Waaah! Kapitalizm is Krool!

It’s socially unjust, and must be stopped in our lifetime – so we can be free to be slaves of the state.

Whatever It Takes?

"We are at war. We are at war against al Qaeda," [Barack Obama] said in one of his strongest and most direct speeches about the threat to the United States.

"We will do whatever it takes to defeat them."

Whatever it takes?

How about firing Eric Holder or at least putting the attorney general in his place and reverting to trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, and any other "suspects" in military tribunals?

Indeed: how about using waterboarding to get information out of the "suspects" on Al Qaeda's — no, not (just) Al Qaeda's, militant Islam's (or Islamic militants') — future plans for terror?

Prudence Dictates another Law

The French parliament has written into law a broad, unenforceable piece of legislation rigged up entirely for gal-Queda type feminists specifically outlawing mental abuse in marriage (interspecies or otherwise) in the same way that ‘hate crimes’ work – wherein one kind of murder victim is somehow more special than some other kind of murder victim on grounds of some sort of ‘social justice’ status.

There have long been laws against physical abuse of spouses, but France has gone a significant step further and criminalized “psychological violence” between men and women.

The law, which will apply to couples both married and unmarried who cohabit, was promulgated to coincide with the United Nations’ 10th International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and will take effect within six months.

The irony is that this announcement stuff, and shove a law through stuff is seen domestically as a way of practicing über-skilled Machiavellian foreign policy, even if the whole worldly, caring-looking “behold my poop stinks not” thing is internationally forgotten by 10:27 tomorrow morning. It’s a euro win-win when there are even minutes of that touchy-feely satisfaction that comes with passing a new social measure, followed by decades of joy taken in circumventing it later.

Surely making the entire law subjective is the recently publish finding by French psychologist Maryse Vaillant who is pandering to the complex of calling the rest of humanity prudish under some rationalization or another. Her these is that a husband's cheating, and the neglect and betrayal that comes with it, is good for marriage. Doubters need to think about the travails of an easy going wife who accepted this 'grand tradition' widely accepted to be normal, even for publicly prominent men in Europe.

At their wedding in 1983, when the mayor began reciting the vows of "fidelity, aid and support", she said Mr Besson commented: "Fidelity, no."

Miss Brunel, although "humiliated", convinced the shocked mayor it was a joke. He was, she claims, unfaithful for five years before their marriage and 25 years afterwards, adding: "I can't say I wasn't warned."

Mr Besson has been dubbed "the Traitor" by the opposition Socialists whom he deserted to join President Nicolas Sarkozy's cabinet. He left his wife soon after for a woman "almost as young as our eldest daughter" and who "oozed narcissism from every pore of her pretty skin", according to his ex-wife.

Mr Besson described her book as "shameless". She hit back, saying: "What's shameless is the way you've treated me for 30 years."

Years. Abuse. She’s got a case there under the new law, I would say. Nonetheless in the vacuum of “gee that sounds nice for this week’s article”, some ‘sex guru’ quack writer has called the acceptance of philandering as ‘pragmatic’.

Elsewhere, NPR’s American audience, which often seems to be made up what seems entirely of family therapist types of one kind or another, likely see in it another meal ticket.

If Psychological Abuse In Couples Is Criminalized, Treatment Will Be Key

Don’t worry, folks – if the history of lefty nanny state measures is anything to go by, the definition of ‘abuse’ will be expanded to make this whole thing into another legal or financial instrument, fashioning the whole thing into a venal burden on the former family’s earnings and savings, and surely infantilize another couple of million citizens, and rendering helpless to do right on their own initiative a whole generation of young people entering adulthood. After all, with law as your sole moral guide, why would one need to develop one's moral reasoning?

Success is easier to achieve in counseling for psychological abuse, Stosny says, than in cases of physical abuse. With physical abuse, he says, there's often "traumatic bonding" between the parties.

Sometimes, with some life-experience, and the taking of ones’ own life seriously, the bonding isn’t traumatic. Can you write up a law to cover that? No. Law can do no such thing.

In a report from the appropriately named Eleanor Beardsley, it’s all, as always about those special isolated cases, and never, ever, open to a future that banalizes abuse. It will. Meanwhile, in the land of pretend-bombast where men often pretend to be given to abusiveness as a way of exerting their adulthood (something ‘Anglo-Saxons’ are much less prone to,) how many days will it take to hear a bunch of these guys saying “well then keep it physical!,” banalizing it in THEIR way.

Billard rejects critics who say the new law would allow couples to be hauled in for having an argument. She says it must be proved that the abuse is repeated and done with the intention of destroying the victim's dignity.

Which also brings to mind the ‘therapeutic stance’ of accepting that BDSM is okay if you can intimidate your partner into consent, itself feeding the private game of calling you abuse "playtime" antics. It is, after all, all about metal abuse and conditioning the abused into taking pleasue in being servile. Or is it prudish to otherwise believe that THAT kind of abuse must, for reasons of being socially non-judgmental, be held aside as a special legal class? When will that play against the rules of propriety and respect need to be regulated for what it is?

I mean, just when was it that the all-knowing therapeutic do-gooder left dragged us back to the Victorian age where the population had social strictures that a social elite could ignore for their private pleasure? Much as there is an incentive to enjoy doing wrong (celebrated all too often as being creative), laws such as these make the incentive to be right one of merely avoiding punishment and conformity. Laws, unlike personal exploration and moral development, like domination, only teach through conditioning. With every law we compound on another we take away a little more of the faith one can have in the individual and the role of free will as a life coach.

No liquids near the keyboard

The vested interest brigades tell us (the great unwashed) how indeed the current cooling is indeed part of the current warming.

One wonders if the same nuanced approach of "this is just a one-off winter that does not disprove anything" will hold true next summer when any degree of heat on any given day will set off the "sky is falling, again" warmists.

Ho hum....

Sounding More Soviet by the Minute

Despite rapidly running out of capitols to name pompous, unrealistic declarations after, the EU is running headlong into a theatrical form of central planning philosophy that I like to call “mining the scrapheap of history” in an attempt to look like their doing something definite about the public’s economic malaise woes.

The next few months will be decisive for the European Union's future economic health, with the bloc set to agree a new 10-year economic plan in a bid to leave the recent recession behind, and chart a fresh course towards steady growth and job creation.

and the paean to the Rubber chicken internal summitry circuit MUST go on:

Memory of the EU's current economic plan - the Lisbon Strategy, due to expire in 2010 - is also likely to influence EU leaders as they prepare to discuss its successor at a number of European summits over the next six months under the Spanish EU presidency.

If 5 year plans never worked, how is a 10 year plan supposed to work? By giving one even more time to create a few months of diminished expectations before the whole PR exercise is forgotten?

Unaknowleged, even while admitting to the failure of the Lisbon Strategy to “make the union the most competitive knowledge-based economy in the world", is that innovation takes place when governments are not staring at private innovators, tapping their toes, fondling their mobiles, and checking their watches.

Still think it is all about peace, love and understanding?

Behold the Katrina-esque Chaos

A good part of the UK is socked in by the rather beautiful randomness of ‘climate’, and all they can do is whinge.

Oxfordshire was also braced for extreme weather. In North London, Harrow had only four days of grit left.

A spokeswoman said: "We ordered 1,000 tons of extra salt but the supplier has left us high and dry." Yesterday there were claims of people LOOTING roadside supplies of rock salt to sprinkle at their own properties.

Bush!

Any minute know, there will be reports of cannibalism, and dining from tins from the back of the cupboard. Oh the humanity! The media should soon need to show every womyn to be an Ernest Shackleton

Vive le Vent, Vive le Vent, Vive le Vent d'Hiver in a One-Horse Open Lay

What have THEY Been Smoking?

Proof enough for the French, I suppose. The success of marketing the idea of the nation beyond all plausibility goes on unfettered.

'The French love little window boxes filled with flowers, tidy gardens, pretty sidewalk cafes, and clean streets. Cities are well tended and with little crime.'

To punctuate the silliness of this survey, of the top 25 ranked nations, only 4 aren’t in Fortress Europe. Published by an Ireland based puffy travel magazine, this is by, for and of Europe’s image of self.

One also wonders what USA or Canada they’re looking at, given their breadth and variety, given that 12 of “nations” listed have a population less than that of Metro New York.



The other thing they “love” as much as tidy streets and window boxes, two things that have a museum-like air of rarity in every French city I’ve been to, is to make any attempt possible to compare their high culture to others’ low culture.

Living like a Teenage Radical Zealot to Survive

In Eurostan, there are retirees burning books to stay warm instead of the coal we are told that isn’t burned there because of their assumed continental eco-infallibility.

Bear in mind that this is in the UK where they are so thoughtful that their underequipped lives just can’t deal well with real weather, and are given to entertaining the notion that one should put snow tires on ones’ eco-pod transporters in the presence of 6-in. [15 cm] of snow.

For every degree the temperature drops below 18C, deaths in the UK go up by nearly 1.5%.

I suppose it keeps one young, doesn’t it?

"In very cold weather it may be best to stay indoors".

Alas, but for that sage advise...

Mr. Bean Goes to Brussels

Zapatero the hugely irrelevant is looking for new and interesting ways to use the 6 months that his government will “run Europe” for what that line is worth.

Practically, Madrid's overarching challenge will be dealing with the economic crisis. The European Commission will next year present a proposal for a 10 year strategy to bring the bloc to 2020, which it hopes to have a preliminary agreement on by a March meeting of EU leaders.

Something he has a proven track record in the rousingly reassuring state of economic rebound visible in Spain. One, which puts him in a position to pressure the leadership having the most contact with the ECB, to consider a bailout of the “PIGS”: Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Spain – another reason to short the Euro-Zloty for the next six months and invest in Norwegian bellwether and Poland as a whole.

Why lead when your term can be used for peevish personal politicking?

The treaty leaves plenty of scope for potential turf wars: Spain has said that it would like to host the EU-US and Latin America summits, in a move that will propel Mr Zapatero into the global spotlight alongside Mr Rompuy. The possibility of having Barack Obama on Spanish soil for a summit is already sparking protocol speculation, such as who will be the first to shake the US leader's hand.

Just imagine the stage being set for that “latin American summit” making President Obama the apparent equal of Daniel Ortega, Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, Castro II, and the like. In looking rather closely at Zapatero, the only distinction I can find is that he appears to not wear a uniform or theatrical native garb, and probably has table manners.

¡ Но пасаран !

As ideological signifiers, all Zappo would need is a moustache and military un-dress uniform that looks like it came from a Hamburg fetish discount supply shop to pull of the same sales schtick in the long-looked-down-upon post rebellion “colonies”. One can’t help but picture a sort of Army Surplus Store of stale European ideas, but the irony is that in Europe, one needs no such signifiers anymore. With no drama being required, there are enough people who vote who take post-modern tripe at face value that one need not start dressing like an extra from an early Mel Brooks picture.

France Admits that the Car Burnings Phenomenon Has Become Banal

In one decade, the phenomenon of car burnings has spread in France and become banal, writes Luc Bronner in Le Monde (En une décennie, le phénomène des voitures brûlées s'est étendu et banalisé). The yearly number has risen from 14,000 burnings in 1998 to probably over 40,000 in 2009 (which is still down from over 45,000 in 2005, over 44,000 in 2006, and over 46,000 in 2007).

Notice how politicians manipulate statistics by saying (and by congratulating themselves over the "fact") that the number of burnt cars this new year's eve has decreased from the previous year year's eve (by the impressive number of… 10 vehicles — from 1,147 to 1,137!) and by ignoring the new years' eves prior to that.

…le ministre de l'intérieur, Brice Hortefeux, peut se féliciter publiquement d'avoir permis aux Français de passer une soirée de Saint-Sylvestre "calme", alors que 1 137 véhicules ont été incendiés dans la nuit. "La tendance à la hausse a été enrayée", s'est réjoui M. Hortefeux en référence aux statistiques de l'année précédente, les pires jamais enregistrées avec 1 147 véhicules carbonisés. Mais cette appréciation positive est invalidée par l'analyse des années précédentes : 878 voitures brûlées en 2008, 397 en 2007, 425 en 2006, 337 en 2005, 324 en 2004, selon les chiffres officiels alors transmis à la presse par le ministère de l'intérieur [et à peine une centaine de véhicules incendiés en 1998].

It turns out that one of the factors that has contributed to the (minute) decline of car-burning — besides the massive injection of police forces between Christmas and New Year's — is television's reluctance to cover the phenomenon, nourished in turn by politicians' criticism in years past of having given it too much coverage. So, again, we somehow have an example of the mainstream media covering, if belatedly and if reluctantly, for the politicians.

Two Le Monde readers comment:

Je trouve choquant que Le Monde, comme d'autres journaux, prenne le communiqué officiel pour titre de l'article.

Le ministre et Le Monde ont bien raison puisqu'il y a eu, d'après le première : 1.137 voitures brûlées. L'an dernier, elles étaient 1.147. 10 de moins... Un bien plus grand calme en effet... :( Communiquer ou informer, il faut choisir

Oh, and while we're on the subject of banality, France's newspaper of reference, and French traditions, today's issue is online for free while Le Monde subscribers got this in the mail today:

Suite à un arrêt de travail d’une partie des ouvriers CGT de l’imprimerie, Le Monde daté mercredi 6 janvier ne pourra être imprimé. Nous vous présentons toutes nos excuses pour ce contretemps indépendant de notre volonté, qui vous privera de l’édition papier.

Vous pourrez néanmoins consulter votre journal au format PDF depuis la page d'accueil du Monde.fr et, à partir de 15 heures, profiter de la version électronique du journal directement sur www.lemonde.fr/je.

Nous vous renouvelons nos excuses.
Fidèlement,

Eric Fottorino
Directeur du Monde

PETN is Deadly, but Old Hat

AND it was engineered long ago which places the “brilliance” of the Yemeni al Qaida planners of the BVD-bombing on the intellectual par of a high-school chemistry student. The files of the Stasi reveal this interesting use of the stuff by Iraqi “diplomats” to EAST Berlin trying to kill Kurdish students in WEST Berlin prior to reunification.

On August 1, 1980, at about 8:30 A.M., detectives of the West Berlin police special action command watched Jaber and Mahmoud drive through the U.S. Army's Checkpoint Charlie, the diplomatic crossing point through the Berlin Wall. They were in a gray Mercedes limousine bearing East German foreign office diplomatic license plates CD-21-09. The West Berlin officers followed the Iraqis to the district of Wedding, where the Mercedes stopped. Jaber and Mahmoud got out of the car, and the chauffeur retrieved an attaché case from the trunk.

Both men walked a short distance to a street corner, where another man was waiting for the attache case. The third man was the Kurd who had tipped off the Syrians. After he walked away, the two Iraqis returned to their car.

When Jaber and Mahmoud were about to drive away, an unmarked police car stopped alongside the Mercedes and another stopped in front of it. Mahmoud reversed, sideswiped a parked car, and careened across the center strip dividing the road, but was blocked by another police car. Jaber jumped from the car and tried to flee. He was wrestled to the ground by detectives. Still at the wheel and trying to escape, Mahmoud rammed the police car. At that moment, a detective yanked the car door open and dragged the Iraqi secret service station chief out of the seat. A brief struggle ensued during which a loaded Walther PPK 9mm pistol with a silencer attached fell out of Mahmoud's jacket pocket.

The attaché case was taken to a bomb squad laboratory for x-ray examination. It was equipped with a coded numerical lock set on 0. Had another number been set, the bomb would have exploded in 44 minutes. Specialists dismantled the bomb and found that it held 575 grams (1.2 pounds) of pentaerythritoltetranitrate (PETN). Experts describe PETN as one of the most powerful explosives used as a base charge in sea mines, torpedoes, and antiaircraft shells.

- From John O. Koehler’s “Stasi: The Untold Story of the East German Secret Police”

That they were using cover as diplomats to assassinate and used the DDR as a safe-haven apparently found little opposition among the SED leadership and the Stasi spooks who knew about it.

Noone can represent a parent's issues better than that parent themselves

When it comes to custody, I believe that nonone can represent a parent's issues better than that parent themselves.

If John of Kansas, who was dragged through family court, is to be believed, "a pro se litigant who appears in court, arguing for himself, is his best advocate."

William Wagener is telling us:

We must abolish family courts completely and have an automatic system, when two people don't get along … it's 50-50 with each fit parent and zero child support … That's the only thing the judge can do without a jury verdict … and if the judge wants to do anything else, he has got to get a jury to be convinced that the mother or the father is so suddenly unfit … now that one's trying to screw the other one out of everything they've got, [in order to decide that that other] is suddenly unfit, you gotta get a jury.

Stephen Baskerville has more in his ground-breaking book, Taken Into Custody (The War Against Fathers, Marriage, and the Family)…

Human Extinction Program Going Just Swimmingly in EUtopia

I guess having a preponderance of the world’s skanks will ultimately reduce the continental carbon footprint by making preserving the species little to no fun. Especially when half the population reduces itself to becoming cheerless, disinterested, booze-addled mere breeding stock.

So mate, ‘ow dga know she ‘ad 'er orgasm?

She dropped her crisps.

The Theme is Quite Simple

The idea of one British journalist to make a Rubik's cube with all the potential candidates for the top jobs was picked up not only by Mr Reinfeldt, who held up the cube in front of photographers at the 19 November summit, but also by the Swedish press team who interviewed Erno Rubik, the Hungarian inventor of the toy.

Much as we find with the strange newsy-news that the a communist era toy has come to say something about the governance of the EU, it should be understood in its’ basic form for what EU politics is: a very fake set of issues that one is compelled to make a very face set of choices on. Such as who’s on first:

The problem with ‘our’ new president and foreign minister is not that they are nobodies, but that they are unelected, unaccountable nobodies.

Which might comfort leaders across the continent, but has the frightening side-effect of having surprised no one. They are used to this sort of thing where someone up above feigns to know better and care, and directs society below. It is the very opposite of the grassroots participatory society, and it isn’t just familiar, it’s widely held to be “all for the best” in the same manner that “scientific socialism” was.

Take for example the ‘broadmindedness’ assumed to be a part of this suggestion. It doesn’t stay that way very long. As the logical extension of another obsession that the population is sold on, one that Mr. Malthus is alive and well, hating humanity, and everything it does, we are expected to fall into line. Again.

When you go out shopping for your Christmas dinner on December 23, 2020, you will probably opt for grasshoppers, instead of shrimp. You will toss your tried and true turkey in favour of a real delicacy: juicy dragonfly larvae and beetle caviar. This is 2020 after all, and insects are the most environmentally friendly and varied source of animal protein available.

Sadly, what is assumed to be the easy part is the altering of the population and its’ desires.

If insects are to be effectively marketed as human grub, they will first need to rehabilitated in the public mind. Their current reputation as dirty, nasty creatures that are to be avoided at all costs can only be changed if society learns more about the cleanliness and beneficial properties of insects.

And since we’re already trained to fall into line, what does it matter? It’s no different than the lack of uproar over who’s opaquely appointed to be ‘the people’s choice’. The pattern has already been illustrated on the People’s Cube.

¡No Pasarán! (sie werden nicht durchkommen)

The Mistaken Assumption About the Yemeni Terrorists Released During the Bush Administration

When liberals and their sympathizers put the emphasis on the fact that two Yemenis who became terrorist leaders (again) were former prisoners released from Guantanamo during the Bush years — adding, "let's not repeat the mistakes of the past" (thanks to Instapundit) — they are making a basic mistaken assumption.

The difference is that the Bush administration, which would have liked nothing better than to keep every inmate in America's Cuban prison (and had you said anything different during the Bush years, you would have been subject to snorts, scorn, and ridicule), was operating under pressure from leftists to release prisoners, due to the latters' fairy tale of "be nice to everybody and we can all live together". ("Of course those poor innocent souls being tortured at Guantanamo — being tortured by their very presence at Guantanamo — are not terrorists; how can you be so clueless?")

While the Obama administration, which has those (self-same) leftists in power throughout the cabinet, is operating under the (self-same) "be nice to everybody and we can all live together" fairy tale and has been actively doing its utmost to push for as many of the prisoners' release at the very earliest possible date.

It's never too late to remember that context is everything…

An Open Letter to Democrat Politicians: America Rising

HillBuzz posts An Open Letter to Democrat Politicians (thanks to Larwyn)

Sarkozy's coolness towards Obama: France's current frustration is aimed at Washington's hesitancy or even weakness

Nicolas Sarkozy, the most pro-American president of France for half a century, has gone cold on Barack Obama, the most popular American leader in France in generations

writes the Financial Times' Ben Hall (Thanks to Janina who adds that this is the first time that she found something positive to say about Sarkozy).

Mr Sarkozy has expressed his frustration at the White House's perceived equivocation over how to deal with Iran's nuclear ambitions and the priority that Mr Obama attaches to the long-term goal of a world free of nuclear weapons.

Mr Sarkozy's frustration boiled over in September in a remarkably barbed speech to the United Nations General Assembly.

"We are right to talk about the future, but before the future there is the present, and the present is two major nuclear crises," Mr Sarkozy said, alluding to Iran and North Korea. "We are living in a real world, not a virtual world," he added, in a clear dig at Mr Obama's disarmament ambitions.

Policy differences have been compounded by friction over choreography and symbolism. The Elysée still smarts at Mr Obama's visit to France in June for the commemoration of the D-Day landings, when he declined an additional bilateral event with Mr Sarkozy.

The French press regularly publishes Mr Sarkozy's unflattering comments about Mr Obama's lack of prior government experience, his alleged difficulty in reaching decisions or his domestic electoral setbacks.

…Like his predecessor, Mr Sarkozy plays up differences with the US for domestic purposes. But there is a crucial difference. Whereas Mr Chirac's stance towards the US was determined by suspicion of US power, current French frustration is aimed at Washington's hesitancy or even weakness.

America's Heartland Again Shows How Clueless Americans Are

…and how much in need they are of government intervention for their own good (why can't they show some humility and learn from the nanny state example of those ever-lucid Europeans?)…
Thanks to Texas Val for this story that shows how clueless, how idiotic, and how unsophisticated those reactionary retards in America's heartland are (those Christians — really!)…