I guess these guys don’t think that 72 virgins in the afterlife are worth waiting for.
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…
Saturday, July 09, 2005
Friday, July 08, 2005
2005-JUN-27-Zulu:2300
Lifted from the Best of the Web:
Saved by the Cole
«Before arriving in Philadelphia, the Cole participated in the annual Baltic Sea operations, a joint exercise of 11 nations. But the Cole took an unexpected detour on the way here, for reasons that offer a symbolic story about the U.S. military, one which hasn't been told until now. Here is the way [Cmdr. Brian] Solo spelled out the itinerary in an e-mail to me:
COLE changed course to save a French teenager. Other than one item in the Philadelphia Daily News, a rather “squidly” kind of town, the media is sure to stay mum. However, they seem more than capable of finding “international incident” items to run.
"At 2300 hours on 27 June, COLE received word via the Coast Guard regarding a medical emergency aboard a civilian sailboat in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean... more than 300 nm [nautical miles] to the southeast of COLE's position. The patient was initially reported to have appendicitis. Due in Philadelphia, COLE nevertheless turned and headed, at best speed (30+ knots) towards the position of the sailboat.
Simultaneously, the merchant vessel CHIQUITA NEDERLAND, who was in the vicinity of the sailing vessel, took the patient, a 16-year-old French national, on board, and then headed at best speed to the northwest to meet COLE."»
Then again the Navy inhabits a reality based environment, and actually CAN say "help is on the way" without being laughed at.
"Staged bombings terrorize everyone?"
With neither a shred of proof or an awareness that the causality can't be magically produced by ones' feelings, John Kaminski of uruknet.info rushes the following allegation on the London bombings to the presses: When the cops are the crooks Staged bombings terrorize everyone! «Every time there's an embarrassing incident, a charge of official malfeasance, or some nasty revelation to cover up, the powers that be stage a terrorist incident — randomly throw away the lives of an arbitrary number of innocents — and then blame some fantasy enemy as an excuse to further ratchet up the corrupt oppression of ordinary people.»
Actually he could be describing his own leap to pretend that the only evil there is in the universe can only emanate from his own society - or at least the one he's pretending not to be a part of by rejecting and turning on.
And no - he's not criticising constructively to make a better world. A brief reading of his body of work amounts to little more than agit-prop in support of chaos. You would be hard pressed to find the phase "Staged bombings terrorize everyone" on Uruknet if he can't refute that the bomber is a jihadi-anarchist.
Steve Bell, throwback propaganda artist part I
Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell when not abnormally obsessed with drawing farts, always characterizes President Bush as some sort of sub-human. No matter what the situation, he is cast in the light of a sort of animal without thought or feeling. It isnt even editorializing, its nothing more than hate-baiting of the oldest, most sordid, and pedantic sort.
Even when Bush quietly took issue with Vladimir Putin over his treatment of political opponents and a growing suppression of political dissent in Russia, Bell made him look the fool. Apparently snuffing free speech in Russia is okay if one can take a cheap shot at W.
The likes of Steve Bell have a long history in the cruder "politics" of Europe. The common trait is the rendering of an individual, a class, an ethnicity, a nationality, or a faith into a non-person. All this makes it easier to hate, degrade, even kill off the one set up to be the non-person. The only thing left out is a ugly mob with pitchforks, and bada-boom a la bigot: instant vulgarian with an option on a Kristallnacht of their own.
Thursday, July 07, 2005
The "Special People's" first reaction: blame the victim and the defender
"Don't look at me, lady. I didn't do it."
| Spot on | Droit dans le mille |
| Atrios is pointing to this as if it's over the top with regards to commentary about French | Atrios pointe ici en insinuant que le commentaire au sujet des |
London, 7 July 2005
Tuesday, July 05, 2005
Monday, July 04, 2005
Actual events hidden. Feelings redirected
«After two billion viewers watch Live 8's call for action on Africa... Bush says: I put US interests first Stunned readers, aghast at the selfish actions of a democratically elected leader putting the interests of his own people above those of other nations, are soon given the specifics of the President's breathtakingly offensive statement: Readers have to wait quite a bit longer to see any actual reference to Bush policy vis-a-vis Africa - but it's there, near the end of the column, just past the cartoon of the smirking President behind a sign reading "G1", that's placed next to another, much smaller one bearing the legend "G7" (Geddit? It's to show that Bush won't, like, work with the other G7...):
"The president will adopt a stance starkly at odds with the idealism professed by the performers at Saturday's Live 8 concerts around the world and their television audience of 2 billion. "'I go to the G8 not really trying to make [Tony Blair] look bad or good; but I go to the G8 with an agenda that I think is best for our country.'"
"Mr Bush also said that the rich world had an "obligation" to make trade fairer, but made it clear he would not slash farming
subsidies unless the European Union did the same.
"He said America was 'leading the world when it comes to helping Africa', despite the fact that it gives only 0.2% of its GDP in overseas aid - well below the UN's 0.7% target."
The only sentiment left from Live Aid was pretty typical: all I can remember is that the Philadelphia Police were significantly nicer than the audience, and that I was canoodling with some chick from South Philly. Etheopians still starved until their civil war piped down.
The BBC has been supporting the “ignorance” argument on the environmental front – having one guest “expert” after another stating right out that the US shouldn’t really bother with advanced technology, but needed to reduce GHG output at any and all costs (while Europe’s output goes UP,) and that India and China needed to do nothing. So too was the argument that the UN was the only reasonable entity in the universe. I suppose this has something to do with the fact that the EU will permanently maintain 25 votes, with 2 on the UNSC.
Reasonable must mean that a European is in charge regardless of his disinvolvement, moral posturing, and lack of realism, while we mere wogs in the rest of the world look at them in awe for what they FEEEEEEL.
The implication is of American stinginess and stupidity, and that the rest of the world is a basketcase in need of Euro-management, and Nestle and Parma groceries. It’s little more than a bad case of Euro-penis envy and emotional bullying.
«Actual dollar contributions reveal that the U.S. is the world’s largest donor. The OECD calculates U.S. development assistance (based on bilateral assistance, humanitarian assistance, and contributions to multilateral institutions like the International Development Association of the World Bank) in 2003 at $16.2 billion—more than double the amount given by France, Germany, or any other European nation.[2] Japan is second at $8.9 billion.
Private aid is ignored. These numbers do not include private assistance. This is not a major factor for most other nations because private charity is not large in most countries. It is a gigantic oversight when calculating America’s aid ratio, however, because the U.S. Agency for International Development estimated that private assistance was $33.6 billion in 2000.[3] Therefore, the calculations upon which Egelund based his criticism severely shortchange the generosity of the United States.»
So the question is when is Government Aid giving by the choice and generosity of the people? It isn’t. It NEVER is, as much as anyone would like to salve their pangs of personal guilt over.
Euro-über-gutmenschen: if you really mean it, reach down into your pockets and give of yourself, not your neighbor’s pockets.
Meanwhile the irony in this lovefest is abundant:
«In London, where there were 205,000 at Live8, the biggest clean-up ever seen in the park was being completed. Officials said Live8 generated enough rubbish to fill 72 dustcarts - the equivalent of 10 days' litter.»No problem there, right? Just demand a cleaner world from Chimpy W. Hitlerburton
Doctor, heal thyself.
Indymedia: a Room Stazi of their own
They have started taking down names and busting heads… and busting heads… and busting heads… and not saying anything when certain people are busting heads…
Which makes one want to take them all the more seriously…
In the mean time, have a go in this caption contest:
Mr. Euro-intellect Defending the Failed and Inhumane Regime
«In short [to Meyssan], September 11th was a US conspiracy. If he’s right, the weight of the US government should have fallen on him before he even got the pile of merde to his publisher. Since the French government and cops were absolutely cooperative during the post-9/11 investigation, they obviously would not have stopped it or even got in the way.»
From Castro’s propaganda mouthpiece “Granma”:«Jean-Guy Allard, a journalist with Granma International, wrote a book about RSF's leader (El expediente Robert Ménard: Por qué Reporteros sin Fronteras se ensaña con Cuba, Quebec: Lanctôt, 2005) which lays out the pieces of the puzzle regarding Menard's activities, associations and sources of funding in an attempt to explain what he calls Menard's "obsession" with Cuba.»
Hey Meyssan, what about BURMA or the NorKs – they don’t care for the US – do you plan on repeating THEIR press releases?
He is referring to RSF (Repoters without borders) and accusing them of “counter revolutionary activity,” which includes not just smothering dissent, but censoring and silencing journalists in “El Hefe’s” Cuba.«On April 27 this year the pieces began to come together: Thierry Meyssan, president of the Paris daily, Red Voltaire, published an article in which he claimed Menard had negotiated a contract with Otto Reich and the Center for a Free Cuba (CFC) in 2001. Reich was a trustee of the center, which receives the bulk of its funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development. The contract, according to Meyssan, was signed in 2002 around the time Reich was appointed Special Envoy to the Western Hemisphere for the Secretary of State. The initial payment for RSF's services was approximately 24,970 euros in 2002 ($25,000), which went up to 59,201 euros in 2003 ($50,000).»
He is aiding in the snuffing out of any criticism and honest discussion for a regime which has capped 10.000 political opponents between the eyes. Not very wise of Meyssan. The stars in his eyes are obvious, and obviously misguided. It’s a VERY old story, and you’re still on the wrong side of humanity. Even a book reviewer in the freebie rag “Citypaper” ten years ago was aware enough the old leftist fiction about the “gentleness of Communism:«My mentor in college was a devoted Cuban apologist. She conceded that the Castro government had problems, but she knew where her loyalties lay. When I told her I had met Guillermo Cabrera Infante at the Telluride Film Festival, she seemed almost agitated, reminding me that rumors abounded that he had once worked for the CIA. He seemed nice enough to me, I said, shrugging this off. When I mentioned him to another fellow leftish film person, she too recognized the name. "He's a gusano ," she said. This, apparently, is the Spanish word for worm, which is what pro-Castro types dubbed those who fled the island in the revolution's wake.
Talk show-boy needs to look carefully at who he's propping up, and who his friends are after.
The fact is that Infante makes left-wing types really nervous. He started out as a journalist in the Batista days, and after his writing was banned he turned to publishing under the name "G. Cain." When Castro seized power he was named editor of Lunes , the literary supplement to the newspaper Revolucion, the voice of Cuban revolution. But when the film P.M., a "Havana by night" documentary, was denied an exhibition license by the government-sponsored film institute Infante had helped to form, Lunes led a movement to protest. The end result was that the seized film print was returned, but both P.M. and Lunes were banned. Infante, after accepting a post as cultural attache to the Cuban embassy in Belgium, eventually fell completely from favor in the Castro regime and fled to London, where he resides today.»
One year after the 9-11 attacks one blogger writes of Meyssan, pointing out the obvious problem with tinfoil-hat conspiracy theories and asks the obvious questions:
Now I’m mostly curious. Why is this guy still alive?
Independence Day
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
An escapee of terrors grip on the mind explains the murderers programme
Brave and unapologetic, Walid Shoebat shows us the heart of darkness that is the culture of terrorism. Those who repeat over and over that the US should have stopped in Afghanistan need to be put on notice: jihad is old, widespread, and was planned from the start to kill its own young to kill others. All the while playing at their victims compassion.
