G*OGLE DANGERS

I am very careful not to post any language on any of my sites that could fall foul of G*ogle's "wipe-off" rules. Certain content on a site causes them to erase that site from their database. And it's not just political sites that suffer. The technical site Javalobby was wiped by G*ogle recently because spammers had posted huge amounts of pornographic links in their Comments facility. When I read it, I felt rather thankful that I do not allow comments on this site. And on other sites where I do allow comments, I have maximum precautions against comment spammers.

I suspect that G*ogle don't even like criticism of themselves, so I use a strategic asterisk in their name -- hoping that might stymie the search for their own name that they undoubtedly do.

Another problem: G*ogle fosters antisemitism. If students ever use G*ogle to search for "Zionism" for a school or university project they will find that the top articles are anti-Zionist, and indeed antisemitic. Web guru Andre Oboler has tackled the problem in: Expert Search to combat antisemitism and racism. People can use this tool if they need to undertake research.

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The left's intellectual disintegration.

There used to be a time when the left proudly carried the banner of reason and science; and disdainfully viewed religion as a superstition or at best an antiquated myth. In the name of science they advanced an agenda on several fronts. In economics, central planning was described as a rational systematic alternative to the chaotic free-for-all of the market. In human relations, what was previously viewed as a moral failing was now a condition amenable to social engineering. Social science, we were assured there was such a thing, would provide the guidance and justification for the socialistic regulations required for a better world. To maintain this stance, left-wing intellectuals felt compelled to provide substantiation, evidence, and rational arguments. That time has long since past.

The facade of science is gone - reality stubbornly refused to go along. Socialism was a glaring failure that brought poverty, misery, and wholesale death. Yet, despite this, the dream remains. The left seems strangely indifferent to evidence that undermines their worldview. Communism was responsible for over 100 million deaths and the enslavement of over 1 billion more. But on the left, this hasn't hurt the popularity of communism's remaining standard-bearer: Fidel Castro.

Rational debate no longer exists among the vanguard of today's left. Exposing a flawed argument engenders few signs of discomfort. Contradictions curiously fail to perturb in the slightest the left's steadfast adherence to fixed doctrine. For example, America and Britain are singularly condemned for the sins of slavery as if it were unique to our history or a particularly egregious example. However, it was Anglo-American tradition of individual liberty which is exceptional in history, not the remnants of slavery which existed everywhere and through out history. Islam, which invented the race-based slave trade centuries before America's discovery, condemned people to slavery from Africa, India, and Europe, exceeding the British slave trade by orders of magnitude. And it was the West that led the abolitionist movement worldwide. But the left shrugs. All of this is deemed irrelevant since in absolute terms the West's history remains blemished.

Not only is evidence summarily dismissed, but what spews forth often has little relation to the subject matter. By being barraged by "rhetorical spam" the listener is overwhelmed with dubious claims in the hope that something will stick. No shame accompanies wrong, arbitrary, or ridiculous statements. This technique was ubiquitous in response to recent military actions in Iraq. For example, every major intelligence agency, including France, Germany and Russia, incorrectly believed Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. Yet, leftists continually repeated the mantra that Bush is a liar. On top of that, they yammer about Rumsfeld meeting with Saddam, Iraqis getting bio-agents from "us", and nefarious neocon Zionist conspiracies. It becomes impossible to have an intelligent discussion under these circumstances.

Not surprisingly, civil and reasonable discussions are now the exceptions. The far left is reduced to chanting: racist imperialist war-mongering America. No they won't say they hate America - they realize you can't say that yet. But are we to believe that imperialist, racist, and war-mongering describe a country one could love? Of course not, but apparently most imagine a confession is required before you can point to the obvious conclusion.

Much more here

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ELSEWHERE

Second thoughts in Iran: "Amid the chaos of confused global weather fronts, uncommonly cold temperatures have gripped Tehran in recent weeks. This freeze provides a suitable metaphor for the rapidly cooling feelings many Iranians have towards President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Just as the Iranian capital has been shivering in the winter freeze Ahmadinejad has started to feel the unmistakable chill of public disaffection. Having become accustomed to the warmth of mass acclaim at a series of nationwide open-air rallies, the Islamist firebrand is now discovering the limits of his popularity.... voters have started to turn against a man whose political strength lay in his populist appeal. Last month, rising discontent over his government's failing economic policies led to a drubbing at the polls. In nationwide council elections, candidates supporting the president gained just 20% of the vote. Only two Ahmadinejad loyalists - including his sister Parvin - won seats on the 15-member Tehran city council, often seen as a key indicator of political trends across the country. The results coincided with a political comeback for Hashemi Rafsanjani, Ahmadinejad's most powerful rival and his defeated opponent in the 2005 presidential election. Rafsanjani, a sharp critic of the president's strident anti-Western rhetoric, topped the poll in elections to the experts' assembly, a clerical body empowered to supervise and appoint Iran's supreme leader."

When will they ever learn? "The 2006 midterm elections confirmed once again a truism of American politics: American Jews remain overwhelmingly devoted to the Democratic party. According to exit polling, the tilt this year was, if anything, even more pronounced than it has been in the past. Some 88 percent of Jewish votes went to Democratic candidates, while a mere 12 percent went to the GOP. Along with this lopsided outcome, a historical extreme, comes the news that the number of Jewish representatives in Congress has itself reached an all-time high. Although Jews represent a marginal sliver-a mere 2 percent-of the U.S. population, they now hold 13 seats in the U.S. Senate, all but two of them-Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Norm Coleman of Minnesota-Democratic. (Bernard Sanders of Vermont, elected as an independent, has pledged to vote with the Democratic caucus.) In the House of Representatives, Jews, all but one of them Democrats, now occupy 30 seats."

Chris Brand has just done a new lot of posts on his usual themes of race, IQ and political correctness -- with particular emphasis on the British scene.

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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

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 -- Details here and here

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