Reminder

“Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.”

P.J. O'Rourke

Made on Earth

By Gillian Tett

March 18 2011

Last week I popped into the American Girl store in Manhattan, the giant consumer temple that sells wholesome “all-American” dolls and clothes. As I queued to buy 6in replicas of a cheerleader costume and football suit, I could not help but chuckle: between the red, white and blue, there was a tag saying “Made in China”. Those American Girls were not so “American” after all.
It is a telling metaphor for a much bigger economic, cultural and political dilemma stalking the western world. Over the past decade, a growing proportion of the manufacturing processes that used to occur in the US and western Europe have moved elsewhere. Last week, for example, the economics consultancy IHS Global Insight calculated that in 2010 China displaced America as the largest manufacturer in the world – the first time that the US has lost this top slot for 110 years.
And the list of goods involved in this shift is growing longer by the day. According to a recent piece of analysis by Newsweek magazine, a host of seemingly American items are no longer produced in America, such as Barbie dolls, Hummers, gumball machines, Wurlitzer jukeboxes, Levi’s jeans and Converse All Star basketball boots. Even Spalding basketballs – the official ball of the NBA – are not truly “American”, since they are stitched offshore.

Anti-Civilization

by Dr Zero

Look at the world through the eyes of Hamas and its apologists, and ask yourself: what’s the point of sending a couple of boats full of terror “activists” to run the Gaza blockade?

The short-term benefit is obvious. Israel is placed in another no-win situation. If the Israeli military had allowed the Terror Flotilla to cruise on its way, they would have displayed a dangerously provocative weakness. Enforcing the blockade brought the Israelis into contact with armed and determined terrorist agents. When the IDF commandos defended themselves, a credulous global media was ready to write stories of “peace activists” being “massacred,” as Hamas desired. Within twenty four hours, regimes noted for the regular murder of their captive subjects were at the podium of the United Nations, denouncing a democracy for defending its borders. I have yet to see a major media figure ask how many of the countries denouncing Israel would respond to an invading flotilla by sending in a squad of guys with paintball guns.
The long-term strategy behind the Terror Flotilla is more troubling, because the pieces in that game are moved by the skeleton hand of anti-civilization… and it is winning.
The central flaw in Western liberal foreign policy is the naïve belief they can construct a civilization without enemies. No amount of multicultural babble, foreign-aid payoffs, or servile bows before foreign leaders can accomplish that task. Every society has both rivals and enemies. Rivals have plans which extend beyond victory in any given contest or campaign. The conquerors of old were looking to assemble empires, and the most successful of them made efforts to incorporate the people and cultures they overwhelmed. Not even the rowdiest English king planned to exterminate the French.
Anti-civilization is different. It destroys without assimilation. It learns nothing from its enemies, studying them only to find weaknesses it can exploit.

Champion of the Light

By now, you’ve probably watched the death of Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax on YouTube. 

In the early morning hours of April 18, on a sidewalk in Queens, he stepped forward to save a woman from a mugger. The mugger had a knife. Multiple stab wounds to the torso didn’t stop Tale-Yax from trying to chase his killer down. His blood ran out before his spirit did.

Twenty people walked past Tale-Yax as he lay dying on the street. One of them used his cell phone to snap a photo, then continued on his way without calling for an ambulance.


ABC News found a psychologist to offer the insight that “we love violence in this culture.”
What a shallow and stupid analysis. Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax didn’t die because those pedestrians loved violence. He died because they didn’t love life enough. They saw it broken and fading before them, but their instinct to protect and nourish it at all costs – which ran so strongly in Tale-Yax – was hopelessly diluted. The dying man was homeless, and had nothing to bring to the endless war against evil except his heart, and the fragile body surrounding it. The callous bystanders carried marvels of communications technology in their pockets, and could think of no use for them except snapping a couple of digital photos as souvenirs.


There is nothing more to say about those people, and the anemic culture that led them to treat life and death as problems for someone else to solve. We gain nothing by studying the flocking behavior of sheep. Let us remember, and honor, the sheepdog who died in their midst.


The shadow of murder has crawled through every human generation. Sometimes it rears high above us, spreading dragon wings and roaring promises of conquest, holy war, and final solutions. Other times it becomes small and dull, living in the static of a petty criminal’s thoughts, or burning as dark flames of rage within those who offer their souls as kindling. Killing is easy. People break easily. A bit of sharp metal makes the task almost effortless.
In the moments before murder, Heaven sounds its horns, and calls good men and women to battle. Those horns are not always easy to hear. Their music rolls around caves filled with beasts who worship death as a god, through streets dotted with improvised explosive devices, and past locked doors that serve as uncertain shields between decent families and barbarian gangsters. Last week, it swirled through the early morning air of a street in Queens, and a man with nothing to lose sacrificed everything to answer the call.


He was not the first, and will not be the last, to die in the defense of the innocent. Whatever mistakes and misfortunes led him to spend his last days on the streets of New York, his final deeds earn him membership in a great company of soldiers, rescuers, protectors, and saints. He lived a broken life, but he carried a priceless treasure of courage. Let us all pray that if, someday, the horns that called him to destiny sound in our presence, our ears are as sharp as his, and the same spirit fills us. The world has too many hollow men.
God bless and keep Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax, champion of the light.

Reason in the Age of 'Global Warming'

For the primary task of reason is to cope consciously with
the limitations imposed upon man by nature, to fight against
scarcity.


Ludwig von Mises
Human Action, p. 237; p. 236

When does it end ?

The hole where doughnuts used to be

Wednesday 23 March 2011

Innocent snacks in the workplace could fall victim to the Lib-Cons’ outsourcing of moral busybodiness. 

Is the humble office doughnut facing extinction? According to a headline in the UK’s Daily Telegraph newspaper last month, ‘employers have a duty to “nudge” staff into shape’. Britain’s Lib-Con coalition government is expected to privatise many services, but outsourcing state moralising about healthy lifestyles to your boss is a step too far.

The Telegraph was reporting on the Public Health Responsibility Deal, which was launched on 15 March and is – according to the Guardian – at the heart of the coalition government’s public health policy. The Health At Work Network is among five working groups developing pledges for the deal, which companies and charities have been asked to sign up for.

My catastrophe is bigger than yours

The grief of those bereaved following the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, their attempts to somehow get on with their lives, to salvage something from the swamped wreckage, just didn’t strike the right chord for some Western spectators. They wanted more. More devastation, more disaster - more titillation. And what better way to sate their pangloomian desires than a potential nuclear holocaust? If accusing parts of the media, campaign groups and politicians of uranium-fuelled sadism seems a little harsh, the UK coverage alone provides more than enough evidence for the prosecution. No sooner had the tsunami inundated vast swathes of Japan than the headlines were excitedly imagining the worst in the worst of all possible worlds. ‘Fears of catastrophe as nuclear plant explodes’, chirruped The Sunday Times as news emerged that the Fukushima nuclear power plant had been damaged. Elsewhere, the Observer heard ‘an echo of Chernobyl’.

Amazing Ideas at Work

How to Use New Auction Sites to Nab Must-Have Merchandise for up to 95% Off Retail

Have you ever heard of "Penny Auctions?"
They’re a new online auction model that is becoming hugely popular.  Penny auctions allow individuals to do just what the name implies--buy new, popular products for just pennies on the dollar.
One of the most interesting and successful companies offering penny auctions is called QuiBids.  This Oklahoma based company auctions off brand new products such as iPads, Macbooks, HDTVs, Digital Cameras, Gaming Consoles, and more for steep discounts, often as much as 85 percent off their retail price.

Benefits ? By the victim's tax pounds ??

Rapists and killers demand right to benefits

Murderers and rapists locked up in psychiatric hospitals are challenging the British Government in a test case at the European Court of Human Rights which could see them win full State benefits.

Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper and Ian Brady, the Moors Murderer, will be in line for state benefits if other patients in secure hospitals win their case at Strasbourg.

The case will intensify pressure on David Cameron, after the Prime Minister pledged to review Strasbourg's influence on British law following the row over whether prisoners should have the vote.

The Sunday Telegraph can disclose the new case, involving four patients at secure mental hospitals and one former patient, is among a series of extraordinary claims being considered by Strasbourg, demonstrating the extent of the court's influence over Britain.

Who is running the Asylum ? (cont.)

EHRC now targets 'gay-only' guesthouses. Just in case any straight Christian fundamentalists were planning a night in one                                                         

By Ed WestPolitics February 22nd, 2011

The Equality and Human Rights Commission is examining whether “gay-only” guesthouses breach new laws designed to prevent people being treated unfairly in the provision of goods or services.
Last month, Christian owners of a guesthouse in Cornwall became the first to be found guilty of discrimination under equality laws after they refused to let a homosexual couple stay in a double room, in a legal action supported by the EHRC.
Now, the watchdog says it must establish an “objective balance” by considering if gays-only accommodation also defies the legislation.
Its lawyers are now investigating the issue and the EHRC says it has not ruled out taking legal action against “gay-only” hotels if they are deemed to be discriminating against heterosexuals.

Who is running the Asylum?

Justice Department sues on behalf of Muslim teacher, triggering debate

By Jerry Markon, Tuesday, March 22

BERKELEY, Ill. — Safoorah Khan had taught middle school math for only nine months in this tiny Chicago suburb when she made an unusual request. She wanted three weeks off for a pilgrimage to Mecca.
The school district, faced with losing its only math lab instructor during the critical end-of-semester marking period, said no. Khan, a devout Muslim, resigned and made the trip anyway.
Justice Department lawyers examined the same set of facts and reached a different conclusion: that the school district’s decision amounted to outright discrimination against Khan. They filed an unusual lawsuit, accusing the district of violating her civil rights by forcing her to choose between her job and her faith.

Forced adoption: another win for the child snatchers

In 43 years of medical practice, said the family’s GP, he had “never encountered a case of such appalling injustice”. To their neighbors, it was so shocking that up to 100 of them were ready to stage a public protest, until being banned from doing so by social workers and the police.

This was the case of Tony and Debbie Sims, which I first reported in July 2009 under the headline “ 'Evil destruction’ of a happy family”, and whom I can now name because their daughter, torn from them for no good reason, has finally, after three years of misery in foster care and 74 court hearings, been adopted.

The story of Mr and Mrs Sims was my first introduction to that Kafka-esque world of state child-snatching which I have so often reported on since. It illustrates so many of the reasons why, hidden behind its self-protective wall of secrecy, this ruthless and corrupt system has become a major national scandal.

Remininder

A Republic if you can keep it

'There is really no essential difference between the unlimited
power of the democratic state and the unlimited power of the
autocrat. The idea that carries away our demagogues and their
supporters, the idea that the state can do whatever it wishes,
and that nothing should resist the will of the sovereign people,
has done more evil perhaps than the caesar-mania of degenerate
princelings.'


Ludwig von Mises 
Socialism, pp. 64–65

“Nobody Gets Married Any More, Mister”

Welcome to our urban high schools, where kids have kids and learning dies.

In my short time as a teacher in Connecticut, I have muddled through President Bush’s No Child Left Behind act, which tied federal funding of schools to various reforms, and through President Obama’s Race to the Top initiative, which does much the same thing, though with different benchmarks. Thanks to the feds, urban schools like mine—already entitled to substantial federal largesse under Title I, which provides funds to public schools with large low-income populations—are swimming in money. At my school, we pay five teachers to tutor kids after school and on Saturdays. They sit in classrooms waiting for kids who never show up. We don’t want for books—or for any of the cutting-edge gizmos that non–Title I schools can’t afford: computerized whiteboards, Elmo projectors, the works. Our facility is state-of-the-art, thanks to a recent $40 million face-lift, with gleaming new hallways and bathrooms and a fully computerized library.

Green Fervor, Red Blood

Some environmentalists have a warped sense of humor.

By now you may have heard that the man behind such heartwarming chick flicks as Bridget Jones’s Diary and Four Weddings and a Funeral has come out with an environmental snuff film.

Leading environmental organizations in Britain, with the backing of numerous major corporations, recruited British screenwriter Richard Curtis to produce a video for the “10:10” campaign, which seeks to cut carbon emissions by 10 percent every year for ten years.

The video begins in a classroom, where a mild-mannered teacher tells her middle-school students about the 10:10 effort. She then asks the class if they’d like to sign up. Most do, but two kids abstain. The teacher tells them, “That’s absolutely fine, your own choice.” Then she reaches for a device on her desk with a red button on it. She pushes the button, and the kids who refused to sign up for the green crusade are blown up, their blood and viscera spraying across the classroom, staining the school uniforms of their conformist and compliant classmates. The same “joke” plays out several more times in different settings (an office, soccer practice, etc.).

Nanny State

Death by a thousand cuts ...

Earth Hour

People who see virtue in doing without electricity should shut off their fridge, stove, microwave, computer, water heater, lights, TV and all other appliances for a month, not an hour.
- Ross McKitrick

The Architect as Totalitarian

Le Corbusier’s baleful influence

Theodore Dalrymple

Autumn 2009

Le Corbusier was to architecture what Pol Pot was to social reform. In one sense, he had less excuse for his activities than Pol Pot: for unlike the Cambodian, he possessed great talent, even genius. Unfortunately, he turned his gifts to destructive ends, and it is no coincidence that he willingly served both Stalin and Vichy. Like Pol Pot, he wanted to start from Year Zero: before me, nothing; after me, everything. By their very presence, the raw-concrete-clad rectangular towers that obsessed him canceled out centuries of architecture. Hardly any town or city in Britain (to take just one nation) has not had its composition wrecked by architects and planners inspired by his ideas.
Writings about Le Corbusier often begin with an encomium to his importance, something like: “He was the most important architect of the twentieth century.” Friend and foe would agree with this judgment, but importance is, of course, morally and aesthetically ambiguous. After all, Lenin was one of the most important politicians of the twentieth century, but it was his influence on history, not his merits, that made him so: likewise Le Corbusier.

Cosmonaut Crashed Into Earth 'Crying In Rage'

''...so strange in retrospect that we were afraid of them. The Soviets were really best at harming their own citizens.''

by Robert Krulwich

So there's a cosmonaut up in space, circling the globe, convinced he will never make it back to Earth; he's on the phone with Alexsei Kosygin — then a high official of the Soviet Union — who is crying because he, too, thinks the cosmonaut will die.

The space vehicle is shoddily constructed, running dangerously low on fuel; its parachutes — though no one knows this — won't work and the cosmonaut, Vladimir Komarov, is about to, literally, crash full speed into Earth, his body turning molten on impact. As he heads to his doom, U.S. listening posts in Turkey hear him crying in rage, "cursing the people who had put him inside a botched spaceship."

This extraordinarily intimate account of the 1967 death of a Russian cosmonaut appears in a new book, Starman, by Jamie Doran and Piers Bizony, to be published next month. The authors base their narrative principally on revelations from a KGB officer, Venymin Ivanovich Russayev, and previous reporting by Yaroslav Golovanov in Pravda. This version — if it's true — is beyond shocking.