HOORAY! THE BUTCHER OF BAGHDAD IS DEAD



A great New Year present for Iraq. But no doubt the Left will now immediately make a saint of some sort out of him. They don't care about mass murder. They never have. If they could canonize the vicious "Tookie" Williams (above), and excuse mass murderers like Stalin and Mao, they can do it for anyone.

I imagine that the Left might say that Saddam was no worse than Pinochet -- ignoring the fact that Pinochet took power at the invitation of a democratically elected parliament and that he handed the country back to democratic rule when he had sorted out the mess that the Left had plunged Chile into. But differences like that will be invisible to those who will not see. Les Bates also has some cynical comments on the Leftist attitude to Saddam.

Mind you, I am not unsympathetic to the view that the recent atrocious behaviour of large numbers of Iraqis towards one-another shows that Saddam was what they deserved. Their mentality suggests that they may well have a Saddam Mark II in their future.

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ISLAMISTS ON THE RUN IN SOMALIA

Post lifted from Daniel Mandel

Since warning in this opinion piece and this blog against US passivity in the face of the gradual take-over of Somalia by the al-Qaeda-linked Supreme Council of Islamic Courts (SCIC), some provisionally good news: Ethiopian forces have moved from defending the beleaguered Interim Federal Government in Baidoa to ejecting the SCIC from the capital of Mogadishu, which it seized in June. It did this, according to Ethiopian leader, Meles Zenawi, without the US contributing "a single bullet, a single soldier, or a single military equipment to this operation."

Ethiopia has however done this in the face of EU, Arab League and Organisation of the Islamic Conference condemnation.

Additionally - and for some, this factor will be damning - Ethiopia has been criticized editorially by the New York Times. On what ground? - Because it was a "unilateral pre-emptive attack" which "seldom solves anything" and because "Ethiopia's armed forces crossed an international border". Its advice? That "the Security Council must meet urgently to find ways to replace Ethiopian troops with a neutral international force and keep the violence from spreading to other countries."

It is true that violence could indeed spread and that action is needed. However, Ethiopia's "unilateral pre-emptive attack" comes after months of remorseless SCIC aggression against Somalia's lawful government, which has welcomed Ethiopia's help. In these circumstances, coming to the aid of a lawful government under internal assault can be called several things, but unilateral or pre-emptive are not among them. For the meantime, Ethiopia certainly seems to have "solved" something - preventing the imminent demise of Somalia's lawful government. And the proposal the New York Times advises the Security Council to adopt - inserting an international force - is probably a foredoomed idea whose possibility exists at all solely because of Ethiopia's "unilateral," "pre-emptive attack" and "crossing of an international border."

One suspects that the New York Times cannot welcome a non-Muslim victory over Muslim extremists and has plucked out its proposal of a "neutral force" (i.e., mainly Muslim) to preserve what Ethiopian arms alone achieved.

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ELSEWHERE

There is a fabulous non-satirical post about hurricane Katrina by Scott Ott on Scrappleface here -- which shows that the mockery Scrappleface serves up comes from the real, old America that is constantly threatened but not so far defeated by Leftism and bureaucracy. The comments Scott Ott makes in his post about how it is local efforts that work best in recovery from floods and hurricanes were amply confirmed in Australia last year -- in the aftermath of Northeast Australia's big cyclone. See here.

Nobody (not even blacks) likes working for blacks: "Last month, Jennifer Freeman sat in a Chicago coffee bar, counting her blessings and considering her problem. She had a husband with an M.B.A. degree, two children and a job offer that would let her dig out the education degree she had stashed away during years of playdates and potty training. But she could not accept the job. After weeks of searching, Ms. Freeman, who is African-American, still could not find a nanny for her son, 5, and daughter, 3. Agency after agency told her they had no one to send to her South Side home."

Chris Brand points out that the unbelievable has happened: The New York Times has achknowledged the low average IQ of Africans. They explain it erroneously (as due to malnutrition) but acknowledging it at all is at least to raise the matter for discussion among the "caring" (self-important) classes. Even the United Nations says that poor nutrition accounts for a loss of only 5-7 IQ points and severe food shortage (which the NYT discusses) can in fact be eugenic (raise IQ slightly) -- as the Dutch famine study showed. See about half-way down here. For academics, the usual reference is: Stein Z, Susser M, Saenger G, Marolla F. Famine and Human Development. New York: Oxford University Press, 1975.

A rare apology. But Muslims are special, of course: "The Homeland Security Department sent a letter apologizing to a Muslim woman who was detained at the Tampa airport and strip searched at a county jail. Safana Jawad, 45, a Spanish citizen who was born in Iraq, was detained on April 11 because of a suspected tie to a suspicious person, authorities said. She was held for two days before being deported to England."

UK: 1,000 pound fine for failing to update ID card: "A draconian regime of fines, which would hit families at times of marriage and death, is being drawn up by ministers to enforce the Identity Card scheme. Millions of people, from struggling students to newly-wed women and bereaved relatives, will face a system of penalties, netting more than 40 million for the Treasury. People would be fined up to 1,000 pounds for failing to return a dead relative's ID card, while women who marry will have to pay at least 30 pounds for a new card if they want to use their married name, risking a 1,000 pound fine if they do not comply."

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

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason

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