An Overheated Cultural Wasteland

Completely unsure about everything? Flummoxed? Afraid of any answers you might get? Sound thoughtful: just keep asking questions! The more vast and broad the more smug you can be.

Caption contest, anyone?




Elsewhere: the “true European Spirit” correctly and proudly defined as greedy socially parasitic rioters. Go on... eat the rich, they won’t be coming back, and the poor aren’t hiring. A confusedcultural obfuscator who has tried to redefine human rights to mean the European regard of itself as “cosmopolitan” notes on the Guardian’s Comment Macht Frei that:

In London and Athens, protesters are rekindling the true European spirit

The idea of Europe must go back to a democracy that resists fake economic orthodoxy and false monoculturalism.

So long as you ignore the fact that money does not grow in trees, and that most of Europe’s “true historical nature” when it comes to rioting normally involves one class, nation, and religious monoculture trying to eradicate another one.

Here’s a sample sure to rally those huddled masses yearning to be free:

The most persistent and pronounced feature of Douzinas ’ analysis relates to his effort to underscore the structural ambivalence of human rights. Vibrant sources of critical dynamism and reified crystallizations of socio-historically conditioned forces, rights are, he argues, suppressive and subversive at one and the same time, just as capable of functioning as instruments of imperialism as they are amenable to operating as agents of resistance. This is by no means surprising, for, as Douzinas notes, natural and human rights have long been understood to be comprised of two, closely related but conceptually distinguishable, dimensions. On the one hand, they have been regarded as means of opposing
oppression, be this at the hands of the state and its constituent apparatuses or the diffuse, multivectored networks of transnational governance revered by some as the harbingers of a properly ‘ post-national ’ future. On the other hand, they have been viewed as devices that serve the interests of dominant classes, entrenching and naturalizing those politico-economic structures which are most likely to consolidate their privilege and cultivate their prosperity.

Okay. Once more now. With Feeling...

Getting towards the end, it gets even worse. The “humanitarian” caste is assumed to dictatorial powers, and the purpose of all relief work is to subvert a roundabout description of “the American Empire”. It’s tripe and hate speech given an academic platform to legitimate itself, but that isn’t that much different than everything else in their overheated cultural wasteland where an “eat the rich” fantasy can take the place of thought, and still be taken seriously.

And I’ll Bet you Think He’s Joking...

Hermann, observed in his native habitat:

Germans sort of shocked that Egyptians would actually use the weapons they sell them.

Fables from the Healthcare Paradise Human Warehouse that is Europe’s Well to do North

They’re dying to get out, and functionaries are all too willing to help.

For some, lurking behind this trend is a desire "to ease the finances of the health system."

That this quest for “death with dignity” seems to be the only decent option someone has because all of the others are so poor or are denied to people.

In the Netherlands, the instrumentalisation of death can now be symbolised by a single digit: 4. This is the average number of minutes required by physicians to make the decision to hasten death, while nearly a quarter of the killings were performed without the consent of the patient. The Guardian, which has looked into the 114 cases of British parties who went to Switzerland to commit suicide, found clear evidence that many of them had a chance to cure their illnesses and live in dignity.

When the Vatican talks about “a culture of life” it isn’t limited to some procedure or another, it speaks to a view of living a good and full life itself: whether you can bungie-jump or have gymnastic sex or not. The next time you hear someone say “live a little”, imagine that this also means having an inner life of the soul too.

When the state is involved, expect there to be a greater emphasis on what will seem like “financial Eugenics” as the average age of the population rises, and fewer older people have children to defend their interests.

There Goes Another Failed Five-Year Plan

Remember kids: nothing in reality ever happens without a targeted government objective and planning.

Europe risks missing the train of scientific progress. The EU is advancing too slowly in the sciences to narrow the gap with leaders U.S. and Japan, while China rapidly makes up for its ancestral backwardness. The targets of the failed Lisbon process have been postponed for no less than a decade, from 2010 to 2020. Naturally, concern is growing that budget cuts will only put brakes on a research sector still heavily dependent on state investment.

So let’s try and understand the natural conclusion a reader of the paragraph above would come to. Is it that one should stamp your feet like a 6 year old and demand government funding and direction? Or would it be to find a way despite the government, to do research in the natural way in civil society, the way those who are succeeding at it are doing?

I guess the “future looking,” Cosmopolitan, wise thing to do is as the reflex of the average European would do. To wait for the handout instead of crowding out industry’s opportunity to do the innovating.

Just Another Eye Candy Coffee-table Book to the French

Buffoon, paranoid anti-semite, attention whore and all-around fuckwit Alain Soral has a new book out. It’s called “Understanding the Empire”. I’ll summarize it for you: Jew-baiting, Zionist Occupation Government, 9-11 was a (Jewish cabal led) inside job, and his horrible victimization by Jews because of that Holocaust thing, and whatever other delusions of personal intelligence that get him through the night. In other words, a no-brainer as far as sales in France go: because the world, and particular, Jews, are out to get them, you see. Why they matter enough for anybody to waste their time doing that is beyond me.

When you hover over a photo of the yet to be attacked World Trade Center, the dynamic caption shows two stacks of his book, meant to be as forboding as the book of revelation. It reads: Global governance or a revolt of nations? In 2012, it will all play out between the two towers”

Stanley Kurtz Discusses His "Radical-in-Chief" Book

Uncommon Knowledge's Peter Robinson interviews Stanley Kurtz of Radical-in-Chief fame (Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism)…

Everything you need to Know About the French Exception

NOT culture:



Ah, culture!

Who Died and Made You Don Cheadle Anyway?

In OTHER news from “Febraury 6. 2011 Juch 100” [sic]:

A joint seminar on the theme of "Immortal Exploits of Comrade Kim Jong Il, Illustrious Commander of Songun" took place in Mexico on January 28 on the occasion of his birthday.

Present there were personages of the Mexican National Coordinating Committee for the Study of the Juche Idea, the Committee for the Study of Kimilsungism and its affiliated organizations and the Institute for the Study of the Juche Idea and adherents of the Juche idea in Mexico.

I know that you wanted to know that. Because it sounded so familiar. From 29-May-2009, we all waited with bated breath for the headline:

Kim Jong Il's Feats Lauded

France's Public Works Indebting the Country's Local Governments

Corrèze is the most indebted of all of France’s 100 departments

writes Steven Erlanger,

and former President Jacques Chirac appears to be the prime reason.

…As president from 1995 to 2007, Mr. Chirac directed many expensive public works projects to the area, including roadways, an airport and a strange sort of museum devoted to displaying nearly all the varied gifts he received as president.

Built on farmland 19 miles from the departmental capital of Tulle, the museum was opened in December 2000 and then expanded in 2006. It cost a total of 16.7 million euros, or about $23 million, shared by various levels of government, but with the largest part borne by Corrèze.

It is beautifully designed and holds a fascinating collection of lavish kitsch given to Mr. Chirac from the world’s variety of democracies and despots.

The financial problems of Corrèze reflect a larger national difficulty with budget deficits. As France struggles to cut its deficit, which is putting a strain on its bond ratings, the perilous finances of its departments is getting more attention.

… through various “decentralizations,” the national government has been dumping responsibility downward onto the departments, including the costs for most roads and maintenance, school construction and caring for the elderly, the handicapped and the long-term unemployed. … About a third of France’s departments are deeply in debt.

… “The museum is only a small part of the problem,” [said François Hollande, the president of the Conseil Général and a member of the National Assembly from Corrèze], but it is a good symbol of it.

Plantu is a Racist

How to Balance the Budget

I've already cut more than six times more than President Obama proposed in his State of the Union address

trumpets John Stossel as he tries his hand at balancing the budget…

End subsidies for public broadcasting, like NPR. Cancel the Small Business Administration. …

Oops. That doesn't dent the deficit. We have to do much more.

So eliminate the U.S. Education Department. We'd save $94 billion. Federal involvement doesn't improve education. It gets in the way.

Agriculture subsidies cost us $30 billion a year. Let's get rid of them. They distort the economy. We should also eliminate Housing and Urban Development. That's $53 billion more.

Who needs the Energy Department and its $20 billion sinkhole? The free market should determine energy investments.

And let's end the war on drugs. In effect, it's a $47 billion subsidy for thugs in the black market.

He Sure is that "Man of the World" they Concocted his Image to be, isn't he?

My God, the man can't even do myopic and expedient Realpolitik right, much less grasp the notion of affirming a Freedom Agenda!




Actually, he is very much a man of the feeble, miserably failied notions of the world... If you can't understand the reasons for American "exceptionalism" and isolationist tendencies, it has little to do with Americans as much as it is the general ineptitude of "our international betters".

The Democrats' dirty little secret

The dirty little secret is that many of those people on Wall Street who are getting ridiculously rich are Obama supporters

writes Erick Erickson.

But then the Democrats are so loudly demagoguing Republicans as tools of Wall Street that they hope you don’t notice that fact.

Stick a Fork in it. It’s Done

If you have to set up programs, and pay people to do journalism, or even think about the specific things that you want them to, then your society is dead. Period.

Observing the Meal-Ticket Left in their Native Habitat

Generous campaign doners have historically been given easy Ambassadorial posts. Knowing full well that the DCM, or Deputy Chief of Mission is really doing they job, the State Department is used to putting up with a lot.

But one of Obama’s appointments really takes the cake.

The situation was so bad that the inspector general recommended that the State Department dispatch medical personnel to Luxembourg to test the stress levels of embassy employees. It said at least four staffers quit or sought transfers to Iraq and Afghanistan during her tenure, unusual steps for diplomats assigned to a modern, Western European capital.

Much as Pelosi, the spouse of a billionaire, first ran as “a Mom in tennis shoes”, Cynthia Stroum has also channeled a lot of that inept, imperious “don’t they know who I am” self-indulgent adolescent behavior that has grown to characterize the wheelers-and-dealers of the gauche-cavier.Nonetheless, even a press that find this kind of thing hilariously juice call this nightmare a “businesswoman and philanthropist”, when in fact she was a personal investor and political action committee boarding party type.

You would think that these Eva Peron wannabees would eventually realize that they they aren’t royalty, and that they aren’t playing out “Upstairs Downstairs” fantasies.

But the report paints a picture of a corrosive atmosphere at the small embassy, with the ambassador running roughshod over staff, threatening to read their e-mails, largely concerned about job-related perks and involved in improper purchases.

When you’re a lefty, politics doesn’t
stop at the nation’s shores.



Protocol be damned: displaying campaign posters in the embassy

The complaints of cronyism, it seems, go back to 2009.

In recent years, Stroum has contributed $10,000 to Cantwell and an equal amount to Murray, as well as making four-figure donations to Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and former Sen. John Edwards, D-North Carolina. She gave to the successful 2006 campaign of Sen. Jon Tester, D-Montana.

Stroum was recently honored as a "Woman of Valor" at a closed-door Cantwell fundraising luncheon.

The Luxembourg embassy has long been used to reward political donors, but also to break barriers.

Barrier. Valor. Whatever. This is the kind of reception this barrier busting, “valorous” dark-pool-style private equity investor elicited:

As an American presently living in Luxembourg, I wonder why this country can never get an ambassador who is actually a diplomat? Granted, Luxembourg isn't France, but is it too much to ask to get someone who has passed the Foreign Service Exam, or who speaks French?

as well as the most logical of comments:

Stroum - a "Woman of Valor?" Only in a society that lacks any virtue. Such titles belong to individuals who risk their lives in order to save the lives of others - not people who shell out their political bribery money to prostituting politicians.

In fact the words success, generosity, understanding, understanding, hard work, success, and valor DO apply to the Stroum family name: her father

[...]he joined the Army Air Corps.But in the fall of 1941, months before the U.S. entered World War II, Mr. Stroum took a leave to attend a sister's wedding, and while he was gone, his squad shipped out to the Philippines. Mr. Stroum became a crew chief and flight engineer, and came to Seattle to ferry Boeing B-17 bombers throughout the nation.When he first arrived in Seattle, Mr. Stroum lived with the other aviators at the Sorrento Hotel. He met his future wife at the nearby Jewish USO center. They were married Aug. 9, 1942, and Mrs. Stroum paid for the $3 marriage license. They were the first couple married by Temple De Hirsch-Sinai's new rabbi Raphael Levine, who became one of Seattle's great religious leaders.Briefly living in Portland, he sold different items including auto parts.He settled in Seattle in the late 1940s and formed several sales companies to representing automotive- and radio-parts makers. In the mid-1950s he became an electronics distributor.He named his main company ALMAC/Stroum Electronics, combining the names of his wife, Althea, and his two daughters, Marsha and Cynthia.He also began distributing parts for Erna Jorgensen and Harry Schuck, who had founded Schuck's Auto Supply. In 1967, when the pair retired, Mr. Stroum bought their business with their help and oversaw expansion of the chain to seven stores.Stroum sold ALMAC in 1974 for some $2 million. He then made his first major charitable gift: $600,000 to the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle. He sold Schuck's to Pay n' Save in 1984 for $70 million, beginning a new career of giving.

So it seems that it isn’t juts genius that seem to skip a generation.

Muslim Brotherhood: Does "a Fact of Life" Mean That Something — That Anything — Has to Be Welcomed and Integrated?

The United States is acknowledging that the hardline Muslim Brotherhood may play a role in Egypt's transition from autocracy if it agrees to a peaceful, democratic process

reports the AP.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley says the U.S. isn't dictating Egypt's shift from President Hosni Mubarak's three decades in power. He says it is up to Egyptians to determine the process, but he called on the Muslim Brotherhood - which is a banned group - to respect democratic processes. …

He acknowledged Wednesday the hardline Islamist movement is "a fact of life in Egypt."

And so? The Mafia is a fact of life in Sicily — as well as in various places in the New York/New Jersey areas… Is that a reason to insist that the Cosa Nostra play a role in Italian and/or in Northeastern politics if it were to renounce violence and agree to a peaceful, democratic process?

Doesn't the term "lip service" ring any bells in the State Department?

Marriage under assault by unilateral divorce, family courts' bias against dads, & taxpayer-paid financial incentives subsidizing illegitimate births

The attack on the institution of marriage is not only the biggest cultural but also the biggest fiscal issue of our times

writes Phyllis Schlafly (who is also telling Congress that We Want Our Light Bulbs).

Marriage is being assaulted by unilateral divorce, feminist hostility toward marriage, the bias of family courts against fathers, and the taxpayer-paid financial incentives that subsidize illegitimate births.

…Sounding a Moynihan-style alarm today is Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation. He has assembled figures from U.S. Census Bureau and Centers for Disease Control data, and they are downright scary.

…It's a very big money problem because the government is transferring nearly $1 trillion a year in taxpayer-funded handouts to the 40% of Americans who rely on government for all or part of their living expenses.

A lack of marriage causes poverty. … single moms want their babies and confidently expect Big Brother to provide for them.

Rector's solution to the poverty problem is marriage. He urges government policies to promote and strengthen the institution of marriage instead of providing incentives to discourage it.

Marriage drops the probability of child poverty by 82%. Marriage has just as dramatic an effect as adding 5 to 6 years to the parents' level of education.

If single moms were to marry the fathers of their children, the children would immediately be lifted out of poverty. Eight out of ten of these fathers were employed at the time of the births of their out-of-wedlock children.

Government should reduce or eliminate the marriage penalties in welfare programs, in tax law, and even in ObamaCare.

…Ronald Reagan's advice is still pertinent. If we subsidize something, we'll get more of it; if we tax it, we'll get less of it.

From Phyllis Schlafly's (smashing) list — read them all — of New Year's Resolutions for State Legislators:

• Family Court: "A restraining order for domestic violence shall issue only on proof of clear and convincing evidence" and "divorced parents shall have joint (50-50) legal and physical custody of their children unless proof shows a parent to be unfit." Explanation: The anti-father abuses by family courts must stop. …
  
• Child Protective Services: "All rights accorded to criminal defendants shall likewise be recognized for any family targeted for investigation by a child protective agency." Explanation: Why do criminal defendants have more rights than parents?

Euro-Bravitude™

Topical or not... On what is meant to be an authoritative cartoonist website, what religion having a great deal of difficulty fitting in with the modern European society eradicating relativist outlook do you not see represented under the rubric of “sacrilege” ?

You will, however find this kind of thing all over the site:

Don’t look all surprised, already.

Ailing Jacques Chirac Heading to Court for Embezzlement During his Paris Townhall Days

• Jacques Chirac: Pff… How does that doodad work? I gotta head for the courthouse! Where is that anyway?
• Valéry Giscard d'Estaing (Chirac predecessor and… foe who sits on the Constitutional Council): Easy-weasy! Use Google-map!

As Jacques Chirac prepares to go to trial on March 7, for embezzlement when he was mayor of Paris, the former president has been denying rumors that he is ill, perhaps with Alzheimer's. But his wife Bernadette did confirm that he sometimes has hearing problems and trouble walking and that he at times suffers from memory loss (as Plantu suggests).

"J'ai en face de moi chaque jour un homme qui peut être éblouissant et qui en étonnerait plus d'un", a-t-elle dit. Quant à son procès, "il a toujours dit qu'il voulait être traité comme un justiciable comme un autre. Il a dit qu'il irait à son procès et il le fera", a aussi garanti M^me Chirac.

…Olivier Besancenot, porte-parole du Nouveau Parti anticapitaliste, a estimé sur RMC/BFM TV qu'il fallait, "bien sûr", juger Jacques Chirac. "On nous fait le coup à chaque fois (...), à chaque fois qu'il y a un responsable politique qui pèse un peu, qui est dans le collimateur de la justice (...), ça dure, ça dure, ça dure et puis, à un moment, il est trop vieux et puis on nous dit : 'C'est trop tard.'

European External Policy is an Unmanned Drone

EU envoy to Belarus suffered from 'stress,' not beating

Your diplomats aren’t worth beating anyway. For WHAT? Their intelligence? What’s more, is that their guy sounds like someone defending themselves against a workplace sexual harassment claim:

He confirmed that there was "no physical contact" between any Belarusian policeman and himself during anti-government demonstrations in Minsk on the night of 19 December.

Elsewhere, the European Council on Foreign Relations has published a study that confirms the obvious: Europe will not be “a pole” in the popular model of the “multipolar” world. The appeal of thinking the world’s multi-polarity permitting EUtopia to be at the center of all triangulations, but alas ther will be little pole-dancing for them.

Now they take solace in the world evolving into a “post-western” one. In other words, if they can’t run it, there must be a bigger trend cheating them out if it, and it couldn’t possibly have anything to do with their apathy in dealing with strategic risks. There is: they decided that they were too busy hating their allies and themselves to preserve their own well being.

It’s about this simple: now that they have shot western culture in the foot, an expansive weathly, still largely Maoist state who are amateurs in any sort of statecraft that doesn’t involve commerce will soon have the biggest say when it comes to human rights and international relations.