The Official Victory Guide to the Irish Re-vote

The follow-up edition:

An Outbreeder's Modest Proposal for Inbreeder Tolerance

Who is anybody to judge Mackenzie Phillips and Papa John? (danke zu Ben).

And with awareness will come acceptance. Supportive bumperstickers, marriage equality, an end to outbreeder sex-police targeting inbreeders, campus "safe spaces," incest pride marches, and corporate sensitivity training will be the signs that the campaign from out of the closets and into the streets has made headway. When all this is accomplished, our world will be transformed from one in which the incestophobes who now hatefully condemn incest without fear of repercussion will be reduced through social pressure to criticism of the most oblique and satirical sort.

Fig Leaf Internationalism

The graphic chosen says it all:

Morales, Castro, and Chavez lionized by Europeans wanting to oppress a populace vicariously through others.

The EU, which is the leading donor of development assistance to Latin America, also hopes to set up a new financial instrument to leverage millions of euros to bank-roll energy infrastructure, environmental projects and combat poverty.

Oddly enough it’s the Europeans are the ones looking for energy. South and Central America have plenty of it. Money too. This is obviously a kind of bribe to stave off the continent’s Leftists penchant for nationalization, making it look rather like a sign of love and concern, as if governments really could love and be concerned.

They refer to themselves as the "biggest doners" to Latin America, but as usual it reveals little more than an obsession with statism. European government aid to governments for the model of program is greater than anyone else's, but as development aid goes, it's a pittance and an insult compared to the aggrandisement they find in it. In this case, they get to aggregate individual European governments into the EU to look big, and aggregate the varied societies in Latin America to make it look braod, as if there was a generic Latin America which is uniformly poor - for the purposes of the sympathies they may appear to have for the European generic image of peasants.

In reality, private doners, largely American improve the lives of others in many part of Latin America to a far greater degree than even Latin American governments do. What this looks like, is a sale and purchase of access to mineral rights, preferably through an absolutist who can inforce that franchise as long as the money keeps flowing. After all, Total had decades of experience operating that way on the African continent.

How Is That New Respect for Our Friends'n'Allies Workin' fer Ya, BHO (V)

Thanks to the absence of George W. Bush from the Oval office, America — and Chicago — get all kinds of respect these days (all links in Danish)..

Plus: Contrary to what Obama thinks of himself, former IOC member Kai Holm said (prior to the Rio win), Chicago showed nothing if not disrespect by having Obama show up, business-like, out of the blue and think the One's very presence could influence the outcome of the 2016 Olympic Games city vote (by contrast, Holm says, when London was chosen for 2012, Tony Blair had spent three days of lobbying and talking to all kinds of people, right and left…)

A "global climatic upheaval" whose "effects could be extremely serious, if not catastrophic"

"I don't believe that the world's present population is sustainable if there are more than three years like [the year we had two years ago] in a row."

Time Magazine comes with a timely warning of "extremely serious, if not catastrophic" climate change (merci à Harrison Colter who perceptively points out that it "seems foolish … not to heed calls to solve the problem").

As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval.

…Whatever the cause of the cooling trend, its effects could be extremely serious, if not catastrophic. Scientists figure that only a 1% decrease in the amount of sunlight hitting the earth's surface could tip the climatic balance, and cool the planet enough to send it sliding down the road to another ice age within only a few hundred years.

Update: According to Jerome R. Corsi, back then (in the 1970s and 1980s), global warming — the artificial type attributable to mankind — was something to be… welcomed and… desired, even… actively worked for!

In their 1970s textbook, "Ecoscience: Population, Resources and Environment," last revised in 1977, [future White House science czar John] Holdren together with co-authors Paul and Anne Ehrlich argued on page 687 that "a man-made warming trend might cancel out a natural cooling trend."

Update: Newsweek picks up the good work…

No, It’s not Man Ray Appreciation Night

Drunken man in fur hat carrying rifle and bumping into trees make newspaper.

Plantu Uses the Death of Michael Jackson to Castigate… the U.S. Army (?!)

Newspaper headline: Tragedy in the United States
American soldier: It's horrible! I must go home!

Michael Jackson's death was another opportunity for Le Monde's Plantu to make caricatural, derogatory remarks about Americans and the U.S. Army.

Well, of course: forget about the horrors of the Saddam Hussein years, forget about Saddam's killing fields (forget, especially, about Saddam's foreign abettors, Monsieur Plantu), forget about all the rebuilding done thanks to the army of the United States, forget how far Iraq has come, and (last but not least) make a caricature of the situation in Iraq, where all is — still — nothing but desolation, all of which is — bien sûr — the lone fault of the United States army and America itself…

Of Jackboots and Footnotes

Man about town Mark Steyn dissects Yale University Press’ self-censoring of depictions of both Mo and the Mo-toons, even in what will be a forgotten academic publications. Mimicking the numb intellectual monoculture of the European “intelligentia”, the reasons are Grade A venality.

notwithstanding the damage done by Euro-Canadian appeasers, an American institution has now effortlessly outpaced them. Having commissioned a book on the subject, Yale University Press has decided that it will appear without any illustration of said subject matter. The author is not a scaremongering blowhard like Ezra and me but a respected Brandeis University professor, Jytte Klausen. Insofar as I understand the thesis of The Cartoons That Shook The World, Professor Klausen argues that the crisis was artificially whipped up for political purposes and that, therefore, one should draw no broader conclusions about Muslim culture and its relationship with the west.

Which gives the benefit of the doubt to the symbolic ‘victims’. Sorry. Not good enough for the grand Troika of Victimhood!

The official explanation was the threat of violence. Not any actual violence, and, as it turns out, not even any actual threats. After Roger Kimball poked around a bit, it emerged that the decision to ban both the Danes and Dore was driven not by editors or publishers at YUP but by the very biggest bigwigs of the University itself. The experts were contacted by “the Office of the President”, no less. On its face, the decision to gut its own reputation for editorial and scholarly integrity seems to owe less to unspecified fears of jihadist nuts blowing up a university bookstore than to a cooler calculation of its strategic interests, including (so Mr Kimball suggests) continued access to wealthy Muslim benefactors.

It’s all about the bling-bling, baby!

In Denmark and other countries, craven accommodationists can at least plead that they have incendiary majority-Muslim suburbs with 50 per cent youth unemployment. That’s not true of New Haven, where the honchos seem to be using fear of violence as a cover for the appetites of their endowment. In other words, they’re merely posing as contemptible Euroweenies. Which, when you think about it, is even more contemptible.

In 2006, during the original cartoon jihad, a Muslim demonstrator in Toronto spelled it out: “We won’t stop the protests until the world obeys Islamic law.”

Alas double secret probation!



All of those willing to cede New Haven to the Umma, raise your hands. I thought as much. Put them down now. You’re freaking me out.

It takes a Priest to make it a Scandal

"This affair is frankly a bit sinister ... Here is a man of such talent, recognised worldwide, recognised especially in the country where he was arrested. This is not nice at all."

- Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner

How would the French cultural aristocracy or the sirens of Hollywood feel if a Roman Catholic Priest were detained by Swiss police for a 30 year old molestation, rather than Roman Polanski? Wouldn’t it just be another case of “American style” overzealous prosecution (oddly enough, executed by the Swiss) of an old man?

Swiss Church leaders have conceded that a priest suspected of molesting children in France was quietly transferred into Switzerland in the 1990s.

French law-enforcement officials are now seeking to question the priest, who has been identified only as a 67-year-old Capuchin. He has reportedly been living in a monastery in Switzerland.

Experience tells me that half of the ire comes from the fact that Polanski is a French national, and more importantly considered culturally French. The other half comes from a false argument that ‘he’s suffered enough’ founded on his chosen profession. Polanski's position in that cult of culture makes him a sort of high-priest. As with the church, it was the higher-ups that too came to the defense of the violator. The irony here is that while the parishoners were the most adamant to see justice served, there appears to be no great sense from the European public, save for a few parents, that THIS child abuser should at least come in under the law for the crime he pleased guilty to.

“Judicial lynching,” said Jack Lang, the former French culture minister. “Absolutely horrifying,” echoed the current French culture minister, Frédéric Mitterrand. “Provocation!” shouted Andrzej Wajda and other Polish filmmakers. From across Europe, nearly 100 representatives of the entertainment industry, including Pedro Almodóvar and Wim Wenders, signed a petition declaring themselves “dismayed” by the arrest

Their dismay seems to say a lot about these men.

The AFP "Exists Only Because of the Will of the French State"

Claude Moisy, a former head of the Agence France-Presse, admits in Le Monde that the AFP exists only because of the will of the French state.

Entreprise bâtarde [qui] n'existe que par la volonté de l'Etat français.

Meanwhile, in an unrelated matter, Alexandre Tylski defends Roman Polanski, which leads a number of readers to react. (More from JustOneMinute, merci à Larwyn…)

And the delayed closure of Guantanamo gives Le Monde grounds for an editorial.What they don't say is, "Hey, maybe Dubya wasn't as big a dumb*ss as his opponents — American as well as foreign — said he was"…


Meanwhile, Plantu demonstrates what happens when your brain has fried and you can no longer emit rational thoughts and use common sense…

Incongruity Alert

NYT: Europe’s Socialists Suffering Even in Downturn

However there’s always that strange sound of zombies out in those woods on the other side of the railroad tracks when the American provisional wing of the European socialist rose-bearers rings in on an issue like this. The online article’s properties list a different title altogether: “Even in Capitalists’ Bad Times, Europe’s Socialists Suffer - NYTimes.com”

As appealing as the idea is, European Socialists are not disappearing. They are just experiencing less control over their political challengers’ avenues to state their positions.

German voters clobbered the Social Democratic Party on Sunday, giving it only 23 percent of the vote, its worst performance since World War II.
Voters also punished left-leaning candidates in the summer’s European Parliament elections and trounced French Socialists in 2007. Where the left holds power, as in Spain and Britain, it is under attack. Where it is out, as in France, Italy and now Germany, it is divided and listless.

It being the New York Times, random, unrelated, and spurious political hobgoblins have to be introduced or course:

Some American conservatives demonize President Obama’s fiscal stimulus and health care overhaul as a dangerous turn toward European-style Socialism — but it is Europe’s right, not left, that is setting its political agenda.

What Mr. Obama, idolized by many no longer questioning reality, has to do with this story, one can only speculate. It does, however, reveal the author’s hand – to the blind.

And as if it one little buzz-phrase caught in their jaws was the essence of capitalism, the unfamiliarity that the stupid hold for the object of their hatred...

Even in the midst of one of the greatest challenges to capitalism in 75 years, involving a breakdown of the financial system due to “irrational exuberance,” greed and the weakness of regulatory systems

You might as well throw in the Mummenschantz Players while you’re at it, if you’re trying to maintain some congruity:

France Wants Its Share of the Iraq's Large Market

"Les entreprises qui m'accompagnent sont venues avec la ferme intention de développer leurs activités en Irak", a déclaré le premier ministre, estimant qu'il n'y avait "aucune raison que nous ne retrouvions pas la qualité de la relation économique qui était la nôtre" dans les années 1970-1980, lorsque la France était le partenaire privilégié de l'Irak de Saddam Hussein.

Last summer, shortly after American departure from Iraq's cities, François Fillon paid a surprise visit to Baghdad as a salesman (VRP), accompanied by several business tycoons (the heads of Total, EADS, Schneider, Suez, Lafarge, Veolia, etc), under Le Monde's blaring front-page headline, France Wants Its Share of the Large Iraqi Market.

Not much to say about that — unless it be Nouri Al Maliki's comment, which ought to sound bitter to some ears:

"Nous ne partons pas de zéro. Nous reprenons, nous retrouvons une longue histoire commune", a-t-il dit.

As for Plantu, his joke is more about the sorry state of the opposition Socialists in France. Still, notice his (typical) assumptions (via the cartoon Fillon's words):

"Democracy must be rebuilt" as if nothing had happened since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, as if three or four elections — the first ever in Iraq — had not taken place.

"Here there is no opposition" as if it was only France's arrival that will bring democracy about…

Word Got Out That the Nazis Would Deport Denmark's Jewish Population

Today is the 66th anniversary of the rescue of the Danish Jews (mange tak til Larwyn)…

Case in point

So, if this individual makes it across La Manche into France, will the same great and good among us be howling against his extradition too?

It’s only Called Rendition when Americans do it

"Conditions ... generally qualify as inhuman and degrading," the report says.
"One member state is going out and openly violating international law by intercepting migrants and maybe many refugees, sending them off to undergo degrading treatment, giving them no opportunity to seek asylum," Bill Frelick, author of the report, told EUobserver.

But it’s rendition on a much larger scale, of course.
Purpose? Moolah.
And oil.

The EU remains keen on enhancing ties with Libya despite its poor treatment of the scores of African migrants intercepted and sent back by Italy, a report by Human Rights Watch reads.

A 92-page Human Rights Watch report, released on Monday (21 September) as EU justice ministers were gathering in Brussels for their monthly meeting, with immigration high on the agenda, examines what it describes as the "brutal" treatment of migrants, asylum seekers and refugees in Libya through the eyes of those who have managed to leave and are currently in Italy and Malta.

Elsewhere, the Canadian government is tired of EUvians disposing of those dependants on the state at their border. Purpose? Moolah.
And the tacit belief integral to the European outlook that holds that some people are human trash.

The EU commissioner for justice and home affairs, Jacques Barrot, has warned Canada it could face "retaliatory measures" if it does not scrap the visa obligation imposed on Czech citizens by the end of the year.

Ottawa abolished visas for Czechs in 2007, but re-introduced them in July after hundreds of Roma from the central-European country applied for asylum in Canada, citing discrimination in their home country.

The Canadian move just serves as a reminder that the EU’s lectures about other people’s humanity are about as welcome as the way they treat the Roma.

Information coming on-line

Remember back in March when we had a giggle (for lack of a better word) about the never-ending fantasy of soaking the rich and all things being pure in the world? Well ,the tax hikes on the evil rich were put in place, claims were made and all was right with the world. Now, the results (for lack of a better word) are starting to trickle in:

This year, New York's deep-pocketed rich were required to dig even deeper to help shore up state finances.

They now pay higher taxes on their income and on limousines and yachts, more to enter a horse in a race and more to dabble in real estate. Meanwhile, many are losing millions from the closing of business tax loopholes and those making over $1 million are losing tax deductions others get.

It even costs more to hunt foxes or pheasants and have their taxes prepared.

Now, a half-dozen states in this recession-driven movement are nervously eyeing New York to see if it's wise to demand so much from people rich enough to have a second home in less taxing states — and for whom a change of address can be its own tax break.

Early data from New York show the higher tax rates for the wealthy have yielded lower-than-expected state wealth. Gov. David Paterson, who had always warned targeting the rich could backfire, fears that's just what happened.

Paterson said last week that revenues from the income tax increases and other taxes enacted in April are running about 20 percent less than anticipated.

No doubt, just the beginning.

Good-Bye Friend

William Safire, 1929-2009 (tip du chapeau à Instapundit)

Read 'em and weep

Polling numbers can be an interesting guide to the mindset and thoughts of the great unwashed masses. Political hacks like to look at the numbers and divine any path possible to appease the most number of people in any bid to stay in office. Even when poll numbers are absolutely set against whatever pet issue being pushed by a political hack they will look for any numeric thread by which they can glom on to and keep trying to expand their business (government), voters be damned. Usually the thread grasped is along the lines of the "Polls show that, left-handed people born during a leap-year on a Wednesday and have a hermaphrodite sibiling want the government to act on this issue. WE MUST ACT NOW TO SAVE ALL CHILDREN AND PUPPIES FROM STARVING TOMORROW!" routine.

That is what makes poll numbers like this so interesting. The topic: government-run healthcare. The responses range from: no, hell no, STFU/STFD:

- Just 41% of voters nationwide now favor the health care reform proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats.

- 56% are opposed to the plan.

- 33% of seniors favor the plan while 59% are opposed.

- 16% of the over-65 crowd Strongly Favors the legislation while 46% are Strongly Opposed.

- among all voters 23% Strongly Favor the legislative effort and 43% are Strongly Opposed.

- 68% of American voters have health insurance coverage they rate good or excellent.

- If the plan passes, 24% of voters say the quality of care will get better, and 55% say it will get worse.

Good luck to anyone looking to make chicken-salad out of this one.

FINALLY!

Thankfully the truly dire issues facing (hu)man-kind are finally being addressed:

Now hear this, if you still can: The European Union said Monday it wants makers of popular digital music players to recommend users turn the volume down to preserve their hearing.

The EU's Consumer Affairs Commissioner Meglena Kuneva said experts and industry will together draft tougher standards to limit hearing loss.

Let's just hope it is not too late...

Euro-Doofus Alert

Plan 9 from Outer Space meets the unintentionally absurd German hobbyist.

Der Indianer: Why do 40,000 Germans spend their weekends dressed as Native Americans?

Because too many of them live vapid little lives, take something up as a hobby, eventually think it “spiritually fulfilling” (as opposed to the bad, condescending mimicry that it is,) and seem extremely weird as a result. I.E.: believe in nothing, and you will believe anything, especially if it doesn’t involve any sort of serious personal examination.

...Next...

Carmen Kwasny, who chairs the Native American Association of Germany, is convinced that Germans’ fascination with der Indianer comes from a lack of interaction with the natural environment in the country’s increasingly crowded, industrial cities. Kwasny grew up in Bavaria in an area surrounded by towers and factories; she remembers longing for an intimate connection to nature. “People in Germany are looking for some closeness, a new religion, new way of thinking,” she says. “The conflict is they have to find out that Native Americans are just people.”

As if this was an actual issue... What WOULD we do without our sophisticated cousins?

Polanski Case: "There is a Generous America That We Love, There Is Also a Certain America That Frightens, and That America Has Just Shown Its Face"

While I have mixed feelings about Roman Polanski's arrest (If the account I have heard is to be believed, the teen not only was already sexually active but was having an affair with none other than her step-dad, her mom's boyfriend; in addition, Samantha Geimer … s'est en effet prononcée pour la clémence en affirmant que l'exclusion de Polanski de Hollywood pendant une si longue période constituait un châtiment suffisant), I have none about French officialdom's (and artists') reaction to it, notably the eternally arrogant one haughtily uttered by culture minister Frédéric Mitterrand:

"On sait les conditions dans lesquelles c'est arrivé, et de la même manière qu'il y a une Amérique généreuse que nous aimons, il y aussi une certaine Amérique qui fait peur, et c'est cette Amérique là qui vient de nous présenter son visage", [a dit le ministre de la culture et de la communication].

Nevertheless, a surprising number of Le Monde readers are countering the élites and defending American officials (maybe more because George W. Bush has been replaced by Barack Obama than for any other reason? That would be ignoring that Tinseltown, and California, are more associated with the progressive Democrats that "we love")… (The words are all the more ironic coming from Frédéric Mitterrand, who wrote an autobiographical "novel" — is that supposed to be a phallic symbol on the cover, or what? — about going on trips to Asia for sex with young boys…)

Truth is, you cannot think of the whole affair without taking into account the sexualization of society — due to (the intense efforts of) the left — which leads to an acceptance ("tolerance", again) of young teens (even pre-teens) dressing and acting provocatively and thinking sex is cool and making themselves available; along with the left's equally-strong desire to a series of criminalize every part of society — creating laws and regulations for one and for all, along with activist judges, out-of-control courts and the ingérence of the state into every sphere of private life. (I notably remember a series of John Stossel stories about a man registered as a sex offender because he had sex with his grilfriend when he was 19 and she, 17; she was not some unknown "chick" but they were sweethearts and married, and today they have three children, three kids — his own! — whom he whom he cannot see alone!) This all serves to lead, among other things, to an abandonment of family values, to a feminization of men, and (therefore) to a father's relinquishment of his responsibilities (including protecting their teenage daughters)…

NB: While the much-ballyhooed religious right may be most vocal in favor of family traditions and in opposition to premarital sex (and to schools curricula that condone same, overtly or otherwise), I think that, as good conservatives, they have les to do with all the sorts of legalization we have witnessed in the past years than the left. I therefore consider the criminalization of the past few years to be a product of the left. In fact, I consider it an example of the state creating a problem and then intervening to correct said problem: first, they (and their artist abettors) make the sexualization of society something that is normal and, in fact, desired (so to speak), and then, when people (adults or otherwise) act out — leading to a sense of scandal, and not only from people on the right — leftists scream about, say, society's dark underground closet of pedophilia and jump in to assert more government control, punishing those who grew up in the society that they helped to create in the first place, thinking that desire and lust was normal and to be acted upon.

You get the 1960s and its "liberalization" of sexuality; then (by the greatest of coincidences) you get an onslaught of teens engaging in sex and things such as (in no particular order) adultery, divorce, and pedophilia; then you get such things (from the state) as an invasion of divorce courts and of rules against underage sex. But maybe the best thing would have… not to go so far in "liberalizing" sexual mores in the first place?

France, Sermonizer on Race Relations? Europe? "Un homme me regarde froidement en me lançant : 'J'aime pas les Arabes'"

The only problem with French criticism of alleged American racism and with the donneurs de leçon that are always giving Americans lessons in tolérance and solidarité, is that the deeds of their society, the deeds of the French, do not always — ahem — match their words…

(This, incidentally, brings us back to the main raison d'être of this blog: Not anti-Frenchism, as a number of our detractors are wont to sputter, but "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…")

A Muslim (or an Arab?) journalist of Le Monde testifies first (leading to the unprecedented reaction of over 450 readers), and he is followed by a Jewish journalist — or, at least, a journalist with a Jewish name…

Mustapha Kessous:

Je couvre le Tour de France. Je prépare un article sur ces gens qui peuplent le bord des routes. Sur le bitume mouillé près de Blain (Loire-Atlantique), je m'approche d'une famille surexcitée par le passage de la caravane, pour bavarder. "Je te parle pas, à toi", me jette un jeune homme, la vingtaine. A côté de moi, mon collègue Benoît Hopquin n'a aucun souci à discuter avec cette "France profonde". Il m'avouera plus tard que, lorsque nous nous sommes accrédités, une employée de l'organisation l'a appelé pour savoir si j'étais bien son... chauffeur.

Je pensais que ma "qualité" de journaliste au Monde allait enfin me préserver de mes principaux "défauts" : être un Arabe, avoir la peau trop basanée, être un musulman. Je croyais que ma carte de presse allait me protéger des "crochets" balancés par des gens obsédés par les origines et les apparences. Mais quels que soient le sujet, l'endroit, la population, les préjugés sont poisseux.

J'en parle souvent à mes collègues : ils peinent à me croire lorsque je leur décris cet "apartheid mental", lorsque je leur détaille les petites humiliations éprouvées quand je suis en reportage, ou dans la vie ordinaire. A quoi bon me présenter comme journaliste au Monde, on ne me croit pas. Certains n'hésitent pas à appeler le siège pour signaler qu'"un Mustapha se fait passer pour un journaliste du Monde !"

Ça fait bien longtemps que je ne prononce plus mon prénom lorsque je me présente au téléphone : c'est toujours "M. Kessous". … J'ai dû amputer une partie de mon identité, j'ai dû effacer ce prénom arabe de mes conversations. Dire Mustapha, c'est prendre le risque de voir votre interlocuteur refuser de vous parler. Je me dis parfois que je suis parano, que je me trompe. Mais ça s'est si souvent produit...

Des histoires comme celles-là, j'en aurais tant d'autres à raconter. On dit de moi que je suis d'origine étrangère, un beur, une racaille, un islamiste, un délinquant, un sauvageon, un "beurgeois", un enfant issu de l'immigration... Mais jamais un Français, Français tout court.

This led Le Monde to ask its readers for personal testimony (which only led to another 100 comments):

Refus à l'entrée des discothèques, difficultés à trouver un appartement ou un travail malgré mon diplome d'ingénieur, tout ça je l'ai vécu. Mais le plus pernicieux, le plus écœurant, ce sont toutes ces remarques du quotidien, qui n'ont l'air de choquer personne et qui suscitent le silence dans le meilleur des cas. Un soir, lors d'une fête d'entreprise, on me présente au directeur en tant que nouvelle recrue. Mon responsable donne mon nom à consonance arabe et s'empresse de préciser : "mais ne vous inquiétez pas, c'est quelqu'un de bien."

Then, Le Monde's Léon-Marc Levy joins the debate:

Je ne crois pas que … la haine du Juif soit moindre que la haine de l'Arabe. Loin s'en faut. Et, dans tous les cas, quel sens aurait une "hiérarchie des phobies", un "Palmarès des haines" ? Il faudrait plutôt chercher du côté du tabou. "Je n'aime pas les Arabes" est une déclaration beaucoup plus imaginable aujourd'hui que "je n'aime pas les Juifs".

…Mon propos, c'est le nom qui tue. Le nom sans homme. Le nom propre qui devient nom commun pour charrier la haine collective de l'Autre. M. Arabe Kessous. M. Léon-Marc Juif. … Le nom-sans-homme le fait basculer du côté des victimes de la haine. C'est que la haine raciale ne porte pas sur des individus en tant qu'individus. Elle porte sur une entité haïe. Tout le monde a entendu la pitoyable "défense" : "Mais je ne suis pas antisémite, d'ailleurs j'ai des amis Juifs". Ca marche aussi, bien sûr, avec les "amis Arabes, Noirs, Asiatiques..." Et alors ? Qu'est-ce que ça prouve ?

French Schools Losing Interest in Arabic Lessons

…en France, … l'enseignement de l'arabe, pourtant centenaire, est laissé à l'abandon par l'éducation nationale, au profit des mosquées qui ont capté la demande.

French high school students are losing interest in learning the Arab language, leading Brigitte Perucca to write in Le Monde that Arabic has been chased away from the classrooms.

Que quelques lycées prestigieux de centre-ville regroupent des classes d'arabophones ne doit pas faire illusion. Reléguée dans les zones d'éducation prioritaire, la langue arabe ne parvient pas à quitter son ghetto.

…Le dernier rapport de l'éducation nationale consacré aux ELCO, publié en mars 2006, relève que les cours d'arabe "ne sont pas convaincants". Non qu'ils se soient transformés en cours de religion, comme les inspecteurs l'ont maintes fois entendu, mais à cause de leur piètre qualité : méthodes jugées d'un autre âge, absence de lien entre l'arabe dialectal et arabe standard, rappel constant au pays d'origine et à son régime politique...

La comparaison avec les autres langues "rares" joue en la défaveur de l'arabe. Le chinois, porté par un effet de mode qui ne faiblit pas, attire environ 15 000 élèves dans le secondaire, le portugais 12 000, le russe 14 000 et l'hébreu 7 000. Cet échec sonne, pour nombre d'arabisants, comme un symptôme du rejet des Maghrébins dans la société française. "L'enseignement de cette langue se porte aussi mal que les populations qui la parlent", résume Abdellatif Naguaoui, professeur d'arabe au lycée Alfred-Noble de Clichy-sous-Bois (Seine-Saint-Denis). Traduire : l'arabe est aussi mal aimé que la communauté qui le parle.

…Le motif [du rejet], exprimé ouvertement ou non, étant toujours le même : proposer l'arabe, c'est prendre le risque de "stigmatiser" des collèges. D'où un double échec : cette langue ne trouve pas sa place dans les établissements en quête d'excellence et déserte les plus en difficulté.

But there is some good news (?):"…si l'arabe est en crise au collège et au lycée, il est en plein boom dans les mosquées." Also, private schools have taken up the torch, says Stéphanie Le Bars in Le Monde.

…ces ouvertures d'établissements répondent au désir des parents d'offrir à leurs enfants un "environnement musulman" et un "meilleur encadrement". Outre le programme de l'éducation nationale, les élèves y suivent des cours de langue arabe et de une à trois heures d'éducation religieuse, selon les projets.

La plupart des établissements ont été lancés à l'initiative ou avec le soutien de l'Union des organisations islamiques de France (UOIF), en pointe sur ce dossier. Le projet de Toulouse fait, lui, directement référence à la loi de 2004. "Que faire, sinon, des filles qui désirent rester voilées ?", s'interroge son responsable, Abdelfattah Rahhaoui.

This leads one reader to exclaim:

AU SECOURS !moi petite algérienne,la chance que j'ai eue en 1960, d'être sortie et tirée des griffes de la religion musulmane,par l'école française, bien des fillettes aujoud'hui ne l'auront plus. Elles seront voilées, subiront la discrimination et le sexisme de l'islam!! Tout cela sur le sol de la REPUBLIQUE FRANçAISE. Dans mon pire cauchemard, je ne pouvais l'imaginer . L'horreur absolue, pour toutes les femmes du monde musulman qui vaoyaient en la France et l'Europe un havre de sécurité.

They'd Prefer that we would all be Unequal Under the Law

PARIS, Sept 27 (Reuters) - France's political elite rallied to the defence of Roman Polanski on Sunday, calling on Switzerland to free the 76-year-old film director rather than extradite him to the United States. Artists and film makers also urged the release of Polanski, who faces charges of having sex with a girl of 13 in 1977, accusing Switzerland of being overzealous in pursuing the case.

True to form, European cultural lites come the the defense of a pedophile.

French Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand said he was "stunned" by the news, adding that both he and French President Nicolas Sarkozy wanted to see the acclaimed director returned swiftly to his family.

Let's set aside the fact that if your culture needs a government minister, it is rather likely to be in orbital decay, especially given the narrow way in which culture is being drawn.

Culture used to also mean something about civilization. Civilized cultures don't permit precedents like these to become normative in a culture.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner also issued a statement, saying he had spoken to his Swiss counterpart to demand that Polanski's rights were fully respected and that a "favourable" solution be rapidly found.

Sure. Is their culture reduced to a Kennedy-esque "fixing" of violations of an elite? May great moral lessons that sustains cultures without "ministries" be lost on that morally repugmant elite?

Born in Paris, Polanski moved to Poland with his Jewish family when still a toddler shortly before World War Two. His mother died in a Nazi concentration camp, but Polanski avoided capture and spent his youth in Poland before moving to the West.

Time to show what you can do ......

.... now that you have succeeded in shedding the albatrossic carcass:

Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives have won enough votes in Germany's election to form a center-right government with their preferred partners, the Free Democrats (FDP), early results showed Sunday. That brings to an end an awkward "grand coalition" over the past four years between Merkel's conservatives and the Social Democrats (SPD).

Hopes will be high, but judgment will be reserved.

P.S. Where is that much bally-hoo'd voter stampede to the left in Europe? Seeking shelter in the loving arms of government due to the economic crisis and all that.....

We do requests

This one goes out from Gordon B. in Brighton to anyone who will listen, with the message, "Can we just give it one more try? I promise I'll change."

Exterminating Humanity by Discouraging one Breeder at a Time

Adloyada makes note of something that has ALWAYS cracked me up – the naïve and awkward way that the BBC parrots whatever political Agitprop is available to them, which they then dramatize in such childish fashion that the only people who take it at face value are the very thoroughly programmed whom even the left don’t trust to think for themselves without continuous reinforcement.

This hilarious bit of tendenz literatur was read aloud, complete with the bit where nice, liberal Mr Jones transformed the homophobia of his wife, grumpy Mrs Jones, to the gay male couple with daughter living next door by the simple expedient of explaining to her that he had once loved a man, but decided that he loved her better and married her. Don't try that one at home, folks.

Clearly, they aren’t content to let society take its’ course, and that it must be conditioned and engineered away from what they must suspect are inborn tendencies to not act in favor of their social visions. Misguided as it is, it’s deeply stupid to say that if nature “created them as they are” that that same thing must also be fought and contained through humiliation and conditioning. The subtext is, of course, that social conditioning into a philosophical view that defies procreation is rather quite necessary for them to make the claim that it’s as natural as anything else, and that somehow heterosexuality is learned behavior.

The idiocy of all of it is rife. Among the population of the western world, hardly a soul or a crank “opposed” the rights for gays to exist. So the question is why the social warfare? Why the paranoia and driving need to restructure social thought? Why in a free society, is there some need to define outcomes with such a deep neglect for the fundamentals of freedom, such as the right to be disagreed with?

I suspect that the identity-related undercurrent, that one that rationalizes the bypassing of accepting the speech of others is not unlike the vulgar nature of the respect that the servile have for dictatorial leadership. It’s the only, slightly less-cold cold comfort that there is to the fear of a society trying to control the individual. The “proletarian” is supposed to take the leader whole, in a way greater than that of faith for god or the self-definition of the citizen’s ideas, with who the leader is afraid to have to compete with.

You almost wonder if they have conceived (no pun intended) of any use of non-homosexuals, other than provide them with fresh meat and new children to traumatize in early adolescence. However in Britain, one could not even joke about this with anyone for fear of the screeching of the thin skinned who have no tolerance for the freedom of conscience. Much to the joy of that sort of social autocracy, we, the vile unwashed masses will be found begging that we’re more than just walking protein.

That the apparent majority of people in sexual minorities deflect away from Classical Liberalism in favor of state enforced social controls is something I find not so much a reflection of the stupidity of its’ advocates, but a sort of weakness for, and inability to challenge the behavioral conditioning that was imposed on them. How is it that people can’t see that they are better off and FREER without the overbearing campaigning?

She proclaimed that the opposition to the circulation of propaganda books about happy gay male couples bringing up daughters represented anxiety that if knowledge of gayness as a valid lifestyle became widespread, it would threaten the continuation of capitalism.....

As if there was EVER ONE non-capitalist society anywhere in the history of humanity that left homosexuals unabused. Taking autocracy in the form of Communism at face value, no doubt, Davina Cooper whom Adloyada cites must surely have never seem it in action, or noticed that its’ motives were to construct conformity from the social level down to the very personal level, presumably in the interest of the rest of the zombies inhabiting their Marxist-Leninist, or even Maoist dream-world that is appealing to those who would suffer under it as a tool of social control over others.

The ignorance is implausible.