FROM BROOKES NEWS:

US economy and the China trade deficit: There is no doubt that the US trade deficit with China is causing a lot of confusion as well as anguish
Australian economy and recession factors: The Australian economy is not looking too good, regardless of what the Treasurer Mr Costello thinks
Workplace reform: unions lie about minimum wages and unemployment: There is a situation where increases in the minimum will not add to unemployment. Therefore, so long as the minimum wage does not exceed the market rate it will not cause unemployment
US troops slaughter civilians: The Americans came in killing like mad men
Tariff nonsense and ALP stupidity: The economic illiterates who are running Victoria have been demanding that the Federal assume direction of industry
More compulsory voting nonsense: It is utter nonsense to assert that citizens would be disenfranchised if compulsory voting were scrapped
Move to middle leaves conservatives looking for new home: Things began to unravel in the 1970s, when the national Democrat Party began to embrace a liberal social agenda
The Grinch who stole my Halloween: Spooks, pirates, goblins, and ghouls are upon us once more. It is time for deciding tricks or treats and to curl up on our sofas to watch, 'It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown'

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ELSEWHERE

Blair gets it right: "Tony Blair gave warning last night that the West might have to take military action against Iran after worldwide condemnation of its President’s call for Israel to be “wiped off the map”. Ending a one-day European Union summit, the Prime Minister called the explosive declaration by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday a disgrace. Promising discussions with Washington and other allies over how to react, Mr Blair said that he had often been urged not to take action against Iran. But he added: “If they carry on like this the question people will be asking us is - when are you going to do something about Iran? Can you imagine a State like that with an attitude like that having nuclear weapons?”

Amazing. Economic responsibility from Congress: "House Republicans voted to cut student loan subsidies, child support enforcement and aid to firms hurt by unfair trade practices as various committees scrambled to piece together $50 billion in budget cuts. More politically difficult votes -- to cut Medicaid, food stamps and farm subsidies -- are on tap Thursday as more panels weigh in on the bill. It was originally intended to cut $35 billion in spending over five years, but after pressure from conservatives, GOP leaders directed committees to cut another $15 billion to help pay the cost of hurricane recovery."

GM pays the price for its gutlessness with its unions: "Japanese car giant Toyota is expected to surpass US-based General Motors to become the world's leading car manufacturer in terms of output in 2006. To do so, it will raise its production to more than 9.2 million units, a Japanese business daily reported today. Toyota decided to increase its global production volume by 12 per cent next year compared with the 8.3 million units projected for this year, a 900,000-unit increase... Daihatsu and Hino Motors of the Toyota group have not completed their plans for next year, but they expect to raise their total production from the 2005 projection by about 900,000 cars amid strong domestic sales. General Motors is expected to fall short of its global production of a projected 9.12 million units for 2005 due to a drop in sales and factory closures, the newspaper said".

The "New Puritans": "Ick, just waded through a screed at The Observer about these so-called New Puritans, the trendy new church of young socialists. In a nutshell they are young control freaks just as bad as those churches who decide every aspect of members lives. It is dressed up with a very thin veneer of concern about over-consumption, environment, social responsibility blah blah blah. They encompass the anti-capitalist who snidely derides the employer while tallying up your purchase, the brave souls who deflate SUV tyres at night and the disparaging tossers who look down on fat people. But ironically in the week of the death of Rosa Parks we have a group very similar to that which ruled over the American South in her time, the paternalist Dixiecrats using their religion and morals to oppress the others they didn't care for"

Calvin vindicated "Attending religious services may enrich the soul, but it also fattens the wallet, according to research released on Tuesday. "Doubling the frequency of attendance leads to a 9.1 percent increase in household income, or a rise of 5.5 percent as a fraction of the poverty scale," Jonathan Gruber of the economics department at Massachusetts Institute of Technology wrote in his study. "Those with more faith may be less 'stressed out' about daily problems that impede success in the labor market and the marriage market, and therefore are more successful," Gruber wrote in the study, which was released by the National Bureau of Economic Research".

Government lies about terrorist threats: "Journalist Annie Jacobsen gained a certain degree of fame last year as the woman who wrote about the strange and frightening behavior of a group of Syrian "musicians" aboard a Northwest Airlines flight. She has now written a riveting book, Terror in the Skies: Why 9-11 Could Happen Again about what happened that day and in the months that followed. Jacobsen put her investigative skills to work, and discovered that the harrowing events that took place on her flight were far from an isolated occurrence. She ends her book with a warning: If our security system does not improve, another 9/11 is almost inevitable".

More negligent bureaucrats should get the same: "The gaunt figure of Vitali Kaloyev confessed yesterday to the fatal stabbing of an air traffic controller who had been in charge on the night that Kayolev's family and 68 other victims plunged to their death in a mid-air collision. For the 48-year-old Russian engineer it was the last act in a tragedy that began on a clear night over Lake Constance on the Swiss-German border just over three years ago.... Mr Kaloyev's world collapsed in July 2002 when a Bashkirian Airlines Tupolev 154 crashed into a Boeing cargo aircraft operated by the DHL courier service. Forty-five children died in the crash..... Prosecutors in Germany and Switzerland are still conducting investigations against members of the Skyguid staff to establish whether they could be charged for negligent killing. For all the Russian families this investigation has been proceeding too slowly. When Mr Kaloyev attended a memorial service in Ueberlingen in 2003 he exploded with anger that Skyguid was accepting only partial responsibility for the crash".

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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

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DOES AMERICA FACE A LOSS OF WILL AND SELF-CONFIDENCE?

Some people seem to think it does and perhaps they are right. No country is being subjected to such a ferocious white-anting attack from the Left as America is. When a large section of your own populace wants you to lose at anything you do, you have certainly got a problem. The "antiwar" exhibitionists America has prancing around the place at the moment would all be in jail if Woodrow Wilson were still President. Read your history if you doubt it.

Lots of people have drawn my attention to an article by Jonathan Last which argues in favour of an imminent loss of American will by comparing America today with Britain in the era between the two world wars. Last argues that despite their victory in WW1, the British went all Leftist and wussy in the 20s and 30s and virtually threw their empire and their position of strength away. He thinks America might be on the same track.

It's absolute rubbbish as an analogy. In World War I, Britain lost virtually an entire generation of its young men. No wonder the entire nation got totally demoralized by that and came to have an absolute horror of war and anything associated with it. Chamberlain's "appeasement" of Hitler is scorned now but it had the support of virtually the entire British population at the time.

The American death-rate in Iraq is piffling by comparison. It's about the same as the homicide rate in Detroit. I give every honour to the brave men who have voluntarily joined the military forces that are now in Iraq and feel personally grieved when I hear of a death among them but comparing that to what happened to Britain in WW1 is ludicrous. It's also ludicrous because another country than Britain emerged from WW1 as the strongest -- the USA. Whereas the USA faces no rivals regardless of what happens in Iraq.

If the Muslims ever got to be more than a nuisance, GWB could just press the red button -- which he has recently been officially authorized to do -- and most of the Islamic world would vanish in a thermonuclear cloud, Mecca included. It's only the good heart of GWB and the American people that stands between the Muslims and that fate. For the sake of the societies that they infest, I hope that the Islamic fruitcakes have enough brains to remember that another American President reluctantly decided to use nuclear weapons on a civilian population rather than suffer further American military casualties.

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ELSEWHERE

Australian blacks told to pull their weight: "The era of "sit-down" money for Aborigines in remote communities has ended, with Centrelink officers telling indigenous people those who do not work will lose their handouts. Eight communities have been told in the past month they have to change or face the same penalties as the rest of the community: loss of dole payments. Until now, about 8000 indigenous people have been exempt from mutual obligation programs because they live in areas where there is no locally accessible labour market program or education and training facilities. But the Howard Government is dismantling the system of exemptions and has in the past month told about 880 people they will be taken off the program. Already, 115 of them are working for the dole."

Straight talk from Jesse Lee Peterson: "When 75 percent of New Orleans residents had left the city, it was primarily immoral, welfare-pampered blacks that stayed behind and waited for the government to bail them out. This, as we know, did not turn out good results... Of course, if these two were really serious about laying blame on government, they should blame the local one. Responsibility to perform - legally and practically - fell first on the mayor of New Orleans. We are now all familiar with Mayor Ray Nagin - the black Democrat who likes to yell at President Bush for failing to do Nagin's job.... One wonders how there was "no way" for these people to evacuate the city. We have photographic evidence telling us otherwise. You've probably seen it by now - the photo showing 200 parked school buses, unused and underwater. How much planning does it require to put people on a bus and leave town, Mayor Nagin? ... President Bush is not to blame for the rampant immorality of blacks. Had New Orleans' black community taken action, most would have been out of harm's way. But most were too lazy, immoral and trifling to do anything productive for themselves. All Americans must tell blacks this truth. It was blacks' moral poverty - not their material poverty - that cost them dearly in New Orleans".

The hypocritical Michael Moore: ""Michael Moore claims he grew up poor in urban, blue-collar, largely black Flint, Michigan," Mr. Schweizer notes. "Actually, he grew up nearby in the largely white, middle-class town of Davison." The author reveals that Mr. Moore's dad was not "just another working stiff," as Mr. Moore insists; rather, he put his four children through private schools, "played golf every afternoon at a private club, and retired comfortably at the age of 56." And get this, the rotund filmmaker and defender of the little guy once owned shares of Halliburton Co. that the Internal Revenue Service says he sold for a 15 percent profit, gobbling up next some shares of McDonald's Corp. If the author sounds familiar, his other books include "The Bushes: Portrait of a Dynasty" and "Reagan's War: The Epic Story of His Forty-Year Struggle and Final Triumph over Communism," which was made into an award-winning documentary in 2004 - not by Mr. Moore, obviously." [Sourced from a new book: "Do As I Say (Not As I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy" by Peter Schweizer]

Reforming FEMA: "It was probably not helpful that both Michael Brown, the head of FEMA when Katrina struck, and Michael Chertoff, his boss at the Department of Homeland Security, are lawyers. The pernicious impact lawyers can have in a crisis is compounded by bureaucracy. Bureaucracies typically move at a torpid pace, and insist on following the rules even when the rules make no sense. So firemen were prevented from rescuing Katrina victims until they had received a lecture on sexual harassment policy. The more layers of bureaucrats through which a decision must pass, the slower the response. Yet Washington's response to any crisis is to create larger bureaucracies.... The only bureaucracy which moves rapidly in a crisis is the military. I think it would be a mistake to make the military a "first responder" in natural disasters, but FEMA should be reorganized along military lines. And the head of FEMA should always be either a National Guard general or a Coast Guard admiral. There are some jobs which require adult supervision. Too many of these are held by political hacks".

Leftist privacy hypocrisy: "Protecting privacy only seems to matter to liberals when it comes to 14-year-old girls seeking abortions behind their parents' backs, illegal aliens seeking sanctuary from the police, and registered sex offenders objecting to community registration requirements. Needless to say, if it had been Republicans involved in this outrageous breach of privacy and the target had been a liberal minority politician, it would be front-page news".

I am pleased to see that Majority Rights has passed its one millionth hit. That is pretty good going for a blog that is only one year old and doesn't even have a blogroll. I regularly disagree with my fellow-bloggers there but it is always a lively and intelligent debate.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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

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TAX

Restoring freedom at home "Governments in the U.S. take approximately 40 percent of the country's total income in taxes. In other words, nearly half of all the income generated each year is sent to governments to spend. How free are you when governments take half of your income? Serfs in the 16th and 17th centuries typically owed their feudal lords only a quarter of their crops and livestock, and often much less. Our forefathers fought a war for independence over tax levels that were far lower than those we now pay without complaint."

Costs of the federal tax system : "In 2005, Americans will pay about $2.1 trillion in combined federal taxes. However, the amount of taxes paid does not reflect the total cost to taxpayers -- taxpayers also bear compliance and efficiency costs, according to a new study by the Government Accountability Office. Combining the lowest available compliance estimates for the personal and corporate income tax yields a total of $107 billion (roughly 1 percent of GDP) per year. The GAO says estimating efficiency costs are very challenging because the tax system has extensive and diverse effects on behavior."

Tax reform timidity : "The president's tax reform panel's report is due at the end of this month, but don't hold your breath if you were looking for the reform that is really needed. Preliminary signs are the panel will recommend relatively modest (but several desirable) changes to the federal tax system. For decades the present income tax system, with its tens of thousands of rules and regulations, has been widely recognized as so complex no one human, no matter how talented, can understand it. The present system puts even those who fully intend to comply with the code at risk of being convicted as tax felons because it is impossible to know with certainty when one is or is not in compliance (even federal tax courts rulings sometimes rule contradict other federal tax courts). The short, but correct, word for such a system is tyranny. It is also extraordinarily expensive to administer, both by the government and the private sector."

Tax reform panels says: Cut mortgage deduction: "The real estate lobby is already screaming. Representatives from California and other real-estate bubble states are voicing opposition, saying that their states would bear most of the shifted burden. Brokers and others in the real estate industry say this would hurt their business. What those in the real estate pressure group are not saying is that the tax breaks for real estate, such as the deduction for mortgage interest and property taxes, is what drove real estate prices up in the first place. To the extent they are beneficial, government's goods and services such as highways, streets, parks, schooling, security, welfare aid, and farm subsidies, all drive up rentals and the price of land, since these are paid for mostly from taxes on wages. The big landowners are now screaming because government will reduce their subsidy."

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ELSEWHERE

A black professor calls for the extermination of all whites and we hear nothing about it from the mainstream media. How odd! They're too busy re-running pictures of terrorists being humiliated at Abu Ghraib, I guess. And two little girls who expressed WHITE nationalist sentiments got blanket coverage, of course.

Rafe Champion notes some good sense from one Australian black leader: "Noel Pearson delivered an inspiring address in Sydney at a CIS symposium this evening. He used the image of a staircase of opportunity to signal the need for something more substantial to assist outback Aborigines than the "ladder of opportunity" that has been advocated for suburban battlers. The foundation of the ladder consists of healthy social norms, mores or morals. He described this as a thoroughly conservative approach in a non-derogatory sense and he noted that people in the mainstream of society where the mores are essentially healthy need to realise what life can turn into when the moral framework has been seriously eroded by the wrong mix of incentives and payments."

The Adam Smith blog has an amusing post on why Homer Simpson is a far better influence than either Karl Marx or Noam Chomsky. I have previously made a similar point myself.

Wonders will never cease: "A Saudi columnist says the violent jihad movement of Islam is similar to, or even worse than, Nazism, and that for the West not to oppose it will lead to consequences worse than Nazi Germany."

Why am I not surprised? "A Senate report is criticizing nonprofit groups that employ people with disabilities for handing out excessive salaries and benefits to their top executives, among them the chief executive officer of Roseville-based PRIDE Industries Inc. Michael Ziegler, a 60-year-old businessman who has helped turn PRIDE into the nation's largest employer of people with disabilities, received $594,000 in salary and bonuses, according to the company's 2002 IRS filings. Ziegler and members of PRIDE's board defended the pay Monday, saying it includes bonuses for two different years."

Why "liberal elites" can't sink America: "Jonathan Last has written a fascinating piece in The Weekly Standard titled 'Rule America?' where he suggests that there are ominous parallels between the United States of today and a sinking, subdued Great Britain of the 1930's, dragged down by the hostility of the liberal elites of the time. In fact, go ahead and read it yourself! Go on! Do it right now, at www.weeklystandard.com. ... And that, ladies and gentlemen, is one reason why our own liberal elites will never succeed in bringing America down. What am I talking about? Why, how easy it was for you to read that article, by merely clicking a button! The Internet is going to save America ... or, I should say, the New Media will, by breaking the liberal elite's media monopoly."

Russia: Hail the good revolution: "It wasn't the Bolsheviks that swept away the Czar in a heroic seizure of power; they came to power instead in a squalid little coup that stabbed in the back Russia's first chance at real freedom. Remember all those stories and images of people rampaging across Palace Square and storming the Winter Palace? That wasn't the Bolshevik hordes storming the citadel of Czarist oppression -- that is a lie. There were no hordes; there was no storming of the Palace -- not by the Bolsheviks anyway; and the Czarist oppression had already been swept away some months before in the 'Good Revolution' of February. The Bolsheviks didn't sweep away oppression; they brought it back."

There is a good new site called Eye on the U.N. with daily updates on the shenanigans there.

The latest Carnival of the Vanities is now up with lots to read.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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

Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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

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ISRAEL, JEWS, IMMIGRATION

The heading above draws attention to some of the most emotive issues in today's world but I have never been one to run from controversy and I am not going to start now. I just feel sorry for the Jewish people that the mere mention of their name is an "issue". I am myself a great supporter of Israel. The Israelis have bent over backwards to be fair to the other inhabitants of their ancient land and got only mass-murder of their people as a response. So I am delighted to note that our present Australian conservative government is also a resolute friend of Israel. A small excerpt:

"The Howard-Downer duumvirate in Australian foreign policy has changed our position on the Middle East at the UN in a way that is wholly remarkable, not only independent but positively brave, utterly politically incorrect and undoubtedly right in principle; and, amazingly, is meeting with success. Australia has always been a strong friend of Israel... the UN has established a vast bureaucracy dedicated to blackening Israel's name....

Most nations that Australians would regard as like-minded, such as the west Europeans, the Canadians and some others, traditionally find this all too hard to deal with and seek a coward's solace in abstaining from most anti-Israel resolutions and activities. Until about two years ago, that was Australia's way as well. But then came the wave of terror attacks on Israel, Israel's fence and the absurd overreaction to it. Alexander Downer and John Howard decided enough was enough.... it wasn't going to go along with the usual Israel bashing. In truth it was a proud moment in Australian foreign policy and certainly one of the deepest independence....

This vote was not a one-off. It has become the pattern of our voting on Israel-related issues. Canberra has attempted to use its influence with Pacific Island nations, and even in Southeast Asia, to try to produce a change. And, get this, it is working. Canada has joined Australia on some critical resolutions and the attitude towards Israel at the UN has begun to change noticeably."

And I again want to draw attention to Isi Leibler's article which shows, quite appallingly, that in Britain the Leftist intelligentsia are a greater source of antisemitism even than the Muslims. Thank goodness that their official leader, Tony Blair, is a decent man. If his name had been Adolf .....

Hooray! The good sense and moderation of ordinary British people has won the day again. There was an official move to ban members of Britain's anti-immigration party (the BNP) from being employed as firemen (firepersons?) in Dorset but the Dorset Fire Authority Committee rejected the move:

"One member of the committee stated: 'I think it is totally inappropriate to single out one political party in this way! The fact of the matter is, if any member or firefighter acts in an improper way, he will be dismissed." "And I don't see why we should single out this particular party. It is not proscribed, it stands in general elections, and I think it is totally wrong!" "If we were going to do it, we'd have done it with the Communist Party that had strong membership of the fire brigade union 20 years ago!" "We didn't do it then and I don't see why we should do this now!" The motion to reject the proposal was seconded, and a unanimous vote rejected the motion to ban BNP members from the Dorset Fire service."

And in my view it is the sense of moderation and fairness displayed above that has made Britain Great and which makes me proud of my British origins, remote though they now are. "First they came for the BNP ...." and in Britain people DID speak up. And I myself have spoken up in the most practical way that I know.

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ELSEWHERE

An email from Sean Gabb: "The Libertarian Alliance Conference is still open for bookings. This conference will take place on the 19th and 20th November 2005 at the National Liberal Club in London. You can book on-line either the whole conference (British Pounds 85.00 /$150 US/124 Euros) or for the banquet only on the evening of Saturday the 19th November (British Pounds 35.00/$65 US/55 Euros). You can check out who are the speakers for this conference - I am one! - or book on-line by going here. I do not wish to be gloomy, but this may be the last main public occasion for Dr Chris R. Tame Director of the Libertarian Alliance. As you may know, Chris was diagnosed last summer with advanced cancer of the bones. He regards this conference as his last organisational achievement"

Good article from Melanie Phillips. Excerpt: "I am currently in Australia, where I dropped in for the weekend (as one does) to attend a conference discussing the phenomenon of judicial activism. The meeting, which brought together lawyers, judges and other interested parties from Australia, the US and Britain, brought out in a particularly fascinating way the deep divisions between lawyers – particularly in the US Supreme Court and the Australian High Court – over judicial activism. In one camp were the judicial activists themselves, who bridled at the very suggestion that they were anything of the kind and then proceeded by everything they said to demonstrate conclusively that they were; and in the other camp were their legal and judicial colleagues who were aghast at the damage the activists were doing to the integrity of the law and the place of the judiciary in western society as the arbiters of dispassionate and objective justice".

I mentioned yesterday the Economic Freedom of the World 2005 Annual Report. Readers wishing to take a closer look at it can find the whole thing here

There is a rather satisfying post just up on Strange Justice

A little while back, I put up a post about Melanesians (and the people of New Guinea in particular) that speculated on why Melanesians seem pretty bright despite their having been in the Stone Age within living memory. A reader has emailed me some interesting observations on the factors which may have affected their evolution and the evolution of civilization in general. I have posted the email here

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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

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SOME ECONOMICS

Pumping gas prices: "Price controls have been around as long as prices. And price controls have had disastrous effects for just as long. They discourage production and encourage waste, creating shortages. They also penalize emergency preparedness -- stockpiling, for instance. But counterproductive effects have never deterred demagogic politicians seeking votes. Advocates of price controls apparently believe that the oil companies are artificially jacking up prices. It's a convenient theory, but it makes no sense. After all, if ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell could simply conspire to push up prices, they would have done so last year. And the year before. And the year before that. In fact, Americans have been spoiled over the last two decades. Adjusted for inflation, gas prices have been historically low. Even today prices remain lower than in Europe."

Poor Africans made REALLY poor by socialist regulations: "Niamey, Niger -- In countries like this, children end up being killed not only by malaria and measles, but also by an insistence on the six-week paid vacation. This land of mud huts and malnourished babies is the very least developed country on the planet, but local regulations stipulate that companies must give all employees six weeks and two days of paid vacation a year. Not surprisingly, there are almost no employers in Niger... ...The minimum wage is set at $35 a month in Niger, higher than the local market level. Employees are allowed to work no more than nine hours a day, weekend work is basically prohibited, and women are not allowed to work evenings at all. Layoffs are usually not allowed. Perhaps those rules (typically inherited from European countries during colonial days) sound as if they protect workers. But the upshot is that companies don't come to Niger and don't hire anyone they don't want on the payroll forever. So almost all people toil in the informal labor sector where there are no protections whatsoever." (Cafe Hayek picks up on much the same points).

The Economic Freedom of the World, 2005 Annual Report has just been published by Canada's Fraser Institute... The report's conclusions include the following: "Countries with more economic freedom have substantially higher per-capita incomes and higher growth rates." These findings show economic freedom is not just desirable from some philosophical viewpoint but is a necessary and absolute good. Countries that move from less economic freedom to more raise their citizens' well-being much faster than the more restrictive regimes. "Life expectancy is over 25 years longer in countries with the most economic freedom than it is those with the least." Those who argue they support socialism or the "social market economy" because it is more humane ignore the fact that people in most free market economies live longer and healthier lives than those in most of the very regulated economic systems.... Economic freedom is reduced by high taxes and regulation; failure to secure proper rights; restricting domestic and international trade; unnecessarily costly regulation of credit, labor and business; and denying access to sound money. Almost all poor countries are poor because their political leaders have restricted economic freedoms. The next time we see a political leader on global TV blaming others for his people's plight and demanding aid, we should insist a condition of aid would be removing restrictions of economic freedom".

EU boss goes for globalization: "Europe will become “nothing” if it fails to meet the challenge of globalisation and succumbs instead to the demands for protectionism and xenophobia that are sweeping the Continent, José Manuel Barroso, the President of the European Commission, has said. In terms that will be seen as strong backing for the British stance and condemnation of French protectionist policies, Senhor Barroso called on all “civilised and rational” people to fight the kind of populism that is opposed to free markets and to embrace globalisation rather than turn Europe into a fortress".

Nothing succeeds like success: Bryan Caplan explains why poor countries generally stay poor and why rich countries tend to get richer. In summary, economic rationality is only persuasive once it has already been shown to work.

There is a very sad story here about what 70 years of communism has done to a nation that once dominated the world -- Mongolia. Incentive and motivation seem to have been almost wiped out.

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ELSEWHERE

I occasionally link to the writings of far-Left San Francisco columnist Mark Morford. His rantings are so extreme, so vituperative and so ignorant (in all senses of that word) that they are usually far more amusing than anything else. His recent attack on the Duggar family however is utterly reprehensible. Somebody should fund the Duggars to sue the pants off him for claiming that they are psychologically disturbed because they have a large family. Though I am sure that the Duggars feel too full of blessings to be bothered by the screechings of Morford. One commenter referred to Morford as "heterosexually challenged" and that did rather make things fall into place for me. There is a pervasive bitchiness and egotism among some (but not all) homosexuals which outdoes the worst of female bitchiness and egotism (and women have been very kind to me in my life so I am again not speaking of ALL women). And I think it is that extreme egotism and bitchiness that we see in Morford. And I am sure that my valued homosexual readers will recognize the phenomenon of which I speak. By the way, I always use the objective term "homosexual" rather than "gay" as I see no reason why I should make any judgment about what the characteristic mood of homosexuals is.

Good to hear that there were in the end proper celebrations in Britain of Nelson's great victory at Trafalgar, despite British government fear of "offending the French": "The Queen lit a beacon beside the flagship on which Admiral Horatio Nelson died leading Britain to victory at the Battle of Trafalgar 200 years ago, as Nelson mania gripped the country.... First Sea Lord Sir Alan West said Britain was abuzz with Trafalgar Day celebrations. Amid a year characterised by Nelson mania, some 6000 events were taking place this weekend to mark the historic fight. "I was amazed how it has gripped the spirit of Britain across the country. It's almost a Nelson fever going on," he said". (My own tribute to Nelson is here)

I recently put up a post on Leftists as Elitists that looked at one long sneer at Australia and Australians by a noted Australian playwright. Andrew Bolt has just sneered back -- to excellent effect.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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

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TWO MORE POSTERS THAT SHOW HOW LEFTIST FASCISM WAS

And this lot don't even need translating!

I guess most readers here will be aware that Britain too had a vigorous Fascist movement during the Hitler era. And the leader of the British Union of Fascists -- Sir Oswald Mosley -- was anything but a nonentity. The King even came to his wedding! And Mosley originally left the British Labour party (in 1930) because it was not socialist enough! As Mosley himself said in 1968: "I am not, and never have been, a man of the right. My position was on the Left and is now in the centre of politics"

Anyway, a picture is worth a thousand words so below are two of Mosley's posters from the 1930s. The first has the familiar "peace" motif that Leftists always use and the second will sound very familiar to Americans today. American Leftists are always claiming that it is the children of the poor who are dying in the American army in Iraq. Mosley said much the same in his time about military service in the British army.





If the pictures fail to come down, there are backup copies here and here

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TWO INTERESTING BOOK REVIEWS

There is a new book out which summarizes the long-known facts about radiation hormesis. Such facts will NEVER be mentioned in the MSM so we need books like this. It is called UNDEREXPOSED: What If Radiation Is Actually Good for You?. Some of the facts that the book mentions: Japanese survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki blasts are outliving (and healthier than) their unexposed peers; nuclear workers in power plants, shipyards, and weapons factories have not only less cancer, but a lower death rate from other diseases; populations in areas with high background-radiation have less cancer than those in areas with low background-radiation..... And there's much more.

Howard Schwartz has a review of the book Memory as a Moral Decision by Steven P. Feldman. Excerpt: "Feldman is conservative in the most unadulterated sense: he believes there is value in the past and in following the traditions that represent it within the present. These traditions contain within themselves the wisdom that previous generations gained through experience. They bring with them the reasons why we are who we are and in this way tie us into the historical and moral community of which we are a part. To deny the value of tradition is to deny everything that goes into our identity. Much of what we know, we know in a way that we cannot say. It is "tacit knowledge.""

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ELSEWHERE

British Left the chief antisemites today: "Parallel with this over the past few years, anti-Semitism, which had been in remission for 40 years, has dramatically revived. Violent acts against Jews are soaring, with 532 incidents recorded last year - a 42% increase from 2003. In many respects Jews are now regarded as pariahs, like their antecedents in the 1930s. While many Anglo-Jews insist that anti-Semitism is primarily a product of Muslim immigrants, the reality - as recently confirmed in a London police study - is that the core of anti-Semitism in England emanates from indigenous Britons. They are the ones demonizing Israel in the media. They shamelessly create Nazi-style caricatures like the one published by the Independent newspaper which portrayed Ariel Sharon as an ogre physically devouring Palestinian children. That obscene cartoon was awarded first prize as the best political cartoon of the year. It is "white" British academics, not Muslim immigrants, who promote anti-Israeli boycotts and divestment campaigns. And, needless to say, the BBC which has evolved into one of the greatest global agents demonizing Israel is not run by Muslims... London Mayor Ken Livingstone, who has now assumed the role of a 21st-century Oswald Mosley, continues his anti-Israel and anti-Jewish outbursts unabated. But there are no protests outside the mayor's office".

Sin is not cost effective: "Why do some countries develop economically, while others stagnate? Both the World Bank Institute and economist Alvaro Vargas Llosa point to the problem of corruption as one of the major culprits. They say that the most important 'natural resources' for economic development are not raw materials like oil or coal, but moral qualities like the even-handed enforcement of law, and the transparency of government. The World Bank Institute reports that in poor places like India, people pay bribes when their children are born, when they collect loved ones' bodies from mortuaries, and for everything in between: garbage collection, clean water, medicines, admission to public schools and even police protection."

The constitutional bar on an established church in the USA is routinely interpreted by Leftists to mandate the banishment of anything religious from any government-funded premises. This article gives you the history that you need in order to understand what the founders were really referring to.

As I expected, my recent post on my scripture blog about Romans 13:1-7 produced a bit of correspondence. I have just posted there one of the more interesting emails -- giving some Old Testament background to the text. The key passage under discussion is of course: "Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God"?

David Boxenhorn also emailed a comment that the Jewish view of government is "dina d'malkhuta dina" - "the law of the land is the law", which means that Jews have to follow civil law unless it conflicts with halakha [Jewish religious law]. He also notes a Talmudic quotation: Rabbi Chanina, an assistant of the high priest said: Pray for the welfare of the government, since but for fear of it men would swallow each other alive.

I have just heard from Madsen Pirie that the Adam Smith blog is going to feature my GREENIE WATCH blog on their site some time today. I quite often "steal" a post from them for GREENIE WATCH or EDUCATION WATCH so I am very pleased by their kind thoughts.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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

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AUSTRALIANS ONLY HAVE FIVE COMMANDMENTS

(We are great abbreviators). The quiz I put up recently about knowledge of Australian slang seems to have been very popular so I thought I might re-post the observations below:

From its foundation in 1788, Australia has always been a traditionally unholy place with a very low rate of churchgoing. Americans trace their founding fathers to religious zealots but Australians trace their foundations to convicts. And other major population elements in the white settlement of Australia -- such as goldrush "diggers" and Irish rebels -- did little to alter the culture originating from our convict origins. Only about 3% of modern-day Australians have convict ancestors (I am one of the 3%) but the early days formed a culture that has been passed on to others as they arrived -- just as only a small minority of Americans now have primarily English ancestry but English is nonethless the language of America. And Australia's only national hero to this day is Ned Kelly -- an Irish highway robber who eventually was hanged for his undoubted crimes.

So how come Australia is a civil, prosperous and pleasant place to live? It is because Australians DO have a widely agreed-on moral code -- but it is not a Christian one. It originates from the values of the English working class of yesteryear and can perhaps be conveniently summed up (in its original Australian slang) as the following five "Commandments":

* Thou shalt not dob in thy mates
* Thou shalt not bung on an act.
* Thou shalt not be a tall poppy
* Thou shalt give everyone a fair go
* Thou shalt be fair dinkum

Translating these into standard English yields APPROXIMATELY the following:

* You must not incriminate your friends to the boss, the police or anyone else. Loyalty to your associates is all-important.
* You must not be ostentatious or pretend to be what you are not.
* You must treat others as your equals. If you are seen as being better than others in anything but sport you will be made to suffer for it.
* You must be fair and permissive in your treatment of others.
* You must not be insincere or dishonest.

From Hammurabi onwards, most moral codes have had much in common and the Australian and Christian moral codes do also have things in common but the Australian moral code is not preached in churches. It is simply traditional and widely heartfelt.

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ELSEWHERE

I have regarded Andrew Sullivan as contemptible since 2002 but nothing I say of course has any impact on as big a fish in blogging and journalism as Sullivan is. I am therefore pleased that the widely-read Taranto has a similar view of Sullivan, with a particularly nice innuendo at the end of his latest post. Taranto has of course been having fun with Sullivan for some time (e.g. here) -- often by quoting from earlier Sullivan posts that contradict Sullivan's present stance. Keith Burgess-Jackson also thinks that Sullivan argues disreputably.

California: Dems claim Bush tax plan targeted at them: "A tax reform proposal agreed upon Tuesday by President Bush's advisory panel would eliminate the federal deduction for state and local taxes and sharply limit the tax break for home mortgage interest. That's leading some Democrats in California and New York to assail it as an attack on the blue states -- the ones that voted Democratic in the 2004 presidential election -- which tend to have higher taxes and housing costs. 'The Bush panel's recommendations are a double-barreled blast aimed squarely at California and the middle class,' state Treasurer Phil Angelides said in a press release. 'These recommendations are good for Texas, but bad for California.'"

How long could your state run on ANWR oil? "Recent disruptions in oil production caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, coupled with America's increasing dependence on foreign oil, have once again exposed the frailty of our nation's energy supply. And as Americans continue to face sticker shock at the pump and quiver in anticipation of expensive home heating bills this winter, the need for increased domestic production has reached the forefront of the American psyche."

UK: Microsoft warns of ID card security risk: "Microsoft has warned the UK government's national ID card plans pose a huge security risk that could actually increase the likelihood of confidential personal information falling into the hands of hackers and criminals. A top security and identity management expert at Microsoft said the current technology proposals are flawed and criticised other IT suppliers for failing to speak out publicly about their concerns for fear of damaging any future bids for a piece of the lucrative ID cards contract."

Locking up more criminals for longer works: "The nation's murder rate declined last year for the first time in four years, dropping to the lowest level in 40 years. Experts said local rather than national trends were mostly responsible. The rates for all seven major crimes were down and the overall violent crime rate reached a 30-year low, according to the FBI's annual compilation of crimes reported to the police. There were 391 fewer murders nationwide in 2004 than the year before. The total of 16,137 worked out to 5.5 murders for every 100,000 people."

I have just put up a new post on my Leftists as Elitists blog that looks at one long sneer at Australia and Australians from a noted Australian playwright. He actually manages to make HIMSELF look ridiculous in the process.

Les Bates has a pungent reply to a Leftist assertion that "liberals and progressives are not communists or socialists".

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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

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Brookes News Update

US economy, trade deficit and monetary policy: Because of the sheer size of its economy, a monetary-induced deficit by the United States distorts the pattern of international trade as well as disarranging internal investment
Labour market reform attacked by Paul Keating: Keating's attack on labour market reform at least served the purpose of demonstrating just how bad the critics' so-called economic thinking is
Labour market reform and productivity: Liberal Party stuffs it up again: When it comes to productivity and labour market reform the Liberal Government and its advisers just cannot get it right
Liberal Party treats members with contempt: I am not surprised that Liberal Party membership is shrinking. What can one expect when it treats ordinary members with contempt
Does consumer confidence raise economic activity?: The view that by means of opinion surveys one can ascertain the future direction of an economy is somewhat questionable
Australian economy: Inflation and jobs: Critics of 'fight inflation first' policies are wrong. The unemployment they attack is the cost of having inflation
Deflation and economic confusion: Deflation is a greatly misunderstood phenomenon. In fact, I am inclined to go so far as to suggest that very few Australians actually know what it means

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ELSEWHERE

I have just put up on my scripture blog a treatment of the important passage in Romans 13:1-7. The passage is one which causes many Christians to ask: "Should Christians obey the government, no matter what sort of government it may be?" What are we to make of: "Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God"?

I have just put up here a counterblast to a Leftist parallel between resistance to Hitler and resisting the allied intervention in Iraq.

I have just put up here a short post from one of my regular readers about the infantilization of modern American culture. I don't entirely agree with him but he has some good points. The infantile nature of the modern American Left is something that Evan Sayet often writes about.

I've always said Chomsky is just an entertainer for Leftists: "One of the most persistent themes in Chomsky's work has been class warfare. He has frequently lashed out against the "massive use of tax havens to shift the burden to the general population and away from the rich" and criticized the concentration of wealth in "trusts" by the wealthiest one percent. The American tax code is rigged with "complicated devices for ensuring that the poor -- like eighty percent of the population -- pay off the rich." But trusts can't be all bad. After all, Chomsky, with a net worth north of $2,000,000, decided to create one for himself. A few years back he went to Boston's venerable white-shoe law firm, Palmer and Dodge, and with the help of a tax attorney specializing in "income-tax planning" set up an irrevocable trust to protect his assets from Uncle Sam. He named his tax attorney (every socialist radical needs one!) and a daughter as trustees. To the Diane Chomsky Irrevocable Trust (named for another daughter) he has assigned the copyright of several of his books, including multiple international editions".

Pathetic: "The French campaign against the global tide of American entertainment will take a big stride forward today when almost every nation backs the first world convention on protecting culture. Most of the 191 members of Unesco, the United Nations' cultural agency, are expected to vote for a "convention on cultural diversity", which enshrines on a global level France's longstanding policy of subsidising its arts and imposing quotas on American films and music. The vote will be a big defeat for the United States, which held out against the plan with partial backing from Israel, Australia and Japan".

Threat to jobs averted: "Senate proposals to raise the minimum wage were rejected Wednesday, making it unlikely that the lowest allowable wage, $5.15 an hour since 1997, will rise in the foreseeable future. A labor-backed measure by Sen. Edward Kennedy would have raised the minimum to $6.25 over an 18-month period. A Republican counterproposal would have combined the same $1.10 increase with various breaks and exemptions for small businesses."

Fred Reed on "reparations": "I suggest that blacks ought to be grateful that their faster ancestors caught their slower ancestors -- which is exactly what happened -- and sold them to the slavers. American blacks would otherwise be somewhere on the Slave Coast of Africa, barefoot, illiterate, blankly ignorant, wearing loincloths, living in stick huts that would give Eeyore the willies, and shuddering with malaria. That's what Africa is: primitive, hopeless, godawful. I've been in Masai hutments, spent time in the outback of Cuando Cubango. It's not Stone Age. It's more like Stick Age. No country in Africa today comes close, or ever has, to the culture of Fifth Century Athens, 2500 years ago. Yes, slavery was brutal and ugly. It was, however, hard on the slaves, not on today's blacks. Slavery brought our blacks into contact with a vastly superior civilization from which they benefit enormously, and without the slightest gratitude. Everything blacks enjoy in this country today -- air-conditioning, writing, automobiles, television, medicine, welfare, medicine, everything -- they enjoy only because they were brought here. Further, they have contributed almost nothing to the industrial and technological flowering that has provided the benefits they enjoy."

Taxes and economic growth: "New York Times editorial board member Teresa Tritch believes our tax system should serve one purpose and one purpose only -- to soak the rich. Any reduction in tax rates, especially on saving and investment, has nothing to do with raising growth, but is nothing but a give-away to the ultra-wealthy. The reality is that the wealthy pay almost all of the federal income tax and there is clear and compelling evidence that our tax system - especially its misguided redistributive elements -- impose a heavy cost in terms of growth that is ultimately paid by the non-wealthy in the form of lower productivity and, hence, lower wages and incomes ..."

This site keeps track of the unending atrocities committed in the name of "the religion of peace".

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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

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NOT ALL BLACKS ARE EQUAL

I was just leaving Wesley Hospital (A top Brisbane private hospital) yesterday after one of my regular encounters with the surgeon's knife (for skin cancer) when I saw a very recognizable figure walk in -- a member of the Most Distinguished Order of St Michael and St George (CMG). He seemed rather surprised when I greeted him but he shook my hand anyway. I remember writing a congratulatory letter to him about something or other in the 1980s (though I forget what it was about now) so it was a pleasure to shake his hand. And I think it is the only time I have shaken hands with a Prime Minister anyway. Paias Wingti had a couple of terms in the 1980s and 1990s as Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea. He is of course a Melanesian ("black islander"). I grew up with Melanesians around the place and rather like them (as I have noted previously) -- which I would not say of certain other dark-skinned populations. Note however that I say "populations". There are good and bad individuals in all populations.

That got me thinking about Melanesian IQ. Lynn & Vanhanen give the mean IQ for Papua and New Guinea as 84 and at first glance that seems well justified. Melanesians have only recently emerged from the stone age. But it doesn't gell with my experience of them. I have met lots of Africans (both in Africa and in the USA) and I have met lots of Australian Aborigines and I have no doubts whatever about the accuracy of the mean IQ quoted for both those groups. But Melanesians seem in my experience of them to be a lot brighter than that. And with the difficulty of measuring ANYTHING cross-culturally (see e.g. here), I think I am entitled to reserve judgment on the matter.

But if Melanesians are reasonably bright, how come they were in the stone age within living memory? Even a stopped clock is right twice a day and I think this is one case where one of Marx's ideas was right (though Engels tried to talk him out of it). Marx believed in geographical determinism -- a common 19th century idea from which we get the phrase "blood and soil" as a description of what is important to people. Mostly the idea is rubbish but I think it explains New Guinea. New Guinea is very large but it is also extraordinarily mountainous. It is probably the earth's most wrinkled bit of geography. And the people of course live in the many small valleys and are very effectively cut off from one-another by the surrounding mountains -- which is why every valley has its own language. So I think it was simply the isolation of the New Guineans that kept them in the stone age. There was little communication with outsiders and hence no diffusion of ideas. And that of course contrasts greatly with the relative ease of communication across the great Eurasian landmass.

And for some reason New Guinea has very little fauna to hunt. Birds and tree kangaroos are about it (Yes. Some kangaroos do live in trees). So living in those isolated valleys was pretty challenging and meant -- as in Northern Europe -- that you could only survive by planning ahead -- which the New Guneans did by planting their "gardens" and raising pigs. Basically, if your garden did not feed you, you starved. And gardens are not equally productive all the year round so root crops such as cassava had to be grown that could be kept aside for when there was nothing else to eat. So that's my contribution to the theoretical biology of Melanesians anyway. For very different reasons, I think they had pressures on their mental development that were similar to the pressures that produced modern Europeans.

I might mention that the Melanesian population in mainland Australia is small but they generally fit in well, are peacable and are well-liked. I mentioned my own positive view of Melanesians to the lady in my life -- who was for a time a nurse on Thursday Island -- the most populous bit of Melanesia that is still part of Australia -- and her response was simply: "They're lovely". And she is certainly in a position to know.

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ELSEWHERE

Keith Burgess Jackson has just taken another swing at that mini-Chomsky, Brian Leiter. Leiter really is execrable. If you want to know what elitist hate is like, read Leiter. Wicked Thoughts has just put up a reminder of his past campaigns against Leiter too.

Capitalizing on capitalist peace: "[W]e are living in remarkably peaceable times. For six decades, developed nations have not fought each other. ... The present peace is unusual. Historically, powerful nations are the most war prone. The conventional wisdom is that democracy fosters peace but this claim fails scrutiny. It is based on statistical studies that show democracies typically don't fight other democracies. Yet, the same studies show that democratic nations go to war about as much as other nations overall. And more recent research makes clear that only the affluent democracies are less likely to fight each other. Poor democracies behave much like non-democracies when it comes to war and lesser forms of conflict. A more powerful explanation is emerging from newer, and older, empirical research -- the 'capitalist peace.'"

It's all about Israel, of course: "Suspected Muslim militants killed a Buddhist monk and five other people in Thailand's restive Muslim south, police said on Sunday, in separatist violence that has claimed more than 900 lives. The militants attacked a Buddhist temple in the southern Pattani province late on Saturday, slit the 76-year-old monk's throat, killed two teenage boys and set fire to the temple, a police report obtained by Reuters said".

Good to hear: "A new resolution introduced in the U.S. Senate offers political backing to the Bush administration by slamming a United Nations effort to exert more influence over the Internet. Sen. Norm Coleman, a Republican from Minnesota, said his nonbinding resolution would protect the Internet from a takeover by the United Nations that's scheduled to be discussed at a summit in Tunisia next month. "The Internet is likely to face a grave threat" at the summit, Coleman said in a statement on Monday. "If we fail to respond appropriately, we risk the freedom and enterprise fostered by this informational marvel and end up sacrificing access to information, privacy and protection of intellectual property we have all depended on."

Senate approves ANWR drilling: "The Senate Energy Committee voted Wednesday to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil drilling as part of a broad budget bill to fund the federal government. Within weeks, the measure could become law. By attaching the language to the budget bill, Republicans have made it impossible for Democrats to block it with a filibuster. And the House of Representatives has repeatedly voted in favor of opening the refuge to energy development"

Gateway Pundit has a great roundup of the fact and fiction about New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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

Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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

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HOMOSEXUALS: MORE NAIVE PSYCHOLOGICAL "RESEARCH"

Forgive me while I have another laugh at some so-called psychology. This article (titled: "The Gender Belief System, Authoritarianism, Social Dominance Orientation, and Heterosexuals' Attitudes Toward Lesbians and Gay Men" and written by Bernard E. Whitley Jr. & Stefania AEgisdottir) arrives at the most complex conclusions about who does not like homosexuals. Here is the journal Abstract:

"We tested hypotheses drawn from three theoretical perspectives--gender belief system, authoritarianism, and social dominance--concerning heterosexuals' attitudes toward lesbians and gay men. Data from 122 male and 131 female heterosexual college students with mostly White, middle-class backgrounds indicated that constructs postulated by all three perspectives played important roles in predicting attitudes: Gender differences in attitudes toward lesbians and gay men were mediated by social dominance orientation and gender-role beliefs, indicating that gender role beliefs may act as legitimizing myths to justify antigay attitudes. Authoritarianism had both a direct relationship to attitudes toward lesbians and gay men and an indirect relationship mediated by gender-role beliefs".

All three scales (question-sets) that they used, however, have lots of statements in them that are readily identified as conservative. So all that the "research" really showed is that conservatives are a lot more dubious about homosexuality than Leftists are. Big news!

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What a contrast between a modern capitalist economy and a backward Muslim one:

OK: the Pakistan earthquake was stronger but it is still one hell of a contrast. Japanese buildings and infrastructure are of course built to resist earthquakes. That's why they just "shook" instead of falling down

Recent Pakistan earthquake: "New casualty figures from the South Asian earthquake have pushed the death toll to more than 79,000, regional officials said Wednesday. The new numbers come as two strong aftershocks jolted the devastated region, unleashing landslides and setting off another wave of panic among survivors who lost loved ones and homes in the Oct. 8 disaster... Despite brisk sorties of helicopters delivering aid to quake victims, an estimated half-million survivors, many of them in Pakistan's portion of Kashmir, have yet to receive any help since the monster 7.6-magnitude quake leveled entire villages.

Recent Japan earthquake: "A strong earthquake rocked eastern Japan late Wednesday, shaking buildings in Tokyo and nearby areas, but there was no immediate report of injuries or damage. The earthquake, with a preliminary magnitude of 6.5, was centered 24 miles below the sea off the coast of Ibaraki prefecture.... Runways at Tokyo's Narita airport closed temporarily but later reopened, Kyodo News agency said. Bullet train service north of Tokyo also was suspended but quickly resumed"

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ELSEWHERE

Oliver Kamm is in good form -- in such good form that some people have not tumbled to the fact that the Tony Blair "apology" he has put up is a spoof. Kamm is however absolutely right in setting out what Blair SHOULD have said about the old Marxist heckler Walter Wolfgang.

Ya gotta laugh: Some group of fruitcake intellectuals has noted that there has been a lot more peace in the world since the fall of the Soviet Union. And who gets the credit for that? The United Nations! The words that occur to my mind (such as "Ronald Reagan", "globalization" etc) do NOT of course get a mention. What a simple soul I must be!

Greenie barriers to oil exploration knocked over: "In an aggressive push by the Bush administration to open more public land to oil and gas production, the Interior Department has quit conducting environmental reviews and seeking comments from local residents every time drilling companies propose new wells. Field officials have been told to begin looking at issuing permits based on past studies of an entire project, even though some of those assessments may be outdated".

There is a BIG article in New York Magazine about the Harpending & Cochran paper on Jewish intelligence. The Harpending & Cochran work does seem to have opened up some public awareness of the academic data about racial differences in IQ so one hopes that the discussion continues to open up. For the sake of respectability, all the old bromides that pretend to offer alternative explanations for the findings are of course trotted out -- saying that we don't really know what IQ is etc. A hundred years of evidence that there is such a thing as general problem-solving ability and that IQ measures it are conveniently overlooked. But some progress towards getting the truth about IQ differences out is better than none.

Dalrymple wisdom: Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to"

The vampire economy: Italy, Germany, and the US : "What is the link between fascism and socialism? They are stages on a continuum of economic control, one that begins in intervention in the free market, moves toward regimentation and greater rigidity, marches toward socialism as failures increase, and ends in dictatorship. The fascist system, wrote Mises, 'clung first to the same principles of economic policies which all not outright socialist governments have adopted in our day, interventionism. Then later it turned step by step toward the German system of socialism, i.e., all-round state control of economic activities.'"

One Cosmos has an interesting psychoanalytic-style post which concludes that the Islamists NEED us as their enemy.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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THIS SOUNDS GREAT

"Some 750,000 blogs and other user-generated content will soon show up on Yahoo! News search pages, presented right alongside news from mainstream media. But is Yahoo! taking another big step in the blurring of lines between professional media and grassroots journalism? The company is testing a new search tool that includes results from thousands of mainstream media outlets, and a separate results column for blogs, its new My Web social search and pictures posted to the company's Flickr photo service.

"Traditional media don't have the time or resources to cover all stories," says Joff Redfern, a director in Yahoo! Search. "We want to offer an alternative perspective on news outside of what the mainstream media has to offer." In a prepared statement, Neil Budde, general manager of Yahoo! News, says the company wants to fuse professional journalism with so-called citizen journalism to provide a fuller spectrum of content to its members. Still, Yahoo! is clearly sensitive to the dangers of blurring the lines between professional and amateur journalism. Results from 6,500 of Yahoo!'s content partners (mainstream media) will be displayed on the left side of the page. On the right side, clearly demarcated, will be relevant blog-search results. Below that, MyWeb and Flickr results will be listed. "We will make sure there is enough differentiation and demarcate where the [content] is coming from," says Redfern. "Part of the goal here is to learn from consumers and publishers, he added, noting that blogs aren't necessarily cannibalizing mainstream media. "Sometimes this stuff gets positioned as a zero-sum game, but it's not."

How will Yahoo! determine which search results to display in its blogs column? That's a closely guarded secret. Yahoo! is loath to give content providers the tools that might help them game the system for better visibility. The company won't discuss specifics but says that blog-search results are based in part on the popularity of the blogs within MyYahoo, as measured by a computer algorithm. "If we've got more people subscribed to a blog, there is presumably more credibility to its reputation," says Redfern.... Initially, only blogs registered with the MyYahoo RSS directory--there are about 750,000 today--will be searchable. Bloggers will soon be able to apply to Yahoo! Search to add their blog to its index, even if it's outside the MyYahoo universe".

As Michelle Malkin shows at length, even the conservative "Old Media" hate blogs so this will be a bitter pill for them. Michelle also mercilessly exposes the lies of the MSM about the Toledo riots. A vast riot by blacks was reported as being the work of whites! Thank goodness half a million people a week read her.

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