One Reason why most Europeans are Morons

Mr. Morales is expected to win re-election easily, in part because in many areas that he controls voters will be escorted into polling booths to make sure they choose correctly. His party, Movement for Socialism (aka MAS for its Spanish initials), is almost certain to retain control of the lower house of congress and is likely to win the senate, which until now has been controlled by the opposition.

Because they think THIS http://online.wsj.com/article/SB40001424052748704888404574549741582508178.html kind of thing is a social advancement. So much so, that many among them idolize the world’s grim human failures as “naturalistic”. Natural for them maybe.

A dictatorship that fosters the production and distribution of cocaine is not apt to enjoy a positive international image. But when that same government cloaks itself in the language of social justice, with a special emphasis on the enfranchisement of indigenous people, it wins world-wide acclaim.

This is Bolivia, which in two weeks will hold elections for president and both houses of congress. The government of President Evo Morales will spin the event as a great moment in South American democracy. In fact, it will mark the official end of what's left of Bolivian liberty after four years of Morales rule.

Those with some resignation and a vile sense of humor, no doubt will take a certain joy in having this lesson – the one that was taught to eastern Europeans and a million dead Cambodians at the end of a stick – taught once more.

While the U.S. and the Organization of American States have been obsessing over Honduras's legal removal of an undemocratic president, Mr. Morales has been fortifying his narco-dictatorship. He's also made friends with Iranian dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who will make another visit to La Paz tomorrow.

The only question is: who many decades will it take, and how many tens of million must die for the “progressives” of this world to put their ideology in line with what they claim to be their ethical framework.

Attention On Deck!

Why? Just because. Thanks to the very good taste of OMMAG.

You'll Pay for that Jizya, Allright!

Only among Arabs would you find anyone getting enraged about the supposed superior purity and virtue of THEIR kind of $10 whore.

A Muslim driver drove a Christian man to a Muslim brothel, then went out to call a Muslim mob that broke into the brothel, dragged out the Christian and stabbed 16 times after pouring acid over him. As the victim was rushed to hospital in critical condition, the mob started attacking and looting Christian properties.

And of course in retribution to the man with oh-so-much to give, they did the usual thing, and trashed what they thought might have been his neighborhood, cause, y’know, the neighborhood had some causal thing going there.

Dr. Naguib Gobrial, President of the Egyptian Union of Human Rights, in a press release addressed to the Minister of Interior, strongly condemned the vandalism and looting of Christian properties, and criticized the prevailing state of fear and insecurity, under which the Christian Copts live. He also attacked the inaction of the Governor of Minya and the failure of the security agencies to ensure peace and stability.

I suppose it’s because the hypocritical mob couldn’t be reached.

And speaking of $10 whores...

Talk of the Town Shanty

Word has it that on the northern edge of the city of lost souls, where east meets weird, that an interesting Economic Indicator has turned up. At the Porte de Clignancourt flea market, a thing has cropped up wherein people are buying opened and partially consumed food with one another, such as half a jar of jam, or half a box of powdered milk – a throwback to the meagerness of postwar life.

In a ‘rich country’ where purchasing power is mysteriously weak in spite of an inflated currency, this isn’t so much an anomaly as a worrying sign. It’s easy to understand this otherwise disturbing evidence of the failure of Social Democratic economic intervention: just wait for the locals to blame ‘Capitalism’ – whatever it is that they think that Capitalism really is.

You can almost smell the ‘social justice’ in all of it.

Just What the Order Doctored

Soeren Kern writing on his own site and in the Brussels Journal makes clear for us all what has become obvious by drips: the EU doesn not only not lend itself to any sort of democracy other than a Potemkin village of symbolism and plenary plentitudes, but its’ leaders seem to rather prefer to meet in a (now unlawful) smoke-filled room to select it’s non-titular lider maximo free of the burden of public knowledge.

Leaders of the 27 member states of the European Union are meeting in Brussels on November 19 to choose the first-ever European president and European foreign minister. European political elites say these two new jobs are needed so that the notoriously divided EU can begin speak with one voice on the global stage. Once that happens, they contend, the EU will assume its rightful role as a world superpower and act as a counter-balance to the United States.

Choices Made With “Succession by Palace Coup” as their Ideal

As if hoping for some sort of Ernst Blofeld-like Evil Genius who will restore their egos to it’s rightful place as emotional rulers of the globe, Kern compares the process of selection rather favorably to those that place in the Soviet Union where the 99,9% votes for the people’s man were thought to become more plausible over time.

Today, these so-called Eurocrats oversee more than 100,000 pages of EU legislation, much of which has primacy over national legislation and parliaments. Indeed, unelected bureaucrats in Brussels now exercise so much power that they dictate what elected leaders can or cannot do in more than 30 policy areas.

Kern is giving them too much credit. The public actually knows about this affair to a degree, and the press has found it fit to discuss in the manner of a “who’s hot and who’s not thing” after the fashion of a gossip magazine printed on newsprint. Complaints about the lack of a public voice in all of this is people characterized as mumbling neurotic who know not what they say. Soon these reprobate Democracy-fetishists will surely have a nice, warm, comforting Sanitarium bed, for all three of them.

In the absence of a consensus candidate, the contest has degenerated into a race to the bottom. In secretive backroom horse-trading, the center-right, which controls the European Parliament, has staked its claim to the presidency; the center-left will get the foreign policy job. There are now half a dozen or more contenders for both jobs. And the one thing all the candidates have in common is that they are virtually unknown outside of Europe.

So much for that policy of truth stuff that their parents never taught them. After all, think about it, if public acclimation was required, they might miss out on THIS gem of a Cub Scout Den Mother:

The leading hopeful for the presidency is Belgian Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy, whose biggest claim to fame is writing haiku poetry in his native Dutch. According to the London-based Economist magazine, Van Rompuy’s main foreign policy experience stems from his involvement in a Belgo-Dutch row over the dredging of the River Scheldt.

High-minded, fresh thinking stuff that will define the 21st century world as they imagine, no doubt but the matter of precedents and examples doesn’t speak well for the future if this is the heady and philosophically pure point from which future corruption of the dream will ensue:

The London-based Telegraph newspaper quotes another Eastern European official as complaining: “Trying to work out who is going to be President of the EU Council is not dissimilar to decoding who was in or out in the Kremlin in the 1970s. It seems strange to many of us that 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall we have to dust off our Kremlinology skills here in Brussels.”

Small is no Longer Beautiful

Consistent with the big Euro-topia theme that privacy and individual rights are meaningless, The Netherlands will start monitoring automobiles to charge a per-kilometer tax on mere locomotion. Not only does this make smaller cars less appealing, but forces on drivers yet another cost to install what amounts to an ankle bracelet of the sort found among “non-custodial prisoners” on their vehicles.

The Cabinet approved a bill Friday calling for drivers of an average passenger car to pay a base rate of euro0.03 per 1 kilometer (7 US cents per mile), beginning in 2012. Drivers of heavier, more polluting vehicles will pay more, and the cost will go up for driving in peak hours.

GPS will track the time, hour and place each car moves and send the data to a billing agency.

Bear in mind that this is in addition to the taxes on fuel, which discriminate very definitely on how much of it you consume.

- Tip o’ hat to Shy Guy

What decades of abusive Marxism-Leninism Has Taught Us

To construct conformity, you take away people’s privacy.

The information had been available to media until 2004, when a more conservative government banned the publication of tax records. Three years later, a new, more liberal government reversed the legislation and also made it possible for media to obtain tax information digitally and disseminate it online.

Norway's 2007 law emphasized that "first and foremost, it's the press that can contribute to a critical debate" on wealth and the elaborate tax scheme that, along with the country's oil wealth, keeps Norway's extensive — and expensive — welfare system afloat.

The press, having some sort of rights greater than that of citizens, are written into law. How charming.

With characteristically uninformed ignorance of the issue they think they’re dealing with, we find commentary like this:

"Isn't this how a social democracy ought to work, with openness, transparency and social equality as ideals?" columnist Jan Omdahl wrote in the tabloid Dagbladet.

No, that isn’t necessary or beneficial in a social democracy. It’s a tool of coercion whose place is better limited to selective use in protecting society, like listing approximate addresses of convicted child sexual predators so that parents can gage the risks to their children’s safety – and privacy – for themselves.

The search for whys and wherefores isn’t that hard, when you look at some of the other symptoms of the disease that they suffer from:

The country of 4.8 million people had the third-highest income tax among industrialized countries in 2007, behind Denmark and New Zealand, according to the latest statistics from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

I wonder if it ever dawned on the opinion-makers there that when you keep feeding the beast, it gets bigger and bigger and worries less and less about why they were fed to begin with.

While this has little to do with the rest of the world, that’s never stopped Norwegian social critics from commenting vociferously about the lives of others. Other times, they find themselves enmeshed in it too:

A Somali-born Norwegian citizen accused of funding a Somali militant group has become the first person to be charged under the Nordic country's 2002 terror financing law.

Which is a great time to step up to the plate. A fine time to show the world their mettle. Except when your notion of the violation of privacy gets in the way.

They did not give his name in line with Norwegian privacy rules.

Rules, rules, and good intentions. Rulers, rules, and good intentions. Don’t they ever get bored with themselves?

Reviews in the Comment Section Most Welcome

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