SOME RATHER NUTTY (but very "correct") "SCIENCE"

The academic article below (plain-language summary here) is a contribution to the religion that black intellectual disadvantage is solely due to environmental factors. They examine verbal ability, which is the strongest single correlate of general intelligence. The message is that black kids who have grown up in ghettoes are permanently harmed by it. I imagine that might be true to some extent. Environment does indeed have SOME effect on IQ development. But the article below does not prove that. It shows that the black ghetto kids studied fell more and more behind age-norms as the years went by but it overlooks the basic truth that blacks fall behind whites as they grow up anyhow, REGARDLESS of their early or other environment. See here. The fact that the research was by sociologists with no apparent participation by psychometricians may account for its naivety.

The article also seems to make some heroic assuptions about WHERE blacks move to when they move out of a ghetto. That the place that they move too might also be low-quality seems not to be taken seriously. Do we really believe that about 42 percent of the black children living in the worst neighborhoods in 1995 moved to a nondisadvantaged neighborhood later on? Pull the other leg! If we DO believe any part of that, however, the movers (and their kids) were probably brighter than those who stayed behind so the nearest thing the researchers had to a control group wasn't really one.

Durable effects of concentrated disadvantage on verbal ability among African-American children

By Robert J. Sampson et al.

Abstract

Disparities in verbal ability, a major predictor of later life outcomes, have generated widespread debate, but few studies have been able to isolate neighborhood-level causes in a developmentally and ecologically appropriate way. This study presents longitudinal evidence from a large-scale study of >2,000 children ages 6-12 living in Chicago, along with their caretakers, who were followed wherever they moved in the U.S. for up to 7 years. African-American children are exposed in such disproportionate numbers to concentrated disadvantage that white and Latino children cannot be reliably compared, calling into question traditional research strategies assuming common points of overlap in ecological risk. We therefore focus on trajectories of verbal ability among African-American children, extending recently developed counterfactual methods for time-varying causes and outcomes to adjust for a wide range of predictors of selection into and out of neighborhoods. The results indicate that living in a severely disadvantaged neighborhood reduces the later verbal ability of black children on average by ~ 4 points, a magnitude that rivals missing a year or more of schooling.

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, December 19, 2007

One thing that always rather gets me is how Leftists ignore the fact that blacks from bad environments often rise to pre-eminence in sport (e.g. here). So how come a bad environment cripples the cortex (the part of the brain critical to intelligence) but empowers the muscles and the cerebellum (the part of the brain critical for co-ordination)? The brain, the muscles and the nervous system are all parts of the body so how can they be affected differently?

One might perhaps argue that ghetto kids improve their cerebellum and not their cortex because they do a lot of leaping about (do they?) and not much talking but then we have to ask why is that. Verbal ability and intelligence are intimately related so is intelligence not important for survival? Given the great need for "street smarts" in the ghetto, one would think that intelligence was very important in the ghetto so how come it is not selected for there? How come the cortex is not trained too? How come blacks are not geniuses with words? And I know a lot of very restless and very active Dutchmen and Germans who almost never seem to sit still but I cannot think of any sport dominated by blacks where Germans and Dutchmen are also prominent. Blacks just wouldn't be genetically different, would they?

Posted by John Ray

Achmed the dead terrorist

Thanks to Rough Diamond. Yeah, I know Christmas is over but it's a good one. Language Alert!!!

A nation of morons?

News.com.au - In an ominous revelation ahead of tonight's New Year's Eve parties, almost half of young motorists admitted to driving under the influence of drugs. And a staggering 72 per cent of young people admitted to being passengers in a car while knowing the driver was drug-affected. The findings are revealed in a NSW Government-commissioned report which shows for the first time the cavalier attitude of some young motorists.

I don't know why everyone is suddenly shocked by all this, we have a culture of hitting the booze at every celebration, friday night, booze, saturday night, it's booze again. The cricket's on, booze again, the footy, booze, gee what a shock that the population is experimenting with drugs as well. Do we have harsh punishments for drug use, no, instead we have injecting rooms so that you can shoot up in safety, all funded by the tax payer, yay!! Naturally the shocked and horrified are turning to the state to do something!!

It reveals the urgent need for drug-driving education campaigns, with the research showing while the drink-driving message has got through, young people are ignoring warnings about drug-driving. Police Minister David Campbell said he was shocked by the survey's results and warned drug users that two new drug testing trucks would be rolled out next year. "This is moronic behaviour which puts lives at risk and that is why we are in the process of expanding random roadside drug testing," Mr Campbell said.

What the hell is wrong with us, for every ill, the state has to roll out some "education campaign", every one of us will have to be subjected to ads and flyers of the dangers of drugs, we'll all have to become aware of another bloody thing, what happened to common sense? Drug driving ads will join the ads for the dangers of drink driving, speeding, too much sun tanning, slip-slop-slap, violence against women, smoking, heart disease, water conservation, evils of plastic bags, bullying in schools, the internet, dial before you dig, eating vegetables, school zones and obesity. Apparently we're all too stupid to think for ourselves, I'm waiting for the flyer on how to breath, I know it's coming.

Naturally it'll be all of us coughing up to fund this new "education campaign" to nanny the morons, I'd be perfectly happy to fund a campaign of flogging those caught drink/drug driving, I assure you, catch a few of them and flog the skin off their backs, then make em' pay the medical bills, the crackheads will educate themselves very quickly. But I guess we don't have the stomach for all that. There'll be some UN human right of theirs that will be violated, no charter of responsibilities though, just rights. Besides the do-gooders won't have anything to do and our tax dollar will have less use, can't have any of that.

Examining surnames

This is probably the time of the year for a few lighter posts so let me mention an occasional recreation that I have: Observing what surnames tell us. For instance: Surnames ending in "uk" or "iuk" are usually Ukrainian, surnames ending in "u" are Sardinan or Romanian, surnames ending in "yan" or "ian" are Armenian, and a final "ee" sound is very common in Irish names (Murphy, Toohey, Fahey, Talty, Sheehy, Mahoney, Mulrooney etc). There is also a more minor tradition for Irish names to end in an "un" sound: Coughlin, Reagan, Rearden etc.

But Ashkenazi names are the most amusing of all. They were meant to be. In a combination that will blow current Leftist minds, militaristic Prussia (in Northeastern Germany) was for many years the most tolerant place in Europe and many Jews fled to Prussia from persecution elsewhere. So much of the surviving Jewish population today owes its existence to the refuge their ancestors found in Protestant Prussia: Germany giveth and Germany taketh away. The Prussian border guards could not be bothered with foreign names, however, so gave the incoming Jews ID papers with German names on them. And the German names were deliberately mocking. So a Jew who was renamed as "Kren" for instance, had to go around thenceforth introducing himself as "Mr Horseradish" -- which is what "Herr Kren" means in German.

A basic knowledge of German therefore makes Ashkenazi names amusing to this day. Goldberg is "Goldmountain", Rosenblum" is "Roseflower", Finkelstein is "SparklingStone" etc. Occasionally however the guards must have run out of imagination and gave names that were not too bad. "Wiesengrund" is an example. It means "Meadowland", which sounds rather pleasant to me. In one of those ironies with which life abounds, however, the most prominent bearer of that name for his entire professional life used the pen-name of "Adorno", which is Spanish for "ornament"! Words fail me!

And I find my own surname rather fun too. There may be more than one path that has led to the surname "Ray" but it seems to me that the important fact about it is that it is found throughout the British Isles in various spellings (Rae in Scotland, Reay in Ireland, Wray in England etc.). So I think that it is clear that it is an old Celtic name probably derived from the Gaelic "rath" -- meaning "red" (cf. "roth", also meaning "red", in German). The Rays were originally the redheads. And guess what? My father was a redhead! So it all fits in a rather surprising way.

And then there are patronymics -- still important from Iceland to Russia. In Ireland we have of course originally patronymic names like O'Brien and McSweeney and in Scotland Macdonald. And if ever you get an urge to write a letter to the present President of Russia, DON'T address him as "Dear Mr. Putin". That is crass. You address him as "Vladimir Vladimirovich" (Vladimir son of Vladimir"). Similarly you would address Mikhail Gorbachev as "Mikhail Sergeyevich" (Mikhail son of Sergei). Patronymics are polite in Russia. But it is in Iceland that patronymics reign supreme. The full name of a recent President of Iceland is, for instance, "Vigdis Finnbogadottir" (Vigdis, daughter of Finnboga). That's her below.



In Denmark too patronymics used to be dominant but they made a law around 100 years ago that said everybody had to adopt a surname. But the Danes just converted their patronymics into surnames -- which is why we have so many Andersens (son of Anders), Petersens, Olsens (son of Ole), Neilsens etc. Now isn't that all rather fun?

Update:

I feel slightly foolish for having omitted the name "Kelly" from my list of Irish names ending in an "ee" sound. My very own beloved grandmother was a Kelly!

And to the list of Irish names ending in an "un" sound one should of course add Ryan, Mahon and Geoghegan. You may need to be Irish to pronounce Geoghegan correctly. It's easier than it looks!

Posted by John Ray

Those poor, starving Palestinians

Jerusalem Post - The IDF and Shin Bet uncovered 6.5 tons of potassium nitrate hidden in sacks that were disguised as aid from the European Union, the army announced on Saturday. Security forces discovered the stash in the cargo of a Palestinian truck at a West Bank checkpoint earlier in December. According to the IDF, the material, hidden in sugar sacks, was planned to be used by terrorists in the Gaza Strip. "Potassium Nitrate is a banned substance in the Gaza Strip and the Judea and Samaria region due to its use by terrorists for the manufacturing of explosives and Kassam rockets," the IDF spokesperson wrote in a statement. "This is another example of how the terror organizations exploit the humanitarian aid that is delivered to the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip with Israel's approval," the statement read.

Western governments gathered recently to waffle about how we all need to increase aid to the poor, starving Palestinians. One of our own politicians was whining at us recently on talkback radio about the lack of social justice and what not over in Palestine, how the poor Palis were in such dire straits and it was our obligation to cough up a few billion dollars for peace, that's all well and good if that scumbag was writing personal cheques but that is never the case with leftist scum. Rest assured folks, there will never, ever, in the history of mankind, be a shortage of leftist scum with numerous ideas of how to spend YOUR money. So you can rest uneasily folks, in the knowledge that these Jew-hating terrorist scum are not starving and in dire straits, if they were, they wouldn't be smuggling potassium nitrate instead of Sugar and your tax dollar will be supporting them, whether you like it or not.

How Far We Fall. . .

. . .is entirely up to us, but if this grotesque hero worship goes too much further, then Hicks’ incarceration will, to be quite frank, have been for nothing.

A DEFIANT David Hicks was in hiding last night after refusing to apologise for working with Islamic terror groups responsible for killing Australians.

Hicks, 32, looking robust and with shoulder-length hair, walked out of Adelaide's Yatala Prison yesterday morning after nearly six years behind bars.

A relative in a Victorian-registered car took him to the first of a series of secret safe houses.
Elvis has left the building. . .

Hicks made no apology for his actions in a statement read by his lawyer outside the prison after his client had left. Asked if Hicks felt he had anything to be sorry for, his father, Terry, said: "I don't think so." Mr Hicks later refused to say if Hicks was sorry for training with al-Qaida and serving alongside the Taliban.

"I think that's probably irrelevant now. He's out," he said.
Sorry - it’s far from irrelevant, and these creatures will persist on pretending that this man was guilty of nothing more than poor judgement while off on a fun little jaunt. I find this position, and its holders, deeply pathetic and worse. I believe this vile little mantra is motivated by, in some small part, deception, and in some much larger part, a deep and pervasive societal sickness (a disease I see manifest in most of the lefties I know, actually).

Now let’s hear why David’s little lack of remorse is a problem for quite a few of us out here in 'evil redneck land':

The snub sparked anger among terror victims and their families. Bali bomb survivor Therese Fox said it was a further insult to terror victims.

"We've had so many insults as victims of terrorism that this is just another one. You become desensitised to it," Ms Fox said.

She said the Bali bombers and the terror groups Hicks served with all had evil in common.

"I put them all in the same group. I think they're all evil," she said.

Paul Gyulavary, twin brother of 9/11 victim Peter, said: "I hope he shows some dignity and fades away. There's been a lot of taxpayer dollars spent to give him what I consider a fair bit of sympathy. I don't believe he was badly treated. His situation should be weighed against what happened to the 3000 people who died on September 11 and their families."

Their anger was echoed by David Cearns, whose daughter Jodie, 35, was a victim of the 2002 Bali bomb blasts.

Mr Cearns, the husband of Olympic gold medal heptathlete Glynis Nunn-Cearns, said he believed Hicks should not have been released from jail and Australians had "gone soft".

Federal Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson said Hicks should apologise.

"Whilst it is understandable that Mr Hicks thanked those who helped secure his release, the rest of the country will expect nothing less than an unqualified apology for his self-confessed material support for terrorism," Dr Nelson said.

On Friday, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said Hicks should be treated like any other former prisoner.
Ahhh – sorry – no – he really can’t. And that’s quite simply because he is not ‘any other’ former prisoner – he is David Hicks, the captured Taliban fighter and Al-Qaeda sympathiser – the supporter of a world-wide ideology that would destroy us if given half a chance – a man who went to war on their behalf, and against us and everything that we believe. He is a grotesque; an aberration; a representative threatener of our entire ‘group’ – in short, he should be punching every survival button we humans, as a species, possess.

That he does not punch these buttons for so many of us is a frightening symptom.

The whole point of Hicks’ incarceration, though – even in face of the fact that we had no laws by which to try him, which, on an earlier return, would have handed him a free pass (a fact the lefties have always known full well and yet have steadfastly refused to answer) – was to make an example of him in the only way possible without actually taking his life, and, most importantly, to dissuade others who might be thinking similarly traitorous thoughts.

For my part, I entirely agree with Paul Gyulavary, and hope he just now fades away; to make a celebrity of this creature now undermines the entire point of having him behind bars in the first place. I have no doubt that the lefties and their pet media-of-the-fifth-column won’t let us down there, though – they’ve been doing such a bang-up job of gumming up the works on every other front for the last several years, why would they stop now?

Update: One reason why the Australian Democrats just went the way of the Dodo:

MONITORING confessed terrorism supporter David Hicks after his release is unnecessary since existing laws and surveillance techniques would suffice, the Australian Democrats say.
Huh? Monitoring is unnecessary because we’re already able to monitor using existing techniques and laws (under which the authority to monitor was just granted)? HUH? What on earth is this lady trying to say? Oh – that’s right – absolutely nothing.

Situation normal. . .

Democrats Senator Natasha Stott Despoja said the control order subjecting Hicks to a nightly curfew and requiring him to report to police three times a week is unjust.
And Natasha would know all about that, wouldn’t she (after that opening paragraph?). I’m so glad the Democrats are gone.

"Mr Hicks has made it clear through his lawyer and family that he wants to move on with his life," Ms Stott Despoja said in a statement.
Goody for him, but I don’t actually give a toss what he or his family wants, and that’s hardly a case to put as to whether or not he actually constitutes any kind of potential ongoing threat. But Natasha knows best, I guess. . .

"I hope governments of all persuasions will respect this."
In the same way he respected them (and us)? Okay – if you insist. . .

Actually, Tash, it ain’t up to the Government – the Court provided this ruling. Are you, with this statement in our national media, respecting that?

She also hopes the government will not treat Hicks as a "political football". "David Hicks' treatment is a blight on the former (Liberal) government, which abandoned him overseas for more than five years before his ongoing detention began to bite them politically," Ms Stott Despoja said.
What absolute balls. Natasha, like so many of the bleating heads out there, just doesn’t (or simply refuses to) get it. This is not about politics – it’s not about some minor policing matter.

It’s about survival. It always has been. Once again, thank God the Democrats are politically gone. A few less suicidal windbags (jostling for their turn at the wheel) to have to worry about. . .

Update II: DAVID Hicks won't be taken seriously until he renounces terrorism, a prominent human rights lawyer says.

But of course this man is right – in a sense – unfortunately, he’s just got it all completely arse about – and this is the whole problem. Far too many of us do not take this man or his evil seriously right now (let alone after delivering some half-baked and no doubt bullshit apology).

Just one small example of what Hicks stood for and may well stand for still:
Hicks allegedly expressed anti-Semitic views to Feroz Abbasi, a fellow detainee at the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Abbasi, according to memoirs published in Time magazine, said he trained with Hicks at al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. Abbasi wrote that Hicks had said he wanted to "go back to Australia and rob and kill Jews", crash a plane into a building, and "go out with that last big adrenalin rush".
Hicks was always going to be an ongoing problem no matter what, thanks mostly to many of those on the left who seek to idolise him. This media feeding frenzy may end up making him a much, much bigger one.

Update III: There’s a seriously foul stench in the air:

A $1 million international bidding war is set to erupt for rights to David Hicks' story. Australian and US media organisations are expected to fight it out for interviews, book deals and movie rights.

While legislation prevents Hicks from profiting from his story, his father, Terry, has reportedly indicated the family has been advised on possible loopholes in the laws.
Vile. Absolutely vile.

The nannying industry:

Women drink-drivers 'disaster waiting to happen'
5:00AM Sunday December 30, 2007
By Rebecca Milne
One in four drink-drivers is now a woman - up from one in 20 - and police say many are driving with children and are a "big disaster waiting to happen".
"Finally the (female) statistics are catching up with reality and showing us what is going on out there," said Alcohol Healthwatch's Rebecca Williams.
Auckland police road policing manager Heather Wells said one of the most disappointing aspects was women drink-driving with children in the car.
Megan McPherson, spokeswoman for the Sensible Sentencing Trust's Cross Roads group lobbying for harsher penalties for repeat drink and drug drivers, said female drink-driving needed immediate attention.
source:
I get the definite impression that Kiwis are bloody sick of being nannied and lectured by busybodies and they're simply tuning out the messages.

Time to Choose

Scott Ott sums things up quite effectively:

Bhutto Killing Puts Euro Leaders On Notice: Time to Choose

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto has put on notice the leaders of every European nation.

Your secularism, your democracy will not stand. The growing Muslim populations in your own lands that you have done so much to tolerate, protect and celebrate, will soon rise up against you. Sharia law shall become your law. The Caliph shall rule you.
It remains only for you to choose submission or assassination.

This bullet to the neck of democracy in Pakistan should cause a twinge in the carotid artery of each leader in France, Britain, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Greece...name them all.

The assassin, strapped with bombs and carrying a firearm, stood amidst a cheering throng and took aim at the only major symbol of liberalism and democratic reform in the Islamic world. As the mortally-wounded woman slumped through the sunroof, the happy hunter detonated himself to send a clear message that no security cordon can protect those who rise to oppose jihad.

Cling, if you will, to your professors who drone on about the legitimate grievances of oppressed peoples who wish only to be left alone. Your cartridge clicks into the chamber.

Sing yourself to sleep each night with an ode to peaceful co-existence. The crosshairs find your throat.

Cup your hands over your ears to muffle the unthinkable warnings. The finger squeezes the trigger.

As you mount the rostrum to decry the slaying and call for calm in Pakistan, do you wonder whether your security detail could stop him?

As you send your condolences to the grieving widower, the shattered supporters and the tottering Pakistani president, himself a target of previous assassination attempts, do you have a strategy for negotiating with those who embrace murderous martyrdom?

Which will you choose -- submission or assassination?

Take your time deciding, but know this: The bullet hurtles onward.
I have no illusions. The only actions these fools will take is to try to silence people like Scott Ott.

The Australian Democrats [*sigh*]

Daily Telegraph - Democrats Senator Natasha Stott Despoja said the control order subjecting Hicks to a nightly curfew and requiring him to report to police three times a week is unjust. "Mr Hicks has made it clear through his lawyer and family that he wants to move on with his life," Ms Stott Despoja said in a statement. "I hope governments of all persuasions will respect this."

Yes, you heard right, she thinks that keeping an eye on a traitor and a scumbag is 'unjust'. Oh but he says he wants to move on with his life, well if a child raping sack of filth says, leave me alone, I just want to move on with my life, I've done my time, then I guess we should all just go back to the pastures and graze quietly like good little sheeple. Can you believe this, every time I hear the Democrats say something, I am amazed at their stupidity, they seem to get dumber every time!! Correct me if I'm wrong, but in the last Federal election I don't think the Democrats even got the "pity" vote. Since they've established themselves, with buffoonery like this, as the left of the left nutbase party, I guess we know why.

There's a lot we DON'T know about CO2

The article excerpted below is written so as not to threaten Warmists but the great gaps in knowledge that it notes show how shaky the assumptions fed into climate "models" have to be

So far, scientists have no reliable way to measure all these fluctuating carbon emissions. Temperature predictions based on future CO2 levels, therefore, could overestimate the risk of greenhouse warming -- or dangerously understate it. "A quarter of all the CO2 that is emitted is going somewhere, and we don't know where," said David Crisp at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he is senior scientist for the $270 million Orbiting Carbon Observatory, set for launch next December. "That raises a lot of red flags."

Moreover, as governments try to prevent climate change through emissions trading -- where buying and selling emissions rights is expected to top $70 billion by the end of next year -- regulators must track CO2 no matter where it comes from or where it goes, to verify transactions.

To pinpoint the places where the planet naturally absorbs CO2 emissions, researchers have turned North America into a test lab. No other region is so thoroughly monitored; nor does any other area emit as much carbon dioxide -- about 27% of the world's annual total.

The U.S., Mexico and Canada together release about 2 billion tons of carbon as CO2 into the air every year -- 85% from the U.S. alone -- but only about a third of it typically is absorbed by so-called carbon sinks, such as new forests, grasslands, crops and soil. The rest is either in the air or unaccounted for. That is according to a new study of 28,000 measurements collected every week from 2000 through 2006 and analyzed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's online CarbonTracker system.

The CarbonTracker offers a portrait of the continent in carbon dioxide, locating where greenhouse-gas upwellings are strongest and where new plant growth and soil most readily remove it from the air. Greenhouse-gas emissions were highest in the Midwest, which released more CO2 than any country except Russia, China, India, and the U.S. as a whole. By the same token, CO2 was absorbed mostly east of the Rocky Mountains and in northern Canada, where vast boreal forests hold twice as much carbon as tropical woodlands.

These detailed calculations reveal a countryside where these natural carbon-storage zones are failing, the NOAA researchers determined. The higher temperatures that result can, through more frequent wildfires and prolonged droughts, further interrupt ancient cycles of carbon storage, spilling even more carbon into the air....

An unusually severe U.S. drought in 2002, the NOAA researchers discovered, left an extra 360 million tons of carbon in the atmosphere -- an amount equal to the annual emissions of 200 million cars -- by stunting plant growth that normally might have absorbed the gas. "We lost half our natural sink," said NOAA geochemist John Miller. In Europe, a severe drought in 2003 left more than 500 million tons of carbon in the air.

In turn, the dry weather from higher temperatures also has made wildfires in the western U.S. more frequent, longer-burning and harder to extinguish. Large-scale fires in western and southeastern states can release as much carbon dioxide in a few weeks as motor-vehicle traffic there does in a year, University of Colorado researchers reported this past October in Carbon Balance and Management.

In a single week this fall, they reported, wildfires in Southern California released 7.9 million metric tons of CO2 -- equal to 25% of the monthly fumes from every car, truck, factory and power plant in the state.

Source


Posted by John Ray

Another influential Australian Leftist who is keen on the navy

Sub fleet should be doubled says Kim Beazley -- even though new ones are already planned. Tony Blair recently ordered two big new aircraft carriers for Britain so maybe the moderate Left is going back to a Theodore Roosevelt mentality. But big Kim always did like military hardware. Excerpt below

AUSTRALIA may need to double the size of its submarine fleet tocounter the growing and deadly threat posed by rival submarines in the region, former defence minister Kim Beazley said yesterday. His comments come after The Australian this week revealed that Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon had ordered planning to begin on the next generation of submarines to replace the six Collins-class boats when they are retired in 2025.

Mr Beazley also called on the Rudd Government to urgently tackle what he said was a "glaring weakness" in Australia's anti-submarine warfare capabilities. "This weakness comes at a time when (the navy) will soon be producing the best submarine targets in the region with the new air warfare destroyers and amphibious landing ships," Mr Beazley told The Weekend Australian.

Mr Beazley, who ordered the Collins-class submarines when he was defence minister in the 1980s, said the strategic scenario facing Australia had changed and that a larger submarine fleet was needed. "I think we need to have up to 12 submarines because of the numbers of submarines being developed elsewhere," he said. "This project will be of vital significance to Australia at a time when submarines are increasingly becoming multi-purpose platforms (for warfare)."

More here


Posted by John Ray

Leave Hicksie alone!!!

News.com.au - MEMBERS of the public and the media should leave confessed terrorism supporter David Hicks alone, Federal Attorney-General Robert McClelland says. The attorney-general said in a statement that Hicks served six years and three months of a seven-year sentence, with the remaining nine months of his sentence being suspended. "Mr Hicks is now entitled to start rebuilding his life," Mr McClelland said. "I urge the media and members of the public to respect Mr Hick's privacy."

Like that internet drama queen whining at everyone to "leave Brittney alone", our Federal Attorney-General Robbo is whining at us, leave Hicksie alone, he has rights you know, you meanies, you all just suck, so what if he is a traitor and fought for the other side. Robbo thinks that Hicksie is like the victim of rumor and innuendo or something, that he's been unfairly treated, it's all just been a witch-hunt, Hicksie was just a young bloke looking for a bit of an adventure. So what if he abandoned his wife, children and his country, it's all about Hicksie's rights you know. So pass Robbo a tissue and leave Hicksie alone!!!

Right on target!

Comment by "Zenster", writing in Gates Of Vienna under the post "The Future Without Benazir Bhutto":
" It looks like most people are missing the big message here:

TARGETED ASSASSINATIONS WORK.

Yes, Bhutto was your average run-of-the-mill corrupt wannabe banana republic dictator. But, she was a secular run-of-the-mill corrupt wannabe banana republic dictator and when dealing with Islam, even that slight difference is significant. Personally, as The Average Joe already noted, I am also amazed that she survived for this long. After all, a woman presuming to run "The Land of the [Islamically] Pure" in its currently more advanced fundamentalist form is just a bit much, now isn't it?

As I have mentioned before, at some point the West will probably need to adopt a few of jihad's strategies in order to wage counter-jihad. Few major forest fires are fought without lighting back-fires to deny the conflagration further fuel. Similarly, we need to begin denying jihad its own "fuel" or prime movers: Namely, its clerics, scholars and financiers. Please consider that the removal of less than 100 such operatives could temporarily stall or cripple Islam long enough for us to potentially turn the tide against terrorism."
The whole comment is posted over at Crusader Rabbit

"Racist" Reference to Visas?

We read:

"Australian cricket fans racially taunted Indian supporters at the MCG yesterday despite Cricket Australia's zero-tolerance policy. And police and security staff did not eject any fans despite the Australian supporters shouting "Show us your visas, show us your visas" at their Indian counterparts and being within metres of the potentially explosive incident.

Indian fans spoken to by the Herald Sun described the chant as "offensive, ugly and racist". One said the chant created "a potentially explosive situation". They were backed by Australian fans who said that those responsible should have been thrown out of the ground.

Up until the chant began, there had been good-natured banter between the two groups but the Indians' mood changed when the "visa" taunt started. More than 100 Indian supporters sat stony-faced and silent during the chant....

Insp Bob Hill said a police senior-sergeant was sent to the area to investigate the incident. "The Indian fans interviewed said they were not offended by the chant so there was no need for anyone to be ejected," Insp Hill said.

Source

So possessing or not possessing a visa makes you a member of a particular race? Reminiscent of the Leftist claim that Americans who oppose illegal immigration are "racists".


Posted by John Ray

It's all about our 'rights'

Daily Mail - When she spotted yobs vandalising a war memorial garden, Julie Lake sprang into action. As the daughter of a Second World War RAF pilot – and granddaughter of one of the fallen in the 1914-18 war – she felt it was her duty to intervene. But, after giving the main culprit a talking- to and a 'cuff round the ear', she finds herself facing the prospect of being arrested for assault. Gangs of teenagers wearing hooded tops have carried out a series of attacks on the pretty memorial garden with its sombre stone cross. They have daubed offensive graffiti on the stone, ridden their bikes over wreaths and carved their names into wooden benches. Mrs Lake will voluntarily attend a police station next month to be formally arrested.

Apparently the youth that got the "cuff" called the police and reported that she had assaulted him. In this western PC world, technically that is assault and she will be charged and don't think it'll only happen in Britain. I assure you, the PC Scumbags will do the same to you if you intervene the way she did. You see in today's world, it's all about your rights, everyone has all these bloody rights but no one seems to have any responsibilities. This lady tried numerous times to get the police involved and stop these disrespectful curs but they won't bother because they don't care or they know that some gasbag judge will probably slap them on the wrist and that'll be that. If you want justice, you'll have to follow that punk home and when it's nice and dark, send a brick through his window and hope he learns his lesson from that. It's either that or go to jail for doing the right thing or just suck it up and look the other way.

IS RON PAUL A RACIST?

By some Leftist definitions, Ron Paul IS a racist. But Leftists class as a racist anybody who mentions racial differences at all -- a definition which is to my mind just a form of abuse. Are medical scientists (e.g. here) who repeatedly find medically significant differences between blacks and whites racists too?

I mentioned yesterday Taranto's feeble attempt to brand Ron Paul as a racist but he has clearly retracted that claim today. I suspect that I was far from the only one who sent him links and emails that took him to task over his comments yesterday.

A much more serious claim that Ron Paul is a racist comes from black conservative Bob Parks. Bob Parks generally speaks a lot of sense but the refusal of Ron Paul to be politically correct has obviously alarmed him. Parks has a whole list of broadly realistic utterances from Ron Paul that would have any Leftist shrieking "racism". The prime example seems to be:

"We don't think a child of 13 should be held responsible as a man of 23. That's true for most people, but black males age 13 who have been raised on the streets and who have joined criminal gangs are as big, strong, tough, scary and culpable as any adult and should be treated as such."

If you left out the word "black", I think there could well be a majority of Americans who agreed with that. And, given his vocal condemnation of real racism (as now linked by Taranto), I suspect that Ron Paul himself would intend his remarks to apply to all gang members who otherwise fitted his description. And who would deny that many of the gang members who fit Ron Paul's description are in fact black? Ron Paul has no difficulty in describing reality but Bob Parks seems uncomfortable with it.

One of my Jewish correspondents emailed me with the thought that Taranto initially got a bit freaked over Ron Paul because Ron Paul frequently denounces "neocons" and in Leftist mouths "neocon" is often code for "Jew". That would be an understandable mistake. But it shows no awareness of the libertarian position on armies and war. There are probably no two libertarians anywhere who agree totally with one another but, as extreme individualists, libertarians tend to be very suspicious of ANYTHING that governments do -- and armies and war are very clearly large examples of the exercise of government power. Many libertarians in fact deny that armed forces are needed at all. To caricature a little, they believe that each man should have his own bazooka and that would be sufficient to deter any invader or attacker. I disagree with that but I am describing a common libertarian view.

So given that background, opposition to foreign military interventions (interventions which neocons favour) is fundamental for a libertarian like Ron Paul. And that makes him fundamentally opposed to the foreign wars that GWB has undertaken with neocon support. So Ron Paul's opposition to the neocons is entirely explicable on POLICY grounds, not racial grounds. And his view that it is Bush's advisers who are most responsible for the foreign wars rather than Bush himself is one shared with many Leftists. For Ron Paul, however, that opinion clearly serves the end of limiting criticism of an administration (GWB, Cheney, Rice etc.) that is still popular in many conservative circles.

It has also been remarked that Ron Paul gets approval from a motley crew of political extremists, from Nazis to Communists. But that is again to be expected of a libertarian. Libertarians agree with conservatives on some things and Leftists on other things so a libertarian who forcefully expresses a view that is dear to the heart of an extremist will get some approval. And most extremists of all sorts are highly critical of Bush government policies (particularly in the middle East) so Ron Paul's vocal criticisms of those policies can be expected to be welcomed in extremist circles. To judge Ron Paul by those who praise him is very strange however. By that logic he is both a Communist and a Nazi!

I intend nothing that I have said above as support for Ron Paul. My preference remains strongly for Fred Thompson. I intend what I have said above as just my attempt to set the record straight in an area that is much prone to hysteria.

Update:

I am both amused and pleased that some readers have questioned my point above about Ron Paul being supposedly both a Nazi and a Communist. They say that in view of my own comments about the Leftist nature of Nazism, the combination is not at all improbable. That does however overlook the fact that "splits" are chronic on the far-Left and it is other "splittists" that Leftists tend to hate most of all. Sibling rivalry can be vicious. And the enmity between Nazis and Communists was indeed great in WWII (as the many German bodies resting in Russian soil attest) and continues to this day. The basis of the split was in fact a fundamental one. Marx and Lenin wanted class-war whereas Hitler wanted all Germans united in one big conformist happy family: Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuehrer. Hitler was in that way closer to Hegel than Marx was.

Posted by John Ray

The Darling of the Australian Left

News.com.au - The nation's most famous [TRAITOR] prison inmate has told his father Terry Hicks a trip to Centrelink to sign on for the "Newstart" allowance is at the top of his to-do list when he tastes freedom for the first time in six years. Although Terry Hicks remains confident of his son's mental state, questions remain over whether he will be fit to work any time soon. Recent reports suggest Hicks suffers panic attacks and lacks self confidence and social skills [BOO-HOO]. According to Centrelink's website, the 32-year-old is eligible to receive $465 a fortnight while he looks for work. Terry Hicks said his son had no income and no savings since leaving Australia to fight [FOR THE ENEMY] in Afghanistan.

MK - I added the bits in capitals. His old man defended his right to bludge off us, something about being an Australian citizen, well I guess this is one instance where leftists will put aside their clamoring for "global citizens" and just settle for mean, old, xenophobic Australian citizenship. Is it any wonder that the darling of the Australian left is a dole bludging terrorist traitor, I mean, would the left have their heroes any other way? Ain't western civilization great, go off to fight for the enemy, against your own country men and when you're caught, we'll coddle you for years, such that you're fatter when you came out than when you went in. When we finally release you from you weak-ass punishment, we'll then give you money for food and clothing, we'll even try to find you a job. Anywhere else and he'd be rightly shot and his carcass thrown to the vultures.

"Crime in Australia Takes on a Muslim Face.."

"Storm Track Infiltration:
More and more, crime in Australia is taking on a Middle Eastern face. Tim Priest, a former police detective from New South Wales Australia, describes the combination of willful political negligence which is leading to police inaction where cops in Australia, like in France, won’t even go into Middle-Eastern and North African neighborhoods."
More HERE

Blasted whales again..

SMH - Anti-whaling protesters have vandalised the Japanese Consulate in Melbourne with fake blood. A consulate spokesman, who declined to be named, said about six protesters spread red ink on carpet inside the consulate office on the 45th floor of the Melbourne Central building in Elizabeth Street this afternoon.

MK - Meanwhile around 80,000 abortions are performed in Australia every year, any one of these scumbags got any fake blood for the unborn, those who have no voice? When you think about it they are worse off than the damn whales, at least they are killed for "research" and eaten, the unborn are just killed and discarded. The Better Health [well, not for the baby] Channel says that the current "studies have shown that the majority of Australians support the idea of safe [again, not for the baby] and legal abortions." I just wish the majority of Australians would get as hysterical and emotional about our own species before we start wailing about whales!!

Leftists - what have you done?

Back when the Howard dictatorship was ruling this country, with regular executions of leftist windbags, we were told everything that was wrong in the states was due to the lack of funding from the Feds. From the public health fiasco to the potholes in your driveway, it was all John Howard and all that was needed was more funding.
News.com.au - MINISTERS have been told to forget any notion of additional funding requests as the Rudd Government returns to work today, determined to deliver on its election promises. Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner has delivered the directive to all ministers in a sign that Kevin Rudd aims to put his credentials as an economic conservative beyond doubt.
Now that the glorious new leader has taken the reins and has his mandate for the glorious revolutions, I was under the impression that there would finally be "social justice" in Australia. I'm sure leftists were also hoping for this, sorry losers, looks like all your merry schemes just went up in flames.
In a letter to his colleagues, Mr Tanner says the ministers should focus their submissions for the May budget on the implementation of election commitments, advising them that they need to have good reason as to why any other spending proposals should be considered. And those who do make submissions will have to identify matching savings or face a tough time before the budget razor gang, the expenditure review committee.
Another thing, back during the election campaign, the Howard government told us that we've never been better off, judging by the billions spent by us over the Christmas period, it's hard to argue with that. Well, it looks like even the leftists never had it so good.
A senior minister told The Australian the cuts would be deep and would target inefficient programs that were allowed to continue, without review, under the Howard government.
Good grief leftists, what have you done, he's worse than Howard!!

Taranto, Ron Paul and the North/South war

I rarely disagree with Taranto but his sensitivity to "racism" (He is Jewish) sometimes loosens his contact with reality. And he is too slippery with the facts by far in his comments on Ron Paul. He faults Ron Paul for pointing out what I and many others have pointed out: That America was the only country that needed a civil war to free the slaves -- leading to the view that the real motive was not to free the slaves but rather as Lincoln himself often said: To "preserve the union" -- in other words to centralize power in the Federal government and allow no dissent from it. The slaves were merely a pretext.

Taranto puts forward a very stretched interpretation of Ron Paul's words by saying that Paul favours official desegregation only at "a federal lunch counter" and not in the armed forces etc. He realizes however that such an interpretation is not sustainable and endeavours to bolster his position by saying that "Paul blames Lincoln for the Civil War rather than blaming the South for starting a war to preserve slavery".

But the accusation that the South started the war, although technically correct, is disingenuous. The South attacked Fort Sumpter only because it was already under heavy threat and needed to consolidate its position against the more numerous Northerners if it was to have any chance of defending itself. On Taranto's argument, Israel's six-day war was also wrong because it was Israel that fired first when it was heavily threatened by Egypt.

Posted by John Ray

Some more remarks on Left-leaning aid organizations

I give a lot of money away but I almost always give it direct to the intended beneficiary. The story below is one of many which shows why. Even though I am a former registered dog breeder, I do NOT intend to remember the local dog's home (RSPCA) in my will for fear that the money could fall into the hands of "animal lib" fanatics.

I used to donate to World Vision until they came out with one-sided criticisms of Israel. I tried to donate to World Vision on condition that the money go to a needy Jewish child in Israel but they would not take my money under such conditions. Because of her huge military burdens, Israel is still in many ways a poor country so there are many needy Jewish families there. I am afraid that ALL the well-known "aid" organizations must be regarded as very dubious conduits for actual aid. There are however Jewish charities which aim to help poor Israeli families and my negative remarks must not be taken as applying to them

THREE years after Australians donated $400 million to rebuild Asian lives devastated by the 2004 tsunami, aid groups are under attack for spending much of the money on social and political engineering. A survey by The Australian of the contributions by non-government organisations to the relief effort found the donations had been spent on politically correct projects promoting left-wing Western values over traditional Asian culture.

The activities - listed as tsunami relief - include a "travelling Oxfam gender justice show" in Indonesia to change rural male attitudes towards women. Another Oxfam project, reminiscent of the ACTU's Your Rights at Work campaign, instructs Thai workers in Australian-style industrial activism and encourages them to set up trade unions.

A World Vision tsunami relief project in the Indonesian province of Aceh includes a lobbying campaign to advance land reform to promote gender equity, as well as educating women in "democratic processes" and encouraging them to enter politics. Also in Aceh, the Catholic aid group Caritas funds an Islamic learning centre to promote "the importance of the Koran". This is seen as recognition of the importance of Islam in a province that has been the scene of a long-running and bloody independence struggle against the secular central Government....

More here



Posted by John Ray

There's a polar bear in there somewhere, looking for his ice floe.....and a greenie out there somewhere who believes that..

How YOU helped fund the leftist propaganda machine

"THREE years after Australians donated $400 million to rebuild Asian lives devastated by the 2004 tsunami, aid groups are under attack for spending much of the money on social and political engineering."
Care to see where a lot of the money went? Some examples:

"The activities - listed as tsunami relief - include a "travelling Oxfam gender justice show" in Indonesia to change rural male attitudes towards women.
Another Oxfam project, reminiscent of the ACTU's Your Rights at Work campaign, instructs Thai workers in Australian-style industrial activism and encourages them to set up trade unions.
The Oxfam website describes how $18,690 of its tsunami relief fund is being spent on a theatre production to "help change attitudes toward women in Acehnese society".
A World Vision tsunami relief project in the Indonesian province of Aceh includes a lobbying campaign to advance land reform to promote gender equity, as well as educating women in "democratic processes" and encouraging them to enter politics.
Also in Aceh, the Catholic aid group Caritas funds an Islamic learning centre to promote "the importance of the Koran".

This is seen as recognition of the importance of Islam in a province that has been the scene of a long-running and bloody independence struggle against the secular central Government.
Critics say the aid agencies have exceeded the mandate provided to them by mum-and-dad donors from middle Australia who thought they were giving money to rebuild houses and lives shattered by the tsunami, rather than forcing the ideological views of the Australian left on traditional Asians."
The Australian
Well, that's the left for you--dishonest, patronising, racist bastards who never let anything get in the way of promoting their foul ideology.

Australian Navy to get new submarine fleet

A bit surprising from a centre-Left government. Perhaps they are as conservative as they say they are. Or is this just a pork-barrel project for the faltering South Australia economy? I can see another economic disaster unfolding however. It doesn't look likely but pray to all your gods that Australia buys something off the shelf this time. Buying unproven designs has never worked well: behind time, over budget and lacking capabilities has been the routine result in the past

AUSTRALIA will build the world's most lethal conventional submarine fleet, capable of carrying long-range cruise missiles and futuristic midget-subs, to combat an expected arms race in the region. Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon has ordered planning to begin on the next generation of submarines to replace the Royal Australian Navy's Collins-class fleet [which they have just recently finally got working!] with the aim of gaining "first pass" approval for the design phase from cabinet's National Security Committee in 2011.

The 17-year project will be the largest, longest and most expensive defence acquisition since Federation, potentially costing up to $25 billion. It comes at a time when regional navies such as Indonesia's, China's and India's are seeking to dramatically expand their submarine fleets, potentially altering the balance of naval power in the region. "There is widespread agreement that submarines provide a vital military capability for Australia," Mr Fitzgibbon said. "The development of new submarines requires long-term planning and needs to progress quickly, and that's what I have asked for.".....

Source

Post by John Ray

I Am Legend Should Be I Am Moron

By AR - Will Smith, star of new film I Am Legend is a reliable Hollywood star not usually known for moonbattery as are many of his colleagues. So was he joking when he said Hitler wasn't all bad?

"Even Hitler didn't wake up going, 'let me do the most evil thing I can do today', I think he woke up in the morning and using a twisted, backwards logic, he set out to do what he thought was 'good'. Stuff like that just needs reprogramming."

For Will's information, that stuff was reprogrammed starting with D-Day.

enough talk--what about some practical ideas?

""They're out there, and they're pressing as hard as they can, and if my assessment of freedom lovers' fortitude and perseverance is at all accurate, they're driving us backward. We're not cornered yet, but we mustn't delude ourselves; the point of no return is drawing near.

What have we been doing, other than carping to one another? I'll allow that, short of a second American Revolution, there isn't a lot we can do except to talk, write, lobby, and otherwise represent our own interests and point of view. But I'm beginning to think that the power structures of our nation have turned against us -- that they've tacitly leagued with the forces of darkness outside our borders. If that's the case, no amount of talk will hold back the night for long, much less cleanse our polity of the wounds it already bears. We'll either have to fight -- really, with real weapons, real, lasting terror, and real, copious bloodshed -- or accept bondage." (bold mine . kg)
From the post "Laughter And Tears" by Francis Porretto
Not just the power structures of America, is it? The ruling classes everywhere in the West appear to be selling their citizens down the river, increasing the restrictions on us even as they either cave in to or turn a blind eye to the islamists.
Sure, there are troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the war against islam needs to be fought by the people at home, resisting the demands of muslims and the steady erosion of our rights and liberties in the name of "security".
The video clip of an F16 dropping bombs on the Taliban may be satisfying, but it's ultimately bloody useless if we can't be bothered to fight for freedoms here at home.

Does black IQ matter?

There is a post on the libertarian Rockwell site which quite rightly points out that it is absurd to judge a person by his race or by any other group membership he may have where there is variety within that group. So why do I, as a libertarian conservative, continue to expound the science of the matter? There are two reasons: Because we do not live in a libertarian world and because it is my own scientific discipline that is involved and I feel a committment to publicize the truth of the matter.

The second reason I will not expand on as it is simply a personal committment that I feel. The first reason is the important one: Vast errors in public policy are made because of the general refusal to accept the truth of the matter. Race is a most vexed topic in all countries where there is a substantial African minority and the problem is made much worse by the utter failure of many attempts to deal with it. The clearest example is in education.

Because the lesser ability of blacks is not accepted in education circles, every failure of blacks to do well at educational tasks is always attributed to "the system" or "racism". A perfectly normal and natural occurrence is treated as an emergency which must be remedied by hook or by crook. And because the real nature of the problem is not admitted, all the "solutions" that are tried are based on wrong theories so not only fail but normally make the problem worse -- generating much anger and feelings of victimization among blacks at the same time.

One "solution", for instance, is "dumbing down". The requirements for (say) a diploma are watered down so that EVERYBODY (or most anyway) passes. In the course of that, however, the educational requirements for whites have to be lowered too (it would be "racism" otherwise) so that white kids in the same educational institutions are taught and evaluated at a "black" level and consequently receive a much degraded education -- which is a tragedy, however you look at it. For instance, around half of High School graduates trying to entering Florida's public colleges and universities are found to lack the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic -- skills which in more "racist" times were acquired in grade school.

I could go on to multiply examples of how refusals to cope with black realities degrade life for everybody but I think I have said enough to make my point clear. I cover the matter in more detail here. For the record, what I would advocate as regards black educational failure is simply for the authorities to be race blind. Let children be judged not by the colour of their skin but by their individual characteristics. Kids who are not doing well should get extra tuition whether they are black, white or brindle and after that let the chips fall where they may. That would be the least destructive policy.

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and TELSTRA/BIGPOND. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

MERRY CHRISTMAS! From JOHN RAY



The image above is by talented Australian conservative cartoonist Zeg

Homosexuality Trumps Blackness

Jamaican culture not acceptable in Britain:


"Brighton council's decision this week to prohibit concerts that incite racist or homophobic violence should be applauded. While no BNP-supporting boot-boy band would get a council licence anywhere, there has been more tolerance for Jamaican reggae stars such as Buju Banton and Sizzla, famous for those toe-tapping lyrics "Shot battybwoy, my big gun boom" about murdering gay men.

It is time to challenge the hierarchy of discrimination that puts the rights of racial minorities and religious groups high above those of women and gay rights. Too often culture or faith are cited as excuses for attitudes that would never be forgiven in, for example, white working-class men. According to Amnesty and Human Rights Watch, Jamaica has one of the most repressive attitudes to homosexuality in the world

Source

I just wonder how the correctness police work out these priorities. So nice that we have such wise people making decisions for us dummies about what we hear. Sorta a pity if you like Jamaican music, though.

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and TELSTRA/BIGPOND. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

Merry Christmas

To all our dear readers - may your celebration be as delightful as mine (Santa, by all accounts, has been kind).

borrowed from The Sniper

It's not News Unless it's Reported by a Mainstream Journalist

The Leftist "Media Matters" is scandalized because Fox News reported an anti-Greenie story that was originally put on the net via a blog rather than by one of the mainstream news organizations. Fox was reporting -- HORROR -- that a group of 400 scientists have rejected the "consensus" view that the world is warming up. The scientific "consensus" on global warming has unravelled and we can't have that!

How pathetic they are. They couldn't question the truth of the story -- because it is true. The only thing to criticize that they could find was who reported the event. We must bow down to the Leftist media and let them tell us what to think, apparently. We are naughty children from whom some information must be kept hidden. They are in for a lot of disappointment from now on, I would say.

The blog concerned was run by the GOP side of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee -- which makes the squawk from Media Matters all the more absurd. How did putting the info on a blog differ from putting out a press release? I suppose the difference is that the media have the chance to ignore a press release. An important difference to be sure.

-------

The Greenie site called "Grist" is also in mourning. Excerpt:
"One final (depressing) note: How effective is Inhofe's media outreach compared to that of the entire community of climate scientists? Well, according to technorati (PDF), as of today, Dec. 21, the IPCC Synthesis report has had 278 blog reactions since its release November 17, whereas Inhofe's "report," issued just yesterday (Thursday), has already had over 300 blog reactions."

Grist was also sad that the NYT ran the "consensus-shattering" news -- a sort of "betrayed by our own" feeling, apparently.

The only substantial point in the Grist article was what we have come to expect of the Green/Left -- attempts to discredit the personalities concerned. They said that some of the scientists were not "prominent" enough -- even though some of them were very prominent indeed.

That the Grist post was a "watermelon" (Green on the outside, red on the inside) effort was shown by its footnote: This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund

Another typically abusive Leftist response here



(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and TELSTRA/BIGPOND. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

NEW IQ DATA SHOW THAT THE FLYNN EFFECT IS NOW DEAD

East German psychologist and geneticist Volkmar Weiss has some fascinating results here about IQ scores. He shows that the PISA tests -- annual comparisons between countries of educational achievement -- are little more than IQ tests. He uses this to convert PISA scores into IQ scores and shows that the PISA results correspond very closely to the IQ averages for different countries that are reported by Lynn & Vanhanen -- With Japan very high-scoring and African countries very low-scoring (for instance). Volkmar thinks that once the PISA people realize what they are testing, they will stop doing it! Because the PISA tests are very carefully conducted and use good sampling, however, the PISA data are at the moment a very robust body of information about IQ. And the fact that the tests are conducted annually allows trends over time to be tracked very closely -- a huge improvement over existing IQ data.

Using both the IQ test and PISA data, Volkmar shows that the simple upward trend in IQ scores shown in 20th century data by Flynn has now been shot to ribbons. Some countries are showing declining IQ scores, some are holding steady and some are rising. Volkmar relates this to the percentage of poor people in the country. Countries with lots of poor people are getting dumber overall and countries with few poor people are getting brighter. It is not clear why that is. It may well however be due to immigration. As genetically less able people from (say) Africa move into (say) Britain, they drag down the average of both IQ scores and income.

By and large however, Volkmar presents raw data so what you make of it is to some degree a function of how closely you study it. I hope someone who is really on top of the subject takes Volkmar's data and puts it into better order than I have done in my few remarks above. Both Lynn and Rushton are aware of the data so I am hopeful of comments from them soon.

If we have to wait for their comments to come out in the academic journals, however, "soon" may be two years away. The last academic journal article that I had published took two years to come out even AFTER being accepted for publication! Fooey to that! Anything academic that I do these days I just put straight on the net and that is that.

One point I have not heard anybody make is that the Flynn findings are actually among the stronger proofs that the black IQ handicap is genetic. The rise in IQ scores for most of the 20th century has to be an environmental effect as the time period was much too short for genetic change. But the black/white gap remained roughly the same throughout the period. So if cancelling out environmental factors left the gap unchanged the remaining influence on the gap must be genetic! IN THEORY, there could still be environmental influences on IQ scores that could be improved but the fact that the improvement has now flattened out shows that environmental factors have now IN FACT done about all they can do for the IQ scores of the populations concerned. And yet the gap remains. Eppur si muove.


(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and TELSTRA/BIGPOND. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

Lakota Indians Declare Independence

Has anyone seen this story? The Lakota Sioux Indians have withdrawn from all treaties with the U.S government and have declared independence. From a news release at CommonDreams.org,
Lakota Sioux Indian representatives declared sovereign nation status today in Washington D.C. following Monday's withdrawal from all previously signed treaties with the United States Government. The withdrawal, hand delivered to Daniel Turner, Deputy Director of Public Liaison at the State Department, immediately and irrevocably ends all agreements between the Lakota Sioux Nation of Indians and the United States Government outlined in the 1851 and 1868 Treaties at Fort Laramie Wyoming.

Following Monday's withdrawal at the State Department, the four Lakota Itacan representatives have been meeting with foreign embassy officials in order to hasten their official return to the Family of Nations.

Russell Means, Itacan of Lakota added,
"The new country would issue its own passports and driving licences, and living there would be tax-free - provided residents renounce their U.S. citizenship."

Keep your eye on this story, it has the potential to explode. I wonder how long the U.S government will allow this to continue?

Japanese Defense Minister on Aliens

While most of the industrialized nations of the world deal with such mundane matters as economics, health care, justice, education and global warming to name a few, Japan is preoccupied with more pressing concerns.
Japan's Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba is considering how his Self-Defense Forces could respond to an attack by space aliens while adhering to limits on military action under the country's war-renouncing Constitution.

Mr.Ishiba did add he was expressing his own views and not speaking on behalf of Defense Ministry policy.

Genes for the higher Asian IQ

Excerpt:

Human evolution has speeded up over the past 80,000 years. Dr Moyzis's paper suggests that HOMO SAPIENS is continuing to undergo local evolution. He and his colleagues reckon they can both estimate the rate of evolution and identify many of the evolving genes, by using a trick with the clumsy name of linkage disequilibrium.... In acknowledgment of these diverse circumstances, the researchers looked in detail at the DNA of four groups of people from around the planet: Yoruba from Africa, Han Chinese and Japanese from Asia, and Europeans.

The finding that may cause most controversy, however, is that in the Asian groups there has been strong selection for one variant of a gene that, in a different form, is responsible for Gaucher's disease. A few years ago two of the paper's other authors, Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending, suggested that the Gaucher's form of the gene might be connected with the higher than average intelligence notable among Ashkenazi Jews. The unstated inference is that something similar might be true in Asians, too.

The Ashkenazim paper caused quite a stir at the time. It was merely a hypothesis, but it did suggest a programme of research that could be conducted to test the hypothesis. So far, no one--daring or foolish--has tried. Eventually, however, such questions will have to be faced. The paper Dr Moyzis and his colleagues have just published is a ranging shot, but the amount of recent human evolution it has exposed is surprising. Others will no doubt follow, and the genetic meaning of the term "race", if it has one, will be exposed for all to see.

More here

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and TELSTRA/BIGPOND. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

Socialist government and other lefty idiots at work

Aurora over at The Midnight Sun has some interesting background on the difference in the way two Israelis were dealt with for forging a passport compared to several Arabs who had what amounts to a full-blown production line going in forged documents. It makes for fascinating (and infuriating) reading.
An excerpt:
"In 2004, two Israelis Uriel Zoshe Kelman and Eli Cara were arrested for manufacturing a single passport. There was a huge outcry with Helen Clark’s voice rising shrill and strident over the rabble. In the ensuing scandal, the New Zealand ambassador to Israel was recalled..."
and:
"Consider a parallel incident which occurred on September 28, the day the two Israelis were deported. This was the very day the trial opened in Auckland of Fahad Jaber Ajeil and Riyad Hamied Sultan, a Kuwaiti and an Iraqi accused, in the words of the crown prosecutor, of forging passports and other travel documents on “a scale never before seen in this country.” Police found a passport-manufacturing process with false documents from seventeen countries and twelve fake passports in various states of readiness. Yet, this incident – which could well be connected to Al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups – has aroused precious little ire from the Clark government, much less from the prime minister herself, who seems to find this business as usual. (September 29, 2004)

Now here we are in December, 2008 and it seems that the Arabs who committed large scale fraud ‘on a scale never before seen in this country’ have appealed the court’s decision to have them deported as well and have won the right to stay on in New Zealand. Why? Because they’re having emotional problems."
I'm spitting mad about this--it seems to me that there's an army of liberal idiots queueing up to make excuses for every fucking criminal lowlife, unlimited taxpayer's funds for lawyers and gullible (at best) judges willing to deny reality, all in the name of some "humanitarian" dreamworld.
Unless, of course, you just happen to be a law-abiding white person of European extraction. Or Jewish. In that case, you'd be on your own.

Remember them this Christmas




Past & Present, May God bless them and watch over them.


Merry Christmas.

Thanks to landrecce & joshdsmith01 for the videos.

More on FDR and his "New Deal"

A few Excerpts

When accepting the Democratic Party's presidential nomination in 1932, Roosevelt proclaimed "a new deal" for the American people. Once in office, he began radically transforming the federal government while seeking to ameliorate the nation's woes. He pushed subsidies for farmers, changed the banking system, and created the National Recovery Administration, which regulated many aspects of business until it was declared unconstitutional in 1935. Through the creation of the Social Security system and related programs, Roosevelt vastly expanded the scope and size of the federal government and created the political world in which we live. The shift was so complete that even as vocal a foe of big government as Ronald Reagan, who started his political career as a New Deal Democrat, approvingly wrote to Congress in the early 1980s of the "nation's ironclad commitment to Social Security" and praised FDR's visionary leadership in creating the program.

In her meticulously researched new history of the Depression, The Forgotten Man (HarperCollins), journalist Amity Shlaes describes the received catechism of the era: "Roosevelt made things better by taking charge. His New Deal inspired and tided the country over. In this way, the country fended off revolution of the sort bringing down Europe. Without the New Deal, we would all have been lost..The attitude is that the New Deal is the best model we have for what government must do for weak members of society, in both times of crises and times of stability." But that conventional account, she writes, fails to capture "the realities of the period." Shlaes shows how both Hoover and Roosevelt "overestimated the value of government planning" and intensified and prolonged the very problems they were seeking to fix.

One of the important things about the existing argument is that it's all about Keynesianism, about whether government spending can cure the economy when it's ill. Scholars have overlooked the cost of uncertainty in an economy, what we would now call the "unknown unknowns." Both the Hoover and Roo-sevelt administrations (but especially the Roosevelt administration) were so unpredictable. That hurt the economy very much, and when I went back and saw the extent I was astounded. Uncertainty is a factor that I thought needed to be explored. There were lots of people who said, "I will not invest 'til I know what's going to happen." ...

Roosevelt's advisers didn't know Stalin was a monster, or at least not so much, and very naively they copied him. In the book I trace how some of the characters go to the Soviet Union in 1927 and are bowled over by Stalin. They get six hours with him and they come back and you see them, especially [former Columbia University professor] Rex Tugwell, implementing things they learned from fascist Italy or from the world of Stalin. The influence of these European entities from Russia to Italy was not parenthetical. These people were not working for Moscow, but they were influenced by Moscow.

One of the members of the junket was a very well-known writer named Stuart Chase, an accountant who wrote about economics. He wrote a book called The New Deal, and it appeared in 1932, and that's where Roosevelt got the phrase. The last sentence of Chase's book is, "Why should Russians have all the fun remaking a world?" So you see the continuity.

There was a romance with the economy of scale, and not just in America. FDR's advisers said that having so many different states and so many different ways of doing things was inefficient. If you had 50 flowers blooming, as federalists would have, they bloom differently and it makes for a messy garden. There was this sense that the economy couldn't grow further unless there was rationalization, standardization. Even now you'll see businessmen fighting for standardization: "Just make the rule!" they say.

The most important thing for our generation is that the New Deal will come back to bite our children when they pay yet higher payroll taxes because we did not dare to reform Social Security and other entitlements. There are not enough people to pay for Social Security, and Social Security is set up so that you can't fix it just by growing the economy.

This is a moment of choice for us, our generation and the younger people. We have to look again at Roosevelt. Roosevelt was inspiring. He was right on World War II, but we do not have to have false nostalgia for his wrongheaded policies in the '30s. We should warn our children and help to change Social Security, but you don't see that in the presidential candidates. You don't see daring on Social Security.

More here

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and TELSTRA/BIGPOND. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

Will the Real Dictators Please Stand Up

For ten years we’ve been assailed by the usual leftist voices, shrieking about the loss of liberty and democracy under the evil Howard regime with utterly mendacious little hit pieces like this:

Since 1996, Howard has cowed his critics, muffled the press, intimidated the ABC, gagged scientists, silenced non-government organisations, neutered Canberra’s mandarins, curtailed parliamentary scrutiny, censored the arts, banned books, criminalised protest and prosecuted whistleblowers.
Not even thirty days in power, however, and the new ALP government is taking steps to curb free speech in ways the Liberals never did.

Rudd takes control to new highs

SOME of Australia's major institutions will have their media releases vetted by the Rudd Government to make sure they reflect Labor's "key messages".

If necessary, Senator Carr would send the release to the Prime Minister's office. The department would contact the agency "regarding required changes"
This will, of course, be met by deafening silence from the lefties. And that’s because, when it comes right down to it, they don’t mind dictatorship one little bit – just as long as it’s their lot who are doing the dictating.

One former Liberal minister called the Rudd Government "control freaks".

"The CSIRO sent out a lot of things that were quite contrary to our position on climate change. We just gritted our teeth and wore it," he said.
Of course, the ALP is having none of that. . .

The secretary of the department, Mark Paterson, said there was nothing unusual about the directive, especially in the early days of a new government. Mr Paterson said statutory authorities should not be immune.

"There's a mindset with some that statutory authorities are independent for all purposes. They're not," he said.

"They are created to undertake a particular task. That doesn't give them free range or nor should it."
From the horse’s mouth, folks.

So, where are you, lefties? Where are your outraged voices now?

Vile hypocrites, the lot of you.

Another Me-too from New Leadership, Fresh Ideas

Back when this was all over the news, the leftists were squealing like stuck pigs about this case, it was as if the police were breaking the fellows legs and once healed just breaking them again, all whilst pulling his finger nails out and rearranging his face with a sledgehammer. The leftwing media were fawning over the fellow, interviews and money about his 1000-year persecution at the hands of the merciless Howard Junta.
LiveNews - Mohamed Haneef's lawyer says he is unsure why the new Labor Government is considering a High Court challenge to stop the Indian doctor returning to Australia. New Immigration Minister Chris Evans is flagging a High Court appeal after the Federal Court today again ruled Dr Haneef should have his visa returned. Mr Russo says it's unclear why Labor appears to be copying the Howard Government.
We couldn't get enough of the fellow, now that the leftwing gasbags are in power, I was expecting welcoming parades and chartered flights to bring Haneef and his entire family to Australia so that we could all do penance by putting them up at tax payer expense at the Ritz. Gee, I wonder why none of this has happened, could it be that the Howard cabal was right, that new leadership got some fresh info on all this and decided to shelve some of his fresh ideas until the morons move to the next source of hysteria.

Update - Looks like the feds have caved in and now say he is free to return, yay, perhaps now the left will be pushing to sue, it's only taxpayers money after all and it's not like leftist parasites are making any contributions to that.

It's official--the U.N. and islam are now allies.

According to CNS news, the UN General Assembly has passed a resolution against the “defamation of religions”, especially Islam.
an excerpt:
" * Opposes “the introduction and enforcement of laws that specifically discriminate against and target Muslims”;
* Points out “the increasing trend in recent years of statements attacking religions, Islam and Muslims in particular, especially in human rights forums”;
* Asserts that “Islam is frequently and wrongly associated with human rights violations and terrorism”; and
* “Stresses the need to effectively combat defamation of all religions, Islam and Muslims in particular, especially in human rights forums”.

Simply collecting and publishing data on atrocities committed in the name of Islam will become “hate speech” once the would-be despots at the UN and the EU have their way."
from Gates of Vienna