Benazir

The mainstream press is tending to eulogize the tragically assassinated Benazir Bhutto but lots of conservative blogs are pointing out the reservations that should be borne in mind about her. She was the socialist heir to a socialist dynasty and would almost certainly have done more harm than good if she had regained power in Pakistan. Ralph Peters is, as usual, the most acerbic in his comments.

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Some good holiday reading

For those who still have some holiday time left, Jonah Goldberg's recent book ("Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning") sounds well worth a read. Sadly, I am betting that you won't pick it up at your local bookstore, however. Below is the Amazon synopsis of the book:

"Fascists," "Brownshirts," "jackbooted stormtroopers"-such are the insults typically hurled at conservatives by their liberal opponents. Calling someone a fascist is the fastest way to shut them up, defining their views as beyond the political pale. But who are the real fascists in our midst?

Liberal Fascism offers a startling new perspective on the theories and practices that define fascist politics. Replacing conveniently manufactured myths with surprising and enlightening research, Jonah Goldberg reminds us that the original fascists were really on the left, and that liberals from Woodrow Wilson to FDR to Hillary Clinton have advocated policies and principles remarkably similar to those of Hitler's National Socialism and Mussolini's Fascism.

Contrary to what most people think, the Nazis were ardent socialists (hence the term "National socialism"). They believed in free health care and guaranteed jobs. They confiscated inherited wealth and spent vast sums on public education. They purged the church from public policy, promoted a new form of pagan spirituality, and inserted the authority of the state into every nook and cranny of daily life. The Nazis declared war on smoking, supported abortion, euthanasia, and gun control. They loathed the free market, provided generous pensions for the elderly, and maintained a strict racial quota system in their universities-where campus speech codes were all the rage. The Nazis led the world in organic farming and alternative medicine. Hitler was a strict vegetarian, and Himmler was an animal rights activist.

Do these striking parallels mean that today's liberals are genocidal maniacs, intent on conquering the world and imposing a new racial order? Not at all. Yet it is hard to deny that modern progressivism and classical fascism shared the same intellectual roots. We often forget, for example, that Mussolini and Hitler had many admirers in the United States. W.E.B. Du Bois was inspired by Hitler's Germany, and Irving Berlin praised Mussolini in song. Many fascist tenets were espoused by American progressives like John Dewey and Woodrow Wilson, and FDR incorporated fascist policies in the New Deal.

Fascism was an international movement that appeared in different forms in different countries, depending on the vagaries of national culture and temperament. In Germany, fascism appeared as genocidal racist nationalism. In America, it took a "friendlier," more liberal form. The modern heirs of this "friendly fascist" tradition include the New York Times, the Democratic Party, the Ivy League professoriate, and the liberals of Hollywood. The quintessential Liberal Fascist isn't an SS storm trooper; it is a female grade school teacher with an education degree from Brown or Swarthmore.

These assertions may sound strange to modern ears, but that is because we have forgotten what fascism is. In this angry, funny, smart, contentious book, Jonah Goldberg turns our preconceptions inside out and shows us the true meaning of Liberal Fascism.

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ELSEWHERE

Smearing Ron Paul: "I couldn't help but be struck by the vicious smear of Ron Paul by a Virginia Heffernan in the New York Times. ... Sure, politics is a nasty business but I just couldn't help but wonder why the New York Times would publish garbage like this. Here's the thrust of Heffernan's attack: that Ron Paul has received donations from neo-Nazi extremist groups and has spoken at events attended by right-wing extremist individuals. ... Is this ludicrous or what? What are Heffernan and the New York Times suggesting -- that Ron Paul, one of the most committed libertarians around, has instead been a closet Nazi the whole time he has been in Congress? Or maybe they're suggesting that this committed libertarian has, all of a sudden, decided to convert to Nazism. Or maybe they're saying that libertarians don't really advocate individual freedom, free markets, and limited government but instead advocate statism and government control over economic activity."

You can be too clever: "The nineteenth century English philosopher John Stuart Mill bequeathed to modern conservatism a lasting inferiority complex when he dismissed the conservatives of his day as "the stupid party." ... Yet the sting of Mill's insult remains today, and it explains, in part, the conspicuous braininess of contemporary conservatism. Conservative think-tanks abound in PhD's and experts in every field imaginable, whose intelligence, as measured by IQ tests and academic credentials, is certainly a match for those of their ideological opponents. But has the emergence of a conservative intelligentsia proven to be an unmixed blessing? Or is the very phrase "conservative intelligentsia" an oxymoron? Let's begin by noting that the eagerness to appear intelligent to others is a fairly recent development among conservatives. By and large, the English Tories whom Mill dubbed as the original stupid party did not share this desire in the least... Their stupidity, as many of them no doubt hazily realized, was their best defense against the inroads of clever madmen intent on turning their world upside down-men like John Stuart Mill, for example, to whom tradition meant nothing, and who was willing to throw out the solid heritage of the past in the pursuit of the latest fad, dubbed by him "experiments in living."

The Chicken or the Egg (on His Face)?: "Which came first: the Chicken or the Egg? I ask because Maryland Congressman Steny Hoyer, the House Majority Leader, brought it up. You see, Hoyer has supported earmarks totaling $96 million, including a $450,000 grant to the California-based InTune Foundation Group, to supposedly provide music education. InTune officials say they aren't sure what they are going to do with the money. The group's director offered that, "It might be music camps. It might be lessons. It might be how to be a DJ. It might be how to create a television show." Last year, InTune got $500,000 and failed to report what they did with the money. Asked why he went to bat for this earmark, Hoyer replied, "I thought it was a program that would be a positive program." Some testimonial. Of course, it couldn't be the more than $30,000 that Hoyer's political action committee has received from folks connected to InTune."

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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IS RON PAUL A RACIST?

By some Leftist definitions, Ron Paul IS a racist. But Leftists class as a racist anybody who mentions racial differences at all -- a definition which is to my mind just a form of abuse. Are medical scientists (e.g. here) who repeatedly find medically significant differences between blacks and whites racists too?

I mentioned yesterday Taranto's feeble attempt to brand Ron Paul as a racist but he has clearly retracted that claim today. I suspect that I was far from the only one who sent him links and emails that took him to task over his comments yesterday.

A much more serious claim that Ron Paul is a racist comes from black conservative Bob Parks. Bob Parks generally speaks a lot of sense but the refusal of Ron Paul to be politically correct has obviously alarmed him. Parks has a whole list of broadly realistic utterances from Ron Paul that would have any Leftist shrieking "racism". The prime example seems to be:

"We don't think a child of 13 should be held responsible as a man of 23. That's true for most people, but black males age 13 who have been raised on the streets and who have joined criminal gangs are as big, strong, tough, scary and culpable as any adult and should be treated as such."

If you left out the word "black", I think there could well be a majority of Americans who agreed with that. And, given his vocal condemnation of real racism (as now linked by Taranto), I suspect that Ron Paul himself would intend his remarks to apply to all gang members who otherwise fitted his description. And who would deny that many of the gang members who fit Ron Paul's description are in fact black? Ron Paul has no difficulty in describing reality but Bob Parks seems uncomfortable with it.

One of my Jewish correspondents emailed me with the thought that Taranto initially got a bit freaked over Ron Paul because Ron Paul frequently denounces "neocons" and in Leftist mouths "neocon" is often code for "Jew". That would be an understandable mistake. But it shows no awareness of the libertarian position on armies and war. There are probably no two libertarians anywhere who agree totally with one another but, as extreme individualists, libertarians tend to be very suspicious of ANYTHING that governments do -- and armies and war are very clearly large examples of the exercise of government power. Many libertarians in fact deny that armed forces are needed at all. To caricature a little, they believe that each man should have his own bazooka and that would be sufficient to deter any invader or attacker. I disagree with that but I am describing a common libertarian view.

So given that background, opposition to foreign military interventions (interventions which neocons favour) is fundamental for a libertarian like Ron Paul. And that makes him fundamentally opposed to the foreign wars that GWB has undertaken with neocon support. So Ron Paul's opposition to the neocons is entirely explicable on POLICY grounds, not racial grounds. And his view that it is Bush's advisers who are most responsible for the foreign wars rather than Bush himself is one shared with many Leftists. For Ron Paul, however, that opinion clearly serves the end of limiting criticism of an administration (GWB, Cheney, Rice etc.) that is still popular in many conservative circles.

It has also been remarked that Ron Paul gets approval from a motley crew of political extremists, from Nazis to Communists. But that is again to be expected of a libertarian. Libertarians agree with conservatives on some things and Leftists on other things so a libertarian who forcefully expresses a view that is dear to the heart of an extremist will get some approval. And most extremists of all sorts are highly critical of Bush government policies (particularly in the middle East) so Ron Paul's vocal criticisms of those policies can be expected to be welcomed in extremist circles. To judge Ron Paul by those who praise him is very strange however. By that logic he is both a Communist and a Nazi!

I intend nothing that I have said above as support for Ron Paul. My preference remains strongly for Fred Thompson. I intend what I have said above as just my attempt to set the record straight in an area that is much prone to hysteria.

Update:

I am both amused and pleased that some readers have questioned my point above about Ron Paul being supposedly both a Nazi and a Communist. They say that in view of my own comments about the Leftist nature of Nazism, the combination is not at all improbable. That does however overlook the fact that "splits" are chronic on the far-Left and it is other "splittists" that Leftists tend to hate most of all. Sibling rivalry can be vicious. And the enmity between Nazis and Communists was indeed great in WWII (as the many German bodies resting in Russian soil attest) and continues to this day. The basis of the split was in fact a fundamental one. Marx and Lenin wanted class-war whereas Hitler wanted all Germans united in one big conformist happy family: Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuehrer. Hitler was in that way closer to Hegel than Marx was.

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ELSEWHERE

More political fakery: "How does the Republican frontrunner in Iowa further ingratiate himself with the locals with just a week to go before the first votes are cast in the 2008 presidential election? He gets a dog called Dude and goes out shooting with his buddies, of course. It doesn't matter that it's freezing cold and there's nobody to greet with a big Arkansas howdy. It's about creating that experienced outdoors man look, and reminding all those Iowan evangelicals how much you enjoy their kind of fun. And getting yourself photographed with a gun can only help shore up those all-important Second Amendment credentials. Luckily for Mike Huckabee, and anyone else within cooee, there was no sign of Vice-President Dick Cheney, who famously (and almost fatally) sprayed his 78-year-old pal Harry Whittington with birdshot during a similar hunting trip in Texas in February last year. Early in the campaign, Mr Romney played loose with the truth when he claimed to be a "lifelong hunter". He later had to admit he owned neither a gun nor a hunting licence. To many, it was a startling oversight for someone whose presidential campaign is heavily dependent on early success in states such as Iowa and New Hampshire, where recreational shooting is a way of life."

Militants slain in Gaza air strikes: "Israeli air strikes killed at least six militants in the Gaza Strip overnight, including a senior member of Islamic Jihad, the militant group said. It said the man killed was Mohammed Abu Murshud, head of Islamic Jihad's armed wing in the central Gaza Strip. An Israeli army spokesman confirmed there had been an air strike in the central Gaza Strip, but did not say who had been targeted in the attack. At least five other militants were killed earlier and nine were wounded in Israeli air and ground attacks in the central Gaza Strip and near the southern town of Khan Younis, medical staff in the Hamas-controlled territory said. An official for Islamic Jihad said that two of its members had been killed and another was wounded. Three bystanders were also wounded. The Israeli army spokesman said the strikes targeted a vehicle carrying explosives and militants travelling to "execute a terror attack", and a group of gunmen who had launched a rocket propelled grenade at a military vehicle."

Sowell on Edwards: "None of the candidates looks truly inspiring at this point. I wouldn't buy a used car from most of them, nor a brand new car from some of them. John Edwards is the easiest to peg. He looks just like the phony that he is. His talk about poor children going to bed hungry may rouse the far left in his party but in fact the lowest-income people are even more obese than the rest of us, not that the facts make the slightest difference to Senator Edwards. As an attorney, Edwards conned millions of dollars out of gullible juries, using junk science to create the impression that it was the fault of doctors when babies were born with birth defects."

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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Taranto, Ron Paul and the North/South war

I rarely disagree with Taranto but his sensitivity to "racism" (He is Jewish) sometimes loosens his contact with reality. And he is too slippery with the facts by far in his comments on Ron Paul. He faults Ron Paul for pointing out what I and many others have pointed out: That America was the only country that needed a civil war to free the slaves -- leading to the view that the real motive was not to free the slaves but rather as Lincoln himself often said: To "preserve the union" -- in other words to centralize power in the Federal government and allow no dissent from it. The slaves were merely a pretext.

Taranto puts forward a very stretched interpretation of Ron Paul's words by saying that Paul favours official desegregation only at "a federal lunch counter" and not in the armed forces etc. He realizes however that such an interpretation is not sustainable and endeavours to bolster his position by saying that "Paul blames Lincoln for the Civil War rather than blaming the South for starting a war to preserve slavery".

But the accusation that the South started the war, although technically correct, is disingenuous. The South attacked Fort Sumpter only because it was already under heavy threat and needed to consolidate its position against the more numerous Northerners if it was to have any chance of defending itself. On Taranto's argument, Israel's six-day war was also wrong because it was Israel that fired first when it was heavily threatened by Egypt.

There's been a whole library of books written on the North/South war but some recent comments here and here may be of interest.

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ELSEWHERE

IAF interested in new US jet: "Fearing the possibility that airfields will be bombed and destroyed during a war, the Israel Air Force has expressed interest in purchasing a squadron of Joint Strike Fighters (JSF) with vertical take-off and landing capabilities. In September, the IDF announced its plans to purchase at least 25 F-35 jets, with the option to purchase up to dozens more. Delivery was initially scheduled for 2014, but The Jerusalem Post revealed in October that the Pentagon had in principle agreed to work to move up delivery of the fifth-generation and stealth-enabled aircraft to Israel by as early as 2012. The agreement was reached during Defense Minister Ehud Barak's visit to Washington. The IAF had initially planned to purchase the standard version of the aircraft, the F-35A, which takes off from runways. While Israel does not have aircraft carriers - traditionally used for short take-off and vertical landing (STOVL) aircraft - the decision to consider the vertical airplane, called the F-35B, was made due to an understanding that at a time of war, Israeli bases and runways will be heavily targeted by enemy missiles."

The Soviet mentality is alive and well: "By the time she had realised her mistake - that as one of Germany's top communists she should probably not be seen eating lobster - it was too late. There was no time to switch from the 22 euro "rich man's dish" to a more modest platter of kippers, because Sahra Wagenknecht had already been caught on camera in the act of betraying her own political ideals. So the photogenic MEP for Germany's Left party set about trying to destroy the evidence of what happened that night in the Strasbourg restaurant Aux Armes in a manner that has sent ripples of scorn across Germany."

PLO a creation of the KGB: "As Ion Mihai Pacepa, onetime director of the Romanian espionage service (DIE), later explained, the PLO was conceived at a time when the KGB was creating "liberation front" organizations throughout the Third world. Others included the National Liberation Army of Bolivia, created in 1964 with help from Ernesto "Che" Guevara, and the National Liberation Army of Colombia, created in 1965 with help from Fidel Castro. But the PLO was the KGB's most enduring achievement. In 1964, the first PLO Council, consisting of 422 Palestinian representatives handpicked by the KGB, approved the Soviet blueprint for a Palestinian National Charter-a document drafted in Moscow-and made Ahmad Shukairy, the KGB's agent of influence, the first PLO chairman. The Romanian intelligence service was given responsibility for providing the PLO with logistical support. Except for the arms, which were supplied by the KGB and the East German Stasi, everything, according to Ion Pacepa, "came from Bucharest. Even the PLO uniforms and the PLO stationery were manufactured in Romania free of charge"

McCain proposes new welfare program: "In his latest attack on the free market and what appears to be a calculated political move to appeal to Michigan voters, John McCain wants to create a new welfare program for manufacturing workers. According to the Detroit Free Press, Senator McCain announced yesterday a plan to use federal dollars to make up the salary difference for workers who lose manufacturing jobs and are forced to accept lower-paying jobs until they find new careers. This is exactly the kind of plan you expect to hear from the Democratic candidates, not an alleged economic conservative, The government should not be in the business of guaranteeing wages. In a dynamic economy, wage and employment changes are inevitable and part of the normal process of economic growth and technological innovation. In addition, McCain's welfare program has the potential to unleash a series of perverse incentives, the worst of which is the disincentive to learn new skills and assume challenging new career paths. Why make an effort to learn new skills and take on a challenge when John McCain will make taxpayers pay your former wage for even a minimum wage job?"

Senate meets for 9 seconds to block Bush appointment: "The House was quiet as a mouse the day after Christmas. But across the Capitol, the Senate was operating in an unusually efficient manner in its ongoing power struggle with President Bush. A nine-second session gaveled in and out by Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., prevented Bush from appointing as an assistant attorney general a nominee roundly rejected by majority Democrats. Without the pro forma session, the Senate would be technically adjourned, allowing the president to install officials without Senate confirmation. Democrats wanted to block one such recess appointment in particular: Steven Bradbury, acting chief of the Justice Department's Office of Legislative Counsel. Bush nominated Bradbury for the job and asked the Senate to remove the "acting" in his title. Democrats would have none of it, complaining Bradbury had signed two secret memos in 2005 saying it was OK for the CIA to use harsh interrogation techniques - some call it torture - on terrorism detainees".

Democrat use of the filibuster (mainly against judicial nominees) comes back to haunt them: "GOP senators used vote-delaying filibusters this year to thwart House and Senate majorities on efforts to offset the $50 billion cut in projected revenue from the alternative minimum tax; allow the government to negotiate Medicare drug prices; impose new taxes on oil companies; require more use of renewable fuels in generating electricity; grant congressional representation to the District of Columbia; and require more rest time from troops deployed to Iraq."

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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On the first day of Christmas...

A few lighter posts from the Unhinged Kingdom today: Post below lifted from Adam Smith blog. See the original for links

My true love sent to me: a partridge in a pear tree. In the original song it seems that 'my true love' is God, that the partridge symbolizes Christ, and the pear tree represents the Cross. Well, maybe.

But in Britain, until this year, if you wanted to deal in game - not just partridges but pheasants, hares, grouse, moor game, woodcock, deer, or rabbits, you needed a licence from the local authority under section 18 of the 1831 Game Act (plus an excise licence from the Post Office under section 14 of the 1860 Game Licences Act). The 1831 legislation laid down strict rules on when game could be sold - an attempt to ensure that breeding cycles were not disrupted. Freezing and refrigeration of course make a nonsense out of this, but our politicians seem to have overlooked this for the last half century. That is how laws are made.

The requirement for a licence to shoot game has been scrapped, but shooting on Sundays and Christmas Day is still banned, thanks to a campaign by the League Against Cruel Sports. (I guess it's not so cruel to shoot things Monday-Saturday.)

Critics also argued that Sunday shooting would disrupt people's lie-in, and could prove dangerous as people went for a Sunday stroll. Still, they told us that nobody wanted to shop on a Sunday too, and now (even though our rulers allow the shops to open only a few hours) Sunday is a hugely popular shopping day. We really should scrap all this regulation.

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Red Ken's bureaucracy defeats the Greenies!

Transport for London, run by far-Left Mayor "Red Ken" Livingstone, claims that pedicabs (a glorified bicycle) are the same as taxicabs. It has resorted to litigation against a company called Bugbugs - which operates pedicabs - in pursuit of the point. Post below lifted from The Croydonian. See the original for links and pics

"Bugbugs had sought to strike out, on the grounds of abuse of process, a claim made under CPR Part 8 by the respondent, Transport for London ("TfL"), for a declaration that a pedicab is a "hackney carriage" for the purposes of section 4 of the Metropolitan Public Carriage Act 1869 ("the 1869 Act"). The Master dismissed Bugbugs' application to strike out TfL's claim. He gave permission to appeal".

And the appeal failed. I am not going to go off on a 'the law is an ass' rant since that would be a - dull and b- not entirely justified as this and previous litigation revolve around whether a pedicab is a hackney carriage or a stage carriage. What is more noteworthy is that TfL is behaving like a classic monopolist and attempting to destroy a competitor by loading it with an unsupportable regulatory burden. Apparently the old bale of hay law has been repealed, but the added weight of insurance and so like will inevitably wreck the ability of pedicab riders (that would appear to be the technical term) to make a living. And meanwhile, how many accidents have been caused by the riders, public nuisances etc etc? Few I imagine.

The company itself appears to be achingly right on - "It is a not-for-profit organisation, limited by guarantee and run by a board of trustees. It was founded in 1998 and its aims include the provision of a sustainable emission-free integrated form of passenger transport and the creation of work and training opportunities for people from all backgrounds and nationalities". Doubtless regular users are Guardianistas to a wo/man, and occasional users tourists. I went for a ride in one in Edinburgh in the summer and it was rather fun.

So well done TfL. What a great day's work - an almighty spoke has been rammed into the wheel of both a harmless diversion for denizens of the metropolis and the ability of folk to make a living.

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The super-efficient British cops will get their man!

Unless there is a serious problem, of course. Post below lifted from Adam Smith blog. See the original for links

Alain Roberts climbed Portland House the other day - a tall building (mainly full of quangos) near London's Victoria Station. He did it all with his hands and feet - he used no ropes, pitons or other kit. At the top he was promptly arrested. The charge? Wasting police time.

Now I don't know what makes the police think their time is so valuable that the antics of this harmless eccentric amount to a waste of it. Presumably they reckon that while they were taking tea on the roof and waiting for 'Spiderman' Roberts to arrive, they could have been out booking motorists for doing 36mph, or harrassing middle class citizens for trying to stop thugs breaking into their homes.

The police didn't have to be there. Their action reminds me of the supposed lawyer's bill: To crossing the road to update you on your case, 100 pounds . To crossing back after realizing it wasn't you 100 pounds. We seem to live in a society where we invent crimes for no good reason. Why punish people for smoking weed (or tobacco for that matter) when the only person caused any harm is themselves? I'd really prefer it if the police sat at home rather than having to think up new reasons to arrest folk.

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ELSEWHERE

Oldsters for an old lady: "When Hillary Clinton's volunteers and staffers stand at the back of their candidate's events, they sometimes play a game one observer called "count the oxygen tanks and wheelchairs." Barack Obama's Iowa troops have their own rituals in the days leading up to the crucial Jan. 3 caucus - one of them is making sure that the high school kids who swarm Obama's appearances turn 18 in time to vote. If the Clinton-Obama confrontation figured to be a clash of gender and racial pathfinders, it has turned out in large measure to be a generational battle. Obama is gunning for 80 percent of the under-21 vote, his advisers say, while Clinton is banking on a bedrock of middle-age and elderly voters who make up the majority of caucus-goers."

What Mark Steyn is up against in Soviet Canada: "Well, the Human Rights Commission up there is, you know, almost the textbook definition of a kangaroo court, in the sense that of the complaints that have been brought under this section, since it was introduced almost thirty years ago now, no defendant has ever won .... think of the most politically correct professors at Berkeley, put them on a commission. The plaintiff, the guys who make the complaints, their legal expenses are paid for by the Canadian taxpayer. The defense has to fund his or her own. Essentially, there's no rules of due process or evidence"

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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Does black IQ matter?

There is a post on the libertarian Rockwell site which quite rightly points out that it is absurd to judge a person by his race or by any other group membership he may have where there is variety within that group. So why do I, as a libertarian conservative, continue to expound the science of the matter? There are two reasons: Because we do not live in a libertarian world and because it is my own scientific discipline that is involved and I feel a committment to publicize the truth of the matter.

The second reason I will not expand on as it is simply a personal committment that I feel. The first reason is the important one: Vast errors in public policy are made because of the general refusal to accept the truth of the matter. Race is a most vexed topic in all countries where there is a substantial African minority and the problem is made much worse by the utter failure of many attempts to deal with it. The clearest example is in education.

Because the lesser ability of blacks is not accepted in education circles, every failure of blacks to do well at educational tasks is always attributed to "the system" or "racism". A perfectly normal and natural occurrence is treated as an emergency which must be remedied by hook or by crook. And because the real nature of the problem is not admitted, all the "solutions" that are tried are based on wrong theories so not only fail but normally make the problem worse -- generating much anger and feelings of victimization among blacks at the same time.

One "solution", for instance, is "dumbing down". The requirements for (say) a diploma are watered down so that EVERYBODY (or most anyway) passes. In the course of that, however, the educational requirements for whites have to be lowered too (it would be "racism" otherwise) so that white kids in the same educational institutions are taught and evaluated at a "black" level and consequently receive a much degraded education -- which is a tragedy, however you look at it. For instance, around half of High School graduates trying to entering Florida's public colleges and universities are found to lack the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic -- skills which in more "racist" times were acquired in grade school.

I could go on to multiply examples of how refusals to cope with black realities degrade life for everybody but I think I have said enough to make my point clear. I cover the matter in more detail here. For the record, what I would advocate as regards black educational failure is simply for the authorities to be race blind. Let children be judged not by the colour of their skin but by their individual characteristics. Kids who are not doing well should get extra tuition whether they are black, white or brindle and after that let the chips fall where they may. That would be the least destructive policy.

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A good year in Congress

Hellbent on driving its approval rating into single digits, Congress adjourned after passing an omnibus spending bill larded with at least 8,993 earmarks costing at least $7.4 billion. The gusher of earmarks was a triumph of bipartisanship, which often is a synonym for kleptocracy.

This was the first year since 1994 that Democrats controlled both houses. Consider Congress' agreeably meager record: It raised the hourly minimum wage from $5.15 to $5.85 - less than the $7 entry wage at McDonald's - thereby increasing the wages of less than 0.5 percent of the work force.

Rebuffing President Bush, who advocates halting farm subsidies to those with adjusted gross incomes of more than $200,000, the Senate also rejected a cap at $750,000. This, in spite of the fact that farm income has soared, partly because Congress shares the president's loopy enthusiasm for ethanol and wants more corn and other agricultural matter turned into fuel.

Although Congress trembles for the future of the planet, it was unwilling to eliminate the 54-cent-a-gallon tariff on Brazilian ethanol. But our polymath Congress continued designing automobiles to make them less safe (smaller) and more expensive. It did this by mandating new fuel efficiency - a 35 mpg fleet average by 2020. And Congress mandated a 12-year phaseout of incandescent light bulbs.

Bruce Raynor, president of the union Unite Here, expressed organized labor's compassionate liberalism when he urged sparing workers the burden of democracy: "There's no reason to subject workers to an election." The House agreed, voting for "card check" organizing that strips workers of their right to a secret ballot when deciding for or against unionization of their workplace. Senate Republicans blocked this, but the Senate Democrats voted to cripple the Department of Labor agency that requires union bosses to explain how they spend their members' money.

To improve Americans' health, Congress hopes that by 2017, 22 million more people will begin smoking, enough to pay the increased cigarette taxes that purportedly would finance an expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program. SCHIP, supposedly for low-income children, would have been expanded to cover many children - and adults - from households with incomes far above the nation's median income. The president vetoed the expansion.

Having vowed to end the war in Iraq, House liberals passed a bill containing money for the war in Afghanistan, but not for the one in Iraq. The Senate added money for Iraq. House Democrats then voted 141-78 against final passage, but House Republicans and moderate Democrats passed it and liberals headed home to brag about having voted against funding the war.

In January, with much preening, House Democrats embraced "paygo," the pay-as-you-go rule that any tax cut must be "paid for" by compensatory tax increases or spending cuts. In December, Democrats abandoned it because of the alternative minimum tax.

The AMT was enacted in 1969 as an indignation gesture aimed at fewer than 200 rich people who managed, legally, to owe no taxes. But the enactors neglected to index the AMT against inflation, so this year it would have been a $50 billion bite out of 23 million taxpayers. The House voted to repeal it and pay for repeal with a $50 billion tax increase. Senate Republicans argued that no Congress ever intended the AMT to collect such large sums. Therefore, paygo would siphon $50 billion to compensate for a fictitious $50 billion. The Senate voted 88-5 not to collect the AMT this year, the House acquiesced.

Rep. John Campbell, a California Republican, notes that this year the House took many more votes (1,186) than ever, but only 146 bills became laws. Congress, and especially the Democratic majority, should be congratulated for this because a decrease in the quantity of legislation generally means an increase in the quality of life.

Source

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ELSEWHERE

The psychopathic thinking of Leftists again: "Here we have it. The defining moment in leftarded Jewicidal thinking. A leading Israeli university has conducted a study to determine why Jewish soldiers don't rape Pali Arab women, you know - spoils of war. As far as the left is concerned, Islamic barbarism has effectively become the norm so when decent, honorable (Jewish) men do not behave according to savage norms, there must be an ulterior motive. Seriously. Perhaps Jewish men don't rape the women because they are good, kind and decent moral men. Not possible? For this they did a study? A study? This is why Israel is in such trouble. Leftarded Jews hold sway in their media, universities and government. I think the leftarded Jews ought to convert to Islam and move to the Muslim countries whose outrageous crimes against humanity they sanction"

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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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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