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…
White Euro-sclerosis has unemployment at twice that figure, the NYT buries the news. If the left were in charge, and if they’re smart enough not to impose any of their “economic theories” on it to destroy it, the New York Times would call it the end of another successful 5 year plan.
- thanks to some guy in Baghdad.
One of the aspects of a cult is that it tries to intrude on every area possible sphere of people’s lives. Call it the drip, drip, drip of meme affirmation.You've heard of green cars, green tourism and green weddings. Now Canadians should ready themselves for green sex.
All those things sound so damned green, don’t they?
Another one of EUtopia’s countless “central committees” speak:It's absolutely clear that this kind of message is not appropriate for the competition," said Kjell Ekholm, an organizer of the contest. "We'll have all the delegation leaders here in Helsinki next week, and I'm sure we'll talk about this case within the EBU [European Broadcasting Union] group."
We failed, therefore the world and all of the vulgar shlubs living in it in it must be big fat idiots... Andrew, I spent many years with you (idealogically at least) but life on the front line of socialism, both campaigning and administrating at local authority level, taught me one overarching truth. The people are simply not up to Socialism. It's too difficult, it's too hard and it's too 'intellectual' for the people. The people have shown themselves, the world over, to be fundamentally lazy, greedy, selfish and myopic.
Don’t you just love the distinct lack of mortal, fiancial, or personal risk of his efforts “on the front lines”? Having lived behind the iron curtain, I don't think the comment's author realizes how meaningless people's work was, just how shabby the education and housing really was, or even how bad the knock-off "coca cola", or any other available goods were.
Did you watch the wall come down? The glee with which the people pulled down those bricks and threw themselves and their families headlong into unemployment, shabby education, poor health and CocaCola showed more clearly than anything else that the people are just too dumb for Socialism.
Socialism is indeed a better way to run things than capitalism, but first we have to find ourselves another 'people'.
Move on mate. You'll only cause yourself heartache.
- Vielen Dank, Georg
Just make it up. Start cherry-picking in 2007 for a good-looking trend in data for 2004 to 2005!According to the Commission's Joint Employment Report, published on 19 February 2007, "unemployment in the EU-25 fell from 9.1% in 2004 to 8.8% in 2005 and employment rose by 0.8% in 2005 - the largest increase since 2001.
Indeed. The Lisbonian magic is clearly at work. By 2010, the hard-working elves of the EU were scheduled (through the miracle of saying so,) to have the worlds leading economy. Instead a recent report warned that by some measures they were 22 years behind the US (where supposedly people live in cardboard boxes and eat cat-food.)
In two years’ since 2005, the gap EU-US has widened for all economic indicators:
- Income (GDP per capita). The current EU level for income was achieved by the US in 1985. Since the first edition of the study, the time gap has increased by 3 years;
- Employment and R&D. Both the current EU levels for employment and R&D investment per capita were reached by the US in 1978. (+3 years and +5 years respectively);
- Productivity (GDP per employed). The current EU productivity level was achieved by the US in 1989 (+3 years).
- The current EU level of Internet users per capita was reached by the US in 2002. Obviously, there hasn’t been enough ranting about predatory capitalism this winter to keep the good burgers of Outer-Lisbonium warm and dry long enough for them to enjoy the way high taxation and low wealth-creation is breaking their knees.
Owing to the usual democratic-sounding un-democratic ideas, French Presidential elections require that 500 Mayors sign a petition to get a candidate on the ballot. One mayor of a town in Calvados (Noron-la-Poterie,) is giving his vote to the highest bidder. Any punters?
Funnier still is the dim starethat the news elicits. The story's been up all day without a single comment at Libération.
Funny how we come across some people: author and apologist for Syrian dictators Jürgen Cain Külbel seems mad at Medienkritik’s Ray, and oddly enough mad at the US, Israel, and even mad at most of Lebanon too. He’s even nearly expressing genuine emotions in his desperate comparison of the US’ dealings with the eastern Mediterranean as a “puppet play”, and implying that the Siniora government is a puppet of the US. The poodle meme dragged out one more painfully boring time.
How did we find this guy? He’s got his panties in a bunch over the fact that David’s Medienkritik organized a public demonstration in Mainz last year in support of President Bush and the war on transnational terror – something the Syrians have done more for through direct arming and tacitly allowing advanced terrorist training and technique development in the Be’kaa Vally of Lebanon for more than a decade. Using an accusation as a defense of his hatefulness, he accuses Ray of “working for the CIA”. Among idiots, this might actually seem novel. Evidently a handful of people practicing their right to free speech is a problem for this guy. He can’t wrap his brain around where the pluralism that permits him to trash others comes from or how to preserve it. It isn’t a matter of him disagreeing with anyone else’s VIEWS, he seemed apoplectic that they were allowed to be there at all.
What drew my attention to him was his blatant mendacity when it comes to the Lebanese which I'll get to later. But to get an idea of what passes for "advocacy journalism" these days, and what passes for intelligent discourse in the adolescent anti-western camp, you need to look at their actions and habits.
Forget free will, anyone who chooses anything other that his favorite repressive ideologues is “a puppet” – as if he isn’t. Talking straight through his teeth, he all but admitted to certainty that the Syrians killed Rafik Hariri while accusing the US and Israel of the deed, and seems a lot more concerned with constructing houses of cards to be fawned over in places which have no free press than making any informed or useful theses.
By way of German bloggers we learn that he's currently writing a book about Osama bin Laden entitled "Osama bin Laden -World Theater with a Corpse." In an interview he did with "Muslim Markt", he explains that his book will talk about how "USAma bin Laden" was already dead by the time of the 9/11 attacks, implying that he is a fiction created by the US to justify its' actions therafter. I suppose anyone with time-penetrating precience is sure to be capable of that sort of conspiracy! What's sad is that even in German the "corpse thing" is dated and tasteless, and if countless other attempts to make this same silly argument haven't grown stale yet, here he is trying to make it again. Too bad it only works once or twice with the same gullible audience, but by indulging the Syrians to find flattery in having a European writing it while focusing on their pet peeves, that a new field of interest might open up.
Like any bad propagandist, he also seems to have himself convinced of his own nonsense, and can’t seem to recognize that the majority of Lebanese detest the Hizballah, but like anyone with any serious criticism of the Ba'athists in Syria, are too scared by them to speak out. The fact that the far more serious problem that Hizballah, once a puppet, is now a barely controllable possessed puppet of Iran and Syria registers no-where in his work. One can hardly call that due dilligence.
Maybe this guy is grabbing his ankles for money, ideology, readership among fevered single-issue simpletons in the German-speaking geographic pocket, or simply doing it to get access to senior figures in Damascus. What seems particularly un-natural for any kind of writer is that he seems to be making quite an effort on their behalf of a state long obsessed with a neighboring state that has an actual free press.
Take look at his incredibly ignorant choice of images:
Siniora obviously still believes in the US-American neoconservative idiocy of „nation building“ and to the spreading of western style democracy in the entire elbow from Morocco to Indonesia. And it obviously recognizes from Bush and cohorts would only install „democratic“ revolutions so long as only valid ones were established...He goes on to question the motives of the protesters who wanted Syria-supporting President Emile Lahoud to step down, and also calls the Lebanese Prime Minister a “Guerrilla fighter for US democracy” and the first “Democratic Dictator” in Beirut.
„L’état c’est moi”, is what Siniora thinks, because he’s following on a November 2006 opinion poll that didn’t take place in Lebanon, but mainly among the exiled Lebanese living prosperously in California, Ohio, and elsewhere under the star-spangled banner along with a few Parisians, the Israeli Prime Minister, and the former East German girl-scout leader who are behind him.
From the “rights of man” to the flight to ban:
What began as a good natured attempt to suppress whistle-blowing by abusive care-givers in old age homes, as well as propagation of mobile-phone videos by “happy slappers”, finds itself fitting in perfectly with the continental predilection to suppress any telling but illuminating showing of their warts - without which there is no improvement or change. 
The council chose an unfortunate anniversary to publish its decision approving the law, which came exactly 16 years after Los Angeles police officers beating Rodney King were filmed by amateur videographer George Holliday on the night of March 3, 1991.
Basically, this tries to make it illegal to report bad news to anyone other than the Police, unless you’re a “professional” journalist – which means, of course, you’ve been thoroughly indoctrinated into believing in the preciousness of the social status quo by having fear of one thing or another drummed into you.
- With thanks to Strummin’ Joe
The way you do a poll that sees air in Europe is to flatter and indulge the reader, and in effect, rigging up the outcome. A “world” public opinion poll excluded Americans from answering questions about the US, but asked Europeans questions about Europe. A majority of people polled for the BBC World Service across 27 countries believe Israel and Iran have a mainly negative influence in the world with almost as many saying the same about North Korea and the United States.
The outcome is obvious, and the BBC will flog it on the air for a good solid week without revealing the fact that it was ginned-up. Canada, Japan, the European Union, and France were judged most positively. Britain, China, and India received more positive than negative evaluations while Russia was viewed slightly more negatively than positively.
Of course they’ll flog the results on the World Service for 3 days, and try to keep the story alive tomorrow a few days after that by doing a story about their own poll.Opinions about Venezuela were evenly divided.
Of course they were, all things, ALWAYS being equivalent equal... but it isn’t very hard to explain:They met, fell in love and had four children. But their story has horrified Germany. They are brother and sister, separated at birth and reunited years later.
The writer goes on to explain in the money quote:And their story is astonishingly common.
- H/T to Georges
except for the fact that it’s not about America, and that it’s true:In five decades of France-Africa summits, France has offered continued material and military aid to prop up unelected leaders, some of whom have been around for decades thanks to elections that have largely become a mockery of democracy.
and right after their latest lecture promoting their faux euro-humanism to the rest of the world, they’ll be heading back down to the plantation to see what the Pinkertons of their state-run industries can wring out of those people getting “too many concessions.”
FRENCH COMPANIES are equally guilty. For instance, Elf Aquitaine has been closely related to the enduring system of Franco-African relations, “Francafrique.”
Beyond the formal institutions, “Francafrique” worked through a system of international clientelism, combining corruption and force, economic, political and social exchanges, and public and private relations.
Only 45% of the French want to work more to earn more.
As if that’s all bad. But for some bad is never bad enough. Le Monde publishes the result of a survey not so much on an attitude towards work, by on philosophizing about the concept of thinking about work... or something:
[the magazine] 20 minutes and [talk radio operation] RMC published on Friday March 2nd. 
Asked about their definition of work, 78% of the people surveyed saw it as “a way to earn a living”, ahead of being “an important value to pass on to your children” (63%), “a source of wealth” (42%), “the way to being useful to your employer” (28%), “a source of pride” (21%).
[work is] “A PLACE OF INJUSTICE” to 5% of those surveyed.
Only a minority of the French regards work as “a source of inequality” (9%), “serious constraint” (5%) and “a place of injustice” (5%). The total of the percentages is higher than 100 because multiple responses were possible with question about work.I’ll leave the heavy editorializing to your imaginations, dear reader, but consider the spin: 45% is still a lot of people, particularly in a society that has talked itself in circles and has had two generations of Socialist bunkum sold to them as an essential morality to the exclusion of all others.
Imagine a place for a moment where the society tells you what to do with a basic matter of personal choice like whether or not you want to work hard of your own free will.
It looks like the EU finally found the place to drone on about their imaginary problems.The European Union is looking into entering the virtual world and opening up an office in Second Life - an increasingly popular internet-based virtual world - which the Swedish government and the French presidential candidates have already entered.
It gets even more ridiculous. Far from “experimenting” with alternate universes, it turns out people are being as stupefyingly predictable in Second Life as they are in meat-space:
"It is certainly an idea we are looking into," commission spokesman Mikolaj Dowgielewicz told EUobserver.
"But we do not have enough people dealing with the internet - we could but they are bogged down with other work such as for the EU's 50th birthday,"the socialist Segolene Royal, centre-right Nicolas Sarkozy and far-right Jean-Marie Le Pen - have all opened election headquarters in Second Life sharing out free pizza slices and t-shirts while promoting their campaign.
However, the presence of Le Pen's anti-immigration, ultra-nationalist National Front has proved particularly divisive among virtual users, some of whom protested outside the party's first headquarters until it moved.
