RECENT ABORTION RESEARCH

Dear me! There is a lot of nonsense reported in abortion research. As far as I am concerned, abortion is an ethical issue and I have made my view of it clear elsewhere but various medical claims seem to get tangled up in it too. One claim is that women who have abortions are subsequently more depressed, which makes some intuitive sense and appears to be borne out by research. A recent piece of research has challenged that, however, and the BBC gives a reasonable summary of the controversy for the general reader. The abstract of the actual research report concerned is here and you can link from there to the full research report. I confess to not having read the article in full but it seems a rather silly article to me. They report that higher income women are more likely to abort and that such women are typically less depressed -- which rings true. But they apparently fail to control for that in assessing the effects of abortion. They really needed to compare women of SIMILAR income background (or control for income background statistically) in order to assess the effects of abortion. So I don't think we can conclude anything from their study at all.

And there is another study here which reports that women who have had abortions are more likely to become child abusers when they do eventually have children. The inference is that it is the abortion that makes the women more abusive. But isn't it the more obvious conclusion that women who are callous enough to have an abortion in the first place are also the types who would abuse children anyhow? Not all women who have abortions are callous but I don't think it's much of a stretch to assume that there are a lot more callous women among them than in the general population.

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THE IRISH FLOODS OF THE YEAR 2000

You can read a little about the floods here and the predictable Greenie comment is here but I think the picture below tells you most of all.



With an enormous effort at self-restraint, I will refrain from making any comparisons.

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ELSEWHERE

Australia's major public broadcaster, the ABC, is getting very grand -- with the pride that come before a fall, I fancy. The Managing Director of the ABC has just failed to turn up for a Senate scrutiny of ABC operations -- sending an underling instead.

Targeted terrorist assassinations would spare innocent lives : "When Pat Robertson, the televangelist who once ran for president, suggested that the U.S. consider assassinating Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, he was roundly denounced by voices left and right. Robertson is, of course, known for saying impolitic things. But, based on the breaking news that Chavez is seeking nuclear technology, perhaps Robertson's assessment of the Venezuelan situation was more farsighted than impolitic. The Washington Times recently reported that Chavez is on the offensive, making 'overtures to various countries' including Iran 'about obtaining nuclear technology.' Even more troubling than rumors of the Venezuelan government discussing the obtainment of nuclear technology is Chavez's recent fraternization with Iran's ruling bad boy, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, which has brought increased pugnacious policy choices in the southern hemisphere."

American and European car-makers both trailing on quality "Toyota, along with its Lexus division, makes more than half of the sedans and small cars that earned our highest Reliability Rating. All the others that earned this Rating were also Japanese, including the Honda Accord and previous-generation Civic; the 2006 Infiniti M35/M45; and nonturbo models of the Subaru Impreza. Most of the worst sedans in our rankings came from Europe, including several expensive luxury models such as the Audi A8, BMW 7 Series, Jaguar S-Type, and the Mercedes-Benz E- and S-Class. The rest of the bottom-rated small cars and sedans were from domestic manufacturers and included the Chevrolet Cobalt, the V8-powered Chrysler 300C, and the Lincoln LS".

Methodists rediscover the Bible: "In a denomination divided over the role of homosexuals in its ranks, a United Methodist Church court Monday defrocked a lesbian minister and reinstated a pastor suspended for denying church membership to a gay man. The nine-member Judicial Council, the denomination's highest court, released its decisions after hearings last week at Houston's First United Methodist Church Westchase campus. The council ruled that the Rev. Irene "Beth" Stroud of Pennsylvania had violated church law that prohibits "self-avowed practicing homosexuals" in the clergy. It also reinstated the Rev. Edward H. Johnson, pastor of South Hill United Methodist Church in Virginia, who had been suspended by his bishop after refusing to add a gay man to the church membership roster."

Reliapundit has a summary of the Muslim riots in Paris -- riots the French rather deserve, in my view. More background on the subject here

Brits still ruling some waves: "Royal Navy snipers shot out the engines of a speedboat carrying £200 million worth of cocaine during a drugs bust in the Caribbean, it was disclosed last night. The operation to intercept and arrest the drug trafficking gang was led by the Type 22 frigate Cumberland and a Lynx helicopter from her support vessel, the Royal Fleet Auxiliary ship Wave Knight. They intercepted the speedboat as it raced across the ocean 100 miles off Nicaragua. The four-strong gang tried to outrun the helicopter but they were forced to surrender after specialist snipers in the Lynx fired bullets to disable the speedboat's engines. A team from Cumberland boarded the speedboat, arrested the crew and seized two tons of cocaine with a street value of £200 million.

I have just put up here a big new lot of postings by Chris Brand on recent events to do with race, IQ etc.

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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SUITCASE NUKES

One of my nuclear physicist readers has emailed me to offer the following technical correction to the "Suitcase nukes" story in the WSJ's Opinion Journal that I referred to below:

You are correct to note that the suitcase nukes story is bunk and that real suitcase nukes have an extremely limited shelf life - but the Opinion Journal article on why it is bunk gets the physics all wrong. A suitcase nuke has to make use of a small quantity of plutonium with isotopics that are referred to as "super-grade" well above the normal weapons grade level (super grade is around 97% Pu-239 as opposed to 93% Pu-239 for normal weapons grade) - the Pu-239 has a half-life of 24,000 years. The Opinion Journal's explanation of why the suitcase nukes have a limited shelf-life is simply ludicrous.

The real reason is that the nukes themselves operate at extremely fine tolerances and their yield is incredibly dependent upon the absolute perfection of their internal geometries. As the higher isotopes of the Pu decay (most importantly Pu-241 going to Am-241) the heat output of the Pu part of the core changes drastically and the geometry changes slightly - this makes the weapn prone to two problems that are referred to as spalling and jetting. As the weapon itself operates right on the limit of having too little material to give an actual nuclear explosion, any material lost to spalling or jetting will prevent the weapon from going off at all. The steps necessary to remake the suitcase weapon to get back its old yield are at least as complex as building it in the first place.

ARE RELIGIOUS PEOPLE BIGOTS?

The above question is one that has often been asked and the answer has been found to depend on how you define "religious". But generally, psychological research -- such as mine -- has found no association between orthodox Christian beliefs and racial prejudice. That does not suit the religion-hating Leftists at all, however -- as "racist" is one of their handiest terms of abuse. So we find an attempt (under the heading "Authoritarianism, Religious Fundamentalism, Quest, and Prejudice") by the ludicrous "Bob" Altemeyer to salvage something nasty from the situation.

Altemeyer relies in his research very heavily on a scale (set of statements) of his own devising called the Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) scale. As the very name of it implies, it contains a "mixed bag" of statements. Many are worded in a very aggressive and punitive ("authoritarian") way but there are also in the scale statements such as: "National anthems, flags and glorification of one's country should all be de-emphasized to promote the brotherhood of all men" (from p. 305 of Altemeyer's 1981 book). Now how many conservatives would agree with that statement? Very few, I suspect. So agreeing with the aggressive and hostile statements of the RWA scale can get you a high score on it but just rejecting characteristically Leftist statements can also get you a high score on it. So whether any given correlation with the scale arises from its conservative character or its authoritarian character is simply unknowable.

So Altemeyer's failure to recognize that simply being conservative could lead you to get elevated scores on his RWA scale leads him to lots of apparently profound conclusions that are in fact much more parsimoniously (simply) interpreted. For instance, he concludes: "people raised in no religion are apt to be the least authoritarian [conservative] respondents". But all that that finding really tells us is that modern-day North American Christians tend to be conservative. Big news! In a similar vein he supports his assertion that high scorers on his RWA scale [conservatives] are characterized by "deplorable behavior" by showing that they were more supportive of Republican President Richard Nixon and were more opposed to Communists and more dubious about homosexuality. Again: Big news

Anyway, Altemeyer's whole approach is so silly and naive that it does not deserve a full critique so I will simply move on to a few remarks on what he says about religion. His first interesting statement is this one: "For example, in a study of 533 University of Manitoba students tested in the fall of 1987 by Altemeyer, the RWA Scale correlated .48 with a measure of acceptance of Christian beliefs, the Christian Orthodoxy (CO) Scale ( Fullerton & Hunsberger, 1982). It also correlated .41 with a measure of prejudice against most of the minorities mentioned a few paragraphs ago. But CO scores correlated precisely .00 with prejudice". In other words, Altemeyer found what I found 15 year before him (not that he mentions my work) -- that orthodox Christian beliefs have ZERO correlation with racial prejudice.

That pesky finding did not defeat him, though. He went back to the drawing board and came up with his own measure of religious belief -- a "Religious Fundamentalism" (RF) scale, which was essentially a set of statements that were very dogmatic about the truth of religion. And he went on to show (Phew!) that that scale DID show a small (.30) correlation with racial prejudice. But here's the kicker: Altemeyer's scale of religious belief deliberately EXCLUDED all specifically Christian statements of belief! Even an atheist with a passionate belief in flying saucers could get a high score on it! There is a later study here which also used Altemeyer's scales and that study confirms that high scorers on Altemeyer's RF scale (but not Christians) tended to be simple-minded. So once again poor old Alty tried to fudge his data and failed. All he has really shown is that racial prejudice (but not Christianity) tends to be simple-minded.

It may finally be worth noting that my earlier study used a measure of religious dogmatism too (which I called the "religiocentrism" scale) but my scale was specifically Christian in content. And guess what? It too showed NO correlation with ethnic prejudice. So it was only by taking the Christianity out of religion that nutty old Altemeyer could show that religious people were bigots. What a laugh! Only too typical of Leftist psychology, however.

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ELSEWHERE

Steve "Finefrock" and his friends have been having fun promenading among the Lefties of Santa Monica wearing pro-Arnie t-shirts. You can guess how much intelligent discussion that elicited from the Lefties! Maybe someone should however tell Steve that "boot" in German is "Der Stiefel", not "Das Boot". But his proximity to Hollywood probably means that he was just joking about a famous submarine movie.

PETA kills animals wholesale: "Hypocrisy is the mother of all credibility problems, and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has it in spades. While loudly complaining about the "unethical" treatment of animals by restaurant owners, grocers, farmers, scientists, anglers, and countless other Americans, the group has its own dirty little secret. From July 1998 through the end of 2004, PETA killed over 12,400 dogs, cats, and other "companion animals" -- at its Norfolk, Virginia headquarters. That's more than five defenseless animals every day. Not counting the dogs and cats PETA spayed and neutered, the group put to death over 85 percent of the animals it took in during 2003 alone. And its angel-of-death pattern shows no sign of changing.... PETA raked in nearly $29 million last year in income, much of it raised from pet owners who think their donations actually help animals. Instead, the group spends huge sums on programs equating people who eat chicken with Nazis, scaring young children away from drinking milk, recruiting children into the radical animal-rights lifestyle, and intimidating businessmen"

The lies of Edgar Snow: "The new biography Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday shows that every major claim made by Snow was false. Rather than opposing the Japanese invasion, Mao had welcomed it. He hoped the Japanese would engage and destroy his rival, Chiang Kai-shek, and would also draw Soviet troops into China. Mao avoided armed conflict not only with the Japanese but also with the Nationalists. Rather than being a champion of independence for his country, Mao since the 1920s had been an agent of the Soviet Union, taking its arms and money, doing its bidding, and accepting its control of the Chinese Communist Party. He knew his only hope of gaining power in China was with Soviet support, a belief ultimately confirmed in his takeover of the country in 1949. Mao was no agrarian reformer. He redistributed no land and liberated no peasants. His initial "red base" at Ruijin in Jiangxi province, southern China, had been achieved not by a revolutionary uprising of the masses but through military conquest by the Red Army, armed and funded by Moscow. His rule was identical to that of an occupying army, surviving by plundering the local population and killing anyone who resisted".

A pretty reassuring article here explaining why "suitcase" nuclear weapons are a myth.

I have just put up here a review of recent research on the genetics of IQ, civilization and race by Chris Brand.

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.

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THE FAR-LEFTISM OF AUSTRALIA'S PUBLIC BROADCASTERS

The following is an excerpt from a letter recently sent by one of my Australian readers to to General Karl Eikenberry, US Army Central Command Iraq and Afghanistan. I have posted the whole of the letter here. And Andrew Bolt has also just put up a mocking story about the bias and distortions of Australia's major public broadcaster

"I would like make you aware that there are two Australian television and radio broadcasters, the ABC and SBS with embedded correspondents in Iraq and Afghanistan who are sending extremely strong anti American propaganda back to Australia. In the case of the ABC, which is now broadcasting into some forty countries in SE Asia, Osama bin Laden and associates could not have a more effective propaganda machine in this region, no matter how much money they paid. Amazingly both these broadcaster are funded by the Australian government which these broadcasters despise.

These broadcasters, staffed by extreme Leftists have a blantant agenda to divide the Australian and regional peoples from America's efforts to win the war on terrorism. Their focus is targeted at any US and coalition setbacks, harm done to civilians, and especially any stories related to torture.in US military prison camps, including Guantanomo.

In fact the ABC ran 57 stories on Iraqi prisoner abuse alone, yet only one on the world's biggest scam featuring the Left's favourite institution, the UN and it's oil for food program, which as you are aware, enabled Saddam to buy weapons that have been, and still are being used to kill coalition forces in Iraq. I have never seen a single program by these broadcasters showing the US in a good light. Even their three stories on Hurricane Katrina were nothing more than hysterical rants against the US Government, and yet, this is the ABC, SBS idea of "balanced reporting"."

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ELSEWHERE

Lawmakers call for more illegal-immigrant prosecutions: "Frustrated because they say federal attorneys aren't prosecuting enough criminal illegal immigrants, California Republican lawmakers are seeking a meeting with U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. The 19 GOP members of the California congressional delegation have signed a letter to Gonzales saying many illegal immigrants who are arrested and deserve jail time are instead released because of a lack of resources to prosecute them. "There is one simple reason why 'catch and release' cannot continue: it endangers our citizens," the letter reads. "It is the responsibility of the Department of Justice to punish dangerous criminals who violate federal laws, and this includes criminal aliens."

Criminals discriminated against. How awful! "In what could be a first among municipalities nationwide, San Francisco has adopted a resolution aimed at erasing the stigma faced by felons who apply for public sector jobs. An outgrowth of complaints that job applicants with criminal records are discriminated against when applying for jobs, the nonbinding resolution asks San Francisco's Human Resources Department to consider eliminating the check-off box that asks applicants if they've ever been convicted of a crime. The resolution, which was unanimously passed by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, quietly passed into law last week without the signature of Mayor Gavin Newsom, a spokesman for the mayor said Tuesday. Newsom wants to "make sure that people who made past mistakes are not discriminated against," said mayoral spokesman David Miree".

Private enterprise fairer than government "Far from existing from time immemorial, as many have assumed, racially segregated seating in public transportation began in the South in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Those who see government as the solution to social problems may be surprised to learn that it was government which created this problem. Many, if not most, municipal transit systems were privately owned in the 19th century and the private owners of these systems had no incentive to segregate the races..... The incentives of the economic system and the incentives of the political system were not only different, they clashed. Private owners of streetcar, bus, and railroad companies in the South lobbied against the Jim Crow laws while these laws were being written, challenged them in the courts after the laws were passed, and then dragged their feet in enforcing those laws after they were upheld by the courts. These tactics delayed the enforcement of Jim Crow seating laws for years in some places. Then company employees began to be arrested for not enforcing such laws and at least one president of a streetcar company was threatened with jail if he didn't comply"

The USSR didn't work because of the USA? : "I argued that in the main in the U.S. people are still required to look out for themselves via voluntary institutions, and this approach to problem-solving is more effective than top-down government management. One panelist responded to this by claiming that, while Cuba (which is ostensibly a socialist dictatorship) and other centralized systems are cruel and mean -- to, say, gays and journalists -- their main problem is the U.S.; this country just will not allow them to flourish. Then he added that this was the problem with the Soviet Union -- countries of the West would not permit its socialist dictatorship to succeed as it would have, had it been left to its own resources."

Bring on the mother of all judicial battles : "It's time to right the wrong that was done to Judge Bork. It's time to use this 'swing' seat to right the direction of the Court. A court which reaffirmed special, rather than equal, treatment of minorities in college admissions. A court which said the government can take away your property and give it to someone else for economic reasons. A court which upheld a congressional law infringing on citizens' right to free speech 30 days before an election. A court which is out of control and out of line. If the President does, in fact, nominate someone like that, the left will be loaded for bear. They're gonna kick like mules and bite like crocodiles. It's gonna be an old-fashioned bar brawl, complete with mud, blood and beer. Oh, what a glorious constitutional fight it will be."

Australian Left tries to woo Christians: "Opposition Leader Kim Beazley has moved to soothe relations between Labor and Christian churches, linking his moral values to the fight against the Government's planned industrial relations laws. He told church leaders that a post-September 11 world had distorted the message of faith in God. The devoutly religious Mr Beazley also criticised a distortion of Christian faith which he said had occurred in the United States. "In the post-September 11 age when religion is at the centre of public fears of terrorism, we must be able to challenge the ugly, violent distortions of genuine faith," he told the Australian Christian Lobby conference in Canberra. ... Mr Beazley did not mention by name former leader Mark Latham - who has bitterly criticised Mr Beazley - but conceded Christians had had concerns about Labor in the lead-up to last year's federal election.... Dealing with questions from the audience on matters such as abortion and homosexuality, Mr Beazley promised Labor would listen to the often silent, religious sector of the community, partly through its caucus faith and values working group, headed by frontbencher Kevin Rudd. ACL head Brigadier Jim Wallace said many Christians did not vote for Labor at the last election because of former leader Mark Latham's public pronouncements that he was not guided by faith".

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.

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'Equal protection'? Just protect the Constitution from the Supreme Court

An excerpt from Ben Shapiro

In 1866, when members of the 39th Congress of the United States submitted the Constitution's 14th Amendment to state legislatures for ratification, they would have been stunned to learn that they had just written a provision mandating that homosexual sex be treated on the same moral plane as heterosexual sex. On Friday, Oct. 21, the Kansas Supreme Court, ruling under the Supreme Court precedent of Lawrence v. Texas (2003), decided that the 39th Congress meant just that. A Kansas law penalizing statutory homosexual rape more severely than statutory heterosexual rape was struck down under the 14th Amendment's "equal protection" clause....

As the constituency of the Court has changed, interpretation of the Constitution has changed. The Court has arrogantly enforced its own morality. "Equal protection" is no longer a simple bar against racist law enforcement; it is no longer even restricted to race itself. "Equal protection" now means that any law classifying groups differently must meet the Supreme Court's moral standards. Of course, all laws inherently classify groups differently. Murder laws will classify murderers differently than law-abiding citizens. Such laws have always been constitutional. But members of the Supreme Court must now personally agree that legal classifications meet their own moral standards.

In Bowers v. Hardwick (1986), for example, the Court declared that a Georgia statute criminalizing sodomy did not violate the "equal protection" clause. Justice White, writing for the majority, explained, "In 1868, when the 14th Amendment was ratified, all but five of the 37 States in the Union had criminal sodomy laws. In fact, until 1961, all 50 States outlawed sodomy, and today, 24 States and the District of Columbia continue to provide criminal penalties for sodomy performed in private and between consenting adults. Against this background, to claim that a right to engage in such conduct is 'deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition' or 'implicit in the concept of ordered liberty' is, at best, facetious."

By 2003, a constitutional right to engage in sodomy had been discovered. What changed between 1986 and 2003 to bring about this reversal? Nothing, except the constituency of the Court. And so the Constitution magically changed. Personal politics of the justices trumped the fully constitutional will of the people. Nothing gives the Supreme Court power to overrule popular legislation wherever it pleases. The Constitution does not grant unlimited power to the Supreme Court. We live in a republic, not an oligarchy. No matter whether the Court considers the law in Kansas abhorrent or praiseworthy, it is none of its business under the Constitution. We must trust the people more than we trust tyrants. Anything less is tyranny.

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ELSEWHERE

Why can't those wonderfully wise Europeans get anywhere near this? : "The US economy strengthened in the third quarter, driven higher by strong government and consumer spending, and despite damage caused by hurricanes. Gross domestic product (GDP) expanded by an annual rate of 3.8% in the three months from July through September, the Commerce Department said. That compares with 3.3% in the second quarter and topped market estimates.... There had been concerns that the cost of rebuilding after hurricanes Katrina and Rita, coupled with record oil prices, would slam the brakes on growth. It now looks as if the US economy will keep motoring through to the end of the year, analysts said. "This is a very positive, strong report and encouraging because it included Katrina and a spike in oil prices and we still just seem to have a lot of momentum going into the fourth quarter," said Kurt Karl, an economist at Swiss Re.... Friday's GDP report also contained inflation figures that showed a decline in the core level of price growth. Excluding food and energy prices, the core inflation rate was 1.3% during the quarter, down from 1.7% in the previous quarter."

Another economic moron: "Senator Dick Durbin wants to impose a tax on U.S. oil producers, just at the time when they are struggling to get Gulf Coast gas and oil production and refining restored after being hit by two hurricanes. The plan by Senator Dick Durbin would impose a 50% tax on the difference between the market price of oil and a bench-mark of $40 a barrel. The result will be to raise $40 billion or so a year based on a price of $63 per barrel. This will retard the post-hurricane recovery of the U.S. oil industry and put a dead hand on future exploration in the United States. That, in turn, will keep the world price of oil at a level higher that would prevail otherwise and retard domestic economic growth. It will also provide more revenue for foreign producers like Saudi Arabia and Iran. I worry about how that extra revenue will be spent by the sheiks and ayatollahs."

Wal-Mart gets praised for shafting its competition! "H. Lee Scott, Jr., the CEO of Wal-Mart, surprised many by calling for an increase in the minimum wage. And what accolades were heaped on him! The company was even cast in a new role, from the exploiter of workers to the responsible advocate of pro-worker policies. And how selfless, for who has to pay such higher wages but companies like Wal-Mart? And thus do we see a corporation set aside its business interests on behalf of the long-term interests of society. The whole thing befuddled Wal-Mart haters as much as it disgusted its free-market defenders. Ted Kennedy wouldn't go so far as to praise the company, but he did say that 'If the CEO of Walmart can call for an increase in the minimum wage, the Republicans should follow suit on behalf of the millions of working men and women living in poverty.'.... And yet, let us think this through. Might there be another reason Wal-Mart would advocate a higher minimum wage?... The current minimum is $5.15. According to studies, Wal-Mart pays between $8.23 and $9.68 as its national average. That means that the minimum wage could be raised 50% and still not impose higher costs on the company"

Perverted Irish priests: "Twenty-one Irish Catholic priests sexually assaulted young boys and girls in parishes across Co Wexford over a period of 40 years, a damning report into clerical abuse revealed yesterday. The Irish Government said that it would take immediate action to implement the recommendations of the report into the Diocese of Ferns, which is now regarded as the world's leading centre for clerical sexual abuse. The 271-page report catalogues 100 complaints of abuse, with one priest responsible for 26 assaults. The Ferns Report, which investigated allegations dating back to 1966, concluded that Church authorities, the medical profession and society in general failed to appreciate the horrendous damage which the sexual abuse of children causes. The report revealed that police investigations were wholly inadequate, while bishops in the Diocese of Ferns failed to take basic precautions to protect children."

The utter intellectual dishonesty and pure hatred that characterize that mini-Chomsky, Brian Leiter, has once again been exposed for what it is -- this time by Will Wilkinson

Jennifer Marohasy is blogging up a storm these days. Hers is another "Greenie Watch" blog but her focus is mainly on the nuttiness of Australian Greenies whereas I try to take a global view.

The Religious Policeman is a blog from "A Saudi man, currently living in the United Kingdom, where the Religious Police no longer trouble him for the moment". He is pretty scathing about the whole Islamic scene.

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.

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FROM BROOKES NEWS:

US economy and the China trade deficit: There is no doubt that the US trade deficit with China is causing a lot of confusion as well as anguish
Australian economy and recession factors: The Australian economy is not looking too good, regardless of what the Treasurer Mr Costello thinks
Workplace reform: unions lie about minimum wages and unemployment: There is a situation where increases in the minimum will not add to unemployment. Therefore, so long as the minimum wage does not exceed the market rate it will not cause unemployment
US troops slaughter civilians: The Americans came in killing like mad men
Tariff nonsense and ALP stupidity: The economic illiterates who are running Victoria have been demanding that the Federal assume direction of industry
More compulsory voting nonsense: It is utter nonsense to assert that citizens would be disenfranchised if compulsory voting were scrapped
Move to middle leaves conservatives looking for new home: Things began to unravel in the 1970s, when the national Democrat Party began to embrace a liberal social agenda
The Grinch who stole my Halloween: Spooks, pirates, goblins, and ghouls are upon us once more. It is time for deciding tricks or treats and to curl up on our sofas to watch, 'It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown'

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ELSEWHERE

Blair gets it right: "Tony Blair gave warning last night that the West might have to take military action against Iran after worldwide condemnation of its President’s call for Israel to be “wiped off the map”. Ending a one-day European Union summit, the Prime Minister called the explosive declaration by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday a disgrace. Promising discussions with Washington and other allies over how to react, Mr Blair said that he had often been urged not to take action against Iran. But he added: “If they carry on like this the question people will be asking us is - when are you going to do something about Iran? Can you imagine a State like that with an attitude like that having nuclear weapons?”

Amazing. Economic responsibility from Congress: "House Republicans voted to cut student loan subsidies, child support enforcement and aid to firms hurt by unfair trade practices as various committees scrambled to piece together $50 billion in budget cuts. More politically difficult votes -- to cut Medicaid, food stamps and farm subsidies -- are on tap Thursday as more panels weigh in on the bill. It was originally intended to cut $35 billion in spending over five years, but after pressure from conservatives, GOP leaders directed committees to cut another $15 billion to help pay the cost of hurricane recovery."

GM pays the price for its gutlessness with its unions: "Japanese car giant Toyota is expected to surpass US-based General Motors to become the world's leading car manufacturer in terms of output in 2006. To do so, it will raise its production to more than 9.2 million units, a Japanese business daily reported today. Toyota decided to increase its global production volume by 12 per cent next year compared with the 8.3 million units projected for this year, a 900,000-unit increase... Daihatsu and Hino Motors of the Toyota group have not completed their plans for next year, but they expect to raise their total production from the 2005 projection by about 900,000 cars amid strong domestic sales. General Motors is expected to fall short of its global production of a projected 9.12 million units for 2005 due to a drop in sales and factory closures, the newspaper said".

The "New Puritans": "Ick, just waded through a screed at The Observer about these so-called New Puritans, the trendy new church of young socialists. In a nutshell they are young control freaks just as bad as those churches who decide every aspect of members lives. It is dressed up with a very thin veneer of concern about over-consumption, environment, social responsibility blah blah blah. They encompass the anti-capitalist who snidely derides the employer while tallying up your purchase, the brave souls who deflate SUV tyres at night and the disparaging tossers who look down on fat people. But ironically in the week of the death of Rosa Parks we have a group very similar to that which ruled over the American South in her time, the paternalist Dixiecrats using their religion and morals to oppress the others they didn't care for"

Calvin vindicated "Attending religious services may enrich the soul, but it also fattens the wallet, according to research released on Tuesday. "Doubling the frequency of attendance leads to a 9.1 percent increase in household income, or a rise of 5.5 percent as a fraction of the poverty scale," Jonathan Gruber of the economics department at Massachusetts Institute of Technology wrote in his study. "Those with more faith may be less 'stressed out' about daily problems that impede success in the labor market and the marriage market, and therefore are more successful," Gruber wrote in the study, which was released by the National Bureau of Economic Research".

Government lies about terrorist threats: "Journalist Annie Jacobsen gained a certain degree of fame last year as the woman who wrote about the strange and frightening behavior of a group of Syrian "musicians" aboard a Northwest Airlines flight. She has now written a riveting book, Terror in the Skies: Why 9-11 Could Happen Again about what happened that day and in the months that followed. Jacobsen put her investigative skills to work, and discovered that the harrowing events that took place on her flight were far from an isolated occurrence. She ends her book with a warning: If our security system does not improve, another 9/11 is almost inevitable".

More negligent bureaucrats should get the same: "The gaunt figure of Vitali Kaloyev confessed yesterday to the fatal stabbing of an air traffic controller who had been in charge on the night that Kayolev's family and 68 other victims plunged to their death in a mid-air collision. For the 48-year-old Russian engineer it was the last act in a tragedy that began on a clear night over Lake Constance on the Swiss-German border just over three years ago.... Mr Kaloyev's world collapsed in July 2002 when a Bashkirian Airlines Tupolev 154 crashed into a Boeing cargo aircraft operated by the DHL courier service. Forty-five children died in the crash..... Prosecutors in Germany and Switzerland are still conducting investigations against members of the Skyguid staff to establish whether they could be charged for negligent killing. For all the Russian families this investigation has been proceeding too slowly. When Mr Kaloyev attended a memorial service in Ueberlingen in 2003 he exploded with anger that Skyguid was accepting only partial responsibility for the crash".

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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DOES AMERICA FACE A LOSS OF WILL AND SELF-CONFIDENCE?

Some people seem to think it does and perhaps they are right. No country is being subjected to such a ferocious white-anting attack from the Left as America is. When a large section of your own populace wants you to lose at anything you do, you have certainly got a problem. The "antiwar" exhibitionists America has prancing around the place at the moment would all be in jail if Woodrow Wilson were still President. Read your history if you doubt it.

Lots of people have drawn my attention to an article by Jonathan Last which argues in favour of an imminent loss of American will by comparing America today with Britain in the era between the two world wars. Last argues that despite their victory in WW1, the British went all Leftist and wussy in the 20s and 30s and virtually threw their empire and their position of strength away. He thinks America might be on the same track.

It's absolute rubbbish as an analogy. In World War I, Britain lost virtually an entire generation of its young men. No wonder the entire nation got totally demoralized by that and came to have an absolute horror of war and anything associated with it. Chamberlain's "appeasement" of Hitler is scorned now but it had the support of virtually the entire British population at the time.

The American death-rate in Iraq is piffling by comparison. It's about the same as the homicide rate in Detroit. I give every honour to the brave men who have voluntarily joined the military forces that are now in Iraq and feel personally grieved when I hear of a death among them but comparing that to what happened to Britain in WW1 is ludicrous. It's also ludicrous because another country than Britain emerged from WW1 as the strongest -- the USA. Whereas the USA faces no rivals regardless of what happens in Iraq.

If the Muslims ever got to be more than a nuisance, GWB could just press the red button -- which he has recently been officially authorized to do -- and most of the Islamic world would vanish in a thermonuclear cloud, Mecca included. It's only the good heart of GWB and the American people that stands between the Muslims and that fate. For the sake of the societies that they infest, I hope that the Islamic fruitcakes have enough brains to remember that another American President reluctantly decided to use nuclear weapons on a civilian population rather than suffer further American military casualties.

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ELSEWHERE

Australian blacks told to pull their weight: "The era of "sit-down" money for Aborigines in remote communities has ended, with Centrelink officers telling indigenous people those who do not work will lose their handouts. Eight communities have been told in the past month they have to change or face the same penalties as the rest of the community: loss of dole payments. Until now, about 8000 indigenous people have been exempt from mutual obligation programs because they live in areas where there is no locally accessible labour market program or education and training facilities. But the Howard Government is dismantling the system of exemptions and has in the past month told about 880 people they will be taken off the program. Already, 115 of them are working for the dole."

Straight talk from Jesse Lee Peterson: "When 75 percent of New Orleans residents had left the city, it was primarily immoral, welfare-pampered blacks that stayed behind and waited for the government to bail them out. This, as we know, did not turn out good results... Of course, if these two were really serious about laying blame on government, they should blame the local one. Responsibility to perform - legally and practically - fell first on the mayor of New Orleans. We are now all familiar with Mayor Ray Nagin - the black Democrat who likes to yell at President Bush for failing to do Nagin's job.... One wonders how there was "no way" for these people to evacuate the city. We have photographic evidence telling us otherwise. You've probably seen it by now - the photo showing 200 parked school buses, unused and underwater. How much planning does it require to put people on a bus and leave town, Mayor Nagin? ... President Bush is not to blame for the rampant immorality of blacks. Had New Orleans' black community taken action, most would have been out of harm's way. But most were too lazy, immoral and trifling to do anything productive for themselves. All Americans must tell blacks this truth. It was blacks' moral poverty - not their material poverty - that cost them dearly in New Orleans".

The hypocritical Michael Moore: ""Michael Moore claims he grew up poor in urban, blue-collar, largely black Flint, Michigan," Mr. Schweizer notes. "Actually, he grew up nearby in the largely white, middle-class town of Davison." The author reveals that Mr. Moore's dad was not "just another working stiff," as Mr. Moore insists; rather, he put his four children through private schools, "played golf every afternoon at a private club, and retired comfortably at the age of 56." And get this, the rotund filmmaker and defender of the little guy once owned shares of Halliburton Co. that the Internal Revenue Service says he sold for a 15 percent profit, gobbling up next some shares of McDonald's Corp. If the author sounds familiar, his other books include "The Bushes: Portrait of a Dynasty" and "Reagan's War: The Epic Story of His Forty-Year Struggle and Final Triumph over Communism," which was made into an award-winning documentary in 2004 - not by Mr. Moore, obviously." [Sourced from a new book: "Do As I Say (Not As I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy" by Peter Schweizer]

Reforming FEMA: "It was probably not helpful that both Michael Brown, the head of FEMA when Katrina struck, and Michael Chertoff, his boss at the Department of Homeland Security, are lawyers. The pernicious impact lawyers can have in a crisis is compounded by bureaucracy. Bureaucracies typically move at a torpid pace, and insist on following the rules even when the rules make no sense. So firemen were prevented from rescuing Katrina victims until they had received a lecture on sexual harassment policy. The more layers of bureaucrats through which a decision must pass, the slower the response. Yet Washington's response to any crisis is to create larger bureaucracies.... The only bureaucracy which moves rapidly in a crisis is the military. I think it would be a mistake to make the military a "first responder" in natural disasters, but FEMA should be reorganized along military lines. And the head of FEMA should always be either a National Guard general or a Coast Guard admiral. There are some jobs which require adult supervision. Too many of these are held by political hacks".

Leftist privacy hypocrisy: "Protecting privacy only seems to matter to liberals when it comes to 14-year-old girls seeking abortions behind their parents' backs, illegal aliens seeking sanctuary from the police, and registered sex offenders objecting to community registration requirements. Needless to say, if it had been Republicans involved in this outrageous breach of privacy and the target had been a liberal minority politician, it would be front-page news".

I am pleased to see that Majority Rights has passed its one millionth hit. That is pretty good going for a blog that is only one year old and doesn't even have a blogroll. I regularly disagree with my fellow-bloggers there but it is always a lively and intelligent debate.

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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TAX

Restoring freedom at home "Governments in the U.S. take approximately 40 percent of the country's total income in taxes. In other words, nearly half of all the income generated each year is sent to governments to spend. How free are you when governments take half of your income? Serfs in the 16th and 17th centuries typically owed their feudal lords only a quarter of their crops and livestock, and often much less. Our forefathers fought a war for independence over tax levels that were far lower than those we now pay without complaint."

Costs of the federal tax system : "In 2005, Americans will pay about $2.1 trillion in combined federal taxes. However, the amount of taxes paid does not reflect the total cost to taxpayers -- taxpayers also bear compliance and efficiency costs, according to a new study by the Government Accountability Office. Combining the lowest available compliance estimates for the personal and corporate income tax yields a total of $107 billion (roughly 1 percent of GDP) per year. The GAO says estimating efficiency costs are very challenging because the tax system has extensive and diverse effects on behavior."

Tax reform timidity : "The president's tax reform panel's report is due at the end of this month, but don't hold your breath if you were looking for the reform that is really needed. Preliminary signs are the panel will recommend relatively modest (but several desirable) changes to the federal tax system. For decades the present income tax system, with its tens of thousands of rules and regulations, has been widely recognized as so complex no one human, no matter how talented, can understand it. The present system puts even those who fully intend to comply with the code at risk of being convicted as tax felons because it is impossible to know with certainty when one is or is not in compliance (even federal tax courts rulings sometimes rule contradict other federal tax courts). The short, but correct, word for such a system is tyranny. It is also extraordinarily expensive to administer, both by the government and the private sector."

Tax reform panels says: Cut mortgage deduction: "The real estate lobby is already screaming. Representatives from California and other real-estate bubble states are voicing opposition, saying that their states would bear most of the shifted burden. Brokers and others in the real estate industry say this would hurt their business. What those in the real estate pressure group are not saying is that the tax breaks for real estate, such as the deduction for mortgage interest and property taxes, is what drove real estate prices up in the first place. To the extent they are beneficial, government's goods and services such as highways, streets, parks, schooling, security, welfare aid, and farm subsidies, all drive up rentals and the price of land, since these are paid for mostly from taxes on wages. The big landowners are now screaming because government will reduce their subsidy."

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ELSEWHERE

A black professor calls for the extermination of all whites and we hear nothing about it from the mainstream media. How odd! They're too busy re-running pictures of terrorists being humiliated at Abu Ghraib, I guess. And two little girls who expressed WHITE nationalist sentiments got blanket coverage, of course.

Rafe Champion notes some good sense from one Australian black leader: "Noel Pearson delivered an inspiring address in Sydney at a CIS symposium this evening. He used the image of a staircase of opportunity to signal the need for something more substantial to assist outback Aborigines than the "ladder of opportunity" that has been advocated for suburban battlers. The foundation of the ladder consists of healthy social norms, mores or morals. He described this as a thoroughly conservative approach in a non-derogatory sense and he noted that people in the mainstream of society where the mores are essentially healthy need to realise what life can turn into when the moral framework has been seriously eroded by the wrong mix of incentives and payments."

The Adam Smith blog has an amusing post on why Homer Simpson is a far better influence than either Karl Marx or Noam Chomsky. I have previously made a similar point myself.

Wonders will never cease: "A Saudi columnist says the violent jihad movement of Islam is similar to, or even worse than, Nazism, and that for the West not to oppose it will lead to consequences worse than Nazi Germany."

Why am I not surprised? "A Senate report is criticizing nonprofit groups that employ people with disabilities for handing out excessive salaries and benefits to their top executives, among them the chief executive officer of Roseville-based PRIDE Industries Inc. Michael Ziegler, a 60-year-old businessman who has helped turn PRIDE into the nation's largest employer of people with disabilities, received $594,000 in salary and bonuses, according to the company's 2002 IRS filings. Ziegler and members of PRIDE's board defended the pay Monday, saying it includes bonuses for two different years."

Why "liberal elites" can't sink America: "Jonathan Last has written a fascinating piece in The Weekly Standard titled 'Rule America?' where he suggests that there are ominous parallels between the United States of today and a sinking, subdued Great Britain of the 1930's, dragged down by the hostility of the liberal elites of the time. In fact, go ahead and read it yourself! Go on! Do it right now, at www.weeklystandard.com. ... And that, ladies and gentlemen, is one reason why our own liberal elites will never succeed in bringing America down. What am I talking about? Why, how easy it was for you to read that article, by merely clicking a button! The Internet is going to save America ... or, I should say, the New Media will, by breaking the liberal elite's media monopoly."

Russia: Hail the good revolution: "It wasn't the Bolsheviks that swept away the Czar in a heroic seizure of power; they came to power instead in a squalid little coup that stabbed in the back Russia's first chance at real freedom. Remember all those stories and images of people rampaging across Palace Square and storming the Winter Palace? That wasn't the Bolshevik hordes storming the citadel of Czarist oppression -- that is a lie. There were no hordes; there was no storming of the Palace -- not by the Bolsheviks anyway; and the Czarist oppression had already been swept away some months before in the 'Good Revolution' of February. The Bolsheviks didn't sweep away oppression; they brought it back."

There is a good new site called Eye on the U.N. with daily updates on the shenanigans there.

The latest Carnival of the Vanities is now up with lots to read.

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.

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ISRAEL, JEWS, IMMIGRATION

The heading above draws attention to some of the most emotive issues in today's world but I have never been one to run from controversy and I am not going to start now. I just feel sorry for the Jewish people that the mere mention of their name is an "issue". I am myself a great supporter of Israel. The Israelis have bent over backwards to be fair to the other inhabitants of their ancient land and got only mass-murder of their people as a response. So I am delighted to note that our present Australian conservative government is also a resolute friend of Israel. A small excerpt:

"The Howard-Downer duumvirate in Australian foreign policy has changed our position on the Middle East at the UN in a way that is wholly remarkable, not only independent but positively brave, utterly politically incorrect and undoubtedly right in principle; and, amazingly, is meeting with success. Australia has always been a strong friend of Israel... the UN has established a vast bureaucracy dedicated to blackening Israel's name....

Most nations that Australians would regard as like-minded, such as the west Europeans, the Canadians and some others, traditionally find this all too hard to deal with and seek a coward's solace in abstaining from most anti-Israel resolutions and activities. Until about two years ago, that was Australia's way as well. But then came the wave of terror attacks on Israel, Israel's fence and the absurd overreaction to it. Alexander Downer and John Howard decided enough was enough.... it wasn't going to go along with the usual Israel bashing. In truth it was a proud moment in Australian foreign policy and certainly one of the deepest independence....

This vote was not a one-off. It has become the pattern of our voting on Israel-related issues. Canberra has attempted to use its influence with Pacific Island nations, and even in Southeast Asia, to try to produce a change. And, get this, it is working. Canada has joined Australia on some critical resolutions and the attitude towards Israel at the UN has begun to change noticeably."

And I again want to draw attention to Isi Leibler's article which shows, quite appallingly, that in Britain the Leftist intelligentsia are a greater source of antisemitism even than the Muslims. Thank goodness that their official leader, Tony Blair, is a decent man. If his name had been Adolf .....

Hooray! The good sense and moderation of ordinary British people has won the day again. There was an official move to ban members of Britain's anti-immigration party (the BNP) from being employed as firemen (firepersons?) in Dorset but the Dorset Fire Authority Committee rejected the move:

"One member of the committee stated: 'I think it is totally inappropriate to single out one political party in this way! The fact of the matter is, if any member or firefighter acts in an improper way, he will be dismissed." "And I don't see why we should single out this particular party. It is not proscribed, it stands in general elections, and I think it is totally wrong!" "If we were going to do it, we'd have done it with the Communist Party that had strong membership of the fire brigade union 20 years ago!" "We didn't do it then and I don't see why we should do this now!" The motion to reject the proposal was seconded, and a unanimous vote rejected the motion to ban BNP members from the Dorset Fire service."

And in my view it is the sense of moderation and fairness displayed above that has made Britain Great and which makes me proud of my British origins, remote though they now are. "First they came for the BNP ...." and in Britain people DID speak up. And I myself have spoken up in the most practical way that I know.

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ELSEWHERE

An email from Sean Gabb: "The Libertarian Alliance Conference is still open for bookings. This conference will take place on the 19th and 20th November 2005 at the National Liberal Club in London. You can book on-line either the whole conference (British Pounds 85.00 /$150 US/124 Euros) or for the banquet only on the evening of Saturday the 19th November (British Pounds 35.00/$65 US/55 Euros). You can check out who are the speakers for this conference - I am one! - or book on-line by going here. I do not wish to be gloomy, but this may be the last main public occasion for Dr Chris R. Tame Director of the Libertarian Alliance. As you may know, Chris was diagnosed last summer with advanced cancer of the bones. He regards this conference as his last organisational achievement"

Good article from Melanie Phillips. Excerpt: "I am currently in Australia, where I dropped in for the weekend (as one does) to attend a conference discussing the phenomenon of judicial activism. The meeting, which brought together lawyers, judges and other interested parties from Australia, the US and Britain, brought out in a particularly fascinating way the deep divisions between lawyers – particularly in the US Supreme Court and the Australian High Court – over judicial activism. In one camp were the judicial activists themselves, who bridled at the very suggestion that they were anything of the kind and then proceeded by everything they said to demonstrate conclusively that they were; and in the other camp were their legal and judicial colleagues who were aghast at the damage the activists were doing to the integrity of the law and the place of the judiciary in western society as the arbiters of dispassionate and objective justice".

I mentioned yesterday the Economic Freedom of the World 2005 Annual Report. Readers wishing to take a closer look at it can find the whole thing here

There is a rather satisfying post just up on Strange Justice

A little while back, I put up a post about Melanesians (and the people of New Guinea in particular) that speculated on why Melanesians seem pretty bright despite their having been in the Stone Age within living memory. A reader has emailed me some interesting observations on the factors which may have affected their evolution and the evolution of civilization in general. I have posted the email 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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SOME ECONOMICS

Pumping gas prices: "Price controls have been around as long as prices. And price controls have had disastrous effects for just as long. They discourage production and encourage waste, creating shortages. They also penalize emergency preparedness -- stockpiling, for instance. But counterproductive effects have never deterred demagogic politicians seeking votes. Advocates of price controls apparently believe that the oil companies are artificially jacking up prices. It's a convenient theory, but it makes no sense. After all, if ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell could simply conspire to push up prices, they would have done so last year. And the year before. And the year before that. In fact, Americans have been spoiled over the last two decades. Adjusted for inflation, gas prices have been historically low. Even today prices remain lower than in Europe."

Poor Africans made REALLY poor by socialist regulations: "Niamey, Niger -- In countries like this, children end up being killed not only by malaria and measles, but also by an insistence on the six-week paid vacation. This land of mud huts and malnourished babies is the very least developed country on the planet, but local regulations stipulate that companies must give all employees six weeks and two days of paid vacation a year. Not surprisingly, there are almost no employers in Niger... ...The minimum wage is set at $35 a month in Niger, higher than the local market level. Employees are allowed to work no more than nine hours a day, weekend work is basically prohibited, and women are not allowed to work evenings at all. Layoffs are usually not allowed. Perhaps those rules (typically inherited from European countries during colonial days) sound as if they protect workers. But the upshot is that companies don't come to Niger and don't hire anyone they don't want on the payroll forever. So almost all people toil in the informal labor sector where there are no protections whatsoever." (Cafe Hayek picks up on much the same points).

The Economic Freedom of the World, 2005 Annual Report has just been published by Canada's Fraser Institute... The report's conclusions include the following: "Countries with more economic freedom have substantially higher per-capita incomes and higher growth rates." These findings show economic freedom is not just desirable from some philosophical viewpoint but is a necessary and absolute good. Countries that move from less economic freedom to more raise their citizens' well-being much faster than the more restrictive regimes. "Life expectancy is over 25 years longer in countries with the most economic freedom than it is those with the least." Those who argue they support socialism or the "social market economy" because it is more humane ignore the fact that people in most free market economies live longer and healthier lives than those in most of the very regulated economic systems.... Economic freedom is reduced by high taxes and regulation; failure to secure proper rights; restricting domestic and international trade; unnecessarily costly regulation of credit, labor and business; and denying access to sound money. Almost all poor countries are poor because their political leaders have restricted economic freedoms. The next time we see a political leader on global TV blaming others for his people's plight and demanding aid, we should insist a condition of aid would be removing restrictions of economic freedom".

EU boss goes for globalization: "Europe will become “nothing” if it fails to meet the challenge of globalisation and succumbs instead to the demands for protectionism and xenophobia that are sweeping the Continent, José Manuel Barroso, the President of the European Commission, has said. In terms that will be seen as strong backing for the British stance and condemnation of French protectionist policies, Senhor Barroso called on all “civilised and rational” people to fight the kind of populism that is opposed to free markets and to embrace globalisation rather than turn Europe into a fortress".

Nothing succeeds like success: Bryan Caplan explains why poor countries generally stay poor and why rich countries tend to get richer. In summary, economic rationality is only persuasive once it has already been shown to work.

There is a very sad story here about what 70 years of communism has done to a nation that once dominated the world -- Mongolia. Incentive and motivation seem to have been almost wiped out.

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ELSEWHERE

I occasionally link to the writings of far-Left San Francisco columnist Mark Morford. His rantings are so extreme, so vituperative and so ignorant (in all senses of that word) that they are usually far more amusing than anything else. His recent attack on the Duggar family however is utterly reprehensible. Somebody should fund the Duggars to sue the pants off him for claiming that they are psychologically disturbed because they have a large family. Though I am sure that the Duggars feel too full of blessings to be bothered by the screechings of Morford. One commenter referred to Morford as "heterosexually challenged" and that did rather make things fall into place for me. There is a pervasive bitchiness and egotism among some (but not all) homosexuals which outdoes the worst of female bitchiness and egotism (and women have been very kind to me in my life so I am again not speaking of ALL women). And I think it is that extreme egotism and bitchiness that we see in Morford. And I am sure that my valued homosexual readers will recognize the phenomenon of which I speak. By the way, I always use the objective term "homosexual" rather than "gay" as I see no reason why I should make any judgment about what the characteristic mood of homosexuals is.

Good to hear that there were in the end proper celebrations in Britain of Nelson's great victory at Trafalgar, despite British government fear of "offending the French": "The Queen lit a beacon beside the flagship on which Admiral Horatio Nelson died leading Britain to victory at the Battle of Trafalgar 200 years ago, as Nelson mania gripped the country.... First Sea Lord Sir Alan West said Britain was abuzz with Trafalgar Day celebrations. Amid a year characterised by Nelson mania, some 6000 events were taking place this weekend to mark the historic fight. "I was amazed how it has gripped the spirit of Britain across the country. It's almost a Nelson fever going on," he said". (My own tribute to Nelson is here)

I recently put up a post on Leftists as Elitists that looked at one long sneer at Australia and Australians by a noted Australian playwright. Andrew Bolt has just sneered back -- to excellent effect.

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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TWO MORE POSTERS THAT SHOW HOW LEFTIST FASCISM WAS

And this lot don't even need translating!

I guess most readers here will be aware that Britain too had a vigorous Fascist movement during the Hitler era. And the leader of the British Union of Fascists -- Sir Oswald Mosley -- was anything but a nonentity. The King even came to his wedding! And Mosley originally left the British Labour party (in 1930) because it was not socialist enough! As Mosley himself said in 1968: "I am not, and never have been, a man of the right. My position was on the Left and is now in the centre of politics"

Anyway, a picture is worth a thousand words so below are two of Mosley's posters from the 1930s. The first has the familiar "peace" motif that Leftists always use and the second will sound very familiar to Americans today. American Leftists are always claiming that it is the children of the poor who are dying in the American army in Iraq. Mosley said much the same in his time about military service in the British army.





If the pictures fail to come down, there are backup copies here and here

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TWO INTERESTING BOOK REVIEWS

There is a new book out which summarizes the long-known facts about radiation hormesis. Such facts will NEVER be mentioned in the MSM so we need books like this. It is called UNDEREXPOSED: What If Radiation Is Actually Good for You?. Some of the facts that the book mentions: Japanese survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki blasts are outliving (and healthier than) their unexposed peers; nuclear workers in power plants, shipyards, and weapons factories have not only less cancer, but a lower death rate from other diseases; populations in areas with high background-radiation have less cancer than those in areas with low background-radiation..... And there's much more.

Howard Schwartz has a review of the book Memory as a Moral Decision by Steven P. Feldman. Excerpt: "Feldman is conservative in the most unadulterated sense: he believes there is value in the past and in following the traditions that represent it within the present. These traditions contain within themselves the wisdom that previous generations gained through experience. They bring with them the reasons why we are who we are and in this way tie us into the historical and moral community of which we are a part. To deny the value of tradition is to deny everything that goes into our identity. Much of what we know, we know in a way that we cannot say. It is "tacit knowledge.""

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ELSEWHERE

British Left the chief antisemites today: "Parallel with this over the past few years, anti-Semitism, which had been in remission for 40 years, has dramatically revived. Violent acts against Jews are soaring, with 532 incidents recorded last year - a 42% increase from 2003. In many respects Jews are now regarded as pariahs, like their antecedents in the 1930s. While many Anglo-Jews insist that anti-Semitism is primarily a product of Muslim immigrants, the reality - as recently confirmed in a London police study - is that the core of anti-Semitism in England emanates from indigenous Britons. They are the ones demonizing Israel in the media. They shamelessly create Nazi-style caricatures like the one published by the Independent newspaper which portrayed Ariel Sharon as an ogre physically devouring Palestinian children. That obscene cartoon was awarded first prize as the best political cartoon of the year. It is "white" British academics, not Muslim immigrants, who promote anti-Israeli boycotts and divestment campaigns. And, needless to say, the BBC which has evolved into one of the greatest global agents demonizing Israel is not run by Muslims... London Mayor Ken Livingstone, who has now assumed the role of a 21st-century Oswald Mosley, continues his anti-Israel and anti-Jewish outbursts unabated. But there are no protests outside the mayor's office".

Sin is not cost effective: "Why do some countries develop economically, while others stagnate? Both the World Bank Institute and economist Alvaro Vargas Llosa point to the problem of corruption as one of the major culprits. They say that the most important 'natural resources' for economic development are not raw materials like oil or coal, but moral qualities like the even-handed enforcement of law, and the transparency of government. The World Bank Institute reports that in poor places like India, people pay bribes when their children are born, when they collect loved ones' bodies from mortuaries, and for everything in between: garbage collection, clean water, medicines, admission to public schools and even police protection."

The constitutional bar on an established church in the USA is routinely interpreted by Leftists to mandate the banishment of anything religious from any government-funded premises. This article gives you the history that you need in order to understand what the founders were really referring to.

As I expected, my recent post on my scripture blog about Romans 13:1-7 produced a bit of correspondence. I have just posted there one of the more interesting emails -- giving some Old Testament background to the text. The key passage under discussion is of course: "Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God"?

David Boxenhorn also emailed a comment that the Jewish view of government is "dina d'malkhuta dina" - "the law of the land is the law", which means that Jews have to follow civil law unless it conflicts with halakha [Jewish religious law]. He also notes a Talmudic quotation: Rabbi Chanina, an assistant of the high priest said: Pray for the welfare of the government, since but for fear of it men would swallow each other alive.

I have just heard from Madsen Pirie that the Adam Smith blog is going to feature my GREENIE WATCH blog on their site some time today. I quite often "steal" a post from them for GREENIE WATCH or EDUCATION WATCH so I am very pleased by their kind thoughts.

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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AUSTRALIANS ONLY HAVE FIVE COMMANDMENTS

(We are great abbreviators). The quiz I put up recently about knowledge of Australian slang seems to have been very popular so I thought I might re-post the observations below:

From its foundation in 1788, Australia has always been a traditionally unholy place with a very low rate of churchgoing. Americans trace their founding fathers to religious zealots but Australians trace their foundations to convicts. And other major population elements in the white settlement of Australia -- such as goldrush "diggers" and Irish rebels -- did little to alter the culture originating from our convict origins. Only about 3% of modern-day Australians have convict ancestors (I am one of the 3%) but the early days formed a culture that has been passed on to others as they arrived -- just as only a small minority of Americans now have primarily English ancestry but English is nonethless the language of America. And Australia's only national hero to this day is Ned Kelly -- an Irish highway robber who eventually was hanged for his undoubted crimes.

So how come Australia is a civil, prosperous and pleasant place to live? It is because Australians DO have a widely agreed-on moral code -- but it is not a Christian one. It originates from the values of the English working class of yesteryear and can perhaps be conveniently summed up (in its original Australian slang) as the following five "Commandments":

* Thou shalt not dob in thy mates
* Thou shalt not bung on an act.
* Thou shalt not be a tall poppy
* Thou shalt give everyone a fair go
* Thou shalt be fair dinkum

Translating these into standard English yields APPROXIMATELY the following:

* You must not incriminate your friends to the boss, the police or anyone else. Loyalty to your associates is all-important.
* You must not be ostentatious or pretend to be what you are not.
* You must treat others as your equals. If you are seen as being better than others in anything but sport you will be made to suffer for it.
* You must be fair and permissive in your treatment of others.
* You must not be insincere or dishonest.

From Hammurabi onwards, most moral codes have had much in common and the Australian and Christian moral codes do also have things in common but the Australian moral code is not preached in churches. It is simply traditional and widely heartfelt.

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