Böse Bozos

With awe-like admiration, we thank Clarsonimus, the evil genius behind Observing Hermann for this find. Germans prone to imagine the Greek government and population as thankless spongers should bear in mind that most of the Greek debt that they’re being asked to help underwrite is owed to German banks.

They should cast that unimpeachable historical memory (more like selective historical memory) they keep rattling on about:

Ritschl: That may be, but during the 20th century, Germany was responsible for what were the biggest national bankruptcies in recent history. It is only thanks to the United States, which sacrificed vast amounts of money after both World War I and World War II, that Germany is financially stable today and holds the status of Europe's headmaster. That fact, unfortunately, often seems to be forgotten.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What happened back then exactly?

Ritschl: From 1924 to 1929, the Weimar Republic lived on credit and even borrowed the money it needed for its World War I reparations payments from America. This credit pyramid collapsed during the economic crisis of 1931. The money was gone, the damage to the United States enormous, the effect on the global economy devastating.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: The situation after World War II was similar.

Ritschl: But right afterwards, America immediately took steps to ensure there wouldn't be a repeat of high reparations demands made on Germany. With only a few exceptions, all such demands were put on the backburner until Germany's future reunification. For Germany, that was a life-saving gesture, and it was the actual financial basis of the Wirtschaftswunder, or economic miracle (that began in the 1950s). But it also meant that the victims of the German occupation in Europe also had to forgo reparations, including the Greeks.

So who exactly is the bum here, and who has been the compassionate society that stepped in, in a time of need and crisis? Germany? Pscheah right!

SPIEGEL ONLINE: If there was a list of the worst global bankruptcies in history, where would Germany rank?

Ritschl: Germany is king when it comes to debt. Calculated based on the amount of losses compared to economic performance, Germany was the biggest debt transgressor of the 20th century.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Greece can't compare?

Ritschl: No, the country has played a minor role. It is only the contagion danger for other euro-zone countries that is the problem.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: The Germany of today is considered the embodiment of stability. How many times has Germany become insolvent in the past?

Ritschl: That depends on how you do the math. During the past century alone, though, at least three times. After the first default during the 1930s, the US gave Germany a "haircut" in 1953, reducing its debt problem to practically nothing. Germany has been in a very good position ever since, even as other Europeans were forced to endure the burdens of World War II and the consequences of the German occupation. Germany even had a period of non-payment in 1990.

It was that healthy dose of USA that seems to have turned that goose-step around. It’s something for them to think about when they’re trying to pawn off the burden onto outsiders using the IMF, or bending Greece over the table for a proper German education.

Good-Bye, Friend

Cardinal Georg Sterzinsky, who kept the Catholic Church alive under the East German state, has died early in the day today at the age of 75.

Officially atheistic as Socialists need to be to justify their power, the DDR tried to convince the people that they had no souls. Eventually, they had to back off and leave at least some of the people to be free to guide their consciences in the way that they choose.

Born in 1936, his childhood years were the hardest times in the lives of the German people as a whole. He was ordained 11 years after the establishment of the Marxist-Leninist state. The best years of his adulthood were spent in a church that had to find a way to survive and coexist with the immutable, seemingly eternal oppressive state.

What is little understood about German Communism was that it was not generous to those in society who face difficulties in life. The churches, particularly the significantly larger Lutheran church, were depended upon for charitable work that (in a strange way,) was not provided by the “workers’ and peasants’ state” the way those needs would be covered in the west by government and civil society. Despite that, the invasive ideology of Marx and Engels was at war with faith. It though it needed to BE the only faith, but failed in the same way that it couldn’t serve the needs of society.

The all-powerful nanny state still depended on the people of faith that they were at war with to provide for those in need. Remember, in a command economy, those who don’t work are of inherently no use to the state.

The EU: One Stop Shop for Bad Ideas

Thanks to Gawain Towler, evil genius, who was more patient to read the story on this pedantic event, we get to meet the world’s stupidest political observation.

The US sent soldiers to Europe to fight the forces of Nazism, noted the Bulgarian official.

"But like 1941, we aspire for Asian leadership in global affairs. With wealth comes global responsibility. That would earn the place in history of the 'Asian Century'."

If anyone should understand the “light-tough” humanism of unelected, ham-fisted Communist states, it would be a Bulgarian. So if you want put over the sense that you want China to start doing a little of the rich man’s burden, such as peacekeeping, real disaster relief, and the like, it’s probably not wise to deploy their troops in EUtopia.

However that wasn’t the high-point of the Brussels Bowling for global luuuurve event:

EU commissioner for international cooperation Kristalina Georgieva said granting the EU a seat at the East Asia Summit would be an important first step towards improving interregional communication.

Europe has been lobbying hard on this issue after the US and Russia recently gained special representation at the summit meetings, among the the world's largest multilateral events.

The leaders of India, China, Japan, Korea, Indonesia and Australia regularly meet at the forum, but "the story of EU involvement, unfortunately, is a sad one," Jonas Parello-Plesner wrote in research note for the European Council on Foreign Relations think-tank last October.

Might this not have something to do with the fact that they don’t attend for the same reason they don’t attend the ASEAN summits? Like, say, not having a coast on the Pacific?

The East Asia Summit (EAS) is a forum for dialogue on broad strategic, political and economic issues of common interest and concern with the aim of promoting peace, stability and economic prosperity in East Asia.

Do they think that they have anything to contribute to the issues discussed there?

I think it’s far simpler. As a needy geopolitical pygmy, Europe needs to try to insert itself between chairs anywhere it can, just to keep from being ignored altogether. So they have to muscle in on any diplomatic event that they can, because a meaningful dose of all of that hardcore balance-of-power, peacemaking, and disaster relief stuff makes them break out in hives and get nosebleeds. What they can do is talk, so long as everyone agrees with their position to begin with, ignores them politely, or the stakes are meaningless, pointless, implausible, or fake to begin with.

i.e.:

Georgieva's officials have recently returned from North Korea, one area where Europeans would like to see China exert its considerable leverage, amid reports of malnutrition due to failed economic policies.

If that isn’t a surprising, controversial statement, I don’t know what is, by gum. It’s only parroting what the US has been telling the Chinese for a little over a decade.

Karalambous’ Krazy Kristallnacht

Welcome to the third world.

Athens is obviously competing with Vancouver’s placid charm.



Apparently it’s all about Communists and Nationalists duking it out over, well, nothing as usual. Anything that they trash isn’t going to end their austerity.

It reminds me of another great moment in Greek history. Under Nazi occupation, both the Communists and Nationalists opposed the Nazis, but decided instead to use force against one another.

These resistance groups launched guerrilla attacks against the occupying powers and set up large espionage networks, but by late 1943 began to fight amongst themselves. When liberation came in October 1944, Greece was in a state of crisis, which soon led to the outbreak of civil war.

Sad but True

In a comment to a post my Mark Steyn writing in National Review’s The Corner, we find a chillingly familiar notion described by an American Conservative living in Belgium:

I do not trust the "right wing" political parties in Europe. I don't think they are the same as the Republican party in the US. These parties often use language that resonates with American conservatives, but my fear is that their real root system lies closer to the "liberal fascism" that Jonah rights about. There really seems to be a racist, xenophobic undercurrent in some of these parties. It has happened too many times that when I talk to a "right winger" that he starts talking about the good points of Hitler and conspiracy theories about the Jews.

My real fear is that when the economy inevitably collapses in Europe, a neo-nazi movement will gain power once again. In my opinion, this is even a bigger danger than radical Islam. This seems impossible in the present political environment, but things can shift very quickly. The present political system in Europe, as bad as it is, might prove much better than the system that replaces is.

I know the type. It’s not so much a caged heat you feel off them about it, but a crazy vibe when it comes to masses of folk of a certain flavor or sort, despite the occasional discussion of the rights and imposition on the individual, the ideas come somewhere behind their “pedigree”.

European do-gooders working overtime to torment drivers

While American cities are synchronizing green lights to improve traffic flow and offering apps to help drivers find parking, many European cities are doing the opposite: creating environments openly hostile to cars.

That is how Elisabeth Rosenthal starts her International Herald Tribune article in which — naturally — notions of (alleged) equality and (so-called) fairness predominate ("it’s not really fair to everyone else if you take the car,” says Zurich’s chief traffic planner, Andy Fellmann; while city official Pio Marzolini adds that "I can’t get used to the idea that I am worth less than a car”).

The methods vary, but the mission is clear — to make car use expensive and just plain miserable enough to tilt drivers toward more environmentally friendly modes of transportation.

… “In the United States, there has been much more of a tendency to adapt cities to accommodate driving,” said Peder Jensen, head of the Energy and Transport Group at the European Environment Agency. “Here there has been more movement to make cities more livable for people, to get cities relatively free of cars.”

… To that end, the municipal Traffic Planning Department here in Zurich has been working overtime in recent years to torment drivers. Closely spaced red lights have been added on roads into town, causing delays and angst for commuters. Pedestrian underpasses that once allowed traffic to flow freely across major intersections have been removed. Operators in the city’s ever expanding tram system can turn traffic lights in their favor as they approach, forcing cars to halt.

Around Löwenplatz, one of Zurich’s busiest squares, cars are now banned on many blocks. Where permitted, their speed is limited to a snail’s pace so that crosswalks and crossing signs can be removed entirely, giving people on foot the right to cross anywhere they like at any time.

As he stood watching a few cars inch through a mass of bicycles and pedestrians, the city’s chief traffic planner, Andy Fellmann, smiled. “Driving is a stop-and-go experience,” he said. “That’s what we like! Our goal is to reconquer public space for pedestrians, not to make it easy for drivers.”

…there is grumbling. “There are all these zones where you can only drive 20 or 30 kilometers per hour [about 12 to 18 miles an hour], which is rather stressful,” Thomas Rickli, a consultant, said as he parked his Jaguar in a lot at the edge of town. “It’s useless.”

…It often takes extreme measures to get people out of their cars, and providing good public transportation is a crucial first step. One novel strategy in Europe is intentionally making it harder and more costly to park. “Parking is everywhere in the United States, but it’s disappearing from the urban space in Europe,” said Mr. Kodransky, whose recent report “Europe’s Parking U-Turn” surveys the shift.

…With politicians and most citizens still largely behind them, Zurich’s planners continue their traffic-taming quest, shortening the green-light periods and lengthening the red with the goal that pedestrians wait no more than 20 seconds to cross.

“We would never synchronize green lights for cars with our philosophy,” said Pio Marzolini, a city official. “When I’m in other cities, I feel like I’m always waiting to cross a street. I can’t get used to the idea that I am worth less than a car.”

Thanks for the Rubber Crutch

Don’t they realize that they eventually have to buy that oil back?

In an effort to supply Europe with the light-sweet crude it’s lost from Libya, play Sun Tzu with OPEC, and collectively keep otherwise helpless looking elected officials in office, 60 million barrels of oil will be released from strategic reserves in the world. Half of it is coming from the US. Seemingly proposed by one of the states involved, it’s surely seen as another dose of economic stimulant for a chaotic Europe, a teetering China, and an economically enfeebled US.

And the White House backed it in what must surely be a passive way – that of a “best choice among those offered”, and likely didn’t initiate the idea. Surely it seemed to be an economic positive, based on spending behavior in the US being closely tied to the price of gas, but it is starting to look more like a date-rape drug than a sugar pill.

It also displays the continued chaotic nature of the US administration’s behavior. On one hand, it manages this effort. On another, it harasses Boeing to the degree that buyers, eternally playing Airbus and Boeing off against one another and sitting on the fence. It’s not hard to get the sense that the extent that the Airbus’ recent jackpot in aircraft sales are based on buyers looking at the sad misuse of what is meant to be a mediation board, the NLRB, into an anti-capitalist voodoo priestess, and seeing contract fulfillment difficulties in their future.

That the White House seems eternally held hostage by loons is not a revelation. That they are largely blind to the consequences of their ardent crusade to build a bridge to the 19th century is. “Labor” used to be made up of Labor, and thus actually understood industry. Now it looks more like it’s populated by the graduating class of some sort of Bedwetting Social Justice Campaigners’ Reeducation Camp, not to mention law school.

I could even see the frustration in the eyes of the old warriors myself, having had a casual conversation with a higher up in an American Machinist Union. We discussed education and economics. While our social philosophies are different, I learned a great deal. He knew a great deal. He learned it in industry.

While the role of labor can, has, and will be debated, the American zeitgeist is closer to the mature, intelligent engineer from that Machinists’ Union than they are to the post-modern attendants around the alter of the political and social left, who don’t actually know much about a chain of production, and actually seem to think rather little of the American skilled or unskilled worker that they are presuming to “save” from their very own nature.

The shorthand goes that there are makers and takers. it is truer than you think that makers pursue knowledge and skill, and that takers have their response-set programmed into them by political activists not employed in a productive capacity or from educators. Makers inspire makers. Takers turn potential makers into takers.

French Diplomats Raging As Foreign Spending Drops and as France Allegedly Lags Behind "les Anglo-Saxons"

Sur les planches de Deauville, accueillant le G8 hier, sur la Croisette demain pour le G20, il est facile de jouer une pièce de théâtre et de laisser croire que la France a les moyens de ses grandes ambitions déclaratoires.

France is losing the soft power battle, charges a group of French diplomats named Groupe Marly in Le Monde, and French diplomacy is nothing but a sand castle — a sand castle that will be swept away by the next tide. A closer view of the details of their rant shows that the diplomats are angry that spending (for, say, essential (sic) UN organizations like UNWRA) is on its way down, coupled with frustration that the French are lagging behind "the Anglo-Saxons".

Nous aimerions applaudir sans réserve à cette séduisante mise en scène. Il y a tant à faire pour gagner les paris d'une mondialisation plus juste et plus humaine. Mais, si on passe dans les coulisses, les illusions s'évanouissent. Le château de sable de la diplomatie française est proche de s'écrouler à la prochaine marée...

… La diplomatie de crise, des communiqués et des coups médiatiques est la plus visible. Mais, à l'opposé de la diplomatie "de perron", la diplomatie de l'influence et la coopération souffrent gravement. La France est en train de perdre la bataille du soft power, qui se joue sur le terrain et à long terme.

…Se vanter dans les discours officiels de disposer du deuxième réseau diplomatique après les Etats-Unis est de la poudre aux yeux. Année après année, ce réseau s'appauvrit et devient une coquille vide. Qu'est-ce qu'une politique d'influence sans hommes et sans femmes pour la faire vivre sur le terrain ? Après avoir réduit ses effectifs de 10 % entre 1994 et 2005, le petit ministère des affaires étrangères (15 500 agents au total) doit en sacrifier deux mille de plus d'ici 2013, au titre de la révision générale des politiques publiques (RGPP).

… Quel que soit le secteur d'activité — culturel, linguistique, coopération universitaire et scientifique, audiovisuel, missions et invitations de jeunes talents et d'experts —, la baisse des moyens depuis 2008 varie de moins 33 % à moins 50 %, voire conduit à la disparition de pans entiers de notre coopération.

Nos partenaires y voient au mieux la marque d'un décalage entre les paroles et les actes, au pire, celle d'un sérieux déclin, et les amis de la France s'en inquiètent partout dans le monde.

Enfin, en matière d'aide publique au développement, nous nous vantons d'être le troisième donneur d'aide derrière les Etats-Unis et le Royaume-Uni. En fait, l'aide publique au développement (APD) française repose pour 40 % de son montant sur des remises de dettes et sur la croissance très rapide des prêts bancaires accordés par l'Agence française de développement (AFD) aux pays émergents.

… Faute de peser financièrement, nous influençons de moins en moins les débats et les décisions dans les pays africains prioritaires pour nous, et ce sont les Anglo-Saxons qui s'imposent dans les enceintes où se concertent les bailleurs.

A Dose of their Own Medicine

For decades, Europeans as outsiders have been fond of demanding a two-state solution in part of the former Trans-Jordan. After all, it's been the hobby-horse of the bien pensent for decades.

Fond of telling themselves that the financial crisis has revealed a fault line between [____] and [____] (like... WHATever) in some strange class-warfare argument, it releals little more than a society that seems to actually seek out reasons to convince the world that it has a bipolar disorder.

And let’s not get started on who is and is not in favour of reducing the interest rate Ireland pays on the bailout loans…

(Hint: The Commission is in favour and the President of the European Council is in favour. The Chair of the European Parliament’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee is in favour. The IMF has no problem. The Élysée is not so keen.)

Now, can anyone tell me why the evil markets don’t trust Europe to agree a clear way out of the Greece tragedy?

Now they alone appear to be demanding two-state solutions all over EUvia.

With Belgium, as with most marriages, the split wasn’t foreseeable from the beginning. Despite claims by the Flemish nationalists to the contrary, when it was formed Belgium was anything but an artificial nation.

Even if a solution is found, it will only delay the problem until the next crisis. The Czechoslovakian example demonstrates that in such a case it is better to break up. In that country, too, everyone wondered why a split was absolutely necessary. Just like the Flemish and the Walloons, the Czechs and the Slovaks seemed destined to remain together eternally.

So who’s going to smuggle in the Katyushas? Y’know it’s for a ‘liberation movement’ and all... How could any proper >Gutmensch be opposed to that?

Why haven’t Europe’s politicians explained to taxpayers that when it comes to bailouts there is no such thing as a free haircut?

Are Europe’s politicians trying to save the euro or sink it?

asks Melvyn Krauss, Emeritus professor of economics at New York University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

… like the three deceased characters in the 1944 Sartre play “No Exit” who are locked in a room together for eternity, there is no exit for the participants in the euro project — no matter what Europe’s politicians do. The pain of leaving would be too great.

When I asked a high-ranking Dutch official if he could contemplate the Netherlands ever leaving the euro, the answer was: “Never — we are making too much money from it.”

How so?

“The periodic devaluations of the southern currencies under the old system were really costly for our exports,” the northern official explained. “We don’t want to go back to that.”

The Germans and Dutch are exporters who will not give up the trade gains from the euro just because they are being diminished by bailout payments to the south. Populist politicians in Germany and the Netherlands are missing the most important part of the euro story by focusing exclusively on the bailouts.

The populists are particularly keen to force the private holders of Greek debt (mostly German and French banks) to take a substantial “haircut” for further government aid to Greece. But northern taxpayers might lose their enthusiasm for private haircuts if they realized that it is they who are on the hook for the risk the European Central Bank has taken on. The E.C.B.’s risk is taxpayer risk.

… Why haven’t Europe’s politicians explained to taxpayers that when it comes to bailouts there is no such thing as a free haircut?

Lefty iZ predictable.

Mark Humphreys maintains a near encyclopaedic post on the mind of the left.

Boring? Have you tried to live with anything else? Because I have, and it’s dull AND repressive.

The New York Times: where is the George Soros for the Middle East and North Africa?

Sometimes the conventional wisdom is right

notes Chrystia Freeland in an International Herald Tribune article that starts out well and logically and common-sensically, but later turns out to be a… Soros love-fest… One of the professors at the Budapest university praised as "one of the intellectual centers of the region’s political and economic transition" tells Freeland that “I may be the only academic in town who didn’t study on a Soros scholarship”.

The Arab Spring really is the most important political event since the 1989 revolutions in Eastern Europe. So it makes sense to find out what the East Europeans make of the uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa and to ask what they think it will take to transform the promise of these rebellions into a lasting political transformation.

…The scholars and activists who gathered [in Budapest to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Central European University] spent a lot of time debating the lessons of their revolution for the Arab Spring. Here are four of them:

The first is that selling democracy has become harder now than it was 20 years ago. That’s because, as Aryeh Neier, the human rights activist and head of the Open Society Foundations, explained, the equation of prosperity and democracy, which was universally acknowledged in 1989 and the period that followed, has broken down today.

… A second big idea was that while technology has probably made it easier to rebel against authoritarian governments, it has also made it tougher to build enduring, deeply rooted democratic polities to replace them.

… The third big idea was a historical one. Wanda Rapaczynski was one of the leading creators of Poland’s vibrant free press. But she identified a critical external force in her explanation of what made the revolutions in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic succeed: Europe and the promise of membership in the European Union.

… The fourth lesson of Central Europe for the Arab Spring came from the founder and chief benefactor of Central European University — George Soros. Mr. Soros, who fled Budapest as a teenager and made his fortune in the United States, suggested that the history of his homeland offered an example for the Arab revolutions that was both cruelly realistic and ultimately inspiring.

… Listening to these friends and patrons of Central Europe’s successful revolutions prompted one big question. It was left unspoken — and that is probably appropriate, since it is most properly asked on the banks of the Nile, not the banks of the Danube. It is this: Where is the European Union and where is the George Soros for the Middle East and North Africa?

…where is the George Soros for the Middle East and North Africa?

Good-Bye Friend

Peter Falk, 1927-2011

Even Propagandastaffel Gets it

Europeans have discovered that they do not have the means to achieve their ambitions - or even to protect themselves.

Ignore for a moment the chillingly infantile notion of what some of their 'ambitions' might be - that really doesn't matter when your forces are undertrained, underequipped, and insufficient to even deal with Muammar Gadaffi, let alone the Bashir Assad that's also killing civilians and creating instability just across the sea lanes of the EU.

The first of these is that even those Europeans who believed that military dependence on the United States was the best means of guaranteeing cohesion among the western powers were obliged to revise their position when the Americans did not lift a finger to provide support for Georgia in its conflict with Russia. In August 2008, the most Atlanticist Europeans suddenly discovered that America was prepared to prioritise the stabilisation of its relations with Moscow over one of its most faithful European allies and assert its own interest to the detriment of a solidarity that Europe had believed to be unshakable.

To call them 'faithful' is both questionable and has that strange emotionalization that Visigoth 'non Anglo-saxons' seem to insert in the least meaningful ways.

The United States is no longer willing to fund European defence, and there is hardly any reason to expect that this will change anytime soon. That was the perfectly explicit sense of Robert Gates' message, which is already evident in the Americans' deliberate strategy of leaving Europeans in the front line in Libya. Now that they have been forced to shoulder most of the burden of this operation, European states must be aware that they will have to increase military spending, especially in the context of the Arab Spring and a prolonged period of instability in a region that extends from Rabat to Sana'a.

Which, if they are even unable to find the GWOT on a map - put it into a into a geographic and cultural context, might at least let them come to grips with the fit of silliness Europe has been putting itself through for the last decade. The fact is that those who saw Europe as a soft target were preoccupied with the Americans who were disrupting their networks and drawing their effort further and further away from 'Fortress Europe' itself.

Afghanistan: Realities on the ground must determine strategy

In late 2009, President Barack Obama announced U.S. troop reductions in Afghanistan would begin in July 2011

writes Marco Vicenzino as France immediately picks up from the Apologizer-in-Chief's speech and decides to withdraw as well.

As the self-imposed deadline approaches, a token drawdown should suffice for the president to save political face without seriously risking operational effectiveness. Realities on the ground must determine strategy. The president’s deadline was always illusory. It was a concession to placate his party’s grassroots when announcing the Afghan surge of 30,000 troops. It also puzzled allies, confused publics in NATO member-states and undermined the international mission’s credibility.

Undoubtedly, a lasting political settlement with insurgents presents the only way out of the current conflict.

However, Obama’s public eagerness for negotiations creates the risky perception of a rush for the exit door. Sensing weakness, insurgents may drive an even tougher bargain. The insurgency is far from monolithic. Unless a broad consensus emerges in its ranks, negotiations will prove futile.

In addition, it is naïve to think Osama Bin Laden’s death or increased drone attacks alone will force rebels to the table. Most grievances remain local. Unless substantially addressed, little will change.

Finally, a Form of Renewable Power...

...that even Erik can get behind.

If NATO is “an essential source of stability in an unpredictable world,” heaven help us all

In a reply to Ivo H. Daalder's reaction to a Geoffrey Wheatcroft opinion article, Sarwar A. Kashmeri voices doubt regarding the former's "surreal world of NATO":

Not surprisingly, most of America’s next generation of military leaders has lost confidence in NATO. At a recent talk I gave at an elite U.S. military institution, just five participants out of an audience of some 60 raised their hands when asked how many believed NATO ought to continue in business.

An American colonel, recently returned from Afghanistan, told me that when he asked an officer from a European NATO member country to lead a supply convoy one evening, the officer explained that he was only paid to work for a set number of hours and his working day was done. Reminded that there was a war in progress, the officer said, “Maybe your country is at war, but not mine.”

… This European/American schism within NATO is further aggravated by a split between Central and Eastern European members on one side, and Western ones on the other. The former continue to regard Russia as a threat, the latter do not. If this NATO is “an essential source of stability in an unpredictable world,” heaven help us all.

… After speaking with over 50 military and political leaders on both sides of the Atlantic, I am convinced this will to change will only come about when America decides to take away its defense credit card and asks Europe to take responsibility for its own security.

And a big thank you to Professor Reynolds for the Instapundit link…

Communism Works, I tell ya!

Fanboys of 'radicalism' should beware that their sick ideological frotteur with authoritarian leftism doesn't exactly provide the never-ending peace and harmony that they'd like to think it does. Here's your real living socialism, Sparky:

In one account, a male guard who could not bear his hunger killed his colleague using an ax, ate some of the human flesh and sold the remainder in the market by disguising it as mutton, the report said, without giving any further details such as when the alleged crime occurred.

- Chapeau to One Free Korea

Dick Morris Brings Up Mitterrand and Lenin As He Analyzes Obama's De Facto Attempt to Bring the US Into the European System

Dick Morris discusses the lesson that Europe's socialists learned after President François Mitterrand's party lost legislative elections following his attempt to socialize the French economy — and how Barack Obama, 30 years later, fits into the arrangement (and why he is so popular in Europe, and indeed is deserving of such honors as the Nobel Peace Prize)…

Update: The Nobel Prize is really Obama's payback for disciplining the unruly United States and taming it to be a member of the European family of nations

Europe wants to reverse the American Revolution and re-colonize us, and it sees in Obama a kindred spirit willing to do its bidding.

The Axis of Feeble

John Rosenthal, writing in the Weekly Standard's blog, paints a perfect portrait of the wierd and weepy global left's thinking: support "your own", even if they're murderers who tried to crash-test civilization.

On June 2, the convicted Italian terrorist Cesare Battisti walked out of a Brazilian prison a free man. He did so after Brazil’s supreme court upheld the decision of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to refuse to extradite Battisti to Italy. A member of the left-wing terror group Armed Proletarians for Communism (PAC) during Italy’s blood-ridden “years of lead” in the 1970s, Battisti had been on the run from Italian justice for nearly thirty years, since escaping from a prison near Rome in October 1981.

It even includes a special appearances by geopolitical bungling meddler, Bernard-Henri Lévy, the pasty head of the Socialist Party, and Paris' token gay Mayor..

In the intervening years, Battisti had become a cause célèbre of the French left. Following his February 2004 arrest in Paris, the then chair of the French Socialist party, François Hollande, would visit Battisti in prison, in order to “make clear [his] disapproval.” Alluding to the “Mitterrand doctrine,” Hollande insisted that France had to “keep its word.” Hollande is the current frontrunner to obtain the Socialist nomination for the French presidential elections in 2012. The city of Paris, under the leadership of Socialist mayor Bertrand Delanoë, likewise expressed its support.

Three years later, in May 2007, it was the turn of globetrotting French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy to visit Battisti in prison—this time in Brazil. After the Brazilian supreme court ruled in a first decision that there were no legal grounds to prevent Battisti from being extradited to Italy, “BHL” penned an impassioned letter to the Brazilian president, appealing to him to refuse Battisti’s extradition

Lévy wrote in the typical arrogant terms of those who see themselves as the masters of the universe and unimpeachable high lords of justice.

...I would be dismayed – there are many of us in the world who would be dismayed – to see “our” Lula doing damage to the tradition of welcoming refugees that is the pride of your country. Extraditing Battisti would create a dangerous precedent.

Abusing term the term beyond despair, that "refugee", obfuscating his crimes under the babble of turning his standing as merely "an affair":

Alberto Torregiani was 13 years old on February 16, 1979, when his father Pierluigi was shot in the head by members of Italy’s Armed Proletarians for Communism (PAC) in Milan. The younger Torregiani also took a bullet that day and ended up a paraplegic. Now he spends most days in a wheelchair...

...Cesare Battisti, a member of PAC who was convicted of murdering four Italians in the 1970s, including the elder Torregiani.

His explanation?

“Clearly it’s not enough to use diplomacy, so the people’s voice must be heard.”

The PEOPLE! That generic mass imagined to have a monolithic outlook that matched his own, whether they like it or not.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn even picked up the trope (referring to him as a "militant turned crime writer") in "the words one must say" to appeal to France's "proletariat" on his way to running for office. The electorate, the one that deems itself "humanistic" expresses that feeling by backing a misguided, ideologically driven murderer.

Nowhere in the United States Is There a Single "Undocumented" Worker

The New York Times has another tear-jerker about illegal immigrants — in the course of which we learn that "the Obama administration has deported almost 800,000 people in the last two years" — concerning a tell-all by a former reporter for The Washington Post under the title My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant.

The whole thing about "his illegal American dream" is very touching, but what Jose Antonio Vargas (who, in the middle of the story, turns out, incidentally, to be gay and the whole article is presented as as an innocent person deciding to courageously out himself from the closet, albeit from the illegal immigration closet) — and the New York Times — never points out is how not every one of the millions of "undocumented" immigrants thinks of his or her situation as "the central conflict in my life", feels such a "sense of loss and displacement", and is as studious, or as willing to integrate, as he happens to be. (Indeed, quite a number of these people are sitting in jail for crimes of various degrees of seriousness.)

More to the point, the entire premise of "undocumented immigrant" turns out to false and the basis for another of the left's tales where the poor-innocent-victim take is assumed as an established given. As I have written before,

it so happens that every illegal alien in the United States is documented; every illegal alien in the United States does have papers.

Mexican papers.

(Well, sometimes, they have Honduran papers, or Guatemalan papers, or Belizean papers, or Filipino papers, or some other papers, but let's keep using Mexico as an illustrative example…)

If a foreigner, say an American, were to head to Mexico, for however short (a vacation) or however long a period (to work there) — and whether he entered the country legally or not (!) — he still, guess what, has papers. He has his American papers! Offhand, he has his driver's license, various IDs, and/or his passport…

True, a number of the Mexican and Central American illegals, many of them paupers, may not physically have papers in their pockets to produce, as is the case with many of their respective countrymen, but still, offhand, they retain as many (or as few) papers, and rights, as any other citizen of their country before they emigrated illegally.

Everybody has the right to papers, but everybody does not have the right to American papers!

What is there to be outraged about here? The equivalent is true for Americans, and for other Westerners — for instance the Yanqui Gringo mentioned above, who does not have the right (or an automatic right) to Mexican papers. Just as I, a foreigner living in Paris, do not have right — certainly, not an automatic right — to French papers and do not have the right to vote in French elections (it is not a right I would want — no offense intended — and I would never castigate the French for failing to give it to me or to any other foreigner)…

Of course, the Jose Antonio Vargas testimonial (excerpt from My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant below) evokes sympathy, but not every immigrant, legal or otherwise, is a Jose Antonio Vargas and none of them — none — turns out to be someone who can be called an "undocumented" immigrant.

One day when I was 16, I rode my bike to the nearby D.M.V. office to get my driver’s permit. Some of my friends already had their licenses, so I figured it was time. But when I handed the clerk my green card as proof of U.S. residency, she flipped it around, examining it. “This is fake,” she whispered. “Don’t come back here again.”
Confused and scared, I pedaled home and confronted Lolo. I remember him sitting in the garage, cutting coupons. I dropped my bike and ran over to him, showing him the green card. “Peke ba ito?” I asked in Tagalog. (“Is this fake?”) My grandparents were naturalized American citizens — he worked as a security guard, she as a food server — and they had begun supporting my mother and mefinancially when I was 3, after my father’s wandering eye and inability to properly provide for us led to my parents’ separation. Lolo was a proud man, and I saw the shame on his face as he told me he purchased the card, along with other fake documents, for me. “Don’t show it to other people,” he warned.

I decided then that I could never give anyone reason to doubt I was an American. I convinced myself that if I worked enough, if I achieved enough, I would be rewarded with citizenship. I felt I could earn it.
I’ve tried. Over the past 14 years, I’ve graduated from high school and college and built a career as a journalist, interviewing some of the most famous people in the country. On the surface, I’ve created a good life. I’ve lived the American dream.
But I am still an undocumented immigrant. And that means living a different kind of reality. It means going about my day in fear of being found out. It means rarely trusting people, even those closest to me, with who I really am. It means keeping my family photos in a shoebox rather than displaying them on shelves in my home, so friends don’t ask about them. It means reluctantly, even painfully, doing things I know are wrong and unlawful. And it has meant relying on a sort of 21st-century underground railroad of supporters, people who took an interest in my future and took risks for me.
…This is my home. Yet even though I think of myself as an American and consider America my country, my country doesn’t think of me as one of its own.

Silence; Talk; Action: 3 Responses, All Bad, to the Syrian Revolt

There are three operative approaches to the slaughter in Syria, where a dictator’s army meets a citizens’ uprising with new savagery day after day

notes John Vinocur in the International Herald Tribune.

Silence: from the Arab world — and jarringly so from Egypt and Tunisia, whose successful revolts built the notion of an Arab Spring and raised the possibility of a wave of democratic solidarity supporting rebellions against despotism in places like Syria.

Talk: a vocabulary full of words about the “inacceptable” and “intolerable” nature of the Syrian regime’s “murderous path” from the United States, France, Britain (and even Germany), but no palpable steps to stop the killing beyond a few very ignorable sanctions.

Action: from Russia, which, as Syria’s main arms supplier, is defending its strategic handhold in the Middle East by opposing or blocking U.N. reports on its ally’s nuclear program and arms deals with Iran, and through a probable veto of a condemnation of Syria if it comes up in the Security Council.

In the absence of an activist position involving Syria’s Arab neighbors, the situation’s external backdrop involves three leaders contemplating the ongoing massacres and calculating how (don’t look shocked) their actions will play out in presidential elections next year.

Barack Obama (in November) and Nicolas Sarkozy (in May) will both seek second terms. Vladimir Putin, the pre-eminent figure in the Russian power structure as prime minister, has an advantage over both democrats: no risk of losing in a presidential election in March if he chooses to run — while stroking a “patriotic” constituency that wants him to demonstrate that the West, particularly America, is in retreat, two-faced and unwilling to help troublemakers challenging established authority.

… Could [Sarkozy] confront the Russians on Syria?

Foreign Minister Alain Juppé has said that if Russia chooses to veto a French-sponsored Security Council resolution condemning Syria (the United States supports it at a distance), “it will be their responsibility.” French presidential politics would then leave Mr. Sarkozy with a hard time not defining that responsibility.

The United States, in a lower octave, and without specifically mentioning Russia, has said through its U.N. ambassador, Susan E. Rice, that “we will be on the right side of history if it comes to a vote” in the council, and that other countries’ refusal to approve Syria’s censure “will be their responsibility to bear.”

Talking about historical good and evil when it concerns Russia is a novelty for an Obama administration that has characterized the Cold War as a kind of neutral event.

…doing nothing about [the Syrian slaughter], or avoiding focusing on Russia’s responsibility, could well be a re-election campaign liability for both the French and American presidents.

Once Mr. Putin or President Dmitri A. Medvedev emerges as a candidate later this year, how could Mr. Sarkozy and Mr. Obama not confront the rigged nature of the Russian presidential election without exposing themselves to accusations of having failed in their judgment of Russia’s capacity for change?

Not Like Chicken

Greenie says: "eat shit and die!" What could possibly be greener than repulsion and feeding people human pathogens?

Mitsuyuki Ikeda, a researcher from the Okayama Laboratory, has developed steaks based on proteins from human excrement. Tokyo Sewage approached the scientist because of an overabundance of sewage mud. They asked him to explore the possible uses of the sewage and Ikeda found that the mud contained a great deal of protein because of all the bacteria.

The researchers then extracted those proteins, combined them with a reaction enhancer and put it in an exploder which created the artificial steak. The "meat" is 63% proteins, 25% carbohydrates, 3% lipids and 9% minerals. The researchers color the poop meat red with food coloring and enhance the flavor with soy protein. Initial tests have people saying it even tastes like beef.

Dziękujemy Prezydencie Ronald Reagan

"Ronald Reagan is a Polish hero" exults Janina, as she sends us the website that underlines the importance of celebrations which are to be organized in many Polish towns on June 27. You can also like the event's Facebook page.

The initiative in Poland commemorating the 100th anniversary of the birthday of Ronald Reagan … has been a civic action directed to all those who are close to the values​​ adhered to by President Reagan and who appreciate his undeniable contribution to the overthrow of communism and the recovery of freedom. Our goal is to pay homage and express gratitude to President Ronald Reagan, using the 100th birthday anniversary to remind public opinion in Poland of his character, his achievements, and his ideals, to which he was faithful.

We invite everyone to testify in the Memorial Book, which after closing will be printed and sent to the Ronald Reagan Library in the United States.

We invite institutions, associations, governments, businesses, media, etc. to take in their fields of activity of initiatives to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan's birth. Remember that it is to a large extent thanks to Ronald Reagan that today we can enjoy freedom of association and civic activities, social and economic. All who choose to take any initiative, please let us know. We will inform, encourage and inform the media.

Is Kung Fu Panda 2 "a Metaphor for the China-US Struggle"?

I recently rather enjoyed the (3-D) experience of watching Kung Fu Panda 2, so it was with some dismay that I learned, from Jacques Mandelbaum's film review, that it might be an anti-American film. (Of course the Le Monde reviewer puts in in a more neutral light.)

Il est vrai que ce dessin animé invite à être compris comme une métaphore de la lutte sino-américaine pour la suprématie mondiale.

Can it be true?! That this cartoon "prompts to be understood as a metaphor for the China-US struggle for world supremacy"?! Or at least for a China-US struggle proper?!

If that's the case, the heroes of the movie (Po, the Furious Five, the master — all of them wise, honest, and upright — and the whole populace that they are determined to protect — all of them innocent and virtuous) can only be the Chinese, while the bad guys with their evil designs — and with superior firepower — can only be the Americans…

Is this what it's come to? American, and Western, artists and filmmakers giving China's communist dictatorship the image of poor innocent victim fighting for justice, while Western Republicanism and Democracy is to be the destroyer of the peaceful status quo?

The more I think about it, the more there seems to be some truth to it or, certainly, the more it seems that that is how the movie will be perceived among Chinese spectators… As for the Tibetan occupation, saber-rattling over Taiwan, and China's threats to its neighbors, along with the genocide of tens of millions of citizens, those are facts are conveniently left to the side…

(Below is another type of movie that seemingly is not made in Hollywood anymore — check out the Peter Sellers speech about the monstrous Americans at 0:45-0:55)

Recommended

The Patriot's History Reader (Essential Documents for Every American)
by Larry Schweikart, Michael Allen, and Dave Dougherty

Superior Euro-humanism at a Glance

In other words, keep talking until there are no victims left to “rescue”.

Father's Day should be a call to action

Barack Hussein Obama and his socialist cadres are fast-tracking the redefinition of "marriage and family," which, in effect, perpetuates the neglect of children, thus necessitating institutional solutions

writes Mark Alexander as he takes on Hillary Clinton's "thesis [that] suggests that parenthood can be outsourced" and as he asks Who Needs a Father?

Obama understands that to "fundamentally transform America" into a socialist state, the Left must successfully destabilize the three pillars of Essential Liberty: Individual Liberty, Economic Liberty and Constitutional Liberty.

…Marriage is the foundation for the family, which in turn, serves as the foundation for a free society. This principle is especially embodied in the spirit of natural law upon which our Republic is founded.

In 295 B.C., Mencius wrote, "The root of the kingdom is in the state. The root of the state is in the family. The root of the family is in the person of its head."

When fathers do not take on their parental responsibilities, broken marriages and families are the result. These, in turn, lead to broken societies.

…an increasing number of fatherless homes result from mothers who separate without reasonable grounds from the fathers of their children.

…Of course, some fatherless children successfully fill the "daddy deficit" by becoming overachievers in the corporate, political or sports arenas, and not usually in a Rule of Law way. A textbook case study would be Barry Obama.

On the official White House website, the bio for Obama claims, "His story is the American story -- values from the heartland, a middle-class upbringing in a strong family..." While this is certainly the image Obama would like to project, it is most certainly not accurate. Like so many Leftists, his roots are shallow and broken, and they are in no way a reflection of "values from the heartland."

In effect, Obama is the consummate poster child for the consequences of fatherlessness. Though his pathological narcissism has driven him to the most powerful political post on the planet, the phony façade of "a middle-class upbringing" has all but worn away.

The fate of fatherless children like Obama is, at best, a broken heart. At worst, it is the root cause of contemporary American social entropy. It is also the greatest threat to Essential Liberty as established by natural law, because, I would argue, it is directly linked to the broken faith of the fatherless. Broken trust with earthly fathers often results in a lack of trust in our Heavenly Father, our Creator.

Separated at Birth ?

Or brotha of anotha motha? Who can tell.

"The only thing you really have in this world is your family"; Now, thanks to the government, neither we nor our children have that

There really are no surprises on how the system works once you know how it actually works. And it does not work anything like they taught you in high school history or civics class.

Excerpts from the suicide letter of Thomas James (or Tom) Ball (thanks to Arf), who immolated himself on the steps of a courthouse in New Hampshire:

… I could have made a phone call or two and borrowed the money. But I am done being bullied for being a man. … Twenty-five years ago, the federal government declared war on men.

…Almost two years after the incident [of slapping my child], I was talking with [my separated wife] on the phone. She told me that night she had called a mental health provider we had for one of the kids. Wendy, the counselor told my then wife that if she did not call the police on me, then she too would be arrested.

Suddenly, everything made sense. She is the type that believes that people in authority actually know what they are talking about. If both she and I were arrested, what would happen to our three children, ages 7,4 and 1? They would end up in State custody. So my wife called the police on her husband to protect the children. And who was she protecting the kids from? Not her husband, the father of these children. She was protecting them from the State of New Hampshire.

This country is run by idiots.

…Labeling someone's action as domestic violence in American in the 21st century is akin to labeling someone a Jew in Germany in the 1930's. The entire legal weight of the state is coming down on him.

…I was 48 years old when I got arrested here for my first time. So I went looking for the arrest numbers for domestic violence, this new group that I had unwilling joined. I could not find anything. So I wrote the U.S. Dept. of Justice in Washington. They wrote back that they did not keep track of domestic violence arrests. The FBI keeps track of all other crimes. How come not domestic violence? I thought some low level clerk was blowing me off.

At the time, I had mailing addresses in both New Hampshire and Massachusetts. So I wrote to all six Congressional offices, the two Senators from each state and the two Congressman. They like doing favors for constituents hoping you will favorably remember their name in the voting booth. All six offices reported back the same thing. They do not know how many arrests for domestic violence have been made. I immediately knew something was wrong. And I also knew this was not going to be good.

…The first thing I found was a study not of domestic violence arrests but of domestic violence injuries for 18 unnamed states and the D.C. in the year 2000. In the study 51% of the injuries were 'no injuries'. So I knew I had a study of police reports. Who else but a police officer would record no injuries?

…[According to the informal study I did, the] number I have now in 2011 is 36 million adults have been arrested for domestic violence. I have a gut feeling this number could be as high as 55 million. But I only have data to 36 million. So 36 million it stays. And there is a really cool trick you can do once you have this number. You can find out how many American men. women and children ended up homeless because of these arrests.

… When then a man is arrested for domestic violence, one of two things can happen. If they are only dating and have separate apartments, then he can head home. But if they are living together, then this fellow has a real problem. Bail conditions and then a possible protective or restraining order prevent him from being with her. So he needs to find a new place to live, at least until the charges are resolved. The King of his Castle is no longer allowed into his castle. A feminist name Pence who wrote that was absolutely giddy at that outcome. So he can get his own place if he has enough money. Or he can move in with his mother, his sister or another relative. He might have a girl friend who would let him stay with her. And if none of this is possible, well then I guess he is sleeping in his car down by the river.

If he has minor children, money will soon turn into an issue. Most men I know do not mind paying child support. They want their kids to have food on their plates, clothes on their backs, and a roof over their heads. But it does stress that man's finances. Child support is usually 33% of the man's gross income. Withholding for taxes, social security and health insurance can range up to 28% of his gross paycheck. So a man making $500 a week gross has only $825 monthly left over after withholding and child support. That is not enough money for an apartment here in Central Massachusetts. That does not include other expenses like heating, electric, gas, groceries, telephone, cable, car payment and car insurance. So he is in a financial hole. Estimates of homeless men run 82% to 94%. I am going to round that down to 80%.

…The Dummies on the Potomac. Twenty-five years ago the federal government start pushing these arrests on state's legal systems. Now, we have an economy on the rope.

…So we have 800,000 American police officers arresting one in every six adults in the country and throwing 25% of the men, women and children out on the streets in an effort to enforce a policy that they knew did not work back in1992. And I had always assumed that you needed a man to really screw something up. Oh well, there goes another glass ceiling.

…I told the judge that the decision on whether these two girls [i.e., Tom Ball's own daughters] had a father or a fatherless childhood was not leaving this courthouse.

… Judges are addicted to counseling like a meth-head is addict to crystal meth.

… just exactly where does the buck stop with our legal system? Police have to make an arrest. The prosecutor has to pursue the case. Judges now also walk a away without rendering a verdict, and passing the buck does not constitute a decision. Can those mental health counselors slide the decision over to someone else? Just where does this end? Who is responsible? Who is accountable?

… Some people think [the mental health crowd] are geniuses with their Masters and PH D's. Others think they are so wacky that they call them fruit loops. Well, I have a third name for them. Suckers. They did not get hired for their medical ability. They got these because they were willing to take these cases off the judge's hands. Which has done nothing for the credibility for their profession. We are not here to help—we are here to unload. And they created a liability that did not previously existed. If a judge releases a defendant and he goes kills someone, that judge or the judiciary cannot be sued. But a mental health worker, and their employer certainly can be held liable. Our judiciary is now using the mental health field like a ten dollar whore.

… These people—police, prosecutors and judges—are suppose to protect us. They are checks and balances to prevent injustice. That is why we spend so much money of police training. But if the police screw it up, the prosecutor can catch it. If the prosecutor misses it then the judge can step in to fix it. But if all three have been compromised, then what does one need to do to get justice? Go to the appeals court or the Supreme Court? That seem a little ridiculous particularly when the zero tolerance has arrests for something as trivial as touching.

On one hand we have the law. On the other hand we have what we are really going to do-the policies, procedures and protocols. The rule of law is dead. Now we have 50 states with legal systems as good as any third world banana republic. Men are demonized and the women and children end up as suffering as well.

So boys, we need to start burning down police stations and courthouses. [It all] originated in Washington. But the dirty deeds are being carried out by our local police, prosecutors and judges. These are the people we pay good money to protect us and our families. And what do we get for our tax money? Collaborators who are no different than the Vichy of France or the Quislings of Norway during the Second World War. All because they go along to get along. They are an embarrassment, the whole lot of them. And they need to be held accountable. So burn them out.

… let us look at your life. You are broke after paying child support. She and the kids are not doing any better. None of you are middle class any more. You have no say in the kids education, their health treatment, you may not even have visitation with your sons and daughters. And everything you thought you knew to be true—the rule of law, the sanctity of the of the family, the belief that government was there to nurture your brood-all turned out to be a lie. Face it boys, we are no longer fathers. We are just piggy banks.

… Some where along the line I picked up the crazy notion that it is better to be dead as a free man than to live as a serf. The government needs to be a little more careful about what they teach in our schools.

… [Bureaucrats in the] Office of Violence Against Women (OVW) which is part of the United States Department of Justice … are smart, clever, bigoted and able to lie as well as any politician that ever called Washington home. In other words, they have now become Washington insiders.

But what makes them so uniques is their anger towards men, any man. They are so twisted in their hatred of men that they are positively scary. And it is not what they are doing to men that makes them frightening. You would expect that. No, it is what they are doing to the women and children that makes them so twisted.

… Your wife and kids are Collateral Damage in the war against you, the man in the family. For 25 years these feminists at OVAW have been willing to sacrifice the women and children to get you. And they cannot claim ignorance about what they are doing. Under the VAWA the federal government is funding at least 1,800 homeless shelters. As long as the Office for Violence Against Women exists in the U.S. Department Justice , no American man, women or child will be safe in their own home.

If you ask these feminists why are the shelters all full, they will not say because of all the arrests. The shelters are full because of men. But they knew from the beginning that this was not man bad—woman good thing. The year was 1976. Two things would happen that year.

… how did we end up with the theory of man bad—woman good that the government at all levels is using? The feminist writer Susan Brownmiller wrote In Our Time that," the way you get funding and church donations is to talk about the pure victims. If you talk about the impurity of the victim, the sympathy vanishes." If women get to be good then men get what is left—bad. Man bad—woman good was originally a funding raising technique. After 35 years, it has turned into official government dogma at all levels, from the local cop on the beat to the White House. Men need to be punished, restrained and retrained. Your wives and children are, unfortunately, just collateral damage in this effort to punish men. So you were not dreaming it. There really is a government pogrom against men.

When a man batters or kills, there is no excuse. When a woman commits the same act, there is nothing but excuses. Simple though inaccurate.

… As long as OVW exists then the government is at war with men. As long as there is a pogrom against men, then women and children are going to end up as collateral damage.

… Washington has not got a friend in the world. Even the British and Israelis loath them now. Kind of a bad time to be losing domestic support. And what they done over the last 25 years? They have wiped out the middle class pandering to a special interest group of bigots. And in typical Washington fashion, they did not even know they did it.

This Ivy League inbreeding in Washington has produced an elite that knows what best. Everyone else—husbands, wives, police officers, prosecutors, judges, attorney generals and guardian ad litems—are to shut up and do what they are told. The rule of law is gone, replaced by the policies, procedures and protocols …

… Betty Friedan wrote that the feminist revolution, like any revolution, would have its excesses. Losing the rule of law is too great to call it a mere excess. It is a catastrophe. It is the heart, mind and soul between the people and their government. These feelings of betrayal by losing it may be permanent.

… you replace the federal government or not, men are still going to need a legal defense center for men. Something like the NAACP used to get black people their rights. The only checks and balances in the Second Set of Books is the First Set of Books. Which means lawsuits. Now I know you guys are broke. Some of you have had your wives and kids thrown into homelessness. So I completely understand when you tell me that you are broke. But if everyone who has been arrested throws in $10.00 a year then the legal defense center will have a war chest of $360 million. You can buy a whole bunch of lawsuit with that kind of money.

… The smartest person I knew in this life was my mother. Perhaps that is true of all of us. Maybe I just got lucky. … I must have heard [her one favorite saying] a thousand times in the eighteen years I lived under her roof. It always came at the end of the conversation as she peeled away to see if it was time for Perry Mason or Lawrence Welk. She would turn her head to the side, and over her shoulder she would say, "And the only thing you really have in this world is your family." Now, thanks to the United States Government, neither we nor our children have that.

I have three things to say to my children. First, Daddy loves you. Second, you are my three most favorite people in the world. And last, that you are to stick together no matter how old you get or how far apart you live. Because it is like Grandma always said. The only thing you really have in this world is your family.

Child support was less a response to "deadbeat dads" than a mechanism to create them

In her post about a husband and father who set himself on fire on the steps of a (New Hampshire) courthouse (hat tip to Instapundit), Elie Mystal pours venom upon the hapless victim (whose Last Statement was received by a newspaper the following day).

The key question being, was the father irresponsible, suicidal, or otherwise bonkers, to begin with (cavalierly assumed by Elie Mystal), or did the man become so because (!) of the years of exasperating frustrations dealing with government, with courts, and with all the parasites in what Stephen Baskerville calls the "divorce industry"?

Using Stephen Baskerville's Taken Into Custody (The War Against Fathers, Marriage, and the Family), let's walk her points though, shall we?

(Update: Stacy McCain takes on another feminist's attack on the victim, Tom Ball.)

Elie Mystal: "…you know what’s worse than defaulting on your student debts? Not paying your child support. In fact, I’d even go so far as to say that if you had a choice between paying your student debts or making your child support payments, the morally superior choice would be to pay your child support and circle back to your student payments when you can."

Stephen Baskerville (quotes from throughout his book, Taken Into Custody):

A look at the government machinery reveals that [child support] was created not in response to claims of widespread nonpayment but before them, and that it was less a response to "deadbeat dads" than a mechanism to create them.
…To what extent child support is responsible for the very poverty it is claimed to alleviate is unclear. It has long been known that the vast majority of the homeless are male. Widespread anecdotal evidence suggests that family courts may be partially responsible for their plight.
…coerced child support is predicated not on uniting children with fathers but on keeping them apart…
… the premise betrays the true agenda: not to unite fathers with their children but to keep them apart and to pull them more securely into the government enforcement machinery, extending the bureaucratic hegemony into the every corner of their lives…
…social scientists have found that as much as 95 percent of fathers having no unemployment problems for the previous five years pay their ordered child support regularly, and that 81 percent paid in full and on time. Columnist Kathleen Parker concluded that "the 'deadbeat dad' is an egregious exaggeration, a caricature of a few desperate men who for various reasons — sometimes pretty good ones — fail to hand over their paycheck, assuming they have one." Deborah Simmons of the Washington Times observes that "there is scant evidence that crackdowns … serve any purpose other than to increase the bank accounts of those special-interest groups pushing enforcement."
…The comments of a Tennessee judge that "I specifically make it [visitation] so absolutely ridiculous that nobody can adhere to it." was apparently not deemed to be grounds for disciplinary actions, "And I hold people in contempt and put them in jail for it," he added.
…Contrary to popular belief (and centuries of common-law precedent), child support today has nothing to do with fathers abandoning their children, reneging on their marital vows, of even agreeing to a divorce. It is automatically assessed on all non-custodial parents, even those divorced over their objections and who lose their children through no legal fault or agreement of their own. It is an entitlement, in short, for all divorcing mothers…
…child support is no longer primarily a method for requiring men to take responsibility for the offspring they have sired and then abandoned, as most people are led to believe. Overwhelmingly it is now a regime whereby "a father is forced to finance the filching of his own children."

Elie Mystal: "Is this [commenter on the article from the Union Leader website] honestly suggesting that we’ve gone too far in protecting abused spouses and children … ?"

Stephen Baskerville:

Though not classified as a form of child abuse, the emotional devastation inflicted on children by divorce itself is arguably at least as serious as the effects on grown women of the "abuse" recounted by domestic violence groups ("depriving her of clothes"). The psychological trauma and emotional damage of divorce on children has been understood for centuries, however fashionable it has become in recent years to deny it. Judith Wallerstein and Sandra Blakeslee have called divorce the "single most important cause of enduring pain in a child's life."
…accusations of spousal abuse and child abuse made without any evidence are presumed true and used to separate fathers from children for extended periods and even for life, until proved otherwise…
…Unlike any other area of the law, the accusation is enough.
…Most fathers accused of abuse are never formally charged, tried, or convicted because there is no evidence against them. The purpose usually is not to punish a crime but to gain custody of the children, along with the financial awards they bring. The result is the parent never receives due process of law or a chance to clear his name, let alone recover his children.
…"Whenever a woman claims to be a victim, she is automatically believed," says Washington attorney Lisa Scott. "No proof of abuse is required." Jeannie Suk characterizes domestic violence as a system of "state-imposed de facto divorce that subjects the practical and substantive continuation of the relationship to criminal sanction."
…Open perjury is readily acknowledged in family law circles…
…As with domestic violence, most unsubstantiated reports are made during divorce proceedings for the transparent purpose of obtaining custody and preventing fathers' visitation…
…"There is not an epidemic of domestic violence," Judge Milton Raphelson has stated (after his retirement). "There is an epidemic of hysteria about domestic violence."
…Melanie Phillips: "One study included "feeling threatened" as evidence of violence. Even [Britain's] Home Office some years back widened the definition to include the slippery "emotional abuse." That now includes insults or rows. In America, it includes an "overprotective manner" or not helping the children with their homework. … To call it abuse is to batter the language. To equate it with violence is dishonest. To accuse only men of doing it is despicable.

Elie Mystal: "for what it’s worth, I don’t think I’m the only one who would rather face a 'legal bludgeon' than be bludgeoned by a deadbeat father my mom needs to sue every time I have a medical problem."

Stephen Baskerville :

When Heidi [Howard] said Neil was never violent the social worker replied, "You don't need to be beaten to be battered," saying he kept the family checkbook to gain "power" over her, which constitutes violence.
…the political and financial incentives that induce prosecutors, family courts, and child protective services to exaggerate and even fabricate charges of child abuse against parents in order to take away their children. "By far the most powerful incentive to rubber-stamp as abuse charge is financial," argue Parke and Brott. A San Diego grand jury investigation revealed "a system out of control, with few checks and little balance." This system, where justice is blocked by "confidential files, closed courts, gag orders, and total statutory immunity [for judges and social workers], has isolated itself to a degree unprecedented in our system of jurisprudence and ordered liberties."
…Not only has the father's role as his children's protector now become politically incorrect; the divorce machine has perverted it into a fault. Such "male violence against women" as does occur is almost certainly the result of child stealing more often than it is the cause, since common sense suggests that fathers with no previous proclivity to violence could well erupt when their children are taken. "A significant percentage of domestic violence occurs during litigated divorces in families who never had a history of it," according to Douglas Schoenberg, a New Jersey divorce attorney and mediator. At the risk of laboring the ideologically incorrect obvious, one is tempted to say this is precisely what fathers are for: to become violent when someone interferes with their children.
…By using unproven abuse allegations against men to secure automatic child custody for women, feminists are openly practicing in the political arena precisely what they claim is not happening in the courts: unfounded accusations of "battering" to separate children from fathers who are guilty of no such thing…

Elie Mystal: "If you have a Dad who didn’t beat or molest you, didn’t embezzle money from you or your family, and kept his whoring enough on the down-low that he has never had to address it in a press conference, you better be getting that man a present.

"Dads who manage to avoid all of the things mentioned in the previous paragraph are hard to find, and deserving of praise."

Stephen Baskerville:

… The growth of [the divorce] machinery has been accompanied by a huge propaganda campaign that has served to justify punitive measures against citizens who are not convicted of any crime. "is there a species on the planet who is more unjustly maligned than fathers?" writes columnist Naomi Lakritz. "Fathers are abusers, bullies, deadbeats, molesters, and all-around sexist clods who have a lot of gall wanting a relationship with their children once the initial moment of conception is over."
…the media will go to any lengths to avoid admitting that we are in a massive epidemic of government-sponsored child stealing.
So pervasive is the demonization of fathers today that fathers themselves share in it even after they have become its victims. "It is typical for a man to believe … the media myth of the Evil Male," writes Robert Seidenberg. "While he knows that he is a great father himself, he thinks everybody else is a deadbeat dad."

Update: What might Abraham Lincoln's take have been on this?