We don’t need attempts at soaring rhetoric in a time of earthbound problems.
Round about this time in the election cycle, a presidential challenger finds himself on the stump and posing a simple test to voters: “Ask yourself — are you better off now than you were four years ago?”
But, in fact, you don’t need to ask yourself, because the Federal Reserve Board’s Survey of Consumer Finances has done it for you. Between 2007 and 2010, Americans’ median net worth fell 38.8 percent — or from $126,400 per family to $77,300 per family. Oh, dear. As I mentioned a few months ago, when readers asked me to recommend countries they could flee to, most of the countries worth fleeing to Americans can no longer afford to live in.
Mere HER i National Review Online. Orange County Register her.
Vivat Regina
Mark Steyn – 10 June 2012
The trick to monarchy is not queening it. In The Radetzky March, Joseph Roth’s great novel of the Habsburg twilight, the Emperor Franz Joseph has it down to a tee:
‘At times he feigned ignorance and was delighted when someone gave him a longwinded explanation about things he knew thoroughly… He was delighted at their vanity in proving to themselves that they were smarter than he …for it does not behoove an emperor to be as smart as his advisers.’
At dinner in Melbourne and Sydney, as in Toronto and Montreal, I have sat next to clever, dazzling politicians — the coming men of the coming republic — mimicking Her Majesty’s absurd voice and mocking her dreary stolidity. ‘If people smirked behind his back, he pretended not to know about it,’ wrote Roth of Franz Joseph. ‘It does not behoove an emperor to compete with wags and sophisticates.’ And a year or three later the coming men have come and gone, and there’s the Queen, opening a hospital, touring a school.
Den økonomiske krise i Spanien spidser til. Recession, konkurstruede banker, bristet boligboble, voldsomme demonstrationer i alle større byer og mere af samme skuffe. De er stadig betydeligt bedre stillet end grækerne, men hver fjerde spanier er arbejdsløs. Ikke mindst de unge er hårdt ramt. Her er det mere end hver anden, der ikke har job, skriver Berlingske Tidende. Lidt økonomi før artiklerne om islam i Spanien:
Europe’s Worst Fear: Spain and Greece Spiral Down Together
By Landon Thomas Jr. – May 20, 2012
In a season of nightmare projections for Europe, this one could be the scariest: Greek leaves the euro currency union at the same time Spain’s banking system is collapsing.
In many ways, the market convulsion last week was a test run for those crises, as political deadlock in Greece and mounting fears over the health of Bankia, one of the largest consumer banks in Spain, converged. The credit ratings agency Moody’s Investors Service downgraded the entire Spanish banking sector Thursday.
As investors gird for another challenging week, they will be hoping European leaders in Brussels, if not Frankfurt where the European Central Bank is based, can finally start to map out an action plan. It is not clear that policy makers have many good options.
Spanish village goes back to peseta: Residents turn to old money they’d held on to in case the euro folded
By Lee Moran – 15 February 2012
Thirty businesses have started using old currency
Spain estimated to have saved 1.7bn euros in pesetas
Jobless rate in Villamayor de Santiago above national average – with a third out of work
Mere HER i The Daily Mail. Og så til muslimer i Spanien:
Spain Facing Creeping Islamization
by Soeren Kern – March 9, 2012
Laaroussi was questioned by police but refused to answer questions because he does not recognize the legitimacy of the Spanish state. According to one estimate, 75% of all babies born in Spain on January 1, 2012, were born to immigrant parents, primarily from Morocco.
A radical Islamic preacher in Spain has been arrested for calling on Muslims to use physical and psychological violence to “discipline” errant wives who refuse to submit to Islamic Sharia law or obey their husbands.
Spanish public prosecutors say Abdeslam Laaroussi, a charismatic imam from Morocco who preaches at a large mosque in Terrassa, an industrial city situated 30 kilometers north of Barcelona, is guilty of “incitement to violence against women” for “providing concrete examples of the manner in which wives should be beaten, how to isolate them inside the family home and how to deny them sexual relations.”
Mere HER hos Gatestone Institute. Kern har mere om islamistiske tv-kanaler i Spanien i denne artikel:
As part of the agreement, however, the ruler of Ras al-Khaimah required Real Madrid to remove the cross from the crown on its logo for all promotional materials. The president of Real Madrid dutifully complied.
The top-ranked football team in Spain, Real Madrid, has removed a Christian cross from its official logo as a way to strengthen its fan base among Muslims in Europe and the Middle East.
According to Spain’s top sports newspaper, Marca, the change was made to “avoid any form of confusion or misinterpretation in a region where the majority of the population is Muslim.”
Real Madrid says its decision to remove the cross from its logo (see image here) is simply a cost of doing business in a globalized world. But critics say the move represents yet another erosion of European culture and tradition in the face of encroaching Islam.
The problem is so grave that the United States has proposed setting up an intelligence hub at the U.S. Consulate in Barcelona to counter the growing threat.
Nine Islamists accused of planning terrorist attacks aimed at “liberating” Spain for Islam are standing trial in Madrid.
Spanish public prosecutors say the men — Salafi-Jihadists who belonged to an Islamist cell known as the “Army of the Messiah” (Ansar al-Mahdi) — sought to “free” the cities of Ceuta and Melilla, two Spanish enclaves in northern Africa, from Spanish rule and thus begin the Islamic re-conquest of Spain.
Salafism is a branch of radical Islam that seeks forcibly to re-establish an Islamic empire (Caliphate) across the Middle East, North Africa and Spain, which Salafists view as a Muslim state that must be reconquered for Islam.
Controversies over Islam dominated the Christmas and New Year holidays in Spain this year.
These conflicts reflect the growing influence of Islam in Spain after mass immigration from Muslim countries. They are a harbinger of things to come, especially as the Muslim population in Spain is predicted to double within the next fifteen years.
Demography, not surprisingly, is a major topic of debate in Spain. Spanish newspapers, for example, reported that the first child born in Spain in 2012 was Fatima, whose parents are Muslim. According to one estimate, a whopping 75% of all the babies born in Spain on January 1, 2012 were born to immigrant parents, primarily from Morocco.
Mere HER hos Gatestone Institute. Flere historiske artikler:
“The levels of anti-Semitism in Spain are among the highest in Europe,” wrote the Spanish daily, El Pais. According to a poll, presented on November 30 during the Fourth International Seminary on Antisemitism hosted at the Caja Navarra Foundation in Madrid, 52% of Spanish students declared that they would not like to have a Jewish classmate sitting next to them, and 58% of adults thought that Jews have too much power and that they are all too rich.
The organizers of the Madrid conference said they were sad an bewildered that anti-Semitism “is a problem that is often denied in the country.” The Federation of the Jewish Communities in Spain (FCJE) also stated that although surveys indicate that there are high levels of “hostility” towards Jews, “most leaders and media persons believe there is no prejudice whatsoever against Jews.” However, sociologist Alejandro Baer explains that the situation has become unbearable and that it is time to face the problem: “In Spain, insults, writings and slogans against Jews are considered normal.”
Is New Moroccan Government Inciting Muslims in Spain?
by Soeren Kern – December 8, 2011
Some 3,000 Muslim immigrants took to the streets in near Barcelona to protest recent cuts in social welfare benefits.
The protest, which took place on December 5 in the industrial city of Terrassa, about 30 kilometers from Barcelona, was organized and attended by Moroccan immigrants.
The size and spontaneity of the demonstration caught local officials by surprise — they had been expecting no more than 300 demonstrators — and reflects the growing assertiveness of Muslim immigrants in the northeastern region of Catalonia.
Mere HER hos Gatestone Institute. Baskerlandet bliver også løbet over ende af islamister, ligesom wahhabisterne har travlt i spanske ghettoer, fortæller Kern i disse artikler – den sidste har været blogget her en gang tidligere:
Videoen kommer ind på en del af de samme emner som artiklerne – fra CBN 6. februar 2012:
Under Siege? Spain Resists Islamic ‘Invasion’ – CBN.com
The Koran instructs Muslims to conquer the whole world for Islam. It happened 1,300 years ago in Spain — and some say it’s happening again… The Christian Broadcasting Network CBN
Mark Steyn’s Australian Freedom of Speech Tour 2012
Watch Mark Steyn stand up for free speech in Australia in this speech to more than 500 people at the Institute of Public Affairs-Spectator Australia event in Sydney on Wednesday 29 February.
Hurrah for Philip! Wind power is the most ruinous folly of our age
By Melanie Phillips on 21st November 2011
Once again, Prince Philip has performed an invaluable national service by tilting at windmills — or to be more precise in this case, wind turbines.
In private remarks that found their way into the Press, he apparently said wind turbines were ‘absolutely useless’, completely reliant on subsidies and that those who claimed they were one of the most cost-effective forms of renewable energy believed in ‘fairytales’.
The Prince’s outburst may have been impolitic but many will be cheering his words. Indeed, he understated his case. For the Government’s promotion of wind-farms is simply off-the-wall crazy from every conceivable point of view.
Mere HER i The Daily Mail. Kan også læses her på Melanie Phillips blog.
Bigotry, revisionism and Baroness Warsi
Melanie Phillips – 15 November 2011
The co-chairman of Britain’s Conservative Party, Sayeeda Warsi, has delivered a speech about antisemitism to the European Institute for the Study of Antisemitism. I am sure that Baroness Warsi means well. I am sure that she is personally genuinely opposed to bigotry and prejudice in any form. I would therefore like to be able to say it was a fine speech. I cannot do so. Despite much in it that was worthy and unexceptionable, in one vital respect it was a travesty – made no more palatable by the fact that many Jews subscribe to precisely the same lethally misguided misapprehension.
This revolves around the comforting but mistaken notion that Jews and Muslims stand shoulder to shoulder against the same threat by racists and bigots. It’s the argument that says ‘antisemitism = Islamophobia’. And it’s the claim that there is nothing intrinsically threatening to Jews within Islam.
All three notions are false. All three notions are promoted by many Jews. All three were to be found in Baroness Warsi’s speech.
Mere HER i The Daily Mail. Melanie Phillips blog her.
How feminism made so many nurses too grand to care
The real reason our hospitals are a disgrace
By Melanie Phillips on 17th October 2011
Back in 2001, when Tony Blair was Prime Minister, I was invited to talk to him about the National Health Service. At that time, he was particularly exercised about reforming the NHS.
Sitting on the Downing Street sofa, I told him that the experience of my frail and elderly mother had left me shocked and aghast.
Mere HER i The Daily Mail. Melanie Phillips blog her.
Echoes of Diana: The public’s insatiable appetite for voyeurism has driven journalism to the brink again
Nothing changed after the media, at the behest of the public, hounded Diana into an early grave. Nor will anything change this time around.
By Douglas Murray – 08 July 2011
Today’s newspapers are awash with the hubris that comes when an especially unpredictable animal that might have eaten you, finds its attention diverted and consumes your companion.
The British press is filled with good reporters and people who deserve more credit than they get for unearthing real wrong-doing in high places. But it also has, across the spectrum, scum-bags and liars. With no meaningful predator or regulator, the only restraining force the British press ever meets is when every decade or so one of their own does something so low – and gets found out – that the public suddenly, and briefly, turns on them. When it happens it is almost impossible to predict who it will turn on or when it will stop.
Hvem finansierer reklameudstillingen om islam, der åbner på mandag? Helle Merete Brix har fulgt pengestrømmene.
Muslimer i Dialog og…?
På mandag slår Børsbygningen i København dørene op for en udstilling om islam. På hjemmesiden for udstillingen reklameres der for den på følgende måde:
En gruppe engagerede ytringsfrihedsstøtter er i færd med at samle penge ind til at betale Lars Hedegaards bøde på 5000 kr.
Dyb skuffelse
Da Lars Hedegaard blev dømt efter den kontroversielle paragraf 266b, sms’ede jeg med tre andre venner om det. Vi var alle dybt skuffede, og hos os alle fire var den første tanke:
Dommen over Hedegaard kan ikke undgå at lægge en klam hånd over den offentlige debat – og det er nogenlunde det sidste, vi har brug for i den situation, vort samfund befinder sig i, skriver Poul Osmundsen.
Mest foruroligende
Østre Landsrets racismedom over Lars Hedegaard er formentlig det mest foruroligende attentat på ytringsfriheden, jeg har oplevet i mine 33 år som journalist.
Mere HER i Sappho. Desuden denne engelsksprogede pressemeddelelse fra Lars Hedegaard:
Statement by Lars Hedegaard on his conviction for “hate speech”
Copenhagen, May 5, 2011
It is with great sadness I have to report that Denmark’s reputation as a haven of free speech and a bastion of resistance to sharia encroachment is irreparably tarnished. Denmark is my country and I used to be proud of it.
On May 3 the Eastern Superior Court in Copenhagen convicted me of hate speech under Denmark’s infamous Article 266 b of the penal code – a rubber provision that may be stretched to serve any political purpose dear to the hearts of the ruling elites.
Mere HER hos International Free Press Society eller her i The New English Review.
Does Kate Middleton really want to marry into a family like this?
By Christopher Hitchens – April 18, 2011
A hereditary monarch, observed Thomas Paine, is as absurd a proposition as a hereditary doctor or mathematician. But try pointing this out when everybody is seemingly moist with excitement about the cake plans and gown schemes of the constitutional absurdity’s designated mother-to-be. You don’t seem to be uttering common sense. You sound like a Scrooge. I suppose this must be the monarchical “magic” of which we hear so much: By some mystic alchemy, the breeding imperatives for a dynasty become the stuff of romance, even “fairy tale.” The usually contemptuous words fairy tale were certainly coldly accurate about the romance quotient of the last two major royal couplings, which brought the vapid disco-princesses Diana and Sarah (I decline to call her “Fergie”) within range of demolishing the entire mystique. And, even if the current match looks a lot more wholesome and genuine, its principal function is still to restore a patina of glamour that has been all but irretrievably lost.
Mere HER i Slate. Kan også læses her i Deccan Chronicle eller her i National Post.
Englænderne har ikke længere noget at skulle have sagt i deres eget land. Muslimer har åbenlyst erklæret egentlig borgerkrig:
Britain – Jailed for Burning a Koran
By Adrian Morgan – April 19, 2011
Forget notions of freedom of speech in Britain. Freedom of speech, if it does still exist in that Godforsaken country, is now subject to cultural relativism.
When Muslim fanatic Emdadur Choudhury burned a large poppy symbol on Armistice Day (November 11, 2010) in London, he deliberately offended relatives of fallen soldiers who were gathered to respect their memory. He was ordered to pay £50 – which is equivalent to $81.
26-year old Choudhury had been part of a group calling itself “Muslims Against Crusades” that was apparently influenced by Al-Muhajiroun rabble-rouser Abu Izzadeen (born: Trevor Brookes).
Mere HER hos Family Security Matters. Og om den muslimske krig i England:
Muslim fanatics to burn effigies of royal couple and turn wedding into ‘a nightmare’
By Rebecca Camber – on 20th April 2011
Muslim fanatics plan to hijack the royal wedding by burning effigies of Prince William and Kate Middleton.
Extremists belonging to the group Muslims Against Crusades were behind the poppy-burning outrage on November 11 last year.
According to police, they have now vowed to turn the wedding celebrations into a ‘nightmare’. They plan a ‘forceful demonstration’ with thousands of protesters set to burn the Union Flag, images of the Crown, and the bridal couple.
Mary og Frederik venter tvillinger! Det er da et effektivt kronprinspar, vi har her til lands. Tronfølgeren bliver far til fire. Den havde selv ugebladene ikke ventet. De har ellers gættet løs i over en uge.
Den store, glædelige begivenhed skal finde sted i januar måned 2011. Stort tillykke til hele kongefamilien!
Dutch Queen Beatrix does not like Member of Parliament Geert Wilders, the winner of the recent elections in the Netherlands; she is attempting to prevent the formation of a right-wing coalition that includes him.
The maneuvers to exclude Mr. Wilders have angered ordinary Dutchmen. Asked to comment on television, many voters could be heard complaining, “What is the use of going to vote when we are not listened to anyway?”
June’s general elections in the Netherlands resulted in a clear victory for the right. The Dutch Constitution, however, grants the Queen the power to appoint a person (or persons) of her choice to initiate and direct negotiations for the formation of a government coalition. By appointing the Labor politician Herman Tjeenk Willink to the position of formation facilitator, the Queen has made it clear that she wants a coalition that includes the Labor Party and excludes the Freedom Party of Geert Wilders.
Vanvid! Mere hos The Hudson New York Institute HER.
Der har været lidt gode sager i Berlingske den sidste uge. Det skal lige med her:
Perspektiv: Farlig ideologi bag beskidte bomber
Af Karen Jespersen
Obama og hans politik kradser kun i overfladen. Han tager slet ikke fat på, hvad der er de bagvedliggende årsager til terroren. Som andre ledere i Vesten vil han helst se terror og islamisme som to helt adskilte ting.
I dag fejres Dronningen med pomp og pragt, og diverse kommentatorer og lederskribenter svulmer for en stund op og besynger monarkiet som udgjorde det alene landets bærende konstruktion.
Af Michael Jannerup Andersen
[...]
For mens der ingen grænser er for dækningen af en royal fødselsdag, så fifler oppositionen videre i al ubemærkethed med deres korstog mod en af samfundets vigtigste byggesten; nemlig vores kristne livsgrundlag, som især Socialdemokraterne har gjort til skydeskive for deres nye værdikamp.
Det hele HER. Og så er der problemer med sammenhængskraften. Underligt. Danskerne hænger da helt fint sammen. Det er ikke os, der ikke kan finde ud af at hænge sammen. Balladen stammer et andet sted fra. Og der er ingen politiske partier, der nogensinde har haft mandat til at svække den sammenhængskraft. Så hvorfor i himlens navn gør de det så?
Kommentar: Udlændingepolitikken følges tæt
Politik handler også om næste generation, om sammenhængskraften og om danskerne som folk og nation. Det er den opgave, vi i Dansk Folkeparti har taget på os, og det er en opgave, som vi agter at løse, hvis vi fortsat får mandat af befolkningen til det.
Af Martin Henriksen, medlem af Integrationsudvalget (DF)
TV2s program Operation X viste 25. marts, hvordan studerende fra tredjelande kommer til Danmark med den begrundelse, at de ønsker at studere, selv om dette i mange tilfælde ikke er virkeligheden.
Nå, Dansk Folkeparti følger udviklingen. Ja, se det gør vi andre jo også. På så lang afstand som muligt. Ingen multikultur i mine omgivelser, tak. Sådan ser de fleste danskere på den sag. Med stor sammenhængskraft.
Et klart mønster tegner sig. Konservative medier får etiketten ‘højreorienteret’, hvorimod venstreorienterede får ‘uafhængig’, ‘velanset’ eller ‘troværdig’.
We don’t need attempts at soaring rhetoric in a time of earthbound problems.
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