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MANY LEFTIST TENTACLES

A reader writes:

It seems to me that the common core of beliefs for ARM Republicans, most Greens, the Big M Multiculturalists is really "democratic centralism". That is why these three views (anti-monarrchy, environmentalism and multiculturalism) , logically independent, usually are batched together, along with 'liberal' views on gay rights, gun control etc.

I think it was Alexis De Toqueville who highlighted the risk to liberty from democracy and argued that there were two rival strands of democratic thought. What we can call a Jeffersonian strand with an emphasis on breaking up power centres ('decentralisation of power') and a Jacobin strand that sees the common will as the ultimate goal to which all must bow.

I think the main streams in the contemporary left certainly have a Jacobin impulse but it is elitist not populist. They only recognise a popular desire as authentic when it goes along with their ideology, otherwise they call for government 'leadership' to overcome the popular demand.

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FALSE MEMORIES AND FALSE ACCUSATIONS

This (Australian) ABC News Radio "Health Minute" has a summary of recent research on False Memory Syndrome. This is a controversial field and goes to the heart of recent public concerns over child abuse. It shows the urgent need to develop protocols to take account of FMS in cases of child abuse so the accused's rights are protected. Without these protocols in place all child abuse charges, true or false, will be subject to increasing skepticism.

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PINE TREES CAUSE ACID RAIN!

What a dilemma for the Greenies this must be: Even pristine forests can contribute to air pollution. In fact, researchers now say that northern pine forests exude a family of nitrogen oxides and do so in quantities that may rival those produced worldwide by industry and traffic. Nitrogen oxides can react with hydrocarbons to yield nitric acid, a primary ingredient in acid rain. They can also help produce smog-causing ozone. Scientists generally peg automobiles as the prime source of nitrogen oxides. Trees, on the other hand, are usually credited with sopping up air pollutants

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ELSEWHERE

US President George W. Bush pledged the United Nations will play a vital role in post-war Iraq, offering reassurances that Washington will not act unilaterally in rebuilding the country. The USA must be the most generous and forgiving nation in history.

The Australian government has positioned a small group of federal officials in Kuwait as part of the government-in-waiting of occupied Iraq. The Bush administration invited the federal government to supply specialists to the staff of the US-run Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, which will govern Iraq after the war until an elected Iraqi government is in place.

The silent majority again: Sometimes we think only lunatics live in the San Francisco Bay Area, but the San Francisco Chronicle has a poll that suggests that's not true. Sixty-three percent of Bay Area residents support the liberation of Iraq

Peter Hitchens argues we need to return to the idea of punishment if we are to avoid both the continued escalation of crime and the Big Brother surveillance state the popular reaction to out of control crime will produce.

Prominent Australian historian, Geoffrey Blainey has reviewed Windschuttle's book on Tasmania and credits Windschuttle with demolishing a Leftist myth about the “genocide” of Tasmanian Aborigines by early British settlers. Speaking of the Leftist historians, Blainey says: But many of their errors, made on crucial matters, beggared belief. Moreover their exaggeration, gullibility, and what this book calls “fabrication” went on and on.

Matt Ridley has some good things to say about GM technology and criticises Europe's techno-pessimism, which is now HURTING the environment

China Hand has just had a shot at Australian school-teachers -- asking whether such government-cosseted people can really be called "professionals"

Chris Brand points out that Political correctness has made SARS pneumonia much more dangerous than it might otherwise have been.

Michael Darby has a few notes on the history and thoughts of Daniel Pipes -- the man who more or less predicted the 9/11 events.

In my academic posting of April 7th here I look at a claim that Rightists have been shown as opposed to human rights. I point out that the result arose because “human rights” were defined in a Leftist way.

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POSTWAR IRAQ

My nomination for the stupidest headline about Iraq in Australia’s Left-leaning press: Time to stand up to America. What hate-filled Leftist nutcases like this forget to mention is that Australia would have no influence at all in Iraq if we had not done our bit to help the USA put down a brutal madman.

As it is, it is good to see that Australians will likely be part of the US-led post-war administration in Iraq, although not in key roles, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer says. Mr Downer has just returned from the US where he discussed with President George W Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell US plans for the reconstruction and administration of Iraq.

Australia’s foreign minister Alexander Downer also says that the UN should supervise eventual elections in Iraq. I agree with that but cannot see any other justification for having the U.N. there.

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MILITARY HELICOPTERS

The U.S. has lost a few helicopters in the Iraq war. But:

Gibson and other helicopter experts say, it should be a very different story if the U.S. is unfortunate enough to have to return to this or any other battlefield in the future. There's a new generation of copters coming on-line in the next five years that can fly lower, faster and more stealthily than anything deployed in Iraq. New night vision and radar technology will help pilots identify their targets from four to five times farther away than is currently possible. They also promise to be easier to maintain, cutting down on crashes. By the end of the decade, some helicopters will even be capable of flying more like fixed-wing aircraft

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OSAMA AND SADDAM

There is a very interesting summary here of the links between the Iraquis and Osama bin Laden. It all seems to be well-documented -- insofar as one can document what would be closely-guarded secrets. The home page of the article has a whole lot of other documentation on Iraq and Saddam as well.

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LENIN ON THE STATE

“Essentially the state is the power exercised over the masses by a group of armed men separated from the people.” From the April Theses See here

“The state is a special organization of force: it is an organization of violence for the suppression of some class” From The state and revolution. See here.

That makes the Leftist position pretty clear, I think. The State exists to suppress people. No wonder power-mad people such as Leftists like big government!

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ELSEWHERE

Arabs throughout the Mideast were dismayed by television images of American tanks rolling through the heart of Baghdad and some rushed to sign up for holy war against U.S.-led forces. "As Arabs, we cannot see this and not move," said a man in his early 30s.. It seems clear that it is the Arabs who define us as the enemy rather than vice versa. They sure love suicide.

Good: Oakland police fired rubber bullets and wooden pellets on Monday to disperse hundreds of anti-war protesters in what was believed to be the first such use against U.S. protesters since the American-led war on Iraq began. Demonstrators were seeking to block access to American President Lines, a shipping company they claimed was profiting from the war in Iraq when police said they used the pellets and bullets to disperse about 750 protesters.

Great news! Britain is going to deport “Captain Hook” -- their pro-terrorist Muslim leader. Is British justice finally beginning to target the dangerous ones? About time!

And even the U.S. Justice Dept. seems to be overcoming their political correctness long enough to get some terrorist-supporting Muslims convicted! Is sanity breaking out everywhere?

Claims that man-made pollution is causing "unprecedented" global warming have been seriously undermined by new research which shows that the Earth was warmer during the Middle Ages

Michael Darby has an article that reminds us that Muslims think they should still own any territory that they once controlled.

Chris Brand has a post on the psychological reasons why women no longer need marriage.

In my academic posting of April 6th here I look at a claim that working class people are particularly authoritarian and show that some are and some are not -- with no overall trend one way or the other.

Mike Kerrigan, a Canadian university student, obviously has a lot of fun. He has created two big posters which he uses to taunt the Leftists around him about the Leftist policies of Hitler and Mussolini. I alluded briefly to them yesterday but if you missed them you can see them here.

The Wicked one has a joke in the “oldie but goldie” class.

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A LEFTIST HITLER AND RIGHTIST NEO-NAZIS?

I have just put up here an interesting email about the historical Hitler and modern-day Neo-Nazis. The writer makes several good points which question my own formulatuion that Hitler was simply the most nationalist of the extreme Leftists. I would like to look here therefore at his three main points. Firstly, though, readers here might like to read what I am replying to, as it does embody some common misconceptions and assumptions.

1). I have previously pointed out at some length that Hitler’s eugenic ideas were in fact typically Leftist for his times and were supported in America by “progressives” of the day. My correspondent then asks how I square that with my general support for Chris Brand today -- who also has some eugenic ideas. Am I being inconsistent?

For a start, although I support some of Chris Brand’s ideas, I do not support them all. I assist him to circulate his ideas mainly out of free-speech considerations -- as there have been great efforts made (sacking him from his university job, pulping his book) by Leftists to suppress him. And I myself have never commented on the eugenic ideas he occasionally raises. Nonetheless, I do think it is absolutely stupid to condemn an area of science or scholarship just because it has been misused in the past. One might as well condemn all dog-lovers because Hitler loved dogs. So just because Hitler and the American “progressives” of the interwar era had the perverse and ridiculous idea that Jews were genetically inferior does not mean that all and any genes are therefore equal in any sense. The rise of genetic engineering -- with its capacity to filter out genetic defects in children -- has in fact really made the matter a non-issue. Genes are ALREADY being selected for and against by medical science in today’s world with little controversy. And Jews, ironically perhaps, are one of the major beneficiaries of that, with the recent virtual elimination of Tay Sachs disease.

2). The second point made is a common one: That the Fascists of the 1920s and 1930s were opposed in their day by other Leftists and admired by many mainstream politicians in Britain and America. Mussolini in fact achieved the remarkable feat of being admired not only by Hitler but also by Winston Churchill and F.D. Roosevelt! All that, however, is really no more than an illustration of how radicalized interwar politics had become in Europe. If Hitler and Mussolini were seen as moderate and reasonable by nervous Anglo-Saxon politicians and businessmen, how radical must have been the alternative? And the alternative was very radical indeed. Stalin’s Russia was to the forefront of everyone’s mind with the unprecedented challenges it presented to almost the whole of society’s traditonal arrangements. And Stalin’s Russia had extensive support throughout Europe. So it is no wonder that slightly less radical Leftists (Nazis and Fascists) were gladly greeted for their apparent capacity to prevent the Communists from taking over the whole of Europe. And the Communists, of course, were not oblivious of the effective opposition provided by their Fascist rivals. So Communists and their symathizers did indeed hate and oppose the Fascists. Mainstream democratic Leftists -- such as Germany’s Social Democratic Party -- however were much less opposed to Hitler and in fact voted with the Nazis in critical Reichstag votes. For a fun poster that makes crystal clear how Leftist Hitler’s ideas were see here.

Interestingly, the basic economic policies of the Fascists and the Nazis -- permitting private business to continue but only under tight State controls and supervision -- were radical in their day but are now the staple of Leftist political parties worldwide. The greatest affinities of the Fascists and Nazis were then not with the Communists but with parties like the Democrats of the modern-day USA and the Labour Party of modern-day Britain! The Fascists were in fact the first of the modern Leftists -- something that I have already set out at great length here.

3). The third major point is that Hitler's few remaining admirers in at least the Anglo-Saxon countries all seem to be on the political far-Right. If Hitler was a socialist, how come that some modern-day far-Rightists admire him?

In considering this, the first thing to ask is whether the description "Far-Right" is an accurate one for the people we are talking about. I think it is. The American far Right do share important basic values with mainstream "conservatives": They are independent, individualistic, suspicious of big-government and find great wisdom in traditional American values and arrangements. But they seem to be much more doctrinaire about it all and sometimes carry their independence and individualism so far as to become "survivalists" -- trying to live as independently of government and of what they see as a corrupted society as they can. But the far Right is a broad church with many opinions within it and it must be noted that only some of them have added pro-Hitler and antisemitic attitudes to their gospel.

So although support for antisemitism was in Hitler's day widespread across the American political spectrum -- from Henry Ford on the Right to "Progressives" on the Left -- it has lived on during the postwar era mostly on the extreme Right. (Though recent upsurges of "Anti-Zionism" among Leftists on university campuses seem to be a harbinger of big changes in that situation). Why?

The pro-Hitler, antisemitic orientation of some modern Rightist fringe groups goes back to the fact that Marxism and Leninism were internationalist. Marx and Lenin despised nationalism and wished to supplant national solidarity with class solidarity. That this was the best way to better the economic position of the worker was, however, never completely obvious. The Fascists did not think so nor did most Leftists in democratic countries. Nonethless, it did have the effect of identifying Leftism with skepticism about patriotism, nationalism and any feeling that the traditions of one's own country were of great value. The result of this was that people with strong patriotic, nationalist and traditionalist feelings in the Anglo-Saxon countries felt rather despised and oppressed by the mostly Leftist intelligentsia and sought allies and inspiration wherever they could. And Hitler was certainly a great exponent of national pride, community traditions and patriotism. So those who felt marginalized by their appreciation of their own traditional values and their own community tended in extreme cases to adopt Hitler and blot out of their minds or otherwise rationalize the fact that he was also a socialist. And the Leftists also blotted out of their minds or otherwise rationalized Hitler's socialism for exactly the same reason -- because Hitler was also a nationalist. The Rightists liked Hitler's nationalism and the Leftists did not but it suited neither to acknowledge his socialism. It did not suit the Leftists because it would have associated them with a failed and condemned figure and it did not suit the Rightists because socialism was no part of the traditional independent culture that they wished to preserve.

So antisemitism lived on in the postwar era among the extreme Right for two reasons -- firstly because such people are traditionalists and antisemitism had been traditional in European societies for roughly 2,000 years and secondly because it was a central part of Hitler's doctrines. Their liking for Hitler's national and ethnic pride led to their adopting his antisemitism too.

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ELSEWHERE

Chris Brand has some rather amazing revelations about the role of sex in the Russian revolution.

Michael Darby has a post on how the African AIDS epidemic could be beaten.

The Wicked one has a heartening report about resistance to anti-war tyranny.

In my academic posting of April 5th here I look at a claim that drug abuse in young people is caused by their “authoritarian” parenting. I point out that the authors concerned did not really know how to measure authoritarianism and that they were treating as significant a relationship which was in fact negligible.

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A MEMOIR OF SCOTLAND

My post about Scotland yesterday got me thinking about my various visits to Scotland. A few recollections:

The most beautiful scenery I have ever seen was Scotland's Western Highlands. I have never been much of a one for scenery but this even got to me. The only thing in Australia that I know of which comes close is the road from Cairns to Port Douglas.

My wife and I made a detour to visit the Isle of Skye. I was glad we did. It too was really beautiful. One morning I looked out the window of the bed and breakfast place in which we were staying and literally saw "a bright golden haze on the meadow" there.

After Skye, we drove further up the coast and eventually took a Caledonian McBrayne ferry across to Harris and then drove straight up the island to Lewis. When my wife and I got to the main centre on Lewis it was 11pm but still broad daylight and we had no trouble getting accommodation at a bed and breakfast place (i.e. a private home).

At the Northern tip of Lewis was a nice white sandy beach and I decided the next morning that a swim in Sub-Arctic waters would be worth a try. By the time I got in up to my knees I could not feel my toes so thought the better of it. Nobody else tried. I later did the same thing off a beach at Herm in the Channel Islands -- with similar results. I felt rather at home on Lewis. Everyone seemed to have skin that was as fair as mine.

On our way back South we stopped in Glasgow, where my wife had relatives. I got to know a fair bit about Glaswegians and really got to like them. I particularly liked their sense of humour. Billy Connolly’s humour is in many ways simply an exaggerated form of typical Glaswegian humour. They are incredibly status-conscious, however. My being a Doctor went down exceedingly well! Education is, of course, the thing Scots most respect.

The most notable thing about Glasgow was that it looked as if it had just been heavily bombed. Whole suburbs were in rubble. But it wasn't the Luftwaffe that did it. It was smart-alec town-planners and Leftist social engineers. They bulldozed the "slums" such as the Gorbals. Beautiful old stone terrace houses which would have been snapped up for renovation in Australia were witlessly destroyed. They moved the slum-dwellers out to new estates such as Easterhouse which then also became pretty slum-like. I know. I later did a social survey there and saw for myself.

I did the social survey on my second trip to Glasgow. On that occasion, one thing I noted was that Scots are great lovers of ritual and "the done thing". They seem to love rules. They have a custom for every occasion. I went to a party in Glasgow at one stage and it was some occasion (Halloween?) on which "Apple Dooking" was practiced. You have to grab an apple with your teeth only while it is bobbing in a pail of water. Being a rather dour sort, I did not think much of the idea so said "No thanks". To an English person that would have been it. They would have been embarrassed to press me further. Not the Scots. In the most friendly way they simply insisted. They just did not understand the idea of not doing something that was customary.

That aside I felt very much at ease among the Scots. Australians are popular there. Scots see Australians as being "enemies" or "victims" of the English --- which is also how they see themselves. As I moved around Scotland it was interesting to see how my reception changed when Scots discovered that I was not English. It was a transformation: From correct formality to warmth. I think I slightly prefer the Scots to the English. I like their greater spontaneity. Though I appreciate English reserve too.

The only thing I dislike about the Scots is their ingrained Socialism. When Mrs Thatcher came to power in a landslide, Scotland actually at the same time swung away from the Tories. Still, Edinburgh is a lot more conservative than Glasgow (where 50% of the Scots live), so maybe I would enjoy living in Edinburgh if I could hack the climate. Glasgow has a reputation for ugliness which is undeserved. There are quite a lot of nice places in Glasgow.

When I was doing my social survey in Glasgow (mainly concerned with Scottish nationalism) I tried to look up various books on Scottish nationalism in the various libraries there. One I could not find anywhere. No library had bought it, I gathered. Because of funding limits, a lot of books are hard to find in British libraries, even University libraries. When I got back to Australia the book I had been seeking was just sitting there on the shelf at my own University of N.S.W. library! They could afford a book on Scottish nationalism that the Scots themselves could not. Wealth and poverty do make a difference and socialist Scotland certainly was poor when I was there.

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POSTWAR IRAQ

Stanley Kurtz has a long and learned article in Policy Review about what America should do with Iraq once Saddam is ousted. GWB and many others think that an effort should be made to set up democracy there but since the last effort to do just that led to Saddam Hussein’s rise to power, the critics are skeptical that Iraqui democracy is possible.

Kurtz relies heavily on the way the British Empire gave birth to modern Indian democracy out of a traditional society and also argues that short term control by America worked well in setting up Japanese democracy after WWII. He does however see huge difficulties and a long haul ahead in Iraq.

I am inclined to think everybody is being too pessimistic about postwar Iraq. I think that after Saddam, ordinary Iraquis will be dead keen to try the American way. I know that there are important cultural differences between Iraq and Europe but I still think that the example of central Europe and the Baltic States is instructive (Poland, Estonia etc.). After they all escaped from Soviet rule there is no doubt that America was thenceforth the model that they have all tried in various ways to follow. Saddam has obviously been as bad for those he ruled as the Soviets were so I think the response of Iraquis too will be keenness to try everything that is opposite to the Saddam regime.

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ELSEWHERE

Chris Brand documents some fairly astonishing ignorance about autism by someone who is supposed to be an expert on it. Apparently all that naughty evidence about genetic factors must not be mentioned. Even blaming mothers is apparently preferable to that.

Michael Darby has a post pointing out that science and technology is CREATING resources all the time.

The Wicked one takes a swipe at Canadian wimpishness.

In my posting of April 4th here, I have a bit of a laugh at how some Dutch colleagues were completely unable to understand their own research results because those results contradicted their Leftist expectations.

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POSTMODERNISM DECONSTRUCTED

To most people the ideas of postmoderrnism -- that truth is nonexistent etc -- simply seem too bizarre to be worth further consideration. They are just a sort of intellectual masturbation for Leftists. Life goes on BECAUSE we recognize some statements as true and others as false. If I ring the WRONG telephone number I will not speak to the person I want to speak to. A recent article by Simon Blackburn makes a similar point at much greater length and thoroughly dissects the theories of Richard Rorty -- one of the chief postmodernists. Warning though: The first two thirds of the article sets out the postmodernist position. You may want to skip straight to the final third of the article to get to something worth reading.

Simon Blackburn is the professor of philosophy at the University of Cambridge and appears to be something of a Leftist himself. He is however thoroughly within the tradition of British empiricism in philosophy. The British have always seen the purpose of philosophy as being to clarify and EXPLAIN whereas French philosophers (and France seems to be the prime source of postmodernism) from Descartes, through Sartre to Derrida have always seen being clever as the prime role of philosophy -- and they have generally equated being clever with an ability to CONFUSE any issue they touch on.

In the circumstances, it is no wonder that the Anglo-Saxons are so much more influential in the modern-day world than are the French. Someone recently said that the French are basically a Chihuahua that wants to be a bull-terrier. The Ango-Saxons really are that bull-terrier. And, as a former bull-terrier breeder, I can asssure you that, despite their power, bull-terriers are extremely good natured.

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SCOTLAND

Freedom & Whisky continues to put up good postings about ongoing socialist idiocies in Scotland. Paradoxically, getting their own parliament seems to have been the worst thing that has ever happened for freedom in Scotland. One explanation for it is that most of the sensible and enterprising Scots left Scotland long ago leaving behind a preponderance of envious no-hopers. Emigration may have been even more dysgenic for Scotland than for Ireland. It was mainly the best and brightest who left Scotland for England and the colonies whereas anybody who could left Ireland. I have ancestors from both so I do have some personal interest in the matter.

Genetics, however, is clearly only one part of the story -- as the great economic success of equally Celtic Ireland in recent times demonstrates. The Irish have been independent from the English since 1922 so have had a long time to work through their political follies. And in the 1980s they finally got around to a real embrace of capitalism -- with tax cut after tax cut after tax cut. They even outdid Mrs Thatcher and a very great Irishman -- Ronald Reagan -- in that regard. So Ireland has now clearly outstripped England in prosperity. Given my continuing great affection for Scotland, I can only hope that it does not take them 60 years to learn the same lesson.

In my academic days I had quite a lot published on Scotland:

References:
Ray, J.J. (1978) Are Scottish nationalists authoritarian and conservative? European J. Political Research 6, 411-418.
Ray, J.J. (1979) How different are the Scots and the English? Contemporary Review 234, 158-159.
Ray, J.J. (1979) Authoritarianism in Australia, England and Scotland. J. Social Psychology 108, 271-272.
Ray, J.J. (1979) Opposition to the Common Market in England and Scotland. British J. Sociology 30, 218-221.
Ray, J.J. (1979) The Scottish paradox. Quadrant 23(10), 27-29.
Ray, J.J. (1981) English attitudes to Scottish nationalism. J. Social Psychology 115, 141-142.

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KINDNESS CAN BE HATED

In a post here of 23rd March I noted:
“Anyone who has read Helmut Schoeck's book on envy will understand very well why America is hated. Paradoxically, their kindness probably gets them hated even more than they otherwise would be: Because it too shows them up as being so much better than most other people.”

Lileks has recently made a related point, saying: “Sometimes I think the reason America is so despised in some quarters is that we fail to live up to other peoples' worst expectations.”

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ELSEWHERE

China hand has a rather alarming report about attitudes to the Iraq war in China. Apparently most Chinese see it as nothing more than naked American aggression. China Hand himself however sees as ridiculous the current Leftist proposition that we should never militarily intervene in the affairs of other nations.

This U.S. Christian site notes that Saddam has become “chic” on many college campuses. He is the modern-day equivalent to Che Guevara in the 60s -- a vicious butcher who is revered simply because he is seen as a “rebel”. It does show what a dangerous ethical vacuum exists inside many Leftists despite their usual protestations of “caring”. That they almost all rose up to defend a Fascist butcher such as Saddam shows once and for all how much they “care”!

Chris Brand takes on the arguments of the libertarians who are against the war.

Michael Darby has a post that argues that the U.S. was too soft on Islamic militancy in the past and that 9/11 was the outcome of that softness.

In my posting of April 3rd here I look at the poor state of research that combines both medicine and psychology to investigate heart disease.

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LEFTIST NONSENSE ABOUT SUPPORT FOR THE WAR

A reader writes:

Contrary to leftist claims that the current war is a big business conspiracy, the CEOs of the largest corporations are actually quite reluctant to support the coalition war effort. At least according to Slate. Their practical globalism promotes caution, the exact opposite of the viewpoint that criticises this war as a war for globalization. Thomas Friedman goes somewhat further and says no two countries with Big Mac franchises have ever gone to war! See here .

As far as the real war is concerned... This BBC site has some statistics providing a brief history of Urban Warfare There are reports that the Iraqi government has been distributing copies of the movie "Black Hawk Down" as a training guide for his forces. This could mean that we shall soon see another example of "life (or more accurately, death) imitating art" but there of course major differences between the relatively small scale operation in Mogadishu and Iraq. The US forces in Somalia lacked armour and had no fixed wing air support. Also the US will probably make use of the Apache, armoured attack helicopters that were not used in Somalia. Of course the urban combat environment will be dangerous even with these advantages. The US military is developing new urban warfare technology including "thermobaric weapons" for the infantry and even robots. These won't be ready before 2006 at earliest.

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WAR CAUSUALTIES

Before the Iraq war, the Left were very big on predictions of many casualties and claimed that nothing could justify such casualties. And of course there have been casualties but the supreme prowess and humanity of the modern American military has been shown by how few there have been. Just for perspective, a reader has sent in these comments -- focusing initially on the casualties Saddam himself inflicted on his fellow Muslims when he invaded the Ayatollah’s Iran some years ago.

Here is what the Federation of Atomic Scientists site says about casualties in the Iran / Iraq war in the 1980s. Casualty figures are highly uncertain, though estimates suggest more than one and a half million war and war-related casualties -- perhaps as many as a million people died, many more were wounded, and millions were made refugees.

Iraq's “victory” was not without cost. The Iraqis suffered an estimated 375,000 casualties, the equivalent of 5.6 million for a population the size of the United States. Another 60,000 were taken prisoner by the Iranians. Iran's losses may have included more than 1 million people killed or maimed. The war claimed at least 300,000 Iranian lives and injured more than 500,000, out of a total population which by the war's end was nearly 60 million.

Without diminishing the horror of either war, Iranian losses in the eight-year Iran-Iraq war appear modest compared with those of the European contestants in the four years of World War I, shedding some light on the limits of the Iranian tolerance for martyrdom. During the Great War, German losses were over 1,700,000 killed and over 4,200,000 wounded [out of a total population of over 65 million]. Germany's losses, relative to total national population, were at least five times higher than Iran. France suffered over 1,300,000 deaths and over 4,200,000 wounded. The percentages of pre-war population killed or wounded were 9% of Germany, 11% of France, and 8% of Great Britain.

I have found it a bit difficult to find figures for the casualties in the various Israel Arab wars over past 50 years but there are figures on the Intifada here and here. Iraqi casualties alone in the Iran/Iraq were about 170 times the total Palestinian casualties in the Intifada. (Close to 500 times if both Iran Iraq deaths are accounted for.) It is common for the US to be criticised as having double standards for supporting Israel but opposing Iraq. The arithmetic suggests double standards are not the exclusive property of one side.

Gulf War 1 casualty figures are here and are, by comparison with other wars, very minor

.

As every military man will tell you, every casualty is to be regretted but the present war is as nothing compared to what Saddam himself has inflicted on the Iraqui people and compared to what we inflicted on ourselves by our past follies. Removing Saddam is undoubtedly the best thing we could have done to PREVENT casualties among the people of Iraq. Many more would have died had we left him to carry on as usual.

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ELSEWHERE

If you think that the French should not get off scot-free for their hatred of America, see here

Progress of the war: "Our special forces, working closely with anti-Saddam Iraqis on the ground, are very actively preparing the Baghdad battlefield for collapse from within. Casualties are low. Finally, pockets of resistance in Iraq, Manhattan and Paris have been contained and will turn out to be of no strategic significance." Via The Federalist

Michael Darby has a vivid memoir of the Australian military involvement in Vietnam to remind us that the Iraq war is not the first time that Australians and Americans have fought together.

Chris Brand reviews the “Individual psychology” of Alfred Adler -- a Freudian “rebel”

The Wicked one has some good advice about how to deal with the speakerphone menace.

In my posting of April 2nd here I deplore the way Leftists psychologists just refuse to give up old and failed ideas.

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