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LEFTIST SANITY ON GLOBALIZATION

Australian philosopher Peter Singer is something of a hero on the loony Left but he seems to have had an attack of good sense recently and come out IN FAVOUR OF globalization -- on the undoubtedly true grounds that it will reduce global poverty. This article by Greg Easterbrook (apparently a moderate Leftist) reviews Singer�s book and even makes the point that, as globalization has been progressing, global inequalities in income have been DECLINING. It must be so sad for Leftists to hear even from their own that, under wicked old capitalism, the poor are getting richer, not poorer.

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FEMALE TRIUMPHALISM

Men and women have always tended to think of one-another as silly. Men see things that women do as crazy and vice versa. But they mostly get on anyhow -- sometimes very well. For a long time women felt that they got the raw end of such comparisons -- being paid smaller wages for similar work, etc. Men, however, felt that they got the raw end of the deal in that they did not have the option of staying home rather than going out to work. And it is not only men who think that women get a good deal out of conventional arrangements. But anyway, feminists ended up persuading many of us that �sexism� is bad -- and so unequal payment to women in the workforce at least has now largely been eliminated.

Radical feminists (many of whom appeared to be lesbians), however, pushed things much further -- declaring men to be the �enemy�. Many women love their men so do not agree with that but a watered-down version of that view has become common, in that many people -- male and female -- have been brought to believe that female ways of doing things are just better: Full stop. This is of course sexism -- prejudice based on sex -- but somehow seems to be permissible and applauded by our media and educational elites who otherwise deplore all forms of prejudice. Any thought that both males and females each have their own spheres of excellence and that both should be equally applauded seems to be abandoned.

This leads to some sad outcomes and I want to mention here just one small example: I recently read an article (not online) by Jannine Barron in the November, 2002 issue of Living Now -- a free newspaper of a distinctly �alternative� bent. The article is on p. 9 and is headed �The solicitor and the partner�.

It is a nice human interest story: A group of women had been involved in a business partnership and decided to call it quits. They therefore wrote out an agreement to be signed by all which would terminate the arrangement. They decided that it should be vetted by a lawyer who would put in all the necessary legal bits. They took it to a lawyer and left it with him to do his part. When one of them called to pick up the revised agreement, however, the lawyer very kindly said that there would be no charge for his work. On being asked why he replied that it was because the agreement concerned was the nicest and most considerate partnership termination agreement he had ever seen.

Once upon a time that would have been the end of the story but on this occasion a generalization apparently had to be extracted from this one event. What conclusion would you extract? The only conclusion I would extract is that lawyer X was an unusually nice guy. Pushed hard, I might have added the jocular conclusion that even lawyers can be human sometimes. But what conclusion did the author draw? The conclusion was about �women� generally: That women do business �differently� -- and the difference was clearly outlined as being more lovingly, kindly etc.

Women are better -- get it? Prejudice in the media is fine -- as long as it is the �right� sort of prejudice.

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GREENIE "SCIENTISTS"

Gary of Public opinion objects to environmentalism being classed as a religion and says that environmental debates are really debates between scientists -- not debates of science versus religion. Well, he is right about that. Many scientists do (for instance) say that humankind is causing global warming. But what sort of scientists are they? There are some indications of global warming and a lot of indicators of global temperature stability. What do real scientists do in that situation? I will tell you exactly what they do: They "accept the null hypothesis". They conclude that there is no systematic evidence of anything going on and therefore conclude that nothing is going on -- at least until better or clearer evidence is obtained. So scientists who say that there IS global warming going on when there is so much evidence that there is NOT are not acting as scientists at all. They may be defending their Greenie religion or (more likely) they may be defending their research grants but they are not giving a scientific response to the evidence.

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INDIAN IMPERIALISM

I love this quote attributed to Michael Duffy by Gareth Parker:

"There are six times as many Indian restaurants in Britain than McDonald's. Why aren't you worried about Indian cultural imperialism as well as American?"

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LIGHT RELIEF

Two dyslexic bankrobbers walk into a bank shouting:
"Air in the hands motherstickers, this is a fuckup!"

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