HAPPY NEW YEAR!

New Year is traditionally a time for optimism about the future so I thought I might reproduce here a New Year message from a self-described �incurable optimist�. As a Swede who manages to spend much of his year on the Isle of Capri in Italy, perhaps he has grounds for optimism.

A message from Gunnar Adler-Karlsson:



Dear Friends,

My Christmas and New Year question is: Do nine out of ten of us live thanks to the birth of the symphony orchestra some three hundred years ago?

The "Mediterranean Museum" in Stockholm recently arranged a concert with the first known keyboard instrument, a water organ or "hydraulis". Fascinated, Marianne and I listened to the sounds from 19 longer and 14 shorter pipes, united into a small organ, the inspiration for all later organs in our Christian culture.

Suddenly, I saw in front of myself a shepherd of the sort that you still can see in the Greek countryside, with his flock of sheep and a flute under his arm. Then another came, and still others until in my fantasy I saw 19 shepherds with long, and 14 with short flutes. Together they played a beautiful concert, like the one by "hydraulis".

Then came a lyre, a cymbal, a trumpet, a drum and a bit later, a violin. An orchestra was forming. Out of this joint effort came then more advanced music, such as Bach�s Brandenburg Concerti and Pergolesi�s neapolitanean Opera Buffa, a few decades later perfected in the symphonies by Mozart and Haydn.

Then it came to my mind that the population of the earth has increased tenfold since the birth of the symphony orchestra! Do nine out of ten of us thus live thanks to heavenly symphonic music? Or is there some other, possibly less crazy relation between these two phenomena, the symphony orchestra and the increasing number of children in our global Christmas cribs?

I do think that is the case! Even if only thanks to a "spurious" relation.
Both phenomena are born out of an improved ability to co-operate. Slowly the shepherds learned to play together. With the help of more instruments we got ever more beautiful music, enjoyed by ever more people. Now, for instance, refined into the Santa Cecilia orchestra Marianne and I recently heard in Rome under a Japanese conductor, a Georgian piano soloist, and five other nations involved.

What is easy to understand and accept in music has also happened in society in the form that in my latest books I have termed "co-thinking Superbrains". Thanks to co-operation and "co-thinking" between individual brains, both within and between ever bigger nations and companies since the early 1700, we have also achieved fabulous economic results. The number of those who can enjoy symphony orchestras is probably a thousand times bigger today than in 1700. And , even if many still exist in dire poverty, about ten times as many human beings can live.

Now, when we peacefully have united almost all of Europe, couldn�t we, in spite of all, also imagine a Christmas vision with a water organ transformed into a global symphony orchestra? In which, even if with different instruments, both Greeks and Turks, Hindus and Buddhists, and even Jews, Christians, and Moslems play together in a beautiful symphonic community. In order that all the world�s people may enjoy that global harmony, of which our Christmas cribs can make us dream!

Happy New Year from
Gunnar

(Latest book: Meditations on Western Wisdom. If you want a copy, just tell me)

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LEFTIST OPEN-MINDEDNESS

Prof. Bunyip is a great favourite of lots of people. Here is an example of why. He is reporting something he once said at a Christmas dinner party made up of Leftists:

These words (or something very much like them) tumbled unbidden from the Professor's lips:

"Ronald Reagan won the Cold War, revived the American economy, brought freedom to Eastern Europe and ended the Soviet Union. Why are any of these things bad?"

Pandemonium erupted. One simply can't utter such bald truths in what passes for the left's version of polite society. The right to demand that an alternate point of view be examined and rationally discussed can never be granted. The left fears scrutiny as a vampire shuns sunlight.

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A SILLY HITCHENS ON IRAQ

Two of the most articulate political writers of today are Christopher and Peter Hitchens -- who happen to be brothers. For many years, Christopher was far-Left and Peter was far-Right. Recently, however, Christopher has had a change of heart and moved to the Right. And he has become a vigorous supporter of war with Iraq. So what has Peter done? Anybody who has read Freud on sibling rivalry would not be surprised. Peter has just come out in OPPOSITION to war with Iraq! Fortunately, however, his arguments are so silly that it is unlikely that anyone will take him seriously. He argues, for instance, that it is a pity that the USA has not become a true empire!

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BOYCOTTING ZIMBABWE

Sport is very popular in Zimbabwe and Australian Prime Minister John Howard has just called on the Australian cricket team to cancel their forthcoming tour to Zimbabwe as a means of putting pressure on the horrific Zimbabwe government of Robert Mugabe.

Michael Darby tells you how you can support that call.

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THE CLONING CONTROVERSY

Tim Gillin has written in with some good thoughts and links on human cloning. He compares the current controversy with earlier controversies about advances in reproductive science. See here.

There is also an article in �Spiked� on the Clone Wars.

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SLAVERY AND �REPARATIONS�

With the current agitation for slavery �reparations� in the United States, it seems important to get clear just what the reparations might be for. I think that the following extract from The Encyclopedia Britannica will have lots of surprises for most people:

Black slaves exported from Africa were widely traded throughout the Islamic world. Approximately 18,000,000 Africans were delivered into the Islamic trans-Saharan and Indian Ocean slave trades between 650 and 1905.

In the second half of the 15th century Europeans began to trade along the west coast of Africa, and by 1867 between 7,000,000 and 10,000,000 Africans had been shipped as slaves to the New World.

Although some areas of Africa were depleted by slave raiding, on balance the African population grew after the establishment of the transatlantic slave trade because of new food crops introduced from the New World, particularly manioc, corn (maize), and possibly peanuts (groundnuts).

The relationship between African and New World slavery was highly complementary. African slave owners demanded primarily women and children for labour and lineage incorporation and tended to kill males because they were troublesome and likely to flee. The transatlantic trade, on the other hand, demanded primarily adult males for labour and thus saved from certain death many adult males who otherwise would have been slaughtered outright by their African captors

I guess I am naive but is there not some cause for THANKS somewhere in there?

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QUIZ

Here is a good Quiz: What do these three people have in common? John Tyler,
James Polk and Zachary Taylor. I doubt that anyone outside the USA would know and I suspect that many Americans would not know either. And yet they all held a very exalted office. They were all Presidents of the United States.

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IRRELIGIOUS AUSTRALIA

I have previously noted how irreligious Australia is compared to the USA -- and noted also that it seems to do Australia no harm. Here is another observation of the marginal place of Christianity in Australian life.

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CORRUPT "EDUCATION"

Present realities are the best argument for making education voucher-funded:

If money were the answer, Washington public schools would be the best in the nation -- if not the world. Per student expenditures are $10,500 a year, second highest in the nation. With a student-teacher ration of 15.8, they have smaller-than-average class sizes. What is the result?

In only one of the city's 19 high schools do as many as 50 percent of its students test as proficient in reading, and at no school are 50 percent of the students proficient in math. At nine high schools, only 5 percent or fewer of its students test proficient in reading; and in 11 high schools, only 5 percent or less are proficient in math. The story gets worse when we look at the percentages for "below basic" performance, which means that the student has little or no mastery of subject skills.

But that's not the worst of the story: Each year, more than 80 percent -- and up to 96 percent -- of high school students are promoted to the next grade. This is nothing but fraud, dishonesty and deception, plain and simple. While the education establishment can rightfully point to education problems beyond their control, -- irresponsible parents, students with alien and hostile minds, and rotten teaching conditions -- they bear the sole responsibility for fraudulent promotions and fraudulent diplomas.

The bottom line is that if one didn't know better, one would think that Washington's predominantly black public school system was being run by the grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, hell-bent on a mission to sabotage black academic excellence. Instead, it's a system being run by blacks for blacks.

More here.

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BRUTAL TWINS

Meanwhile, the North Korean "news" agency KCNA reports that "General Secretary Kim Jong Il received a floral basket from Yasser Arafat, President of Palestine, on the occasion of the New Year, Juche 92 (2003). The floral basket was handed to Paek Nam Sun, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the DPRK, by Shaher Mohammed Abdlah, Palestinian Ambassador to the DPRK, on Wednesday."

Arafat won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1994.

From Best of the web

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ELSEWHERE

Michael Darby gives his recipe for defeating Islamic fundamentalism.



On IQ & PC there is a story of completely off-the-planet political correctness in Britain. Apparently if you have a social worker on your case and you go and steal a car and then crash it, it is the social worker�s fault! Leftists seem to be doing their best to abolish all ideas of personal responsibility whatsoever! Do they ever think at all about what they are doing?

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RUSSIANS NIX GLOBAL WARMING

Wow! On the recently-released Russian scientific data, the Arctic is NOT warming up. And they should know: More of the Arctic is in Russia than anywhere else.

What their figures show is that the temperature of the Arctic oscillates but that it is now actually lower than it has been for long periods within the last century. It has been clear for a while now that ANTarctica is not warming up so this really should put the lid on global warming once and for all --- among those who are interested in the facts anyway.

It is precisely the scare that the ice at the two poles is melting that the Greenies have been dining out on for years now. �Trust me. I�m a Greenie�!

There is also a more wide-ranging demolition of the whole global warming case by atmosphere scientists here.

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GREENIE RELIGION

I think that this description of environmentalism as a religion is a spoof but Greenies can be pretty loony so you never know.

Anyhow here is another amusing little story about the high calibre of our Greenies.

And another bit of fun: When given a free choice of a taxpayer-funded car to drive around in, Australia�s only �Green� Member of Parliament in our lower house chose a gas-guzzler! A definite bright spark!

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MUSLIM COUSIN-MARRIAGE

A few bloggers and others are now looking at what the U.S. should do in Iraq once Saddam is knocked off his perch. Most think that there is no way that Iraq can be turned into a democracy any time soon. One reason why is that Arab societies are intensely tribal and their tribalism is very deep-seated because of the Arab custom of cousin marriage. So why that custom?

It is a result of the ease of divorce in Islam. A Muslim just says �I divorce you� three times to his wife and that is it. So how does a woman in a poor country get the security she needs to raise her children if marriage offers no security? There is only one way: She has to have a means of preventing her husband from exercising his �Islamic rights�. And the only good way of doing that is to have his family on your side. But the only chance of having his family on your side rather than his is if they are your family too. So in cousin marriage, if a man divorces his wife without very strong reasons, he will have the whole family come down on him like a ton of bricks. So incestuous marriages are yet another outcome of that delightful religion.

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THE DESPERATE IDIOCY OF THE MODERN LEFT

Recovering Leftie, Ron Rosenbaum, is appalled at the words of a Leftist film-reviewer:

Reviewer
"Still, if �Road to Perdition� ultimately fails as entertainment, it offers rich material for allegory. Maybe it was because I attended a screening on Sept. 11, but I couldn't help seeing Hanks as an American everyman, a pure-hearted killer who will commit no end of mayhem to ensure a better life for his children. Imagine Willie Loman with a tommy gun, and you'll see what I mean. 'You dirty rats! Attention must be paid.'"

Rosenbaum
But of course! What a BRILLIANT point he's making in the course of preening his anti-Americanism before his audience of U.K. intellectuals. What does Sept. 11 remind him of? The way AMERICANS are killers. Sept. 11 becomes, in his lovely leap of logic, really about Americans being pure-hearted killers capable of "no end of mayhem," infinite evil deeds. Doesn't EVERYBODY think that way? (Everybody in his little circle, I imagine). Sept. 11 reminds them that Americans are first and foremost murderers, so let's not spend a moment acknowledging that little matter of Sept. 11 being a day on which 3,000 AMERICANS were murdered by the "pure-hearted killers" of Al Qaeda. Who, when not committing mass murder, stone women as punishment, torture gays, crush free thought by executing dissidents. No, THEY get a pass (and the 3,000 become non-persons). Because they hate America.

Source here. Via Bleeding Brain.

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CLONING

Human cloning is in the news at the moment -- though the current claim is almost certainly a fraud. All I know is that human cloning WILL happen sooner or later and I fail to see what is wrong with it. Such a child would be very much a wanted and treasured child for sure. And is that not a great start in life? Anyway, there are clones all around us. All banana trees are clones, for instance. And natural human clones (twins) invariably LOVE being clones. Criticizing cloning is just busybody stuff as far as I can see. Anyway, here is a scholarly link on the subject which deals with the considerable SCIENTIFIC problems of the procedure.

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OTHER BLOGS

One of the sanest sites on the web at the moment is Bill Whittle�s new blog. His essays are so simple and yet so insightful that I cannot see how any sane person could disagree with them. Now how�s THAT for a big claim? Here�s just one thought-provoking paragraph in which he gives just a tiny part of his answer to European anti-Americans:

To those who doubt our mental sophistication, I would remind you that our GRANDPARENTS walked upon the moon. And why is it that of all we produce and all we exult, the only things that seem to have caught on in Europe are McDonald's and �Baywatch�? That says much more about them than it does about us, and none of it good, I'm afraid.



There is a good joke just up on Michael Darby and there are some reports about the oppressiveness of political correctness in Britain today up on IQ & PC.

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RACIST LEFTISTS

In the course of the Trent Lott affair, U.S. Democrats did their best to paint all Republicans as racists and quite desperate attempts are now being made by them to tar Lott�s successor with the same brush. In the crazed minds of Leftists, even blunt pencils are seen as a sign of racism!

I have mentioned previously this quiz that lists the history of racism in the U.S. Democrats. One wonders how they can have the cheek to accuse Republicans of racism in such circumstances. �Those who live in glass houses .....� No doubt, however, liberals say that it was �only� Southern Democrats who were racist. I think therefore that I should point out that Leftists everywhere were not so long ago unashamedly racist.

One striking case in point is the immigration policy maintained by all Australian governments from 1901 to 1966. This policy was known as the �White Australia policy� and was aimed mainly at excluding Chinese immigrants from Australia. And who were always the most ardent supporters of that policy? The Australian Labor Party -- Australia's major Leftist party. It was an Australian Labor Party leader (Arthur Calwell) who became famous for his remark that, "Two Wongs don't make a white". The policy was eventually abolished by a conservative government under Harold Holt.

And are feminists conservative? Hardly. And feminists are not a new phenomenon. In the person of Margaret Sanger and others, they were very active in the USA in first half of the 20th century, advocating (for instance) abortion. And Margaret Sanger was warmly praised by none other than Hitler himself for her energetic championship of eugenics. And the American eugenicists were very racist. They shared Hitler's view that Jews were genetically inferior and opposed moves to allow into the USA Jews fleeing from Hitler (Richmond, 1998). So if Hitler's eugenics and racial theories were loathsome, it should be acknowledged that his vigorous supporters in the matter at that time were Leftists and feminists, rather than conservatives.

So Leftists racism was once ubiquitous and, going by the way Jews are treated on many American campuses today, the old prewar follies are rapidly being rediscovered by Leftists. Any Republican racism has nothing on Leftist racism.



Update: John Hudock has some additional �Quiz� items for us:

Which party voted in higher percentages for the 1964 civil rights act?
(Republicans 80% House/82% Senate vs Dems 63% House/69% Senate).

What was the party of the ex-Klansman who lead the filibuster against the 1964 Civil Rights Act? (the 'conscience of the Senate' Robert Byrd, Democrat).

What was the party of the Senator who rounded up votes to invoke cloture to end the filibuster (Everett Dirksen, Republican)

Reference:
Richmond, M. (1998) Margaret Sanger's eugenics. "Life advocate". January.

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�MERRY XMAS� FROM ISRAEL

On Christmas eve, Israeli blogger Imshin wished all her Christian readers a �Merry Christmas�. I wonder if any Muslim blogger did the same? Far too childish and insecure, I would think.

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GREAT CARTOON

Pejman has a great cartoon about the �brutal� way Americans treat their Muslim prisoners of war.

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GREENIE "CLEVERNESS"

A reader has recently directed my attention to a most amusing piece of Greenie "cleverness". In a big scaremongering blub here, the United Nations climate-change panel note as proof for their contentions that "the Arctic ice is thinning". Those in the know would all laugh about that one. The statement is of course true. BUT did you notice that word "arctic"? Why not "polar"? Because the ANTARCTIC ice is thickening! What fun! We good guys down in Australia are making up for those bad guys in the USA see!

What a lot of dishonest nonsense it all is. You can prove anything by the sort of selective use of evidence that the Greens rely on.

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AUTISM AND VACCINES

One of the latest capers of the Left is to blame drug-companies and vaccines for the rise in cases of autism that have been reported in recent years. The Lefties particularly condemn a particular preservative (Thimerosal) used in many vaccines. The fact that the same preservative has been used in vaccines for 60 years without giving cause for concern does not seem to hold the Lefties up one bit. Charles Murtaugh (post of 22nd) has a few good shots at the nonsense being written on the subject at the moment.

Blissful Knowledge has been blogging on the topic lately too.

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CHURCHILL UNDERSTOOD IT ALL

"My friends, I must tell you that a Socialist policy is abhorrent to the British ideas of freedom. Although it is now put forward in the main by people who have a good grounding in the Liberalism and Radicalism of the early part of this century, there can be no doubt that Socialism is inseparably interwoven with Totalitarianism and the abject worship of the State. It is not alone that property, in all its forms, is struck at; but that liberty, in all its forms, is challenged by the fundamental conceptions of Socialism."

Words of Winston CHURCHILL: Pre-Election radio broadcast, June 4th., 1945

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THATCHER VS. REAGAN

The Economist has always been my favourite magazine but I think that in one recent article they have got part of their story back to front. They claim that conservatism is doing much better in the USA than in Britain and that Ronald Reagan therefore had more lasting influence than did Margaret Thatcher.

I think that the real problem for the British Conservative party is that Prime Minister Tony Blair of the British Labour Party has stolen their thunder -- he has taken over most of the the Tory causes and themes. In other words, Britain�s most effective Tory is now the very popular head of a still somewhat Leftist party. In keeping with that, a British Labour party stalwart (Peter Mandelson) recently said: "We are all Thatcherites now". Can you imagine Ted Kennedy or any other prominent U.S. Democrat saying "We are all Reaganites now"? Lady Thatcher changed the whole agenda in Britain -- more than Reagan did in the USA. I must say, though, that while I admired Margaret Thatcher, I loved Ronald Reagan.

That the British are inherently less promising material for conservatives than are Americans, however, I do not doubt. For hundreds of years the more enterprising and independent Brits have been emigrating to Britain�s daughter countries in North America, Australasia and Africa. We now have much evidence (e.g. Lake et al., 2000) that personality is one of the many human traits that are genetically inherited so it is no surprise that the descendants of the Brits who remained at home in Britain should be more inclined to suck on the teat of the Welfare State.

Reference:
Lake, I.E., Eaves, L.J., Maes, H.H.M., Heath, A.C. & Martin, N.G. (2000) Further evidence against the environmental transmission of individual differences in neuroticism from a collaborative study of 45,850 twins and relatives on two continents. Behavior Genetics. 30 (3), 223-233.

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A GREAT BLOG

Wow! Robert Musil has a great blog. He really knows what he is talking about in economics and science. I don�t know why he likes the French, though.

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A GOOD STOUSH OVER GLOBAL WARMING

Wow! There has been a great stoush recently between economist John Quiggin and scientist Aaron Oakley over global warming! I declare Aaron the winner!

(Hmmm ... Is "stoush" a term used outside Australia? Literally, it means a punch-up or a fight but in this case I am referring to a vigorous controversy.)

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THE ULTIMATE TWISTED LOGIC

Leftist logic always leaves lots out but it is at least usually easy to follow -- far too simplistic if anything. But the latest Leftist idea that American Indians should not be allowed to use Indian mascots or use such Indian terms as "Braves" to refer to themselves or name their sporting teams leaves me crosseyed with the deviousness of its "logic". Apparently it is supposed to be "non-racist" and "inclusive" to ban Indians from referring to their own group names and their own past. I guess that whites who refer to themselves as "Anglo-Saxons", "Germans", "Italians" etc. will be in the firing-line next. And Americans who remember and praise the deeds of George Washington must be a bad lot too by the same logic. David Yeagley (an American Indian) has been fulminating about it for some time. He has good reason to be angry at such oppression in the name of "tolerance" (of all things!). Only George Orwell would not be surprised by it all.

So the supposedly "anti-racist" Left is now not only persecuting Jews again (particularly on U.S. College campuses) but it is now persecuting the poor old American Indians too, because they have the temerity to be proud of their warrior past! With friends like the Left, who needs enemies?

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BLACKS AND "WHITE TRASH"

People from time to time point out that what Americans rather cruelly call "white trash" show much the same low achievement levels as blacks and they take this as an indication that there is no genetic basis for black underachievement. The (unproven) claim is that whites who underachieve do so because of bad habits, customs or culture and that therefore bad habits, customs and culture also explain low levels of achievement among blacks. This has however been tested just about as carefully as can be imagined and been found not to be so: If whites and blacks are reared in the SAME family, the black disadvantage persists (Whitney, 1996).

But if the "cultural" explanation fails on the evidence the genetic explanation does not. As Richard Lynn and many others have pointed out, it has been known for nearly a century now that IQ correlates substantially with most indices of social disadvantage -- lower educational achievement, lower occupational status, lower income, smoking, crime etc. So the commonalities between blacks and poor whites can be simply explained by saying that BOTH poor whites and blacks suffer from lesser intelligence and that the lesser intelligence is the major factor leading to the lower achievement and the maladaptive customs and behaviour that people observe in both groups. Whether you are black or white, lower intelligence is a broad-ranging handicap.

So poor social habits and practices can indeed lead to low achievement but we then need to go on and ask why some people (both black and white) display such disadvantageous behaviours. And in many cases the answer will be: because of low intelligence. So in such cases unwise behaviour is simply the MEANS whereby low intelligence exerts its unfortunate effect. It is not the basic cause itself.

References:
Ray, J.J. (1972) Are all races equally intelligent? Or: When is knowledge knowledge? Journal of Human Relations, 20, 71-75.
Ray, J.J. (1985) Smoking and intelligence in Australia. Social Science & Medicine 20, 1279-1280.
Whitney, G. (1996) Professor Shockley's experiment. Mankind Quarterly, 37 (1). Reproduced here and here.

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HOW NECESSARY IS CHRISTIANITY?

Orrin Judd is one of many Americans who assert their belief that the secret of American success in material and other fields is the very strong hold that Christianity has on Americans. He feels that Christianity is needed to encourage and enforce moral and ethical behaviour and that a civil society would be impossible without the moral habits that Christianity is so good at engendering.

As it happens, the Judd blog is one of my favourites. I log on there frequently and when I do I settle myself down for a careful read of the many interesting and well-informed posts there. I think that the Judd blog is at least twice as deserving of the money that Andrew Sullivan recently raised from his readers. On the importance of Christianity, however, I am going to disagree with the Judd position across the board and I am going to do so by referring to some historical and sociological evidence from outside the United States that Americans generally seem little aware of.

But let me start out by conceding that there is indeed something there to explain. Materially, the American advantage is great. The average Englishman, Frenchman, Canadian, German or Swede has only around two thirds of the spending power of the average American. See the figures on the matter in my post of 13th. And Americans are also around half as likely to be victims of crime.

(Unlike other crimes, the American murder rate is very high but that is almost entirely a matter of blacks murdering blacks. It has little impact on the white population. See my post of 8th. Whites are much safer in America than in many other advanced countries (though nowhere nearly as safe as the Japanese in Japan). Even blacks, however, are much safer and more prosperous in America than they would be in Africa -- in impoverished hellholes of war and crime such as South Africa, Nigeria, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan, Ghana, the Congo etc.)

And I agree with Hayek (1944) that morality and trust in a society are enormously important to its prosperity, not to mention the pleasantness of everyday interpersonal relationships.

But the American advantage is much slighter than the statistics referred to so far might suggest. Countries like Britain, Australia, Canada, Germany and Sweden are still pleasant and prosperous places to live and their small degree of disadvantage to America can easily be accounted for by such simple differences as the less socialized American economy (i.e. government there does less than in other advanced economies) and the much longer prison sentences that Americans inflict for crime (See my post of November 24th).

Australia is a particularly interesting case in point. Americans generally like Australia and see it in many ways as being a version of the USA -- though minus the blacks. The more laid-back Australian lifestyle does lead to poorer standards of consumer service and the fact that there are only 20 million people to pay for a road network covering a country as large as the United States does mean that the roads are generally of a noticeably lower standard but otherwise life in Australia is generally attractive: Rather like a friendlier and less weird version of California.

Yet from its foundation in 1788, Australia has always been a traditionally unholy place with a very low rate of churchgoing. Americans trace their founding fathers to religious fanatics but Australians trace their foundations to convicts. And other major population elements in the white settlement of Australia -- such as goldrush �diggers� and Irish rebels -- did little to alter the culture originating from our convict origins. Only about 3% of modern-day Australians have convict ancestors but the early days formed a culture that has been passed on to others as they arrived -- just as only a small minority of Americans now have primarily English ancestry but English is nonethless the language of America. And Australia�s only national hero to this day is Ned Kelly -- an Irish highway robber who eventually was hanged for his undoubted crimes.

So how come Australia is a civil, prosperous and pleasant place to live? It is because Australians DO have a widely agreed-on moral code -- but it is not a Christian one. It originates from the values of the English working class of yesteryear and can perhaps be conveniently summed up (in its original Australian slang) as the following five �Commandments�:

* Thou shalt not dob in thy mates
* Thou shalt not bung on an act.
* Thou shalt not be a tall poppy
* Thou shalt give everyone a fair go
* Thou shalt be fair dinkum

Translating these into standard English yields APPROXIMATELY the following:

* You must not incriminate your friends to the boss, the police or anyone else. Loyalty to your associates is all-important.

* You must not be ostentatious or pretend to be what you are not.

* You must treat others as your equals. If you are seen as being better than others in anything but sport you will be made to suffer for it.

* You must be fair and permissive in your treatment of others.

* You must not be insincere or dishonest.

From Hammurabi onwards, most moral codes have had much in common and the Australian and Christian moral codes do also have things in common but the Australian moral code is not preached in churches. It is simply traditional and widely heartfelt.

So. Sorry to all you American churchgoers but people CAN be moral and decent without someone either putting the fear of God into them or inspiring them with the love of Christ.

Final note:
When asked at census time most Australians do put down some religion for themselves. Note, however, that in the last census we had over 5% of the population describe themselves as Methodists -- a denomination that does not exist in Australia any more. The Methodists, Presbyterians and Congregationalists combined to form the �Uniting� church a quarter of a century ago. In other words, for the vast majority of Australians, Christianity is a token thing.

References:
Hayek, F.A. (1944) The road to serfdom. London: Routledge
Ray, J.J. (1981) Is the Ned Kelly syndrome dead? Some Australian data on attitudes to shoplifting. Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 14, 249-252.


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CHRISTMAS PAST

I hope that everyone had as good a Christmas as I did. If so we should maybe spare a thought for what Christmas was like in Zimbabwe.


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THE QUEEN�S CHRISTMAS MESSAGE

I always enjoy watching the Queen�s Christmas-day message on TV. She always speaks such good sense. This year I particularly enjoyed the following passage in which she speaks of the huge celebrations of her Jubliee that took place this year in many countries of the world.

The celebrations were joyous occasions, but they also seemed to evoke something more lasting and profound - a sense of belonging and pride in country, town or community; a sense of sharing a common heritage enriched by the cultural, ethnic and religious diversity of our 21st Century society.

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POLITICAL FOLLIES OF YOUTH

Tim Blair, Bernard Slattery, Aaron Oakley and others have been reflecting lately on how they and many other well-known Australian conservatives started out on the Left and for various reasons became fed up with it and moved towards the Right. In the full knowledge that it leaves me open to the accusation that I have no �heart� I am pleased to say that I joined a conservative political party in my teens and have lived to see much of what I have always believed in (such as the folly and brutality of Communism) vindicated by time. In my case, the world has moved in my direction rather than vice versa. The 1970s were arguably the high-water-mark of Leftism but in 1974 I published a largish book in defence of conservatism!

There are many lifelong conservatives like me but few of them bother to talk about it much. Just as it often said that there is no anti-Catholic like an ex-Catholic, so it is that those who are most vocally anti-Left are usually ex-Leftists. I guess that they resent being conned and very commendably try their hardest to save others from the same fate. My motivation is that I have always seen irrationality and dishonesty as highroads to disaster.

Reference:
Ray, J.J. (1974) Conservatism as heresy. Sydney: ANZ Book Co.

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XMAS !

Merry Xmas, a happy New Year and best wishes for the holiday season to all!

Or as they say in Bella Italia: Tantissimi auguri di Buon Natale e di Buon Anno a tutti, e tanti auguri affettuosi di buone feste. (Pinched from Wog Blog). Italian is a beautiful language.

Nothing very heavy today. Just some interesting links, stories and jokes:

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CARNIVAL AGAIN

See here for the latest "Carnival of the Vanities" -- a digest of good posts from all over the blogosphere.

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TOUR OF THE DISUSED LONDON UNDERGROUND

The London Underground or "tube" is a great way to get about London and has been for a very long time. Take a relaxing look here at the parts that the public can no longer normally access.

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PIPED MUSIC

Do you hate Muzak and other forms of piped music in shopping centres etc? It only bothers me if it is loud but this site suggested by one of my correspondents could be for you if you are really anti. Apparently MOST people do not like it and those who inflict it on us do sometimes turn it off once they find that out.

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A CHINA SURVEY

After a week of silence, China hand has redeemed himself with some interesting holiday season reading about religion, politics and the economy in China today.

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IS THE CATHOLIC CHURCH DYING?

Philip Jenkins makes the point that the vast paedophilia scandals in the Roman Catholic church have harmed it badly in the Western world and compares that effect with the effect of the Reformation launched by Martin Luther.

He also points out, however that the church is gaining adherents rapidly in the poor countries of Africa and Asia so foresees the time when the RC church will be mainly a non-Western operation.

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ZOROASTRIANS, IRAN AND ISLAM

I have had three papers published in the academic journals that report psychometrically-based survey research among the Parsees (Indian Zoroastrians of originally Persian origin). As the Parsees are rarely studied by psychologists, that may make me the world's leading expert on the psychology of the Parsees. When I said therefore (in a post on this blog of 13th November) that the Zoroastrians of today are great haters of Islam, I was not entirely speaking through my hat. One of my Hindu correspondents has however written to remind us that Zoroastrians were historically not effective opponents of Islam and he also has some interesting thoughts on what the past tells us about the future prospects for Iran (Persia).

See here. He is undoubtedly right that Hindu Indians resisted Islam much more effectively than did the Persians.

References:
Ray, J.J. (1983) Ambition and dominance among the Parsees of India.
Journal of Social Psychology 119, 173-179.
Ray, J.J. (1986) The traits of immigrants: A case study of the Sydney Parsees. Journal of Comparative Family Studies 17, 127-130.
Ray, J.J. (1983) Race and climate as influences on anxiety.
Personality & Individual Differences 4, 699-701.

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FUN QUOTE

Wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. And radio operates exactly the same way. The only difference is that there is no cat.

� Albert Einstein (explaining radio)

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ODD BLOG

There is a blog called: How to learn Swedish in 1000 difficult lessons. It is written by an American living in Sweden. I guess he is no linguist.

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A NICE STORY FOR XMAS

One day, a poor boy who was selling goods from door to door to pay his way through school, found he had only one thin dime left, and he was hungry. He decided he would ask for a meal at the next house. However, he lost his nerve when a lovely young woman opened the door. Instead of a meal he asked for a drink of water.

She thought he looked hungry so brought him a large glass of milk. He drank it slowly, and then asked, "How much do I owe you?"

"You don't owe me anything," she replied. "Mother has taught us never to accept pay for a kindness."

He said..... "Then I thank you from my heart." As Howard Kelly left that house, he not only felt stronger physically, but his faith in God and man was strong also. He had been ready to give up and quit.

Years later that young woman became critically ill. The local doctors were baffled. They finally sent her to the big city, where they called in specialists to study her rare disease. Dr. Howard Kelly was called in for the consultation. When he heard the name of the town she came from, a strange light filled his eyes. Immediately he rose and went down the hall of the hospital to her room.

Dressed in his doctor's gown he went in to see her. He recognized her
at once. He went back to the consultation room determined to do his
best to save her life. From that day he gave special attention to the case.

After a long struggle, the battle was won. Dr. Kelly requested the
business office to pass the final bill to him for approval. He looked at it, then wrote something on the edge and the bill was sent to her room. She feared to open it, for she was sure it would take the rest of her life to pay for it all. Finally she looked, and something caught her attention on the side of the bill.


She read these words.....

"Paid in full with one glass of milk"

(Signed)

Dr. Howard Kelly.

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ON THE LIGHTER SIDE

Several centuries ago, the Pope decreed that all the Jews had to convert to Catholicism or leave Italy.
There was a huge outcry from the Jewish community. So the Pope offered a deal. He would have a religious debate with the leader of the Jewish community. If the Jews won, they could stay In Italy; if the Pope won, they would have to leave.
The Jewish people met and picked an aged but wise Rabbi, Moishe, to represent them in the debate. However, as Moishe spoke no Italian and the Pope spoke no Yiddish, they all agreed it would be a "silent" debate. On the chosen day, the Pope and Rabbi Moishe sat opposite each other for a full minute before the Pope raised his hand and showed three fingers. Rabbi Moishe looked back and raised one finger.
Next the Pope waved his finger around his head.
Rabbi Moishe pointed to the ground where he sat.
The Pope then brought out a communion wafer and a chalice of wine. Rabbi Moishe pulled out an apple.
With that, the Pope stood up and declared that he was beaten, that Rabbi Moishe was too clever and that the Jews could stay.
Later, the Cardinals met with the Pope, asking what had happened. The Pope said, "First, I held up three fingers to represent the Trinity. He responded by holding up one finger to remind me that there is still only one God common to both our beliefs." "Then I waved my finger to show him that God was all around us. He responded by pointing to the ground to show that God was also right here with us."
I pulled out the wine and wafer to show that God absolves us of all our sins. He pulled out an apple to remind me of the original sin." "He had me beaten, and I could not continue."
Meanwhile, the Jewish community gathered around Rabbi Moishe. "What happened?" they asked.
"Well," said Moishe, "First, he said to me that we had three days to get out of Italy. So I said to him, Up yours!"
"Then, he told me that the whole country would be cleared of Jews; and I said to him, Mr. Pope, we're staying right here."
"And then what?" asked a woman.
"Who knows?" said Moishe. "He took out his lunch, so I took out mine."

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A cowboy dressed in a cowboy shirt, hat, jeans, spurs and chaps went to a bar and ordered a drink. As he sat there sipping his whiskey, a young lady sat down next to him.

After she ordered her drink she turned to the cowboy and asked him, "Are you a real cowboy?"

To which he replied, "Well, I have spent my whole life on the ranch, herding cows, breaking horses, mending fences, I guess I am."

After a short while he asked her what she was. She replied,

"I've never been on a ranch so I'm not a cowboy, but I am a lesbian. I spend my whole day thinking about women. As soon as I get up in the morning I think of women, when I eat, shower, watch TV, everything seems to make me think of women."

A short while later she left and the cowboy ordered another drink.

A couple sat down next to him and asked, "Are you a real cowboy?"

To which he replied, "I always thought I was, but I just found out that I'm a lesbian."

More jokes here

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AIRPORT SECURITY

Several people have written in to say that I should not blame President Bush for the moronic Gestapo that he has inflicted on the American public in the name of �security�. They seem to have forgotten where the buck stops.

I do not particularly blame the low-paid front-line workers who initiate these abuses. I blame their supervisors and superiors who should know better and who should proceed immediately to an apology for the excesses of their workers. They do not. They treat innocent people as criminals. And they do it time and time and time again. And the victim never has any effective redress. It is a Police-State system and I think that there is no doubt that the President is responsible for the system

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THE RED �CROSS� AND CHRISTMAS

There has been a lot of rage in the blogosphere about the ban on Xmas paraphenalia in British Red Cross shops. Now I would never donate to the Red Cross because of their tradition of Antisemitism but I think that their explanation of this one is reasonable. See here.

By the way, even though I am an atheist, I love Xmas, Xmas carols and Xmas day. Christmas symbols certainly do not �offend� me one bit. I will probably in fact attend the 9.30am divine service at Brisbane�s marvellous St John�s Anglican Cathedral on Xmas day because I love the old hymns and other Xmas music. And the Anglicans have always known how to put on a good show: Big ecclesiastical processions with lots of shiny stuff, tastefully magnificent vestments, smells and bells, anodyne sermons, Anglican chant etc. Great stuff!

(But the Greek and Russian Orthodox churches have the best hats!)

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�GREEN� BIAS IN THE MEDIA

That most of the media are Left-leaning is pretty obvious to anyone who cares to think about it. That most of the media are also pro-Green is less obvious because not many people have easy access to the original scientific reports and statistics that disprove Greenie claims. This article shows that even minimal access to such information is sufficient to disprove the global warming nonsense we get every day from the media.

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MORE DEMOCRAT DOUBLE STANDARDS

�Do as I say, not as I do� is a motto that could have been designed expressly for Leftists. The State Library of Massachusetts describes one William Bulger as follows:

�Former President of the State Senate William Bulger's memoir contains many stories of life in the political trenches. Bulger, now President of The University of Massachusetts has been a strong force in Democratic politics since the 1960s�

Yet this stalwart of the Democrats is at the moment deliberately protecting a brother of his who is a gangster wanted for many murders. Foolish old Trent Lott just had to say a few silly words to lose his position. But Lott was a Republican. A Democrat can protect murderers and still remain an idol of his party!

But from Robespierre through Stalin to Pol Pot, murder has never bothered Leftists, of course. Isn�t it wonderful to be so �caring�? As a certain wise man once said: �By their fruits shall ye know them�.

Jeff Jacoby has more,

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�ALTERNATIVE� MEDICINE

Medpundit tells of a $250.00 jar of skin cream being promoted on the basis of pseudoscientific claims and comments:

�And $250? If that were a prescription skin cream, there would be cries of outrage. Funny that we're willing to pay more for unproven therapies than we are for proven therapies.�

Funny?? Moronic!

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RATIONALITY IN EDUCATION

For once Chris Brand seems to have the strength on his side -- the British Prime Minister, no less! See yesterday�s postings here

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ORWELLIAN "DIVERSITY"

Steve Sailer has a good point. He says that there is no overall equality or inequality between blacks and whites, only differences, and deplores the Leftist habit of denying that any differences exist:

We must finally take seriously the value of diversity. The first step is to drop the fashionable but Orwellian habit of saying "diversity" when we mean "sameness." To pretend that all groups have all the same talents to all the same degree is the antithesis of truly celebrating diversity.

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LAW REFORM

Here are some examples of how the law is so often an ass. The examples are Australian ones but I am sure that similar crazy judgments are handed down all the time in Britain and in the USA too. It is because of examples such as these that I support the recent British moves to weaken the hoary legal doctrines that have led to this sort of injustice in the past.

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NEW COLOUR SCHEME

Guess who has been playing around with his template? I think that the new colour down the side is easier on the eyes. Green and Gold are of course Australia�s national colours: Green for our vast agricultural and pastoral industries and gold because we are still a major gold-producing country. And the bit of blue sky in the corner tells you what sunny weather we usually have. Where I live in Brisbane, Queensland, we very rarely have grey skies. Queensland has long been known as �The sunshine State�. (And, as a monarchist living in a monarchy, I think that the name of my home State is a proper tribute to a great Sovereign -- Queen Victoria).

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CARNIVAL REMINDER

The �Carnival of the Vanities� is due out again this Wednesday -- at Ravenwood�s Universe -- so if you have a posting that you think deserves a re-run, email the link to Steve pronto so he does not have to work too hard on Xmas day: steve@ravnwood.com.

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THE LATEST AIRPORT HORROR

No. Not a horror perpetrated by terrorists: A horror perpetrated by the U.S. government. And it is far from an isolated incident. Conservative though I am I think it would be enough to make me vote AGAINST G.W. Bush in the next election if I were an American. The USA now has its own Gestapo and it is G.W. Bush who set it up and who lets it do what it does. American civil liberties will soon be gone altogether at this rate.

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RABBIT-PROOF FENCE

I suppose that there are still a few people around who are not aware how heavily fictionalized the recently released Australian film Rabbit-proof fence is. The film itself does assert that it tells a true story -- about a young Aboriginal girl who �escapes� from a white institution to return to her Aboriginal home.

Funny that the person whose life it was allegedly based on could not recognize her experiences in it at all! If you want the true story see here.

But perhaps the most extraordinary thing about the film is that the man who made it has himself done exactly what he portrays as evil in the film! See here.

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ANTI-RACIST DEMOCRATS

There is a great quiz about all those good old anti-racist Democrats here. It comes ultimately from a column by Thomas Oliver. Clever man!

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FRENCH �COWBOYS�

An excellent satire here about the current French military intervention in Africa.

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ANTI-GLOBOS: HEIRS OF MARX

There is a long but very thorough article in The Economist looking at the heritage of Karl Marx -- which concludes that the anti-globalization protestors of today are his direct intellectual heirs. Excerpt:

�Anti-globalism has been aptly described as a secular religion. So is Marxism: a creed complete with prophet, sacred texts and the promise of a heaven shrouded in mystery. Marx was not a scientist, as he claimed. He founded a faith. The economic and political systems he inspired are dead or dying. But his religion is a broad church, and lives on.�

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HONESTY REWARDED

The FBI agent who wrote a scathing memo on the agency's intelligence failures and women who blew the whistle on corruption at corporate giants Enron and WorldCom were on Sunday named Time magazine's Persons of the Year.

More.

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FLYING TO AFRICA

A story reported at IQ & PC yesterday suggests that terrorists may not be the only danger to aircraft at African airports.

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ABORIGINE WELFARE

The Australian government has spent BILLIONS on Aborigine welfare programs in recent years. Most of the money of course went into the pockets of white bureaucrats and social workers. I am sure that the Aborigines themselves would rather have had the money in THEIR pockets. A good way of putting an end to government racial favouritism, therefore, would be to abolish ALL the existing government agencies concerned with Aborigines and just send each Aborigine a cheque once a year for (say) $2,000 for the next 5 years.

The white bureaucrats and Leftist agitators would of course fight that tooth and nail but if the Prime Minister went on TV and appealed over their heads directly to the Aboriginal people themselves to ask THEM whether they wanted the money or not, I think the answer would be clear and the do-gooders might have to submit.

Abolishing the government agencies concerned would of course disrupt the lives of the clerical employees in them but that could be overcome by placing a moratorium of hiring into the rest of Public Service for one year so that former empoyees of the Aborigine agencies could be absorbed into other Public Service vacancies as they arose.

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KAVA KAVA

In another bit of Nanny State foolishness, the British government has banned Kava Kava on the grounds that it might damage your liver.

The Pacific Islanders would be amazed at the ban and the reasons given for it. It has been a traditional tipple there from time immemorial so one would think they would all be dead if it killed your liver.

At any event, KK could not be nearly as bad as cigarettes or alcohol: Probably a lot safer as KK just zonks you out. People will die from this decision as they turn from KK to booze. Just one alcohol-related traffic accident could kill more people than will ever die from using KK.

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RACE IS REAL: GENETICISTS

Under the influence of Leftist political correctness, a lot of biological scientists have in the past pooh-poohed the reality of race and said that all races are more or less the same genetically. It is interesting, therefore, that the latest DNA research establishes what every honest observer has known all along -- that there are different races, that they are genetically different and that the differences in the genes correspond to how people generally group the races.

Thanks to Steve Sailer for the link.

Razib at Gene Expression also blogs on the study concerned -- ending up with an hilarious sendup of how a post-modernist might explain his conclusions.

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U.S. CRIMINAL GANGS

Eternal student has some interesting observations on urban gangs (But a warning: �Eternal student� is a vegetarian liberal lawyer) in his area -- which appears to be in New Jersey. He says that his law office has seen evidence of gang activity going up sharply in recent years and that gang members are becoming more loyal to one-another. He explains that (predictably) as an outcome of �society� having failed them and compares it to Muslim attacks on our society but, all that aside, his observations impress as sound so there does seem to be something there worth investigating. It does look as if gangs are getting more savvy at avoiding the law -- which could alone account for their growing popularity. Perhaps tougher penalties for gang activity are needed.

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9/11 RACIST?

I no more agree with all the views expressed at WASP than I do with all the views expressed by �Eternal Student� but the post of 20th on �WASP� did make an interesting point that I had not thought of before -- but a point which seems obviously true in the light of much of the propaganda coming out of the Arab world: The hostility expressed by Arabs towards the USA and its allies is at least in part good old-fashioned racism. Arabs believe that they are (or were) a great people and a great civilization and that our ascendancy over them is unjust. So they attack us just as Hitler attacked the Jews and for the same reason. Hitler too, of course, thought that the Jews were in an unjustly dominant position in German society.

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ABORIGINAL MIGRATION INTO AUSTRALIA

In response to my �Black armband� post yesterday, Tim Gillin has written in giving a summary of the anthropological arguments in favour of the view that there were THREE waves of immigration by primitive peoples into Australia before the white man came. See the post of 21st here. See also an earlier communication from Tim on the same subject here.

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THE LEFT IN INDIA

I have been to India three times and very much like Indians so it was saddening to find out that the grip of the Left on the media and on academe is as tight in India as it is in Australia and the United States. See here.

And the authorities there are pandering to Muslims too.

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LEFTIST TERRORISM IN ACADEME

Yet another US college makes a laughing-stock of itself. Pity the taxpayers who are forced to pay Leftist parasites to destroy genuine scholarship and learning.

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THE CHURCH AND �THE SPECTATOR�

The Spectator has an article in its latest edition which does a good slash and burn job on the incoming Archbishop of Canterbury but fails to do a similar job on the Roman Catholic church. The author's criticism of the current Pontificate is very shallow indeed and focuses entirely on papal toleration for some pagan symbols in ceremonies that he has attended. But the church has always co-opted pagan symbols as a means of propagating its own message. Look at Xmas!

But there is a cartoon here that I love for its fabulous British silliness!

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GOOD CARTOONS

A good site for political cartoons is American Realpolitik. It is run by a couple of clergymen!

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THE GLOBAL QUIGGIN

I think Prof. Quiggin should stick to economics. First Gareth Parker and now Aaron Oakley have made him look ignorant over his global warming claims.

It is pitiful the way supporters of the global warming scare are always appealing to authority rather than looking at the evidence itself: Just like the supporters of the flat-earth theory in Galileo�s day appealing to the Pope for support.

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YOUR GOVERNMENT WILL PROTECT YOU

That is the heading of an amusing story over at IQ & PC of yesterday.

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AUSTRALIA�S �BLACK ARMBAND� CONTROVERSY

Americans might be able to understand Australia�s current �Black Armband� controversy but I doubt that many others would. I have some difficulty understanding it myself.

The controversy is about the fact that the Commonwealth of Australia (like the United States of America) is the result of conquest by the British. Unlike the USA, however, the early British settlers of Australia met only feeble and sporadic resistance from the indigenous population (Aborigines). And, for some reason that quite escapes me, many white Australians seem to take comfort from the fact that their ancestors met only feeble resistance.

Australian Leftist historians, however, do the usual disruptive thing that one expects from Leftists and try to undermine that comfort by claiming that Aboriginal resistance was in fact fierce and that the slaughter of them was great. They also claim that white Australians owe black Australians an �apology� for the suffering inflicted on their ancestors -- with �reparations� being the obvious next step after that.

Our Prime Minister has dismissed what he calls the �black armband� version of Australian history put forward by Leftists and resolutely rejects the need for an �apology�.

The Leftist version of Australian settlement has not however gone unchallenged and Keith Windschuttle, a reformed Marxist, has just published a large scholarly book called The fabrication of Aboriginal history in which he points out all the distortions in Leftist histories of the events concerned. Some of his arguments are given here

This has raised quite a storm in the Australian press with �get Windschuttle� being the agenda. Some of the criticisms are pretty desperate -- e.g. that he wrote his book �too quickly� and that he did not get it published through a conventional Left-leaning academic publisher -- but he has also been accused of �plagiarism�, even though it is only a similarity to another author that has been paraded rather than true plagiarism (i.e. outright copying). But this too is nonsense as both Windschuttle and the author he supposedly semi-copied were in fact both paraphrasing yet an earlier source and both footnoted that fact.

So why are the Leftists so frantic to get Windschuttle? An unspoken reason is that the Leftist historians are afraid of Windschuttle�s really BIG challenge to them. Windschuttle has also publicized the now generally forgotten fact that the Aborigines are NOT Australia�s original inhabitants. They too were invaders and wiped out or absorbed most of their predecessors. And pictorial evidence of that is freely available!

One of the predecessor groups was a pygmy race -- a pocket of whom survived into modern times by living in Australia�s densest rainforest. And striking early photographs of them are still available and were once widely circulated. Despite the photographs and extensive early Anthropological descriptions of them, however, Australia�s pygmies have been unmentioned in the textbooks and popular histories of Aboriginal Australia for roughly the last 30 years! And Windschuttle has broken the silence! So if THAT gets widely known, the Leftist case for apologies and reparations will get completely wiped out!

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ABUSER AS VICTIM

An Ontario priest convicted of sexually assaulting a teenager is suing the victim's parents, claiming they had a duty to protect and provide counselling for their son and were negligent in allowing him to spend time with the Roman Catholic priest.

More here



A convicted rapist has sued the hospital where he raped a patient in her bed, saying the hospital failed to protect visitors and patients.

In the lawsuit, filed Monday in Erie County Common Pleas Court, Edward Brewer said the former Providence Hospital�s "inadequate security in protecting visitors as well as their patients" caused him pain and suffering. Brewer, 47, was found guilty in October of rape and sexual battery for attacking a 44-year-old woman in June, 1998.

More here

Both these cases reflect the current Leftist obsession with victimhood and are perfectly consistent with the Leftist�s constant theme of trying to shift responsibility off the individual and on to �society�.

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THE PAIN OF FOREIGNESS

Marc Miyake wrote recently of the way he that he, as a Japanese American, feels neither Japanese nor American. He was obviously coping with it but not without some regrets. I thought therefore that I should reproduce something that an older Scottish-born woman who has spent most of her adult life in Australia wrote to me recently:

We are all indeed Scots to the core and to the end. I wrote a letter to the editor about that the other day. Some Asian immigrant had said that they did not feel that they belonged. In one sense no immigrant feels that they belong .... I also want my remains to be in Scotland�

The cases are not directly comparable as my correspondent loves Scotland whereas Marc clearly does not love Japan but it may be some reassurance to Marc to realize that there is nothing that he personally could have done to prevent the problem that he has encountered.

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DEATH PENALTY

The death penalty is available in 38 states and the federal system, yet only 66 convicted killers were executed in the United States last year.

But whatever else might be said about these numbers, they are eclipsed by a far larger and more heartbreaking number, one not mentioned in the Justice Department's report: the number of murder victims. In 2001, 15,980* Americans lost their lives to murder -- a death toll hundreds of times greater than the small body count of executed murderers.

Year after year, the number of inmates put to death by the state -- usually painlessly and after years of due process -- adds up to a minuscule fraction of the number of Americans purposely shot, beaten, strangled, knifed, poisoned, burned, drowned, hanged, and tortured to death by murderers. And yet which set of deaths elicits more public outrage, more media attention, more demands for reform, more cries to protect the innocent? Which occasions more debates, more candlelight vigils, more international protest?

If those who pour so much passion, effort, and money into wiping out the death penalty would pour themselves instead into wiping out homicide, who knows how many thousands of innocent lives they might save? But for reasons I have never been able to fathom, they would rather save the lives of the guilty.

Jeff Jacoby

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FALSE ACCUSATIONS

There are some links in yesterday�s IQ & PC about the disgraceful affair in England where local social workers falsely accused some nursery nurses of paedophilia. It took them years to clear their name because no-one would admit that local-government officials could have got it wrong!

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GLOBAL SILLINESS

Gareth Parker skewers John Quiggin very neatly here on global warming.

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A LOTT OF DOUBLE STANDARDS

Larry Elder says:

This in no way excuses the bone-headed, offensive remarks made by Lott. But let's apply the same standard to non-Republicans.

and Elder goes on to show how much Democrat racism there is. After all, both Thurmond and Lott started out as Democrats.

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BLACKS VERSUS WOMEN IN AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

One of my correspondents writes:

Monday night a Black Republican man called the Michael Savage show. He said he supported Trent Lott until he saw him on Black Entertainment TV, and Lott said he favored affirmative action.

Then the caller told his story. He had scored 99% on an exam to be a police officer (in Boston, I believe). He lost the job to a White woman with a lower score.

The largest numbers of affirmative action giveaways are to White women, simply because there are more of them. This is shameful and apparently unknown to many Blacks, who really have been duped to believe that it is all about them. Why do they think White liberals (largely women) support this nonsense - because of "caring"? Many of these same women are also obtaining special treatment under affirmative action - why would they vote conservative?

For more on the harm done by affirmative action, see this account of the long-term outcome of the famous Bakke case.

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GREENIE CLIMATE MODELLING

The bedrock of the Greenie argument for global warming is climate modelling -- in which a whole series of assumptions are fed into a computer program and out pops a prediction for the future. In a recent email Tim Gillin notes how incredibly overconfident this is and compares it to the stockmarket gurus who ran a firm called "Long Term Capital Management". The LTCM gurus convinced many important people of the wisdom of their predictions only to end up getting their predictions disastrously wrong -- much to the mortification of their investors.

Another one of these ideas that needs to be taken skeptically is climatic modelling. Computer modelling of the economy (econometrics) is interesting but hardly a predictive science. Same goes for computerised horse tipping systems. In fact people who have bet money on these systems have lost big time. Ever heard of an outfit called "Long-Term Capital Management"?

The earth's climatic system is probably as complex as the world economy or any horse race gambler's "system" ... and even less well understood. Why make a multi-trillion dollar bet on a "clima-metric" model that is probably flawed? That is what the Greenhouse lobby is asking us to do. It probably makes more sense to build up reserve funds "for a rainy day" and use that surplus to help us deal with come what may. Isn't that the case for economic growth?

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WHY SOCIALISTS HATE RICH PEOPLE

A great article by Neal Boortz here. As Peter Cuthbertson comments:

Haters of the rich exist everywhere and what Neal Boortz does is examine sympathetically the mindset of people who make bad decisions in life, most often taking the easy road, and end up working tough, boring jobs for little reward. Isn't it so much easier, he asks, for such people to blame the rich than for them to examine themselves and their choices critically? How much simpler and better for them it would be if it wasn't their own freely chosen decisions that led to their present state, but the conspiracies and exploitation of those who did better.

Please read the whole article, and bear in mind as you do the famous Economist statistic regarding American poverty - that your chance of being poor is 0.5% providing you do three things: (i) complete high school, (ii) marry and stay married and (iii) take a job, even at minimum wage. It's a figure worth remembering next time you cringe at someone saying that poverty is largely self-inflicted. For 199 out of every 200, it very nearly is.

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ANIMAL RIGHTS?

The animal rights brigade will hate this one. Even The New York Times is calling for a mass culling of America's millions of deer. The animal rights people come from all over the world to protest Australia's practice of culling some of our millions of kangaroos so I imagine this call will whip up a storm too.

Via Blissful Knowledge.

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FEMINIST DESTRUCTIVENESS

The opportunity for large-muscle movements is a "vitamin". Even prisoners are entitled to an hour in the yard. But there is ongoing curtailment in American schools of the opportunities for play involving large-muscle movements, bodily movements over space, and the conduct of lively games many of which by preference appear to be competitive.

This is both a reflection of fears of lawsuits against school boards, teachers, equipment makers, and the like, but it reflects an anti-male bias by feminizing school systems. These have clearly been configured more to female than male nature and one result is that females are decisively more successful in the system academically as well as emotionally--in colleges and universities there are some 57% females to 43% males. There is apparently a nine to one ratio of male to female victims of Ritalin and similar behavioral management drugs. Perhaps because males throughout the primates like to move around more than females, human ones in particular are being penalized for their nature. They are required to become drug users by those responsible for their welfare. Obviously such drugs are useful for some individuals. But it becomes highly suspicious when the sex ratio of prescriptions is so remarkably skewed. Is this about the students, or about the system they are in?

Lionel Tiger.

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THE GENETICS OF IQ

There were a lot of good scientific links on IQ & PC yesterday pointing to the genetic origins of intelligence.

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CANADA

I have given up posting on the large throng of Leftist Canadians but The Rottweiler is still savaging them.

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Comments? Email me: jonjayray@hotmail.com.
If there are no recent posts here, check my HomePage for a new blog address.

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FROM THE GRASSROOTS ON LOTT

One of my US correspondents writes:

The country is currently a-buzz about Trent Lott. You're probably been up to speed on all of the clamor. As a conservative I would rather he step down and in fact I never thought that he was the man for the job in the first place. He has had a history of "foot-in-mouth" disease for years.

His recent "5th apology" on Black Entertainment Television was a form of grovelling that would have made Bill Clinton (spit) blush. He offered affirmative action support and other trinkets if he could just stay in power. This flies in the face of the platform of the Republican party which recognizes those policies as nothing more than reverse discrimination.

As I said this is not the first time he stuck his foot in his mouth. In 1997 there was a B-52 bomber pilot in the U.S. Airforce; Kelly Flinn, who was brought up on charges of disobeying and order, lying and adultery. Before all of the facts were out Lott and his wife jumped on the band waggon and declared that the Air Force was wrong. Of course the charges against Flinn were from the beginning the three listed above but the press chose to ignore the more important of lying and disobeying an order. The military just can't have it's officers "doing their own thing" especially when they fly a B-52 that could be delivering a nuke.

Most recently Lott made a deal with the Dems that he would be the majority leader and leave them at their posts as chairmen of the committees. What a slap in the face of conservatives. Those people are the ones that have held up appointments of federal judges, and the tax cut for over a year. Why would someone make deals with them. It's strange to me how the Dems can play hardball when they are in the majority but when Republicans are in power they "share the power". I wish the SOB would just step down.

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REPUBLICANS = CIVIL RIGHTS

This article shows that Republicans do NOT have an inferior record to the Democrats on civil rights.

Via Innocents abroad.




In the 26 major civil rights votes after 1933, a majority of Democrats opposed civil rights legislation in over 80 percent of the votes. By contrast, the Republican majority favored civil rights in over 96 percent of the votes.
The civil rights act - Republicans favored the bill 138 to 34; Democrats supported it 152-96.

I honestly feel the Dem's are the party of segregation now. They are the ones who wish to categorize and classify us by our skin color, sexual orientation, religion, etc. They are the ones constantly trying to divide the American people into ever smaller victim groups.

From American RealPolitik




"Every day our nation was segregated was a day that America was unfaithful to our founding ideals. And the founding ideals of our nation, and in fact the founding ideals of the political party I represent, was, and remains today the equal dignity and equal rights of every American."
-- George W. Bush

Via The Fed:

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DEMOCRAT RACISM

People for the American Way has put out a report claiming that Lott's prospective rivals as majority leader also have what the group's honcho, Ralph Neas, calls a "dismal voting records" on civil rights. Among the evidence? Sens. Mitch McConnell and Don Nickles both voted for the confirmation of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. That's right, by Neas's lights you're against civil rights if you vote to put a black man on the Supreme Court.

From Best of the web of 18th.

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NUKES FOR IRAQ

Meanwhile, a Washington Post-ABC News poll finds that 60% of Americans would support nuking Iraq "if Iraq attacked U.S. forces with biological or chemical weapons." Let's hope it doesn't come to that.

From Best of the web of 18th.

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A HINDU COMMENT ON ARABS

In this quote a Hindu lady replies to an Arab comment on the fact that a Hindu Nationalist party did well in the elections for India's Gujurat State:

"If the election that has just taken place in Gujarat, where the BJP has been re-elected by a landslide, had happened in Europe or elsewhere in the West, there would be an international outcry, with demands for a boycott of the country and that something be done about it".

Thus starts the preaching of this Arab News column, which is published in Saudi Arabia, where as our readers know, there are no elections at all. I would respond to this guy's pontifications, except that I refuse to even dignify with an answer his rants and ravings. I mean, his country does not elect its leaders, is extremely oriented towards only one religion, and he is preaching to a secular, democratic country about how they should hold their elections? Pah!

Source

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FOSSIL FUEL HORRORS FOR THE GREENIES

"Fossil fuels": How often have we heard that phrase? It is the Greenies' favourite way of persuading us that we are about to run out of oil. How the Greenies must hate old Tom Gold! Astronomer/geologist Gold makes a first-class scientific case that petroleum is not of fossil origin at all and that we have only scratched the surface of what there is locked up in the earth's crust.

Read about Tom Gold here and read his account of why his work has largely been ignored by academics so far here.

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CARNIVAL

Carnival of the vanities is up again here. You need to keep ABREAST of these things!

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MORE NOXIOUS DOUBLE-STANDARDS

Palestinians might revile Israelis as oppressors and occupiers, might bleat to the international community for redress of their political grievances. But Palestinians the world over aren't hunted down like dogs. Arabs the world over aren't targeted for extermination. Muslims the world over aren't murdered in packs. Humankind would not stand for it. The Pan-Arab alliance would not stand for it. Islamic countries would not stand for it.

Imagine, if Zionist terrorists armed with shoulder-held rockets had attempted to bring down a Saudi airplane, as unidentified militants had attempted to blast an El Al flight out of the sky over Kenya, simultaneous with the Mombasa bombing � a two-pronged attack suggesting sophisticated planning and a network of operatives, with the fingerprints of Al Qaeda all over it. The reverse scenario � Jew on Muslim � would be grounds for war, for a unified assault on Israel. And the West would be hard-pressed to interdict, to mollify

Via Angela Bell.

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GIRAFFE RIGHTS

Slattery has a good post about the privacy rights of a dead giraffe. I kid you not. You couldn�t make this stuff up.

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KOREAN ANTI-AMERICANISM

The anti-Americanism that seems to be rife in SOUTH Korea these days proves once and for all that the taproot of anti-Americanism is envy. It was only by virtue of thousands of young Americans spilling their blood in the Koean war that South Korea escaped from the horror to their North. One might naively think that this would induce gratitude to America. That it does not shows that there is a stronger force at work. And only envy seems to be a sufficienmt explanation. What have Americans done to earn the dislike of South Koreans? Nothing of any significance (unless you count this). All that they have done is to be their prosperous, kindly,confident and successful selves. And envious people hate them for it: So very sad for all concerned.

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ANOTHER ONE FOR THE GREENIES?

Dihydrogen Monoxide, or DHMO, is a colorless and odorless chemical that kills or maims thousands each year, primarily through accidental inhalation. It has also been revealed to be a causative agent in many environmental exposure incidents, industrial contaminations, automobile accidents, and property damage. The dollar amount losses caused, and the lives impacted, by the DHMO threat are virtually innumerable.

Via NZ Pundit. If you don't know what DHMO is email me and I will tell you.

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PHONE CHINA

AP - China's mobile phone users, already the world's most numerous, surged past 200 million last month, according to state media.

They sure are making huge progress over there. Link.

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SCOTTISH PC

There is a good story about insane political correctness in Edinburgh, Scotland at �IQ & PC�. Apparently ANY picture of children is incitement to paedophilia there.

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ANOTHER SAD STORY

Marc Miyake saw my reference to the brief autobiography given by Bad Eagle and appears to have been rather moved by it. He gives a brief rundown of his own travails as a Japanese American and the conflicts it has caused him. His main difficulty, however, has clearly been his refusal to go along with the Leftist consensus in the colleges and universities where he seeks employment.

As a 5th generation Australian of WASP origin still living in Australia, I fortunately have none of the ethnic or cultural identity problems that he has but I can sympathize with the political problems. I was given tenure at a major Australian university on the strength of my academic work before anyone knew of my conservative views so my encounter with academe was not too bad but I suspect that Marc should consider a career change. He will get nowhere in academe. When I realized how limited my academic future was by reason of my views, I went into business part-time and did well enough out of that to retire at age 39 -- now 20 years ago.

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BAD BOY STILL

I suspect that I am seen by some as the bad boy of Australian conservative blogging -- too �extreme�! I think that I am unlikely to change, however. I have just been looking at a few things I wrote over a quarter of a century ago in my book Conservatism as heresy. Somewhat to my surprise, I find that I was pulling few punches then too. Here is an excerpt from Chapter 1 -- which is a reprint of something that originally appeared in Nation Review in 1973. I was discussing the now thoroughly laughable Zero Population Growth movement:

If any further evidence for the obsessional neuroticism of this movement were needed, it could be found in the amazing way it treats the entire world population as an undifferentiated, featureless gruel. Because the world population is expanding steadily, it is argued that we in Australia should therefore limit our numbers.

This is to regard Australian as being in the same situation as Bangladesh -- which we most evidently are not. If love of sweeping generalizations were the basis of comparison, the ZPG movement could well be compared with Hitler�s Nazism.

Sound familiar? Lots of conservatives started out as Leftists. I don�t think I have changed a bit.

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Comments? Email me: jonjayray@hotmail.com.
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