So said Saudi marriage officiant Dr. Ahmad al-Mu’bi last week on Lebanese television.

“You can have a marriage contract even with a 1-year-old girl, not to mention a girl of 9, 7 or 8,” he said. “But is the girl ready for sex or not?” What is the appropriate age for sex for the first time? This varies according to environment and tradition,” al-Mu’bi said.

Is a girl of 9, 7, or 8 ready for sex?!  NO!  Not in any environment.  Not according to any respectable tradition.  It’s called pedophilia, and if it’s your cultural practice, you should be invaded and overthrown.

Don’t tempt us.

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Filed under: politics, rant

There are kooks in every country, and I usually just try to ignore them, but this is too perfect.

Apparently, thousands of Dutch are preparing for the end of the world (it’s nigh, according to the Mayan calendar, which ends in 2012).  I’m not surprised to see broad support for end-of-the-world scenarios, no matter how obscure, but individual responsibility is like a dirty word here, and fatalism is the national religion, so I am surprised that these folks are making preparations.  The really Dutch thing to do is believe that the world is ending, but shrug it off, light a joint, and wait for the end.

It is kind of adorable that the emergency supplies include life rafts, though.  To the Dutch, the world is always in danger of sinking.  In any emergency, step one is to grab your boat or life raft.  I think this pervasive fear is the real reason why the Dutch are so tall - they’re so afraid of flooding that height has gained added influence as a factor in sexual selection.

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Filed under: Holland

It appears that I was right to be concerned about the EU overruling the Irish “no” vote on the Lisbon treaty.

European leaders met last Thursday to discuss how to proceed.  They apparently concluded that the solution is to lay the effort on Ireland’s lap, and push them to make the “correct” choice.

This is my favorite part:

The European Commission president, José Manuel Barroso, said he had assured Prime Minister Brian Cowen that Ireland would be given time to plan for and hold a new vote.

How kind of the EU to generously allow the Irish government plenty of time to subvert the express wishes of its public, and undermine the very foundation of its democracy.  It’s sad that Europe, the cradle of democracy, isn’t even paying lip service anymore.

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Filed under: crazy europeans, politics

So gas is at $4.00 a gallon.

Cry me a river.

With the dollar’s slide and the rise in oil prices, I just filled up at $9.52/gallon here in The Netherlands.  And guess what?  That’s not enough to get me out of the car and onto a bicycle, despite the fantastic bike infrastructure here (bike lanes with their own lights, tons of bike racks, favorable right-of-way rules, etc.).  I’d like to think that if it rained less, I might bike, but I think the plain truth is that I’m too spoiled by the American way of doing things.  It’s just way more convenient to drive, and I think I can say with confidence that lefty hopes of high gas prices changing American driving habits are just pipe dreams.

So what else do they have to offer in the marketplace of ideas?  Corn ethanol and other food-to-fuel solutions have blown up in the left’s face.  True, there are still a few options in the biomassarena, but probably it’s too early to seed the lawn with switchgrass.  Wind power is inefficient and unreliable.  Solar technology has seen some recent advances and is becoming a great supplemental energy source, helpful for hot water systems and reducing heating bills.  But it’s not going to make a dent in oil demand anytime soon.  Basically, that’s the story of the left’s energy policy.

 So what solutions does the right have to offer?

Jonah Goldberg recently had a great articlein Townhall debunking the notion that drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would spoil its “pristine” beauty and rob it of the sanctity that environmentalists have tried to bestow on what they consider hallowed ground.  The truth, as Goldberg so aptly points out, is that the proposed drilling area is a frozen, barren wasteland whose only nearby residents are a few hardy knuckleheads that favor drilling.  Even most of the animals have enough sense to choose more habitable parts of the ANWR.

Goldberg is not alone.  All across the blogosphere, conservatives are calling for  more drilling.  Now even President Bush is calling for a lift on the offshore drilling ban.

Domestic drilling is a good first step, but alone it’s probably not enough to substantively reduce oil prices.  Chinese and Indian demand for oil has continued to grow even as oil prices have risen precipitously.  Much of this demand is attributable to the rise in car ownership, but rapid industrialization also plays a significant part.  China and India are hungry for oil, specifically, but also for energy, period.

Right-wingers serious about energy independence and some clear-headed environmentalists are championing the idea of plug-in hybrids affixed to a grid powered by nuclear energy.  Although dramatic advances in nuclear technology promise clean, safe, cheap electricity in the future, nukes won’t get us out of our current pinch, because building reactors takes time, and it yields a net loss of energy in the short term.  Even worse, our old, leaky, unreliable electric grid is probably not capable of handling the extra demand resulting from widespread use of plug-in hybrids.

All of this boils down to one really simple idea: we need to start utilizing all of the energy resources available to us, and we need to do it right now, before inflation tears our economy apart and Saudi petrodollar-funded jihad kills any more of our citizens.  Tap domestic oil reserves.  Build new nuclear power plants.  Use clean coal technology as a stop-gap until the nukes are online.  Update the power grid so that the power actually gets to our homes when we need it.  Doing some of those things is not enough.  We must do them all, and we must do them now.

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Filed under: politics, science

You can count on the Irish to call a spade a spade.

Irish voters have soundly rejected ratification of the Lisbon treaty, foiling the plans of the powers-that-be, who would have crammed the EU constitution down their public’s throats despite their vociferous objections.  The proposed constitution was rejected in 2005 by public referenda in France and The Netherlands, but let it never be said that European governments seek the consent of the governed.  Apparently, the “democracy” in “social democracy” is really just a metaphor.  After all, who would heed the wishes of the unwashed masses?

So the Eurocrats put their shiny noggins together, and came up with the Lisbon treaty, which they claimed was a reform treaty only, and not a resurrection of the failed constitution treaty - even though 96% of the constitution treaty was contained therein.  Under this guise, the French and the Dutch started forcing it through their legislatures for ratification, not trusting their publics to fall for the gimmick.  Luckily, the Irish constitution requires public referenda for the ratification of most EU treaties, and the Irish didn’t buy what Brussels was selling.

Czech President Vaclav Klaus, who totally rocks, called the no vote a ”victory of freedom and reason over artificial elitist projects and European bureaucracy.”  Have I mentioned that I love this guy?

There is reason to worry that the victory may be short-lived, however.  As happened with the 2001 Nice treaty, the Irish may be pressured to keep voting until they get it right.  Fortunately, the Czechs assume the rotating EU Council Presidency in January 2009, and they are likely to use their 6-month term to advocate against a third attempt at ratification.  Hopefully, their influence will be felt more strongly than the nons, nees, and nos of the European public.

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Filed under: crazy europeans, politics