New evil preventing victory in Iraq

Some more wise words below from Dennis Prager

I never thought we could see a new form of evil. After the gas chambers of the Holocaust, the tens of millions murdered in the Gulag, the forced starvation in the Ukraine, the hideous medical experiments on people by the Germans and the Japanese in World War II, the torture chambers in all police states, I had actually believed that no new forms of evil existed. I was wrong.

Of course, for sheer cruelty, one cannot outdo the Nazis; no depiction of hell ever matched the reality of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. But while Islamists and Baathists in Iraq have not devised new forms of torture - there probably are no new ways left - they have devised a new form of evil: murdering, maiming and torturing as many innocents among their own people as possible.

I do not know of an analogous form of evil. When the Allies conquered Nazi Germany, disaffected Nazis did not go around murdering and cutting off the heads of fellow Germans in order to make the Allies leave. Nor did disaffected Japanese blow up Japanese students so as to make the American occupation of Japan untenable.

Here is the latest example of this new form of evil as reported by the Associated Press: "Maj. Gen. Michael Barbero, deputy director for regional operations on the Joint Staff, said . . . the vehicle used in the attack [on Iraqi civilians] was waved through a U.S. military checkpoint because two children were visible in the back seat. He said this was the first reported use of children in a car bombing in Baghdad. 'Children in the back seat lowered suspicion, (so) we let it move through, they parked the vehicle, the adults run out and detonate it with the children in the back,' Barbero told reporters in Washington."

These same "insurgents" routinely blow up children who line up to receive candy from U.S. troops. Likewise, college students are targeted for death, as are men lining up to apply for civilian jobs, men and women attending mosques, physicians in hospitals, and so on. The more innocent the Iraqi, the more likely he or she is to be targeted for murder.

I submit that there was no way to anticipate this. And no one did. This includes all those who predicted a civil war in Iraq between Shiites and Sunnis. I include myself among those who predicted savagery in Iraq. On a number of occasions prior to our invasion of Iraq, I recounted to my radio listeners this chilling story:

As a young man, in 1974, I was riding on a bus traveling from Beirut to Damascus. The man I sat next to was an English-speaking Iraqi whom I asked at one point in our conversation, "Can you describe your nation in a sentence?" "No problem," he immediately answered. "We Iraqis are the most barbaric people in the world." I obviously never forgot that man's words, and therefore anticipated great cruelties in Iraq. But neither I nor anyone who predicted a civil war had so much as a premonition of this unprecedented mass murder of the men, women and children among one's own people as a military tactic to defeat an external enemy.

It is, therefore, unfair to blame the Bush administration for not anticipating such a determined "insurgency." Without the mass murder of fellow Iraqis, there would hardly be any "insurgency." The combination of suicide terrorists and a theology of death has created an unprecedented form of "resistance" to an occupier: "We will murder as many men, women and children as we can until you leave." Nor is this a matter of Sunnis murdering Shiites and vice versa: college students, women shopping at a Baghdad market and hospital workers all belong to both groups. Truck bombs cannot distinguish among tribes or religious affiliations. If America had to fight an insurgency directed solely against us and coalition forces - even including suicide bombers - we would surely have succeeded. No one, right, left or center, could imagine a group of people so evil, so devoid of the most elementary and universal concepts of morality, that they would target their own people, especially the most vulnerable, for murder.

That is why we have not yet prevailed in Iraq. Even without all the mistakes made by the Bush administration - and what political or military leadership has not made many errors in prosecuting a war? - it could not have foreseen this new form of evil we are witnessing in Iraq. That is why we have not won. There are respectable arguments to be made against America's initially going into Iraq. But intellectually honest opponents of the war have to acknowledge that no one could anticipate an "insurgency" that included people leaving children in a car and then blowing them up.

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Fallout fear puts deadline on nuclear sites attack

IRAN is several years away from nuclear capability but any plan for a pre-emptive attack on its nuclear sites may have to be implemented before the end of the year to avoid the danger of serious radiation fallout. Sources cited by The Jerusalem Post say a US or Israeli strike on the Iranian facilities would probably be carried out before Iran had enriched weapons-grade material in sufficient amounts to trigger a nuclear catastrophe if hit. Iran is believed to be attempting to produce a critical mass of enriched uranium before the end of the year. Any attack after that would risk triggering fallout that could kill civilians over large distances and make parts of Iran uninhabitable.

The same consideration figured in the timing of Israel's attack on Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1981. The Israeli cabinet decided then to approve the attack when it learned that a shipment of enriched uranium fuel rods was due to arrive at the new reactor south of Baghdad. An attack on the reactor once it became "live" would release massive radiation, experts had warned. It would turn the bombing into a nuclear attack, despite the use of conventional armaments. Israeli warplanes demolished the Iraqi reactor before the rods could be installed.

In view of the possibility of an early strike against the Iranian facilities, several foreign embassies in Tehran are reportedly updating their emergency evacuation plans, including choosing alternate land routes out of the country. Israeli officials welcomed Sunday's decision by the UN Security Council to impose tougher sanctions on Iran in an effort to persuade Tehran to suspend its uranium enrichment program. The officials said earlier sanctions by the Security Council, though relatively mild, were already having an effect. They said influential voices were being heard in Tehran calling on the Government to avoid escalating the confrontation with the international community....

More here

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Brookes News Update

The US economy: the coming recession and what to look for: Every credit boom ends with a bust. Although it is impossible to predict the precise timing of an impending recession, one can look out for certain danger signals. Let us begin with the fallacy that consumer spending drives economic growth
The Iraq surge: why it's working: Early signs are positive; early indicators say that we're winning. As General Petraeus cautiously concluded, 'We'll be able to evaluate the situation for sure by late summer'
Turning the tide against terrorism and the Democrat Party: In 1973 the Democrats callously cut off all aid to South Vietnam so that it could not defend itself against communist aggression. Today the Democrat Party is trying to do the very same thing to the Iraqi people. Once again the Democrats have revealed their total indifference of the suffering and pain of others. This party is without remorse, pity, integrity and
patriotism
President Bush versus the Democrats' phony attorneys scandal: At the heart of the latest dust-up in Washington is the news that the Bush administration, through Gonzales' Justice Department, fired eight federal prosecutors
US economy: will a housing bust cause a recession?: Terry McCrann of the Herald Sun unwittingly revealed the truly dismal state of economic 'debate' in Australia. According to him inflation is 'the absolute foundation of sustained growth in the economy and of living standards"

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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

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

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 Pages are here or here or here

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IRRELEVANT EXPERTISE: WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU CONSULT A ZOOLOGIST ABOUT STATISTICS

We read:

The British government was advised against publicly criticising a report estimating that 655,000 Iraqis had died due to the war, the BBC has learnt. Iraqi Health Ministry figures put the toll at less than 10% of the total in the survey, published in the Lancet. But the Ministry of Defence's chief scientific adviser said the survey's methods were "close to best practice" and the study design was "robust".

The Lancet medical journal published its peer-reviewed survey last October. It was conducted by the John Hopkins School of Public Health and compared mortality rates before and after the invasion by surveying 47 randomly chosen areas across 16 provinces in Iraq.

Shortly after the publication of the survey in October last year Tony Blair's official spokesperson said the Lancet's figure was not anywhere near accurate. He said the survey had used an extrapolation technique, from a relatively small sample from an area of Iraq that was not representative of the country as a whole.

But a memo by the MoD's Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir Roy Anderson [A zoologist], on 13 October, states: "The study design is robust and employs methods that are regarded as close to "best practice" in this area, given the difficulties of data collection and verification in the present circumstances in Iraq."

To see what statisticians experienced in the research method concerned say, see here and here. I am myself a much published user of that research method and I made the following comments last year:

None of the comments I saw appeared to be by people who are experienced users of cluster sampling -- the method used for the Lancet study. I am a VERY experienced user of cluster sampling -- with many of my academic publications based on it. And the glaring error which rather explains why the study appeared in a medical journal rather than a more statistically sophisticated journal is that there was NO VALIDATION of the survey results. That your survey-takers might just sit down under a tree and "make up" their "interview" results is a routine peril and it is routine to take precautions against it -- usually by going back on a later occasion and checking with the alleged respondents a proportion of all interviews handed in. Just the awareness that a sample of the respondents will be re-interviewed tends to keep the interviewers honest -- though not always so, regrettably. So the results reported in the Lancet study have no credibility at all and must be regarded as garbage.

It is astounding that the authors of the study were so naive. Perhaps they WANTED their interviewers to "fudge" the results -- making clear what the desired results would be, of course.

Another oddity in the Lancet article that suggests something peculiar about the authors is the claim that their interviewers were all DOCTORS -- and not just any doctors but doctors bilingual in Arabic and English. I have never seen the like of that before. Experienced interviewers of some kind were what was needed and that is what is usually used, not doctors. Can we really believe that a whole corps of these rare doctors abandoned their medical duties for so long in order to do something outside their normal expertise? If true it certainly suggests a heavy political committment on the part of the doctors concerned -- exactly what one would NOT want in a study claiming to be objective. To me the whole claim seems like the sort of "gilding the lily" that con-men engage in.

Other critics have noticed other vast implausibilities in the results reported -- the amazingly high (98%) success-rate at getting people to consent to an interview, for instance --- garbage, garbage garbage. And the lie about the death certificates actually shows how bogus the results were.

"Those guys were not even trying to do real research. It was just a propaganda circus. I strongly support Moore's point about the survey's lack of demographic information. That is so unthinkable in survey research that the article would never have been published in an academic journal that knew anything about survey research. The Lancet should stick to medicine.

And as Iraq Body Count note:

"Between January and June 2006, there were 91 violent deaths recorded by the Lancet survey. This would correspond to over 180,000 deaths in the first 6 months of 2006, and an average rate of 1,000 per day. The daily death rate over the same period based on UN reports (which sum Baghdad morgue and Ministry of Health data) is 80 violent deaths per day. Cumulated media reports provide a somewhat lower figure. If the Lancet extrapolation is sound, this would imply a further 920 violent deaths every day (1000 minus 80) which have been recorded by neither officials nor the media. As these are averages, some days would see many more deaths, and others substantially fewer, but in either case, all of them would remain unnoticed."

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ELSEWHERE

Democrat corruption coverup?: "Democrats promised reform and instituted "a moratorium" on all earmarks until the system was cleaned up. Now the appropriations committees are privately accepting pork-barrel requests again. But curiously, the scorekeeper on earmarks, the Library of Congress's Congressional Research Service (CRS)--a publicly funded, nonpartisan federal agency--has suddenly announced it will no longer respond to requests from members of Congress on the size, number or background of earmarks. "They claim it'll be transparent, but they're taking away the very data that lets us know what's really happening," says Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn. "I'm convinced the appropriations committees are flexing their muscles with CRS."

America's coming tax disaster: "Earlier today, I wrote a post discussing the Democrats proposed budget for next year. I briefly mentioned that this proposal is a sham to the American taxpayer. Having now listened throughout the day to their acrobatic attempts to justify it, I wanted to specifically tell you why it is so bad. Here we go... Their budget proposes the largest tax increase in American history - The Democrat's budget calls for a tax increase of every tax bracket, slashes the child tax credit, raises the death tax, and reinstates the marriage penalty. And this is just a sampling, there is more. In all, the Democrat's plan will cost taxpayers over $390 billion in the next 5 years. What is particularly frustrating about this ill-advised action is that the Democrats are blatantly ignoring the economic consequences and fiscal benefits that lower taxes have brought to the treasury the past few years. Revenue has increased in double digits the last two years alone because of the economic expansion encouraged by reduced taxation. This revenue growth has been crucial in reducing the deficit. The Democrats refuse to recognize this, though, and instead they just want to tax us to death. This is a recipe for disaster."

The media don't have a clue: "Noemie Emery has a great column in The Weekly Standard that rips Time magazine for its assessment of the current Administration and conservatism. In "How the Right Went Wrong", the writers at Time seem to have conveniently forgotten how, in a similar analysis done toward the end of the Reagan's Presidency (1987), they unanimously dismissed his legacy; while in the new article, they wax nostalgic about what a great man Reagan was; a beacon of purpose and clarity, a statesman of genuine vision and character, dwarfing the pygmies who have frittered away his inheritance."

No Leftist "liberation" campaign for Zimbabwe?: "This puzzle of the heartless Left came into focus tonight when I watched Abdel Bari Atwan of Al Quds newspaper claim on another BBC show that the problems of Zimbabwe stem solely from the sanctions imposed by Britain and America. America, apparently, was to blame for the Mugabe regime's policy of burning farms and the replacing white farmers with incompetent cronies that has sowed famine and economic catastrophe in a once-fertile land. This is a sorry state of affairs. The same Left that rails against Israel and the United States and organizes marches for the "liberation" of Palestine will not acknowledge the political crisis in Zimbabwe because it would mean siding with America."

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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

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

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 Pages are here or here or here

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WARNING ABOUT VIRUS CHECKER

I recently installed the virus detection system from PC Security Shield. I found it to be crap. It progressively disabled my access to all sorts of sites and applications. The first sign of trouble was when I could no longer access YouTube videos. I put up with that for a few days but when it got to the point that I could no longer create a new document I deleted the whole thing. And, hey presto! Everything is working again. I emailed the firm concerned but received unhelpful form-letters in reply only. They promise a refund to dissatisfied customers but my request for one was met with a crashing silence.

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Islam Expert: Netherlands Tolerates Muslim Excesses

Dutch politicians and media are downplaying excesses of multicultural society and thereby increasing these, in the view of Islam expert Hans Janssen. "The Netherlands should resist, using non-peaceful means", he argues in weekly magazine Opinio.

Jansen, Professor of Modern Islamic Ideology at Utrecht University, characterizes the Dutch as inhabitants of "a peaceful enclave" who have, however, "forgotten that peace sometimes needs to be defended through violence". A peaceful society that wishes to remain existent and stay peaceful "will have to find a way to defend itself through non-peaceful means from people who are not peaceful", as the Arabist writes. "It will be hard to explaining this convincingly to all those respectable and friendly people in the (Christian coalition parties) CDA and ChristenUnie. And to the rest."

As Jansen sees it, the Netherlands is too indulgent to violence of fundamentalist Muslims. But he also suggests that moderate Muslims, too, strive after an Islamic society in the Netherlands. They intentionally make use of the radicals to enforce their wishes, according to the Arabist.

According to Jansen, Muslim fundamentalists frequently make threats, but the Dutch media remain silent about them. He is pleading for a central reporting station for all Dutch people who are being threatened.

Source

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Articles recently up on ICJS

BGU President Disses Overseas Donors
Zionism in the Age of Dictators
Liberalism a luxury during war
Concert
Jews against Zion
Liberty fades as rights talk grows
University accused of censoring anti-Semitic Islam lecture
Et tu, BBC?
Islamicization of Antwerp

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ELSEWHERE



I rarely post to my Leftists as Elitists blog these days but I have just posted there a story I could not pass up.

The pathetic EU anniversary: "Equally mysterious is why the European Union is so pleased with itself. The fiftieth anniversary bash held in Germany at the weekend has been an odious spectacle. It was a politically correct modern version of the Field of the Cloth of Gold. That one of the exhibits on display was a collection of cakes from the 27 member states was accidentally appropriate, since this is an organisation sharing Marie Antoinette's attitude towards its "citizens". It was bizarre to witness political leaders acting as if they were attending a celebrity birthday party. Though the occasion symbolised a collective detachment from reality, it contained a message within the pious "Declaration of Berlin" that was formally launched yesterday. The heirs to Thomas Jefferson will have no reason to fear the competition from this. The text is turgid and it is contains near-comic double-talk"

More media deception: "On March 17, I noticed that Bud Cummins, one of the fired U.S. Attorneys, had directly contradicted the major premise of an L.A. Times article published about him. It's now been over a week, and the paper has done nothing to correct the record. It appears clear to me that they aren't going to tell their readers that the subject of an article has publicly claimed that the central premise of the article was wrong. If you're looking for an L.A. Times scandal, you've found it. This nonsense about Andres Martinez isn't a scandal. Hiding the truth from your readers is. On March 16, the L.A. Times published a story titled Cummins fears corruption investigation led to his firing. The article said that Cummins had looked into allegations relating to potential corruption by Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt. It quoted Cummins as speculating that this investigation may have had something to do with his being fired: "Now I keep asking myself: `What about the Blunt deal?'" In an e-mail to TPM Muckraker, Cummins said that The Times got it wrong: "Unfortunately, that isn't what I said, or at least what I intended to say, and it is not the case."

Reality dawns in Quebec: "With three days left in one of the most tightly contested elections in decades, Quebec's electoral officer yesterday reversed his decision to allow Muslim women to vote without having to lift their face veils to identify themselves. Chief Electoral Officer Marcel Blanchet invoked emergency powers to change his mind on one of the controversial minority-rights issues that have roiled the campaign and led to death threats, public outrage and repeated criticism by Parti Quebecois Leader Andre Boisclair. Mr. Blanchet said his office had been inundated with calls and emails about his decision to allow women to wear the niqab when they voted. His staff was worried and he was assigned two bodyguards. He feared some angry voters would turn out "in the craziest disguises you can imagine" and disrupt Monday's election."

No brakes on Soros spending: "The following is a statement by Mark Fitzgibbons and GrassrootsFreedom.com, regarding grassroots legislation currently being considered by Congress as part of lobbying reform: “George Soros-financed Open Society Institute, a 501(c)(3) ‘private operating foundation,’ spent nearly $65 million financing mostly left-leaning 501(c)(3)s that engage in lobbying and/or public policy advocacy in just 2005 alone according to its tax return, IRS Form 990 available at Guidestar.com. “The attached partial list of recipients of this ‘largesse’ shows the distinct political, lobbying and public policy purposes of these expenditures, including (1) influencing judicial nominations, (2) advocating for gay marriage, looser immigration and social security legislation, (3) taxpayer-financed elections and (4) gaining more ideological control of the news media. “None of these lobbying and grassroots expenditures would be disclosed under the grassroots legislation written by lobbyists and being considered by Congress, even though the organizations that receive Soros’ financing clearly ‘influence’ the general public and Congress to take action on policy, legislation and judicial nominations. Yet other citizen-supported grassroots causes communicating on the same issues would be required to track their expenditures, report them quarterly to Congress, and would be subject to civil and potential criminal penalties based simply on the exercise of their First Amendment rights, such as the right of citizens to petition the government."

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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

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

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 Pages are here or here or here

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BBC pays 200,000 pounds to 'cover up report on anti-Israel bias'

The BBC has been accused of "shameful hypocrisy" over its decision to spend 200,000 pounds blocking a freedom of information request about its reporting in the Middle East. The corporation, which has itself made extensive use of FOI requests in its journalism, is refusing to release papers about an internal inquiry into whether its reporting has been biased towards Palestine.

BBC chiefs have been accused of wasting thousands of pounds of licence fee payers money trying to cover-up the findings of the so called Balen Report into its journalism in the region, despite the fact that the corporation is funded by the British public. The corporation is fighting a landmark High Court action, which starts next week, in a bid to prevent the public finding out what is in the review, which is believed to be critical of the BBC's coverage in the region.

BBC bosses have faced repeated claims that is coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict has been skewed by a pro-Palestianian bias. The corporation famously came under fire after middle-east correspondent Barbara Plett revealed that she had cried at the death of Yasser Arafat in 2004.

The BBC's decision to carry on pursuing the case, despite the fact than the Information Tribunal said it should make the report public, has sparked fury as it flies in the face of claims by BBC chiefs that it is trying to make the corporation more open and transparent. Politicians have branded the BBC's decision to carry on spending money, hiring the one of the country's top public law barrister in the process, as "absolutely indefensible".

Source

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Brookes News Update

US economy: will a housing bust cause a recession?: Last month the Fed reported that factory production and the output of mines and utilities leapt by 1.0 per cent. This is a big figure - and an important one. If the higher stages of production are still expanding then the country is not yet on the verge of a recession
Tony Abbot and the Liberal Party screw up again on labour market reform: The Liberal Party, including Tony Abbot, was provided with the necessary information to defeat the critics of reform. For some reason the Liberals refused to use it. The result is that opponents of reform have been given more opportunities to try and discredit it
Another Murdoch journalist slimes the Iraq War while giving leftwing thugs a pass: Matt Price - a columnist with The Australian - smeared Libby, Cheney and Prime Minister Howard. But when it came to Vietnam's murderous regime and sadistic terrorists the heroic Mr Price had nothing to say
Castro loves hippie software: Software guru Richard Stallman founded Free SoftWare Foundation. Was a recent guest of honor of Castro's Stalinist regime. True to form, Stallman embraced the regime that jails the most journalist per capita on planet earth. So while people were being tortured in Castro's gulag Stallman was praising the torturers while ignoring the plight of their victims
The US and Australia: are their foreign debts a problem?: Our economic commentariat refuses to even consider the role monetary policy plays in distorting the pattern of production, destabilising exchange rates and creating balance of payments crises. It's as if they would rather the economy sank than admit they were wrong

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ELSEWHERE



As Al Capone said: "Vote early and vote often": "Muslim women wearing the niqab or burka - veils that hide the face entirely - will be allowed to vote in the Quebec elections, without showing their face. That's the directive from the Director general of elections, despite the fact it goes against the electoral law. Typically a voter is to present photo-I.D. But women wearing a full-face veil will have to either swear that they are who they say they are - or have an adult with them verifying their identity."

Anti-semitism rules come in at British universities: "Measures to tackle antisemitism in British universities will be unveiled this week amid concern about rising discrimination. The government will warn vice-chancellors they must not ignore antiJewish activity on campuses and must prevent prejudiced lecturers, guest speakers and extremist political organisations stirring up hatred against Israel. A recent Commons report highlighted attacks on undergraduates, a lack of respect by lecturers and tutors for the needs of observant Jewish students and a growing tolerance of extreme language against Israel during student debates on the Middle East. There is particular concern about so-called "Islamic" antisemitism, with radical Muslim clerics, or their followers, being allowed to preach antiJewish hatred in universities".

The dreaded Wal-Mart has now opened a store just outside Washington, D.C.: "Wal-Mart Stores Inc. opened its first store inside the Capital Beltway yesterday. The Landover Hills store, the closest to the District, is the chain's latest store in an urban setting. Nationwide, Wal-Mart is focusing on urban locations such as the District, Chicago and Atlanta for new customers as it saturates rural and suburban areas... The store will have an expansive selection of Hispanic groceries -- such as Goya beans and rice -- and a broader collection of Latin, gospel and R&B music. The store also carries Wal-Mart's urban clothing line, Exsto, in addition to its Metro 7 and George private clothing lines.... The store will have 330 employees, and it received more than 11,000 applications, Mr. Restivo said. He said he didn't have information on how many employees are from Prince George's County. Wal-Mart said last month that the Landover Hills store will be one of 10 urban areas it planned to help revitalize with jobs and small-business assistance."

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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

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

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 Pages are here or here or here.

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DRAT!

Yet another one of my websites has gone out of existence. Background: I have always had a website in webspace provided by my ISP but one does of course lose that if one changes to another ISP. And some ISP websites I have known have had big glitches that make them of only limited use. So I have always had "backup" websites with my writings on them. But the backup sites nearly all seem to be run by arrogant nerds who feel free to delete a customer's account any time they like. And they do like. I have never tried to keep track of it all but there must be about 10 addresses where my writings once appeared but which now just give an error message. The latest such is here.

I have enquired why the site just mentioned was deleted but got only a form-letter reply that gave me no clue about what my sin was in their eyes. The fact that I occasionally mention the most obscene four letter word of the modern age -- "r*ce" -- probably accounts for a lot of the cancellations I have had. Using that word makes me guilty of "hate speech" of course and webspace providers usually seem to have a "policy" about that. That I use the word in a scholarly way is obviously too deep a distinction for a lot of nerds.

The most reliable hosting service for me has in fact been blogspot -- though they go offline for a short while every now and then. Anyway, I cope with the unreliability of it all by putting up multiple copies of everything I write in different places on the net. So if my writings cease to be available in one place they will still be available somewhere else. The three "home pages" I list at the bottom of all postings here are all to sites that DO currently work most of the time and that do have most of my writings on them. So if at first you don't succeed, don't keep trying: try another one!

If blogspot ever bans me that will be pretty pesky (they DO delete blogs on "hate speech" grounds. See e.g. here) so keep handy a link to my only Wordpress blog -- IMMIGRATION WATCH -- in case that happens. I will use the Wordpress site to redirect readers to new non-blogspot sites in case that should ever be needed. The owners of blogspot are of course G*ogle -- which is why I generally mention their name in modified form only. I want to be as far below their radar as possible. They DO run searches to see what people are saying about them. There are around 1500 other blogs that link to Dissecting Leftism alone so all those links would become dead if blogspot got nasty with me.

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BEND OVER ATLANTA

Post below lifted from Boortz

OK .. here's the way it works:

1. Steve learns to weld.
   


2. Steve would rather be an artist than working in a machine shop
   


3. Steve obtains some scrap metal and starts welding it together in odd shapes which he declares to be art.
   


4. Steve can't find anyone who will voluntarily pay for the piles of scrap metal he has welded together.
   


5. Steve changes his name to Stephano and drops his last name.
   


6. Still nobody will buy Stephano's art, though there is one Buckhead matron who has taken a rather prurient interest in some of Stephan's other talents.
   


7. The Buckhead matron allows Stephano to place a pile of scrap metal in her garden and begins to refer to it as a sculpture.
   


8. Buckhead socialites, after encountering Stephano's "sculpture", and desiring to pander to the matron's artistic tastes, decide that Stephan is being greatly wronged because nobody will pay him for his artistic efforts.
   


9. The buzz among the Buckhead social set is heard in the halls of the Atlanta City Council and the arts community.
   


10. A sense of anger builds that we have yet another artist in our midst who simply cannot manage to find a willing buyer in a free market environment.
    


11. Stephano and his backers become increasingly frustrated with the lack of respect the great unwashed have for his artistic talents.
    


12. The arts community -- which, by the way, won't buy any of Stephano's art either -- tells Atlanta's political leaders that Atlanta simply cannot survive or be considered a world class international city unless Stephano's "art" is displayed citywide.
    


13. A plan is hatched to use the police power of the Atlanta city government to fun the purchase of Stephano's piles of junk.
    


14. The city seizes money from residents and writes some fat checks to Stephano for more artwork.
    


15. Stephano, no longer needing to service the needs of the Buckhead matron, tells her to find another cabana boy.
    


16. Atlanta residents wake up one morning wondering when someone is going to come along and remove those piles of scrap metal someone left in their neighborhood overnight.

This scenario, or something very close to it, is playing out in Atlanta right now. A task force appointed by the Mayor has determined that Atlanta needs a cultural investment fund in the amount of at least $10 million that will provide money to artists, arts organizations and what it refers to as "cultural organizations." The suggestion is that there should be a tax on businesses operating in Atlanta to provide the funds. The story in this morning's Atlanta Journal-Constitution says that "Many of those who work in the arts in Atlanta said they hope to see some progress on arts funding soon."

At this point you shouldn't need a translation of that quote from the AJC. But then again, many of you went to government schools, so I'll provide that translation for you. Many of the people in the arts community in Atlanta remain frustrated by the fact that Atlanta residents will not voluntarily pay for their art. So, of the Atlanta residents won't voluntarily buy their art, the government should step in and make them buy the art by seizing their money and transferring that money to artists and arts organizations.

And what about this idea of placing a special tax on Atlanta businesses? What we have here is the arts community taking advantage of the ignorance of our government-educated residents. They know that many people think that if the tax is placed on the businesses this means that the rank and file Atlantans won't be paying for the art. Sadly, they're possibly right. Our education is so pathetic that most people can't noodle out the fact that all taxes paid by businesses are passed on to the consumers of whatever service or goods they sell.

When I was driving from the Charlottesville, Virginia airport into downtown Charlottesville yesterday I noticed many piles of scrap metal scattered around the local highways and biways. No ... seriously. I did! I learned later that this is all from a taxpayer-funded program called "Arts In Place." You should have heard the shouts of approval from the audience at the Charlottesville Omni ballroom last night when I made a less-than-complimentary comment about this "art." Then I wake up this morning to see that the welfare artists in Atlanta are after even more of our money.

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ELSEWHERE



I have just put up another lot of postings from Chris Brand on his usual highly "incorrect" themes.

German decay?: "Germany – A German judge has stirred a storm of protest by citing the Koran in turning down a request for a speedy divorce from a Muslim woman who said her husband beat her. In a ruling that underlines the tension between Muslim customs and European laws, the judge, Christa Datz-Winter, noted that the couple came from a Moroccan cultural milieu, in which it is common for husbands to beat their wives. The Koran sanctions such physical abuse, she wrote in her decision. News of the ruling brought swift and sharp condemnation from politicians, legal experts and Muslim leaders in Germany, many of whom said they were confounded that a German judge would put seventh-century Islamic religious teaching ahead of German law in deciding a case of domestic violence. The court in Frankfurt abruptly removed Datz-Winter from the case Wednesday, saying it could not justify her reasoning."

Duke case ending: "It seems that the trumped-up charges against three young men who played for the la crosse team at Duke University will be dismissed either today or sometime next week. That will mostly end their ordeal, though they'll still have to deal with millions of dollars in legal fees (which, in the end, the city of Durham, N.C., will probably have to pick up). The same can't be said of their false accuser - who is in a world of trouble, since you're not supposed to make false accusations to the authorities. But her dire fate will seem positively sunny compared to that of Durham DA Mike Nifong - who is certain to be sued for defamation, likely to be disbarred and very possibly charged with an open-and-shut case of perjury that could land him in jail for a long time. Yet some of the most disgraceful actors in this case will go unpunished. I'm referring to a huge cohort of the professors at the top-flight university attended by the three unjustly accused men. Some 88 of them - more than 10 percent of the entire Duke professoriat - engaged in a shocking rush to judgment in the weeks following the party where the accuser falsely alleged she had been raped... Since the academic work of those who organized the ad centers around the notion that the white male power structure subjugates and violates all those who are neither white nor male, the case was actually a dream come true for them." [Dr Sanity has some good comments]

Baby bottles now a terror weapon: "Fanatical terror suspect Abdula Ahmed Ali, 25, and his wife, Cossor, 23, are among those being interrogated by police as suspects in the massive plot to attack trans-Atlantic flights in midair. What the outwardly normal couple had secretly plotted is almost too horrifying to consider, cops said. The Alis planned to use 6-month-old son Zain's baby bottle as a liquid bomb, blowing themselves and their child up, along with hundreds of others aboard the flight... The baby was later turned over to her grandparents."

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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

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

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 Pages are here or here or here.

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IRAQI ANTI-WAR FABLES DEBUNKED

Post below lifted from Dan Mandel

When war against Saddam's Iraq was proposed in 2002, a key component of the opponents’ case was to assert that dismantling Saddam’s regime would bring more death and destabilization than leaving him in place. When the anticipated disaster failed to materialise, critics spoke of Iraqis loathing the uncertainties of life and death today to the certitudes of life and death under Saddam. With the on-going terrorist insurgency producing death in Iraq and disenchantment in America, both claims came back in vogue. Critics now spoke of greater humanitarian disaster, citing the figure 650,000 Iraqi dead since Saddam’s ouster on 20 March 2003 published by the Lancet journal last October and polls showing Iraqis believing themselves worse off today than under Saddam.

Facts however have again intruded. The Times (London) recently showed that the Lancet estimate was tenfold in excess of all other surveys; was produced by partisan figures using dubious extrapolations rather than body counting; included unexplained anomalies (such as an admitted two-thirds drop in the number of child deaths since Saddam’s overthrow) and was also found to be wanting by an array of experts on methodological grounds. The debunking is important, as the Lancet figure’s significance lies in the fact that, if believed, a key element in the case for removing Saddam – the humanitarian imperative – would be seen to have collapsed.

As to the views of Iraqis, questioned four years later as to whether they preferred life under Saddam to the present, a poll published on 18 March by Britain’s Opinion Research Business found that 49% of those questioned did not, while only 26% did. Also, Baghdadis’ sense of security has risen in tandem with the troop surge, according to the 400 interviewers who spoke to 5019 adult Iraqis – an index of the importance of American efforts via the troop surge to end the sense of rigidity and drift that had been increasingly characterizing the Bush Administration policy to date. Whether the surge and its attendant new strategies are adequate to the task remains to be seen.

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A great anniversary

Post below lifted from Elder of Ziyon. I do incidentally like that blog title: "Elder of Ziyon". It is of course a mockery of that stupid old antisemitic tract "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion". The blog title probably freaks a few of the crazies. To them it would PROVE the reality of their fears

For some reason, when PalArab terrorists are not as successful as they like to be at killing Jews, the world tends to ascribe peaceful motives to them. There is a good reason for this: to say that Israeli defensive actions are saving Israeli lives would justify them, and no one wants Israel to have any justification for any defensive moves.

In fact, every single Israeli action designed to save Israeli lives is roundly criticized: building a fence, pro-actively targeting terrorists, disrupting terror infrastructures, stopping tax payments to terrorists - all have come under withering condemnation.

Which brings us to today. Today is the third anniversary of Israel's wiping out Hamas uber-terrorist, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Only a week before, there was a suicide bombing at an Ashdod chemical plant that killed 10 and that was intended to blow up the plant and kill untold hundreds of Israelis. Yassin taunted Israel at the time, saying that their reaction to that attack was weak and that Hamas was gaining strength.

Those who complain about Israeli actions always say that Israel is acting in ways that cannot be justified. Here are some of the reactions to Yassin's assassination:

The killing provoked widespread condemnation from the international community. Kofi Annan, UN General secretary, strongly condemned the killing and also called on Israel to halt its policy of assassination. The UN Commission on Human Rights passed a resolution condemning the killing supported by votes from 31 countries including the People's Republic of China, India, Indonesia, Russia, and South Africa with 2 votes against and 18 abstentions. The Arab League council also expressed condemnation, as did the African Union.

Jack Straw, the British Foreign Secretary, said: "All of us understand Israel's need to protect itself - and it is fully entitled to do that - against the terrorism which affects it, within international law. But it is not entitled to go in for this kind of unlawful killing and we condemn it. It is unacceptable, it is unjustified and it is very unlikely to achieve its objectives."

The White House equivocally condemned the action. Scott McClellan, the White House Press Secretary, said, "We are deeply troubled by this morning's incident," but he added, "Israel had the right to defend itself" and stressed that Yassin had been "personally involved in terrorism". A State Department spokesman said: "This does not help efforts to resume progress towards peace."

Well, here's your justification: In the three years prior to Yassin's death, approximately 800 Israelis were killed in terror actions. In the three years since, that number has plummeted to about 110.

The way to eliminate terror is to go after it. Israel's assassination of Yassin was part of a series of actions that reduced the threat to Israelis and caused the terrorists to spend more time hiding and less time attacking. In hindsight, it is clear that the condemnations of Israel were wrong and that, then and now, Israel's actions to defend her citizens are not only justified, but obligatory.

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ELSEWHERE

The Congressional Democrats are making a big fuss at the moment about the firing of 8 U.S. prosecutors by Attorney General Gonzales. They say they smell a rat in it. I have been covering the matter mainly on my Immigration Watch blog and it now seems clear that I was right to do so. The firing was apparently part of a generally stepped-up recent effort by the Bush administration to enforce the immigration laws. The crackdown has never been publicly announced because to do so would be to admit that enforcement had been neglected up to that point. To follow the matter on my Immigration Watch blog go here, here and here in that order. So the Democrats are just defending part of their criminal clientele -- as usual.

INSA Pressuring the FBI to Cancel Meeting with Robert Spencer : "The Muslim Brotherhood front group, The Islamic Society of North America (INSA) is pressuring the FBI to cancel having Robert Spencer of JihadWatch.org from speaking to their agents. Unfortunately it may be working. Mr. Spencer is one of the most qualified individuals to inform FBI agents on the threat of Muslim terrorists. Obviously, the INSA and other groups such as CAIR are aware of this, and will put pressure on the FBI to cancel under the guise of Islamophobia."

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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

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

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 Pages are here or here or here.

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THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JOHN LENNON AND YOKO ONO

Your morality is what guides you in your choices between right and wrong, good and evil. If you believe it's wrong to enjoy life in a successful capitalist society, you'll feel guilty about your high living standard and a disproportionate consumption of world's resources. By extension, you wouldn't want to miss the once-in-a-year opportunity to redeem your sins by supporting such a highly moral cause as an anti-war protest.

But what is the source of a morality that forbids to fight terrorism and views the United States as the enemy? Clearly it isn't rooted in the American tradition. Such a morality manifested itself on a massive scale for the first time in the 1960s. Many of today's protesters admittedly crave to recapture the spirit of those days. Many will be singing John Lennon's "Imagine."

My research has led me to the excerpts from Yoko Ono and John Lennon's articles published in the 1972 editions of Sundance magazine. Although attributed to John and Yoko jointly, they were written mostly by Yoko who clearly was the one wearing the pants. It should be a required read for everyone who would like to know where their otherwise lazy and cynical leftist opponents get their passionate idealistic convictions from. Here is a condensed list:

1. A collective hallucination can create objective reality.
2. "The fenceless and doorless world is soon to come." Obviously it's a good thing.
3. Middle America is stupid and "afraid of youth and the future."
4. People work not because they're glad to have a job but because they're being bullied into working by the "tyranny and suppression of the capitalists." (Karl Marx called and left a message).
5. Immature youth are "the aware ones"; traditional education and thought discipline is the enemy.
6. Material reality is evil.
7. "Come together rather than claim independence."
8. "Feel rather than think."
9. Immature and irresponsible behavior is a virtue.
10. Possessions are immoral. "Any possession that is more than what you need belongs to someone who needs it."
11. A worldwide revolution ("progress") is inevitable, and such a future "cannot be anything but brightness."
12. To resist the revolution is immoral because it prolongs people's suffering.
13. A society based on competitiveness and logic produces "hypocrisy, violence, and chaos."
14. A society based on love rather than reasoning will produce "balance, peace, and contentment."
15. To remove evil from this world men must be feminized (if you liked this one you will also like "The DaVinci Code" which is a 500-pages-long regurgitation of this very doctrine).

Absurdities may be a good material for rock lyrics, but presented as a life philosophy they are, well, absurd. Nonetheless, in the absence of logic and reason whose use had been abolished by liberal education, this psychobabble has become Holy Scripture of the new "progressive" religion. John's fame and his unfortunate martyrdom have turned these mind games into unquestionable prophecies. They might as well be called the Gospel of John and Yoko, from which generations of protesters have been religiously drawing their strength and moral fortitude. Can you say, "Imagine no religion?"

While Yoko may not be the original creator of these inanities, she certainly succeeded in presenting them as the original "Instant Flower Garden" combination package. Planted into the heads of faithful innocents, the seeds have grown into the bizarre efflorescence covering the left side of America's brain that we are dealing with today.

So many of these uncontested absurdities have been inserted as moral messages in popular novels, TV shows, and Hollywood movies, that one can only wonder how come they haven't yet become the country's official ideology. One might even suspect there's some ominous dark force in this society that is preventing a total compliance with the "progressive" morality. A conservative might identify the culprit as the good old common sense. But if you are a frustrated "progressive," you will either blame it on the American stupidity, or claim a criminal conspiracy. Either way you may become convinced that the culprit had better be eliminated with prejudice for the sake of the Greater Good.

If you believe the Gospel of John and Yoko represents a higher morality, you will naturally begin to resent such obstacles in the way of "progress" as reason, the rule of law, common sense, the need to be a master of your own life, and the responsibility for your own well-being. And since the United States of America was built on such values and remains their most dedicated proponent, any honest and consistent "progressive" is bound to develop a seething hatred towards this country.

In the "progressive" book of virtues, American values are the quintessence of evil. So if you are a "progressive" and you aren't mad at this country, that just means you're neither honest nor consistent. But then again, because living by this dead-end moral code is logically impossible, one has to resort to hypocrisy and seek compromises, forever balancing on the edge of madness.

Such mad morality is exactly what drives people into crowds at anti-war rallies. The fate of Iraq is not their biggest concern. Protesting the war is more of an excuse to take revenge for the daily torture of maddening hypocrisy and compromises with the "system." Believers in the Gospel of John and Yoko use these rallies to claim high moral ground, work out anxieties, seek reassurance - and some of the die-hards may even still harbor hope that a collective hallucination will somehow change the objective reality - just as the prophecy predicted.

As for the Iraqis - to hell with them! Let them all kill each other. "Progressives" have more pressing issues, struggling to maintain and expand their high moral ground. They have never cared about the lives of the people they claimed to protect. They didn't care about the Soviets, Cubans, Vietnamese, Cambodians, or Palestinians. It was always about them and their maddening inner struggles.

Granted, this mad dead-end morality has always existed in various forms around the world. But it was in the 1960s that it gained such massive proportions in this country - and has been growing ever since, affecting schools, culture, politics, and even science - occasionally winning the official status. So even if America had swallowed and digested a refutation of itself then, it has suffered such a severe poisoning that many toxins have reached as far as the Capitol Hill and settled there, resulting in Congress's erratic and self-destructive behavior.

Attempts to confront the lure of "progressive" ideology with facts and logic have failed and will continue to fail because the "progressive" faith is not based on facts and logic. It is based on morality and this is the ground on which it must be fought.

Conservatives who support their positions with economic and political data but give away high moral ground to the "progressives" are thereby admitting that their economic and political achievements are immoral - and thus have no right to exist. Those seeking middle ground and a moral compromise are thereby proposing that hypocrisy and absence of moral standards be made the law of the land. Guess what fish will grow most rapidly in those murky waters!

The only way to fight absurdity is by exposing it for what it is - an absurdity. The "progressive" morality based on logical fallacies and wishful thinking cannot sustain the life of a society or even one individual. It lures people with seemingly easy solutions to life's problems, but results in breeding hateful wrecks wallowing in their own madness, trapped in their communal moral dead end, longing for self-destruction and trying to drag the rest of us down with them.

Because the spreading of the "progressive" morality has always brought suffering and misery to real-life humans, it should be exposed as inhuman and condemned. It should be opposed with the true human morality that is based on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness - the one that has proven to spread happiness, prosperity, and real progress without any quotation marks.

More here

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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

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

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 Pages are here or here or here.

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More media bias: ABC’s strange and questionable Iraq poll

Post below lifted from Dinocrat

ABC has a poll of Iraqis that it positions as highly negative, and of course that is partially true. However, the story is more complicated, and far better than ABC represents, if you are not a Sunni. Here’s the ABC spin from its story, “Voices from Iraq 2007: Ebbing Hope in a Landscape of Loss” — a heck of an objective title for a news article by the way:

A new national survey paints a devastating portrait of life in Iraq: widespread violence, torn lives, displaced families, emotional damage, collapsing services, an ever starker sectarian chasm - and a draining away of the underlying optimism that once prevailed…the sharpest deterioration is in Baghdad, where the number of Iraqis who say their own lives are going well has dropped by 51 points. But it’s also down by 26 points in the rest of Iraq. And even outside of Baghdad, just 32 percent of Iraqis feel “very safe” where they live, compared with 60 percent a year and a half ago.

The poll is quite bizarre in some respects. For example, it features touchy-feely data like this chart below, showing that the poor Iraqis feel “stress” in their transition away from decades of cruel, totalitarian rule towards, perhaps, something better:

We look at the chart above and we wonder how the Western world, the United States of America, and our attendant freedoms, blessings, and wealth were ever created. Did the American Revolution or Civil War, or maybe World War I or World War II, or even Desert Storm, cause “trouble sleeping” among Americans, we wonder? Should we have canceled our own Civil War or opted out of World War II to prevent “feelings of anger” or “difficulty concentrating”? Indeed, is “stress” in the pursuit of freedom a vice?

Leaving aside the fatuousness of the chart above, let’s get down to the real nitty-gritty: do Iraqis feel safe in their environs and are they happy that we liberated them? The way ABC spins the poll, you would say no, since in many cases ABC averages the results of Sunnis, Kurds and Shiites, and the purported nearly 100% negativity of Sunnis weighs down the averages. So you can’t believe the story; you have to look to the poll’s internals to find some truth. Powerline summarized these findings, which show a high level of satisfaction among Shiites and Kurds on these issues:

when asked to rate “today's conditions in the village/neighborhood where you live” with respect to security, by a 61% to 39% margin, Shia respondents rated their local security “good” rather than “bad,” and by an even wider 89% to 11% margin, Kurds rated their local situation “good.” The average is dragged down by the Sunnis, who said 7% “good,” 93% “bad.”…When asked whether it was right for the coalition to invade Iraq and depose Saddam, 70% of Shia and 83% of Kurds say Yes. On the other hand, Sunni responses were 2% Yes, 98% No…

So Kurds and Shiites rate their local security good by wide margins, and they are darned happy that the Americans decided to free them from their torment and bondage. Sunnis, on the other hand, are understandably upset by their loss of power, and the subsequent acts of reprisal against them.

But — and this is our point about the methodological problems with this poll — is it possible or plausible that 98% of Sunnis are virtually unanimous in their disapproval of the deposing of Saddam Hussein? Is is possible that only 2% of Sunnis (a result that could go below zero, since the margin of error is 2.5%) are happy that the US deposed Saddam? Are there no Sunnis in Iraqi government or getting US government contracts or largesse? Are there zero freedom-loving Sunnis in Iraq? Do 98% of any group ever agree on anything at all? Furthermore, as we said, the 2% of Sunnis who are reported to think that liberating Iraq was a good idea is even below the margin of error of the poll:

The survey had a contact rate of 90 percent and a cooperation rate of 62 percent for a net response rate of 56 percent. Including an estimated design effect of 1.51, the results have a margin of sampling error of 2.5 percentage points at the 95 percent confidence level.

We wonder if the poll’s methodological problems come from the difference between the “contact rate” of 90% and the “cooperation rate” of 62%. What tests did ABC’s pollsters perform to determine that there were no systematic biases among the Sunnis who did and did not cooperate, for example? Might we find an answer to ABC’s counter-intuitive findings of unanimity there?

The ABC poll and story flunk the tests of common sense in at least a few ways: (a) ABC’s relentlessly negative story on its poll, which ignores the regional and confessional differences in results, itself calls into question the objectivity of the poll; (b) the touchy-feely nature of some poll questions are such that any war whatsoever, including the American Revolution, the Civil War and World War II would give the same negative results on certain issues; (c) it is highly suspect that only 2% of Sunnis approve of the US’s removal of Saddam Hussein; and (d) any poll about any issue that results in statistical unanimity among a large group of those polled ought to question the validity of its own methodology. In summary, it’s hard not to conclude that there was an agenda behind both the poll and the reporting of the poll.

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ELSEWHERE

The latest Leftist hero going down the same old path of economic destruction: "While Barbara Walters is busy sucking up to Hugo Chavez, I wonder if her inquiring mind is even aware of the damage this wonderful and passionate guy is doing to Venezuela's economy? Venezuela is knocking three zeros off the bolivar, its currency, and renaming it the "bolivar fuerte" (strong bolivar). This is an effort to cope with rising inflation. Inflation has spiked in recent months due to Mr Chavez's very expansive fiscal policy, and capital flight following recent nationalisations. Ahhh. The wonders of socialism! You would think that this "charming", "passionate", and "intelligent" man might have learned from the economic debacles that socialism wrought in the 20th century. You would think he could look around the world and grasp that a country's embrace of socialist and communist principles is directly proportional to its level of poverty and misery. And that even in the so-called "advanced" and "enlightened" European Union (socialism lite), life is deteriorating."

The rich already pay most of the tax: "The IRS just released some data. One of the most interesting reported facts is this: "For tax year 2004.... Taxpayers with an AGI [adjusted gross income] of at least $328,049, the top 1 percent of taxpayers, accounted for 19 percent of total AGI, representing an increase in income share of 2.2 percentage points from the previous year. These taxpayers accounted for 36.9 percent of the total income tax reported, an increase from 34.3 percent in 2003"

Another charming Muslim: "A man who ripped out his wife's eyes in a fit of rage was sentenced by a French court to 30 years behind bars today. Mohamed Hadfi, 31, tore out his 23-year-old wife Samira Bari's eyes following a heated argument in their apartment in the southern French city of Nimes in July 2003 after she refused to have sex with him. Ms Bari, who had demanded a divorce before the attack, was permanently blinded. Hadfi, a Moroccan, initially fled to Germany. He was finally arrested and sent back to France, where he was indicted for "acts of torture and barbarity leading to a permanent disability". Prosecutor Dominique Tourette demanded that Hadfi be sentenced to 30 years in prison, two thirds of which must be served in full, calling the defendant a "diabolic torturer". Once his sentence is served, Hadfi will be deported and barred from ever returning to France."

Scientist "Silenced" By Bush Gave 1,500 On-The-Job Media Interviews In Recent Years: "A NASA scientist who said the Bush administration muzzled him because of his belief in global warming yesterday acknowledged to Congress that he'd done more than 1,400 on-the-job interviews in recent years. James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who argues global warming could be catastrophic, said NASA staffers denied his request to do a National Public Radio interview because they didn't want his message to get out. But Republicans told him the hundreds of other interviews he did belie his broad claim he was being silenced. "We have over 1,400 opportunities that you've availed yourself to, and yet you call it, you know, being stifled," said Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican."

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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

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

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 Pages are here or here or here.

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MUSLIM HATRED IN AMERICA

Spc. Craig Perkins' uniform made him a target in Baghdad - and, he believes, again in an apartment complex near Clarkston. Perkins, who returned last summer after almost a year's duty in Iraq, shot a man outside his apartment March 9 in what he says was the culmination of months of insults by some of his neighbors from the Middle East. Perkins, 34, said some residents in the ethnically diverse Kristopher Woods Apartments taunted him and made spitting sounds when they saw him in uniform heading to or from National Guard duty. Now Perkins is moving. He said he did not want more conflicts.

Perkins said he shot 26-year-old Tareq Ali Bualsafared in self-defense after Bualsafared and another man threatened him. He said the two men rushed toward his front door even after he fired a warning shot. Bualsafared, a college student from the United Arab Emirates, said Perkins was the aggressor. He said Perkins cursed them. Bualsafared, who was shot in the leg, said neither he nor his friend, Saleh Ali, a 17-year-old refugee from Iraq, knew anything about Perkins before he confronted them as they walked by his apartment. In interviews Friday, the accounts of Perkins and Bualsafared agreed on one detail: There were angry words about Iraq before shots were fired.

He said he had no animosity for his Middle Eastern neighbors in Clarkston. "I've never been a prejudiced person," he said. He noted he is a black man with a white girlfriend. He said he has white and American Indian ancestors. But he said he could feel the animosity when he walked by his Middle Eastern neighbors in his Guard uniform. Women and older men tended to be polite, but the younger men were hostile, he said. On many occasions, he said, he received signs of disrespect he knew from Iraq. Men made exaggerated spitting noises, and "they would raise their shoe at me to show me the bottom of their feet, or they would take off their shoe and wave it at me."

Perkins said that before last week's shooting, he had never seen Bualsafared or Ali, neither of whom lived in the apartment complex. But he believes others helped prod the men to come to his apartment looking for a fight....

Perkins said Ali said something about being an Iraqi and said he wasn't afraid of Perkins' .45 caliber automatic pistol. Bualsafared said Perkins then fired. Perkins said he warned the men to stop and fired a warning shot, but they ran toward him until he fired several shots. He said Bualsafared made it to his front steps, a few feet from his door. Bualsafared said the men were in the parking lot when Perkins shot him. DeKalb police spokesman Michael Payne said a detective's report showed blood was found "just outside" Perkins' door. Police at the scene arrested Perkins and charged him with aggravated assault. But after about 15 hours in jail, he was released when a magistrate's judge declined to sign a criminal warrant. Perkins is not now charged with a crime, Payne said.

On Thursday night, Ali was arrested by DeKalb police for criminal trespass, DeKalb jail records show. The arrest was apparently based on a complaint that he should not have been in Perkins' apartment complex at the time of the incident.

More here

There is a lot of discussion of this case among conservative bloggers. See, e.g. here and here. We seem bound to hear more of it. The fact that the soldier was black might protect him somewhat from the Muslim-lovers, though

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ELSEWHERE

The Durham bully: "Michael Nifong may be about to get his just desserts. His abuse of the legal process has been so outrageous that the government will have to do something, if only to save face. Nifong will be the one exception that proves the rule but, overwhelmingly, government never attacks its own. He's a wounded shark and will be thrown to the others as a sacrifice. Watch him scream as he is slowly consumed."

After constant Arab agreement-breaking: "Since Oslo's degeneration into the murderous intifada and the ongoing Palestinian infatuation with suicide/murder, the vast majority of Israelis have become convinced that their only option for even a modicum of peace is to fully separate from the bulk of the Arabs who surround them. Considering the skewed press coverage by the international media, as documented by sites such as MEMRI, Camera, and the Augean Stables, it takes a great deal of desperation and courage for the Israelis to accept that they have few friends and no choices but to do whatever necessary to protect themselves. Learning that there is nothing you can do to satisfy, or appease, your enemies is a hard lesson to learn. Many Americans are having profound difficulty grasping the lesson"

Textbooks of hate: "At the end of 2006, the Palestinian Authority (PA) Ministry of Higher Education introduced new 12th grade schoolbooks, written by the Center for Developing the Palestinian Curricula. The center is comprised of Palestinian educators appointed by the Fatah governments of Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas, and directed by Dr. Naim Abu Al-Humos, former PA Minister of Higher Education, appointed in 2002. The center is backed by foreign funding, with special thanks to Belgium noted in the new schoolbooks.... PMW has found that the new 12th grade Palestinian schoolbooks make no attempt to educate for peace and coexistence with Israel. Indeed, the opposite is true: The teachings repeatedly reject Israel's right to exist, present the conflict as a religious battle for Islam, teach Israel's founding as imperialism, and actively portray a picture of the Middle East, both verbally and visually, in which Israel does not exist at all."

The bad loan panic: "More and more mortgage borrowers can't keep up with their monthly house payments, and Congress wants to rescue them. "I'm determined to do everything we can to allow people to stay in their homes," Democratic senator Chris Dodd, head of the banking committee, said on Wednesday. But congressional meddling is not the way out of subprime-mortgage woes; in fact, government action will prolong the crisis.... Investors in mortgage loans, including investment banks, pension funds, and international bondholders, jumped into risky subprime mortgages because they were paid for that risk, getting higher interest rates than they would have received for investing in, say, Treasury bonds. The reason that the risky mortgages paid more, of course, was that there was a very real possibility that lots of borrowers would default. If the government, or its proxy, now steps in and purchases those mortgages, or otherwise systematically bails out borrowers, it will create a hazard for the future. The next generation of mortgage lenders won't take the high risk of subprime home loans seriously, because they'll expect that, in the event of another crisis, the government will step in and bail them out again. So they'll be even more eager to approve the risky subprime mortgages that are getting so many borrowers into trouble in the first place."

Globalization does not lead to inequality: "Another investigation -- this one by Fernando Borraz and Jose Ernesto Lopez-Cordova -- of some of the economic consequences of freer trade finds that freer trade has not increased income inequality in Mexico: "Our findings strongly indicate that globalization has not raised income inequality in Mexico. On the contrary, we present compelling evidence showing that income distribution is more equitable in states that are more closely linked to the world economy and that those states exhibit larger declines in inequality. We also find some statistical evidence suggesting that deepening globalization results in reduced inequality"

I have just put up a lot of postings from Chris Brand but I did not have time to put in the links. So email me if you want to follow something up.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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

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

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 Pages are here or here or here.

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