Brookes News Update

US economy, productivity and the Bush boom: Commentators are dangerously wrong about US productivity and the boom bust cycle
Islamic Clerics sanction child sex and Bahraini women's rights activist expresses outrage: Is it conceivable for a grown man to have sex with an infant girl? And you people tell me that the Islamic Sharia authorizes this
Jack Murtha betrayed America - and for what?: Democrats are playing politics with the lives of US citizens and in the most hateful way anyone has ever seen our Congress
Defending capitalism against socialist lunacy: Many socialists still peddle the absurd myth that unemployment and 'excess capacity' are created by the need for capitalists to invest to make profits rather than create jobs or meet 'social needs'
The dangerous myth of price stability: There is almost complete unanimity among economists that the most important role of the central bank is to attain price level stability. This is a dangerous fallacy
Mexicans Hire Bush Advisor to Stop US Border, Illegal Immigration Reforms: Mexican President Vincente Fox has bought the services of a Republican strategist to help stop the public outcry over rampant illegal immigration
The coming day of the blog: Political blogs are going to end up more on the activism side because bloggers care about issues.

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Sharon stuns doctors: "Israeli leader Ariel Sharon had appeared aware of his younger son at his bedside, his chief surgeon said. He also expressed astonishment at Mr Sharon's powers of recovery after a serious stroke. The 77-year-old Prime Minister, whose fate is crucial to Israel and the wider Middle East, remains in intensive care but doctors said they had been able to all but stop the drugs that had been keeping him in an artificial coma. His chief surgeon, Felix Umansky, told AFP it could take months to assess the full extent of the damage Mr Sharon has suffered. But his progress so far had defied all expectations, Mr Umansky said, amid suggestions by some of the Prime Minister's allies that he could even lead his new Kadima party at a March general election".

Support for Sharon's party soars: "Voters have swarmed towards the fledgling political party of Israeli leader Ariel Sharon, which is now set to win more seats in the new parliament than before its founder was stricken. A fresh opinion poll shows the new party, which Mr Sharon dubbed Kadima in mid-November, would pick up 44 seats in the Knesset if national elections - scheduled for March 28 - were held now. Before the veteran Prime Minister suffered his massive stroke eight days ago, Kadima had not polled higher than 40 seats, which was still enough to give it commanding majority".

Dutch must send troops: US: "Washington's former administrator in Iraq Paul Bremer has warned the Dutch they could face economic penalties in the US if they fail to send troops to Afghanistan. NATO has also turned up the heat on the Dutch, while the fate of a 200-strong provincial reconstruction team Australia wants to send to Afghanistan hangs in the balance because it is relying on the Dutch to provide security. "I assume from time to time decisions must be taken by the US Government and Congress which affect Dutch economic interests," Mr Bremer, a former ambassador to The Netherlands, told Dutch newspaper De Volksrant. "It is not difficult to imagine that decisions will be made that are not in the best interests of The Netherlands".

Another nail in the coffin for GM. Irresponsible management eventually hurts: "Honda Motor Corp. swept the top honors at the Detroit auto show on Sunday as its all-new Civic and first-ever pickup, the Ridgeline, were voted car and truck of the year by a panel of automotive writers. The result marked another setback for Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Corp., which have been losing market share to Japanese competitors in their home market and have pledged to mount a comeback in the passenger car market".

Curing Poverty or Using Poverty? ""China is lifting a million people a month out of poverty." It is just one statement in an interesting new book titled "The Undercover Economist" by Tim Harford. But it has huge implications. I haven't checked out the statistics but they sound reasonable. If so, this is something worth everyone's attention. People on the political left make a lot of noise about poverty and advocate all sorts of programs and policies to reduce it but they show incredibly little interest in how poverty has actually been reduced, whether in China or anywhere else. You can bet the rent money that the left will show little or no interest in how Chinese by the millions are rising out of poverty every year. The left showed far more interest in China back when it was run by Mao in far left fashion -- and when millions of Chinese were starving.... Since wealth is the only thing that can cure poverty, you might think that the left would be as obsessed with the creation of wealth as they are with the redistribution of wealth. But you would be wrong."

NYPD Gets 'Islamic-Culture Training': "Police in New York are getting "Islamic-culture training" to prepare them for dealing with Muslims in the city, home to 16 percent of the nation's Muslims. About 100 members of the NYPD's hostage negotiating team spent a day at a local college learning about mosques, prayer rituals, holidays and other facets of Islamic life. The instruction was designed to give negotiators tips on dealing with any hostage situation involving Muslim perpetrators, according to the New York Post. Points of Muslim etiquette covered in the training include: Don't step on prayer rugs, never display the soles of your feet; Shake a woman's hand only if she offers it, and: Remember that dogs are not allowed in most Muslim homes

America's founders did not intend for there to be a separation of God and state, as shown by the fact that all 50 states acknowledge God in their state constitutions . An actual list of quotations from each constitution is here. Somewhere along the way, the Federal Courts and the Supreme Court have misinterpreted the US Constitution. How could fifty States be wrong? One is faced with the prospect that maybe, just maybe, the ACLU and the out-of-control federal courts are wrong!

More deliberately misleading NYT reporting: The Rev. Lusk affair

There's a slightly encouraging post here about libertarianism in France.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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