Why Worry About Weapons Being Banned when you can Just Steal Them?

Near Lyon:

A local athletic track is being investigated into the theft of 28 kilos of semtex found this weekend at the civilian arsenal at Corbas, a suburb of Lyon.

The police are trying now to make the link between this theft and a Sunday brush fire in the neighbouring area of Saint-Fons, where six detonators stolen and two grenades without fuses dating from the Second World War disappeared from their inventory, but were found by firefighters. Located less than five minutes drive from Fort Corbas, the overgrown former landfill is suspected to have served as a place to abandoning or field test equipment for budding terrorists. The discovery of the semtex has not yet led to any arrests.

O! the Rapture!

Compare and contrast:

Sure the South Koreans have food and freedom. But North Korea has something that totally wipes them off the map (figuratively, not literally, at least as I’m writing this). The Great Leader, the Sun of the Nation and of Mankind: Kim Jong Il. Put aside any notions you may have about the man. Put aside his lust for nukes, a penchant to torture and starve his people and the funky glasses. These things are irrelevant. The simple fact is this: Kim Jong Il is the greatest golfer in the history of, well, history. According to North Korea’s crack research department, the diminutive dictator shot a 34 his first time golfing. And no, not at mini-golf, at a championship, par-72 course. He drilled home 11 holes-in-one in his miraculous 34-under round and reportedly still shoots in the low 50s, though at 60-plus years of age, his holes in ones are down to four or five a round. So cheer on the South Korean women if you like, just remember that to the north there is a golfer that can handily beat them all. Or at least he would if he could get his hands on them.

"Hi, how’s it going?“ asks Obama in his deep voice. My heart beats. "Very good, and you?" I say. Obama replies: "Very good, thank you!" Obama (with toned arms and a strong back) puts on his headphones for his iPod to listen to pop music. He hums quietly. Then he jumps on a fitness bike. He pushes three times on the pedals – but then can’t be bothered with it. He goes and picks up a pair of 16 kilo weights and starts curling them with his left and right arms, 30 repetitions on each side. Then, amazingly, he picks up the 32 kilo weights! Very slowly he lifts them, first 10 curls with his right, then 10 with his left. He breathes deeply in and out and takes a sip of water from his 0,5 litre Evian bottle. Shortly before five o’clock Obama comes over and sits directly next to my cross-trainer on the mat. First he does 10 sit-ups, then stretches. Then he looks at his watch and says to his bodyguard: “It’s time, let’s go.” Quickly I ask: “Mr. Obama, could I take a photo?”. “Of course!” he answers, before asking my name and coming over to stand next to me. “My name’s Judith” I reply. "I’m Barack Obama, nice to meet you!” he says, and puts his arm across my shoulder. I put my arm around his hip – wow, he didn’t even sweat! WHAT A MAN!

Just what is it with these zombies? Do they think a set-up story about a lonely woman who can afford to work out at the Ritz-Carlton (and one apparently rather horny for a bland politico at that) who resorts to stalking political candidates is supposed to endear Europe to Americans?

Who does Bild think this feeble item is supposed to bring to political orgasm? Are we to believe that a Senator is so negligent of his duties that he has time to work his way up to being able to swing two supposedly real 72 lb. weights that she implies are free-weights?
Gee, not bad for 46 year old a smoker. Having seen men with muscles and joints of that vintage try this in the gym, I’m impressed at his stellar, superhuman qualities, truly. It recalls images of Leni Riefenstahl hero-making. The guys I’ve seen trying that end up calling their wives to come pick them up down the block, and just out of sight of anyone who saw them crawl out at best speed without changing back into their street clothes. I mean we really do have a mythical Beowulf-meets-Jesus-Christ kind of guy here. One attempted implication the the previous Barack-workout videos being that he could have plucked Mohammed Atta out of the sky with his bare hands, and that other pilot guy, whoever he is, wouldn’t be able to do a thing! NOT one THING, I tell ya... As for me, I’ll stick with the guy who knows when and when not to fire a missile, both literally and in the context of international policy.

And without someone spotting him, at that? Perhaps she’s too modest to mention him parting the seas, and making the loaves into protein bars, or the water into... bottled water.

It’s obviously a posed story that didn’t get cleared with even the provisional wing of the democratic party, where some German imagined him or herself so clued in by his prejudices as to what would sell in the US that this painfully awkward and childish stunt.

On another note, the same story in an completely different form appeared last night on Deutsche Welle Radio, lacking the tumultuous back arching, orgasm induced tears, and overt moaning. In other words, an unsophisticated attempt was made to package it using a Bild reporter positioning it one way for DW and another way for her own paper.

Keep up the good work there, Bonesky. Americans can come a step closer to being certain that Obama is so many things, that he’s a marionette of his handlers and a PR sleazebag’s fabrication - and that political outreach can be reduced to thinly veiled allusions to niche porn style “character blocking.” The sort where women, (possibly of a certain age,) who perhaps seems a lot like the ones drawn to Hillary Clinton, can dream of getting physical and imagine themselves possibly cuckolding some of what hung-up European simpletons imagine is forbidden fruit... Or some other unstated meta-crypto-political under-the-radar horseshit that most Wellesley grads are only good for at this point.

Either way, its drawing howls out of Americans, and the laughs seem to be on Judith, an entertainment and puff-piece writer for a trashy German tabloid who managed to pull off one decent stunt in her life that might get her away from doing page-six hoochie articles.

No doubt, my theory that this could be some sort of solo attempt at unstated meta-crypto-politics-under-the-radar horseshit or VHS-quality niche porn will draw “thoughtful reflection”, but it’s the only thing trash like this deserves. To give you a taste of what level of journalistic brilliance we’re dealing with here: today, Bild’s lead is a story about Annie Lennox dying her hair blond.

The Pulitzer committee must be struggling with their feelings at this point.

This was Supposed to Move Your Soul, America

The “expectation-reducing” estimate of 100.000 from 1.000.000 somehow turned into a 20.000 talked up to 200.000 as spirit moved them.

It turns out that Berlin’s Obamatons convention has turned out into something of a Dutch auction, where the bidding drops until the bien pensent can no longer stand it.

John Rosenthal:

ZDF Berlin studio chief Peter Frey added, "We do estimate that 20,000 [literally, "a couple of ten thousand"] people have turned out." Frey's tone, like that of Gelhard, reflected the gap between the relatively modest number cited and the lofty predications that had preceded the event. Moreover, while the ZDF live images showed that the "Fan Mile" was indeed populated from one end to the other, they also appeared to reveal patches of thinness and pedestrian traffic flowing easily on the half of the boulevard closer to the Brandenburg Gate (i.e. furthest from the "Victory Column").

And then: the candidate did not appear at the appointed time. Could his handlers have been disappointed by the turnout? Did they hope to buy time for more spectators to arrive? At this point, ZDF interrupted its special coverage and broke for the nightly news. When the coverage resumed some fifteen minutes later, ZDF host Claus Kleber promptly declared that there were "one hundred thousand" people on the Fan Mile. He then repeated the claim twice more in rapid succession -- now, more precisely, "over one hundred thousand people" -- as if repetition could somehow cover up the glaring discrepancy between this number and the number cited by his colleague Frey only 20 minutes earlier.

Minutes later, Obama was on stage. And a half hour after that, he was gone again. By 8 p.m. -- as the crowd filed out, obediently following the order to disperse given over the loud-speaker system -- the number being cited had grown to fully 200,000. As this German timeline indicates, the original source for the rapidly growing estimates was in fact the rally organizers: i.e. the Obama team. The 200,000 figure would also be attributed to the Berlin police -- which might represent the first time in modern history that the police and the organizers of a political rally agreed on their estimates of crowd size.

BBC evasively called it “some tens of thousands” which is beautifully non-numeric, as the press was trying to suppress it’s “hallelulias”. The other amusing feature of the 200.000 send-up is that it would represent 6% of the population of the city which seems to be as prone to general belly-aching and lacking in enthusiasm as you’ll find.

Reporting on the scene is Berlin-based Atlantic-Review, a blog run by former Fulbright scholars which is supposed to be focussing on NATO and the Trans-atlatic relationship with funding from the German Marshal Fund has for the last few weeks appeared to have drunk the juice. Taking sides under the dangerous pretense that they are sure who will win, and that there really isn't anything unseemly for a para-governmental think-tank grabbing its' ankles.

They even managed to call their needy-dope-on-the-street-interview post “continuity you can believe in”, somehow intellectually consolidating “continuity” and “change” without their heads imploding.

The premise behind their effort is that life would be just dandy if Germans liked America again. A silly expectation from the nation that brought you Realpolitik, which means throwing anyone under the bus if it's convenient or if there are enough molotov-cocktail tossing German adolescents outside.

Oddly enough, they seem unaware of just how many people this could alienate, and I don't mean the half of the population who will vote for McCain, I mean imagining that America should expend even one man-hour of somebody's time at Foggy Bottom on being liked by Germans when there are real problems in the world, and it isn't worth exciting ones shred of resentment from those governments leery of Germans, i.e. The Poles, Russians, and a cast of dozens for the sake of some collective sandbox jollies which won't matter to either relations or the broader German and American publics.

Europeans don't do change, at least not at anything faster than a glacial pace. Obama isn't going to magically compel anyone in Europe to do anything cooperative. If they like the fluff, fine, but there is no way in hell Americans will elect a man just to be told some silly fiction about being temporarily and conditionally liked by Europeans.



You'll be sure to enjoy the continuity the Jordanian guy expresses in his idea that all American politicians are alike, and the wacko at the end hoping for “Bush jokes”. On the planet that think-tank types live on, this is called a budding endearment to America

The sad thing is that now these people expect a possible President Obama to follow policy guidance that favors them. Fat chance getting that out of this shark. These very people will make no effort to conceal their resentment of America even more in 24 months out of simple disappointment for not having gotten out of him in policy terms, something for nothing.

Even among friendly nations, the exercise of seeking affection out of random citizens is pointless. If they like or dislike America, it's for their own reasons that shouldn't cost one drop of American blood or one single element of domestic interest. Only on a superficial cultural level could that emotional cultural bond matter, and Realpolitik being what it is - the Europeans would withdraw that bond in a flash if we ever needed it.

Nor would that effort of being broadly liked by the German public benefit Germans either. Want to be liked if you have a serious task in the world that might require cooperation from Europeans? Then get a dog. Affection hasn't been used as the basis of international relationship since the Soviets employed the pretense ran an annual “solidarity parade” for each of their satellites – where the children wore Marxist Pioneer or FDJ shirts and attendance was mandatory.

Democratic Candidate Attempts Impersonation of an Average American, Fails

One thing Americans know about the Euro-bama mystery tour is that it reveals why we don’t want the man his superficial promoters abroad want to be “the world’s candidate”.

Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama has compared Americans unfavorably with Europeans, which seems to be a recurring theme among Democrats in general. This time it has to do with language. When Europeans come to America, says Obama, they speak English along with their French and German. But when Americans go to Europe, all they can say is "Merci beaucoup." I guess that assumes they all go to France when they go to Europe. But be that as it may, the point seems to be, Europeans can speak the language of the country they visit, while Americans can't.

That is not the case. In fact, it is a ridiculous argument.

All it really is, is a the usual display of European ignorance by proxy.

When Europeans visit Spain (which they do in droves), do they speak Spanish? Perhaps the equivalent of "Merci beaucoup" but not much more than that. Not to mention when they visit Latin America. What language do they speak then? English. How chauvinistic! And how about when Europeans visit Portugal, or Denmark, or the Netherlands, or Poland, or the Czech Republic, or Italy, or.... What language do they speak? Either their native German or French (if that's where they're from), or ... English.

It’s even worse that they’re pandering to some notion that there is “one world view”, but that’s something that the left in Europe and America have always fallen for. To the surprise of German Green Party candidate who certainly learned everything she knows about the US from a protest sign or the hateful tirades of American leftists themselves:

But the Green Party's Deputy Parliamentary Leader voiced what many politicians, especially on the left, probably feel, when he told reporters, "Barack Obama's visit shows: there is another America."

Who knew? Everyone who isn’t ignorant and doesn’t share you narrow world view or doesn’t crave absolute uniformity of thought, that’s who.

All the while, the making of the myth-making continues, and anything that isn’t skin deep or based on a simple, flattering adjective is ignored. For example, can Democrats really call themselves “worldly” when they can’t even get a grip on the variety of things that the people worldwide find meaningful? Well, they never have in the past, especially when it comes to promoting views that most humans find repellant.

But the Ghanaian song [about Obama] adds two starkly negative chords. Over the rat-a-tat-tat of simulated gunfire, it cautions Obama about white racists who could harm him. Then it warns that his entire nation faces doom on Judgment Day, because of "legalizing abortion in America."

Do listeners realize that Obama himself is a strong advocate of abortion rights? I don't know. But here's what I do know: Africans are deeply conservative on cultural issues, especially abortion and gay rights. And when they find out that Obama isn't, he might start to lose some of his luster.

Consider a recent column out of Uganda, where, as in most of Africa, abortion is prohibited by law. "The Democrats whom Obama wants to take to the White House are known for killing unborn babies," columnist Owen Kibenge declared.

Even worse, Kibenge continued, Obama supports civil unions and adoption rights for homosexual couples. "I am certain that the majority of Ugandans would not subscribe to this, even if it meant not voting for a black man," Kibenge added.

Lefty, the world is listening. Some of them want you in govern the US because they hate America. Some of them don’t want you in power because you hate their values. Some of them are actually struggling with the idea that voting on racial lines might not be what someone meant by “content of their character”, but the idea of not having your own skin color or gender chaining you to a candidate is bubbling through, and it’s your loss, and democracy’s gain.

Your “hate Bush” campaign did more damage abroad than anything else the US has had to do militarily, succeeded in undermining US policy, damaging American leverage worldwide, and now you can’t wait to do some more of it. Thanks for doing your best to try to sink the ship.

The Essence of Evil had to be Found in a Pickle

Readers of the Times could be forgiven for feeling a little confused after reading that "the monkeys have not merely surrendered but are prostrating themselves at the Golden Arch" of McDonald's. The monkeys? The French. The evidence of their national surrender to burgers: the latest profit figures showing that France is leading the field for McDonald's in Europe with revenues increased by 11% to €3 billion (£2.3 billion) in 2007.

For decades on end, it couldn't just be a product or idea that people like or reject. It had to be ginned up into "imperialism," or some other item from the short list of buzzwords rolling from the tips of their tongues much as Pavlov's dog's drool.

French school canteens, with a menu du jour displayed every day in playgrounds, also educate young palates so that children don't become slaves to fast food in later years. Most teenagers in France go to McDonald's, but it doesn't prevent them from enjoying their grandmother's soupe de cresson their uncle's soufflé au fromage, and more importantly, they know the difference between junk food and gastronomy.

As they do everywhere else on earth, but in their great, superior enlightenment, able to leap tall buildings, etc., etc., to a degree which somehow must always be defined as greater or better, as they eternally try to define themselves banking on a distant past.

As if this grand, global drama (based on them, of course) really existed, there had to be a way to talk about oneself, and one's great inability to be taken seriously when something (anything) identified as being from some other nation competes with anything as minor as your own malbouffe, something MUST be rationalized.

But of course, to explain McDonald's parfum de success you may prefer to dig into the legendary contrarian nature of French behaviour ...

- H/T to Eurota

You Could Almost Write their Script Now

David Aaronovitch notes that the Europe’s anti-Americans resort to the same old things: the feeble recitation of comparing their high culture to others’ low culture, all the while pretending they’re assaulted by the tabloid papers and trashy TV that they exported to America.

But even if he had been a half-Chinese ballet-loving Francophone, he would have been hated by some who should have loved him, for there isn't an American president since Eisenhower who hasn't ended up, at some point or other, being depicted by the world's cartoonists as a cowboy astride a phallic missile. It happened to Bill Clinton when he bombed Iraq; it will happen to Mr Obama when his reinforced forces in Afghanistan or Pakistan mistake a meeting of tribal elders for an unwise gathering of Taleban and al-Qaeda. Then the new president (or, if McCain, the old president) will be the target of that mandarin Anglo-French conceit that our superior colonialism somehow gives us the standing to critique the Yank's naive and inferior imperialism.

Often those who express their tiresome anti-Americanism will suggest, as do some of the more disingenuous anti-Zionists with regard to anti-Semitism - that they, of course, are not anti-American, and that no one really is. But, coming as I do from an Anti-American tradition that wasn't afraid to proclaim itself, I think I know where the corpses are interred. For example, the current production of Bernstein's Candide at the English National Opera is a classic of elite anti-Americanism, in which we are invited to laugh at the philistine invocation of “Democracy, the American Way and McDonald's”. The laughter that accompanied this feeble satire showed our proper understanding that we, the audience, had a proper concept of democracy, and would never soil ourselves with an Egg McMuffin.

The true irony went way above the sniggerers' heads, which was that Leonard Bernstein was the American cultural import that we were, at that very moment, enjoying.

His title?

Eventually, we will all hate Obama too

Which is an exaggeration, but not that far from the mark. Unlike European political dynamics, it really isn’t necessary to join a cult of attendant party social organizations, only buy the party newspapers line, etc. In America is isn’t necessary to detest your political opponents as it would be among the “brain trusts” of the UMP and PS in France. Though those on the far-left do it, it's still mocked.

The sad thing about the title, is that except the reasons the usual European pedants will have to hate won’t be rational. They will be the “usual” ones. The complex of myths and prejudices that they’ve been flogging for ages. It’s a slightly more adult looking form of the “we invented that first” game, but only slightly so.

Tourism is not an International Relations Credential

Today on BBC, it was summed up quite nicely. There was a brief snippet of sound thrown into a horribly disorganized piece flashing uncritically from one bit of Obama-idolitry to another, where a German state minister was quoted saying [Obama] "he represents civil rights to me", in a statement based solely on his image and the color of his skin, is 40 years late to the lefty zeitgeist party, and is utterly ignorant of the involvement of the democratic party in Illinois being more along the lines of Bull Conner, a democrat, than with Martin Luther King, a republican.

The question is, do our news editor-created, airbrushed, bumbling, leftist idiots outdo their news editor-created, airbrushed, bumbling, leftist idiots.

To underscore just how badly Germans are struggling with their hideously poor understanding of a larger world that America inhabits, they can't seem to figure out how we can be so evil, yet so weak:

Among Germans, 88% believe the U.S. influences events in their country despite a simultaneous belief that the U.S. is a spent power; 47% think that influence is a bad thing; only 12% call it good. And 80% believe America has a negative impact on Germany's economy — an idea so plainly wrong as to be laughable.

What Germans Call “A Million People”

If they knew how to count.

Of course in the dizzy enthusiasm of groupthink, that isn’t the only error they’ve made lately. Speaking at the monument associated with another leftist, an American candidate canvassing for non-votes might find the local hype might not be all it’s cracked up to be, especially when practicing the usual progressive “forgetfulness” about history.

The “Victory Column” as such already existed before Hitler and Speer decided that it would form a suitable centerpiece for the “East-West Axis”: one of the two major thoroughfares laid out in their megalomaniacal plans for a “new” Berlin redesigned to reflect the power of the new German Reich. The polarity of column and gate — with the two monuments providing dramatic points of reference for the mass demonstrations so beloved of the Nazis — undoubtedly figured in their calculations. One can well expect both elements to be featured in the televised images of Obama’s mass rally on Thursday.

How Dare you Question Europe’s New Living Saint

Blackfive posted a quick email received from an Air Force officer who had to endure Obama “supporting the troops”.

As you know I am not a very political person. I just wanted to pass along that Senator Obama came to Bagram Afghanistan for about an hour on his visit to ' The War Zone ' . I wanted to share with you what happened.

He got off the plane and got into a bullet proof vehicle, got to the area to meet with the Major General (2 Star) who is the commander here at Bagram.

As the Soldiers where lined up to shake his hand, he blew them off and didn't say a word as he went into the conference room to meet the General. As he finished, the vehicles took him to the ClamShell (pretty much a big top tent that military personnel can play basketball or work out in with weights) so he could take his publicity pictures playing basketball. He again shunned the opportunity to talk to Soldiers to thank them for their service.

No doubt Germans will be treating him like the flawless, superhuman deity undisambiguated earthling that they have no actual clue about that he is – probably because traditionally they’re used to being treated like a number when it comes to any sort of interaction with government. I guess fearless leader is worthy of Europe’s historically frightening uniformity of thought and deficit of rational critical capacity which usually doesn’t clear up until it’s too late.

That he’s so popular in Europe, though is rather telling. Since they want to cobble US policy any way thay can, are generally a predatory economic competator willing to use the full force of government to create “champions” and cramping the competitiveness that the rest of the world thrives on to pimp their overpriced rubbish, then Americans will realize just who to vote for, and specifically who to vote against to see that US interests. Sweeping everything ideological aside, it's safe to say that what they want isn't good for us, so why then, would we accept “their” and their fellow travellers' candidate?

If it hasn’t registered yet, it isn’t the guy eager to serve a non-voting foreign “constituency” who want most to see us poor and weak. Now that we know what Europeans are looking for, as if there was any question about it in the past based on the comments of Joe and Jane euro-sixpack, it's really is the dawn of a new age of transatlantic understanding. We hear you loud and clear, and we trust the meddling naïfs even less than ever.

"Every day we have democracy is a victory for the Iraqi people"

I asked Iraqi Ambassador to the United Nations Hamid Al Bayati what would constitute victory for the Iraqi people

remembers Austin Bay.

He responded viscerally, "Every day we have democracy is a victory for the Iraqi people."

Obama's Magical Media Tour: The NYT wanted McCain to write his editorial on Obama's terms

The refusal of the New York Times to print McCain's op-ed on Obama after an Obama piece was published has nothing to do with editorial judgment and everything to do with protecting the media's heartthrob

writes Investor's Business Daily (no, no, the fact that Times op-ed editor David Shipley served in the Clinton administration has nothing to do with it) while Bobby Eberle adds that "It has been shown time and time again that the mainstream media are dominated by liberals and left-leaning reporters."

The "newspaper of record" doesn't want John McCain's views on Iraq to go on the record, at least not while Barack Obama is on his magical media tour. The truth about Obama is unfit to print?

…Shipley wanted McCain to define what he meant by victory and submit a timetable for achieving both victory and total withdrawal. He wanted McCain to write his editorial on Obama's terms.

Investor's Business Daily suspects

that the Times was trying to protect Obama, at least during his trip, from reminders that he opposed the surge and the war and was wrong on both counts.

Among the things the Arizona Senator said that the NYT didn't want you to read was:

The success of the surge has not changed Senator Obama's determination to pull out all of our combat troops. All that has changed is his rationale. In a New York Times op-ed and a speech this week, he offered his "plan for Iraq" in advance of his first "fact finding" trip to that country in more than three years. It consisted of the same old proposal to pull all of our troops out within 16 months. In 2007 he wanted to withdraw because he thought the war was lost. If we had taken his advice, it would have been.

…I have said that I expect to welcome home most of our troops from Iraq by the end of my first term in office, in 2013.

But I have also said that any draw-downs must be based on a realistic assessment of conditions on the ground, not on an artificial timetable crafted for domestic political reasons. This is the crux of my disagreement with Senator Obama.

Senator Obama has said that he would consult our commanders on the ground and Iraqi leaders, but he did no such thing before releasing his "plan for Iraq." Perhaps that's because he doesn't want to hear what they have to say.

…Senator Obama seems to have learned nothing from recent history. I find it ironic that he is emulating the worst mistake of the Bush administration by waving the "Mission Accomplished" banner prematurely.

I am also dismayed that he never talks about winning the war — only of ending it. But if we don't win the war, our enemies will. A triumph for the terrorists would be a disaster for us. That is something I will not allow to happen as president.

Hint: The Sierra Club won't like it.

After all, they and their ilk like the idea of killing apostates much more. But while the touchy-feelies talk themselves into rationalizing the end of humanity over nothing, we got the juice:

What is small enough to be hauled on a truck, has the power to provide electricity to 45,000 homes, can help the U.S. cut its dependence on foreign oil and has no emissions?

[snip]

An Energy Department official told New Scientist magazine four years ago that such reactors wouldn't require maintenance or need to be refueled. After their useful life of about 30 years they could be returned to the factory.

Duh

EU lagging behind on education, illiteracy on rise

In case you had any doubts, they aren’t just self-aggrandizing, they’re also dumshits.

However, countries have failed to bring down the share of low performing readers. Instead of the targeted 20% decrease, illiteracy has actually increased by more than 10% since 2000.
According to the Commission, all countries have their own relative strengths and weaknesses across the benchmark areas and "there are significant divergences between member states and fields". For example, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Poland and Slovenia "exceed the five benchmarks on average and are still progressing" while France, the Netherlands and Belgium show only "average performance below the benchmarks and have stopped progressing in this respect".

The Lingering Red Parasites

Defending the indefensible and believing the absurd is still a common pastime for many battle hardened British Stalinists, albeit these days the struggle continues with aging ranks and greatly depleted numbers (depleting one assumes due to the deaths of members from the aging ranks). The late Andrew Rothstein’s CPB remains the largest grouping of tanky Brits. Don’t let that fact overwhelm you though. Figures from the party’s 2007 congress reported that membership had at the last count fallen to just 941. One can only wonder just how small the smaller factions actually are when this is considered the behemoth of British Stalinism. It does appear to be that the smaller your faction the crazier you tend to be - and the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) is both very small and very crazy.

So reports the Johnny Guitar, but have no doubts, others of this ilk do indeed have options. While most have gravitated toward the comfortable, protected, humanity-hating false populism of Greenie mendacity, others would do well to move to France with the home-buying sort of Britons they detest.

They are sure to find a friend in the boy wonder of agitational fantasy Marxism, Olivier Besancenot. A recent revelation that he has links to a Red Brigade era terrorist of Action Directe proves that he’s got the “cred” that the hopeless, lonely, and stupid are looking for.

Ultradirigisme on one side, and ultralaxisme on the other... In immigration, his constituents and others know that they Besancenot and his party are demanding the immediate amnesty of anyone not in the country lawfully, granting each a 10 year residence permit which they suggest could be automatically renewable. Do they know that the LCR claims the right to voter eligibility for all foreigners (including non-EU noational) in all elections, perhaps even for president? To break the "criminalization of youth and the poor," the Trotskyist party advocates nothing less than the repeal of public safely laws, and even the doing away of keeping police files! Nonetheless they want "controls" over the social sphere.


"Unrealistic and dangerous": is what Minister Jean-Marie Bockel, called the LCR’s program in an interview. "If revenues were applied [as the LCR wished], he adds, the economy would collapse in a few weeks, and, fairly quickly, our freedoms would be questioned." Including in his party one Jean-Marc Rouillan, the former Action Directe terrorist, the party is not as limited to worker issues as Besancenot has suggested. She recalled the "historic links" between the extreme left and violence, and these tinks never completely broken. Interviewed by Le Monde, Pierre-Francois Grond, leader of the LCR and one close to Besancenot described as mere "twenty years ago bullshit" the double murder of Georges Besse and General Audran!

Moreover he’s a complete fake, as 5 Years Later recently notes.

We often wondered if the factor Aggravant still working? To this question, the candidate Besancenot spoke of his monthly salary of less than €1200 as a Postal worker. Blessed are the believers, because the reality is somewhat different. He’s paid mainly by the party. For example, he very regularly got compensation as a European parliamentary assistant when Alain Krivine was an MEP, in amount considerably above the monthly €5000.

What is his provenance? To this question, Olivier Besancenot speaks with modesty of a small studio in the 18th arrondissement. The journalist would have had much to see - a really good size apartment in the neighborhood of Sacre Coeur in Montmartre - the most expensive part of the 18th, one of the most sought after by Parisian Bobos. Of course, he owns it... something impossible on a postal worker’s salary, but who’s saying...

What strikes me about these people is their ignorance, for which I have absolutely no desire to lend any tolerance to. I lived behind the iron curtain as a fireigner, and had the good fortune to be able to leave. The population didn’t, and none of these latter-day zealots who continue to have wet dreams of collective, homogeneous being where so many of life’s choices are taken away, but are rather assigned to you, have never had to live that kind of life. Rather than make any effort to understand the dynamics of making a good life in a free society, they’re more than happy to seem to appeal to others while being very much in love with assigning you your life options based on opinions they alone have without respect to others’ freedom to have some control over hteir own lives.

Even if their exaggerations about the life in the easterm block being so good, and ours being so violent and unjust were true (which they aren’t,) removing people’s will over their simplistic materialism is an abomination. Were they to actually think about it, would they themselves actually take free child daycare over the ability to leave the country, or to travel, or to invent a new vocation of their own? Would they genuinely be able to salve their suspicions that everything is “the peoples’ property” versus “the corporations” when they are slaves to a state which itself is the boldest example of corporate abuse and holds an absolute monopoly over the satisfaction of simple, easily served human needs which they struggled with? Unless they’re stupid enough, I doubt it.

A lIfe in the Merde

Trying to pare down gub’mint? Trying to pad it for votes and to creep toward an entirely centralized economy? Makes no difference in the land where you end up with Socialism no matter who you elect.

During the presidential campaign, Nicolas Sarkozy had said would only replace one in two government employees as their positions are made vacant at retirement. Half of the savings generated would go to deficit reduction, and the rest to increase civil servant salaries. Once in office, he decided to pursue the decline in the public service started under Chirac. In the 2008 budget, 23 000 public service positions will be eliminated.
But, incredible as it may seem, the State does not know exactly how many people it employs.

I suppose this includes the long-since communized parts of the economy itself, which is to say the state enterprises that have as their workforce “state employees” such as EdF, GdF (which now owns formerly-nearly non-state Suez), the passenger trains, the post office, etal. While HItlerian state-run corporatism rules that day in some parts of Europe, these “champions” invariably buy-up other Europeans’ privatized entities.

Free-markets? Just you try it! We’ll fix your wagon!

The True Purveyors of Lies: Hear about the 550 metric tons of yellowcake uranium found in Iraq, enough to make 142 nuclear weapons?

Hear about the 550 metric tons of yellowcake uranium found in Iraq?

asks Investor's Business Daily.

No? Why should you? It doesn't fit the media's neat story line that Saddam Hussein's Iraq posed no nuclear threat when we invaded in 2003.

It's a little known fact that, after invading Iraq in 2003, the U.S. found massive amounts of uranium yellowcake, the stuff that can be refined into nuclear weapons or nuclear fuel, at a facility in Tuwaitha outside of Baghdad.

In recent weeks, the U.S. secretly has helped the Iraqi government ship it all to Canada, where it was bought by a Canadian company for further processing into nuclear fuel — thus keeping it from potential use by terrorists or unsavory regimes in the region.

This has been virtually ignored by the mainstream media. Yet, as the AP reported, this marks a "significant step toward closing the books on Saddam's nuclear legacy."

Seems to us this should be big news.

After all, much of the early opposition to the war in Iraq involved claims that President Bush "lied" about weapons of mass destruction and that Saddam posed little if any nuclear threat to the U.S.

This more or less proves Saddam in 2003 had a program on hold for building WMD and that he planned to boot it up again soon.

…That means Saddam held onto it for more than a decade. Why? He hoped to wait out U.N. sanctions on Iraq and start his WMD program anew. This would seem to vindicate Bush's decision to invade.

The American Thinker Web site reported four years ago on the scary math behind Saddam's uranium hoard: 500 tons of yellowcake, once refined, could make 142 nuclear weapons.

But yellowcake wasn't all they found at Tuwaitha. According to the AP, the military also discovered "four devices for controlled radiation exposure . . . that could potentially be used in a weapon."

By the way, this should put to rest the canard peddled by the American left and by former Ambassador Joseph Wilson that "Bush lied" about Iraq seeking yellowcake from the African country of Niger.

Given what we know, including comments by officials in Niger's government, Iraq did make overtures to buy uranium. And it's quite possible all or part of the 550 tons came from there.

What's more, if Bush hadn't acted, we might today see a nuclear Iraq, an Iran on the way to having a weapon, Libya with an expanded nuclear program, and Syria — with its close ties to Saddam — on the way to having a nuke.

Of equal concern is why the media ignored this good news coming from Iraq. It seems to be of a piece with how they've treated other recent positive developments in Iraq.

We ask again — why aren't you seeing and hearing more about this? The reason is simple: The mainstream media find it inconveniently contradicts the story they have been telling you for years.

Christopher Merola adds:

We have been hearing from the far-left for more than five years how, “Bush lied.” Somehow, that slogan loses its credibility now that 550 metric tons of Saddam’s yellowcake, used for nuclear weapon enrichment, has been discovered and shipped to Canada for its new use as nuclear energy.

It appears that American troops found the 550 metric tons of uranium in 2003 after invading Iraq. They had to sit on this information and the uranium itself, for fear of terrorists attempting to steal it. It was guarded and kept safe by our military in a 23,000-acre site with large sand beams surrounding the site.

This is vindication for the Bush administration, having been attacked mercilessly by the liberal media and the far-left pundits on the blogosphere. Now that it is proven that President Bush did not lie about Saddam’s nuclear ambitions, one would think the mainstream media would report the story? Once the AP released the story, the mainstream media should have picked it up and broadcast it worldwide.

This never happened, due in large part I believe, to the fact that the mainstream media would have to admit they were wrong about Bush’s war motives all along.

…The truth is, due to their opposition to the war, Joe Wilson, Valerie Plame, the mainstream media and their left-wing friends on the blogosphere engaged in a propaganda campaign to undermine the Bush administration.

No. It was not just a propaganda campaign. The truth is that this is the true point where the word lie should enter the debate: the adversaries of the Bush White House lied. They lied knowingly and they lied deliberately.

If anyone suggested that Tiger Woods should try to be more like other golfers, people would question the sanity of whoever made that suggestion

Yet there are those who think that the United States should follow policies more like those in Europe,

writes Thomas Sowell,

often with no stronger reason than the fact that Europeans follow such policies. For some Americans, it is considered chic to be like Europeans.

…Those Americans who are pushing us toward the kinds of policies that Europeans impose on pharmaceutical companies show not the slightest interest in what the consequences of such laws have been.

One consequence is that even European pharmaceutical companies do much of their research and development of new medications in the U.S., in order to take advantage of American patent protections and freedom from price controls.

These are the very policies that the European imitators want us to change.

It is not a coincidence that such a high proportion of the major pharmaceutical drugs are developed in the U.S. If we kill the goose that lays the golden egg, as the Europeans have done, both we and the Europeans — as well as the rest of the world — will be worse off, because there are few other places for such medications to be developed. …

A Not-So-Sophisticated Record

Some of the people who are most adamant against outsourcing economic activity from the U.S. to other countries often seem to think we should outsource our foreign policy to "world opinion" or act only in conjunction "with our NATO allies."

Like so many things that are said when it comes to public policy, there is very little attention paid to the actual track record of "world opinion" or of "our NATO allies."

Often there is a blanket assumption that European countries are just so much more sophisticated than American "cowboys." But there is incredibly little interest in the track record of those European sophisticates whom we are supposed to consult about our own national interests — including, in an age when terrorists may acquire nuclear weapons, our national survival.

In the course of the 20th century, supposedly sophisticated Europeans managed to create some of the most monstrous forms of government on earth — communism, fascism, Nazism — in peacetime, and to start the two World Wars, the bloodiest in all human history. In each of these wars, both the winners and the losers ended up far worse off than they were before these wars were started.

Mad like a Sandmonkey

F’ing brilliant:

Unarguably , Obama's number one foreign policy objective is to get things right with the arab and muslim world. And that's when you are going to watch the best circus in the world, because no a single leader, in the arab or the muslim world, really wants to get right with the US. Hell, our rulers have justified their entire existence in power by positioning themselves as opposed to America . They continue , in their state-sponsored media, to point fingers at the US and go " See, those bloodthirsty Americans. They will kill you all, rape all of your women and drink the blood of your babies, if we are not here to protect you. So eat shit and shut up!", and If you think I am exaggerating please check Egypt, Syria, Iran, Yemen, etc.. etc.. Those people have built their entire rule on that whole notion, you think they are going to give that up because the silly Americans voted for a 40-something inexperienced Black dude? Get real!

He also raises this excellent point of perceptions. The nodding, bien pensent repugnant elite might think Obama some sort of healer to those people who are “victimized by our existence”, when the inverse is rather more obvious.

Oh, and I am sure that once he gets elected that the Islamists will warm up to him immediately. You know, because there is nothing that Islamists like more than a former born- muslim who chose, by his own accord, to become a Christian and an active one at that. Yeah, I am sure they will be very impressed, and quit fighting the US immediately. After all, he said that he intends to deliver a speech from a muslim nation in his first 100 days of office. Yeah, that kind of pandering really calms islamists down, especially coming from apostates. And they will surely respect him if he withdraws partially from Iraq, and not mistake it as a sign of weakness or that they are winning or anything. And since we are on the topic, can you imagine what will happen if a terrorist attack took place during the Obama Presidency, after he does all of this? Can you imagine how America will feel, when they realize that even after they voted for the Blackman with Arab middle name and Muslim background who gave a speech during his first 100 days in a muslim nation, that the world still hates them and that Islamists still want to kill them?

But it would never dawn on the Birkenstock-wearing buffoons with PhDs at your local fair-trade anti-capitalist co-op grocery store to understand the obvious. It really is too much to ask of the “brilliant progressives” of this world.

Unfortunately, karma does not easily cross the Atlantic

Upon her liberation, Betancourt offered profuse thanks to God and the Virgin Mary, to her supporters and the media, to France and Colombia and just about everybody else

writes Charles Krauthammer as he discusses a "Europe luxuriat[ing] in soft power", a "Europe specializ[ing] in providing haven for those fleeing the evil that Europe does nothing about", and the "Solemn condemnations [that] have been issued from every forum of soft-power fecklessness — the EU, the U.N., the G-8 foreign ministers". Returning to Ingrid Betancourt's "profuse thanks to … just about everybody else", he adds:

As of this writing, none to the United States.