Saturday, August 18, 2007

Plantu is a Bigot

By that standard, would he caricature Rutger Hauer by putting him in wooden shoes?

I dare him to find even ONE Japanese woman who sees herself this way:

" Seven Japanese automakers accept a settlement in a lawsuit to compensate people for the harm done by pollution. "
After all, people don’t kill people, guns kill people. So by extension, cars pollute because people don’t have any free will of their own. Not in the well managed asylum Europeans like this strive for.

Soviet Sanitarium Redux

In today’s Le Figaro, Thibaut Danancher covers the story of one woman’s treatment by Paris’ city hall when she complained about vandalism and crime in her neighborhood in the 18th arrondissement: they referred her for Psychiatrist treatment:
By opening her mail last Saturday, Sylvia Bourdon discovered that it was invited to go to consult a psychiatrist at the Maison-Blanche hospital in Paris. An appointment planned for August 20 at 2 p.m. Subject of the consultaion: emails sent to the ministry for the Interior “to complain about what occurred in my neighborhood”.

Sylvia Bourdon then decides to take the things into her own hands. She created several blogs to denounce “this chaotic ghetto, this busted-up crime-ridden capital”. She spent June 14th at the window of her apartment taking photographs of what she qualifies as “persistent criminal activity”.

Tracked down by ten young men, her apartment was broken into a few days later. She had it. So much so that she sent angry emails to senior people at the Ministry for the Interior just to ask them to ensure her safety.


On one blog Sylvia Bourdon, a former porn and horror/ B-movie actress is shown to have been given the ultimate Scarlet Letter and being outed as some sort of xenophobe and racist, presumably for wanting to be able to walk safely down the street in a City in a Nation that won’t shut up about the wonders of its’ social model. In Paris, even when an argument to support someone’s views hints at any of this, the characterization becomes the kiss of death.
Last Saturday she received a letter which made it all clear to her: “Due to the various emails which you addressed to the Ministry of the Interior, the proper authorities required of us to contact you. If you wish, we can set up an appointment [with a Psychitarist] for you. I propose Monday August 20, 2007 at 2 p.m”, wrote someone from the hospital.

This last email was acted on at the request of the office of Mental Health Action of the Paris Police Prefecture, in particular the office responsible for involuntary admissions.

[ ... ]

Angered, Sylvia Bourdon has decided to leave Paris and France altogether. She announced that she will be migrating permanently to Greece in the fist half of 2008.
There goes the neighborhood. After all if you can’t cart off the citizens who speak up, what’s left?

- Hat-tip to Carine

Friday, August 17, 2007

Maybe Delanoë will make him an honorary resident of Paris à la Mumia

For Le Monde Al Jazeera on the Seine, Jose Padilla's guilty verdict symbolizes the excesses of America's war on terror.

It’s, like, all About the Environment, Dude

Which of course it isn’t. Not when you live in an apartment in a former industrial district, use a “macbook” (if you can even figure that out) and think that your over promoted, totally exploited thing is actually about “smashing PR” or “casseurs de pub”



And making America into a green Cyclopse, of course.

Today, they’re out on a marching protest to promote the act of walking! I’ll bet you didn’t know that big oil is trying to buy up peoples’ feet, did ya?!? You can smell the mendacity from here.

Thursday, August 16, 2007

Zapatero’s Defense of Cuban Regime Explained

Socialists seeking youthful “solidarity”:

by all accounts, the country is a major destination for sex tourism, including child sex tourism. Cuba's thriving sex trade caters to thousands of European, Canadian, and Latin American tourists every year, and involves large numbers of Cuban girls and boys, some as young as 12. State-run hotel workers, travel employees, cab drivers, hospitality staff, and police steer tourists to prostituted women and children and facilitate the commercial sexual exploitation of these women and children.
Thousands of these lucid and thoughtful types are licking their chops over the revolution and class struggle no doubt.

It’s Becoming the Anus of Civilization

Pretend provocation, pretend sensitivity: This cartoon was published the day after the Feast of the Assumption, not that it really means much to your average Le Monde reader numb to the genuine beliefs of others. That very fake form of concern by way of telling oneself how fair one is, is the first step to not realizing how offensive this (and they) really are.

Virgin Mary matronly EU apparition: "What? The French only have 9 weeks of summer vacation and Bulgarians get 16? I foresee strikes at back-to-school time!"
Vacationers (who look like Plantu’s derisive characterization of Americans:"No-one will belive us."
The EU angle? There isn’t one. I suppose he’s trying to imply something about either traditional France or the EU commenting on the horrible “Anglo-Saxon-like” mechanization of their lives through the mere realization that there are schoolkids in Europe who get more vacation than they do.

News-people thinking that their own work is news. The public is predictably expected to bang their spoons on their high-chairs yelling “Me Me Me!” But this all comes out of a news item Le Monde brought out itself by reporting a survey of some of nationally mandated school schedules in Europe. More than one EUvian? Then think of it somehow connected with the EU and therefore paint it as a criticism... somehow.
In fact none of it is the case. As with many things the root cause of this great social horror is that someone actually reported it.

Big whoop. It IS in fact an indicator. If you look at the poorest and least intellectually developed or successful parts of Europe and the Middle East, they all have very short school seasons. This is due to a combination of weather and poverty. In fact in Germany, the summer school break used to be limited by law to 45 days or so. Their point of pride at the time were that Gerd and Uta were not dimwits. Meanwhile let’s teach François and Ingrid to demand more of something from the anonymous, objectifiable, all-powerful “other”

So, like all fake issues and fake buzz, how far can these detached Parisian take this? Invent a fake social problem, nay, a plague dogging their very lives! Serguei:

Girl on phone: "I’m in school in Denmark, François."
Surfer (too old to be a schoolkid anyway): "Maybe next year then, Ingrid."
Cupid: "That’s not the way to construct a single Europe."
Conclusion: the government and the rest of society should be responsible for your love lives, and that Anschluß unification means that Bulgarians and Danes should be forced to do as you.

Hence the title.

Where You Are Officially Free to Conform




... ”New idea: he fights against the evil power, but we'll make it less historically heavy and he can become the Harry Potter of the 1940s.” ...

... “Brilliant Mr. Cruise!” ...
Many Germans have been fearful of Tom Cruise, citing their own puzzling obsession with Scientology. If it wasn’t a religion, I’m sure many EUvians would surely ignore it with the same passivity they have for subcultures that actually cause harm.

Kerouac thinks they're pussies

While the French, like so many deers caught in the head lights, flip out over what's going down in financial markets (today's Libération PropagandaStaffel tells them how market swings will affect them on a daily basis without the slightest hint of how they might get a grip and benefit from such swings) -- Jack Kerouac (currently featured on a Le Monde Al Jazeera on the Seine blog) has a message for them ...


"Accept loss forever."

Cultural Awareness Day

For those of you who might have forgotten just how McDo-like the imposition of European culture really is, let us all sing, then kumbaya.

Staging the News: Magic Bullet Theories

AFP at it’s worst. I’ll leave finding the hook in this one to you.

"An elderly Iraqi woman shows two bullets which she says hit her house following an early coalition forces raid in the predominantly Shiite Baghdad suburb of Sadr City."
BAD coalition! BAD! NO-ONE else is BAD. (Hint: note condition of said rounds, and the bogus nature of the way the photo and the story was staged.)

- Thanky-thanky to Kevin

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Confusion Over Which Petty Demand to Get Worked Up About

Ahead of a very flat piece about the American treatment of the poor little Iranian National Guard (“Les Gardiens” – they support the troops, you see...) comes a confused story about France lagging behind in the number of days kids are in school per year. Since it’s about “les congés d'été” and not these kids growing to be as smart as your average speedbump, their deference must be toward the class-struggle angle of these brats only getting however much of this thing they like to think of as a grand national tradition, only to find out that a bunch of other European countries, all less developed, get more.

Décroisse it on up, baby!

Dar el Harb

Preferring Jihadi total war, hacking “Cyber Protestors” post Anti-American invective on a UN website, of all places.

A page usually used to display statements from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon was yesterday showing remarks accusing the US and Israel of killing children.

The message on the site read: “Hey Ysrail and Usa don’t kill children and other people Peace for ever No war.”

Security experts believe a group of hackers known as Cyber Protest was behind the attack. The malicious users called themselves “Gsy”, “kerem125” and “M0sted”.
It’s a good thing that they’re idiots too:
the group, one of whom is from Turkey, has allegedly hacked into other sites, including those of the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, the University of California and the Japanese car manufacturer Toyota.
Ooh, Sass-ay!

"We were trapped by the French musically correct"

The duo Rita Mitsouko unloaded a double barrelled assault on the French music industry in an interview in the hyper politically-correct Télérama of all places. They slammed French musicians in general for being too intellectual, anti-American and pro-Diversity to a fault. They targeted French rappers in particular for being anti-Western Civilisation and anti-White. This is some pretty heavy stuff coming from a duo long considered to be Oh-so-hip.

Éminence grisaille

Jack-of-all-Trades consultant, philosopher, and blowhard extraordinaire, French Secular High Priest to the 5th Republic Jacques Attali blubbers some easy fluff about the current financial market turbulence and states that it is all the fault of US banks and their scandalous lending practices. Guess his investment portfolio took a hit. Either that or he's on the rag.


He has some BNP "funds" to unload.

Libération PropagandaStaffel bemoans the lack of regulation and the
increase of competition among financial markets. It's true that the French know all about regulation and very little about competition.

So Much for Those Leisurely Sunday Strolls

A vacationing Italian sportscaster/journalist was murdered on Sunday afternoon by two petty thieves in the 15th arrondissement at the Bir-Hakim (above ground) Metro station.

Sergio Vantaggiato, a journalist for Italian television on vacation in Paris, was attacked by two people who stole his backpack on Sunday in a accessway of Bir-Hakeim station. The man in his 40s died of his wounds.
It’s an otherwise decent neighborhood where I once lived. The irony is that the French press will take little notice of Parisian gangbangers in favor of 24/7 coverage of crime in America. The source for this story?: the only Parisian paper with a shred of integrity.

Libération sat on the story until Tuesday afternoon. That must mean that there can't be much crime, I guess.

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Sonderkommando „Frieden” 2.0





It takes a special kind of amoral nature and stupidity to think this up, and parade around calling it kunst, with that detachment from decency that let’s one use the subject of a murderous micro-sect who were the wholly owned flunkies of the KGB as part of one’s attention-seeking behavior:
Today they'd probably form a rock group rather than a political one, and Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof and Gudrun Ensslin would play death metal rather than live it till their deaths. On the stage of Hamburg's Thalia Theater, the RAF veterans have reformed as an OAP band. One standing on a tripod, the other on a dolly, the two erstwhile rivals Gundrun and Ulrike wobble towards each other. Physically disintegrating but ideologically in tact, the RAF setptuageneriennes pose with their Andy, who can no longer close his biker jacket round his belly of affluence, Bond girls and their manchild with the golden Colt, fighting more over him than for a new world order. From the bitch fight with poisoned love, a menage sentimentale
Behold: gentle, lucid, humane, and solidaristic EUtopia. The idea that those happy go lucky terrorists wanting to be in nothing more than a band if they were running around today is undermined by the fact that they weren’t a band THEN. In fact if they were “Active” today, they’d be Jihad-and-kill-the-system-symps like Richard Reed, David Hicks, John Walker Lindh, Adam Yahiye Gadahn (a.k.a. Adam Perlman) and the “European Citizens” in Gitmo.

Méchant et pingre

Yep, sounds like the French.

Nidra Poller covers French media coverage of Sarko's lunch with Dubya.

"So, my friends, that’s how it was reported over here. Mainly mean and stingy. But don’t think you’re friends with yourselves alone. There are a whole lot of French people over here who would be glad to share hot dogs & hamburgers with you…if only they could get a word in edgewise."

The truth is out there

Surprise, surprise. There are a few ideologically challenged Europeans who can no longer hide the truth.


"The 'Hands of Victory' in Baghdad's Green Zone: The US military is more successful in Iraq than the world wants to believe.

Eurospin

"Europe had a lot of explaining to do last night on its conference call with analysts. The continent announced 2nd quarter growth that was slower than what had been forecast. What's more, the continent never gave a pre-announcement warning, leaving investors feeling blindsided. Of course, leaders tried to put an optimistic spin on things, citing seasonality and deal timing for the shortfall."

It’s not About what you Believe. In Europe it’s About who you are

Meet their gentle, thoughtful citizenry:

The European Jewish Press reported Monday that she was attacked in front of her house by two youths of "African origin" wearing hoods and scarves to cover their faces. One of the two was later arrested by police and taken into custody.

They shouted "You dirty Jew" at the woman before stealing the mobile phone she was using and beating her violently about the head and body, the EJP reported
These model citizens will no doubt get a stern, paternalistic talking to, but I’m sure it will stop just short of mattering to them.

There’s Always Hope in his Imaginary Universe

Georges Bouche: ... “Sometimes we think of you as Superman” ...
Sarko: ... “Thanks. That’s kind of you” ...
Georges Boosh: ... “Except – I’m Superman” ...
Imagine the number of delusions you need to harbor to nod dumbly at the sight of today’s scribble by Pancho

Monday, August 13, 2007

Everyone’s a Critic

Everyone’s a comedian

Opinions are like...

Um:

DES DIZAINES d'impacts de balles sur les murs, sur des voitures et sur la vitrine d'une banque voisine... Voilà ce qu'il restait de « la plus impressionnante fusillade de ces dernières années à Paris » - dixit un policier -, hier devant la boîte de nuit Plaza Madeleine, dans les beaux quartiers de la capitale.
or, as it were:
TENS of rounds hit the walls, cars, and the window of a bank...

Here are what remains of “the most impressive shootout of these last few years in Paris” a police officer said -, yesterday in front of the Plaza Madeleine night club, in the beautiful part of the capital.
Look, I’m impressed too, but I don’t think it’s the right time to dwell on their style or get too hung up on the stats.

Slow news day

So Libération PropagandaStaffel let loose with their "Decline of the American Empire" issue. All the news that's fit to print on how the US is history and how a France-led EU is ready to take its place. <insert_yawn_here/>

French socialized medecine watch

In France, where more and more dentists are proposing root canal treatment for simple cavities (some dentists are even teaming up with consumer credit agencies to better milk the clientele -- think "subprime dental"), patients are looking East to receive decent and affordable dental care. Specialized travel agencies have sprung up that provide dental junkets to Hungary for struggling French.

Great Moments in French House Music History

Summer musical interlude.

Alex Gopher, Party People.

All the News That’s Fit to Ignore for 16 Months

August 2007: frothing cartoonist Pancho finally gets all worked up about the Hamas-Fatah split.



Pancho finally noticing the Palestinian Civil War
that started brewing in March 2006

French hatred continues unabated

The lunch didn't go down too well. Sarko is scolded by both the French Left and the Right. As we have seen with a certain French Hate Site, these are pavlovian animalistic reactions.

Comparative Dictatorship 101

We have so much to thank Europeans for.

Sunday, August 12, 2007

Shoot out at Place de la Madeleine

Bandits armed with kalashnikovs rip off an after nightclub and shoot it out with police in Central Paris at 5AM this morning. One bystander was hurt.

Même face, même race

"I Hate My French Bank" is a group on Facebook.

To be run by a Frenchman, of course

As the subprime situation plays itself out, the remaining hacks at Libération PropagandaStaffel (those who have not B-lined over to Rue89) are calling for a new "world economic government" that would make those French economic girlie men feel more secure.

Great Moments in French House Music History

Etienne de Crecy, Am I Wrong ...

A French musical statement against American fast food, McJobs, and obesity.