Katrina Hypocrisy to the Tenth Power

Like lefties’ erstwhile cause celèbre of post-Katrina New Orleans (not post-Katrina Mobile, Alabama, mind you), many Greeks tend to wallow in conspiracy theories and blame incessantly at the top of their voices.

But that’s where the similarities end. Within 48 hours there were more helicopters in the skies of New Orleans than could safely operate in civilian airspace. After more than a month of forest fires in Greece, the EU finally shows up for some PR and to toss some of their subjects a pittance, so long as it’s highly visible. That’s because they’re better people than you and me.

Perennial Whine-fest

Every year summer vacation ends. Every year kids go back to school. Every year parents have to get them school supplies. Cluebat: It’s why merchants have been competing with one another with “back to school” sales since Meseopotamians have put stick to clay, and little snot-nosed boys have been pulling the pony tails of snot nosed girls.

With kids returning to school, it’s time to buy school supplies. An investment which weighs heavily on the family budget.

Waaaah!!!! If you can recall, the nation’s brain was fairly sure that the Virgin Mary doesn’t really think kids should go back to school at all.

Like the other hypermarkets, Carrefour has been preparing for the return to school for several weeks. Setting it up has been going on since mid-July. “We hired five more people for two months”, said Christophe Chenevier, who is in charge of non-food sales. It is one of strong times of the year. In turnover, it’s equivalent to the sale of toys in December. ”From simple fountain pen ink cartridges to large dictionaries, hundreds of items are available.” To make life easier for customers, Carrefour Saint-Malo proposes a new service: “Come in with your shopping list and we’ll fill out your order for free in 72 hours. More people need to do this, it’s a real time saver.”

An aside: this ad brought to you free by the local paper – and one of the less dishonest ones at that.

Do these parents think that their kids don’t need pens and paper? The population at large is already paying for their schooling. Do these people think that their neighbors have to be responsible for what amounts to the kids’ personal property?

I’m sure you remember what condition the schoolbooks you didn’t have to buy were in. Reason: the kids knew that they were not theirs. It’s also why teachers had to inspect your book covers – so you’d learn something about taking care of things in spite of disinvolved inattentive parents.

But in only a few very “special” places are parents culturally acclimated to complain about it, showing that they don’t value education or take a stake in it. Not only are they extending the cultural exception to the personal one, they’re making one hell of an example for their kids, initiating them into the culture of complaint and personal passivity.

Never mind why “Johnny can’t read,” with every display of parental blubbering, Johnny can’t imagine doing relatively simple things for himself. Good luck with all that.

They aren’t alone in this - in the US, they observe this problem dominating in the ghetto, but not largely with the general population.

Encore des pingreries franchouilles

France to cut back on contributions to the UN's Global Fund to Fight AIDS? Pas étonnant qu'on n'a pas les moyens.

De la merde entre les deux oreilles

French arthouse veneer over a heaping pile of anti-Americanism. Starring a typical French broad: "Some things I forgot because it was just too much." Connasse.

Gosplan 2.0

Planned obsolescence.

Another Protest of Bronislaw Geremek's That Will Not Earn the Pole a Spot on the Front Page of Le Monde

Today the European Parliament will act as the host to a conference held by the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP). Despite the neutrally sounding title of its conference, CEIRPP has a proven record of anti-Israel bias, spreading propaganda that presents only the Palestinian narrative, including the delegitimization of Israel - a UN member state.

The CEIRPP casts a shadow on the UN role in the Middle East conflict and is first and foremost harmful to the UN. Its work only reinforces a long held Israeli suspicion vis-a-vis the UN and contributes nothing to the cause of peace. A recent example is a plan of action calling for boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel.

Will today's conference, in the halls of the European Parliament, issue similar directives? Though of little practical consequence, this conference, especially under the banner and auspices of the European Parliament, will harm the cause of peace and also damage European credibility as an honest broker.

We are told that Parliament is merely letting CEIRPP use its premises. Surely, the European Parliament is not just a convention center. As Members of the European Parliament, we are shocked that this biased event would take place within our institutional premises.

Several colleagues have already announced they will boycott the conference. We hope many more will join in condemning this event and call on the presidency to reconsider the damaging consequences this event will have for our institution. Behind the neutral banner of a UN committee and the seemingly respectable goals of this conference there lurks a biased agenda of radical anti-Israel organizations. The European Parliament should not give them a platform in the only representative body of the European Union, whose goals are to foster dialogue and understanding, not acrimony, mistrust and despair.

Frédérique Ries, Belgium, Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe
Bronislaw Geremek, Poland, Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe
Patrick Gaubert, France, European People's Party
Bernard Lehideux, France, Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe
Sarah Ludford, Britain, Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe
Marek Siwiec, Poland, European Socialist Party
Charles Tannock, Britain, European People's Party

The International Herald Tribune-published text entitled The wrong platform, signed by seven members of the European Parliament, represents yet another protest which is not among those that will earn Bronislaw Geremek a spot on the front page of Le Monde. (You could call it… the wrong platform…)

Tourette's Syndrome? "The European America-bashers launch free-associative rants that would be irritating if they were not ultimately so hilarious"

The signature moment in The Anti-Americans (a hate/love relationship) comes during a series of interviews with irate French citizens blathering on about how McDonald's is oppressing their country

writes Glenn Garvin in the Miami Herald (merci à Jay).

Though, one woman adds sternly, it won't last forever: ''We threw out the Germans, we'll throw out the Americans, too.'' Asks the interviewer in astonishment: ''The French threw out the Germans?'' Well, the Frenchwoman replies airily, ''you Americans helped a little.'' How long before we see a Jean-Luc Godard film in which Charles de Gaulle saves Private Ryan?

So it goes in The Anti-Americans, a sly and maliciously funny documentary airing as part of the PBS film series America At A Crossroads on the post-9/11 world. Like victims of some weird political form of Tourette's Syndrome, the European America-bashers launch free-associative rants that would be irritating if they were not ultimately so hilarious.

"The woman is almost always the first victim of a dictatorship"

There is another disturbing current in [Mario] Vargas Llosa's work that is less often discussed--mistreatment of women, ranging from disrespect to outright violence

writes Emily Parker in an interview with the Peruvian writer that seems to put the lie to the tale that in Saddam's Iraq, "at least" women were free and had rights.

The abuses are particularly horrifying in "The Feast of the Goat," a novel based on the life of Rafael Trujillo, the dictator who terrorized the Dominican Republic from 1930 to 1961. Mr. Vargas Llosa describes traveling to the Dominican Republic and being stunned to hear stories of peasants offering their own daughters as "gifts" to the lustful tyrant. Trujillo and his sons, he tells me, could abuse any woman of any social class with absolute impunity. The situation in the Dominican Republic, which he refers to as a "laboratory of horrors," may have tended toward the extreme, but it underscores a larger trend: "The woman is almost always the first victim of a dictatorship."

Mr. Vargas Llosa discovered that this phenomenon was hardly limited to Latin America. "I went to Iraq after the invasion," he tells me. "When I heard stories about the sons of Saddam Hussein, it seemed like I was in the Dominican Republic, hearing stories about the sons of Trujillo! That women would be taken from the street, put in automobiles and simply presented like objects. . . . The phenomenon was very similar, even with such different cultures and religions." He concludes: "Brutality takes the same form in dictatorial regimes."

Did this mean that Mr. Vargas Llosa supported the invasion of Iraq? "I was against it at the beginning," he says. But then he went to Iraq and heard accounts of life under Saddam Hussein. "Because there has been so much opposition to the war, already one forgets that this was one of the most monstrous dictatorships that humanity has ever seen, comparable to that of Hitler, or Stalin." He changed his mind about the invasion: "Iraq is better without Saddam Hussein than with Saddam Hussein. Without a doubt."

Media Moron Describes Recent Gang Violence in Paris as « A L’Américaine »

Which is secret code for not wanting to admit how normal and traditional it is.



« Les loups sont entrés dans Paris » / “The wolves have entered Paris” but not on the TGV as they’re trying to imply.

-Danke Schön zu Hervé

Mexican 300

"This...is MEXICO!"

Posted Aug 22, 2007

France: a new reality based community?

More on French foreign policy:

"There is a third idea, not articulated, but which seems to be guiding this new diplomacy: a fresh pragmatism, based on a more realistic assessment of France's rank, and a touch of opportunism. In his entire speech, Mr Sarkozy mentioned neither French grandeur nor gloire, both staples of Chirac-era discourse, preferring less ambitious terms such as France's “influence” and “role”. "

Who's afraid of Google?

You mean, besides the French?

Ça fait drole

Wow, imagine France doing something other than ankle biting.

"Nicolas Sarkozy made headlines this week by telling his diplomatic corps that 'an Iran with nuclear weapons is for me unacceptable.' But the French President did more in his speech than name the gravest current threat to global security, itself a feat of clear thinking. He also signaled that France means to be something more on the international scene than an anti-American nuisance player."

“But Officer, I Need To Hack My Way Home Through The Tall Grasses!!!”

Nouvel Observateur reports that:

Thirty people were arrested Monday night in the 18th arrondissement of Paris after brawls and armed violence between rival gangs, reported the police on Tuesday August 28th.
Six individuals, mainly from Hauts-de-Seine, were taken into police custody at the urban police task force (PUP) station which sees in this outburst a link with incidents on Sunday at Gare du Nord.

“Armed with machetes and kitchen knives”

Two people had been slightly wounded, probably with blunt instruments in the gang fight early in the evening inside the Gare du Nord station on Sunday. Three of the suspects were stopped shortly thereafter and placed in police custody.

You just wait. Before you know it, these punks will be learning to use stone, and then maybe even bronze tools.

The Wolfman Bites Again

Once upon a time, it was the New Soviet Man. Today, it’s the New Ecological Person, living in the New Sustainable Society. The new person is perfect because he consumes nothing.

Again, Gary Wolf takes up the subjects of civilization and the New Ecological Person…

Make the myths

Got Döner?

Eat your heart out, and don’t forger that hot ajvar stuff while you're at it.

- It’s always an after-party
at Observing Hermann

There are alot of French who would give anything to be poor in America

You haven't seen poor until you've seen French SDF-RMI-smicard-crevard poor.

Foot in mouth disease

This French "star" has it.

No surprise here

Racist attacks rise in Europe, says EU report:

These increases were recorded in Britain, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Poland and Slovakia ...

Fallout Boy

The fallout continues from the Dissident Frogman's ridiculing of the oh-so-venerable Agence Fwance Presse.



AFP is used to setting themselves up for ridicule.

Thank you Bill O'Reilly

Back in May, when Guy Millière appeared on "88 Minutes", political talk show on channel Direct 8, he confirmed that the French government had greatly underestimated the effects of the boycott of French agricultural goods by American consumers following the Vilpine's little song and dance at the UN. (comments are at 5:41 into the clip, or at 1:10 remaining depending on your viewer).



Part two of the show is here.

Evidence of the old glazzies

French Hate & Snuff Lit front and center at Paris' biggest bookseller: la FNAC Les Halles. Thanks to Xtofer.

Food for Thought

Scattered but interesting. a global politician blames America. Not everyone in America, just some:

This is how the European Union can claim to be the culmination of democracy, while in fact being entirely free from politics. The truth is that, except for a tiny minority of carping malcontents, all respectable Europeans agree on all significant political questions. Europe's educational system has simply done a fantastic job of eradicating dissent.

Fine. But what does this all have to do with anti-Americanism? How can an essentially American tradition be anti-American? This still makes no sense.

The truth, in my opinion, is that Europeans hate not America, but the American government. And they hate not the American government, but the red government - Defense, the White House, and maybe (quite anachronistically these days) the CIA. In other words, they are just like the San Francisco liberal who "loves her country, but doesn't trust her government." The fact that the overwhelming majority of American government employees work for the blue government simply does not occur to her in this context, and nor to the Europeans.

The foreign-policy institution of the blue government is, of course, the State Department - much as the foreign-policy institution of the red government is the Defense Department. So one way to see Europe is as a client state of State - much as Israel is a client state of Defense. No wonder they hate each other!

But only where dissent is eradicated can one find people blaming whole nation. People do, after all, try to find themselves in other people. So then how does one think of whole nations and whole peoples monolithically? By making ones’ society monolithic. In essence, this requires a society to become a minor subset of the state.

Call this touchy-feely cooperative zombie act what you will – nothing good can come of it. Time and again, the group hug became a beer-hall putsch. Time and again, America became an unwilling empire-crusher, either through force of arms, or force of ideas. That is the liberation – the real revolution. The physical and temporal myopia of the liberated standing too close to see the big picture always seem to resent the one who sprung them.

Sarko to the Mullahs: Read My Lips

Sarko lets loose.

"Un Iran doté de l'arme nucléaire est pour moi inacceptable."

"It is unacceptable that Iran obtain nuclear weapons."

... and ...

"Cette démarche est la seule qui puisse nous permettre d'échapper à une alternative catastrophique : la bombe iranienne ou le bombardement de l'Iran."

"This way forward is the only way to avoid a catastrophic choice: the Iranian bomb or the bombardment of Iran."

Isn’t Being Deified By Atheists Sort of Useless?

...” Is it an apparition? ” ...
... “ No, after the collapse it's the ascension. “...

First she was made to look bigger that Jesus Christ and walking on water. Now she’s sort of levitating in a non-specific, east-ish, new agey kind of way. Inasmuch as the Saints are now thought to be the state again and given the role of distributing Welfare checks and school vacations, in the absence of any sort of belief system in anything larger than themselves (and possibly government,) I wouldn’t expect much from this new lefty neo-medieval piety.

Press Distances Self From the Press

Some in the press have joined the rest of civilization in finding most of the press repugnant. What’s makes them register an 11 on hypocrisy index is all right there in the cartoon: a big chunk of the press hate Sarko, and fault him for somehow slavishly having in his thrall the very people who hate him.



Really. It’s time you had a nice little nap.

She makes Susan Sarandon look intelligent

Salope.

Doomed By Their Own World View

US based John O’Sullivan returns to the UK and sees little hope in its’ present social state.

My returning American friends sugar-coat their vacations to me. They enthuse over the historic monuments, the superb theatre, the cathedral cities, the improvement in British cuisine, the precision of the Royal Horse Guards, Fortnum & Mason, and the kindness of almost everyone they met.

Almost everyone? Yes, after a while, they admit sadly to the odd disappointment: the snide anti-American remarks directed at them, the warnings against crime near their hotel, the vomiting young people dominating the centres of every town at night.

"Going to a West End play today is like going to Broadway in the 1970s," said one. "You thread your way past the same sleazy porn shops, over the same junkies, and past the same drunks, except that the swearing doesn't stop when the play starts."

It didn't happen overnight. Breaking down a strong culture of civic self-control takes time and several social acids.

The first such acid was the cultural liberalism generally associated with the 1960s: the attempt to free people from irksome traditional moral customs and the laws that reflected them.

For all the “revolution’s” intent of fostering freedom, all they have made for themselves is precisely the opposite: a nanny state with neither the social ease of a safe street, or the confidence that one can freely air your views.

The result is a fractured, distrustful and disorderly society. And because a diverse society lacks agreed values and standards, governments regulate the behaviour of all, including the law-abiding, to maintain social peace.

Thus, we have far more officials supervising us than in the 1950s, but they are anti-smoking social workers and ethnic diversity officers rather than park wardens.

The police have become little more than the paramilitary wing of The Guardian, sniffing out "racist" or "Islamophobic" attitudes rather than investigating serious crimes that have some "cultural" excuse. Society gradually becomes more governed and less self-governing.

While some call their boorishness “art” others imagine that this is their freedom. In the end what that have to show for it is neither intellectually provocative and enriching nor do they the room to think freely.