BRITAIN

Good to see that Tony Blair is so hugely popular worldwide. Being a man of principle does pay off in the long run.

Overweight people and heavy smokers would have to sign contracts promising to diet or give up cigarettes in return for Health Service treatment, under radical new plans being drawn up by the British Labour Party. And if they break their contracts they get charged the full costs of their treatments. I expect that a lot of people will be outraged by that but we do not live in an ideal world and the fact is that health care is universally rationed these days -- only the way it is rationed varies. And a rationing system that gives preference to people who are ill through no fault of their own makes sense to me.

The British government has declared war on the huge and obscene payouts that company bosses now often get when their companies go broke. As a shareholder myself, I just hope the Brits start a ball rolling there that gets to other countries as well. Shareholders seem to have no power in the matter so I think this is clearly one area where governments do have a proper role. I actually think a chief executive’s pay should be cut to zero when his company goes under. Why should shareholders be the only ones to suffer? They are the ones who have least control over anything but they always get the penalty.

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ELSEWHERE

A LUTHERAN priest was suspended today after his remarks that God doesn't exist and there is no eternal life rankled many of his peers in Denmark's state church. They would have made him a bishop in the Church of England.

New blogger FreeSpeech points out that the Bush tax cut gives little to the poor because the poor already pay almost no tax in the USA anyway.

This article says that opposition to the FCC easing of U.S. media ownership regulations is mainly driven by Leftists who hate Rupert Murdoch and his Fox News. Sounds right.

Prime Minister John Howard told the mining industry his government was committed to Kyoto greenhouse gas emission targets, but he would not sign the Kyoto Protocol. I suppose we must be thankful for small mercies.

A black intellectual comments on trends in black music: “The staged alienation of the hip-hop scene shows black Americans celebrating attitude over action at best and violence over civility at worst. For 350 years white America told blacks they were beasts. Now a black-generated pop music presents us to whites and ourselves as beasts.”

Very clever of American interrogators to pressure captured Baathists in Iraq with heavy metal music to make them talk. It would drive me around the bend too. Give me Mozart any day.

Keith Windschuttle shows how the (new) National Museum of Australia perpetrates outright deception in lieu of history. It is truly amazing how things like the emancipation of Australia’s blacks and the abolition of the White Australia policy are routinely attributed to the Leftist Whitlam government when they were in fact initiatives of conservative governments.

Also from Windschuttle, the text of his latest debate with Henry Reynolds discussing the so-called genocide of Tasmanian aborigines by British settlers.

Turns out the Florida woman who is suing for the right to wear a Muslim headdress in a driver's license photograph has previously been subjected to an, um, unveiled government portrait. Following her 1997 conversion to Islam, Sultaana Freeman (formerly Sandra Keller) was arrested in Decatur, Illinois for battering a foster child.

Great! The G8 leaders urged Iran to co-operate with weapons inspectors, and President Putin promised to suspend Russian nuclear exports to Iran until it had complied,

I suppose everyone has seen this picture of the latest “nude protest” by Leftists -- this one at the G8 summit on May 31st. Yahoo postings do not stay up long so I am also posting the picture here to provide a more lasting reminder of how desperate Leftists are to draw attention to themselves. Talk about weak egos!

The Wicked one points out that, far from being a pollutant, carbon dioxide is good for us.

Michael Darby has a sad story from Zimbabwe

Chris Brand quotes figures showing that poorly educated immigrants cost the taxpayer heaps.

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PRIVATIZING ENVIRONMENTALISM

A reader writes:

This article discusses some of the wins of 'Stewardship Partners', a US conservationist group that works with, not against, private land owners, to forward 'down to earth' conservation aims.

The Australian Land Care movement is probably the most successful environmental group in Australia. Mainly because it focuses on practical measures to improve environmental quality at the local level, and avoids green politics and doomsday scaremongering, most of which has next to nothing to do with what used to be called 'quality of life' issues. Campaigns to encourage farmers to plant more trees have been quite successful. Fostering conservation stewardship on private land is also the path most likely to succeed.

Historically it has been the largest and usually richest private land owners, often aristocrats, that have been the main wildlife preservationists in the long settled countries. Many aristocrats were also hunters, in fact the longest running 'conservation program' in the world protected the Chinese Père David’s deer, which survived exclusively in the Imperial Hunting Park in Beijing for nearly 1,800 years. Few 'national parks' in Australia or the US are likely to survive shifting political fortunes that long. Having government as land manager of large national parks for instance is no guarantee that park authorities will have the resources or political will to protect their conservation value. In Australia, national parks as often as not provide refuges for feral animals as much as native species.

One genuine environmentalist I know says we should consider the heresy of selling off one or two of our national parks to pay for adequate fencing and feral animal control in the remainder. Under current politics, more national parks, the rallying point for green voters, will not equate to better biodiversity protection. At the same time recreational users of national parks, whose interests sometimes compete with conservation, are getting better organised politically.

Environmentalists in Australia are currently campaigning against land clearance, something that brings them into conflict with land owners. A more useful tactic would be to change the incentives private land owners face so as to encourage more conservation. Most of our land taxes and local government rates are based on the assessed market value of land. This puts private owners who want to conserve at a financial disadvantage. The solution would be to replace property value based rates and land taxes with user pays charges for local government services. Of course our green politicians oppose user pays. This site has several case studies of private conservation projects in the US..

A common theme they report is echoed by Fred Hebard, from the American Chestnut Foundation, an outfit dedicated to reviving the american chestnut from a devastating fungus, "government funding is too fickle to support a long term project like restoring the American chestnut."

The lesson of all this would seem to be that greens would be more successful if they put their money where their mouths are. If they want to preserve wilderness they should buy land themselves.

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LEFTIST THUGS

I have just put up here and here a copy of a paper I had published over 30 years ago during the Vietnam war era. It is worth reading to see how little has changed in the interim. In that paper I reproduced many reports of gangs of thugs going on an orgy of destruction and violence in the name of: “Peace”! The points I made then about the great gap that exists between what Leftists say they believe in and what they do are still true today. Leftists are by their nature full of hate and that shows itself when they think they can get away with it -- it shows itself in the way hate usually does -- through violence and destruction.

Here is an equivalent from present times: "Thousands of demonstrators poured into the streets Sunday to protest the Group of Eight summit across Lake Geneva in the French town of Evian, some battling with police and looting shops and gas stations. Anti-riot agents struck back with tear gas, water cannons and rubber pellets, as clashes continued into the evening."

What has looting shops and gas stations to do with the high-minded ideals Leftists profess? Nothing. What does it show? Everything we need to know about Leftists -- that they are hate-filled, thieving, dangerous thugs. Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were no accidents. They show what Leftists are really like when not restrained by more decent people. Ignore their fancy talk. Watch their brutish deeds. The “activists” reveal vividly the basic motivations behind Leftism generally.

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ELSEWHERE

What a joke: “The Group of Eight nations yesterday pledged to "fully commit themselves" to boost development in Africa and help build an African peacekeeping force on a continent where civil wars still spawn death, hunger and poverty.”
All of Africa has gone only one way after the colonial powers left -- backwards. What magic wand is anybody going to wave that will change that?

China Hand now has a Mirror Site that evades the Chinese censorship of Blogspot and is therefore viewable in China itself. If you have any contacts in China, please let them know. It should also be faster to load than Blogspot is at the moment.

Michael Darby reproduces a report of a vast underground nuclear complex that was discovered early on in the Iraq war. One wonders why we seem to have heard nothing of it since.

Chris Brand notes mockingly some of the dangers of sexuality.

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ISRAEL TOO PASSIVE

Arlene Peck's latest column is up here (post of June 1st.). Arlene says that Israel is being treated like a banana republic at the moment and should not put up with that. Also: Last time she was in Israel she had some photos taken that she is very proud of. You can see them here. Arik looks a bit bemused in the second one, though.

Crossposted on Israpundit

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AIRCRAFT SECURITY

A reader writes:

It's interesting to note how the press are turning the recent aircraft hijacking story into a human interest story about what a nice chap the hijacker is, , mowing his neighbours lawns etc., rather than focusing on the systems failures the hijack attempt represents. These articles from Jeff Tucker here and here written after 9-11 argues that excessive regulation in the aviation industry has prevented and politicised one of the most basic private property rights, the right of the property owner to take their own steps to secure his property. When the average big city McDonalds or suburban 7-11 store has better security than a multi-million dollar airliner, you can bet government bureaucrats have stuffed up again.

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MORE ON OGBU

Referring to the Ogbu findings that even affluent black kids are too unmotivated to do well at school, an article in Front Page comments: “Many ethnic groups have found ways to combine pride in group identity with pride in individual academic striving. Moreover, the African-American community was once an outstanding example of just that synthesis of effort. Why has the African-American community succumbed to this particular pathology? McWhorter's answer in Losing the Race is that affirmative action -- especially racial preferences in college admissions -- are operating as a perverse incentive to value group identity over individual performance.” Sounds logical. Why strive to do well when affirmative action will give you what others have to work for?

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ELSEWHERE

There is a very powerful article here that exposes how enormously bigoted educated Democrat supporters tend to be.

Another example of the disgraceful behaviour of the Red Cross here -- this time over the Bali bombing.

A smart-ass act from Sweden: They are refusing to hand over an Islamic terrorist because they have no law to enable it. How about passing such a law?

Good to see that Germany’s socialists are finally doing something about Germany’s economic problems. Pity it took 5 million unemployed to convince them that their bloated welfare system needed cutting, though.

GWB might be another Reagan yet: "The Bush administration issued new rules Thursday making it easier for businesses to compete for government work, an effort that could lead to the privatization of nearly half the nation's 1.8 million federal jobs. 'For quality service at the best price, competition beats monopoly every time,' said Mitch Daniels, outgoing director of the Office of Management and Budget. Government studies show that competition for jobs can save the government almost a third of the cost."

Interesting news: "The Iraqi military came within seconds of possibly wiping out the headquarters of the coalition ground forces with a missile on March 27, U.S. military officials said. The missile was intercepted and destroyed by a U.S. Patriot missile shortly before it could have hit its target. A CNN crew embedded at ground forces headquarters witnessed the incident. At the time of the incident, the material from the crew was embargoed under an agreement with the U.S. military until major hostilities in Iraq were over."

Anyone for government schooling? “More than four in 10 teachers (43 percent) say that in their schools, teachers spend less time teaching than they do trying to keep order in the classroom."

The black mayor of Washington D.C. has thrown his weight behind school vouchers, realizing that increasingly vocal parents demand more options and will not want to wait for the public school system to improve the schools.

A good article here comparing the looting losses at the Iraqi museum with the destruction inflicted on Western museums by multiculturalism -- showing that the protests about Iraq and the non-protests about the Western losses are both motivated by hatred of Western success and pre-eminence.

The Wicked one has four appalling examples of what passes for justice in the USA today.

Michael Darby commemorates Italy’s national day with some surprising information about World War I.

Chris Brand is mocking about the outrage over Russian “lesbian” Pop duo “Tartu”.

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OBL LOVES AUSTRALIA TOO

According to Yossef Bodansky, Osama Bin Laden was known as a serious terrorist threat long before 9/11. And, as it says here and here Australia went very close to being his first major target in the West. A reader comments:

I remember reading about this in Yossef Bodansky's pre 9-11 book on Osama Bin Laden. Bodansky's book was available in most chain book stores in Australia and discussed OBL related threats to the Olympic Games, Lucas Heights reactor, visits by OBL 'afghanis' to Melbourne and NZ arrests of 'afghanis' on illegal immigration charges. The book's claims received nil media coverage in the Australia of the immediate post 9-11 period when there was 'wall to wall' coverage of terrorism issues, yet Bodansky's book was probably for sale at the corner bookshop. This absence of discussion or coverage presumably reflects a failure to perform the most basic level of background research by our "media professionals".

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GREENIE WATCH

"It has become Standard Operating Procedure in climate change hype to never bother with inconvenient facts. Tons of tornado data are only a few mouse-clicks away. And they show that Toles was dead wrong in his implication that the recent storms show any link to the slight warming of the atmosphere that has occurred in recent decades. In fact, just the opposite may be occurring despite a perception of increased storminess."

"Efforts in the Senate to amend the bill with aggressive global warming policies make for a long, hot summer. Should the proponents of these measures succeed, American consumers could be in for a shock." And more on the latest Greenie nonsense from the U.S. Senate: “A renewable energy portfolio mandate would require each energy provider to ensure that 10 or 20 percent of its delivered energy comes from a renewable energy source."

"John Holdren, a Clinton-era leader of energy technology task forces, and now the leading academic member of the National Commission on Energy Policy, was one of four authors to hurl accusations of incompetence and worse at Bjorn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, in the pages of Scientific American. Energy expert Rob Bradley, Jr. rebuts Holdren's criticisms of Lomborg. Indeed, Bradley's review of Holdren's publications over a 30-year period documents a penchant for exaggeration, error, and now wholesale intolerance of reasoned dissent."

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ELSEWHERE

How about that: The latest scientific work shows that it is NOT the Gulf stream that keeps Western Europe warmer than North America.

"Thomas Paine is primarily remembered for his fiery rhetoric in favor of American revolution and independence. But in The Rights of Man, in which he tries to 'establish a system of principles as a basis on which government ought to be erected,' he shows that commerce, or free trade, is not only deducible from those principles, but interference with such commerce impoverishes the nations involved as well. We would do well to return to that understanding he expressed over two hundred years ago."

“Russia supplies Iran with nuclear technology and advanced conventional weapons, including anti-aircraft missiles. After the vote in the UN, Washington does not need to placate Moscow as much as before, and pressure is mounting to force an end to the construction of the nuclear power reactor at Bushehr on the Persian Gulf. In fact, the Bush administration seems to be moving toward sending the Kremlin an ultimatum: End Bushehr or we will bomb it to bits anyway."

We hear of the Jewish diaspora, the Greek disapora, the Chinese diaspors etc. but how often to we realize that the Australian diaspora is huge too. 5% of our people now live abroad. Young Australians really do see the world as their oyster.

A great letter to Senator Byrd from a US navy man about his commander in chief.

"During an anti-income tax protest recently, a friend of mine and I discussed fact that for some unexplained reason, modern democracies tend to have high tax rates. Later, I found out this phenomenon is known as 'Wagner's Law.' Wagner could not explain it either. The only possible explanation I can come up with is this: taxpayers in wealthier countries can afford to give more and still maintain a comfortable lifestyle. In other words there is a bigger pie; the politicians can take more of the pie and redistribute it; and still leave the populace with enough to live on."

Ambrose Bierce in 'The Devil's Dictionary' had the last word on protectionism: "TARIFF, n. A scale of taxes on imports, designed to protect the domestic producer against the greed of his consumer. " (See here).

Chris Brand has some thoughts on the low birthrate among highly intelligent people.

Michael Darby reports that there has been an almost total collapse of food production in Zimbabwe.

The Wicked one reports on the vast unemployment problem in France.

In my academic journal article here (post of May 31st), I report survey evidence showing that Leftists are sensation-seekers -- people motivated by a desire for change and novelty of almost any sort.

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SOLVING AIRCRAFT HIJACKING

In response to the recent aircraft hijacking attempt in Australia, a U.S. reader has sent me an excellent comment:

Actually, what the latest hijacking attempt demonstrates is that Australians have in effect the only anti-hijacking safety precaution that's been demonstrated to work: Crew and passengers who refuse to be hijacked. The only reason the 9-11 hijackings actually worked was that a generation of Americans had been trained to surrender to hijackers. How, short of strip downs and cavity searches, were you planning on keeping a hijacker from carrying a sharpened stick on board?

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BLOGGER HINT

Blogspot has been so inaccessible lately that I hope most of my readers have moved to one of my mirror sites by now. If not, you are highly likely to be experiencing long delays before the site loads up. One hint that seems to help with ALL slow-loading Blogspot sites, however, is to send the “cache bypass” command (Ctrl+F5) from your keyboard. That sometimes brings up the “stuck” site almost immediately.

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BRITAIN

I thought I should mention that there is ONE page on the web which has unchanging content but which I still keep logging on to over and over again. It is “England” and you may have to be born a British subject to appreciate it -- I don’t know. I mostly log on for the words and music of “Jerusalem” -- William Blake’s marvellous British Israel hymn. It makes me weepy every time. What wonderful, wonderful words, so fittingly set to music by Parry!

Interesting that the
British have had better success in running Basra than the US has had in running Baghdad. British experience at running other places has paid off.

The more I hear about Britain’s Blunkett the more I like him. Now that Iraq is free he wants all the Iraqi refugees in Europe sent home: “British Home Secretary (Interior Minister) David Blunkett warned that if voluntary measures did not work then "compulsion" could be used”.

A lot of conservatives are criticizing Blunkett’s law reforms but I cannot see much wrong with them. British justice has become so irrational that something had to be done to give crime victims a chance.

There is a long but interesting article by Dominic Lieven. which endeavours to draw out lessons from the British empire and other empires of the past that might help the USA today now that it seems to have had something of an imperial role thrust upon it. It might be noted that the British empire too is often said to have been acquired “in a fit of absence of mind”. One rather provocative observation:

“Among the empires of the day, the Habsburgs stood out for their protection of the civic, cultural and political rights of minorities, Jews included....” and “The economic and cultural interests of indigenous peoples were usually safer under bureaucratic or aristocratic imperial rule than under settler democracy”.

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ELSEWHERE

Miranda Devine says Greenie opposition to feral dog control in the largest national park in New South Wales is imposing enormous cruelties on nearby domestic livestock.

Surprise, surprise! The Red Cross is keeping 64c out of every dollar it makes from fundraising. Don’t give a cent to the antisemitic scum.

Some Good sense from Ross Gittins: “Those dreaded multinationals often speed a country's growth. The unceasing claim of the mainly youthful protesters against globalisation is that it involves the rich countries - via "trans-national corporations" such as Nike - ripping off the poor countries. But it ain't necessarily so. Indeed, recent research - much of it prompted by the protests, I suspect - suggests that this claim is the opposite of the truth. The developing countries that have done most to open up to trade and foreign investment are enjoying faster economic growth, rising real wages, falling poverty and, eventually, greater environmental protection.”

Interesting: Blacks, unionists and Hispanics are slowly deserting the Dims for the GOP. A very useful trend. Minority support is about all the Dims have going for them.

Jeff Jacoby points out the hypocrisy of the Middle East “roadmap”. Everything is expected of the Jews but the Palestinians can do anything they like without protest.

There is a good coverage here of how slippery “natural medicine” advocates are when subjected to scientific scrutiny.

The Wicked one says we might need genetically engineered crops to save the banana from extinction!

Michael Darby puts the case for having diiferent ages of consent for heterosexual and homosexual intercourse.

Chris Brand points out that “thought crime” is alive and well in modern-day Germany.

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LOTS OF GOOD STUFF TODAY:

Another example here of US stockmarket portfolios continually declining in value. You have to be mad to put your money into a managed fund. It is cheaper to make your own mistakes. My portfolio of Australian stocks has a very successful spread of relatively safe companies that also tend to GROW in value. Details of it are available FREE to anybody. Here are the stocks I hold:

(Australian stockmarket abbreviations): ADB AGL AMC AMP ANN ANZ BBG BOQ BPC BEN BWA BRZ CBA CCL CDO CNN COA CRG CSR DJS FFL FLT FOA FWD GFD GNS GUD HWI ION JHX JUP LDW MCP MPB MRL MTT NAB NFD PPK PPX RIC RIN SHV SMS SSX SGB SUN TAH WWA WBC WOW. Copy my portfolio and you instantly become your own fund manager with a very successful medium-term track record! I am hundreds of thousands of dollars ahead. I put my money where my mouth is as far as capitalism is concerned.

Bob Hope has just turned 100! What a marvellous man.

Whoopee! An arrogant Leftist ”human shield” got shot! There should be more of it. They endanger the safety of others as well as themselves.

The latest hijacking attempt shows that safety precautions are virtually non-existent on Australian aircraft but our bureaucratized government assures us that “talks are continuing” on the matter! Great that the flight crew in the latest incident were not seriously hurt, anyhow.

Wow! A Right to Die judgment in an Australian court. Let’s hope it is just a first step in giving back people control over their own lives.

Watch their deeds, not their words: The US Democrats do NOT believe that “diversity” is good for you.

Auditors are refusing to sign off the British Conservative Party’s accounts because they fear that it is no longer a going concern. Amusing! I don’t think they are a going concern either. They seem to have totally forgotten what conservatism is all about.

This research finding will upset the Lefties. They hate anything that ordinary people enjoy -- from McDonalds to video games: Video games that require players to knock off enemies that pop out of nowhere sharply improve children’s visual attention skills. How awful! Violent games are actually beneficial!

The Communist News Network (CNN) recently aired a demonstration of an illegal versus a legal 'assault weapon' that showed the illegal one blowing apart cinder blocks, while the legal model did no apparent damage. After the NRA accused CNN of 'faking' the presentation -- since both rifles should cause the same damage CNN conceded their demonstration was misleading! Soviet-style lies live on among the American Left.

We all now know how crooked CNN was in its coverage of Saddam’s regime but this suggests that ALL the Left-leaning media distorted the truth about Saddam’s Iraq.

Cato says: "There already are early warning signs that the United States can ill afford to linger in Iraq and overstay its welcome. Thousands of Muslims -- Shiite and Sunni -- have protested against the U.S. military presence. American troops, saddled with peacekeeping duties they are not trained to perform, have fired on crowds and killed civilians in Mosul and Fallujah. The lesson is clear: The United States must leave Iraq at the earliest possible opportunity." Hear here!

Oregon folly: “Voters clearly value education, but this new money will largely benefit the teachers' union, not the students. Rather than help the schools in a positive way, the new tax will allow the school system avoid doing two things it must eventually do: control spending and become accountable for learning outcomes."

The Greenie response to complaints from people about wildlife pests (such as noisy crows): "If you just leave them alone, they'll leave you alone". The birdbrain concerned ignores the fact that people are complaining precisely because the pests are NOT leaving them alone.

Arlene Peck's latest column is up here (post of 29th.). She points out that all Jews have been forced out of most Arab countries and asks why, in such circumstances, Arabs have to be given their own State within the borders of Israel. Jews must be tolerant but Arabs don’t have to?

Michael Darby has an article that takes on the “funny money” theorists of “Social Credit” -- theorists who have had a significant following in New Zealand and British Columbia. The Social Creditors mistake the (true) statement that the banking system creates money (because of the velocity of circulation) for the (false) statement that individual banks create money. It is perhaps an understandable mistake.

Chris Brand notes a World Bank report that says many African countries are worse off now than they were at independence in the 1960s.

The Wicked one is glad that a mad Yugoslav was shot dead.

In my academic posting of May 29th. here, I show that standard psychological techniques for detecting lying normally work pretty well.

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BLOGGER.COM BLUES

Ever since Google took over Pyra, the blogspot archives seem to have become progressively more and more of a shambles. Nothing seems to archive automatically now. You have to manually republish all the time. And even manual republishing does not work sometimes. All my posts on this blog from last year, for instance, seem to have vanished. I think that this sort of thing must bother most bloggers. Most of us, I fancy, do want our words of wisdom to remain accessible for some time. I certainly think that my efforts have some permanent worth. Fortunately, I do have copies of all my posts so I have now republished the ones from last year in the only way I can -- not as archives but as front-page posts on new blogpot sites that I have created especially for the purpose.

So my posts for July, August, September and October 2002 can now be found on http://lostleft.blogspot.com;

My posts for November 2002 are on http://lostlef2.blogspot.com

and my posts for December 2002 are on http://losleftdec.blogspot.com

My archives for this year are in better shape (at the moment) but, just in case, I have put them up elsewhere too. See http://jonjayray.tripod.com/archive.html.

In creating the new sites I needed I was automatically directed into the new version of the blogger.com software. What a shambles! I have always said that Blogger was the most bug-prone software that I have ever had the misfortune to get entangled with but I now take that back. The new version of the software is even worse! It takes the patience of Job to get it to do anything at all and when you do get some response out of it posts disappear, edits disappear and you keep getting error messages. In creating one of the new sites I needed I just could not get it to post properly and had to delete the whole blog and start all over again from scratch. I spent hours on doing what should have taken 10 minutes.

Dread the day when Pyra makes all users convert to the new software. One hint though: If you click all buttons about 8 times in rapid succession instead of the usual once or twice, you are more likely to get something to happen.

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OGBU WAS RIGHT

I noted recently that Prof. Ogbu, a black researcher, has found that black students from affluent homes do poorly at school because they are lazy and think that doing well is "acting white". A reader comments:

“Black underachievement is such a disaster that it is almost unfixable. In Florida, the NAACP has threatened a boycott if students are not given a high-school diploma even if they fail the exit exam - given 6 times to pass the same exam. Ant Gov Jeb Bush has actually spent the time of day to discuss this issue. This is a no-brainer - stupid people shouldn't get a diploma - and we need more people like Prof Ogbu to tell these 'race warlords" to take a hike.

My daughter (graduate student in Sociology at UC) is familiar with Prof Ogbu's work - she actually admitted that he might be right - this is a milestone in my battle against her Communist indoctrination.

Personal experience reinforces my belief in Prof Ogbu's work. Years ago (before the Prof coined the term "acting white"), a Black friend confided in me that her two sons had faced harassment in school for "acting white" - a major stress in her life had been to convince her sons to do well in school inspite of this harassment. This is not a fantasy of a professor - this is real life.”

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LOONY WATCH

These loonies are just as bad as Islamic Terrorists and should be treated accordingly. Excerpt:

"The radical environmental group Earth Liberation Front is claiming responsibility for fires that destroyed two houses near Ann Arbor [MI] in March. The slogan 'ELF, no sprawl' was spray painted on the garage door of a house next to one of those burned March 21 in the Mystic Forest subdivision. On its Web site, the group claims responsibility for the fires, which it says caused $400,000 in damage. The group also takes responsibility for burning luxury homes being built near Philadelphia late last year. A picture of a burning home is featured on the Web site, along with instructions on how to start fires."

"'Hey, hey, ho, ho, drugs in meat have got to go' chanted protestors outside a McDonald's in Maine. The oh-so-clever rabble held up massive 'pill burgers' (hamburgers with a big pill inside) and were joined by the Union of Concerned Scientists' Michael Khoo, who recently penned an article entitled 'Want drugs with those fries?' for the insanely self-important TomPaine.com. While Khoo tries to scare the public about antibiotics in hamburgers, the organization he works for declares that it's a non-issue."

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ELSEWHERE

Disgraceful: San Francisco's Irvine Foundation is dedicated to improving the quality of life for Californians. But the foundation has improved life for one individual in particular: a previous president. He got $717,000 in pay, retirement and perks. I have noted previously that charities often become little more than a honeypot for their staff. Congress seems to be doing something about it but I doubt if it will improve things much.

There is a fairly comprehensive report here about the now controversial Jessica Lynch rescue. Leftists blame US troops for being cautious! In the middle of a war!

Germany supports India in its war against Muslim terrorism! I suppose that's something.

Threatening budget cuts, the Howard Government has savagely attacked Australia's public broadcaster, accusing it of being blatantly biased and anti-American in its Iraq war coverage. About time!

The Dean Esmay version of the Carnival of the Vanities is now up. Much to read.

China Hand is rather peniternt for disparaging the pastoral work of the (Roman Catholic) Maryknoll Society in China.

Chris Brand says that elitism in UK universities is soundly based.

Michael Darby says that attacks on Australia's former Governor General were unjustified but that our constitution showed its worth in how the matter was handled.

The Wicked one points out some surprising facts about heroin.

In my academic posting of May 28th. here, I show that there are many influences on how people vote in Australian Federal elections.

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GOOD ARTICLES FROM BROOKES NEWS

Why regulating gas prices doesn't really work. Recent events in Australia and California have brought government intervention in prices and production back on to the political scene. Gas is a particularly good example for Australia regarding the dangers of price-fixing regulations.

Anti-growth nonsense from lefty lecturers. The world's present population owes its existence to economic growth. Stopping growth would literally be a sentence of death for several billion people. But as Dr Van den Bosch, another greenie, said, "They're only little brown people in poor countries."

The trade balance and the value of the dollar — what is the relationship? Explains why the dollar has fallen. And guess what? It has nothing to do with the balance of payments or the balance of trade.

Details here

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MATTERS OF RELIGION

I am a great admirer of the Sydney diocese for showing that real Christianity can still flourish within the Anglican communion but I do regret that they are betraying one of their core traditions by denying the significance of the priesthood -- and with it the whole notion of the Apostolic Succession.

"Culture Wars" sees the pedophilia crisis in the Catholic Church as in part a product of its defection (after Vatican II) from its traditional values and its adoption instead of quack psychological dogmas (especially Reich and Rogers) from the secular world.

This VDARE writer says US Roman Catholicism is really post-Catholic these days and that its pews would be steadily emptying except for poor immigrants with a traditional Catholic background.

An interesting article on Euthanasia here. Australia's Dr. Nitschke seems to be the main successor of Dr Kevorkian. Giving Dr. Kevorkian a long jail term for his work of mercy is a grotesque crime in my view.

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