Next on “Who Wants to be Called a Superpower”

=Sarko managed a very insightful comment at the recent Munich security conference, albeit something absolutely no action can be expected will be taken on by the patchwork of continental statelets that just want humanity to hold them in high regard for no clear reason:

Does Europe want peace or does it want to be left in peace? I’d like you to think about this. Do you want peace or do you want to be left in peace? It isn’t the same policy, it isn’t the same strategy, and the consequences aren’t the same. If you want peace, you have to give yourselves the means to exist as an economic, financial, political and military power. You want to be left in peace? If so, you have to curl up very small, stay in your corner, cover your eyes, block your ears, and not talk too loudly, and for a time you will be left in peace. Until the moment when it’s discovered that you haven’t got the means to defend yourself. But at that point, it will be too late.

The overwhelming response he got at that security conference was that Europe indeed wanted to be left in peace. Sobeit. The very fact that they’re having a conference to discuss a conference is ultimate bureaucratic prize. Especially since the Strasbourg/Kehl conference is going almost certainly to be a Kabuki theater scene of the Europeans being asked to share some burden in Afghanistan and knowing from their pre-emptive strike that they will say no.

What is that creeping around in that world view of the large part of the European leisure class? Simple: achieve peace by eliminating whatever small capacity their governments still have to defend their populations and interests. Here we see that the reflex is so ingrained and requiring no thought that they even oppose the holding of a conference where most of their governments will be resoundingly refusing to oppose the Taliban and al Queda. I guess identity politics, and class and religious warfare is honky-dorey with these nuts because they consider themselves non-participants and non-members of humanity anyway. Either that or violently bumping your fist in the air for peace does something for them. To each his own. I guess their sexual proclivities aren’t doing it for them anymore.

Further on the medievalism theme, we find this unintentionally funny headline: Strasbourg prepares for siege as Anti-NATO forces gather.

“There is no question of ruining Strasbourg, but NATO cannot claim to occupy a town if we cannot do the same”.

Keep an eye out for head-smashing and public car-b-ques for peace. Sure sounds peaceful and super-national to me, what with all of that imagining there’s no countries, and such – especially since the item is hosted Russia Today, a state-operated media arm of a passive-aggressive mobocracy with nukes.

British Squaddie Goes Green, Joy Rides

and eventually hugs tree.

The Anti-Americans’ Vocabulary Still Hasn’t Yet Expanded to that of a Normal Adult

Doomed! America is doomed, I tell ya! Whithering away! But not whithering away too quickly to be at fault of the very opposite too – culpability for showing any comparative degree of success in anything. For that, and its’ opposite, the entire culture, people, and most of all its’ image must be smited to prop up someones’ tender feelings of needing to wallow in an envious obsession of envy and the need for a far away demon.

The silliest thing that clever people are saying about the world economic crisis is that the United States will lose its position as the dominant world superpower in consequence. On the contrary: the crisis strengthens the relative position of the United States and exposes the far graver weaknesses of all prospective competitors. It makes the debt of the American government the world's most desirable asset. America may deserve to decline, but as Clint Eastwood said in another context, "deserve's got nothing to do with it". President Barack Obama may turn out to be the most egregious unilateralist in American history.

America's supposed decline dominates the glossy magazines. Last September, Germany's Finance Minister Peer Steinbruck intoned, "One thing seems probable to me. As a result of the crisis, the United States will lose its status as the superpower of the global financial system." The German official is quoted by Professor Richard Florida in the March 2009 Atlantic Monthly, who adds, "You don't have to strain too hard to see the financial crisis as the death knell for a debt-ridden, overconsuming and underproducing American empire - the fall long prophesied by [British historian] Paul Kennedy and others." (Florida's views are more nuanced).

Ah, the buzzwords. “Empire” “Over-consuming” etc., etc. Those phrases signal who can hear the silent dog-whistle and who can’t. It’s a good thing the US can remain useful as a hobby-horse to flag their feeble careers and lack of attention by the press.

Shamba-langa-ring-rang

Perhaps the AP forgot a zero.

Writes John Rosenthal. But AP isn’t at issue here. Even when it comes to Iran, a nation they’re actually turning into a regional power, Germans seem willing appeasing anyone, anywhere, to peddle their wares. Even to the point of stammering their way around aggression and Holocaust denial.

Last month, Uwe Westphal of the German public radio Hessischer Rundfunk spoke with Helene Rang, the managing director of the Near and Middle East Association of German enterprises. (German audio is available here). The Honorary Chair of Ms. Rang’s organization is none other than former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder.

Ms. Rang was adamant that Germany should not let itself be “bound” by any new sanctions vis-à-vis Iran: “such that we as Germans would, in the end, be in a position of having to wait again, perhaps respecting sanctions, while other countries quickly and efficiently have already begun deals or have prepared deals in a way that we Germans have not yet done.”

Stammering away, our intrepid peddler resorted to the catch-all voo-doo fetish, the only thing that actually functions in most EU states: that somehow the US is bad for sales.

Ms. Rang then beat a hasty retreat from the political front, in order to resume her economic argument, again raising the specter of Germany losing Iranian market share to other countries: notably, America. Even under the Bush administration, she pointed out, American trade with Iran increased dramatically. This appears to be an allusion to a highly publicized Associated Press report from last July, which claimed that US exports to Iran increased more than tenfold between 2001 and 2007, reaching some $146 million in 2007 (or €115 million at current exchange rates). The American goods were exported under special licenses issued for companies wanting to do business with countries under US sanctions. Note that even at the cited volume of American exports for 2007, German exports to Iran would still represent a volume some 35 times greater. Moreover, as the AP article itself makes clear, the American goods consisted of consumer items like cigarettes and bras or agricultural commodities like “bull semen.” Unlike Germany’s high-tech industrial exports, this is hardly the sort of stuff that could have military significance.

This is why a large part of Europe is not prepared to take any kind of meaningful role in strategic affairs – which is to say, the real actions and roles. Not the roles and issues that only exist because their governments demand to be a part of. They then can look like they’re on the forefront of something like “climate change” or what to do with old cell-phone chargers. Issues that are custom made for wild evasions, giant bureaucracies, and interlocking themselves artificially between the whole of humanity and something they must have to conform to some new more such as recycling or transgendered rights. Anything, so long as it doesn’t really matter. For example, the rare occasion that freedom from oppression or freedom of worship are discussed, they are quickly abandoned as too controversial or demanding too much risk to do anything about. Highly marketable ‘cultural sensitivity?’ Well. Now that’s different.

This is What Old Europe Mean by "Finally Getting Involved” in Iraq

The European Greens are no longer pacifists. What they really aren’t though is realistic about what Europe will actually commit to when they say that it’s time to support their man in the White House when it comes to Iraq, now that they think the White House is theirs’.

”The European Union should make use of its rich experience of state-building and managing transition and peace-building processes to support the Iraqi government" ... "by educating, training and mentoring personnel of key ministries, such as the ministries of the Interior and Justice." "... call for human resources of about 200 to 500 European officials as part of a broad initiative" ... "to empower state institutions and to train officials and qualified staff"

Which is to say, create another raft of jobs for the managing types who will serve in the European exploitation of Iraq, as opposed to the US’ interest, time, and commitment to put Iraqi resources at work in Iraq’s benefit.

The pieties all sound nice until you read their proposal for engagement.

Noting that the US doesn’t need EU troops, but EU civilians to come just in time for stabilization to pay off, one of the contributors to this academic-journal style of articles gathered together to be called a report, one writer lays out the United States’ basic objectives for Iraq.

It is important to be clear about the US’ vital interests and options in Iraq, which will have echoes and repercussions in Europe. An expert group spanning the full range of the American political spectrum convened at the US Institute of Peace over the past year and defined US vital interests as follows:
1. Prevent Iraq from becoming a haven or platform for international terrorists.
2. Restore US credibility, prestige, and capacity to act worldwide.
3. Improve regional stability.
4. Limit and redirect Iranian influence.
5. Maintain an independent Iraq as a single state.

Aside from the fact that they are harldy able to accomplish any of this within Europe in the former Yugoslavia after more than a decade of occupation, the European objectives are also made quite clear.

Behold the (American) blood for (European) oil “humanitarian policy position” found on page 37:

There is plenty of gas in Iraq that Europe can make use of. According to Syrian oil expert Mustapha al-Sayyed, this reserve “Can easily provide Europe with gas for the upcoming 10 years.” The European gas network, he said, is linked to the Turkish one,
which in turn will be connected to the Syrian one, “in no more than 6 months.” Once the Syrian gas network is in full operation with the Turkish and European one, he said, this will be a tremendous source of additional power to Europe. The Iraqi gas reserve is estimated at more than 112 trillion cubic feet, larger than that of both Algeria and Egypt combined. In the Akkas field, for example, near the border with Syria, there is an estimated seven trillion cubic feet, representing up to 6% of Iraq’s full reserves.
This reserve would relieve Europe from its reliance on Russia, which currently provides nearly 40% of the continent’s need, said Sayyed, who is closely involved with the Akkas gas fields. “Akkas is expected to produce up to 50 million cubic feet/day by 2011, when the Americans leave Iraq, and given a mutual will between both the European Union and Iraq, this could increase to more than nine-fold, after the Americans leave Iraq.”

Goodbye pluralism, here comes Total, Siemens, Nestlé, and the rest of the usual stuff they tell themselves for inspiration.

Invest in young people, those who are struggling to get a better education, or escape the misery of their difficulties in Iraq. Scholarships should be provided for promising Iraqi students to study at European schools, visit Europe to learn more about European culture, and then return to their countries, to “spread the influence.”

Then they can drive for them under the influence. ‘Tis their way: maximum profit for minimum gain, all wrapped up with a bow and a card called “See? Now we care!” Amazingly, they want to be loved for merely thinking this battle plan of theirs’ isn’t as crass as it seems, even going so far as to call it elsewhere in the screed a “moral obligation”.

Make the best of the current desire in Iraq to provide alternatives to the American option when it comes to industrial development, commerce, real estate, oil and gas.

Same as it ever was.

The Reality of Squandered Sympathy

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. When Obama went on his midsummer world tour, foreign leaders fell over themselves to get in photo-ops with the Democratic nominee, and a crowd of hundreds of thousands packed a park in Berlin to hear Obama speak.

What’s all that goofy EurObamaMania worth? Just like rest of those empty European pieties. Nothing.

In fact, in Germany, the debate is shifting away from “what more can we do?” entirely, and toward “when can we leave?” Merkel’s immediate predecessor, Gerhard Schroeder, wrote in the Spiegel that “the question of how much longer this is supposed to last is also appropriate. I believe that the Bundeswehr’s mission can be ended within 10 years. . . . A timeframe must be set for troop withdrawal.”

Sunday Funnies

La verité du President Le Pen.

La verité du President Obama.

Get into Single File. Form One Line.

Vaclav Klaus seems to be trying to steer Europe into a kind of sustainable federalism, and away from the over-centralization of state power that made the 20th century as bloody and traumatic as it was. In large part, it was because man was pushed and engineered into a specific “model of efficiency” and used as a tool. In effect, the Jedermann was and is today being buffaloed into becoming a sheepish tool with arguments about the need for collectivism and state social management as a way of wresting SOME SMALL RATION of human decency for oneself.

I call it ceasing to be a human, the kind living in the first person singular and all that. But what do I know?

The main aspects of Europeism, as I see them, can be summarized in the following way:

- the belief in social market economy, and the demonization of free markets;

- the reliance on civil society, on NGOs, on social partnership, on corporatism, instead of classical parliamentary democracy;

- the aiming at social constructivism as a result of the disbelief in spontaneous evolution of human society;

- indifference towards the nation state and blind faith in internationalism;

- the promotion of the supranationalist model of European integration, not its intergovernmental model.

Your ration card, of course, comes from a casual looking complex of rules, mores, and non-government authority mechanisms. If the very idea that Klaus’ statements are demonized in de rigeur fashion, and as a function of what one must do in polite political discourse, then I would say that European society is already reaching that intellectual dystopia that characterized the age of Hitler and Stalin, Honecker and Chaucescu.

It Must be a Matter of Style and Élan

How is it that Europe Inc’s drunken sailor spending bears so little mention?

Europe Inc. Old World companies, from cement makers to chemical producers, went on a borrowing spree over the past decade that left them deep in the red. Corporate debt in the euro zone stands at more than $11 trillion, equaling some 95% of the region's annual output. U.S. corporate debt, by contrast, is about 50% of the economy.

Just as with subprime mortgages in the U.S., risky corporate loans were repackaged and sold to investors. Now hundreds of billions of dollars in payments are coming due as sales slump in the global economic crisis. In better times companies might have gone to their bankers to refinance. No more. Bank lending to euro zone companies plunged 40% last fall as credit tightened.

Much as the dozen Euro-feeder funds that enabled Bernie Madoff to launder his ill-gotten gains into the opaque wilderness of unregulated Eurasian finance seem to bear going unmentioned, so it seems does what the leaders of those European industries, the ones so often called social-market oriented and concerned with the population in contrast to the “cavalier” yanks and their lack of government command and control over the economy. Pfft! Don’t say that! It doesn’t fit the image!

The shock waves could ripple through global markets. S&P estimates that over the next two years, 150 European companies could default on a total of $65 billion in loans. In recent years, "there was a flood of cheap debt, lower and lower terms," says Jon Moulton, head of London private equity group Alchemy Partners, "and with less and less due diligence."

Just try hiding THAT weenie, or the inane lectures about “cowboy capitalism” from those who know so little about the world that they can’t tell the difference between failure and fraud.

Vision Located, Fuzzy

Things don’t seem to be going well for the ultimate anglo-saxon patter.

Germans learn foreign languages while foreigners shun German

Reason found.

“Our song title is ‘Miss Kiss Kiss Bang,’

That spot on your eye, that foggy feeling, all of it has been brought on by that continental scourge of vapidity called Eurovision. Oxymoron, really.

What the promoters of the tongue really need is a catchy tag line, as opposed to that “francophonie or impalement! Take your pick!” paranoiac rhetoric that they use next door. They need something like “Learn German: it’s a strange proclivity.”

Info-Malbouffe Now Being Served on i>télé

Thanks to a news-junkie writing in, small-box discount news operation I>télé was caught out using the wrong footage too, running footage of rioting in Madagascar as rioting in Gaudeloupe. The Madagascar police working the riot don’t even have uniforms of the same color as the French National Police. No matter to the “journalists” in question – a riot is a riot, non? Our correspondent noted that it had the same stench as the omissions made during the Ramadan insurrection and the ‘05 episode where chants of "sarko, sale juif" were subtitled as "sarko, fasciste”.

Nuance schmuace! What’s 8000 miles between fellow travelers? To be truthful, there has been unrest in both island groups, but for the “Metropolitains,” I’m not sure that the distinction would matter. What matters is that while the concept of raging against the machine, or in this case, the water wheel might give old lefties a rare woody at their age, one of their rioting proletarian heroes blew away a union activist with a shotgun, and they can’t dope through the subtleties. One report goes that he was mistaken for a plain-clothes cop, but what seems far more likely is that as a “syndicaliste” the activist is supporting the lack of competitive anything that throttles France, but strangles the dependencies of the Outre-Mer. What we’re talking about here are virtual monopolies on consumer needs imposed by an association of their producers or middle-men through support pricing and price-fixing. “The Syndicate” is as apt a name as can be found, and it costs the consumer dearly, even more so the less you earn.

Le Parisien reported:

A man was shot dead near Pointe-à-Pitre, on Tuesday night. The victim, aged about fifty, was a organizer for the CGTG, a branch of the CGT union. He was returning from a meeting of the LKP, a class-action lawsuit against exploitation (LKP organization) when his vehicle came under fire. This activist was traveling with a friend in the town of Henri IV, a significant area of the district Chanzy at Pointe-à-Pitre. “This was not a stray bullet," said Pointe a Pitre Attorney Jean-Michel Priest. “The vehicle was targeted by three shots.”

Shots were fired, according to the magistrate with "a handgun or a 12 caliber pump-action hunting rifle" with round used for hunting wild boar. One of the bullets has seriously affected the trade unionist, Jacques Bino. A murder investigation has been opened.

Firefighters immediately notified by the person who accompanied the man, took almost three hours to reach the scene, having come under fire from young people who were in the blockade. Police reinforcements sent to the scene met with stone throwing and and shots fired”, said Nathalie Segaunes, special correspondent for the Parisien - Aujourd'hui en France. Three police and three policemen were slightly injured. Rescue and police could only record the death of the victim. Several arrests were made in the wake.

Of course there is some stock discourse to bring out, that of calling the action of the police “racist”:

Faced with this upsurge in violence, Elie Domotique, the leader of the lawsuit against exploitation "(LKP), leading the general strike that paralyzed the island and its economic activity since January 20, has launched an appeal for calm "in the evening. "Do not put your life in danger, do not put the lives of others in danger," he explained. "Do not respond to provocation," he said to the young, calling at the same time the prefect of police withdraw. In the morning on RTL, residents accused the police for conducting "racist" actions in facing the demonstrators. It was said that Guadeloupe is “treated with contempt".

So what this really boils down to is an economic riot against leftist dirigisme, but don’t ask the talking heads to elaborate on that, because it will devolve into a dissertation on gun control – right after the Parisian intelligentsia look up just what a pump-action shotgun is.

The situation had degenerated from the previous night. On Monday morning the LKP militants had set many blockades and the police intervened. Then in the evening and night gangs of youths had opposed the forces of order. Shops and businesses belonging to the group béke the descendants of white Martiniquan settler Bernard Hayot (GBH), including a Renault dealership, an auto repair shop fast, a tire store and a hypermarket Carrefour, had been looted.

LKP's claims include complaints at the cost of living in the French West Indies where almost everything is imported, while the unemployment rate is the highest in the EU and GDP per capita less than twice that of the metropolis [Ed.: mainland France].

But then again a riot is a riot. Those activist sons of the pioneers, as well as what’s left of the 68ers are nonetheless hoping that the violence will infect European France as a means of taking power, just when the economy is at a stage when they are most likely to destroy it further with their theories, blackmail over it’s final destruction, and spirit of universal economic nationalization.

We’re On a Road to Nowhere

In an effort to be singularly bilateral and neither sovereign or multilateral, the European directors of the Galileo geo-location satellite array made a quick and dirty deal with the Chinese government to offset a small percentage of their cost. Low and behold, they have been double crossed.

To appreciate what turns out to be a huge irony, we have to go back to 2001 when the Galileo system was in its early stages of going nowhere, and the US started raising the alarm about possible interference with the established US GPS system.

[ ... ]

Meanwhile, also to the consternation of the Americans, the euroweenies were doing a separate deal with the Chinese, bringing them on board as "development partners" for Galileo, with the very real risk that they would exploit the technology for military purposes.

The odds are out there that if they have a data protocol and an overlapping frequency problem, there will be times in the day that the “smart” Galileo system will be catatonic, even in Europe when a Chinese or Russian geo-location satellite is passing overhead in low earth orbit.

In setting up their system, Chinese representatives have informally resolved with the US potential problems with co-ordination of frequencies. Recognising the status of GPS as a "legacy" system with a prior claim to its frequencies, China is prepared to respect the status quo and not interfere.

Not so with the euroweenies, however, where compatibility issues between Compass and Galileo most definitely have not been resolved. With China's schedule now edging ahead on the launch stakes, the inscrutable ones are taking the view that it has equal rights to pick its operating frequencies as do the Euros.

The result is that Compass could end up interfering with Galileo's high accuracy Public Regulated Service (PRS) signals. This is the part of the system which will be available on subscription and will also be used for military purposes - not that it's a military system, of course. But, with the Chinese system up and running, PRS will be pretty much useless for military purposes unless China allows access to the frequencies.

Not content with this, the Chinese are also seeking to build into their system some "product differentiators" - enhanced capabilities and unique signals and/or services – which will give them a competitive advantage over Galileo and GPS. With their eyes on the lucrative Asian applications market, that will leave the poor old Euros decidedly in the cold.

That quick buck came at a high price, papito. The ambulance using “smart” technology to get to the side of the highway barrier that your wreck is on, or looking for the police officer in distress will be operating at cost to a Chinese state corporation, and at the pleasure of their often Machiavellian leadership.

The ultimate joke – if your sense of humour takes you that way – is highlighted by Dinerman. The Galileo system was originally intended by Jacques Chirac to prevent Europe from becoming the "technological vassal" of the Americans. With the frequency conflict, it has now produced a situation where the EU is going to be subservient to the Chinese.

- The hat tip goes to Pat “the persuader” Patterson who notes “Maybe they can use it to navigate to the beach”. Rock on, Pat.

“billig will ich”

Expect shortly the pulsing eyeballs and shifting blood vessels on the foreheads of the European left to decry how armed bands are roaming the streets forcing people to eat McDo. Right next to imagining how “those people” are Anglo-Saxons, that’ll be the next best thing.

Dateline Deutscheland:

You know how people eat when they’re under stress sometimes? Well I guess that’s what’s going on here. Financial crisis hin oder her (here or there), McDonald’s, of all non-people, is planning to create another 2000 jobs in Germany this year.

Just when you though the average German couldn’t trade down any more, they manage to.

Other conspiracies by the evil lord Obama: KFC is being barbarously thrust on Britons.

KFC to create 9,000 jobs in UK expansion drive

Resist! Stiff upper lip, lads!

A quick review on misleading captions

I was reading an article at NYDailyNews.com and saw a link with the Question: Lamest Duck Ever?

I was reviewing the pics because I do think President Bush made a lot of funny expressions and sayings.

I came across a pic that states in the caption that President Bush was having a hard time finding his heart. Another attempt by the media to characterize a republican president as just stupid.

While there are many legitimate moments that we can find to laugh at a president or other elected officials the media should not be trying to invent them. I am sure this caption violates their ethics policy on truth when dealing with photo's and video's.

Here is the pic at Daily News:



Here is the pic at Jamd.com:

To one Very Special European, It Doesn’t Matter if NATO Matters

But then again, aren’t they all just so special? All their leaders and bright lights of the political and social class exemplary in their carriage and leadership? Worthy of admiration and all that? Isn’t that what one is supposed to say to get them to momentarily stop fidgeting in their chairs and behave like adults?

In large part to the European modern sensibility, any and all organizational mechanisms is about nothing more than every other one: a talking shop for a subsidized class of minions, and an opportunity for political types to grandstand pointlessly and at the expense of the reason the organization even exists.

French president Nicolas Sarkozy has threatened to boycott the April NATO summit celebrating the 60th anniversary of the organisation, unless he is allowed to choose where he sits at the conference table.

The president appears not to want to follow the established rules whereby seating is arranged by alphabetical order. Instead, he has insisted he should be seated next to NATO secretary general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, according to a report in German Spiegel Online.

Under a compromise deal, Mr Sarkozy would sit on Mr de Hoop Scheffer's right whenever TV cameras are in the room, while German chancellor Angela Merkel would sit to the left of the NATO chief.

Once the doors are closed to outsiders, however, the 26 leaders would switch chairs and be seated according to alphabetical order.

Never mind the history of child-like drama France has put NATO through in the past, the Elysee insists on looking like it’s most involved member. It isn’t – not by any stretch of the imagination.

In addition, the French leader's gaps in English mean he cannot participate in "small talk" with his non-French speaking counterparts during high-level meetings, and cannot freely give interviews to CNN or other English speaking media, unlike his wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy or his predecessor Jacques Chirac.

It needs to be noted that Chirac’s English was laughable, and something he displayed dramatic silliness over, rather than just admit that the basic protocol of how ones uses a translator is held to.

Am I being too harsh when I say that the modern European sensibility wants everything to look and behave like the same type of talking shop as every other one that they dominate? Hardly. Even a think-tank dwelling almost entirely on NATO thinks it should be dwelling on global warming as dozens of others already do.

In case you’ve forgotten at this point, NATO is a mutual defense pact. If the Europeans didn’t in the past have a propensity to involve the rest of the world in their wars with one another, it wouldn’t have ever been necessary. On the other hand, if they could form a serious partnership of genuine mutual interest with one another half a century after the creation of the EU, they wouldn’t need it either and a simple, multilateral partnership where they actually did something for themselves would do.

Hat in Hand

And foot in mouth.

The mayors of Mannheim and Heidelberg who visited Washington this week to rally support to retain US army bases in the southwestern German region say there’s a chance they might succeed.

Speaking on Friday after their return from Washington, the mayors said it would be not be easy to reverse a four-year decision by the US to close bases in the Rhine-Neckar region but added that there was no final word on the debate.

“The door isn’t closed yet,” said Peter Kurz, mayor of Mannheim.

As for Mannheim, the outliers of the are American bases are closing here and there anyway, and they won’t much miss many of the locals’ indulgence in hating Americans, even if they‘re more likely to know them than most Germans.

anti-Americanism in and of itself does not bother me at all IF it is an opinion derived from empirical facts. But so much of what I see in German media about America is factually inaccurate - from whatever motivation - that I want to probe any anti-American rationale before I consider it worthy of dialogue - or even agreeing with it. For example, a German woman I 'met' here who is married to an American in the Navy lives here in Virginia. She sent me a translation from her hometown newspaper in Mannheim that talked about American 'concentration camps for children'.

Too bad, so sad, “lord mayors”. I guess you’ll miss those American 'concentration camps for children' after all.

Were Those Fired in “Self-defense” Too?

Malmö, Sweden – at a march in solidarity with Israelis, they bottle-rockets fired at them to cheers in an obvious homage to the Gazan who lob rocket-propelled artillery across the border to hit Israeli homes.

Of course those fair-minded European peacables called all too many things a peace protest. It’s the new code word for any kind of intolerance-based violence that leftists take quiet, passive-aggressive pleasure in.

You remember Malmö, don’t you? It’s the town where last month a synagogue was firebombed in solidarity with the peace movement, and where a public Christmas tree was set alight in solidarity with the peace movement. How much “peace” can one city take? Radical Unitarians are suspected as being behind each incident.

Rumors, conspiracy theories, group-think... Europe is again a battlefield of racism and bigotry with willing hosts from without and within.

Europeans Clawing Their Way Back Into the Womb

Ah, Europe, where it’s always the 19th century. Barcepundit major José M. Guardia sees these inspired minds in love with global courts, governance, and brute authority reaching for their usual comfort food:

SHAMEFUL: A poll commissioned by the ADL shows that 33% of Europeans blame the Jews for the financial meltdown. A mind-boggling 74% Spaniards think so; another 2/3 of Spaniards think that Jews are more loyal to Israel than to their home countries.

And to think that the smart, stupid, and even occasionally normative people of the continent are lecturing others about ethnic strife and prejudices. Never mind all that, a third of them are looking for a stetl to find themselves a Tevye or an Uncle Vanya type to behead.

Perhaps the same quietly grumbling respondents will start for Jews, and blame their very existence on the “atmosphere” that would cause some innocent soul to resort to extremes to feed themselves in welfare paradise:

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The bank heist at the European Parliament in Brussels on Thursday scooped €50,000, with police still looking for the robber on Friday.

"The bank services have said it was about €50,000," a parliament official told EUobserver. "The police haven't caught him. Our security services are looking at all the camera images and are in contact with the police."

It’s a building that you practically need to get a rectal exam to walk into, but keep that to yourselves if you know any lonely Bruxellois, what with this being the cusp of Valentine’s day and all.

Still, I’m hopeful that some artfulness is found in the fact that a brave, romantic “pistolero” can bring some joy to someone’s life.

The attack occurred at around 4pm local time at a branch of the ING bank inside the parliament's Paul Henri Spaak (PHS) building in the heart of the European quarter.

"The man showed a gun, or something that like looked like a gun, the staff were afraid so they gave him the cash in the drawer and he escaped," European Parliament head spokesman Jaume Duch told this website.

Nobody was hurt, he added.

The bag used in the robbery was quickly recovered, another official said.

Gee, that’s nice.

Don’t Feed the Squirrels

I always knew they were a bunch of bums.

To aid their ailing commercial banks, central banks in Europe have relied on huge currency swaps, borrowing nearly $400 billion from the U.S. Federal Reserve. But as European commercial banks and European currencies deteriorate, repaying all that money to the Fed is becoming ever more difficult.

"[Fed Chairman Ben] Bernanke's assurances aside, I don't see how they can easily be repaid," warns Gerald O'Driscoll, senior fellow with the Cato Institute and formerly with Citigroup and the Dallas Fed.

Misoverestimating

Leftists slobbering over Obama looking for a some kind of international superior-wisdom cred need look no further – than their own rubbish PR and that of the press fawning over them.

Adloyada points out that this great Obamian act of fist unclenching and divine illumination was set up well a year ago under dark lord Bush, eater of babies and former head chimpie. Beside that, it get harder to find a cred at all knowing how the far left get all romantic when it comes to fisting.

What do you know? It seems it's a women's badminton team which is going to be sent out to engage the good people of Iran. Is this a masterstroke, a superb bit of cultural finessing by Obama, in which he sidesteps potential accusations of sexist sports orientation by showing that both US and Iranian women can excel in the most macho of court sports?


Oh, but hang on. The story tells us that this initiative hasn't come from Obama at all.

In fact, it was the result of an invitation from the Iranians.

So is this the first sign that they are after all prepared to extend a hand instead of a fist in this new process of engagement instead of confrontation?

Er, probably not. Because what's clear is that these exchanges have been going on since January 2007. That's right, since deep into the presidency of-- George W. Bush, the supposed pariah of the old politics which Obama Is going to sweep away with Change We Can All Believe In.

Without reservation, I recommend reading her blog daily.

Get Some Couth, Already

Fantasy Fascism Fan and boxing ring tomato and former Commie Fantasy Fascist Alain Soral is having a hissy-fit with the National Front. As with all political parties and discourse in France, the most sophisticated thing they can think of calling one another is “dirty jew” and “Nazi”. In the case of Soral and the nitwits around him, incongruously calling Marine Le Pen both at the same time.

Brussels Journal’s Tiberge has more: ”The Front National Disintegrates” - and not a moment too soon as far as I’m concerned. They might be indentified as the right because the left hates them, but they really aren’t conservatives as anyone with an intellect understands it. They tend toward authoritarianism as much as the left does, giving it a cultural tinge of “family values” as the left does, and have an economic theory called nationalist protectionism which involves a lot state-ownership, dirigisme, and putting a wall around what they would quickly turn into petit pays de merde, just as the left would.

Oddly enough, the only one among them who has a shred of couth in all of this is the mare they’re all beating to death: Marine Le Pen who is carrying on the political franchise her father built on the discontent with the culture of venality and promotional posturing that Soral is crash-testing right now.

The New “Boo Hurrah” Wards of the State

Thanks to Manfred Nowak and Barack Obama, we can all look forward to a pre-9/11 terror cell reunion. John Rosenthal tells you why.

A first point that needs to be stressed is that a detainee’s being “cleared for release” by the Pentagon in no way implies that he was not in fact engaged in Jihad when he was captured. This is made clear by the example of Murat Kurnaz: perhaps the most celebrated of the ostensibly “innocent men” released from Guantánamo up to now. The Bremen-born Kurnaz was returned to Germany in 2006. But evidence presented before the intelligence oversight committee of the German Bundestag leaves scarce room for doubt that when he was picked up in the vicinity of Peshawar in November 2001, he was there to fight, exactly as US authorities maintained. (On Kurnaz, see my article here; and for a translated summary of the contents of his German police file, see here.)

About the remaining detainees, Manfred Nowak has glibly asserted that “very, very many” of them ended up in Guantánamo simply by virtue of having been “in the wrong place at the wrong time.” But Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the erstwhile Qaeda operations planner and current Guantánamo resident, presumably knows better and he disagrees. In a March 10, 2007 Combatant Status Review Tribunal hearing, Mohammed likewise pleaded for the release of many of his fellow detainees. But he by no means denied that they had been combatants. “When America invaded Afghanistan, they just arrive in Afghanistan cause the[y] hear there enemy,”

That’s okay, they’re still “innocent”, by emotive standards of the concept of truth at least. And y’know, the Europeans will take them, if only someone would ask.

For a great many reasons this is a bad idea. The least of which is the European past abetting, and by virtue of the embarrassment it will cause to jail ANY of them, the fact that they will simply release the likes of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Nonetheless, the paradox that European leaders care less about the safety of their populations as they do an “emotive truth” simply to support past arguments is a real gas:

"Many past and present detainees were trained in terror camps in Afghanistan after 9/11. They obviously didn't go there as tourists to admire the scenery. These people are potential terrorists," German conservative deputy Hartmut Nassauer said.

But socialist and liberal leaders underlined the EU's moral imperative in supporting US President Barack Obama's move.

Not helping shut down Guantanamo "would be even worse than setting up the camp in the first place," socialist chief Martin Schulz said.
"Europe cannot stand back and shrug its shoulders and say these things are for America alone to sort out," liberal group leader Graham Watson said.

Even though in all likelihood because it requires something more than checkbook diplomacy, they will stand back and make new excuses for not doing the thing that no-one has yet to ask them to do.

The commissioner placed the burden of security on the US, which is to be responsible for checking that any EU-bound detainees do not pose a terrorism threat.

Which they do. But before then, they want someone else, anyone else to make true what they wish to be true: their fragile emotive truth.

A Little Greenie Emotional Blackmail for the Kiddies Out There

And if that doesn’t work, we’ll hunt them!

-Via Tim Bleeah

Only This Time It’s Okay

Obama will continue the rendition of suspected terrorist both the the US to be interrogated, or to third party states where they fall under the laws of those states, and may be abused.

Google News only shows 34 stories for this philosophical reversal, one of which is Rachel Maddow’s theorizing that Obama’s decision to permit renditions is somehow auto-magically due to Bush hires still being in government. To use your own theme of sabotage, how is it that you sabotage thoughts Rachel? Or is the Enver Hoxha mind influence crap the piece of history they want to bring with them into this century?

Andrew Sullivan’s take in the Atlantic is stupefying in trying to gloss over the differences between rendition and detention of intelligence finds.

If anything proves what a miserable job the press is doing with even basic news coverage, it’s this. By fawning over their favorite, they are barely reporting the news at all. In fact the OPINION item blindly backing the left came out almost as quickly as the wire stories.

As is this was about suspicions of torture, then definition downward of torture, Sullivan wants to make this move about something that won’t muss his readership’s hair. What it is, is a salve wherein after having defined UP the rendition issue, it now has to be defined back down for as many as possible in the world view of Obama’s voters to even be perceivable to them.

There is, of course, a deeper point here. The clear abandonment of the Bush-Cheney torture program makes the detention and rendition of terror suspects much less worrying - both in terms of the damage done to reliable intelligence and the moral cost of betraying core Western values. When the US government has already deployed torture (and retains it as an option under ludicrous euphemisms), it is difficult to believe that they will be squeamish in preventing other governments - such as Egypt and Jordan - from the same or more sadistic and crude forms of torture. One can also be much less worried about short-term, accountable detention of terror suspects if we know that they won't be tortured, abused or mistreated. Abandoning torture as policy makes temporary detention and ordinary rendition less controversial and more defensible as tools in our arsenal.

What some on the far right seem not to grasp is that opposition to torture is not about being soft on terrorism. It is about being effective against terrorism - ensuring that intelligence is not filled with torture-generated garbage, that we retain the moral high-ground in a long war against theocratic violence, and that we can better identify, capture, kill or bring to justice those who threaten our way of life. Rendition and temporary detention are tools in that effort - tools that now need to be as closely monitored and assessed as they were once recklessly abused.

The thrust of the left has NEVER ONCE been about “effective” practice in external affairs. It’s always been a canvas to imagine the shape of their social policies at home in a manner that agrees with them: where they can deal directly with governments that can implement without public consent one social program or another by simply declaring it, such as is the case with WAVA and other social bugaboos that have nothing to do with relations anywhere or international security issues anywhere other than in academia or a think tank. We’re just supposed to believe that to be true because of what they’re calling it, and accept that by declaring it serious, it becomes serious.

So goes it for thing that are real too, and in the same way: never mind the fact that there is no consistent theory matching up the complaint rhetoric against American interests, no consistent theory holding their measures together now, and nothing telling us that they aren’t amateurishly feeling their way through each of their passionate past complaints the left made into its’ own individual ulcer that need be addressed, such as “no torture,” “save the whales,” “no more rendition,” “Cheney ran Abu Ghreib,” etal.

We are in for a hell of a ride if international policy is driven by a need to put balm on the left’s self-inflicted verbal wounds – each of which USED to have a “solution” which invariably required the making of a weakened and deferential America.

Much as we found that the more anti-American a non-American is, the more they favored Barack Obama during the election season, we find that strange deference having to face itself and change itself, both in the US and abroad. Good luck, because it was the very essence of cognitive dissonance.

A Legend to Themselves

Thefake nature of the whole tempest in this teapot, is that no-one in the Obama administration has asked if Europeans will take any detainees. Of course the real issue here is that the Europeans want the US to take the risk of declaring “innocent” the Gitmo detainees – in effect wanting the US to be brave for them.

This principle was previously employed by the Bush administration when it requested co-operation from the Netherlands and 70 other countries to accept Guantanamo Bay detainees who were eligible for release, but could not be repatriated. The Netherlands has thus far rejected this request.

The Dutch had no problem prosecuting Geert Wilders for “inciting an emotion”, in effect criminalizing his opinions. In this case what they’re looking for is that some other place, culture, anyone far away to confirm what European opinion WISHES was true without any of them having to contend with any of the potential consequences of what any of those men go back to doing after release, even though the Europeans are hoping for the 60 that are to be acquitted anyway.

The US request concerns the 60 “acquitted” detainees. The Dutch government’s argument in denying the request is that the trial and repatriation of these detainees is America’s responsibility. Dutch foreign affairs minister Maxime Verhagen (Christian Democratic party, CDA) is prepared, together with the EU Council [organisation of EU member states' foreign ministers], to consider “the possibility of facilitating the acceptance of ex-prisoners by countries of origin or by third party countries."
Critics, including the opposition party WD [right-wing liberal party], D66 [left-wing liberal party] and GroenLinks [green party] argue that the Netherlands must take in these 60 “acquitted” detainees because the Netherlands has always maintained a high-horse attitude towards the closing of the prison. “Someone like Verhagen, who is always talking about human rights, should really be able to show something on this point,” said D66’s Pechtold.
This reasoning, however, falls short. First of all, the responsibility for the trial, repatriation and acceptance of Guantanamo Bay detainees is primarily that of the US. According to international law, a country that has taken prisoners is itself responsible for safeguarding their rights. Rectifying abuses in Guantanamo Bay is legally and politically very complex and America itself needs to take on this responsibility. Were the Netherlands to do this, it would send the message that America can not only fail to recognize the International Criminal Court, but can also get away with violating human rights.

Using the same old brickbat – their own patented concept of human rights – the dear John letter is starting to take shape and stretching to the point of implausibility. When was it that the acquitted even need a full trial to vindicate them? Isnt the operating assumption that European public opinion has been operating on that these ‘poor waifs’ are the portrait of innocence?

Without the tempest of their invention in the teapot of their invention, they would have to face who and what they are as non-risk-takers who just want to be liked: irrelevant, even to themselves if they can’t back up their opinions.

What Will the Lefty “Stimulus” fed Economies Eventually Look Like?

You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling

I’ve always smacked my forehead every time I’ve heard that stock phrase on the BBC, that meaningless saw that goes “we live in a global world!” Is there any other kind of world? That said, the continental world view, the one that tries to outsource from the person anything unpleasant to government, and further to one despotic notion or one another about global über-governance, a UN council for anything that seems vexing has once again proved to be little more than a silly expression of the adolescent sentiment that it’s the only way people can get along with one another.

So much for the warm fuzzies about that big blue ball of lurrrve, even within the European super-state.

Staff at the Lindsey refinery, in Immingham, North Lincolnshire, began their wildcat strike on Wednesday in protest at the arrival of 200 Italian and Portuguese staff who were awarded a large construction contract.

It is thought that the European contractors at the centre of the dispute were told to avoid confrontation by staying inside a large, grey barge accommodating them, which was moored in Grimsby docks. A small band of protesters gathered near the barge today but quickly dispersed.

Elsewhere, anti-globalization global-worlders protest against the existence of the global economic conference, especially its’ pan-global internationally aware nature, and all that. Apparently, anti-globalization universalists want the global village to be made of malaria ridden mud huts, and whatever other luvvy-globey symbols are fashionable this week.

Riot police have fired tear gas at bottle-throwing demonstrators in Geneva protesting against the annual World Economic Forum meeting in the Swiss Alps.

An Associated Press reporter on the scene says the protest was largely peaceful until police blocked the protesters from walking to the center of the city.

Some in the crowd of about 1,000 people threw bottles and police responded with tear gas.