MERRY CHRISTMAS! ON CHRISTMAS DAY IN AUSTRALIA

Australia is up to 18 hours ahead of the USA in time zones so for American readers this greeting will probably seem a day early



The image above is by talented Australian conservative cartoonist Zeg



A friendly Koala above

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Magi Mythbusting

Post below lifted from Blue Crab. See the original for links

The Washington Post has an interesting little article about the myths that have grown up about three kings visiting the Christ child. Not only is there no mention of kings in the scriptures, there isn't even a head count. The scene ingrained in the public imagination - a stately procession of three kings in turbans, crowns, elaborate capes and fancy slippers, with an entourage of servants and camels trailing behind - is a common image in books and films, but it isn't from Scripture.

In fact, there's no evidence in the Gospels that the Magi were kings, or even that there were three, much less that they sidled up to a manger on dromedaries exactly 12 days after Jesus's birth.

"Legends pop up when people begin to look closely at historical events," said Christopher Bellitto, assistant professor of history at New Jersey's Kean University. "They want to fill in the blanks."

Only the Gospel of Matthew mentions "wise men from the East" who follow a star to Bethlehem. In the original Greek, they were called magoi (in Latin, magi), from the same root that gives us the word magic. It's been posited that they were astrologers or members of a Persian priestly caste.

The myths sprang up and were fleshed out many years after the events actually mentioned in Matthew. The third century Christian writer Tertullian called them 'almost kings'. In the sixth century, they acquired names, Gaspar (or Caspar), Melchior and Balthazar and they - whoever or however many of them there were - became important figures. (By the way, none of this is new information, I actually found a sermon plan online discussing these points and others.) It is interesting tracing the way these kinds of embellishments develop over time, though.

None of which changes the fact that We Three Kings is still one of best known and best-loved Christmas carols. It's one of my favorites.

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ELSEWHERE

G.M. Roper has a great Christmas story.

As al-Qaeda's grip eases, Christians flock home: "IRAQI Christians who fled a district of Baghdad that declared itself an al-Qaeda caliphate have returned home to celebrate their first Christmas in two years. Known as the "Vatican of Iraq", the small but long-established Christian enclave in the mainly Sunni district of Doura suffered constant terror at the hands of al-Qaeda gunmen who tried to impose a Taliban-style rule. Churches were car-bombed, women were threatened for not wearing Islamic headscarves, and families had to pay off local mosques to keep them safe from kidnap gangs. But now al-Qaeda has been rooted out of Doura and the hundreds of Christian families who left the area are returning. On Christmas Day they will congregate in the battle-scarred St Mary's Church, where part of the crucifix on its tower is still missing after being shot at. "We closed the church two years ago because of all the trouble," said the priest, Father Younadim Shamoon, 45, who has decorated its bullet-cratered walls with modest fairy lights. "But many people are coming back after word got around that the local Muslim people were welcoming us again. We thank God and hope that we can live together again as brothers." Overlooking the River Tigris on Baghdad's southern outskirts, Doura was home to 4000 followers of the Chaldean Catholic and Assyrian Orthodox churches. The neighbourhood has churches, monasteries and convents, and the Christian residents' homes stand out because of their neat gardens."

How absurd: "A growing number of young people now identify themselves as non-believers, and some colleges have responded by adding so-called "atheist chaplains" to their staff. Harvard now has an atheist chaplain, who helps students celebrate the holidays without violating their core (non)-beliefs."

Rejection of Christmas can be Christian: "During the English Civil War, the victorious Puritans under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell had suppressed traditional Christmas festivities on the grounds that they were merely pagan rituals that had been given a thin veneer of Christian respectability. The Puritans who came to America brought their righteous horror of Christmas with them, and it may even be reasonable to speculate that they hit upon the feast of Thanksgiving as an ersatz Christmas that could help them get through the bleak coming of winter without endangering their souls by adopting heathenish customs. Yet in the end, most Protestant congregations in North America found themselves irresistibly drawn to the old pagan rites, so that today the few hold outs, like the Jehovah's Witnesses, strike us as distinctly odd."

Australia to stay in Afghanistan: "The Prime Minister has given an open-ended commitment for Australian troops to remain in Afghanistan as he revealed he fears more fatalities. Kevin Rudd met Australian troops at Tarin Kowt in Oruzgan province before flying to Kabul, where he held a press conference with the President, Hamid Karzai. It was the latest stop in Mr Rudd's tour of the Middle East with his Defence Minister, Joel Fitzgibbon, and the Chief of Defence Force, Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, to thank military personnel and meet political and military leaders. Mr Rudd said it had been a difficult end to the year and worse could be to come. "I fear what the new year might bring," he told soldiers in central headquarters at Kabul air base on Saturday. "But our advice and our conviction is that this is a job worth doing."

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and TELSTRA/BIGPOND.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

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NEW IQ DATA SHOW THAT THE FLYNN EFFECT IS NOW DEAD

East German psychologist and geneticist Volkmar Weiss has some fascinating results here about IQ scores. He shows that the PISA tests -- annual comparisons between countries of educational achievement -- are little more than IQ tests. He uses this to convert PISA scores into IQ scores and shows that the PISA results correspond very closely to the IQ averages for different countries that are reported by Lynn & Vanhanen -- With Japan very high-scoring and African countries very low-scoring (for instance). Volkmar thinks that once the PISA people realize what they are testing, they will stop doing it! Because the PISA tests are very carefully conducted and use good sampling, however, the PISA data are at the moment a very robust body of information about IQ. And the fact that the tests are conducted annually allows trends over time to be tracked very closely -- a huge improvement over existing IQ data.

Using both the IQ test and PISA data, Volkmar shows that the simple upward trend in IQ scores shown in 20th century data by Flynn has now been shot to ribbons. Some countries are showing declining IQ scores, some are holding steady and some are rising. Volkmar relates this to the percentage of poor people in the country. Countries with lots of poor people are getting dumber overall and countries with few poor people are getting brighter. It is not clear why that is. It may well however be due to immigration. As genetically less able people from (say) Africa move into (say) Britain, they drag down the average of both IQ scores and income.

By and large however, Volkmar presents raw data so what you make of it is to some degree a function of how closely you study it. I hope someone who is really on top of the subject takes Volkmar's data and puts it into better order than I have done in my few remarks above. Both Lynn and Rushton are aware of the data so I am hopeful of comments from them soon.

If we have to wait for their comments to come out in the academic journals, however, "soon" may be two years away. The last academic journal article that I had published took two years to come out even AFTER being accepted for publication! Fooey to that! Anything academic that I do these days I just put straight on the net and that is that.

One point I have not heard anybody make is that the Flynn findings are actually among the stronger proofs that the black IQ handicap is genetic. The rise in IQ scores for most of the 20th century has to be an environmental effect as the time period was much too short for genetic change. But the black/white gap remained roughly the same throughout the period. So if cancelling out environmental factors left the gap unchanged the remaining influence on the gap must be genetic! IN THEORY, there could still be environmental influences on IQ scores that could be improved but the fact that the improvement has now flattened out shows that environmental factors have now IN FACT done about all they can do for the IQ scores of the populations concerned. And yet the gap remains. Eppur si muove.

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ELSEWHERE



Above pic via Peg Kaplan

Google has got better: I have had a few grouches in the past about various writings of mine on the net being invisible to Google. But there is no doubt that they are very good about archiving blog posts. They seem to treat us bloggers as some sort of net aristocracy -- if that is not getting too imaginative. I have been very pleased about how rapidly they archive posts on my new Telstra/Bigpond blog. I have just found that they have posts I put up there in their archive within a matter of hours. Nice that somebody is efficient and nice for a very new blog.

Quite a few bloggers have expressed disgust that Time magazine has put Russia's Vlad Putin on their cover and named him as man of the year. Publius Pundit is one of many who have pointed out that Time also put Hitler on its cover in 1938. Nobody seems to have mentioned, however, that Time had Hitler on their cover as recently as 1995. There is no doubt that Time finds socialists fascinating. Do we get a "woman of the year"? Hillary, no doubt.

KBJ has up another evisceration up of Brian Leiter, the mini-Chomsky and law-school thug: Another lovely Leftist with slippery ethics.

The rogue CIA again: "The CIA obstructed an official US commission investigating the September 11 attacks by withholding tapes of interrogations of Al-Qaeda operatives, according to former panel members quoted in a report on Saturday. A review of documents by former members of the 9/11 commission revealed the panel made repeated, detailed requests to the spy agency in 2003 and 2004 for information about the interrogation of members of the extremist network but were never notified of the tapes, the New York Times reported. The review of the commission's correspondence with the Central Intelligence Agency came after the agency earlier this month revealed it had destroyed videotapes in 2005 that showed harsh interrogations of two Al-Qaeda members. The review, written up in a memo prepared by Philip Zelikow, the former executive director of the 9/11 commission, said that "further investigation is needed" to resolve whether the CIA's failure to hand over the tapes violated federal law."

Fred Thompson wants to cut agricultural subsidies: "Farmers are not looking for a president to hand them something. Farmers want fair treatment and a chance to prosper in a free economy and that's what I would help ensure. There's a lot of programs we've got out there, some of which are good programs, some of which are not. And I think that we need to work our way through that and make sure we're doing what's good for the country, not just the farmers, not just the people of Iowa, not just the people of Tennessee. But good for the country. A sound policy that makes sense. I think there's a lot more that we could do for the working farmer in terms of ecological programs and environmental programs - land conservation, soil conservation - that would be fair and it would be beneficial to the nation and to Iowa and to our country. We're going to have to phase out the corporate welfare system we've got, however. There are extremely rich people living in skyscrapers in Manhattan that are receiving subsidy payments. I think that's wrong"

A very queer priest: "The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis has informed LifeSiteNews.com that after a meeting with Archbishop Harry J. Flynn, Father Leo Tibesar, of Saint Frances Cabrini Parish in Minneapolis has agreed to remove from the parish website "any language from the St. Frances Cabrini parish website that is in opposition to Roman Catholic Church doctrine." Removed from the parish website was a page titled a "Statement of Reconciliation" which bemoaned Church teaching on sexual purity and married chastity and misrepresentied these teachings as a form of "oppression." The statement said the parish is committed to "Publicly bless the relationships of a same sex couple after the couple completes a process of discernment similar to that completed by heterosexual couples before marriage."

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and TELSTRA/BIGPOND.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

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Genes for the higher Asian IQ

Human evolution has speeded up over the past 80,000 years. Dr Moyzis's paper suggests that HOMO SAPIENS is continuing to undergo local evolution. He and his colleagues reckon they can both estimate the rate of evolution and identify many of the evolving genes, by using a trick with the clumsy name of linkage disequilibrium.... In acknowledgment of these diverse circumstances, the researchers looked in detail at the DNA of four groups of people from around the planet: Yoruba from Africa, Han Chinese and Japanese from Asia, and Europeans.

The finding that may cause most controversy, however, is that in the Asian groups there has been strong selection for one variant of a gene that, in a different form, is responsible for Gaucher's disease. A few years ago two of the paper's other authors, Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending, suggested that the Gaucher's form of the gene might be connected with the higher than average intelligence notable among Ashkenazi Jews. The unstated inference is that something similar might be true in Asians, too.

The Ashkenazim paper caused quite a stir at the time. It was merely a hypothesis, but it did suggest a programme of research that could be conducted to test the hypothesis. So far, no one--daring or foolish--has tried. Eventually, however, such questions will have to be faced. The paper Dr Moyzis and his colleagues have just published is a ranging shot, but the amount of recent human evolution it has exposed is surprising. Others will no doubt follow, and the genetic meaning of the term "race", if it has one, will be exposed for all to see.

More here

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Brookes News Update

The US economy causing confusion: America's currency problems are due to bad economics. So long as central bankers refuse to jettison their faulty theories about the nature of money, interest rates and capital America and the rest of the world will be plagued by recessions and international monetary crises
The Australian economy is heading into stormy seas: The Treasurer Wayne Swan believes that the solution to the current account deficit deficit lies in expanding the country's productive capacity. Swan has committed the glaring error of thinking that the deficit and bottlenecks are structural and can be overcome by increased investment. Like everyone of his predecessors and their advisors he is completely ignorant of monetary and capital theory
Inflation: the pestilence that threatens prosperity, part 2: The real danger inherent in housing is the one which is now unfolding - namely, a vast hemispheric storm system of horribly malinvested capital and negligently granted credit that has quietly been brewing over an ocean of inflation is making its presence felt
A doctor pleads for green totalitarian controls over the birth rate: Greens have revealed their insane totalitarian vision where those who have children will be heavily fined. Those who try to have 'excess' children will be severely punished and will be forced by the state to have their children aborted. What a lovely bunch of people
Dishonest plitical tampering with the science on global warming: The IPCC's so-called 'scientific findings' on global warming have been exposed as fraudulent. Its phony predictions of an impending disaster brought on by excess Co2 are just that - phony. So why are politicians and journalists still lying to us?
US strategic oil fields that Go undrilled: While Cuba and Brazil are opening up oil fields the Democrats - with the support of a corrupt media - refuse to drilling for oil in the US, Energy Information Administration estimates that ANWR, which is only one oil field, contains 10.4 billion barrels of recoverable oil. So why are the Democrats trying to strangle energy production?

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ELSEWHERE

UN Moving to Derail Fraud Investigation of itself: "The UN bureaucracy has once again acted to insulate itself from punishment for engaging in fraud that has cost the UN (and America, since America by far is the largest contributor to the United Nations) hundreds of millions of dollars. The General Assembly is preparing to put an early end to an in-house panel that has exposed more than $600 million in tainted United Nations contracts and is currently investigating an additional $1 billion in suspect agreements. A budget committee of the General Assembly is scheduled to vote as early as Friday on a resolution that would force the panel to close down its operations in six months."

Official land thieves told to pay up: "A Superior Court jury has awarded $26.5 million to a family whose Otay Mesa land was targeted for condemnation by the state Department of Transportation so it could build a freeway. At issue was the value of a piece of land that the Andersons controlled off Otay Mesa Road east of Interstate 805 and south of Brown Field. Caltrans had used eminent domain to take a 2.8-acre sliver of a 58-acre parcel, said Vincent Bartolotta, Jr. the Andersons' lawyer. But by doing that, the family claimed the majority of the parcel was cut off and landlocked - with no viable access in or out. The agency contended it did not have to pay damages for the balance of the land and offered $172,410 for the 2.8 acres, Bartolotta said. The agency argued that the land was slated to be used for open space anyway and could not be developed. But the Andersons rejected the offer, setting the stage for the trial. The jury ruled unanimously in favor of the landholders. The panel concluded the value of the 2.8-acre parcel was $1.3 million. Additionally, it set damages for the lost use of the landlocked property at $20.1 million.

The American dream is alive and well: "America continues to be a society of upward income mobility. Over the past decade, millions of Americans have joined the once highly exclusive club of six- and seven-figure earners. Some 304,000 Americans earned $1 million or more in annual income in 2005, compared to 110,000 in 1996 and 176,000 in 2000. Because there is no cap on the top income share, this increase in millionaires pushes the top income (and taxes paid) share higher. The number of millionaire households in net worth also increased to nine million in 2006, up from six million in 2001, according to TNS, a global market research firm. Liberals decry this as proof of a new "gilded age." But we'd say these gains are a sign that more Americans are joining the ranks of the truly affluent. More than 13 million American households, or about one in 10, had an income of more than $100,000 a year in 2005. This is the kind of upward mobility that a dynamic society should want because it means that incomes aren't stagnant and opportunity continues to exist."

McGonagall lives! There is a poem here about the "Alternative Minimum Tax" that is almost worthy of him.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and TELSTRA/BIGPOND.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

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More on FDR and his "New Deal"

A few Excerpts

When accepting the Democratic Party's presidential nomination in 1932, Roosevelt proclaimed "a new deal" for the American people. Once in office, he began radically transforming the federal government while seeking to ameliorate the nation's woes. He pushed subsidies for farmers, changed the banking system, and created the National Recovery Administration, which regulated many aspects of business until it was declared unconstitutional in 1935. Through the creation of the Social Security system and related programs, Roosevelt vastly expanded the scope and size of the federal government and created the political world in which we live. The shift was so complete that even as vocal a foe of big government as Ronald Reagan, who started his political career as a New Deal Democrat, approvingly wrote to Congress in the early 1980s of the "nation's ironclad commitment to Social Security" and praised FDR's visionary leadership in creating the program.

In her meticulously researched new history of the Depression, The Forgotten Man (HarperCollins), journalist Amity Shlaes describes the received catechism of the era: "Roosevelt made things better by taking charge. His New Deal inspired and tided the country over. In this way, the country fended off revolution of the sort bringing down Europe. Without the New Deal, we would all have been lost..The attitude is that the New Deal is the best model we have for what government must do for weak members of society, in both times of crises and times of stability." But that conventional account, she writes, fails to capture "the realities of the period." Shlaes shows how both Hoover and Roosevelt "overestimated the value of government planning" and intensified and prolonged the very problems they were seeking to fix.

One of the important things about the existing argument is that it's all about Keynesianism, about whether government spending can cure the economy when it's ill. Scholars have overlooked the cost of uncertainty in an economy, what we would now call the "unknown unknowns." Both the Hoover and Roo-sevelt administrations (but especially the Roosevelt administration) were so unpredictable. That hurt the economy very much, and when I went back and saw the extent I was astounded. Uncertainty is a factor that I thought needed to be explored. There were lots of people who said, "I will not invest 'til I know what's going to happen." ...

Roosevelt's advisers didn't know Stalin was a monster, or at least not so much, and very naively they copied him. In the book I trace how some of the characters go to the Soviet Union in 1927 and are bowled over by Stalin. They get six hours with him and they come back and you see them, especially [former Columbia University professor] Rex Tugwell, implementing things they learned from fascist Italy or from the world of Stalin. The influence of these European entities from Russia to Italy was not parenthetical. These people were not working for Moscow, but they were influenced by Moscow.

One of the members of the junket was a very well-known writer named Stuart Chase, an accountant who wrote about economics. He wrote a book called The New Deal, and it appeared in 1932, and that's where Roosevelt got the phrase. The last sentence of Chase's book is, "Why should Russians have all the fun remaking a world?" So you see the continuity.

There was a romance with the economy of scale, and not just in America. FDR's advisers said that having so many different states and so many different ways of doing things was inefficient. If you had 50 flowers blooming, as federalists would have, they bloom differently and it makes for a messy garden. There was this sense that the economy couldn't grow further unless there was rationalization, standardization. Even now you'll see businessmen fighting for standardization: "Just make the rule!" they say.

The most important thing for our generation is that the New Deal will come back to bite our children when they pay yet higher payroll taxes because we did not dare to reform Social Security and other entitlements. There are not enough people to pay for Social Security, and Social Security is set up so that you can't fix it just by growing the economy.

This is a moment of choice for us, our generation and the younger people. We have to look again at Roosevelt. Roosevelt was inspiring. He was right on World War II, but we do not have to have false nostalgia for his wrongheaded policies in the '30s. We should warn our children and help to change Social Security, but you don't see that in the presidential candidates. You don't see daring on Social Security.

More here

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Holiday cheer -- How to

To Democrat friends:

Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all. I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2008, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great. Not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country nor the only America in the Western Hemisphere. Also, this wish is made without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishee.

To Republican friends:

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

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ELSEWHERE

Nice to see that James Taranto of Opinion Journal -- who is Jewish -- has wished his readers "Merry Christmas". Civility is only difficult for Leftists.

FCC overturns media ownership rule: "The Federal Communications Commission in a party-line, 3-2 vote, agreed today to overturn a 32-year-old ban and allow broadcasters in the nation's 20 largest media markets to also own a newspaper. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin was joined by his two Republican colleagues in favor of the proposal, while the commission's two Democrats voted against it. Martin pushed the vote through despite intense pressure from House and Senate members on Capitol Hill to delay it. The chairman, however, has the support of the White House, which has pledged to turn back any congressional action that seeks to undo the agency vote."

The Real Race card: "The Clinton campaign's discussion of Barack Obama's admitted drug use is having an effect, all right. An effect on the black community's acceptance of Hillary Clinton."

There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race and IQ.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and TELSTRA/BIGPOND.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

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Human evolution speeding up

Research shows that different human groups are becoming LESS alike -- and that it has been happening in relatively recent times

The world may feel more and more like a global village, but its residents are increasingly genetically diverse thanks to the rapidly accelerating pace of human evolution, a study said Monday. Geneticists say the huge explosion in our numbers in the past 40,000 years, since Homo sapiens migrated out of Africa to other continents, has resulted in a much faster pace of evolution compared to the previous six million years.

The pace of change has increased 100-fold in modern times compared to our distant past, and most notably since the Ice Age, 10,000 years ago, and has led to increasing diversification between the races. "We are more different genetically from people living 5,000 years ago than they were different from Neanderthals," said John Hawks, an anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who collaborated on the study.

The findings are based on analysis of data from an international genomics project. A team of scientists examined DNA from 270 individuals in four ethnically different populations to see how genetic variations or SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms) evolved over time. Contrary to conventional wisdom, which holds that human evolution has slowed to a crawl or even stopped in modern humans, the researchers' analysis suggested that the process of natural selection has sped up. "Rapid population growth has been coupled with vast changes in cultures and ecology, creating new opportunities for adaptation," the authors wrote in the paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "The past 10,000 years have seen rapid skeletal and dental evolution in human populations, as well as the appearance of many new genetic responses to diet and disease."

Human migrations into new European and Asian environments created selective pressures favoring less skin pigmentation (so more sunlight could be absorbed through the skin to make Vitamin D), adaptation to cold weather and dietary changes.

One example of a genetic adaptation to human culture involves the gene that makes the milk-digesting enzyme lactase. The gene normally stops activity about the time a person becomes a teenager, but northern Europeans developed a variation of the gene that allowed them to drink milk their whole lives -- a relatively new adaptation that is directly tied to the introduction of domestic farming and use of milk as an agricultural product.

"Human races are evolving away from each other," said Henry Harpending, an anthropology professor at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. "Genes are evolving fast in Europe, Asia and Africa, but almost all of these are unique to their continent of origin. We are getting less alike, not merging into a single, mixed humanity." He said that is happening because humans dispersed from Africa to other regions 40,000 years ago and "there has not been much flow of genes between the regions since then."

Source

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ELSEWHERE

California hands a huge debt to its children: "The state of California is not funding a mountainous $48 billion tab for medical benefits promised to future government retirees, a bill that ranked as the second largest in the nation last year. The escalating liability, which accounting rules now require listing on the balance sheet, would hurt the state's debt rating and consequently raise the cost of borrowing if it goes unaddressed. Equally as important, since tax revenues are not expected to cover it, taxpayers will be forced to sacrifice services or sell bonds at ever-higher interest rates to accommodate the obligation. "That $48 billion is quite a lot. The substantial annual increases (to fund the benefits) the states are facing . is really stunning," said Katherine Barrett, co-author of a ground-breaking report, released Tuesday, from the nonprofit Pew Charitable Trusts' Center on the States."

S. Korean conservative's landslide win: "Conservative Lee Myung-bak, offering South Koreans a CEO-style presidency after a decade of Left-liberal occupation of the Blue House, scored a landslide victory in yesterday's presidential election. With 40 per cent of the vote counted last night, Mr Lee, representing the Grand National Party, had almost 47 per cent, while his main opponent Chung Dong-young, aligned with the current left-wing administration, had 28per cent. Exit polls had suggested Mr Lee, who turned 66 yesterday, could become the first winner to secure an endorsement of more than 50 per cent since direct presidential election was adopted 20 years ago. Mr Lee claimed victory in a nationally televised news conference, after Mr Chung, formerly unification minister under the outgoing President Roh Moo-hyun, conceded defeat. "Today, the people gave me absolute support," Mr Lee said. "I'm well aware of the people's wishes. I will serve the people in a very humble way. According to the people's wishes, I will save the nation's economy that faces a crisis." A spokesman for Mr Roh acknowledged the victory late last night and said the election had been fairly conducted."

Even They Can't Cover Up The Fraud: "How ragingly bad must the fraud be if even the United Nations can't hide it from an internal investigation? A UN group has determined that there is widespread, pervasive fraud in the UN's peacekeeping operations. The fraud they admit to runs into hundreds of millions of dollars (and heading north rapidly) and 10 UN procurement officials have been charged with offenses so far. And they are not even finished investigating yet."

Hamas Seeks Truce Talks With Israel: "Gaza's embattled Hamas leaders are seeking a cease-fire after months of Israeli attacks and sanctions, going so far as to make an unprecedented appeal through the Israeli media, a Hamas official confirmed Wednesday. The overture, which the Hamas leader made Tuesday through an Israeli reporter, followed an especially bloody day in which the Israeli air force killed 12 militants, including a top commander. Despite calls for a cease-fire within his Cabinet, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert pledged to continue targeting the leaders of militant groups who fire rockets into southern Israel almost daily."

Rich Pay More Taxes Since Bush Elected Contrary to Media Meme: "You know all that nonsense the media have been spewing that the Bush tax cuts caused the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer? Well, the Internal Revenue Service and the Congressional Budget Office have published tax and income numbers for 2005, and the press couldn't be any more wrong. In fact, it's almost as if the media get their data from Democrat presidential candidates, and disseminate it without the slightest effort whatsover to vet or verify its veracity.... part of the news is that the richest 1% paid about 39% of all income taxes that year. The richest 5% paid a tad less than 60%, and the richest 10% paid 70%. These tax shares are all up substantially since 1990, and even somewhat since 2000. Meanwhile, Americans with an income below the median -- half of all households -- paid a mere 3% of all income taxes in 2005."

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and TELSTRA/BIGPOND.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

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The usual Democrat concern for the truth

In his town-hall meeting last Wednesday night, Edwards sang the refrain he has made the core of his big-government populist campaign: Big-business controls Washington and blocks crucial regulations and welfare programs, and John Edwards is the only man who can take it on. And the crowd loved it.

For all the free passes Barack Obama has received from the media, he's never gotten away with being as demonstrably wrong on the facts as John Edwards is nearly every time he sounds this theme. The truth of the matter is an awkward one for Edwards and his fans: the very big businesses they vilify support the very big-government policies they advocate.

In Thursday's debates, when asked about federal curbs on greenhouse gases to battle global warming, Edwards said: "first of all, we need to recognize what the obstacles are to the change that everyone believes is necessary. And the obstacles are oil companies, power companies, all those entrenched interests that stand between America and the change that it needs."

Democrats in the crowd nodded their heads at this, and reporters in the press room didn't bat an eye. That sounds natural to them: big oil and big energy oppose regulation of fuel and power, right?

Well, not Duke Energy whose CEO, Paul Anderson, has been calling for a tax on carbon dioxide for nearly three years.

Is there any more "entrenched interest" than General Electric, which every year since 1998 has spent more on lobbying than any other company in America? Hardly an "obstacle" to Edwards's favored policies, GE's Jeff Immelt on January 22, 2007, joined CEOs from Alcoa, DuPont, and other corporate titans to call for federal regulation of greenhouse gas emissions.

And oh yeah, one former big power company (the biggest in the world, at the time), lobbied two White Houses for the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, pointing out in one e-mail, "This agreement will be good for Enron stock!" I could go on, but you get the point.

The same is true of health care. Edwards said Thursday that "corporate power and greed have literally taken over the government, and we need a president who's willing to take these powers on. It is the only way we're going to . have universal health care." Well, you could take them on, but that hardly seems necessary considering that many of the biggest corporations are firmly behind the big government health care plans that Edwards and the Democrats are offering.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

A takedown of Lefty blogger David Niewert (aka "Orcinus") here. I had some fun with him a few years ago. Also here.



Fred Thompson well-received in Iowa: "Haus was understandably upbeat, especially considering David Yepsen's column about Thompson today. Haus tells me Thompson has been received quite well: “I think, just based on the reception we’ve seen in the last 24 hours, it’s been nothing short of spectacular." “... It’s hoots and hollers and 'hell yeas' from the back of the room. It’s almost Revivalesque. It’s stuff we’re not used to in Iowa," says Haus. He also tells me he's also surprised by the number of folks who are undecided, and the number of folks who are unhappy with the candidates they are currently supporting.

A Brigadier and a soldier: "The British Forces commander in Afghanistan played a personal role in the recapture of Musa Qala, the Taleban-controlled town in the north of Helmand province. Brigadier Andrew Mackay, who commands 6,000 troops of 52 Brigade, walked for nearly a mile across no man's land to reach the town as the battle raged. He then took up position on Roshan Hill, which overlooks Musa Qala. The Taleban were driven from the town by a combination of American, British and Afghan troops, using a plan devised by Brigadier Mackay and his staff, called Operation Ma, which means "snake" in Pashtun. The 50-year-old brigadier, who would normally have been expected to stay well clear of the frontline action, flew by helicopter to the area around Musa Qala and walked the last stage. He spent ten days supervising the attack on Musa Qala from his headquarters, "just a hole in the ground", on Roshan Hill, about 700 yards from the fighting."

A myth about consumer spending: "Every year, and especially during holiday-shopping season, we hear the familiar refrain: 'What the consumer does is the most important thing.' ... 'If shoppers stop spending, we're in big trouble.' ... 'Consumer spending accounts for 70 percent of the economy.' ... These Keynesian principles have become ingrained conventional myths. But they're not true. Many factors are far more significant than consumer spending in stimulating the economy: business spending on capital goods, tax cuts, lower interest rates, and productivity."

Handling the specter of victory in Iraq: "A specter is haunting the Democratic Party. The long-awaited defeat of American forces in Iraq, on which so many critics of this administration have built their fondest hopes, seems to have been delayed again and - unsettling thought - may not even materialize. Even the dreaded word, Victory, is being whispered. Who would have thought it? Besides, of course, that dwindling minority of Americans who never gave up on the valor of America's armed forces - and the flexibility of their commanders, including their much-despised commander-in-chief."

A happy day: "Border checks between the former communist states of eastern Europe and their Western neighbours will end on Friday, a move potent with symbolism for those who lived behind the Iron Curtain and were then made to feel like "second-class citizens" in a united Europe. "We have been dismantling our own Berlin Wall stage by stage. The first stage was in 1989, and the second will be in December," proclaimed Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek during a recent visit to Dresden to prepare for his country's entry into the Schengen zone. The Czech Republic, along with Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, the three Baltic states and Slovenia, as well as Malta, will this week join the 15 countries in the zone where passport checks have disappeared."

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and TELSTRA/BIGPOND.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

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My telecommunications woes: Update

Some readers may vaguely recall that I have been having something of a "war" with Telstra/Bigpond (Australia's largest provider of telecommunication services) over the execrable services that they provide. As part of trying to get some sort of civilized and intelligent response fom them, I have been using their own "Bigblog" blogging facility to post criticisms of them. BigBlog was always a primitive affair but I have just found out that it is even more primitive than anyone could have imagined. They turn it off at night! That's right: It is only available during Australian daylight hours! Amazing that Australia's largest provider of internet services cannot keep its own blogs up and running 24 hours a day -- but that is the reality, folks. I did not of course expect such bloody-mindedness but repeated attempts by me to log on late at night were met with failure so I now know from experience what the reality is.

Now that I have discovered that, I have of course moved camp and am now blogging about Telstra/Bigpond on blogspot. See here from now on. I have transferred to there the more recent posts on the BigBlog site.

And in this case competition does not seem to be much of an answer to problems. When I encountered difficulties with my Telstra cellphone I thought that buying a second cellphone connected to Optus (Australia's second-largest telecommunications firm) might be a partial solution. But you can see how well that worked out here.

The only thing that really moves these oligopolists is publicity so if anyone reading this is inclined to link on their own site to the two sites I have mentioned above, I would be obliged. The more links the sites get the further they will move up the Google page-rankings and the more they will embarrass the behemoths concerned.

Australia does have an official telecommunications watchdog, the TIO (Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman) and they do sometimes help with problems but they are bureaucrats so they give up easily and do their best to wash their hands of matters. The main aim of all bureaucracies is to maximize their funding and minimize their workload and the TIO seems to be no exception to that.

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Why are civilized countries still supporting the UN and its corruption?

The UNICEF Photo of the Year has been announced, and I couldn't possibly think of something more appropriate. Recall that the agency has tasked itself with-and is held responsible for-the well-being of children around the world. Check out how UNICEF decides to illustrate this calling:



The photograph shot by U.S. freelance photographer Stephanie Sinclair shows a wedding couple in Afghanistan who could not be more opposite. The groom, Mohammed, looks much older than his 40 years. The bride, Ghulam, is still a child; she just turned 11. Stephanie Sinclair works as a freelance photographer based in Beirut, Lebanon

What better way to care for the well-being of children than by celebrating the forced marriage of an 11-year-old girl to a man over 30 years her senior, right?

Source

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The British government data bungles multiply: "The British Government has suffered new embarrassment over missing data after it revealed one of its contractors had lost the details of 3 million learner drivers. The mistake came just weeks after Prime Minister Gordon Brown's Government admitted it had lost computer discs containing the names and bank account details of 25 million people, exposing nearly half the population to possible fraud and identity theft. The opposition Conservatives accused the Government of incompetence over the data loss, the latest in a series of mishaps that have caused the popularity of Mr Brown's six-month-old team to plunge. Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly told Parliament a private contractor reported in May that a hard disc drive had gone missing from a facility in Iowa in the US. It contained the names, addresses and other details of more than three million candidates for a theory test taken by learner drivers in Britain. The disc drive did not contain any bank account or credit card details, Ms Kelly said. She also revealed that two discs containing the details of 7500 vehicles and the names and addresses of their owners had been lost in transit." [It is events like this that make many people oppose national ID cards]

Publicity works: "Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah has pardoned a teenage girl sentenced to six months in jail and 200 lashes after being gang raped, Al Jazirah newspaper reported. The ruling against the 19-year-old girl in the ultra-conservative Muslim kingdom had attracted widespread international condemnation, including from human rights groups and the White House. The Arabic language daily said it had been informed of the royal pardon from its own unidentified sources. The girl, who was 18 at the time she was raped, was attacked at knifepoint by seven men after she was found in a car with a male companion who was not a relative, in breach of strict Saudi law. In October 2006, a judge sentenced her to 90 lashes for being with the man -- a taboo in the conservative Muslim kingdom which imposes segregation of the sexes. She appealed against the sentence but despite her ordeal the court ruled that her punishment should be increased to 200 lashes and a six-month jail term."

French police finally do something other than run away: "An attempt to build a Christmas encampment for the homeless on the banks of the river Seine was swept away by police before the startled eyes of tourists at the weekend. A homelessness action group, which generated worldwide attention a year ago by pitching an encampment of red tents in the centre of Paris, attempted an even more spectacular coup on Saturday morning. Scores of red, 'two second,' all-terrain tents were erected along the quays of the left bank of the Seine opposite the Notre Dame cathedral. As tourists looked on, police moved in en masse -- using tear gas at one stage -- to sweep away the homeless people and their supporters."

The "Toxic Texan": "In the past third of a century, the American economy has swollen by 150 per cent, automobile traffic has increased by 143 per cent, and energy consumption has grown 45 per cent. During this same period, air pollutants have declined by 29 per cent, toxic emissions by 48.5 per cent, sulphur dioxide levels by 65.3 per cent, and airborne lead by 97.3 per cent. Despite signing on to Kyoto, European greenhouse gas emissions have increased since 2001, whereas America's emissions have fallen by nearly one per cent, despite the Toxic Texan's best efforts to destroy the planet."

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and TELSTRA/BIGPOND.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

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Father Coughlin was a Leftist

A little bit of American history you won't read in your history textbooks

As the Great Depression dragged toward the end of its first decade in 1938, Father Charles Coughlin released the latest issue of his newspaper Social Justice. It reprinted that most notorious and persistent of anti-Semitic tracts, The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.

Coughlin's decision to disseminate the spurious conspiracy tale to his millions of followers was not just the same old Jew-hatred, even if part of his financing came from Henry Ford. It marked Coughlin's transformation from an ardent New Dealer, who had coined the phrase "Roosevelt or Ruin," to a divisive demagogue.

The through-line from Coughlin the social democrat to Coughlin the biased provocateur was populism. The same ideology that had led him earlier in his public career to attack corporate power and unmediated capitalism, to champion labor unions and activist government, also enabled him to search for a scapegoat.

Source

The above was written by a modern-day Leftist and so pretends that antisemitism was a departure from the Leftist "New Deal" ideas of FDR but we see quite to the contrary here.

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ELSEWHERE

Readers of EDUCATION WATCH should get a pleasant surprise now that Mike Pechar is also posting there. His style is notably lighter than mine.

Astounding: A major Australian bank is offering university scholarships to students who want to study "the development of Shariah compliant financial products and services". The scholarship is called the "Sheikh Fehmi El-Imam Scholarship". Sharia law of course forbids the charging of interest. I would like to see how long the bank lasts if it adopts that principle!

The thug behind Kwanzaa: "Each year, with the onset of Christmas, we are treated to another gauzy, fluff piece about how great Kwanzaa is by yet another PC spewing newspaper columnist. This year, among many others, the Houston Chronicle gets in the act with a piece by Leslie Casimir titled "Learning about Kwanzaa from the holiday's creator." This one, though, is a bit off the usual track of the how-great-Kwanzaa-is theme because this particular piece celebrates the inventor of the faux holiday, Maulana Karenga, himself. So, we've gone from merely celebrating this manufactured holiday to making a hero of the rapist, race monger and a violent thug who created it! Karenga, as it happens, has a long criminal record, indeed. In 1971 Everett served time in jail for assault. By then Everett had changed his name to Maulana Ron Karenga and began to affect a pseudo African costume and act the part of a native African. It wasn't mere assault he was convicted of, either. It was sexual assault and torture perpetrated against some of his female followers. The L.A. Times then reported that he placed a hot soldering iron in one woman's mouth and used a vise to crush another's toe.... Happy Kwanzaa, indeed!

Arrogant labor unions lose: "After nearly a four-year delay, a Florida worker has prompted an administrative law judge of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to strike down a nationwide policy of a major international union that requires employees to object annually to prevent union officials from spending their compulsory union dues for political activities. The policy is a pervasive tactic used by union officials to prevent dissenting employees from reclaiming forced union dues used to promote political causes they oppose."

`Political art' that treats the public like mugs: "An art installation in New York featuring fake criminal mugshots of Bush and Cheney is meant to be cutting edge. In fact it is cynically conformist.... The supposedly controversial, polemical and outrageous Line Up exhibit has been branded `political attack art'. Yet what is striking is just how ordinary and simple the prints are. The New York Public Library describes Multiple Interpretations as showcasing prints by `some of the most intriguing and compelling artists active today'. Yet as David Durant points out on his `Heretical Librarian' blog: `Wow, if this kind of infantile, dishonest agitprop is what "the most intriguing and compelling artists active today" are doing, then I'd really hate to see what the crappy and unimaginative artists are up to.'"

Olmert government stupidity: "Palestinian militants, freed in past prisoner releases by Israel, were responsible for at least 30 terror attacks which claimed the ives of 177 Israelis, according to a study published yesterday by Almagor, an organization representing the victims of Palestinian terrorism. The report's publication came in response to yesterday's release of 429 Palestinians jailed in Israeli prisons. According to the report, 6,912 militants were released between the years 1993 and 1999, and nearly 80 percent of them returned to terrorist activity."

On Wal-Mart et al. in the recent Northwestern deluge: "In cases of extreme weather and natural disasters, some of the nation's largest retailers now behave like municipalities -- sometimes better. Retailers have created specialized divisions -- or hired outside firms -- to gird for emergencies. The goal: to speed recovery for customers, employees and ultimately sales. No one is clear how many retailers operate internal emergency units, but the practice is now standard among the biggest players, including Target Corp. and Lowe's Cos. Inc. This past week, Wal-Mart donated a 40-foot tanker of potable water to Vernonia, [Oregon,] while up north Home Depot opened its still-waterlogged Chehalis store for the town's Chamber of Commerce to pick up face masks and cleaning supplies free of charge. Such coordination became clear during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when local governments praised initial responses from retailers as more expedient than those of the Federal Emergency Management Agency."

What would Adam Smith say? "The role of government in the United States and other western democracies has expanded dramatically over the last century. Compared to its pre-twentieth century functions, government has taken on new and vast roles, including old-age pensions, government-provided health care, and a host of other programs that typically comprise a modern welfare state. What would Adam Smith, the eighteenth-century Scottish moral philosopher, say about the expanded role of our modern government? For Smith, the ideal functions of government were few and well defined."

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and TELSTRA/BIGPOND.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

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JAG Needs Refocus

The military's judge advocate general corps of lawyers' primary job is to interpret and help enforce the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). The UCMJ is the military's parallel but carefully customized legal code, meant to provide the disciplinary basis necessary to meet military missions while being true to the U.S.'s civilian laws....

JAG officers, especially without combat experience, are often at heart civilian lawyers in uniform. The often antagonistic attitudes toward U.S. and military policies that pervade our campuses and law schools affect their judgments, and frequently prevail. Instead of seeing themselves as enablers of the nation's and military's mission, JAG's often try to undermine them. That said, the Boston Globe reports:

The administration has proposed a regulation requiring "coordination" with politically appointed Pentagon lawyers before any member of the Judge Advocate General corps - the military's 4,000-member uniformed legal force - can be promoted.

The tone of the Boston Globe's report, and the sources it chooses to present, is that,

The former JAG officers say the regulation would end the uniformed lawyers' role as a check-and-balance on presidential power.

Flash to Boston Globe and to the liberal former JAG officers quoted: JAG does not exist to be "a check-and-balance on presidential power." JAG exists to carry out and enable the military's missions and discipline. The president is the civilian authority over the military, as well as Commander in Chief. It's not until the end of the Globe article that we get to the meat of the matter. JAG officers are there to offer legal opinions, but not to contradict or seek to override their constitutional civilian superiors.

Responding to the conflicts, in 2004 Congress enacted a law forbidding Defense Department employees from interfering with the ability of JAGs to "give independent legal advice" directly to military leaders. But when President Bush signed the law, he issued a signing statement decreeing that the legal opinions of his political appointees would still "bind" the JAGs.

I'm not sure whether this proposal is best, or will fly. But, it's still an important shot across the bow of runamock JAG's.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

There is an interesting catalog here of the bogus disaster stories that the media have been using to drown out the good news from Iraq. And there is a list of the top 10 media myths about the economy here

US, British & Germans Don't Trust Their MSM: "In the United States, Britain and Germany, only around 29% of those interviewed thought their media did a good job in reporting news accurately. This reflects favorably on the strong attachment to truth of Americans, the British and Germans, and most West Europeans. But, at the same time, reflects the extent to which skepticism and cynicism and outright disdain of the reliability of MSM, across the political spectrum, has permeated Western publics. The narrow incestuous worldview of media elites, coupled with repeated evidenced instances of absurdly unprofessional conduct, is widely recognized, and, as witnessed by the steady drain away of their audiences, is an unsustainable business practice."

Dept. of State is a lying Leftist organization: "The State Department's intention to remove North Korea from a list of countries that support terrorism is criticized in a newly released nonpartisan congressional report that cited "reputable" sources saying the communist regime of Kim Jong Il has supported Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers and the Lebanese Hezbollah group, both of which have long been on America's list of terror groups. Didn't Israel just take out a nuclear bomb making factory that North Korea helped build..."

Democrat-led Michigan's economy offers fewer jobs than Iraq's: The headline in the Detroit News today was startling: "Hundreds line up for shot at Iraq jobs." But then again, Michigan's unemployment rate is startling: 7.7%. That's the highest in the land and considerably higher than the rate of the next-highest state, Mississippi, at 6.1%. "I wouldn't say it's a last resort, but it's looking very attractive. If we don't make some serious decisions, we're going to lose our house," said Tony Woodward, 38, of Port Huron. "There are no jobs in Michigan. I just don't see how there's a future here in Michigan." The jobs are dangerous. So far, 800 civilians working for the U.S. military died in Iraq. Marceilos Davis, 27, of Detroit said, "That's a no-brainer. From the neighborhood I live in, it's no different than Iraq. I'm not scared." She has a point. And while there is only so much a government can do for the economy, Jennifer Granholm has not delivered on the promise of jobs that got her elected governor five years ago."

Author of NIE report believes CIA's Priority should be 'Diversity': "The Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence, who was integral to the findings of that report and its publication last week addressed the need to reform our intelligence agencies: "The 500-day plan enters almost immediately into a discussion of the vital importance of "Equal Opportunity and Diversity." It offers high praise for the intelligence community's Diversity Strategy Implementation Workshop" Perhaps Mr. Kerr is ignorant of the case of Nada Prouty , a 37-year old illegal alien from Lebanon who was hired by the FBI from her waitress job at a restaurant owned by her brother-in-law who is now on the lam for financially supporting Hezbollah. Prouty was hired under such a "diversity plan". She was later transferred and promoted to the CIA, despite no previous espionage experience, where she was discovered to have illegally accessed CIA files in a bid to discover what information the CIA possessed about Hezbollah. Donald Kerr is seemingly oblivious to the absurdity of his touting diversity when the CIA was just penetrated by a "diversity" hire."

Toyota expands while GM contracts: "Japanese car giant Toyota Motor Corp. plans to raise its global output to near 10 million units next year, out-distancing its rival General Motors Corp. of the United States, a news report said Sunday. Toyota now expects its group's global production to expand to some 9.9 million vehicles in 2008, about 500,000 units more than the projection for the current year, the Nikkei newspaper said. Toyota projects its global output for this year will climb by four percent year on year to 9.42 million cars, while General Motors earlier this month announced a production forecast of a one percent gain to 9.26 million units. While Toyota is expanding its overseas production facilities, GM has been laying off workers and shuttering factories to try to reverse losses that hit two billion US dollars last year." [Toyota cars are brilliant. I drive one myself]

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and TELSTRA/BIGPOND.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

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THE GERMAN VERSUS THE U.S. REACTION TO THE DEPRESSION

Further to my post yesterday, a reader writes:

Your article leaves out one very salient fact: Due to the French insistence on outlandish reparations after WWI, the Germans were saddled with unpayable debt which resulted in a huge inflation during the 20's and an economic downturn. The US prospered in the 20's (as did most of the rest of the western world) and therefore entered the 30's prosperous and contented.

Germany therefore had really two decades of economic depression versus the one suffered by the rest of the world. The German people, after losing a war were turned from being economically well off to being ravaged by lousy economic conditions for two decades. Even the best of men may turn the wrong way under those circumstances.

I have always felt that France was the most responsible nation for the German onslaught in Europe. Before Napoleon, Germany was a mix of different states which generally got along with their neighbors. When Napoleon went on his rampages he generally had to cross German territory to reach his goal. In those days most armies lived a great deal off the land and this was German land.

My parents immigrated from Germany in the 20's and I can honestly state that I never heard a harsh world about Jews from them or their German born friends. But to a person, they basically hated the French. When I grew up and learned the history of the two nations I began to understand why.

The above certainly reminds us of one important factor in explaining the rise of German Nazism. There were of course various factors involved -- including the personal political genius of Hitler himself. My purpose yesterday was simply to point out how a basic theme in conservative thinking was an important part of the total explanation.

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ELSEWHERE

Further to my comments on the misleading account of black IQ by Malcolm Gladwell, it seems that Jonah Goldberg has taken an interest in the matter too. It seems that someone has even got Gladwell to do a grudging retraction of one of his slurs. See here

The WSJ is now a great Australian newspaper: "News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch has finally achieved his long-held ambition of owning The Wall Street Journal, one of the world's great newspapers, and ending more than 100 years of ownership by the Bancroft family. Confirmation of Mr Murdoch's successful $US5.2 billion takeover of the Journal's owner, Dow Jones & Co, came after an historic, 30-minute shareholder meeting and vote at New York's Marriott Hotel, which is appropriately located just near Wall Street on the southern tip of Manhattan Island. Just under 60.3 per cent of Dow Jones investors approved the merger, with 78 per cent of common shares and 54 per cent of super-voting shares - mostly held by the divided Bancroft family - allocated in favour of the deal. Later, standing on a makeshift stage made out of four boxes of copying paper at Dow Jones's head office, Mr Murdoch - flanked by two trusted Australian lieutenants, new Dow Jones chief executive Les Hinton and new WSJ publisher Robert Thomson - reassured journalists about the company's future."

Bible realistic: "The ten Plagues of Egypt recounted in the Bible and which caused Pharaoh to let the Israelite slaves go free were nothing more than natural "population imbalances" caused by environmental factors, a leading scientist has claimed.... The "rivers of blood" could have been caused by heavy rainfall on baked soil, leading to sediment-rich water flowing into the Nile from tributaries where the underlying soil and rocks are red. Egyptians often spoke of the "red lands" surrounding the fertile, "black lands" they occupied. The sediments would also have killed the fish, as described in the Bible, he says. The plague of frogs could have been migrating frogs, or the sudden appearance of the froglike Spadefoot toads from hiding places in damp undersoil after a sudden rainfall. Similarly, the plague of lice could have been merely the sudden hatching of lice throughout Egypt after rain that followed unusually hot and dry weather. The description of swarms of flies match the behaviour of dancing midges, which can sometimes be so dense that livestock have to be taken indoors to avoid asphyxiation, he says. Again, unusual weather conditions could have led them to the Nile. An abundance of biting insects would also have led to the "pestilence" that caused the death of the country's cattle. Similarly, the boils on the human population could have been caused by insect bites. The "fiery hail" could have been the large hailstones accompanied by ball lightning that sometimes appears during severe, dramatic storms. The locust swarms would also have been caused by severe environmental conditions, and a dense storm could also have produced the darkening of the skies described in the Bible."

Britain: Muslim car thieves: "Five members of a multimillion-pound "car-ringing" gang, who stole luxury cars after trawling expensive areas of London were sentenced yesterday . The 34 stolen vehicles included Porsches, Mercedes, BMWs, Range Rovers, Toyota Land Cruisers and an Aston Martin. Southwark Crown Court was told that the thieves videoed themselves at the wheel of high-powered cars on their mobile phones. One clip showed 21-year-old Yusef Kaduji behind the wheel of a Mercedes McLaren worth 300,000 pounds. Imran Ganchi, a father-of-two from Ilford, who masterminded the operation, was jailed for six years; Kaduji, from East London, got two years; Hameed Nawaz, 31, of Luton, received three years; and Shazad Hussain, 31, of Mosely, Birmingham, four years.Shakeel Shoukat, 21, also of Forest Gate, was given a 12-month sentence suspended for two years."

Israel getting worried: "A senior Israeli official has fiercely criticized U.S. President George Bush's administration for the way it has dealt with the Iranian nuclear issue. The official said that the administration was not doing what was required of it to create an international coalition and wide agreement to pressure Iran over its nuclear program. Criticism from senior members of Israel's political echelon with regard to U.S. policy on the matter is rare. The official mainly spoke out against Bush's failure to enlist support from China, Russia and, to a certain extent, India, for increasing pressure on Iran and North Korea. According to the official, the Bush administration has insisted on stressing matters such as human rights in China and its policy on Taiwan, and as a result, has neglected to gain its support in the struggle against Iran."

Yes Minister: British bureaucrats help PRESERVE freedom of information: "At the turn of the year, Government forces, led by Lord Falconer of Thoroton, then Lord Chancellor, appeared determined to press ahead with new rules that would stop the media and campaign groups from making costly and embarrassing requests for information. New documents released under the Freedom of Information Act now provide a clearer understanding of why the Government got cold feet. Responses to its own consultation paper published last year include submissions from FOI officers who show themselves to be less than enthusiastic about the idea of “blanket aggregation”, whereby a financial cap would be put on the amount of money that could be spent on complying with FOI requests made by individuals from within the same organisation. Government agencies were even less enthusiastic. In its detailed response, Transport for London noted that the consultation paper did not present any evidence that “burdensome FOI requests are a significant or extensive problem outside of central government”. [Embarrassing political info is no skin off the bureaucrats' nose but processing requests does provide jobs for them]

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and TELSTRA/BIGPOND.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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

"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

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