A Legend to Themselves

Thefake nature of the whole tempest in this teapot, is that no-one in the Obama administration has asked if Europeans will take any detainees. Of course the real issue here is that the Europeans want the US to take the risk of declaring “innocent” the Gitmo detainees – in effect wanting the US to be brave for them.

This principle was previously employed by the Bush administration when it requested co-operation from the Netherlands and 70 other countries to accept Guantanamo Bay detainees who were eligible for release, but could not be repatriated. The Netherlands has thus far rejected this request.

The Dutch had no problem prosecuting Geert Wilders for “inciting an emotion”, in effect criminalizing his opinions. In this case what they’re looking for is that some other place, culture, anyone far away to confirm what European opinion WISHES was true without any of them having to contend with any of the potential consequences of what any of those men go back to doing after release, even though the Europeans are hoping for the 60 that are to be acquitted anyway.

The US request concerns the 60 “acquitted” detainees. The Dutch government’s argument in denying the request is that the trial and repatriation of these detainees is America’s responsibility. Dutch foreign affairs minister Maxime Verhagen (Christian Democratic party, CDA) is prepared, together with the EU Council [organisation of EU member states' foreign ministers], to consider “the possibility of facilitating the acceptance of ex-prisoners by countries of origin or by third party countries."
Critics, including the opposition party WD [right-wing liberal party], D66 [left-wing liberal party] and GroenLinks [green party] argue that the Netherlands must take in these 60 “acquitted” detainees because the Netherlands has always maintained a high-horse attitude towards the closing of the prison. “Someone like Verhagen, who is always talking about human rights, should really be able to show something on this point,” said D66’s Pechtold.
This reasoning, however, falls short. First of all, the responsibility for the trial, repatriation and acceptance of Guantanamo Bay detainees is primarily that of the US. According to international law, a country that has taken prisoners is itself responsible for safeguarding their rights. Rectifying abuses in Guantanamo Bay is legally and politically very complex and America itself needs to take on this responsibility. Were the Netherlands to do this, it would send the message that America can not only fail to recognize the International Criminal Court, but can also get away with violating human rights.

Using the same old brickbat – their own patented concept of human rights – the dear John letter is starting to take shape and stretching to the point of implausibility. When was it that the acquitted even need a full trial to vindicate them? Isnt the operating assumption that European public opinion has been operating on that these ‘poor waifs’ are the portrait of innocence?

Without the tempest of their invention in the teapot of their invention, they would have to face who and what they are as non-risk-takers who just want to be liked: irrelevant, even to themselves if they can’t back up their opinions.

No Plane Touched Down in the Hudson!

Mayday! Mayday! Listen up, y'all! An' listen good!

No plane ever crash-landed in the Hudson! You know what it was really?! It was a conspiracy! Planned by the White House… You don't believe us? Snort! You think it was the Canadian geese?! Snicker, eye roll, deep sigh, head shake, tch tch tch… Don't be so clueless…

Where is the video of the plane crash-landing in the water?! Huh?! Huh!! Tell us, where?! Aren't there always cameras trained on that New York river?! And how about all the tourists?! Don't they have cameras on them?! And haven't you heard the bird specialists?! It is impossible for a goose (for a Canadian goose, at any rate) to get within 70 feet of an Airbus A320! Plus, didn't you hear the explosions? The explosions that detonated right prior to the plane's alleged touchdown? C'm'on, now!!

Update: A strange coincidence took place right before takeoff: it seems that as the flight was boarding, a surprising number of passengers canceled their flights — all of whom were Jewish!!

Update 2: As we go to press, Thierry Meyssan is planning a book confirming that it was "a plot by the CIA to take the American people's attention away from the crisis America is undergoing, coupled with aid from Mossad to keep the media from looking more closely at the Gaza genocide"…

(The continued) Closing of already small and static minds

As regular readers of NP are aware, from time to time we enjoy delving into the "minds", "thoughts" and tortured "logic" of hardcore leftists and statists. As mentioned previously these journeys into the abyss are normally done with the same slack-jawed awe one usually musters up only when viewing the human oddities exhibit at a traveling carnival.

However, as the ideas of the hardcore left seem to move closer into the mainstream of thought (mind you, this mainstream dash is not accomplished by head-on debate and an honest airing of ideas but by oozing underneath the backdoor while no-one is watching) it is much more prescient to take the "ideas" offered by the statists as serious contributions to the actual debate. Do note, the suspension of reality and the understanding of speciousness are key factors when lifting up the rock to observe these "ideas" which scatter and slither in the light of observation.

All of this brings us to one of our favourite reality-phobic leftist touchstones, Tax Research UK (TR-UK). It matters not that this particular "pressure" group of statists are UK-based. The template for this particular group would fit in nicely with the same hard-left statist types based in any country: More government control, more taxes, more spending, afraid of debate, closed-mindeness, and an oddly provincial outlook on life. What the TR-UK types are stammering on about lately should not be a surprise to anyone familiar with statists: More taxes (again), the denial of reality and of course hypocrisy. All familiar ground for the hard-left. Before your eyes glaze over and you scroll furiously, do keep in mind these are the types of individuals who agitate for their narrow world-view to be foisted upon the normal and rational of the citizenry all in the name of that vague notion of "social justice", as defined by the hardcore left naturally. Foisted behind closed doors with other like-minded hand-wringing types with sit around the sewing circle with too much time on their hands and too many eyes on your wallet and purse.

Back to the subject at hand, the latest tax-quest,denial of reality and hypocrisy by TR-UK. TR-UK has spent years denying the reality of a little something that those running a lemonade stand grasp quite firmly, tax incidence. Tax incidence being of course the concept and reality of who bears the economic burden of taxation. The issue comes about as the Guardian is in the midst of an illuminating, for reasons possibly not intended, series of articles on taxation. The usual airing of the bloody shirt, "increase taxes on business!", has the tax-mongers at TR-UK in a fevered pitch of denial. The concept of tax incidence is that of taxes on business being borne by some combination of shareholders receiving smaller returns, labour receiving lower wages, and/or customers paying higher prices. A quite easy concept to grasp for any reasonable, rational and logical individual. Of course it goes without saying that the statists at TR-UK fail to grasp the obvious, as usual. Do not believe the reality of tax incidence by NP, see what the OECD has recently said about the very same topic:

In summary, whether the burden of the corporate income tax falls rather on capital than on labour depends on the underlying model assumptions. The easier it is to substitute foreign production for the home-country’s production and the more mobile is capital, the lower is the burden of the corporate income tax on capital and the higher is the burden on the more immobile production factors such as labour. If capital is perfectly mobile, labour might even bear more than the full burden of the corporate income tax. But if capital is less internationally mobile, then the burden will fall partly on capital. Moreover, if goods produced in different countries are imperfect substitutes, their prices might differ which might imply that the before-tax price of capital is not necessarily the same across countries. Again, even in a small-open economy, capital might then partly bear the tax burden of the corporate income tax.

So, depending on the situation, the sector, the tax regime, and a host of other factors the economic burden of taxation does indeed fall upon some combination of shareholder, labour, and/or customer. The major outstanding question is the percentage of the taxation falling upon the particular actor. TR-UK denies the existence of tax incidence and thus reality. All of which leads us to the third-leg of the leftist stool in this example, hypocrisy.

TR-UK has a long-standing tax fetish with the Channel Islands of Jersey and Guernsey. Two localities which offer a modicum of tax sanity in the storm of never slaked thirsts of other governments (egged on by the likes of TR-UK) for evermore taxation to be paid by the citizenry. TR-UK highlights the introduction of a consumption tax on all goods and services imported into Jersey and Guernsey (the GST). Despite years of denial regarding tax incidence, TR-UK finally sees the light (based in the relativism of an axe-grinding flip-flop to sate the aforementioned tax fetish) and unknowingly admits the introduction of this tax will not be borne by those firms importing but:

What is very clear is that those ordinary people living there (the real residents - not the parasitical ex-pat community who are either there to evade tax or provide facilities for those who want to) do not enjoy a high standard of living. Prices are astronomical. And this move would shift the burden of significant additional tax onto them: most goods and services are subject to the GST. In other words: they would be paying to have the tax evaders in their midst.

Given TR-UKs long-standing and dogmatic denial of tax incidence, how can these ordinary people of Jersey and Guernsey now bear the burden of taxes imposed upon the businesses actually doing the importing? Tax incidence does not exist, just ask TR-UK.

This all to typical example of the ham-handed "ideas" of one statist organisation, TR-UK, is the norm amongst the hardcore left. The more rational and logical among us need to do a little less laughing (as difficult as that is) when the statist crowd begins bleating and trying to run everyone elses life according to the twisted and authoritarian agenda of the hardcore left.

How to paint yourself into a corner

With this being stated as fact:

In an op-ed piece in The Washington Post, the president argued that each day without his stimulus package, Americans lose more jobs, savings and homes.

It only stands to reason that once the stimulus package is passed, and make no mistake it will be, Americans will stop losing jobs, savings and homes. The very next day after it is passed, no?

The vast bulk of Obama's spending will go to programs that further erode families, encourage single-parenthood, and criminalize fathers

Like all presidents, Obama will reward his supporters with jobs, money, and power

writes Stephen Baskerville of Taken Into Custody fame.

His principal constituencies are the bar associations, social work bureaucracies, and feminist organizations. Regardless of his rhetoric about “restraint,” Obama will reward these friends with federal appointments and federal spending. They will take up positions directing the welfare agencies such as HHS, housing, and education. These officials will be very hostile to fathers, parents generally, and intact families. Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – both of whom push an aggressively feminist agenda –will help distribute the largesse.

…Obama and his court intellectuals have rationalized a free-for-all for leftist programs (and perhaps some apparently conservative ones, to diffuse opposition by ensuring that conservatives too have a place at the trough). It is a prescription for a massive federal patronage machine, centralization of power, and destruction of constitutional protections. This is precisely what was begun by the New Deal and has been steadily growing ever since. The present administration starts way ahead of where the New Deal began. It is a power grab on an unprecedented scale.

All this will do little or nothing to stimulate the economy but, on the contrary, run the economy into the ground. As more fathers become unemployed, they will be divorced, unable to pay “child support,” and jailed without trial.

Few will notice immediately the expanding power of the already burgeoning and authoritarian federal police forces: child protection, child support enforcement, the various agencies dealing with "domestic violence" such as the Justice Department. The welfare state is already becoming a police state, but now many more parents will be criminalized and incarcerated. The incarcerations will seldom be reported in the news, and there will be no information about them, as there is none now, from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Only This Time It’s Okay

Obama will continue the rendition of suspected terrorist both the the US to be interrogated, or to third party states where they fall under the laws of those states, and may be abused.

Google News only shows 34 stories for this philosophical reversal, one of which is Rachel Maddow’s theorizing that Obama’s decision to permit renditions is somehow auto-magically due to Bush hires still being in government. To use your own theme of sabotage, how is it that you sabotage thoughts Rachel? Or is the Enver Hoxha mind influence crap the piece of history they want to bring with them into this century?

Andrew Sullivan’s take in the Atlantic is stupefying in trying to gloss over the differences between rendition and detention of intelligence finds.

If anything proves what a miserable job the press is doing with even basic news coverage, it’s this. By fawning over their favorite, they are barely reporting the news at all. In fact the OPINION item blindly backing the left came out almost as quickly as the wire stories.

As is this was about suspicions of torture, then definition downward of torture, Sullivan wants to make this move about something that won’t muss his readership’s hair. What it is, is a salve wherein after having defined UP the rendition issue, it now has to be defined back down for as many as possible in the world view of Obama’s voters to even be perceivable to them.

There is, of course, a deeper point here. The clear abandonment of the Bush-Cheney torture program makes the detention and rendition of terror suspects much less worrying - both in terms of the damage done to reliable intelligence and the moral cost of betraying core Western values. When the US government has already deployed torture (and retains it as an option under ludicrous euphemisms), it is difficult to believe that they will be squeamish in preventing other governments - such as Egypt and Jordan - from the same or more sadistic and crude forms of torture. One can also be much less worried about short-term, accountable detention of terror suspects if we know that they won't be tortured, abused or mistreated. Abandoning torture as policy makes temporary detention and ordinary rendition less controversial and more defensible as tools in our arsenal.

What some on the far right seem not to grasp is that opposition to torture is not about being soft on terrorism. It is about being effective against terrorism - ensuring that intelligence is not filled with torture-generated garbage, that we retain the moral high-ground in a long war against theocratic violence, and that we can better identify, capture, kill or bring to justice those who threaten our way of life. Rendition and temporary detention are tools in that effort - tools that now need to be as closely monitored and assessed as they were once recklessly abused.

The thrust of the left has NEVER ONCE been about “effective” practice in external affairs. It’s always been a canvas to imagine the shape of their social policies at home in a manner that agrees with them: where they can deal directly with governments that can implement without public consent one social program or another by simply declaring it, such as is the case with WAVA and other social bugaboos that have nothing to do with relations anywhere or international security issues anywhere other than in academia or a think tank. We’re just supposed to believe that to be true because of what they’re calling it, and accept that by declaring it serious, it becomes serious.

So goes it for thing that are real too, and in the same way: never mind the fact that there is no consistent theory matching up the complaint rhetoric against American interests, no consistent theory holding their measures together now, and nothing telling us that they aren’t amateurishly feeling their way through each of their passionate past complaints the left made into its’ own individual ulcer that need be addressed, such as “no torture,” “save the whales,” “no more rendition,” “Cheney ran Abu Ghreib,” opposing abstinence education in poor societies where AIDS is becoming endemic, etal.

We are in for a hell of a ride if international policy is driven by a need to put balm on the left’s self-inflicted verbal wounds – each of which USED to have a “solution” which invariably required the making of a weakened and deferential America.

Much as we found that the more anti-American a non-American is, the more they favored Barack Obama during the election season, we find that strange deference having to face itself and change itself, both in the US and abroad. Good luck, because it was the very essence of cognitive dissonance.

So What Will the Lefty “Stimulus” fed Economies Eventually Look Like?

No Democrats ever commit crimes; they merely make mistakes

You can't help but wonder if Democrats pay ever taxes

muses Michael Reagan as Ronnie's eldest son discusses double standards while taking a look at Timothy Geithner, Tom Daschle, Nancy Killefer, Charlie Rangel, and Al Franken, among others.

It seems from the headlines that the way it works is that Democrats levy taxes but only Republicans have to pay them.

…Not to worry, though. It appears that none of these people committed offenses. They merely made "mistakes."

Speaking of Daschle, the president said: "Tom made a mistake, which he has openly acknowledged. He has not excused it, nor do I. But that mistake and this decision cannot diminish the many contributions Tom has made to this country."

No Democrats ever commit crimes. They merely make mistakes.

Not so with Republicans. If you tell a joke at the 100th birthday party of a retiring and dying Senator, your career in the Senate will be in shambles, as Trent Lott discovered. If you're a Democrat, however, well, you simply make a mistake when you do something wrong.

Democrats can do just about anything they want. They can avoid paying taxes, wrap $90,000 in bills in tinfoil and put in a freezer, and it's written off as just another mistake.

Willie Sutton didn't rob banks. He and John Dillinger simply made a lot of mistakes.

Funny, I haven't heard anyone suggest that Dick Nixon's actions in Watergate were simply mistakes. But then, Nixon was a Republican and Republicans are not allowed to claim that their misdeeds were mistakes. That privilege is reserved for Democrats who get caught with their hands in the cookie jar.

…When George Bush didn't go the New Orleans it was seen as a crime of enormous proportions. When Barack Obama gives a party instead of giving aid and comfort to ice-stricken Kentuckians, it must be an oversight -- a mistake.

Like they say...

The first thing to go in tough times are luxury items:

Wind and solar power have been growing at a blistering pace in recent years, and that growth seemed likely to accelerate under the green-minded Obama administration. But because of the credit crisis and the broader economic downturn, the opposite is happening: installation of wind and solar power is plummeting.

The presumption of guilt against Geert Wilders: A classic case of shooting the messenger

Ian Buruma, in his attempt to disparage the Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders, says there is a "muddle" in "the debate in the West over Islam and free speech" ("Insults to free speech," Views, Jan. 30)

protests Peter Forsythe from Hong Kong as he points out that a "pre-judged case against someone for the 'crime' of 'insulting Islam' is surely worthy more of a Saudi court than a European one."

The biggest muddle of all is about who should be insulted by what.

"Fitna," the short film by Wilders on Islamic extremism, quotes verses from the Koran, then shows Muslim clerics repeating those verses, then shows the violence resulting from acting on those verses. Muslims vilify Jews, seek death for apostates, call for jihad against European crusaders and proclaim that Islam will take over the world. Should not moderate Muslims be offended by such activities — done explicitly in the name of Islam — and not by the man reporting them?

Should they not protest against the "hijackers" who, we are repeatedly told have "hijacked" their peaceful religion? Should they not be insulted that these people have "misunderstood" Islam, for it is, after all, a "religion of peace"?

But no, they do not. They target instead the person who reports them. And for the West, for the Dutch, the message is ignored, in a classic case of shooting the messenger.

This case, with its presumption of guilt, has done violence to fairness and justice. A pre-judged case against someone for the "crime" of "insulting Islam" is surely worthy more of a Saudi court than a European one.

Wilders is on an Islamic hit list and travels with bodyguards. And yet it is he who faces jail. That's not just an insult; that's obscene.

In the dim, chilling light of winter 2009, Iranian fists or hands or fingers still look alike

With Iran so far advanced in making enriched uranium that some experts think it could produce enough for an atomic bomb sometime this year, the Obama administration and its European friends have gotten no closer to stopping the rush to a nuclear weapon that they insist is "unacceptable"

writes John Vinocur about the current direction of Middle Eastern policies which might lead to "an end to [Obama's] star turn as Mr. Multilateral"

Part of the problem is that the Iranians, gifted verbal twisters and masters of murk, are toying with Barack Obama's phrase last week about an extended American hand in exchange for their unclenched fist.

…Hah. A couple of details in passing: Iran's extended hand ([close Ahmadinejad aide Ali Akbar] Javanfekr's phrase here) involves Iranian refusal to curtail its nuclear work, a demand that the United States end its military presence around the world, proof from Obama of "diplomatic respect" and an end of American support to (the wording is Ahmadinejad's) "the rootless, uncivilized, fabricated, murdering Zionists."

There was nothing more positive coming back publicly in response to what Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said was a clear opportunity for Iran "to demonstrate some willingness to engage meaningfully."

In the dim, chilling light of winter 2009, Iranian fists or hands or fingers still look alike.

But there is an American problem here, too. According to French anti-proliferation experts, the United States has acted in a way that allows Iran to believe it has a no-fist or low-risk adversary.

…Bruno Tertrais, an analyst for the Foundation for Strategic Research [in Paris], found the American messages "confusing if not contradictory."

…Drawing on other indicators, Thérèse Delpech, the most authoritative voice among the tough-minded French nuclear weapons-control specialists, has concluded that "the notion of a United States military threat has no credibility in Iran."

So: Is there, in fact, an American fist clenched someplace behind the offers of respect, friendship and a willingness to listen?

…Looking at the overall situation, Delpech found "there's no chance - zero - that the negotiations succeed with the present Iranian power."

Reference update

In case you need to update your bookmarks in order to keep your mind refreshed, via this comment we re-find a (somewhat) definitive list of those things in the world being ruined/destroyed/strengthened/created/other by man-made global warming. As man-made global warming currently rests in the field of cryptoecology, the entry from the list which sticks out rests in the field of cryptozoology:

Despite having hundreds of sonar contacts over the years, the trail has since gone cold and Rines believes that Nessie may be dead, a victim of global warming.

You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling

I’ve always smacked my forehead every time I’ve heard that stock phrase on the BBC, that meaningless saw that goes “we live in a global world!” Is there any other kind of world? That said, the continental world view, the one that tries to outsource from the person anything unpleasant to government, and further to one despotic notion or one another about global über-governance, a UN council for anything that seems vexing has once again proved to be little more than a silly expression of the adolescent sentiment that it’s the only way people can get along with one another.

So much for the warm fuzzies about that big blue ball of lurrrve, even within the European super-state.

Staff at the Lindsey refinery, in Immingham, North Lincolnshire, began their wildcat strike on Wednesday in protest at the arrival of 200 Italian and Portuguese staff who were awarded a large construction contract.

It is thought that the European contractors at the centre of the dispute were told to avoid confrontation by staying inside a large, grey barge accommodating them, which was moored in Grimsby docks. A small band of protesters gathered near the barge today but quickly dispersed.

Elsewhere, anti-globalization global-worlders protest against the existence of the global economic conference, especially its’ pan-global internationally aware nature, and all that. Apparently, anti-globalization universalists want the global village to be made of malaria ridden mud huts, and whatever other luvvy-globey symbols are fashionable this week.

Riot police have fired tear gas at bottle-throwing demonstrators in Geneva protesting against the annual World Economic Forum meeting in the Swiss Alps.

An Associated Press reporter on the scene says the protest was largely peaceful until police blocked the protesters from walking to the center of the city.

Some in the crowd of about 1,000 people threw bottles and police responded with tear gas.

Are you capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time?

If you said "yes", some people may disagree with you:

Meglena Kuneva, European Commissioner for Consumers, will give a keynote speech at a conference in Brussels on 27 January, which will look at measures that can be taken to tackle the health risks that personal music players can pose to listeners. Last October, an opinion from the EU Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks (SCENIHR) found that 5-10% of personal music player listeners risk permanent hearing loss if they listen to a personal music player at high volume settings for more than one hour per day over a period of at least 5 years. The conference will bring together EU Member State experts, scientists, industry, consumer organisations, standard makers, MEPs and other stakeholders, to discuss precautions that users can take, technical solutions that industry could apply to minimise hearing damage, and whether there is a need for further regulation or revision of existing safety standards to better protect consumers.

EU Consumer Affairs Commissioner Meglena Kuneva, said, "I am concerned that up to 10 million people in the EU, who are frequent users of personal music players and mobile phones at high acoustic levels, may be unknowingly damaging their hearing. In the light of the recent scientific advice, we need to act quickly, to look again at the controls in place, to make sure they are fully effective and keep pace with new technology so that consumers benefit from the highest safety standards."

The 2008 Election was as Historic as Vintage Machine Politics

They outspent the Republican by 2 to 1, they had as a gift an economic downturn which works naturally against the incumbent party, they had nearly the entire press in bed with them, more than willing to provide support to any slander that Obama supports could gin up.

They had nearly every corner of pop culture, anyone who could get in front of a camera gunning for them. They fired up as much fuelling of hate, demonization, “rapid reaction forces” sent to Alaska to dig up dirt, as much class-warfare as they could stoke, along the lines of Kanye West alleging that anyone he disagrees with hates black people. Money and support were pouring in from abroad and accepted unlawfully. Credit card fraud schemes added to their coffers.

All the stops came out, and they only got 52.9% of the popular vote. All of that, a billion dollars spent by the Obama campaign and others acting in its’ interest, slave labor provided by unions and just the right kind of municipal works who get election day off and benefit personally by voting for the left, and they only tipped the balance in favor of a logo-branded man running on little more than repeating the name of an emotion by what is actually a tiny margin compared to the amount of leverage of the public used.

You would think that with all of that firepower a result more akin to the victories declared for Castro and Saddam Hussein’s regular “elections”, almost always announced with great pride and little objection by our caring defenders of “social justice” to be in the area of 99%.

By every objective measure the Obama campaign was a miserable failure. His election victory is nothing to really be proud of. That said, I’m not that worried about President Obama himself because he really doesn’t appear to believe in anything, but he’s got to dance with the ones that brung ‘em.

Like we said...

Gaia is indeed a cruel mistress:

The heaviest snow for two decades moved into Britain on a freezing easterly wind last night after gathering strength over the North Sea. Falls of up to 10cm (4in) are predicted initially on the south-east coast and inland as far as London before the storms head north.

The Met Office said it was classifying today's expected snowfall as an "extreme weather event".

Now, input from readers is needed. If this paragraph from the article...

The current snap is expected to thaw much sooner, with temperatures rising later this week, but further snow is forecast. Overall, the renewed cold spell is certain to seal this winter's dubious distinction of being the coldest for 13 years.

...actually said...

The current snap is expected to thaw much sooner, with temperatures rising later this week, but further snow is forecast. Overall, the renewed cold spell is certain to seal this winter's dubious distinction of being the warmest for 13 years.

...would the article have included the obligatory gnashing of teeth regarding the relentless march of man-made global warming destroying us all before the dawn? Oddly, this winter's dubious distinction of being on track as the coldest for 13 years does not merit any discussion in the article of man-made global warming. Strange.

On a related note the article has a sub-headline which reads:

People warned to avoid unnecessary journeys

Does that mean most governmental offices will be closed today due to lack of staff journeying to work?

Genocidal chic

Two items come to mind of late while reading the hard-left scribblings on-line: 1) Too often those not on the hard-left have a hearty laugh at the latest schemes, scams, and wind-mill tilting of those who know better how to live our lives for us; 2) The real lack of ad hominem attacks (a recurring theme amongst the clenched-fist leftists) from non-statists and socialists during the course of debate (yes, it does happen but is primarily the domain of the hard-left).

However, this particular offering rather leads the rational and libertine among us to drop the above two caveats:

COUPLES who have more than two children are being "irresponsible" by creating an unbearable burden on the environment, the government's green adviser has warned.

Jonathon Porritt, who chairs the government's Sustainable Development Commission, says curbing population growth through contraception and abortion must be at the heart of policies to fight global warming. He says political leaders and green campaigners should stop dodging the issue of environmental harm caused by an expanding population.

....

Porritt, a former chairman of the Green party, says the government must improve family planning, even if it means shifting money from curing illness to increasing contraception and abortion.

The above of course is from a government official, not some left-wing loon who fortunately has no power over their own existence much less anyone else. No, the above is from an officially sanctioned governmental official. Rather than have a nice laugh at the meanderings of a potentially genocidal mind, this particular instance of population-control footsie unfortunately carries a little bit more weight. As such it is quite rational to ask legitimate questions along the lines opened-up by this particular government official:

1) Should there be a cull of third-born, fourth-born, etc children under a particular age? If yes, what age would that be? If no, the 'problem' you state must not be that serious, correct?

2) Which illnesses should not be treated so as to increase the funding for contraception and/or abortions? What if individuals want to pay for their own treatment for an un-illness? Will there be an age limit at which illnesses will not be treated -or- just a blanket non-treatment for certain illnesses?

3) Will household pets be included in this plan?

4) Will livestock used for food purposes be included in this plan?

5) What should be the penalties for any individual/couple for having a third-born+ child?

6) Who is to make these decisions related to enforcing such a scheme? Individuals or government?

There are undoubtedly a myriad of serious questions this government official should be forced to answer. This particular article may be attributed to a slip of the tongue for this particular government official. Make no mistake, this is better classified as a slip of the veil, a slip through which the mask drops and we get to truly see what types of individuals are staffing government officialdom. This leads to point two from paragraph one above, it is not only proper but necessary to question the sanity and possible mental defections of any government official with such troubled inclinations? Anyone this dogamtic in their zeal to push an unproved agenda in this manner is begging to have their fitness for office proven. Unburdened by reality the psychosis of this type of genocidal mindset must run very deep.

For those who prefer the story in pictures, this is what the genocidal-wing of the hard-left thinks about you the individual bringing that brand new bundle of joy back home from hospital, Luftwaffe-style.

By the way, they actually mean it.

From the mouths of babes

Being stuck inside with innumerable rug rats this weekend, cartoons were watched. Of note was the beginning of Scooby-Doo and the Witch's Ghost. Typical Scooby-Doo fare, but oh that beginning illuminates nicely for the grown-ups:

The movie opens with the curator of a museum closing up for the night. Suddenly he is attacked by two creatures with glowing green eyes. Hiding in the museum, amongst various artifacts are Scooby-Doo, Shaggy, Fred, Daphne, and Velma. It turns out that they are not alone in the museum. A man by the name of Ben Ravencroft is also hiding there.

Ben Ravencroft helps catch the bad guys. It seems that they are really not scary creatures after all. The men work at the museum!! It is Perkins and Griswald, two disgruntled archeologists from the Babylonian Project.

Now, why would these two disgruntled archeologists from the very same museum attack their very own curator:

They were angry because their funding had been cut by the curator!!

Art imitates life. Still think that assistance, the pursuit of knowledge, scientific discovery, truth, et al are the number one objectives of many in the do-gooder community?

It is all about the funding ....... ZOINKS!!

Who says cartoons can't teach children important life lessons?

What Would “the World” to without the US as a Distant, All-Purpose Scapegoat?

What they say:

"In Europe, we have a social-market economy," European Commission President José Manuel Barroso said in an interview. "We have universal health care, a more generous system of social security, a general principle of almost free university education. And we want to keep that."

For years, Europe's more-regulated model of capitalism has been maligned by many economists as a study in second-rate market economics. Now, as world leaders seek a way out of the crisis -- and aim to avoid repeating it -- U.S.-style capitalism is under siege and the European model is getting another look.

What it means:

German unemployment rose almost twice as much as forecast in January as an economic slump sparked by the global financial crisis spread to industries from cars to software.

The number of people out of work rose by 56,000 in seasonally adjusted terms to 3.27 million, the Nuremberg-based Federal Labor Agency said today. Economists forecast an increase of 30,000, according to the median of 33 estimates in a Bloomberg News survey. The adjusted jobless rate rose to 7.8 percent from 7.7 percent. In unadjusted terms, the number of jobless increased by 387,000.

“We’ve reached the turning point on the labor market,” Rainer Guntermann, an economist at Dresdner Kleinwort in Frankfurt, said in an interview. “Sooner or later, we’ll see major restructuring programs and job cuts.”

That’s the ‘socially aware’ forecast of the ‘socially advanced’ economy. Can the population afford to be any more ‘aware’ of their superiority to their own “just please don’t call it a market economy” market economy? Or the “we’ll keep touting our nonexistent social collectivism?”

But Thursday's Davos discussions also brought reminders of the Continent's structural vulnerabilities. "I don't think everyone wants to take responsibility for everyone else's problems," Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt said during a panel on European economic governance. "In that sense, we are still nation-states ... and I think that will not change in the short term."

Just don’t say it, please... after all isn’t it that American invention, “the blind pursuit of profits” that has cause every ill in the world? We all know that the Chinese and Russian don’t pursue profits! Why? Because our delusions about them say so!

government leaders decided not to make new investments in a number of US companies that sought China's capital. China's pullback from Fannie and Freddie debt helped push up rates on US mortgages last year just as Washington was seeking to revive the US housing market.

Mr Wen said the crisis had posed "severe challenges" for China and that it needed 8 per cent growth this year to maintain social stability while the International Monetary Fund predicted 6.7 per cent for this year. The Chinese leader called for faster reform of international financial institutions and for a "new world order" for the economy.

So they poured fuel on the fire by investing in US mortgages, triggered the economic crisis by spiking the demand in energy and commodities to sell goods to the world using previously sound credt, and not they want a “new world order” that will guarantee them 8 percent growth in GDP.

Oh, and it isn’t “their capitalism” that’s at fault. It’s someone else’s. Yeah right.

Missing the point

Interesting to read the dispatches in the US regarding a natural disaster going un-noticed:

Utility crews renewed work in subfreezing temperatures Saturday in their effort to put the power back on for nearly a million customers left in the dark by an ice storm that crippled parts of several states this week.

....

Local officials grew angrier at what they said was a lack of help from the state and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

In Kentucky's Grayson County, about 80 miles southwest of Louisville, Emergency Management Director Randell Smith said the 25 National Guardsmen who have responded have no chain saws to clear fallen trees. He said roads are littered with fallen trees and people shivering in bone-chilling cold are in need.

"We've got people out in some areas we haven't even visited yet," Smith said. "We don't even know that they're alive."

Smith said FEMA was still a no-show days after the storm.

As this is winter in the northern hemisphere, everyone should have known this was coming. Just as "hurricane season" denotes the possibility of hurricanes, winter denotes the possibility of snow, ice, and cold temperatures.

One element which is missing from this current natural disaster is the now curiously quiet chorus of US media types normally ready to pounce on every shivering shiverer in order to make political points. The New York Times editorial page, silent; Maureen Dowd, silent; Paul Krugman, silent; Bob Herbert, silent.

If only they showed the same Katrina-esque zeal during this particular natural disaster......

Then again, with a new and more amenable ruling class in Washington, pointing out the silence of the New York Times on the failure of government now rather misses the point of the whole exercise.

All hail the new laconicism.

A Complex of Small Minds and Lame Excuses

If we could only have another one of those Abba Eban style studies on the European mind, we could see just how simplistic and flawed the general reasoning is: a “modern” Paris Imam says that the Gaza conflict makes it hard for him to talk to French Jews, because he “differentiates them from Israelis?” No. Certainly not. The palpably lame Christian Science Monitor thinks it has to find a moral equivalency argument of its’ own to merely report the story saying:

Esther Benbassa, chair of Jewish studies at the Sorbonne in Paris, says one effect of the Gaza bombing already visible is "to remove the taboo of the Holocaust" in common speech, both among Arabs and ordinary French. "I don't agree that Gaza and the Holocaust can be compared, but I note a willingness to do so. I understand that, even if I don't agree with it. It's something new."

All those “venomous Jews” eh? As if opening up their mouths to incessantly apologize for something that they themselves haven’t done to people whose victimhood is limited to being offended that something is happening to SOME PEOPLE they want to identify with and not others.

But never mind that, these are the great minds of the conversational, intellectual society that Parisians continually claim to be. Their tender sensibilities and humanism require a tap-dance to even mention the fact that the French to compare the Israelis retuning fire at people who fire rockets at them as a Holocaust.

This doesn’t come as a novelty. That meme has been bouncing around in the Arab mind for the past 40 years when the Holocaust could no longer be plausibly denied. It is, however only been 20 years since this madness has dominated the majority of Europeans, who should know something of the Pagroms, Holocaust, etal., and reveals the ethnological bigotry and simplistic reasoning widespread in the population: that the nationalities, or more to the point their image of the nationalities forms comparisons by way of involvement. Jews figured as the biggest group of victims of the Holocaust, therefore the feel like you sound smart, one must find an inversion by which one can point a finger in the air at false surprise. “Those Jews” (as if the survivors of Auschwitz and Birkenau were the ones returning fire today) must be at fault as they are magically connected because they fit into the same simple category that that average european can understand: the tribal pigeon hole.

"Solidarity with Palestinians has at its roots a feeling of disenfranchisement in France," says Ms. Benbassa. "Migrants from North Africa are astounded to find that when something happens to Jews it is treated with great importance in the media, but when something happens to Arabs or blacks, it is not."

As though this was anyone’s fault but that of the paranoiac society that they live in, “in the heart of Europe”.

Does banning freikörperkultur contravene Schengen?

Amazing to see what gets people all hot and bothered. Confiscatory taxation, no. Ever growing governmentalism, no. Diminishment of civil liberties, no. Feckless leadership in government and/or commerce, no. Mindless labour unionism, no.

Naked German ramblers, yes:

When the first nude walkers came over the border the tranquil, neutrality-loving Swiss tried to pretend it wasn't happening. It was only when it became clear that the invaders had a plan of conquest — even if they had no clothes — that the Alpenhorns sounded the alarm.

Now the Swiss authorities are trying to fend off hordes of German ramblers dressed in nothing more than a rucksack and walking boots. The influx appears to have been started after a German mountaineering website declared the Swiss wilderness a "paradise for naked ramblers".

Don't forget the bug spray.

Populism Ran out of Reality a Long Time Ago

Many Europeans, in a roundabout and vague way see Barack Obama as some sort of Civil Rights Leader®™, because something in their limited frame of understanding tells them that it somehow should be that way. Whatever. It’s not like they’ll ever lay off of the stupid juice.

Behind the crickets

Remember the fuss about "windfall profits" the oil companies were "making" back in the day under BushCo™? Seems as though the very same oil companies are now suffering from "windfall losses":

Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Europe's largest oil company, posted its first quarterly loss in 10 years following a record plunge in oil prices, and warned that industry conditions "remain challenging."

The fourth-quarter net loss was $2.81 billion, or $0.44 a share, compared with a profit of $8.47 billion, or $1.36, a year earlier, The Hague-based Shell said today in a statement. Revenue fell 24 percent to $81.07 billion.

Oddly no word from the usual suspects who pushed the favoured saw of the statist hard-left tax-and-destroy ethos crowd back in the very same day as a way to "punish" those very same oil companies. Tim Worstall muses regarding one such group of usual suspects, Compass:

However, if, logically, those "excess profits" should be windfall taxed away in the good times then those "excess losses" should be subsidised in the bad times, no? So why isn’t Compass out there calling for a subsidy to Shell?

Two possible reasons I suppose. The first being that they’re too dim to understand what is going on, the logic of their own position. The second is that there was no logic to their earlier demands for a windfall tax. That it was just a circle jerk for frothing lefties.

I have to admit that I can see truth in both explanations.

Rinse and repeat, inserting your own favourite statist hard-left socialistic pressure group in lieu of Compass.

The intellectual, cultural war waged against the USA

This interview with Dr. Walid Phares might be of interest to lateral thinkers

writes Ellen Sundstrom.

Dr. Phares claims there is an intellectual, cultural war waged against the USA. That over the years sums of monnies have been invested in Ivy League Universities i.e. Harvard and Georgetown and that the Jihadist lobby is impacting the classrooms.

Europe Loves Gitmo

Indeed they do love it. Without it, how could their politicians keep feigning to have meaningful, strident opinions that they can fill the airtime with and by which try to seem relevant.

Now it’s okay. Now it isn’t. Now they want them, now they don’t.

Barack Obama has signed an executive order to close the GuantánamoBay detention center – among other things, in response to a barrage of “international” criticism of the center and of the Bush administration’s policies toward its inmates. But – believe it or not – in February 2002, the EU Parliament passed a resolution approving of the Bush administration’s policies and explicitly stating that the Guantánamo inmates do not qualify for Geneva Convention protections.

It’s the same old passive-aggressive fear and loathing in Europe. Once upon a time, they were all for Gitmo because it gave them a way of not having to take their “one-time residents” “nationals” and “citizens” who were ready to murder their way to paradise, now after years of publicly telling their populations that they then wanted it to end, they were privately telling Washington that they wouldn’t take the detritus of war on splodey-dopes.

Now the stalling tactic is different: they aver that they want “the innocent ones” whoever they are, and they want the US to declare them the innocent ones, so that they don’t have to put their money where their fat fotzen are and blanketly declare the innocence of Gitmo “alumni” themselves.

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) — European Union leaders said Monday they were willing to take in prisoners being released from the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay — but stressed that American authorities must show ex-inmates pose no security threat before they can be resettled.

Foreign ministers from the 27-nation bloc discussed the fate of up to 60 Guantanamo inmates who, if freed, cannot be returned to their homelands because they would face abuse, imprisonment or death. The prisoners come from Azerbaijan, Algeria, Afghanistan, Chad, China, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

The EU's foreign and security chief, Javier Solana, said Europeans wanted to help on humanitarian grounds.

But he said no EU state could act until President Barack Obama's administration gets its Guantanamo case files in order and can demonstrate that prisoners do not pose credible security risks.

Let’s face it: those remaining are the ones who either have a much worst fate going to any of the countries that will take them, or they really are a threat.

So, which is it? Apart from the fact that the entire conversation they’re having is with their “imaginary friend in Washington”:

Finland's foreign minister, Alexander Stubb, said Guantanamo inmates would become eligible for resettlement only once they passed through U.S. scrutiny and courts and were granted official status as political refugees.

"Then, we'll have to have a look at that individually," said Stubb, who also is chairman of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. "If there are people who are not tried and are let free, but they can't go back to their own countries, I think we in Europe should take our responsibility."

But Stubb emphasized the widespread view that the U.S. administration was not yet in position to clear any terror suspects.

"We are jumping the gun here a little bit, because the Americans haven't given us an offer or required us to take anyone on board," Stubb said.

Burning down the House

Yet again the French are on strike. This time, among the usual collection of everybody striking over their own petty demands that they expect the rest of society to attend to for them, is the over-arching theme of this economy wrecking event – they are striking against the global economy.

The best I can gather from interviewed agonists and such is that in large part people are mad at the French government’s intervention to prop up the banks and major industries, something the blithering idiots are usually all for. Normally, a trend away from socialistic dirigisme would be a good thing for the overall potential of a healthy economy, but these protestors, including the bolshy CGT, Reds, etal., are protesting that the largesse of the state is being directed at the economy at all and not limited to relieving them of the cost of social free-riding.

Even the employees of the Euronext stock exchange are marching. Just what is it that they think the ‘social compact’ is supposed to do for their racket that the rest of the people in their same union won’t protest?

Never letting a crisis go to waste, the left are ready to exploit your misery for the sake of their power-grab, and opportunity to wreck the economy for good with methods borrowed from the largely agrarian 1930s. As per the Boy wonder Olivier Besancenot:

Olivier Besancenot, the young leader of France’s extreme left is hoping Thursday’s strike will be the first step towards another French revolution as the recession bites and protests multiply across Europe’s second largest economy.
“We want the established powers to be blown apart,”

As usual, the thing they don’t get when they are pretending to care about the larger society is that they don’t – they want someone to cover their individual wants and needs, and can’t get past the fact that sooner or later there is no-one else left to tax, and that the pitiful little sums that ARE broadly redistributed reflect that ugly fact. Irrationally, they demand some more, demand anyone who makes a shade more than them pay higher taxes, and slows the process of productive wealth generation (the only thing one CAN tax) even further. Grim a bunch as they are, relatively speaking, they are still the leisure class. What the public sector workers are accomplishing by striking is beyond me.

They are even dumber than the American far-left.

Only a small part of the dialog seems to have anything to do with aiding those who were made unemployed or are facing hardships related to being out of work or unemployable for one reason or another.

If you can get though the unfocussed clamor of broad, universal complaints, it is in effectas though they are protesting the unrelenting persistence of gravity, and think the government, the collective, or anyone other than they themselves – can somehow reverse it.

There ain’t no cure for gravity, people.

"Les talibans semblaient moins craindre les observations aériennes que leur localisation grâce aux cartes SIM de leurs téléphones"

Jacques Follorou tells the story of the French businessman, a former legionnaire who fought with Commander Massoud, who was a hostage of the Taliban for three weeks…

Les gardiens alternaient entre les combats et la garde du prisonnier. L'otage se souvient les avoir entendus raconter certaines de leurs opérations. "Ils avaient attiré des commandos américains dans un guet-apens en laissant un portable allumé, avec lequel ils avaient communiqué en arabe dans une maison abandonnée, puis avaient miné le lieu ; ils étaient contents, le piège avait semble-t-il fonctionné."

… Le 19 juin, alors que la routine de la vie d'otage s'est installée, Johan Freckhaus saisit une conversation entre deux gardiens : "Il va être échangé", se disent-ils. "Je pensais qu'ils parlaient de mon codétenu irakien, mais c'était pour moi." Il est transféré, en plein jour, sur une moto, les yeux bandés, dans la cour de la maison d'un mollah local, proche des talibans, où il retrouve ses deux ingénieurs. Une liaison téléphonique avec un négociateur français, chargé par la France d'obtenir sa libération, annonce l'issue de l'épreuve, alors que, cachée dans un recoin, la fille du mollah fixe l'otage du regard. En guise d'au revoir, "Elias" lui glisse, "si on te reprend, on te tue, on n'est pas copains", puis lui demande, peu après : "Qu'est-ce que tu penses de moi ?"

L'un des deux hélicoptères Caracal de l'armée de l'air française basé à l'aéroport de Kaboul récupère alors les otages. Rapatrié sur l'une des bases des services secrets (DGSE), à Orléans, l'ex-détenu français est interrogé quelques heures après avoir atterri. Dans l'avion du retour, Johan Freckhaus, comprenant la somme de moyens déployés pour sa libération, s'inquiète, en souriant, de la facture qu'il va devoir acquitter. Un membre de la DGSE lui rétorque, sur le même ton : "T'inquiète, tu pourras jamais rembourser."

Trying out their new Vainglory

Since when is it that an a UN type like Manfred Nowak, albeit a political beast of a UN type, would need to throw red meat at an ugly mob?

It did not take long. On January 20, the very day of the swearing-in of Barack Obama as the new president of the United States, Germany’s ZDF public television broadcast a report in which UN “torture rapporteur” Manfred Nowak called for the new American administration to prosecute outgoing President Bush and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on torture charges.

Assmonkey. When have you ever once tried to get even so much as an "operational pause" out of Mobutu, Mugabe, or a genuine despot torturing to maintain a grip on unelected power?

Nowak, you might recall, was a perennial fixture on the UN missing persons/human rights racket in the former Yugoslavia where a suspiciously small to non-existent number of actual genocidal murderers were detained. He at once called human rights in Bosnia “a local matter” and calling for this silly bit of super-national overreach by which to masturbate.

That said, let’s have a look at the man’s intentions: to make people parrot a few words that reassure him on the subjects of human rights – I assume by this he means to say that this is the leaving unabused the innocent, but I haven’t found his definition of it.

To Prof. Nowak, human rights in general is a worldwide issue and not a western society issue. There have been many positive changes in the last 20 years, especially concerning the widespread public awareness of and respect for human rights. It is important to promote the dissemination of human rights standards and democratic values in order to create a basic human rights culture which involves all people and cultures around the world.

So go ahead, world: be primitive and savage. Just say the magic words and you can get away with it. In the mean time, we’ll go after the government that says what they’re doing, who they’re doing it to, and isn’t by any normal definition of torture doing anything those blessed, angelic, Europeans aren’t doing.

Don’t Forget to Hide

The irony of risk adversity in Europe is that a mere threat on the internet can both scare the bejeezus out of the public, stir governments to do whatever they can to be taking no action to stop it, and immediately prompt a public display of self-abuse. As is some anonymous outfit called “Islamic Jihad Union” will be more deferential as a result or that there is anyone among them that one could negotiate with in a way that will assure anyone of anything.

The Belgian stiffie has re-emerged in Germany, again.

The German public television station first reported on the video, which is being attributed to Islamic Jihad Union, a radical group active in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In the video, which features details of dead children and injured people, six men threaten violence against Germany.

"We have a few surprise packages prepared this year," the men reportedly say. "Allies of the occupation powers must always reckon with our attacks."

Germany currently has 3,600 troops in Afghanistan as part of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in that country.

The video also made reference to the latest conflict between Israelis and Palestinians and to German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

"For 10 days the world has watched as Muslims in the Gaza Strip have been massacred," the men in the video reportedly say. "Where is the US? Where is Mrs. Merkel and her cabinet?"

In case you’re wondering, the al-Qaida flavor of Jihad had not started fixating on Israel until well after 9-11, and it’s purpose was merely to prop up its’ waning popularity. Then, as now, and potentially into the future, the aversion therapy the Americas put them on has done on “the Arab/Muslim/irate crowd” street what appeasement has never done: caused the angry to stop and think of the real consequences of the casual, decades long call for the blood of Jews, Americans, Europeans, Gays, Secularists, Pluralists, etc., etc., the straw men they had built up in the societies they live in.

Which is to say that this is the first time in the more savage corners of that broad collection of subcultures we misidentify as the “Muslim World” the “Arab World”, etal., that the concept of coexistence and compassion have had to be grappled with. You can thank George Bush for that.

C'est comme ça

Leftist, as usual, are trying to criminally prosecute people for disagree with their world view.

Michigan Rep. John Conyers, Democratic chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, on Monday issued a subpoena to Mr. Rove, seeking his appearance at a deposition Feb. 2. Mr. Conyers wants the former aide to President George W. Bush to answer questions on the Justice Department's firings of U.S. attorneys in 2006, among other matters.

[ ... ]

"Change has come to Washington, and I hope Karl Rove is ready for it," Mr. Conyers said.

If the rhetoric sounds familiar, just rip a page out of history: a 1967 East German “documentary” interviewing US Air Force pilots and Navy aviators downed over North Vietnam. The only difference is that even Conyers isn’t capable of matching the false rhetoric of an East German propagandist, as mendacious as it really was.

Interviewer: Lieutenant, you are experiencing in practice an example of socialist humanity. The President of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh, has stated that the people here are capable of differentiating between real criminals in the background, who hold the decisive positions of government, and their tools who carry out their plans by dropping bombs and firing rockets. You are enjoying here more or less the advantages of this socialist concept which does not absolve you of guilt or minimize your actions, but does differentiate in each case between the initiators of a policy and their mere tools.

So let’s be frank. The goal of that Kangaroo court questioning was the same as Conyers’.

Peter Hitchens marks just such a signpost on the way: the left would like to revive memories of the “great society” while they turn us into a latter day Yemen.

Anyone would think we had just elected a hip, skinny and youthful replacement for God, with a plan to modernise Heaven and Hell , or that at the very least John Lennon had come back from the dead.

The swooning frenzy over the choice of Barack Obama as President of the United States must be one of the most absurd waves of self-deception and swirling fantasy ever to sweep through an advanced civilisation. At least Mandela-worship, its nearest equivalent, is focused on a man who actually did something.
I really don't see how the Obama devotees can ever in future mock the Moonies, the Scientologists or people who claim to have been abducted in flying saucers.

[ ... ]

Just look at his sermon by the shores of Lake Michigan. He really did talk about a new dawn, and a timeless creed, (which was yes, we can!). He proclaimed that change has come. He revealed that, despite having edited the Harvard Law Review, he doesn't know what enormity means. He reached depths of oratorical drivel never even plumbed by our own Mr Blair, burbling about putting our hands on the arc of history (or was it the ark of history?) and bending it once more toward the hope of a better day (Don't try this at home).

To wit:

The United States, having for the most part a deeply conservative people, had until now just about stood out against many of the mistakes which have ruined so much of the rest of the world.
Suspicious of welfare addiction, feeble justice and high taxes, totally committed to preserving its own national sovereignty, unabashedly Christian in a world part secular and part Muslim, suspicious of the Great Global Warming panic, it was unique.

Even the “economic recovery plan” and the idea that international relations will make your citizens personally liked abroad has a familiar sounding ring to it:

There has been many a confirmation of our firm conviction that the internal development of socialism necessitates an objective growth of the possibilities and requirements of international cooperation between the fraternal countries. The results attained by each individual country will be all the better, the more comprehensive use is made of the chances offered by internationalist cooperation. For this reason the GDR pursues an active policy of intensified dovetailing between the economies of the GDR and the USSR and of deepening socialist economic integration.

Major projects such as the joint power grid, participation in the construction of a natural gas pipeline, the GDR's modern power stations and the ESER data processing system are the outcome of this policy. Nowadays there is no task of major importance which the GDR does not tackle in fraternal cooperation with the USSR. Suffice it to mention the efforts made to ensure the raw materials and energy base or to master promising spheres of scientific and technological progress such as microelectronics. At the same time, the wide range of ties between the GDR's combines and scientific institutions and their partners in the fraternal socialist countries is becoming even more ramified. Economic efficiency and also the personal experience of friendship and internationalism, that leaves its impression throughout a lifetime, are the result of this cooperation in training, research and production ...

It will be one of our vital concerns in the years to come, together with the Soviet Union and the other states of the socialist community, to achieve scientific and technological advances that embody top standards, to harness them for the people's well-being, which will also help strengthen the economic positions of socialism in the world. The good results obtained encourage us in our intention to tackle projects of even greater dimension with optimism and consistency.

Really, there IS no place like utopia.

France's convoluted internal political debate on NATO

… the French message can be confusing, especially at the point where its convoluted internal political debate on NATO, weighted with factionalism worthy of Italy's 12th century Guelphs and Ghibellines, runs into the reality of just what France wants in terms of a European NATO pillar

writes John Vinocur in his article about "a country that for close to a half-century maintained a gap between itself and NATO for its own advantage."

Bruno Le Maire, the new French minister for Europe, speaking last week at a symposium in Paris on relations with the Obama administration, said three things that were not readily understood by all of France's allies.

First, that Europe had to have "our own doctrine on Iran"; that NATO must be redefined in April "so that we know what organization we're entering"; and that a Europeans-only military operational headquarters in Brussels "had been agreed to in principle."

What?

The puzzlement is that NATO has been redefining itself for a decade, that the operational center has little future in any realistic time frame, and that a "European doctrine" on the Iranian threat — not exactly a unifying notion since Le Maire himself said intra-European agreement on security issues was "unbelievably difficult" — sounds plain baffling.

For a U.S. official, Sarkozy's real task before giving the final go-ahead is to resolve the internal French debate and make sure his base is with him. The official said, "You want it all lined up in advance."

Beyond their internal debate, the fact is also that very little has been done by the French (while reducing their defense budget and cutting back their military presence in Africa) to support the American expectation that they would be a leader in steering the rest of Europe toward greater investment in defense.

This too: Sarkozy's perceived haste in resuming the EU's "strategic partnership" talks with Russia after it invaded Georgia — coupled with his placing more blame on Ukraine than the Kremlin during their gas supply dispute — hardly advanced France's self-portrayal as a more consensual future leader for all NATO's members, particularly those from the old Soviet bloc.

Gibing at Europe's "most important politicians" last week, Poland's conservative president, Lech Kaczynski, said their failure to stand behind the Ukrainians "proved once more that a country that gets drawn into a dispute with Russia cannot count on any effective help."

Update: Denmark's Uffe Ellemann-Jensen refers to the paper tigers of Europe while calling the EU's policy towards Russia "the Three Monkeys" policy:

See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, and you won't be touched by the evil … the three monkeys is a precise picture of many big European countries towards Russia.

Le prisonnier "est en train de mourir"

Yet another report about a prisoner's death (this one not a suicide), is the subject of Alain Salles' article in Le Monde.

Gaia is a cruel mistress

Cruel indeed.

The Origins of the French-American Conflict, as Seen by a De Gaulle Foe

While America was giving lavishly of her blood and her money for the great democratic idea of human liberty, General de Gaulle was inclining more and more toward a neo-fascism that was the very thing America had set out to destroy. Only the United States could liberate and save France, But General de Gaulle was unwilling to admit this. Even on D-Day when the Americans landed on the Normandy beaches, he refused in his radio "Appeal to the French People" to acknowledge their sacrifice and heroism. … In London, in Algiers, in Paris, wherever he has gone, he has left behind him a trail of mistrust, ingratitude, and hostility toward America.

Henry de Kérillis, 1945

A 1945 pamphlet against Charles de Gaulle has been republished. Originally an admirer of the French officer, Henry de Kérillis turned against the general as World War II progressed. Because of the powers that De Gaulle kept accumulating, Henry de Kérillis warned that he would institute the equivalent of an effective dictatorship in France and, more to the point, that he was behind the French-American conflict (or, rather, the Gaullist-American conflict), a conflict which he (Henri de Kérillis) deemed entirely artificial.

If You Have Any Interest in the Doctrine of Free Speech…

Tom Trento interviewed Geert Wilders at The Hague, the day before the Dutchman was charged with hate speech.

Think Locally, Act Feebly

Global Village Idiots: Zapatero’s Socialist industry minister, Miguel Sebastián is resorting to good old fashioned European nativism, urging Spaniards to “shop patriotically”, as if they were cloth-cap wearing, lunch-pail toting old-fashioned factory worker reds who occasionally show up to work sober.

Mr Sebastián then did some simple calculations. Consumption was expected to fall by €7bn ($9bn, £6.6bn) this year, causing the loss of 120,000 jobs. If each Spaniard introduced the “Spain factor” into their shopping and purchased just €150 of Spanish-made suits or toys instead of foreign goods, then those jobs would be preserved.

That should do wonders for exports, and says quite a bit about the thought behind the call: when it doesn’t work, trade restrictions, even those within Europe, would have to be put in place to make the theory support the sentiment.

Between all the tribalism, small-thinking, and ego propping delusions, that benighted “globally thinking Europe” forming an “ever closer union” is looking more like a sitcom based on Orwell’s “Animal Farm.”

Good luck with all that.

Flip-side

It is an odd feeling when one finds themselves agreeing with the chairman of Germany's Social Democrats:

Franz Müntefering, chairman of Germany’s Social Democrats, hit out against bankers on Sunday, describing them as "gangsters" and a threat to democracy, amid discussions over ways to step up support to the country’s ailing banks.

"Most of the bankers are competent and responsible, but there are also some beatniks, pyromaniacs and gangsters," he said in an interview with German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

"Some have lost track of what they were doing. Others risked everything. And further bankers have lined their pockets. This is a burden for democracy," said Mr Müntefering, famous for branding financial investors as "locusts" in 2005.

Now, will the chairman agree that the very same comments hold true for many politicians, government officials, and trade unionists? Or, would that be missing the point?

The Left’s Conditional Love of Society

VDH asks “whither the shredding?”

If you are a civil libertarian, if you are in the ACLU or a law professor, or a liberal in good standing who swore that George Bush from Texas, with strut and twang and mangled vocabulary, destroyed your liberties with FISA, with the Patriot Act, and with Iraq, then please extend that outrage to Barack Obama, for whom all such shredding of the Constitution suddenly has become merely complex and problematic rather than fascistic. Please list, cite, name just one instance from 2002-8 in which you lost your freedom, or you were censored on the library internet, or you were followed around by the FBI, or your letter to the editor earned a wiretap, or even one instance of the loss of any freedom under Bush—and if so, just one example of how the election of Obama has once again restored your lost liberty. Nothing in the abstract, please—something concrete, an example both real and personal.

Did you notice how the Constitution suddenly just unshredded itself? That wiretapping is just A1-OK and that no-one is unhinged, stamping their little feet, and holding their breath? Could have something to do with fantasies of being able to wiretap republicans… all in the interest of “social justice” of course.

In a major August 2008 decision released yesterday in redacted form, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, the FISA appellate panel, affirmed the government's Constitutional authority to collect national-security intelligence without judicial approval. The case was not made public before yesterday, and its details remain classified.

Somewhere along the way we “un-apocalypsed”. How and why did that change so quickly?

For all the political hysteria and media dishonesty about George W. Bush "spying on Americans," this fight was never about anything other than staging an ideological raid on the President's war powers. Barack Obama ought to be thankful that the FISA court has knocked the bottom out of this gambit, just in time for him to take office.

Begging the question

As the economic "crisis" is in its relative infancy, is this sustainable for any amount of time:

Across the whole of the UK, 49% of the economy will consist of state spending, while in Wales, the figure will be 71.6% – up from 59% in 2004-5. Nowhere in mainland Britain, however, comes close to Northern Ireland, where the state is responsible for 77.6% of spending, despite the supposed resurgence of the economy after the end of the Troubles.

Even in southern England, the government’s share of spending is growing relentlessly. In the southeast, it has gone up from 33% to 36% of the economy in four years.

The state now looms far larger in many parts of Britain than it did in former Soviet satellite states such as Hungary and Slovakia as they emerged from communism in the 1990s, when state spending accounted for about 60% of their economies.

Southeast Iceland awaits.

The Left Current Bleat is, in Essence, “Stop the Recovery”

One Suicide Every Three Days in France's Jails

One hundred and fifteen inmates committed suicide in French jails in 2008, or about one every three days, writes Alain Salles regarding a report disclosed in Le Monde.

2009 seems a promising year, so far, for Frenchmen bragging about their superior system to clueless Neanderthal-like Americans, as 13 people committed suicide during the first 14 days — as attested in and by a full-page article on the 13 unfortunates in the dead-tree version that, (although it appears right next to Salles' 2008 report article in the newspaper) strangely enough, does not appear on Le Monde's website…