Jul 14 2012

Britain, R.I.P.? Part Eight

Category: Europe,freedom,government,justice,legislation,liberty,race,racism — harmonicminer @ 5:52 pm

The previous post in this series is here.

John Terry, a soccer player, has been found “not guilty” of racist speech in a criminal trial in merry old England.

Chief Magistrate Howard Riddle delivered his verdict after a five-day trial at Westminster Magistrates Court in London.

He said the case was not about “whether Mr Terry is a racist in the broadest sense of the word”, telling the court he had heard “a great deal of evidence to show that he is not”.

“It is understandable why Mr Terry wants to make this point – his reputation is at stake,” he said.

He was accused of racially abusing Ferdinand during a match between QPR and Chelsea at Loftus Road in October. He was investigated and charged after a complaint from an off-duty policeman.

Riddle said Terry was a “credible witness” and “nobody has been able to show that he is lying”. He told the court: “There is no doubt that John Terry uttered the words ‘f****** black c***’ at Anton Ferdinand.

So, it seems that losing control a bit and uttering an epithet or two in the heat of battle is a criminal offense in the land that brought us the Magna Carta and the Glorious Revolution, not to mention John Locke and Edmund Burke.

Details are here, but the reason for the not guilty verdict, given that Terry did say the words, is that he claimed to be repeating back an accusation from the “victim,” Anton Ferdinand, and this produced just enough question about Terry’s intent and motivation to create “reasonable doubt.”

I have reasonable doubts that Britain is any longer anything remotely resembling a free nation.  And consider:  the USA’s founding fathers thought of themselves as fighting to keep “the rights of Englishmen” which they thought they had been denied.

It would seem that Englishmen lost them some time back, too.

In the meantime, consider that this five day trial has to have cost the state considerable money, which might have been better spent other ways, perhaps not withholding necessary treatment to the elderly and infirm.

Just call it an informal death panel.

 

 

Sep 05 2011

Europe is indeed crazy

Category: Europe,humor,Obama,society — harmonicminer @ 10:43 am

I know, you probably saw this news bit already, but since Nearly 40 percent of Europeans suffer mental illness, and it’s now official, I feel constrained to point out that many of us have thought Europeans were crazy for many years.

Europeans are plagued by mental and neurological illnesses, with almost 165 million people or 38 percent of the population suffering each year from a brain disorder such as depression, anxiety, insomnia or dementia, according to a large new study.

With only about a third of cases receiving the therapy or medication needed, mental illnesses cause a huge economic and social burden — measured in the hundreds of billions of euros — as sufferers become too unwell to work and personal relationships break down.

“Mental disorders have become Europe’s largest health challenge of the 21st century,” the study’s authors said.

At the same time, some big drug companies are backing away from investment in research on how the brain works and affects behavior, putting the onus on governments and health charities to stump up funding for neuroscience.

“The immense treatment gap … for mental disorders has to be closed,” said Hans Ulrich Wittchen, director of the institute of clinical psychology and psychotherapy at Germany’s Dresden University and the lead investigator on the European study.

“Those few receiving treatment do so with considerable delays of an average of several years and rarely with the appropriate, state-of-the-art therapies.”

Wittchen led a three-year study covering 30 European countries — the 27 European Union member states plus Switzerland, Iceland and Norway — and a population of 514 million people.

Let’s not kid around. When you’d rather be on the dole than taking care of yourself, you’re nuts.  When you think the world owes you a living, you’ve definitely gone bonkers.  When you think the solution to keeping your government benefits is to import foreign workers who are hostile to your very way of life and basic beliefs, you’re crazy.  When you think it’s natural to  live like a dependent teenager up to the age of 40 or so, you’re positively certifiable.

Of course, the American elite, whether political, social or academic, seems to think that Europeans do almost everything better, and frequently compare the USA to Europe in a way they think is unfavorable to the USA.

I’m pretty sure, though, that only 19% of America is crazy.

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Saturday shows that 19% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as president.

Proving, I think, that only half as many Americans are as crazy as Europeans.

Jul 11 2010

New Spanish abortion “liberalization” law is less radical than current USA law

Category: abortion,Europe,left — harmonicminer @ 8:51 am

Spanish Abortion Law Galvanizes Pro-Lifers and Prompts Opposition

A new abortion law went into effect in Spain this Monday, July 5, which raises abortion to the status of a civil right. Abortion was first legalized in Spain in 1985, but was permissible only under three circumstances:

1) To save the life of the mother.
2) In the case of rape and incest.
3) In the case of fetal abnormalities (http://www.clinicasabortos.com/aborto-legal.asp).

In February of this year, the PSOE: Partido Socialista Obrero Español (Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party), Spain’s ruling party, succeeded in getting its new abortion law approved by Parliament. It was subsequently signed by both José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (Spanish Prime Minister and member of the PSOE) and Juan Carlos I (King of Spain). The new law codifies that women have the “right” to obtain abortions up to the 14th week of gestation, no questions asked.

Check the yellow pages of your USA phone book, and you’ll probably find abortion “clinics” offering abortions up to 24 or 26 weeks… no questions asked.

The debate surrounding the law had already struck a nerve with the Spanish people and spurred them into action even before anything had been approved. Grassroots pro-life organizations such as Hazte Oír (http://www.hazteoir.org/) and Derecho a Vivir (http://derechoavivir.org/) took Zapatero and the PSOE to task immediately, and organized a series of very successful demonstrations and ad campaigns to show the strength of the opposition to the liberalization of Spain’s abortion laws. The most famous of these was the demonstration on October 17, 2009 in Madrid, which brought approximately 1.5 million pro-life activists to the Spanish capital (http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/oct/09101908.html).

Despite the massive show of public disapproval, the bill narrowly passed through Parliament, was signed and officially became law on Monday.

Spain, of course, is in the middle of demographic meltdown, because it simply isn’t replacing its population. So a commitment to higher rates of abortion, a sure outcome of the new law, is a commitment to acceleration of the death spiral, as well as encouraging murder of the most innocent.

Just to compare: in the USA, virtually any fetus can be killed anytime during the first two trimesters, in virtually any jurisdiction.  Some states have managed to limit “late-term” abortion to one degree or another, but the fact is that any woman who wants an abortion at almost any time in the pregnancy can get one, if she wants it badly enough to find a provider of such “services,” even if she has to go to another state to do it.

This is not a way in which the American Left wants to imitate European law, however…  since many European nations have laws more restrictive on abortion than the USA.

Jan 14 2010

Britain R.I.P.? Part Four

Category: Europe — harmonicminer @ 9:35 am

The previous post in this series is here.

I’m not the only one who thinks Britain is doomed.

UPDATE:  Let’s be clear.  When you no longer have the right to the means for self-defense, the so called “right to self-defense” is meaningless.  When you no longer have the right to defend yourself and your family, you no longer have the right to live.  When you no longer have the right to live, you are a thing, a slave….  or just nothing, a cog in a social machine in which you are totally expendable.

Which is probably not a bad definition of a British citizen these days.

Feb 20 2009

Can it happen again?

Category: Europe,Islam,Israel — harmonicminer @ 10:51 am

Vichy government found responsible for deporting Jews in WWII

France’s top judicial body on Monday recognized the French government’s responsibility for the deportation of Jews during World War II, the clearest such recognition to date of the state’s role in the Holocaust.

The Council of State found that the government of Nazi-occupied France at the time held the responsibility for deportations that led to anti-Semitic persecution

The decision released on Monday also found that the deportation had been compensated for since 1945, apparently ruling out any reparations for deportees or their families.
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Thousands of Jews were deported from France to Nazi death camps during the occupation. After the war, subsequent French governments took decades to acknowledge any role played by the collaborationist Vichy regime in the Holocaust.

Europe is busy bending over backwards to accommodate the Islamic immigrants (and second and third generations of same) that have been used to support European socialism, in the absence of a sufficient birthrate of traditional Europeans to keep the trains running and fund entitlements.

Can any objective observer believe that Europe is less likely to target Jews, or simply allow them to be targeted by Islamic anti-Semites, than it would have been if the slow Islamic invasion hadn’t occurred?  The facts belie any optimisim in the matter:  Jews are being targeted now, and the various states do little except public hand-wringing.

The virulent disdain in which the state of Israel is held by Europe is a mask for something uglier, and not so political as personal, I fear.

If I was a European Jew, I’d get outta Dodge now.  It’s 1933, and the clock is ticking.  A war is coming, not one that really involves Jews directly (being but a continuance of the siege of Vienna in 1683) , but one in which too many of them will be casualties of convenience, and contempt.

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Jan 22 2009

Will the USA have to learn Britain’s lesson the hard way?

Category: Europe,freedom,guns — harmonicminer @ 10:44 am

Freedom has eroded in Britian, bit by bit, for 20-30 years now. Britain does not have anything approximating our Constitution… essentially the Parliament can make nearly any law it chooses, subject only to whatever the politicians believe will keep them in office.  It is a true tyranny of the majority, with little in the way of checks and balances, or constitutionally mandated protections of minority positions.   Britain has laws against certain kinds of speech, laws that would never stand under the First Amendment of the USA, it has banned most guns (and had an enormous rise in crime as a result), it has sold out many aspects of its sovereignty to the Europeans, and so on. At the same time, Britian is in real danger of losing its very identity as a nation.  Here’s a window on how some middle class British are feeling about it now:

The British called – They want their guns back!

Will we make the same mistakes?  I’m not optimistic, given how the recent election went, with Democrats winning big by promising to do the very things the British now regret, from nationalized health care to gun restrictions masquerading as crime prevention.

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Aug 22 2008

Israel tries appeasing Russia, too: fruitlessly, of course

Category: appeasement,Europe,freedom,liberty,politics,Russia — harmonicminer @ 8:53 am

Israel didn’t stick to its principles in its response to Russia’s invasion of Georgia, hoping to salvage some bit of self-interest, but to no avail.

You have to give Kadima <the ruling party that is almost certain to lose the next election> credit for loyalty: As the Bush administration was destroying any remaining credibility, and undermining its country’s interests, by abandoning a loyal and strategically important ally to Russia’s tender mercies, Israel’s ruling party decided it could not allow its American friends to shoulder the disgrace alone; it, too, should betray Georgia at the expense of its country’s interests. So the minute Russia invaded – just when Georgia needed arms most – Israel, which had hitherto been a prominent Georgian supplier, halted all arms shipments.

One might legitimately ask how this undermined the national interest. After all, Israel desperately needs Russian help on several crucial issues, ranging from Iran’s nuclear program to Hizbullah’s rearmament, and Israel needs Georgian help not at all. Moreover, Russia has made its unhappiness with arms sales to Georgia clear. Thus Kadima seemingly made the correct realpolitik choice.

The problem is that, according to government officials themselves, not only did the country receive no quid pro quo for halting the shipments, but Russia has repeatedly and explicitly declared that it will continue its anti-Israel policies regardless of whether or not Jerusalem sells arms to Georgia. Thus Israel gained nothing by betraying Georgia, while undermining two secondary but still significant interests.

Read it all, and hope that future US policy doesn’t reflect the same mistakes. The motto of the US Marines, “No better friend, no worse enemy”, ought to be true for any democracy supporting another democracy. There cannot be a good end for Russia to believe they can invade neighbors without serious repercussions.

The question is not, “What kind of risks are we willing to accept to defend Georgia’s sovereignty?” The question is, “What are we willing to do to stop Russia from retaking former territory of the Soviet Union, and getting a stranglehold on crucial oil pipelines? What are we willing to do to make sure Russia does not believe another Cold War is to its advantage?”

If we do nothing, or take only symbolic action with no real effect on Russia, this will not stop with Georgia.

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Aug 18 2008

Memo on evil: it’s real

Category: Europe,freedom,liberty,middle east — harmonicminer @ 9:47 am

There are many people who have dealt with “the problem of evil” by ascribing it to societies and culture more than to individuals who get into positions of power. The “end of history” has not come, nor will it until the Second Coming. Michael Ledeen has again written a document that perfectly skewers the conceit of the Left that humanity is perfectable, if only we could live in better, fairer societies. Read the whole thing for essential background, but here are the concluding graphs:

It was all wrong, as are most beliefs in the vast impersonal forces that are held to determine human events. The great constant in man’s affairs is change, the direction of that change is determined by human actions, and many of the men and women who take those determinant actions are evil. Machiavelli is not the only sage who recognized it, but he put it nicely: “Man is more inclined to do evil than to do good.” Rational statecraft starts right there.

The American Founders knew it: recognizing man’s innate capacity for evil, they designed a system of checks and balances to thwart the accumulation of power by any group, lest the entire enterprise fall into wicked hands. They knew the battle for liberty would never end, Benjamin Franklin famously warned we would have to fight to keep our republic.

All of this wisdom has been dangerously undermined by the foolish notion that man is basically good, that all men are basically the same, and that all we need do is to permit history to take its preordained course. Are these not the tenets of contemporary education? Are our children not forbidden to criticize “others,” whether of different pigmentation or religion? Has debate on our university campuses not turned into the moral equivalent of the Inquisition? And it rests on the sands of a demonstrably false vision of man. We are not naturally inclined to do good. Quite the contrary; left to our own devices we produce genocide in Europe, Asia and Africa. And the evil spreads, eventually it threatens us, it kills our people here at home and it is straining to kill more of us. Ask the Georgians. Ask Middle Eastern Jews and Christians, or the Iranian, Iraqi or Syrian peoples.

The basic debate needs to begin with a recognition that we have bought into a fable. Without that recognition, we will be incapable of designing the policies we need in order to survive this perilous moment.

Continue reading “Memo on evil: it’s real”

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Aug 07 2008

Obama’s speech to the Germans: trying to make sense of it

Category: election 2008,Europe,McCain,Obama,politics,White House — harmonicminer @ 9:00 am

Dennis Prager has written two articles analyzing Obama’s speech to the Germans:

First article

Second article

As this analysis makes clear, Obama employs just about every progressive-liberal cliche in the Left’s panoply of double-think and half-truth. He reveals himself to be exactly what objective measures say he is: the farthest Left senator in the United States Senate, and the farthest left nominee for President of the US in history. The main stream dinosaur media won’t report this, or do fair analyses of his speeches, preferring to talk about his tone and delivery, rather than his substance, such as it is.

Instead of holding Obama’s feet to the fire for ducking townhall style debates with John McCain, the media continue to swoon in abject worship at his hypnotic oratory…. when they aren’t throwing their underwear at the stage, like rock-star groupies everywhere. (Except for the French reporters, of course, who are reputed to “go commando”. I really don’t want to think about what they’re throwing at the stage.)

After all, we can’t force Obama to go off teleprompter… people might find out what he really thinks, and how well he thinks, neither of which is conducive to his being elected. Who knows, though: maybe a couple of extra-enthusiastic reporters’ boxers will accidentally land on the teleprompter, and Obama will have to speak off-script because the cameras are rolling.

I can hear it now: “America must cease acting only in its own self-interest and step up to its responsibilities to coordinate multilaterally with… with…. Fruit-Of-The-Loom… and…. and….. Joe Boxer….”

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Jul 27 2008

A man’s home: no longer his castle in Britain

Category: Europe,freedom,liberty,politics — harmonicminer @ 8:59 am

Oh please, can I please move to Britain? I just love their sense of civil liberty. And I do so want the bobbies to know that they’re always welcome in my home, at any hour of the day or night, for pretty much any of a thousand trivial reasons:

The march of the Big Brother state under Labour was highlighted last night as it was revealed that there are now 1,043 laws that give the authorities the power to enter a home or business.

Continue reading “A man’s home: no longer his castle in Britain”

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