WHY ELITES TEND LEFT

Why is a man as privileged as John Kerry on the Left of politics? Why are people who are well-organized, well-paid and successful in life often Left-leaning? Surely they should be thankful for the system that gave them their success instead of wanting to tear it down? The answer is really quite simple. If your life had made you feel superior to most people wouldn't you want to be treated in a superior way too? More importantly, wouldn't you feel that your inferiors should be got out of your way and told what to do? Wouldn't you feel that they should be herded onto public transport and thus leave the roads free for you to drive where you want without being held up by traffic jams? That is EXACTLY how elite Leftists think. Only they cannot say that out loud of course. To say it out loud would not only be obnoxious but it would also achieve nothing. So our elites are smarter than that. They know they have to cloak their oppression in the mantle of a claim that "It's all for your own good". And knowing how rich, clever and well-organized they themselves are, they are confident that they will be able to escape the limits and confines that they put on other people. Even high taxes are no worry to them when they already have most things that money can buy. So regulate, regulate, regulate is their cry. And that's Leftism.

A classic example was pre-Thatcher Britain in the 60s. The British Labour party had nationalized practically all the hospitals leaving only a very small and expensive private sector. And the nationalized hospitals were of course overcrowded and gave inferior service in various ways. Britain's "Red Queen" at the time was Barbara Castle, a minister in Harold Wilson's Labour government. She was famous for saying that it was "obscene" for anybody to "carve their way to a hospital bed with a chequebook": Good propaganda. But what did she do when her son got sick? Being very well-paid as a government minister, she got him admitted to a private hospital, of course, under a false name. When the press got wind of it were any on the Left upset by her actions? Not at all. They understood what she was doing and why. Harold Wilson ended up making the obscene one a Baroness, in fact. Leftist elites WANT one law for the rich and another law for the poor. That is why the British Labour party let a small private medicine sector survive in Britain. They knew that they might need it one day: No grotty public hospitals for them. Public hospitals are only for "the people".

And my post of December 12th, last year shows that the same mentality prevails among the Leftist British elite to this day.

And Leftist elitism even explains the current Leftist war on "obesity":

"Medical and public health authorities have determined a BMI of 25 or above is hazardous to a person's health. This belief, however, is not supported by the available evidence... In almost all large-scale epidemiological studies, little or no correlation between weight and health can be found for a large majority of the population... "overweight" people actually had a lower overall cancer mortality rate than "ideal weight" individuals.. Even massively obese men and women do not appear to be more prone to vascular disease than average... deaths from heart disease have been plunging at precisely the same time that obesity rates have been skyrocketing... on average, poor people in America are fat and rich people are thin. The disgust the thin upper classes feel for the fat lower classes has nothing to do with mortality statistics and everything to do with feelings of moral superiority"

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The media and the Democrats (same thing) seem to have gone rather quiet about GWB's "lies" over WMDs lately. Even John Kerry has hedged his bets. Could this be part of the reason why? "Jordan recently seized 20 tons of chemicals trucked in by confessed al Qaeda members who brought the stuff in from Syria. The chemicals included VX, Sarin and 70 others. ... There's a lot of reason to think (the source of the chemicals) might be Iraq..... The best U.S. and allied intelligence say that in the 10 weeks before the Iraq war, Saddam's Russian adviser told him to get rid of all the nerve gas."

Dreadful news for John Kerry: "A springtime surge in hiring rumbled into a second month as employers added nearly 300,000 new jobs in April, which lowered the unemployment rate to 5.6 percent".

There is a set of figures going the rounds on the net which purport to show that U.S. States which supported Bush in the last Presidential election have lower average IQs. This author wisely suspects that the figures are a fake. Chris Brand has contacted the author of the test concerned and he says that he knows of no authentic State-by-State averages for his test.

Catallarchy has a celebration of May Day which notes accurately what socialism has done for the workers.

Brigitte Bardot was once the symbol of France. It is good to see her defending the France she once stood for.

A blunt New Zealand comment: "Michael Moore is being interviewed on CNN as I blog. He actually used the term "crushing of dissent". Stupid fat bastard!"

China Hand has a big new post up on his recent travels around China -- with some striking photos.

Both China Hand and I found this article about British cars very funny -- despite that fact that China Hand is a car buff and I am anything but. It is British humour from an American. Page 3 is the best.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

All politicians seek power but conservatives bring with them a genuine concern for the welfare of their country. Leftists bring only their hate-filled Stalinist hearts and their pretend compassion

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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FROM BROOKES NEWS

Sen. Lautenberg: Patriot or fifth columnist? Last week Frank Lautenberg took to the floor of the Senate and launched a vicious and insulting attack on President Bush and some of his advisers. Now it's time to look at Lautenberg's anti-American voting record.
Did Gorelick's infamous memo provide the missing link between Chinagate and 9/11? Jamie Gorelick not only blinded the US to foreign intelligence information, she also allowed Clinton to offer access and key strategic technologies to the highest bidder: China, and Indonesian/Chinese billionaire donors with close ties to China's dictatorial regime were recipients.
America's media subversives There is no escaping the fact that the mainstream media largely consists of leftwing political bigots whose contempt for the truth is only exceeded by the hatred for President Bush.
Oysters, the ABC and so-called market failure: Revealed it to be a myth that frees market policies allowed media owners to ruthlessly impose politically homogeneous views media reporting.

Details here

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Revel: Anti-Globalism = Anti-Americanism: "How to understand this war against globalization, which has grown in scope and virulence over the past five years? First, we must realize that it is a war in the real, not the figurative, sense of the word. It is a physical struggle being fought in the streets, not just theoretically. The demonstrators who are its shock troops are organized by activist organizations, many of them subsidized by governments, and they sack cities and lay siege to international meetings during their battles. What motivates this extraordinary resistance? Globalization simply means freedom of movement for goods and people, and it is hard to be violently hostile to that"

For those who want the detailed figures, Donald Luskin shows that the last U.S. economic recession took place under Clinton and that it was under the Bush administration that the recovery took place. His chart of GDP growth is pretty persuasive.

Hooray! "The World Trade Organization ruled that the government's multibillion-dollar subsidies to the U.S. cotton industry violate global trade rules. The landmark case could compel Washington to cut farm subsidies and force the United States, Europe and other wealthy economies to make greater concessions to poor countries at global trade talks. It was the first successful challenge of a wealthy nation's domestic agricultural subsidies."

Interesting comment from a reader: "In the Bible (Genesis 27: 29), there is a remark that those who bless Israel will be blessed and those who curse Israel will be cursed. Countries who are friendly towards Israel and/or who treat Jews equally do seem to have most prosperity and freedom, whereas antagonism towards Jews seems to be associated with poverty and oppression. Whether it is the work of God or a remarkably prescient comment on the human condition, it does seem to hold true."

CafeHayek says the statistics show SUVs are NOT safer than other vehicles (which their buyers often claim) but NOR are they more dangerous (which their opponents routinely claim).

David's Medienkritik points out that there is abuse of prisoners in German prisons too and asks why the German government is not apologizing: A very sarcastic post.

The Left are fervent in their belief that criminality is NOT genetically inherited but is due to "poverty", "discrimination" etc. So Chris Brand's latest post is a VERY interesting one: "Identical twins were found to share anti-social behaviour patterns "much more strongly" than did fraternal twins in a study of 670 twins pairs conducted from the University of Wales College of Medicine (Arch. Gen. Psychiat.; Times, 4 v). Apparently `basic' antisocial personality was "wholly genetic", though the environment added finishing touches." This is the academic article Chris is referring to (Summary only).

There is now a PDF version online here of Chris's book The g factor which is a bit more convenient than the previous zipped version. Chris has also advised that he is prepared to email to those who request it a copy of his chapter in the 2003 book The scientific study of general intelligence (edited by Danish psychologist Helmuth Nyborg and published by Pergamon). The chapter -- jointly authored by Brand, Constales and Kane -- is called 'Why ignore the g factor?' and contains new vindications of the strength of g, of the measurability of g and of g's 'differentiation' at higher-g levels. There is more about the book here. Email: cbrand@cycad.com or brand@crispian.demon.co.uk

Hmmm... I dabbled a bit with Technorati last night -- who track over 2 million blogs worldwide. From what I can make out, it seems that I am -- rather to my surprise -- the No. 3 Australian blogger. I seem to be behind only the two Tims in the number of other blogs that link to me: The Conservative Tim (Blair) has over 800 linkers and the Leftist Tim (Dunlop) has nearly 400 linkers whereas I have just over 300 linkers -- adding together those who link to me via my old site and those who link to me via my current site. I also seem to pick up quite a few unique links via "PC Watch". Australian blogging is only a small world, however, so being No. 3 is no great distinction.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here. GREENIE WATCH responds to the latest Greenie scare about kangaroos.

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

All politicians seek power but conservatives bring with them a genuine concern for the welfare of their country. Leftists bring only their hate-filled Stalinist hearts and their pretend compassion

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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THAT WONDERFUL U.N.

Kofi-gate kickbacks: "Kickbacks paid to Saddam Hussein's regime on contracts signed under the United Nations' oil-for-food programme were far higher than the 10 per cent rake-off previously assumed to be the norm.... The discrepancy represents the kickbacks for leaders and regime officials who skimmed off billions of pounds from the scheme that was supposed to provide food, medicine and essential supplies for the Iraqi people... The inflated contracts were apparently not noticed or ignored at the UN in New York.

Kofi Annan was chiefly to blame for the Rwanda genocide: "During the hundred days of slaughter and until it stopped, says Hourigan, "consistently, repeatedly people like Kofi Annan failed to act. I think there can be nothing else to do for that person either to resign themselves or be replaced." And, added Colvin, the United Nations' own internal inquiry actually did blame Kofi Annan and the unit he led. "Yes," replied Hourigan, "the Carlson Commission did just that.""

The Sudan: "Now I'm in another Sudan, in the Darfur region to the west of the country, witnessing the horrendous and tragic results of a campaign of ugly ethnic violence, which has left thousands dead and hundreds of thousands homeless". Where is "the international community" when you need them? Surely a U.N. resolution would fix the problem?

Setting the fox to guard the henhouse: "Sudan won re-election to the United Nations' main human rights watchdog on Tuesday, prompting the United States to walk out because of ethnic cleansing in the country's Darfur region..... Sichan Siv, the U.S. delegate to the council, accused Sudan of having no right to sit on the rights commission because of ethnic cleansing in Darfur where government troops are accused of backing Arab militia which pillage black Africa villages, raping and killing". See Dhimmi Watch for more on the delights of Sudan. Even though it's in Africa Sudan is definitely not a good place to be black. But, come to think of it, nowhere in Africa is nearly as good to blacks as the USA is. Mass death seems to be happening all the time somewhere or other in Africa.

Tim Worstall goes into a bit more detail about the strange membership of the UN "Human Rights" Commission.

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More glories of socialized medicine: A pregnant Australian mother was told by two public hospital doctors that the baby was dead inside her and she was sent for a curette to remove the "remains". She asked several times for an ultrasound scan to confirm the diagnosis but was refused because: "The obstetrician said she didn't want to place an undue burden on the ultrasound staff". While she was waiting to go into theatre -- a long wait, of course -- she felt that all was not right, checked herself out and went to a private doctor who booked her in immediately for a scan. The scan showed there was nothing wrong with the baby. So a precious life was saved because of Australia's large private medicine sector. In Canada the baby would be dead.

Socialized arrogance: "A huge headline on the front of a recent issue of the New York Times Magazine said more than was intended: 'Now are we ready to talk about health care?' Inside was an article with the same title by Sen. Hillary Clinton. The casual arrogance of that question is staggering. We talked endlessly about Hillary's proposed government-run medical system a decade ago and decided against it for many reasons. Now this rerun of the same issues proceeds as if the question is whether the rest of us are 'ready' to talk about such things."

Keith Burgess-Jackson has reproduced a letter originally printed in the New York Times in which a woman repeats the familiar complaint that men won't "commit" to marriage or any lasting relationship. She is surprised?? The way politically correct American divorce and palimony laws attack men, I wonder why ANY American male gets married or risks fatherhood. All who do are either heroes or incorrigible optimists. See here. Or maybe they don't know what they are letting themselves in for.

Silver lining? Has Islam killed multiculturalism? The Spectator thinks that may be so in the UK: "The rest of us might have suspected that multiculturalism was officially dead on 12 September 2001; but to hear multiculturalism disavowed, in public, by an organisation hitherto dedicated to its propagation is something else entirely".

Carnival of the Vanities is up again with a wide range of reading.

Dick McDonald reminds the younger generation of what the righteous Senator Ted Kennedy really is.

The wicked one tells you what you need to do to get to heaven. You'll never guess.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

All politicians seek power but conservatives bring with them a genuine concern for the welfare of their country. Leftists bring only their hate-filled Stalinist hearts and their pretend compassion

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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FASCISM

I mentioned last Sunday the latest book on Fascism (The Anatomy of Fascism by Robert. O. Paxton) but was too deterred by its obvious biases to do anything more than link to my own article on Hitler so that readers could see for themselves what Paxton had "overlooked".

Marxist "superstar" Terry Eagleton has however now reviewed the book and most of what he says is surprisingly fair. He does, for instance, make clear the antipathy between conservatism and Fascism and even hints at Fascism's Leftist origins and its affinities with modern-day Leftist "post-modernism". He also concludes, as I do, that Fascism seems in the long run to have won the day and that most of the world's political systems are now at least moving towards what would once have been called Fascism.

One of my readers bridled at Eagleton's statement: "The assumption that the free market and political democracy go naturally together was always pretty dubious" but I am afraid Eagleton is right. Up until recently the world's most free market society was Hong Kong, with no democracy at all, and intensely capitalist Singapore has pretty limited democracy too. As in most of his comments, however, Eagleton is overstating his case. Although there is no necessary association between democracy and capitalism, the two do seem to have some rough association.

I should mention, however, that the opening of Eagleton's review is deceptive. He says that Mussolini (the founder of Fascism) opposed Socialism. He omits to mention that what was called Socialism in Mussolini's day was what we would now call Communism. Mussolini, like the Mensheviks, considered Communism/Bolshevism to be a deviation from true Marxist doctrine. Mussolini was a non-Communist Leftist, in other words -- something that is still all around us today. The main difference between the Communists and the Fascists was that the Fascists detested the idea of class-warfare. They wanted the people of their countries to be united in one brotherly band rather than at war with one-another. But both the Communists and the Fascists wanted (and got) an all-powerful State that would allegedly "look after" its people -- not much different in the end from what modern-day Western Leftists clamour for.

And Eagleton's description of Fascists as "uncouth bruisers" is absurd. Eagleton admits that Britain's Sir Oswald Mosley was an "exception" to that but so was Mussolini. Like many modern-day Leftists, Mussolini was an intellectual. He read poetry and philosophy voraciously, including Socrates and Plato. He spoke several foreign languages, was always interested in discussing political and philosophical ideas with almost anyone, had considerable acceptance in his early days as a leading Marxist theoretician, wrote over 40 books, and was a tree-lover and environmentalist 50 years before Greenies were thought of!

I linked to a review of Eagleton's own recent book on 29th April. That reviewer noted Eagleton's superficial cleverness. A good example of it can be found in the last sentence of his review of the Paxton book.

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The hysteria about childhood obesity is rising -- as this article shows. Obesity is a great discovery for the Left. It will NEVER be cured so they will be able to go on for years making nuisances of themselves over it.

Statistical expert John Lott Jr. sets out why California's virtual ban on electonic voting is just ignorant technophobia. Australia has paper voting only so I have no personal knowledge of alternatives but his claim that electronic voting is in fact more secure than paper voting seems reasonable to me. Voting security in Australia is a joke -- leading to Al Capone's famous saying "Vote early and vote often" being regarded as good election-day advice in some Australian Leftist circles. Rather like Pakistan.

From one who knows: "I was on Mr. Kerry's boat in Vietnam. He doesn't deserve to be commander in chief."

Steve Sailer tells us what few others will about Europe's Gypsy problem.

How odd! Many of the "ex-diplomat" critics of Tony Blair are so involved in businesses in Arab countries that they are known as the "Camel Corps". But none of them declared a conflict of interest, of course.

This very amusing but serious article by David Carr on the recently enlarged EU shows all by itself why "Samizdata" is such a popular blog.

Who armed Saddam? There is a great chart here showing that 57% of Saddam's arms imports came from Russia, 13% from France and 1% from the USA.

In his post of 28th April (no permalink) Snowball sets out a whole host of criticisms of the proposed ID card for the UK. There is opposition to national ID cards on both the Right and the Left but I must say that they seem a reasonable way of limiting fraud to me. Perhaps I am not paranoid enough.

Icelandic blogger Willy Sutton has now started a separate blog for what he calls "visual economics". See here. It's a good idea to show the follies of socialism in pictorial form and he does have some good pictures.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

All politicians seek power but conservatives bring with them a genuine concern for the welfare of their country. Leftists bring only their hate-filled Stalinist hearts and their pretend compassion

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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LADY THATCHER

I was delighted to read that Lady Thatcher has made a good recovery from her recent illness and bereavement. And this comment rings true too:

"She remains a self-effacing, charming, polite woman in private, never seeking to be the centre of attention - though of course she cannot help but be in almost every setting - and with an immense humanity that her critics simply refuse to believe exists. Her sincerity and basic decency illustrate one of the most important and fundamental truths about her, that she was never in it for herself."

That self-effacement is precisely what I noted on the occasion that I met her at a small garden party in Kent in 1977. When people began to make her the centre of attention then (while I was talking to her as it happens) she turned around and did her best to break it up.

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ELSEWHERE

Jeff Jacoby points out that America's marching feminists are not feminists at all, just far-Leftists. If they were really concerned about women, they would be attacking Islamic fundamentalists, not GWB. But you never hear a word from them about the suffering of women under Islam: The usual total hypocrisy of the Left.

Sad: The Australian Federal government is trying to bribe young men into taking up primary school teaching. Given the prejudiced way false allegations of sexual abuse against male teachers are handled, I can only hope that no young men are desperate enough to take up the offer. They risk having their lives ruined if they do.

Shawcross on Iraq: "Do not forget that during the 1990s, when there was no war in Iraq, perhaps tens of thousands of Islamic warriors were trained in the bin Laden camps in Afghanistan. That was a time when the US president, Bill Clinton, was working overtime to create an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. The US finally came to the rescue of Muslims in Bosnia, after Europe had failed to do so, and then led the effort to save Muslims in Kosovo. None of that stopped bin Laden from building up his organisation and attacking the US wherever he could.... They live to kill. The most determined and, by their own standards, the most devout live to die. They cannot be appeased." Note that Shawcross was an ardent Leftie once. See here. He now says: ""As in the twentieth century, so in the twenty-first, only America has both the power and the optimism to defend the international community against what really are the forces of darkness." How awful for the Left!

The man behind most of the anti-Bush ads: "During the eighties he grew more corporate and at the same time more radical, building offices for Fenton Communications in New York City and Washington while fattening his payroll by performing services for various communist state and "liberation" groups, including the Sandinista government of Nicaragua, the dictatorship of Grenada's Maurice Bishop that President Ronald Reagan sent troops to overthrow in 1983, the El Salvadoran terrorist Farabundo Marti National Liberation group and the conspiratorial Christic Institute, which spread vicious, baseless smears about retired U.S. military heroes." So you know you can trust him.

Some good quotations recently in The Federalist:
"The unforgivable crime is soft hitting. Do not hit at all if it can be avoided; but never hit softly." --Theodore Roosevelt
"Don't expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong." --Calvin Coolidge
"The elements of our strength are many. They include our democratic government, our economic system, our great natural resources. But, the basic source of our strength is spiritual. We believe in the dignity of man." --Jeane Kirkpatrick
"Eternal vigilance is only part of the price of freedom. The maturity to live with imperfections is another crucial part of the price of freedom." --Thomas Sowell

Amusing. Chris Brand has started off his postings for May with a full measure of the incorrectness that he is known for: "Star slut Sharon Osbourne was also in trouble at the Grauniad for saying she wanted to have sex with a well-hung Black man before she died. What could she mean, asked the troubled Grauninannies? She surely could not be referring to Phil Rushton's anathematized findings, contested by the small-peniled left, - findings which actually take no account of the pretty minimal staying power of the average Black or of females' greater interest in property values than in penile volume. [While we're at it, it should be noted that the evolutionary advantages of a modest and amply-foreskinned penis are to avoid frostbite while hunting in northern climes and to allow of ready erection in days before Viagra. Sluggish AIDS-prone slit-splitting members are of more interest to pervs than to women.]" I have added a couple of links and edited the quote slightly to make Chris's telegraphic style a bit easier to follow but you can find the original at the BOTTOM of his page here.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

All politicians seek power but conservatives bring with them a genuine concern for the welfare of their country. Leftists bring only their hate-filled Stalinist hearts and their pretend compassion

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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SOME ECONOMIC REALITIES

Marginal Revolution discusses (Nobel prize winning economist) Gary Becker's plan to cut drug prices by cutting FDA red tape: "...a return to a safety standard alone would lower costs and raise the number of therapeutic compounds available. In particular, this would include more drugs from small biotech firms that do not have the deep pockets to invest in extended efficacy trials. And the resulting increase in competition would mean lower prices - without the bureaucratic burden of price controls..."

Is the EU a tax cartel? "Germany yesterday threw cold water on the festive mood ahead of this week's European Union enlargement by telling its eastern neighbours that low corporate tax rates used to attract foreign investment were unacceptable"

In Argentina privatization of the water supply led to a drop in child mortality of 5-7 percent, with reductions of 24% in the poorest areas

The Stossel "problem": "According to some leading journalists and consumer activists, ABC's news division suffers from a major problem: John Stossel. He used to be such a good consumer reporter, years ago, worthy of his numerous Emmies. But now he thinks that markets protect consumers better than governments do, and he's skeptical of all sorts of beliefs that we all just know are right. ... The real Stossel problem is that he's so alone..."

The private sector in Australia has been using new technology (mobile phones and trunk radio) to provide a better service to taxicab users. So the government wants to ban it: "Groups of entrepreneurial cabbies have created a thriving business providing luxurious, limo-class service at cab prices. The passengers are thrilled and the drivers are getting ahead in an ingenious example of how the market can outwit the leaden bureaucracies of big government regulation. But last week, the Transport Minister, Michael Costa, spoiled it all. As part of his "reform" of the taxi industry, Costa announced a ban on "private network" cab drivers who use mobile phones to service private clients, threatening fines ranging from $1100 to a staggering $110,000"

South Africa today. "South Africa now has a high rate of taxation, restrictive labor laws, is Africa's largest welfare state and has Africa's largest, most politically well-connected and politically influential labor union movement... At the present day, an estimated 42% or 8-million employable non-white South Africans are unemployed. The unemployment among this segment of the population is higher today than at any time during the apartheid era... South Africa's long term economic future appears bleak due to the policies that the nation's government has already enacted. The disarming of the civilian population has left it at the mercy of armed criminals."

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ELSEWHERE

On Saturday I linked without comment to an article about gun control that referred to work by John Lott. John Lott has of course been much criticized by Leftists because he could not produce the original data behind one of the surveys he quoted --- a fact originally brought to light by a libertarian blogger. Lott says he lost the data in a computer disk crash. As I have myself lost stuff that way despite being generally very careful about backups, I sympathize with such problems. Conservatives are divided over Lott's claim but I note that The person who knew Lott's work best at that time has testified in Lott's favour and that even the Leftist Mother Jones says that the particular survey concerned "isn't central to the argument".

There is a recent scholarly paper by G.A. Mauser here (PDF) surveying the results of gun control in Britain, Canada and Australia which describes Australia's gun-buyback scheme and associated bans as a "failed experiment". The article concludes: "In all cases, disarming the public has been ineffective, expensive and often counterproductive".

Nader: A man of principle? "Despite the millions of dollars he commands, he historically paid his professional staff less than minimum wage... When I worked for Ralph Nader in 1980-81, he paid us $8,000 a year, hardly enough to get by on even then. We could scarcely afford the time to spend money, though, because Nader expected staff to work around the clock.... Though Nader claims he wants to fight discrimination, he and his staff asked me my age, religion, sleeping habits, family tree, medical history and a lot of other highly personal questions in violation of District of Columbia's employment law".

More glories of socialized medicine: Canadian healthcare workers are on strike because their government wants to cut their annual leave from 9 weeks to a "measly" eight weeks! The poor darlings!

Crystal ball experts: "The United States said Monday it would not force the issue of placing armed sky marshals on trans-Atlantic planes if European countries reject such anti-terrorist precautions.... Portugal, Sweden and Denmark have signaled they prefer canceling flights to deploying armed guards on planes if there is a strong suspicion of an attack."

Hooray! "A Southern California college professor who received wide media attention when she claimed that racists had vandalized and defaced her car with ethnic slurs was charged on Monday with filing a false police report and insurance fraud.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

All politicians seek power but conservatives bring with them a genuine concern for the welfare of their country. Leftists bring only their hate-filled Stalinist hearts and their pretend compassion

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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"THINK ISRAEL"

Some recent articles on Think Israel:

"SHARON'S DISENGAGEMENT PLAN"
"ISRAEL'S GAZA GAMBLE"
"ISRAEL'S REAL CHOICE IS EITHER TO FIGHT AND SURVIVE, OR TO CAPITULATEAND BE DESTROYED"
"PALESTINIAN FALLACY"
"SHI'ITE IRAN: THE KEY TO THE MIDDLE EAST:
"AN UNTONED-DOWN COMMENTARY ON SUDAN"
"MAKING THE CASE FOR JEW HATRED: Martin Jay Explains How Jews Cause Antisemitism"
"ISLAMIST FIFTH COLUMNS"

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"THOUGHT YOU SHOULD KNOW"

Thought you should know is site worth bookmarking. It is not quite a blog as the owner of the site lets the news stories and articles he links to speak for themselves. But he sure get some good ones. A quick sampling of recent headlines:

Homosexual Leader Vows to 'torture' Opponents
N. Korea banks on Kerry White House
'Several Thousand' Foreign Fighters Slip Into Iraq
Detroit Woman Tells of Self-Defense Shooting
Heroes and Wusses
Al Qaeda and Converts to Islam
Liberals ARE Unpatriotic

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Australia's Leftist State governments are proposing a massive re-socialization of schools and hospitals: "EIGHT Labor premiers and chief ministers are working on a radical plan to overhaul the way the nation runs its hospitals and schools. They are considering proposals forcing all schools - public and private - to accept students who cannot afford to pay fees. They also are looking at "enrolling" families with a selected GP or health clinic for life." Too many Australians have escaped to the private sector for the idea to be a vote-winner, though.

The NYT has an adulatory review of the latest book about Fascism: The anatomy of Fascism by Robert. O. Paxton -- in which the author claims that Hitler was an "antisocialist". That would have been news to Hitler! Hitler did after all call the political party he led "The National Socialist German Worker's Party". I might say more about all the Leftist distortions involved in Paxton's book at greater length tomorrow but I suspect that I have said it all already.

USA Today is back to doing good editorials again -- this time condemning government intervention in the airline business. Excerpt: "That's the type of meddling Congress rejected when it deregulated the industry 26 years ago to let customer demand, not federal bureaucrats, determine flights and prices"

Have Saddam's WMDs been found? "In virtually every case - chemical, biological, nuclear and ballistic missiles - the United States has found the weapons and the programs that the Iraqi dictator successfully concealed for 12 years from U.N. weapons inspectors."

There has of course been lately much pontificating about the nature of Islam and why it is so anti-Western. Two of the better efforts are here and here. I myself don't think such debates matter a hill of beans. It is clear that only an armed response has any chance of restraining the terrorists. They won't be debated into giving up violence. Israel has been very peaceful lately after they knocked off the last two Hamas leaders.

This may be the last we hear of the disgusting Amirault case -- where virtually the entire Massachusetts establishment colluded to keep an innocent man in jail for 18 years. But since when did America's so-called "liberals" ever really care about liberty or the little guy? All they cared about in this case was saving face for themselves and their cronies.

The Policeman's blog continues to show what a mockery British policing is these days. I don't think I'll visit Britain again any time soon. "The old grey mare aint what she used to be".

China Hand is back blogging again -- with posts on buying a car and running a small business in China.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

All politicians seek power but conservatives bring with them a genuine concern for the welfare of their country. Leftists bring only their hate-filled Stalinist hearts and their pretend compassion

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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GUN CONTROL

Guns save lives: "How strange it must be to be a liberal. Driven by slogans, blinded by superstitions, dazzled by fantasies, the liberal stumbles through life oblivious to facts. There is almost nothing the liberal thinks he knows about race, social policy, sex roles, individual differences, and even history that is not some combination of slogan, superstition, and fantasy. John Lott's soberly brilliant More Guns, Less Crime could not possibly be a more convincing demonstration that what liberals think they know about guns is fantasy, too. The liberal view, of course, is that private citizens should not have guns and that gun control will stop violence. Prof. Lott, who teaches law and economics at the University of Chicago, makes an air-tight case for the opposite view"

Shoot attacking cougars or wave at them?: "California game wardens now visit elementary schools, advising children to stand still, wave their arms and shout when they encounter one of these deadly predators. It's good advice as far as it goes -- the animal is far more likely to take a small human for prey if it tries to run away. But shouldn't the kids yell something else, first? Something like, 'Daddy, shoot the cat?' For most absurdly of all, the pathetic bedwetters who have taken over the state of California have made it almost entirely illegal to carry a firearm for self-defense in precisely the places citizens are most likely to have this kind of unpleasant encounter -- the state's parks and recreation areas."

And in Alaska, the do-gooders fight bears with pepper spray. How dangerous can the antigun mania get?

Peter Hitchens has a good article on the gun-control lunacy in Britain.

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More glories of socialized medicine: "Senior health officers tried to disguise the truth from a mother desperate to know if a hospital blunder had put her baby in danger.... It is just one example of how health chiefs blamed for substandard care in Sydney hospitals attempted to "spin" their way out of the crisis. A Daily Telegraph investigation has uncovered at least five cases of patients who received substandard treatment being deliberately misinformed or having relevant facts withheld from them, their families and the public".

Plain talk: "The advanced state of Britain's utter moral bankruptcy is on vivid display today with the publication of the scream of venomous outrage by 52 ex-diplomats against Tony Blair's backing for George Bush over Iraq and Blair's failure to rein him in over his support for Israel. Their letter speaks volumes for the rancid prejudice which animates so much of the British foreign policy mandarinate, and has now unfortunately influenced the attitude of so much of the population".

Keith Burgess-Jackson recently had an article on Tech Central Station explaining why Leftists are such an angry, hate-filled lot. He got a heap of attention out of it, including lots of emails. He posted on his blog a lot of the critical emails he got from Leftists. He must have hit where it hurt because some of his Leftist critics even went so far as to criticize him for saying that Leftists believe in equality! But then other Leftists have said that Communists like Castro and Stalin are conservatives (!) so it just goes to show that Leftists will say anything that suits them at the time. Truth doesn't matter to Leftists -- only their own pathetic over-inflated egos matter.

The National Center for Public Policy Research responds to the "Nightline" stunt about America's fallen soldiers.

Amazing: Kofi Annan supporting Ariel Sharon and criticizing the Arabs: "U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged Yasser Arafat Friday to give Israel's Gaza pullout plan a chance".

More amazement. Australia's Leftists are making the teachers shriek: "Labor's plan to give more money to poor private schools would hasten the flight of middle-class students out of the state system, defenders of public education have warned. Chris Bonnor, president of the NSW Secondary Principals Council, said the "populist" pledge to take money from wealthy private schools and redistribute it to needy non-government schools would make low-fee schools more attractive to parents".

Wonders will never cease: Australia's Leftist wishy washies calling for Koalas to be shot. They are right for once: "A koala population explosion on an Australian island has prompted calls for 20,000 of the furry, native marsupials to be shot to stop them destroying their island habitat".

There is a good post here on the utter brainlessness of John Kerry's solution to the outsourcing "problem".

David's Medienkritik has made an amazing find: A pro-American and pro-Bush article in a major German newspaper!

The wicked one has got some good pictures for you.

Dick McDonald is still blogging up a storm. He covers a lot of the stuff I would cover if I were more energetic. I urged him to start blogging because I liked his emails and he has not disappointed. He's got a good colour scheme too!

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here. PC WATCH notes some pretty alarming attacks on free speech in connection with immigration.

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

All politicians seek power but conservatives bring with them a genuine concern for the welfare of their country. Leftists bring only their hate-filled Stalinist hearts and their pretend compassion

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES

A minor eccentricity of mine is that I find amusement in a lot of things that most others don't find amusing at all. For instance I find Mein Kampf an amusing read -- because you can open it almost at random and be struck not only by what a good Leftist of his day Hitler sounds but also by what a good Leftist he was even in modern terms -- as I have previously pointed out here.

Another text I get a kick out of is about as unlikely as you can get: The "39 Articles of Religion" of the Church of England. To this day all Anglican priests have to swear that they agree with them before they can be ordained. They are the original definition of Anglicanism and go back to 1571. The main reason I enjoy them is that so many of them are very plain-spoken. They conspicuously lack the waffle, obfuscation and infinite compromise that characterizes the Church of England and its daughter churches of today. Note a few of them below. All conservatives should like the last two I quote. The meaning of some words has of course changed a bit over the centuries. "Fond", for instance, meant "deluded" in the 16th century. So being "fond" of someone originally meant being crazy about them! And a "fond hope" was a crazy hope.

The Romish doctrine concerning Purgatory, Pardons, worshipping and adoration as well of Images as of Relics, and also Invocation of Saints, is a fond thing vainly invented, and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture; but rather repugnant to the word of God.

It is a thing plainly repugnant to the word of God and the custom of the primitive Church, to have public prayer in the Church, or to minister the sacraments in a tongue not understanded of the people.

The Cup of the Lord is not to be denied to the lay people; for both parts of the Lord's sacrament, by Christ's ordinance and commandment, ought to be ministered to all Christian men alike.

Bishops, Priests, and Deacons are not commanded by God's laws either to vow the estate of single life or to abstain from marriage. Therefore it is lawful also for them, as for all other Christian men, to marry at their own discretion, as they shall judge the same to serve better to godliness.

The Bishop of Rome hath no jurisdiction in this realm of England. The Laws of the Realm may punish Christian men with death for heinous and grievous offences. It is lawful for Christian men at the commandment of the Magistrate to wear weapons and serve in the wars.

The riches and goods of Christians are not common, as touching the right, title, and possession of the same, as certain Anabaptists do falsely boast; notwithstanding every man ought of such things as he possesseth liberally to give alms to the poor, according to his ability.

It is the English of over 400 years ago but I still think it is hard to beat for plain-speaking: Most refreshing in the present era of political correctness. There was no worry then that they might make someone feel "uncomfortable".

And the simplicity and clarity of the wording does not stem from simple-mindedness on the part of those who wrote the 39 articles. Where they feel a need to get theological -- on the difficult doctrine of predestination (Article 17), for instance -- they are as complex as any modern theologian.

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I have recently done a long overdue cleanout of my blogroll in the green column to the Left. All the links there now should be "live". If I have missed out anybody who should be there for some reason let me know.

A day in the life of an anti-war protest Some fun pictures and commentary from Washington, DC. (Via The New Criterion)

Arlene Peck thinks that there is too much talk about Arab fundamentalism and not enough action.

Australia's cultural protectionists are getting hysterical about the effect of the U.S./Australia free trade agreement on Australian films. Maybe they think Hollywood should be protected against Australians such as Nicole Kidman, Peter Weir, Russell Crowe and Mel Gibson. Fair's fair!

Brazil once had a comparable per capita GDP to the US. Then it discovered ...corporations tax.

Academic researchers find that Fox News, typically blasted by Leftists for conservative bias, is "fair and balanced" in its reporting

Carnival of the Vanities is up again with its usual big range of good reading.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

All politicians seek power but conservatives bring with them a genuine concern for the welfare of their country. Leftists bring only their hate-filled Stalinist hearts and their pretend compassion

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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"THE AUSTRALIAN" HAS A GOOD DAY

Interesting that this article on gross Leftist bias in American universities was reproduced half way across the world in yesterday's "The Australian" newspaper (p.33 April 28th). "The Australian" is the nearest Australian equivalent to the London "Times". Rupert Murdoch owns both, of course. Excerpt: "A criminology professor asked his class to write an essay on "Why George Bush is a war criminal." One student balked and instead turned in a piece on why Saddam Hussein was a war criminal. He got an F."

Interesting admission here that the most passionate advocate of racism in Australia a century ago was the leader of the Leftists, Chris Watson. Excerpt: "McMullin doesn't deal with Watson's role in the creation of White Australia but it is revelatory. After Edmund Barton, as inaugural PM, introduced the bill in 1901, Watson led the attack seeking not a dictation test but, on Labor's behalf, a direct racial ban. He told the house his objection to the mixing of coloured and white people "lies in the main in the possibility and probability of racial contamination". And all Australia's Leftist honchos were loudly celebrating Watson's government just yesterday! Leftists change their principles as easily as they change their clothes -- as the present upsurge of antisemitism on the Left also attests. Hitler's racism simply made him a normal Leftist of his era.

Good to see "The Australian" reporting at length on the U.N. abuse of the Iraq 'oil for food' program. The Australian media have almost totally ignored the story so far. Fun to note that the author of the article in "The Australian" is American-born conservative ex-blogger, James Morrow. Excerpt: "ABC viewers were shocked to learn last week that the man who spent six years administering the UN's Iraqi oil-for-food program stood accused of receiving millions of dollars in bribes from Saddam Hussein's regime. ... But the ABC that aired the story and tracked Sevan down in Noosa Heads was not Australia's taxpayer-financed broadcaster but the American television network. Meanwhile, Australia's ABC has remained virtually silent on the story"

Again in "The Australian", a good comment on the positive news from Iraq here: "There is violence and there is progress in Iraq. Most visitors understand that, and most Iraqis are using their freedom well. Municipal elections have been held in 17 cities so far; according to Iranian-born author Amir Taheri, they have all been won by democratic and secularist parties."

Incredible illogic: The leader of Australia's major Leftist party, Mark Latham, has championned the idiotic idea that if you read books to kids, that will somehow help the kids to learn how to read! Latham's words: "if we read three storybooks a night to our infant children, by the age of five they'll be able to read". He doesn't explain how or offer any evidence, of course. But it suits the teachers' unions who seem to have "Anything but phonics" as an article of faith -- regardless of all the evidence to the contrary. Brian Micklethwait would be aghast.

This book review in "The Australian" (by a feminist author) of After Theory by (Marxist) Terry Eagleton is rightly scathing: "What I hoped to find in After Theory was ideas about what type of thinking and writing might flourish in a post-theory world. I soon discovered that Eagleton doesn't seem to be the least interested in thinking, only in potted ideas. After Theory has a strange cover featuring an aircraft, possibly a bomber. Eagleton himself is so bombastic it's hard to read him straight... After Theory takes us into a vacuum where bits of past theories collide, supported only by vacuous commentary". Needless to say, Eagleton is a huge success in the academic world.

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Amusing: "Elton John thinks there's something "incredibly racist" about viewer voting on Fox TV's "American Idol."" He is right of course. Most whites are heartily sick of blacks (as "white flight" has always shown) but there are few occasions on which they are allowed to show it these days. Anyobody who thinks that most people don't prefer people like themselves does not know much about human nature. And no amount of preaching will alter it.

Another triumph of socialized medicine: "Although he arrived in an ambulance with a note from a doctor recommending "urgent psychiatric attention", Mr Da Pos received no medical treatment and took his own life shortly after leaving the hospital."

"Scalpism": Israeli blogger David Boxenhorn has just made up a new word. He noted my big tease of Captain Clueless and sent me the following rather amusing email in response: "It is interesting that you brought up heightism in your email to Den Beste. I have long noticed that myself - it is VERY pronounced in hiring for leadership positions. How many short CEOs can you name? I bet that they're all entrepreneurs that weren't hired by anyone! Bill Gates is usually described as short; he's 5'10" - that's AVERAGE in the US, but very short for a CEO (yes, I know he isn't CEO anymore, but he's still Chairman). While we're on the subject, what about scalpism? Most men over 40 in the US are bald. No bald man has been elected since the advent of television! Can you imagine a short, bald guy being elected US President?"

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

All politicians seek power but conservatives bring with them a genuine concern for the welfare of their country. Leftists bring only their hate-filled Stalinist hearts and their pretend compassion

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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