This sort of thing would never, unfortunately, be said here.
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A once glorious continent continues its headlong rush into the abyss:
The politically correct rules also mean a ban on Continental titles, such as Madame and Mademoiselle, Frau and Fraulein and Senora and Senorita.
Guidance issued in a new ‘Gender-Neutral Language’ pamphlet instead orders politicians to address female members by their full name only.
Officials have also ordered that ’sportsmen’ be called ‘athletes’, ’statesmen’ be referred to as ‘political leaders’ and even that ’synthetic’ or ‘artificial’ be used instead of ‘man-made’.
So, it’s ‘artificial global warming?’ Now you’re speaking my language.
Hat tip: Moonbattery
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Not content with spending the US economy into oblivion, Secretary Geithner is imploring the rest of the world to also destroy themselves in the name of “stimulus.”
Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner yesterday unveiled a sweeping plan that calls on the United States and other nations to offer billions more to bail out economies in crisis and prods a reluctant Europe to prop up the reeling world economy with more aggressive government spending.
But the campaign is triggering controversy on both sides of the Atlantic. In Europe, some officials doubt the wisdom of falling deeply into debt to create jobs and halt the plunge in consumer demand, as the United States is doing. On Capitol Hill, members of Congress have grown wary of approving still more money.
Geithner said the administration will ask Congress to make $100 billion more available — nearly doubling the current U.S. commitment — to the International Monetary Fund to aid struggling nations. U.S. lawmakers said yesterday that they are already bracing for the administration to request hundreds of billions of dollars in more rescue funds for U.S. financial firms, and possibly a second massive economic stimulus package as well.
The IMF is pushing for more aid to Africa. The problem is, aid to Africa has never worked. But Geithener wasn’t done.
Geithner said he plans to press his counterparts from major economies to boost their fiscal stimulus and to sustain that spending for as long as the downturn lasts. “Forceful” actions by the world’s leading economies are needed because “the global recession is deepening,” Geithner said.
What was it Albert Einstein said about insanity? Oh, right:
“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
If “the global recession is deepening” despite all the “forceful” big government plans so far put into action, it may be time to start committing those who call for ever more.
Einstein also had another saying relevant to our current mess:
“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”
Tell that to the big government interventionists.
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The Washington Post reports on some regulatory parting shots the Bush administration took on free trade.
In its final days, the Bush administration imposed a 300 percent duty on Roquefort, in effect closing off the U.S. market. Americans, it declared, will no longer get to taste the creamy concoction that, in its authentic, most glorious form, comes with an odor of wet sheep and veins of blue mold that go perfectly with rye bread and coarse red wine.
The measure, announced Jan. 13 by U.S. Trade Representative Susan C. Schwab as she headed out the door, was designed as retaliation for a European Union ban on imports of U.S. beef containing hormones. Tit for tat, and all perfectly legal under World Trade Organization rules, U.S. officials explained.
ad_iconBesides, they said, Roquefort is only one of dozens of European luxury products that were attacked with high tariffs. The list includes, among other things, French truffles, Irish oatmeal, Italian sparkling water and “fatty livers of ducks and geese,” which apparently is how Washington trade bureaucrats say foie gras.
While none of these particularly barriers are going to have significant economic impact in America, this is simply bad policy.
Playing tit for tat with trade barriers may have emotional appeal, but it makes little sense practically, as we’re hurting ourselves almost as much as them when we do it. Moreover, we’re just encouraging others when they play these games. There’s little chance these tarrifs will get Europe to rethink their beef policy, and cutting off our nose to spite our face does not constitute good policy.
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From Britain, but the same basic story could just as well be told from America:
The head of the NHS rationing watchdog has said he is ‘genuinely sorry’ for a delay in approving a new treatment for blindness.
But campaigners said Andrew Dillon’s comments would be of little consolation to the thousands of Britons who have lost their sight in the two years it took NICE to make its final decision.
The watchdog has now approved Lucentis, which is used to treat wet age-related macular degeneration, a condition which affects 26,000 new sufferers every year.
NICE’s original recommendation was that patients had to wait until they went blind in one eye before they would be given treatment to save the sight in the other.
The proposal caused a huge public outcry from doctors and campaigners, prompting a U-turn in December last year before further consultation resulted in the final decision today.
NHS thought it was their responsibility to decide what level of risk warranted use of this drug. The public vehemently disagreed with the determination that the drug was only worth taking after eye-sight was lost in one eye.
Why is the individual’s own judgment not sufficient? Let people decide when they want to take a drug and risk the side-effects, not government. If they want to wait until they are blind in one eye, then they can. But no one knows better than the individual how to properly weigh the consequences of their choices.
Proponents of government interventionism always promote these watchdog groups as protecting consumers, but what they really do is needlessly delay the operation of the market. The real beneficiaries are the drug manufacturers, whose already approved products need not face the level of competition they otherwise would without government meddling.
Freedom is a wonderful thing. Let it happen.
Hat tip: OpenMarket.org
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What happens when multiculturalism and the victim culture collide? The end of sanity, that’s what.
For a year, Sarah has been facing financial ruin, due to a compensation claim for £34,000 brought by Bushra, 19, who has maintained she is due that figure after being turned down for a job at the Wedge salon in London’s King’s Cross.
In the event, the tribunal ruled this week that while Bushra’s claim of direct discrimination failed, her claim for indirect discrimination had succeeded.
Sarah has therefore been ordered to pay £4,000 compensation by way of ‘injury to feelings’.
…Since the judgment, Bushra, who is of Syrian descent and has worn a headscarf since she was 13, has, so far at least, chosen not to comment.
But, speaking last year, she admitted she had attended 25 interviews for hairdressing jobs without success.
But Sarah, she told the tribunal, had upset her the most.
She said: ‘I felt so down and got so depressed. I thought: “If I am not going to defend myself, who is?” Hairdressing has been what I’ve wanted to do ever since I was at high school.
‘This has ruined my ambitions. Wearing a headscarf is essential to my beliefs.’Bushra had a job in a salon in London, where her tasks included cutting hair, highlighting, tinting and perming, before she left to get married in Syria in 2006.
But on her return to Britain, she was unable to find work.
She has given up her ambitions to become a hairdresser and is studying travel and tourism at Hammersmith and West London College while working part-time in a shop.
At the tribunal, Bushra was asked if Sarah had made derogatory remarks about her headscarf.
She replied: ‘She did not. She just asked me if I wore it all the time, or whether I’d take it off.’
…
‘Her CV didn’t stand out because I was looking for someone who lived locally – something I’d specified in the advert so that I could call them in as and when required – and she lived several miles away in Acton,’ says Sarah.
‘One day she rang up to see if I’d got her CV and begged me for an interview. I told her I had concerns about where she lived, but she sounded so desperate that I agreed she could come in for a chat.’
A few days later, Bushra duly arrived at the salon.
‘I have to say I didn’t take to her,’ says Sarah. ‘She waltzed into the salon and hung up her coat as though she already had the job.
‘Naturally, I noticed her headscarf. But I presumed that, as she’s a hairdresser, she’d take if off when she was working. In 16 years, I’ve never known any stylist cover their hair with a headscarf. And this particular headscarf came all the way down to her eyebrows and covered her entire hairline.’
Sarah broached the subject with Bushra, who said she would not be removing the garment.
After ten minutes, with the interview complete, Sarah said she would come back to Bushra about the vacancy.
‘As she left, Bushra turned to me and said that she’d been turned down for jobs before,’ says Sarah. ‘And I admit I thought: “Well, what do you expect?”
‘It was not a religious matter. If she’d come in wearing a baseball cap and saying she wouldn’t take it off for work, then she wouldn’t have got the job either.’
One morning in the second week of June 2007, an innocuous white envelope landed on Sarah’s doormat. It contained a letter saying that she was being sued for £15,000 for indirect and direct discrimination by Bushra Noah.
This, the letter stated, related to compensation for injury to her feelings and lost earnings. Later, that figure was increased to £34,000.
‘I read it and re-read it and stood there dumbfounded,’ says Sarah.
‘I remembered Bushra, and I guessed straight away that the claim related to the headscarf. In my mind I was saying “But I wasn’t discriminating, it’s just a part of the job”, over and over again.‘I dialled the number at the top of the letter and was told I needed to get a solicitor, but that because I worked, I wasn’t entitled to Legal Aid. I thought: “This is it – my business is over.” I was devastated.’
There are no words.
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Europe Pushes Ahead Plans for Anti-Death Penalty Day
Europe will mark an anti-death penalty day next week, but it won’t be an official European Union initiative. Efforts to involve the E.U. failed when member state Poland refused to go along on the grounds that the death penalty debate ignored broader right-to-life questions.
The conservative Polish government’s objections ruined the E.U. plan, but another European grouping, the 47-nation Council of Europe (CoE), has decided to push ahead with a “European Day against the Death Penalty” on Oct. 10.
The CoE groups most European countries, including those outside of the E.U. It is independent of the 27-member E.U. and has been campaigning for years against capital punishment.
Poland was able to veto the E.U. plan to formally recognize the day, but at the CoE decisions are based on a majority view rather than unanimity.
I foresee a future dilemma for the Euroweenies. What will they do when they realize they are insulting Islam by denying the right of Muslims, who they usually bend over backwards to accommodate, to practice stonings of women for real or imagined social infraction?
If they oppose the death penalty, they get to feel good about themselves for being “compassionate,” plus they get the nice bonus of being able to attack America. On the other hand, they are rendering judgment on a cultural practice of another group, which flies in the face of their cultural relativism. And not they’re not just poo-pooing the behavior of any group, but the newest protected victim group on the block: Muslims. What’s a do-gooder Euroweeny to do?
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Exclusive: Suicide Bomb Teams Sent to U.S., Europe
Teams assigned to carry out attacks in the United States, Canada, Great Britain and Germany were introduced at an al Qaeda/Taliban training camp graduation ceremony held June 9.
A Pakistani journalist was invited to attend and take pictures as some 300 recruits, including boys as young as 12, were supposedly sent off on their suicide missions.
The tape shows Taliban military commander Mansoor Dadullah, whose brother was killed by the U.S. last month, introducing and congratulating each team as they stood.
“These Americans, Canadians, British and Germans come here to Afghanistan from faraway places,” Dadullah says on the tape. “Why shouldn’t we go after them?”
Wait, these terrorists are mad about Afghanistan? Doesn’t this tend to undercut that common argument of the left, that Iraq is uniquely responsible for creating more terrorists, while Afghanistan was a perfectly acceptable military action? Seeing as how the left is so quick to proclaim that they supported Afghanistan, and that these terrorists are using Afghanistan to justify attacks on Western targets, does that not now make the left as responsible for new terrorists as they argue supporters are the war in Iraq are? Of course it does, by their reasoning.
But we also know that their reasoning is bunk. Terrorists give all kinds of justifications for their actions that they know will be parroted in western media outlets across the globe. Their goal with such statements is to get us to question our tactics and erode our will to fight. The reality is that these suicide bombers exist because they have been indoctrinated by an extremist cult since birth. Their inauguration date into the world of suicide bombers was set long before we ever stepped foot into Afghanistan. Sitting around whining that military action “breeds terrorism” shows fundamental ignorance of history. Putting our national head in the sand has invited far more terrorism to date than taking the fight to the enemy. We were attacked because we were perceived as weak. Unfortunately, due to certain useful idiots here at home, we are still perceived as weak. Our projection of weakness, and not our military actions, is what will continue to drive terrorist attacks against this country.
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I know many of you are wondering why we’re talking about the French elections. Here’s why you should care. The French election this year offered a clear choice between the far-left socialist Royal and the right leaning Sarkozy. The choice made by the French will make a dramatic difference if they are to turn around their floundering economy. Most importantly, however, is what this means for the war against global jihad. All indications point to Europe becoming the future center of conflict against the jihadists. A large swath of unemployed young French Muslims would be a boon for jihadist recruiters. And while many of you are probably saying, “So what, Europe deserves it for their persistent policies of appeasement,” and you certainly make a good point, we have to consider a Europe in chaos not to be a good thing.
Another story you won’t be hearing about in the American media is how this caps a decidedly pro-American turn in Europe. The mantra, repeated without though since the beginning of the Bush administration, has been that Bush has alienated our allies and Europe. And yet, during his tenure, Bush has seen both Germany and France elect leaders more favorable toward America than their predecessors. In the case of France, Sarkozy is much more favorable. The son of a Hungarian immigrant, Sarkozy once declared that he was proud to be called more American than French, which was no doubt a response to an intended slur from one of his opponents. A Sarkozy presidency will be much less sympathetic to Palestinian terrorism than his predecessor Chirac and more supportive of American and Israeli efforts to defeat the jihadists. And that’s why we should all care that he has defeated Segolene Royal.
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The European Islamic conversion presses on:
Schools are dropping the Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim pupils, a Government backed study has revealed.
It found some teachers are reluctant to cover the atrocity for fear of upsetting students whose beliefs include Holocaust denial.
There is also resistance to tackling the 11th century Crusades – where Christians fought Muslim armies for control of Jerusalem – because lessons often contradict what is taught in local mosques.
A people that won’t fight for truth deserve to lose.
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I am a libertarian-conservative blogger living in the DC area. I have a Master's degree in Political Science, but please don't hold that against me.
