28 February 2012

With Socialists Like These Who Needs Enemies?

Flamby, AKA François Hollande reveals the envy living beneath his pasty Caspar Milquetoast veneer. He proudly announced that he wanted the rich in France to be taxed at a 75% rate, presumably to get his revenge at all of those schoolyard bullies that still keep him up at night. All we can deduce ist’s some kind of Wealth Tax he seems to be thinking of. However you make it, you are taxed for being wealthy, not necessarily earning anything, so it’s especially counterproductive to a nation incurring trade deficits and seeing productive companies take more of their affairs offshore or to eastern Europe.

He actually seems to have mixed it up with the other uncreative globally borrowed tirade having to do with executive compensation. I guess all successful people must have been corporate big-wigs, which in France means a subsidy queen and a government insider anyway.
"It is not possible to have these levels of compensation," he said. "I learned of the considerable increases in the remuneration of bosses of the CAC 40, two million euros (per year) on average. How can we accept this? "
After all, they’re doubling down and calling the political call for heavy taxation “patriotic”.
Francois Hollande said anyone earning above the million euro mark should view the surprise measure, which is not in his manifesto, as a type of "patriotism to accept to pay extra tax to get the country back on its feet again".
Thanks – I love surprises. Again, for those of you in the cheap seats: crack kills. Thanks, crazy eyes.

24 February 2012

My Dinner with André the Giant

Here’s an interesting confrontation: read as Marxist-Leninist Communism tries to run head-on into Ronald Reagan and try to rhetorically topple it with the mendacious assumption that the USSR’s radical leftism was the defender and standard-bearer of human rights.
Secretary General Gorbachev: It is a shame, Mr. President, that you and I do not have enough time to discuss humanitarian issues. We have concrete ideas on this which we simply are not going to have time to discuss. I have to say that people in the Soviet Union are very concerned about the human rights situation in the United States. There is one other important subject. This is the importance of mutual information in our day. The situation now is this: the Voice of America broadcasts around the clock in many languages from stations you have in various countries in Europe and Asia, while we cannot present our point of view to the American people. Therefore, to achieve parity, we are forced to jam Voice of America broadcasts. I propose the following: we will stop jamming Voice of America and you will be able to broadcast what you consider necessary to us, but at the same time you will meet us half-way and help us lease, from you or in neighboring countries, radio stations that would allow us to reach the American people with our point of view.
Then, as with today’s radical leftism, they continue to parrot the bogus position, still reading off the same, yellowing 3 by 5 cards as their fellow travelers were in 1986 and 1956.
President Reagan: The difference between us is that we recognize freedom of the press and the right of people to listen to any point of view. This does not exist in your press. Today in Washington there will be a press conference, and Americans will see it, and newspapers will publish the text of it. It is not that way in your country. Your system envisions only a government press.
In fact Leftism appears to have liberate no-one and subjected billions of lives to an unnecessary compromise between the individual and a power-hungry state whose only purpose is to preserve the privileges of a permanent, hereditary class that runs it and lives off of it. That outlook even modifies the notion of common sense, and the very idea that a civil society can guide itself in any endeavor, no matter how common or banal.
Secretary General Gorbachev: We are for parity in general. In the information field, for example, or in film. Almost half of the movies showing in our theaters are American. Soviet movies are hardly ever shown in the United States. That is not parity.

President Reagan: We do not have any ban on your movies. The film industry is a free business, and if someone wants to show your films he can do it.

Secretary General Gorbachev: I see that the President avoids this question and goes into talk about business.

President Reagan: Our government cannot control the film market. If you want to inundate us with your movies go right ahead. How our movies get to your country, I do not know.
What I can tell you is that the idea that half the films being run in the Socialist East were American is entirely false. What did give them a woodie, oddly enough, were films critical of American society freely made by Americans, something not one of the Socialist states permitted themselves.

Fast forward to day. Government run Voice of Russia runs flamethrower shortwave transmitters and have leased AM transmission capacity in London, Washington, and New York City that broadcast in English, is buying up capacity in other parts of Europe on MW and in India on FM, and attempt to entertain when they aren’t trying to counter the obvious conclusion anyone would have for the moves that Moscow makes.

The US, on the other hand, may do no such thing in Moscow.

22 February 2012

It all Just Looks so Vacuous and Flaccid Right Now

Why does this planche of last-years' Plantu seem so totally inappropriate today?

19 February 2012

Naked Ramblers in the News

While this is an issue the editorial Quango here at ¡No Pasarán! visits from time to time, I did not realize that it’s not so much about scaring dog walkers, but rather gathering statistics.
The committed naturist kept score of the number of positive reactions versus adverse reactions he received on his naked tea-time stroll at Otley Chevin in Leeds on October 2 last year.
What’s particularly funny is that the reporter is trying to give this guy’s strange, empty life of polling those people in that other world who wear garments, the air of someone reasonable who has something to say.
''I saw her turning around, I could tell she was upset about something.''
Aren’t you glad that in this crass, career-obsessed world, that there are Europeans willing to face the big issues of the day? ...and do it with such dignity and aplomb?

18 February 2012

Do they Realize that this Involves Genetic Modification?

They tried to give us “the new man,” and it failed. Now they’re working on “the new cow.”
Scientists from across Europe are gathering in Aberdeen this week to draw up a programme of research aimed at mitigating some of the causes of climate change, as well as benefiting rural communities and addressing global food security.

The € 7.7 million, four-year project is a partnership between 11 European organisations, and will be coordinated by Professor John Wallace of the Rowett Institute of Nutrition and Health at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, UK.

The demand for livestock products is growing, and the health of the farming industry is vital to the sustainability of rural communities. Farm animals are however significant contributors to the emission of the ‘greenhouse gas’ methane, but there is still much uncertainty around how this happens.

Professor Wallace explains the aims of the collaboration as follows: “Ruminomics aims to increase the efficiency – and decrease the environmental footprint – of the farming of ruminant livestock, and to significantly advance current knowledge in this sector.

“The project will exploit state-of-the-art technologies to understand how ruminant gastrointestinal microbial ecosystems – called microbiomes – are controlled by the host animal, and by their diet, and how this impacts on greenhouse gas emissions, efficiency and product quality.
Evidently the methane-producing capacity of German beer has yet to be exploited as “untapped potential”.

17 February 2012

Ship of Tools Adrift at Sea and Longing to be Heard

This man is indicative of why Europeans generally don’t get the global economic crisis, or Europe’s own debt crisis. There has been so much babble, spin, and talking in circles, that he doesn’t realize that there was much of a “French-German Axis” to begin with. It was the case that the two conferred because they were the only large economies remaining who were marginally serious about dealing with the EU’s issues within the EU.
One may think that in these difficult times, the renewed Franco-German axis is a good thing. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Today, it is the “total collaboration” between Merkel and Sarkozy that is driving Europe into the catastrophe.
Really? What’s the alternative? Who’s coming forward? You guessed it: no-one.

In fact the other large economies in the Eurozone as well as the small ones, when they aren’t begging special deals of one kind or another from France and Germany, have become inept enough to believe that they could just punt for some kind of politically CYA freebies from the IMF and Washington, and somehow remain a union.
Sarkozy’s opponent François Hollande has become the lone challenger to Mrs. Merkel. “Socialists live in Europe” he has declared and he has vowed to re-negotiate the fiscal pact by which Merkel hopes to germanify Europe. This fact explains why the German Chancellor has thrown her weight behind Sarkozy, the conservative candidate; even if her foreign minister was quick to point out that party support was not in the interest of the German state. It will be harder for Merkel to dominate a socialist government in France than a weakened Sarkozy.
And no, the entire world, let alone the western Europeans, do not believe that everything that happens is a form of palace intrigue. Nor are the charged exchanges between the Europeans genuinely serious for the outside world or even the rest of Europe for that matter.
Where does that leave France and Germany? National identities have a long shelf-life. Fois gras and Schweinshaxe will not disappear; nor will the different models of organising the welfare state. What is needed is a new political consensus that allows citizens to assume responsibility for their common affairs, and both France and Germany can contribute to making it happen.
Which is being expressed HOW exactly? What is being proposed or volunteered in the hinterland other than pot-banging, destroying property, and rioting? Zip.

The dramatization and personalization of the whole thing gives me a sense that those who indulge in it have such a shaky understanding of economies and markets, that it appears to be a defensive act – one meant to let one hear the sound of ones’ own voice and pretend to have a grip on things. It’s no wonder most of it comes from either leftists who wish private markets didn’t exist (possibly out of an inability to understand why prices can’t be controlled and fixed), and the neo-fascist “far-right”, the one with leftist platitudes when it can come up with economic pronouncements, one of which was this pointless pearl free of the burden of prescience or even tolerance for his fellow Europastani tribesmen:
Is Germany a normal country?
...and other rude assumptions made just before uttering the obvious about the political behavior of national government heads. Remember, that kind of callous crap is supposed to offer the already intelligent an even more-super-special insight.

Typical of the high quality and informative commentary in the continent available these past 4 years, it even pretends that you haven’t heard the pathetic theories based on one nation or another’s “national persona” which even among Europeans inevitably devolves into a Russ Meyer style German she bitches, cartoon Italians playing the accordion, and a beret-clad lout canoeing a unfiltered cloc that’s stuck to his lower lip representing the citizens of the republic.
Where does that leave France and Germany? National identities have a long shelf-life. Fois gras and Schweinshaxe will not disappear; nor will the different models of organising the welfare state.
As opposed to, say, a saucisson or Eisbein, which a twit unfamiliar of whom he speaks might pretend to know, if they can’t find a real sporting of real lifestyle analogy that post-dates the 19th century.

So beware the idea that you can understand economics by trying to force it through the cheesecloth of politics or culture, especially the politics and culture or what you THINK YOU KNOW. After all, through the fog and muck, there is a little voice saying to all of us something we don’t want to hear: you’re all broke, you filthy moochers.

16 February 2012

A Portrait of European Sophistication

AKA: A Sad Tale of Ill-Timed and Awkward Smarminess

Unlike Americans, a great many Europeans who should know better are prone to leaping to compare present day Germans to the Nazis. That is, when they weren’t quietly wishing that they had “finished the job,” that is.

Bernd Ulrich wrote in Hamburg’s Die Zeit:
At a book reading in Portugal the sensible East German writer Ingo Schulze was even asked if the Germans intended to take with the euro what they had failed to take with their panzers, i.e. become the masters of the continent. From Greece we can hear the same sort of remarks every day, often put more dramatically.

Elsewhere the reproach is dressed up with more gentility, when for example Germany’s current austerity policy is compared with that of Reich Chancellor Brüning, whose successor was Adolf Hitler. Frequently, too, German’s “special path” is brought up, as when the Merkel government fails to print as much money as the others are demanding. The so-often quoted “special path” ends where, historically? In Auschwitz, of course. Thus is the circle closed.
And that’s just a normal daily tidbit from the paper, so you can imagine what chatter among bar patrons and neighbors to whom Euro-Ur-man regularly grumbles recreationally with must be like.
It does not take long, really, to work out the riddle of why the Nazi comparisons are being flung about so thick and fast. It’s because for the first time since 1945 Germany is back at full strength, not because it wanted to be, but because the European debt crisis has left it the economically strongest and politically most powerful country in Europe. German interests now reach deeply into the internal affairs of other states.
In other words, like the United States they are through the underperformance, negligence, and dependency of others, the only entity left among their allies with enough power to be begged, or beggared as the case seems to be.

Ulrich recognizes the need for realism, not just in outlook by Europeans in vaunted “national imagery,” but in simple understanding of other humans:
What should we do now? Ask the others to quit this Nazi crap, to please insult us Germans in every imaginable way but that one? Yes, that could be done. The Germans could also admit that they want to be loved, much more than the French or the British, who already love themselves very well indeed. However, the Germans cannot deny themselves out of the sheer need for love, if only because the others would despise us even more.
It’s a silly thing to have to waste time on to repair the public regard of Germany when those who need to learn the lesson are broke, saddled with delusions about economics, and pusillanimously paralyzed by their own envy-laden forms of national cultural identity.

15 February 2012

The ‘Cultural Superiority’ Parent Trap

Much has been made lately of an article by Pamela Druckerman on claims of the “superiority” of French parents, and it’s hard to make inferences of that kind without plainly telling the reader that the statement was founded on the writer’s limited observation of a few isolated days with the sort of French families that she would have as friends and acquaintances, and is also very much the case of an American who only seems to know Americans like herself:
Soon it became clear to me that quietly and en masse, French parents were achieving outcomes that created a whole different atmosphere for family life. When American families visited our home, the parents usually spent much of the visit refereeing their kids' spats, helping their toddlers do laps around the kitchen island, or getting down on the floor to build Lego villages. When French friends visited, by contrast, the grownups had coffee and the children played happily by themselves.
If I might add an opinion here based on observation – a lot of it – Druckerman’s thesis is completely specious. Parents in any society are broadly varied in their ability, and that’s reflected in children’s behavior. What the writer observes are small piece of things that are present everywhere in the world. I can tell you quitter plainly that there is no shortage of trashy parents, indifferent parents, confused parents, over-active parents, meddlesome parents, good parents, and utterly helpless parents in France or anywhere else.

Druckerman’s assumption is reminiscent of a 1972 comment by Ney York film critic Pauline Kael, where she is reputed to have wondered aloud how Richard Nixon could have won since no one she knew voted for him. Yet while armed with that received wisdom, Richard Nixon won.

A French-American friend wrote me with a rather different view:
I have taught French schoolchildren, teens and young adults.

The 9 - 13 year olds were hell. Complete and total hell. Not that each individual on his/her own was not, in general, a nice enough kid. But as a group, trying to teach them was a major effort and discipline was THE problem.

The 1 - 3 year olds were fine because they were in an English-language group all day with English-language educators and, so, we ran a tight ship, so to speak. When we walked across the hall to the French-language group, it was like walking into a zoo. The noise was unbearable. And the educators were standing around drinking coffee and chatting amongst themselves and just letting the kids behave that way. The German-language group was similar to our group but even quieter.

The older students I taught, when they had been to Catholic schools, were fairly well-behaved. The ones from public schools were not.
So the fact Druckerman decries that non-French children don’t behave like painter’s subject should be taken for what it’s worth: shallow intercultural babble dressed up as yet more meddlesome unsolicited advice offered to parents of young kids.

14 February 2012

Un Message Pour Les Toujours Courageux Pédés-Bloggeurs Franchouilles

Contrary to popular received wisdom among intelligent Europeans, we do not fire weapons in the air while barefoot, wearing bib overalls at night.

13 February 2012

German Science Finally Escaping the Plantation

Dirk Maxeiner is a long-time blogger and all-around evil genius who has spent years doing the hard work of shining the light of reality on the sad world of Gleichhaltung, or common feeling in Germany. In the present day and age, much of that Gleichhaltung comes in the form of commonly held delusions borrowed from abroad, or things that empirically challenged people just wish was true:
More and more each day, the academic structure that was built around the dogma of global warming, reminds me of a corrugated metal shed, one that shudders and wobbles at every turn. That said, it constantly needs shoring and having holes in the roof patched up. Yet with each gust of wind, someone from the Potsdam Institute has to brave the cold and patch another hole.

Meanwhile, what we have to show for it is a sort of climate favela, ugly and almost always leaking. It’s charming that we have to hear that the current bitter cold have their cause in global warming. Ten years ago, you still could have prophesied that there would be no more cold winter, now they know exactly why they still aren’t. The findings are supposed to become real in hindsight. That is, if the theory and computer models absolutely do not fit the reality, they are not rejected, but subsequently adapted to the fit the trend. That’s how it goes with scientific socialism [Ed.: consensus]. Yu can also call it anti-science.
With the recent turn of direction taken by a senior one-time apocalypse-monger, and a general skepticism about once-favored foregone conclusions, the charlatans of Klimaschutz are being held to some of their claims, even in Germany.

12 February 2012

How Charming! They’re Even Wearing Shoes for Us!

Western civilization is afflicted with a horrible condition. It is one that debilitates the mind, poisoning international relations, enfeebling whole nations to anguish, wasted tears, hands chapped from self-flagellating wringing. Daniel Hannan can tell you all about it.
Congratulations to Rahul Bedi for putting into words what we all half-suspected: India neither needs nor wants UK aid. Such grants are outdated and patronising, he says, and encourage corruption. Indeed, Indians have 'become so contemptuous of Britain’s contribution that they accept it merely to avoid causing the Coalition embarrassment'. Ouch! Indians are a courteous people and Mr Bedi is perhaps too discreet to play his trump card: India's economic prospects are healthier than Britain's.
I call it the bedwetting of the morally vain. The nations at risk of this affliction are the donors, not the recipients, who seem uniquely unaware that the recipients suspect that the erstwhile missionaries of better-ness want to be called “B’wana”, and make them wear native garb for them, but parrot back stories about their good old days in Uni together.
Still, it's worth standing back and considering the big picture. We are borrowing money we don't have to send it to a country less indebted than our own. That country doesn't want it, but accepts it as a favour to us. The money encourages corruption without reducing poverty. Our relations are damaged in consequence.

11 February 2012

The Single Issue Overshadowing the US Presidential Election at a Glance

The President believes that the Government creates success and that private enterprise creates poverty. This makes his goals no different than that of a Marxist-Leninist, and makes his opponents the calm, caring, mild voice of common sense.

10 February 2012

Even More Illiberal and Expansionist

Let’s not forget about that other #European union.
The document was signed by the leaders of the Russian Federation, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. Only the ignorant will be less than impressed.
And it wasn’t just about “Kampuchean-Yemeni Solidarity” like the bad old days.
The Eurasian Union is part of an integration process leading to the Common Economic Space. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev likens it to a train. Think of it as a new European Union with Russia in the driver’s seat, picking up new passengers as it happily motors along.

Western Europe’s clout on world affairs is fading. My sad analysis is that the EU’s economy will soon implode like that of the old Soviet Bloc. Its people’s poverty and austerity will resemble that of communist Romania or Albania.
While the “implosion” fantasies are bogus, the notion of going through a transition phase of mediocrity and dependence isn’t. The EU being the world’s locus of high finance or “big-wind” in the form of being perpetual UN conference hosts will not pay the bills. The fact that we are talking about two R&D deserts doesn’t really figure into things either when you consider who it is that has the natural resources.
The harsh fact is that thanks to years of political ineptitude, the European Union has nothing left to offer the world. It is an also-ran.
I don’t see a sauve qui peut threshold being crossed in the future, but rather a creeping awareness that comes in the form of independent treaties and partnerships that critics will characterize as being rather too “British“ or “Hungarian” for their happy, loving family.

09 February 2012

Is New Age Fluff Another Form of Naziism?

You bet, Cha Ca, only a lot more buffoonish, historically ignorant, and almost as morally bereft.

The article quotes fillum maker David Lynch’s blindingly bad, but banal in its’ predictability:
"What do you mean by this concept of invincibility," asked an onlooker from the audience, made up mainly of film students with a smattering of meditation devotees. "An invincible Germany is a Germany that's invincible," replied a Delphic Schiffgens, who was dressed in a long white robe and gold crown. Adolf Hitler wanted that too!," shouted out one man. "Yes," countered Schiffgens. "But unfortunately he didn't succeed."

08 February 2012

You Can Check Out Any Time You Like, But You Can Never Leave

With no exit mechanism, and no substantive federalism, or a unifying idea, Francis Fukuyama decribes why the EU empire-building project is more or less like the Hotel California
in a sense, there is a deeper failure at the European level, a failure in European identity. That is to say, there was never a successful attempt to create a European sense of identity and a European sense of citizenship that would define the obligations, responsibilities, duties and rights that Europeans have to one another beyond simply the wording of the different treaties that were signed. The EU in many respects was created as a technocratic exercise done for purposes of economic efficiency. What we can see now is that economic and post-national values are not enough to get people to buy into this community. So wealthy Germans feel a sense of noblesse oblige towards poorer Germans; this social solidarity is the basis of the German welfare state. But they do not feel similar obligations towards the Greeks,whom they regard as being poor disciplined, very non-German in their general approach to fiscal matters.
So there is no solidarity in that broader European sense. I think for various reasons Europe is stumbling toward a short-term solution to this crisis. But I do not think that any form of deepening at this point is a viable project unless someone pays more attention to identity and is able to answer the question in a more substantive sense of what it means to be a European. Not just in a negative sense that we don’t want conflict and old nationalisms and war, but what it means in terms of positive values.

07 February 2012

Kulture Korner: the Yé-yé girl

Sylvie Vartan’s 1967 Japanese TV Ad



A fun fact: Vartan was married to France’s no. 1 Elvis impersonator, Johnny Hallyday.

06 February 2012

Price Discovery and the Economics of Reality

#Occupy Cathouse!

Following a progressive clampdown by French police, Le Temps reports that hookers are flocking to Geneva in droves.
Though most agree that the prostitution market in Geneva is booming, the local police vice unit is not concerned, saying that the increase will eventually level off. "In the 1980s, Geneva prostitutes were already complaining about competition from German prostitutes," says Michel Félix, a member of Aspasie, an association that has been protecting the rights of prostitutes for 30 years. "Then other nationalities started arriving – it works in cycles."
Which might possibly give then more of a sense of how supply and demand works than their Johns who are probably representing the finance industry well.
Lisa angrily accuses the media of hyping up the Swiss Eldorado’s huge salaries, thus attracting throngs of girls lured by easy money. Girls can indeed bring in 15,000 to 20,000 Swiss francs (12,000 to 17,000 euros) a month. But rates are actually comparable to those in the other European capitals. As the Gclub puts it: "Customers will usually pay 150 to 300 Swiss francs (120 to 250 euros) in high-class places, but 25 to 40 euros to turn a trick in the street -- that’s really slashing prices."
The economic nationalism, labor competition, and nativism are rife. It’s busting out all over, in fact:
Lisa, who runs Venusia, a legal and regulated house of prostitution in Geneva, has just about had enough. "France is trying to get rid of its prostitutes by sending them abroad. So they come here," she says. "We’re sick and tired of this situation."
Protectionism is rearing its’ ugly head in an industry critical to Europe, my friends, and something must be done.

I recommend the conventional European solution: a syndicat that you have to bribe your way in to despite a lack of “talent”, and, of course, unionization. Organize the workers and shut the place down!!! Death to the bosses!!!

05 February 2012

A Moment for Morbid Poesie

When I am dead, I hope it may be said:
His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.

Belloc, Hilaire (1870 - 1953)

Daz right, bitches!

04 February 2012

A Hard Working Poet Never Takes a Break

I'm tired of love; I'm still more tired of rhyme;
But money gives me pleasure all the time.

Belloc, Hilaire (1870 - 1953)



Word up.

03 February 2012

Defining Deviancy Downward

"The abandonment of the reproductive function is the common feature of all perversions. We actually describe a sexual activity as perverse if it has given up the aim of reproduction and pursues the attainment of pleasure as an aim independent of it. So, as you will see, the breach and turning point in the development of sexual life lies in becoming subordinate to the purpose of reproduction. Everything that happens before this turn of events and equally everything that disregards it and that aims solely at obtaining pleasure is given the uncomplimentary name of 'perverse' and as such is proscribed."

- Sigmund Freud, Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die Psychoanalyse

In other news, other varied forms of assplay or watersports will have come at a price:

Europe's demographics also aren't on the side of growth. Populations across the developed world are graying, but Europe's low productivity growth means that its future labor shortfall will be especially acute. It doesn't help that Europeans draw social security benefits earlier and more easily than their developed-world peers.

02 February 2012

The (Anti-) Capitalism of Fools

An editorial in Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten displays an undercurrent common to Europeans who are just as nominally supportive of authoritarianism inducing central planning economics, more likely in a form of nicey-nicey seeming government management of enterprise, and are also nominally supportive of free markets.

Oddly enough, the odd reasoning behind the quivering lips are visible even behind the centrist positions typically held by Jyllands-Posten:
The gap between rich and poor increased. The global financial crisis has shown that we have to rethink a capitalist model, which meant that financial institutions without the necessary checks could throw first USA and then Europe into a deep crisis that it can take decades to fix the economy up.
We’re all familiar with what this bemoans, and how it can never be salved outside of assigning every working person with the same income and benefits, something even Marxist-Leninism couldn’t achieve – so why even bother saying it if it wasn’t part of the usual atmospherics – no different than saying hello when you picking up a telephone?

It gets worse.
It is an economic crisis that has also become a political crisis because it is about lack of leadership. It is now so deep that it has started to weaken democracy.
No, being skeptical about or dissatisfied with your elected officials doesn’t weaken democracy, it gives you a reason to not vote for them again and embolden democracy by using it and letting it operate.
The crisis of capitalism in the West certainly raises many issues in Asia, whose interventionist economic model so often been criticized by the West but whose economies are nevertheless going ahead. The western model has taught them that the economic downturn has gruesome consequences and that one should be cautious in liberalizing the economy too much. So it's safer to have the state on track with the adjustments, such as the banking sector, as the U.S. and Europe lacked.
Sure, you say that now, but could you live in that kind of ‘company store’ society? Not likely.

Worse still is a total forgetting of who Nick Leeson was, and under whose laws he operated under, and .
The crisis of capitalism in the West certainly raises many issues in Asia, whose interventionist economic model so often been criticized by the West but whose economies are nevertheless going ahead. The western model has taught them that the economic downturn has gruesome consequences and that one should be cautious in liberalizing the economy too much. So it's safer to have the state on track with the adjustments, such as the banking sector, as the U.S. and Europe lacked.
Which oddly enough is that same ‘pirate capitalism’ that made Hong Kong’s economy grow and robustly resist a state of aggression that Havana can only dream of whining about.

Worried about democracy? Then stop alluding to the value of the Asia’s crypto-authoritarian factory states. The pointless bedwetting must stop.

01 February 2012

The French Cultural Exception Explained

It’s an exemption from the shackles of reason and truth-telling. It’s purpose is to fit whatever uninformed view of reality that you have – because there is simply no way you can’t be right.

What’s all that about? You ask... An Elle blogger, like a typical higher-being of the continent decided that all African-Americans could and should be defined by the three or four African-Americans that she’s familiar with in passing.
In an blog post titled “Black Fashion Power,” writer Nathalie Dolivo managed to insult American blacks as a whole while offering left-handed compliments to the First Lady Michelle Obama for taking on the Jackie O role in a “jazzy” way.

The writer imagines that the Obamas are the first to bring true style to African-Americans.
See, there you go. She did her national duty by defining nearly 37 million people she has no knowledge of outside of the doctored appearances found in photographs and videos, and there you have it.

And throw in some of that Jazz stuff too while you’re at it, it still being the hip thing with the kids, you see, at least in the minds of those Europeans who we are told simply know everything there is to be known.

I was reminded of this again just a few weeks ago when a Parisian in a bar was inquiring about the south as if the world that they lived in was straight out of ‘Mississippi Burning’. The man’s age, mature nature, and outward air of intelligence almost made me confuse him with someone with a shred of decency and intelligence. While willing to be ignorant of a culture, he was more than willing to have an opinion about who he thought were the good-guys and bad-guys in it.