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

Upon reading this headline:

Turtles Are Casualties of Warming in Costa Rica

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reviews in the Comment Section Most Welcome

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

Dreams of their Fathers

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



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

Just Ignorant Enough to be Funny

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

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

Generation Boudin

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

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

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

Reasons why today should be a day to celebrate wildly

Note, should.

Berliner Mauer, a query

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

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

Weekend wonders

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

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

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

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

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

Obama: an American Walter Ulbricht

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

It all began with creeping nationalization.

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

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

Social solidarity does have its limitations...

...even for the most pure of hearts:

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

Our Middle Name is Still Anxiety

Alles ist noch in Ordnung

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

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

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

"Americans, You Are Hated Here"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Country Preacher and His Teenage Son

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

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

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

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

1. A Bible.

2. A silver dollar.

3. A bottle of whiskey.

4. A Playboy magazine.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A good starting point on taxation

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

And what better day to shout it from the rooftops?

Our Middle Name is Anxiety

Alles ist in Ordnung

It made us laugh....