It's Easier to Curse Those Accursed Capitalists When Certain Facts Are (Conveniently) Ignored

As Barack Obama does his utmost to destroy the American (and thus, the world's) economy, Serguei applauds (while further denigrating capitalists) and Le Monde's readers say he isn't going far enough.


On the front page of the same issue, meanwhile, Plantu depicts foreign aid for Haiti after the earthquake in the form of a generic hospital ship and of the United Nations dove (in tears, like everyone else) heading for the stricken island (in the form of its flag).

What the Europeans ignore, of course, is that again, as usual, the with the most humanitarian help just happens to be (by entire coincidence, of course) the planet's foremost capitalist nation. Claudia Rosett:

In Haiti, the UN has been reporting that it has some personnel working on the ground, and is preparing to mobilize more. But the basic picture so far is that once again the American military is shouldering the chief burden of immediate relief.

One thing I will never forget about the 2004 tsunami in Asia is seeing news reports on French TV describing "the UN's" help and efforts for the victims, all the while, showing images of naval crews from the USS Abraham Lincoln and helicopter crews in the air sporting the US flag on their sleeves.

Europe's Superior Health Care System: Wasting an entire day at the hospital

From the All-the-news-that's-fit-to-print media, Sindya Bhanoo's New York Times story praising (or at least in awe of) the latest technological "breakthrough" and the latest socialist improvement of society — one in which patients get to see their doctors far less (but that's not necessary, of course, and it's all good for society, don't you see, for the common good) — and explaining in how many myriads of ways the United States would benefit from adopting the system (oh, what a headache those 50 different states are) or from adopting one like it:

Now, however, [Jens Danstrup] can go to the doctor without leaving home, using some simple medical devices and a notebook computer with a Web camera. He takes his own weekly medical readings, which are sent to his doctor via a Bluetooth connection and automatically logged into an electronic record.

The technical doodads from Denmark's health care system sound duly impressive:

[The 77-year-old retired architect] clipped an electronic pulse reader to his finger. It logged his reading and sent it to his doctor. Mr. Danstrup can also look up his personal health record online. His prescriptions are paperless — his doctors enters them electronically, and any pharmacy in the country can pull them up. Any time he wants to get in touch with his primary care doctor, he sends an e-mail message.

All of this is possible because Mr. Danstrup lives in Denmark, a country that began embracing electronic health records and other health care information technology a decade ago. Today, virtually all primary care physicians and nearly half of the hospitals use electronic records, and officials are trying to encourage more “telemedicine” projects … [After all, several studies] conclude that the Danish information system is the most efficient in the world, saving doctors an average of 50 minutes a day in administrative work

It all sounds impressive, and certainly I don't mean to say (or to suggest) it's uniformly bad, but you have to admit that it is especially impressive if you are someone who doesn't care for a personal encounter relationship with, not your local Domino's manager, but your, er, primary health provider. But I suppose that doesn't mean that the brave new world is all negative and who knows, I may be somewhat cynical. Still; are you ready for the money quote?

“You see how easy it is for me?” Mr. Danstrup said, sitting at his desk while video chatting with his nurse at Frederiksberg University Hospital, a mile away. “Instead of wasting the day at the hospital?”

Wasting the day at the hospital. Now isn't that the type of thing that we clueless conservatives have been warning about all along?! Instead, say the Europeans, we'll try to get you — insofar as possible — to save your time and the doctors', and stop seeing any doctors at all…

Now policy makers in the United States are studying Denmark’s system to see whether its successes can be replicated as part of the overhaul of the health system making its way through Congress. Dr. David Blumenthal, a professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School who was named by President Obama as national coordinator of health information technology, has said the United States is “well behind” Denmark and its Scandinavian neighbors, Sweden and Norway, in the use of electronic health records.

No wonder.

Time Teaches (an Audience) many Things

The story of central Europe is one of many things, but some themes emerge to yield meaning. A large part of the story of those who survived the adversity of it's trials has been one of having to wait to reveal your soul to others.

After decades of toying with the myriad of forms of belief that give unchallenging comforts and helps avoids being treated with a hatred of the traditions of those that brought us into this world, Nina Hagen has rejected that conformity. Love her or hate her, she, like many times before she leads us to believe that she has questioning the new conformity and has said publicly that she is a Christian. She has outed herself in clear defiance of the comfortable sensitivities of her generation.

"Nina tells how she, at an early age in an atheist environment, came upon a forbidden but fascinating being named God. She takes the reader with her on a wild road movie in which she has demonic experiences in an Indian ashram.

"On the way, she looked love, drugs and death in the eye. But above all, she encountered God."

While those that have always admired her are not surprised, she, again, teaches us on more thing. There is much about people that we think we know and don't, but merely assume.

She did it HER way. SHe always has.

Haiti Clinton for Massachusettes Coakley

Martha Coakley: "And without further ado…
I would like to present to you…"

Martha Coakley: "…the United Nations' Special Envoy to Haiti!"
[Cheers and applause]

Bill Clinton (sotto voce): "Darnit, lady: Couldn't you just have said
something like… 'the 42nd president of the United States'?!"

Bill Clinton (to himself): "Jeez Louise…
No wonder this douche needs us to bail 'er out…"

Bill Clinton: "Yes! It's true! I ought to be in
Port-au-Prince! Now! Right this minute! But!…"

Bill Clinton: "…Mark my words!
My esteemed colleague Martha Coakley is a Democrat! And
a Democrat always knows how to get his or her priorities straight!"

A Grand and Heroic U.N. Tradition Continues

Bush-hating purple helmeted peace gladiator Scott Ritter finally found something he was willing to call a weapon of mass destruction. Maybe he got the idea from having been stroked vigorously by the left for so long.

Otherwise, you have to catch him doing his best Shecky Green act in the Catskills to put his interpersonal skills into context. When his jokes flop, he offers them candy.

The Great Change That Has Taken Place Since Obama Took Over From Bush

(Merci à François)

I May Change the Low Opinion I Have of Frozen Drinks

Rev it, baby.

Is Obama Flexing His Jeffersonian Muscle?

I disagree with calling Barack Obama (or Jimmy Carter) a Jeffersonian.

In spite of the outcome looking perhaps similar to what is happening in Obama's foreign affairs, Thomas Jefferson thought — he knew, I should say; he never lost sight of the fact — that America was/is "the world's best hope" (later alluded to, more famously, by Abraham Lincoln, as "the last best hope on Earth") — not because TJ held, mindlessly, that the "tribe" to which he belonged was/is better (as Obama put it derogatorily, declaring that the Brits and the Greeks probably think they are special too), but because a republic — any republic — is always better than any other (i.e., any lesser) government.

Obama's worldview is closer to the left's simplistic world view, that fairy tale where if we all simply come together and discuss our differences, everything will turn out alright… The only problem with that, of course, is that it is as much a fairy tale now as it was in the late 1970s or at Munich or any time in the intervening time or before that…

The Return of the Reeperbahn Donkey Show

As opposed to them wanting to see them published well in advance:

CIA Had Secret Plan to Kidnap German-Syrian Suspect in Hamburg

Behind the usual wooden SPONglish journalism, we discover that all they are doing it parroting a Vanity Fair article founded on merely thinking about it:

The CIA official said, “That would have been absolutely impossible in a country like Germany.”

But a CIA agent who was active in Germany at the time admitted to the magazine that the US secret services had considered kidnapping suspected al-Qaida activists in Germany and that this had been weighed up for Darkazanli.

Considered, you see, is more than enough for the bright lights of the press to tacitly root for an al Queda victory by rallying around a man wanted in Spain as well as the US, who took refuge in Germany. Unmentioned in the piece was that Darkazanli was linked to the Hamburg cell as a financier.

Shortly after the supposed assassination plot was made public, Christoph Ahlhaus, the interior minister of the city-state of Hamburg and a member of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), called upon the German government to demand an explanation from Washington. As a result, parliament's domestic affairs committee and the parliamentary control committee, which is in charge of monitoring Germany's intelligence services, will look at the accusations, as will the public prosecutor's office in Hamburg.

While that’s a long way to go on a mere press report, this business of Germany protecting terrorists from reprisal for their actions has a familiar ring to it. The DDR trained and sheltered Abu Daoud, planner of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre who headed a group calling itself Black September. In reality they were Fatah men operating under the orders of Yassir Arafat.

The same goes for Abu Nidal, and the Libyan agents who carried out the Lockerbie - Pan Am 103 bombing and the La Belle Disco bombing and attempted to murder a US Diplomat posted to the DDR, even credentialling the terrorists as Diplomats.

Providing cover for the sake of a misplaced ideological grumbling is nothing new.

French Health Care? Faced With a Health System that Has Become Practically Incomprehensible, Individuals Feel Helpless

While the French health care system, among many others, continues to be praised to the heavens by America's élites, both for what it does, medically-wise, and for its alleged low costs, Le Monde publishes a report on the top part of its front page called What Is the True Cost of Health in France? (Quel est le coût réel de la santé en France?).

In other words, how can America's élites praise the French health system (based, supposedly, on reports from France) if the truth turns out to be that the French themselves do not know the cost (or the true cost) of health in their own country?!

Confronted with a health system that has become practically incomprehensible over the years, individuals feel helpless, especially when it comes to trying to figure out what the various health rates correspond to

writes Laetitia Clavreul in Le Monde. Incidentally (dentally — no pun intended), you know about the rumor about Frenchmen's allegedly nasty teeth? Well, it turns out that at least part of that can be explained by the fact that France's optimal, wonderful, heavenly, glorieux health system does not do much to cover dental (as well as optical) care.

Combien rembourse l'assurance-maladie pour tel acte médical ou tel type de consultation ? A quoi correspond ce forfait de 1 euro qui apparaît sur les relevés de remboursements ? Quels frais sont pris en charge par les mutuelles ?...

Confrontés à un système de soins devenu quasi incompréhensible au fil des années, les particuliers se disent souvent désarmés, notamment quand il s'agit de savoir à quoi correspondent les tarifs de santé. Avec la création, au 1^er janvier, d'une nouvelle vignette de remboursement de médicaments, qui sera orange cette fois, et la hausse annoncée des cotisations des mutuelles de 5 %, la tâche ne devrait pas leur être simplifiée en 2010.

"Comprendre les tarifs de santé est désormais aussi complexe que comprendre sa facture de téléphone", observe Christian Saout, le président du Collectif interassociatif sur la santé (CISS), qui représente les patients. M. Saout regrette que, contrairement aux télécommunications, il n'existe pas dans le secteur de la santé d'agence de régulation.

Related:

• The French healthcare system, even if taken at its best, is like an expensive jewel on a beggar’s neck by Bojidar Marinov

• What the American enamored with French health care doesn’t realize is that the French, too, would love to have such a perfect health system by Guy Sorman

• Call it the grass-is-greener syndrome: the French have their own problems that show there's no such thing as a free lunch — or a free doctor's visit by Investor's Business Daily

The Imperial Japanese Army was every bit as evil as the Nazi SS, and more lethal

More on the Hiroshima era, from Dave (and RWE — thanks to Larwyn):

For those who missed it the first time around: In 1945, “defeated” Japan had seven atomic bomb factories ready to go, lacking only fissionable material. When their IU 92 was sunk, delivery of the U235 fell to the German U234. I have seen U234 survivors interviewed on TV. They are to a man happy that their cargo did not get through.

“Battleground Atlantic” is the book to peruse on the submarine delivery plans. “Japan’s Secret War” details the science and technology of their nuke program.

Japan also had 8000-10000 combat-worthy aircraft stashed in various parts of their homeland. This does not include pure kamikaze planes. 3500 of the piston-engine variety were hidden at one unobserved airfield.

Their most probable course of action would have been to assault the blockading fleet with conventional kamikaze attacks and then mix a few nukes in. Then hit the landed troop concentrations with their version of the dirty bomb.

Any attacks on Honolulu, Los Angeles or San Francisco? Yes. Had aircraft strapped to submarines. Doubt if said aircraft would have had purely conventional weapons.

It was one close race and Enola Gay won by half a nose, no more.

Even after losing their U235, even after Hiroshima, even after Nagasaki, no more than half of the Japanese power elite were willing to give up the flight.

There was a coup attempt to prevent the Emperor’s surrender speech from being broadcast and instead replace it with the orders to begin final fanatical defense of homeland.

Coup failed only because a diverted flight of B29s passed over Tokyo and caused a blackout in the one 20-minute time frame where said blackout could prevent that coup.

This story is detailed in “The Final Mission” which is also a History Channel film.

Of the bombers, 48 took off. Every one of them had near misses and close calls on their way. And every one of them made it home with 192 R3350s quitting for lack of fuel as they taxied in.

What do YOU think kept those evil spirits from running wild that night and doing even more damage to the world?

What do I think? Divine Navigation.

He does help those who help themselves. And that is why we came through in good shape after all.

Marty joins in the discussion, as does Trent Telenko, twice:

The Imperial General Headquarters had planned to sequester the Emperor effective upon the British amphibious assault on southwestern Malaya, which the British planned for late September 1945.

That would also have been when the orders would have gone out to massacre all Allied POW’s, interned civilians, and any other Allied civilians Japanese forces could catch in China and all of Southeast Asia (Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, any Phillipine islands still held by the Japanese, etc.).

Check out the reference to Field Marshal Terauchi (CinC of the Japanese army group – Southern Group of Armies) in the index (page 573) of George Feifer’s Tennozan: The Battle of Okinawa and the Atomic Bomb.

Allied signals intelligence (MAGIC) intercepted and decoded the late July 1945 order from Imperial GHQ to Terauchi to prepare for this.

The Imperial Japanese Army was every bit as evil as the Nazi SS, and more lethal. They’d probably have killed at least an additional 50 million people, more than had died in all of World War Two to that point, before Allied armies could eliminate Japanese forces overseas.

The horror would not have stopped there. An estimated ONE THIRD of the Japanese people (25-30 million) would have died of starvation, disease, poison gas and conventional weapons during a prolonged ground conquest of Japan.

See:

The Most Deadly Plan, Norman Polmar and Thomas B. Allen, Proceeding of the US Naval Institute, January 1998 edition, pp 79-81

and

“Gassing Japan”, Norman Polmar and Thomas B. Allen, MHQ: the Quarterly Journal of Military History, vol 10 no 1 (Autumn 1997), pp 38-43.

Allen and Polmar ran across references to a plan to gas Japan and put in a FOIA request. Eventually they got a copy of a document labeled “A Study of the Possible Use of Toxic Gas in Operation Olympic.” The word “Retaliatory” was PENCILED in between “possible” and “use.”

Apparently there were only five of these documents circulated during WW2. After the war in 1947, the document was requested by the Chemical Corps for historical study. In an attempt to “Redact” history, another document was issued to change all the copies to emphasis “Retaliatory” rather than the reality of the US planning to use it offensively in support of the invasion of Japan.

The “Retaliatory” plan called for US heavy bombers to drop 56,583 tons of gas in the 15 days before the invasion of Kyushu than another 23,935 tons every 30 days after that, and that was just the STRATEGIC bombing campaign.

Tactical air support was in addition to that.

The ground weapons would contribute and additional 1,400 tons of gas shells and there was 8,000 tons on invasion ships.

By way of reference, In shelling Okinawa, 126 4.2 inch mortars on US Navy landing craft fired 28,000 4.2 inch mortar shells in one hour. Since the 4.2 inch mortar shell was the primary gas weapon of the CWS, that represents 400 tons of shells with 98 tons of lethal gas.

At the time of the invasion, 144,762 tons of gas shell munitions were available to the USA for the invasion.

Another 9,356 tons would arrive every 30 days after the invasion.

Chemical Corps casualty estimates for this attack plan were 5 million dead with another 5 million casualties.

Ultimately, it looks like the plan was not approved, but prepared for by General Marshall, since the gas to implement the plan was sent to the Pacific in very scarce shipping space, likely as a back up to the A-bomb.

The US Army Chemical Warfare Service was planning using captured stocks of German chemical weapons and it had transported many of those stocks to the USA. It was in the process of placing many of those chemical agents in US weapons as the war ended.

See:

http://www.bordeninstitute.army.mil/published_volumes/chemwarfare/CHAP2_Pg_09-76.pdf

According to Allen and Polmar, the June 18, 1945 meeting where Harry Truman was briefed on Operation Downfall, the over all plan to invade Japan, by Adm King, Gen Marshall and the rest of the Joint Chiefs was when the topic was broached.

We know now that the decision to drop the atomic bomb was made then, although the notes for the meeting only referred to “undisclosed topics.”

This was our backup to nuking Japan into surrender. If the A-bombs didn’t work, the US military wase going to gas the Japanese people from the air like bugs, and keep doing so until Japanese resistance ended or all the Japanese were dead.

Thank God for the atom bomb – killing 150,000 – 200,000 Japanese at Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved 75-80 million lives.

Notes on Propaganda

New EU Foreign ministry grand poobah, and former CND flunky campaigner Catherine Ashton, we are told was “getting tough” everyplace where it counts. Who’s getting the wood shampoo from the EU?

The EU's new foreign relations chief, Catherine Ashton, was hard on Iran but cautious on Israel and Russia in a lively hearing with MEPs on Monday (11 January).

Except she wasn’t getting tough with who she was “getting tough” with.

The three-hour-long event at the European Parliament in Brussels kicked off a series of 26 hearings with commission nominees that is to culminate in a plenary vote later this month on the new EU executive as a whole.

It’s different when you have to tell that to Medvedev Putin or Ahmedinejad, and not a plenary session of plenary sessionists summitting to plan a summit, to take place definitely some time in the indefinite future.

It is to be noted that this EU-3 “tough talk” routine with Iran has been going on for almost a decade, buying Iran enough time and cover to keep on truckin’!

C Whose Name They Keep Misspelling…

Remember how, last summer, the Apologizer-in-Chief had dominated the news for what, two years, three? And that still wasn't enough to get them to spell his name right? (It was the same with Georges Bush and Condy Rice.)

Well, six months later, there doesn't seem to have been much improvement…

Les détracteurs les plus acharnes de Barak Obama au sein des Républicains, dans l'opposition, vont probablement répéter qu'il ne maitrise pas les questions de sécurité.

As if there was any Doubt

I tell them to stand in the corner. Michael Phillips equates middle-minded “pleeeeeeze-please, Universe, like me” leftism with being a child.

Today, I concluded that the new Leftism, which passes laws to control the behavior of ordinary citizens, what we eat, drink, smoke, wear, sit in, sit on, burn, put in the trash... etc are premised on the Left's desire to be goody-goody children.

With the added wrinkle of things like all of those women who blame their parents for their behavior well into adulthood, and men who act like feral children who were raised in a barn... somehow knowing that doing what their parents found normal (say, getting into your car to run an errand,) are conditioned into believing that they are being naughty, 37 year old children.

The Left has already filled our lives with a thousand laws, rules and suggestions for being goody-goody to satisfy the need of lefties to know what good behavior is expected of them.

To be goody-goody and legal: Don't smoke, wear a helmet, put on seat belts, drive a Prius, sort your garbage, shop at Whole Foods, eat local organic but not fish-farmed, send your kids to Waldorf schools, hate TV, love Al Gore, love Doonesbury, hate Bush, Cheney, Palin, Beck, Limbaugh, ride a bike, wear hiking boots, hate the sun, hate big corporations, drink bottled water, be pro-vegetarian etc...

The dichotomous nature of dramatic swings between good and bad, an apocalypse dangled in front of you for “behaving badly”, figures we are supposed to be thankful suffered for our enlightenment...

Is the mushy-middle-minded left not starting to resemble something it did so much to rebel against in its’ youth, except without the philosophical depth?

Cheeky imps or Cowering in Fear

A similar discussion has been taking place among Europe’s Libertarians (both of them), about the loss of much of the population’s capacity at moral reasoning in the light of merely living by an endless supply of rules in their stead. Rather accurately, the argument goes that living in fear of rules signifies a kind of emptiness of modern and post-modern life which largely reduces the need to reason enormously, even when it comes to decisions related to family life. That this century development in the developed world has amusingly drawn in the past the criticism by the former Communist to call Western populations “weak” and “unwilling to fight” particularly amusing since virtually ALL of public life under Communism was defined by the behavior of people fearful of crossing the line and defying authority.

One for the ages

Definitely a post to print, put up on the wall and re-visit from time-to-time:

In March 2000, Dr David Viner, then a member of the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit, the body now being investigated over the notorious 'Warmergate' leaked emails, said that within a few years snowfall would become 'a very rare and exciting event' in Britain, and that 'children just aren't going to know what snow is'.

Now the head of a British Council programme with an annual £10 million budget that raises awareness of global warming among young people abroad, Dr Viner last week said he still stood by that prediction: 'We've had three weeks of relatively cold weather, and that doesn't change anything.

'This winter is just a little cooler than average, and I still think that snow will become an increasingly rare event.'

One wonders how much of that 10m per annum the good doctor would be willing to bet on his beliefs.

Bread and Circuses for a Domestic Audience at Time of Economic Misery: In the Brave New EU, Old Impressions Dominate

If this, theoretically, is Week One of the rest of the European Union’s new life of unity, power and global impact, then it looks pretty much like the place that has struggled so long to demonstrate its relevance and leadership

intones John Vinocur.

For starters, old impressions predominate. … The first six months of a notionally re-minted E.U. risk being scrambled, rather than a demonstration of new cohesion and strength.

For one thing, the calendar hurts. In 2010, there are important elections in Britain, Germany and France. Voting involving the E.U.’s big players invariably means those countries taking a quasi leave of absence from immediate European concerns. …

Spain took over this agenda-setting, pacemaking role on Jan. 1.

In spite of joblessness at an E.U.-worst of 19.3 percent, a negative rating on its sovereign debt, and a deficit close to 11 percent, Spain, no kidding, is supposed to provide impetus for a new 10-year E.U. growth strategy in time for an inaugural meeting in Valencia at the end of March.

…Madrid, as boss on its own turf, has set up a series of summits — E.U.-Balkans, E.U.-Morocco, E.U.-Latin America, a Mediterranean Union meeting, and possibly a Middle East conference — that look a lot like bread and circuses for a domestic audience at time of economic misery.

According to reports from Madrid, one of Mr. Zapatero’s biggest cheerleaders, Leire Pajin, is even talking about this semester’s routine E.U.-United States summit meeting (usually an hour’s chat, a joint declaration and lunch) as an event of “planetary” significance between “two progressive forces from both sides of the Atlantic.”

Their Own Private Idaho

At yet another fake, loony, long desiccated transnational meal-ticket so loved by Euro-polity we make an interesting discovery. The OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe) will be chaired by rotating head-cheese of the cheese board, Kasakhstan.

Human Rights Watch, another one of those things loved by Euro-polity, find the place to have an atmosphere of quiet repression. Quiet repression and self-important international bureaucracies – it’s a continental wet dream if there ever was one.

Slated to become the OSCE chairman in 2010, Kazakhstan will join the leading trio in 2009 already. It follows that it has just under a year to launch certain changes indicating that the Kazakh leadership means to keep its promises to Europe. As it turned out at the meeting in Brussels, however, the EU is upset by Kazakhstan's idleness these last two months or so. Kajegeldin informed Ferrero-Waldner that everything actually depends on President Nursultan Nazarbayev who only has to make his will known to have the tame parliament adopt all necessary amendments to the acting legislation.

So, as you see, a “tame parliament” is to be considered a good thing by Bruxellois trying to ram something through, not before they are forced to deal with post-soviet backwater public politics, but before they are embarrass themselves.

Kazakhstan's forthcoming chairmanship in the OSCE scheduled for 2010 compels Europe to focus attention on this Eurasian country, vast and rich in natural resources. Former (1994 to 1997) Prime Minister Akejan Kajegeldin, 55, remains one of the prime sources of data on Kazakhstan for European leaders. Kajegeldin aspired for presidency in the late 1990s, joined the Kazakh opposition, and found himself promptly sentenced to a decade behind the bars (in absentia).

Forget pandering for natural gas to Russians who like playing with the tap for fun and profit, this show is even better. Going hat in hand to a president for life for some kind of special access, only to get kicked in the head by the Russians lider maximo again.

You want it? You got it!

For all you "food miles" types, quit yer bitching:

Britons have been warned to brace themselves for an increase in food prices as plunging temperatures leave farmers unable to harvest vegetables and hauliers struggle to distribute fresh produce.

Concerns have now switched to food supply. Sub-zero temperatures have made it impossible to extract some vegetables from the ground. Producers of brussels sprouts and cabbages are all reporting problems with harvesting. Cauliflowers are said to have turned to "mush" in the sustained frost, with the result that only imported ones are available – at more than £2 each.

Waaah! Kapitalizm is Krool!

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

Whatever It Takes?

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

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

Whatever it takes?

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

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

Prudence Dictates another Law

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No liquids near the keyboard

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

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

Ho hum....

Sounding More Soviet by the Minute

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Behold the Katrina-esque Chaos

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

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

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

Bush!

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

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

What have THEY Been Smoking?

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

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

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

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



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

Living like a Teenage Radical Zealot to Survive

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

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

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

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

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

Alas, but for that sage advise...

Mr. Bean Goes to Brussels

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

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

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

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

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

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

¡ Но пасаран !

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

France Admits that the Car Burnings Phenomenon Has Become Banal

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

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

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

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

Two Le Monde readers comment:

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

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

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

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

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

Nous vous renouvelons nos excuses.
Fidèlement,

Eric Fottorino
Directeur du Monde

PETN is Deadly, but Old Hat

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

William Wagener is telling us:

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

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

Human Extinction Program Going Just Swimmingly in EUtopia

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

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

She dropped her crisps.

The Theme is Quite Simple

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

¡No Pasarán! (sie werden nicht durchkommen)

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

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

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

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

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

An Open Letter to Democrat Politicians: America Rising

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

America's Heartland Again Shows How Clueless Americans Are

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

A Festival of Rationalization

José Manuel Barroso is working the only force-multiplier available to a European Union not interested in actually doing anything to earn that respect:

We need to revisit the structures of global governance, to ensure that they work better for people everywhere, and in the interests of both current and future generations. The EU has led the discussion within its own structures and taken it to wider international fora. We welcome the emerging economies' call for reform of global institutions.

In other words: the think the world should voluntarily come under the same undemocratic headlock that the populous entities are putting the smaller or less wealthy members of the EU, and we should, of course employ Europe-centered institutions to do it, the ones dominated by European employees.

The economic crisis has made progress in the negotiations of the Doha Development Agenda in the World Trade Organisation even more important.

The WTO framework, to which the EU has always given priority, is increasingly recognised as being fundamental to our prosperity. It helps to anchor the global economy in an open, rules-based system based on international law

That is, the Doha round that the Europeans killed to maintain tacit protectionism.

Multilateral engagement is essential for dealing with these threats. The EU has multilateralism in its DNA. Others, too, can benefit from its experience. Europeans are long-standing champions of the United Nations and international cooperation, and continually seek to ensure that stability, freedom, democracy, and justice prevail as cornerstones of international relations.

Which is an interesting way to put the passive-aggression that charaterizes anything that happens between EU member states or in the UN where the most extreme and vile resolutions, as unenforcable as they all are, come from nation-states that can do it without any consequence to themeselves, and at no cost to themselves. Pledging tp spend others' money and issuing a pandering condemnation of the politically unpopular hardly amounts to sane or responsible action, let alone "global governance".

As it is, what is in the EU's DNA is totalitarian statism whose only addition in the past 20 years has been to put a smily face on it. If, as Barroso claims, that the EU has a growing role, or lessons to teach the world, their historically-recent revelation that they should stop dragging the rest of civilization into their internecine wars and awful top-down authoritarian ideas about social organization (Communism, Socialism, Fascism, etal), there is scant proof that it won't do as much harm in this century as it did in the 20th century.

Our best and brightest

Wonderful news:

Twelve million low-energy light bulbs were posted to households over Christmas by an energy company as part of its legal obligation to cut carbon emissions, despite government advice that many would never be used.

The reason:

In 2008 the Government ordered the big energy companies to invest in measures for improving energy efficiency and cutting fuel poverty.

Who pays for the 'free' bulbs:

Companies can pass on all the costs of the scheme to their customers. Over three years it is expected to add more than £100 to the average household’s energy bills.

Once again, the reason:

In 2008 the Government ordered the big energy companies to invest in measures for improving energy efficiency and cutting fuel poverty.

Where would we be without our governmental betters?

2009 Closes with Less Veneration of Saint Sylvester

New Years' Eve was declared "relatively calm" in Paris, pot-shots are taken at the NYPD - just because, dontcha know.

Head smashing

Le Parisien report -only- 11 injured police officers and 405 arrests on the Champs-Elysées in Paris. The qualifier being that there were significantly less people out there this year, and the head-smashing took place over a 4 hour period.

The same report indicates that Strasbourg "only burned up a little bit," as if this kind of thing is normal.

Carbeques

After a 30% spike last New Years' Eve, last night's events are reported to have yielded a significant drop in vehicular arson. Some of it can be attributed to bad weather, and my sense is the senselessness of past years' chaotic public behavior has blunted much of it this year, even among feral youths.

International broadcaster RFI reports on its' news blog that the drop can be attributed to a committed intervention by police. Clearly, the use of the "broken windows" apprach to policing has been applied to effect.

The French police will be mobilized in large numbers for the traditional New Year festivities. The night of Saint-Sylvestre normally degenerates [in its' safety]. Last year more than thousand cars had been deliberately burned, or 30% more than last year. Update on the mechanisms put in place to fight against this crime.

Heal Thyself, Pokey

No good deed going unslandered, while taking a non-disapproving position on the improvements in Paris with the special deployment of 45 000 cops, "calm" in New York gets a different characterization. It's declared "draconian".

From east to west across the globe, millions of people thronged the streets of major cities around the world to celebrate 2010 and try to forget within a few hours, the climate of uncertainty surrounding and upheavals of the global economic crisis.

Hard to believe when the numbers out on the streets are down.

In New York, a huge crowd braved the rain and snow to welcome with enthusiasm the midnight descent of the famous crystal ball in Times Square, symbolizing the transition to the new year.

Draconian security measures surrounding the festivities, six days after the attempt of a young Nigerian to blow up an aircraft from a U.S. company flying from Amsterdam to Detroit.

So while the statist tendency give's AFP's scribblers the notion that all is well when it takes place in a relatively small celabration in Paris which had one-fifth the revellers, it's jack-booted when it's employed to protect the nominal one million people who converge on time square.

And the Children Still Blindly Follow his Wisdom

"To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary."

--Ernesto "Che" Guevara

You will Read the Numbers now, Liebschen

Is it a parody of stereotypical irritatingly self-absorbed central European experimental film or the crude tailings of cold war espionage? Be the judge.

N/A in the 2nd Year of Age of O

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty…

- Thomas Jefferson

Mr. Mota will take Care of that “Mr. Socrates,” Ha Ha Ha...

I tell ya man, they’re always working for the people! EUvian justice-ocrats finally catch up with corrupt Leftist official, 2 years after his appointment as the head of Eurojust, the über-mega-state's pan-galactic anti-crime agency.

Eurojust will not suffer any image damage because this was a "national matter" which did not involve the EU agency as such, its spokesman Johannes Thuy told this website.

Except for the fact that the guy in charge of the über-mega-state's pan-galactic anti-crime agency was implicated in the crime of the abuse of office, and the misuse of judicial processes.

I mean, like, so what!, eh?

José Luís Lopes da Mota is Vice-President and National Member for Portugal. He has 28 years’ experience in the judiciary as a prosecutor and as an assistant to the Portuguese Prosecutor General where he was responsible for matters related to management of the prosecution services at a national level and for international co-operation.

- Statement which at the time of this writing is still on
the über-mega-state's pan-galactic anti-crime
agency’s website.

A Massive Intellectual Regression In Which State Intervention Has Become the Panacea

As The Seventh Dimension is published, Michel Garroté brings us an interview with the book's author, namely Guy Millière.

On semble oublier tout ce que l’ouverture planétaire des marchés a permis en termes de recul de la pauvreté et des pénuries en deux ou trois décennies, et entrer dans une grande régression intellectuelle où l’interventionnisme étatique serait devenue la panacée.

Cow Mutilations are Up!

Yea, verily, ManBearPig hath spoken, and he makes about as much sense as nuts who can’t decide it cattle mutilations are caused by UFOs or nefarious secret military experiments.

Do you think that’s a stretch? Wheeeell, how cracked do you have to be to want to put a near septagenarian railroad engineer as the center and final judge of all geophysical science?

WWII-Era Higgins Boat in Action

Hugues Eliard's World War II-era Higgins Boat in action…

Challengelcvp "Objectif Omaha 2009" - Caudebec-en-Caux 31.05
envoyé par koucikoussa

Cette vidéo fait partie d’une série actuellement en cours de montage et tournées en mai/juin dernier durant l’opération "Objectif Omaha". Celle-ci est prise le 31 mai à Caudebec en Caux, lors de notre arrivée [à bord du LCVP PA30-4] à la station des Pilotes de la Seine, alors en route vers Honfleur.

As Revealing as a Barium Enema

The perpetual rigamarole surrounding the formation of the EU over the past 4 decades is rather more revealing of the state of the European political mind than one thinks. It’s an accounting of unredacted reactions, expressions of instincts, and the willingness to live with broad, warm-sounding feelings of communatarianism that wants to magnify it’s power around the world for no reason, while all the parties act like they want to take their ball, leave the sandbox, and go home.

Any detailed account of EU history reads like an endless list of failures, dissapointments, backtracking, non-compliance with commitments, unfulfilled expectations, hard bargaining, dull and unimpressive bureacrats, selfish national leaders, egoistic states, ever-growing scepticism, blatant behaviour of large member states, a ridiculous common agricultural policy, etc ., etc.

What I’m waiting for is the kind of commitment to “something-hood” (one cannot speak of nationhood, or cartel-hood for that matter), that, to a sufficient degree of confidence, will permit them to dismantle their 27 Embassies in every major capitol in the outside world in favor of a consolidated entity, ceding 26 of their UN General assembly seats, and one of their two UNSC seats, and live with the world in a way that the rest of the world must, and matches their own vision of the monoculturalism that they take to be inherent in any other national government on earth.

And what of the dull bureacrats? The European Commission has had 11 presidents since 1958. But who remembers presidents Rey, Malfatti, Ortoli or Thorn? You might remember Santer, but for the wrong reasons. Hallstein and Jenkins are somewhere in the back of the mind, but far from being household names. And only Delors looks impressive, but then many will tell you that he was appointed precisely because no one thought at the time he was a visionary.

And still the EU is somehow considered a big success. The truth is that the EU has almost always been an institution of dull bureaucrats pushing for incremental measures that mostly fail, and those that become successes are acknowledged as such only ten years later.

From without, the only reaction is “big deal”. Far from being a denouement of human advancement and the superiority of impotently wishing for good in the world, it’s a mere sign of incremental evolution from being a culture at war with itself and the rest of humanity for a millennium, an exporter of the most murderous ideas, especially that of the subservience of the man before the power of the state, only to construct an increasingly undemocratic super-state that takes the power people can have over their lives further away from them into a vague multi-lingual babble where one never knows what is getting lost in translation.

The only question at this point is “how long do the children have to be kept being told that they’re making history?” and “how long does Nana have to say they’re special?”

Bright Lights, Big City

Just curious if anyone else has experienced this phenomenon. Whilst preparing for one of the myriad holiday parties served up at Chez Moi, we replaced our regular light bulbs, in a rather longish L-shaped hallway (residential), with the new greendom CFL types.

Upon transiting the newly illuminated and environmentally friendly hallway, guests emerged in some combination of confusement, disorientation and/or irritation (one guest was found flushed, sweating and muttering that his name was Leonard Zelig). Do note, these events happened prior to cordials being served.

Suggestions?