Saturday, September 30, 2006

 
Brookes News Update

Why tax cuts and not consumer spending rescued the US economy: By cutting capital gains President Bush lifted a huge burden off production by generating additional savings. It is these tax cuts that spurred the economy. Therefore they gave the US economy something it sorely needed - more investment
Inflation and the price of oil: The yearly rate of growth of the CPI less food and energy edged up to 2.8 per cent in August from 2.7 per cent in July - the biggest 12-month gain in nearly five years. So did the Fed cause the rise or was it the price of oil?
Is monetary policy killing Australian manufacturing?: Australia's ratio of manufacturing to GDP is one of the lowest in the developed world. Our economists tell us not to worry because this is a natural process. But what if it isn't? What are the consequences for living standards if this shift in manufacturing has been caused by the Reserve Bank's loose monetary policy?
Liberal Party sabotaging its own labour market deregulation policy: By imposing more regulations on firms the Government is admitting that it has no genuine understanding of how labour markets work. Is that why it no longer claims that deregulated labour markets generate increased productivity?
Day of Muslim rage: What else is new?: Nothing Muslim - be it law, music, written words, or cultural practices - can be criticized. When anyone has the audacity to complain about something Islamic, the fanatics automatically take to the streets in numerous places around the world and in engage in orgies of barbaric behaviour
Terrorism and the West's path to self-destruction: In recent years there have been many Islamic acts of terror committed against Western countries. All of them were openly or covertly supported by most Muslim rulers and are silently condoned by most of the Islamic communities around the world
Inflation fallacies, prices and houses: Much economic commentary, particularly in our newspapers, makes for truly depressing reading so poor is much of the analysis - particularly with respect to inflation

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ELSEWHERE

I have just put up here a press release about the enormously biased media hounding of Senator George Allen. I rarely comment on individual Congressional races but this is a case of outright media persecution on essentially baseless grounds. Previous posts from me about what the Senator was originally accused of are here and here

Sowers of sexual confusion: ""Transgender activists are aggressively targeting our public school children this fall," said TVC Executive Director Andrea Lafferty. "These sexually confused individuals have made it their goal to deceive our kids into thinking they're the opposite sex. This insanity must stop. Our new report, "Will Cross-Dressing Activists Come To Your School?" exposes this dangerous effort to confuse our children." TVC's Back to School Report details the growing movement of transgender activists, including teachers, counselors and pediatricians who are teaching children that being male or female is "fluid" and changeable. "This is absolutely crazy, but pediatricians from some of the nation's most prestigious children's hospitals are involved in this gender confusion movement," said Lafferty. "Children who suffer from a Gender Identity Disorder are being redefined by these radical pediatricians as `gender variant' children who should be affirmed in their sexual confusions. These children need serious therapy, not affirmation for their gender confusion"

Is your IP address harboring pedophiles?: "Contrary to conventional wisdom, the most outlandish and delusional thing uttered last week by a small, powerful Hispanic man was not Hugo Chavez ranting at the United Nations about El Diablo. It was U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales telling a Senate panel that the Justice Department must have two years worth of history on every American's Web site usage. Gonzales claimed the info hoarding is needed to stop child pornography. Assuming the Bush administration really believes that -- and we'll get to that -- collecting giant stacks of cyber-hay in order to find pedophiles is madness."

Why Bush will nuke Iran: "The U.S. has battled in Iraq longer than it fought against Nazi Germany, and the situation in Iraq is out of control. The Taliban have regained half of Afghanistan. The king of Saudi Arabia has told Bush that the ground is shaking under his feet as unrest over the American/Israeli violence against Muslims builds to dangerous levels. Our Egyptian puppet sits atop 100 million Muslims who do not think that Egypt should be a lackey of U.S. hegemony. The king of Jordan understands that Israeli policy is to drive every Palestinian into Jordan. Bush is incapable of recognizing his mistake. He can only escalate. Plans have long been made to attack Iran. The problem is that Iran can respond in effective ways to a conventional attack. Moreover, an American attack on another Muslim country could result in turmoil and rebellion throughout the Middle East. This is why the neocons have changed U.S. war doctrine to permit a nuclear strike on Iran."

Where's the integrity?: "The Senate is poised to take up, as soon as this week, the Federal Election Integrity Act of 2006. Some say the act is an overdue, common-sense measure to prevent voter fraud; others protest that it's a clever attempt at voter suppression, if not outright disenfranchisement. Regardless of who's right one thing is certain: If passed, the act will spawn considerable litigation. In fact, the day before the House passed the bill last week a Fulton County, Georgia superior-court judge struck down a nearly identical Georgia statute."

Socialist man in the Big Easy: "Marxists long theorized that communism would bring about the new socialist man. Through communist programs, man would turn his sole purpose to laboring and struggling for the greater good of the collective. Through socialist policies and redistribution, New Orleans has raised from its ruin a new socialist man. However, instead of working for the collective, this risen New Orleans man does not work at all."

Chicago Gets Its First Wal-Mart: "Wal-Mart opened its first store in Chicago, a little more than two weeks after Mayor Richard M. Daley vetoed an ordinance requiring all 'big-box' stores to pay their employees $10 an hour by 2010. More than 15,000 people applied to work at the 142,000-square-foot store, which is in the economically depressed Austin section on the West Side. Wal-Mart officials estimated that the store would produce 490 jobs. Critics of the chain's urban expansion, including some aldermen who were unable to override Mr. Daley's veto, said they would continue to push for higher wages for employees of the city's big-box stores." [If workers have too few employers bidding for their services, it hardly makes sense to crack down on those that are!]

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

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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

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

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posted by JR 9/30/2006 12:14:00 AM

Friday, September 29, 2006

 
A defence of Muslims by a Leftist elitist

I very rarely bother to fisk Leftist articles. It is much more interesting to spend my time looking at articles that endeavour to consider all the facts of a matter rather than looking at the very selective attention to the facts that characterizes Leftist writing. A reader has however drawn my attention to a typical bit of Leftist hate by Australian columnist Amanda Blair and offered some comments on it. I reproduce both the column and the comments on it elsewhere. I thought however that I might make a few comments in passing on the column myself:

Our wonderfully caring Amanda is unhappy with the way senior members of the Australian government have repeately told Australia's Muslims that they should shape up or ship out (See e.g. here). In response to that, dearest Amanda puts forward the hoary argument that since not all Muslims are the same we should consider them only as individuals and not as a group. That most Leftist discourse consists of NOTHING BUT talk about groups ("The poor", "Minorities", "Women", "Zionists" etc.) does not of course embarrass Amanda one bit. And according to Amanda's logic we should all in fact be struck dumb -- since all words in our language are words for categories. There are for instance large dogs, small dogs, black dogs and white dogs, tame dogs and fierce dogs so obviously we should not talk of dogs -- right?

Allowance should of course always be made in official policy for the characteristics of individuals (something that Leftists seem to find extraordinarily hard to do) but Prime Minister Howard has repeatedly done just that -- stressing that the problem lies with a minority of Muslims only, not with all Muslims. And yet it is of Mr Howard that sad Amanda is most critical.

What would you say about someone who was careful to speak slowly and clearly to someone who appeared to be of immigrant origin? Would you describe them as polite, considerate etc.? Amanda does not. When Mr Howard did that she made the very large leap of saying that it showed him to be a "little Englander". Since he is Australian, not English, that would appear to be a snide accusation of racism. The irony of the fact that the original little Englanders of the 19th century were radical opponents of imperialism is of course quite lost on our Amanda. She appears to be one of that fortunately rare but very amusing ilk who like to use big words and expressions without really knowing what they mean. She is, most probably, the product of a modern journalism education.

She also seems to be claiming that Australians are much less happy with their immigrants than are Americans. Since Australia has had for around 60 years now a policy of deliberately encouraging immigration -- something that only Israel could rival -- that is as fact-free as the rest of her diatribe.

To say any more about her pathetic outburst would, I think, be to take it far more seriously than it deserves. I have however interpolated into her text a few more comments in italics here. Note that the "caring" Amanda turns into the arrogant Amanda when she starts to talk about working-class Australians.

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NO PLEASING THE LEFT

Among the most heated debates of the last 40 years has been the debate over Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust. What did he do when the greatest evil of his day engulfed Christian Europe? Was he "Hitler's Pope," as the name of a widely read book about him charged? Was he too reticent in speaking out against Nazism and the Nazi extermination of Europe's Jews? Was he perhaps even a Nazi sympathizer? Or was he in fact a great friend of Europe's Jews who did whatever he could to save tens of thousands of Jews, especially in Italy, opening up the doors of Church institutions to hide Jews?

It is not my aim here to offer an answer to that debate. But the attacks on Pope Benedict XVI may help shed new light on some of the motives for the attacks on Pius XII. It is true that we have always known that most, if not all, of Pius's critics were/are on the political/religious Left. But this no more discredited their critiques of Pius than the fact that the vast majority of Pius's defenders were on the political/religious Right discredited their defense.

But recently the critics have lost credibility. If the same people who attack Pope Pius XII for his silence regarding the greatest evil of his time are largely the same people who attack Pope Benedict XVI for confronting the greatest evil of his time, maybe it isn't a pope's confronting evil that concerns Pius's critics, but simply defaming the Church.

After all, has not Benedict done precisely what Pius's critics argue that Pius, and presumably any pope, should have done -- be a courageous moral voice and condemn the greatest evil and greatest manifestation of anti-Semitism of his time? Take The New York Times editorial page, for example. It is written by people who condemn Pius for his alleged silence and now condemn Benedict for not being quiet. According to the Times, Benedict will only create more anti-Western Muslim violence. But that was exactly the excuse defenders of Pius XII so often offered for why Pius XII did not speak out more forcefully -- that he was afraid it would only engender more Nazi violence. Yet Pius's critics have (correctly) dismissed that excuse out of hand.

Source.

(For a scholarly demolition of the scurrilous accusations against Pius XII, see here. Pacelli (Pius XII) was an Italian and there has long been very little antisemitism in Italy. In the early days, Jews were even prominent in Mussolini's Fascist party).

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ELSEWHERE

A new lot of Reds: "Democrats have an anti-religion problem. In fact, they have such a serious anti-religion problem that in 2004 they had to bring a leftist pastor named Jim Wallis to try to teach Democrat congressmen how to use "God talk" in their campaign speeches. This pathetic effort failed as will a new disinformation campaign called "Red Letter Christians." Wallis, founder of the left-wing Sojourners group, and self-described "progressive evangelical" Tony Campolo, have just founded a liberal front organization called the "Red Letter Christians." Wallis, Campolo, Father Richard Rohr, "Emergent Church" pioneer Brian McLaren, Dr. Cheryl J. Sanders, Rev. Noel Castellanos, and others met recently to form this new pseudo-evangelical group. These "Red Letter Christians" are supposedly trying to alert American Evangelicals to the importance of living the words of Jesus as highlighted in red in many Bibles. Their idea of living the words of Jesus, however, is somehow reinterpreted to mean support for every liberal political agenda on the horizon."

Cartoons of Pope OK: "A few months back, American liberal newspapers (which is to say, most of them) refused to publish cartoons previously published in a Danish newspaper, depicting Muhammad as the terrorist that he was... The liberal fourth estate in the US wants us to believe that it is "sensitive," a frequently bastardized word, now code, and akin to the newly equally manipulated word, "tolerant." [but] Neither the Associated Press, nor The New Haven Register, on Saturday, September 23rd, exhibited any compunction in showing an altered and vitriolic photo of a hideously defiled Pope Benedict XVI, sporting facial sutures, bruises, and an eye patch, with of course, Arabic writing above and below."

A former Prime Minister of Spain comments: ""It is interesting to note that while a lot of people in the world are asking the pope to apologise for his speech, I have never heard a Muslim say sorry for having conquered Spain and occupying it for eight centuries."

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

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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

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

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posted by JR 9/29/2006 12:17:00 AM

Thursday, September 28, 2006

 
WHAT THE POPE SHOULD HAVE MENTIONED INSTEAD OF STATING "REGRET"

Predecessors of Ratzinger in the Vatican had to oversee actual battle against hosts of Islam. Coastal Italy was subject to repeated Arab maritime depredation between 652 and 1087. In 846, an Arab force of 11,000 men borne on 73 ships entered Rome through the mouths of Tyber. They freely plundered the suburbs of Rome and despoiled the basilica of St. Peter and Cathedral of St. Paul before nonchalantly returning to their ships. When Pope Leo IV came to office in 847, he dedicated himself to fortification of Rome. The entire Vatican area, where St. Peter's basilica stood, was walled to form Civitas Leonina or the "Leonine City".

Corsica and other places in Tuscan coasts were also fortified under Pope's direction. But the Arabs caught with the Romans in 849, before the fortifications could be completed. But as the Arab fleet launched from the island of Sardinia approached Rome, the allied fleet of Gaeta, Amalfi and Naples, led by Caesarius of Naples, came forward to Rome's defence. Blessed by Leo IV, it gave a decisive battle to the Arab fleet. Storm kept a date with Arab fleet, and the aggressors were routed. Many Muslim survivors were mercilessly hanged, while others were pressed into slavery to build the incomplete walls and towers.

Yet Rome was so endangered by Arab pirates that Pope John VIII (872-882) had to pay the Arabs an yearly bribe of 25,000 mancusi! .The abbey of San Vincezo and the great monastery of Monte Cassino were burnt and destroyed in 883-884, as were they abbeys of Farfa and Subiaco in 890. Arab bases materialized, dangerously close to Rome, at Ciciliano and Saracinceso on river Garigliano, from where they indulged in wanton plundering. It took an impressive and heroic Pope John X (reigned 914 - 928) to rally the Byzantines, Lombards, Gaeta, Capua, Salerno, Beneventum, and other Italian states against the Arab aggression. Pope John X was himself present on the battle field when his alliance, in August 916 CE, routed the Arabs beside Garigliano River.

But Arabs, emanating from their bases in Sicily and Barbary (North African) Coast, continued to harass southern Italy past 916. They took Reggio in 918; overran Calabria; and sold many of its captured inhabitants into slavery in Sicily and North Africa. Their piratical activities were a constant bugbear to the Christian maritime commerce on the Mediterranean, and they extorted ransom from coastal cities of Italy.

Finally, Genoa and Pisa decided to take the bull by its horns. In 1015 and 1016 CE, allied Genoese and Pisan fleets, blessed by Pope Benedict VIII, raided the Tyrrhenian base of Arabs in Sardinia. The Arab resistance literally collapsed in the face of this Italian resurgence, and Pisa occupied Sardinia. In 1034 CE, they took the offensive to Bona, the Arab base on Barbary Coast. The booty captured in the campaign was given away to monastery of Cluny, from which Moors had extorted enormous ransom in 972 CE after captivating its revered Abbot St. Maiolus.

In 1062 or 1063, Pisan made a daring raid upon Palermo, in Arab Sicily, and extorted a booty, whose one sixth went to making of Santa Maria Maggiore. In 1087, Pope Victor III inspired a coalition of Italian cities Pisa, Genoa, Rome, Amalfi to raid Mahdia, a dreaded piratical base on Barbary Coast with 30,000 men borne on more than three hundred ships. It was an immensely successful attack and the Arab prince Tamim doled out huge tributes in gold dinars, and granted Pisan and Genoese merchants free access to his territory. He released all Christian captives and promised to stop piratical raids. Their victory was attained on the feast day of St. Sixtus (August 6) and Pisans and Genoese constructed Churches dedicated to that Saint with tributes extracted from Mahida. Pisa and Genoa, had swept clean the western Mediterranean of Arab scourge, on the eve of the First Crusades

A resurgent scourge of Barbary Pirates between 16th and 19th centuries held Europe into ransom. In 1571, Pope Pius V Michele Ghisleri played a seminal role cutting down the western expanse of Islam. He inspired the `Holy League' of Christian states that under the command of Don Juan defeated the Turks in sea battle of Lepanto on Sunday October 7, 1571. Coincidentally, it was on Sunday October 7, 2001 the President George Bush launched the US-led coalition attack on Afghanistan. Miguel Cervantes, the author of famous `Adventures of Don Quixote', world's first novel, was disabled in his one arm fighting the battle of Lepanto.

But four years later Miguel and his brother Rodrigo, while returning in from Italy to Spain in galley El Sol, in September, 1575, were captured by Barbary Pirates. Miguel Cervantes spent the following his four years as a slave of Arraez Ali Mami in Algiers until he was ransomed back by the monks of Trinitarian order. There were tens of thousands of Christian/European slaves in Algiers (also in Tunis, Tripoli, Sale etc) and most of them were not so lucky.

Pope Ratzinger, instead of apologizing to Muslims for his anecdote on Manuel III Paleologues, should have reminded them of these indelible facts of history. And these are only fractions of the whole story of Islamic torture of Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Zoroastrianism etc.

Source

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ELSEWHERE

Scruton on Chomsky: "For it is his ability to excite not just contempt for American foreign policy but a lively sense that it is guided by some kind of criminal conspiracy that provides the motive for Prof. Chomsky's unceasing diatribes and the explanation of his influence. The world is full of people who wish to think ill of America. And most of them would like to be Americans. The Middle East seethes with such people, and Prof. Chomsky appeals directly to their envious emotions... Prof. Chomsky is an intelligent man. Not everything he says by way of criticizing his country is wrong. However, he is not valued for his truths but for his rage, which stokes the rage of his admirers. He feeds the self-righteousness of America's enemies, who feed the self-righteousness of Prof. Chomsky. And in the ensuing blaze everything is sacrificed"

We the sheeple? "A clue to the real attraction of conspiracy theories, I would suggest, lies in the rhetoric of theorists themselves, which is filled with self-congratulatory descriptions of those who accept such theories as 'willing to think,' 'educated,' 'independent-minded,' and so forth, and with invective against the 'uninformed' and 'unthinking' 'sheeple' who 'blindly follow authority.' The world of the conspiracy theorist is Manichean: either you are intelligent, well-informed, and honest, and therefore question all authority and received opinion; or you accept what popular opinion or an authority says and therefore must be stupid, dishonest, and ignorant. There is no third option."

More welfare, more poverty: "News that the poverty rate remained at 12.6 percent last year, statistically unchanged from the year before, has set off a predictable round of calls for increased government spending on social welfare programs. From the New York Times to the Democratic Leadership, we hear familiar complaints about how George W. Bush and congressional Republicans have 'slashed' anti-poverty programs. Yet, last year, the federal government spent more than $477 billion on some 50 different programs to fight poverty. That amounts to $12,892 for every poor man, woman, and child in this country. And it does not even begin to count welfare spending by state and local governments. For all the talk about Republican budget cuts, spending on these social programs has increased an inflation-adjusted 22 percent since President Bush took office. Despite this government largesse, 37 million Americans continue to live in poverty."

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

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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

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

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posted by JR 9/28/2006 12:10:00 AM

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

 
The jihad against the Pope

Excerpts from Melanie Phillips

In fact, the Pope's real crime surely lay in speaking a truth that is denied by the many who claim that Islam is a religion of peace. On the contrary, Islam does indeed have a long history of imposing its faith on the world by the sword. The Emperor whose remarks sparked this furore had spoken in despair when his empire was under siege from the Ottomans. It is that religious tradition of holy war which is precisely what is driving the global Islamic terrorism that currently threatens us all. Which is why the Pope's observations were a contribution to a crucial worldwide debate which must be had.

Certainly, many Muslims who reject this tradition of violence are appalled by acts of terror in the name of their faith and insist that Islamic theology dictates that it is a religion of peace. It might also be argued that, contrary to the Pope's remarks, Christianity also spread itself by the sword before the Reformation ended its own religious wars.

The extent to which holy war is an expression of religious belief or politics - or a fusion of the two - is a perfectly legitimate debate. So it is obviously essential for people to be able to express their opinion about Islam and to criticise it, just as they should be able to criticise any other religion. But it seems that we are fast getting to the point where people are being intimidated into silence about Islam, since it appears that no one can criticise it without violence and mayhem breaking out. This deadly process of intimidation started in the West in 1989 with the fatwa calling for the murder of Salman Rushdie, after he was held to have insulted Islam in his novel The Satanic Verses.

Last year, the re-publication of Danish cartoons protesting at Islamic violence that included depictions of the Prophet Mohammed, which Muslims regarded as an insult, led to rioting, kidnap attempts, and the murder of some 140 people across the world. As with the Pope's remarks, the trigger for the violence on each occasion was the claim that Islam had been insulted. But religion generally provokes strong passions, and one faith almost inevitably gives offence to another. If all such offence is to be prevented, vital debate will be stifled, too - and if violence is used to bring this about, freedom itself will be brutally stamped out. For free expression lies at the core of a free society. Sure, it isn't absolute; some limits are placed on it, but only where such expression threatens fundamental human rights, such as the right to life or to live as a free and equal individual (which should surely mean that Mr Choudary should be prosecuted).

The warriors of the Islamic jihad wish to destroy that whole way of life. Which is why it is absolutely vital that we stand up for free speech and act as one in staunch opposition to murder and mayhem. Unfortunately, there are some in our society who are not prepared to do so but who seek instead to appease the aggressors and blame their victims....

The BBC, in particular, has behaved in a very questionable manner. As so often, it has given undue airtime to extremists, thus lending credence to the false interpretation of the Pope's remarks. In common with several newspapers, it wrongly said that the Emperor Manuel had accused the Prophet Mohammed of bringing into the world `only "evil and inhuman" things'.... And it wrongly reported in news bulletins and on its website that the Pope had apologised - rather than merely expressing regret for the misinterpretation of his remarks - thus helping Islamic extremists believe that the forces of intimidation had cowed the Pontiff and scored a notable victory in the war against western civilisation.

Our greatest danger comes from those in the West who, in these and other ways, have mentally surrendered to the irrationality and false logic of those who accuse the West of aggression simply because it defends itself against Islamic holy war. This surrender has already resulted in a degree of self-censorship and back-to-front thinking, with accusations of ` Islamophobia' hurled at those telling the truth about the violence practised by some Muslims in the name of Islam.

If we are ever to defeat the global jihad against free societies, it is vital to tell that truth - that it is the West that is under attack. It is in that context that the Pope's remarks must be seen - defending Christianity and western civilisation from an onslaught that has not just snuffed out many innocent lives, but seeks to snuff out freedom and truth itself.

More here



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ELSEWHERE

Interesting news from China: China Hand reports that blogspot sites are once again accessible from behind the great bamboo wall. No official announcement so we can only guess why.

Like most bloggers, I occasionally put up reports of my daily doings. I do so rarely, however, so I have decided to consolidate all such posts in a separate blog. You can find it all here or here. I have just put up a new report there.

Genetics again: "The way people behave as children can determine whether they will become dangerous drivers, an Australian psychology professor said today. University of Melbourne professor Margot Prior said that children as young as five who showed signs of aggression and hyperactivity were more likely to become a risk taker behind the wheel once they reached adulthood. Professor Prior's finding comes after a 20-year study of Victorian children. The Australian Temperament Project (ATP) was a study of the psychosocial development of a sample of children born in Victoria between September 1982 and January 1983. The study traced the children over a 20-year period to investigate what influence personal, family and environmental factors had on an individual's emotional and behavioural development. "Between the ages of five and eight, the children at risk for dangerous driving in early adulthood were characterised by teacher reports of hyperactive and aggressive behaviours," Professor Prior said. "As teenagers, they experienced more behaviour problems, less social competence and more friendships with antisocial peers."

Churches rally for GOP: "Worried that discontent among conservatives and the lack of a clear standard-bearer to follow President Bush might cost Republicans in November, top evangelical leaders pleaded with their followers Friday to put aside frustrations and turn out for GOP candidates. The appeals, coming on the opening day of a weekend-long rally and strategy conference, included entreaties to pastors to use their pulpits on behalf of the social conservative agenda. "There is no choice, because the alternative is terrible," said James C. Dobson, founder of the influential group Focus on the Family, referring to the potential for a Democratic takeover of the House and Senate in November. Dobson's organization recently launched a major voter recruitment drive in eight battleground states that will include placing registration tables outside Sunday worship services at conservative churches."

Report from Mike Pechar: "On Tuesday, the teacher in my son's 12th-grade American Government class complained that Al Gore actually won the 2000 presidential election and George Bush was named President because of his buddies. Specifically, the teacher said it was relationships with brother Jeb Bush and Florida SecState Katherine Harris coupled with a majority conservative Supreme Court that made George Bush President of the U.S."

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

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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

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

****************************
posted by JR 9/27/2006 12:11:00 AM

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

 
Transfer? It's Time!

By Arlene Peck

I'm much too young to be a political pundit but the fact is that, for more years than I care to remember, the thought of transfer, the enforced movement of the Arab population from their homes to Arab countries, has been criticized as irrational, immoral and impossible to implement. However, after the past two years of living through the horror of sometimes-daily terror attacks, almost fifty percent of the Israeli public supports transfer.

Despite that fact, the only party advocating it in the Knesset is Moledet. With only one representative in the Knesset, they are continuously held back by politics. Since transfer has gained so much support among the Israeli public, it is unconscionable that the politicians do not reflect that position. Unfortunately, the peoples' voice is drowned out by the Israeli political system. A system that so far refuses to accept the fact that it would eliminate the Arab demographic threat to Israel.

I remember having long dialogues with Rabbi Meir Kahane twenty-five years ago. At that time he prophesied: "At the rate that the Arabs are populating the Jewish state, they won't beat us with bullets. No, they'll beat us with ballots. Who but the Jews would put the enemy in power to vote them out? The average Israeli family has two children while an Arab family has five ."

Today it is easier to see that the transfer Kahane advocated would solve that problem immediately and the Jewish state would no longer have to concern itself with the Arab population doubling itself every sixteen years. At this point in time, the 22 Arab states have 289 million people and their numbers are soaring worldwide. By the year 2020 they will have 410 to 459 million. Even now, they are growing up violent and illiterate and taking over much of Europe. Today, many of the European countries are finding their cultures changed. Churches are being removed and mosques are being built in their stead.

Do you really think that the Arabs who walked away from 97% of everything on their `wish list' in the misplaced leadership of Ehud Barak would be satisfied with the land they've received from Gaza, Judea and Samaria? Pu-lezzz! The present day Arab considers the entire state of Israel as "Historically Palestinian." It's interesting how the world sees nothing wrong with uprooting over a quarter of a million people from lands that they have been residing in for almost forty years. Where do they think the Jews living in the `settlements' come from? Did they drop out of a pineapple tree? What about making it possible to have all the Jewish residents of Israel return who were chased out of any of the Arab countries 'return' to claim their property? If the despots in Iraq, Saudi Arabia or any of the surrounding Arabs states had not been keeping the Palestinians as an excuse for their efforts to destroy the Jewish state, they would have resettled their Arab brothers fifty years ago. Instead they have allowed the Palestinians to grow up for generations in the filth of the Palestinian dream.'

Knowing the Jewish mentality as I do, I am confident that Israel would be the first one to assist in building a Palestinian state on Arab land, helping their neighbors in in terms of agriculture, finance, industry and trade and all the other trappings of statehood. Which, considering if the situation was reversed, the Arabs wouldn't be happy until every Jew is dead and all of their historical sites renamed after Mohammed.

More here

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Swiss back tougher asylum laws: "Swiss voters supported tighter asylum laws in a national referendum yesterday, despite fears that refugees will be denied a fair hearing. Sixty-eight per cent of voters approved the new legislation, according to official figures. Christoph Blocher, the right-wing Swiss Justice Minister, had argued that tougher rules were essential to crack down on "bogus" asylum-seekers who allegedly exploit loopholes in existing laws. Catholic, Protestant and Jewish leaders released a joint statement yesterday, describing the law as "unfit to solve the problems it seeks to tackle and contrary to this country's humanitarian tradition". The new law will require all asylum-seekers to present documents within 48 hours of making a claim. In response to allegations that it is often impossible for those fleeing their countries to collect the proper paperwork, Mr Blocher said that the law contains safeguards for those who are clearly refugees"

China Hand has an interesting comment on language policy in China. The last paragraph makes China seem very much like the Western world: "Suddenly we hear the term, 'cultural heritage' being used with great fervour. In Jiangsu all local cities are allowed to have programs in local dialect to promote knowledge of the local culture. The policy was simply too effective. It almost wiped out some local dialects. It's opposite will now prevail. Chinese policy, as it does so often, mirrors the developments in all modernizing countries. Having promoted uniformity until it looked like working, they now preach diversity."

Voting early and often: "Can I call 'em, or can I call 'em? Nearly four years ago, I predicted charges of electoral fraud before the polls had even opened in the 2002 elections. I was right, and such charges have only grown louder as in recent elections. It's easy to dismiss this as the grousing of losers, for the good reason that that's pretty much what it is. But although it's easy, fun -- and basically the right thing to do -- to heap scorn on the purveyors of silly conspiracy theories, we shouldn't stop there. One of the great risks of the modern world is that when a cause is propounded by loudmouthed fools, we tend to dismiss the cause as well as the fools. But in fact, there are lots of reasons to worry about ballot security."

Aaron Sorkin vs. the moralists: "Now, Studio 60 is by no means a 'libertarian' show. It seems too ready to be critical of the lowbrow pull that capitalism can sometimes exert (the producer's tirade includes angry references to the crassness of reality television), and, with the producer's labeling of TV as 'this country's most influential industry,' it will likely view Hollywood as too much of an instigator of social change. But even with these caveats, it's refreshing to see a show take up the cause of free speech so bluntly and so eloquently. For even when Sorkin's ideas lack credibility, they always make for compelling, thoughtful drama."

Accused denied due process in Duke case? "Do the principles of justice still operate in American courtrooms? The Duke Lacrosse case, in which three white male students are accused of raping a black woman last March, is also a case about race, class conflict and political ambition. For me, the case has become a litmus test for the American justice system. I believe the accused are blatantly innocent and that the prosecuting District Attorney Mike Nifong is acting with willful disregard for both the evidence in the case and the Constitutional rights of the accused. In this case, I believe the legal system is the enemy of justice ... and nakedly so."

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

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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

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

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posted by JR 9/26/2006 12:14:00 AM

Monday, September 25, 2006

 
Too Many Men is Bad for Society

Cultures that tend choose male babies over female babies could be unknowingly contributing to the destabilization of their society, according to a new study by researchers in England and China. The researchers say their study suggests men who find themselves without marriage prospects are more likely to turn toward antisocial behavior, like crime and terrorism.

The researchers report in parts of China and India there will be 12-percent to 15-percent more men than women over the next 20 years. "These men will remain single and will be unable to have families, in societies where marriage is regarded as virtually universal and social status and acceptance depend, in large part, on being married and creating a new family," write the authors.

The men who are not able to marry are more likely to be poorer and less educated than men who are able to find a wife, according to the researchers. "When there is a shortage of women in the marriage market, the women can marry up, inevitably leaving the least desirable men with no marriage prospects," they write. With no family or outlet for sexual energy, these men could be part of trend toward increased levels of antisocial behavior and violence.

A positive outcome of an unbalanced society could be the raised social status of women, suggest the researchers. The researchers propose measures to reduce sex selection, equal rights for women, and public awareness campaigns about the dangers of gender imbalance.

Source

The same applies of course to Islamic countries -- where poorer men are deprived of women not by infanticide but by polygamy.

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Wal-Mart leads the way: "After mammoth retailer Wal-Mart announced plans this week to drop many generic drug prices to the cost of a cheeseburger, everyone it seems took note. From small independent pharmacists to big brand-name retail chains to individuals with mounting prescription drug bills, Wal-Mart's announcement that it's cutting prices of nearly 300 generic medications to as little as $4 for a 30-day supply has created quite a buzz. And it's already having an impact. Target announced Friday it will copy Wal-Mart's plan to sell $4 generics -- a move that experts say is likely to create a completely new and cheaper price structure for America's off-brand medicines."

UK: Courts set to admit wiretap evidence: "The attorney general has thrown his weight decisively behind the use of intercept evidence in court, making it highly likely that the ban on phonetap evidence will be lifted. Speaking out for the first time in favour of the move, Lord Goldsmith told the Guardian he was determined to find a way round the obstacles which now stop wiretap evidence going before a jury. 'I'm personally convinced we have to find a way of avoiding the difficulties,' he said. 'I do believe there are ways we can do that. Otherwise, we're depriving ourselves of a key tool to prosecute serious and organised crime and terrorism.'"

Sweden has learned from its own lesson: "The summary of Swedish success and failure is a story of markets against the state. Every time Sweden has taken a step towards freer markets, it has been very successful. And every time it has increased the size and power of the state, success has sooner or later faded away."

More of that great government "security": "Two teenage car thieves drove a stolen car on Wednesday without being stopped onto the US military base that commands much of the war on terror, triggering an investigation into the security breach, police and military officials said. Police in Tampa, Florida, said the joyriders were only stopped and arrested after ramming two police cruisers that had entered MacDill Air Force Base in pursuit. ... There was nothing at the gate preventing entry to MacDill, which houses the US Central Command, responsible for US military operations in the Horn of Africa, Middle East and Central Asia and therefore for much of the US war on terror. Public affairs spokesman Air Force Lt Larry van der Oord declined to discuss specific security measures in force at the gate but said an investigation had been launched."

The games bureaucrats play: "When a bureaucrat makes a comment that defies logic, like the following, it may mean something's up: It is misleading to imply that the commission could be the cause of delays. It is not up to us to tell Microsoft what it has to do to Vista. The onus is on Microsoft to design its product in conformity with European competition laws. The words are those of a spokesman for the EU, who is referring to a comment from someone at Microsoft to the effect that uncertainty over how the EU will act is making it hard for the company to make some critical decisions on how to design its new operating system, Windows Vista."

NY: 25 to life in race killing: "A homeless man was sentenced Monday to 25 years to life in prison for knifing a woman to death in a mall parking garage because she was white. ... [Phillip] Grant, 44, who is black, was convicted in July of murder as a hate crime in the killing of Concetta Russo-Carriero, a 56-year-old legal secretary. She was stabbed twice in the heart in June 2005 in the parking garage of the Galleria mall in downtown White Plains."

Kin's documentary seeks to reclaim Goldwater ideals: "CC Goldwater didn't want to send an overt political message with the documentary she produced on her grandfather, Barry Goldwater, but the message still comes through. Most of the Republicans who invoke Goldwater's name are frauds. Barry Goldwater became a national figure when he ran for president in 1964 and an icon after the conservative movement was reborn with Ronald Reagan's two terms in the 1980s. But as his name became popular, much of his philosophy was lost. That's the mistake his granddaughter tries to correct with Mr. Conservative: Goldwater on Goldwater.

"Peak oil" or lots more oil?: "In May 2006 I wrote, 'I know about the 'Peak Oil' theory that says we either have or are about the reach the point of diminishing returns regarding the world's oil supply, but these recent discoveries suggest there is still plenty of oil to be found.' In that commentary I documented nearly a dozen new fields of oil and natural gas discovered since 1995. So I wasn't surprised when, on September 5, Chevron Corporation announced it had discovered new, huge reserves of oil some five miles below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. The initial estimates were that these reserves 'could boost U.S. oil reserves by 50 percent.'"

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

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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

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

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posted by JR 9/25/2006 12:22:00 AM

Sunday, September 24, 2006

 
SCRUTON ON IMMIGRATION

In the excerpt below, "indigenous" means "English"

Decisions can still be taken, but only in the hope of limiting the damage. And even now, when opinion across Europe is unanimous that immigration must be controlled, and that Muslims must be integrated into the secular culture, liberal politicians are refusing to admit to a problem or to confess that they are the cause of it. They still preach "multiculturalism" as the sign of our "vibrant" future; they still condemn "racism and xenophobia" as the enemy; they still try to state and solve the problem by the promiscuous multiplication of "human rights." Their Enlightenment creed makes it all but impossible for them to acknowledge the fundamental truth, which is that indigenous communities have legitimate expectations which take precedence over the demands of strangers. True, indigenous communities may also have duties of charity towards those strangers-or towards some of them. But charity is a gift, and there is no right to receive it, still less to force it from those reluctant to give.

The destructive effects of liberalism are not usually felt by the liberals themselves-not immediately, at least. The first victim of liberal immigration policies is the indigenous working class. When the welfare state was first conceived, it was in order to provide insurance for poorer members of the indigenous community, by taxing their income in exchange for the benefits which they may one day need. The rights involved were quasi-contractual: a right of the state to levy contributions in exchange for a right of the citizen to receive support. The very term used to describe the deal in Britain-"national insurance"-expresses the old understanding, that the welfare system is part of being together as a nation, of belonging with one's neighbors, as mutual beneficiaries of an ancestral right.

The liberal view of rights, as universal possessions which make no reference to history, community, or obedience, has changed all that. Indigenous people can claim no precedence, not even in this matter in which they have sacrificed a lifetime of income for the sake of their own future security. Immigrants are given welfare benefits as of right, and on the basis of their need, whether or not they have paid or ever will pay taxes. And since their need is invariably great-why else have they come here?-they take precedence over existing residents in the grant of housing and income support. Those with a handful of wives are even more fortunate, since only one of their marriages is recognized in European systems of law: the remaining wives are "single mothers," with all the fiscal advantages which attach to that label. All this has entailed that the stock of "social housing" once reserved for the indigenous poor is now almost entirely occupied by people whose language, customs, and culture mark them out as foreigners.

It is not "racist" to draw attention to this kind of fact. Nor is it racist to argue that indigenous people must take precedence over newcomers, who have to earn their right of residence and cannot be allowed to appropriate the savings of their hosts. But it is easier for me to write about these matters in an American intellectual journal than in an English newspaper, and if I tried to write about these things in a Belgian newspaper, I could be in serious trouble with the courts. The iron curtain of censorship that came down in the wake of Powell's speech has not lifted everywhere; on the contrary, if the EU has its way, it will be enshrined in the criminal code, with "racism and xenophobia"-defined as vaguely as is required to silence unwanted opinion-made into an extraditable offense throughout the Union.

The problem with censorship, as John Stuart Mill pointed out a century and half ago, is that it makes it impossible for those who impose it to discover that they are wrong. The error persists, preventing the discussion that might produce a remedy, and ensuring that the problem will grow. Yet when truth cannot make itself known in words, it will make itself known in deeds. The truth about Hitler burst on the world in 1939, notwithstanding all the pious words of the appeasers. And the truth about immigration is beginning to show itself in Europe, notwithstanding all the liberal efforts to conceal it. It is not an agreeable truth; nor can we, in the face of it, take refuge in the noble lies of Enoch Powell. The fact is that the people of Europe are losing their homelands, and therefore losing their place in the world. I don't envisage the Tiber one day foaming with much blood, nor do I see it blushing as the voice of the muezzin sounds from the former cathedral of St. Peter. But the city through which the Tiber flows will one day cease to be Italian, and all the expectations of its former residents, whether political, social, cultural, or personal, will suffer a violent upheaval, with results every bit as interesting as those that Powell prophesied.

More here

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Capitalism cuts health costs: "Retailing giant Wal-Mart Stores Inc., known for forcing prices down to dominate nearly every market it enters, said yesterday that it would sell nearly 300 generic drugs for $4 per prescription, whether or not a customer has insurance. Using its might as the nation's largest retailer and its legendary ability to force suppliers to cut prices to the bone, the company will begin the $4 price program in its 65 stores in the Tampa area today, in all of Florida in January, and in as many other states as possible by the end of 2007. The $4 is for a typical monthly supply of medicine, and included on the Wal-Mart list are generic versions of many popular prescription drugs, including the antibiotic amoxicillin and the heart and blood-pressure treatment lisinopril, sold under the brand names Prinivil and Zestril. Health-care industry analysts said the program has the potential to transform the $230 billion prescription-drug business the way Wal-Mart has transformed other industries"

EU's Microsoft vendetta provokes backlash: "European consumers and small businesses are suffering the effects of the European Union's continuing vendetta against Microsoft, and they're finally speaking up about it. For years, European bureaucrats have cavalierly targeted Microsoft and other American companies like General Electric and Apple, assuming that they could do so with impunity. The predictable consequence of this E.U. campaign, however, is a de facto trade barrier, resulting in inferior products, fewer choices, higher prices and delayed access to the latest technological innovations for European consumers."

More Leftist lies: "Political ads have never set a high standard for accuracy, but the citizens of Montana, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Missouri and Florida have recently been treated to a particularly egregious display of political dishonesty. Americans United, a liberal front group, has been running ads attempting to frighten seniors with scare stories about Social Security reform. The ads suggest Republican candidates support cutting Social Security benefits in half and, as a result, forcing retirees to spend half as much on food and medications. These ads are simply wrong on the facts. None of the Social Security reform plans debated in Washington, including the one President Bush proposed last year, would cut or change benefits for anyone retired today or nearing retirement. These seniors will continue to receive every penny in Social Security benefits promised to them. To say otherwise is quite simply a lie."

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

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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

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

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posted by JR 9/24/2006 12:27:00 AM

Saturday, September 23, 2006

 
Brookes News Update

The US economy, the housing slowdown and the November elections: The Fed's loose monetary policy fuelled the housing boom. Now it is tightening credit. Fortunately for President Bush oil prices have started to slide. This will probably ease the economic and electoral pain of a slowing economy before the November elections
The Australian economy and the decline of manufacturing - what is really happening?: When it comes to Australian manufacturing Australia's free-market commentariat adopt a blas, attitude. For them the money simply does not matter. This is why they cannot provide an adequate explanation of the housing boom, our foreign debt and the CAD
We Are Creating Unemployment!: Our anonymous Liberal Party bard has turned out another hit. This time it's not Liberal Party corruption but the union's moral corruption. Unless you think deliberately pricing people out of work is not morally corrupt
Joseph Stiglitz and Phillip Adams slime the US economy: Phillip Adams used Professor Joseph Stiglitz to attack the US economy by using phony statistics and outright lies. As an outrageous economic illiterate Adams could only parrot what Stiglitz had apparently told him
Media frenzy over bogus Cuba 'scandal': America's freedom-loving mainstream media is still doing Castro's dirty work for him. Leading the charge was the corrupt Miami Herald, a paper that recently put a Castro agent of influence on its payroll. It was followed by the treasonous New Times, CNN, USA Today. Their aim was to silence critics of Castro's Stalinist regime. These are the same American patriots that lie about the economy, about terrorism, about Bush, about Iraq. In fact they do nothing but - in between sucking up to leftwing dictators
New York Times advises on how to reveal state secrets and thwart the Federal Government: The 'paper of record' that betrays its country and does Castro's dirty work while demanding rights for terrorists is feverishly advising its traitors in residence on how to evade detection when they once again betray the America's state secrets to terrorists
Where is the Jewish leadership?: Ehud Olmert is a disaster. He is a dangerous, impotent fool, who is putting not only his country but world Jewry at risk every time he makes a decision
Are you ready to convert to Islam?: What brand of Islam are we supposed to convert to? Do we put on suicide belts immediately after conversion or wait for an order?
Do economic indicators really make any economic sense?: Economic theory, however, must only have one purpose - to explain the essence of economic activity. But statistical methods are of no help in this respect

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ELSEWHERE

In case you have not seen it yet, there is a picture here of far-Leftist Venezuelan tyrant Hugo Chavez displaying one of Noam Chomsky's books and recommending it. There is an old syaing: "know a man by the company he keeps". That far-Leftist Chomsky should be a inspiration to tyrants is of course no surprise. The last 100 years have been awash with far-Leftist tyrants.

Good to hear: "Pervez Musharraf, the President of Pakistan, claimed last night that the Bush Administration threatened to bomb his country "into the Stone Age" if it did not co-operate with the US after 9/11, sharply increasing tensions between the US and one of its closest allies in the war on terrorism. The President, who will meet Mr Bush in the White House today, said the threat was made by Richard Armitage, then the Deputy Secretary of State, in the days after the terror attacks, and was issued to the Pakistani intelligence director."

Familiar IQ findings under another name: "Research has found that key skills in learning to read and spell - the ability to sound out words and read unusually spelt words - are affected by your genes. The study, which examined 650 identical and non-identical twins, also revealed that the same sets of genes affect both reading and spelling. Assoc prof Anne Castles said the research found these reading and spelling skills were more than 50 per cent inherited, with experience accounting for the rest. It also discovered that reading and spelling had a common genetic basis so if children had difficulty reading they would also struggle to spell. "This is the first study to put reading and spelling together in genetic models," Prof Castles said. Prof Castles said researchers would now like to identify the genes responsible. The research was conducted in conjunction with Queensland Institute of Technology and Macquarie University".

28 hour week in Germany! : "Vehicle manufacturer Volkswagen AG said its sales for all brands through the end of August were up 11 per cent compared to last year, but warned that its German plants were barely profitable... The German plants have barely generated profits "and are miles away from our profitability goals,'' he said. Volkswagen, Europe's biggest car maker, is seeking to drastically cut production costs for its VW-brand vehicles such as its flagship Golf, which are selling strongly but bringing in little profit. It disclosed last year that it intends to cut as many as 20,000 jobs in Germany. Since June, about 85,000 VW workers in western Germany have been offered severance packages ranging from euro 41,000 to euro 250,000 ($A69,338 to A422,797), depending on their salary level and years of service. The company also wants to extend the work week at six plants in western Germany that manufacture VW-brand cars from the current 28.8 hours to 35 hours, but talks with its union, IG Metall, have not yielded any deal. The talks are set to resume on Friday."

Cruel precedent: "That's how government abuses work. They start small. They start with an excuse that many of us are willing to buy. And then, as the public is desensitized, the abuses are gradually increased. By the time we realize the level of the abuse to which we're being subjected, it's too late for us to have nipped it in the bud. In fact, it's often too late to do much at all. But just as one kitten can be rescued, so can one gun owner. Just as one dog can be saved, so can one property owner. Precedents can be set in the opposite direction."

Advice to defendants: "I receive requests several times a week from defendants who suddenly find themselves forced to defend their lives, their right to use medical cannabis and even the Bill of Rights. Like you, each defendant is suddenly forced to cope with a predatory criminal justice system that judges them guilty, until proved innocent. This advice is intended to help provide you with the necessary tactics to succeed against the terrifying challenge you now face."

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

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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

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

****************************
posted by JR 9/23/2006 12:23:00 AM

Friday, September 22, 2006

 
THE TAJ MAHAL IS A HINDU, NOT A MUSLIM CREATION

Standard histories credit the Arabs with a great civilization in the Middle Ages. Those who look at the detail of the civilization concerned, however, cannot help noticing that not much of it is Arab. It is generally derivative -- derived from the Byzantine Greeks whom they lived alongside for 500 years or from conquered people in Assyria, Persia etc. Some details of that can be found here. So was the Taj another example of that? Was it a product of Muslim culture or was it stolen from the Hindus? First let us have a look at a few pictures. First below, the dome of the Taj:



Now a closeup of the finial on the dome. Do you see Hindu cattle horns or an Islamic moon crescent?



And below we see the same inlaid pinnacle pattern in the courtyard



And below we see the sealed doors and windows at the back of the Taj



Below we see typical Vedic style corridors



Below we see a locked room on the upper floor



Below we see the OM in the flowers on the walls



Below is the staircase that leads to the lower levels



Below we see the 300 foot long corridor inside the apartments



Below we see one of the 22 rooms in the secret lower level



Below we see a secret walled door that leads to other rooms



Below we see a Vedic design on the ceiling of a locked room



Below we see a huge ventilator sealed shut with bricks



So what are we to make of all that? Below is an answer:

"If you have ever visited the Taj Mahal then your guide probably told you that it was designed by Ustad Isa of Iran, and built by the Moghul Emperor, Shah Jahan, in memory of his wife Mumtaz Mahal. Indian children are taught that it was built in 22 years (1631 to 1653) by 20,000 artisans brought to India from all over the world.

This story has been challenged by Professor P.N. Oak, author of Taj Mahal: The True Story, who believes that the whole world has been duped. He claims that the Taj Mahal is not Queen Mumtaz Mahal's tomb, but an ancient Hindu temple palace of Lord Shiva (then known as Tejo Mahalaya), worshipped by the Rajputs of Agra city. In the course of his research, Oak discovered that the Shiva temple palace had been usurped by Shah Jahan from then Maharaja of Jaipur, Jai Singh. Shah Jahan then remodelled the palace into his wife's memorial. In his own court chronicle, Badshahnama, Shah Jahan admits that an exceptionally beautiful grand mansion in Agra was taken from Jai Singh for Mumtaz's burial. The ex-Maharaja of Jaipur is said to retain in his secret collection two orders from Shah Jahan for the surrender of the Taj building.

The use of captured temples and mansions as a burial place for dead courtiers and royalty was a common practice among Muslim rulers. For example, Hamayun, Akbar, Etmud-ud-Daula and Safdarjung are all buried in such mansions.

Oak's inquiries begin with the name Taj Mahal. He says this term does not occur in any Moghul court papers or chronicles, even after Shah Jahan's time. The term 'Mahal' has never been used for a building in any of the Muslim countries, from Afghanistan to Algeria. 'The usual explanation that the term Taj Mahal derives from Mumtaz Mahal is illogical in at least two respects. Firstly, her name was never Mumtaz Mahal but Mumtaz-ul-Zamani,' he writes. 'Secondly, one cannot omit the first three letters from a woman's name to derive the remainder as the name for the building.' Taj Mahal is, he claims, a corrupt version of Tejo-mahalaya, or the Shiva's Palace. Oak also says that the love story of Mumtaz and Shah Jahan is a fairy tale created by court sycophants, blundering historians and sloppy archaeologists. Not a single royal chronicle of Shah Jahan's time corroborates the love story.

Furthermore, Oak cites several documents suggesting that the Taj Mahal predates Shah Jahan's era:

* Professor Marvin Miller of New York took samples from the riverside doorway of the Taj. Carbon dating tests revealed that the door was 300 years older than Shah Jahan.

* European traveller Johan Albert Mandelslo, who visited Agra in 1638 (only seven years after Mumtaz's death), describes the life of the city in his memoirs, but makes no reference to the Taj Mahal being built.

* The writings of Peter Mundy, an English visitor to Agra within a year of Mumtaz's death, also suggest that the Taj was a noteworthy building long well before Shah Jahan's time.

Oak also points out a number of design and architectural inconsistencies that support the belief that the Taj Mahal is a typical Hindu temple rather than a mausoleum. Many rooms in the Taj Mahal have remained sealed since Shah Jahan's time, and are still inaccessible to the public. Oak asserts they contain a headless statue of Shiva and other objects commonly used for worship rituals in Hindu temples.

Fearing political backlash, Indira Gandhi's government tried to have Oak's book withdrawn from the bookstores, and threatened the Indian publisher of the first edition with dire consequences. The only way to really validate or discredit Oak's research is to open the sealed rooms of the Taj Mahal, and allow international experts to investigate.

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

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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

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

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posted by JR 9/22/2006 12:10:00 AM

Thursday, September 21, 2006

 
A LEFTIST WISES UP TO THE DANGEROUS REALITY-DENIAL OF HIS FELLOW LEFTISTS

A cult of death is forming in the Muslim world — for reasons that are perfectly explicable in terms of the Islamic doctrines of martyrdom and jihad. The truth is that we are not fighting a "war on terror." We are fighting a pestilential theology and a longing for paradise. This is not to say that we are at war with all Muslims. But we are absolutely at war with those who believe that death in defense of the faith is the highest possible good, that cartoonists should be killed for caricaturing the prophet and that any Muslim who loses his faith should be butchered for apostasy.

Unfortunately, such religious extremism is not as fringe a phenomenon as we might hope. Numerous studies have found that the most radicalized Muslims tend to have better-than-average educations and economic opportunities. Given the degree to which religious ideas are still sheltered from criticism in every society, it is actually possible for a person to have the economic and intellectual resources to build a nuclear bomb — and to believe that he will get 72 virgins in paradise. And yet, despite abundant evidence to the contrary, liberals continue to imagine that Muslim terrorism springs from economic despair, lack of education and American militarism.

At its most extreme, liberal denial has found expression in a growing subculture of conspiracy theorists who believe that the atrocities of 9/11 were orchestrated by our own government. A nationwide poll conducted by the Scripps Survey Research Center at Ohio University found that more than a third of Americans suspect that the federal government "assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East;" 16% believe that the twin towers collapsed not because fully-fueled passenger jets smashed into them but because agents of the Bush administration had secretly rigged them to explode.

Such an astonishing eruption of masochistic unreason could well mark the decline of liberalism, if not the decline of Western civilization. There are books, films and conferences organized around this phantasmagoria, and they offer an unusually clear view of the debilitating dogma that lurks at the heart of liberalism: Western power is utterly malevolent, while the powerless people of the Earth can be counted on to embrace reason and tolerance, if only given sufficient economic opportunities.

I don't know how many more engineers and architects need to blow themselves up, fly planes into buildings or saw the heads off of journalists before this fantasy will dissipate. The truth is that there is every reason to believe that a terrifying number of the world's Muslims now view all political and moral questions in terms of their affiliation with Islam. This leads them to rally to the cause of other Muslims no matter how sociopathic their behavior. This benighted religious solidarity may be the greatest problem facing civilization and yet it is regularly misconstrued, ignored or obfuscated by liberals...

In their analyses of U.S. and Israeli foreign policy, liberals can be relied on to overlook the most basic moral distinctions. For instance, they ignore the fact that Muslims intentionally murder noncombatants, while we and the Israelis (as a rule) seek to avoid doing so. Muslims routinely use human shields, and this accounts for much of the collateral damage we and the Israelis cause; the political discourse throughout much of the Muslim world, especially with respect to Jews, is explicitly and unabashedly genocidal.

Given these distinctions, there is no question that the Israelis now hold the moral high ground in their conflict with Hamas and Hezbollah. And yet liberals in the United States and Europe often speak as though the truth were otherwise... To say that this does not bode well for liberalism is an understatement: It does not bode well for the future of civilization.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

Some amazing logic from "USA Today". They say: "The Iraq war continues to be problematic for Bush. Six in 10 people said he does not have a clear plan for handling Iraq (two-thirds said the same for Democrats), and 56% said Congress is not doing enough to oversee U.S. policy there. So more people (66% versus 60% for the GOP) say it is a problem for the Donks, yet "USA Today" says it is a problem for GWB?? Maybe "USA Today" does not know that two thirds is 66%. If the writer studied under Leftist professors, I wouldn't be surprised.

German economic doldrums: "German economic confidence has plummeted to its lowest level in more than 7« years this month, in what analysts said was a sign that growth is past its peak in Europe's largest economy. The unexpectedly sharp drop in the ZEW business confidence index, its eighth consecutive fall, will chip away at the determination of the European Central Bank (ECB) to raise interest rates. Concern among investors that a predicted slowdown in the United States could damage Germany's huge export sector helped to drive the ZEW index down to minus 22.2 for September, from minus 5.6 last month. It was the lowest level since January 1999. Rising interest rates and a plan to raise VAT by three percentage points to 19 per cent from the start of next year, which has been proposed by the coalition Government led by Angela Merkel, are also expected to damage business."

Archbishop speaks out: "The former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey of Clifton has issued his own challenge to "violent" Islam in a lecture in which he defends the Pope's "extraordinarily effective and lucid" speech. Lord Carey said that Muslims must address "with great urgency" their religion's association with violence. He made it clear that he believed the "clash of civilisations" endangering the world was not between Islamist extremists and the West, but with Islam as a whole. "We are living in dangerous and potentially cataclysmic times," he said. "There will be no significant material and economic progress [in Muslim communities] until the Muslim mind is allowed to challenge the status quo of Muslim conventions and even their most cherished shibboleths."

Two reasons why I love international trade: "This Friday, after work, we are going to have a beer fest and take lots of photos to send back across the puddle to our new best friends in Austria. So, that is why I love international trade. It gives us the opportunity to see people from across the globe, not as scary and threatening foreigners who are a part of the monolithic 'Chinese' or 'Europeans,' but as fellow humans, individuals, parents, children, businessmen, innovators, friends and drinking buddies."

Duke's Reichstag fire: "More than six years ago, I wrote about contrived campus 'incidents' in which college students falsely report racial (white on black) or sexual attacks as a modern form of the Reichstag Fire. Certainly, the patterns are the same. After the 1933, the German parliament gave the Hitler government carte blanche to do whatever it wanted to 'prevent' future attacks .... Thus, we come to another version of the campus Reichstag Fire, that being the false accusations of rape against three Duke University lacrosse players. As has been documented in a number of previous articles, the charges are transparently false, and if any crimes have been committed, they were carried out by District Attorney Michael Nifong and the Durham police."

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

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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

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

****************************
posted by JR 9/21/2006 12:23:00 AM

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

 
GERMAN FAILURE AGAIN

Socialism is very German (Marx and Engels were German, not to mention a certain National Socialist -- and Bismarck made Germany the world's first welfare State in the late 19th century) -- unfortunately for Germans

Koerber is one of 145,000 Germans who fled the fatherland last year amid record postwar unemployment, pushing emigration to its highest level since 1954, Federal Statistics Office figures show. Last year was also the first since the late 1960s that emigrants outnumbered Germans returning home from living abroad, the statistics office said. Even more troubling to German officials and business leaders, many were skilled workers like Koerber. The loss of such people, they say, may threaten Germany's economic competitiveness in the future.

"Many highly qualified young people are leaving our country to seek their fortunes elsewhere, while only very few top people have been attracted to Germany in recent years,'' said Ludwig Georg Braun, president of the Association of German Chambers of Industry and Commerce, which represents more than 3 million companies. ``This development is causing us growing concern."

Unemployment reached 5.2 million, the highest level since World War II, in February 2005. Joblessness has declined since Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition government of Christian Democrats and Social Democrats took office last November. Still, the unemployment rate stood at 8.2 percent in June, according to internationally comparable figures published by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. By the OECD's reckoning, the jobless rates in neighboring Austria and Switzerland were 4.9 percent and 4.3 percent, respectively.

"People say things aren't getting better in Germany, and nothing's going to change any time soon,'' said historian Simone Eick, director of the German Emigration Center in the northern port city of Bremerhaven. Indeed, ``some indicators suggest that this may be the start of mass emigration."

For Koerber, the decision to leave was largely one of taxes. In Germany, where the highest tax bracket starts at 52,152 euros ($66,600), he would have to pay 42 percent of every euro above that level. In addition, the German value-added tax -- a kind of national sales levy -- is 16 percent, which is scheduled to rise three percentage points next year. ``I only get 25 percent deducted from my salary and that includes everything,'' said Koerber of his pay packet in Canada. ``And I'm in the highest tax bracket!'' The goods and services tax in Alberta is 6 percent, cut from 7 percent in July, he said.

Other German expatriates cite what they say is the over- regimentation of the labor force. ``Life in Germany is totally over-regulated,'' said Christian Kaestner, 38, an attorney who moved from Munich to Cape Town, South Africa, in 1997. ``There are hardly any freedoms left, and you keep bumping into regulations and prohibitions.''

Today's emigrants are likely to choose Canada, New Zealand and Australia, or, within Europe, Switzerland, Austria and the Netherlands. An estimated 2,300 German doctors are working in Switzerland, more than 8 percent of the Swiss total, said the Bern-based FMH Swiss Medical Association. Taking into account gross pay, taxes, insurance and the cost of living, doctors make more money in Switzerland, said Matthias Dettmer, 31, an assistant pathologist in Zurich from the southern German city of Tuebingen. He makes more than double his former colleagues in Germany, who earn what he calls a ``cleaner's pay.''

More here.

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ELSEWHERE



The Communist roots of Islamic terrorism: "Modern terrorism was born within a year, 1967-1968. International socialists (communists) started the fashion all over the world simultaneously, which should make us suspicious about the common roots. National socialists followed suit, turning Marxists of Muslim origin into Islamists of Marxist origin. In May 18th, 1967, Yuri Andropov took over the leadership of the KGB. The Russian security services evolved into a state within the Soviet state, as it became clear when Andropov became the communist party's general secretary after Leonid Brezhnev's death, in 1982. During Andropov's era, which was far longer than that of any other KGB chief, the Soviet secret services supported international terrorism through satellite states and Marxist "liberation fronts". "On becoming chairman of the KGB in 1967, Andropov immediately announced his intention to revive KGB 'special actions' as an essential tool of Soviet policy during the Cold War."

A JUDGE to raise wages?? "The federal receiver in charge of fixing California's prison health care system asked a judge Tuesday to bypass the bureaucracy in Sacramento and grant $24 million in raises to medical workers in order to attract more of them to the state's penal institutions. Saying he was skeptical of the state's excuses for inaction on salary adjustments, receiver Robert Sillen asked U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson to raise pay by up to 64 percent.... Sillen's "motion for a waiver of state law" was his first exercise of muscle since Henderson last winter hired him to bring the prison medical system into compliance with constitutional standards for humane care. A judicial order at the time specified that if the state put up legal or other roadblocks, Sillen should ask Henderson to set them aside. Sillen on Tuesday told Henderson that staffing vacancies -- 44 percent among X-ray technicians, for example, and 42 percent among pharmacists -- are crippling his efforts."

Why Michiganders are moving out: "Liberals dissatisfied with the Bush economy have, through the wonders of federalism, an alternative. They can move to Michigan. The state represents a rough approximation of ideal liberal economic policy. It is heavily unionized, taxed, and regulated in a failed attempt to close its eyes to the dynamic forces of the market and globalization all around it. This stew has helped make Michigan the economic sick man of the Midwest. It is suffering from a one-state recession all its own, mostly because it has failed to foster the most profound economic force in the universe - opportunity. The state has been losing out to more business-friendly environs both overseas and in other states for decades, but has refused to adapt accordingly."

The State: An Anecdote: "Reported in "Harper's Index" (Harper's, October 2006, page 13): Minimum amount of USDA farm subsidies since 2000 that have been paid out to people who do not farm: $1,300,000,000. That's $1.3 billion. One program. And this by an institution -- the state -- that many conservatives trust to build nations abroad and many left-liberals trust to make better decisions for each of us individually than each of us individually will make for ourselves."

Some new cities outsource city hall: ""Newly formed cities are giving the keys to city hall to private companies that say they can run a government better than bureaucrats. Mayors in 'contract cities' say they get better services for less money; more flexibility, because private employees can be hired and fired more easily than workers under civil service rules; and lower debt, because they can own fewer buildings and less equipment."

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

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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

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

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posted by JR 9/20/2006 01:01:00 AM

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

 
AMERICAN LEFTISTS AND THE RECENT WAR IN LEBANON

Kofi Annan has recently stated that Israel's "excessive use of force is to be condemned," and in a recent interview taken during the war, Jimmy Carter said, "I think they should declare an immediate cease-fire on both sides, Hezbollah said they would comply, I hope Israel will comply, and then do the long, slow, tedious negotiation that is necessary to stabilize the northern border of Israel completely." And while we're at it, let's try to diplomatically work out a long, slow, tedious negotiation between a full bathtub and a plugged-in toaster.

This military action was apparently also upsetting too many liberals back in America who believe that the only good Jew besides Al Franken, Barbara Streisand and Arthur Sulzberger is the kind that have been used to wash your body with in the shower. Yes, American liberals are just fed up with Israel not staying put when bestial player-hating Muslims push its buttons, and they are absolutely outraged when Israel dares strike back when they are messed with (don't those Jews know their whole "eye for an eye" thing was rendered obsolete by Gandhi?), not to mention the American Jews back home from those scheming neo-cons (code word for "Jews") like Paul Wolfowitz to obstinate Democratic deserters like Joe Lieberman (the only man liberals would call a traitor), who simply believe in the concept of self-defense for both the U.S. and its close Jewish ally. Liberals would sooner defend the "right" of an Arab Muslim to defend himself from the impending threat of a bus filled with women and children by blowing himself up in it than they would Israel protecting itself.

Liberals also like to shroud their anti-Semitism with the claim that it is not Jews they are against, but the Israelis because of their alleged "belligerence" - a term that was used against Israel in a statement made by the organizers of the Locarno International Film Festival, who dropped the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a festival sponsor this year. Belligerence? Are they talking about when Ariel Sharon went against the will of his Likud Party and withdrew from Gaza, which only preceded daily firings of rockets into Jewish communities? Or the belligerence demonstrated by Ehud Olmert's plan to evacuate the Jews from 95 percent of Judea and Samaria - all land they won fair and square after the war of 1967 - which the Arabs felt so grateful for that they kidnapped two Israelis and provoked what was the doormat of the world and then wasn't for a few weeks?

Why can't we just let the Jews finish the fight? A lot more bloodshed lies in the way of securing peace - which is an absolute imperative. Let's get it over with. If Israel can take out Saddam Hussein's Osirak nuclear facility as they did in 1981, they could also do the same with Iran - a rogue nation led by the new Hitler of the Middle East which they are already indirectly dealing with by attempting to wipe out from Lebanon the Iran-sponsored Hezbollah terrorist group.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

New dawn for Sweden? "A centre-Right alliance led by Moderate Party leader Fredrik Reinfeldt won power in Sweden today, ending 12 years of Social Democrat rule. The Moderates had promised to lower taxes and trim the welfare state. Social Democrat Prime Minister Goran Persson, one of Europe's longest-serving leaders, has conceded defeat after 10 years in office. He will quit as party leader. According to almost complete results from Sweden's Election Commission, the four-party opposition bloc had won 48 per cent of votes to 46.2 per cent for Mr Persson and his allies. Taking the stage with his arms raised, a jubilant Reinfeldt told supporters, "We campaigned as the New Moderates. We won as the New Moderates, and together with our alliance partners we will rule Sweden as the New Moderates".



When will the nonsense about Islam stop? "The hardline Muslims who took to burning churches this weekend in the wake of Pope Benedict's remarks supposedly linking Islam to violence seem to have proved his point. In keeping with the ludicrous over-reaction to a Danish newspaper's decision last year to publish cartoons featuring the prophet Mohammed, churches around the world have been firebombed and death threats issued." [Pope protest in Srinagar above is a picture worth 1,000 words]

No dialogue with Islam possible: "The irony of this row is that it is the opposite of what the Pope was trying to achieve. Benedict ended his speech by hoping for a new dialogue between the sciences, religions and cultures "which is so urgently needed today". It looks, from this miserable episode, as if you can only have a conversation that deals - however remotely - with Islam on Muslim terms. Not much of a dialogue, then."

The Anchoress has a very detailed coverage of the controversy over the Pope's speech.

Australia's Islamic neighbour: "Indonesia is in the middle of an explosive debate about whether conservative Islamic morality will become enforceable law in that nation of 230 million. It is a debate that threatens to unravel the secular foundation of the republic itself. Amid street protests, the DPR, Indonesia's newly democratic legislature, is debating a reactionary Anti-Pornography Bill that is really an attempt to introduce hardline interpretations of sharia (Islamic law) by stealth. The bill would criminalise much sexuality, force women to cover up almost completely, largely exclude them from public space and tightly censor the arts and media.

The maker of the "Path to 9/11" TV series reports: "I am neither an activist, politician or partisan, nor an ideologue of any stripe. What I am is a writer who takes his job very seriously, as do most of my colleagues: Also, one who recently took on the most distressing and important story it will ever fall to me to tell. I considered it a privilege when asked to write the script for "The Path to 9/11." I felt duty-bound from the outset to focus on a single goal--to represent our recent pre-9/11 history as the evidence revealed it to be. The American people deserve to know that history: They have paid for it in blood. Like all Americans, I wish it were not so. I wish there were no terrorists. I wish there had been no 9/11. I wish we could squabble among ourselves in assured security. But wishes avail nothing. My Iranian parents fled tyranny and oppression. I know and appreciate deeply the sanctuary America has offered.... Clearly, those enraged that a film would criticize the Clinton administration's antiterrorism policies--though critical of its successor as well--were willing to embrace only one scenario: The writer was a conservative hatchetman."

IL: Veto of "living wage" law stands: "The so-called 'living-wage' ordinance that would have required mega-retailers here to pay their workers higher wages was successfully turned back Wednesday as supporters on the City Council could not muster enough votes to override Mayor Richard Daley's veto. Daley, who vetoed the ordinance this week saying it would cost the city jobs and hurt people who need those jobs the most, was able to convince enough aldermen who voted in favor of the ordinance in July to change their votes. The vote was 31-18 in favor of overriding the veto -- three short of the necessary votes to do so."

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

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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

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

****************************
posted by JR 9/19/2006 12:21:00 AM

Monday, September 18, 2006

 
"Progressives" aren't progressive

A follow-on from my post of 15th.:

It's usually the people on the Left who joyfully choose to be called "progressive"-there are several left of center and far Left publications that contain "progressive" in their title, for example. In this instance, however, the designation fails to fit altogether. That is because instead of moving forward, getting away from past practices, in short, instead of making progress, those on the Left are actually regressive, even reactionary, in their politics. I give you one major example.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the fathers of the modern Left, proposed, in their Communist Manifesto, as their first order of business the abolition of private property. They and thousands of intellectuals who followed in their ideological lead over the last century and a half have believed, often sincerely, that this made them all progressives. But that is just not so.

In the era prior to the rise of modern capitalism there was virtually no acknowledgement of the right to private property for all but some at the top. It is government-by way of the monarch such as the king or czar or pharaoh-who was deemed to own everything. So when ordinary folks like you and me occupied and worked some plot of land, for example, the government had to grant this privilege. We had no right to private property, only a grant of privilege and we all had to pay taxes for it to boot. (Remember that Robin Hood didn't steal from the rich but from those who took taxes from us all, seeing how unjust this was!)

Clearly, then, the rejection of private property rights was part and parcel of much of pre-capitalist political economy, where it was government that deemed itself authorized to grant people rights. The idea that the individual has a natural-pre-political, pre-legal-right to private property was a radical, actually progressive notion which unseated government from its high and mighty position, robbed it of its phony sovereignty.

Contemporary Leftist "progressives," then, want to return to something very old fashioned and misguided, namely, the idea that government is supreme and we are all its subjects. (Sadly, the U. S. Supreme Court has given them support in this recently, via its July 2005 ruling in Kelo v. City of New London, Ct.) There is absolutely nothing progressive about what the Left wants and please realize that the term is applied either because of rank ignorance or as a simple ruse. The Left is, in fact, reactionary and regressive.

More here

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BRITISH BLOGGING

Judging from my emails, most readers of my blogs are American or Australian. Since I blog from Australia about mostly American issues, that is not at all surprising. I am a little disappointed however that I have so few British readers. I in fact give quite a wide coverage to British news and views on my blogs but the coverage is scattered across several blogs so it may not be obvious to British readers that I am, among other things, a "British blogger". In case it helps me to communicate more with British readers, therefore, I have decided to round up all the "British" posts from my various blogs every day and put them up all together on a single, separate blog. Once I have prepared something for posting, it takes me only seconds to put it up elsewhere so the new blog will not be any appreciable burden on my time. The new blog is now up and running and is called "Eye on Britain". I would be obliged if anybody who knows Brits would direct their attention to it.

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ELSEWHERE

I had rather a good weekend just past. I have put up a brief memoir of it here.

Victory for the American taxpayers: "Pardon me. I must crow. The public just won a big one. And it was in spite of little or no coverage in the mainstream press, not to mention underhanded trickery in the U.S. Senate. This major milestone was the passage in the U.S. Senate of a bill to increase budget accountability and transparency by establishing a public database to track federal grants and contracts. The Senate passed S.2590 on September 7, 2006 and the House passed HR 5060 on June 21, 2006. Both votes were unanimous."

The grand tax illusion: "Let us put ourselves into the position of those complaining. Wages should rise -- a noble goal. How, exactly, are we to achieve this? By what mechanism are we going to reshuffle the current distribution of income so that more flows into the moth-eaten wallets of the hardworking US citizens? Simple: Abolish the Corporate Income Tax .... For, you see, corporations don't actually pay taxes. Only people pay taxes. This is an idea called "tax incidence". It means that people we think aren't being taxed are in fact coughing up the dough demanded by a specific impost... as a working paper from the Congressional Budget Office tells us: "domestic labor bears slightly more than 70 percent of the burden of the corporate income tax."

Religious leaders bash the global market: "Religious activists are more outspoken than ever about the problem of global poverty. So why do they so often and so energetically attack multinational corporations -- the very organizations that are helping developing nations create jobs and grow through broader trade relations? To a certain way of thinking in religious circles, large global corporations are often perceived to make excessive profits, exploit the poor, damage the environment and exercise undue influence on governments -- especially struggling democratic nations in the developing world. In many ways, these companies are visible and easy targets for the anti-globalization crowd."

Strange new idea in SF: Enforce the law: "San Francisco police will begin enforcing the city's long-ignored curfew for young teenagers, send authorities to truants' homes and flood high-crime neighborhoods with officers on overtime as part of a $3.7 million package of measures that Mayor Gavin Newsom hopes will turn back a surge of violence in the city. The package emerged from meetings among mayoral aides, judges, probation officials, prosecutors and police that Newsom convened as the city's homicide rate spiked in recent weeks. Sixty-six people have been slain in San Francisco this year; at that pace, the year's total would about equal last year's 10-year high of 96 homicides. The plan would make greater use of laws already on the books and provide more money for existing strategies, disappointing some critics of Newsom who had called for a sweeping attack on crime that would include new social programs."

Voting shouldn't require a heroic act of patience: "Of all the issues that decide federal elections, the length of lines at polling stations shouldn't be one of them. Yet, as egregious as that would be, they may. And as implausible as that would be, nobody seems to care. After two straight close presidential elections, the 2006 midterms and the 2008 election are likely to be nail-biters, too. This means that the integrity of the election process matters more than ever. Is there cause for concern? Yes. Consider the 2000 presidential election. George W. Bush won the presidency by a margin of just 537 votes in Florida. Assume (optimistically) that all the voters were properly registered and marked their preferred candidate, and that no voting machines malfunctioned. Even then, if only 538 Floridians who came to the precincts did not vote due to the widely reported long lines, the election outcome would be in doubt."

Remember Reno!: "The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is an established sect. Many FLDS families in the Utah and Arizona communities have lived there since well before the two states were formed. ... FLDS polygamists are peaceful people, engaged in what appear to be consensual living arrangements. Yet the federal government has described Jeffs, who was unarmed and did not resist arrest, as extremely dangerous. In May, the polygamist was placed on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list, alongside Bin Laden. As the polygamists become part of the media's demonology, we'd do well to remember another crusading prosecutor, Attorney General Janet Reno."

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

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

"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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

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

****************************
posted by JR 9/18/2006 12:42:00 AM

Sunday, September 17, 2006

 
Bush policies are here to stay

From an Australian commentator:

One of the greatest mistakes the opponents of George W. Bush in the US, and of John Howard in Australia, perennially make is to consider the respective leaders as aberrations and to think, therefore, that they represent odd cul-de-sacs of history. Closely allied to this is the rooted faith that once the dark leader, winner of dark victories through dark satanic methods, passes from the scene, the nation will return to normal. However, Bush and Howard represent the absolute mainstream of their nations in domestic as well as foreign policy.

Surely, you say, the neo-conservative excesses of Bush's foreign policy are sui generis. Consider this classic Bush formulation: "If a nation shows that it knows how to act with decency ... then it need fear no interference from the US ... but brutal wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilised society, may finally require intervention by some civilised nation ... the US cannot ignore this duty."

That's about as crisp a version of the neo-con idea as you could get. But actually I'm kidding when I say it is a Bush formulation. The words come to us from more than a century ago, from Theodore Roosevelt. Yet in his book Diplomacy, Henry Kissinger sets up TR as the ultimate foreign policy realist, the opposite pole to Woodrow Wilson and his liberal internationalism. The most astute analysts of US foreign policy see much more continuity than radical change in Bush, especially when the magnitude of the 9/11 terror attacks of five years ago is added. It would have been inconceivable, and utterly inconsistent with US history, for Washington not to have responded with great vigour to the 9/11 attacks.

All of which is a long-winded way of saying that I think whatever happens in the November mid-term congressional elections, and then in the presidential election of 2008, it is most likely the broad elements of Bush's foreign policy will stay. There may well be a repudiation of the Bush personality in either or both of these elections. However, there almost certainly won't be a fundamental change of course. By the time Bush ends his presidency in 2008 (technically in January 2009), he will have influenced directly four national elections. He won the presidency in 2000 and was re-elected with an increased majority in 2004. He also oversaw very large Republican gains in the mid-term congressional elections in 2002. In this year's congressional elections, it is most likely the Democrats will make gains. All of the House of Representatives, one-third of the Senate and 36 governorships will be up for grabs. Local issues will influence many of these contests, but it is fair to see them in some measure as a referendum on Bush and in particular on the conduct of the war in Iraq.

The campaign in Iraq is not going well and is not especially popular. But the politics of this are extremely complex. I am drawn to the argument by Harvard Law School professor William Stuntz that the US public attitude is not so much get out now but, rather, win or get out. In other words, Americans will continue to support the Iraq operation provided the Bush administration can tell a convincing story about the value of what the US is doing there....

However, it is in some senses easier to predict that the next presidential election will not produce drastic change in US policy. This analysis proceeds from two factors: the politicians likely to be involved and the structural forces at work in the world. On the Republican side, the frontrunner is Arizona senator John McCain. He is critical of the Bush administration on issues such as the treatment of detainees, but he would put more troops into Iraq to make sure the victory is won. He is also if anything more hawkish than Bush on Iran. He says, for example, that the only thing worse than the US bombing Iran's nuclear facilities would be a nuclear-armed Iran. The other highly prominent Republican is former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani. He came to prominence entirely as a result of the 9/11 terror attacks and would run hard on national security, as would any of the other Republican contenders.

On the Democratic side the leading candidate is Hillary Clinton. She has a ton of money and would be an extremely formidable candidate. Since entering the Senate she has assiduously established her national security credentials. She serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee. She backed the war in Iraq. She sponsored legislation to ban the burning of the US flag. She strongly backed Israel in its recent conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon. Former vice-president Al Gore has become famous for his environmental campaigns but in office he was the most hawkish member of the Clinton administration. John Kerry, the loser last time, tried to run as the military candidate. All these Democrats understand that they cannot win an election unless some southern conservative states believe they can manage national security.

This will dovetail with the structural factors at work in the world. Any US president will continue the war on terror vigorously. And any US president will have to deal with the situation in Iraq as it exists and will not want to create a strategic disaster by immediate, total disengagement.

Here's a final thought. The body language of the Bush administration regarding Iran looks to me as though it is not planning to let Iran progress to nuclear weapons. A US strike on Iranian nuclear facilities by Bush before the end of his administration strikes me as at least an even money bet. And that, of course, would transform and polarise the politics of the US once again. If you don't like the US now - or if you do - you'll probably feel the same way in two or three years.

More here

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Brookes News Update

The economic lesson the US economy can teach Japan : The lesson for Japan is to follow the American example of allowing markets greater flexibility in eliminating malinvestments. The alternative leads to economic stagnation
The Australian economy, recession and monetary policy: The surge in manufacturing is entirely due to the Reserve's reckless monetary expansion. Even if this monetary injection is sufficient to avert an imminent recession it will only be delaying the inevitable
The Australian economy and the export-growth myth: Although it's indisputable that a falling dollar will tend to encourage export growth, it's simply fallacious to think this will generate economic growth"
The media vs. the war on terror: While President Bush and Prime Ministers Blair and Howard wage war on Islamic terrorism the ABC, CBS and NBC try to subvert the war by falsely accusing the Administration's terror-fighting tactics as being dangerous, abusive and illegal. But don't dare question these lefty journos' patriotism
Beneath the veil of 'media objectivity' and Republicans: The Fourth Estate hates Republicans, particularly the likes of Senator Rick Santorum who actually behaves like a Republican in the vast majority of cases
The more times change, the more things stay the same: In 1929, the Arabs rampaged through Hebron, on a killing spree that managed to almost wipe out the Jewish population. Now, their grandchildren and great grandchildren have attempted a similar act with their recent massacre in Hebron
The World Trade Center: The movie Spielberg should have made: I just returned from seeing 'The World Trade Center'. In my opinion this is the film Spielberg should have made. Instead of mocking the murders of Israeli athletes at Munich. Evidently Spielberg's spin on history doesn't bother with truth

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

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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

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

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posted by JR 9/17/2006 12:12:00 AM

Saturday, September 16, 2006

 
A STUPID KRAUT

Prof. Dr. Gert Weisskirchen is a stupid Kraut and I want to tell you why. For a start, Kraut is the German word for cabbage and -- perhaps due to their liking for Sauerkraut (sour cabbage) -- it has become a contemptuous term for Germans generally. It was a term much used in two world wars during which Germans killed a lot of people.

In this month's British report on antisemitism, Prof Weisskirchen describes the causes of antisemitism as follows:

"Nationalistic or right-wing populist movements are trying to gain a foothold to varying degrees in all European States. Apart from bringing chauvinistic longings up to date, the common elements in their rationale are the emphasis on authoritarian thinking, the stirring up of resentment towards established parties and the mobilization of right-wing extremist attitudes in the form of xenophobia or even open racism and antisemitism.

A wealth of studies, beginning with the sociological writings of Theodor W. Adorno more than 60 years ago, demonstrate that xenophobia and modern versions of ethnic and racist sentiments with antisemitic prejudices are the most significant features of right-wing extremism and populism. Although they sometimes do without the key trappings of classic Fascism and Nazism, they still make use of its arsenal of discriminatory and denigrating contemptuous prejudices. In accordance with the classic scapegoat mechanism, foreigners are held responsible for whatever social problems exist, such as unemployment and failing social systems, and are disparaged as social parasites who dispute the right of the native population to the country's wealth. As a group they are ostracized as "disruptive factors" who need to be removed. Behind the "new" forms of antisemitism the old core still remains. If preventive measures are not taken to combat antisemitism at its source it will turn into a "social disease" that infests society, gradually eating it up from within and finally destroying it.

So "nationalistic or right-wing populist movements" are the prime source of antisemitism. There is absolutely no mention of Islam or Leftist "antizionism", which are by far the main forms of antisemitism today. Could the fact that the professor is also a socialist member of the German parliament have something to do with that? In his other writings he does occasionally mention Islam and European antizionism but he never mentions that antizionism is mainly Leftist nor does he discuss causes of any form of antisemitism other than "rightist" antisemitism. Apparently the causes of Leftist and Islamic antisemitism either do not exist or must not be examined.

And the amusing thing is that the alleged origins of rightist antisemitism that he mentions derive from one of the most discredited pieces of work in the whole of the social sciences -- the claims about psychological "authoritarianism" by Marxist theoretician Theodor Wiesengrund (aka Adorno). If Prof. Weisskirchen were a chemist, he would still be talking about "phlogiston".

Below are some of the books (not to mention hundreds of academic journal articles -- e.g here) that demolish in various ways the Adorno psychological theories that Prof. Weisskirchen believes in.

Altemeyer, R. (1981). Right-wing authoritarianism. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press.

Christie, R. & Jahoda, M. (1954) Studies in the scope and method of "The authoritarian personality". Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press.

McKinney, D.W. (1973) The authoritarian personality studies. The Hague: Mouton.

Kirscht, J.P. & Dillehay, R.C. (1967) "Dimensions of authoritarianism: A review of research and theory. Lexington: Univ. Kentucky Press

The Altemeyer book is particularly interesting. Altemeyer rather likes the Adorno theory but he devotes the first half of his book to a comprehensive literature review (up to about 1973) of all the vast body of research on the theory -- and finds that none of all that evidence actually supports the theory!

How stupid do you have to be still to accept such a theory?

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ELSEWHERE



The scribble above is the new logo of the British Conservative party. How pathetic can you get? Background here. That the British Tories are now "green" seems to be the only message in it.

Change coming in Sweden? "Astonishing as it seems, it is just possible that on Sunday Swedes will throw out the centre-left Social Democrats who have governed them for all but nine of the past 74 years... But whether the centre-right alliance wins on Sunday or not, there are plenty of signs that the dream has darkened. It is costing too much, and immigration is straining the unspoken contract under which Swedes were happy to pay the Government for what they were confident they would later receive. The young challenger who threatens to topple G”ran Persson from his ten-year premiership is Fredrik Reinfeldt, who has been compared with David Cameron for his success in stitching together a coalition from the demoralised and fractured opposition on the Right. At 41, he would be Sweden's youngest prime minister. But he has been less coy than Cameron about campaigning for lower taxes, as well as for cutting unemployment benefits and demanding results from schools and healthcare. He may have struck a chord. Swedes are fed up with their high tax rates - and loathe the property tax of about 1 per cent of the value of a typical house.

Rare wisdom from a centre-Left government: "The [British] Government has pledged to use legislation to block the imposition of heavy-handed Wall Street-style regulation on the City if the London Stock Exchange is taken over by a foreign buyer. Users of the London market welcomed the promise, by Ed Balls, the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, that the Financial Services Authority would be given the statutory right to veto rule changes proposed by recognised exchanges, including the LSE, if these were "disproportionate" in their impact on London. Mr Balls said in Hong Kong: "The Government's interest in this area is specific and clear: to safeguard the light touch and proportionate regulatory regime that has made London a magnet for international business." By contrast, the imposition on Wall Street of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act in response to accounting scandals such as Enron is seen as making it more difficult for New York to attract new issues. Nasdaq, the New York market, has 25.3 per cent of the LSE"

Unilateral moral disarmament: "As I write, it is one week after the Atrocity. And while we prepare for war, we ask ourselves, again and again, two questions: Why? Why would anyone be motivated to commit such a horror? How? How could the most powerful nation on earth let it happen? The answer in both cases is philosophical."

Geniuses get fewer hangovers: "High IQ scores may do more than separate geniuses from those of lesser intelligence, they could also be an indication of how much clever people are likely to suffer from hangovers. New research by Scottish scientists suggests that smart people are less likely to repeatedly experience the excruciating headache, nausea, dry mouth and sensitivity to light and sound that can follow a heavy night out. "The main finding of this study was that higher IQ scores at 11 years of age were associated with a reduced risk of alcohol induced hangovers in middle age," said Dr David Batty of the University of Edinburgh. In a study published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, Dr Batty and his colleagues looked at IQ test scores of 11-year-olds taken in Aberdeen in 1962 and sent questionnaires to them between 2000-2003 asking about their drinking habits. Responses from more than 7000 showed a higher IQ score was associated with a lower prevalence of hangovers."

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

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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

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

****************************
posted by JR 9/16/2006 12:10:00 AM

Friday, September 15, 2006

 
"Progressives" HATE progress

From my earliest curiosities concerning politics, I had an overriding concern that I believed everyone shared: What is the social, political, and economic system that is consistent with human flourishing, justice, and morality? After a long intellectual struggle, the answer has become quite focused: Society tends to thrive under freedom -- economic, cultural and political freedom.

When I see countries that are slowly leaving inhumane despotism behind and embracing freedom, how can I but rejoice? In China, Indonesia, India and Latin America, where there was poverty, dictatorship and death, there is now rising prosperity, hope and life.

Strangely, the political left does not share this joy. They bad-mouth and disparage it. Reading over course curricula, journals, magazines and blogs, one finds a return to the same points again and again: The environment is being abused. There are too many cars. The population is rising too fast. The distribution of wealth is unequal. Traditions are being lost.

Some concerns have legitimacy, but others are absurd, such as about population. Why regret that more people are living longer through better medical care and nutrition? Why regret the loss of the coercive regime that mandated only one child per family? Why regret the presence of the greatest economic resource of all: namely, people? Mao Zedong slaughtered millions. "Capitalist" China is allowing millions to live....

The perverse consequence is that liberals and socialists regret prosperity and strain gnats to find flaws in social progress.

More here

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ELSEWHERE



Iraq in bed with Iran! "Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki-who spent years in Iran during his exile from the Saddam Hussein regime-made his first official visit to Iran Tuesday, September 12, 2006 -five years and a day after the cataclysmic jihad terrorist attacks of 9/11/01. Mr. al-Maliki was greeted warmly by Iranian President Ahmadinejad. The meeting reflected growing economic ties between Iraq's Shi'ite-led government and the Shi'ite theocracy of neighboring Iran. Last month Baghdad finalized deals for Tehran to provide it with gasoline, kerosene and cooking fuel amid a shortage in Iraq. Immediately prior to al-Maliki's visit, a separate Iraqi delegation discussed additional petroleum deals, including possible Iranian investment in Iraq's fuel sector. Accompanied by mutual expressions of "brotherhood", the two Shi'ite leaders-al-Maliki and Ahmadinejad-pledged continued cooperation."

The Pope gets it: "The Pope has hit out at Islam and its concept of holy war during one of the last public appearances of his six-day visit to his Bavarian homeland. The thinly veiled attack by Benedict XVI on extremist Islam's justification for suicide bombings and other forms of terrorism came in a complex theological lecture to staff and students at the University of Regensburg, where the former Joseph Ratzinger taught theology in the 1970s. Using the words "jihad" and "holy war" in his lecture, the Pope quoted criticisms of the Prophet Mohammed by a 14th-century Byzantine Christian emperor, Manuel II Paleologos, in a contemporary debate with a learned Persian. "The emperor comes to speak about the issue of jihad, holy war," the Pope said. "He said, I quote: 'Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."'

Australia says: "Speak English" "All new Australian citizens would have to pass English tests under a plan to be announced soon by the Howard Government within weeks. Thousands of migrants are refusing to take part in taxpayer-funded English courses each year and those applying for citizenship only need to show they understand the questions they are asked for citizenship to be granted. A decision on mandatory English tests for citizenship is to be announced soon by Andrew Robb, parliamentary secretary for immigration and multicultural affairs. "If these people want to reside here and take citizenship, they should have a functional grasp of English, that is why I have been canvassing the idea of a compulsory citizenship test with an English test component," Mr Robb told the Herald Sun. All new non-English speaking migrants would also be encouraged to have English lessons to help them integrate into Australian society. "We already have a compulsory test for skilled migrants"



Gas falls nearly 11 cents a gallon in a week: "The average U.S. retail price of gasoline fell by almost 11 cents last week to $2.62 a gallon -- the lowest it has been in more than five months. The federal Energy Information Administration said Monday that U.S. motorists paid $2.618 a gallon on average for regular grade last week, a decrease of 10.9 cents from the previous week."

AZ: Judge won't block voter ID law: "A federal judge on Monday refused to block a law that requires Arizona voters to present identification before casting a ballot. U.S. District Judge Roslyn Silver's order came a day before Tuesday's primary, the first statewide election for which voters will be required to show identification. The law has already been used in some municipal elections. The 2004 law requires that voters at polling places produce government-issued picture ID or two pieces of other non-photo identification specified by the law. It also requires proof of citizenship when registering to vote. Parts of the law were aimed chiefly at illegal immigrants."

5 lessons from the first 5 years of war -- from Newt Gingrich: "Five years after 9/11, the thing we have most to be grateful for is the fact that we have not suffered another terrorist attack. This is largely because of the courage and determination of one man, President George W. Bush. Faced with the deliberate and horrific attacks on 9/11, President Bush instinctively understood that this was a war. He demonstrated his courage by taking that war to al Qaeda to protect the American people. That decision was the decisive break with the terrorism-as-a-criminal-act strategy and in direct contrast to the terrorism-as-a-nuisance mindset held by many."

Jihad? Purloined pig meat spoils fundraiser: "A thief with a taste for pork put a damper on a fundraiser for scholarships by making off with nearly 350 pounds of porkburgers and hog dogs, police said. Cromwell Town Marshal Rich Snyder said the 300 pounds of porkburgers and 48 pounds of hot dogs were taken either late Saturday or early Sunday from the Cromwell Community Center's walk-in freezer in the town about 35 miles northwest of Fort Wayne. The theft was discovered Sunday morning when members of the Cromwell-Kimmell Lions Club went to pick up the meat. The group had planned to sell porkburgers and hot dogs Sunday at the Stone's Trace festival to raise money for scholarships for West Noble High School students. Snyder said an investigation is under way into the burglary."

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

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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

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

****************************
posted by JR 9/15/2006 12:08:00 AM

Thursday, September 14, 2006

 
"YE HAVE THE POOR ALWAYS WITH YOU" (Mt. 26:11)

Some of the people the Democrats want the taxpayer to look after below:

For a lot of people, winning the lottery is the American dream. But for many lottery winners, the reality is more like a nightmare. "Winning the lottery isn't always what it's cracked up to be," says Evelyn Adams, who won the New Jersey lottery not just once, but twice (1985, 1986), to the tune of $5.4 million. Today the money is all gone and Adams lives in a trailer....

William "Bud" Post won $16.2 million in the Pennsylvania lottery in 1988 but now lives on his Social Security. "I wish it never happened. It was totally a nightmare," says Post.... Post even spent time in jail for firing a gun over the head of a bill collector. Within a year, he was $1 million in debt. Post admitted he was both careless and foolish, trying to please his family. He eventually declared bankruptcy. Now he lives quietly on $450 a month and food stamps.

Suzanne Mullins won $4.2 million in the Virginia lottery in 1993. Now she's deeply in debt to a company that lent her money using the winnings as collateral. She borrowed $197,746.15, which she agreed to pay back with her yearly checks from the Virginia lottery through 2006. When the rules changed allowing her to collect her winnings in a lump sum, she cashed in the remaining amount. But she stopped making payments on the loan.

Ken Proxmire was a machinist when he won $1 million in the Michigan lottery. He moved to California and went into the car business with his brothers. Within five years, he had filed for bankruptcy. "He was just a poor boy who got lucky and wanted to take care of everybody," explains Ken's son Rick. "It was a hell of a good ride for three or four years, but now he lives more simply. There's no more talk of owning a helicopter or riding in limos. We're just everyday folk. Dad's now back to work as a machinist," says his son.

Willie Hurt of Lansing, Mich., won $3.1 million in 1989. Two years later he was broke and charged with murder. His lawyer says Hurt spent his fortune on a divorce and crack cocaine.

Charles Riddle of Belleville, Mich., won $1 million in 1975. Afterward, he got divorced, faced several lawsuits and was indicted for selling cocaine.

Missourian Janite Lee won $18 million in 1993. Lee was generous to a variety of causes, giving to politics, education and the community. But according to published reports, eight years after winning, Lee had filed for bankruptcy with only $700 left in two bank accounts and no cash on hand.

More here

Most poverty is behavioral, not financial

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There is a wonderful story here about the hunger for Christianity in Iran -- despite the risks from the Mullahs. Excerpt: "Though Iranians are tired of the government's religion, there is still great interest in spiritual things. This hunger is prevalent especially with the children of the 1979 revolution ignited by Ayatollah Khomeini's regime (over 50% of the total 70 million population) and who are seeking for answers beyond Islam. The good news is this: There is a tremendous openness and interest in Jesus Christ! The Christians in Iran, both from the over-ground and under-ground church, are keen evangelists and are more than ready to share Christ with the people despite the risks involved. Before any evangelistic effort, they will first pray and fast, sometimes for days, asking God to supernaturally guide them to people who are open. They then find that the Lord leads them in miraculous ways."

Listen to this colossal bit of feminist rubbish: "Many studies show a strong link in developed economies between low national birth rates and measures of gender inequality". The high birthrate in Muslim countiries and Africa goes with great female equality???

Who Is "Big Oil?": "When liberals and populist conservatives attack "Big Oil" for manipulating world markets, they're generally levying charges against capitalism and unfettered free markets. But who exactly is "Big Oil?" Believe it or not, "Big Oil" is actually "Big Socialism." The Economist recently looked at the largest oil companies in the world, and found that the thirteen largest oil companies in the world are all state-owned, where all profits go to national governments. These thirteen companies control 90 percent of the world's oil. Exxon Mobil, the largest publicly listed company in the world, comes in a measly fourteenth, and controls only a tiny share of the world' oil reserves."

Roman virtues: "You may think that a little African village in the bush has no government. In fact, it is all government, all the time. It is a collective that dominates the lives of its members and permits no competing institutions. In a sub-Saharan community, the individual appears to count for nothing. The family, the village, and the tribe are all. There is no privacy and little room for private life. Also, there are no aqueducts, and no roads or bridges built to last forever. There is no plumbing, and there are no Plinies. I believe that the primitive motivations of family and tribe are the roots of tyranny. This is a truth to which Rousseau was blind. His free and noble savage never existed. ... How fitting, I saw, that Rousseau's ideas should have become part of the architecture of socialist thought. But Rome transcended the family and the tribe. Rome did not respect all rights, but it protected many rights, including rights of property, at least in Pliny's time. Rome two thousand years ago was more like America today than is today's West Africa."

Lifestyles of the superrich and not so famous: "When I lecture to teenagers and twentysomethings here in the United States, I often ask members of the audience to 'raise your hand if you're wealthy.' Except for the young woman years ago who announced that her father owned a string of 7-11s, no one ever raises a hand. 'Oh but you are wealthy!' I insist. 'Each of us is among the wealthiest people ever to breathe.' My listeners think me mad. 'I'm middle-class, not rich' surely is what most of think to themselves. And they're right about being middle-class -- but they don't realize that to be middle-class in America today means to be superrich by historical standards."

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

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

"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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

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

****************************
posted by JR 9/14/2006 12:09:00 AM

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

 
Democrat delusions

"On `This Week' recently, former co-host (and daughter of a former Democratic congressman) Cokie Roberts stunned host George Stephanopoulos when she said before the Connecticut primary that it would be a "disaster for the Democratic Party" if Lamont defeated Lieberman. "Pushing the party to the left," Roberts said, "is pushing the party to the position from which it traditionally loses."

The American people may not be happy with events in Iraq. But they do know, especially after events in Lebanon and the foiled British bomb plot, that we're in a war in which failure is not an option and for which repeating `Bush lied' is not a strategy. Americans will not put in power a party that accepts the proposition that global warming is a greater threat than terrorism, that thinks Wal-Mart is a plague on the poor and that wants to repeal the job-creating, economy-boosting and deficit-cutting Bush tax cuts. They will not put in power a party that thinks death is a taxable event and that success should be punished. They will not pass the reins to a party that denies us access to energy reserves offshore and in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge and which thinks energy independence means building windmills and hugging caribou...

The Democrats think this year will be their 1994. As voters read the morning papers on their way to vote in November, and decide who should navigate these unsettled waters, the Democrats may well wake up the next day to find the Republicans still in power and Lieberman getting a congratulatory phone call from President Bush."

More here

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Islamic sleeping around: "For over a decade, the phenomenon of marriage without commitment, called misyar marriage, has been spreading throughout the Sunni Muslim world, particularly in Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf countries. In such marriages, the woman relinquishes some of the rights that Islam grants her, such as the right to a home and to financial support from her husband, and, if he has other wives, the right to an equal part of his time and attention. In most cases, these marriages are secret, without the knowledge of the man's other wives - even though a marriage contract is drawn up in the presence of witnesses, and although consent is commonly obtained from the woman's guardian, and the marriage is registered and documented at the courthouse.... In a fatwa issued on April 10, 2006, the institute permitted marriages in which "the woman relinquishes a home, financial support, and her part [in joint life] with her husband, or part of it, and consents to the man's coming to her home whenever he wants, day or night." The fatwa also permitted marriages known as "friend" marriages, in which "the girl remains at her family's home and she and the man meet any time they want, either at her home or anywhere else, as they have no [joint] home and livelihood." ... Those opposed to misyar marriage - including the vast majority of women - claim that it exploits the difficult social situation of unmarried women in Arab society, and is designed primarily to sate men's lust, with no concern whatsoever for women's needs and the needs of children born of these marriages."

To filter the people: "I favor immigration. America is defined not by ethnicity but by a set of political ideas, and if others will embrace those ideas, I welcome them. I have helped people immigrate here, and they have made good Americans. I married an immigrant. But I also realize that the very culture that embraces immigrants has certain historical roots and depends on a critical mass of support, much of which has to do with the ability to live a good life here. In today's world of global TV and cheap and easy transport, to throw the doors of America wide open, as they were a century ago, would invite a swamping of American values."

Signs of our disease "It occurred to me that just in my lifetime, not only has technology accelerated, but so has the loss of our freedoms. When I was a young girl in school, we studied about the feudal system. We were told how awful it was, how the serfs had to yield up to 25% of what they grew or created to the lord and his knights. This of course was given for protection against raiders and space within the castle walls if that became necessary. Today, we - as a `free' people - give more than 50% of our earnings up to those who govern us!"

What's (not) the matter with the middle class?: "Note: Stephen Rose, Lawrence Mishel and others are debating the economic politics of the middle class this week. Here is Rose's opening salvo. For more than a decade, the Democratic Party -- the self-proclaimed party of the middle class -- has consistently lost the middle class at election time. ... What's the matter with the middle class? Democrats like to pin their defeats on national security and culture issues alone, but the progressive economic message is also to blame. What progressives generally say about the economy is unrelentingly pessimistic -- stagnant wages, rising costs, overwhelming burdens of debt. It's a message that doesn't resonate with the middle class -- not only because it's overly negative (by itself political poison), but because it's simply flat out wrong."

Busybody politicians, get off our backs: "Sometimes I think the type of people who run for office are the most dangerous people. Most of us want to run our own lives, or help people by offering them charity, or selling them things. The people who want to run other people's lives are ... different. In pursuit of their vision of the perfect world, they justify even absurd restrictions on our freedom. For example: In Belton, Mo., it is illegal to throw a snowball. In New Jersey and Oregon, it is illegal to pump your own gas. In Kern County, Calif., it is illegal to play bingo while drunk. In Illinois, it is against the law to hunt bullfrogs with a ?rearm. In Massachusetts, it's illegal to deface a milk carton. In Fairfax, Va., the use of pogo sticks is outlawed on city buses. In Palm Harbor, Fla., it is illegal to have an artificial lawn."

What's discrimination?: "Discrimination is simply the act of choice. When we choose Bordeaux wine, we discriminate against Burgundy wine. When I married Mrs. Williams, I discriminated against other women. Even though I occasionally think about equal opportunity, Mrs. Williams demands continued discrimination. You say, 'Williams, such discrimination doesn't harm anyone.' You're wrong. Discriminating in favor of Bordeaux wine reduces the value of resources held in Burgundy production. Discriminating in favor of Mrs. Williams harmed other women by reducing their opportunity set, assuming I'm a man other women would marry. Our lives are spent discriminating for or against one thing or another. In other words, choice requires discrimination. When we modify the term with race, sex, height, weight or age, we merely specify the choice criteria."

Stiglitz is wrong on government: "Joseph Stiglitz shared the Nobel Prize in 2001 partly on the basis of an important paper of his (with Greenwald): 'Externalities in Economies with Imperfect Information and Incomplete Markets.' In that paper he says: 'There exist government interventions (e.g., taxes and subsidies) that can make everyone better off.' Stiglitz is a prolific, outspoken, and outstanding spokesman for the pro-government school."

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

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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

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

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posted by JR 9/13/2006 12:14:00 AM

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

 
Democrats for Worker Exploitation

"A group that raises money for Democratic Congressional candidates uses a canvassing company that pays some workers submimium wage, in apparent violation of Wisconsin state law, to talk about the need to raise the federal minimum wage, Isthmus newspaper has learned. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), based in Washington, D.C., has hired Grassroots Campaigns, a Boston-based for-profit company with operations in 18 U.S. cities, to conduct canvassing on its behalf. The DCCC's "New Direction for American" agenda, which provides the talkiing points canvassers are taught to use to solicit contributions, includes a call to "Raise the minimum wage....

These practices likely violate state law. Rose Lynch, spokesperson for the state Department of Workforce Development, says there are no special rules for canvassing firms and "even individuals paid on a commission basis must receive at least minimum wage...

How does the DCCC feel about having workers making less than minimum wage soliciting contributions to help it force the evil Republicans to raise the minimum wage? Burton said he'd look into this, then failed to call back.

Twice last week, former Grassroots Campaigns workers staged protests in front of its Madison office, 222 N. Hamilton St., holding up a huge banner. Says Kristan, "We will continue to demonstrate until Grassroots Campaigns pays all of its employees minimum wage."

More here

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ELSEWHERE

Presbyterian rebellion in Sacramento: "Delegates from local Presbyterian churches decided Saturday not to accept gays -- or anyone who fails to comply with rules laid out in the denomination's constitution -- as church leaders. The decision, made by nearly 200 delegates from many of the 44 Presbyterian churches in the district, sent a clear message of protest to the denomination's national leadership. In June, a rule was passed at a national conference that gave individual districts the flexibility to ordain gay clergy. The decision Saturday lays the groundwork for a possible legal battle in the denomination's courts."

British Conservative leader attacks anti-Americanism: "David Cameron will criticise, in a speech today, a soundbite approach to foreign policy that sees only lightness and darkness in the world. In remarks that are certain to be seen as an attack on the conduct of foreign policy by the Bush Administration, supported by Tony Blair, the Tory leader will say that humility and patience have been absent from the making of foreign policy in recent years. In a reference to elements of the US Administration, Mr Cameron, speaking on the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on America, will say pointedly that he is a liberal conservative, not a neoconservative. In his most substantial address on security policy, Mr Cameron will make a fierce attack on anti-Americanism, which he will say is an "intellectual and moral surrender". Sources close to the Tory leader said that his words did not mark any weakening in his support for the Iraq war, but they are nevertheless controversial after recent efforts to build bridges with the Republicans".

PETA? "Saudi Arabia's religious police, normally tasked with chiding women to cover themselves and ensuring men attend mosque prayers, are turning to a new target: cats and dogs. The police have issued a decree banning the sale of the pets, seen as a sign of Western influence. The prohibition on dogs may be less of a surprise because conservative Muslims despise dogs as unclean. But the cat ban befuddled many, since Islamic tradition holds that the Prophet Muhammad loved cats... The decree -- which applies to the Red Sea port city of Jidda and the holy city of Mecca -- bans the sale of cats and dogs because "some youths have been buying them and parading them in public," according to a memo from the Municipal Affairs Ministry to Jidda's city government."

The Khatami tour: "The Bush administration repeatedly warned that Iran would face serious consequences if it defied international demands to shut down its nuclear weapons program. So what did it do when Tehran blew off the Security Council's Aug. 31 deadline to stop enriching uranium? It promptly issued a visa authorizing one of Iran's leading theocrats, former president Mohammad Khatami, to embark on a propaganda tour of the United States. It is the first such visa issued to an Iranian president since 1979, when Islamist radicals loyal to the Ayatollah Khomeini seized the US embassy in Tehran and held American diplomats hostage for nearly 15 months. That'll show 'em".

Army shuns system to combat RPGs: "Sixteen months ago, commanders in Iraq began asking the Pentagon for a new system to counter RPGs and other anti-tank weapons. Last year, a special Pentagon unit thought it found a solution in Israel -- a high-tech system that shoots RPGs out of the sky. But in a five-month exclusive investigation, NBC News has learned from Pentagon sources that that help for U.S. troops is now in serious jeopardy."

Tennessee plans ID checks of jailed immigrants: "Thousands of illegal immigrants who are arrested in Davidson County for other crimes would be deported each year, under a proposal being pushed by local law enforcement officials. By installing a federal immigration computer system in the Metro Jail and placing an immigration officer in the lockup full time, local authorities would be able to quickly identify criminal suspects who are in the country illegally and keep them from being released. The proposal is contained in an Aug. 15 letter from Davidson County Sheriff Daron Hall to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials and comes on the heels of several high-profile crimes in which illegal immigrants are accused. Several of the illegal immigrants had been arrested repeatedly -- and not deported -- before committing more serious crimes."

Permission to speak freely: "As of Friday, when the 60-day blackout period for 'electioneering communications' by nonprofit interest groups begins, political speech will enjoy less protection than dirty movies. While a sexually explicit film is protected by the First Amendment if it has some socially redeeming value, an 'electioneering communication' is forbidden even if it deals with important and timely public policy issues. ... It seems Americans now need permission to speak out on political issues and petition the government. I'd suggest a constitutional amendment protecting those rights, but I thought we already had one."

Shades of Waco?: "As to Jeffs, the mindless media has always been enthralled by child-abuse crusaders. Janet Reno, one of the most murderous DAs, established her career by launching the day care child sex abuse witch hunt that gripped the nation in the 1980s. She used fabricated accusations elicited from children (who never lie, right?) with the aid of highly suggestive techniques, to imprison her victims absent corroborative evidence. These cases served as a professional stepping stone for Reno, who went on to commit even greater crimes. Here are the Jeffs arrest warrant and affidavit. He is charged with being an accomplice to rape, no less. Such an accusation conjures visions of Jeffs holding the victim down while another commits the act. Jeffs, however, is charged, based on hearsay, with encouraging a girl, then under 18, to submit to intercourse with her husband, who was a little older."

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

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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

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

****************************
posted by JR 9/12/2006 01:03:00 AM

Monday, September 11, 2006

 
In memoriam for all those who died on this day in 2001 at the hands of Islamic haters

It is their common hatred of ordinary people doing well for themselves that draws the Left to Muslims -- who otherwise epitomize all that the Left say they disapprove of.
posted by JR 9/11/2006 12:32:00 AM

 
SPECIAL PROSECUTOR PATRICK FITZGERALD: OBSTRUCTING JUSTICE

Excerpt from an article by lawyer Raymond S. Kraft

On July 14, 2003, Robert Novak published a column in the Washington Post in which he identified retired Ambassador Joe Wilson's wife as Valerie Plame, who worked for the CIA. Her husband immediately charged that somebody in the White House, whether Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, George Bush, or one of their aides acting on orders, had "outed" his wife in conspiratorial retaliation for Wilson's charges in the New York Times that Bush lied when he cited intelligence that Iraq had tried to buy uranium in Niger. Wilson, with brazen disingenuity, took monumental umbrage at the idea that Bush, Cheney, Rove, or all of them, were trying to "discredit" him in response to his overtly partisan, political attempt to discredit President Bush. Wilson's claim that President Bush lied proved, in the end, to be a lie, and it is Wilson's own reputation that now lies on the ignominious dunghill of history.

These events led to the now infamous investigation of the alleged "outing" of the allegedly "undercover" Valerie Plame by Somebody in the Bush White House by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. I will not detail the subsequent convolution of events. They are too well known to need repeating. The Wickepedia article on Valerie Plame runs to eleven pages, with many footnotes, references, and citations.

Three years later, on September 7, 2006, Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage publicly, finally, acknowledged that he was Novak's source for the disclosure that Joe Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, worked for the CIA. The Associated Press report by Matt Apuzzo (September 8) states that "Armitage's admission suggests that the leak did not originate at the White House . . . " ...

Armitage reports, too, most notably, that (as the AP story reads): "Fitzgerald, he said, had requested that he not talk about his role in the case, a restriction that was lifted only Tuesday." In his interview on ABC News Armitage said that his disclosure was inadvertent, merely careless or negligent, an unfortunate bit of gossip, and it apparently did not violate the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which requires specific intent. But it did hobble the Presidency for three years.

On July 11, 2006, Bob Novak reported that "For nearly the entire time of his investigation, Fitzgerald knew - independent of me - the identity of the sources I used in my column of July 14, 2003 . . That Fitzgerald did not indict any of these sources may indicate his conclusion that none of them violated the Intelligence Identities Act." In other words, from very early in this long investigation, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald knew that Richard Armitage was the source of Novak's information, and that the White House was not, and that the Intelligence Identities Protection Act had not by violated. Not by anyone. And Fitzgerald concealed this knowledge, his knowledge that the prime suspects were innocent, and told Armitage not to talk about it....

If, promptly upon learning, a year or two ago, that Richard Armitage was the source of the leak, Patrick Fitzgerald had disclosed that the "case had been solved, the leak has been found, and no crime has been committed," he would no longer have had any reason to continue his investigation, interviewing the President, parading Cheney, Rove, Libby, and other witnesses before the Grand Jury, or himself before the phalanx of cameras on Capitol Hill. He would have had to find other work... In my opinion, it is time to prosecute the Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald for obstruction of justice.

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ELSEWHERE

There is an unsigned feature article in Britain's Sunday Times that revives the breastbeating about "racism" in the much misrepresented "Tuskegee" study of syphilis in American blacks that began in the 1930s. The author is aware of the debunking given to the misrepresentations by Shweder but ignores most of the points Shweder made. The article seems to be a promo for a forthcoming book called Medical Apartheid by historian Harriet Washington, to be published in the US early next year. So what is new in the new book? Apparently, all that has been discovered is that the medical researchers of the 1930s had "racist" beliefs. Since just about everyone in the 1930s had racist beliefs by the standards of today, that is not much of a discovery. For details about the horrific "treatments" available for syphilis in the 1930s, see here.

A Leftist here has a big list of historical events that show how hostile to the Left the Islamists are. He concludes: "It does not need slogans to understand that the Islamist programme, ideology and record are diametrically opposed to the left - that is, the left that has existed on the principles founded on and descended from classical socialism, the Enlightenment, the values of the revolutions of 1798 and 1848, and generations of experience."

A REALLY bent poll: "The owner of DataUSA Inc., a company that conducted political polls for the campaigns of President Bush, Sen. Joe Lieberman and other candidates, pleaded guilty to fraud for making up survey and poll results. Tracy Costin pleaded guilty Wednesday to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Costin, 46, faces a maximum of five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 when she is sentenced Nov. 30.... According to a federal indictment, Costin told employees to alter poll data, and managers at the company told employees to "talk to cats and dogs" when instructing them to fabricate the surveys. FBI Special Agent Jeff Rovelli said 50 percent of information compiled by DataUSA and transmitted to Bush's campaign was falsified, the Connecticut Post reported Thursday."

Professor Stiglitz and the minimum wage: "Nothing gets me more upset than when someone brings up an argument supporting minimum wage legislation. It's not that I can't counter the argument; it's just that it takes some time to do. So, once and for all, I'm going to target the main motivation for minimum wage advocates in academia: politics. Minimum wage is one of the only subjects nearly all economists agree upon. Quite simply, to believe in the merit of minimum wage laws is to misconstrue the fundamental claims of economics."

MO: Democrats squelch democracy: "The backers of two ballot proposals limiting government spending and eminent domain gave up their legal fight Tuesday to get the constitutional amendments on the Nov. 7 ballot. Both initiative petitions had been rejected in May by Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, who concluded they were not properly organized under state law. Cole County Circuit Judge Richard Callahan upheld that decision in July. Courts also struck down the financial estimates attached to both initiative petitions."

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

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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

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

****************************
posted by JR 9/11/2006 12:10:00 AM

Sunday, September 10, 2006

 
WHY LIBERALS ARE FASCISTS

By Dr. Jack Wheeler

Doesn't it seem odd that the kids who started the 60s anti-establishment protest riots on college campuses with the Free Speech Movement (Berkeley, 1964) are the college professors or politicians today who most vehemently suppress free speech among their students or constituents in the name of political correctness? How can this be? How can worshipping at the shrines of Diversity, Tolerance, and Multiculturalism result in trials and expulsions for students, or jail for citizens, who express ideas with which the worshippers are not in agreement? The answer is the intimate connection between Subjectivism and Fascism.

The core metaphysical assertion of liberals is that there are no absolute truths, factually or morally. What's true for you may not be true for me, it's all a matter of perspective, who are you to say what is right or wrong, true or false. Truth is a matter of subjective opinion, it is relative to the values of different people. This belief, which lies at the very center of the liberal view of the world, is known as Subjectivism or Relativism. It's opposite, Objectivism, the assertion that there are in fact absolute truths, both moral and factual about the nature of reality regardless of anyone's opinion or desires, horrifies liberals. They think such an assertion leads straight to tyranny and fascism.

Benito Mussolini (1883-1945), the founder of Fascism as a political movement (after the Latin fasces, the bundle of rods used by Rome to symbolize strength through unity) vehemently disagreed. In his 1921 essay Diuturna (The Lasting, that which endures), Mussolini made it clear that moral relativism was his rationale for Fascism: If relativism signifies contempt for fixed categories and those who claim to be the bearers of objective immortal truth, then there is nothing more relativistic than Fascist attitudes and activity. From the fact that all ideologies are of equal value, we Fascists conclude that we have the right to create our own ideology and to enforce it with all the energy of which we are capable.

Liberals follow Mussolini's conclusion to the letter. Preaching tolerance, they have no tolerance for anyone's opinions but their own. Anyone they disagree with they call racist' or sexist' or homophobic' or some other denigration. Liberal intolerance, of course, goes way beyond mere disagreement and name-calling. They want to criminalize the beliefs and actions of those with whom they disagree....

Liberal "tolerance" is forcing people at the point of a gun to believe and act as liberals demand. You don't get more fascist than that. California's Attorney General, Bill Lockyer, is, however, trying. He is actually trying to criminalize disagreement on "global warming." In his lawsuit against such prominent scientists as MIT Professor of Meteorology Richard Lindzen and Harvard astrophysicist Sallie Baliunas, Lockyer accuses them of being "climate skeptics," who are playing "a major role in spreading disinformation about global warming." ...

The only way to combat liberal lunacy like that on exhibit in California is to attack it at its source: liberal subjectivism leading directly to fascism. It will do no good for liberals to bleat about religious absolutists, be they Christian or Moslem, who believe they have a right to force people into behaving as they want because that's what the Bible or the Koran says. That's a red herring. Don't let liberals switch the issue. The issue here is the fundamental contradiction in their world-view, not anyone else's. Liberals cannot argue for relativism in morality and claim there are no moral truths, then claim their moral values magically have more validity than anyone else's.

When you argue there are no objective moral truths, the only way to settle a moral disagreement is at the point of a gun. Mussolini understood this, and he had the intellectual honesty to admit it. Liberals understand it too, but they don't want to admit it, least of all to themselves. It still makes them fascists, nonetheless.

Demonstrating how and why liberals are fascists is their Achilles' Heel. Name-calling is a liberal specialty, and they are fond of calling their opponents "fascists." But using reason and logic to expose how they are demonstrably in fact fascists can be effective. Combat liberalism by publicly exposing it as fascism.

More here

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Brookes News Update

How confusion about the money supply is damaging the US economy: Until mainstream economists adopt Walter Boyd's definition of money and the reality that money is not neutral the US economy will continue to be plagued with recurring recessions
The Liberal Government and its supporters must stop kicking the unemployed: The Liberal Party has failed to understood that the jobless issue is one of compulsory unemployment. The logic of which is that if anyone is under an obligation it is those who get to keep their jobs at the expense of those whose jobs have been destroyed
Money supply and the stock market: is there any relation?: Contrary to various experts who dismiss the importance of money in driving the stock prices we have shown that this dismissal is based on a questionable framework of thinking
French 'justice' vs Cuban 'vengeance': According to the Cuba Archive Project headed by scholars Maria Werlau and Dr Armando Lago the Castro regime - with firing squads, forced-labor camps and drownings at sea - caused an estimated 102,000 Cuban deaths
Americans must confront their axis of idiots and the media: Americans must prosecute those who leak national security secrets to the media. They must prosecute those in the media who knowingly publish those secrets. US soldiers need the American public to confront the enemy that they cannot
How the selfishness of the better-off damages the housing market: There is no disputing the fact that any activity that restricts the supply of land in the face of an unchanged or rising demand for housing must raise rents
Katrina: The political storm that will not die: Democrats are holding on to the hope that the ghost of Katrina will damage President Bush in the November elections
Will the US economy learn from history?: The '90s demonstrated that monetary booms are still highly corrosive of morals and ethical behaviour, a sad fact that is never going to change while men remain as they are. So will the US economy learn from history, meaning its central bankers and economic commentariat?
Under Sharia Law: In Bracks' state of Victoria it is now a felony to quote from the Koran - except, of course, if you are a Islamo-fascist who thinks unbelievers deserve to be beheaded. Fortunately someone is using satire to mock Victoria's Blasphemy Laws and Muslim bigots.
Islamic fanaticism: A resource for Turkish growth and prosperity?: The AK Party is the one Turks fear. It is the one trying to reassign Turkey to fundamentalist Islam. It is working hard at restoring the caliphate. Make no mistake, Turkey is in the midst of a religious war and at the forefront of the line that separates the future from the past
How the media helped Hezbollah terrorists use dead children as anti-Israel props: Islamo-fascists use dead children as props for their propaganda war against Israel - and the media collaborate with them
Why are the Democrats savaging Wal-Mart?: While many Americans are concerned about al Quaida and other terrorist enemies of the US, the Democrats have identified Wal-Mart as the real enemy. How can anyone call these Dems serious people

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

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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

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

****************************
posted by JR 9/10/2006 12:13:00 AM

Saturday, September 09, 2006

 
It's fascism -- and it's Islamic

(By Victor Davis Hanson)

George Bush recently declared that we are at war with "Islamic fascism." Muslim-American groups were quick to express furor at the expression. Middle Eastern autocracies complained that it was provocative and insensitive. Critics of the term chosen by the president, however, should remember what al-Qaida, the Taliban, Hezbollah, Hamas and other extremist Muslim groups have said and done. Like the fascists of the 1930s, the leaders of these groups are authoritarians who brook no dissent in their efforts to impose a comprehensive system of submission upon the unwilling.

Osama bin Laden urged Muslims to kill any American they could find, and then tried to fulfill that vow on Sept. 11. Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah bragged that "the Jews love life, so that is what we shall take away from them" -- and then started a war. Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, promises to "wipe out" Israel, and is seeking the nuclear means to do so.

Sharia law and dreams of pan-Islamic global rule fuel their ambitions. Once again, they seek to fool Western liberals through voicing a litany of perpetual hurts.... Islamic fascism is also anti-democratic and characteristically reactionary. It conjures up a past of Islamic influence that existed before the supposed corruption of modernism. Like Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo, who sought to recapture lost mythical Aryan, Roman or samurai purity, so Islamic fascists talk in romantic terms of the ancient caliphate.

Anti-Semitism is a tenet of fascism, then and now. But so is a generic hatred for unbelievers, homosexuals and blacks. The latter are slurred in the Arab media, while homosexuals were rounded up under the Taliban and the Iranian mullacracy. "Mein Kampf" sells well under its translated title "Jihadi." .... Even now, it is hard to distinguish the slurs against Jews ("pigs and apes") used in the Middle Eastern media from the venom of Joseph Goebbels' propaganda. Goose-stepping and stiff-armed salutes at Iranian and Hezbollah parades are conscious imitations of past fascist armies.

Some object that the term "Islamic fascism" is too vague to encompass the differing agendas of diverse groups such as the Wahhabis, al-Qaida and Hezbollah. But just as racist German Nazis found common ground with Asian supremacists in Japan, so too the shared hatred of the West trumps the internecine rivalries of present-day Islamists.

The common denominators are extremist views of the Koran (thus the term Islamic), and the goal of seeing authoritarianism imposed at the state level by force (thus the notion of fascism). The pairing of the two words conveys a precise message: the old fascism is back, but now driven by a radical fundamentalist creed of Islam...

The real problem is not that "Islamic fascism" is inaccurate or mean-spirited, but that this identification earns such vehement disdain in Europe and the United States. That hysteria may tell us as much about the state of a demoralized West as the term itself does about our increasingly emboldened enemies

More here

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ELSEWHERE



How the Church of England preaches the gospel of Christ: "A priest with the Church of England who converted to Hinduism has been allowed to continue to officiate as a cleric. The Rev David Hart's diocese renewed his licence this summer even though he had moved to India, changed his name to Ananda and daily blesses a congregation of Hindus with fire previously offered up to Nagar, the snake god. He also "recites Gayatri Mantram with the same devotion with which he celebrates the Eucharist", according to The Hindu, India's national newspaper. The Hindu this week pictures him offering prayers to an idol of the elephant god Ganesh in front of his house. However, he still believes he is fit to celebrate as an Anglican priest and plans to do so when he returns to Britain.... "My philosophical position is that all religions are cultural constructs," he said"

Whiners get a reply: "President Bush in the White House East Room Wednesday explained for the first time in detail the importance of interrogation as an intelligence tool in the war on terror. He conceded that some of the techniques used against the likes of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed were "tough." But he also used his remarks to declassify a fair bit of information about what's been learned. Quite clearly the interrogations are a major reason there have been no further terrorist attacks on American soil in the past five years. The demagogues alleging senseless "torture" at "secret" overseas prisons have now gotten a proper reply. Like the programs for monitoring bank transfers and warrantless wiretaps overseas, interrogating those who would do us harm has helped keep the country safe with minimal intrusion into the lives of ordinary Americans" [Taranto has some good excerpts from the Bush speech]

Americans like Wal-Mart better than unions: "Fifty-eight percent (58%) of Americans have at least a somewhat favorable opinion of labor unions while 33% disagree and have an unfavorable view. Those figures, from a Rasmussen Reports survey of 1,000 adults, include 23% with a "very favorable" opinion and 12% with a "very unfavorable" view. By way of comparison, 69% of Americans have a favorable opinion of a company the unions love to hate-Walmart. Twenty-nine percent (29%) have an unfavorable opinion of the retail giant".

Got to admit it's getting better ...: "The basic message Greenhouse and Leonhardt deliver is that 'wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of the nation's gross domestic product since the government began recording the data in 1947, while corporate profits have climbed to their highest share since the 1960's.' That is literally correct, according to the federal government's measures. But it's also misleading, for two main reasons, in order of importance. First, as marginal tax rates have increased for most people except the highest-income people, due mainly to rising Medicare and Social Security tax rates over the last 40 years, employers have paid a higher and higher percent of compensation in the form of untaxed benefits. So a more-relevant measure is not wages and salaries but total employee compensation. Second, national income is a better base to use for considering each group's -- employees, corporations, proprietors, landlords, and lenders -- share of income"

Prop 87: Paying at the pump and misdirecting innovation: "Californians pay an average of more than $3.20 per gallon for regular unleaded gasoline. Many consumers are agitated because prices have increased more than a dollar per gallon since the beginning of the year. British Petroleum's Alaskan shutdown has only increased concerns. Unfortunately, if passed, Proposition 87, the Clean Alternative Energy Act (CAEA), would only make matters worse. The Act would increase gas prices and our dependence on foreign oil, while creating a vast new bureaucracy that is unlikely to speed the successful development of alternative fuels."

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

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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

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

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posted by JR 9/09/2006 12:14:00 AM

Friday, September 08, 2006

 
ISLAM IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH WESTERN CIVILIZATION

Some excerpts below from a talk by eminent Australian, John Stone:

We need to understand that the core of the Muslim problem-for the world, not merely for Australia-lies in the essence of Islam itself. It is the problem of a culture that, for the past 500 years or so at least, has failed its adherents as its inward-looking theocracy has resulted in it falling further and further behind the West. It is that sense of cultural failure, that sense of smouldering resentment that fuels the fires so busily stoked by the more extremist Muslim teachers. Fiercely exclusive rather than inclusive, Islam holds that church and state are inseparable; that women, while respected so long as they stick to their appointed place in the Islamic scheme of things, are less than equal to men generally; and that even the most extreme violence is justifiable when applied in pursuit of approved Islamic ends. Until all that changes-and it can only be changed from within Islam itself, if indeed it can be changed at all-the Islamic culture will never reside in harmony with others.

This is where all those comfortable (one might even call them "lazy") assumptions about our own Muslim community break down. Contrary to those assumptions, I do not believe that this latest body of newcomers amongst us will emulate the examples of their predecessors from Italy, Greece, Poland, the Baltic states, or more recently Vietnam, Hong Kong and China. How can it be possible for them to become part of a united Australia, when any Muslim woman who wishes to "marry out" risks not merely social and familial ostracism, but outright violence, even death by way of "honour killings", by her father or her brothers? Almost without exception, the only marriages occurring in Australia today between Muslims and non-Muslims involve conversion to Islam of the latter.

The high priests and priestesses of multiculturalism should not be surprised by this. It is after all a product-admittedly, an extreme one-of policies they have been espousing with such religious zeal for thirty years or more....

Academics, and timid politicians seeking excuses for their inactivity in addressing the Muslim problem, may therefore continue to dance on the points of philosophical needles about those supposed differences between "moderate" Islam and "extremist" Islam. And it is true that it often seems as though there are as many hostilities between different Islamic sects-the Shia and the Sunnis, to name only the most topical example-as there are between Islam and non-Islam. Nevertheless, as Father Paul Stenhouse has reminded us in a typically scholarly but also extremely pointed article in the March issue of Quadrant, all followers of Islam, "moderate" or otherwise, divide the world into two areas: the Dar al-Islam and the Dar al-Harb. The former, the house of submission, is that part of the world where Islamic governments and Islamic law prevail: the latter, the house of war, is the rest of the world. Australia, to all Muslims, is part of the house of war.

In May this year Quadrant printed a thoughtful paper by Cardinal George Pell arising from his recent study of the Koran. He distils a clear distinction between the revelations Mohammed claimed to receive (via the Archangel Gabriel) while in Mecca, and those which followed his later move to Medina. During the former period he was "without military power" and was still seeking to convert the non-believers by way of proselytising. During the latter period, proselytising had given way to the ravages of the sword. In Pell's words, "the spread of Islam through conquest and conversion began".

Cardinal Pell notes that those passages from the Koran that are often quoted by those seeking to show the "moderate" nature of Islam are all drawn from the earlier period, whereas the Koran of Medina is replete with the most blood-curdling injunctions to kill all infidels wherever they are found. As Pell notes, just as in our own legal system a later law overrides any earlier one to the extent of any inconsistency between them, so it may not be unreasonable to assume that the Koran of Medina overrides the Koran of Mecca where any inconsistencies are concerned. That is indeed the view taken by the scholars of fundamentalist Islam.

There is another point relevant to this debate about "moderate" versus "extreme" Islam-namely, the Islamic doctrine of taqiyya. This has been the subject of two most interesting articles in National Observer in 2005 by Andrew Campbell. Without going into detail, taqiyya is the doctrine whereby any lies, deceit, or other forms of treachery may be justified in the cause of defeating the infidel. It is "a cloak for the believer" that provides a religious dispensation for such things as "friendship with unbelievers" and other subterfuges "in defending oneself from one's enemies". I suggest that, when one reads the soothing words of our own Islamic "moderates", the doctrine of taqqiya should never be far from our minds.

It is clear that, in Muslim countries throughout the world, the forces of extremism are winning the battle within Islam. (Of course, the usual apologists would undoubtedly argue that that is all our fault because of such things as our support for the continued existence of Israel, or the US-led coalition's invasion of Iraq; but let that pass.) In many Muslim countries, such as Egypt, those forces today are held back and driven underground by the present regime's security apparatus; but then, the same was true of the Shah's Iran until 1979....

More generally, and while I am open to correction, I believe the evidence is incontrovertible that Islamic and Western cultures are today, within any single polity, incompatible. Certainly, I know of no example that can be cited to the contrary.

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ELSEWHERE

Growing antisemitism in Britain now recognized: "A sinister alliance has developed between far-Right groups and Islamist extremists who are united in their hatred of Jews, Israel and Zionism and are contributing to increasing anti-Semitism in Britain. A report criticises police forces for failing adequately to monitor anti-Jewish incidents. It calls on the Crown Prosecution Service to investigate why fewer than one in ten reported incidents leads to a prosecution. The report was published after The Times revealed that conflict in the Middle East had led to a surge in anti-Semitism. It says that Britain’s 300,000 Jews are “more anxious and more vulnerable to abuse and attack than at any other time for a generation or longer”. It refers to “anti-Semitic discourse”, defined as a “widespread change in mood and tone when Jews are discussed, whether in print or broadcast, at universities, or in public or social settings”. But it expresses particular concern about a new, “symbiotic” relationship between the traditional perpetrators of anti-Semitism — the far Right and some Islamist extremists — who are united in their hatred of all things Jewish... Of particular concern to the inquiry was anti-Semitism on campuses, with literature being distributed that called for the killing of Jews and the destruction of Israel."

The fallacy of open immigration: "Nothing is more common than for well-intentioned people to believe that if everybody just does what is right (as they see it), nothing but good can possibly result. Libertarians have always been skeptical about that assumption. They know, for example, that wars have always been fought for causes believed to be right. The vast fabric of the modern welfare state was created to ensure proper care for the poor and needy. Yet very terrible things have resulted from the impulse to assert the right through warfare and to create the right through social engineering. This, more than anything else, has caused thinking men and women to look for ways of limiting, rather than increasing, the power of the state and, with it, the bad effects of good intentions. But libertarians themselves have not always succeeded in resisting the allure of good intentions, the assumption that there will be no unfortunate consequences of our good ideas."

Happy Labor Day: We're all workers! "Marx, of course, was wrong and the implications of Labor Day were wrong as well. There is not a separate class of individuals called 'worker' who are opposed to other economic classes. To begin with, without entrepreneurs, investors, managers and, in general, capitalists, workers would have no factories in which to work or those factories would be as inefficient as those in the Soviet Union and the workers as poor as those under communism. Entrepreneurs, investors, managers and capitalists are all workers. Further, as the great Austrian School economist Ludwig von Mises pointed out, economic roles are artificial."

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

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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

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

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posted by JR 9/08/2006 12:13:00 AM

Thursday, September 07, 2006

 
"STOMP ISRAEL LIKE A BUG" (!)

Nazism is definitely back. And, just like last time, it is Leftist. Below is a comment by Steve Frank on a post by Taranto covering some of the gibberings appearing on the website of the influential "MoveOn" organization within the American Left

"Finally!!! It is no longer the Jews that cause all the problems in the Middle East. No, it is those crazy Christian Zionists!!! Just ask the supporters of MoveOn.org

Bigotry and hatred runs rampant among the supporters of MoveOn.org. The leadership could denounce it, stop it, but they don't. When you read the MoveOn blogs and article, you would think the Ku Klux Klan became socialists and instead of white sheets, they wear the look of fear and hatred. Of course what they really dislike is Freedom--that works against their worldview. If people can make decisions for themselves, then government won't be needed. But, if you believe people are too stupid to govern themselves, then MoveOn is the place for you. Nothing people eat, drink, learn, say, believe is good enough--only government can shine the light on "Truth".

When you read the pages of MoveOn you see that all the worlds problems start with the Middle East and US foreign policy in support of Israel. I had always thought that the United Nations certified the creation of the State of Israel, but we now know, according to MoveOn supporters that Christian Zionists conspired to create a State just for the purpose of stealing oil. Yet in the almost 60 years of the State of Israel, the US has yet to steal a drop of oil. We even give foreign aid (bribe money) to Egypt, Lebanon and other trouble spots controlled by terrorist groups. Just a reminder of history: When Israel was certified as a State, Jordan offered to take in all the Palestinian Arabs--yet the leadership decided it was better to live in poverty and war, than get an education and success. It was the choice of the forerunners of Hamas and Hezbollah to force the Muslim population in the Middle East to become a warrior class.

Now, the new scapegoats are the Christians, never the terrorists. In fact, the whole question of the Middle East to the Left is a cover for their latent anti-Semitism. Remember the father of modern liberalism, Franklin Roosevelt, refused to allow Jews to come into this country from Germany and the rest of Europe. Roosevelt, though he knew about the Holocaust, he said nothing, did nothing, and cared very little. So, the fact that his philosophical grandchildren don't like Jews and the Christians that support them, is no surprise. Just listen to the words of Kerry, Clinton, Kerry, Schumer, and the others. It is Israel and US foreign policy, not terrorists, that are the problem. If only Israel would give up more land and give up their weapons, the crisis would be averted. This is terrorism, in the name of anti-Semitism, with a compassionate heart. Phooey, these are bigots in the old KKK style. The sooner we admit it, the sooner we can solve the problem.

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ELSEWHERE



A joyous day for Japan: "Princess Kiko of Japan gave birth this morning to the country's future emperor, defusing the imperial succession crisis and provoking celebration across the country. Commuters travelling to work were handed special editions put our by all the major Japanese newspapers after the princess gave birth to a 2.55kg (5lb 10oz) baby boy by Caesarean section at 8.27am Japanese time. The baby prince, who has not yet been named, is expected to be the 128th Emperor of Japan after his grandfather, Emperor Akihito, his uncle Crown Prince Naruhito, and his father, Prince Akishino. There had been unprecedented speculation over the gender of the child, who is the first male to be born into the family for nearly 41 years. The lack of a male heir threatened the long-term extinction of the world's oldest monarchy. Crown Prince Naruhito and his wife, Masako, have a four-year old daughter, Aiko, but under law women are not eligible to take the throne."

National identities reviving: "Far from softening, national and other local identities are hardening again, reverting to ever-narrower blood-and-language relationships that Europe's dreamers assumed would fade away. Who now sees himself as fundamentally Belgian, rather than as a Fleming or Walloon? Catalans deny that they are Spaniards, and the Welsh imagine a national grandeur for themselves. In the last decade, the ineradicable local identities within the former Yugoslavia split apart in a bloodbath, while a mortified Europe looked away for as long as it could. The Yugoslav disaster was written off as an echo from the past--anyway, Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, and Kosovars were "not our kind"--but the Balkan wars instead signaled a much broader popular discontent with pseudo-identities concocted by political elites. The collapse of Yugoslavia hinted at the future of Europe: not necessarily the bloodshed, but the tenacity of historical identity."

Has NASA learnt nothing from the shuttle?: "NASA on Thursday gave a multibillion-dollar contract to build a manned lunar spaceship to Lockheed Martin Corp., the aerospace leader that usually builds unmanned rockets. The nation's space agency plans to use the Orion crew exploration vehicle to replace the space shuttle fleet, take astronauts to the moon and perhaps to Mars. Unlike Apollo and earlier spacecraft perched atop rockets, it will be reusable. NASA estimated the cost at $7.5 billion through 2019 for likely eight separate spaceships."

Progress in Sweden? "One of the longest-serving leaders in Europe is facing a young challenger from the resurgent Right who has transformed his party's appeal, particularly to first-time voters. Goran Persson's ten-year grip on power in Sweden is being threatened by Fredrik Reinfeldt, who has ditched his tie along with a raft of right-wing policies, adopted a modern pale blue logo and spoken at a gay pride event.... Mr Reinfeldt's core appeal is based on lowering high income tax and using benefit cuts to invest in what he calls real jobs as opposed to the Social Democrats' training schemes. Mr Persson is pushing green policies and promising more of the high-tax policies that support the so-called Swedish Model, which is widely cited as the most successful and generous social system of childcare, schools, healthcare and public transport in Europe. But, unlike his predecessors on the Right, Mr Reinfeldt is not talking of dismantling it. "In the 1970s there was a clear difference of ideology, with real socialism standing against a market economy," he said. "But it is a new kind of world now and the ideology from the past is not really valid. We are not asking for a mandate to tear anything down. "We are asking for support for job-creation policies and to focus more on results from the school and healthcare system."

Progress in France? "The battle to be the next French President heated up yesterday when Nicolas Sarkozy, the centre-right favourite, set out his manifesto for a revolution to restore basic values that would win the confidence of a younger generation that distrusts him. M Sarkozy, 51, the Interior Minister and leader of the Union for a Popular Majority (UMP), President Chirac's party, blamed the Sixties generation for squandering France's heritage and creating a sense of entitlement and despair among the young. He would, he promised, create a new, better-educated France of hard workers and entrepreneurs."

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

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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

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

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posted by JR 9/07/2006 12:11:00 AM

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

 
SUICIDE BOMBING PSYCHOLOGY

The origins of suicide bombing lie among the Shi'ite in Iran. A 13-year-old child, Hossein Fahmideh, strapped rocket-propelled grenades to his chest and blew himself up under an Iraqi tank in November 1980. Ayatollah Khomeini's embattled Islamic republic adopted Fahmideh as a national hero and as an inspiration for further bloodshed and martyrdom. Even today on the streets of Tehran huge propaganda posters depict Fahmideh as the "grandson" of the Islamic revolution.

The posters are adorned with tulips and beds of flowers - symbols of eternal life. His tomb on the outskirts of the city is a national monument, a site of pilgrimage for hundreds of thousands of Iranians. The Khomeini regime even issued every Iranian schoolchild with a plastic knapsack depicting Fahmideh's heroic sacrifice under the tank and the grenades he used to blow himself up. It's not difficult to read the message. In life you may be a nobody but if you die for Khomeini or his successors you will become a blessed shahid, a martyr, and rise up in death, and dwell in paradise.

Normally, it is not easy to persuade anyone to kill themselves. Think how instinctively even small children are wary of potential harm. To create a willing martyr like Fahmideh or Hasib Hussain you need to overwhelm every natural instinct. Suicide bombers are not born but indoctrinated. And it helps to have a cult that glorifies those who have blown themselves up and so encourage fresh recruits.

The cult has easily spread itself, like the recipe for the bomber's home-made explosives, over the internet. If you have just a few words of Arabic and know where to look you can download a constant stream of martyrdom videos from Iraq.

Western suicide bombing is a collective act, a tight conspiracy of individuals drawn together by what at the beginning is an unfocused anger at the West, their own sense of frustration with their lives and a search for identity. As the group tightens in on itself its distorted view of the world blocks all alternative viewpoints. Every allied blunder in Lebanon/ Iraq/ Afghanistan merely confirms what the group sees as a revealed truth that the US and its ally the UK are at war with the ummah, the entire Islamic world.

The videos, the glorification, compound the distorted world view of the would-be bombers and help cancel out other loyalties like marriage, love and education. A willingness to die becomes the ultimate loyalty test to the group and its leader. Both the September 11 cell, based in Hamburg, and the July 7 bombers spent a huge amount of time in each other's company at mosques and gyms insulating themselves against the outside world.

But what makes suicide bombing different from other terrorism is its doctrine of religious sacrifice. For the would-be bomber the deliberate sacrifice of his or her own life is a guarantee of a place in paradise and thus a vindication of the deed. Dying on a distant Afghan battlefield fighting British troops and blowing yourself up in the toilet of a crowded transatlantic plane are one and the same.

More here

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THE MOST RECENT POSTS ON ICJS

Downer's unfounded faith in the internet
Red Cross rocket snares Downer
Not the hole truth
ABC will surrender documents
Reciting the Shehada in Gaza
The responsibilities of the media
Israel's fight for life in the name of the West
Israel Lebanon adjournment debate
Israel fostering Islamofascism
The peacekeepers of Penzance
Silencing enlightenment
War on the home front
Apocalyptic Ahmadinejad rattles sabre
Khalil Eideh
Israel grotesquely cast as villain in one-sided TV news
PM’s Muslim hardliners
Time for radical change
State-funded terror stalks UK campuses
Arabist lobby
Watching Lebanon
Why the world hates Jews
Bleeding heart ignoramuses
Systemic failure
Olmert cannot remain in prime minister’s office
Resolution 1701
We must win we shall win
Jews Dying
This ongoing war
Worry about the West -- not Israel
The Cease-Fire Stakes
The Spectre of the Shi'ite Crescent
Red State Jews
Protection of civilians
Your ABC of bias
Shut down Iran’s deadly ambitions
Faked Picture on ABC website
HRW Hezbollah must end attacks on civilians
Media missiles. Working for the enemy
ABC admits program was unbalanced
Ronaldson calls for proactive stance
ABC lets down Australian students with breach of charter
Two Paragraphs
Ronaldson praises prompt action by ABC
Ronaldson demands further action on ABC bias
Behind the News Discussion and Teaching Resource
ABC sorry for bias on children’s show
ABC Letter of apology
ABC acknowledges program bias
When the devil dislikes the stink of brimstone

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

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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

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

****************************
posted by JR 9/06/2006 01:01:00 AM

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

 
MY FATHERS' DAY

Sunday just past was Father's Day in Australia and I was delighted that my 19 year-old son came over in the afternoon and joined me in a drive down to Wynnum (a Brisbane seaside suburb) in the Humber. Joe (my son) has now got very high marks in all three years of his university studies (in Mathematics) so I am of course very pleased to have such an academic son. And he has never given me a moment of worry about his personal life either. There is a picture of him here with his Asian girlfriend.

We bought takeaway coffee and cakes as soon as we got to Wynnum and sat down on the grass a few feet from the sea to eat, drink and chat. We had no sooner sat down than Joe spilt his coffee. I am myself a bit clumsy so it is no mystery where he got a bit of clumsiness from. He was apologetic about the spill but I gave him half of my coffee and remarked that he would probably learn from what he did. I pointed out to him that I give him thousands of dollars every birthday and Christmas precisely so he can make mistakes on the stockmarket and learn from them. I want him to have learnt investing by the time I die and he gets my money to manage.

We talked about politics and current affairs and I pointed out to him the number of fronts on which I am doing battle at the moment. Some of the things I mentioned to him were:

On my FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC blog I am doing battle with the obesity warriors and trying to get the results of the longevity studies known -- which show that it is people of MIDDLING weight, not slim people, who live longest.

And I mentioned that on this blog I try (among other things) to demolish the great Leftist coverup about their prewar liking for Fascism and I also pointed out what a myth is the Marxist claim that Fascism was "bourgeois" by referring to a scholarly study by Fischer (1978) which shows that it was WORKING class people, not middle class people, who were over-represented in the Sturm Abteilung (S.A.; Brownshirts). See here.

I did however advise him to keep out of all politics at university as it would be bad for his career. So we in fact spent most time reading poetry together. I read him poems by Keats, Coleridge, Blake, Burns, Fitzgerald, Hopkins etc which I myself had mostly read at school but which he had never heard of. Schools these days have robbed our kids of their literary heritage but I am doing my best to see that my son is not robbed in that way.

Reference:

Fischer, C.J. (1978) The occupational background of the S.A.'s rank and file membership during the depression years , 1929 to mid-1934. In: Stachura, P. The shaping of the Nazi state. London: Croom Helm.

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EVEN AN ANTISEMITE CAN SEE THROUGH THE BIAS OF THE ISRAEL-HATING MEDIA

Comment by Tibor Machan:

My mother has always had a tinge of the anti-Semite about her, especially back when she was married to my father in the late 1930s, a man who was the epitome of the virulent Central European anti-Semite. Till the day he died, in 1970, he continued with this attitude, so much so that he alienated both his children as a result, not to mention innumerable acquaintances who knew him mainly professionally. My mother was never quite like my father in this regard but she clearly shared the widespread prejudice against Jews shown by millions throughout Europe, east and west.

We had managed during my previous visits to skirt this topic-there was no way that I could make any headway with her during a day's worth of chit chat, although in her mid 80s she is entirely lucid. This time, however, she initiated a discussion on the topic of the Jews by turning to me and saying, "You know, Richard (she calls me by my middle name), I have never liked the Jews, but recently I have begun to wonder why it is that so many people around the world begrudge them that tiny plot of land they got back in the 1940s." I was taken aback by this and my shock increased as she continued: "I have been watching television news throughout the recent upheaval (indeed, she can do little else but that and read, given that she is physically quite frail), and have noticed that nearly all the commentators, including reporters, seem to favor the Hizbullah even though they were the ones who started all of this."

By my own fragmented information, too, I came to this conclusion but having my anti-Semitic mother in agreement with me on the matter was quite a surprise. Because she seemed to me to be right. Everything I read and listened to about the conflict kept emphasizing the collateral victims in Lebanon, produced from Israeli shellings, with hardly any reminders that (a) the Hizbullah initiated the conflict and (b) the Hizbullah routinely locate themselves-their artillery and inventory of weapons-within the Lebanese civilian population so that efforts at placating them and any retaliation could not but do damage to these civilians.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

Some libertarians are hard to tell from Leftists. Note this post, which just oozes contempt for ordinary Americans, calling them "sheeple" and what not. No respect for the individual there.

France deports more illegals: "France has accelerated its deportation of illegal immigrants and is more than halfway toward its 2006 target of 25,000, the Interior Ministry says, but with a new school year approaching the government appears to have largely refrained from expelling families with school-age children.... the expulsions of Africans, Asians and East Europeans are moving forward, reaching 12,716 as of July 31, and accelerating in August, according to Franck Louvrier, spokesman for Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy. France expelled 20,000 illegal immigrants in 2005, and Sarkozy vowed to step up the pace after suburban riots last autumn in areas largely inhabited by people of foreign extraction. "We are on track for our objective of 25,000 expulsions," Louvrier said. At the same time, following protests by teachers and parents, families with children in school appear to have been spared, advocacy groups say... There are 4.9 million immigrants in France, just over 8 percent of the population"

No Virginia Moneys to Illegals: "A lot of us were saying, instead of raising taxes, why don't we start prioritizing where we're spending our existing money,' said Delegate David B. Albo, Fairfax Republican, who sponsored the bill. `One of the things we found was the state was not checking for legal presence for Medicaid,'" according to AP's Dionne Walker. Therefore, the new law goes into effect on New Year's Day. Happy New Year, Virginia. Illegals will not be able to get state-funded moneys. Illegals with no social security numbers will not be receiving Medicaid via Virginia. They also will not be handed temporary assistance for welfare-style families. They will not get aid from some other state and local offices. Virginia could pocket millions through this one new law.... "Mr. Albo could not specify how many illegal aliens might be receiving public benefits. But he said the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles rejected 187,000 applicants the first year after 2004 legislation restricted illegals from obtaining driver's licenses."

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

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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

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

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posted by JR 9/05/2006 12:35:00 AM

Monday, September 04, 2006

 
DID THE NAZIS BAN IQ TESTS?

And did they recognize Jews as more intelligent?

Given the hostility of modern-day Leftists towards IQ tests, it is interesting that the Nazis too seem to have been opposed to them. I have been on an email list that discusses the matter -- a list including some of the authorities on the history of IQ testing. No-one as yet however has found any documentation of a formal ban by the Nazis. It seems that the tests were frowned on by the Nazis rather than banned outright -- which is also broadly true of today's Left of course. And there was certainly some acceptance of the greater intelligence of Jews in prewar Germany.

Some interesting points have come up in the discussion however and I thought the email below from Volkmar Weiss, a most erudite psychologist from the former East Germany, made some very unusual points:

"On my desk I have: Lenz, Fritz: Menschliche Auslese und Rassenhygiene (Eugenik) [Human Selection and Race-hygeine (Eugenics)]. Third edition. Muenchen: J. F. Lehmanns Verlag 1931. It is a famous book, at least for people who can understand German. It is said that Adolf Hitler read this book -- or at least the first edition -- during his imprisonment at Landsberg, where he wrote Mein Kampf. The publisher, J. F. Lehmann, sent a copy of all the books he published to Hitler. Therefore, the story may be true, Hitler was very erudite.

In this book by Lenz you can find many pages on the above-average social status and intelligence of Jews. Also the sentence on page 417: "Den einseitigen Antisemitismus des Nationalsozialismus wird man natuerlich bedauern. Es scheint leider, dass die politischen Massen solche Anti-Gefuehle brauchen, um zur Aktivitaet zu kommen." [One naturally regrets the one-sided antisemitism of National Socialism. Regrettably, it appears that the political masses need such antagonisms in order to be moved to activity].

In 1933 and 1934 Hitler personally did nothing to instigate the hatred against the Jews. He was and could never be sure whether not one of his grandfathers was a Jew. Maybe he considered seriously to assimilate as many Jews as possible. But the voelkisch wing of the Nazis prevented such a development and instigated a rising wave of persecution. There was no law about who was a Jew and who not. In 1935 therefore Hitler was forced to proclaim the Nuremberg laws, which said that quarter-Jews were Germans.

In 1936 or 37, maybe in the Zeitschrift fuer Psychologie [Journal of Psychology], an article was published on "Jewish intelligence tests". I myself have read this article. I am sure, Hans Eysenck was always aware of this article, too. But I have thousands of references and reprints and it would need hours to locate the source again.

There were "Eignungspruefungen", also for the entrance eximation into the SS, which could be understood as minimal IQ tests, but no fully-fledged IQ-tests.

In the German army (Wehrmacht), even in World War Two, there fought hundreds or even thousands of Jews. Hitler had the the right to declare Jews to Aryans and Germans and used this right in many cases. I myself had a letter to Heinrich Himmler in my hands (in the Bundesarchiv Berlin), in which Himmler was asked what should be happen with two SS-men who were Jews. Himmlers handwriting: The question will be answered after the war. With Hamlet I would like to say: There are more things in heaven and earth ...

Note that the above is just a part of an informal email discussion. I have no doubt that Volkmar would be able to refine and document his points more fully given time. From my reading in Mein Kampf and elsewhere, I agree with Volkmar's judgment that Hitler was quite erudite by the standards of his day and I am sure that the presence of Jews in the SS is very little-known

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ELSEWHERE

Parts of Europe are learning: "There have been labor changes across continental Europe recently. Denmark's measures to liberalize hiring and firing have helped the country cut its unemployment rate in half from about 10% in the early 1990s to under 5%. Spain, too, has introduced short-term employment contracts which have helped cut its unemployment rate by more than half from 20% a decade ago. But elsewhere, attempts at change have met with staunch opposition, often resulting in watered-down measures. Italy passed changes to its labor laws in 2004, introducing an extension of temporary-work contracts that were introduced in 1997 and were credited with helping cut Italy's overall unemployment rate to 7.1% from 12% when the contracts began. Yet many economists say Italy, which recorded zero growth last year, hasn't gone far enough. In Germany, where unemployment stands at 11%, a coalition government headed by conservative leader Angela Merkel has promised to reduce unemployment by introducing similar measures to those hotly debated in France. The government had to settle on compromise measures that can extend a current probation period for workers to 24 months, from the current six. But companies don't have the right to terminate contracts within those two years without giving just cause. Other, more difficult, provisions, are still on hold."

Fortune 100 loves the Left: "Led by Goldman Sachs, the charitable foundations of Fortune 100 companies overwhelmingly supported liberal groups over conservative groups, according to a new study by the Capital Research Center. Authors David Hogberg and Sarah Haney found that the corporate foundations of the Fortune 100 preferred liberal groups by a 5.8:1 ratio."

Incomes and politics: "One sure sign that the economy is doing well is when the left revives that old political warhorse, inequality. With GDP growth of nearly 4% for three years running and a jobless rate of 4.7%, it's their last economic resort in an election year. But when you look at the actual evidence, the inequality campaign also proves to be trumped up. The Treasury Department will soon release the latest IRS data on who paid how much in taxes in America through 2004. We've had an early look at the numbers, and anyone who reads the front pages of our leading dailies may be surprised to learn that the Bush years compare very well by tax and income equality to the sainted Clinton era. First, the new data show that the bottom 50% of Americans in income--U.S. households with an income below the median of $44,389--paid a smaller share of total income taxes in 2004 (3.3%) than in Bill Clinton's last year in office (3.9%). That 3.3% is the lowest share of total income taxes paid by the bottom half of earners in at least 30 years, and probably ever. The majority of American families with an income below $40,000 pay no income tax at all today, and many of them also get a welfare subsidy from the Earned Income Tax Credit that effectively offsets much of what they pay in payroll taxes."

Sen. Byrd also blocked sunshine legislation: "In a new twist in this week's Capitol Hill whodunnit, Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., acknowledged Thursday that he also placed a 'secret hold' on legislation that would open up the hidden world of government contracts to public scrutiny. Byrd and Alaska Republican Ted Stevens, two of the most skilled purveyors of federal funds, used the parliamentary maneuver to stop legislation that would create a searchable database of some $2.5 trillion in federal spending."

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

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

"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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

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

****************************
posted by JR 9/04/2006 12:24:00 AM

Sunday, September 03, 2006

 
MORE ON LEFTIST PSYCHOLOGY

Excerpt from a post by Ray Kraft:

I am getting some liberal response to my article at ChronWatch about Islamic Nazism - and some of these people give drivel a bad name. The intellectual vacuity is truly amazing.

I am coming to suspect that liberalism may be a genetic defect, or at least a congenital defect, because in the correspondence I get froms libs I observe that most of them are completely unable to grasp even the most rudimentary concepts of logic and reason, and also completely unable to grasp the idea that they are not grasping the most rudimentary concepts of logic and reason. I am not sure that it is merely beyond their will, I am coming to suspect it is beyond their ability.

Those who are able to think more or less rationally and logically tend to become conservative and Republican, while those who are unable to think more or less rationally and logically tend to become liberal and Democrat. Which makes the Democratic party (as it is today) by definition the party of illogic and unreason, the party of emotionalism rampant.

The libs who are not thinking coherently always think (or feel) that they are thinking coherently, no matter how clearly and cogently one points out that they are not. They are apparently unable to recognize (much less understand, or analyze) the inconsistencies and non sequiturs in their own thinking -

For instance, if one points out that the observed one degree of global atmospheric warming over the last century (per the IPCC report) is hardly conclusive proof of catastrophic runaway global warming, and probably within the margin of measuring error (!) the response is Yes! There is Global Warming! Didn't you see Al Gore's movie?! . . . so there really is Global Warming, Toto, I guess, even if we can't actually see it.

Yes, some glaciers are melting, but the fact that glaciers have been melting for the last ten or fifteen thousand years since the beginning of the end of the last ice age is an uncomprehended, or incomprehensible, idea, that cannot possibly have any relevance at all to the faith and doctrine of Global Warming!

Another correspondent keeps insisting that Israel is engaging in "ethnic cleansing," even after I point out that there are more than a million Muslim Palestinians living in Israel (who haven't been ethnically cleansed in the last sixty years) and that Israel recently removed its own Jewish citizens from Gaza and gave Gaza back to the Palis - the exact opposite of "ethnic cleansing." He feels that Israel is doing ethnic cleansing, and no quantum of objective facts can change his mind, or the feelings in his mind.....

The Liberal mind forms a conclusion, and then looks for evidence to support the conclusion, and rejects evidence inconsistent with the conclusion, and holds faithfully to the conclusion even if there is no evidence to sustain it.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

"Islamized" classics: "Pinocchio, Tom Sawyer, and other characters have been converted to Islam in new versions of 100 classic stories designed for the Turkish school curriculum. "Give me some bread, for Allah's sake," Pinocchio says to Geppetto, his maker, in a book stamped with the crest of the Ministry of Education. "Thanks be to Allah," the puppet says later. In "The Three Musketeers," D'Artagnan is told that he cannot visit Aramis. An old woman explains: "He is surrounded by men of religion. He converted to Islam after his illness." Tom Sawyer may always have shirked his homework, but he is more conscientious in learning his Islamic prayers. He is given a "special treat" for learning the Arabic words. Pollyanna, seen by some as the embodiment of Christian forgiveness, says that she believes in the end of the world as predicted in the Koran".

NYT lies again: "I suppose it's a dog bites man story-I shouldn't be upset when the New York Times news division writes a intellectually dishonest story that plays to the biases of its readership base. But today's front-page above the fold story on wages depresses and surprises me anyway... Here's how the article opens: "With the economy beginning to slow, the current expansion has a chance to become the first sustained period of economic growth since World War II that fails to offer a prolonged increase in real wages for most workers". The Bureau of Labor Statistics does calculate real hourly compensation for the nonfarm business sector, a measure that includes benefits. Let's see what those numbers look like... What these numbers show is that for every year since the recession of 2001, real hourly compensation has actually increased. It's up since 2003 as well. And this year it's up quite dramatically. Any of these measures are at odds with the Times's conclusion."

Reuters again: "Not content with just doctoring photos to get us to buy into personal agendas of the editors, Reuters, knowing that most people skim headlines to get their news, are now into creating headlines that speak the opposite of their own news stories. Reuters article excerpts: "The economy grew at a faster clip in the second quarter and inflation was slower than originally reported" .... "The U.S. economy grew at a 2.9 percent annual pace in the second quarter, faster than the 2.5 percent rate initially reported but marginally below what analysts were expecting," And your reaction might be the same as mine. Pretty good news for the US. But if pretty good news for the US is not what you want to tell people, you create the following headline: GDP Growth revised up less than expected.

Amazing: Chinese textbooks downplay Communism: "When high school students in Shanghai crack their history textbooks this fall they may be in for a surprise. The new standard world history text drops wars, dynasties and Communist revolutions in favor of colorful tutorials on economics, technology, social customs and globalization. Socialism has been reduced to a single, short chapter in the senior high school history course. Chinese Communism before the economic reform that began in 1979 is covered in a sentence. The text mentions Mao only once -- in a chapter on etiquette."

Canadians as bad as the TSA: "The family of an 87-year-old diabetic great-grandmother says she is the latest victim of new, tighter security regulations at airports. Hetwig Strohmeier is supposed to take heart medication every four hours, but had to go almost 12 hours without it after the drugs were confiscated Friday by screening officers at Pearson airport, said her son Helmut Strohmeier. "What did they think were in the pill bottles with my mother's name on them - dynamite?" said an irate Helmut Strohmeier, who is demanding answers from the Greater Toronto Airport Authority."

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

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

"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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

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

****************************
posted by JR 9/03/2006 12:22:00 AM

Saturday, September 02, 2006

 
Life in a "backwater"

Anne and I got into my 1963 Humber Super Snipe yesterday morning and motored down to the seaside for brunch. We took sandwiches with us and got takeaway coffee from a cafe close to our destination. When we got there, the park had a few people wandering around but the picnic shelter where we sat down was uninhabited. So we sat there in perfect peace and quiet and had our brunch looking out to sea across Moreton Bay. And there were no "minorities" to trouble us.



The English used to "motor" to salubrious places once too but from what I hear these days, all that they now do is crawl along in traffic jams. I encountered no traffic jams or holdups at all and we drove through some quite nice green countryside on the way -- so if any English person had been with us it would have seemed to them like a trip back in time.

We did stop at a liquor barn on the way to pick up some choice Tokay. The liquer Tokay that Australian vintners produce is lightyears ahead of the rough red that Hungarian vintners make out of the same grape. Australian liquer Muscat is remarkably good too -- so, if you are a drinker of fortified wines, scrap the Port and go for Australian Muscats and Tokays. It will be a definite step up.

Today is the first anniversary of Anne and I meeting so we are going to celebrate by going to the smorgasbord at the Hilton. The Brisbane Hilton does an impeccable smorgasbord with lots of seafood -- of which Australians are usually very fond. They seem to do the best Sydney rock oysters in town -- large and succulent. If you have never eaten raw Sydney rock oysters, you haven't lived. I know of no other oyster remotely as good.

It is so nice not to live in a "vibrant" place.

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ELSEWHERE



Iran wins: "So, what now? Iran has defied the United Nations order to stop its most controversial nuclear work. It looks as if there will be a fudge by the European Union, dragging the US along behind. At yesterday's deadline, which was supposed to be the climax of this long-running stand-off, Europeans blinked first. Germany and Italy, in particular, have taken the view that more talks would be preferable to sanctions, even at the cost of blurring the force of the UN Security Council demand. That has played into the hands of Russia and China, who never much wanted sanctions. It has left the US, Britain, and France, who favoured an immediate move to sanctions, frustrated on the sidelines."



Australian PM unapologetic about the need for migrant assimilation: "Mr Howard sparked controversy yesterday by saying on talk-back radio a small group of Muslim migrants had refused to accept their adopted country's values and had not learned English. The Prime Minister said today he had no reason to apologise or water down those remarks. "There's a small section of the Islamic population which is unwilling to integrate," he said. "And I have said, generally, all migrants ... they have to integrate, and that means speaking English as quickly as possible, it means embracing Australian values and it also means making sure that no matter what the culture of the country from which they come might have been, Australia requires women to be treated fairly and equally and in the same fashion as men. "And if any migrants that come into this country have a different view, they better get rid of that view very quickly. "I don't retreat in any way from that."

Sweden no better for the poor: "In the USA the poor get 39% of the US median income and in Finland (and Sweden) the poor get 38% of the US median income. It's not worth quibbling over 1% so let's take it as read that the poor in America have exactly the same standard of living as the poor in Finland (and Sweden). Which is really a rather revealing number don't you think? All those punitive tax rates, all that redistribution, that blessed egalitarianism, the flatter distribution of income, leads to a change in the living standards of the poor of precisely ... nothing."

Albion's wayward children: "There is, to be sure, a very 'special relationship' that exists between England and America. Usually undefined, this relationship is essentially characterized by warm and collaborative ties between the two countries -- in the diplomatic, military, economic and political spheres. But there is also a deep cultural affinity between the two countries -- one that is, too often, left unexamined. Many people only see the linguistic expression of America's cultural bond with Britain -- the fact that we speak the same language. But there are 'fundamental customs and values that form the core of English-speaking cultures' according to a website inspired by The Anglosphere Challenge by James C. Bennett."

FEMA was the biggest disaster in New Orleans: "FEMA's failure was that it employed a command and control approach -- central planning -- as the basis for organizing relief activities. This compounded disaster with disaster, because the great weakness of central planning is its inability to respond quickly and adapt to changes and unforeseen circumstances. No centralized authority, no matter how well-intentioned its employees and well-functioning its internal operations, can overcome this problem. How could any one agency go about coordinating thousands of people with different needs with thousands of people who have supplies that could help them? FEMA's model required both the demands for relief and offers of supply to be communicated first to the agency for approval. Private individuals and local governments that attempted to bring in their own supplies quickly found that FEMA would not allow it."

Wal-Mart and Toddler economics: "Whether we handle WalMart and the attendant issues as intelligent adults, capable of reasoning, or we do so as whining three-year-olds with all the attendant knowledge of incentives, utopian wishes and economic consequences such a three-year-old might possess is, indeed, one of the important questions facing the country. At the heart of Klein's cluster of concerns is an entirely valid, even admirable, concern. He wishes the low paid to be paid more and to have better benefits to go with that higher pay. However, like a three-year-old, he's not quite capable of seeing what the consequences of such a wish would actually be."

Strange silence: "For the national media, higher gas prices at the pump are always deserving of banner headlines and sob stories about how tough it is for families to make ends meet. But reductions in gas prices are invariably a snoozer. So that's why the latest data on gasoline prices falling comfortably below $3.00 a gallon in most markets has been mostly ignored. AAA reported an average price of $2.84 -- which, in the wake of prices as high as $3.29 a gallon at many service stations, is a blessed relief. Lower gas prices act like an economy-wide tax cut"

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

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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

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

****************************
posted by JR 9/02/2006 12:35:00 AM

Friday, September 01, 2006

 
RUMSFELD CALLS OUT THE DEMS

About time!

The US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, has compared Bush Administration critics to those who sought to appease the Nazis before World War II, warning that the US is confronting "a new type of fascism". Mr Rumsfeld, speaking at an American Legion convention in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, delivered some of his most explicit and extended attacks yet on the Administration's critics, provoking an angry response from Democrats who accused him of "campaigning on fear".

By comparing US foreign policy with World War II and the Cold War, Mr Rumsfeld sought to portray sceptics of the Bush foreign policy as being on the wrong side of history. Mr Rumsfeld again ridiculed US officials who, before World War II, wished to negotiate with Adolf Hitler. "I recount that history because, once again, we face similar challenges in efforts to confront the rising threat of a new type of fascism," he said. "But some seem not to have learned history's lessons. Can we truly afford to believe that, somehow or someway, vicious extremists could be appeased?"

His use of the word "appease" is seen as an attempt to associate critics of the Administration with the failed efforts of the British government to mollify Hitler in the 1930s.... Mr Rumsfeld aggressively defended the war in Iraq and his leadership of it.While he acknowledged the reality of debate in a free society, he attacked the media, saying reports have been manipulated by Iraqi insurgents or al-Qaeda terrorists. He suggested that negative news stories and criticism of the war sap the nation's will to fight in Iraq. "The struggle we are in is too important to have the luxury of returning to the 'blame America first' mentality," Mr Rumsfeld said.

More here. Taranto has more on the speech and the slippery Democrat reaction to it.

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ELSEWHERE

Generation gap: "It turns out that NPR lefty Juan Williams' kid is a conservative. Sweet. He's running for the D.C. city council as a Republican. Where did Juan go wrong? Then again, with Juan's recent attack of common sense on the race issue, maybe the kid's influencing the dad."

Dumb Californians want to make their fuel even dearer: ""As Los Angeles motorist Jill Cantrell removes the pump nozzle from her Honda Civic gas tank, she spouts out two figures: '$56 for a gas tank for me and $78 billion in profits last year for the oil companies,' she says. 'I'm livid.' How many other Californians are angry about gasoline prices -- and ready for their state to take action -- will be clear this November, when voters decide whether to levy a new tax on oil companies that drill in California and use the money for in-state development of alternative fuels."

More UN corruption: "For years the United Nations tried to cover up perverted and outrageous behaviour by uniformed and civilian personnel who have served in East Timor since 1999. But as a new wave of more than 2000 UN-employed police and staff prepare to travel to the capital Dili, Sukehiro Hasegawa, the top UN official in East Timor, has acknowledged for the first time that the UN system failed to bring anybody to justice for crimes that included sexual abuse of children and bestiality. Dr Hasegawa declared that the UN's Integrated Mission in East Timor, which officially became operational on Monday, would enforce a "zero tolerance" policy towards sexual exploitation and abuse committed by uniformed and civilian UN personnel. He said several UN staff would be employed solely to enforce the policy, which will include briefings for all staff at which "they will be made aware of the consequences of any activity they may carry out that could blacken the authority of the United Nations".



Cynics mock stars' African charity: "Madonna feels responsible for the children of the world and has found herself a "big, big project" to help orphans in Malawi. Gwyneth Paltrow declares "I am African" in a new advertisement for a charity working in Africa. The continent has long been a favourite destination for celebrity campaigners, going back to 1954 when Danny Kaye became UNICEF's goodwill ambassador. U2's Bono and fellow Irish rocker Bob Geldof are Africa veterans, and more recently Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have brought Hollywood gloss to the continent. But the latest flood of stars searching for a good cause has prompted a collective groan in the press and among bloggers, as people question their methods and motives. "We are on the verge of farcical at this point," said Michael Wolff, columnist for Vanity Fair, when asked about Africa's popularity among famous performers. "This has become just a part of the public relations play book. Everybody has a PR person and every PR person says 'which country do you want to adopt?'."

Califonia tries to rein in irresponsible judges: "A bill concerning sentencing of dangerous juveniles authored by state Sen. Roy Ashburn, R-Bakersfield, is headed to the governor for a final yea or nay, Ashburn's office announced Thursday. Senate Bill 1626, also known as "Dylan's Law," would discourage judges from giving "slap on the wrist" judgments to teenage rapists and other dangerous young offenders, Ashburn says, by requiring judges to formally explain their decisions when issuing lenient outcomes. Ashburn introduced the law in honor of Dylan Pardo of Bakersfield. Pardo was 14 in 2003 when she was drugged and raped by a 17-year-old who received almost no punishment. The Californian typically does not name victims of sexual assault but Pardo has chosen to talk about her case publicly. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has 30 days to sign the bill, veto it or take no action, in which case it would automatically become law".



Donkey police in South Africa: "Police in South Africa, which has one of the highest rates of violent crime in the world, have been told to ride donkeys or bicycles to crime scenes. The advice, offered by a smiling Charles Nqakula, the country's embattled Minister of Safety and Security, to a passing-out parade for new recruits, drew immediate criticism. Mr Nqakula was responding to complaints that because his force was undermanned and underequipped, officers were often slow to reach the scene of a crime. "If you don't have a car, ride a bicycle or a donkey," Mr Nqakula told the newly qualified officers at the weekend. His remarks came after an upsurge in armed attacks and concern that the country's criminals are better equipped than its police. "This is typical of the complacency of a government which is no longer accountable to any except its own," a spokesperson for the opposition Democratic Alliance said. The South African murder rate is second only to that of Colombia and reported rape cases rank among the highest in the world. Residents are 12 times more likely to be murdered in South Africa than in the United States and 50 times more likely than in Europe"

Arab Prince speaks out: "Arab leaders wasted billions of dollars to fund a war they can never win, a member of Jordan's royal family charges. "Arab leaders stole billions of dollars from the Arab people in order to spend them on weapons to fight Israel, which they can never defeat, instead of using the money for health and education purposes to aid their people," Jordanian Prince Hassan Bin Talal told an international conference in Kyoto, Japan, according to the Israeli Ynet news. Once in line for the Jordanian throne, Prince Hassan spoke to the world conference of the interfaith group "Religions for Peace," attacking Iran's nuclear development program and warning against nuclear armament, especially on Iran's part."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here). Other backups here

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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

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posted by JR 9/01/2006 12:09:00 AM