Surprise of the Day: Pont Structure Metallique!

Get a load of this Rue 89brainchild:

Du point de vue structure on peut faire un paralele entre ce pont et les tours du World Trade Center, les deux sont en structure métallique, en France on construit les ponts et les immeubles en béton même la tour Montparnasse a un noyau en béton et les prochaines tours comme celle de Marseille seront entièrement en béton, de la a en tirer une conclusion c'est peut être un peur rapide, mais on peut se poser la question.

Hey, I’m just asking questions, here!

From a structural point of view, one can make a link between this bridge [failure] and the collapse of the World Trade Center. Both are metal structures. In France the bridges and buildings are built from concrete, even the Montparnasse Tower has a concrete frame, and the next biggest tower like that in Marseilles will be entirely made of concrete. To leap to conclusions might cause fear, but one can still ask the question.

This idiot is clearly not an engineer. They economic limit of concrete is somewhere near 20 floors in most places, perhaps up to 40 at this point given the rising price of steel as a commodity right now. Looking around even a cittythe size of Paris, it’s obvious that the number of tall buildings around “Courageux anonyme” is pretty limited.

His rationalization reminds me of that Monty Python routine where they figure out that the woman couldn't be a witch because witches are made of wood and wood floats – or doesn’t. They had it about as straight as these “89-istas.” To begin with, no-one has built a bridge with span distances like that out of concrete for about 50 years, and when they do use concrete, it's in the form of pre-cast beams that are set on abutments like steel, and behave like steel. Applying non-engineering analogy based reasoning to an engineering problem is par for the course for your average conpiracist “truther.”

Where is Adam Smith when you need him?

Fear of markets and its consequences. Bizarrely, the only invisible hand that Europeans trust is the government paw that regularly lashes out and shakes them down for loose change.

Avis aux jeunes entrepreneurs du Neuf-Trois

Aspiring French youths looking to create their own publishing multimedia start-ups can look forward to 2015 when "Mein Kampf" will be in the public domain. If they can read French by then.

Kidnapping Germans for Fun and Profit

John Rosenthal sums up rump Europe’s concept of free trade.

Ever since the disappearance of Susanne Osthoff in November 2005, the constant refrain of Foreign Minister Steinmeier and German Chancellor Angela Merkel after each new hostage-taking has been: "Germany does not allow itself to be extorted" ["Deustchland lässt sich nicht erpressen"]. This pretense, however, quickly began to crumble when, shortly after Osthoff's release, reports emerged that part of the ransom money had been found on the person of none other than Susanne Osthoff herself.

In their haste to deflect the obvious inference that the kidnapping had been staged and that Osthoff has been complicit in the operation, German officials appeared to forget their pro forma denials that Germany had ever paid ransom in the first place. Shortly after the May 2006 release of Bräulich and Nitzschke -- who had been in Iraq all of two days when they went missing -- German public television ARD reported that the German government had paid $10 million to obtain their release: thus seemingly confirming a stable value of Germans on the Iraqi hostage market of $5 million per.

They should know. The East Germans extorted an average of 55,000 DM from Bonn for every retiree that let emigrate and free them of their “Socialist obligation” to care for them in old age.

Sarko to rich exiles: please come home

"Few may heed his call".

One more hint: when you get to Kinshasa, you'll have to leave the hotel bar and mingle with the natives a bit

The hack journalists over at Rue89.com are furious that so much media coverage is directed at the Minnesota bridge collapse and not enough to catastrophes in other parts of the world. Hint to the hacks at Rue89.com: get on the stick and take your digicams over to Kinshasa instead of pontificating to your affluent bobo Parisian readers who, far from being interested in coverage of Third World disasters, spend increasing amounts of their leisure time lapping up the round-the-clock French coverage of all things anti-American.

La Chirakisation de Sarko continue

Sarkozy is tripped up by a loose-lipped Colonel Kadafi.

Utopia Now

The August edition of the Le Monde Diplomatique's website is pulling all the stops. Ignare je-fois-me-faire-Ramoner is outdoing himself in providing the latest and greatest in the realm of anti-American propaganda. The myth of social mobility is the USA, the struggle of French workers against the increased use of English in their workplace, how the sale of the Wall Street Journal to Murdoch is part of a vast conspiracy to brainwash every one on the planet, and an extensive interview with the darling of the Paris Left Bank intelligentsia , Norm Chomsky (the Left Bank shithole is one of the last places on the planet where any attention is paid to the Subcomandante Marcos, outside of Chiapas and Berkeley).

Edgy Zeropean culture

After "Fallujah", the play, "Jihad" the musical.

No competition please, we're French

Sarko guts the Zeropean Constitution and prepares the way for more interventionist Colbertism made-in-Fwance.

Europe showing signs of life

Dead cat bounce.

Patron voyou

Des hystériques qui s'étripent les unes les autres dans une cage aux folles. Bon débarras.

Miserable Failure

While collectively smug greenies in Europe make five-year-plans that sound like Soviet rutabaga production figures, and repeatedly cast the United States as a mustache-twirling eco-satan, they forget that they laughed at the environmental movement which started in America while their obsession remained in highly polluting state industries.

Fast forward to today where the US advances the cleanliness of the environment technologically, quietly, and without turning it into anything like the state established and imposed and religion that it’s become in Europe.

Nonetheless, for all the bluster we’ve gotten so used to, they still manage their practice of enfeebling anything they attempt.

For the second year running, more wind power was installed in the US in 2006 than in any other country: about 2,500MW. The American Wind Energy Association forecasts that a further 20,000MW will be installed before 2010, an investment of about $30bn, putting it well ahead of Germany and Spain which currently head the installed capacity league table. Much of this has been driven by a subsidy of 1.9 cents per kilowatt-hour for the first 10 years of any wind farm's operation and, although there has been some doubt as to whether this production tax credit will be extended beyond 2008, most of the presidential hopefuls (in both parties) have been making warm noises about the importance of renewables.

Twenty-three states now have ambitious "renewable portfolio targets", but it is California that has really seized hold of the challenge. Arnold Schwarz¬enegger, the governor, is taking the credit (with the state well on track to generate at least 17 per cent of electricity from renewables by the end of the year), but much of California's success goes back to the multi-billion-dollar research programmes introduced during President George W. Bush's first term as compensation for pulling out of the Kyoto process. California has become the centre for hund¬reds of start-up "clean tech" companies..

By comparison, the European renewables sector often appears stodgy, although it is fair to say that the new target adopted at the European Union summit in March (to achieve 20 per cent of all energy generation – not just electricity – by 2020) has sent shock waves through both the policy community and Europe's energy companies. The idea of generating 12 per cent of transport fuels, 18 per cent of heat and 34 per cent of electricity from renew¬ables will require every member country radically to rethink its policy mix.

Add to it the ignorance: several months ago I met a German engineer who was either engineering or peddling something relative to some kind of greenie blackmail. He was very proud that his native Germany had households which on average use less power as those in Minnesota. I asked him if he know just how much colder Minnesota is than any part of his precious Heimat. He averted his gaze and mumbled that he did.

Sonderkommando „Frieden”

Doctor, heal thyself.

Sarko kicks back

With a Stateside vacation.

The Just Called to Say They Hate You - Teil Drei

In front of the kitchen door: ”Ahem! The President is hungry“

Ouais, et Alors ?

They can’t hack it. The “Little Eichmanns” who comment at Rue 89 can’t bear the very notion that a French public figure has anything positive to say about the US, Israel, or basically anything mentioned by their public figures. The Rorschach inkblot that set them off? A review of Sarko’s books in the NYT by Bernard Henri Lévi. Rue 89’s “good points and bad points” approach was more than the lurkers could bear.

Behold one commeter who found a link to a pud-cast piece questioning Lévi’s patriotism and nationality while hashing over the miniscule CPE reforms. I have an even better question for these clucking buffoons: how could anyone who looks fondly on the European left, the one that compelled Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, and Mao Tse Tung to commit real-life bloodshed with their academic arguments about how many dead it would take to make a proper socialist society question ANYONE’S ethics or patriotism from their Commophiliac transational mass-murdering perch?

Operating from the starting point where BHL is just indulging flatulent overweigh chain-smoking American trailer park dwellers, they can’t quite consolidate the comparative poverty of both spirit and material comfort inherent in their “revolutionary” world view which does more to kill and oppress than elevate from poverty of provide with hope.

Moron See, Moron Do

A few years ago, a bar named Café Marx cropped up in DC. Owing to the youth it was going after, advertising clearly wasn’t required. Now Babalu reports on a retread of the same idea in the impoverished proletarian ghetto of the West Village.

As for the place in DC fantasizing over a form of misery I had the pleasure to live through before most of these little shits were born, one bar reviewer reports that they seem to have unintentionally gotten one thing to seem rather accurate: no, not cultural uniformity, not the polar opposite of freedom of thought and speech, not control over ones’ life...

Apparently socialism encourages surly waitstaff and food that tastes like it just came out of the freezer. The good news is I've had drinks there half of dozen times and as bar Marx Cafe works very well. They have several beers on tap, including Chimay and Guinness (although they often run out)

Scarcity. Something these patrons who might imagine for a moment that Marxism has some virtues have never known thanks to Capitalism, where even the poorest in America were living better than the average Soviet citizen.

As for the booby hatch in New York, the Times of course gushed since their haughty selves who refused to seem moved by lowbrow celeb distraction seem also to be easily moved by lowbrow celeb distraction:

“In a perfect world, socialism means everyone is equal,” said the club’s owner, Armin Amiri, who spent five years buffing and rebuffing egos while manning the door at Bungalow 8.

He’s recruited the TV producer Ben Silverman, Harvey Weinstein and Sting and his wife, Trudie Styler, to invest, and Giuseppe Cipriani to create the menu for Socialista’s ground-floor restaurant. And though Mr. Amiri admits that gaining entrance to the upstairs lounge is a long shot for most, he says that once you are inside, celebrity and money hold no special privilege. “If they come, fine, but there is no baby-sitting here,” he said.

Indeed, the hard knocks of elitism built on equality were on view on a recent Friday night. Loads of fancy-dressed hopefuls, arriving in chauffeured BMWs, S.U.V.’s and limousines, were turned away. “I have a bicycle,” Mr. Amiri said. “I don’t care what car you drive. It’s all about energy, attitude and personal style.”

To correct Mr. Amiri, it was about absolutely none of those things unless you call forced conformity and oppression “energy, attitude and personal style”.



Diversity and free thinking: school kids in the DDR who have a school period on “solidarity” with “Kampuchea” pitying the Cambodian childrens' pre-Pol-Pot days of labor.

What evil in the world does one Frenchman decry? "One of the most offensive slurs ever used in the French-bashing orgy that started in 2003"

I don't "disagree" with SuperFrenchie. What I don't like are his double standards.

"Me, I think that what’s insulting is the expression [cheese-eating surrender monkies] in the first place." Really, SuperFrenchie? Is that so? Well, I have lived in France for over 10 years, and I don't know how many times I have heard such charming expressions as "Les Américains, c'est de la merde!" (The day before yesterday encore, at a café near le Parc Monceau, it was "Are you American? (pause) You should be ashamed of yourself.")

But what is really significant is that when you hear such comments, whether in leftist, in rightist, or in centrist circles, is how regularly everybody else seems to take such an ugly attitude as "normal"; i.e., no other Frenchman rushes in to confront the guy (or the gal) or even just to try to tone things down. (At those times, people did not know I was American, of course (or half-American). So among the things that SuperFrenchie (or any average Frenchman) does NOT tell you about France is what the French say behind Americans' (and others') backs.)

In fact, SuperFrenchie goes nigh berserk about "one of the most offensive [slurs] ever used in the French-bashing orgy that started in 2003". But Frenchmen like him will do little if anything about the pervasiveness of anti-Americanism in France, such as the fact that French schools teach children that Americans are nothing if not dumb, clueless, greedy, treacherous, and malevolent. SuperFrenchy goes berserk over "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" and alleged French-bashing, but that a show like Les Guignols is shown daily on French television doesn't bother him one bit! (Aah, c'est pas la même chôôôôôôôse!…)

SuperFrenchie has complained about books by American authors hostile to France. However, in France, they have "got books and editors saying that the main enemy of America has always been France". Is America being the main enemy of (or threat to or danger for) France and, indeed, of all humanity, not what you read about not only in untold French tomes, but in French newspapers day after day, month after month, year after year? Rather than American books being gratuitously anti-French, as Frenchmen allege, the fact that such literature is so ubiquitous in France is — precisely — the reason why a number of books on the subject have come out in America recently.

As to whether there is a difference between French enmity and its American equivalent, one traveled American points out where it lies: "Any criticism of France occurs in small doses and almost never in the mainstream media — unlike the near daily nonsense in the Paris papers."

But even those (small) doses are too much for France!

So: The French dislike being called cheese-eating surrender monkeys. In fact, he wags a finger at us as he smugly says that "calling others animal names is as low as it gets!" But the French like nothing more than calling other people(s) names (whether referring to animals or otherwise). And these names are always taken as nothing more than objective fact. (Thanks to cette rationalité française éternellement lucide.) For instance, God forbid that the charge of the British being the Americans' poodles or of Blair being Bush's poodle be considered an insult in France. It is taken a nothing less than an incontrovertible fact.

To quote Jean-François Revel:

Dans le charmant vocabulaire politique français, on traite Tony Blair de « caniche de Washington » et on multiplie les déclarations arrogantes à l'égard de l'Espagne, de l'Italie, de la Pologne et des autres pays du Vieux Continent qui ont suivi les Américains. C'est la façon délicieuse dont nous méprisons les autres membres de l'Union européenne.

And France's foreign minister (later prime minister Dominique de Villepin!) could write a book likening America to nothing less than a greedy, blood-lusty predator shark. Who in France objected then (and with how much force)? Oh, such a depiction, we must understand, is only an objective (and entirely self-serving) description; oh, so that's perfectly okay…

The constant here is that there is little that les Français love more than to make gratuitous charges against others. But being on the receiving end, and they are far less smug. In other words, they can dish it out, but they can't take it themselves. Indeed, in la société de l'ouverture et du débat, the theory that in one single case (Iraq or any other), the French may have not acted all that courageously cannot even be entertained — even only as a theoretical debating point! — without being immediately, automatically, and (very) angrily refuted offhand.

In fact, while SuperFrenchie says he welcomes "Groening’s regrets[,] I’d say he should have thought of it back in 1995. And I hope he’ll think twice next time before calling me and my family cowards and animal names!" So there you have it: you can call Uncle Sam and/or its allies and/or its capitalists "bloodsuckers" and "poodles", but heaven forbid that a humorist (!) — a humorist who bashes America (conservative, liberal, everything) 100 times more in his TV show than any foreign nationality, French or other — even considers (even considers one single time) that the French acted as cowards or, indeed, that they are anything less than a wonderful people deserving of nothing but praise. This, when France's president (not a humorist — not intentionally, at least) called Eastern Europeans blabbermouths and turncoats qui feraient mieux de se taire.

So there you have the root of the anger: The only response and reaction acceptable to French policies, whether by Americans (neo-cons or other), East Europeans, or other foreigners, is one of gratitude and kowtowing to the people who always are more lucid and always know best…

Indeed, for fear that it may be "misused" in the future, nothing untoward (except in a sympathetic way) must ever be said against les Français (and their culture of… debate), in a tongue-in-cheek way or otherwise…

Nobody in his right mind can fail to notice the difference between French anti-Americanism which has gone on, for decades year in and year out (and even centuries), concerning every subject under the sun, on the one hand and, on the other, the current attitude in the United States, which has far less (hardly anything, in fact) to do with amounting to being a "parodic counterpart of French anti-Americanism" than with the sentiment — real or false — that in the Iraq crisis, Marianne not only refrained from coming to Uncle Sam's help, but that she tried to stick a knife in his back.

John J. Miller and Mark Molesky appear to be doing hardly more than echo L'Ennemi américain, Philippe Roger's study of anti-Americanism in France over the centuries, an anti-Americanism that carries nary a counterpart in the United States vis-à-vis France. Moreover, theirs' is not a book like the one called 50 Good Reasons to Hate Americans, and it certainly has not become best-seller in the U.S. the way the latter has in France.

In contrast to the constant attacks on Uncle Sam in le Hexagone, how many quotes can you find from American leaders and the élite towards France? Before 2002-2003 — as SuperFrenchie states himself! — not many. And, more importantly, insofar as anti-French quotations can be found (and I can't think of any), to what extent does the leader owe his popularity (if any) to his anti-French remarks? Mark Twain and Dave Barry have also written about the French in humorous terms (which led to Twain being dubbed a "racist" by BHL!!), and Art Buchwald's first columns (for the New York Herald Tribune's Paris office) are replete with funny observations about France and its inhabitants. Except all three also wrote that way about other nationalities, being harshest with… Americans themselves!

The French can dish it out (they love to do so), but they can't take it!

In fact, what is it we always hear: we/they are not against Americans, we/they are only against their leaders and Washington's policies! But Americans — and even Frenchmen! — can not be against only Paris's policies without suffering opprobrium.

Certains prétendent que la marionnette de Stallone ne caricaturerait pas le peuple américain, mais bien leurs dirigeants politiques, les commandants militaires, les chefs des grandes multinationales, etc, et que ce sont contre ces leaders, et non le peuple entier, que l'on se défend… Or, nous avons vu que ce type de discours n'a rien de neuf : il se trouve que ces arguments soutiennent la présente thèse, car en d'autres mots, ses adeptes appellent les leaders américains racistes, barbares, sans sentiments humains, et avides de pouvoir et de dollars. Or, si de tels monstres (le mot n'est pas trop fort) sont au pouvoir depuis un demi-siècle, il s'ensuit logiquement que les sujets qui les ont élus peuvent difficilement être, dans leur vaste majorité, autre chose que… bêtes, avides, racistes, ou tout du moins (criminellement?) inconscients, et donc qu'ils sont quelque part, eux aussi — directement ou indirectement —, des monstres.

To say that that is not the same thing is deliberate hypocrisy; the number of times I have heard people say (with a self-righteous sniff) they did not like Americans or there was no way they would ever spend a vacation in the United States proves it so. But they will never tell you that outright.

Or they will add: "Oh but you have to understand us/those French individuals. It's (only) because what's going on now…" Well, apparently the same thing cannot happen in the opposite direction; nobody should be allowed to understand anger at France without its citizens suffering a major blood pressure going on.

And here is a good point to ask what is it exactly that happened? What is the difference between the "bashing" of the two nations? Here is one answer: French ugly attitudes came about (they have been existing forever, as we have seen) while sitting passively without risks on the sidelines; America's anger comes at somebody sitting on the sidelines offering gratuitous slander (not advice, thank you very much) while their (America's) politicians, their people, and their troops took risks (good ones or ill), took action, and put its citizen (soldier)s in harm's way, i.e., in mortal danger.

To quote Jean-François Revel again:

Les Américains n'auraient pas demandé mieux que d'accepter un partage des responsabilités si la France n'avait pas menacé de brandir son veto au Conseil de sécurité. [Mais] Notre ministre des Affaires étrangères s'est transformé en commis voyageur, en Afrique notamment, pour inciter à voter contre les États-Unis. Ce fut une faute de goût considérable. Autant la France avait le droit de dire « non, je n'approuve pas l'intervention militaire pour le moment et je ne m'y associerai pas », autant elle n'aurait pas dû se muer en centrale de propagande antiaméricaine…

One Frenchman once said that jokes about France during the Iraq crisis hurt. They hurt the French. The French feel hurt.

In other words, according to those poor things, the Yanks were/are not only duplicitous and treacherous, they are insensitive and rude, those clueless clods.

Wait a minute, do you mind if we get real here? For just a moment?

How do you think Americans feel for being called imperialist? For being called duplicitous? For being called treacherous?

How do you think Americans feel for hearing, Yes, of course 9/11 was a tragedy, but, somehow, somewhere, they deserved it…

Oh, that's not being insensitive. That's being intelligent and lucide! I see… (It's just a total coincidence, I suppose, that being lucide happens to mean slamming the American government's position and being pretty much in total symbiosis with the French government's policies…)

And how about America's allies in the Coalition. How do you think they feel for being called poodles? And for being told, ils feraient mieux de se taire?

While we're at it, how do you think the Iraqis feel about the various peace activists, governments as well as individuals, who opposed the American action? What about the Iraqi people's hurt? Isn't it slightly more important than that of the French?

Because the difference with the members of the so-called "peace camp" is that while the latter remained passive, the Americans and their allies took action. Whether or not you agree with their policy, they put their soldiers into harm's way. (As for the leaders themselves, you can hardly deny that, at the very least, they took unpopular — and electoral — risks in making the popularity-defying decisions they did.) The hurt the troops risk suffering is somewhat of a more poignant type than that which members of the peace camp have the luxury of haughtily complaining about from the comfort of their living rooms (or government offices or computer desks).

And you complain of the hurt suffered by the French?!

Stop Trying To 'Save' Africa

What with Sarkozy's trip to Africa including visits with Libya's Kaddhafi and Gabon's Bongo, not all Frenchmen, including Le Monde and many of its readers, are convinced that the president is really operating a break with the past, at least as far as Françafrique (French Africa) is concerned…



While Jean-Michel Bezat files a report from Angola called Babel- on-the-Sea, a Nigerian writer named Uzodinma Iweala pens an opinion piece entitled Stop Trying To 'Save' Africa.

Subject: History Lesson 101

Humans originally existed as members of small bands of nomadic hunters/gatherers

says an email from Kae.

They lived on deer in the mountains during the summer and
would go to the coast and live on fish and lobster in the winter.

The two most important events in all of history were the invention of beer and the invention of the wheel. The wheel was invented to get man to the beer more quickly. These were the foundation of modern civilization and together were the catalyst for the splitting of humanity into two distinct subgroups:

1. Liberals, and
2. Conservatives.

Once beer was discovered, it required grain and that was the beginning of agriculture. Neither the glass bottle nor aluminum can were invented yet, so while our early humans were sitting around waiting for them to be invented, they just stayed close to the brewery. That's how villages were formed.

Some men spent their days tracking and killing animals to BBQ at night while they were drinking beer. This was the beginning of what is now known as the Conservative movement.

Other men - who were weaker and less skilled at hunting - learned to live off the conservatives by showing up for the nightly BBQs and doing the sewing, fetching, hair dressing, and dancing around the fire. This was the beginning of the Liberal movement. (Some of these liberal men eventually evolved into women. The rest became known as girlie-men.)

Some noteworthy liberal achievements include the domestication of cats, the invention of group therapy, group hugs, and the concept of Democratic voting to decide how to divide the meat and beer that conservatives provided.

Over the years conservatives came to be symbolized by the largest, most powerful land animal on earth, the elephant.

Liberals are symbolized by the jackass.

Modern liberals like imported beer (with a slice of lime), but most prefer white wine or imported bottled water. They eat raw fish, but like their beef well done. Sushi, tofu, and French food are standard liberal fare.

Another interesting evolutionary side note: most liberal women have higher testosterone levels than their men. Most social workers, personal injury attorneys, journalists, dreamers in Hollywood, and group therapists are liberals.

Liberals invented the designated hitter rule in baseball because it wasn't fair to make the pitcher also bat.

Conservatives drink domestic beer. They eat red meat and still provide for their women. Conservatives are big game hunters, rodeo cowboys, lumberjacks, pipe fitters, plumbers, construction workers, firemen, medical doctors, police officers, corporate executives, athletes, Marines, and generally anyone who works productively. Conservatives who own companies try to hire other conservatives who want to work for a living.

Liberals produce little or nothing. They like to govern the producers and decide what to do with the production. Liberals believe Europeans are more enlightened than Americans. That is why most of the liberals remained in Europe when conservatives were coming to America. They crept in after the Wild West was tamed and created a business of trying to get more for nothing.

Here ends today's lesson in world history. It should be noted that a Liberal may have a momentary urge to angrily respond to the above before forwarding it. A Conservative will simply laugh and be so convinced of the absolute truth of this history that it will be forwarded immediately to other true believers and to more liberals just to piss them off.

We cannot change our past but we can start now to affect our future by how we handle the present.

Meet the Press Provisional Wing of the Peace Movement

Even with Blair’s departure from № 10, the unquestioning nodding poodles of the Jihad will not let the poodle meme rest. It’s probably the only one that they are intelligent enough to grasp.



Bush: ...Do you want to be the special mediator for the middle east?...
Vulgar Blair-as-poodle caricature:Oh yes - I will!

Deutchland

No, you may NOT think for yourself. And yes, if anything about your business seems American you will be singled out. Otherwise, no. That's what makes these "campaigners" far more sophisticated, sensitive, and thoughtful than you and me. In fact they're superior in every way.

Taking the fight to the enemy

McDonalds is opening up a branch in hostile territory.

The Just Called to Say They Hate You - Teil Zwei

Pinocchio’s nose crosses the line under a banner saying:
”Presidential election 2007“

Sarko, le faux ami

The Dissident Frogman takes on the 9-11 Truther that is a member of Sarkozy's cabinet.

Outrage Spared Due to Nationality

It took 480,000 homes to have their power cut off to get Gordon Brown to take a 15 minute helicopter overflight, (on July 23rd, when the flooding started in late June) and the outrage reserved, even by Britons themselves of George Bush is not meted out for this true miserable failure. All-knowing, all-feeling Euro-citizens in the bucolic countryside found lowering themselves to New Orleanian looter Katrinaesque behavior:

In Gloucestershire, where fresh water supplies have been cut after contamination from flooding, there was anger among residents after emergency bowsers were vandalised, leaving families without drinking water.

Yobs were accused of urinating and tipping bleach into supplies, deliberately running them dry and even having water fights.

Residents also complained that not enough water was being brought in. Some reported having to visit as many as 50 bowsers before they could find one with water in it.

Though the old standby of blaming global warming popped up like a gopher, George Bush has yet to be blamed. Give them time. They’ll find a way.

Back to the frame of reference... That elephant in the room... Katrina showed more than anything else that in parts of American urban society some have been made helpless by welfare and class hatred. In disarmed, sensitized, and socialized Britain, nearly everyone is.
Good luck with all that.

The truth about Villepin's poetry

Not the poet laureate that he claimed to be.

100 years of cretinitude

Fuck Allende. His undoing was a true example of magical realism.