Breaking News from the Land of Milk and Honey

Brussels says first ever citizens' petition does not count

"We've always said that we take their opinion very seriously but it's not an ECI as the legislation is not yet in place," Michael Mann, the commission's administration spokesman, told this website on Tuesday (30 November).

Once the obfuscating starts, expect it to continue.

First Came the Bail Out

And then came the bale out.

Another Exhilarating Dispatch from the Fake-Crisis Management Center

Get a life:

Last week Google Street View went online in Germany, after which isolated Google fans threw raw eggs at pixelated buildings in Essen. Enno Park defends people's wish to protect their private sphere in Blog Carta. "Street View is Google, no more and no less. Google can manipulate the service as it likes, make it payable or even take it off the Web. Of course building facades are public and can be seen by everyone, but that doesn't change the fact that these images may lead people to draw true or false inferences about my person - especially in small towns and detached house neighbourhoods. ... Now the pixelators are under general suspicion of having something to hide and are already being called crackpots, squares, sticks-in-the-mud and even fascists. Nevertheless it is precisely in its dealings with such Street View opponents that our Web culture shows itself for what it is. ... If we netizens can't come to terms with the Street View 'dissidents', then we are the ones who aren't ready for Street View."

That’s what dissent and argument have now boiled down to in the strange little world of their zeitgeist.

Crisis Averted on the Back of an Envelope

Labor's economic plan: borrow, waste and tax.
Australia.TO

Let us look at that which they are so proud of: the $43 billion National Broadband Network that was cooked up on the back of an envelope on a airline flight.

News Digest from the Fake-Crisis Management Center, no. 2010\11-E

Yet another case of European "We are the World" delusions:

Deflecting Earth-bound asteroids becoming a global effort
Christian Science Monitor

Europe is ramping up efforts to detect incoming asteroids.

Elsewhere: recycle or the Cosmos will get you:

Try the 'Impact Earth!' Asteroid Impact Catastrophe Calculator
Treehugger

Big asteroids hit the Earth very rarely, and there are other problems...

Fake-Crisis not Critical Enough

GST and mining tax too low, says OECD report
Sydney Morning Herald

AUSTRALIA'S mining tax is too low, its GST should be increased and extended to food, and its approach to building the National Broadband Network conflicts with "multiple" international studies.

What would we do without "multiple" international studies ?

Unintentionally Funny Wonks ?

An Effete Pig Fingers Effete Pigs

”Firing back” at an idea with an unrelated trope has become the gold standard in (anti) intellectualism by intimidation.

Two books have shaped German debate this autumn. Thilo Sarrazin's book "Deutschland schafft sich ab" (Germany is abolishing itself) and "Das Amt und die Vergangenheit" (The Foreign Ministry and the past). On first appearances they would seem to have little in common, other than they are both published by Random House. Actually, though, these books are intricately bound up with one another, two souls in the breast of the politically-minded Bildungsburger or member of the German educated classes.

After all, both arguments somehow become equal because they came out of the mouths of “a class”, a sorting mechanism from people outside of those being assigned to one class or another.

Somehow, Sarrazin’s mention of the disinvolved and least educated not participating in the larger society’s social and economic life, and a collection of essays about the largely now deceased staff of Germany’s postwar foreign ministry whitewashing its’ past are to become about something else entirely. Were those Ausenministarium folk really elitists? Maybe. But was it their class and education that drove their moral failure? This is a question that one may not ask in a post-you name it society.



Which “class” is it right to appear to be after today, all you Besserwisser types out there?

Where then, should we arbitrarily deposit out judgment on the likes of that elite “class” called opinion journalists such as the article’s author, Welt journalist Alan Pösner? We may not judge right nor wrong in an individual for fear of sanction or being held to account for our words, which is how constructing invective for a constructed class develops so much appeal.

Crime Doesn’t Pay. Or Does it?

I just love these stories that induce hysteria in Germany... A 19 year old German citizen by the name of Christopher Mettin decided to join his Ami girlfriend back to Sioux City. They forged a driver’s license and birth certificate. His forged identity, though, was tripped up when he tried to vote.

Behaving as though they live in a far away village where nothing dramatic is supposed to happen, expect Germans to be hysterical anyway, but the apoplexy will come from the fact that he’s going to be deported and, horror of horrors, wasn’t asked for his passport when he voted as they would in the land where nothing unheimlich even happens. As in, the opposite of their usual datenschutz style hysteria when they discover that there are Americans who are concerned that non-citizens, inhabiting the US legally and illegally, are voting.

Of course they can go back to the old “the US justice system is so cruel and severe”. This, from a country where you can legally be held in preventative detention after you’ve finished serving your sentence in the crowbar hotel. Yeah, whatever you say, Udo.

Mettin made a false statement or claim that he was a citizen on a voter registration form, according to the indictment. The indictment also alleges on October 12, Mettin falsely represented himself to be a U.S. citizen to agents of the Department of Homeland Security.

Right before they pop a blood vessel in their eye, they might think back to the annual German-press ritual of “declaring the American Dream dead”, something that they’ve been doing for decades, as far as I can remember. Strangely enough, Christopher Mettin didn’t think so, enterprising as the zit-faced punk was.

News Digest from the Fake-Crisis Management Center, no. 2010\11-C

Caclulate your new found Paranoia, my friends!

How Afraid of Asteroids Should You Be?
ScienceBlogs

I don't know, you tell me.

Otherwise there's always what youd normally expect from San Fransisco

Elsewhere, our elders speak with authority...

Self-claimed UFO Abductee Billy Meier's Warnings On Asteroid Strikes

She be a Ho

Sara Lee goes Bimbo.

Forgotten Facts, Done Dirt Cheap

Don’t be mislead by the American mainstream media, or anything else you may have seen or heard.

Observing Hermann made clear not of the fact that Germany’s “authoritative” Focus newsmag was quick to declare the mid-term election “undecided”. I guess their hoping for some Washington-state democrat-style ballot box stuffing and “found” votes. All in the spirit of fairness, legality, and social legitimacy, of course.

But their obsessive-compulsion to misinform their readers doesn’t stop there. Another piece keyed in by the most unflattering picture that they could find of George Bush, a man who had nothing to do with the mid-term election, even by way of political ghosts, reads:

“The Democrats also win the Senate”

Also?



Just to illustrate what a great job Focus has done in informing its’ readers, we find to be rather typical comments such as these:

I am pleased that the Bush administration has received a shock and has to start thinking although I also know that a total reversal of the policy is not possible, but a start has been made.

I though the likes of this twit would have ‘also’ been happy to have heard about the 2008 election at this point.

Here’s another gem from someone unaware that George Bush isn’t just no-longer-in-charge, but left office when his term ended, in the fashion precisely opposite of a dictatorship:

Now the USA can move away from the warlike Bush dictatorship that can comes to an end. It’s funny when a despot wants to democratize the world, but at home undermine any form of respect for democracy, and want to overturn with self-made laws.

It’s painful to even try to deconstruct the sickness in that commentator’s mind... WHAT dictatorship? What “self-made laws”? It doesn’t matter in Euro-land: they are superior beings who (despite election reports) just KNOW what the “real facts” are, and are willing to dispense with democracy, reflection of reality, or anything else to keep their petty hatred alive.

It’s probably all they have to keep their dignity intact.

Steal His Book – If he ever Publishes One

Gutmenschtum cause requires flexibility. Flexibility, that is, with the reality of any situation over which you decide to become as theatrically outraged as those who tell you that you should (if you want to remain a good little Gutmensch.)


Sign and Sight, the product of near-monopoly mega-publisher Bertelsmann (AKA the Death Star of European gutmenschliche non-diversity of thought and opinion), takes up the matter in their unsalable digital form over a tempest in a teapot governing Argentine copyright law. Apparently it’s draconian because at it’s heart, it doesn’t exempt professional academic philosophers from stealing others’ copywritten work.

The article 17º states that "Every author or inventor is the exclusive owner of his work, invention or discovery, for the term granted by law".
Juan Bautista Alberdi intended for the copyright term to be indefinite, but during the writing of the Constitution it was decided to give a time limit, as done in Chile and the United States.

Pretty damn typical, and a good friend of authors who want to defend themselves from theft of their work by those evil corporate publishers, not to mention comforting the publishers enough to believe that if they print something, some ass isn’t going to turn around and give it away. It’s hard to see any publisher committing to print ANYTHING without that protection.

Alas, enter the outraged:

in 2009, something happened that no one in their right mind would have believed possible: the Argentinian Book Chamber filed charges against a university professor who was running a number of websites on philosophy. Among other things, these featured unpublished or unavailable texts by Derrida, Heidegger and Nietzsche.

Because laws are for vanity, I guess – not to be enforced!

[in 1913] Clemenceau learned that one of his theater plays was being played without authorization. After a dispute about the topic, the first copyright law was enacted in 1913.

The interview’s hero, Horatio Patel further bumbles:

In my naivete I had assumed that the existence of such a wonderful medium for sharing texts would mean that within a decade, the majority if not the entirety of philosophical writ could be available online. Which would mean that everyone would have a complete library in their homes, making it unnecessary to travel or wait, and that the 'books' could be leant to thousands simultaneously, and would be easy to locate. And finally I thought of philosophy magazines which are published once a year at most, and then only in editions of 50, which is barely enough to supply the specialist libraries. This would all change, I thought. Everything that had ever been or would ever be produced, could be published online. This was utterly fantastic, I thought.

Which in the case of copywritten work, can easily made spontaneous with online sales and e-book readers. However, that’s not good enough. The author or rights-holder must never be compensated for their work, even if they want to.

The source of his horror?

Horacio Potel's name was picked up by the European, Asian and US media. The case of the Argentinian professor who was taken to court for putting philosophical texts online, with no intent to make a profit, made it painfully clear that if everyone breaks the law, anyone could be prosecuted.

Picked up, because the idea of defending the hero of all great truths from intellectual repression couldn’t matter more based on the logic that the man wasn’t making a profit. He was giving away other people’s work without their permission, but that’s okay, because there wasn’t any profit involved in his giving something away.

Tell you what... I feel generous. I’m going to give you Potel’s shoes. How does that sound. There’s no profit involved, so we can all feel good and warm inside! Property is theft, Pal!

Doesn’t Horacio Potel realize that if the rights-holders of Derrida, Heidegger’s and Nietzsche’s work wanted their otherwise unavailable writings released for free, they would do it? Even Abbie Hoffman didn’t surrender his rights to “Steal this Book”. Even he understood that it wasn’t yours’ to give away.

News Digest from the Fake-Crisis Management Center, no. 2010\11-C

'Immediate hummus shortage probable'
Ynet News, Israel

Is Israel's national food about to become very expensive? Hummus manufacturers are warning that a legume shortage is leading to a shortage in hummus, which will likely lead to a price hike.

The crisis reached the legume sector because of the drought, fires caused by dry heat waves and weather damage in Israel and around the world.

Enjoying the Colorectal Exam, Are We?

Gee, and I thought it was a land that time forgot where everything is rosy and ‘social’...

Report finds that EU member states carry out fewer than half the targeted screenings that the European Commission has recommended.

I didn’t know the state was carrying them out, but like whatever. That’s how they’re used to referring to anything that happens in society.

News Digest from the Fake-Crisis Management Center, no. 2010\11-B

China Times: Broadband infrastructure lag could be fatal
Focus Taiwan News Channel

Taiwan's lack of urgency in the development of wireless broadband infrastructure compared to other major Asian economies could lead to a national crisis ...

Note the lack of hysteria-laden fake crisis, becoming a "crisis".