FREE TRADE

I am afraid this is true: "Over the past three years, President Bush has positioned himself as one of the more hostile opponents of free trade. Last week the Bush administration announced it was levying antidumping duties on shrimp imported from China and Vietnam, with more countries perhaps to be added soon. Last year, a tariff on catfish from Vietnam was enacted. These, in addition to antidumping duties on bras and wooden furniture, the now-infamous steel tariffs, and a heavy dose of agricultural subsidies, expose a President who is as openly hostile to free trade as any in modern history."

The "dumping" excuse: "Do you like shrimp but wish it cost more? Need bedroom furniture but hate getting a good deal on it? If so, you're very different from most Americans. You are, however, one of the few who can rejoice in our national trade policies. Politicians know U.S. consumers are more than happy to buy foreign goods if the quality is sufficient and the price is right. They also know explicit efforts to shut out imports are usually political fool's gold, more likely to bring defeat than victory at the polls. So how can our leaders cater to corporate executives and workers who resent competition, without looking like hidebound protectionists? Simple: They don't attack trade -- they attack 'dumping.' When it comes to trade, many Americans cherish the notion we are victims of our innocent good-heartedness. In this picture, we're always being cynically exploited by underhanded foreigners while our own companies play by the rules."

Free trade always beneficial: "Free trade intertwines international voluntary exchanges to such an extent that war is unthinkable to the participants; it is a doctrine of international peace in which the frontiers of nations are immaterial to their citizens. Any voluntary exchange benefits both participants. No fact about trade is more superficial than the particular pieces of geography concerned, so a single nation pursuing free trade unilaterally still gains."

Ten truths about trade: "Is globalization sending the best American jobs overseas? If you get your news from CNN's Lou Dobbs, the answer is 'of course' and the only real issue is how many trade restrictions should be applied to stem the bleeding. But the recent scare about 'offshoring' is just the latest twist on an inaccurate, decades-old complaint that global trade is stealing jobs and causing a 'race to the bottom' in which corporations relentlessly scour the world for the lowest wages and most squalid working conditions."

Icelandic blogger Ice & Fire takes a big interest in the Left/Right basics. One quote: "When jobs are competed for on an international scale, low-skilled manufacturing jobs often move to poorer countries, thereby decreasing the power of local unions often controlled by the Left. All other reasons for the Left to fight free trade worldwide are derived from this reason".

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ELSEWHERE

More hilarious Leftist nonsense: "It's a rarely stated truth that global terrorism is a monster of the West's own making". I guess Mohammed had nothing to do with it.

Riots! Good news for Britain. Similar riots in Australia caused "refugees" to stop coming: "Hundreds of asylum-seekers were being held in prison and police cells last night after a riot at an immigration centre. Inmates seized control of the Harmondsworth Immigration Removal Centre in west London for several hours in a protest that threw a harsh light on the handling of failed asylum-seekers."

Marxists and Islamists unite: "When the US-led coalition invaded Iraq in March 2003, few would have imagined that the move might lead to the formation of an alliance between the radical Left and hard-line Islamists in Western Europe. But this is precisely what happened. In Britain, the new Marxist-Islamist alliance is the offspring of the so-called anti-war coalition set up two years ago to prevent the liberation of Iraq. The coalition has a steering committee of 33 members. Of these, 18 come from various hard Left groups: communists, Trotskyites, Maoists, and Castroists. Three others belong to the radical wing of the Labor party. There are also eight radical Islamists. The remaining four are leftist ecologists"

Non-Advancing Blacks: "Last week, for the fourth year in a row, President Bush declined the NAACP's invitation to speak at its annual convention. Predictably, NAACP President Kweisi Mfume railed that the Bush administration failed to recognize the nation's oldest and largest civil rights group as being significant or important in any way. The sad thing is, the Bush administration's attitude toward the group is justified. The NAACP is stuck in a mind-set that worked 30 years ago but makes little sense today.

Mark Steyn has some interesting stuff up on crime in Britain -- pointing out that it is gun-controlled Britain that has high rates of crime rather than America. If you took out black-on-black crime the difference would be even more stark. I was intrepid enough to point out years ago that the percentage of blacks in a community was overwhelmingly the strongest of all predictors of crime in the USA.

That unending TV "news" bias: "With the scandal surrounding former Clinton national security adviser Sandy Berger deepening in the rest of the media, Dan Rather and his colleagues decided to ignore the story, proving once again that while any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, any sufficiently biased journalism is indistinguishable from official propaganda. .... Back when the Wilson/Plame story broke, CBS cast the disclosure in severe terms.... Now that a Democrat was accused of committing a felony, however, CBS has changed its tune.... After jumping all over the Plame disclosure story, none of CBS's news shows ran anything on the Berger story Wednesday."

A comment from a Sydney reader on multiculturalism and "diversity": "Strange that the multicultis are also anti-American. Having a McDonalds in your suburban shopping strip is a sign of cultural invasion but the half dozen or more Thai or Indian restaurants on the other corners are not. Where I live in the Eastern suburbs, the Thais outnumber the McDonalds by maybe 20 to 1 !!"

Gutless Filipinos: "How many more people will lose their lives because the Filipino government has no balls? Do you think if we kidnapped and threatened to behead a Filipino in New Zealand they might send their troops back to Iraq? There is one thing that is worse than evil and that is cowardice in the face of it. How do Filipino politicians sleep at night?"

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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Puzzle 1: Leftists always say that human nature is fundamentally good and that people can be trusted. So why do they say that whilst at the same time wanting to regulate everybody to death and take as many decisions and choices out of the hands of the individual as they possibly can? Easy: They say that about human nature because, if it is true, then THEY are good at heart and can be trusted -- and, given their destructive deeds, they need all the propaganda help they can get in that regard.

Puzzle 2: Why do "postmodern" Leftists make the strange claim that everything ever written has to be interpreted in terms of how it serves power? Easy: Because everything THEY say is directed towards getting themselves power

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