"STEREOTYPE THREAT"

I commented fairly acerbically in April 2004 on the latest gambit among psychologists for explaining away low average black IQ and educational attainment. It is the "stereotype threat" theory. The theory seems to have a number of incarnations but at its wackiest, it says that blacks do poorly because they are afraid of letting down their race! Nonsense as gross as that hardly needs comment but let me simply ask: If such fears exist at all, why do they not make the student try harder and thus do better?

A somewhat more reasonable theory is that blacks "drop their bundle": They know that they are on average unlikely to do well so don't really try to do well. All the studies that I have heard of over the years tend to show, however, that blacks have unusually HIGH motivation in the testing situation -- so that theory need not detain us.

In that situation, psychologists have had to devise ever more dubious experiments to support their ideas. The latest appears to be a study reported here of which we read: "In their spring study of 81 students at Boca Ciega High School in Gulfport, Brett Jones and Tom Kellow investigated "stereotype threat," a phenomenon in which students worry their failure might confirm a negative belief about their race'.

They found that giving a test under "threatening" conditions -- where students were told that the result would predict their later educational success -- produced much lower scores among blacks than when the test was given with a more reassuring introduction. Under the more reassuring condition, scores of blacks and whites were about the same. The authors concluded that the findings supported their theory.

It is difficult to know where to start in commenting on such nonsense. Quite aside from the total disregard for sampling that is characteristic of most psychological research, Occam's razor has been completely ignored. If the findings show anything, they simply show that blacks handle stress less well. There is no need to bring "stereotypes" into the explanation. But the gaping oddity in the findings is that blacks and whites did in one condition do about equally well on the test. That is totally contrary to all prior findings where some attempt at sampling was used and suggests that the whole setup was severely contrived in some way and that the results therefore tell us nothing at all. To put it as politely as I can, there was at least a very strong "Rosenthal" (experimenter expectation) effect at work.

I am not the first to find the "theory" risible. Steve Sailer also dissects it and there is an even more savage takedown at Gene Expression. Charles Murray is probably the most succinct of us all, however. Of the original study in the field, he says: "Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson, demonstrated experimentally that test performance by academically talented blacks was worse when a test was called an IQ test than when it was innocuously described as a research tool. Press reports erroneously interpreted this as meaning that stereotype threat explained away the black-white difference. In reality, Messrs. Steele and Aronson showed only that it increases the usual black-white difference; if one eliminates stereotype threat, the usual difference remains". See also here and here.

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ELSEWHERE

Jeff Jacoby on Abramoff: "The worst is that Abramoff is a Jew. Not only a Jew, but an Orthodox Jew -- someone who claims to be committed to strictly observing Jewish law and faithfully adhering to the Torah's ethical standards. But instead of upholding those ethical standards Abramoff trampled on them, and a "religious" Jew who behaves so corruptly disgraces not only himself but all religious Jews. He brings his faith into contempt. He is guilty of what Jewish tradition calls, with disgust, *chillul ha-Shem* -- a desecration of God's name. For me -- also an observant Jew -- that is the worst thing of all. Honesty in financial dealings is not optional in Judaism; it is mandatory. The Talmud teaches that when a person is brought to judgment in the world-to-come, the first question the heavenly tribunal puts to him is: "Did you conduct your business affairs in good faith?" A Jew who takes the values of his religion seriously must be scrupulous in his transactions with others"

Most Senate Dems Took Abramoff Cash: "Nearly ninety percent of Senate Democrats took money linked to disgraced "Republican" lobbyist Jack Abramoff, according to a list compiled by the Republican National Committee. Though reporters continue to insist that the Abramoff imbroglio is "a Republican scandal," 2008 Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton took more than $12,000 in tainted cash. Compared to the party's 2004 standard bearer, however, she's a piker. John Kerry raked in nearly $100,000 in Abramoff-linked donations. In fact, 40 of the party's 45 U.S. senators made the Jack Abramoff dishonor roll"

Media Critic Donald Rumsfeld: "Defense Secretary's Rumsfeld's speech on Iraq, in which he strongly criticized the conduct of the U.S. media, deserves to be read in its entirety. Unfortunately, the Secretary expressed the false hope that the media might be persuaded to come around to responsible journalism. He said, "it's important also for the media to hold itself to account." Well, don't count on it, Mr. Secretary. Remember how Newsweek had published that phony Koran-in-the-toilet story. Rumsfeld mentioned it, saying, "Not too long ago, there was a false and terribly damaging story about a Koran that was supposedly flushed down a toilet in Guantanamo, and in the riots that followed in several countries, some people were killed." Yet nobody was fired or even reprimanded by Newsweek over that false story. So much for accountability from the media."

MN: GOP blogger served with libel lawsuit: "A dispute between a self-described 'Republican operative' and a former Democratic campaign organizer widely quoted in Minnesota media has turned into a libel lawsuit that could help set legal standards for Internet blogs. The suit pits Blois Olson, a Democratic public relations executive who is a frequent guest on Twin Cities Public Television's 'Almanac' show, against Michael Brodkorb, a former Minnesota Republican Party employee who operates a political blog -- or Web journal -- called minnesotademocratsexposed.com. Olson's lawsuit, which was served to Brodkorb on Tuesday but has not yet been filed in court, seeks damages of more than $50,000 and a court order forcing Brodkorb to remove from the blog a Dec. 28 posting about Olson and his St. Paul-based public relations company. In the Dec. 28 item, Brodkorb suggested that Olson had publicly criticized former FBI agent Coleen Rowley's campaign for Congress because Rowley's campaign staff last summer refused to hire Olson's firm, New School Communications. Olson insists the item was a fabrication; Brodkorb says he's confident it was true."

Keith Burgess Jackson has just done a big fisking of the latest NYT attack on Supreme Court nominee Alito.

Tom Heard updates us on the latest antics of Communist-loving Harry Belafonte. GWB is "the greatest terrorist in the world" etc.

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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A POWERFUL ARTICLE FROM A FORMER THATCHER MINISTER

Just a few excerpts from an article by Lord Tebbit about Britain's new Tory leader

There is no doubt Mr Cameron is a remarkable political animal. From back office, through the back benches to leadership in half a decade is unusual. From proud authorship of a Conservative 2005 manifesto widely criticised for narrow dogmatism, to its condemnation and utter rejection is hardly less so. Nor could Mr Cameron's uplifting effect on the party's poll ratings be anything but amazing. Unfortunately razzle-dazzle success and exciting policy statements only whet the public appetite for more non-stop political pyrotechnics than any man can deliver. Mr Cameron is now in danger of such an outstanding public relations success dissolving into tetchy doubts about his political orientation. Is he really "New Labour Lite", a Tory wolf in Lib-Dem sheep's clothing, or for that matter a Lib-Dem sheep leading a pack of Tory wolves?...

Quite why Mr Cameron believes that voters who flocked to Mrs Thatcher's dark blue flag defected to Blair's pale pink or Kennedy's muddy yellow banners I do not understand. Nor can I see that if they did, they would now flock back to a pale blue and pink flag emblazoned "Thatcher Was Rubbish". In any case, for all the talk about Tory voters switching to Labour in 1997, the figures show that if it did happen, the numbers were tiny. What happened was that Labour voters turned out, as did Lib-Dems voting tactically to get the Tories out, and 4.5 million Tory voters stayed at home unable to stomach John Major's ERM disaster.

Nor should Tories be ashamed of Mr Cameron's concern with world poverty, but throwing money at corrupt dictators because they have ruined their economies will help neither poor Africans nor poor British. The trouble is that we have other problems here at home. With selection on ability (but not ability to pay) and vouchers ruled out, how will we improve our schools? If the Treasury alone can finance hospitals, how can they be run for patients and not for the Treasury?... How would Cameron deal with multiculturalism, which threatens social stability? Would he encourage marriage and stable families? Could he free us from our masters in Brussels? Like the voters, I wait for Mr Cameron to show as much interest in all this as the chocolate oranges in WH Smith. His answers will decide the election.

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ELSEWHERE

Constant attacks on Wal-Mart hurt the poor in yet another way: "Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., the nation's largest food retailer, said Thursday it will no longer donate nearly-expired or expired food to local groups feeding the hungry. Instead, that food will be thrown away, a move several Sacramento charities consider wasteful. Olan James, a Wal-Mart spokesman, said the policy, which applies to all 1,224 Wal-Marts, 1,929 Supercenters and 558 Sam's Clubs, is an attempt to protect the corporation from liability in case someone who eats the donated food gets sick."

Deceptive Munich: "Ever since World War II, the German city of Munich has been symbolic of a single, solitary political lesson: the folly of 'appeasement.' The 1938 Munich Pact represented the futility of compromising with evil. This was always a bit unfair to poor British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who had better reasons to sign on to the pact than most people remember. But the moral of the story was a good one, going all the way back to Aesop, who told the fable of the scorpion and the frog, which ends with the frog being shocked that the scorpion would sting him even though the scorpion could do nothing else, for that was its nature. Hitler was a scorpion, and thinking or hoping otherwise wouldn't change that fact. Much of the Cold War was predicated on this lesson, as the World War II generation agreed not to let down its guard ever again. Steven Spielberg would like to rewrite the meaning of Munich. In his film about the response to the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, Spielberg seems determined to invest the word with a new meaning: We must not treat scorpions like scorpions."

Media ignore the truth again: "Guilt by association. It is a common tool used to discredit those deemed a threat to the established order. Recently, I've found myself on the receiving end of such a tactic courtesy of a piece by Jonathan Finer and Douglas Struck in the Washington Post. On the day after Christmas, the Washington Post featured an article titled "Bloggers, Money Now Weapons in Information War - U.S. Recruits Advocates to the Front, Pays Iraqi TV Stations for Coverage," of which my recent embed in Iraq was the subject of scrutiny as a military-information operation. It is a fact-challenged article that manages to cast an unfair shadow on my reporting from Iraq. The piece claims that I had retired from the military, when in fact it requires 20 years of service to retire. I served four years on active duty and two years in the National Guard. The authors report that I was credentialed by the American Enterprise Institute, when in fact this is impossible, as a think tank cannot provide media credentials - this must be done by a recognized news organization. I was credentialed by The Weekly Standard and the Canadian talk-radio show The World Tonight. And finally, contrary to the report, I was not in Iraq when the article was published. I had been home for nearly a week. Each of these items could have been easily confirmed by a simple inquiry....."

UK immigration: Sense creeping in? "A large-scale overhaul of the asylum system has begun which will lead to at least a third of all asylum seekers being placed in detention centres for the 'fast-track' processing of their claims for refugee status. The 'new asylum model,' which ministers hope will be implemented by September, also envisages far greater controls over failed asylum seekers facing removal, including the use of electronic tagging, reporting requirements and detention."

No free speech in Muslim Turkey: "After writers and intellectuals, bar owners have become the latest targets of a controversial Turkish law limiting freedom of expression, the daily Hurriyet reported on Friday. The owners of nine Istanbul bars and restaurant have drawn the wrath of the authorities for staging a protest last month over what they called frequent and arbitrary police inspections which they said harmed their business, the mass-selling daily reported. The protesters closed shop for a day, hanging banners denouncing 'arbitrary and unlawful practices and pressure by the police, conducted under the guise of inspections.' Police removed the banners and filed complaints against the bar owners, leading to their indictment under Article 301 for 'openly denigrating the police force,' Hurriyet said."

Big Brother has arrived in the UK: "John Prescott has told tax inspectors to use satellites to snoop on householders' attempts to improve their homes. Images of new conservatories and garages taken from space will be used to hike up council taxes and other property levies, official guidance obtained by The Independent on Sunday reveals. Mr Prescott's department is overseeing the creation of a database containing the details of every house in Britain to help tax inspectors to assess new charges. Even minor improvements, invisible from the road, will be caught by 'spy in the sky' technology that uses a mix of aerial and satellite images taken over time to spot changes."

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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ABRAMOFF

I don't even try to follow all the minutiae of American politics so for those like me I thought the following sounded like a rather fun summary of a man very much in the news these days:

"Here are some of the details of the Abramoff story. He made more money as a lobbyist than anyone had ever even imagined making. He bilked two Indian tribes out of $82 million by representing both of them -- as they waged a fight against EACH OTHER. The longer they fought, the more money he made off BOTH OF THEM. He bought off libertarian newspaper columnists. It appears he owned at least one congressman who was willing to do his bidding by using the Congressional Record as a weapon in his private business dealings.

In the course of those dealings, he bought a casino cruise-ship company with a mobbed-up former owner of the Dial-A-Mattress concession in Washington, D.C. Less than a year after that transaction, the original owner of the casino company was shot to death on a Fort Lauderdale street, and three members of the Gambino crime family have now been arrested for the murder. Those three Gambino-ites were put on the company's payroll by the Dial-A-Mattress guy. Meanwhile, in Washington there was Abramoff's partner, the former chief of staff to the House Majority Leader. This guy, Michael Scanlon, had set up a "think tank" at his beach house in Delaware to launder lobbying money -- a think tank run by a bartender and a yoga instructor who might well have been "more than friends" of Scanlon's.

This is like a really bad novel. An Orthodox Jewish lobbyist stealing money from Indian tribes, funneling it through a yoga instructor at the beach, and being a possible accessory to a gangland hit in Florida? And it's all true. It's the best Washington story in years!"

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ELSEWHERE

ACLU moves further Left: "Not satisfied with its ongoing anti-President Bush campaigns (the group took out a full-page Ad in the "we-hate-Bush-all-the-time" NY Times that blasted the president), the ACLU has already come out against any and all probes into who leaked information to the Times' staff , in regards to formerly top-secret national security information. In fact, the ACLU is veritably furious that the Justice Department has the audacity to actually investigate treacherous behaviors. How dare the Justice Department work toward protecting the country? In a press release, ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero stated: "President Bush broke the law and lied to the American people when he unilaterally authorized secret wiretaps of U.S. citizens. But rather than focus on this constitutional crisis, Attorney General Gonzales is cracking down on critics of his friend and boss. Our nation is strengthened, not weakened, by those whistleblowers who are courageous enough to speak out on violations of the law!" In other words, according to the ACLU President Bush has no right to protect the United States (the question of NSA intercepts of terrorist phone calls--regarding legal v illegal--appears to have an equal number of legal scholars on both sides of the debate), but allowing and condoning treason (as long as it also hurts any Republican-president) is "okay" with the ACLU. Besides, Romero told us that leaking national security information is a good thing--as long as it "gets Bush". In fact, any far-Left agenda is acceptable to the ACLU--as long as it promotes its cause toward the destruction of the USA".

Islam is the religion of violence: "Christian women are being abused on the streets of Baghdad by Islamo-fascist thugs for not wearing the hijab. Shop owners--mostly Christians--who sold beer under Saddam without fear are now being shot dead in their own places of business. Four churches were bombed in a single day in Baghdad, priests have been threatened and killed, Christian children are being forced to read the Qur'an and Christian Midnight Mass was cancelled this year because of fears of being bombed..... Islamo-fascism is ubiquitous. Seventeen thousand police officers are currently deployed in Jakarta, Indonesia, to protect Christian churches from those who believe 'Burn, baby, burn' is second only to 'Allahu akbar.' Twenty-nine churches were hit on Christmas Eve five years ago and the Indonesian government didn't want a repeat of that--at least not while applying for assistance at Uncle Sam's Welfare Office. Hundreds of thousands of East Timorese have been murdered by Muslim terrorists over the past decades and, more recently, generic Qur'an-spouting psychopaths beheaded three Christian schoolgirls.... And the sorry tale continues: The Palestinian Authority has driven tens of thousands of Christians out of Jerusalem, the persecution of Coptic Christians continues unabated in Egypt. In Pakistan, Christian children are still being kidnapped and raised as Muslims. From Australia to Zanzibar, thousands of non-Muslim women are being gang-raped by sexist chauvinist pigs inspired by the Qur'an."

American poverty now comes with a color TV, DVD and computer: "In case there was any doubt, a study has confirmed that Americans have a lot of what economists know, technically, as stuff. The computer has surpassed the dishwasher as a standard household appliance. The poorest Americans have posted a sharp rise in access to air conditioning. The richest Americans still own the most cars, but they are choosing to own slightly fewer of them than they used to. These Census findings, released in December, were true even before gifts piled up under trees. These nuggets provide a glimpse of American lifestyles that isn't captured in the raw data of monthly economic reports. At a time of concern about the standard of living for future generations, the study offers hopeful signs of tangible progress, even as the pace of income growth has slowed in recent years.... by almost all measures, the data show rising well-being for all of society. And while the wealth gap may not be narrowing, the rich-poor gap in lifestyles has narrowed substantially since 1992 when measured in many of these tangible items. "In terms of the items people have ... it amazes me the number of people who are at or near the poverty line that have color TVs, cable, washer, dryer, microwave," says Michael Cosgrove, an economist at the University of Dallas in Irving, Texas.... Two-thirds of those in poverty had air conditioners in 1998, up from 50% in 1992. Personal computers have grown increasingly ubiquitous. Where fewer than 20% of homes had them in 1992, nearly 60% did in 2002 (more than own dishwashers). Two-thirds of those in poverty had air conditioners in 1998, up from 50% in 1992. Personal computers have grown increasingly ubiquitous. Where fewer than 20% of homes had them in 1992, nearly 60% did in 2002 (more than own dishwashers).

Our law-abiding ways of doing things make us rich: "Economists are gradually shifting the way we think about the determinants of economic well-being. Traditionally, the focus was on resources. Increasingly, we appear to be moving toward a focus on beliefs. A new study from the World Bank, called Where is the Wealth of Nations? (which I first saw mentioned in Ronald Bailey's article in Reason magazine), is a landmark event in this transformation of economic viewpoint. First, it adds to the growing body of evidence that institutional factors, such as property rights, play a significant role in economic development.... Over the past 50 years, economists have become less materialistic. No, we have not become hippies, rejected consumerism, and discovered spirituality. As social scientists, however, we have noticed that a large share of wealth comes from factors other than basic labor and capital.... The current consensus is that institutions matter. The rule of law is important. Clear property rights are important. On the negative side, protectionism, corruption, and barriers to entrepreneurship are important."

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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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).

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

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)

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