MY FATHERS' DAY

Sunday just past was Father's Day in Australia and I was delighted that my 19 year-old son came over in the afternoon and joined me in a drive down to Wynnum (a Brisbane seaside suburb) in the Humber. Joe (my son) has now got very high marks in all three years of his university studies (in Mathematics) so I am of course very pleased to have such an academic son. And he has never given me a moment of worry about his personal life either. There is a picture of him here with his Asian girlfriend.

We bought takeaway coffee and cakes as soon as we got to Wynnum and sat down on the grass a few feet from the sea to eat, drink and chat. We had no sooner sat down than Joe spilt his coffee. I am myself a bit clumsy so it is no mystery where he got a bit of clumsiness from. He was apologetic about the spill but I gave him half of my coffee and remarked that he would probably learn from what he did. I pointed out to him that I give him thousands of dollars every birthday and Christmas precisely so he can make mistakes on the stockmarket and learn from them. I want him to have learnt investing by the time I die and he gets my money to manage.

We talked about politics and current affairs and I pointed out to him the number of fronts on which I am doing battle at the moment. Some of the things I mentioned to him were:

On my FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC blog I am doing battle with the obesity warriors and trying to get the results of the longevity studies known -- which show that it is people of MIDDLING weight, not slim people, who live longest.

And I mentioned that on this blog I try (among other things) to demolish the great Leftist coverup about their prewar liking for Fascism and I also pointed out what a myth is the Marxist claim that Fascism was "bourgeois" by referring to a scholarly study by Fischer (1978) which shows that it was WORKING class people, not middle class people, who were over-represented in the Sturm Abteilung (S.A.; Brownshirts). See here.

I did however advise him to keep out of all politics at university as it would be bad for his career. So we in fact spent most time reading poetry together. I read him poems by Keats, Coleridge, Blake, Burns, Fitzgerald, Hopkins etc which I myself had mostly read at school but which he had never heard of. Schools these days have robbed our kids of their literary heritage but I am doing my best to see that my son is not robbed in that way.

Reference:

Fischer, C.J. (1978) The occupational background of the S.A.'s rank and file membership during the depression years , 1929 to mid-1934. In: Stachura, P. The shaping of the Nazi state. London: Croom Helm.

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EVEN AN ANTISEMITE CAN SEE THROUGH THE BIAS OF THE ISRAEL-HATING MEDIA

Comment by Tibor Machan:

My mother has always had a tinge of the anti-Semite about her, especially back when she was married to my father in the late 1930s, a man who was the epitome of the virulent Central European anti-Semite. Till the day he died, in 1970, he continued with this attitude, so much so that he alienated both his children as a result, not to mention innumerable acquaintances who knew him mainly professionally. My mother was never quite like my father in this regard but she clearly shared the widespread prejudice against Jews shown by millions throughout Europe, east and west.

We had managed during my previous visits to skirt this topic-there was no way that I could make any headway with her during a day's worth of chit chat, although in her mid 80s she is entirely lucid. This time, however, she initiated a discussion on the topic of the Jews by turning to me and saying, "You know, Richard (she calls me by my middle name), I have never liked the Jews, but recently I have begun to wonder why it is that so many people around the world begrudge them that tiny plot of land they got back in the 1940s." I was taken aback by this and my shock increased as she continued: "I have been watching television news throughout the recent upheaval (indeed, she can do little else but that and read, given that she is physically quite frail), and have noticed that nearly all the commentators, including reporters, seem to favor the Hizbullah even though they were the ones who started all of this."

By my own fragmented information, too, I came to this conclusion but having my anti-Semitic mother in agreement with me on the matter was quite a surprise. Because she seemed to me to be right. Everything I read and listened to about the conflict kept emphasizing the collateral victims in Lebanon, produced from Israeli shellings, with hardly any reminders that (a) the Hizbullah initiated the conflict and (b) the Hizbullah routinely locate themselves-their artillery and inventory of weapons-within the Lebanese civilian population so that efforts at placating them and any retaliation could not but do damage to these civilians.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

Some libertarians are hard to tell from Leftists. Note this post, which just oozes contempt for ordinary Americans, calling them "sheeple" and what not. No respect for the individual there.

France deports more illegals: "France has accelerated its deportation of illegal immigrants and is more than halfway toward its 2006 target of 25,000, the Interior Ministry says, but with a new school year approaching the government appears to have largely refrained from expelling families with school-age children.... the expulsions of Africans, Asians and East Europeans are moving forward, reaching 12,716 as of July 31, and accelerating in August, according to Franck Louvrier, spokesman for Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy. France expelled 20,000 illegal immigrants in 2005, and Sarkozy vowed to step up the pace after suburban riots last autumn in areas largely inhabited by people of foreign extraction. "We are on track for our objective of 25,000 expulsions," Louvrier said. At the same time, following protests by teachers and parents, families with children in school appear to have been spared, advocacy groups say... There are 4.9 million immigrants in France, just over 8 percent of the population"

No Virginia Moneys to Illegals: "A lot of us were saying, instead of raising taxes, why don't we start prioritizing where we're spending our existing money,' said Delegate David B. Albo, Fairfax Republican, who sponsored the bill. `One of the things we found was the state was not checking for legal presence for Medicaid,'" according to AP's Dionne Walker. Therefore, the new law goes into effect on New Year's Day. Happy New Year, Virginia. Illegals will not be able to get state-funded moneys. Illegals with no social security numbers will not be receiving Medicaid via Virginia. They also will not be handed temporary assistance for welfare-style families. They will not get aid from some other state and local offices. Virginia could pocket millions through this one new law.... "Mr. Albo could not specify how many illegal aliens might be receiving public benefits. But he said the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles rejected 187,000 applicants the first year after 2004 legislation restricted illegals from obtaining driver's licenses."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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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