ANOTHER AMUSING "FAKE BUT ACCURATE" CLAIM
We all remember how popular with the Left was the claim that the forged documents used by Dan Rather to attack GWB's military service were "fake but accurate". Given the Leftist tendency to KNOW things regardless of the evidence, it should not be surprising that another "fake but accurate" claim has emerged. In an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Alan Wolfe, a Professor of Political Science, gives a reasonably fair review of how the "authoritarian personality" theory of Adorno (a prominent Marxist theoretician) and his colleagues was discredited academically not long after it was published. The rather hilarious claim of the theory was that it is conservatives who are authoritarian (Lenin and Stalin were really just misunderstood) and that conservatives are psychologically disturbed.
The theory is of course utter catnip to Leftists. They just cannot resist it regardless of the evidence against it -- so it has retained a following to this day among many Leftist academics in the social sciences. Alan Wolfe is one of those. Most authors who still refer to the theory seem unaware of the swingeing criticisms that it has attracted but Wolfe cannot claim that excuse. So it seems that he has a NEED for the theory -- which doesn't say much for his own mental health. A debunked theory is the only way he can make sense of his world. He finds the theory to offer an excellent explanation of current Republican politics generally and of the dreaded John Bolton in particular.
Given his disregard for the facts, I was not the least surprised at this passage in Wolfe's pathetic whine: "One item on the F scale, in particular, seems to capture in just a few words the way that many Christian-right politicians view the world in an age of terror: "Too many people today are living in an unnatural, soft way; we should return to the fundamentals, to a more red-blooded, active way of life.""
That sounds more like a description of Greenie thinking to me but there is a bigger problem with that observation by Prof. Wolfe than you might think: The item quoted is NOT in fact in the F scale. Table 7 of chapter VII in The Authoritarian Personality gives the final form of the F scale and that item is not included. So I think we have to say of Prof. Wolfe that he is both fake AND inaccurate. You can find a detailed account of why the Adorno claims are the reverse of the truth here. (Hat Tip to California Conservative for the link to Wolfe's howl).
Econbrowser has an excellent article pointing out why oil shale is an energy asset of last resort. Nuclear power and ethanol are alternatives to petroleum products that are both already available via well-tested technology, environmentally-friendly and cheap. Using Brazilian production methods, ethanol is already competitive with gasoline if oil prices stay as high as they are now. See the fourth post down here
Good stuff: "President George W. Bush last night reiterated his Government's determination to win the war on terror, likening Islamic extremism to the ideology of communism that was defeated by the US during the Cold War. In a major speech on the US commitment to continue the fight in Iraq and Afghanistan - and to prevent terrorism from "outlaw regimes" such as Iran and Syria - Mr Bush said he would fight extremists who wanted to "enslave whole nations and intimidate the world"."
India is of course famous for its bureaucracy, though it has been considerably reduced in recent years, to India's great economic benefit. This hilarious story about the New Delhi rat-catchers suggests that reform still has some way to go however.
Justice? Crooks Scam Terrorists' Families: "The latest criminal racket in the Middle East is to scam money out of the families of al Qaeda terrorists that have gone to Iraq and, well, disappeared. Several thousand Saudi Arabian men have gone to Iraq to fight for al Qaeda, or at least said they did. Not surprising for the country that supplied 15 or the 19 terrorists who carried out the 911 attacks. But this has provided opportunities for crooks in Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Syria. When these fellows find out about a young man who has gone off on jihad to Iraq, they contact his parents with the news that their son is in trouble, and that money can make it all better. The story varies, from the kid getting kidnapped, or arrested, in Syria or Iraq. The families, whether they approved of their lad's terrorist intentions or not, are usually eager to get him back. Money is sent, and the scammers are never heard from again".
The lesson of Katrina: "The Katrina hurricane has finally awakened the media and the public to one huge reality that few were formerly willing to accept -- the important difference between socialistic bureaucracy and a free market. Anyone who is aware of the reports on Katrina knows that most of the early rescues and help came from individuals and groups who saw what was needed and did what they could to help. The bureaucracies all waited for 'go-ahead' orders. 'Government at all levels failed the people,' Senator Susan Collins told the national press."
No excuse for excuses: "A decent society should be able to evacuate its weakest from a disaster zone, and Louisiana showcased the mismanagement only patronage politics buys. But it's not unreasonable to expect that, once sheltered, survivors would designate a latrine rather than smearing feces on the walls. And no historical grievance means the self-designated victims are owed a free flatscreen TV. The makeshift communities at the Superdome and Convention Center seemed to lack any civilizational impulse, firing even on the helicopters sent to save them. Far from rallying to maintain order, they contributed to the chaos or stood numb awaiting aid. Liberals will say that instinct was cheated from them -- no plantation boss wants the field hands to organize. More likely, the dividends of victimhood provide an unfortunate incentive to segregate from the social order."
Swedes turn blind eye to antisemitism: "Anti-Semitism is perceived as a minor problem in Sweden, restricted to marginal neo-Nazi and other extreme-Right groups. Anti-Jewish ferment among parts of the country's Arab and Muslim population is largely denied and ignored. Nevertheless, the phenomenon exists and manifests itself among some Arab and Muslim pupils in suburban schools, on Muslim websites in Swedish, and in attacks on Jews and their institutions. . a wave of anti-Semitic violence has swept over Europe. Most attention has been paid to the arsons and other violent attacks in France and other countries such as Germany and Belgium. But Swedish Jewry, too, has felt this phenomenon. Swedish Jewry seems, however, to have been the only segment of society not just to be affected by the violence, but also to notice it."
Hitchens on the lessons of Bali: "The return of murderous nihilism to Bali is highly instructive. It shows, first, that the fanatics of Islamism don't know how to stop. And it also shows that they never learn. How can Jemaah Islamiyah, which almost ruined Indonesia's economy by its filthy attack three years ago, possibly have tried to repeat the same crime in the same place? If we look for answers to this question, we shall find answers that completely discredit the current half-baked apologies for terrorism."
For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)
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Brookes News Update
Labour market reform comes under attack and the Liberal Government flounders : The left have launched a fierce assault against the Liberal Government's labour market reform policy. As expected, the Liberal Party's brilliant elite failed dismally to counterattack
A bigoted journalist slimes President Bush, US and the market: Martin Flanagan is another sickening example of the mainstream media's hatred of President Bush and loathing of free markets
Hussein's media collaborators use anthrax lie to slander the US: The London Times and The Australian published a story accusing the US of aiding Hussein's biological-weapons program, even though they knew the story was false
Los Angeles Times libels Israel, and enough is never enough: The anti-Semitic Los Angeles Times libels Israel over Palestinian living standards. What is it about the lefty media that drives them nuts about Israel -- or should I say Jews?
Econometric models - what are they all about? : Econometric models are clumsy and expensive extrapolative devices which have nothing in common with real economies
Labour market reform and the costs argument: How the concept of costs was used to try and discredit the idea of free labour markets
Free labour markets and a leftwing academic's propaganda: The mere mention of free markets is enough to drive left-wing academics like John Legge into a frenzy. In a truly educated climate Legge's economic views would, at best, be the subject of some amusement. Unfortunately, many journalists and politicians share his deplorable economic ignorance
Free markets, science, technology and conservation: Free markets drive technology, not self-important bureaucrats, arrogant academics or ignorant politicians
Disturbing if true. There's nothing worse than a dummy with a gun: "Further evidence that the war in Iraq is wrecking the U.S. Army: Recruiters, having failed to meet their enlistment targets, are now being authorized to pursue high-school dropouts and (not to mince words) stupid people. This year the Army set a goal of recruiting 80,000 active-duty soldiers, but it wound up with just 73,000 -- almost 10 percent short. As a result, the Army Times reported this week, the Pentagon has decided to make up the difference by expanding the pool -- by letting up to 10 percent of new recruits be young men and women who have neither graduated high school nor earned a General Equivalency Diploma. More than that, the Los Angeles Times reports today that 4 percent of recruits will be allowed to score as low as in the 16th to 30th percentile -- a grouping known as 'Category IV' -- on the U.S. Armed Forces' mental-aptitude exam."
FEMA gets even nuttier: "The Phoenix Fire Department's Urban Search and Rescue team has been suspended from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for deploying armed police officers to protect firefighters in violation of the agency's rules. As a result, Phoenix officials now are threatening to refuse some of the most dangerous deployments in the future or possibly even pull out of the federal agency altogether, unless the rules are changed to allow teams to bring their own security, even if that means police with guns. FEMA has been the target of widespread criticism for its perceived slow response to Hurricane Katrina. Assistant Phoenix Fire Chief Bob Khan said his department also is questioning the federal agency's ability to manage working conditions, security and communications. 'Our priority has to be the safety of the firefighters we're sending,' Khan said."
No mention of how many died violently: "The search for Hurricane Katrina victims has ended in Louisiana with a death toll at 964, but more searches will be conducted if someone reports seeing a body, a state official said Monday. State and federal agencies have finished their sweeps through the city, but Kenyon International Emergency Services, the private company hired by the state to remove the bodies, is on call if any other body is found, said Bob Johannessen, a spokesman with the state Department of Health and Hospitals."
The heirs of the Soviets like Fascism: How unsurprising: "Russia has caught World War II fever 60 years after the war's end, but the books and DVDs flying off store shelves are far from patriotic. They contain Nazi themes and often offer Nazi ideology. 'It's already a fashion,' said Sergei Stepanich, an expert on fascist literature at the Center for Human Rights. Nestled among pornographic DVDs at kiosks at Leningradsky Station are numerous discs offering original Nazi propaganda from the 1940s. The DVDs carry the original newsreels that were shown in German cinemas. A DVD on the Nazi SS has a blurb on the back of the box that talks about the troops' 'genuine professionalism.'"
Sounds reasonable: "Republican Gov. George Pataki has ordered state officials to keep some sexual predators locked up after their prison sentences are up, despite objections from those who say it may not be legal. Pataki, who is eyeing a run for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, issued the order Sept. 12 after failing for years to persuade lawmakers to pass legislation authorizing civil confinement for sex offenders. The order extends the state's involuntary commitment law, normally used for the mentally ill, to sexual predators. It requires offenders nearing the end of their sentences undergo an evaluation to determine if they are a public safety risk."
Rather encouraging: "Orthodox priests chanted prayers and believers lighted candles as Patriarch Alexy II led reburial rites yesterday for Gen. Anton Denikin, who fought against the Red Army during Russia's civil war and is now cast as a patriot. The ceremony was Russia's latest attempt to close a bitter chapter in its history, when the country was divided into communists and their foes. The reconciliation seeks to give respect to all Russians who fought for their nation".
Typical Leftist elitism: "The man once known as the most trusted journalist in America no longer trusts Americans to vote for their own leaders, saying average citizens are just too ignorant to cast their ballots wisely. "We [as a nation] are not educated well enough to perform the necessary act of intelligently selecting our leaders," CBS News legend Walter Cronkite told the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication last week".
Daniel Pipes has an amusing article about the incredible stupidity of many Muslim terrorists.
BOGUS LEFTIST "SCIENCE"
As regular readers of this blog will be well aware, I am one of the very small band of atheists who takes a considerable and sympathetic interest in Christianity. Like the Devil, I even quote scripture for my purposes sometimes. And I did for a while do a regular scripture blog devoted to recovering via New Testament exegesis what first century Christians believed -- before the paganizing influences of later centuries had set in. If you are an orthodox Christian, don't read it. You may find it disturbing.
And I have written at some length on what history shows us about the common Christian claim that Christianity is an essential foundation for a moral society and individual liberty. I could find little support for that claim. But I see no evidence for the opposite claim, either: That Christianity is bad for you.
So when I saw a report of the negative garbage written about Christianity by "humanist" Gregory Paul in the Journal of Religion and Society, I gave him a pretty good blast (yesterday) over his apparently clueless "research" methods -- without bothering to check on what others had written before me . One of my readers, however, has pointed me to a very comprehensive article by Statguy -- who has taken the trouble to look in more detail at the "research" concerned. And it is, as I thought, incompetent to the point of fraud. Paul apparently carried out no appropriate statistical analysis of any kind. No reputable academic journal in the social sciences would have accepted such clueless garbage -- and I say that from the viewpoint of someone who has had many critiques of academic journal articles published. So I think that identifies without need for further enquiry what the Journal of Religion and Society is: a Leftist rant and nothing more is my guess.
It might be of interest for me to pass on something else that my reader emailed me about Gregory Paul: "I heard him defend his study on a national talk show here in the States. The reason he gave for including Black violence was that Blacks were mainly influenced by "Southern Redneck" culture which came from Protestant Southern English culture and therefore Christian religion is the reason for Black violence. This Leftist's logic is so bad I really don't know what to say".
Amen to that. For more on the "troubled" relationship Leftists have with science, see GREENIE WATCH. The fourth post down that I put up there yesterday is very much to the point. And genetic science is very inconvenient for Leftists too. See, for example here
Before I leave the subject of dodgy Leftist science, have a look at this report: "In a Cornell University study [of Cornell Sociology students], men who perceived their masculinity to be maligned displayed more homophobic attitudes, tended to support the Iraq war more and would be more willing to purchase an SUV over another type of vehicle. In other words, men overcompensate when they feel their masculinity is threatened".
I get a bit tired of pointing out the holes in this sort of study so I will simply note that there was NO sampling done for the "research" so NO generalizations from the study are possible -- not even generalizations about all Cornell students, let alone about men in general. And students do of course become expert at telling their teachers what their teachers want to hear. A university education in the "Humanities" seems to consist of little else these days. And having taught sociology students for 12 years at a major university, I know what a wacko lot they can be. I remember one student who seemed to think that the idea of negative numbers was some sort of CIA plot. And I am pretty sure he ended up graduating!
The always well-informed Keith Windschuttle has weighed in on the Andrew Fraser controversy -- where Fraser's academic journal article on Australian immigration policy was suppressed from publication in an Australian law journal. I was the one who first put the article online so have some interest in the matter. Windschuttle points out something I have been pointing out for a long time -- that the old "White Australia" policy (originally designed to exclude the Chinese from Australia) always had its principal support from the Left. It was news to me that Fraser too has extensive Leftist affiliations but Windschuttle's conclusion that Fraser is in fact an old-fashioned Leftist rather than any type of conservative should come as no surprise to anyone who knows history. Leftist histrionics have been amazingly successful in suppressing all memory of how openly racist Leftists were up until about 1950 to 1960 but the facts are there for anyone who wants to check (See here and here). And I thoroughly agree with Windschuttle in seeing no problem with Australia's intake of Asians. I made my disagreement with Fraser about that clear from the outset. Windschuttle avoids mentioning the other leg of Fraser's paper, however: The serious doubts Fraser has raised about the wisdom of Australia's intake of African refugees. I think Fraser is well justified in those doubts -- as I have pointed out at length elsewhere.
Australian attitudes to immigration: "More than half of Australians would like to see fewer migrants from the Middle East, despite a decade-long softening in opposition to immigration, new research shows. The study also found British migrants here want more of their own kind to come here. Overall, despite the divisive debate about boat people, refugees and the Federal Government's mandatory detention policy, Australians appear to be becoming more tolerant, with overall opposition to immigration dropping greatly in recent years. But 53 per cent would like to see fewer migrants from the Middle East, according to the research, to be published in Monash University's People and Place this month. There is opposition, too, to more Asian migrants, with 36.7 per cent of Australian-born people wanting to see fewer Asians coming to this country. But opposition to further migration was much more moderate in relation to migrants from southern Europe or Britain. Only 15.4 per cent of the overall population thought fewer southern Europeans should come here, and only 13.9 per cent thought fewer Britons should come"
There is a very good cartoon here about use of the word "niggardly". See here and here for examples of the uproar that use of the word "niggardly" has produced in the past. Despite appearances, "niggardly" has nothing whatever to do with the famous "N word".
I liked this comment: "An eye-witness account of the talks between EU Commissioner Peter Mandleson and his Chinese counterpart, held in Beijing at the height of the textiles trade dispute: "One of them was an unaccountable, unelected politician from a sprawling bureaucracy who was promoting protectionism," says the Confederation of British Industry Director, Sir Digby Jones. "And the other was Chinese.""
Theodore Dalrymple asks, is The Guardian institutionally racist?
This is another "read the whole thing" article but below is the beginning of it. Dalrymple normally seems to avoid all mention of race -- perhaps because he is himself Jewish -- but "The Guardian" finally seems to have got his goat:
Is The Guardian - the best newspaper in Britain - institutionally racist? Alas, I think the answer must be a resounding Yes. I had long had the impression that blacks were over-represented in photographs published in the newspaper by comparison with people from the Indian subcontinent or with the Chinese, and I tested the accuracy of my impression by counting the photographs in the edition of 19th September 2005.
There was only one photograph of an Indian, and that was in a commercial advertisement, over the content of which The Guardian, presumably, had little or no control. By contrast, there were 26 photographs of blacks. Surely this was a discrepancy that could not have arisen by chance, and is proof positive of a systematic bias amounting to racism. After all, there are more people of South Asian descent in Britain than of African and West Indian descent, and yet Indians were the subjects of fewer than 4 per cent of all the photographs of ethnic minorities to appear in the newspaper.
How are we to explain this? Does it mean that The Guardian, if it systematically ignores Indians, harbours specially friendly feelings towards blacks? By no means: I think the most likely explanation is quite otherwise. I admit that my hypothesis cannot be proved and is somewhat speculative, but I think it is more plausible than the alternatives.
The people who run and write The Guardian have deep, suppressed and subliminal doubts about the equality of human races. To prove to themselves that they do not have such doubts, they overcompensate by publishing as many photographs of blacks as possible in their pages.
They don't have any such doubts with regard to the Indians and the Chinese. Moreover, these two groups have a horrible and fatal vice, as far as the mindset of The Guardian and its readers is concerned: grosso modo, these two groups can shift for themselves, and require no help from the coalition of intellectuals, moral entrepreneurs and bureaucrats in order to thrive. On the contrary, they are well on the way to outstripping the white population in achievement, thus demonstrating the redundancy of that coalition. By contrast, blacks are regarded in the pages of The Guardian much as conservationists regard endangered species, in need of special protection.
A "humanist" dinosaur expert masquerading as a social scientist (Gregory Paul) has recently published a much-noted article in the Journal of Religion and Society which declares that religion is bad for you. His main evidence for that seems to be that the USA is both heavily Christian and has higher crime rates than less religious European countries. The fact that the USA has a higher percentage of blacks (with their attendant high crime-rates) seems not to have been mentioned. If he had been a REAL social scientist, he would have "partialled out" the effect of race from all his correlations -- but he probably would not even know what "partialling out" means. See here for more about the author of the article.
Wowee! "Language Log" sure has some nuclear strikes on French. See here and here for things you cannot express well in French. I know more about German and I think the score is about 50/50 there. We cannot translate adequately words like "Reich" and Volk" and they cannot adequately translate (amazingly) "happiness" or "pink". Given the penchant that English-speakers have for "stealing" words from all around the world, it is rather a wonder that "Reich" and "Volk" have not come into much use among English-speakers but their prominence in a certain very regrettable historical episode probably accounts for that. We did however manage to steal "ersatz" from that selfsame historical episode, though our use of it is more derogatory than it is in German. A thousand years ago, we did of course have in English a form of the word "Reich" but it survives today only as part of the word "bishopric". Schoolboy hilarity aside, a bishopric is the Reich (ric) of a bishop. And the Swedes still use the word too. The very word for Sweden is in Swedish "Sverige" -- the "rig" of the Svea. The Svea were the Southern Swedish tribe that eventually came to dominate all Sweden.
The DNA of Race: There is no topic on which Americans are more muzzled than race. Even mentioning the word is almost taboo. About the only thing you can safely say on the subject is the monotonous Leftist chant that "race does not exist". Yet Americans not only notice racial differences but they respond very strongly to them -- as the "white flight" phenomenon shows. So in such circumstances it is perhaps encouraging that some geneticists (many of whom seem to be Asian) are resolute enough to continue their studies of the matter. And what they find is that the different races (which Leftists assure us are all "a social contruct") are genetically very distinct. You can predict from a person's DNA which "social" race he belongs to -- and you can predict it with a very high probability of getting the prediction right. The Abstract (scientific summary) of the latest research report is here and you can find some interpretative commentary from an anthropologist here
Dems cover up dirty tricks used to attack black Republican candidate: "Republican Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, a rising star in the party, is considering a Senate bid for the Maryland seat being vacated by Democrat Paul Sarbanes next year. Apparently threatened by the prospect of a strong, popular, black Republican candidate, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee got down and dirty. Two of Schumer's staffers on the committee, including a former top researcher for David Brock's left-wing "think tank," obtained Steele's confidential credit report by using his Social Security number, which they had reportedly culled from court records. Under federal law, it is illegal to knowingly and willfully obtain a credit report under false pretenses. The federal Fair Credit Reporting Act imposes a maximum two-year prison sentence for the crime.... Law enforcement officials are taking this criminal intrusion into private records deadly seriously. But left-wing partisans are nowhere to be found. Steele's staff tells me that longtime crusader against identity theft Sen. Schumer, who denies having any knowledge of the scheme, has still issued no apology for the abuse of Steele's personal data. And there has been no outcry from the ACLU, the champions of clean campaigns, or any major national newspaper editorial board".
Ovi Magazine has a new issue out with forty-five new articles, over 26,000 words of text and a PDF packed with colourful text and imagery
There is a pretty disgusting story up on SOCIALIZED MEDICINE today. The British pay their health insurance premiums to their government. But their government often won't deliver -- even when life is at stake. You sometimes need a newspaper publicity campaign to get life-saving drugs.
STUPID WHITE GUILT
A few excerpts from a very comprehensive article:
"In the aftermath of the worst natural disaster in American history, we have seen a spectacular resurgence of the indictment against white America that has been an organizing theme of our national discourse since the 1960s. Starting from the liberal assumption that any undesirable outcome for black people is the result of white racism, black leaders and spokesmen-supported, according to one poll, by 66 percent of all blacks-have charged in the most virulent terms that white indifference towards or outright hostility to blacks slowed the response to the disaster, leaving tens of thousands of poor blacks to suffer needlessly. As Rabbi Aryeh Spero writes, even as white men in helicopters were risking their lives to save black people stranded on rooftops, and even as whites were navigating their small, private boats in swirling, toxic floodwaters to rescue their black fellow citizens trapped in their houses, black leaders were crying white racism.
To the extent that most whites think about the issue at all, they seem to imagine that acting decently is a sufficient response to being called a racist. But if past experience is any guide, such a passive and uncomplaining attitude on the part of whites, far from clearing them of the racism charge in the eyes of blacks, leaves them looking guiltier than ever. Why else-as blacks see it-would whites not defend themselves against such a damning accusation? Why else-unless whites really are racists-would they not indignantly strike back at people who are saying such terrible things about them? Thus whites' unprecedented outpouring of generosity, far from acquitting them of racism, merely continues the familiar psychodrama of white liberal guilt, in which whites are forever trying through conspicuous demonstrations of compassion and good will to shield themselves from a racism charge against which they appear to have no real defense.....
However, of all the factors that serve as a pretext for the racism charge and make intelligent discussion of race- and culture-related problems impossible, the most important is the black differential in academic achievement and socioeconomic outcomes. While the liberal media have routinely published articles since the early 1990s showing that black students score below whites on basic skills tests, and that even upper middle class black students score lower than poor white students, the explanations offered for this phenomenon always come down to some sin or failure on the part of whites....
The most likely reason for whites' intellectual paralysis regarding racial issues in general and the charge of racism in particular is that whites do indeed experience sincere guilt-and a sense of their own moral illegitimacy as a group-as a result of America's history of discrimination against blacks. Whites therefore feel that they have no right to assert themselves as the historic majority people of America, either in promoting moral and educational standards for the whole society, or in defending the majority culture and national identity from the forces of mass immigration and multiculturalism.....
One problem with the notion of a historic white guilt is that many other nations have oppressed their ethnic or religious minorities in the past, yet did not ever afterward feel that they were deprived of the right to preserve their majority culture or to exist as a distinct society. This suggests that white America's susceptibility to the charge of racism does not derive from its past treatment of blacks, but from blacks' current condition, namely their lagging intellectual and economic performance relative to the rest of the population, and the backwardness, incompetence, and moral disorder that characterize so many inner city black communities. Yet because of the egalitarian, oppressor/oppressed model that has informed the civil rights movement at least since 1966 when the black left pushed liberal integrationists like Martin Luther King aside, it has been totally unacceptable to the white left as well as to blacks to believe that the cause of persistent black deficiencies lies in the black community itself".
(Please read the above excerpts in the context of my own previous comments on the matter here)
And it took over 10 years before the medical community believed them: "Australians Barry Marshall and Robin Warren won the 2005 Nobel Medicine prize for discovering a bacterium that causes gastritis and stomach ulcers, the Nobel Assembly of Stockholm's Karolinska Institute said. They made the "remarkable and unexpected discovery that inflammation in the stomach as well as ulceration of the stomach ... is the result of an infection of the stomach caused by the bacterium Helicobacter pylori," it said, announcing the winners of the 10 million crown (A$1.69 million) prize".
More FEMA stupidity: "Now there's more news that ought to be, but isn't, a joke. Casting about for a place to temporarily house the people stuck in the Superdome and convention center in the days following Katrina, FEMA contracted with a cruise line to provide three ships at a cost of $236 million. But as aides for Sen. Tom Coburn calculated and The Washington Post reported, this averaged out to a rate of $1,275 per evacuee, per week. A quick glance at the newspaper would reveal that a seven-day western Caribbean cruise embarking from Galveston can go for as little as $599 per person. And that includes entertainment and the cost of actually propelling the ship through the water. How did FEMA get snookered? Well, just consider the demands the agency made on would-be suppliers. Apparently, after a one-day competition, the agency received bids from 13 ships -- but only four met FEMA's requirements. Among these necessities were "full meal service, between-meal snacks, linen and maid service, medical support, and prescription refills." People evacuated from the Superdome could not be expected to make their own beds or clean their own rooms aboard an all-expenses-paid cruise ship?"
A good comment on economic progress over the last 20 years: "The four English-speaking countries have done particularly well. That's because their financial and labor markets are less regulated, so they are more "resilient and spontaneously self-correcting," says Jean-Philippe Cotis, chief economist at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. If a worker loses his job in one industry, he is more likely to take one at a lower wage in another. Firms are more likely to cut prices and shrink capacity in the face of falling demand. This, Mr. Cotis says, makes it easier for a central bank to cut interest rates, and for those cuts to flow through to home buyers and businesses". (HT Albion's Seedling)
Austria saves the day: "Turkey's 40-year campaign to join the European Union is on the brink of collapse after emergency talks between EU foreign ministers broke up without agreement just hours before entry negotiations were due to start. Amid frenetic diplomacy and warnings of dire consequences if the EU rejected Turkey, Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, chaired fraught negotiations through the night in an attempt to stop Austria from torpedoing the membership talks.... Austria has demanded that Turkey be offered a "privileged partnership" as an alternative to full membership, an offer that Turkey has made clear is unacceptable. Although Austria stands alone on the issue, it has the power of veto..... Opponents of Turkish membership claim that the country is too big, too poor and too culturally different to join the EU. With the EU in crisis over the rejection of its constitution by French and Dutch voters, they claim that it is not capable of absorbing the Muslim country. Opinion polls show that the majority of EU citizens are opposed to Turkey's membership, with opposition particularly high in Austria, France, Germany and the Netherlands"
SEX DIFFERENCES IN IQ
This issue was in the news not long ago but it has now made the front page of "The Australian", Australia's national daily (issue of Sat., Oct 1) so it is good to see that the "incorrectness" of discussing IQ now seems to be waning. And the article that the headline leads to is unusually comprehensive so I am going to quote a little more from it than I usually would. The article does of course include comments from feminists about the issue but they are long on abuse and short on facts.
"The idea is as simple as its implications are seismic: women, as a group, lack the evolutionary genetic intelligence to master the highest strata of mathematics and the hard sciences. This is the central tenet of a contentious theory forwarded by famed US social scientist Charles Murray, who a decade ago made similarly explosive claims about the inferior genetic intelligence of blacks in his best-selling book The Bell Curve....
He had not intended to delve again into the genetic nature of group intelligence -- he received death threats after publishing, along with Richard Herrnstein, The Bell Curve in 1994 -- until a controversy erupted at Harvard last January over comments made by its president, former Clinton administration cabinet officer Lawrence Summers. Summers cited research showing that more high school boys than girls tended to score around the top on standardised maths tests and wondered aloud in casual remarks whether that chasm stemmed from biological differences between the sexes. It was a radical idea and not well received within the academic community. After being shouted down at almost every turn Summers, not surprisingly, quickly backpedalled.
"It absolutely appalled me, the reaction to what was a fairly unremarkable observation that men seem more predisposed to excel in these areas than women," Murray says. "I mean, it's true, isn't it? He had actually done his homework, which is more than I can say for those who attacked him." And so Murray set about writing The Inequality Taboo, which was published in September.
"The assumption of no innate differences among groups suffuses American social policy," he writes. "That assumption is wrong. When the outcomes that these policies are supposed to produce fail to occur, with one group falling short, the fault for the discrepancy has been assigned to society. It continues to be assumed that better programs, better regulations or the right court decisions can make the differences go away. That assumption is also wrong. "The historical reality of male dominance of the greatest achievements in science and the arts is not open to argument. The question is whether the social and legal exclusion of women is a sufficient explanation for this situation or whether sex-specific characteristics are also at work." ...
Murray -- who believes intelligence is the most important attribute if society is to become a true meritocracy -- is convinced that new breakthroughs will reveal that biology plays an overwhelming role in intelligence quotient, which in turn helps predict societal success. In examining the differences between the sexes, he cites as proof the fact that, among mathematically gifted students, seven times as many boys as girls scored in the top percentile of the standardised American SAT mathematics test....
"There is nothing inherent in being a woman that precludes high math ability. But there remains a distributional difference in male and female characteristics that leads to a larger number of men with high visuospatial skills. The difference has an evolutionary rationale, a physiological basis and a direct correlation with math scores." per cent of Nobel prizes in sciences were awarded to women in the 20th century....
Murray, however, remains unrepentant. "Elites throughout the West are living a lie, basing the futures of their societies on the assumption that all groups of people are equal in all respects. Lie is a strong word, but justified," he writes. In education, he says that the taboo has hurt boys because educators see their development as an aberration and girls as the norm. "I am confronting realities, dealing with the way the world exists," he says. "There are group differences but they don't preclude an individual from rising above them.
(Please read the above excerpts in the context of my own previous comments on the matter here and here)
The fast-vanishing truth about New Orleans: "In his recent article "Africa in our Midst: Lessons from Katrina," which runs in the Oct. 2005 issue of American Renaissance, Jared Taylor gives an account of horrifying and explicit details concerning the actions of thugs and criminals in New Orleans which severely frustrated, and often completely halted, relief efforts for several days following Hurricane Katrina. The thugs and criminals happen to be black, which is not surprising since 67% of New Orleans population is black. On the other hand 1) nobody else has reported these outrages in the comprehensive manner Taylor has and 2) many black leaders like Jesse Jackson have used the events surrounding Hurricane Katrina as an indictment of white people. Apparently fifty years after the passage of the Civil Rights acts, when the very mayor in charge of government in New Orleans is a black man elected by its people, the only acceptable discussion of race in America is one that conforms to the dramas of half a century before. Even if black people suffer at the hands of black people, whitey must be somehow to blame".
In the brainless world of the Left, the cure for poverty is to give the poor more money. The concept that poverty in the modern-day Western world may be mainly an attitudinal and behaviour problem is too deep for them. But what happens when the poor ARE given a lot of money through no exertions of their own? This story is pretty typical: "A couple who won nearly $800,000 on Lotto have told how they blew the lot in just seven weeks. Pregnant mother-of-five Donna Lynden described how she and partner Allan Taylor were pressured to give away much of their win to relatives, after buying a house and cars for themselves. She said their winnings quickly ran out and they continued to claim welfare payments to survive, despite hitting a $793,151.87 jackpot in June 2003.... They pleaded guilty this week to charges related to receiving about $29,000 of payments"
Blair disses Europe: "In terms of international diplomacy it was the equivalent of an unprovoked elbow to the back of the head. Tony Blair, speaking to the annual conference of his Labour Party, decided that the easiest way to pump up a bit of pride in Britain and his Government was to have a gratuitous whack at the country's biggest allies in Europe. "This is a country today that increasingly sets the standard," he boasted to a packed conference hall and dozens of TV cameras. "Not for us the malaise of France or the angst of Germany." The offence was magnified because Blair's gibe was so unexpected; in a few weeks he will be hosting a summit meeting with his German and French counterparts. But Blair's swipe was even more wounding because it was deadly accurate".
No underclass in Australia: "It's assumed that Australia, like most Western nations, has an underclass: a group of people who will always be poor. These people are sometimes called the disadvantaged, said to exist in reasonably large numbers and expected, as a social reality, to be always with us. But is it true? New research drawn from data previously unavailable to Australian academics suggests it's not: the underclass isn't vast and, what's more, disadvantage is a transient state, something that some people slip into before clambering up from. "The idea that there is a large number of people who, in crude terms, you might think of as being losers, who are basically beyond help, it's factually incorrect," says Bruce Headey, principal fellow at the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research at the University of Melbourne".
SOME RECENT ARTICLES UP ON ICJS
Letter to Palestinians
View from the other side
Two Rallies
BBC refuses to hand over evidence on Islamics to Police
How The United Nation's Neutrality Props Up Evil Regimes
Nazifying Israel returns to haunt the Labor Party
THE ONLINE BIOS OF IRAQ'S Suicidology
Rushdie speaks out against Islamic extremism
American anti-terror fatwa falls short
ABC's culture of contempt
I have just put up here an email from a reader in the Houston petroleum industry. He explains exactly how and why there were huge traffic jams and gasoline shortages in the recent evacuation of Houston before hurricane Rita.
A libertarian defence of the Iraq intervention: "The fact remains that there were reasons to believe Saddam had WMDs -- wherever they may be today. Whether they were buried in the sand or moved (with the help of the Russian military) elsewhere is not known by the West. But even if there were never any WMDs at all -- which is nonsense -- the Bush Administration still had moral and legal justification for its action there. What about the "international community" you ask? Well, if by "international community" is meant the corrupt United Nations, then it should not be forgot that Saddam Hussein was in violation of several UN resolutions as well as the terms of the cease fire. So, any way you want to look at it -- basic classical liberal or libertarian principles or international law -- the Bush Administration has as much right as anyone to overthrow Saddam and his regime"
Mark Latham, who led the Australian Labor Party into their great defeat in the 2004 Federal election, has recently put on a huge tantrum blaming everybody but himself. But even a stopped clock is right twice a day and he did manage some pretty conservative words of wisdom in a recent speech to university students, explaining his retirement from politics. Especially apt was his last sentence. "The sane, rational choice: If you are a young, idealistic person, don't get involved in organised politics. Contribute to your community, your neighbourhood, your immediate circle of trust and support. This is the best way forward for a better society."
Foreign aid is futile: "Foreign aid was invented in 1948 with President Truman's Four Point Program. In almost six decades, some 2.3 trillion dollars have been dished out worldwide to poor countries by rich ones-about half the cost of World War II! In that time, not a single country has significantly reduced poverty as a result of foreign aid. If we examine U.S. foreign aid in the last decade, we find that there is no relation between these transfers and the reduction of poverty. In Egypt, extreme poverty as a percentage of the population has remained the same despite the money given to that country, the second biggest beneficiary of U.S. largesse. China, while receiving two thousand times less aid than Egypt, reduced extreme poverty by half. Bolivia, one of the eleven biggest recipients of U.S. assistance, has managed to double the percentage of people living in extreme poverty.... But the causes of the wealth of nations are well known: open economies and secure property rights. The countries that are moving in that direction are reducing poverty; those that are not are getting worse. (On average, the first type of countries reduced poverty from 60 to 19 percent of the population in the last three decades, while the second type has managed only a twelve percent reduction.)...."
Why am I not surprised by this? "The California Department of Transportation is poised to buy $7 million worth of new trucks and trailers to help control highway stormwater pollution, even though it already owns similar equipment that sits idle because there aren't enough workers to operate it. The Department of Finance has approved a Caltrans proposal to buy 12 "Super Sucker" vacuum excavator trucks for $6.5 million. They clear highway stormwater drains of sediment and debris. The proposal also includes plans to buy a dozen hydroseeder trailers, devices that spread grass seed, water and mulch, for $540,000, state documents show. But Caltrans now owns 30 vacuum trucks and eight hydroseeder trailers across the state, and documents show the equipment often sits unused for weeks."
This didn't happen, of course: "The police department said Thursday it is investigating a dozen officers in connection with looting during the lawlessness that engulfed the city after Hurricane Katrina. News reports in the aftermath of the storm put officers at the scene of some of the heaviest looting, at the Wal-Mart in the Lower Garden District. Some witnesses, including a Times-Picayune reporter, said police were taking items from shelves."
Global warming didn't generate storms: "USA TODAY is right: Activists who blame Katrina on global warming may gain short-term publicity, but risk losing long-term credibility. The increasing frequency of hurricane activity in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico since 1995 is due to a natural, multidecadal shift in the Atlantic Ocean thermohaline circulation (THC), the oceanic 'conveyor belt' that pulls warm water from the tropics northward to the British Isles."
Carnival of Cordite (gun blog roundup) is up again.
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SOME RECENT ARTICLES UP ON ICJS Letter to Palesti...