EU SHENANIGANS

They are trying to give themselves power to jail British and other national citizens

EU shoots itself in the foot: "Brussels has been given the power to compel British courts to fine or imprison people for breaking EU laws, even if the Government and Parliament are opposed. An unprecedented ruling yesterday by the supreme court in Europe gives Brussels the power to introduce harmonised criminal law across the EU, creating for the first time a body of European criminal law that all member states must adopt. The judgment by the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg was bitterly fought by 11 EU governments, including Britain, and marks a dramatic transfer of power from national capitals to Brussels.....

Some national government officials said that the issue was so sensitive that EU lawmaking would grind to a halt and member governments would refuse to pass legislation rather than accept harmonisation of criminal law. One diplomat said: "This stuff is political dynamite in the UK, Holland, Italy, Scandinavia, and Eastern Europe, where they are as keen on their sovereignty as anyone. Imagine how Italians would react if their criminal law was rewritten at EU level. Ironically, it means less will be done at EU level.""

I doubt in any case that any attempt to enforce such EU edicts in Britain would get past the House of Lords. The Law Lords could well rule that Britain is not bound by something outside specific treaty obligations. Note this comment: "Gerald Barling, QC, a leading European expert, said that the European court had declared that the powers to introduce harmonised criminal laws were already there. "But that in itself is arguable - the Community treaty itself does not directly say so," he said".

*****************************

ELSEWHERE

Putting America under foreign rule: "Though John Roberts may be on the firing line this week as his Senate hearings begin, it's sitting Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy who is making big court news. In the Sept. 12 New Yorker, legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin pens a profile of Kennedy, who vigorously defends his use of foreign laws and constitutions to interpret U.S. laws and our Constitution. Some in Congress believe Kennedy's position - and those of several other Court Justices - is a clear violation of both U.S. law and the Justices' own solemn oath to uphold solely the U.S. Constitution.... The use of foreign and international laws in deciding Supreme Court decisions has outraged many present and former policymakers in Washington. "Relying upon foreign law, particularly international covenants to which the United States is not a party, is an illegitimate source of interpretation for the Constitution," former Reagan administration Attorney General Edwin Meese told NewsMax. "It is impossible to reconcile foreign customs or opinions of law with the meaning of the Constitution," he added..."

Is this the ultimate madness? They are disarming the National Guard in New Orleans.

American Fascism? "'All Our Visitors Bring Happiness,' reads the wrought iron sign on the front column of Albert Cousin's 102-year-old Victorian house. Not Wednesday. Sheriff's deputies in body armor and holding rifles came to try to force Cousin and other residents of St. Bernard Parish to get out of town. ... For the past few days, residents have found comfort in food and water brought by units of the Georgia National Guard, who arrived Labor Day weekend. ... With such efforts under way, the rousting of residents was left to deputies from neighboring parishes, and law enforcement members from as far away as Oklahoma City. The forced eviction of stubborn occupants of this parish, the first community downriver from New Orleans, is more aggressive than similar efforts in the city."

Great stuff!: "Jefferson Parish Sheriff Harry Lee said he has 'commandered' the Sam's and Wal-Mart stores in the parish and ordered them to open as soon as possible. Lee said he took the action after he learned that a Wal-Mart store wanted to open recently but was told by FEMA officials that it could not. 'I am upset with FEMA and some of their regulations,' Lee said. After talking about the situation concerning the Wal-Mart on Thursday, Lee said he briefly talked to Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-New Orleans on Friday. He asked her to check on the situation and find out if there was a legitimate reason to keep the store closed. But because of communication difficulties, he did not hear back and took the situation in his own hands. Lee said he gave handwritten notes to Wal-Mart stores in Harvey and Kenner saying they were ordered to open as soon as possible. Lee said Parish President Aaron Broussard agreed with the decision. Lee said anyone from FEMA who tries to close either store will be arrested by deputies."

FEMA should be shut down : "What if there was no such thing as FEMA? I asked myself that question after reading about the Federal Emergency Management Agency's bungled efforts to serve the poor and suffering in the area formerly known as New Orleans. Following Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, FEMA was criticized for inaction, epitomized by Director Michael Brown's August 29th memo suggesting workers be allowed two days to get to the ravaged region. (Incredibly, Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke defended the two-day delay as necessary to provide workers with adequate training.)"

Labor regulations suspended to "aid hurricane recovery": "Last week President Bush, in order to speed the hurricane recovery efforts in the Gulf Coast, suspended labor regulations that control wages for workers employed by federal contractors. The additional flexibility will help create new jobs and speed the rebuilding process, raising the larger question of whether the rules should be reinstated even after the emergency has passed. The so-called 'prevailing wage' regulations which date from the 1931 Davis-Bacon Act require that federal contractors pay employees a government-determined minimum wage."

"Living wage" laws don't help low-income families: "In July, Sonoma, California passed an ordinance requiring certain employers to pay $11.70 an hour with health benefits or $13.20 without health benefits, indexed to the consumer price index. The ordinance applies to companies with a city service contract worth at least $10,000, nonprofits with city contracts of at least $75,000, and companies that receive city loans or economic assistance worth at least $100,000. But a new study of 'living wage' laws indicates the Sonoma City Council's decision may not help those the law is intended to benefit."

For old-timers or those who are interested in the history of American conservatism, there is a good review here of a recent book by Priscilla Buckley, sister and co-worker of Bill Buckley.

Chris Brand has a HUGE coverage of the controversy over male/female differences in IQ which I have just posted here

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

**************************

Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.

********************************

YOUNG AUSTRALIANS BECOMING MORE CONSERVATIVE

An "Absolutely Fabulous" generation of ageing hipsters with straitlaced children is emerging across Australia, as flower-power parents grow old dis-gracefully and are viewed with amazement by their offspring. New research has found that 50-somethings have clung to baby boomer ideals of the 1960s and '70s, with a relaxed attitude towards such matters as prostitution, premarital sex and divorce. However, like Eddy's bespectacled daughter Saffy in the sitcom "Absolutely Fabulous", typical 20-somethings are more conservative than their parents and are happy to settle down with partners, mortgages and steady jobs....

Attitudes prevalent among the middle-aged include an impatience with fussy food, an appetite for the good life and a positive outlook. Their children, however, are more into spirituality than the Sex Pistols. They worry about healthy food, feel that religion plays a strong part in their lives and are believers in marriage and the family unit....

The study finds that spirituality has enjoyed a renaissance: in 1978 only 26 per cent of young people viewed religion as important to their lives. Among today's parents, it is 36 per cent while their children are holier, at 40 per cent. On moral issues, young people are far less liberal than their forebears. Just 22 per cent agree with legalised prostitution, compared with 60 per cent in 1978. The proportion backing legalised marijuana has fallen from 39 per cent to 27 per cent. Even support for pre-marital sex has taken a knock, from 84 per cent of 20-somethings in 1978 to 69 per cent today.

More here

****************************

ELSEWHERE

Democrat politics in Louisiana: "Sen. Bill Frist rode to the rescue in more ways than one last week, with his call for a comprehensive congressional investigation into the failings of planning and execution of preparing for Hurricane Katrina and the ensuing relief effort. Frist's efforts weren't intended as a slam at President Bush, who has taken a pummeling in the media from Democrats in Congress, their operatives, and cooperative journalists who were willing to set facts aside for the opportunity to create a political fire storm around the Republican president. Instead, Frist's call for an investigation sent many Democrats running for cover.... "In the end, if the Democrats want to place blame, they know the behavior of their party members, for a generation really the only party in power in New Orleans and Louisiana, is damning, and they don't want to draw any more attention to the issue than the media wants to." Senate Appropriations Committee staff late last week were drawing up statistics on just where the hundreds of millions of dollars set aside for New Orleans went over the years.... If I were a local politician or a state or local bureaucrat down there, I'd be nervous about now."

See here for how the Levee Board in New Orleans mis-spent its budget

See here for how the Levee Board was under investigation for corruption prior to Katrina

Local corruption: There is an interesting parallel to the recent failure of State and local authorities in New Orleans in the matter of Multi-Drug-Resistant-TB (MDRTB). Note this excerpt: "In the United States, a very effective national TB control program was decimated when the government, in their "wisdom" chose to give discretion on the spending of public health funds to state governments. In 1972 when this change was first contemplated, informed observers testified to the US Congress, predicting that giving discretion on TB public health funding to state governments would lead to a public health disaster: a resounding resurgence of TB! These experts were roundly ignored, yet this "block grant" exercise of the 1970s directly led to the 20% resurgence of TB in the United States (35% in children) in the 1980s and 1990s, which required a huge outlay of new funds to return to control. Not having learned their lesson, high officials in the US government continue to try to reintroduce this concept". [As a good Federalist, my view is that both State and Federal governments have their place and I think that in cases where the need is uncontroversial and strong leadership is required (which it certainly is in the difficult case of MDRTB) the Feds are usually the right place to look. After New Orleans, I suspect that the Feds will now be given full authority to override immediately the local and State bodies in managing the initial reaction to major disasters]

Canadians back down on Sharia law: "Ontario has reversed course on plans to let Islamic sharia law to be used in settling family disputes and will ban religious-based arbitration altogether, to the dismay of other groups that had used the system. A spokesman for Premier Dalton McGuinty said that the Canadian province will dispense with all types of religious-based dispute settlements on issues such as child custody and divorce, allowed under its 1991 Arbitration Act. The decision comes after months of controversy and debate over the use of sharia - a code of law based primarily on the Koran as well as the teachings of the Prophet Mohammad - to settle family issues. Critics had said it strips women and children of their rights and had rallied to have Ontario prohibit it. There were protests in Toronto and other Canadian cities, as well as in Europe."

Gaza: "But as inhabitants celebrated the end of Israeli military occupation, there were fears that Palestinians have traded one form of control for another. While there may no longer be any visible signs of an Israeli presence, Gaza's economy, security, transport and basic utilities like water and electricity, will remain in Israeli hands for the foreseeable future, leaving some Palestinians to complain that they are now inmates of a "giant prison"... Nabil Shaath, the Palestinian Information Minister, said that the priority must be to give Palestinians freedom of movement, to allow the Gazan economy to export goods and attract investment. "Without freedom of passage and mobility, Gaza will be doomed to be a prison - rather than the beginning of a peace process," he said. Israelis insist that only when the Palestinians have demonstrated the ability to control militant groups and maintain security will Israel consider making further concessions."

The latest post on Strange Justice concerns my home State of Queensland and the case deserves a lot more publicity than it is getting, in my opinion.

There is a new conservative blog that you might like to have a look at here. He calls himself "The Right-Wing Warmonger Who Is Always Right". He's got a sense of humour anyway.

There have been recent objections from British Muslims about official Holocaust remembrance. I have a couple of recent posts on POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH that comment on the matter.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

**************************

Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.

********************************

Cricket: My hearty congratulations to the England team for just barely managing to pull it off this time. Doggedness is rewarded in the end. Cricket is of course the world’s most widely-played bat-and-ball game, thanks to its avid following in the Indian subcontinent. How odd that the British invented most of the popular sports —tennis, cricket, golf, soccer etc and yet are usually so bad at sporting competitions.

BNP Update: It is a great relief to me personally that the threat of a Fascist Britain has receded. The British police realized that they didn't have a legal leg to stand on in seizing the BNP paper and released it eventually. "At about 1800hrs today (12th) two BNP officials received telephone calls from Kent Police who admitted they made a mistake and that the print run of 60,000 copies of our monthly newspaper can be uplifted at the earliest opportunity from the HM Customs compound at Dover docks.... The news came as a response to a legal letter delivered by a barrister, acting on behalf of the BNP that we would press for “serious and maximum damages” against Kent Constabulary for the loss of earnings from our newspaper and a further expectation of taking the Force to the European Court of Human Rights. [An online copy of page 1 of the seized publication can be accessed here (PDF).]

MORTALITY COMPARISONS REVEAL USA RESPONSE TO KATRINA WAS EXCELLENT

I have lifted this optimistic post from Reliapundit. See the original for links

Nagin - the inept and negligent and hysterical mayor of New Orleans - who bears major responsibility for the horrific conditions in the Superdome and the Convention Center (because he FAILED to evaucate his poor citizens from the city, and because he FAILED to provide security or sustenance to those who followed his advice and sought shelter where and when he advised them to, and then failed to get his governor to allow the Red Cross or the Salvation Army in to his city to replenish sustenance for his citizens) - predicted a death toll in New Orleans alone of perhaps as many as 10,000 people.

This prediction horrified the public and made people want to BLAME SOMEONE!

The current death toll from Katrina in New Orleans - and the rest of Louisiana and Mississipp and Alabama - is less than 400. This number is SURE to go up, but it is VERY UNLIKELY that it will reach 10,000 or anything near that dire and irresponsible prediction.

BY COMPARISON: the 2003 heat-wave in Europe killed 35-40,000, (14,847 in France alone; 20,000 in Italy).

And Hurricane Katrina was a HUGE natural cataclysm which wreaked huge damage to 90,000 square miles! In fact, in terms of the force and breadth of the physical destruction it wreaked, Katrina was the worst natural disater to hit a developed nation in all of human history.

I think this proves that the HYSTERICAL charges by the Left and the MSM they dominate (that the Bush Administration dropped the ball) are entirely unfounded.

In fact, if you subtract the horrifying images of the Superdome and Convention Center from the "newsreels" (and your memories) there was next-to-nothing wrong with the federal response (or the federal, state and local responses in Mississippi and Alabama, whose coasts were savaged more completely by Katrina than was the city of New Orleans). And when considers the FACT that the Superdome and Convention Center debacles were strictly the result of local and state government incompetence, it means that there was absolutely NOTHING wrong with the federal response. PERIOD. Eventually, this truth will come out. The truth always does.

In addition, when New Orleans is restored, renovated and repopulated in RECORD TIME, this will seen as a huge triumph of the federal government's wonderful efforts (huge and comprehensive efforts which went nearly completely UNREPORTED by the MSM but which are compiled HERE by RELIEFWEB, an outfit run by the UN....

*********************************

ELSEWHERE

Stupidity about fuel prices: "What is it about the price of gasoline that turns seemingly normal politicians into barking economic demagogues? When Jill puts her house on the market for $450,000 -- triple what she paid 10 years ago, but the going price in her neighborhood today -- the politicos understand that the 200 percent markup is the result of supply and demand in the real estate market. Senators don't call press conferences to denounce Jill as a profiteer. Attorneys general don't threaten to prosecute her. Governors don't compare her to looters. But when Joe's service station ups the price of gasoline by $1 a gallon, the political world freaks out. Never mind that a Category 4 hurricane has devastated oil production throughout the Gulf Coast, depleting the nation's already strained refining capacity by 2 million barrels a day and driving up the price Joe's wholesaler is now charging *him*. For some reason, politicians forget everything they learned in Economics 101, and rush to savage Joe for "gouging" his customers".

Victory for privatization in Japan: "Japan's Prime Minister, Junichiro Koizumi, won an overwhelming election victory yesterday, crushing the Opposition, destroying rebels from within his own party and securing his reputation as the country's boldest and most brilliant post-war leader. As counting continued early this morning, Mr Koizumi's Liberal Democratic Party took 296 of the 480 seats in the lower house of the Japanese Diet, one of the country's biggest-ever election victories. New Komeito, the LDP's coalition partner, was projected to win at least 30 more seats. It was the first time that the LDP has won an outright majority since 1990 and represents a vindication of Mr Koizumi's risky decision to call a snap election after the defeat of his proposals to privatise Japan's postal services". [This puts the rest of the world to shame. Who else is trying to privatize their postal service?]

Tough new U.S. nuclear policy (about time!) "A president of the United States would be able to launch pre-emptive nuclear strikes against enemies planning to use weapons of mass destruction under a revised "nuclear operations" doctrine to be signed in the next few weeks. In a significant shift after half a century of nuclear deterrence based on the threat of massive retaliation, the revised doctrine would allow pre-emptive strikes against states or terror groups, and to destroy chemical and biological weapons stockpiles.... It came to light as Iran insisted, in defiance of the European Union, that it would continue processing uranium at its Isfahan reactor. The US has called on the UN Security Council to impose sanctions on Tehran for failing to shelve its nuclear programme. Referring repeatedly to "non-state actors" - parlance for terrorists - the doctrine is designed to arm the White House and US forces with a new range of threats and sanctions to counter the situation of threatened nuclear attack by al-Qaeda or one of its affiliates. The document's key phrase appears in a list of pre-emptive nuclear strike scenarios, the first of which is against an enemy using "or intending to use WMD".

Just one step away from book-burning? "The entire print run of this month's edition of the British National Party newspaper was seized by police yesterday. Sixty thousand copies of The Voice of Freedom were confiscated at Dover. Police said: "They have been seized so we can see if any criminal offences have been committed." The papers were being carried by lorry from a printworks in Slovakia. The BNP later decided to publish the edition on its website. The 16-page issue leads with the headline "What about showing some solidarity with the British people?", under the words "Britain gets bombed but it's Islam that gets the sympathy" Spokesman Dr Phill Edwards said it was "a serious attack by the state on freedom of speech"." [The BNP website also seemed to have been taken down when last I checked]

A heartfelt email from one of my Jewish correspondents: "The heart breaks at the destruction of Synagogues in Gaza. Paula Stern has written about it. Read her chilling account, her heartfelt grief at The face of Islamic intolerance, and pass it on. I've run out of words".

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

**************************

Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.

********************************

WHAT THE PEOPLE THINK ABOUT CRIME

I once did some academic studies of this subject (See here and here and here and here) and not much seems to have changed. There are still too many court sentences that treat criminals as needing sympathy rather than deterrence. The following reports the results of a survey carried out for a Brisbane Sunday newspaper but there is no doubt that similar results would be obtained in many other parts of the Western world

Queenslanders have savaged the state's judiciary for going easy on criminals. Just 3 per cent think Queensland courts impose sentences that reflect the crime, while 92 per cent think violent criminals should be dealt with more harshly. About 87 per cent support the introduction of a "three strikes and you're out" policy of mandatory jail terms for criminals convicted of the same offence three times. Four-fifths support convicted child sex offenders being jailed for life. Fifty-four percent support re-introducing the death penalty.

"There's a genuine concern that punishments do not fit the crime," said social analyst David Chalk of AustraliaSCAN. "Underpinning this whole thing is a sense that we know we are vulnerable and we rely on the system to protect us." .....

Ninety-two per cent of respondents say homeowners should be allowed to use any force necessary against burglars in their homes. While 91 per cent of people feel safe in their homes, only 12 per cent think the state is safer than it was in 2000, and two-thirds say police are losing the battle against crime.....

More here

***************************

ELSEWHERE

There are transcripts here and here of two good speeches which were delivered on the Israel / Palestine conflict in the Australian Parliament recently. Also, there is a fascinating extract from an article by Caroline Glick. In this longish article she points out that Gaza - which now has no sovereign power laying claim to it apart from the Palestinians, IS actually a sovereign Palestine under conventions of international law.

France's rising political star and probable next President, Nicolas Sarkozy, is a free marketeer, in a French sort of way. He's also surprisingly pro-American and very popular.

Protesters condemn Canada's sharia court plan: "Hundreds of human rights campaigners staged protests yesterday in 11 cities in Europe and North America against Canadian proposals to set up the first court in the Western world to use Islamic law to settle family disputes. The demonstrations registered outrage over the recommendations of a government report which advocates the introduction of voluntary tribunals based on sharia -- the strict Islamic code -- into the legal system of Canada's most populous province."

Not that '70s show : "The story of Hurricane Katrina is first and foremost a tale of Mother Nature's wrath and the resulting human misery: thousands of deaths, destroyed homes and businesses, family break-ups, psychological demoralization and other hardships too painful to recount. But Katrina is also an economic story in terms of its effect on U.S. commerce, trade, energy, shipping and overall growth. Here the doomsayers and pessimists will again be proven wrong. This is not the 1970s. After more than 20 years of deregulation the U.S. economy is flexible and resilient -- even in the face of short-run shocks. ... In the 1970s, government-applied price controls and supply rationing created a dysfunctional economy that looked like a pinball machine on permanent tilt. Today, with few exceptions, price controls have been rejected. Auto and truck drivers would rather pay $4 a gallon for gas they can get, than have government mandate $2 a gallon for gas that's unavailable."

Reliapundit says: "The failure of Governor Blanco to allow the Red Cross or Salvation Army into Nalwins and to resupply the 'dome or the Convention Center - and the failure of the MSM to adequately report that this was the cause of the terrible suffering we all witnessed for 4 days after Katrina hit - is a scandal and it's called BLANCOGATE! The failure of Mayor Nagin to follow his city's Hurricane Evacuation Plan is a scandal and it's called NAGINGATE. Together, these scandals - which togther were responsible for the horrific scenes of suffering at the Superdome and the Convention Center - are called KATRINAGATE! Blanco and Nagin should resign IMMEDIATELY."

U.N. says Australia a great place to live (A bit arbitrary but nice anyway) "Petrol prices might be soaring and house prices falling but Australians don't really have much to whinge about. We live in one of the healthiest, richest and most highly educated places on earth, a UN report said this week. Our life expectancy has climbed to 80.3 years, fifth-highest in the world, income per person is the eighth-best in terms of buying power, and we are as well educated as any other nation. When these indicators are put together, the UN's measure of human development ranked Australia third out of 177 countries - only Norway and Iceland surpassed Australia at the vanguard of human progress... The human development index, prepared by the UN Development Program, assumes wellbeing is about more than the rise or fall of national incomes. It tries to create a broader indicator of achievement by combining income with health (measured by life expectancy) and education (measured by literacy and enrolment levels)".

Anglicans rediscover God -- when it suits them: "In an all-too-predictable twist Middle East studies, and scholars such as American Lawrence Davidson, have been enlisted to justify an ancient manifestation of anti-Semitism revived: replacement theology, sometimes called supersessionism. This doctrine, as proposed by St. Augustine, asserts that the Jews fell from divine favor when they refused to accept Christ, and that God chose the Church to replace them. In the updated version of replacement theology, Palestinians are the new chosen people. The modern Jewish state is considered an occupying power because the Jews forfeited their right to the promised land. But modern adherents to replacement theology would find their hatred a hard sell if they relied solely on New Testament imagery; instead, they describe Israel as a Nazi state or compare it to apartheid South Africa, making sure that Israel's status as the new Rome is clear. And of course, the Palestinians are cast as the new Jews. The Anglican Consultative Council recently affirmed its support for replacement theology when it accepted the September 22 divestment recommendation by the Anglican Peace and Justice Network (APJN)."

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

**************************

Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.

********************************

Let's start out today remembering the many good innocent people just going about their daily tasks who died on this day in 2001 as victims of the 21st century's version of Fascism

**********************

WHY DO MANY SMALL STATES DO SO WELL?

Because they respect the individual more and are hence more nimble in moving towards market-based policies and giving people choices

"Iceland: Why is this cold, rainy land with its stark volcanic landscape, without much in the way of natural resources, one of the wealthiest places on Earth? Small states, in the past, were most often poorer on a per capital income basis than large states, but in the last half-century many have become much richer then their large neighbors. Among the wealthiest places on the planet, in addition to the United States, we now find Luxembourg, Hong Kong, Denmark and Ireland, none with many natural resources.....

After obtaining freedom 15 years ago, Estonia rapidly moved to establish a rule of law, protect private property and create a sound currency. Estonia removed most price controls, discarded useless regulations, privatized most state-owned enterprises and established a free-trade regime. The result has been the largest percentage increase in real per capita incomes of any of the former communist states.....

Former Iceland Prime Minister and current Foreign Minister David Oddsson detailed how he took a typical, economically stagnate, Scandinavian socialist welfare state and turned it into an economic tiger by privatizing state industries, freeing labor markets, and reforming the financial structure. Iceland has been engaged in a massive tax reduction (for instance, the corporate tax rate has been cut from 50 to only 18 percent, and the inheritance tax to a maximum 5 percent). Yet government revenues have steadily increased because of the resulting economic dynamism, and the national debt has fallen from 50 percent of gross domestic product to only 15 percent."

More here

**************************

ELSEWHERE

The people speak: "More than three-quarters of California voters remain concerned about illegal immigration, and two out of five support the "citizen patrols" on the state's borders, according to a statewide Field Poll released Wednesday. The survey, conducted of 426 registered voters from Aug. 19-29, also showed sharp divisions over whether Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger should call a border emergency, with 44 percent favoring the move and 40 percent opposing it.... About half of the voters (49 percent) said they were "extremely concerned" about illegal immigration, with another third (32 percent) saying they were somewhat concerned. Nearly two-thirds said they perceived that the flow of illegal immigrants across the border is increasing. Poll Director Mark DiCamillo said there's no telling whether concern over the issue could rise to a major campaign issue in the governor's race next year. In 1994, he noted, exit polls showed it was the top reason voters gave for backing then-Gov. Pete Wilson for re-election. Proposition 187, which sought to end most state services for illegal immigrants, was a big part of Wilson's campaign...."

Australian Prime Minister gets tough: "Islamic leaders have reacted angrily to the Prime Minister's plans for new terror laws, claiming he has undone any good achieved by his recent Muslim summit. Many who attended last month's summit criticised the proposals to create a new incitement offence and extend the existing list of terrorist groups to include those who advocate terrorism.... Mr Howard said the incitement offence would "address problems with those who communicate inciting messages directed against other groups within our community, including against Australia's forces overseas and in support of Australia's enemies".... Asked about deporting firebrand clerics, the Prime Minister yesterday said: "I take the view that people who are dual citizens do run the risk of being deprived of their Australian citizenship if they break a relevant Australian law."

Government was the problem yet again: "Hurricane Katrina is yet the latest example of `government' - at all levels - failing the people `it' is supposed to serve. This is not a matter of Republican or Democrat; it is a matter of the expected arrogance, aloofness, diffidence, innate corruption, coldness - and sheer incompetence - that always permeates all levels of government. Katrina is just the latest example. Pick your poison: from bungled investigations to billion-dollar rip-offs, `government' in our country is more often than not more a problem than a problem-solver. Liberals - and this is why they have lost power nationally - still cling to the notion of using the government to `do good.' But, even when well-intentioned, government efforts to solve a problem rarely work; and often they actually make that problem worse.

Krauthammer on Katrina: "In less enlightened times, there was no catastrophe independent of human agency. When the plague or some other natural disaster struck, witches were burned, Jews were massacred and all felt better (except the witches and Jews). A few centuries later, our progressive thinkers have progressed not an inch. No fall of a sparrow on this planet is not attributed to sin and human perfidy. The three current favorites are: (1) global warming, (2) the war in Iraq and (3) tax cuts. Katrina hits and the unholy trinity is immediately invoked to damn sinner-in-chief George W. Bush. This kind of stupidity merits no attention whatsoever, but I'll give it a paragraph...."

Hooray! Collapse of a New Orleans legal system that was good for nothing anyway: "More than a third of the state's lawyers have lost their offices, some for good. Most computer records will be saved. Many other records will be lost forever. Some local courthouses have been flooded, imperiling a vast universe of files, records and documents. Court proceedings from divorces to murder trials, to corporate litigation, to custody cases will be indefinitely halted and when proceedings resume lawyers will face prodigious -- if not insurmountable -- obstacles in finding witnesses and principals and in recovering evidence. It is an implosion of the legal network not seen since disasters like the Chicago fire of 1871 or the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, events in times so much simpler as to be useless in making much sense of this one."

Arab Christians persecuted: "Christians in the Holy Land have handed a dossier detailing incidents of violence and intimidation by Muslim extremists to Church leaders in Jerusalem, one of whom said it was time for Christians to "raise our voices" against the sectarian violence. The dossier includes 93 alleged incidents of abuse by an "Islamic fundamentalist mafia" against Palestinian Christians, who accused the Palestinian Authority of doing nothing to stop the attacks."

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

**************************

Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.

********************************

ONE REASON WHY GERMANY HAS 12% UNEMPLOYMENT

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and his Social Democrats have pledged action. So has Angela Merkel, whose conservative parties lead the polls for the Sept. 18 elections. Her would-be government partners, the Free Democrats led by Guido Westerwelle, have been most vocal in promising the same. What Germans of all political stripes seem to want is action to reduce the battery of 90,000 laws and regulations and curb the powers of the 4 million bureaucrats that economists say stifle initiative and motivation.

But tell that to the managers of small businesses who have heard such promises before. Indeed, just mention the word "bureaucracy" to Patricia Ferer and her eyes roll, the hands go up and the frowns set in..... Ulrike Hoerchens, an expert on regulations at Germany's Federation of Retailers, which represents 100,000 retailers, hears these complaints all the time. "Red tape strangles many businesses," she said.

Udo Robakowski, 34, was one of those who nearly suffered. In a burst of optimism, he moved to Berlin from Cologne in 1998 and plunged into setting up a top quality shoe shop in Berlin's elegant Charlottenburg district. But the enthusiastic Rhinelander has become increasingly frustrated with the bureaucracy, the complicated tax structure and the endless regulations. "I had 10 years' experience in the shoe business before I set up my shop here," Robakowski said. But one day, he recalled, the Obermeister, the superviser of the Meisters, the title given to those who have passed the examinations for making and mending shoes, turned up. "He wanted to see my Meister's certificate. I never did the exams. He then said I did not have permission to carry out all the shoe repairs. "He then threatened to fine me 25,000 deutsche marks," now about 12,500. "It was so stupid. All he had to do was to look at the quality of my work."

Robakowski, who employs two people, said that he could easily employ more but that it would cost too much. Hoerchens explained: "Once a retailer employs six people, the employer has to register his staff. You cannot imagine the bureaucracy. You have to fill in 18 different forms and many from different departments. "This costs time. It costs money and you really need help to do this. Each employee costs the employer an additional 4,500."

Asked whether the situation would change after Sept. 18, despite the loud promises, neither Hoerchens, Ferer nor Robakowski was willing to place bets.

More here

***********************************

ELSEWHERE

One for the "Unbelievable" files: "Before Hurricane Katrina breached a levee on the New Orleans Industrial Canal, the Army Corps of Engineers had already launched a $748 million construction project at that very location. But the project had nothing to do with flood control. The Corps was building a huge new lock for the canal, an effort to accommodate steadily increasing barge traffic. Except that barge traffic on the canal has been steadily decreasing."

California tries to mandate higher unemployment again: "For the second time in two years, the Legislature is sending Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger a bill raising the state's minimum wage. And for the second time, the governor is expected to veto it, setting the stage for a possible ballot-initiative fight on the issue next year and possibly carrying repercussions for the governor's agenda in the Nov. 8 special election, Democrats say".

A people disaster: "Buildings can be rebuilt, but "The Big Easy" has died and cannot be resuscitated. People will remember the Superdome as a concentration camp, a huge "rape room." They will forever wonder if the cop they see stayed on duty or became a predator, or whether he did anything but watch. Many will feel some small sense of shame each time they turn on that TV they stole (or bought from a thief). The rest of the country and the rest of the world now has put their whole city and anyone admitting to have lived there into the same category as British soccer fans, politicians and people who cheat on their marriages -- okay most of the time, but never quite trustworthy. It is already happening. Cities where the refugess are being taken are putting extra police on duty around them to guard against a spread of the problems which have been so widely reported. And this is the tragedy following the tragedy, because the vast majority of these folks are good people, who only need a safe place to stay while they come to terms with the world as it really is. The looters generally won't leave their loot, for fear that someone will do to them what they did to someone else. I predict that, as a direct result of the mess in Louisiana, there will be a resurgence in militia and local posse membership. Now that we have seen Americans turning into animals, a lot of Joe Sixpacks are going to look around and realize that the only way to protect their families and their homes will be by turning into Joe SixGUN. Expect a lot of the towns near New Orleans to openly support these groups as they form or come back to life.

Britain: Abortion laws too lax: "Powerful public support for an overhaul of the 40-year-old abortion laws has emerged from a Daily Telegraph survey of the nation's attitudes to the key ethical and moral issues of the day. Only 27 per cent of those questioned believed that the current 24-week legal limit for termination should be retained. Fifty eight per cent said abortions should not be carried out after the 20th week of pregnancy, with women more likely than men to favour tighter controls"

Phenomenal economic turnaround under GWB: "We are currently within a hair's breadth of achieving 5 million new jobs since the president's tax cuts were fully implemented in May 2003. If we hit it this month, that would mean 5 million jobs in 28 months. When the new jobs numbers are reported four weeks from now, maybe it will be time for the administration to crow a little bit. Perhaps the reason President Bush has had so much trouble selling his admirable Social Security reform plan is that so many people think his economic performance is weak. But perhaps so many people think this way because the press systemically tells them so"

Oil for Food scam: $12 Bn illegally misallocated; Kofi Annan's son was involved in a $64Bn contract but Dad apologises and keeps his job. The UN secretary general's behaviour, and the "free ride" liberals have given him compares poorly to the standards of ethics demanded in your average democracy. Peter Reith lost his job as an Australian federal minister because his son used $50,000 worth of calls on a government phonecard. UN practice is at the banana republic level.

Carnival of the Vanities is up again -- but a bit over-clever and thus hard to follow.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

**************************

Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.

********************************

THINK ISRAEL

Below are just some of the recent articles up on Think Israel

DANGERS OF CAPITULATION
I WAS THERE: IMPRESSIONS OF KFAR MAIMON
A DAUGHTER OF ISRAEL
A SALUTE TO THE TRUE LEADERS
THE UNBEARABLE EASE OF DESTRUCTION
GAZA VERSUS BERLIN
GOING BEYOND SCAPEGOATING
ISRAEL AND THE HOLOCAUST
GAZA'S HISTORY AND THE JEWS
ISRAEL: THE JEWISH AFFIRMATIVE ACTION STATE
OCCUPATION AND SETTLEMENT: THE MYTH AND REALITY
THE OSLO SYNDROME
WHY SOME JEWS STILL BELIEVE IN ARAB MYTHS
SCORCHED-EARTH KULTURKAMPF

************************************

ELSEWHERE

The end of a golden age for Jews: "Pipes contends that the mega-events of the last few years may have ushered in a less favorable era for American Jewry: "The Jews' Golden Age in America began in 1950, when social restrictions were eased in universities, banks, businesses, clubs, etc. This period may now be ending with the growth of the American Muslim population. Within that community, there are significant elements that see American Jewry as their prime enemy; they perceive Jews as the cause of Islamic failure.... "Militant Islam cannot be compared to any segment of Christianity, Judaism, or Hinduism. These religions do not embody groups with totalitarian utopian ideologies that seek world hegemony. In fact, militant Islam resembles fascism and communism more than any religious movement. "All we can do presently is prepare ourselves for worse to come".

Birth order does affect some things: "Younger children do less well in terms of overall educational attainment than their older brothers and sisters, new research reveals today. A first child is typically at least a year ahead of a third-born brother or sister at the equivalent stage at school, it shows. At the same time, it suggests that parents with limited financial resources may invest more time and money in the education of their eldest child. The findings are claimed to represent the first comprehensive analysis of the impact of family composition on educational achievement. They will influence the long-running debate about why first-born children are typically more successful than their younger siblings. The research was carried out by Kjell Salvanes of the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration, and will be presented today to the 2005 World Congress of the Econometric Society, hosted by University College London. Working with colleagues at UCLA in the US, he analysed the entire population of Norway aged 16-74, between the years 1986 and 2000".

If you have not seen it already, Chrenkoff has a MOST interesting comparison between the situation in Louisiana and Mississippi. Miss. was worst hit but fared much better because of superior leadership. I don't need to tell you which political parties the respective leaders belong to.

Great news for Australian conservatives: "More young people voted Liberal than Labor at the last federal election, dispelling the popular belief that they are more likely to vote for left of the centre parties, a study has found. Political scientist Clive Bean said research into the political attitudes and voting behaviour of people aged 30 and under had found "substantially" more had cast their vote conservatively in last year's federal election. Professor Bean, from the Queensland University of Technology, said a poorly performing federal Labor Party under former Leader Mark Latham could be partly to blame. "In Australia, as in other countries such as Britain and the United States, the conventional wisdom has been that young people are more likely to vote for left of centre parties," Prof Bean said. "But an analysis of voter behaviour at last year's Australian federal election has shown this is not always the case. "Young men were far more likely to cast a conservative vote, and with young women it was a fairly even split between the two major parties."

Australian economy holding up well: "Australia's economic growth surprised observers with its strength yesterday but the outlook was met with caution for the year ahead. In the past three months, the country's Gross Domestic Product surged 1.3 per cent to add a further $2.7 billion to the national accounts. The result was well above most economists' expectations, which ranged from 0.7 to a steady 1 per cent, and took the yearly rate to 2.6 per cent. The number though is still well below the trend average of 3.75 per cent and lower than the past few years' rate of 4 per cent.... The impact of petrol prices and dampened consumer sentiment and spending were seemingly overshadowed by booming business investment, and the upward resources spike.... The Australian result reverses an emerging worldwide trend of slower economic growth."

The astrobiologists will love this report on Comet Tempel 1: "Dust emanates from the comet in frequent outbursts, likely a result of being warmed by the Sun. The dust kicked up by the impact was not the same as surface dust, but it spread through space and dissipated in a manner similar to the natural outbursts. While more analysis is needed, the interior is clearly different from the surface. Inside, the comet harbors a relatively high concentration of organic compounds, the stuff from which life is made. The organics were more prevalent during and after the outburst than the water and carbon dioxide that routinely escape from the nucleus, or hard core of the comet. The results were presented to reporters in a teleconference today and will be published later this week by the journal Science.

Strange Justice has a post up about a blogger in big legal trouble over exposing injustice

I often have up here postings about how something "is all in the genes". I have such a posting up today on POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

**************************

Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.

********************************

REBUILDING AFTER KATRINA

Amid the constant negative whining and criticism coming from the Left via the media, we hear almost nothing about what to do next in hurricane-hit areas -- except of course calls for even more bureaucracy. So Jack Kemp's thinking is refreshingly constructive. Excerpt below:

"There are a few simple things Congress could do immediately to facilitate the rebuilding effort in the private sector. For example, the entire storm region could be turned into an enterprise zone, suspending burdensome federal regulations, such as the Davis-Bacon Act and the Jones Act. Also, onerous regulations imposed by the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Communication Commission and the Environmental Protection Agency could be suspended.

Certain taxes, such as gasoline taxes, telephone taxes and others could be suspended for the duration of the emergency. Individuals living in the storm-affected region and companies doing business there could be relieved of the outrageously complex and economically destructive federal tax code.

For example, the individual income tax and the death tax could be suspended for people living in the storm region. Rules relating to retirement accounts could be relaxed to give people access to capital.

Small businesses could be relieved of payroll taxes, and companies in the region subject to the corporate income tax could be relieved of the most economically damaging features of the current corporate tax code. They could, for example be allowed to write off all investment spending (e.g. spending on plant, equipment, structures, machinery and technology) immediately rather than having to depreciate it over a period of years. In fact, now would be an ideal time to allow companies to choose to be taxed under a simplified reformed system of taxation, the blueprints of which are well developed and could be enacted into law in short time. To further increase access to capital, the capital gains tax could be eliminated.

Displaced individuals could be given education vouchers they could use to enroll their children in schools anywhere in the country. Similarly, vouchers might be used to transform low-income and public housing to give people property rights and pride of ownership in their dwellings. Housing vouchers, for example, could be used not only for homeowners whose houses were destroyed but also for renters and Section 8 housing residents to make a down payment on a house anywhere in the country.... "

"Marginal Revolution" also has two posts on privatising flood prevention and FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency). See here and here

*********************************

ELSEWHERE

An excellent point: "New Orleans's Mayor Ray Nagin is up for re-election in February 2006, Gov. Kathleen Blanco and Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu in November 2007, and Sen. Mary Landrieu in November 2008. All four are Democrats. When they point the finger at the federal government for whatever went wrong in the Katrina response, remember that they are fighting for their political lives."

If you have not seen it already, read Brad De Long's posting about the "plan" for dealing with a hurricane disaster that the State and local Democrat representatives for New Orleans had ready. The "plan" consisted of telling the poor: "You're on your own". But only the Mormons were in fact ready to look after their own. So that makes it all George Bush's fault, of course. There is more on that here.

A realistic black guy's take on what happened in New Orleans. Excerpt: "The pictures I have been seeing are of people - black people - stealing shoes, diapers, and television sets. Not food and definitely not water. Not unless the armfuls of clothing, shoes, and appliances I see people wading through the streets with count as food and water. Now, if all the looters were looting out of desperation, how desperate were the guy and girls I saw toting several boxes of size 13 Nikes? How desperate was the fellow with the stack of diapers? What, is it that he has several babies at home suffering from loose bowels? .... Desperation? Yeah, right. I am beginning to believe that black people, no matter where in the world they are, are cursed with a genetic predisposition to steal, murder, and create mayhem. The entire firearm department at a Wal-Mart department store, for example, was cleaned out and the looters used the stolen weapons to rob people. How low is that? Everybody is suffering and the black people would seek to rob people who are suffering just like themselves."

Some wise words from Thomas Sowell: "During good times or bad, the police cannot police everybody. They can at best control a small segment of society. The vast majority of people have to control themselves. That is where the great moral traditions of a society come in -- those moral traditions that it is so hip to sneer at, so cute to violate, and that our very schools undermine among the young, telling them that they have to evolve their own standards, rather than following what old fuddy duddies like their parents tell them. Now we see what those do-it-yourself standards amount to in the ugliness and anarchy of New Orleans. In a world where people flaunt their "independence," their "right" to disregard moral authority, and sometimes legal authority as well, the tragedy of New Orleans reminds us how utterly dependent each one of us is for our very lives on millions of other people we don't even see. Thousands of people in New Orleans will be saved because millions of other people they don't even know are moved by moral obligations to come to their rescue from all corners of this country. The things our clever sophisticates sneer at are ultimately all that stand between any of us and utter devastation.

Rebecca Hagelin has similar observations. Excerpt: "Why do we as a nation produce and embrace a pop culture that glorifies rap and hip-hop music, that teaches men to prey upon women and engage in senseless violence, and that is now, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation's recent survey on media and youth, the number-one music choice of teenagers from all races and every socio-economic status? .... Why is it not only common knowledge but also accepted practice that organized crime and gangs hold much of the power and control much of the commerce in New Orleans? Will New Orleans return to business as usual? Or will you uplift the entire community by throwing out the thugs and their vile wares for which New Orleans is infamous? When you think about it, the values of the thugs involved in the post-Katrina crime wave really weren't all that different from those that have flooded sections of New Orleans with societal sewage for years."

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

**************************

Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.

********************************

WOMEN'S RIGHTS CAN BE WRONG

A recent very sophisticated econometric study by Silvia Pezzini of a huge body of data from several European countries looked at the effect of women's rights legislation on women's happiness. The study found, predictably, that getting access to the contraceptive pill was a great load off women's minds. What was much more interesting however, was the effect of laws that made divorce easier and laws that give working women maternity benefits. It was found that easier divorce REDUCES women's happiness overall and that job protection laws for mothers only worked for women who continued to be employed. Particularly in countries like Sweden, the main effect of maternity benefits for working women was that private employers stopped hiring women. Following is an excerpt from the conclusions of the paper:

"The main finding is that following the introduction of birth control rights, women who could take advantage from the policy (that is, they were of childbearing age at the time the policy was introduced) consistently registered an increase in welfare. The magnitude of the welfare gain is equivalent to the return from achieving higher rather than middle education and a third of the size of the gain from being married or cohabiting. It is approximately one tenth of the effect of going up one level on a 12-category scale of income....

At the same time, other women's rights have been less beneficial. The analysis shows that mutual consent divorce laws have decreased women's welfare, while granting high maternity protection in the workplace did not have significant effects, possibly because of negative feedback effects on the `employability' of women.

Source (PDF)

No-one really knows why easier divorce has made the majority of women unhappier but easier divorce certainly reduces the security of marriage and women do tend to value security in relationships highly.

USA Better for Working Women than Sweden

Just as one follow-up to the above, people might be interested in some findings in a 2004 book Key Issues in Women's Work by Catherine Hakim. Swedish women in the workplace who become pregnant must under Swedish law be given all sorts of benefits that few private businesses can afford -- so 75% of Swedish women work for the government. Nobody else wants them. And here's one result of that -- a result that should rile feminists no end:

"What is more, the glass ceiling problem is larger in family-friendly Sweden than it is in the hire-and-fire-at-will US, and it has also grown as family-friendly policies have expanded. In Sweden 1.5% of senior management are women, compared with 11% in the US."

Source

Conservatives keep telling Leftists that things are not as simple as you think and that coercion doesn't work very well -- and Leftists continue not to listen to that. But conservatives generally have the last laugh -- because human beings and human society ARE complex.

I say more about male/female matters in today's POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH.

**************************************

ELSEWHERE

Genetics will out: "A New Zealander who inherited $NZ1 million ($927,000) from foster parents who saved him from a childhood in institutions has been jailed indefinitely after 221 convictions in a 30-year life of crime, a newspaper reported today. A judge told Christian Harry Brusey, 46, he was a professional criminal who posed a risk to the safety of community despite his extraordinary upbringing by caring and affluent parents, The Dominion Post reported. The Wellington High Court was told Brusey was saved from life in an institution at the age of four by a wealthy couple and given the best education money could buy. But he turned to a life of crime with convictions for vicious sex attacks, theft, fraud and burglary with violence. Inheriting $NZ1 million when his foster parents died did not change him. "Maybe he was just born bad," detective Tim Leitch told the paper after Brusey was sentenced to preventive detention, which means he can be held indefinitely.

This is one poll you won't hear much about: "Most Americans, 55 percent, also say Bush does not deserve a significant level of personal blame for problems in the federal response to the crisis. And while 44 percent do assign him blame, only about half of them, 23 percent overall, blame him "a great deal."" There is a good coverage of the media frenzy on Newsbusters

A good post from Commonsense & Wonder: "How incredibly stupid is this? With housing and construction costs skyrocketing, a situation that Katrina is likely to exacerbate, the U.S. government wants to tariff Canadian lumber because it is too cheap. If the Canadian government wishes to subsidize their lumber industry with Canadian tax dollars so that U.S. citizens can purchase cheaper lumber what sane person in the U.S. would want to stop them?"

Three Cheers for "Price Gougers": "With every disaster or crisis, it seems that the public, press and politicians require a remedial course in Economics 101. In fact, apparently we need an ongoing educational campaign even when there is no catastrophe, as demonstrated by the recent foolish legislation in the state of Hawaii to cap wholesale fuel prices. Note the subhead in the linked story: "Some analysts warn move may spur supply problems." Really? Only "some"?"

Brits love the Gurkhas so this announcement should be popular: "Gurkhas, or Nepalese serving in the British army, are to be put on a par with British-born soldiers when it comes to family accommodation, British Defence Secretary John Reid announced this week. From April 1 next year, Gurkhas will be entitled to family accommodation once they have served for three years, and if they are accompanied by their spouses and children, he said. "The new arrangements put those Gurkhas who are eligible on the same footing as all other service personnel when it comes to the allocation of family accommodation," he said. In a statement, the Ministry of Defence in London said the announcement was proof of the government's commitment to ensuring that terms and conditions for Gurkha service were fair and equitable. Some 3,500 Nepalese serve in the British army, continuing a tradition that dates back two centuries. An estimated 43,000 Gurkhas were killed or wounded in action in the two world wars. Last year the government said it would grant the right to settle in Britain to those with at least four years' service.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

**************************

Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.

********************************

GARBAGE SOCIOLOGY

Australians have repeatedly in recent years elected to power one of the world's most conservative governments -- so what do the sociologists find about Australian attitudes? This:

"Australians are now less conservative in their social and political thinking than they were under Paul Keating. The notion the country has swung to the Right under John Howard is challenged by the first major study of social attitudes since Labor lost power in 1996. Australian Social Attitudes: The First Report finds most people are satisfied with the economic gains made since the Prime Minister's election, and that they enjoy their work, are proud of their families, and feel confident and optimistic about the future. Most would happily give up tax cuts in exchange for more government spending on health or education, and support for immigration has more than doubled since the Keating years. "There has been no big swing to the Right on social issues," says Shaun Wilson, a lecturer in sociology at Macquarie University, who helped write the report.

Sheer Leftist boilerplate in other words. In the unlikely event that the study was done with proper academic care (i.e. with such things as a split-plots design, verified random sampling, balance against acquiescence, control for social desirability etc.), it just shows how slanting the questions can produce any answers you want. Sociologists generally know nothing about psychometrics but they are great at Leftist bias. I am a psychometrician who taught in a Sociology Department for 12 years so I know whereof I speak. If the "research" concerned ever gets published in a refereed journal, I look forward to having fun with it -- as I have done on many previous occasions.

**************************

ELSEWHERE

A good comment from Frum on the New Orleans disaster: "There may well be fault on the part of the federal government and this administration. I'm certainly open to evidence on that point. But to review the wild, contradictory, and utterly opportunistic charges from the administration's critics is to enter a realm of madness. Some patient bloggers are responding to the charges one by one. Here is a post in reply to the charge that the levees were somehow neglected. Here is an accounting for the Louisiana National Guard: 8,000 of whom remain on duty in-state, including the Guard's most pertinent engineer group, numbering four battalions. Here is a crushing reply to those who blame the Bush administration for hurricanes - when hurricane activity has in fact dropped since 1940. Here is one of many stories detailing how the notorious New Orleans police force led the breakdown of civic order".

One of the most objectionable Leftist accusations about NO is fisked here. (Via Les Bates)

Brits trapped in NO: "During seemingly endless days and sleepless nights, the British survivors' fear of the hurricane's destructive force was transformed into terror of the other survivors. Mr Nelson, 21, and Jane Wheeldon, 20, told The Times how they and some 50 other foreigners - many of them British backpackers - were ordered by the US Army to gather together to protect themselves from resentful locals. "The army told us to stick in a group and for the women to sit in the middle with the men around the outside and to be ready to defend ourselves," .... The "internationals", as the army labelled the stranded tourists, were among the few white people in the stadium. Marked out by their skin colour and unfamiliar accents, they were verbally abused, while their luggage made them targets for robbery."

Fabulous news: "The treatment of high blood pressure, a condition affecting 18 million Britons, is being reviewed after research indicated that combining two drugs dramatically reduces the risk of heart attacks and strokes. A combination of new hypertension drugs and a common statin used to lower cholesterol cuts the chances of a heart attack or stroke by almost two thirds, a study of more than 19,000 patients with high blood pressure has revealed."

EU threatens slap on wrist: "The European Union on Thursday urged Iran to return to the negotiating table to discuss its nuclear program and threatened to take Tehran to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions if it did not. At a meeting of EU foreign ministers, Britain, France and Germany briefed the EU nations on the collapse of negotiations with Tehran and said U.N. intervention could well become the only option."

German Socialists prefer Russia to the USA: "At the yesterday's extraordinary meeting of Social Democratic Party (SPD), German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said SPD will go to elections independently and put forward Russia as a key foreign policy partner of Germany. SPD met in Berlin for a day yesterday, August 31, 2005. The highlight was parliamentary elections to be held on September 18, one year ahead of the schedule. Even before the meeting was opened, Schroeder announced SPD will go to elections independently, not in alliance with the Green Party. Contrary to the major rival - Christian Democratic Union, which leader Angela Merkel stands for the Berlin-Washington political cooperation in the election program, Schroeder has put forward Russia as the major partner in foreign policy"

No safety for Arab Christians in Palestinian areas: "Efforts were under way on Sunday to calm the situation in this Christian village east of Ramallah after an attack by hundreds of Muslim men from nearby villages left many houses and vehicles torched".

Not all readers here may be aware that I have been putting up a few postings on POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH about America's North/South war. I jib at calling it a "civil war" because as far as I can see it was just another war of independence -- and as a libertarian, I tend to sympathize with wars of independence. And slavery was already on the way out at the time anyway. All other civilized countries managed to ban it without a war.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

**************************

Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.

********************************