En 2010, en Afghanistan, les blessures diffèrent des autres conflits. Elles touchent les membres, à reconstruire entièrement. Les amputations sont nombreuses. La cause : les engins explosifs improvisés déposés sur les routes par les talibans. "On amène beaucoup plus de blessés vivants au bloc. Mais leurs blessures sont beaucoup plus graves", explique Emmanuel Rigal, chef du service de chirurgie orthopédique de l'hôpital Percy (Clamart, Hauts-de-Seine). A l'avant, les techniques médicales et la logistique ont progressé. On va plus vite. Un soldat qui avait sauté sur une mine en fin de matinée en Afghanistan a été opéré par les Américains sur place dans les premières heures.

Nathalie Guibert has a story in Le Monde about four soldiers (severely) wounded in Afghanistan. Interestingly, it turns out that France is like the United States in the sense that she makes the same point as Frank Gaffney, Jr, i.e., that most civilians know next to nothing about the military.

Pour quoi et pour qui [le sergent Jocelyn Truchet, 25 ans,] a-t-il laissé cette jambe ? La question l'embarrasse. "J'espère que je ne l'ai pas laissée pour rien, répond-il après un silence, que tout ça servira à ce que les Afghans prennent en main leur pays."

|

Venezuela's Chavez blames capitalism for deluges: Chavez blames rich countries for climate problems

He seems to have forgotten that the capitalist west is the one that started the environmental movement, created all the of technology to clean the environment, created the efficiencies that allow for clean industrialization, despite the uninformed howling of the closet authoritarians of the “green” movement, and that the Marxist-Leninist regimes of old that he lionizes were so poisonously polluted and so willing to choke their own populations with toxic waste, that it was the one form of opposition that they couldn’t rationalize silencing.

The amateurishly operated Chernobyl nuclear plant and the cover-up of its failure was, of course, some sort of capitalist plot too, I imagine.

|

So, we won't have "Bush-era tax cuts for the rich" to kick around anymore. Statists simply love having a new narrative to play with, how does this one sound, "Obama-era tax cuts for the rich"?

|

Part of an ad campaign for Occurrence, "specialists in evaluating communication issues"…

Une pub dans une campagne pour l’équipe Occurrence, "Spécialiste de l’évaluation de la communication"…

|

426 Berlin merchants are finally catching on to a very American thing.

|

"Ce n'est pas une guerre des chefs, mais une affaire criminelle !"

The feud at France 24 takes on the air of a spy story, with Christine Ockrent trying to fight back by denouncing des "insinuations intolérables"…

"Elle n'a plus de protection et Alain de Pouzilhac a obtenu le permis de chasse de l'Elysée, qui suit le dossier de près", note un journaliste de France 24.

|

Background:

January 2002: "Germany Softens Anti-War Stance"

February 2002: "German Government Signals Support for Iraq War"


Precis:

They were all so hysterical about the US, with or without it's post-9-11 foreign policies, and so besotten with pandering to the constructed Bush-hatred in their electorates, that they will lie to save face, if needed, over their positions, statements and actions. Domino no. 1 is Gerhard Schröder, founding member of the axis of weasels.

Intervening himself, indicating that there was a rather person sense of his convictions, the story goes on to report:

Prior to the new year the German government, a coalition of the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Greens, definitively abandoned its previous posture of categorical opposition to a war against Iraq. When asked by Spiegel magazine whether Germany would vote against such a war in the United Nations Security Council, Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer (Green Party) replied, “This cannot be decided in advance, because nobody knows how and under what circumstances the Security Council will deal with this issue.”

This statement provoked angry protests within the membership of the SPD and the Greens, but Chancellor Gerhard Schröder (SPD) immediately backed his foreign minister: “One only decides on one’s vote in committees when one knows the background to the decision,“ he told Spiegel.

In his Presidential memoirs, George Bush presented this matter as it was reported then with an open hand, (not a Poka face.)

Now the predictable German passive aggression point to a rather militant covering maneuver, with the very same publication, Spiegel openly calling George Bush a "liar" and supporting without interspection or curiosity the former Chancellor's specious assertion. In a strange attempt to impart more importance to Schröder and Germany with more relevance than it really had or has, they character as "an ongoing emnity", as if it was really there.

On Tuesday, the day that Bush's own presidential memoirs, "Decision Points," finally hit the shelves, Schröder went even further. "The former American president is not telling the truth," he said on Tuesday in Berlin.

Schröder was referring to a passage in Bush's memoirs in which the former president described a meeting that took place between the two leaders in the White House on Jan. 31, 2002. Bush writes that, when he told Schröder that he would pursue diplomacy against Iraq but would use military force should the need arise, the German leader responded, "'What is true of Afghanistan is true of Iraq. Nations that sponsor terror must face consequences. If you make it fast and make it decisive, I will be with you.'"

Bush continued: "I took that as a statement of support. But when the German election arrived later that year, Schröder had a different take. He denounced the possibility of force against Iraq."

I'd shed a tear for any nation that looks to the likes of Schröder to lead it, but it isn't worth it.

|

(Thanks to Hervé who is… "speechless")

|

Call me when your moral compass stops spinning.

While belittling the death of American civilians is nothing new, this cartoon published on the web page “All Voices”, one which purports to reflect the opinions of “a world that has no other outlet,” it displays quite plainly that to many out there the WikiDump is not about “transparency”, but another quietly celebrated missile fired at Americans and at the United States.

|

Hugh Prather, 1938-2010

|

Alexander Golts, a Russian security and military affairs analyst with a reputation for considerable integrity and cheek … writing in The Moscow Times about his view of the [Lisbon] summit’s ultimate futility, insisted that, since the fall of the Soviet Union, grand notions of deep cooperation between Russia and NATO “inevitably” fall apart.

Thus reads John Vinocur's latest column in the International Herald Tribune.

Is that unreasonable, or just undiplomatic? In truth, there are seriously limiting elements both to the NATO-Russia relationship’s possibilities and to NATO’s own flexibility in acknowledging and confronting its members’ most serious security concerns:

• Russia, in its official military doctrine, continues to designate NATO as its prime external threat. …

• Iran was not discussed at the Lisbon meeting or mentioned in any of its documents, or in a message to Europe from President Barack Obama that preceded the conference. This may have been out of U.S. deference to Turkey and Russia, which do not explicitly acknowledge Tehran’s push for a nuclear weapon. Still, the silence appeared so mousy to President Nicolas Sarkozy that he said, “In France, we call a spade a spade” (well, sometimes), and, in a news conference, singled out Iran as the basic “threat” behind the need for missile defense.

• In comments about possible cooperation on a joint strategy (against the effectively whited-out Iranian nukes), Russia has insisted on “absolute equality” and murmured warnings of no deal otherwise. …

With this tone and level of noninformation, you just might want to put off a decision on buying a used car, not to mention sharing a system to defend against a nuclear threat from Iran. …

A coda: the high-pressure gush at Lisbon was successfully slip-streamed by France so that in the midst of all the self-congratulatory talk no one uttered a word about French efforts to sell the Russian Navy two helicopter-carrying assault ships, a NATO first. The French could certainly cheer, Long live Mr. Obama’s reset!

|

Sarkozy l'Américain is often criticized by the French for having opposed Jacques Chirac and Dominique de Villepin's policies on the Iraq war, but as the WikiLeaks trove make clear, the future French president was hardly the only French politician upset with the duo's excesses in the mid-2000s; former prime minister Michel Rocard pointing out that Villepin identifies himself with Napoleon, whereas he is more of a Cyrano de Bergerac character…

|

Former external relations commissioner Chris Patten in 2004: The EU will never be a real power

Mr Patten expressed his scepticism that the EU will ever become "a real power," because "there is always someone in the room who is overly cautious, and will insist on looking at matters 'sensibly'," the cable reads.

They haven’t been “ready for prime time” for what seems like decades now. This, of course, as they’ve held one fake celebration after another inferring that their founding on paper half a century ago was serious or significant.

It’s a hard thing to believe, because they still aren’t serious or significant.

"To be a real power, Patten said, a country must be ready and able to adopt and implement a policy, even if the rest of the world considers it unwise. Europeans may agree or disagree with US policy, but they admire that the US is ready to carry out the policies it thinks best, no matter what the rest of the world thinks."

Sensible, meaning providing enough time and enough cover to enable inaction.

|

Hey, Kids! This could be you!



It’s a sterile*, lonely unicorn†.
(The one on the right, dingus)

* rainbow love means never really making any little Unicorns
† They never existed outside of the imagination

|

Global warming strikes again: Europeans, normally so fond of lecturing all passing sundry that they deal so handily with everything while whoever they’re standing in front of can’t, struggle to deal with 8 measly inches of snow.

Shops running out of basics as lorries struggle to deliver.

Every male, no matter what his age, thinks that he’s Fritz the Cat, but gets arrested with apoplexy by the prospect of having to shovel the walk in front of the Cat pad.

Just put a dress on them. What a bunch of pansies. To think that they pretend to be humanity’s bold, wise oracles.

|

L'homme fascine les Américains autant qu'il leur raconte être fasciné par l'Amérique

writes Rémy Ourdan about WikiLeaks' Sarkozy revelations in Le Monde.

Il est le "président le plus pro-américain depuis la seconde guerre mondiale". … On découvre dans ces mémos que Nicolas Sarkozy et ses conseillers fréquentent assidument l'ambassade américaine de Paris, ainsi que les dignitaires américains de passage en France.

Signe de cette proximité, Nicolas Sarkozy, qui n'avait certes pas fait mystère qu'il pensait à la présidentielle "pas seulement en se rasant" et qui ne masquait pas ses ambitions, annonce sa candidature aux Américains le 1^er août 2005, soit seize mois avant qu'il ne l'annonce, le 29 novembre 2006, au peuple français. "Je vais être candidat en 2007", confirme M. Sarkozy à l'ambassadeur Craig Stapleton et au conseiller économique du président Bush, Allan Hubbard. Pour la France, c'est déjà à l'époque une évidence, mais encore non déclarée. Pour les Américains, cette confirmation avant l'heure est une marque de confiance.

…Nicolas Sarkozy fait, lors de ce rendez-vous, une véritable déclaration d'amour aux Américains. "Sarkozy a exprimé son admiration pour le président Bush, écrit l'ambassadeur. Sarkozy a dit que, comme le président [Bush], lui aussi mettait un point d'honneur à tenir sa parole et à affronter honnêtement les problèmes réels de son pays."

Le ministre de l'intérieur n'hésite pas à critiquer la position diplomatique française devant des officiels étrangers. "Sarkozy s'est lamenté de l'état troublé des relations entre les Etats-Unis et la France au cours des dernières années, écrit le diplomate. Affirmant que c'est quelque chose que lui 'ne ferait jamais', il a évoqué l'utilisation, par Chirac et Villepin, du veto de la France au Conseil de sécurité [de l'ONU] contre les Etats-Unis en février 2002 [sur l'invasion de l'Irak] comme étant une réaction injustifiable et excessive."

…Nicolas Sarkozy, toujours à l'occasion du passage d'Allan Hubbard, devient plus personnel. "'Ils m'appellent 'Sarkozy l'Américain', a-t-il dit. 'Eux considèrent que c'est une insulte, mais je le prends comme un compliment'. Sarkozy a souligné à quel point il 'se reconnaît' dans les valeurs américaines", écrit le diplomate. "Il a raconté que, lorsqu'il était enfant, il a dit à son père qu'il souhaitait devenir président. Son père d'origine hongroise a rétorqué 'dans ce cas, va en Amérique, parce qu'avec un nom comme Sarkozy, tu n'y parviendras jamais ici'. Prouver que c'était faux, a dit Sarkozy, est la pierre angulaire de ses efforts à la fois pour réussir [à devenir président] et à transformer la France."

L'ambassadeur en conclut que "Sarkozy est viscéralement pro-américain" et qu'"il voit sa propre ascension comme étant le reflet d'une saga à l'américaine".

Needless to say, Le Monde's French readership is hopping mad by Sarkozy's free market tendencies, by his pro-Americanism, by his "poodleness", and by his "treason" (to Chirac and de Villepin), leading Un "imbécile" to declare:

Noel avant l'heure pour les eminents commentateurs du Monde: antiamericanisme et antisarkozysme se rencontrent, livres sur un plateau par le compte-rendu pas-tendancieux du Monde. C'est vraiment trop, il ne fallait pas. Le millieme commentateur qui sort les memes cliches gagne le Grand Prix de la Previsibilite.

|

Bertelsmann is a near-monopoly player in German publishing. Despite sitting in that sort of catbird seat, they are pretending to do the world a favor while trying to pry open new markets abroad. One way they’re doing this is by running a think-tank in DC. It’s director, Annette Heuser, previously of their international dealmaking unit, rather transparently describes it thus:

We want to position the Bertelsmann Foundation in the highly competitive and fast-moving market of think tanks and foundations in DC by defining ourselves as a "Center of European Excellence." By this, we mean to showcase European best practices for confronting challenges that afflict all our societies.

Which is to say, to propagate their ways not by example, but by making great news of what others should be doing to be more European.

What fine examples to they have for us to live by and admire them for? News about themselves:

Europe’s Fight Against Human Trafficking
Middle East: Difficult Negotiations Ahead

As if some European that they can put a claim on were intimately involved in any of these things in an effective way. We can see how well a decade of European negotiation with Iran has gone: they were chumped – used as cover to build nukes. They are proud of their role as willing idiots that enabled an aggressive buffoon who gets a woody thinking of genocide.

Otherwise, the their object lessons for humanity are all about Europeans dealing with Europeans: as if their internal matters were any more remarkable that anyone else’s internal matters, and that we’re somehow supposed to be proud of the fact that after a millennium of slaughtering one another, that they are, historically, in an “operational pause”.

So what is it exactly that can make people like this go away and take their underhandedness with them? Applaud them, continually, in the manner of a faked orgasm until their self-satisfaction is sated? Or should we tell them that their peace, that remarkable example of the absence of them being their usual selves, is founded on two things:

1. Their apathy, and
2. The rest of the world having had to nation-build them into a functioning society that stops dragging the rest of humanity into their blood-bathes, they fantastice social ideas that include collectivist-learned helplessness, Marxist-Leninism, and Fascism. You know... because they’re “efficient”.

They should be deported for mendacity, if not their surreal naiveness:

But on the macro-level, the greatest challenge for Europe and the US is demonstrating that democracies can deliver in today's world. We must demonstrate that democracies have the power to guarantee their citizens equal access to health care and education, and provide security on a local, national and even international scale.

As if that’s what democracies are, or are for, or that the same thing was accomplished by any past or present non-democracy.

Some of it rises to the kind of pedantry that we’ve all heard first hand for decades. All the while waiting for the European side of this imaginary great love/friendship/partnership to demonstrate ANY action founded on their words, even WITHIN the European orbit. Take, for example, the years of absolute unwillingness that they had for removing the thuggish regimes of the former Yugoslavia: people had to cross an ocean to do it for them. Even today, they had to hire the Eulex staff in the classifieds because no European government was initially willing to commit a single staff person themselves if there was much of any risk involved... and that’s IN EUROPE.

Right now, Americans shoulder a greater portion of the military responsibility in the alliance. For Europe, the true recipe for successful transatlantic burden sharing requires comprehensive, pragmatic diplomacy enforced by European military power, if needed, in a conflict. Europeans also must demonstrate more convincingly that they share the ultimate objectives of the Americans even in cases, such as Afghanistan and Iraq, in which both sides want different approaches.

Prove it. Prove to the world that your beer-drinking German louts in Afghanistan have accomplished ANYTHING rising to the level of the number of troops that are there.

Are we to admire ANY of the things they do, take it as an example, and THANK THEM for it? The European view, quite simply, is that there is greatness in what we are to SUPPOSE about them, generically, as a people in a far off idyllic well-managed and programmed glass and steel utopia. None of it is plausible because it’s entirely undermined by their stagnant and stubborn way of never actually doing much of anything for other cultures, much alone for each other, while telling us all how well we should think of them.

Otherwise they HAVE to keep prattling on about a Trans-Atlantic alliance, because it’s all about them. It IS their defense, and it IS their access to any plausible form of relevance in the world, all 500 million of them – the wealthiest entity on earth.

Delusions arise from believing what you continually repeat. Theirs’ is that they’re relevant and indispensible to humanity by mere virtue of their being, or their history, or any number of things other than their inaction and misguided attempts to compete in the human-intervention business with rest of the world not for the sake of those they’ll help, but for the sake of those they think they’re showing up.

And if that fails, pretend that it’s all about co-operation and it’s a small world after all internationalism. Like this bit of coercion and blackmail:

The legislature's rejection earlier this year of the interim SWIFT agreement with the US was, Barker writes, partially motivated by a desire to establish a more active role in policymaking. This was also a reason for the parliament's opening a liaison office in Washington, DC, making the EP the only legislature with its own presence in the US capital.

What do they try to call that dynamic? “Transatlantic Power House.” Their use of power, your house.

|

Regardless of your thoughts on the the leaking of US documents via Wikileaks, you are undoubtedly curious as to how it all works on the inside. You can spend your time plowing through thousands of mind-numbing cables -or- you can take the quick and very accurate path to see how it all works (far more funnier as well - in a cringing way for those who have been there and done that):

|

…on Tuesday Mr. Sarkozy told cabinet ministers that the release of the documents was “the height of irresponsibility”

writes Katrin Bennhold regarding the WikiLeaks scandal as well as the release of documents pertaining to French diplomacy and to the French president.

President Nicolas Sarkozy is an unusually solid French friend of America. He is also a “mercurial” man operating in “a zone of monarch-like impunity” surrounded by advisers often too fearful to give honest counsel, according to leaked cables from the United States Embassy in Paris. …

Five years of correspondence between Paris and Washington chronicle a spectacular post-Iraq turnabout between one of the West’s most complicated diplomatic couples. Mr. Sarkozy, who took office in May 2007, was described even last year as “the most pro-American French president since World War II” and a “force multiplier” for American foreign policy interests. …

Paul Patin, an American Embassy spokesman, said Tuesday: “President Sarkozy has proved, time and time again, that he is a true friend of the U.S. France is one of our closest allies, and our partnership has only gotten stronger during his presidency.”

In general, few foreign policy disagreements surface between France and the United States under Mr. Sarkozy. … The delight among American diplomats at the arrival of a self-professed pro-American candidate after years of difficult relations with Jacques Chirac was evident in correspondence well before Mr. Sarkozy’s election.

In 2005, Mr. Sarkozy, then the interior minister, told Craig R. Stapleton, then the American ambassador, that although he would have advised against the Iraq invasion he still felt it “personally when American soldiers die in combat.” Mr. Sarkozy said he took it as a personal responsibility that “no U.S. Embassy or Consulate was so much as touched” in anti-American protests.

“Very much unlike nearly all other French political figures, Sarkozy is viscerally pro-American,” said a cable signed by Mr. Stapleton. “For most of his peers, the U.S. is a sometimes reviled or admired, but decidedly foreign, other. Sarkozy identifies with America; he sees his own rise in the world as reflecting an American-like saga.”

|

At every presser all we hear is that our Iberian brothers and sisters not only don't need any help with their financial problems, they are positively thriving. Odd then this selection from today's news:

Spain and Italy, the countries that with Portugal appear most at risk from being enveloped by the euro zone's deepening debt turmoil, are leading an effort to spur more decisive action from the European Central Bank in order to prevent the crisis from spreading further.

A €67.5 billion ($88.2 billion) bailout plan for Ireland that European Union governments signed Sunday has offered little relief from the crisis, dashing the hopes of European leaders. Since then, borrowing costs for the three governments rose sharply.

No worries at all, "panic" now being a sign of everything being alright.

|

|

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS – European governments negotiating with the US on the resettlement of Guantanamo Bay inmates asked for money and meetings with Barack Obama, while others refused to accept Chinese Uighurs for fear of upsetting Beijing, diplomatic cables disclosed by WikiLeaks show.

That’s some serious droits de l’homme, you’re sporting there as you codpiece, studly: give me the ones that won’t make you look bad, or anger a REAL epirious totalitarian regime like China. I can smell the bravitude from here.

The Bulgarian interior ministry, for instance, expressed willingness to accept two men, on condition that the US got rid of visa requirements for Bulgarian tourists and businessmen and helped with relocation expenses.

These were the Europeans who were begging to “shut down Gitmo”, and were trying to tell humanity that they were begging the US to just purdy pleeeez give them a Jihadist of their very own to hug and squeeze and call George. They promise to walk and clean up after them too.

The reality?

Even the Germans joined in the haggling, though Berlin had been particularly strident in calling for the closure of Guantanamo. Wolfgang Schäuble, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) and the country's interior minister until late October 2009, repeatedly rejected American overtures.
Berlin was particularly reluctant to take 17 Uighurs, originally from China, despite the fact that 500 of their ethnic brethren already lived in Munich, the largest such community in Europe. The Uighur community in Munich expressed a willingness to accept them into its midst. But Germany wouldn't allow it.

Oh, the poor innocent darlings! Victims of big, bad AmeriKKKa!

Islamists from Guantanamo are too dangerous, Schäuble insisted.

|

[In Germany] it was the coldest start to December for centuries

The urgent need for global warming talks in Cancún is felt across Europe as the situation grows worse…

In the Russian capital, Moscow, temperatures dropped to -23.6C, the lowest on record for 1 December since 1931.

In Poland the mercury dropped even lower, with the eastern city of Bialystok registering temperatures of -26C. …

In Britain, thousands of schools were closed and police in the southern county of Surrey described conditions as the worst they had ever seen. …

Thick snow across Germany blocked roads, and caused flight cancellations and school closures. Bild newspaper said it was the coldest start to December for centuries, with some areas reporting temperatures as low as -18C.

|

As if they haven’t spent the past century trying to convince French society to rise up in arms against “the system” and trying to scare them into the belief that there is a Capitalist under their beds, Propagantastaffel now propagandizes that, to the contrary,

The new far right not only exerts a growing influence on national governments, it is also organising at a European level and could soon weigh heavily on the very workings of the EU, warns French columnist Bernard Guetta.

Otherwise when not “saving the people”, the strange complex includes the notion that they are some sort of better-knowing elite that otherwise “hate the people”.

Buoyed by a wave of social discontent that has swept across the continent, it is in the process of mounting a platform that brings together the defence of the welfare state, an aspiration for protectionism, and an attachment to liberal values that are supposedly threatened by Muslims. Represented by pleasantly urbane leaders, who appear wholly contemporary, it has attracted a hefty swathe of the working-class and urban youth vote.

In other words, since it smacks somewhat of the lefts class-warfare bogeyman routine, and they supposedly have that copywritten, one is supposed to not just oppose it, but not notice pretend that the left’s crash-testing of civilization is to go unremarked.

|

A Brooks Barnes article in the New York Times on finding the film industry's chief lobbyist in Washington reveals some not-so-hidden truths about Hollywood.

The job, as chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America, is supposed to be one of the most coveted gigs around. … The late Jack Valenti held the position for nearly four decades, and he not only wielded incredible power but also found time to maintain a Malibu tan.

Yet three studio chairmen, aided by headhunting firms, have been trying for almost a year to find a new leader to replace Dan Glickman, the former nine-term congressman from Kansas [who was secretary of agriculture during the Clinton administration and] who stepped down earlier this year after succeeding Mr. Valenti [who earned his political stripes by working as an adviser in the administration of Lyndon B. Johnson] in 2004. …

The search committee came close over the summer, zeroing in on Bob Kerrey, the former Democratic senator from Nebraska and president of the New School. But negotiations fell apart.

Now a new round of interviews is under way … one candidate is Christopher J. Dodd, the powerful Democratic senator from Connecticut, who is retiring. Bill Richardson, the exiting governor of New Mexico, is also in the mix, this person said.

One of the more out-of-left-field names under consideration is Vickee Jordan Adams, a former executive at the communications firm Hill & Knowlton and daughter of Vernon Jordan, the senior adviser to former President Bill Clinton. (The candidate pool is filled with Democrats because it reflects the political leanings of Hollywood power players.)

You can be sure that the New York Times would not be speaking so flippantly of an industry if the contenders for a similar post were all Republicans, nor would its alarmists (where evil conservatives are concerned) be minimizing the reason for the similarity of their background by hiding them inside a pair of parentheses…

|