EUROPE

What incomprehensibly arrogant European logic! Only governments can kill the EU constitution, the voters don't matter: "Britain is leading moves to shelve the European constitution until EU leaders agree a way forward after the emphatic "no" vote in France and the Netherlands. Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, is expected to tell MPs on Monday that legislation paving the way for a British referendum will be suspended until there is "clarity" from EU leaders. Officials in Brussels fear that suspending the ratification process is tantamount to killing it, and European leaders have demanded that the process continue despite the defeats."

David Brooks on learning from the EU: "Forgive me for making a blunt and obvious point, but events in Western Europe are slowly discrediting large swaths of American liberalism. Most of the policy ideas advocated by American liberals have already been enacted in Europe: generous welfare measures, ample labor protections, highly progressive tax rates, single-payer health care systems, zoning restrictions to limit big retailers, and cradle-to-grave middle-class subsidies supporting everything from child care to pension security. And yet far from thriving, continental Europe has endured a lost decade of relative decline. Western Europeans seem to be suffering a crisis of confidence. Election results, whether in North Rhine-Westphalia or across France and the Netherlands, reveal electorates who have lost faith in their leaders, who are anxious about declining quality of life, who feel extraordinarily vulnerable to foreign competition - from the Chinese, the Americans, the Turks, even the Polish plumbers."

Amusing comment from Thomas Friedman: "It is interesting because French voters are trying to preserve a 35-hour work week in a world where Indian engineers are ready to work a 35-hour day. Good luck."

I am still laughing about this desperate post from Rockwell: "There is a more recent indebtedness to France that most Americans lack the decency to acknowledge: the refusal of Chirac's regime to join forces with George W. Bush's unprovoked aggression against Iraq, the first step in a neocon-inspired effort to get the world to prostrate itself at the feet of American emperors. By refusing to join with such lap dogs as Tony Blair -- eager to roll over in exchange for any morsel of recognition from the grand imperator -- the French became a symbol to other nations of the importance of pursuing a course of principled integrity in dealing with others."

*****************************

ELSEWHERE

Surprise, Surprise: ""U.N. satellite imagery experts have determined that material that could be used to make biological or chemical weapons and banned long-range missiles has been removed from 109 sites in Iraq, U.N. weapons inspectors said in a report obtained Thursday. U.N. inspectors have been blocked from returning to Iraq since the U.S.-led war in 2003 so they have been using satellite photos to see what happened to the sites that were subject to U.N. monitoring because their equipment had both civilian and military uses."

There is an amusing review here of a book on "God's politics" by Jim Wallis, the Leftist "Evangelical" whose congregation consists of about 40 people.

Publius Pundit has more on the absurdly biased Amnesty International and its allies in the media.

And this pathetic old fool is a "moderate" Muslim: "Mahathir Mohamad, modern Malaysia's founding father and moderate Islam's self-styled champion, denounced the Bush administration yesterday as a "rogue regime" bent on terrorising innocent civilians. He also said he was disappointed that Tony Blair, whom he called a "proven liar", had won re-election after joining the US invasion of Iraq. ... Asked whether he regretted his statement that "Jews rule the world by proxy", which caused an international furore in 2003, Mr Mahathir said he took nothing back."

Why Jews are brainier: "The idea that some ethnic groups may, on average, be more intelligent than others is one of those hypotheses that dare not speak its name. But Gregory Cochran, a noted scientific iconoclast, is prepared to say it anyway. He is that rare bird, a scientist who works independently of any institution.... Together with Jason Hardy and Henry Harpending, of the University of Utah, he is publishing, in a forthcoming edition of the Journal of Biosocial Science, a paper which not only suggests that one group of humanity is more intelligent than the others, but explains the process that has brought this about. The group in question are Ashkenazi Jews. The process is natural selection."

Fathers rights victory: "A determined father in Massachusetts has delivered an early Father's Day gift to non-custodial parents, the overwhelming majority of whom are dads. Dr. Henry M. Fassler has successfully contested a 1998 Massachusetts law that requires a non-custodial parent to have court certification as a non-batterer on a yearly basis before he (or she) is allowed access to their children's school records. The school system currently views all non-custodial parents as guilty of battery until proven innocent. But all that is going to change."

Sad story: "The forced removal of the Bushmen was the culmination of what the Botswana government said was years of effort to bring development to southern Africa's most traditional people. The Bushmen have resisted at every turn, defying hunting restrictions, refusing to abandon their villages and battling the government in a court challenge they hope will reverse policies that, they say, have pushed them to the edge of extinction."

Private sector is key to African development: "The United Nations and the Commission for Africa, a British government group headed by the Prime Minister Tony Blair, have recently called for massive increases in foreign aid to Africa. But past aid to African governments achieved little. Economic growth in Africa, as in the rest of the world, depends on a vibrant private sector. African entrepreneurs, however, face daunting constraints. They are prevented from creating wealth by predatory political elites who control the state. African political elites divert private sector savings to finance their own consumption and to strengthen the repressive apparatus of the state. Unfortunately, Western aid continues to flow to the source of Africa's problems -- the African governments."

Carnival of the Vanities is up again with its usual big range of select reading.

On LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS today I have a dissection of a really crazy bit of Leftism that calls GWB "The Spoiled Man-Child"!

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

**************************

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"

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

********************************