You will Read the Numbers now, Liebschen

Is it a parody of stereotypical irritatingly self-absorbed central European experimental film or the crude tailings of cold war espionage? Be the judge.

N/A in the 2nd Year of Age of O

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty…

- Thomas Jefferson

Mr. Mota will take Care of that “Mr. Socrates,” Ha Ha Ha...

I tell ya man, they’re always working for the people! EUvian justice-ocrats finally catch up with corrupt Leftist official, 2 years after his appointment as the head of Eurojust, the über-mega-state's pan-galactic anti-crime agency.

Eurojust will not suffer any image damage because this was a "national matter" which did not involve the EU agency as such, its spokesman Johannes Thuy told this website.

Except for the fact that the guy in charge of the über-mega-state's pan-galactic anti-crime agency was implicated in the crime of the abuse of office, and the misuse of judicial processes.

I mean, like, so what!, eh?

José Luís Lopes da Mota is Vice-President and National Member for Portugal. He has 28 years’ experience in the judiciary as a prosecutor and as an assistant to the Portuguese Prosecutor General where he was responsible for matters related to management of the prosecution services at a national level and for international co-operation.

- Statement which at the time of this writing is still on
the über-mega-state's pan-galactic anti-crime
agency’s website.

A Massive Intellectual Regression In Which State Intervention Has Become the Panacea

As The Seventh Dimension is published, Michel Garroté brings us an interview with the book's author, namely Guy Millière.

On semble oublier tout ce que l’ouverture planétaire des marchés a permis en termes de recul de la pauvreté et des pénuries en deux ou trois décennies, et entrer dans une grande régression intellectuelle où l’interventionnisme étatique serait devenue la panacée.

Cow Mutilations are Up!

Yea, verily, ManBearPig hath spoken, and he makes about as much sense as nuts who can’t decide it cattle mutilations are caused by UFOs or nefarious secret military experiments.

Do you think that’s a stretch? Wheeeell, how cracked do you have to be to want to put a near septagenarian railroad engineer as the center and final judge of all geophysical science?

WWII-Era Higgins Boat in Action

Hugues Eliard's World War II-era Higgins Boat in action…

Challengelcvp "Objectif Omaha 2009" - Caudebec-en-Caux 31.05
envoyé par koucikoussa

Cette vidéo fait partie d’une série actuellement en cours de montage et tournées en mai/juin dernier durant l’opération "Objectif Omaha". Celle-ci est prise le 31 mai à Caudebec en Caux, lors de notre arrivée [à bord du LCVP PA30-4] à la station des Pilotes de la Seine, alors en route vers Honfleur.

As Revealing as a Barium Enema

The perpetual rigamarole surrounding the formation of the EU over the past 4 decades is rather more revealing of the state of the European political mind than one thinks. It’s an accounting of unredacted reactions, expressions of instincts, and the willingness to live with broad, warm-sounding feelings of communatarianism that wants to magnify it’s power around the world for no reason, while all the parties act like they want to take their ball, leave the sandbox, and go home.

Any detailed account of EU history reads like an endless list of failures, dissapointments, backtracking, non-compliance with commitments, unfulfilled expectations, hard bargaining, dull and unimpressive bureacrats, selfish national leaders, egoistic states, ever-growing scepticism, blatant behaviour of large member states, a ridiculous common agricultural policy, etc ., etc.

What I’m waiting for is the kind of commitment to “something-hood” (one cannot speak of nationhood, or cartel-hood for that matter), that, to a sufficient degree of confidence, will permit them to dismantle their 27 Embassies in every major capitol in the outside world in favor of a consolidated entity, ceding 26 of their UN General assembly seats, and one of their two UNSC seats, and live with the world in a way that the rest of the world must, and matches their own vision of the monoculturalism that they take to be inherent in any other national government on earth.

And what of the dull bureacrats? The European Commission has had 11 presidents since 1958. But who remembers presidents Rey, Malfatti, Ortoli or Thorn? You might remember Santer, but for the wrong reasons. Hallstein and Jenkins are somewhere in the back of the mind, but far from being household names. And only Delors looks impressive, but then many will tell you that he was appointed precisely because no one thought at the time he was a visionary.

And still the EU is somehow considered a big success. The truth is that the EU has almost always been an institution of dull bureaucrats pushing for incremental measures that mostly fail, and those that become successes are acknowledged as such only ten years later.

From without, the only reaction is “big deal”. Far from being a denouement of human advancement and the superiority of impotently wishing for good in the world, it’s a mere sign of incremental evolution from being a culture at war with itself and the rest of humanity for a millennium, an exporter of the most murderous ideas, especially that of the subservience of the man before the power of the state, only to construct an increasingly undemocratic super-state that takes the power people can have over their lives further away from them into a vague multi-lingual babble where one never knows what is getting lost in translation.

The only question at this point is “how long do the children have to be kept being told that they’re making history?” and “how long does Nana have to say they’re special?”

Bright Lights, Big City

Just curious if anyone else has experienced this phenomenon. Whilst preparing for one of the myriad holiday parties served up at Chez Moi, we replaced our regular light bulbs, in a rather longish L-shaped hallway (residential), with the new greendom CFL types.

Upon transiting the newly illuminated and environmentally friendly hallway, guests emerged in some combination of confusement, disorientation and/or irritation (one guest was found flushed, sweating and muttering that his name was Leonard Zelig). Do note, these events happened prior to cordials being served.

Suggestions?

"Just a Cute 'Lil Firecracker"?

Re-edited moments ago to say that "a passenger believed it was a firecracker"

The AP appears to be trying to minimize an attack on civilians, saying in a video report that Nigerian-British student Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, was merely playing with mere party poppers, and mentioning nothing about the significance of the date of the attack.

The man who tried to blow up a US airliner as it prepared to land at Detroit on Christmas Day had an explosive powder strapped to his leg which he tried to ignite by injecting chemicals with a syringe, Fox News reports.

The reasoning behing calling it a firecracker came from a passenger statement like this one, carefully omitting what law enforcement described the IED to be:

One US intelligence official said the explosive device was a mix of powder and liquid. It failed when the passenger tried to detonate it.

"It sounded like a firecracker in a pillowcase," said Peter Smith, a traveller from the Netherlands. "First there was a pop, and then [there] was smoke."

An Open Thread

Feel free to interpret.

Will Hillary Clinton Get it This Time?

Like a parody of history, the willing idiots will autonomically rally to rationalize the legality of illegality to pitch a "lite" version of Communizing revolutions, and it will sound as clumsy as the same tired rhetoric did in the 70's and 80's when said willing idiots were little more than the unwelcome result of a broken condom. The whole empty "coup" routine we heard with Zelaya's attempt to sieze power will be parrotted when this gofer pops up to talk his way into a "permanant Presidency".

Lawmakers are refusing to recognize a Supreme Court decision that would allow Ortega to run again in 2011 by overturning bans on consecutive re-election and serving more than two terms.

The question is, will the US State Department be as inept and spineless with Daniel Ortega as it was with Zelaya?

A Y Pestis of Youthful Ignorance

Suddenly, David Aaranovich’s observation of the Copenhagen festival of self-hatred started sounding historically familiar.

Suddenly there was the world, spread out in front of us, not like a bookcase full of travel guides, or even as represented in diplomatic simulacrum in New York by UN ambassadors, but in its own messy right.
The image that came to my mind was of some vast biblical trek, in which tribes make their way over various terrains to an uncertain land. Out front, and to the sides, were the little groups of activists and NGOs; some pathfinding in distant hills, some wailing and beating themselves and others with thorn branches, some praying loudly and piously, some shouting to the others to catch up, some predicting doom with an unacknowledged pleasure.

To my ear it seemed to start conforming to a pattern of human behavior that was a cross between the Donner party and Nero’s joy at the incineration of Rome.

As soon, however, as the Flagellant movement crossed the Alps into Teutonic countries, its whole nature changed. The idea was welcomed with enthusiasm; a ceremonial was rapidly developed, and almost as rapidly a specialized doctrine, that soon degenerated into heresy. The Flagellants became an organized sect, with severe discipline and extravagant claims. They wore a white habit and mantle, on each of which was a red cross, whence in some parts they were called the "Brotherhood of the Cross". Whosoever desired to join this brotherhood was bound to remain in it for thirty-three and a half days, to swear obedience to the "Masters" of the organization...

Much like the lethality, boredom, and pedantic constancy of medieval life, the ritual sit-ins and the public rioting had to take place with the cadence of the familiar chants, the banners and the parasitic circus of politicized mitlaüfer.

Twice a day, proceeding slowly to the public square or to the principal church, they put off their shoes, stripped themselves to the waist and prostrated themselves in a large circle. By their posture they indicated the nature of the sins they intended to expiate, the murderer lying on his back, the adulterer on his face, the perjurer on one side holding up three fingers, etc. First they were beaten by the "Master", then, bidden solemnly in a prescribed form to rise, they stood in a circle and scourged themselves severely, crying out that their blood was mingled with the Blood of Christ and that their penance was preserving the whole world from perishing.

The only question is who it is that the modern Carbon Dioxide cult will lionize and then compare themselves to.

Christmas Address From the White House

Not a Franciscan, but Rather a San Franciscan

Michael Phillips calls out the new authoritarians for what they have become.

The Liberal mantra used to be: 'Capitalism created too much change, inequality and poverty; that we need bigger government to redistribute wealth and control the 'means of production'.

A forced meagerness which they tried to associate with a materialist view has evolved into a different sort of asceticism-based meagerness:

It is an attack on our right to the pursuit of happiness.

It’s very nearly evolving into a kind of code associated in the past with religious adherence, and a firmly established one at that (in the traditional legal sense.)

The New liberalism tells us what kind of light bulbs we have to use, when we have to use helmets, what weight and size our children must be before they can stop using 5-point auto harnesses, when and where we can smoke, what we can smoke, how we can talk on the phone in a car, what kinds of foods we can't eat at all (horse, whale, dolphin etc),

And in that strange little world, PETA will be left to bless the animals. Like “meatless Mondays”, they are likely to take care to avoid meatless Fridays, the feast of St. Francis of Assisi, or any other virtue larger than nanny’s desire to control others.

Diplomatic Pauch

In the wake of the stench of sulfur that Chavez left in the Bella Center, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Eduardo Rodríguez Parrilla called U.S. President Barack Obama:

an "imperial and arrogant" liar Monday for his conduct at the U.N. climate conference, a reflection of the communist island's increasingly fiery verbal attacks on the U.S. government.

One of the many touted benefits of the perpetual “revolution” which the Cubans have always pimped was that they somehow magically eliminated all inequality and racism from the island. Which makes Rodriguez’ further comments somewhat more interesting to those not familiar with Communism, where you NEVER actually get what’s on the jar’s label.

Last week, the elder Castro, who stepped down as head of state in February 2008, wrote that Washington is looking to solidify its control over Latin America and that Obama's "friendly smile and African-American face" hide his government's sinister true intentions for the region.

Raul Castro over the weekend mentioned recent war games Cuba conducted to prepare for a U.S. invasion

So color blind, indeed that a portrait of their government looks like a “mafia” social club: one guy who looks like he might vaguely be Indian, 3 women, and a bunch herpetic looking old white men of Iberian origin with a stunning similarity to one another – truly – the portrait of the Caribbean if there ever was one.

You can virtually smell the diversity, which, like the university faculty of many of the social sciences, has about the same uniformity of thought.

Well, that didn't take long

From those who are never ever responsible for anything (sometimes literally, sometimes figuratively):

European Union leaders on Tuesday sought to deflect criticism that they had fumbled their strategy at the Copenhagen climate summit meeting, just as a feud between the British and the Chinese over whom to blame for the outcome worsened.

Andreas Carlgren, the environment minister of Sweden, the country holding the rotating E.U. presidency, said that the summit meeting had been a "great failure" partly because other nations had rejected targets and a timetable for the rest of the world to sign on to binding emissions reductions.

The E.U. went into the conference with a strategy of leading by example on emissions cuts, but has been widely criticized by industry and environmental groups for not marshalling other nations to follow and for ending up sidelined at the summit meeting.

"It was obvious that the United States and China didn't want more than we achieved at Copenhagen,” Mr. Carlgren said at a news conference in Brussels.

The obstacles created by those countries were "part of what we regretted," he said.

We seem to recall something about Europe wanting to be the "leaders" of green-everything? To my brothers and sisters in Brussels, here is your chance. No need to fret over the great failure, show everyone else on Gaia how it can be done. Just talk?

What's that? European-only leadership on greendom would put Euro-industry at a global disadvantage? How so, we seem to recall something about transitioning to green-jobs and green-economies being sure-fire money-makers. Europe will be that much further ahead of all the other economies, right? Just talk?

What is this:

Philippe de Buck, the director general of BusinessEurope, a powerful lobby group, suggested over the weekend that industries based in Europe would increasingly move their operations to less regulated parts of the world as a result of the weak accord struck in Copenhagen.

We seem to recall something about Europe being so far advanced and nuanced about the brotherhood of man and beyond such seedy things like money and profits. Just talk?

A Salvo of Domestic Desertions in Time of Peace

Because of the disastrous war in Iraq and Afghanistan, America's armies are plagued by waves of desertions, writes Nathalie Guibert in Le Monde, unlike the pacifist-minded armies of Europe, which have so many lessons to… No, wait a minute. Those soldiers deserting aren't Yanks; they are French!

The French army is the one that is plagued by une salve de "désertions à l'intérieur en temps de paix". One particularly memorable time (violence-minded Yanks will be happy to learn), a desertion followed a farewell party:

en août 2008, des sous-officiers très alcoolisés ont entamé une bataille rangée avec les premières classes qui s'étaient invités. Dans le garage où se tenait la fête, les gradés ont saisi pelle, hache, chaîne de tronçonneuse.

Got That, You &^#%#?! Cycling Jerseys That Make a Statement

6 inches of Snow Brings Much of the UK to a Screeching Halt

It seems that the upper lip, not to mention a great deal else, has long since gone flaccid.

6 Questions on Health Care for Foreigners and Expatriates

Saying that "we are on the verge of socializing our health care system", Louisiana Conservative wants to ask foreigners and expatriates half a dozen questions (please answer in the comments section)…

1. What do you like about the government ran health care system?

2. What don't you like about the government ran health care system?

3. What would you change about the government ran health care system?

4. How long does a normal visit to the doctor take?

5. How has the system affected you or your family positively?

6. How has the system affected you or your family negatively?

Ils se Sont Tiré Dans le Pied

Half of the arrogance of the Donkey Show is founded in ignorance. While the lauding of the health care provided outside of the US has diminished with a growing number of people who are familiar with alternate international systems speak up, the delusions are still there. Leftists want “what they have in ___” or more to the point, what Leftists THINK they have in ____, when in fact most western European governments have spent a politically agonizing decade privatizing medicine in spite of their domestic Marxist-Leninist leaning loonies in order to improve the quality and availability of the care.

The American Thinker has the run-down.

Shouting in a Classroom; Fighting Breaks Out; A Student Is Sent to the Hospital, Lacerated by a Knife

The violence in America's schools and universities is a disgrace, writes Maryline Baumard in Le Monde. A female teacher has even asked not to have to teach on late afternoons so she does not have to ride home on the night bus. Now, if only those clueless Americans could learn from the Europeans with their societies that tend to promote peace and har—… Wait a minute! Oops! The violence is taking place in a French university…

Lundi 14 décembre, il est un peu plus de 15 heures lorsque trois individus s'introduisent dans un amphi de Paris-XIII-Villetaneuse et commencent à chahuter. Un étudiant demande le calme. Invectives. Bagarres. Le bras que lève le jeune homme pour se protéger le visage est lacéré de plusieurs coups de couteau. L'étudiant en droit a été opéré mardi.

…Selon une main courante électronique, mise en place par le président de l'université, Jean-Loup Salzmann, 83 incidents ont été signalés : 10 agressions, 7 dégradations de biens publics, 7 dégradations de véhicules, 14 vols de biens privés et 45 perturbations de cours. "Et tous les incidents ne remontent pas. Ce n'est pas dans la culture universitaire", tempère un professeur.

The money quote:

"Oui, c'est l'omerta. Depuis pas mal de temps déjà, on fait comme si rien ne se passe. Je vote à gauche. Je n'aime pas le discours sécuritaire, mais je souhaiterais plus de présence policière", regrette Michel Renault, secrétaire pédagogique de l'institut d'études judiciaires.

And then, there are the usual apologists:

A l'instar de Faihina Saidani, étudiante en L3 information et communication, ils sont nombreux à se sentir bien "dans cet espace mélangé, où chacun trouve sa place, avec ses différences" et à estimer qu'il "faut arrêter de stigmatiser la banlieue en laissant penser qu'on est plus en danger ici qu'ailleurs".

One reader writes:

Tout universitaire véritable et informé sait que depuis ses origines soixante-huitardes, Paris XIII — comme Paris VIII — n'est qu'un parking où l'enseignement supérieur n'est qu'une activité occasionnelle et épisodique.

Orbitting EUranus Looking for Klingons

From the EU’s internal propaganda arm, it’s provisional wing in the war to be transnationally loved for no good reason, we get to discover many light and meaningless facts, though ones that undergird a rather vile world view.

The word Europe comes from Ancient Greek and means "wide-gazing"

Along with Europe this and Europe that that subtly obscures the definitions of Europe and the EU, until finally we come to:

The longest river in Europe is the Volga in Russia

Which is no different than some tourism promotion branch of the US government calling one’s attention to the natural wonders of the Canadian Rockies or the Sonora desert in Mexico.

Which, by the way, has forced me to have to politely suffer through dozens of tirades about the use of the word “American,” hoping that the crazies would get tired and wobble to the other end of what they think is a bar.

Alle Menschen werden Brüder

First, the eye-wash performance for the suckers:

Now, the back-story for those who even care at this point:

The lead negotiator for the small island nation of Tuvalu, the bow-tie wearing Ian Fry, broke down as he begged delegates to take tough action.

"I woke up this morning crying, and that's not easy for a grown man to admit," Mr Fry said on Saturday, as his eyes welled with tears.

"The fate of my country rests in your hands," he concluded, as the audience exploded with wild applause.

But the part-time PhD scholar at the Australian National University actually resides in Queanbeyan, NSW, where he's not likely to be troubled by rising sea levels because the closest beach at Batemans Bay is a two-hour, 144km drive away. Asked whether he had ever lived in Tuvalu, his wife told The Australian last night she would "rather not comment".

Not to be mentioned in polite company, of course.

Enjoy

Residents of the east coast of the United States will surely enjoy this old ditty as they spend the day digging out from under all of that white global warming stuff.

15 Hours in the Unbearable Heat of a Stopped Train Under the English Channel

Where to put this story? In the global warming department, in the French hospitality department, or in the let's-turn-everything-over-to-government-run-services department?

More than 2,000 people spent hours trapped inside the Channel Tunnel after five Eurostar trains broke down due to cold weather.

The trains failed as they left the cold air in northern France and entered the warmer tunnel.

Some passengers were evacuated via service tunnels to car trains, while others were kept on their trains. Many have faced gruelling 15-hour journeys.

…Lee Godfree, a passenger evacuated from one of the stranded trains, said he and his family had arrived in Folkestone at 0500 GMT, having left Disneyland Paris at 1837 GMT.

He said their journey had been a "complete nightmare".

"We were without power. We ran out of water, we ran out of food and there was very, very poor communication from the staff," he told the BBC.

"We lost air conditioning when we lost the power. We had to open the emergency doors ourselves.

"The evacuation procedure we followed was one that we set down ourselves."

Check out the video at Ashford International at 00:15

We was actually treated like animals … Everyone made out they couldn't speak English … They went mh, mh, mh [imitating the raising of shoulders in the Gallic fashion]

And at 00:54:

The people who run Eurostar, the French people over there, I've never met such a rude, ignorant bunch of people in my life! Disgraceful, disgraceful…

Good-Bye Friend

Roy E. Disney was a big fan of referring to the past to define the future. He told a biographer: “The goal is to look over our shoulder and see Snow White and Pinocchio and Dumbo standing there saying, ‘Be this good.’ We shouldn’t be intimidated by them; they’re an arrow pointing someplace.”

So Long and Thanks for All the Plonk

A former French government agra-flunky walks off the plantation. And after having learned about wine from the nacent California wine industry, sets out on his own to make wines of his own.

All Becomes Clear: Copenhagen's Failure Is America's Fault

The reason that COP15 is a failure belongs to Barack Obama who (in spite of being serial bower and Apologizer-in-Chief) "shot [the Copenhagen conference] down in flames", says Yannick Jadot. From the Europe Écologie député, we also learn that Obama caved in to the conservative element of the Congress (!) and that the Danes were lapdogs for the Americans (!)…

Patientez S.V.P.

Deep in our underground headquarters bunker, a team of wierdos in lab coats are busying themselves at a fevered pitch into a fit of madness repairing our comment system. After all, we won’t let the likes of evil genius Ernst Stavro Blofeld get the best of us, will we old chap!

In the mean time, imagine that you’re all slagging on each other with acerbic witticisms and cunning feats of triple-entendre. The rest of you, just try to keep your hands where I can see them.

French “Resistance” Imaginary Heroism

French Publishing Racketeers have employed the courts to prevent Google from digitizing books and documents.

Even if the case doesn't have much financial impact on Google or force a big change in its book-scanning strategy, it is a reminder that its ambitions are increasingly colliding with fears that the company is getting too powerful.

Read: successful.

"It shows Google that they are not the kings of the world and they can't do whatever they want," said Serge Eyrolles, president of France's Syndicat National de l'Edition. He said Google had scanned 100,000 French books into its database - 80 percent of which were under copyright.

The wedge was being able to read a sample of the work, much as you can in the bookstore itself, but ironically, not at the website of FNAC for reasons unknown, the nation’s largest francophone book, music, and gizmo and doodad retailer.

Eyrolles said French publishers would still like to work with Google to digitize their books, "but only if they stop playing around with us and start respecting intellectual property rights."

It has absolutely nothing to do with intellectual property rights, especially when the case is brought to court by an organization that has a literal monopoly on anything published in mass, short of small run limited edition publications, and the like. The AUTHOR has no right to bypass this syndicate at all, one known for occasionally practicing political editorialization when all they amount to is a glorified trucking company with a sweaty-palmed union boss. The only reasonable option an author then has, is to try to find a publisher in Quebec.

By contrast, the real effect that the national publishing cartel is having was summed up by Google’s Colombet:

"French readers now face the threat of losing access to a significant body of knowledge and falling behind the rest of Internet users," Colombet said an e-mailed statement. "We believe that displaying a limited number of short extracts from books complies with copyright legislation both in France and the U.S. - and improves access to books," Colombet said.

For once the fallacious term “Anglo-Saxon” was not used.

As Obama Lands in Copenhagen, Snow Starts Falling With Denmark Expecting a Weekend of Minus 20 Degrees Celsius

"It's starting to snow; of course [in view of the global warming conference], that hardly makes for an entirely optimal situation"

That was the laconic comment of a retired weatherman from Copenhagen Airport. As the world (and the Copenhagen conference) heads towards (an objective of) minus 2º (Celsius), writes Berlingske Tidende, Denmark is heading towards minus 20º. As Obama arrives in Copenhagen, the snow has started to fall.

The irony is palpable when the American president Barack Obama flies in on a Danish December weather day, whose snowfall, fog, and frost seems to disavow COP15's whole raison d'être. … According to the weather forecast Denmark will get a snow storm this weekend. The wind will make the temperature feel like minus 20 degrees.

Jacques Chirac Indicted

Jacques Chirac has been indicted (mis en examen) in the case of the fake jobs system that allegedly existed when he served as mayor of Paris (1977-1995).

From Our "You don't say..." Department

The climate change summit in Copenhagen was in jeopardy tonight with the complex negotiations falling far behind schedule as the climate secretary, Ed Miliband, warned of a "farce".

All You Really Need to Know About Them

Carbon peddling poop-stain Hugo Chavez brings down the house in Copenhagen with another one of his gentle, thoughtful, treatises:

President Chavez brought the house down.

When he said the process in Copenhagen was “not democratic, it is not inclusive, but isn’t that the reality of our world, the world is really and imperial dictatorship…down with imperial dictatorships” he got a rousing round of applause.

When he said there was a “silent and terrible ghost in the room” and that ghost was called capitalism, the applause was deafening.

Not that it gets any better, anywhere, inside or out. The UN had to throw out protesters whose bidding the UN is there to do. All you really need to know about them, and the entire shambles of a “movement” is evident in their reaction. They would prefer that the conference not take place at all if they can’t squat the lobbies.



The irony is that these feral children have the arrogance think that they’re “saving the world” and “saving lives”, when all they are, in fact, are unproductive political parasites trying to remander other peoples’ resources. They bear an uncanny resemblance to violent adolescents who have so little life experience that they follow radicals blindly, as we’ve seen in the past with “peace” movements, cults, and various flavors of authoritarian Communism.

It Causes Earthquakes Too?

From the opening ceremony's video of a little girl running from an earthquake to the promises of emissions reductions, everything taking place in Copenhagen is contrived. The outcome of climate talks -- no treaty, no emissions reductions -- was known in advance. And yet participants pretend there is an unfolding drama. As such, Copenhagen is history's first completely postmodern global event. It's a festival of phoniness. With the ambitions of Versailles but the power of Davos, Copenhagen creates a cognitive dissonance for its creators, which results in ever-more manic displays of apocalypse anxiety and false hope. In the end, Copenhagen tells us more about ourselves -- our post-American world, our fragmented media environment, and our hyper-partisanship -- than about any attempt to slow global warming.

- Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus
of the Breakthrough Institute

And further in a paean to the bobo-ism that typifies academia, the European world view, and a moderate-seeming resolution to the impotent rage of “our betters”:

In this, Copenhagen represents the first truly postmodern global event in human history. Other generations had Versailles, Yalta, Bretton-Woods -- agreements that re-organized nation states and shaped the modern world. We, by contrast, have Copenhagen, which has no power to do anything. In reality, Copenhagen is no more effectual than the made for media confabs like Davos. But the United Nations, multinational green groups, and sympathetic reporters have succeeded in creating the impression of action where there is, in fact, none at all.

Don’t be surprised if they DON’T understand that what they want will result in the enlargement of the poverty gap, and thanks to the “science” that they will take to be “better than nothing”, founded on nothing. Absolutely nothing, as there is no objective proof that man can passively alter the temperature of the world’s atmosphere, let alone hack nature out of it’s own patterns and force it to refrigerate itself.

But “correction” of anything real is not the purpose, given this unaddressed trend that continues today:

Between 2000 and 2005, European emissions grew twice as fast as America’s. Emissions in Canada grew a whopping five times faster. Since 1990, Germany and Britain reduced their emissions, but they did so for prior reasons having nothing to do with global warming: Margaret Thatcher broke the coal miners’ union in the early 1980s, moving Britain to cleaner-burning natural gas, and the East German economy collapsed after the fall of communism, reducing a reunified Germany’s reliance on dirty coal plants. When you remove these two from the calculation, European emissions rose almost 12 percent between 1990 and 2005.

I hope this puts the anger, the lectures, the vile harangues, and the looks askance in some kind or perspective, one that’s doesn’t set out to scare children or convince an otherwise able population to believe that Global Warming caused a tsunami or an earthquake.

Goodnight, Copenhagen. Like the response to the name “Kyoto”, as a city you are now just another place linked to a massive fraud, and possibly the most oppressive limitation placed on the human potential of the poor humanity ever imposed on itself. Not that "summits" have any more meaning or inspire any more awe anyway.

Like so much else, summitry is a concept or brand that has been abused and trivialized, as Cadillac was for many years. If Copenhagen deters the world’s publicity-seeking official conferenciers from trying to squeeze any more juice out of the summit lemon, it will be a howling success. Only the countries that mistakenly expect to receive compensation for their impoverished inability to generate carbon emissions, or for the falsely pledged reduction of them, will pay any attention to the pious frauds that the posturing busybodies of Copenhagen may claim to agree to implement.

Case in point: the EUvian habbit of naming some purposeful sounding declaration after a city where the media circus is brought to, as if, some day, they will all be discussed in detail as the "Treaty of Paris" was for two centuries. The cities after which they are being named are becoming progressively less known and smaller, because they appear to be running out of them, at least the ones that sound politically correct.

I mean can you picture a treat or declaration being named after Luton? It'll happen about two decades after they have completely run out of ways to seem high-minded.

"The Trolley was Undamaged"

Sarkozy seeks the creation of a new international monetary system

Nicolas Sarkozy "is setting up real strains with the Obama administration", says John Vinocur:

In little-publicized remarks Dec. 1 — buried under Nicolas Sarkozy’s gloating over placing a Frenchman in a European Union post with potential oversight on the run-and-gun British financial sector — the French president announced that he would seek to create a new international monetary system that doesn’t solely revolve around the U.S. dollar.

“A new international monetary system is required,” Mr. Sarkozy said. “Following World War II, there was a single superpower in the United States, and it was normal that there was a single great currency. Today, we have a multipolar world, and the system must be multimonetary. In the world as it is now, there can’t be submission to what a single currency dictates.”

Mr. Sarkozy, speaking just ahead of regional elections in March, gave a time and place for enacting his plans — 2011, when France holds the presidency of the Group of 20 global economic consultative body, and, not entirely by accident, the year before presidential elections here and in the United States.

Incidentally, the Europeans' hype for Obama had all to do with a person they thought would bring America down while elevating all others (something some of us still have reason to fear, but which they — the Europeans — are feeling increasingly resentful that he isn't doing).

The issue was also present in an essay published in the leftist newspaper Libération in mid-November by Zaki Laidi, a professor at Sciences Po here, who said — could Mr. Sarkozy have noticed? — that after a year of global economic crisis, the United States retained not only its world economic and strategic dominance but also what he called its “instinct for power.”

Mr. Laidi wrote, “We’re being told that America is on the decline and Barack Obama is the representative of an America that voluntarily accepts playing a multipolar world game. These two hypotheses, at best, are highly questionable. It’s impossible to see why Washington would accept structuring a world order while it continues to have sizable advantages.”

…Mr. Sarkozy is not an anti-American, but he may regard standing up to the Yanks as a multipurpose tool in the campaign to come. In his incomparable book, “L’Ennemi Américain,” Philippe Roger describes anti-Americanism as a constant of French political life, “halting hostilities between factions in the face of supposed common enemy” and in “manufacturing a tissue of consensus.”

Not to Mention Man-made Global Warming...

Who IS that reality-based community you ask? Gee – according to 98% of the press, academia, and anyone the left can pistol-whip, those leftie munchkins who consider their collage of policy tirades a philosophical foundation.

New study: More Democrats than Republicans believe in ghosts, talking with the dead, fortunetellers

Which makes the whole “pro-choice vegan” thing a lot clearer, not to mention the belief that crushing public dept is good, and that unless we devolve into an ignorant and grindingly poor agrarian society that the future will be altogether unpredictably gassy. I mean the waters might keep rising by 3 millimeters a year, just like it did in the last century.

"many also blend Christianity with Eastern or New Age beliefs such as reincarnation, astrology and the presence of spiritual energy in physical objects."

Thus attributing it to “some Americans” we find the Pew elves find a nice way of obscuring deltas on the order of 2:

For example, 21 percent of Republicans report that they have been in touch with someone who is dead, while 36 percent of Democrats say they have done so.

Which explains the charisma with which Nancy Pelosi’s town hall meetings are greeted.

Either way, what we’re talking about beliefs that are philosophically and theologically meaningless forces regarded as putting the choices in our lives beyond our control, ones that do nothing to inform human morality or force the exercise of self-examination - being far more likely to bedevil the minds of leftists, that anonymous lot sold to us as our thoughtful and more worldly betters. In reality they look more like spiritual vagrants searching for the unreal and meaningless to tolerate the real and meaningful.

The Purple Helmets of Peace Strike Again

Same as it ever was. UN backed troops, taking the place of professional soldiers doing peacekeeping, have been engaging in the kind of rampage that has come to be associated with the words “U.N.” and “Peacekeeping”. As usual, they weren’t just massacring civilians, they were more interested in getting a piece.

More than 7,500 cases of sexual violence against women and girls were registered at health centers during that nine-month period, nearly double that of 2008 and likely representing only a fraction of the total.

Human Rights Watch said that the 19,000 peacekeepers in Congo — the biggest U.N. force in the world — must "immediately cease all support to the current military operation" until it can ensure there are no violations of international humanitarian law. The group also called for the U.N. to find "a new approach to protect civilians."

In other words, something a little more like those awful Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a little less like those lionized by bobs as “doing God’s work.”

Is there any reason to be surprised? Hell no! That was all just oh-so last year! The force in question is composed as it is because of a failed Europeans commitment where the world was supposed to thank them for the fine conference accommodations where the press conference took place, but expect nothing in the way of peacekeeping troops in their former colonies:

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said ministers would discuss Mr Ban's appeal, but added: "Let me also underline that the situation on the ground is getting slightly better, and politically also."

But non-governmental organisations poured scorn on any suggestion things in eastern DR Congo were improving, saying rape, murder and pillage was still rife in the region.

'Situation is dramatic'

The 27-nation EU has so far been reluctant to commit forces to the Congo to back a 17,000-strong UN force, Monuc, already on the ground.

Belgian Foreign Minister Karel De Gucht said before the discussions: "It will take four to six months before the additional troops for Monuc will arrive and the humanitarian situation is dramatic over there."

Belgium has been the most outspoken European country in appealing for help for DR Congo, its former colony.

Again, they closed their eyes and wished for peace, so (again) they should not be surprised as what that gave them. Speaking in 2008 on the subject on behalf of this “peacey-peacey superpower of lurrrrve”, Sarko said:

“You can't be everywhere all the time,”

Or in France’s case, failing to support a force to the point where it really can’t effectively be anywhere.

Allô, Coucou! We Make Revolution Today?

Do please define often, would you old chap?

The language Esperanto is often used to access an international culture,

...

Every year, hundreds of new titles are published in Esperanto along with music. Also, many Esperanto newspapers and magazines exist.

Today would be the 150th birthday of the inventor of Esperanto, an language promoted by the former Marxist-Leninist communist states where hardly a soul learned it, and present day Marxists, who for the same reasons think that it makes sense to homogenize humanity into a single servile monoculture speaking an indistinct babble aggregated entirely of European languages. A lot like EU legislative proceedings if you ask me.

Europeans, being the only people on earth that matter, and are, like, "global," saw a great coming together in that idea of peddling this eurocentric language on the rest of humanity, some largely as great way to be "International" and as in "5th Internationale", and others, because, well, "world" means "them". To wit, the amusing characrterization of the organic growth of English being a reason to "carry the flag" for this thing which calls itself a movement, but feigns to have no ideology:

In France on Monday, the Le Monde daily ran a full-page ad by the European Esperanto Union under the breathless headline, "Europe is suffering under the domination of the Anglo-American language."

In other news, not widely associated with any comment of that nature, the Francophonie is promoting the French language under the same banner, berating people with what they will think is a sort of guilt which should, as a movement with no ideology either, cause someone who self-selected to learn english, to use French for the same non-ideological, pan-galactic, humanistic reasons.

It’s all part of the loving and caring thing, which is honky-dorey, so long as they run the show. It explains the lack of support the Maoists gave the Marxist-Leninists promoting it, who could as Asians indeed smell the stench of underhanded cultural colonialism from that far away.

Step aside, Saint Augustine

There’s a new religion in town, and you’re all doomed to irredeemable guilt. Forever.

US supporters of a strong climate deal in Copenhagen on Saturday lit candles and erected a mock Noah's Ark in Washington, warning leaders that the planet faced a crisis of biblical proportions.

The rally in view of the US Capitol was the culmination of a day of demonstrations around the world including in the Danish capital where tens of thousands took to the streets near the venue of the 194-nation summit.

Another ‘official day of rage’ if you will, which is exactly what you need if you’re founding a civilization-killing concept on a philosophical-sounding notion that has no objective scientific proof, nor an actual philosophy. It’s theology without all that theo stuff which aligns rather oddly with some way serious haters, also begging for an apocalypse to come along and prove them right.

The United States is the only industrial power to shun the current Kyoto Protocol, but Obama has pledged to work with other nations on drafting future action against climate change.

No, the United States is one of the only nations that doesn’t regularly signs things and then promptly weasel or ignore the commitment.

Only Siberia was colder

We need to send Al Gore to Edmonton to clear things up (merci à Frank)…

Edmonton was the coldest place in North America yesterday morning and the second chilliest in the world.

The Edmonton International Airport saw a record low of -46.1 C and -58.4 C with the windchill, outfreezing even the Arctic.

"The cold high pressure has been moving down from the Arctic over the Prairies," said Environment Canada meteorologist John McIntyre, adding British Columbia and Saskatchewan also experienced plummeting temperatures. "We are right now in the centre of the heaviest, coldest air."

Better Living Through Arson

“Passionate” Environaughts in København are doing their bit to “save the planet” by vandalizing property and having carbeques.

We’re still waiting for the Carbon Liberation Movement to claim responsibility. Clean and Green, Spic and Span, La-dee-da-dee-dah

Euro-rific Social Solidarity

Following a botched back operation on France’s most famous Elvis impersonator, fans of Johnny Hallyday assault the über-Euro-surgeon who screwed the pooch. Hallyday is now at Cedar-Sinai in LA getting “inferior, third world medical care”. Apparently Cuban medicine would be too good, or something, and of course because it’s France, the President is required to get involved, and you have to have an ineffectual “vigil” for some reason, and probably not covered by even a French medical insurance rider policy.

Highly Recommended: Harry Jaffa's A New Birth of Freedom

It is my opinion that a modern history book on the Civil War or on the life of Abraham Lincoln without a reference to Harry Jaffa's A New Birth of Freedom, however brief, can only be incomplete. But not only books on the Civil War and Old Abe, along with tomes discussing of the rights and/or wrongs of secession.

More than that: any book on Thomas Jefferson, on James Madison, on the revolutionary era, and, in fact, on American history in general, old and modern, without a reference to Harry Jaffa's latest book is incomplete, as is any book on today's liberal and progressive ideology…

Some excerpts of the book that discusses natural law versus positive law and constitutional rights versus revolutionary rights, while mentioning Plato, Aristotle, Rousseau, Karl Marx, and Locke's Second Treatise of Civil Government:

No one can write properly about the American Civil War without taking note of the fact that Jefferson, in 1774, declared the "abolition of domestic slavery" to be "the great object of desire" in the American colonies

Slavery, of course, is nothing but taxation without representation carried to its ultimate extreme

Individual rights become valuable only insofar as they result in a good society — a society in whcih man's moral and intellectual virtues can find their fullest measure of opportunity. There is in Jefferson none of that radical individualism that sees the rights of the individual transcending and opposing the moral demands of a good society. The opposition between the demands of society and the rights of the individual, so familiar in our time, arose only as those rights were no longer understood to be natural rights subject to the natural law.

An elected government has no more moral or legal right to arrogate authority or employ powers not delegated to it by the people through the Constitution than a nonelected government

No one can rightfully demand obedience of another, however plausible his claims to superior ability, until he has proved that his ability will be devoted, not to exploiting, but to benefiting the other

Jefferson: "that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself, that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them"

A morality governed by prudence is largely beyond the ken of our latter-day abolitionist historians. For them, prudential compromises in dealing with slavery are regarded as mere excuses for inaction. They have much in common with Chief Justice Roger Taney, who in the Dred Scott decision of 1857, declared that the Signers of the Declaration of Independence could not have regarded slavery as wrong, since they did not abolish it — ignoring the fact that, in any event, they had no power to abolish it! For such historians as these, the portrayal of a "racist" American Founding is a necessary preamble to the disavowal of any authority to the principles of the Revolution, notably those enshrined in the Declaration

We understand … why it is against our interest to become tyrants as why it is in our interest to prevent tyrants from ruling us. That is the argument of Plato as well as Aristotle. It is the argument of the American Revolution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Gettysburg Address. Yet it is an argument held in almost no esteem today. How is that possible?
The answer is that in our time, truth has been disarmed by the opinion that reason is impotent to know what it just or unjust, right or wrong, true or false. If there is no truth, or if the truth is beyond the power of the human mind to know, then free argument and debate as means of arriving at the truth are meaningless. Truth is thereby disarmed of her natural weapons a priori. This challenge to the principle of a free society is one that neither Jefferson nor Lincoln anticipated. Nonetheless, we assert categorically that the common sense of the subject as it appeared to Jefferson and Lincoln, although it has been denied by the mainstream of Western thought for more than a century, has not been refuted.

Self-realization was in fact the only correlate of the new atheism. As there could no longer be any distinction between man and God, which distinction is as fundamental to the Declaration of Independence as to the Bible, there could be no distinction between base and noble desires. All desires were understood to be created equal, since all desires were seen as originating in that highest of all authorities, the self-creating self. Each human being was to be his own God, obeying only those restrictions that were enforced upon him by the fact that he was not yet himself the universal tyrant. In time, however, Science would enable everyone to act as if he were the universal tyrant.
As these doctrines were filtered trough the intellectual establishment of modern liberal regimes, of which Chief Justice Rehnquist is a typical representative, the emancipation from morality was itself seen as moral progress, and the opponents of that emancipation were seen as the reactionary enemies of both freedom and morality. The essence of the new Liberalism was to make each human being, as far as possible, a universal tyrant within his own world, commanding all the pleasures possible in that world, and emancipated from everything except those limits upon his power which Science had not yet conquered. Thus would the return to a Garden of Eden — but one in which there would be no forbidden fruit — be accomplished.

The great proposition of human equality, the central idea of the Gettysburg Address as of the Declaration, … means that laws are rightfully for the benefit of the governed, not of the government. It means that those who live under the laws should share in making them and that those who make the laws must live under them.

It was hardly remarkable that a nation of slaveholders, upon declaring independence, did not at once abolish slavery. What was remarkable — perhaps more remarkable than any other event in human history — was that a nation of slaveholders declared that all men are created equal and thereby made the abolition of slavery a moral and political necessity.

Some latter-day critics of Lincoln wrongly attribute to him the leveling egalitarianism of twentieth-century socialism and welfare statism. In taking property from those who earn it and giving it to those who do not, in coming between the hand and the mouth of the producer or laborer, such egalitarianism reproduces the essential characteristics of slavery. Lincoln's doctrine of the relationship of capital and labor, which he elaborated in his first annual message to Congress, proposes no such thing. For Lincoln, the guarantee of rights means the guarantee that there shall be no intervention by law or government, as far as possible, between the work of any man's hand and his mouth

Those who live under the law have an equal right in the making of the law, and those who make the law have a corresponding duty to live under the law.

It is impossible to understand the quarrel over the right of secession that Lincoln addresses on July 4, 1861 — as it is impossible to understand either the American Revolution or the Civil War — without understanding the divergent interpretations of this doctrine [the right of revolution] of the Declaration as applied to the transformation of the Union from the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution

The freedom and equality of rights propounded in the American Revolution were never understood to describe conditions belonging to or enjoyed by human beings without struggle or effort. They were not "entitlements" in the sense of gifts bestowed from above

[A historian like] Allan Nevins … thought that the institution of slavery was wrong because it was anachronistic, differing in this from Lincoln, who held slavery anachronistic because it was wrong.

Since Napoleon, the plebiscite has been the resource of tyrants to claim democratic (or republican) legitimacy for their regimes

Interview with the Hoover Institution's Peter Robinson:

Almost everything, the great statements of Lincoln, most of them are reviving and rephrasing things that he got from Jefferson. In the Notes on Virginia, Jefferson says that "Will the liberties of the people be secure when we have abolished their only sure foundation, the belief of the gift of God may not be violated but with his wrath?" And that is followed by "I tremble for my country when I remember that God is just." Lincoln's second inaugural was all there, see?!

What is the institutional root of evil in the world in which we inhabit? There is no question but that it is in the universities. That's where the teaching begins, that's where the high school and grade school teachers go to college and they learn that morality is subjective and they think [that] that is sophisticated thing to say

Imaginary dialogue with Ted Bundy: "I used to believe that [in the moral law] until I took my first college course in philosophy"

Fun for the whole family

An article from the BBC on-line which may just leave you in stitches. First, the set-up:

In its 2007 report, the Nobel Prize-winning Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said: "Glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate.

"Its total area will likely shrink from the present 500,000 to 100,000 square kilometres by the year 2035," the report said.

It suggested three quarters of a billion people who depend on glacier melt for water supplies in Asia could be affected.

Some kill-joy had the unmitigated gall to actually look into the matter:

The UN panel on climate change warning that Himalayan glaciers could melt to a fifth of current levels by 2035 is wildly inaccurate, an academic says.

J Graham Cogley, a professor at Ontario Trent University, says he believes the UN authors got the date from an earlier report wrong by more than 300 years.

Naturally there is this:

He is astonished they "misread 2350 as 2035". The authors deny the claims.

And then this bit:

When asked how this "error" could have happened, RK Pachauri, the Indian scientist who heads the IPCC, said: "I don't have anything to add on glaciers."

Odd how this all happened anyway, the "2035" sources look like they are rock solid:

The IPCC relied on three documents to arrive at 2035 as the "outer year" for shrinkage of glaciers.

They are: a 2005 World Wide Fund for Nature report on glaciers; a 1996 Unesco document on hydrology; and a 1999 news report in New Scientist.

And just in case you were wondering:

Incidentally, none of these documents have been reviewed by peer professionals, which is what the IPCC is mandated to be doing.

Laughter is indeed a wonderful way to keep warm on these cold winter nights....

French Health Care: "l'opération était un massacre"

French health care is the best in the world and a model to follow (Ah que coucou à Jan), as American doctors intervene to rectify a French doctor's "massacre" on Johnny Hallyday's back by placing the French singer in a coma…

Jean-Claude Camus [le producteur de Johnny Halliday] a mis en cause le médecin français l'ayant opéré en novembre d'une hernie discale, responsable selon lui des complications observées par les médecins américains.

Après son opération dans la nuit de mercredi à jeudi, le chanteur a été placé dans un coma artificiel de façon à soulager ses douleurs.

It's the same old leftist playbook: Approach every desired major policy change as a crisis, and demand immediate action

It's the same old leftist playbook: Approach every desired major policy change as a crisis, and demand immediate action. If the public begins to wise up to the distortions and exaggerations, elevate the threat warning from dire to urgent.

David Limbaugh has more:

The alarmists tell us that the incriminating e-mails do nothing to discredit global warming science. Well, if that is true, why did these top-gun environmentalists believe it necessary to cheat and lie? If the science is so clear, why did they have to cherry-pick their data and rig the evidence? Why did they have to "hide the decline" of the "real temps"? Why did someone destroy the underlying temperature records that could either support or undermine their catastrophic conclusions? …

Perhaps the culpability of many rank-and-file leftists should be understood in light of their mind-numbed credulity over the alarmists' claims and the Draconian solutions they offer to avert their mythical Armageddon. These leftist sheep seem engaged in a chimerical search for significance apart from God, whose existence their worldview rejects but for whom their hearts cry out in a self-muted cacophony.

Teleologist-in-Chief: Teleology explains everything Obama has done, with regards to foreign policy, economic policy, dealings with Congress, etc…

Why does teleology (in this mutated form) matter?

asks Steven den Beste (tak til Instapundit).

Because right now we have a teleologist as our President. what’s really going on is that Obama has this kind of world view. And that explains everything he’s done.

It explains his foreign policy. To a teleologists, it just makes sense that everyone should want to get along. If you unclench your fist and hold out your hand, everyone else will unclench their fists, and become your friends. So Obama is doing that, and as we know the result has been a shambles.

It explains his economic policy. Teleologists inherently don’t believe in unintended side effects when it comes to implementing their idealistic policies. Obviously it should be possible to provide free health care to everyone without wrecking the economy; it’s just how things really should be, so that’s how it will be. Where will the money come from? That’s the kind of question that materialists ask; teleologists don’t concern themselves with such trivial. It’ll happen somehow, because it’s obviously how it should turn out. To say we shouldn’t do it is to be heartless, uncaring — and those things are more important than mundane claims that it won’t work. If you just believe, it will work.

Of course, it won’t work. The materialists are right about that. But when it fails (if it gets tried) the teleologists will blame the negative vibes of all the materialist doubters for the failure. If only they’d come on board and supported it, then it would have come out OK.

It explains his dealings with Congress in general. He has been telling Congress in very general terms what he wants from them, and seems to think that this is all he really has to do. He wants the bills enough so that Congress will spontaneously create exactly the bills he wants and send them to him as soon as he says. Nothing else need be done by him except to want them.

Hey, Lefty Chumps!

Are you done embracing their worldy ‘worldiness’ in your Fair Trade underoos?

Proposed legislation would impose the death penalty for some gay Ugandans, and their family and friends could face up to seven years in jail if they fail to report them to authorities. Even landlords could be imprisoned for renting to homosexuals.

Those seeking ‘climate justice’ and other class warfare arguments need look no further than their own ability to be vile, which is about the same as any other human, no matter what their ‘class’ or virtuousness by way of perceived victimhood status, only to have to grade one victim class over another.

How about THIS idea: decide to defend INDIVIDUAL rights, become aware that all are universally capable of moral thought, and accept that class, “group rights” and the rest of the dust political parasites kick up is the social construct they should be after.

A Russian Worth Listening To…

Svetlanin Kunin is a Russian worth listening to…

They Doth Fling Pooh from their Gilded Cage

First, let me quote Whittaker Chambers:

The revolutionary heart of Communism is not the theatrical appeal: "Workers of the world, unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains. You have a world to gain." It is a simple statement of Karl Marx, further simplified for handy use: "Philosophers have explained the world; it is necessary to change the world." Communists are bound together by no secret oath. The tie that binds them across the frontiers of nations, across barriers of language and differences of class and education, in defiance of religion, morality, truth, law, honor, the weaknesses of the body and the irresolutions of the mind, even unto death, is a simple conviction: It is necessary to change the world.

But that’s neither here nor there, because the saintly attendies to the COP15 poverty and medievalism confab are themselves no Sistertian monks, charmers, or even humanistic stewards of the precious kidlets in whose name they want the rest of us to commit eco-cide. Andrew Bolt notes that at the miracle of the loaves and fishes in Copenhagen, the suffering weight of abundance weighs down many a soul attending.

”We haven’t got enough limos in the country to fulfil the demand,” she says. “We’re having to drive them in hundreds of miles from Germany and Sweden.”
And the total number of electric cars or hybrids among that number? “Five,” says Ms Jorgensen…

Which means that their number of electro-pods and Toyota Piouses is wildly outnumbered by the people living on my block – ONE SIDE OF IT, in fact.



Buoyed by the usual puproseless agit-prop cum Klimantenschmutz of course:



“Can you smell that, son? Can you smell the mendacity?”

Moscow has announced that the Arctic will become its “main resource base” by 2020, and plans for troops “capable of ensuring … security in region"

During a week when big ideas have their shot at the Copenhagen Climate Conference, it’s clear the Arctic isn’t getting its share

writes John Vinocur concerning "the worst-case Great Game perspective of guns, gas leaks and oil spills, tanker collisions and nationalist jostling". As John Vinocur explains, the (ignored) problem is that

the Russians … seem more in a rush than the Atlantic Alliance players to create their own kind of Arctic facts.

They have experience in the region, but hardly a resounding record as great stewards of the environment. Their claim to half of the Arctic as their own was described in Halifax as “extravagant” by a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, Kurt Volker.

In 2007, they planted a Russian flag under the North Pole. This year, Moscow’s National Security Council announced that the Arctic would become its “main resource base” by 2020, and plans for troops “capable of ensuring military security in the region.” In October, a Russian admiral said that helicopter carriers the Russian Navy hopes to buy from France were earmarked, in part, for its Arctic fleet.

But this could be just woofin’. … All the same, said Mr. Volker, who is managing director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Transatlantic Relations, “The Russians know what they want. They’ve got an Arctic fleet, and incentives to bring people to settle in the region. They want to develop gas fields. It’s not military aggression, but an attempt to build a comprehensive presence.” Washington, he said, “has been a little slow to put the pieces together. And we’re the only country to have the resources and political weight that can get a handle on the development of the region.”

Remember Kids, Daddy Drinks Because you Cry

Pravda makes beeg trouble for Correct-thinking Cadre

And we quote:

Now that the Czech Republic has announced it will ratify the Lisbon Treaty, the EU will be even closer yet to becoming a unified monster state, with more than half a billion inhabitants. Inhabitants is the correct term, since “citizens” would indicate a set of political rights. The people living in the EU should rather be called “subjects,” since they have no influence whatsoever on the constitution of the centralized European government, the “European Commission.” The Europeans are allowed to vote for members of the European Parliament, but this body has about as much political power as the ineffectual German parliament meeting at Frankfurt in 1848. Political power in the EU is firmly in the hands of the European Commission, which is set to obtain even more power under the Lisbon Treaty. This infamous treaty does not hold the peoples of Europe in high regard. As a matter of fact, it is only halfway through the treaty (originally presented as a “Constitution”) that one finds the first references to the people.

Under your newly imposed constitutional privileges, you are permitted to register your surprise so long as I still feel like it.

Have a nice day.

Anarchists Like Siné Are Immature And Want Civilization To Be at the Degree Zero

Alain Abellard has a portrait of Siné, an anarchist who doubles as one of France's top (Dieudonné-type?) humorists… Says one reader:

Siné peut bien s'en aller au Paradis ou en Enfer. Qu'importe ! Les anars sont des immatures : il n'aiment pas l'homme tel qu'il est, mais tel qu'ils le rêvent. S'ensuit un galimatia infantile d'imprécations diverses, d'où ne peut sortir que la loi du plus fort, c'est-à-dire le degré zéro de la civilisation. Bon vent, les anars, mais restez discrets, s'il vous plaît.

Says another reader:

Sine, c’est un témoignage du passé, un voyage dans le temps. Cette hargne, cette outrance dans les propos, cette manière de voir la vie politique et sociale comme une guerre civile, de prendre des positions outrancières sur tous les sujets était la norme «dans le temps». Comment pouvait-on lire «Je suis partout», ai-je demandé un jour à un ancien. Comme on lit Sine aujourd’hui, répondit-il en sous-entendant que j’avais tort d’imaginer ma génération nécessairement meilleure que la sienne

At some point you just have to say....

...f**k you and the horse you rode in on:



Note: NP has no party affiliation