Vraisemblablement excessif

En Irak, les chiffres les plus alarmistes (plus d'un million de morts, selon Opinion Research Business, un institut de sondage britannique) sont dix fois supérieurs aux estimations conservatrices

écrit Philippe Bolopion dans un article du journal Le Monde sur les enjeux politiques des bilans des morts de guerres.

En Irak, le CRED a évalué le bilan, jusqu'en juin 2006, entre 120 000 et 130 000 morts et estime que l'étude très controversée publiée par The Lancet souffre de deux handicaps : l'engagement contre la guerre de certains de ses auteurs et l'absence de contrôle de la qualité des données recueillies sur place par des équipes irakiennes.

…Comment savoir qu'un échantillon est représentatif ? Ou qu'un "sondé" n'exagère pas le nombre de morts dans sa famille, pour discréditer l'occupant ou recevoir plus d'aide ?

Our Effete, Sophisticated Friends, Part CCLXXVI (remember, America must get back on the right side of these people)

Of course, the only thing found to be outrageous is that some chick has a Hitler moustache, as if that were so totally foreign to them. Actually the broad with the moustache looks like so many Continental Zeropean broads. Real two-baggers.

Displaced Anger: Pushing Their Cynicism on Kids

Apparently, their own inaction is the fault of others. Brits complaining about a lack of home-grown childrens’ programming decide that teaching their kids to hate Americans is the way to go. As if. They prefer pillow-biters anyway.

You’re Kidding, Right?

Europe’s Obama-zombies – once you teach them one word, they can’t get it out of their heads. It will even make them back an Italian guy named ‘Walter’ that they can’t even vote for. Besides: just who is it they think they’re convincing one another to vote for when Veltroni is pimped in the Guardian and Obama is relentlessly shoved down the throats of BBC viewers?

Squirrel Trebuchet

The Sport of Kings

Buffoons

Le Monde, in it’s usual sophistication will slag Iraq as America’s 49th state, but forget about Hawaii and Alaska.



Never mind just how badly France’s former colonies are floundering in misery, often also in violence, and characterized in paranoia, but the nations the US has occupied in the past aren’t. In fact Germany, Japan, and Korea make the sneering miscreants at Le Monde own precious homeland look like a third world backwater.

Our Effete, Sophisticated Friends, Part 275

Interesting. To most Europeans, is that all a nation boils down to?

By ze Dawn's Early Light

(Merci à RV)

"Al-Qaida et les talibans n'ont que faire de ces formules qui ont toujours servi à la victoire des dictatures et à la défaite des démocraties"

"Que proposez-vous ?!", François Fillon asked rhetorically France's opposition socialists (as reported by Patrick Roger in an article entitled M. Fillon dénonce "l'antiaméricanisme primaire" de la gauche française).

"Le renforcement de nos efforts et ceux de nos partenaires ? Vous y êtes hostiles. Le statu quo ? Vous estimez que c'est un échec. Reste donc le retrait. Ce serait la défaite de tout ce que nous avons dit. Ce serait la défaite de tout ce que nous avons fait."

M. Hollande avait mis en garde contre "le double risque de l'enlisement et de l'engrenage" en Afghanistan et demandé que soient fixées plusieurs conditions à toute intervention supplémentaire des forces françaises. "L'ONU, l'Europe et l'OTAN n'ont pas à rougir de ce qu'ils ont fait", a répondu M. Fillon [France's prime minister could have added les États-Unis to that list, but apparently that would have gone too far]. "L'opposition entend-elle signifier que tout cela est vain ? Qu'elle n'hésite pas à s'en faire l'écho auprès de la communauté internationale et, surtout, auprès des vingt-cinq Etats européens engagés en Afghanistan à nos côtés, dont quinze dans lesquels les socialistes et les sociaux-démocrates sont au pouvoir. Qu'elle n'hésite pas à aller dire au peuple afghan, les yeux dans les yeux : "c'est fini"", a-t-il poursuivi.

La motion de censure déposée par la gauche disait ne pas vouloir "ajouter la guerre à la guerre". "Al-Qaida et les talibans n'ont que faire de ces formules qui ont toujours servi à la victoire des dictatures et à la défaite des démocraties, s'est indigné le premier ministre. Quand les démocraties sommeillent, leurs adversaires agissent."

En ce qui concerne l'OTAN, M. Hollande avait dénoncé "une décision fâcheuse et inopportune", qui conduirait la France et l'Europe "en situation d'alignement sur les Etats-Unis". M. Fillon a accusé l'opposition de "surfer sur l'antiaméricanisme primaire". "En délaissant l'Afghanistan, en négligeant l'Europe, en diabolisant l'Alliance atlantique, la gauche révèle son repli hexagonal, son pessimisme profond, tout le contraire de la grandeur nationale", a-t-il conclu.

Let’s not forget about the Communists that Collaborated with Hitler

Let’s also not forget their little friends.

Like the French, Their Maoists don’t Seem to Understand Maoism

When people with a completely failed world view admire you, you know you’re onto something:

Nepal: Maoists want a Republic à la française"

- Thanks to the devilish Damian

How Cute

Lefties demand violent regime change in China, but think nuclear-tipped Iranian warmongering is o-tay, if they aren’t a reason to call any stand-down of the western values of individual and human rights to a dictator or miscreant as “constructive engagement”.

The Love that Dare not Speak its Name

By omission, Propagandastaffel is still “liberating” people
from a fact-based baseline reference of reality.



Elsewhere reality sets in and past grave miscalculation get abandoned.

Which is it THIS Week?

Le Monde’s daily lecture to humanity: In the hypocritical world of Al-Jazeera sur Seine’s editorial environment, memories may be as short-lives as their principals. Once upon a time they showed little concern if not lauded the strong, new (economically motivated) French connection with China. Not shortly after that, they showed only the socially necessary perfunctory distaste for the Police’s removal of Falun Gong activists from the streets of Paris during a visit by visit by Chinese President Hu Jintao, and later during a visit by PM Wen Jiabao. Now they give themselves the latest vehicle with which to pander to the public cause of showing displeasure at what red China did half a century ago in Tibet.

They just wish they were one of the cool kids, I guess

Les liens entre Juan Peron et les nazis ne s'arrêteront pas à la fin de la guerre

Whenever the "sages" of the era (French, American, or other) want to put the responsibility of all the conflicts of the past 60 years on the United States, doubled with the extreme victimization of any Latin American country not its ally, this is the type of detail they forget about (don't forget to read the last paragraph)

… En Argentine, l'emprise américaine a été moins néfaste que l'influence européenne. Après les nazis, c'est bien l'expérience française en Indochine et dans la bataille d'Alger qui a inspiré les militaires du coup d'Etat de 1976. L'excellent ouvrage de Marie-Monique Robin, Escadrons de la mort, l'école française (La Découverte, 2004), l'a rappelé opportunément.

The Fate of a French Reporter Who Thinks Human Rights Activism Goes Beyond Denouncing USA to Opposing Cuban and Chinese Repression

Question: What happens in France to a human rights activist who is not content to oppose the United States every inch of the way, but who goes on to oppose repression in Cuba and to protest against China's communists?

Answer: Robert Ménard gets accused of being a CIA agent!

(And what sort of evidence do they bring to substantiate this charge? The fact that RSF head Ménard uses (shudder) computers, and (mon Dieu)… so does the CIA!!!)

Incidentally, far from being 100% pro-American, it would be far more accurate to call Reporters Sans Frontières an instrument of EU propaganda…

Which Saloperie is That Exactly?

To most Europeans, it’s the socially approved kind.

Like a Bum who Thinks he’s Napoleon

Hyperpedant: Failure in Afghanistan emboldens those attacking the stability of European society from within it’s borders, and yet continental Europe is carrying around the delusion of their own statecraft while trying to do it all on the cheap by imposing on the rest of the world. The disposition of their defense posture of this body of 450 million people is that it’s willing to let it all wrests on the commitment 32 million Canadians.

Nato leaders yesterday reaffirmed their "firm and shared long-term commitment" to fighting the war in Afghanistan, but it was agreed some member countries could demonstrate that commitment by just sending money or equipment.

Attempts at a summit in Bucharest to expand the alliance eastwards were set back, meanwhile. Membership for Macedonia was postponed because of Greek objections, while Georgia and Ukraine were told they would have to wait at least eight months before they even embarked on the preparations for membership, largely out of concerns over Russia's reaction.

To be what they think they are they need to be at the front the line. Nonetheless, the Socialist in France who are typical of this parasitic world view are trying to sandbag it in favor of nothing, promoting as a ‘competing vision’ more of the usual atmospheric philosophizing to lend to their inaction an appearance of action.

On the other hand, former Socialist candidate in 2007 elections Segolene Royal launched a savage attack against Sarkozy decision of increasing French troop numbers in Afghan territory.

Whatever you think of America’s course of action in these matters, it’s hilarious to think that even these socialists believe that an objective threat can be countered with a subjective thought that that isn’t even directed at the threat anyway. As was the case with the Balkans, it may be that the only thing the real world can do is hand them broom when the hard work is over, say that it wrecked their Saturday night, and let them complain about being left to sweep up after the “detrius of the warmongers” who eliminated a threat to their well being.

"Lions for Lambs" Among Air France's In-Flight "Entertainment"

Some passengers must have complained to Air France about the description of Lions for Lambs in their in-flight Magazine — something to the tune of Robert Redford's "criticism of George W Bush's foreign policy" — because the new issue of the magazine is far more succinct ("A professor, a journalist, and a powerful politician are all linked by the fate of two idealistic US soldiers wounded in Afghanistan"). In any case, it is good to know that the French still have the education of the masses — French, American, and other foreign — as one of its guiding principles.

"Je suis contre l'amnistie des sans-papiers"

Le Monde's Cécile Gregoriades interviews Texas's Rick Perry.

Feelgood Tokenism gets Ugly Enough for Tokenists to Notice

Don't you just love do-gooder cannibalism?

Call it an eco-parable: one Prius-driving couple takes pride in their
eight redwoods, the first of them planted over a decade ago. Their
electric-car-driving neighbors take pride in their rooftop solar panels,
installed five years after the first trees were planted.

[snip]

The couple who planted the trees, Carolynn Bissett and Richard Treanor, were convicted of violating the law, based on the complaint of their neighbor, Mark Vargas, and were ordered to make sure that no more than 10 percent of the solar panels are shaded.

Parable? It isn't a religion, it's a cult of primitivism.

We are the ones who make a brighter day, So let's start giving

It's true we'll make a better day just you and me…

The new peace activists' website is up (thanks to Ryan Gill)…

5,000 Popsicle Stick Eiffel Tower

(Merci à Valerie)

Who wants to live like an Andean Peasant?

European leftists, that’s who! Property? Bad. Wealth? Bad. Being able to take a risk for your own well being? Bad. What better time to call in economist Hernando de Soto who has spent a lifetime studying poverty to disabuse at least a few Parisians who wouldn’t know a subsistence farm if they saw one of their aspirations to peasantry.

Les clés du développement par Hernando de Soto

le mardi 8 avril à 19h30
dans le Grand Auditorium d'Entreprises Générales de France – BTP
9 rue La Pérouse, paris XVIème
Métro Kleber

Our Effete Continental Friends

Gentility and wisdom by the handful.

For the NYT, Wright's "God DAMN America" Becomes Simply "Goddamn America"

Not content with comparing Barack Obama's pastor with… the Dalai Lama (!) in a New York Times article (seemingly only published by its sister paper, the International Herald Tribune), Howard W French manages to go on to water down the former marine's key controversial sermon. (Of course, if this were a one-time occurrence, it might hardly be blog-newsworthy; but with the MSM, it happens to fit into a pattern…) The Reverend Jeremiah Wright Jr, French writes,

seems to have drawn the most ire for the phrase "Goddamn America," for what he perceives as his country's abuses of power around the world.

But of course, it was not an almost innocent, off-the-cuffish adjective that the pastor used impulsively in a relatively insignificant part of a sentence ("That goddamn son of (y)ours has again failed to take the garbage out"), but a (proper) noun (God) followed by a verb, i.e., a desire, a directive, a decree to the Deity in one single sentence, a single solitary sentence that served as the pinnacle of his sermon and message.

News Hacks Fire up the Tardis for Gaia

Let's say you went to J-School because you “wanted to make a difference”. Let's say that you're so invested in the narrative that you think your poop don't stink. Let's say you're so invested in the “ah!!! the world is ending! Narrative that you start to believe in time travel.

Data from the UK and US indicate that the earth's temperature peaked either in 1998 or 2005. They can't tell.

"La Nina is part of what we call 'variability'. There has always been and there will always be cooler and warmer years, but what is important for climate change is that the trend is up; the climate on average is warming even if there is a temporary cooling because of La Nina."

The 2007-08 La Nina, that is. But don't judge a cooling trend following 1998 or 2005 by anything else.