FROM BROOKES NEWS

Bush did not cause the recession The true nature of recessions always confounds the prevailing economic orthodoxy. Highly paid economists sit in their Wall Street offices trying to figure out what's up.
The Clintons and the Democrats' moral decline A couple of weeks ago I argued that for Hillary Clinton there was an acceptable level of violence that also included murder. The statement is all too true.
China's military and Sun Tzu: What every American should know The Chinese military is extremely nationalistic in the worst possible way. There seems to be little doubt that China sees Asia and the Pacific region as its own special sphere of influence, an interest threatened by a powerful American presence.
China's economic growth and green elitists Some Westerners, specially those with a distinct greenish hue, just cannot abide the thought of China raising its living standards to Western levels. From red to green Where the Red and the Green meet: Where the old left still believe in the virtues of a centrally planned economy, the utopian left consist mainly of people who have developed a vague vision of an agrarian socialist society. Budgets and spending: a contrarian's view What we are left with are big-spending politicians; a situation that must eventually lead to higher taxes. If not that, then little or no genuine tax relief in the foreseeable future can take place. Taiwan democracy a model for China While talk of Taiwan's "economic miracle" has become commonplace, its political and social developments have been even more miraculous.

Details here

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ELSEWHERE

How awful for the Left: Life in the Western world has continued to improve steadily throughout the last century. For all the prophecies of doom coming from the Greens and the Left, the opposite has happened. Just this one sentence must be deeply upsetting for the American Leftists who hate their own country: "Incomes are up. Inflation-adjusted per capita income has doubled since 1960". Fancy that nasty old capitalism making people twice as rich as they were in the 1960s so beloved of the Left! But the Left will just deny it all of course. It is their own wonderful feelings that matter to them, not facts -- and certainly not the welfare of Joe Average.

I am a bit uncertain what to think about the French ban on Muslim headscarves. On the one hand, the libertarian in me says that people should be free to wear funny hats to their heart's content, but on the other, the French seem to see the ban as a signal to their large Muslim population that they are not going to have France Islamicized. Since Islam is a deadly foe of liberty as we know it, I have some sympathy for that. Good to see that the Sikhs are unlikely to be banned from wearing their turbans.

I must say I am rather pleased to see Eastern Orthodox Christianity being treated with great respect in Cuba. It's a small step but a good one.

An amazingly pro-Bush article in Australia's most Leftist newspaper here: "Most Americans also support Bush's decision to go to war with Iraq. They are not stupid".

A Brazilian reader has responded to my post about Brazil yesterday, noting that privatization there has delivered SOME benefits: "Telephones and comunication are great now, and roads with tolls on them are much better". He also points us to this site -- where a Brazilian writer rather despairs of the instinctive anti-Americanism that prevails in Brazil. His article on the causes of poverty in Brazil is hard-hitting.

And Brazilian blogger Luis Afonso has drawn my attention to this article -- which sees the present Brazilian Leftist government on a Gramscian path of gradual takeover of all the institutions of Brazilian society. There is no doubt that Brazil has taken a big risk with its present government but it seems to me that how good the outcome is depends very much on President Lula Da Silva himself and a drift from Left to Right with age and a drift from Left to Right on attaining power are both far from unknown. One can only hope at this stage. His recent alliance with a major "reactionary" party would seem to suggest that there are some grounds for such hope.

My mention of flat tax yesterday caused one reader to ask what its advantages are. Here is one answer.

Steve Sailer has summarized the available evidence on the IQ of GWB and finds he scores in the top 5%! Pretty good. Sailer reports grumbles from a psychologist about GWB's simple recreational interests but that probably keeps him close to the average American -- which is surely a virtue in a democratic leader. There is also talk of GWB not being very "open to experience" but psychologists talk such a lot of nonsense about that subject (See e.g. here) that I am not even inclined to look up the evidence for the claim. I have got very tired of refuting that sort of nonsense.

UN secretary general Kofi Annan receives the German Media Award 2003 this Wednesday in Baden-Baden, Germany. Former US president Bill Clinton will hand him the award.... The award for Kofi Annan - who was against the invasion in Iraq - is a message from the German media to the world: Annan yes, Bush no.

Some American Leftists support the Iraq war regardless of the WMD issue. Good to see that some Leftists really are against Fascists, since the Arab world has little else.

Random observations thinks that the Leftist Tugboat has sprung a leak over that pesky conservative happiness.

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

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

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SIMPLE ECONOMICS AGAIN

Awkward facts from Walter Williams: "46 percent of poor households actually own their homes; 76 percent have air conditioning; the typical poor American has more living space than the average non-poor individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens and other cities in Europe... Here's Williams' roadmap out of poverty: complete high school; get a job, any kind of a job; get married before having children and be a law-abiding citizen. Among both black and white Americans so described, the poverty rate is in the single digits."

Free trade: Moral questions and partisan politics: "In the run-up to the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 19, trade policy has been one of the hottest issues. But the debate among Democratic candidates seems to revolve around who is more opposed to free trade. Voters should beware, however, that trade involves not just presidential politics but profound moral questions."

Another raid on the taxpayer by farmers: "The federal government has agreed to bail out the struggling citrus industry by buying up to $50 million worth of orange juice. The news was welcomed by Florida orange growers who are facing shrinking prices caused by their largest crop ever. Florida is the source of most of the nation's orange juice and is the world's second-largest orange producer behind Brazil."

Iraq to receive flat tax : "The citizens of Iraq will receive a tax reform gift in 2004, compliments of the U.S. government. 'That's because the Iraqis will enjoy something we don't -- a simple and fair tax system,' said Daniel J. Mitchell, the McKenna Fellow in political economy at The Heritage Foundation. 'Beginning in January, all Iraqis will pay a flat tax of 15 percent.'"

Amazing -- Leftist admiration for Hitler -- because he was the first "Keynesian": "As Cockburn writes, "Hitler, genocidal monster that he was, was also the first practicing Keynesian leader. ... There were vast public works, such as the autobahns. He paid little attention to the deficit or to the protests of the bankers about his policies. ... By 1936, unemployment had sunk to 1 percent."

Leftists like Keynes because he said that, in a recession, governments can spend more than they raise in tax. They usually "forget" Keynes's "in a recession" limitation, however.

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Brazil is a large and important country but I am having trouble working out what to think of the political situation there. One of my Brazilian correspondents pointed me to this article showing that their present Leftist government under Lula Da Silva is giving great honour to the old Communists and their sympathizers from Brazil's past -- which is certainly pretty disgusting. But is it important? I am inclined to think that such moves are mere tokenism. Although Lula was a flaming radical early in his career, he lost election after election on radical policies and finally won only by moving towards the centre. And since gaining power, he has been fairly Rightist in fact -- as this disgruntled Leftist points out. So I am inclined to think he is a bit like Malaysia's Mahathir -- spouting nonsense to keep his supporters happy but implementing good capitalist policies at the same time. Rather clever, in a way. That's my impression so far, anyway, but I am sure my Brazilian readers will let me know if I am missing something important. It does seem that neither privatization nor anything else does much good in most of Latin America and corruption is certainly the obvious explanation for that.

" Martin Luther King was a brave and courageous person. I agree with him that a person should be judged by the content of his character and not by the color of his skin. To those who stress King's loose sexual morals, I reply that sin is that for which we ask God's forgiveness. My problem with Martin Luther King Day is that it celebrates a civil rights revolution that achieved the opposite of King's intention. Today we are judged by the color of our skin."

Still some real Christians among American Anglicans: "Episcopal conservatives, making good on their threats to form an ecclesiastical and legal shelter for theologically orthodox believers, meet today and tomorrow in a Dallas suburb to hammer out the details. ... The AAC is the lead group opposing the November consecration of the Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson, the denomination's first openly homosexual bishop." (Note: I define what I mean by a "real" Christian here).

My comments yesterday on Ronald Reagan's lifelong anti-racism drew this comment from a reader: "When Reagan was working in Hollywood he joined a country club that did not allow Jews as members. As soon as found this out, he immediately resigned from the club. Some have said that he did this for professional aggrandisement due to the fact that most if not all the studios were run by Jews, but this does not seem to fit the man. Apparently he had a fist fight with Errol Flynn when Flynn made some antisemitic remarks in a bar one day. What a guy!"

Socialized medicine: "A baby was treated for the deadly meningococcal disease just days after being diagnosed with a simple case of gastroenteritis in a country hospital. Miss Carman said yesterday that on both occasions when she took the baby to the hospital, she was forced to wait in the emergency area for more than four hours. "It's really frustrating when you know your child is very ill," she said" Would YOU like a 4 hour wait when your baby had a disease that could kill it within hours?

Setting an example for GWB?: "The [Australian] Federal Government intensified its attacks on public schools yesterday, accusing the system of being hostile towards Australian heritage and values"

Arlene Peck is once again drawing attention to the double standards in the treatment of Israel.

The Wicked one has recent posts about creampuff firemen and the dubious state of justice in America.

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

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

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SOME IMMIGRATION REALISM

GWB's Hispanic "guest workers" will have children -- who will be automatically U.S. citizens because they were born in the USA. So their parents will have to be allowed to become permanent residents to look after them. So the policy is in effect an open door to all who want to come. V.D. Hanson also thinks the whole idea is pretty nonsensical.

Clearly, America has no answer to its huge and continuing Hispanic influx. The horse has long ago escaped and it is no good trying to close the barn door now. There is certainly not enough political will to stop it. And there is not enough political will because lots of Americans think it is not such a bad thing. And the way it undermines restrictive labor laws is undoubtedly an important source of oxygen for the U.S. economy. And at least the immigrants are Catholic Christians rather than some alien religion. Sensible U.S. conservatives would therefore be focusing on making sure that the influx is assimilated and integrated rather than forming alien and hostile "multicultural" ghettoes. Schools that taught the immigrant children American culture, American history and traditional American values ought to be the major means of doing that but government schools in the U.S. seem to do anything but that these days. So once again it is breaking the Leftist stranglehold on the schools that is the real key to a harmonious future for America.

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THE GREENIE NONSENSE AGAIN

PID has a discussion of vested interests and global warming. The global warming mania has in my view been unparallelled in the Western world for the way it has politicized and corrupted what were once regarded as "hard" sciences. The public cannot rely on any authority for truth and objectivity these days. Perhaps that's a good thing. Skepticism of authority made the Protestant Reformation, after all.

The situation has got so bad that the White House is now having to insist that normal scientific criteria be applied to politically-relevant scientific judgments -- and the scientists are resisting! They are so politicized that they are rejecting science itself!

The first global warming scare: "A marked climate change has taken place in a number of areas around the polar circle" claims a publication by The Royal Society (UK). "In the last two years more than two thousand square miles of ice-sheet covering the Greenland Sea have completely disappeared between latitudes 74 and 80 degrees north." The big freeze, which for centuries had transformed the region into an impenetrable shield of ice, clearly seems to have lost out to warmer temperatures in no time at all. Even in central Europe the report records alarming signs of a sudden warming of the climate: All rivers whose source lies in the high mountains have flooded vast areas because of the meltwater from snowfields and glaciers." The statements just quoted above were written on 20 November 1817. See also point 3 here

One of the biggest dangers to endangered species is the U.S. Endangered Species Act -- which in theory protects endangered species but which in fact discourages conservation. Yet another example of government coercion being counterproductive.

Wallace of Big Gold Dog is a Texas oilman and he has emailed me about geologist Demming's claim that there are still big oil reserves in the ground. He makes the point that while Demming is right and there is a lot of oil still in the ground, recovering it will gradually get more costly. He is right. Recovery costs are clearly the ONLY limiting factor on oil production -- but oil-derived motor fuel is still about half the price of industrial alcohol (the major alternative motor-fuel) so we are a fair way from that ceiling. Note that, because of high taxes, much of the world already pays heaps more for their fuel than Americans do so even a big rise in prices could be absorbed with little problem over time.

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ELSEWHERE

And fake science is not confined to Greenie issues. Frank Furedi is one psychologist who is always worth reading and his latest article titled "A danger to the nation's children" pulls no punches. One excerpt: "Advocacy research is the very opposite of scientific investigation. Sound science is devoted to the exploration of the unknown and the discovery of the truth. Advocacy organisations don't have to discover the truth - they already know it and their research is designed to affirm what they already know".

Pretty amazing to anyone who listens to Leftists: Ronald Reagan was a lifelong anti-racist!

David's Medienkritik notes this news item about Green/Left shenanigans: "The six-day anti-globalisation meeting was overshadowed by a presumed rape. As police stated on Monday, a South African participant was arrested on charges of forcing sex on a woman from his country in his hotel room". I liked David's dry comment on the matter: "Probably a South African neo-conservative..."

Liking Indians as I do I was delighted to read these words of an Indian journalist about the tour of Australia by his country's cricket team: "Australians are, I have found, ready to laugh at themselves if they think that the joke is funny and the humour not ill-directed. And the ability to be self-deprecating is the mark of confidence; it is, as much as anything else, the yardstick by which a society measures how tolerant and self-assured it is. That tolerance and readiness to applaud have been reflected in Australian fans' attitude towards the Indian cricketers. Everywhere this Indian cricket team has gone in Australia, there has been genuine warmth towards them; there has been a great deal of respect"

More rubbery Leftist "principles": "In an interview with Jane Hall in the most recent Columbia Journalism Review, Brokaw suggests there is no such thing as liberal media bias ... and then asserts that liberal bias is an "obligation" of journalism. Journalists should "represent the views of those who are underrepresented in the social context, or the political context, and to make sure that they're not overlooked, and that their wrongs get the bright light of journalistic sunshine.""

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

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

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MORE BLACK EYES FOR THE GREENIES

Fake food scares: "In this Sunday's New York Times Magazine, organic-farming cheerleader Michael Pollan declared: 'For several years now, an alternative, postindustrial food chain has been taking shape, its growth fueled by one 'food scare' after another: Alar, G.M.O.'s [sic], rBGH, E. coli 0157:H7; now B.S.E.' This, for Pollan, is a good thing. Never mind that the Alar scare, which devastated apple farmers, was an utter fabrication staged to raise money for the Natural Resources Defense Council. Forget that biotech crops pose zero risk to human health, that milk from cows given the 'recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone' is indistinguishable from conventional milk, that Americans are more likely to get E. coli food poisoning from eating organic produce, and that -- as Pollan himself admits -- the risk of getting mad cow disease 'may be vanishingly small.'"

UK to approve commercial growth of GM crops: "The Government will next month approve the commercial growing of genetically modified (GM) crops in Britain for the first time. But ministers will impose strict conditions on the cultivation of GM maize and ban commercial GM sugar beet and oilseed rape after trials showed that they could be more damaging to the environment than conventional crops ....."

A long but very comprehensive debunking of the "multiple frauds" behind the "Kyoto" greenhouse treaty here

Geologist David Demming questions "hottest year ever recorded" claims: "the borehole data also showed that present-day climatic conditions are in fact colder than average when compared to climatic conditions that prevailed over the 10,000-year-long rise of human civilization... The geological evidence demonstrating that 20th-century warming is nothing unusual has been ignored"

Demming also says that 'The Petroleum Age is just beginning": "For more than 80 years, geological estimates of the world's endowment of oil have risen faster than humanity can pump it out of the ground. In 1920, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated the total amount of oil remaining in the world amounted to only 20 billion barrels. By the year 2000, the estimate had grown to 3,000 billion barrels. "

And physicist Tom Gold says oil is not a fossil fuel anyway and that there are still vast amounts of it to be discovered beneath the earth. Hydrocarbons (the principal components of crude oil) have been observed throughout the universe -- including on planet Jupiter -- so clearly are far too common to be explained as the product of living organisms.

Gold has an excellent if rather depressing article on fashions in science here

A good comment from a reader about Greenie predictions: "I'm always amazed that people who have no idea what the weather will be in 24 hours, can somehow figure out what will happen in 24 years, or 24 decades. I heard that Mount Rainier is starting to rumble. When that blows, imagine what will happen to the atmosphere (not to mentions Seattle)"

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The cricket was on in my home town of Brisbane yesterday -- a one-day international match. I could hear the roars of the crowd at the "Gabba" cricket-ground from where I sit writing this. India beat Australia by a whisker -- which no doubt caused great joy in India. The vast majority of the world's cricket fanatics are Indians.

Leftist hypocrisy goes back a long way. They believe in nothing other than their own brilliance. This is just one extract from a history of the Soviet propaganda apparatus: "If Americans in the adversary culture understood that the oppression of blacks was the society's great institutionalized crime, Stalinism would take the highest of high ground on the "Negro question." No matter that Stalin ruled a country where a significant part of the population languished in slave labor camps. If the English adversary culture saw philistinism and middle-class repression as the enemy, Stalinism would embrace iconoclastic taste and sexual liberty as nobody else did; the Bohemianism and flamboyant homosexuality of Guy Burgess were an indispensable part of his slick Stalinism and central to his place in Bloomsbury. No matter that Soviet sexual policy and taste were intolerant to a degree that made Colonel Blimp look liberated."

And not much has changed: "Nothing can be more obvious than that the current Democratic leadership considers actual principle a laughable electoral weakness. ... Democrats consider strength to be the skillful capture of swing votes via the tactically precise execution of a fuzzy policy of standing for nothing at all, as in the case of Bill Clinton."

The German media are even using mistranslation to put the USA in a bad light in Iraq.

Some breath left in American conservatism: "National leaders of six conservative organizations yesterday broke with the Republican majorities in the House and Senate, accusing them of spending like "drunken sailors," and had some strong words for President Bush as well"

That's government for you: "Australian civil servants have been warned they could face disciplinary action if they hold lunch meetings between noon and 2pm. An Education Department circular to all staff implies lunch meetings are permissible -- as long they're not at lunchtime. The bizarre edict is one of six changes to hospitality expenditure policy."

Left wing feminists were happy to criticise the Bush/Blair campaign against Saddam Hussein but they have had no such concerns about rushing into Iraq to export their own brand of feminism. Hypocrites? Carpet baggers? The real imperialists?

Irshad Manji has been called Osama Bin Laden's worst nightmare.

Seen on a billboard outside a church"Dear God, Please help me live up to the image that my dog has of me"

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

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

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CONSPIRACY THEORIES

Political extremists of both Left and Right have always loved their conspiracy theories but such theories now seem to be going mainstream. Frank Furedi -- one of the few psychologists I have respect for -- has a good article on why so many people now believe in conspiracy theories -- about the death of Princess Diana and JFK, about the 9/11 events and much else besides. As he says:

"The public's scepticism towards the official version of events surrounding Diana's death is the result of a profound sense of distrust in conventional authority. We live in an age of rumours where official facts often carry little more authority than an internet site devoted to alien abduction".

Under Leftist and Greenie influence, people have been told so many lies that public skepticism about government statements is warmly to be welcomed in my view. As a libertarian, I can only hope that it carries over into skepticism about the worth of government in general.

Gerard Henderson also has a good article on conspiracy theories -- though his evidence for thinking that Australians are less affected by them is pretty dated.

But Germany would now seem to be the world headquarters for conspiracy theorists. Modern-day realities seem to be too much altogether for Germans.

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ELSEWHERE

My mention yesterday of the demand for legal polygamy brought this response from one reader: "Polygamy is already "legal"! Back in the late 70s, this guy I worked with practiced polygamy. I heard he had personal checks with 3 names - his, and his two "wives". And the house was also "shared". If there is no marriage involved, any number of "partners" is legal. And mobility is easy - when you get tired or want to make a new arrangement, you do it. So what the hell do these people demanding "legal polygamy" want? More restrictions on their "relationship" - divorce courts, etc?" And most married men seem to have “girlfriends” at some stage too. The polygamist is just more upfront about it.

The American Left seem to have slowed down their tirade to the effect that GWB is intent on establishing an American "empire" but if there is any doubt that the American presence abroad is nothing like the empires of the past, Herbert London sets the record straight. He shows it is not even like the British Empire.

A reader noted this article on changing standards in modern society. It shows that in the US military, obesity is punished but deserters can go free -- so my reader asks: "Does this mean that they treat desserters tougher than deserters?". Very droll.

There is a fun story here about an engineer's encounter with "postmodern" literary criticism. He says that figuring out what it is all about is "a mind stretching departure from debugging C code" -- and any programmer knows how hard that can be. After studying it, he concludes: "The basic enterprise of contemporary literary criticism is actually quite simple. It is based on the observation that with a sufficient amount of clever handwaving and artful verbiage, you can interpret any piece of writing as a statement about anything at all". Personally, I regard that as a charitable judgment.

What fun! "Two words in the modern French vocabulary are almost invariably spoken here with an air of disgust: mondialisation (globalization) and McDonaldisation (no translation necessary). Tomorrow, in what some would see as the next step toward American homogenization and a gastronomic faux pas, Starbucks Coffee Company opens its first retail store in the heart of the City of Light."

On anti-Americanism: "A large part of the European left spent a large part of the 20th century hating the United States not because it had economic inequality or Jim Crow but because it did not have show trials, labor camps and the other appurtenances of "actually existing socialism." ". But, aside from that, it all boils down to jealousy. And, childish though it is, jealousy is all too common.

Are GWB and some libertarians trying to model U.S. immigration policy on the policy of Saudi Arabia? "So, the president's proposal would create a permanent guestworker class, millions strong, but lacking any realistic timetable for becoming Americans".

Pat Buchanan has some tough words criticising Bush's amnesty for illegals: "Consider what the president is saying with his amnesty. He is telling us that he cannot or will not do his constitutional duty to defend the states from invasion. He is saying that he simply cannot or will not protect our borders or enforce our immigration laws. He is saying he will no longer send illegal aliens back"

Wow! I had no idea that it was this difficult to get a prescription filled in America. If you go to a pharmacist in Australia in the morning and something is out of stock, they get it for you by that afternoon. In my experience that even applies to prescriptions requiring special authorization.

PID debunks the Leftist myths surrounding late FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.

Whether or not Saddam had WMD's, he had some extremely advanced military equipment -- as this article shows (with 3 photos). No wonder the Russians opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq. They were sending Saddam their best stuff and now the U.S. has it!

The Wicked one has an interesting quiz about age.

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

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GREENIE CORNER

A good summary of Bjorn Lomborg's findings (PDF): "Professor Lomborg does believe that global warming is taking place. However, he says: "The cure is worse than the ailment. Let's not focus on phantom problems at the expense of real problems." All the Kyoto treaty on global warming would achieve is to postpone warming for six years, he argues. For a bill of $4 trillion, a 2 degree rise in temperature would arrive in 2106 instead of 2100."

In contrast, a recent BBC "Horizon" program presents a variety of scientific data showing that Britain is headed for a new ice age!!! -- possibly with 20 years. Ahh!! How lovely to have such scientific certainty about these things. It is certainly true geologically that we are living at the end of a warm interglacial period so I have always said that we might one day need all the global warming we can get. Geology is not a very precise clock, however, so whether the next ice age will start in 20 years or in 1,000 years time, nobody can say -- though the start does already seem to be overdue. When it does start, however, Canada will rapidly cease to exist. Canada should be laughing the Kyoto treaty to death, not supporting it.

Don't mention the Sun! "The Sun is more active now than it has been for a millennium. The realisation, which comes from a reconstruction of sunspots stretching back 1150 years, comes just as the Sun has thrown a tantrum. Over the last week, giant plumes of have material burst out from our star's surface and streamed into space, causing geomagnetic storms on Earth."

The air gets cleaner, while environmental politics gets dirtier "The way the administration's environmental critics tell it, you can't see your hand in front of your face anymore because of all the pollution Bush has allowed his big business buddies to emit. That's certainly the theme of every green activist group, Democratic presidential hopeful, and far too many environmental journalists. But there is one big problem with this scenario -- it's the exact opposite of reality, according to a 2003 report by the Environmental Protection Agency."

Disease doesn't have much to do with climate change one way or the other: "Every year, according to a new report by the World Health Organisation, 150,000 people succumb to the effects of global warming... But what about all the elderly and infirm people who would have died had this winter been as cold as those frequently experienced in Europe during the 19th century? Strangely, these non-deaths do not appear to feature in the World Health Organisation's one-sided ledger"

Alarmism sells papers: "It seems that virtually every news organ in the English language has carried the story of new scientific claims published in Nature magazine that by 2050 over a million species will be doomed to extinction owing to the effects of global warming. Yet few of them realized how flimsy the story actually is."

John Daly also takes apart recent claims of greenhouse species extinction.

And another article that says the mass extinction is more like a mass exaggeration

Carbon dioxide is beneficial, not harmful: "The results of this impressive study of real-world agricultural operations in a significantly CO2-enriched atmosphere -- which is the only environmental change we can be confident will occur in the foreseeable future -- bodes well indeed for the financial well-being of Western Australian wheat farmers and the land that supports them."

The green machine "Twenty EU member and accession states labour under a cadre of panels collectively known as the European Environmental Advisory Council (EEAC). Styling itself as a body 'to provide independent, scientifically based advice on the environment and sustainable development,' this so-called 'network' is actually a series of organisations funded by the European Commission to lobby for their interests locally."

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Jeff Jacoby asks the obvious next question in the homosexual marriage debate -- Is lawful polygamy next? "Three adults who want to live together as a husband and two wives asked a federal court this week to strike down Utah's ban on polygamy as a violation of their constitutional rights". Why a guy would feel the need for a government certificate to say he sticks his penis up some other guy's behind rather escapes me but as a libertarian I think all marriage should be a matter of civil contract anyway.

To put it plainly: "Now the Democrats and their reactionary academic gurus are peddling the notion that what will make people rich is, once again, raiding the wealth of those who are already rich. More taxation, they scream, not more production and free trade. These pathetic people are counting on voters to be motivated not from an honest desire to become prosperous -- one that would incline a person to work harder, to invest wisely, and to save prudently. No, they hope that voters are motivated from rank envy, the desire to bring down those who have it better than they do. And to fuel this envy good and hard, these vile politicians are preaching class warfare and zero-sum political economy."

Homeschoolers vs. Big Brother: "New Jersey's child welfare system, like most state child welfare systems, is a corrupt and deadly mess. Children are lost in the shuffle, shipped to abusive foster homes, returned to rapists and child molesters, and left to die in closets while paperwork piles up. So whom does the government decide to punish for the bureaucracy's abysmal failure to protect these innocents? Homeschoolers. And what does the government think will solve its ills? More power and paperwork."

The Spectator has a satirical piece lampooning Cherie Blair's advice to the Vatican after a recent state visit. It also says that Mrs Blair is just the latest incarnation of one of a common English character: "Mrs Blair is in a noble tradition among British women. She knows what is good for us. ...Mrs Blair's generation must espouse what the age most values. This seems to be two, on the face of it, incompatible things: diversity and equality".

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

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FROM BROOKES NEWS

Unemployment and the tyranny of aggregates It was sad state of affairs when in late 2001 economic news from the US surprised and contradicted our economic commentators. For sometime I had been predicting a significant rise in unemployment as America's recession unfolded. So what happened?
Bush, Beijing and al Qaeda By striking hard and swiftly against terrorists, by imposing on them and their paymasters a terrible price, Bush not only sent a vitally important message to other terrorists and their potential supporters but also to Beijing's generals. For this the world should be immensely grateful.
Why increased consumption hampered America's economic recovery Greenspan's policy of trying to promote increased consumption hindered economic recovery in America. Concentrating on consumption at the expense of production is a recipe for prolonging recessions.
The media, Iraq and the traitor Burchett Even though the Soviet Empire collapsed some years ago many of our so-called journalists still refuse to call those Westerners who worked for the murderous KGB traitors.
Addressing the causes of terrorism: A cry from the Quisling Left There is a cry from the Quislings and fifth columnists among us that we must not only address terrorism, but to also "address the causes of terrorism". I shall address it right now.
Hillary Clinton's acceptable level of homicide To Hillary Clinton and her progressive friends more dead blacks and Hispanics was a small price to pay to fulfil her ambition to become the country's first female president.

Details here

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HOW AWFUL THAT CONSERVATIVES ARE HAPPIER!

The Tugboat is getting all churned up at the moment over the well-established fact that conservatives are happier than Leftists. He first fusses over whether the differences in a recent Gallup poll are statistically significant -- apparently unaware that statistical significance is just a way of allowing for small sample size and, as such, irrelevant to large public opinion polls -- unless very small subsections of them are being examined separately. His post was too long and rambling for me to read right through but he appears to be convinced that conservatives are only happier because they are more self-deluded! I guess that, as a Leftist, he has to believe that.

No doubt some study of 30 American college students somewhere has shown that happy people are more self-deluded. American college students are very obliging about giving their Leftist psychology professors what they want. I have critiqued such studies too often to want to do it again. The phenomenon even has a name. It is called The Rosenthal Effect.

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ELSEWHERE

The Democrats seem to be back on the socialized medficine trail -- but they don't have to look further than New York to see where it leads. One of my medical correspondents comments: "And most doctors simply don't want to practice in NY State because of this nonsense - so the State subsidizes medical education (I don't know where these doctors end up, but I can tell you that several Anesthesia Residents we fired from our (Backward Southern) institution were immediately hired in NY (Progressive, Enlightened) because they were short on doctors)"

Bin Laden losing: "The United States' global 'war on terrorism' has clearly entered a new phase. Regardless of how one feels about the US-led war in Iraq, the results of that war, and especially the increased capability that US forces have shown in fighting terrorism, capturing Saddam Hussein and gaining valuable intelligence thereby, have had a decisive effect.

FrontPage seems to be taking the phenomenon of white nationalism seriously. Confronted by whites arguing for "group rights" in the same way that minority advocates do, some multicuturalists now seem to have re-discovered the benefits of colour blind integrationism.

Virginia Postrel has an excellent summary article on the free-market and other ideas of Friedrich Hayek and the way his ideas took decades to be recognized for the great insights that they are.

This article about evangelical Christianity in America rings true. The author sees it as being anything but fanatical and a long way from the Protestant dogmatism of the past.

The lowdown on the "condom in my soup" case.

An Australian atomic physicist has put links to "PC Watch" and "Dissecting Leftism" on his home page -- and I do get a few hits off it. Should be more of it!

Donald Luskin has a lot of good jokes up at the moment. I particularly liked the one about GWB and the Pope.

A government commuter railroad kills: "NSW State Rail has knowingly operated defective trains since 1988, according to a report that blames the authority for the Waterfall rail disaster that killed seven people last January."

China Hand has just posted on his other site yet another attempt to drum sense into people about the folly of "protecting" jobs. GWB's recent steel tariff fiasco shows that this ailment of the brain can afflict even those who are supposed to be in favour of free trade. China Hand is also addressing a committed conservative -- his brother -- and uses the example of Australia's large-scale abandonment of protectionism to show how beneficial that is.

The Wicked one has lots of funnies up.

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SOME SIMPLE ECONOMICS

Leftists still haven't learned basic economic lessons even when delivered by one of their own. This biographical piece outlines some uncommon economic sense on minimum wages and government intervention in agriculture delivered by socialist economist Gunnar Myrdal.

New jobs for old: "It is in destroying jobs that the economy improves and makes it possible for the standard of living of all Americans to increase. This constant churning means that even a "stagnant" American job market is extremely dynamic, and that the ranks of the unemployed are not necessarily the dispossessed of the earth, as Democrats tend to portray them."

"An inevitable consequence of socialism is the division of society into two groups; those who are consuming government 'services' and those who are paying for them. As the waning and collapse of socialist countries around the globe has clearly demonstrated, those who consume eventually overwhelm those who provide. ... Every entitlement program the government ever instituted has or soon will metastasize into an open ended endowment that politicians can incrementally expand to buy votes; 'vote for me and we'll take care of you, too.' The best illustration of this point is the history of Social Security."

Too logical for his own good: "Early in our marriage, 40-some years ago, Mrs. Williams would return from shopping complaining about the unreasonable prices. Having aired her complaints, she'd then ask me to unload her car laden with purchases. After the unloading, I'd ask her: 'I thought you said the prices were unreasonable. Why did you buy them? Are you unreasonable? Only an unreasonable person would pay unreasonable prices.' The discussion always headed downhill after such an observation."

Indian economist Jagdish Baghwati has come out swinging in favour of globalization. He gives the facts and figures to show what an enormous influence it is in reducing Third-world poverty. "During the three decades that Bhagwati's India was a relatively closed economy, for example, the economy grew at 4 percent a year, and the poverty rate hovered around 55 percent. But in the two decades since it opened its economy to foreign trade and investment, economic growth averaged five percent; by 2000, the poverty rate had fallen to 26 percent. China's experience was similar: with liberalization came spectacular growth, and poverty declined from 28 to 9 percent between 1978 and 1998."

Californian stupidity is very bad for business: "Robert Peritz is no jingoist, despite how he sounds at times ... Neither is the ex-New Yorker ... some storming anti-government extremist -- despite his rants against politicians and bureaucrats: 'There is too much big government and a lot of bad policy right here in this state. The politicians and bureaucrats are making and passing regulations that are actually running businesses out of town. We need less government intrusion into our lives.' Peritz, in truth, is an inherently humble guy who knows what's what. He's clear that in business, as in life, if you do good things, good things will come back to you."

Facts don't matter to some, apparently: "Richard Florida, a Carnegie Mellon professor .. argues that cities that attract gays, bohemians, and ethnic minorities are the new economic powerhouses because they are also the places where creative workers_the kind who start and staff innovative, fast-growing companies_want to live... [BUT] Far from being economic powerhouses, a number of the cities the professor identifies as creative-age winners have chronically underperformed the American economy..."

An important reminder about free trade: "Before getting into the heart of the matter, let us remind ourselves of a basic but important fact: Tariffs are taxes. No matter how sophisticated the argument, when someone opposes free trade, what that really means is that he favors the placement of taxes (or similar restrictions) on consumers."

Unemployment: "Chronic unemployment is only and can only be caused by one thing. That is the resistance of the unemployed worker to accept employment at a rate or in an area that reflects his current market value. Remember as long as any human desire remains unfilled there is work that can be done. This means there is always work."

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ELSEWHERE

Boondoggle opens: Australia's billion dollar railroad to nowhere. Australia has a history of huge government spending on uneconomic projects -- the Snowy and Ord river schemes being the most notable predecessors of the present nonsense of spending over a billion dollars to service a town of only 80,000 people.

Those awful religious people! There's an interesting study in the October 2003 issue of Policy Review on "Religious Faith and Charitable Giving". The study was of 30,000 religious and non-religious people. It found that religious people give to charity and volunteer themselves SIGNIFICANTY more than non-religious people. The study measures people of the same socio-economic and educational class. Also, religious people give to non-religious affiliated charities more often than non-religious people do.

This article from TCS shows that George Soros is like many people who are very good at one specialization -- totally ignorant of the real world outside that specialty.

More Leftist lies about American "imperialism" exposed in Front Page.

At least the Spanish have got cojones: "Muslim author of book advocating wife-beating jailed"

David's Medienkritik has an amusing picture of Germany's Chancellor Gerhardt Schroeder (look at his feet).

Chris Brand has a further posting on the latest attack on free speech in Britain -- the sacking of a TV presenter who once made disparaging remarks about Muslims.

Carnival of the Vanities is up again as your contents-page of the blogosphere for the last week

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SELECTED GOVERNMENTAL IDIOCY

Government idiocy at its finest: "Last year Sandy Meadows, who supervises the floral department at an Albertson's supermarket in Baton Rouge, was filling in at another Albertson's store that had lost its florist when she was visited by an inspector from the Louisiana Horticulture Commission. He told her she'd have to throw out the seven arrangements she had produced that morning if she wanted to avoid a $250 citation for practicing floristry without a license. Louisiana appears to be the only state in the nation that treats unlicensed florists making unauthorized arrangements as a public menace.

And this idiocy is nearly as bad: ""Is the war on terrorism over? Have we stopped drug trafficking? Has corruption in corporate America ended? We must have cured these problems. Why else would federal officials spend their time prosecuting people for importing lobster tails in plastic bags instead of cardboard boxes?

But 40 years of trying has not made this one work: "In his State of the Union address forty years ago this week, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared an 'unconditional war on poverty in America.' Since then, the federal government has created vast new bureaucracies and raised taxes to a staggering level not seen since World War Two. L.B.J. helped create welfare (Aid to Families with Dependent Children), Medicare, Head Start, the Job Corps, and Medicaid. Worst of all, most of L.B.J.'s War on Poverty was a failure."

The British contribution: "The Government has announced it is to scrap an obscure law after shop staff refused to serve a police officer a sausage roll. Constable Dougie Brown was on duty in the village of Nettleham, near Lincoln, last month when he tried to buy the snack in his local Co-op store. It turned out that the staff had acted according to the letter of the law which bans the sale of 'any liquor or refreshment' to an on-duty policeman without the permission of a senior officer."

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ELSEWHERE

Safire in the NYT has joined the chorus in concluding that the Iraq invasion has been of enormous strategic benefit to the USA and to world peace. And even a German newspaper has condescended to notice positive developments in Iraq.

Keith Burgess-Jackson says that feminists have lied to women in saying that they "can have it all" -- and he once had feminist views himself. I myself have been fortunate in knowing lots of women who are very happy to be female but I do blame feminism in part for raising women's expectations to unrealistic levels and thus making them postpone childbearing until it is too late. Two of my four ex-wives have had no children -- despite both being very good and capable women.

The current City Journal has a couple of rather pessimistic articles: George Will thinks it will be a long haul before Iraq becomes democratic and James Q. Wilson thinks that terrorists will be with us for a long time yet.

Putin's "authoritarian liberalism" may be better for Russia than corrupted democracy. We cannot expect them to leap in one bound from centuries of oppression to where we are now: "For all its dictatorial tendencies, the contemporary Russian state clearly exhibits some restraint. It does not seek to intervene in every aspect of its citizens' lives, and Russia is a country where people can and do criticise the government without being molested. In many respects the government of Vladimir Putin is probably the most benign in Russian history. Like the Whites, Putin is no liberal democrat, but his promotion of state interests may well be the best hope for liberal democracy in Russia."

Slavery is alive and well in the Islamic world: "From the Niger River to Sudan slavery continues to be practiced and justified in the name of the Koran"

Now that soot has been shown to have global warming potential, the Greenies are trying to blame soot on Diesel engines used in the West and are ignoring the huge output of soot from poorer countries. A reader who has been overseas recently writes: "I crossed from Romania to Bulgaria, two extremely poor, poor countries, the living conditions were about 12thC in the country, Romania especially. The Danube was anything but blue & huge power plants belching out smoke & SOOT! It certainly did away with any romantic notions one may have had".

A good report about current health panics on "Spiked" -- problems which the do-gooders of course blame on everything modern: More people are getting cancer! How Awful! But is it? It's mainly because people are living longer and older people are more prone to cancer. British sperm counts are dropping! How awful! Will the British die out? Hardly, it was only men with fertility problems who had lower counts and counts vary widely anyhow.

Not all actors and actresses are imbecilic Leftists. See at the bottom of this article for some very sensible comments by John Rhys-Davies, the actor who played "Gimli" (the dwarf) in 'Lord of the Rings'

PP McGuinness has an interesting review of a humorous film about the old Communist East Germany. He knows something of it from personal experience. He concludes: "Everybody has had hankerings after the creation of a new society, a vision, the ongoing progressive march forwards - but the reality is that carrying such hankerings beyond youth leads not to utopia but to dystopia".

A big collection of LEFTIST race-hatred here.

Yesterday I mentioned in passing an economist (Gittins) who thinks that "money does not buy happiness" is a reason to stop giving people more of what they want. There is a reply to Gittins here

Heh! Heh! I am in a minority again: "Blogs are currently the province of the young, with 92.4% of blogs created by people under the age of 30".

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HAPPINESS

George Will has a good review of a recent Gregg Easterbrook book on happiness. The basic point, of course, is that making a lot of money does not necessarily bring happiness. Anybody who reads anything about the lives of filmstars would have known that at least 50 years ago but economists and Leftists seem to have discovered it only recently and are using it as a weapon to say that we should stop trying to give people what they want -- in good authoritarian style. Nicolae Ceausescu, Joseph Stalin and Marshall Tito would approve.

But I had a post last year that traces unhappiness to Leftist values and it is certainly clear that conservatives are in fact happier.

So some things DO generally make a difference to your happiness -- and HOW you spend your money is a factor: "Money can buy happiness and the best investment advice may be as simple as the sports shoe slogan: just do it. That's the conclusion drawn by researchers who set out to identify what sort of spending made people happiest"

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ELSEWHERE

An editorial in "USA Today" backs U.S. intervention in Iraq as having improved world peace and safety and rejects Leftist claims that it has been "destabilizing" etc.

In the latest City Journal, Heather MacDonald shows that some of the most violent criminals at large today are illegal aliens. Yet cops cannot use the most obvious tool to catch them: their immigration status. Reasons: fear of offending powerful immigrant lobbies

A reader comments on "global warming": "Last year, there were no roses in Montreal in June - the winter had been the worst in many years. Apparently, more of the same this year."

An encouraging article here about moderate Islam in Turkey. Very different from the Arab world. Turks are an entirely different race from the Arabs of course and until roughly a century ago held most of the Arab world in subjection.

I have said little so far about the latest GWB illegal immigration "solution" because it does seem very complex. I am however almost sure that bureaucratic incompetence will transform it into a virtual "open-door" policy. Jeff Jacoby, however, seems to have some sensible comments on the matter and his stress on putting life back into "e pluribus unum" (i.e. the policy of assimilation) I heartily agree with. Australia has successfully assimilated a huge immigrant intake and America can do the same if the Leftist "all cutures are equal" dogma is defied.

The lost Left: "An examination of the plans that former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, Rep. Dick Gephardt (Mo.) and the rest of the nine dwarfs have proposed reveals just how sharply leftward the Democratic Party has tilted in recent years. Every one of the major contenders wants to raise taxes, wants to re-regulate key industries, militantly opposes private accounts for Social Security, supports the Kyoto Treaty on global warming, and would seek a much higher minimum wage. Most would create a Hillary Health Care- type plan for the nation"

About time: "People are turning increasingly to alternatives such as the Internet for news about the presidential campaign, shifting away from traditional outlets such as the nightly network news and newspapers, a poll found"

Dave Huber has a good post on the nonsense that passes for modern educational theory -- and which is all too often being imposed on our kids nowadays. I myself have taught High School under both systems -- "student directed" and "traditional" and there is no doubt which delivers students who know their subject.

The poor old Sikhs seem to have fallen foul of French anti-religious laws. For a Sikh not to wear a turban is to abandon his faith so I hope they are given an exemption -- as they so often are elsewhere. I have known Sikhs since my early youth and think they are exceptionally good citizens wherever they live.

"KOALA contraception was being considered as a way to curb population blow-outs among the marsupials in Victoria". But the Greenies still oppose any development in areas that Koalas inhabit, of course.

The Far-Leftist MoveOn.org has been goosestepping backwards with its on-again off-again hate- speech about GWB being a "Nazi".

It looks like mad cow disease has become a hobbyhorse for some pretty mad people (if a disease can be a hobbyhorse). See here

Michael Darby has put up another big selection of postings. Some of his headlines:
Yet another "bank" scam
Cathy Buckle: Deepening Disaster in Zimbabwe
French Corruption
"Beyond the Razor Wire" - the truth about asylum-seekers
Seventy-two Dark-Eyed Virgins still taught as reward for Shahada (Death for Allah)
Democracy & the Enemies of Freedom
Tough Times For Terrorists
Public Broadcasting Service, Recruiting for Islam
Prepared for war and peace on Earth
Tax Reform for the New Century

The Wicked one has an Australian elaboration of an old joke about the FBI etc.

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