Social solidarity does have its limitations...

...even for the most pure of hearts:

On Nord Stream Pipeline, 'Germany Must Take a Selfish Stand'

Our Middle Name is Still Anxiety

Alles ist noch in Ordnung

A Higgins Boat Off the Coast of Omaha Beach 65 Years After D-Day

On the 65th anniversary of D-Day, an authentic World War II-era Higgins Boat cruised off the coast of Normandy as the official commemorations were taking place at the American Cemetery of Omaha Beach.

The craft was meticulously restored, over a dozen years, by Hugues Eliard, a story that has been told on No Pasarán before…

"Americans, You Are Hated Here"

Out of over 30 French reader comments on the killing spree at Fort Hood, there are all sorts of reactions: they castigate psychiatrists, they invoke pacifism, they suggest the US deserved it, they fear the NRA's reaction, a lot mention Bush('s home state), and they say they don't care or that there are more serious problems in the world.

Apart from the odd "RIP" (hidden among all the above), not a word of compassion "pour nos amis américains", voire pour les soldats qui nous défendent… That's what a culture of pacifism and leftists teachings has brought them to.

Et alors? Que puis-je en faire, de ce fait divers? Et quoi, combien peut-on compter de milliers de morts sur notre planète depuis que cela c'est passé? Ma compassion pour nous tous...

Ce fait-divers est vraiment interessant et pose de nombreuses questions : pourquoi ce psy. a-t-il pete les plombs? d'autres incidents sont arrives sur cette base, pourquoi? le fait qu'il soit d'origine palestinienne, son integration? les pressions des collegues? peut-on relier son geste aux centaines de suicides et milliers de depressifs retour d'Irak? le fait que ca se passe au Texas, patrie de Bush, de la peine de mort, centre culturel de tous les neo-cons ne manque pas d'ironie...la + noire

Noms significatifs : Fort Hood (Fort Capuchon, comme celui mis sur la tête des suspects en attente de tortures en Irak), près de Waco ("cinglé" en quelque sorte), dans ce Texas fruste et violent qui vit l'assassinat d'un President en exercice (Obama n'y va pas !). Un psychiatre musulman ! Merci MM. Huntington pour la théorie, et Bush pour la pratique d'avoir réalisé l'impensable "guerre des civilisations" ! Encore un beau retour de flammes ("blowback") des atrocités US au Proche et Moyen-Orient.

Any Decade Now, They’ll get to the Press Freedom Part of Press Freedom

This is typically European: getting carried away with massaging your ego and sating your preconceived notions with so little conscience as to entirely ignore the facts.

United States:
There was both praise and concern for the United States, which climbed 20 places from 40 to 20 to join the United Kingdom.

“Barack Obama’s election as president and the fact that he has a less hawkish approach than his predecessor have had a lot to do with this,” RWB said, adding that the sharp rise concerned only the state of press freedoms within the country.

The US, their estimation went UP the league table of “Press Freedom” by getting rid of their enemy, George Bush, and electing their theoretical special new friend, Barack Obama. All this without any reference to the press, it’s freedoms, or the fact that virtually the entire US media is ‘in the tank’ for the white house under threat of being cut off from the news. The State virtually commands the media’s emissions, and can always get their way with 90% of the airtime and column inches.

A White House attempt to delegitimize Fox News--which in past times would have drawn howls of censorship from the press corps--has instead been greeted by a collective shrug.

That's true even though the motivations of the White House are clear: Fire up a liberal base disillusioned with Obama by attacking the hated Fox. Try to keep a critical news outlet off-balance. Raise doubts about future Fox stories.

But most of all, get other journalists to think twice before following the network's stories in their own coverage. . . .

To Euro-poppers, THAT is called an improvement in the freedom of the press. They enjoy being servile tools of charismatic characters with political power, so long as they can pretend their Ken Doll is a revolutionary.

The Country Preacher and His Teenage Son

A country preacher had a teenage son, and it was getting time for the boy to start thinking about choosing a profession.

That's how the story, went according to WMD.

Like many young men his age, the boy didn't really know what he wanted to do and he didn't seem too concerned about it.

One day his father decided to try an experiment. He went into the boy's room and placed on his study table 4 objects:

1. A Bible.

2. A silver dollar.

3. A bottle of whiskey.

4. A Playboy magazine.

"I'll just hide behind the door," the preacher said to himself. "When he comes home from school today, I'll see which object he picks up."

"If it's the Bible, he's going to be a preacher like me, and what a blessing that would be!"

"If he picks up the dollar, he's going to be a business man, and that would be okay, too."

"But if he picks up the bottle, he's going to be a no-good drunken bum, and Lord, what a shame that would be."

"And worst of all if he picks up that magazine he's going to be a skirt-chasing womanizer."

The old man waited anxiously, and soon heard his son's footsteps as he entered the house whistling and heading for his room.

The boy tossed his books on the bed, and as he turned to leave the room he spotted the objects on the table.

With curiosity in his eye, he walked over to inspect them.

Finally, he picked up the Bible and placed it under his arm.

He picked up the silver dollar and dropped into his pocket.

He uncorked the bottle and took a big drink, while he admired the magazine's centerfold.

"Lord have mercy," the old preacher blurted out in disgust. "He's gonna run for Congress."

A good starting point on taxation

A rather effective default position to assume (it is certainly more dignified than grabbing your ankles .... again) when our statist betters come calling to once again rummage through our already shopworn pockets:

And what better day to shout it from the rooftops?

Our Middle Name is Anxiety

Alles ist in Ordnung

It made us laugh....

Lemme guess, the return of Diebold?

That can be the only answer to the pounding taken by the statist political elements in the US yesterday. Everyone knows the US electorate is just head over heels in love with bigger government, onerous taxation and profligate spending, just ask them:

Republicans swept contests for governor in New Jersey and Virginia on Tuesday as voters went to the polls filled with economic uncertainty, dealing President Obama a setback and building momentum for a Republican comeback attempt in next year’s midterm Congressional elections.

Of course the European strain of statists are chuckling once again at those crazy Yanks. Afterall, when the continent has an unruly electorate returning an unacceptable result, we simply allow the voters try,try again until they get it "right".

Forget El Nino, I blame Karl Marx

Residents of the Venezuelan capital face cuts in water service for as much as 48 hours per week, after the government imposed rationing to stem a 25 percent shortfall in the city's supply, officials said Monday.

However this is Chavez-land, where like all Socialist political environments, dystopia is a political instrument and misery is useful make a better world to keep an elite in power. For an example of how this kind of stupidity infects the human mind, see Ba’thist Iraq and Barack Obama’s social weltanschauung.

"What will the rich fill their swimming pools with?" the country's leftist leader asked recently.

"With the water that is denied inhabitants in the poor neighborhoods," he said, blaming the lack of sufficient water on "capitalism -- a lack of feeling, a lack of humanity."

Which is entirely to say that when markets are superseded by “rights” to others’ property, and the worth of a commodity is politicized (as health care will be in America if the left’s wet dream takes place), you end up with rationing and shortages that must be enforced, otherwise the price goes up, and you use less of it.

Which reminds me of the tomfoolery of banning carbon filament lightbulbs because they are too expensive to run. Too expensive for whom, exactly? The person willing to pay a higher electric bill to have something they’re willing to pay for?

Like Chavez’ “Kill my mob! Kill!” routine, it’s based on a notion that can only appeal to people who aren’t paying their own bills to begin with: school-age children and the dupable well off who don’t care if their poor neighbors pay more for something if it makes their well trained-in guilt go away.

How about we instead eat this kind of rich peeplez, people?

Al Gore's is positioned to become a green billionaire thanks to his investment in several 'green energy' companies which reportedly will soon be awarded healthy contracts by the US government. If it were anything other than 'green' energy -- say oil, there would be widespread outrage.

If you’re looking for some figure to hate who profits from increasing the burden and misery on others, he certainly fits the bill.

Al Gore defends all this as putting his money where his mouth is and investing in what he believes. That would almost make sense, were it not for the fact that money is made in this "industry" only because the government is sending dump-trucks full of money to these companies.

And much as Mao was just another Emperor in his own eyes, and Chavez can believe that the love of a people can be bought, the demonization that’s employed as a tool enriches through the corruption of the instruments employed.

Funny how Democrat politicians know how to make money better than greedy capitalists, isn't it? You might think our government is many trillion dollars in debt. But Gore and Obama actually saved or created trillions of dollars over the years with their investments of your money. Just ask Joe Biden.

Odd, really given that the only way this story got a rise out of anyone from the the NYT, was Gore’s detestable act of not hiding his wealth. It makes for an interesting sight when you find motivated young people volunteering their time, or working at fellowships and make-work schemes for free to create the social headlock that makes Gore richer and Chavez more domestically omnipotent.

Chumps.

God Bless America, Land of the Free…

Hurrah for the Garden State and the Old Dominion…

"Russia has laid bare its real intentions with respect to Poland"

"Yo, Barry! How's that friendship with Putin working out?" asks Duncan Hill as the Telegraph's Matthew Day reports on Moscow's simulating a nuclear attack on Poland.

The Kremlin's

armed forces are said to have carried out "war games" in which nuclear missiles were fired and troops practised an amphibious landing on the country's coast.

…Poland, which has strained relations with both countries, was cast as the "potential aggressor".

The documents state the exercises, code-named "West", were officially classified as "defensive" but many of the operations appeared to have an offensive nature.

The Russian air force practised using weapons from its nuclear arsenal, while in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, which neighbours Poland, Red Army forces stormed a "Polish" beach and attacked a gas pipeline.

…Karol Karski, an MP from Poland's Law and Justice, is to table parliamentary questions on Russia's war games and has protested to the European Commission.

His colleague, Marek Opiola MP, said: "It's an attempt to put us in our place. Don't forget all this happened on the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland."

Ordinary Poles were outraged by news of the exercise and demanded a firm response fro[m] the government.

One man, identified only as Ted, told Polskie Radio: "Russia has laid bare its real intentions with respect to Poland. Every Pole most now get of the off the fence and be counted as a patriot or a traitor."

…With a resurgent Moscow now more willing to flex its muscles, Central and Eastern Europeans have warned of Russia adopting a neo-imperialistic attitude to an area of the world it still regards as its sphere of influence.

In July, the region’s most famed and influential political figures, including Lech Walesa and Vaclav Havel, wrote an open letter [to] Barack Obama warning him that Russia “is back as a revisionist power pursuing a 19th-century agenda with 21st-century tactics and methods.”

But not to worry, Duncan; no need to worry, Poland: Moscow and Minsk have insisted that Operation West was — only — to help "ensure the strategic stability in the East European region". (Now, ain't that a relief?!)

“A state built on deception is not worth having”

A state built on deception is not worth having

Says David Pryce-Jones of the way the European Union is being made official by avoiding the consent of the populous through the use of the Lisbon Treaty.

The French and the Dutch did actually vote to reject the treaty, but their rulers simply ignored that fact. In Britain, Mr. Blair promised to hold a referendum, but then with no apparent strain on his conscience decided not to, leaving his successor to sign up to it without the legitimacy to do so. The majority of European governments have followed this path, cheating their electorates one by one, moreover keeping them in the dark as though they were Romanov or Habsburg emperors, and politics were some private domain about which voters should not be consulted.

Which is the same ideological trap that also got some of them into totalitarian Communist leftism, and others under totalitarian Fascist leftism. Pick your totalitarian leftism, folks. You know it comes naturally to you!

In normal circumstances, democracies will not tolerate trickery of the kind. Treated with such open contempt, genuine electorates take to the streets and build barricades and start burning institutions that do not represent them. A state built on deception is not worth having, and for the future it looks as if force alone will be able to maintain it. Europe is set either to collapse with unimaginable consequences or harden into some sort of authoritarian monster.

Utterly unaware of the great breakthrough that finally came along in the late 20th century, they remain obsessed with class, something that effectively ceased to exist in any effective form (it was defeated by a comfortable, meritocratic view of people, and capitalism), and fixated on a continuing fear of federalism and any kind of pluralism that appears to be anything more than a Potemkin village of democracy.

Are Images of the Prophet Really Prohibited by Islam? asks Oleg Grabar.

Time to pay up

My, my, funny how things change once the bill arrives and it is time to pay up. No doubt many will be studying most intently their watches, some nervous laughter, a convenient and well-timed trip to the WC (yes, that would be you France), all the while pretending they do not see l'cheque laying in the middle of the table. Afterall, surely someone else will be picking up the tab (yes, that would be you Germany):

Negotiations to save the planet from catastrophic climate change are heading for trouble, five weeks before the U.N. conference in Copenhagen to tackle the problem.

The European Union has been at the forefront in pressing for binding, internationally monitored reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and for securing the financing from industrialized countries to help developing nations switch to clean energy.

"We can now look the rest of the world in the eyes and say 'we have done our job. We are ready for Copenhagen'," the European Commission president, José Manuel Barroso, said Friday after E.U. leaders papered over differences on how to finance environmental policies in the developing world.

But even in Europe, which adopted ambitious goals last year to cut the output of carbon dioxide by at least 20 percent by 2020, signs of climate fatigue are setting in.

The money-shot:

So the European Union risks being stranded on its moral high ground.

The wrangling among the leaders of the 27 E.U. countries last week over how to share the cost of helping poorer nations fight climate change was a glimpse of the discord likely during the U.N. negotiations in Copenhagen from Dec. 7 through Dec. 18, in which 193 countries will participate.

The Europeans agreed that it would cost about €100 billion, or $150 billion, a year by 2020 to help developing countries reduce carbon emissions and that as much as half of that sum would have to come from public money, mostly from the industrialized world.

But when it came to deciding who would pay how much within the E.U., they stalled, largely because of Europe’s own wealth gap.

To quote the ultra-fabulous 'hostess with the mostess', Bobbi Flekman:

Money talks and bullshit walks....

Alas, But for the Love of Self...

Yet Another Way the American Left Exports Anti-Americanism

Received largely with smug slef-satisfaction, some French hater has taken the animated clips out of “Bowling for Columbine” and written his own “history of the USA” in a way that sums up all the flourishes of the delusional and factually challenged. In fact, it’s so typical of the world view of a whole generation, I don’t even know if it’s worth mentioning, but this sure is: this kind of thing ALWAYS takes the place of Europeans looking at themselves, their own societies, and their own attitude. In fact the only reason that they KNOW that there was a civil rights movement is becase American society transformed for the better, which is reason enough for them to be hatin’ on us.

The only marginally skeptical comments about it are racial in nature and dwell on the strain of “white nationalism” that takes the place of common sense in the souls of many young French people, otherwise they’re perfectly happy to call Americans racists in the fantasy model of their own domestic obsession with Jews, Scottish people (for some implausible reason), tribal warfare, and even a few personal problems.

The result of a government-run health system is sloppiness, a culture of excuses, gross dereliction of managerial duty, and patient infection

Thomas Sowell On Economics Of Medical Care

I ‘Larned it from the Bish

Actually he’s an ARCH-bish. So there. Even a rabid Maronite Catholic such as your host can ‘larn something in his dotage.

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.

- Sir Winston Churchill,
KG, OM, CH, TD, FRS, PC (Can).
(Prime Minister 1940-1945, 1951-1955)