Celebrate Meat

Thanks to Tim Bleeeah’s polluted mind:

Even the Queensland Premier says they got what they deserved, as Melanie Christiansen reports.

MELANIE CHRISTIANSEN: The World Meat Congress has drawn the industry's leaders to Brisbane this week, closely followed by animal liberation activists, who've staged a series of protests.

This morning they invaded an abattoir at Ipswich just south of Brisbane, where they chained themselves in.

Protester Patty Mark says what followed was frightening.

PATTY MARK: The abattoir workers were very violent to us. We were chained right over the killing room floor. The owner came in with an angle grinder and started to… We begged for the police.

Amazing – they attack someone’s workplace and their line of work and expected to be treated with deference. How typical of people accustomed to shouting straight over anyone who disagree with them.

Bake a tête de nègre and go to jail?

Remember, some things because of their name or origin are magically less wrong than others. In a fit of zeal, elements and factions of the EU want to bring the humble hamburgers under their loving wing of regulation. Never mind the Dutch predilection for mayonnaise on pomme-frites, or raw herring, never mind the dubious biology of sushi inside the Périphérique, or the bizarrely names tête de nègre.

Yes, the Commission is a place of paradoxes, and frankly, the Eurocrats wouldn't want it any other way. As they sit in Michelin-starred restaurants, washing down the foie gras with champagne, conversations among the Eurocrat heavyweights inevitably turn to the poor diet of the average European. Apparently, the great unwashed of the old continent eat pizza, fries, and even that most unspeakably vulgar American snack, the hamburger. The results are there for all to see: healthier populations, rising life expectancies, more balanced diets than previous generations and ... Wait! Wrong spin sheet! What I meant was: rising obesity levels, bordering on the epidemic!

Remember, habits don’t kill people, it’s the specific, politically incorrect nation-of-origin of the things that are plugging the übermenschliche artery of the old-world man. Traditions get a pass, unless they're not "fair trade" and are intellectually linked to revolutionairies or starving pastoralists, or something, but they're only nearly wrong for now.

Or is it?

Unfortunately, it's unlikely these measures will stop European policy-makers from taking matters into their own hands. Take the recent proposal by the Dutch Health Minister Hans Hoogervorst. In what we can only assume to be one of his more frivolous moments, Hoogervorst suggested forcing food outlets to reduce the size of the hamburgers they sell. It's an idea right out of the Soviet Union cookbook: the government issuing decrees on the maximum diameter of your burger (it makes you wonder what Hoogervorst would make of this initiative, by the way).

Others aim to shrink not the size of the average burger but the number of burgers sold. The way to achieve this aim is, apparently, to slap a big, fat tax on every burger sold -- a fat tax, if you like. In order to drum up support for this initiative, European politicians are even willing to sell the odd big fat lie, for instance when a British government minister claimed that no fewer than 900,000 people in his country were claiming incapacity benefit because of obesity, costing the British taxpayers a shocking £3.5 billion a year. Stunning figures indeed. Unfortunately, they were based on a small clerical error. The real figure, the minister in question, Lord Warner, later admitted in a press release, was not 900,000, but a rather less impressive 900. That's n-i-n-e h-u-n-d-r-e-d, a mere 899,100 fewer than first suggested. The real benefit costs of obesity were therefore approximately £3.5 billion less than the £3.5 billion mentioned above.

Amusing, yet stupid. Since you’re entirely incapable of choosing for yourself, you need to be saved from the impulse of the evil, round, nearly Atkins-compliant bit of bouffe, and stick to that unidentifiable thing drowning in Hollandaise. The croque, somehow, won’t make you croak. After all, it might even have an ISO 9001 label on it.

Agitators have long learned to cook the books, but doing it by two orders of magnitude is normally a desperate measure reserved for cases when the claim is so wrong that you have to try something new after people stop buying the previous crock of scaring the money out of them.

Creeping socialism for thee, but not for me.

Creeping socialism always seems to follow the pattern of a successful society's non-productive sector promoting a growing ignorance of economics. While ‘our betters’ in the MSM are too well educated to let common sense get in the way, they go wild over the 7 percent Exxon makes. Not surprisingly there is no outcry over the 19.5 percent margin of profit on a newspaper. We find no hew-and-cry for investigation into the secretive and large scale effort to create a public addiction to those delusion inducing opinion-makers.
All we find is the usual bitching and moaning about others' success. It's as hypocritical as we've said here earlier about Microsoft and Apple's only "crimes": not being European "champions."

But I digress. Getting back to oil - it seems to become a commodity that's magically different than others when the left is angry and needs some press. The old routine where they feign a concern for people must feel pretty good to those idiots who need others to be miserable in order to nobly pity them.

Rich Tucker highlights the finer points of this ridiculous routine the left keeps using:

It’s critical to be aware of memes, because these days we’re all falling under the sway of a powerful one -- a meme that insists gasoline prices are too high because oil companies are gauging us. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi nicely encapsulated this. “We have two oilmen in the White House. $3-a-gallon gasoline is no mistake. It’s a logical follow-up,” she told reporters.

But oil prices aren’t set by the White House. They’re governed by the laws of supply and demand. Worldwide demand for oil is surging, especially in developing nations such as India and China. In fact, most of “big oil’s” profits come from overseas; three-quarters of ExxonMobil’s $8.4 billion first-quarter profit was earned abroad.

Lawmakers won’t tell you this, but taxes are a big reason gasoline is so expensive. The Energy Department says that in 2004, 23 percent of the price of a gallon of gas was taxes, while 18 percent was for refining costs and company profits.

And oh, by the way, Exxon’s “excessive” earnings were 7 percent higher in the first quarter -- exactly the same percentage growth as the 7 percent announced by media company E.W. Scripps Co. And former Los Angeles Times Editor John Carroll recently noted that the average newspaper profit margin remains 19.5 percent.

Indeed, I really would like to see if a nagging cabal of Nancy Pelosi types DOES succeed in artificially suppressing the price of energy when it’s supply is low, and it’s cost is HALF of the real value that it was 30 years ago. It takes the piss out of the other leftist lie that (supply and demand be damned,) energy should cost more.

No doubt they will propose a social solution: dispense cheaper fuel to the least economically successful who are going to be the least productive with it... We’ve seen this before. That creeping “redistributionism” cum folk-Marxism brings the stagnation that impacts the disadvantaged the most.

But folk Marxism is not limited by this economic classification scheme. All sorts of other issues are viewed through the lens of oppressors and oppressed...

Under folk Marxism, the oppressed class has inherent moral superiority to the oppressor class ... Class membership trumps individual character in determining moral standing ... It should be no surprise that this belief has failed to improve the lot of those regarded as "oppressed." It inverts Martin Luther King's call to judge people by the content of their character.

SO – according to this morally repugnant elite, there should be no open market for anything except the social classification that is the most irrationally revered. As ever, prejudice and racism has never benefited anyone, except for those selling the rest of us on it.

Alas if the Lamp of Liberty can illuminate in Arabic, why would the likes of the New York Times shun the same discussion of it in English?

The only way to know is to follow the money.

Anti-Americanism disguised as business regulation

If Apple and Microsoft were European companies, instead of being investigated by EU bureaucrappers, the companies would be given piles of EU taxpayer cash and be hailed as European champions (anybody heard of Airbus ?). Europeans wouldn't know a truly free and open market if it bit them on the ass.
Money quotes:
"the ruling shines light on a mindset that explains why Europe is becoming a continent where things are no longer invented."
(click thru to Wall Street Journal editorial) -- "We're not kidding when we say there's a connection between the Microsoft case and the European 20-somethings who riot in the streets because they'd rather have no job than take a job from which they might fail and be fired."

Separated at birth

What me, worry isolated?

Remembering the first Americans to fight back in the War on Terror

Anyone who say’s it’s ‘too soon’ to make films like this simply doesn’t want anyone to remember that 9/11 happened. They forget how many WWII films were made during WWII, and that they actually mentioned who the enemy is.

Chiraq à la masse

After his air travel tax, Chiraq should just create a 'Hamas Tax'.

French youths are not guilty of being violent scum ...

... American GIs are guilty of getting those French kids all worked up.

What Europeans are good at ...

... besides museums and opera houses.

Total lack of service notice

As capitalist lackeys, we are all rather busy right now. In fact we’re all working for the weekend, which is when you’ll likely see us a-bloggin.’

As for Erik, he’s actually locked in a (neo-modern yet elegantly appointed) apartment being held hostage by a ravenous pack of empowered women who simply can’t resist his charms.

Zeropean politicians' fave pasttime

If you can't win at home (and they never can), then attack the USA. Chiraq tries to create the Zeropean Google. With rivals like that, I'll take that as a buy signal for 'GOOG'.

Girls on film

Abu-sockhead’s feature video sends an obvious message – that things aren’t going well for him. The bosses need young flesh, and he probably can’t communicate to some of his own elements very easily, but has to try to prop their spirits up, especially since all but a handful of Iraqis (and Jordanians for that matter) seem to think he’s an idiot and a cretin.



Just after the cooking segment about subtituting kidnapped contractor as a low-fat alternative in your Shetland Sheep's Head soup, you can groove on the rockin' special effects! Makes you just want to up-n-kill a market full of civilians, eh?

Hot for Teacher

Forget the ‘ooh, ooh Mr. Kotter, Mr. Kotter,’these punks are getting an A in assault:

The assault on a teacher by and 18 year old pupil was filmed by a pupil on Monday, in a class at a a vocational school in Porcheville. The scene was filmed by an accomplice to the attacker, who then distributed the video around in the town of Val-Fourré in Mantes-la-Jolie.

Le Parisien published some of the images on Wednesday which show a young man throwing a chair at his teacher. The 18 years old suspect shown was later arrested.
[...]
The police officers now seek the accomplice of the attacker who could be charged with "grievous bodily harm". This sordid affaire is not an isolated phenomenon. According to police, filming assaults and trading the images has become a new fad among delinquents.

Woof, alors!

Monsieur le chien is at it again.

"A New Oslo Peace Process?"

Only if you call this peace.

Fjordman is back, and he seems to be tom-catting around to various blogs, including Gates of Vienna:

"The most basic instinct of all living things, even down to bacteria level, is self-preservation. In 2006, you have a natural right to self-preservation if you are an amoeba, but not if you're a Scandinavian."

He goes further. An excellent read.

The Jihad Against Free Speech

(Shookhran to Tom Pechinski)

Practical Use for China's Executed

While Europeans sputter with rage and indignation about such atrocities as capitalism, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and the death penalty in America, they ignore such things as Russian prisoners' (mis)treatment in Siberian gulags and the the situation in China (unless they can blame the Jews for it)…

"Marxism is not bad," one person wrote. "But it is a dream, beautiful only as philosophy."

Check out one of the favorite Chinese tourist destinations in Germany.

René Burri & David Alan Harvey

On Every Battleground, a Surprising and Formidable Life Force, a Love of Life, a Generous Idea, Words Full of Audacity and Decency

Not to put down the travails of the poor and downtrodden, but the descriptinves in Patrick Kéchichian's book review of a prostitute's autobiography are so far out, you would think they were a conservative's parody of a liberal's description of their idea of hero(ine).

Sedition, the light musical comedy

E-nough! has the straight dope on the adolescent rebellion they call European culture. In fact she keeps a funning tab on it. Having already acquiescing when faced with a deep seeded illiberalism that believes in the exact opposite of what it does, where does it go from here?

Once more, with FEELINK!:

Springtime for Hitler and Germany
Deutschland is happy and gay!
We're marching to a faster pace
Look out, here comes the master race!
Springtime for Hitler and Germany
Rhineland's a fine land once more!
Springtime for Hitler and Germany
Watch out, Europe
We're going on tour!
Springtime for Hitler and Germany...

"It is like wanting to display a dead elephant at the zoo"

"It may be good if the EU gets so big that it can no longer function — it will be like a rat with its hypothalamus removed, who keeps eating until it explodes," [Timo Soini] said, using the kind of colorful analogy that has made him popular with some voters.

Dan Bilefsky has more about Finland's self-described hairikko or "hell-raiser" (parts of which text were left out of the online version).

"The EU structure is very catholic," he said. "The commission president behaves like an unelected pope, the commissioners are his cardinals, while there are 83,000 pages of regulation that it likes to think are the gospel."

"I already have my church," he added, "so I don't need another religion in Brussels."

Soini compares Finland's relationship with the EU to its appeasement of the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

"Everyone knew that the Communist dictatorship was a harmful system, yet we talked about it bringing peace and prosperity," he said. "Now we use this same doublespeak when talking about the EU."

The doeskin-gloved conciliator: the EU approach of hedging, neither-norism, and willfully playing the contrarian to whatever the US position might be

The idea of the European Union achieving world heavyweight status through playing the doeskin-gloved conciliator — soft solutions to dangerous situations offered up at good hotels in pleasant locations — is dying an obvious but perhaps promising kind of death

writes John Vinocur in the International Herald Tribune.

The causes are self-incriminatory.

… Peeked at through the Brussels curtains, the view of what lies beyond is now one that makes untenable the old EU approach of hedging, neither- norism and willfully playing the contrarian to whatever the American position might be.

… But delusional thinking about how Europe can have a say in the world's problems without risking trouble or confrontation is growing fainter. At the very least, the EU's powerlessness is no longer coming as virtue wrapped as the equivalent of effective policy.

Rather, an acceptance of the old methods' failure as a real lever for world influence has seemed to emerge. Some indicative things have happened.

… In its weakened state, the EU can't talk seriously about pan-European armies to replace NATO, or, junior high guidance counselor-style, call for new multilateral conferences to win the confidence of repulsive rulers and regimes.

Nor is it portraying itself any longer as the Counter-Answer. For difficult months to come, you could call that promising.

OBL targets the French ...

.. and the French, showing off their usual bravery and self-flattering and illusional delusional résistance, attack an unthreatening target.

My drawing is no good. We look to much alike.

Zeropean social problems

Belgium has them too.

Bored of Education

Maybe they can get Dieudonné to play Buckwheat.

That hideout called the 9-3

Pamela reports, and the ideological decay of free states continues.

Sadly this news is not on the online edition, but today's UK Daily Telegraph has an interesting story on its print edition, page 16. Charles de Gaulle is one of Paris's three main airports, and is the newest. In a book to be published next week by Philippe de Villiers, entitled The Mosques of Roissy, the author states that the French frontier police have identified 50 baggage-handlers who hold extremist Islamic views.

Hot Air

The world’s first, full-service conservative Internet broadcast network has not been banned in China

…yet

EUtopian new-speak on terror

It’s the love that dare not speak his name.
Diana West:

How wunderbar, merveilleux and perfectly ripping that the European Union is creating a new "lexicon" to discuss Islam and terrorism so as never to conflate the two. The Telegraph tells us that EU officials -- having double-checked that George Orwell and his satirical pen are dead and gone -- are putting together a "non-emotive lexicon for discussing radicalization."

In other words, this lexicon speech code will prove the rightness of the inane accusations of oppression, thus linking all terror and all of Islam, even though it isn’t true. All subjects are now off the table unless one uses the new code-words.

All it will do is provide a cover for the promoters of terror by shrouding it in what’s left of the European understanding of religion.

Kennedy, Kerry, side with al Qaeda

Ted Kennedy and John Kerry leapt into action. Both used the nebulous, hateful pronouncements of a mass murder to criticize their own country. Treason? Aw, shucks no. They’re just plain folks. They can’t be responsible for anything they say or do.