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…
As George W Bush breaks a two-year silence since leaving the White House to plug “Decision Points”, can the former U-S president make something of a political comeback with his memoirs? The France 24 Debate looks at the book and the man with guests that include a member of Republicans abroad and Radio France International's former Washington bureau chief.
A debate with François Picard and guests:
• Marjorie PAILLON, Founder of www.ilovepolitics.info • Stuart HAUGEN, Former Vice-president of Republicans Abroad France • Donaig LE DU, Former Washington Bureau chief for Radio France International RFI
Programme prepared by Charlotte Oberti and Perrine Desplats
“One World, One Enemy” (From the German language Leftist political organ “Bahamas”)
It’s so palpably sad, that even some in the left get it:
Israel is the Schibboleth of the yet-so-close revolution, the uncomprehended shadow of its failure. It is the Menetekel that involuntarily both illustrates the minimal categorical conditions of communism while simultaneously demonstrating the beastliness of which the bourgeois national state is capable. Those who have failed to grasp the hatred against this state—embodied in anti-Zionism and antisemitism, both of which harbor a will to eliminate those who live there as well as the Jews who live in scattered cosmopolitanism around the world—have not understood the essence of antisemitism: the unconditional hatred of the idea of mankind living in free association. They fail to grasp communism as the riddle of history solved.
- Initiative Sozialistisches Forum (Socialist Initiative Forum)
Another potential large scale mugging by reality may well be on its’ way: since the majority of gays in the Netherlands are supporting the PVV, where will the “big-tent” supposed protectors of that group be on the fact that they see those most likely to attack them as also being a (specially useful) victim-group?
Personally I'd say that isn't so much the "youths with an ethnic minority background" as the extreme coddling of those yoof by political parties, mostly on the left, who fly gay rights high in their rethoric, but fail to act accordingly. Action. Louder. Words. Or some such...
Or some such. How about the fact that the nodding muddle-brained twits have been crash-testing civilization for decades, and don’t really care who among their supporters or political opponents they’ve hit?
This, my friends, is how the left make people back into the Classical Liberals who champion individual rights that their idealism compelled them to be.
How dare he? How dare he?!?! Le Monde's Nicolas Bourcier can barely hide his shock at the fact that, in his new autobiography, George W Bush "has the gall" ("l'ex-président … ose") to defend his policies, from the War in Iraq to waterboarding. How typical of Dubya ("Du Bush dans le texte")!
Certes, il défend toujours sa guerre en Irak, l'utilisation du "waterboarding" (méthode de torture simulant la noyade) et affirme que son autorisation avait été nécessaire afin d'éviter une répétition des attentats du 11 septembre 2001. D'ailleurs, justifie-t-il, cette technique controversée — "utilisée uniquement contre trois détenus" — aurait permis d'obtenir des informations qui ont empêché d'autres attaques. "Il ne fait aucun doute que c'était quelque chose de dur mais les experts médicaux affirmaient que cela ne causait pas de séquelles durables", ose même l'ex-président. Du Bush dans le texte, dira-t-on.
there are the anecdotes about Jacques Chirac, who at several points lectures the U.S. on the folly of morality or idealism. When I ask the president if he wants to expand, he starts, stops, and gives that Bush chuckle. "Let's just say he wasn't a freedom-agenda guy."
Other excerpts:
If his book has an overriding theme, it is Mr. Bush's case for his "freedom agenda." He defines it broadly: from Afghanistan and Iraq, to his African AIDS work, to tax cuts. One major criticism of his Iraq policy is that the turmoil in that country has empowered Iran, which continues to move toward a bomb.
"The notion that we went into Iraq and therefore the Iranians became emboldened—it was the opposite," Mr. Bush says. "The Iranians, it turns out, suspended their program," he continues, referring to a 2007 National Intelligence Estimate finding that Tehran had halted its weapons program in 2003. He says that it wasn't until mid-2005 that Iranian elections brought to power Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who announced the process of nuclear enrichment would accelerate.
As for those who feel Mr. Bush wasn't aggressive enough, the president disputes the notion that Iran can be compared to Iraq. "Diplomacy was just beginning in Iran, the world was just beginning to focus," he says. Mr. Bush takes credit for "helping focus" that attention.
…What about the critique that Afghanistan was left to fester while the president dealt with Iraq, setting up a return of the Taliban and the need for President Obama to send more troops? "What I say is, we had a large coalition of troops in Afghanistan and it looked like we were making progress." He notes that "when it became apparent that the NATO coalition was not able to cohesively deal with the Taliban," he ordered a 2006 "silent surge" in Afghanistan—a 50% troop increase. "We were plenty capable of doing two things at the same time."
Mr. Bush writes that one of two major "setbacks in Iraq" was not finding WMD. He writes it still gives him a "sickening feeling." I ask why, given the myriad reasons he lays out for removing Saddam. The problem, he says, was what the lack of WMD meant for the public's perception of the war.
In contrast to the ugly cartoon figure drawn by his opponents, Mr. Bush is unfailingly gracious to virtually all his opponents, including Cindy Sheehan, the antiwar activist who had lost a son in Iraq.
In Sean Hannity's Fox News interview (thanks to Vincent), the "Former president reflects on years as commander in chief during driving tour of Crawford ranch" Merci, Monsieur Reynolds
I just love these stories that induce hysteria in Germany... A 19 year old German citizen by the name of Christopher Mettin decided to join his Ami girlfriend back to Sioux City. They forged a driver’s license and birth certificate. His forged identity, though, was tripped up when he tried to vote.
Behaving as though they live in a far away village where nothing dramatic is supposed to happen, expect Germans to be hysterical anyway, but the apoplexy will come from the fact that he’s going to be deported and, horror of horrors, wasn’t asked for his passport when he voted as they would in Gutmensch Land. As in, the opposite of their usual datenunschutz style hysteria when they discover that there are Americans who are concerned that non-citizens, inhabiting the US legally and illegally, are voting.
Of course they can go back to the old “the US justice system is so cruel and severe”. This, from a country where you can legally be held in preventative detention after you’ve finished serving your sentence in the crowbar hotel. Yeah, whatever you say, Udo.
Mettin made a false statement or claim that he was a citizen on a voter registration form, according to the indictment. The indictment also alleges on October 12, Mettin falsely represented himself to be a U.S. citizen to agents of the Department of Homeland Security.
Right before they pop a blood vessel in their eye, they might think back to the annual German-press ritual of “declaring the American Dream dead”, something that they’ve been doing for decades, as far as I can remember. Strangely enough, Christopher Mettin didn’t think so, enterprising as the zit-faced punk was.
I didn’t know that saying no was a spruning. Do they really think that nations are anthropomorphic beings that have feelings and “sprun” as though this was just a movie date?
The idea that they didn’t want a dose of Brussels’ date rape drug being taken as a disappointment says more about the EUvian outlook than the Icelandic government’s actual decline of the money.
It’s this simple: little Iceland’s democratic traditions make the EU look like Zimbabwe.
Suite aux mid-term elections de 2010, dans lesquelles Barack Obama a reçu "une raclée" (a shellacking), Stu Haugen participe à un débat au Press Club de France avec le Démocrate Joseph Smallhoover, le tout sous les auspices de Marjorie Paillon…
Gutmenschtum cause requires flexibility. Flexibility, that is, with the reality of any situation over which you decide to become as theatrically outraged as those who tell you that you should (if you want to remain a good little Gutmensch.)
Sign and Sight, the product of near-monopoly mega-publisher Bertelsmann (AKA the Death Star of European gutmenschliche non-diversity of thought and opinion), takes up the matter in their unsalable digital form over a tempest in a teapot governing Argentine copyright law. Apparently it’s draconian because at it’s heart, it doesn’t exempt professional academic philosophers from stealing others’ copywritten work.
The article 17º states that "Every author or inventor is the exclusive owner of his work, invention or discovery, for the term granted by law". Juan Bautista Alberdi intended for the copyright term to be indefinite, but during the writing of the Constitution it was decided to give a time limit, as done in Chile and the United States.
Pretty damn typical, and a good friend of authors who want to defend themselves from theft of their work by those evil corporate publishers, not to mention comforting the publishers enough to believe that if they print something, some ass isn’t going to turn around and give it away. It’s hard to see any publisher committing to print ANYTHING without that protection.
Alas, enter the outraged:
in 2009, something happened that no one in their right mind would have believed possible: the Argentinian Book Chamber filed charges against a university professor who was running a number of websites on philosophy. Among other things, these featured unpublished or unavailable texts by Derrida, Heidegger and Nietzsche.
Because laws are for vanity, I guess – not to be enforced!
[in 1913] Clemenceau learned that one of his theater plays was being played without authorization. After a dispute about the topic, the first copyright law was enacted in 1913.
The interview’s hero, Horatio Patel further bumbles:
In my naivete I had assumed that the existence of such a wonderful medium for sharing texts would mean that within a decade, the majority if not the entirety of philosophical writ could be available online. Which would mean that everyone would have a complete library in their homes, making it unnecessary to travel or wait, and that the 'books' could be leant to thousands simultaneously, and would be easy to locate. And finally I thought of philosophy magazines which are published once a year at most, and then only in editions of 50, which is barely enough to supply the specialist libraries. This would all change, I thought. Everything that had ever been or would ever be produced, could be published online. This was utterly fantastic, I thought.
Which in the case of copywritten work, can easily made spontaneous with online sales and e-book readers. However, that’s not good enough. The author or rights-holder must never be compensated for their work, even if they want to.
The source of his horror?
Horacio Potel's name was picked up by the European, Asian and US media. The case of the Argentinian professor who was taken to court for putting philosophical texts online, with no intent to make a profit, made it painfully clear that if everyone breaks the law, anyone could be prosecuted.
Picked up, because the idea of defending the hero of all great truths from intellectual repression couldn’t matter more based on the logic that the man wasn’t making a profit. He was giving away other people’s work without their permission, but that’s okay, because there wasn’t any profit involved in his giving something away.
Tell you what... I feel generous. I’m going to give you Potel’s shoes. How does that sound. There’s no profit involved, so we can all feel good and warm inside! Property is theft, Pal!
Doesn’t Horacio Potel realize that if the rights-holders of Derrida, Heidegger’s and Nietzsche’s work wanted their otherwise unavailable writings released for free, they would do it? Even AbbieHoffman didn’t surrender his rights to “Steal this Book”. Even he understood that it wasn’t yours’ to give away.
1.0 was Marxist-Leninism that DIDN’T require help from Hollywood.
Chavez promised Sunday to crack down on construction and real estate companies that he accused of unjustly boosting prices, which he labeled "housing fraud."
A grasp of supply and demand isn’t his strong point, is it?
In some mostly middle-class residential complexes, groups of neighbors have implemented security measures aimed at keeping squatters out, such as organizing around-the-clock surveillance teams and putting a siren at entrances to be sounded in case of emergency.
Apartment owners from one of the expropriated complexes — El Encantado Humboldt — issued a statement over the weekend criticizing the state takeover and throwing their support behind the company responsible for building the gated community, saying it never stopped construction as government inspectors have alleged.
Besides whatever happened to that Affluenza that humanity was afflicted with?
More than 1 million of Venezuela's estimated 28 million inhabitants do not have adequate housing while millions more live in dangerous, laberinth-like slums ringing the South American nation's cities.
Because a decade of neo-Communist coercion isn’t enough to cure the other 27 million Venezuelans of it.
The TV channel that a number of Paris-based conservative (and liberal) Americans have appeared upon this past week is actually in difficulty, writes Daniel Psenny in Le Monde, due to the feud waged at the top of the corporation, between a famous publicist (Alain de Pouzilhac) and a famous news anchor (Christine Ockrent, who doubles as the significant other of foreign minister Bernard Kouchner), which has led to a "rédaction … décapitée" et "une confusion totale".
[L'époque de la] solidarité … à toute épreuve … est révolue. Il est loin le temps où, en bon publicitaire, M. de Pouzilhac lâchait à ses interlocuteurs : "La reine Christine à la tête de France 24, ça a de la gueule, non ?" Depuis des semaines, il ne lui parle pratiquement plus. En face, les partisans de Mme Ockrent accusent le PDG de France 24 de se comporter "tel un prince" qui considère la chaîne "comme sa propriété personnelle, avec sa cour et ses favoris".
dans
Leur rupture remonte au début de l'été. M. de Pouzilhac, qui s'est investi dans l'AEF, veut reprendre en main France 24. Selon lui, la chaîne est gérée de façon catastrophique par l'équipe de Mme Ockrent. Dérive budgétaire, erreurs stratégiques, mauvaise gestion humaine, audience en panne : France 24 serait au bord du gouffre éditorial et financier. De source syndicale, le déficit s'élève à 7 millions d'euros.
How is the feud between Alain de Pouzilhac et Christine Ockrent likely to conclude?
Tous deux [le publicitaire en vue et la journaliste vedette] savent que c'est l'Elysée qui sifflera la fin des hostilités.
Let us just briefly remind readers how the cable channel — obviously not as independent from the government and therefore not as objective as could be hoped — originated…
"Nous voulons transmettre en arabe notre vision du monde, a répété M. de Pouzilhac. France 24 présente une perspective française, différente de ses concurrents anglo-saxons, une diversité d'opinions en opposition aux Américains, qui ont une vision unifiée du monde."
… Voulue, dès 1995, par Jacques Chirac, qui estimait que, lors de la première guerre du Golfe (1990-1991), "la voix de la France" avait été absente face à l'américaine CNN et à la britannique BBC, la chaîne française d'information internationale (CFII), devenue France 24, naît, le 6 décembre 2006, après nombre de rapports parlementaires et d'arrangements politiques.
Last month, the joint “Media Academy” of Germany’s two public television networks, ARD and ZDF, hosted a three-day seminar in Wiesbaden on the topic of “Islam in the Media and in Society.”
And so forth with the kumbayas with the nodding, academic-sounding types that attempt to sound like steady-handed, thoughtful types known for an even temperament and the ability to clearly communicate facts. We are chided to thank the likes of you when Americans get that sort of “experienced” European criticism, because, after all, it’s for our own good.
Abu Bakr Rieger regretted lack of “thoroughness” of Holocaust, defends “justified doubts” about the “official version” of 9/11 attacks.
Prove it, you bearded clam.
Whereas
[Andreas Abu Baker] Rieger emphasizes the Islamische Zeitung’s explicit rejection of terrorism in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, he is notably ambiguous when it comes to assigning responsibility for the attacks.I knew that it had to be those Lutherans that did it. After all, why would it have been called the Hamburg cell?
It's not only American politicians who are maneuvering for a presidential race two years from now. The Sarkozy-Villepin feud continues as Dominique de Villepin prepares a challenge for the 2012 elections, the former prime minister being quoted in Le Monde as saying during a Grand Rendez-vous Europe 1/Le Parisien debate that
"Je dis que Nicolas Sarkozy est aujourd'hui un des problèmes de la France et parmi les principaux problèmes qu'il faut régler et qu'il est temps que la parenthèse politique que nous vivons depuis 2007 soit refermée" …
Ce réquisitoire tombe cependant mal pour certains cadres de République solidaire (RS). Même avec le procès en appel de Clearstream en mai 2011, ils espéraient voir leur leader tourner la page de l'antisarkozysme et prendre de la hauteur pour crédibiliser son offre de candidature alternative à droite en 2012. "L'antisarkozysme ne mène à rien. Les Français ne veulent pas d'un président qui clive, fabrique de la distance et pas de l'adhésion. Il faut dépasser cela si on veut apparaître comme un homme d'Etat, sinon, on se 'bayrouise'", analyse-t-on dans l'entourage de l'ancien premier ministre.
"On est à 7 % dans les sondages. On a vocation à être plus haut. Il faut repartir sur une dynamique politique", affirme la porte-parole de RS, Marie-Anne Montchamp, qui évoque une "séquence de la responsabilité" pour faire "un pont entre l'homme de l'ONU [non à l'intervention en Irak en 2003] et l'homme du combat présidentiel de 2012". A l'Assemblée nationale, Mme Montchamp et François Goulard, autre pilier de RS, ont mis ce principe en application en votant avec le reste de l'UMP la réforme des retraites, au risque de brouiller leur message en faveur d'une alternative à droite.
While the counting of America's mid-terms had started, France 24 decided to seek out the voices of America (or, at least those American voices in Paris like the Republicans' Ellen Wasylina and the Democrats' Joseph Smallhoover).
Elections – Les voix de l’Amérique
A l’heure des élections de mi-mandat, il semblerait que la population américaine soit focalisée sur la crise qu’elle traverse. Alors que Barack Obama se trouve dans une posture difficile, comment vivent les Américains aujourd'hui ? Quels sont leurs espoirs et leurs inquiétudes ? Leurs revendications ? Et dans quel camp pensent-ils trouver la solution ? Jean-Bernard Cadier reçoit : • Joe SMALLHOOVER, Democrats Abroad • Ellen WASYLINA, Republicans Abroad • Anne DEYSINE, Professeur d’études américaines à l’Université Paris X-Nanterre, spécialiste de la politique des Etats-Unis et auteur de « Etats-Unis – une nouvelle donne »
Emission préparée par Bilal Tarabey et Perrine Desplats
In the storied land of Svalbard, a career journalist who landed near the top of the world as he bounced. That alone is a blogworthy item (or is that bløgworthy...), but I digress. He’s brave enough to come right out and say what we’re all thinking when we see a news story about protestors on TV: what a bunch of maroons.
The cause of these folks, or how angry they are at these idiots?
They throw pies at world leaders. I admit it's a great photo, but I haven't got the slightest idea what their cause is.
That I share a fairly similar view of the likes of the adolescents at Greenpeace is beside the point. If the point of protesting is to be seen, gather attention, and sway the unmoved, the best that these snapperheads will do is make more people into confirmed carnivores.
Climate change is bad. But among the leaders and citizens who aren't convinced, are demonstrations like this and stripping naked by the hundred in vineyards more likely to advance serious debate or generate "hey, Martha, look at what those whacky Greenies did today" comments?
Whoever Iceman is, he is an evil genius likely plotting in obscurity to take over the world. The notion of inadvertently finding oneself someplace that remote makes me want to move to Longyearbyen and open a Burrito cart.
While the French spit'n'sputter at the gall of George W Bush to wish to defend his record in the White House, France 24 hosts a debate… a political comeback with his memoirs? The France 24 Debate looks at the book and the man with guests that include a member of Republicans abroad and Radio France International's former Washington bureau chief.
• Stuart HAUGEN, Former Vice-president of Republicans Abroad France
