Bloodthirsty Liberal

Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain

Much has been written about the EU debt bomb, cleverly called PIGS.

The inevitable “sovereign debt panic” finally struck last week, causing severe one-day drops in stock markets from New York to London to Toronto on Thursday.

Ostensibly, the epicentre of the crisis is Greece, in danger of defaulting on its debt payments to worldwide holders of its government bonds, or sovereign debt.

But the fear about state defaults quickly spread to Spain, Portugal and Ireland, fiscal train wrecks that together with Greece now go by the unfortunate acronym PIGS.

Even then, the scope of a potential second global financial crisis so soon after the credit crisis of 2008-09 goes far beyond the euro zone, the 16 nations sharing a common currency, the euro.

Last week’s dramatics could have been far worse. And they may yet manifest themselves in an ugly fashion in weeks to come if the euro-zone countries don’t rescue what Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou described last week as “the weakest link in the euro zone.”

Greece accounts for just 3 per cent of the euro-zone economy. The crisis in the cradle of Western civilization serves merely as proxy for government over-indebtedness everywhere.

Only a few months ago, a Dubai on the edge of default had to be bailed out by oil-rich neighbour Abu Dhabi. [hard to keep these guys straight, isn’t it? - Aggie] A debt-strapped Argentina recently tried and failed to pay debts by raiding its central-bank treasury.

Greece’s debt-to-GDP ratio is an eye-popping 95 per cent. But then, the U.S. isn’t far behind at 84 per cent. (The Canadian ratio is estimated at 35.5 per cent in the current fiscal year.) Greece’s deficit-to-GDP ratio is an alarming 13 per cent. But then, Britain isn’t far behind at 12.6 per cent.

And so on. Any thoughts? Maybe this is the End Of The Western World that the Iranians are drooling about? Then again, maybe it is just the usual nonsense.

Elections have consequences:

The U.S. looms largest. President Barack Obama just tabled a budget that projects a doubling in America’s national debt, to $28 trillion (U.S.), by decade’s end. That’s twice the size of the U.S. economy.

- Aggie

In European newspapers these days, they publish the weather report and the obituaries on the same page:

The bitterly cold weather across much of the continent combined with heavy snow in some areas has caused cancellations and delays at airports and forced train lines to close.

…

Road traffic in the UK was severely disrupted, including the south-east where roads were gridlocked late on Monday after numerous crashes in heavy snowfall.

Major roads elsewhere in Europe were blocked after some regions had snowfall of up to 50cm (20in).

…

In Poland, police appealed for people to help if they came across homeless or drunk people lying outside, as temperatures dropped towards -20C in some areas.

Most of the 79 people who froze to death in the country since the wintry conditions began were homeless, police said.

Cold-related deaths were also reported in France, where two homeless people died.

Damn. That’s 79 probable global warming skeptics we lost. Did anyone check to see if Al Gore was in town?

Oh no, of course not. Al was home:

(Another view here: choose “Aerial”.)

You can tell he’s home because three SUVs are parked in the driveway—and what empty-nest couple needs more than three SUVs?

It’s snowing here; has been all night, is expected to for most of the day. Nothing unusual about that here, even though it’s still autumn (technically).

But this is a bit out of the ordinary:

Eurostar passenger trains will remain suspended on Sunday after the wintry weather caused chaos.

More than 2,000 people were trapped in the Channel Tunnel for up to 16 hours after condensation caused a series of electrical failures on Friday night.

The closure of the tunnel left thousands of people stranded on either side of the Channel.

Further snow is forecast in western Scotland and Northern Ireland, where weather warnings are in place.

The snow is expected to spread across northern England on Sunday afternoon.

…

Five Eurostar trains broke down in the Channel Tunnel on Friday night, after the move from cold air outside into the warmer tunnel caused condensation which affected electrical systems.

Contrast that epic cluster[bleep] of megagovernment—designing an international train system that can’t operate in the cold—with this story of local government (the Scottish Highlands) in action:

Richard Guest is head of roads and community works at the Highland Council. And he’s a man with a plan.

“When snow is forecast our first priority is to treat main roads from 0600. Next we turn to bus routes. Then we do urban streets and school bus routes. And we aim to get them all covered by 0900.

“After that we do everything else, with difficult and steep routes being treated before the rest.

“And if it keeps snowing, we’ll go back and treat all the roads during the day until 2100.

“On the first day of snow we aim to grit all of the region’s roads.”

And that’s a lot of roads. Highland Council is responsible for 4,200 miles (6,700 km) of highways and byways.

The council has some smart ideas to get to grips with the weather.

Mr Guest said: “Some of our gritters take their lorries home with them at night so that they don’t get stranded the next morning.

“They use the same radio system as the police. So, if an officer wants to speak to his local gritter he can switch to the same radio network.

“Our gritting crews operate from local depots and they will know the bus operators.

“We make sure that we clear the route up to the bus depot entrances and we also ensure that places like hospitals and fire and ambulance stations are kept clear.

They talk to the police, they know the bus operators, they look after the hospitals and ambulances—they even take their trucks home with them so they don’t get stranded.

“Stranded”: you mean like this?

Many passengers were kept on the trains, where they complained of a lack of food and drink, power supplies and information.

…

“People will panic, which is why the contingency plan, to get trains out with people on, while they’re entirely safe, out as soon as possible. That’s what went wrong, it took too long to get the trains out.”

The trains had spare water, but it had run out, he added.

“I’m not saying it went well, I’m saying it went rather better than actually a lot of people say.”

“People will panic”: why, yes, they will, if they have to rely on large bureaucracies to bail their asses out of jams (see above, see New Orleans, 2005, etc.). The lessons of these disasters don’t have to be relearned in isolated pockets where they’ve never been forgotten.

Any contradiction between the efficiency of the Highland gritters and the Copenhagen twits (and the ObamaCare mutts) is purely intentional.

First let’s read about the priest leading a mob to smash a Hanukkah menorah

Dozens of people led by an Orthodox priest smashed a menorah in Moldova’s capital, using hammers and iron bars to remove the candelabra during Hanukkah, officials said.

The 1.5 meter(5-foot)-tall ceremonial candelabrum was retrieved, reinstalled and is now under police guard.

Police said they were investigating but there was no official reaction from Moldova’s Orthodox Church, which is part of the Russian Orthodox Church and counts 70 percent of Moldovans as members.

The national government said in a statement that “hatred, intolerance and xenophobia” are unacceptable.

Jewish leader Alexandr Bilinkis called on the Orthodox Church to take a position over the priest’s actions.

The Jewish community was thriving before World War II but there are now estimated to be just 12,000 Jews in the former Soviet Republic. Twenty years ago there were 66,000 Jews. Many emigrated to Israel

Aunt Agatha calls on the Jewish community of Moldova not to hold its collective breath waiting for the church to apologize. Instead, they should leave Europe. ASAP. When you get priests leading the mob, you end up with pogroms.

On to Britain

Senior officials in Israel confirmed reports on Monday that a British court issued an arrest warrant against opposition chairwoman Tzipi Livni for her role in orchestrating Israel’s military offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip nearly a year ago.

The request for the warrant was submitted by a pro-Palestinian organization.

We really should do a daily feature on European Jew hatred, shouldn’t we? It is endlessly varied and there’s plenty of it. I wonder if they’ve considered doing a reality show: Which Nation Can Torment The Jewish People Most Successfully? Ok, bad title. Needs more snap. Let’s work on it and come up with something better.

- Aggie

This day in Europe:

The European Jewish Congress (EJC) expressed disappointment over the conclusions issued after the European Union Foreign Ministers meeting in Brussels.

EJC President Moshe Kantor said that the declaration hardly takes into account recent Israeli concessions including a moratorium on settlement building, removing roadblocks, boosting the Palestinian economy and accepting the premise of a Palestinian state.

…

“This will only embolden the Palestinians by sending them the message that they don’t need to negotiate because they will receive everything on a silver platter. It also ignores the fact tha israel has repeatedly called for immediate and direct negotiations without preconditions, something repeatedly ignored by the Palestinians”

“Israel has taken significant steps towards the renewal of talks by its actions, including freezing the settlements, and it is time to push the Palestinians back to the negotiation table, not in the opposite direction,” Kantor said.

This day in European history:

1505: Bohemia

Ten Jews were tortured and killed after being accused by a local shepherd of killing a local girl. Years later, on his deathbed, the shepherd confessed he made up the whole story.

You don’t see the connection? In Europe, Jews are to be sacrificed based on fraudulent claims, same as ever.

Shouldn’t Mark Steyn receive a royalty check for this?

More than 30 years after China’s one-child policy was introduced, creating two generations of notoriously chubby, spoiled only children affectionately nicknamed “little emperors,” a population crisis is looming in the country.

The average birthrate has plummeted to 1.8 children per couple as compared with six when the policy went into effect, according to the U.N. Population Division, while the number of residents 60 and older is predicted to explode from 16.7 percent of the population in 2020 to 31.1 percent by 2050. That is far above the global average of about 20 percent.

The imbalance is worse in wealthy coastal cities with highly educated populations, such as Shanghai. Last year, people 60 and older accounted for almost 22 percent of Shanghai’s registered residents, while the birthrate was less than one child per couple.

I was having a friendly discussion with someone the other day, during which the other person claimed that socialism did have a successful model, in Europe. I had two responses (and chose the third, to nod thoughtfully): one, that Europe does not have true socialism, but just a spectrum of welfare states; two, that whatever you call what they practice, it’s successful only in the short term, if at all.

Again, to credit Steyn, you can ratchet up all the yummy, generous social programs you want if you don’t have to pay for your self defense (thanks to Uncle Sam), and if you have no kids to take care of. Just don’t think you can get old. The European welfare model is good for one generation, tops. But retiring at 55, after maybe twenty years of working (those advanced degrees take time), and ample vacation time, works only if there’s another generation—your kids—to pay for your golden years (all three decades of them, thanks to medical advances).

Oops, did I write “kids”? I meant “kid”—or 1.3 kids, give or take a freckle or two. Hey, at least they didn’t abuse the recklessly generous maternity and paternity leaves offered throughout Europe. All well-meaning and humane—but none of it affordable.

China can just crush its swelling geezer population with tanks (they took out the wrong demographic in 1989); does Europe even have nay tanks?

As Sweden goes, so goes Ukraine

News from the cesspool:

Stories appearing on several Ukrainian Web sites claim Israel has brought around some 25,000 Ukrainian children into the country over the past two years in order to harvest their organs.

The claim, which was made by a Ukrainian philosophy professor and author at a pseudo-academic conference in Kiev five days ago, is the latest expression of a wave of anti-Semitism in the country. It comes a few months after a Swedish tabloid ran an article alleging that Israel Defense Forces soldiers have killed Palestinian civilians for their organs.

Jews, Israel and anti-Semitism have become a major motif of the presidential election campaign in Ukraine, with some figures making anti-Semitic statements and others condemning them. Some candidates, including a Jew and someone whose rivals claim is Jewish, blame a third rival - Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko - for bringing anti-Semitism into the race.

It is appalling that there are any Jews left in Ukraine. The history of pogroms in the early 20th century was second only to the Holocaust in terms of slaughter of Jews. Granted, a distant second, but nevertheless, Ukraine is the biggest Jewish graveyard, the location of the worst tragedy of Jewish history, next to Germany and Poland during the Third Reich. I am horrified that there are Jews there still willing to discuss or defend themselves against the violence that is that culture. “Just leave!” I want to scream. “Get out of there!”

“Ukraine’s political system is a parody of democracy,” Russia’s Chief Rabbi, Berel Lazar, said.

Vyacheslav Gudin told the estimated 300 attendees of the Kiev conference a detailed story about a Ukrainian man’s fruitless search for 15 children who had been adopted in Israel. The children, Gudin said, had clearly been taken by Israeli medical centers, where they were used for “spare parts.” Gudin said it was essential that all Ukrainians be made aware of the genocide Israel was perpetrating.

This is known as projection. The Ukrainians apparently wish to perpetrate genocide against Israel, at some dim level in their lurid minds, and so they fantasize that it is Israel that wishes to murder their children. It is a classic blood libel.

The Swedes started this current round of European blood libel obsession. I wonder how it will all end? In the past, it ended in pogroms, and Ukraine was the most fertile ground for pogroms in all the world. If you go to the link, you can read about how the political class in Ukraine is blaming the Holocaust on the Jews, and claiming that Jews caused famine in Ukraine in the ’30s. These are sick puppies.

- Aggie

Excuse me, while I stand and bow deeply:

“Obama to attend climate summit” said the newsflash, apparently announcing the news that environmentalists around the world had been praying to hear.

Within minutes, however, it became clear that President Obama was simply heading to the Danish capital for a photo opportunity.

He will stop off in Copenhagen on December 9 on his way to Oslo to pick up the Nobel Peace Prize. He will not, his officials say, be returning to join 65 other heads of state for the crucial last three days of the conference from December 16-18.

Obama is playing politics with the most important climate change negotiations for more than a decade in order to try to avoid embarrassing headlines.

Quite right, and quite rightly, I’d say.

I might also add, cynically, that President Obama has quite enough liars, prevaricators, and obfuscators in his administration without having to mix with those in the global warming mob.

But that doesn’t make them very happy:

[T]he compromise planned by Obama’s spin doctors is the worst possible outcome: by turning up briefly on the third day of the two-week conference he is sending a message that there is no point in other leaders being there for the denouement.

He is snubbing the rest of the world in order to suit his own travel diary. It is also a blatant attempt to hog the limelight: with no other world leaders present all eyes will be on the US President.

…

Without Obama, those negotiations are less likely to produce a positive result.

I would bow again, but my back, you see…

These jackals deserve to be snubbed, and their “settled science” deserves the dustbin. Smothered science, bound and gagged science, duct taped and buried alive science is anything but settled. It turns out the most toxic thing about the theory of man-made global warming is its advocates.

The true will out, they say, and dang if it done did.

Unintentional hilarity from Der Spiegel

They’re upset because Obama lied to them!

US President Barack Obama came to office promising hope and change. But on climate change, he has followed in the footsteps of his predecessor, George W. Bush. Now, should the climate summit in Copenhagen fail, the blame will lie squarely with Obama.

The folder labeled “climate change” that George W. Bush left behind for his successor on the desk of the Oval Office in January likely wasn’t a thick one. Although Bush once said that America is overly dependent on oil, he never got beyond that insight. He was too busy waging war on Iraq and searching for a legal basis for extraordinary renditions to pay much attention to the real threat facing humanity. “Forget the climate” seems to have been Bush’s unofficial motto.

But few people expected that Barack Obama, of all people, would continue his predecessor’s climate change plan. When he took office at the beginning of 2009, it was clear that the success of the UN Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen in December depended almost entirely on the US — that America needed to take a clear leadership role on a problem that could shake civilization to its very core.

Only if the US manages to reduce its excessive energy consumption, commit itself to mandatory CO2 emission reduction targets and help finance poorer countries’ move away from oil is there still a chance that countries like China and India will do the same and that a dangerous warming of the Earth can be stopped. On the weekend, Obama announced that there would be no agreement on binding rules in Copenhagen. It was the admission of a massive failing — and the prelude to a truly dramatic phase of international climate policy.

Obama Lied to the Europeans

Barack Obama cast himself as a “citizen of the world” when he delivered his well-received campaign speech in Berlin in the summer of 2008. But the US president has now betrayed this claim. In his Berlin speech, he was dishonest with Europe. Since then, Obama has neglected the single most important issue for an American president who likes to imagine himself as a world citizen, namely, his country’s addiction to fossil fuels and the risks of unchecked climate change. Health-care reform and other domestic issues were more important to him than global environmental threats. He was either unwilling or unable to convince skeptics in his own ranks and potential defectors from the ranks of the Republicans to support him, for example, by promising alternative investments as a compensation for states with large coal reserves.

Oh, my sides! Stop! I can’t breathe!

Is this where the American Left learned its simpering, whiny routine? From the Europeans? He lied to meeeee! This can’t happen to meeee! Get used to it, kidz. He lies to everybody.

This next bit was written by a pissed-off tenth grader, I’m sure:

Obama’s announcement at the APEC summit that it was no longer possible to secure a binding treaty in Copenhagen is the result of his own negligence. China, India and other emerging economies have always spoken openly about the fact that the US, as the world’s largest emitter of CO2, has to be proactive in commiting itself to targets agreed on by way of international negotiation. But that is not America’s style. The US is quite happy to see itself as the leader of the Western world. But when it comes to climate change, America has once again failed miserably — for the umpteenth time.

If the rest of the world were to follow the US example in their approach to fossil fuels, the oceans would not only heat up, but would probably soon begin to boil. [Don’t you just love that? Boiling oceans, so original. - Aggie] American per capita CO2 emissions are about twice as high as those in comparable industrialized nations and many times greater than those of the developing world. The climate change bill that is currently making its way through Congress does not go nearly far enough — and that is Obama’s fault. The bill proposed reducing CO2 emissions by a ridiculous 4 percent relative to 1990 levels, by 2020. Climate researchers believe that reductions of 40 percent or more are required.

Oh my, he just blathers on. How come Obama went to Copenhagen for the Olympics, but won’t come for the climate conference. [Hey, did you consider that he might be punishing Copenhagen for the results of the Olympics vote? - Aggie] How come Americans are such selfish, greedy oinkers? On and on…

I earnestly look forward to the day when I can read screeds like this in the NY Times. Until then, I will reflect on the gentle, thoughtful, considerate nation of Germany. After all, we Americans are ever so much worse, aren’t we?

- Aggie

The more things change, the more they stay the same

Israeli fencer Daria Strelnikov won the gold medal at the cadet’s fencing world championship in Austria Saturday night. However, as the 14-year-old athlete stood at the podium waiting to hear the Israeli national anthem, she was greeted by a disturbing quiet.

Strelnikov and a fellow teammate on the podium decided to fill in the silence by singing Hatikva themselves. They were joined by their coach, and other supporting voices in the crowd.

Shouldn’t the Austrians be ashamed? Shouldn’t they apologize?

Don’t hold your breath.

- Aggie