Just What the Order Doctored

Soeren Kern writing on his own site and in the Brussels Journal makes clear for us all what has become obvious by drips: the EU doesn not only not lend itself to any sort of democracy other than a Potemkin village of symbolism and plenary plentitudes, but its’ leaders seem to rather prefer to meet in a (now unlawful) smoke-filled room to select it’s non-titular lider maximo free of the burden of public knowledge.

Leaders of the 27 member states of the European Union are meeting in Brussels on November 19 to choose the first-ever European president and European foreign minister. European political elites say these two new jobs are needed so that the notoriously divided EU can begin speak with one voice on the global stage. Once that happens, they contend, the EU will assume its rightful role as a world superpower and act as a counter-balance to the United States.

Choices Made With “Succession by Palace Coup” as their Ideal

As if hoping for some sort of Ernst Blofeld-like Evil Genius who will restore their egos to it’s rightful place as emotional rulers of the globe, Kern compares the process of selection rather favorably to those that place in the Soviet Union where the 99,9% votes for the people’s man were thought to become more plausible over time.

Today, these so-called Eurocrats oversee more than 100,000 pages of EU legislation, much of which has primacy over national legislation and parliaments. Indeed, unelected bureaucrats in Brussels now exercise so much power that they dictate what elected leaders can or cannot do in more than 30 policy areas.

Kern is giving them too much credit. The public actually knows about this affair to a degree, and the press has found it fit to discuss in the manner of a “who’s hot and who’s not thing” after the fashion of a gossip magazine printed on newsprint. Complaints about the lack of a public voice in all of this is people characterized as mumbling neurotic who know not what they say. Soon these reprobate Democracy-fetishists will surely have a nice, warm, comforting Sanitarium bed, for all three of them.

In the absence of a consensus candidate, the contest has degenerated into a race to the bottom. In secretive backroom horse-trading, the center-right, which controls the European Parliament, has staked its claim to the presidency; the center-left will get the foreign policy job. There are now half a dozen or more contenders for both jobs. And the one thing all the candidates have in common is that they are virtually unknown outside of Europe.

So much for that policy of truth stuff that their parents never taught them. After all, think about it, if public acclimation was required, they might miss out on THIS gem of a Cub Scout Den Mother:

The leading hopeful for the presidency is Belgian Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy, whose biggest claim to fame is writing haiku poetry in his native Dutch. According to the London-based Economist magazine, Van Rompuy’s main foreign policy experience stems from his involvement in a Belgo-Dutch row over the dredging of the River Scheldt.

High-minded, fresh thinking stuff that will define the 21st century world as they imagine, no doubt but the matter of precedents and examples doesn’t speak well for the future if this is the heady and philosophically pure point from which future corruption of the dream will ensue:

The London-based Telegraph newspaper quotes another Eastern European official as complaining: “Trying to work out who is going to be President of the EU Council is not dissimilar to decoding who was in or out in the Kremlin in the 1970s. It seems strange to many of us that 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall we have to dust off our Kremlinology skills here in Brussels.”

Good morning, and in case I don't see ya, good afternoon, good evening, and good night!

French Secret Service in 1924: NSDAP Leader "Adolphe Hitler" Is a "German Mussolini" at the Head of "Fascist-Type" Paramilitary Groups

During the 1920s, it turns out, a certain "Adolphe Jacob Hitler" was under surveillance by France's secret service, writes Thomas Wieder in Le Monde, as were several up-and-coming Nazi leaders as well as Germans from all parts of the political spectrum such as Konrad Adenauer. A visit to the national archives also brings to light the fact that French agents attempted to infiltrate the Nazi movement in Germany.

Peu rigoureux quant aux origines de celui qu'ils présentèrent comme le "Mussolini allemand", et dont ils dénoncèrent la présence à la tête de groupes paramilitaires d'un "genre fasciste", les agents chargés de rédiger sa fiche [en 1924] ne se sont pas privés d'ajouter aux données factuelles quelques jugements de valeur. On apprend, par exemple, qu'Hitler "n'est pas un imbécile mais (...) un très adroit démagogue". Ce qui ne veut pas dire, pour autant, que sa capacité de nuisance fût jugée alarmante. Evoquant sa "tentative de coup d'Etat le 8 novembre 1923 contre le gouvernement bavarois", le fonctionnaire français rappelle ainsi que celle-ci a "échoué lamentablement". D'ailleurs, le dirigeant du parti nazi ne serait, selon lui, que "l'instrument de puissances supérieures" : un jugement que l'on sait aujourd'hui erroné mais qui correspond à la vulgate de l'époque, laquelle faisait volontiers de Hitler la marionnette du général Ludendorff, l'ancien numéro 2 des armées allemandes pendant la première guerre mondiale, et dont le futur chancelier s'éloigna après le putsch manqué de 1923.

…l'archiviste [des Archives nationales (www.archivesnationales.culture.gouv.fr)] est formelle : "On fichait tout le monde !" [français ou autre]…

De Hitler à Goering, "recherché par les autorités allemandes pour complicité de haute trahison", en passant par Goebbels, désigné comme "membre influent du NSDAP", ou Himmler, simplement qualifié de "raciste", la plupart des futurs potentats du III^e Reich eurent droit à leurs dossiers. Une plongée dans ces chemises jaunies donne un aperçu de ce qui préoccupait les autorités d'occupation. … On y apprend … au détour d'une lettre destinée à "Son Excellence Edouard Herriot, président du conseil et ministre des affaires étrangères", comment la France essaya d'infiltrer le mouvement nazi. En juillet 1924, le haut-commissaire Paul Tirard détaille ainsi les "intéressantes découvertes" faites par ses services au sujet d'une "école d'entraînement militaire" située à Darmstadt. On peut y lire notamment que "l'un des élèves qui a été identifié de façon précise par la Sûreté a déclaré qu'il existait à l'école de l'organisation d'Hitler (...) un important stock d'uniformes, de revolvers neufs et quelques fusils", et que "chaque élève posséderait deux ou trois matraques en caoutchouc".

…les partisans de Hitler furent loin d'être les seuls à inquiéter les autorités françaises. A droite comme à gauche, il semble en fait qu'aucun mouvement politique n'ait échappé à la vigilance des fonctionnaires français.

Choices, choices

What type of aegis would you prefer to live under:

A) An authoritarian regime based upon the rule of man vs. the rule of law, or
B) A theocratic regime based upon the interpretations* of cherry-picked Biblical passages

If you think feel a combination of A and B is just the ticket, you are in luck!

*interpretations based upon the readings of a select few individuals who are far more caring, smarter and nuanced than the great unwashed masses, of course.

Just what the doctor ordered

When faced with a problem like this:

Improper payments in the Medicare and Medicaid programs totaled $55 billion in fiscal 2009, according to documents provided by OMB.

The only answer is, of course:

More governmental involvement in health insurance, not less.

Welcome to the mind of the statist.

Frankie Says Relax

Only among Arabs would you find anyone getting enraged about the supposed superior purity and virtue of THEIR kind of $10 whore.

A Muslim driver drove a Christian man to a Muslim brothel, then went out to call a Muslim mob that broke into the brothel, dragged out the Christian and stabbed 16 times after pouring acid over him. As the victim was rushed to hospital in critical condition, the mob started attacking and looting Christian properties.

And of course in retribution to the man with oh-so-much to give, they did the usual thing, and trashed what they thought might have been his neighborhood, cause, y’know, the neighborhood had some causal thing going there.

Dr. Naguib Gobrial, President of the Egyptian Union of Human Rights, in a press release addressed to the Minister of Interior, strongly condemned the vandalism and looting of Christian properties, and criticized the prevailing state of fear and insecurity, under which the Christian Copts live. He also attacked the inaction of the Governor of Minya and the failure of the security agencies to ensure peace and stability.

I suppose it’s because the hypocritical mob couldn’t be reached.

And speaking of $10 whores...

Turns Ugly? It IS Ugly.

A recent cash giveaway stunt for an undecipherable internet retailer called “mailorama.fr” went haywire when more ‘youts’ showed up than the gift giveaways could satisfy.

An Internet company that planned to throw envelopes of cash to passers-by from the top of a bus in Paris had to cancel the publicity stunt for security reasons after thousands of people turned up, police said on Saturday.

About 5,000 people gathered near the Eiffel Tower, with groups spilling into neighbouring streets and bursting through crowd barriers before the planned handout of banknotes

The funny part came later: with the rather typical interviews and “after action” reporting that got little more than a nod. In order to take it out on Mairolama.fr, the precious children justified trashing miscellaneous property by saying, essentially, that there were people rich enough to own a car who deserve it for their misfortune at a promotional stunt. While the stunt WAS badly run, legal proceeding are being lodged by the aggrieved former car owners and shop keepers against Mailorama, not the douchebags who, all bobos seem to agree, are just ‘blowing off a little steam’.

I know it’s over, but it MUST be stopped

Nebulous questions about what ‘lurks behind it all’ have, as expected’ bubbled up through the sewerage of their social thinking as well.

An anniversary the socialists don't really like to talk about too much

What is it about the utopian dreams of socialism and communism which always end in death:

On the death tape, Jones urged Temple members to commit "revolutionary suicide". Such "revolutionary suicide" had been planned by the Temple before and, according to Jonestown defectors, its theory was "you can go down in history, saying you chose your own way to go, and it is your commitment to refuse capitalism and in support of socialism."

After Jones announced that "the congressman is dead" no dissent occurs on the death tape. Directly after this, referring to his Red Brigade security squad that shot Ryan, Jones stated "But the Red Brigade's the only one that made any sense anyway" and "Red Brigade showed them justice." In response to reactions of seeing the poison take effect on others, Jones commanded "Stop this hysterics. This is not the way for people who are Socialists or Communists to die. No way for us to die. We must die with some dignity."

The end of a love affair....

Breaking-up is just so hard to do:

Barack Obama cast himself as a "citizen of the world" when he delivered his well-received campaign speech in Berlin in the summer of 2008. But the US president has now betrayed this claim. In his Berlin speech, he was dishonest with Europe. Since then, Obama has neglected the single most important issue for an American president who likes to imagine himself as a world citizen, namely, his country's addiction to fossil fuels and the risks of unchecked climate change. Health-care reform and other domestic issues were more important to him than global environmental threats. He was either unwilling or unable to convince skeptics in his own ranks and potential defectors from the ranks of the Republicans to support him, for example, by promising alternative investments as a compensation for states with large coal reserves.

Obama's announcement at the APEC summit that it was no longer possible to secure a binding treaty in Copenhagen is the result of his own negligence. China, India and other emerging economies have always spoken openly about the fact that the US, as the world's largest emitter of CO2, has to be proactive in commiting itself to targets agreed on by way of international negotiation. But that is not America's style. The US is quite happy to see itself as the leader of the Western world. But when it comes to climate change, America has once again failed miserably -- for the umpteenth time.

As with most things in life, there is levity to be found:

It may seem arrogant to take the Americans to task to such a degree. But at least in Europe, many are willing to question their own lifestyle and to look at events beyond their own borders.

Sure you are....

Quotes that make us smile

"Well, for one, I know nobody wants to pay taxes for anybody else to go to the doctor — I don't," said Kate Kuhn, 20, of Acworth, Ga. "I don't want to pay for somebody to use my money that I could be using for myself."

Rather flies in the face of what the "experts" would like you to think feel.

We know the real reasons....

Barack Obama acknowledged today that time has run out to secure a binding climate deal at Copenhagen and began moving towards a two-stage process that would delay a legal pact until next year at the earliest.

During a hastily convened breakfast meeting in Singapore, the US president supported a Danish plan to salvage something from the moribund negotiations by aiming for a broad political agreement and postponing contentious decisions on emissions targets, financing and technology transfer.

Our friend, as always, put his finger on the real reasons years ago:

They are Were Who They’ve Been Waiting For

Don’t the emissions and transmissions of the White House sound historically familiar? No, not the heady days of Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin, the ugly days of nascent Communism forced on Germans, knowing full well that in their vanquishment and impoverishment, that no crisis should go to waste. As we approach the day of remembrance for the fall of the Berlin wall 20 years ago, we find the ghost of the methods and philosophies behind that repression rearing their ugly head with the election of the left in America. The baiting and taunting, and then the intimidation seem to have been drawn directly from the retrograde left’s cookbook, only to find another young generation of naïve souls to turn into a movement’s Pinkertons.

The most important paper factories in West Germany are the property of a tiny group of millionaires who brought Hitler to power and used his policies of conquest to enrich themselves. A leading and legally convicted war criminal like Flick could in 1960 gain possession of the largest paper-producing firm in West Germany, the Feldmühle-AG. West Germany's leading newspapers, both in terms of circulation and as mouthpieces of the ruling class, are owned by finance capitalists, or are subject to their advertising dictatorship. During the early stages of capitalism, individual printers owned newspapers, but today a press system has developed that is typical of the larger monopoly system. A small group of oil, steel, and bank lords own the leading South German Adenauer paper, the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" along with numerous local papers that are published by the same firm. The press lord Springer, a money-grubber of the post-war era, not only controls the press system of West Germany's largest city Hamburg, but used it as a base to conquer the rest of the country.

All rehashed by our enlightened “educated” youth today as the media monopoly argument, and the need for all “guilds” to do their part for social justice.

Still, that is only a part of the function of journalism in the German Democratic Republic. Its primary mission is to build the enthusiasm of its readers, listeners and viewers for the noble cause of socialism, and to explain to them the laws of historical development in our day. More than that, as the Politbüro of the ZK of the SED said in its decision on press matters of 29 April 1959, the task is "not only to influence and change thoughts, but simultaneously actions in every area of the socialist transformation. . . Each editorial staff should therefore strive to initiate its own actions in the political economic and cultural spheres."

In reality, then, as now, all they are who they’ve been busting heads for:

One of the most terrifying achievements of the Nazi regime was its relentless capture and corruption of German youth. In Eastern Germany, the Communists have proved themselves as good as the Nazis at that deadly game. Their Freie Deutsche Jugend (Free German Youth) seems like a near-perfect reincarnation of the Hitler Youth. The world might get a good look at the young Communists when they stage their long-heralded "march on Berlin" on Whitsunday (see above). Last week, TIME Correspondent Enno Hobbing cabled this preview of the FDJ:

"Be Prepared." The process of corruption begins early. Nine hundred thousand children between the ages of six and 14 are enrolled

[SNIP]

The temper and tactics of FDJ chieftains was well-expressed by agile, aggressive Robert Bialek, who explained: "We'll take care of our church and political enemies. You sock them in the teeth until they fall. Then they write a letter of protest. You let them get up, read the letter, and then knock them down again."

[SNIP]

Again & again, Communist oldtimers din into young ears: "You are the future of the German people." In response to such accolades, one FDJ member recently told an American: "I'm not much now, but when Germany is all Communist, I might be a mayor. When we control all Europe, I might be a state governor."

If it's the weekend, it's the New York Times

Upon reading this headline:

Turtles Are Casualties of Warming in Costa Rica

It is best to gird the loins, render a few garments, find a bit of sackcloth, some ashes and begin gnashing the teeth (preferably your own). The reason, you know it will be coming at you with both barrels, turtles are casualties of warming in Costa Rica. How do we know, the headline says so:

But haphazard development, in tandem with warmer temperatures and rising seas that many scientists link to global warming, have vastly diminished the Pacific turtle population.

Note to the reporter, can we please stay on message, this is about global warming. We continue with our lesson:

Even before scientists found temperatures creeping upward over the past decade, sea turtles were threatened by beach development, drift net fishing and Costa Ricans’ penchant for eating turtle eggs, considered a delicacy here. But climate change may deal the fatal blow to an animal that has dwelled in the Pacific for 150 million years.

Ahem, can we dispense with the facts and just stick with the global warming message please:

Beachside tables have been removed because rising tides have destroyed the restaurant’s concrete terrace and uprooted shading trees there. In different circumstances, the beaches could gradually extend backward as the sea level rose. But along much of Costa Rica’s Pacific coast, the back of the beach is now filled with hotels, restaurants and planted trees, giving the sand no place to go. "The squeezing of the beaches where turtles nest is going to be a big problem," said Carl Safina, head of the Blue Ocean Institute, a conservation group.

Precisely what does this have to do with global warming? Please stay on message:

In a country where turtle eggs are traditionally slurped in bars from a shot glass, uncooked and mixed with salsa and lemon, biologists are also promoting cultural change.

This is the result of global warming how exactly? Far be it for a blogger to help a professional reporter, but the issue, as the headline points out, is global warming. We have to get these things straight, there may be funding at stake. So, here is our help to the reporter:

Let us put aside the haphazard development, beach development, drift net fishing, Costa Ricans’ penchant for eating turtle eggs, deforestation, natural predators, the squeezing of the beaches and cultural traditions ..... the loss of these turtles is about global warming, get with the programme!

"Pay? No Way," Exclaimed the Lady. "It's Supposed to be Free! Free!"

Thanks to our very own "Julius Caesar", a tyrant for those who recall reading source, Americans can look forward to much of this kind of thing that happens in EUtopia. Inspiring the young to go into medicine, no doubt.

Dr. X. is a surgeon who not only does his job admirably: he's also very active in many charities and human rights groups. It will be understood that it is therefore not part of the cohort as countless fantasy that those who refuse medical care for state aid (AME). It is in this personal context that a foreign woman entered, who had nothing to pay her bill with. Until she appeared for her exam, her condition had never been treated.

- "Pay? No way," exclaimed the lady. "It's supposed to be free! Free!"

And again, it requires that the surgeon pay for her medication out of his own pocket ...

Somewhat taken aback (understandably), our colleague says that this is not how things are done in this country. But the woman, visibly persuaded in the arguments of "ad hoc associations" (activists), continued to insist. So much so that she finally get her "companion" in the waiting room, giving the same speech to protest as well. Even with the doctor's polite but firm denial yielded some result: the "companion" threw several punches at him.

Assassin of 1 Abortionist Declared a "Terrorist"; Shootist of Over 40 Citizens and Killer of 13 Deemed a Regular Bloke Who Snapped

Doesn't it make sense, and can't leftists and rightists agree, that inherent in the word "terrorism" is the fact that it entails indiscriminate killing, the murder of vast numbers of citizens, and that the individuals targeted are basically unsuspecting?

We have now come to the point where the assassin of one abortion doctor (who knew that, rightfully or otherwise, he was a targeted man) is called a terrorist — a terrorist of the "domestic" variety — while the man who shot over 50 people, killing 13 of them, is deemed little more than a regular bloke (a stressed-out one, to be sure) who snapped because of the pressure(s) he'd undergone.

Not to excuse Scott Roeder's murder of George Tiller, nor to get into an argument about the pros and cons of abortion, but Roeder specifically targeted a specific individual, one whose life had been threatened (rightfully or otherwise) numerous times in the past (for reasons good or bad), and he (Roeder) did not, manifestly, aim indiscriminately at unsuspecting individuals.

Nevertheless, leftists got on their high horses and sputtered about the "personal responsibility" of conservatives, along with expressions such as their "hate machine", "anti-abortion terrorists", and "Christian Fundamentalist Terrorism"… No desire, here, to understand and to show compassion; no fears, here, about an unjust backlash against conservatives, Republicans, Christians, or — yes — even pro-lifers…

In fact, in both cases — in all cases — the true villains prove, directly or indirectly, to be American conservatives and those who represent the values of America's heartland.

Because, as it happens, to leftists the world over, outside as well as inside the United States (and the latter, tragically, include the members of the Obama administration), the only enemies, the only danger (to America as to the rest of the planet), the only terrorists (would-be or real) are America's own conservatives. And thus you see Nidal Malik Hasan, aka "the alleged shooter" (Barack Obama), aka the "army major suspected of killing 13 people" turned into a victim of the stresses caused, directly or otherwise, by heartland America.

Reviews in the Comment Section Most Welcome

It could also have been titled “A Field Manual for Survival in Europe”.

Dreams of their Fathers

Hollywood’s panting, drooling 1943 love letter to Stalin has been released on DVD.



If their nipples got any harder, blood vessels would have burst.

Just Ignorant Enough to be Funny

As much as this t-shirt guy doesn’t seem to know about the DDR, he does seem to know enough about the “Green” political sensibility being little different than the authoritarian nature of the East German Volkspolizei or “people’s police”.

The more repressive the regime, the more likely that everything in identified, on the surface as being the “people’s property”. Then again, the VoPos were in bad taste too.

Generation Boudin

A recent TNS-Sofres poll of young adult women in France indicates that they are more than 3 times more likely to want to “do nothing,” more than 10 times more likely to want to watch TV, and 11 times more likely to want to surf the internet, than to participate in a benevolent or volunteer activity – a disembodied, intellectualized “want” (since this is not a poll of what 20-29 year old women actually does) that came in slightly behind playing video games.

In other words, even the pretense of what’s held in high regard in a collectivism promoting, socialized society isn’t even on the radar. After all, isn’t that the government’s job?

As if you couldn’t figure this out by the rarity of those that don’t preoccupy their time and crash-test their friendships by incessantly talking about themselves.

Reasons why today should be a day to celebrate wildly

Note, should.

Berliner Mauer, a query

During a recent walk down the Unter den Linden, a question popped into my head:

Will the socialists and statists be celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Wall falling? Afterall, it was their ideological side which proved to be the utterly unsustainable failure....

Weekend wonders

Rhetorically speaking, do you ever wonder why the statists are always yammering on about never "wasting a crisis"? The answer of course is simple, in the chaos and tumult of a crisis it is the statists who use the situation to gobble up more power for their church, government, and to diminish the ability of their enemies, the individual. During a crisis, never think the words and actions of the statist are about actually trying to ease the crisis situation.

Which brings us to our cod-mongering brothers and sisters in Iceland. As the dust settles from the financial implosion up north, individuals are having second thoughts about prostrating themselves before the keepers of hyper-statism:

Iceland this week appointed its chief EU accession negotiator, but the country's application is already hitting the buffers domestically and Brussels fears that the Arctic nation may "pull a Norway", meaning an application that the government is sincere about, but which the people strongly reject.

The country's finance minister, Steingrimur Sigfusson and leader of the government's junior coalition partner, the Left Green Movement, said last Tuesday at a meeting of the Nordic Council in Stockholm that while Iceland had applied to join, the people did not want to become members of the EU, a statement that has not been met with great enthusiasm in Brussels.

This is why the statists must strike when the crisis iron is hot. Once calmer heads prevail and the statist schemes are exposed under the clear light of day, the individual tends to notice the same old putrid stench in the air: more government, more regulation, more control-freaks and less freedom/liberty/individuality.

Obama: an American Walter Ulbricht

Leftists who sneer at Conservatives who call Obama a socialist don’t know Socialism. The costruction of the “progressive” states of the East Block was incremental, and peppered with euphemisms about democracy and even fake opposition parties to demonstrate that they were in reality pluralistic.

It all began with creeping nationalization.

The Second Five-Year Plan committed East Germany to accelerated efforts toward agricultural collectivization and completion of the nationalization of the industrial sector. By 1958 the agricultural sector still consisted primarily of the 750,000 privately owned farms that comprised 70 percent of all arable land; only 6,000 Agricultural Cooperatives (Landwirtschaftliche Produktionsgenossenschaften--LPGs) had been formed. In 1958-59 the SED subjected private farmers to quota pressures and sent agitation teams to villages in an effort to encourage "voluntary" collectivization. The teams used threats, and in November and December 1959 resisting farmers were arrested by the SSD. By mid-1960 nearly 85 percent of all arable land was incorporated in more than 19,000 LPGs; state farms comprised another 6 percent. By 1961 the socialist sector produced 90 percent of East Germany's agricultural products. An extensive economic management reform by the SED in February 1958 included the transfer of a large number of industrial ministries to the State Planning Commission. In order to accelerate the nationalization of industry, the SED offered entrepreneurs 50-percent partnership incentives for transforming their firms into VEBs. At the close of 1960, private enterprise controlled only 9 percent of total industrial production. Production Cooperatives (Produktionsgenossenschaften--PGs) incorporated one-third of the artisan sector during 1960-61, a rise from 6 percent in 1958.

Overraught? No. For one thing, I lived in the DDR and find the US left’s intelligentsia to be promoting IDENTICAL rhetoric. Even with the irony of Lavrenti Beria, the brutal intelligence chief telling the East Germans that they needed a freer market (Tito-like) solution to the poverty that was threatening the newly founded state, the adherents sticking to Stalinism long after the Soviets had painfully purged themselves of it pressed on. They pressed on in underhanded ways that seemed to boil the frog in subtle little steps which within 3 years, a time shorter than one US presidential term, to transform a society into an oppressive command state flouting it’s own Constitutional protections (such as that of Labor action) rather flagrantly.

Social solidarity does have its limitations...

...even for the most pure of hearts:

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

Our Middle Name is Still Anxiety

Alles ist noch in Ordnung

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

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

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

"Americans, You Are Hated Here"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Country Preacher and His Teenage Son

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

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

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

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

1. A Bible.

2. A silver dollar.

3. A bottle of whiskey.

4. A Playboy magazine.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A good starting point on taxation

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

And what better day to shout it from the rooftops?

Our Middle Name is Anxiety

Alles ist in Ordnung

It made us laugh....

Lemme guess, the return of Diebold?

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

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

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

Forget El Nino, I blame Karl Marx

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chumps.

God Bless America, Land of the Free…

Hurrah for the Garden State and the Old Dominion…

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

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

The Kremlin's

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“A state built on deception is not worth having”

A state built on deception is not worth having

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

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

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

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

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

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

Time to pay up

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

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

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

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

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

The money-shot:

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

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

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

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

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

Money talks and bullshit walks....

Alas, But for the Love of Self...

Yet Another Way the American Left Exports Anti-Americanism

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

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

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

Thomas Sowell On Economics Of Medical Care

I ‘Larned it from the Bish

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

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

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

WWII Resistance Hero was Capriciously 'Told to Leave'

“We don't need you here. You too must go home. Au revoir”

- General de Gaulle

Late British officer Peter Lake was parachuted in to occupied France to help train resistance fighters. Three months after D-Day, he encountered the anger of the master of self-made myth, all the way down to his name.

That whole brotherhood of man thing...

... sure does work out well, on paper at least:

Just as Le Corbusier's white cruciform towers once excited visions of the industrial-age city of the future, so Vélib’, Paris’s bicycle rental system, inspired a new urban ethos for the era of climate change.

Residents here can rent a sturdy bicycle from hundreds of public stations and pedal to their destinations, an inexpensive, healthy and low-carbon alternative to hopping in a car or bus.

But this latest French utopia has met a prosaic reality: Many of the specially designed bikes, which cost $3,500 each, are showing up on black markets in Eastern Europe and northern Africa. Many others are being spirited away for urban joy rides, then ditched by roadsides, their wheels bent and tires stripped.

With 80 percent of the initial 20,600 bicycles stolen or damaged, the program's organizers have had to hire several hundred people just to fix them. And along with the dent in the city-subsidized budget has been a blow to the Parisian psyche.

"The symbol of a fixed-up, eco-friendly city has become a new source for criminality," Le Monde mourned in an editorial over the summer. "The Vélib’ was aimed at civilizing city travel. It has increased incivilities."

The New Halloween

(Mercy buckets to François…)

Home of Danish Mohammed Artist Blocked Off After Discovery of Mystery Package

Only a few days after two Jihadists were arrested in Chicago on the suspicion of planning terror attacks on Copenhagen , Danish police blocked off the home of Kurt Westergaard after a strange package was found near the home of Westergaard, one of the Danish Mohammed artists.

"Our government is for homosexuals, by homosexuals; and if you don't like it, you have no rights, no recourse, and no voice"

For those of you who need more convincing that homosexuals are aggressive perverts who do NOT "just want to be left alone"

Benjamin Duffy refers an internet page in which a mother testifies about 11-year-old children given a homework assignment to draw an erect penis ejaculating.

Our government does not work for us. Our government is for homosexuals, by homosexuals. And if you don't like it, you have no rights, no recourse and no voice.

Everybody Knows it’s Baseball Season...

In an amusing twist to the apocalyptic howling that has emerged into popular culture again since Y2K and the plague in the early Renaissance, John Rosenthal quotes a yet to be politicized or cut-down matter of fact report from Corriere della Sera on the fact that alp-loving leisure class can enjoy their après-ski arrogant rants a month early this year.

At Cortina, the snow “cannons” are in operation on the peaks and in the ski area of Faloria one is counting on opening the slopes already on November 13. That is nearly a month earlier than the classic “ponte dell’ Immacolata” that traditionally opens the snowy season throughout the Alps. …Barring any spectacular reversal of the meteorological trends and following last year’s extremely long [lunghissimo] winter, which only ended in May, this will be the shortest summer-fall interval without skiing ever recorded.

Having had to hear the cranky German engineers I work with complaining that this was yet another year without a summer, I’ve found that prodding them with the simple reply “well that’s just how global warming works” is no longer taken as a snide, vaguely insulting remark, but met with mild laugh, resigning itself to the reality of the fact that the end is not nigh, and that kneeling in the streets before the passing clerics of the morality-free post-Christian cult of thermometer worship may not be required of us for the moment.

Meanwhile, back in the usual emotionalized science for the non-impirical, the jihad to end humanity’s addition to toilet paper continues, as if trees were not farmed, and they weren’t actually sequestering carbon more rapidly by cycling through the process of use and replanting. Like everything, it requires someone to blame America first.

he tenderness of the delicate American buttock is causing more environmental devastation than the country's love of gas-guzzling cars, fast food or McMansions, according to green campaigners. At fault, they say, is the US public's insistence on extra-soft, quilted and multi-ply products when they use the bathroom.

Much as the notion of believing that your shit doesn’t stink, the ur-Briton cannot be accused of having a rectum, which explains the confusion over what human buttock are. It’s best not to get confused down there, especially in the throws of passion, but does explain rather well just what it is that Euro-greenies are full of, and why there are ‘compaction issues’ as evidenced by their charm and warmth to people who actually still have a natural environment.

In the mean time, you can check the opening dates of les pistes while a political explanation for the weather is being formulated somewhere.

Toppled Madagascar President Accuses Frenchmen of Being Behind the March Coup

In an interview with Sébastien Hervieu, Marc Ravalomanana accuses France of fomenting the coup d'état that toppled the Madagascar president in March and forced him into exile in South Africa.

Vous avez accusé la France de soutenir Andry Rajoelina. Avez-vous des preuves ?

Le coup d'Etat à Madagascar était bien étudié et bien orchestré. En trois mois, c'était fait ! Moi-même, j'ai été surpris. Je ne dis pas que la France a tout organisé, mais il y avait des Français derrière cela. Les services de renseignement sud-africains, ici, me l'ont dit.

One reader writes:

La France, qui a soutenu jusqu'au bout Ratsiraka [alias "l'Amiral rouge" (the Red Admiral)], n'a jamais accepté l'arrivée au pouvoir de Ravalomanana, considéré par elle comme l'homme des Américains – on allait même jusqu'à lui reprocher de mal parler le français ! Certes, Ravalomanana n'est pas le dirigeant que les Malgaches méritent ; il s'est révélé bien trop affairiste et son surnom de "PDG de Madagascar" est assez mérité mais de là à pousser le maire d'Antananarivo au pouvoir, c'est un jeu bien dangereux qu'a joué la France.

The only way the "mainstream" Democrats will succeed in enacting their socialistic designs is through trickery, legerdemain, chicanery, and deceit

The hard truth, folks, more plainly apparent with each passing day, is that today's "mainstream" Democrats have been exposed as radical leftists, whose agenda is overwhelmingly rejected by a vast majority of Americans.

Thus speaks David Limbaugh.

The only way they'll succeed in enacting various components of their socialistic designs — notwithstanding their strong numerical congressional majorities — is through trickery, legerdemain, chicanery and deceit.

A Word to the Unwise in America who Idolize the “European Social Model”

France’s Social Security System, the “sickness insurance” system nicknamed the “Sécu” will go broke by 2011, perhaps even collapsing under it’s own weight some time as early as 2010.

TR's Rough Riders Sing Garryowen

There are only a handful of war movies and/or historical films that portray the men that fight battles realistically, and two of them — both "starring" Theodore Roosevelt (The Wind and the Lion and Rough Riders) — are by John Milius. "Rough Riders" is an unforgettable film on the events of the Spanish-American War and it is too bad that more movies cannot be like this or like films such as Zulu, Gettysburg, or The Longest Day.

In this brilliant outtake that shows the pathos of the departure to the front, the troops of Teddy Roosevelt's (Tom Berenger's) 1st United States Volunteer Cavalry fall in under the orders of Captain Bucky O'Neill (Sam Elliott) for the train ride east across the South to Florida (for embarkation to Cuba), discovering in the process that the wounds of the Civil War (or the War Between the States, to make everybody happy) have started to heal, all to the tune of Garryowen, stunningly sung by Elan Oberon (who happens to be Milius' wife).

If there are DVDs that all Americans (hell, that all people everywhere) should own, this is one of them — don't miss other outstanding portrayals, notably Marshall Teague as Black Jack Pershing and Gary Busey, utterly outstanding in the role of Fighting Joe Wheeler.

(Thanks to Hervé for all his work in creating this video)

You must see this excerpt from The Wind and the Lion (from 01:52): "I don't think the French and Germans are going to like this" (the sequence continues 25-30 seconds into Part 9)…

Really. It’s Only a Game.

What decades of abusive Marxism-Leninism Has Taught Us

To construct conformity, you take away people’s privacy.

The information had been available to media until 2004, when a more conservative government banned the publication of tax records. Three years later, a new, more liberal government reversed the legislation and also made it possible for media to obtain tax information digitally and disseminate it online.

Norway's 2007 law emphasized that "first and foremost, it's the press that can contribute to a critical debate" on wealth and the elaborate tax scheme that, along with the country's oil wealth, keeps Norway's extensive — and expensive — welfare system afloat.

The press, having some sort of rights greater than that of citizens, are written into law. How charming.

With characteristically uninformed ignorance of the issue they think they’re dealing with, we find commentary like this:

"Isn't this how a social democracy ought to work, with openness, transparency and social equality as ideals?" columnist Jan Omdahl wrote in the tabloid Dagbladet.

No, that isn’t necessary or beneficial in a social democracy. It’s a tool of coercion whose place is better limited to selective use in protecting society, like listing approximate addresses of convicted child sexual predators so that parents can gage the risks to their children’s safety – and privacy – for themselves.

The search for whys and wherefores isn’t that hard, when you look at some of the other symptoms of the disease that they suffer from:

The country of 4.8 million people had the third-highest income tax among industrialized countries in 2007, behind Denmark and New Zealand, according to the latest statistics from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

I wonder if it ever dawned on the opinion-makers there that when you keep feeding the beast, it gets bigger and bigger and worries less and less about why they were fed to begin with.

While this has little to do with the rest of the world, that’s never stopped Norwegian social critics from commenting vociferously about the lives of others. Other times, they find themselves enmeshed in it too:

A Somali-born Norwegian citizen accused of funding a Somali militant group has become the first person to be charged under the Nordic country's 2002 terror financing law.

Which is a great time to step up to the plate. A fine time to show the world their mettle. Except when your notion of the violation of privacy gets in the way.

They did not give his name in line with Norwegian privacy rules.

Rules, rules, and good intentions. Rulers, rules, and good intentions. Don’t they ever get bored with themselves?

Autocrats of the World, Unite!

Yet another Lulu from the mouths of the democratically “differently abled”

Ahmadinejad: Iran, Belarus should manage world through cooperation

That their instincts run along the lines of “running the world” for the same of humanistic warm-fuzzies should indicate quite a bit about anyone taking the story to be anything legit.

How do we know this? A simplistic journo-bot told us so. By the way, in case you’re wondering if an item like that eliciting mockery, let alone horror about the bright lights of the EU-observatory class, you shouldn’t. Another comment thinks rather glowingly of remaking a “new and honest” form of journalism that’s funded by non-profits, NGOs, and para-governmental organizations with unstated motives, and appointed panels that choose what ‘investigative journalism’ efforts to fund.

Every time, money is granted to journalism, there must be a buffer to guarantee editorial independence. In this case we have chosen a combination of two elements. Journalists and investigative journalist organizations give their good reputation to Journalismfund.eu by joining the advisory board. In addition we have a model with an anonymous jury.
The jury consists of four persons. They were selected in the spring of 2009 among a long-list of highly respected media persons gathered by the advisory board. In the spring of 2011 the first two members will leave the board and their names will be published then.
Are there any criteria and rules? Yes, there are. Journalismfund.eu aims to fulfill the niche of covering stories that go across borders or have relevance in several European countries, se the rules for application and the assessment criteria, which the jury applies.

Which to say that the panel are opaque to the point of being able to remain anonymous, and that the product must promote the EU. Also unstated is that the funder’s funder is funded by the Flemish sub-parliament of Belgium which seems to be promoting the EU with all the highmindedness and enthusiasm of a city trying to get a sports franchise to relocate to their patch.

To these folks, anything is better than lowering themselves to ‘touching money’ (unless it’s a grant). That their instincts run along the lines of “running the world” for the same of humanistic warm-fuzzies should indicate quite a bit about anyone taking the story to be anything legit.

The regimented and money fixated mindset that pervades European (apparent) do-gooders is rife, in that the concept of citizen journalism and self-publishing are not even mentioned, let alone considered. The notion that underhanded motives could even possibly trickle in? The idea that one would do better to watch what people do, rather than what they say? Phooey! Who needs it? That couldn’t happen!

La Baf RIP 2004-2009

Today La Baf expired, cut to pieces by 10,000 arrows shot by its enemies — bureaucrats, would-be censors, anti-Americans, humorless psychos, Islamic terrorists, Bosheviks, and opponents of liberty of all countries (as well as cat-haters)…

Hopes Grow in Japan that the Apologizer-in-Chief Will Visit Hiroshima or Nagasaki

Hopes are growing in Japan that the Apologizer-in Chief will become the first sitting U.S. president to visit Hiroshima or Nagasaki, the only two cities ever devastated by atomic bombs. (You read it first on No Pasarán…)

How Exactly is That Suppoed to Work Again ?

Terror Plans Against Copenhagen: More Good News From Chicago

Two men from Chicago have been arrested with video footage of Copenhagen's Jyllands-Posten building and its central train station, writes Elisabeth Arnsdorf Haslund, for planning to blow up the Danish paper that ran the Mohammed cartoons.

The two men with terror plans against Denmark are described as "Americans" (I'd like to see what these citizens look like — blond and blue-eyed, no doubt) who, following their visit, happened to take a trip to Pakistan before heading home to Illinois. What? One of them, David Coleman Headley is "a U.S. citizen who changed his name from Daood Gilani in 2006"? Right…

Atlas has (many) more details…

Further Tales from the World’s No. 1 Sneer Exporter

Slavery in the Land of Milk and Honey

How Blacks Are Oppressed by White Folks in America, and Have Always Been So…

The Dissident Frogman has had it with those American racists who won't stop oppressing and jailing black folks.

And when you think about how many decades, and centuries, that it has been going on…

What Part of This Would a Bien-Pensant Twit NOT Find Spiritually Disturbing? (v1.2)

The Pain of Being Brilliant Artists is Killing Us

Alles ist nicht ist in
nicht Alles noch ist Ordnung Alles
in ist nicht Ordnung Ordnung Alles
nicht Ordnung Alles Alles ist Ordnung
ist Ordnung Alles in Ordnung noch
noch ist Ordnung Alles in ist

A Reformer in the NATO Henhouse

…what a surprise the ambassadors were dealt two months ago when the new secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, entered the alliance headquarters

writes Judy Dempsey.

Mr. Rasmussen, who gave up his job as prime minister of Denmark — the first time that a politician of such rank has taken over NATO — lost little time before he tried to change the internal workings of NATO.

There are fewer meetings. Agendas are shorter. Discussions are to the point. And Mr. Rasmussen, with pen in hand, ticks off what has to be done, by whom and when.

To the U.S.-led military alliance, whose structures and procedures have barely changed since it was founded 60 years ago by only twelve member states, these developments amount to a revolution.

And they come at a time when NATO, fighting its biggest war yet, in Afghanistan, urgently needs more efficiency in its deliberations.

“I am here as a reformer,” Mr. Rasmussen, 56, said in an interview. “I want to modernize, transform and reform so that NATO adapts to the security environment for the 21st century.” That means, he said: “In a rapidly changing security environment, we have to make sure that NATO is able to make rapid moves. Otherwise NATO will not maintain its relevance in the future.”

Previous secretary generals have attempted reforms. But they quickly came up against an unshakable lethargy.

… NATO is still agonizing over a new strategic doctrine to reflect its changing role. This is made more urgent by the war in Afghanistan. NATO also is involved in counterpiracy operations in the Gulf of Aden and is still heavily committed to Kosovo in the Balkans. And even though Mr. Rasmussen wants NATO to reach out to China and India, can it really do so if it lacks a new doctrine to explain its role in the 21st century?

That is why Mr. Rasmussen broke with tradition in yet another matter: He appointed an outsider, former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright of the United States, to lead a group of 12 experts, independent of the ambassadors, to work out a new strategic concept for NATO. Mr. Rasmussen did so to break down the wall of exclusiveness and secrecy that is often associated with the alliance. The panel will be answerable to him, not to the ambassadors.

“I want discussions over NATO’s future to be the most open, the most inclusive consultation process in NATO’s history,” he said. “We have to address properly the new threats such as proliferation, cyber security and climate change, and move away from Cold War thinking.”

…Mr. Rasmussen wants to tackle other internal workings of the organization: What to do, for example, with the plethora of committees, “300 at least,” he said. All require decisions by consensus.

Then there is the sheer size of the military command structure, which has 13,000 personnel scattered across Western Europe at NATO’s many military bases. When France rejoined the integrated military structure in April, it was hard pressed to send 900 top-notch military staff to the various NATO commands. It needed them at home. Mr. Rasmussen said slimming down the military staff and all the NATO military headquarters “was included in my plans for transformation.”