Yet another scandal: A US ambassador soliciting underage prostitutes?

It started with the dial already set to “Bad:” accusations of sexual assault, illegal drug rings, and members of former Secretary of State Clinton’s security detail hiring call girls. On top of that were charges in an Inspector General’s report that high-ranking officials at State had interfered with investigations by the Diplomatic Security Service’s (DSS) criminal division and the Inspector General’s office. The charges were so serious that, as my blog-buddy ST reported yesterday, Clinton’s apologists broke out the ultimate Obama administration defense: “We knew nothing until we heard about it on the news!”

And yet now, what started out as “bad” has gone to “God awful:”

A DS agent was called off a case against US Ambassador to Belgium Howard Gutman over claims that he solicited prostitutes, including minors.

“The agent began his investigation and had determined that the ambassador routinely ditched his protective security detail in order to solicit sexual favors from both prostitutes and minor children,” says the memo.

“The ambassador’s protective detail and the embassy’s surveillance detection team . . . were well aware of the behavior.”

Undersecretary of State for Management Patrick Kennedy ordered the investigation ceased, and the ambassador remains in place, according to the memo.

Gutman was a big Democratic donor before taking the post, having raised $500,000 for President Obama’s 2008 campaign and helping finance his inaugural.

Emphases added.

Jim Geraghty quotes Foreign Policy’s report of the Ambassador’s denial (1):

In a fast-developing story, U.S. ambassador to Belgium Howard Gutman has been named as the diplomat accused of soliciting “sexual favors from both prostitutes and minor children,” according to State Department documents obtained by NBC News. Gutman denied the allegations, in a statement to The Cable and other outlets.

“I am angered and saddened by the baseless allegations that have appeared in the press and to watch the four years I have proudly served in Belgium smeared is devastating,” he said. “At no point have I ever engaged in any improper activity.”

But notes that the Ambassador took no questions, either. Hmm…

If true, this is sickening on several levels. Not only was a US ambassador, who not only represents the United States but is also the personal representative of the president, trolling for hookers, but he may well be a pedophile, too.

On top of that, and if true, Ambassador Gutman created a huge security risk by exposing himself (ahem…) to multiple dangers. What if that Lolita under the street lamp had been a Russian or Chinese agent? Spring the honey trap and hello, blackmail! Or what if, while his security detail was wondering where in the heck he had gone (2), the woman-for-rent had been working with our jihadi enemies, and we suddenly found ourselves with an ambassador kidnapped and held hostage by al Qaeda?

The mind boggles at the stupidity. Does no one under this administration take their job seriously? Does no one have a sense of honor and duty?

Okay, we all know there are good men and women all throughout the US government who do. Four of them died doing their duty in Benghazi.

And the people named in these reports acting like drug-crazed satyrs are a disgrace to them all.

PS: If you read the linked CBS and NY Post articles, two names might easily jump out at you: Cheryl Mills, who was Secretary Clinton’s Chief of Staff, and Undersecretary for Management Patrick Kennedy, both of whom reported directly to Hillary Clinton. Their names should be familiar to you because of the questionable roles they played in the Benghazi massacre and its aftermath: Mills, apparently known as Clinton’s fixer, had a fit when DCM Hicks talked alone and against instructions with Congressman Chaffetz, there to investigate what had happened. On the night of the Benghazi attack, Kennedy (or someone in his office) prevented an interagency team designed for just such an emergency from taking flight to Libya. If you see a pattern here, you’re not alone.

Footnote:
(1) Great title for a thriller, no?
(2) Or were out looking for their own, apparently.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Churchill understood what Progressives want

“Wisdom”

It’s a heckuva busy day today with little time for posting, but I have to share this gem via Steven Hayward at Power Line. It’s an excerpt from a longer quote from Winston Churchill’s closing speech in the 1945 General Election, which the Conservatives sadly lost. Read these two paragraphs, and tell me if you don’t recognize the modern Democratic Party, at least by reflection:

Look how even today they hunger for controls of every kind, as if these were delectable foods instead of wartime inflictions and monstrosities. There is to be one State to which all are to be obedient in every act of their lives. The State is to be the arch-employer, the arch-planner, and arch-administrator and ruler and the arch-caucus-boss. . .

A Socialist State once thoroughly completed in all its details and its aspects—and that is what I am speaking of—could not afford to suffer opposition. . . Socialism is, in its essence, an attack not only upon British enterprise, but upon the right of the ordinary man or woman to breathe freely without having a harsh, clumsy, tyrannical hand clapped across their mouths and nostrils. . . Have we not heard Mr Herbert Morrison descant upon his plans to curtail Parliamentary procedure and pass laws simply by resolution of broad principle in the House of Commons, afterward to be left by Parliament to the executive and to the bureaucrats to elaborate and enforce by departmental regulations?

Churchill was of course criticizing the British Labour Party, which had been founded as an explicitly Socialist, albeit non-Marxist, party, but how well this describes President Obama and the dominant left wing of the Democratic Party! The worship of the administrative state, government by regulation and “boards of experts,” the inescapable, inexorable need to control everything — that bolded portion illustrates the progressive “theory of legislation” perfectly: pass a vaguely-worded bill, and let the unelected bureaucrats fill in the details with the full force of law. I’m surprised Goldberg didn’t quote this in “Liberal Fascism.”

Be sure to read the rest. While Hayward is thinking of Obamacare and the IRS scandal, I think Churchill’s quote reflects the heart of the professional Democratic Party in general.

Back to work…

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Russian Scientists say period of global cooling ahead due to changes in the sun

Reblogged from Watts Up With That?:

From Radio Voice of Russia:

Russia’s Pulkovo Observatory: “we could be in for a cooling period that lasts 200-250 years”

Scientists at Russia’s famous Pulkovo Observatory are convinced that the world is in for a period of global cooling.

Graph by David Archibald

Global warming which has been the subject of so many discussions in recent years, may give way to global cooling.

Read more… 475 more words

I'm not going to run out and buy a parka just yet, but the idea of extended cooling based on solar activity makes much more sense to me than a catastrophic heat rise based on CO2. At least for the sun's effects, there is a demonstrable historical correlation. Not that it's proven (yet), but there's more evidence for solar-induced climate cycles than for anthropogenic global warming.

Barack Obama is a petty, spiteful man-child unworthy of the title “Chief of State”

Okay, okay, Barack. You don’t like those ex-colonialist British and you have emotional issues with the way they may have treated your grandfather in Kenya. I get it, I really do. You just don’t have it in you to overcome your childish bigotry.

But the British are among our closest allies, you are President of the United States of America, charged with handling our foreign relations, and this shames your office and insults those same allies:

President Obama’s delegation to the funeral of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher is drawing some flak in London.

Two former Republican secretaries of State — James Baker and George Shultz — will lead the U.S. delegation to the Thatcher funeral on Wednesday.

Some British press reports noted that the delegation does not include a former president or a member of the current Obama administration.

“Friends and allies of Baroness Thatcher expressed ‘surprise and disappointment’ last night as it emerged President Obama is not planning to send any serving member of his administration to her funeral,” reports the Daily Mail.

The Sun called it a “snub,” and said that “Downing Street is most angered by rejections from Obama, first lady Michelle and Vice President Joe Biden. And none of the four surviving ex-U.S. leaders — Jimmy Carter, George Bush Sr., Bill Clinton and George Bush Jr. — is coming either.

Give me a break. You mean you couldn’t ask George W. Bush and Bill Clinton to represent us? Seriously? What are ex-Presidents for?

Oh, and I just love the reason for not sending the First Lady or the Vice President (h/t Moe Lane):

‘This is a hugely significant week in terms of US domestic politics,’ a spokesman added.

He said that both the First Lady and the Vice President were ‘the President’s point people on gun control’, adding: ‘This is a week when there is a lot of movement on Capitol Hill on gun control issues.’

No. They didn’t. Why not just say “Michelle has to wash her hair and Joe’s already been to Britain this year?”

Margaret Thatcher was the second most important UK Head of Government in the 20th century. She saved Britain economically and stood side-by-side with us in the climactic phase of the Cold War and contributed mightily to the end of the Soviet Union. (1)  The British government has every right to be affronted. Mere decency and respect calls for a high-level delegation.

Instead they get the same level of official representation as was sent to the funeral of Hugo Chavez.

Some men grow into the office of President, rising to meet its challenges. Harry Truman, for example.

Barack Obama demeans and diminishes it.

via Legal Insurrection

Footnote:
(1) And maybe that’s another reason behind the slight: what she did would have upset Frank.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Welfare Handouts for Promoting Terrorism

Reblogged from International Liberty:

I don't think the federal government should be in the business of redistribution income. Simply stated, the welfare state has been a disaster for both taxpayers and recipients.

But our system, with whatever flaws it might have now or in the future, presumably will never be as crazy as the system in the United Kingdom.

A reader sent a story that blows my mind.

Read more… 363 more words

Every time I read about something like this --the UK welfare system handing out money and support to people whose goal it is to destroy the UK, as if it's their right-- I have to shake my head in wonder. This is another victory for cultural jihad.

Commenting on Margaret Thatcher’s death, President Narcissus can’t help himself.

“It’s all about the O”

I really think it’s impossible for Barack Obama to comment on any event without inserting himself:

Here in America, many of us will never forget her standing shoulder to shoulder with President Reagan, reminding the world that we are not simply carried along by the currents of history—we can shape them with moral conviction, unyielding courage and iron will.   Michelle and I send our thoughts to the Thatcher family and all the British people as we carry on the work to which she dedicated her life—free peoples standing together, determined to write our own destiny.

And what’s this “we,” kemosabe? Your beliefs and policies are about as far from Prime Minister Thatcher’s and President Reagan’s as it can be while staying on the same planet.

Seriously, I wonder if he laughed at the absurdity when he read that.

Nah. That would require a modicum of self-awareness.

via Stephen Greene

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

(Video) Canaries in the Coal Mine

Call this a follow up to my worries that Cyprus is a warning and this morning’s post about America being in danger of becoming Europe.

In this latest “Afterburner,” Bill Whittle warns us that, with the European Union lurching from fiscal crisis to fiscal crisis, and with the US headed by an administration enamored of many of the same foolish policies as the Europeans, the members of the EU are serving as “canaries in the coal mine:”

Prediction is a fool’s game, so I won’t guess what’s going to happen, but I’d feel much more comfortable if this man were in charge.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

(Video) Is America Becoming Europe?

A philosophical question for you from Encounter Books and narrated by, I think, Bill Whittle:

My short answer is “No, and I’d  rather not live in Europe, thanks.” (Even though I live in one of the states closest to “might as well just join the EU and get it over with.”) If it means permanent 10% unemployment, economic stagnation, dependency on a cradle-to-grace welfare state, the high taxes meant to support it, and rule by a political class that thinks the people are to be controlled, not consulted… Well, I’ll pass.

Wait. I’ve  just described the modern (Social) Democratic Party, haven’t I?

Seriously, I’m old enough to remember the stagnation, declinism,  and national bad mood of the 70s, particularly under Jimmy Carter. Those times passed, and I’m sure these will too, but only if we work tirelessly to remind people there is a better way.

Complacency really will make us Europe.

PS: I can almost hear someone saying “Yeah, but we had Reagan, back then.” But few if any in the 70s knew that Reagan would become one of the most successful presidents in our history. Many didn’t take him seriously, calling him a fringe politician, a Goldwater throwback, even a nut and an amiable dunce. It wasn’t until several years into his presidency that we realized how right he was and how much good he was doing. We may or may not have a “Reagan” waiting in the wings, now, unnoticed or underestimated, but my point is that we can’t sit back, waiting for that person to save us. We have to work at it and stand against the spread of statism and dependency and for the promotion of liberty day after day, every day.

/soapbox

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Eurozone Chief: Cyprus was just the start

“EU bureaucrat at work.”

Hoo, boy. I just had a feeling that, once the the EUrocracy learned it could take depositors’ money at will without a total meltdown, the temptation to do it again (and again and again and again…) would be too great to  resist. Thus we read in the Telegraph:

Cyprus bail-out: savers will be raided to save euro in future crises, says eurozone chief

Savings accounts in Spain, Italy and other European countries will be raided if needed to preserve Europe’s single currency by propping up failing banks, a senior eurozone official has announced.

The new policy will alarm hundreds of thousands of British expatriates who live and have transferred their savings, proceeds from house sales and other assets to eurozone bank accounts in countries such as France, Spain and Italy.

The euro fell on global markets after Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Dutch chairman of the eurozone, told the FT and Reuters that the heavy losses inflicted on depositors in Cyprus would be the template for future banking crises across Europe.

“If there is a risk in a bank, our first question should be ‘Okay, what are you in the bank going to do about that? What can you do to recapitalise yourself?’,” he said.

“If the bank can’t do it, then we’ll talk to the shareholders and the bondholders, we’ll ask them to contribute in recapitalising the bank, and if necessary the uninsured deposit holders.”

Ditching a three-year-old policy of protecting senior bondholders and large depositors, over €100,000, in banks, Mr Dijsselbloem argued that the lack of market contagion surrounding Cyprus showed that private investors could now be hit to pay for bad banking debts.

Don’t you just love how Dijsselbloem puts it? “We’ll ask them to contribute.” As if Manuel the Madrid taxi driver, who’s put his life’s savings into a bank he thought he could trust, will get any chance to say no. If he’s lucky, he’ll wake one morning to discover that his masters in Brussels have left him anything at all.

This is just immoral. Depositors in Cyprus are being robbed to cover for the bad borrowing decisions of governments and the equally stupid lending decisions of bankers, and now Dijsselbloom and his fellow mandarins are casting their gaze across Europe and seeing a smorgasbord filled with tasty accounts waiting to have a bite taken out of them.

Let’s review an old principle of (real) liberalism that’s more and more forgotten these days: your bank account is your property, as it represents the fruits of your labor. Security in your right to property is essential to your liberty; if you do not have the first, then you lack the second. If some bureaucrat can come and take your property via a diktat dressed in legal finery, then you are not a free human being.

Desperate to save their precious Euro at all costs, the Eurocrats and the national governments are all but guaranteeing a future bank run and financial panic as frightened people take their money and try to put it beyond the reach of grasping, blundering officials and quite possibly creating the very crash they’re trying to avoid.

With establishment politicians like these, is it any wonder people turn in frustration and anger to radical politics?

PS: And I wish the EU would stop giving Obama ideas…

via Bryan Preston

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Britain’s Green chickens are coming home to roost, as will ours, soon

Christopher Booker in last Saturday’s Telegraph: “It’s payback time…”

As the snow of the coldest March since 1963 continues to fall, we learn that we have barely 48 hours’ worth of stored gas left to keep us warm, and that the head of our second-largest electricity company, SSE, has warned that our generating capacity has fallen so low that we can expect power cuts to begin at any time. It seems the perfect storm is upon us.

The grotesque mishandling of Britain’s energy policy by the politicians of all parties, as they chase their childish chimeras of CO2-induced global warming and windmills, has been arguably the greatest act of political irresponsibility in our history.

Three more events last week brought home again just what a mad bubble of make-believe these people are living in. Under the EU’s Large Combustion Plants Directive, we lost two more major coal-fired power stations, Didcot A and Cockenzie, capable of contributing no less than a tenth to our average electricity demands. We saw a French state-owned company, EDF, being given planning permission to spend £14?billion on two new nuclear reactors in Somerset, but which it says it will only build, for completion in 10 years’ time, if it is guaranteed a subsidy that will double the price of its electricity. Then, hidden in the small print of the Budget, were new figures for the fast-escalating tax the Government introduces next week on every ton of CO2 emitted by fossil-fuel-powered stations, which will soon be adding billions of pounds more to our electricity bills every year.

Be sure to read the rest. Not only is the government in London heavily subsidizing uneconomic wind farms and granting needless subsidies in tribute to get nuclear plants built, but they’re doing all they can to drive coal plants out of business, even though coal plants are necessary as backup for those times when the wind doesn’t blow. Hence the warnings about blackouts in the dead of winter. Britain is looking at a new Dark Ages, one wholly of its own doing.

And before we cluck our tongues at our cousins’ folly, this is just the future Obama and the environmentalist movement would lead us to:

Booker is right that Britain’s energy policy is insanity. But what can we say about a nation –us– that sits atop almost unimaginably immense energy resources, enough to restore the cheap energy needed for prosperity and make us nearly energy independent, and yet fights tooth and nail  against developing it in the name of battling a problem that does not exist?

Madness!

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Greek soccer player banned for Nazi salute

Nah, not Fascist at all…

His excuse? “I’m too ignorant to know what I’m doing!”

Greek soccer player Giorgos Katidis has been banned from his national team for life after giving a Nazi salute while celebrating a goal in the topflight league.

Greece’s soccer federation said Sunday in a statement that the AEK Athens midfielder’s gesture “is a deep insult to all victims of Nazi brutality.”

The 20-year-old Katidis gave a Nazi salute after scoring the go-ahead goal Saturday in AEK’s 2-1 victory over Veria in the Greek league. He pleaded ignorance of the meaning of his gesture — right arm extended and hand straightened. He claimed on his Twitter account that he detests fascism.

My first reaction is “yeah, right.” The Nazis rampaged over Europe less than 80 years ago, and Greece was one of many nations subjected to conquest and a brutal occupation. Film, television, books, the Internet — all these make clear what that salute stood for. And given the rise of the fascist Golden Dawn party, Mr. Katidis’ protests are those either of a liar, or a very, very ignorant person.

That fascism is at all on the rise in Europe (Golden Dawn has spread to Germany, by some reports) is a result of the failure of the European political classes to govern responsibly, instead bribing their publics with ever-more generous social safety nets that are now so frayed thanks to aging populations and reckless public borrowing, that many are turning to far leftist politics (1) out of frustration and anger.

While a suspension for life seems harsh, particularly if Katidis really is just historically illiterate,  it’s a measure of how worried Greek and European officials are by the threat of radical politics rising from the EU’s economic troubles. As more Mediterranean countries fail to deal with crushing debt and high unemployment, all made worse by the one-size-fits-all Euro, we may well see many more Europeans who find fascist gestures, and the politics behind them, increasingly attractive.

Footnote:
(1) Remember, Fascism is a derivative of Socialist politics developed by Mussolini, who added the hyper-nationalist element, among other things. No matter how the Left tries to deny it, totalitarian statism is just their thing.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Disgraceful: UK sailor humiliated by Virgin Atlantic

“Welcome to fight for us, not welcome to fly us.”

If this had happened in the US… Well, let just say it wouldn’t happen here:

For 15 years she has proudly served her country as a Royal Navy engineer, risking her life in Afghanistan when she fought against the Taliban.

But far from showing Nicky Howse the respect she deserved as she flew back to her latest posting, Virgin Atlantic staff chose to humiliate her – by demanding that she remove her uniform because it was ‘offensive’.

They warned the 32-year-old helicopter technician she would not be allowed to fly unless she took off her combat fatigues and wore a sleep suit instead.

Petty Officer Howse is on a three-month deployment with a helicopter unit in the US, but had been home on compassionate leave to attend her grandfather’s funeral. She had worn her uniform without any problems on a Virgin flight from America to Britain the week before.

The incident happened as she waited for her return flight to Los Angeles from Heathrow on Monday.

She was confronted by a G4S security guard and Virgin Atlantic staff, who ordered her to change into pyjamas before boarding the jet.

They told her – wrongly – that it was the company’s policy not to allow military personnel to travel in uniform.

As Petty Officer Howse herself put it:

‘To clarify, a British airline who claims to be Britain’s flag carrier won’t allow a member of Britain’s armed forces to travel on their airline in uniform.’ Armed Forces rules state that a serviceman or woman can wear their uniforms voluntarily from their ‘residence to place of duty, irrespective of whether they travel by public or private transport, or on foot.’

That’s a fine “thank you for your service,” isn’t it?

A commenter at the Daily Mail site pointed out that G4S is the same firm that couldn’t properly handle security for the recent Olympics, necessitating the deployment of the British Army. Maybe their customers should reconsider hiring the services of such a bunch of incompetents.

Virgin has admitted the error and apologized to Petty Officer Howse. They ought to comp her a couple of free flights, too, while explaining to their staff that the British military is not the enemy.

Read the rest for further examples of the ill treatment of men and women who wear the Queen’s uniform. Something is very wrong in the UK, these days.

via ST’s Hot Headlines

Islamic terror plot foiled in UK

Their hero, Anwar al-Awlaki

We’d like to pretend the war with Muslims waging “jihad fi sabil Allah” is over, but they just won’t let us:

Four Islamic extremists admitted plotting a terrorist attack on British soil armed with guns and home-made bombs.

The men were caught after in a massive multi-million pound surveillance operation by police and the security services.

Hidden bugs recorded them discussing methods, materials and targets for a terrorist attack, including using improvised explosive devices.

They downloaded illicit online terrorist instructions, purchased survival equipment and collected thousands of pounds to fund the plot.

Investigators looked on as they organised and undertook physical training and prepared to send others to Al-Qaeda camps in Pakistan.

But they were arrested at their homes in Luton, Bedfordshire, following a huge operation by the police and the security services.

The men involved were Zahid Iqbal, 31, Mohammed Sharfaraz Ahmed, 25, Umar Arshad, 24, and Syed Farhan Hussain, 21.

The four were planning an attack they hoped would produce more casualties than the 7/7/05 attacks in London and create another “memorable date.” Fortunately, UK security services noted their suspicious activities and rounded them up before they could put their murderous act of devotion into operation.

Call it a needed reminder that they’re still trying to kill us.

via ST’s Hot Headlines

French minister commits unpardonable sin of telling truth: “We’re broke.”

And he’s deep in la merde, for it:

Michel Sapin made the gaffe in a radio interview, which left French President Francois Hollande and other ministers racing to undo the potential damage to the country’s reputation as a solid economy for investors.

On Monday, Mr Sapin said: “There is a state but it is a totally bankrupt state. That is why we had to put a deficit reduction plan in place, and nothing should make us turn away from that objective.”

The comments came as Mr Hollande attempts to improve the image of the French economy after pledging to reduce the country’s deficit by cutting spending by 60bn euros (£51.5bn) over the next five years and increasing taxes by 20bn euros.

It came as several high profile individuals, including the actor Gérard Depardieu, have left the country to avoid punitive taxes. Last week it transpired that Bernard Arnault, France’s richest man, had transferred his entire fortune to Belgium, where he hopes to gain citizenship.

Pierre Moscovici, the finance minister, said the comments by Mr Sapin were “inappropriate”. He added: “France is a really solvent country. France is a really credible country, France is a country that is starting to recover.”

Why do Moscovici’s claims remind me of Baghdad Bob?

Sapin later tried to “clarify” what he meant, saying France could still pay its bills, and he’s technically right; they’re not in danger of defaulting,  yet.

But what’s truly interesting is the public reaction to Minister Sapin’s description of France as a “bankrupt state”  — most of the public agrees with him:

But it now transpires that a large majority of his fellow countrymen share Mr Sapin’s view. In all 63 per cent agree that “in France, the state is bankrupt”, with 45 per cent saying the claim was “more or less justified” and 17 per cent feeling it was “totally justified”, according to a CSA poll for BFM TV.

You would think that, realizing that their nation is in a fiscal mess, French voters would not have voted for a government who only solution was to jack up taxes to confiscatory levels, leading to an exodus the most productive members of their population. Instead, they throw public fits over the least adjustment to their unsupportable welfare state. They see the problem, but they don’t see that it is them.

But before we in the States point and laugh too hard at France (some is always justified), keep one thing in mind: their debt-to GDP ratio (how much they owe vs. how wealth the nation creates) is at 91 percent. Imagine your credit card debt amounting to nine-tenths of your annual income, and you can see why someone would say they’re broke.

And in the United States? As of 2012, that same ratio stood at an estimated 100.8%, skyrocketing under Obama.

Merde, indeed.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

European Union or EUSSR? Brussels demands power to regulate press, fire journalists

“Enemy of the State”

If anyone had any notion that the European Union was anything but a bureaucratic dictatorship, this should open their eyes:

A European Union report has urged tight press regulation and demanded that Brussels officials are given control of national media supervisors with new powers to enforce fines or the sacking of journalists.

The “high level” recommendations that will be used to draft future EU legislation also attack David Cameron for failing to automatically implement proposals by the Lord Justice Leveson inquiry for a state regulation of British press.

A “high level” EU panel, that includes Latvia’s former president and a former German justice minister, was ordered by Neelie Kroes, European Commission vice-president, last year to report on “media freedom and pluralism”. It has concluded that it is time to introduce new rules to rein in the press.

“All EU countries should have independent media councils,” the report concluded.

“Media councils should have real enforcement powers, such as the imposition of fines, orders for printed or broadcast apologies, or removal of journalistic status.”

As well as setting up state regulators with draconian powers, the panel also recommended that the European Commission be placed in overall control in order to ensure that the new watchdogs do not breach EU laws.

(Emphases added)

I’m sure these new powers, if granted, will be used only for the common good, to ensure fair, sensitive journalism — as determined by a bunch of Eurocrats.

The danger of this is obvious: the power to fine or fire is the power to dictate, and the only reporters to retain their jobs will be those who say things pleasing to the mandarins in Brussels. It would be the death knell of free speech in Europe, for free speech is meaningless if it doesn’t include the right to say things that make the powerful uncomfortable, or even simply to offend. A free, unfettered press is essential to a democratic society, and if the press is fettered, so is the citizen, who becomes a subject. The society is no longer free.

The article points out that these proposed regulations are aimed largely at the British press, which has a large Euro-skeptic element and regularly ticks off the European Union elite.  Quite unsurprisingly, then, the Brussels initiative has set up howls of outrage in Britain, from whom we inherited our traditions of free speech and press freedom. With Prime Minister Cameron promising a referendum on a new arrangement, one can only hope the majority of Britons will see the danger of staying a part of this “brave new Euro-world” and vote to get the hell out.

Indeed, they may already ready be headed for the door.

PS: This article reminds me yet again how rare, fragile, and precious our traditions of free speech –the ability to speak one’s mind to the powerful without fear of reprisal– really are. In Europe, where on the Continent the governing tradition is top-down, the natural reaction of the government is to suppress annoying speech. (And in America, we see twitches of that from the Left.) Even in Australia, the people of which are our close political cousins, there is no recognized natural right of free speech. It is a right that we must not only assert and defend, but actively exercise, especially when it itself is under threat.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Olga from Greece Has a Lithuanian Soulmate Mooching in the United Kingdom

Reblogged from International Liberty:

• 

The welfare state creates some amazingly pathetic and disgusting individuals.

• In the battle of the bums, we've had the spectacle of "Diaper Man" vs "Footless Hans."
• In the contest for most despicable moocher, we have the "Florida Pedophiles" vs the "Gimme Babymaker."
• And the fight for most pathetic victim of dependency features the "

Read more… 937 more words

And if you don't believe it can happen here, click the link, read, and get angry.

More Stomach-Turning Horror Stories from the UK Government-Run Healthcare System

Reblogged from International Liberty:

• 

During the Obamacare debate, Paul Krugman told us we could ignore stories about what was happening across the ocean, writing that “In Britain, the government itself runs the hospitals and employs the doctors. We’ve all heard scare stories about how that works in practice; these stories are false.”

Every so often, I wonder how Krugman would define a "scare story." How about starving babies to death, as…

Read more… 685 more words

If you want to see what's in store for us under Obamacare, just look across the Atlantic.

As in Brussels, so in D.C.?

Call it the EU-USA:

What Mr. Hannan accuses the EU of –spending more to buy the votes of client groups regardless of the harm it does to the economy– is a charge that could be laid just as easily against the statists in Washington.

Or Sacramento, for that matter.

A Swiss-Style Spending Cap Would Have Prevented the Current Fiscal Mess in America

Reblogged from International Liberty:

• 

I greatly admire Switzerland's "debt brake" because it's really a spending cap.

Politicians are not allowed to increase spending faster than average revenue growth over a multi-year period, which basically means spending can only grow at the rate of inflation plus population.

Theoretically, taxes could be hiked to allow more spending, but that hasn't happened. The Swiss are very good about voting against tax increases…

Read more… 671 more words

Many on the liberal left wish we were more like Europe. In one sense, I agree: As Mitchell shows in the linked post, if we had the spending cap Switzerland employs, we wouldn't be stuck in this fiscal morass.

In the EU, you may not say water fights dehydration

Caution. May not cure thirst.

Yes, you read that right:

Drinking water does not ease dehydration, the European Union has ruled – and anyone who disagrees faces two years in prison.

The decision – after three years of discussions – results from an attempt by two German academics to test EU advertising rules which set down when companies can claim their products reduce the risk of disease.

The academics asked for a ruling on a convoluted statement which, in short, claimed that water could reduce dehydration.

Dehydration is defined as a shortage of water in the body – but the European Food Standards Authority decided the statement could not be allowed.

The ruling, announced after a conference of 21 EU-appointed scientists in Parma and which means that bottled water companies cannot claim their product stops people’s bodies drying out, was given final approval this week by European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso.

Yesterday, Tory MEP Roger Helmer said: ‘This is stupidity writ large. The euro is burning, the EU is falling apart and yet here they are worrying about the obvious qualities of water. If ever there were an episode which demonstrates the folly of the great European project, then this is it.’

As the trapped-within-the-EU friend who alerted me to this pointed out:

Just wait, in four or five years you have the same stupidity.

Hey, with our EPA and Obamacare now being implemented… less than a year, tops. Obama’s that good. 

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)