UNUSUAL INSIGHT FOR THE NEW STATESMAN

In writing about the present German election:

"Germans can opt for a combination of nationalism and socialism, as they have done in the past after military defeats or economic depression. This is what Oskar Lafontaine's new Left Party is offering: a "popular front" combining disgruntled Social Democrats in western Germany and former communists in the east.

His alternative narrative tells of how a wealthy, cosmopolitan elite is destroying the "community" (Gemeinschaft) of the German Volk. He denounces "foreign workers", who are allegedly taking jobs from Germans, and he demands that only those who speak German and pay their taxes should be allowed to live in Germany. He even rants about the extinction of the "white peoples" of Europe. Little wonder that polls show the far-right vote, which had been rising in the east, shifting to the Left Party.

Lafontaine will fail, but the re-emergence of his brand of demagoguery tells us that something is stirring deep in die Heimat. Germany is paying the price for Schroder's shameless anti-Americanism, which has reactivated the anti-western forces that wrecked the Weimar Republic, wreaked havoc under the Third Reich, and paralysed the former East Germany"

So they are implicitly recognizing that Hitler's Nazism was akin to Germany's modern-day far-Leftism! Just sometimes reality overcomes the propaganda. The New Statesman is of course a major organ of the British Left. The "far-right vote" (the NPD) that they refer to never was far-right at all, of course. I have shown previously that they too have always been thoroughly socialist.

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ELSEWHERE

How far the BBC has fallen! "British Prime Minister Tony Blair has complained privately to media tycoon Rupert Murdoch that the BBC's coverage of Hurricane Katrina carried an anti-American bias, Murdoch said at a conference here. Murdoch, chairman of the media conglomerate News Corporation, recounted a conversation with the British leader at a panel discussion late Friday hosted by former president Bill Clinton. "Tony Blair -- perhaps I shouldn't repeat this conversation -- told me yesterday that he was in Delhi last week. And he turned on the BBC world service to see what was happening in New Orleans," Murdoch was quoted as saying in a transcript posted on the Clinton Global Initiative website. "And he said it was just full of hate of America and gloating about our troubles.... [Bill Clinton] agreed that the BBC's coverage was lacking. While the BBC's reports on the hurricane were factually accurate, its presentation was "stacked up" to criticize President George W Bush's handling of the disaster"

Same sex marriage versus democracy: "It is amazing how anti-democratic the movement for same sex marriage is. In various states, including Massachusetts, the measure only had a chance of being implemented by the courts, against the will of the legislature. Now, in California, the legislature has finally passed a same sex marriage bill, which the Governor has not yet decided whether to sign. But this apparently democratic decision violates a ballot measure that Californians voted for "overwhelmingly in 2000 that defined marriage as between a man and a woman." Clearly, same sex marriage is a measure that is supported by elites, but not by the common person."

Fat EU farmers impoverish Africa: "In Europe, farm subsidies have reached $51 billion, and although this sector accounts for less than two percent of the work force, it absorbs more than 40 percent of the European Union budget. In the European Union more than three-quarters of CAP support goes to the biggest 10% of subsidy recipients. Unfair trade policies continue to deny millions of people in the world's poorest countries an escape route from poverty, and perpetuates obscene inequalities, says the 2005 Human Development Report.... The Report said that sub-Saharan Africa, despite modest gains in exports, has become increasingly marginalized in the world market. Today, with a population of 689 million people, the region accounts for a smaller share of world exports than Belgium, with just 10 million people. The Report found that if Africa had maintained its share of world exports that it enjoyed in 1980, its exports today would be some US$119 billion higher. The authors conclude that in terms of foreign exchange this amount would equal about five times the aid flow provided by rich countries since 2002...."

And the EU still has the cheek to criticise the USA: "European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso Monday criticized the U.S. development aid strategy ahead of a U.N. summit of world leaders. Speaking at a news conference in Brussels, the former Portuguese premier said: "To use cases of corruption as a pretext for not being more committed to aid is not the right approach." Washington has long resisted calls to increase aid spending, arguing the money is wasted without political reforms in developing countries".

Leftists cook the books on foreign aid : "Two American NGOs, the Centre for Global Development and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, have created an index of "commitment to development" to increase support for aid.... But the index, instead of being an objective statement of the efforts industrial countries make to help developing countries, is a highly subjective compilation of six equally graded components..... This index measures aid as a percentage of GDP, but sleights of hand are used to denigrate major donors, notably Japan, which is the second-highest aid donor in the world. The United States, which has contributed more aid than the next half-dozen donors since the Marshall Plan and which has recently stated it will increase its aid from nearly US$10 billion (A$15 billion) to US$15 billion a year by 2006, comes out as the second-worst performer after Japan in this index.... The US is the largest importer of labour-intensive goods from developing countries and among the highest importer of those goods per capita. This does not do it much good on the index. Australia has no agricultural protection, imports 40 per cent of its textiles, clothing and footwear with 80 per cent coming from developing countries, and that does not do us much good on the index either".

Some people accuse Ronald Reagan of being a big-government conservative. Milton Friedman has a most persuasive reply to that (short PDF).

A reader who is a long-time resident of Connecticut has just sent me a fascinating story of corruption in that State. You can find it here. It's a jolly good short story actually. It would make good set-reading for schoolkids.

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

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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.

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THE GREAT MISANTHROPIST

Karl Marx is the greatest philosopher of all time. Or at least this is what many BBC Radio listeners suggested recently when asked to nominate such a person.... The BBC result, however, underlines a strange blindness about Marx persisting within Western societies....

One response is to claim that Marx's philosophy was distorted by Lenin and Stalin. Marx himself, one often hears, was a humanist who wished to liberate people from their chains. Other apologists insist that one can distinguish between the young Marx and the old Marx: the youthful philosopher being more humanistic than the grayer, more callous political revolutionary.

Even cursory attention to Marx's writings quickly reveals the hollowness of such defenses. A consistent anti-human vision features throughout Marx's thought. For Marx, man is a being whose origins are irrelevant, whose future is extinction, and whose present is beyond his control. Even people living in Marx's Communist society have no possibility of a meaningful existence. Marx once described Communist society as one in which it would be possible "to do one thing today and another tomorrow; to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, breed cattle in the evening and criticize after dinner, just as I please."

This sounds idyllic until one realizes that, from Marxism's perspective, none of these activities can have any value for humans. For true materialists, there can be no qualitative difference between reading and fishing, working or sleeping, living or dying. Everything has the same value and therefore no value. In this world, there is no difference between Mother Teresa's work and that of a concentration camp guard. They share equally in a general irrelevance of everything and everyone.

This tells us that Marxism cannot be interested in justice or liberty. It insists that we are like driftwood, floating hither and thither on the waves of history. In such a world, our lives matter naught. Our deaths are irrelevant. We merely try and salvage whatever animal satisfaction we can from life, before our essential nothingness is finalized in our ultimate annihilation as living beings.....

More here

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SOME RECENT ARTICLES UP ON ICJS

Why corporations fund radical Islam
Myth, Fact, and the al-Dura Affair
Aftermath of Disengagement
Numbers Racket - Book Review
Defamation ruling: Holocaust is undeniable
In a Ruined Country
Gaza still under "Occupation"
New York Times Interviewers Fake Rice Statements
Rubin's humiliating fate no surprise
UN sees one side of Arab-Israeli conflict

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ELSEWHERE

Welfare should be earnt: "Those who receive government help should be held to certain basic requirements. They should have a real job, for example, or be out every day actively looking for one. McDonalds is always hiring – just look at their signs on any street corner. Minimum wage sure beats no wage. After that, those living on the public dole should be held to standards of personal pride and respectability. Their yards shouldn’t be unsightly and all grown up with weeds. Their houses shouldn’t be peeling paint, or their windows unwashed. Assuming they aren’t just wandering around the streets, these people should also have to take a bath every few days, put on clean clothes, and even keep their hair trimmed neatly. After all, cleanliness is next to godliness, as the old folks used to say back before the Federal government took over being our savior.... There are three things that people certainly should not have if they’re on Welfare. If you are down on your luck and trying to save money to better yourself, then you shouldn't be wasting money on frills like cigarettes, or alcohol, or satellite TV. The hard-working people of America, who have to scrimp and save to make ends meet, should have whatever luxuries they can afford. But they shouldn’t have to provide those luxuries to the lazy slackers. Likewise, any type of drug abuse should get you cut off from all government handouts, immediately"

Will science help bypass the abortion debate? "Artificial wombs will be 'reality' within 20 years, according to the London Times. Indeed, 20 years seems a conservative estimate given an earlier report in The Guardian, another UK newspaper, which predicted them for 2008. Discussion of ectogenesis -- growing an embryo outside the mother's womb -- may sound wildly futuristic. But a few years ago, cloning and genetic modification seemed impossible. A few years before that, the idea of a 66-year-old woman giving birth was absurd; it happened last January. And only last week, British scientists received an official go-ahead to create human embryos from two mothers. For better or worse, new reproductive technologies are redefining the ground rules of reproduction. (And, no, the force of law can not hold back scientific 'progress,' as authorities have discovered repeatedly since Galileo's day.)"

If this ripoff of the insurance companies succeeds, insurance costs for everyone will go up nationwide: "Mississippi's attorney general on Thursday sued insurers to force them to pay flood damage from Hurricane Katrina, saying standard insurance polices have led homeowners to believe they are covered for all hurricane damage, whether from wind or flooding. Attorney General Jim Hood asked the Hines County Chancery Court to void provisions in the policies that attempt to exclude from coverage losses or damages directly or indirectly caused by water, whether wind-driven or not. Those losses could reach into the billions of dollars. Only about 3 in 10 houses in disaster-struck portions of Mississippi and Alabama had flood insurance, according to Federal Emergency Management Agency estimates."

Blacks deceived by the Left: "Many white Americans sincerely believe that skin color no longer matters. They have shut their eyes to the facts that: this nation's churches remain heavily segregated, research shows children perform better in school when they are taught by members of their own race, and in the singles ads, many whites still seek white partners. Meanwhile, in the black community -- which I'm a part of -- we find people believing the other extreme: that racism is at the root of nearly every problem. They have shut their eyes to the facts that: minorities are this nation's new and fastest growing group of entrepreneurs, black public officials are found in the highest levels of government, and parental involvement is a key component of academic success. Think of it this way: When race is involved, most of us are wearing cultural shades."

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

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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.

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LEFTISM AS PSYCHOPATHY

I have just put together a new (or newish) article under the title "Leftism as psychopathy". Because the idea is a rather bold one it has to be a longish article to be effective but I reproduce the "Summary and Conclusions" of it below. For details see the full article here or here.

All explanations simply push the need for explanation one step further back. If you show that Y is caused by X then the next question is obviously, "what causes X?". I think that what has been said so far has taken us through three such steps. We initially saw that ideologically-committed Leftists (as distinct from the much larger number of people who vote for Left-leaning political parties at election time) are motivated by a love of change. As the second step we saw that they love change because it gives them opportunities to strut and feed their large but weak egos in various ways -- including giving them opportunites for gaining power.

Now however we have come to the point of suggesting that the emotional shallowness that a large but weak ego implies may in fact be just one symptom of a much broader and more serious emotional and intellectual deficit -- psychopathy. Psychopaths are after all renowned for their emotional shallowness -- to the point where they can at times seem entirely devoid of emotion. Additionally, we have seen that Leftists not only have the moral imbecility of the psychopath but in fact proudly proclaim it -- in their "postmodernist" doctrine (See here) that everything is relative and nothing is better or worthier than anything else (except when it suits Leftists, of course). We have also seen that the other major characteristics of the psychopath -- indifference to brutality and reliance on lies -- are present in spades among Leftists. And most of all, the sense of superiority to others and the masked contempt for others are at once very psychopathic and very Leftist.

In a basic sense, then, it has been proven that Leftists are psychopathic: They have all the symptoms. To show that they and clinical psychopaths have similar brain function would be the next step but the study of psychopathy itself is still only in its infancy so that step would seem a long way off as yet. Psychologists might consider it a useful step to examine whether or not Leftists score high on standard questionnaires that are used to detect psychopathy but I have shown elsewhere the large problems in that.

In summary, then, Leftism at its deepest level would seem to be a form of sub-clinical psychopathy -- not normally severe enough to get the person into much trouble but severe enough to cause lots of trouble for others.

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ELSEWHERE

Tax hike fails by 2-to-1 margin: "A proposed half-cent sales tax increase for schools failed at the polls today in Nashville by a 2-to-1 margin. With 100% of all precincts reporting, there were 15,389 votes in favor of the increase, or about 30% of the votes tallied, and 36,090 against it, which is roughly 70% of the balloting, election officials said around 9:15 p.m. [Tuesday]. That total included early and paper ballots and all of Davidson County?s 172 precincts. The question was whether to raise the local sales tax, which if approved would have brought the combined Metro and state rates to 9.75 cents on the dollar. ... If the referendum had passed, 80% of the revenue generated by the tax would have gone toward schools while 20% was earmarked for a tax relief program for senior citizens."

Tort reform has worked in Mississippi "Prior to the legislation, Mississippi was known as the "jackpot justice capital of America." The American Tort Reform Association had labeled certain jurisdictions "judicial hellholes." A survey of more than 1,200 senior in-house counsels for the U.S. Chamber Commerce ranked Mississippi 50th in virtually every category of judicial system nationwide. Insurance companies were fleeing the state. Others were refusing to write new policies. The medical field was particularly strained: Liability insurance was in many cases unaffordable, and in some cases unavailable. One year later, the story is very different. Mass Mutual Insurance Group, St. Paul Travelers, World Insurance Co. and Equitable Life Insurance Co. are returning to Mississippi. State Farm Insurance eased its growth restrictions for homeowners' insurance and lowered its rates on property insurance. The Medical Assurance Company of Mississippi, which writes 60% of the medical malpractice coverage for doctors in the state, had raised its rates 20% the year prior to the tort reform legislation. After its passage, MACM did not raise its rates at all"

Why do we regulate? "Should government regulate business? I expect most people would answer 'yes' to that question, but if you ask them why, I expect these same people will have a harder time giving an answer that makes sense. Some may say, 'in order to prevent businesses from engaging in fraud or misrepresentation.' But we do not need regulation to do that; there are already many federal, state and local statutes against fraud and misrepresentation, and businesses that behave badly can be dealt with through normal civil and criminal legal means. Others who are a bit more sophisticated might argue that we need to regulate business in order to protect people from 'market failures.' However, the empirical evidence is that there are far fewer 'market failures' than commonly imagined, and many of these so-called market failures are actually a result of misguided government policy or regulation. For a minute, try to imagine a world without government regulation, but where all of the standard laws against theft, fraud, misrepresentation and bodily injury still exist."

See here for a good debunking of the common Leftist charge that Israel is a racist state.

Unlike PC non-Muslims, there is the odd Muslim willing to confront the Islamic nature of Islamist terrorism. See here

See here for a discussion of Tony Blair's U-Turn on multiculturalism after the bombing of London's "Tube".

See here for the Leftist view of an appropriate 9/11 monument.

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

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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.

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HINTS ON REBUILDING NEW ORLEANS

A great article by Pete Wilson, former governor of California, telling how they got the vital Los Angeles I-10 freeway back into action so quickly after the 1994 quake. Excerpts:

I was advised that it would require some two years and two months to repair the bridges and restore the I-10 to use.... Instead, we completed the repairs and reopened the freeway to its normal heavy traffic in just 66 days. How? We did two things. First, I quickly exercised the extraordinary emergency powers conferred upon the governor of California by the state Government Code. I suspended the operation of statutes and regulations that would have required the protracted public hearings called for before environmental impact reports could be filed and acted upon, and I suspended other normally demanded procedural hurdles.

Second, we took a page from the book of private-sector incentives for accelerating performance. We told contractors bidding to repair the bridges that they must submit bids that specified not only the cost but the date of completion, and that they must agree to an added condition: For every day they were late, they would incur a penalty of $200,000; and for every day they were early, they would be rewarded with a bonus of $200,000. The winning bidder, C.C. Myers Inc., put on three shifts that worked 24/7. In order to prevent any delay in the work, they hired a locomotive and crew to haul to Los Angeles steel sitting on a siding in Texas. Myers made more on the bonus than they did on the bid. Incentives work.

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RECENT AUSTRALIAN NEWS ROUNDUP

America-hating Americans have their equivalents among Australian intellectuals -- Australia-hating Australians. The ever-iconoclastic Keith Windschuttle shows them for the hate-filled but otherwise empty vessels that they are. It is a long and thorough article that any Australian who is tempted to respect our intellectuals should read. It will cure such temptations forthwith. I liked this typically supercilious quotation that Windschuttle dug up: "Behold the man - the Australian man of today - on Sunday mornings in the suburbs, when the high-decibel drone of the motor mower is calling the faithful to worship. A block of land, a brick veneer [house], and the motor-mower beside him in the wilderness - what more does he want to sustain him, except a Holden [car] to polish, a beer with the boys, marital sex on Saturday nights . At age of sixty-five, equipped with dashing sports coat, matched luggage, good wishes from the bowling club, and two P&O cruise tickets, he imagines he is about to begin living, not knowing that he died many years before"

Australia's conservative reforms praised: "The International Monetary Fund has weighed into Australia's politically charged industrial relations debate, throwing its support behind the Federal Government's reforms in a move that has angered unions. Issuing a glowing report on the state of the economy, the organisation praised the Government's welfare-to-work changes, particularly moves to boost the workforce participation of Australians aged 55 to 64, which the IMF described as "middling" by international standards. The Treasurer, Peter Costello, seized on the support to bolster the Government's case for further economic reform. "The point of all of this is that we must keep the reform process going, if we want to stay near the front of the pack as one of the lead economies of the developed world," he said".

Outspoken Australian politician praised: "Tony Abbott, often accused of saying the wrong thing, has received expert plaudits for his forthright warning about the likelihood of a bird flu pandemic. American risk communication consultants Jody Lanard and Peter Sandman have written a detailed - and glowing - analysis of a speech by the Health Minister in which he warned that such a pandemic could dwarf the health consequences of a terrorist attack. "Minister Abbott is saying the kinds of things government officials normally recoil from saying," doctors Lanard and Sandman wrote. "They imagine that being this candid, this alarming and this uncertain about anything is bound to boomerang badly . Abbott's speech did not do any of that. "By levelling with the public, [Mr Abbott] made a solid, informative contribution to an aspect of pandemic preparedness that has been badly neglected around the world - the preparedness of the public.""

Australian SUVs under attack: "Four-wheel-drives would leap in cost by thousands of dollars under a controversial plan to keep the fuel guzzlers out of city streets. The House of Representatives environment committee has urged the Federal Government to consider increasing the tariff on four-wheel drives (4WDs). Only farmers and others with a legitimate need for a 4WD would be spared the price jump under the plan. Imported 4WDs attract a 5 per cent tariff while other imported cars attract a tariff of 10 per cent, a concession originally intended to help farmers. But 4WDs now make up about one in five new cars sold and have become the car of choice for countless city-slickers"

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ELSEWHERE

Countries rated as good places to do business are good generally: "Doing Business in 2006 was published today (midnight GMT), tracking the state of red tape across the world... There are many wise things to be said about this data, and I'll try to say them over the next few days. But since this is a blog let me go for the cheapest headline. The top ten business environments in the world, as measured by the 'Ease of Doing Business index': 1. New Zealand; 2. Singapore; 3. United States; 4. Canada; 5. Norway; 6. Australia; 7. Hong Kong; 8. Denmark; 9. United Kingdom; 10. Japan [Note that fully half of them are English-speaking]

Was relief to Katrina victims slow because of racism? Jeff Jacoby points out: "Katrina devastated more than black-majority Orleans Parish. Four other Louisiana parishes and three coastal Mississippi counties, all with substantial white majorities, suffered heavily too. Government relief reached them no faster than it did New Orleans. If this were truly a racist country, it would have."

"Logical Meme" has been blogging up a storm. He's got a post on the vast bias shown by "Newsweek" and has also started a series on "Debunking Slavery Myths", the first installment of which is here. He is also getting steamed up about the MSM's burying of the story re. dozens and dozens of brutal murders reportedly having taken place at the Superdome and Convention Centers. He's been posting regularly on it -- e.g. here

Carnival of the Vanities is up again and very informative about the posts this time

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

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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.

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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".

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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.

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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....

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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)

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