Greece: Socialism's Never Ending Story!

By Rich Kozlovich

GREEK VOTE JOLTS PRESS...

 

Updated at 3:00 pm

 

What happens if the EU or the IMF decides Greece should have complete debt forgiveness? Spain, Italy and Portugal are waiting in the wings.

 

Well then - hey EU/IMF I have a loan I would really like forgiven - can you give me a hand? After all, how am I expected to repay a debt on a loan arrangement I willingly entered into and still have money for a good time?

 

I hope you're not going to start with all that "responsibility" and "integrity" crapola on me? This is a wonderful opportunity for you to demonstrate capitalism has a heart and relieve me of any responsibility while never questioning my integrity! See - Problem solved.

 

Oh, by the way. To show what a good fellow I am, I still want to be a customer. I saw this really hot Mercedes Benz at the dealership yesterday and I'm going to need a loan to buy it. Since I no longer have to repay a loan, which was a clear act of Corporate Social Irresponsibility on the bank’s part, I can afford it now. When can I expect the check.

EURO FALLS AFTER GREECE VOTES...
Jubilation in Syntagma Square tinged with fear...
BANKS PREPARE TO RAID DEPOSITS...
Panicked residents stock up on essentials...
Quartet of crises threatens Europe's core...
Merkel, Hollande Call for Summit...
Brussels weighs next steps...
STOCKS ROCKED...

FARAGE: 'European Union dying before our eyes'...
Merkel's Biggest Challenge...
48 Hours Away From Unrest?
Fear and trepidation in Athens' Beverly Hills...
EURO FALLS AFTER GREECE VOTES 'NO'...
Jubilation in Syntagma Square tinged with fear...
BANKS PREPARE TO RAID DEPOSITS...
Capital Controls Extended Through Wednesday...
Panicked residents stock up on essentials...
Drug companies still supplying...
Latin America celebrates...

Quotes of the Day!

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick

"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy; its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery." - Winston Churchill

Cartoon of the Day!

Will Greece Be The Lesson in Socialism, Economics and Stupidity the EU Needs!

By Rich Kozlovich

Greece is toast and the EU is doomed! Elena Becatoros and Demetris Nellas wrote the article, Greece enters uncharted territory after referendum 'no' vote, saying:

“Greece lurched into uncharted territory and an uncertain future in Europe's common currency Sunday after voters overwhelmingly rejected demands by international creditors for more austerity measures in exchange for a bailout of its bankrupt economy. Results showed 61 percent voted "no," compared with 38 percent for "yes," with 93 percent of the vote counted. The referendum - Greece's first in more than four decades - came amid severe restrictions on financial transactions in the country, imposed last week to stem a bank run that accelerated after the vote was called thousands of jubilant government supporters celebrated in Syntagma Square in front of Parliament, waving Greek flags and chanting "No, no, no!" It was a decisive victory for Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who had gambled the future of his 5-month-old leftist government - and his country - in an all-or-nothing game of brinkmanship with Greece's creditors from other European countries that use the euro currency, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank."Today we celebrate the victory of democracy," Tsipras said......"a bright day in the history of Europe." "We proved even in the most difficult circumstances that democracy won't be blackmailed"

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras - are you really that stupid? Just how is insisting you pay your bills and repay the money you borrowed with promises you clearly were unable to keep and clearly never intended to keep - blackmail? Where are you seeing a bright day in all of this? As for the brain dead people who applaud you –they’re blithering idiots.

Those of you who've been reading P and D for some time know I believe Greece is toast and should be! This week a friend was telling me how badly he felt for the Greeks. He said he was shocked they can't even draw all their money out of the bank – “How can they do that”, he asked? I told him this was just the beginning. The government will eventually confiscate all the money in the banks, and now it's already being talked about. I also told him I wasn't the least bit sorry for the Greeks - they brought this on themselves and they deserve whatever happens to them.

He wasn’t alone in his disbelief though. In Mark Steyn’s article, Big Fat Greeks, and Weddings he quoted Angeliki Psarianou, a 67-year-old retired public servant, who stood in the drizzle after arriving too late at one empty ATM in the Greek capital. "How can something like this happen without prior warning?" His answer to Ms. Psarianou? “Don't you just hate it when the Germans refuse to re-fill your ATM?” Especially since she’s a retired government “worker” (later you will see why I deliberately put that in quotes) is one of the major reasons Greece is going down the toilet.

Somehow they think this vote gives them leverage with creditors and lenders. Why? Are they that delusional? Or is it possible the birth place of logic has now abandoned any resemblance to their ancestors and gotten completely stupid? Both! When one adopts socialism it requires a level of delusional stupidity that's incomprehensible to the rational mind. What exactly do they think they have to bargain with? They have no assets, they have no money, and although on paper they should have a thriving economy – they’re in the toilet.

Here's what fascinates me. The population of Greece is 11.03 million people. The population of Ohio is almost 11.59 million people, and the population of the Greater New York City Metropolitan area is 19 million 950 thousand people. How did they get into such trouble with that few people? It's simple. They have a burdensome incompetent bureaucracy, their citizenry demand great benefits and yet fail to pay their taxes, there is a high level of corruption and they're ability to compete in the global marketplace is low.

If they can't pay the interest on the loans they already have, what makes them think they can convince someone to give them more loans. One Greek citizen, Yiannis Gkovesis 26, says "We don't want austerity measures anymore. This has been happening for the last five years and it has driven so many into poverty, we simply can't take any more austerity," First of all, the so-called austerity programs never went into effect, so how did he suffer?

Steyn points out another major problem. Their birth rate! He notes: “The United States has a fertility rate of around 2.1 — or just over two kids per couple. Greece, as I pointed out in America Alone, has one of the lowest fertility rates on the planet - 1.3 children per couple, which places it in the "lowest-low" demographic category from which no society has recovered and, according to the UN, 178th out of 195 countries. In practical terms, it means 100 grandparents have 42 grandkids – ie, the family tree is upside down.”

The Greeks somehow think 42 future people will pay off the waste, corruption, greed and profligacy of 100 people today. Steyn goes on to say:

Greek public sector employees are entitled not only to 14 monthly paychecks per annum during their "working" lives, but also 14 monthly retirement checks per annum till death. Who's going to be around to pay for that?

So you can't borrow against the future because, in the crudest sense, you don't have one. Greeks in the public sector retire at 58, which sounds great. But, when ten grandparents have four grandchildren, who pays for you to spend the last third of your adult life loafing around?

Greek public servants have their nose to the grindstone 24/7: They work 24 hours a week for seven months of the year. It's not just that every year you receive 14 monthly payments, but that you only do about 30 weeks' work for it. For many public-sector "workers", the work day ends at 2.30pm. Gosh, when you retire on your 14 monthly pension payments, you scarce notice the difference, except for a few freed-up mornings...

Greeks are going to learn about reality the hard way –via some very unpleasant experiences. The problem with socialism is you eventually run out of other people’s money and when they finally realize they’ve nothing to bargain with rioting will undoubtedly break out as it has in the past.

 

So who cares?

In Defense of Donald Trump!

Media Hide Facts, Call Everyone Else a Liar, By Ann Coulter

When Donald Trump said something not exuberantly enthusiastic about Mexican immigrants, the media’s response was to boycott him. One thing they didn’t do was produce any facts showing he was wrong. Trump said: “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems to us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” The first thing a news fact-checker would have noticed is:

THE GOVERNMENT WON’T TELL US HOW MANY IMMIGRANTS ARE COMMITTING CRIMES IN AMERICA…….

The only reason our newspapers aren’t chockablock with reports of Latino sexual predators is that they are too busy broadcasting hoax news stories about non-existent gang-rapes by white men: the Duke lacrosse team (Crystal Gail Mangum), University of Virginia fraternity members (Jackie Coakley) and military contractors in Iraq (Jamie Leigh Jones)……. The media knew from the beginning that the monstrous gang-rape and murder of Jennifer Ertman, 14, and Elizabeth Pena, 16, in Houston in 1993 was instigated by Jose Ernesto Medellin, an illegal immigrant from Mexico. But over the next decade, with more than a thousand news stories on that case, the fact that the lead rapist was a Mexican was not mentioned once, according to the Nexis archives……Who is this media cover-up helping? Not the American girls getting raped……..To Read More...

America's Trump Card Trumping the Left, By Lloyd Marcus

Catching bits of the news, my wife asked, “Did Donald Trump say something against Mexicans?” I replied, “No, Trump simply dared to state statistical facts exposing the high criminal element among the illegals flooding across our border.” I've read horrific articles about the torture, rape and murder of Mexican women and children during their illegal journey to America, not to mention the gang members and other bad people invading our homeland. The probability of getting raped is so high crossing the border illegally that women take birth control.

And yet Trump was not supposed to alert the American people. The left immediately went into attack and destroy mode, trying to brand Trump a hater of Mexicans. The left had a cow when Trump stated the truth because welcoming illegals, regardless of their caliber, is how the left restocks the Democratic Party with new uneducated and unskilled future voters who will be dependent on government and vote for Democrats, who promise more freebies. To silence and hopefully destroy Trump, the left employed its standard never failing tactic of changing the subject and taking its opponent's comments to the extreme. Case in point: addressing illegal immigration means that Trump hates Mexicans. ……To Read More…..

Quote of the Day!

"The worst difficulties from which we suffer do not come from  without. They come from within. They do not come from the cottages of the wage-earners. They come from a peculiar type of brainy people always found in our county, who, if they add something to its culture, take much from its strength.  Our difficulties come from the mood of unwarrantable self-abasement into which we have been cast by a powerful section of our own  intellectuals. They come from the acceptance of defeatist doctrines by a large proportion of our politicians. But what have they to offer but a  vague internationalism, a squalid materialism, and the promise of  impossible Utopias?" - Winston Churchill, 1933

Racing Through History

Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog 15 Comments

The return of the Confederacy was averted in the summer of 2015 when major retailers frantically scoured through their vast offerings to purge any images of a car from the Dukes of Hazzard. If not for their quick thinking, armies of men in gray might have come marching down the streets of New York and San Francisco to stop off for an Iced Mocha Frappucino ™ at a local Starbucks before restoring slavery.

History will little note nor long remember the tired wage slaves making $7.25 an hour while checking Amazon and eBay databases for tin models of an orange car with a Confederate flag on top. During this courageous defense of the homeland from the scourge of a mildly politically incorrect 80s show, Hillary Clinton committed her own unpardonable racist hate crime by saying, “All lives matter”.

The politically correct term is, “Black lives matter.”

Even while our own Boss Hoggs in DC and SF are locking up the Duke boys as a symbol of racism, they are loudly arguing that black lives matter, all lives don’t. The proportion that the weight of a life should be measured by race is the sort of idea that we might have associated with slavery. Today it’s an idea that we associate with racial tolerance as we heal our nation’s racial wounds one race riot at a time.

Romanticizing the South means a whipping from our cultural elite. Instead of romanticizing the culture that bought slaves, they romanticize the Middle Eastern and African cultures that sold them the slaves.

When Obama condemned Christianity for the Crusades, only a thousand years too late, in attendance was the Foreign Minister of Sudan; a country that practices slavery and genocide. Obama could have taken time out from his rigorous denunciation of the Middle Ages to speak truth to the emissary of a Muslim Brotherhood regime whose leader is wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity. But our moral liberals spend too much time romanticizing actual slaver cultures.

It’s a lot easier for Obama to get in his million dollar Cadillac with its 5-inch thick bulletproof windows, a ride Boss Hogg could only envy, and chase down a couple of good ole boys than it is to condemn a culture that committed genocide in our own time, not in 1099, and that keeps slaves today, not in 1815.

Even while the Duke boys were being chased through Georgia, Obama appeared at an Iftar dinner; an event at which Muslims emulate Mohammed, who had more slaves than Robert E. Lee. There are no slaves in Arlington House today, but in the heartlands of Islam, from Saudi mansions to ISIS dungeons, there are still slaves, laboring, beaten, bought, sold, raped and disposed of in Mohammed’s name.

Slavery does not exist under the Confederate flag eagerly being pulled down. It does exist under the black and green flags of Islam rising over mosques in Iraq, Saudi Arabia and America today.

In our incredibly tolerant culture, it has become politically incorrect to watch the General Lee jump a fence or a barn, but paying tribute to the culture that sent the slaves here and that still practices slavery is the culturally sensitive thing to do. In 2015, slavery is no longer freedom, but it certainly is tolerance.

And it’s not just about Islam.

If romanticizing Dixie is wrong, so is romanticizing those ancient African cultures so beloved by amateur anthropologists and professional sociologists with more plastic tribal jewelry than sense. Slavery was an indigenous African and Middle Eastern practice. Not to mention an indigenous practice in America among indigenous cultures.

 

If justice demands that we pull down the Confederate flag everywhere, even from the top of the orange car sailing through the air in the freeze frame of an old television show, then what possible justification is there for all the faux Aztec knickknacks? Even the worst Southern plantation owners didn’t tear out the hearts of their slaves on top of pyramids. The romanticization of Aztec brutality plays a crucial role in the mythology of Mexican nationalist groups like La Raza promoting the Reconquista of America today.

Black nationalists romanticize the slave-holding civilization of Egypt despite the fact that the narrative of the liberation of the Hebrew slaves from bondage played a crucial role in the end of slavery in America. The endless stories about the “Amazons” of the African kingdom of Dahomey neatly fit into the leftist myth of a peaceful matriarchal Africa disrupted by European colonialism, but Dahomey ran on slavery.

The “Amazons” helped capture slaves for the Atlantic slave trade. White and black liberals are romanticizing the very culture that captured and sold their forefathers into slavery. “In Dahomey”, the first major mainstream black musical was about African-Americans moving to Dahomey. By then the French had taken over old Dahomey and together with the British had put an end to the slave trade.

The French dismantled the “Amazons” and freed many of Dahomey’s slaves only for the idiot descendants of both groups to romanticize the noble last stand of Dahomey fighting for the right to export black slaves to Cuba and condemn the European liberators who put a stop to that atrocity.

If we crack down on romanticizing Dixie, how can we possibly justify romanticizing Dahomey or the Aztecs or Mohammed? If slavery and racism are wrong, then they are wrong across the board.

Even by the miserably racist standard under which all lives don’t matter, only black lives matter, Dahomey and Mohammed had bought, sold and killed enough black lives to be frowned upon.

If we go back far enough in time, most cultures kept slaves. The Romans and Greeks certainly did. That’s why the meaningful standard is not whether a culture ever had slaves, but whether it has slaves today. If we are going to eradicate the symbols of every culture that ever traded in slaves, there will be few cultural symbols that will escape unscathed. But the academics who insist on cultural relativism in 19th century Africa, reject it in 19th century South Carolina thereby revealing their own racism. And so instead of fighting actual modern day slavery in Africa and the Middle East, social justice warriors are swarming to invade Hazzard County.

Most of the cultures of the past that we admire, respect and even romanticize had slaves. When we look back at their achievements and even try to forge some connection to them, it does not have to mean an endorsement of their worst habits. This is a concept that liberals understood, but that leftists reject. The recent hysteria reminds us that the nuanced reason of the former has been replaced by the irrational destructive impulses of the latter. The left is so obsessed with creating utopias of the future that like the Taliban or ISIS, it destroys the relics of past societies that do not measure up to its impossible standards. And then it replaces them with imaginary utopias of the past that never existed.

 

As Ben Carson pointed out, we will not get rid of racism by banning the Confederate flag. Even when it is used at its worst, by the likes of Dylann Storm Roof, it is a symptom, not the problem. Roof was not radicalized by the dead Confederacy, but by the racial tensions kicked off by the Trayvon Martin case.

The same racial tensions that led to the murder of two police officers by a #BlackLivesMatter protester in New York City led to the massacre of nine black congregants in a church in Charleston. This surge of violence has its roots in racist activism by Obama and his supporters seeking power and political gain, but feeding racial tensions for political purposes eventually risks leading to actual violence.

The Confederate flag is a matter of history. The racial tensions stirred up by Obama have actually gotten people killed. Slavery is not making a comeback and Robert E. Lee will not come riding into San Francisco any time soon.

The Civil War ended long ago. The country would be a better place if modern racists who believe that some lives, whether black or white, matter more than others would stop trying to start one.

American Thinker: My Independence Day Picks!

Oregon bakery owners to pay $135,000 to gay couple and lose their right to free speech
By Rick Moran

The former owners of an Oregon bakery who refused to bake a cake for a gay couple's wedding are being forced to pay damages in the amount of $135,000 and have been ordered to cease and desist "from publishing, circulating, issuing or displaying, or causing to be published … any communication to the effect that any of the accommodations … will be refused, withheld from or denied to, or that any discrimination be made against, any person on account of their sexual orientation." Aaron and Melissa Klein, whose bakery "Sweet Cakes by Melissa" was forced to close because of the decision, say, “According to the state of Oregon we neither have freedom of religion or freedom of speech.”

Daily Signal:

The cease and desist came about after Aaron and Melissa Klein participated in an interview with Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins. During the interview, Aaron said among other things, “This fight is not over. We will continue to stand strong.”

Lawyers for plaintiffs, Rachel and Laurel Bowman-Cryer, argued that in making this statement, the Kleins violated an Oregon law banning people from acting on behalf of a place of public accommodation (in this case, the place would be the Kleins’ former bakery) to communicate anything to the effect that the place of public accommodation would discriminate.

Administrative Law Judge Alan McCullough, who is employed by the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries and was appointed by Avakian, threw out the argument in the “proposed order” he issued back in April.

But today, Avakian, who was in charge of making the final ruling in the case—and is also an elected politician—reversed that decision.

It's mind-boggling that judges like this guy exist in America. But it gets worse, according to the Kleins' lawyer:

“Brad Avakian has been outspoken throughout this case about his intent to ‘rehabilitate’ those whose beliefs do not conform to the state’s ideas,” she told The Daily Signal. “Now he has ruled that the Kleins’ simple statement of personal resolve to be true to their faith is unlawful. This is a brazen attack on every American’s right to freely speak and imposes government orthodoxy on those who do not agree with government sanctioned ideas.”

Perhaps the judge would like to set up re-education camps so these misguided Christians can be "rehabilitated."

The Kleins aren't done yet:

In their Facebook post, the Kleins signaled their intention to appeal Avakian’s ruling, writing, “We will not give up this fight and we will not be silenced,” already perhaps putting themselves at risk of violating the cease and desist.

Remember: You will be forced to care.

Leftist and Islamic Policymakers Outlaw the Truth

By Sonia Bailley

No need to worry, the recent Ramadan triple slaughter fest in Tunisia, France and Kuwait has nothing to do with Islam. There is no linkage between Islam and terrorism, and the word Islamic need not be used to describe the terrorists because their murderous and barbaric ideology has nothing to do with Islam. Islam is, after all, a religion of peace that is being hijacked, perverted and distorted by only a small percentage of savage extremists.

Welcome to the false narrative that Western leaders, mainstream media outlets, and academic elites are enforcing on civil society to help shape the public’s perception of Islam so that it is always presented in a positive light. Any form of expression that reflects badly on Islam is in violation of Islamic law, which forbids any criticism of Islam, even what that criticism expresses the truth. Stories that are reported according to this narrative need not have anything to do with factual accuracy or truth. Both the 2009 Fort Hood massacre in Texas and the beheading in Vaughan Foods in Oklahoma last September were reported as workplace violence and not Islamic terrorism......

This Independence Day, We Need James Otis

By Mark J. Fitzgibbons

As Americans gather this Independence Day weekend, many will read the Declaration of Independence. When we get to the line, “He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance,” we may wish to tip our hats to James Otis. John Adams wrote about James Otis’ fiery argument in court against the Writs of Assistance in 1761: “[T]he child independence was then and there born.” A 1783 eulogy poem written by Thomas Dawes described Otis as “first in patriot fame.” The Writs of Assistance, a method of search and seizure known as “general warrants,” were authorized by Parliament. Otis nevertheless called these institutionalized violations of liberty “illegal.”That certainly contrasts with the more milquetoast terms such as “lawless” and“overreach” used today to describe government’s unlawful and unconstitutional acts.

General warrants were used in England to suppress religious and political dissent, and were also being used to regulate and stifle commerce in favor of cronies of the Crown. Boston merchants hired Otis, previously the government’s lawyer, to argue their case. Otis called the Writs of Assistance“the worst instrument of arbitrary power, the most destructive of English liberty and the fundamental principles of law, that ever was found in an English law-book.”….

The Value-Driven Conservatism of July 4

By Bruce Walker

The Fourth of July is the perfect time for conservatives to recall that we hold to our positions – or at least that we should hold to them – not because conservative principles will help the economy or make us safer or cause government to operate more effectively. Markets do produce prosperity in ways that statism does not – but Adam Smith, who pioneered this notion, did not publish his Wealth of Nations until after our Declaration of Independence. It is a happy byproduct of our love of liberty that liberty helps create wealth, but the men who signed the Declaration of Independence often condemned themselves and their families to poverty because of their value-driven conservatism.

The way to get rich quick today is to slavishly champion the most awful leftist lies and then rake in money from government awards, contracts, tax-exemption, and the like, or to become a lazy professor writing expensive textbooks that trapped students have to buy…and so on. Those men who signed the Declaration of Independence, and even more the men and muskets of unpaid, ordinary Americans who fought the world’s first superpower, the British Empire, certainly were not fighting to be safer. Those not killed or crammed into ghoulish prison boats or maimed knew that a noose awaited them if their cause lost, as most people thought it would…….Our Declaration of Independence could not be said to make government work better, either. Our Continental Congress was a loose, illegal group that printed worthless paper money that was “not worth a Continental” and that was as often as not on the run from British armies. During our War of Independence, it might fairly be said that there was no real government in the rebellious colonies, and the Constitution was 13 years away…..

United We Stood, Divided We'll Fall

By Peggy Ryan

News that the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage ignited joyous celebration among gays and the media. Images assaulted us on all sides, victory parades showcasing same-sex couples entwined in ecstasy, media gushing praise, and #LoveWins rocking the Twitter universe. They won, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that same-sex couples can marry anywhere, anytime. By nullifying state laws, dismissing individuals’ religious beliefs, and totally ignoring the Constitution, they trumped it all and won. Except it wasn’t a gay victory, not really. Oh the gay community and their supporters will argue it was a huge win, an in-your-face slam-dunk. But beneath all the hoopla, behind the well-designed scenes, the gays lost. We all lost because the real victor, the hands-down big winner is government. You see, the dirty little secret is that gays, like blacks and Hispanics, are being used to declaw the silent majority. Politicians have tried over and over again to stop those constitutional nuts who keep waving the American flag and quoting the Constitution. It hasn’t been easy, these conservatives have been the majority since colonial days. They still are the majority, the silent majority; too silent.…..

Reparations: The Next Liberal Thing?

By Claire Hawks

The level of overreaction in this country seems to have reached a fever pitch since the killing of nine black people in Charleston, SC by a highly disturbed young man. First the calls for banning the Confederate flag began, followed by calls for the removal of statuary of anyone having anything to do with the Confederacy. Louis Farrakhan has called for banning the American flag, and Malik Shabazz, the head of the New Black Panthers, has called for the killing of "slave masters." The logical progression would seem to be that there will again be legislation introduced in Congress for reparations to be paid to black people for the enslavement of their ancestors. Let's look at reparations logically, not emotionally.

The discussion in America has always centered on the descendants of American slaves feeling that they are owed reparations for their ancestors being held in slavery. There is no doubt that slavery was and is a horrible thing. No person or persons should ever be allowed to own another. But slavery has existed in the human race for millennia. In 1760 BC, the Code of Hammurabi, in the first recorded instance of slavery, referred to slavery as an established institution. No doubt there was slavery prior to this recorded history, and, unfortunately, it exists to this day in some parts of the world. I see some distinct problems with paying reparations to descendants of former slaves. I'm sure there are others....

The White Privilege Lie

By Eugene Slaven

Of all the invectives launched against the United States by the resurgent American Left, the charge that in America, White Privilege reigns supreme is the most insidious and culturally ruinous. Its intent is unambiguous: leftists perpetuate the White Privilege lie to smear America and its institutions as inherently racist, and therefore unworthy of adulation and in need of fundamental socioeconomic transformation. The ultimate power of the White Privilege calumny lies in its capacity to impugn the virtue of American patriotism and the idea of American exceptionalism. The Radical Left’s aversion to America is well documented. Rooted in a perverse contempt for capitalism and Western culture, leftists perennially seek to discredit the view that America is exceptional or even good. Engraining in our culture the White Privilege lie is an effective means to achieving that destructive end. After all, how can a racist nation be noble and moral, never mind exceptional? What kind of a morally and intellectually bankrupt person could be a patriot of a racist nation?.........

Organized mob (of no particular race, according to media) ransacks a Walmart, attacks handicapped man in motorizedcart

By Thomas Lifson

The fragile bonds of civilization that keep society peaceful and orderly are fraying in the face of mobs organized online. Last Sunday, an organized mob of about four dozen people attacked a Walmart in Macon, Georgia, intentionally doing damage to displays and merchandise and dragging a man out of motorized cart and throwing him to the floor. The Macon Telegraph reports:…………The odd (well, actually quite common) thing about this report and all the others I could find (including ABC News and Newsmax) is that in this age of hyper-consciousness about diversity, nobody dared notice that in the videos taken from multiple cameras (see embedded videos below), all of the miscreants appear to be black. This just shows the taboos that operate in American society and journalism. The endless propaganda that holds America to be a terrible racist place that has oppressed blacks is having predictable consequences, and these consequences are being erased from the public's notice insofar as possible. This sort of thing never ends well.

Videos from the store’s surveillance cameras:……

 

Mr. Sulu in racist rant against Clarence Thomas

By Rick Moran

 

George Takei, better known as Star Trek's Mr. Sulu, has been a gay activist for many years. Apparently, he's a sore winner as well. Responding to a thoughtful dissent by Justice Clarence Thomas to the gay marriage case, Takei called the associate justice to the Supreme Court a "clown in blackface."…..What happened to Takei's family was inexcusable, but he never explains how the government "took" their dignity. How can government take your dignity unless you give it away? Thomas made the same point about slavery. Even the most vicious mistreatment by white masters could not steal the human dignity that all people possess if they choose not to lose it. Dignity shines the brightest when it is challenged the most. Takei is not just wrong. He is a racist. What did Thomas's color have to do with his legal thinking? Judging an individual by the group like Takei has done is ignorant, and referring to Thomas as a fake black is beyond the pale. Like all liberals, he won't apologize or back down. But he should.

 

Mark Levin: The name 'Democratic Party' should be banned for racism

By Newsmachete

 

Now that we're in a new movement to ban the Confederate flag from computer games and old television shows, talk show host Mark Levin has jumped on the bandwagon, suggesting we ban the name "Democratic Party." Levin says this is because the Democratic Party has such a racist past. It was the party of slavery, after all, the party who fought against Abraham Lincoln's efforts to free the slaves. The Democratic Party was also the party of segregation for decades. Former Senate majority leader Robert Byrd was an official in the Ku Klux Klan. Hugo Black, FDR's appointment to the Supreme Court, was a lawyer for the Ku Klux Klan. FDR himself locked up most of our Japanese-American population in camps simply because of their ethnicity. Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, signed a law making interracial marriage illegal, the army was segregated, and Wilson supported Jim Crow laws in the South. Democrat Bill Clinton praised Democratic senator William Fulbright, a segregationist…..

Editor's Note:  After reading your picks from this list I would like for everyone to read my article of June 28th,   We Are What We Stand For!

Is the Media Silent on Tim Hunt Accuser Connie St Louis’s Lies Because of Her ‘Black Privilege’?

By Milo Yiannopoulos

It’s terrible that by mere accident of birth, some people are afforded benefits and opportunities that are denied to others.  That’s why I think Connie St Louis, the black female journalism professor whose malicious slander led to the virtual destruction of a Nobel Laureate’s career, needs to urgently check her privilege. Because unlike most people in the country, it seems she can get away with murder, thanks to her gender and, yes, her skin colour.

St Louis is responsible for the sacking of Sir Tim Hunt, a Nobel prize-winning biochemist who became the target of an online lynch mob after his comments about women in science were taken out of context……St Louis, eager to combat damaging stereotypes, immediately went off crying to the media........her resume describes her as an “award winning freelance broadcaster, writer, and scientist” who “presents and produces a range of programmes for BBC Radio 4 and BBC World Service” and “writes for numerous outlets, including the Independent, the Daily Mail, the Guardian and the Sunday Times…[yet she ] she had only written one article for the Guardian, in 2013…..[the] Joseph Rowntree fellowship which she received to write and publish a book….ten years later has yet to produce a completed work……. St Louis has lied about her CV, and she has lied about Tim Hunt.

Anyone else would be fired on the spot.

Quote of the Day

Once, when I was teaching at an institution that bent over backward for foreign students, I was asked in class one day: "What is your policy toward foreign students?"   My reply was: "To me, all students are the same. I treat them all the same and hold them all to the same standards."  The next semester there was an organized boycott of my classes by foreign students. When people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like discrimination. - Thomas Sowell

Sustainability Project, Part II

By Rich Kozlovich

Sustainable development is a phrase that's being bandied around everywhere these days. It's promoted by the United Nations as the answer to every problem in every aspect of human activity: sustainable development in agriculture, sustainable development in banking, sustainable development in tourism, sustainable development in education, and more. Let's get this right.  Sustainable development is just another effort by the left to take commonly understood words and re-define them in support of an irrational, misanthropic and morally defective ideology. Socialism! 

P.T. Barnum would have been truly impressed with this trompe l'oeil, for what better way to deflect attention away from themselves, the real perpetrators of the economic mess in which the world finds itself.  And now, because they've adopted and promoted this phrase - sustainable develoment - and tout it as a philosophy, we're to believe the economic incompetents who run these socialist governments, including the United States, have an economic vision that can be implemented with them in control and it will work to humanities benefit!  We desparately need to explore this.

Just as when they use the phrase “it’s for the children” when they want some pesticide banned - after all, who could be against something that's "for the children" - they resort to these emotional appeals to prevent you from looking deeper into what they’re really promoting.   Their policies haven't been "for the children", it been  “to the children”.  For over 50 years those policies have devastated the children of the third world terribly.

Correspondingly, we had better look more deeply into the phrase “sustainable development” when they talk about economic development.  After all - who can be against sustainability? After all isn’t sustainability something that can be done over and over again!  Who can be against development?  Isn’t development about creating more and better ways to live!  What can be wrong with any of that?

Let’s think about this for a second.  The words sustainability and development can easily be defined separately, but can they be defined as a phrase?  Are they even compatible as a philosophy?  Ask ourselves this question.   Is anything sustainable if there’s development?  We will explore that!

What happens when the two are combined and defined illogically and in a way that will generate a diametrically different goal than either sustainability or development would mean independently? What happens when the real goal isn’t the leftist mantra – we can fix everything if the world just adopts our vision of sustainable development and give us the power to define it, and unendingly re-define it, as we see fit to meet needs that only we can understand and implement according to some unknown formula?  What if the real goal is global governance under the auspices of the United Nations?  

Independently both of these words are easily definable. The trick is to put these words together in order to create a phrase that is so meaningless anyone can attribute any philosophy to it they wish and call their policy “sustainable development”.

In reality the term sustainable development as a philosophy is a logical fallacy because it has no logical foundation.    Who decides what’s sustainable, and for whom?  Who decides some practice or other is or isn’t worth developing?

There are no identifiable parameters for a universal definition or modalities of action to which everyone can agree.  As a result there can be no logical foundation from which to make viable verifiable determinations for what needs to be done.  That leaves opinion - not facts, not science, not history, not results – just someone’s opinion as to how the world should function.  Make no mistake about this.  If the world accepts this there will be no level of individuality that will be tolerated, including the real foundation for economic sustainability or development – personal property rights. 

Here in the United States that is now, and has been, the thrust of these people from the beginning.  The elimination of personal property rights by use of the Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, via their agents of tyranny at the EPA, the Wildlife Service and the Army Corp of Engineers.

They claim sustainable development is to support current and future generations. Both of which are completely incomprehensible for central planning purposes, especially by bureaucrats who’ve never had a real job. Who knows what future generations need?  Who knows what developments will arise that will change the needs of society today.  Who knows what developments will be thwarted by central planning meddling?   Who’s to say what’s best for current or future generations, and how do we know their goals and plans are benign?

Especially since - as a group – the sustainable development mob thinks – mostly privately lest the world find out how insane their vision of the world really is – the world has between four and six billion too many people.  So why does anyone think a massive infusion of regulations and taxes implemented by an unconnected, unaccountable, unconscionable United Nations bureaucracy dominated by tyrants should regulate sustainability? 

The reality is that sustainability has no need of government at all.  Actual sustainability is self regulating! Either something can be done or it can’t.  If it can’t be done people will stop doing it and attempt some other way of achieving a needed goal. 

That makes development self regulating also.  Development occurs when a need arises, and as in all developmental processes there will be successes and failures.  That’s how the light bulb came into being.  Edison tried 1000 compounds as a filament and failed, but he took each failure as a success because they now knew what wouldn’t work.   When a reporter asked, "How did it feel to fail 1,000 times?" Edison replied, "I didn’t fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps." 

What regulation from a central authority could have made that happen?   What if central planners didn’t want this development to happen?  What if central planners had decided electric light bulbs were destructive to the economic interests of candle makers and declared light bulbs as a threat to current and future generations? 

Who was the most antagonistic opponent of the electric light bulb?  John D. Rockefeller!  Why, was he a supporter of sustainability or development?  I guess you could say he was a supporter of sustainability – because his company, Standard Oil of New Jersey’s number one product was kerosene, which was used to light the nation’s buildings, and the electric light bulb would not be sustainable for his business model.  Remember, gasoline was a by-product of kerosene production and was thrown away because it was so volatile and there were few cars.  Once again – the reality of history is this - nothing is ‘sustainable’ if there’s development.

Now we find these promoters of sustainable development claiming sustainable development isn’t possible without equality of genders.  Really?  Why?  Whether or not our particular societal paradigms practice equality of race, equality of gender, equality of class or not, there is no ‘sustainable’ proof that has anything to do with sustainability or development.  Great political and economic empires came into being without practicing anything that could be construed equality in any arena. 

The world’s history demonstrates the largest obstacle to sustainability or development is   government!   The very people who are promoting what they call sustainable development are the very people who stand in the way of legitimate economic sustainable or development with massive infusions of regulations, fees, taxes and penalties for doing anything with which they disagree. 

What if they decide drinking wine is a threat to the needs of today’s society? What if they decide growing grape vines or the making of wine will not be tolerated?  What if they decide theatrical entertainment should be restricted in order to more directly focus on producing the things the central authority decides is most important?  Both of those things occurred in ancient China. 

These aren’t stupid people.  They’ve been educated in the best universities in the world so they must have studied history….but did they really?  In order to really understand world economics we need to study the history of China!

According to the book Wealth and Poverty of Nations, “by about 500 BCE the Chinese had learned to improve the supply and use of water by means of artificial devices and arrangements; were making use of draft animals (above all, the water buffalo) for plowing; were weeding intensively; and were putting down animal waste, including night soil, as fertilizer. All of this required prodigious labor, but the work paid off.  Yields shot to a high of 1,100 liters of grain per hectare, which would have left a substantial surplus for the maintenance of nonfood producers.”

Printing and paper was invented by the Chinese around the 9^th century, but the difficulty of ideographs versus an alphabet made printing or even learning difficult.  “for all that printing [in China] did for the preservation and diffusion of knowledge in China, it never “exploded” as in Europe,.  Such publication depended on government initiative, and he Confucian mandarinate discouraged dissent and new ideas”.  (WAPN pg 52)

The Chinese use of gunpowder started by the eleventh century (two to three hundred years before it appeared in Europe, and probably brought from China) but never advanced beyond their use as incendiaries because the “Chinese would seem to have been more afraid of rebellion from within than invasion from without.  More modern armaments might fall into the wrong hands, and these including those of the generals.” (WAPN Pg. 53)   

So it appears the central authorities decided gunpowder was not to be developed any further for the benefit of a sustainable society…Right?  Or was it for the benefit of the central authorities?  

The control of the Chinese population by a central authority – The Emperor, who was presented as “The Son of Heaven”, making him a semi-divine being in the eyes of the Chinese – feared innovation as a threat to his rule.  As a result a nation that was scientifically 500 years ahead of the rest of the world stifled innovation with regulations and an unyielding bureaucracy until the rest of the world surpassed them.  That’s been the history of central planning all over the world. 

While there have been times when in the short term it has worked to meet a specific need, as a permanent arrangement to meet societies needs – it’s a disaster!

Their rhetoric about "sustainable development" gives the impression this will benefit society providing for all of humanities needs.  But what happens when this central authority decides to change it to "sustainable consumption"? All they promote in all their schemes and international treaties lead to that - sustainable consumption - and they will decide what and how much will be consumed and by whom.

After he took power in China communist dictator Ma0 Tse Tung decided he needed armament but he didn’t have the capital to purchase it.  So to fix that economic problem he decided to sell the food needed by his Chinese countrymen to get that capital.  Over thirty million innocent people starved to death and Mao said that was the beginning and more may need to die in order to attain his goals.  What was he sustaining?  His power at the expense of humanity! 

 

The left is not a lover of humanity, sustainable development as a policy defined by them and under their control, will not be benefit humanity.   We have the history of leftism, and that history is incontestable!  There really is good and evil in the world and there really is such a thing as right and wrong.  What needs to be demonstrated over and over again is the left isn’t just wrong.  It’s evil! 

The Sustainability Project: Part I

 

Paradigms and Demographics For June 2015

By Rich Kozlovich

The month of June had some interesting twists regarding from which countries the most hits came from for Paradigms and Demographics. The top ten for June was United States, Ireland, Russia, Germany, India, Greece, France, Ukraine, Slovenia and Bulgaria.

I always find it interesting how countries with serious problems can all of a sudden surge into the top ten. I’m not quite sure why with the exception of Bulgaria. I was able to correlate the number of hits on fracking articles and Bulgarian hits. They started hitting over fracking and have stayed in the top ten ever since. It would appear there are a substantial number of people in Bulgaria that feel P and D has a unique perspective to offer.

I’m not sure what’s happening in Ireland, but I welcome their interest. China jumped into the top ten for a few days and then dropped off the radar again. At one point hits from China were growing so rapidly they went from not being on the chart to number two on the all time chart in less than 18 months. Some months back they dropped down to the point they didn’t even appear on the daily chart. I’m assuming there is a problem with the Chinese government blocking their access to the internet.

 

Isn't it interesting China is one of the countries that are trying to get the UN to take control of the internet to “protect the security, stability and resiliency of the Internet" and “is advancing a proposal to make a special committee of the U.N. General Assembly the dominant body to determine global Internet governance."  "Meanwhile, Russia has joined China in sponsoring an “international code of conduct for information security” at the U.N. that would authorize Internet censorship and enshrine multilateral state control of the global network.”

“Many countries, including Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Brazil, will be advocating their vision of the Internet’s future at a major international conference at U.N. headquarters in New York at the end of 2015.”

Only a leftist could promote such blather and expect normal people to believe it’s a good thing. Yet that’s what’s being promoted by people in authority in the Obama administration. I often find it fascinating to see how so many insane people can worm their way into power.

India is number one on today’s top ten chart but alas, it would appear England has abandoned me, and although I know there are daily readers in Canada, both Canada and Australia don't seem much interested these days. However, there are a host of blogs from Australia I would be willing to bet their paying attention to such as Greenie Watch, Dissecting Leftism, both of which are published by Jon Jay Ray, and JoNova by Joanne Nova. You may wish to give them a look see.

Welcome to all and thanks for your interest.

 

A Question For Bernie Sanders

By Rich Kozlovich

Over the years I've talked about the socialist monsters of the 20th century and how many innocent lives they sacrificed on the altar of this insane secular atheistic religion. We have the history of these terrible crimes against humanity and that history is incontestable.

Alan Charles Kors wrote an article entitled, “The Age of Communism Lives”, on April 9, 2015. He says:

In addition to the tyranny, the torture, and the assault upon the human spirit, the slaughtered victims of communism were not the thousands of the Inquisition, not the thousands of Americans lynched, not even the six million dead from Nazi extermination.

The best scholarship yields numbers that the soul must try to comprehend: scores and scores and scores of millions of individual human bodies, which is what makes the work of Lee Edwards in keeping alive in our minds the victims of communism so morally essential, so morally vital.

Alexander Yakovlev, Gorbachev’s right hand man, who examined the archives for the last Soviet leader and who came away a deeply changed and heroic man, let us know that 60 million were slain in the Soviet Union alone. The Chinese author Jung Chang, who had access to scores of Mao Zedong’s collaborators and to the detailed Russian and local archives, reached the figure of 70 million Chinese lives snuffed out by Mao’s deliberate choices. If we count those dead of starvation from the communist ability and desire to experiment with human interaction in agriculture—20 million to 40 million in three years—we may add scores of millions more.

The communist Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot, who was educated in France and taught his politics by French communist intellectuals, butchered one-fifth to one-fourth of the entire Cambodian population. That would be as if an American regime had murdered some 50 to 70 million of its people. In each and every communist regime, countless people were shot and died by deliberate exposure, starved and murdered in work camps and prisons meant to extract every last fiber of labor before they die. No cause ever in the history of all mankind has produced more slaughtered innocents and more orphans than communism. It was a system of production that surpassed all others in turning out the dead……. There’s much more here.

I find people like Bernie Sanders and the entire left must be insane to continue to tout policies that have ended in absolute disaster.  Policies that demonstrate a total disregard for human suffering, privation, disease, starvation and early death. These are educated people – they must know the history of leftism. They must know the outcome of the very policies they espouse are so flawed they cannot possibly work. Yet they refuse the recant. There can only be one conclusion.  They must all be insane!

Greece: Ancient Culture - Spoiled Children

By Rich Kozlovich

Today there was an article that appeared on the Stratfor news service website (subscription only) entitled, Greece's Weighty Decision, saying “There is no doubt that it is a hard time to be Greek”  because the  Greeks are a “bewildered population” over the emerging “revelations” over the announcement by the Greek Prime Minister’s announcement on “national television that a referendum would be held July 5 on the bailout terms that had been offered by Greece's creditors”, and a later announcement “that Greece's bailout would not be extended beyond June 30.”

Alas, the Greeks, who like a spoiled child who has lived off daddy’s credit card for decades, are being asked to decide if their creditors are being “fair” by demanding they begin to take some responsibility for their actions. 

Well, I would like to know who wrote the Book of Fair?   There is no Book of Fair!  As is often the case “fair” depends on whose ox is being gored.  Fair is in the eyes of the beholder and in this case these spoiled angry children, who’ve rioted in the streets demanding the gravy train never stop, and have lived off the hard work of others are asked if it’s “fair” they have to new stand on their own two feet.    

Well, here’s the answer - the Greeks, who have lived off daddy’s credit card for decades, will demand their government go back and negotiate with the EU for a continuation of the largess that prevents them from becoming adults.  That’s when they will finally come to the realization no one cares what they think, no one cares what they were promised, no one cares what they want, and no one cares they don’t want to work hard and long to pay their own way. 

The leftist Syriza party took control of Greece’s government by promising to end the austerity programs, that were never really implemented under the previous government, and continue and expand the policies leftist governments love in Greece.  The very policies that got them into trouble.   And now all the leftist rhetoric, all the posturing, all the shouts of victory by they and the population is going to stop!  They’re finally coming face to face with reality.  They face doom and previous attitudes of defiance are gone, and now they know.  Daddy isn’t going to pay their bills any longer. 

Their banks are  closing - the potential of leaving the EU is very real - the potential for Greece’s total economic collapse is very real – violence is sure to erupt, and all the talk about they have to bail out Greece otherwise the Greeks will cozy up to Russia and Putin is interesting, but if there ever was a red herring that’s it.  Does anyone really believe Putin will give them money he doesn’t even have for his own country.  Putin’s a cad, but he isn’t a stupid cad.  No one can afford to be Greece’s friend on Greece’s terms.  Greece is toast, get over it and move on. 

As for the EU?  Unless they abandon all their stupid socialist economic, environmental, and regulatory policies – they’re doomed also.  Socialism is a system with no moral foundation that believes in stealing from the producers to give to the non producers.  Greece is finally learning the truth.  Eventually you run out of other people’s money!  Will the EU accept the reality of history?  I have serious misgiving about that, and to demonstrate just how deeply socialism permeates the European psyche take a look at England’s Conservative Manifesto.  If this is England’s concept of conservatism, then all of Europe is doomed.