AFRICA

Even in a country grown accustomed to horrific acts of violence, it is a crime that still shocks. ''Muti murder'', in which human body parts are removed to be used in traditional "medicine", is increasing in South Africa - but victims' families complain that the police too often ignore it.

The murder of four-year-old Connie Ncube, whose mutilated body was discovered in a river near her home east of Pretoria by her father last month, has sparked a public outcry and demands for tougher action against the gruesome crimes.

Jabu Majola said: "I was shocked to see my daughter that way. It took me 10 minutes to identify her because of the way they cut at her. I couldn't believe someone could do something like this." Mr Majola condemned the police for not responding to his calls for almost 12 hours after Connie disappeared. "If they had sent police to search for my daughter when we asked them to, she would be alive today," he said.

It was only after a report of her death appeared in a local newspaper, Mr Majola said, that the police launched a full investigation and eventually identified a suspect - a neighbour with links to traditional "healers" - who has not been caught.

Source

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ELSEWHERE

Alain's Newsletter was a Christian conservative site that was getting a fair bit of attention but it disappeared suddenly. Why? I have been forwarded an email signed "Alain's wife" which said: "for health reasons my husband has closed the newsletter for a while".

Some Baptists still follow the Bible: "Following the approval of a large majority of its churches, the board of the American Baptist Churches Pacific Southwest region voted unanimously May 11 to withdraw from its covenant relationship with its parent denomination. The board's action makes final the separation of the 300-church region from the American Baptist Churches (USA) in Valley Forge, Pa. The decision comes after eight months of discussion and a vote on the part of the region's churches in late April to recommend that the board withdraw over the refusal of the ABC (USA) to deal with the acceptance of churches with lax policies on homosexuality in the denomination".

The pain in Spain: "2330 illegal immigrants are currently being held in Canary Islands detention centers, though an unknown number have been transferred to mainland Spain during the last week. Nearly 400 immigrants arrived by boat in the Canaries yesterday, and the interior ministry has been unable to alleviate the overcrowding. Foreign minister Miguel Angel Moratinos yesterday announced that Spain would begin diplomatic efforts with six sub-Saharan African countries to control the flow of illegals."

Afghan women graduate US college program: "When she was a child growing up in Afghanistan, Nadima Sahar loved to draw. But after the Taliban came to power in the 1990s, her love for art became a secret. The strict Islamic movement banned art and secular music, so only Sahar's family knew about her drawings. 'I couldn't share them with my neighbors,' Sahar said. Today, after four years as a college student in Rhode Island, Sahar has showcased her mostly abstract, black-and-white drawings at four art competitions and won prizes in all of them."

Islamic bank shunned in Britain: "Evolution Securities and BNP Paribas failed to persuade a single UK investor to sign up for shares in yesterday's initial public offering of the first British investment bank to comply with Islamic financial law. The failure will compound the brokers' embarrassment about the European Islamic Investment Bank's (EIIB) London float as its shares slumped 38 per cent on their first day of trading, after raising less than half of the target. One source close to the offering said that the float did "not attract a single UK investor"

Hitchens: Don't talk to the mullahs: "There is an excellent case to be made for initiating an imaginative diplomatic overture to Iran, or rather to the Iranians, and I did my best to lay it out. But this case is not strengthened by the demented letter recently made public by the man posing as Iran's president. I say 'posing,' because, however many times our media babble about his 'landslide' victory in Iran's 'elections,' everybody knows that he was put in by the reigning mullahs at the very last moment, after all independent and reformist candidates had been eliminated from the process, and that the counting of the votes was an insult to the meanest intelligence."

George Will: "Proof that incumbent politicians are highly susceptible to corruption is the fact that the government they control is shot through with it. Yet [according to John McCain] that government should be regarded as a disinterested arbiter, untainted by politics and therefore qualified to regulate the content, quantity and timing of speech in campaigns that determine who controls the government."

Shelby Steele: Black truth-teller: ""The only thing that makes me interesting as a writer," Shelby Steele says, "is that I'm just talking common sense. The most ordinary, everyday sort of common sense." Correction. What sets Steele apart is that he's saying things many people, even those who secretly agree with him, would rather not hear. He says that blacks should take responsibility for their own disproportionate crime rates and poor academic performance and not blame a system imposed on them by whites; that whites support affirmative action and other "silly racial policies" out of fear, to avoid accusations of racism. He says that blacks who use the "race card," as Johnnie Cochran did in defending O.J. Simpson, are practicing "blackmail" through the manipulation of white guilt."

Why $3 gas won't slow the US economy: "As all the pollsters are telling us, there's an inverse relationship between rising gasoline prices and President Bush's falling approval ratings -- most especially his approval rating on the economy. Of course, these polls describe a certain national angst over energy that harkens back to the dreadful 1970s. But there's a better reality out there: Namely, the upturn in gas prices simply is not stopping the economy the way it did three decades ago. Today's economy may be the greatest story never told. It's an American boom, spurred by lower tax rates, huge profits, big productivity, plentiful jobs, and an ongoing free-market capitalist resiliency. It's also a global boom, marked by a spread of free- market capitalism like we've never seen before."

There is an interesting article here reviewing the present role of women in the U.S. armed forces.

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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 Pages are here or here or here.

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AMERICAN ELECTION SYSTEMS

One summary:

"The biggest problem in cleaning up our elections is the issue of voter registries, and Carter's commission doesn't begin to deal with it. If voter registries are corrupt, there is no way our democracy can be assured a fair election. Throughout America, people with the flimsiest kinds of ID are put on voter registries, allowing ineligible voters to determine our elected officials and the fate of the nation. That this doesn't horrify more Americans is, in itself, horrifying, and smacks of some Third World banana republic. For our elections to be right, our voter registries must be right.

I will never understand why Americans put up with all that crapola. The site from which the quote above was taken offers some simple alternatives that would be much better. Australia uses an old-fashioned paper ballot system that evokes very few complaints and criticisms, though it is not perfect, of course.

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ELSEWHERE

An interesting comment from a tax accountant: "As the Senate cleverly negotiates the amendments that would scuttle new immigration legislation, they blithely ignore the real nightmare immigrants face if a path to citizenship is enacted: they must pay their back taxes. Those of us who have worked in the tax field can tell you that (1) the IRS can reconstruct your past income out of the thin air with great precision, (2) The effort to fight the IRS or to reconstruct your own version of what you made and what you owe is so painful it can by itself motivate the illegal to return home and (3) Certain taxes like Social Security and Medicare are payable on the first dollar you earn and the amounts owed the government will, in almost all cases, bankrupt the illegal or make the water so deep he will drown before he survives. The House has passed a very specific bill to effect the deportation of 12 million illegals. The Senate by requiring poverty-stricken illegals to pay back taxes has finished the job. Either way attrition will shrink that population."



Spain seeks to stem tide of African immigrants: "Spain has put the last touches to initiatives, including a strengthened presence in Africa, to try to stem the swelling tide of immigrants from the continent heading for its shores. The government's plan was agreed as it was announced that a total of 656 African illegal immigrants had arrived in Spain's Canary Islands in the space of 24 hours. In Madrid Deputy Prime Minister Maria-Teresa Fernandez de la Vega said after a cabinet meeting she would be going to Brussels next week to discuss the issue with, among others, European Commission President Jose Manuel Durao Barroso. She said that "more Europe" had to be one of the weapons in the battle against would-be illegal immigration. An "Africa plan" was to be implemented within the space of 48 hours, said de la Vega. The headquarters will be in the Senegalese capital Dakar, under the supervision of a specially appointed ambassador, Miguel Angel Mazarambroz.

Nothing like a good track record: "Russia overnight took over the presidency of Europe's chief body charged with maintaining democracy and human rights, issues on which it has frequently found itself the target of criticism. Speaking in Strasbourg overnight, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov promised "a concrete approach to the committee's tasks, respectful of the rights of all citizens and of instruments for the defence of those rights." Russia succeeds Romania as president of the committee of ministers, or executive body, of the 46-member Council of Europe, for six months. The Russian presidency is likely to dwell more on dialogue between cultures and local democracy than the basic freedoms Moscow is said to ignore."

Political posturing on gas prices mostly hot air: "Three gas station owners report for their first day in prison. The prison guard asks one of them, 'What are you in for?' He replies, 'The government says I charged customers more for my gasoline than other gas stations. I'm in for price gouging.' The guard looks at the second man. 'And you?' He answers, 'I charged less for my gasoline than everyone else. I'm in for anti-competitive pricing.' The guard looks to the third. 'And you?' He shrugs. 'I charged the same price for my gasoline as all the other gas stations. I'm in for collusion.' Like many jokes, that one has a lot of truth to it. I'd imagine many Americans wouldn't mind at all to see just about everyone involved in the oil industry do some time in the pokey these days. What's been even more disheartening has been to see Americans turn to their politicians, and ask them to 'do something' about the price of gas. We seem to love the free market until it inconveniences us. Then we want someone punished."



Genetics again: "A group of Yale researchers studying the origin of irrational decision-making found that choosing impractically isn't a behavior exhibited only by humans. Our evolutionary cousins, capuchin monkeys, exhibit the same tendency with respect to loss aversion, or the tendency to strongly prefer avoiding losses rather than acquiring gains. The findings, published in the Journal of Political Economy, indicate these biases are innate in primates and have existed since before capuchins and humans split 40 million years ago. "Some of the most deeply ingrained economic behaviors turn out to be very, very ancient and hardwired parts of our decision-making processes," said Yale economics professor and the study's lead author, Keith Chen. "If I showed a string of capuchin monkey data to an economist, he couldn't, with any statistical test, tell the difference between a capuchin monkey and your average American stock market investor."



My doubts about the "hobbits" get learned support: "A report released today disputes scientists' claims that bones of a dwarf human discovered on an Indonesian island are those of an entirely new human species. The 18,000-year-old bones found on Flores Island in 2003 were given the scientific name Homo floresiensis, and the nickname "Hobbit" after the diminutive figures in JRR Tolkien's novel. Anthropologists from Australia and Indonesia said it was an entirely new human species derived from the primitive Homo erectus.... But a group of scientists led by primatologist Robert Martin said in an article in Science magazine's May 19 issue that, far from being a new species, the bones were of Homo sapiens suffering from the pathological condition microcephaly, which results in small brain and body size....Dr Martin's team also argued that sophisticated tools found with the Flores bones could not have been created by a race with such small brains. "These tools are so advanced that there is no way they were made by anyone other than Homo sapiens," anthropologist James Phillips, also of the Field Museum said."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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 Pages are here or here or here.

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NOTHING CAN DENT THE LOVE OF THE LEFT FOR COMMUNIST CUBA

The following is a program promo for SBS -- one of Australia's public broadcasters. No bias there at all of course. It appears that viewers will hear of Cuba's system for earning dollars by selling cheap medical services to foreigners but no mention of the medical care that Cubans get seems to be in the offing. Straight cold-war propaganda lives on -- courtesy of the taxpayer

"For almost half a century Cuba has endured crippling sanctions imposed by its near neighbour the United States. But this tiny Caribbean nation has not only survived but achieved the unthinkable. It has had made major medical breakthroughs and now has a medical report card that is the envy of its most of its neighbours. Last year, Cuba's infant mortality rate declined even further. It now equals many developed nations but has surpassed that of the United States.

America, the largest medical market in the world, has responded, by accusing Cuba of trying to make money out of medicine. Health and medicine are indeed big business in Cuba. This year, monies raised from health tourism and from its biotechnology breakthroughs look set to surpass Cuba's traditional economic mainstay which has been tourism.

But Cuba's medical miracles are not confined to homeshores. A legion of medical missionaries have been sent to work overseas and the United States is concerned what impact that is having on the region."

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Brookes News Update

Is supply-side economics driving the US economy?: Although supply-siders have made serious errors they should still emphasise that if you want more of something you have to reduce the cost of producing it. What every country needs is more capital -- and capital comes out of savings. By eliminating taxes on capital gains more savings are made available which then expand the capital structure
Australian economy is still signalling an impending recession: The Treasurer Peter Costello believes that the economy is still on course and a recession is far beyond the horizon -- or at least beyond the next federal election. He could be making a grave error
The left finally find a cause they can support that will kill US troops: With the left there is neither shame nor honour, but there is consistency -- and it is their remorseless hatred of the United States and of liberty. That's why they will sacrifice US troops when it suits them
Democrats -- World's second largest Death Cult: Muslims reign as the Number 1 Death Cult on the planet, closely followed by America's Democrat Party. In 1,400 years of terror Muslims have slaughtered hundreds of millions forcing their faux religion on others
Support from Jews but not for Jews?: I met that amazing woman, Dr. Wafa Sultana, whose comments about the Arabs during an interview on the Arab television station, Al-Jazeera were like 'the shot fired around the world
New offshore drilling = more oil and fish: Offshore drilling not only means more energy it will also create a more fruitful environment for marine life -- as if greens really cared"
National day of regret: The President, with his cockeyed optimism and can-do American spirit, seems to believe he can and will succeed. And he believes that much of the credit can be attributed to prayer

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ELSEWHERE



Hunting with dogs was banned recently in Britain and it seems likely that the same thing is going to happen to the California version ("live field coursing") soon too. See here. Since hunting is how the human race got here, that does seem to be an attack on normal humanity.

Half-hearted Senate vote in favour of English: "The Senate voted Thursday to make English the "national language" of the United States, declaring that no one has a right to federal communications or services in a language other than English except for those already guaranteed by law. The amendment, approved 63-34, directs the government to "preserve and enhance" the role of English, without altering current laws that require some government documents and services be provided in other languages".

Senate bypasses security for immigration: "Buoyed by President Bush, supporters of immigration legislation established command in the Senate on Tuesday, brushing aside potentially crippling challenges to a bill that blends tougher border enforcement with a path to citizenship for millions in the United States illegally. 'It was a good way to start,' said Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo. as a shifting bipartisan coalition held firm against attacks from the left and the right. On a vote of 55-40 that crossed party lines, the Senate rejected an appeal from Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., to require the border be secured before other immigration law changes could take place."



Minuteman fence still a goer: "A civilian border-patrol group said it still plans to erect a short security fence along the Mexican border, despite President Bush's pledge to deploy thousands of National Guard troops there. A spokeswoman for the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps [sic] said Tuesday what Bush promised was not enough. 'It's adding more people to the mix who will not be in position to do actual patrols,' Connie Hair said."

Australian kids conservative: "Adolescent angst is not what it used to be. A survey from the Australian Institute of Family Studies presents the current crop of teenagers as sane and sensible, with an utter absence of the angry self-indulgence the boomer generation made the measure of youth. Instead of denouncing capitalism, the survey found young people today are very keen to acquire capital - and lots of it. Instead of wanting to turn on, tune in and drop out, they are keen on sport and hobbies. Rather than getting wasted, they want to work.... And the survey is especially bad news for politicians whose stock in trade is contempt for traditional family values. Because the coming generation of voters is just not buying ancient, eccentric arguments that claim family life is for failures and making money is inherently evil. Certainly, this survey offers no evidence on the future political allegiances of today's teens. But it does suggest an eroding audience for people who bang on about abstract rights while ignoring the economic interests and social aspirations of young couples and their kids.

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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 Pages are here or here or here.

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A GOOD EXCERPT FROM TARANTO:

"Unknown assailants killed a senior Hamas activist [sic] in Gaza on Tuesday," Reuters reports:

"Unidentified Palestinian gunmen shot dead Mohammed Tatar, a senior member of Hamas's military wing, as he drove his car in Gaza city, Palestinian medics and a security source said. No one claimed responsibility for the attack. Hundreds of Hamas supporters took to the streets later on Tuesday calling for revenge. Separately, masked gunmen shot and critically wounded another senior member of Hamas's military wing and injured a second Hamas member in Gaza's Khan Younis area, witnesses said.

Remember a couple of years ago when Israel killed some Hamas honchos in an effort to prevent suicide bombings? That prompted world-wide outrage. This time, however, it was Arab terrorists killing other Arab terrorists. If any Jewish lives were saved in the process, it was purely incidental. Thus there is no cause for world-wide outrage.



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ELSEWHERE

Disgraceful: "A Georgia judge on Tuesday struck down a ban on same-sex marriage that was approved by voters in 2004, saying it violated the Southern state's constitution. Judge Constance Russell of Fulton County Superior Court ruled that the measure violates the state's "single-subject rule" as it asked voters to decide on multiple issues in one amendment, said Jack Senterfitt, an attorney with gay rights group Lambda Legal Defense.... Georgia was one of several states where voters solidly backed state constitutional amendments in 2004 to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman. Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue voiced disappointment in the ruling and said he was weighing his options to protect the will of the people. "This decision highlights the effect activist judges can have on our system of governance," Perdue, a Republican seeking re-election this year, said in a statement. Perdue noted that 76 percent voted in support of the constitutional amendment two years ago".

More political persecution: "Five British National Party (BNP) "activists" have been arrested and bailed on suspicion of committing public order offences in Swansea. Police said the men were taken into custody at 1117 BST on Sunday in the Bonymaen area of the city. The BNP's website described the men as a "leafleting team" that was "lawfully campaigning" in Swansea. A spokesman for South Wales Police said they had been released on police bail pending further inquiries".

Japan gets the idea: "Japan's cabinet approved a bill on Friday to make nurturing "love of country" an aim of education, a change sought by conservatives who want patriotism in schools but opposed by those who see parallels with militarism.... The revisions would make it a goal of education policy to cultivate "an attitude that respects tradition and culture, loves the nation and the homeland that have fostered them, respects other nations, and contributes to peace and development of international society"."

Homosexual indoctrination in the guise of a "survey": "Parents are angry and school leaders are promising action in response to a "Heterosexual Questionnaire," approved by two teachers, that asked students questions such as: "If you have never slept with someone of your same gender, then how do you know you wouldn't prefer it?" Hundreds of Port Washington High School students were told to submit written answers and discuss the survey."

US bans weapons sales to Venezuela: "The United States is imposing a ban on weapons sales to Venezuela because of what it claims is a lack of support by President Hugo Chavez's leftist government on counterterrorism efforts, the State Department said Monday. The Bush administration will also list Venezuela -- the fifth-largest supplier of oil to the United States -- as a 'country of concern' in the war on terrorism, an official told NBC News, speaking on condition of anonymity. The label is not as severe as being listed as a 'state sponsor of terror,' but it reflects what the State Department reported in April about Venezuela in its annual terror report."

The Bush administration snubs Taiwan: "When it came into office, the Bush administration vowed to treat the leader of a sister democracy with far more consideration. And it did. The reception accorded Chen during his stopovers throughout Bush's first term was cordial and respectful, despite strong objections from China. Chen routinely interacted with journalists, members of Congress, and public audiences while in the United States. Washington's reaction was very different, however, regarding Chen's latest trip in early May. This time, U.S. officials even refused his request to land in New York City for a refueling stop on his way to Central America. Indeed, they indicated that all airports in the United States would be off limits. They did offer to let him stop in Alaska, provided that he have no interaction with the public."

Amusing: Castro makes the rich list, but doesn't like it. Bill Gates makes the rich list and he doesn't like it either.

Murdoch, 75, tells the PM, 66, it's time to go: "The most influential expatriate Australian, Rupert Murdoch, has suggested John Howard should quit while he's ahead. Mr Murdoch, 75, who shows no sign of quitting himself, offered the retirement advice just before attending a White House banquet in honour of the Prime Minister, who is 66. Mr Howard was "on top of his form and much better to go out that way, than like Margaret Thatcher, or losing an election", he said".

Congressional stupidity in aid of looking good: "Last week the House of Representatives expressed its collective outrage over high gas prices by voting as a herd, 389-34, to make gasoline 'price gouging' a federal felony. Really. This command and control legislation reads like the kind of law passed by the old Soviet Politburo... The heretofore sensible Joe Barton, head of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, explains that 'we know price gouging when we see it.'... There's no actual evidence that oil companies or gas stations are in any way 'gouging' consumers. Webster's Dictionary defines the term 'gouge' as 'to extort from or to swindle.' But in the marketplace with prices set free of government intervention, the sales price is established through a transaction of a willing buyer and a willing seller. Service stations are in no way 'extorting' or 'swindling' motorists at the pump... If service stations are guilty of extortion because their prices are rising more than their costs, then are we to have pricing police preventing homeowners from selling their houses for two or three times what they bought them for, or movie theaters from charging $6 for popcorn that costs 25 cents to produce, or Barbra Streisand from commanding a $1 million fee for a single performance?... The irony here is that if there is any extortion or swindling going on in the oil marketplace, Congress is the guilty party. It is Congress that ordered service stations across America to switch last month to ethanol additives that have both raised prices at the pump and exacerbated shortages in recent weeks. It is Congress and state governments that take 59 cents a gallon on average of fuel taxes at the pump-almost six times the average of 10 cents per gallon profit that the oil companies make."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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 Pages are here or here or here.

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ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION

Illegal immigration is THE political topic in the USA at the moment and the recent "Have it both ways" speech by GWB will inflame the debate rather than douse it. I have not so far posted a lot on the topic as I live in a country that has a settled immigration policy that I and most others of my fellow citizens agree with. Some years ago, Australia's conservative government firmly reasserted control over our borders and we now have virtually no illegal immigrants. And since Australia has many thousands of miles of unguarded and mostly deserted coastline, that was not intrinsically easy. And we have far more poor Asians living to our immediate North than the USA has poor Hispanics to its South. So it seems completely obvious to me that the USA should and could control its borders too.

So why is it not happening? It is not happening because of an unholy alliance of Leftist Democrats and lassez faire Republicans. Leftists will support anything that tears down existing society and liberty-minded conservatives think government controls are mostly counterproductive. But there are liberties and liberties. Does a person have the liberty to decide who lives in his own home? Must he accept as a resident anyone who wanders into his house? Most people would say that a householder should be free to boot intruders out. And it seems to me that a nation should be similarly free.

But the time for that discussion is of course now long past. The egg has been scrambled. Half the babies now being born in the USA are "minority" babies. The USA is now a largely Hispanic nation and will steadily become more so even if effective border control measures are taken. So the already large numbers of Hispanics who vote will also grow. And NO political party can afford to alienate them. And although effective border control would not alienate ALL Hispanic voters, it would alienate many millions of them. And that would certainly be enough to swing an election.

So GWB has no choice. He has to go easy on Hispanic immigration or he will hand the next election to the Democrats. And much the same is true of Congress. There are substantial numbers of Hispanics in all States so many Congressmen would lose their jobs if Hispanics turned solidly against them.

So Americans no longer have much choice about the future ethnic composition of their country. It has been settled. The only choice is whether the USA will become rapidly more Hispanic (which is what will happen if the Democrats get control) or whether it slowly becomes more Hispanic (if GWB's policies prevail). There is no third option that would win an election.

So is that a good thing? Is the future of the USA clouded by its demographic transformation? It seems unlikely to be a big problem. Non-Hispanic whites will go on doing what they have always done -- leading the world in most spheres of endeavour -- and most Hispanics will probably have learnt enough from growing up in America not to support the Fascist political policies that regularly prevail in Latin America.

An increased level of crime may be one adverse result from the Hispanic influx but high crime levels are largely a reflection of poor policing and a lenient criminal justice system so that can be fixed whenever there is a public will to do so. Similarly, the burden of giving free medical care and schooling to illegals could be ended by requiring proof of citizenship first -- but there is virtually no will for that.

In the present, the Hispanic influx undoubtedly lowers wages at the bottom end of the market but there are both winners and losers from that.

Is there anything that non-Hispanic whites can do if they want America to remain predominantly non-Hispanic? Just one thing: Have babies.

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ELSEWHERE

Bill permits 193 million more aliens by 2026: "The Senate immigration reform bill would allow for up to 193 million new legal immigrants -- a number greater than 60 percent of the current U.S. population -- in the next 20 years, according to a study released yesterday. "The magnitude of changes that are entailed in this bill -- and are largely unknown -- rival the impact of the creation of Social Security or the creation of the Medicare program," said Robert Rector, senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation who conducted the study. Although the legislation would permit 193 million new immigrants in the next two decades, Mr. Rector estimated that it is more likely that about 103 million new immigrants actually would arrive in the next 20 years."

Your bureaucracy will protect you: "The Home Office has abandoned hope of finding hundreds of thousands of failed asylum seekers, its most senior enforcement officer admitted yesterday. In a shockingly frank series of answers to MPs, Dave Roberts said he didn't have the 'faintest idea' how many were at large. Mr Roberts is director of enforcement and removals at the Immigration and Nationality Directorate, which polices migration into Britain on behalf of the Home Office. Coming from such an authoritative source, the comments exposed more starkly than ever the hopeless inadequacy of the asylum system".

Ward Churchill found guilty: "A University of Colorado investigative committee found deliberate and serious misconduct by ethnic studies professor Ward Churchill, including plagiarism, fabrication, and "serious deviation from accepted practices in reporting results from research," according to a report made public today. The committee also noted Churchill was "disrespectful of Indian oral traditions" when he wrote the U.S. government distributed blankets infested with smallpox to Mandan Indians in 1837 on the Upper Missouri River. Three of the five members of the committee said the transgressions were serious enough that CU could revoke Churchill's tenure and fire him. But two of those three said the most appropriate sanction would be a five-year suspension without pay. See also here

Supreme Court won't block lesbian "parent's" rights: "In a Washington state case, the U.S. Supreme Court refused today to block a gay woman from seeking parental rights to a child she had helped raise with her partner. Justices could have used the case to clarify the rights of gays in child custody disputes stemming from nontraditional families. They declined, without comment, to disturb a ruling of Washington state's highest court that said Sue Ellen Carvin could pursue ties to the girl as a 'de facto parent.' The girl is now 11. The case had brought a contentious issue to a court that has shied away from gay rights disputes. Lawyers for the girl's biological mother, Page Britain, told justices that the state court decision in this case and others around the country 'pave the way for children to have an unlimited and ever-changing number of parents.' Carvin's attorneys had said the court has never agreed to hear a case involving parenting or visitation disputes arising from same-sex relationships.

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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 Pages are here or here or here.

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Muslim refugees desecrate Belgian churches

Failure to confront reality exacts its price:

Illegal immigrants have taken refuge in some Belgian churches and, according to the conservative Brussels Journal, these churches "are being turned into mosques before [the bishops'] very eyes." A recent report in the journal indicates that the Belgian bishops have opened their churches and offered sanctuary to illegal immigrants in order to pressurize the Belgian authorities to allow them to stay in the country. Most of these illegal immigrants are Muslim, and the Brussels Journal accused the bishops of being "ignorant" to the fact that these immigrants are desecrating the churches.

According to the Belgian publication, the squatters live in tents in the churches. Catholic relief organizations provided the tents and offered radios, television sets and computers. They hold Islamic prayer services in the church and display banners showing the name of Allah. They have also moved the altar and covered the face of a statue of Our Lady with a cloth

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LEFTISTS ARE THE REAL HATERS

As Richard Cohen, a Washington Post "liberal", found out when he said that a comedian who had criticized Bush was not funny. HE then became the target of the hate. Cohen writes:

"Then I wrote about Stephen Colbert and his unfunny performance at the White House Correspondents' dinner. Kapow! Within a day, I got more than 2,000 e-mails. A day later, I got 1,000 more. By the fourth day, the number had reached 3,499 -- a figure that does not include the usual offers of nubile Russian women or loot from African dictators. The Colbert messages began with Patrick Manley ("You wouldn't know funny if it slapped you in the face'') and ended with Ron (``Colbert ROCKS, you MURDER'') who was so proud of his thought that he copied countless others. Ron, you're a genius.

"Truth to tell, I peeked into only a few of the e-mails. I did this because I would sometimes recognize a name I thought I knew, which was almost always a mistake. When I guilelessly clicked on the name, I would get a bucket of raw, untreated and disease-laden sewage right in the face. I'd quickly delete the thing, like closing a manhole cover, and move on, trying to figure out how to peek into an e-mail without getting the full, ugly message. No way....

"The e-mails pulse in my queue, emanating raw hatred. This spells trouble -- not for Bush or, in 2008, the next GOP presidential candidate, but for Democrats. The anger festering on the Democratic left will be taken out on the Democratic middle. (Watch out Hillary!) I have seen this anger before -- back in the Vietnam War era. That's when the anti-war wing of the Democratic Party helped elect Richard Nixon. In this way, they managed to prolong the very war they so hated.

"The hatred is back. I know it's only words now appearing on my computer screen, but the words are so angry, so roiled with rage, that they are the functional equivalent of rocks once so furiously hurled during anti-war demonstrations."

For more on Leftists as haters, see here

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Tokenism: "US President George W. Bush unveiled plans overnight to deploy up to 6000 National Guard troops on the US-Mexico border to bolster efforts to stem the flow of illegal immigrants. In a rare nationally televised speech that underlined the political stakes, Mr Bush denied he was "militarising" the border but said he wanted to use the troops to back up the Border Patrol while he added 6000 officers in the next two years."

Now we are in big trouble -- Chavez supports Iran!: "Venezuela's visiting President Hugo Chavez said here Friday Caracas supports the Islamic Republic of Iran. Speaking to IRNA on the sidelines of the EU-Latin America Summit, Chavez said, "We pray to `Allah' that no war would be launched against Iran!" The Venezuelan President added, "We believe the Iranian nation's campaign is our own nation's, and we ask the world countries to respect Iran's independence." He concluded stressing, "We are on the side of the Iranian nation and pray for President Ahmadinejad."

Tories attack the Beeb: "The Conservatives will intensify their attack on the power of the BBC today with a call for limits on its ability to "crowd out smaller players" in internet and local television markets. George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, will suggest that the BBC should be blocked from dominating online and local media in order to safeguard independent innovators who cannot get a foothold. Mr Osborne will build on the warning from his leader David Cameron last week that "we need to look at ways of making sure that the BBC doesn't overextend itself"."

Freer trade lifts all boats: "The global economy is on a growth streak that is shaping up to be the broadest and strongest expansion in more than three decades. Rising spending and investment by consumers and businesses worldwide are boosting national economies on every continent, pushing down unemployment rates in many countries and lifting business earnings and confidence. . . . The trend is being driven by free trade, which has created millions of jobs in emerging nations in recent years, fueling stunning new wealth in those countries."

Brazil is finished! Or so Luis Afonso thinks. And it is hard to disagree. Read Luis for the details.

With the recent arrival in London of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, an editorial in the Sunday Times once again mulls over the puzzle of why Leftists cream their jeans over dictators and other authoritarian rulers. The editorial does not quite get to the obvious solution to the puzzle, however: That Leftists themselves are would-be dictators -- despite all their flim-flam about "caring" etc.

Good: Muslim thugs kill one-another: "A man shot dead in a Sydney park was a suspect on the run over the fatal stabbing of Robin Nassour and the wounding of his brother, Fat Pizza actor George Nassour. Police have used fingerprints to identify Faouxi Abou-Jibal after his body was found with a gunshot wound to the back in a Lakemba park early yesterday. A warrant was issued late last month for Abou-Jibal's arrest over the attack on the Nassour brothers, stabbed in a Chiswick garage in January.

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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 Pages are here or here or here.

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PROGRESS IN HUMAN GENETIC ENGINEERING

A Brisbane couple is set to give birth to a designer baby hand-picked from a test tube as part of a world-first IVF test. The test, developed for Brisbane's City Fertility Centre, is set to revolutionise the booming IVF industry by allowing couples to select disease-free embryos. They will also be able to pick the gender, and safeguard against lab mix-ups by providing a DNA swab to match with the embryos.

The test, available nationally from July 1, involves taking a single cell from a three-day-old embryo and screening it for chromosome abnormalities which can lead to miscarriage and diseases, including cystic fibrosis and Down, Edwards and Patau syndromes. The molecular technology, known as MFPCR or multiplex fluorescent polymerase chain reaction, will cut down the time it takes to scan embryos for abnormalities to just a few hours. The $500 test is also predicted to slash the cost of IVF treatments from up to $20,000 each.

CFC medical director Glenn Sterling said the test was not about producing "designer babies". "We are examining embryos, not interfering with the genetic makeup," Dr Sterling said. "So many women go through IVF and they don't get pregnant, miscarry, or have a baby with major complications, and now they can go, `Let's get pregnant the first time and not go through the heartache'," he said.

The test took Griffith University's Prof Ian Findlay and scientists from South Australia-based company Gribble Molecular Science eight years to develop.

The above article appeared in the Brisbane "Sunday Mail" on 14 May, 2006. Now that it is mostly the dumber element of society that is having the babies, some form of genetic engineering would appear to be the only hope for the intelligence of the future human population

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PROOF THAT PEOPLE KNOW ABOUT THE HIGH PROBABILITY OF BLACK CRIME

Leftist denials and excuses haven't fooled them

Male murderers with stereotypically "black-looking" features are more than twice as likely to be executed as lighter-skinned African-Americans convicted of killing a white person, researchers have found. But this effect disappears when both murderers and their victims are black, the scientists said. "Race clearly matters in criminal justice in ways in which people may or may not be consciously aware," said Jennifer Eberhardt, a psychologist at Stanford University in Stanford, Calif., one of the researchers.

"When black defendants are accused of killing whites, perhaps jurors use the degree to which these defendants appear stereotypically black as a proxy for criminality, and then punish accordingly." The findings appear in the May issue of the journal Psychological Science.....

The study found that 57.5 percent of defendants rated by students to have "stereotypically black" features-broad noses, thick lips, dark skin and hair-were sentenced to death. This happened to only 24.4 percent of men rated as less stereotypically black. ...

Source

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ELSEWHERE

Duke university "rape" update: "The second round of DNA test results in the Duke University rape investigation show "no conclusive match'' to any lacrosse players, defense attorneys said, but a vaginal swab of the alleged rape victim produced DNA from a "single male source'' - a man not on the lacrosse team who did not attend a March 13 party that was the site of the alleged rape. Defense attorney Joe Cheshire declined to identify the mystery man or his connection to the alleged victim, but ABC News' Law and Justice Unit has learned that the unnamed source of the DNA is the alleged victim's "boyfriend," according to her mother."

Presbyterian antisemitism: "As unpleasant as this may be for Presbyterians to face, the offices of the PC(USA) have also issued several statements that clearly cross whatever lines exist between an anti-Israel stance and a blatantly anti-Jewish one. Our Washington Office has assured us, in more polished words, that powerful Jews control American politics. Their missives have referred to "The traditional pandering by political candidates for Jewish support" and bemoaned the strange alliance between conservative Christians and some Jewish groups. The possibility that a person actually believed Israel to be in the right in the conflict, or at least neutral, does not seem to have occurred to the Washington office..... if something walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, an observer does not know it's a duck, but there's a pretty good chance that it is. If official actions and statements of the Presbyterian Church (USA) look like anti-Semitism and sound like anti-Semitism, an observer could be excused for concluding that they in fact represent anti-Semitism.

Odd that the Cathoic church is now more faithful to the Bible than many Protestant churches are: "The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, faced accusations of hypocrisy from gay rights groups last night after it emerged that he dismissed a senior aide who was homosexual. Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor, regarded as the spiritual head of the Roman Catholic Church in Britain, dismissed his press secretary, Stephen Noon, three years ago. Sources suggested that the Cardinal was prepared to accept Mr Noon's homosexual orientation but when he was presented with irrefutable evidence that he had a partner and was living an openly gay lifestyle he felt he had to act."

Sickening : "A German reader informs us that it is not just the Catholic Church that has its quislings selling out to the Muslims. On Palm Sunday (9 April) a Protestant church in Bochum/Germany celebrated Muhammad’s birthday. The church invited the local Turkish community and the Turkish Consul, Munis Dirik, to attend the service. A Turkish music band played sufi music during the service, in which Protestants and Muslims joined together in honour of Muhammad".

I have just put up a new entry on my Scripture blog. It is an account by Chris Brand of how Jesus might have survived the resurrection without recourse to anything miraculous. My own view is that the post-crucifixion Jesus was probably a con-man impersonating Jesus but Chris thinks it more likely that the real Jesus was never crucified at all.

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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 Pages are here or here or here.

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HILARIOUS DILEMMA FOR BRITISH LEFTISTS

As part of their "all men are equal" mania, Leftists hate to acknowledge the high level of crime among blacks. Among Leftists you are allowed to blame black crime on anything but blacks themselves -- with police "racism" being the usual explanation. But what if the crime is detected by a machine? "Racist" machines are a bit much even for Leftists!

Britain's most senior policeman Sir Ian Blair is facing a race relations dilemma after the release of figures that reveal almost half the number of people arrested in relation to car crime in London are black. Blair, the Metropolitan police commissioner, has signed off a report by his force's traffic unit which shows that black people account for 46% of all arrests generated by new automatic numberplate recognition (ANPR) cameras. The technology allows car registration plates to be scanned and automatically run through databases to determine whether a vehicle is stolen, uninsured or has not had its road tax paid. Each numberplate is also checked with the police national computer, where vehicles suspected of links to crimes such as robberies are flagged up. The Met has deployed six mobile ANPR camera units in the capital, primarily in areas with high levels of street crime. When a suspect vehicle is identified, police officers are sent to intercept the driver.

Although ANPR technology is impartial, the disproportionate number of blacks being arrested has prompted the Met to investigate. The arrests have been broken down by ethnicity in a report sent last month to the Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA), to which the force is accountable. It reveals that between April 2005 and January this year the units generated 2,023 arrests. Of these 923 were black suspects, while 738 (36%) came from white backgrounds. Asians accounted for just over 9% of arrests. The report tacitly appears to address concerns among ethnic minority communities who believe they are unfairly targeted by the police through stop and search powers. Black people are up to six times more likely to be stopped than whites. The report says: "It is worth stating that out of all our activities, this is the one area where the officer has minimal discretion as they respond to an electronic matching process." ...

Captain Gatso, of Motorists Against Detection, the anti-speed-camera group that uncovered the Met figures, said: "All this does is create a new problem for Sir Ian Blair, the politically correct PC, as ANPR cameras and the databases they are linked to are colour blind." It is more than a decade ago that Lord Condon, the former Met commissioner, caused controversy when he suggested that young black men were likely to be responsible for most muggings.

More here

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ELSEWHERE



Leftist Susan Estrich thinks the L.A. Times is a rag: "When I was in law school, I thought the press could do no wrong. I was a strong supporter of New York Times v. Sullivan, the Supreme Court decision granting the press extra protection from state libel and slander laws and providing that only where there was actual malice could the press be sued for destroying a person's reputation. Then I entered the public world, where I -- or the candidates for whom I worked -- were frequently the subjects of newspaper stories, and I discovered something very upsetting. In almost every case, in almost every story, there was always something, usually more than one thing, that was just plain factually wrong."


Taking the "play" out of kids' playgrounds: "Most adults can remember the carefree days of childhood, climbing trees and jumping from swings, often on schoolyard playgrounds. Climbing, swinging and sliding was once a rite of passage during recess, a time for adventure, to see how high, how far and how fast we could go as a kid. Today, kids find themselves grounded, victims of a culture of fear and injury litigation. A growing number of school districts are going so far as to ban the game of tag and are even posting signs that read 'no running on the playground.' Is there real danger on the modern playground? Safety advocates say yes and want to eliminate it. Their first target: swing sets."

How can farmers be expected to anticipate such unprecedented phenomena as severe weather and rising costs? "Congress and the administration are engaged in a bitter fight over a $1.5 billion assistance package for farmers that senators tucked into a $109 billion war and hurricane-recovery spending bill last week. The new subsidy -- aimed at mitigating the impact of severe weather conditions and rising energy prices -- would primarily help farmers in the Midwest and Southeast who already get subsidies from the federal government for growing crops such as wheat, grain, rice and corn."

French wines imitating Australian and Californian wine: "Pascal Renaudat is the founder of the most sacrilegious concept imaginable to any Gallic purist - a French wine company that unashamedly imitates the New World. Op,ra Vins et Spiritueux (OVS) aims to win back drinkers in France's biggest export markets, and notably in Britain, where it introduced its wines this week. M Renaudat, 52, made a fortune as a wine distributor in France and then followed his father and brother into farming. But he was soon back in an attempt to prove that his compatriots had no one but themselves to blame for a fall in their global market share from 70 per cent to 40 per cent in the past decade. "I got fed up with reading that the difficulties of French wine were always the fault of everyone else - of the Government, of the New World, of supermarkets. The real problem is the way French wine is organised." ... With French wine sales in Britain falling to 761 million pounds last year, M Renaudat convinced them that the sort of easy-to-drink product that has proved successful in California and Australia would meet with similar fortune in France.

Bolivia Fascist, not Communist: "On May 1st, President Evo Morales of Bolivia ordered the army to assume control of Bolivia's natural gas fields and announced their nationalization. Not coincidentally, Morales' command came after his return from a meeting in Havana with two other self-identified leftists, Presidents Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Fidel Castro of Cuba. Many observers commented that Morales' decision reflects Latin America's shift to the left. 'Left' in this context does not mean mildly center-left policies. 'Left' in the case of Morales and Chavez involves embracing aggressive class-struggle rhetoric and a classically socialist political agenda. Up to a point, this is a fair depiction of affairs. But a more accurate description would be to say that Bolivia and Venezuela are experiencing a resurgence of 'corporatism.'"

If anybody wants to follow Cardinal Pell's advice and read the Koran, you can download a copy from here

The truth about British casualties in Iraq: "Iraq is becoming less dangerous for British troops - and the IRA killed twice as many soldiers in one year as Iraqi insurgents have killed in three".

There is a little-known but interesting blog here. I like his idea that Americans should burn MORE gasoline, not less. He's got a good argument for it.

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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 Pages are here or here or here.

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Absurd bureaucratic attack on church music in Left-ruled Australian State

When the Reverend Warwick Cadenhead, the minister at Paddington Uniting Church, tallied the costs of hosting live music at the 130-year-old sandstone pile he knew it must be a test. "My God," he said, "There has to be a better system." There is not. For the price of a temporary council-issued place of public entertainment authority - required for any performance on church grounds, even the singing of hymns - there was not much change from $30,000. "We had to pay Sydney Council for the development application, and for acoustic and traffic engineers to conduct reports - it's taken four months," Mr Cadenhead said.

Under the Local Government Act, every NSW church is required to have an authority for live music, which includes singing by congregations and choirs. But councils apply the law inconsistently, and in most cases they require churches to comply only when noise complainants make a fuss. In Balmain the Campbell Street Presbyterian Church, founded in the 1840s, has cancelled a Mother's Day concert planned for tomorrow because a one-off authority from Leichhardt Council could cost more than $5000. The church's minister, the Reverend Ivan Ransom, said the complaints started about a month ago when a new resident moved into the neighbourhood. "There are lots of churches around here that are considering defying the council," he said.

When applying for the last 12-month permit from the City of Sydney, Mr Cadenhead had to lay out more than $200,000 to soundproof Paddington Uniting Church. "I'm not suggesting that churches should get special treatment, but surely this is extreme." However, in pubs and clubs the State Government exempted big screen TVs, jukeboxes and poker machines from needing the authority...."

Source

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ELSEWHERE



Inquiry sought on 'tipping' of border group locations: "Congressional leaders Thursday called on the Department of Homeland Security to investigate reports that U.S. Customs and Border Protection has given information to the Mexican government about the locations of U.S. civilian border watch groups. California Reps. Duncan Hunter, R-El Cajon, and Darryl Issa, R-Vista, along with Texas Rep. John Culberson, R-Houston, sent a formal letter to DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff asking for a full investigation into all circumstances and events related to civilian border observation groups and the Mexican government. The letter was in response to a story published in Tuesday's Daily Bulletin, which reported Border Patrol officials shared civilian groups' locations with the Mexican government when illegal border crossers were detained and at the request of the Mexican consulate, among other things".

Organ socialism: "Congress passed the National Organ Transplantation Act in 1984, making it illegal to buy or sell human organs. That law funded organ procurement organizations, which find organ donors, acquire organs, and ship them to transplant hospitals. It also created the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network. It made the Secretary of Health & Human Services responsible for outsourcing OPTN's operation. HHS hired the United Network for Organ Sharing. People who need transplants can only be put on the waiting list by government-approved transplant hospitals, and only if they pay UNOS a listing fee. Transplant patients pay hospitals for the donated organs they get from organ procurement organizations. How's this system working? Over 6,000 people on the transplant waiting list died waiting in 2005. Another 1,800 left the list because they became too sick for surgery. They'll die soon -- if they're still alive. The waiting list has doubled in ten years to over 92,000 people. Most people on the list will die waiting."

U.S. as biggest foreign aid recipient: "Which country receives the most in total foreign aid from all donors? The official numbers show Iraq at the top with $3 to $18 billion in aid (depending on how you define 'aid') and all the other recipient nations of the world at less than $3 billion per year. However, if you look at which nation benefits most from foreign subsidies, the U.S. would come out on top by a very wide margin. Yes, I did just say that the U.S. is the world's largest recipient of foreign assistance. Other countries are not sending official government 'aid' dollars to help the U.S. but are doing things that have the same effect. For instance, China provides the biggest single subsidy to the U.S."

Gas tax a bonanza for state: "Oil companies aren't the only ones raking in the money because of rising prices at the fuel pump. The coffers of state and local governments are seeing big gains as a result of increased revenue generated by the sales tax that consumers pay on gasoline. Sales tax receipts from the gas pumps in the fourth quarter of last year grew by nearly $100 million from the same period the year before , according to the latest figures available. And that was when California's average price for a gallon of gas at the pump, which includes state and local sales tax along with fixed state and federal excise taxes, was at $2.56. Since 2002, sales tax revenues on gas have been growing annually by $300 million to $400 million to reach $2.86 billion in 2005, according to the California Board of Equalization. And with fuel prices at the pump already well above $3, the gas tax boom will likely continue for state and local governments."

Massachusetts gets real on gas taxes: "Motorists in Massachusetts would save 21 cents a gallon for gasoline this summer under a bill filed yesterday by House minority leader Bradley H. Jones Jr. that would eliminate the state gas tax for three months. ... With the summer travel season approaching, the bill, backed by Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey and legislators from both parties, would be in effect from Memorial Day through Labor Day, giving relief to businesses who need tourism dollars to thrive and to working families who want to travel, Jones said. ... Chances of the bill's passage appeared slim yesterday, given the criticism from a key Democratic lawmaker and other observers. The critics said the tax cut would endanger spending on other state initiatives, such as education and healthcare. The supporters estimate the cut would cost the state $187 million in revenue. They propose using up to $200 million of the state's $1.7 billion budget reserves to make up for the loss."

The "Peoples Cube" satirists are having a shot at Muslims now. See here. As with all good satire, it's not far from the truth.

Wicked Thoughts has just put up an exceptionally funny collection of kid stories.

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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 Pages are here or here or here.

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LYING DEMOCRAT BOSS MAKES IT EASY FOR THE GOP

It looks like John Kerry has made flip-flopping into the Democrat modus operandi. Not impressive

Democratic chairman Howard Dean mischaracterized his party's platform on gay rights in an interview courting evangelicals, then set the record straight Thursday when an advocacy group called him on it. Dean told Christian Broadcasting Network News that the 2004 Democratic platform declares "marriage is between a man and a woman" - just one of the points he made in reaching out to religious conservatives who are largely hostile to the party. But the platform does not define marriage that way, and his remarks prompted the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force to return a $5,000 donation from the Democratic National Committee.

Dean later acknowledged his misstatement, but the group sent back the money anyway. "We need for Governor Dean to demonstrate real leadership on our issues," executive director Matt Foreman said in an interview, "not to equivocate depending on the audience." Dean sought to establish common ground with religious conservatives in the interview on Pat Robertson's network, a tall order considering their opposition to the Democratic Party's positions on abortion rights, gay rights and some other social issues.

More here

Once again we see that Leftist principles are as solid as foam rubber. When they say that there is no such thing as right and wrong they really mean it. As Tibor Machan says:

Do "liberals" care about liberty? "I assume most of those who read this column have heard modern liberals proclaim their the deep concern civil liberties and due process. Among them many tell us they are upset about how President George W. Bush and most of those on his team are willing to sacrifice these so as to carry on with 'the war on terror.' These liberals express earnest concern about how the rights of detainees are violated. They lament how Americans are being subjected to unlawful wiretapping. They are very upset with certain provisions of the Patriot Act and similar measures that they claim violate our rights. These liberals profess real worry about our loss of liberties. I don't believe them. I am convinced they are not at all serious about liberty. They are merely playing power politics"

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ELSEWHERE

New immigration bill in the works: "Senate leaders reached a deal Thursday on reviving a broad immigration bill that could provide millions of illegal immigrants a chance to become American citizens and said they'll try to pass it before Memorial Day.... Key to the agreement is who will be negotiating a compromise with the House, which last December passed an enforcement-only bill that would subject the estimated 11 million to 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States to felony charges as well as deportation.... Frist said a "considerable" number of amendments would be debated when the Senate begins debating the bill early next week. That measure absorbed a bill drafted by McCain and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., that called for allowing illegal immigrants to work toward becoming legal permanent residents. President Bush had helped accelerate progress on the bill after meeting with a bipartisan group of senators last month and stating clearer support for allowing illegal immigrants a path to citizenship. "Business and labor, Democrats and Republicans, religious leaders and the American people strongly support our plan to strengthen borders, provide a path to earned citizenship for those undocumented workers who are here and put in place a realistic guest worker program for the future," Kennedy said.

Comment from Keith Burgess Jackson: "The president of Iran says that "America is a sinner." Gee, that's what Noam Chomsky and Brian Leiter have been saying. Sometimes I wonder whether these great thinkers realize how ludicrous they sound. Their mantra is "America bad; everyone else good." If this country is so bad, why don't they move to Iran or some other land of liberty, opportunity, justice, and prosperity? I'm serious. Why would you live in a place that you think deeply and irredeemably immoral? Why would you raise your children in such a place? Isn't that a dereliction of parental duty? Chomsky and Leiter want it both ways. They want all the advantages and comforts of living in the United States, but aren't willing to pay any price, bear any burden, or incur any risk to promote its interests. They are leeches."

National security at work: "Bush Administration officials insist they have no idea how a minute-by-minute schedule for the President's trip to Florida landed in a pile of trash, where almost anyone could grab it, hours before the President took off. But the White House does admit the document should have been burned not tossed. The document in question appears to be a White House staff schedule for the President's trip to Florida Tuesday. And a sanitation worker was alarmed to find in the trash long hours before Mr. Bush left for his trip. It's the kind of thing you would expect would be shredded or burned, not thrown in the garbage. Randy Hopkins could not believe what he was seeing. There on the floor next to a big trash truck was a thick sheaf of papers with nearly every detail of the President's voyage. "I saw locations and names and places where the President was going to be. I knew it was important. And it shouldn't have been in a trash hole like this," he said."

More brilliant security: "On April 28, 2006, Eric McCarty was arraigned in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. McCarty is a professional computer security consultant who noticed that there was a problem with the way the University of Southern California had constructed its web page for online applications. A database programming error allowed outsiders to obtain applicants' personal information, including Social Security numbers. For proof, the man copied seven applicants' personal records and anonymously sent them to a reporter for SecurityFocus. The journalist notified the school, the school fixed the problem, and the reporter wrote an article about it. The incident might have ended there, but didn't. The school went through its server logs and easily traced the activity back to McCarty, who had made no attempt to hide his tracks. The FBI interviewed McCarty, who explained everything to the agents. Then the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles charged the security expert with violating 18 U.S.C. 1030, the federal computer crime law".

More California craziness: "The state has placed more than 20 high-risk sex offenders on parole in hotels and motels near Disneyland, and in some cases moved them from place to place to avoid registering their addresses, a legislator charged Tuesday. This shows 'a total lack of common sense' by top corrections officials, said Assemblyman Rudy Bermudez (D-Norwalk) on Tuesday at an Anaheim news conference. He compared the practice to 'putting the fox in charge of the henhouse.' He cited a recent investigative KCBS-TV report that allegedly showed parole agents moving sex offenders from one motel to another. 'It's a devastating situation,' Bermudez said. 'When you place high-risk sex offenders where children are, you're almost violating the laws by putting children in harm's way.' The Department of Corrections denied Tuesday that any parolee 'shuffling' took place."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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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