Hava Nagila: The Movie

My mother's favorite episode of "The Dick Van Dyke Show" was not one of the certified classics, like the one with the walnuts, but rather the one in which middle-aged comedy writer Buddy Sorrell was belatedly bar mitzvahed. God, she would have loved "Hava Nagila: The Movie," a slight, but very satisfying, and at times, surprisingly moving, documentary about the inescapable Jewish anthem and wedding and bar mitzvah music staple.

But you don't, as the old saying goes, have to be Jewish to enjoy it. Because everyone knows "Hava Nagila." It is an instantly recognizable musical cliché on par with "Kumbaya," a pervasive earworm so irresistibly catchy, yet so cheesy that even "It's a Small World" might be moved to protest, "Please, make it stop."

"It's not just a song, it's an event," offers Josh Kun, one of the academics who speaks on the mystery, history and meaning of "Hava Nagila." "It's a song that screams, 'This is a Jewish song.'"

Not everyone is happy about that. Counters Henry Sapoznik, founder of KlezKamp, a Yiddish folk arts program, "It's relentless, resilient, but so are cockroaches. … It represents for multitudes of people Jewish music and that's all that they will ever know."

There is much more to "Hava Nagila," however, than meets the ear. As another expert observes, the song is "a portal into a century-and-a-half of Jewish history." To find out how this song went "from the Ukraine (where it began life as a wordless prayer) to YouTube," director Roberta Grossman embarks on a global "Hava quest."

Strap yourself in for a Hava-palooza. Grossman unearths a dizzying array of clips from films and TV shows in which "Hava Nagila" has been featured, including "Private Benjamin," "Thoroughly Modern Millie," "The Wedding Crashers," "Daddy Day Care," "The Danny Kaye Show," "The Ed Sullivan Show" and "The Simpsons."

But wait; you ain't heard nothin' yet. "Hava Nagila" has also turned up in "Raisin in the Sun," a Bruce Springsteen concert, and the B-side of Glen Campbell's single, "True Grit." Chubby Checker twisted to it, and Lena Horne adapted it for her powerful civil rights anthem, "Now."

And Bob Dylan! To paraphrase a joke from Ernst Lubitsch's "To Be or Not to Be," what the Germans did to Poland, Dylan does to "Hava Nagila."

The movie includes interviews with two of the song's most prominent ambassadors, who were instrumental in introducing the song to a mass American audience, Connie Francis, an Italian Catholic, who included it on her bestselling album, "Connie Francis Sings Jewish Favorites" ("I'm 10 percent Jewish on my manager's side," she jokes), and Harry Belafonte, who movingly recalls singing the song in Germany.

Inevitably, "Hava Nagila" becomes a target for spoof and parodies (Allan Sherman's ode to upward mobility, "Harvey and Sheila") and ultimately outright scorn by a new generation attempting to take Jewish music into the 21st Century.

But "Hava Nagila," endures as "an immediate connection to tradition and community." Its lyrics speak of rejoicing ("We are a happy people," one rabbi proclaims) and throughout Jewish history, the song has been the best and most defiant answer to oppression and misery.

Writer Sophie Sartain tries to get cute with onscreen identifications (Someone Else, Really Smart Historian), which gets old fast, but Grossman keeps the film as briskly paced as a Hora, the dance that became "Hava Nagila's" soul mate.

Grossman tackles several intriguing questions, among them: Which is more Jewish, "Hava Nagila" or gefilte fish? And who was the actual author of the song? (Two competing families stake their claims.) But the one, eternal question that this documentary dances around may never be fully, truly answered: What's up with this song?

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A mysterious sci-fi relationship primer

A romance, a thriller, and a science-fiction drama, "Upstream Color" tantalizes viewers with an open-ended narrative about overcoming personal loss. It's the long-awaited follow-up to the equally sophisticated 2004 time travel drama "Primer" by American indie wunderkind Shane Carruth, and it's every bit as good. A young couple are connected by a singular, mysterious experience, a form of hypnosis caused by body-snatching maggots that alienates them from everyone around them.

"Upstream Color" is about pattern recognition, but it's also about how a couple's inexplicable attraction is fostered by (shared?) trauma. Immediately after Kris (Amy Seimetz) is introduced, she's abducted and, for lack of a better word, hypnotized. For reasons that are never made explicit, a thief subjects Kris to mind-and-body-controlling maggots. The experience completely throws her routine out of whack: She loses her job, and bankrupts herself without knowing why. Once that ordeal is over, she finds herself weirdly drawn to Jeff (Carruth), a man she initially feels no connection with, but soon can't stop bumping into.

Post-brain-washing, Kris and Jeff's intertwined lives are presented through a drunken haze. Their relationship develops at a brisk pace, and while it's ambiguous to what extent Jeff and Kris have had the same thing happen to them, the two keep bumping into each other. Their motives are not always clear, even to themselves, but that's because they're never not struggling to figure out what's happened to them, and why everything now seems alien and menacingly opaque.

Kris and Jeff's bond is established and developed by small, telling gestures. Carruth bombards viewers with information, but he does this in small, unassuming ways, like the first time Kris hears Jeff describe a scene from his childhood. While they eat dinner, Jeff tells a story from his past. Kris interjects a detail, then lets him excitedly continue while she quietly wonders why his past sounds just like her own. This is the first of several conversations where Kris and Jeff seem to share each other's memories. In a later even, Jeff describes with photographic accuracy exactly where in his old office building Kris is as she tries to exit. And in an even later scene, after several heated conversations about grackles and starlings (it might also be just one conversation that goes in several different directions) Kris accuses Jeff of confusing his memories with hers. Eventually, it's uncertain whether Kris is retracing Jeff's steps, or vice versa.

The complex bond between the two characters is defined by questions that they don't ask each other, and gestures that don't have meaning outside the relationship itself. "Upstream Color" is about how, once co-dependent attachments are formed, people create new contexts for their lives, effectively distancing themselves from their identities as individuals. Kris and Jeff aren't just themselves anymore, they're a couple, redefined by their shared experiences, including those from before they met -- like when Jeff connects himself with Kris by describing what it was like to be ostracized by his peers after making bad business decisions that even he can't fully explain.

It's unclear how Kris and Jeff are linked to Sampler (Andrew Sensenig), a man who runs a pig farm and makes ambient noise music by distorting natural sounds on a synthesizer, or how Sampler facilitates the growth of the maggots. But finding answers to these questions is of secondary importance compared to watching the effect that certain triggers, like the color blue, or passages from Thoreau's "Walden," have on Kris and Jeff. As a couple, Kris and Jeff advance towards a new future together, one characterized by abstraction, but defined by a genuine sense of wonder.

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The Science on Same-Sex Marriage

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in two
cases challenging legal restrictions on same-sex marriage.
Proponents and opponents sought to cudgel one another with
sociological and psychological studies aiming to prove that science
is on their side. Well, what does the science say?

Impact on Traditional Marriage

Some opponents told the court that same-sex marriage will
undermine conventional marriage among heterosexuals. So what do the
data say about how legalizing gay marriages affects conventional
marriages?

A 2009 study by University of Sherbrooke economist Mircea
Trandafir investigated the effect
of the legalization of same-sex marriage in the Netherlands,
the first country to recognize same-sex marriage. In 1998, the
Dutch created registered partnerships, which are open to all
couples, and in 2001 a law allowing full same-sex marriages. His
analysis found that same-sex marriage leads to a decline in the
different-sex marriage rate, but not in the different-sex union
(marriage plus registered partnership) rate. In other words, Dutch
heterosexual couples are taking advantage of the “marriage lite”
registered partnership alternative.

At the time of Prof. Trandafir’s study, the chief difference
between registered partnerships and marriage was that the former
could be dissolved at the civil registry by mutual agreement. In a
2012 West Virginia Law Review article, Mercer School of
Law professor Scott Titshaw shows that the political compromises
provoked by the initial
refusals to extend full marriage rights to same-sex couples
result in a proliferation of civil union alternatives. Prof.
Titshaw agrees with Prof. Trandafir that different-sex couples
increasingly find the new marriage alternatives attractive; in
effect, refusing to give full legal recognition to same-sex couples
ends up diminishing the status and benefits associated with
conventional marriage for everyone. Ironically, conservatives by
opposing the extension of full marriage rights to gay people have
ended up weakening the institution they sought to protect.

The Divorce Rate

Sweden legalized same-sex civil unions in 1995 and gay marriage
in 2009. A 2011 demographic study from researchers at the
University of Stockholm reports that since 1999, after decades of
falling, both the marriage rate and the
fertility rate have trended upward and the divorce rate is
down.

Massachusetts was the first state to legalize same-sex marriage
in 2004. In 2003, the divorce rate in Massachusetts was 2.5 per
1,000 residents, and it fell to 1.9 by 2009. The Massachusetts
marriage rate jumped 15 percent in 2004, as many same-sex couples
chose to get married, but since has remained stable. Interestingly,
the states that permit same-sex marriage tend to have lower divorce
rates than those that ban same-sex marriage.

A 2004 study of registered partnerships in Sweden reported that

gay male couples were 50 percent more likely to divorce than
were heterosexual couples. Lesbian couples were nearly three times
more likely to divorce than were heterosexual couples.

 But how salient are higher divorce rates among gays and
lesbians for making public policy? Consider that a 2008 study in
the journal Family Relations by Rice University
sociologist Jenifer Bratter found that in the U.S.
black-husband/white-wife marriages were
twice as likely to end in divorce as white/white couples, and
Asian-husband/white-wife couples were 59percent more likely. Yet
few would argue that interracial marriages should be prohibited
because their children are at substantially greater risk of
experiencing the social, psychological, and economic disadvantages
stemming from a higher interracial divorce rate.

Having Kids

Nearly 20 percent of
same-sex households—i.e., 115,000—reported having children, and
84 percent contained children biologically related to one of the
householders. In comparison, 94 percent of different-sex married
couple households with children reported living with their own
children. A study issued in February by the Williams Institute, a
gay public-policy think tank at the law school of the University of
California, Los Angeles, reports that 37 percent of “lesbian, gay,
bisexual and transgender” (LGBT) adults have had a child at some
time in their lives. In addition, the report notes that as many as

six million American children and adults have an LGBT
parent.

 Opponents and proponents of same-sex marriage spar
fiercely over the data about how children fare in same-sex
households. On March 21, when the American Academy of Pediatricians
issued a
statement in favor of same-sex civil marriage, the group also
published a technical report that comprehensively looked at the
available research on the well-being of children living in same-sex
households. The report noted that a big problem with current
research is the small sample sizes of many of the studies. An
additional problem is that most of the children in these studies
have been through divorce before living in a same-sex household.
Divorce is well known to have deleterious effects on the well-being
of children.

However, data are reassuring from the National Longitudinal
Lesbian Family Study, which includes 78 lesbian families who used
donor sperm to have children and have been followed since the
1980s. A 2012 study compared quality-of-life measurements of

adolescents from lesbian families with those from a matched set
of adolescents raised in different-sex homes. The researchers
reported that “adolescents reared by lesbian mothers from birth do
not manifest more adjustment difficulties (e.g., depression,
anxiety, and disruptive behaviors) than those reared by
heterosexual parents.”

 By the time that their children were age 17, some 55
percent of the lesbian couples had separated compared to 36 percent
of heterosexual couples in the National Survey of Family Growth.
However, children from separated lesbian couples don’t appear to
manifest the social and psychological problems often found among
children whose heterosexual parents are divorced. The better scores
achieved by the children of lesbians, the researchers point out
might result from the fact that 75 percent of the separated lesbian
couples shared custody, whereas 65 percent of divorced heterosexual
mothers had sole custody of their children.

 A 2010 study in the periodical Demography by
Stanford University sociologist Michael Rosenfeld parsed Census
data to compare the school progress of children
reared in same-sex, heterosexual, and single parent families.
He reported that “children raised by same-sex couples have no
fundamental deficits in making normal progress through school.”

Adoption Outcomes

A 2012 study by UCLA researchers involving 82 families (60
heterosexual, 15 gay, and 7 lesbian) who
adopted high-risk children from foster care found that on
average, children in both same-sex and different-sex households
“showed significant gains of approximately 10 IQ points in their
cognitive development and maintained stable levels of behavior
problems that were not clinically significant.”

The researchers noted that these findings were especially
remarkable because the children adopted by same-sex couples were
generally higher risk and often of a different ethnicity than those
adopted by heterosexual couples. The bottom line is that research
on the effects of being reared by same-sex parents on children is
certainly not perfect, but the AAP seems right when it concluded
that despite research “imperfections, it is likely that the
extensive research efforts that have been carried out would have
documented serious and significant damages if they existed.”

Monogamy

Research suggests one salient difference between same-sex,
especially gay male couples, and different-sex couples relates to
the acceptability of sex with people outside of the relationship. A
2010 study by University of Toronto sociologist Adam Isaiah Green
in the Canadian Journal of Sociology involving 30 same-sex married
couples around Toronto found that two-thirds of same-sex spouses
(40 percent female, 60 percent male) did
not believe marriage needed always to be monogamous. In fact,
nearly half of male same-sex spouses (47 percent) had an explicit
agreement that allowed for non-monogamy. In comparison, the
General Social
Survey reported in 2010 that
19 percent of men and 14 percent of women they had been
unfaithful at some point during their marriages.

My reading of the scientific literature as it currently stands
is that the legalization of same sex marriage does not have major
effects on marriage trends in the wider society. As ever greater
numbers of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Americans have
exited the closet, more straight Americans have come to know and
accept their homosexual family members, friends, and colleagues. It
is this personal data, not the dueling studies published in obscure
social science journals, that have now persuaded a majority of Americans
in recent polls to support same sex marriage.

A slightly different version of this article originally appeared
at the Wall Street Journal's Ideas Market.

Disclosure: My wife and I have supported Equality Virginia
for a number of years.

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Huge News: 52 Percent of Americans Now Support Legalizing Marijuana

"For the first time
in more than four decades of polling on the issue,"
reports the Pew Research Center, "a majority of Americans favor
legalizing the use of marijuana. A national survey finds that 52%
say that the use of marijuana should be made legal while 45% say it
should not." 

Here's the demographic breakdown: 

The survey by the Pew Research Center, conducted March 13-17
among 1,501 adults, finds that young people are the most supportive
of marijuana legalization. Fully 65% of Millennials –born since
1980 and now between 18 and 32 – favor legalizing the use of
marijuana, up from just 36% in 2008. Yet there also has been a
striking change in long-term attitudes among older generations,
particularly Baby Boomers.

Half (50%) of Boomers now favor legalizing marijuana, among the
highest percentages ever. In 1978, 47% of Boomers favored
legalizing marijuana, but support plummeted during the 1980s,
reaching a low of 17% in 1990. Since 1994, however, the percentage
of Boomers favoring marijuana legalization has doubled, from 24% to
50%.

Generation X, born between 1965 and 1980, came of age in the
1990s when there was widespread opposition to legalizing marijuana.
Support for marijuana legalization among Gen X also has risen
dramatically – from just 28% in 1994 to 42% a decade later and 54%
currently.

The Silent Generation continues to be less supportive of
marijuana legalization than younger age cohorts. But the percentage
of Silents who favor legalization has nearly doubled –from 17% to
32% – since 2002.

H/t Tom Angell

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Obama's Budget: Medicaid Would Be Spared From Deep Cuts

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama's budget will steer clear of major cuts to Medicaid.

They wouldn't go over too well at a time when his administration is trying to persuade skeptical governors to expand the giant health care program for the poor.

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More on sequester

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"Anti-Government" Couple on Run After Kidnapping Their Own Children From Court-Appointed Guardian

This story probably isn't going to end well:
Joshua Michael Hakken and his wife Sharyn Hakken are on the run in
Florida after kidnapping their own two children from Sharyn's
mother this morning. Patricia Hauser has had legal custody of her
grandchildren, four-year-old Cole and two-year-old Chase, since
2012, when Joshua and Sharyn lost custody for displaying pot in
front of their sons at an "anti-government rally" in Louisianna.

ABC Action News has more: 

Investigators say Joshua Michael Hakken, 35 entered the home of
Patricia Hauser at 14040 Shady Shores Drive around 6:30 a.m. Hauser
is the maternal grandmother of Chase Hakken, 2, and Cole Hakken, 4.
It's believed Hakken's wife, 34-year-old Sharyn Hakken was waiting
outside.

Investigators did not know if the children were taken at
gunpoint and it was not clear if the mother was directly involved
in the abduction.

Reporters were told at a Wednesday afternoon news conference the
State of Louisiana took away the parents' parental rights and gave
Hauser temporary custody. 

Joshua Hakken tied up Hauser, took the children and fled in
Hauser's 2009 silver Toyota Camry, which was later found a few
blocks away.   

According to investigators, the couple lost custody of the two
boys after an anti-government rally in Louisiana. The father was
charged was possession of marijuana in the presence of the
children.

Afterward, Joshua Hakken tried to take the children, reportedly
at gunpoint, from a Louisiana foster care facility, but was
thwarted, according to the sheriff's office.

There aren't a lot of details out there right now, so it's
possible that the Hakkens really were a danger to their kids. But
it will be just so goddamn awful if all of this is the result of
them using some marijuana at a rally in front of their
kids. 

According to the Tampa Bay Times, the Hakkens run an
engineering firm in the Tampa area. Their parental rights were
terminated by a Louisiana court yesterday. 

Update: More on Hakken's June 17, 2012 drug
charge that may have gotten his kids taken away,
from the Time-Picayune police blotter: "Joshua M.
Hakken, age 34 of 3609 S Sterling Avenue, Tampa, FL, was arrested
for Possession of Marijuana, Possession of Drug Paraphernalia and
Possession of a controlled dangerous substance in the presence of a
minor."

Update II: Florida media outlets are really
playing up the anti-government angle. This is at the top of the
Orlando Sentinel's home page.

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Caroline Kennedy Not a Serious Choice for U.S. Ambassador to Japan

President Obama may be
just weeks away from selecting Caroline Kennedy, JFK’s
daughter, as U.S. ambassador to Japan. It’s a choice as unserious
as it appears.

Writing for Foreign Policy, Clyde Prestowitz
reviews the history of post-world war II ambassadors to Japan,
starting with JFK’s nomination of Harvard Japan scholar Edwin
Reischauer in 1961. That nomination, Prestowitz says, signaled
to Japan that Kennedy was serious about the country and its
relationship with the U.S. It led to the nominations of people like
Mike
Mansfield, a former Senate majority leader, and Tom Foley, a former
Speaker of the House. Barack Obama broke that mold, according to
Prestowitz, when he selected a top fundraiser from Silicon Valley
to represent the U.S. in Japan during his first term. As for
Caroline Kennedy?
Writes Prestowitz:

I'm sure she's a lovely person and a good lawyer and
author and, of course, she comes from a prominent American family
and was wise enough to choose the right father. Even more wisely,
she supported Barack Obama politically at a critical moment.


But she knows little of Japan, speaks no Japanese, and is not
particularly experienced in world affairs and diplomacy. Here we
are at a moment when China and Japan are at loggerheads over the
Senkaku Islands. This could easily turn into a shooting conflict.
North Korea is saying that it is in a state of war with South Korea
and that it is turning on its nuclear generator. And the United
States is trying to conclude a major international free trade
agreement in which the United States and Japan will be the major
players. In short, this is a serious moment -- a Reischauer
moment.


But this appointment is an ornamental one. It tries to evoke the
good feeling of the Kennedy years, but without the substance of
those years.


Do you think Caroline might have the good sense to turn it down and
urge Obama to imitate her dad with a Reischauer-like
appointment?

Kennedy
abandoned a bid to be nominated to replace Hillary Clinton when
the latter vacated her Senate seat after a lackluster media tour.
She is starting to face
similar resistance to the potential appointment as ambassador
to Japan, and Fox News spoke with the American Foreign Services
Association, a union for
foreign service workers:

The union points out that roughly one-third of the
president’s first-term appointments have come from such
non-diplomatic ranks as politics, fundraising and academia – a rate
slightly higher than the historical average for presidents. And the
rate is as high as 85 percent for major European countries and
Japan, which are seen as plum diplomatic assignments.


“The sale of ambassadorships and rewards for political support
basically suggests we really don’t value diplomacy,” union
President Susan Johnson told FoxNews.com.

But it also signals the president is ready and willing to reward
his supporters richly!

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Europe's Only Option Is To Split Up

Seeing Spanish and Italian bond yields drop over the past few days, it's impossible not to wonder what it is the markets, whoever they're comprised of, can't seem to figure out. Like that the Italian cloud will hang over Europe well into summer, Cyprus is falling to scandalous bits, French president Hollande is hanging on to his job for dear life because his friend and Budget minister Jerome Cahuzac was found to be an ordinary big swindler, and in Spain even the King Carlos' daughter Princess Christina is now a suspect in a financial scandal (PM Rajoy's antics will resurface soon).

The EU has been feeding the corrupt PIIGS (find a spot for a C in there for Cyprus) everybody else's tax money, and it has done so knowingly and willingly - well, either that or blindingly stupidly-. Now that the loot has been divvied up, everybody else gets to pay a second time. Or so is the plan. Which will fail.

 

So what's happening in Italy 5 weeks after the elections? The short answer is: not much. They haven't been able to patch together a new government, because various parties refuse to form a coalition with various others. Leftie Bersani refused rightie Berlusconi's advances, and outside-the-system Beppe Grillo, as he's said all along, refuses to work with any and all of them.

Which is why a few days ago President Napolitano threw together a team of 10 advisers who are supposed to tell him how to make things work after all. Since there is no feasible coalition between existing parties, they will probably as a last resort advise him to try a technocrat government of one kind or another. That will not be appreciated, because many Italians will argue that they might as well hold on to the Monti technophiles while the next elections are being prepared. Things have changed since Monti was pushed forward, and a second Wall Street/IMF/World Bank made man could lead to anarchy, not smooth sailing.

Interesting to see that the 10 men adviser group has people from the leftie and rightie factions (as well as lawyers etc.), but none from Grillo's Five Star M5S. Also interesting is that Napolitano has left one option undiscussed: M5S have offered to form a government, which might survive with the support of Bersani. Word is that Grillo hasn't even rejected being prime minister himself.

The President's term expires May 15. Parliament will have to elect a new president, with a possible first presidential vote as early as April 18. But whoever's followed Italy over the past few months can easily understand how hard that vote will be. It's absolutely possible that not only will there be no government in place 6 weeks from now, but that beyond that there'll be no-one left to mediate the process either. While Berlusconi and Bersani want old and corrupt political stalwarts for president (Romano Prodi?!), Beppe Grillo has suggested Gino Strada, a celebrated war surgeon operating in global combat zones who's been vocal in rejecting Rome's support for several NATO operations including the invasion of Afghanistan.

Apparently ECB chief Mario Draghi did make a phone call to Napolitano, telling him, no doubt, to stay the course and make sure there's going to be a euro-friendly government (no Grillo!). Trouble for Draghi - and Merkel and Brussels - is, Napolitano, an 86-year old former communist, has nothing to lose. He can bide his time while no solution is found, and tell Grillo to form a government anyway, ideally one week or so before his term is up. One thing Napolitano cannot do, because his term is almost up, is dissolve parliament.

 

Cyprus? Let's see..., a 2-week old government that cut a deal with the troika. A little over a week later, the Finance minister responsible for the deal has resigned and president Anastasiades' son in law stands accused of transferring €21 million out of Laiki Bank to a UK bank one week prior to the deal (along with at least 100 other well connected savers).

Less than a week after the bailout deal was announced, Cyprus was handed extra time to implement the deal's measures, and depositors are cut for much higher percentages than "estimated". This is a set pattern, not an unfortunate course of events. It's like Groucho's line: "These are my principles!. And if you don't like them, I have others...". Turns out, the entire deal was a con game from the get go, and the entire eurozone is well on its way there too.

The IMF "gives" €1 billion because Cyprus has such a great set of economic "reform" measures, i.e. fire who you can, cut pensions and benefits where you can, raise taxes and sell your most valuable public assets. Cypriots have no idea what's going to hit them. Oh, and the president announced that a casino will be opened soon.

Michalis Sarris, the Finance minister who brokered the troika deal and resigned, had a 30-odd year career at World Bank, and has an earlier term in the same post from September 2005 till March 2008. He was also a longtime non-executive chairman at Laiki Bank during the time it made the investments that brought it down, and became more actively involved at the bank in 2012 to "cleanse" it in order to comply with the troika bailout. Either a man who knows how to get the job done or a man who raises a few suspicions, take your pick.

 

You know, and this is not the first time I argue the point, the EU and the euro could well have been successful; just not with the one-dimensional-thinking religious zealots that make up its present leadership structure. There's nothing wrong with European unity in itself. But that one dimension - i.e. the refusal to discuss anything other than pushing forward with "the project" despite serious and reasonable doubts and questions - is not a minor flaw, it's a fatal one. If you want to make something work, you will always have to leave space for - thinking about - the possibility that it won't. Brussels does no such thing. That right there is the seed that breeds inevitable failure.

The EU has resorted to trampling its weakest members. That's not something that started with Cyprus, it's merely the next step in the process. "Official policy", as dictated entirely by the richest member states, could from the very beginning only have worked in times of unbridled wealth and growth, since these would have temporarily kept inbuilt flaws from view.

As soon as the financial crisis first reared its head in 2006/2007, though, this game was up. From then on in the EU as a governing body has started to react as your own body would do if for instance you were exposed to extreme cold for a prolonged period of time (hypothermia). That is, in order to save the core, blood flow to the extremities (in the EU case, the peripheral countries) would be cut off, eventually resulting in the amputation of toes and fingers.

The Roman empire didn't fall because of just one cause, but this hypothermia-like dynamic certainly played a big role. The more Rome resorted to squeezing the peripheral regions to maintain its own wealth, the more resistance it encountered. Until the periphery sacked the entire empire.

The best, or make that the only, advice for southern European countries is Get Out! before you're liquidated as so many frozen gangrenous digits. If you don't, the moment will inevitable come when the core accuses you of infecting it with life threatening afflictions, thereby morally justifying to itself unceremoniously dumping you in the great azure yonder.

The people of Italy, Cyprus and Spain should neither be seen nor treated as mere essentially disposable extremities, but the way the EU was first set up and then governed made it inevitable that they would be at the first sight of adversity. And since these countries don't have the political power to affect the necessary changes in Brussels and Frankfurt, their only option is to quit. Or be suffocated completely, but there is no way all PIIGS plus Cyprus (and add a second S for Slovenia) will accept that, because southern Europe is as loaded with historic pride and independent spirit as it is with corruption. There's no way there won't be a first country that will elect to leave the eurozone. And it'll be all dominoes all the way down from there.

Sure, it hasn't happened yet, though I've said for years it would. But has anyone seen the manufacturing numbers for Europe, including the core countries, this week? The entire European economy is falling like a stone, and the worse it gets, the more the core will attempt to squeeze the periphery. At some point it will become clear that there are only 3 core nations left (Germany, the Netherlands, Finland), and 14 peripheral ones. And then the periphery will start doing the squeezing. That is what we should all really start being afraid of, for there be the seeds of bloodshed. And that blood will spill around the world.

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Ohio CPS Wants to Snatch Kid Away from Family that Has Taught Her Self-Sufficiency

In early March, an Ohio father
wrote to parenting site Free-Range Kids to describe the
harassment he had received from police for teaching his 6-year-old
daughter how navigate their quiet suburban neighborhood and then
having the temerity to decide on his own when she may do so
unsupervised. After letting her walk to a nearby store, he
discovered when she failed to return that the
police had taken her:

Once I got to the police station they would not release her to
me for over 20 minutes, though she was sitting behind bullet-proof
glass just 20 feet away.  When the police finally came to
talk to me, I was told that they had responded to a call of a young
child being unsupervised.  They refused to identify a
reasonable cause for her detention, or even what law had been
broken.  They insisted that they were waiting for CPS to
respond before they would let me see my daughter, but then they
later came back and said that they were releasing me to her because
CPS had told them to give her to me, since I was waiting for
her.  

That sounds like resolution of sorts, right? Child Protective
Services told the police to give her back to her parent. But the
story took a
turn for the worse, detailed again on Free-Range Kids
today:

”Emily” and I are both walking back from the library.  She
wants to do it herself, so I let her walk separate from me
some of the time.  The cops get a phone call from a concerned
citizen who says there’s a strange guy talking to a little girl.
 Three officers respond and cite a concern for Emily’s safety
in crossing the street.  I confirm that I am her father and
give my name, as is required by law.  They refuse to state any
reasonable suspicion of a crime being committed or say what law has
been broken, and so, in accordance with my 5th amendment rights, I
refuse to answer any questions.  We are detained for over half
an hour before being released.  (I asked many times over the
course of the detention whether I was “free to go” and I was told
that I was not. We were told that we were being held for an
“investigative detention.”)  The sergeant who responded
to the scene stated over the radio that he wanted to “hook this
guy” for child endangerment. (The recording of radio traffic during
the encounter was later received through a public records request
that I made.)

They were again reported to CPS, even though police say they
haven’t broken any laws. Later he deals with CPS directly:

I talk with the supervisor at CPS on a recorded phone call.
 I refuse to answer any questions or make any statements.
 Though he did relay that he was concerned about a child
“roaming the streets of [Our City, OH],” he refuses to tell me what
law has been broken.  We go around and around for about 25
minutes.  I find out through my employer shortly after the
phone call that if I do not “cooperate” CPS is threatening to seek
an ex parte order, which would allow CPS to take
custody without a hearing, to separate us that Friday (and
then keep Emily all weekend since a hearing would not have to be
held until close of business on Monday).  Note that I have
cooperated to the full extent required by law.  The Home
School Legal Defense Assn. is very helpful in getting CPS to agree
not to seek an ex parte order so long as Emily
does not go outside again by herself.

Since then CPS has knocked on the door many times.  I did
answer the door when the CPS supervisor came by–I thought that he
was a delivery guy or what not since he didn’t have a uniformed
police officer with him–but otherwise we have simply ignored them.
 There is no law requiring someone to answer their door, and
since I had no interest in talking to them or getting detained by
the cops simply ignoring them seemed the best course of action.

CPS has responded by filing a complaint alleging neglect and
attempting to take the child into protective custody. They are also
attempting to try to force the family to allow CPS officials into
their home, search the house and interview their children.

Free-Range Kids is asking for pro bono legal help in Ohio to
assist the family.

Our Reason TV interview with Free-Range Kids founder Lenore
Skenazy is
here.

(Hat tip to Popehat)

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Enter To Win A Kindle Fire From Business Insider

We're giving you a chance to win a Kindle Fire HD.  Become a newsletter subscriber now to enter.  If you're the lucky winner you will have a host of features at your fingertips.  

Entry deadline is May 31.

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What do Movie People Say When Asked to Remove Guns from Films?

 

The new video from Project
Veritas - James O'Keefe's merry band of guerilla
filmmakers who have scored major hits on ACORN, NPR, and voter
fraud - is a compelling watch. From the YouTube writeup:

@Project_Veritas investigators urge Piers Morgan, Oprah
Winfrey's production company (Harpo), and Robert DeNiro's
production company (Tribeca) to help ban all guns from past and
future movies. With some disturbed murderers citing violent movies
as the impetus for their crimes, would Hollywood elites agree to
remove guns from their flicks #ForTheChildren? Or would money and
fame supersede their malleable ideology?

To that end, Project Veritas asks a bunch of
people involved in media and film if they would sign a petition to
delete guns from old and new movies. The answers...will surprise
you.

I'm less interested in the rank hypocrisy that surrounds debates
on the effects of popular culture on behavior and more interested
in the way that this video shows that by framing the debate
differently you might actually have a really interesting
conversation.

But wherever you stand on the issue of guns, violence, and
movies, if you've ever watched a Merchant Ivory movie, you will
enjoy this video.

And if Project Veritas's plan to delete guns from new and old
movies sounds implausible, recall the big push to airbrush smoking
out of movies and other forms of entertainment. (My favorite
contribution to that effort was Joe Esterhas's heartfelt but stupid
bit). Some years back, the U.S. government went full Orwell on
the stamp honoring bluesman Robert Johnson.
Click here for more egregious airbrushing of famous cigarettes
from photos.

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Here's How US Allies Could Shoot Down Missiles From North Korea

Things are heated on the Korean peninsula, and while there's plenty of talk from the North about launching a "cutting edge strike" on the United States, their missile capabilities are mostly limited to attacks against U.S. forces in South Korea or Japan.

But were they to actually launch missiles, America and its allies are far from defenseless.

South Korea and Japan currently have the Phased Array Tracking Radar to Intercept on Target system, better known as the PATRIOT. It's a highly mobile system that can be set up in under one hour.

First designed for an anti-aircraft role in the late 1970s, the Patriot was later modified to defend against ballistic missiles. With a radar that can pick up threats more than 60 miles away and armed with a high-explosive warhead, it's designed to launch missiles that detonate and produce shrapnel when it gets close to a threat, according to PBS.

The PATRIOT system was used extensively during the first Gulf War against Iraqi SCUD missiles, with varying degrees of success. In Operation Iraqi Freedom, however, they worked extremely well.

From a report of the Defense Science Board:

All nine enemy tactical ballistic missiles that threatened areas designated for Patriot defense were engaged. Eight of these engagements were observed by enough other sensors to conservatively declare them successes; the ninth engagement is judged to be a probable success. None of the attacking tactical ballistic missiles caused any damage or loss of life to the coalition forces.

Here's how it works:

The land-based PATRIOT system will soon be joined by U.S. ships en route to the area, the USS John McCain and the USS Decatur. Both are Aegis-class warships, meaning they're capable of intercepting and destroying ballistic missiles "above the atmosphere during the midcourse phase of a hostile ballistic missile's flight."

The holistic anti-North Korean missile system will also be bolstered soon by the deployment of another missile defense system to Guam, the Terminal High Altitude Air Defense (THAAD).

SEE ALSO: Defense Secretary Calls North Korea Clear And Present Danger — US Set To Deploy Missile Defense To Guam >

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Bus Falls 30 Feet From Viaduct In Rio De Janeiro, Killing At Least 7 (VIDEO)

RIO DE JANEIRO -- A passenger bus plunged from a 30-foot high (10 meter) viaduct in central Rio de Janeiro, killing at least seven people and closing the major thoroughfare where it landed.

At least six more people were injured in Tuesday's accident, said Sergio Simoes, who heads Rio state's Civil Defense department, adding that number of injured was likely to rise. Simoes said the dead were five men and two women.

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More on Video

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The Complete History Of False Threats From North Korea

North Korea is threatening Seoul again, this time over a jointly controlled factory.

The Democratic People's Republic also says it is restarting its nuclear reactor, five years after shutting it down.

But a survey of 50 years of North Korean bellicosity shows nothing major is likely to happen.

We went back and pulled all the major headlines created by North Korean bluster against the South since the end of the Korean War.

As you'll say, there are exactly zero violent outbreaks of any consequence.

In some ways we shouldn't be surprised by all the threats: the conflict never officially ended. Instead, an armistice was signed when the U.N. withdrew troops in 1953.

And there is a new dimension this time around i n the form of the North's brand-new leader, Kim Jong-un

But after five decades, it seems safe to say that we'll get through this one — and the next — in one piece.

Hostilities had ended by 1954. But just four years later it seemed like there'd barely been any progress.

And by '66, skirmishes had begun breaking out again.

Kim Il Sung, who ran the country during this time, can be credited with starting the trend of periodic bluster, which was mostly came from frustration over American forces' ongoing presence in the South. He ended up ruling until his death in 1994.

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