Politicians in Brussels decreed that British citizens living and working at home in the UK cannot work overtime.”"”"”"”"

To me, the irony is huge. The late Middle Ages saw the rise of what would one day become the Middle Class. These industrious ex-peasants created what became known as “Cottage Industries,” which involved “Moonlighting” when the full Moon permitted it, and keeping the hearth fire stoked so they could work into the late evening. The authorities (representing the interests of the aristocracy and the Church) created something called a “Curfew” (“Couvre Feux”) to try to curb the practice of live fires after sunset under the guise of promoting “Public Safety.” Sound familiar?

I knew I smelled a rat or two in the article but couldn’t explain exactly how many. The next day Newsbusters reported that “New York Times European correspondent Dan Bilefsky bizarrely relayed the contents of a secret police file from the former Communist state of Czechoslovakia to boost his argument that Vaclav Klaus,the new president of the European Union, is a dangerously arrogant proponent of the free market.”

When I read that I became a lot more fond of Klaus. But when I read this in Investors Business Daily, I actually started to feel something akin to the audacity of hopeychanginess:

“But this is nothing new. In 2003, Arie Oostlander, a Dutch member of the European Parliament, lamented that “the worst thing that the Czechs could have done was to elect to the presidency a follower of Margaret Thatcher.”

Yet Klaus, a student of the great F.A. Hayek and Milton Friedman, is exactly the sort of leader that Europe has to have. The liberty-minded defender of free markets has the opportunity to rock the continent out of its self-inflicted economic malaise.”

Klaus, the man with both brains and balls,
comitted blasphemy against their secular religion.

Let us resolve to burn them at the stake before we are the one immolated.

“Activists” are thugs…as thugs, they are stupid and brutish. On the first point, remember that old saying that begins “When they say it’s not about the money….” On the second, they submit themselves to their aristocracy so that they may be rewarded for their thuggery, which gets us back to the first point.

“The Internationale” [variant words in square brackets]

Arise ye workers [starvelings] from your slumbers
Arise ye prisoners of want
For reason in revolt now thunders
And at last ends the age of cant.
Away with all your superstitions
Servile masses arise, arise
We’ll change henceforth [forthwith] the old tradition [conditions]
And spurn the dust to win the prize.

So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale unites the human race.
So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale unites the human race.

No more deluded by reaction
On tyrants only we’ll make war
The soldiers too will take strike action
They’ll break ranks and fight no more
And if those cannibals keep trying
To sacrifice us to their pride
They soon shall hear the bullets flying
We’ll shoot the generals on our own side.

No saviour from on high delivers
No faith have we in prince or peer
Our own right hand the chains must shiver
Chains of hatred, greed and fear
E’er the thieves will out with their booty [give up their booty]
And give to all a happier lot.
Each [those] at the forge must do their duty
And we’ll strike while the iron is hot.# # #

Note the praise of fragging.

Do not know if that will prove accurate or not. However, a pissing contest over something as trivial as a flag display is something of an ominous warning. Indicates that ideological ego gratification can blot out real needs of statecraft. Remember
a minor Archduke getting assinated in 1914?

And how do they enforce that, with little vans going up and down the street in the middle of the night with antennas which can detect desktop keystrokes? If they see the text “Quarterly Profit Estimates” rather than “oh baby when you put your big boobs against my back it always turns my stomach” do they stop and issue a ticket?