The canary's fading song

More disturbing devolution of civility. As ever, the canary in the coal mine is a familiar one.

Violence 'reflects national surge' in anti-semitism

Rosie Cowan, crime correspondent
Friday January 21, 2005
The Guardian [London]

Tonight, worshippers leaving dozens of synagogues in north-east London's Stamford Hill will hurry home in groups, keeping an eye out for strange cars and taking care not to leave anyone on their own.

For the large Jewish population in this part of the city has been subjected to a series of vicious attacks in the past six weeks.

[snip]

Mike Whine, spokesman for the Community Security Trust, an agency which provides defence information and advice to British Jews, said the sustained nature of the attacks on a close-knit community was intimidating.

But he was even more worried that they were symptomatic of a general upsurge in anti-semitism throughout the UK in the last year.

[snip]

"While we are still compiling final figures, we know there has been a substantial increase in violence against Jews in the past year." The Community Security Trust has compiled reports on anti-semitic behaviour since 1984 and has recorded an average of 500 instances a year since 2000, ranging from verbal insults and offensive literature to desecration of property and physical attacks on people.

Islamic extremists have targeted Jews on several occasions. But there is no evidence to date that the Stamford Hill attacks are linked to any such group. Mr Whine could think of no particular reason for the recent increase in anti-semitism, but said there was always a backlash when Jews, Israel or Nazism were in the news.

[snip]

EU Rearranges the Deck Chairs

BRUSSELS - The European Commission is preparing a wholesale revamp of the beleaguered Lisbon Strategy - its ambitious goal to become the most competitive economy in the World by 2010 - in a bid to restore momentum to the process.

[snip]

The Commission's Competitiveness Group - which drew up the report - recommends repointing the Lisbon strategy around 10 so-called 'central policy areas'

These include: 'attracting more people in employment', 'more and better research and development', 'promoting innovation and sustainability', 'completing the internal market' and 'creating the conditions for a strong European industrial base'.

There is also a policy area entitled, 'increasing the adaptability of workers and enterprises and the flexibility of labour markets'.

And a draft outline of the 2005 Spring Report, entitled, 'European partnership for growth and job - relauching the Lisbon Strategy', warns how urgent it is to breathe life into the process.

'Without action, European growth would decrease to 1.5 percent of GDP in the coming years which, then, would damage our social model", the draft reads.

[snip]

Unmentioned (and perhaps unmentionable) is the inconvenient fact that the "social model" is the problem.

Rather than such gauzy goals as "attracting more people in employment," the eurocrats would be advised to foster a euroculture that values competition, respects the work ethic, venerates the individual, rewards risk-taking, abhors taxation and reverses the soul-crushing, incentive-sapping tide of nanny-state socialism that has eroded European competitiveness for more than half a century.

Of course, such a recommendation is at cross-purposes to the foundational precepts of the Brussels übergovernment. See, what's being conclusively proven is the futility of top-down approaches for growth, especially ones driven by circle-jerking government bureaucrats. The Lisbon Strategy, revamped or otherwise, is like the Soviet Union's Five Year Plans, only without the warmth and hominess of its hive-like urban housing cooperatives. So far.

A parallel story whose essential message will surely escape Brussels' grasp:

Germans Don't Want the Corner Office:

Most Europeans would rather be the employee than the employer

Fear of failure makes Europeans happier to be cashing regular paychecks than starting their own business. Americans, on the other hand, are more likely to want to be their own boss, according to an EU report.

The European Union's report showing 61 percent of Americans want to be their own boss compared to 45 percent of Europeans comes after five years of surveying more than 21,000 Americans and Europeans about their feelings toward self-employment.

'There are cultural differences between Germans and Americans,' Goetz W. Werner (photo), founder of German drugstore chain dm, told DW-WORLD.DE. 'Americans say, 'Let's try it,' a German wants to consider all the possibilities first -- that's why Germans often lack boldness.'

[snip]

Really, if they could fix that, they could fix Europe.

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Sheets, Swimmer and Sore Loser Impotently Protest Uppity Condi's Rise

Three luminaries of the Democrat Party are stomping their puny feet in a futile display of obstructionism and ill grace. "Sheets" Byrd, of course, is the former KKK Grand Kleagle, and his opposition to the second black Secretary of State is no surprise. That the Democrats would assign him to the block-Condi leadership role is more surprising given his background-- more evidence that the Democrat massahs truly believe the black vote can be taken for granted. Hey, Black Vote: what have these guys done for you lately? Meanwhile, this is not Teddy Kennedy's first attempt to sink a woman, and John Kerry is merely being the faux-highborn poor sport he was throughout the campaign.

...after members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved Rice by a 16-2 vote yesterday and the full Senate prepared for a vote today, some vehemently anti-Bush Democrats suddenly served notice they wanted more time.

Republican sources identified the key holdouts as 87-year-old Robert Byrd of West Virginia, along with Ted Kennedy and John Kerry, both of Massachusetts.

Byrd, a former Ku Klux Klan member, has been one of the most vocal critics of Bush. Rice would be the first black woman to serve as secretary of state.

Tsunami-hit Thais told: Buy six [Airbus] planes or face EU tariffs

Tsunami-struck Thailand has been told by the European Commission that it must buy six A380 Airbus aircraft if it wants to escape the tariffs against its fishing industry.

While millions of Europeans are sending aid to Thailand to help its recovery, trade authorities in Brussels are demanding that Thai Airlines, its national carrier, pays 1.3 billion [pounds, about $2.4 billion] to buy its double-decker aircraft.

[snip]

As the world's largest producer of prawns, Thailand has become so efficient that its wares are half the price of those caught by Norway, the main producer of prawns for the EU.

To ensure the Thais cannot compete, EU officials five years ago removed its shrimp industry from the EU's generalised system of preferential tariffs - designed to share Western wealth with developing countries by trade.

The EU has instead slapped a tariff of 12 per cent on its fish - three times that imposed on prawns from Malaysia, its neighbour.

Catch that? The (ahem) stinginess of threatening Thailand with tariffs at this tragic moment in history aside: the eurocrats are saying, "Buy the bloated, unproven, un-market-driven, airport-incompatible flying Renault made by our predatory tax-subsidized consortium cobbled-together from failed companies driven into the ground by poor engineering, chronic market disconnection, inept management, underproductive labor and dismal quality, or we'll use the police force of government to undermine your fabulously efficient agricultural industry, against whom we retrograde Gauloises-puffers can't compete."

Is there any doubt now that the Brussels ubergovernment is a deeply socialist institution designed to stamp out innovation and feather the nests of eurocrats and strap-hangers?

Just ...unbelievable.

California: Democrats give up on tax increases, await governor's next move

SACRAMENTO (AP) - Leaders of the Legislature's Democratic majority said Tuesday they are setting aside a long-standing call for tax increases to close the state's $8.6 billion deficit next year and instead will concentrate on closing tax loopholes and chasing more federal support.

[snip]

[Schwarzenegger's] $111.7 billion budget allows for increased funding almost across the board and represents $6.4 billion more in spending than the current year's budget... The deficit, estimated in recent weeks at $8.1 billion, was raised Monday to $9 billion to account for a $500 million reserve the governor wants and a $450 million settlement of a flood case the state lost last year... The governor's plan calls for no new taxes but uses $3.5 billion in loans to help close the budget gap.

[snip]

$3.5 billion is a shade under 3.2% of the budget. Anyone reading this could tighten their monthly household expenditures by 3.2% to live within their means. To fund a profligate lifestyle with debt is irresponsible. One is tempted to call it "Gray Davis' Disease", except now it's Schwarzenegger who has delivered a debt-based budget for two years in a row, matching Davis' sorry record.

While the no-tax-hike news is certainly welcome (though cuts in our economically-afflictive sales and income taxes are long overdue), Schwarzenegger is fast becoming a disappointment. His fiscal stewardship is far too accommodating of the spending whores in the Legislature; he's done nothing substantive to reduce the size of government, and he's a gun-grabber. I credit him with a marvelous star-turn at the Republican Convention that brilliantly illuminated the pro-individual, small-government philosophy that supposedly anchors the GOP, but mere words--and muscles--aren't keeping him from being Just Another Round-Heeled Pickpocket in Sacramento.

CIA report: EU and NATO to dissolve

I don't doubt what the article below predicts, but I fear that it won't happen with a whimper.

This past weekend, in some correspondence regarding one particular European nation with a well-known policy analyst, I noted my own observations of "a deepening nationwide sense of depression due to increasingly limited economic opportunity, a collapse of the work ethic, rage over the quickening withdrawal of soft-socialism's promised benefits, rising crime-rates, smoldering disillusionment over the sour fruits of [one aspect of post-Cold-War consolidation], dawning awareness of the submersion of [their] national identity into the sea of pan-europeanism, and dismay over their imported labor's rude insistence on maintaining its own culture"...

(I'm leaving the country unnamed in the excerpt above for a variety of reasons, but mostly because the problem is not particular to any one country. In fact, it is remarkable that the same comments don't currently apply to the U.S.)

The article below suggests my perceptions aren't unique.

And historically, when the zeitgeist hits the fan in Europe, things happen. I hope I'm wrong, but some familiar (and chilling) scripts may be playing out.

CIA report: EU and NATO to dissolve

WASHINGTON, Jan. 16 (UPI) -- The European Union will break-up within 15 years as a result of its countries being dragged down by unsustainable welfare programs, a CIA report says.

The CIA report warns by 2020, Europe could be thrown into economic decline by its aging population and the post-1945 military alliances of NATO would disband, the Scotsman.com reported.

'The current EU welfare state is unsustainable and the lack of any economic revitalization could lead to the splintering or, at worst, disintegration of the EU, undermining its ambitions to play a heavyweight international role,' the report said.

Experts 'are dubious that the present political leadership is prepared to make even this partial break, believing a looming budgetary crisis in the next five years would be the more likely trigger for reform.'

Restrictive labor policies, a drop in birth rates and increased longevity would have devastating economic consequences for Europe, the report says."

Communism's Resurgence

"'It's a new day. Communism is dead. It's even dead in Cuba.' So declared Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing in May 2002. 'I hate to say it,' she continued, 'it's dead.' "

She hates to say it: communism is dead?

She hates to say it?

...Everything you need to know about Barbara Boxer, in just a few words.

Fossil fuel curbs may speed global warming

More evidence that atmospheric science is in its infancy...

13 Jan 2005 00:00:42 GMT

By Matt Falloon
LONDON, Jan 13 (Reuters) - Cutting down on fossil fuel pollution could accelerate global warming and help turn parts of Europe into desert by 2100, according to research to be aired on British television on Thursday. 'Global Dimming', a BBC Horizon documentary, will describe research suggesting fossil fuel by-products like sulphur dioxide particles reflect the sun's rays, 'dimming' temperatures and almost cancelling out the greenhouse effect.

The researchers say cutting down on the burning of coal and oil, one of the main goals of international environmental agreements, will drastically heat rather than cool climate.

[snip]

NYPost: il Consigliere falls quiet

Now this is interesting. Bruce Lindsey, "il Consigliere" of the Clinton Administration, testified about the documents Sandy Berger admits stuffing in his shorts. Recall, "Archives officials discovered that some documents were missing after Berger's review of the files on Sept. 2, and again Oct. 2. The archives inspector general's office alerted Berger and former Clinton aide Bruce Lindsey, who is overseeing presidential documents." [from WashPost, 20 Jul 04]

To no one's surprise, il Consigliere's memory failed him when questioned.

NYPost: 'SOCKS DOCS' JURY GRILLS CLINTON CRONY