Thou shalt not

You'd think the Anglican church at least would have a grasp of some of the essential commandments, not the ones about God as many of us suspect God has very little to do with the machinations of the upper echelon Anglicans. I'm talking about the basic ones for life, don't lie, don't cheat. don't steal, those ones.

Telegraph.

Thousands of bogus weddings may have taken place in Anglican ceremonies throughout the country, an investigation by The Sunday Telegraph has uncovered. 

One vicar said he had been instructed by the Church to conduct marriages even after he warned officials that he believed they were bogus.

A senior Government source accused Church officials of failing to take sufficient steps to stop bogus marriages, which can grant foreigners the right to stay in Britain and claim benefits. 

The investigation found that the issuing of marriage licences, required for foreigners to marry in church, has almost trebled in five years. Church figures show that the number of common licences issued rose from 1,650 in 2004 to 4,632 last year.

The leap followed the introduction of rules in 2005 which required non-EU nationals to obtain a certificate of approval from the Home Office before they could marry in a civil ceremony at a register office. The Church of England was exemp­ted from the clampdown.

Furthermore, Anglican clergy are not legally required to report suspicious marriages, even though register offices have been compelled to do so for more than a decade.

The figures appear to indicate that the Government has underestimated the scale of the scam, and last night prompted calls for the Church to "wake up" to the problem.

A senior Government source said: "There is concern at high levels that some parts of the Church of England are not taking this as seriously as they should. The attitude seems to vary from diocese to diocese, and we clearly need more work in some dioceses."

Bishops have now admitted that a "loophole" has left the Church vulnerable to criminals arranging marriages of convenience.

Official Home Office estimates for the number of sham marriages that take place each year show a decline from 3,578 in 2004 to 561 in 2009.

Even when they suspected they were bogus weddings the vicars were told to put up and shut up. It's a very profitable sideline for the diocese after all, they get their cut.

However, Father Tim Codling, rector at Tilbury, Essex, claims that he was repeatedly ignored when he tried to warn Church authorities that he suspected the majority of weddings in his church to be fake.

He alleges that he was told he would face disciplinary action if he refused to conduct the ceremonies.

"I got the feeling that they thought I was being awkward and difficult," says Fr Codling.

"I was given the impression they were thoroughly disinterested in what I was saying.

Sounds about right, the immigration scam in this country caused by the previous government went down several avenues and the State church, like the BBC and various other organs of the "Righteous" were complicit in trying to change the demographics of the UK especially England to rub the rights face in the wonders of multiculturalism and diversity. It was to be a brave new world in which their new immigrant pets would do the work and be grateful enough to vote for them whilst the indigenous welfare pets would be grateful enough with their benefits to also vote for them. After all, what could go wrong? I mean apart from the working classes deciding they didn't like these non integrating foreigners, especially the ones with the violent religion and the odd habit of marrying their cousins, the favoured of the "Righteous" who could do no wrong in their eyes. Well at least until they voted for their own people, wanted their own laws enshrined instead of the state ones and set about causing trouble once their population levels reached critical mass.
Not that the "Righteous" have to live with it yet, though you can tell they are becoming increasingly uneasy with their pets and quite worried about those who have decided enough is enough. 10 years ago the scream of "racist" would have been enough to send the opposition scurrying away unable to debate such vitriol. Nowadays the tendency when being called racist is to say "so what" and carry on protesting anyway. Not even the states brownshirts can keep a lid on things these days, their numbers are fading away as the tide of public concern grows and people want solutions to the immigrant problem before its too late. The "Righteous" also faced a stunning blow when the German Chancellor stated that multiculturalism was an utter failure, very tricky when one of your own breaks ranks.Though it had become increasingly obvious that it was a failure and that the "Righteous" had allowed a fifth column of alien origin into their midst which didn't care for anyones sensibilities other than their own. Happy to use the "Righteous" yes, but definitely their own agenda which was convert to our religion, pay us protection money, or die.
I can't help wonder when the "Righteous" will seek to use the native rebels to tackle the foreign body in their midst, can't be long now, it's what they do when their status quo is upset, look for a scapegoat and ride the tiger and still end up running things. Though I suspect they're a little bit worried about a Ceaucescu moment if it gets really out of control, that's probably why our army is in Afghanistan rather than at home, last thing they need is people with guns around.

The next few years are going to be interesting and possibly quite violent.

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Goodbye Global Warming, Hello Biodiversity

By Alan Caruba

After three decades of trying to push the global warming scam to a point where billions could be made selling and trading bogus “carbon credits”, the global schemers have abandoned it in the wake of 2009 revelations that a handful of rogue climate scientists were literally inventing the data to support it.

If there is one lesson to be learned from and about environmentalists, it is that they are utterly relentless. The ultimate goal is one-world government directed from the United Nations by unelected bureaucrats who are soulless strangers to the truth, to morality, to humanity.

The United States supports this abomination to the tune of billions every year.

The United Nations is a place where some of the world’s dictatorships have delegates representing them on its Human Rights Council, where a vast Oil-for-Food scandal flourished while Saddam Hussein held power in Iraq, where a single agency’s sole purpose is to ensure that Palestinians remain refugees six decades after the rebirth of Israel.

It is an organization where all manner of international treaties are ginned up to extend its control over the entire land mass and all the waters of the earth.

It is where the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) practiced its deceit, regularly documenting a rise in the earth’s average temperature even when a new natural cooling cycle began in 1998.

Everything that could be attributed to a phony global warming to keep the people of the world scared flowed from this enormous lie. It caused governments to invest billions into the worst forms of energy, wind and solar, along with endless other equally worthless “Green” programs.

So, now, permit me to introduce you to the NEXT Big Lie—biodiversity!

It is the claim that a “Global extinction crisis looms, new study says.” That’s the headline on an October 27 Washington Post article by Juliet Eilperin, the Post’s designated shameless scaremongering reporter.

In June, the delegates from 200 nations gathered in Busan, a South Korean port city, under the banner of the Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), a platform just like the discredited IPCC, but with the goal of denying vast areas of the earth from the development needed to feed six billion people and provide the raw materials vital to the energy required for a modern technological society dependent on electricity and on transportation fuels.

The “reason” for this is the alleged extinction of “nearly 26,000 species across the globe.” The list was compiled by the International Union for Conservation of Nature that purports to count all the mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, and fish in the world to determine how “imperiled” there.

The very idea evokes incredulity. It is laughable and it is impossible. In the same fashion people were told that the global warmers could predict the temperature of the Earth fifty to a hundred years from now, we are expected to believe that all current species are imperiled. Just as humans were blamed for a non-existent rise in the Earth’s temperature, human are blamed on a massive and fictional extinction.

Consider that, from the earliest forms of life on earth to the existence of present species all have been engaged daily in the act of killing and eating one another. Ruminants that dine on grasses and other vegetation remain the prey for predator species.

Consider that of all the species that ever existed on Earth, 99% are extinct.

Nicholas K. Dulvy, a co-author of the list of alleged endangered species, complained that “We’ve transformed a third of the habitable land on earth for food production.” Oh, heaven forbid that humans should have enough food!

So, naturally, as reporter Eilperin noted, “Environmental groups are pushing for a goal of protecting 25 percent of all land on earth and 15 percent of the sea by 2020” even though, under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, roughly 14 percent of terrestrial areas and less than one percent of the ocean are already subject to so-called “environmental safeguards.”

Expect to begin hearing from yet a new group of “scientists” claiming that every creature from antelopes to zebras, from anteaters to weasels, albatrosses to vultures, crocodiles to vipers, and all the fish in the seas are doomed! Doomed! Doomed!

Billions of dollars that should go to feeding the hungry, caring for the sick, and all manner of humanitarian needs will be siphoned off by this new group of United Nations grifters and charlatans for endless “research” grants and, of course, more international meetings to discuss this horrible new crisis.

This is how the cruel enviro-mafia works. We have all had a taste of it since the late 1980s when the global warming hoax was first perpetrated. The biodiversity lie needs a quicker death.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

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Jail? I'd have given him a medal

Most people just want a quiet life, to be left alone to live as they please not harming anyone else. Then there are the thugs, yobs and other assorted ne'er-do-wells (I wont call them mindless, they are often ingenious in their petty maliciousness)

Express.

A TORMENTED householder on a yob-blighted estate was jailed yesterday for killing a man he caught urinating through his letterbox.

Michael Williams, 53, “just flipped” and stabbed father-of-one Anthony Kershaw, 25, after he caught him defiling his property.

Williams, who lived alone on the Smallbridge estate in Rochdale, had previously suffered a similar attack, and had paint thrown on his door.

Yesterday he wept as he was jailed for five years after admitting manslaughter at an earlier hearing. One night in April, ­Williams heard a bang on his front door as if someone was kicking at it to break in, Manchester Crown Court heard. He went to investigate and saw urine pouring through his letterbox,

In anger he went to his kitchen, grabbed a knife with a seven-inch blade and, as Kershaw urinated, swung the door open. In his own words he “just flipped” and stabbed his ­victim in the stomach.

Williams then rang his daughter and the police and confessed to what he had done while a baying mob tried to smash their way into his house screaming they would “burn him alive”.

Kershaw, who had been drinking and smoking cannabis in a flat in the same block before the incident, died later in hospital.

Prosecutor Peter Wright said Williams lived in an area where “extremely abusive” youths made trouble in ­the communal areas, leaving some res­idents despondent, ­intimidated, and at times frightened to go out.

Mr Justice Brian Keith told Williams: “Your reaction was not premeditated. Something snap­ped and you acted on the spur of the moment. Of course, I take into account that this was a frightening and ­intimidating estate to live on.”

Did Kershaw deserve to die? Probably not, however should Williams have even been prosecuted? No, the guy should have been praised as a lesson to all whose pleasure it is to make others lives a misery simply because they can. As for Kershaws mob, well they are the ones who should have been looking at 5 years today, not Williams, the very fact that Williams has been attacked in prison by Kershaw's "friends" tells me all I need to know about that waste of space.
Still the good news is of course that Kershaw can no longer pollute the gene pool, good riddance, the world is a better place without scum like that, just a shame Williams has to suffer the consequences of Kershaw's barbarity after all, what else can you call urinating through a letterbox? Whilst what happened to him was harsh, he brought it upon himself, Williams deserved better from out legal system, he was only defending his home from scum.

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Al Qaeda Sends a Message Again

By Alan Caruba

On March 11, 2004, just days before general elections in Spain, bombs went off on trains in a series of coordinated attacks that killed 191 people and wounded 1,800. An investigation determined that they were the work of an al Qaeda “inspired” terrorist cell, though it was said at the time there was no direct connection.

The ruling party, Partido Popular, had supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq, a policy that was generally unpopular with Spaniards. The result was that its opposition won the elections.

I do not believe in coincidences and news that two explosive devices were found on cargo planes headed for America just days before our general elections suggests a pattern.

The larger pattern, of course, has been a number of recent terrorist attacks from the Christmas Eve “underwear bomber” to the more recent Times Square bomber. The only thing that seems to have protected Americans from being murdered as infidels is the sheer incompetence of those involved.

That kind of luck does not last forever.

Ironically, on October 27th I posted a commentary that was intended to be a reminder that, as we got ready to go to polling places on November 2nd, we have been too distracted from the fact that outside of America there is still a dangerous world.

Al Qaeda has sent us a message. The first part of the message was that they are still around and still at war with the Great Satan, America. The second was that they believe they can influence the outcome of our midterm elections. Though unintentional, the third part of the message is that they are a bunch of incompetents who, unlike Timothy McVeigh of Oklahoma City infamy, cannot put together a decent bomb.

That, of course, is an overstatement because Arabs, whether al Qaeda or not, have been blowing up each other’s mosques with regularity throughout the Middle East. There’s an Arab saying that goes something like “I against my brother. My brother and I against our cousins. My brother, my cousins, and I against the world.”

Even the Mafia had more internal cohesiveness than these sons of Allah whose biggest problem in life is who to kill next.

Unlike the Spaniards who voted to run away from the Iraq conflict, these would-be bombers have seriously misunderstood how Americans think. You attack us, we send in the Marines—and the Army—and the Air Force—and we park a couple of Navy carrier groups off the coast..

If the Yemenese do not get serious about their jihadists, finding and killing them, they will eventually get a visit from Uncle Sam. They don’t have that many friends in the world and that includes their neighbors in Saudi Arabia, so it’s likely to get very nasty for them.

The American military will be exiting Afghanistan in 2011 because President Obama never wanted to be there in the first place. I hate to agree with anything the man says or does, but in this he is correct. The Afghanis are tribal. When not finding a reason to fight one another, they will join together to fight anyone from outside. And that is likely to include the Taliban at some point.

The troops we are leaving in Iraq will be there when our grandchildren have grandchildren. The U.S. has a long history of never leaving a nation once we have invaded. Just ask the Germans, the Japanese, or the South Koreans, all of whom appear to have found that arrangement to their advantage.

Aside from the operational failure of this latest terror attack, what stands out is the lack of terror among Americans. Even the stock market took it in stride on Friday.

On Tuesday Americans are going to clean house in a Congress whose members are so unpopular that the survivors and the new winners will have gotten the message voters will have sent.

That’s not just a problem for Democrats. It’s a problem for al Qaeda, too.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

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So why turn up in an ambulance?

I'm watching the 7/7 inquiry, not that I expect to learn anything new about the motivations behind those who did it, but more to confirm just what a mess the initial response was, from the TfL "Power cut/transformer fault" which sent the wrong people to the scene to the Ambulance service sending an ambulance to the scene only for it to act as a liaison centre for other ambulances rather than deal with casualties.

BBC.

Firefighters at the Aldgate terrorist bombing were "hostile" and "quite upset", the 7/7 inquests have heard.

Paramedic Anthony Kamner was in the first ambulance to arrive at the Tube station after the 7 July 2005 attack.
He told the hearings that firefighters "did not understand the role" of the initial ambulance which was to report the situation back to the control room.

The inquests are into the deaths of 52 people who were killed by suicide bombers on three Tube trains and a bus.

Mr Kamner said the firefighters were "demanding" that he take some of the injured patients to hospital.
He told the hearings that he tried to explain that this was not his role, and that the firefighters were "not helpful."
Shehzad Tanweer, one of the four bombers who carried out the London attacks, blew himself up at Aldgate station, killing seven people.
The inquests have heard that a group of firefighters refused to enter a tunnel at Aldgate because of health and safety concerns.
Police Inspector Robert Munn said there was a delay as they tried to confirm the electricity had been switched off.

Now I know it was a difficult and confusing time for all, but surely an ambulance should be used for its purpose? The guys a paramedic, he should have got to the scene, made a quick assessment, then got back-up, then started triage and evacuation of the injured. I'm no expert of course and I might have this wrong, but surely one of the controllers at HQ should have been despatched to the scene once alerted to a serious situation to do the liaison thus freeing up a trained paramedic to do his job? perhaps it did happen like that, though there's no indication in the report to say that it was, just fire fighters getting annoyed because an ambulance was just standing there. Did people die because they were waiting? Possibly. Were more lives saved because a proper liaison was going on? Possible too, though why he needed an ambulance once he'd got there remains a good question, particularly if he wasn't there to be a paramedic.

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Madness

Now say I were to steal £50,000 from my employer and I were to be caught, even if I showed great remorse over my actions, I could be expected to be sacked and very likely prosecuted and given a prison sentence were I to be found guilty. You'd think that such a set of circumstances would apply throughout the system and of course you'd be wrong.

Express.

A BENEFITS cheat from Southampton who falsely claimed income support of almost £50,000 has escaped jail and will take 106 years to pay back the cash.

Mother of three Lee-Anne Jennings, 42, claimed the money for nearly five years but did not tell the Department for Work and Pensions her husband had moved back in.

She is now paying it back voluntarily at £9 a week, which will take 106 years.

A Southampton Crown Court official said on Thursday that Jennings admitted that she had failed to notify the DWP of a change of circumstances between 2004 and 2009.

She received an 18-week sentence suspended for 18 months coupled with 150 hours community service at a charity shop one day a week, because of poor health.

No order was made to pay the money back as Jennings did not have the means to pay.

Judge Derwin Hope said if he sent her to prison, her two younger children would have to go into care, the paper said.

Jennings began claiming for income support on the basis of being a single parent after her husband, Roy, left her in 2000.

But four years later they began living together again and she failed to tell the authorities, who eventually found out after a tip-off.

Not only does she have 106 years to pay it back, she's still getting benefits in order to pay for it! She still keeps her house, she still keeps her kids and no doubt gets certain benefits for having them too. This is taxpayers money too, taken from those of us who pay taxes and paid out to her to pay back the money she illegally claimed. She should have lost everything, at least until the money was paid back, including if necessary the costs of keeping her kids in care or adopted. Yes I know it sounds draconian, but other people out there manage fine, don't cheat the system and often enough want out of the system if only it paid for them to do so. Jennings has just shown the rest of the scroungers as well as the honest folk out there struggling along that it pays to cheat the system because even if you're caught it wont matter a damn, well £9 a weeks worth of damn.
The system needs to be completely overhauled, simplified and the penalties for fiddling it made plain and draconian, you aren't stealing from the state you're stealing from your neighbours, friends, anyone who pays tax in other words.

Sometimes the whole mess that's accrued over the years makes me very angry, today it managed to make me livid.

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Voters are Distracted in a Dangerous World

By Alan Caruba

It is natural that Americans would be focused on the November 2nd elections, but it is worrisome that they are also distracted from a world that grows more volatile and dangerous by the day.

Just across the southern border, Mexico is disintegrating into anarchy with mass murders occurring all the time. The government gives little evidence of being able to gain control because, as often as not, holding a position in its government will get you killed. A recent CNSnews.com article reports that 1,200 children have been killed by cartel violence in Mexico since 2006. Overall, more than 28,000 Mexicans have been killed as the result of drug trafficking related-violence between December 2006 and July 2010.

At what point must Mexico be put under martial law to crush the drug cartels or cease to be a modern state? At what point would the U.S. have to invade militarily to impose security on our shared southern border?

While Americans ponder the elections, the U.S. has moved a second carrier group to the Persian Gulf, perhaps because military intelligence has picked up signals that the Iranian leadership which normally works through proxies like Hezbollah and Hamas is preparing for either an offensive or defensive state of war.

Iran has managed to stir the cauldron of the Middle East for decades now. Closely allied with Syria and the main support for Hezbollah, Lebanon is poised for yet another civil conflict and no matter what the outcome it will not bode well for Israel. A huge arsenal of rockets and other weapons have been moved into Lebanon since the 2006 conflict with Israel.

The failure of the Iraqi elections to result in a ruling coalition in its parliament is a sign of instability and it is known that Iran has played a massive role in the provision of weapons that were used against U.S. forces following the 2003 invasion.

Economic sanctions against Iran are having some effect, but not enough to destabilize the ruling junta of ayatollahs even in the face of major protests in the streets of Tehran following the rigged reelection of Mamoud Ahmadinejad.

Afghanistan has proven to be a total loss for U.S. policy and the exercise of its military efforts. Participating nations are withdrawing from the NATO military coalition there. General Petraeus has noted that the Taliban are safely harbored in Pakistan, a nation into which the U.S. has poured billions to no obvious effect.

China is achieving hegemonic ambitions as its economy continues to grow, keeping Japan on edge and manipulating North Korea, always a potential trigger for conflict. While many see it as a military enemy, its real strength is the enormous U.S. debt it owns in the form of our treasury securities. Its human rights record is dismal and it continues to hold a recent Nobel Peace Prize winner in jail.

Europe is only just beginning to recognize the threat posed by a huge population of Muslims in its midst. Germany’s Chancellor, Angela Merkel, has recently declared that “multiculturalism has failed.” In France, there are areas in its cities that are “no go” zones controlled by their Muslim population and this is true in other European cities as well. In England, the most popular name for new baby boys is Mohammed!

South America is a patchwork quilt of nations either friendly to the U.S. or led by communists like Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez who continues to seek alliances with Russia, Iran, and South American neighbor states.

A visit to a website of Freedom House.org provides a map illustrating that much of the world; in particular Russia, China, the Middle East and large portions of Africa do not offer any freedom to their vast populations.

Foreign relations are a duty allocated to the president of the United States. The midterm elections which are mostly about domestic issues will not likely affect the policies of the remaining two years of President Obama’s first and hopefully last term. He is weak on Middle Eastern affairs, seemingly indifferent to Mexico and illegal immigration issues, and has alienated many leaders in Europe.

A fragile U.S. economy and, in particular, its dollar, leaves America vulnerable to its enemies.

Depending on the outcome of the midterm elections, we may either see an energized Republican Party, supported by the Tea Party movement, take dramatic efforts to end wasteful spending, repeal Obamacare, and ensure the Bush tax cuts do not expire, or we will enter upon a period of political gridlock and compromise that will endanger the nation’s future in ways that defy the imagination.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

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Note to Visitors/Followers: Blogger.Com Not Posting Artwork or Photos

Blogger.com has a technical problem affecting many users like myself. It makes it impossible to add artwork or photos to a post. Its "Help" section lists numerous complaints about this so one can only hope and assume they are working to repair the technical aspects of this.

Alan C.

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Politics 2010 in Black and White

By Alan Caruba

In 2008, Barack Obama would not have been elected to the presidency if white voters had not reached a point since the days of the 1960s Civil Rights movement to think a black man could and should have a shot at the job.

If race played a role in the election, it was usually Obama that made reference to it, lightly touching on the subject to acknowledge and diminish it.

The only Americans permitted to discuss black/white relations these days are its media-designated spokespersons like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. When the NAACP spoke up recently, it was to condemn Tea Party members as racists.

Rather than advance the condition of blacks in America, Obama has done almost nothing. Indeed, one of his administration’s first acts was to defund charter schools in Washington, D.C. where, like most major urban centers, the schools that young blacks attend are universally dismal.

It is, of course, impossible to look at the handsome, young black President without seeing a handsome, young black President. Understandably, he has the support of the vast majority of America’s black population; approximately 9.9 million according to the last census. They are a minority among minorities. There are now more Hispanics than blacks.

It is, however, Obama’s policies, not his skin color, that have created resistance. In a recent statement, Earl G. Graves Sr., chairman and publisher of Black Enterprise, said, “The distress is real and legitimate. First, people of all races and economic backgrounds are continuing to suffer as the result of an economy that continues to struggle.”

Graves, however, gave Obama a pass with the now familiar assertion that Obama “inherited this mess”, but the fact is that Obama sought the presidency and all presidents inherit whatever issues preceded their term in office or occur on their watch. It is the manner in which they address those issues by which we judge their competency.

Graves lamented that, despite Obama’s election as the nation’s first black president, “there are still people who just cannot get past the issue of race. They still can’t bring themselves to respect a black man, even if he is the President of the United States, regardless of his policies and actions.”

To which I say “hogwash.”

The forthcoming midterm elections are all about the Obama administration policies; the profligate borrowing and spending, the bailouts, the takeover of the nation’s healthcare sector, the shutdown of offshore oil drilling, the insults to foreign allies, and the timidity toward foreign enemies.

Having lived in the south at a time when segregation was the norm, I can attest to how far white America has come in rejecting those restrictions, but I would argue that their hopes for America’s black community have fallen well short of expectations.

White Americans are hugely disappointed. Much had to be ignored when some of them voted for Obama. At one point in the campaign he had to disavow Rev. Jeremiah Wright and the twenty years he attended a church devoted to black liberation theology; a church where Rev. Wright could stand in the pulpit and say, “God damn America.”

Much within America’s black community remains dysfunctional. A recent Wall Street Journal commentary about the NAACP, noted that “Blacks are 13% of the population but comprise 38% of prison or jail inmates in the U.S., and black-on-black violent crime is the norm. Blacks commit 52% of all murders and make up 49% of all murder victims—90% of them are killed by other blacks.”

In cities, many of which that have had black mayors, the schools are among the worst. More than 70% of black children are born to single women and, as The Wall Street Journal commentary noted “are more likely to live in poverty, perform poorly in school, to commit crimes and abuse drugs.” This is a failure of the progress many white Americans had wished for.

Obama is no flag-waving black American. He has noticeably been unwilling to salute during the playing of the national anthem. He is demonstrably a socialist in a capitalist nation.

When he selected Van Jones, a black member of the Communist Party, to be his “green jobs czar”, Jones resigned when his communist affiliation was revealed. When Obama lived with his grandparents in Hawaii, a teenage mentor was Frank Marshall Davis, a black newspaper journalist and poet who was widely known in the 1950s to be a communist. His memoirs speak of his affinity with Marxist students and faculty members.

He was elected despite this. It has taken less than two years in office for the backlash to occur.

It may be unfair, but whites hold black politicians to a higher standard of behavior simply because they have risen to positions of power, often as the result of heavily black constituencies.

Charles Rangel (D-NY) is facing ethics charges along with Maxine Waters (D-CA). It was revealed that Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) steered college scholarships to members of her own family. In 2006 Rep. William Jefferson was found to have $90,000 in bribe money in his home freezer and subsequently went to jail. In 1994, Rep. Mel Reynolds was found guilty of having had sex with an underage 16-year-old campaign worker.

When it comes to the Department of Justice, issues of voting rights are front and center. The double standards of DOJ under the leadership of a black Attorney General, Eric Holder, are a cause for concern in the white community.

While on a recent campaign stop in Rhode Island Obama repeated his mantra that the nation’s economic problems are all due to Republicans despite the obvious fact that Democrats have been in control of Congress since 2006. Prior to the 1994 midterm elections, Democrats had controlled Congress for forty years.

At one point Obama said, “We can’t have special interests sitting shotgun. We gotta have middle class families up in front. We don’t mind the Republicans joining us. They can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back.”

The ill-conceived and unfortunate back-of-the-bus remark comes from the early days of the Civil Rights struggle for equality when, throughout the South, blacks were required to sit in the back of the bus. Applying it to Republicans was especially offensive. In a recent radio interview he told Hispanic listeners that they must “punish our enemies.”

Like an old time Southern Democrat politician Obama has played the race and ethnicity card reflecting his party’s dependency, not just on blacks, but a hoped-for Hispanic support as well. The rest of his base has shrunk to unions and the nation’s youth.

The midterm elections are expected to make a dramatic change in Congress and, when the dust settles, it will not be because America is led by a black president, but because America is led by an incompetent president, a socialist whose policies will have been soundly rejected.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

More about → Politics 2010 in Black and White

So, why move in there then?

There are some people out there who will move into a new home say next to an airport and decide that as it's noisy, the airport should shut down rather than move themselves. There's a similar problem in the village of Mayfield, East Sussex, where a couple who moved in 2 years ago are now complaining about the church clock bells ringing through the night, the bells of which have been ringing since 1887 and Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee.

Mail.

A row has erupted over a church clock which chimes every 15 minutes - after a couple used an iPhone app to discover it was disturbing their sleep.

Lucie Kinnell and partner Terry Godden used the Sleepcycle application which monitors their movements during the night.

The programme showed they were just falling into a deep slumber as the chimes went off.

The couple are spearheading a campaign in the sleepy village of Mayfield, East Sussex to get the 1,050-year-old St Dunstan's Church to switch the bongs off overnight.

Lucie and Terry have lived opposite the church in the leafy village for two years.

Church-goer Lucie, 24, who went to Sunday School at St Dunstan's, said today: 'I've written to the the vicar, father Nigel Prior, to tell him that the chimes are seriously affecting our sleep patterns.

'It's not just a simple bing bong every 15 minutes. When it hits midnight it does the whole bing-bong cycle and then bongs 12 times in a row and then repeats the bing-bong cycle.

It's driving us both mad. I found out what other villagers thought and a lot of them agree that it should be put on timer between 11pm and 6am.

'What is the point of it making a lot of noise at 2am?'

But instead of the vicar writing back, Miss Kinnell received a letter from the Parochial Church Council dismissing her request.

 "When I were a lad", I lived in Gateshead, right next to a railway marshalling yard, there were loud steam trains and diesels running about all the time at all hours. You got used to the noise, the only time we noticed it really was during a railway strike, when it wasn't there.
Now I'm all for getting a decent nights sleep, which means that were I to move somewhere I'd make damned sure that noise levels were acceptable at all hours of the day. For God's sake the woman went to the Sunday school there, didn't she know? The bells have been ringing for 123 years, they've lived there 2 years, if there were any justice in the UK they'd be told where to get off.

I'll not take bets on the bells going off at night sooner rather than later.

sadly there's no app for justice.

More about → So, why move in there then?

Adrift on an Ocean of Lies

By Alan Caruba

“The men the American public admires most extravagantly are the daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.”  -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

One of the insights that age provides is that we are all adrift on an ocean of lies from the moment we are born to when we pass from this world. So much of what we initially “know”, taught to us at home and in school, broadcast via newspapers, radio and television, in the workplace, and, in particular, requiring us to make decisions about the politicians we select to govern in our name, are lies.

The British Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, categorized them as “Lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

Lies and lying, however, may be the natural order of life because even nature employs lies when various species devise ways to camouflage themselves either as a means to deceive and lure prey or to avoid becoming prey.

The prevalence of lies in the affairs of men and nations accounts for why the U.S. has a CIA and a NSA, two giant intelligence and counter-intelligence operations. It is why a third branch of our government is the judiciary.

Americans are now experiencing an avalanche of lies in the form of political ads, media reporting intended to sway the outcome of the forthcoming elections, and the pronouncements and predictions of various politicians and pundits. Not all are lying, but it is safe to presume that most are.

The rise of talk radio and the popularity of personalities such as Rush Limbaugh are based on a hunger for the truth. The revelation that National Public Radio has a deliberate leftist agenda enraged many who genuinely enjoy its programs.

The great anger driving the midterm elections is directly traceable to the lies of the President, his administration, and the Democrat leadership in Congress. Beyond and behind these lies is a mortgage banking system that had been in place for years leading up to the moment that the critical housing market collapsed. The “American dream” of a home must still be earned and paid for. There is no free lunch.

Simply said, making loans to people who were never expected to repay them, turning around and selling those mortgages to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two government entities who in turn “bundled” those bad loans and sold them as securities to banks and investment house was, in hindsight, a system that had to fail at some point.

Passing a “financial reform” act that did not mention Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, while vastly expanding the Securities and Exchange Commission only compounded the lies.

The elections are about the lies told to sell Obamacare, to hide the real numbers of unemployed, to shut down oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, and to insanely increase the national debt by borrowing more in two years than all previous administrations combined had done since George Washington was president.

The lies came at a dizzying pace from the day President Obama was sworn into office.

He told the world that America is not a Christian nation.

He said that “green jobs” were an answer to no jobs.

He said that Medicare “reform” was not a lie designed to implement a governmental takeover of healthcare, one-sixth of the nation’s economy.

He said that General Motors and Chrysler were taken over as wards of the federal government instead of being permitted to reorganize (shake loose of union demands) under the normal process of bankruptcy.

He said the stimulus act was a solution to a stagnant economy when it was, in fact, a laundry list of Democrat earmarks, a “porkulus” bill.

He pushed for a Cap-and-Trade act to sell “carbon credits” as the lies about global warming were crashing around the world. This is the year that the Chicago Climate Exchange will end carbon trading.

The President who dazzled so many with soaring oratory during his campaign proved so inept at explaining his actions that his formal press conferences virtually ceased while his access to the nation’s print and broadcast media increased.

His use of Teleprompters became a national joke.

In a world where lies and the use of violence have always been a driving force throughout human history, where greed is instinctual, we should not be surprised at the folly with which we are surrounded, but we can and must strive to educate ourselves about the truths that are essential to the survival of our form of governance and the future of America.

We can learn that humans have nothing to do with the Earth’s climate; that nothing compares with or can replace the original, totally natural biofuels—oil, coal, and natural gas—that socialism/communism always enslaves and always fails; and that telling the truth is always superior to telling a lie.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

More about → Adrift on an Ocean of Lies

Wonder how the warmists will spin this one

One of the more amusing aspects of global warming, climate change, global climate disruption (and there isn't that much amusing about the amount of money this scam has raked in from the taxpayers) has been the ever more increasingly shrill explanations from the warmist camps in the face of colder and colder weather. We've had the "colder winters are all part of global warming" explanation which sounded lame even to warmists, coupled with the "weather is not climate" explanation which is now wearing a bit thin as enough weather does equal climate eventually.

Express.

BRITAIN faces a succession of harsh winters like those seen half a century ago when the country shivered in some of the coldest conditions on record.

One forecaster suggested we may even have a white Christmas this year.

The warnings come as temperatures plummeted in parts of the country to -6.6C (20.1F) on Sunday night, making it the coldest in October for 17 years.

Worldwide forecaster Weather ­Services International blamed a ­global La Nina weather pattern that sees ocean temperatures cool by up to 5C, ­subsequently cooling the rest of the planet.

Spokesman Dr Todd Crawford said: “As we head into winter, most of our important climate ­indicators are at or near record levels. Based on all of the available evidence, we expect a winter with below‑normal temperatures across the UK.

“Further, we expect the coldest weather to be early and late in the winter, with the potential for a very mild spell during the heart of winter.” He said conditions over the past three years suggested a return to weather patterns like those of the ­Fifties and Sixties.

The harsh winters of half a century ago have passed into legend. The nation came close to a standstill in the Great Freeze of 1963 when the sea off Kent froze and temperatures ­struggled to get above freezing for months on end. Last year we shivered in the ­coldest winter for 30 years.

Ian Michaelwaite, of Netweather, said: “This winter, we are convinced, is going to be colder than average for the third year in a row which is quite rare. Through November into ­December there is a good chance of a bitter cold spell which might lead to a white Christmas.

So, even the meteorologists are starting to have to skirt around the fact that it's obviously not getting any warmer, though there tendency to throw in terms like "rare" and "hurricane" as a smokescreen doesn't exactly fill me with confidence in their predictions either. They have been known to predict the weather for tomorrow completely wrong after all.
Still the house of cards that was global warming, climate change, global climate disruption continues to collapse. I suspect we're only a matter of a couple of years away from a new scam of global cooling starting up because of a lack of heavy industry in India, China and the rest of the third world so we must give them a lot more of our cash to heat up the world.
Meanwhile our pensioners will die as we struggle through a succession of cold winters because of the price of the environmental levy on fuel bills coupled with the fact that on the coldest of days, the bird choppers wind farms don't work.
I expect that will be about the time that the politicians will distance themselves from the green lobby and deny they ever believed in global warming, climate change, global climate disruption, but we know who they are, Huhne, Milliband E,  most of the Labour party and Lib Dems too, as well as far too many Tories.
They saw it as a tax scam, hopefully we'll make them pay for their greed and arrogance, but it will I suspect be a pyrrhic victory as these so called leaders will have lead the country into disaster and depression as we wont have the means necessary to keep our people alive in bitterly cold winters.

More about → Wonder how the warmists will spin this one

Time to End the Ethanol Rip-Off

By Alan Caruba

Psst! Want to avoid $25-to-$30 billion in new deficit spending over the next five years? You do? Okay, then email, fax or call your congressman and tell him you want to let the 45 cents-per-gallon Volumetric Ethanol Tax Credit (VEETC) expire on December 31, 2010.

In the same way you want Congress to extend the Bush tax cuts that are due to expire the same day, letting the VEETC expire will end a subsidy to ethanol producers. It is the only way they can stay in business. It is a hidden tax we pay every time we fill up our gas tank and it is one that deprives us of the full value of pure gasoline.

When Republicans take control of the House and possibly the Senate as well, they will have not just an opportunity, but a mandate to end support for ethanol and biodiesel, two of the worst ideas ever foisted on drivers.

Need it be said that the ethanol scam began with former President Jimmy Carter? He also thought that solar and wind power was a great idea. Ethanol, though, is particularly pernicious because, simply put, it is corrosive to engines. It takes a bite out of every driver’s wallet every time they fill up with a federally required ethanol-gasoline mixture, and it actually reduces the mileage you will get from every gallon.

As a recent issue of Business Week magazine points out “Today the U.S. offers a 45 cent per gallon tax credit to refiners that blend ethanol with gasoline. The government also requires gasoline makers to use a steadily increasing amount of the additive, and it imposes an import tariff to deter foreign competition.”

If you wonder why such stupidity is permitted, Business Week points out that it is a $27 billion industry today. Last year the tax credit was worth more than $4.7 billion.

If the tax credit for ethanol expires on December 31 along with a protective tariff consumers will cease being ripped off. When the $1-a-gallon incentive for biodiesel expired at the end of last year, so did the niche industry making it.

Ethanol is made from corn and biodiesel is made from soy beans. The farmers growing these crops will cry bloody murder, but there is a global market for them so they won’t be selling the farm any time soon. Instead, the cost of the countless food products made in whole or part from corn and soy beans will likely decrease, along with the cost of feed, mostly corn, for livestock.

The battle over ethanol pits its producers and corn farmers, along with the U.S. Agriculture Department against an unusual coalition of environmental groups and cattle ranchers. The former have come to question the alleged benefits of ethanol and the latter have always opposed the way the government’s ethanol mandate forces up the cost of feed corn.

Applauding from the sidelines will be the major U.S. auto manufacturers that worry ethanol will corrode engines that are not designed to handle the stronger blend. Take away ethanol and the cost of an auto will be reduced.

The ethanol tax incentives are just one part of the appalling failure of bad environmental ideas and policies that Americans have had to suffer since the days of Jimmy Carter.

All those “Green jobs” and Green energy projects Obama promised as he rolled out his economic stimulus plan just over a year ago have proven to be a boon…for China! The Department of Energy estimated that 82,000 jobs were created, but government job creation estimates are notoriously wrong. Meanwhile, DOE acknowledged that eighty percent of some Green programs, including $2.3 billion of manufacturing credits, went to foreign firms in China, South Korea, and Spain!

About the only “good” news is that only some $20 billion in stimulus funds have been spent.

Americans are slowly realizing they have been robbed at the gas station courtesy of the U.S. government and that their tax dollars are being shipped overseas to purchase wind turbines and solar panels that, together, produce barely three percent of the electricity used daily.

The problem is that the Greens and the U.S. government have kept Americans in the dark for a very long time regarding all these squirrelly “solutions” they have come up with to save the world from “global warming” (ain’t happening) and dependence on foreign oil (they won’t stop selling it to us and we have virtually stopped drilling here).

The sins are many, the jobs for Americans are few these days, the borrowing continues unabated, government spending is obscene, and, next year, you will not be permitted to purchase a 100-watt incandescent light bulb.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

More about → Time to End the Ethanol Rip-Off

Just Because You're Paranoid

By Alan Caruba

“Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean someone isn’t watching you,” goes the adage and in America where there’s a television camera just about everywhere, as well as folks with phones that can record live action and transmit the video, it’s probably more true today than ever.

My paranoia tends to focus on politicians and, in particular, those of the liberal stripe. The reason for this is simple enough. They promise not to raise taxes and then they raise taxes.

They promise to reduce the national debt and then increase it by $3 trillion in under two years.

They promise to “reform” Medicare and then they destroy it.

They promise to create and “save” jobs, and the unemployment rate just keeps climbing.

The lies are endless and highly destructive of my beloved nation.

My levels of paranoia have been off the meter since Obama was elected and on their way to the Moon ever since he took the oath of office to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Even though Obama briefly taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago, he does not give much evidence of liking the Constitution. In an early interview he said that the Constitution “is a charter of negative liberties. (It) says what the states can’t do to you, says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your account.”

Well, the government, for example, can’t search your home or office without a warrant, must provide a speedy trail, and importantly cannot restrain your right to free speech, deny a free press, or the right to peacefully assemble to protest. It cannot “establish” a national religion, but it cannot forbid the practice of religion even though cities and towns across America are afflicted with demented people who would deny you the right to celebrate Christmas in any fashion.

No where in the Constitution is there a provision for the Department of Education, the Department of Housing and Human Services, the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, and much of the rest of the alphabet zoo that comprises our present government.

It surely does not say you have to buy something you don’t want!

The whole object of the Constitution is to limit the size of government, make the process of passing legislation difficult, and to distribute political power via its “checks and balances” to ensure no one branch can do too much damage.

As we close in on the November 2nd midterm elections, I am again impressed with the way the Founding Fathers created a document that allows Americans to engage in corrective measures by ridding themselves of truly bad politicians and replacing them with those who promise to do a better job.

We do this every two and four years, weeding out Senators, Representatives, and Presidents who are too stupid or criminal to be allowed the power we grant them.

If it were not for paranoia the Tea Party movement would not exist. The power of the Constitution has permitted this leaderless movement to coalesce around the single idea of ridding the Republic of people whom we deem dangerous to its future.

The current U.S. President is rapidly approaching levels of disapproval not seen since the days of Jimmy Carter.

It’s hard not to feel paranoid about a President who wrote to the Secretary of State asking that 80,000 more Muslim “refugees” be allowed into the United States where we have already witnessed 9/11, the Fort Hood murder spree by U.S. Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan, and the trial of Faisal Shashad, a Pakistani granted citizenship who demonstrated his appreciation by trying to kill Americans in Times Square.

Do we really need 80,000 more potential jihadists? And why does Obama want to encourage this?

In the interest of brevity, let me add a distinct sense of paranoia about Bill Clinton traveling all over to endorse Democrat candidates. It is testimony to the short attention span of Democrats that they do not recall Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Hillary’s abortive healthcare reforms, Monica Lewinsky, his lies under oath, his impeachment trial, nor that the things he gets credit for occurred after Republicans gained control of Congress.

I am just paranoid enough to think that Bill is collecting political favors Hillary may use if she decides to run for president. One President Clinton was more than enough. One President Obama is one too many.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

More about → Just Because You're Paranoid

Not (in) the 9 o'clock news

Well you wouldn't have noticed it yesterday, it's certainly not in the MSM either the dead tree press or on it's online versions, not a mention on BBC or Sky either. The EDL were out on a protest yesterday, outside the Israeli Embassy, supporting the right of the Israeli state to exist. There was unfortunately no violence, save only an attempt by the great unwashed UAF to throw a bucket of water over the P.A system.

The (clearly) racist EDL earlier

The (clearly) homophobic EDL marching, note the pink Union Flag.

The only real trouble on the day happened when Rabbi Shifren attempted to speak at Hyde Park Speakers Corner, apparently the Muslims there did not like the idea of free speech to the police refused to allow his right of freedom of speech and turned him and the EDL contingent away, seems there were many complaints from the EDL’s opponents that a foreigner was somehow being allowed to speak for them.  These are probably the very same people who have the gall to call the EDL racist and xenophobic.

 A peaceful anti-EDL protester being given a hug by the police. Seems this is one un-pc PC who did not get the memo on how to treat the special ones

So, there you go, unless there is violence directed at the EDL, it doesn't get into the news and even when it does, the EDL invariably end up being judged by the MSM in a bad light. There is an agenda still being promoted by the "Righteous" and their minions that everything is ok in this country and that multiculturalism and open door immigration policies were welcomed by the people of the UK with open arms. That those who opposed this were violent racists and probably fascist homophobes to boot.

The EDL are no saints, but clearly the evidence is building that they are more sinned against than sinners. Those who oppose them are the ones directing the violence on the streets and the smears in the MSM. However hard they try though, the truth is emerging that multiculturalism and open door immigration policies particularly those that have brought in Sharia law and radical Islam are no longer being tolerated by the English at least. The EDL appear to be a genuine grass roots movement and they are not going away any time soon, this is something that the "Righteous" have brought upon themselves and something they don't understand and can never control.

They can get their lies out quicker, but sooner or later the truth will out.

More about → Not (in) the 9 o'clock news

Iranian Hegemony, American Timidity

By Alan Caruba

Remember George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil”? Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. Bush identified these three during a January 29, 2002 State of the Union speech. On March 20, 2003, the U.S. and coalition forces invaded Iraq in “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” We were assured that weapons of mass destruction would be found and, for the most part, few were.

The U.S. had been in Afghanistan since shortly after 9/11 in 2001, but Iraq became the focus and Afghanistan a backwater combat area where, as best as one can determine, nothing much has changed except that, reportedly, the U.S. is providing cover for meetings between the Taliban and President Karzai. The levels of corruption between these two are impossible to parse and, as usual, the only topic on the agenda is who gets to control the heroin industry that passes for Afghanistan’s Gross Domestic Product. Also reported is that Iran has been bribing top Afghan officials.

When I served in the U.S. Army, it was in a minor intelligence function as part of the Second Infantry Division. Its primary duty for a very long time has been the defense of South Korea where approximately 30,000 troops are stationed. They have been there since a truce was signed in 1953! The U.S. tends to stay on forever once we’ve invaded a country with the exception, of course, of Vietnam.

I mentioned my Army service only because the most recent intelligence “dump” by WikiLeaks evokes a visceral response to ever letting our enemies know anything about our conduct of the Iraq war and, in this case, the enemy is still Iran. It has been Iran since they took our diplomats hostage in 1979.

To my mind, WikiLeaks is engaged in an act of war against the United States, but I am sure that a legion of international lawyers would say they are not.

The worst part of all this is an analysis reported by an Israeli news agency, Debka File, over the past weekend. As often as not, one will find reports there that never seem to make it into the mainstream media here in the U.S.A.

For example, I suspect most Americans have no idea that we again have a second carrier group in the area of the Persian Gulf. That’s a lot of fire power and one or two such groups have been parked there for a very long time for a very good reason. Meanwhile, Egypt and Saudi Arabia just conducted “secret” war maneuvers together and it isn’t because either expects to be invaded by Bahrain.

The initial Debka File analysis of the U.S. classified documents “bared a catalogue of extreme abuse by Iraqi forces against fellow Iraqis and Iran’s deep involvement in terrorist operations against Americans and Iraqis alike—to both of which the U.S. turned a blind eye.”

Several very troubling facts emerge from the documents. U.S. troops “were instructed not to investigate any breach of the laws of armed conflict, such as abuses of detainees, unless it directly involves members of the coalition.” That kind of directive comes down the chain of command from the very top.

Iraq became a sovereign nation on June 30, 2004 and the fighting among its elected leaders has not ceased for a day as to how the oil riches will be divvied up between Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites.

The last elections were held on March 9, 2010 and Iraq still does not have a functioning government. In the days when Saddam Hussein ran everything, elections involved a 99% vote for the psychopath, but this year’s election involved 325 seats in the parliament and a coalition government has not been decided upon for the last eight months.

Granting that Saddam was evil incarnate, he was nonetheless a bulwark against Iranian ambitions. He had invaded Iran in the 1980s and spent eight years trying to win a war against it. Failing that, he turned around and invaded Kuwait, drawing the U.S. into the first invasion, but one in which he was allowed to remain in power after Iraqi troops were pushed out of Kuwait.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has had the backing of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. In the past he has had ties to Iran because both are Shiites and, according to Debka File he “headed Iran-backed Shiite terror networks responsible for political assassinations on his orders.”

The new intelligence data reveals even more about the extensive involvement of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps’ Al Qods Brigades in attacks on American forces in Iraq. Over the course of the conflict there since 2003, American troops suffered 4,287 dead and 30,000 wounded in combat.

Out of all this expenditure of American treasure and lives, Iran has emerged with a strong network of puppet militias in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. It has forged strong ties with Syria. It has a network of allies inside Iraq. And it has pursued its quest for nuclear weapons and the development of the missiles to deliver them as far away as parts of Europe.

All of this suggests that America’s expressed policy of establishing a democratic Iraq and the total lack of confrontation with Iran adds up to failure at this point. The problem with that assertion, however, is that Saddam was an unpredictable, disruptive figure who had to be neutralized.

It looks like George W. Bush’s Axis of Evil is still very much intact and an understandably war-weary United States is leaving a battlefield whose nations were created in 1919 by the Treaty of Versailles way back when Woodrow Wilson was the president.

As the French say, plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. The more things change, the more they remain the same.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

More about → Iranian Hegemony, American Timidity

Paranoia

At the moment I and a few others believe that Muslims are being set up as scapegoats for when/or if the economy goes "tits up" and the rioters take to the streets looking for someone to blame. Not that the certain Muslim groups help themselves at times.

Deccan Herald.

British Premier David Cameron has banned Conservative party Chair, Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, from attending a major Islamic meet where a number of pro-al-Qaeda speakers are also due to appear, igniting a bitter internal row over how the government tackles Islamist extremism.

Warsi, Britain's first woman Muslim Cabinet Minister, was told by the Prime Minister to cancel her today's appearance at the Global Peace and Unity Event billed as the largest multicultural gathering in Europe, according to The Observer.

The London-based conference is aimed at improving community relations, yet critics have pointed out that a number of speakers who are due to appear have justified suicide attacks and promoted al-Qaeda, homophobia and terrorism.

An influential voice among the international Muslim community, Warsi believes that confronting extremists at public events is a more effective way to tackle fundamentalism than a refusal to engage with them.

The report quoted a government source saying: "She had hoped to attend, but there is a conflict of opinion on how extremists should be dealt with and the Prime Minister, supported by Home Secretary Theresa May, were adamant no Tories should attend."

According to the report, Andrew Stunell, the Liberal Democrat Communities Minister, will deliver an aggressive speech against those who espouse fundamentalism.

"He will make clear that the coalition government will not tolerate extremism, hatred and intolerance in any form," a spokesman for the Department for Communities and Local Government, said.

The conference has been organised by Britain's most popular Muslim television station, the Islam Channel, which earlier this year was accused by a Muslim think-tank, the Quilliam foundation, of promoting extremist groups.

Ok fair enough I can sort of see Camerons reasoning about this, after all Labour managed to seriously tar themselves with their love ins with various Islamic extremist speakers Ken Livingstone seemingly being a magnet for it, even with his support for Lutfer Rahman in Tower Hamlets and the extremist Islamic Forum of Europe. Supporting minorities is fine, however some minorities appear to be more than equal, this was a major failing of Labour. However as Churchill put it, Jaw Jaw is better than War War, at least talking to them will prevent the alienation they feel even if a lot of it is self inflicted. Though I suspect ordinary Muslims will ignore the event about as much as the ordinary UK citizen. Even more hysterical was the reaction of MPACUK (the Muslim Public Affairs Committee UK) EXCLUSIVE: Is the Conservative Party becoming the Political Wing of the EDL?  Inside sources from the Conservative Party have leaked that the EDL and the Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) have pressurised the Chairman of the Party, Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, into NOT attending this years Global Peace and Unity Event taking place this weekend at London's ExCel arena. MPACUK understand that this is not the first time Officials have been lobbied into abstaining from attending Britain's Biggest Islamic Event, organised by Islam Channel. Such heavy handed power exercised by the CFI in coordination with the EDL begs the question of where the Conservative Party's loyalty now lies, and how closely the Zionist lobby are linked with the EDL. Where does the Conservative Party's loyalty lie, with the EDL or the Muslim community? Now apart from wondering what the hell the MPACUK been smoking or popping, never in their wildest dream does the EDL  have that kind of influence, they're also starkly apolitical unlike the MPACUK and from what I can gather comprise quite a mix of political opinions though focussed solely on preventing Sharia law ever being implemented in the UK. Which puts them at odds with the multiculturalists that haunt most political parties despite the fact its becoming increasingly obvious multiculturalism is an abysmal failure. Yet this obvious falsehood keeps stoking the tensions in our society, some Muslims will believe it and so the pressure and the alienation remain. As for the EDL, they just shrugged and laughed it off, they don't like Cameron at all, see him as just another Blair, which goes to show who are the more saner of the two groups.

More about → Paranoia

Obama's Failure Agenda

By Alan Caruba

Normally, we assume that anyone who runs for and assumes the office of president has an agenda intended to succeed and thereby ensure that history will look favorably on his accomplishments. The men who served in that office craved success and loathed failure.

Barack Obama didn’t merely promise hope and change. On June 3, 2008 in his nomination victory speech, he said that “this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal…”

Lovely rhetoric, soaring oratory, but the sick were being cared for in hospitals all over America, even if they could not afford it because the law required such care then and now. No one was being turned away at the emergency room. As for jobs, in 2008 the unemployment rate rose to 6.1%, the highest level since September 2003. Today, it officially stands at 9.6% and is widely understood to be far closer in reality to 20%.

As for the Earth beginning to heal, I have no idea what he meant by that and I doubt anybody else did. Last time I checked, the Earth was doing just fine. The seas, meantime, have been rising a few millimeters each century and give no indication of stopping.

What will end, however, is the control of Congress by the Democrats in November; definitely the House and even possibly the Senate. What has already ended is Barack Obama’s credibility. Few people who have been paying attention believe anything the man says.

It took less than half his term to achieve this, but it began with his oath of office that required a “do-over”. Legislatively, letting Nancy Pelosi write and ram through a $787 billion stimulus bill was an indicator that Obama was clueless regarding ways to jump-start the economy. Obama signed it into law in February 2009.

Meanwhile he busied himself taking over ownership of General Motors and Chrysler, signing off on a failed “Cash for Clunkers” program.

The stimulus program, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, spent $63 million on a tunnel to nowhere in Pittsburgh, an $89,000 sidewalk that led to a ditch in Boynton, Oklahoma, and the president’s belated discovery that there were no “shovel ready” projects.

Among the projects were $1.9 million for international ant research, $554,763 for the National Forest Service to replace windows in a closed Mount St. Helens visitor center, and $308 million for a joint clean energy venture with BP, the oil company best known these days for the Gulf of Mexico spill.

While Americans were losing jobs and seeing their homes foreclosed upon, the Obama administration was spending $700,000 to study why monkeys respond negatively to inequality, $529,000 to study the effects of the environment on local populations—in the Himalayas, and $456,000 to study the circulation of Neptune’s atmosphere.

Nearly $9 million was spent on signs promoting the administration’s sponsorship of various stimulus projects.

His idea of partisanship was to tell Republicans in Congress “We won.”

His press conferences were such disasters there was a stretch of more than 300 days between the last two.

His foreign policy decisions included abandoning Poland, Tibet, and Israel. His efforts to entice Iran were rebuffed and the leaders of European nations and Russia made no secret that they regarded him as a dunce.

Obama took credit for the official end of the Iraq War even though that had been set in motion by the Bush administration well before his election. Instead of just closing down U.S. participation in the Afghanistan quagmire, Obama prolonged it.

At the heart of the mortgage loan financial collapse were two government entities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but when the Obama administration signed off on new regulations for Wall Street, neither were even mentioned in the reform legislation.

Big Government will keep getting bigger as agencies such as the Security Exchange Commission increases its budget by twenty percent to $1.2 billion, more than triple its size in 2000. It is expected to increase by more than one thousand people to about 4,700 regulators, a 36% increase from 2007.

Left unsaid that this is the same SEC that failed to spot Bernie Madoff’s $50 billion Ponzi scheme or did anything regarding what were later deemed “toxic assets” requiring a TARP program to bail out the banks, investment firms, and AIG, an insurance company.

Absolutely nothing good can be said for Obamacare. Most Americans opposed its passage and most say they want it repealed.

It’s a long list of failures and bad judgment. It’s worth keeping in mind that, on the day Barack Obama was inaugurated, the National Debt stood at $10.626 trillion. A recent calculation put it at an all time high of $13.665 trillion, an increase of $4.9 trillion in under two years.

The National Debt, by the time Obama leaves office in 2012, is projected to soar to nearly $16.5 trillion and that is more than one hundred percent of the value of the nation’s economy.

Here’s what I think. I think this is exactly what Barack Hussein Obama had in mind when he ran for the presidency and what has been a deliberate agenda while he has been in office.

Don’t forget to vote on November 2nd. The next Congress, particularly the House where all spending bills must be initiated and passed, must slam on the brakes if America is to survive Obama’s failure agenda.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

More about → Obama's Failure Agenda

Cartoon Round Up

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Having your cake and eating it

It never ceases to amaze me how some civil servants just don't get it where it comes to a recession and who actually provides the money to pay them. The civil service unions are even worse for this, many are actually paid by the state to be union reps in their places of employment and of course they fiddle the system to get what they want.

Telegraph.

An undercover investigation by Priti Patel, Conservative MP for Witham, found that officials at unions were telling members how to campaign against the Government's cuts programme on the taxpayers’ time.

The news emerged as Brendan Barber, the general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, announced plans for a national demonstration in Hyde Park in London against the cuts on 26 March next year. 

Ms Patel set up a bogus email account and contacted the officials, asking whether it was possible to attend demonstrations on “facility time" to carry out their union duties during office hours.

One official said she could be “economical with the truth about your use of the time you may be able to claim facilities time” while another suggested she could “pop it down as a union meeting and be creative about how you spend your union time”.

Last night, Ms Patel told The Daily Telegraph: “The hard working law abiding majority will be disgusted to see trade union officials suggesting ways that their members can fiddle the system and act dishonestly to get time off.

“Any civil servant using facility time to attend these political demonstrations should be disciplined and there need to be a full investigation into the way trades unions are abusing taxpayers.

"It is unacceptable for taxpayers to be left footing the bill for trade unions' political campaigning and union members abusing the system in this way should be regarded with the same disdain as crooks, fraudsters and benefit cheats."

Ms Patel, 38, a rising star who entered Parliament in May, used an alias “John Wright” to email a number of union officials this week, asking if it was possible to attend a Trades Union Congress-organised rally against the cuts using "facility time", because his holiday entitlement had run out.

Under official guidance, officials are only allowed paid time off as "facility time", typically 25 days a year, for a “tightly defined set of duties” including “negotiating with employers, representing members, performing the duties of an accredited Health & Safety rep and of an accredited Union Learning Rep”.

Laura Cockram, head of campaigns at the Public and Commercial Services Union, said: “It depends which dept [sic] you're in and how vigilant your management is regarding facility time.

“You could pop it down as a union meeting and be creative about how you spend your union time, however I wouldn't advise you to do that.”

Andrew Freemantle, another PCS organiser, replied: “If you are economical with the truth about your use of the time you may be able to claim facilities time. Look forward to seeing you.”

Shirley Mills, regional organiser at Unison, said: “I don't think you can use facility time to attend the rally and lobby as the employer may see it as activities rather than duties.

“Please inform your manager that you will be meeting with the Regional Organiser this should avoid any problems.”

Simon Weller, an official at Aslef, told her that facility time can only be used for “trade union duties’ in relation to your elected post. Demos and the like come under the label “trade union activities” which are not covered by your facility time”.

He added: “Although, if you've found something legitimate to do at the depot/meeting etc in the morning and then you could attend the demo in the afternoon.”

Bernie Pardon, an official at the NASUWT teaching union, replied: “I don't know who you are? Which union? What branch / association? I'm using facility time tomorrow if that helps.”

Last night Mr Weller from Aslef stood by his comments. He said a lot of his members worked in shift patterns and it would have been fine “if he [“John Wright”] was finished his shift, if he was free and in the area”.

A TUC spokesman said: “Union reps are entitled to paid time off for duties such as negotiating with employers and representing members in grievance and disciplinary matters.

“While there is no obligation for employers to pay reps time off for activities such as attending union meetings and events, many do provide paid time off as an acknowledgement of the valuable role played by union reps.”

A PCS spokesman said: “We're proud of all our reps who not only do their day jobs under increasingly difficult conditions, but also work hard to support their colleagues and improve their working lives - more often than not taking union work home with them to do in the evenings and at weekends.

First off, you want to be in a union fine, however it is a voluntary thing and you should not be paid by the state when doing union activities, any union activities.
Second, you aren't cheating your employer, you're cheating the people who are taxed in order to pay you, you're betraying the general public by attempting to be paid to go and protest.
Unions have been abusing taxpayer funds for years now with the Using the Trade Union Reform Act, Mandelson established the Trade Union Learning Fund in 2006 which along with the Union Modernisation fund more or less matches trade union contributions to the Labour party with a cash grant to the unions to help in reform, basically it's a scam.
Civil service unions are perhaps the worst in being militant these days, they've been coddled by the state with decent rises without increases in productivity or efficiency. It's time I think they came down to earth and learned what real life is all about as those of us in the private sector have figured. If they are planning on milking a corrupt system to protest about cuts, then plainly they need to be the first ones out. Lets see them try to pull that one in the private sector.

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So what are our laws for then?

Labour were forever trumpeting the "fact" that crime was falling despite peoples personal experience, plus the interesting fact that a lot of people didn't report crimes anymore as they felt the police weren't interested.
Seems that of the crimes reported, 75% of those deemed serious weren't ever solved anyway.

Express.

SOFT justice under Labour’s Britain was exposed yesterday by the revelation that thousands of criminals were let off by police.

Official figures showed only one in four of the most serious crimes reported to police were solved.

Of the 4,338,604 notifiable offences recorded in England and Wales in 2009, 28 per cent, or 1,204,967 offences, were marked as detected, the Ministry of Justice figures showed. But only half of those detected by police resulted in criminal charges. 

More than a fifth, 269,552, offences were dealt with by police cautions and just under one in 10 led to penalty notices.

In all, 1.7 million defendants had their cases taken to court in 2009, with only 94,586 being sentenced in a crown court. Of these, 51,801 were jailed, with an average sentence of 24.3 months. But 19,749 were given a suspended ­sentence, 16,174 received a community sentence and 2,300 were fined.

Of the 1.3 million cases dealt with by magistrates, 943,194 people were fined, 179,593 were given community sentences and 48,389 were jailed.

The MoJ statistics showed the number of defendants found guilty of violence soared by 4.6 per cent to 43,300 in 2009, compared with 41,500 the previous year. The number of offenders found guilty of drugs offences also rocketed by 7.4 per cent from 52,900 to 56,800.

The figures showed the number of women found guilty rose by nine per cent to 314,700 in 2009, compared with the previous year, and was up 43 per cent compared with 1999.

The number of men found guilty remained unchanged from 2008 at 1.05 million, which was down 11 per cent from 1.18 million in 1999.

However, overall crime recorded by the police fell by eight per cent in the last year. Reported incidents of ­criminal damage were down 17 per cent, offences against vehicles were down 16 per cent and domestic burglary fell by eight per cent compared with last year, the latest Home Office figures for the year to June 2010 showed.

Violence against the person, which includes murder, attempted murder and causing death by dangerous ­driving, also fell, down seven per cent from 421,072 to 392,473.

Firearms offences were also down, dropping two per cent from 8,113 to 7,966. But the number of recorded sexual offences rose by eight per cent.

The statistics were released the day after the Government’s Spending Review outlined plans to cut the police budget by four per cent year-on-year to 2014-15, raising fears that the number of officers could fall by up to 20,000.

The total spending cut on police amounts to between 14 per cent and 20 per cent, depending on how much money is raised through council tax.

The first thing that springs to mind is what on earth are we paying them for? Don't get me wrong here, I know it's simplistic and that red tape and bureaucracy as well as imbecilic political correctness all divert resources away from catching criminals, not even the feared cctv really prevents crime either. Take into account the never ending war against motorists and you do have to wonder what the point of the police is anymore. They do appear to be unfit for purpose more often than not siding with minorities against the majority too if my observation of the police handling of EDL demo's is to be taken as an example.
So, what do we want? Well a crime free environment in which to live is a plus, also a clear definition of what is a crime and what is simply someone doing their own thing. Prison being the place we put people who harm others, not themselves, a society of few laws yet rigorously enforced. A place where you could drive at over 100 mph on the motorway, yet know if you have an accident and injure or kill someone, you'll go to jail for a long, long time, not just get a slap on the wrist and a 3 year ban.
Simple laws, where the definition of harm is seen to be how it affects others, go around robbing pensioners, expect 5 to 10 years, pull a knife and threaten someone, 2 years, hurt them 5 to 10 depending how bad, possibly more sentencing being open ended. Murder someone, life, meaning life, other sentencing being on a scale of personal harm to others. But no crime at all to carry a knife or gun, that's down to individual responsibility.
Fact is, Labour opened our eyes as to how ineffectual the law and the enforcers of it are. I can't bring myself to thank them for it though, they were after all responsible.

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