SATURDAY NIGHT ECHOBELLY, MOBY.

Great Things, good and upbeat 1995 single from Britpop band Echobelly. Picked from the album On it reached #13 in the UK singles chart that year. The most prominent character is the singer, Sonya Madan, of Indian extraction. Quite an impressive voice for someone with such a frail frame. Since embedding the excellent studio version was disabled by request I had to make do with the live video below:





I thought Echobelly was dead and buried since 2004, but it seems Madan and Glenn Johannson, a Swedish guitarist and early Echobelly member, gave a concert featuring a.o. old material as late as July 2009 in Manchester.


Seems I can't get enough of Moby, despite his being an ass. "Why does my heart feel so bad" from the 1999 album Play. Whoever thought of using this song in the trailer for Black Hawk Down had a good idea:





Somalia was another of those places where an asshole population with ditto culture thought they'd be much better off running things their own way. I wonder if in the meantime, evolution in that hellhole has proceeded so far there that it has produced a single individual who has come to the conclusion that it would have been better for Somalia had they not taken potshots at Rangers and Deltas back in 93.

If you want my honest opinion, I don't think so.


MFBB.

MARTIN DE VLIEGHERE ON THE RE-EMERGENCE OF UTOPIAN SOCIALISM.

Over at The Brussels Journal, Belgian philosopher/economist Martin de Vlieghere, of the Belgian/Flemish pro free market think tank WorkforAll, published a very good article about the re-emergence of utopian socialism, which he co-wrote with businessman Paul Vreymans. Some exerpts:

THE DANGEROUS RETURN OF UTOPIAN SOCIALISM.

From the desk of Martin De Vlieghere on Thu, 2009-10-22 17:17

"Jeffrey Sachs is senior economist at the UN and author of the bestseller "Common Wealth" and the controversial Time essay "The Case for Bigger Government". In a recent interview for the Belgian Journal ‘De Tijd” Jeffrey Sachs blames “unbridled American market capitalism” for the financial crisis and pleads in favor of the Swedish social model as an alternative. His ideological argument is revealing for the dominant utopian-socialist mind at the top of the UN.

The fact is that the Swedish social model, which Sachs would like to introduce, has not the only the largest Size of Government of Western World, but also the weakest economic performance of the OECD. In 1970, Sweden still was the fourth wealthiest nation in the world. Thirty years later, Sweden had fallen to rank 17 with catastrophic social consequences. In the meantime the U.S. consistently managed to remain the second or third for more than half a century. So there is not much socio-economic wisdom to be learned from the Swedish Social Model.



Sachs also argues that "unbridled capitalism" is the cause of the current crisis. The reality is that during the last twenty years central planning progressively intruded Western economies who now bear the burden of governments spending 40% to 55% of GDP. Entrepreneurs face ever more crippling restrictions, licensing schemes, quotas and price and quality controls. Businessmen endure tens of thousands of pages of new rules and regulations each year, all written in a lawyers slangy that totally undermines the legal certainty of the free market and which transformed business into a gamble on the next political caprice and on judicial interpretations of the legal jargon. Size of government, computerized control and dirigisme has now reached a level plan economists of the Soviet Union could only dream of. Not the capitalistic system failed, but excessive dirigisme is to blame for the crisis."


....


"Sachs also belongs to the side of the climate fixers who take the controversy over the global warming trend for a "global consensus" and continue to believe that human action caused the trend and may even reverse it. According to Sachs Southern Europe will soon dry out and cause a massive flow of refugees to the north. The bombastic climate alarmism in the run up to the Copenhagen Climate Conference next month must be understood as an ultimate attempt to convince conference goers to step into the global emissions bureaucracy.

CO2 Emission rights are a totally fictitious but legally indispensable commodity for most production processes. Politics will determine its degree of scarcity and the regional allocation, thereby disconnecting production costs from market reality and cause massive distortions. The global ETS scheme is not only fraud sensitive. Scarcity and allocation being the result of political decisions, inside knowledge are likely turn the ETS scheme into one big swindle with grave counter-productive effects. The Soviet debacle learned to what systemic waste the falsification of competition and the elimination of market forces can lead. High subsidies for extremely low productive windmills and solar panels in the Western World for example are causing awfully suboptimal use of scarce resources worldwide. Under free market conditions much more productive use would be found in developing countries. "

A long time ago already I dismissed Sachs as a serious economist. That this man enjoys the standing that he has, that he can advocate seventy-year old mechanisms that have proven not to work, that he emphatically maintains that the only way for poor countries out of what he dubs the 'poverty trap' is.... even more massive aid by rich countries... speaks bookmarks of the West's intellectual crisis. An he indeed made a strong case for bigger government in TIME - I was very glad that by that time (early 2008), I had already ended my subscription to that leftist rag. Sachs is a classical example of an ivory tower wackademic totally disconnected from reality. And speaking of the 'poverty gap': no matter how many titles he has and no matter how senior his position as economy czar at the UN, I'll take Dambisa Moyo's "Dead Aid" over "Common Wealth" any time.


MFBB.

THE CURRENT US ADMINISTRATION: A CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER FOR AMERICA.

This is just another week with such a torrent of ominous news that once again, I can't get rid of that gathering storm feeling. But one news item struck me in particular. From FOX News:

"White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs on Tuesday pointed to two top-rated opinion shows on Fox News as the reason why the Obama administration has castigated the network as an illegitimate news organization.

Gibbs weighed in on the controversy after several top White House advisers have gone on other channels to criticize Fox News' coverage of the administration, dismiss the network as the mouthpiece of the Republican Party and urge other news organizations not to treat Fox News as a legitimate news station.

Gibbs said White House officials "render (that) opinion based on some their coverage and the fairness of that coverage."

But asked how Fox News was different from other news organizations, Gibbs mentioned the channel's 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. shows, in an explicit reference to "Beck" and "Hannity" -- even though those two shows represent opinion programming.

Informed that those hours are for opinion programming, Gibbs said: "That is our opinion."

....

The White House also appeared to stand by its effort to urge other networks to isolate and alienate the channel. Gibbs said Tuesday that it's up to the White House Correspondents Association to decide whether Fox News should continue to be part of the White House pool which covers President Obama.

"I'm not going to delineate for the White House Correspondents Association how the pool is conducted. That's not my job," he said.

The pool, the rotation through which the networks share the costs and duties of White House coverage, represents the most significant interaction among the news channels. Despite the Obama administration's guidance to other channels to disregard Fox News, there are no indications so far from the other networks that the pool relationship will change.

Obama senior adviser David Axelrod on Sunday called on media outlets to join the administration in declaring that Fox News is "not a news organization."

"Other news organizations like yours ought not to treat them that way," Axelrod counseled ABC's George Stephanopoulos. "We're not going to treat them that way."

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel told CNN on Sunday that Obama does not want "the CNNs and the others in the world (to) basically be led in following Fox."

I want to warn Americans that when governments go after news outlets, you're already way down a slippery slope towards a totalitarian state. Have we forgotten how during eight Bush years, basically all mainstream media, Fox excluded, mercilessly pounded President Bush and his administration? Have we forgotten how he was ridiculed, deliberately misinterpreted, made a laughing stock when the slightest occasion presented itself? Have we forgotten how MSNBC, CNN, PBS, the LA Times, the New York Times and a gazillion of other news outlets constantly focused on alleged screwups and squarely omitted things that put the Bush Administration in a good daylight?

Then I ask you: have we ever heard something, anything, about that same Bush Administration going after the media? Threatening it? The answer is NO. To the contrary, the meekness with which Bush's White House let itself often be slaughtered, even when it had plenty of arguments to defend itself, has often baffled me.

Yet now we DO watch such a scenario. It is plain for everyone to see. I just wonder... have we lost our capacity to become enraged upon reading:

... Gibbs weighed in on the controversy after several top White House advisers have gone on other channels to criticize Fox News' coverage of the administration, dismiss the network as the mouthpiece of the Republican Party and urge other news organizations not to treat Fox News as a legitimate news station...

Hello??? Do I read that right??? The White House spokesman "URGES NEWS ORGANIZATIONS NOT TO TREAT FOX NEWS AS A LEGITIMATE NEWS STATION"?????? What's next? The National Guard being ordered to bust inside FNC HQ in New York City's Sixth Avenue?

This is it for me. I have long refrained from using that Obama/Socialism poster you see now on the upper right, since I still consider myself a guestwriter on this blog, and since he is not my president (thank God). And when the founders of this blog ask me to remove it, I will do so. Hell, they can do it themselves if they like. But as far as I'm concerned, viewing that joker image each time helps to remind you the current White House occupant is a very, very dangerous guy. And this is not about Gibbs or Dunn overplaying their hand. These are not isolated remarks. When you have a president who happens to have a frightening phalanx of ultraradicals as his 'czars', they aren't all ultraradicals because of a coincidence. They are on their posts BECAUSE they are ultraradicals. They are Obama's czars BECAUSE they hold extremely radical views. They are Obama's czars BECAUSE he himself holds the same extremely radical views. Likewise, when a White House spokesman or a White House Communications Director issues threats THAT ARE NOT EVEN VEILED ANYMORE...

... you can be damn sure that the man behind the desk in the Oval Office...

... completely approves of treatening an independent news organization.

We have seen that before.

In EVERY totalitarian state.

Americans should be very cautious of their current government. Extremely cautious. Not one year has elapsed yet since Baraka Hussein Mohbama took office. But at the current rate of events, I am really dreading what America will look like after four years.



MFBB.

MUSLIMS SCHOLAR EXHORTS TENS OF THOUSANDS OF MUSLIMS TO RECALL MUHAMMAD PROPHECY THAT ISLAM WILL CONQUER ROME. CROWD CHEERS.

Seven prominent French islamologues have written a letter to messrs. Caracciolo and Maroni, Italian ambassador to France and Italian Interior Minister respectively:

Paris, le 19 octobre 2009


Ambassade d’Italie à Paris

51, rue de Varenne

75343 PARIS CEDEX 07


Lettre ouverte à Giovanni Caracciolo di Vietri et Roberto Maroni, Ambassadeur et Ministre de l’Intérieur de la République italienne.


« C’est Rome qu’ils menacent depuis la France !»



Monsieur l’Ambassadeur, Monsieur le Ministre.



Nous vous adressons ce courrier afin de vous signifier que votre pays fait l’objet de menaces caractérisées émanant d’une institution musulmane française, l’Union des organisations islamiques de France (UOIF), composante du Conseil français du culte musulman (CFCM).

En effet, lors de la 26ème Rencontre des musulmans de France, qui a eu lieu des 10 au 13 avril 2009, au Bourget, le « docteur » Tareq Suwaidan, invité à donner une conférence sur Le Prophète Mohamed : un modèle pour l’humanité, a expressément enjoint la nombreuse assistance à ne pas oublier une prophétie de Mahomet, fondateur de l’islam.

Il s’agit d’un propos[1] du dit prophète rapporté par ses compagnons dans le Hadîth (Tradition islamique ou Sunna), source majeure, après le Coran, de la Charia (Loi islamique). Mahomet aurait en effet annoncé que la conquête de Rome suivrait celle de Constantinople, première prophétie déjà réalisée en 1453 dans un bain de sang comme vous le savez.

Lors de cette rencontre au Bourget, évènement majeur pour la communauté musulmane établie en France, Tareq Suwaidan a déclenché des applaudissements nourris quand il a appelé les dizaines de milliers de musulmans présents à ne pas cacher cette prophétie, et donc à la faire vivre. Venant de ce « docteur » soutenant ouvertement le Hamas et appelant à supprimer Israël, il y a de quoi s’inquiéter...

I don't have time to translate it all because I'm cracking under the workload, but the letter says in essence that in Bourget, France, A prominent muslim scholar, Tareq Suwaidan, addressed a meeting of ten thousands of muslims organized by the UOIF, the Union of Islamic Organizations of France, in which he exhorted the crowd never to forget a phrophecy by muhammad, namely that the conquest of Constantinople would be followed by the conquest of Rome.

Now, Constantinople has of course been conquered and pillaged in 1453, after which the islamic world without success tried to advance further in the Mediterranean. That did not go too well, as we all know, and islam's advance stopped at around the end of the sixteenth century.

Anno 2009, islam is on the rise again, as always because its adversaries are too weak.

We should not be fooled. A drooling idiot muslim "scholar" is sweeping up tens of thousands of muslims in Paris with the promise that Rome will be conquered, he is feted as a hero, and... THEY ALL MEAN IT.

Under our noses.

I hope that Italian ambassador and that Interior Minister pay attention to the letter. Hat tip the website Islamisation. Photo comes from there too.


MFBB.

JUST A STREET IN PARIS. MUSLIMS BLOCK IT AND OCCUPY IT FOR TWO HOURS FOR FRIDAY PRAYERS. WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION.

Scene: Paris, Quartier barbès, Rue Myrha. A Friday in October.

Suddenly the street is blocked, just like that, WITHOUT permission from the authorities. Prayer mats are rolled over the entire street's length. Friday prayers begin, the loud ramblings of the imam are heard even beyond the street. Police does not intervene. A hapless native française, on of the last indigenous French who live in rue Myrha, tries to reenter her house after shopping. She is punched, almost thrown to the ground and can only make it inside her house with the greatest difficulty. She was an unveiled infidel whore, you see.





Of course, situations like this are used by socialists to demand building permission AND funding for mosques, given the obvious need.

A nightmare is engulfing Europe.


MFBB.