Europe to America: You Am Evil!

In a cross-Atlantic low blow, Europeans tell America via polling data that America is a greater force for evil than for good. It is likely that the poll well reflects current European thinking toward the US, as well as European opinions of the US over the recent past.

In Britain, France, Germany and Russia, more people thought that the United States was a force for evil than for good.

The wildcard in the poll was Italy, where 49 per cent (compared to 27 per cent) thought that the US was a force for good. _
Telegraph

The poll also found a striking level of anti-American feeling in every country. A clear majority of Russians - 56 per cent - believe the US is a "force for evil" in the world. In Britain, only 33 per cent see America as a "force for good".

Opinion towards America has become steadily more hostile throughout the presidency of George W Bush, with the Iraq war probably being the single most important factor. _Telegraph

It is fortunate for Americans that Europeans cannot decide their next president. There is no question that the Euros would be essentially single-issue voters this year.

Such opinions can almost certainly be laid at the feet of a strongly biased European media, which essentially reflects the strong anti-Bush, anti-war sentiment of the vast majority of North American journalists and media personalities as well. What we see, essentially, is a continent of people who allow their media to do their thinking for them. Quelle surprise!

Intelligent people can be led by the nose to most any conclusion, if they trust the persons leading them. One can see that in China, Vietnam, North Korea, in Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, and increasingly in today's Europe, although still at a nascent stage compared to the other examples. But every total government had to start somewhere. Europe has made a good start of it.

Is Europe to be the New Lebanon or Armenia?

Europe's population is being increasingly replaced by poorly educated outsiders from the third world who do not wish to become Europeans--rather they wish to transform Europe into more affluent versions of their own countries. But since they bring their old prejudices, feuds, religious fanaticisms, and tendencies to violence along with them, it is more likely that they will be dragging Europe down. Starting with London, or perhaps Amsterdam, or maybe Malmo?

London is now the most ethnically diverse city in the world—more so, according to United Nations reports, even than New York...Walk down certain streets in London and one encounters a Babel of languages...A third of London’s residents were born outside Britain, a higher percentage of newcomers than in any other city in the world except Miami, and the percentage continues to rise. Likewise, migration figures for the country as a whole—emigration and immigration—suggest that its population is undergoing swift replacement. Many of the newcomers are from Pakistan, India, and Africa; others are from Eastern Europe and China. If present trends continue, experts predict, in 20 years’ time, between a quarter and a third of the British population will have been born outside it, and at least a fifth of the native population will have emigrated.

... the unprecedented influx of immigrants, often poorly educated, have little interest in, or appreciation of, the society to which they have come. Many are not learning to speak English, or speak it poorly, and forced marriages and other practices foreign to British law and custom remain common among them. A government report several years ago found that Britain’s whites and ethnic minorities led radically separate lives, with no sense of shared nationality. And as is now well-known, a disturbing number of British Muslims have proved susceptible to the ideology of Islamism. [A] poll found that a fifth of all British Muslims had sympathy with the “feelings and motives” of the London suicide bombers. Only a third of British Muslims, a Guardian survey found, want more integration into British culture.

...in Britain, multiculturalism became a career opportunity and a source of political patronage. So-called experts on cultural sensitivity and equal opportunity—generally people whose ambitions far exceeded their talent, except for bureaucratic intrigue—built little empires, whose continued existence depended on the permanence of racial and other divisions in society.

...increased contact between people does not necessarily result in increased sympathy among them. A large proportion of the indigenous Muslim terrorists caught in Britain are children of prosperous small businessmen, who have been to university and whose individual prospects for the future were good, if they had chosen to follow a normal career path. Cultural dislocation, the readiness to hand of an ideology of hatred that seems to answer their personal need for a fixed identity and an end to cultural confusion, and a disposable income—these, not poverty, account for their terrorism.

... ___CityJournal

This is the legacy that young Europeans are waking up to. It is becoming more likely that their own children or grandchildren--if they ever choose to have them--will find themselves outsiders in the country that their grandparents had believed they would own in perpetuity.

Will Europeans become the new Armenians? Europe the new Lebanon?

A Fascinating Anti-Americanism in London

European media has bred a trendy anti-Americanism among all classes on the old side of the Atlantic. The curious thing about this fashion is that the practitioners appear to believe that it is a cost-free habit. As if reviling the only force on the planet capable of saving them from their own suicidal tendencies has any kind of future. Fascinating.

I make a point, as my friends will attest, of wearing a pair of stars and srtripes cufflinks. It might be slightly pathetic, but I want to demonstrate my solidarity with the nation leading the fight against barbarism.

Understandably, when strangers see but don't hear me, some jump to the conclusion that I am American. And it's instructive to see how some people behave when they see the cuffs.

On countless occasions I have been sneered at, sworn at and, twice, spat at. I would say - my memory is impressionistic on this - that by far the most common insult is a muttered "F*c*ing American". And I cannot recall such behaviour from anyone who looked older than 40ish.

Not being American, for me this is simply useful in seeing how common such prejudice is. Of course, just because it is only the under 40s who are vocal, it does not follow that others do not share their views.

It's not that usual to hear people give voice to their anti-semitic or anti-black bigotry. But in my experience, there is one prejudice which is now entirely acceptable: anti-Americanism. __SpectatorUK

Of course every place--even the most politically correct place--has to have its lawful prejudices and bigotries. In North America, it is the straight white male who is lawfully discriminated against. In Europe, it is the American.

Americans have always felt that Europe--at least England--was a friendly zone. Given the close alliances with England in WWI, WWII, and the cold war, Americans naturally assumed that merry olde Englynde would always be merry toward them. That is why Americans have always assumed maintaining a defensive perimeter around England and Europe was just part of the price of having allies. As Americans watched Europeans abandon any pretense of defending themselves, diverting those monies to social welfare programs etc., they just assumed that Europeans would feel the binding ties of history and the shared shedding of blood--and the promise of similar future sacrifice if necessary.

Instead, what Americans receive is a monolithic blame for all that is perceived as wrong with the world. Demonisation, accusation, scapegoating, along with a minimisation of any worthwhile contribution to the world, past or present. Americans had been largely oblivious to this bloated, self-satisfied trans-Atlantic phenomenon. No longer.

Europe is being infiltrated by something far more vile than anything that can be laid at the doorstep of the hated Americans. This vile thing has promised to subjugate Europe under the desert sandals of a new Caliphate. It is a vile and growing thing that Europe refuses to see, and in order not to see the vile thing, Europe expends all its excess energy in hating the thing that is peripheral to Europe's problems at most.

It is an inexplicable societal imbecility which can only be explained by a total lack of insight on the part of Europe's leadership, media, and academe. Of course, North America suffers from a similar imbecility, although much less advanced, and far less suicidal.

The ball is in Europe's court. Too much more of this cross-Atlantic bile, and Europe will find itself in an unmarked wasteland of rapidly diminishing options. Most Europeans that I know will not like that.

America: Revolutionary Nation

Great revolutions accompany the uncovering of great frontiers. The USA was founded on the Eastern frontier of a large continent, and has been moving to expand its frontiers outward over most of the 232 years since. That expansionary revolution continues, but it is taking some interesting forms:

The great new American frontiers proved to be those of business, science and technology. In the course of the 20th century, Americans invented more milestone technologies and inventions, created more wealth and leisure time, and reorganized their institutions more times than any country had ever done before – despite a massive economic depression and two world wars. It all reached a crescendo in the magical year of 1969, with the creation of the Internet, the invention of the microprocessor and, most of all, a man walking on the moon.

Along with genetic engineering, we are still busily spinning out the implications of these marvels. Yet it is becoming increasingly apparent that the cultural underpinnings of these activities have changed in some fundamental way.

We still have schools, but a growing number of our children are studying at home or attending private schools – and those in public schools are doing ever more amounts of their class work on the Internet [ed: virtual charter schools].

We still have companies and corporations, but now they are virtualized, with online work teams handing off assignments to each other 24/7 around the world. Men and women go to work, but the office is increasingly likely to be in the den. In 2005, an Intel survey of its employees found that nearly 20% of its professionals had never met their boss face-to-face. Half of them never expected to. Last summer, when the Media X institute at Stanford extended that survey to IBM, Sun, HP, Microsoft and Cisco, the percentages turned out to be even greater.

Newspapers are dying, networks are dying, and if teenage boys playing GTA 4 and World of Warcraft have any say about it, so is television...The most compelling statistic of all? Half of all new college graduates now believe that self-employment is more secure than a full-time job. __WSJ

So where is it all heading? Into a very wild and Future Shock sort of a world.

The economy will be much more volatile and much more competitive. In the continuous fervor to create new institutions, it will become increasingly difficult to sustain old ones. New political parties, new social groupings, thousands of new manias and movements and millions of new companies will pop up over the next few decades. Large corporations that don't figure out how to combine permanence with perpetual change will be swept away.

This higher level of anarchy will be exciting, but it will also sometimes be very painful. Entire industries will die almost overnight, laying off thousands, while others will just as suddenly appear, hungry for employees. Continuity and predictability will become the rarest of commodities. And if the entrepreneurial personality honors smart failures, by the same token it has little pity for weakness. That fraction of Americans – 10%, 20% – who still dream of the gold watch or the 30-year pin will suffer the most . . . and unless their needs are somehow met as well, they will remain a perpetually open wound in our society.

The "gold watch and 30-year pin" segment of Americans may be only 10%, but in Europe that fraction is closer to 50% or larger. How will Europe adapt to this brave new frontier revolution that is unfolding in America, only to spread globally in the next few decades?

Given the enormous influx of new uneducated welfare recipients from the third world, Europe will be severely challenged to find the type of economic growth at home in which its capital savings can invest. It will have to look overseas to areas that are still growing. In the mid 2000s, that would be Brazil, India, and parts of the Anglosphere including the US.

Tort Reform Rejuvenates Mississippi Industry

Mississippi governor Haley Barbour is quite happy with the results of tort reform in his state. Lawsuits are down. Business and employment are up.

"We were America's No. 1 judicial hell hole for jackpot jury verdicts," the two-term Republican governor told me. "For trial lawyers, this was the state you wanted to come to if you wanted to sue someone."

But it was not the state to come to if you wanted to start a business. Mississippi's antibusiness reputation was so awful, Mr. Barbour said, that the CEOs of several Fortune 500 companies told him specifically that they wouldn't consider locating in the state unless the tort system was fixed.

For doctors, the situation was a little different – many who were inside the state were getting out as fast as they could. With 25% annual increases in malpractice premiums, many physicians simply couldn't survive if they stayed. The outflux left some counties without a single obstetrician. In some cases, residents had to drive 100 miles to find a doctor.

Shortly after winning election in 2003 by running on a tort-reform platform, Mr. Barbour stitched together a coalition of doctors, business groups, taxpayers and even unions to roll back the trial lawyer lobby.

"It was not just a battle," recalls Charlie Ross, the Senate sponsor of the reform bill, "it was a five-year war." The law that eventually passed was every trial lawyers' worst nightmare. It capped awards for noneconomic damages, and prevented the popular practice whereby a plaintiff attorney seeking to bring a class-action shops around for a court where he'll be likely to get a favorable ruling or judgment.

Almost overnight, the flow of lawsuits began to dry up and businesses started to trickle in. Federal Express invested $1 billion in a new facility in the state. Toyota chose Mississippi over about a dozen other states for a new $1.2 billion, 2,000-worker auto plant. The auto maker has stipulated that the company would pull up stakes if the tort reforms were overturned by the legislature or activist judges.

That hasn't happened. About 60,000 new jobs have arrived in four years – not a small number in a workforce of about 1.3 million – and a sharp improvement from the 30,000 jobs lost in the four years before Mr. Barbour took office. Since the law took effect, the number of medical malpractice lawsuits has fallen by nearly 90%, which in turn has cut malpractice insurance costs by 30% to 45%, depending on the county.

Another encouraging sign: Fewer Mississippians are heading to law school and more are looking at business school as the best way to get rich. Many in the younger generation are pursuing a career path that will make them wealth creators, not wealth redistributors. ___WSJ

Trial lawyers are vultures and parasites on the life of a community and region. They are bent on re-distributing wealth, never creating it. In an opportunity society, creating wealth through commerce is a win-win proposition.

Count on the vultures to jump in whenever they are allowed to do so.

Throwing Barbie From the Plane: BarbieBomb Iran

Iran clearly needs to be bombed. The question is: is it better to bomb Iran with bombs, or with Barbies? Greg Beato thinks Barbies are the appropriate choice.

Iran is terrified of Barbie, the tiny polyvinyl sex bomb who loves shopping, pizza, and brushing her hair, but has few satellite-guided missiles at her disposal. According to Iran's Prosecutor General, Ghorban Ali Dori Najfabadi, a loosely organized coalition, led by the world's most impeccably accessorized mercenary but also including additional combatants like Harry Potter and Spider-man, is doing "irreparable damage" to Iranian children. "The irregular importation of such toys, which unfortunately arrive through unofficial sources and smuggling, is destructive culturally and a social danger," Najafabadi cautioned...the Barbies who show up in Tehran shop windows are smuggled into the country, the victims of international doll trafficking. Once there, however, they make the best of it, embodying the traditional American values of self-determination and haircare...If Barbie's marginal and haphazard presence in Iran is so disruptive, what kind of impact might she have there if a more orchestrated effort to put additional sexy white boots on the ground was implemented? Luckily, the relative economy of a Barbie surge—an army of 200,000 cheerleaders for Western decadence can be mustered for the price of a dozen Tomahawk missiles... __Reason

Beato may not be the brightest bulb in the box, but perhaps he has a point to make about cultural subversion. Not that a few hundred thousand Barbie dolls would actually do the trick of overturning a millenia-old culture of primitive tribalism and religious barbarism. But think it through to the core idea, and play with it.

Culture is passed along from generation to generation--unless something happens in between generations. Say, a music revolution called rock and roll that puts rebellion on the front burner, combined with a drug and anti-war revolution among the young. You might think that nothing would ever be the same again.

Children like to fantasize. And they like to have secrets from others. Some parents like to indulge their children in these fantasies. Childhood and adolescence are such confusing times, unless something happens to stir things up it is often easier just to go along with tradition.

What about a talking doll that said things the ayatollahs wouldn't want young girls listening to? What if a talking doll was also a radio and a tutorial device? Solar powered so its batteries won't run down? What if it could teach children catchy songs with infectious lyrics? These things require a bit of thought.

Oppressive cultures have to keep the lid on tight. But then the pressure tends to build at the slightest incident. Bomb Iran? With Barbies? Or something even more devilishly clever.

Will China Invade North Korea? It Seems So

China appears to be mobilizing for an invasion of North Korea--just in case.

For the last four years, China has been holding an increasing number of exercises to test their ability to come to the aid of North Korea, in the event of a war with South Korea (and the United States). On in the event of a collapse of the North Korean government. More Chinese ground units have been moved to areas just across the Yalu river from North Korea (and many of the troops set to work guarding the border against the growing number of desperate North Koreans trying to get out.) There have also been exercises with engineers practicing erecting bridges across the rivers that form most of the border between North Korea and China (on the assumption that U.S. or South Korean warplanes would quickly destroy the existing bridges.) The latest development has been the deployment of Su-27 fighters (the most modern in the Chinese Air Force) to the border area. __StrategyPage

As mentioned previously here, in the event of the collapse of the North Korean government, China does not want South Korea and the US to occupy large parts of North Korea in an attempt to provide aid and to lay the groundwork for re-unification of North and South Korea.

China is happy to have North Korea as a buffer zone between the free world and its own authoritarian land. China would rather see North Koreans starving than to see them have the option of freedom, as experienced in the South. The Chinese CCP is just funny that way.

Making the US More Like Europe? No, Thanks

Europe is undergoing a traumatic transformation, due entirely to its over-regulation and over-dependency on central government bureaus. Naturally, it is the middle class in Europe that is feeling the greatest squeeze. When governments grow out of control, it is the middle class that pays the greatest price, and this is the case in modern Europe.

The European dream is under assault, as the wave of inflation sweeping the globe mixes with this continent’s long-stagnant wages. Families that once enjoyed Europe’s vaunted quality of life are pinching pennies to buy necessities, and cutting back on extras like movies and vacations abroad.

Potentially more disturbing — especially to the political and social order — are the millions across the continent grappling with the realization that they may have lives worse, not better, than their parents.

“I have this feeling that there is a wall in front of us,” said Axel Marceau, a 41-year-old schoolteacher living outside of Frankfurt. “We’re just not going to get any further.”

His concerns are well-founded. A study by the German Institute for Economic Research in Berlin found that the broad middle of the German work force, defined as workers making from 70 to 150 percent of the median income, shrunk to 54 percent of the population last year, from 62 percent in 2000. __NYT__via__OTB

Senator Obama wants to make the US more like Europe. He thinks that Americans want this too. But only uninformed and unintelligent Americans want that, which may categorize Obama's supporters a bit too well for Obama's comfort.

Europe has bigger problems than the middle-class squeeze, however. A demographic collapse of indigenous Europeans (from failure to breed) combined with an out-of-control influx of uneducated and unassimilable third world immigrants, leaves the top-heavy over-bureaucratic state welfare systems of Europe with a shortage of tax paying citizens. Even worse, the resentful and increasingly alienated European third-world underclass is swelling the criminal ranks of an old Europe that had grown accustomed to low crime rates.

For those who examine critical underlying trends in a society, Europe is suffering from some of the worst possible trends a society can experience. Obama would do well to look in another direction for societies to model his brave new world after.

Enlightened Pols Show Kindness to Terrorists

Image Source

More on Obama's radical terror connections here. The world's terrorists suffered a blow when Red Ken Livingstone was ousted from the London mayorship. What a coup for the cause of terror to find a friend in the US White House?

The calculus of appeasement suggests that being good to terrorists means that they will bomb someone else other than you. That would be assuming that current terrorists are the ones you should be fearing. Not a wise assumption.

The US Democratic Party has become a political party of appeasement to the enemies of human rights and freedoms. Regardless of which candidate they choose, they will be starting from the moral low ground.

There has always been a subtext of anti-government resentment among many US taxpayers and solid citizens. If the US government is taken over by stylish apologists for anti-American terror, watch that resentment grow.

"We are the ones we have been afraid of. Test us, and discover why."

H/T StonedCrab

Radical Loser Quits London Stage

Outgoing London mayor Ken Livingstone represents a fusion of the radical left with radical Islamic fundamentalism. It is the radical nature of Livingstone and his attempted makeover of London into a third world hellhole, that will be remembered long after he is gone and London has mostly recovered from his mal-government.

This result isn’t just a wonderful victory for Boris and the termination of Livingstone. It’s also a defeat for the campaign – an exceptionally dirty one, at that - waged against Boris by a small band of separatists claiming to act in the name of all London’s Muslims. __Source

Radical Islamists had been welcomed into London by Livingstone, and were fanning out into all of England. Livingstone's deranged radicalism intended to replace the old London with a brave new radical leftist/Islamist London with no place for traditional English values of hard work, tolerance, and self-reliance.

The victory for England extended far beyond the disposal of a bit of mayorial trash. Across the nation, the ruling Labour party began to reap the results of its massive overhaul of the English welfare, courts and law enforcement systems. The English were not ready to lay down in helpless stupour at the feed of an all-encompassing nanny Labour government.

For Labour, it was the worst election in 40 years. In a massive turnout, the Conservative Party took 256 seats in parliament, along with control of 12 town councils and 44% of the vote. Labour and moderate Liberal Democrats got to split the remains, and even the Liberal Democrats ,with 25%, won more than Labour.

Best of all, London's 5.5 million voters threw out Labour's biggest bum: Marxist Mayor Ken Livingstone — a man so detested he forced Labour to spend the bulk of its campaign cash to defend his re-election after eight years in power to the neglect of other districts. Nice going, Red Ken.

The "very big moment," as Tory chief David Cameron put it, echoed conservative victories in France, Germany, Sweden and Italy and signaled Britain's alignment with them. The reason was also largely the same — costly, overweening and unresponsive government that does what big governments do best: fail.

In Britain, the burden was intolerable. Labour has savaged the poor, battered Brits with tax after tax, pushing the government's tax-take to its highest level ever. __IBD

So there is still a bit of life in sad old England after all. That is a very good sign.

Ecuador's Leftist Correa Funded by FARC Terror

It is amazing what one can learn from a purloined laptop! Now we are learning that the FARC narco-terrorists movement is funding leftist politicians in South America, such as Ecuador's Correa.

New documents discovered on captured FARC computers suggested that FARC terrorists donated $100,000 to the campaign of Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa.
The Miami Herald and The Real Cuba reported:

New documents a Colombian government official says were retrieved from the computer of slain guerrilla leader Raúl Reyes show FARC's ties in Latin America may be more widespread than previously reported.

Some of the documents, obtained by The Miami Herald, indicate that a leading member of Ecuador's constitutional assembly, charged with reshaping that country's political landscape, may have been a longtime supporter of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.

María Augusta Calle -- also the head of Venezuela's Telesur TV network in Ecuador and a supporter of President Hugo Chávez -- let the rebels use her bank account for at least one transaction and helped promote their ideas through another news agency she directs, the Colombian offical said...

...If confirmed, Calle's links would be yet another indication that the rebels' tentacles have spread far across the Colombian border and reached various sectors of Ecuador.
__Gateway

FARC is closely tied to Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Correa in Ecuador, and others later to be named. The murderous narco-terrorist coalition stretching across South America is the natural evolutionary result of political processes set into motion decades earlier by Castro and Guevara of Cuba. From Venezuela to Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Paraguay, the revolutionaries-cum-nihilists are destroying hopes of millions of South Americans for a better future. They can't help it. It's who they are.

Officials at Oynklent Green [OTC:OYNK] are keeping a close eye on political developments in South and Central America, with regards to a possible new supply of feedstock. Stay tuned.

Future of World Geopolitical Power Balance

The United States has been the world's largest economic powerhouse since the 1880s. But not until the first half of the 20th century did the US become the world's largest military force as well. The role of world's military hegemon was one that was forced upon the US by Germany in WWI and by Japan and Germany in WWII. By the end of WWII, the intent of the USSR to become the predominant hegemon of Europe and Asia was clear. The US had a choice: either allow itself to become a permanent worldwide military hegemon to balance the effect of the growing influence of the USSR, or to retreat back into an isolationist shell.

The USSR's acquisition of the atomic bomb, and later the hydrogen bomb in combination with long-range bombers and inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) made it obvious that isolation had become impossible. The US under Truman committed itself to world leadership in the attempt to prevent Soviet style totalitarianism from smothering the entire globe.

Now, still at the dawn of the 3rd millenium, what is the future of the world geopolitical power balance, in the face of a newly belligerent Russia, a diffuse but ambitious worldwide program of Islamist ambition to conquest, and a rapidly arming mainland China?

The problem today is that the U.S. political system seems to have lost its ability to fix its ailments. The economic problems in the United States today are real, but by and large they are not the product of deep inefficiencies within the U.S. economy, nor are they reflections of cultural decay. They are the consequences of specific government policies. Different policies could quickly and relatively easily move the United States onto a far more stable footing. A set of sensible reforms could be enacted tomorrow to trim wasteful spending and subsidies, increase savings, expand training in science and technology, secure pensions, create a workable immigration process, and achieve significant efficiencies in the use of energy. Policy experts do not have wide disagreements on most of these issues, and none of the proposed measures would require sacrifices reminiscent of wartime hardship, only modest adjustments of existing arrangements. And yet, because of politics, they appear impossible. The U.S. political system has lost the ability to accept some pain now for great gain later on.

As it enters the twenty-first century, the United States is not fundamentally a weak economy or a decadent society. But it has developed a highly dysfunctional politics. What was an antiquated and overly rigid political system to begin with (now about 225 years old) has been captured by money, special interests, a sensationalist media, and ideological attack groups. The result is ceaseless, virulent debate about trivia -- politics as theater -- and very little substance, compromise, or action. A can-do country is now saddled with a do-nothing political process, designed for partisan battle rather than problem solving. __FareedZakaria

The Democratic Party in the US combined with much of the US news media, is painting a picture of widespread national malaise for public consumption. They are portraying the US as a defeated nation in the midst of economic and environmental devastation, with no possibility of improvement--unless one of the unqualified Democrats is elected US President, and the dysfunctional Democratic Party led US Congress is allowed to maintain control over the US legislature.

Yet, it is that same dysfunctional Democratic Party that is responsible for most of the problems the US has with energy supply, lack of innovation, lack of business competitiveness, and lack of credibility on the international front.

The "great national malaise" suffered by the US under President Jimmy Carter was a real phenomenon. Unemployment, Inflation Rate, and Interest Rates were in the double digits. The USSR appeared to be in ascendancy and unbeatable. The world had no respect for a US that had run away from its Vietnamese allies with its tail between its legs, for a US that deserted its ally in Iran to the muslim fundamentalist terror state. Jimmy Carter's policies created the malaise, and it lasted until Jimmy Carter was well and gone from government.

The current malaise is largely a creation of the news media in collaboration with the US Democratic Party and powerful allying forces, including various organisations sponsored by George Soros. The US economy is nowhere near the sad shape it assumed in the late 1970s. But perceptions are often more important than reality. As long as the US Democratic Party has the cooperation of the US news media, it is the Democratic Party's perception that will be presented to the larger part of the US public.

Muqtada al-Sadr: A Source of Family Shame

A relative of renegade Muqtada al-Sadr has indicated that the Sadar family of Iraq is planning to deal with the renegade rebel son as an internal family matter.

Alseyed Josef Alsadar a member of the honored Sadar family wrote a letter to Alrafedain news (Nida'a al Rafidain News) which said: "Muqtada al-Sadr has tainted the reputation of this respected family, and the family disowns Muqtada. We are as innocent of him as the wolf is of the blood of Josef (Biblical (Old Testament I believe) and Koranic reference). The family is working on ways to discipline him with in the family. Consultations for this are held at the highest level to come up with punishments for its rogue son.
_GatewayPundit

This statement from a senior member of the Sadar family comes as the rebel cleric al-Sadr threatens to unleash new violence upon Iraq in the coming days and weeks.

Sadr threatened to end the cease-fire after Iraqi troops took over the Mahdi Army-dominated neighborhood of Hayaniyah in Basrah and ejected the Sadrist political party from government-owned offices in the city. He openly said he was prepared to revolt against the government.

"Do you want a third uprising?” Sadr said, referring to the two Mahdi Army uprisings in Baghdad, Najaf, and the South in April and August 2006. "So I direct my last warning and speech to the Iraqi government to refrain and to take the path of peace and abandon violence against its people. If the government does not refrain and leash the militias that have penetrated it, we will announce an open war until liberation." __LongWarJournal

The rabble following of Sadr has stockpiled weapons for the threatened uprising across the Shia regions of Iraq, although one huge stockpile has been uncovered in Karbalah.

Security forces on Monday seized a huge weapons cache in western Karbala, the police chief said.... “A large security force accompanied by explosive ordinance disposal team moved to al-Tar, a highland area containing a number of caves, to search for explosive based on intelligence tips,” Brig. Gen. Raid Shakir, Karbala security operations commander, told Aswat al-Iraq - Voices of Iraq - (VOI).
The security official pointed out “forces found 20 mortar of different calibers, 72 rocket-propelled grenade(RPG), 54 roadside bombs, ammunition boxes, wires, 23 kg TNT, 33 hand grenades, 14 explosive controls, blast wires, and more than 1000 rifles along with their bullets.”.....Al-Tar is an archaeological site whose history dates back five thousand years characterized by highland caves. ...“The armed groups hid the weapons in such a remote fearful area to prepare for armed actions in the city,” the official added...Karbala, the second holiest Shiite city after Najaf and the capital city of Karbala province, lies 110 south-west of Baghdad. _Source

As more Iraqis grow weary of constant warfare and terrorist atrocities, the number of citizen reports to authorities of arms caches and gathering places for terrorists--both Shia and Sunni--are increasing.

Obama vs. Clinton: What They Choose Not to Say Would Fill Volumes

Senators Clinton and Obama met in debate last night, their last public battle together before next week's critically important Pennsylvania primary. How did they do?

Keeping the score card, there's no way Obama could fared worse. Nearly 45 minutes of relentless political scrutiny from the ABC anchors and from Hillary Clinton, followed by an issues-and-answers session in which his anger carried over and sort of neutered him. But Hillary Clinton has a Reverse-Teflon problem: her negatives are up, and when she's perceived as the attacker, the attacks never seem to settle on Obama and always seem to boomerang back on her. So it would be unwise to declare that Hillary "won" the debate in the dynamic sense just yet. (How much money will Obama raise off this debate? $3m million? $4 million?)

A lot of stuff that Obama doesn't Pennsylvanians to think about were the subject of fairly detailed questions. Obama's supporters are already blaming the "establishment" -- that is, the powerful institution of the mainstream media -- for the tone of the debate. This sets up a blowback scenario wherein his supporters will rally to his defense and lash out at the media very loudly. But Obama's going to be the next president of the United States, maybe. The most powerful person in the world. And questions about his personal associations, his character, his personal beliefs, his statements at private fundraisers -- the answers to these questions tell us a lot. __Source

This was perhaps the first honest debate that Obama has been forced to face head on. He did not do well. He was lost in a fog through most of the performance. His supporters in the audience violated the "no applause" rule repeatedly, which seemed to rattle Obama even more.

The Marc Ambinder report quoted above is fascinating. Why? Because of the comments that followed his report at the Atlantic website. The well-zombied following of Obama comes out in full force in Marc's comments to rant and condemn ABC, Marc, the MSM in general, George Stephanopolous, Charlie Gibson, and the usual suspects Sean Hannity and Fox News (??).

The most interesting way to watch such political performance theatre is to turn the volume all the way down, and watch the debaters' faces. The silent examination allows a better reading of the speaker's subconscious nuances, that underlie the attempts to obfuscate and circumvent the things they really do not want to say.

Most fascinating.

Hugo Chavez Gives Venezuelans Something to Cry About: Collapsing Health Care

There are many ways for a revolution to fail. Most of them revolve around a growing dissatisfaction among the middle classes that eventually reaches the lower classes, the proletariat--the ones the revolution claimed it existed to help.

Palacios, Venezuela's largest public maternity hospital and once the nation's beacon of neonatal care, has fallen on hard times. Half of the anesthesiologists and pediatricians on staff two years ago have quit. Basic equipment such as respirators, ultrasound monitors and incubators are either broken or scarce. Six of 12 birth rooms have been shut.

On one day last month, five newborns were crowded into one incubator, said Dr. Jesus Mendez Quijada, a psychiatrist and Palacios staff member who is a past president of the Venezuelan Medical Federation...The deaths of the six infants "were not a case of bad luck, but the consequence of an accumulation of circumstances that have created this alarming situation," Mendez said.

...the problems at Concepcion Palacios are symptoms of a variety of ills that have beset the public healthcare system under leftist firebrand President Hugo Chavez. Cases of malaria nearly doubled between 1998, the year before Chavez took office, and 2007. Incidents of dengue fever more than doubled over the same period.

Poorly paid doctors regularly demonstrate at hospitals from Puerto La Cruz in the northeast to Maracay in the industrial heartland, demanding back pay and protesting the lack of equipment and supplies. Others are leaving in droves for Spain, Australia or the Middle East, where they make 10 times the $600 monthly average salary they earn in public hospitals.

... the system's current crisis comes as the country is awash in oil wealth, a windfall that critics say could be used to ease the problem. Instead, Chavez is building a parallel health program called Barrio Adentro, which features 11,000 neighborhood clinics staffed mainly by Cuban doctors...Inaugurated nationwide in 2003, Barrio Adentro initially was so popular with the poor that it helped Chavez win a crucial 2004 referendum and hold on to power. It has brought basic healthcare to the barrios, providing free exams and medicine as well as eye operations that have saved the sight of thousands.

But the system siphons resources and equipment away from the public hospitals, which have four-fifths of the nation's 45,000 hospital beds and where the public still goes for emergency and maternity care, as well as for most major and elective surgeries.

The finances and organization of Barrio Adentro are "a black box and not transparent, so it's impossible to analyze it for efficiency," said Dr. Marino Gonzalez, professor of public policy at Simon Bolivar University in Caracas, the capital.

A lack of openness has affected other facets of public health too. After the medical establishment blamed him for an outbreak of dengue fever last summer, Chavez halted weekly publication of an epidemiology report that for 50 years had tallied occurrences of infectious diseases nationwide....Former Health Minister Rafael Orihuela says the loss of the weekly report has deprived the government of information needed for a quick response to outbreaks of disease.

"I am not talking about a failure of the government to adopt innovations in healthcare," said Orihuela, a Chavez critic. "I am talking about a failure to maintain basic healthcare standards." ___LAT

Leftist revolution is a temporary situation. The inevitable collapse always follows an extended period of progressive deterioration of basic services and quality of life. Even without corrupt dictators such as Chavez and Castro, leftist systems of governments inevitably fail, due to a lack of grounding in basic economic realities.

How odd that so large a proportion of professors, journalists, and politicians in the developed western world should be addicted to the perpetually failing ideology of the left. Barack Obama, the audacity of hope? The futility of empty wishful thinking.

The Trouble is the West: Stop Being Weanies!

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is perhaps the clearest voice on speaking about Islam in the world today. A refugee from the nightmare of muslim Somalia, Hirsi Ali pulls no punches in warning western countries about what Islam has in mind for them. The choice is the west's.

Hirsi Ali: Only if Islam is defeated. Because right now, the political side of Islam, the power-hungry expansionist side of Islam, has become superior to the Sufis and the Ismailis and the peace-seeking Muslims.

Reason: Don’t you mean defeating radical Islam?

Hirsi Ali: No. Islam, period. Once it’s defeated, it can mutate into something peaceful. It’s very difficult to even talk about peace now. They’re not interested in peace.

Reason: We have to crush the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims under our boot? In concrete terms, what does that mean, “defeat Islam”?

Hirsi Ali: I think that we are at war with Islam. And there’s no middle ground in wars. Islam can be defeated in many ways. For starters, you stop the spread of the ideology itself; at present, there are native Westerners converting to Islam, and they’re the most fanatical sometimes. There is infiltration of Islam in the schools and universities of the West. You stop that. You stop the symbol burning and the effigy burning, and you look them in the eye and flex your muscles and you say, “This is a warning. We won’t accept this anymore.” There comes a moment when you crush your enemy.

Reason: Militarily?

Hirsi Ali: In all forms, and if you don’t do that, then you have to live with the consequence of being crushed.

Reason: Are we really heading toward anything so ominous?

Hirsi Ali: I think that’s where we’re heading. We’re heading there because the West has been in denial for a long time. It did not respond to the signals that were smaller and easier to take care of. Now we have some choices to make. This is a dilemma: Western civilization is a celebration of life—everybody’s life, even your enemy’s life. So how can you be true to that morality and at the same time defend yourself against a very powerful enemy that seeks to destroy you? __Reason__via__RottenGods

Is the west truly at war with Islam? Of course. Whenever two civilisations vie for dominance, they are at war--total war.

Anyone who thinks otherwise has decided to take a snooze from reality.

Reason: Having lived in the United States for about a year now, do you find that Muslims in the United States have by and large integrated better here than they have in Europe?

Hirsi Ali: Since I moved here, I’ve spent most of my time in airports, in airplanes, in waiting rooms, in hotels, doing promotion for Infidel all over the world, so the amount of time I’ve actually lived in the U.S. is very small. But yes, I have the impression that Muslims in the United States are far more integrated than Muslims in Europe. Of course, being assimilated doesn’t necessarily mean that you won’t be a jihadist, but the likelihood of Muslims turning radical here seems lower than in Europe.

For one thing, America doesn’t really have a welfare system. Mohammed Bouyeri had all day long to plot the murder of Theo van Gogh. American Muslims have to get a job. What pushes people who come to America to assimilate is that it’s expected of them. And people are not mollycoddled by the government.

There’s a lot of white guilt in America, but it’s directed toward black Americans and native Indians, not toward Muslims and other immigrants. People come from China, Vietnam, and all kinds of Muslim countries. To the average American, they’re all fellow immigrants.

The white guilt in Germany and Holland and the U.K. is very different. It has to do with colonialism. It has to do with Dutch emigrants having spread apartheid in South Africa. It has to do with the Holocaust. So the mind-set toward immigrants in Europe is far more complex than here. Europeans are more reticent about saying no to immigrants.

And by and large, Muslim immigrants in Europe do not come with the intention to assimilate. They come with the intention to work, earn some money, and go back. That’s how the first wave of immigrants in the Netherlands was perceived: They would just come to work and then they’d go away. The newer generations that have followed are coming not so much to work and more to reap the benefits of the welfare state. Again, assimilation is not really on their minds.

...But I don’t even think that the trouble is Islam. The trouble is the West, because in the West there’s this notion that we are invincible and that everyone will modernize anyway, and that what we are seeing now in Muslim countries is a craving for respect. Or it’s poverty, or it’s caused by colonization.

The Western mind-set—that if we respect them, they’re going to respect us, that if we indulge and appease and condone and so on, the problem will go away—is delusional. The problem is not going to go away. Confront it, or it’s only going to get bigger.

There is much more at the link above. Including a discussion about the true meaning of the word tolerance. Perhaps the word does not mean what you think it means?
;-)

Iran Declares War on Iraq

Not officially, not yet. But Iranian forces were fighting at command level with Shia militias inside Basra recently. It is safe to say that Iran is the greatest threat to peace in Iraq at this time.

Military and intelligence sources believe Iranians were operating at a tactical command level with the Shi’ite militias fighting Iraqi security forces; some were directing operations on the ground, they think. ___Times

The current US Democratic Party controlled congress has invested deeply in the defeat of the young democratic government in Iraq. You can expect DP hacks such as Pelosi and Reid to resist the fact of direct Iranian government involvement in the killing of Iraqi civilians, Iraqi security forces, and US forces inside Iraq. But then, Pelosi has always been a minor league thinker, and Reid not much better if any.

The real question is how the surrender branch of the Democratic party (is it really only a branch?) will persuade American voters that they can both retreat in the face of a direct military confrontation with Iran -- of all countries -- and nevertheless be relied upon to defend and assert the national interest of the United States. __TigerHawk

The US government is divided between those who are working for a safer world, and those who shirk from any conflict that may advance US interests in any way.

The geopolitical world is not a nice place, on the whole. Nice guys don't make it to the top, as a rule. Crocodiles and pigs predominate. If your leaders are not reptilian crocodiles, like Putin and Hu Jintao, they may be pigs, like Pelosi.

Obama's Strengths, Obama's Weaknesses

The map above reveals the parts of the continental US where Senator Obama enjoys his greatest advantage. Black voters go for Obama between 80% and 90% across the state primaries. In the long run, Obama's advantage over Clinton is greatest in cities and states where US blacks make up the highest percentage of voters. US blacks were slow to warm to Obama, but once the decision is made, it tends to stay made.

The well publicized videos of the Rev. Wright, ranting against and damning the US, will continue to have a damping effect on the enthusiasm of more educated, non-leftist US voters. But leftist oriented voters (universities) and black voters will maintain their loyalty to the junior Senator through almost anything, at this point.

Obama's religion--Black Liberation Theology--is seen most clearly by looking at his church's newsletters. They are full of conspiratorial ideas about "rich white society" in full attack mode against American blacks for the entire existence of the USA. Obama's church expresses anti-Jewish views and pro-Islamist views as well.

Until recently, Obama had seemed to be in control of the Democratic Party's nomination process. He seemed to be a shoe-in for the DP candidate. Now, things may be looking a bit different.

Upcoming primaries in several states present the possibility that Hillary Clinton can win the "popular vote" over all the primaries, while not achieving enough delegates to lock the nomination. When reaching the convention in the summer, if neither candidate has locked the nomination, the unbound super-delegates will determine who goes over the top.

If Obama had been honest throughout the primaries, he would have perhaps half or less of the delegates he currently has. Only after his huge Super Tuesday wins, did some of the truth about his concealed viewpoints begin to trickle out.

Obama's weakness is himself, and his close associates--including his wife. Except among US blacks and leftists. With US blacks and leftists, Obama is Obiwan-Obama, "He is the one."

Obama's Personality Cult, Socialism, Mugabe's Zimbabwe, and Argentina's Death Wish

Senator Obama is an undisputed cult leader. Cult leaders are common in third world politics in places such as Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea, Peronist Argentina. But they always come to a bad end due to overreach.

Zimbabwe's Mugabe is finally reaching the logical extreme of his own corrupt power hunger, and he has taken his nation all the way down with him. He deserves the fate of Mussolini or Ceausescu. Instead, he will probably live out the rest of his years in comfort at the expense his own country's ruin.

Argentina was once a rich country, with excellent prospects for the future. Peronist populist socialism--in its various revivals--will simply not let go of the chokehold on Argentina's potential wealth. The latest brainless twit dictator in Argentina is Christina Fernandez de Kirchner. She is destroying the country more by the minute.

First, consider that Fernandez is dangerously ignorant of the impact of taxes on any business, having spent her entire life as a politician in cities. Combined with the concentrated power of her Peronist party, which controls every institution in the country, it's little wonder that she has little inclination to listen.

But declining production is likely to be its own message. Already, there is so much micromanaging of Argentina's agriculture that the only profitable areas left are in relatively uncomplicated export crops of soya and sunflowers — 70% to 90% of which are exported.

But three tax hikes on exports in six months, along with VAT taxes, income taxes, capital costs and salaries, are likely to leave no net profit for Argentina's last dynamic producers in agriculture....Fernandez has fixed socialist notions of big farms being capitalistically bad and has tried to make farmers halt their strike based on her proposed subsidies to "small" farmers. ___IBD

Of course the nitwit femme-dictator will not stop until she is overthrown, or until the entire nation is ruined. She and Obama think a lot alike. Chavez in Venezuela would be ruined already if not for a ready supply of oil that he can plunder.

But Argentina is the model that Obama is likely to follow. Take a rich country, decide to raise taxes on all productive sectors to extortionate levels, then reap the praise of your toady "yes men and women" while the country collapses in slo-mo.

Watch while Argentina repeats one of its worst foreign policy mistakes ever--its war against the UK over the Falkland Islands. Now that oil has been discovered in the vicinity, Argentina has decided even more firmly that it must have the Falklands back.

Kirchner called for Argentina to strengthen its representation in international bodies to denounce "this shameful colonial enclave in the 21st century."

And Vice President Julio Cobos said in the southern city of Rio Grande that "we must recover this territory that is ours, that belongs to us."

The comments came as Kirchner faces her own woes, battling against farmers who have barricaded roads in a protest against a stiff tax hike on soybean exports.

The conflict has created shortages of meat and other staples in Buenos Aires and elsewhere, and tested the social fabric, with pro- and anti-government supporters holding dueling rallies.

Foreign Minister Jorge Taina said, meanwhile, that Argentina was awaiting authorization from Britain to allow families of Argentine military personnel killed in the war to fly to the islands for the inauguration of a memorial.

London is insisting the travel be carried out by ship, but Buenos Aires has pointed out that many of the relatives are elderly and would find a long return sea voyage too tough. ___Source

The Falklands are quite small, and a military invasion could be spear-headed by an air dropped commando force under cover of a legitimate series of air flights. No wonder the UK is concerned about the timing of this "memorial inauguration."

The utter foolishness of Fernandez and her Peronist cohorts is astounding. If Argentina was located closer to Venezuela, I would wonder about a possible military alliance between the socialist governments, in a runup to war in the South Atlantic. But all Venezuela could do to assist the Peronists would be to intercept any naval task force that the UK might send to the Falklands. If that happened, the US would probably step in and punish Chavez.

But that assumes that a rational US president would be occupying the White House. A President Obama--rich on rhetoric but poor in experience and rational perspective--would be clueless as to how to respond to such a situation. So expect Argentina to wait until after the US elections in November.

Obama as world leader? If you think that Bush's administration was incompetent, you have not seen incompetence until you see an Obama administration in action.

Fitna the Movie: Geert Wilders' Warning

This 15 minute video is oddly understated, given its huge buildup by the dhimmi leadership of the Netherlands. If this footage is too controversial for showing on Dutch television, then Holland is already lost to the forces of darkness.

Much ado about nothing, but then sometimes nothing can sneak up behind you and take your head.