THEREfore...!

How does MSNBC get to make insane assertions? They do it in plain sight. Behold the alarmist headline from that hideous never-healing “Post Katrina world” we live in:

Worms and parasites afflict the poorest in U.S.

MSNBC need to alert the media! FIrsy you throw in a alarming SUB-heading too, while you’re at it:

Increased threat after Hurricane Katrina

go into a recitation of how very, very awful the disease is:

Chagas disease, caused by the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi, infects as many as 8 to 11 million people in Latin America and may become a U.S. threat,

Allusions to underdeveloped countries, managed only slightly better than one gripped by venal, lefty machine politics, and PRESTO!:

and a case of Chagas disease was recently reported in post-Katrina New Orleans," he wrote.

THREE YEARS “post-Katrina”. It’s a miracle! It’s the hurricane that keeps on giving!

They Must be Talking about the US Ryder Cup Team

Spiegel is so cute when they blow a gasket:

Did neo-cons from the United States fund the campaign in Ireland to reject the Lisbon Treaty? Accusations to that effect are widespread -- particularly given the business contacts of a leading group in the "no" camp. 

The words were clear: "Europe has powerful enemies on the other side of the Atlantic, gifted with considerable financial means." The speaker was France's Europe Minister Jean-Pierre Jouyet, addressing a pro-European rally in Lyon at the weekend. He was putting the blame for the Irish rejection of the Lisbon Treaty on some surprising shoulders: neoconservatives in the United States. "The role of the American neocons was very important in the victory of the 'no,'" he said.

A voice of paranoia from old Europe? Perhaps. But the allegations are not exactly new. Those campaigning for a "yes" vote in the Irish referendum on June 12 had made similar suggestions in the run up to the vote." 

Which is hugely absurd. Between non-Europeans who still want that one-phone-number and the ones who love the idea of Europe uniting itself to become non- competitively cobbled by pan-EUtopian social and techno-phobic legislation, I can’t imagine “those evil neocons”, shoeless and toothless dimwits as we all just know they are to oppose the EU actually becoming a nation and taking up some responsibilities once and for all.

How Dick Cheney managed to use mind control over 850k irish voter, of course, goes unexplained, but you know that Dick. You just don’t HAVE to explain. What comes as no surprise is that there are people in the divine continent given to Chavez-like periodic accusations of their imaginary enemy in order to flag their implausible view of their own infallibility. The very idea that any American Conservative would buy the veracity of the loony Irish notion that they were really neutral in the 20th century is even more laughable.

- Vielen Dank, 2BrixShy

Next stop is Pamyat Headquarters

What do you call a train man who steps on a live 3rd rail?
A conducter!

Don’t pop your rocks all at once there people, but it really is starting to sound like someone is going to call for a 5th International and we’ll sing special songs when we dig potatoes (led by the strong voice of the Cadres, of course.) The EU has buffaloed Thalys into decorating one of their overpriced, fancy-schmancy über-speed trains for... wait for it...

the logo of the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue !!!!

I know this is exciting, but try to contain yourselves. Hey! You back there! Quit playing with your Johnson!

I say put him on the Stand!

Isn't it every trial attorney's wet dream to put a trained chimpanzee as a witness?

The country's supreme court has upheld a lower court ruling which rejected the activists' request to have a trustee appointed for Matthew.

So now 36-year-old Miss Stibbe and the Vienna-based Association Against Animal Factories have filed an appeal with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

Matthew, by the way, is a chimpanzee.

Organisers could set up a foundation to collect cash for Matthew, whose life expectancy in captivity is about 60 years.

Or they could buy the mangy creature and promise not to fit him for a tuxedo, but I don't think that the actual welfare of the animal is what they're really concerned with. What this looks like is a stunt plaintiff making a philosophical argument that people, being the rutting and eating stupid beasts that they are are no different that any other simian that we'd like to think have complex emotions and might eventually manage to accomplish something with a typewriter, if only enough of these drips "cared" about them.

But they argue that only personhood would ensure he is not sold to someone outside Austria, where he is protected by strict animal cruelty laws.
In dismissing the activists' request to get a guardian for Matthew, a lower court ruled that the chimp was neither mentally impaired nor in danger - the legal grounds required for a guardian to be appointed.

Not the varied use of “it” and “he”, “person” and “human” in this stunning ontological dialog!

But the biggest fallacy is this unexamined assumption:

Miss Stibbe, who is from Brighton but has lived in Vienna for several years, says she is not trying to get the chimp declared a human, just a person.

'Everybody who knows him personally will see him as a person,' she said.

Exactly - It the humans embedding meaning in this and conferring human qualities on him based on a chimp's manners reminding us of human affectations. Yet even though the worst the possible outcome of this 'crisis' is that the local equivalent of the SPCA or a government department whose competence is wildlife would sort out where this animal will collect his social security, “justice” (for the feelings of the well meaning) marches on.

After all, get a load of this zoophilic reader comment. It's rather telling in that it confers acceptance of the idea that a chimp is as much a person as a human. Like many philosophically dubious causes, it's just a matter of strange, lonely people forcing their emotional problems on a newly discovered brand of victim:

I wish them all the very best of luck - given what supposed human beings do to each other on a daily basis, I'd far rather give human rights to chimps and other great apes who are infinitely superior to all those inhuman 'humans' who blight society, and certainly wouldn't shame us all the same way.

This is an awful lot like the socially minded parents who try to get their daughters to play with truck, and their sons to play with Barbies – it's about the big chimp, not the little one trying to impose their feelings on a helpless subject.

Pot Calls Kettle Black

EU to the Irish: Keep voting until you produce the desire results.
ZANU-PF to Zimbabweans: Keep voting until you produce the desire results.

Here’s the money quote:

"some African countries have done worse things."

Why? Cause They Was Home...

Oh, those poor, misguided youts:

The night of the music festival, about 15 youths tore in to a family, and brought more friends with them. Five fished the night off in the emergency room.

It was a nasty free-for-all, said Adele, a woman in her 30s who had an eardrum perforated when she was hit. On Saturday, she and her husband decided to meet up with family and friends for the music festival. Around 11 p.m., five youths trading insults with two friends in front of the house on Blvd. de Cluis. It could have all stopped there, but it didn’t.
The gang of youths returned a little later with reinforcements – about 14 of them between the ages of 15 and 20. After tearing off the security shutters covering the door, they physically attacked the occupants. Trying to interrupt, a woman is thrown to the ground and kicked. During the scuffle, a little girl ends up with wounds from broken glass.

Hitting women is inhuman

In tears, the other other children watched from the window of there room where they were sheltering themselves. Five people – among them friends and family were taken to the emergency room. One will be in a cast, and the others have sores, bumps, and bruises.

As Boorish a Bunch of Idiots as You’ll Ever Meet

Bowdlerizing the reality of who they really are is a habit Europeans have had for some time. They lead the world to believe that there is some sort of magical supra-gentility and humanity found in the engineered ‘human systems’ that dominate everyday life. There is the notion that these “well-raised/educated/socialized” individuals are the elixir of this miracle, when in reality (for now) it’s feeding off the former habits of the family-centric nations they once were.

The social glue now is the loose collection of positive habits that are endangered but remain in a ‘bowling alone’ society like no other. The comparatively feeble state of enduring marriage and the number of sole children speaks to a social narrative that is leading into a desperately untrusting and lonely state. One whose only convenient and emotionally un-risky remedy is more of what used to be the realm of the individual or the family’s doing toward those of collective ‘human systems’. We find this in relying on hired-in expertise to raise children from the crèche to the employment office. Cooking the family mean has become take-away or par-prepared, and so forth. People are not better for it.

See any symptoms? Janet Levy points out the obvious to outsiders who don’t pay attention that nothing could be further from the truth, and that people quite primitively seek comfort from this in the “robust, socially unified seeming” past that never was for very long in Europe when it wasn’t also barbaric and diseased with broadly shared vile hatred:

In recent years, soccer crowds have gone so far as to simulate the hissing of Nazi gas chambers, pairing the sound with Nazi salutes. In Belgium, Muslim fans at a soccer match between Israel and Belgium shouted "Jews to the gas chambers" and "strangle the Jews," while waving Hamas and Hezbollah flags. Freed from the restraints of acceptable behavior, with inhibitions loosened by alcohol consumption and the intense camaraderie of team spirit, soccer fans freely unleash anti-Semitic slurs with abandon and without fear of retribution.

This alarming behavior prompts questions as to whether anti-Semitism is becoming acceptable again in a Europe that has forgotten its Nazi past, and whether guilt has been supplanted by denial. Is the era of Nazism being re-examined and re-framed in a more positive light that contributes to such gratuitous and ugly outbursts?

Two recent disturbing incidents appear to support this idea, raising legitimate concerns that Europe is indeed repainting its Nazi past.

First there were few siblings. Then there were few cousins. Then all they had for human warmth was a mob of one flavor or another to choose from, (social action/ sporting head-breaking /political head-breaking/ dangerous thrill-seeking...) making solitude and distance, if not emigration the only remaining reasonable option. That brave new world is on its’ way.

The Piss Christ Culture meets the 7th Century

Monday afternoon in room 322 at the Saint Vincent de Paul clinic in Bourgoin-Jallieu at 17h 30 a shout echoed in the room where a girl was being hospitalized. Before the medical staff did their care on the girl (whose father is a Muslim) who underwent scheduled surgery that morning demanded the removal of the crucifix hung on the wall.

"For nearly a quarter of an hour the father in the presence of his wife was irately demanding that the crucifix be removed," said a witness. While the nurse uses diplomacy to appease them, the crucifix was finally removed from the wall, in the interest of providing calm for the child.
"When people choose to be cared for in our establishment, they do so knowingly. They know they are in a Catholic clinic. It’s not hidden. It’s inscribed at the entrance of the institution.

[snip]

"Each room is equipped with a crucifix. Small in size and not ostentatious, but very simple."

But in the primitive land of class warfare, don’t you dare try that with the Hand of Fatima, of the mass expression of “calling for tolerance” will be overwhelm your senses.

We are occasionally faced with this type of situation in each of our institutions," explained Sister Marie-Mathieu, president of the board of directors. The [ethics] committee meets several times a year brings together religious leaders, civic figures, philosophers, lawyers, but also representatives of the medical corps of each establishment.
At the latest meeting something that happened several months earlier was brought to its attention. In an institution in Aix-en-Provence, a father broke a crucifix and then threw in the trash. That action was not tolerated.

"Why did you choose our school, while the family was apparently allergic to religious symbols?" the staff asked while denouncing a drift of a society less and less respectful of one's faith. "We welcome very regularly Muslim women, veiled, and everything goes normally," noted the director.
Regretting the incident, Sister Marie-Mathieu believes it goes against the foundations of the institution: mutual respect. "The clinic welcomes and respects each one with his religious beliefs. Our desire is the desire of universal communion."

It seem the “universal” part of anything is what these crucifix-ated fathers have a problem with.

Be Honest and Stop Trying to call it Capitalism

I'’m not sure why telephone and ISP subscribers need to pay for state television production, but that’s how the usual feeble logic goes in post reason EUtopia when they’re flogging another tax.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy proposed a new tax on profits of Internet providers and telephone companies Wednesday to finance the end of advertising on public television and radio.

Sarkozy confirmed a timetable for phasing out advertising on public stations starting next January. Ads would be gone completely by 2011.

He said a new tax of 0.9 percent should be imposed on profits of Internet providers and telecom operators to compensate state coffers for the estimated €650 million (US$1.3 billion) annual loss in advertising revenue.

The measure dissociates revenue with costs, charges the private sector for a business unnecessarily occupied by government, and contributes to the longstanding feeling of being “pecked to death”. As it is, French TV owners pay an “annual user fee” to watch television, which is an additional cost to view non-government produced TV because one must pay it to have anything other than an old black and white set.

Staff members at public radio and television stations staged a strike earlier this year against the plan.

Critics of Sarkozy's shakeup say he is handing a present to private channels. Shares in leading private channel TF1 soared after Sarkozy's January announcement, and climbed 5.9 percent to €11.11 (US$17.33) on Wednesday.

The private operations, intertwined in the massive foreign satellite provider operation business too, advertise anyway, and permits the state corporate umbrella operator to derive revenue from this as well, not to mention corporate taxes and the subsidizing of the satellites themselves. In other words, there’s money everywhere charged in however many unrelated ways to the use as it is, and here we see people wanting to make it even more complicated.

Moreover, like all of these minor forms of usury, the general population restructures itself to cheat it, further disconnecting the tax from the purpose. The common practice of “taking Grandma with you” when you buy a television is the simplest way to get a discounted form of relief set aside for senior citizens by having them place the purchase for you.

Curiously, in a nation where nationalization is seen as a virtue:

Staff members at public radio and television stations staged a strike earlier this year against the plan.

This probably has to do with the fact that the suspicion is that there will be less money in it for them if this went through, but contradicts another view that in an environment where one wouldn’t really want to respond to public demand, revenue would otherwise drop.

Société Télévision Française 1 and M6-Metropole Télévision, the largest commercial broadcasters in France, may benefit from increased ad spending as a result of the change. TF1 shares rose the most in almost six weeks, while M6 had the biggest gain in three weeks.

Either that or they were striking against the man. What I doubt is that the strikers prefer the benefits of a freer market environment since freelancers and subcontractors share work with the private sector.

Is your head spinning? It should, because that’s how societies managed heavily by government always seem to turn out.

The European Left: Crash Testing Humanity Since 1900

The aptly named “Eco-Communist” IU-ICV part of Spain has succeeded in making itself some new voters:

The move is the first time any national legislature has called for rights for non-humans.

The parliament’s environmental committee approved the resolution, which calls on Spain to comply with the Great Apes Project. The initiative, originated by philosophers Peter Singer and Paola Cavalieri in 1993, promotes the position that "non-human hominids" such as gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans and bonobos should enjoy comparable rights as humans, including the right to life, freedom and not to be tortured. The philosophers believe the apes are our closest genetic relatives.

"This is a historic day in the struggle for animal rights and in defense of our evolutionary comrades, which will doubtless go down in the history of humanity," Pedro Pozas, Spanish director of the Great Apes Project, told Reuters.

Now, in fact, they can have so many of the rights that humans have, that they too can be reduced to being thought of as “just a clump of cells”, and will be trying to force the idea on the rest of the human warehouse.

Oh Maya

Behold our “betters”:

Thousands of people in the Netherlands say they expect the world to end in 2012, and many say they are taking precautions to prepare for the apocalypse.

Which brings to mind other contemporary obsessions with the apocalypse, one where constantly staying off-kilter and never ending behaviour modification might might permit one to be slightly less guilt-laden. For now.

"You know, maybe it's really not that bad that the Netherlands will be destroyed," Petra Faile said. "I don't like it here anymore. Take immigration, for example. They keep letting people in. And then we have to build more houses, which makes the Netherlands even heavier. The country will sink even lower, which will make the flooding worse."

Besides, if the world is ending, why are they hoarding stuff and “preparing” for something?

Making beeg trouble for Crazy Moose and Squirrel!

The Times Online held a Communist joke competition. Enjoy, and make your last vote count. The winning contestant won a copy of the MPI sponsored film “Hammer and Tickle”.

Duck and Cover!

When it Comes to Al-Dura, Journalists Are Against Free Speech, writes John Rosenthal in Pajamas Media. French journalists falsifies story. French media supports liar, sues party trying to keep them honest. First court rules in favor of the best connected.

It is this insight — an insight that one would expect to be entirely banal in a democratic society — that underlies the higher court’s ruling. The court did not find that the fraudulence of the Al-Dura report had been “proven,” but it found that Karsenty offered sufficient and sufficiently serious grounds for the claim of fraudulence to make it a legitimate matter of public debate.

To have ruled otherwise — as the lower court did in its original ruling — would be, in effect, to institute a sort of crime of lèse majesté protecting journalists and news organizations from criticism: placing them above society and the mere “lay persons” who are then supposed to accept the claims of the “news professionals” without question. Le Nouvel Observateur’s “Appeal for Charles Enderlin” positively exudes such a sense of corporate privilege, as Richard Landes and his commentators on Augean Stables were quick to point out.

And of free speech:

It is on account of this massive funding by France and the European institutions that I have suggested that RSF be referred to not as a “non-governmental organization” (NGO), but rather as a “para-governmental organization”: a “PGO” whose supposedly objective assessments of the situation of press freedoms around the world are in fact largely and obviously influenced by the political agendas of its principal state sponsors. (See part II of my exposé here.)

Robert Ménard’s attitude to the Al-Dura affair is just further confirmation of the “PGO” status of Reporters Without Borders. By breaking his silence and signing the Nouvel Observateur “Appeal,” Ménard has now explicitly come out in favor of suppressing Philippe Karsenty’s right to criticize Enderlin and France 2. He has thereby pulled off the remarkable feat of outing himself and the “press freedoms” organization he heads as, in effect, enemies of free speech.

It’s just another day in paradise.

Oil Fuels War!

Chavez threatens to cut off oil shipments and nationalize European assets to the EU if they deport illegal immigrants from Latin America. The only problem is that most of Venezuela’s oil can only be refined in the US, and European investors were intelligent enough not to leave much of anything within the reach of that buffoon.

Le Parisien picks up on an item bouncing around the Francophone blogosphere for about a week now:

An eye for an eye. In the same way that European countries decide to return undocumented immigrants to their countries of origin, countries of Latin America can decide on their side "the return of European investments," Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez threatened during a press conference.

The symbolic gesture seems, however: according to the latest figures available from the European Commission, the share of Venezuelan oil in all oil imports from the European Union accounted for only 0.9% in 2005.

Thankfully, not everyone suffers from the Zapatero paradox.

Slightly Less Interesting Than Pepto-Bismol

The EU realizes that the only way anyone will “believe in it” is if they buffalo people with propaganda advertising. From the unctuous, state-run Euractiv :

Consumer policy is moving up the European Commission's agenda as the EU becomes increasingly concerned about its popularity level among citizens.

[snip]

Criticism that the EU is cut off from the concerns of its citizens led Communications Commissioner Margot Wallström to launch a 'Communicate Europe in partnership' initiative in October 2007, which seeks to foster greater cooperation between EU institutions and national governments in communicating EU policies. 

Boosting popular support for the European project is also seen as critical to reversing the steady decline in voter turnout in the run-up to the European Parliament elections in June 2009.

Off to a great start, nay? You realize that they’re trying to call their obligation to listening to citizens to be something like listening to customers. It comes with the same baggage that the social welfare system will call a juvenile delinquent a “client”.

Postcards from Pétainistan

That’s no exaggeration. There are organized mobs or wastrels seeking strawmen to physically abuse in order to act out there hatred of demonized nations and cultures.

The violent assault of a young Jewish man, Saturday evening in Paris led to a thunderous outrage in the Jewish community at the Elysée and the government. The 17-year-old boy was beaten in public on Saturday around 8 pm Buttes-Chaumont, in the nineteenth arrondissement.

According to the National Office of Vigilance against anti-Semitism (BNVCA), the young man "was attacked with an steel bar by a group of "6 or 7" youths.
Five minors from that district and the Seine-Saint-Denis area were arrested and remanded in custody. The investigation was entrusted to Usit (Support Unit and territorial investigation) of the Metropolitan police nearby.

According to Public Assistance-Hospitals of Paris (AP-HP), the status of the victim is "stable" and his prognosis remains inconclusive.

For his father, interviewed by RTL, the young man was attacked "because he was wearing a kippa and is Jewish." Similarly, for UEJF and CRIF, the anti-Semitic nature of this attack is not in doubt. "The young man of 17 years age was brutally attacked last night, is currently in a coma, was wearing a kippa, and there is no doubt that this is an anti-Semitic act," said Ariel Goldmann , Vice-president of CRIF.

Through its chairman, Raphael Haddad, UEJF said he was "very concerned" by repeated fights in recent weeks between organized gangs, including in the Parc des Buttes Chaumont area.

There is no tangible motive in these attacks other than that of simple, mindless, irrational hatred. That the young man was not a “settler” in Israel should actually buoy the attackers’ world view, but that clearly isn’t the point. To the young attackers with their world view trained into them, the mere existence of something representing their enemy.

Even the comments to the article in Le Figaro reflecting outrage show us what kind of “brave new world” we’re living in. Many of those wanting to discuss this kind of criminality have to first qualify their opinions with a statement making sure that everyone knows that they “aren’t a Zionist”. Nonetheless, I found this one amusing:

Vive la France! Country of human rights and especially of giving lessons that are ignored and comments only on what suits them.

No doubt, we’ll also have comments here from the usual drive-by shooters who think beating a 17 year old into a coma is heroic. It’s rather that these sad and confused would do better not to conflate a teenager walking down the street with the usual “enlightened” lectures about how he’s no different than an Israeli soldier in the West Bank. Were they only to have that same form of moral equivalence used against them, instead of having their free speech rights defended, one might find them worthy of some passing attention.

Our Effete Sophisticated Friends, Part 291

Some fool working for an educational support and tutoring company in the Netherlands searching in French for that all-powerful, mysterious “Jewish lobby”. No surprise there.

Constructing a Plain of Chaos

Writing in The American Thinker, Soren Kern reflects on Ireland’s Lisbon Treaty vote and the motives behind EUvium in general:

One of the main objectives of the virtually unreadable treaty is to turn the EU into a "global geopolitical actor" that can counterbalance the United States on the world stage. To achieve this, European elites say the EU needs to speak with "one voice" in international affairs. In this context, the new treaty is designed to create the job position of (an unelected) European president as well as a powerful European foreign minister. It would also establish a European diplomatic corps with European embassies and a European army.

As many observers of European politics know, democracy does not come easy on a continent where European elites view themselves as an aristocracy entitled to rule over the ignorant masses. Indeed, the entire European social welfare state has been built upon the unspoken quid pro quo of "bread and circuses" (ie, the cradle-to-grave nanny state) for the general populace, in exchange for their loyal submission to the political and intellectual classes.

It’s not that they shouldn’t be a super-state, it’s that they aren’t by any means prepared or disposed to the meaning and responsibilities of it. Case in point is the very forced looking nature of all of the stage-managed “historic steps,” conferences, and such, each named in a near Soviet manner for one city or another as if the continent were already a coherent realm or huge metropolitan plain. It isn’t – the EU’s disposition is akin to a thousand unexploded bomblets of unwanted public opinion about the overly complex, indirect, and bureaucratic to the point of always seeming to be hiding something.

Thus it should come as no big surprise that the word ‘No' does not exist in the European political lexicon. After voters in France and the Netherlands rejected the European Constitution (of which the Lisbon Treaty is an almost exact replica) in 2005, European elites famously advised the miscreants to keep voting until they come up with the right answer.\

I take these rejections for what they are: rather than fearful rejection people wanting clear rights and transparency.

This Will Hurt Me More than it will Hurt You, Dear...

Didn’t they think of the impact it will have on the collective European sex-life?

The Council of Europe wants to abolish spanking

After all, why would they want to tell these hard-working students how to make a living?

And They Loved their Cherished Victims to Death Too

A study looking at 20 years of data by Keith Marsden, advisor to the World Bank looked at the alleged “greater humanity” there is to be found in the simplistic view that big government can guarantee a safety net and a great society. In fact, the bigger and more socially interventionist a government is, the progressively more poorly it serves those in need.

My study, "Big, Not Better?" (Centre for Policy Studies, 2008), looks at the performance of 20 countries over the past two decades. The first 10 have slimmer governments with revenue and expenditure levels below 40% of GDP. This group includes Australia, Canada, Estonia, Hong Kong, Ireland, South Korea, Latvia, Singapore, the Slovak Republic and the U.S.

I compared their records to the 10 higher-taxed, bigger-government economies: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Both groups cover a representative range of large, medium and small economies measured by their gross national incomes. The average incomes per capita of the two groups are similar ($27,046 and $30,426 respectively in 2005).

Most governments have reduced their top tax rates and spending-to-GDP ratios over the last decade or so, according to data published by the OECD, IMF and World Bank. But slimmer governments have done so at a faster pace, and to significantly lower levels. Their highest tax rate on personal income fell to a group average of 30% in 2006 from 36% in 1996. Top corporate rates were lowered to an average of 22% from 30%. Their average ratio of total government outlays to GDP fell to 31.6% in 2007, from an average peak level during the previous two decades of 40.4%

Oddly enough, the left calls the eternal expansion of that form of failure “progressive”.

Slimmer-government countries also delivered more rapid social progress in some areas. They have, on average, higher annual employment growth rates (1.7% compared to 0.9% from 1995-2005). Their youth unemployment rates have been lower for both males and females since 2000. The discretionary income of households rose faster in the first group. This allowed their real consumption to increase by 4.1% annually from 2000-2005, up from 2.8% in 1990-2000. In the bigger-government group, the growth of household consumption has slowed to a 1.3% average annual rate, from 2.1% during the 1990-2000 period.

Faster economic growth in the first group also generated a more rapid increase in government revenue, despite (or rather, because of, supply-siders suggest) lower overall tax burdens.

Slimmer-government countries seem to have made better use of their smaller health resources. Total spending on health programs reached 9.5% of GDP in the bigger government group in 2004, 1.6 percentage points above the average in the slimmer-government group. Yet slimmer-government countries have raised their average life expectancy at birth at a faster pacer since 1990, reaching an average level of 78 years in 2005, just one year below the average for bigger spenders. Average life expectancy is now 80 years in Singapore, although government and private health programs combined cost only 3.7% of its GDP.

Finally, spending by bigger governments on social benefits (such as unemployment and disability benefits, housing allowances and state pensions) was higher (20.3% of GDP in 2006) than that of slimmer governments (9.6%). But these transfers do not appear to have resulted in greater equality in the distribution of income. The Gini index measuring income distribution is similar for both groups.

The irony of the left’s world view is that the model required taxing the poor rather heavily, and the actual handouts amount to sums of very little value when you consider all of the was the framework itself scares the very people who would employ and provide affordable services to the lowest earners off of their shores.

And They Loved their Cherished Victims to Death Too

A study looking at 20 years of data by Keith Marsden, advisor to the World Bank looked at the alleged “greater humanity” there is to be found in the simplistic view that big government can guarantee a safety net and a great society. In fact, the bigger and more socially interventionist a government is, the progressively more poorly it serves those in need.

My study, "Big, Not Better?" (Centre for Policy Studies, 2008), looks at the performance of 20 countries over the past two decades. The first 10 have slimmer governments with revenue and expenditure levels below 40% of GDP. This group includes Australia, Canada, Estonia, Hong Kong, Ireland, South Korea, Latvia, Singapore, the Slovak Republic and the U.S.

I compared their records to the 10 higher-taxed, bigger-government economies: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Both groups cover a representative range of large, medium and small economies measured by their gross national incomes. The average incomes per capita of the two groups are similar ($27,046 and $30,426 respectively in 2005).

Most governments have reduced their top tax rates and spending-to-GDP ratios over the last decade or so, according to data published by the OECD, IMF and World Bank. But slimmer governments have done so at a faster pace, and to significantly lower levels. Their highest tax rate on personal income fell to a group average of 30% in 2006 from 36% in 1996. Top corporate rates were lowered to an average of 22% from 30%. Their average ratio of total government outlays to GDP fell to 31.6% in 2007, from an average peak level during the previous two decades of 40.4%

Oddly enough, the left calls the eternal expansion of that form of failure “progressive”.

Slimmer-government countries also delivered more rapid social progress in some areas. They have, on average, higher annual employment growth rates (1.7% compared to 0.9% from 1995-2005). Their youth unemployment rates have been lower for both males and females since 2000. The discretionary income of households rose faster in the first group. This allowed their real consumption to increase by 4.1% annually from 2000-2005, up from 2.8% in 1990-2000. In the bigger-government group, the growth of household consumption has slowed to a 1.3% average annual rate, from 2.1% during the 1990-2000 period.

Faster economic growth in the first group also generated a more rapid increase in government revenue, despite (or rather, because of, supply-siders suggest) lower overall tax burdens.

Slimmer-government countries seem to have made better use of their smaller health resources. Total spending on health programs reached 9.5% of GDP in the bigger government group in 2004, 1.6 percentage points above the average in the slimmer-government group. Yet slimmer-government countries have raised their average life expectancy at birth at a faster pacer since 1990, reaching an average level of 78 years in 2005, just one year below the average for bigger spenders. Average life expectancy is now 80 years in Singapore, although government and private health programs combined cost only 3.7% of its GDP.

Finally, spending by bigger governments on social benefits (such as unemployment and disability benefits, housing allowances and state pensions) was higher (20.3% of GDP in 2006) than that of slimmer governments (9.6%). But these transfers do not appear to have resulted in greater equality in the distribution of income. The Gini index measuring income distribution is similar for both groups.

The irony of the left’s world view is that the model required taxing the poor rather heavily, and the actual handouts amount to sums of very little value when you consider all of the was the framework itself scares the very people who would employ and provide affordable services to the lowest earners off of their shores.

Same Thing, Really

It looks like they really miss the good old days... Of heroic, monumental sculptures of Lenin, the lone Red Army soldier, and the Collective Farmer...

It isn’t just the Weather Outlook that Looks Dim in Brussels

On a continent where the constructed image of one person that can seem pitiably aggrieved makes a majority, this is what you end up with. Having heard rationalizations about the mainstay of the BBC’s presenters looking more like 5% of the population than reflecting the self-image of the other 95%, it should come as no surprise that at one side there are apologists, and at the other people acting out their typically overraught fascism. It’s a Catch-22 without the star studded cast, but with all the guilt-ridden or hateful angst sometimes found in junior high school.

That this living caricature isn’t enough to start rioting in the streets of Peshawar or Lille is a miracle.

- Ya halla, ya halla! to Kevin

The Art of the Carbeque

Clarsonimus points out the European need to find aesthetics snobbery, even in violence. Of course it’s just a way of salving ones’ feelings when things are hopeless. After all, you can try to change your attitude all you like, and Kreuzberg still sucks.

Disco? Ça bouge encore?

Where is there Never a Damn Treehugger Around When you Need One?

Next time you hear a French person getting sentimental about their loony delusions and “their GI’s”, consider this.

The European World View Finds another Enemy

Populist movements are a threat not because they raise the issue of direct democracy, but because they advocate nationalist mobilisation based on xenophobia, writes Antony Todorov. Given the failure of the leftist projects of the twentieth century, it is telling that far-right populism is more anti-democratic in the new democracies of central and eastern Europe than in western Europe. Is populism identical to the crisis of democracy or rather a symptom of it?

It’s a specious argument that assumes that people left uncrushed will show themselves to be nothing but wife-beaters, racists, and chainsaw-wielding embarrassments to them in diplomatic dinner parties while chatting with the Burmese, Zimbabwean, or Venezuelan 3rd Secretary.

That enemy is “direct democracy” which is code for “actually paying attention to the public.” Couched in a miasma of people discrediting each other with the broad-brush of populism and anti-populism, it’s been reduced to this in the zeitgeist: they are so far gone and simplistic, that democracy itself has become a left-right issue with the left, after all this time trying to conceal (or at least obscure) it’s proclivities for central planning and control.

Above all, populism is defined as a strategy that gives priority to the need for direct contact between the elite and the people, without the mediation of institutions. This implies that populist strategies question one of the main characteristics of modern democracy, or at least of modern democracy as defined by Tocqueville. Tocqueville speaks of the "intermediary bodies" (the aristocracy in Europe, political associations in America) that serve as a mediator between the citizens and the government, ultimately keeping the power of the executive within acceptable limits and preventing it from becoming tyrannical.

This school of thought seemes to prefer the unelected corporate-shakedown, bribe and donation-driven entities in the form of NGOs and lobbyists, over the actual institutional pillars of democracy: in the case of the US, that’s the Supreme Court and the Legislature.

Sorry, but they have NOT come a long way, Baby...

More interesting yet, is that the article referenced came before the Irish No vote on the Lisbon Treaty, because it supports the view that entertained later by the yak-arati about the Irish being some kind of simple yet charming cave dwelling people. In fact a personal inventory needs to be taken by that same humorless class of critics, because what they were after was the same sort of popular mandate that the likes of those Todorov cites argue against for what seems like no reason other than the kind of yearning for politesse.

France Reluctant to Expose Themselves in Southern Afghanistan

Exerpt: 16-JUN-2008 - By Adrien Jaulmes, Le Figaro’s special correspondent in Kabul

Three days after the daring attack on the prison in Kandahar by the Taliban, which released last Friday over 1 000 prisoners, 400 of them, Afghan units stationed in the Kabul area were put on alert. They should be transported by air to Kandahar, to reinforce the Afghan troops and contingents from NATO that give hunting escaped in provinces near open rebellion against the central government.

Some of these battalions, or Kandaks, are supervised by French detachments. Called OMLTs (acronym for Operational Mentoring & Liaison Teams), these detachments provide advise, tactics, logistical support, and liaison, particularly with the air support of the coalition. They participate in operations conducted by the Afghan army against the Taliban. Last April, the French as OMLT stakeholders launched an operation against insurgents in the Alasay valley in the province of Kapissa, north-east of Kabul.

Yesterday, the 1st Kandak, the 201st Corps of the Afghan army was deployed without notice to Kandahar. His OMLT, composed of some fifty officers and NCOs of the Foreign Legion, should logically be deployed with the unit in Afghanistan that it supports.

But this sudden departure takes Paris court. While some logistical issues remain unresolved, especially on armored vehicles, which must be transported by road, the hesitation is mainly political. Deploying the French Kandahar OMLT means joining one of the most deadly theater of conflict which is one that looks increasingly to a stalemate without a foreseeable end.

The french commitment in Afghanistan has long been considered somewhat ambiguous by some allies of NATO. Present in the Kabul area since 2002, the French battalion has always remained confined in a relatively clear mission: to ensure the safety of the capital and its environs, [in order] to enable the Afghan government to gradually take up control of the country.

UN Carrying the EU’s Security Piss Bucket

But that doesn’t stop them from fooling themselves:

Western analysts take a dim view of UN forces: heavily reliant on Asian and African troops, they are low-tech and do not match visions of twenty-first century warriors.

Yet these are often the only forces available for trouble-spots like Liberia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Darfur. And so they keep on being deployed. The UN's peacekeeping budget has reached $7 billion a year, two-fifths of it paid by EU members.

And the reasons for that are quite clear. Except for the long-term entanglements that France and the UK have taken up in Africa Only the smaller EU member states commit to anything significant outside of Europe. In Afghanistan, they’ve proved more than willing to see The US, Canadians, and Dutch take the hits, and will even make preposterous claims like this:

But the EU's support for the UN is not solely financial. The European Council has mandated a series of ESDP operations to work alongside the UN, ranging from emergency military interventions (such as 2003's Operation Artemis in the eastern Congo) to smaller-scale police training missions. Outside Europe, there is currently not one ESDP operation that is not co-deployed alongside some form of UN presence.

It's hard to imagine ESDP having got anything like as far as it has without the UN as a partner. The UN and EU are the Obelix and Asterix of international security: one handling big, slow missions while the other concentrates on smaller, flexible, operations.

Which is funny that they would be able to know WHO is Asterix and WHO is Obelix, because they are only planning a few things here and there, and as far as anyone can tell the ESDP predecessors, have only made a handful of observation and monitoring style deployments outside of EUFOR in the Balkans.

The article makes them sound like General Washington’s 1st Engineers reminiscing about all of those old campaigns. In reality, it’s a PR send-up to cover for the European yearning for a “peacy” image and have a military that a culturally suicidal pacifist can be proud of, but yet has so far been dependant on forces from Nigeria, Pakistan, India, Brazil, Fiji, and the like.

So ensuring that a European sits at the top of the UN peacekeeping pyramid is not enough. As the UN's leading donor, the EU needs to investigate how to ensure that UN missions get the high-end assets, like helicopters, that it needs in a place like Darfur.

France and Britain recently suggested creating a pool of helicopters for NATO and EU missions – it should be possible to do something similar for the UN, and at lower cost.

They go on to laud the EU as the UN’s leading doner. Hardly – the members are doing up the döners, and the US with 2/3 the population of the EU covers 27 percent of the peacekeeping budget versus 41% covered by the EU states, a sum equal to the “stingy” US by population. All the while these UN deployments in Africa are being depended upon to protect Fortress Europe from the flotsam and jetsam of other people’s conflicts. The US, on the other hand doesn’t derive any such direct benefit from either “Asterix” or “Obelix”.

We’re Still Teaching the Idiots Something after 219 Years

The EU doesn’t seem to have the population believing that there is a need for separation of powers, or limits to centralized power. Must be an old instinct of theirs’, but the Irish, Dutch, and French “Nyet” votes all shared one message: everything that way too X, Y, or Z about the notion of the EU has to do with the loss of control over too many features of their daily lives, and displayed a sort of disproportionality in what powers really need to be über-national.

Limiting the scope of Brussels’ power, i.e. Justice, Defense, International Policy, Borders, interstate trade, money supply..., and an absolute separation of those supernational functions from those of the states are the basis around which people can develop a sense of trust for the European project. But the very idea of something that simple and elegant – a kind of Confederation seems impossible for them to accept. It could be a kind of closeted megalomania that can’t understand why EVERTHING isn’t standardized and centralized, it could be that the imbalance in the size of populations of the members states makes it uninviting, or it just could seem too “new world”.

Rightly, the majorities in these referenda did not appear to trust in the integrity of those to whom their sovereignty was to be evolved up to. I wouldn’t trust them either.

Take it away, Nosemonkey.

That old bogeyman of “the United States of Europe” is still all too often based on a misunderstanding. Working together but independent, independent but united is not an impossible dream - it has been done before. The flaw of the European project has always been in attempting to create - artificially and on too short a timescale - something that in America evolved more organically. And not just in America - almost all countries with a history of more than a couple of hundred years were once divided,

A Hard to Note Omission

So just who was it who committed torture? AP wants you to play Where’s Waldo? Elsewhere EUROSOC notes that extra special laziness that j-school types call “reflection”.

We know times are hard at the Independent, but we didn't think they'd be passing off month-old blog postings as front page stories.
Today's Indie boasts an interview with singer Tom Waits, conducted by Waits himself. It's very entertaining; Waits is always good value. Except that this interview has been on Tom Waits' own website since May 20.

Wow, man. You’re so Progressive

When not beating dead horses, leftism means nothing, if kicking the dead in the nuts.

They’re Generally Toasted by Lunchtime

Funny, doesn’t poaching them release heat into the atmosphere?

InBev: All You Brewskis are Belong to Us

Belgican über-corporate brewer InBev tried to buy out Budweiser. Bud teases them for a while. Budweiser then tries to make itself into a poison pill by bidding on Mexican brewer Modelo. A mega-corp from a continent that has anti-corporatism as a universal home truth gets the kind of Dirty Sanchez they take such delight in seeing their big corporate behemoths give to any foreign entity, so long as any feature of that country’s culture wouldn’t make it on the cover of National Geographic. In other words “fashionably poor” and immediately recognizable as pitiable wogs of one kind or another.

Since Le Monde cartoonists and various other overgrown adolescents on the people-powered anti-corporate continent take such great joy in their own monopolistic instincts “taking over” American assets, I though this would be a good time to wish them: have a nice day!

Priorities Established

If the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers were a Junta, what country would they be running?

In a move that has left many Netherlanders wondering what the government is smoking, coffee shops are being lumped together with restaurants, bars and cafes, which are being forced to lose the ashtrays. Ironically, customers will still be able to buy hash or pot, roll it and smoke it at more than 700 approved shops. But starting the first of next month, those joints must contain pure marijuana only. People wishing to mix tobacco in, as is the continental custom, must go outside.

And to think that they won’t even respect what’s left of their cultural traditions.

They paved the terroir, and put in a parking lot.

Europe’s Obamazombies Having a Hard Time with their own Paraodox

Andrei Markovits and Jeff Weintraub, writing in the Huff-Po plausit quite simply why it is that Europeans are so GObama when in fact:

All very heartwarming. But having followed the European media with some care since my arrival in Vienna on June 1, I have seen very little acknowledgement of one inconvenient complicating reality. Obama, or someone with Obama's social background and political style, would have a hard time getting elected dog-catcher in any of these European countries,

Nonetheless, there is something puzzling about the euphoria shared with the fringe left in America: the strange willingness to idolize and fetishize a political figure, to lionize and make heroic government and the state, when they just spent the past 8 years trying to convince the world that a much less emotionally needy and less intervention-minded POTUS had been guilty of so many things that he could be compared to Hitler, Pol Pot, and Stalin, all of who, by the way, were leftists whose goal was to channel in it’s entirely the state the ruling of society, the individual, and create a monoculture ruled by a clenched fist in an iron glove. Promoters of “diversity”, the thing we celebrate because it just is may want to reconsider their apparent blind fealty to any mortal being and go back to their animist worship of Gaia until they can consolidate the disparate features of that paradox of their own.

But back on the benighted continent of the wise and divine, no such trust of “the other” is even remotely possible. In the absence of having much of a platform, and with little airing of it in EUtopia, their attraction to Obama is one of imagery and perhaps the hope that he’ll handicap the thing competing with their hubristic pride as the imagined sages of humanity. It may have more to do with a humger they have for their own devilling distrust of “the other” that they hope this passive aspiration of theirs will somehow cure with neither substantive words nor action.

In France (depending on how the calculations are done) roughly ten per cent of the population are of Arab or sub-Saharan African origin. But the 577 members of the Chamber of Deputies do not include a single person of color. The German Bundestag has a few members of Turkish origin, but their numbers are minimal and none of them plays a prominent role (as compared with some heavyweight African-American, Cuban-American, and Mexican-American Congresspeople and Governors in the US). And so on. One can find isolated exceptions here and there (Ayaan Hirsi Ali in the Netherlands, for example, before she had to flee the country?), but the point is that they're isolated exceptions.

Nor is this just a question of race (and racism). In comparison with the US, European societies have more ethnically restricted and exclusionary conceptions of full citizenship and of political community that make it difficult for outsiders of all kinds to succeed politically. Consider who is Governor of the largest and most important US state, California -- the Austrian-American immigrant Arnold Schwarzenegger. Is it even conceivable that a foreign-born immigrant with a funny foreign-sounding name and a heavy funny-sounding foreign accent could be elected Prime Minister of the most important German Land, North Rhine-Westphalia? (You don't have to guess -- the answer is no.) And ditto for Italy, Britain, France, and the rest.

(Frankly, it's hard to imagine someone with Schwarzenegger's career profile getting himself elected to an important political office even in his native Austria -- which may or may not be a good thing, depending on your perspective.)

Further, the likes of the late Tom Lantos, a holocaust survivor from Hungary managed to serve in Congress, in spite of this society that Europeans generally try to convince one is horribly racist. The list goes on and on, but the implication is clear: they don’t want “someone that appeals to them” in the White House, they want someone that they think would not appeal to their imagined notion of America in the White House.

One thing is clear. Europeans can’t vote here, and for the most part their own votes at home under party-lists of people they don’t get to nominate, elections that are repeated until the desired results are achieved, etc., don’t amount to much either.

In the face of their “friendly advice” which is at best an ongoing series passive-aggressive emotional terrorism attempts, they need to start by not lecturing the rest of humanity and get a grip on their own feeble distrust of their own populations.

NGO complains about lack of Imperious Control over Government Funds

Waaaaah!!!!

The organisation groups over 600 NGOs working to combat racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in all 27 EU member states.

According to the Indian-born, Pakistani-raised Dane, if each country chooses to spend the EU money according to its own definition of 'intercultural dialogue', the targetted minorities stand little chance of being involved in dialogue with the majority communities.

In other words, he doesn’t want governments to spend the money their own moneys that they’re getting back from the EU in a manner that elected officials would with anything else – with at least SOME semblance of a mandate from the public.

But since activists thrive and dine on propagating the belief that all people are wrong in the way they define it, unless they act on their wishes and buy them off, then these “enlightened” masses of tolerance and love übermenschen that is suppose to make Europeans better that and distinct to, for examble, Americans, Israelis, etc. (but not Robert Mugabe)...

"The commission should have said: 'By interculturalism we mean that majorities with all their resources and money interact with minorities who do not have those things'. Ask them [the minorities] what kind of activities they want in the 'intercultural dialogue' programme. Their picture is completely different from that of the governments," Mr Quraishy said.

...which used to be called redistribution. In this case, there are specific social features, almost entirely genetic, that qualify one for this new form of human equality.

The European year of intercultural dialogue has a budget of €10 million, plus money from EU capitals, to be spent on seven flagship multi-European projects and 27 national projects involving culture, education, youth, sport and citizenship.

It aims to encourage understanding, tolerance, solidarity and a sense of common destiny among people of all origins and cultures in Europe.

And they want to create this solidarity by chopping them up into smaller and smaller ethnic factions that think the world owes them something, as opposed to say, appealing to basic positive human values that they might (or should) have in common.

For all the self-congratulation and sneering at others, their “commitment” to these things seems like a feeble fig leaf at best. All €10 million really buys is a chance to get a good press story here and there, and the hope that a few European that aren’t bigoted and hateful can actually be found. It’s just enough to maintain a pretext, and a sort of blood-money payment to unelected organizations trying to commander government funds and use it to political ends.

Nothing new in EUtopia.

The Same Answer to Everything

Even with potential for starvation in the third world, they parrot the same old lame fake terroirism that props up “state champion” industries.

France has launched a political campaign to restore food protectionism at the heart of Europe’s agriculture policy as food riots erupt in poor countries and global leaders give warning of the dire consequences of soaring grain prices.

At a high-level EU agriculture meeting in Luxembourg, Michel Barnier, the French Agriculture Minister, called on Europe to establish a food security plan and to resist further cuts in Europe’s agriculture budget.

Mr Barnier said that the EU should not bow to pressure from the World Trade Organisation to reduce further its agricultural subsidies but instead should increase aid to farmers in developing countries.

I don’t know how someone could say that with a straight face.

Diplomatic sources in Brussels said that the Commission believed higher food prices would stimulate farming output.

“Our policy is to liberate production,” said one Commission source.

So liberate it, already! Stop trying to set prices. The only way you’d ever be prompted to say something like that in the face of high world market prices is if you were engaging in de-facto controlling of output, subsidies and prices in a fashion reminiscent of the soviets.

Elsewhere “standards” are invoked to keep trying to tax the likes of Apple, Google, and Microsoft (but not SAP, SAGE, Dassault Systems, or Business Objects) honest from competing on their patch.

The crime in there eyes is, of course, not enough creativity in couching your trade barriers from view.

Finally, One of Them Who Will Look You in the Eye

And actually put your change in your hand instead of dropping it on the grocery bagging trough. Meet one supermarket cashier with an actual work ethic, who “tells all” in a society where the customers of common, daily goods are such that customer service is generally pointless and thankless.

But there is precious little return for these efforts. Many customers treat la caissière as though she was not there, staring past her and failing to say hello back, according to Mrs Sam. When they do speak, it is often with condescension or anger. “It's not a majority who are impolite but it's not far off,” Mrs Sam said. “They are often very vulgar. They are fed up with being there and they take it out on us.” Insults fly as staff refuse people with 11 items at the ten-items-or-less checkout.

Then there are the mothers who point at the checkout worker and say to their child: “You see, darling, if you don't work hard at school, you'll become a caissière like the lady.” Mrs Sam tells them that she had five years of university education.

I know you’ve probably heard the gripe about Americans having as one of their interminable list of flaws the terrible sine of “being too friendly”. Try asking Mrs. Sam if that’s such a bad thing.

Oh, and she blogs too. Give it up for your hard-working cashiers, folks!

Forever Young Adolescent

Middle aged Euro-men should stick to cow tipping, don’t you think?

They Were Against It Before They Were for it

Just another day of outrageous lunacy at Libération PropagandaStaffel where leftism gives license to call the Irish despotic, supersticious bible thumpers if they vote non to the EU Constitution Lisbon Treaty. Never mind the fact that the French left and its' propaganda rags were the great lodestar of wisdom when it came to the rejection of the French rejection of the EU Constitution.

Ireland is the European nation that has most obviously benefited from the construction of Europe. There are even Irish who are happy about it. Unfortunately, there is no evidence that they have become the majority.

Basically their getting the hate treatment here because they're rejecting this week's hypocritical Libération theology where among other things, that as a large beneficiary from EU funds, that they were unwilling to be bought off and simply unquestionably accept the Treaty conditions.

He even goes so far to console himself with the emotional detrius of class theory dialectics. Big words for spewing scripted buffonery, actually:

Despite the desolate beauty of its rainy landscape, Ireland remained the nation persecuted by history whose sons both had to emigrate driven by famine and were tyrannically oppressed by the English.

He goes on to wring his hands over their insolent near-rejection of the treaty of Nice, and their general dislike of following orders in spite of their entrepreneurial prosperity which he thinks was handed to them. Of course this makes no sense to the unprogrammed, but for the sake of argument we'll take it that at least he's saying that sincerely, since he also calls this Europe's “global” crisis. After all Europe IS the globe, as we all know, and not just flat.

But what truly makes the item's writer a slut is the veering his mental Mr. Choo-choo off the track of simple disappointed anger into the usual overbroad theorization of cause. In spite of conceding that the young and the educated also oppose the Lisbon Treaty as much as anyone else he still manages to say humorlessly:

As always in referendum campaigns, the most absurd fantasies triumph, the most absurd rumors, the most shameless take hold multiply to infinity. They plunged again into the democracy of opinions with its demagogues, populists, confabulators, and its myth obsessed. It's a technique which is irresistible to a culture riddled with superstitions.

Like all good lefties, he concludes that if democracy means anything, their rejection can be vetoed. I wonder who will get worked up about that “forcing of democracy” on the Irish?

al-Guardian More Likely to Believe al-Queda than the US Government

The usual spittling shouts in their news and opinion sites sound more or like this when they’re intelligible:

The US military-industrial-televangelist complex keeps power by fomenting instability and violence.

and other forms of the confluence of anything, anything, and everything that they can beat off to:

Barack Obama puppet boy of the New World Order ...bought and paid for by big corporations , next president of the USA (United States of Advertising)

In a more sober moment:

Last month an Arabic satellite TV channel broadcast a chilling video of a group of Iraqi teenagers called the "Youths of Heaven" - their faces masked and brandishing Kalashnikov rifles, chanting "Allahu Akbar" and vowing to blow themselves up with "crusaders and apostates." The film of these aspiring suicide bombers, all said to be under 16, was produced by al-Furqan, the media arm of the Islamic State of Iraq, aka al-Qaida. But such material is rare these days, with film coming out of Iraq looking suspiciously like posed training sessions with little of the live action of ambushes that has been the staple fare of jihadi websites.

Two weeks ago, General Michael Hayden, the director of the CIA, made waves when he said in an interview that al-Qaida has suffered "near-strategic defeat" in Iraq. To many observers it was a surprisingly upbeat view just a year after gloomy assessments of the dangers that Osama bin Laden still posed. In fact, few security sources - including key counter-terrorism officials canvassed by the Guardian - and independent experts disagree, though the US military is more circumspect.

That they are too touchy and self-absorbed to hear the idea “attract as many of them into one place and kill them” spoken out loud, but for now this bit of awarness will do.

The Sun’s Fine-tuning Knob Still not Found

"There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate,"

The environmental movement is no longer about clean air, land, and water. It’s a Gramscian distraction for political leverage which has made a mockery of science.

Overstretched, Needed to Defend Home, Blah, Blah, Blah

While all of the states leverage is, as ever, employed to make arms sales, and yacking “biz-tellectuals” write sonnets to the Rafale, or the near holiness of any other precious piece of overpriced rubbish the state tangled arms industries come out with, the French Army’s gear is thoroughly FUBAR. So much so that Sarko just penned a “reduction and improvement” program for the French armed services.

According to confidential defence documents leaked to the French press, less than half of France's Leclerc tanks – 142 out of 346 – are operational and even these regularly break down.

Less than half of its Puma helicopters, 37 per cent of its Lynx choppers and 33 per cent of its Super Frelon models – built 40 years ago – are in a fit state to fly, according to documents seen by Le Parisien newspaper.

Two thirds of France's Mirage F1 reconnaissance jets are unusable at present.

Like with the left in the US, the nattering is identical: they are a failure, but they shouldn’t be given a cent. They are “overstretched”, but should be reduced. As it is, there will be fewer soldiers ready for duty in the “la Grande armée de la République” then there are Girl Scouts in Canada. And of course even that would be considered excessive if we were talking about the Boy Scouts.

According to army officials, the precarious state of France's defence equipment almost led to catastrophe in April, when French special forces rescued the passengers and crew of a luxury yacht held by pirates off the Somali coast.

Although ultimately a success, the rescue operation nearly foundered at an early stage, when two of the frigates carrying troops suffered engine failure, and a launch laden with special forces' equipment sunk under its weight.

Later, an Atlantic 2 jet tracking the pirates above Somali territory suffered engine failure and had to make an emergency landing in Yemen.

"External operations, in the Ivory Coast and Lebanon are a fig leaf: we are able to keep up the pretence but in ten years our defence apparatus will fall apart," one high-ranking official said.

In truth, they have it kind of rough. They deploy their forces to various parts of Africa and the near East with the expectation of benignly satisfying the public’s need to imagine that they are there broadly doing good with kid gloves.

But it only works if you don’t have a lot of illusions about the world, and the violence in it, let them do their jobs, and give them a way to do it.

Moreover, every time the issue comes up, there is a parroted “that a reason for MORE Europe, not LESS Europe” routine that they go through: always a call for military intergrations. All well and good, but all of the parties are looking for a second peace dividend which lays the burden of a professional force at the feet of the UK and the smaller states with experienced forces such as the Danes and the Dutch – hardly a way to develop a broad, unified military force with a doctrine unique to their needs. In fact it would lean even MORE heavily on the US and the force segment retrained through US cooperation as we’ve seen with the Poles.

Again, if they really want it, they have to actually want it and show it. So far, other than the UK and the Dutch, as usual the other players remain in a staring contest over who can SEEM to take action in Afghanistan with the least possible risk.

From the Zombie-Cult of those with too much Time on their Hands

With no UK teams in Euro 2008, who should British supporters throw their weight behind in the European Football Championship?

Naturally – they speak for the world! The entire world - without the slightest hint of irony or awareness of the condescention or imperialism in the tone.

The World Development Movement, a UK development charity, however, wants the bereft supporters to choose a European team based on which of their home countries is most committed to international development or most advanced in the battle against climate change.

Go team? No way – because you know, when you compete, we all lose. And since sports can be seen as a analog for war (if you torture the logic enough) then you should think war is bad too. Or something...

So goes the tripe from the muddled Euro-lefty mind. Proving that their burning interests in whatever-it-is-this-week and whatever holy green hoop they want you to jump through are really just a game:

The criteria include aid spending, carbon emissions, electricity from renewable energy, military spending, inequality and corruption.

According to the ranking, Netherlands pumps out the highest amount of carbon dioxide of countries in Euro 2008, emitting 16 tonnes per person. Turkey, Romania and Croatia emit the least with three to four tonnes per person.

Rationalizing: it’s the new “beautiful game”.

Cuddly egalitarian Sweden comes out as the most 'supportable' in the ranking, followed by Austria and Croatia, while Italy, Greece and Russia are bottom of the ethical league.

Cuddly and egalitarian? Have these people ever been there? I put this in the same place as all that sad fake blue-collarism you see among leftists in America who want to be liked... want to be a “man’s man”, but don’t know how – so they force themselves to “pick a home team” in baseball, and get worked up about microbrews because they’re egalitarian in their Beeriness, but still permits one to be distinctively lecturesome in their choices.

Either way, it’s as lacking in any sort of genuine interest on their part that only their friends who are equally emotionally debilitated will buy it.

Plantu Prefers Terrorists

Caption: Ongoing torture at Guantanamo

Detainee being forced to watch President Bush on TV: Stop! I can’t take it anymore!

His “Americans”, stunned: “Oh! It looks like he only has a few months left”

With the usual arrogance, he wants to believe that Americans don’t know when the President’s term ends, and that his presidency it is entirely bound-up with “Le Gitmo” of Plantu’s wet dreams. In reality, they’re having a hard time getting rid of these detainees. The European citizens among them are not wanted, and the US is unwilling to release most of the remainder because they would go to states that actually torture prisoners, and do it indiscriminately.

Our Effete, Sophisticated Friends, Part 290

The divine and unquestionably virtuous Casque Bleu show their mettle in the face of human misery, need, and cannibalism triggering starvation:

UNITED NATIONS -- A U.N. official showed up at the U.S. mission to the United Nations in 2006 with an alarming story: The U.N. Development Program office he ran in North Korea had stashed thousands of dollars in counterfeit U.S. cash in a safe, diverted tens of millions more into the coffers of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and possibly supported North Korea's weapons programs.

For the next year and half, Artjon "Tony" Shkurtaj, an Albanian national who served as the UNDP's operations manager in Pyongyang, guided U.S. officials on a tour of U.N. malfeasance in North Korea, furnishing internal U.N. documents and an insiders' analysis of how the global body violated its rules and helped North Korea obtain hard currency and sensitive high-tech equipment.

“ Valedictory Tour ? ”

VoA:

U.S. President George Bush is on his way to Europe for talks with European Union leaders in Slovenia, and discussions in Germany, Italy, the Vatican, France and the United Kingdom. VOA White House Correspondent Paula Wolfson reports it is likely to be his last official visit to the region, before leaving office.

White House National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley says the president will pursue a broad agenda in Europe.

"At the U.S.-European Union summit and during his bilateral stops, the President will encourage Europe to work with the United States to confront a series of global challenges that face us both," he said.

Those challenges include trade, climate change, the global food crisis and a wide range of security issues - from encouraging stability in the Balkans to bringing peace to the Middle East.

BBC:

Bush eyes economy on Europe trip

IHT says he’s out to shake someones’ Trichet to see what nuts fall out:

"I'll talk about our nation's commitment to a strong dollar," he said at the White House before leaving on an eight-day visit to Europe. "A strong dollar is in our nation's interests. It's in the interest of a global economy."

On the other hand, Deutsche Welle, ever serious about interviewing people who think earthquakes are caused by Global Warming ©®, passed the whole thing off as a “valedictory tour.”

Europe’s Venal Pedophiliac Culture

I’m really glad that they generally hate America. It means we’re doing something right.

Germany's largest-circulation newspaper, the tabloid Bild, which routinely places nude photos of women on its front page, has admitted that it published a topless photo of a 13-year-old girl.

On August 8, 2003, as part of a reader contest seeking the "hottest girl of summer," the newspaper ran a topless photo of "Melanie from Leipzig." Generally, the newspaper includes the age of the models it uses on its front page, but on that date, it was conspicuously absent.

”Na, und?” You say?

A major German newspaper admits it ran a naked photo of a 13-year-old girl on its front page as part of a contest to find the country's "hottest summer girl."

This is all that the “openmindedness” that they keep referring to amounts to as making European culture and its’ precious, holy self something they keep promoting as the social model for the world. An aberration, you say? Not what the ‘social model’ really leads to? Hardly. It’s promoted as groundbreaking social commentary, dialogue, and literature to think that we’re nothing more than mindless rutting beasts without a conscience, and are incapable of reasoning anything else (but are intellectually superior to those simpletons and patrician damp squibs in North America!)

Yet Another Successful 5 Year Plan

Starting next month, members of the European Parliament will travel in style on their own specially designed high-speed train from their office in Brussels to their other office in Strasbourg, France. The parliament holds its preparatory meetings in Brussels and its plenary sessions in Strasbourg meaning that every month, 377 MEPs and their staff need to be transported between the two cities. The new train is being touted (mostly by the French who built it) as an eco-friendly and cost-effective alternative to flying.

To make it even MORE “eco-friendly” why don’t they dust off Stalin’s train car?

Cato's Daniel Mitchell compares the train to the special highway lanes once enjoyed by high-ranking Soviet officials.

Beside the Caligula-like nature of that perc paid for by people who don’t get vote on whether or not the want to be forcibly relocated to this new nation, the “proletariat” it’s intended to serve aren’t quite yet pleased:

Despite the luxurious accomodations, MEPs are still griping that the train's late arrival in Strasbourg will "deprive colleagues of their midday break and the possibility of a proper lunch."

Be Thankful

From the unctuous Euractiv website:

Highlighting the bloc's lack of political direction, the May paper raises issues relating to Europe's political, economic and international objectives as well as limits to further enlargement.

Chopin stresses that it is essential to clarify the aims of the EU in order to "define the Union's goals and shed light on the European project".

If history and common opinion is any sort of guide, we should all be thankful for the EU's lack of direction. Soren Kern summed up the alternative nicely:

The Reform Treaty, in its essence, is all about the centralization of political power by an unelected ruling clique in Brussels that wants to pursue its superpower ambitions free from the constraints of democracy.