Celebrate diversity!

This is such a good post from La Shawn Barber that I am reproducing it in full below

New York City Fire Department (FDNY) has succumbed to the pressure. One of the finest fire departments in the country will lower its hiring standards to attract more black recruits.

This Newsday article begins with an effusive lead about the new “pro-diversity” campaign to attract “minorities,” but the important part is how the fire department intends to do that. As originally conceived, affirmative action would require FDNY to look farther and wider for qualified black candidates. Affirmative action as practiced today means lowering qualifications.

How low will they go? FDNY is dropping the college requirement altogether if applicants have held a full-time job for six months, but this New York Daily News story reveals more of the truth. The department is “considering a change in the way the test is scored.” That story also notes the “surge” in Latino fire fighters. I'd be interested to know how they scored on the employment test as a group.

(I’d guess that criminal records are disqualifying “minorities,” too. By the way, whenever you see that m-word, it means black.)

Although the article mentions only a change in the way the test is scored (residents are given extra points, for instance), test changes usually mean that reading comprehension and mathematical portions are either de-emphasized, removed or “dumbed down.” I’ll bet $1 that’s what the FDNY plans to do if it hasn’t already.

I happen to know a bit about this. Last year the Denver Fire Department intended to dumb down its test to hire more blacks.

Last year I spoke to Denver’s Chief Larry Trujillo, who said a story in the Rocky Mountain News (one I linked to) misquoted him. If I recall correctly, the story left the impression that he favored a watered down test. He was adamantly opposed to this, expressing pride that he, a “minority,” had gone through the same process as other recruits. But he believed “something” needed to be done to bring in more blacks.

Intending to do a story about this, I called CWH Management Solutions, the consulting company hired to create the department's newer and easier-for-blacks test. There I was, a little ole freelance writer and blogger, talking to three people on a conference call. I kept trying to get to the heart of thing: What sort of test ensures that a greater percentage of blacks will pass it?

Like a good interviewer, I'd done preliminary research before calling. I knew that as a group, blacks tended to score lower than whites on standardized tests. I wanted to know why. I found out part of the answer.

The more “g-loaded” a test was, the worse blacks performed on it. General intelligence is represented as g. Most standardized tests are basically IQ tests. Intelligence is what we use to reason abstractly and solve problems. While there are different sets of skills that can be measured, what is generally being tested is our overall level of intelligence, hence, general intelligence. The more of this ability the test measures, the more g-loaded the test.

Whenever you read or hear about some institution or other changing tests like the SAT or civil service exams (No one advocates changing medical board or pilot exams. I wonder why…) so that more people of races other than white can pass it, it means the test’s g-load will be decreased.

Back to CWH. I knew the consulting firm designed tests that reduced the g-load, but I wanted at least one of the three people on the telephone to say it. No matter how many ways I asked the question, I never got a straight answer. I asked if they planned to make the test easier. No. I asked if I could see a sample of the test. No. I asked exactly how they intended to ensure that blacks would do better on their test than on the current one. Just as the web site reads, the “leader” of the three said the new test would measure a “broader range of job related abilities than traditional written tests" in order to identify “well-rounded, motivated, and qualified” applicants.

In other words, the goal was to play down what made blacks look bad — abstract reasoning ability — and play up “interpersonal” skills.

Why is cognitive ability important? In general, cognitive ability predicts life outcomes, and cognitive tests are the best predictors of job performance. The higher the ability, the better recruits are able to learn and develop the skills necessary to be good firemen or policeman, for example. Study after study has shown this to be true.

(When people speak of different “intelligences,” like the faddish emotional and multiple “intelligences,” they don't know what they’re talking about. Intelligence is the ability to think abstractly and solve problems. Period. People who use those terms are not referring to these abilities. )

Bottom-line: To eliminate the “disparate impact” g-loaded tests have on blacks, test-makers eliminate the g-load.

I googled Chief Trujillo to find out whether the Denver Fire Department ever implemented the dumbed down test, and I pulled up this: “Push to hire more in fire department goes nowhere.”

Oh well.

Why do blacks generally have lower cognitive ability than whites? Is it in the genes, the environment, or both? Read, theorize, discuss — when you find the answer, let us know. In the meantime, we’ll keep pretending it has to do with slavery and segregation.

Addendum: Somewhere along the way, proportionality became the measure of non-discrimination. Since blacks are 13 percent of the population, they should represent at least 13 percent of fire department employees, for example. Anyone of average intelligence knows how unsustainable and illogical that is.

If blacks are overrepresented in certain government agencies, that’s OK.

Update (12:22 p.m.): Whenever you think something goes without saying, it’s best to say it anyway.

When I asked why blacks generally have lower cognitive ability than whites, I’m basing the question on the body of research I’ve read about IQ and employment tests. Commenter Frank offers a point of clarification. IQ tests certainly measure something, and cognitive ability correlates with life outcomes and predicts job performance. If you disagree, make the argument and support it with sources, as I’ve done here and here.

If you don’t think IQ tests properly or adequately measure cognitive ability, or that cognitive ability isn’t all that important, make the argument and support it.

Emotional I-refuse-to-believe-blacks-are-dumb type of responses are part of the problem with this dumbed down country. Think and argue.

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here). Other backups 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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How the left has changed -- once a bastion of principle, now a supporter of thugs

The mask has slipped

During these last few weeks of grief and bloodshed in the Middle East, I have read at least five contributions to the Daily Camera that vehemently criticize Israel's response to Hamas' and Hezbollah's cross-border attacks - attacks which not only led to the kidnapping of three and the killing of 10 Israeli soldiers but also to the firing of rockets from Gaza and Lebanon into Israel.

All five writers, well-known local Left activists, justified the Arab attacks as valid responses to Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory; and all five promised us that if only Israel withdrew completely from its occupied territory, peace inevitably would follow. I have become very skeptical, however, of such rosy promises - and especially when offered with glib assurance in the face of much contradictory evidence and by parties who reside in peaceful Boulder rather than Haifa or Beirut.

As for the contradictory evidence, what better place to discover Hamas' and Hezbollah's avowed intentions than their founding documents promulgated only 20 years ago - Hamas' 1988 Covenant, and Hezbollah's 1985 Program. The first thing one notices is that these are not ordinary political programs, like the Republican or Democratic Party platforms - rather, these are passionate religious proclamations written by and for committed Muslim believers. The quasi-religious nature of both documents implies that their provisions will be obeyed without questions or hesitation by their adherents. Consider now some of these provisions. To begin, both documents affirm the inadmissibility of permanently abandoning to infidels any territory that had ever been in Muslim hands - an injunction which applies most particularly to Palestine, home of the third most sacred Muslim site. As the Covenant states:

"The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgment Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up." From this principle, the Covenant draws the following conclusion: "There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors. "

Hezbollah's Program takes the identical position: "We vigorously condemn all plans for negotiation with Israel, and regard all negotiators as enemies, for the reason that such negotiation is nothing but the recognition of the legitimacy of the Zionist occupation of Palestine." There is clearly only one conclusion to this religiously ordained command - Israel's destruction. Here is Hezbollah's Program: "Therefore our struggle will end only when this (Zionist) entity is obliterated. We recognize no treaty with it, no cease fire, and no peace agreements, whether separate or consolidated."

It should also be noted that neither document mentions "occupation," that word so cherished by our Left activists, nor is there any hint that either movement might ever consider peaceful coexistence with Israel. In fact, the Covenant declares that "Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it."

Finally, what is the position of Hamas towards Jews as a people? As we discover from the Covenant, Hamas propounds an anti-Semitic creed as virulent as anything ever disseminated by Nazi Germany. Just like its Nazi teachers, Hamas holds international Jewry responsible for all the evil features of this modern age - i.e., for Capitalism, Imperialism and Communism. According to its Covenant, the Jews have been "behind" all significant, presumably unhappy, events of the last 200 years, beginning with the French Revolution and ending with the creation of the United Nations Security Council....

Many years ago, when I was young, the Left was an honorable antifascist movement. It fought racism, anti-Semitism, clerical obscurantism; it supported modernity, science, humanism. Today's Left defends fascist thugs like Saddam Hussein and Islamo-fascist parties like Hamas and Hezbollah - parties that advocate returning to the Seventh century, and preach the most virulent form of anti-Semitism. When I was young, men of the Left fought Fascism in Spanish trenches and on the beaches of Normandy; they would have been ashamed to shake a Nazi killer's hand. Today's Left activists preach Chamberlain's gospel of appeasement, and Left guru Chomsky joins Hezbollah leader Nasrallah on Lebanese TV, shakes his hand and voices approval of his 12,000-rocket arsenal donated to Hezbollah by Iran's mullahs for Israel's destruction. How low the Left has sunk since I was young.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

Crazy regulation: "Today, in what was once the freest nation on earth, we are regulated from stem to stern. I'm not just talking about high market-cap corporations coughing up millions just to comply with the latest Byzantine addition to the Federal Register. I'm talking about barbeque sauce. Yes, barbeque sauce."



Passengers do their own profiling: British holidaymakers staged an unprecedented mutiny - refusing to allow their flight to take off until two men they feared were terrorists were forcibly removed. The extraordinary scenes happened after some of the 150 passengers on a Malaga-Manchester flight overheard two men of Asian appearance apparently talking Arabic. Passengers told cabin crew they feared for their safety and demanded police action. Some stormed off the Monarch Airlines Airbus A320 minutes before it was due to leave the Costa del Sol at 3am. Others waiting for Flight ZB 613 in the departure lounge refused to board it. The incident fuels the row over airport security following the arrest of more than 20 people allegedly planning the suicide-bombing of transatlantic jets from the UK to America. It comes amid growing demands for passenger-profiling and selective security checks. It also raised fears that more travellers will take the law into their own hands - effectively conducting their own 'passenger profiles'. The Tories said the Government's failure to reassure travellers had led the Malaga passengers to 'behave irrationally' and 'hand a victory to terrorists'. Websites used by pilots and cabin crew were yesterday reporting further incidents.

The swastika and the scimitar: "The Jews everywhere are "the Muslim's bitter enemies," said a prominent Islamic leader. Throughout history, the "irreconcilable enemy of Islam" has conspired and schemed and "oppressed and persecuted 40 million Muslims," he said. In Palestine, the Jews are establishing "a base from which to extend their power over neighboring Islamic countries." And, he proclaimed, "This war, which was unleashed by the world Jewry," has provided "Muslims the best opportunity to free themselves from these instances of persecution and oppression." Sound like Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah? Or perhaps Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? Nope. It was the grand mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Husseini, in 1942. An ardent Nazi supporter, Husseini delivered his speech at the opening of the Islamic Institute in Berlin, one day after the Allies denounced the Nazis for “carrying into effect Hitler’s oft-repeated intention to exterminate the Jewish people in Europe.” Husseini’s address was approved by Nazi foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, and Joseph Goebbels was in attendance. The Reich press office widely distributed the comments."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC 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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Britain's cultural cowardice

Britain's loss of nerve is one of the main reasons it has become a global centre of Islamic extremism. For decades, successive British governments have regarded multiculturalism as an article of faith. The idea that Britain should become a joyous melting pot of different cultures and religions living side by side in mutual toleration and respect is a noble vision. But it's not working out that way. Instead, the benefits of immigration are being lost through a failure to control numbers and a reluctance to pursue policies that might promote integration. As a result, Britain has a huge Muslim population, much of which is increasingly alienated from mainstream society. "Londonistan" is no longer just a safe haven for foreign extremists. Today, it nurtures home-grown terrorists, many born in Britain, educated at British schools and attending British universities.

The July 7 bombers were British. So was Richard Reid, the shoe bomber. Zacarias Moussaoui, convicted for his role in the 9/11 attacks, was a student in London. Some of those arrested last week converted to Islam in the past year. That suggests the problem is escalating.... why do young Muslims embrace terrorism rather than democratic politics? How can people born and educated in Britain feel so alienated from its culture and values? The snag is that many never fully engage with British culture and values. Muslims make up the majority in many towns and in most big cities there are large Muslim enclaves. Even if the multiculturalists were to change their minds on the need for integration, it would be too late. Muslim leaders are demanding more separation from mainstream society, not less.

They want bank holidays for Muslim festivals and sharia law courts to rule on family matters. They may well get it. They are helped by the remarkable ambivalence of the liberal Left towards British culture and values: to Christianity, British history, free markets and free trade. Above all, the Left is deeply suspicious of the institutions in which those values are embedded, starting with the family and extending via churches, schools, businesses, clubs, right through to parliament and the monarchy. To the Left, Britain's social institutions are bastions of privilege that must be remodelled or destroyed to make way for multiculturalism. The resulting cultural war has left British society brutalised and infantilised, and wide open to attack. Why should British Muslims respect a culture that has no respect for itself?

More here

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ELSEWHERE

A huge double standard for Israel: "The outrage of so many outraged people outrages me. On the scales of world opinion, some Muslim corpses are light as a feather, and others weigh tons. Two measures, two weights. The daily terrorist attacks on civilians in Baghdad, killing 50 people or more, are checked off in reports under the heading of miscellaneous, while the bomb that took 28 lives in Qana is denounced as a crime against humanity. Only a few intellectuals like Bernard-Henri Levy or Magdi Allam, editor of Corriere della Sera, find this surprising. Why do the 200,000 slaughtered Muslims of Darfur not arouse even half a quarter of the fury caused by 200 times fewer dead in Lebanon? Must we deduce that Muslims killed by other Muslims don't count--whether in the eyes of Muslim authorities or viewed through the bad conscience of the West? This conclusion has its weak spots, because if the Russian Army--Christian, and blessed by its popes--razes the capital of Chechen Muslims (Grozny, with 400,000 residents), killing tens of thousands of children in the process, this doesn't count, either. The U.N. Security Council does not hold meeting after meeting, and the Organization of Islamic States piously averts its eyes. From that, we may conclude that the world is appalled only when a Muslim is killed by Israelis...."

Terrorist attack in Germany: "According to reports circulating throughout the German media today, two suitcase bombs placed by two unidentified men very nearly went off on regional trains in Dortmund and Koblenz at the end of July. A deadly simultaneous bombing was only averted because the bombs were technically defective. Had they detonated, German authorities believe that a mass casualty event similar to the recent attacks in London could have been the result."

Sam Pender has an amusing article up about the Democrat foreign policy. A site linked to the centrist Democratic Leadership Council sets out a policy that is only a slightly reworded version of a well-known neocon policy! There can be no doubt that the Left are utterly bereft of ideas these days. Aside from their antiquated idea that the government should control everything, they have nothing positive to say.

Are capitalists bamboozling the poor?: "For lack of a better term I am dubbing it Woods's Law: whenever the private sector introduces an innovation that makes the poor better off than they would have been without it, or that offers benefits or terms that no one else is prepared to offer them, someone -- in the name of helping the poor -- will call for curbing or abolishing it."

The minimum wage: A denial of freedom and duty: "In an interview conducted by Faithful America, a website affiliated with the National Council of Churches, a man named Dan expresses some of the hardships faced when working for a minimum-wage job. 'A lot of times you don't get to pay your bills,' he says. 'A lot times you just stick them back, you're usually in debt. You usually don't ever get them paid.' This sort of picture of the hard-working but struggling family man is consistently invoked in political debates about the minimum wage."

The no-sense doctrine: "The TSA's more established security system, Screening Passengers by Observation Technique, or SPOT, relies on human intelligence instead of the artificial kind. Teams are trained to scrutinize passengers for more than 30 questionable behaviors, according to the Journal: 'They look for obvious things like someone wearing a heavy coat on a hot day, but also for subtle signs like vocal timbre, gestures and tiny facial movements that indicate someone is trying to disguise an emotion.' This apparently is unacceptable for civil libertarians. 'Our concern is that giving TSA screeners this kind of responsibility and discretion can result in their making decisions not based on solid criteria but on impermissible characteristics such as race,' the ACLU's Gregory T. Nojeim told the Journal. In other words, while our enemies are coming up with ingenious ways to murder Americans, we're coming up with ingenious ways to search for our enemies in the nicest manner possible."

Abolish the TSA, save lives: "The TSA has been a farce from its inception. It exists not to prevent terrorists from bringing down a plane but to prevent passengers from realizing the government can do little to thwart such a catastrophe. Rep. Christopher Cox, R-Calif., was chairman of the Homeland Security Committee in May 2005 when he explained why the TSA squandered $4.5 billion on malfunctioning equipment; he also inadvertently admitted that the agency is merely window-dressing for the Feds: 'After 9/11, we had to show how committed we were by spending hugely greater amounts of money than ever before, as rapidly as possible.' It worked. Forcing folks to remove their shoes and submit to pat-downs convinced many Americans that the TSA is an effective bureaucracy, unlike all others in their experience."

I have just posted here a movie review sent in by a reader, who thought that the movie had considerable libertarian interest. The movie is "King Arthur"

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC 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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Israel grotesquely cast as villain in one-sided TV news

Coverage of Israel's entirely justified strike against Hezbollah in Lebanon has emphasised the sinister way that war as reality television distorts the reality of war. Within a week or so of the start of fighting, the idea was being canvassed that this was a public relations war, and Israel was losing it. The main basis for the proposition was the depiction on TV of destruction wrought by Israeli bombs and artillery fire on villages and towns near the Lebanon-Israel border and, especially, the killing of civilians.

The deaths of 16 children in a building probably bombed by mistake (although it is also possible Hezbollah rockets had been fired from it) in Qana, 19 days into the war, was said to have put the kybosh on Israel's chances of having its cause perceived as just. Some commentators, doggedly pursuing implausible analogies between the Vietnam War - a defeat for the West and the US - and the war against Islamist aggression, compared the impact on public opinion of TV reports from Qana with the footage of Saigon's police chief drawing his pistol and shooting a cringing Vietcong prisoner dead.

Commenting on the Qana bombing on July31, the ABC's PM program reported that "the massacre appears to have united the Lebanese people and their Government in grief, anger and support for Hezbollah". Massacre? To kill indiscriminately? The violent death of one child is a tragic horror. Loaded hyperbole in news reporting on serious issues is an insult. Maybe the ABC drew on an estimate by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan that set the death toll in Qana at nearly twice the actual number and included 37 children. Annan's earlier claim that Israeli soldiers had "deliberately" killed four UN employees may also have influenced ABC expectations of Israeli conduct.

Violence by the US and its allies in Vietnam predominated in TV images because network cameras had relatively easy access to it. On the other side they had none. The situation was reversed in Lebanon. Israel kept the cameras at bay so as not to help Hezbollah aim its rockets or gain encouragement from watching its hits on Fox News. Hezbollah opened its arms to correspondents filming grieving friends and relatives amid the ruins of bombed and shelled border towns.

Civilian deaths in Lebanon appear to have been at least 10 times higher than in Israel, although the Israelis made systematic leaflet drops urging evacuation of targets about to be attacked. One reason for the damage was Israel's heavier weaponry. But the principal cause of the disparity in casualties was that many Israeli civilians moved out of range of Hezbollah's indiscriminate rocket firing. Those physically impaired or without access to vehicles received public assistance to evacuate. Temporary accommodation and meals were provided for the displaced. On the other side of the border, thousands of Lebanese stayed put, some undoubtedly acting in brave defiance. Staying put was encouraged, one way or another, by Hezbollah, which needed human shields to inhibit Israeli attacks or to display to the cameras as victims of Israeli brutality. Hezbollah certainly paid rent for private premises from which to launch rockets.

Viewed as a TV program, the past six weeks' fighting has seen Israel portrayed as a rampaging villain. This grossly distorts the reality of a free and democratic society (with a fully participating Arab population of almost one million) robustly defending itself against a specific attempt to destroy it that had been in the planning for nearly six years.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

The DREAM Act: "It is no secret that the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006 (S. 2611), passed by the U.S. Senate on May 25, 2006, contains numerous provisions that reward illegal aliens for violating federal immigra-tion law. What is less well known is that the Senate bill also condones the violation of federal law by 10 U.S. states. Indeed, S. 2611 expressly shields these states from liability for their past violations of federal law. These absurdities are found in the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act provisions of S. 2611.[1] Just before the Senate Judiciary Committee approved the first version of the bill in the evening of March 27, 2006, Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL) offered the DREAM Act as an amendment. It passed on a voice vote and was in the compromise version of the bill that the Senate passed in May. The DREAM Act is a nightmare. It repeals a 1996 federal law that prohibits any state from offering in-state tuition rates to illegal aliens unless the state also offers in-state tuition rates to all U.S. citizens. On top of that, the DREAM Act offers a separate amnesty to illegal-alien students."

UK: A new law a day for nine years: "Tony Blair's government has created more than 3,000 new criminal offences during its nine-year tenure, one for almost every day it has been in power. The astonishing tally brought accusations last night of a 'frenzied approach to law-making' that contrasts with falling detection rates and climbing levels of violent crime. The figures emerged as police chiefs disclosed they were considering asking ministers for a set of new measures to allow them to impose 'instant justice' for antisocial behaviour."

The mythology of minimum wage: "A recent Reuters article stated that the minimum wage 'equat[ed] to $10,700 a year for full-time work, well below the roughly $20,000 needed to keep a family of four above the federal poverty level.' The article then cited Labor Department statistics that there are now 1.9 million workers earning an hourly wage at or below $5.15, 'with most of those people working in service-oriented jobs.' Conflating these two statistics leads one to believe that almost 2 million people in the United States are trying to keep families financially afloat, when, in reality, the vast majority of minimum wage earners contribute second and third incomes to a household. On average, a family with a minimum-wage worker has a total income of $43,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau."

Katrina victims blamed for Houston crime: "A letter to inmate No. 1352951 and a cell phone bill for $76.63, both found in a soggy New Orleans duplex ruined by Hurricane Katrina, led Louisiana bounty hunter James Martin to Texas. Again. It marked the seventh time since Katrina that Martin, whose pursuit of bail jumpers often begins with clues salvaged from abandoned New Orleans homes, has followed a trail to Texas."

Germans dying out: "Germany has seen another decline in its birth rate, which is Europe's lowest. Official figures show that the number of births fell by a further 2.8% last year. Meanwhile, the mortality rate rose by 1.5% compared with 2004.... The data from Germany's Office for Federal Statistics show there were 686,000 births last year - half as many as in the early 1960s... Germany registered 830,000 deaths last year".

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC 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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AN INSIDER'S VIEW

(Binyamin Netanyahu is a leading Israeli conservative and member of the Knesset)

To Netanyahu, the rise of Iran's extremist regime is the defining geopolitical event of our times; the whole world, not just Israel, is in its sights. Dealing with Tehran is therefore the West's greatest challenge; he is scathing about many Europeans' refusal to recognise the Iranian regime's imperialistic and murderous ambitions. But to my great surprise he is absolutely convinced that America will soon step in, one way or the other, to prevent Tehran from going nuclear, and that this will happen at some point during the remaining two years and three months of the Bush presidency.

`When President Bush said that he will not let Iran develop nuclear weapons, I take him at his word,' he said, quietly. `How he plans to do it of course is up to him. The fact is that the President of the US said that he - he - would not let Iran develop nuclear weapons. That places first a clear goal. It doesn't define the means, and as you know there is a United Nations resolution, but it does define a time-limit for the achievement of that goal. The timeframe is a logical inference. I take him at his word. Why doubt it?'...

I pressed Netanyahu further, asking him whether he thought it would be feasible for the US to take out Iran's nuclear capabilities by force, given that their nuclear research programme is spread across Iran and buried in bunkers deep underground. But Netanyahu simply shrugged. `Just listen to Bush. He obviously thinks he has some combination of means: diplomatic, military, whatever.'

More here

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Brookes News Update

The Wall Street Journal's immigration fallacies and US wage rates: When it comes to the economics of immigration the Wall Street Journal can be remarkably obtuse in its drive for open borders. Not only is the Journal's economics shonky on this matter it also ignores what is happening in Dearborn. For most Americans one Dearborn is one too many
US economy: Wall Street, GDP and wingnuts: The problem with Gross National Product is that it is not gross but net and hence leaves out an enormous amount of spending that maintains the capital structure. By using GDP economists therefore miss vital data. However, some critics think that anyone who questions GDP on these grounds must be a "wingnut". This article is my defence"
Australian economy: the Labor Party and the unions put economic planning back on the drawing board: Unions and the Australian labor Party have declared that economic planning is back on board, only they call it industry policy. Anyone with such remarkable foresight would be immensely rich. But I don't see the Creans of this world putting their money where their ambitions are
Thank you, Hezbollah: A Lebanese doctor thanks Hezbollah's Islamo-fascists for all the wonderful things they have done for his country. Things like destroying the economy, inciting hatred, provoking war, etc
Time for Israel to think about annexation and transfer: Only Israel warns the enemy by, television, leaflet and radio, even calling people on the phone to tell them they must leave specific areas because they are going to be attacked. But the Islamo-Nazi terrorists strike without warning at defenceless Israeli civilian targets
Islamo-fascist terror plot thwarted by methods the Democrats condemn: An Islamo-Nazi terror plot to massacre thousands of British and American airline passengers was uncovered by British and foreign intelligence agencies. Nevertheless, the Democrats still refuse to read the message
Islamo-fascists' useful idiots: Why do Western intellectuals prostitute themselves for the Islamofascist cause? Why do they willingly act as useful idiots for a mob of sadistic savages that despises them and wants to destroy the West?
UN funding the indoctrination of children into Islamo-Nazi terrorism: The Jew-hating intellectuals favourite organization the UN is using Western funds to indoctrinate Arab children in to hating Israel and Jews. So why is the UN collaborating with the Islamo-Nazis' anti-Semitic hate machine?
Say hello to the neo-McGovernites: It's 1972 again with the blame-America-first neo-McGovernites taking over the Democrata' Party. Led by the woeful likes of Lamont and funded by the megalomaniac Soros these lemmings think we can negotiate with Islamo-Nazis, which means giving legitimacy to the terrorists' claims and goals

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The jihadists are using Israel to distract and lull the West: "Besides being anti-Semitic themselves, the Nazis used anti-Semitism brilliantly to subvert other countries and societies. Though Nazism was (among other things) a form of German expansionism, wherever there were anti-Semites the Germans would also find collaborators. Anti-Semitism was used by the Germans to undermine from the inside countries, societies and armies that could or would stand up to them.... Thanks to their sincere or opportunistic anti-Semitism the Germans were able to paralyse important forces in the countries and societies they wanted to defeat and submit. That's jus t what is happening once again before our very eyes. Though the Jihadists have their own clear, even megalomaniac goals, and while they kill thousands in the US or fight for Shari'a in Europe, while they complain about East Timor or fight for Kashmir, it is enough for them to involve the Jews, particularly Israel, in their struggle or their declared agenda to get the active support or at least the indifference of those in Europe, the US and elsewhere who would like to believe that their complaints, grievances and goals are restricted to or only motivated by Israel. The Jihadists... seem to have discovered through trial and error that the hatred of Jews is alive and well in the West and, as the Nazis did before, they are using it not only to further their own different goals, but to recruit collaborators and to paralyze whole countries and societies as well."

California Democrats think they're smarter investors than Buffett: David Crane is a gifted investment banker who shared his expertise with government until he was dumped from a state board that invests teacher retirement funds. Lawmakers bounced him from the board, one of the biggest players on Wall Street, after he repeatedly questioned whether state pension funds could earn enough to keep paying retirement benefits to teachers and other politically powerful employees.... Falling short of the nearly 8% return that state money managers project for those funds could create deficits of tens of billions of dollars... A decade of returns at the rate Buffett has set for retirement plans at his companies -- 6.4% -- would leave California short more than $90 billion. That is more than the entire state budget for health and human services this year, and several times what the state is spending on its university system.

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC 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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UK Telegraph vs. The Washington Post on roots of jihad

Post lifted from Jihad Watch

The Unalienable Right blog (thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist) makes an important point by comparing a story from the Washington Post to one from the Telegraph:

From the Washington Post:

Young Muslim Rage Takes Root in Britain, Unemployment, Foreign Policy Fuel Extremism

"...Britain has become an incubator for violent Islamic extremism, fueled by disenchantment at home and growing rage about events abroad, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan." .... In one of Europe's largest Muslim communities, young men face a lack of jobs, poor educational achievement and discrimination in a highly class-oriented culture. Prime Minister Tony Blair is the most outspoken ally of President Bush, and their policies in Iraq and Afghanistan are seen by many Muslims as aimed at Islam.

But from the UK Telegraph, contrast the article headlined "University students at centre of terror plots":

The recruitment of Muslim students at British universities to take part in terrorist attacks is at the heart of the alleged plot to blow up passenger jets, it is feared. A dossier of extremist Islamic literature has been uncovered by The Sunday Telegraph on the campus of a north London university, one of whose students has suspected links to the alleged terrorist attack. Waheed Zaman, 22, a bio-chemistry student and the president of the Islamic Society at London Metropolitan University, was one of 24 people arrested last week. Material found at two portable buildings used by the society includes documents advocating jihad and a pamphlet on how to deal with approaches from the security services....

Extremist Muslim groups had been detected at more than 20 institutions, both former polytechnics and long-established universities, over the past 15 years, Prof Glees said.... According to security sources, "several" of the 23 people still in custody over the alleged plot last week are suspected of links to universities, appearing to confirm growing fears that campuses are providing Britain's biggest security threat.

So which is it? Are they poor and uneducated, or relatively well-off university students? As the Unalienable Right blog goes on to point out, the Post is simply repeating the old poverty-causes-jihad myth, and if the facts are otherwise, so much the worse for the facts.

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PLUSH HEAD OFFICES FOR PROGRAM DESIGNED TO HELP THE POOR

Across the country, the neighborhood offices of the Legal Services Corp. - where one out of every two poor Americans is turned down for help because the agency lacks resources - are a far cry from the federal program's headquarters. Documents obtained by The Associated Press detail the luxuries that executives of Legal Services have given themselves with federal money - from $14 "Death by Chocolate" desserts to $400 chauffeured rides to locations within cab distance of their offices.

"I don't think that's right," Taylor said, as he walked from the program's inner city legal clinic in the nation's capital, covering his head with a towel to protect himself from the searing summer heat. "They're depriving some others that really need it and that's not good. ... It's supposed to be about the people."

The government-funded corporation boasts a spacious headquarters in Washington's swank Georgetown district - with views of the Potomac River and a rent significantly higher than other tenants in the same building. And board members wrote themselves a policy that doubled the amount they could claim for meals compared with their staff.

Legal Services is a nonprofit corporation run with federal money that was created by Congress to provide legal help in civil matters for Americans who can't afford their own lawyers. It funds neighborhood clinics across the country where lawyers provide such help. Three congressional committees have questioned the program's spending as has the corporation's own internal watchdog. The chairman of the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee is threatening to withhold future money if the corporation doesn't trim its extravagance. "It's waste and abuse," said Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, citing the board's doubling of the meal money as an example. "At 200 percent, it seems to me what we would call in Iowa living high off the hog." ...

The scrutiny of Legal Services' spending comes as the corporation says it doesn't have enough resources to meet many poor clients' needs. Legal Services' own study found last October that for every client who receives service, one applicant is turned away because there are not enough resources to help. Since that study counted only those who contacted the program for assistance, the corporation said it likely underestimated the unmet need.

More here

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Illegal immigrant crime: "Iowa's United States Congressman Steve King told a crowd in Des Moines in June, "Illegal aliens cause the death of 25 American citizens every day...13 by drunken driving and 12 by stabbings or gun fire." That daily figure adds up to 9,125 deaths annually caused primarily by illegal alien Mexicans residing in America. Mike Rosen, radio talk show host in Denver, said it wasn't significant when you consider our country of 300 million. A listener corrected him, "It's not significant unless it's your father or family member who gets killed." ... What can be done to stop it? First, lay the blame directly on the shoulders of President George Walker Bush. Any man worth his salt after 9/11 would have sent troops to the borders and closed them to illegal entry on 9/12. For crying out loud! Three thousand innocent people died that day-specifically because of non immigration enforcement!"

No escaping it: "The number of immigrants living in American households rose 16 percent over the last five years, fueled largely by recent arrivals from Mexico, according to fresh data released by the Census Bureau. And increasingly, immigrants are bypassing the traditional gateway states like California and New York and settling directly in parts of the country that until recently saw little immigrant activity -- regions like the Upper Midwest, New England and the Rocky Mountain States."

Bungling British bureaucracy again: "Police are investigating how a 12-year-old boy with neither a passport nor a boarding pass was able to walk on to an international flight at Gatwick at a time when security staff were supposed to be on high alert. The child, who had run away from a care home, boarded a plane bound for Portugal early on Monday, even though security had been raised amid fears of a terrorist attack".

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, 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 DIFFICULT CONFLICT TO MANAGE -- WITH LEFTIST DREAMING A BIG HINDRANCE

More and more people are asking if the Israeli-Hezbollah war is really a proxy war between the U.S., representing the West, and an Iran-Syria axis representing a devil's handshake between two factions of Islamofascism. The short answer is yes, but there is much more involved in the fight than that toxic bilateral alliance.... we are in a global conflict, one that without exaggeration exceeds its predecessors in vitriol, intensity, and potential for destruction. While we ducked under our school desks waiting for the Soviets to attack with devastating nuclear weapons, political leaders on both sides accepted the doomsday strategy of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) as a reasonable deterrent...

But in the war against Islamofascists and their allies and supporters the equation has changed drastically -- and not in our favor. This war is, as Taheri notes, not over territory but rather "an ideological battleground between two rival camps with global ambitions." The U.S.-led camp looks to free market democracy and open societies as a solution to the world's issues. The other sees itself under the flag of a resurgent, conquering Islam, sweeping the globe in a new order that aims to impose a new Caliphate upon heretics. Not only is the MAD strategy not applicable, but in the instance of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad such global destruction would be welcome, even desirable, as a door-opener for the 12th Imam to reawaken and lead the hosts of Islam against the infidel foe.

Meanwhile Leftists, appeasers, anti-Semites, and blame-America-firsters in Europe and the U.S. think that they can do business or "dialogue" with the Islamofascists, or at best hold them at bay. They are so blinded by their own ideology that they refuse to see the undermining effect their policies have on the very countries that provide them a platform for their rhetoric. Despite assassinations of filmmakers like Theo Van Gogh, vilification and death threats against intellectuals like Oriana Fallachi, and open declarations vowing death to the West, they continue to operate as if they are going to be exempt from the stonings and beheadings that will accompany Islamofascist victory....

More here

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Los Angeles becoming a Third-World "country"

To visitors the signs that mark a third-world county are obvious. Crumbling infrastructure, people sleeping in doorways, a wide gap between rich and poor, little or no middle class, limited government services unless you pay "extra," and all political and economic power concentrated in the hands of a small elite minority whose sole mission is to perpetuate their power and wealth.

These characteristics also describe the once proud city of Los Angeles where disintegrating sidewalks are fixed only when homeowners agree to come up with extra cash. Los Angeles, where subsidizing downtown development projects for already-wealthy business interests takes priority over picking up the trash -- another service for which homeowners will now pay extra. It is the city of angels that levies an art tax, but can't seem to fix the potholes in the streets unless residents are willing to pony up extra in the form of a proposed $1.5 billion infrastructure bond...

Los Angeles residents are told they must pay more for trash collection if they want more police to protect them from gang crime. Yet the city continues with Special Order 40 in force, which limits the ability of police to apprehend illegal alien gang members.

City leaders show an arrogant disrespect for the views of average citizens. When hundreds made the effort to show up at city hall to speak in opposition to a 154 percent increase in the trash collection fee, council members limited many to only a few seconds of comment. However, the rules were bent for a former colleague who was given five minutes to bloviate about perceived inequities in the three-strikes law, an issue that was not on the agenda.

City residents must be prepared for electric service interruptions on hot, peak use days. The city-owned utility cannot afford to maintain aging transformers because 10 percent of its income is funneled away by City Hall to fund pet projects. However, those same officials who are pikers when it comes to providing services to city residents can be generous to those interests that support them. Double digit pay increases for public employee unions, who have backed winning council and mayoral candidates, have become more the rule than the exception... In Los Angeles, a city that a generation ago epitomized the middle class lifestyle, those in the middle are fleeing, leaving behind a city made up of the fabulously wealthy and the working poor.

More here

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Media hide GOP success: "If a deficit falls in the forest, does anyone hear it? And if no one hears it, did the deficit really fall? That's the question that administration officials must be asking themselves after the report that the Congressional Budget Office issued earlier this month. The CBO announced that the federal deficit is indeed falling, or narrowing, the more precise verb for the phenomenon. This year, the new report says, the deficit will be $260 billion, or $111 billion less than the CBO estimated in March. For 2006, the government deficit will be 2 percent of gross domestic product, down from the old baseline prediction for 2006 of 2.6 percent. On Aug. 17, when the more extensive annual Update of the Budget and Economic Outlook appears, that 2 percent figure is likely to show up more definitively. But neither the budgeteers' news nor the prospect of a confirmation of it is generating much discussion. This is surprising. The Economic Report of the President shows the federal deficit for 2004 was 3.6 percent. A narrowing of more than 1 1/2 percentage points in such a short time is itself a story. The U.S. deficit is worth comparing, for starters, with the data for European nations. In the Maastricht Treaty of 1992, European leaders set a deficit goal of 3 percent of GDP. EU member countries have had trouble meeting that target since"

NY Times prefers heretical evangelicals to the Christian Right : "Just this Sunday we got an article on Greg Boyd of Woodwind Hills Church - and behold he's not 100% behind the Republicans.... Greg Boyd is best known as a major proponent of "Open Theism" - and his book "God of the Possible? A Biblical Introduction to the Open View of God (2000)" The doctrines associated with Open Theism were rejected by the Evangelical Theological Society in 2001.... This is not only a rejection of predestination as it is understood by Calvinism, but also of most accepted alternative versions. The writers in favor of free-will theism differentiate their views from those of Roman Catholicism, Lutheranism, Arminianism, Eastern Orthodoxy, neo-orthodoxy, and Islam, all of which-differently from one another, but similarly over against open theism-assert that God has a certain knowledge of all aspects of the future."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, 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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IRAN AS A NEW NAZI GERMANY

I have often wondered what it would have been like to live through the Thirties. How would I have reacted to the annual Nuremberg Party rallies, the rants against the Jews, and Hitler's foreign adventures which the democracies did nothing to oppose, the occupation of the Rhineland and Austria, Nazi support for Franco in the Spanish civil war, and the rest of it. Appeasement was then considered wise, and has only become a dirty word with hindsight.. Now Iran is embarked on foreign adventures in Iraq and Syria and Lebanon. It is engaged on all-out armament programs, and is evidently hard at work developing the nuclear weapon that will give it a dimension of power that Hitler did not have.. Appeasement is again considered wise....

We can't avoid this war, because Iran won't let us avoid it. That is the real analogy to the 1930s. Hitler came to power espousing the goal of German world domination, openly promising to conquer neighboring nations through military force and to persecute and murder Europe's Jews. He predicted that the free nations of the world would be too weak-too morally weak-to stand up to him, and European and American leaders spent the 1930s reinforcing that impression. So Hitler kept advancing-the militarization of the Rhineland in 1936, the Spanish bombing campaign in 1937, the annexation of Austria and the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938, the invasion of Poland in 1939-until the West finally, belated decided there was no alternative but war.

That is what is playing out today. Iran's theocracy has chosen, as the nation's new president, a religious fanatic who believes in the impending, apocalyptic triumph of Islam over the infidels. He openly proclaims his desire to create an Iranian-led Axis that will unite the Middle East in the battle against America, and he proclaims his desire to "wipe Israel off the map," telling an audience of Muslim leaders that "the main solution" to the conflict in Lebanon is "the elimination of the Zionist regime." (Perhaps this would be better translated as Ahmadinejad's "final solution" to the problem of Israel.)

Like Hitler, Ahmadinejad regards the free nations of the world as fading "sunset" powers, too morally weak to resist his legions of Muslim fanatics. And when we hesitate to kill Muqtada al-Sadr in Iraq, when we pressure Israel to rein in its attacks on Hezbollah, when we pander to the anti-Jewish bigotry of the "Muslim street"-we reinforce his impression of our weakness.....

The larger evasion is this: the Left senses that a regional war is coming, that Iran is hell-bent on starting it, and that there is no way to avoid it. But all of this runs directly counter to their whole world-view. Rather than questioning that world view, they simply assert that this can't be happening. They have to believe that something, anything-no matter how implausible-will stop it from happening. If we just get everyone together and talk, and we keep tinkering with diplomatic solutions until we find something that works, surely we can find a way to avoid a regional war in the Middle East. Can't we? Please? And so the Left confirms the Right's sense that the appeasement of the 1930s is the best historical precedent for the current era.

More here

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SOME HISTORY OF ISLAMOFASCISM

Excerpt from here

Since the Iranian revolution of 1979, the world has been confronted by a new form of totalitarianism. It is a multidimensional phenomenon that originated not only before Bush but even before the state of Israel was created. The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in British colonial Egypt in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna. Its most famous theoretician, Sayyid Qutb, was executed in Egypt in 1966, one year before Israel's success in the Six-Day War made it a hate object of the Western Left.

Radical Islam is different from communism, and from what we had come to know as fascism in Europe, by its ostensibly religious character. But the Islamic revolution in Iran was like European fascism in its totalitarian domestic ambition and its violently aggressive foreign policy. It was also vehemently racist, persecuting Iranian Jews and people of the Baha'i Faith in particular. From its inception the Islamic Republic of Iran has been committed to the destruction of Israel.

The Iranian regime, which represented the Shia strand of Islam, claimed to be the centre of global Islamic revolution, fostering mentoring relationships with Shia parties and religious leaders throughout the Arab world, most notably with Hezbollah (The Party of God) in Lebanon, which Iranian agents created in 1982. Hezbollah's incumbent leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has declared Jews invented the legend of the Nazi atrocities and that Israel is a cancerous body in the region that must be uprooted. Hezbollah has carried out numerous bombings and political assassinations abroad on Iran's behalf. The most spectacular were a suicide bomber's massacre of 241 US marine peacekeepers in Lebanon in 1983, and the bombing of the Israeli embassy and Jewish cultural centre in Buenos Aires in 1994, slaughtering more than 100 Argentinian Jews. Hezbollah also has kidnapped scores of Western journalists in Lebanon during the '80s, torturing and murdering many of them, and has assassinated Iranian opposition politicians in France and elsewhere. As we have seen recently, Hezbollah initiated conflict with Israel, then launched rockets on Israeli civilians....

Of course, Iran is not the only locus of Islamic fascism. In 1994, a rival Islamic totalitarian regime from the Sunni branch of Islam, the Taliban, seized power in neighbouring Afghanistan. It became the base and training area for the Sunni terrorist organisation al-Qa'ida after that organisation was expelled from Sudan.

Al-Qa'ida had been founded by Abdullah Azzam in 1988. Its explicit ambition was the destruction of existing Arab regimes and the creation of a religious caliphate in an arc stretching across the Muslim world, from Indonesia, Malaysia and The Philippines through to the Arab world and including the region of Spain known as Andalusia. Its modus operandi rests on the terror of the deed. For those who imagine that al-Qa'ida's wrath is directed only against those nations that have intervened in Iraq, one should note that it was founded 15 years before the Iraq war, at the height of Western support for the Afghan mujaheddin. Moreover, it has attacked a French tanker in the Persian Gulf and has launched attacks in Muslim countries, notably Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Morocco and Jordan....

By now it should be patently clear that we in the West are at war with a hydra-headed and barbaric enemy that has not a shred of humanity and relishes the bloodletting of tens of thousands of innocents, including other Muslims. It is at least as brutal as the Nazis and communist enemies we have faced in the past. Although radical Islam is not militarily as powerful as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, it has the huge strategic advantage of suicide bombing, which is immune to deterrence.

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ELSEWHERE

Top Leftist an ex-Nazi: "It's enough to make an old man cry. Just days before publication of his long-awaited autobiography entitled Peeling the Onion, Gunter Grass, bleeding-heart figurehead of the German Left, has confessed he was once a member of the Nazi SS. The revelation by the Nobel prize winner, now approaching his 80th birthday, has shocked Germany's literary and cultural world. It was Grass first and foremost who insisted the Germans "come clean" about their history and that his own generation should not try to pose as "victims" of Hitler's National Socialist ideology. Now the great advocate of facing unpalatable truths has lived up to his own standards, but a little late."

You can now watch Milton Friedman's "FREE TO CHOOSE" classic TV programs online. See here

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, 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 SMALL MEDITATION

For all the frantic hate that the Islamists are directing at Western civilization, what they have managed so far is really no more than a fleabite on the vast body of that civilization. The number of us that they have managed to kill pales into insignificance compared with the road toll, for instance. And that is why we have so far tolerated them. We know that they do not seriously threaten us -- at least so far. So for 99% of us life goes on in its accustomed way.

I was moved to that reflection by my own experiences last night. I went to a classical music soiree in a private home here in Brisbane. Being a Sunday night, the roads had very little traffic on them so I zipped from my place to the venue in my little Toyota Echo in about 15 minutes. No Muslims were encountered on the way!

Unusually for me, I was a bit late, so as I walked up the stairs to the house I could hear the marvellously elaborate, ordered and complex music of one of Bach's Brandenburg concertos, which was a great environment to walk into. It was being played by a string quartet of young people but most of the audience were on the elderly side. After the Bach came a movement from one of Beethoven's string quartets -- which sounded quite chaotic after the ordered majesty of Bach. Then we had some songs and arias, mostly sung in the original Italian. Then there was some excellent piano and solo violin music, including more Bach.

I was pleased that the songs were in Italian. Italian was one of my matriculation languages and I have always thought it to be a particularly beautiful language. Translations of Italian songs certainly lose something. Fortunately, I know something of both main languages of music (German and Italian) so I can appreciate singing in both languages without too much trouble. Italians find Germans very alarming but, perhaps partly because I am a member of the world's dominant Anglo culture, I happily get on with both Italians and Germans. Neither bother me and both have valuable strengths.

Although the audience at the concert was wholly Anglo, both the Han and the Ashkenazim were represented among the musicians -- as one expects at a classical concert in Australia these days. Both the Jewish violinist and the Chinese pianist were exceedingly competent -- again as one expects. Both Han people and the Ashkenazim fit effortlessly into Anglo civilization and tend to raise the level of it in so doing. If only we could replace every ten Muslims by one Chinaman, the world would be a vastly better place.

So life went on for me in its normal pleasant way, as it did for 99% of Westerners. People did of course talk about the sadly twisted Muslims but they had no impact other than that. If the Muslims ever do succeed in making a serious nuisance of themselves to large numbers of us, though, I am confident that they will be dealt with effectively. If we all felt really threatened by them, their end would be swift.

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BRITISH RETHINK ON IMMIGRATION?

Sitting in his two- bedroom house just outside Bucharest, the Romanian capital, last week, Irinel Spatara, 42, was dreaming of a better life. He is one of the tens of thousands planning to travel to Britain when Romania and Bulgaria join the European Union.... However, it emerged yesterday that the ambitions of Spatara and others may be thwarted. John Reid, the home secretary, is said to be lobbying for possible restrictions on arrivals from the two countries seeking work. His rethink follows internal estimates by the government that 60,000-140,000 Romanians and Bulgarians could arrive in Britain in the first year after accession. A leaked government report warned last month of the increasing strain on schools, housing and the National Health Service.

Reid's move comes after one of the most significant changes in immigration policy since Labour came to power. After years of the government insisting that immigration was an unqualified good for the economy and there was "no obvious limit" to the numbers the country could hold, Reid suddenly announced last week that it was time for the country to discuss possible quotas. This has delighted the government's critics. They say previous attempts to encourage a "mature debate" about immigration levels have often been quashed with accusations of racism.

Bob Rowthorn, professor of economics at Cambridge University, said: "Most people coming into the country have a good reason: they're either running from somewhere or they want a job. You can't but be sympathetic and it's a natural reaction to think `let's let them all in'. The difficulty is that there is such a gigantic supply that it's not a practical policy. The government has, however, been in denial that there is any need for a debate." Michael Howard, the former Conservative leader, was left bruised in last year's election campaign election when he raised the issue. Charles Clarke, then home secretary, accused the Tories of trying to "mobilise prejudice and bigotry".

More than a year later, with constituents in some of Labour's heartlands complaining that their wages are being undercut and local services are under strain, Labour is suddenly starting to discuss immigration.

There is opposition in the government to Reid's proposal to consider denying Romanians and Bulgarians full rights to work in the EU. The Foreign Office and Geoff Hoon, the Europe minister, are said to oppose any ban. Frank Field, the Labour MP who has campaigned for stricter immigration controls, said: "We can't continue with an open-door policy. People are starting to complain they can't find jobs."

More here

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Britain's young Muslim problem: "According to the NOP poll, 22 percent of the Muslims surveyed agreed that the July 2005 rush-hour bombings of London's transit system, which killed 52 subway and bus riders, were justified because of Britain's support for the war on terror. Young Muslims -- 31 percent, compared with 14 percent of those 45 and older -- were most likely to say the attack was justified. About 1.6 million Muslims live in Britain. Most come from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh and live in communities with ties that are stronger to their home countries than to Britain, said Marshall Sana of the British-based Barnabas Fund. "You have whole communities that are sort of self-governing, who are not acculturating to the community but are becoming more distant," said Mr. Sana, whose organization works to protect Christians around the world. "One major exchange is religious leaders coming into Britain -- they are not home-grown and educated in Western madrassas," but rather have strong Islamist ideals, said Mr. Sana."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, 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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The Left's Love Affair with Europe

Certain people of the leftist persuasion are always trying to convince the rest of us that Europe is superior to America and, quite frankly, I'm getting sick and tired of it. We even hear that certain Supreme Court justices are less interested in what the Constitution says, or common sense would dictate, than in how their decisions will be viewed on the other side of the Atlantic.

Whenever the Europeans do something, no matter how cowardly or corrupt, their champions in our country can be counted on to put the best possible face on it. With one Socialistic country after another perched on the brink of bankruptcy, our yahoos continue to ballyhoo their failed policies as if they were all paid flacks.

What's particularly peculiar is that these are the very same people who dislike white American males of European descent, but who can't stop gushing about white European males. Go figure.

These numbskulls insisted that Bush was a puppet of the Saudis, but ignored the fact that they begged him not to invade Iraq. That's the kind of puppet that only Stephen King could dream up. Without missing a step, they claimed that we were only invading Iraq in order to capture its oil fields. While they no longer repeat that lie, they also never admitted they were mistaken. Odd, though, that they didn't seem to notice that we didn't confiscate Kuwait's oil fields after driving out Saddam Hussein in '91. Instead, they hailed France and Russia for refusing to depose Hussein, ignoring the sweetheart deals both countries had with the oil broker of Baghdad.

One of the favorite lies the leftists like to parrot is that the United States is an imperialistic power. Wouldn't even the dumbest of them have figured out that if we were, we'd have far-flung colonies to show for it? At the very least, wouldn't we have invaded Cuba by this time and sent Castro packing, the way that America's cigar smokers have long demanded?

The truth is, Europe is a hodgepodge of second-rate powers who don't trust each other, and with good reason. A few of them are so fearful of their own Muslim populations that they actually feel they have to line up with Hezbollah and Al-Qaeda against Israel. Of course, being as anti-Semitic as so many Europeans are, they'd probably swing that way in any case....

Of course these American leftists never get upset about suicide bombings in Israel or the anti-Semitic ravings of Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It's only when Israel defends itself against the lunatics who have sworn to exterminate the Jews that these moral midgets work themselves into a proper frenzy.

More here

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PLAN A

Below is an interesting email I received:

Okay, here's the plan:

* Back off and let those men who want to marry men, marry men.
* Allow those women who want to marry women, marry women.
* Allow those folks who want to abort their babies, to abort their babies.
* In three generations, there will be NO Democrats!!!

Damn, I love it when a plan like this comes together

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ELSEWHERE



There is a good video here about the rash of fraudulent photos coming out of Lebanon -- all of which have been run in the mainstream media in an attempt to discredit Israel.

Great! "UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said overnight that the Security Council's failure to act more quickly to end the bloodshed in Lebanon had "badly shaken" the world's faith in the United Nations."

Lax security again: "British police have arrested seven anti-war activists after three of them boarded a US military transport plane at an airport in Scotland to check if it was carrying weapons to Israel, a peace group says. Anti-nuclear campaign group Trident Ploughshares said its activists had cut through a perimeter fence at Prestwick Airport, near Glasgow, on Monday and boarded a US plane to search for evidence of arms shipments to Israel. David Mackenzie, a spokesman for the group said 'security was lax' at the airport, making it easy for Trident Ploughshares' 'war crimes detectives' to board the aircraft in the early hours. The group said the airport has been used by chartered cargo planes to carry US-made bunker-busting bombs to Israel as the war in Lebanon continues."

Bandits with badges: "Society has no problem with law enforcement fighting crime or even confiscating property used in a criminal enterprise but, as with any law, the good intent for which the law was created, has been immensely abused to the point that innocent citizens are losing everything they ever worked for without even being charged or convicted of a crime. Clearly, states need to pass laws to safeguard the rights of the innocent from zealot law enforcement agencies run amuck from the smell of greed."

More European appeasement: "In an attempt to halt gang violence, Barcelona has taken the unusual step of legalising the Latin Kings, registering them as a cultural association that could receive state aid. The feared gang, which was born in 1940s Chicago and has recently spread to Spain, was this week granted the grand title of Asociacion Cultural de Reyes y Reinas Latinos de Cataluna (Cultural Association of Latin Kings and Queens of Catalonia), making it sound more like a medieval court than a band of street thugs. However, the city believes that the way to curb escalating violence is to involve the gang's teenage members in city life."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, 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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