Bad Romance

Is there really a self-desecration dividend for America? Andy Markovits, scolar and observer of European anti-Americanism doesn't seem to think so.

The massively positive reaction to the appearance of Barack Obama on the international political stage, however, seems to have run directly counter to this massive anti-Americanism. Indeed, Obamamania, as enthusiasm for Obama has been aptly termed, spread rapidly throughEurope and the world seemingly negating the previously widely extant anti-Americanism.

Thus, his being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize nary one year after having been elected President and barely ten months into holding this uniquely important office, testifies to this man’s singular popularity among the world’s publics, but most notably—and importantly— West (or, actually, in this case North) Europe’s political and cultural elites who, after all, comprise the crucial decision makers that choose the recipients of this prestigious prize. Crudely put, had Barack Obama been less
beloved by Norwegian, other Scandinavian and West European elites—and had George W. Bush not been as reviled and disdained—Obama would not have won this award so early in his presidential incumbency.

Then, I noted that the more societies in Europe detested the United States, the more they "loved" Barack Obama.

This remains true, to an extent. But the global popularity of Obama's passive-aggressive view of the United States is growing increasingly less useful to him, and as was predicted, not useful to the people of the United States.

At first sight, this seems to contradict the notion of widespread anti-Americanism;
the German print media as well as pundits have been quick to predict that European anti-Americanism will soon or may already have come to an end. Our purpose in this article is to question such assumptions, rebut such statements, and present them as wishful thinking at best or—more likely—post hoc self-exculpatory statements designed to minimize a continuously extant anti-Americanism.

And the beat goes on.

Thus, for example, while in the context of the war against Iraq the engagement of the United States has been denounced as too aggressive, in the context of the long-lasting wars conducted in Lebanon, the American reaction was criticized as being to meek and timid. Once again, we have a fine manifestation of what Markovits has termed the “damned if you do, and damned if you don’t” syndrome that is so crucial to the logic of any prejudice, that of anti-Americanism included. Critics regard America as being too cowardly and self-interested by not preventing the genocide in Rwanda, and by rescuing the Bosnian Muslims and their brethren in Kosovo way too late. Yet, at the same time, often the very same critics blame America for being the actual culprit by exhibiting too much aggression even against bullies of the Slobodan Milosevic variety. One even hears criticism of America’s passive-aggressive character, meaning that in its very passivity, America exhibits a sort of arrogance that is de facto aggressive.

So has it ended, or just created new group-emotional opportunities and contrivances?

Notable in the case of anti-Americanism is, for example, the externalization of problems existing within European societies by projecting them onto the United States. Using America as a scapegoat for global troubles, Europeans obscure their own responsibilities regarding social, economic and political problems besetting the world thus being to make America the sole culprit while at the same time establishing Europe’s moral superiority vis-à-vis its American rival. Dan Diner identifies anti-Americanism as a general way of rationalizing complex and misconceived social processes defining all aspects of modern societies. “Resistive reactions to emblems of an incriminated time—modernity—convert into emblems of a denounced place—America. ”Accordingly, anti-Americanism—like all prejudices—facilitates the substitution of a clear-cut explanation for a more nuanced understanding of the intricate structure of modern societies. By so doing, it offers a mindset leaving anti-American attitudes ever more resistant to rational arguments, differentiated interpretations, and empirical facts that point into an opposite direction.

Returning to the cheap, opportunistic notion that they would tacitly compare European high-culture that few Europeans understand and partake in, to what they perceive as American low-culture that they do, Obama's presence in Europeans' view has done little that is it was assumed it would.

Turning to the data depicting Germans’ views of America’s cultural influence, the negative not only exceed the positive but also remain steady and unchanged from the pre-Obama days. Thus, 36 percent view America’s cultural influence as negative, only 16 percent as positive. As can be expected, Germans rate America’s culinary influence as particularly horrid: 52 percent regard America’s export in this realm as the absolute worst U.S. contribution to world culture. Showing yet again the abysmally low regard Germans (and other Europeans for that matter) accord American high-brow culture such as art/architecture and literature, only 3-7 percent believe that this aspect of American culture has any global influence, indicating yet again that there exists little, if any, knowledge of, let alone respect for, American culture beyond its mass aspects which, though disdained and hated by Germans, remains avidly consumed by them. This patent contradiction, even hypocrisy, has never stopped a large percentage of Germans to express negative attitudes about America and things
American without shame and any social sanctions. It has not done so prior to the election of Obama, and will not do so during his incumbency.

At best, the resentment looks like "something to think" and fill time with that will convince those "critics" that their opinion is meaningful and relevant to the world in a way that no-one else on earth can. The delusion that they may judge drives much of this.

It's actually an expression of helplessness, and a sign that precious shared-views were received as irrelevant. Like someone who only knows one song on the guitar, playing it over and over, and playing it louder isn't proof of a broad and serious repertoire.

Two Old French Broads Dispensing Pro-Gadaffi Propaganda in Beirut

Neglected since 30 March:



Some women would work the donkey show for enough money. Others just naturally love dictators.

Europe: Vee Play Naughty Dress-up Game, Yes?

Just for fun, say that title again, except this time, trying to sound like Yoda. Otherwise the European intellectual legacy of impossible to understand analogies, humorlessness, and hate-hate relationship with those of faith, we find an opinion columnist comparing Germany with a Vicar disciplining his flock. Those of you who actually attend religious services know that happens all of the time.

The Eurozone crisis has now put Germany in the classic vicar's dilemma

Given that they are conditioned at this point to believe that every man of the cloth is a child molester, it might actually seem more clear. Either that or they miss the good old days of studying the gender dynamics of Russ Myer “films” as an analogy for geopolitical dialogue.

Some even whisper that German European policy has entered its punitive phase.

If that whispering gets you too excited, there are some paper towels on the kitchen counter.

The writer heads the Brussels Office of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP). He is writing in a personal capacity.

You don’t say?

The French: World Champions at Breaking Wind

Reversible wind farms form shield.

In the event of nuclear accidents abroad, the turbines will turn to face the wind, switch to blow, and repel the approaching radioactive cloud.

A secret trial of the technology in the 1980s proved a success, when in 1986 French weather forecasters announced that an area of high-pressure over the country had spared the country, pushing radiation from the Chernobyl nuclear power station north to Britain and south to Corsica.

It seems that Britons and Corsicans must have neglected to thank them for this.

The project was scrapped by President Mitterrand, who believed it would be interpreted as an apology to Greenpeace, but was reinstated by Nicolas Sarkozy last week.

Radiating your neighbors – is that “European solidarity” or what?

Better Living Through Meddling ?

Government, it is said, should only have the remit of those things which civil society can’t do without laws to compel it. The EU takes the reverse tack: it tries to offer whatever services appear to have been successfully without the cold and clammy hand of government on its neck:

Yesterday the energy saving lamp, today data retention. Tomorrow: recording your frequent flyer points and what hotel you stay in. Its highly questionable and intrusive meddling is costing the EU the trust of the public.

Like mobile phone chargers, and the like, one wonders where they get this communistic sisyphean exercise with the state keeping up with the rest of the world’s capacity to provide quality goods and services.

I’ve got an idea! Why don’t they run a chain of grocery stores?!? with a view to acheiving harmony.

Berlin Sera Tousjours Berlin

Americans weeping for a fabled EUrotopia of their very own have a hard time coming to grips with the real, living, every day life of “EUrotopia”

An incident at a Berlin subway station at the weekend in which a man was savagely beaten by a drunken youth has raised concerns that penalties for crimes of this kind are not severe enough.

The incident in question – one of a string of similar crimes in recent years - involved a 28-year-old who was confronted by an 18-year-old youth on the platform of the Friedrichstrasse subway station in the early hours of Saturday morning.

The youth provoked the man, then punched him in the face and repeatedly kicked and stamped on his head. The brutal attack was captured on the station's CCTV. A passing tourist stepped in to diffuse the situation and was himself attacked by the youth who then fled, together with an accomplice.

The Pointlessness of European Political Life

1992: A defensive/ passive aggressive statement titles ”News” from Katyn in Roter Morgen (Red Morning), the house Organ of the Communist Party of Germany tries to mock the Soviet massacre of Polish officers in 1940.

Imagine that, the whole Politbureau leadership had signed! What a "find"! However: "Political observers in Poland expected that Warsaw nevertheless would not decide to appear as accuser of the CPSU" (FR). Perhaps Lech Walesa is a secret Stalinist?

This cheap melodrama shows clearly what is to be made of the whole propaganda cry about the alleged "proofs" of Soviet responsibility for Katyn. For decades even in the West it was assumed that the Hitler-fascists were the criminals at Katyn. And then all of a sudden things were turned upside-down. Without a single document being presented. Simply because it was politically convenient.

Operating on the theory that they all killed themselves, I suppose. Otherwise the inflammatory style of Communist “public relations” (when not massacring) normally involves:

1. Insisting something pointing to their ideological fellow travellers didn’t really happen.
2. Insisting someone else did it.
3. Insisting loudly that the proof is fake without any actual proof.
4. Obfuscation

2001: Facts still aren’t good enough.

Yuri Zhukov, senior scholar at the History Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, claims that documents proving Stalin’s security service (NKVD) murdered over 20,000 Polish officers in the Katyn massacres are “counterfeit”.

Operating on the theory that they all killed themselves, I suppose. Otherwise the inflammatory style of Communist “public relations” (when not massacring) normally involves:

1. Insisting something pointing to their ideological fellow travellers didn’t really happen.
2. Insisting someone else did it.
3. Insisting loudly that the proof is fake without any actual proof.
4. Obfuscation.

Zhukov is taking issue with documents made public last April which show that on 5 March, 1940, the Soviet politburo decided to kill several thousands of Polish prisoners, who they claimed were, “nationalists and counter-revolutionaries”.

On their release, President Medvedev said of the documents, signed by Stalin: “'Let people see it, let them know who made the decision to kill the Polish officers. It's all there in the documents. All signatures are there, all the faces are known.”

Same old, same old. A Red Army smokescreen with fakes supporting evidence were even presented in an attempt to use the proceeds at Nuremburg as a Soviet-style post-revolutionary show trial. No matter: when you only know one chord, repeat it over and over and play it as loudly as possible. What you’re left with is a European leftist.

This Report is superbly characteristic of Nuremberg evidence. The ‘testimony’ consists of ‘written statements’ signed by ‘eye-witnesses’ but which only appeared in a report written at Stalin’s behest and read aloud (in excerpt form) by a Soviet prosecutor. The ‘statements’ were not attached to the report, the ‘witnesses’’ did not appear in court and the original documents were not available.

Most Nuremberg evidence was considerably less substantial than this document. The ‘forensic report’ reproduced here was the only forensic report ever introduced into evidence at Nuremberg.

In April 1943 4,500 bodies were discovered buried in the Katyn Forest. At first the Russians claimed it to be an archeological find but shortly afterwards the British, American and Russian Allies laid the crime at the door of the Nazi enemy. Another 10,000 Polish officers remained unaccounted for.

Following numerous Russian excuses and pretended searches, the British and American authorities both knew of Soviet responsibility by the time the Nuremberg Tribunals were held. The charges of German guilt brought at the IMT placed the British Government and the Tribunal in an intensely difficult position. Relations with the Polish Government-in-Exile were strained and to have acquitted Göring and the other twenty IMT defendants of the crime would have implied that the Russians were guilty, and they shared the bench. When judgement was eventually delivered by Lord Justice Lawrence on 1 November 1946 the charges relating to the Katyn massacre were simply passed over, as if they had never been brought at all.

Just what you’d Expect from a Murderer with Nothing to Lose

In an interview with the Spanish edition of Vanity Fair, Charles Manson spews far-left rubbish.

President Barack Obama is "a slave of Wall Street,"

Indeed, the turnips and potatoes of the “progressive” world view.

"Everyone's God, and if we don’t wake up to that, there’s going to be no weather because our polar caps are melting because we’re doing bad things to the atmosphere," Manson warned.

Maybe he’s still getting messages from the mother ship, or the Might Quinn or something.

For the second time in less than two years, California prison officials caught Charles Manson, mastermind of one of the most notorious killing sprees in U.S. history, with a cellphone behind bars.

What’s the frequency, Kenneth?

France Gives Up on Curbing its’ Citizens

For the 400,000 residents of Toulouse, says Fabre, who’s also a veterinarian, the postcard-perfect southwestern town is otherwise soiled by 50,000 dogs that step outside to leave tons of their excrement annually. In tow are 300 sanitation workers, 100 of them with scoopers-at-the-ready, spending as much as 33 percent of the city’s 153 million-euro sanitation budget on shoveling canine fecal matter.

Anywhere else, this would seem improbably. People actually clean up after their pets.

A Bunch of Freaks

The Swedish government and responsible authorities ‘ignore’ child sex tourism offences, according to child rights organisation Ecpat.

Those most likely to claim some sort of monopoly on humanistic thinking seem to have the wobbliest spinning moral compasses of them all.

The group furthermore slammed the Swedish police for not having investigated more than 100,000 images depicting sexual abuse against children.

In a letter to the UN signed by Ecpat and 30 other child rights organizations, they maintain that Sweden fails to take the appropriate measures in the fight against child trafficking.

Further blowback to ‘being social’?: people posing as concerned-type humans trying to ‘socialize’ your kids for their uses.

Human Programming Then and Now

22 April is Earth Day, and the birthday of the ultimate unwitting leader of its’ proponents, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Speaking of it as the day of the birth of their savior, the official organ of the Communist Party of Germany said:

In 1902 Lenin's book "What Is To Be Done" was published, which had great significance for the struggle against opportunism. In this book Lenin explained that socialist consciousness can not emerge out of the spontaneous workers' movement, but only out science, that consequently socialism can only triumph if the workers' movement is connected with the theory of scientific socialism. This connection is the communist party.

The first earth day was on the 100th anniversary of the birth of Lenin.

Today, the environmental political movement sees itself in the very same terms: a class of people indispensible to civilization, one that is compelled to tell us what matters philosophically (despite our nature and independent reflections,) and want to tell us how to live while pretending to instruct us in how to live. In reality, they are programming children only because it is a shorthand around reasoning with people with a perspective more stable than their own.
Those incapable of any sort of natural scientific scepticism even act like every positive stroke, no matter how repetitive or pedantic, is a reward, like a rabbit in a lab getting his oxycontin. Even when they live in a wealthy suburb occupied by omnivore-consumers whose economy is founded on the seizing of wealth from the productive, whom they can’t wait to find ways to further hinder.

Our disobedience is pitiable, and the mere result of false consciousness. One subject to change, just as the name of the movement, it’s vocabulary, it’s enemies are all subject to change based on who the competitors in the political field are.

Lenin also showed why the opportunists, who strove for reconciliation with the bourgeoisie, glorified the spontaneous workers' movement so much: it is because the spontaneous development of the workers' movement leads to its subordination to bourgeois ideology.

Lenin concluded from this, "that all worship of the spontaneity of the working-class movement, all belittling of the role of 'the conscious element,' of the role of Social-Democracy" (the revolutionary parties of the working class at that time still called themselves "social-democratic", RM) "means, quite irrespective of whether the belittler wants to or not, strengthening the influence of the bourgeois ideology over the workers."

Moderation is wrong, he said, even when they called themselves “social democrats”.

It was all subject to change – the names, suppositions, ideas, all to the level that “the unaware masses,” unwilling to go along for whatever reasons that the divine lesson-givers aren’t patient enough to bother to try to understand, can make you choke down.



Try to tell me that something has changed.

Earth, peace, harmony, the godhead of the all-meaningful blob... it’s all the same to the indoctrinated. It gets to suit any previous purpose they had for other people, and if not that, anything and everything else. Further to that bullshit is this kind of prose:

The first Earth Day, proclaimed by the City of San Francisco and celebrated on March 21, 1970 was created by John McConnell. What led him to the idea was his interest in Space exploration and awareness of the March Equinox, nature's primary day of global equilibrium.

This special moment of nature's equipoise provides a sound basis for members of the human family to simultaneously join -- each in their own way -- in silent prayer or reflection: a time for dedication and commitment to the care of our planet, a time for thanksgiving and celebration. Earth Day is on the first day of Spring -- nature's symbol of renewal and new life.

Observed each year at the United Nations and to some extent around the world, nature's Earth Day celebration of life has been a dynamic force for resolution of conflicts and peaceful progress -- for harmony with neighbor and nature by people acting as responsible trustees of Earth.

Which is amusing, since we were told that all war forever would be over drinking water and who can get the high land far from the perpetually late tidal wave of sea rise that is when we aren’t running out of water, and if not that the other apocalypse of the guilt-bearing human for which we can never be redeemed: fighting over the cooler polar regions where we can raise crops.

If that doesn’t suit you, just wait a few days for some other reason will be passed around. Maybe something about things only being made whole by Mayan crafts, living in a geodesic dome, and raising your own chickes. Again, it’s whatever someone thinks you can choke down.


i.e.: earthquakes. Taunters mocked the greens for their predilection of making a connection between people using fuel and any natural disaster. They were told that there are always a few cranks and crazies. They didn’t tell you that the conditioned are the real cranks and crazies.

The last few years saw many natural disasters and most are still afresh in our memories. One very good example to site is Haiti crisis. Did you know, the last few years have been registered as the most warm years? Ice Age, though an animated movie actually addresses a real problem! Ice from the poles, Arctic and Antarctic regions is melting at an alarming pace – 9% per year! There’s a hole in the Ozone layer that’s contributing to increase in temperatures considerably. Why all these adverse issues? The only reason for this drastic climate change is our lifestyle, which is against nature.

Stop wasting humanity’s time and effort.

Next they will Ban Deoderant

I really wonder if the biological drive to reproduce is what drives Greenies to bring the rest of civilization down to conform with their own fragile outlook, particularly when they do things like ban Trisodium Phosphate.

It is still a must in commercial establishments like restaurants and hotels. But 17 states have already banned the product for consumers, causing most all makers of the detergent to remove it from their products, which vastly degraded their value. The detergent makers saw the writing on the wall and this time decided to get out in front of the regulatory machine, anticipating a federal ban before it actually takes place.

In case you’re wondering what the chamber of horror TSP is, it’s commonly called Spic ‘n Span. Phosphorus is also what is used to make non-chlorine bleach, or if you live in the village of the truly retrograde, anything marked “sans javel”.

Environmentalists are gunning for humanity. They have a taste for blood, and feel the power. To dictate. To beat the servants and sing to themselves like Eva f’ing Peron on psychotropics.

Who’s Really Buying What they’re Selling?

Joe Carducci has a term for the power play being acted out by a dysfunctional Arab society, calling it a “powerful weakness” being thrown on the west’s plate.

With little irony, Catherine Ashton is proud of the same enfeeblement and ineffectualism:

The strength of the EU lies, paradoxically, in its inability to throw its weight around. Its influence flows from the fact that it is disinterested in its support for democracy, development and the rule of law. It can be an honest broker – but backed up by diplomacy, aid and great expertise.

To which observer of strategy James Rogers notes:

What? Like in the Caucasus and North Africa? Or, previously, in the former Yugoslavia? Should our willingness to allow whole countries to fall apart or get invaded – countries in our own neighbourhood – really be seen as our ‘strength’? Is it not because Brussels (and the Member States) has been so ‘disinterested’ in its support for constitutional government abroad that its policies have been so ineffective? Mrs. Ashton should perhaps express a little more humility here, particularly in light of recent events. If anything, given the turmoil in the eastern neighbourhood in August 2008 and the southern neighbourhood now – in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya – far from ‘great expertise’ among European diplomats and strategists, there seems to be a certain lack of it!

With stunning ignorance about the world, Aston continues:

Whatever the subject, the ambition of countries round the world, from the biggest and richest to the smallest and poorest, is the same: to make the EU their ally.

Hardly. The Russians don’t. The American just deal with you because you’re even more of a strategic threat if you fail, and immigrants as a rule aren’t attracted enough to your societies to integrate amicably.

That isn’t love. That’s called making yourself irrelevant. Her position is the equivalent of palliative care. One certainly not buying it is M. N. Silva, a graduate of International Relations and a critic of security and intelligence affairs.

The European Union though is a house of cards. Its growth/integration is built on incompatible cultures, on divergent legal systems, clashing strategic interests, and an ever growing lack of orientation and strategic thought – if there ever was one. In September I asked a panel of EU experts what the strategy of EU enlargement was, they smiled and rhetorically asked what the strategy of the EU itself was – the strategy was just the success of the project. They continued to smile, I did not. This is the typical pink destiny blind faith that Liberal Internationalists always display, believing themselves to be the creators of an end-of-history chronological exception which will generate paradise on Earth. I refuse to reckon an ounce of rationalisation in people who dismiss the need for strategy in a civilisational revolutionising endeavour.

And I think it’s safe to say that the likes of the Baroness who once was heavily involved with the KGB’s most destructive wet dream, the CNDUK. It fits into this European preoccupation with self as well. While she doesn’t state it, many a continental thinker genuinely believes that the rest of the world cares about their union, and sees its’ formation as a pattern for international policy itself. It isn’t – it’s been a decade of chaos with no sign of ending, and if it weren’t for having the United States to guarantee its’ security, it would be overtly chaotic to the point of lawlessness.

As I’ve stated, European cooperation would be essential to the strategic success of the different European nations in a world of civilisation-states. To have delegated that strategic goal to universalists will unfortunately prove to be a historic mistake of epic proportions.

EU Changes Tack

Henceforth they will now provide advance of any upcoming impotent hand-wringing.

EU ministers to 'deplore' Syria killings, threaten sanctions

what is a lot more serious that “expressing concern”, or even “deep concern”, I gather.

EU foreign ministers will next week step up pressure for Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad to stop killing protesters and to make good on promises of reform.

Well, there goes the big surprise as far as their heavy ammunition is concerned.

And if that doesn’t do it, there’s always the magical power of Roget’s Thesaurus and their other secret weapon: the menacing Petit Larousse, or perhaps even the Langenscheidt of doom.

The EU vocabulary puts Syria on a par with Yemen, up to now seen as the most dangerous and unstable regime in the region.

This is supposed to make them seem forceful, robust, and effective.

You are asked to wear the costume they gave you and play along:

In Spite of them for their OWN GOOD!

Jürgen Habermas:

Europe's unification process is faltering because the political elites are not committed to promoting increased citizen involvement, the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas writes in the daily Süddeutsche Zeitung: "As long as European citizens see only their national governments as the actors on the European stage they will perceive the decision-making processes as zero-sum games in which their own players must prevail over the others. ... It is quite possible that the expectation that Europe-weary nations will oppose the further transfer of sovereign rights even within the Union's core zone is correct. But this prediction is a convenient excuse for the political elites to shun their share of the responsibility for the pitiful state of the Union. ... The European unification process, which has always been driven above the heads of the citizens, has now reached a dead end because it can't go any further without converting from the present mode of administration to one that entails greater participation from Europe's citizens. The political elites are burying their heads in the sand. They are continuing with their elite project and the incapacitation of Europe's citizens."

Yeah?!? Well no-one really asked them anyway!

Helplessness Was Never made to Sound so Good

EU thumpers always seem to come up with the saddest and most implausible spin. Take for example the motives behind an article that prattles on for 13 paragraphs of criticism of Action Ashton, but lands on words like these:

For the moment, Europe is satisfied to remain the “narrative power” described by political scientist Zaki Laïdi –able to talk about the world, to state its values, but not (yet?) able to impose itself as a true power.

”Narrative” being the best one can do to describe a nation with a Peter Pan disorder. It gets even better when the critics of inaction can’t quite digest the idea that EU foreign and defense policy are a light comedy film given an award by it’s own director when they get angry at the idea that the EU takes up policy positions driven by the commentary of its’ member states, who are the only genuine conduit of communication with the EU that the population has.

Will Ms Ashton be able to elaborate this vision despite her tendency to adopt, at best, the policy most acceptable to the States thus ignoring the latitude and the prerogatives allowed by the Lisbon Treaty? The Baroness seems to desire little more than being a “facilitator” between the Member States. Before Socialist MPs on January 12, she used the same term – “facilitator” – to define the possible action of the EU on the world stage.

Besides: “facilitation” is all they have, when you’re trying to still get in on the significant affairs of the world, but are prepared to risk nothing more than part of a loan guarantee and a handful of peacekeepers long after the peace is won.

“Inclusion” is thought to purchase peace. For a while, even though they’re already in on the joke. To these clowns tolerance is warm gun.



Good luck “facilitating” your way out of that.

Adulating in the High Esteem in which they Think they are Held

Europeans, permanently putting America on trial, can’t seem to get a bone out of their throats: for all their resentment, they have no-one out there to do for them what the United States does.

Asked to rate US impact on the issue most important to them, views are even more negative. On average, 61 percent have a negative view, with just 29 percent positive. Indeed, majorities in
all countries except one have majorities holding a negative view. The one exception is Poland, which is divided – 44 percent negative, 41 percent positive.

Canadians are 62 percent negative.

The arrogance is in the questions. The only way the “impact us” conclusions make any sense to discuss is if you naturally assume that the United States exist to serve your interests at its’ own expense. It actually doesn’t.

For example, when the “transatlantic study” ask the question “is the relationship effective?”, what they mean to ask is “it is effective for them?” The very fact that there are a majority of French people who want to further relations with the United States should make Americans ask what all of these couched phrases, the auto-eroticism, and pretend-statesmanship are for?

In summary, it seems that the EU is nearly universally seen as intrinsically positive, though there is less enthusiasm about its ability to produce positive results on the issues that matter to people.

Amusingly, this comes up in an evaluation of what Europeans think of the EU, and what Americans think of the EU, ignoring the incompleteness of the study: what do Americans think of the US when similar questions are asked, if for no other reason, as a control point? The idea that you can assert that they are “loved universally, except when anything meaningful is at stake” is idiotic.

If they really want to understand what people think of their standing in the world, the questions that should be asked are:
“What can Europe do if the United States starts ignoring it?” and
“What can Europe do if the United States becomes hostile to it’s interests and requests?” Their arrogant imaginings that they are at the heart of all global affairs prevents them from even thinking realistically in such terms.

Lastly, the French appear to see themselves as important players in transatlantic efforts to address global issues. The perceived success of these efforts, in French eyes, seems to require France to exert its influence, and for the US to be reliable.

This, despite the fact that minus “peacekeeping” in the Ivory Coast, they’re total commitment is quite limited, and that their demands for others’ reliability needs to be tempered with decades of playing the spoiler at every opportunity as a means of triangulating more influence than their power and capacity at commitment can justify.

Now that they’re buoyed by studying themselves, perhaps they can then start expressing themselves in some real way: do something other than wring their hands, hold seminars, have unimpeachably simplistic opinions about things, and take sort of action that will actually let observers see if they really are doing something that makes them the world’s superpower teddy bear of their fantasies. This is only true if you can “hide the decline”, or in this case conceal an inherent inhumanity and indifference at every turn:

Nearly three quarters (73%) say it is very likely they would volunteer their time to help address the poverty issue, rising to 81 percent in America. Poverty is another issue on which Americans are more prepared than Europeans to contemplate paying higher taxes – 56 percent say they would be likely to do so willingly, compared to 47 percent of Europeans.

Sssh! Don’t say that too loud! De’re hunting wabbits!

Europeans have rather strong perceptions of Americans

you don’t say!?!

with most of these being negative. Majorities or near majorities perceive Americans as manipulative, aggressive, and selfish. However, majorities or near majorities also perceive Americans as bold or daring and as keen consumers.

It must be all of that volunteering to relieve poverty that makes Americans “manipulative, aggressive, and selfish”...

Americans have much less pronounced views of Europeans. They give them modestly high ratings in a number of positive traits including being open, collaborative, sensible and respectful. They also give Europeans low ratings in being aggressive, selfish, and vulgar.

Including aggressive, selfish, and vulgar thoughts like the notion that people are trying to beat down Europe’s door in order to worship them:

The survey suggests that one of the legacies of the turbulent last few years may be a situation in which Americans are much keener on a closer transatlantic relationship than Europeans.

Of course, of course. Whatever you say.

The rest of the publication has a collection of essays which with a few exceptions are not interested in Transatlantic relations in any way, but rather use stale preconceptions and stereotypes about the United States, a few harmless old saws about Europe, and the assumption that the whole “America thing” is simply there for them to use. It is to the point of offering nothing. So fond of its preconceptions, the editors probably thought themselves generous when they asked American Heather Gonzales, Association Director for the National
Association of Evangelicals, to contribute to it – in some effort to get a grip on “that religion thing” that they think plagues “that America thing”. Fighting the temptation to having her play the goat must have been agonizing.

Like the basis of the opinions of most of the essays included, it is printed on post-consumer waste.

When Will the White House Recognize the US as a NATO Member?

It’s hard to tell. Mark C. Toner, Acting Deputy Department Spokesman, April 12, 2011:

That’s all I have for the top. I’ll take your questions.

QUESTION: Mark, on Libya, there seems to be some unhappiness in Europe among your European NATO allies, in particular your first ally ever, France, and its – enemy ever.

MR. TONER: You mean ever ever? (Laughter.) Yes.

QUESTION: Yes. And Britain. They seem to be teaming up on you wanting more U.S. military input – a bigger U.S. role in the NATO operation. Are there any plans to increase – to go back to where – to increase that role, to go back to where it was at the beginning?

MR. TONER: Matt, I’m aware of the remarks and I don’t know that they were necessarily ganging up on us. I think they were commenting on NATO’s tempo of operations. And I believe NATO briefed earlier on this issue today and addressed some of those concerns.
We have every confidence in NATO’s ability to carry out the tasks of enforcing the arms embargo as well as the no-fly zone and the protection of civilians in Libya. As the President said, the U.S. and other key partners had capabilities that they brought to this operation up front, and then our role would diminish as NATO stepped up and took command and control of the operation.
(Sneeze.)

MR. TONER: God bless you.
And that’s what’s happened, and we have confidence in NATO’s ability to carry out the mission.

QUESTION: Look --

MR. TONER: Yeah.

QUESTION: You talk about NATO as if it is some extraterrestrial being from another planet with which you have occasional meetings. (Laughter.) I mean, you are the largest country in NATO.

Laughter.

They’re all Special, and All Equally Irrelevant

Like a Chamber of Commerce from hell, or a disturbing recurring clown dream, the EU is replete, if not festooned with “Presidents.”

Overview:

The Lisbon (Portugal) Treaty creates an all-powerful “President of the European Council” (POEC).

This is additional to the existing roles of “President of the European Commission”(POCO) and “President of the European Parliament” (POPE). There is also a “rotating” President-in-Office of the European Council (PORC).

This is the same “European Council” as mentioned in the first paragraph. However, we observe no matching rotating “President-in-Office” of either the Commission or Parliament. Thus, the “Council” is the only EU institution with a rotational element in its presidential structure.

There is also a “President of the Committee of the Regions” (POCE) and a “President of the Economic and Social Committee” (PESC), two EU institutions operating quietly in the background. These two Committees (not real committees as they are not subordinate parts of a bigger entity) are nothing to do with the 22 committees of the European Parliament, which are subordinate but nevertheless have their own “presidents”.

Maybe they can use a kaleidoscope of other superlatives, like El Hefe, Pimp Daddy, or maybe just Christ almighty to differentiate themselves from one another.

We need more time to reach considered conclusions as to the purpose and relative values of all these presidential positions, and the many others we have uncovered.

For instance, the European Court of Justice has a “President” as does the European Court of Auditors and the European Central Bank. Other EU-related bodies using the term include the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market and the Community Plant Life Variety Office. The term “president” seems to be accorded to anyone of even marginal authority in the EU system.

Unlike our own system, there is little appetite in Europe for terms such as “Speaker”, “Governor” or “Chairman”. The idea of, for example, US Senate and House Committee leaders being titled “Chairman”, to ensure clear (downward) separation from the Head of State, is unfamiliar.

This confusing focus on “president” status in Europe is blamed on the French language, which uses the term for both “President” and “Chairman” in political life. Without the French influence, the vast majority of EU positions carrying the term “president”, would, in English, be reduced to “chairman” or something less.

The French language is also blamed for the plethora of EU committees often termed “commissions”, causing confusion with the status of the European “Commission”, which is not a committee.

That implies that there is some actual reason to communicate with any of them or try to sort out their gauntlet of completely unjustified self-importance.

The Greenest Kids U Know

Nature will thin out the herd.

Large sections of Australia’s rich are engaged in a conspiracy to screw the poor in the name of saving the planet.

What Night is it, Kids? It’s Movie Night

Peter Lorre is listed as a film director only once in his biography. It was a film he also played a lead role in. From 1950, here is part of „Der Verlorene”, or ”The Lost Ones”. The German language film reveals in his accent a fairly refined acting accent, Viennese in general form, which makes quite a bit of sense of his characteristic English-speaking accent.

Much of the film doesn’t go long without visiting film noir style image framing and lighting, and the entire thing has a characteristic silence that brings out the characteristics of his voice, and the facial expressions of the cast.

Now if only he could find a way to work Sidney Greenstreet into it...

The Search for Intelligence Continues

German Curveballs and Italian Yellowcake

The EU's intelligence bureau, the Joint Situation Centre, has recently sent people to Libya. But its new director says there is little prospect of turning it into a genuine intelligence-gathering service even in the "long term."

In fact, they seem so harmless, that even the enemy of their member states received and ignored them.

Joint Situation Centre chief Ilkka Salmi confirmed that one of his staff accompanied a European External Action Service (EEAS) fact-finding mission to Tripoli on 6 March and that another one took part in a visit to Benghazi on 5 April.

"We want to avoid the impression that these were spooks of any kind. They were technical specialists who went to help with satellite phones and that type of thing. There was certainly no tasking," he explained. "These are the only missions of this kind that we have carried out since I became director two months ago."

'Tasking' is intelligence jargon for being asked to get information on a given subject.

Outside of obvious comparisons to phone company linemen, who they were there to support goes unexplained: EU diplomats? Member state Diplomats? A extra-special surrender phone to the trailer trash dictator himself? Serious brown-nosing?

A contact familiar with the work of SitCen earlier told this website: "These are fairly normal people who have perhaps in their lives had some experience of being out in the field in a place less comfortable than Washington … They are people who can write reports. Who do not mind not staying in five star hotels. Who know how to take precautions when they go out at night."

FOUR star hotels?!? They’re SO butch!

Stop All Human Activity Now!!!

Founded entirely on a falsehood, more and more people believe that human productivity and advancement are, with some sort of puritanical self-hatred, little more than a guilty pleasure to be kept in secret. To wit, the German stereotype of having a reputation for cheerless kinkiness is held up rather nicely.

In Baden-Württemberg the dilemma is more apparent than ever. Many want the dangerous dynamic of modernity to be held back by the Greens, and their motives are decent enough. But they are the same people who, while they do indeed want to take to heart the limits to growth in their daily lives, are extremely relieved that the financial crisis is slowly giving way to economic recovery. Baden-Württemberg owes its remarkable prosperity to its industries. Its chemical industry alone — not exactly a friend to the environment — employs nearly 100,000 and brings in 28 billion euros in annual sales.

Unlike sin, there is no redemption here – no matter how modestly one lives, no matter how rough ones’ hair-shirt has become, merely being has effects that must be “mitigated” for the sake of the new omission against gaia: emitting carbon dioxide, one of the earth’s most abundant elements.

Otherwise... Live a little! Take a bus somewhere and chill out!

So how can nature be “wrong” without millions of Besserwisser heads exploding? I don’t know, but I may start carrying an umbrella.

Just how much sustainable lifestyles are grounded in the gains in freedom afforded by prosperity can be observed at any organic market in the Western world, but especially prettily in the Vauban district of Freiburg. The neighbourhood is named after a French marshal, and after the French troops left in 1992 their barracks were converted into a kind of model settlement for ecologically minded townspeople. In the regional elections on Sunday the Greens in Vauban won 72.2 per cent of the vote. These are all very nice, friendly people in Jack Wolfskin jackets; but anyone who has ever strolled through Vauban knows what the gentle “virtue terrorism” of our time looks like.

I prefer to call it terroirism, but like whatever, bro. As long as there are Americans and Asian to buy their goods, I’m not too sure that they care when they lecture us about the use of the vehicles that they export.

Elsewhere: hysteria! Run for your empty, repetitive, welfare-parasite lives!

Europe “in a state of nuclear emergency”

"Maybe they should send the flotilla to Syria instead - I'm sure it's more needed there."

Europeans are planning another Gaza “flotilla”:

The NGOs behind the project also expect several MPs from EU countries and MEPs from Brussels to join them when they set sail in late May.

Huseyin Oruc from the Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH), a Turkish NGO, said: "There will be many MPs on board. I don't think Israel will attack us. They did so much damage to their international reputation last time that I don't think they will repeat the same actions again."

Plans for the new project will be finalised at a meeting in Athens next week.

All that humanitarian aid, what with the issue being SOOOOO important in the Middle East right now. The doofuses.

An Israeli diplomat noted:

Noting the current turmoil in the region due to the Arab uprisings, he said: "It makes this attempt to make the situation in Gaza look like the most important thing happening in the Middle East even more out of place than before."

He forgets that the target audience is European, not so much Arab. There is little evidence that Arabs WANT Gaza to be “opened up”. In reality, it’s playing into the Iranian effort to open yet another military front on Israeli civilians.

Delegates are also expected from Canada, the US, Switzerland, the Nordic countries, Belgium, Germany, Greece, France, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK. Nobody from the former Communist EU member states or from Iran and Syria will be involved.

Around 15 boats are to set sail from a number of ports in the Mediterranean including Cyprus, Italy, Malta, Turkey and Tunisia. The route will avoid the Nato naval blockade on Libya and Israeli territorial waters, aiming to unload humanitarian supplies in Gaza and, later on, to sell the boats and donate funds to charities working in the strip.

Gazans don’t need that “humanitarian relief” nearly as much as those caught in the middle of a civil war in Libya, the people of Haitians and Pakistanis still suffering from the effects of their earthquakes.

No, the permanent ward of the UN is in need of this “emergency aid” first.

Do “unapproved thoughts” cause Global Warming?

Greenie “public intellectuals” living in their self-referential hell seems to think so.

[T]he capitalistic systems of economy follow the one principal rule: the rule of profit making. All else must bow down to this rule…The current USA is an example of a failed capitalistic state in which essential long-term goals such as prevention of climate change and limitation of human population growth are subjugated to the short-term profit motive and the principle of economic growth.

It’s all sounding rather familiar.

Totten Tours Hizb’allahstan

Ever wonder what it’s like to travel back in time?

“A guy from Hezbollah TV came down here to Fatima Gate once,” Leena said, “and some Israelis having a picnic on the other side recognized him. ‘Hey!’ they said. ‘You’re that guy from Hezbollah! What’s up?’ He was furious. He wanted to say something, but no one here is allowed to talk to Israelis. So he growled at them.”

She smiled. “He just clenched his teeth and went, ‘Grr.’”

The notion that we should feel “inclusive” of this culture is why I will never willingly go back there:

Hezbollah erected a billboard next to him that faced south and taunted Israelis with horrific images of violence and war — dead bodies gunned down in a street, a soldier with skin missing on one side of his face holding a rocket launcher, and a Hezbollah militiaman holding up the severed head of an Israeli man by his hair. Underneath these gruesome photographs was text written in Hebrew referring to Israelis who had been captured and never returned: “Sharon don’t forget, your soldiers are still in Lebanon.”

I felt embarrassed for Lebanon that this was what Israelis saw when they looked north. What on earth must they have thought when their eyes lit upon that barbarous billboard?

Why? Because they’re barbarians, and they don’t care. Hizb’allah are more than happy to turn Lebanese society into a Iranian proxy populated by angry, illiterate, and vulgar louts willing to use the general population as a human shield against their will.

Of all the cities in the world I could have relocated to, I chose Beirut, partly because I liked it, but mostly because it was the capital of the only country in the whole Middle East that had freed itself from the great Arab prison. Damascus was a dungeon, Baghdad was on fire, Cairo was choking with slums, and Dubai was a mall. Beirut was the light. From Israeli soil, however, Lebanon must have looked like Somalia.

To be more precise, from most of Lebanon, Hizb’allahstan looks like Somalia.

Europe's Stock of “Statesmen” is Looking Rather Feeble

Huffington Post discusses Dany the Red’s outrage at Germany’s non-action on Libya, and overlooks Daniel Cohn-Bendit pederasty.

Like the Jacobean queens and their horses, this seems to be "their thing."

The real question is: why is the outrage of an MEP over some nation NOT doing something news? It isn’t. It’s to artificially raise the sale pédé’s profile, and amplify his criticism of Merkel?

Oh, and in case you’re wondering why so many Europeans are eager to “enforce the No-Fly Zone”, it’s because Libya has virtually no airworthy aircraft. This way they can look like they’re doing something.

REO Mistwagen

In December 2010, Frank Schneider, the president of the German Society for Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Treatment of Nervous Diseases admitted that the race and euthanasia policies of the Third Reich had not been forced upon German psychiatrists, but that they had been among its initiators.

Germans, always hypersensitive to the telling of any history or comparisons of present day German society with Nazism need to stop fretting, because you aren’t alone. No-one buys the routine any more, and humanity realizes that it comes a lot more naturally to Europeans that we want to believe.

Forty-seven percent of Germans are of the opinion that Israel is exterminating the Palestinians according to a poll undertaken by the University of Bielefeld for the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, affiliated with the German Social Democratic Party. These findings raise fundamental questions about the future of German society and not only about those Germans who falsely accuse Israelis of behaving like their own totalitarian or murderous ancestors.

It’s the few of them that aren’t conspiracy crackpots, that handful that don’t believe things for the sake for their egos that I have some slight hope for.

The recent data should not surprise anyone. It even marks some progress when compared with the past. This same university undertook a major poll in 2004. Some 68% percent of Germans then agreed with the allegation: “Israel undertakes a war of destruction against the Palestinians.” Fifty-one percent shared the opinion: “The way the State of Israel acts toward the Palestinians is in principle no different from the Nazis’ behavior in the Third Reich toward the Jews.”

All of those lesson-givers, going at it again...

At least they have Norwegians to keep them company. Alan Dershowitz offered to offer to speak without compensation at Norwegian Universities, only to be turned down for similarly one-sided reasons. These “tolerant” academics “in search of the truth,” it seems tend to stick to plugging their ears while yelling nya-nya-nya-nya

A third university, Bergen, answered that it was only willing to host Dershowitz provided he change his topic to an analysis of the O. J. Simpson trial, the American star football player who became a criminal. They did not want him to speak about Israel. Dershowitz rightly refused. The student unions of the three universities then quickly organized lectures by him, thus saving a little bit of the country’s honor.

Dershowitz told the small Christian daily Dagen that the refusals by the Norwegian universities to let him speak reminded him of his visits to the Soviet Union, and South Africa under the apartheid regime. He called the Norwegian universities propaganda tools, with leaders who are smart yet ignorant. Dershowitz added that Norwegian government policies were a hindrance to the peace process, as their double standards helped Hamas.

Americans to look down on, whodaguessedit? Somehow, I don’t think the Dersh takes requests, especially when it comes to offering a survey of the kind of law practiced by scheissters who advertise on buses.



Another new high for European culture

Steyn, On the 80’s Retread Goings On in London

It’s all very Carnaby Street.

Instead, the Polish and Balkan baristas were hurriedly dragging in all the sidewalk tables and chairs before the Socialist Workers’ Party chaps showed up in search of projectiles. Nobody in the Socialist Workers’ Party actually works, which is one reason why it’s Mitteleuropeans frothing your coffee rather than any of the natives.

So right after watching the real proletariat trying to save their hides in the face of the puerile children’s crusade, we get to go from the Mittel-Europäern to the Middle-Minded:

Still, on balance I prefer the class-war thugs trashing the joint, who at least have the courage of their convictions. The “nice” people bussed in from the shires struck me as some of the most stupid people I’ve ever met anywhere on the planet. One elderly lady from Yorkshire told me she was there because her grandson’s university fees were likely to go up.

... SNIP ...

She stared at me blankly. “Well, I don’t want to argue,” she said politely. “I just think it’s a disgrace.”

It’s all a matter of “being nice” this desire to take and take for ones’ illusions and comforts. After all, if one is truly nostalgic for a Britain of the 70’s and 80’s, you might as well note a feature of that nation that has gone unchanged the whole while:

I was in a cranky mood because I hadn’t had my coffee. “You can protest all you like,” I said. “But this country’s broke, so all you’re doing is postponing its reacquaintanceship with reality, and ensuring that your grandson and his contemporaries are going to be stuck with the tab because you guys spent their future.” I pointed out that in her part of the world – northern England – as in Wales and Northern Ireland, the state accounts for three-quarters of the economy. And it’s still not enough for the likes of her and her pals.

And all of that is BEFORE every other single issue faction tries to salve their perspectiveless guilt by proposing the same dedication to THEIR issues. Either way, it’s a class firm in their belief that only a huge, paternalistic, government with obscenely high levels of power can solve problems, and that the solution to each problem starts by sucking more capitol out of society.

Not only can Ian and Nigella not add, but they don’t want to know the ugliness of knowing what those numbers do to them of the rest of society.

Like Water for Moonies

Left think:

As if Tea Party Republicans have not done enough to undermine the working class in America, now they are going after children. New pro-business legislation threatens to make it even harder for adults to keep their jobs, or get new ones, in the struggling American economy.

Of course, one must first ignore the fact that the Tea Party ARE overwhelmingly the working “class” in America. You must also ignore the fact that the non-family-farm working age isn’t being lowered, and that 20 year olds are not children.

Instead of seeing every shadow, every leaf, every whistle in the wind as political ammunition for the gullible, why don't these cretins look at what the proposal really is: a youth unemployment measure to deal with the handwringing about young people delaying the start of work, and not developing skills.

To make her feeble “globally distributed” point, he tosses in a Youtube video of child labor in a grab-bag of places in the developing world, including “fashionably backward” societies like Kenya, and rapidly developing Brazil.

Maryann Tobin is a professional journalist who has appeared on the History Channel in Brad Meltzer's DECODED. She is also a former jockey and rescues abused animals on her farm.

She calls herself a “political spin examiner”, if you can believe it. Her “journalistic” magnum opii includes fact-of-the-title-statement masking items with titles such as:

Gov. Rick Scott plans to add 12,300 to Florida unemployment lines.
Republican Tea Party conservatives plan big govt. regulation of women’s rights.
Republicans get failing grade in new poll.
Republicans begin Muslim American terrorist hearings.
Republicans take collective bargaining rights with no democrats present.
Republicans want to cut funding for tsumani warning system

Without irony, or noticing that Unions are little more than a movement corrupted and exploited by the left:
Republican Governors use union busting to go after democratic campaign funds.

(because union money are THEIR campaign funds)

Is Fox News running scared from Huffington Post, AOL deal?.

and the utterly implausible notion:
Republican bill takes Food Stamps from union workers children and families.

Because union workers are starving, underpaid, and are poor enough to qualify for the same food stamps that no pre-packaged anti-Walmart tirade fails to include, saying “they make just enough to not qualify for food stamps”.

And scrambling feverishly into the past centuries for personal opinion justification:
Can Republican Budget Cuts lead to Another Triangle Fire Disaster?

As if the Federal government budgeted for local fire departments... Etc. You get the picture - reporting MSNBC opinion as newsworthy facts, and the like.

She has also lent her crack-reporting skills to something she is quite proud of: some production on History Channel called “Decoded”.

Brad Meltzer's Decoded, (or simply Decoded), is an American mystery and conspiracy theory investigation television series, produced by Go Go Luckey and Berman/Braun, that premiered December 2, 2010 on the History channel.[1] The series is hosted by political thriller author and non-fiction writer Brad Meltzer and follows a team of investigators who try and determine the meanings behind various symbolism, alleged secret codes and conspiracies that surround us everyday.

So goes the search for fining that all adversity in the world is caused by Jewish Bankers, the British Royal Family, and Fluoride.

You get it. “Journalism,” indeed. To call herself a Political spin examiner is laughable. Her entire occupation is to spin others’ journalism for her own, and her uses. She aggregates from wire items like a politically programmed adolescent would blogs.

One does have to give her points for consistency. “Decoded” the serialized mimeograph-grade cult pamphlet that she posed as a journalist with a sound reputation for to ligitmate it, somewhere among heaven knows who, was received thus:

New York Times reviewer Ginia Bellfante, gave Decoded a negative review saying; "[there] are the languorous crackpots who wonder if codes are embedded in their Home Depot receipts, or if George Washington's wooden leg hid an alternate Constitution. It is for this group that the series 'Brad Meltzer’s Decoded' has been conceived"

There it is, folks... the Black Helicopter crowd, and they appeal to the kind of lefty fake-crisis gin-ups and populist pandering that have done more to tar the American people’s reputation than anything else. In other words, the new generation of the left.

Remind me to send out the Bilderburg hit teams on our Alien technology transporters later this week.

REO Mistwagen

In December 2010, Frank Schneider, the president of the German Society for Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Treatment of Nervous Diseases admitted that the race and euthanasia policies of the Third Reich had not been forced upon German psychiatrists, but that they had been among its initiators.

Germans, always hypersensitive to the telling of any history or comparisons of present day German society with Nazism need to stop fretting, because you aren’t alone. No-one buys the routine any more, and humanity realizes that it comes a lot more naturally to Europeans that we want to believe.

Forty-seven percent of Germans are of the opinion that Israel is exterminating the Palestinians according to a poll undertaken by the University of Bielefeld for the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, affiliated with the German Social Democratic Party. These findings raise fundamental questions about the future of German society and not only about those Germans who falsely accuse Israelis of behaving like their own totalitarian or murderous ancestors.

It’s the few of them that aren’t conspiracy crackpots, that handful that don’t believe things for the sake for their egos that I have some slight hope for.

The recent data should not surprise anyone. It even marks some progress when compared with the past. This same university undertook a major poll in 2004. Some 68% percent of Germans then agreed with the allegation: “Israel undertakes a war of destruction against the Palestinians.” Fifty-one percent shared the opinion: “The way the State of Israel acts toward the Palestinians is in principle no different from the Nazis’ behavior in the Third Reich toward the Jews.”

All of those lesson-givers, going at it again...

At least they have Norwegians to keep them company. Alan Dershowitz offered to offer to speak without compensation at Norwegian Universities, only to be turned down for similarly one-sided reasons. These “tolerant” academics “in search of the truth,” it seems tend to stick to plugging their ears while yelling nya-nya-nya-nya

A third university, Bergen, answered that it was only willing to host Dershowitz provided he change his topic to an analysis of the O. J. Simpson trial, the American star football player who became a criminal. They did not want him to speak about Israel. Dershowitz rightly refused. The student unions of the three universities then quickly organized lectures by him, thus saving a little bit of the country’s honor.

Dershowitz told the small Christian daily Dagen that the refusals by the Norwegian universities to let him speak reminded him of his visits to the Soviet Union, and South Africa under the apartheid regime. He called the Norwegian universities propaganda tools, with leaders who are smart yet ignorant. Dershowitz added that Norwegian government policies were a hindrance to the peace process, as their double standards helped Hamas.

Americans to look down on, whodaguessedit? Somehow, I don’t think the Dersh takes requests, especially when it comes to offering a survey of the kind of law practiced by scheissters who advertise on buses.



Another new high for European culture

Ja, Aber... Na Ja.....

March 1981: Germans selling out to the highest bidding autocrat, otherwise complain about American arms trade and “hegemony”. In the meantime, they continued with the peacenik hair-shirt routine.

March 2011: Germans selling out to the highest bidding autocrat, otherwise complain about American arms trade and “hegemonyIn the meantime, they continued with the peacenik hair-shirt routine.

Greens Former Fixation on Earth’s Corn Hole Ignored

Remember waaaay back, right after the paper bag hysteria based on the idea that the world would run out of trees, and that paper bags were by-some-miracle linked to the loss of old-growth forests (when we were supposed to start using PLASTIC bags)... there was this impending apocalypse called the hole in the ozone layer.

Apparently, it hasn’t changed much at all in 20 years, despite eliminating spray deodorant and going through the costly effort of changing the refrigerant used in, say, everything.

John Ray links to one rather telling quotation that a few bitter clingers in the cult of ecological millennial madness can’t quite square: the fact that the Ozone layer Jihad really was as much of a big fat pile of mendacity that “the deniers” said it was.

Even the author of the Gaia theory, James Lovelock, reacted the way any as-yet unprogrammed person would with the 2009 leaking of the Climategate emails.

“I was utterly disgusted. My second thought was that it was inevitable. It was bound to happen. Science, not so very long ago, pre-1960s, was largely vocational. Back when I was young, I didn’t want to do anything else other than be a scientist. They’re not like that nowadays. They don’t give a damn. They go to these massive, mass-produced universities and churn them out. They say: “Science is a good career. You can get a job for life doing government work.” That’s no way to do science.

I have seen this happen before, of course. We should have been warned by the CFC/ozone affair because the corruption of science in that was so bad that something like 80% of the measurements being made during that time were either faked, or incompetently done.

It’s really just their followers that are coo-coo for Cocoa Puffs. Aside from the flunkies and dupes, the true proponents are just proving themselves to be evil.

“The warmers are getting more and more like those traditional predictors of the end of the world who, when the event fails to happen on the due date, announce an error in their calculations and a new date.”

Otherwise, top of the icecap to you, friends. May your endless wait for the violent, dramatic, and sudden sea level rise be as uneventful and contrived as every other feature of your lives.

Euro-think

AKA: Keeping your head planted as deep in your ass as possible.

Dutch Jews now complain of growing anti-Semitism in the country. But historian Jan Dirk Snel gives a different interpretation to such cries in the daily Trouw: "In fact the anti-Semitism people complain about is really criticism of Israel. Those are two entirely different things. ... There are in fact signs that some Dutch Muslims do not distinguish between the state of Israel and Jews in general.

Which is precisely the inverse of reality. Unceasing anti-Israeli sentiment has little to do with the doings of the only woman-respecting, gay-friendly, social democracy in the Near East, but with European anti-Semitism.

Sadder still is to use the obviously light-hearted “Gas the Jews” chant used at Ajax Amsterdam football club games, as the team is casually called “The Jews”:

A player for the Dutch football club Ado Den Haag celebrated his team's win over Ajax Amsterdam with the battle cry: "We're going on a Jew hunt!" Dutch Jews now complain of growing anti-Semitism in the country.

I guess these people “just didn’t mean it” in 2004:

Verbal and violent anti-Semitism in the Netherlands is probably greater today than it has been during any other time in the last two centuries except the Nazi occupation.

Or mean to mention that anti-semitic violence was up 64% in 2007, of up another 48% in 2009. A report on the problem was even sandbagged by an EU committee.

They just didn’t mean it. They only meant to criticizing Israelis by cracking Dutch heads open.

It looks like the kind of cover and (if you’ll excuse the term,) pulling a fast one with casting the violence on politically shunned people by the likes of Dirk Snel is now acceptable.

They Love Death the Way that We Love Life

An increasingly sterile and senile continent obsessing over more and newer ways to bring back the ham-fisted euthanasia of 20th century Europeans autocracies.

At a private conference in 1990 Els Borst, a well-known figure in the euthanasia movement, said that this progression was always the objective: "It was a matter of tactics: we could gradually win the field for the acceptance of euthanasia by starting with this category." By "this category" Borst, who later became minister of health and who saw to it that the Euthanasia Act was passed in parliament, meant the people who were able to ask for euthanasia. In other words: Borst started out presenting euthanasia as termination of life at the request of the person due to die, with the implicit aim of subsequently making it possible without request, for individuals who are unable to ask for euthanasia, for example people with dementia and babies.

Don’t forget that this all started with “strict conditions” caveats, etc.

What started with an appeal to self-determination ("if a person is in terrible pain and asks to be allowed to die, then that should not be a problem"), has led to termination of life in individuals who are unable to express their will and whose lives other people assume to be worthless ("it is better for him to be at peace now"). What happened to self-determination here? Is it not the ultimate act of paternalism to decide for a severely disabled individual that it would be better if they did not exist?

The imprint of the Nanny state will all over these notions that this is all “so humane”, and is the “dignified option. The fact is, it’s nearly cult-like in its’ motives.

Now the next step is under discussion. What if a baby can survive without treatment and is not suffering now, but will suffer in the future? Some physicians are deliberating whether termination of life is an acceptable option in this case. This future suffering does not need to involve physical pain; the Committee for Pediatricians, Ethics and Law of the Dutch Association of Pediatricians mention the inability to communicate, the burden of treatment and an anticipated long life-expectancy of the disabled or sick baby as suffering that could legitimise termination of life.

Soon, when people say that growing old is not for cowards, it will likely mean not just facing mortality bravely, but facing off with those dropping the idea in your head that you should take the “dignified option” that they will present repeatedly.

After all, Europe will have warehouses of social liabilities to dispose of – and it seems to be increasing with the “death with dignity” campaign’s political timeline.

Is it possible to adequately organise such assistance for elderly people who feel they have lived long enough? Can it be done in such a way that we know what we are getting ourselves into and do not end up somewhere we never wanted to go?

The people from Uit Vrije Wil are saying that this is for the elderly, that only people over the age of seventy should be able to get help to end their lives. But a meeting of Uit Vrije Wil and the Dutch Humanistic Union on 9 November 2010 in Amsterdam was attended by so many sympathisers, that a few individuals forgot that this was a public gathering. The famous neurobiologist Dick Swaab, one of the initiators, said: "The age limit is arbitrary. Just between you and me: this age limit was chosen for pragmatic reasons, so we would have a chance to obtain majority support in parliament."

The sad thing is that those who fight for their lives over this will probably face humiliation from caregivers or even from malicious and negligent relatives.

Is this really the –social- humane, socialistic model of a society that they keep banging on about?