As Carine said the other day: “The so called Clash of Civilizations would be possible if we had to face an actual civilization.”The Fuse is Lit (No Pasaran!)
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, January 13, 2007
Bitchslap Culture
As Carine said the other day: “The so called Clash of Civilizations would be possible if we had to face an actual civilization.”The Fuse is Lit (No Pasaran!)
Embracing their Helplessness
An opinion column in a Connecticut newspaper today puts on display the numbness of those seeking the empty center of any argument which is often confused for agreement, one that puts the usual inaction of European governments on a pedestal, no matter how dim-witted the statements are to begin with. It operates on the assumption that the US can be European, or broadly that anyone would want to be.
The outlook almost always points an adoring eye to the exclusion of mentioning anything else European states have let fester or not done in international relations, and the arguments themselves almost always dwell on looking for affirmation in the sort of statement parroted by street protestors. Since both camps have checked out of having any real ideas or taken any concrete action in the larger world, they can’t but help but look to use one another as an authority of some sort or another to prop up one anothers’ ideas.
The social role of how and what is said dominates any discussion of this sort. It has a thin veneer used to shield from the embarrassment of having disengaged from doing anything serious long ago:For some, the response was a study in haughty indifference.
The statements read otherwise like catchphrases.
“Europeans and Germans believe you have to talk to regimes you don't like,” said Eberhard Sandschneider, the director of the Research Institute of the German Council on Foreign Relations. (Pointedly, Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, declined to discuss Iraq in an interview with correspondents on Thursday.)
”Talk to your enemies, not your friends” that latest signboard goes, looking to find a way to tell the US to go hat in hand to the regimes enabling the Iraq insurgency. Nonsense – it’s an attempt to force the US into a weak strategic position for reasons of the sign carrier’s pride as if these were matters between people and not nations. They have it entirely reversed: you make your enemies try to come talk to you.Indeed, said Philippe Douste-Blazy, the French foreign minister, only a broad political strategy would enable Iraq to “recover stability, and beyond Iraq, stability in the region.” That was the view, too, among Spanish officials. “Only political solutions can solve the crisis which affects stability in the region,” said Miguel Ángel Moratinos, the Spanish foreign minister.
Ultimately, yes, but that’s not what motivates the same argument that is nearly identical to the peacenik argument that has been kicking around since US went after the Taliban in novemeber 2001: the statement is always made with a view of getting the US to negotiate from a position of weakness.At the same time, there was some sympathy — if not always explicit — for the American quandary: This was, many analysts sensed, a defining event, a last throw of the dice that would measure American prestige and credibility against the clamor of its adversaries.
Proforma statements of supposed sympathy are never in short supply, and they have NEVER amounted to anything. Ever. They are always phrased in a way to veil a mood to save face at the moment but try to say “I’m sorry you’re so stupid”.
If you can attribute European shrugs to having an actual goal, it’s always the same: to maintain a strategic balance for its’ own sake because it requires no visible action to support. It’s the same strategic that doesn’t ask why tyrannies are encouraged to continue provided that they conceal from plain view their treatment of people from a sensitive European public who are easily outraged and have had their sympathy exhausted to the point to that they sometimes confuse not knowing about the things that outrage them with things going well.
Never far away though are the usual verbal daggers:Others painted their analogies in a more apocalyptic hue. In France, the newspaper Le Monde — which, after the Sept. 11 attacks, had declared: “We are all Americans” — published a cartoon depicting President Bush as a bulldozer driver shoveling American soldiers into a ditch in the shape of Iraq.
A statement confused for action and a statement confused for action – the “We are all Americans” has been used too often to be meaningful to any American, and from the week after it was written, used as a kind of emotional set-up to point out the disappointment with any statement stapled onto the end cleft with the word “but”.
Useless. Dead words used solely to find meaning in statements, not actions or even beliefs. They are a vessel of pride, or rather the hubris coming out of inaction and self-imposed helplessness. It is merely another signboard carried by a marcher in a crowd who could neither summin the same bravery on his own or look anyone in the eye.The Fuse is Lit (No Pasaran!)
Friday, January 12, 2007
Moteur, kaput !
Merkel's government sends the French a message to put on a lid on all the hissy fits they are throwing over EU Central Bank independence. The famed Franco-German engine is no longer firing on all cylinders.
Baudruche boursoufflée
This will not please the French heads-up-their-asses pseudo-economists who are convinced that France and the Euro are at the vanguard of some kind of post-industrial, post-free market, dare I say post-economic EUtopia. A study has just shown that the Euro is not at all, not even slowly, replacing the US Dollar in central bank reserves. It's a smoke and mirror shell game thing.
Dreams of a Glossy, Post-Democratic World
Why isn’t Ah-nold on the list? Because he had to face a challenger in an actual election where people who just don't look good actually VOTE. He can’t be on a list of any sort of course – he’s conservative, silly.
Just what is it that curls the toes of equally vapid lefty Britons who read that tripe? They want their MTV.
The idea of appointing an adamant pacifist as minister of war isn’t just a warm, “humanistic thought” for which the thinker should be richly loved and rewarded for merely saying it, but would really do well off-off Broadway, which many such people who enjoy the victory of warm intentions could confuse for real life.
Fun W/ №s: the New Year Carbeque
In an effort to manage and dim the public temperament the Police lied with the help of the media. The number of cars torched on New Years’ Eve was initially stated at 301, then 396, up until the number 483 appeared somewhere. Nouvel Obs now reports it to be 683, up from 425 from 2005.
Partying like it’s 1939
De jour en jour, on voit qu'elle est vraiment la bonne conne
Ségolène Royal praised the rapidity of China's criminal courts and had not a single word to say about capital punishment (something that always gets the French on their high horses), or the use of executed prisoners' body parts for organ transplants. She even mumbled something about not wanting to give lessons to others. Funny how the French suddenly decide to no longer distribute lessons when the USA is not involved. Elsewhere, (c'est à dire, en dehors de la planète Maboule qui s'appelle la Fwance), Royal's visit is the subject of some ridicule.
The bulldozer is missing a "Halliburton" logo. Plantu is slipping.
Plantu made one of his more goulish efforts in yesterday's Le Monde Al-Jazeera on the Seine. French commentators have gone into all-is-lost overdrive since Bush's speech. The French preSS is a bit lost to say the least. They had fully expected all of this to be over by now, what with the Democrats winning the mid-term elections and all.
And it was Just in time for Christmas too
Cable operator Noos seems to have snuck in a few new channels over Christmas.
Lube it up for the new aristocracy!
Ironically, the Protestors Can Leave Cuba
Unlike the Cubans, these wankers don’t need to risk it on an innertube:
Fine. Feel free do it in MY name if you have to. The Fascist Fishwife can join her peaced-out pacifistic kindred spirits and just stay in Castro’s “paradise” for all I care.
As for her fellow travelers, make a note of the fake photo montage and how many times the word “probably” appears in this feeble parody, all anticipating hopes of finding the very worst of their “real enemy” – their fellow citizens from a country where it’s still bad form and at last check unlawful to target unsuspecting civilians just to get your jollies. Behold, their chachas at Reuters prattling on about Sheehan and Medea Benjamin “defying” the travel ban on Cuba under the heading of “crisis” while neglecting to mention the Cuban “travel ban” on Cubans that thousands have died defying.
Apparently, that’s not a crisis to Reuters or the "peace" camp, and neither was this:
"I was ten years old. But they changed my age to 18 for execution.”Yet the sad subculture of leftist protesters is uniquely obsessed with entirely different things that happened at Abu Ghreib and on the island of Cuba.The Fuse is Lit (No Pasaran!)
“Dear Mom and Dad. I am going to be executed by the Baath. I will not see you again.”
10,725 people were killed in this one building alone. All died during torture. Formal execution actually took place in Abu Ghraib.
Comrade Plushtoi
Luxurious old cars and some cute, fuzzy Stalin worship. How cute.
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Bi-Polar Nation
After talking it up, and rationalizing it, they’re talking it down:Mr Breton said French growth in the final quarter of 2006 would be between 0.6 and 0.8 per cent, an improvement on the third quarter, when the economy stagnated, but lower than the 0.9 forecast from Insee, the state statistics agency.
The Fuse is Lit (No Pasaran!)
And Europeans are orbiting Uranus
« An astrologer accuses America of altering the zodiac. »
The Fuse is Lit (No Pasaran!)
What Morons
I really wonder if these goose-stepping jerk-offs have any idea how stupid they really sound: Votez: Le Pen !
[Arab]!Is it 1939 yet?
LE PEN! Don’t let yourself be deceived by the propaganda of Jewish liars that want to fight France to the last "beur" LE PEN was the only French politician who was clearly opposed to the war which the américano-Zionists carried out against Iraq, the cradle of Arab civilization.
The Fuse is Lit (No Pasaran!)
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
EU : le club aux abonnés absents
EU members cannot adopt a common stance with regards to Russia's energy shenanigans.
National Cultural Profile: A mission to teach and to civilise others
The French believe that they are intellectually superior to any other nationality. The length and magnificence of their historical achievements leave the French convinced that they have a mission to teach and to civilise others. Their political, military and economic strengths may no longer predominate as they once did, but they perceive no diminishment or fading of their moral and didactic authority.So we learn from the Daily Telegraph's National Cultural Profiles page devoted to France.
Murderous Hateful Creep Employed Peddling Soft Drink
Adoring a man who enjoyed violating civilians and wrecked the Cuban economy, some twit try to fawn over a murderer who wanted to “make beeg revolution” using a veil of charitable donation as a marketing gimmick:
In homage of an emblematic figure, legendary Ernesto Ché Guevara was known for sound effort and for his fight counter the inequalities for a world righter. Far from any political ideology or partisanship, the company “El Ché-Cola” is the first commercial operation to take choose to divert 50% of its net profit to NGOs that fight world hunger, and humanitarian organizations coming to the assistance of orphans and the needy in France and throughout the world. Sharing the wealth to fight together against hunger in the world is our goal.
- The Founder, J.M. Ferreira
Yeah, right. Whatever you say, spanky. Link omitted.
Middle Class Trappings
Go ahead. Badger them about not recycling, of maybe about the “rights of the transgendered” or something. See if they’ll play along.
Sticking it to a Morally Repugnant Elite
Thin skinned, outraged, millionaire ‘revolutionaries’ like the unctuous poster-child for the decay of the public mind Tracy Emin are out raising all the ‘awareness’ that they can sell you or parlay into public exposure. But criticize the echo chamber that serves them and the parasites living off of them and they would call you “stuck”.
The torrent pointed at the handful of people who merely asked the question as to why the Turner Prize has grown into a sick joke has mutated into an annual event involving those feeding off the institutions going on the defensive against society at large. It goes so far as to find them opposing a zeitgeist that holds similar, if not nearly identical world view to that generally found uniformly among the ‘revolutionaries’ of the art racket with a few important ethically founded distinctions: one that holds that the publicized personalization of the artist is not art.
Every year, the elite wanting to be “controversial” without the attendant criticism exhibits something more akin to pack animal behaviour: the wagons are circled, and the public are frowned upon in a Pomish way not seen since the lost days of the Raj.
“Stuckism” calls itself [a] Radical international art movement for new figurative painting with ideas. Anti the pretensions of conceptual art. Anti-anti-art. The first Remodernist art group. Daubers (daubing is the new painting).
It is. And fascism is the new black. Noted one dejected juror: There was a pre-party party for the judges and shortlisted artists but I was so busy keeping my lips sealed that it wasn't much fun. Then we went through to join the main thrash in the Duveen gallery where Yoko Ono (dressed bizarrely as a French mime artist) announced the result. In previous years it has been a sitdown dinner but this was a milling-about party with mouse-sized food. (No wonder Nick Serota and all the Tate curators are so thin - they subsist on fairy dust.) And of course there was no smoking, so I was soon out on the front steps in the rain with the artists, and delighted to find Sarah Lucas among them. I thought she disapproved of the Turner Prize because she has always refused to accept nomination, but she says no, she doesn't disapprove per se, she just thinks it's not her thing. Anyway, she is doing the Tate's Christmas tree this year - she showed me photos of her decorations which I think were all genitalia but I didn't have my glasses on.
Tell the Journalists "How Close I Was to Mitterrand"
Ariane Chemin has a long portrait of Ségolène Royal (more blunt outspokenness and bravitude on the issue of basic principles and human rights during her visit to China here) and how François Mitterrand has been a central feature in her political life.
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
De l'eau dans le gaz
The EU has just been sent a message. Looks like we are in for some serious strategic sensibilities management.
Monday, January 08, 2007
Sign the Petition to Help Chirac Avoid the Hangman
Quickly! Go visit La Baf in order to sign the international petition for the pardon of Jacques Chirac, President of France ("Let's stand united against the execution of Jacques Chirac by the puppet governement of Ségolène Royal").
Y en a marre de la même merdouille franchouille ?
Regarde un peu Underbahn.tv. La télé garantie 100% non-consensuelle. Actuellement : l'interview en trois partie avec Frédéric Valandré, auteur de France Intox. A venir : beaucoup plus.
Sunday, January 07, 2007
The Difference in the Treatment Accorded by the MSM to Strongmen Aligned with the US and Despots Opposed to the US
We are against the death penalty. It is a shameful abomination (and a disaster and a catastrophe)!We are against the war in Iraq. It is a shameful abomination (and a disaster and a catastrophe)!
We are against capitalism. It is a shameful abomination (and a disaster and a catastrophe)!
How about Saddam Hussein?
Well… yeah… y'know, that too… but, y'know…
it is hard to draw a portrait of Saddam Hussein. The man, like numerous dictators [like Castro, like Deng, like Kim Il Sung, but not like Pinochet (!)] presents numerous sides. His paranoia does not make the task easier…
Whereas the MSM had called unequivocably for moving heaven and earth to go after Pinochet while depicting Chile's former head as nothing but a monster, they have taken to referring to the environment in which Warsaw's Stanislaw Wojciech Wielgus met his fate as "Eastern Europe's widening witch hunt for former Communist secret police informers".To go after Pinochet (as well as his henchmen and people such as the officers forming the 1970s junta of Argentina) is necessary, even heroic, but to go after the leaders of communist states (or their henchmen) amounts to nothing but a "witch hunt"?!
Read Brent Bozell's Dying dictators and double standards (written two to three weeks before Saddam's execution). He hits the nail straight on the head:
The New York Times headline noted Pinochet was a "Dictator Who Ruled by Terror in Chile." The Times began by describing him as "the brutal dictator who repressed and reshaped Chile for nearly two decades and became a notorious symbol of human rights abuse and corruption." He was "never brought to trial." Both the Post and the Times used post-Pinochet government estimates that more than 3,000 people were executed or disappeared during the Pinochet dictatorship.
But the same liberal press that despises right-wing autocrats cannot bring that same vigorous denunciation to bear when a communist dictator dies. When Chinese dictator Deng Xiaoping died in 1997, the Post mentioned the "bloody crackdown" in Tiananmen Square in 1989, but the words "dictator" or "dark legacy" did not appear in the headline, which simply recited the fact of death: "China's Deng Xiaoping, Dead at 92." The Post reporter did not attempt to enumerate the thousands or millions killed on Deng's watch, or wonder why he was never put on trial.
The Post presented Deng as a great liberalizer, to a point. "Deng had guided the country out of the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, flung open China's doors to the outside world and loosened the grip of central economic planning," while, ahem, "insisting that the Communist Party's monopoly on power go unchallenged."
Some communist leaders couldn't even be accused of liberalizing tendencies. When Korean despot Kim Il Sung died in 1994, The New York Times couldn't call him a dictator in their headlines, let along mention ruling by terror. The second story on the death was headlined, "Kim Il Sung, Enigmatic 'Great Leader' of North Korea for 5 Decades, Dies at 82." (…)
So let's review. A right-wing ruler responsible for the deaths of 3,000 -- but also responsible for an economic miracle of free enterprise, and who allowed the democratic process which forced him from power: "dictator." But communist despots who controlled their citizens with iron fists until the day they died, preventing all manner of political, economic and religious freedoms, and who caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands, if not millions: "leaders."
The more things change, the more they stay the same. While conservatives still seek to defend both democracy and American interests, liberals are still fawning over communist and terrorist thugs.
France's — and Europe's — Inviolate Human Rights Principles
When interacting with Americans, French citizens at all levels — common people, media outlets, government leaders — must make them (likewise, America's common people, media outlets, government leaders) understand the rock-hard base of European principles and the fundamental position of the latter in the European Union. Europeans must make Americans understand that they disagree with the death penalty, that they disagree with Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, that they disagree with pre-emptive war and saber-rattling and the Iraq conflict and Bush's lies, etc etc etc…
Europeans are not against America per se, you understand; they are only against America's current government. They are only against America's leaders and the country's policies. Thus, Europeans must tell Americans that they preferred the policies of the country's past administrations, and that they have no choice, but that they are compelled to say (in a snotty voice or otherwise) that this side of America is not the America that they like.
Europeans are the good friends of the Americans, in fact; they just want to make Americans (its citizens as well as its leaders) aware of certain realities in the new world and, indeed, make them understand that their (the Europeans') outbursts are done for their (the Americans') own good.
This is Europe's human rights principles!
How about Russia (whose "sensibilities" France's president said the French "should manage") and China (for whose leader's state visit the Eiffel Tower was lit up in red)? Where Moscow and Beijing and their "extremely sensitive political questions" are concerned, the Europeans haven't exactly come around to making a stand and stating their principles forcefully yet, but don't worry. The Chinese will soon feel the full force of France's outrage (danke zu Jörg Wolf) and the Russians can't be far behind.
Update: Currently on a visit to China, Ségolène Royal, who famously told a Hezbollah (!) "lawmaker" how awful Bush was and who like most French people is constantly trying to give Americans lessons,
Europeans are not against America per se, you understand; they are only against America's current government. They are only against America's leaders and the country's policies. Thus, Europeans must tell Americans that they preferred the policies of the country's past administrations, and that they have no choice, but that they are compelled to say (in a snotty voice or otherwise) that this side of America is not the America that they like.
Europeans are the good friends of the Americans, in fact; they just want to make Americans (its citizens as well as its leaders) aware of certain realities in the new world and, indeed, make them understand that their (the Europeans') outbursts are done for their (the Americans') own good.
This is Europe's human rights principles!
How about Russia (whose "sensibilities" France's president said the French "should manage") and China (for whose leader's state visit the Eiffel Tower was lit up in red)? Where Moscow and Beijing and their "extremely sensitive political questions" are concerned, the Europeans haven't exactly come around to making a stand and stating their principles forcefully yet, but don't worry. The Chinese will soon feel the full force of France's outrage (danke zu Jörg Wolf) and the Russians can't be far behind. Here is a French government tip on how best to do business with the Chinese: Do not mention Tibet, Taiwan or the Tiananmen Square crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators.
…And do not mention politics, the guide says. "Avoid speaking about Chinese politics, for example: The events on Tiananmen Square, strategic questions of Taiwan or of Tibet," it says.
Hundreds, possibly thousands, of unarmed protesters were killed when the Chinese army cleared the square in the heart of Beijing of student demonstrators on June 4, 1989. China has threatened to use force to assert its claim of sovereignty over the self-ruling island of Taiwan and has been accused of widespread human rights abuses in Tibet since it invaded the Himalayan territory in 1950.
Update: Currently on a visit to China, Ségolène Royal, who famously told a Hezbollah (!) "lawmaker" how awful Bush was and who like most French people is constantly trying to give Americans lessons, The French Socialists' presidential candidate has gone out of her way to minimize human rights, an issue that is "sensitive" to the Chinese (no sh-t!), in favor of questions like globalisation and ecological rights.told reporters that she plans to discuss human rights — without browbeating her Communist Party hosts. "I am not going as a giver of lessons," she told reporters.
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