Europe, Your Fly Is Down. It’s Always Been Down.

This is what a rendition flight is for, and this is why there is a Gitmo. It is simply because the US does not have the laws that permit nearly every European state to administratively detain suspects, often indefinitely – something that they’ve had since they've had modern laws to reason their way around. So stop whining, grow some huevos. You're overding the passive-agressive beaten wife routine.

Political Correctness in Japan: The comment "tramples on the feelings of victims", so… Shut the F**k Up and Lose Your Job!

No mention, of course, is made of the (many more) Japanese people that would have been victims had the bombs not been dropped — which (needless to say) was the entire point behind Fumio Kyuma's comment in the first place!

In a public appearance [last] Saturday — the unofficial start of the campaign for [Japan's] upcoming election — Kyuma said that dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 "ended the war," adding, "I think that it couldn't be helped."

Otherwise, Kyuma said, the war would have dragged on and the Soviet Union would have ended up occupying northern Japan.

…The comments by Kyuma, who represents Nagasaki in the lower house, caused widespread anger by apparently treating lightly Japan's status as the only country ever targeted by nuclear weapons. Although the debate over the use of nuclear arms is not the taboo it once was, Japan's self-image as a special victim of World War II remains deeply rooted, even as revisionist politicians like Abe have tried to minimize Japan's militarist past.

Kyuma had to resign as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's defense minister (and was replaced by Yuriko Koike, Japan's first female defense chief). His comments, more specifically, said:

"I understand that the bombing ended the war, and I think that it couldn't be helped," Kyuma said.

Kyuma, who is from Nagasaki, said the bombing caused great suffering in the city, but he said he did not resent the United States because the bombs prevented the Soviet Union from entering the war with Japan, according to Kyodo news agency.

Kyuma said if Japan had not surrendered, northern Japan could have been occupied by the Soviet Union, which had begun invading Manchuria on the same day Nagasaki was attacked, according to Japanese media.

The remarks, rare for a Japanese cabinet minister, were quickly criticized by atomic bomb victims.

What the MSM Missed About Iraq's Jihadists, Insurgents, and Freedom Fighters

At first … they would only target Shia, but over time the new al Qaeda directed attacks against Sunni, and then anyone who thought differently. The official reported that on a couple of occasions in Baqubah, al Qaeda invited to lunch families they wanted to convert to their way of thinking. In each instance, the family had a boy, he said, who was about 11 years old. As LT David Wallach interpreted the man’s words, I saw Wallach go blank and silent. He stopped interpreting for a moment. I asked Wallach, “What did he say?”…

Read what the local sheik of “al Ameriki tribe” (i.e., Lt. Wallach) answered… (two paragraphs above Michael Yon's first photo (more insurgent courage here))

Crank up the Rationalization Engine!

And fire up the Heisenberg compensators while you’re at it! It’s time to protect the precious, vulnerable, and strategic yogurt production.

French business radio channel BFM reported, citing an unnamed source close to the matter.

'Never has Pepsi's appetite for Danone been so strong,' the channel cited its source as saying.

Yessiree, you heard that right. Rennet culture is a birthright! Not only that, corporate entities have grown emotively thirsty! Pepsi, you anthropomorphically alluring little corporate minx!

Clearstream Scandal Catching Up With Villepin

The great hero of the UN's Iraq crisis seems about to get his come-uppance…

What with Nicolas Sarkozy further undermining the unity of the socialist party (by reaching out to PS honchos Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Laurent Fabius to head the IMF), the French political arena is starting to look more and more like the final settling of scores in the Godfather…

Thomas Lifson (merci à Penny) puts it best:

Remember how many media libs swooned over former French prime minister Daniel de Villepin? He published poetry! He wrote a book about Napoleon! He dressed in fancy suits and was oh, so sophisticated. Not like you-know-who, the [cowboy] who makes self-styled sophisticated Americans cringe in embarrassment.

Many conservatives heartily despised de Villepin and his boss President Chirac, recognizing them as hypocritical libs, and smarting over French betrayal in the UN Security Council. Evidence is now accumulating that conservatives were right all along.

The Kit Carson Scouts: Sunni Iraqis Team Up With Yankee Soldiers

Michael R Gordon calls them "unexpected" or "unlikely" alliances. Note to the New York Times and other like-minded mainstream media (inside or outside the U.S.): The alliances are indeed unexpected and unlikely (and the twists surprising) if (and only if) you have been so busy listening to your own verbiage and hand-wringing for the past four years that, in the process, you have ignored the voices of the Iraqis (and of American service members) — the two populations who just happen to be most concerned by Bush's decision to intervene in Iraq.

Here is a portrait of Iraq's "insurgents" and "freedom fighters":

In a surprising twist, the jihadists — the Americans’ most ardent foes — made the new strategy possible. Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a predominantly Iraqi organization with a small but significant foreign component, severely overplayed its hand, spawning resentment by many residents and other insurgent groups.

…The fighters raised funds by kidnapping local Iraqis, found accommodations by evicting some residents from their homes and killed with abandon when anyone got in their way, residents say. A small group of bearded black-clad militants took down the Iraqi flag and raised the banner of their self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq.

“They used religion as a ploy to get in and exploit people’s passions,” said one member of the Kit Carson scouts, who gave his name as Haidar. “They were Iraqis and other Arabs from Syria, Afghanistan, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. They started kicking people out of their houses and getting ransom from rich people. They would shoot people in front of their houses to scare the others.”

Or, as the know-all liberals keep telling us in dramatic tones: "You too would take up weapons, you too would act the same, if a foreign army invaded your country." Kick people out of their houses and get ransom from rich people? Shoot people in front of their houses to scare the others? The hell we would! Maybe your understanding of the entire situation over there is, uh, slightly simplistic!

He Is, After All…

…in recent days, criticism of Sarkozy's interventionist language and unapologetic intent to ignore EU budget rules is mounting. The question that Eurocrats, central bankers and fellow politicians are asking is the same they asked three years ago: Is the man who wants to shake up France's labor market and ignite economic growth with a flurry of tax cuts the liberal European he claims? Or is he an old-style Gaullist in modern disguise?

…"Sarkozy talks right but rules left. Portrayals of him as a French Thatcher who will shake things up are vastly exaggerated," said one EU official in reference to the former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher. "He is, after all, French."

What Evil Lurks in the Hearts of American Neocons?

The search for more treachery and more evil plots is on…



More tales of horror here…

Wealthy Europeans (and the Continent's legislatures) are laughing up their sleeves, while the ordinary person pays a flat tax on everything purchased

As so often with critics of American policy, they would be on sounder ground if they first understood what goes on at home

writes a John Ellis of Rockland, Maine.

Renaat Horemans states in a letter to the editor (Letters, June 6) that Americans must be willing to accept a more progressive tax structure to support better health care. He cites Europe as an example of what needs to be done: "Social justice starts by paying taxes according to one's income. In Europe, even the wealthy have accepted this basic principle."

I suggest he examine Europe's ubiquitous Value Added Tax, one of the major regressive tax structures in the world. Wealthy Europeans (and the Continent's legislatures) are laughing up their sleeves, while the ordinary person pays a flat tax on practically everything purchased. VAT goes well over 20 percent, depending on the country - 21 percent in Belgium and up to 25 percent in Scandinavia. Adding to the charade, the tax is hidden in the price of the merchandise. Many Europeans don't really seem to realize what is going on here.

As so often with critics of American policy, they would be on sounder ground if they first understood what goes on at home.

Getting an education

Guy Millière stands up to the pretentious filth that is the French Left and media elite and sticks to his pro-US, pro-Bush guns.

A Truther in Sarko's government

"Could Bush be behind the 9-11 attacks?" In November 2006, Christine Boutin, now Minister of Housing and Urban Affairs responds "I believe it is possible."

Bah. Pas étonnant. Et puis de toute façon, Sarko se chiraquise de jour en jour.

Why Would a Hollywood Movie Make the Front Page of Le Monde?

When a French daily puts the review of a Hollywood movie on its front page, you know that it's because the movie will be blasting Washington's policies (past or present). And so it is with Robert De Niro's The Good Shepherd (called Raison d'État in French) in the bottom center of Le Monde's front page…

In His Heart, Sarkozy "Is Like the Corsicans, a Gaullist and a Bonapartist"

On "lui a donné sa chance, il a su la saisir, estime Camille de Rocca-Serra, dans le fond il est comme les Corses, gaulliste et bonapartiste."

An article by Jacques Follorou states how much Nicolas Sarkozy owes to Corsica (the island where he won over 60% of the votes)…

Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control

Al Gore III caught doing 100mph in hybrid car containing marijuana and pills, police say.

To the left, of course, this is the one only bits of individual freedom they show any sign of wanting to defend.

The deputies smelled marijuana and searched the car, Mr Amormino said. They found less than an ounce (28 grams) of marijuana along with the tranquilizers and painkillers Xanax, Valium and Vicodin, and the attention deficit disorder drug Adderall. "He does not have a prescription for any of those drugs," Mr Amormino said.

I’d take all of that crap too if I couldn’t escape the shadow of a disingenuous, messianic, and thoughtless father who wanted us all to turn back the clock on human development, and impoverish humanity while he plays with his “enlightened” MacBook and Prius.

Lefty Mental Masturbation At Its Best

Like the crazed American lefties who tried to prove to themselves that George Bush’s interest in his own physical fitness is some sort of character flaw which causes wars, you can always rely on Libé to construct preposterous ideas.

Some crackpot at Libération plausits that jogging is “right wing”:

More fundamentally, the polemic which is making a rage on the Internet on “running, is it right or left?” all started with comments surrounding the President’s running. Then on it’s the symbolism and further on its values. On the left, the author of a blog called “diner’s room” has a banner saying “No-jogging”. The reasons given are that “jogging is harmful for everything and in every way It harms your health, elegance, the way you walk, and the dignity of disabled ex-servicemen and prostitutes”

Quick to retort was Loïc Le Meur, a jogger, Sarkozy supporter, and adamant defender of successful young entrepreneurs who want to excel and take care of their bodies. Whether from the right or left, the argument makes [fitness writer] Odile Baudrier smile: “We went over this on our pages a few years ago. Jogging, of course, is associated with individualism, a values traditionally linked to the right. At the same time, in the research of the wellbeing, judgment is divided.” One could add that the contact you have with nature makes it something for the ecologically inclined. And that as a sport [tr.: form of exercise] accessible to those with any income, that it is straightforwardly Communist. “Traditionally, French intellectuals always had a certain contempt for exercise, Patrick Mignon points out. Only the head counts.
To the contrary, totalitarian ways always stressed the development of the body. Between the two, one too often forgets that humanists of the enlightenment preached for a completely balanced education including both the training of the body and the mind.” “Don’t obstruct him, Mitterrand” the saying went.

Never mind that they’re mimicking the jogging craze of the US in the 1970’s, they give rise to nutty tribalism about the cycling being proper exercise for good leftists.

Of course they will find a bunch of nodding morons who will agree that his holiness François Mitterand’s name can be invoked here, as everywhere, along with some throwaway trash phrase about the fascism of anyone who hasn’t drunk from their tub of kool-ade. They always do.

Some Thoughts on American Patriotism

Some thoughts on American patriotism

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Doctors With Borders

When I think of the detonating Doctors affair unfolding in Old Blighty™, it makes me think of just how impotent, uninspiring, and socially inept the zeitgeist of teh EUropean neighborhood really is. This blogger reflected on his great Uncle who happened a great long while back to be a sojourning physician of Arab origin in the UK. Instead of building a wall of hatred and carrying the modern Arab’s air of superiority (no different than a crowing rooster standing on a pile of dung,) he understood and respected their power and understood that it was built from something.

Wanting to be a part of it instead of just another foppish antagonist, he took an oath of abjuration to the Monarch as an officer in the Royal Navy. He took joy in the subtle irony of the English language. He took the citizenship of the nation he served.

When he returned to the place of his birth, he chose to take the citizenship of the nation where he actually lived. More than any time since, people understood that a citizenry and decent society is built, not granted. He would have recognized what these gas-can quacks have been doing as parasitism: these paragons of virtue have gone somewhere where they could look down on and hate the locals, and then kill them because "the border crossed them" or crossed their ideology, at least.

These modern-day Dr. Mengele types who are more than willing to be party to random murder are a bellwether of the state of decay and medievalism the culture they came from has let itself fall back into.

Bend over and take your shot. It’s the only way that nasty little itch will go away.

The World Can’t Wait

Condescending, maniacal, and beneath contempt, Zapatero (and his world view) managed to accomplish nothing substantive on the world stage since he entered office. It seems that his first grand policy move, conceived in fear (the withdrawal of Spanish troops from Iraq after the Madrid train bombings,) did little other than embolden a then otherwise apprehensive ETA.

By October of this year we will hold an early general election.” Instead, the pessimists got it right. Mr Zapatero appeared on television all right, after the shocking announcement by men in masks. All he said, in an tortured interview with his friend Iñaki Gabilondo on La Cuatro was that everyone should unite with him, including the Popular Party, in the fight against terrorism. He is quite right, but under what terms? And should not tomorrow’s crucial meeting take place in Congress, not in the privacy of the President’s drawing room?

Behold the horror:

after ZP won the general election in 2004 following the Atocha atrocities, he decided to present himself to the world as Blair had done in Britain – as the Great Peacemaker. Blair and his group had won the peace in Ulster, and ZP was going to do even better in the Basque Country – by hook or by crook. No-one, and especially no political party, would be allowed to block this crusade. If the chief opposition party found the peace process potentially explosive, or farcical, or a devilishly clever means by which ETA could recover from its then crippled and bankrupt state, and made this view public knowledge – then ZP and his companions would denounce the chief opposition party. They would be hounded in the socialist media, and on the Government-owned TV channels. They would be turned into an ogre by the Administration’s spokespeople. We would be taught to hate the Partido Popular.

In effect, it was a direct reward for the violence of ETA and al Queda. And it gets better and better for them.

Mr Rajoy will remind Mr Zapatero that without consulting the PP, or even seeking a bit of advice, he instructed Mr. Eguiguren in the Basque Country to make contact with ETA leaders, in order to bid them to secret meetings that the rest of Spain would know nothing of. Rajoy will gently remind Mr Zapatero that after due compromises had been made (which have come to be revealed after all) the terrorist band would declare (on 22 March, 2006) a truce and a ‘permanent ceasefire’; that ETA’s wish to become an international issue had been granted, by becoming part of the European Union’s agenda; that despite innumerable huge public demonstrations against Mr Zapatero’s dreamed-of peace process taking place across Spain and in its capital, he continued making concessions as if the contrary opinion of at least 50% of the population counted for nothing at all.

Rajoy can mention that when ETA felt the Government had not fulfilled all its promises made to them, they ignored the truce for a moment and blew up the carpark at T4, Barajas, incidentally killing two innocent bystanders; that after this atrocity, instead of shutting the book and concentrating on the demolition of ETA, Mr Zapatero carried on with the compromises and the promises made under the counter with the terrorist band; that Mr Zapatero’s faithful judges released a convicted criminal (De Juana Chaos) who had personally dispatched innocent men and women to another world in the name of politics, because he went on a hunger strike in jail.

A shining success, that great Socialist demonstration of solidarity and valor, yes? Against the wishes of an angered population, he sent someone to negotiate with ETA. All just to try to prove something to Blair and to the world that he would make some sort of great last stand for the euro-party of the euro-roses. Somewhere. Anywhere. Trying to prove positve something about itself, yet failing.

Friends of Yours'?

Sicko

The evils of socialized medecine.

Falling Apart

But they’ll tell you its’ part of the charm, but it’s actually the oldest rationalization in the Hexagon.

The New Anti-Capitalism...

...same as the old anti-capitalism.

Chiraq To Be Grilled Over 'Fake Jobs' Plot

No, not the French presidency fake job that he had. It's about a different fake job.

McDo surge in France

French journalist declares, "We're very anti-American in principle, but individually, if you're going to the movies and have to eat in 10 minutes, you go to McDonald's." The same journalist might have added that McDo is the place to go if you want to eat in a place that doesn't have a Turkish toilet.

Le Rwanda : "Il faut aider Habyarimana coûte que coûte et endiguer l'influence anglo-saxonne"

Comme tout l'entourage du président Mitterrand, obsédé par la préservation de l'influence française dans la région, le diplomate Bruno Delaye décèle une autre urgence que ces alertes. Dans une note du 15 février 1993, le conseiller Afrique de l'Elysée s'alarme du fait que le FPR est "en mesure de prendre Kigali", bénéficiant entre autres de la "complicité bienveillante du monde anglo-saxon" et d'un "excellent système de propagande qui s'appuie sur les exactions malheureuses commises par les extrémistes hutus".

"Le passé est le passé." Just released, the Élysée's archives on Rwanda give an entirely different version of what has hitherto been the official story of France's presence in the country of a thousand hills. The true reason involves the real problem that bedevils this planet (not the Russians, not the Chinese, not genocide, but: those perfidious Anglo-Saxons!).

"Il est patent que, tout au long de la période allant de 1993 jusqu'à l'attentat du 6 avril 1994 [contre l'avion du président rwandais Juvénal Habyarimana], la préoccupation centrale des autorités françaises est de soutenir inconditionnellement le président Habyarimana, même s'il fallait aller au-delà d'un appui indirect aux forces armées rwandaises", écrit Antoine Comte.

…L'Etat français ne semble pas disposé à favoriser les investigations en cours. Le 13 février 2006, la juge Brigitte Reynaud, qui a précédé Florence Michon au TAP, avait signé une commission rogatoire internationale à destination du Rwanda. Elle demandait aux autorités de Kigali de lui fournir tous documents ou auditions "permettant d'identifier les régiments et services français présents au Rwanda en 1994" et d'autoriser une mission sur place des policiers français. Pendant six mois, cette commission rogatoire est restée dans un tiroir du Quai d'Orsay, chargé de l'envoi. Le 24 novembre 2006, le Rwanda a rompu ses relations diplomatiques avec la France…

"Le passé est le passé." Officially, France had no inkling of what type of tragedy was being prepared.

C'est faux. A partir de la fin de l'année 1990, plus de trois ans avant le déclenchement du génocide, l'Elysée avait reçu des signaux d'alerte diplomatiques et militaires.

Des signaux aussitôt négligés, au nom d'une vision conservatrice façonnée par l'histoire coloniale de la politique africaine de la France. La preuve en est fournie par plusieurs volumes d'archives de l'Elysée transmis au tribunal aux armées, dont Le Monde a eu connaissance.

Ces archives dessinent bien une France "mithridatisée" à son sommet, c'est-à-dire accoutumée volontairement au poison, selon le mot de la mission parlementaire réunie en 1998.

Elles répondent à deux questions-clés : Que savait la France des préparatifs de l'entreprise génocidaire ? Quelle était la nature de la coopération militaire décidée par l'Elysée ?

…autour de François Mitterrand, dans ce palais hermétique, on veut défendre une autre perspective et justifier, à tout prix, la politique française. Le 3 mars, pour renverser les charges, le général Quesnot propose au président d'incriminer la rébellion en exigeant "une réorientation forte et immédiate de l'information des médias [français] sur notre politique au Rwanda en rappelant notamment (…) les graves atteintes aux droits de l'homme du FPR : massacres systématiques de civils, purification ethnique, déplacement de population…".

…La pression diplomatique monte, face à l'ampleur des massacres. Les ONG mettent en cause la France. Le 19 juin, l'Elysée publie même un communiqué exceptionnel, pour dénoncer les "procès sommaires" qui lui sont faits. Les médias n'auraient rien compris : la France serait au contraire à louer pour son engagement.

L'opération humanitaire "Turquoise" est lancée; elle va durer jusqu'au 22 août. "Toute cette mission doit être présentée comme une étape nouvelle de notre politique : le passé est le passé", écrit Bruno Delaye le 21juin.

"Le passé est le passé." What is the most important lesson to take from this? As it happens, it has little to do with Rwanda proper. As I explain in my book, the lesson has to do with the Old World's perennial tendency to put off the investigation of bad news (and crimes and/or criminal negligence) until years (or decades) later, allowing for a culture that always feels confident to cover itself with self-praise, in the process blasting Uncle Sam for every known sin imaginable ("we have known war", it is said in a tragic voice, "and that is why we are opposed to your presence in Iraq", conveniently ignoring — until years later — things such as the — far worse — Rwanda tragedy).

"Le passé est le passé." Of course, once (years, decades, later) the tragedy does become public, relatively little is made of it. Why? Because the Europeans are "now" busier with more important fare. I.e., pointing out, investigating, decrying (volubly), and countering the very latest horrendous sin(s) from America's shores (and contrasting said sins with Europe's far more civilized bahaviour/ideology/human interactions)!!

Maybe He Thought They Were With CBS News

They might as well be.

"Keeping an open mind": now required by EU diktat directive

The Dissident Frogman is keeping an open mind.

French Isolation Watch

France and Turkey? As fine Paris eateries will attest, the French are undisputed experts in the realm of Turkish toilet engineering, but other than that it seems that no one is listening to them.


EU Constitution in a Turkish Toilet located in a fine Paris eatery.

European Regime Change Fantasies

A film screened at the Venice Biennale put on display the continental complex: a desire to be the wise euro-jockey riding the American horse, one whose failure has elicited decades of passive-aggressive euro-rationalization, euro-tantrums, and throwing their tows out of the euro-crib.

BHL plays one of the candidates with an accent only an American electorate would thing to overlook. As reported by Erik earlier from Le Monde’s fawning interview:

[Former campaign advisor] Jim Mulhall: We set it in the context of a real campaign. In the United States, when a candidate throws their hat in the ring, their told what the race will consist of.
It is what we tried with Bernard: “OK, if you want to be president, here’s what you have to do to appeal to American voters.” At the same time, it was a chance to get Francesco’s opinion on the way political campaigns run. It was important for us to have a critical eye. ...An American president must set up his biography to fit that ambition. Very specific images were chosen, which characterize a modern democratic candidate to lead modern America: Opposition to the war in Iraq, but at the same time being strong and uncompromising on security to not to leave to the Republicans with a monopoly of the flag.
Bernard has certain points in his biography which point out these values.

Every last bit of this is horseshit for one simple reason: it looks at Americans as a bunch of zombies, and looks at a part of America through the same drinking straw use to resent it. Imagine for a moment the hackles that would rise should any foreigner, American or otherwise turned the same mirror on any election in France, Germany, the UK, Italy, or Spain. Imagine that the audience to whom this appeals (as predictable and easily amused as the voters this filmmaker thinks he’s writing about) thinking that their own elections are any better. They aren’t.

Spain’s last election for leadership turned on a population that caved in to terror. The UK just transferred power without the consent of the voter. Italy chose a party which has to live the threats, and is thus driven by parties of less than a thousand people. I could go on, but I wont. I’ll leave that to these film-makers who make a living gazing at other people’s navels. Get a euro-life.

Mulhall got one thing right: the American Democrats unwittingly have a light turned on their practice of looking and seeming like something will be bought off by the voter, everything like trying to pretend to their candidates being “common” (which shows you where their condescension places them above you in their minds), to “focusing like a laser beam” on an economy they had no part in repairing, to incessantly demanding social healing by creating as much class struggle, internecine anger, and resentment as possible. Apart from toying with the "no politics at all" image of the "third way", they don't seem to have any other views, platforms, or prospects.