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…
Trying to make a religious war out of whole cloth with a weak and delirious US is the culprit, and Christianity the hurtful party when Jihad is at war with the civilized world. I expect nothing less from such a complete dissembler and abject idiot.
... What if we declared once and for all the separation of church and state in the region forever? Beneath a red banner from the salad days of group love behind the iron curtain saying "An Idea Such as This..."
A look at the map, even the ones carried by Le Monde on their web site can’t get their writers to dispose of their illusions that calling and hoping for a fake peace will ease the worried moon-children of the European commune.
UNIFIL’s area of responsibility corresponds exactly to the area of operation Hizballah has control over.
In rehab, they call that enablement. Even if the UN ever did grow enough of a spine to say something the “peace camp” would wish that they nary mention it at all for fear of their precious vision.
Nonetheless, things on the ground seem quite different. There are Lebanese who have no illusion of who’s really oppressing them:The mixed village population on the Israeli units path of advance, Druzes, Shiites, Sunnis and Christians, provides a useful shield for Hizballah fighters. They take full advantage of the directives to Israeli ground forces not to touch Druze and Christian villages. By long Lebanese tradition, the Druzes shut their village doors to Shiites, while the Christians accommodate them because they don’t know how long Israeli forces will be around to protect them against the Hizballah.
Similarly the usual ire the children of the corn have for the Lebanese Christians will be confused by what they see as alliances, and the locals see as a moral issue and one of protection against a jihadist organization intent on killing them based on their religion.The IDF found that certain local elements, which once cooperated with Israel forces during their 24-year occupation of South Lebanon until the May 2000 withdrawal, were still willing to be helpful. Their assistance shortened the Bint Jubeil operation and made its completion possible barring scattered gunfire early Tuesday, July 25.
What I’ve even heard western adult leftist say openly on several occasions is that the fact that there are still Arab Christian alive is hindering “the peace”. After I point out the obvious inhumanity of the though, and the fact that it’s none of their business, and rather sick to want other to die so that they can maintain their narrow and simplistic view of the region, I tell them to go fuck themselves. On one occasion I casually handed a fork to the listener in the bar a fork. As a convenience, of course.
a small pro-Israel rally on the site of old synagogue that was burned down on Kristallnacht, 1938. It was also the assembly point where Jews were gathered before they were sent to Gurs concentration camp in southern France. I'm sure the location of the rally was not coincidental.
A couple of Muslim-looking teenagers were obviously not happy with the rally, althought there wasn't much they could do about it with so many cops standing around.
There was a much larger anti-Israel march through Freiburg about a week ago. Their signs read—big surprise!—Bush #1 terrorist! They were really obnoxious, and they gave me the old Jihad-glare when I booed them and told them to go home. That's when the cops came over and told me that they wanted a peaceful demonstration, and that I should go home. I guess I was "provoking them".
John Rosenthal has more on Germany (and on the abolition of poverty in Europe, as illustrated by France), Michelle Malkin has more on angry peace activists, Dennis Prager says that the "Middle East conflict is difficult to solve, but it is among the simplest conflicts in history to understand", and Michael Medved points out that it should come as no surprise that some of the same angry leftists who stridently deny Israel’s “right to exist” similarly challenge the claims to nationhood of the United States of America.…
No, we aren’t talking about ingénue would-be supermodels, we’re talking “just plain folks” parasitically asking what their country can do for them:For two months the van was parked outside the Packard Bell computer factory in Angers, western France. Inside were three former employees on hunger strike: Tony Berthelot, Bruno Mouillé and Betty Bergeon.
Copycats, alas no. I think we see evidence of the Stockholm syndrome at work here whenever the state or public give in.
The French distinguish themselves, both statistically and anecdotally, ahead of Germans, Britons and even Americans in their obsession with blogs, the personal and public journals of the Internet agewrites Thomas Crampton in the International Herald Tribune.
Just why the French have embraced blogs more than most is anyone's guess, but explanations range from technical to historical and cultural.
Sixty percent of French Internet users visited a blog in May, ahead of Britain with 40 percent and little more than a third in the United States, according to Comscore, an Internet ratings service.
Likewise, French bloggers spent more than an hour in June visiting France's top-rated blog site, far ahead of the 12 minutes spent by Americans doing the same and less than 3 minutes for Germans, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.…
French blogs stands out in other measurable ways. They are noticeably longer, more critical, more negative, more egocentric and more provocative than their U.S. counterparts, said Laurent Florès, the French-born, New York-based chief executive of CRM Metrix, a company that monitors blogs and other online conversations on behalf of companies seeking feedback on their brands.
"Bloggers in the United States listen to each other and incorporate rival ideas in the discussion," he said. "French bloggers never compromise their opinions."
Baghdad Despatch # 22
Baghdad — December 26, 2004Religion and the Iraqi Elections
It is the day after Christmas, this being the second Christmas since Iraq was liberated. Tragically, many Iraqi Christians were afraid to celebrate openly. Almost two years after the US occupation and they are more afraid to celebrate their religion openly then they were under Saddam Hussein.
In fact, one of my friends at work, also an Iraqi Christian, is leaving for Jordan with his family. He is one of many. Clearly, our hopes of a stable country tolerant of all faiths are currently not coming to fruition.As I stated in my previous dispatch, religion and politics are almost totally intertwined in this part of the world. Probably one of our larger mistakes to date is to push too much for the development of a secular regime in Iraq. The religious leaders, especially in the Shia camp, are accorded such a high degree of political power by the Shiite population that to exclude them from politics would be a futile effort. We must incorporate them into the political process but we must also try to inculcate a sense of religious tolerance. From an American perspective, Iraq is an inherently conservative society. Some basic degree of Koranic inspired law that respects all faiths but maintains the essential conservative elements common to all sects and faiths would probably be amenable to the bulk of the population. It will be interesting to see how Islam is referenced in the final constitution. It will be even more interesting to see how the US copes with the election outcome if it does not turn out as desired.
A Grim Reminder
The bombing of the mess hall in Mosul served as a grim reminder to our ongoing danger. In response to this incident, all civilians must be frisked when entering the military dining facility. Eating lunch is now like boarding an airplane. Convenience is sacrificed for security. Of course, this in itself is a victory for the insurgency since additional resources and manpower are now required to feed the military and contractors.
Struck by this incident so close to Christmas, I decided to go to the hospital on Christmas Eve to lend my support to the injured troops. After giving away some magazines, I came back down to the lobby to run into a crowd awaiting the arrival of a VIP. It turned out to be Donald Rumsfeld. Upon arrival, he promptly wished us all a Merry Christmas. He was actually kind of short and looked tired from his day spent traversing the country.
Back to wrapping up my adventures traversing the Middle East . . .My Endorsement of Lebanon
In finishing up my adventures in Lebanon from my [previous] dispatch, I wanted to reiterate my great fondness for the country and its people. Despite the shadow of possible war in the future, I think the place has enormous potential, especially to be the next party capital and music scene. I found the Lebanese to be extremely interested in all forms of music from Yugoslavian gypsy bands and classical Lebanese Arabic singing to Trance, House, and Rock’n’Roll. Its anarchic, materialistic, and European flavor lends itself well to weekend getaways from the Continent. Granted, in many respects, it would simply be reclaiming its lost glory from before the war, but it could also serve as an alternate window into the Middle East, especially if Syria experiences “Regime Change” or opens up politically and economically.
A simple analogy might be that if Dubai is the Las Vegas of the Middle East, then Beirut is the New Orleans.Lessons from the West Bank
Our travels next took us to the Holy Land. Ryan and I flew from Amman, Jordan to Tel Aviv. This had to be one of the shortest but most interesting flights I have ever taken. We flew right over the Jordan River Valley and the West Bank. From that height, one could pick out the numerous Jewish settlements and Palestinian villages. The settlements tended to top the hills and looked extremely orderly while the Palestinian villages tended to reside in the valleys and looked more haphazard. A few days later, we traveled into the West Bank to go to Bethlehem and the Church of the Nativity. There were no tourists. The Intifada had driven them all away. The locals were clearly hurting. The Church of the Nativity itself was very pretty and they have marked the spot where Christ came into the world and where he lay in the manger.
The following day, we traveled to Ramallah to see Arafat’s compound and tomb (he had died just two weeks previously). The compound was half in ruins and there was a large heap of destroyed cars. Guards stood at his tomb just outside the compound. There were many photographs of the former president. There were also many wreathes. There was even a wreath from UNICEF. We thanked the guards as we left and they seemed happy that we made it to pay our respects. Despite his obvious failings, one must certainly give him credit for instilling a sense of nationhood and unity among the Palestinians. One of the more interesting rumors we heard about his death is that he may have converted to Christianity before the end. Imagine the monkey wrench that would throw into regional politics should it turn out to be true and publicized!
The general feeling now, at least among the Palestinians that we spoke to, is that peace with the Israelis is now more possible since his death. It seems that perhaps a degree of optimism is present.Our guide during these travels was a Christian Palestinian. He was quite proud to take us to Ramallah and even treated us to tea and baklava at one of the nicest restaurants in town. Ramallah is actually pretty pleasant for it is apparently the wealthiest Palestinian town. We were told the poorest Palestinian areas are in Gaza. One of the more interesting sights occurred at night as we drove back through the West Bank toward Jerusalem. The Jewish settlements were all extremely well lit and with ample sources of power. The Palestinian villages, on the other hand, were barely any lit at all.
I also want to point out that despite the obvious failings of the peace process to date, there is an ongoing drive on the part of religious leaders from both sides to bridge the gap. They are trying to succeed where the politicians have failed. We had the opportunity to meet one of the prominent Palestinian politicians involved in this process. However, one of the problems is finding the necessary funding. The Great Powers who proclaim to have an interest in solving this conflict should take note and perhaps diversify their strategies. Despite the challenges, I think this informal religious approach can also be used in Iraq.
Where the secular Iraqi politicians fail, we must succeed elsewhere. This is especially important considering that the Iraqi elections may not prove decisive in legitimizing the government and restoring stability.
Lefty Britain: their lives have become a never ending contest to apologize, a stampede to be first at the tut-tut stone. The soft bigotry of low expectations has mutated into an overt bigotry of expecting skin color or origin to establish the behavior of the new gangmasters: the gutmenschen of the culture of concern.
Of flawed attempts at social engineering:
Indeed she doesn’t. These “betters” making one pronouncement or another about public life don’t seem to realize their own tyranny. Moreover, decades of their “moral leadership” have reduced their admirers to a state of stupidity as we can see in this question:
Is it better to memorialise the dead - or to get on with living our own lives?
Connoisseurs of human life and being are otherwise uniformly aware that this is how we say goodbye to those we love, miss, and admire. It’s how we go on.
The author should note that we will not be memorials to the depth of their reasoning.
They’re trying to look like they’re preaching “dialog” with the U.S., but beyond the peddling of business ventures, all there really is that constitutes a “bridge” is what it usually is. The disinct pattern can be easily detect here on their rather lame blog that has a overdesigned “professionally” look, and a theme.
Not enough clues? It has nearly nothing to do with the EU when you consider the author’s interest. When being Europeans amounts to so little that it only amounts to “not being American”, then there really is an existential identity vacuum that they have to attend to before they show so much “concern” for the U.S.
Oddly enough, the author’s own blog is hosted at Rice University in Texas.
U.S.A.
“Concern”. They always like to use the word “concern”.
Thanks.
>
Such “dialogue” with Islamists of all stripes, representatives of Arab dictatorships and all sorts of self-appointed spokespersons for the Arab and Islamic world has been underway for over ten years now. Astonishingly, it is seldom asked what results it has in fact produced. Two years of “dialogue” with Iran over its nuclear program has, for example, brought no results whatsoever. Unperturbed, the Iranian Mullah Regime is sticking to its plans to build a bomb, just as if all the many positive rounds of discussion had never taken place.
”Dialog” even when you’re being suckered. Why then? What, then, is driving the “old” Europeans? Is it cowardice, as Matthias Doepfner recently suggested, a preemptive capitulation to Islamism, as Bernard Lewis suspects, appeasement as Henryk M. Broder (“Europe – appeasement is your middle name”) has insisted, or a mix of stupidity and arrogance coupled with a large dose of anti-American and anti-Semitic resentments? Can it really be the case, as Nikolaus Blome recently put it in the pages of Die Welt, that a German Chancellor seriously defends the view that although Iran does indeed want the bomb, “this does not [threaten] world peace as much as that American President manically fixated on going to war”? Even the most experienced observers of the so-called dialogue with Islam and the Arab world are left looking for answers.
Denis Boyle: Not on the Left. At the the Independent, where confusion reigns in effusive style, the editors were so perplexed by the world around them that they had nothing but questions for their readers, including one on the front page — “Middle East: Who backs immediate ceasefire?” (Correct answer: “I do, sir!”) — and another over a main news story: “Why is there not a murmur of protest from Washington?” 
Normally, for example, one reads newspapers for answers.
As if what Hizballah is up to is so simple, that it’s just about the Shiites anyway. When you’re a simpleton like Pancho, it HAS to be. It couldn’t possibly be about Jihad fueled by Mommy-Dearest-Syrian injecting that charm that can only come from a control-freak.
« We can’t stop the fighting! Lebanon is full of Shiites! »
« But the Shiites are our friends in Iraq! »
We've received e-mails from him a few days ago and he described the fact that he was taking within - in one case - three meters of his position "for tactical necessity - not being targeted". Now that's veiled speech in the military and what he was telling us was Hizbullah fighters were all over his position and the IDF were (sic) targeting them and that's a favorite trick by people who don't have representation in the UN. They use the UN as shields knowing that they can't be punished for it."
G-Mailers: ever notice that line at the top that seems like a cross between fortune cookie wisdom and a NYT ticker tape? Click the image to see one of their recycling tips.
The commo-trotsko-aracho-fantacist daily L’Humanité’s latest headline: ”Only peaceful negotiations permit the ending of crises”
As if they ever have - since negotiation almost always occurs either at a stalemate or immediately following the vanquishment of one side.
Wrong, bunky. The only reason to call for a halt right now is to make sure the Iranians and Syrians can make sure that no political equilibrium develops, and therefore no real prospect of peace (cold or otherwise.)That being, the situation which prevails in Lebanon is different from that in Palestine, even if the Israeli war machine strikes in both countries. We are people under occupation, Israel exerts a control on our ground, sea, and air borders, whereas Lebanon is an independent State.
The article, an interview with Mahmoud Abbas leaves the impression that he’s feeling forgotten by the nit-wit press this week, and perhaps relieved by that too. But the line of questioning makes attempts at linkage of the Hamas and Hizballah issues, which Abbas distances himself from.
L’Humanité need not ask anyway since any sane Lebanese person wouldn’t want their fate tied to that of the Palestinians anyway, regardless of the special love they have for them.
Abbas went on to try to disown the problems in Gaza with the south of Lebanon answering perfunctually the entirely expected perfunctual questions, in spite of what must have felt like a great moment of intellectual convergence to L’Humanité’s moron-on-the-spot. Maybe he, she, or he/she felt a great wallop of pyramid power hitting them right in the bong, and gave them plenty of that good juju that lets one connect things no-one ever has before, and for reasons completely unknown.
Has anyone suggested a “two state solution” for Lebanon yet? It is, after all, a big part of the Euro-leftie vocabulary at this point...
Hi Joe –
On Saturday I drove up north with a friend. These pictures were taken in Nahariya, which seemed mostly deserted. The Katyusha had landed about an hour before we got there. you can see the hole it made (actually, it dug about a meter deep under the asphalt. The cars and office building you see are between 10 and 20 meters from the impact. While we were there, we heard a Katyusha land. I can only guess that it was within a kilometer from where we were.
“Pepsi stands for “Pay Each Penny to Save Israel”, viewers in the Islamic republic have been warned in an oft-repeated three-minute infomercial on state television, prompted by Israel’s ongoing assault against the Palestinian territories and Lebanon.
“Zionists are the biggest shareholders in the soft drinks industry, and each year they make billions of dollars for their colonialist aims,” consumers with a thirst for fizz have been told.
No matter to our “peace loving friends” in medieval-stan who need to realize that one is a Zionist when one moves to Israel to find fellowship with Israelis – a difficult task to accomplish outside of Israel or in New Bern, North Carolina for that matter.
Foreign occupation in Lebanon ending, little by little.
The fuse is lit!
With his usual élan, he seems to be beginning to face up to the repugnance of the action Hizballah’s militia. The state’s official tip-toeing around the immoral nature of this rogue guerrilla gang is a misguided attempt to maintain a DMZ around the suburban ghettos and the fragile delusions of the 68’ers. Since it hasn't yielded much, it may have finally sunk in that it was a crappy idea to begin with. All it does is tacitly affirm their dearly held chickendove twitching coupled with popular chickenhawk-like dreams of revolution.
A French embassy spokeswoman said Douste-Blazy was in a convoy of vehicles about to leave the northern city when the sirens went off.
Appeasment for the popularity of chic fist-pumping aside, the Douste-ster mananged to swing this much without embarassing himself:"We believe the spiral of violence will not lead to anything durable. Only political dialogue can lead to a durable solution," Douste-Blazy said.
If they had only thought of that earlier, like, before Hizballah started all of this, and after the U.N. passed 1559 in February of 2004.
He also called for the implementation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1559 which demands the disarmament of militias in Lebanon and the deployment of the Lebanese army along the border with Israel, which has been under the control of Hizbullah.
“The only tragedy is that the ploy worked” writes FDI Magazine Editor Courtney Fingar of the recent hunger strike by UDF party deputy Jean Lassalle. The goal of the stunt was to gilt-trip a manufacturer into keeping a low-yielding plant open.
Foreign Direct Investment Magazine is a part of the Financial Times group, and as a journal with a specific focus is rarely given to comic flights – in other words, Ms Fingar is dead serious when she asks what a politician is doing to his own country, and why he would ever want to encourage a non-productive operation to drag his constituency down.
parliamentary representative for the Pyrenees went on a 39-day hunger strike to force a Japanese company to reinvest in his constituency. The only tragedy is that the ploy worked.
Toyal, a subsidiary of Osaka-based Toyo Aluminium, had not attempted to close its Accous plant; it merely announced plans to build a second factory in a nearby town. For Jean Lassalle, a deputy in the UDF party, this smacked of betrayal. He ensconced himself in the National Assembly building in Paris, where he received such visitors as prime minister Dominique de Villepin and shed nearly 50lbs. He ended up in hospital, and the French government ended up agreeing to compensate Toyo for the money it wasted on its new plant site.
[ . . . ]
And why any company would consider setting up a plant on Mr Lassalle’s turf, knowing that it could face similar emotional blackmail if it dared to pull out, is beyond imagining.
[ . . . ]
…A hunger strike would not be nearly as effective in convincing investors to come as it was in forcing them to stay.
As Japan’s ambassador to France remarked: “Japanese investors will hesitate to settle here, for fear of being
held hostage.” Of course the economics resulting from such emotionalism has another side to it. It fails miserably to create an environment where the supply of jobs created can match demand. The successful are following France’s most famous Elvis impersonator off to the borders."They were asking me to pay taxes on money I didn't have," Payre said. "I had no choice but to leave the country."
True to form as it is with any socialistic arrangement, the only things left to take away are those things that come with the promise of a nanny state. The man who runs this artful blog has seen his share of it. He was building a small business in coding and made the mistake of taking a vacation and leaving his only employee to work on a project for his only client. Needless to say, like anyone sold on Nanny’s notion that no one is ever truly responsible for their fate, he caused the client to dump the project.
What do you end up with? A business environment that can barely create clients, and employment environment that will scare even the most promising concept into obscurity, and the final outcome: able bodied people with little to do, and in a position to do even less for others.
Don’t forget that Nanny loves you, and that she only hurts the one she loves.
Leslie inadvertently explains the garden variety European leftist:« In other words, what happens if an organism is set so that changing one little part will make it useless? Like a house of cards it crumbles with the slightest shift. How can that evolve? »
the fuse is lit!
The emptiness of the soul and mind of the selectively "pacifist" European left is astonishing.
In the meantime, the WaPo Outlook section is doing by omission what the BBC's (Dont) Have Your Say filter through by commission: an articulate-sounding Lebanese caller who simply refused to address the chronological matter of who started the present war between the IDF and Hizballah, and caller after caller unable to make a distinction between Hizballah the militia and Hizballah the political entity, much as they were unwilling to dope out the same with Hamas.
They both made their own fig-leaf for the dimwitted to defend them with.
Writes Fouad Ajami: A cleric by the name of Hassan Nasrallah, at the helm of the Hezbollah movement, handed Lebanon a calamity right as the summer tourist season had begun. Beirut had dug its way out of the rubble of a long war: Nasrallah plunged it into a new season of loss and ruin. He presented the country with a fait accompli: the "gift" of two Israeli soldiers kidnapped across an international frontier. Nasrallah never let the Lebanese government in on his venture. He was giddy with triumphalism and defiance when this crisis began. And men and women cooped up in the destitution of the Shiite districts of Beirut were sent out into the streets to celebrate Hezbollah's latest deed.
And what he was actually trying to accomplish with the artillery barrage into northern Israel, and the nabbing of border soldiers is beyond me. Nasrallah's brazen deed was, in the man's calculus, an invitation to an exchange of prisoners. Now, the man who triggered this crisis stands exposed as an Iranian proxy, doing the bidding of Tehran and Damascus. He had confidently asserted that "sources" in Israel had confided to Hezbollah that Israel's government would not strike into Lebanon because Hezbollah held northern Israel hostage to its rockets, and that the demand within Israel for an exchange of prisoners would force Ehud Olmert's hand.
What people in Europe and America who enamored with “resistance” for it’s own sake need to watch closely right now: people don’t like you. You don’t understand anyone but your own kind. The type just as enamored with your fake subversion who surn children into soldiers and start wars with morally dubious reasons, and whose goals are as transparently repugnant as what terrorist openly state. In his cocoon, Nasrallah did not accurately judge the temper of his own country to begin with. No less a figure than the hereditary leader of the Druze community, Walid Jumblatt, was quick to break with Hezbollah, and to read this crisis as it really is. "We had been trying for months," he said, "to spring our country out of the Syrian-Iranian trap, and here we are forcibly pushed into that trap again." In this two-front war--Hamas's in the Palestinian territories and Hezbollah's in Lebanon--Mr. Jumblatt saw the fine hand of the Syrian regime attempting to retrieve its dominion in Lebanon, and to forestall the international investigations of its reign of terror in that country.
A terror engineered to control through chaos - it's a familiar pattern. But Nasrallah was in the end just the Lebanese face of Hezbollah. Those who know the workings of the movement with intimacy believe that operational control is in the hands of Iranian agents, that Hezbollah is fully subservient to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. The hope that Hezbollah would "go Lebanese," and "go local," was thus set aside. At any rate, Nasrallah and his lieutenants did not trust the new Lebanon to make the ample room that a country at war--and within the orbit of Syria--had hitherto made for them in the time of disorder.
Pity Lebanon and hope that someone out there can Make Hizballah History.
Newsflash to the wooly-headed: anyone proposing negotiation with Hizballah needs to realize that it would just undermine the Lebanese government.
Even the Arabs think it idiotic and are keeping their eye on the man behind the curtain.
Speaking of wooly don’t these clown who are incapable of seeing anything other war crimes and racism in everything need to realize that they virtually all the foreign evacuees should be called Lebanese holders of foreign passports?
With a stunning lack of self-awareness, they can’t quite imagine that Hizballah’s killing of civilians also constitutes a war-crime.the fuse is lit!
