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Showing posts with label eu. Show all posts
Showing posts with label eu. Show all posts

Saturday, November 19, 2011

A Little Liberal Catharsis

Nov 19th, 2011

Hello liberal friends and, well, everyone from Sullivan to Frum to Bartlett, etc... Feeling down? The insane machinations of a mouthbreathing American Republican Party have you in fits? Well, here's your moment to bask in a little cathartic it-could-be-worse-type-stuff. The European Union, that forward thinking body, has struck a blow against corporate speech... there's just one hitch...

Actual headline from a real place in the "civilized West"


Via The Telegraph:

"EU officials concluded that, following a three-year investigation, there was no evidence to prove the previously undisputed fact.

Producers of bottled water are now forbidden by law from making the claim and will face a two-year jail sentence if they defy the edict, which comes into force in the UK next month.

Last night, critics claimed the EU was at odds with both science and common sense. Conservative MEP Roger Helmer said: "This is stupidity writ large.

"The euro is burning, the EU is falling apart and yet here they are: highly-paid, highly-pensioned officials worrying about the obvious qualities of water and trying to deny us the right to say what is patently true.

"If ever there were an episode which demonstrates the folly of the great European project then this is it."

We shit you not. Water, as officially designated by the EU, does not, repeat, does not prevent dehydration. Sleep tight.

Next on their docket? Gravity, the pernicious rumor that things "fall."

Monday, September 27, 2010

The Austerity Movement

Sept. 27th, 2010


From the Financial Times comes coverage of the current European economic crisis and how the E.U. is handling it.


"In a letter to all 27 EU finance ministers, Wolfgang Schäuble (the German Finance Minister) said he “chiefly supports” the stringent proposals to be unveiled Wednesday by José Manuel Barroso, European Commission president, which include millions of euros in fines for countries that fail to cut sovereign debt levels.


But the letter and a position paper, obtained by the Financial Times, also goes further, suggesting EU development and agricultural funding should be suspended for repeated violators. It also proposes that voting rights in the powerful Council of Ministers be suspended for countries that fail to meet fiscal benchmarks."


One has to wonder if the punishments being proposed for failing to meet bureaucratic targets might actually aggravate the disparities in financial strength or industrial stability amongst E.U. members. Could the strictures of the sort suggested lead to unfinished infrastructure or even diminished programs to prevent famine and combat drought? 


Time will tell.