What to do with a Failed State?

In the NYT:

Europe’s unraveling is also a problem for Americans. A fracturing of the euro could drag down the global economy. A breakdown of NATO would mean the United States would have to bear an even bigger security burden. More than a year into their debt crisis, major European leaders are still unable to make the necessary tough decisions. The constructive way out would be to restructure excessive debt, recapitalize affected banks and relax austerity enough to let debtor countries — Greece, Ireland and Portugal are most at risk — grow their way back to solvency. No one country could afford to finance such a solution, but Europe as a whole could.

As it should. Having handed the Greeks Versailles-treaty-like terms, they will likely default unilaterally anyway, and if not, exhibit what I like to call "powerful weakness", wherein every time they suggest default, the public and private financial institutions of the EU get a chill in their neck. Politically, they could behave like Hamas.

Look at this shambles for what it is: a river in Egypt. The EU is effectively one sovereign state when it comes to finance, markets, and economy. Member state nationals can point to one another and tell them to "take one for the team", but what they need to do is print some Euros in a classic devaluation move, and use them to dissolve debts that are at a risk of default internal and international.

Greece then goes into financial receivership. Italy and Portugal might have to join them there too, but if you're a bum and owe people money, then too bad. The intervening years will turn these places into a great investment once prices align with value.

Remember that Greece has in its high-borrowing years used it to show a per-capita GDP figure as high as Germany, but with an economy akin to Bulgaria whose GDP/capita is a third of Germany. The borrowing and sprinkling of this moolah on the 'starving proletariat' is what did this. They need to own up to that by not doing it again, but "demanding reparations" will not work for them.

Consider for a moment the postwar German "Wirtschaftswunder". It is a direct result of the US dissolving their past debts, and was willfully done to restore their economy and feed people. Can these people who tell us that they are mature students of history actually take a lesson from their own history in this regard? Pshyeah right! They won’t, but the markets will.

Siemens' stock fell 4% this past week on the entirely founded suspicion that things will not be wonderful in approximately 90-120 days when the world as a whole stops buying their goods all at once, and the reparations for Greek government, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese borrowing are considered.

Siemens is one of the bellwethers of the northern European economy, just as Kimberly-Clark is a bellwether of what the South American economy will do, and as the EUR-USD exchange rate almost always foreshadows what the S&P 500 will do. Things could certainly be looking better, and they may be trying to price in the stagnation that austerity and debt freezes in a number of European states will cost.

Nonetheless, the German financial entities will themselves do well by the implementation of this Versaiiles treaty in reverse. They will borrow from the Bundes-Godhead-dudes at about 3%, and lend to Greece at the bargain-basement rates of about 5%. Cha-ching, for them. Money for nothing, chicks for free.

That does not mean it will have any effect on a European economic contraction. In fact it might create stagnation where there isn't now. It's a disincentive to lend businesses operating capital, and to individuals for mortgages.

The same dynamic has been going on in the US to bolster the balance sheets of the banks when they were at risk of failure from 2008 onward. It resulted in them not lending money to people and businesses because it was riskier and less profitable than the return on buying government bonds with money borrowed from the Fed and near-zero interest rates.

Ultimately, this is also a socialization of cost associated with the effort. So the talk of “making Greece pay” and “not hurting the taxpayer” are mere distractions. The only way out is to eat the cost, and pass out free haircuts to all, either though default agreements where partial repayments are accepted, and/or a currency devaluation takes place.

Top Secret Tale of Operation Jaque to Rescue FARC Hostages Is Revealed 3 Years Later

For the first time, "Fernando", the Columbian officer in charge of the military operation to save a handful of FARC hostages, including Ingrid Betancourt, has told the top-secret tale of Operation Jaque, recounts Nathalie Guibert in Le Monde. It comes out at the same time as the Juan Carlos Torres book, Libération des otages en Colombie (Ed. Lavauzelle).

…une fois le feu vert donné par le président Uribe, le militaire s'interroge toutes les nuits : "Toutes les nuits je me suis demandé : est-ce qu'on les trompe ou est-ce que ce sont eux qui nous trompent et vont nous faire tomber dans un piège ?"

The New York Times v. the People

Food for thought for Michelle Bachmann and Sarah Palin:

“First they ignore you, then they mock you, then they fight you, then you win.”

- Gandhi

Overlooked in the Facebook Killer Story: "How does it feel to not have your child when I did not have mine for three months?"

The Huffington Post has a story about an unacceptable murder, a story, however, that ignores the (compassionate) left's, the government's, and the divorce industry's contribution to the father going bonkers in the first place.

Ramazan Acar, Australian 'Facebook Killer,' Gets Life Sentence For Murdering Daughter After Social Media Threats

…After taking [two-year-old daughter] Yazmina, Acar communicated with [ex-partner Rachelle] D'Argent by phone and via a bizarre series of text messages, at one point telling her she would not get her child back and asking whether he should kill the girl in a car crash or stab her. "How does it feel to not have your child when I did not have mine for three months?" he is quoted as saying. He also said: "I loved you Rachelle and look what you've made me do."

Stephen Baskerville writes about this in his book:

Fathers of course should no more be excused for killing their spouses or children than mothers, but the common factor in both instances is the intervention of the divorce machinery. In this case at least some of the blame would seem to lie with the legal system.

…the media will go to any lengths to avoid admitting that we are in a massive epidemic of government-sponsored child stealing.

…By depicting fathers as killers, the promoters of compassion and self-described champions of children can ignore the one efficacious, common-sense solution of returning the father to the home and instead respond to the escalating child abuse crisis by increasing the number of personnel and agencies that are perpetrating it

…it is still clear from the figures they report that it is not fathers but mothers — overwhelmingly single mothers — who are by far the most likely to injure and kill their children. Data from the Department of Health and Human Services, an agency strongly pervaded by a feminist culture, consistently show that women are much more likely than men to be perpetrators of child maltreatment

…mothers are seldom punished for injuring or killing their children. "Even child killers can get sympathy if they claim victimization by a male," writes Cathy Young, who quotes one feminist activist as saying, "When a woman [is] so alone that she wants to kill heself and her children, it's not her fault." Judges seem to agree. "Most women aren't incarcerated for infanticide," writes Patricia Pearson

…"The person who is least likely to abuse a child is a married father," notes Canadian Senator Anne Cools. "The person who is most likely is a single, unmarried mother." Maggie Gallagher sums up the reality: "The person most likely to abuse a child physically is a single mother. The person most likely to abuse a child sexually is the mother's boyfriend or second husband." A two-parent family is "the safest environment for children."

Maybe the Alarmists can Overdramatically Declare them Dead

Originating in some UN member-funded echo chamber plucking academic “reseach” out of the thin wind of whatever appeals to the committee, Le Monde Diplomatique published a map to back up the theory that by 2010, there would be 50 million “climate refugees”. Again, plucked out of the thin wind. Not so strangely, especially as it goes with ideas that appeal to the most apocalyptically obsessed elite in human history, the opposite is the case:

"… a very cursory look at the first available evidence seems to show that the places identified by the UNEP as most at risk of having climate refugees are not only not losing people, they are actually among the fastest growing regions in the world."

I know it’s hardly a surprise to our readers, but it helps ground the daily grind of propaganda about what someone-who-built-a-model-based-on-someone’s-study, which never stops coming.

Some day it will be seen as an age of hysteria which is assumed to have been true of the entire population of the western world, much as a mere mention of the turn of the first millennium Anno Domini provokes immediate images of pilgrims immolating themselves before the world ends. As if humanity could have survived it.

The greenies would leave our historical legacy as that of a bunchy of idiots as helpless and confused as our environmental caste.

Love for Sale

Van Rompuy calls the EU a 'corner of paradise':

EU Council chief Van Rompuy rejected the idea the EU is in crisis in a speech in Brussels Wednesday. Commenting on living standards and democratic values he said: "We are living in ... a little corner of paradise." He added if the EU was a musical piece its "basso continuo" would be "prosperity."

This might be what he means:

Zooming in on Cyprus, the survey said sex clubs who use trafficked women from post-Soviet countries, Latin America and Asia and are frequented mostly by Cypriot and Greek men pose a problem.

They should stick to their unnatural affection for the village goat. Much as one could say that the drug trafficking problems that there are in the Americas stem from cash-rich Americans needing nose candy, Europeans apparently are addicted to cheap poontang that doesn’t require any emotional attachment.

The report, out on Monday (28 June), said "the absolute number of victims of severe forms of trafficking is very significant or is significantly increasing" in the three EU members, but governments are guilty of "failure to provide evidence of increasing efforts" to combat the problem.

As is the case with anyplace called a 'corner of paradise':

The EU group-of-nine hold similar or lower ratings than many developing countries such as Guatemala or Malawi.

It’s that concern for humanity that really makes them into an export, I guess.

In Estonia, rural Estonian women are trafficked to sex clubs in Tallinn as well as in Finland, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Italy. But the government spent just a little over €100,000 in total on victim assistance in 2010.

So much for bragging about the art of seduction. They may be eager to prove that they aren’t all pillow biters, but unless they get rid of the dyspeptic personae I suppose they’re stuck paying for it. Of course that isn’t the only thing that they’re beavering about to find inconclusive.

Serbia will continue making efforts for the UN Security Council to adopt a draft resolution on an independent investigation into Kosovo human organ trafficking.

“In Spain, I would still be living off scholarships.”

Spaniards expatriated by the economic meltdown finally discover the new world.

"In Mexico, the world of work has nothing in common with Spain,” Juan Arteaga goes on. “You work really hard, and there is less time off. But hard work is rewarded. Someone who works well moves up fast. I landed here with no money, no network, and five years later I’m handling communications for Coca-Cola in its second global market. And all that by the age of 30.” It’s a career that’s unthinkable for most young people in Spain. Juan sums it up succinctly: “In Spain, I would still be living off scholarships.”

...noted one interviewee. From the perch of the delusions where opinion are broadly taken as fact, reality strikes. It strikes hard.

“In Spain, Latin America is seen as a little child who is still growing up,” Juan Arteaga explains. “But when you get here, you realise that the kid is really, really big. Mexico is a much larger market than Spain, thanks to its resources, its oil, energy, the size of the country, its 110 million people... It's a monster.”

Going about their lives, I’m not sure they quite care ‘how they’re seen’, but I know why it is that many Latin Americans generally don’t get along with Argentinians.

Is the DSK Scandal the 21st Century's Dreyfus Affair?

Michel Garroté wonders whether the Dominique Strauss-Kahn scandal is the 21st Century's equivalent to the Dreyfus Affair?

Primo, … des centaines de milliers de médias, dans le monde entier, se sont jetés sur cette affaire, comme sur tant d’autres affaires, sans objectivité et sans retenue, la photo de DSK ayant fait la page de couverture de plus de 150'000 Magazines de par le monde, soit plus que le drame de Fukushima (cette remarque ne concerne pas le patron de drzz.info, qui est chez lui sur drzz.info, et qui, par conséquent, écrit ce qu’il a envie d’écrire sur drzz.info un point c’est tout).

Secundo, cette nuit on apprenait que l'accusation contre DSK est sur le point de s'effondrer (« cette nuit » en Europe et donc hier après-midi à New York).

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Et tertio, ce matin, vendredi 1^er juillet 2011, la presse française commentait ce rebondissement (je précise que j’ignorais hier, à 11h00 heure de New York, que le pot aux roses allait être dévoilé, hier après-midi heure de New York). Donc, écrivais-je, ce matin, vendredi 1^er juillet 2011, la presse française commentait ce rebondissement.

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Ainsi, ce matin, à 11h32, sur lepoint.fr, Laurence Neuer écrit : « La thèse de l'accusation sur le point de s'effondrer. Un dossier près de se refermer. L'incroyable feuilleton des sept charges valant 74 ans de prison qui pèsent sur DSK depuis le 16 mai dernier pourrait connaître un épilogue dans les prochains jours. C'est ce que révèle le New York Times (ndmg – aujourd’hui) vendredi matin après que les procureurs responsables de l'affaire ont rencontré les avocats de l'ex-patron du FMI jeudi et dévoilé les nouveaux éléments de leur enquête (voir notre dossier : Le scandale DSK). C'est la crédibilité de l'accusatrice qui est en cause. À commencer par son passé. Nafissatou Diallo aurait déjà été impliquée dans des activités criminelles, elle serait notamment liée à un réseau de blanchiment d'argent et de trafic de drogue ».

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Laurence Neuer : « La jeune femme aurait également menti aux enquêteurs au sujet de sa demande d'asile et aurait faussement déclaré être en possession d'un seul téléphone portable alors qu'elle payait ses factures à cinq compagnies de téléphone différentes. Sa crédibilité quant aux faits reprochés à DSK serait également contestable. Selon des enregistrements saisis par les enquêteurs, la femme du Bronx aurait téléphoné en prison à un détenu quelques heures après sa rencontre avec Dominique Strauss-Kahn et aurait discuté de l'intérêt de poursuivre l'homme politique en justice. Le détenu avec lequel elle s'entretenait avait été arrêté pour s'être trouvé en possession de marijuana. Il fait partie des personnes qui ont transféré sur le compte de la jeune femme de nombreuses sommes d'argent, dont le total atteindrait environ 100’000 dollars au cours des deux dernières années ».

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Laurence Neuer : « Les transferts auraient été réalisés en Arizona, en Géorgie, à New York et en Pennsylvanie. Ces dernières semaines, les avocats de Strauss-Kahn, Benjamin Brafman et William W. Taylor, avaient laissé entendre, notamment dans une lettre du 25 mai, qu'ils étaient en possession d'informations qui "diminueraient considérablement la crédibilité" de l'accusatrice. Ce vendredi, les procureurs du bureau du district de Manhattan devraient dire au juge de la cour suprême de Manhattan qu'ils "rencontrent des problèmes avec cette affaire", liés à ces découvertes, et révéler de nouveaux éléments à la défense. Le juge Michael Obus pourrait alors assouplir le régime de liberté sous caution de DSK. "L'audience d'aujourd'hui n'a pour but que de modifier les conditions d'assignation à domicile, précise l'avocat aux barreaux de Paris et de New York Denis Chemla ».

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Laurence Neuer : « Mais compte tenu des révélations du NYT, le juge ne manquera pas de poser des questions au procureur au sujet des faits évoqués dans l'article". Par ailleurs, le procureur et la défense discutent à présent d'un éventuel abandon des poursuites criminelles et de leur remplacement par un simple délit. "Si les révélations se confirment et si le procureur a perdu confiance dans les accusations de Nafissatou Diallo, la logique voudrait qu'il retire les charges ou négocie une charge beaucoup moins grave que les agressions sexuelles ("crimes") en retenant par exemple la séquestration ».

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Laurence Neuer : « Mais les avocats de DSK rejettent pour l'instant une telle éventualité. "À partir du moment où ils ne peuvent pas établir la contrainte, il n'y a en effet aucune raison de reconnaître qu'il l'a empêchée de sortir", souligne Me Chemla. Quand on apporte la preuve que le témoin a menti dans un procès qui se résume à la parole de l'un contre la parole de l'autre, c'est le socle même de l'accusation qui se consume », conclut Laurence Neuer.

The Next Big Thing in Feeble Leftist Tokenism

Dick “Dick” Durban: Illegal Alien Could Be Our Future President

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.