SOWELL ON FLYNN

Thomas Sowell has another one of his admirably balanced articles here -- where he broaches the heavily forbidden topic of the heritability of IQ. He is not a psychometrician, however, so he misses a few things.

He points out the long-standing evidence that IQ is strongly hereditary but then goes on to question that evidence on the basis of research by James Flynn -- who has documented a large rise in IQ scores throughout the 20th century. Since genetics do not change over such a short time, one might conclude that the causes of IQ are therefore non-genetic and presumably environmental. He seems to miss the point that psychometricians have always said that the environment has SOME influence on IQ. He is right, however, in saying that environmental improvement is universally seen as what lies behind the "Flynn effect". Exactly what environmental factors lie behind the "Flynn effect" is a decades-old topic of research and discussion among psychometricians but it is a controversy largely unknown to the general public and Sowell has done us all a service in bringing it to the attention of a wider audience.

Sowell would seem to be of the view that the famed black/white difference in average IQ is called into question by the Flynn findings. It is therefore regrettable that he does not mention that the changes of the 20th century seem to have affected most groups equally. Blacks now score more highly than they once did but so do whites. The black/white gap, in other words, has NOT been narrowed by the general rise. That the gap remains the same DESPITE obviously favourable environmental circumstances would therefore seem to STRENGTHEN the evidence in favour of the black/white gap being wholly genetic.

The broadest explanation for the rise in IQ scores over the 20th century is that it reflects the advantages of modernity in general: The elimination of hunger in Western countries, improved perinatal care (particularly less damaging obstetric practices), improved medical care generally, greater access to mental stimulation via movies and TV etc. But the leading cause is thought to be greater test sophistication. The many more years that kids now spend in education makes them good at test-taking strategies generally (e.g. the wisdom of guessing when you don't actually know the answer).

All these influences are essentially one-off however. Once the major limits on maximum brain development are removed, no further improvement in IQ scores can be expected. And in some countries that does already seem to have happened. Test scores there have ceased to increase. Environmental influences do have SOME effect on IQ but once the environment is removed from the equation, the still-large remaining differences in scores between individuals can only be genetic. So Flynn's findings in fact STRENGTHEN the evidence in favour of genetics being the overwhelming influence on IQ.

And the twin studies showed that long ago, anyway. Twins usually have extremely similar environments but identical twins have almost exactly the same IQs whereas fraternal (genetically different) twins may or may not. I personally know of one set of fraternal twins where one flunked High School and the other got a University degree.

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The DEMOCRAT ATTEMPT TO "GET" LIMBAUGH

More Leftist dishonesty -- smearing Rush Limbaugh: "The latest attempt to crush Rush is by pretending that Rush called any soldier who questions the war a "phony soldier." The claim is baldly false. Peter Wehner over at National Review has a transcript of the call that is the root of this made-up controversy. In short, it is clearly that when Rush talked about phony soldiers, he was referring to actual phony soldiers: people who have made up military credentials in an attempt to add heft to their criticism. And there have been a lot of such phony soldiers during the course of this war and its criticism. Yet since that time Senators Kerry and Harkin and others have been smearing Rush with these false charges. It would be kind to assume that they simply haven't heard the show or seen a transcript, so don't know that the remarks were taken out of context. That would show an astonishing degree of irresponsibility, not to bother having staff actually check what someone said before taking to the Floor of the Senate to denounce him. But I think the truth is that they do know that what they are saying is absolutely untrue and simply don't care. [Kinda amusing that one of Limbaugh's Democrat accusers is himself a phony war hero -- as is another]

Attack on Limbaugh aimed at talk radio generally: "If you need any proof that the Democrats are going to try to rip the guts out of talk radio when they gain control of the White House, you need look no further than the current storm surrounding Rush Limbaugh. The instigator here is Media Myrmidons. They like to call themselves "Media Matters" but myrmidons fits so much better. Media Myrmidons is an ultra left-wing machine created by Hillary Clinton and her supporters and backers to carry forth the attack on conservative talk radio. Media Myrmidons started this attack on Limbaugh by writing that Rush called "service members who advocate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq 'phony soldiers.'" Media Myrdions is lying .. and they know they're lying. They also know that they can depend on the mainstream media in this country to not only ignore their distortion, but to actually work to support and spread it. This whole mess starts with a clown by the name of Jesse Macbeth. Macbeth became very popular with the media earlier this year when he started telling stories about all of the hideous crimes he saw our soldiers commit while he was serving in Afghanistan and Iraq as an Army ranger. Oh, how the leftist media sopped it up. The only problem was, Macbeth was lying. "Jesse Macbeth, 23, Tacoma, Washington, sentenced today in connection with his fraudulent claims of military service. Macbeth never traveled outside the U.S. with the Army"."

No consistency in Leftism again: "Ah Democrats. Too clever by half, again. In denouncing Rush Limbaugh, Reid had to admit that in Iraq: "Our troops are fighting and dying to bring to others the freedoms that many take for granted." This is the same Harry Reid who in April pronounced the war in Iraq was lost."

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ELSEWHERE



Palestinian Propaganda Coup finally coming apart: "Last month, a French court heard an appeals case whose forthcoming verdict will have far-reaching ramifications for all who value truth and accuracy in Middle East news reporting. The case involves Philippe Karsenty, a French journalist and media commentator, who was found guilty of defamation after he called for the firing of two France 2 Television journalists responsible for the Sept. 30, 2000, news report on the alleged killing of a 12-year-old Palestinian boy, Mohammed al-Dura, by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). It has been seven years since France 2 Television broadcast the excruciating footage of Mohammed and his father Jamal crouching in terror behind a barrel in Gaza's Netzarim Junction while, according to the report, under relentless fire from IDF soldiers. The 59-second clip, which ends with the boy apparently shot dead, was presented around the world as an unambiguous case of Israeli savagery. Shortly following the al-Dura incident, however, a series of inquiries cast grave doubt on the accuracy of the original France 2 report. And yet France 2 refused to release Abu Rahmeh's full 27 minutes of raw footage. It did, however, agree to let three prominent French journalists view the footage. All three concluded that it comprised blatantly staged scenes of Palestinians being shot by Israeli forces, and that France 2's Jerusalem Bureau Chief Charles Enderlin had lied to conceal that fact.

Cheap wine: I have just bought from my local liquor store a box containing 6 standard bottles of Australian Chardonnay wine -- for $18, a similar amount to what I often pay for a single bottle. I intend to open one of the bottles immediately after I post this. Should be interesting. Many cheap Australian wines are quite good and, even though I give away thousands of dollars to selected recipients, my Presbyterian upbringing always makes me interested in a bargain: "Waste not, want not", and all that. Update: It is a perfectly pleasant wine -- though with a bit of bitterness in the aftertaste. Great value for $3.00!

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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TIKKUN FAILS TO LOOK IN THE MIRROR

Does this sound like a pretty good comment on the Left?

"What we are suggesting is that being stuck in a doctrinal belief system which is intolerant of another's personal interpretation, or one which disregards facts and foments intolerance of others while setting its followers apart as elite and uniquely special, is a move away from our full potential and from the kind of reasoning that has brought humanity its marvelous advances"

That statement is an only slightly edited version of a passage from a long article in "Tikkun" -- a Left-wing Jewish periodical with vague pretensions to being religious. It is meant to apply to religious fundamentalists and is basically an attack on fundamentalist Christians and Jews.

The theme of the article is that the Christans and Jews concerned are "rigid" in their beliefs. They are incapable of changing their views in response to new evidence. Does that sound like anyone you know? Does it sound like people who blame "poverty" for everything, even Islamic hostility to the West? DESPITE the fact that Bin Laden is a billionaire and most of the 9/11 hijackers were thoroughly middle-class?

Tikkun also seems to be unaware that the concept of mental rigidity has been actively researched by psychologists since before WWII and in fact originates with the Nazi psychologist Jaensch. Nazism and Communism are siblings, however, so it is not particularly surprising that the transplanted German Jewish Marxist theoretician Theodor Wiesengrund (aka Adorno) carried on the Jaensch research after the war, making much of it in his co-authored 1950 book "The Authoritarian Personality". Wiesengrund also thought that it was conservatives who are mentally rigid.

The Wiesengrund/Adorno theory attracted a lot of attention and follow-up research and the outcome of that research was precisely the opposite of what Tikkun asserts. Far from being a general attribute with deep roots in the architecture of the brain, rigidity was in fact found to be highly situational. People who were rigid in one way were often not at all rigid in other ways.

So mental rigidity does exist. We would hardly have Leftism otherwise. But rigidity in political or religious matters does NOT imply a general handicap or trait of rigidity. People who are rigid in their politics can easily be very flexible in other ways. And the "flexibility" of Leftists when it comes to morality of any sort is a good example of that.

I was myself intimately involved in the psychological research I have just described for around 20 years and my many published papers on the subject offer a comprehensive introduction to the whole body of research on the topic. A brief summary of the research with full citations can be found here

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ELSEWHERE

There have been warlike women at least since Boadicea: ""I was a member in good standing with the NDP and was in solidarity with gender parity on party executives and at party meetings. I believed in affirmative action and testified in favor of it in front of legislative committees at Queens Park in Toronto. I was no reactionary behemoth back then. But when I would hear how women would govern by consensus and that there would be no more war I drew the line. I would inevitably point out that Margaret Thatcher led Great Britain into the Falklands Islands War against Argentina in 1982. Almost to a woman, the response to that would be, 'Thatcher's more like a man.' As one might imagine, this would be said in the most derisive way imaginable. Yet history demonstrates that women leaders -- be they monarchs or presidents -- will just as surely go to war as their male counterparts and very often for the same reasons."

"New Deal" debunked: "Sometimes, books create paradigm shifts in how we view history. The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, by Amity Shlaes, is just such a book. An absorbing journey through that era, it sets the record straight on both the causes of the Great Depression and how the New Deal policies failed. Conventional wisdom holds that the Great Depression was sparked by the 1929 stock market crash; that capitalism had to be saved from itself; that Hoover failed to do so; and that Franklin Delano Roosevelt helped us through the period with his New Deal policies. But this narrative, as Shlaes makes clear, fails to recognize how the economy actually works since it reflexively champions government as a savior for the common man. In reality, reckless government intervention can make a bad economic situation much worse. The New Deal, in fact, is what put the "Great" in the Great Depression."

Leftist "Strib" to be less Leftist and more local: "The new owners of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune have parted ways with veteran editorial page editor Susan Albright because she did not want to focus on local issues. It also appears the Strib lost the law suit over hiring the former editor of the St. Paul Pioneer Press. The story notes the chairmen of the paper is now acting as publisher because Par Ridder was forced out by a court ruling. Chairman/publisher Harte echoed what I wrote earlier about the St. Paul Pioneer Press being the better read of late because it contained local information, not just a rehash of last night's network news and editorials that could have been from the NY Times."

From the inimitable Ann Coulter: "Uttering lines that send liberals into paroxysms of rage, otherwise known as "citing facts," is the spice of life. When I see the hot spittle flying from their mouths and the veins bulging and pulsing above their eyes, well, that's when I feel truly alive. This happens, I dearly hope, once a week when my column is released. But the public gnashing of teeth that I incite occurs approximately every six to eight months, which is rather peculiar, since I believe I annoy liberals much more often than that. Liberals' response to unbridled right-wing speech makes the Muslims look laid back. Reacting with stupefied indignation whenever someone disagrees with them-especially in a way that makes people point and laugh at liberals-they seem to be in a constant state of outrage. Liberals, and the conservatives who fear them, have a look of perpetual outrage, kind of the way Nancy Pelosi has a look of perpetual surprise".

Senator Tom Harkin, another Democrat phony: "While running for his Senate seat in 1984, and again while running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1992, Harkin has faced criticism for claiming that he had flown combat missions over North Vietnam. In a 1979 round table discussion with other Congressional Veterans, Harkin said of his service as a Navy pilot: "One year was in Vietnam. I was flying F-4s and F-8s on combat air patrols and photo-reconnaissance support missions". These comments were later published in a 1981 book by David Broder. After subsequent inquiries by Barry Goldwater and The Wall Street Journal, Harkin clarified that that he had been stationed in Japan and sometimes flew recently repaired aircraft on test missions over Vietnam. His service flying F-4s and F-8s was later, while he was stationed in Cuba. References to this controversy were deleted from Wikipedia by staffers from Harkin's senate office"

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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Leftist hypocrisy again

Last week, every major newspaper in Texas published a report of a study by "nonpartisan" Texans for Public Justice. It detailed the amounts of money that donors contributed to legislative and major statewide races during the 2006 election. One implied TPJ criticism echoed by the newspaper reports: Millionaire contributors have too much influence on Texas elections.

Most of the articles singled out Houston builder Bob Perry, who favored Republican candidates. His 2006 total: $7.1 million.

What neither the authors of the TPJ study nor any of the journalists reporting the story mentioned was the fact - easily found on the TPJ Web site - that one source of TPJ funding is the "Open Society Institute, New York, NY." The institute - as easily determined by five minutes of Google research - was founded by billionaire George Soros, who remains its chairman. During a 2006 interview, Soros told a New York Times writer that he gave "something like $27.5 million" to MoveOn.org and other anti-Republican groups during the 2004 election campaign.

I mention all of that simply to say ... It's a good thing George Soros doesn't reside in Texas. If he did, the "nonpartisans" at Texans for Public Justice would be pouncing on him like a duck on a June bug. Don't ya think?

Source

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ELSEWHERE

A quality person: "Last Wednesday, while flying from Phoenix to the Alamo City on U.S. Airways Flight 207, a San Antonio man, Gil Anderson, witnessed something memorable. Shortly before takeoff, he overheard a flight attendant tell a young uniformed soldier sitting in front of him: "A lady in first-class wants to switch seats with you." The soldier accepted the offer and walked up to the first-class section. "When the lady came back to our area, I had a tear in my eye," Anderson said when he phoned this column soon after his plane landed. "I gave her a little round of applause. "Then, by golly, everybody in that area started applauding," he said in a voice tinged with emotion. "It was a very moving moment." Acknowledging the applause of Anderson and the other passengers, the first-class lady said simply: "I did it because he deserves it."

PBS Rewrites World War II with Ken Burns' 14-1/2 hour documentary "The War": "Although promoted as "non-partisan," it keeps up a relentless monotone drumbeat of political correctness, incessantly hammering American mistakes, incompetence, and racism. Burns' documentary is a propaganda pulpit, e.g., for activist Black liberal historian John Hope Franklin. Franklin boasts that after a military recruiter told the young Harvard Ph.D. that he had "everything right but color," he decided to sit out the war because he was "too good" to fight for such a country. Burns made little attempt to juxtapose Franklin to his documentary's footage of African-Americans who fought heroically for America as pilots, artillery men, and Marines. Burns conjures the impression that all Japanese-Americans were sent to concentration camps. Japanese-Americans in Hawaii such as Inouye were not interned in local Manzanars. They comprised a third of the population and an even larger share of Hawaii's skilled manual laborers, so to round up these loyal Americans would have shut down the islands' economy. Burns credits the founder of our present welfare state Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt for what went right in the war. But when loyal Japanese-Americans on the West Coast were forcibly herded into camps like Manzanar, FDR's responsibility for this racial discrimination is downplayed."

We Shall Overcome: "Perhaps ashamed that during both major Civil Rights battles (the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movements), Democrats allied themselves against African Americans, modern Progressives not only proclaim themselves the defenders of Civil Rights in America, but they also continue to wage the battle against racism as if it's still Selma, 1964. In the Progressive world, racial oppression is an omnipresent aspect in the fabric of American life, with every white American (who isn't Progressive, of course) a slavering racist anxious to degrade and dehumanize blacks".

European Protectionism Targets American Companies, Worldwide Innovation: "Unable to defeat American companies in the open marketplace, protectionist European bureaucrats are instead resorting to litigation and regulation to kneecap American companies and protect their own. This week, the European Court of First Instance (CFI), Europe's second-highest court, upheld a $690 million European Commission (EC) antitrust judgment against Microsoft, which it accused of "abusing its market power." And precisely how did Microsoft abuse its power? According to the EC, by having the audacity to cater to consumer preference by including its digital media player in Windows. It should be noted that when Microsoft compliantly offered a stripped-down version of Windows without the media player, almost no one chose to purchase that version. Just brilliant, those European central planners."

President Thompson: "Conventional wisdom is hardening around the proposition that Fred Dalton Thompson is too lazy, ill-prepared, tired, old, lackluster, inexperienced, inconsistent and bald to make a successful run for President. Of course, conventional wisdom rarely gets anything right. When it does, it's only by accident. In this case conventional wisdom is not just wrong but comically so. Thompson will win the Republican nomination for two reasons. First, he's a very impressive candidate. Second, there's no realistic alternative. He will win the general election for the same two reasons":

Europeans Want America to Stay in Iraq: "The Atlantic Community Editorial Team asked European policy experts for their opinions on proposed ways forward in Iraq. Respondents from ten different countries provided some surprising results. While the American public and policy debate revolves largely around exit strategies and "redeployment," there is apparent consensus among European policy analysts that American troops should remain in Iraq for the foreseeable future. In contrast to both European media opinion and the prevailing views of American liberals, our respondents supported sustained troop levels. Many consider the announcement of a timetable for withdrawal to be counter-productive and even outright dangerous, saying that lack of American involvement would drive Iraq into further chaos."

Another triumph of British bureaucracy: "The government has paid out a record 450,000 pounds for an end-of-terrace house in one of the Victorian streets being bulldozed across northern England to make way for modern housing developments. A Cheshire-based property investor picked up the payout, which is more than double the price that any other property has fetched on the same road in the last two years. Property experts said it could be completely refurbished for less than 100,000 pounds. [Governments have always done housing badly]

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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Hitler, Mussolini, Roosevelt

What FDR had in common with the other charismatic collectivists of the 30s. Excerpts:

On May 7, 1933, just two months after the inauguration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the New York Times reporter Anne O'Hare McCormick wrote that the atmosphere in Washington was "strangely reminiscent of Rome in the first weeks after the march of the Blackshirts, of Moscow at the beginning of the Five-Year Plan..America today literally asks for orders." The Roosevelt administration, she added, "envisages a federation of industry, labor and government after the fashion of the corporative State as it exists in Italy." That article isn't quoted in Three New Deals, a fascinating study by the German cultural historian Wolfgang Schivelbusch. But it underscores his central argument: that there are surprising similarities between the programs of Roosevelt, Mussolini, and Hitler.

With our knowledge of the horrors of the Holocaust and World War II, we find it almost impossible to consider such claims dispassionately. But in the 1930s, when everyone agreed that capitalism had failed, it wasn't hard to find common themes and mutual admiration in Washington, Berlin, and Rome, not to mention Moscow. (Three New Deals does not focus as much on the latter.) Nor is that a mere historical curiosity, of no great importance in the era following democracy's triumph over fascism, National Socialism, and communism. Schivelbusch concludes his essay with the liberal journalist John T. Flynn's warning, in 1944, that state power feeds on crises and enemies. Since then we have been warned about many crises and many enemies, and we have come to accept a more powerful and more intrusive state than existed before the '30s.....

In the North American Review in 1934, the progressive writer Roger Shaw described the New Deal as "Fascist means to gain liberal ends." He wasn't hallucinating. FDR's adviser Rexford Tugwell wrote in his diary that Mussolini had done "many of the things which seem to me necessary." Lorena Hickok, a close confidante of Eleanor Roosevelt who lived in the White House for a spell, wrote approvingly of a local official who had said, "If [President] Roosevelt were actually a dictator, we might get somewhere." She added that if she were younger, she'd like to lead "the Fascist Movement in the United States." At the National Recovery Administration (NRA), the cartel-creating agency at the heart of the early New Deal, one report declared forthrightly, "The Fascist Principles are very similar to those we have been evolving here in America."

Roosevelt himself called Mussolini "admirable" and professed that he was "deeply impressed by what he has accomplished." The admiration was mutual. In a laudatory review of Roosevelt's 1933 book Looking Forward, Mussolini wrote, "Reminiscent of Fascism is the principle that the state no longer leaves the economy to its own devices..Without question, the mood accompanying this sea change resembles that of Fascism." The chief Nazi newspaper, Volkischer Beobachter, repeatedly praised "Roosevelt's adoption of National Socialist strains of thought in his economic and social policies" and "the development toward an authoritarian state" based on the "demand that collective good be put before individual self-interest."

In 1973 one of the most distinguished American historians, John A. Garraty of Columbia University, created a stir with his article "The New Deal, National Socialism, and the Great Depression." Garraty was an admirer of Roosevelt but couldn't help noticing, for instance, the parallels between the Civilian Conservation Corps and similar programs in Germany. Both, he wrote, "were essentially designed to keep young men out of the labor market. Roosevelt described work camps as a means for getting youth `off the city street corners,' Hitler as a way of keeping them from `rotting helplessly in the streets.' In both countries much was made of the beneficial social results of mixing thousands of young people from different walks of life in the camps. Furthermore, both were organized on semimilitary lines with the subsidiary purposes of improving the physical fitness of potential soldiers and stimulating public commitment to national service in an emergency."

And in 1976, presidential candidate Ronald Reagan incurred the ire of Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), pro-Roosevelt historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., and The New York Times when he told reporters that "fascism was really the basis of the New Deal."

Source

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ELSEWHERE

About time: "Duke University President Richard H. Brodhead apologized today for the school's lack of full support for the three lacrosse players falsely accused last year of raping an escort service dancer. It was Brodhead's first public apology for the university's handling of the case, which drew worldwide media attention. He said the university should have done more to reach out to the players and their families at a time of great peril. "This was a mistake. I take responsibility for it and I apologize," he said.... "If there's one lesson the world should take from the Duke lacrosse case," Brodhead said, "it's the danger of prejudgment and our need to defend against it at every turn." His short speech was greeted with a standing ovation by many in the crowd.... Brodhead forced the resignation of the lacrosse coach and canceled the 2006 Duke lacrosse season after the dancer claimed she was assaulted at a lacrosse team party on March 13, 2006"

Life in the California dream world: "A rash of recent murders has not only shattered the peace in Sacramento, it has shaken our community's sense of itself as a safe place to live and raise families. Two weeks ago, armed robbers broke into a home in southeast Sacramento County where residents were apparently selling drugs. Detectives say the assailants shot to death Sean Aquitania, a visitor at the home who tried to fight them off. One of the killers then walked outside and shot Aquitania's 7-month-old son, Sean Jr., in the head. The boy was strapped in a car seat, helpless. It was the cold-blooded murder of an infant. And it didn't happen on the streets of bloody Baghdad. It happened on a neighborhood cul-de-sac here in Sacramento. As local residents absorbed the horror of the deliberate murder of an infant, someone pumped four bullets into 21-year old Rodrigo Rodriguez, a scholarship student at the University of California, Berkeley, the first of his family to go to college, a young man who organized food drives and tutored kids from poor neighborhoods. The killing took place outside a barber shop in Oak Park two days after baby Sean's murder. Witnesses say the killer shot twice, and after Rodriguez fell, twice more. The shooter then jumped into the passenger seat of a waiting car and drove away."

British Leftists to destroy the navy that Napoleon and Hitler could not: "Ministers have drawn up confidential proposals to slash the number of ships in the Royal Navy, The Sunday Telegraph can disclose. The expected reductions follow a fierce row between Service chiefs and the Treasury over defence spending. The Ministry of Defence has produced a plan to decommission five warships from next April, which would reduce the Navy's capability to the level where it could carry out only "one small-scale operation".

Superannuated traitor now totally nuts: "Daniel Ellsberg must miss being in the spotlight. The former star of the radical left, best known for giving the New York Times the "Pentagon Papers", is on the comeback trail, trying to restablish his radical credentials on the college speaking circuit. But times have changed and Ellsberg knows he must change with them; he must become as hysterically unbalanced in his criticism of government as any other lefty if he expects to stand out in a crowd. At American University on September 20, Ellsberg didn't disappoint. He said: "And I would say after the Iranian retaliation to an American attack on Iran, you will then see an increased attack on Iran - an escalation - which will be also accompanied by a total suppression of dissent in this country, including detention camps."

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

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

"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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SOME MISSILE NEWS

Unhappy Iranians: "Information coming out of Iran indicates that the military there is very dismayed at how ineffective new Russian anti-aircraft systems were during the Israeli September 6th air strike on a Syrian weapons development facility near the Iraqi border. Syria and Iran have both bought billions of dollars worth of the latest Russian anti-aircraft missile systems. Apparently the Israelis were able to blind these systems electronically. Syria isn't saying anything, nor are the Israelis, but Iranian officers are complaining openly that they have been had by the Russians. The Iranians bought Russian equipment based on assurances that the gear would detect and shoot down Israeli warplanes.... The Iranians fear an Israeli air strike against their nuclear weapons development facilities. It was thought the new Russian missiles and radars would persuade the Israelis to stay away. But now the raid on Syria looks like a dress rehearsal for one a little further east. Since Iranian leaders have openly called for the destruction of Israel, one can't deny the Israelis a little self-defense. Thus the cries and whispers in Iranian military headquarters. A lot of this is leaking on to Farsi language email and message boards. There is much angst and unhappiness."

Missile defense test successful against dummy Nork type missile: "A U.S. interceptor missile on Friday shot down a dummy warhead replicating an incoming North Korean missile in the seventh successful test of Boeing Co's long-range missile shield, the Pentagon said. The Missile Defense Agency said in a statement it completed a test "involving a successful intercept by a ground-based interceptor missile designed to protect the United States against a limited long-range ballistic missile attack." The interceptor missile was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base on California's central coast, and its target was fired from Alaska's Kodiak Island."

Taiwan plans its own missiles to hit China: "Faced with a threatening military buildup by China, an increasingly outgunned Taiwan is quietly pushing ahead with plans to develop missiles that could strike the mainland, defense and security experts say. Taiwan successfully tested its first cruise missile with that kind of range this year, one that could send a nearly 900-pound warhead more than 600 miles, to targets as distant as Shanghai, military analysts said. Some Taiwanese military specialists have argued for decades that Taiwan should develop offensive weapons, including missiles, as a deterrent to the mainland, which has threatened to attack the self-governing island if it moves toward formal independence. The Pentagon estimates that China has deployed 900 missiles across from Taiwan".

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On 28th. I reproduced here a report which said that Deputy Chief global warming alarmist, James Hansen (Al Gore is of course Chief Alarmist) received $720,000 from a George Soros foundation. The report was based on Soros foundation documents but Hansen has since denied that he received any Soros money. Newsbusters points out how evasive the denial is. It would appear that the money went to Hansen's benefit via a third party.

Don Surber's Week that was is good again. Very sarcastic about the Green/Left.

Senator Vitter exposes LOST dangers: "The senator demonstrated on Thursday, during a hearing into the U.N.'s Law of the Sea Treaty, that he is going to continue to do the job he was elected to do. Vitter's performance was so effective that he left State and Defense Department officials either speechless or caught up in embarrassing contradictions about the impact of this international agreement on America's security and sovereignty. It should now be perfectly obvious that Bush Administration officials, in collusion with liberal Senators, are trying to bamboozle the Senate into quickly ratifying a very dangerous pact."

GOP Albatross Is Dems' Tar Baby: "Judging by the answers given by Democratic presidential candidates on Wednesday night to the question of whether there will still be troops in Iraq in 2013 following the first term, it seems certain that the mission will continue in one form or another Bush or no Bush. The enormity of the military conflict in Iraq was spelled out in the simplest of all admissions tonight: Among all of the leading Democratic candidates for president, none was willing to commit to a promise in a campaign debate that all of the U.S. combat forces deployed in Iraq will be gone by 2013, the end of the next president's term in office. When pressed to the wall, the Democratic candidates demonstrated that despite all the tough talk about withdrawing from Iraq, they are as much a hostage to events there as the President. Like the Republicans, they are well and truly stuck with Bush's policies, the Maliki government, al-Sadr's plotting, and the rest of the crummy situation that will continue to exist for the foreseeable future in Iraq. There is no going back or getting out quickly. And the Democratic candidates, at the risk of riling up their rabid, anti-war base (and recognizing the facts of life on Iraq all along despite rhetoric to the contrary) are responsible enough and practical enough to see that there is no briar patch nearby where this tar baby can be shed." [Note the term "tar baby". It makes Leftists froth over its imagined "racism"]

Murtha ordered to testify in Haditha defamation case: "A federal judge refused Friday to dismiss a defamation case against Rep. John P. Murtha and ordered the Pennsylvania Democrat to give a sworn deposition about his comments alleging "cold-blooded murder and war crimes" by unnamed soldiers in connection with Iraqi civilian deaths. A Marine Corps sergeant is suing the 18-term congressman for making the charge, which the soldier claims is false. Murtha, who opposes the Iraq war, made the comment during a May, 2006 Capitol Hill news conference in which he predicted that a Pentagon war crimes investigation will show Marines killed dozens of innocent Iraqi civilians in Haditha in 2005."

The UAW's Awakening : "This week's deal between General Motors and the United Auto Workers is being hailed as a new era for Detroit, and for once that advertising may be justified. The UAW in particular made historic concessions that show a new awareness of global competition. What's less encouraging is how much this reality-based compromise still contrasts with the policies that unions and their political friends are promoting in the unreal world of Washington, D.C.... Under the deal, wages are frozen, save for bonuses and some lump-sum payments. GM in turn promises to invest in American plants with UAW workers, though of course it will also keep investing abroad. In what seems to be the most creative stroke, GM will pay some $35 billion toward a new health-care trust fund to be administered by the union. That's a big initial cash flow, but it means the company can divest itself of some $50 billion in long-term liabilities, which would only have grown as health-care costs rose and retirees lived longer. Investors loved it, driving up GM stock by around 7% for the week."

Black Group Welcomes Supreme Court Decision to Hear Voter ID Case: "Calling voting "one of the most fundamental rights we have," members of the Project 21 black leadership network are calling on the U.S. Supreme Court to provide a clear and unmistakable ruling on the constitutionality of states requiring voters to show photo identification at polls before the 2008 general elections. Proponents of voter ID requirements say they want to lessen the likelihood of voter fraud. Opponents, such as Democratic strategist Donna Brazile, say that asking for a driver's license or passport at a polling station is the equivalent of a "modern-day poll tax." "While I am appalled that the Supreme Court feels compelled to have to take up such a case in the first place, it is important we get this issue behind us before the next election," said Project 21's Kevin Martin. "Voting is one of the most fundamental rights we have as Americans, and we have a right to a process that is free of fraud and corruption." Six states currently require some sort of photo ID be presented before ballots are issued to voters. Photo ID laws were challenged and upheld by the courts in Indiana, Georgia and Arizona. In Missouri, a photo ID law was struck down last year".

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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Columbia University's Past: Nazi Ambassador Invited to Speak in 1933

According to the David Wyman Institute of Holocaust Studies, Columbia University's invitation to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is not the first granted by that prestigious institution to the representative of a despotism committed to anti-semitism.

The invitation to Iran's leader may seem less surprising, but no less disturbing, when one recalls that in 1933, Columbia president Nicholas Murray Butler invited Nazi Germany's ambassador to the United States, Hans Luther, to speak on campus, and also hosted a reception for him. Luther represented "the government of a friendly people," Butler insisted. He was "entitled to be received ... with the greatest courtesy and respect." Ambassador Luther's speech focused on what he characterized as Hitler's peaceful intentions. Students who criticized the Luther invitation were derided as "ill-mannered children" by the director of Columbia's Institute of Arts and Sciences.

And this was not all. Three years later Columbia would send a delegation to celebrate the 550th annniversary of the University of Heidelberg, even though it had already been purged of Jewish faculty members, instituted a Nazi curriculum and burned books by Jewish authors. Could this be the effect of the importation of German scholarship in the previous century? Or just that every generation supplies its share of useful idiots?

Source

What it shows is that Leftists have a compulsion to portray themselves as in possession of superior wisdom -- even if to do so they have to deny the obvious

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ELSEWHERE



Cao is keeping up awareness of the traitorous plan to turn the flight 93 memorial (See the plan above of the proposed memorial -- a crescent oriented towards Mecca) into something that honours Islam rather than honouring the American victims of Islamic fanatics on 9/11. G M Roper has more.

Something the MSM have ignored: A former President of Italy, Francesco Cossiga, has furiously returned the honorary doctorate given to him by Columbia University because of the university's hosting of the antisemitic President Ahmadinejad of Iran.

Hillary outsmarts her dovish competition: "Kudos to Hillary Clinton--yes, you read that right--for her Senate vote this week urging the U.S. to designate Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps as a foreign terrorist organization. That's more than can be said for her primary competition of Barack Obama, Chris Dodd, Bill Richardson and John Edwards, who assailed her on this score at Wednesday's Democratic Presidential candidates debate at Dartmouth. These are men who seem to fear the Netroots more than the mullahs. Mrs. Clinton's vote was on a symbolic amendment offered by Connecticut maverick Joe Lieberman and Republicans Jon Kyl and Norm Coleman."

Hillary good for GOP: "A leaked Democratic poll has suggested that Hillary Clinton, the front runner in the race for the party's presidential nomination, could lose the 2008 election because of her "very polarised image". The survey by the Democratic pollsters Lake Research indicated that both Mrs Clinton and Barack Obama, second in the Democratic race, trailed Rudy Giuliani, the Republican front runner, in 31 swing congressional districts. All party preference polls show that Democrats are much more popular than Republicans. But when the names of individual candidates are used, the gap narrows considerably. "The images of the two early [Democratic] favorites are part of the problem," the memo said. The leaked poll found that Mr Giuliani, a centrist Republican with liberal stances on issues such as abortion and gay rights, leads Mrs Clinton by 49 per cent to 39 per cent in the swing districts."

Some in the Netherlands get it: "Critic of Islam, Ehsan Jami, and Freedom Party leader, Geert Wilders, compared the Prophet Mohammed to Adolf Hitler in a co-written article published in the Dutch daily Volkskrant Thursday. In their article, Wilders and Jami say strong criticism of Islam is absolutely necessary. "If we do not act now against the far-reaching Islamisation of the Netherlands, then the 1930s will be revived. The only difference is that back then the danger came from Adolf Hitler, while today it comes from Mohammed." The article is a response to an interview with Tjibbe Joustra, chief of the Dutch counter-terrorism body NCTB. In the interview, published in the daily newspaper Algemeen Dagblad on September 24, Joustra said making bold statements about Islam and Muslim immigrants might push fundamentalists over the edge."

A Quiet Triumph May be Brewing: "There are signs that the global Islamic jihad movement is splitting apart, in what would be a tremendous achievement for American strategy. The center of the action is in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the very territory which is thought to harbor Usama, and from which Al Qaeda was able to launch 9/11. Capitalizing on existing splits, a trap was set and closed, and the benefist have only begun to be evident."

Spitzer meeting resistance over illegals: "Last week NY Governor Eliot Spitzer(D) announced that the state would no long require proof of citizenship or legal residence to get a drivers license. This week, county clerks who issue the licenses in NY voiced concern as did NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg. "Many of us think the whole idea is crazy and ill-fated," said Rensselaer County Clerk Frank Merola. "I myself will not process any driver's license renewal or driver's license verification for someone who cannot prove legal status." The Democratic governor's decision comes as the Department of Homeland Security is pushing all 50 states to tighten their identification standards. Merola said Spitzer's approach "is going just the opposite way" as the federal government. . Bloomberg said Wednesday that the city's lawyer "does believe that in fact this would make New York's state driver's licenses ineligible to be used to get on an airplane. People would need other form of identification, generally a passport, and that would be a very big problem."

Virginia Democrats appoint Jihadi to immigration job (until it gets known): "A member of the state's Commission of Immigration resigned Thursday, a few hours after Gov. Timothy M. Kaine was told about online videos showing the appointee condemning Israel and advocating "the jihad way." Kaine issued a statement saying he had accepted the resignation of Dr. Esam S. Omeish. He said Omeish offered to resign because he didn't want anything to distract the work of the commission."

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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LOST should get lost

"Time was, Ronald Reagan's 600-ship Navy gave us freedom of the seas. But if Joe Biden and the Senate have their way, we'll need the permission of 21 judges in Hamburg. On Thursday, presidential wannabe Biden will chair hearings intended to lead to the ratification of the quarter-century-old Law of the Sea treaty (LOST), a document that would severely restrict our ability to use oceans to defend ourselves and would turn over control of 70% of the world's surface to a U.N. bureaucracy.

Supporters say we must be a signatory to guarantee our share of the resources to be found under the world's oceans and to avoid situations like the race to claim the sea bed under the Arctic between Russia, Canada and other states. But experience suggests a Law of the Sea tribunal won't protect interests we should be protecting ourselves. LOST would create an International Seabed Authority (ISA) with the power to regulate and tax things like seabed mining, fishing rights and deep-sea oil exploration. The ISA would decide who gets access to the sea's resources, and the companies granted these rights would pay a royalty to the ISA.

When he refused to sign ISA in 1982, President Reagan rightly decided the U.S. shouldn't be a part of this global resource grab and redistribution of wealth. It's in the area of national security that LOST is most dangerous. The [Bush] administration cites military support for the treaty because of its uniform limit on territorial waters and its establishment of `rules of the road' for littoral waters. But current international law already protects nonaggressive passage of military ships. When Reagan vetoed the treaty, the U.S. Navy had 594 warships. We could protect our own right of passage. Today the fleet has withered to 276 vessels. Is that why we need the treaty? The answer is to build more warships. Our access to the seas should be guaranteed by the Navy and not a U.N. bureaucracy."

Source

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Soros supports checkbook science and astroturf immigration rallies

How many people, for instance, know that James Hansen, a man billed as a lonely "NASA whistleblower" standing up to the mighty U.S. government, was really funded by Soros' Open Society Institute , which gave him "legal and media advice"? That's right, Hansen was packaged for the media by Soros' flagship "philanthropy," by as much as $720,000, most likely under the OSI's "politicization of science" program. That may have meant that Hansen had media flacks help him get on the evening news to push his agenda and lawyers pressuring officials to let him spout his supposedly "censored" spiel for weeks in the name of advancing the global warming agenda. Hansen even succeeded, with public pressure from his nightly news performances, in forcing NASA to change its media policies to his advantage. Had Hansen's OSI-funding been known, the public might have viewed the whole production differently. The outcome could have been different.

That's not the only case. Didn't the mainstream media report that 2006's vast immigration rallies across the country began as a spontaneous uprising of 2 million angry Mexican-flag waving illegal immigrants demanding U.S. citizenship in Los Angeles, egged on only by a local Spanish-language radio announcer Turns out that wasn't what happened, either. Soros' OSI had money-muscle there, too, through its $17 million Justice Fund. The fund lists 19 projects in 2006. One was vaguely described involvement in the immigration rallies. Another project funded illegal immigrant activist groups for subsequent court cases. So what looked like a wildfire grassroots movement really was a manipulation from OSI's glassy Manhattan offices. The public had no way of knowing until the release of OSI's 2006 annual report.

Meanwhile, OSI cash backed terrorist-friendly court rulings, too. Do people know last year's Supreme Court ruling abolishing special military commissions for terrorists at Guantanamo was a Soros project? OSI gave support to Georgetown lawyers in 2006 to win Hamdan v. Rumsfeld - for the terrorists. OSI also gave cash to other radicals who pressured the Transportation Security Administration to scrap a program called "Secure Flight," which matched flight passenger lists with terrorist names. It gave more cash to other left-wing lawyers who persuaded a Texas judge to block cell phone tracking of terrorists.

How did the NY Times and Washington Post miss this blockbuster report on a rich guy who is underwriting attacks on the government? Weren't they all in favor of getting money out of politics and not allowing the rich to dominate the political process?

Source

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Swedish Tax Cuts?: "Sweden's centre-right government pledged to continue its tax reform plans earlier this week, announcing cuts in personal income tax worth about US$1.6 billion (around SKr11 billion). ...Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt told lawmakers that the latest round of tax reforms was aimed at creating more incentives to work, thereby cutting Sweden's rate of unemployment. ...In other actions that will chip away at Sweden's huge welfare state, the government will reduce sick pay in the first year by 5% to a maximum of 75% of salary... The government has also promised to eliminate Sweden's wealth tax, charged at 1.5% on savings of over SKR1.5 million (US$214,000) for single people, and at the same rate on savings of more than SKR3 million for couples.

Confrontation for Sarkozy and Unions: "President Nicolas Sarkozy will face his first strike on Oct. 18 after five of France's eight railway unions called for a day of protests, vowing to defend their right to retire at 50. The strikes will be a test of labor's strength against Sarkozy's resolve to overhaul pension privileges enjoyed by 500,000 public sector employees. ...The unions seem to have been shaken by Sarkozy's determination. Unlike in 1995 and 2003, public opinion is firmly opposed to public sector pension privileges.

Feminism has failed: "Two new research papers, using very different methods, have both come to this conclusion. Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, economists at the University of Pennsylvania (and a couple), have looked at the traditional happiness data, in which people are simply asked how satisfied they are with their overall lives. In the early 1970s, women reported being slightly happier than men. Today, the two have switched places." (H/T Keith B-J)

Backlash Against Bollinger Hits Columbia: "A backlash against the president of Columbia University, Lee Bollinger, who on Monday delivered a harsh rebuke to President Ahmadinejad, is coming from faculty members and students who said he struck an "insulting tone" and that his remarks amounted to "schoolyard taunts." The fierceness of Mr. Bollinger's critique bought the Iranian some sympathy on campus that he didn't deserve, the critics said, and amounted to a squandered opportunity to provide a lesson in diplomacy."

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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Brookes News Update

How the Laffer curve really works: The basis of the Laffer curve is the intuitive knowledge that if you want more of something then reduce the cost of producing it. Nevertheless, no one has shown how the Laffer curve works This article attempts to do just that with the use of a couple of simple diagrams
Defending tax cuts against leftist journalists: Lefty journalists cannot help themselves. Once again revealing their total ignorance of economics, economic history and the history of economic thought they engaged in scaremongering by making false statements about the dire consequences of tax cuts
China's economy is heading into very stormy weather: Credit-led boom is piling up ever increasing amounts of malinvestments. Calculations done by Morgan Stanley estimated that whereas 13 per cent of reported profits were of the non-operating variety last year, this has now soared to over 30 per cent
Hillary Clinton's middle class tax hike: Hillary Clinton is planning a range of tax hikes that will sock it hard to the middle class, which is odd considering that politicians like Hillary constantly talk about how much they want to help the middle class
Fidel Castro: Reagan's savior?: The evidence that Castro personally ordered the murder of President Kennedy is steadily mounting. Nevertheless, the media still refuses to report anything that might possibly implicate Castro in Kennedy's assassination. So much for media honesty
Clinton Doctrine versus Bush Doctrine : The Clinton doctrine is carried forth today by Democrats who blame America for the terrorists who seek to overturn the will of millions of Iraqis who voted in the first free election held in the region in history
Moonbats jump the shark: All the Democrats have to sell are defeat, fear, and bad news - plus their traditional solutions for any perceived problem: higher taxes and more government control over your life. Thus any good news for America and the world is bad news for them
The Gray Lady's shame: Never has the New York Times behaved more shamefully on September 10, 2007. On that day it ran a full-page ad accusing General David Petraeus of being a traitor for doing his job fighting the War of Terror
Productivity vs. jobs: another economic fallacy: Like all enemies of the market Mike Steketee cannot bring himself to accept certain fundamental economic laws, one of which is that overpricing goods or services will create a surplus. According to this genius increasing productivity destroy jobs and creates poverty. So does Rupert Murdoch's Australian publish Steketee's rubbish?

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Union Fund Embezzlements 'Epidemic,' Analyst Says: "Eleven union officials were indicted and eight were convicted in August on charges of embezzling union pension funds, following probes launched by federal auditors and investigators at the U.S. Department of Labor. According to a report released Monday by the department's Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS), 84 indictments for corruption have been issued thus far in 2007, leading to the conviction of 108 union officials. All told, nearly 800 convictions have been obtained since 2001, with court-ordered restitution exceeding $101 million, said Deputy Assistant Labor Secretary Don Todd, who announced the report's release. In the largest enforcement effort, Jorge Aponte-Figueroa, the former president of the International Longshoreman's Association Local 1740 in San Juan, Puerto Rico, was sentenced to five years in prison and three years of supervised release for embezzling $1.9 million in union funds. He also was found guilty of falsifying records and money laundering".

Kicking them when they're down: "Politicians and bureaucrats have power and are often careless about how they use it. Respect for the rights of innocent people? Not always a priority. Not even in New Orleans, where so many are struggling to pick themselves back up after one of the toughest gut punches anybody can suffer. So you live through Hurricane Katrina, return to the city, spend thousands to fix your home. Double-check to make sure it isn't targeted for demolition. Then what? Well, if you're IdaBelle Joshua, two days after City Hall says your home is safe ... it's smashed! Gone. No prior notice except tiny type in a newspaper somewhere."

Wheel rediscovered: "For centuries men believed themselves to be smarter than the fairer sex, who they felt were only equipped for wifely duties. Now a study has revealed that the male of the species is actually more intelligent. But there's a catch - he's also more stupid. When scientists measured the intelligence of more than 2500 brothers and sisters, they found a disproportionate number of men in both the top 2 per cent and the bottom 2 per cent. There were twice as many men as women in the smartest group. But there were also twice as many men among the dunces. The subjects were tested on science, maths, English and mechanical abilities. The average scores of the men were virtually identical to that of the women. Professor Bates, of Scotland's Edinburgh University, said: "The female developmental program may be tilted more towards ensuring survival and the safety of the middle ground."

Same old drivel: "Listening to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad address the UN, I was struck by how mainstream American left he is. From his anti-Semitism to blaming the United States for all the woes of the world to blaming poverty on capitalism - even to his views on global warming - Ahmadinejad hit all the lefty talking points except for gay marriage. Well, Bill Clinton codified don't-ask, don't-tell and signed DOMA into law. Nobody's perfect. But Americans have heard it all before. In the 1960s, it was Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro. In the 1970s, Yasser Arafat. In the 1980s, Mikhail Gorbachev. Last year, Hugo Chavez. This year, this guy. What they share in common besides their iron-fisted rule at home (Arafat within the PLO) is a streak of anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism and anti-Semitism."

Tax the internet? "Legislation in Congress to make the Internet tax ban permanent has strong bipartisan support, but that doesn't mean it should be taken for granted. In fact, it recently hit a snag over the unrelated issue of how satellite TV is taxed, while there continue to be disputes over when grandfather clauses that allow some states to tax the Internet should finally be closed. Given the tight timeframe - the current moratorium is due to expire on November 1 - it's possible that a slew of new Internet taxes could in fact arrive this fall.... A federal moratorium first put in place in 1998, and subsequently extended, has protected the Internet from access taxes and discriminatory or multiple taxation... If the moratorium is allowed to expire, states will likely impose new taxes on Internet access fees, bit-taxes on downloads, and perhaps even e-mail taxes."

Major Insurance Company Planning to Escape Germany's High Taxes: "Hannover Re, one of the world's largest reinsurance companies, is considering switching its operations to Ireland or another low tax jurisdiction, the company's chief executive told a conference recently. According to Bermuda's Royal Gazette, Wilhelm Zeller, CEO of Hannover Re, told a press conference at the annual reinsurance gathering, Le Rendez-Vous in Monte Carlo, that the $5.5 billion firm is considering moving from its present base in Germany... "For us, the ideal location, from a fiscal point of view, would be Ireland," Zeller stated, although he added that setting up headquarters in Dublin could be costly." [H/T Market Center blog]

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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Islamics and Leftists have a "logic" that serves their needs, not truth

With projection and denial prominent

In the unconscious mind, where symmetrical logic rules the night, the stronger the emotion one is feeling, the more "symmetrical deductions" are likely to occur. For example, as Bomford writes, on a deep unconscious level, "one who hates has to believe that his or her hatred is returned." Note that this is a logical operation, only based upon a different sort of logic. This logic is no doubt the source of the psychotic fear of Israel in the Islamic world. Their unconscious hatred is so profound that it simultaneously reverses the relation, so that they can't help perceiving that Israel hates them. But Israelis just want to shop, raise their families, or read the Torah. They couldn't care less about Muslims, except to the extent that bloodthirsty Muslim barbarians harbor murderous rage toward them.

It's fine to hate evil, but in the Islamic world, what is hated is transformed into evil. Something is not hated because it is evil, but evil because it is hated. One could say the same of the left, which habitually fears what it eternally hates. The left cannot be comprehended unless one appreciates the extent of their unbound hatred. Once this is grasped, what seems illogical is suddenly seen to obey the dictates of symmetrical logic. For example, the unconscious feeling that I hate America and want us to lose in Iraq is transformed to General Petraeus is a traitor, or I am a racist becomes America is racist, or I am unbearably envious becomes the wealthy are engaged in class warfare against me!

Another characteristic of the unconscious is that it is timeless, in the sense that it can reverse temporal relations. For example, in the unconscious mind, if A is the cause of B, B can also be the cause of A. Thus, "before" and "after" become meaningless. Therefore, although we were inexcusably attacked by Islamists on 9-11, within minutes, leftists were saying that the real reason for the attack was that we had done something to offend Muslims.

Likewise, throughout the Cold War, leftist scholars wrote "revisionist" histories, in which the United States was the cause of the Cold War, or at least equally responsible for it. You will notice that there are no conservative revisionists who write, for example, that blacks were the cause of their own lynching, or that Japanese Americans were the cause of their own internment. You can only think in this manner if you are pathologically under the sway of unconscious symmetrical logic.

Also in the unconscious mind, there is no distinction between the memory of something that actually occurred vs. the memory of a fantasy. Here we can understand how and why the left is so prone to mythologizing the past, as their fantasies are mingled with reality. Thus, no amount of reality and asymmetrical logic will ever convince them that FDR made the Great Depression worse, not better, or that the black family only began to disintegrate after the imposition of all the "Great Society" programs of the mid to late '60s. No amount of logic could convince a leftist that his policies harm the "little guy," since his ruling myth, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, is that he is here to rescue the hapless little guy (for whom the leftist always feels rich contempt in the unconscious mind, contempt which only seeps out everywhere).

One thing you will notice about the left is that they are passionate. Because the left is guided by feelings and intentions, they are blind to the results of their actions. If their feelings are infinitely good, then in the unconscious mind, the results must also be infinitely good.

As I have written before, this is a religious passion in the absence of religion, so it has no traditional means to structure and channel it. Just as religion partakes of symmetrical logic in an adaptive way (i.e., the meek shall inherit the earth, the Golden Rule, humans are made in the image of the Creator, etc.), leftists do so in a terribly unhealthy way. That is, because of the intensity of their feelings, these feelings reach way down into the symmetrical realm, with no way to structure or make sense of them. This is why you always see so much highly charged, "unfiltered" unconscious material coming out of the left. To borrow a metaphor from someone, reading dailykos or huffington post is like taking a ride through a sewer in a glass bottom boat.

Source

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ELSEWHERE

Ahmadinejad hears some home truths: "I can't pretend to understand Lee Bollinger. I'm not sure why he invited Mahmoud Ahmadenijad to disgrace his campus, and whether the invitation was a ruse to get the diminutive dinner jacket on the same stage so the Dean could blast the Mahdi with the Mahdi's list of horribles. Regardless of how stupid inviting Ahmadenijad to the Columbia was in the first place, let's give Bollinger credit for standing face-to-face with evil and calling it out. If you didn't see Bollinger's speech, you have no idea what I'm talking about. Suffice to say, Bollinger used the occasion to deliver a Sister Souljah moment on behalf of academia. His attack on the Mahdi was withering, something so harsh that it could have sprung from the modem of a conservative blogger. Bollinger's speech today, for what it's worth, gets an A . The Mahdi, clearly with hurt feelings, labeled the speech a "wave of insults."

EU may fund anti-Semitic radio station: "The head of the Center of Organizations of Holocaust Survivors in Israel is urging the European Union not to pour tens of millions into a Polish ultra-nationalist Catholic radio station infamous for its anti-Semitic programming. The 15.5 million euros in EU funding would be allocated towards the expansion of a journalism school for the controversial Polish radio station Radio Maryja. "The head of the radio station, and the radio station itself, is known throughout Europe as a symbol of the increasing wave of global anti-Semitism," head of the umbrella organization of Holocaust survivors in Israel, Noah Flug, wrote in a letter to the President of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso."

The Holy Father defends religious liberty: "Another cause highly esteemed by all of you is the defence of religious liberty, which is a fundamental, irrepressible, inalienable and inviolable right rooted in the dignity of every human being and acknowledged by various international documents, especially the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The exercise of this freedom also includes the right to change religion, which should be guaranteed not only legally, but also in daily practice. In fact, religious liberty corresponds to the human person's innate openness to God, who is the fullness of truth and the supreme good. An appreciation for religious freedom is a fundamental expression of respect for human reason and its capacity to know the truth."

Iran smuggling surface to air missiles into Iraq: "The U.S. military accused Iran on Sunday of smuggling surface-to-air missiles and other advanced weapons into Iraq for use against American troops.... Military spokesman Rear Adm. Mark Fox said U.S. troops were continuing to find Iranian-supplied weaponry including the Misagh 1, a portable surface-to-air missile that uses an infrared guidance system. Other advanced Iranian weaponry found in Iraq includes the RPG-29 rocket-propelled grenade, 240 mm rockets and armor-piercing roadside bombs known as explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs, Fox 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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