Daniel Greenfield article: Friday Afternoon Roundup - Classless Warfare

Friday Afternoon Roundup - Classless Warfare

Posted: 23 Sep 2011 03:12 PM PDT

The UN is now hard at work pandering to terrorists and shutting down midtown traffic, but do we really need the UN?

My Freedom Center pamphlet, 10 Reasons to Abolish the UN argues that not only don't we need it, but the whole world would be better off without it.

The 51 founding members of the UN were roughly balanced between democracies and dictatorships. As the United Nations membership expanded, the ratio of tyrannies to democracies increased.3 According to the Economist’s Democracy Index, there are 26 full democracies and 55 authoritarian regimes with the latter outnumbering the former in population 3 to 1.4 The average UN representative is statistically less likely to be speaking for a democratically elected government and far more likely to be there as the personal representative of a tyrant or an oligarchy.

...and then there's this...

During the Cambodian Genocide, the UN Security Council did not issue a single resolution on it. While millions were dying, the UN occupied itself with condemning the Israeli expulsion of the Sharia judge of Hebron and the United States for allowing former members of the Rhodesian government to enter the country.

The United Nations, after being approached by the Cambodian government nearly two decades later, finally got down to the task of trying some of those involved for genocide.

That was 1997. An agreement to conduct the actual trials was signed six years later. Another three years after that, actual judges were finally approved to preside over the tribunal. It had taken nine years just to get to this point.

In 2007, the first indictment was issued against Pol Pot’s second in command. Nuon Chea had been 70 when the UN was first approached. He was now almost 80. Today he is 84 and the trial is still going on.13 The odds are very good that he will die before it is all over.

So far the only man convicted of anything in the proceedings, whose origins date back to the 90’s and have budgets in the hundreds of millions of dollars, is Kaing Guek Eav, who ran the Tuol Sleng prison. The Khmer Rouge Tribunal could hardly have sent a louder message about UN impotence in the face of genocide.

If you read the pamphlet, you'll find that this is a common pattern with UN genocide tribunals. If the UN Genocide Tribunal had ever gotten hold of Hitler, he would have died of old age.

And there's lots more from outrageous corruption to dangerous threats to the US Constitution from the UN-- all reasons to give back Turtle Bay to the turtles.

Frankly George

Soros and Frank. No it's not the worst law firm on the planet (though it might be) it's also the topic of this week's two articles. Remember those "social protests" in Israel. Well they're more like socialists and the world's leading socialist James Bond villain is behind them.

In late February, the Israeli Knesset passed the NGO Funding Transparency Bill by 40 to 34. It had been a long journey for the bill, which despite, its neutered, state was still a declaration of war by the conservative Likud Party against the shadow NGO empire that was the Soros way.

While the bill was no longer able to empower the lifting of tax exempt status for foreign funded NGOs and it only addressed foreign funding of NGOs by government entities, it was a major step for foreign funding transparency. The Soros empire had been built on non-transparency, on hidden donor lists and front groups funded by think tanks with money pipelined in grants through a dozen different organizations.

NGO transparency threatened the entire Soros empire and the passage of even a neutered bill meant that Israel might finally be ready to begin rolling back the peel on the rotten fruits of the Open Society Institute. First governments, then foreign funders, parliamentary inquiries into foreign funding, and then the loss of tax exempt status for left-wing NGOs waging a civil war.

...so Soros did what he always does. See more in The Soros Plot to Topple Netanyahu. And speaking of evil and creepy left-wing billionaires....

Organizations like ACORN agitated for more government intervention in the mortgage market, supposedly to make home ownership more affordable, while actually serving the interests of the predatory left-wing lenders who were making the loans, like the Sandlers.

The Sandlers invested millions into ACORN and made billions from adjustable rate mortgages in a government backed wealth transfer that was a masterpiece of crony capitalism as left-wing billionaires scored big, while the taxpayers and minority homeowners were left holding the bag.

And the total price for the scheme was quite high

African-American subprime losses may reach as high as a 100 billion, and as many as one in ten may be facing foreclosure. This is having a devastating effect on their already shaky position in the middle-class… and that is the perversely brilliant part of this scheme.

Not only did the left shamelessly loot the system by dressing up their crony capitalism as social justice, but they also profited from ripping off the very minority borrowers on whose behalf they were gouging taxpayers and banks—with the end result that the minorities who are their voting base are kept out of the middle-class and remain a reliable plantation vote with no hope for anything but government benefi

See the whole picture laid out in Barney Frank's Racist Legacy

Classless Warfare

After long months of waiting and listening, Obama finally heard his far left base and brought out a dose of class warfare, timed with the pathetic occupation protests, which I passed yesterday.

I missed the Israeli version, but down in downtown Manhattan I caught the latest live show and it was exactly the same. Grinning idiots with hundreds of dollars worth of portable devices and camping gear holding up messages against capitalism scrawled on flimsy cardboard for “authenticity” when their pictures get taken. A few guitars, lots of food wrappers and all the other trappings of yuppie\hipster Woodstock.

Everyone involved could easily put together sophisticated well done posters, plenty of them have graphic design backgrounds, almost all of them have solid computer skills, but then it would look “organized” as opposed to just plain ole folks holding up messages scrawled up on pieces of cardboard.

When you throw a protest against capitalism and the only people who show up are trustafarian parasites whose career path is either environmental sustainability consultant/freelance poet or graduate lecturer/food blogger then your message has failed to reach beyond the ranks of your most self-indulgent and your useless base.

North in Massachusetts, there’s celebration becauseElizabeth Warren is running ahead and making the case for why government shouldbe able to rob everyone blind. For the people. You know the ones who pay for sidewalks with no choice about it. Well no… not those people. For the union members who cash in on the sidewalks. And the consultants and experts who determine whether the sidewalk will destroy any endangered blowflies and who hand out sidewalk construction contracts to minority owned businesses and finally the grants to the activists who once the sidewalk is built will protest that it is a racist sidewalk that destroys the habitat of the urban blowfly and sue the city to get the sidewalk torn down.

Warren acts like taxes are paid into a trust fund for the people—and the only people who believe that are so stupid they could drink paint straight from the can.

Taxes are compulsory payments by the people into a trust fund for politicians and their cronies and their supporters. The time when taxes had anything to with the people is long past, Obama may babble on about social security, but social security was looted by him and the rest of the pigs, whose oinking company Warren is eager to join.

Taxes have become wholesale theft by the Obamas, the Buffetts and the Trumkas from the people, and the thieves trot out the same class warfare arguments.

The upper class in a system is not simply a matter of money, but of power. The power to tax and spend is the only class that counts. And the middle class is vanishing under the appetites of liberal lords who have amassed a 15 trillion dollar deficit and still can’t get enough.

In 2011, the government is the only monopoly that matters and it is the worst of them. It is a trust with tentacles reaching into Wall Street and Harlem, into union boss offices and environmental consultancies, it has become an uncontrollable mafia that takes a piece of everything and howls for more in the name of the people it is robbing.

“Pay your fair share,” the pigs oink. The people want it. The people who make money off taxes.

You don’t have to love corporations or wear a top hat and play monopoly to be disgusted by the utter hypocrisy of the thieves trying to construct a moral argument for their theft.

Class warfare is always about those in power seizing the wealth of the people who have less power and influence than they do. Dress it up as they like with Warren Buffett, a crony capitalist who has made billions at taxpayer expense and owes back taxes that would get any working person sent to jail, but it’s about the powerful gaining more money.

It’s about the parasitic middle class that derives its wealth through government mandate robbing the productive middle-class. And it’s about the parasitic underclass robbing the working class and pushing them into the ranks of the unemployed through manufactured unemployment.

Pay your fair share, the thieves with cardboard signs need more environmental consultancies.

State of Distaste

Manhattan traffic is in a state of havoc as the international vultures of the UN descend on the city to feast at restaurants, snarl up traffic and block off chunks of a narrow island behind security barriers.

Abbas lacks the gun toting showmanship of Arafat, and his cunning, but his game is simple enough and hard to blow. Either he gets UN recognition and more money, while Israel suffers another blow, or Israel and the US spend enough prestige and concessions to keep him from declaring a state, which will still leave him with improved status and more money.

As usual the terrorists win either way, at least until Hamas decides to make its move, and “President Abbas” finds himself being hurled off a building or on the fastest plane out of Ben Gurion Airport for an academic appointment in Columbia where he can lecture on Palestinian history and Middle-Eastern politics till the pigs fly home.

The crisis is convenient for everyone involved. Netanyahu gets to see the protesters upstaged a second time, once again by the actions of their own allies. For all the money plowed into the “protests”, the people on whose behalf they are really taking place keep sabotaging them with terrorist attacks and unilateral diplomatic assaults.

Obama gets to focus on foreign policy and try to shore up the Jewish vote. The former matters more than the latter as oval office occupants tend to pick up points when there is a focus on foreign affairs, not that this is likely to benefit him much when unemployment is high and everyone wants answers on the economy.

The people who lose out are… the people. Again. The people always lose out.

The Unknown Man

Perry’s drooping ratings are a reminder of why he scored big in the first place. He was unknown and hadn’t faced the test of fire yet. Now that he’s been through several debates, his ratings are lower. Palin’s sudden positive polling is related to it, while she is quite well known, she hasn’t been subject to a surge of attacks in a while. Three debates later her polling wouldn’t be quite as good either.

But it also reveals the dissatisfaction with the field. Conservatives are passionate about principles and the combination of principles and electability is an elusive one. All candidates have their flaws and the more electable the candidate, the bigger the flaws. So we end up with Romney and Perry, in a clash of cultures, rather than policies.

Perry’s best asset is being the anti-Romney and Romney’s best asset is being the anti-Romney, which works fine so long as no one looks too closely at whether they’re really all that different. Some people have already looked and are not all that happy with what they have seen. But this is the way that the system works.

And Now the Roundup

Say You're Sorry

It doesn't get any better than a Democrat congressman apologizing to Muslims for us being ourselves.

Charity Subsidized Journalism

Can we look forward to the day when the New York Times is a charity case? That's already the case for liberal Jewish papers who lack that vital thing called readers and whose agenda is subsidized by the Federations, which are subsidized by the government and gullible donors.

Adam Taxin's Examiner column examines the story. I don't recall seeing any recent stats, but the numbers from five years back suggested that even so-called youth oriented papers like the Forward are demographically doomed, the Jewish Week was slightly better off but still sliding inevitably away.

Divide We Stand

Washington Rebel, via Western Rifle Shooters, We are a Divided People

What I mean by indulgences is this: $500 million dollar loans to companies who play the liberal game, nothing for those starving, bankrupt small businesses put out of business by the policies of politicians who sought the favor of the mass of voters looking for the spoils of a rich nation. The Community Reinvestment Act and all of the disastrous actions that strengthened it and bastardized the business of banking was nothing more than another form of looting the middle class. They have destroyed the middle class with their efforts and now seek another method, the direct method, outright confiscation.

Of course part of the problem is that we're not really a "people" at this point, and if the economics of the Civil War were about economic competition, there is no turf war here, just the decay of the system into an oligarchy where the people at the top are concerned with maximizing their power.

The people at the top have their constituencies, some of them legitimate, but the philosophical division that some on the right and the left emphasize hardly exists. Yes there are people who expect the government to pay their mortgage and there are people who want to see the military privatized, but for the most part, people are angry and confused. They know the system is unfair and they're being pulled two ways over who to blame.

The trick is that both are to blame. The oversized government and its crony capitalists. They're part of a common problem where irresponsibility and complete lack of foresight are the standard way of doing things. The old robber barons made mistakes, and were often bastards, but they weren't incompetent. The real problem of America today is that it is being governed by the incompetent on behalf of the incompetent at the expense of the competent.

We could have a functioning country if it was being governed by the competent on behalf of the incompetent, though it wouldn't be a very good country. But the current system is headed off the rails at ridiculous speeds because it's being run by the likes of Obama and his cronies, who are clever enough to get to power, but not wise enough to understand that they have to make the system work in order to steal from it.

The old Tammany roots of the party lay in people who understood that, they didn't understand it well enough to control themselves, but they got better at it as time went on. And then with the advent of the baby boomers it got worse, as radicals and community organizers who did not learn the lessons of the political machine got their chance to spend the dough. And then came Generation X with even less connection to the old politicos.

What we have now are a bushel of Aaron Burr's, smart and crazy enough to claw their way up, but completely devoid of morals or reality checks. They have ingenious schemes and boundless arrogance. They will do anything, without conceiving that they might fail or that there might be a price to pay. Think Tower of Babel.

The Future of New York

Via the always great American Digest, the future of the city

Despite its self-celebrated "progressive"image, New York has the most unequal distribution of income in the nation. The bulk of the job growth has not been on Wall Street, where employment has declined over the decade, but in hospitality and restaurants, which pay salaries 60% below the city average. In fact, restaurants are now the largest single private employers in Manhattan, with more people serving tables than trading equities.

That's not an uncommon phenomenon on islands that exist only for tourists, but it's a sad state of affairs for a city that was one important because it produced something, which is now a city with massive municipal services, boroughs destroyed by multiculturalism and a gentrified center on the island of Manhattan and around the old city center of Brooklyn where yuppies crowd close to the river.

Now the funny thing about waiters is that you can pay them less than minimum wage and busboys are usually Mexican illegals who can be paid... whatever. So the only job growth here is in jobs that are below minimum wage. Count also the number of off the books jobs in immigrant communities and you start to get a truer picture of the situation.

The tricky thing that New York City has pulled off is that it has retained the status of a cultural capital with a world class opera company and scholarly institutions, book publishers and all that, with a tourist destination which all adds up to a major hospitality industry, but not a whole lot else.

The docks still mostly stand empty, industrial powerhouses are a shadow of what they were, 19th century warehouses are converted into overpriced condos for the people who can't afford Manhattan, so much is being lost and not all that much has been gained.

New York has picked up a whole lot of Midwestern wannabe poets and Bangladeshi immigrants, but the people who made it what it is are gone or working for a government paycheck.

Enjoy the weekend