Whenever you think the bureaucracy in the city of Minneapolis, or Minnesota state government in general,  is addled and hidebound, just take a look at India, and see what the future holds.

It’s bad enough when it comes to importing things or retaining Indian labor.

When it comes to “Justice”, forget about it.

Six British ex-military men employed by an American company on anti-piracy duties were arrested by the Indian Coast Guard 3½ years ago – and charged with weapons possession (for the firearms they used to, y’know, guard ships from pirates).  They’ve been rotting in an Indian prison ever since.

An international move is going on to try to get some justice for these guys.

Joe Doakes from Como Pak emails:

“They couldn’t even manage a park….”

Love that

Joe Doakes

Heh.

Most of Europe’s political leaders – almost without exception, among the big ones – have no children.  The list is almost airtight:  Frances’ Emmanuel Macron; Germany’s Angela Merkel, the UK’s  Theresa May,Scotland’s Nicola Sturgeon, Italiy’s Paolo Gentiloni, the Netherlands’Mark Rutte, Luxembourg’s Xavier Bettel – none have kids.  Sweden’s Stefan Löfven has no bio-kids; the EU’s uber-bureaucrat Jean-Claude Juncker is also “child-free”.

And this is significant:

One of the benefits of parenthood is the daily confrontation with free will—a human nature. Parents may have their child’s life, career, and happiness planned out, but a child has other ideas -constantly. Love, patience, teaching, negotiating, scolding—nurture—can help direct the child, but the overwhelming otherness of the child is undeniable. They are not blank slates upon whom the parent exercises his will.

Political leaders without this experience of parenthood may be susceptible to the idea that people are blank-slates, interchangeable units of human capital. As a parent and a teacher, I have seen many brilliant and well-meaning parents and colleagues crash their will and intellect against the rock of a child’s independent nature. Now, scale such a hubristic paternalism to a nation. Or a continent.

Contemporary childless leaders, however ascendant they feel today, may be the last gasp of secularism. The future is won by those who show up, and only the religiously orthodox are having children.

The number of utopians – good and evil (and as opposed to totalitarian gansters, who may talk of utopia but never practice it), from the far left, far right, and the far libertarian fringe – who have eschewed parenthood is also a little daunting.

I know my own approach to politics was a lot more…entitled?  Absolutist?  Based on assumptions that raising kids showed me were unsupportable?   All of those and more, before I had kids.

So now we have the leadership of one of the world’s most powerful blocs of natoins, all governing from the perspective of people who’ve never had to deal with kids?

I think it’s also significant that the leaders of the former Communist countries in Europe – Poland, Hungary (fiive kids!), the Czechs, Latvia, Estonia, Bulgaria – people who’ve had to deal with genuine cognitive dissonance and the imperfection of institutions in their lifetimes – tend to have kids.

Last year, we were assured, BREXIT would spell doom for Britain, and the conservatives who led it.

It just had to happen; BREXIT was an epic rejection of the political technocrat elite by the rabble and peasants – and the technocrats (and those who suck up to them) warned us that that could lead to nothing but calamity.

It haan’t – and the opinion polls on the upcoming parliamentary votes seem to be bearing this out:

For the first time in this election, YouGov reveals the voting intention picture in each British government office region. The fieldwork, conducted from April 24 to May 5, shows:

• The Conservative vote share is up, sometimes dramatically so, since the last general election in every region of the UK.
• Labour are down on their 2015 vote haul in every region of the UK except the South West and South East where they were already performing poorly.
• The Liberal Democrat vote share is up in most regions, but only by small margins.
• UKIP’s vote share is down seven to ten points in all regions except Scotland and London, where they were already performing poorly.

The Tories have co-opted a lot of UKIP’s messaging.  And Labour seems to be eading toward its worst showing since the end of WWI.

I saw this story a few years ago, and put it aside until today – the fortieth anniversary of the dedication of the more unusual Catholic churches in the world, Kosciol Arka Pana in Novy Huta, Poland.

Which is interesting in and of itself; Nowy Huta is a district in Krakow that was built as a “Socialist Realist” experiment, an entire community built from the ground up to reflect the ideals of Stalin-era communism.

Including absolute, suffocating atheism.

Poles are, of course, obstreperously Catholic – so the battle between Socialist Atheism and Faith seesawed across the city.  In 1960, a wooden cross was erected with aa permit, prompting police response; violent demonstrations ensued.  The future pope, then-bishop Karol Wojtyla, who began holding annual outdoor Christmas Eve Masses in Nowy Huta in 1959 – and saw to it that ever time the cops removed the cross, another one replaced it.

It took seven years to secure a permit – and, literally, nothing else.  In a society where all resources were officially allocated by the government – picture a government where everyone is Alondra Cano – they did it all with volunteer labor and scrounged material.

With no outside help it was down to the locals to mix cement with spades, and find the two million stones needed for the church’s facade. The first corner stone was laid in 1969 by Cardinal Karol Wojtyła, who would later assume fame as Pope John Paul II, but the discovery of a WWII ammunition dump delayed work, as some 5,000 mines and shells had to be carefully removed. Finally, on May 15th 1977, the church was consecrated. Built to resemble Noah’s Ark, with a 70 metre mast-shaped crucifix rising from the middle, the church houses an array of curious treasures, including a stone from the tomb of St. Peter in the Vatican, a tabernacle containing a fragment of rutile brought back from the moon by the crew of Apollo 11, and a controversial statue of Christ that shows him not on a cross, but about to fly to the heavens. If you think that’s odd, check out the statue dedicated to Our Lady the Armoured – a half metre sculpture made from ten kilograms of shrapnel removed from Polish soldiers wounded at the Battle of Monte Cassino. In the early 1980s, the church became a focal point during anti-communist protests, not least for the shelter it afforded the locals from the militia. Protesting during the period of Martial Law was dangerous business, as proven by the monument dedicated to Bogdan Włosik opposite the church. Włosik was shot in the chest by security services, and later died of his injuries. His death outraged the people, and his funeral was attended by 20,000 mourners. The monument commemorating the site of his death was erected in 1992 and is a tribute to all those who died during this period. As recently as September 2012, Kraków City Council awarded Arka Pana the ‘Cracoviae Merenti’ silver medallion for its significance to the city’s history.

Apropos not much, other than historical interest.

SCENE:  Mitch Berg is picking through a bin of “Priced To Move” CDs at a “Half Price Books” when Avery LIBRELLE notices him, and slowly tiptoes up on him from behind.

BERG:  Hey, Avery.

LIBRELLE:  Er…OK, Merg, how did you know I was here?

BERG:  (not looking up from the CD bin)  It’s the same expository plot device Mitch always uses for these bits.  Your surprise me at some location where I can’t tactfully get away without dropping a smoke grenade.  So – what can I do for you?

LIBRELLE:  Donald Trump is sucking up to fascists.

BERG:  (Finding a CD of “The River”)  What, again?  Do tell.

LIBRELLE:   He’s invited loose cannon fascist Filipino dictator Rodrigo Duterte to the White House for a meeting

BERG:  (Visibly disinterested)   So?  And he was elected democratically.  He’s not a dictator until he suspends Filipino democracy.

LIBRELLE:   He’s cozying up to fascists.

BERG:  Would you prefer that the Philippines – tens of millions of heavily westernized people, a growing economy, a key military position on the PacRim, and a long time ally of the United States – fall into the Chinese orbit?

LIBRELLE:  But Duiterte is an awful man!

BERG:  He’s a democratically elected leader.  And sometimes you make common cause with awful people to solve more important goals.  Like containing China.

LIBRELLE:  We can’t condone extremists like Duterte!

BERG:  His “extremism” is a matter for the people of his country to ascertain.  And containing Chinese expansionism is for us to do.

LIBRELLE:  You know who Duterte sounds like?

BERG:  Melissa Click?

LIBRELLE:  (Stops, stares, puzzled into space, slowly walks away)

BERG:  See ya.

And SCENE

The only reason not to vote for Marine Le Pen (if you’re a French voter) is sexism.

(Hat tip to Dave Fitzsimmons).

Under Obama and Secretary of State Clinton, the US participated in the overthrow of Muammar Gadhaffi.

The result has been less than stellar (emphasis added):

If a Republican President had invaded Libya and overthrown its government, then left bloody chaos, terrorism and rampant arms smuggling behind, our courageous press corps would be all over the story like a chicken on a June bug.

But fortunately all this happened under President Obama, so we don’t hear all that much about it. And when we do, nobody tries to assign blame to the arrogant ignoramuses who “organized” this disaster.

But the latest news, that slave markets are now operating in Libya, where desperate black Africans are being bought and sold as slaves, ought to trigger some kind of response. . . .Again, if Republicans were responsible for this it would be the Biggest. Disaster. Ever.

Since the left can’t (plausibly, even by their standards) blame it on Bush anymore, expect them to deflect to Russia.

Or Kansas.

Remember when excessive concern about the Russians was a sign you were  a simple-minded Cold Warrior?

The good news:  There is so far zero evidence of direct Russian “hacking” of the election.  Influence, sure – but then, Obama was nobody to gripe about people influencing foreign elections.

The bad news?  They were certainly trying to sow chaos and misinformation.

The worse news?  Americans are ripe for political manipulation, and American politics is a fertile field for a seasoned chaos-monger, and our media is the problem, not the defense.

EU top bureaucrat vows ¹ to “Break up the US” in revenge for Trump backing the Brexit.

EUROPEAN Union boss Jean-Claude Juncker this afternoon issued a jaw-dropping threat to the United States, saying he could campaign to break up the country in revenge for Donald Trump’s supportive comments about Brexit.

In an extraordinary speech the EU Commission president said he would push for Ohio and Texas to split from the rest of America if the Republican president does not change his tune and become more supportive of the EU.

Please, Herr Juncker.  Take California, New York, and DC.

[1] possibly jokingly…

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

How can anyone not foresee the obvious consequences of this policy:
Migrants will stay in Germany if they can prove neo-Nazi violence
Berlin’s interior minister Andrea Geisel ([pictured) said Berlin is looking into the legal possibilities of the exemption after nearby Brandenburg opted for the scheme which offers protection to witnesses.
First, there will be a tenfold increase in the number of asylum seekers falsely claiming to have been beaten up by Neo-Nazis in order to claim permanent residence; and
Second, Neo-Nazis now know that beatings aren’t sufficient to make asylum seekers leave, so they’ll escalate to killing.
How stupid are these bureaucrats?
Joe Doakes

“How stupid are these bureaucrats?”

Knowing Joe, I know it’s a rhetorical question.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Remember yellowcake? 

 The story was that intelligence agencies had learned Saddam Hussein was trying to buy yellowcake uranium to build nuclear weapons to use against the United States, which would have posed a threat to our national security, so we had to go to war against him to prevent him from using weapons of mass destruction on us.

 The entire international coalition shared the intelligence evidence as did select members of Congress including John Kerry and Hillary Clinton, both of whom supported the war based on that intelligence assessment.

 Except – no yellowcake.  Turns out the intelligence was faulty.  Nobody should have relied on it, much less gone to war over it.  Bush lied, people died.

 Fast forward a decade.  Portions of the intelligence community believe Russia hacked into the DNC computers but portions of it do not, the evidence is unclear, the motive is unknown, the result on the election is impossible to prove.  But some idiots in Congress are ready to start a war over this?  And not just war with some two-bit tin pot dictator, war with a nuclear nation whose conventional military forces dwarf ours? 

Insane.  Literally, not sane.  Should be locked up as a danger to themselves and all the rest of us.

 Joe Doakes

Knowing some of this might come from reading military history.

But you can count liberals who read military history on one hand.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Last February, my wife and I stayed at an all-inclusive condo on Cozumel.  We asked the staff about tipping – not required but okay if you want to.  How much to tip?  Well, the groundskeepers, the people who speak no English and have no particular skills, make 70 Pesos per day.  The wait staff in the restaurants have some English skills so they make 100 per day.  Everyone was super-efficient and friendly because there was a line of applicants for those jobs.  At those wages in that economy, they weren’t just jobs – they were GOOD jobs.

 At the time, one American dollar was 15 pesos.  The groundskeeper was making about $5.00 per day; the waitress, $7.00.  Not per hour.  Per day. 

 One year later, Trump’s been elected and one American dollar is worth 20 pesos.  Yes, I’m glad Trump’s been elected, the strength of the dollar shows the rest of the world is glad, too. 

 Will it make America look like the Promised Land?  The starting wage for one day of part-time work at McDonalds is an entire week’s pay back home.  

 Will illegal immigration increase? 

“Build the Fence” is a wonderful short-term solution but eventually there will be 500 million inside the fence and 6,000 million outside it.  Can a fence hold off Billions of immigrants?  What’s the long term solution?

 Obama’s long-term solution seems to have been “if we make America into a Third World country, nobody will bother to come here.”  What’s Trump’s long-term solution?

 Joe Doakes

Not sure Trump was about long term solutions – but I’ve been surprised before.

DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson says no, there was no Russian interference with the mechanics of our past election:

Washington Post columnist David Ignatius asked Johnson if he could assure the country that Russian hacking did not affect the outcome of the presidential election.

“We see no evidence that hacking by any actor altered the ballot count or any cyber actions that deprived people of voting. Whether the disclosures that we made that we pointed out in our Oct. 7th statement altered public opinion, that’s beyond my level of expertise,” he replied.

SCENE:  Mitch BERG is in his garage, puttering with his snowblower. 

Avery LIBRELLE walks into the garage, drinking a bottle of kombucha.  

BERG:  Uh, hey, Avery.  To what do I owe the…

LIBRELLE:  I needed a place to throw the empty bottle.   Hey – Trump was elected by the Russians!

BERG:  Well, it seems that the Russians were trying to do something about our elections, via propaganda, and perhaps online skulduggery.

LIBRELLE:  It just proves that Trump was not legitimate.

BERG:  Well, I’m sure the DNC hopes people believe that.  But there’s no evidence they were doing it to benefit Trump, specifically.  More to generate chaos.  Putin is a former KGB guy.

LIBRELLE:  Don’t give me your crazy acronyms.  That’s racist.

BERG:  Whatever.  Intelligence people use chaos as a tool; out of chaos comes opportunity.  If an American government needs to use its poltiical capital fighting internal questions about its legitimacy – which seems to be Putin’s goal, and seems to be working so far, at least among our chattering classses – then it’s less likely to be able to intervene in Syria, or take serious action re ISIS, or marshal any political will to protect Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania or Estonia.

LIBRELLE:  Bla bla bla.  America’s intelligence agencies say it’s a smoking gun!

BERG:  A smoking what?

LIBRELLE:  Oops. A smoking microaggression.

BERG:  No, they don’t.

(But LIBRELLE has already scampered away, leaving the empty kombucha bottle on BERG’s garage shelf).

(And SCENE)

My prediction – last week’s teapot-tempest about Trump talking with the Taiwanese president will redound to everyone’s benefit.

So far, so good:

But rumors of apocalypse were overstated. Beijing’s response, besides requesting that the U.S. not let [Taiwan’s presidentTsai Ing-wen pass through the U.S. in January on her way to Guatemala, has been muted. That is to be expected. China has more to lose than to gain from an overreaction. For Donald Trump’s domestic critics, though, the opposite tends to be true. It is a telling comment on America’s political Left that they have reacted more strongly to Donald Trump’s potentially “undiplomatic” phone call to the head of a vibrant democracy than to the regime in Beijing trying to crush that democracy. Visitors to Taiwan will find a fairly elected president, a vigorous legislature, an open press, religious freedom, the fifth-largest economy in Asia, and a unique culture that straddles East and West. A little over 100 miles to the west, visitors will find a one-party dictatorship, directly descended from the terrors of Chairman Mao, that “disappears” political dissidents and harvests the organs of Falun Gong adherents.

Selling out democracies because of a precedent set by one of our least capable presidents is incredibly stupid policy.

Our chattering classes had a projectile aneurysm over the weekend, when President-elect Trump spoke with Taiwan’s president:

Mr Trump’s decision to turn his back on four decades of US protocol on Taiwan and speak directly to a president of Taiwan will stun policymakers in Beijing.

Since his election last month, they have struggled to understand who is advising Donald Trump on Asia and what his China policy will look like.

This move will turn concern into alarm and anger.

Beijing sees Taiwan as a province. Denying it any of the trappings of an independent state is one of the key priorities of Chinese foreign policy.

It was about thirty years ago when Ronald Reagan sent the “elites” into a similar state of incontinence by walking out of the Rejkjavik talks with Mikhail Gorbachev.

The “elites” said it was a prelude to a nuclear war – pure madness.

The opposite was, of course, the case.  It was a called bluff that started a chain of events that led, five tears later, to the downfall of communism.

Of course, Donald Trump is no Ronald Reagan – but then, either are the current administration’s foreign policy hamsters.

Our alllies on the Pacific Rim – Korea, Japan, Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand, Australia, Malaysia, Indonesia – have been wondering where DC’s priorities are, and whether the US can be counted on re the Chinese for the past eight years.   Obama’s Chamberlain-like policy made the region less, not more, stable.

Will Trump’s “gaffe” make things better or worse?  I don’t know – and it’s for damn sure the authors of this past eight years worth of foreign policy don’t, either.  But if they say the sky is blue, I’m inclined to believe it’s red.

Fidel Castro is dead – but the dictatorship lives on.

For now.

Over at Bablublog – the foremost Cubablog for the past 13 years, now – Humberto Fontova notes a couple of the facts that the worst of our repulsive media, especially NPR, can’t quite:

In the above process he converted a highly-civilized nation with a higher standard of living than much of Europe and swamped with immigrants into a slum/sewer ravaged by tropical diseases and with the highest suicide rate in the Western hemisphere.Over TWENTY TIMES as many people (and counting) have died trying to escape Castro’s Cuba as died trying to escape East Germany. Yet prior to Castroism Cuba received more immigrants per-capita than almost any nation on earth—more than the U.S. did including during the Ellis Island years.

He helped train and fund practically every terror group on earth, from the Weathermen to Puerto Rico’s Macheteros, from Argentina’s Montoneros, to Colombia’s FARC, from the Black Panthers to the IRA and from the PLO to AL Fatah.

Would anyone guess any of this from reading the media today? Or from reading President Obama’s message of condolences to the terror-sponsoring Castro family?

Every item above thoroughly documented here.

More tomorrow on the American media and left’s repulsive performance over the weekend.

Oh, yeah – and Canadian Prime Minister McDreamy.

UPDATE:  Or Green Party Prez candidate “Dr.” Jill Stein:

Fidel Castro was a symbol of the struggle for justice in the shadow of empire. Presente!

— Dr. Jill Stein (@DrJillStein) November 27, 2016

Please, “Doctor” Stein, I beg of you – run for president again.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The slogan “America First” has historical connotations.  Set history aside for a minute, just think about the principles of self-government. 

 If you don’t believe the American government should put America’s interest ahead of all other nations, then whose interest should be first? 

 Who should we mortgage our children’s future for, so we can send money to another nation to solve their problems instead of spending it here to solve our own problems? 

 Whose border should we send our finest young men and women to defend, instead of deploying them to defend our own border?

 Libya?  Iran?  Cuba?

 Joe Doakes

Who’s given most to the Clinton Foundation?

Once upon a time, when I worked at a radio station whose initial rhymed with “Ay Ess Tee Pee”, we went without a general manager for six months.

In that time the station’s ratings doubled.

Eventually, in their good time, Hubbard Broadcasting sent us a GM.  Who promptly screwed everything up, where it stayed until the dawn of Limbaugh.

I’m not saying that kind of thing happens all the time with businesses.

But it certainly is associated with civilized people who observe the law, in regard to “government”.

Spain, after the better part of a decade of stagnancy in squalor under a socialist government, is bouncing back strongly:

The eurozone’s fourth-largest economy is on track to expand around 3% this year, outpacing the International Monetary Fund’s projections for France, Germany and the U.S.

The landed punditry believes that is inconsistent with the fact  Spain hasn’t had a functioning  government in nearly a year:

Spain has been without a full-fledged government since December. Doubts about who will form the next one have persisted since the divided parliament elected that month failed to install a prime minister and was dissolved. A new parliament, elected in June, is also deadlocked among four major parties, none close to a majority.

It is – to borrow a phrase that the Obama administration has turned into a national punchline it – “unexpected”.

But only if you’re the kind of person that believes “Brexit” is going to send the UK back to the Stone Age, and that raising taxes fight recessions.

Kevin Williamson, by way of hammering both Clinton’s self-destructive take on national security and Donald Trump’s simplistic and wrong-headed one, points out a consequence of American military, cultural and social hegemony that eludes Big Left and some of the libertarians who, these days, are increasingly indistinguishable from the left:

The American example has changed — forever — what the people of this world believe to be possible for themselves, bringing into present reality peace and prosperity that even the most utopian thinkers of three centuries ago would not have permitted themselves to dream of. Having liberated ourselves from the superstition of zero-sum economic thinking, the United States grew rich while helping other nations grow rich, too. That, too, is neither entirely altruistic nor entirely self-interested: When the United States intervened to save India from famine 50 years ago, and when Norman Borlaug et al. helped India to make a century’s worth of agricultural advances in a relatively short period of time, nobody was thinking about American exports or business practices in 2016. But it is the case that a rich India is much better suited to buy the things that America exports — aircraft, industrial machinery, optical and medical instruments – than is a poor India. For all our present anxiety, a rich China will be much better for the United States – and the world – than a poor China.

As always with Williamson, read the whole thing.

And then ask yourself; what good does an America that doubts and checks itself do anyone else?

Leftist parties in Europe are facing declining membership, electoral routs, and a general malaise:

The sick list is headed by Britain’s Labour Party, where veteran radical Jeremy Corbyn last week easily won a leadership challenge by centrist MPs angry at his part in the shock Brexit vote.

But political analysts say the venerable party — founded in 1900 — faces electoral oblivion despite his victory.

Its dismal standing in the opinion polls is mirrored across Europe.

As with Labour, Spain’s Socialist Party is in the grip of a fratricidal war over the performance of its leader, Pedro Sanchez, at a time of national crisis.

In Germany, the Social Democratic Party has lost half its members since 1998.

In France, President Francois Hollande is the most unpopular president in his country’s modern history and would be routed if he stands in next year’s presidential elections, according to opinion polls.

Centre-left parties recently lost power in Denmark, a stronghold of social democracy, and registered their worst-ever results in Finland and Poland. In Greece, support for the once dominant Pasok has plunged to just six percent.

“Social democracy is a shadow of itself,” German political analyst Albrecht von Lucke said on NDR television channel. “We are dealing with decline of historic proportions.”

The bad news?  While the center right and populist parties are benefitting, many near-left voters are moving even further left.

Sometimes it seems like Americans are the most culturally illiterate and oblivious people in the world.

So this story is to remind you there’s always one more level to sink.

The bad news: the Kremlin has learned the power of swamping Westerners with bogus stories:

Disinformation most famously succeeded in early 2014 with the initial obfuscation about deploying Russian forces to seize Crimea. That summer, Russia pumped out a dizzying array of theories about the destruction of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine, blaming the C.I.A. and, most outlandishly, Ukrainian fighter pilots who had mistaken the airliner for the Russian presidential aircraft.

Photo

The cloud of stories helped veil the simple truth that poorly trained insurgents had accidentally downed the plane with a missile supplied by Russia.

Russian media – including “RT”, Ed Schultz’s new employer – exist in part to try to baffle the west with BS.  And, since our media is largely gullible, semiliterate and utterly completely incurious, it works like a charm.

The good news?  NATO and the EU are establishing offices to try to “fact-check” the Russian propaganda effort.

The really bad news?  Nobody in the western news media is used to fact-checking without a Democrat party operative telling them what the facts are.

MINNESOTA CONSERVATIVE:  If a conservative, libertarian or Republican gets hit, spit on and otherwise attacked, and no media reports on it, did it really happen?

MINNESOTA LIBERAL:  If what happened to who?  Huh?

MINNESOTA CONSERVATIVE:  I said, if a conservative, libertarian or Republican gets hit, spit on and otherwise attacked, and no media reports on it, did it really happen?

MINNESOTA LIBERAL:  If what happened to who?  Again, I have no idea what you’re talking about.

MINNESOTA CONSERVATIVE:  Well, you got that part right…