How Dull do you Have to be ...

... to make EU institutional flunkies seem like Mr. & Ms. Excitement?

In the six months that Emanuele Gatti lived in Brussels he built up a respectable collection of business cards from 'Europeans'. At first he thought they wanted to make friends, but then, to his surprise, he would never hear from them again.

Obviously the solution to the this problem is more Europe, not less.

The 31-year-old Italian sociologist, who works for a consultancy firm near Trieste, says he was disappointed by the shallow social lives led by the people who work in the European institutions in Brussels, or in the lobby or lawyer's firms that have sprung up in their shadow.

Of course ‘consultant’ has orgasmo-swing in the living room written all over it too, dintcha know.

"These Europeans," Gatti says on the phone from Italy, "are very competitive. They focus on what you do more than on who you are."

Which is largely why you hear rather vocal Australians wondering out loud if any of them are really male.

Just another day in the city of lost souls.
It’s that hard-bitten life of alienation in social Europe...



Hot town, summer in the city...

The Fuse is Lit! (No Pasaran)

Obama’s priorities lie not in the Hindu Kush but in America

Why squander your presidency on trying to turn an economically moribund feudal backwater into a functioning nation state

asks Mark Steyn,

when you can turn a functioning nation state into an economically moribund feudal backwater?

You May Choose Only One

Central Planning or Central Plumbing

?

You can win a Nobel peace prize for wishing for world peace now? Shouldn't Obama share his prize with the last 50 winners of the Miss America Pageant?

The tuxedo cat provides links to the news of the Apologizer-in-Chief winning the Nobel Prize, notably The Times of London (in which Michael Binyon calls the award "patronizing"), which should be noted for some of the comments:

Ted Clarke wrote:

The people who pick the winners of this idiotic award seem to believe that peace is advanced by those who project weakness in the face of aggressive evil. JFK's weakness lead to "The Bay of Pigs", The Vienna Summit, The Cuban Missile Crisis, American missiles out of Europe, The Berlin Wall, Castro ensconced, the Vietnam "Police Action" and the global retreat of liberty. Carter's weakness lead to U.S. hostages in Tehran, Operation Eagle Claw, the emergence of nuclear armed nutcases in North Korea and Iran. And the global retreat of liberty. Gore's weakness sees the theory of Global Warming--and NOT the reality of Global Jihad--as an existential threat that must be fought by eliminating human liberty. And now the weakest of the weak -- BHO -- is projecting a new kind of weakness that will have us in a massive world war before we know what hits us. America's enemies look at this crisis of a President and they think, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste!"

… Rudolf Richter wrote a response to my opinion that Obama's weakness will provoke war: "Ted Clarke, you know that exactly what you say about 'BHO' is what many Russians say about Mikhail Gorbachev. Many of them still revere Stalin as a great leader because he was 'strong not weak'."

Right. But Gorbachev's weakness advanced liberty and Stalin's strength advanced tyranny. It's clear that Obama's horrifying display of abject weakness is not simply advancing tyranny, it's targeting liberty for destruction. Examples abound: China gets hugs and kisses; The Dalai Lama gets the boot. Chavez gets backing; Honduras gets the back of the hand. Ahmadinejad gets validation; Pro-democracy Iranians get thrown under the bus. He will provoke our enemies to strike just like sharks do when they smell blood in the water. That's why I call Ohim "The 'Chum' of the World."

VAl Wayne wrote:

What? Where has Obama achieved peace? You can win a Nobel peace prize for wishing for world peace now? Shouldn't Obama share his prize with the last 50 winners of the Miss America Pageant? I suppose its not any worse than Al Gore winning for his Global Warming scare talk, but it now appears being a prominent, self important, left wing radical is all it takes to win a Nobel Peace Prize? These things should starting coming with a box of Cracker Jacks!

Dan Pankowsky wrote:

Mr. Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize after wishing for World Peace. He narrowly beat out Miss Japan and Miss Croatia who, during the Miss Universe competition, also wished for World Peace. However, both the runner up contestants for the prize lost out during the swimsuit competition to Mr. Obama.

Robert Vaughn wrote:

Nobel Peace (Appeasement) Prize Criteria

Socialist Agenda: Check
Hatred for America: Check
Appeasement of Tyrants: Check
Apology Tour For America: Check
Desire to rid the world of nukes: Check

Hey without question President Zero is at least as deserving as Arafat or Mr Le Duc Tho. Those that are really deserving (President Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, President George W. Bush) are excluded because they actually did the dirty work that it takes to achieve peace. All you need to win this award is talk about how you desire peace. You don't actually have to get your hands dirty with the whole process of killing mass murderers with their thugs and armies. Who will be on the list next year I wonder? Putin? Chavez? Castro? Ackmadinnawackjob? Or maybe we can nominate President Zero again?

Charles Pierce wrote:

I was proud that an American won the Nobel prize, but was taken aback by who was to receive the award. If it was for encouragement I can understand the award for he has accomplished nothing during his term as President. President Bush II did much more in actual work to help the world to piece, confronted North Korea and Iran, funded aids research and treatment in the third world. Removed a dictator and a repressive in Afghanistan, but he is vilified for being a right wing despot. I don't understand the committees reasoning. It must be a left wing thing.

Chukkal Mason wrote:

Did they have ACORN count the votes?

Great Expecations wrote:

Did George Soros write a big check?

Dawn B wrote:

To be fair, Obama hasn't done any less to further peace than, say, Yasser Arafat, IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei, or Al Gore.

It's hardly an honor to win, since it is merely a vehicle for liberals, apologists, and socialists--not to mention terrorists--to pat each other on the back.

Whoopty-doo.

Craig Bills wrote:

The Noble Peace Prize, the Pulitzers, the Academy Awards, have all become politized. They're now just awards from Leftists to Leftists for being Leftists.

Hoping for a New Fürerprinzip

Odd, isn’t it that when the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to a leader of government or governmental organization, it’s intent is to try to swing in one direction or another the motives of a dictator or disliked figure who presents themselves as being able to be persuaded to change their ways. Past nominees of the Nobel Peace Prize have included Josef Stalin and Adolf Hitler for just that presumed reason.

In light of this, the Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to Barack Obama for having made a few statements here and there on things he is unlikely to act on comes as something of a surprise, unless you look at it as a measure taken by members of that committee to influence the internal politics of sovereign nation states. The problem here is that the US is not a dictatorship. The award is a telegraphing of political opinion which may have been more venal and reactionary than ‘aspirational’, spending heavily the capital of it’s past legitimacy.

The recent trend in Europe, the region where the likes of the Nobel Committees imagines as representing world opinion, has been to a rejection of leftism, and this award may me a sort of political influence “twofer” in opposition of those societies who voted to make it that way.

Sarkozy was elected with a firm mandate, Merkel was re-elected, Cameron seems like a practical shoe-in, and so forth. So the message transmitted from the rarified air of that northern latitude to democratic practitioners of their own choices is to fall into line. It’s sad to see that they have mounted this kind of effort on the pluralistic societies of the world to the willful ignorance of places like Belarus and the racketeer-like leadership succession practices of Russia.

As to the pretext of reducing nuclear weapons stockpiles, and channeling the dream of a world without peaceful deterrents, you have to wonder if they are really giving it to the right guy:

On the eve of this week's summit between President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin, negotiators from both countries huddled in New York Sunday to hash out a plan to substantially reduce their arsenals of nuclear warheads.

Secretary of State Colin Powell and U.S. arms specialists and their Russian counterparts were trying to work out details of how to make deep but uneven cuts in their stockpiles of nuclear arms in the next 10 years or more.

Putin arrives in Washington Monday night and will meet with Bush Tuesday to continue discussions over ways to reduce the number of offensive nuclear weapons. The two leaders are simultaneously working out a weapons negotiation blueprint that may allow Bush to proceed with his plans for a missile defense system.

"We see the capability to negotiate on the U.S. side and we have the same capability, but we want to know what we'll be negotiating about, in military and technological terms," Putin told a group of American journalists at the Kremlin in Moscow before departing for the U.S.

The two leaders begin their summit in Washington, but White House officials have suggested they would announce any agreements later at Bush's ranch near Crawford, Texas.

Bush is hoping to announce cuts of about two-thirds, from 6,000 warheads to about 2,000 on the U.S. side, when he and Putin meet. The reductions would be verified under guidelines established under previous nuclear treaties.

The entire affair was derided by those passionate about arms reduction as Putin and Bush playing a child’s game of cowboys and Indians on his ranch in Crawford, Texas, but the arms control ‘achievement’ being attributed to Mr. Obama, something he announced too shortly after entering office to have actually accomplished with his shambolically under-organized early administration, was not his at all, but a statement by a man they seek to turn into a Manchurian Candidate for their world view is sufficient for their Prize and their admiration.

In a summit that was said to "end a long chapter of confrontation," Presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia and George W. Bush of the United States met in Moscow on May 24, 2002, where they signed the Treaty on Strategic Offensive Reductions. Hailed as the beginning of a new relationship between the former Cold War foes, the Treaty calls for each state to reduce its deployed strategic nuclear weapons to approximately one third of the current level.

Which is all Obama will ever get, however much anybody believe that a few words from his lips will start a decades-long love parade leading to the Russians and Americans having NO nukes, while India, Iran, Israel, Pakistan, France, and the UK will likely serrupititiously retain theirs’, despite what they say when their lips are moving. No-one will be making arms verification trips to Pierrelatte.

Among the very dependable ‘known knowns’ of those who pretend to speak for the larger opinion of the world, is that the more they dislike America and Americans, the greater a need they feel to support Barack Obama. What the Nobel committee seeks is a conformity of opinion on the part of world leaders, even if they are accidental ones, to limit the diversity that makes man who he is, and the tension in opinion that maintains the breadth of ideas that keep us all safely in check.

Expect it to only get 'better' as time goes by for this academy award of political influence peddling:

Among those who have the right to nominate candidates for the coveted award are parliamentarians, academics, former peace prize laureates as well as current and former members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

The BHO honeymoon is over: Doubts about the Obama administration have been a dirty secret in European policy circles for months

The Apologizer-in-Chief may have won the Nobel Prize, but still, The Economist tells us (or told us prior to the Nobel Committee announcement), "The honeymoon between Europe and Barack Obama's America is over", with the London weekly noting that

From the American side, there is frustration that the Obama administration’s multilateral humility has not been matched with more European help in Afghanistan, or a promise in every European capital to back tougher sanctions on Iran.

… The sense of a honeymoon ended is widespread, at least at official level. … Doubts about the Obama administration have been a dirty secret in European policy circles for months, even as polls like the latest German Marshall Fund’s “Transatlantic Trends” survey continued to find Obamamania in western Europe. But the grumbling is slowly becoming public.

The Nobel Peace Prize: Finally, the Apologizer-in-Chief Gets Returns on His Denigration of America

The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize this year is none other than Barack Hussein Obama. (Maybe the Scandinavians wanted to send a reassuring note to BHO after the Olympic Games debacle?)

In any case, this means that the Apologizer-in-Chief has now been endorsed (but we already knew that, didn't we?) by Europe's extremist pacifists (in addition to Chávez, Kaddhafi, Putin, etc etc etc…) and that he will be able to travel — once more — to a foreign nation to make more apologies for the United States

The "Absolute Crime": For "the Battle of His Life" —the Fight Against the Kremlin's Rule— André Glucksmann Is Hated By His Fellow French Intellectuals

Marie-Pierre Subtil has an article on André Glucksmann, the French intellectual loathed by French intellectuals (and much of the French public) for "the battle of his life", the fight against the Kremlin's hegemony, coupled, naturally, with its corollary, i.e., support for Russia's biggest adversary, Uncle Sam, and, more recently, his backing George W Bush in the Iraq War.

Needless to say, Le Monde's readers join in castigating the man who committed the "absolute crime".

Son ami Pascal Bruckner : "Il a accompli la transgression qui est un crime absolu pour les intellectuels en France, le passage de l'extrême gauche à la droite. Il doit y trouver un certain plaisir."

Il ne s'en cache pas : "Ça me satisfait assez de décevoir des gens qui m'avaient collé une étiquette que je n'avais pas choisie." Ce qui le surprend, c'est l'"exécration" dont il a fait l'objet. Le rejet a été plus fort que lorsqu'au milieu des années 1970 il s'était fait le chantre d'Alexandre Soljenitsyne. Plus fort que lorsqu'il avait pris position contre François Mitterrand, coupable d'avoir été le ministre de l'intérieur du gouvernement qui a fait la guerre en Algérie. Plus fort que lorsqu'en 2003 il s'était engagé derrière les Etats-Unis partant en guerre contre Saddam Hussein. "On me faisait endosser de gré ou de force le costume de l'intellectuel de gauche", sourit-il. Un temps, puis : "Je ne me considère pas comme un intellectuel de droite."

Ni gauche ni droite. Tel est son credo depuis qu'il a lu Soljenitsyne, assure son fils. Raphaël Glucksmann a gardé des dîners de son enfance le souvenir de grandes tablées où moudjahidin afghans, féministes algériennes, dissidents soviétiques et opposants sud-américains "s'engueulaient mais avaient un fonds commun, la révolte contre l'ordre établi". Dans la famille Glucksmann, "une sorte de PME militante", dit un proche, il y a la mère, Françoise, dite "Fanfan", qui joue "un rôle moteur" d'après tous les amis, le père, André, pourvoyeur du carnet d'adresses, et Raphaël, 30 ans, héritier des causes du couple, installé à Tbilissi où, salarié d'une fondation estonienne, il conseille le président géorgien Mikheïl Saakachvili.

Dans les années 1990, il y a eu la Bosnie, le Rwanda, le Kosovo, la Tchétchénie, l'Afghanistan. Aujourd'hui, c'est l'Ukraine, et surtout la Géorgie. De sa lutte contre l'hégémonie du Kremlin, Glucksmann dit : "C'est la bataille de ma vie." Pour l'enfant de communistes autrichiens, né à Boulogne-Billancourt en 1937, Vladimir Poutine incarne le mal.

…Ses détracteurs lui reprochent sa vision binaire du monde, ses indignations "de rente", voire "sélectives" : pourquoi les Tchétchènes et pas les Palestiniens ? Réponse en trois temps. Un : pourquoi le monde se mobilise-t-il pour les Palestiniens et pas pour les Tchétchènes ? Deux : sur 1 million de Tchétchènes, 200 000 au moins ont été tués, beaucoup plus, proportionnellement, que de Palestiniens. Trois : "La question laisse entendre qu'il y a un fort et un faible, or, au Proche-Orient, Israël est le faible." Cette position expliquerait-elle son attitude vis-à-vis de Nicolas Sarkozy ? "Son ralliement était en fait motivé par l'espoir d'un abandon de la politique arabe de la France", estime Pascal Boniface, le directeur de l'Institut de relations internationales et stratégiques.

A couple of rare Le Monde readers set the others straight:

• Il faudrait souligner, qu'en général, le conformisme des "intellectuels critiques" français rappelle beaucoup la sainte inquisition de l'église catholique.

• L'unanimité en France depuis 20 ans (en résumé: pro-palestinienne, anti-israélienne, pro-russe, anti-US, anti-GB) est étouffante, elle ne rend pas compte de la complexité du monde. C'est pourquoi une voix discordante telle que celle d'André Glucksmann est rafraîchissante, même si elle est minoritaire. Mais la gauche française, et la France en général, détient le monopole mondial de l'intelligence: du moins est-il bien confortable de le croire. Le reste du monde, lui, reste sceptique.

Bragging Rites

Frédéric Mitterrand our favorite passive-aggressive crypto-pederast tries to “channel” his way around a controversy that only came to light in view of the cultural elite’s passive defense of Roman Polanski which Erik commented on.

From an interview which appears arranged for the “reconstruction” of his image we find:

“This is in no way condoning sex tourism", said Mr. Mitterrand on the TF1 channel. "There is no apology for pedophilia and relationships with young boys," he added.:

Pleasing himself: from a program named “You can’t please everybody” 20 March 2005

"I condemn sex tourism as a shame, I condemn pedophilia that I have never participated in in any way," he stressed.

It is "probably a mistake, but not a crime, nor even a poor choice," he further added, when asked about the story of episodes of sex tourism in his book.

He said he never had any intention to resign and has the confidence of President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Frédéric Mitterrand, nephew of former Socialist President François Mitterrand, joined the [Sarkozy] government in June, is at the center of a political controversy generated by his book « La Mauvaise vie » ("Bad Life"), published in 2005. n one chapter of this book, the narrator recounts sexual experiences with boy prostitutes in Thailand.

It’s funny how his pride is protected by a “no apologies” air that tries on one level to rationalize the very thing he wants to appear to be criticizing.

As Erik reported, his “hypno-autobiography” is as much an exercise in playing to technicalities as his interview – he wants to brag about violating children without having to bear any of the consequences of it. These children he all-but admits he indulged himself in sexually were sexualized at a pre-natural age for the sole purpose of the pleasure of those who like to have an absolute control over others without risk of their person being rejection in any way that would matter to them. That, and a sexual affection for children, and a thirst for something that is forbidden for the sole purpose of protecting children.

In his book, Mr Mitterrand, the nephew of the late Socialist president François Mitterrand, wrote: “I got into the habit of paying for boys...All these rituals of the market for youths, the slave market excite me enormously.
“One could judge this abominable spectacle from a moral standpoint but it pleases me beyond the reasonable.”

An odd appeal to pity where even the normative people in a similar place in life reach for empty temporary pleasures.

If the destruction of their good development for the sole purpose of an old man’s pleasure isn’t proof enough to someone of the degeneracy and uncaring of someone, they should probably find a society somewhere where it is accepted – if they can. Ancient Greece, as well as Sparta, destroyed themselves.

Marine Le Pen quoting from Mitterand’s auto-biopic of a “novel” on television outlines the very pathology that causes so much harm:

Miss Le Pen read out a passage in which Mr Mitterrand wrote: “The profusion of very attractive and immediately available young boys puts me in a state of desire that I no longer need to hinder nor hide...as I know that I will not be refused.”

Mitterand’s response was to treat the whole thing like it was a minor political scuffle, with the sort of typical bombast of a man trying to shock his way out of a bind. In truth, Marine Le Pen understands where the populism of this position comes from: virtually the entire population, and especially of parents, which unlike the elite of the culture appears profoundly offended by the idea of defending the past actions of Roman Polanski or Frédéric Mitterrand. Especially since the argument was limited to “but they all had such a great time!”

Wanting access to others’ children, what is coveted by these vile adults is the physical, emotional, and mental enslavement of children. Setting his admission aside, even were it an unpracticed amelioration of the idea alone, it should tell you something about this “de facto CEO of Culture” and his world view.

Never mind the fact that people of importance in government or critical media didn’t do a good job of largely blowing off the moral component of a fellow member of their caste back 2005, where all but a few had an equally repugnant disregard of the public interest when « La Mauvaise vie » was published.

"Don't ever let homosexuals tell you that they 'just want to be left alone'"

For some strange reason, Benjamin Duffy has a problem with "gay people" and doesn't really believe it when "homosexuals tell you that they 'just want to be left alone'." (Very strange that he should think that, I know…) He adds: "They are the aggressors in this culture war, no two ways about it…" Tony Perkins:

Few Obama administration appointments have been as startling as Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s appointment of Kevin Jennings, the homosexual founder of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), to head the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools.

…Jennings does not limit his promotion of homosexuality in schools only to high schools or middle schools. He wrote the foreword for a book titled Queering Elementary Education, which includes an essay declaring that “‘queerly raised’ children are agents” using “strategies of adaptation, negotiation, resistance, and subversion.”

Avast!

There is much to mock here, but I won’t. The absurd events do a good enough job of it without any assistance.

Somali pirates in two skiffs fired on a French navy vessel early Wednesday after apparently mistaking it for a commercial boat, the French military said. The French ship gave chase and captured five suspected pirates.
No one was wounded by the volleys from the Kalashnikov rifles directed at La Somme, a 3,800-ton refueling ship, French military spokesman Rear Adm. Christophe Prazuck said.
La Somme "was probably taken for a commercial ship by the two small skiffs" about 250 nautical miles (290 statute miles) off Somalia's coast, Prazuck said.

This vessel, 18% grey paint, radomes, numbering and all, was confused by Somali pirates as a commercial vessel. Even in the dark, its’ profile couldn’t be mistaken for a commercial cargo ship:



What the hell were they thinking?

That isn’t the sad part. Having been bled dry over the decades, making them hard up for a viable fleet, they were using a lightly armed ship loaded with fuel as a command information center.

La Somme is the French command vessel in the Indian Ocean, overseeing French air, sea and land forces fighting Somali pirates and hunting terrorists under the banner of the US-led Operation Enduring Freedom.

How, I wonder, could they have gotten that close without local radar and a nervous wizzo letting them know? After all, this isn’t the first time, unless they’re so structurally understaffed or aren’t permitted to stand a few sailors on their watch shift on the deck.

This was not the first time that Somali pirates have mistakenly attacked a French naval vessel. Several pirates were captured in May when they attempted to board a frigate in the area.

Elsewhere: how NOT to make the sale:

The plane was on a demonstration flight at an air show at Maatiga military airport when it crashed in the nearby Soug-Ejemaa district. There was no immediate word on the cause of the accident.

The South African Press Agency report failed to mention that the aircraft hit a house and that 3 residents were killed.

Omitted information and Arabs buying Russian weaponry in bulk... Is it 1971 yet? Industry press releases report that Russia has brokered 5 military contracts with the Libyan government..

Russia has five military procurement contracts underway with Libya, as reported yesterday by the news agency "RIA Novosti", quoting Alexander Mikheyev, deputy director general of Rosoboronexport, the Federal Agency in charge of managing former Soviet Union's military exports, and head of the Russian delegation at the "Lavex 2009" air show in Tripoli until today.

"The contracts involve military equipment for the Ground Forces and the Navy -Mikheyev explained- including the modernization of T-72 tanks, and the general supply of spare parts for the above-mentioned branches of the Armed Forces. We are also participating in a Libyan tender on the delivery of aircraft and air defense systems".

The 12h22 UT report cribbed from RIA Novosti was followed by a 17h23 UT report of the crash that neglected to make mention of the dead civilians.

France's Culture Minister (a Polanski Defender) in Trouble Regarding the Sex Tourism for Young Boys He Admits to in His Autobiography

A major article on Prague by Piotr Smolar in Le Monde, on 2 full pages, inaugurating a 5-part series on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and of the Soviet block throughout Europe — entitled "Mémoires à vif du communisme" — has led to not a single comment from any of its readers.

By contrast, the imbroglio involving Frédéric Mitterrand has led to almost 250 "réactions" from Le Monde's readers.

The culture minister's problem concerns a book he published in 2005. In the "semi-real, semi-dreamt autobiography", the defender of Roman Polanski and the demonizer of the American heartland tells of sexual tourism to places such as Thailand and Jakarta.

Parmi les scènes les plus fortes des pages hallucinées dans des maisons closes de Thaïlande où des jeunes gens défilent devant des hommes venus du monde entier, des nuits pluvieuses à Djakarta où le narrateur cueille un "boy" aux allures de paysan athlétique. "L'argent et le sexe, je suis au cœur de mon système, celui qui fonctionne enfin, car je sais qu'on ne me refusera pas", écrit l'auteur, face à cette profusion de chair à l'étal.

But actually, quite a number French politicians (and citizens) seem shocked, indeed disgusted, by the fact that the matter was brought up by the far-right Front National than by Mitterrand's antics. (Didn't Nicolas Sarkozy say, when presented with accusations that in some instances durig his presidential campaign, he was close to the positions of the FN: "It's not because Jean-Marie Le Pen says the sun is yellow that I am going to say it is blue"?)

And what is the punchline? you ask…

La Mauvaise Vie is being translated into English.

Lessons in Savoire-faire from our Continental Betters

Treated for depression after finding it difficult to come to terms with leaving the Elysée Palace

(Woof to Valerie)

No, Georges, the Future of Blogging is Here.

The Kindle e-book reader is to plunder Europe by the end of the month, and the Kindle Edition of ¡No Pasarán! will be there to enjoy the view. That is to say: we are who we’ve been waiting for.

The future of blogging?

20 Years After Half of Europe Was Freed, a New Wall Is Being Built: on the Sovereign Territory of Georgia

As Europe remembers the shame of the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact of 1939 and the Munich agreement of 1938, and as it prepares to celebrate the fall of the Berlin wall and the iron curtain in 1989, one question arises in our minds: Have we learned the lessons of history? Put another way, are we able to avoid repeating the mistakes that cast such a dark shadow over the 20th century?

A dozen European luminaries, several of them leaders from the former Soviet block (Vaclav Havel, Valdas Adamkus, Mart Laar, Vytautas Landsbergis, Otto de Habsbourg, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Timothy Garton Ash, André Glucksmann, Mark Leonard, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Adam Michnik, and Josep Ramoneda), sign an article in Le Monde called Le test géorgien, un nouveau Munich ? Is the Georgian Test a New Munich? they councel action from the the European Union, which, they remind us, "was built against the temptation of Munich and the iron curtain."

In order for the … historic commemorations to be meaningful both for Europe's collective identity and for its future, we urge the EU's 27 democratic leaders to define a proactive strategy to help Georgia peacefully regain its territorial integrity and obtain the withdrawal of Russian forces illegally stationed on Georgian soil.

…a big power will always find or engineer a pretext to invade a neighbour whose independence it resents. We should remember that Hitler accused the Poles of commencing hostilities in 1939, just as Stalin pinned the blame on the Finns when he invaded their country in 1940. Similarly, in the case of Georgia and Russia, the critical question is to determine which country invaded the other, rather than which soldier shot the first bullet.

As Le Monde's readers castigate the article, one of them writes:

Beaucoup d’européens et de français défendaient l’idée que l’annexion des Sudètes était conforme au droit des peuples à disposer d’eux-mêmes…Effectivement, la situation présente énormément de similitudes avec la situation en 39/39: L’europe libérale de l’ouest ne veut pas se battre pour de lointains alliés et est adepte d’idéologies américano/anglo-phobes qui amènent les foules à soutenir hier l’Allemagne nazie et/ou URSS et aujourd’hui Poutine.

Beaucoup de lecteurs du Monde ne réalisent pas une chose fondamentale concernant les pays de l’ex Europe de l’est:ils se sont toujours méfiés de la Russie expansionniste et se méfient de l’Europe de l’ouest qui les a trop souvent abandonnés aux ambitions impérialistes et totalitaires de la Russie.Cette sensibilité explique leur attachement à l’OTAN. On doit les écouter et oublier nos réflexes pro-cocos/pro-soviets/anti-US si nous voulons construire l’Europe politique et militaire avec ces Etats.

Seasonal Crap Rotation

Angry men on tractors protest global commodities markets. As if they could be controlled. Much as before.

We Need to Remember Who the Real Victim Is: Big Government

(Merci à Valerie)

Chicago's Olympic Defeat, to the French, Is Obama's First (and Hence So Far Only) Failure

While a photo selection in Le Monde denigrates the demonstrations protesting against the Apologizer-in-Chief as nothing but one "big circus" of "anti-Obamas", the daily's New York correspondant, Sylvain Cypel, refers to Chicago's Olympic defeat as Obama's first failure.

Lorsque, lundi dernier, Barack Obama avait opté pour le déplacement à Copenhague, de nombreux élus républicains avaient fustigé un président qui abandonne son pays pour une vétille au moment où tant d'urgences sont à régler. Hier soir, les mêmes venaient sur Fox se gausser de son échec, "une défaite de l'Amérique". Sale journée.

Democrats Will be Democrats

The Gary Glitter of the (court) circuit appears to be firing on all corrupt, lefty thrusters: patronage, rationalizing deviancy down, reserving corporal punishment for pleasure, coerced anal sex worthy of a lauded European film director. You name it.

Just think of it as giving time off for ‘good behavior.’ The defense, of course, will be seeking ‘social justice’

a civil rights organisation, has said that Mr Thomas is being prosecuted because of his race.

Moreover, just because prisoners were being abused, even though we all know that they’re all innocent due to society’s unjust ways, one may not be judgmental:

If someone has a sexual fetish that involves beating young males without their pants up and that is sexually stimulating to them, then for them that's a thing of value.

To whom exactly?

That unbelievably unfair and horrific US healthcare system on parade for the whole world to see

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded this year to three American scientists who solved a problem of cell biology with deep relevance to cancer and aging. The three will receive equal shares of a prize worth around $1.4 million.

Over 64 million Arrogant Paranoiacs Served

No doubt, a million “cultural theories” will abound...



Success, my friends, has a secret ingredient. A sort of overlooked special sauce, if you will. It’s called cleaning your shop and the bathrooms, and it’s why Americans have managed to succeed in the business of street food.

Stop the presses!

Shock/horror:

Irish government: There will be no third referendum

Chasing Lance Armstrong

They're still going after Lance Armstrong.

For reasons good or ill, this time the French are targeting the Union Cycliste Internationale (the UCI or International Cycling Union is in charge of controlling the cyclists for illegal substances), which they claim favored Armstrong and Alberto Contador's Astana team, among others by giving team members 45 minutes' advance notice of the upcoming test (when none, obviously, should be given)…

Offhand, there may be truth to some of the accusations, but it does seem that a government agency wants/wanted, as usual, to meddle and that it — l'Agence française de lutte contre le dopage (AFLD) — is miffed for its "escorts" being denied access by the UCI to the testing places…

Update: Pat Patterson adds some needed perspective:

Any drug that a cyclist is taking now that is popular will not magically disappear in 45 minutes. In some cases the residue of the byproducts of these drugs can last up to weeks not minutes. They are simply trying to imply that this 45 minutes is critical when it is not.

But The Tour is a private race that is not part of any of the other administrative groups but AFLD is quite anxious to take over the tour and has tried this tactic before.