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…
But don’t stop panicking, there’s always hopelessness:The Earth's temperature may stay roughly the same for a decade, as natural climate cycles enter a cooling phase, scientists have predicted.
[snip]However, temperatures will again be rising quickly by about 2020, they say.
Someone ought to “do something.”“Imagine the payoff of knowing with some certainty what the next 10 years hold in terms of temperature and precipitation”
- H/T to Georgos
…it is … time to reconquer Francewrites London Mayor Boris Johnson.
Because, in spite of our existing rail link, the Channel is serving to pen in the English, and to push up our house prices, and to prevent us from spilling naturally back into Artois and Normandy and Aquitaine and all the other bits of France that we held, one way or another, until we lost Calais in 1558.
…We could repopulate northern France. We would alleviate the hideous pressure on the green belt, and we could physically reunite the English with their former territories.
Just like when budding poop-stain Hugo Chavez claims every six months that the CIA is trying to kill him, some Europeans know exactly when to work the built-up mass of self-delusion, and wave that magic wand: Lucinda Creighton, a spokeswoman for Ireland's largest opposition party, Fine Gael, says in a Web posting that "U.S. foreign policy has traditionally been opposed to EU integration."
Such deep thoughts: this is by some magic of European electioneering rhetoric, the same America that has been trying to give them a way to “have their moment”, and yet now we’re supposed to be threatened by their “hyperpuissance”. You wish.
"The U.S. supports the EU as an economic bloc but nothing more. The idea of a politically strong EU, acting as a check or counterbalance on the U.S. does not sit well with our trans-Atlantic friends," says the spokeswoman, a member of Ireland's Parliament.
The US has had to deal with this lunacy for more than a decade – one moment they’re a cartel with 27 votes (or representative, or whatever) in some global talking shop operation that they stack with their people, the next minute they’re poor helpless little countries that need protection, leadership, and guidance, and the moment after that, they’re the über-wise and all-knowing largest economy in the world reaching into the Crisco jar to start up another solo palm-party with their delusions that they invented everything positive in the world when the difficulty the US has with them is just a proxy for the way Europeans treat the rest of the world.
Lucinda, try this idea on for a moment: your fate is yours’, as are your successes and failures. If the United States is the bone caught in your throat, it doesn’t make that fixation at fault for your fixation.
The real question is, will Ken Livingstone demand a Al Gore/Robert Mugabe style recount?
Hilarious – they have a blog which is nicely funded by a lefty grant-sucking operation, and a passel of graduate students and interns to blog for them. Behold the lefty-europe of ideas, which gets an average daily hit-count of 59 visitors. (That’s up from 37 only 6 months ago). So help out your hardworking bartenders and waitresses, people!
On the tips of their tongues today: Europe and China – Emerging Rivals or Partners? Economic competitors certainly, and sure to be rivals most of the time based on the fact that their economies are incompatible, and have wildly different notions of their “social” future. A great many Europeans long for and are trying to recreate what the Chinese seem to be trying to get rid of to eliminate poverty. Of the two spheres, the Chinese are clearly more flexible in their world views, making China the candidate most likely among the two to eventually embrace some form of Democracy.
Elsewhere they ask themselves a question that’s been answered about a decade ago: Europe - A Break with American Strategy? Of course. As we see with the Darfur expeditionary coalition since they started wringing their hands in 2004, if it requires any form of action or leadership, count ‘em out. You’ll be sure to find them taking bold action to craft a perfect press release and organizing a bold, bold symposium.Divisions are appearing across the Atlantic between NATO allies on both the prosecution and validity of the ‘global war on terrorism’ and on related issues ranging from Russia to the Middle East, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and on NATO itself. Some American commentators are calling this an ‘existential crisis’ for NATO. Professor Haseler presented a paper arguing that the time for Europe to pursue a strategy based on its own interests and assessments has arrived.
Non-European NATO has been waiting for them to “have their moment” since the mid 80’s, and this is how they plan to carry it out – by rationalizing some form of inaction that can be 1) sound smart, 2) compel action by the United States in the benefit of their security, 3) provide them with some sort of emotional blackmail for a few weeks, and 4) make protecting downtown Munich look heroic. To do this they’ll have to try to find a way to talk to the Taliban or a purposefully headless beast called al-Qaeda that are both just too simplistic to negotiate with.
Coordinated global action, my ass! The burden of feeding the world’s pool has been borne by the productive, wealthy west for as long as there has been a way to deliver aid. Nonetheless:
As for not being generous, one pervasive feature of the Arab character that rarely sees much daylight is a kind of hatred of the poor and those who are bad off for their “common” nature and lack of success that’s associated with natural inferiority.
On the other hand, Saudi Arabia, with oil revenues last year of $164 billion, does not even appear on the website donor list for 2008.The only other major oil exporter who made the WFP list of 2008 donors was the United Arab Emirates, which kicked in $50,000. UAE oil revenues in 2007 were $63 billion.
The high present cost of food, increasingly inaccessible to the poorest of the world is largely that way BECAUSE of the high cost of transporting food from where it’s produced efficiently and in abundance to where it isn’t, not to mention the fact that fuel is one of the biggest inputs in food production to begin with.
By contrast, the poverty-stricken African republic of Burkina Faso is listed as donating more than $600,000, and Bangladesh, perennial home of many of the world’s hungriest people, is listed as donating nearly $5.8 million.
Forget biofuel. Even though the output of biofuels has doubled in 5 years, the trend in the price of grain has tracked upward with the cost of petroleum move for move, tick for tick, doubling in 15 months, benefitting fake humanists like Chavez, faux social victims like the Gulf Arabs, and the champion of domestic economic ineptitude, Ahmedinejad.
Speaking of Le Monde's birth and origins in an article on the financial difficulties of le quotidien de référence, the New York Times' Doreen Carvajal describes it as having beencreated in 1944 on the orders of General Charles de Gaulle to be the "conscience of France".Le Monde Watch had more details during the 60th anniversary of the daily whose motto is: "Indépendant depuis sa création".
That vow ["I will present the full information. I will force them to read me!"] is made by the first director of Le Monde as he is given the mission to create a newspaper of reference worthy to represent France abroad.Huh? "Is given"? "The mission"? "To create" not a newspaper but "a newspaper of reference"? "Worthy" not to bring the news but "to represent France abroad"? What's going on here?!…
Incidentally, the New York Times' Doreen Carvajal seems to put the lie to the idea that, at least newspaper-wise, those nuanced Français are far more well-read, far more cultivated, and far more knowledgeable than those clueless Ricains. Over the years, the French newspaper culture has been relatively weak compared with that in some other countries — 181 of 1,000 people subscribe to newspapers in France compared with 371 in Germany and 274 in the United States, according to figures from the World Association of Newspapers, based in Paris.
THE DEVIL IN THE DETAILSMaybe their mothers never told them that it was only a movie.
The 150 million euros announced for France remain modest compared with similar investments to the USA – as the size of the European market and the stock market crisis obliges. "Only high-quality projects to be funded," said Yann Le Quellec. But that’s okay, we are here to stay." The company intends to popularize a way of financing which has the advantage of relieving the producer of the painstaking work of seeking funding. It could reduce some adverse effects associated with the French production system, as the increasing financial partners who, on big films, deprives many of their revenue.
The reflections of former AFP President Lionel Fleury were reported by John Rosenthal as leaving "little room for doubt that the raison d’être of the AFP is not simply to inform, but rather to 'inform' in such a way as to serve the French national interest as defined by the French state."Le problème, c’est que la diplomatie française s’obstine à vouloir mettre dans le coup le président vénézuélien Hugo Chavez. La diplomatie française est persuadée que les seuls progrès, c'est soi-disant à Chavez qu'on les doit. « C'est le moment de lui dire à quel point il est nécessaire et on compte sur lui », affirment, sans rire, des sources diplomatiques françaises à l’AFP .
On apprécierait, de la part de l’Agence France Presse, qu’elle manifeste, le même zèle, à reproduire, les déclarations et les communiqués des autorités colombiennes qui, sauf erreur, sont plus respectables, que l’Agence Annacol [proche des terroristes narcotrafiquants des Farc], l’Agence Bolivarienne, Altercom et autres officines gauchistes, à la botte du marxisme terroriste et narcotrafiquant. On apprécierait, aussi, que le gouvernement français, notamment son ministère des affaires étrangères, traite sur pied d’égalité, avec le gouvernement colombien. La Colombie n’est pas un protectorat français en 1908. La Colombie est un Etat souverain en 2008.Read Garroté's deux derniers points…
Yes, just like they enjoy saying about anything and everything, they are better at it than anyone else due to their lucidity, humanism, general schlau-ness, élan, verbal ju-jitsu, etc. all in an manner reminiscent of Kim Jong Il, especially better than those hideously backward Americans.
Wanna know who got 'em? An abject idiot by the name of Diane Johnson In our family, with a great feeling of sacrifice, we first stopped ordering mineral water in resaurants, saving as much as 4 euros an outing! This turns out to be everyones' first strategem, [sic] and it doesnt make a dent. Then we calculated that cutting out one one restaurant meal would save $200 a week, or $800 a month!
These are people too stupid to have tried to wangle their income from their employers in Euros since 2006, and apparently, we're supposed to care. This is also someone who imagines herself a responsible parent – bringing life into the world, and then spending $800 a month, more than the average SMIcard lives off of, just dining out.
And the imagined petty aristocrat reader of the Washington Post is supposed to care – in fact care so much, that we should deal with this family's inflexibility in employment to un-emply people in Ohio, a place leftist used to whine were forced to eat their young in Youngstown for lack of industrial jobs. Now that the dollar is of a value that they can actually punch bolts, all of that has to stop for the sake of this hosebag's perceived understanding of cuisine, and the her ignorance of the plonk she's drinking.
These people, this morally repugnant elite, more than anything are responsible for the United States' image in the world.
The irony is that her self-absorbed screed appears on the same page as a story entitled “What Can They Buy? A good bit of Us.” as if to be punctuated with the shock that people are coming to the US to buy iPods, earth-moving equipment, and steel, and that it must be stopped for fear of someone having one of those jobs that leftists couldn't demand by demanding, pretending to care about them, in spite of supply and demand.
Diane Johnson – for the sake of 2 of my cousins who raise their kids happily on what they earn at Wal*Mart, stay in France, and keep your theories from impoverishing them, me, and all the other productive people who might notice much earlier than you that they're pissing away $800 a month in bars and restaurants in a paved terroire.
From the same edition of the Washington Post: the received wisdom that the the sause of the rising cause of oil is... the rising cost of oil, but not the casue of the rising cost of food, for which fuel is the greatest single input, especially if you're trying to transport it to hungry people.
Little tiny violins, Johnson.
THE US war in Iraq has strengthened its strategic position, especially in terms of key alliances, and the only way this could be reversed would be if it lost the will to continue the struggle and abandoned Iraq in defeat and disarray.
Which I’m sure will come as a surprise to the “sophisticates” reacting the America the way they react to anything else they can’t fathom – by pot-banging in the street at any sort of change to the world, and attaching any sort of consequences to brutality and injustice are being done.
As usual, the home-truths of the peace-through-tyrant-appeasement left are wrong and failed, just as they have been historically: Similarly, it seems clear that US standing in Japan declined most recently when it softened its position on North Korea, something international liberal opinion universally demanded. However, some other facts are incontrovertible. Japan in 2003 sent 600 troops to Iraq to help the Americans. The Japanese leader who did this, Junichiro Koizumi, was subsequently re-elected in a landslide.
South Korea is even more instructive. Some of the strategic dinosaurs at the Australian National University write as if the US-South Korea alliance is finished and that the day is both inevitable and soon when China will be the dominant power in South Korea. This was always a silly bit of analysis that had a brief vogue six or seven years ago. To hold it now, it is necessary that you never look at what is actually happening in South Korea.
There were no official reprisals, but trade flows from Russia fell…
Saying Estonia's action showed disrespect to the fighters of Fascism, Russia retaliated with steps that dampened trade flows and hurt Estonia's economy.
While trying to be "fair" and nuanced, MSM-style, in a Reuters article on Estonia's "wrestling with Russian speakers" in the IHT, one that professes to recap the conflict over the removal of Stalin's World War II statue, Patrick Lannin totally and deliberately forgets the cyberspace-war that Moscow conducted against Tallinn in the wake of the decision to remove said statue — widely reported as the very first war of its kind. There were no official reprisals, but trade flows from Russia fell…That (apart for some details of the fall in trade statistics) is all that we learn from the New York Times' sister publication:
There were no official reprisals, but trade flows from Russia fell…Read anything about the home-truths of the peace-through-tyrant-appeasement left lately?
A 700m long train convoy was attacked in the northern district of Marseille by an organized gang who had seized the contents of several cars.
After lecture after lecture about the superiority of a society where socialistic intervention is pervasive and there’s a law for every occasion and human activity, the facts show quite the opposite: a social failure in “good” parts of town expressed mostly by hoodlums and thug wannabees and a quagmire of crime. Of one University:
The theft took place Thursday at nightfall in St. Louis in the 15th arrondissement of the city, reported the newspaper La Provence on Saturday, which was confirmed by police.
They stacked wooden ties and metal barriers on the track to force the train to come to a stop.Crime figures are through the roof, and they’re taking place in front of the academic buildings of the Mirail where attacks on students for their phones and their laptops have continued to multiply. Between January and early April, around 40 complaints have been made as we wrote on April 9th. Today, nearly a month later, about 70 female students filed assault complaints. "Our presence there has often been decried" we are told the police reports recorded them saying. The degree of larceny has grown overwhelmingly, and the major public university and governments are facing a serious security problem.
Beaten and Insulted
Specifically, police have recorded 63 assaults between December 18th and April 15th. This outbreak has yet to let up. Despite the lull due of the academic holidays, a young man was beaten on Tuesday. His attackers had stolen his guitar and his mobile phone.The majority of these crimes take place in broad daylight between noon and 7 p.m. between the entrance to the university and the subway, and they are especially violent: "I received a punch on the left ear. My laptop is dropped and my glasses were broken, reported a student of 25 who for one week, came to the university with friends for fear of threats. A teacher was also punched, thrown to the ground and insulted during the assault. Result: fifteen days of temporary closure for forensic investigation.
Of course in a “gun-free” paradise, passivated by government social action, one can hardly imagine anything of the sort, right?"I saw a girl being attacked by two boys who had beaten her to snatch her laptop. Many witnesses were at the scene but nobody did a thing", said one student letters.
I guess this is what believers in the “managed” social contract do in the face of adversity.
Being a poser is a way of life when you’re in political environment where quangos and appointees make most policy. If you don’t have a platform or opposable thumbs, much of it involves either scaring people or trying to convince them that you walk on water.
John Rosenthal introduces us to a German politician who backtracked after saying that Germany shouldn’t discriminate against Iraqi non-Christians in awarding asylum. The logic is goes something like this: symbolically, giving asylum to a minority of people being targeted for matters of upbringing or conscience makes you prejudiced, especially in the eyes of the people targeting them. Better to open the policy to anyone, and let Ba’athists into your country.
Herta Däubler-Gmelin, you probably won’t recall, is the same woman in September 2002 who compared George Bush to Adolf Hitler. Apparently this is enough to get you appointed to the Bundestag’s Human Rights Committee, having resigned her post of Minister of Justice after the Hitler gaffe only to find that she has a whole new bunch of fans.
In Germany, however, the spring and summer months of 2002 would mark the return of a virulent anti-Americanism into the mainstream of German political discourse, as Schröder made a novel sort of "preemptive" opposition to military intervention in Iraq into the centerpiece of his re-election campaign. Däubler-Gmelin made her remarks at a campaign event only days before the elections and the -- at the time merely hypothetical -- prospect of a war against Iraq was again the theme. Bush wanted to use a war "to divert attention from domestic problems," Däubler-Gmelin suggested, just as "Adolf Nazi" had once done.Which is funny, considering that the history past that she’s so keen to dissociate herself from also happens to be politically useful. Odder still is that those Ba’athists who will likely flee to Germany under her policy revision will recall where their movement has its’ origins: in Hitler’s SA that her father was a “jurist” in.
The chancellor would offer his American counterpart an ambiguous "apology" for his minister's comparison. Significantly, however, he rejected calls for her resignation. Indeed, on the very day of the elections, government spokesman Uwe-Karsten Heye went to the trouble of dismissing reports of her impending resignation as "pure speculation" (ddp, Sept. 22, 2002). The election results would secure victory for Schröder by a razor-thin margin. Shortly after their announcement, Däubler-Gmelin brought the controversy to a close by informing the chancellor that she was not available to form part of the new government.
