It’s ALWAYS Earth Hour in Pyongyang!

And thanks to our omnicient and well meaning activistariat, we can also find ourselves using the phrase:

"The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime".

- 3 August 1914

Yemen and Syria

“Most of the Muslim community is apprehensive about confronting radicals; There’s an unresolved identity issue.”

“The Islamists are telling everyone what Cameron means is ‘change your religion.’ This is what Muslims are getting from the gatekeepers of their communities.”

Reporting for the International Herald Tribune, John Vinocur notes that that is

a view suggesting Britain’s Islamists will press for ignoring the government if it really does try to dismantle the multicultural status quo that [Prime Minister David Cameron] says “encouraged different cultures to live separate lives” and “tolerated these segregated communities behaving in ways that run completely counter to our values.”

… The prime minister’s speech Feb. 5 brought him into line with Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Nicolas Sarkozy’s announcements of multiculturalism’s demise — meaning, seemingly, that the accommodation of Muslim immigrants’ particularities must end, replaced by their acceptance of the primacy of the laws, standards and cultural (but not religious) identity of the host country’s majority.

Indeed, Mr. Cameron, with an eye on his electorate in the manner of his French and German counterparts, said that when “unacceptable views or practices come from someone who isn’t white, we’ve been too cautious, frankly, even fearful, to stand up to them.”

But the British situation, in its European context, has been different over the years and remains more volatile. Sometimes self-willed, the segregation of its immigrant communities appears unique; the level of Islamic extremism is widely regarded as higher; and the advocacy of Muslim exceptionalism (such as the use of Shariah) is more mainstream, advocated by organizations like the Muslim Council of Britain.

Accounts of the heat and abrasions of a daily clash of cultures can be jarring.

…In a view from the European Continent, the Dutch sociologist Paul Scheffer, author of a new book, “Immigrant Nations,” describes Britain as the country, alongside Canada, where multiculturalism is most entrenched but where “radicalization is the most intense.”

And with ironic gloom, Olivier Roy, the French expert on the Middle East, in finding the opening of a “post-Islamist generation” in the revolts in Egypt and Tunisia, writes that Islamism’s most radical international jihadists are now elsewhere: in the North African desert with Al Qaeda, in Pakistan, “or in the suburbs of London.”

To talk about how British multiculturism might be modified, I went to the town of Rotherham in Yorkshire, where people of Pakistani backgrounds can make up as much as 10 percent of the parliamentary election districts.

Mahroof Husain, the borough councilor in charge of “community cohesion,” did not dodge the problem. As an attempt to deal with the alienation of the local white working-class residents, and their sense of being disadvantaged in relation to social services given immigrants, he told me of guiding funds their way that were originally meant to prevent Muslim radicalization.

At the same time, he acknowledged that “most of the Muslim community is apprehensive about confronting radicals. There’s an unresolved identity issue.”

For an explanation of this, I talked to Dr. Mohammed Hamid Husain, immigrant, physician, Rotherham notable and an officer of the Order of the British Empire. More True Brit, it would seem, you cannot get. Still, he said:

“I want to differentiate between integration and assimilation. I am all for integration. Assimilation means giving up everything.”

Palpitation Nation

It has become a pattern of German foreign policy not only to be right all the time but also to let others know so that they can duly acknowledge Berlin’s wisdom.

It rings quite true to all familiar with it, but dispute limiting the observation of this trend to Germany. Punting most any issue, no matter what shadow it seems to cast while pretending to be the humanitarian and the force behind it is now the European norm.

The Germans were playing it carefully, though. In Tunisia, Egypt and Libya they were only demanding things once they seemed to be happening anyway. Before Westerwelle or Merkel started talking about ‘orderly transitions’, the dictator in question had usually packed his suitcase and withdrawn the funds from his Swiss bank account.

In Libya however, Germany’s ingenious strategy backfired. Germany had never been willing to participate in any military operation anyway.

Read it all here. Elsewhere the oddball excuse making and covering-action continues.

The French want to keep NATO out because they want to prove that THEY are the true friends of the Arabs, and they'll keep that bad NATO away.

Continental consensus: try the same old one trick pony baloney

Other noteworthy observations simply look at German attitudes repeating themselves out of simple convenience of the day. Clarsimonius notes the numbingly dull repetition of it all:

In a recent talk show, German Development Minister Dirk Niebel found “it is notable that exactly those countries which are blithely dropping bombs in Libya are still drawing oil from Libya.”

I found his comment quite notable too, but maybe that’s just me. I found it notable to have been placed into a time warp without my expressed written consent and to have landed back in the good old Germany of those good old German Gerhard Schröder days (author of the old saying-no-to-an-allied-attack-on-Saddam-to-get-re-elected trick).

They keep doing this because to a European audience, it actually looks statesmanlike. Going undiscussed is the naked fact that they can't even deal with issues at their geographic perifery.

Blantu is a Pigot Plantu is a Bigot

Or as they like to think of it in the "Gaul-o-sphere"... witty

The Dark Art of Weaseling

Suddenly human rights are no longer their raison d’etre:

"We have considered this very carefully and made an important decision," he explained. "Why does the West have primary responsibility instead of the countries in the region, the Arab League in particular?"

How else, could they deal with worlds like this?

The People's Daily newspaper, a Chinese government outlet, wrote in an editorial on Monday: "The blood-soaked tempests that Iraq has undergone for eight years and the unspeakable suffering of its people are a mirror and a warning."

Just Keep your Hands off the Culturally Exceptional Yoplait and Danone!

In the face of hostile takeovers, largely by French companies, some of them partially state owned, Italy is raising barriers to M&A and buyouts.

French cheese giant Lactalis said on Tuesday it had reached a deal to increase its stake in Parmalat to 29 per cent despite a government warning of measures to keep the dairy group in Italian hands.

Lactalis the single largest shareholder in Parmalat, which had grown into a global dairy leader before collapsing in 2003 due to financial fraud by its founder Calisto Tanzi in a scandal that was dubbed "Europe's Enron".

Lactalis' move triggered a vociferous response from the Italian government, dismayed by a recent buying binge by French companies in Italy recently.

If French yogurt production somehow could have been declared strategic, one would imagine that this would engender a similar philosophical respect for other nations’ industries, state owned or not – especially those of their fellow EU cartel members.

Dream on. Add (impotable) UHT milk production to the strategic yogurt production list, including watchmaker to the rich despots and the vane, Bulgari and asset manager Pioneer.

The moves come amid a backlash against whole or partial takeovers by French companies of energy group Edison, jeweler Bulgari and dairy company Parmalat.

In a sign that the backlash is affecting business plans, Federico Ghizzoni, chief executive of UniCredit, said he could pull the sale of the bank’s asset manager Pioneer, which is valued at €2 billion - €3 billion ($2.8 billion - $4.2 billion).

Pioneer, which is in the final stages of a lengthy auction, has attracted bids from French companies Amundi, a joint venture between Société Générale and Crédit Agricole, and Natixis.

His Privacy Matters More than Yours'

Someone out there has republished a blog once-written and later-deleted by Wikileaks prop, Julian Assange. It reveals a great deal about him, namely that he's a rationalizing conspiracy crackpot trying to apply a scientific seeming veneer to what otherwise is the domain of the distinctly stupid, and a misogynist.

Addressing one such Gordian knot of trutherisms hosted at his previous "secret knowledge society", he linked it with the phrase:

No. Don't skip to the good stuff. This is the good stuff.

The Word "Luxury" Banned in China

• Uh… Boss… Are we allowed to say that the communist system is not a luxury?

Plantu comments on the fact that the word luxury is among the terms that have just been banned by China's communists…
Other banned words on Beijing's billboard campaigns, associated with an opulent lifestyle, include "supreme", "royal", even "class"…

Happy Birthday

Obi's Sister turns 5…

Compare and Contrast

"All the other large and small nationalities and peoples are destined to perish before long in the revolutionary world storm… these residual fragments of peoples always become fanatical standard-bearers of counter-revolution and remain so until their complete extirpation or loss of their national character… [A general war will] wipe out all these petty hidebound nations, down to their very names. The next world war will result in the disappearance from the face of the earth not only of reactionary classes and dynasties, but also of entire reactionary peoples. And that, too, is a step forward."

- Friedrich Engels, "The Magyar Struggle," Neue Rheinische Zeitung, January 13, 1849

“As the Imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map,”

Elsewhere

“There is no doubt that the new wave (of attacks) in Palestine will wipe off this stigma (Israel) from the face of the Islamic world, ...”

- Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, “The World without Zionism.”

French Soccer Star Issues Apology Laden with Regrets

One of the reasons the holier-than-thou Frenchmen are always excoriating those clueless Yankee puritans is the way that the latter are always make members of their élites, from Hollywood stars to Tiger Woods and Bill Clinton, apologize for their — alleged — misdeeds; "alleged", we write because if only the Yanks were as suave and lucid as the French, they would understand that in fact the misdeeds are only misdeeds in the minds of the traditional and mindless reactionaries and that, in today's day and age, we need to be less doctrinaire.

In that perspective, it's rather interesting to learn, via Le Monde, that football star Franck Ribéry has issued a communiqué stating exactly that: How sorry he is for what he's done (for what he did last year) and for the people that he has hurt…

C'est clair : j'ai connu une année 2010 horrible à tous points de vue. Je ne parlerai même pas des blessures qui ne m'ont pas épargné. Mais dans ma vie privée, dans mon comportement de footballeur, je me suis planté. J'ai pris des mauvaises routes, je me suis perdu. J'ai blessé des gens, des gens qui me sont très chers, j'en ai déçu voire choqué beaucoup d'autres : je m'en veux et je m'en excuse.

The Left’s Love of Vengeance

Century-plus old failed Marxist tripe and revolutionary violence.

A former official of one of the country's most-powerful unions, SEIU, is detailing a secret plan to "destabilize" the country.

Specifically, the plan seeks to destroy JP Morgan, nuke the stock market, and weaken Wall Street's grip on power, thus creating the conditions necessary for a redistribution of wealth and a change in government.

But you know, they’re just out there ‘defending working people’ and baby girls, puppies, and tax auditors too... The nearly unintelligible lout goes on:

For example, 10% of homeowners are underwater right their home they are paying more for it then its worth 10% of those people are in strategic default, meaning they are refusing to pay but they are staying in their home that's totally spontaneous they figured out it takes a year to kick me out of my home because foreclosure is backed up

If you could double that number you would you could put banks at the edge of insolvency again.

And if that doesn’t sound enough like he crawled out of Ed Asner’s ass:

We have a very simple strategy:
- How do we bring down the stock market
- How do we bring down their bonuses
- How do we interfere with there ability to be rich...

ABILITY TO BE... It has nothing to do with what they have, even if he does fantasize he’s entitled to it. This is somewhere between adolescent spite and the kinds of clepto-revolutions that are based on the idea that the lumpenproletariat would surrender their well-being and their freedoms if they can be bought off with high-minded sounding promises about getting something out of following ‘the leader with the great new idea’.

The idea, however, tested for more than a century failed, and produced nothing but totalitarianism, social nihilism, misery, and at some-point everywhere it was tried, the need to be defended with mass murder of the ‘liberated’.

Lerner, by the way, likes to take the form of a “socially concerned reformer” when he shows up on CNBC, and pens articles that are meant to be caring and thought-provoking at the hive of the Queen of aggregation, The Huffington Post.

Gadaffi's BFF

For days there has been no mention made in NorKland of goings on in Libya. The Colonel knows how his true friends are.

The Weather Forecast in Japan andthe Weather Forecast in France

• Japanese weather girl: A few clouds here, a few clouds there…

• French weather girl: Spring is here

(Yes: At times, one may well ask what is the point with some of Plantu's cartoons…)

Paris Sera Toujours Paris - II

For those of you getting sentimental for the city of lights, art, fashion, etc., etc.™®©, ¡No Pasarán! Brings you truth in advertising.

Where are the Radiation Alarms ALWAYS Going off?

You guessed it!

Although It Is Not Said Openly, Hiroshima Also Played a Purifying Role, IE the Baptism of a New Japan, the Event that Put an End to 50 Years of Crimes

Hiroshima was a horrific event, but in the memory of the nation, it also represents the baptism of a new Japan, the event that put an end to fifty years of crimes. Out of this evil came a good, a Japan which repudiated the horrors of militarism and nationalism, engaged in repentance, and focused on growth. Although it is not said so openly, Hiroshima also played a purifying role. If the Japanese committed crimes, they also suffered what no other nation has ever suffered and thus, in the collective unconscious, they have somehow paid their dues.

Naturally, an article coupling Japan's nuclear plant disaster with 1945's dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima had to appear in Le Monde and so it does, thanks to Philippe Mesmer.

Pour les 239 225 hibakusha encore de ce monde, l'enchaînement des événements à la centrale de Fukushima et l'extension progressive des zones de retombées radioactives rappellent ce matin d'été ensoleillé, chaud et humide, déchiré par l'éclair d'une explosion d'une violence inouïe, suivie pour certains d'une perte de conscience avant un réveil dans un paysage de cendres, traversé par des survivants hagards, brûlés au dernier degré, la peau en lambeaux, torturés par la soif. Ils se souviennent aussi des jours de pluie noircie par les cendres contaminées, des années à souffrir dans les hôpitaux où les médecins pronostiquaient une mort prochaine. Soixante-cinq ans plus tard, ils n'ont rien oublié.

… "Le pire est à craindre pour les habitants de la région. Le problème est que peu de gens peuvent comprendre, car ils ne connaissent pas les dommages causés à la santé par les radiations."

La situation suscite également des réactions de colère, comme celle de Kohta Kiya, qui avait 3 ans au moment de l'attaque atomique de 1945, et qui est aujourd'hui le secrétaire général de la Confédération préfectorale des survivants de la bombe A. "Le gouvernement a fait preuve d'inconscience. Je ne comprends pas comment on peut construire des centrales nucléaires sur un territoire aussi sujet aux séismes." Lui craint de voir la région de Fukushima devenir comme les alentours de la centrale de Tchernobyl, en Ukraine, qui reste une "zone morte avec au centre des matériaux toujours actifs, vingt-cinq ans après".

Philippe Mesmer's article is coupled with Gaëlle Dupont's interview of Jean-Marie Bouissou (directeur de recherche au Centre d'études et de recherches internationales de Sciences Po, historien du Japon contemporain, et l'un des meilleurs spécialistes du pays), who states that "La presse ne mène pas le débat" and who gives another viewpoint on the dropping of the atomic bombs.

Hiroshima a été une horreur, mais c'est aussi, dans la mémoire du pays, le baptême d'un nouveau Japon, l'événement qui a mis fin à cinquante ans de crimes. De ce mal est sorti un bien, un Japon qui avait renié les horreurs militaristes et nationalistes, se repentait et se développait. Même si ce n'est pas dit ouvertement, Hiroshima a aussi joué un rôle de purification. Dans l'inconscient collectif, si les Japonais ont commis des crimes, ils ont aussi subi ce qu'aucun autre peuple n'a jamais subi et ont donc, en quelque sorte, payé.

It Looks "the Colonel's" Fisting Days are Over

The 5 W’s of kissing à la française

A general rule of thumb: if two people tutoient each other (address each other with the familiar tu instead of the more formal vous), faire la bise is in order. When in doubt, a handshake probably won’t ruffle any feathers.

Treating us to a map showing how many pecks on the cheek (1, 2, 3, 4, or more) to give in which region of France, Canada's Maria Foley gives a rundown of the five W's of France's kissing culture…

The first time I moved to France, as a teenager, I was blissfully unaware of the seismic cultural shifts that were in store for me. …

One day I was in town doing some shopping when I spied a girl I’d met at a party the previous week. “Salut, Thérèse,” I called out, waving happily.

She looked at me blankly for a second before smiling politely in recognition. "La Canadienne," she murmured, leaning close, and closer, and then -- just as I started wondering if she was going to whisper in my ear -- kissing me on the cheek. Twice.

My first French kiss. I can still feel the shock.

Many years later, the double kiss would become a standard greeting between my friends and me. But at that time, being kissed by another girl -- and a stranger at that -- was not something I was used to.

What I didn’t realise is that, to the French, la bise is not really a kiss. Not the way we Anglos define it, anyway. There’s nothing remotely sexual about it, any more than a hearty handshake could be construed as "holding hands".

Knowing something and being comfortable with it, however, are sometimes very different things.

It has been Declared Art

The 1961 winner of the Golden Upturned Nose at the Pan-European Kinematik Uber-superior Fillum Festival!