THE HOLY FATHER ON ISLAM

More on the discussions at Castelgandolfo



Some more detail is coming out about recent discussions by and with the Pope on the possibility of reform within Islam. This article has links to other articles discussing the debate the Pope's comments have kicked up. In sum the earlier brief note on this blog that the Pope seems to believe reform of Islam is not impossible, but nonetheless likely to be exceedingly difficult, (in other words, "don't hold your breath") would seem to hold. Interestingly this later Chiesa report indicates that if reform is to come it is likely to be from areas such as Turkey, Indonesia or from Western Muslims. The labelling of 'so called' Western countries is also interesting, ...is this a tacit acknowledgement that parts of Europe are no longer in the West? Eurabia? Key excerpt:

"The Holy Father is well-informed enough to know that there have existed and that there exist today, probably increasingly, other interpretations of the Qur'anic evidence with regard to a theology of revelation. These considered Muslim views and approaches do not (yet?), it would seem, inform the thinking and approach of a sizable Islamic movement or organisation - and we do not know what future problems lie ahead in this regard - but it does exist and is vividly discussed in many places, both in academia and beyond.

"An open debate on these matters does not yet seem to be possible within the Arab world but Turkish and Indonesian society grant relatively more room for airing and discussing such ideas, and the so-called Western countries offer even more space".

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There are even big genetic racial differences in earwax! "It is not a subject scientists generally wax about. But a seven-page scientific paper published today is solely devoted to the genetics of earwax. Human earwax comes in two varieties -- wet and dry. According to the journal Nature Genetics, dry earwax is seen in up to 95 per cent of East Asians, but no more than 3 per cent of Europeans and Africans. The reason for the difference is a gene called ABCC11 which controls earwax-altering molecules. A 39-strong international team did the research. The role of earwax was unclear, said the scientists. "Insect trapping, self-cleaning and prevention of dryness of the external auditory canal are its plausible functions," they wrote. Armpit (axillary) odour was associated with wet-type earwax, raising the possibility that earwax might be involved in sexual attraction."

Crooked British cops: "Undercover detectives altered a surveillance log to avoid blame for the death of Jean Charles de Menezes in a bungled counter-terrorist operation, according to police watchdogs. The disclosure, in a report by the Independent Police Complaints Commission, puts fresh pressure on Sir Ian Blair, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, and his officers over the shooting.... Police sources say that the report, which is being studied by the Crown Prosecution Service, shows that a Special Branch logbook describing Mr de Menezes's last movements had been altered to hide that he had wrongly been identified as a suspect.... The IPCC team is said to have been alerted by a whistle-blower. A scientific technique for checking changes in documents showed the change that had been made. [All they are good at these days is political correctness]

Jeff Jacoby on the Hamas election win: "Western reactions to the outcome of the Palestinian election last week mostly came in two varieties: highly negative and decidedly undecided.... I think the sweeping Hamas victory is by far the best result that could have been hoped for. I say that not because Hamas is anything other than a blood-drenched terrorist group responsible for killing or maiming thousands of innocent victims, but because its lopsided win is an unambiguous reality check into the nature of Palestinian society. And if there is one thing that the West badly needs, it is more realism and less delusion about the Palestinians".

World Bank 'toadying to the corrupt': Sir Edward Clay, the outspoken former British envoy to Kenya, let rip at the World Bank yesterday for lending $120 million to President Kibaki's Government when it was embroiled in a massive corruption scandal. In a letter to Paul Wolfowitz, the President of the World Bank, Sir Edward accused the organisation of "toadying to a thoroughly corrupt administration" and said that last week's loan made a mockery of efforts to stamp out high-level looting.

William F. Buckley, Jr. on Bolivian President Morales: "Morales shapes his complaint in language similar to that which has been used by the father of the movement against socialism, Milton Friedman -- the language of free trade. Whose problem is it that many Americans use cocaine? And that they desire it intensely enough to give it a street price sufficient to support Bolivian producers at every level -- the agricultural workers, the refiners, and the exporters? The point is in part cynical, because Morales knows perfectly well that human weakness will always produce a demand for toxic substances, if they provide intense pleasures en route to devastation. But he is shrewd enough to pick up on the point of free trade -- even though it is a part of the neoliberalism he has otherwise denounced. What right does the United States government have to convert its concern for weak-minded Americans into a veto power on Bolivian agriculture?"

Interesting stories here and here about how capitalist Boeing has outsmarted the socialist European Airbus. One cost item not mentioned in Las Vegas Sun article is the various costs in deicing the A380 on the tarmac during snow and ice conditions in winter time. Although this is not a problem in warmer climes it is routine in the higher latitudes each winter and it is costly in time, materials, manpower and delays.

The horny-headed one has a great post on deceptive Leftist "statistics" about poverty. The poor are actually getting richer and the rich are getting poorer.

A little birdie tells me that the obnoxious Brian Leiter is feeling the heat of Keith Burgess-Jackson's Anti-Leiter blog. Keith seems to be feeling his oats so Leiter might be in for a long haul.

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)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.

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AN ABORIGINAL SUNDAY

This post will encourage Leftists to shriek "racist" and "Nazi" at me but they regularly shriek that at GWB and heaps of other conservatives so I am going to disregard such shrieks as devalued currency.

I grew up with Aborigines (Australian native blacks) in my class at school and I have seen plenty of them since -- particularly as a landlord (Yes. I HAVE let rooms and houses to them. Racists do that, you know) -- so I think I know a bit about them. And if you are looking for "cultural" differences, Aborigines must be as different from people of Northern European ancestry as you can get. And the reason why is that they were isolated in Australia from other populations for up to 60,000 years (on some estimates). So they evolved separately. And they evolved to suit Australia as it originally was. And the abilities they evolved -- particularly a remarkable capacity for observing and remembering minute details of the landscape -- do in some ways leave the rest of us for dead. In other ways, however, they are badly lacking in what is needed to fit into modern Western society -- a strikingly poor ability to plan ahead being their most obvious handicap. They very much "live for the day".

One thing I have always envied them is their ability to relax. They can sit around under a tree all day happily doing exactly nothing. I, however, am one of those instinctively hard-driving people who is genetically from the far North of the world. And the fact that, in my retirement, I post daily to seven blogs of my own and contribute frequently to four group blogs is, I think, some testimony to that. It is as hard for me to sit back and do nothing as it is easy for Aborigines. But yesterday I managed it. Just as Aborigines often do, I spent the whole day sitting around and doing practically nothing other than some intermittent chatting. Anne accompanied me in this experience, of course. She is probably more full of beans than I am these days, however, so she caved in first and shot off to do something at about 7pm. She spent many years as a remote-area nurse working with (and getting on with) Aborigines so knows them even better than I do. So she knew all about the model I had in mind when I said we were having an Aborigine day. She enjoyed it but she couldn't keep it up! Genetics will out.

Update:

I receive a heap of supportive emails but, although every one is greatly appreciated, I reproduce on my blogs only the tiniest fraction of such mail. I seem to be having a spasm of reproducing emails today, however. I have just added emails as updates to posts on GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH so I think I will also reproduce an email relevant to the post above:

"Your observations are -- as usual -- spot on. My wife Pam also worked as a remote area nurse (N.T., Qld., Torres Straits) and we came to like Aborigines very much".

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More scientific evidence of deep-lying racial differences: "A common genetic mutation may explain why Asian heart patients are less likely than others to get relief from chest pain when they take nitroglycerin, a new Chinese study finds. Fudan University researchers examined 111 coronary heart disease patients who were self-administering nitroglycerin under the tongue whenever they experienced an acute angina attacks. Eighty (72 percent) of the patients reported that they had pain relief within 10 minutes of taking the nitroglycerin, while the remainder of the patients experienced no pain relief. The researchers found that many of the patients who didn't respond to nitroglycerin had an inactive mutant form of the ALDH2 gene. This mutant version is called ALDH2*2. In order for nitroglycerin to be effective, a patient's body has to be able to convert the nitroglycerin into nitric oxide. This process requires ALDH2. It's estimated that 30 percent to 50 percent of the Asian population has the ALDH2*2 mutation. This information needs to be considered when doctors recommend nitroglycerin for Asian patients, the study authors said".

An interesting thought: "I finally figured out why the angry left hates President Bush. Psychiatrists call it transference. President Clinton almost destroyed the Democratic Party while he was in the White House. We all remember the wasted years, the scandals and the Republicans sweeping to power in 1994. And, if not for Bill, Al Gore would have won in 2000. So the angry left really hates Bill Clinton. But, through a process called cognitive dissonance, they can't hate one of their own, so they have transferred the hate to President Bush. But they really don't believe it, do they? [The Left are past-masters of using psychological defence-mechanisms to shield themselves from reality so use of transference is not at all unlikely]

Calls to act on Soviet crimes: "Sixteen years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Council of Europe became the first international body to consider the crimes against humanity that were committed by the communist regimes of the Soviet Union and other states. In a debate that relit the clash between Russia and Western European countries, the 43-nation council considered a report by a Swedish parliamentarian that also called on former communist states to teach the truth about their former regimes, erect memorials to the victims and create days of remembrance. A resolution, adopted by a simple majority, referred to "individual and collective assassinations, death in concentration camps, starvation, deportation, torture, slave labour and other forms of mass physical terror."

Tibor Machan: Limiting outsourcing is wrong and harmful : "If my kid has been mowing your lawn for $5 an hour and he has gotten used to this, when some other kid offers to mow it for $3 an hour, my kid will be upset. He will have been outbid! The alternative of putting the competitor and the customer in chains isn't acceptable. It's flat out morally wrong. The only thing my own kid can do is either find some other job where he can make his $5 an hour or lower his price and keep the job at $3 an hour or less. Now if I had given the mowing job to my child and got a better offer and took it, I could be faulted for my insensitivity as a parent. But most of us aren't related to those who work at the Big Three, so we do not owe them special considerations that trump commerce."

The Rising Cost of Complying with the Federal Income Tax: "In 2005, taxpayers will pay roughly $1.2 trillion in federal income taxes. But America's tax burden is more than just the amount of tax paid. It also includes the cost of complying with federal taxes, including tax planning, paperwork and other hassles caused by tax complexity.... In 2005 individuals, businesses and nonprofits will spend an estimated 6 billion hours complying with the federal income tax code, with an estimated compliance cost of over $265.1 billion. This amounts to imposing a 22-cent tax compliance surcharge for every dollar the income tax system collects. Projections show that by 2015 the compliance cost will grow to $482.7 billion".

There is a satirical article here called: "Sexual orientation is flexible, right?"

Mike Pechar has a great post on how the "caring" Leftists of San Francisco are doing their best to dump the "homeless" onto other cities. Leftist piety does not last long when it affects Leftist wallets.

I have just put up on Australian Politics the latest salvo in Australia's history wars -- where Australia's lying Leftist historians are being exposed for what they are. Warning: The site is not quite office-safe at the moment.

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)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.

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DON'T GO WOBBLY ON IRAN

(Excerpt from Jeff Jacoby)

"It is not on the table. It is not on the agenda. I happen to think it is inconceivable." That was British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw in September, telling the BBC what he thinks about the use of military force to prevent Iran's homicidal theocrats from acquiring nuclear weapons... Fortunately, not everyone is off in Cloud Cuckoo Land when it comes to dealing with Tehran. The acting prime minister of Israel, Ehud Olmert, put his government's position bluntly: "Under no circumstances, and at no point," he said on Jan. 17, "can Israel allow anyone with these kinds of malicious designs against us [to] have control of weapons of destruction that can threaten our existence." As the Jewish state has good reason to know, dictators who publicly vow to commit mass murder generally mean what they say -- and are generally not deterred by threats of "diplomatic solutions."

Israel is widely assumed to be at work on plans to destroy Iran's nuclear program. Iranian rulers have repeatedly declared their intention to wipe Israel off the map, and Vice President Dick Cheney said publicly more than a year ago that Israel "might well decide to act first" and attack Iran's nuclear facilities in its own self-defense. But it isn't clear that Israel could pull off such an operation, which would be far more complex than its strike on Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981. Unlike Osirak, which was a stand-alone facility, Iran's nuclear facilities are dispersed among dozens of sites. Many are hidden underground. "To attack them all with cruise missiles and fighter-bombers," notes The Economist, "would require an extended campaign and hundreds of sorties. Corridors would have to be cleared through Iran's air defenses and the Iranian air force destroyed." Israel could not hope to carry off such a sustained military effort against targets a thousand miles away. Which is why, if Iran's nuclear program is to be demolished by force, it will have to be done by the United States....

The Bush administration -- and, increasingly, leading Democrats -- have been speaking out with growing urgency about preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear threat. What is not stressed enough is that Iran is not just a potential menace -- it is a clear and present danger right now. The radical Islamists in Tehran bankroll the world's deadliest terrorists. They foment violence in Iraq. They lied for 18 years about their nuclear activities. They persecute democratic activists and oppress women. They declare that their goals are "a world without Zionism or America" and "the destruction of Anglo-Saxon civilization." It was they who began the war we are in -- the global conflict between Islamofascism and the West -- with their seizure of the US embassy in 1979. Fanatic, apocalyptic, totalitarian, the mullahs who rule Iran see their destiny as waging jihad and extending theocracy across the entire Middle East. Under no circumstances can such enemies be permitted to acquire nuclear weapons -- or to doubt that we will do what we must to make sure that they don't.

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The irresponsible suits running Ford and GM might even lose dominance in that great American sport of auto racing: 'It was not a little jarring several years ago when NASCAR fans began arriving at racetracks in Toyota Tundra trucks and other vehicles built by foreign manufacturers. Now, Japanese automaker Toyota is preparing to leave the parking lot and drive into that bastion of American auto racing and culture -- NASCAR's Nextel Cup series. Not since the mid-1950s, when British-made Jaguars ran a handful of races in NASCAR's top series, has a foreign make competed in the Cup. From that time until 2000, when NASCAR allowed a Toyota-powered car in the now-defunct Goody's Dash Series, even the suggestion that a car or engine built by the Japanese, the Germans or any other non-Americans could eventually race in NASCAR kindled everything from heated debate to physical confrontation among the parochial and rabid fans of stock-car racing. Once Toyota ratcheted up to the Craftsman Truck Series in 2004, though, it became clear the next step was stock cars. It was announced earlier this week that a NASCAR edition of the Camry, the best-selling car in the United States in seven of the past eight years, will begin racing in 2007 in both of NASCAR's top stock-car series, the Cup and Busch".

Guess who favours voting rights for felons: "Democratic lawmakers, who have long pushed to restore voting rights to Maryland felons, say racial politics and election-year considerations make this the year they open the polls to every ex-convict. 'This law seriously disenfranchises a large number of African-Americans,' said Delegate Salima Siler Marriott, a black Baltimore Democrat who is gathering sponsors for a voting-rights restoration bill she plans to submit. 'Their disenfranchisement impacts the power of African-Americans in this state,' said Mrs. Marriott, whose bill would give all felons the vote immediately upon release from prison."

MA: Romney may veto religious funds bill: "Governor Mitt Romney signaled yesterday that he is likely to oppose a bill requiring religious institutions to disclose their finances, creating a major hurdle for advocates of the legislation who must gain a veto-proof vote in the House to guarantee that it becomes law. The governor's comment caught supporters of the bill off guard, particularly since Romney had appeared to support the measure last August. Romney's comment also comes as supporters engage in a fierce political struggle on Beacon Hill over the legislation with the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston and other religious denominations. Opponents say the measure violates religious freedoms and puts undue financial burdens on churches, particularly smaller denominations. Meeting with reporters in his office yesterday, Romney said the bill appears to be 'far more intrusive' than 'routine, regulatory interaction' and would place 'substantial burdens on religious organizations.'"

The Left still love traitors to America: "You would think, by now, with a half-century of scholarship behind us and a great deal of damning evidence on display, we would not have to be arguing about the guilt or innocence of various iconic figures of the late 1940s and 1950s: Alger Hiss, Harry Dexter White or, perhaps most notoriously, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. But the martyr status of such figures seems irresistible, even today, to a certain kind of sentimental leftist. They still remain symbols of some malevolent American quality--never mind the truth of what they actually did.... In his memoirs Nikita Khrushchev noted that the Rosenbergs "vastly aided production of our A-bomb." Joyce Milton and Ronald Radosh wrote a damning account of their activities in "The Rosenberg File" (1983). And the Rosenbergs' guilt was corroborated by the 1995 declassification of the Venona documents, thousands of decrypted KGB cables intercepted by the National Security Agency in the 1940s. The notion that anyone would today deny their fundamental complicity in Soviet subversion is extraordinary, almost comically so"

Italian restaurant supports the troops: "Tremoglie approached Finocchiaro about sending some of his pasta and sauce to Marine Corps Sgt. Brandon Rogers, and Finocchiaro was happy to oblige. According to Tremoglie, who has since sent two shipments of four pounds of pasta along with sauce, dried mushrooms and cookies, Finocchiario refused payment both times with a simple statement: "It's my honor to do it." Finocchiaro said the e-mails he received from Rogers showing his unit enjoying the pasta were the only payment he could ever want. "It was a touching moment to see them cooking on a stove in the middle of nowhere. Just to see the e-mail, that was a huge payback for us," Finocchiaro said. "I'm sure that they have some good food over there, but that was a moment that makes them feel like they're home."

An amusing screech here from an over-optimistic user of blogger.com. I feel no sympathy for him/her whatever. I myself put NOTHING online until I have saved it to disk.

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)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.

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I GET RESULTS -- SORT OF

My goodness! My derisive comments about the vituperative Leftist "Tryworks" site have had a most unexpected result. I actually stimulated them to temporary politeness! What I said must have really hit home. I reproduce here an email I recently received from their "John Moredock" (a.k.a. Ward Churchill?). I reproduce it as an out-of-character curiosity, not because I accept any of the assertions in it. Being polite was obviously painful for them, however, as they shortly thereafter reproduced the missive concerned on their own site, accompanied by their usual vitriol.

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ELSEWHERE

Stupid Wal-Mart enviers defeated: "Eighteen months after the Chicago City Council torpedoed a South Side Wal-Mart, 24,500 Chicagoans applied for 325 jobs at a Wal-Mart opening Friday in south suburban Evergreen Park, one block outside the city limits. The new Wal-Mart at 2500 W. 95th is one block west of Western Avenue, the city boundary. Of 25,000 job applicants, all but 500 listed Chicago addresses, said John Bisio, regional manager of public affairs for Wal-Mart.... The Chicago alderman who tried to bring a Wal-Mart to the Chatham neighborhood was left gnashing his teeth. "I always tell people I'm not for Wal-Mart, but I am for that project coming into the city and to my ward. We can't beat them," said Ald. Howard Brookins Jr. (21st). "The same things they talk about Wal-Mart doing to Small Town U.S.A when they build on the outskirts of town is the same thing they have done to the City of Chicago without fanfare. Nobody distinguishes that if I cross Western Avenue at 95th Street, I am no longer in Chicago. For all practical purposes, Wal-Mart is in the city of Chicago without us receiving any benefit. You're going to see the parking lot filled with cars with Chicago city stickers." Eighteen months ago, Brookins negotiated with Wal-Mart for a store at 83rd and Stewart, former site of the Ryerson steel plant. His plan fell apart when other South Side aldermen failed to support his request for a zoning change."



Cuban coverup: "Czech supermodel Helena Houdova took a break from the catwalk to visit communist Cuba and was arrested for taking photographs in a slum. The former Miss Czech Republic 1999 runs a foundation in New York that supports disadvantaged children and wanted to see what she could do to help in Cuba. But on Monday, Cuban security police detained Houdova and her companion, Czech psychologist Mariana Kroftova, while they were taking photographs in the poor Havana area of Arroyo Naranjo. They were released 11 hours later after signing a let ter saying they would not engage in "counter-revolutionary" activities. "We were afraid," Houdova said. "We grew up under communism and know what it is like."

What does it mean to be a (Canadian) conservative? "In yesterday's Canadian election, the new Conservative Party swept into power for the first time since 1993. Paul Martin and the Liberals, it turns out, were unsuccessful in their campaign to demonize -- yet again -- Canadian conservatives. But what does it mean to be a Canadian conservative? Is it the same as being an American conservative? Do the same markers apply, such as one's stance on abortion or gay marriage, lower taxes, free trade and smaller government, a strong military and vigilant national defense? To a certain extent, yes.... But the problem with defining Canadian conservatism exclusively in the above terms is that it overlooks the fundamental issue plaguing Canada since the 1960s: the separation movement in the French-speaking province of Quebec. The traditional liberal response to Quebec separatism was a call for greater centralization of power. There is no better example of this than the fetishism of socialized medicine. More than a mere health care system, socialized medicine acts as a symbol of Canadian unity and food for identity-starved Canadians. Policy choices-socialized medicine or not-soon morph into the "Canadian values" espoused by the Liberal Party-to be contrasted with the "American" values of their political opponents, the Conservatives.... But Conservatives see this as a big mistake. Instead, the reason for Quebec's continued disaffection is federal meddling in its affairs, a sentiment shared to a lesser extent by other provinces, such as Alberta. The Conservative response is a policy of "open federalism."

The latest statistics on race in Britain: "The number of people in ethnic-minority groups is growing significantly as the white British population continues to decrease, government figures show. England's non-white population rose by more than half a million between 2001 and 2003 to 7.1 million, with the Chinese community growing at the fastest rate. Over the same period the white British population fell by 100,300 to 42.8 million, according to a report by the Office for National Statistics. The figures suggest an overall decline in ethnic segregation as non-white groups move into almost every area of the country. London continues to have the greatest concentration of non-white British ethnic groups, with 40.7 per cent of the capital's population in 2003 belonging to a non-white British group. But faster growth of the non-white British population in all areas outside London means that its share of the non-white population has fallen from 44.7 per cent to 42.5per cent.

England no longer a green and pleasant land: "Muggings and violent attacks on people soared by more than 10 per cent in the third quarter of last year as the police struggled to contain street crime, according to figures published yesterday. Street robbery is rising at its fastest since Tony Blair demanded action three years ago by the Home Office and police to tackle the issue. The increase in violent crime came as rising numbers of people expressed concern at the extent of antisocial behaviour, including public drunkenness and drug dealing in their neighbourhoods. Homicides of people under 16 rose by a quarter in the year to the end of September 2005". [No mention of the race or religion of the criminals, of course

WMDs moved to Syria: "The man who served as the no. 2 official in Saddam Hussein's air force says Iraq moved weapons of mass destruction into Syria before the war by loading the weapons into civilian aircraft in which the passenger seats were removed. The Iraqi general, Georges Sada, makes the charges in a new book, "Saddam's Secrets," released this week. He detailed the transfers in an interview yesterday with The New York Sun. "There are weapons of mass destruction gone out from Iraq to Syria, and they must be found and returned to safe hands," Mr. Sada said. "I am confident they were taken over." Mr. Sada's comments come just more than a month after Israel's top general during Operation Iraqi Freedom, Moshe Yaalon, told the Sun that Saddam "transferred the chemical agents from Iraq to Syria."

"Closing a loophole": Washington-speak for squelching a bit of freedom overlooked by the regulators : "Outgoing Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan is opposing a regulatory loophole that allows corporations to own banks, according to a media report Thursday.Greenspan's opposition, contained in a 12-page letter to Congress, thrusts him into the controversy over an attempt by Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to use the loophole to establish a bank in Utah... Wal-Mart officials have said they don't plan to establish bank branches, but would use the Utah bank as a back-office processing center, handling debit-card, credit-card and electronic check-transfer payments by customers at its stores, according to The Journal. Wal-Mart estimates it could save money by bringing that work in-house, according to The Journal".

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)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.

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Brookes News Update

Paul Krugman's economic shortcomings: Krugman spends his time at the 'New York Times' spewing anti-Republican bile and hatred while simultaneously spinning fantastic conspiracy theories reaching back 40 years. Methinks it's straitjacket time
The Australian dollar: anti-marketeer attacks deregulation - and gets it wrong: One shouldn't be too hard on Mr Feil considering that our so-called free marketeers are no better. If they are not prepared to recognise the significance of money supply why should anti-marketeers like Feil act differently?
Lefty journalist trashes Wal-Mart and slimes President Bush: Gawenda is reason enough to despise the media. As Washington correspondent for The Age this leftwing hack can always be counted on to paint a grim picture of America
Bracks' religious tolerance laws: Bracks' anti-free speech laws that favour Muslim bigots are coming under increasing pressure as more people realise the oppressive nature of these laws and their spiteful anti-Christian character
A Rupert Murdoch journalist smears President Bush's America: The smear-mongering David Nason just cannot contain himself. Overflowing with self-righteousness he maliciously portrayed a Republican judge as an out-and-out racist, As if he were a metaphor for Bush's America
Leftwing film reviewer drools over Clooney's anti-McCarthy agitprop: Tom Ryan, film and television critic for the Sunday Age Preview, is an example of that breed of lefty who just cannot conceal his political bigotry. Hence his sneers about terrorism and his support for Clooney's lying Goodnight, and Good Luck
Alito hearings bring out the worst in the pro-abortion crowd: It is high time that NARAL, the ACLU, and Planned Parenthood stop their lobbying campaigns for the Supreme Court. They are not concerned with the integrity of the Constitution

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ELSEWHERE

Several people have emailed me to suggest that the poisonous Leftist site, "Tryworks" (should that be "Tryhard"?) is in fact all written by the contemptible Ward Churchill himself under various pseudonyms. That a hate-filled Ward Churchill should write a hate-filled blog certainly sounds reasonable so if anyone is up-to-date with textual analysis techniques that could be an interesting line of enquiry. My own interest in Churchill is minimal, however. Jim Paine, John Rubery and the American Indian Movement do a pretty good job of keeping him pinned down.

An unusually sensible archbishop: "Tony Blair's Government was condemned yesterday by the Archbishop of York for passing too much legislation and risking debasement of the law as a result. The Most Rev John Sentamu, speaking after being sworn in to the House of Lords, made clear that he would be an active member of the Upper House... The Archbishop said: "What I feel very strongly about is when you make a lot of laws all the time, one has to be extremely careful they are not made in haste." He called for a study on exactly how many laws had been passed since Labour was elected in 1997. "I think there have been too many," he said. "The more laws you pass, the greater the insecurity you create in society." Dr Sentamu, who fled Uganda, his country of birth, and came to Britain when it became clear that his life was at risk from Amin's Government, continued: "Laws are good because they show us how we need to be governed. But the more laws you have got, the more the law becomes debased."

Revival for Germany? "Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany, yesterday promised a free-market revolution in Europe's biggest and most troubled economy, dismantling the mass of regulations that have been built up over recent decades. She said that Germany must follow the economic policies of Britain... Using language almost identical to that used by Margaret Thatcher when she was the British Prime Minister, the centre-right leader mapped out a U-turn in her country's treasured social model, repeatedly emphasising that Germans must stop fearing the world, embrace freedom and learn to take responsibility for their own lives instead of looking to the State. She said that rules introduced by previous governments to protect workers were strangling initiative, and had led to "terrifyingly high unemployment". She declared that there would be a new type of "social market economy"."

Evil bureaucrats: ""On January 9th, 15 Cuban rafters plucked a few days earlier from the decrepit and unused Flagler Bridge in the Florida Keys were repatriated to their communist gulag homeland. The reason given by the US Government was that these migrants never achieved 'dry foot' status under the Wet Foot-Dry Foot policy. This decision was based on the fact that the bridge was no longer in use and did not connect to dry land, so it was considered 'wet.' This is just one more example of the bureaucratically sick twist of semantics going on In Washington DC. Wet Foot-Dry Foot is a presidential decree signed by former President Bill Clinton"

Another attack on the "Dark Ages" myth: "Only in Europe did alchemy develop into chemistry and astrology into astronomy, with thinkers moving beyond mere technology into true research. Stark rejects the century-old scenario of Max Weber that Protestantism undergirded capitalism. Stark maintains that the main elements were invented by Catholic monks and lay Italians, centuries before the Reformation. He also thinks it's high time to eradicate "an incredible lie that long disfigured our knowledge of history": the claim that between the fall of ancient Rome and the secular Renaissance and Enlightenment, Europe suffered through so-called Dark Ages of "ignorance, superstition and misery." That's a "hoax," he says, that was invented by 18th-century intellectuals who hated religion and especially Roman Catholicism. In reality, he says, the centuries before Protestantism and modern secularism saw huge progress in technology, education and human betterment".

Slovakia's pension reforms: "Politicians in Europe and America who remain in denial about the huge black holes at the heart of their state pension systems should take a look at the remarkable reforms pushed through by Slovakia. That tiny Eastern European country, already famed for its flat tax, launched its pension reform on 1 January last year. Under Prime Minister Mikulas Dzurinda's new -system, Slovakia's 2.2m workers were given a choice: they could either remain fully reliant on the pay-as-you-go pension system or take a part of their social security contributions and invest it in personal retirement accounts managed by a number of different investment funds."

Thought of the day from Les Bates: "For all of the publically communistic posturings and moanings, John Lennon and Yoko Ono chose as their place of residence the most capitalist city in the most capitalist nation on Earth".

I have just put up on SOCIALIZED MEDICINE no less than THREE articles looking at the causes and effects of the recent Maryland attack on Wal-Mart over its health insurance policies.

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)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.

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AUSTRALIA DAY TODAY

Australia day is a national holiday. It commemorates the arrival in Australia of the first white settlers on 26 Jan., 1788. So I guess it is terribly politically incorrect these days. There is minimal criticism of it, however. My many relatives on my mother's side have for many years been celebrating it with a get-together over a BBQ. It is normally the one time of the year that we see one-another so it is nice to have that opportunity to keep in touch. There are usually about 20 of us. The children who were brought along by their parents many years ago still come -- now bringing their own children with them. And that of course is a great delight to us all.

My Burns Night last night was a great (if lowkey) success. The cockaleekie soup, haggis, tatties, neeps and clootie dumpling were all first class. Pipe music was played, the haggis was properly addressed and favourite Burns poems were read. We were all a bit too old to hit the Scotch whisky too heavily, though.

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LOL. My passing mention of a certain poisonous Leftist site yesterday produced the predictable vituperative response. Pure abuse. Nothing to reply to there at all. But I think we can safely take it that their admission "And, Yes, It Is Hatred That Warms Our Heart" is a sincere one. I discuss the central role of hate in Leftist psychology at some length here.

Interesting thought from a reader: "Do you think some Dems and Libs are upset with Bush because they know he is doing what Clinton should have done? Clinton could have gone down as one of the greatest had he toppled the Taliban and Al Qaeda, but he is in danger of being forgotten, stuck between the Cold War and the War on Terror. IMO he screwed Gore (thank GOD). If he had attacked the Taliban, I think Gore would have walked in the Oval office. That event would have dispelled the notion that the Dems are weak on security. But Clinton's lack of action added to that notion. I think a small bit of what we are seeing is the Dems angry at what could have been".

Kay S. Hymowitz argues that America really is becoming two countries, one rich and one poor-but it's not because of any economic or racial injustice. It's because children born and raised in married, two-parent families are on average much more likely to succeed than children brought up by divorced or never-married mothers. Cultural renewal, not social services, is what's needed to promote prosperity for all-the American version of equality.

See here some details of discussions with the Pope on the difficulties of reconciling Islam and democracy. Two reports are available discussing the Pope's views on the issue. One view is seen as pessimistic and another optimistic. The pessimistic view is that reconciliation is nearly impossible and would require changes in Islam never seen before. The optimistic view is essentially the same.

Did the socialist and pro-Mussolini FDR save capitalism? You don't need to make any kind of fancy free market economic argument to disprove this nonsensical Leftist claim. David T. Beito uses simple historical reasoning, the calendar and a quick look at the election returns to torpedo this myth.

Prince of Wales helps to enhance Wal-Mart's image: "The world's biggest retail corporation, which is under fire from environmentalists, trade unions and community leaders, has enlisted an unlikely champion to try to improve its image. Lee Scott, the chief executive of Wal-Mart, which owns Asda, the second-biggest retailer in Britain, had a two-hour meeting with the Prince of Wales at Clarence House".

Iraq war not a big burden on the huge American economy: "Critics of the war in Iraq often complain about the "escalating cost of the war." Listening to them, you'd never know that the war is one of the least expensive in American history. Robert Whaples, professor of economics at Wake Forest University, has measured the cost of each major American war up through the first Gulf War. We took these costs and compared them to the cost of the Iraq war and found that the Iraq experience has consumed a smaller percentage of GDP (just 2 percent of one year's wealth creation) than every other American war except the first Gulf War (which measured just 1 percent of GDP).

I like it!: "Activists who want U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter to pay a personal price for ruling New London, Conn., could seize private property for a development project rallied Sunday in Souter's small hometown, arguing the town should take Souter's home to build a hotel.... He said the five Supreme Court justices who sided with the Connecticut city on the eminent domain controversy "shot a hole in the Constitution." He said opponents should organize nationwide and vote officials out of office if they push similar projects. Doug Schwartz, of New London, Conn., urged the crowd on. He said eminent domain problems have plagued the city for decades. Clements said he and volunteers gathered 188 signatures Saturday in support of having the town take Souter's home so the property could be turned into a hotel -- the "Hotel Lost Liberty"."

Why am I not weeping? "A civil-registered Dassault Falcon 20E VIP business jet operated by the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force (IRIAF) crashed on 9 January killing the crew and much of the senior leadership of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Ground Forces"

Marc Morano, the journalist who blew the whistle on the fake "war hero" status of John Murtha, has got a lot of flak over his story. He has however had a chance to defend himself on CNN. Transcript here

Mike Jericho has a BIG post on bias at the BBC. I won't even try to excerpt it but it mainly concerns their pro-Muslim stance. Mike has obviously put a lot of work into it so I think it is worth a read.

The latest issue of Ovi Magazine is out with lots to browse through.

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)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.

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BURNS NIGHT!

I don't feel much in the mood for pointing out Leftist distortions and deceptions today so I will talk about more personal things. I might however note in passing that there is a particularly poisonous Leftist site here that seems to be enamoured of the egregious Prof. Ward Churchill. They seem impressed that Churchill is popular with his students. The fact that con-men are usually popular is not mentioned. There is a systematic dismantling of some of their deceptions about Churchill here

With that aside, I am going to say a few words about what I did on Monday. Monday was Anne's birthday and preparations also had to be made for Burns night on Wednesday (TODAY!) so I was busier than usual. At 9am I set out to track down and capture a haggis for Wednesday dinner. And it was in fact more of an expedition than I had expected. Being a lazy sod, I don't make my own haggis but get it off a very talented man who is both a master butcher and a brilliant pastrycook. Visiting his shop is always a great pleasure. His website is here. I usually get to his shop by taking an exit off the freeway that leads straight to the shop but on Monday I discovered that the bureaucrats who know better what is good for us than we do ourselves had closed that exit off. So I spent half a nerve-frazzling hour trying to find an alternative route to the shop. I eventually succeeded more from luck than good management. And, Yes, I DID stop and ask for directions at a nearby service station but the young girl on duty there did not have a clue, not too surprisingly.

Anyway, I did finally get my haggis plus some clootie dumpling for dessert. I am marking the birthday of the poet in a very low-key way this year. No speeches etc. There will be just four of us at my place to share some haggis and probably read some of the poems. For those unfortunate souls who have never been to a proper Burns night, you can at least read about it here. My own previous post on it is here.

Anyway, on Monday night I took Anne to the Hilton for the smorgasbord. The Hilton smorgasbord is probably the dearest in town but the food is probably also the best -- including a big bucket of the incomparable Sydney rock-oysters in prime condition. I had bought Anne some white slacks (of a very un-slack kind) plus an embroidered white top for the occasion and she got into high heels for what she said was the first time in 40 years so she looked pretty good to me. For some inscrutable reason she seemed to think that I looked good in a blue shirt and grey slacks but there is no accounting for taste. Anyway, we people in our 60s can still have a lot of fun, surprising though that news might be to much younger people.

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Tory win in Canada: "Stephen Harper and his Conservative Party won national elections Monday and ended 13 years of Liberal rule, a victory expected to move Canada rightward on social and economic issues and lead to improved ties with the United States. The Conservatives' winning margin was too narrow to avoid ruling with a minority government, a situation that will make it difficult to get legislation through a divided House of Commons... With nearly all votes counted in the race for the 308-seat House, officials results showed Conservatives with 123 seats; Liberals with 103; Bloc Quebecois with 50, New Democratic Party with 28; and one seat to an Independent. Three seats still haven't been determined. Prime Minister Paul Martin conceded defeat and said he would step down as head of the party"

Amusing: My post yesterday about the hate-filled Canadian John Chuckman seems to have got under the chuckful one's skin. I got a speedy email rejoinder from him. I cannot find the rejoinder online at the moment so I reproduce it in full here (together with a few more comments from me) for the entertainment of all.

Israel has Leftist loonies that are arguably the looniest of all. They abuse and call "Nazis" the very Israeli soldiers who protect them from extermination by the Arabs. What would Leftists do without the word "Nazi" to abuse people with?

Blair tries to cut one of Britain's biggest rackets: "Ministers will try to sound the death knell of the sick-note culture today by unveiling plans to take a million people off incapacity benefit at a saving of up to 7 billion pounds. The proposals will mean hundreds of thousands of people who have been on the benefit for many years being asked to attend interviews to judge their suitability for work. After Tony Blair made clear yesterday that he was ready for a showdown with his party over the education Bill, he will open up a new battlefront with his backing for the plan that John Hutton, the Work and Pensions Secretary, will present. Like the schools Bill, it may receive support from the Conservatives. Doctors will be urged to consider alternatives to writing sick notes if they believe that their patients will be helped by doing work"

While the Da Vinci Code movie debuts at Cannes, the real story of a fake gospel goes unnoticed in the mainstream media. The late professor Morton Smith apparently created a fake "Secret Mark" gospel with the intent on showing that Jesus was homosexual. Apparently Morton Smith was homosexual although it is never openly documented owing to political correctness. This new book by an attorney, Stephen C. Carlson, has debunked the whole thing. They will never make a movie about it. Instead millions will flock to the fictional Da Vinci Code and swallow it hook line and sinker. I have never read nor do I intend to read the Da Vinci Code but it apparently contains some very large howlers. It refers for instance to Opus Dei monks whereas Opus Dei is a layman's movement.

The EU pot calls the Turkish kettle black: "The European Union today welcomed Turkey's decision to end the prosecution of Orhan Pamuk, the country's best selling writer, but urged a wider reform of the country's free speech laws.... Olli Rehn, the EU's Enlargement Commissioner, said the collapse of the case should lead to a "positive outcome" for the dozens of Turkish journalists and authors currently facing similar charges.... "It is clear for me that Turkey needs to fill properly the loopholes of the current Penal Code, which leave too much room for abusive and restrictive interpretations limiting freedom of expression.""

Chris Brand has just put together a new lot of posts which he believes represent good news on racial matters.

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)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.

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LEFTIST LOGIC: THE NAZIS INVOKED GOD SO ANYBODY WHO INVOKES GOD IS A NAZI

That is the classic non sequitur underlying a piece of pure hate by the aptly-named Canadian John Chuckman. According to him, asking the blessing of God is akin to Nazism. The entire article is one distortion after another. Putting a balanced argument would leave him with nothing to say. I have added just a few comments out of the many that spring to mind

I hadn't realized until recently that Stephen Harper was using "God Bless Canada!" as a tagline for his speeches. Some may think this a harmless, or even beneficent, expression for a politician to use, but for those with knowledge of history, nothing could be a more frightening. I do believe we all know to whom Harper is tipping his hat with these words. George Bush, author of two wars which have killed more than a hundred thousand innocent people [A reference to a now thoroughly discredited piece of Leftist propaganda masquerading as science] and the champion of an ugly set of repressive laws [Being a Canadian Leftist, I guess he means the awful oppression of homosexuals being allowed civil unions only -- which is just the same as Hitler murdering homosexuals by the thousands, of course] in the United States, says "God Bless America!" every chance he gets.

Some might say Bush uses the line because he has nothing else to say, and I don't doubt this is part of the truth. But slogans of this kind are always used to protect dangerous people from criticism. The words are used also as code, a kind of insidious political wink, to bloodthirsty supporters, the Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell types [Who was it again that Robertson and Falwell killed? I forget. Was it Mary Jo Kopechne perhaps?] . They says [He is as weak on grammar as he is on the facts] things that cannot be uttered in public [Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell hold back from speaking their minds in public?? This bozo must be the only guy who thinks so]. Bush usually says it in front of a set of gigantic, eagle-topped American flags, reminiscent of nothing so much as the days when Germany's leader spoke and sputtered in front of platoons of monstrous, threatening flags. [But I guess the red flag would be OK]

Bush also always wears a prominently-placed American flag pin on his lapel, just in case you forget where he's from. I can never help thinking of the image of Hitler wearing his quiet Iron Cross on an otherwise plain, neatly-tailored uniform. [So all patriotic Americans are Nazis, I guess. And the similarity between a German war decoration and the American flag really is obvious, isn't it?] Neatness and patriotism for the cameras instead of troops sloshing through human blood. The belt buckle of the German legions which murdered their way across Europe were embossed with "Gott Mit Uns" (God With Us) [But "Allah akhbar", meaning "God is great" is OK of course] over a fierce eagle grasping the swastika. This is only to say that there is a record in fairly recent history of the use of religious slogans in politics to cover horrors. I recall a photograph of American Marines, having illegally [Illegally under what law? Are heaps of U.N. resolutions that Saddam refused to comply with and big majority votes in the U.S. Congress not enough?] invaded Iraq, kneeling for a quick blessing before going out to kill more Iraqis in their own land [How nasty of them to kill terrorists while the terrorists are trying to kill them!].

The blurb about Chuckman says: "He writes with a passionate desire for honesty, the rule of reason, and concern for human decency". I would say that all three of those attributes are conspicuously missing from the above article.

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Murdoch is on the ball: "Rupert Murdoch, the chairman and chief executive of News Corporation, parent company of The Times, yesterday gave warning that British competitiveness and productivity were being held back by over-regulation stemming from the Government.... Mr Murdoch said that Labour was "extending the nanny state," and complained that the "cost of business was going up" at a time when newspaper advertising, and by implication the wider economy, was "tightening up". Arguing that education was fundamental to Britain's competitiveness in the world, Mr Murdoch said: "If the labour Party is so stupid as to prevent Blair from putting through his [education] reforms, then the Conservative Party should certainly support Blair. We're not educating our people properly here."

Conservatives ahead in Canada: "Latest opinion polls are predicting a clear win for the opposition Conservative Party in tomorrow's Canadian election but leader Stephen Harper will need a late spike in support to achieve an absolute majority in the 308-seat House of Commons. After starting the eight-week campaign well behind Paul Martin's Liberal Government, Mr Harper has retained his comfortable 7- to 12-point lead in all the major polls published at the weekend.

The European parliament shows its fundamentally anti-democratic nature by acting as if its rejected constitution had been approved: "Look at the number of policies and institutions envisaged by the constitution that have been, or are being, enacted regardless: the European External Action Service, the European Human Rights Agency, the European Defence Agency, the European Space Programme, the European External Borders Agency, a justicable Charter of Fundamental Rights. None of these has a proper legal basis outside the constitution"

A good Indonesian Muslim: "I have been called 'Chrislam' because I am so close to Christians," Abdurrahman Wahid is saying. "When I was criticized by a certain Muslim preacher for not being harsh enough against the 'kaffir' [infidels] -- for being too close to Jews and Christians -- I told him to read the Koran again. Because when the Koran speaks of 'infidels,' it means idolaters," not monotheists.... With 200 million residents, Indonesia is the world's largest Muslim nation, and Wahid -- popularly known as Gus Dur -- was not only its first democratically elected president but the longtime chairman of its largest Muslim organization, the 35 million-member Nadhlatul Ulama. A revered religious scholar who studied in Cairo and Baghdad, Wahid is a longtime champion of a moderate, progressive, and nonpolitical Islam. As a result, he has frequently clashed with militant fundamentalists whose growing influence, fueled by Arab/Wahhabi oil money, is undermining Indonesia's traditional religious pluralism".

Modern liberalism's central flaw : "Modern liberals sadly cling to their most grievous flaw and that is what makes them, even if at times only inadvertently, fundamentally misanthropic. They believe that advancing their objectives, even those that are perfectly valid, ought to be done by using coercion against those whose cooperation they seek. This major, colossal error on their part makes it even difficult to join them in their various campaigns to help those they wish to help, to argue against those whom they rightly oppose. As a recent example, consider the war in Iraq. Most modern liberals oppose this war but do so on grounds that are frankly blatantly hypocritical"

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)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.

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PARDON ME WHILE I LAUGH

Below is part of a rather pathetic news report to which I have added a few comments:

"Hundreds of progressive Christians from around the country are coming to Berkeley next week to plan how to take Christianity back from the right wing. [Only hundreds! How amusing! Probably more like dozens. And THEY are going to convert millions of Christians to Leftism?]

"'Progressive Christian' is not an oxymoron [just an ordinary moron], despite what the right says," said Diane Thomas, director of advanced placement programs at the Pacific School of Religion, part of UC Berkeley's Graduate Theological Union. PSR is sponsoring the event. "Our goal is to put the soul back in Christianity, to focus it back on what it's always been about," said Thomas.

The event will be held Monday through Thursday at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. PSR Dean of Faculty Emeritus Delwin Brown, one of the main speakers, says the left has itself to blame for its present powerless condition. "We assumed that a more humane, more compassionate, more intellectually serious interpretation of Christianity would inevitably win out," he said. "We forfeited the argument to the other side." Brown said the left also has a tradition of hostility to religion that handicaps its ability to talk to people of faith. [A sudden rush of reality to his head]

"There's been a long-seated suspicion of authoritarianism [including Communism?], primary of which is organized religion [Organized religion is the main source of authoritarianism? He must have forgotten about the whole history of the Left from the French revolution on -- but in this guy's weird religion maybe the Communists were not authoritiarian!].

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Thomas Holsinger makes the case for invading Iran: "All the reasons for invading Iraq apply doubly to Iran, and with far greater urgency. Iran right now poses the imminent threat to America which Iraq did not in 2003. Iran may already have some nuclear weapons, purchased from North Korea or made with materials acquired from North Korea, which would increase its threat to us from imminent to direct and immediate." [And even Pat Buchanan seems to agree!]

V.D. Hanson on Leftist self-contradiction: "At home, much about Iraq has been turned around in Alice-Through-the-Looking-Glass fashion. Indeed the debate over Iraq has too often descended into Jabberwocky-like gibberish. We were once slandered as hegemonic; but when we didn't steal anything in Iraq, and instead spent billions in aid, suddenly we were called naive by the now realist Left. The war was caricatured as all about grabbing oil. Then when the price skyrocketed, we were dubbed foolish for tampering with the fragile petroleum landscape, or with not charging Iraqi price-gouging exporters for our time and services. Americans tried to remain idealistic on the principle that Iraqis, if freed and helped, could craft a workable democracy, and that such consensual governments would make the volatile Middle East safer, since elected and legitimate governments rarely attack their own kind. In response, the supposedly idealistic Left charged that we were bellicose and imperialistic - as if being on the side of the purple-fingered Iraqi voter was not preferable to being on the side of the terrorist and insurrectionist, who masked his fascism with national rhetoric."

Religious freedom to be restricted in EU : "Clergymen across the United Kingdom have been left highly concerned by a European Union report which has recommended that clergy not be allowed a right of conscientious objection to conducting gay weddings if the Parliament decides to enact legislation permitting same sex marriages. The EU ruling states that the rights of access to abortion, euthanasia, birth control and marriage trump the right of conscience to opt out of conducting gay weddings, reported The Church of England Newspaper. The highly controversial report by the EU's Network of Independent Experts on Human Rights said that where "euthanasia or assisted suicide are partially decriminalized, the right to religious conscientious objection, while it should be recognized to the medical doctors asked to perform euthanasia or to assist a person in committing suicide, should not be exercised in a way which leads to depriving any person from the possibility of exercising effectively his or her rights as guaranteed under the applicable legislation." The report also stated that the "right of access" should take precedence over the right for clergy or registrars to object to solemnizing gay weddings, where the law permitted them.

German government scammed: "Part of the ransom money alleged to have been paid by the German government to win the freedom of Iraq hostage Susanne Osthoff last month was found on Osthoff after her release, the German magazine Focus said on Saturday. Without citing its sources, Focus said officials at the German embassy in Baghdad had found several thousand U.S. dollars in the 43-year-old German archaeologist's clothes when she took a shower at the embassy shortly after being freed.... Osthoff, who converted to Islam and lived in Iraq, was seized heading north from Baghdad on Nov. 25 by gunmen who threatened in a videotape to kill her and her driver unless Germany ended all support for the Iraqi government... Two days after her release, the German government freed a Hizbollah member jailed for life in 1985 for the murder of a U.S. Navy diver. Berlin has denied a connection between the two events. Osthoff herself caused a stir when she said in an interview at the end of December that she did not believe her kidnappers were criminals.

Some readers may be aware of the Italian Muslim leader who is PRO-Israel. As he says here: "Israel exists by Divine Right, confirmed in both the Bible and Qur'an." There is also video of a recent interview with him (in English) here

Walter Williams explains that the poor get RICHER!: "Talk about the poor getting poorer tugs at the hearts of decent people and squares nicely with the agenda of big government advocates, but it doesn't square with the facts. ...The authors analyzed University of Michigan Panel Study of Income Dynamics data that tracked more than 50,000 individual families since 1968. Cox and Alms found: Only five percent of families in the bottom income quintile (lowest 20 percent) in 1975 were still there in 1991. Three-quarters of these families had moved into the three highest income quintiles. ...Cox and Alm's findings were supported by a U.S. Treasury Department study that used an entirely different data base, income tax returns. The U.S. Treasury found that 85.8 percent of tax filers in the bottom income quintile in 1979 had moved on to a higher quintile by 1988 -- 66 percent to second and third quintiles and 15 percent to the top quintile".

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)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.

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DERRIDA

Sometimes I feel a bit sorry for Leftists. Their peculiar compulsions often give them a need to deny reality, which is why the "nothing is real" brand of Continental philosophers appeal to them -- with Jacques Derrida being the chief reality denier -- a man who always had a rapturous audience of Leftists on his visits to America. But listen to the painful stuff that Derrida had to say about the 9/11/2001 events in NYC and elsewhere:

"Something" took place, we have the feeling of not having seen it coming, and certain consequences undeniably follow upon the "thing." But this very thing, the place and meaning of this "event," remains ineffable, like an intuition without concept, like a unicity with no generality on the horizon or with no horizon at all, out of range for a language that admits its powerlessness and so is reduced to pronouncing mechanically a date, repeating it endlessly, as a kind of ritual incantation, a conjuring poem, a journalistic litany or rhetorical refrain that admits to not knowing what it's talking about. We do not in fact know what we are saying or naming in this way: September 11, le 11 septembre, September 11. The brevity of the appellation (September 11, 9/11) stems not only from an economic or rhetorical necessity. The telegram of this metonymy-a name, a number-points out the unqualifiable by recognizing that we do not recognize or even cognize that we do not yet know how to qualify, that we do not know what we are talking about.

Amusingly, he got it right in his last sentence above. Leftists are often intelligent people. They must at times find it depressing that they have to claim to find wisdom in such a hopelessly incoherent soul as Derrida. They would find more sense in the average loony bin. (HT Capitalism Magazine)

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Brookes News Update

Inflation and the US economy -- what's the problem?: As money is not neutral, a price stabilisation policy would aggravate inflation and destabilise the economy by distorting prices and production
The commodities boom and China: the missing ingredient: A great deal has been said about the current commodity boom -- nearly all of it wrong. As usual so-called analysts fell into the trap of confusing symptoms with causes
Murdoch journalists smear President Bush over NSA spying program: What was particularly dishonest about these so-called journalists was their refusal to give space to anyone who could provide a legal argument for the President's surveillance program
The media bats for the Dems to blame the GOP for Abramoff: The Bush-hating Michael Gawenda is another lefty journalist who is falling over himself to slime the Republicans over the Abramoff affair
Illinois GOP: Finding the Promised Land: What incentive is there for voters to unseat a Democratic incumbent and hire a Republican in his place, if the GOP offers candidates who, on the issues, are nothing more than Democrat-light?
Lefty journalist distorts the facts on General Motors' crisis: The leftwing Stephen Ellis is another Murdoch journalist who has trouble confronting reality, in between bashing markets and president Bush
Capitalism is the real friend of the poor -- not socialism: The one question our anti-poverty warriors never really address is the nature and origins of poverty. They always give the impression that poverty is a unique problem caused by an unjust distribution of wealth and income
Keynesians are wrong -- cost cutting does benefit the economy: Cost cutting is an important means of correcting previous erroneous decisions in order to be able to return to a situation where real wealth can be generated again

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ELSEWHERE

Access to the German version of Wikipedia has been restricted by a German court. This is of course an intolerable attack on free speech which I am sure all libertarians will do their best to defeat. You can see that the forbidden information which caused the site to be taken down -- the information that the real name of a German/Yugoslav hacker known as "Tron" was in fact Boris Floricic -- cannot be found via a search of the German site but the information IS still freely available on the U.S. site. To do my bit towards spreading the forbidden information, I will repeat the core of it here in my rough German: Hacker Tron heisst im Tatsache Boris Floricic. "Tron" is ein Beiname. Weiter hier. And my comment to the German court concerned: "Heil Hitler"!

Interesting that anti-hereditarian psychologist Prof. Elizabeth Spelke now say that at least some types of mathematical ability are genetically hard-wired. Sometimes the data can atom-bomb even a Leftist mind. But she is probably only an affirmative action appointee so unparsimonious thinking on her part should be no surprise.

In the latest "City Journal" we read how Democrats have begun to wield campaign-finance regulations, especially McCain-Feingold, and are pushing for a new Fairness Doctrine to try to muzzle the influential new media world of talk radio, cable-TV news, and the blogosphere. In short order, these outlets have ended the monopoly on U.S. political discourse that the liberal mainstream media, headed by CBS News and the New York Times, so long enjoyed, with seismic political consequences, possibly including George W. Bush's reelection. Apoplectic at its loss of power, the Left, rather than debating these new media, is trying to smother them, in such a flagrant attempt to suppress free speech as would make the Founders weep.

Cheney says domestic surveillance vital : "Vice President Dick Cheney offered a robust defense of the Bush administration's domestic surveillance program Thursday, calling it an essential tool in monitoring the activities of al-Qaida and associated terrorist organizations. But he stressed the program was limited in scope and had been conducted in a way that safeguarded civil liberties. In a luncheon speech at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative public policy think tank, Cheney warned that the United States still faced significant threats from a network of terrorists intent on establishing a radical Islamic empire throughout Northern Africa and the Middle East."

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).

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

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)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.

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