FROM BROOKES NEWS

US economy and productivity: some truths and fallacies: Two dangerous myths -- one a crude derivation of the other -- appear to be re-emerging as an explanation of the Bush boom. However, the fundamental point is that the ultimate source of rising productivity is investment
Why do dollar rates fluctuate?: When it comes to exchange rates confusion is the order of the day. Regardless of sneering references to speculators, it is not they who are at fault but the central banks
Bracks' Star Chamber commission applies the law selectively against Christians in favour of Muslim
bigots: The cowardly dhimmis who sit on the Equal Opportunity Commission and the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal have basically admitted that they are persecuting two Christian pastors at the behest of a Muslim bigot who incited religious hatred
Times' treason likely in cahoot with Dems: The New York Times must be investigated as to how it illegally obtained classified war-time information and whether it coordinated its activities with members of the Democrat Party
I Spy: Terrorists at Work: Spying gives us valuable knowledge about terrorist planning and activities. We can use that knowledge to save American lives and continue the fight against terrorism
Islamic fundamentalism is the elephant in the room: I am not the only Jew who has intimate knowledge of what happened to our people once before, not that long ago. The threat of Islamic Fundamentalism is on the march
Israel facing leadership crisis: Israel is in need of strong National leadership. She can't afford the continuation of the same self-destructive games any more

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ELSEWHERE

Major Terror Plot Against U.S. Ignored: "The mainstream U.S. media outlets have failed to report a major terrorist plot against the U.S. - because it would tend to support President Bush's use of NSA domestic surveillance, according to media watchdog groups. News of a planned attack masterminded by three Algerians operating out of Italy was widely reported outside the U.S., but went virtually unreported in the American media. Italian authorities recently announced that they had used wiretaps to uncover the conspiracy to conduct a series of major attacks inside the U.S. Italian Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu said the planned attacks would have targeted stadiums, ships and railway stations, and the terrorists' goal, he said, was to exceed the devastation caused by 9/11".


The party of Margaret Thatcher is now led by a blithering idiot: "David Cameron, Conservative leader, on Wednesday launched an outspoken attack on retailers, singling out WH?Smith for offering cut-price chocolate oranges. He accused it of irresponsible marketing that made people fat. His remarks, in a speech on health policy, sparked concern that the Tories had embarked on a campaign against big business to win votes from Labour and the Liberal Democrats. Mr Cameron said the consumer industries could do more to promote healthy lifestyles. "Try to buy a newspaper at the train station and, as you queue to pay, you're surrounded by cut-price offers for giant chocolate bars... As Britain faces an obesity crisis, why does WH Smith promote half-price chocolate oranges at its checkouts instead of real oranges?" he said. The comments caused bemusement at the retailer and embarrassment among senior Tories with City links, one of whom said it was a mistake to target WH Smith in this way. The company denied acting irresponsibly, saying it also sold dried fruit. "I am not quite sure why he picked on us. We offer customers a whole range of products so they have a choice," it said".

The imaginary America of the deaf and blind European Left: This past New Years Day, an editorial from across the Alps caught our attention. It was published in "Der Standard," Austria's self-described "leading quality newspaper": According to columnist Barbara Coudenhove-Kalergi, American journalism has been on the ropes ever since President Bush took office. And because of the President and his scheming corporate pals, American media have come under unparalleled "pressure" to censor themselves, refrain from criticizing the government, ignore topics involving the rest of the world and avoid domestic "social" issues such as single, homeless, oppressed, depressed, drug-addicted mothers." [No criticism of the government in America!!!! What sort of bubble do these pathetic Europeans live in?? Do they even live on the same planet as the rest of us?]

Those peace-loving Muslims and the ineffectual French again: "A gang of more than 20 youths -- thought to be North African immigrants -- terrorized hundreds of train passengers in a rampage of violence, robbery and sexual assault on New Year's Day ... The gang of between 20 and 30 youths boarded the train, heading from Nice on the French Riviera to Lyon, in eastern France, early on Jan. 1, as it carried 600 passengers home from New Year's Eve partying overnight. Once inside, they went wild, forcing passengers to hand over mobile phones and wallets, and slashing seats and breaking windows. A 20-year-old woman cornered by several of the marauders was sexually molested. "It was a real scene of pillage on the train," said the regional state prosecutor, Dominique Luigi, adding that the passengers were in a state of "panic." Train staff alerted police, and the train pulled into a station to wait. The three officers who initially turned up later were joined by reinforcements. A waitress in a bar near the station said two young women from the train had come inside in tears. "They told me there had been groping. They talked about sexual assaults. They were really traumatized," she said. The train resumed its journey with the heavy police presence on board but, just before Marseille, the youths pulled the emergency stop and many escaped." [No Pasaran has more details]

If you ever doubted that Leftists lack any principles, this profile of super-popular Leftist blogger Moulitsas should set all doubts at rest. He sounds a lot like other Greeks I have known.

I have put up here another installment of my correspondence about Australian/American differences in "authenticity".

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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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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FOLLOW-UP TO YESTERDAY'S "AUTHENTICITY" POST

I of course knew that the impressions I set down yesterday were rather provocative and therefore thought a long time about posting them. Because they had a potential to offend well-justified American feelings of patriotism, I was careful to point out that my generalizations were only that -- ones to which there were plenty of exceptions. A definite omission in what I posted however was that I should have said that I had in mind big-city Americans. Most of my time in the USA was spent in (horrors!) Los Angeles, San Francisco and NYC. I should have added that my experience of small-town America was of thoroughly warm-hearted and genuine people. Unfortunately, however, in most ways it is the big cities that set the tone and have most influence. Only one of the emails I received about the post was condemnatory and it was very ad hominem so I will not reproduce it. Below are however four other emails I received:

1). "Having lived in NYC for 15 some years before returning to New Zealand, I'd have to say you're not wrong. However, I did find upstate NY (rural) people to be far more authentic - as were pretty much all the Southeners I happened upon. On the flip side, I didn't come across many "she'll be right" Americans - most are pretty competitive and believe "good is not as good as better"".

2). "Just read your grafs about phony Americans. I have only met a few Aussies, and I must say they did seem very genuine. I'm not sure where in America you have traveled, but it sounds like you may have been in an urban areas, perhaps in the Northeast, or (shudder) Southern California. Next time, try rural Texas, New Mexico, Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Colorado, anywhere in the deep South, or anywhere rural or "small town" in nature. Some call these areas "fly over country." Perhaps a better impression will emerge. Or perhaps you have visited such places and come away with the same poor impressions. I'm not sure what to think about that, as I find most rural and small town Americans to be noticeably deficient in worrying over their image."

3). I didn't think this post was pointless at all. Your comments about one of the characteristics of Australians and Americans is straight to the heart of the difference between our countries. I wanted to go to go Australia on R&R while I was in Viet-Nam and didn't get to go. I was finally able to make it almost twenty years later. I finished my assignment on the island of Guam and was going back to the States to retire from the military. Before I came back I took thirty days leave and most of my savings and went to Australia. I saw as much of the county as I could in the time I had but it's the people that made my visit such a memorable experience. I've traveled across most the United States during my military career and I agree with what you say: Americans in general are more concerned with the impression they create. I didn't see that concern at all in the Australians I met in the pubs of Sydney, Melbourne and Adlelaide and played cards with on the train going to Alice Springs. An expression you sometimes hear in the U.S. is "get real"; there would be no use for that expression in Australia.

4). "I have just read your article regarding the problem with Americans having difficulty defining who they are and spending too much time presenting some image of the moment. There is a degree of truth in that statement, but I believe there is a degree of truth in that statement in any society that permits their members to be who they want to be. The real problem isn't their not knowing who they are. The problem is not knowing who they should be.

I had the pleasure of meeting some Aussie sailors in the late 60's when my ship ported in Singapore. I will agree wholeheartedly that Aussies have few inhibitions and are truly genuine. Most of them would rather fight and drink than do almost anything else. I say this with affection as I thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

The real problem we Americans have is a lack of interest in history and the lessons it teaches because we rely on television entirely too much. I think you will find there is more depth in Americans than you realize when the going gets tough. At home as well as abroad, we also have the tendency to want to be liked entirely too much. As a result we adapt to the circumstances and adopt ideas that may be detrimental to us too easily. Americans are an easygoing lot. That is why we hate wars so much. Wars interfere with a good time. Extreme adversity will however, bring out what is best in American society, which has been the most generous society the world has ever known.

It is true we have a judgmental mentality in America, although that judgmental attitude is tempered with a degree of acceptance that would be totally unacceptable in most places of the world. What you say is true, puritanical restraints create hypocrisy, but as nationally syndicated columnist William Raspberry once noted, "There is something to be said for hypocrisy". What? It acts as a restraint since those at are being hypocritical recognize they are doing something wrong. Where as today, we have few hypocrites and few restraints. Neither is good, but you can't be a hypocrite unless you have values".

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ELSEWHERE

Another historical insight into the Leftist mind: Opposite a car park that I sometimes use on those rare occasions when I go to the bank, there is a graffito up which says, "Stop GHOGM". Now what in the blue blazes is "CHOGM"? -- you might ask. It stands for "Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting" -- with the Commonwealth concerned being the British Commonwealth. It is purely a talk-shop with no powers whatsover, though its members do seem to hope (usually in vain) that their resolutions will have some moral force towards lessening human rights abuses. So what could be more innocuous and worthy? Yet to the Left it should be "stopped". Why? There is no rational reason. It is just that the Left like disrupting the normal activities of other people. That is it, pure and simple. There is no other rhyme or reason to it. Trying to please or placate the Left is pointless. They will always find SOMETHING to condemn, no matter how brainless the condemnation may be.

The bureaucratized British: "In his book, Lions, Donkeys and Dinosaurs, Page deconstructs many of the most cherished beliefs of the men and women who run our military. Most spend their careers defending the indefensible, Page says, largely because it is the only way to keep their jobs and inflation-proof pensions. The number of officers is way out of proportion to the number of service units that actually need commanders. "The army's two combat divisions - one of which is at least partly fictional - might call for 10 or 15 brigadiers, two or three major-generals and a single lieutenant-general to run them," Page said. "Maybe we should also have some extra generals - say two or three times this number. What we actually have is more than 10 times as many." There are 180 brigadiers and 60 generals. And, as Page points out, the military hierarchy is even more distorted in the Royal Navy, where there are 41 admirals with only 40 major warships or submarines to look after. The RAF has 40 air marshals for 36 squadrons. Little has improved since C Northcote Parkinson of "Parkinson's law" fame first identified the problem 50 years ago".

The lying Castro: "The longest-ruling despot in the world is Fidel Castro, who seized power in Cuba 47 years ago this week. Like most dictators, Castro is a brazen liar, especially about his own regime. This, for example, is what he told an international conference in Havana in April 2001: "There have never been death squads in our country, nor a single missing person, nor a single political assassination, nor a single victim of torture. . . . You may travel around the country, ask the people, look for a single piece of evidence, try to find a single case where the Revolutionary government has ordered or tolerated such an action. And if you find them, then I will never speak in public again." ,,, Castro's mocking challenge -- "try to find a single case" -- is not going unanswered. The Cuba Archive project (www.CubaArchive.org) is working to document the cost, in human life, of more than five decades of Cuban dictatorship... It is heartbreaking work.... So far the archive has catalogued the deaths of 9,240 victims of the Castro regime"

I have just put up a new recipe on my recipe blog. (Mirror site here). It is a convenient recipe for that yummy Hungarian creation -- Liptauer Cheese spread. Great for parties and canapes.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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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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ON BEING AUTHENTIC

This is probably a pretty pointless post but I just want to say a little about one of the differences I have noticed between U.S. and Australian society. In Australia, it is almost a national religion to be authentic. To be "fair dinkum" is expected and to "bung on an act" is regarded as very low indeed. In standard English that means that to be respected, Australians have to be genuine, sincere, honest, natural and unpretentious. I myself share those values and I hope I exemplify them.

In the USA, however, there seems to be little of that attitude. From my observations on my various trips to the USA, honesty seems to run a distant second to making a good impression. It seems to me that most Americans don't really know who they are at all. They are constantly aware of their "image" and often wonder how they can improve it but "being themselves" is almost a meaningless expression to them. Obviously not all Americans are like that and readers of this blog who write to me seem generally to be a pretty individualistic lot who know where they stand and are not afraid to express it. But, on the whole, I see American society to be a very largely phony society. I think the average American is a good-hearted person but the pressures under which they operate militate against frankness and openness.

So what are those pressures? I think a lot of it goes back to America's puritan origins. Puritanism is against nature so where puritanism prevails hypocrisy is a quite inevitable outcome. And while America is no longer puritan in the original sense of that word, it still retains the judgmentalism of one-another that the original puritans had. These days puritanism is more likely to manifest itself in the form of recycling your garbage than in keeping the Sabbath but the need to claim virtue is still there.

So in the end I feel rather sad about the pressures under which Americans operate but I think it should be encouraging that there is a much more relaxed and natural society on the other side of the globe. Being authentic is possible and works well.


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ELSEWHERE

I have just put up here a rather sad email from a disabled American veteran who had the temerity to challenge illegal behavior on the part of the U.S. Postal "Service". They cut off his mail, of course. That's the behaviour you have to expect from an arrogant, legally protected monopoly.

A reader writes: "Marin County, North of San Francisco, is a liberal bastion. It is also the location of the Russian and Napa rivers, two streams that just went over their banks causing millions of dollars damage. One decimated city, Sebastopol, probably wishes it had declared itself a flood free city instead of a nuclear-free city. I wonder if I should ask the cities up there to contribute to the Wild and Scenic Rivers cause.

The usual Leftist love of violence: "A Labour Party campaign manager went on trial today accused of trying to throttle a young Tory activist on the eve of the General Election. David Harding, a Labour Party worker, is accused of punching and grabbing the throat of Robert Benham, 25, a parliamentary assistant to Andrew Rosindell, the Conservative MP for Romford in Essex, on May 4 last year. Harding, 48, of Hornchurch in Essex, denies common assault. He also denies using abusive words or behaviour during the alleged incident.

More Muslim thuggery: "They weren't your average thugs. Dressed in bow ties and dark suits, the group of nearly a dozen men entered a corner store and smashed bottles of liquor, wine and beer with metal pipes, shattering refrigerator cases and leaving behind a terrified clerk along with piles of broken glass. No one was held up. Nothing was stolen. The vandals just wanted to leave a message: Stop selling booze to fellow Muslims. In urban America, friction between poor residents and the immigrant merchants who sell cigarettes, bread and alcoholic beverages from neighborhood markets is nothing new. But the recent attack at San Pablo Liquor has injected religion into the old debate over whether a glut of such stores contributes to violent crime, vagrancy and other social ills. Followed by an identical attack at another West Oakland store the same evening, the episode highlighted tensions -- and different interpretations of doctrine -- between black Muslims hoping to reclaim troubled parts of the city and Middle Eastern shop owners, many of them also of Muslim faith".

A good rant: "A former friend of mine has called me a "zombie nutcase." Why? Because I refused to waste an hour of my irreplaceable time to watch a video which purports to be: "A one hour analysis of 9/11 and how it is more likely than not that the government was actually behind the attacks." What purpose would this video serve? It would, if believed, terminally discredit the Bush administration and the War on Terror. Who would benefit from the terminal discrediting of the Bush administration and the War on Terror? Certainly not the Libertarians, and the Perot faction is for all practical purposes dead as Lenin. Who could possibly replace President Bush and the Republicans as the ruling party in the United States? The Democrats, of course. The problem with this is that the Democrats are a bunch of traitors, thieves, and murderers who don't care how high the pile of human bodies is as long as they are firmly seated on top, and thus are objectively unfit to hold any form of public office. And if this wasn't bad enough, as a former Army combat rifleman who refuses to be an mindlessly obedient drone in the socialist collective I would be looked upon by the Democrats as some form of vermin".

Who would have predicted it? "The city of Houston is appealing for emergency funding to help to fight a huge crime wave following the arrival of refugees from hurricane-hit New Orleans. The murder rate in the Texan city leapt by 24 per cent last year, with the toll for November and December up by 70 per cent on the same period in 2004. There were 324 murders in Houston in 2005, compared with 263 in 2004. Of the 2005 tally, 51 occurred in November and December - up 21 on the same period of 2004. The police department has not monitored precisely how many can be attributed to those evacuated after Hurricane Katrina, but says that at least 12 homicides in the past four months have involved evacuees either as victims or perpetrators. While stressing that they cannot lay all the blame at the door of hurricane evacuees, the police chief and the mayor suggest that the influx of as many as 150,000 extra people has been a contributory factor. The issue is highly sensitive as the majority of the hurricane's victims were drawn from New Orleans's black underclass."

One of my regular Dutch correspondents was moved to comment on my reference yesterday to this stupid Dutch site. He says that such stupidity is all too typical in the Netherlands today and offers some interesting comments on the Netherlands generally. I have posted his 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. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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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 JFK ASSASSINATION AGAIN

Here's something interesting from Germany's Der Spiegel (in German). It is a report about a (Leftist) German filmmaker Wilfried Huismann, who thinks he has evidence that Castro ordered the assassination of JFK:

His documentary "Rendezvous mit dem Tod" revolves around the 6 days in September 1963 that Oswald spent in Mexico City. It took Huisman five years to make the film, with extensive research in Mexico and the US. His first hint was an interview with the retired FBI-Agent James Hosty, who was one of the guys that interrogated Oswald after the assassination. He said Oswald was very arrogant and only showed weakness when asked what he did in Mexico City. Huismann has more: a G2 agent from Cuba, who says "we did it"; witnesses and evidence that Oswald had intensive contact with people of the Cuban embassy in Mexico.

An active member of the Russian FSB told Huismann that the KGB notified the Cubans about Oswald after he was in the Soviet Union, and the Cubans contacted Oswald shortly after that. Another Witness, the retired FBI agent Laurence Keenan, was in Mexico in 1963 and says he felt like he found "Pandora's box" there, but was personally ordered back to Washington by Edgar Hoover after only three days.

The German ARD and the Japanese NHK sponsored the film, and also paid a Mexican journalist for about a year to investigate in Mexico. The film will be aired on January the 6th.

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ELSEWHERE

More Leftist censorship: There is a site called Article Destination that looked to me like it might be what it claims to be -- a useful way of circulating articles. So I put up a few of my articles on their site. But they showed their true colours when I submitted this rigorously factual and fully referenced article to them. They deleted it! Identifying Nazism with the Left is just too much of course and MUST be censored. The site where I have the article posted gets over 1,000 hits a day and has a high Google ranking so the censorship attempt will fortunately fail.

Putin caves in: "Russia is restoring full gas deliveries to European states, effectively easing a blockade on Ukraine, but the Kremlin's row with its ex-Soviet neighbour that triggered the sanction is still bubbling. Russia accused Kiev of illegally tapping off gas from the pipeline crossing its territory to Europe after the Russian gas monopoly Gazprom cut its feed for Ukraine on Sunday. States from Serbia to Germany complained of supply cuts and Washington warned Moscow against using energy as a political tool. In agreeing yesterday to restore pumping close to normal levels, Moscow bowed to Western pressure and acknowledged, albeit reluctantly and with some frustration, that it could not fully control and channel gas supplies crossing Ukraine. "With the aim of preventing a possible energy crisis, caused by Ukraine illegally taking gas, Gazprom has taken the decision to deliver additional gas into the gas transport system of Ukraine," the company said in a statement".

There is a page here by some highly educated but ignorant Dutchman who claims to show that Europe is more civilized than the USA. The major part of his spiel is an attempt to specify what is necessary for a democracy to function. And what a fool he makes of himself! He sees a judicially enforceable written constitition as necessary and a separation of the legislature and the administration as necessary. Yet I live in a country (Australia) where there is NO separation of the administration and the legislature. So is Australia not democratic? Only an arrogant fool of a Dutchman would say so. And it is not only Australia he ignores. Canada, New Zealand and many other British-influenced countries have similar systems. And the world's most venerable democracy (Britain) has no written or judicially enforceable constitution at all. Ultimately, the British politicians can do what they like. So is Britain not democratic? The irony is of course that the country the ignoramus is trying to criticize (the USA) does have all the desired characteristics he lists. I guess it is all testimony to how totally inadequate to an understanding of the world a European education is.

Not postmodern enough? "They can't judge a book without its cover. Publishers and agents have rejected two Booker prize-winning novels submitted as works by aspiring authors. One of the books considered unworthy by the publishing industry was by V S Naipaul, one of Britain's greatest living writers, who won the Nobel prize for literature. The exercise by The Sunday Times draws attention to concerns that the industry has become incapable of spotting genuine literary talent. Typed manuscripts of the opening chapters of Naipaul's In a Free State and a second novel, Holiday, by Stanley Middleton, were sent to 20 publishers and agents. None appears to have recognised them as Booker prizewinners from the 1970s that were lauded as British novel writing at its best. Of the 21 replies, all but one were rejections".

New Orleans corruption: "Some members of the governor's staff will return from the three-day holiday on Tuesday to newly renovated offices at the State Capitol. Shortly after the two hurricanes, Gov. Kathleen Blanco decided to renovate some of her staff's offices. At the time of her decision, Blanco also was hinting at deep budget cuts to state programs and the possibility of laying off 20 percent of the state workforce. The project cost $564,838".

Hollywood parasites: "Apparently, Wayne Newton and Robin Williams are having a hard time lining up Hollywood "talent" to go to Iraq to entertain the troops -- the troops, mind you, that provide them with the freedom to make huge sums of money for engaging in a pleasant occupation under pleasant conditions (resulting, all too often, in a trashy or silly product).... Now, celebrities are afraid, so it seems, that deigning to entertain the troops will be construed as an endorsement of the war, and -- heavens! -- that wouldn't do at all. Might be bad for the career, or result in some odd glances at the fashionable cocktail parties. Barbara Streisand, Alec Baldwin and all the rest of the summer soldiers and sunshine patriots needn't waste any of our time suggesting that they "support" the troops, if not the President. Obviously, they don't".

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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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 OF THE ARTICLES RECENTLY UP ON ICJS:

US: No militants in Palestinian cabinet
Justice still in detention
Western Muslims' racist rape spree
Talk June 2004 by Mark Regev
Talk December 2005 by Mark Regev
Road to the point of no return
Are we becoming "acclimated" to terror?
Down at your ABC, they sure know how to party
Persecuting the Holy Land's Christians
Off the Air
Middle East feels the ripple of progress
Too much law not enough order
Critics on the wrong track over racism
Dangerous Peaceniks on the Hudson
Pentagon breaks the Islam taboo
Iran's threat
Two States or two universes
In Iran, arming for Armageddon
Media bias is real, finds UCLA political scientist
Muslim gang rapes and the Aussie riots
Was careless coverage to blame for racial conflict?
Media must avoid fanning flames
Press must lift its game on self-regulation
The etiquette of destruction
The 'shock jocks' are in tune with the silent
majority
Press Council dismisses Age complaint
It's time to think
Interview with Pierre Rehov
Blame race riots on police force neglect
Sons of beaches: a land girt by bigots
The rise of middle eastern crime in Australia
Helping eople evicted from Gaza
The white moor as willing executioner
The Media War on Israel
Five questions non-Muslims would like answered
Expert: Saudis have radicalized 80% of US mosques

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ELSEWHERE

I have just spammed all the bloggers I know with the following message but a lot of the messages probably got trashed as junk so I am repeating it here in case I missed anyone: "Keith Burgess Jackson, a tenured philosophy professor, has just started a new blog designed to deflate thuggish far-Leftist blogger, Brian Leiter. Leiter has a lot of influence and uses it to harm people who dare to challenge him. So Keith wants to try to civilize him a bit. Apparently Leiter is obsessed with his reputation. Keith has reason to believe that Leiter scours the internet for references to himself and then writes to people to get bad references removed. Leiter has also apparently hired a lawyer to get the University of Pennsylvania law students to take down their rankings blog. Keith wants to put him down, but only by saying true things about him. Truth is an absolute defense to defamation. If you would like to help, at least please blogroll the new blog so that it rises in Google's rankings, so that when people type "Brian Leiter" into Google, the new blog comes up. I myself have no connection with the new blog -- just a wish to see it thrive. The blog is here".



The new year celebrations: "Londoners ignored a subway strike to welcome the New Year. Some Japanese climbed a snowcapped peak to see the first sunrise of 2006. GIs in Iraq got a year-end "American Idol" treat. New Year's celebrations like these spread throughout the world Saturday and early Sunday and were generally jubilant, a contrast with last year when the devastation of the Indian Ocean tsunami led many countries and individuals to cancel festivities. In France, youths burned hundreds of cars in a traditional year-end form of vandalism, but the country appeared to have avoided a massive resurgence of the rioting that broke out this fall. By 4 a.m. Sunday, police counted 343 vehicles burned - just slightly more than the comparable figure from last year, 323, police said. They also arrested 266 people, but it wasn't clear if the arrests were linked to the vandalism".

There is voluminous documentation here of the often ludicrous Leftist bias in the Los Angeles Times.

There is an interesting review of the state of U.S. immigration legislation here: "While it's easy to write an immigration bill and give it a stern name, it's awfully hard to pass one. That will be the challenge confronting Congress next year."

There is a pretty disgusting story just up on Australian Politics about the Australian flag being banned from Sydney's most popular beach because it might "inflame" someone.

Wicked Thoughts has got a very funny blooper just up.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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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 OF THE RECENT ARTICLES UP ON "THINK ISRAEL"

GAZA FALLOUT by Al Skudsi bin Hookah
YASSER ABBAS by Tom Gross
TERRORISM: THE ROOT CAUSES by David Meir-Levi
JIHADI TERRORISM: RIDICULOUS EXPLANATIONS, COMPLEX SOLUTIONS by Dr. Babu Suseelan
THE ORIGIN OF THE OCCUPATION MYTH by Howard Grief
HOW AFGHAN CAPTIVITY SHAPED MY FEMINISM by Phyllis Chesler
WHAT'S WRONG: THE ARAB LIBERAL CRITIQUE OF ARAB SOCIETY by Barry Rubin
AL-QAEDA IN EUROPE by Jamie Glazov
FOR JEWS, THERE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN TWO IRANS by Abbas Milani
THE BANGLADESH GOVERNMENT AND THE AHMADIAS SECT by Salah Choudhury
A MOSQUE GROWS IN BOSTON by Dean Barnett
FRANCE AND THE JEWISH HERITAGE IN JERUSALEM by Elliott A. Green
FRENCH HISTORY AND CURRENT ATTITUDES TO ISRAEL: An Interview with Freddy Eytan by Manfred Gerstenfeld
PRINCE CHARLES: ISLAM'S NEW AMBASSADOR by Cinnamon Stillwell
"MUNICH" STANDS FOR "APPEASEMENT" by Kate Wright
ELIMINATING ISRAEL POLITELY by Daniel Pipes
UN CEREMONY INCLUDES MAP OF "PALESTINE" IN PLACE OF ISRAEL by Ezra HaLevi
MUSLIMS MARCH OVER CARTOONS OF THE PROPHET by Kate Connolly
MEDIA BIAS IS REAL by Meg Sullivan

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ELSEWHERE

There is so much reading above that I am not going to put up much else today:

The kids are all right, dammit: "In 1972, said David Mindich, a journalism professor at St. Michael's College and author of Tuned Out: Why Americans Under 40 Don't Follow the News, half of all college students read a newspaper every day. Now the percentage is 21 percent. He and other panelists invoked a long-term decline in youth political participation, a trend which is at the very least complicated by the turnout in the 2004 election, in which, according to Pew Charitable Trusts, the youth vote surged more than any other group's. Indeed, with some notable exceptions, the notion of today's youth as disengaged is not particularly convincing."

Tom Sowell on Cheap politicians : "I don't make a million dollars a year but I think every member of Congress should be paid at least that much. It's not because those turkeys in Washington deserve it but because we deserve much better people than we have in Congress. Paying every member of Congress a million dollars a year is absolutely trivial compared to the vast amounts of taxpayers' money wasted by cheap politicians doing things to get themselves re-elected. You could pay every member of Congress a million dollars a year for a century for less money than it costs to run the Agriculture Department one year. There is no point complaining about the ineptness, deception or corruption of government while refusing to do anything to change the incentives and constraints that lead to ineptness, deception and corruption."

They are teaching some pretty weird economics at Harrisburg Area Community College (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania). We read here: "The main sources of the U.S. public debt are: (1) Wars; (2) Recessions; (3) Tax-rate cuts". No mention of government spending!

Lee Harris has a very sarcastic comment here on what it takes to win a Nobel prize.

There is another (sarcastic) article on the inaccuracy of Wikipedia here

With the help of a Dutch-speaking reader, I have just put up here some background on the anti-capitalist Nazi poster that I put up yesterday.

Chris Brand has just done a new lot of posts - updating us on the latest news about race and IQ

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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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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HAPPY NEW YEAR! to all who come by here



I am writing this in the wee small hours of 2006, my New Year's Eve celebrations having just concluded. Ann and I went to a social occasion earlier in the evening but we spent the last couple of hours of the old year in one-another's company only. As midnight approached we put on a tape of "Andy Stewart's Hogmanay". Even an ersatz Scottish New Year is better than no Scottish New Year! We greatly enjoyed it anyway. I have always loved the great old Scottish sentimental songs and Andy gave us a great selection of them. The Scots know who they are and what they are.

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ANOTHER NAZI POSTER FROM WW2

This one was issued in the Netherlands for a Dutch audience. Given my limited comprehension of Dutch, I do not totally follow the history of the poster but I gather that it was issued by the Nazi occupation authorities after the German invasion of the Netherlands. In any case, however, it is a striking display of how Leftist Nazism was. In translation the poster reads: "With Germany AGAINST capitalism".



The poster is one of a series. You can see the rest of them here. Other posters in the series say Nazism is against Bolshevism, for a new Europe etc. -- all of which sounds a lot like the modern-day EU to me. There is a discussion of the series here (In Dutch).

Next time someone tells you that Nazism was Rightist, ask them how come the Nazis were against capitalism!

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ELSEWHERE

Out of Asia? "Two archaeologists are challenging what many experts consider to be the basic assumption of human migration—that humankind arose in Africa and spread over the globe from there. The pair proposes an alternative explanation for human origins: arising in and spreading out of Asia. Robin Dennell, of the University of Sheffield in England, and Wil Roebroeks, of Leiden University in the Netherlands, describe their ideas in the December 22 issue of Nature. They believe that early-human fossil discoveries over the past ten years suggest very different conclusions about where humans, or humanlike beings, first walked the Earth. New Asian finds are significant, they say, especially the 1.75 million-year-old small-brained early-human fossils found in Dmanisi, Georgia, and the 18,000-year-old "hobbit" fossils (Homo floresiensis) discovered on the island of Flores in Indonesia. Such finds suggest that Asia's earliest human ancestors may be older by hundreds of thousands of years than previously believed, the scientists say".

Economic freedom in the Arab world : The idea economic freedom is essential to human progress catches on in the Arab world. "At a gala dinner here attended by hundreds of Arab diplomats and other prominent guests, a new Omani organization, the International Research Foundation, released an 'Economic Freedom of the Arab World' report showing how big differences in policies in the region can produce big differences in economic outcomes. The report looks at 39 variables in 16 countries, ranging from size of government to monetary policy, trade openness, regulation and the rule of law. Published in conjunction with the Fraser Institute, whose global index on economic freedom is well known, the report suggests what is true of the world is also true in the Arab region: Economically free countries tend to be more prosperous and faster growing."

Baby Boomers' unhappy future: "The U.S. economy speeds toward a brick wall. But instead of trying to stop or even slow the fiscal train wreck, many senior citizens want to push hard on the accelerator. Nothing was more evident at the recent 2005 White House Conference on Aging than the palpable greed of seniors. Perhaps they see it as getting even with their Baby Boomer kids for how we aggravated them in the 1960s and '70s. Whatever their motives, they are not very realistic. As U.S. Comptroller General David Walker, the chief federal auditor, made clear, our country can't afford existing programs for the elderly, such as Medicare. If more benefits are piled on, as many conference delegates demanded, we face economic disaster. Policymaking in Washington is often nine-tenths political theater and one-tenth deliberation. The Conference on Aging was no exception."

Monopoly blues: "There are many other instances of economic inefficiency and other maladies caused by government supported monopolies -- just think of how elementary and high schools, as well as a great many colleges and universities, are monopolistic by coercing support from taxpayers for themselves, thus restricting other educational options for their clients. (Private schools aren't allowed to expropriate their operating expenses!) All in all, these unnatural monopolies -- as distinct form the natural ones that exist simply because they have managed to outdo competitors in their line of business -- impose serious burdens on many of us. But they are now so entrenched that hardly anyone even discusses breaking them up. The last time a serious change was made was when Ma Bell was broken up and even then the result wasn't quite what a free market would produce."

Europe must embrace true free speech: "In Europe, five years into the 21st century, two writers face trial and imprisonment for something they said or wrote. Both could be incarcerated, not for physically harming another person or for damaging property, but for uttering words that European states deem offensive. Yet only one has been defended by the international literati, who have described the attempt to curtail his freedom of speech as an act of 'anachronistic brutality.' The other writer's plight has been ignored; worse, many liberals have supported the campaign to punish him for expressing outrageous views. As such, the two cases cast a harsh light on the debate about free speech in Europe: They suggest we Europeans have a partial, picky attitude to freedom of expression, and thus do not understand the real meaning of this fundamental liberty."

Stupid support for the U.S. textile industry: ""It's easy to list the ways in which U.S. cotton and textile policies are intensely stupid. They jack up prices, muck up foreign policy, and keep us all looking a little more J.C. Penney than Bergdorf Goodman. What's harder is to explain is why no one much cares, or at least cares enough to change a sorry state of affairs that has persisted for centuries. In The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy, Pietra Rivoli, a business professor at Georgetown University, goes a long way toward explaining why we continue to support an economically preposterous industry. Tracing the deeply politicized life of a six-dollar shirt, Rivoli draws on economic theory, American history, and her travels through Texas, Dar es Salaam, Shanghai, and Washington. The result is lively, accessible, and infuriating."

I love it! Keith Burgess Jackson has started a new blog specifically targeting the thuggish Brian Leiter.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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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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FRANCE VERSUS THE USA

French democracy unable to cope with its Muslims: "This is the end of the French political system that has prevailed since de Gaulle came to power and established the Fifth Republic in 1958," said Guilhou. "The middle classes are becoming impoverished, and they fear for the future of their children. The system has run its course, and I expect a general implosion of the system leading to something between the Argentine economic crash and political crisis of 2001 when the government was thrown out of power, and the Lebanese situation. We can expect populist reflexes to emerge in the middle class, leading to that traditional French recourse in a crisis, the election of a new Bonapartism," Guilhou added.

French economy in trouble: "France's economy is under fresh scrutiny after industrial production unexpectedly fell in October. Output dropped by 2.5%, after rising by 0.6% in September, the statistical office INSEE reported. While the government has promised to revive the flagging economy, a mixed picture has emerged in recent months. Despite the good intentions recent riots have dented consumer confidence, unemployment is still above 9% and reforms are proving difficult to enact".

U.S. economy booms: "The U.S. economy turned in a remarkably strong performance in the summer despite surging energy prices and the battering the Gulf Coast states took from hurricanes, although business growth was slightly lower than the government previously estimated. The Commerce Department reported Wednesday that the gross domestic product, the nation's total output of goods and services, rose at an annual rate of 4.1 percent in the July-September quarter. It was the fastest pace of growth in 1 1/2 years".

There is an article here that says that France quarrels with America not because the pair are so different but because they are so alike

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ELSEWHERE

I have a post on Australian Politics about the Victorian Equal Opportunity Commission -- famous for prosecuting two Christian pastors who quoted the Koran. They have just refused to take note of REAL abuse of Islam, thus showing their total hypocrisy.

Leftist racism: "Nothing brings out racist slurs like an ambitious black man who doesn't know his "place." So when Maryland's lieutenant governor, Michael Steele, announced his candidacy for the US Senate recently, the bigots reared up. On one popular website, The News Blog, Steele's picture was grotesquely doctored, making him look like a minstrel-show caricature. "I's Simple Sambo and I's Running for the Big House," read the insulting headline accompanying the picture. This wasn't some white supremacist slime from the right-wing fringe. The News Blog is a liberal site, and the reason for its racist attack on Steele, a former chairman of the Maryland Republican Party, is that he is a conservative. Specifically, a black conservative. As far as too many liberals are concerned, blacks who reject liberalism deserve to be smeared as Sambos and worse....

Conservative group speaks out: "The television commercials are attention-grabbing: Newly found Iraqi documents show that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, including anthrax and mustard gas, and had "extensive ties" to al-Qaida. The discoveries are being covered up by those "willing to undermine support for the war on terrorism to selfishly advance their shameless political ambitions." The hard-hitting spots are part of a recent public-relations barrage aimed at reversing a decline in public support for President Bush's handling of Iraq. But these advertisements aren't paid for by the Republican National Committee or other established White House allies. Instead, they are sponsored by Move America Forward, a media-savvy outside advocacy group that has become one of the loudest - and most controversial - voices in the Iraq debate".

It is very encouraging to see an article by Abdurrahman Wahid in the WSJ which sets out the urgency of defeating Islamic extremism. Better known as Gus Dur, Wahid is of course arguably the most respected religious leader in the world's most populous Islamic nation -- Indonesia. As Indonesia is on Australia's doorstep, many politically aware Australians are rather appreciative of Gus Dur.

New England elitists deny choice to their people: "As a newspaper reporter, Diane Srebnick covered the division that surfaced last year when a Dunkin' Donuts planned to move into rural Cornish, Maine. The tension she witnessed between an anti-franchise coalition and Dunkaccino fans spurred her to preventive action: a ban on 'formula restaurants' in her own community a few weeks ago. A tiny town of 2,500, Shapleigh has no franchises. But Ms. Srebnick, a planning board member, says corporate sprawl is a concern for even the most remote parts of Maine. ... Her measure comes on the heels of two similar bans within two years in Maine. Last month, the seaside village of Ogunquit banned all chain restaurants from its vicinity, following in nearby York's footsteps the year before."

Keep the front door of legal immigration open: "In the long run, the best way to fix our immigration system is not to militarize the border or to drive undocumented immigrants further into the shadows. The flood of illegal immigration exists, in large part, because U.S. laws do not provide legal channels to accommodate the labor demand of employers and the supply of immigrants willing to work. An estimated 70 percent of the current agriculture work force is illegal. Current guest-worker programs are capped at 66,000 annually for non-agriculture service industries, the current temporary agricultural-worker program is so bureaucratic that over 40 percent of applications to the Department of Labor are not acted upon until after the harvest, and current laws allow the admission of only 5,000 unskilled workers annually on a permanent basis."

I recently had an email discussion with Steve Sailer on the topic of Hispanic IQ which I reproduce here

I have also just put up here an email from a reader in response to my recent comment on the Brace craniofacial findings about human evolution.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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

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 ORIGIN OF MODERN EUROPEANS

Physical anthropology is not my field at all but I have a slight interest in the genetic origins of the British population from which I personally am descended so I do occasionally note studies that attempt to enlighten us about that. I have however given up taking notice of the DNA studies as their conclusions seem to vary between saying that the English population is almost wholly Celtic and almost wholly Anglo-Saxon. My conclusion is that DNA is so complex and our understanding of it is still so slight that we will have to wait for some time before anything definitive emerges.

I was therefore rather interested to see the latest paper by Loring Brace using craniofacial measurements of ancient skulls to trace European ancestry. Such measurements do at least offer the prospect of being a lot simpler than DNA. There is an abstract of the paper here, the full paper is available here and there is a popular summary of it here. I am afraid, however, that I also find difficulties with Brace's conclusions. What Brace appears to have found is that modern Europeans are in appearance more like very ancient Europeans than the Europeans who came in between. The Europeans who came in between were the first farmers (he refers to them as "neolithic") and he says that they had heavier features than either present-day or very ancient Europeans. His explanation for his finding is that the first farmers came into Europe from the Middle East and taught the natives how to farm but then mostly died out (or at least left little genetic legacy).

That seems reasonable at first glance but if the natives soon learnt to farm from the incomers, how come most of the farmer remains are not in fact those of the natives? Surely it is absurd to claim that the natives conveniently refrained from farming until the incomers died out!

What seems a slightly more reasonable explanation to me is that the original European population evolved in two directions -- the more heavyset farmers and the more gracile hunters but, perhaps due to climatic changes, the hunters eventually took up farming too and in the process wiped out most of the original farmers -- aided in that, no doubt, by the superior fighting skills that their original hunting lifestyle had given them.

That of course leaves us with the problem of explaining how farming APPEARS to have originated in the Middle East. Time-lines that far back are however very speculative so I see no real difficulty in supposing that the first farmers in the Middle East in fact fled there from Europe.

But that still leaves the question of where the original Europeans came from. Brace believes that they gradually evolved from Neanderthals -- which conflicts with the usual view that they originated from Cro-Magnons out of Africa. Brace's data do conveniently show little affinity between Cro-Magnons and modern Europeans so that is certainly interesting. The only firm conclusion that seems to emerge from it all is that the present-day population of Europe is very ancient.

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ELSEWHERE

Something had to be done: "China plans to jail anyone who helps prospective parents to learn the sex of their unborn child, in an attempt to reduce the number of female fetuses being aborted. It is already illegal to scan a fetus to discover its sex. But an amendment submitted to the standing committee of the National People's Congress, or parliament, will mean up to three years in jail and heavy fines for anyone helping with gender selection. It is rare for the parliament not to pass a bill. Most couples are limited by law to one child. Many, especially in the countryside, yearn for a son to work their land, provide for the parents in their old age and carry on the family name. Many rural clinics provide unauthorised ultrasound scans to determine the sex of the fetus and parents generally abort daughters. As a result, the ratio of boys to girls stands at 119 to 100, significantly higher than the world average of 106 to 100. In southern provinces such as Hainan and Guangdong the imbalance is as high as 130 boys per 100 girls, despite the many incentives offered to farmers to stop them aborting daughters".

Good if they really were guilty: "A Kuwaiti court handed down death sentences Tuesday, to six Islamists linked to the al-Qaida terror network. The six condemned men were among a group of 37 people accused of plotting to attack Kuwaiti security forces and U.S. troops in the Gulf emirate."

Malingerers under threat in Britain? "Payment of long-term sickness benefit is to become conditional on people taking advantage of government help aimed at getting them back to work, under reforms to be announced next month. The Times has learnt that ministers are to risk the opposition of Labour MPs by introducing a "something-for-something" approach. The Government would provide more generous benefits and support to deal with illness and disabilities in return for a new obligation on people to try to work again. Incentives to stay on benefit will be removed".

French 'active' in Rwanda genocide: "One of the most controversial episodes in France's recent history is to come under legal scrutiny after a judge opened a formal inquiry into allegations that the French Army conspired in the Rwandan genocide of 1994. The move, which will renew debate over the actions of Francois Mitterrand, France's late president, is embarrassing for Paris at a time when it is struggling to maintain its influence in Africa. Despite attempts by the French Defence Ministry to block the case, Jacques Baillet, the prosecutor at the army tribunal, has begun an investigation into the role of France's troops during the massacres".

Cowardly Dutch: "Britain's plans to expand significantly its military presence in Afghanistan early next year are being disrupted by political indecision within Nato. Ministers had hoped to give the Commons details of the proposed despatch of a combat battle group to Afghanistan before Christmas. Army units have already been put on standby for Afghanistan and have been training for weeks, but without any firm guarantee that they will be sent. Military planners and ministers have been unable to make final decisions about the reinforcements, which are due to go in March and April. Nato foreign ministers agreed at a meeting in Brussels this month to increase the size of the alliance’s commitment in Afghanistan from 10,000 to 16,000 troops. The major players within Nato earmarked for sending extra troops included Britain, Canada and the Netherlands. But no decision has been made about each nation’s contributions, partly because of Dutch concerns over the risks".

There is a rather heartwarming story here that may even be true. At least Snopes do not appear to have rubbished it yet: "It started last Christmas, when Bennett and Vivian Levin were overwhelmed by sadness while listening to radio reports of injured American troops. "We have to let them know we care," Vivian told Bennett. So they organized a trip to bring soldiers from Walter Reed Army Medical Center and Bethesda Naval Hospital to the annual Army-Navy football game in Philly, on Dec. 3. The cool part is, they created their own train line to do it.... "

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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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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BLACKS VERSUS HISPANICS

John Brimelow recently put up on Vdare a reasonably friendly comment in response to my recent post about New Orleans. That he calls me a "market supremacist" causes me no grief at all -- though my libertarianism is in fact much broader than mere market advocacy. What Brimelow implies by calling me that however is a bit amusing. He is claiming that I ignore the importance of race and genetics. I am sure that any regular reader of my posts would be falling off their chair laughing at that!

What Brimelow is bothered by is that I appear to be defending Hispanics. As he is an anti-immigration warrior that curdles his egg-nog. I in fact am also an immigration restrictionist, unlike some libertarians. I think that just as a homeowner has the right to say who lives in his house, so a nation has a right to say whom they admit to their home. And, as an Australian, I am very mainstream about that. Both of our major political parties support a crackdown on illegal immigration and our government has in fact successfully reasserted control over immigration into our country.

But none of that should blind us to the fact that not all minorities are the same. And I think that a comparison of blacks and Hispanics treated as groups definitely favours Hispanics. I am well aware that the measured mean IQ of Hispanics in the USA is at present low but I have presented reasons elsewhere for thinking that Hispanics will in general eventually rise above that and become good mainstream Americans -- which only a Leftist would expect to happen with blacks as a group.

And Brimelow's claim that wages of up to $15 per hour are unattractive in a country where the national minimum is $5.15 seems to me quite absurd.

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ELSEWHERE

There is an interesting article here by Jeffrey Hart that attempts to summarize and integrate the current themes in American conservative thinking. Most of what Hart says has merit but, as might perhaps be expected from a professor of English, his history is weak. Identifying the founder of the Progressive Party (TR) as a conservative is an easy mistake to make (given the often extreme ways in which pre-WW2 and post-WW2 Leftism differ) but it is quite wrong nonetheless. One wonders if he has ever heard of TR's progressively more strident anti-business policies. See here for a more informed commentary on TR.

Conversions to Islam show failure of mainstream churches: "Mary Fallot looks as unlike a terrorist suspect as one could possibly imagine: a petite and demure white Frenchwoman chatting with friends on a cell-phone, indistinguishable from any other young woman in the caf, where she sits sipping coffee... Ms. Fallot is a recent convert to Islam... Fallot laughs when she is asked whether her love life had anything to do with her decision. "When I told my colleagues at work that I had converted, their first reaction was to ask whether I had a Muslim boyfriend," she recalls. "They couldn't believe I had done it of my own free will." In fact, she explains, she liked the way "Islam demands a closeness to God. Islam is simpler, more rigorous, and it's easier because it is explicit. I was looking for a framework; man needs rules and behavior to follow. Christianity did not give me the same reference points." Those reasons reflect many female converts' thinking, say experts who have studied the phenomenon. "A lot of women are reacting to the moral uncertainties of Western society," says Dr. Jawad. "They like the sense of belonging and caring and sharing that Islam offers."

Discrimination as property rights policy: "My wife and I were waiting to be seated at an airport restaurant when an angry man exclaimed, 'This is America! There's not supposed to be discrimination!' The man had been told that he could not be served since he was traveling with a pet and was asked to leave. I just rolled my eyes and felt sad for this person. The truth is, everyone discriminates. We do so not only on purpose but also with total impunity in most cases. Every decision that we make implies the rejection of other possibilities. Faced with the challenge of choosing from many options, a discriminatory process solves the problem. If we value A over B, we are discriminating against B."

German news magazine highlights Eastern European economic miracle: "The Spiegel is not known as a market-friendly publication, so it is noteworthy that the German news magazine has a lengthy article reviewing the economic revival in former communist nations. Slovakia and Estonia get much of the attention, and rightly so. These nations have implemented the flat tax and many other free market reforms. Too bad Angela Merkel thinks Germany needs more government. She could learn a thing or two by looking to the East:

Wonders never cease. There is actually a whole book called The Dittohead's Guide to Adult Beverages. Limbaugh-style humour is definitely in evidence. For impoverished Limbaugh fans, there are some extracts from it here.

A truth-teller not to be forgotten (Alain Besancon in "Commentary" of 1998) : "In my country [France], it is still possible to provoke a scandal by raising in public the issue of the crimes committed by Communism -- and an even greater scandal by suggesting that not only in the enormity of its crimes but in its very nature, Soviet Communism can be compared with that other great evil of our century, Nazism. This was illustrated once again by a recent French best-seller, The Black Book of Communism, an 846-page compilation by six historians with an introduction that points out a number of commonalities between the two totalitarian systems. The book has raised a storm of controversy in intellectual and political circles, and has even caused an uproar in parliament." (Hat tip to Keith Burgess Jackson)

I have just put up a new recipe on my recipe blog. (Mirror site here). It is a versatile recipe for fresh bernaise sauce.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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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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YET MORE EVIDENCE FOR THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF IQ

"Bigger is better when it comes to brain matter, says a leading neuroscientist. Canadian researchers examined the brains of 100 people who were given extensive IQ tests before they died and found a correlation between cerebral volume and intelligence. "This is essentially the first study that is actually looking at the size of the brain directly and not through imaging," Sandra Witelson, who headed the study at the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine at McMaster University, said Thursday from Hamilton. "What is very clear is that there is a correlation between brain size and intelligence, particularly verbal ability," said Dr. Witelson, noting that verbal ability encompasses comprehension of complex sentences, understanding verbal logical information and verbal memory.

The study looked specifically at the size of the cerebrum, the thinking part of the brain, and found a correlation with verbal intelligence in women. The same correlation was found for right-handed men. The research paper was published online this month by the journal Brain. Dr. Witelson is the scientist who made headlines in 1999 after painstakingly studying the brain of the scientific genius Albert Einstein. She discovered that one part of his brain - the inferior parietal region, which is related to mathematical reasoning - was 15 per cent wider on both sides than normal. Her latest study involved the brains of 58 women and 42 men who all lived and died in the Hamilton area over the past 25 years. The subjects had secondary stage cancers - their cancers had spread, or metastasized - and while still relatively healthy, they agreed to take the intelligence tests as well as donate their brains to science after death.

Some studies have looked at intelligence using MRI images of the brain, but Dr. Witelson noted there is room for ambiguity in the images that come through computer programs. Likewise, she said people can't just look at head size and determine that a smaller head means a smaller brain, or vice versa. "There's a lot inside a skull other than just the brain," she said. The brains in her study were weighed and the volume calculated through the simple Archimedes' principle - they were placed in water, and measures were taken of how much water was displaced".

More here

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SOME MORE NOTES ON KATRINA AND ITS AFTERMATH

Katrina cleanup: Private firms best: "There are many reasons for the difference between the lack of progress in Pascagoula and the quick cleanup in the Biloxi area. But officials here point fingers at what they consider the No. 1 culprit: the federal government and, in particular, the Army Corps of Engineers. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Harrison County, the home of Biloxi, and Jackson County, where Pascagoula is located, each had about 10 million cubic yards of debris to clean up. Both counties took up the federal government on its offer to foot the bill. But while Harrison County and all but one of its cities hired contractors on their own, Jackson County and its cities, at the urging of the federal government, asked the Army Corps to take on the task. Officials in Jackson County said it was a choice they had regretted ever since. The cleanup in Jackson County and its municipalities has not only cost millions of dollars more than in neighboring counties, but it is also taking longer".

Those who live in glass houses ....: "The Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, which slammed the Bush administration for its allegedly slow and racially insensitive response to Hurricane Katrina, has yet to spend any of the estimated $400,000 that it raised for the victims of the Aug. 29 storm."

I have just put up here an interesting email from a reader that takes a skeptical look at the New Orleans fiasco.

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ELSEWHERE

There is yet another survey of American professors here which shows how strongly they adhere to Leftist politics. It also shows that the range of views among them is quite narrow. They march in lockstep to their Leftist drumbeat. They conform to an orthodoxy rather than being individual thinkers. No wonder they want to impose the same orthodoxy on everyone else.

Comment from Germany: "A former German hostage who spent 24 days in the hands of unknown captors in Iraq has said that her kidnappers were not criminals and had demanded humanitarian aid for Sunni Arab regions. She described her captors as "poor people" and said that she "cannot blame them for kidnapping her, as they cannot enter [Baghdad's heavily fortified] Green Zone to kidnap Americans." This has got to be another evil trick by Bush&Rumsfeld Inc. - incapacitating Iraqi terrorists ability to kidnap Americans by not allowing them to enter the Green Zone! Shocking!

The religion of peace: "A man allegedly killed his four daughters today by slitting their throats while they slept in their home in eastern Pakistan, after the eldest married a man of her choice, police said. "The man came to a police station ... after killing his four daughters," said senior police officer Mukhtar Iqbal Tikka. Nazeer Ahmed, who worked as a labourer near Burewala, some 110 kilometres east of Multan, had resented his eldest daughter's love marriage and killed the three others, fearing they might follow her, Tikka said. Ahmed allegedly told police his eldest daughter Muqadas Bibi, 25, had married a man of her choice against his wishes and her act had tarnished the family's honour so he plotted to kill her and his other daughters".

Stupid Jewish Leftists: "The movement of which I am a member has just voted against a war that I support. This vote by the Union of Reform Judaism was the first vote by a major national Jewish organization or religious movement opposing the war in Iraq. This war was and is being fought for American reasons, not Jewish reasons. However, to see this war that toppled one of Israel's fiercest enemies-an anti-Semitic dictator who sent $25,000 to the families of every jihadist who had been able to kill and maim Israeli children and other innocents-opposed by Jews is more than an act of ingratitude to this country and this president. This vote was an act of stunning and incomprehensible historical blindness".

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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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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