EUvians may no longer be Impressed by their own skilled displays of good intentions, but, ya know, they’re trying. They’re almost getting to the point where they’re copping the United States’ agenda on this thing they never seem to actually get around to do anything about called human rights.

European Union countries have threatened to pull out of the United Nations Human Rights Council if its developing country majority succeeds in an attempt to prevent scrutiny of the worst abusers.

Too bad it’s only about 5 years too late for this particular effort to actually matter.

Fine words aside, they’re really still a lot more worried about what the neighbors will think (as if their neighbors actually thought like them.)

EU diplomats, requesting anonymity, said they still hoped to negotiate a compromise accord.

Wow. You can almost smell the bold “unilateralism” from downtown Pyongyang, can’t ya?

|

|

…as the signs of disdain for Chirac among the French public — and even certain parts of the French media — multiplied in the months [after the resounding "no" vote in the May 2005 French referendum on the EU "constitutional treaty"], the mainstream of the American media continued to treat him with the deference befitting a great and influential statesman

writes John Rosenthal in his insightful article on Jacques Chirac's role (or lack thereof) during the Iraq war.

There is little doubt about the source of the media's obvious faith in Chirac's statesmanlike "grandeur": namely, his high-profile role in opposing the Iraq War in early 2003. In France, Chirac's anti-war stance predictably led to a spike in his popularity, as the "anti-imperialist" left suddenly found itself expressing pride in the courageous and upstanding leadership of a man who only the year before was being persistently referred to in "leftist" media as "Super-liar" [Supermenteur]: a leaden allusion to "Superman" that is as unfunny in French as it is in English. …

For the American media and the American public, however, the highly publicized French agitation in the run-up to the war left behind the enduring impression that it was Chirac who was the driving force behind the Franco-German "Axis of Peace" that attempted to prevent the American-led intervention. The notion that Chirac led the opposition to the war is common on both the "left" and the "right" and it is shared by both Chirac's admirers and his detractors. But a simple look back at the chronology of events makes clear that this notion is a myth. Chirac did not lead. He followed.

|

After providing Sopranos endings to Scarface and The Godfather, The National Lampoon takes a look at the director's cuts of Mel Gibson's Apocalypto and Clint Eastwood's Letters From Iwo Jima. Coming this summer (unless it's a joke): National Lampoon’s 72 Virgins.

|

Roger L. Simon interviews Mark Steyn. To kick off the interview, Steyn tells Americans to not get their hopes up about Sarkozy.

|

Strategic dairy product management turns sour in China where authorities accuse the French of behaving like a bunch of "hommes d'affaires voyous". Comme quoi, on est toujours le voyou de quelqu'un.

|

While PBS purports to examine anti-Americanism in a neutral, objective light, Stéphane checks out a (Reuters-inspired and Amnesty-created) map for use in publications around the world.

Guess which country (with six sins, versus at the most four for all other countries) is the worst human rights offender on the planet?

Notice to the dissidents of the world: do not try to emigrate to the United States, do not too hard to reform your own régimes; as long as governments like Iran's, Russia's, China's, and Cuba's are opposing Uncle Sam, they are doing good work…



As usual, Stéphane is not content to respond by simply showing outrage. Deliberately and methodically, he calmly analyzes the data.

Certains intitulés me laissent dubitatif. Discrimination et violences contre les femmes? Dans la société américaine où la bise sur la joue d'une collègue d'entreprise peut vous mener au tribunal, difficile à croire.

Exécutions et exécutions "extrajudiciaires"? Cela ne fait même pas référence à la peine de mort, couverte par un autre symbole (qui n'intègre pas la notion d'un procès équitable.) J'imagine que cette référence fait appel à la "violence intrinsèque de la société américaine" ou à d'autres concepts du même tonneau, le genre de lieux communs constamment déversés dès qu'on parle du pays de l'Oncle Sam. Le verdict est injuste, car un régime politique n'est pas forcément responsable du comportement des éléments criminels présents sur son sol. Comme si les crimes des FARC étaient à imputer au régime colombien qui les combat!

Enfin, pour la "torture" on pensera inévitablement à Guantanamo - alors que Cuba, constellé des 300 prisons du régime castriste, n'a même pas droit à un pareil honneur...

Mais essayer d'expliquer la palme ainsi décernée aux Etats-Unis revient à s'enfermer dans la logique des critiques d'Amnesty. Or, à y regarder de plus près, il n'y a aucune logique dans cette image — sauf la volonté délibérée de salir les Etats-Unis.

…Les émigrés avides de se trouver une vie meilleure sont donc priés d'abandonner cette quête ridicule d'une carte verte. Qu'ils contactent plutôt l'ambassade ouzbèke ou chinoise la plus proche...

Ces approximations tendancieuses, trop appuyées pour ne pas être parfaitement volontaires, se combinent pour amener une planisphère peut-être conforme à l'idée des activistes d'Amnesty ou des journalistes de Reuters sur le monde, mais malheureusement très éloignée des souffrances réelles infligées aux populations de la planète.

Il serait bon que certains militants perdent leurs oeillères et jugent comme il se doit les régimes communistes ou ceux appliquant la Charia, au lieu d'être constamment obnubilés par leur croisade névrosée contre les Etats-Unis d'Amérique. Mais le respect des Droits de l'Homme est-il vraiment leur premier souci?

|

"Damn it, you're doing stupid things that could screw up my world!"

THE ANTI-AMERICANS (a hate/love relationship) examines the complicated mixture of envy, pride, admiration, and cultural misunderstanding that characterizes European views. It’s a situation that has led some commentators to say that “Americans are from Mars, Europeans are from Venus.”

This film examines the current status of European attitudes towards America in three very different places: France, the United Kingdom, and Poland. Freely mixing humor with provocative commentary, the program shows how Old World attitudes can be both nuanced and simplistic at the same time – sometimes contradictory, sometimes predictable, but always worthy of our interest.

It may be that people such as Pascal Bruckner, Boris Johnson, and Agnieszka Graff are included in the new documentary in which PBS purports to examine anti-Americanism in a neutral, objective light, but offhand, one is wont to ask if the directors and producers have not wondered about the negative (not to mention preposterous) "opinions" of French 11-year-olds regarding America(ns) and how these may have something to do with the adults in whose trust they are (in school as well as at home, where they live with parents who went through the same schooling system), coupled with no little amount of indoctrination…

|

The EU is pleading with Palestinian terrorists on both sides to do everything possible to "avoid a civil war". At least, that is, until the EU can dream up a way to blame it on the Jews.

|

Serving fewer Francophones as there are Anglophones in Paris, RFI is broadcasting in numerous American cities while the CSA, France’s “owners” of the airwaves act out their fear of the mythical Anglo-Saxon, what with their blue jeans and decadent rock and roll that might corrupt the proletariat: with the same effect as Cuban jamming transmitters, English language radio is not permitted on the air in Paris. Even the unctuous BBC transmits from beyond the frontier. One expat-radio entrepreneur resorted to secreting an Internet Radio operation from the UK.

Diplomacy being what it is should compel the FCC to boot RFI out of the US, if they didn’t have something that the CSA doesn’t: an actual belief in basic individual rights.

Boot them off the air. Period.

|

|

My whole life won't be enough to yell how much I despise this commie s**thole where I happened to be born, and this is not a soft damnation

confides Hervé shyly.

Yesterday a memorial to the victims of communism was settled in Washington DC, Bush was invited and made a speech — an excellent speech by the way.

The speech seems to have been basically ignored in the mainstream media (Hervé's email was the first I'd heard of it!) — as was the fact that last week (in the words of Natan Sharansky),

President George W. Bush, who put the democracy agenda back on the world stage after 9/11, came to Prague to renew the commitment he made in his second inaugural address to work toward "ending tyranny in our world" and met with each and every dissident.

Notice that it took someone who has actually lived in an authoritarian state to write a sentence like Bush "put the democracy agenda back on the world stage after 9/11" without sarcasm, adding matter-of-factly that the president "came to Prague to renew the commitment he made in his second inaugural address to work toward 'ending tyranny in our world'" without hyperventilating about the expression "axis of evil". Notice also how the IHT's mother paper, the NYT, apparently thought unfit to print Sharansky's piece (probably, with all the Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd material, there simply was no room).

But back to the memorial to the victims of communism; Hervé decided to check the news about this:

• Google news US: 173 articles
• Google news Fwance: 7 articles, one duplicate, one from Switzerland.

And every title is the following: Etats-Unis: hommage solennel à Washington aux "victimes du communisme"

|

The cartoon exploits of Astérix may be enjoyed by millions of children around the world, but the ancient Gaulish hero has just been declared unfit to be official ambassador for children's rights. He is too French, too violent, he perpetuates stereotypes and his outlook conflicts with the spirit of the European Union.

It’s so sad that it defies the bounds of anyone’s acceptance of the absurd as an emotional defense.

The DCI organisation says that Astérix conveys an "archaic...hierarchical" world at odds with the "revolutionary" values of the 1989 convention. This stresses the child's existence as a being with rights while children in Astérix are fragile objects that need to be protected, said Jean-Pierre Rosenczveig, a senior juvenile judge who heads the French DCI.

Astérix also projects "a Gaulish vision which ignores the intercultural reality of French society," they say. His constant resistance against the Romans and other foreign invaders sends altogether the wrong message in the peace-loving European Union.
[ ... ]
It congratulated Obélix for tackling the problem of obesity but faulted the cartoon for failing to deal with unsanitary housing. The child defenders are also upset that Astérix delivers "a eulogy to tribal, hierarchical, society with frequent references to a chief." The right to education is sadly depicted by a woman school-teacher telling pupils: "Get into rows in silence please," adds the DCI.

Like the ubiquitous presence of the rainbow for a flag, turning holloween into an olympiad of gay narcissism, and the turning of clowns into icons for suicidal anti-capitalism, the ones who lose are the children who have their joy and innocence stolen from them by politcos trying to find the quickest and cheapest shot they can.

Astérix entertained generations of kids and also showed them that they could have moxie and valor. Evidently this isn’t good enough. It’s not that they themselves didn’t select it for their own kids, it’s that they also seem to need to give it a bad name while they punch up their own narcissism to state, but not prove by example, a “spirit of the European Union” in “peace-loving European Union” that has something as transparently fake as an “Ambassador for children”. What they need to do is set their personalized selfishness aside, show some hope for the future of man and actually have some children.

|

Agence France Presse wrongly published a news bulletin on Saturday stating that the space shuttle Atlantis had exploded; explosion confirmed by NASA according to said news bulletin. Asked for an explanation about this very typical case of French wishful thinking, Agence France Presse declared that the catastrophic news bulletin had been written "just in case" and then had been sent out by error. We've seen stuff like this before. When Agence France Presse journalists are not on drunken rampages, they are working for the enemy.

|

It's the civil war unleashed by Bush's invasion of Iraq that has resulted in a torrential bloodletting in Iraq.

There are currently 3,500 dead Americans in Iraq along with violence in 3 of Iraq's 18 provinces (the others being entirely peaceful). May I ask how Mo Rocca would describe the situation if there were twice as many deaths and twice as much violence (7,000 Americans down and violence in 6 provinces)? You can hardly use expressions like "torrential bloodletting", "the daily mass slaughter of innocents", "the unending nightmare in Iraq" (Keith Olbermann), and/or "the most disastrous military adventure since the founding of the republic" (IHT letter) because they are superlatives that you have already used.

As for "the Iraq invasion [being] the worst foreign policy error in our nation's history", World War II faced America with over 400,000 lives lost (not to mention the other nations' millions of deaths) in much less time and somehow I don't really remember (angry) expressions such as "torrential bloodletting", "the daily mass slaughter of innocents", "the unending nightmare", and/or "the most disastrous military adventure since the founding of the republic" being used there — even in news items and news reels from the early 1940s! It doesn't sound right, because it sounds too impassioned (although, again, for a war with more than 100 times more deaths in fewer years and months).

I submit to you that the only conclusion that can be arrived at here is the following: all those expressions have little to nothing to do with the objective descriptive reality, but have everything with presenting opposition to Dubya. Which is entirely fine, of course. Just one thing: don't pretend that your language is free of partisanship and that it is supposed to reflect objective descriptions and the unfailing truth.

|

…Everybody knows that all scientists agree that the danger — like like-minded theories — is nothing short of true fact!

|

I got 67% (#s 1 and 4 wrong) in Mikhail Simkin's An artist or an ape quiz. (Grump, Hervé!)

|

|

Corine Lesnes has an article praising Jean-David Levitte, the Elysée's new « Diplomator » who seems to be "appreciated by the Americans".

There may be some truth to that. But it remains a puffy piece of praise through and through ("Les humanitaires étaient touchés qu'on ne les prenne pas de haut. A la fin de la séance, tout le monde applaudissait"; "Partisan d'un monde « multipolaire harmonieux », Jean-David Levitte est d'un optimisme perpétuel"; and, of course, a nuanced Frenchman teaching the clueless Americans lessons ["Jean-David Levitte s'est souvent servi de cet exemple pour essayer de faire comprendre aux Américains que la France était moins antisémite qu'ils ne le croyaient"]).

Indeed, the last part is entirely dedicated to a lucid Frenchman standing courageously up against treacherous "French-bashing".

…la grande vague de francophobie aux Etats-Unis, il a mené la contre-attaque. … Il fallait construire un rempart contre cette hostilité. Il l'a fait à sa façon, avec une grande tolérance pour ce qui lui était dit. » … Quand Bill O'Reilly, l'animateur de Fox News, a dépassé les bornes du « french bashing » (le dénigrement des Français), Jean-David Levitte a pris rendez-vous. Il lui a reproché d'attiser la haine. … Les conseillers ont fait la liste des insultes anti-françaises circulant dans les médias. L'ambassadeur l'avait toujours dans la poche. Quand il était invité quelque part, il la lisait à ses hôtes en remplaçant « Français » par « juifs ». Un jour il l'a lue à Colin Powell. « Permettez-moi maintenant de remplacer Français par Noirs », a-t-il suggéré sans se soucier de l'embarras de l'Américain. « Quand il revenait, il disait : «J'ai encore gâché l'ambiance !» », raconte un collaborateur. … Le 17 mai 2003, M. Levitte … dénonçait « la campagne de désinformation » contre la France orchestrée « par des responsables gouvernementaux anonymes ».

Unless Corine Lesnes (and Lavitte) have forgotten, there are quite a few differences between France's America-bashing, which is continual, harsh, and never-ceasing, and America's French-bashing, which came only at a time when America (or Washington, or Bush) — rightly or wrongly — took a very risky decision, and put America's troops in harm's way.

As I have written before,

there is a difference between a country that takes action and one that remains passive. In America's case, Bush (and Blair) — rightfully or wrongfully — took risks. George W Bush put his politics at risk, he put his popularity at risk, he put his presidency at risk, he put his party at risk, he put his country at risk, and most importantly, he took decisions that put the lives of his soldiers at risk. In France's case, it did nothing — nothing being lauded as courageous by one French citizen after another ("au moins Chirac a eu les couilles d'opposer Bush"). That was its policies (or lack thereof) — all the while bringing opprobrium on America and its foreign minister going out of his way to get the most autocratic countries to oppose Washington in this riskful undertaking. Trust me, America's anger was anything but hysterical.

In fact (speaking of "disinformation campaigns"), the biggest disinformation campaign of all is presenting America's anger as …"French-bashing", i.e, little more than an entirely unjust phobia of the gratuitous kind, low, dirty, and totally uncalled-for.

Moreover, if any Frenchman wants to replace a nationality with "Jew", all he has to do is turn on Canal +'s Les Guignols and he can see their version of Sylvester Stallone, the everyday American (treacherous, racist, barbaric, dollar-hungry, bloodthirsty, etc…) who is the 20th/21st century version of the old caricature of the Jews and who — unlike the temporary anger of the Americans — has been depicted thus since the very beginning of the TV show.

There are a couple of other things that Corine Lesnes left out. But La Bannière Étalée did not:

Souvenez-vous de la Commission des Droits de l’Homme de laquelle l’Oncle Sam fut expulsé en mai 2001 sans cérémonie (les Américains furent réintroduits l’année suivante). La France, elle, avait gardé sa place grâce à un nombre record de votes (52 sur 53), et à Jean-David Levitte, ambassadeur français aux Nations Unies, d’attribuer le succès de son pays, avec un soupçon de suffisance, à une politique étrangère “fondée sur le dialogue et le respect”. Le message sous-entendu : la rebuffade contre l’Oncle Sam était due à l’absence de “dialogue et de respect” de la part de Washington.

Il est intéressant de noter que la plupart des Américains aient vu la situation différemment. Dans un éditorial, le New York Times a noté que la réaction de Paris semblait faire écho à celle de Pékin qui disait que Washington avait “miné l’atmosphère pour le dialogue”. De quel dialogue parlent les Chinois, se demandait le quotidien. De celui concernant les églises rasées, les pratiquants de Falun Gong qui sont morts en prison, les moines tibétains emprisonnés, les activistes du Parti Démocratie dans les camps de travail ? « Voila, présumément, quelques-uns des sujets que la France pense devoir être approchés avec plus de “respect”. Le Soudan, la Libye, Cuba, et le Vietnam, autres membres de la commission, seraient sans doute d’accord.» (Le Times aurait aussi pu mentionner l’Autriche de Jörg Haider.) Pour le journaliste William Safire, le vote révèle un empressement, de la part d’une “bande d’hypocrites” de “nous poignarder dans le dos en échange d’une préférence commerciale chinoise ou pétrolière arabe ou un vote du conseil de sécurité.” Il se demande “pour quel avantage commercial ou politique ont-ils troqué leurs votes en trahissant les droits fondamentaux des êtres humains” “avec la connivence de diplomates français cherchant à gagner la faveur de dictateurs africains et arabes.”

Les Américains n’auraient donc pas retenu la leçon de diplomatie indirecte fournie par Paris. Comme la Suède, “La France, terre des libertés, patrie des droits de l’homme, donneuse de leçons universelle” serait en fait plus apte à donner des leçons à la démocratie américaine qu’aux dictatures syrienne, irakienne, et chinoise. (Quoi qu’il en soit, l’on comprendra que dans ce type de circonstances et avec ce type d’alliés, les Américains ne font peut-être pas tout à fait confiance à une cour pénale internationale de garantir un procès équitable.)

|

Does anyone have any idea why these commie hellholes still exist anywhere in civilization?

Bonus: by way of the charming and talented Kate herself, we find this bit of unwitting proletarian irony:

"'I'm depressed - I voted for the Socialists purely because the right is going to win,' said Geraldine Gourbe, a 30-year-old philosophy professor, on her way out of a polling station in northern Paris. 'I voted for them to be effective, but I'd rather have voted for the Greens or the Communist Revolutionary League,' she said, concerned that those parties' candidates stood less of a chance of gaining seats."

A French philosophy instructor and university parasite is depressed. A pinhole in the balloon of a fantasy world views is burst by an organic mass called the anonymity of the voting booth. Even someone in the university racket can’t chock it up to “brainwashing” or any of the other usual Fig Newtons of the leftist imagination.

Just one question: teacher, may I laugh now?

|

Left and right may disagree, but I’m fairly sure we all want to break David Chase’s knees today:

Chase pulled the ultimate copout.

Nothing happened.

Actually, it was worse than nothing. In the last few minutes of the last episode of The Sopranos, the screen suddenly went blank and silent.

Big joke on the audience. Get it? A lot of us went crazy thinking our TVs had suddenly died, or the cable company went kerflooie.

That's not drama. That's sadism.

Time to poison his cannoli if you ask me.

|

While monitoring enemy broadcasts a discussion of the Parliamentary elections in France came up. The BBC’s correspondent at large in France discussed the mechanics of what looks like a landslide, after which the presenter rapped with some writer from Libération who sounded to be all of 14 years old. She rattled on for a while about how voting doesn’t really matter and “their” democracy was on the streets.

This would only make sense if you believed that voting doesn’t matter, and that the will of a majority that votes matters less than the will of a minority willing to break windows and burn trash cans.

Otherwise the BBC sound like this:

blah, blah, blah, climate change, blah, blah, blah, George Bush, blah, blah, blah, climate change, blah, blah, blah, climate change, blah, blah, blah, climate change...

And so forth.

Sure, And a big fat Sieg Heil to you two too.

|

TF1 is announcing the following results for the French parliamentary election:

UMP & Presidential majority (Right) : 405-455 seats
Mouvement pour la Démocratie (Eunuch Centrist) : 1-4 seats
Socialist Party and other Left : 120-160

Run-off elections continue next Sunday.

|

Official results will be announced in minutes, but Swiss TV is forecasting a right wing majority for the UMP (Presidential) Party of between 440-470 seats out of 577 in France's National Assembly. If this turns out to be accurate the French Socialist Party has been well and truly laminated. If Sarkozy does not push through Reagan and Thatcher style reforms after this then it will never happen.

|

No linkage. Bush’s poodle. Created by America. Al-Qaida has nothing to do with Syria which has nothing to do with Al-Qaida... Rumsfeld's lawn jockey... I wonder how terror’s willing collaborators among the western left will explain this away?

Beirut - This is an update on last week's Ya Libnan report on the arrest by the Lebanese security agents of the Al-Qaida terrorist mastermind at a Beirut hotel . The arrest was called 'a major catch'.

According to LBC TV, Lebanon's "major catch" has revealed that he is the coordinating officer between the Syrian intelligence and Fatah al-Islam terrorists.

Those inclined to fall for terrorist causes for their ‘rebeliousness’ need to realize just how “bought and paid” by authoritarian regimes many terrorists are: Ahmed Mehri was an al-Qaida “officer” type, and a liason between Syrian intelligence and the gang that hid behind civilians in a Palestinian camp in northern Lebanon by firing on the Lebanese Army.

The whole affair looks like it was set up as retaliation and a diversion for the Lebanese effort to keep attention on the investigation of Rafiq Harriri’s murder which is getting closer and closer to showing Damascus’ complicity.

The source explained that al-Qaida is "no more a solid-structure network. Many of its ranking members have joined several intelligence agencies and are used to infiltrate, control and direct local Qaida-inspired fanatics to carry out attacks that serve the interests of these intelligence agencies."

Fatah al-Islam, the source added, "is one of such local groups. Its members are inspired by al-Qaida ideology, but its attacks are directed by Syrian intelligence officers."

It also looks like someone (no-one will say who) seems to be putting a lot of these guys out of a job.

I wonder... who could THAT be?

|

From a rag that reads like a 1960’s report on Soviet tractor production we can observe the species in the wild: among the announcements is this bit of common evasion:

Journalist and Communist: Françoise Germain-Robin passes on the colors of the PCF [French Communist Party] to her replacement in the 19e district of Paris, Catherine Ballester. The candidate is a recognized writer to l’Humanité readers, where she’s been since 1975 after having been a journalist for France Culture. For l’Humanité she was a correspondent in Algeria until 1981, and then a reporter at large for the Middle East.
She’s also the author of several works in particular on Islam, Algeria, and Israel or Palestine.

This is undoubtedly the motivation which led people to take part in her committee of support, where dramatists, those organized on the questions of the Middle East, and historians are found. Beyond being a candidate who has lived in the 18e arrondissement since 1989, she intends to fight against the right and “for a strong left” in a district which she likes to say, is a “reflection of the world and is rich in true human and cultural diversity”.

So a neighborhood of rich lefties (and political monoculture) is now magically “diverse”, journalism’s purpose is entirely political, and it’s warm, touching and sincere to run for local office in a place you don’t live.

Now I see.

|