BRUSSELS unveiled detailed proposals yesterday that would for the first time create a body of pan-European criminal law and force member states to punish citizens who transgress it. […]
The highly controversial announcement, made possible by a European Court of Justice ruling in September, would represent a huge transfer of power from national capitals to the EU. At present member states jealously guard their right to decide what constitutes a criminal offence, and when their citizens should be fined, imprisoned or given criminal records. […]
The announcement is strongly opposed by Britain and many other member states. The Commission is using powers granted by the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, the EU’s supreme court, and governments fear that there is little they can do to prevent it.
That’s just pathetic. It’s like your idiot friend who being driven in to bankruptcy because of a domineering, extravagant spouse. You ask why and the only reply is “There’s nothing I can do”. But at least your friend doesn’t pretend to be an world power who, by the way, is taken to the cleaners on a regular basis by a two bit hustler.
Yes, the weblog broke down last week sometime, but I was off planet and unable to effect repairs. But I’m back and the weblog’s back and maybe I’ll have a bit of time to write.
Orrin Judd claims that “there’s only one way to purge excess young men” with regard to the coming gender imbalance in China. Well, perhaps the latest news about disasters in Chinese mines indicates that Communism has found an alternative solution, in its typical fashion.
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I hate to pile on poor Mary Mapes, but really, she’s so loony and so lauded by Old Media that it is beyond human endurance to resist. She wrote at the conclusion of her recent book,
And I wish for the people of this country a chance to believe again in the press and its duty to ask questions on their behalf, to believe that reporters care about real-life Americans, to believe that knowledge is power, to believe that the truth really can set us free.
One is merely left noting that Mapes has no wish that journalists start either believing or doing these things, only that the American Street starts believing that journalists do so. If Mapes wants a chance for that to happen, maybe she should try leading by example.
Police have launched an investigation into claims that video tapes and DVDs handed out at mosques in Dewsbury [UK] were being used to recruit terrorists.
The tapes, purporting to contain readings from the Koran, were given to Muslims attending two mosques in Savile Town during the weekend’s Eid festival.
Local resident Safiq Patel said: “When people played them they realised they were violent jihad videos.”
We’re not Old Media, so we report the good along with the bad. Two key points stand out here:
TEHRAN, Nov. 6 (MNA) — Iran’s Association of Muslim Journalists (AMJ) issued a statement on Sunday condemning the violation of Muslims’ civil rights in France and calling on the French government to cooperate with them in establishing a fact-finding commission in order to investigate the conditions of French Muslims. The AMJ said that the mistreatment of Black French Muslims over the past two weeks has deeply influenced Iranian public opinion.
While it is a bit unseemly to indulge too openly in schadenfreude over the intifadah in France, I feel no shame in doing so over the discomfiture of the political class there. Here we see the Caliphascist media team gearing up to do to the French ruling class what it has done for so long (with support from the French ruling class) to Israel. For that which they are about to receive, Lord, we are thankful.
THE leader of an Australian Islamic political party wants to know if supporting the right of Iraqis to kill Australian soldiers in Iraq constitutes sedition under planned laws.
Kurt Kennedy, president of the Best Party of Allah, which is registered in the ACT, believes it is a mere statement of fact that Iraqis were right to kill Australian soldiers.
[…]
Mr Kennedy said his party wanted to know the answers from policymakers.
“We’ve asked them directly to give us a policy reply. Is this what you want to do, to stop us from saying this?”
Perhaps Mr. Kennedy should discuss this, privately with some of those soldiers. I think that would be a very … informative experience.
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At the time, Wilson was based in Stuttgart, serving as the political adviser to George Joulwan, the U.S. general in charge of the European command; Plame was based in Brussels. Meeting in Paris, London, and Brussels, they got very serious very quickly. On the third or fourth date, he says, they were in the middle of a “heavy make-out” session when she said she had something to tell him. She was very conflicted and very nervous, thinking of everything that had gone into getting her to that point, such as money and training.
She was, she explained, undercover in the C.I.A. “It did nothing to dampen my ardor,” he says. “My only question was: Is your name really Valerie?”
It was after reading this that I lost all belief that Valerie Plame was covert in any way.
“News reports indicate that Pres. Assad of Syria was accidentally killed today when an American bomb dropped during a skirmish along the Iraq-Syrian border destroyed his office in Damascus.”
— b
SEN. JOE BIDEN, D-Del., made some interesting comments during his Manchester stop Tuesday night. He said too many Democrats were elitist and even unpatriotic, and he blamed them for helping Republicans paint the entire party as out of touch with America.
Biden noted that some Democrats had even questioned why he wore an American flag pin on his lapel.
How far out there do you have to be to appear elitist and unpatriotic to Joe Biden?
Marine park rangers in the Philippines say Greenpeace is to be fined after its flagship Rainbow Warrior II damaged a coral reef during a climate change awareness campaign.
Must have been a drunk President Bush at the tiller.
It must be getting a little too close for Christmas for the chi-chi crystal palace of the pretentious European Union. Pooh-bahs in Brussels have come up with a new grammar rule for themselves and the Netherlands—making it official that the name “Christ” will soon be written with a lower-case “c”. That was the stipulation in an orthography reform published earlier this month in Brussels. […] There is no description of the fines offenders will face if they keep right on spelling “Christ” with a capital “C”. […]
At the European Union, the name of the humble carpenter from Nazareth may be diminished by lower-case spelling, but Javier Solana, The Great will continue to have his name spelled in capital letters.
Solana, a sort of Kofi Annan, European style, is High Representative of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and the Secretary General of both the European Union and the Western European Union. Note to the media, all of his titles are to be spelled in capital letters.
Does that include use as an exclamation too?
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After the IDF set up a hotline for Palestinians to warn Israel of Qassam rocket launches, an Israeli hacked the system after discovering a security breach that could’ve allowed others to listen in on calls. So when AFP picked up on this development, how did they describe the Palestinians who want to thwart the terrorists?
A concerned Israeli has thwarted the army’s latest anti-militant initiative by hacking its ‘rocket hotline’ set up so that Palestinians in Gaza can rat on those firing projectiles at Israel, the Yediot Aharonot daily reported.
Following a week of multiple Israeli air strikes targeting rocket-firing militants in northern Gaza, the air force tried a new tactic: dropping leaflets encouraging locals to anonymously snitch on any rocket-toting militants. [emphasis added]
What’s stunning to me is that an Israeli is trying to thwart this despite the fact that he could be at the impact site of the next rocket. Or maybe not and is willing to sacrifice others to make a political statement.
Black Democratic leaders in Maryland say that racially tinged attacks against Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele in his bid for the U.S. Senate are fair because he is a conservative Republican.
Such attacks against the first black man to win a statewide election in Maryland include pelting him with Oreo cookies during a campaign appearance, calling him an “Uncle Tom” and depicting him as a black-faced minstrel on a liberal Web log.
Apparently things have shifted enough that the Democratic Party no longer feels the need to conceal its racism.
[French Interior Minister Nicolas] Sarkozy says that violence in French suburbs is a daily fact of life.
Since the start of the year, 9,000 police cars have been stoned and, each night, 20 to 40 cars are torched, Sarkozy said in an interview last week with the newspaper Le Monde.
If only we ignorant, xenophobic, and violent Americans could achieve this level of civil harmony.