Latest Scandal of International Proportions: In Afghanistan, Europeans Are Faced with an "Americanized" War

As Barack Obama "the Afghan" promises to open up discussions with Iran and as Barack Obama "the Afghan" presents his Afghanistan strategy (to which Le Monde's readers present their usual pacifist wisdom™), Europeans who were earlier whining that Washington was asking for too many of their troops are now whining that they will have too few troops in an "Americanized" war…

Grabbing Up All the Bling That They Can

Populist politics really is just show-biz for ugly people. The irony is that the more venal they are, the greater their feeling of entitlement, even as they play the class-warfare game of humiliating the successful. That doesn’t mean that tour ‘selfless civil servants’ aren’t employing the power of law and government to enjoy a similar lifestyle. Babe-a-licious Belle de Ville rings in and has her doubts about the Politburo’s worthiness to having any claim to enjoying the fruits of our hard-earned money that they’re taxing away from us. You can be sure of one thing. Barney Frank will never be thanking the “little people” productive for funding his political shickanery.

Anti-Religious Movie Loses Punch When You Realize that Son and Sun Are Homophones Only in a Language Born Centuries After Religious Events

Updated throughout: Man, as someone who went bananas over Erich von Däniken's ancient space travellers when he was a teen, this would similarly make me go "Oh, Hallelujah, the truth is finally out!!"

Except... I am older and wiser now...

A few contradictions, you ask for?

Sure, easy.

1) How about the fact that, to quote Joe Kovacs, 'the Bible [itself] never does assign December 25 as the date of Jesus' birth, and "three kings" or "three wise men" are never mentioned in the related gospel accounts.'

Even if later church fathers added those details (Dec 25, 3 wise men, etc…) to the original story (for whatever reasons, including choosing them from pagan sources), this hardly has any bearing on the original story…

If, say, you found out that George Washington's chopping down the cherry tree was exaggerated or outright false, that would hardly be a reason to dismiss the man's accomplishments — especially if the cherry tree story were authored (as it was) not by George Washington but by someone else… And should someone find out that President's Day is not the birthday of Bill Clinton or of (either) George Bush or of Abraham Lincoln, does that mean those presidents did not exist?

2) How about one of the central "arguments", if not THE CENTRAL ARGUMENT, in Zeitgeist:
Did the ancients in Armenia, Persia, and India speak the King's (or any other kind of) English (a language which hardly existed even in the year 500)?

I didn't think so.

Well, it just so happens that "son" and "sun" are not homophones in most languages, including living languages today...

...In some languages the words for SON and SUN may look (somewhat) alike (søn/sol in Danish, Sohn/Sonne in German) — and all these languages seem to antedate the foundation of Christianity and of the other religions — but in many they do not and rarely if ever (except for English) are they pronounced alike.

Imagine using the "international" language that, historically, preceded English (French); how well would this video work if the filmmakers had to use the words FILS and SOLEIL? And how about the language that preceded French (Latin); how well would this video work in the language used in Roman times — i.e., in Jesus's time — if the filmmakers had to use fili- (the root for son) and sol- (the root for sun)?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but is this SUN/SON connection (in the modern language of English alone) not the MAIN and/or the BASIC argument of this video?

Come to think about it, if any person or any people or any culture should want to choose a homophone for the word "sun" (in their language), i.e., the sun-god, wouldn't it rather (than "son") be "God" (in their language) or, if using a word linked to the family relationship, "father" (idem)?

In any case, as it happens, people studying linguistics are taught to watch out about getting excited about words looking alike that are really unrelated. For instance, the word for woman in two different languages is Donna and Onna. You might conclude that they share the same root until you realize the former is Italian and the latter Japanese.

3) Similarly, how about the ancient glyph (in what language?!) for the constellation Virgo being an (altered) M (7:15) and this being related to virgin mothers such as Mary and Myrra and Maya?

Again, the triple-pronged SYMBOL "M" from Latin is linked in the modern West to the SOUND (that WE know as) "Mmm", but how is that supposed to necessarily mean anything in languages (and cultures) where the letters were totally different and where the "Mmm" sound could be represented by a symbol looking entirely different?!?!

How does that mean anything in a culture in which the constellation (that we know as) Virgo is not recognized as anything to do with a woman (virgin or otherwise), but — insofar as it is recognized as anything at all — is linked to something completely different — say, a (well, Peter Joseph's video is kind enough to provide one that — I am sorry to say — has little if anything to do with a virgin) "house of bread", a snowmobile, or a butler slipping on a banana peel?!

In any case, Siddhārtha Gautama, aka the Awakened One (or the Buddha) — like Jesus — was a real person, and so was his mother. If his mother's name was Maya, cannot that be attributed to a coincidence? (Again, did the Indo-Aryan language use a three-legged symbol looking like the "ancient glyph" — again, in what language, this glyph? — to symbolize virgins and had its speakers, similarly to those in the West, chosen the constellation Virgo to represent a virgin?)

As somebody who minored in religious studies, I certainly don't remember that Buddha's mother was supposed to be a virgin; indeed, Māyādevī does speak of dreaming of being entered by a white elephant with six tusks on the night Siddhārtha was conceived, but as far as I know, that doesn't mean that Suddhodana (his father) did not do the (ahem) work. As for Adonis, I understand that not only was his mother hardly a virgin — far from it — but Myrrha actually got pregnant by coupling with her father (Theias) in the darkness. Untold numbers of similarities between the religions, as you can see…

As I watched the documentary, I was wondering about the unnecessary (and inappropriate?) music and the drumbeat... And I wonder if doesn't seem to have a deadening effect on the reasoning part of the brain.

Once again: Take the conclusion linked to observations of the winter solstice: "Thus it was said [sounds religious!], the SUN died on the cross, was dead for three days, only to be resurrected or born again; this is WHY [idem!] Jesus and numerous other SUN gods share..." bla bla bla…

Regarding the "death of the SUN" and "the SUN's demise" "in the vicinity of the Southern Cross" and all the "THEREFOREs" and all the "THIS IS WHYs" and all the "THUS IT WAS SAIDs":

Remove the (modern) language of English — one of the few in which the words SON and SUN look or sound alike — and tell me if I am wrong if the whole "theory" (at least this, the main part, of it) doesn't seem to collapse...

In any case, you realize that you have to take with a grain of salt someone who mocks religious people as gullible and superstitious while pretending to be looking exclusively at cold, hard facts when Peter Joseph (a pseudonym!) turns out to be a… truther! (see last 45 seconds in movie's third part, edited to look like the two planes hitting the World Trade Center are no less than 10 explosions)…

Former Mobster Compares Obama's Thugs and Soros to the Mafia

Mafia Mobster Compares Obama's Thugs and Soros to the Mafia (thanks to Valerie)…



…While Newt Gingrich Says "This is Starting to Look Like a Dictatorship."

A Friday Funny

‚No Pasarán' (sie werden nicht durchkommen)

YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS!!

Former tennis champion John McEnroe was duped along with investment firms, art dealers and the Bank of America in a sophisticated $88 million art investment scam revealed in New York on Thursday.

Incompetence and Parasitism

In Europe it’s called looking out for numero uno, and doing it rather miserably. The UK’s Evening Standard cites James Surowiecki’s article in the New Yorker that points out the the EU member states are the collective ‘big government that couldn’t’.

Just as Sarko and Merkel may have been congratulating themselves, Surowiecki delivers the sting in the tail.

"They’re also probably counting on the fact that, even as they sit tight, their economies will get a boost from the American and Chinese stimulus packages. The thing about government spending is that it “leaks”: a good chunk of our stimulus package will buy other countries’ goods. So Europeans can avoid getting too deeply into debt and still reap some of the benefits of our borrowing.

It’s not that they won’t do a debt-heaping stimulus package for same reasons, surely that’s what they’ve been already doing be way of dirigisme, de-facto state industries, and subsidies anyway for ages. They simply can’t find that many institutions to take up their dept, and are mortally afraid of the GDP-multiples of their existing borrowing, not to mention that in Europe, more than anywhere else, commercial bonds could scupper them in a way that will make the banks look like a safe investment.

What a wonderful parable of our time has been the expedition to the North Pole for measuring the thickness of the ice to show how fast it is declining

The only problem with a project to prove that Arctic ice is disappearing, says Christopher Booker in the Daily Telegraph, is the fact that… it is actually getting thicker (cheers to J. H. Colter).

With perfect timing, the setting out from Britain of the “Global Warming Three” last month was hampered by “an unusually heavy snowfall”. When they were airlifted to the start of their trek by a twin-engine Otter (one hopes a whole forest has been planted to offset its “carbon footprint”), they were startled to find how cold it was. The BBC dutifully reported how, in temperatures of minus 40 degrees, they were “battered by wind, bitten by frost and bruised by falls on the ice”. …They were [later] disconcerted to see one of those polar bears, threatened with extinction by global warming, wandering around, doubtless eyeing them for its dinner.

…Professor Wieslaw Maslowski, whose team, according to the BBC, “is well known for producing results that show much faster ice-loss than other modelling teams” … predicts that summer ice could be completely gone as early as next year. It took the Watts Up With That? science blog to point out that there is little point in measuring ice thickness unless you do it several years running, and that, anyway, Arctic ice is being constantly monitored by US Army buoys. The latest reading given by a typical sensor shows that since last March the ice has thickened by “at least half a metre”.

“In most fields of science,” comments WUWT drily, “that is considered an 'increase’ rather than a 'decline’.”

Commentator Allan adds:

I work for a government agency. We are about to get a pile of money to study carbon neutral fuels that will reduce the AGW, so of course all the scientists “support” AGW on a professional level, yet we all doubt AGW is real, why, the claims of are unreal. The variations in the measurement coupled with the uncertainty make no sense.

Allan goes on to "ask some simple questions" while Tony B, who also says he works for a government agency, states that he is

equally aghast at the precision given to sea level rises. There is little real world evidence of any noticeable increase let alone one on the scale imagined by the IPCC.

I frequently complain in this forum of the reliance we place on the concept of global temperatures, let alone our believing we have enough objective evidence to parse it to fractions of a degree back to 1850.

Tumbling totems and talismen

Oh dear, the neo-luxury industry certainly does seem to be having a tough time getting the wind beneath its wings:

Iberdrola Renewables’ decision to cut its investment in Britain by more than 40 per cent, or £300 million — enough to build a wind farm powering 200,000 homes — is the latest obstacle to Gordon Brown’s target of generating 35 per cent of the country’s electricity from renewable sources by 2020. Lifting it to that level from the current 5 per cent would cost an estimated £100 billion. But wind energy investments have collapsed as funding dries up in the credit crunch and the price of oil, gas and coal has fallen. Delays obtaining access to the national grid and planning permission have compounded the industry’s woes.

Shell and BP have shelved or pulled out of renewable energy projects, including a £3 billion project for 341 turbines in the Thames Estuary, and questions have been raised over the future of npower’s £2.2 billion Gwint y Mor farm off the Welsh coast.

Fortunately Lord Cull is on the case:

"We are way off the pace," Jonathon Porritt, the head of the Sustainable Development Commission, said. "The UK has talked about this for years, but the Government now has very little time to get this together. People just do not consider the UK to be a good place to invest in renewables."

Why would any respectable firm consider the UK to be a bad place to invest in any sector? High-government officials as well as local rabble activists seem to be promoting that all important underpinning of any investment environment, the rule of law:

A group has claimed responsibility for attacking the home of former bank boss Sir Fred Goodwin and warned "this is just the beginning".

Of course, should you agree with the sarcastic tone of this post .... well, you are just some sort of anti-social weirdo. Don't believe me, ask the expert:

Opposition to wind farms should become as socially unacceptable as failing to wear a seatbelt, Ed Miliband, the climate change secretary, has said.

As luck would have it, the good secretary was talking up his own book at an aptly titled movie premier and alternative headline for this post:

The Age of Stupid

Keeping tabs

While not the first, something to keep tabs on going forward:

French employees of a US company have barricaded their boss in his office south of Paris as they demand better terms for workers facing redundancy.

A union official said Luc Rousselet, who is allowed out for toilet breaks, could not leave the building until workers secured better conditions.

Too many conclusions to draw from this no doubt future viral form of "direct action". In this particular case future redundancies should be announced via a post-it note affixed to the padlocked front gate.

Update: Oddly no mention of arrests,

Luc Rousselet was allowed to leave the plant in Pithiviers, central France, early on Thursday morning after talks between unions and officials from 3M France.

"We have an agreement with 3M that they will provide the means to respond to our demands," union representative Jean-Francois Caparros told news agency AFP.

"The negotiations will resume and that's a very good thing," said Rousselet as he left an office where he took refuge on Tuesday afternoon.

"I am very happy for the employees of the Pithiviers factory. I know that this was a very difficult lay-off plan for them," he said as workers shouted "Scoundrel boss!"

‚ Ausweis Bitte ! '

All leftist love affairs end up in the same place – in dictatorships, ones that slowly expand the control of central government (in the stated interest of the people and social justice,) and erase the human right to individual liberty. Like boiling a frog, they do it in steps. It took the East Germans less than a decade to substantially dismantle freedom of expression, the economy, and individuals’ freedom, as well as confiscate all productive property, even that held by the poor.

Venezuelan Military Takes Control of Transportation Hubs

Critics say the move is designed to expand President Hugo Chavez's power and weaken his opponents.

Opposition gubernatorial and mayoral candidates made gains in November elections, taking a number of key seats including leadership of the capital city, Caracas.

Same old, same old rhetoric employed, abusing the public’s emotions:

Mr. Chavez was quoted by the AFP news service as saying he was reunifying the motherland, which he said was in pieces.

The Venezuelan president has warned that state governors who challenge the new law might be arrested.

Joseph Kennedy is quite proud, I’m sure.

America's French Friends Equate 911 With Global Warming

"Les Américains sont nos amis", they say, and Nicolas Hulot proves France's friendship by making an ad (merci à RV) that equates the murder of 3,000 Americans with… (with what? with global warming?!?!) by showing the trunks of a couple of trees (!!) standing like the Twin Towers on 911 being hit by hijacked airplanes (or the equivalent thereof) with the slogan For Nature, Everyday is 9/11…

Needless to say, the ad has caused no controversy among America's immortal and undying French friends… (Indeed, it seems that a variance of the ad first appeared in Belgium — something nobody seems to have heard about, either, as controversy or otherwise — meaning there was little to no outcry (by Europeans) about that either…)

Here is where you can rate the brilliance and originality of the ad…

BOE to PM: UK economy is DOA

A few days ago the Guardian mused editorially:

Is austerity all you have to offer, Mr Cameron?

Today the Bank of England governor answered the Guardian's query:

The government should not unveil any further fiscal stimulus in April's budget as Britain's public finances are already in such dire straits, Mervyn King warned today.

Appearing before the Treasury select committee, the Bank of England governor said: "Given how big those deficits are, I think it would be sensible to be cautious about going further in using discretionary measures to expand the size of those deficits."

"There is no doubt that we are facing very large fiscal deficits over the next two to three years," he added.

While proven long ago to anyone with a modicum of sense and ration, the Great Lady's claim has now been delivered in spades:

They've got the usual Socialist disease—they've run out of other people's money.

No doubt the usual fevered minds will continue running barefoot through the bogs chasing that elusive rainbow which promises more taxes, more government and less freedom for the individual. If only they can get a few more precious drops out of the turnip all will be right with the world..... Of course, it's never enough.

It really is way past high time to treat the bankrupt "ideas" of socialism and governmentalism with the absolute and utter contempt so richly deserved and earned.

Obamanomics Deconstructed By Another… Frenchman (!?!)

The voice of fiscal restraint does not normally have a Gallic accent

opines The Wall Street Journal.

But in our newly upside-down world, it's the French [from Nicolas Sarkozy to Jean-Claude Trichet] who are warning Americans about runaway spending and false Keynesian stimulus hopes

The Onion imitates life

No doubt the mentally sclerotic governmentalists among us will fail to see the humour:

Germans Seeking Less Stimulus in a Flaccid Market

Rip off the sales-pitch and the veneer of hip, sexy, edgy, and ”with it” Europe, and you’ll find it vacuous, limp, and sagging:

Hoping for more success, many women are driven from the clubs to the kerbs to sell their bodies on their own terms.

An increasing number of men on a tight budget are also picking up prostitutes on street corners rather than in pricey brothels or "Eros Centres."

Some places have been forced to shut their doors and in January, sex-shop owners and porn producers pushed for state aid, taking their lead from the crisis-hit auto and banking industries.

Erotic trade federation official Uwe Kaltenberg, said that "economic aid would be judicious."

No justice! No peace!

When a society believes in virtually nothing, it’s not surprising that after the personal because the political, people human flesh becomes little more than a commodity anyway. They’re as cheerless, blasé, and mechanical as ever. Put your heart into it chacha!

While Barack Obama Is Compared to a Rock Star From Whom Only Outstanding Work Can Be Expected, Erik Svane Channels Martin Luther King Jr

As France 24's Natacha Butler and Robert Parsons cover the inauguration ceremonies in Washington, DC (from the station's Paris headquarters on January 20, 2009), Stephen Sawyer, Professor of History at the American University of Paris, joins them in comparing Barack Obama to a rock star from whom we can expect little but outstanding work(s).

Referring to Martin Luther King's 1963 speech before the Lincoln Memorial, a skeptical Erik Svane reflects on the reasons behind (as well as the enthusiasm for) the election of an African-American — both domestically and abroad...

Table of Contents:

• 00:05 Natacha Butler, France 24 host
• 01:30 Erik Svane, representing Republicans Abroad
• 06:00 Robert Parsons, France 24 correspondent
• 07:10 Natacha Butler, France 24 host
• 07:35 Stephen Sawyer, American University of Paris
• 08:45 Erik Svane wonders whether the president-elect hasn't been judged (and hasn't been elected) more because of the color of his skin than because of the content of his character...

See Part I…

Never Mind the Cannibalism

It seems that His Excellency, Her Majesty’s grand mucky-muck in Pyongyang is more than just a twit. He is at the point where he can’t tell the difference between autocracy and pluralism. Via Iain Dale we meet what may be the stupidest man to ever nest in government – he is the exception that manages to prove the rule in the Peter Principle.

In a manner that would have George Orwell spinning in his grave, Hughes describes election day in the totalitarian state as if it were a festival of democracy. Forget the Axis of Evil, forget labour camps, secret police, a nation nearly reduced to starvation only a few years ago. No, it's a veritable Butlins here in the DPRK.

The weather was "warm and sunny for the elections of the 12th Supreme People's Assembly", Hughes gushes.

You might wonder just what it is that the embassy staff in Pyongyang are there for, other than processing papers for non-existent trade and all of those free-wheeling NorKs needing visas to blighty. Odds on, they’re doing absolutely nothing – they are if anything a space-holder for what might someday become a nation with who the rest of the world would want to deal.