A news roundup I can't beat



First, take a look at the picture of the bear -- according to the US Fish & Wildlife Service office in Kalispell, Montana, that little fella has taken to sitting every day at the picnic table apparently waiting to be fed and to have his winter den dug by government employees. Although he once was self-sufficient, he now begs for a handout every day from our generous government. Because of this, residents have taken to calling him Bearack Obama!

Next, according to the Detroit News, a new industry is starting up in Detroit, and I suspect that it actually is the fast-growing industry in the city (other than working for the government). The new industry is urban hunting and skinning. Yes, like a scene out of I Am Legend, the wilderness is retaking the city of Detroit, and the animal population is moving into areas that were once inhabited by productive men. Years of Democrat control in action!

The story in the Detroit News is the story of a young 69-year old entrepreneur, who has to supplement his Social Security checks by hunting raccoons in the city of Detroit. Apparently this guy kills coons with the help of his rifle and coon dog, butchers the meat, and sells it to local residents, and he also sells the skins- but doesn't pay taxes on these sales (must be a Democrat). The meat is not USDA approved (probably something to do with rabies), but the video about the story (go to the link for the article to watch it and howl with laughter) shows coon meat being served with liver and onions and Faygo red pop- just the way mom made it!

In other news, Obama recently was in England, and since he had to talk to people over there, he brought with him 5 speech-writers and 12 teleprompters for the weekend. I don't think that was enough- I heard some of his stammering and stuttering in a press conference- but still- 12 teleprompters? Can't you just bring one and move it from place to place? Or do they have to put a separate one up everywhere he goes and load it with his thoughts?



Sadly the teleprompter didn't let his wife know that you aren't supposed to touch the Queen of England -- it's apparently a big no-no. Doesn't anyone on his staff do any research on this stuff? I guess not- Michelle put her arm around the Queen and gave her a noogie on national television- probably not a good idea, but at least her arms were fantastic!

Lastly, least we forget how low the bar was for Presidents (and yet Obama still gets under it), here is a hilarious clip from a George W. Bush press conference where he is talking about fighting the biggest threat to our lives- zombies. That's right- laugh if you want, but apparently zombies are a big threat, and I am glad our President did everything he could to wipe them out- click on the link if you don't believe me. Enjoy! [It's a mashup]

SOURCE

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In Israel, a voice of realism

by Jeff Jacoby

IF AVIGDOR LIEBERMAN'S first speech as Israel's new foreign minister did nothing else, it certainly vexed the media. The Associated Press called it a "scathing critique of Mideast peace efforts" that had diplomats "cringing," while other reports said Lieberman had "dropped a political bombshell," "sparked an uproar," "repudiated a key accord," and "reinforced fears." The New York Times pronounced Lieberman's remarks "blunt and belligerent," describing the foreign minister as a "hawkish nationalist" who is "not known for diplomacy" and heads an "ultranationalist" party that is "seen by many as racist." Headlines summed up Lieberman's debut as an attack on peacemaking: "Lieberman dashes peace hopes," "Israeli official hits peace efforts," "Lieberman dumps peace deal."

But the headlines were wrong, as anyone can ascertain by reading Lieberman's short address. Far from disparaging peace, Israel's new foreign minister called for pursuing it with the respect and realism it deserves. And far from "dumping" agreements entered into by his predecessors, he explicitly committed himself to upholding the Roadmap -- a step-by-step blueprint to a "two-state solution" adopted by Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and the international Quartet (the United States, the United Nations, Russia, and the European Union) in 2003.

"I voted against the Roadmap," Lieberman acknowledged, but it was "approved by the Cabinet and endorsed by the Security Council" and is therefore "a binding resolution and it binds this government as well." However, he insisted, it must be implemented "exactly as written" and "in full." The Road Map imposes specific obligations that the Palestinians must meet prior to achieving statehood -- above all, an unequivocal end to violence, terrorism, and incitement against the Jewish state -- and Israel will not agree to waive them in order to negotiate a final settlement.

If Lieberman is as good as his word -- and if he is backed up by Benjamin Netanyahu, the new prime minister -- we may finally see an end to Israel's fruitless attempts to buy peace with ever-more-desperate concessions and retreats. Under Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert, Israel surrendered the entire Gaza Strip, released hundreds of terrorists from prison, expelled thousands of Jews from their homes, and even offered to divide Jerusalem with the Palestinian Authority. "But none of these far-reaching measures have brought peace," said Lieberman. "To the contrary." The steeper the price Israel has been willing to pay for peace, the more it has been repaid with violence: suicide bombings, rocket attacks, kidnapped and murdered soldiers, and wars with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

It is time, Lieberman is saying, for Israel to stop genuflecting to a feckless and counterproductive "peace process" and to return instead to the pre-Oslo policy of deterrence...

More HERE

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Destroying The Integrity Of Nonprofits

The recently passed so-called stimulus law contains dire threats of which most Americans are unaware. The law, containing untold billions for nonprofits, vastly lubricates an already slippery slope that will destroy the independence and integrity of America's nonprofit sector. Under the legislation, our country's vast network of nonprofit organizations -- groups that serve our spiritual needs, help mitigate poverty, care for seniors and disabled veterans, and work to cure disease -- would become increasingly dependent on the government, and increasingly subject to the whims of the party in power. Unfortunately, this is neither the first nor the last step.

Two institutions historically have provided a check on abuses of power by politicians and government: nonprofits and the news media. Both have been imperfect but essential critics and watchdogs of political abuses for one reason: they have remained independent from the government.

Nonprofits such as churches, educational institutions, unions, and charities have been critical players in issues such as slavery, segregation, workplace issues, conservation, prison reform, protecting the Constitution, health and safety, life and death, and nearly every issue affecting our freedom from overzealous government.

One of the first steps of any dictatorial regime is to control the dissemination of information, especially about government. We certainly wouldn't trust the objectivity of news agencies if scores of them were to be financed even partly by the government. As a general rule, take government money, and you become an adjunct of government.

Nonprofits, which are important to the marketplace of ideas, are no different. Taxpayer funding of nonprofits not only increases their dependency on government, it buys the silence of nonprofits when they would otherwise criticize politicians, or creates a cheerleading squad for the agenda of those in power.

Easy money, i.e., taxpayer money, institutionally weakens nonprofits' desire and even ability to find other sources of funding. And like addicts, they become hooked to the point they are willing to sacrifice their principles and do whatever it takes to get the next fix.

The result has been that many so-called non-ideological charities have become sycophants to political power and the taxpayer money that flows from it. This should trouble anyone who understands and appreciates the importance of an independent nonprofit community.

More HERE

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ELSEWHERE

Obama goes ahead with missile defence shield despite disarmament pledge: "The United States would continue to develop a missile defence shield until Iran abandoned its nuclear ambitions, President Barack Obama said in the Czech Republic. As long as the threat from Iran persists, we will go forward with a missile defence system that is cost-effective and proven," he told a crowd of about 20,000 gathered in Hradcany Square, next to Prague Castle. "Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile activity poses a real threat, not just to the United States, but to Iran's neighbours and our allies." He hailed the "courageous" Czech Republic and Poland for "agreeing to host a defence against these missiles".

Brother, can you spare a decade? : “Not surprisingly, everyone from Wall Street to the halls of Congress is worried that the current recession will turn into the dreaded D, and has seized on desperate rescue measures. But was the Great Depression all bad? Did anything good come out of the 1930s? I started doing some research and was amazed to find a bright side to the gloomy ’30s — a lower cost of living, great new inventions and other technological advances, new forms of entertainment, more sports and reading, and a return to sober social behavior.”

The flat tax is not flat and the FairTax is not fair: “Our current income tax system, inaugurated in 1913 with the adoption of the 16th Amendment, began with a 1 percent tax on taxable income above $3,000 ($4,000 for married couples). A series of surcharges of up to 6 percent were applied to higher incomes, with the maximum rate being 7 percent on taxable income over $500,000. Less than 0.5 percent of the population ended up paying income tax.”

Prominent British black sabotaged by arrogant black wife: "When Paul Boateng became Britain's first black High Commissioner it was hailed as a major breakthrough in the white, middle class, pubic school dominated diplomatic service. The Daily Telegraph has now learnt that the former head of the Equalities and Human rights Commission has been lined up to replace him in the prize posting of South Africa. The disclosure that Mr Boateng, 58, is returning to Britain comes only months after the Daily Telegraph reported that the Foreign Office was investigating allegations that his wife Janet, 52, had bullied the black domestic staff. Ministers were alerted about the inquiry because of the sensitivity of the complaint against Mrs Boateng, a former Lambeth social worker, in post-apartheid South Africa. The complaints of verbal bullying against cooks, cleaners, gardeners and security staff poisoned the idyllic atmosphere at the High Commissioner's sumptuous residence in Cape Town. Saying goodbye will be a serious wrench for Mr Boateng who became Britain's first black Cabinet minister when he was made Chief Secretary to the Treasury in 2002... When Mr Boateng was sent to Cape Town by Tony Blair after the 2005 general election senior foreign office officials were appalled as he had no experience of the diplomatic service or Africa."

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, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

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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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" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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"Nazi"

I am going to try to explain where the word "Nazi" comes from. It is as plain as a pikestaff to a German-speaking person but I doubt if I have ever come across an English speaking person who "gets" it. Jonah Goldberg probably gets it but Yiddish is a German dialect so he has a head start.

OK: The first thing to note is that Hitler's political party was called (in English) the "National Socialist German Workers' Party". And the curious thing is that the word "National" is spelled exactly the same in German as in English. So in German the party was called the: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter Partei. "National" is in fact a borrowing from English/French. It's spelled the same in French too. But it is PRONOUNCED differently in the three countries. Germans pronounce it (approximately) as "nartsionarl". But a German word pronounced that way would not be spelled that way. It would be spelled as "Nazional". German has strict spelling rules (unlike English) so that is obvious in German. So "Nazi" is simply the first two syllables of "National" -- where "national" is pronounced in the German way. Maybe that is as clear as mud but I hope it is not. If not, just take my word for it that "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National". Quite mundane, really. Much less exciting than you might expect.

But Nazis were not simply the "Nationalists". There was another German political party at the time called Nationalists. "Nazis" were "national socialists" because "National Socialists" is one word in German: Nationalsozialisten. So "Nazi" could be an abbreviation of both "Nationalists" and "National Socialists". It was of course normally applied to the latter. Hugenberg's Nationalists were a much more minor party.

Jamming two or more words together to make one longer word is very German. In English we do the same but use Latin and Greek words as the starting point. Perhaps the most curious example of that is the word "television" -- where the Greek word "tele" (meaning "afar") is combined with the Latin word "videre" (to see). In German, a TV set is a Fernsehgeraet, or "far-seeing-gadget". I think the German word is more straightforward.

Mixing Greek and Latin is considered rather crass in the making of English words so "television" should probably have been "teleskopia" if we had stuck to Greek. A bit too close to "telescope", maybe.

Tags: Nazi word meaning derivation origin

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I reproduce below part of a report from 2007 about antisemitism in Germany today. The report repeatedly calls the antisemitic NPD party "far-Right" but at the same time keeps noting how Leftist it is. There are none so blind as those who will not see. Hitler was a Leftist who was also a nationalist and so are the NPD

Success of the Neo-Nazi NPD in East German Elections

In the last two parliamentary elections for East German federal states, the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD) achieved significant success. In 2004 in Saxony it won 9.2 percent of the votes; in 2006 in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, 7.3 percent. In some small municipalities it even became the strongest party. The NPD particularly attracts young people with a low level of education: in Saxony, 21 percent of voters aged eighteen to twenty-four voted NPD, and for those under thirty-five with only basic secondary education the figure was 26 percent.

This success for the NPD-for decades an unimportant party winning less than 1 percent of votes-also reflects the modernization and radicalization of its politics and propaganda. First, the NPD focuses its work on East Germany. Second, it has opened up toward explicitly neo-Nazi individuals and groups (such as the grassroots, unofficial Kameradschaften). Thus, the "left-wing"-voelkische, national-revolutionary tendency within the NPD has clearly gained in importance.

Third, the NPD cultivates the image of a "people-oriented" middle-class party. By cooperating with schools and citizens' groups, organizing children's events and leisure activities, and offering free private tuition for students, the NPD deepens its local roots. Fourth, it has successfully made contacts with the right-wing youth subculture. It distributes free right-wing rock CDs at schools, projects an activist-rebellious image for the NPD youth organization Junge Nationaldemokraten, and offers concerts by skinhead bands after NPD events.

Fifth, in the context of its increasingly national-revolutionary orientation the NPD also adopts current topics and increasingly uses anticapitalist and anti-imperialist terminology. In East Germany, in 2005, it joined massive protests against cuts in unemployment support, while adopting aggressive populist propaganda against "those at the top" who did nothing for the "ordinary German." The NPD also mobilized against the Iraq war of "U.S. imperialism," its fierce anti-Americanism finding much sympathy. The NPD agitates massively against "capitalist globalization." Employing slogans such as "Work for millions instead of profit for millionaires" or "Social instead of global," it calls instead for a national "people's economy" and for "Volksgemeinschaft" (people's community)."

Sixth, the NPD incites hatred against immigrants, declaring them to be the cause of unemployment, criminality, cuts in social security benefits, and the loss of "German identity." Under the slogan "Germany for Germans," the party demands an "ethnic reconquista." It describes the German government as "far-Left" and "bribed."

The NPD also seeks to rehabilitate National Socialism. Party chairman Udo Voigt considers Hitler "undoubtedly...a great German statesman." The NPD member of Saxony's federal-state parliament, Juergen Gansel, cites a "just economic order," "national sovereignty," and "internal pacification" as great achievements of National Socialism. At the same time the NPD vehemently denies, minimizes, and relativizes German crimes, and it agitated against the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin with slogans such as "Kindergartens and old-age homes instead of a Holocaust Memorial" and "Stop the memorial! Seventy-six million for the people!"

For the NPD, the Allies were the true warmongers and the Germans the real victims of World War II. In January 2005, on the anniversary of the Allied air raid on Dresden, the NPD members of the Saxony parliament spoke of the "bomb-Holocaust of Dresden" stemming from British "eliminatory anti-Germanism," of "industrial mass murder of the civilian population that was planned in cold blood." They said a memorial for German victims should be built instead of the Berlin Holocaust Memorial.

Anti-Semitism in NPD Propaganda

Although open anti-Semitism is prohibited in Germany, the NPD uses it in only slightly moderated form throughout its propaganda. Mostly the NPD presents Jews as the main obstacle to putting German crimes aside and building a proud "national identity." A member of the NPD executive stated:

We are not to be pseudo-morally blackmailed, politically treated like children, and financially squeezed dry by the Holocaust industry...sixty years after the end of the war.... No German needs to put up with the Jews constantly presenting themselves as victims and the cult of guilt that the Jewish side has exercised for sixty years. Similarly, the psychological warfare by Jewish power groups against the German people must be stopped immediately.

Again it is the Jews who blackmail and exploit the Germans, and again the "German people" must protect themselves. The NPD finds Jews to be the originators of dangerous "work undermining the foundations of German communal life." The "critical theory" of Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and others -"all of them the sons of rich Jewish fathers"- is said to be a "destructive program of undermining people, state, culture, and family," a "poisonous muck that was supposed to damage the internal organs and the brain of the body of the German people."

Anti-Semitism is also prominent in NPD propaganda against globalization and "U.S. imperialism." Even when not explicitly mentioning Jews, the NPD says the world is dominated by a conspiracy of "controllers of capital," "globalists," and "plutocrats." Characterizing the United States as a "decadent society of the West," "civilization of grocers," or "embodiment of the antination" also has clear anti-Semitic overtones. The NPD often conflates anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism: "Just like a squid, dollar-imperialism has the world in its stranglehold,...the global power of Jewish capital strategists...seems to have reached its world-historic climax." "Jewish-America" is said to be working to destroy all "peoples" throughout the world: "In Washington and New York-it may remain an open question if the tail called Israel wags the dog called the USA or not-there are the deadly enemies of all peoples."

Of course, the NPD is also hostile to the Jewish state. "Jews and Americans who are driven to the same extent by Old Testament hatred of other peoples and the belief in chosenness," "Jewish-America," and "USrael" are said to be foisting their "neoprimitive dollar civilization" on the world, with "the Jews" intending to "build up ‘Eretz Israel' through a campaign of extinction against the Arabs."

Notwithstanding the NPD's usual hostility to foreigners and Islam, all Arab and Muslim enemies of Israel are guaranteed its solidarity. The party particularly approves Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad because of his threats to annihilate Israel and his recent Holocaust-denial conference. As for Iran's earlier Holocaust-cartoon contest, the NPD submitted a caricature showing the Berlin Holocaust Memorial as an Israeli missile launching site.

The NPD says German politicians are entirely "true to and in serfdom to USrael." Only the NPD, it claims, has the courage to stand up to the "impudent financial demands of the Zionist lobby,...the more and more unscrupulous lust for predominance over the world expressed by the American East Coast, [and] Israel's state terrorism."

The NPD's agitation against the "Israeli entity" features much anti-imperialist terminology and iconography that is typical of the Left. Neo-Nazis of the Kameradschaften and the Junge Nationaldemokraten demonstrate against Israel wearing keffiyehs, and the NPD youth organization flaunts posters of stone-throwing Palestinians. The NPD protested the summer 2006 war in Lebanon with slogans such as "No to war and repression," "For the freedom of peoples," and "Hurrah for international solidarity."

For the NPD, the Jews are the driving force behind every evil: globalization, immigration, "Wallstreet," "East Coast," "U.S. imperialism," the pluralization of values, the democratizing and dissolving of "people," the state, culture, and family. This classical anti-Semitism is supplemented by the specifically German accusation that the Jews seek to impose a guilt complex on the innocent Germans and destroy their national identity. This is the old, anti-Semitic principle: the Jews, now in combination with the United States, function as the global evil, the counterimage that is necessary for forming an integrated Volksgemeinschaft.

More HERE

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Obama Census Plan: No Illegal Alien Left Behind

I have seen the electoral future, and it is rigged. With fraud-prone, ideologically driven interest groups swarming the census-gathering process, the left is solidifying its chances of a permanent ruling majority. Lax immigration enforcement is the not-so-secret key to the Democrats' power grab. And the Obama administration is all too happy to aid and abet.

The volunteer groups Locke is entrusting to protect accuracy and fairness include the voter registration con artists of tax-subsidized ACORN, the amnesty activists of Voto Latino and the labor bosses of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). The fate of $300 billion in federal funding -- and, most importantly, the apportionment of congressional seats -- rest in their hands.

As for "privacy rights," it's not your privacy rights they care about. It's the privacy rights of millions of illegal aliens, whose advocates have enshrined for them a sacred right never to be questioned about their immigration status. Obama's census partners are using the process to pressure homeland security agents to halt interior enforcement efforts and workplace raids so that illegal alien cooperation with the national survey is maximized. Inclusion of the massive illegal alien population has resulted in a radical redrawing of the electoral map.

The census is used to divvy up seats in the House as a proportion of their population based on the headcount. More people equals more seats. More illegal immigrants counted equals more power... Translation in plain English: Open borders have profound consequences. And they don't end with congressional apportionment. The redistribution of power extends to presidential elections because the Electoral College is pegged to the size of congressional delegations.

More HERE

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ELSEWHERE

See here for an explanation of the present economic woes in terms of "Austrian" economics

Peta under fire over claim that it kills most animals left at its US headquarters: "People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals - is itself on the receiving end of angry words over its own treatment of animals after it emerged that the organisation put down 96 per cent of the animals handed into its American headquarters. Of 2,216 animals taken to its premises in Norfolk, Virginia, last year, 2,124 were put to sleep - almost six per day. Homes were found for just seven. The high-profile charity, famous for its "I'd rather go naked than wear fur" campaigns, has euthanised more than 20,000 pets in the last decade, according to figures it has supplied to Virginia state officials.

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

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, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

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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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" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Obama=Hitler (?)

The lack of results so far from the various "stimulus" plans seems to have got the American Left worried already. How else can one explain the appearance in the NYT of an article which declares that Obama's actions are similar to Hitler's and that Hitler was successful in his economic policies? I would never have predicted an article like that in the NYT in a million years!

Taranto writes at some length about the broader aspects of the comparison so I will confine myself to the economic argument in the article. Although I am a former High School Economics teacher, I am not fully engaged with economic statistics these days so I will speak in general terms and hope that a more detailed critique will emerge from elsewhere.

The Hitler comparison is in fact only one of the dubious comparisons used in the article. The writer declares successes where few others would. That the Hoover/FDR policies did not cure unemployment is, I think, undeniable but to our NYT writer they were a success -- as were the policies behind the Japanese doldrums of the 1990s. So one must suspect from the outset some flimsiness in the Hitler comparison too.

Much has been written about the German economic recovery of the 1930s but the first point that needs to be made is surely that Germany's position at that time was very different from that of the USA today. The twin impacts of a currency totally destroyed by inflation under the Weimar regime and a continuing demand for "reparations" were huge negative factors for the German economy at that time. And the large reductions in those problems were more the work of the brilliant Hjalmar Schacht at the Reichsbank than anyone else. Just relieving Germany of those problems was a very good "stimulus" to an economic recovery.

And it was also the manoeuvring of Schacht that enabled Hitler to finance his public works programmes. The programmes concerned did of course run up huge debts and it was only Schacht that kept Germany out of some form of bankruptcy. But Schacht could only do so much and by 1939 Germany was effectively "broke" and it is often contended that Hitler's march to war in that year was as much an economic necessity as an ideological imperative. Germany's generals certainly did not think that they were ready for war at that time. They felt that their buildup would not be complete until a couple of years further down the track. And the outbreak of war in 1939 in fact saw Germany facing French forces that were in most ways numerically superior to it.

So Hitler went to war to loot the gold in the Bank of France and elsewhere as much as for any other reason. Thanks to the brilliance of General von Manstein he initially succeeded in his objectives. One shudders to think what might have happened if he had put Manstein in charge of the Russian campaign.

Obama does not have to go to war to deal with the debt problem he is creating. Because America is the provider of the world's reserve currency, he can simply print all the greenbacks he likes to pay his government's bills. And he has already started doing that on a large scale. That is of course called "inflation" and there are plenty of commentaries from all sorts of sources on the evils of that. That it rewards debtors and penalizers savers has always been obvious but in the present case it has also started the process of snatching away from the world its reserve currency. And the consequences of discouraging saving (and hence capital formation) worldwide must indeed be grim.

The gold bugs are of course as happy as pigs in mud at the moment and gold exporting countries, such as Australia, are doing a roaring trade. But the net effect of that is to increase the Reserve Bank of Australia's holding of American paper -- and it is precisely that which now seems unwise. So from that alone one can see that the gold standard has its own problems -- which is why it was abandoned many years ago.

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THE G(RASPING)-20

By Sheldon Richman

We expected little of sense to come out of the G-20 summit, and it met our expectations with flying colors.

When you don’t understand how the economy got into a mess, you are not likely to understand how it can get out. Politicians either can’t or won’t graps the key fact: “the free market” did not cause our problems. How do we know this? It’s logic: the nonexistent cannot be the cause of anything. I’d like someone to show me this free market that brought on all the current turmoil. Please. The banking industry gets most of the blame, but banking has been part of a formal government-sponsored cartel since 1914 and is regulated, as well as privileged, by multiple layers of authorities, among them the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and the Comptroller of the Currency. An international agreement among the major central bankers, the Basel Accord, controls capital requirements and related matters. (Before 1914 a patchwork of regulations existed.) And let’s not forget the regulators in the states. With perhaps a local or exception or two, there has never been an unregulated banking industry in America (or most anywhere else).

This only scratches the surface of the corporate state’s stewardship of the economy. But politicians, who wield power and spend coercively acquired money for a living, have no incentive to see this. How could they? That’s not how the game of politics is played. They have no reason to see things in a way that would counsel against their exercising authority.

So, with complete predictability, the Gang of 20 promised to spend over a trillion dollars they don’t have to “stimulate” the world economy, to help struggling countries through the IMF (its record is so good at that), and other noble purposes. The G-20 also endorsed worldwide inflation by central banks and promised—I love this one—to “take action against” tax havens.

“The era of banking secrecy is over,” said the communiqué, as though that were a good thing. “We stand ready to deploy sanctions to protect our public finances and financial systems.”

The Obama administration led us to believe it was standing firm against a world regulatory authority, which was pushed by French President Sarkozy. But you be the judge. Here’s what the communiqué says:

“We each agree to ensure our domestic regulatory systems are strong. But we also agree to establish the much greater consistency and systematic cooperation between countries, and the framework of internationally agreed high standards, that a global financial system requires…. In particular we agree: … to establish a new Financial Stability Board (FSB) with a strengthened mandate, as a successor to the Financial Stability Forum (FSF), including all G20 countries, FSF members, Spain, and the European Commission…; to reshape our regulatory systems so that our authorities are able to identify and take account of macro-prudential risks; to extend regulation and oversight to all systemically important financial institutions, instruments and markets. This will include, for the first time, systemically important hedge funds; to endorse and implement the FSF’s tough new principles on pay and compensation and to support sustainable compensation schemes and the corporate social responsibility of all firms….”

And more—as if the regulators could have the requisite knowledge to manage economic affairs. This is a regulatory cartel, and to the extent it squelches competition among jurisdictions, it will produce all the evils of a coercive monopoly. That of course is the point. There is to be no safe haven where people can protect their wealth from the grasping politicians.

Economies Aren’t Run

The presumptuous and undistinguished assembly in London—why are they regarded by the media as wise men and women of accomplishment?—aspire to run the world economy, and they know that out-and-out nationalization is not necessary to that end. Of course, they disclaim any such objective. The current White House occupant, Barack Obama, said in his post-conference news conference that he believes in the free market—he did say that!—but that government must set rules to keep it from running “off the rails.”

Well, of course, an economy is not a locomotive and there are no rails. It’s people engaging in exchanges. “Society is purely and solely a continual series of exchanges,” said the eighteenth-century French liberal economist Destutt de Tracy. So Obama’s idea translates into politicians regulating our peaceful, consensual conduct in order to bring about or to avoid certain outcomes. The current economic turmoil has politicians convinced that they must limit risk taken by financial firms. This, pardon me, is a bad joke. It is none other than government itself that has systematically socialized risk in the financial industry and therefore encouraged individuals and firms to undertake greater risks than they would have taken otherwise. The irony is that the more the politicians strive for a risk-free society, the greater the danger to us all. That’s moral hazard, the largest manufacturer of which is the state.

If banks, hedge funds, and other sorts of operations (including government-sponsored enterprises) assume the Federal Reserve or the Treasury will bail them out in a crisis, they will be less risk-averse than they would have been without that guarantee. If depositors see an FDIC sticker on every bank they encounter, they won’t be too particular about which one they entrust with their money. Safety will not be a competitive factor because deposit insurance makes them all appear equal. The bankers know this.

Full Market Discipline

If politicians were really interested in reducing reckless financial activity with the potential for external harm, they would want to see the full force of market discipline at work. The full force. But remember the point about political incentives. Letting market forces discipline banks, insurance companies, automakers, and other firms would leave politicians and bureaucrats little to do. Market discipline—the threat of loss and bankruptcy—is the product of laissez faire, and, loosely translated, that means: “Politicians, keep your cotton-picking hands off peaceful voluntary exchange.”

We face a serious challenge. On the one hand, people who understand markets realize that government regulation—which includes the corporate safety net—was the essential cause of the economic failure. Any seeming irrationality by bankers and financial managers must be grasped in the context of well-understood government guarantees, including the implied promise by the Federal Reserve—the Great Counterfeiter—to buy toxic assets and provide fiat liquidity in a crunch. This was the indispensable underpinning of the government housing policy that encouraged the making and securitizing of dubious mortgage loans (prime and subprime) and the underwriting of those who invested in them.

On the other hand, people who don’t understand markets or who dislike markets can always blame them for any problem that arises. After all, government regulators, no how much power they have, can’t be everywhere watching everything, can they? So as I’ve written elsewhere, “No matter how much the government controls the economic system, any problem will be blamed on whatever small zone of freedom that remains.” (I modestly acknowledge that Laurence Vance has dubbed this, Richman’s Law. I have no objection.) And the “solution” will be—of course—more regulation. Just ask Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. Don’t think of regulation as being imposed. Think of it as the modest price for government privileges and protection.

So the market’s opponents can rely on demagogic sound bites and pervasive economic ignorance, while the market’s defenders must ask people to think. Sad to say, this puts the freedom philosophy at a disadvantage. And so we press on.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

I have recently put a couple of things up on my personal blog -- for anybody outside family who takes an interest in my boring personal life. I like my life to be boring, mind you.

Unemployment rate hits 8.5%: "The nation's unemployment rate shot up to 8.5% in March as employers shed 663,000 jobs and cut workers' hours to a record low, the Labor Department said Friday in a report showing continued rapid deterioration in the job market. A record 13.2 million Americans were out of work last month. Firms have cut 5.1 million jobs since the recession began in December 2007, with nearly two-thirds of the cuts happening in the last five months. The unemployment rate was up from a seasonally adjusted 8.1% in February, and at 8.5% it is the highest since November 1983. A year ago the rate was 5.1%. For the first time since 1985, less than 60% of the U.S. population was working."

The O-man gets some things right: "US President Barack Obama has urged the NATO allies to boost their own military strengths, and has warned that Europe is more likely to fall victim to a terror attack than the US. In Europe on his first major overseas trip since becoming president in January, and seeking to drum up support for his new Afghan strategy, Mr Obama praised Washington's partners but said they should raise their game. "NATO is the most successful alliance in modern history. The basic premise of NATO was that Europe's security was the United States' security, and vice-versa," Mr Obama said in France ahead of NATO's 60th anniversary summit. "That is its central tenet, that is a pillar of American foreign policy that has been unchanging over the last 60 years. It is something that I am here to affirm," he added, standing alongside France's President Nicolas Sarkozy. "We would like to see Europe have much more robust defence capabilities. That is not something we discourage, we are not looking to be the patron of Europe, we are looking to be partners with Europe," he said. "The more capable they are defensively, the more we can act in concert on the shared challenges that we face."

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, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

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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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" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Indonesia's Islamic forces full of hate, former president Abdurrahman Wahid says

Islamic extremists have infiltrated deep into Indonesia's government, businesses, schools and religious bodies, and are using cunning new tactics to seize control of mosques and preach radicalism, former president Abdurrahman Wahid has written in a new book. Mr Wahid, who was president of Indonesia from 1999 to 2001, said hardliners were transforming Indonesia's traditionally moderate brand of Islam into one that is "aggressive, furious, intolerant and full of hate".

Writing in The Illusion of an Islamic State, Mr Wahid said the extremists were systematically infiltrating Indonesian institutions in order to remake Indonesian society "in their own harsh and rigid likeness". Mr Wahid, also known as Gus Dur, said the hardliners were strongly influenced by transnational Islamic movements from the Middle East, such as Wahhabism and the Muslim Brotherhood, and many are financed by massive amounts of Wahhabi petro-dollars.

The 68-year-old wrote that the hardliners have penetrated to the heart of Indonesia's Government, and warned of opportunistic politicians who work with extremist political parties and groups. "They have joined the extremists in driving our nation towards a deep chasm, which threatens destruction and national disintegration," he wrote.

The book is based on more than two years of research by the LibForAll Foundation, a non-government organisation set up to promote religious tolerance and discredit extremism.

The Indonesian Council of Religious Scholars had largely fallen into the grip of radicals and is now dictating to - and in many ways controlling - the country's government, he wrote. As Mr Wahid noted in the introduction, researchers for the book uncovered evidence of several cunning schemes extremists use to seize control of mosques. Under one scheme, a group of youths offer a mosque a free cleaning service. Actually "extremist agents", the cleaners aim to impress a mosque's management with their piety, and eventually gain a spot on the mosque's board. Once on the board, they consolidate their power, stack it with other radicals and eventually come to control who can serve as imam, deliver sermons or give religious education.

The groups were also involved in strenuous efforts to seize control of Indonesia's mainstream Islamic organisations, particularly Muhammadiyah and the Nahdatul Ulama, in order to use them as vehicles to spread extremism, Mr Wahid said.

About 90 per cent of Indonesia's 240 million people are Muslims. Mr Wahid, Indonesia's fourth president, was kicked out of office and impeached in 2001 amid accusations of incompetence and corruption. [That last sentence is misleading. Allegations are cheap. In fact, he was too tolerant for the Jakarta establishment so they got rid of him. He is a very devout and sincere man]

SOURCE

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The folly of estate taxes

In Australia, where I live, all estate taxes were abolished long ago

President Barack Obama has proposed prolonging the federal estate tax rather than ending it in 2010, as is scheduled under current law. The president's plan would extend this year's $3.5 million exemption level and the 45% top rate. But will this really help America recover from recession and reduce our growing deficits? In order to assess the pros and cons of the estate tax, we should focus on its impact on those who bequeath wealth, not on those who receive wealth.

Advocates of the estate tax argue that such a tax will reduce the concentrations of wealth in a few families, but there is little evidence to suggest that the estate tax has much, if any, impact on the distribution of wealth. To see the silliness of using the estate tax as a tool to redistribute wealth, realize that those who die and leave estates would be taxed just as much if they bequeathed their money to poor people as they would if they left their money to rich people. If the objective were to redistribute, surely, an inheritance tax (a tax on the recipients) would make far more sense than an estate tax.

Indeed, from a societal standpoint, inheritance is an unmitigated good. Passing on to successive generations greater health, wealth and wisdom is what society in general, and America specifically, is all about. Imagine what America would look like today if our forefathers had been selfish and had left us nothing. We have all benefited greatly from a history of intergenerational American generosity. But just being an American is as much an accident of birth as being the child of wealthy parents. If you are an American, it's likely because ancestors of yours chose to become Americans and also chose to have children.

In its most basic form, it's about as silly an idea as can be imagined that America in the aggregate can increase the standards of living of future generations by taxing individual Americans for passing on higher standards of living to future generations of Americans of their choice. Clearly, taxing estates at death will induce people who wish to leave estates to future generations to leave smaller estates and to find ways to avoid estate taxes. On a conceptual level, it makes no sense to tax estates at death.

Study after study finds that the estate tax significantly reduces the size of estates and, as an added consequence, reduces the nation's capital stock and income. This common sense finding is documented ad nauseam in the 2006 U.S. Joint Economic Committee Report on the Costs and Consequences of the Federal Estate Tax. The Joint Economic Committee estimates that the estate tax has reduced the capital stock by approximately $850 billion because it reduces incentives to save and invest, has excessively high compliance costs, and results in significant economic inefficiencies.

Today in America you can take your after-tax income and go to Las Vegas and carouse, gamble, drink and smoke, and as far as our government is concerned that's just fine. But if you take that same after-tax income and leave it to your children and grandchildren, the government will tax that after-tax income one additional time at rates up to 55%. I especially like an oft-quoted line from Joseph Stiglitz and David L. Bevan, who wrote in the Greek Economic Review, "Of course, prohibitively high inheritance tax rates generate no revenue; they simply force the individual to consume his income during his lifetime." Hurray for Vegas.

If you're rich enough, however, you can hire professionals who can, for a price, show you how to avoid estate taxes. Many of the very largest estates are so tax-sheltered that the inheritances go to their beneficiaries having paid little or no taxes at all. And all the costs associated with these tax shelters and tax avoidance schemes are pure wastes for the country as a whole and exist solely to circumvent the estate tax. The estate tax in and of itself causes people to waste resources.

Again, a number of studies suggest that the costs of sheltering estates from the tax man actually are about as high as the total tax revenues collected from the estate tax. And these estimates don't even take into account lost output, employment and production resulting from perverse incentives. This makes the estate tax one of the least efficient taxes. And yet for all the hardship and expense associated with the estate tax, the total monies collected in any one year account for only about 1% of federal tax receipts.

It is important to realize that less than half of the estates that must go through the burden of complying with the paperwork and reporting requirements of the tax actually pay even a nickel of the tax. And the largest estates that actually do pay taxes generally pay lower marginal tax rates than smaller estates because of tax shelters. The inmates really are running the asylum.

In 1982, Californians overwhelmingly voted to eliminate the state's estate tax. It seems that even in the highest taxed state in the nation there are some taxes voters cannot abide. It shouldn't surprise anyone that ultra-wealthy liberal Sen. Howard Metzenbaum, supporter of the estate tax and lifetime resident of Ohio, where there is a state estate tax, chose to die as a resident of Florida, where there is no state estate tax. Differential state estate-tax rates incentivize people to move from state to state. Global estate tax rates do the same thing, only the moves are from country to country. In 2005 the U.S., at a 47% marginal tax rate, had the third highest estate tax rate of the 50 countries covered in a 2005 report by Price Waterhouse Coopers, LLP. A full 26 countries had no "Inheritance/Death" tax rate at all.

In the summary of its 2006 report, the Joint Economic Committee wrote, "The detrimental effects of the estate tax are grossly disproportionate to the modest amount federal revenues it raises (if it raises any net revenue at all)." Even economists in favor of the estate tax concede that its current structure does not work. Henry Aaron and Alicia Munnell concluded, "In short, the estate and gift taxes in the United States have failed to achieve their intended purposes. They raise little revenue. They impose large excess burdens. They are unfair."

For all of these reasons, the estate tax needs to go, along with the step-up basis at death of capital gains (which values an asset not at the purchase price but at the price at the buyer's death). On purely a static basis, the Joint Tax Committee estimates that over the period 2011 through 2015, the static revenue losses from eliminating the estate tax would be $281 billion, while the additional capital gains tax receipts from repeal of the step-up basis would be $293 billion.

SOURCE

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CO: Jury awards $1 to corrupt Ward Churchill: “A jury Thursday found that former college professor Ward Churchill, who referred to victims of the September 11, 2001, attacks as ‘little Eichmanns’ in an essay, was wrongfully terminated by the University of Colorado, according to a court official. But the jury, which deliberated for a day and a half after a trial that began March 9, awarded Churchill only $1, the minimum they could award while still finding in Churchill’s favor, according to Robert McCallum, pubic information officer for Colorado’s 2nd Judicial District Court. … Churchill argued during the trial that he was fired from his tenured position for expressing politically unpopular, but constitutionally protected, views. The university argued in the trial that he was not fired for his political views but rather for sloppy academic work.”

The mark-to-market relief rally: “The events leading to the Dow’s climbing over 8000 today can be properly called the Mark-to-Market Relief Rally. More than any expected action of the bureaucrats and politicians at the G20, the decision today of the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) to relax strict application of mark-to-market accounting mandates, urged on by members of Congress of both parties, it what’s giving investors something to cheer for.”

Obama: The hollow man: “Normally, I try not to think too much about presidents. The mainstream media focus excessively on them, cheapening the quality of political discourse. As a result, American citizens who are inclined to talk about politics regurgitate pointless trivia about the White House occupant and staff — things they’ve heard on National Public Radio or seen on TV. But we have a new occupant in the White House, one whom the popular media laud as a visionary and transformative figure. To anyone who loves liberty, this overwrought praise is by itself a cause for skepticism. And skepticism is surely warranted, on many grounds.”

A caricature of a riot: “Yesterday’s anti-capitalist protest in London was a half-hearted ritual of pretend-rage and pseudo-concern. ‘Concerned of Tunbridge Wells’ was elbowed aside by ‘Angry of Brighton’ in a shallow display of second-hand militancy. What was really striking about the G20-related demonstrations against ‘capitalism and climate chaos’ — which took place outside the Bank of England and elsewhere in London — was the extent to which the opportunistic coalition of protesting moral crusaders represented a going-through-the-motions activism; they weren’t so much representing a cause as searching for one. Predictably, the authorities faithfully played their part in this melodrama.”

Obama’s losing bet on Detroit : “If you had bought $1,000 worth of General Motors stock in 2000, your holdings would now be worth less than $40, for a loss of 96 percent. You could have made worse investments in that period — with Bernard Madoff, for one — but not many. So anyone looking to participate in a viable business would look a lot of other places before they would look there. But the United States government thinks GM might just be a really smart place to put its money.”

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, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

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

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

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" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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G-20: Much Talk, Thankfully Little Action

The likelihood that this meeting will kick-start a recovery from the global economic downturn is about as high as your winning the jackpot with the next lottery ticket you buy. At the prior G-20 meeting in November all parties solemnly proclaimed their devotion to free trade and opposition to protectionist measures in the midst of recession. Since then, 17 of the 20 countries, including the United States, have imposed recovery-killing protectionist measures.

The world would be better off if the two major initiatives being pushed at this meeting were similarly ignored. The U.S. and Great Britain will try to persuade other countries to commit to the kind of large-scale domestic "stimulus" spending they have instituted. Meanwhile the continental European countries will try to persuade the U.S. to regulate its financial institutions more tightly, emulating the strict European regulation that failed to stave off imprudent exotic investments and a financial crisis there.

France, Germany, Japan and other countries are rightfully leery of too much deficit spending, convinced that it won't end the recession and concerned about subsequent inflation. Stricter U.S. regulation will be designed to prevent the previous round of excesses while failing to anticipate problems that have not yet materialized, accomplishing little at great cost.

All in all, then, the best news out of London would not be announcements of great decisions agreed upon, but flowery statements about "friendly discussions" and "frank exchanges," which when decoded translate to "we did nothing much."

More HERE

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G20 summit: Leaders target bankers

Totally trivial amid the present financial meltdown but that seems to be all that the blowhards have been able to agree on. Laughable, really

World leaders will agree unprecedented global restrictions on pay and bonuses for bankers at the G20 summit in London. In future, bankers will be prevented from receiving multi-million pound cash bonuses for speculating on the stock market. Their remuneration will instead be based on the risks they take over the long term. Bankers deemed to be making risky investment decisions will only be paid in shares that can be cashed in after several years.

The multi-million-pound bonuses paid to bankers have been blamed for encouraging them to take the "reckless" decisions that triggered the global financial crisis.

The Daily Telegraph has learnt that the remuneration deal was thrashed out over the past few days following intensive diplomatic efforts by Nicolas Sarkozy, the French President, and Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor. The measure did not appear in a draft communiqué that was leaked at the weekend. The European leaders were understood to have pushed for an exact monetary limit on banking pay but were prepared to sign up to the new, strongly-worded agreement.

Regulators in each of the G20 countries will impose the new restrictions, which cover both private banks and those owned both wholly and partially by the state. The agreement will be the most eye-catching part of the communique, which is expected to be released by G20 leaders at the summit in London's Docklands on Thursday.

More HERE

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Good start for Netanyahu

By Ted Belman

The Netanyahu government is looking good to me. First, Netanyahu studiously avoided giving anything away upfront to the consternation of the EU and Livni. He offered negotiations on “three parallel tracks, economic, security and diplomatic” with the Palestinian Authority. As the NYT put it Netanyahu Offers Conciliation, but Not Concessions. His sole position on the peace process was that he would abide by all signed agreements.

As Min Lieberman made forcefully clear today, that didn’t include Annapolis. The International community was dying to make discussions under Annapolis binding on Israel but the Netanyahu government would have none of it and came out of the gate stressing this point.

In Understanding Netanyahu, I pointed out that Bibi intended to take Bush’s “vision speech” of 2002 as his point of reference. Even the Roadmap isn’t a signed agreement. Let’s look at it.

A two state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will only be achieved through an end to violence and terrorism, when the Palestinian people have a leadership acting decisively against terror and willing and able to build a practicing democracy based on tolerance and liberty, and through Israel’s readiness to do what is necessary for a democratic Palestinian state to be established, and a clear, unambiguous acceptance by both parties of the goal of a negotiated settlement as described below.

The emphasis on a “negotiated settlement” precludes an imposed solution which is currently what the Obama Administration would like to do..

However, as a performance-based plan, progress will require and depend upon the good faith efforts of the parties, and their compliance with each of the obligations outlined below.

There is no way progress can be made under this roadmap so long as there is violence and the Arabs will never give up on the use of violence.

A settlement, negotiated between the parties, will result in the emergence of an independent, democratic, and viable Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with Israel and its other neighbours.

Notice he word “sovereign” is left out.

Netanyahu has taken the position that he will not consider making Palestine a sovereign state. He is offering “limited sovereignty” otherwise known as autonomy.

The settlement will resolve the Israel-Palestinian conflict, and end the occupation that began in 1967, based on the foundations of the Madrid Conference, the principle of land for peace, UNSCRs 242, 338 and 1397, agreements previously reached by the parties, and the initiative of Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah - endorsed by the Beirut Arab League Summit - calling for acceptance of Israel as a neighbour living in peace and security, in the context of a comprehensive settlement.

More HERE

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The Ted Stevens Scandal

After yesterday's dismissal, time to put rogue government prosecutors in the dock

Last fall, the senior Senator from Alaska was the poster octogenarian for political corruption. As of yesterday, Ted Stevens is merely another casualty of abusive prosecutors out to make a name for themselves.

The Justice Department yesterday moved to set aside an October conviction on ethics charges and forgo any future trials for Senator Stevens. He walks free, in other words, an innocent man. In the motion, Justice said it "recently discovered" that prosecutors withheld from the defense notes about an interview last April with the state's star witness, Bill Allen, that contradicted his subsequent testimony. Under the Brady Rule for evidence, Justice was obliged to share that with Senator Stevens's lawyers.

This was one of many prosecutorial missteps that came to light after Mr. Stevens was found guilty less than two weeks before Election Day. The Republican narrowly lost his bid for a seventh term. Attorney General Eric Holder yesterday promised a "thorough" probe into the conduct of prosecutors, which is the least the Department owes Mr. Stevens. The Obama Administration made the political calculation here to walk away from the original mistake made by Bush Justice rather than further embarrass the Department in post-trial hearings....

Evidence since the trial confirms suspicions that Justice lawyers were eager to bag such a prominent Senator before Election Day and before a new Administration brought in different political appointees. Perhaps they knew that a Republican Attorney General wouldn't dare overrule career lawyers prosecuting a GOP Senator, especially amid charges of "politicizing" Justice. They failed to share other documents with the defense and redacted exculpatory passages from witness transcripts. Chad Joy, an FBI "whistleblower," filed a complaint in early December, saying his partner, Mary Beth Kepner, had an unspecified "inappropriate relationship" with Mr. Allen, the prosecution witness.

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan in February called the behavior of Justice lawyers "outrageous," taking the rare step of holding them in contempt. The Department subsequently replaced the entire prosecutorial team, which had been led by the chief of its public integrity section, William Welch. The Justice internal probe will have a lot of ground to cover. The government's lawyers likely miscarried justice and should be held to account. All of this comes too late for Mr. Stevens's political career, but perhaps not for other politically tempting prosecutorial targets.

More HERE

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, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

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

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

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" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Our Problem is Immorality

by Walter E. Williams

Most of our nation's great problems, including our economic problems, have as their root decaying moral values. Whether we have the stomach to own up to it or not, we have become an immoral people left with little more than the pretense of morality. You say, "That's a pretty heavy charge, Williams. You'd better be prepared to back it up with evidence!" I'll try with a few questions for you to answer

Do you believe that it is moral and just for one person to be forcibly used to serve the purposes of another? And, if that person does not peaceably submit to being so used, do you believe that there should be the initiation of some kind of force against him? Neither question is complex and can be answered by either a yes or no. For me the answer is no to both questions but I bet that your average college professor, politician or minister would not give a simple yes or no response. They would be evasive and probably say that it all depends.

In thinking about questions of morality, my initial premise is that I am my private property and you are your private property. That's simple. What's complex is what percentage of me belongs to someone else. If we accept the idea of self-ownership, then certain acts are readily revealed as moral or immoral. Acts such as rape and murder are immoral because they violate one's private property rights. Theft of the physical things that we own, such as cars, jewelry and money, also violates our ownership rights.

The reason why your college professor, politician or minister cannot give a simple yes or no answer to the question of whether one person should be used to serve the purposes of another is because they are sly enough to know that either answer would be troublesome for their agenda. A yes answer would put them firmly in the position of supporting some of mankind's most horrible injustices such as slavery. After all, what is slavery but the forcible use of one person to serve the purposes of another? A no answer would put them on the spot as well because that would mean they would have to come out against taking the earnings of one American to give to another in the forms of farm and business handouts, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps and thousands of similar programs that account for more than two-thirds of the federal budget. There is neither moral justification nor constitutional authority for what amounts to legalized theft. This is not an argument against paying taxes. We all have a moral obligation to pay our share of the constitutionally mandated and enumerated functions of the federal government.

Unfortunately, there is no way out of our immoral quagmire. The reason is that now that the U.S. Congress has established the principle that one American has a right to live at the expense of another American, it no longer pays to be moral. People who choose to be moral and refuse congressional handouts will find themselves losers. They'll be paying higher and higher taxes to support increasing numbers of those paying lower and lower taxes. As it stands now, close to 50 percent of income earners have no federal income tax liability and as such, what do they care about rising income taxes? In other words, once legalized theft begins, it becomes too costly to remain moral and self-sufficient. You might as well join in the looting, including the current looting in the name of stimulating the economy.

I am all too afraid that a historian, a hundred years from now, will footnote America as a historical curiosity where people once enjoyed private property rights and limited government but it all returned to mankind's normal state of affairs -- arbitrary abuse and control by the powerful elite.

SOURCE

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The Rise of ObamaCorps

As ALG News mentioned last week, Rep. Virginia Foxx's (R-NC) amendment banning so-called “volunteer” organizations from using taxpayer funds to political purposes was stripped from its parent bill in the Senate, and replaced by an amendment allowing those organizations to skirt the law and continue lobbying. This week, the House will approve the Senate version, and President Obama will no doubt sign it shortly thereafter.

The battle to kill this bill in Congress is very likely over. Unless the Blue Dogs can muster enough support to halt Speaker Pelosi's march to madness, the American taxpayer will have to pony up another $5 billion for paid “volunteers” (an oxymoron if there ever was one) to politically-oriented organizations, the aims of many of which they will invariably oppose.

So when groups like ACORN and the DNC come knocking at the government's door for taxpayer funds and “volunteers,” the only thing standing in their way will be a hollow “promise” to not use them for partisan purposes. Of course, strictly speaking, they can get around that by using the volunteers and funding to create and manage the 'non-partisan' infrastructure, thus enabling them to shift more non-government dollars into lobbying and partisan efforts. It's called “fungibility.” And the “volunteer” front groups know how to use it well.

In essence, a new army has been created—a civilian army, ready to do the will of those organizations that have the political shrewdness to hire them. By creating this massive influx of government-managed, taxpayer-funded positions, President Obama will enable any group (with the proper connections, of course) to access this talent pool and influence Washington—all at taxpayer expense.

More HERE

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BrookesNews Update

Dark clouds hover over US economy: Let us be clear, the Dow rally is not squaring Obama's economic circle. His policy of big government is - at best - guaranteed to retard economic growth. The bigger the government the more resources it commands and the more resources it commands the fewer resources there are for capital accumulation. Then there is the Fed's utterly reckless monetary policy that has created an inflationary time bomb
The economy tanks as politicians look the wrong way: Rudd, like Obama, is following in the destructive footsteps of Gordon Brown. Australia, the UK and the US are being led by economic and historical illiterates, men who are criminally ignorant of how free economies functions and the forces that destabilise them. Unfortunately our media commentators are every bit as bad
Israeli soldiers speak out against the slanders : To combat the many slanders and libels that are being perpetrated against them Israeli soldiers are now speaking up. They are highlighting their personal accounts of the IDF's moral code and their own combat experiences. Needless to say, this would not be necessary were it not for a corrupt media
The Fed created the bubble and Greenspan should admit it: A bubble cannot emerge without a loosening of monetary policy, which means it cannot occur without money pumping by the Fed. Hence, what matters for the economic boom, i.e., the emergence of bubbles, is the creation of money out of thin air and not the level of long-term interest rates as Greenspan argued
Will the US economy be able to keep the military strong? :America cannot retain a superpower status without a strong manufacturing base. Unfortunately the Fed's monetary policy has weakened that base, causing some manufacturers to invest overseas rather than in the US. Obama's policies will only worsen the situation
Marx and Keynes and Obama's primitive economics :Obama's primitive economic program and the support it is getting from the media is frightening evidence of just how far economic thinking has regressed. That his economic nostrums had been refuted many times before has been all but forgotten. I fear the consequences of this historical amnesia will be severe
The left's romance with Castro's Cuba: Western leftist intellectuals were greatly inspired by the persecution of intellectuals in Cuba, just as the earlier generation had been by the persecution of intellectuals in Stalin's Soviet Union. Charmed by the notion of a society in which their own talent - as well as their entire being - would be extinguished, they continued the practice of labelling the totalitarian
The coming loss of American sovereignty :The new war on sovereignty started slowly but will be accelerated in the next four years and from all appearances may be a war our country will lose unless the public realizes Obama in just a socialist idealist and not a messiah but one who has been under the tutelage of socialist and mentors

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ELSEWHERE

Netanyahu to Obama: Stop Iran—Or I Will: "In an interview conducted shortly before he was sworn in today as prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu laid down a challenge for Barack Obama. The American president, he said, must stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons—and quickly—or an imperiled Israel may be forced to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities itself."

Sell the Roads!: "Under President Obama's stimulus plan, the government will spend billions of your dollars building new roads and fixing old ones. They say they'll do it efficiently. I say, bull; government has never before been efficient. It isn't going to start now. Need proof? How about rush hour? Rush hours from hell are not natural phenomena. They're manmade -- more precisely, politician-made. But what if commuting didn't have to be a horrendous experience? What if, for example, someone wanted to add some lanes to a road or build an entirely new road? It's happening. Private road builders are doing it. They built a double-decker underground highway in Paris. A 45-minute trip now takes 10 minutes. Three hundred-fifty cameras watch for traffic delays or accidents. Once the camera detects a problem, a crew rushes to tow the obstacle away so traffic keeps moving. They did a similar thing in California, too, on Highway 91. Instead of building a brand-new road, a private developer added two lanes in the median strip of an existing highway. The beauty of it: Unlike government work, the private highway is all voluntary. No driver or taxpayer was forced to pay for the extra lanes. Drivers can choose to use them or not. Those who want to go faster have to pay a toll -- from a buck fifty to $9 -- depending on traffic. By paying you save time. And for some people, time is money."

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, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

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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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" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Conscription Law AKA The GIVE ACT Passes Senate

And, sadly, it's not an April Fool's joke: The Hitler Youth comes to America. Joining the Hitler Youth was "voluntary' too. The speech restrictions are routine Leftism but will probably not get past SCOTUS

The GIVE ACT has been rubber stamped by the Senate making a domestic draft that legislates mandatory national service and creates an “army” of at least 7 million civilian enforcers. Imagine that, 7 million members of this civilian “army” equates to about one member for every 50 Americans, a similar figure to the number of East Germans who collaborated with the Stasi and informed on their own citizens during the cold war.

Paul Watson reports " In an interview with Ben Smith of the New York Daily News, Emanuel outlined the agenda for military-style training, essentially a domestic draft, aimed at preparing Americans for a chemical or biological terrorist attack.

Asked by Smith about the universal service plan and whether people would have to live in military barracks, Emanuel laughed before responding, “We’re going to have universal civil defense training, somewhere between the ages of 18 to 25 you will do three months of training….but there can be nothing wrong with all Americans having a joint similar experience of what we call civil defense training or civil service in service of the country, in preparation, which will give people a sense of what it means to be an American.”

“It will be a common experience and we will be prepared, God forbid, God forbid that there is a chemical hit, another terrorist act or natural disaster becoming more frequent - there’ll be a body of citizens who are ready and capable and trained - that’s all you have to think about,” said Emanuel before smugly declaring, “We’re all here for you OK? It’s a circle of love.”

As Gary Wood writes, “Those in support of this legislation will argue this amendment is limited in scope and is not meant to interfere with the rights of citizens to protest, petition, boycott, or strike in resistance to government proposed laws. However, the people associated through service under the GIVE Act are considered volunteers, still free citizens, yet it will be unlawful for them to take part in any protests against any legislation. This is as close to a sedition act, a violation of 1st Amendment rights, as has been proposed in recent history. A basic right as a part of our natural, inalienable rights, is to resist government. Our founders not only knew it was a right but it was a responsibility. This legislation begins to break that down significantly.”

Within this legislation it contains language that takes away the first amendment rights of the so-called "volunteers".

‘SEC. 125. PROHIBITED ACTIVITIES AND INELIGIBLE ORGANIZATIONS.

‘(a) Prohibited Activities- A participant in an approved national service position under this subtitle may not engage in the following activities:

‘(1) Attempting to influence legislation.

‘(2) Organizing or engaging in protests, petitions, boycotts, or strikes.

‘(3) Assisting, promoting, or deterring union organizing.

‘(4) Impairing existing contracts for services or collective bargaining agreements.

‘(5) Engaging in partisan political activities, or other activities designed to influence the outcome of an election to any public office.

‘(6) Participating in, or endorsing, events or activities that are likely to include advocacy for or against political parties, political platforms, political candidates, proposed legislation, or elected officials.

‘(7) Engaging in religious instruction, conducting worship services, providing instruction as part of a program that includes mandatory religious instruction or worship, constructing or operating facilities devoted to religious instruction or worship, maintaining facilities primarily or inherently devoted to religious instruction or worship, or engaging in any form of religious proselytization.

More HERE

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ELSEWHERE

ND: As river rose, volunteers stepped up: "In Fargo, a city of 90,000, 80,000 volunteers showed up -- men, women, children. Everyone who could help appeared in defense of the city. 'You've got to try and stay positive,' said one volunteer. ... a statement was made here that may be useful beyond the Great Plains. After weeks of national stories about cheats and schemers, the people of faraway Fargo showed what a sense of community really means ... and the rewards that sacrificing for a cause greater than oneself may bring." [Note: And just imagine, they did it themselves with no gov't mandate, no gov't funding, no FEMA, no foulups]

Stupid regulators Force insurer out of Florida: "On January 27, State Farm Florida Insurance Company, the largest provider of homeowners insurance in the Sunshine State, gave formal notice to the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation (OIR) that it intends to withdraw completely from the state. This action will leave more than one million policyholders, including many in the riskiest areas, searching for coverage... In the notice, the company blames regulatory price controls for its decision, saying they have created an “unacceptable probability of impairment or insolvency.” The notice followed a decision by state insurance regulators denying State Farm’s request for a rate-increase. The request did not rely fully on the threat of another bad storm season. While a catastrophic storm would accelerate the company’s financial woes, a combination of increasing small claims, increasing reinsurance costs, and excessive mandatory discounts would lead State Farm Florida into bankruptcy as soon as 2011 without a hurricane making landfall. State Farm Florida’s decision to exit the market should send two very clear signals to Floridians—and residents of other states facing similar problems. First, it shows that the company was not earning adequate returns to continue writing insurance in Florida, much less price gouging to generate excessive profits. Second, it confirms that market forces set terms firms cannot ignore."

Iranian official: No dialogue until we build a bomb: "A high-level Iranian official said that Iran will not dialogue with the United States until Iran has a nuclear bomb. Remarks by the secretary general of Iranian Hezbollah were reported in Berlin from a March 26 symposium on "Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah: Anti-Semitism and Holocaust Denial." Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer Kharrazi reportedly told the Iranian state news agency Shabestan that Iran "will arrange contacts to America as soon as we build our own bomb." "If one is not allowed to build an atom bomb, then no contacts are allowed. And if there are to be contacts, then it will be necessary to build the atom bomb," Kharrazi said, according to a translation from the original Farsi, reported by Wahied Wahdat-Hagh, a senior research fellow at the European Foundation for Democracy. Officially, the Iranian government dismissed the recent Persian New Year greeting and overture from President Obama, insisting that the United States has to be the first to change its approach.

Europe won’t blacklist Israeli airlines: "Israeli airlines will not be blacklisted in Europe. The European Aviation Safety Agency, which last month sent the Israel Civil Aviation Authority an e-mail warning that if its flight safety record did not improve it would blacklist the country's national airlines, announced March 26 that it would not downgrade the security ratings of El Al, Arkia, Israir and Sun d'Or. The decision means the airlines can continue to land at European airports. The Israeli authority also presented the European agency with a plan to be reinstated to the American category 1 safety rating. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration downgraded Israel's air-safety system to a third-world level last December. The European warning came on the heels of the FAA's decision to downgrade. Meanwhile, Ben Gurion International Airport was named top Middle East airport for the second year in a row in an annual survey by the Geneva-based Airports Council International. The survey ranks airports based on more than 30 aspects of service voted on by travelers.

Murtha Award Sparks Vet Outrage: "In one of his last moves before leaving office March 13, then-Navy Secretary Donald Winter quietly awarded 19-term Democratic congressman John Murtha (Pa.) with the service's highest civilian honor. The award generated little publicity when it was given to Murtha in early March, but as news of the honor trickled out, some veterans groups ignited a firestorm of protest. The primary reason for their ire stems from the congressman's statements in May, 2006, that a squad of Marines who responded to an IED ambush and short firefight in Haditha, Iraq, rampaged through the village, murdering civilians "in cold blood." When the dust settled more than two years later, six of the eight Marines and Sailors accused of crimes in the Haditha incident had their cases dismissed, one was found not guilty and the last has been continued indefinitely. Murtha has refused to recant his accusations or apologize to the Marines he accused of war crimes".

Crazy: Gates sees sanctions as best bet on Iran: "The U.S. defense secretary said economic sanctions would be more successful than diplomacy in dealing with Iran. "I think frankly from my perspective, the opportunity for success is probably more in economic sanctions in both places than it is in diplomacy," said Robert Gates on the television program "Fox News Sunday," referring to both Iran and North Korea. "Diplomacy -- perhaps if there is enough economic pressure placed on Iran -- diplomacy can provide them an open door through which they can walk if they choose to change their policies, and so I think the two go hand in hand. But I think what gets them to the table is economic sanctions." Gates' remarks came a little more than a week after President Obama launched an effort to diplomatically engage Iran, sending a videotaped message to the Iranian people. The defense secretary also said on the program that Iran has "enough low-enriched uranium" to give it the capacity to make a weapon "should they enrich it more highly." But he said the United States does not believe that Iran has the capability yet.

US Army Confirms Israeli Nukes: "The Army has let slip one of the worst-kept secrets in the world -- that Israel has the bomb. Officially, the United States has a policy of "ambiguity" regarding Israel's nuclear capability. Essentially, it has played a game by which it neither acknowledges nor denies that Israel is a nuclear power. But a Defense Department study completed last year offers what may be the first time in a unclassified report that Israel is a nuclear power. On page 37 of the U.S. Joint Forces Command report, the Army includes Israel within "a growing arc of nuclear powers running from Israel in the west through an emerging Iran to Pakistan, India, and on to China, North Korea, and Russia in the east... Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh published "The Samson Option," detailing Israel's strategy of massive nuclear retaliation against Arab states in the event it felt its very existence was threatened. Israel's nuclear arsenal has been estimated to range from 200 to 400 warheads."

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, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

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

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

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" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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