More EU insanity

Back in the 1990s, I thought the European Union was a sensible, pragmatic way of dealing with the challenges of economic globalism, but my naive view soon changed when it went on a crazy expansion drive in the early 2000s.

Instead of being a trading block between a select group of western European countries with a similar level of economic development, it's now become a massive and unworkable mish-mash of vastly different countries with major disparities in wealth and welfare levels.

The problems in trying to integrate countries with big differences in income levels have come in sharp focus in Spain, which has been had been hit particularly hard by the recent global recession.

Despite unemployment running at a staggering 17 percent following the collapse of its recent building boom, Spain still has large numbers of unemployed migrant workers from Eastern Europe. For example, there are estimated to be at least 70, 000 unemployed workers from Romania who are still in the country. This is in spite of the fact that the unemployment rate in Romania is about 5.5 percent - only a third of what it is in Spain.

The most likely reason why unemployed Romanians are unwilling to return home isn't hard to find. As a Romanian expat points out:

"...the Spanish unemployment benefits are higher than a Romanian salary, so it's better for them to stay here in Spain than go home to Romania."

Nor has the Spanish government had much success in encouraging unemployed migrant workers from Latin America to return home.

So far only 4,000 migrants have taken up a government offer of returning home for three years in exchange for financial handouts.

I don't know whose been the main drivers behind Spain's recent immigration boom, but it seems likely middle class Spanish taxpayers will be ones paying for most of its negative externalities.

Conservative Populism: An Alternative to Obama’s Road to Serfdom

In a previous post, “Is the Republican Party Really Conservative?” I raised the question of whether the Republican Party in America was really conservative, and whether the Party should either become more moderate (left leaning) or focus on conservative social issues. I concluded that instead of the latter, Republicans should align themselves with conservatism by focusing on core conservative principles, including individual and economic freedom, limited government, and the rule of law. In addition, I advocated that if the Republican Party is to represent true conservatism, they must fight to take back the culture by opposing political correctness in the media, the schools, and the universities, they must advocate a pro-American foreign and domestic policy, and they must advocate the reformation of our monetary and financial system. As I’ve addressed core conservative principles in previous posts at GM’s Place, as well as the problem of inflation, government debt, and the need for monetary reform, this article will focus on the need to take back the culture and advocate pro-American foreign and domestic policies.

As I pointed out in the previous post cited above, conservatism had not been a dominant force in American politics until quite recently, in particular, since the Reagan Presidency. Aside from the fact that McCain was a poor candidate, and not a conservative, I attribute the Republican loss in 2008 to a poor showing with three groups: libertarians and fiscal conservatives, the so-called Reagan Democrats, and the youth vote. It seems that the Republicans have thrown their lot in with Wall Street and the Religious Right, a rather uneasy alliance to say the least. Wall Street, as is rather obvious, will support whoever has political power, and with today’s cultural climate, business schools are as likely to turn out leftists as conservatives. Witness the huge corporate contributions to the Obama campaign. The Religious Right, on the other hand, should find the Republican Party even more conducive under true conservative leadership, instead of a party establishment that pays lip service to their causes but seldom follows up with anything substantial. But unfortunately, the Religious Right cannot provide the intellectual fire power to articulate a vision necessary to counteract the huge advantage in numbers and money that benefits the left. As I stated in my previous post: Conservatives are “losing the Cultural War to the left: we lost the universities, the schools, and the media, all the organs of cultural transmission. What the Republican leadership seems to have overlooked is that you can’t stay in power politically if you lose the culture. Today, the left attacks with impunity Western Civilization, America, Christianity, and now, even the goose that laid the golden egg, capitalism.” To engage in this battle and win, a new generation of conservative and libertarian intellectuals is called for.

While there are contradictions in the policies desired by libertarians and conservatives, and between the Religious Right and Reagan Democrats, these groups do have enough in common to make alliance against a common enemy, the “soft despotism” exemplified in the socialistic policies of the Obama administration. We must remember also that individuals are usually more complex than their group affiliations.

To appeal to both the Religious Right and Reagan Democrats, the Republican Party needs to abandon its loyalty to Wall Street and take up the cause of Main Street, or in other words, the American Middle Class. Main Street is actually a lot more conservative than Wall Street. But to win over Main Street, Republicans must implement pro-American foreign and domestic policies. To accomplish the latter change, Republicans must embrace pro-American, America First, domestic and economic policies, which means opposing many of the open border and global free trade policies of the Wall Street crowd when they conflict with the interests of American citizens and workers. The Republican establishment has marginalized Pat Buchanan, Tom Tancredo, and Ron Paul, who have advocated ending illegal immigration, even though a majority of the rank-and-file are opposed to open borders. Illegal immigration offers a constant pool of cheap labor which serves to keep the cost of labor low, and along with global free trade, results in American workers losing their jobs to foreign competition. Giving tax breaks to multinational corporations that move overseas in search of cheap labor also contributes to the demolition of America’s manufacturing capacity, which would be disastrous if this country again found itself in a situation like World War II, in addition to the fact that America is hemorrhaging money due to its trade deficits with China and other Asian countries. While I don’t mean to oversimplify the complexities of international trade, or to take an unqualified stance in favor of protectionism, I do think that American trade policy must consider what is fair to the national interest and to individual Americans, and allowing other countries to have unfair trade advantages with America, or to allow American companies to continue to benefit from low taxes while moving overseas, is not conducive to such fairness. As I said before, Adam Smith did not promote the idea that a free market nation should tolerate huge trade deficits. On the other hand, to implement policies that are not detrimental to American workers and manufacturing does not necessitate that conservatives should be enthrall to the unions, and should not oppose coercive union practices such as closed shops. Neither does it necessitate continuing the Obama “class warfare” policies of taxing the rich. Lower tax rates are economically beneficial for all Americans.

Finally, American foreign policy should be pro-American, in opposition to the left’s Anti-Americanism. Instead of compromising American sovereignty under the auspices of international treaties, with the goal of relinquishing our sovereignty to international agencies or world government, debate should focus on where America’s real foreign policy interests lay. A strong national defense is necessary, but as to what extent America should be the policeman of the world, should be part of that debate. And while we must continue to oppose Islamic fascism and terrorism both at home and abroad, it makes little sense to rely on an overextended military to fight overseas while America and her European allies allow Islamic jihadists to subvert Western civilization from within.

The views stated above reflect a kind of conservative American populism, which is necessary if the Republican Party is to be a party that embraces the middle class, Reagan Democrats, and the Religious Right. Former Washington Times correspondent and Chronicles columnist Sam Francis wrote many columns about right wing populism, citing Donald Warren's work on Middle American Radicals (MARs), The Radical Center: Middle Americans and the Politics of Alienation. And of course, Pat Buchanan had his "pitchfork brigade" in the 1990s. Francis also made the point that Marxism didn't succeed in America until the New Left came along and followed the advice of the Italian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci, who advocated a long “march through [take over] the [cultural] institutions” of the West. In other words, the left wouldn't succeed until it took over the cultural institutions of the West: education, the media, and foundations in particular, and destroyed the culture of capitalism, individual freedom, and Christianity. This is precisely what political correctness and multiculturalism are intended to do.

This leads us back to the Culture Wars, which conservatives are losing to political correctness and multiculturalism, which is also connected to the youth vote. I think one of the difficulties we, as conservatives have to overcome, particularly with youth, is the perceptual distortion that we represent the “Establishment.” We certainly don’t. Since the Progressive Era and the New Deal, the Left has generally controlled politics, media, academia, and education. But they really didn’t control the culture, at least not to the extent that they do now. The 1960s revolution was really a revolt of the New Left against the Old Left (LBJ), and it so alarmed Middle America that there was a backlash: beginning with the election of Richard Nixon, the founding of The Moral Majority and the Conservative Movement, Goldwater, and eventually, the election of Ronald Reagan. So conservatives (or at least, Republicans) were able to dominate the Executive Branch for most of the past 36 years, and finally, with the Gingrich revolution, they were also able to control Congress for a relatively brief 12 year period. Now we’re back to the status quo before Nixon walloped McGovern. So how can conservatives be considered the establishment, when they control only one cable TV channel and none of the major networks, the school and university systems are both controlled by the left, and most major newspapers are controlled by left-leaning editors and writers?

So the question is: who are the real radicals? With its belief in human freedom, both economic and individual, I would argue that America was the most radical of nations. While both the French and Russian Revolutions were more radical in their destruction of the existing social order, I would contend that in implementing statist, totalitarian systems, both the French and Russian regimes became regressive, whereas the American constitutional system, by limiting the power of the state over the individual with a written constitution, and trusting individuals and societies to evolve without coercion, was the more radical. And yet, despite the left’s attack on our liberal institutions of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and academic freedom, they are still perceived as the champions of human progress. This is one of the great ironies of history: that the youth of this nation are taught to believe that the left is the champion of freedom and progress, when in fact, they are also taught in our schools and universities to have a passion for Big Government control of everyone and everything, a passion for servitude (or Serfdom, as Hayek put it). With one exception of course: you can have sex with whomever or whatever you want, and you can pollute yourself with whatever drugs you want.

To take back the culture, conservatives and libertarians must appeal to the next generation. I quote Barry Goldwater: "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." Friedrich Hayek's Road to Serfdom was often criticized by left wing critics for proposing that all forms of socialism eventually lead to totalitarianism. While this is a much slower road for European, democratic socialism, than it is for communism, I agree with Hayek that you eventually end up in a similar place; maybe not 1984, but very likely a Brave New World. And totalitarianism may be revolutionary, but it is nothing if it's not also regressive, a return to a form of government absolutism, much worse in fact than feudalism. Aldous Huxley wrote rather prophetically:

To deal with confusion power has been centralized and government control increased. It is probable that all the world’s governments will be more or less completely totalitarian even before the harnessing of atomic energy; that they will be totalitarian during and after the harnessing seems almost certain. Only a large-scale popular movement toward decentralization and self-help can arrest the present tendency toward statism. At present there is no sign that such a movement will take place.

There is, of course, no reason why the new totalitarianisms should resemble the old. . . . A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude. (From the 1946 Forward to Brave New World)

The love of servitude described above is typical of “Soft despotism,” a term that was coined by Alexis de Tocqueville: “Soft despotism gives people the illusion that they are in control, when in fact they have very little influence over their government. Soft despotism breeds fear, uncertainty, and doubt in the general populace” (see Wikipedia). The blitz of statist, socialistic programs promoted by the Obama regime is a perfect example of “soft despotism.” In “Revisiting Hayek,” Andrew Foy and Brenton Stansky (American Thinker, May 25, 2009) had this to say about the soft despotism associated with democratic socialism:

To many who have watched the transition from socialism to fascism at close quarters the connection between the two systems has become increasingly obvious, but in the (Western) democracies the majority of people still believe that socialism and freedom can be combined. They do not realize that democratic socialism, the great utopia of the last few generations, is not only unachievable, but that to strive for it produces something utterly different - the very destruction of freedom itself. As has been aptly said: ‘What has always made the state a hell on earth has been precisely that man has tried to make it his heaven.' (F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, United Kingdom: Routledge Press, 1944)

The current economic crisis provides just the right kind of excuse for believers in statism to seize greater power for the government that, once attained, will never be relinquished. As Obama’s chief of staff Rahm Emanual so eloquently let another truth slip: "Never let a serious crisis go to waste." Leftist economists like Paul Krugman have advocated that the only problem with the New Deal was that the government was not active enough in “stimulating” the economy (read: take over the economy). Thus, the current economic crisis is being used as an excuse for the government to take over major portions of the U.S. economy. This is the Brave New World we now face. The question conservatives must pose to America is: Do you really want to give up your freedom for what is essentially the false security of Big Government control over your lives?

Cognitive enhancement vs hedonism

A British medical ethicist argues that adults should be free to take the popular stimulant drug Ritalin for cognitive enhancement.

Professor John Harris, of the University of Manchester, says many adult students are already taking the the drug which is illegal in the UK without a prescription. He says that if it is safe for children with ADHD to take Ritalin over an extended period for a non-life threatening condition, there was there is reason to prevent healthy adults using it to.

The problem with making stimulant drugs more freely available though, is the likelihood that a large segment of the population will prefer to use them for getting high instead of performing smarter.

In the first half of the 20th Century, stimulant drugs were quite widely used among professionals and the military for cognitive enhancement. Even the original Coca-Cola was advertised as a red-bull-style pick-me-up which contained a small amount of cocaine.

However, the fallout from hedonistic sixties in which the use of pharmaceutical drugs for recreational purposes was widely popularised for the first time, has done considerable damage to the cause of those wishing to promote stimulant drugs for improving mental performance.

The image of stimulant drugs was further damaged  in the 1970s when dextroamphetamine was used in large concentrations as a sliming aid for women, with the result that a number of prominent female celebrities suffered from stimulant-induced heart failure.

Since then authorities in most developed countries authorities have been severely cracking down on the use of stimulant drugs, which are now are now primarily abused by the underclass. Ritalin for example, is often taken from children to which it's been subscribed and ground down and smoked or snorted for a quick rush (slow-release versions have been developed to get around this problem, but not without significantly increasing the cost).

The demise of smoking though, has created a large gap in the market for a relatively safe stimulant, that's only been partially filled by the renaissance in ground coffee products.

Over the next few decades it's going to be interesting to see whether the needs of the middle class for increased cognitive enhancement options will win out over the needs of the therapeutic state to contain the pathologies of the underclass.

At this stage my money's still on the therapeutic state.

Is the Republican Party Really Conservative?

This article is a post that appeared in GM’s Place, an American Conservative website, on May 17, 2009.

In an LA Times Op-Ed piece (May 10, 2009) entitled “What Republicans need is a mutiny,” Richard Viguerie wrote:

Two major debates face conservative Republicans about the future of the party. The first, rekindled by Sen. Arlen Specter's switch to the Democratic Party, is whether the GOP should move further leftward. The second is whether conservatives should tone down their advocacy on social issues. History is on the side of outspoken conservatives in both debates.

A little history is in order to give perspective to the future of the Republican Party. The modern conservative movement formed in the 1950s (William F. Buckley founded the National Review in 1955). Prior to that, various classical liberals (libertarians) such as Albert J. Nock, H.L. Menken, Frank Chodorov, and John T. Flynn had opposed the New Deal. Friedrich Hayek published The Road to Serfdom in 1944. Traditionalists and agrarians such as Southerner Richard Weaver and Northerner Russell Kirk were also influential. Kirk published The Conservative Mind in 1953. In the 1950s, Anti-Communism was the focus of conservative opposition. The purpose of this very brief historical overview of conservatism as an intellectual movement is to place its inception in the late Progressive and Post-War eras (Source for the above paragraph: Paul Gottfried, The Conservative Movement, 1993). In other words, it was a rather recent development, from an historical perspective, and it did not have much impact politically until Goldwater’s campaign in 1964, and finally, Reagan’s ascendancy to the Presidency in 1980.

The New Right, of which Mr. Viguerie is a representative, did not come onto the national scene until the anti-abortion movement galvanized evangelicals, fundamentalists, and conservative Catholics in the 1970s.

If one briefly analyzes Twentieth Century U.S. Presidents from the perspective of what their economic, social, and national security policies were, Reagan was really the first conservative President since the era of Harding and Coolidge. Teddy Roosevelt was a Progressive, as was Hoover to a large degree; Eisenhower was non-ideological and a military man; and while Nixon was conservative on social issues and a Cold War Hawk, he admitted to being a Keynsian on economic policy. He instituted wage and price controls, and terminated any relationship between the dollar and gold standard. Bush I and Ford were both moderates, and while Bush II was conservative on social issues and a hawk on defense, his economic policies were a mixed bag of too little and then too much intervention. His focus was, of course, the war in Iraq.

Viguerie’s conclusion to his LA Times article was that the Republican leadership has lost touch with the grassroots and that to move further leftward would be a disaster. The focus should rather be on revitalizing the base by focusing on social issues. While I agree with Viguerie’s first conclusion that the party should not move further leftward, I think he’s out of touch in the latter case. First of all, the time to move the agenda on social issues was when the Republican Party was in power; other than Bush’s two Supreme Court appointments, the Republicans have little to show for pushing their social agenda, unlike the Democrats when in power. The national attention is now focused on the economic crisis and if the Republicans do not challenge Democratic policies and offer better alternatives, they will not convince fiscal conservatives, independents, and libertarians to rejoin the party, without which they will surely be consigned to minority status.

Let me explain what I think the Republican focus should be: If the Republican Party is to represent true conservatism, then it must return to its core principles. 1) We must be the party of liberty and freedom, including economic freedom, and we must be in favor of limited government and oppose statism in all its forms. 2) A limited government is a government of laws, the Rule of Law, and not of men, which is the opposite of Obama’s vision of the law. When Obama states that he wants Supreme Court Judges who have “empathy” for minorities, he is arguing for applying the law unequally, and privileging certain members of society to the detriment of others. 3) We must fight the Marxist political correctness movement in our schools and universities. We’re already losing the next generation by a margin of 2:1. We are losing the Cultural War to the left: we lost the universities, the schools, and the media, all the organs of cultural transmission. What the Republican leadership seems to have overlooked is that you can’t stay in power politically if you lose the culture. Today, the left attacks with impunity Western Civilization, America, Christianity, and now, even the goose that laid the golden egg, capitalism. And that’s not all; our liberal institutions of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and academic freedom are also under attack by the left. To counter this, we must stand up for American and Western values, and the freedom to speak our opposition to the leftist orthodoxy. 4) We must continue to advocate a pro-American foreign and domestic policy: America First politically and economically, in opposition to the left’s Anti-Americanism. To me, this means that we do not promote global free trade and open borders when the result is that the average American loses his job to foreign competition and cheap labor. Adam Smith did not promote the idea that a free market nation should tolerate huge trade deficits. We must also continue to oppose Islamic fascism and terrorism both at home and abroad. 5) We must advocate the reformation of our monetary and financial system, with sound currency and curtail the ability of the Federal Reserve and banks to create fiat money out of thin air. (More on this on a later blog.)

The escalating cost of interventionism

With the situation worsening in Afghanistan and western governments finding it increasing difficult to integrate increasing numbers of refugees, the West's invite the world, invade the world strategy is proving to be increasing costly for western taxpayers.

It's now becoming a tiresome trend for example, that every time a western power intervenes in a non-western country, a wave of refugees will leave that country and head for the West.

Since the first Vietmanese refugees arrived in Australia and the US in the early 1970s, western citizens have been discovering that not only do they have to pay for the military and reconstruction costs associated with getting involved in dubious foreign wars, but they also have to pay for the social and economic costs of relocating the resulting refugees.

It wouldn't be quite so bad if most of the West's wars were necessary and were supported by the majority of the population, but in most of these foreign adventures there has been no direct threat to the West and there's also been considerable opposition at home.

The first Gulf war may have been necessary to smash Sadam Hussein's tank army, and therefore his ability to invade his neighbors and monopolise Middle Eastern oil, but neither Gulf War II, or the extended intervention in Afghanistan, were of vital interest to western citizens.

As the domestic counter-terrorist operations in the US and UK clearly demonstrated, it's much easier to combat terrorism on home territory than on ground of the terrorist's choosing.

Since US and UK security forces smartened up their act following 9/11, far fewer people have been killed in terrorist attacks on home soil than in military encounters in Afghanistan and Iraq, where the British and American forces have lost over 3,500 personnel - and that's not even taking into account the enormously greater financial cost of keeping large expediency forces out in the field for years on end.

Unfortunately, financial considerations don't appear to be of much concern to the military planners in the US government.

Billions of dollars have been spent developing smart bombs and cruise missiles that can accurately take out specific targets from a distance. Such weapons would have ideal for taking out the suspected weapons facilities in Iraq or punishing the Taleban leadership in Afghanistan without having to actually invade either country. But just as these smart weapons were finally being perfected, the neocons did a u-turn and decided that the good old-fashioned "troops on the ground" approach was the best way to go.

Previous limited intervention proponents like Eisenhower wouldn't have been impressed.

The precedent for getting involved in unnecessary foreign entanglements was set in the 1960s in Vietnam, where the Americans mistaken Vietmanese nationalism for Marxist internationalism at a time when the countries attention should have focused on the looming economic challenge from Japan.

The involvement in Vietnam also resulted in the great sacrifices made in the Korean War largely redundant. The US and Britain had already made their views on international communism clear in their costly, but eventually successful campaign to push the Chinese back to the 49th parallel. Following this powerful statement of intent against international communism, there was no need to send in large numbers of US troops to a country which had no intention of letting itself become a staging ground for Chinese and Russian advances into South-East Asia. And even if Vietnam had been intend on spreading international communism further East, the best place to make a stand against it would have been in defence of staunchly anti-communist Thailand.

Thanks to the United Nations, the fallout from western intervention in foreign wars is also shared by countries that aren't even involved in the conflicts in question, with neutral Sweden and New Zealand for example, having to accept UN dictated refugee quotas from Iraq.

Currently there is a distinct possibility of US intervention in Somalia with the wave of pirate attacks on shipping in the Indian Ocean. If the US does go in, then the West can look forward to dealing with yet another wave of unwanted, difficult to assimilate refugees.

anti-BNP hysteria

From reading some of the responses of politicians in Britain's mainstream parties to the British National Party's success in winning two seats in the European parliament, anyone would think that a descendent of Adolf Hitler had just been voted into Number 10.

A particularly overblown label which they keep throwing around is "fascist," which now seems to be totally divorced from its original meaning as a particular form of technocratic totalitarianism.

In mainstream liberal society, the term "fascist" lost its original intellectual definition some time in the hedonistic late-60s, when it came to be used to describe virtually anything that was perceived as vaguely authoritarian or conservative.

When coined in the 1920s, fascist, referred to a particular system of non-democratic government, which was moderately elitist and had an corporate economic system in which the public and private sectors worked closely together in the national interest.

In the contemporary world, the developed country with the most fascist-like state is probably Japan, with its staunchly meritocratic education system and complex system of state-directed financial institutions and large scale industrial networks. However, since the country doesn't conform to what most semi-educated left-liberals think of as a "fascist" state, with a militarised government and a charismatic strongman leader, it never gets labeled as one in the mainstream media.

Among European countries, the most fascist-like states would probably be the corporate Scandinavian likes of Finland and Sweden, where the government, for better or worse, continues to take an active role in economic development and industrial relations.

The British National Party, by contrast, fails most of the criteria for being a fascist party. It does advocate protectionism for native industries, but has no detailed corporate programme for integrating the public and private sectors. It also has little to say for example on important corporatist issues like research and development or industrial relations. Nor does it call for greater government control of free speech, the media or the legal system.

A true fascist party for example, would probably be critical of the jury system, which is would perceive as wasteful and unprofessional, and would probably be strongly opposed to populist public referenda.

Nick Griffith himself has argued that a true fascist-style party would probably fail in Britain since the country has no fascist intellectual tradition to draw upon.

Rather than fascism, populism seems to be dominant political philosophy of the BNP. It's political campaigning, emphasises populist imigary, of the Battle of Britain-era and its policies, such as immigration restrictionism, capital punishment and pulling out of the EC, are those which most working-class Britons either support, or would have supported just a few decades ago.

Probably only its anti-interventionist foreign policy could be construed as being more ideologically nationalist than populist.

However, majoritarian populism is arguably just as unpopular these days as Fascism. At no stage in the last 40 years have the populist policies which the BNP now advocates, been put up for public vote through referenda or by being advocated by the major parties.

Controversial matters like increased immigration, EU entry and the repeal of the death penalty were all decided through closed negotiations among the nation's elites without any real democratic imput from the populace.

The reason why mainstream politicians are so concerned by the rise of the BNP is that it represents a populist challenge to the elites monopoly over deciding policy on controversial issues.

In the minds of Britons, political, business and media elites, the populace should only be able to debate, minor issues like small variations in tax rates and prison sentences (which can later be reversed if they prove unsatisfactory) and not over serious matters of long-term consequence like immigration.

It's also rather ironic that pro-EC parties like nu-Labour and the Liberal Democrats should be so concerned about Britain having some nationalist political representation, when this is now a well-established trend in most other European countries which they supposedly want closer relations with.

By labeling the BNP as "Fascists" or "Nazis", rather than calling them what they actually are, Briton's mainstream politicians and journalists are showing contempt for both the British populace, and the populace of much of western Europe.

Attacks on students

Aussie political commentator Andrew Bolt points out that the majority of recent "racist" attacks on Indian students are actually non-racially motivated criminal attacks committed by recent immigrants from non-western countries.

Rather than being a sign of racism by "redneck" mainstream Australians, as the mainstream media is suggesting, the increase in attacks is at least partly due to political correctness, with the hamstrung police failing to effectively crack down on the perpetrators for fear of offending other non-white minorities.

It seems that the Australian media is intent on making up for Australia's previous White Australia Policy with a new blame white Australia policy.

A fairly similar situation occurred in New Zealand last year, when Asian shop keepers were involved in a protest against attacks on Asian shops by Pacific Island immigrants, with the protestors claiming the attacks weren't being taken seriously enough by the police.

Putting aside the issue of whether there's been an increase in racially motivated attacks, I'm getting the impression that crime against overseas students is on the increase in many western countries.

From an underclass perspective, overseas students are a tempting target since they are perceived as being easily physically intimidated and often share the same neighborhoods where cheap housing is available. Inevitably, they also tend to be more naive than locals about what areas to avoid and in what sort of situations they are most likely to get into trouble.

When I lived near a student area in Manchester in northern England, there were lots of reports of students being mugged, with one group of young Pakistani men becoming so bold as to hold up individual students at knife or air pistol point and then take them on enforced shopping sprees around various parts of the city.

Domestic students from other parts of Britain were also targeted quite frequently (Manchester has a high population of students from the more affluent south of England) with an increasing number of attacks on female students by taxi drivers, being reported in the local media.

Closer to home, I recently heard on the radio that Christchurch Police have reported burglaries are up in the student-dwelling areas in the west of the city, with local crims perceiving students to be a bit blase about home security.

Whites, middle-class urbanites and South Islanders more trusting

New Zealand is one of those small, predominantly Protestant countries which is known for having a high level of trust. This is often reflected in those honesty tests reported in the media, where someone leaves a wallet in a public place to see if it will be pocketed or handed into the police.

A few weeks ago UMR Research conducted a survey of public opinion where people over 18 were asked the question:

"Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you cannot be careful in dealing with people?"

Nationally about 56 percent of people said most people can be trusted, with 39 percent agreeing with the later view that you can't be too careful.

However, there were significant differences according to class, income, ethnicity and region.

Among Maori and Pacific Islanders, 54 percent said you can't be too careful in dealing with people.

There was also a marked difference by income and occupation, with 69 percent of those earning $50,000 a year saying most people can be trusted, while only 45 percent of blue-collar workers and those earning less than $30, 000 a year agreed.

South Islanders were also more trusting, with 60 percent agreeing that most people can be trusted, as opposed to 55 percent of North Islanders.

Among the main centres, Wellingtonians were the most trusting (62 percent) and Aucklanders the least trusting (53 percent). As the capital city, Wellington has a high proportion of middle class white liberals, which suggests the country's SWPLs may have a higher degree of trust than other urbanites.

Generally it seems New Zealanders have a pretty rational view of whether people can be trusted, given the proclivities of the type of people they are most likely to come across in their social circles. A blue collar person for example, is more likely to be exposed to members of the criminal underclass than a white collar professional and so has more reason to be less trusting.

A common anomaly though, is that while people from low socio-economic backgrounds tend to be more suspicious of others, this often doesn't seem to carry through into their everyday behaviour.

From my observations, someone from a low socio-economic background is more likely to do dumb things like tell someone else their pin number while drunk, engage in risky sexual behaviour, or fall for money-making scams than a generally more trusting middle-class person.

Terrorism and fertility rates

Reading through a Times article in the Press on current conditions in Guantanamo Bay, my attention was drawn to a chart listing the nationalities of the remaining inmates (the figures were provided by the Brookings Institute but I can't find them online).

While only six current detainees come from "Axis of Evil"member Iraq, a staggering 38 percent of the remaining 245 inmates come from Yemen - a small, impoverished country that rarely makes it into the news, but happens to have to one of the world's highest fertility rates.

I then checked out the respective fertility rates, for the ten listed nationalities of Guantanamo inmates, at the CIA Factbook (the latest fertility rates are shown in parentheses):

94 Yemeni (6.32)
27 Afghani (5.8)
20 Saudi Arabian (3.83)
17 Chinese (1.79)
10 Algerian (1.79)
10 Tunisian (1.72)
8 Syrian (3.12)
8 Libyan (3.08)
6 Iraqi (3.86)
6 Kuwait (2.76)

With second and third placed Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan also having high fertility rates, it reasonable to conclude there's a pretty strong relationship between terrorist recruitment and a high fertility rate.

Historically, a country with a youthful demographic is more likely to be an aggressive country, and in the Muslim world this aggression tends to take the form of terrorism against rival sects or non-Muslims.

China bucks the trend with a below-replacement fertility rate, but relative to its huge population, it's not a particularly fertile source of terrorist recruits.

Not only do Yemen and Afghanistan have the highest fertility rates outside Sub-Suharan Africa, but they also lack significant oil revenues to help support the rising tide of hungry mouths they need to provide for.

Most Middle Eastern countries, either have successful population control programmes (such as Libya and Iran) or, like Saudi Arabia, have sufficient oil revenues to at least keep most people out of poverty for the next few decades.

If the current U.S. government is serious about winning the war on terror, it might want to look at what he can do to encourage Yemen to follow other Arab states like Libya and Algeria in adopting serious population control measures.