EUROPEAN FOLLIES

Hooray! "The leader of France's ruling party has privately admitted that Sunday's referendum on the European constitution will result in a "no" vote, throwing Europe into turmoil. "The thing is lost," Nicolas Sarkozy told French ministers during an ill-tempered meeting. "It will be a little 'no' or a big 'no'," he was quoted as telling Jean-Pierre Raffarin"

Why Europeans are getting disillusioned with the EU: "I have always argued against economic determinism in British or US politics. But that is because the British and American economies have on the whole been performing well since 1992. Europe, meanwhile, has become an economic disaster. The people of France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands may be angry about globalisation or ultra-liberalism or immigration, but this reflects a deeper malaise. Their living standards are falling, their pensions are in danger, their children are jobless and their national pride is turning into embarrassment and even shame. In sum, they feel that their countries, which numbered among the world's richest and most powerful nations as recently as the middle of the last decade, have gone to the dogs under the leadership of the present generation of politicians. And, at least in the economic sense, they are absolutely right".

Europe no model for anyone: "American progressives continue to advocate that the United States should move more toward Western Europe's larger social welfare states and greater job protections.... In the 1990s, the U.S. economy experienced a quantum increase in productivity. European investment in information technology as a percentage of gross domestic product is considerably less than in the United States and is declining. The European Commission estimates that, as of this year, labor productivity per hour in the European Union will have declined from 97 percent of the U.S. level in the mid-1990s to only about 88 percent.... European leaders have a very difficult political path to tread. There appears to be great reluctance by their publics to give up any of the security, protections and benefits of the social model. Yet without higher economic growth, the model is unsustainable. But higher economic growth requires reforming the model."

Dutch democracy?: "Sophie In 't Veld, an MEP for junior coalition party D66, explains in the Algemeen Dagblad that in the case of the EU referendum she even thinks that voting could actually be undemocratic... at least if people are planning to vote 'no'. According to Ms In 't Veld, the problem is that all 25 EU members need to ratify the EU constitution before it can come into force. So if the Netherlands turned out to be the only country voting 'no', then this tiny little blot on the map would single-handedly block the will of the others. And that, Ms In 't Veld argues, would be undemocratic... so in order to be good democrats, people should either stay at home or vote 'yes' as the government wants." (Via No Pasaran).

A market solution to Germany's 12% unemployment: "A young entrepreneur is enjoying success in Germany after developing a website that allows people to bid for work by undercutting others. He is now in talks to set up so-called "job-dumping" sites in other countries. Jobdumping.de, set up by student Fabian Loew, has been flourishing in a country where five million - nearly one in eight workers - are unemployed. The site works much like a traditional online auction site, except in reverse - jobs are advertised, and then the lowest bidder - ie the person willing to do the job for the least amount of money - wins."

Germany invented socialism: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were Germans. The Social Democratic movement that shaped the modern European welfare state also originated in Germany. Although the country profited greatly from its reintegration into the world trading system after World War II, Germany never really came to terms with Anglo-Saxon capitalism and skepticism about it still runs deep.... This new critique of capitalism recently culminated in a series of attacks by the leader of the Social Democratic Party, Franz Muentefering. He accused entrepreneurs who outsource production to low-wage countries of showing excessive greed and lack of social responsibility, and he compared the managers of international equity funds to a plague of locusts that occupy companies, exploit them, and move on after their destructive work is done. These attacks brought Muentefering vast public support... Now unemployment is Germany's biggest problem, standing at a postwar record. This alarms the public and incites anger against capitalists who do not reinvest their profits. Muentefering simply caught the popular mood in developing his theory of locust capitalism. But this useless reaction to the laws of the global market economy hides the fact that Germany's problems are largely a result of an overblown welfare state and extremely aggressive union policies over the last thirty years." [And I don't suppose that we want to draw the parallels with National Socialism do we?]

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ELSEWHERE

Looks like bloggers have had another victory of a sort -- over Pepsico's egregiously insulting and anti-American "CFO". She has done a big backpedal. Pepsi should give her the sack. Or is she secretly working for Coca-Cola? She might as well be for the effect she will have on Pepsi sales.

I think this is the first time I have ever had anything good to say of Daily Kos but I loved this story of the tiny baby that was NOT aborted.

Just substitute "blacks" for "religious people" and figure out what would have happened: ""Moral retards." That's how a Brooklyn College sociologist described religious people a few years ago. And to some in New York City, that's reason enough why Timothy Shortell should not be allowed to assume the post to which his colleagues just elected him: chairman of the sociology department. Editorials and articles this week in The New York Sun and The New York Daily News have blasted Shortell as intolerant, quoted religious students as saying that they were offended by his writings, and demanded that the college do something... The essay also compared religious people to children".

Godless religion is the big killer: "Ideology comes in three colours: red, brown and green, representing Marxism, fascism and environmental extremism. Judged on sheer evil, the worst crime in history was brown, the Nazi genocide, although the reds slaughtered more people. The death toll (difficult to measure) is roughly, Hitler's holocaust 6 million, Stalin's famine and terror 8 million, and Mao's famine 30 million. But the greens have topped them all. In a single crime they have killed about 50 million people. In purely numerical terms, it was the worst crime of the 20th century. It took place in the USA in 1972. It was the banning of DDT."

Is Prophet Yahweh the most amusing con on the net? He summons up UFOs! Just the picture of him in a turban made me laugh. What is it about turbans and fruitcakes?

Gee, what a surprise! "A Muslim woman is Secretary General of Amnesty International and she introduced the instantaneously notorious report on human rights so biased against the US (calling Guantanamo Bay our American "Gulag") that no less than the Washington Post took exception to its contents and bias in an editorial. Her name is Irene Khan"

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftist ideologues are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist"

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