Behind the Façades in France: What expats and the mainstream media (French and American alike) fail to notice (or fail to tell you) about French attitudes, principles, values, and official positions…
Cease militarizing the globe! See instead the world as an interconnected family of liberal societies that is trying to settle differences by reason — BUT stop trying to prevent us from selling hi-tech arms to big Communist China to threaten tiny democratic Taiwan.
In that perspective, check out Eric Allie's cartoon (Thanks to all the readers who helped me with the .gif)…
In other news, Tim reports that
Around 150 anti-war protesters turned up to a demonstration in Canberra yesterday. A Lancet analysis put the figure at anywhere between 2,000 and 198,000.
John Rosenthal points us to some of the many problems there are with the EU 
Imposing notions of "sustainable development" and it's close cousin "starvation" seems to be the focus of yet another EU boondoggle of euphemisms and circumloquation. 
In the Le Figaro article in which he takes on France's embrace of state intervention and the status quo, Ivan Rioufol points out the obvious (was it ever in doubt?): that the "Arab spring" has given the lie to the canard that "democracy cannot be decreed, cannot be exported with guns and violence" …
Leftists are so emotionally insecure that they need a steady diet of attention getting stunts, pointless demonstrations, imagined enemies, and constant affirmation of their bad ideas. They protest wars that are over, and resort to promoting terror and meddling abroad to the disinterested when no-one will listen to them at home.
Why don't they just stick to their little makework hobbies and stop molesting civilization?
Go to Google.com, type in the search phrase "World Trade Center conspiracy" and you'll get links to an estimated 628,000 Web sites. More than 3000 books on 9/11 have been published; many of them reject the official consensus that hijackers associated with Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda flew passenger planes into U.S. landmarks.Jim Meigs adds:
Healthy skepticism, it seems, has curdled into paranoia. Wild conspiracy tales are peddled daily on the Internet, talk radio and in other media. Blurry photos, quotes taken out of context and sketchy eyewitness accounts have inspired a slew of elaborate theories: The Pentagon was struck by a missile; the World Trade Center was razed by demolition-style bombs; Flight 93 was shot down by a mysterious white jet. As outlandish as these claims may sound, they are increasingly accepted abroad and among extremists here in the United States.
To investigate 16 of the most prevalent claims made by conspiracy theorists, POPULAR MECHANICS assembled a team of nine researchers and reporters who, together with PM editors, consulted more than 70 professionals in fields that form the core content of this magazine, including aviation, engineering and the military.
"Everyone is entitled to his own opinion," the great Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York was fond of saying. "He is not entitled to his own facts."
In fact, largely as a result of Bush and his foreign policy, what was once a polite rivalry has become a poisoned well of hurt feelings and recriminations.
These days, Canadian publications are chockablock with surveys showing that Canadians see themselves as something akin to a superior race.
Americans can still expect two things from the European public and its leadership: deep-seeded anti-Americanism and embarrassing contradictions. In that context, let us examine all the recent Eurobabblewrites Victor Davis Hanson (thanks to Greg Schreiber) as he quotes 10 examples of Eurospeak and its double standards.
Don't dare divide us into old and new! We speak with one voice from Warsaw to Lisbon. We aim to be as united as your states are in America — BUT help us to ensure that Europe has separate U.N. Security Council seats for Britain, France, and, we hope, Germany as well.
Stop using force to solve problems! Listen to our diplomats. Promote international courts. The world no longer works according to your silly laws of military power and deterrence — BUT don't dare take any more American troops out of Germany.
Stay in NATO! You are pledged to the collective defense of Europe — BUT get used to the fact that we will soon have a new and rival independent EU military force.
Pay attention to the Muslim world! Hear us who have more experience with the Middle East. Try to incorporate, rather than isolate, the "other" — BUT stop telling us that we have to let Turkey into the EU.
Cease militarizing the globe! See instead the world as an interconnected family of liberal societies that is trying to settle differences by reason — BUT stop trying to prevent us from selling hi-tech arms to big Communist China to threaten tiny democratic Taiwan.
Learn from our more humane culture! See how our short work week, cradle-to-grave entitlements, and pacifism promote well-being — BUT how exactly do you rich and powerful Americans do all that you do?
Remember that we are your critical partners in the war against terrorism! Appreciate our unheralded work that goes unnoticed amid the loud bombs and tanks of you rowdy Americans — BUT Hezbollah is not a terrorist organization and cannot be labeled as such (and Hamas isn't either and needs our financial support).
Sign Kyoto! Start acting like good global citizens! BUT quit suggesting we had a hand in the Rwanda mess, the Balkans mess, the Oil-for-Food Mess, the Saddam-reactor mess, the Hezbollah/Hamas mess, the Arafat mess...
Quit proceeding unilaterally! Refer events that affect the world to the U.N. Don't just act on your own as if your deeds don't affect others — BUT don't remember the Falklands, the Ivory Coast, the unification of Germany, or the oil deals with Saddam.
Don't tamper in the Middle East! Do you cowboys realize what madness you are unleashing? BUT if you succeed we might just stop our caricatures — IF democracy follows and we can take credit for and profit from it.
It pains me to say it, it really does. But the fact is that in so many areas and walks and ways of life, the United States is now a better country than Canadawrites Michael Coren in the Toronto Sun. Replace Canada/Canadien throughout with Germany/Germans, France/French, Great Britain/Britons, suggests FR Hoffmann, and see if Coren's comment doesn't fit equally for these countries.
A week later, Coren's mailbox was overflowing, including with 1,000 letters from Canadians of all backgrounds and ages. Over 90% "wrote to say that I had spoken for them." Unsurprizingly, the remainder only served to prove… exactly what Coren had written the previous week, "deliciously [illustrating] Canadian hypocrisy and self-delusion":There, I've said it. Because I'm so very tired of the way, particularly in the last two years, that we Canadians have come to define ourselves not by who we are but by who we are not.
…With a malodorous stew of ignorance and malice, [publicly funded mediocrities screaming abuse at a great and noble nation] pump Canada at the expense of deflating the United States.
They say that we are about peace and they are about war. Nonsense. We haven't been able to keep the peace for years even if we'd wanted to do so. We haven't the aircraft or the equipment. It's the Americans who send most of the aid and keep most of the peace.
They say we are informed and intelligent, they are insular and foolish. Harvard, Yale, Princeton and a plethora of world-class universities. Nobel Prize winners by the dozen, internationally renowned scientists, scholars and sages. Goodness me, they even produce better anti-Americans than we do.
They say we are sophisticated, they are dumb. Yet they have more symphony orchestras, more theatres, more libraries, more museums per head than we do in Canada.
They say we are free, they are not. Really? Take the example of Fox News. For years this right-of-centre network was barred from Canadian airwaves, while we publicly funded left-of-centre equivalents such as the CBC. …
They say we have diversity and wit in our press, while they have conformity and lack of style. Yet every American city has a number of impressive daily newspapers and most small towns have weekly publications. They have liberal and conservative, religious and secular, black and white.
They have wide and different ownership, a multitude of different and contrary expression, the right to say almost anything, the liberty to question authority, the expectation of argument and debate, the protection of the basic right to speak one's mind.
Bashers of the U.S. say we have the separation of church and state while they have too much religion. The truth is that they have a constitutional requirement to separate church and state but allow religion to have its place in the public square, thus giving voice to so many brilliant and ethical people.
We effectively silence people of faith, lie to and about them and insult the very ideas that founded Canada itself. We stifle talk of moral behaviour in the name of morality. We deny the difference between right and wrong and then condemn people as being wrong if they disagree.
We say we are mature and they are childish. Which shows just how immature we are and how much growing up we need to do.
Time to put away the toys of smugness and conceit and make our own way in the world. With or without a government grant.
We flatter ourselves into a false sense of grandeur by flippant assumptions of our own tolerance and liberalism. Yet the enforcement of secular humanism is not tolerance at all but in itself a genuine form of fundamentalism.
[One of my critics] disagrees with me but instead of simply saying this, as if [sic] her perfect right and democratic duty, she tries to marginalize and insult the messenger rather than deal in any substantive manner with the message.
An e-mail warrior and Canadian nationalist named Mark told me I was a "collaborationist, double-crossing fifth columnist, fraternizer, quisling, saboteur, security risk, subversive traitor, treasonous turncoat, two-timing quisling." and added for good measure: "Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out."
Not once but twice a quisling! Goodness me, I'm as bad as the Norwegian fascist who sold his country to the Nazis because I wrote that the United States is not the ugly bully so many Canadians make it out to be.
All this silliness aside, the irony is that my critics simply did not appreciate that the hurt they felt at having their country criticized might just be shared by Americans when far worse things, with far less foundation, are said about the U.S. by Canadian leaders on a regular basis.
Another constant characteristic of the negative letters was the sheer anger. Dozens of people told me, in no uncertain terms, to go to the United States. But surely a Canadian has a right to appreciate another country and critique his own. …
Conclusion? The chauvinistic neurosis of the Canadian liberal is in many ways even more repugnant than the insularity of some Americans.
Davids Medienkritik make a prescient point which might be mistitled. It may not be so much about hurt feelings, but about a public temperament.«Germans revere Saint Florian as the patron saint of firefighters and offer a prayer to him that goes “Holy Saint Florian, spare my house and burn my neighbor's.” This prayer is an accurate description of Chancellor’s Schroeder’s foreign policy and is held by most Germans as a valid approach to the war on terror.»
«Germans are no longer keen to point out that their sentiments are just anti-Bush, not anti-American. The steady diet of television documentaries and news articles over alleged American wrong doing from World War II to Iraq is a sign of a new German attitude. German media use every opportunity to remind the country there is a global scapegoat for the future while proclaiming moral equivalence for its past. The German media have spoken - GM is responsible for the decline of Opel - Dresden was the same as the holocaust. And Chancellor Schroeder remains silent.»
Hey there, hydrogen fans and fanettes, here’s a newsflash if you haven’t already thought it through: the only natural source of it is in natural gas, otherwise you have to pummel huge amounts of energy at a water molecule to unbound it from the oxygen, and then turn H into H2.True, hydrogen is the most common element in he universe; it’s so plentiful that the sun consumes 600 million tons of it every second. But unlike oil, vast reservoirs of hydrogen don’t exist here on Earth. Instead, hydrogen atoms are bound up in molecules with other elements, and we must expend energy to extract the hydrogen so it can be used in fuel cells. We’ll never get more energy out of hydrogen than we put into it.Since it’s significantly less efficient in terms of energy that fossil fuels are, where then is the appeal? Oh, that’s right… they get to force on people an agrarian existence when people lived in huts, starved to death, and died of dental problems… It’s made to suit by global village idiots who are usually against “globalization”, want to give your kids dystopian nightmares, and are against jet travel unless it’s their fact-finding junkets.
Perform electrolysis with renewable energy, such as solar or wind power, and you eliminate the pollution issues associated with fossil fuels and nuclear power. Trouble is, renewable sources can provide only a small fraction of the energy that will be required for a full-fledged hydrogen economy.
After a summit with Putin in the Slovakian capital Bratislava last month, US President George W. Bush voiced "concerns" about Russia's commitment to democracy, evidence of increasingly chilly ties between Washington and Moscow.claims the AFP. The way the AP put this was:
Putin certainly will not suffer such a public rebuke in Paris, with the Elysée emphasising that Chirac has a more subtle diplomatic style than Bush
Reassuring Putin, and above all not humiliating him, will be the order of the day for Chirac, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany and Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero of Spain, the French president's aides say.Of course, what members of the the MSM don't tell you (and what Chirac's aides don't tell them) is that the "diplomatic soft touch" is applied to all — from Moscow (Putin-style or Soviet-style) and China to Khaddafi and Saddam Hussein — except Uncle Sam. Self-serving double standards, that is the true "European trait"…
The diplomatic soft touch, something of a European trait, stands in contrast to the blunter approach President George W. Bush used at his meeting last month with the Russian leader …
Honor lies in honest toil.
I have considered the pension list of the republic a roll of honor.
It is a condition which confronts us — not a theory.
No man has ever yet been hanged for breaking the spirit of a law.
Officeholders are the agents of the people, not their masters.
The ship of Democracy, which has weathered all storms, may sink through the mutiny of those aboard.
«My interlocutors--who on other subjects had wide-ranging views--all emphatically greed on one thing: Bush should stop talking about "freedom." Several people had counted the times our president had used the F-word. They noted that Chancellor Gerhard Schröder had avoided using it at all. The Germans prefer "stability" to disturbing the status quo by trying to spread "freedom."»
"Monti is of the opinion that "the French debate is wrong", and that "the debate is limited to France and Germany". Moreover, he stated that competition could facilitate, rather than prevent, merger and acquisition activity across European borders. Indeed, in his view, markets do open up and only a few mergers have been turned down by the Commission.
Monti's colleague Frits Bolkestein expressed similar views. In a recent article in the Financial Times, he attacked France and Germany for their approach to industrial policy, saying that the two governments used current fears about deindustrialisation as an excuse to reinforce state interventionism "
Lorenzo Vidino writing for The Middle East Forum confirms the obvious:| Time to cut loose sidecar Zeropa | Il est grand temps de larguer le sidecar Zéropa |
| Europe is losing speed. | L'Europe est en perte de vitesse. |
The BBC has been touting this “killing of science” tale which isn’t panning out in the least. Their theory is that medical science and science in general is being snuffed by visa requirements put in place by the US after 9-11. I guess they think that it’s the US’ obligation to produce much of the advanced science in the world, and if anyone dies of an exotic disease for which there is no cure yet, then it must George Bush’s fault. They repeated an awful and fact free documentary, put it online, and are spreading it around wherever they can for maximum guilt-tripping.“PoliSci: Scientists still prefer U.S.
By DEE ANN DIVIS, Senior Science & Technology Editor
WASHINGTON, March 14 (UPI) -- Some of the largest booths on the exhibit floor at the recent annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science were hosted by European organizations touting their research and employment opportunities.
Recruiters working on both sides of the Atlantic, however, say Europe has a long way to go before it can overcome legal, business and cultural problems that hamstring its efforts to attract scientists and continue to drive the brightest European minds to the United States and elsewhere.”
Two and a half months before a national referendum, support for the European constitution in France has slipped furtherreports the AFP.
Irked by harsh news coverage of legislative perquisites, the European Parliament's leadership has quietly proposed tough restrictions to bar the photographing or filming of members when they are not involved in official duties at the institution's sprawling headquartersreports Doreen Carvajal in the International Herald Tribune
…earlier in February, the German weekly television magazine Stern filmed members after they had signed for daily allowances, which have drawn intense scrutiny as some legislators have left work immediately after jotting their signatures.
… Regulations allow journalists to take pictures in news conferences and public passages. Legislators can also grant permission to be filmed within their own offices.
But the proposed rules also grant broad powers to the Quaestors to establish temporary zones that are inaccessible to reporters and to bar violators at their discretion.
That potential power worries Jens-Peter Bonde, a Danish member of Parliament and the leader of a 36-member independent group of legislators from 10 countries.
Bonde said the new rules emerged because some members of Parliament "hate it that they're taking photos when they're collecting benefits from the gravy train."
"It's been an ongoing battle for years, he said. "When we have a scandal, the first reaction is not to change the reality, but to change the possibility for making stories about it."
To admirers of Sartre, though, what remains is perhaps more important. Conceding that Sartre's image was still not fixed, Annie Cohen-Solal, author of a well-received biography of Sartre, said she preferred to view him more as "a role model, a way of doing things, than a doctrine or a body of work." And as such, she added, he remains "an ethical compass."Thus concludes Alan Riding's article on Jean-Paul Sartre, "the existentialist philosopher, the political activist whose positions frequently changed and the intellectual celebrity who won headlines as a Left Bank ambassador to the likes of Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro and Yugoslavia's Marshal Tito".
Michel Winock, co-author of the Dictionary of French Intellectuals, said Sartre's "taste for the subversive" led him to both political misjudgments and positions which to this day appear legitimate. As for what survives of Sartre, Winock told Le Nouvel Observateur: "I would say above all his moral coherence: his absolute refusal to be resigned in the face of injustice."
While Sartre was wrong on a number of issues (being a fellow traveler of the French Communist Party and supporting French Maoists), the International Herald Tribune writer says, on other issues (colonialism, Vietnam) he was right on the money.
What I retain mostly from Sartre, though, is this: the "role model" never wavered in his opposition to Uncle Sam and capitalism (plus ça change…); and "the ethical compass" who refused "to be resigned in the face of injustice" never seems to have been very vocal when the protest would put himself in an uncomfortable situation — i.e., the existentialist did not make use of "the only thing that permits a man to live" when, and where, it mattered most.
Indeed,
Sartre tried to explain his thought in simple phrases. "Existentialism defines man through his action." "The only thing that permits a man to live is the act." "A man engages in his life, defines his profile and, outside this profile, he is nothing." Put simply, every human being determines his or her destiny.
It followed that Sartre, for one, should be politically engaged, although, until the liberation of Paris in Aug. 1944, this had not been his posture. He played no role in the turbulent politics of France's 1930s. He visited Berlin in late 1933 and did not recognize the Nazi menace. And after a few months as a prisoner of war, he cheerfully he put on plays and published books in German-occupied Paris.
And while we are on the subject of Vietnam (you will remember that the war was "won" by "the Vietnamese", by "the people of Vietnam"), Bill Bainbridge has this:
When 600 overseas Vietnamese landed at Ho Chi Minh City's airport on Jan. 23, they were welcomed by an official delegation and a phalanx of eager young volunteers who insisted on carrying their bags for them.
It was a far cry from the way most of them left the country in the 1970s, on leaky boats and being cursed as traitors by the government in Hanoi. …
| French neocons will soon graduate from the school of hard knocks | Néoconservateurs français auront bientôt leurs diplômes de l'école de la rue |
| Boys will be boys. Sometimes you just have to beat some sense into people. | Il faut que jeunesse se passe. Parfois il faut cogner pour que les gens commencent à comprendre. |
| Bush, Bush, kush, kush! | |
| The French flag is set on fire. Europe is finished and so are the Mullahs! Thanks to Steve. | Le drapeau franchouille est brûlé. L'Europe est finie tout comme les Mollahs! Merci à Steve. |
| Where the Wild Things Are | Au régal des vermines |
| On the proper treatment of monsters. Robert Badinter, for example, is a monster. | Comment faire avec les monstres? Par exemple, Robert Badinter est un monstre. |
| 'It's like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder how I keep from goin' under.' -Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five | '... une authenticité qui n'appartient qu'à ceux qui naissent dans un bunker.' -Suprême NTM, préface du livre Boumkœur |
| Remember Times Square in the 1970s when gangs of kids would bubble up from the entrails of the city's underbelly and scream 'Whitey get off the street!'? That Broadway show has moved on to Paris. | En espérant que très prochainement ces bestiaux font une descente dans le 8ème pour fracasser les crânes de quelques gôchistes pédaloïdes zhumanistes. Là, c'est sûr que je vais me marrer, pour le coup. |
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| Left: Down with inequality Right: Down with whitey | |
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| Poor little faggots | Pauvres petits pédaloïdes |
| Chiraq vs. Google | |
| Chiraq has gone for the bait. Once again, France proves that it doesn't have a plan (or a clue) and only moves by reaction. Chiraq now is calling for a Virtual European Library (which will be at least as virtual as Europe is) in response to Google's vast digitalisation project (15 million books online). Look for Zeropean | Chirak a mordu à l'hameçon. Encore une fois, la Fwance démontre qu'elle n'a aucun projet (ni le moindre brin d'une idée d'un project) et ne fait que procéder en réagissant. Pour répondre au project de numérisation de Google (15 million de livres disponibles online), Chirak veut promouvoir le projet d'une bibliothèque virtuelle européenne (qui sera tout aussi virtuelle que l'Europe elle-même). Bien entendu, les |
| It took a New Yorker ... | Il fallait quelqu'un de Nougayork |
| The truth is out there. Too bad Dutronc is totally whipped by Françoise Hardy. | Un grand chanteur complètement émasculé par Françoise Hardy. |
Moore is the only client that Douglas Urbanski, a critically acclaimed 25-year veteran of the entertainment industry, has ever fired.
(Danke zu F R Hoffmann)
Iranian revolutionary guards (irregulars/non-army religious police types) are reportedly bringing the hizballah arms including tanks, and are reinforcing some positions in Lebanon (probably in the Bekaa) abandoned by syrian troops and intelligence unitswrites Jo N, who wonders what is French Fregoli's take on this…
I'm beginning to think that iran will be the poland of 2006. Will there be a popular uprising like the Solidarity movement? It's looking quite possible that they'll have a long burning revolution inspired by Beirut and a buildup that's been going on for about a year in the population.
It turns out that people across iran have been protesting like mad in small groups in localities for the past 36 hours. They have this Zoroastrian thing that they do at the New Year celebrations which officially start on 21 March, and it slightly pagan. It's always been criticized by the clergy. This year people are taking the impetus to protest. Women are burning headscarves, people are throwing pictures of clerics into these little symbolic fires they build. The idea is that they jump over the burning bush to start out the year purified.
In this second term of snuggling up to Europe … a president who prides himself on his unpretentious Texas style … has made it de rigueur to drop the names of famous French intellectualswrites Elisabeth Bumiller in the International Herald Tribune.
How else to explain his unusual mention of one of America's favorite Frenchmen, Alexis de Tocqueville, twice in a recent week?
Sometimes you read an article that leads to an obvious question, and it's very frustrating when the writer doesn't ask itcomplains International Herald Tribune reader Richard Kalvar.
Apparently there are hundreds of Islamist militants preparing terrorist strikes in Spain (Spain still thwarting Islamists' terror plot, March 14). The obvious question is why?
The Madrid bombings gave the Islamists what they wanted: a change in government and the withdrawal of Spanish troops from Iraq. So what do they want now?
I'm sure there are a lot of informed people in Spain who could enlighten us about this, but of course they have to be asked.
Indeed, given what Elaine Sciolino reports from Madrid ("the Spanish police continue to uncover and thwart new plots involving Islamic militants" and "officials estimate that there are hundreds of people scattered in cells around the country committed to attacking centers of power in Spain"), even more pertinent questions that she might have asked (if only herself) might have been a terrorist threat that is not yet fully understood.You said it, buster.
Of all the unsavory aspects of French police going around the country busting orchestras and locking up their conductors or managers, it is the notion that it's being done to protect these innocent violin-playing lambs from Sofia that drips heaviest with irony. In common with price-fixing cartels the world 'round, France and Germany's high-priced musicians have only one interest in this affair, and that is keeping low-priced competition off the market. That this means smallish French towns get no opera, or get it only when heavy public subsidies are made available for it, concerns them not at all.What's more, it's reasonable to assume, as Mr. Miller does, that productions such as the "Don Giovanni" he was conducting "make the French economy turn a little faster than it would otherwise." The musicians stay in hotels and spend money; stage crews are put to work on the shows, and others may find incremental work on the peripheries of tours such as these. But all that is as nothing, it seems, compared to the need to protect the privileged position of France's domestic musicians.
Whether it is the unions themselves that are responsible for the crackdown, as Messrs. Miller and Hartung suspect, or the impetus comes from elsewhere inside France's lumbering bureaucracy, the story is a microcosm of economic and cultural protectionism that is looking increasingly tenuous in an expanding Europe and globalizing world. When it comes to its language, its cinema, and now its music, France has long stood athwart history crying "Stop!" In two months' time, Mr. Miller is returning to France with a production of "La Traviata." Will the French police let the fat lady sing?
With regards to whole societies in Europe uniting (in France it has been call l'union sacrée) against the danger of the clueless, bumbling, retrograde, and war-mongering Yanks:If men were angels, no government would be necessary.
It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.With regards to Europe's mainstream media uniting to give the stamp of approval to their governments' self-serving contention that it is all America's (or Bush's) fault:
Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.Moreover:
It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.
A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained in arms, is the best most natural defense of a free country.
Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government.
I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.
Learned Institutions ought to be favorite objects with every free people. They throw that light over the public mind which is the best security against crafty and dangerous encroachments on the public liberty.
"Middle East on the Move, Is Bush to Thank?", a newspaper's banner headline quite fairly asked Europeans last week. What a terrifying premise.
Perhaps not for scores of millions of Arabs. But if George Bush is proven right on Iraq, and more than a bit responsible for the Arab Spring of shaky political advances now shimmering from Egypt to Saudi Arabia, then it's a frightening development and delegitimizing situation for European politicians from Spain to Germany.
They are pols like Gerhard Schröder and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero who essentially won election by running against Bush and the Iraq war. Leaving the talk of freedom or jihadist terrorism to the yahoos, they have linked their futures to what they supposed would be the eternal vote-cornucopia of resistance to Bush's vision for the Middle East.
Adding France and Belgium, the group widens to include governments that hoped to leverage their stance on Bush and the war into a genesis myth for a Europe redefining itself as America's counterweight.
Until the elections in Iraq, in this view, Europe's wishful identity as both moral superpower and tower of wisdom had been demonstrated to the world through Bush's headfirst dive into the hopeless Middle East. In the minds of the Zapateros and Schröders, Europe's place as the Righteous Power had become so self-evident recently that in planning to end its embargo on arms sales to China, Europe could proceed with the single near-comic argument that Beijing's rulers felt discriminated against.
Now, things are happening that suggest the start of a change in European mind-set in the zone where the Bush administration usually was called dumb and dangerous.
… Could this be European revisionism on Bush? In any event, when it comes to movement in the Middle East, Laurent Murawiec, a French security affairs expert, wrote that progress certainly wasn't the work of the Holy Ghost or "the very French strategy based for so long on not 'isolating' terrorist killers" like Hezbollah.
In this version, the advances in the Israel-Palestinian conflict yielded no credit to Bush for his refusal to deal with Yasser Arafat; or, indeed, introspection about the years of diligent French support for him. Rather, Bush's essential Middle East contribution had been pressuring Israel to enter talks with the Palestinians again.
Such is the region through French theoretical eyes. In fact, events have made France something of an American ward on the Lebanon-Syria issue, a situation that tacitly gives Bush his due more meaningfully than anything France could say.
When the Syrians pushed Jacques Chirac's intimate friend, Rafik Hariri, out of power in Lebanon, the gesture signified to the Middle East that French protection or practical leverage there meant little or nothing. To respond to this affront, and to jab at its former friends in Syria, France enlisted the Bush administration last fall to produce a joint Security Council resolution calling for the immediate withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon.
Then came Hariri's assassination a month ago. Because it refocused Arab attention on the incapacity of France to act alone in any material fashion in the region, the French hewed to the Bush line on the specifics of a Syrian pullout and supporting Lebanese democracy. On Iran's nuclear arms program, if the Americans have endorsed the European negotiating plan for now, it has come at the cost to France of a public promise to the Bush administration to help it in bringing Iran before the Security Council if the talks fail.
Unlike Schröder, Chirac has the personal luxury of staying away from immediate grief arising from the new facts. Schröder must go to the polls next year in German circumstances of disastrous unemployment and the weakest growth prospects in Europe.
Alongside that lost economic strength and the appearance of Bush-led change in the Middle East, add an increasingly ludicrous Schröder campaign boast of Germany re-emerging as a political force in the world on the basis of his opposition to the Iraq war.
Still, given a year to maneuver and Arab democratization more time to crystallize into reality, Schröder, as Europe's most facile political chameleon, might find a way to persuade his electorate that his steadfastness turned Bush into a peacemaker.
This revisionist reach is virtually impossible for Zapatero. In Spain's schoolyard of hand-on-throat politics, Zapatero seems required to inflict defeat every day on the conservative allies of his predecessor, José María Aznar, a vibrant supporter of Bush.
Saying that Bush may have gotten something right — Zapatero invited George Soros, Gary Hart and Tariq Ramadan, the Islamist political battler banned in the United States, to a conference here last week to insist that Bush hadn't — would mean the end of a domestic war Zapatero wants to continue roaring.
And that's not to mention disdain for looking at the world as it is.
Claudia Rosett writing in the New York Sun on 15 March points out the clear contrast between the optimistic pro-democracy, pro-sovereignty movement which feels optimistic with the Hizballah reinforced Pro-Syrian faction which chants about death and tries to raise it’s tired old tirades and personal hobgoblins: Israel, Europe, the USA. Their negativism reflects the pessimism of the anti-everything, marching left in the west, and seems to be madly in love with death.“BEIRUT - Flags fluttering, horns honking, and fingers flashing V for victory, Lebanon's opposition converged on downtown Beirut yesterday in the biggest democratic protest in the history of the modern Middle East.
Their numbers - about a million strong - were a retort to the rival protests staged last week by the terrorist group Hezbollah, and a message to each other and the world that the Lebanese people are serious in their demands for - as the crowd chanted over and over - "Freedom, Sovereignty, Independence."
In Beirut yesterday, it was clear that message has been heard. Unlike the Hezbollah demonstrators with their chants of "Death to America," many in the crowd were friendly to Americans. "Thank's Free World," (sic) said one poster, held high by a woman in a bright red jacket, Rawya Okal, who told me: "We thank Mr. Bush for his position." Overhearing this in the throng, a middle-aged man in a green baseball cap, Louis Nahanna, leaned over to say, "We love the American people" - adding, "Please don't let Bush forget us. Your support is very important."
Asking more people what they thought of Americans turned up the same refrain. From a young driver, Fadi Mrad, came the message: "We want to change. We need freedom. Please don't let Bush forget us." From a group of young men came not only the message "Our hope is America," and "We believe in democracy in the Middle East," but also praise for Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. There was also an invitation from one of them, young Edgard Baradhy, for his heroine, Ms. Rice, to come to Beirut "and I am ready to take her for coffee."
At one point, two young men sitting on a sidewalk mistook this reporter for a Frenchwoman, and called out "Vive la France!" The European nation's president, Jacques Chirac, has also come out in support of the democratic movement. When I told them that I was American, they got to their feet and came over to say, "Welcome to Lebanon.”
Looking more like “Der Schwarze Kanal”(a unintentionally funny propaganda TV program by the former East German television company which was aimed at the west) every day, Spiegel gins up THIS item: “Bush's Perfect Propaganda Machine”. Thanks to David and Ray for the clue-in.
The Cato Institute’s Doug Brandow asks the simplest question: Europe – Friend or Foe? The focus of his piece has largely to do with constructive engagement with China in the long term – how to do it, and how NOT to do it, and he finds simply that Europe is engaging China in such a fashion that it will building up a potential enemy, not a partner in the world.No American or European wants to see the rise of a global hegemonic authoritarian power. Like China.
There's much good that has happened to the People's Republic of China over the last three decades. However, further liberalization is by no means guaranteed. And even a more democratic China might be aggressively nationalistic.
That wouldn't be so important if the country was Burma or Zimbabwe, two other states under a European Union arms embargo. But Beijing is likely to eventually marry the world's largest population with the largest economy.
With China, however, the differences are more significant - and could conceivably lead to war. Should conflict come, it would be in the interests of both the United States and Europe that America prevail.
The EU-implemented an arms embargo after the Chinese regime's slaughter of demonstrators in Tiananmen Square. But European firms see potential profits from servicing Beijing's growing arms wants. Some Europeans also hope to advance their goal of becoming a counterweight to America. Engagement is a better strategy than isolation for encouraging the development of a free China. However, engagement need not mean strengthening China's military. Beijing will become a significant military power with or without European arms sales.There's no need to hurry the process along.
…as much from a psychological point of view (whether conscious or unconscious) as from the strategic viewpoint…President George W Bush has charged Karen Hughes with the task of improving the image of the United States abroad.
As I have written before, this will not work. This will never work.
Read why…
After a report in a Jordanian newspaper that [Ahmed al-Banna] was responsible for the bombing on Feb. 28 in Hilla, where more than 130 people died, Iraqis erupted in anger.
On Monday, hundreds of Iraqis swarmed around the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad, denouncing the country's leader, King Abdullah II, and defacing a Jordanian flag. A similar crowd marched in Najaf, near the home of Iraq's top Shiite religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who on Sunday accused Jordan of interfering in Iraq's internal affairs. The allegation has even strained official relations.
"We were surprised by the news about the family of the criminal terrorist Raad Mansur al-Banna celebrating his mean terrorist act, taking pride in that," said a statement by the office of Iraq's interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi.
The incident struck a raw nerve for Iraqis, who have been beleaguered by dozens of suicide bombings that have killed thousands of civilians. Iraqis often blame foreigners for the attacks, and neighboring countries for flooding their country with terrorists. …
In the case of Mr. Banna, the most inflammatory allegation in the Jordanian newspaper article was that his family had staged a celebration last week, inviting their countrymen to congratulate them for their son's heroic act. …
Why is it that I think of the recent Iraq cisis, and of George W Bush (you know, the president whom the whole world opposes), when I read the following?Any man worth his salt will stick up for what he believes right, but it takes a slightly better man to acknowledge instantly and without reservation that he is in error.
As long as our government is administered for the good of the people, and is regulated by their will; as long as it secures to us the rights of persons and of property, liberty of conscience and of the press, it will be worth defending.
Every good citizen makes his country's honor his own, and cherishes it not only as precious but as sacred. He is willing to risk his life in its defense and its conscious that he gains protection while he gives it.
It is a damn poor mind indeed which can't think of at least two ways to spell any word.
It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their own selfish purposes.
It was settled by the Constitution, the laws, and the whole practice of the government that the entire executive power is vested in the President of the United States.
No one need think that the world can be ruled without blood. The civil sword shall and must be red and bloody.
One man with courage makes a majority.
Take time to deliberate; but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in.
Never take counsel of your fears.
Peace, above all things, is to be desired, but blood must sometimes be spilled to obtain it on equable and lasting terms.
It looks like Mr. Anthrax is at it again. From Fox News: 
Maureen Dowd, who truly doesn’t get it wrote in this past Sunday’s New York Times Op-ed:“When I need to work up my nerve to write a tough column, I try to think of myself as Emma Peel in a black leather catsuit, giving a kung fu kick to any diabolical mastermind who merits it.”Quite telling. As a editorialist she’s little more than an attacker, as a journalist she is too intellectually lazy to understand why people have the positions they do. It’s simply enough that they do. What then (if anything) was her column about? Women. Not enough of them getting editorials published. Why? It doesn’t matter. Content doesn’t matter – there just aren’t enough women doing it.
“Men enjoy verbal dueling.”
From an editorial in the LA Times:President Jacques Chirac said to NATO leaders in late February that "France wants to contribute to stability" in Iraq. The contribution? Some $660,000 to a NATO fund for military and police training in Iraq and one French mid-level
officer who's being assigned to the training mission at NATO headquarters in Brussels. Not 1,000 officers. Not 100. Just one.
France's attempt to carve out a distinct foreign policy has been distinguished by little more than rank opportunism. During the Cold War it tried to play the U.S. off against the Soviet Union, and in 1989, French President François Mitterrand even thought he could stop the steamroller of German reunification by traveling to East Germany and exhorting it to remain an independent state.
Germany's decision last November to offer 3,900 soldiers for the U.S.-led war on terrorism was preceded by a wrenching national debate over the most far-reaching deployment since World War II.Bear in mind that this grand force is a "robust" version of last years "committment" which stood at 3100, with only 305 of them actually deployed in doing anything. Quite a sacrifice for a combined population of 140 million people, don't you think?
More than 700 German soldiers are part of the international security force deployed in and around the Afghan capital.
Let’s keep this in perspective: when the anti-civilization left bandy about accusation of warmongering and pretend to care about the fate of populations in the midst of war, it’s because they never stop dreaming of violent revolution and maiming their political opponents. Think of it as a kind of "Madonna-Whore Complex" for angry kids with expensive orthodontic work.| Thieving French bitch made to cough up the goods | Salope voleuse doit rendre gorge |
| Milka belongs to Kraft. Cheez Whiz rulez. | Milka appartient à Kraft. Connards de franchouilles, camembert! |
| He's 'embedded' in the hotel bar | Il est 'embarqué' par une bouteille de Courvoisier |
| Serge July, CEO of | Serge July, PDG de |
| The natives are restless | Les indigènes de la Ripoblika Franska sont sur le sentier de la guerre |
| Filthy vermin run amok throughout Paris during the high schoolers' protest demonstration and suddenly reading Mohand, of Tunisian background, explains : "If you look like a good ol' French, you are a target. Even more so if you look like a long haired surfer." ... and now the poor widdle Pawisian high schoolers are traumatised by this unseemly eruption of reality into their privileged lives. They are taking their ball and going home. They are finished playing. Zek comments. | La sale vermine fait irruption dans Paris lors de la manif des lycéens et du coup la lecture de Mohand, d'origine tunisienne, expliquait : "Si vous avez une tête de bon Français, vous constituez une cible. Et encore plus si vous avez le look surfeur avec des cheveux longs." ...et puis du coup, les pôv' lycéens sont traumatisés par la réalité qui fait irruption dans leurs vies de nantis. Ils reprennent leurs billes et repartent chez eux. Ils arrêtent de jouer. Zek nous commente ça. |
Hervé, one of our most faithful readers refers to it as looking for God in peoples’ faces. It’s absence is the disposition of sadness and gloom, the expression of powerlessness and a lack of free will over one’s life. 
Part of the nuttiness of the Jihad support network of the west (the far left) is a kind of manipulation of charitable organizations which plays into their predisposed hatred of any company which actually functions. (Property is theft!)
