ELSEWHERE

Jeff Jacoby is scathing about the “benefits” of race-based admissions to universities.

Apparently there are some people in the Church of England and in Anglican churches worldwide who still accept the authority of the Bible. So the “gay bishop” controversy looks like splitting them off from other Anglicans. In a typical Anglican way it will not be a formal schism, but it seems that parishes will soon start choosing which bishop they acknowledge rather than accept the one given to them. The “primate” of the new faith-based faction looks like being the Archbishop of Sydney. Sydney is a very big and prosperous Anglican diocese with lots of committed young people in its churches and seminary.

There is a rather sad story here by an idealistic Leftist from South Africa who has recently returned there after many years in England teaching at Oxford University. He seems to have decided to stay in Africa now but from the tale he tells about how everything is collapsing there and how everyone who can (black and white) is leaving, he is one hell of a masochist. The only good thing he can find about the place is the scenery. Even the initial presence of a large white minority seems to have done nothing to prevent South Africa from following the other countries of Africa rapidly downhill. Clearly, anti-racism has converted the whole of Africa from a reasonably well-run place into a deadly shambles.

"Exploiting junk science is great for re-election campaign coffers. Thus, one of Sen. Hillary Clinton's first major crusades after she took office was to whip up public health hysteria on Long Island, where some activists have blamed slightly elevated breast cancer rates on everything from pesticides to power lines to planes. ... Red Queen Hillary and her courtiers' expert conclusions notwithstanding, _there is no shred of legitimate scientific evidence connecting breast cancer on Long Island to chemicals or other environmental causes."

A win against hysteria at last: "A federal appeals court told the Tennessee Valley Authority that for now it's 'free to ignore' Environmental Protection Agency orders to clean up pollution at several of its coal-burning power plants. The decision from a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta came in a test case challenging an initiative by the Clinton administration and states to reduce smokestack emissions from aging coal-fired power plants."

The Left think George Orwell must have gone ga ga when he handed a list of Communist sympathizers to the British authorities! I would have said that he was backing his anti-Communist words up with deeds.

A REAL Feminazi: Rwanda's genocide was planned by a feminist

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ENGLISH LIBERTIES IN HISTORY

Much of English history is to a large degree also the history of modern-day Americans and Australians so I think there is a lot of interest in this historical vignette showing that the English attitude to civil liberties and the power of the State has always been different:

Background: We all know how Elizabeth I was famous for her tolerance in religious and other matters. Her statement that she did not want to make a "window into men's souls" is best known in that connection but she also at one stage reproached that great bureaucrat and religious tyrant, King Philip II of Spain, by asking him -- as any modern-day libertarian might have -- "Why cannot Your Majesty let your subjects go to the Devil in their own way?" She also respected Parliament and when Parliament was getting heated about the sales taxes of the day (government-granted monopolies), she abolished most of them -- making probably the first big tax cut in English history.

When she died, however, she was succeded not by an English king but by the Stuart King of Scotland, James I. And note that the attitude of the Scottish Stuarts towards the relationship between the individual and the State differed from traditional English views from the very outset. Note this report of an incident on the initial journey to London of James I:

He ordered a pickpocket to be hanged straight away without trial. The prudish English were too dainty for 'Jedburgh justice', which hanged Border robbers out of hand. They muttered tiresome objections about their Common Law, and Sir John Harington, that privileged wag, proclaimed loudly: 'If the new King hangs a man before he is tried, will he then try a man before he has offended?'

(Quoted from p. 172 of That Great Lucifer: A portrait of Sir Walter Ralegh by Margaret Irwin [Bungay, Suffolk: Reprint Society, 1960])

So the fact that the son of James I (Charles I) eventually got into such trouble with Parliament that they beheaded him was more than a personal mistake. It reflected a deep culture clash between English individualism and the much more tyrannical rule that was accepted as normal by others. Not much has changed since.

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A NEW FRENCH ENLIGHTENMENT DAWNING?

An interesting post from Chris Brand:

WATCH OUT WEASELS! France saw the rise and rise of beautiful neo-rightist, political science student Sabine Herold, 21. Fed up with union domination of France and the paralyzing strikes of June, Sabine, a real babe (long eyelashes, light blue mascara), aimed to roll back the state, rein in the unions, cut welfare dependency and to claim the freedom to work as well the freedom to homosexualize, take drugs and work in the prostitution industry. Altogether her bag sounded rather like that of the late neoliberal Pim Fortuyn (see above) in Holland, and, hinting at her attitude to mass dullard immigration, she certainly supported the Anglo-American Crusade against towelhead fanatics and Madman Insane in Iraq. Of rightist Monsieur Le Pen, she had bravely denied that he was a “fascist” -- “Ca ne sert à rien de gueuler que Le Pen est un fasciste. Il ne l'est pas. C’est son programme liberticide qui est dangereux”. Miss Herold had been nicknamed “the Joan d'Arc of the liberals” by “Le Figaro” and, by the London Times “Mademoiselle Thatcher”. She was “Rédactrice en chef” of the Paris-based free-market association “Liberté j'écris ton nom”. On June 15 she addressed a crowd of 200,000 fans in Paris. She favoured Edmund Burke, Friedrich Hayek and classic English liberalism. She was attending the prestigious Institut des Sciences Politiques in Paris and had links to the liberal organization, Centre for a New Europe.

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ELSEWHERE

Australia’s token antigun laws. A .38 sixgun is still legal! “The states will ban a range of small handguns, handguns with a calibre above .38 and those with a magazine capacity exceeding 10 rounds.”

We all know that there are some morons in the world but how did this guy get to be an air-traffic controller? Frightening. “A Swiss air traffic controller jokingly put an "al-Qaeda" label on a French helicopter that strayed into restricted air space during the Group of Eight summit, nearly leading to a shooting down of it by the French air force.”

There is a good article in the WSJ about the implications of the recent U. Mich. affirmative action decision by the U.S. Supreme court. It says that American institutions know that blacks can never be equal in achievement so also know that they need racial preferences to look good. It also explains anti-Americanism as a “holier than thou” attitude.

I think they are pretty right about this: “The Dept. of Defense ... just announced the launch of a new advertising campaign that links military values with success in life. The military believes the values soldiers learn through military service to be a key to success in civilian life as well. The primary goal of the ads? To encourage adults to to advocate military service to the young people in their lives."

Disturbing: "Even without a prescription drug benefit, the cost of Medicare will double as a percentage of GDP by 2040. The program's unfounded liabilities are more than $13.3 trillion, dwarfing even Social Security's massive debt. ... a more courageous or sensible Congress might have tried to reform this deeply troubled program and bring some restraint to its escalating costs. Instead, Congress decided that what Medicare really needed was a brand new entitlement estimated to cost at least $400 billion over the next 10 years ..."

The Wicked one has an email from a U.S. medical specialist about the incredible red-tape being generated by subsidized prescription drugs.

My latest academic posting: “AUTHORITARIANISM AND ACHIEVEMENT MOTIVATION IN INDIA” can be found here or here. I find that the Indians are a submissive but ambitious lot.

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LEFTIST FEAR OF FOOD

The attention-seeking never stops: "Hundreds of protesters descended on [Sacramento's] streets Sunday as agriculture officials from around the world prepared for a meeting where U.S. officials will pitch advances in genetically engineered agriculture. Chanting, banging drums and carrying signs that read 'We Don't Want to Eat Their Corporate Creations,' protesters swarmed the streets around the state Capitol and nearby conference center."

'Feed the needy, not the greedy!' read one placard hoisted near where agricultural ministers from hundreds of countries are meeting to consider the benefits of genetically enhanced crops. 'Beat Back the Corporate Attack!' demonstrators chanted. 'Entire populations are being put at risk simply for corporate economic benefit,' one protestor told the San Francisco Chronicle. Lost in the haze of anti-corporate hysteria is what the Sacramento conferees are actually doing."

Big food is the nouveau public health epidemic that has been targeted with phasers set on demonize. It began with the fast-food lawsuits. Fat people claimed the food was too cheap so they bought too much. And that restaurant operators should be made to pay for this manipulation."

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GREENIE SCARES BECOME UNGLUED

A big Greenie scare from a while back said that sperm-counts were dropping all over the world because of pesticide use. It turns out that sperm-counts are NOT dropping and that normal pesticide use does not influence sperm-count anyway.

Wow! New Scientist doesn’t seem to be able to work out whether global temperatures are rising or falling but they are sure it is our fault anyway.

The sun needs to sign “Kyoto” too: “Recently, Professor Richard Wilson published a peer-reviewed article in the journal Geophysical Research Letters where he reported the results of his studies on the amount of solar energy that our sun has been producing over the last 24 years. During this time period, the amount of energy the sun is producing has increased by 0.05% every 10 years."

The old fluoride scare: "If you thought that a loony obsession with malevolent forces spiking our drinking water was limited to fictional characters from 'Dr. Strangelove' ... think again. Such characters are very real, and they belong to the extreme environmentalist movement. National Review reports that the same crowd who brought you the entirely unfounded hysteria over Alar on apples and falsely accused biotech corn of mass- murdering monarch butterflies is now warning of a deadly substance that nameless, faceless government officials are purposely putting in your tap water: fluoride."

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ELSEWHERE

There is a good article here on what a dangerous fraud the “diversity” idea is. The version of it made into law by the U.S. Supreme Court doesn’t mean what an unsuspecting person might think it does.

We believe in freedom of association -- it's implicit in the First Amendment, in fact -- but that freedom entails not only the right to associate with those willing to associate with us but the right not to associate -- the right to discriminate, on any ground, good or bad, or no ground at all".

Contrary to first world middle class leftist dogma, the people of the third world are big fans of globalisation. Now why would that be? Simple. Because they know from experience that it makes them better off, not worse off -- contrary to what the lying Leftists of the West say.

Great news: Spam just doesn't sell. I must say I could throttle anybody who buys something advertised in spam. If people stop buying it will go away.

Not very libertarian but I sympathize: "France may pass a new law to ban Muslim veils and other religious symbols in public schools and buildings”

Good show: Officials last week agreed to pay $1.35 million to settle a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of some 700 women illegally strip- searched after their arrest. .... It didn't matter if the women had been arrested for a major felony or for a minor offense. A murder suspect was searched, as were women arrested for underage drinking or shoplifting."

Tom Wolfe wrote an essay at the turn of the century three years ago about the triumph of America and the failure of its Leftist intellectuals that makes interesting reading. He concludes that American intellectuals do not actually want change. They just want to talk about it.

The Wicked one has some more of those exceptionally funny courtroom transcripts.

In my academic posting here (and here) I report evidence which demolishes a stupid Leftist claim that Leftists are “life-loving” and conservatives are “death loving”.

China Hand has some pictures of the graceful new buildings that have just gone up in his part of China.

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LOTS OF GOOD STUFF

Great! Australia’s Foreign Minister has pissed all over the United Nations (metaphorically). He said that the U.N. was "ineffective and unfocused" and that Australia’s foreign policy will increasingly rely on "coalitions of the willing" like the one that waged war in Iraq.

There is good coverage here of the lies and hypocrisy that went into securing the moderately favourable verdict for the University of Michigan in the recent affirmative action case before the U.S. Supreme Court.

There is a short dialogue here with a rather wise correspondent who DEFENDS affirmative action as cheap pacification.

About time: “Alastair Campbell, the Prime Minister’s press chief, yesterday accused the BBC of pursuing a secret agenda against the government and demanded an apology for its "biased" Iraq coverage.”

There is a good article in Brookes News about why the unemployed deserve better treatment from the Government -- i.e. the unemployed deserved to be compensated by the rest because the market is rigged against them. Conservatives could use that argument to really confuse the Leftists!

Philip Adams, child murderers and paedophilia. “Paedophilia is a nasty activity that means the sexual abuse of children. This is something that every ordinary person understands and, with the exception of child molesters, vigorously condemns. But it takes a rancid socialist like Philip Adams to accuse companies who produce goods and advertising that target the youth market of "corporate paedophilia"

There is a good short summary here of the Radical feminist worldview and their notion that there is a "Gender War" going on which women must win against men. It is pretty fevered stuff. Totally devoid of realism or rationality.

Paul Johnson says that the USA is an empire but he makes clear that his usage of that word is not the usual one today. He gives an interesting coverage of how the meaning of the word has changed over time.

Why do Jews rarely become farmers? According to Slate's economics writer it's because they are generally well-educated and so know better. I myself always describe farmers as "rural gamblers".

I am getting a strange new respect for USA Today. Note for instance this straight talk: "The financial problems racking many state governments this year have less to do with the weak national economy than with the ability of governors and legislators to manage money wisely. That is the key finding of a USA TODAY analysis of how the 50 states spend, tax and balance their budgets -- or don't. The National Governors Association says states are suffering their worst economic crisis since World War II. But for many states, the analysis shows, the fault is largely their own."

A good joke from Chris Tame of the Libertarian Alliance: "Q: What do you get if you cross a mafioso with a deconstructionist post- modernist philosopher? A: A man who makes you an offer you can't understand."

There is a good short book review here of a book by an expert on Italian Fascism. He shows that Fascism and Nazism modelled their methods on Lenin and Stalin and that the Fascist idea of adding nationalism to socialism was later taken up by Stalin and Mao -- so that in the end Fascism and Communism were two very similar Leftist sects -- something that I have also argued. The idea that Nazism was Rightist is thus an old Soviet lie that Left-leaning intellectuals in the West have perpetuated in flagrant denial of historical reality.

Environmental Colonialism: "Saving" Africa from Africans: "Under the banner of saving the African environment, Africans in the last half century have been subjected to colonialism from an overlooked source: the conservation movement. Local populations have been displaced and impoverished in order to create national parks and to serve other conservation objectives"

Powerful help for Israel: "Fundamentalist Christians have launched a nationwide billboard and bumper sticker campaign, opposing President Bush's plan for peace in the Middle East that calls for a Palestinian state with permanent borders by 2005. Some 100 billboards in major American cities, including five in Memphis [TN] alone, cite Genesis 35:11-12: 'And the Lord said to Jacob "Unto thy offspring will I give this land!"' Beneath the Bible verse, the billboards say, 'Pray that President Bush Honors God's Covenant with Israel.'"

Chris Brand has a big excerpt from the confession of a lesbian gone straight which concludes: “There’s a quiet ex-lesbian minority of ‘hasbians’ out there, having a gay old time with men after years of sapphistry”. It sounds like lesbians are pretty nasty to one-another.

The Wicked one has a sad story about a very small business being persecuted by local bureaucrats.

My academic posting here (or here) looks at possible effects of climate on political attitudes. It was hypothesized that people from the warmer climate of the Australian State of Queensland would be more conservative than people from the cooler climate of New South Wales. It was found that Queenslanders WERE more conservative on social and moral issues but were not more conservative on economic issues. An expanded treatment of the same subject can be found here.

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INDEPENDENT SCHOOL FUNDING

The Australian alternative to vouchers is already well-established: "Federal funding of non-government schools is on a runaway trajectory but the Howard Government has no plans to rein in the cost, estimated to hit $5.4 billion by 2006. With enrolments in non-government schools growing - and a new religious school opening every six weeks in NSW - federal budget estimates of the funding have blown out by $150 million. "We have no intention of putting some sort of a cap on it," the Minister for Education, Brendan Nelson, said. "This is a society that values and believes in supporting parents in their choice of education." This year, the scheme will pay $4.37 billion to 2650 schools - more than federal spending on universities - while two years ago the budget put the bill at $4.22 billion."

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ELSEWHERE

As a courageous black woman says: "By vigorously defending racial preferences in the name of diversity and refusing to challenge racial double standards, our national and state leaders have fostered hostilities among and between different racial and ethnic groups.... How long can a nation as diverse as America sustain racial and ethnic preferences without fueling increased racial and ethnic conflict? How long can the American people be satisfied with public policies that give advantages to the offspring of new immigrants over the needs of Americans with deep roots in this nation?"

Another story here about the disgusting “humanitarians” of the United Nations -- this time they are pretending that North Korean refugees don’t exist. The whole sorry lot of them should be kicked out of New York at least.

A good comment from one of my U.S. readers: "The GOP "tax breaks" and "prescription drug" plans are nothing short of something to take away ALL liberal issues from the Democrats - and essentially castrate them. The only problem is who is paying the bills."

Carnival of the Vanities is up again with its usual conspectus of the blogosphere.

Realism at last: “Israel is too strong to defeat and the Palestinians have no choice but to live with the Jewish state in peace, a senior Hamas official said in an extraordinary departure from the militant group's implacable enmity towards Israel.”

Wayne Lusvardi has a review here of a crap anti-democratic book that a surprising range of people seem to agree with. Wayne writes: “The author of the book is getting quite a bit of attention in the U.S. in TV and print media. Even many libertarian websites (i.e., LewRockwell.com, vonMisesInstitute.com) have been duped by the book. I'm a sociologist by training and can spot a Neo-Marxist quickly. Globalization is a very contentious issue and the political Left is very aggressive in selling their socialist solution by calling it something other than it is.”

Hey! I really like this: “The US House of Representatives has voted to award British Prime Minister Tony Blair the Congressional Gold Medal, the country's highest civilian honour, for his steadfast support of the US-led invasion of Iraq. Mr Blair becomes the second British leader to receive the award, following in the footsteps of wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill”

Clever! Beats sending troops: “The United States has offered Zimbabwe "generous assistance" in exchange for its ruling ZANU-PF party ousting President Robert Mugabe and agreeing to hold free elections.”

About time: “THE United States and the European Union today agreed to start landmark talks this year on liberalising the trans-Atlantic air market. The "open skies" talks, which have been held up for several years, could radically change relations between European and American airlines.”

ANIMAL activists have threatened to do their utmost to stop shooters culling 6,500 kangaroos at the Puckapunyal army base in central Victoria. There are untold millions of the b***s in Australia and they are a tremendous pest to graziers (ranchers) because they eat what the sheep and cattle also eat. There are so many kangaroos in Australia that you even see them hopping around the suburbs of Brisbane at times -- and Brisbane is a city of 1 million people.

A recent posting from Chris Brand: “RACE IS KEY VARIABLE IN CRIME: Engaging Human BioDiversity President Steve Sailer pulled together US Department of Justice figures showing that Blacks are 9.1 times as likely to commit crimes as are Whites. Apparently, race has now overtaken even sex as a predictor of criminality (and that’s without allowing for the fact that much female criminality consists of civil and unpunishable cheating on men).”

China Hand replies to allegations about China’s “sweatshops”. As an experienced industrial engineer who has toured many Chinese factories he is in an ideal position to do so. He says that many Chinese factories are in fact better than some Western ones he remembers.

The Wicked one has a set of hilarious quotations that should be enough to make a libertarian out of anyone.

My academic posting here (or here) looks at psychopathic tendencies in the normal population and concludes that psychopaths may have got a bad rap.

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ENGLAND IS NOT RULED BY THE ENGLISH

Very few people outside the UK are probably aware of the anomaly that Prime Minister Blair and most of his senior ministers are in fact Scotsmen or Welshmen. So England is not being ruled by the English. A second anomaly is that Scotland and Wales have parliaments of their own in addition to their representatives in the UK parliament but England does not. So Scotsmen and Welshmen control England plus their own countries while Englishmen have no say over Wales, Scotland OR England! And to add insult to injury, the present UK government is even proposing constitutional changes that would almost certainly be rejected by the English if they were given the chance to vote on it all via a referendum. So a lot of the long-suffering English are getting pretty fed-up with all that. I reproduce here an email from one of them that gives more detail of how anomalous the situation has become.

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CONTROVERSIAL GENES

Paul Gottfried makes the interesting aside in his book MULTICULTURALISM AND THE POLITICS OF GUILT that the scientific case for racially based differences in intelligence is much stronger than the case that homosexuality is genetic. Yet the first hypothesis is controversial and hotly disputed, but the much weaker hypothesis is paraded as fact and treated as an 'article of faith' by a large section of society and virtually all the media.

The gay gene theory (criticised here) does now seem to be widely accepted as THE explanation for homosexual behaviour. I don't have a dog in that fight but must note that NONE of the research in fact finds that there is a one-to-one relationship between genetic makeup and homosexuality. I have no doubt that there is a genetic predisposition to it in some cases but in ALL cases there need to be other infuences as well for homosexual behaviour to result.

This article notes how widespread homosexuality is in the RC priesthood and also notes some of the other influences that give rise to homosexuality.

A less controversial gene: Scientists say some people are born shy. Not only that, researchers from Harvard Medical School say most people don't outgrow their natural inhibitions. 'Now we're suggesting that same link continues through life,' says Carl Schwartz, an assistant professor of psychiatry. In a study published in the journal, 'Science', Dr. Schwartz and his colleague, Jerome Kagan, say MRI brain scans show shy adults react to new faces differently than their less inhibited peers.

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IQ RESEARCH

A recent post from Chris Brand:

"Any hopes that the June 1-published Pergamon Festschrift (PDF!) for Arthur Jensen would make waves were dashed as the publisher failed to establish any significant presence for the book on the Internet, let alone anywhere else. This failure had been predicted by some in view of Pergamon's owner, Elsevier, having moved in 2002 to close down Praeger -- the only house to have been publishing London School mat‚riel since 1996. Better cheer came from the University of Missouri-Columbia, where postgraduate Alexander Beaujean had set up a nice website with pictures of Galton, Spearman, Burt, Eysenck and Jensen and gave plenty of news of his own work and reviews on topics such as mental speed (which he reports from meta-analysis to have a heritability of around .40 -- quite high given the unreliability of many mental speed tasks as conventionally administered by researchers)."

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ELSEWHERE

A rare victory for free speech in these politically correct times: "The city violated the First Amendment rights of two firefighters and a police officer when it fired them for riding on a parade float in blackface in 1998, a judge ruled Tuesday. U.S. District Judge John E. Sprizzo said the government "may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because a segment of society finds it offensive."

The poor dears: “There's no guarantee of safety for Canadian soldiers who start patrolling the troubled streets of Kabul next month”

A U.S. Marine on leave in Australia after the Iraq war saved a life: “A US Marine who intervened in a vicious brawl outside a northern Sydney nightclub may have saved a man's life, police said today”

Surprise, surprise: Germany’s socialist government sure has made a mess of the German economy.

A critical report on Australia's peak Aboriginal body (ATSIC) has called it a "corrupt shambles" that would not be tolerated if it were run by whites. Is not the continued tolerance of this an example of Leftist racism? The poor blacks are too childlike to live up to adult white standards?

China Hand notes a mature and tolerant response to "insult" from the People's Daily in Beijing which is a refreshing change from the paranoia and hysteria of the past.

The Wicked one has a good example of why democracy is a good thing.

In my academic posting here (or here) I show that the main things psychologists are interested in are personal adjustment, personal ambition and cynicism. One wonders what those interests reflect about psychologists themselves. Certainly it my impression that they are in general ambitious, cynical and prone to presenting childish games as "research".

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U. MICH. AND THE U.S. SUPREME COURT

Since everyone else will be blogging on this I won’t say much but I find this reasoning pretty incredible:

Justice O'Connor declared that the Constitution "does not prohibit the law school's narrowly tailored use of race in admissions decisions to further a compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body." ... "Effective participation by members of all racial and ethnic groups in the civic life of our nation is essential if the dream of one nation, indivisible, is to be realized,"

WHAT educational benefit flows from having a racially diverse student body? No-one has ever shown any net benefit to my knowledge -- though there is plenty of evidence that it leads to dumbing down.

OF COURSE all racial groups should participate in the life of the nation but who said that blacks need favouritism before they can participate? Sounds like old-fashioned racism to me.

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THE LIBYAN RETHINK

It was notable how quiet Libya’s Gaddafi went after Ronald Reagan had him bombed: A modern equivalent of the old “whiff of grapeshot” effect. The man who once hosted Arafat has now not only agreed to pay compensation to the Lockerbie victims his terrorist underlings attacked but after Iraq he now does not want even to be known as an Arab!

“Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan 'Supreme Guide', plans to announce his withdrawal from the Arab League sometime in August. The Libyan 'Popular Assembly' has just passed a bill to drop the word 'Arab' from the country's official name. After next September, Libya will describe itself as 'The African Republic of Libya'.”

What Reagan started, GWB has finished. Destroying two aggressive Islamic regimes (in Afghanistan and Iraq) has had the intended effect of putting big psychological pressure on other Islamic regimes that have a history of supporting terrorism.

And guess what? Now that Israel seems to be getting pretty good at blowing up their leaders, even the ultra-intransigent Hamas suddenly seems very interested in a cease-fire. Funny that!

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THAT GOOD OL' GENEROUS U.S. CONGRESS

There is a stereotype-busting article here about the new prescription drug plan for the elderly that looks like being enacted in the U.S.A. soon. The scheme will benefit ALL older peoople -- not just the impoverished elderly and the article points out that the elderly have far more assets than the working families who will be paying for the program via their taxes. So the whole scheme is grossly unjust.

"It is wrong to increase refundable child tax credits to families with no income tax liability. It's not a question of being stingy; many are genuinely concerned about the growth of a nontaxpaying class that potentially can vote subsidies for itself under the guise of tax reduction." But this article shows that such credits were a GOP idea in the first place.

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ELSEWHERE

Thought-provoking: One of my English correspondents has recently spent a couple of months in Indonesia and mentioned with approval the dusky maidens there. I commented that dusky Islamic maidens were probably pretty dangerous. His reply was: “Indonesia seems as much Islamic as the UK is Christian. There are more Islamic nutters in the UK than there seem to be there!”

“The appointment of a gay bishop does not violate the Church of England's current teaching”, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams said Monday. Well, I guess we all knew that the C of E long ago ceased teaching the New Testament.

He! He! “Belgium is to amend war crimes laws used to target George Bush and the commander of American forces in Iraq, General Tommy Franks” Those pissant Belgians soon folded under a bit of pressure.

Although IVF conception was invented in Britain, it seems that there are incredible and rather offensive bureaucratic requirements before you are allowed assisted reproduction in Britain today. In Australia, if you can afford it, you have it.

How ridiculous that people have to go to these lengths to have a child: "Eight more British families are to sidestep U.K. law by following the example of a couple who travelled to America to use selective embryo screening to create a so-called 'designer baby' to help save the life of their first child."

The younger brother of the Battleship Potemkin (post of 19th) has found a small round in his aging revolutionary magazine and fired it off with great jollity. He notes with satisfaction that the Left sometimes oppose some taxes (only if they are put forward by conservatives, of course) while taking no account of the fact that they still do their best to increase taxation overall.

Eleanor Spreitzer says that if our kids are eating unhealthy food it is not the fault of McDonalds but the fault of high taxes that force mothers to go out to work and so to be unable to prepare proper home-cooked meals.

The Wicked one has a most instructive fable about modern-day Canada.

My academic post here (or here) reports on the popular notion that love of animals goes with love of people. Survey evidence showed no relationship.

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MORE ON THE HISTORY OF IMMIGRATION POLICY

A reader writes:

Reciprocity and immigration: A possible basis for a bold new "non-discriminatory" immigration policy?? This VDARE article takes a half satirical swipe at immigration thinking based on wonderful big ideas. What could be more 'fair' and 'natural' than the great principle of 'reciprocity'? Do unto others as they do unto you.

The article also makes some points about Japanese immigration policies in the 1930s. Historians still ascribe Japan's path to war in 1942 as being "propelled" by the restrictive immigration policies of countries like the US and Australia. Sure.

It reminds me of a comment by historian Geoffrey Blainey in his SHORTER HISTORY OF AUSTRALIA talking about the adoption of the "White Australia Policy" in the late 19th century. "The White Australia Policy was far from unique. Canada, the United States and New Zealand - three other democratic nations which faced an inrush of Chinese - had built there own walls against Asian immigration by the 1880s. China and Japan usually gave no welcome to foreigners; and it was much safer to be a Chinese living in Australia than an Australian in China. Late in the century six Australian missionaries, young women and men of compassion, were murdered in various episodes in China. When the Emperor of China sent commissioners to other lands in 1887 to see whether Chinese residents were ill-treated, he was informed that Chinese living in Java and the Philippines were treated rather worse than those living in Australia."

The old White Australia policy (ended by conservative governments in the 1960s) stupidly denied Australia the benefit of hard working non-European immigrants. It was short sighted and harmed our economic interests, a bit like our 1960s tariff wall. In it's day it was seen as protecting what were internationally advanced working conditions. The trade unions believed the coolie labour system, common across the Empire could get a toehold here. It had the support of the "social progressives" too. They used the White Australia policy to end an indentured black labour system then operating in North Queensland: Racism and reform in one package, neither wholly right or wholly wrong, it was certainly nothing later generations need apologise for. The article also has some fun pointing out features of Mexico's immigration policies here.

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ELSEWHERE

Who said that conservatives can't have fun? Though I must admit that British Conservative politicians do seem to like having their fun in unusual ways.

I have just posted here an article about Saudi Arabia that gives a vivid picture of what a disgusting place it is. Excerpt about their religious police: "Last year, when a girls' school caught fire, they stopped the fire brigade entering the blazing building in case the girls were not fully covered. As a result, 15 burned to death."

I have just posted here part of a report about the "peace" activist who makes a practice of invading U.S. airbases and damaging aircraft. His own mother cannot not understand why he does what he does but it is not hard to work out if you look at the results of his actions. Does he do anything to prevent war? No. Does he get heaps of personal publicity? Yes. So he is just another attention seeker -- and has been since he was in High School, it appears. Typical Leftist motivations, in other words. In our present terrorist age, however, he probably does the U.S. Airforce a great favour by making clear to them in a relatively harmless way how laughable their security is.

A good summary of the state of affairs in Zimbabwe here. You would think Tony Blair could spare a few troops to get rid of the obscene Mugabe, but Mugabe IS black, I suppose. Blacks can do anything without being pulled into line, of course. But even the French send in their troops to sort out their ex-colonies.

And elsewhere in Africa apes are disappearing and it's not global warming or industrialism that is doing it. Old fashioned hunting by Africans is to blame. How odd that the Greenies are not condemning Africans as the chief threat to an endangered species!

There is some good in everyone, they say: The French not only allow genetically modified crops to be grown but jail those who attack them.

There has just been a big conference in Boston which was 'intended to encourage and support litigation against the food industry'. The usual suspects -- lawyers and activists who use junk-science in an attempt to erode consumer freedom and turn food companies into their newest cash cow -- were on hand."

So it can happen: The Philippine government welcomed a public rejection of terrorism by Muslim rebels, saying it could lead to a resumption of peace talks.

Smallpox vaccination has been going on since 1796 (Yes. 1796, not 1976) and yet we get this self-important nonsense: "The next phase of the smallpox vaccination program should be put on hold while health authorities investigate possible severe side effects, a CDC advisory panel recommended Thursday."

"'If you keep a gun in your home,' a University of Pennsylvania press release said last week, 'you dramatically increase the odds that you will die of a gunshot wound, according to research published in the June issue of the Annals of Emergency Medicine.' ... Frightening results for people who own guns, or who are thinking of buying them. Frightening but, it turns out, meaningless -- another example of how unsound social science is being used in public-policy debates."

The Wicked one explains why a "young man" got shot in the head in South Africa.

In my academic posting here (or here) I point out that not to have a death penalty for serious crime is undemocratic.

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