Basic Russian for crash test dummies

Recently, I was at a boomer backyard barbecue in Boston.The males had Ivy League degrees and high incomes evident in subtle ways.  The wives who were white had the perfect cheekbones and teeth that only generations of breeding and expensive maintenance can produce. The nonwhite wives had PhD’s instead.

The host in a Yes We Can T-shirt sneezed. “Barack you!” said a preppie-looking man, and explained with a broad smile that it’s a new locution replacing “Bless you.”

I walked up to the Obamapod and said, “I like your barackhlo line.” 

“It’s Barack you,” he said, with the typical linguistic obtuseness of the American born-and-bred, of which genus he turned out to be a prize specimen. A Harvard MD, native of North Carolina, smart and personable, he told me how he grew up in a genteel and racist home where only the N-word was used to refer to Afro-Americans. He also said that since Barack Obama’s election he was at last able to breathe.

There is nothing new here. We knew what Sarkozy's vision of the future was: an "Islam of France", "métissage" between races and ethnic groups, dissolution of nationalist, regional, and ethnic identities, subjugation to Brussels, openness to socialism, and a Turkey as closely aligned with Europe as possible, etc...

But it's always sobering to hear it again, from one who knows Sarkozy personally. Philippe de Villiers was interviewed by the weekly Famille Chrétienne. The Catholic blog Le Salon Beige relates part of the interview:

George Handlery about the week that was. Is “avoid America?” the intended message? The pursuit of happiness: at whose expense? Who needs good government? Do government jobs make one wiser and nicer? Is all violence “bad?”
 
1. It has been argued here that the sensation-seeking and scandal-propelled pursuit of often non-existent tax cheats and fat cats (anyone better off than you are), will result in less tax revenue and more economic dislocation. Cross border business, especially international financing and investment, will suffer. The campaign is led by the US’ IRS. It is loudly seconded by stumbling Germany followed by statist France.

Today, the Irish and Czechs go to the voting booth to elect their representatives for the European Parliament (EP). Yesterday, the Dutch and the British went to the booth. Tomorrow and Sunday the citizens of the other 27 member states will elect their Members of the European Parliament (MEPs). The election results will only be announced after the last voters have cast their votes on Sunday evening. “Unofficial official” results of the elections in the Netherlands have, however, already been disclosed this morning. They show that the Freedom Party PVV of Dutch opposition leader Geert Wilders has won at least 4, maybe even 5, of the 25 Dutch MEP seats in the first European elections in which the PVV has ever participated. The party, founded by Mr Wilders two years ago, became the second largest party in the Netherlands, after the governing Christian-Democrat CDA of Prime Minister Jan-Peter Balkenende, which wins 5 seats.
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Our American readers will find this hard to believe, but the electoral system in the Netherlands has been devised to ensure that new or small parties will not be able to win more than 20% of the seats in the Dutch Parliament. Indeed, Dutch law forbids new parties and parties which currently hold less than 16 of the 150 seats in Parliament to put forward more than 30 candidates for parliament.

In November 2008 a Dutch journalist, Joanie de Rijke, was abducted by Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. She was held captive, raped repeatedly, and released after six days for a ransom of 100,000 euros ($137,000). After her ordeal, she acknowledged that her captors “did horrible things to me,” but added in several media interviews “They also respected me,” and emphasized “They are not monsters.”

In a speech in the Dutch Parliament last Thursday, the Dutch opposition leader Geert Wilders referred to Joanie de Rijke’s case.

“She was raped, but she was not angry. The journalist who went looking for the Taliban in Afghanistan saw her curiosity end in a cruel ordeal of multiple rape. While this would make others angry or sad, this journalist shows understanding. She says: ‘They also respected me.’ And she was given tea and biscuits.”

The Spanish Parliament has approved a resolution urging Socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero to limit the power of judges to prosecute people for atrocities and human rights crimes committed abroad under the concept of universal jurisdiction. Spanish law currently enables investigators to probe alleged human rights crimes regardless of where they are committed or where the defendants live. The nonbinding proposal calls on the government to reform the law, which is the most far-reaching in Europe, so that judges may only probe such cases if they involve Spanish victims or if the alleged offenders are found to be in Spain.

George Handlery about the week that was. Legislating a face lifted past. Surprise: Bush wanted rogue states with nukes. Protect ships or fight piracy. What to do if conventional sanctions fail? What Baby Kim is really testing. Aggressiveness pays. Continued chaos, its beneficiaries and Near Eastern peace.
 
1. As an anticipatory kowtow to third world sensibilities prior to their articulation, some countries consider sending forces to” protect” high-sea shipping. The terminology implies that attacks are to be reacted to in ways that make pirates retreat without needing to harm them. The implication is that when such actions dissuade perpetrators from completing their attacks, strikes will be postponed to be repeated once the conditions are more favorable. This means, like in the case of the slap-on-the-hand persecution of domestic crime, that an alternative future victim is created.
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There's a 16-page discussion at a Muslim forum called Mejliss el kalam, linked by François Desouche. To translate the entire discussion is out of the question. But here is the first page somewhat simplified....

The initial question, dated April 11, 2009, comes from ShamsTabrizi, from Somalia:

In his article on how the Greco-Roman heritage impacted Christianity but not Islam, Fjordman has mentioned the different treatment of adulterers in the two religions. He correctly relates how Jewish law prescribed death by stoning as punishment for adultery (Deut.22:19-23), how Jesus overruled this law, how the Jews gradually let it lapse, and how Mohammed chose to uphold it, as his more zealous followers do until today. But the contrast is even sharper than this.