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I have a very simple and fair suggestion to solve the real estate crisis.
All those who have supported the recent policy of uncontrolled mass immigration should build a new house in their back garden, or on top of their existing house if there is no space in the garden.
This will also apply to your second homes.
Those of us who opposed this stupid policy should be exempt.
Of course it won’t happen. It will be those who were against open borders who will be defeated, because they are generally poor and powerless. But it’s good to think about it.
Democracy has been canceled in Romania and the free West is as silent as a grave
It was at this time of year, 35 years ago, that I left Berlin for the east, full of fear. I was looking to enter Romania, then a strict communist tyranny. I finally arrived in the capital, Bucharest, as dusk fell on Christmas Eve. By then the city was gripped by a kind of madness.
I was warned to watch out for snipers at the entrance to my hotel and was ridiculously weaving through the snow with a suitcase in one hand and a typewriter in the other. No one fired, but later I took shelter under my bed as the red tracer bullets passed by the plaza window.
It was more or less impossible to know what was happening, although the city’s hospitals were full of sad and hurt people, and they received third-rate communist health care.
I went because rumors of severe discontent had spread, which exploded on December 21, 1989. The country’s communist leader, Nicolae Ceausescu, was booed during a speech.
This unthinkable act of bravery on the part of the hecklers began an avalanche that took only four days to drag the despot to his death: an ugly irregular tribunal followed by the so-called “execution.” This seemed more like murder to me when it was broadcast on Christmas Day on Bucharest television.
The general reaction of Europe and the world was one of simple joy, as always happens when evil regimes fall (see Syria now).
But Romania hasn’t been particularly happy since then. And I was surprised to learn last week that his last presidential election had been canceled. Yes, you read that right. Romania’s Supreme Court simply canceled the elections, due to the danger of the wrong person winning.
Calin Georgescu would have been one of the two candidates in the second round of Romania’s presidential elections, which have now been cancelled.
Let’s simplify this. Calin Georgescu, who has spoken highly of Vladimir Putin and who is definitely not politically correct, did very well in the first round on November 24. As a result, he was to be one of the two candidates in the decisive second round, which should have taken place on December 8. Now the first round has been erased from the record and the second round will never happen. New elections are promised, but can they now be fair?
I can understand why many in Romania don’t want Georgescu to win. He’s not my kind of person either. But that is the problem with democracy. We must accept the result, or it will not be democracy. And presenting weak “intelligence” claims about “Russian intervention” is really not enough, in an adult country, to stop a free election.
Two things have caught my attention about this event. The first is that it happened at all. The second, equally important, has been the absence of protests by bodies that endlessly condemn rigged elections elsewhere. The EU Commission, as far as I can tell, has avoided saying anything. NATO’s search for condemnation also yielded no results.
There has been no sign of one of those “Pink”, “Orange” or “Dignity” revolutions that break out so spontaneously when the West challenges election results that favor Moscow. Although I must point out, as a former revolutionary, that organizing a spontaneous uprising requires a lot of planning, money and hard work.
This all seems like old-fashioned nonsense to me, and those who have remained silent about it should be ignored when they protest, in the future, the suppression of democracy that does not suit them.
In the meantime, it might be reasonable to worry about how Romanians might react to the cancellation of their democracy after just 35 years.
The evil Assad had his use for our side.
I get a little tired of the emotions about Syria and its horrible prisons from the Western media and politicians.
The West knew this perfectly well and took advantage of it when it asked then-President Bashar Assad for help against Al Qaeda. That’s why Bashar met the Queen and Sir Anthony Blair.
Likewise, the West knows how cruel many of its current friends in the Middle East are and does nothing about it. But the case of Maher Arar goes much further. Mr. Arar, an innocent Canadian citizen, was kidnapped by US authorities while changing planes in New York. They claimed he was a terrorist. He was then handed over to the demons of the Syrian secret police in Damascus. No one wanted to listen to Mr. Arar’s pleas that he was innocent. But no expense was spared to send him on a private plane to a Syrian basement.
Citizens in Damascus celebrate the overthrow of President Bashar Assad
They tortured him for a year in the name of the United States. I’ll spare you all the details, but Amnesty International summed it up like this: ‘He was beaten and interrogated for 18 hours a day for a couple of weeks. They whipped his back and hands with a two-inch thick electrical cable. For more than ten months he was held in a dark, dank, tomb-like underground cell (3 x 6 x 7 feet), where he could hear others being tortured. After a year in Syria, Maher was released without charge.
The United States government is still quite cautious regarding this episode. But a Canadian commission publicly cleared Arar of any links to terrorism, and the Canadian government later reached an out-of-court settlement with Arar for several million dollars.
Logic turned upside down
Walking through the EU capital, near the Belgian Royal Palace, I came across this charming street sign.
It was still there hours later and the next day, so I guess I have a right to try to take it seriously. But I’m too old to follow your advice. I remember Lewis Carroll’s verse:
“You are old, Father William.” The young man said: ‘And your hair has become very white;
‘And yet you stop incessantly in your head – Do you think that, at your age, It’s right?’
‘In my youth’, Father William He answered his son: ‘I was afraid that I might hurt the brain;
‘But now that I’m perfectly I’m sure I don’t have any, wWow, I do it again and again.’