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…
Friday, March 25, 2005
Steyn on the death of the liberal West
«Since 1945, a multiplicity of government interventions - state pensions, subsidised higher education, higher taxes to pay for everything - has so ruptured traditional patterns of inter-generational solidarity that in Europe a child is now an optional lifestyle accessory. By 2050, Estonia's population will have fallen by 52 per cent, Bulgaria's by 36 per cent, Italy's by 22 per cent. The hyper-rationalism of post-Christian Europe turns out to be wholly irrational: what's the point of creating a secular utopia if it's only for one generation?»Assisted Suicide
Major K. writing from Iraq clues us in to the fact that suicide bombers are rarely brave souls who are throwing their lives away for their cause. In fact most of the time they're unwitting chumps who are asked to drive a vehicle containing a remotely controlled explosive device: «The dirty little secret of the Islamo-fascists is that many of these car bombs are not the suicide sacrifice that they tell of in their recruiting propaganda. All too frequently, the driver of many of these vehicles is unaware that he is doing anything more than smuggling supplies through a checkpoint or planting a car bomb for later detonation. These murderers are often driving not far behind the VBIED with a remote control detonation device. The bomb is detonated as soon as the vehicle gets close enough to the target, or, as in many cases, the device is about to be discovered and the mission compromised at a checkpoint. The checkpoint becomes a target of opportunity, no matter how many innocents are there. We refer to this as a Kervorkian, or an assisted suicide bombing.»
Hurricane Lou teabags Stern Magazine
Lou Minatti, one of my favorite visitors to this little corner of blogistan presents: Let's have some fun with stereotypes in response to Germany's Stern Magazine's childish presentation of the US titled: «USA: Das gespaltene Land» (USA: the divided nation.)David's Medienkritik also takes the mickey out of the Stern gang bigots with the usual David-and-Ray elegance.
Thursday, March 24, 2005
Of Fox and Canada
This delicious quote comes from Rachel Marsden who is wondering what to make of the CBC reaction to the Canada's broadcasting Didn't some leftist agit-propists already try that in the US? Why can't the CBC even have an original fascist thought? One also has to concider the source: a woman who had to leave Canada to air conservative thoughts in public, without having to prefacwe them with: «My name is Rachel M., and I'm a Progressive Conservative....»«The CBC is freaking out with the arrival of Fox. So much so that they’re frantically working on a documentary about the Fox News Canadian invasion, in which they will tell Canadians what to think. Given that Fox News is now in direct competition with the CBC for whatever remnants of an audience that the CBC has left, this has about as much credibility as Ford doing a documentary about General Motors, telling you that GM cars suck.»
Infantalizing demands for apology only seem to go one way
«Sheikh Zafzaf, President of the Interfaith Dialogue Committee of Al-Azhar, said during a press conference that his committee had sent a request to the Pope last February, demanding an official apology on Christian crusades against the Muslim world.
Should the Vatican proffer official apologies for Christian crusades against Muslims seven centuries ago, surely Al-Azhar should be ready to respond in kind.
The Christian European west narrowly escaped total destruction at the hands of the Muslims. There are the Moorish invasions of the Middle Ages; Muslim invasions went right up to the gates of Vienna. Then there is the 700 years of Moslem invasions leading to the conquest and rule of India...»
If I could turn back time...
Hugo Chavez will be nationalizing farms and redistribute the land à la Mugabe. The complaint of the man the BBC refers to as a "warrior for freedom" is that 1% of the population owns 60% of the agracultural land. 90% of the population is urban - it goes to follow that, at best, no more than half the remaining population is involved with agriculture. So the 2+% percent of people will have their wealth reposessed for the benefit of the other 3, along with anyone else Hugo can cart off to the countryside in his cultural revolution.Why muss around? Why not just starve people instead of making the poor even poorer by making their food cost them more?
unashamed
Center-right politician Edouard Balladur has saved himself from the Euro-sclerosis of political correctness which strangles a public figure's ability to air his views.For the purpose of context a close comparison can be drawn between the cultural state of leftism in US universities and politics in the EU.
Think about the plane of discussion is composed of in the university - students too young, and educators too insulated to know anything about life are promoting issues which they think are the most offensive and defiant of societies norms for their own sake... All in the interest of howling "nyah-nyah" for it's own sake. As if one could actually control genetic diversity in the population without their own form of "population control" or force leftist causes on society without anyone having the right to object or disagree.
From Washington state to EU accession, we see the exact same pattern: keep holding elections and recounts until the elitists' poor pet peeve ideas are accepted.
Trans-something-or-other
Afghanistan yet another victim of the caring, sharing "Toyota Taliban" trans-national NGOs who shake the change out of western governments with pretty pictures and slickly presented guilt trips.
The more that they say they care, the more they seem to exploit. All they accomplish is to destroy the reputation, plausibility, and moral standing of the west.
The more that they say they care, the more they seem to exploit. All they accomplish is to destroy the reputation, plausibility, and moral standing of the west.
Wednesday, March 23, 2005
Cartoon continent
The Fabulous furry freak brothers? Or the EU 3? I cant tell from
this a familiar tale in the life of the modern welfare state.
Smurfing towards serfdom
An oldie but a goodie: once upon a time, there was an amusing parallel to be found between cartoon characters and communists. Given the European fear of capitalism its’ potential success, makes silly unicorn public funding scams like a “Ministry for Sports” useless.
How else do you explain gems like this one?:
«The EU commission, though, has ordered that use of the gun has been prohibited under the Kyoto protocols because the emissions have not been factored into the trading scheme. No move to order the ammunition can take place until the authority of the commission to make this ruling has been tested in the European Court of Justice, with a preliminary judgement expected in September 2009.»
How they could still call this “Social Democracy”/whatever-you-call-it that they have now an idea at all is an astounding bit of chutzpah, especially with that air of
cultural superiority that always prefaces the lack of explanability.
Was the Iraq War worth it?
Ask an Iraqi…
Or an Iraqi… Or an Iraqi… Or some Iraqis… Or all Iraqis…
And while you're bewailing how much Iraq's population has suffered because of the war, and how the country is in insurrection, and how the hatred of Americans can only grow, read Robert F Worth's NYT article:
Ordinary Iraqis rarely strike back at the insurgents who terrorize their country. But just before noon on Tuesday, a carpenter named Dhia saw a troop of masked gunmen with grenades coming toward his shop here and decided he had had enough. …That's right: it is not the Yanks that ordinary Iraqis are fighting back against.
"We attacked them before they attacked us," said Dhia, 35, his face still contorted with rage and excitement, as he stood barefoot outside his home a few hours after the battle, a 9-millimeter pistol in his hand. He would not give his last name.
"We killed three of those who call themselves the mujahedeen," he said. "I am waiting for the rest of them to come, and we will show them."
It was the first time that private citizens are known to have retaliated successfully against the insurgents. … The battle was the latest sign that Iraqis may be willing to start standing up against the attacks that leave dozens dead here nearly every week.
Furthermore, Iraqi soldiers are fighting back too (alongside the army of the United States of America)…
PS: If the mainstream media — if even the MSM — can agree to say "the insurgents who terrorize their country", then why on Earth can't they use the word "terrorists"?
And a partridge in a pear tree
One corrupt former mayor 4 former ministers… all the dock…
And possibly going straight to the crowbar hotel.
And possibly going straight to the crowbar hotel.
| Panty-waste | Prout prout ma chère |
| Get a load of the snobby French dude at the end of this TV ad. | Regarde un peu le snob de franchouille qui se pointe à la fin de cette pub de télé. Ça doit être un pédébloggeur. |
Tuesday, March 22, 2005
Tuesday comment highlight
The unofficial ¡No Pasaràn! best comment award goes to the fellow named after a Norse diety, whose comment belongs in the hall of fame:
«Welcome to the 21st century. Hmm, looks suspiciously familiar. Yes, thats it, 18th century France--where the aristocrats were fat and happy and the peasants were starved and scared.
...By the way, if you would like to play our game of time machine at home in France, all you have to do is allow millions of illiterate peasants with strange, anti-social, fundamentalist religious beliefs to emigrate to your country, yet somehow never learn French or get a job!
Be sure to give them free apartments bigger than mine and enough money to can get the Hammas channel on their sky TV so they never have to learn French! Then you too will be able to enjoy the sheer joy of seeing your country sink backwards in time.
Close your eyes and listen to Chirac channel de Gaulle and [watch] Le Pen doing his best el Duce impersonation. Listen to the Duc de Villepin rail against the US--or was than Napoleon railing against the English? - sorry, wrong century...Read about Luddites smashing the looms of modern factories and rioting in the street--no, its not the 19th century--welcome to la Belle France of the 21st century! Its sustainable and eco-friendly(!) as we go back to growing potatoes and hating our neighbors with religious fervor! Oh les beaux jours!»
- the exemplary plenepotentiary Thorvald. Accept no substitutions.
Crocodile tears for a naïve Western media
«No doubt the abuse of the prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison is a crime that must be investigated and its perpetrators brought to justice. The civilized world spoke in one voice when it claimed that this transgression was morally unacceptable. But then again, this is war…So while a collection of self-absorbed old hippies and young people who know nothing yet about life complain endlessly about prisoner humiliation at Abu Graib, they don’t seem to care about those doing real harm to Arabs at all by snuffing free speech at the point of a gun and funding terror. Here are a few people the SHOULD be doing their feather-spitting routine for:
The crocodile tears of Arab dictators and the corrupt Arab league are a public spectacle, geared not towards the Arab people that they oppress, but towards a naïve Western media.
Where were the public trials for those who slaughtered tens of thousands of innocent Syrians in Hamma in 1982, or more recently the indiscriminate jailing and murder of anti-government demonstrators and human rights leaders in Allepo and Damascus?»
Chief Hizballah creep Hassan Nasrallah is not the only turd Basher Assad’s regime is supporting. Here’s a handy list. And for those of you harboring illusions that the Arabs share a common love of one another and of Europe, and a common hatred of the US here’s a little something to disabuse you of it. Charming title, no?
Simple-Minded President?
While Pete du Pont takes on the EU's collectivism, Fred Barnes brings us up to date on Bush's Shake-Up-the-World View.
Anyone shocked by the nominations of Messrs. Wolfowitz and Bolton doesn't understand the president's approach to multilateral organizations. The conventional idea is that these organizations are wonderful, though perhaps flawed and infused with too much anti-American sentiment. And the chief task of U.S. representatives is to get along amicably, not buck the system and cause problems. This idea is popular in the press, the State Department bureaucracy and diplomatic circles, and with foreign-policy "experts." But not with Mr. Bush.
The president's idea is simple: No more Mr. Nice Guy.
Fidel Castro: Capitalist running dog
The blog of "Discover the Network" called Moonbat Central cites this little tidbit about El Lider Supremo: his personal worth is roughly $550 million. I guess owning the means of production pays off pretty nicely if you seize it by force.Tyranny Pays Well.
The Globe and Mail: Pro-democracy protesters riot in Kyrgyzstan
"All other lower level negotiations will be just a waste of time"
The Globe and Mail: Pro-democracy protesters riot in Kyrgyzstan
popular revolution - accept no substitutions.
The Globe and Mail: Pro-democracy protesters riot in Kyrgyzstan
popular revolution - accept no substitutions.
Women in the News
Defense minister Michèle Alliot-Marie may be slated for the prime minister's seat, whispers Marion Van Renterghem…
Meanwhile, Elisabeth Bumiller has a portrait of Dina Powell (née Habib), the Egyptian-born principal deputy of Karen Hughes, the president's nominee to be secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs.
But as I've said before, the task of improving the image of the United States abroad will not work. It will never work.
Planet Twit is getting crowded
Living in their parallel universe where only those they fixate their hatred on can ever be wrong, leftists offer this kind of thing on any occasion possible:“World Water Day” (don’t forget to make water) is a good time to remind people that James Glaser offers us this in his steady stream of agitprop: “George Bush Will Be Killing More Kids This Year“
He lives in a world where foolish ideas that make suburbanites feel good, but kill people don’t count, of course, especially if one pretends to be their advocates. Exploiting the poor for political ends is nothing new, and not limited to North America and Europe of course. Just invent an enemy with non-existant events, and enrage the colonias so that they don’t notice how they’re being screwed and killed softly by leftist “love”.
| Who let the dogs out? | La vermine est lâchée |
| What employer can seriously consider paying them an already exorbitant French minimum wage when they can't even be considered functionally literate? | Quel employeur peut sérieusement songer à leur verser un déjà usurier SMIC à partir du moment où ils sont passés par les 400 |
 | |
| Get whitey! | Je suis venu casser du blanc! |
| In the meantime, just ignore them | D'ici là, il suffit de faire comme s'ils n'étaient pas là |
| A little reminder for the Europe that will not forget the war in Iraq (excuse me while I guffaw). Maybe, just maybe, these feckless Zeropeans will grow a spine one day. But not in my lifetime. | Un petit aide-mémoire pour l'Europe qui est décidée à ne pas oublier la guerre en Irak (pardon, je m'esclaffe). Peut-être, oui peut-être, ces zéropéens ineptes vont se faire pousser une paire de couilles un de ces quatres. Mais pas dans cette vie en tout cas. |
| Le salon du Livre |
| Assez de ces écrits tièdasses, relèvant d'un discours partout pareil, pondus pour cette Fwance consensuelle. |
| Good riddance | Bon débarras |
| The United Colors utopia of the Ripoublika Franska is broken and soon the Zeropean Union will be too. | L'utopie blanc-black-beur de la Ripoublika Franska est bousillée et bientôt l'Union zéropéenne avec. |
| Fight Club | Ça va saigner |
| Raphaël Sorin, Editor-in-Chief of Fayard (who I had the pleasure of meeting a few weeks ago) has read an advance copy of Maurice G. Dantec's upcoming novel, Cosmos Incorporated, which will be published on August 25. He had this to say about the book : "Masterpiece in the making. Undoubtedly the best novel from Dantec since the start of his literary career. The duel at the top between Houellebecq and Dantec will take place. In my humble opinion, they will laminate the new literary season." The brown shirt panty-wastes have once again failed to impose their pitiful attempts at censorship. | Raphaël Sorin, directeur éditorial de la maison Fayard (j'ai eu le plaisir de le rencontrer il y a quelques semaines) a lu en avant-première le prochain roman de Maurice G. Dantec, Cosmos Incorporated, qui sort le 25 août 2005 et commente l'ouvrage : "Chef d'oeuvre annoncé. Indiscutablement le plus grand roman de Dantec depuis le début de sa carrière d'écrivain. Le duel au sommet Houellebecq / Dantec aura donc bien lieu. A mon humble avis, ils écraseront la rentrée littéraire." Les pédaloïdes chemises-brunes auront, encore une fois, échoué dans leurs tentatives minables d'imposer une censure. |
Treason to American Warmongers, Not to the American People
One of the most stirring speeches for peace and against Yankee aggressiveness comes from a pacifist in Berlin, an American who understands the value of nuance… Just listen:
Technically, I suppose I am guilty of treason — of treason to Bush and his warmongers, but not to the American people. . . To have deserted the Iraqi people would have been an act of treason against my conscience . . . Don't think the choice was easy . . . Nevertheless I made then my choice, and I have never regretted that choice for an instant . . . If that be treason, make the most of it.Wait a minute! That speech is not original; it was inspired by Patrick Henry…
What's worse is, I made two transcription mistakes: Bush wasn't the president spoken of, nor were the Iraqis the people that the speaker was allegedly asked to desert (answer at end of post)…
Monday, March 21, 2005
Still early days, but there are structural problems in Syria
www.free-lebanon.com reports that there are internal tensions in Syria’s military which required extraordinary action by the Assad regime:«(17-March-2005) The withdrawal of the Syrian Army from Lebanon precipitated a negative moral effect on the Alawite regime in Syria. Things were getting unstable inside the Syrian military after the withdrawal from Lebanon. On one side between Sunnis and Alawite and the other side between Old Guard officers and New Guard in charge of the regime.Though it would seem that would make Basher Assad a moderate of sorts, it doesn’t. It’s a sign of grave disagreement on handling Lebanon.
Ghazi Kanaan, unhappy from his withdrawal of his Military Intelligence position, pushed General Rustom Ghazaleh, his trusted "lieutenant," to fill his place in the Syrian Military Intelligence for Lebanon, a structure that control a billion dollar industry in that country.
Without taking any chances, the Regime alarmed that this situation [that of the intelligence branch defying Damascus] could spread inside the military and go out of control, 3 military bases were attacked simultaneously around 3 AM by Air and Land assault. Most of the Syrian officer dead were military pilots at the Doumair case in charge of protecting Damascus. There are some casualties in Katana and around Homs bases also, we do not have details yet as of this hour.»
Though there has always been a constant threat of putsch, this is an unusual measure. Syrian officers are typically rotated to entirely different region in order to keep a conspiracy against the government from forming. In fact this was the very same way in which the Ba’athist made their way into power to begin with.
There have been other reports which have not been confirmed at this stage: that withdrawing Syrian forces have been handing positions and weapons over directly to Hizballah and to Iranian Revolutionary Guardsmen, who are like an odd combination of religious police, military irregulars, and special operations specialties.
"It does not take a majority to prevail ... but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men"
Samuel Adams' marvelous quote has given birth to a new blog, Brushfires of Freedom (sounds almost like Bushfires, but that was not intentional)…
Setting such types of brushfire is not something that the French would be wont to do, according to a famous thinker:
Francis Fukuyama characterizes France as a Low Trust society, in contrast to the US, UK and Germany, which are High Trust. Low Trust means that people only trust within their own families and the state has to do all the organizing. The UK & US tendency to form clubs, innovate and take risks just does not exist in France. In consequence …Read the rest…
Besides showing the type of photo that French media do not devote a lot of time on, Gandalf has a French joke (which is also — furrowing brow— an American/Cuban/North Korean joke)…
Meanwhile, Loose Coins is back (after a hiatus of only four months this time)…
"I Don't Like Americans":
Letters to the Editor of Le Monde
"I don't like Americans" reads one letter to Le Monde; "Naturally I am against America", reads another; "I am proud of my hatreds" reads a third, with a fourth extolling the writer's scorn; while a fifth reader wishes he could join the Iraqi resistance.
who wishes to advise Jacques Chirac that when George W Bush comes to France, the French president should adopt "a formal reserve as dignified as it is icy."
And why shouldn't the French feel that way? All the proof of America's sins (or her leaders') are around them, the élite and leaders endlessly repeat them, the mainstream media endlessly rehashes them, the citizens debate endlessly what they see in the media, and on and on, in an endless vicious circle…
And so today Le Monde Watch takes a look at Le Monde's letters to the editor section.
The 60th Anniversary Celebration of Le Monde
- The daily's Iraq coverage
- The daily's TV guide
- The daily's film reviews
- The daily's VIP portraits
- The daily's Le Monde 2 magazine
- The daily's Letters to the Editor section
- The daily's 60 years in 60 articles series
- The daily's birth and origins
Not a day passes in which the United States do not present the world with a motive for defiance or bitterness. … Today it is absolutely vital that we uncouple Europe from that country or risk being pulled downward and into a cowboy mentality dangerous for the entire planet.…Read about the Frenchman living in Alabama
who wishes to advise Jacques Chirac that when George W Bush comes to France, the French president should adopt "a formal reserve as dignified as it is icy."
Read about the scandalized reader from Nantes sputtering that it is absurd that France should entertain the thought that it forsake the debts it is owed by Baghdad, when the (French) authorities
do not have enough money for the social budgets and when we are told that the state deficit must be reduced.(Guess whom Gilbert Enaud thinks should take "total responsibility" for Iraq's debt.)
"Immoral foolishness", "cynical", "contempt", "disaster", "disastrous situation": Read whom the French compare Bush and American servicemen to, and (in that perspective) read how grateful they were for World War II during last June's commemoration of the 60th anniversary of D-Day.
Maintaining Western Standards?
Or at least those standards of decency which they’re redefining through inaction:OSLO (Reuters) - Swedish home furnishings giant IKEA is guilty of sex discrimination by showing only men putting together furniture in its instruction manuals, Norway's prime minister says.
IKEA, which has more than 200 stores in 32 nations, fears it might offend Muslims by depicting women assembling everything from cupboards to beds. Its manuals show only men or cartoon figures whose sex is unclear.
Under the Prime Minister watch THIS is happening (to quote the Fjordman blog):
I am by now almost convinced that the theory presented in my first post about Muslim rapes in Sweden and Norway is true. The staggering numbers revealed in 2001 in Oslo have been suppressed for political reasons, as they would destroy too many multicultural pipe dreams and be inconvenient for the elites. So in the end, the safety of young Scandinavian women is sacrificed in order to keep the glossy image of a multicultural society intact.
It is a national, if not international, scandal that the authorities in a nation that prides itself on being a champion of women’s rights can put fear of offending Muslim immigrants higher than the security of its own young women.
It seems that “when in Rome do as the Romans” won’t amount to much when they don’t do much of anything that one is willing to promote and defend, even if you can understand just what it is.
Messages to Putin
In the wake of the EU's "diplomatic soft touch" during Putin's visit to Paris last week, it would seem that the messages to the Russian leader are different, depending on who voices them.
"The recent events in Ukraine have made people everywhere understand that taking to the streets gets the authorities' attention," says Tatiana Poloskova, deputy director of the independent Institute of Modern Diaspora, which studies Russian minorities in former Soviet countries.So reports Fred Weir, Moscow correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor.
Georgian President Mikhael Saakashvili and newly inaugurated Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko were clearly addressing their former Soviet colleagues last month when they hailed their revolts as the leading edge of "a new wave of liberation that will lead to the final victory of freedom and democracy on the continent of Europe."Hopefully, the members of the "peace camp" will try to avoid tumult and chaos, and try to talk the opposition into "constructive talks" with their respective countries' strongmen, as well of the region's strongman, aka Vladimir Putin.
(Spasiba to Grigori Schreiberski)
| Stick it in and break it off | Enfoncez-le bien profond, et cassez-le net |
| Divide and rule and never, ever again, give them a break. | Diviser pour mieux régner et ne plus jamais, mais jamais, leur accorder un répit. |
Sunday, March 20, 2005
Expanding EU
What is funny about this blogging-for-common-sense business is that every time you think that there aren't any more stereotypes of Americans to challenge, or that there are some stereotypes so factual (so based in fact) that you cannot and should not deny them, truth has a way of popping out its head.
At least seven European countries now challenge the United States in size — at least around the waistline. In a group of nations from Greece to Germany, the proportion of overweight or obese men is higher than in the U.S., experts said Tuesday in a major analysis of expanding girth on the European continentwrites the AP's Jenna Payne (thank you for your order, Gregory).
Noonshadows has more about a piece of conventional wisdom (the singular obesity of Americans) biting… the dust