Last week I posted on the violence in Greece due to the first signs of the collapsing of the Bismarckian welfare state, which has been the norm in Europe for a hundred years.  The significance of this and the rest of the PIIGS in Europe is that the trends facing Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain will affect the rest of the EU and eventually the USA as the bills for our entitlements outweigh our ability to pay for them.

Well, today there was some new insight into the violent protests in Greece and the protean unrest in Portugal.  Apparently, those funding and organizing the youth protests are labor unions with connections to the Communist Party of Greece.  It’s been said many times that while America’s unrest is focused against an out of control government, in Europe the unrest is focused on keeping big government strong enough to prop-up the special interests (the communist-leaning labor unions in the case of Greece).  That, at least, gives us a little hope.

Glenn Beck has been way ahead on the issue reviewing the radical book, The Coming Insurrection, last July which says that the capitalist system is dying and must eventually collapse through all means necessary, including street action and violence.  Sounds like the old communist mantra back during the early 1900s.  Here are excerpts from the official “Product Description” at Amazon (the bold words and phrases were altered by me), which struck me as very relevant given the recent events in Greece and the communist connections now coming to light:

The Coming Insurrection is an eloquent call to arms arising from the recent waves of social contestation in France and Europe…. One of its members more adequately described the group as “the name given to a collective voice bent on denouncing contemporary cynicism and reality.” The Coming Insurrection is a strategic prescription for an emergent war-machine to “spread anarchy and live communism.”

Written in the wake of the riots that erupted throughout the Paris suburbs in the fall of 2005 and presaging more recent riots and general strikes in France and Greece, The Coming Insurrection articulates a rejection of the official Left and its reformist agenda, aligning itself instead with the younger, wilder forms of resistance that have emerged in Europe around recent struggles against immigration control and the “war on terror.”

Hot-wired to the movement of ‘77 in Italy, its preferred historical reference point, The Coming Insurrection formulates an ethics that takes as its starting point theft, sabotage, the refusal to work, and the elaboration of collective, self-organized forms-of-life.

There could be a much larger problem on their hands in Europe than anyone thinks.

Well, keep in mind that they’re British and they do mean well.  Saturday’s Brighton Tea Party managed to attract around 300 people (some having to be turned away due to room occupancy issues) in what turns out to be a very “Green” (read: “Red”) locale.  As Daniel Hannan said on his blog:

“If you can run a tea-party in Brighton Pavilion… you can run one anywhere.  You don’t have to be a small-government Conservative to feel that taxation, spending and borrowing are currently too high.”

Three hundred people at a major Tea Party in the States would be nearly a failure, but keep in mind that 13 months ago, the only Tea Party anyone knew about was back in 1773 in (of all places) Boston.  Plus, there was only two days notice about the Brighton event anyway.  We’ll have to wait and see if Brighton’s Tea Party sets off a significant anti-tax movement in the UK, but Hannan seems hopeful that there may be something brewin’ in Britain.

The ancient Oracle of Delphi used to be a spot where ancient Greeks would go to breathe in various toxic fumes and listen to Pythia tell them about possible futures in cryptic phrases and symbols.  Well, millennia later, the Greeks still have some prophesying to do — this time on the eventual collapse of what many have called the “Bismarckian” welfare state which has dominated the West for most of the last century.

Here are the first signs of where our debt-road may lead:

The ever-entertaining and wise Mark Steyn has written a great article summarizing the nature of the crisis: the financial unsustainability of the welfare state due to lower fertility rates coupled with massive entitlement debt that can’t be paid off by the dwindling number of people left in your country will inevitably led to trouble, as it has in Greece.  Steyn likens Greece to being in a canoe about to go over the falls, while America is still upstream a little bit.  Rather than pulling to the shore, the Obama Administration seems content to keep us paddling toward the abyss, adding urgency through a possible new Health Care entitlement we can’t afford.

Will America eventually see the kind of violence currently being experienced in Greece?  Maybe.  It’s going to be very hard telling the “recipient class” (kudos to Andrew Wilkow for introducing me to the term) that they can’t receive as much because the system (which they aren’t contributing to) is going broke.  Add in some anti-business populism, accusations of racism, poverty junkies looking for their next fix and yes, I think we could see some street violence once the hard decisions need to be made here in America.  However, we can reduce its impact if we start ASAP and ween the addicted off the drug of their entitlements responsibly.

The European Union can be a little shady as a Democratic institution sometimes.  It elected its first President in a back room deal and nations are forced to cede their sovereignty away without a referendum despite being promised one by their leaders.  Basically, decisions are often made with little or no regard for the views of the citizens of its member states.

That’s one of the reasons why Nigel Farage’s latest piece of political theater is so refreshing.  On Wednesday, the UK Independence Party Leader really dressed down EU President Herman Von Rompuy on the floor of the European Parliament.

I hope moments like this don’t help the UK Independence Party in the next UK general election because every vote for the UK Independence Party is one less vote for the Conservative majority needed to ensure that Gordon Brown is defeated.   I still like the rant though.

Hat tip:  The Corner

Former Secretary of State Alexander Haig has died from complications resulting from an infection at the age of 85.  A distinguished Korean and Vietnam War vet, NATO Commander, and four-star general, Haig served under President Nixon and Ford as White House Chief of Staff from 1973-1974, and most famously as the State Secretary under President Reagan in the 1980s, uttering the much-maligned statement that he was “in control here in the White House” in the hours after the attempted assassination of Reagan (to be fair Haig was completely aware that Vice President Bush was actually next in Presidential succession, and was merely referring to his current situation in the literal White House at the time).   Haig was even an also-ran for the Republican nomination for President in 1988!  He was always an advocate for an aggressive American foreign policy and a staunch anti-communist with a distinguished military record.  A major figure of that era has died today.

The UK Daily Mail has published this article focusing on hacked ClimateGate scientist Phil Jones’ admission that there has NOT been any statistically significant global warming since 1995!  Ouch — that’s 15 years!

Think 1995 for a second:  Newt and crew take over Congress for the first time;  Jacques Chirac becomes President of France;  the Oklahoma City bombing;  DVDs first show up on the market;  Golden Eye and Toy Story were in movie theaters;  Tupac was still alive;  Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson were first married;  and on a personal level, I graduated from high school that June.

The significance of this is that Jones’ group’s data affected the UN’s IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), which sought to turn the clock back to the pre-industrial 17th Century at Copenhagen just a few months ago.  This keeps getting worse for the Eco-Nazis, even for the legitimacy of “climate change” given that it seems the Earth’s temperature may be subject to natural fluctuations.  Of course, it is, but to have the leading ClimateGate scientist admit as much is about as damning as you get to the enviro-crazy agenda.

If you haven’t heard about the acronym “PIIGS” yet, I’ll let you in on it:  PIIGS stands for Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain — countries in the European Union on the verge of economic collapse.  Of the five nations in trouble, Greece is the closest to collapse and the youth in the streets have made their ire known for a while now.  In fact, Germany is mulling the perhaps necessary bailout of the small Mediterranean nation which is about to default on its national debt and shows no signs of changing its behavior.  About 67% of Germans don’t want to do it.

The problem is, of course, big government.  Many European governments have promised too many goodies to their nanny state constituents over the years and the bills are coming due.  To paraphrase the great Margaret Thatcher:  the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.  The EU PIIGS are running out of money (and are asking for other nations to bail them out), are in too much debt to spend their way out (that’s the phase we’re currently in), and have choked their youth into finding no alternative than low-grade street violence.

Why we should worry about the PIIGS was the topic of Glenn Beck’s show last Thursday.  The Obama Administration has chosen the path of structural deficit spending along with the expansion of the American nanny state –  that will not end well.  We need only look to the PIIGS to foreshadow the problems of an unchecked Liberal government here in America.

With the recent slew of evidence that certain scientists manipulated scientific data to hide the decline of global temperatures over the last decade, those of us capable of critical thought are rightly skeptical of claims concerning the role of human activity in climate change.  But the falsifying of data is not the only technique used by devoted followers of the global warming religion.  The UK Telegraph’s Gerald Warner, the man who hilariously coined the term “President Pantywaist”, has an interesting piece on today’s Copenhagen powwow and how it is nothing more than a collection of modern-day snake-oil salesmen who use institutions with undeserved credibility to buttress their message.

Warner’s article is funny, but it also contains a serious point.  Be wary whenever the mainstream media portrays one of its sources as objective.

Well, I suppose one can breathe IN, just not OUT!

CO2 is a danger to public health;  so says the Environmental Protection Agency today in a Pearl Harbor-like surprise that’s slated to doom our long-term economic future.

In 2007, the Supreme Court allowed the regulation greenhouse gases, including CO2, by the EPA.  Seeing Cap-and-Trade about to die from neglect in the Senate and in an attempt to promote international goodwill towards the Copenhagen crew, Obama’s EPA has decided to make-good on the Supreme Court’s ill-fated decision.   FYI — Justice Kennedy was the swing vote on that 5-4 decision.

I think this act by the EPA could potentially be a back-door way to get Cap-and-Trade.  CO2 is a by-product of our car engines, the coal industry (which accounts for 49% of our nation’s electricity, by the way), multiple other industries, as well as a natural by-product of mammal’s respiratory systems.  With some tinkering from Congress this precedent can easily be used to regulate gas and electricity much like a Cap-and-Trade set-up without Congress taking the full heat.  The jury’s still out on regulating who gets to breathe, but wait, the Dems are debating health care reform, too!  Hmm…

I just want to know:  how many of our Liberal friends at the EPA will take advantage of this new realm of regulation and cut their breathing to save the planet?  This dictate ostensibly makes it bad to breathe.  I can’t wait until next November.

Well, the forecast wintry mix totaling “a dusting to an inch” is already near three inches deep in my part of Central Jersey, so I couldn’t resist a global warming/Climategate post!  Especially when in the face of all the uncertainty behind much of the climate science underlying the upcoming Copenhagen initiatives, President Obama is going to go full-throttle at the global warming summit next week — scandal be damned!  The Administration is in full push-back mode and look more like “deniers” than any of the skeptics they regularly mock.

To me this further demonstrates how Obama and his people are “true-believers.”  I’ve had many conversations with Conservatives and Moderates about what Obama would do if the Republicans took back a house of Congress next year.  Would Obama triangulate the way Clinton did to get reelected?  Would he moderate by 2012?

One cannot trust his speeches for an indication:  he campaigned as more of a Conservative than McCain did, but has acted more Liberal than McGovern might have!  One could look at his actions on two important issues: health care and climate change.  The public doesn’t want his party’s health care reform nor can we remotely afford it, but he’s pushing it anyway.  There are major unanswered questions surrounding the anthropomorphic climate change issue, but he’ll push it anyway.  I don’t think he’s like Bill Clinton, a man who wanted everyone to like him so he triangulated in order to be reelected in 1996.  Obama’s acting more like that true-believer-type who thinks they’re right.  Cap-and-trade would be a complete mess in this country.  He knows this:

…but pushing his view of the “greater good” to “save the planet” is more important than the interests of the people he was elected to represent.  That’s how Jimmy Carter didn’t get his second term, but it’s also how Jimmy Carter left an awful mess in his wake.