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…
Are you a bien pensent twit trying to figure out the Holocaust? Are you looking for any explanation other than evil?
Then why not just find a way to blame a jew?
A brief encounter with a Jewish prostitute may have led to Hitler's genocidal Holocaust, claim psychiatrists.
With no historical memory. Must be nice not to have a conscience.
The Nazi rock concert was held in Croatia’s biggest stadium, Maksimir, and although this time Thompson himself did not make any pro-Ustasha references or Hitler-style salutes, the kids sure did.
The reason you don’t see this kind of stuff in Germany is that everyone knows what the Germans did, and the Germans know what the Germans did, because they were made to admit and apologize for what they did.
- via Julia Gorin
As far as I’m concerned, they’re not that different than these clowns:
As if...
Top French government officials are ignoring warnings to ditch their cherished BlackBerrys -- smartphones with e-mail capacity -- despite warnings their messages may be intercepted by US spy agencies, a report said Tuesday.A bunch of wonderpups at the French Foreign Ministry won’t give up their Blackberries in spite of the security risks.
[ ... ]
"The risk of interception is real, it's an economic war," Alain Juilllet, a senior French economic intelligence official, told Le Monde.
Some of the specific cases are shocking. According to a recent New York Times article by Peter Schweizer, `between 1987 and 1989, French intelligence planted moles in several U.S. companies, including IBM. In the fall of 1991, a French intelligence team attempted to steal `stealth' technology from Lockheed.' Other accounts report that French intelligence units conduct 10 to 15 break-ins every day at large hotels in Paris to copy documents that belong to businessmen, journalists, and diplomats. According to other accounts, the French have been hiding listening devices on Air France flights in order to pick up useful economic information from business travelersGiven that the US Government nearly never goes to bat for US businesses in nearly the same way, and often get audited out of existence. I wonder where they’re getting this idea if no-place other than their own experience.
BERLIN - The four clocks behind the reception desk of Berlin's new budget hotel Ostel show the hour in Moscow, Berlin, Havana, and Beijing. Time, however, appears to have stopped here sometime before 1989, when communism was still entrenched in all four capitals.I wonder, does the package deal come with beatings by the Volkspolizei and the Grenzschutz, or is that only in the abuse spa package?
The Ostel offers a renewed whiff of life in the former German Democratic Republic, welcoming travelers with portraits of communist leaders adorning the walls.
Socialist Unity Party functionaries such as party General Secretary Erich Honecker and Prime Minister Horst Sindermann peer down from portraits in most rooms, giving the impression that one is under constant surveillance.The fun never stops.
At roughly 1315 UTC, at the same time the BBC was having an on-air "silent vigil" for the release of kidnapped BBC correspondent Alan Johnston, a clan member of the group holding him had his head blown off by masked men.
Munir Dughmush was shot while standing outside a building in Gaza City's Zaitoun neighborhood, sources in the Gaza Strip said. They said masked gunmen opened fire at him, killing him instantly.They recently said they were willing to talk about releasing Johnson.
Following the incident, foreign journalists were advised to stay away from the Gaza Strip for fear of reprisal.
Which brings us to the the accompanying photo. Journalists without borders who seem to want to conceal their identity to even show empathy for one of their kidnapped fellow journalists. Even if they are just kids imagining their hearts are with him - Indeed they’re displaying the fear that they themselves have sewn by the over-reporting and giving too much importance and credence to the causes of Johnston’s captors. If they had enough self-awareness to see how screwy their tack is generally, they could let themselves seek the aide of the Israelis for the sake of Johnston’s life, even if it would undermine their rather fake “neutrality” of having to temper their reporting because of their vulnerability to the violence they would be exposed to.
Valiantly, a rearguard of La Baf taxpayers head towards a Paris tax office to turn in their tax returns.
Ségolène Royal, who is to meet with Nicolas Sarkozy this morning (will she shake the president's hand?), did not believe in all the electoral promises she was giving…
I doubt a Ségo blow up doll would have done the trick, but Flanby seems to have found frightening analog to his former political opponent and common law co-parent to their hatchlings.
She was the socialist in stilettos, the woman who injected femininity, glamour and sex appeal into the French elections.Let’s set aside the fact that anyone finding a mother of 4 alluring needs to have their head examined. The idea that the press tried to sell it this way without the objection of a campaign certainly says that as far as the subject goes – that all bets are off in the abuse department. Keep in mind that this public display of flaming, twisted wreckage will certainly be spun in the direction of man-as-abuser, in spite of Hollande never being able to fit that bill, and in spite of the fact that Royal was supposed to be squared away, consensus oriented, and in possession of leadership skills.
And as she embarked on her ill-fated bid to become France's first woman president this spring, Segolene Royal, an alluring mother-of four, appeared as a wonderful breath of fresh air who dared to challenge the macho forces of French politics.
At one point prior to the Presidential election, word had it that a certain candidate was playing naughty little Sprout to the Jolly Green Giant. Hinting that a eco-vangelist was doing a Presidential candidate was subtly floated as a sign of someone with a ‘nuanced’ social bearing doing what she could to ‘take care of the earth.’ I won’t touch the fact that the man is a Veteranarian.Not free to choose: regulated and managed out of existence, some French wine-growers have taken direct action.
Trimming the vines in the 17 hectares of vineyard which used to support his family, wine-grower Francois Thiebaud is in despair because of plummeting wine prices.Were these artisans able to get out of the political trap of demanding help, and then accepting it, they wouldn’t be in the position they’re in. The uncontrollable Euro-desire to ‘control’ the value of French wines in a pretext to protect the farmer has accomplished the reverse altogether. With a sterling reputation, and a history of producing the best wines anywhere in the world, the regime has even rendered the value of even the un-exported product sold locally to a market making 1st world earnings and an appreciation and willingness for wines has been undervalued.
He says that he and many other wine-makers in this region are now fighting for survival: "We're working at a loss," he tells me.
"We've lost between 40 and 50% of our income because of falling prices and the big cut taken by the middle-men.
"I can only afford to carry on working in the vineyards because my wife has another job.
"And some wine-makers have to claim social security benefits, because they earn so little that they can't feed their families.
Working in the same building a couple of "progressive" political lobbying firms can be both depressing and amusing. This normally dyspeptic group, themselves a pantheon of token hires (after the currently fashionable genetic groups) often offer some true anthropological interest.
One day I overheard one barely tinted woman of terribly middle-class and suburban upbringing chiding a man of terribly middle-class and suburban upbringing about being white.
They might be shocked to discover how thoughtless, outdated, and conventional the gender dynamic of their exchange really is. They should be continually bombarded by messages chiding both of them to raises their awareness to this, even if it's all for not particular or real social justice reason itself, but to be made all the less comfortable in their skin. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
It's the false-consciousness, man. Badger them for years to them apologize, child-like, to themselves in the mirror.
When people start to reason that you can avert genocide by cooling the planet below the temperature nature wants it to, you’ve really lost your marbles. Add it to: “Stop coming to work and save the planet”, “Having large families ‘is an eco-crime’”, but more than anything try to square it with this enthusiastic bit of earth-loving genocide.
Royal said the reason for the parting was the infidelity of her partner , Socialist leader François Hollande.I guess she needed a stunt held at the point of maximum attention to sell her upcoming book – or otherwise fall permanently off of the public radar, or into ridicule, or into a pattern of ridiculous, party-wide attention-seeking behaviour.
Further details will be revealed in Royal's autobiography, which is to be published this week.
But with Royal asserting her ambition to challenge for the party hot-seat, the two are likely to clash then, or even earlier if the Socialists decide to call an early congress.Can you imagine this party leading a nation that has nukes?
"C’est une formidable émission, mais elle est usée."With nary a word of explanation, France 5 cancels Daniel Schneidermann's "Arrêt sur images" (hyperlinked several times on NP), the best program on French TV.
Mais l’important n’est pas dans cette grossièreté. L’important n’est pas que Carolis et ses hommes décident, sans l’ombre d’une explication, de tuer Arrêt sur images. L’argument de l’ancienneté n’est pas un argument, ni dans un sens ni dans l’autre.
L’important, c’est qu’ils ne sont pas effleurés par l’idée que cette émission remplissait une mission indispensable de service public.
L’important, c’est qu’ils renoncent impunément, sans un soupir, à cette mission : critiquer à la télévision, avec les armes de la télévision, le pouvoir des images.
…A vous tous, si nombreux, si sincères, mais si dispersés aussi. Je partage votre désarroi, à tous. Mais les graines que nous avons semées sont en vous, maintenant. En vous et en d’autres. Le monstre médiatique est vulnérable. Sa lâcheté d’aujourd’hui en est encore une preuve. Ce travail continuera. Pas nous ou par d’autres, ici ou ailleurs.
"J'ai demandé à François Hollande de quitter le domicile, de vivre son histoire sentimentale de son côté, désormais étalée dans les livres et les journaux, et je lui ai souhaité d'être heureux."
Gérard Courtois answers questions about the election (check out numbers 1, 5, 7, & 9), while Ségolène and François announce their break-up.
Sarko wins, the NYT spins, and Ségolène Royal “divorces” Flanby to the extent that one can under common law - she ditches the bum:
We’re on good terms. We talk. There’s mutual respect.Call in an airstrike.
Those projected results marked the first political stumble for the hard-driving and U.S.-friendly Sarkozy since his emphatic election win last month. But both votes still handed him a mandate to revive French spirits and economic prospects by loosening up labor laws and cutting income and inheritance taxes among other ambitious reforms.Call in an airstrike.
The projected results showed a stunning rally for the fractured and flailing Socialists.
Hunger, heat, and 13 hours back-breaking work a day: all for €1 an hour. Customs officials raided a strawberry plantation in Bavaria on Thursday and found [ed.: 118] illegal Romanian workers living in slave-like conditions. What was worse: the owner of the farm is a [ed.: retired] policeman.The officials were alerted by people in the nearby village where the workers had been begging.
German custom authorities raided a strawberry plantation in the village of Oberndorf in southern Germany at midnight Thursday night and discovered up to 60 Romanian farm laborers living in miserable conditions. The owner of the farm had been keeping the workers as virtual slaves and only paying them around €1 ($1.33) an hour, for up to 13 hours of work a day in the fields.
The Christian Science Monitor reported on May 24, 2006 that some 280,000 Poles were working in German agriculture, many harvesting asparagus. The German Labor Department is insisting that 10 percent of farm workers in 2006 be German. German farm workers can receive subsidies that give them €13 to €20 an hour tax free, or $17 to $25.
The blue tsunami announced has not occurred as the ruling UMP wins "only" about 328 seats to 206 for the left. Still, that is obviously more than enough to wield all the power in the government.
If a rival candidate appears to be getting too close to upsetting the seat of a PS bigwig (Dominique Strauss-Kahn) in the second round of the elections, call her a racist and let your power base know that she is to be threatened and harassed…
