Good War News....from Atlanta

Post below excerpted from Charlie Foxtrot . See the original for links. I am so pleased that at least some of the military are getting the recognition that they deserve

Today Bob posts some good news from the war that he experienced himself firsthand....at the airport in Atlanta .

"...I wasn't prepared for what happened today. As my flight from Cincinnati to Atlanta was beginning its descent, the flight attendant began her normal spiel about landing and gates, and assistance finding your connecting flights and so on. Then she announced that I was on board and on my way back to Afghanistan after spending two weeks with my family. The plane erupted into applause. I was stunned."

But it doesn't stop there....

"They formed us into a line upstairs at the USO, probably 200 or more of us, and took us downstairs in two long lines. Soldiers and Marines paired two by two in a long line snaked through the airport towards the Army Personnel Command desk to do our formalities. As we wove through the airport, the throngs of travelers began to applaud. I wasn't prepared for that, either. Again, I struggled not to lose it. It was like cracking the seal on a warm, freshly shaken coke. All the bubbles rush towards the cap, bringing the contents of the bottle along. That's what it felt like. I managed to keep all my fluids contained; but it was another close call. "

While these stories are not unique, I believe that is a great demonstration that the public opinion battle over the war is not lost as some might want to claim. I am sure that not all of those applauding support the war in Iraq, and maybe not even the War on Terror, but were merely showing their respect. But if the public opinion had truly been lost, I don't think we would see such public displays of support, even if the military is highly respected.

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Black IQ controversy still bubbling

World Science recently had a fairly conventional article on the deeply unpopular observations of James Watson that did however include this report:

But Linda S. Gottfredson, a sociologist at the University of Delaware in Newark, Del., defended Watson Thursday and called the museum's cancellation of his appearance "an outrage." "Prof. Watson's views are actually in the mainstream of knowledgeable scientific opinion," she wrote in an email. "The Museum is wrong on two counts: first, that certain scientific questions may not be debated, and, second, that Prof. Watson is surely mistaken and alone in his scientific judgment on group differences in average intelligence.

World Science got a lot of comments and email over it, including this profundity from a "philosopher": Watson and his supporters like Gottfredson are clearly racists.

World Science now has a poll on the question. Finding truth by majority votes rather than by a careful examination of the known facts seems to be all the rage these days.

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ELSEWHERE

A small apology: There seems to be a real proliferation of social networking sites. Mainly in response to invites from others, I am on lots of them: Myspace.com, spaces.live.com, facebook.com, wayn.com etc. I have quite lost track of them all. I am calling a halt now, though. I have received invites from various people for many other sites but enough is enough. I won't be registering for any more of such sites. I don't make any use of them anyway. The only one I update occasionally is the Microsoft one. By clicking "More" there, you can get to a more readable version of the blog part of it. You will see that I have no "friends" there. Isn't that sad? I think that might be one Microsoft facility that has very few users.

Lots of us like a good shot at the utterly biased NYT and Taranto gets a good one in today (first item). It may help if you know that it took a lot of plastic surgery to make Tori Spelling look presentable (sort of).

The "population bomb" of the 1960s gets a re-run: "The speed at which mankind has used the Earth's resources over the past 20 years has put "humanity's very survival" at risk, a study involving 1,400 scientists has concluded. The environmental audit, for the United Nations, found that each person in the world now requires a third more land to supply his or her needs than the Earth can supply." [According to similar prophecies in the 1960s we should just about all be dead by now]

Time to get tough with Turkey?: "The United States should radically rethink its relationship with Turkey. For the sad fact is that Ankara no longer seems to be an ally worthy of the name - indeed its threatened invasion of Iraq would be the act of an outright enemy. Nor has Turkey behaved like a genuine ally for more than four years. It's not merely that Turkey refused at the last minute to let Coalition forces invade from the north in March 2003 - though that did affect the war and its aftermath in unfortunate ways. There have been other equally serious derelictions, ranging from the refusal to allow a damaged U.S. warplane to make an emergency landing in March 2003, to active subversion of the Coalition and the post-Saddam Iraqi authorities."

Islamofascism week brought out the Fascists: "The fascists came out in force tonight at Emory University and broke up what would have been an interesting conversation. I hardly got through fiteen minutes of my scheduled talk before members of the audience who come to protest rather than to listen became so unruly that it was impossible to go on. (Video and reports on Islamo-Fascism Week available at www.incorrectu.com) . This is too bad, particularly for the students at Emory, which is a good school and whose student audiences have always been civil when I spoke there in the past. [In football, I think this would be called an "own goal"]



Insane bureaucracy: "The Russian Ilyushin-76 "waterbomber" jet [above] that can douse a fire the size of 10 football fields in a single pass is not being used to fight the California fires because it hasn't passed U.S. inspections, federal officials have confirmed for WND."

Microsoft surrenders to EU: "Microsoft Corp. dropped a nearly decade-long legal battle with European regulators Monday, agreeing to key parts of an antitrust ruling that has already led to hundreds of millions in fines. The world's largest software company will slash the royalties it charges rivals for interoperability information needed to make programs that work smoothly with Microsoft's ubiquitous Windows operating system. It will make access to the data easier for open source developers who the EU said are now "virtually the only alternative for users." Microsoft said it would not appeal a EU Court of First Instance decision on Sept. 17 that turned down its challenge to a 2004 European Commission order that found it guilty of monopoly abuse".

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

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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

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

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Mainstream sense on IQ

The article below from "The Times" of London gets it pretty right. One point they glide over, however, is that "culture fair" tests (one not dependant on a particular educational or social background) show very similar racial and class gaps to other tests -- and have been doing so for decades. In Australia there was even a test specifically designed for blacks in a black environment (the Queensland Test) and whites still scored way higher on that. Pesky!

Rows about race and IQ pop up about once a decade, and invariably cause a fuss. But do they really signify anything? The evidence is that IQ, as conventionally measured, does differ between racial groups. Many studies have shown differences of about 15 points between the mean scores of white and black groups, and some have shown that Chinese and Japanese groups score higher still.

The counter-argument is that the conventional measurement of IQ is heavily culture-dependent. A test developed originally to measure the intelligence of Caucasians may not be fair to those whose cultural heritage is different. Some tests do contain biases that may disadvantage people, either on the basis of culture or, indeed, socio-economic status. When the scores are corrected for wealth and social position, the gaps narrow.

A second argument - that IQ doesn't matter anyway -is easier to dismiss. A large body of evidence shows that IQ is linked to success in life, both educational and economic. This is why the gap narrows when corrections are made for socio-economic status, because in a mobile society success is largely determined by intelligence.

To some, it is enough to say that IQ tests are unfair, and that their conclusions must be disregarded, but that flies in the face of the evidence that such tests are in fact good predictors of success. So if we accept that group differences are real, do they matter? The first thing to say is that such group differences tell us nothing about individuals. The distribution curves for all groups overlap, and the range of scores within each group is far wider than the differences between them. So even if the group differences were to be real, they tell us nothing about individuals within those groups. To judge individuals by the nation, race, or sex to which they belong is prejudice. Everyone has the right to be judged on his or her own merits.

The difficulty is that campaigners for racial equality have insisted on the rights of whole groups, not of individuals. They have sought to be argue that entitlements should be conferred on individuals not on their own merits but simply because they belong to that group.... Charles Murray, the author of The Bell Curve, a book published in the 1990s that reviewed the evidence dispassionately, said that the only answer was "an energetic and uncompromising recommitment to individualism".

All people deserve equal treatment. But that is not quite the same as saying they are all equal. The error comes in taking a group difference, which may or may not be real, and using it to judge the worth of individuals. That is racism.

Source

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ELSEWHERE

The short memory of the Leftist media: "After the Clintons and their siblings were caught in the 42nd president's last-minute pardon scandal, Jimmy Carter called them "disgraceful." Robert Reich opined that "Clinton is utterly disgraced." Al Hunt called Clinton the "albatross" of his party who should "drop dead." Al Gore's campaign manager, Donna Brazile wrote in the New York Times that "It's time to let Bill Clinton go -- go on and live the rest of his life and allow a new generation of Democratic leaders to renew their fight on behalf of working families in America." New York Times columnist Bob Herbert affirmed that "Bill Clinton has been a disaster for the Democratic Party. Send him packing. It's time for the Democratic Party to wise up. Ostracism would be a good first step. Bill Clinton should be cut completely loose....some of Mr. Clinton's closest associates and supporters are acknowledging what his enemies have argued for years -- the man is so thoroughly corrupt it is frightening."

Private funding for retirement: "Instead of politically correct solutions to Social Security the Republican Presidential hopefuls might consider what President Bush campaigned on (but has yet to deliver) in 2000: A Private Retirement Account System. And if they don't want to look to Chile for a successful example of a privatized SS system, they can turn to Romanian President Traian Basescu who is steering his country in that very direction. Under the new Romanian system millions of workers will be transferred into a private pension system where they are able to choose between 14 competing pension funds. Romania is the latest country to join 31 other countries that have recognized the need to change over to private systems or go bankrupt. In the US, we don't seem to be moving in the direction of a Private Retirement System...nor are we even discussing the possibilities. That is probably because of the terrible results other countries have had with these types of systems. Take Chile for example where the private retirement system has been embraced by well over 90% of the population; where the annual return on investments has been 10% above inflation since the programs inception in 1981; and where a new sector of the economy has grown to compete for personal retirement accounts. That sounds awful to me". [/sarcasm]

More Leftist wisdom: "Dennis Ross is perhaps the least successful diplomat in American history. And his lack of success isn't down to bad luck. Ross concluded that Yasser Arafat was a legitimate peace partner for Israel, and embarked on the fool's errand of trying to bring about peace between Israelis and Palestinians on that basis. Has any American diplomat ever misjudged an important matter so thoroughly? Ross now brings his analytical powers and judgment to bear on Iraq. He accuses President Bush, who has brought about both regime change and the rise of a constitutional government that's just about holding together, of engaging in "stagecraft" to the exclusion of "statecraft." In the process, Ross has produced a column in which almost everything he says makes no sense."

Belgian police let Muslims run riot: "Last Sunday, demonstrating Turkish youths ransacked an Armenian restaurant in the Sint-Joost-ten-Node borough. According to the owner the police was present at the scene but did not interfere while his establishment was being demolished. The Armenian had to flee for his life. Another man who had to run for his life was the Belgian journalist Mehmet Koksal, an ethnic Turk. He was attacked around 11 pm on Sunday evening by a group of some twenty Turkish youths in front of the American embassy in Brussels, a few yards from the Belgian parliament building. The Parliament and the US Embassy are less than one kilometer from Sint-Joost-ten-Node. Koksal fled to a nearby police car, but a female police officer refused to let him into the car, whereupon the youths savagely beat him up. Fearing that they were about to lynch him, the police officers changed their attitude and allowed the journalist to seek refuge in their car...."

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

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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

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

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Has a statistician demolished the idea of a single general intelligence factor?

Cosma Shalizi is a rather egotistical-sounding young man of apparently Afghan ancestry. He is also an assistant professor in the Department of Statistics at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. On his blog, Three Toed Sloth, he has a long post demonstrating that a popular form of mathematical analysis generically called factor analysis cannot be used to demonstrate the existence of IQ (or 'g' as we psychometricans call it).

His criticisms are perfectly correct. Factor analysis cannot prove ANYTHING in fact. It is just a convenient but rather arbitrary way of summarizing a set of correlations. Factor analysis is such a weak technique that I myself in my more than 200 published academic papers have used it only rarely -- even though I normally present my research results in correlational form. It is my rather severe view that most (though not all) theories in psychology can be substantiated or dismissed with just one Pearsonian correlation coefficient. Anything else tends to suggest poor research design to me. (Yes. I do know about non-linear relationships. I tested for one such in my very first dissertation, in fact).

The sloth is also correct in saying that much of the research into IQ has used factor analysis as a way of summarizing findings. That the findings are not DEPENDANT on that descriptive technique is the point he appears to overlook.

The underlying finding for 100 years or more is that ability to solve one sort of puzzle generalizes strongly to the ability to solve other quite different sorts of puzzle. Problem solving ability is general, no matter how you choose to summarize that. And problem-solving ability is what IQ or 'g' measures.

Perhaps the biggest surprise is that verbal ability (as indexed -- say -- by the number of rare words understood) correlates well with mathematical ability (as indexed -- say -- by ability to detect complex numerical sequences). This is despite the fact that many people report being good in only one of those areas. I am in fact one of those who are good with words but shaky with mathematics. Yet I did for some years teach statistics at a major university. I obviously had some mathematical ability despite my discomfort with the subject. And it is the genes too. My son now teaches mathematics at another major university. And at school he was always a couple of years ahead of his class in reading ability too. Pesky stuff, that IQ.

The sloth should rise above his fascination with mathematical processes and focus on the underlying reality.

There is another over-enthusiastic blog here that claims that the sloth "offers an exhaustive demolition of the idea of a single general intelligence factor". The blogger apparently believes that the sloth has magically made lots of large correlation coefficients disappear. One of the commenters on that blog made an excellent point in addressing the common allegation that IQ tests measure only the ability to pass IQ tests. He said:

"If IQ tests are worthless, then so are college degrees. What do they really measure other than the ability to pass college classes? Nothing. Maybe we should assign MDs by lottery as well. I'll let you go first on the triple bypass surgery under your new world order."

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ELSEWHERE

U.S. Forces Could Attack Iran if Needed: "While military action against Iran is a last resort, the U.S. has the resources to attack if needed despite the strains of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the top U.S. military officer said Thursday. Navy Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the focus now is on diplomacy to stem Iran's nuclear ambitions and its support for insurgents in Iraq. But, he told reporters, "there is more than enough reserve to respond (militarily) if that, in fact, is what the national leadership wanted to do."

Fact-free Leftist illusions: "The alternative Western view of Middle East strategy--so influential in academic, media, and to some extent diplomatic circles-has a six-point program that boils down as: Make deals with Iran, Syria, Hamas, and Hizballah; ally with Muslim Brotherhoods; and split Iran and Syria. Those more extreme who advocate this approach are sympathetic to these forces, seeing them as more misunderstood victim than aggressive oppressor; the more moderate among them merely think the radicals can be moderated through concessions and confidence-building measures. In other words, they are not really adversaries but either already good guys or can be converted into playing that role. By this analysis, those who claim these radical regimes and movements are dangerous due to their radical ideology, violent methods, and totalitarian goals are standing in the way of solving issues quickly, painlessly, and peacefully. They are warmongers perpetrating needless conflicts. This analysis generates tremendous anger against the United States and Israel or anyone else who tries to explain that this approach will not work. Through this transformation, those who generate grievances that create terrorists or don't want to give in to the terrorists' demands are the real villains"

Cardinal signals firm Vatican stance with Muslims: "The top Vatican official for Islam has praised a novel Muslim call for dialogue but said real theological debate with them was difficult as they saw the Koran as the literal word of God and would not discuss it in depth..... The fact that Muslims can build mosques in Europe while many Islamic states limit or ban church building cannot be ignored, he said. "In a dialogue among believers, it is fundamental to say what is good for one is good for the other," he said."

Media can distort anything into anti-capitalism: "Financial Times columnist Clive Crook has had it. Reading MSM's take on the recent World Economic Outlook published by the IMF he feels like the characters of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. No, he is NOT a right wing conservative. He writes for the Atlantic Magazine and National Journal. It is just that he knows enough about economics to finally get what she got 50 years ago - Capitalism is moral and technological innovators are vilified heroes who actually make the world better. The opposite is true of anti-Capitalists, be they from the right or from the left"

Foolish optimism: "The Bush administration's plans to convene a new round of Israeli-Arab diplomacy on Nov. 26 will, I predict, do substantial damage to American and Israeli interests. As a rule, successful negotiations require a common aim; in management-labor talks, for example, both sides want to get back to work. When a shared premise is lacking, not only do negotiations usually fail, but they usually do more harm than good. Such is the case in the forthcoming Annapolis, Maryland, talks. One side (Israel) seeks peaceful coexistence while the other (the Arabs) seeks to eliminate its negotiating partner, as evidenced by its violent actions, its voting patterns, replies to polls, political rhetoric, media messages, school textbooks, mosque sermons, wall graffiti, and much else. Damage will be done should the Israeli government make "painful concessions" and get a cold peace or empty promises in return, as has consistently been the case since 1979. This lop-sided outcome would, once again, boost Arab exhilaration and determination to eliminate the Jewish state."

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

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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

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

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Levitt on IQ

The attempts by do-gooders to dismiss the evidence against racial differences in IQ are often amusing for their desperation. They almost invariably come up with claims and ideas that have been very thoroughly raked over long ago and are too arrogant to suspect that they might learn something by checking the research on the subject (Rushton's demolition of Gould's "Mismeasure of Man" is a handy introduction to some of the more common issues). In his Freakonomics blog on the New York Times, however, economist Steven D. Levitt has come up with something that is at least original -- though at the price of absurdity. He reports a study in which he studied the IQs of one-year-olds. And guess what? At that age there were no differences between blacks and whites.

The idea that one-year-olds can have their IQs reliably measured is of course a joke and Steve Sailer satirizes it well. Steve does not go the full monte, however, so I will -- thus making me perhaps the most incorrect blogger on the net. I regret if it loses me readers but I have never shrunk from telling the full truth.

The fact is that if Levitt had included one-year-old chimpanzees in his group of infants, he WOULD have found some differences -- in favour of chimpanzees. Chimps grow up faster than humans so are capable at an earlier age -- but at the price of a lower final intelligence and a shorter lifespan. Generally speaking, the higher the final IQ, the longer it takes to reach its peak. If the test used by Levitt had really measured IQ, he would almost certainly have found the white children at that age to be LESS intelligent than black children. Blacks do reach puberty earlier than whites. Levitt was the simpleton for being unable even to form a reasonable hypothesis for his study.

The outrage brigade will have stopped reading by now but I must make clear that I am NOT equating blacks with chimpanzees. Blacks are clearly vastly more intelligent than chimpanzees. But comparisons between primates can sometimes help illuminate general principles. Leftists have long claimed to find great significance for human beings in the behaviour of the "peaceful" Bonobos, for instance. But more on that some other time.

Finally, let me add a routine caveat: People have a tendency to see statements about groups as applying to all members of that group. That is rarely so and is certainly not true in this instance. There is no inconsistency in saying that blacks as a whole are less intelligent while also acknowledging that some individual blacks are very intelligent. What is true of most need not be true of all.

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ELSEWHERE

Jacksonian has a long post which argues that Hillary is a sociopath (or psychopath in blunter language). He makes his case fairly well. There is no doubt whatever that Hil is married to a psychopath -- someone plausible but devoid of any conscience, morality, principle or guiding philosophy -- someone to whom a lie comes as easily as the truth.

Hillary puzzle? "For seven years, the left has been up in arms about President Bush's aggressive foreign policy, his secrecy, his partisanship, and his expansive claims on executive power. It's odd, then, that they're prepared to nominate Hillary Clinton to carry the party into the 2008 elections. The problem with Hillary Clinton is two-fold: First, she's likely to be as bad or worse than Bush on all of those issues, and second, she's the one Democrat the Republicans still have a chance to beat."

Mad Muslim airline pilot. Don't fly Garuda: "The Indonesian captain in this year's Garuda passenger jet disaster ignored 15 automated warning signals and his own co-pilot shouting at him not to land the aircraft in the seconds before the crash, investigators have found. Senior pilot Marwoto Komar was so fixated on landing the Boeing 737-400 that he ignored pleas from his co-pilot to perform a "go around', or second approach, the report by Indonesia's National Transportation Safety Committee says. The report notes that Captain Komar was singing and engaging in non-essential conversation during the crucial descent from 10,000 feet to 4000 feet, and that during flight simulator and pilot line testing last year and in 2005, the 45-year-old was found by his check pilots to have made landing approaches that were too fast."

BBC joins the British crime coverup: "BBC News is to cut coverage of crime stories as part of its cost-saving plans. Up to 490 jobs are to go in the department as the television, radio and on-line operations are integrated, with 155 million pounds due to be saved during the next five years. Morale within the BBC is said to be at an all-time low after Mark Thompson, the Director-General, announced last week that 2,500 jobs would be lost across the corporation. Helen Boaden, the director of BBC News, admitted that staff were "unhappy and anxious about some of the efficiencies we are having to make". Explaining where the cuts would fall, she said: "We are talking about deploying fewer stories. For instance, I think there's some middle-ranking crime stories we could do without or think harder about the way we do them."

Dutch worse than the French: "Things have gotten so bad in the Netherlands that even French intellectuals are now accusing us of "unacceptable cowardice" because of the way Ayaan Hirsi Ali was treated recently. Several intellectuals wrote an open letter, which was published in the French newspaper Lib‚ration. In it, Pascal Bruckner, Luc Ferry, Alain Finkielkraut, Andr‚ Glucksmann and Bernard-Henri Levy don't just accuse the Dutch of cowardly behavior, they also call on their own government to offer Ayaan Hirsi Ali French nationality. They write that "the Netherlands closes its eyes for a world in which terrorism, intolerance and totalitarianism don't care about borders."

Advanced missiles from Iran have already been fired at U.S. helicopters in Iraq: "The U.S. military has reported that Iran has smuggled advanced surface-to-air missiles into Iraq for the purpose of downing U.S. combat aircraft. Officials said Iran has transported man-portable SAM systems to Shi'ite allies in Iraq. They said some of the missiles have already been fired at U.S. Army helicopters. "It's a real concern, and it's something that we're dealing with," U.S. Army Col. Daniel Shanahan said. "Right now we've got the best systems in the world, and we've got technology behind us." Shanahan did not identify the Iranian missiles. Over the last 18 months, Iran was said to have received the SA-18 Igla-S man-portable missile from Russia."

Violence in Iraq drops sharply, says Iraqi Ministry: "Violence in Iraq has dropped by 70 percent since the end of June, when U.S. forces completed their build-up of 30,000 extra troops to stabilize the war-torn country, the Interior Ministry said on Monday. Washington began dispatching reinforcements to Iraq in February to try to buy Iraq's feuding political leaders time to reach a political accommodation to end violence between majority Shi'ites and minority Sunni Arabs that has killed tens of thousands and forced millions from their homes. While the leaders have failed to agree on key laws aimed at reconciling the country's warring sects, the troop buildup has succeeded in quelling violence. Interior Ministry spokesman Major-General Abdul-Karim Khalaf told reporters that there had been a 70 percent decrease in violence countrywide in the three months from July to September over the previous quarter".

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

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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

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

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For the children?

On Thursday Nancy Pelosi, as is the fashion, used the phrase "the children" like some twitchy verbal tic, a kind of Democrat Tourette's syndrome: "This is a discussion about America's children. We could establish ourselves as the children's Congress. Come forward on behalf of the children... I tried to do that when I was sworn in as Speaker surrounded by children. It was a spontaneous moment, but it was one that was clear in its message: we are gaveling this House to order on behalf of the children."

Etc. So what is the best thing America could do "for the children"? Well, it could try not to make the same mistake as most of the rest of the western world and avoid bequeathing the next generation a system of unsustainable entitlements that turns the entire nation into a giant Ponzi scheme. Most of us understand, for example, that Social Security needs to be "fixed" - or we'll have to raise taxes, or the retirement age, or cut benefits, etc. But, just to get the entitlements debate in perspective, projected public pensions liabilities are expected to rise by 2040 to about 6.8 per cent of GDP in the US; in Greece, the equivalent figure is 25 per cent - that's not a matter of raising taxes or tweaking retirement age; that's total societal collapse.

So what? shrug the voters. Not my problem. I paid my taxes, I want my benefits. In France, President Sarkozy is proposing a very modest step - that those who retire before the age of 65 should not receive free health care - and the French are up in arms about it. He's being angrily denounced by 53-year old retirees, a demographic hitherto unknown to functioning societies. You spend your first 25 years being educated, you work for two or three decades, and then you spend a third of a century living off a lavish pension with the state picking up every healthcare expense. No society can make that math add up. And so in a democratic system today's electors vote to keep the government gravy coming and leave it to tomorrow for "the children" to worry about. That's the real "war on children" - and every time you add a new entitlement to the budget you make it less and less likely they'll win it..... That's the real "war on children": In Europe, it's killing their future. Don't make the same mistake here.

More here

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Leftists and Islamics: United only by hate

A glorious culture clash took place in Iran recently that made me laugh out loud. The children of Che Guevara, the revolutionary pin-up, had been invited to Tehran University to commemorate the 40th anniversary of their father's death and celebrate the growing solidarity between "the left and revolutionary Islam" at a conference partly paid for by Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president.

There were fraternal greetings and smiles all round as America's "earth-devouring ambitions" were denounced. But then one of the speakers, Hajj Saeed Qassemi, the co-ordinator of the Association of Volunteers for Suicide-Martyrdom (who presumably remains selflessly alive for the cause), revealed that Che was a "truly religious man who believed in God and hated communism and the Soviet Union".

Che's daughter Aleida wondered if something might have been lost in translation. "My father never mentioned God," she said, to the consternation of the audience. "He never met God." During the commotion, Aleida and her brother were led swiftly out of the hall and escorted back to their hotel. "By the end of the day, the two Guevaras had become non-persons. The state-controlled media suddenly forgot their existence," the Iranian writer Amir Taheri noted.

After their departure, Qassemi went on to claim that Fidel Castro, the "supreme guide" of Guevara, was also a man of God. "The Soviet Union is gone," he affirmed. "The leadership of the downtrodden has passed to our Islamic republic. Those who wish to destroy America must understand the reality and not be clever with words."

More here

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ELSEWHERE

Hope for Britain? "In my U.S. News column this week, I took a look at the sharp change in the political balance in Britain and its implications for the United States. As the week has progressed, it looks like the balance in Britain is changing even more. The latest ICM poll for the Sunday Telegraph has a big (43 to 36 percent) lead for the Conservatives-a striking change from the balance over the summer in which Labor led by an average of 9 points. If the popular vote split along these lines, Conservatives would lead Labor 319 to 301 in the House of Commons, with only two for Lib Dems-down from 62 at the present time (hence the forced resignation of Sir Menzies Campbell as lead of the Lib Dems). That would leave Conservatives just seven seats short of an absolute majority, which would mean they could, at least theoretically, govern with the support of the Northern Ireland Unionist parties."

Surprising sense from Britain: "More people from ethnic minorities must be stopped and searched if Britain is to win the fight against violent inner-city gun and knife crime, one of the country's top black police officers has said. Keith Jarrett, president of the National Black Police Association, is expected to make a speech this week calling for an increase in stop-and-searches in black communities. He told The Observer: "A lot of black people want to stop these killings, these knife crimes, and if it means their sons and daughters are going to be inconvenienced by being stopped by the police, so be it." The association, which represents thousands of officers from ethnic minorities, has previously questioned the high proportion of black people stopped and searched. The tactic was blamed for precipitating the race riots of the 1980s"

Palis prefer Israeli (i.e. adult) rule: "After 40 years of living under Israeli occupation, two stints in Israeli prisons and a military checkpoint on the same road as his odds-and-ends shop, one would think Nabil Gheit would be happy to hear an Israeli prime minister contemplate handing over parts of East Jerusalem to Palestinian control. But the mayor of Ras Hamis, a Palestinian neighbourhood on the eastern fringe of this divided city, says that he can't think of a worse fate for him and his constituents than being handed over to the weak and ineffective Palestinian Authority right now. "If there was a referendum here, no one would vote to join the Palestinian Authority," Mr. Gheit said, smoking a water pipe as he whiled away the afternoon watching Lebanese music videos. "We will not accept it. There would be another intifada [uprising] to defend ourselves from the PA."

Cheney: "We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon": "The United States and other nations will not allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon, Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday. "Our country, and the entire international community, cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its grandest ambitions," Cheney said in a speech to the Washington Institute for Near East Studies. He said Iran's efforts to pursue technology that would allow them to build a nuclear weapon are obvious and that "the regime continues to practice delay and deceit in an obvious effort to buy time." If Iran continues on its current course, Cheney said the U.S. and other nations are "prepared to impose serious consequences." The vice president made no specific reference to military action. "We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon," he said."

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

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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

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

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Go Rupert! Fox News proprietor riding high

Murdoch is in his 70s but his mother is still alive so the genes suggest that he can still afford his customary long-term vision. I have always been a great fan of Murdoch. I admire success in others as much as Leftists hate it. But that is probably because I have always been happy with my own life. Murdoch is pictured below with his Chinese third wife, Wendi Deng. I think he is a happy man too. He has even played himself in some episodes of "The Simpsons" -- though he does own that show. It was he that first put it to air, in fact



News Corporation's market value has passed that of all its traditional media peers for the first time and the company's Fox News Channel alone will soon be worth $10 billion, News chairman Rupert Murdoch says. Addressing the company's annual meeting in New York yesterday, Mr Murdoch told shareholders that financial markets were now noticing the group's average 14 per cent increase in operating income in the past four years. "Since January 1, we have outperformed all other media stocks, and indeed over the past five years we have seen our stock grow faster than both the general market and our peers," he said. "And it is with some pride that I tell you that last week our market value exceeded all of our traditional peers for the first time ever."

Mr Murdoch said News, owner of The Australian, had invested $US900 million in the US pay-TV channel Fox News since its launch. "Within the next few years I expect the channel to earn at least that amount annually and its value to exceed $US10 billion," he said. Last week News launched another pay-TV channel, Fox Business Network (FBN), to more than 30 million subscribers and will soon conclude its acquisition of The Wall Street Journal's owner, Dow Jones.

"Make no mistake -- FBN faces many challenges against an entrenched competitor with a 17-year head start," Mr Murdoch said. "I view FBN's growth in terms of years, not months, and I am confident our new approach to business news will be successful as we again offer viewers more choice in their media consumption."

Mr Murdoch said the Dow Jones deal would provide News with "remarkable reach and flexibility in the growing business news sector". "There is a real hunger -- not just in the US but across the globe -- for financial news," he said. "The opportunities are immense and senior management has formulated a long-term plan to integrate the unique properties of Dow Jones within our complementary assets and overall corporate and digital strategy."

Mr Murdoch also said News's internet businesses were continuing to grow, and he expected the company's internet revenues to reach "around $US1 billion" in the coming year. "While other competitors have entered the arena, none of our peers compare in terms of sheer numbers of users or -- more importantly for stockholders -- revenues," he said. Mr Murdoch said Fox Interactive Media's internet portfolio now reached more than 160 million people around the world. "MySpace, our most popular site, turned profitable for the first time last year and now ranks first in the US in total page views and is among the top five sites worldwide in unique visitors," he said.

But Mr Murdoch said other businesses were also doing well, with News Corp's Italian pay-TV channel, Sky Italia, significantly increasing its operating profit. "Sky Italia is now a major growth driver for our company. It's easy to forget that only three years ago it lost $267 million," he said. "In fiscal 2007, Sky Italia made almost that much in profit and is now on track for continued strong growth."

Mr Murdoch said the Fox International Channels business now operated 270 channels, broadcasting in 31 languages across more than 75 countries. That business did not exist a few years ago but grew profit by 80 per cent last year as it expanded to a larger global audience, he said.

Source

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ELSEWHERE

Carbuncle Soul has a heartfelt post about what converted him from Leftism. He starts out referring to this recent horror story from Australia: One that I frankly cannot think about. To me there is nothing more wonderful than a little child. Jesus had it right: "Suffer [allow] the little children to come unto me, for of such is the Kingdom of God" (Mark 10:14). The mother of the toddler has now been charged with his murder.

EU turning a blind eye to Turkish attack on the Kurds: "The EU seem to be missing in action when it comes to the possible all out war that an aspirant EU-state Turkey, who is desperate to join, is about to cause in Kurdish areas of Asia Minor. Where are the screams of protest and the desperate calls for negotiation coming from the EU ministers? Where is their new foreign minister in this whole thing? After all the EU is at great pains to claim that Turkey is a European state. There is much anger in Brussels over Germany and Frances continued opposition to Turkey joining the EU; from as far away as the UK. Many of us suspect that this will be another case where the EU proves to be a toothless and weak tiger as it did with the Balkans. They talk a lot but are not able to handle something that is on their own doorstep and will have a great impact on the EU. After all, where do you think Kurdish refugees will head? They are hated almost as much as Jews are in the Muslim world for a variety of reasons. Iran, Turkey, Syria and Iraq have been trying to wipe them off the face of the earth for as long as they have been trying to drive Jews out of the region. The EU needs to make it clear to Turkey that if they invade Kurdish areas of Iraq that they will never be let into the EU. Their membership application will be torn up and they will be permanently banned from the club they are so desperate to join."

"Immigrant youths" rioting in Amsterdam: "Because a Muslim youth entered a police station and began stabbing two police officers. One of them, after having been stabbed multiple times, shot him to death. Rioting has followed. If the police officers had simply consented to being stabbed, there would have been no problem, you see."

James Watson stirs the pot once again: "One in three people looking for a job in temporary employment bureaux in Los Angeles is a psychopath or a sociopath. Is this a consequence of their environment or their genetic components? DNA sequencing should give us the answer. The thought that some people are innately wicked disturbs me. But science is not here to make us feel good. It is to answer questions in the service of knowledge and greater understanding."

Some realism about Guevara: "A monument erected to immortalize the life and death of Ernesto "Che" Guevara, the Argentine revolutionary who fought with Fidel Castro in Cuba and in the Bolivian jungle, was demolished by gunfire in Venezuela, the country presided over by Hugo Chavez, Castro's heir apparent in Latin America. The attack was denounced by Chavez's government as "an abominable action" and "criminal," in that it was erected to honor "one of the men who crossed the continent promoting the liberation of towns and the freedom of modern man."

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

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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

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

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Exclusion of Alan Keyes

We read:

In what he called "a major abuse of the electoral process," former Reagan administration diplomat and long-time national conservative activist Alan Keyes has been blocked by the Florida GOP from participating in Sunday's Fox News presidential debate in Orlando.

The Florida party used a 1% or better showing in polls from three of six polling firms as their criterion for inclusion in the event, even though none of the selected polling firms included Keyes, the latest entry in the presidential race, in any of their statewide surveys to date.

However, had Keyes been included in these polls, objective observers - including staff of some of the polling firms in question - agreed, based on past electoral performance in Florida, and on current polling that is taking place in other states, that he would have received a percentage meeting or exceeding the threshold.

Source

This is pretty ham-fisted. Had Keyes been a hysterical Leftist, he would be playing the "race card" by now. That he has not done so shows what a gentleman he is.

Clearly, the stage is going to be cluttered for the debate and Keyes is nowhere in the polls so the thinking behind his exclusion is clear enough but what an opportunity the GOP is missing by failing to present a black face to the many African-American voters. Dumb and dumber!

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ELSEWHERE

Alan Coren RIP. I shed a little tear when I heard of the passing of a wonderful man whom I have often read in the pages of the now also deceased "Punch" magazine. "The Times" says it all. There are a few samples of Coren's gentle humour here

She's at it again. Hillary has got herself another Norman Hsu for a fundraiser. Who he is we don't know yet. The L.A. Times plays it straight but skeptical comment is bursting out all over. See here, here, here and here. There is no doubt that crooks and the Clintons go together.

Haditha -- The massacre that wasn't, and its political exploitation: "The incident at Haditha--or the massacre, as it is often called--is due for a wholesale rethinking. The allegations are that in 2005 U.S. Marines went on a killing spree and deliberately executed 24 Iraqi civilians. The casualties have drawn an extraordinary amount of political attention, becoming an emblem for everything critics say is wrong with the Iraq war--in the common telling, another My Lai. Thus Congressman Jack Murtha, a decorated combat veteran, made accusations of war crimes and said the Marines had killed "in cold blood." These are serious charges; and military justice continues to deal with them seriously, though thankfully at a slower pace than politics. Now the prosecutions have mostly unraveled. It seems Haditha, though tragic, was exploited politically, and the allegations were exaggerated, if not unfounded."

Blair gets it: "Islamist extremism is similar to "rising fascism in the 1920s and 1930s", Tony Blair said last night in his first major speech since leaving office. At a prestigious charity dinner in New York, the former Prime Minister said that public figures who blamed the rise of fundamentalism on the policies of the West were "mistaken". He told the audience, which included New York governor Eliot Spitzer and mayor Michael Bloomberg, that Iran was the biggest exporter of the ideology, and that the Islamic republic was prepared to "back and finance terror" to support it. "Out there in the Middle East, we've seen... the ideology driving this extremism and terror is not exhausted. On the contrary it believes it can and will exhaust us first," he said. "Analogies with the past are never properly accurate, and analogies especially with the rising fascism can be easily misleading but, in pure chronology, I sometimes wonder if we're not in the 1920s or 1930s again. "This ideology now has a state, Iran, that is prepared to back and finance terror in the pursuit of destabilising countries whose people wish to live in peace."

Limbaugh Letter Fetches $2.1 Million on eBay: "The conservative radio talk-show host turned an inflammatory letter written by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and signed by 41 of his fellow Democrats into a more than $4.2 million gold mine for the kids of Marines and law enforcement personnel killed in the line of duty, all courtesy of eBay. The Eugene B. Casey foundation Betty Casey coughed up more than $2.1 million to be the sole owner of the letter sent to the radio host's boss demanding that Limbaugh be reprimanded for a "phony soldier" comment he made on air. Limbaugh has pledged to match whatever was paid for the letter. Limbaugh described Betty Casey, a trustee of the foundation, as a loyal listener to his show. "She gives significant sums to hospitals, hospices, colleges and private schools," Limbaugh said during his radio show Friday afternoon, just after the eBay auction ended. "Betty has been a listener to my program since its inception, and we can't thank her enough for her support. This was kind of the last straw for her, what Harry Reid did here." The letter, sent by Reid and signed by his Democratic colleagues, was delivered Oct. 2 to Mark P. Mays, president of Clear Channel, the parent company of the conservative talk show host's radio broadcast."

Amazing! Feds stand up for America: "A private Islamic school supported by the Saudi government should be shut down until the U.S. government can ensure the school is not fostering radical Islam, a federal panel recommends. In a report released Thursday, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom broadly criticized what it calls a lack of religious freedom in Saudi society and promotion of religious extremism at Saudi schools. Particular criticism is leveled at the Islamic Saudi Academy, a private school serving nearly 1,000 students in grades K-12 at two campuses in northern Virginia's Fairfax County. The commission's report says the academy hews closely to the curriculum used at Saudi schools, which they criticize for promoting hatred of and intolerance against Jews, Christians and Shiite Muslims. "Significant concerns remain about whether what is being taught at the ISA promotes religious intolerance and may adversely affect the interests of the United States," the report states".

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

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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

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

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'Bergler' steals Clinton's credibility

[Sandy] Berger, you may recall, was President Clinton's national security adviser. Now Hillary Clinton is trying to sock it to you by employing him as her campaign foreign-policy adviser, treating Berger like a respectable foreign-policy expert - exactly what he ceased to be when he was a common criminal heisting classified documents from the National Archives in 2003. While preparing the former President Clinton for his 9/11 Commission testimony (as well as preparing his own), Berger stole top-secret national-defense documents from the National Archives, stuffing them in a briefcase and in his clothing. He destroyed documents, hid others - some at a nearby construction site. He later lied, claiming it was all a mistake, blaming the removal and destruction on "sloppiness" - "an honest mistake," he said, with former presidential backing.

Berger, for the record, wasn't stealing old lunch menus for his scrapbook. While we don't know everything he took (and in some cases destroyed), we know he did take drafts of what people familiar with it have described as a scathing "after-action report," done after the intelligence community failed to foil the millennium plot to bomb Los Angeles International Airport, which was instead left for an alert customs agent to discover. The report was a brutal internal review of our state of unreadiness - our vulnerability to domestic terrorism. A House government reform committee investigation revealed that Berger had unsupervised access to noninventoried original documents on terrorism for which there were no duplicates.

So perhaps Hillary Clinton is holding Berger close as a "thank you": Thanks for making sure that some hard-hitting internal analysis of the Clinton administration's poor counterterrorism performance won't become breaking news on the way back to the White House. Or maybe Berger simply knows too much of the kind of information that could hurt an aspiring Clinton running on executive experience. That's surely another reason to keep him on board. Perhaps candidate Clinton feels the need to prove that she is up for a challenge. How, after all, can she continue using the Democrats' top talking point - the claim that they are the antidote to a "culture of corruption" in Washington? If Berger's top-secret rampage isn't corrupt, I don't know what corrupt is.

Source

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Brookes News Update

Rightwing columnists stuff up labour market reform debate: A leftwing academic screws up on labour markets - and what do Janet Albrechtsen, Imre Salusinszky and Andrew Bolt do? They attack the man and in doing so reveal that they are every bit as ignorant as he is. With allies like these it's no wonder that the free market gets such a bad press down here
Hillary, Soros, Alinsky, and Rush Limbaugh: The Hillary-Soros smear machine is in top gear. Completely devoid of anything resembling morality Soros' media Brown Shirts are waging war against American democracy. These are the same thugs that that ruthlessly attacked General Petraeus' character and military standing. They are the same thugs who are trying to destroy Rush Limbaugh. And will try to destroy anyone who gets in the way Hillary and Soros' ambitions for a castrated socialist America
Islamic Economics: What Does It Mean?: Islamic economics increasingly has become force to contend with due to burgeoning portfolios of oil exporters and multiplying Islamic financial instruments (such as interest-free mortgages and bonds. But the dirty little secret is that there is no such thing as 'Islamic economics' - it's a fiction, a complete crock
Why and how the Democrats are pushing America toward socialism: Who would ever have imagined that a Democratic presidential candidate could be someone who was a willing and admiring assistant to a self-proclaimed Stalinist and Communist Party member, lawyer. We are speaking of Hillary Clinton
Congress should reject the Armenian Genocide resolution: In this case, the moral high ground should give way to considerations of realpolitik. Congress should reject the resolution at this time. It is not in America's interest to offend our Turkish allies. What's more, why is it that the Dems never seem to take the moral high ground unless it damages the US in some way?

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ELSEWHERE

Stupid Europeans attack China for selling them stuff cheaply: "The European Union launched a concerted attack on China's expanding trade empire yesterday, accusing it of building up surpluses through unfair practices. In a briefing that will significantly ratchet up protectionist tensions, the EU ambassador to China said requests for the issue to be addressed had met with no response. "Apparently China's trade surplus has no limit and we do not see efficient measures," the ambassador, Serge Abou, said. "These facts are considered with a certain bitterness in our leadership" .... nerves have been frayed by an atmosphere of economic uncertainty set against Beijing's currency policies, its $1.4 trillion reserves, much of which is held in US treasuries, and the risks created by such huge imbalances. The EU's trade deficit with China grew to $184bn last year, and would rise by another 20-25pc this year, Mr Abou said.

The market works its usual magic: "The world is rediscovering "Made in USA." American exports are now coursing their way around the world at a record level. In a major shift from the past five years, the US trade deficit, after stabilizing last year, is now shrinking. US companies, faced with slower economic growth in their home market, are now targeting foreign buyers. It doesn't hurt to have the dollar sinking in value - down almost 9 percent so far this year - and a relatively strong global economy. In fact, the US economy would be flirting with recession if it weren't for the 1 percentage point of growth fueled by the export surge. "Exports have suddenly become a key source of growth at a time when the economy is looking for any growth it can get," says Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com. [Past deficits caused a fall in the dollar -- which led to American goods being easier to sell aboad. A surprise only to non-economists]

TSA still a joke: "Security screeners at two of the nation's busiest airports failed to find fake bombs hidden on undercover agents posing as passengers in more than 60% of tests last year, according to a classified report obtained by USA TODAY. Screeners at Los Angeles International Airport missed about 75% of simulated explosives and bomb parts that Transportation Security Administration testers hid under their clothes or in carry-on bags at checkpoints, the TSA report shows."

Democrats tell business to pay up or else: "The late Milton Friedman used to rail against what he called corporate America's "suicidal impulse." By that he meant that the business community continually financed the very politicians who were intent on robbing their profits and slitting their throats. It's happening again. The latest quarterly Federal Election Commission Report on political giving, released this week, shows the majority of corporate money flowing to the Democrats. Firms like Comcast, General Electric, Federal Express and UPS have shifted campaign giving away from the GOP. Employees of five major defense contractors including Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Northrup-Grumman spent $104,000 on Democratic presidential candidates, versus $88,800 for the Republican field.... Sen. Charles Schumer runs the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and is playing the role of "good cop" when he dials Wall Street donors. As one hedge-fund manager tells me: "Senator Schumer says on the phone, 'I can make your problems go away.' " Of course, the Democrats created the problems. Mr. Schumer has raised at least $2 million this year from managers at leading PE firms like Carlyle and Blackstone Group"

There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly incorrect themes of race and IQ.

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

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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

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

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Immense Israeli restraint in the face of vast Arab incompetence

Two years ago, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon led his country in a fateful decision to "disengage" from Gaza, uprooting 8,500 Jewish residents, many born in Gaza and some domiciled there for nearly four decades. Sharon did this because, as he put it to 1.3 million Palestinian Gazans,

"...it is not in our interest to govern you... we would like you to govern yourselves in your own country, a democratic Palestinian state."

Sharon held out hope that if things worked out in Gaza, he would move to withdraw from the West Bank as well. That this hope has turned to literal ashes is now well known.

Not only has a viable Palestinian government willing to live in peace and security with Israel failed to materialize, Hamas, a terrorist group whose charter explicitly calls for the destruction of Israel, won legislative elections and forcibly drove Fatah rivals out of Gaza. Gaza has become the locus for blatant acts of war against Israel, including repeated Qassam rocket barrages against Israeli residential areas and recurring efforts to infiltrate suicide bombers. Twelve Israeli civilians have died and countless thousands have been dislocated by these missiles. In the early hours of September 11, one rocket launched from Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza hit an Israeli basic training camp in Zikim, wounding fifty military recruits. Israeli Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit was kidnapped inside Israel and is being held prisoner inside Gaza. Hamas has smuggled in large quantities of weapons through the porous Egyptian border. Twenty tons of materiel entered Gaza in July 2007 alone, and the IDF now believes that Hamas possesses anti-aircraft missiles and anti-tank rockets, most likely Sagger guided missiles.

On September 18, the Israeli cabinet voted unanimously to juridically recognize these facts: it declared that a terrorist organization has turned Gaza into "hostile territory." This declaration opens the way for Israeli authorities, at a time and in a measure of their choosing, to reduce the amount of electricity, water, and fuel they have continued to supply to Gaza since Israel's departure two years ago. [Egypt, during its entire occupation of the territory from 1948-67, never developed Gaza's energy infrastructure, leaving the strip destitute and primitive. Israel's integration of Gaza into its supply grid has allowed Gazans to develop their industry and agriculture.]

Despite the deliberative tone of the cabinet's decision -- it noted that "sanctions will be enacted following a legal examination, while taking into account both the humanitarian aspects relevant to the Gaza Strip and the intention to avoid a humanitarian crisis" -- critics hastened to denounce the move. One United Nations official interviewed on Israeli Army Radio termed the decision "collective punishment," and "a violation of international law," while UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon declared that any interruption in the utilities would be "contrary to Israel's obligations towards the civilian population under international humanitarian and human rights law."

The UN statements were, typically, hysterical in tone and dead wrong on the law. If Gaza is territory under the control of the enemy -- as it manifestly is under Hamas -- then the Israeli government is both within its rights and arguably obliged by its responsibilities to its citizens to treat the strip as "hostile territory." Siege and blockade of a hostile territory is a legitimate tactic of war, used in declared and undeclared (e.g., Cuban) conflicts and explicitly recognized by the 1949 Geneva Conventions. The Conventions' sole limitation is that there be "free passage of all consignments of food-stuffs, clothing and tonics intended for children under fifteen, expectant mothers, and maternity cases" (Fourth Convention, art. 23) -- and even this exception was conditioned on there being "no reasons for fearing... [t]hat a definite advantage may accrue to the military efforts or economy of the enemy" (for example, if resources destined for humanitarian aid will be commandeered by the enemy). Israel has carefully respected this requirement.....

To the joy of Hamas, Gaza is now Judenrein. But it is a miserable place. Its residents, having voted for a regime that is waging war on Israel, must now suffer the consequences of their electoral (and military) support of the terrorist group. Of course, a cut-off of electricity, water, and fuel, might strengthen the extremists among them, so Israeli authorities are wise to weigh their actions carefully. But if they choose to reduce supplies to their enemy -- a measure far less aggressive than a military takeover -- they are absolutely legally entitled to do so. If Palestinians wish to claim equality among the nations of the world, they should expend energies building a state at peace with its neighbor and supplying its citizens with basic services, rather than devoting themselves to destroying their neighbor and then carping about the standard of living that Israelis allegedly owe them.

Source

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ELSEWHERE

TSA still hopeless -- after 6 years : "The Department of Homeland Security has made some progress in making air travel more secure but has yet to implement recommended improvements in screening passengers and air cargo, a Senate panel was told Tuesday. Although it has made progress in inspecting checked baggage and securing some mass transit systems, the Transportation Security Administration has not implemented a government-run program to match passenger information against terrorist watch lists, leaving some airlines to rely on foreign contractors to carry out the vetting, said Cathleen A. Berrick, director of homeland security at the Government Accountability Office. TSA also currently lacks the technology to detect explosives on passengers, carry-on baggage and foreign cargo traveling on passenger planes, she said."

Britain. Revolt against atheist bishops: "The Church of England is facing a rift similar to that in the US Church after hundreds of leading evangelical clergy were told to invite bishops from outside their dioceses to carry out ordinations. Members of the 1,700-strong Reform group were told at their conference that they must not be afraid to ignore the wishes of their diocesan bishop if he refused to ordain conservative evangelical clergy. The advice mirrors the situation in the US, where conservatives have even had their own bishops ordained by evangelical Archbishops from Global South provinces such as Uganda. The Rev Rod Thomas, the group's new chairman, urged his members to resist the Church of England's "increasingly liberal agenda".

Attack on British drinkers: "According to the report, men who drink between 22 and 50 units of alcohol per week, and women who drink between 15 and 35 are most likely to reside in middle-class suburbs such as Harrogate and Runnymede. The news has been followed by the predictable clamouring of society's new high priests – the interventionist scientists – calling for the government to raise alcohol taxes in order to discourage consumption. Fears that the health service will come under unmanageable pressure as a result have been used as arguments for new government intervention to stop this social 'crisis'. It would be refreshing if these scientific puritans would finally realise that the NHS does not exist for their own intellectual titillation, but to serve its customers – the British people. We are not there to make its life easier, but vice versa. To constantly try and mould individuals into a convenient model for a failing health system is both misguided and draconian public policy."

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

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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

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

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