IMMIGRATION

Samuel Huntington has made a strong case against policies that would increase the rate of Hispanic immigration into the US -- largely on the grounds that the "melting pot" is no longer "melting". There is however some evidence that Hispanic immigrants have in fact been assimilating steadily into American society.

Pro-immigration: America's melting pot is still bubbling... "Some 1.3 million immigrants, legal and illegal, are arriving each year. One in nine U.S. residents began life in another country; the total foreign-born population now exceeds 33 million - more immigrants than people in all of Canada." The author argues that concerns about assimilation go back a long way but all have been shown as misplaced. But the political and social environment of today is very different from that of the past so past precedents may be a poor guide today.

Anti-immigration: Peter Hitchens tells why New Labour wants to turn Britain into a multicultural nowhereland

More on the British government's underhand attempts to INCREASE the intake of unqualified immigrants here and here

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

THE ACADEMIC CESSPIT

I was not originally going to blog on the loony Leftist professor who vandalized her own car to draw attention to "hate", but I realized what a good proof of one of the two mottos at the head of this blog it is. Powerline has a good summary of the story. Note how there is NO outrage from the Left about the "lie" concerned. All their outrage about the "lies" allegedly told by GWB is thus shown for the sham it is. No wonder they keep saying there is no such thing as objective truth. Truth just does not matter to them. They don't have double standards. They have no standards. Only power matters to them. And Stalin showed where that ultimately leads.

Academics ignore the elephant in the bedroom: Sheikh Abd Al-Rahman Al-Sudayyis, the Imam of the most important mosque in Mecca, sermonized that the Jews are "the scum of the human race, the rats of the world, the violators of pacts and agreements, the murderers of the prophets, and the offspring of apes and pigs." The Imam further advised Arabs to abandon all peace initiatives with Jews and asked Allah to annihilate them. But an examination of PsycINFO, a leading online index of psychological studies, shows 458 entries on anti-Semitism since 1940, 99 of which have appeared during the past 10 years. But not a single one deals directly with hatred of Jews by Muslims or Arabs in the contemporary world.

Random Observations enjoyed my mention on 17th of the Sokal hoax and does a good job of explaining how postmodernism came about and why academics in English Departments of universities love it. Perhaps because he is an engineer however, he misses the main philosophical objection to postmodernism -- its solipsism. Because the postmodernist asserts that there is no such thing as objective reality, the only thing he can be sure of is that he himself exists. This "collapse into solipsism" has long been regarded by analytic philosophers as a decisive disproof any theory -- because it implies that the person believing such a theory can make no assertions at all.

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

ELSEWHERE

They want us all to get AIDS: "Quebec's largest school board has voted to cancel Hema Quebec's annual blood drive at its Montreal offices and will remain in effect until the blood agency changes its policy of excluding gay male donors."

Following my post on IQ yesterday, a reader alerted me to a recent study at Duke university which found that the learning ability of rats was much enhanced if their mothers were fed extra choline while they were in the womb. The inference is that human IQ could be increased by early nutritional supplementation too. Eysenck did a study about 15 years ago which showed that feeding babies and young children extra amounts of key nutrients could increase IQ by about 5 points -- not dramatic but worthwhile. So I would expect the same from this procedure. Choline is a very common component in foods that most people eat regularly, however, so the benefit might be confined to people with particularly abnormal diets.

In the Vietnam war many so-called "peace" activists really wanted their country to be defeated. Their anything-but-peaceful behaviour showed that. Mike Tremoglie points out that at least some "peace" activists today are similarly motivated. Hate is their motive, not peace.

VD Hanson and some myths of Iraq war, a year on: "It has now been almost a year since the liberation of Iraq, the fury of the antiwar rallies, and the publicized hectoring of Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky, Sean Penn, and other assorted conspiracy freaks - and we have enough evidence to lay some of their myths to rest. I just filled up and paid $2.19 a gallon. How can that be, when the war was undertaken to help us get our hands on "cheap" oil? Where is the mythical Afghan pipeline when we need it?"

Mark Steyn on terrorism in Madrid: "In his penultimate public appearance, the late Osama bin Laden, broadcasting from his cave in the early hours of the Afghan campaign, listed among his principal grievances "the tragedy of Andalusia" - that is, the end of Muslim rule in Spain in 1492. That's 512 years ago"

The wicked one has a lot of good stuff up at the moment -- including some wisdom from Charles Schultz -- creator of the "Peanuts" comic strip and Charlie Brown.

My latest recipe is for Frittata -- the ultimate Spanish omelette. See here.

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

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.

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