Europe waits for Germany to come to the rescue | Anatole Kaletsky: Economic view - Times Online

I heard on TV yesterday, in an interview with a Brit journalist with an American socialite, that the world financial crisis is the fault of the USA – as the presenter put it, “you lot”. It has seemed to me from the start that the EU is a fundamentally unstable construct and my observations overseas has been that they have tried to emulate the conspicuous consumption of the Americans without the elevated productivity of the American economy.

Now, I have finally seen an analysis from within the EU that confirms my beliefs, despite the rhetoric blaming the US for all the ills of the Old World. Apparently:

“Last Friday the European Commission published what were arguably the most catastrophic economic statistics produced by any official institution in the capitalist world since 1945…What these statistics confirmed is that the credit crunch has been a far greater disaster for Germany and most of continental Europe than for the US and Britain. In fact, it is Europe that faces a genuinely unprecedented economic crisis, whereas the recessions in America and Britain are broadly similar in scale to the ones of the past three decades.”

Europe waits for Germany to come to the rescue Anatole Kaletsky: Economic view - Times Online

Essentially, the powerhouses of the EU economy have been buoyed up by bad loans from wealthy Europe to developing Europe. As the fictions of these loans becomes apparent a credit crunch causes crises in many of the European “provinces”. This can usually be dealt with by instituting draconian economic and fiscal policies but that is no longer possible because everyone now uses the common Euro. Unless Germany bails everyone out there will be a crash beyond the memory of everyone alive. The only ones who will be cushioned against it will be Britain because they did not jump headlong into the Euro.

God bless the Euro-sceptics! and thank goodness someone is willing to speak with honesty. Let’s just hope that those who are trying to scapegoat the USA don’t push for revenge for their failed economy.

How Dare the Israelis Bomb a Mosque

Because it was a Munitions Depot!!!!

Is Don Martin a Little Bitter?

Don Martin has made a pretty transparent "always a bridesmaid..." diatribe in his "Full Comment" article in the National Post regarding Conservative Senators and, in particular, Journalist Senators.
Apparently,

"(t)here’s always professional squeamishness when journalists are granted a juicy patronage plum from the government they are paid to objectively cover."

Martin goes on to suggest state that,

"Whether real or imaginary, journalist appointments by government are viewed as the reward for obedient conduct, a perception further tainted by having Mr. Duffy’s appointment lumped in with a trough-full of patronage payoffs for Conservative fundraisers, defeated candidates and party toadies."

Mike Duffy is the most - one of the few - balanced journalists in Canadian Broadcasting. This is acknowledged by all parties and for this alone he deserves such an honour. His judgment will be a welcome honour in the Senate. I will comment on the flurry of bitching about the ethics of these appointments in light of Stephen Harper's view on the Senate in another post and Don Martin's comments will figure in that.
It seems to me that Don Martin's greatest real concern about Mike Duffy's appointment is that it did not go to Don Martin.

Spain cathedral shuns Muslim plea

I was looking over some letters I have written in the last few months about the double standard by which the Dar al-Islam and the West are judged. While conversion to Islam is encouraged of South Korean Christian prisoners of the Tabiban as they wait to be murdered and an Egyptian former Christian is denied permission to convert back to his original faith. Christians and Jews - in fact all non-Islamic religions - are forbidden to build places of worship in Saudi Arabia. Muslim authorities routinely deny that the Temple Mount in Jerusalem is a Jewish Holy site, seeming to claim that it came into existance with the onset of Islam or that the kings, prophets, and patriarchs of the bible were Muslim.


Within this environment the BBC lambasts the Roman Catholic bishop of Cordoba in southern Spain for the religious insensitivity of his rejection of an appeal from Muslims for the right to pray in the city's cathedral, a former mosque.


The BBC discussed at length the request of Spain's Islamic Board to share the Mezquita, the Cathedral in Cordoba, as "an ecumenical temple where believers from all faiths could worship". While this might seem to be a reasonable request to someone who does not consider the worship of a different religion within the confines of a Catholic Cathedral to be a desecration it should be considered within context, which the BBC story does not provide.
While the the short article noted three times, the history of the Cathedral as a former mosque, it doesn't mention even once the name of the Cathedral, officially the Cathedral of the Assumption of the Virgin.


Nor did the story address the Islamic practice after conquest of desecrating existing religious sites and replacing them with mosques. Such notable examples are the Tejo Mahalaya, a hindu temple-palace which is now known as the Taj Mahal, the most holy site in Judaism which is the site of the Temple of Solomon but is now the site of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and the Visigothic cathedral of St. Vincent which was razed to build the Aljama Mosque - the very site of this story.


Most interestingly, the Aljama Mosque episode began with a determination by Tariq ibn-Ziyad, who occupied Cordoba in 711, that the Cathedral would be used as a shared place of worship. This was eventually determined to no longer be acceptable, the Christian portion was expropriated and St. Stephen's was destroyed.


Within the context of history the hesitation of the Bishop of Cordoba is understandable.

Why Are We In Afghanistan

As noted by Kate at Small Dead Animals there really is a reason that we are in Afghanistan.

1. Millions of girls are back in school with 400,000 new female students starting school for the first time this year;
2. Over 100,000 women benefited from micro finance loans to set up their own business;
3. Over a quarter of parliamentarians are women;
4. Over 7 million girls and boys are in school or higher education;
5. 83% of the population now has access to medical facilities, compared to 9 percent in 2004;
6. 76% of children under the age of five have been immunized against childhood diseases;
7. More than 4000 medical facilities opened since 2004;
8. Over 600 midwives were trained and deployed in every province of Afghanistan;
9. GDP growth estimates of between12-14% for the current year;
10. Government revenues increased by around 25% from 2005/06 to 2006/07;
11. Income per capita of $355, compared to $180 three years ago;
12. Afghanistan is one of the fastest growing economies in South-East Asia;
13. Over 4000 km of roads have been completed;
14. Work has begun on 20,000 new homes for Afghans returning to Kabul;
15. Over 1 billion square metres (roughly 32 km X 32 km) of mine contaminated land cleared;
16. 10 universities are operating around the country, against one (barely functioning) under the Taliban; and
17. 17,000 communities benefited from development programmes such as wells, schools, hospitals and roads through the Government’s National Solidarity Program (NSP).

Of course this directly contradicts comments by Taliban Jack Layton in early July that, “It’s the wrong mission; it’s not working; it’s not going to accomplish the goals.” Unless he missed the point, each of the seventeen points above were not true before we went into Afghanistan. If we leave or "scaleback" before the nascent Afghanistan government is ready to defend itself then they will not be true anymore in a year.

Why is it that we never hear these points from the CBC?

Left Wing Space Cadet Marches Against Ayaan Hirsi Ali

I could not believe the load of tripe that I heard from Marilyn Churley, the former Ontario NDP MPP and Cabinet Minister and federal NDP nominee in Beaches—East York (Toronto) for the next election on Michael Coren the other day. Responding to comments about the shameful excuse for an interview that Avi Lewis hit Ayaan Hirsi Lewis with on the CBC (see it at this link) she said in at minute 1:45 of this clip that she was not ashamed of the treatment he levelled at Hirsi Ali.

This wouldn't be so bad if she were distancing herself from him but she was defending him and agreed with his tactics. During an entire nine minutes and twelve seconds of the tirade his vitriolic abuse was rapid fire but at minute 5:06 of this clip she said that she didn't see him belittling her. It is one thing to stand up and proclaim that such a woman doesn't deserve common respect and decency but to claim to have seen the attack and deny it happened is a little unbelievable, even for the NDP. To see for yourself, see here where I show the "interview".

The final laugh was when Ms Churley objected to the criticsm of the Lewis family - which include such luminaries as father Stephen Lewis who travels the globe blaming the west for the problems of Africa, mother Michele Landsberg, grandfather former NDP leader David Lewis, and wife Naomi Klein whose anti-globalization manifesto "No Logo" became quite a successful logo - by calling them heroes who have done more for Canada than anyone else at minute 4:00+ of this clip. I guess that "Harper" and "Bush" must be shot down at any opportunity but the stars of the Left are above criticism. Such is on the way to Fascism.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

I have a new hero. I have heard for some time and read about a woman, who was born in Somalia and fled to the Netherlands, became an educated writer, outspoken critic of Sharia states and Islamist behaviour in the west. She has lived under threats of death from Islamist authorities and extremists since her picture "Submission" came out in 2005. As a result of this ten minute video her partner in the production, Theo van Gogh, was brutally murdered and a death threat pinned to his chest with the knife used to butcher him.

This is a woman who has been through extreme hardship since childhood and suffered severely under the laws and traditions of Islam. For the audacity of proclaiming herself a free woman and criticizing such Islamic practices as she has survived she is branded an apostate who must be killed.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali became known to me in more than a passing sense during an interview with Avi Lewis on his programme "On the Map". Avi Lewis has not lived a life of hardship. He is a spoiled and pampered, and apparently relatively uneducated, child of Leftist globetrotter Stephen Lewis and journalist Michele Landsberg. I say that he is relatively uneducated because the most detailed bio I could find stops the narrative of his education by saying that he attended Upper Canada College. In other words, he went to High School.

Lewis' treatment of this heroic woman was childish and embarassing to anyone whose taxes are wasted on a government broadcaster that would field this trash. Ayaan Hirsi Ali's responses, on the other hand, were even and dignified. This enraged Lewis to the point he started speaking in tongues. By calm responses to Lewis' attacks she exposed him as the idiot he is and destroyed the cliché Leftist fare that he spewed. The Left's showpiece came to a gunfight armed with a knife.

Click "Play" below and enjoy the show.