Behind the Façades in France: What expats and the mainstream media (French and American alike) fail to notice (or fail to tell you) about French attitudes, principles, values, and official positions…
“We don't need you here. You too must go home. Au revoir”
Late British officer Peter Lake was parachuted in to occupied France to help train resistance fighters. Three months after D-Day, he encountered the anger of the master of self-made myth, all the way down to his name.
... sure does work out well, on paper at least:Just as Le Corbusier's white cruciform towers once excited visions of the industrial-age city of the future, so Vélib’, Paris’s bicycle rental system, inspired a new urban ethos for the era of climate change.
Residents here can rent a sturdy bicycle from hundreds of public stations and pedal to their destinations, an inexpensive, healthy and low-carbon alternative to hopping in a car or bus.
But this latest French utopia has met a prosaic reality: Many of the specially designed bikes, which cost $3,500 each, are showing up on black markets in Eastern Europe and northern Africa. Many others are being spirited away for urban joy rides, then ditched by roadsides, their wheels bent and tires stripped.
With 80 percent of the initial 20,600 bicycles stolen or damaged, the program's organizers have had to hire several hundred people just to fix them. And along with the dent in the city-subsidized budget has been a blow to the Parisian psyche.
"The symbol of a fixed-up, eco-friendly city has become a new source for criminality," Le Monde mourned in an editorial over the summer. "The Vélib’ was aimed at civilizing city travel. It has increased incivilities."
For those of you who need more convincing that homosexuals are aggressive perverts who do NOT "just want to be left alone"Benjamin Duffy refers an internet page in which a mother testifies about 11-year-old children given a homework assignment to draw an erect penis ejaculating.
Our government does not work for us. Our government is for homosexuals, by homosexuals. And if you don't like it, you have no rights, no recourse and no voice.
In an amusing twist to the apocalyptic howling that has emerged into popular culture again since Y2K and the plague in the early Renaissance, John Rosenthal quotes a yet to be politicized or cut-down matter of fact report from Corriere della Sera on the fact that alp-loving leisure class can enjoy their après-ski arrogant rants a month early this year.At Cortina, the snow “cannons” are in operation on the peaks and in the ski area of Faloria one is counting on opening the slopes already on November 13. That is nearly a month earlier than the classic “ponte dell’ Immacolata” that traditionally opens the snowy season throughout the Alps. …Barring any spectacular reversal of the meteorological trends and following last year’s extremely long [lunghissimo] winter, which only ended in May, this will be the shortest summer-fall interval without skiing ever recorded.
Having had to hear the cranky German engineers I work with complaining that this was yet another year without a summer, I’ve found that prodding them with the simple reply “well that’s just how global warming works” is no longer taken as a snide, vaguely insulting remark, but met with mild laugh, resigning itself to the reality of the fact that the end is not nigh, and that kneeling in the streets before the passing clerics of the morality-free post-Christian cult of thermometer worship may not be required of us for the moment.
Meanwhile, back in the usual emotionalized science for the non-impirical, the jihad to end humanity’s addition to toilet paper continues, as if trees were not farmed, and they weren’t actually sequestering carbon more rapidly by cycling through the process of use and replanting. Like everything, it requires someone to blame America first.he tenderness of the delicate American buttock is causing more environmental devastation than the country's love of gas-guzzling cars, fast food or McMansions, according to green campaigners. At fault, they say, is the US public's insistence on extra-soft, quilted and multi-ply products when they use the bathroom.
Much as the notion of believing that your shit doesn’t stink, the ur-Briton cannot be accused of having a rectum, which explains the confusion over what human buttock are. It’s best not to get confused down there, especially in the throws of passion, but does explain rather well just what it is that Euro-greenies are full of, and why there are ‘compaction issues’ as evidenced by their charm and warmth to people who actually still have a natural environment.
In the mean time, you can check the opening dates of les pistes while a political explanation for the weather is being formulated somewhere.
One reader writes:Vous avez accusé la France de soutenir Andry Rajoelina. Avez-vous des preuves ?
Le coup d'Etat à Madagascar était bien étudié et bien orchestré. En trois mois, c'était fait ! Moi-même, j'ai été surpris. Je ne dis pas que la France a tout organisé, mais il y avait des Français derrière cela. Les services de renseignement sud-africains, ici, me l'ont dit.
La France, qui a soutenu jusqu'au bout Ratsiraka [alias "l'Amiral rouge" (the Red Admiral)], n'a jamais accepté l'arrivée au pouvoir de Ravalomanana, considéré par elle comme l'homme des Américains – on allait même jusqu'à lui reprocher de mal parler le français ! Certes, Ravalomanana n'est pas le dirigeant que les Malgaches méritent ; il s'est révélé bien trop affairiste et son surnom de "PDG de Madagascar" est assez mérité mais de là à pousser le maire d'Antananarivo au pouvoir, c'est un jeu bien dangereux qu'a joué la France.
The hard truth, folks, more plainly apparent with each passing day, is that today's "mainstream" Democrats have been exposed as radical leftists, whose agenda is overwhelmingly rejected by a vast majority of Americans.Thus speaks .
The only way they'll succeed in enacting various components of their socialistic designs — notwithstanding their strong numerical congressional majorities — is through trickery, legerdemain, chicanery and deceit.
To construct conformity, you take away people’s privacy.The information had been available to media until 2004, when a more conservative government banned the publication of tax records. Three years later, a new, more liberal government reversed the legislation and also made it possible for media to obtain tax information digitally and disseminate it online.
The press, having some sort of rights greater than that of citizens, are written into law. How charming.
Norway's 2007 law emphasized that "first and foremost, it's the press that can contribute to a critical debate" on wealth and the elaborate tax scheme that, along with the country's oil wealth, keeps Norway's extensive — and expensive — welfare system afloat.
With characteristically uninformed ignorance of the issue they think they’re dealing with, we find commentary like this:"Isn't this how a social democracy ought to work, with openness, transparency and social equality as ideals?" columnist Jan Omdahl wrote in the tabloid Dagbladet.
No, that isn’t necessary or beneficial in a social democracy. It’s a tool of coercion whose place is better limited to selective use in protecting society, like listing approximate addresses of convicted child sexual predators so that parents can gage the risks to their children’s safety – and privacy – for themselves.
The search for whys and wherefores isn’t that hard, when you look at some of the other symptoms of the disease that they suffer from:The country of 4.8 million people had the third-highest income tax among industrialized countries in 2007, behind Denmark and New Zealand, according to the latest statistics from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
I wonder if it ever dawned on the opinion-makers there that when you keep feeding the beast, it gets bigger and bigger and worries less and less about why they were fed to begin with.
While this has little to do with the rest of the world, that’s never stopped Norwegian social critics from commenting vociferously about the lives of others. Other times, they find themselves enmeshed in it too:A Somali-born Norwegian citizen accused of funding a Somali militant group has become the first person to be charged under the Nordic country's 2002 terror financing law.
Which is a great time to step up to the plate. A fine time to show the world their mettle. Except when your notion of the violation of privacy gets in the way.They did not give his name in line with Norwegian privacy rules.
Rules, rules, and good intentions. Rulers, rules, and good intentions. Don’t they ever get bored with themselves?
Yet another Lulu from the mouths of the democratically “differently abled”
Ahmadinejad: Iran, Belarus should manage world through cooperation
That their instincts run along the lines of “running the world” for the same of humanistic warm-fuzzies should indicate quite a bit about anyone taking the story to be anything legit.
Every time, money is granted to journalism, there must be a buffer to guarantee editorial independence. In this case we have chosen a combination of two elements. Journalists and investigative journalist organizations give their good reputation to Journalismfund.eu by joining the advisory board. In addition we have a model with an anonymous jury.
Which to say that the panel are opaque to the point of being able to remain anonymous, and that the product must promote the EU. Also unstated is that the funder’s funder is funded by the Flemish sub-parliament of Belgium which seems to be promoting the EU with all the highmindedness and enthusiasm of a city trying to get a sports franchise to relocate to their patch.
The jury consists of four persons. They were selected in the spring of 2009 among a long-list of highly respected media persons gathered by the advisory board. In the spring of 2011 the first two members will leave the board and their names will be published then.
Are there any criteria and rules? Yes, there are. Journalismfund.eu aims to fulfill the niche of covering stories that go across borders or have relevance in several European countries, se the rules for application and the assessment criteria, which the jury applies.
To these folks, anything is better than lowering themselves to ‘touching money’ (unless it’s a grant). That their instincts run along the lines of “running the world” for the same of humanistic warm-fuzzies should indicate quite a bit about anyone taking the story to be anything legit.
The regimented and money fixated mindset that pervades European (apparent) do-gooders is rife, in that the concept of citizen journalism and self-publishing are not even mentioned, let alone considered. The notion that underhanded motives could even possibly trickle in? The idea that one would do better to watch what people do, rather than what they say? Phooey! Who needs it? That couldn’t happen!
Today La Baf expired, cut to pieces by 10,000 arrows shot by its enemies — bureaucrats, would-be censors, anti-Americans, humorless psychos, Islamic terrorists, Bosheviks, and opponents of liberty of all countries (as well as cat-haters)…
Hopes are growing in Japan that the Apologizer-in Chief will become the first sitting U.S. president to visit Hiroshima or Nagasaki, the only two cities ever devastated by atomic bombs. (You read it first on No Pasarán…)
Two men from Chicago have been arrested with video footage of Copenhagen's Jyllands-Posten building and its central train station, writes Elisabeth Arnsdorf Haslund, for planning to blow up the Danish paper that ran the Mohammed cartoons.
The Dissident Frogman has had it with those American racists who won't stop oppressing and jailing black folks.writes Judy Dempsey.…what a surprise the ambassadors were dealt two months ago when the new secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, entered the alliance headquarters
Mr. Rasmussen, who gave up his job as prime minister of Denmark — the first time that a politician of such rank has taken over NATO — lost little time before he tried to change the internal workings of NATO.There are fewer meetings. Agendas are shorter. Discussions are to the point. And Mr. Rasmussen, with pen in hand, ticks off what has to be done, by whom and when.
To the U.S.-led military alliance, whose structures and procedures have barely changed since it was founded 60 years ago by only twelve member states, these developments amount to a revolution.
And they come at a time when NATO, fighting its biggest war yet, in Afghanistan, urgently needs more efficiency in its deliberations.
“I am here as a reformer,” Mr. Rasmussen, 56, said in an interview. “I want to modernize, transform and reform so that NATO adapts to the security environment for the 21st century.” That means, he said: “In a rapidly changing security environment, we have to make sure that NATO is able to make rapid moves. Otherwise NATO will not maintain its relevance in the future.”
Previous secretary generals have attempted reforms. But they quickly came up against an unshakable lethargy.
… NATO is still agonizing over a new strategic doctrine to reflect its changing role. This is made more urgent by the war in Afghanistan. NATO also is involved in counterpiracy operations in the Gulf of Aden and is still heavily committed to Kosovo in the Balkans. And even though Mr. Rasmussen wants NATO to reach out to China and India, can it really do so if it lacks a new doctrine to explain its role in the 21st century?
That is why Mr. Rasmussen broke with tradition in yet another matter: He appointed an outsider, former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright of the United States, to lead a group of 12 experts, independent of the ambassadors, to work out a new strategic concept for NATO. Mr. Rasmussen did so to break down the wall of exclusiveness and secrecy that is often associated with the alliance. The panel will be answerable to him, not to the ambassadors.
“I want discussions over NATO’s future to be the most open, the most inclusive consultation process in NATO’s history,” he said. “We have to address properly the new threats such as proliferation, cyber security and climate change, and move away from Cold War thinking.”
…Mr. Rasmussen wants to tackle other internal workings of the organization: What to do, for example, with the plethora of committees, “300 at least,” he said. All require decisions by consensus.
Then there is the sheer size of the military command structure, which has 13,000 personnel scattered across Western Europe at NATO’s many military bases. When France rejoined the integrated military structure in April, it was hard pressed to send 900 top-notch military staff to the various NATO commands. It needed them at home. Mr. Rasmussen said slimming down the military staff and all the NATO military headquarters “was included in my plans for transformation.”
