Tuesday, April 11, 2006

 

AN ANTI-BUSH RANT

Your challenge is to guess its origin:

"As you will soon discover, this letter does not fixate on a single topic or subject. To be perfectly frank and honest, it started out rather focused but I soon found, as I worked on my primary hypothesis and sought corroboration from other sources, that I have quite a number of different things to say about Bush. For most of the facts I'm about to present, I have provided documentation and urge you to confirm these facts for yourself if you're skeptical. I'm not the first to mention that I respect the English language and believe in the use of words as a means of communication. Unbalanced flibbertigibbets like Bush, however, consider spoken communication as merely a set of noises uttered to excite emotions in snooty fast-buck artists in order to convince them to subvert existing lines of power and information. If you think about it, what I wrote just a moment ago is not the paranoid rambling of an evil wacko. It's a fact. If you look back over some of my older letters, you'll see that I predicted that Bush would prevent me from sleeping soundly at night. And, as I predicted, it did. But you know, that was not a difficult prediction to make. Anyone who has bothered to learn even a little about Bush could have made the same prediction.

Bush asserts that the ideas of "freedom" and "collectivism" are Siamese twins. Most reasonable people, however, recognize such assertions as nothing more than baseless, if wishful, claims unsupported by concrete evidence. Bush's lickspittles have been staggering around like punch-drunk fighters hit too many times -- stunned, confused, betrayed, and trying desperately to rationalize Bush's unsympathetic, uninformed bromides. It is doubtlessly not a pretty sight. I want to keep this brief: When I first became aware of Bush's covert invasion into our thought processes, all I could think was how my dream is for tired eyes to open and see clearly, broken spirits to find new energy, and weary arms to find the strength to challenge the present and enrich the future.

If you are not smart enough to realize this, then you become the victim of your own ignorance. For Bush's dissolute plans to succeed, it needs to "dumb down" our society. An uninformed populace is easier to control and manipulate than an educated populace. Faster than you can say "microcinematographic", schoolchildren will stop being required to learn the meanings of words like "mechanicocorpuscular" and "floccinaucinihilipilification". They will be incapable of comprehending that Bush can't fool me. I've met randy publishers of hate literature before, so I know that if I were to compile a list of Bush's forays into espionage, sabotage, and subversion, it would fill an entire page and perhaps even run over onto the following one. Such a list would surely make every sane person who has passed the age of six realize that Bush and its mercenaries are the most grungy yahoos you can imagine -- and even then, only in your worst nightmares. At the risk of sounding a tad redundant, let me add that we must learn to celebrate our diversity, not because it is the politically correct thing to do, but because it is swinging pretty hard on some slender evidence. Of course, this sounds simple, but in reality, the real issue is simple: Barbarism advances Bush's long-term goal of plutocratic global dictatorship. To wrap up, I'll just hit the key elements of this letter one last time. First, people who believe that women are crazed Pavlovian sex-dogs who will salivate at any object even remotely phallic in shape need to be worked over with an oak table leg and then sentenced to 20 years of hard labor in order to straighten out their thinking. Second, I don't want to have to hear Bush's rambling streams of consciousness. And finally, I'm sick of Bush sticking its proboscis into everyone else's business."

Go here to find out where it comes from

posted by JR 5:50 AM

Friday, April 07, 2006

 

Two letters about the Frank Ellis affair published in Britain's "Times Higher Education Supplement" on April 7, 2006 -- followed by an essay from the same source

The letters appeared under the heading: "Just a black-and-white issue?"

First letter:

Unlike your previous correspondents on black-white IQ differences (Letters, March 31), we are specialists on this subject. For nearly 100 years, the data have shown that in dozens of studies throughout Africa, in Britain, the US and the Caribbean, black people have lower average IQ scores than white people. There is a clear overlap in the black and white IQ distributions.

The scientific debate is mainly over the causes of the average differences. We have concluded that genetic factors have a role to play in this difference, as evidenced by the fact that black infants adopted and brought up by white middle-class parents show little improvement in their IQ scores by late adolescence.

IQ is also related to brain size, where the races also differ. It is the lower average IQ scores of blacks that contributes to their poorer performance in school and later on to their lower earnings.

Many other scientists have reached the same conclusion as us. Thus, Frank Ellis has done no more than restate what has been well known and accepted for many decades by those who have expertise in this subject.

Richard Lynn
Ulster University

J. Philippe Rushton
University of Western Ontario




Letter 2:

The suspension of Frank Ellis by Leeds University reflects the weakness of the academic community as it submits to institutional mob rule.

Those who condemn Ellis should disprove his assertations, not seek to ban him or condemn his views as "abhorrent". A tightly knit group of politically motivated fanatics and "anti-racist" zealots cannot be allowed to undermine the purpose of a university.

Hanif Lebabi, the spokes-man for Unite Against Fascism, condemned a book he has not read. There is no "Bell Curve theory", only a book of that name. It is not for his group to decide which ideas can be discussed.

The modern book-burners must be resisted. Ellis must be supported on principle in a landmark case with serious implications.

Angela Pinter
Via e-mail

The Times Higher Education Supplement (April 7, 2006)




ON LIBERTY AND RESPONSIBILITY

John Stuart Mill, adapted by A. C. Grayling

(In the year that marks the bicentenary of the birth of John Stuart Mill, A. C. Grayling imagines how the philosopher would respond to the debate on academic freedom in light of the Frank Ellis case)

It will always be the case in society that there will be one or a few who hold opinions strongly at variance with the majority. Such might be reformers and voices in the wilderness, calling to repentance; others might be holders of opinions that are disagreeable to the many or to best opinion. One of the latter is Frank Ellis, whose publicly aired views on the matter of race are for sound reasons not acceptable to good opinion in England - because they are wrong, because they are unjust to those against whom they are directed, and because they are provocative (and we may justly suspect, deliberately so) of dissension and discord.

And yet I hold that Ellis is entitled to voice these opinions, on the basis of the principle of free speech. True, his free speech is bad free speech. But the remedy against bad free speech is more and better free speech, not censorship. Society does itself a greater harm by silencing those with whom it disagrees than by contesting their views, which requires that speech be free on both sides of the case.

Who can argue, as once was argued in the days of enforced religious orthodoxy, that people cannot think as they like? Yet the liberty of expressing and publishing opinions falls under the same principle as liberty of thought, resting in great part on the same reasons and being in practice inseparable from it.

Mankind would be no more justified in silencing one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race, posterity as well as the existing generation and those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth produced by its collision with error.

Indeed, it is for the opportunity to express the fairer, truer and more generous opinion that the racist opinions, such as those of Ellis, should be permitted expression - not of course for any merit in themselves but for that opportunity itself, since for every one person who voices such views there will be others who hold them in silence, and their outlook must be challenged too.

In order to illustrate more fully the mischief of denying a hearing to opinions because we condemn them, and to recognise the principal causes that make diversity and conflict of opinion advantageous, we must recognise that when society acts tyrannically - society collectively, rather than the separate individuals who compose it - its means of tyrannising are not restricted to the acts it may do by the hands of its political and public functionaries. Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the mind itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs to be protection also against the tyranny of prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them.

The necessity to the mental wellbeing of mankind (on which all their other wellbeing depends) of freedom of opinion, and freedom of the expression of opinion, rests on four distinct grounds, which are best understood when we contemplate the risk of losing truth and the advancement of knowledge through refusing to allow the expression and conflict of opinion of all kinds.

First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility. Second, though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of truth; and since the general or prevailing opinion on any object is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied. Third, even if the received opinion be not only true but the whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds. And not only this, but, fourth, the meaning of the doctrine itself will be in danger of being lost, or enfeebled, and deprived of its vital effect on character and conduct: the dogma becoming a mere formal profession, inefficacious for good, but cumbering the ground, and preventing the growth of any real and heartfelt conviction, from reason or personal experience. Such being the reasons that make it imperative that human beings should be free to form and express opinions without reserve; and such the baneful consequences to the intellectual and, through that, to the moral nature of man, unless this liberty is either conceded or asserted in spite of prohibition.

No one pretends that actions should be as free as opinions. On the contrary, even opinions lose their immunity when the circumstances in which they are expressed are such as to constitute their expression a positive instigation to some mischievous act. But until that limit is reached, no one has the right, or a justification, for silencing even the voicing of falsehood; rather, it is our duty to contest and overcome it with truth, and to be glad of the opportunity to do so.

Adapted from John Stuart Mill's essay "On Liberty". A. C. Grayling is professor of philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London. The John Stuart Mill Bicentennial Conference is being held at University College, London, this week.

posted by JR 8:41 AM

Saturday, April 01, 2006

 

Some Statements about Immigrants are now Illegal in Australia

Australia's political correctness court, the "Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission" has just declared illegal statements made by Prof. Andrew Fraser about aspects of Australia's immigration policy. Prof. Fraser has released a response to the verdict which I reproduce below. It appears that he will refuse to comply with the verdict.

Fraser has set out his views both in the popular press and in an academic journal article -- an article which was suppressed before it could be published. You can however find the article here. It is a very thorough defence of his views. Predictably, the only substantial scholarly riposte to Fraser that I know of comes from a moderate conservative -- Windschuttle. The only talent the Left have in these matters is for hysteria and abuse.

Just for the record, I should perhaps note that I personally disagree with much of what Fraser says -- particularly with regard to Asians. I do however find it utterly bizarre that statements can now be declared illegal that would have attracted near-universal assent (including assent from many Leftist intellectuals) in the Western world up until about 60 years ago.

Human Rights Commission Declares Associate Professor Andrew Fraser’s Letter to the "Parramatta Sun" Unlawful

(Press release from Andrew Fraser, Associate Professor, Department of Public Law, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, AUSTRALIA. Email: dfraser@humn.mq.edu.au)


In a stunning blow to freedom of expression in Australia, the President of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Mr John von Doussa, QC, today declared that a letter to the editor written by Associate Professor Andrew Fraser and published in the "Parramatta Sun" on 6 July 2005 was an unlawful breach of s 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.

In that letter Professor Fraser observed that “[e]xperience practically everywhere in the world tells us that an expanding black population is a sure-fire recipe for increases in crime, violence and a wide range of other social problems.”

The letter was the subject of a complaint submitted on behalf of Mr Safi Hareer, General Secretary of the Sudanese Darfurian Union, by George Newhouse of Newhouse Lawyers, with the assistance of David D Knoll, President of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies and Ms Anna Katzmann, SC.

No complaint has been received by the HREOC in relation to the article by the editor of the "Parramatta Sun", Charles Boag, also in the July 2005 issue. In that opinion piece, Mr Boag categorically asserted that “the violence in America’s deep south…was caused by whites.” To emphasize his anti-white message, Mr Boag went on to accuse “white settlers” of committing “murder and mayhem on a great scale in Australia.”

Apparently, in contemporary Australia, people of white, European ancestry can be identified routinely as the root of all evil while it is forbidden for whites ever to mention publicly the social pathologies associated with black Africans, even if they are well-known to any informed person and openly acknowledged by reasonable black people themselves.

The President of the HREOC has just endorsed that double standard. Along with his two submissions to the Commission, Professor Fraser provided, inter alia, an article by a black journalist thoroughly disgusted by the behaviour of African-Americans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans last year. Leighton Levy wrote that “I am beginning to believe that black people, no matter where in the world they are, are cursed with a genetic predisposition to steal, murder, and create mayhem.”

The President of the HREOC also disregarded the rest of the copious evidence provided by Professor Fraser detailing the nature and scope of the crime, violence and other social problems associated not just with the black African diaspora in the West but with the post-colonial societies of sub-Saharan Africa itself.

The upshot of the Human Rights Commission decision is clear. Whenever any person of black African ancestry declares that he has been “offended, insulted, humiliated or intimidated’ by the public mention of such unsavoury truths, the freedom of white Australians to speak openly and freely about black African immigration in particular and non-white immigrants generally will be suppressed.

The Commission has also flatly rejected Professor Fraser’s submission that his Letter was not unlawful because, under s18D of the RDA, it was a “statement, publication, discussion or debate made or held for [a] genuine academic …purpose or any other genuine purpose in the public interest; or…a fair comment on any…matter of public interest if the comment is an expression of genuine belief held by the person making the comment.”

For all practical purposes, the decision of the Commission has rendered nugatory, the assurances of the politicians who assured Australians that the passage of the racial vilification laws would not threaten our historic liberties.

Even before the Commission’s decision, Deakin University had refused to publish a peer-reviewed article by Professor Fraser on the subject of race and immigration while Macquarie University has forbidden him to teach in any subject area.

The freedom of academics to dissent from the official policy of transforming Australia into a colony of the Third World is now officially dead and buried—unless patriotic Australian rally to resist this blatant assault on their ancestral freedoms.

Indeed, on a personal level, the Commission’s decision is more worrying still to Professor Fraser. The Commission’s proposed resolution of this matter echoes the methodology employed during the show trials in Stalinist Russia where defendants were compelled to confess their thought crimes and beg public forgiveness.

Newhouse Lawyers demanded that Professor Fraser “should cause to be published at his expense an advertisement in the "Parramatta Sun" (of a size no smaller than the Letter and no less prominent) acknowledging that he engaged in unlawful conduct by means of the Letter and Comments, unreservedly apologising for the hurt thereby caused to the Sudanese people who live in the Parramatta-Blacktown area, promising not to repeat such conduct and retracting on the public record all of the imputations.”

Mr von Doussa has invited Professor Fraser to submit to this neo-Stalinist ritual of self-abasement.

Professor Fraser will not accept that invitation. But, in all likelihood, that will not be the end of the matter. It can be assumed that, if this “conciliation” proposal is rejected, Newhouse Lawyers will pursue Professor Fraser into the Federal Court, in an effort to ruin him financially by winning an order of costs against him.

posted by JR 6:26 AM