ELSEWHERE

As a former Army man myself, I am pleased to see that most Americans now trust and respect their military. The military is the one branch of government that it takes real committment to belong to.

Hey! Is this sympathy for Bush from the NYT? “The Mideast is once again testing American leadership in ways that would tax any administration.”

Krugman is finding Nazis under the bed again. His latest conspiracy theory is as absurd as most: The Bush administration is setting the country up for a financial crisis so social programs can be cut.

Globalization is a great boon for third world scientists -- putting their ability to communicate their ideas on a par with that of First World scientists.

Something that the economic irrationalists of the Left should bear in mind: "The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups." -- Henry Hazlitt; and: "Trade barriers are an excellent means to higher wealth for the few but lower wealth for the many." --Walter Williams. Via The Federalist

Whether you get fat or not is surely an individual decision but US government control-freaks now feel they must protect people from getting too fat.

NIKE workers in Indonesia need to be saved from Michael Moore and the anti-globos trying to save them from multinational corporate greed. Moore presumably wants worse things to happen to them.. like not working for Nike.

There is a good article by Jason Soon on unfair dismissal laws that makes a point that would be obvious to almost anybody who thought about it but which Leftists nonetheless ignore: If you make it difficult for employers to fire someone they are not happy with, their only defence against getting saddled with a drone is to be a lot more cautious about hiring people in the first place -- i.e. unfair dismissal laws increase unemployment.

A good comment on Lefty regard for the truth from Jim Kalb: “Among the claims Professor Bellesiles made in his Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture — a book once acclaimed and now thoroughly discredited — was that there was no significant market for guns in early America. Clayton Cramer, one of Bellesiles’ most effective debunkers, describes the results of a quick look at 18th and early 19th c. newspapers: you just can’t avoid the gun ads. As Cramer asks, why did the experts, many of them specialists in the period, who praised the book and gave Bellesiles the Bancroft Award get taken in so easily?

Chris Brand looks at the relationship between freedom and justice

Michael Darby commemorates the Dunkirk evacuation.

The Wicked one has an interesting post under the heading: Nazism was gay

In my academic posting of May 27th. here, I look at a theory that Leftists are “life-loving” and conservatives are “death-loving”. Needless to say, the survey data showed no such relationship.

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SCHOOL CHOICE

Eleanor Spreitzer emails me that Robert Kennedy Junior was in boarding school -- a college preparatory school -- when his father was shot. She comments:

"This is a member of a family that foams at the mouth against school vouchers and school testing. School Choice? The children in their family go to boarding schools - college preparatory schools - the children of the poor and undereducated go to failing - actually dangerous (because of no disciple) - schools. These failing schools produce the foundation of poor and undereducated needed for the children of the rich and powerful to get and maintain government jobs, salaries, privileges, pensions and most importantly - POWER.

The children of the rich and powerful learn the routine quickly and easily - promise the poor and undereducated - a better life and better education - but in reality - keep them right where they are - undereducated. Undereducated people are easy to control. Tell them anything - they are too ignorant - and too browbeaten to question any one with such a grand education. This has been going on for the last 50 years. Conservatives and Republicans want to stop this cycle - and we are called the mean spirited ones!"

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VIETNAM AND JFK

Kaplan makes a pretty weak argument that JFK would not have pursued the Vietnam War Kaplan says JFK distrusted his advisors, the same team who, under LBJ, took the US into all out war in Vietnam (see here) and then managed to lose it. If JFK had really distrusted these losers he would have sacked them. After all he didn't mind sacking CIA director Allen Dulles and Richard Bissell (see here) over the 'Bay of Pigs'. Pat Buchanan provocatively argues that once Nixon (certainly no saint but not the devil incarnate of liberal mythology either) started to turn the JFK/LBJ Vietnam disaster around, the liberal establishment got rid of him.

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ELSEWHERE

Was Saddam betrayed by his relatives in his army who ordered his army not to fight? Maybe so but there was little sign of his army fighting for him any way. Only anti-American Islamic fanatics fought. I think the claim is like the other claim that before the invasion began, U.S. special forces had gone in and bribed Iraqi generals not to fight. Both claims are supposed to cover up Arab cowardice when faced with an enemy able to defend himself. Treachery, terrorism and the stab in the back are the natural Arab modus operandi. Always have been. Always will be. Only Islamic fanaticism has ever got any more out of them.

Another Pro-Israel and anti-Muslim article from India. Good to have Indians on board. Hardly any Westerners realize it but nobody has suffered more from Muslim attacks in recent times than Hindu India. And Muslim Pakistan still occupies Indian territory in Kashmir that it seized by force in 1948.

Jeff Jacoby points out that giving preference to the children of graduates in university admissions differs from admissions under affirmative action in at least one major respect -- it spurs donations. Loyalty to the alma mater greatly reduces the fees that many colleges have to charge -- a distinct benefit to the students and their families!

I said yesterday that it was a lot of nonsense to blame Bush Administration rhetoric for the fall in value of the US dollar. Forbes seems to agree.

Tony Blair’s policy for transforming standards in inner-city schools has produced little or no improvement in pupils’ results despite 800 million pounds in spending. Funny that! Money is no substitute for discipline. Who would have thought it?

Great news: Pressure has mounted on Tony Blair to hold a referendum on the new EU constitution after Giscard himself said he would be “very pleased” to see his ideas put to the vote. A referendum almost certainly means that the British public will knock the thing on the head.

The accusations against Britain’s Colonel Collins in Iraq seem to be pretty clearly spite-motivated. The Franco-American accuser should be disciplined himself.

A fun picture of one of nature’s wonders here. Or could it be good Photoshop work?

Another reason why nobody will ever solve the problems of Africa: Well-fed African parents who let their kids starve.

Indonesian mass-murderer gets off Scot-free. A lovely lot, Australia’s Islamic neighbours.

China Hand says that Christian teaching and preaching is widely tolerated in China these days.

Michael Darby has a rather satirical excerpt about the Middle East “peace process”

Chris Brand looks at what psychological meaning can be extracted from notions of equality.

The Wicked one is delighted that some members of Britain’s House of Lords think spam comes out of a tin can.

In my academic posting of May 26th. here, I show that many people who vote for Leftist political parties are in fact conservative. They just get taken in by the better deal that Leftists appear to offer them. Leftist deceit has some rewards.

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SAUDI CENSORSHIP

Amusing: I linked yesterday to a story in the Arab News of Saudi Arabia about reformist protests in Iran. Apparently, however, the story was subsequently censored -- as the original link now gives the results of a cricket match! According to Google News, the original story was headed: Reformists Warn Khamenei Over Political Deadlock and the first line went: "The reformist members of the 290-seat Majlis blasted the conservative-controlled institutions for violently stalling reforms and denying the will of Iran's people" But all is not lost: You can still read other reports of the same story here and here

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BRITAIN IN EUROPE

There is a great site here detailing the work of a group of patriotic Brits who are challenging the legal powers of the British parliament to hand over so much power to the EU. The challenge would seem pretty thinly based legally but certainly should be made. The Guardian has a pretty desperate defence of the new EU constitution that Tony Blair is trying to ram through -- arguing that it is as yet “unformulated”. Utter rubbish, of course. The final form of it may not as yet be agreed but Giscard’s draft is well-known.

Matthew Parris in The Times argues that Britain’s big bust up with France and Germany over Iraq has permanently ruined any hope of further UK/EU integration. Sounds reasonable. Let’s hope.

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LONDON AIR POLLUTION

Mike Kerrigan has written in to challenge my claim that the Clean Air Act was responsible for the elimination of London’s smog. I knew somebody would challenge that. Julian Simon’s point that pollution was declining in London before the Act was passed is well-known both among libertarians and among opponents of the Greenies. I mostly agree with Simon but I am myself a research statistician and I know how carefully you have to treat trend data. You have to read it in conjunction with ALL the other data on the question if you are to arrive at reasonable conclusions. What Simon overlooks in this is that trends in biological data commonly reach an asymptote (i.e. eventually level out) -- as the trend to cleaner air in London now in fact has. It is precisely the way Greenies ignore this and rely on straight-line extrapolations that normally unglues them. In the London case, the air pollution was indeed declining up to the 1950s -- mainly because of London’s de-industrialization and population decline -- but it seems clear that it is only the compulsory phasing out of domestic coal fires that has allowed the pollution to continue to decline to its present low level.

And if we look at Lomborg’s graph (p.4, PDF file) there DOES in fact seem to be a levelling out followed by sharper decline in both smoke and sulphur dioxide levels in London during the 1950’s. The Act was passed in 1956.

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THE GREAT TRAINING ROBBERY

Whenever the Australian or British governments try to rein in higher education expenditure or shift more of it to user-pays, we get all sorts of doom and gloom about dumbing down the clever country, undermining future prosperity etc. But what is the connection between education spending and economic growth anyhow? Not what we are being told, at least according to this study of US States: "Using data from all 50 states and spanning two decades... Three distinct regressions find no consistent, statistically significant impact of higher-education appropriations on states' economic growth. Indeed, a stronger relationship is found when the models are reversed, suggesting that a better case can be made that growth drives spending, rather than spending driving growth." "Comparing states' higher-education appropriations and gross state products also yields no solid evidence that spending drives economic growth."

I found similar results some time ago in Australia. See here or here

And using even broader statistical data, Ivar Berg long ago made the related point that a higher education is of questionable economic benefit to the individual being educated too.

Reference:
Berg, I. (1973) Education and jobs: The great training robbery Harmondsworth, Mddx.: Penguin.

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ELSEWHERE

A long and quite silly Reuters article by a Frenchman argues that the recent drop in value of the US dollar is due to what economists call “jawboning” -- official pronouncements. All governments wish it was that easy. The obvious truth is that the dollar was a refuge currency amid world uncertainty and now that things have settled down a bit after the Iraq war, people are looking for better returns elsewhere.

Worth reading: An excellent (9 pages!) article in the NYT about conservative students giving their “liberal” colleges a big wake-up.

A great article by Andrew Bolt on why talk is useless when it comes to dealing with Islamic extremists.

Michael Darby thinks that the many chemicals encountered in modern warfare have a serious impact on the subsequent health of the soldiers who fought.

Chris Brand notes some progress in getting the evidence about racial IQ differences recognized.

The Wicked one notes the conflict between animal rights and Muslim slaughtering practices.

In my academic posting of May 24th. here, I show that, despite their many years of studying it, psychologists still know very little about materialistic ambition.

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MACHIAVELLIANISM IN FARM POLICY

I don’t know why the penny did not drop before but it took one of my readers to point out to me that EU opposition to genetically modified food (which Americans eat without harm all the time) is just to protect the crazy EU farm policy. If EU farmers started using GM crops it would make them even MORE productive and thus bankrupt the EU farm policy -- which is obliged to buy up whatever the farmers produce. That the policy is also applied to farmers in poor countries who export to the EU and thus keeps those farmers poor does not bother the EU a bit. Better for Africans to stay poor than for the EU farm policy to collapse under the weight of its own stupidity.

The reader concerned is a good cynic. He also points to the instant US ban on Canadian beef after just one Canadian cow was found to have mad cow disease and links it to the way Canada and its Froggy Prime Minister antagonized many Americans with its repeated attempts to protect Saddam Hussein. Canada squandered a lot of goodwill over that so a bit of quiet retaliation was bound to come.

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DEATH DUTIES

Around 20 years ago, all Australian States abolished death duties but they still exist in many places elsewhere. The SCOTSMAN features a well argued attack on Death duties.

This pro-death duties article outlines some of the history of Australia's death duties abolition.

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ELSEWHERE

Extra anti-terrorist police patrolling London's streets have been given orders to shoot to kill suspects. Good to see that the British police can get serious sometimes.

Good to see that the Iranians are trying hard to neuter their Mullahs.

A good summary of feminism -- at least as it once was: "Feminism proclaimed that for women to be fulfilled they had to adopt the career ambitions of workaholic men, the sexual promiscuity of John F. Kennedy, and the cynicism of Gloria Steinem (the pre-married one, that is). Can you think of any demographic group other than women who would have bought into this prescription for complete disaster and then cried victim when the Bunker Buster of Inevitable Biology crashed through the roof and blew up in their faces?"

Christopher Hitchens has a very acerbic attack on the way Leftists betrayed their own supposed values over Iraq. He uses their own jargon to good effect: "The government and people of these United States are now at war with the forces of reaction." "Reactionaries" are what Leftists call conservatives but the Muslim fundamentalists are of course REAL reactionaries. They really do want to take us back to the Middle Ages.

Amusing: In the anti-smoking debate, the Arab News has come out in favour of "personal choice". How about personal choice for Saudi women who want to drive a car etc.?

A remarkable research report here about black under-achievement at school. An extremely thorough black researcher found that black kids from wealthy black homes do not do well at school because they are lazy! Gasp!

Good to see that Israel, the USA and India are beginning to see one-another as natural allies. All three are strong democracies that have big problems with Islamic fruitcakes.

Interesting that blacks are now more often prosecuted for lynching than whites are.

Cuba: “The recent round of crackdowns has not only brought a new wave of international criticism -- as it rightly should have -- but it has once again thrust the issue of what to do with Castro's Cuba back to the forefront of American politics."

After the avoidable loss of two shuttle crews, even NASA now realizes that its credibility is just about zero.

Leftists often seem to think that even the mentally ill are “equal” and “victims”. The Misanthropyst has an amusing link that tells of one of the do-gooders getting a dose of reality about the matter.

The NYT's Jayson Blair falsifications seems small time compared to their Duranty affair in the '30s. There are some other unsavoury NYT episodes listed here

The Wicked one is pretty scathing about Lew Rockwell’s hatred of the “neoconservatives”.

Michael Darby has an extract from a V.D. Hanson article in which VDH argues that there is no problem with us understanding the Islamic world. It is the Muslims who do not understand the modern world.

Chris Brand sees the proposed new European constitution as yet another hope for causing a big bustup in the British Labour party.

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CHEAP DRUGS FOR THE POOR

In response to my recent note about the attempt in Maine to force drug prices down for the uninsured, one of my readers who is a medical specialist writes:

This drug price control will just result in a shortage of drugs - for "the poor" - NPR had a good discussion of this issue. One way the drug companies can wiggle around this is to restrict their supply; and the insurance companies can apply restrictions on distribution, like requiring pre-approval; when "the poor" realize that they will have to make another trip to the doctor's office to obtain pre-approval, etc.. many will not go back and simply will not get their drugs.

There is no free lunch. Following all the pressure to discount anti-AIDS drugs for Africa's "poor", there has been a great reduction of new such drugs - no surprises here. Likewise - there have been few new drugs for malaria - most of the people who need them the most can't afford them. Of course, "need" is simply not a market force - some people are just out of luck.

Fortunately, some have developed common sense in this area - South Africans have re-discovered DDT and the incidence of malaria has dropped greatly - again, no surprises - except to Greenies like Christie Whitman; I always believed she was an airhead when, as Governor of NJ, she fired the chief of the NJ State Police when he said "of course, we profile"

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SMOKING

A smoker among my readers has reproached me for saying that people have a “right” to breathe unpolluted air. To clarify: I am not an anarcho-capitalist -- though I did once trifle with the idea. Like most libertarians I am a Minimal Statist -- which means that I see some role for laws. It seems to me that air pollution is a case in point. 300 years of capitalism did nothing to clear up London's smog but the Clean Air Act did the trick. So I support restrictions on air pollution -- whether emanating from factories, cars or smokers. Breathing is pretty basic and so therefore is pollution of it.

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THE LATEST FROM BROOKES NEWS

Why does Ralph Nader bat for Arafat against Israel?: Nader is more than just a hypocrite. His support for Arafat was a backdoor way of denying the right of Israel to exist _ and what would that mean for Jews everywhere? Bunny Champers: media corruption and the Iraqi war.: It still pains an old battle scarred war correspondent like myself to recall how his fellow scribes refused to report the truth about Saddam and how they lied about the looting and the hospitals so as to make the Yankee Doodle Dandies look bad. Oil prices and energy taxes: another green con.: Free markets, not taxes, conserve resources. This is really basic stuff. When the supply of any resource falls its price rises. Eventually the price reaches a point where the cost of producing an additional unit exceeds the demand. This is why we never run out of resources in a free market.

Details here

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BRITAIN

Wow! Britain is to get a national ID card. I thought only the Europeans went in for that sort of thing. When the Hawke Labor government tried to bring one in for Australia there was a huge outcry that finally knocked the idea on the head. Though I must say that I cannot see what honest people have to fear from it. But at least the new UK legislation will include a further clampdown on the appeal rights of rejected asylum seekers and measures to tackle those who destroy their documents on arrival in Britain.

This EU constitution that Britain looks likely to adopt will essentially make Britain no longer an independent country and will remove from its Parliament most of its powers in favour of dictates from Brussels. If the British accept that they deserve what they get. An Indian reader has emailed me with the claim that Indians under the British Raj had more rights and independence than Britain would have under the new EU constitution. No wonder Tony Blair does not want to put the thing to a referendum. He knows it would be rejected.

All that antiterrorism experience in N. Ireland may come in handy: "Coalition chiefs plan to send 5,500 British paratroopers to Baghdad to save US troops from losing control of the Iraqi capital."

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ELSEWHERE

Clever! Israel has accepted the nutty US “roadmap” for peace. Why? Because they know the Palis will never fulfil their part of it so the whole thing will fall in a heap anyway.

What fun! The “diversity” mania of American colleges and universities is now causing better-qualified girls to be excluded in favour of boys! Feminists will love that. Will we now see feminists AGAINST affirmative action?

James Glaser makes a persuasive case for the view that there is still NOTHING stopping more terrorists and their deadly cargo from entering the United States.

Chris Brand notes that eugenics has just found some support on the Left and that Enoch Powell is getting new respect.

Michael Darby wonders at the continued glamorization of the brutal Fidel Castro.

China hand discusses the merits of renting versus buying in China.

The Wicked one is critical of both the Federal Reserve banking system and the FBI

In my academic posting of May 23rd. here, I try to inject a bit of psychometric sophistication into the measurement of chronic anxiety.

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SLOW LOADING?

Blogspot blogs often seem to be very slow to load lately. If you are finding this blog difficult to access, however, you have options. Both of my mirror sites (see the links top left on this page) should be faster-loading. Try both and bookmark the one that seems to work best for you. The Lycos network seem to have overcome their problems so I have also revitalized my Tripod site lately.

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THERE ARE MANY HOLOCAUSTS

I certainly do not agree with all of Henry Makow’s views but the point made in his post of 19th ( “The other side of holocaust denial”) that there have been many recent holocausts as reprehensible as the Jewish holocaust is undoubtedly true -- and that millions of Germans died AFTER World War II as a result of deliberate Allied policies seems also to be true. It does seem about time that these other holocausts became better known. Maybe the recent mini-holocausts in the Balkans (Kosovo, Bosnia) could have been prevented somehow if we had all long ago realized and accepted that it is in fact common for human beings to perpetrate mass slaughters of those they perceive as “other”. I personally grieve at the Jewish holocaust most because of the vast talent that was lost to the world in that terrible event but for Christians ALL human life is supposed to be sacred.

This article points out that many “holocaust revisionists” are Leftists and that only a minority are at all sympathetic to Nazism. It also tries to explain why such revisionism matters. But for the life of me I still do not get why it matters. If it was 1 million rather than 6 million Jews that the Nazis killed, how does that make the deed any more excusable?

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STATE EDUCATION WATCH

British socialism has now got so bad that they cannot even afford to pay all their schoolteachers and are having to sack some of them. Sounds like Russia. One of their headmasters put his finger on the problem, though: "There is more money going into the system, but so much of it is taken up by bureaucracy that it is not finding its way to schools". You can bet that there will not be any bureaucrats sacked.

By lowering testing standards, some U.S. States hope to evade the penalties that a federal law imposes on schools whose students fare poorly on standardized tests. Anything rather than actually educate the kids!

Jeff Jacoby is pretty plainspoken about teachers’ unions and tells us that we need to recognize that first and foremost: “Teachers unions, like all unions, want to make money and amass power. Those are the motives behind everything they say and do. They're not in business "for the children." They're in business for themselves.”

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ELSEWHERE

A great victory for the USA/UK in the U.N. As big as the military victory in Iraq in a way. Russia too is once again decidedly friendly to the USA. Marvellous!

Arlene Peck's latest column -- commenting on the absurd "roadmap" for peace in Israel -- is up here (post of 22nd.)

The media love a panic. But another one has quietly faded away: The British Mad Cow death toll prediction has now been cut from 50,000 to 40. That might be some small comfort to the frantic Canadians.

A suburban Washington woman was in a Maryland jail Monday on charges of assaulting a 4-year-old after he spilled ice cream on her in a fast-food restaurant. Unbelievable. A little 4-year-old! I hope they give the bitch years inside.

Tobacco: A Florida court threw out the landmark $145 billion punitive award of 2000, saying the suit against cigarette makers should never have gone forward as a class-action. Great! I loathe smoking but blaming other people for your own bad decisions stinks even more.

The House gave final approval to President Bush's $15 billion global AIDS initiative on Wednesday. The US taxpayer must not have much to do with his/her money!

Tax cuts: Congressional Republicans have shown themselves just as willing to spend as Democrats. These bipartisan big spenders are the real source of deficit concerns -- not a modest tax cut.

President Bush said that the ban on genetically modified food had discouraged third world countries from using that technology, undermining efforts to end hunger in Africa. Good to hear that at least GWB is not captive to the Greenie lunatics.

Replacing Whitman: A new EPA director will have to confront the erroneous assumption that more federal regulations are the key to achieving greater environmental quality and that government can be expected to act as a better guardian than private individuals."

Chris Brand says that social class is not as important as sociologists think it is.

Michael Darby points to the heartless government policy that denies grandparents the right to be foster parents to their own grandchildren.

In my academic posting of May 22nd. here, I again look at the Leftist claim that conservatives are maladjusted and report survey evidence showing it to be false. The study concerned was done in conjunction with a prominent (Leftist) sociologist.

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LEFTIST DECEPTION ABOUT CANADIAN ATTITUDES

Opinion pollsters can certainly talk some garbage. There is an absurd bit of work here by a Canadian pollster which examines average Canadian attitudes WITHOUT taking into account the large French population in Canada. So -- surprise, surprise -- he finds that average Canadian attitudes to Iraq etc differ from average American attitudes. What a lamebrain! You don't need to be a sociologist to know that French and English Canadians have their differences. Had he tabulated the averages for French and English Canadians separately it might have told us something. And he concludes that the minority of Canadians who support the USA "are fortunate to live in a country where minority opinion is encouraged" -- as if the USA did not allow dissent! What a puffed-up nincompoop!

Note this more objective report of Canadian attitudes: "Opposition to the United States was heavily concentrated in French-speaking Quebec. In English Canada, a clear majority supported the liberation of Iraq, and two-thirds wanted Canada to help the allies"

And those Canadians who DO think that Canada is too good for the rest of us must have been getting a little rocked lately -- with Toronto recently quarantined over SARS and now Mad Cow disease in their beef herds.

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ELSEWHERE

Christie Whitman resigns. Good riddance to a Greenie dupe.

It looks like the US Federal government is getting involved in the anti-smoking push. Seems a bit excessive getting the Feds involved, let alone international treaties. In Australia it is a matter decided at State government level. I think that in much of the developed world we are not far off the point where smoking will be permitted only between consenting adults in private -- which seems to me a fair balance between respecting the right of the unfortunate addicts who need to smoke and the rest of us who have the right not to have have their air polluted.

Why on earth is the USA supposed to be responsible for the unending disasters of every African tinpot country?

Carnival of the Vanities is up again. Worth a look.

Tony Blair faced his fourth rebellion in two months last night as 34 Labour MPs defied government whips and voted against plans to curb the right to trial by jury Good show!

The Indonesians now have a 30,000- member force in Aceh trying to crush 5,000 poorly armed guerrillas in a dense, mountainous forest. The sides have been fighting since 1976, making this one of Asia's longest-running conflicts. I would normally be on the side of the independence fighters but since they are Muslim fanatics being opposed by Indonesia's secular government, I am rather on the government side this time -- despicable though the Indonesians were in East Timor.

"A federal children's health agency is funding a study of the sex habits of old men.
That's government for you.

Maine will use Medicaid, the federal health program for the poor, to force drugmakers to lower the costs of prescription drugs for uninsured residents, regardless of their income." So people who pay for their health insurance will have to subsidize the free-riders who do not! That's Lefty justice for you.

"Any charge that the U.S. military misrepresented the facts of Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch's rescue on April 1 from an Iraqi hospital to make the mission appear more dramatic or heroic is 'void of all facts and absolutely ridiculous' the Pentagon said Monday -- Responding to a BBC report that called the Pentagon accounts of the rescue 'one of the most stunning pieces of news management ever conceived,' Knowing the frantic Leftist and anti-American bias of the BBC I am inclined to believe the Pentagon.

"A Hamilton County grand jury today declined to indict Harold McKinney, a Citizens on Patrol Program member who police say shot a man May 8 as the man was robbing a Northside bar. Grand jurors ignored charges of felonious assault and carrying a gun in a liquor establishment, charges police had brought against McKinney." Thank goodness for the Grand Jury system! McKinney should never have been charged. The Police were just peeved that he was on their "turf" in the matter.

Michael Darby has a contemptuous letter to the French in which the writer points out what shalom means in Hebrew.

Chris Brand notes that the US Senate wants to give $15 billion to provide for programmes in Africa for "reducing sexual violence and coercion, including child marriage, widow inheritance and polygamy." That seems a lot of US taxpayer money for what is hardly a US vital interest.

The Wicked one points out some possible implications of the recent finding that Chimps and humans are almost identical genetically.

In my academic posting of May 21st here, I look at international levels of chronic anxiety (neuroticism) and find that the average level is surprisingly uniform from country to country -- consistent with the view that this basic personality variable is genertically determined rather than being the outcome of circumstances or environment. If you are the sensitive, worrying type, it is because you were born that way.

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AUSTRALIA’S IMMIGRATION POLICY STILL TOO PERMISSIVE

Although Australia’s policy on illegal immigration has been a brilliant success -- stopping illegal immigration just about stone dead -- Australia still accepts large numbers of legal immigrants on compassionate grounds -- including lots of Muslim “refugees”. And they bring with them the attitudes that have messed up their own countries. As a reader writes:

It is interesting that with the upcoming Rugby world cup all the visiting teams are being housed here in Sydney, except for the US team which is being put up out at Bowral for security reasons because the security authorities are concerned about their safety from ethnic minorities in the Homebush region.

Regardless of one's views on the rights/wrongs of US foreign policy or the Iraq war, the fact that guests to this country can no longer be safe because of ethnic groups that our own authorities let in shows that something is quite wrong with our multiculturalism policies and the mindset of those communities. Whilst all the political focus is on refugees and mandatory detention, the basics of immigration policy ..what kind of country do we want.. get pushed out of view.

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BRITISH IMMIGRATION POLICY A FARCE

The UK government gave, after only four hours of effort, a British reporter "asylum status," meaning he now gets free housing, food and travel in the UK, when he came to them faking an East European accent and claiming that the government of Moldova would kill him if he returned to Moldova.

When they asked him for an ID he said he had none because it was too dangerous to carry any which was a good enough explanation for the Home Office Asylum Screening Unit, in Lunar House, Croydon, Surrey, for those of you who want someone to take care of you the rest of your life and who can fake an East European accent.

“Lunar House” -- sounds well-named in the circumstances.

The UK Sun 19-May-03. Via Jerry Lerman.

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DECRIMINALIZING MARIJUANA

"Marijuana advocates across Canada are celebrating a May 16 Ontario court decision, which effectively legalized possession in Canada's largest province.

The Canadians are pretty incensed about pressure from the USA to abandon their permissive stance on Marijuana. I must say that I think the Canadians are right on this one. US Prohibition on alcohol did more harm than good. Why anyone thinks Marijuana use is any different escapes me. Though I myself have never used ANY illegal drug -- nor do I intend to.

And it has just been anounced in Australia that “Legalised cannabis will be prescribed to people suffering from chronic pain or wasting illnesses”

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ELSEWHERE

A 17-year-old German was convicted and sentenced to 3 1/2 years in jail on Tuesday on charges of taking four children hostage at gunpoint at their school last fall . 3 1/2 years? Surely any parent would want that garbage put away for life!

Surprise, surprise: United Nations officials looked the other way as Saddam Hussein's regime skimmed $2 billion to $3 billion in bribes and kickbacks from the UN Oil-for-Food Program

An amusing article on the new German/French/Belgian military force -- or was that “farce”?

John Derbyshire reminds us that mass-murderer Idi Amin -- with only 300,000 dead Ugandans to his “credit” -- is living a life of ease and luxury these days -- where? In Saudi Arabia. Strange that he has not been extradited to be tried as a war criminal, isn’t it? More about Amin here.

Daniel Pipes has a pretty appalling but well-documented story about how the Saudis BUY “protection” in Washington.

Big scientific discovery: politicians lie. “Politicians need to be more honest about lying," he told the newspaper.” (??).

Michael Darby notes how the Zimbabwe police now have no regard for the law.

Chris Brand notes recent false accusations of rape and the damage they have done.

The Wicked one does not think much of Martin Luther King.

In my academic posting of May 19th here, I show that older women tend to misrepresent themselves.

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THE WICKEDNESS OF CHEAP COFFEE

Where you get your coffee beans from seems to have become something of a cause among Leftists looking for something with which to inflate their claims of “compassion”. Now that Vietnam has become a big producer of coffee-beans, the worldwide supply has increased greatly and the price, of course, has tumbled. So lots of coffee-bean producers in poor countries have had drastic cuts in their already low income. The big brains of the Left blame the problem on the coffee-roasting companies of course and try to heavy them in various ways.

In this report, however, the real solution to the problem is left to a single sentence at the end: Coffee-growers have to start diversifying into growing something else. Unforunately, however, even if they do, the determination of Western governments (USA, EU, Japan) to protect their own high-cost farmers with huge subsidies and tariffs makes it difficult for third-world farmers to get ANY of their their produce into our markets. So bring on free-trade! THAT is how to help third-world coffee growers. But how often do you hear of Leftists pushing for free-trade? The anti-globalizers are certainly dead against it.

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