"You're not laughing now, are you!"

Nigel Farage to the European Parliament:

BREXIT!

In Summary:



Doom, gloom and scare-mongering continue 

The Economist:
CBC:
Globe and Mail: Richard Nesbitt 
National Post: Andrew Coyne, John Ivison 

Realism and optimism

National Post: Rex Murphy, Conrad Black,  Terence Corcoran
PJ Media: Roger L. Simon, Roger Kimball

Barbarians at the gates

... except "there are no gates".  Mark Steyn:

... When the Allahu Akbar boys opened fire, Paris was talking about the climate-change conference due to start later this month, when the world's leaders will fly in to "solve" a "problem" that doesn't exist rather than to address the one that does. But don't worry: we already have a hashtag (#PrayForParis) and doubtless there'll be another candlelight vigil of weepy tilty-headed wankers. Because as long as we all advertise how sad and sorrowful we are, who needs to do anything?

With his usual killer comedy timing, the "leader of the free world" told George Stephanopoulos on "Good Morning, America" this very morning that he'd "contained" ISIS and that they're not "gaining strength". A few hours later, a cell whose members claim to have been recruited by ISIS slaughtered over 150 people in the heart of Paris ...

What's the happy ending here? Because if M Hollande isn't prepared to end mass Muslim immigration to France and Europe, then his "pitiless war" isn't serious. And, if they're still willing to tolerate Mutti Merkel's mad plan to reverse Germany's demographic death spiral through fast-track Islamization, then Europeans aren't serious. In the end, the decadence of Merkel, Hollande, Cameron and the rest of the fin de civilisation western leadership will cost you your world and everything you love.

So screw the candlelight vigil.

German compassion for refugees reaching its limits

New York Times breaking news:

Greek deal struck? The saga continues ...

Peter Foster: The Agreekment paradox:

They’re going to do what? ...  Is this script being written by Lewis Carroll or Samuel Beckett? ... after a 17-hour negotiating session ... there was an “Agreekment,” part of which is another Euros 86 billion of debt.

... has to be voted on both by the Greek Parliament on Wednesday (that won’t go well) and various European parliaments. ...  the Germans are victims here too. They will have to take the biggest brush cut when the debt clippers come out again.

... This mess starts and ends with belief that you can socialize away economic problems. Unfortunately that is the foundation on which the European Union’s “social democracy” is built.  It was never sustainable, and Monday’s bizarre start of yet another round of negotiations indicates that it is unravelling fast. 

See also:

Here’s what could still go wrong

Greece’s economic lessons for us

Resurgent Jew-hatred

Charles Krauthammer:

Anti-Semitism has returned to Europe. With a vengeance.

... It has become routine. If the kosher-grocery massacre in Paris hadn’t happened in conjunction with Charlie Hebdo, how much worldwide notice would it have received? As little as did the murder of a rabbi and three children at a Jewish school in Toulouse. As little as did the terror attack that killed four at the Jewish Museum in Brussels.

...  In Berlin, Gaza brought out a mob chanting, “Jew, Jew, cowardly pig, come out and fight alone!” Berlin, mind you.

... European anti-Semitism is not a Jewish problem, however. It’s a European problem, a stain, a disease of which Europe is congenitally unable to rid itself.

In the comments it's clear that it's not just a European problem.  Canadian Jew-haters came out in force, as usual.  (In America its no doubt the same, plus, the hug-a-Muslim, kick-a-Jew mentality extends to the very top.)

By contrast, the comments behind the e-paper pay-wall harbour no such sentiments. Here are two:

Stephen Boyling:

I say this without reservation - Israel's dilemma is the West's dilemma.  No ifs ands or buts.  There's only one "cure" for anti-Semitism and that would be death.  By any means necessary.  I'm not talking about those confused and crazy nobodies, the "rebels without a cause" that pick the non-thinking obvious - Israel specifically, and Jews generally.  I include union leaders and university professors in that group.  And skinheads.

The enemy is Islam.  The example to be set is Islam.  It's state enablers and financial backers.  Gone.  By any means necessary.  And then maybe I can get on a plane without taking my shoes off.  Or my belt.  Or leaving my trusty pocket knife in a desk drawer.  By any means necessary.  Until that job is done.  Unfortunately, not any time soon.

Alastair Gordon:

It is appropriate to see the term "Jew-hatred" replacing the anodyne "anti-Semitism". How many "progressives" have told me that they cannot be anti-Semitic because, after all, Arabs are Semites too?

Time to call out the Muslim world and their useful idiots - the United Church, Sid Ryan, CUPE, Noam Chomsky, student unions, academics, liberal media, and many on the left for what they really are - Jew-Haters.

EU climate policy enabled Russian blackmail

Peter Foster:

... Russia’s strategic strength in Europe springs (apart from its willingness to use force) from the fact that the EU has been asleep at the energy policy switch, blinded by its climate obsessions.

... Europe’s commitment to green energy has been not merely expensive and disruptive – without measurable impact on climate – it has left the EU comprehensively exposed to Russian blackmail.

...While Russia was flexing its muscles, Europe was fretting about controlling the weather a century hence....

On the bright side, maybe Canadian energy exports will help rescue the EU: 

... Europeans realize that the Canadian government is more than eager to promote exports of both oil and gas, ...

Dirty politics trashing the oil sands

Claudia Cattaneo explains how the EU dishonestly targets the oil sands:

Much like the Keystone XL debacle in Washington, the EU’s proposed Fuel Quality Directive illustrates the hypocrisy of climate change politics — tough to sell at home, the pain of reducing greenhouse gas emissions is pushed abroad to feign the appearance of progress.

... What’s disappointing is that years of Canadian pushback that the directive is discriminatory has not changed the anti-oil sands’ nature of the proposal, spearheaded by EU Climate Action Commissioner Connie Hedegaard. ...

 Thanks to the lies and distortions of disloyal Canadian eco-extremists (like the Pembina Institute and David Suzuki) heavily funded by foreign interests, the oil sands have been turned into an international eco-whipping boy. Naïve, goody-two-shoes Canadian companies and governments have spent boat-loads of cash to reduce carbon emissions and to be environmentally responsible.  On the international front all Canadians ask for is a level playing field and honest dealing.

And what do Canadians get in return? Blatant lies and hypocrisy from the likes of  Connie Hedegaard and Barack Obama who threaten trade restrictions and deny approval of pipelines.

The bitter irony is that all of this (the disloyalty, the hypocrisy, the lies, the naïve, earnest good-faith efforts of Canadians, the waste) is premised on fears driven by dubious, unproven theories of catastrophic global warming - theories that are contradicted by 17 years of credible scientific data - data gathered by and for the fear-monger-in-chief, the UNIPCC.

EU opposing Keystone XL to push its carbon markets

Keystone XL Opposition not based on Reason or Climate Change but on EU Carbon Markets:

EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard of Denmark says President Obama should veto Keystone XL to make good on his global warming rhetoric or institute a carbon tax. There is neither reason nor science to back up Hedegaard’s claims say Friends of Science.

... “People should be following the money in the argument against Keystone XL,” says Len Maier. “Large mission based investment firms have dumped trillions into carbon trades or green energy start-ups. They will lose their shirts if the climate scare and carbon trade markets dry up.”

Corruption in "clean" energy:

Maier points out that the EU carbon market was just barely resuscitated last month. In Italy the Mafia have been making hay in clean energy. According to an April 4 ABC News article, the police confiscated $1.7 billion in clean energy assets of the “Lord of the Wind” - Vito Nicastri - including 43 wind and solar energy companies, 98 properties and 66 bank accounts.

Cyprus - a lesson in the real reason for gun control

The people of Cyprus rolled over when Euro "banksters" raided their savings.  Would Americans?  Would Canadians?  Ezra wonders:

Nobel peace prize goes to giant f'd up nanny state

NYT:

The Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded its 2012 peace prize on Friday to the 27-nation European Union ...

The Nobel Committee is certainly keeping up its reputation for dopey awards.

CPAC - Daniel Hannan on America and Europe

A tremendous speech by a Brit Member of the European Parliament compares America with the EU:



[via]

Europe circling the drain

via

Greeks despair

Reuters:

Greeks watched the latest political drama unfolding in their capital with a mixture of despair and disbelief.

... "What happened this week was a disgrace. We looked bad and Europeans are already sick of paying for us."

"Looks bad"? "This week"? What's happening in Greece is bad. It's a disgrace, and has been for a lot longer than a week.

But we shouldn't be too smug. Peter Foster says we're all headed that way:

... Greece is the result of mixing fundamentally Marxist principles with democratic governance (which the philosopher Karl Popper pointed out had happened by the middle of the last century in all Western countries), and then giving it a credit card with no limit. The anti-principle of “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs” inevitably deteriorated into “From each productive sucker to each unionized public servant and policy wonk.”

This is a crisis not just of Greece, not just of the eurozone, but of nothing less than the dominant version of modern democracy itself. As Joseph Schumpeter pointed out 60 years ago, this is not the rule of “the people” but of politicians who compete to buy votes in order to wield power. Milton Friedman noted after the fall of the Berlin Wall that the collapse of Communism did not represent some kind of victory for Western forms of democratic economic management. It was just that, since they had capitalism to feed on, they were collapsing more slowly. Prof. Friedman also noted the shift in power from politicians to bureaucrats. “The government has become a self-generating monstrosity,” he said. “We don’t have government of the people, by the people, for the people. We have government of the people, by the bureaucracy, for the bureaucracy.” ...

EU mad cow cure

EU Parliament votes to spend millions to cure cows by homeopathy:

The European Parliament ... agriculture committee has decided that the European Union will spend 2 million euros for homeopathical treatment of farm animals. ...

A hilarious primer on homeopathy [via Lubos' comment thread]:

The decline of freedom in Eurabia

Via Xanthippa:

Ouch! "We don't know you, we don't want you and the sooner you're put out to grass the better"

[Via]

Georgia - where’s the rest of the West?

There’s lots of finger pointing but one thing is clear, dictator Vladimir Putin’s powerful Russia is ruthlessly attacking its tiny democratic neighbor, Georgia. As Glenn Beck put it, "it’s like the US military attacking Martha’s Vinyard". Given the enormity of the situation the MSM , with some exceptions, is giving it relatively light coverage. CTV’s Lloyd Robertson skimmed the story last night ending with an observation that "the Bear’s back" and a smiley-faced "fascinating". OK, I know the Beijing Olympics are on but - good grief!

Georgia has been an enthusiastic ally of the USA even contributing some 2000 combat troops in Iraq. The USA has been a strong sponsor of Georgia’s entry into NATO. With its democratic transformation, the cleanup of its corrupt police and civil service, its strongly free market economy ... Georgia is a natural for admission to the European Union and NATO.

So, in rough order of significance: Where’s GWB’s America? Where’s NATO? Where’s Europe? Where’s the UN? Where’s the "peace" movement?

Of this list only the last two are truly measuring up to expectations. The useless UN remains useless and the "peace" movement’s only anti-war stance is anti-American.

But when will America, NATO and Europe step up and smack Putin down? Military backing for Georgia and the immediate expulsion of Russia from the G8 along with other trade sanctions might be a good start. Maybe today.

The EU road to serfdom

Steyn’s back! On the Hugh Hewitt show summarizing the EU constitution:

... it’s a centralized federation being built from the elite bureaucracy down to the people. And every time they let the people vote on it, the French and the Dutch, and now the Irish a couple of weeks ago, they vote against it, because they rightly see it as a racket. The first words of the U.S. Constitution are We, The People. The first words of the proposed European Constitution are We, the people who know better than you, the little people.

... a classic sort of royalist attitude ... a few ... Euro big shots can sit down and tell an entire continent of serfs what it is that’s going to happen.

U.S. Constitution, ... in New Hampshire, they carry it around in their pockets so they can berate their Senators and Congressmen for not sticking to it. You can buy it for $3 bucks, and it fits in your pocket. If you try to put the European Constitution in your pocket, you will be walking with a crippling limp after about six minutes. ... it’s like this huge, great, bureaucratic monstrosity.... it’s doomed.