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ENEMIES OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION, LEGAL DIVISION, PART II

I’m searching for a good word or phrase to desrcibe these folks without resorting to the all-too commonplace ” bastards”. I like ” ideological vomitus of the Left ” for it’s accuracy but it’s waaaaaaaaaaay too cumbersome to be useful as a perjorative.

” AL QAIDA’S SINN FEIN “

The Argus has an important post on a little known but apparently well funded, trans-national Islamist network dedicated to pursuing al Qaida goals by legal means.

Before feeling complacent about peaceful and legal means it is noteworthy to recollect that Hitler too, stuck to a legal course in seeking a dictatorship after the failure of the Beer Hall Putsch. The same objectives by different methods did not make the end result any more palatable.

My other thought is to wonder to what degree the activists here are simply al Qaida veterans and associates with the same money trail as the one that funded terror operations pre-9/11.

BUSH ADMINISTRATION SEEKS MILITARY TIES WITH CHINA

Overshadowed by the controversy over the invasion of Iraq have been Bush administration efforts to improve ties with Russia and China, a policy that paid dividends when President Putin recently reversed course on the need for intensive IAEA inspections in Iran, a longtime customer for Russian nuclear hardware and expertise.

Similarly the United States has been exploring expanding military ties with Beijing, incidentally or intentionally shoring up the waning position of Jiang Zemin in China’s political hierarchy. The former president and Communist party chief still retains supreme control over Chinese military affairs despite having grudgingly vacated the other two ” power posts “.

LIBYAN DISARMAMENT POINTS TO ANTI-AMERICAN WMD PROLIFERATION AGENDA BY PAKISTAN

Pakistan, governed by the shaky, military-nationalist regime of pro-American General Musharraf, is facing further evidence of intentional nuclear proliferation by former high officials with Islamist sympathies. Pakistan is now being linked to WMD programs in North Korea, Iran and Libya.

STANDARDIZED TESTING AS A PREDICTOR OF PERFORMANCE

Rob at BusinessPundit links to an APA press release of a research article that cites the MAT test as a fairly reliable predictor for real-world performance, giving weight to those who argue for the validity of using standardized testing as an admissions criteria for elite schools. Full text of the research article here.

Assuming that the methodology was up to snuff ( this was a meta-analysis) here’s my impression. I’m not surprised that the MAT would be a useful predictor of real-world success, more so than the standard types of IQ testing like the Slossen or g-loaded aptitude tests like the SAT I. Much of effective human communication revolves around analogical thinking where a lack of understanding is bridged by the introduction of comparable or parallel concepts to which the subject can successfully relate to or extrapolate from. Logical thinking, which is so critical in areas like law and engineering often result in long chains of variables in which the listener can easily get lost – successful analogies produce greater leaps of insight. In other words, this is more like how humans naturally tend to reason when engaging in a casual discussion or argument.