Random Thoughts (Political Edition)

We have the same problem with immigration - everyone (Political Parties) is s*1t scared of the subject except the neo Nazis.
 
Swedish lession of the day:

Val, the word for 'election' is a hononym for 'whale'.​

Thus ends the lession on this whale day.
 
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Brussels challenges Arnold Schwarzenegger on death penalty: arrogant EU lectures America as if it were a third world tyranny
By Nile Gardiner World Last updated: September 19th, 2010

It is bad enough that unelected, pompous Brussels bureaucrats constantly meddle in British affairs just over the Channel. But when European Union apparatchiks think they can even interfere in the internal policies of the United States several thousand miles away, that is surely a bridge too far. I don?t recall Washington ever signing up to the Treaty of Lisbon or the European Convention on Human Rights, or the United States Congress rubber-stamping the ludicrously named European External Action Service.

The new EU Ambassador to Washington, Joao Vale de Almeida has already declared his bullish intention to speak for the whole of Europe at the expense of individual nation states. Now he seeks to put that into practice by condemning California?s decision to execute a convicted kidnapper, murderer and rapist on September 29, who is isn?t even from Europe.

In a hectoring, condescending letter to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Vale de Almeida wrote:
The European Union is opposed to the use of capital punishment under all circumstances and accordingly aims at its universal abolition, seeking a global moratorium on the death penalty as a first step. We believe that the elimination of the death penalty is fundamental to the protection of human dignity, and to the progressive development of human rights.

The European Union considers that nations, which have not as yet abolished the use of capital punishment, should not impose this punishment when a de facto moratorium has been in place for an extended period. The execution of Mr. Brown would break the de facto moratorium in the State of California, where the last execution took place on January 17, 2006.

The European Union also notes that on November 20, 2008, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution on the death penalty, which reaffirms its Resolution adopted in December 2007, expressly asking all nations that still use the death penalty to institute a moratorium on executions with a view to abolishing the practice.

No legal system is immune from error, nor is there any reliable evidence to support the argument that the death penalty is a deterrent to serious crime. We believe that any miscarriage of justice, or failure of the judicial system in the application of the death penalty, represents an irreparable loss of human life.

Taking into account of these factors, we respectfully urge you, Governor, to continue the de facto moratorium currently in place within the State of California and to exercise all powers vested in your office to commute the sentence of Mr. Albert Greenwood Brown to life in prison.

(Hat tip: Sally McNamara at The Foundry)

Brussels? new man in Washington is clearly off to a flying start, having declared ?I am the one leading the show?, despite the fact there are 27 ambassadors from across the EU representing their individual countries. He has now also alienated millions of Californians, with his pathetic attack on the state?s use of the death penalty.

His letter is not only staggering and insulting in its arrogance, but is also the kind of note normally sent to a third world tyranny like Sudan, North Korea or Burma protesting over some gross human rights violation. It is frankly none of the EU?s business whether the state of California and the United States of America executes an inmate sentenced to death for a hideous and barbaric crime, which is outlined in full detail here.

I hope that Governor Schwarzenegger sends the EU Ambassador a resounding hasta la vista on this matter, and that the citizens of California let Mr. Vale de Almeida know that they do not live in a far-flung province of the European Union and value their liberty and independence as part of the freest nation on earth.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/n...-america-as-if-it-were-a-third-world-tyranny/

Those in the EU leadership need to realize that they are not the head of one supernation and it is not their place to lecture us. Unlike in many EU nations Californians elect the legislature, the governor, the chief prosecutors, and the chiefs of police. They are elected by people and in insulting them you are insulting us.
 
There's nothing in that text that I consider to be offensive, it's merely stating the position of the European Union. The United States does the same all the time in case you havent noticed. Interestingly Nile Gardiner is a director (at something called the Margaret Thatcher Center) at the Heritage Foundation, which has a long tradition of putting their noses into foreign nations internal affairs as well as the affairs of single citizens. The Heritage Foundation does not want people to have sex before marriage, for example.

Gardiner is also a frequent pundit on Fox News.
 
There's nothing "offensive" in there. Gardiner is just looking for an excuse to continue his butthurt tirade against the EU.
 
He can blow it out his arse. When did saying what you think about something in a country require you to be a citizen of said country?
 
Summary of the election is that there is no majority and the two minoritys will not be in the same room as SD. It'll be interesting. Sahlin needs to go, I voted for her party but people in general put much more emphasis on the person rather than the ideology these days.

We need first and foremost a competent leader. A strong man. Sahlin was elected with her gender as her only qualification. We need someone to point out the way with a firm hand. A new Palme. Yet I'm pretty content with the stalemate. I trust that M will take responsibility and that in all important aspects cross bloc agreements will be made. Hopefully these terrible blocs will fall alltogether. And this should also make it much harder to sell out our state owned assets, which the righties would to fatten their own wallets if they could.
 
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Those in the EU leadership need to realize that they are not the head of one supernation and it is not their place to lecture us. Unlike in many EU nations Californians elect the legislature, the governor, the chief prosecutors, and the chiefs of police. They are elected by people and in insulting them you are insulting us.

So you condemn Newt Gingrich, an unelected private individual, for insulting President Obama then?


Nations that have banned the death penalty regularly condemn the use of the death penalty in the US and other countries where it is still legal. This is a non-story.
 
So SD is in a majority with the righties? Why didn't greens take the offer, and join them?
 
^The greens are being pissy because they feel that the right-wingers have ignored them for the past four years!

Could be interesting this! :D
 
IIRC, the EU does not allow extradition to the US if the person being extradited faces even the possibility of being executed.

The new EU Ambassador to Washington, Joao Vale de Almeida has already declared his bullish intention to speak for the whole of Europe at the expense of individual nation states.

That is because, as EU Ambassador, it is his fucking job!
 
Whether there should be such a job - you and I are paying for - is totally another matter. FWIW I am fed up paying for these fools.

We pay 40 Million GBP per day to this lot of scounderels.
 
Summary of the election is that there is no majority and the two minoritys will not be in the same room as SD. It'll be interesting. Sahlin needs to go, I voted for her party but people in general put much more emphasis on the person rather than the ideology these days.

We need first and foremost a competent leader. A strong man. Sahlin was elected with her gender as her only qualification. We need someone to point out the way with a firm hand. A new Palme. Yet I'm pretty content with the stalemate. I trust that M will take responsibility and that in all important aspects cross bloc agreements will be made. Hopefully these terrible blocs will fall alltogether. And this should also make it much harder to sell out our state owned assets, which the righties would to fatten their own wallets if they could.

That's the problem with sex quotas. But I don't think we (you) need a Palme. Palme was really a bastard in a lot of ways, and he was an authoritarian of sorts. What you need is a new Hammarsk?ld. :p

So SD is in a majority with the righties? Why didn't greens take the offer, and join them?
The conservatives (Moderaterne) don't want to work with SD, neither does the People's Party (Folkpartiet), the Center party (Centern) or the Christian Democrats (Kristdemokratene). Not to mention the Social Democrats (Sosialdemokratene), The Green Party (Milj?partiet) or Left (V?nstern).

It'll be interesting to see what role SD will get, but I think the right and left block agree about enough that they will be able to work with each other. It's a dangerous game to play; it was done with the Progress Party (Fremskrittspartiet) in Norway, which did make them look like victims/whatnot, and made them bigger.

At least there's one good thing come out of it. The leader of the Norwegian party Demokratene (the democrats) say that SD is now their sister party. So now we don't have to argue that Demokratene is racist, we can just say it straight out.
 
Whether there should be such a job - you and I are paying for - is totally another matter. FWIW I am fed up paying for these fools.

Sigh. We all pay for things we don't want or need. I don't think we should be in Iraq or Afghanistan, but my taxes pay towards part of it. I will be paying towards BBC Radio Scilly Isles as part of the licence fee, but that is fine by me because they pay for part of BBC Radio Lancashire. Swings and roundabouts.

We pay 40 Million GBP per day to this lot of scounderels.

48 million per day, actually. But we receive 21 million per day.

By the way, that little agreement means we can freely export goods and services worth over ?500 million per day to the EU. So, do you still think it costs us money?
 
That's the problem with sex quotas. But I don't think we (you) need a Palme. Palme was really a bastard in a lot of ways, and he was an authoritarian of sorts. What you need is a new Hammarsk?ld. :p

It'll be interesting to see what role SD will get, but I think the right and left block agree about enough that they will be able to work with each other. It's a dangerous game to play; it was done with the Progress Party (Fremskrittspartiet) in Norway, which did make them look like victims/whatnot, and made them bigger.

At least there's one good thing come out of it. The leader of the Norwegian party Demokratene (the democrats) say that SD is now their sister party. So now we don't have to argue that Demokratene is racist, we can just say it straight out.
You have two nationalist parties over there? Only thought you had Fremskritt. Or are the others not in, like with NSF/Folkfronten/Svenskarnas Parti (whatever they choose to call themselves now)?

It'll be hard to work out an agreement between a bloc that wants to build more nuclear plants and a party that was created in opposition of nuclear power (MP), not to mention that C is the green party of the Alliance and they don't want to share that with the other, larger, green party. Interesting indeed. As for the Party, I think we need authoritarian leaders. The inverse style (Mona) isnt working at all.
 
Demokratene is made out of people who got excluded from the Progress Party in the late 90s/early 00s. We're talking about the days when Carl I. Hagen ran the Progress Party like his own company, he made the good'ol party secretaries in the social democratic parties look like pussycats, to put it politely. They were thrown out or excluded for very different reasons, usually for being either to liberal to attract voters, to big a challenge to King Carl or because they got too brown even for the Progress Party.

Demokratene is a tiny party which only real base is in the Southern Agder-parts of Norway, they're relatively big there, but still haven't gotten close to a place in Stortinget (the parliament).
 
The new law governing pensions around here has been passed in one of the most fraudulent ways possible. The opposition left the debate, webcam images from the debate itself showed that there were merely 80-90 MPs in the hall at the time of the voting process... out of around 300-ish MPs in the lower chamber of Parliament.


And the law was mysteriously passed with 160 votes "for", 2 "against" and 3 abstentions.



I reiterate my request from Random Thoughts (the original one), someone please have mercy on us and bomb the Palace of Parliament and the Cotroceni Palace when the President and the Parliament are all at "work".
 
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On coming to Paris for a visit, I said to myself: Here are a million
human beings who would all die in a few days if supplies of all sorts
did not flow into this great metropolis. It staggers the imagination
to try to comprehend the vast multiplicity of objects that must pass
through its gates tomorrow, if its inhabitants are to be preserved
from the horrors of famine, insurrection, and pillage. And yet all are
sleeping peacefully at this moment, without being disturbed for a
single instant by the idea of so frightful a prospect. On the other
hand, eighty departments have worked today, without co-operative
planning or mutual arrangements, to keep Paris supplied.

How does each succeeding day manage to bring to this gigantic market
just what is necessary?neither too much nor too little? What, then, is
the resourceful and secret power that governs the amazing regularity
of such complicated movements, a regularity in which everyone has such
implicit faith, although his prosperity and his very life depend upon
it? That power is an absolute principle, the principle of free
exchange. We put our faith in that inner light which Providence has
placed in the hearts of all men, and to which has been entrusted the
preservation and the unlimited improvement of our species, a light we
term self-interest, which is so illuminating, so constant, and so
penetrating, when it is left free of every hindrance.

Where would you be, inhabitants of Paris, if some cabinet minister
decided to substitute for that power contrivances of his own
invention, however superior we might suppose them to be; if he
proposed to subject this prodigious mechanism to his supreme
direction, to take control of all of it into his own hands, to
determine by whom, where, how, and under what conditions everything
should be produced, transported, exchanged, and consumed? Although
there may be much suffering within your walls, although misery,
despair, and perhaps starvation, cause more tears to flow than your
warm-hearted charity can wipe away, it is probable, I dare say it is
certain, that the arbitrary intervention of the government would
infinitely multiply this suffering and spread among all of you the
ills that now affect only a small number of your fellow-citizens.

-Fr?d?ric Bastiat, 1801-1850
 
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