Remembering September 11, and Renewing the Pledge

9/11 brings out the Dissident Frogman (non-politically correct video)…

Never forget.

Never forgive.

And never surrender — ever!

Le Monde Joins Time in Suggesting That Clueless American Clods Can Only Be Motivated by Islamophobia and/or Racism

It could only be a matter of time before Le Monde joined in the leftists' (self-serving) horrors-didn't-you-know-that-Americans-are-Islamophobes movement and when they did so, naturally, they had to give Corine Lesnes's article the place of honor, i.e., on the top right-hand side of the front page, complete with the title Are Americans Islamophobes? and the subtitle Nine years after the 911 attacks, have the extremists won?

Upon closer examination, the front-page article turns out to be a chorus of leftist hand-wringing, from NPR's Barry Lynn to CAIR's Muhammed Musri, but most of all one Peter Beinart whose brooding and angst take up more than the first third of the article…

Our fellow blogger, Pamela Geller, gets a mention — as a right-wing "extremist" (wouldn't you know?!). Mentioned in (the front-page article (!) of) France's premier daily? Pretty good for someone who was "only" a blogger a couple of years ago (they might have mentioned that she is the author of a best-selling book as well)…

Besides side articles on freedom of speech and on the Ground Zero mosque, Corine Lesnes treats us to an online chat with readers (moderated by Pascal Galinier, in which Pam Geller is mentioned again, albeit not by name) in which she (Lesnes, not Geller) tries to project the leftists' typical I-understand-it-all-i.e.-everybody-is-an-intolerant-clod-except-lucid-detached-leftist-intellectual-types-like-myself mindset…

Thank goodness (most of) Le Monde's readers bring some sanity to the "debate"…

This, from a Continent of Neglected Geniuses

It’s everything you need to know about the German exception:

“While America’s super-rich congratulate themselves on donating billions to charity, the rest of the country is worse off than ever.”

PS: The word “Obama” cannot be found in this article.

As if all Americans were expected to somehow be easily categorized as the same, with neither accents, distinctions in income, or anything else. I know, I know... we’re a puzzle, aren’t we?

It isn’t really “concern”, it actually more of a case of Schadenfreude + worries that the people who traditionally buoy their economy by buying their overpriced rubbish, just might buy less of their overpriced rubbish. Since the usual tack of theirs’ is to take joy in repeating over and over, for ALL of the decades that I’ve been alive, that the American dream is finally dead!!!, it’s ridiculous to take seriously, even for a moment, anyone in Spiegel being “concerned” about Americans. The only time any of Americans’ dream weren’t dead, is when they would bloviate endlessly about its “dark side”, or for some other European-life-affirming disparagement. We struggle foolishly to achieve it, but it’s dark, evil, and doesn’t exist, unless it’s at the expense of the pure-hearted, innocent inhabitants of the Smurf village, like themselves. We’re just that stupid for wanting to improve our well being, as if no-one else does anything like it themselves.

From the article, one which anticipated non-existent resentment to Bill Gates for being so generous to assuming that “the recovery” has been actually taking place from the moment Obama took office:

Many Americans are beginning to realize that for them, the American Dream has been more of a nightmare of late. They face a bitter reality of fewer and fewer jobs, decades of stagnating wages and dramatic increases in inequality. Only in recent months, as the economy has grown but jobs have not returned, as profits have returned but poverty figures have risen by the week, the country seems to have recognized that it is struggling with a deep-seated, structural crisis that has been building for years. As the Washington Post writes, the financial crisis was merely the final turning -- for the worse.

And that’s just part of it, dwelling on opinions made on some kind of opinion data, and the like, citing noted data-donkeys like Ariana Huffington, and a variety of editorialist who cite the situation of the long-term unemployed as being “not seen since World War II”, while forgetting the late 70s and ignoring the full employment of World War II. In essence, this fool cites facts based on “this or that opinion writer/journalist said it was a fact.”

Don’t you think that, regardless of bad news being real, but even that being mangled by -bad journalism- is a sign of an even deeper, less fact indicated malaise? A crisis of the soul? An unknownable unknown? Or, in short, the Spiegel writer’s lazy ass standards?

What the non-journo opinion writer can’t quite square (or admit to,) is that the recession didn’t really get bad until get bad, and unemployment didn’t really rise until Obama stepped in bewildering businesses with his “help” by adding to their mandates, tacitly threatening de facto nationalization of one sector of activity after another, etc., etc.

Thanks for nothing, you ignorant oaf. Didn’t you realize that all those people (almost all of them European,) who though they were “giving us lessons” in how to do this their way just like to hear the sound of their own voices declaring that they’re right?

In short, Thomas Schultz, and the rest of the writers of the European media: you loved Mr. Obama so much and wanted to see him elected... why don’t you take him home with you and put him in charge?

In Memoriam…

Tony Blair: Not a Poodle, But a Bulldog

Strange — but all too typical — the double standards involved in The Poodle Speaks, Maureen Dowd's review of Tony Blair's autobiography (Sept. 4).

The International Herald Tribune published the reply (parts of which are based on a post I wrote not long after the Iraq War started, entitled Poodles and Other American "Vassals") that I wrote to the paper concerning Maureen Dowd's New York Times article on Tony Blair.

Why is it that the allies of Washington must always be mocked and demonized for their siding with the United States — a republic and a democracy — while the abettors (conscious or otherwise) of America's enemies, or its adversaries — such as Saddam Hussein, the psychopathic overlord of a horrific dictatorship — must not only escape such stigma but must be rewarded with eulogizing descriptions of their "heroic" opposition?

Offhand, I have no problem with "Phony Tony," or with Britain itself, being called "W.'s peripheral poodle." But why is it that Belgium and Luxembourg, which modeled their opposition to the Iraq War on the policies of France, were not called the poodles of Jacques Chirac? Indeed, why weren't Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Germany, Russia, and China called the poodles of Saddam, the Butcher of Baghdad?

It's easy to demonize someone like Tony "Bliar" when one has a fairy tale view of the conflict that transformed Saddam's Iraq into a harmless country barely more dangerous than the (aforementioned) Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.

Whenever I hear the nonsense about London being the poodle of the American democracy, I think back to the early days of World War II: when most of Europe was, willingly or not (admittedly, a very important distinction), sucking up to the Nazi dictatorship, the British bulldog was virtually alone in its resistance to becoming the poodle of another psychopath — Adolf Hitler.

British grit is a tradition that Tony Blair has, to his everlasting credit, carried on.

Welcome to Carbeque Country

AKA Hamburg, in spite of a culture festooned with “peace movements” and one forever pointing out their civilized, socially democratic nature to any gullible type who will listen:

One rrrrrrockin’ weekend

Korea's Little Angels: In Memoriam of the 60th Anniversary of the Breakout of the Korean War

The Republic of Korea would not exist today without the noble sacrifice of the U.N. Korean War veterans

and as part of the Korean War 60th Anniversary Memorial Project (KW60), along with its 16-Nation Tour to thank those nations that sent troops to the Korean War, The Little Angels Children’s Folk Ballet of Korea gave a memorable performance at UNESCO yesterday (merci pour l'invitation, Edy). Among the many people who spoke in introducing the group, the words of war veteran Bo Hi Pak, 80, were the most memorable.

Remembering the Warsaw Uprising

For Janina and Carine (Dziękuję to Valerie)

Compare and Contrast

David Lynch’s The Elephant Man and implausible Basque terrorists


Just as Hillary Clinton is touting the Apologizer-in-Chief's alleged diplomatic victories with "a speech meant to showcase the successes of the Obama administration’s foreign policy," we learn that France is negotiating with the Russians to increase its military bonds with Moscow. The Kremlin's demands on are increasing, Natalie Nougayrède informs us in Le Monde: Russia not only want to buy France's ultramodern helicopter transportation ship, they say, it also want to have a couple of more of them built in Russian shipyards.

What's more is that, in a new development, the people whom Nicolas Sarkozy called "our Russian friends" have threatened to open arms negotiations with other countries. It seems that this is related to earlier reports in which the French president promised publicly that the Mistral ships would be sold without military equipment; Vladimir Putin is now insisting on a transfer of technology (notably NATO's communications matériel).

In another development, foreign minister Bernard Kouchner holds that the S-300 missiles which were recently deployed in Georgia's Abkhazia region "will threaten nobody" (uh — what's the point of deploying them, then?), but voices inside France's defense circles hold that the deployment are aimed at putting the entire Caucasus region under Russian military tutelage.

La France poursuit non sans complications son rapprochement politico-militaire avec la Russie, paradoxalement commencé aux lendemains de la guerre de Géorgie de l'été 2008. Sur l'affaire du Mistral, le navire porte-hélicoptères dont Paris négocie la vente à Moscou pour donner du travail aux chantiers navals de Saint-Nazaire et accréditer l'idée d'une "confiance" entre les deux pays "partenaires stratégiques", la Russie cherche à pousser le plus loin possible son avantage.

La coopération militaire avec Paris lui a déjà permis d'engranger des dividendes politiques face à l'OTAN, dont certains Etats membres ont critiqué le projet de vente du Mistral jugeant qu'il faisait peu de cas des ambitions régionales russes dans la zone de la Baltique, en mer Noire et dans le Caucase.

Moscou continue maintenant de négocier pied à pied les modalités de la transaction, cherchant à obtenir des transferts de technologie ainsi que la construction d'un nombre maximal de navires de type Mistral dans ses propres chantiers navals et une assistance militaire technique française durable.

…le nouveau négociateur russe chargé du dossier du Mistral, le vice-premier ministre Igor Setchine, un homme issu des services secrets russes, la branche nationaliste du pouvoir …, à l'unisson avec le premier ministre, Vladimir Poutine, est connu pour insister sur un transfert de technologie pour que l'affaire soit conclue (il s'agirait surtout de moyens de communication et de commandement aux normes de l'OTAN).

…Lors d'une conférence de presse à Paris mardi, Serguei Lavrov a déclaré que "les négociations incluent la question du transfert de technologie", ajoutant à ce propos : "nous apprécions l'attitude constructive de la partie française face à notre intérêt". En mars, M. Sarkozy avait pourtant assuré publiquement que la vente se ferait "sans équipements militaires".

Interrogé par les médias sur le renforcement du déploiement militaire russe dans le Caucase cet été, marqué notamment par l'annonce de la présence de missiles anti-aériens S-300 en Abkhazie (région séparatiste de Géorgie) et en Arménie, le ministre français des affaires étrangères Bernard Kouchner, a jugé que ces armements n'étaient pas de nature à "modifier l'équilibre des forces" dans la région, et qu'ils ne "menacent personne". L'analyse est pourtant faite dans les milieux de défense français que ces déploiement visent à placer l'ensemble du Caucase sous tutelle militaire russe.

Off to a Great Start for the 27th Time

It sure says al lot for their gentility, work ethic, noblesse, and whatever the hell it is that they keep implying makes them think that they have an exclusive concession on civilization.

MEPs were threatened with a fine (later backed down from in only the way they could) if those Ministers of European Parliament did not attend European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso's “State of the Union” speech.

"The parliament's bureau looked at the matter and we agreed that we need to beef up MEPs' presence during debate. But we felt we need a bit more time to mull over the various possibilities," Mr Buzek said Tuesday morning.

The original proposal agreed by the assembly's political groups late last week envisioned three electronic checks over the three hour slot and a small fine for MEPs whose absence was registered twice.

I suppose that’s some kind of bid to make it look like this is serious bidness we’re talking about here. And to think that it was the last good weekend to get a little golf in.

Joseph Daul, president of the largest group, the centre-right EPP, was careful to emphasize he was not present at the meeting last week when the preliminary decision was made but suggested "we should take another look at this."

The proposal, the first time that something has ever been concretely suggested, follows years of poor plenary attendance by the 736 deputies during speeches - a phenomenon reserved not only for EU commissioners but also for visiting dignitaries.

The little penalty kerfuffle has resulted in Mr Buzek making a personal plea - and putting his authority on the line - that MEPs should be present for Mr Barroso's speech, which is likely to focus on the problems facing the EU and outline some solutions.

"I would like to launch a personal request to all of you to be present" said Mr Buzek, referring to the importance of the "image of this House worldwide."

Voting with their feet, lope that they are, says quite a bit about their image at home, let alone trying to make it seem better “worldwide”.

As if the world was watching to begin with. Elsewhere in the world of this dark art or political self-legitimation, we learn that his speech was “jam-packed with initiatives and gestures”.

The film the Left does not want you to see

Runaway Slave (thanks to Valerie), the C.L. Bryant film that the Left does not want you to see…

Unintended laughter

Not sure the NYT meant for this to be a light-hearted comedic piece, but it hit that spot pour moi:

Mr. Pearcy and other drifters and homeless people were recruited onto the Green Party ballot by a Republican political operative who freely admits that their candidacies may siphon some support from the Democrats.

“These are people who are not serious and who were recruited as part of a cynical manipulation of the process,” said Paul Eckstein, a lawyer representing the Democrats. “They don’t know Green from red.”

Putting aside the giggles of non-serious people on the ballot who were recruited as part of a cynical manipulation of the process (who would there be to vote for if this standard was enforced across party lines?), why are the Democrats really steamed, we let one of the "drifters and homeless" speak:

Reading tarot cards has taught Mr. Meadows, who is known for his purple and green jester hat, to talk a good game. “This is not the land of the free,” he told the loungers on the sidewalk, pitching himself for treasurer. “It’s the land of what’s for sale.”

He is stealing the Democrats shtick!!

Portraits of the Fallen

Portraits of the Fallen

Au Revoir, Friend

The director Alain Corneau n'est plus de ce monde…

The Leisure Class is Revolting

Yeah, they stink on ice!

- Mel Brooks, “History of the World”

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It’s sort of like Atlas Shrugged (which has yet to be translated into French), except in this case, it’s the icy hand of the CGT you feel up your ass, and not the government’s. This time, the strikes revolve around a stopgap measure to –temporarily- keep the state pension system from hemorrhaging, by hiking the retirement age from 60 to a soul-crushing 62.

So the answer they come up with is to punish the rest of society, particularly people who make less than the comrades of the CGT do with transit slowdowns, and a few days of wrecking the GDP that they’re trying to seize more of. The real question is: how many years did you put in?



So wedded to the idea of making the rest of society cover all of your personal costs, even for Union zombies making a lot more than they’re worth to begin with, the idea of anyone doing anything themselves draws disparagement and confusion. Save for your OWN damned retirement, and you can retire whenever it makes sense for you. Pay yourself first, douchebag.

In every other part of the world (outside of North Korea and Cuba where the aged are often forced to forage in the woods for bark to eat), it’s only the indigent that depend entirely on the state when they retire. How it is that people who come out of what is touted as “the best education system in the world”, but can’t add, is beyond me.

Almost Paradise

In Case You’re Wondering what Ost-Berlin Mitte looked like in the 80’s, it looked like Ost-Berlin Mitte in the 50’s. That is, if you just scratched the surface and got away from the Potemkin village near the Fernsehturm.

French General Receives Reprimand for Criticizing the War in Afghanistan

French général Vincent Desportes has received a reprimand, writes Le Monde, for the criticism he made of the war in Afghanistan (read the full story).

Elephant Maoism

Tuskers of the World, Unite!