The ¡No Pasarán! Film Festival Continues

“Is everybody in this world corrupt?”

“I don’t know everybody.”

The N-P silver screen meltdown marches ever forward in something familiar to European political observers, that is to say in goose steps. We present Billy Wilder’s 1961 madcap tale of Commie Berlinalia called One, Two, Three, which also happened to star Jimmy Cagney who brilliantly shows his comic timing and skill, even as Wilder turned the pace of the film up to 11.

Oddly enough, one of the many things that points out the humorlessness of “progressive” activist to this day is the fact that some of them still campaign cheerlessly and sadly unaware of irony against “Coca-Cola Imperialism”, as if their own not drinking the stuff wasn’t enough. I wonder if they realize that the concept was just one of Wilder’s jokes.



I strongly recommend renting or downloading this film! Not only will you not know where the time went, and possibly regret it, but you’ll find strange hidden gems in it, like a Messerschmitt micro-car that keeps appearing in the background, and momentary references to Carney’s “Little Caesar” character by an untitled supporting actor playing to Cagney, and another play on it with him asking for “Rico”. Along the way, look for a Khruchevesque banging of the shoe on a table, and a chillingly accurate portrait of the shambolic ruin that was East Berlin long AFTER this film was shot.

Layering it even more is the appearance of wonderful players like Leon Askin, (born Leo Aschkenasky) who sent up the temperament of a Soviet apparachik in this film, much as he later sent up the comically greedy Nazi General Burkhalter in the television comedy series, Hogan’s Heroes. Those mere moments in his long and rich career which included politically provocative cabaret as only the Viennese could do. Immigrating to America in 1940, he enlisted in the US Army, was stationed in Britain, and upon return to New York having been unable to find his parents who were sent to a Concentration Camp, he started a theater group made up entirely of Army veterans. Like Mel Brooks who served as a combat engineer and fought in the Battle of the Bulge, he seems to have understood that the most humiliating defeat an enemy can face is mockery.

What they share with Wilder, a Berliner transplanted to America himself, wasn’t just comic ability, creativity, but a keen sense of observation, matched to a functioning moral compass.

Juh Juh Juh Joker Face, Juh Juh Joker Face — Obamamaaaa!

Can we bankrupt this country?
Yes we can!

Why They Hate Us: That Despicable U.S. Foreign Policy

Stephen Walt has an article entitled Why they hate us: How many Muslims has the U.S. killed in the past 30 years? (shookhran to Larwyn), but do you know what is most despicable about U.S. foreign policy? "the fact … that the United States … killed a very large number of [German] individuals over … three decades"!

Around 1917-1918, American government officials (soldiers) murdered thousands, if not tens of thousands of Germans, for (almost) no reason whatsoever.

And then, because the Americans — those clueless retards — are moronic as well as blindly patriotic, 20-30 years later, they still had not learned the lessons of tolerance and understanding, and they again, for no reason whatsoever I tell you, started assassinating poor, innocent Germans again, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands!

No wonder why the Germans and their leaders in the 1910s and in the 1940s hated us… (Now, if only we could have tried a little more understanding…)

The Beatles: A Look Back

In the year 3000, the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit delves into 1,000 years of music history to bring light upon one of the 20th century's top groups (cheers to Larwyn)…

Le Monde Readers Accuse the Daily of Disinformation Regarding the Climategate Scandal

In its first in-depth (sic) analysis (sic) of the Climategate scandal, Le Monde assures its readers that

all of this does not affect, far from it, climate science, which is linked to the work of thousands of scientists.

Stéphane Foucart goes on to offer proof thereof, the most "biting" of which is that the scientists involved in the scandal were "sincerely convinced" of their work, while the work of the sceptics has been… "ridiculed".

Well yes, Stéphane Foucart, except that the whole premise underlying the "fact" that thousands of scientists (and millions of citizens worldwide) accept global warming as gospel truth, the "fact" that the scientists (sic) were "sincerely convinced" of their work, and the "fact" that the work of the sceptics is deserving of "ridicule", that whole premise turns out to be false.

The impression left by the Climategate emails is that the global warming game has been rigged from the start

as the Wall Street Journal opines, which adds, for good measure, that

one is left to wonder why they felt the need to rig the game in the first place, if their science is as robust as they claim.

One Reason why most Europeans are Morons

Mr. Morales is expected to win re-election easily, in part because in many areas that he controls voters will be escorted into polling booths to make sure they choose correctly. His party, Movement for Socialism (aka MAS for its Spanish initials), is almost certain to retain control of the lower house of congress and is likely to win the senate, which until now has been controlled by the opposition.

Because they think THIS kind of thing is a social advancement adn "solidaristic". So much so, that many among them idolize the world’s grim human failures as “naturalistic”. Natural for them maybe.

A dictatorship that fosters the production and distribution of cocaine is not apt to enjoy a positive international image. But when that same government cloaks itself in the language of social justice, with a special emphasis on the enfranchisement of indigenous people, it wins world-wide acclaim.

This is Bolivia, which in two weeks will hold elections for president and both houses of congress. The government of President Evo Morales will spin the event as a great moment in South American democracy. In fact, it will mark the official end of what's left of Bolivian liberty after four years of Morales rule.

Those with some resignation and a vile sense of humor, no doubt will take a certain joy in having this lesson – the one that was taught to eastern Europeans and a million dead Cambodians at the end of a stick – taught once more.

While the U.S. and the Organization of American States have been obsessing over Honduras's legal removal of an undemocratic president, Mr. Morales has been fortifying his narco-dictatorship. He's also made friends with Iranian dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who will make another visit to La Paz tomorrow.

The only question is: who many decades will it take, and how many tens of million must die for the “progressives” of this world to put their ideology in line with what they claim to be their ethical framework.

But isn’t she too old to be Molested as a Minor?

Perhaps it’s her child-like curiosity...

PARIS (AP) - Woody Allen has successfully courted France's first lady, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy.

But to actually add some life to the story, and the sort of flippant, ill-cast silliness that comes with French TV, you need some real talent to show up and save the day:

Allen "asked me to be in his next film," she said Monday on Canal Plus television, where she appeared for an interview and duet with crooner Harry Connick Jr.

How Much Longer Can We Wait Until We Tackle Global Warming?!

More horrific global warming news from down South:

Wish I could send a video of this morning to all of you.

It is snowing.

On the 2nd day of Deceber it is snowing in Texas.

LOL!

That sort of "pretty snow". The big fluffy flakes.

No wind, no biting cold temperatures.

The kind of snow that makes you want to

walk aournd out in it and feel the wet fluffy

flakes touch your face.

The fluttering puffs of white that make you think you are

standing inside in a snow dome.

The friendly snow that doesn't stick to sidewalks or roads.

The perfect kind of snow.

Every one in [our] house was delighted to

see last night's drizzle turn into this. …

The morning has that soft hush that only comes from snow.

Take care, hope every one's day is going well.

(Now, I know you folks who live with this stuff

all the time are just rolling your eyes. Indulge me, please.

We don;t usually get snow. It is too warm for it, we normally

get ice. Ice, we get. Oh, do we ever!)

It's time we do something!

Sarkozy: “France will not send a single soldier more”

How is that new respect for our friends and allies workin' for ya, BHO?

If You Are Are Not in Favor of BHO or His Policies, You Are Not Qualified to Render an Opinion

I'll be honest with you, Diane, I'm not entirely sure what qualifies the former Vice President to render an opinion on Afghanistan

is how the White House press secretary answered Diane Sawyer's question on Dick Cheney's criticism of the Apologizer-in-Chief's war policies (thanks to Scott Whitlock via Larwyn).

Hello-oooo! Are you kidding, Robert Gibbs?! The man was in the vice-president's chair when 9-11 happened, for Christ's sakes, and when the decision to send troops to Afghanistan was made and he was at the helm of power for more than seven years after that!

Can you imagine the — rightful — outrage, not least from the TV interviewer, if, say, Dick Cheney himself had said that he was "not entirely sure what qualifies Al Gore to render an opinion" on Afghanistan, on global warming, on whatever subject? (Well, come to think of it, Al Gore on global warming…)

That was the specifics. More generally, the comment shows the left's tendency to think that no opponent of the White House (or simply a skeptical person) is qualified — remember Obama's admonition that conservatives should shut up and let him do the ruling and make the decisions? — to render an opinion on leftist policies…

In other matters, Maggie's Farm quotes two veterans regarding Obama's West Point speech (you know, the one without the words "win" or "victory" in it):

Obama graduated from Columbia and he knows absolutely nothing about US and World history. Nothing! Listening to him reminds me being in a coffee shop in the late 60s, trying to make my move on a beautiful girl, but as the 4th international idiocies tumbled out of her mouth, the beauty slowly vanished, and chastity became easy--at least with her. Four things can kill sexual desire: hunger, exhaustion, fear, and listening to an idiot.

The previous person quoted is "a combat veteran, a journalist, a frontline refugee aid worker, a man of the cloth, a professor, major scholar, a mentor and example to generations":

Obama says Afghanistan is different from Vietnam because in Afghanistan we are not facing "a broad-based popular insurgency." So it was the "broad-based insurgency" that finally won in Vietnam? Why are there so many Vietnamese in this country? Why did South Vietnam become a gulag for twenty years after 1975? (I went back for the first time in 1995, and it was one of the most oppressive societies I have ever experienced.) Where did the soldiers in the South Vietnamese army come from? If North Korea were to overtake South Korea tomorrow, would it be the result of a broad-based insurgency? The entire North Vietnamese army--after we had withdrawn all support from the South--overran the country. Not the Viet Cong, the North Vietnamese Army. Some South Vietnamese units fought to the last man. Some were still fighting a rear guard action in the central highlands for five years after the fall of Saigon.

…Obama doesn't believe that any war can ever be legitimate. Read his speeches from Cairo, Normandy, or Berlin. He has talked about the progress of American blacks from slavery to his presidency, without ever mentioning the civil war. It just didn't happen. It was like the fall of the Berlin Wall. There was no military involved, no "cold war," people just "came together" and the wall fell.

GOP Litmus Test: Reagan’s 10 Unity Principles

Several Republican National Committee members have proposed a conservative litmus test for candidates who wish to receive support from the RNC, writes Jillian Bandes.

These committee members say the test is essential to fixing the RNC, and one step toward rebuilding the Republican brand. … Here are the ten Reagan’s Unity Principles.

(1) We support smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama's "stimulus" bill;

(2) We support market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run healthcare;

(3) We support market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation;

(4) We support workers' right to secret ballot by opposing card check;

(5) We support legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants;

(6) We support victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges;

(7) We support containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat;

(8) We support retention of the Defense of Marriage Act;

(9) We support protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing, denial of health care and government funding of abortion; and,

(10) We support the right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership.

Washington's Afghan Strategy Frustrates the Europeans

Good job, Apologizer-in-Chief! On repairing relations with Europe and on getting everybody on board towards a common future. A recent headline in Le Monde (two weeks prior to BHO's decision on adding troops to Afghanistan) shows the long path we have come since the days of Bush: La stratégie afghane de Washington déconcerte les Européens. (Still, notice how France's newspaper of reference manages to avoid saying: Obama's Afghan Strategy Frustrates the Europeans, whereas it would probably have used "Bush" in the headline during the previous administration…)

Instapundit has more on the overseas reviews for Obama’s foreign policy…

Georgia Does Not Want to Be the Victim of Obama's Russia Policy

"Georgia does not want to be the victim" of the Obama administration and its revision of U.S. policy towards Russia. That is the first sentence in Piotr Smolar's Le Monde article.

Après des années de relations étroites avec l'administration Bush, les autorités de Tbilissi ont assisté, inquiètes, aux tentatives de rapprochement entre Washington et Moscou initiées par Barack Obama sur certains dossiers clés comme le désarmement ou le programme nucléaire de l'Iran.

Foreign minister Grigol Vachadze, 20% of whose country is occupied by the Russians, has gone to Paris to bring about a closer relationship both with the EU and NATO, but also to voice his worries about France's sale of a Mistral-class warship to the Kremlin.

L'Estonie, membre de l'UE, a déjà fait part de ses interrogations. "Tout le monde est très inquiet dans la région, reconnaît le ministre. Il s'agit d'un navire de dernière génération pouvant accueillir, si je me rappelle bien, 16 hélicoptères d'assaut, 900 soldats, 16 véhicules blindés. Où irait un tel navire ? Pas dans la Baltique contre la Finlande, ni dans le Pacifique contre le Japon ou la Chine. Tout le monde sait que ce serait dans la mer Noire, contre l'Ukraine et la Géorgie."

Meanwhile Le Monde's readers (most of them, at least) are (as usual) going gaga over Russia…

Social Life Board Game Commercial

Get lazy in the Game of Social Life.
You can spend more time with your kids and your wife.

"You fall behind on your mortgage. Yes! Collect $1000 every turn."
"You're current on your mortgage. Pay an extra $1000 every turn."

What concerns BHO is not the problem runaway spending poses for taxpayers and the economy; what bothers him is the political problem it poses for Dems

After engineering an unprecedented spending surge for nearly a year, President Barack Obama now wants to signal that he takes deficits seriously

writes Karl Rove.

What seems to concern the president is not the problem runaway spending poses for taxpayers and the economy. Rather, what bothers him is the political problem it poses for Democrats.

Last year, Mr. Obama made fiscal restraint a constant theme of his presidential campaign. "Washington will have to tighten its belt and put off spending," he said back then, while pledging to "go through the federal budget, line by line, ending programs that we don't need." Voters found this fiscal conservatism reassuring.

However, since taking office Mr. Obama pushed through a $787 billion stimulus, a $33 billion expansion of the child health program known as S-chip, a $410 billion omnibus appropriations spending bill, and an $80 billion car company bailout. He also pushed a $821 billion cap-and-trade bill through the House and is now urging Congress to pass a nearly $1 trillion health-care bill.

An honest appraisal of the nation's finances would recommend dropping both of these last two priorities. But the administration has long planned to run up the federal credit card.

In Le Monde's Comments, We Read Nothing But Bolshevik-Type Speeches Typical of the Era When the Left Kowtowed Before Moscow, Beijing, and Havana

Un lecteur résume bien, à lui seul, la totalité des réactions des lecteurs du Monde à la nouvelle (la "nouvelle", mis à part le fait que je l'avais entendu dès 2002 ou 2003) que les Etats-Unis étaient en mesure de capturer Ben Laden en 2001 :

On pourrait attendre des lecteurs qu'ils fassent au moins le partage entre la "bêtise" de Bush et les crimes des intégristes ! Que non, nous avons droit à un discours type bolchevique digne du temps où la gauche idolâtre se mettait à genoux devant Moscou, Pékin, La Havane... effarant !

Swiss Citizens Forbid the Construction of New Minarets in Switzerland

The results of Sunday's referendum in Switzerland are in: to the "immense surprise" of pollsters, 57% of Swiss citizens voted in favor of the motion to ban the further construction of minarets in the country (the four under construction will be allowed to be finished), as did 22 of the confederation's 26 cantons. (The decision seems to concern minarets proper, not mosques in general…) Most French citizens applaud or, at least, profess to understand…

J'étais chez moi, en train de boire de boire un verre avec des amis, deux Anglais, un Hollandais, un Kabyle et un Malien, lorsque la nouvelle est tombée : "une immense surprise" ! Grand éclat de rire général ! Oh my god, c'est la dictature de la majorité. Non mais, franchement, de qui se fout-on ?

Quand le résultat du vote n'est pas "politiquement correct", certains remettent en cause le principe de la votation! Souhaitent-ils un Comité Central pour dire ce qui est bien, approuvé à 95% par un vote "encadré",et mal, donc réprimé?

Le même référendum dans n'importe quel pays occidental donnerait les mêmes résultats. L'islam n'est plus perçu comme une religion mais avant tout comme un mouvement politique et culturel menaçant. Le refus des organisations musulmanes de condamner la burqua, l'absence de réactions au lendemain du 11-Septembre, ont été lus comme des solidarités communautaristes qui primaient sur les solidarités citoyennes. Ce vote a le mérite de briser le discours angélique.

Cela démontre, si besoin était, l'ignorance des commentateurs (journalistes et hommes politiques) sur l'état de l'opinion. A force de vivre entre eux, de se coopter de façon endogamique, loin de la réalité populaire, de ne pas s'appliquer la mixité sociale et culturelle qu'ils prônent, de prendre leurs désirs pour des réalités, ils ne voient jamais rien venir. Le résultat d'une pareille consultation serait le même dans tous les pays de l'Union Européenne, à commencer par la France.

On peut imaginer le résultat d'un tel référendum en France mais ne nous y trompons pas. A l'image de notre belle Europe "démocratique", une telle question ne sera jamais posée en France car nos élites qui ne vivent pas comme la majorité du peuple sont les seules à voir un "enrichissement" dans une immigration non contrôlée. L'avantage avec les suisses, c'est que normalement on ne va pas leur poser la question jusqu'à ce qu'ils disent "oui" pour leur bien...

Significatif aussi semble être le fait qu'un nombre significatif de sondés aient caché leur véritable intention — les pronostics fondés sur les sondages donnaient un "non" massif à l'interdiction...— et n'ait osé dire leur refus des minarets que dans l'isoloir: scrupule moral ou peur de représailles?

Now, Don’t go Calling them the Axis of Evil!

Judy the exceedingly insightful points out the newly refashioned notion of what “tolerance” and “justice” now is among Britain’s bright lights:

Stephen Pollard, Harry's Place and Normblog have all drawn attention to a blatantly anti-semitic article by a former Ambassador in today's Independent which objects to the presence of two of the distinguished historians on the panel of the Iraq Enquiry on the grounds that they are Jews. And that's taken by the writer, Oliver Miles, as of itself proof that the panel is unbalanced.

Note, that this is an “enquiry” panel.

Hint number one: they were interviewed on Iran’s Propagandastaffel, Press TV.