GREENIE CORNER

A politically-motivated lie: "The U.S. Public Interest Research Group, a Ralph Nader organization, is charging that a March 11 Senate vote defeating a "polluters pay" Superfund amendment offered by Senators Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), Jon Corzine (D-NJ) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA) means that polluters are getting a "holiday" from their legal responsibilities." See here for the facts.

The statues of Easter Island have fascinated many for a long time now. It is now however quite clear how they got there, who put them there and why the civilization of Easter Island collapsed. Jared Diamond sums it up well. But when Diamond comes to the now well-known conclusion that the Polynesian civilization which produced the statues underwent a collapse due to their own destruction of the island's natural resources, Diamond of course moralizes that: "The parallels between Easter Island and the modern world are chillingly obvious". He says that we too could undergo a similar fate if we are not more careful of the environment. That Western man IS wiser than the Polynesians were and that we have been actively conserving our environment and setting aside natural areas for over a century and that agricultural SURPLUSES have long been the major problem for international trade go unmentioned. But Diamond WAS writing in the New York Review of Books, of course. He probably needed a Leftist slant to get his article published there.

I love it: "An ecologically-acclaimed wetland in the grounds of a school in Taiwan turned out to be the product of a leaking water pipe".

Now popcorn is bad for you: "The Environmental Protection Agency is studying the chemicals released into the air when a bag of microwave popcorn is popped or opened. Exposure to vapors from butter flavoring in microwave popcorn has been linked to a rare lung disease contracted by factory workers in Missouri, Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska."

Good to see that the most Leftist of Australia's major newspapers has just given a good summary of the case AGAINST global warming. They still do their best to defend the theory, of course, but in the end arrive at the key conclusion: "But if even scientists like Hennessy and Carter cannot agree on scientific data, how can politicians and policy-makers?" If we spent billions of dollars on every "maybe" around we would soon be back in the Stone Age. But that is what the Greenies really want, of course.

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

ELSEWHERE

There is a very sad example of "famous last words" in "The Spectator" of 13th. The leading article by Simon Jenkins refers to a recent speech by Tony Blair about the imminent dangers of terrorism. Jenkins says that the speech "was just another attempt by the Prime Minister to scare us into believing that we are all in mortal danger. We are not". Beautifully timed to appear in print at roughly the same time as the Spanish atrocity. One of my readers comments: "Simon Jenkins commits journalistic suicide". Even without the Spanish disaster proving Blair to be right, it is pretty amazing that Jenkins sees pop singer George Michael as a good authority for the claim that Blair is stupid. Just that would tend to show that it is Jenkins rather than Blair who is stupid. I have saved a copy of the article to disk in case "The Spectator" takes it down.

A Leftist member of the British parliament gets it right: "As the full horror of the Madrid atrocity unfolds, surely the time has come to unite against terrorism - the new fascism of the 21st century, wherever it takes place".

"Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, yesterday mourned the death of the "martyr" who masterminded the hijacking of a cruise ship in which a wheelchair-bound American tourist was shot dead and his body dumped overboard." Two peas in a pod.

Michael Totten tells it like it is: "If terrorists detonate a portable nuke in a Western city, what's left of the Terror War will be nasty, brutish, and short. The West's so-far limited response will instantly become total and, in effect, genocidal. Any and all WMD-producing states will be considered targets for a unilateral nuclear counterattack, starting with capital cities. The UN will not be consulted. Millions could die in a day."

J.P. Rushton again summarizes the evidence for the very low IQ of blacks in Sub-Saharan Africa. By African standards, U.S. blacks are an intellectual elite. Despite the bad start, America has been very kind to blacks.

Black author Debra Dickerson says "it's time to get over racism": "I am not saying there isn't racism-absolutely not- I'm saying ..some strategies are more effective than others. A vast amount of energy is expended trying to pinpoint who is or isn't a racist, or trying to shut down people like me, who are on the same team but maybe have a different viewpoint. Why isn't the urgency directed toward fixing actual problems? I've seen people praying outside the Supreme Court, for example, who could be in an inner-city community teaching someone how to read."

It's always difficult to unravel cause and effect in these things but there is a lagged correlation between a falling crime rate and increased use of abortion so the view that legalized abortion has caused the drop in crime is gaining ground. For different reasons, this finding is uncomfortable for both Leftists and and conservatives. The fact that welfare recipients are both big users of abortion and more likely to be enmeshed in a criminal milieu makes sense of the finding, however. A lot of potential criminals are being aborted, in short.

Mike Tremoglie quotes evidence to show that the "offence" of "driving while black" is a myth.

"The Occidental Herald is a digest of news for supporters of the culture of the West and its peoples. Twice weekly TOH presents and comments on stories from international news sources on world events and trends that are often neglected in the national and local media. TOH aims to instill a sense of informed purpose in the defense of the West to counter the prevailing, media-inspired atmosphere of anomie and gloom."

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

The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

Three more examples of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries! They also say that they oppose racism yet support "affirmative action" -- which judges people by the colour of their skin! They say that they care about "the poor" but how often do you hear them calling for the one thing that would bring about a worldwide economic boom in poor countries -- the USA and the EU abandoning their agricultural protectionism? Leftists obviously care more about conservative farmers than they do about the poor!

Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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