Behind the Façades in France: What expats and the mainstream media (French and American alike) fail to notice (or fail to tell you) about French attitudes, principles, values, and official positions…
Saturday, October 06, 2007
Friday, October 05, 2007
Straight talk
What's Behind the Straight Talk
The new French "firmness" begins with a terminological overhaulwrites André Glucksman.
It rejects euphemisms and linguistic taboos. If there is a risk of war, it should not be euphemized. Rather, it should be clearly stated and talked about, precisely to stop any escalation, before reaching the "catastrophic alternative."Speaking of "the implacable strategy of the scorched population", Glucksman goes on to point out that
… Essentially, Kouchner has invited the Europeans to go beyond Moscow's stalling maneuvers at the UN, if necessary. It is said that when the wise man points to the moon, imbeciles only see his finger. When Kouchner talks about "war," many Europeans feel that it is a dirty word fired like a handgun into the subdued atmosphere of respectful negotiations.
We think we know what we are talking about when we speak of "insurgents" and "Iraqization," but we err.
The Spanish guerrilla war against Napoleon, the resistance against Hitler and the anti-colonial insurgencies were first and foremost directed against a foreign army, secondly against "collaborators" and lastly and only sporadically against the people in order to mobilize them by intimidation.
In Iraq, the order of the targets is inversed. American troops are no longer the priority targets. The Americans lost 3,700 of their own in four years. During each of the "hot months" though, over 3,000 Iraqis lost their lives, mainly women and children, blown to pieces not by Americans but by the so-called insurgents. The Americans' frustration is due to the fact that they are facing an adversary who can kill as many of their own as they like, indefinitely, true to the motto "the more of our own we kill, the more you loose."
…Today, homicidal and suicidal bombers are creating the implacable strategy of the scorched population. This is neither a resistance against an invader nor even a civil war, but, more diabolically, a war against the civilian population.None of this moves the Iranian mullahs, who, through the "moderate" former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, have declared themselves willing to sacrifice 15 million of their own for the theological glory of eradicating the Zionist entity, the necessary sine qua non for the universal hunting down of all crusaders and infidels.
The sacrifice of one's own and oneself, the systematic self destruction of a whole people, are not a new and unknown pathology in history. However, none of these butchers, in their fury, had our modern nuclear toys at their disposal.
To recognize this reality is to recognize why Kouchner was right to talk of war.
Bof, on est tellement mieux avec la variétoche franchouille de merde style Voulzy
The Aborigines are Behaving as Badly as ever
I demand a two-state solution:Geneva - Racism in France is "alive, pernicious and most of its victims are French citizens from visible minorities, not immigrants," the UN's independent expert on minority issues said on Monday.
"Because of the colour of their skin, their religion, their surname or their address, these young people in France see no chance of social mobility" said Gay J McDougall, after a ten-day visit to the country.
Thursday, October 04, 2007
Why One Marine Supports the War
Marco Martinez explains the five reasons why he supports the war in Iraq. (They are good enough for me…) Liberals often like to say that "violence is senseless."
That’s wrong.
Violence isn't senseless. Senseless violence is senseless.
Pegasus Prepares for Project 65
The Normandy bridges linking Ranville to Bénouville were the objective of the British 6th Airborne glider infantry, six of whose gliders landed noiselessly shortly after midnight on D-Day, i.e., six to seven hours before the actual seaborne landings started on June 6, 1944.Two years to go, and already the Brits are planning to celebrate the 65th anniversary of Pegasus Bridge with Project 65.
Music to the ears of the left and their preconceived notions about poverty, crime, and military service in America
Avant garde
Croisade vers la Terre Sainte
Un nouvel extrait de Général Leonardo, Tome II :Après avoir "embrigadé" un Leonardo réticent et réquisitionné ses inventions militaires pour une nouvelle Croisade, les forces du Vatican, commandées par le général Scharano, mettent les voiles vers Rhodes, bastion chrétien du Proche Orient assiégé par la redoutable armée ottomane. Mais les soldats du Saint-Siège ne sont pas aussi invincibles que ça, et… il y a comme des airs de trahisons…
Publié aux Éditions Paquet, Croisade vers la Terre Sainte (Général Leonardo, Tome II) est mise en dessins par with le talent exceptionnel de Dan Greenberg, secondé par les couleurs magiques de Fred Vigneau (See the cover in real size and order the book from Amazon)…(PS: in the process of reading the book, don't be too surprized if you chance upon a couple of semi-hidden references to Leonardo the painter's portraits, paintings (famous and less famous), and other works…)
Un autre extrait se trouve en bas de cette page…
État actionnaire et voyou
France, Whose Credibility (and Opposition to Uncle Sam) Is Indispensable to World Peace
Ségolène Royal publishes an op-ed article in Le Monde.Au fond, seul le rapprochement avec Washington donne à la diplomatie de Nicolas Sarkozy un semblant de cohérence. A l'heure où l'Amérique remet en cause ses choix de politique étrangère, à l'heure où le rapport Baker prône une nouvelle approche fondée sur le dialogue plutôt que sur le rapport de force militaire, à l'heure où même nos amis britanniques marquent leurs distances, Nicolas Sarkozy fait le choix de l'atlantisme. C'est une décision lourde de conséquence et pourtant, là encore, nulle explication, aucun débat au Parlement.
Le président de la République serait bien avisé de se ressaisir et de s'inspirer de cette sage recommandation du rapport Védrine : amis, alliés mais pas alignés. C'est en ne cédant pas à la tentation des surenchères et de la politique spectacle que la France, dont la crédibilité est indispensable à la paix du monde, disposera d'une diplomatie forte et écoutée, avant qu'il ne soit trop tard.
When the News Seems to Reflect Negativaly on a Part of Former France, "Louisiana" Becomes "The South"
Remember Hurricane Katrina?Then, in the French press, it was all about Louisiana, all about the former French state, all about the poor helpless victims.
Now that the news concerns alleged racism and racial discrimination (within Louisiana as opposed to from without, i.e., by Bush's federal government) — relating to the Jena 6 — suddenly Annick Cojean reverts to "the South" and to "Southern justice" in the process of spending an entire page assuring us that nothing less than "America's" racism is at work here while using less than half a sentence to write about the arrest (emphasis mine) "of six black high school kids, accused of beating up a white male".
Sleaze-o-nomics
Just when Airbus looked to be finally flying high with a new management structure and a new order from British Airways, dark clouds began to gather Wednesday with the opening stages of a major insider trading investigation.Et encore avec le winky-winky, there are sure to be mentions of it having "shades of Enron", but definately not the fact that even before there was an Enron and for time immemorial, European business executives would steal anything that wasn't bolted down, no matter what harm it did to the economy, and the very society they lived in.
the investigation will focus on 21 executives across the three companies involved, who apparently sold EADS shares with insider knowledge that mounting delays and manufacturing problems in 2005 were becoming insurmountable. When the damage became public in mid-June 2006, after the executives had allegedly completed their stock sales, it caused EADS' share price to fall 26% in one day.The irony is that the people who are screwed by this are mainly small investors and retirees in Europe, and that more than half the reporting on this item comes from outside the "magical kingdom of Shengen."
Peur de Rien
In fact for one lone bookseller far from the beaten
path, the comparisons get even better.
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
More Subtlety than you can Shake a Stick at
The next time you hear some Euro-oration about how different they are that the Americans, accept the fact that it’s true:Retired general Romeo Dallaire slammed France today during testimony at a landmark war crimes trial, saying the country helped those responsible for Rwanda's genocide escape to freedom.
Everybody now, sing it! We are the world! We are the children!Testifying at the trial of Desire Munyaneza, a failed refugee claimant on trial for participating in the genocide, Dallaire said the French "push-back" force ended up helping the killers escape into neighbouring Congo.
Meanwhile, back in charming Quebec, a Frenchman meets the welcome wagon which also has yet to do with anything in the US, but then again France Duh, and France Cinq have yet to report air it as the daily feel-good story at the end of the news.
Gestures, Selfish Acts, Refraining from Thinking Pragmatically, and Feeling Better About Oneself: When Conservatives Act With a Liberal Mindset
Every time someone allows the perfect to be the enemy of the good, they do the cause they espouse damage,writes Christopher Cook.
It has been credibly estimated that when the Bush drunk-driving story broke on the weekend before the 2000 election, some four to eight million evangelicals stayed home. Rather than stopping to think clearly about what a Gore presidency would mean in its totality, they just picked up their marbles and went home over that one issue. They were thinking more about their personal status vis-a-vis sin than they were the good of the country. They were thinking, I can't support someone who would sin in that way. I judge his actions to be sinful. My vote would be an endorsement of such behavior. How would that look for me before God? I, me, my. Me me me.
Found While Looking for the Image of Karl Marx in a Tortilla
Next great, whacky, and over-the-top European theory about the US soon to be formed.
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
You’re Right, They Aren’t. Even Though You’d Like Them To Be.
From Sight and Sound: Frankfurter Rundschau 21.09.2007
Let’s set aside the disingenuousness of the statement and test the comparison’s trying to be made here: 1.6 million people were killed at Auschwitz, while no-one was killed at Abu Greib since the days of Saddam Hussein.
Arno Widmann reflects on the 116 newly discovered photos showing Auschwitz SS guards at rest on display at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in New York: "These aren't Abu Ghraib photos. The Auschwitz staff didn't photograph each other lashing out at the inmates, or while they were being murdered. Perhaps such photos will yet appear. But these images are even more horrible. Here we come close to the perpetrators. And with them, their deeds. The Abu Ghraib photos show us what people are capable of. The Auschwitz photos show nothing, they give us a sense of what we are capable of. In front of them we start to think about the circumstances that make murderers of neighbours."
Ant the people in the pictures Arno “Winkler” Widmann is talking about appear to be enjoying themselves in a manner beneath the humanity of anyone who would be aware of what’s going in. With great Euro-élan, they once again make it look effortless. While being entirely unaware of how little change has been seen in the temperament and excitability of the garden variety European, the matter of the 150 million dead resulting from the European concepts of Marxism, Fascism, and other evolved forms of dictatorship and Fin De Ciècle public madness is blotted out of the mind, having never passed the unaware and unhealed soul.
So indeed, those fetishising the 3 weeks and 20-odd criminals abused at Abu-Greib very much need to put on a happy face while the comparisons flow, if they need that to diminish their confusion. To reiterate: we KNOW ABOUT THIS because the Army BUSTED THEY PEOPLE THAT DID IT. On the other hand, the German government and a large part of the society willfully constructed the concentration camps and protected their knowledge of them for as long as possible.
Even to this day there are people engaging in verbal contortions to convince others that Auschwitz was A-O-TAY.
Want a really apt comparison? Compare the European denial and willful ignorance of the abuse that minorities face in the radical, socialist-arab-nationalist, and areas where religious law dominates people – with the contented look on the faces of the photographed cited in Frankfurter Rundschau.
Really want to know what horrors people are capable of? No need to cite 3 weeks in an Iraqi Prison. One merely need look at European history within living memory, and in their desperate and paranoiac need to accuse others of something when it took them millennia to open up their borders even to one another across a patchwork of miniscule fortresses of “culture” on their own patch.
Even "4" is too high
"La diplomatie française est en crise. Parce qu'elle n'a pas saisi l'importance des deux grands changements qui se sont produits ces vingt-cinq dernières années - la chute du mur de Berlin, le 9 novembre 1989, et les attentats contre le World Trade Center à New York le 11 septembre 2001 -, la France n'a pas adapté sa politique étrangère au monde moderne. Toujours prise dans les glaces de la guerre froide, notre pays a de plus en plus de mal à s'imposer sur l'échiquier international. Compromissions africaines, erreurs d'appréciation à l'Est, relations particulières avec les autocrates du Proche et du Moyen-Orient, antiaméricanisme : nos choix diplomatiques, dont l'efficacité n'est pas toujours au rendez-vous, heurtent de front les valeurs de la France, la patrie des droits de l'homme. Depuis l'élection de Nicolas Sarkozy, qui a promis une rupture de la politique étrangère française, les lignes diplomatiques ont enfin commencé à bouger. Ce mouvement sera-t-il suffisant pour permettre à la France de retrouver les voies de l'influence ?"
Monday, October 01, 2007
Crusade Towards the Holy Land
The second album of the adventures of Leonardo da Vinci (in bookstores on October 2) has the reluctant inventor of war-machines (gliders, tanks, scorpion vessels, etc…) forced to ship aboard the armada sailing for the Holy Land.The first mission of General Scharano's Crusaders (after their departure from the Italian peninsula, prior to their final goal of Jerusalem, and with the help of Leonardo's advanced weapons) is to bring relief to the besieged Knights of Rhodes (later the Knights of Malta) by launching a surprise attack on the Sultan's crack troops surrounding their outpost on this, the outskirts of the Ottoman Empire.
A battle of massive proportions looms. But the Baronessa Terranova is acting oddly and treachery is lurking…A graphic novel published by the Éditions Paquet, Croisade vers la Terre Sainte (Général Leonardo, Tome II) is drawn by Dan Greenberg with his usual mastery and brought to you in stupendous colors by Fred Vigneau (See the cover in real size and order the book from Amazon)…
(PS: in the process of reading the book, don't be too surprized if you chance upon a couple of semi-hidden references to Leonardo the painter's portraits, paintings (famous and less famous), and other works…)
Sunday, September 30, 2007
The Dems had their war veteran---the American people were supposed to shut up and accept this as a sign of their strength on national security matters
After three decades, the Democrats had finally found a way to burnish their image on military matterswrites Christopher Cook from Hollywood:
Pick a veteran who agrees with them on the substance of a military issue, and then play up the fact of his service as cover for that position.
…after three decades … the post-Clinton Democrats finally came up with a solution: Continue to oppose military spending, military deployments, and the development of military equipment, but tell everyone how much you love and support the troops.
…The Hollywood left (which, having lived and worked in Hollywood, I can tell you is mostly left) is pumping out more and more brazen examples of the standard military-slurring films. In the last few years, however, they've also begun departing from their regular fare of "supporting" the troops by portraying them as dysfunctional, broken, war-addled victims to making films that directly portray them as war criminals.
…For many months now, I have been pointing these things out, and each time, I have said, don't believe their "we support the troops but not their mission" drivel---it's just a smokescreen, and it won't last. And sure enough, that is coming to pass.
We support the troops, showing them as the dysfunctional, murdering, red-state crypto-rapists in need of psychoanalysis we all know they really are
What the hell is wrong with this country?asks David Kahane (thanks to Christopher Cook), aping the thoughts of Hollywood bigwigs after their films ("movies, lots of ‘em, each with a stronger antigun, antiwar, anti-Rethuglican message than the next") bomb at the box office.
We support the troops, showing them as the dysfunctional, murdering, drug-addicted, red-state crypto-rapists in need of psychoanalysis we all know they really are. Hey — even the Marine officer in Alan Ball’s award-winning American Beauty a few years back was humanized by making him a sadist and a closet queen. And this is the thanks we get?
Travailler ? Very Shocking !
[For all the difficulty of finding a job] you might tell me – that there is such a thing as temping. Of course I pursued that line of thought conscious of my handicaps after several years away from France. The whole thing turned into a joke. Thus, while presenting to me, I told the recruiter that I seek all types of work, even if they don’t have much to do with my qualifications because I’m in a pinch. In general, your interlocutor either raises their eyebrows, does not quite understand what you’re saying, given your CV, or you looks at you like you’re an idiot, as if you were '' disturbed '' (no, really!). At the end of the day, you come away with the despairing feeling that you’ve been talking to a tree.Must be tough running the best, most flexible, most you name it economy in the world.
Another thing we spoke about was working abroad using my English speaking skills. His advice and posture repeated any one of the many assets listed in my CV, just to get through it quickly. Because in reality, if you did not follow the traditional path, the recruiter will get flummoxed and loses his frame of reference. You just dropped off of his radar. No good! Come again later after you’ve '' reintegrated".
Gee, thanks...
Dans le même temps, me direz-vous, il y a l'intérim. Bien sûr que j'ai regardé de ce côté conscient de mes handicaps après plusieurs années hors de l'Hexagone. Le parcours tourne parfois à la farce. Ainsi, en me présentant, j'explique que je recherche tous types de mission, même sans rapport avec mes qualifications car je suis dans l'urgence. En général, votre interlocuteur soit fronce les sourcils car ne comprend pas votre requête au regard de votre CV soit vous regarde en oeil de pigeon, comme si vous étiez ''dérangé'' (certainement !). Au bout du compte, il en ressort un dialogue de sourd plutôt désespérant.
Autre élément dont ont nous parle : l'ouverture sur l'international, des expériences à l'étranger et la maîtrise de l'anglais. Autant d'atouts dans son CV. Des mots, des discours et des postures. Pour faire vite du flanc. Car, dans la réalité, si vous n'avez pas suivi les rails classiques, le recruteur est déstabilisé, perd ses repères. Vous n'entrez plus dans sa grille de lecture. Pas bon ! Repassez plus tard quand vous vous serez ''réintégrez". Merci.