Will the White House Recognize the US as a NATO Member?

It’s hard to tell. Mark C. Toner, Acting Deputy Department Spokesman, April 12, 2011:

That’s all I have for the top. I’ll take your questions.

QUESTION: Mark, on Libya, there seems to be some unhappiness in Europe among your European NATO allies, in particular your first ally ever, France, and its – enemy ever.

MR. TONER: You mean ever ever? (Laughter.) Yes.

QUESTION: Yes. And Britain. They seem to be teaming up on you wanting more U.S. military input – a bigger U.S. role in the NATO operation. Are there any plans to increase – to go back to where – to increase that role, to go back to where it was at the beginning?

MR. TONER: Matt, I’m aware of the remarks and I don’t know that they were necessarily ganging up on us. I think they were commenting on NATO’s tempo of operations. And I believe NATO briefed earlier on this issue today and addressed some of those concerns.
We have every confidence in NATO’s ability to carry out the tasks of enforcing the arms embargo as well as the no-fly zone and the protection of civilians in Libya. As the President said, the U.S. and other key partners had capabilities that they brought to this operation up front, and then our role would diminish as NATO stepped up and took command and control of the operation.
(Sneeze.)

MR. TONER: God bless you.
And that’s what’s happened, and we have confidence in NATO’s ability to carry out the mission.

QUESTION: Look --

MR. TONER: Yeah.

QUESTION: You talk about NATO as if it is some extraterrestrial being from another planet with which you have occasional meetings. (Laughter.) I mean, you are the largest country in NATO.

Laughter.

The Star-Spangled Banner Floating Over England's Premier League

Le milliardaire américain Stan Kroenke est devenu lundi 11 avril le propriétaire du club anglais d'Arsenal

writes Le Monde's Benjamin Pruniaux (you can also read Rob Hughes' English-language version).

Il devient le quatrième propriétaire américain dans le championnat anglais, à l'image de ses homologues de Liverpool, Manchester United et Aston Villa. …

"LA PREMIER LEAGUE ANGLAISE N'EST PLUS ANGLAISE"

L'Angleterre attire les capitaux étrangers à tel point qu'aujourd'hui, plus de la moitié des clubs de la Premier League appartiennent à des propriétaires étrangers. Au point qu'on entend dire maintenant "English Premier league is no longer English" ("La Premier League anglaise n'est plus anglaise"). "On assiste à une mondialisation du championnat anglais. Cette mondialisation a d'abord eu lieu par sa main-d'œuvre puisque 40 % seulement de ses joueurs sont Anglais, mais aussi par le produit car Manchester United est devenue une marque dans le monde entier."

Reporting for the HQ of the Office of the Propagation of the Faith...

Left think:

As if Tea Party Republicans have not done enough to undermine the working class in America, now they are going after children. New pro-business legislation threatens to make it even harder for adults to keep their jobs, or get new ones, in the struggling American economy.

Of course, one must first ignore the fact that the Tea Party ARE overwhelmingly the working “class” in America. You must also ignore the fact that the non-family-farm working age isn’t being lowered, and that 20 year olds are not children.

Instead of seeing every shadow, every leaf, every whistle in the wind as political ammunition for the gullible, why don't these cretins look at what the proposal really is: a youth unemployment measure to deal with the handwringing about young people delaying the start of work, and not developing skills.

To make her feeble “globally distributed” point, he tosses in a Youtube video of child labor in a grab-bag of places in the developing world, including “fashionably backward” societies like Kenya, and rapidly developing Brazil.

Maryann Tobin is a professional journalist who has appeared on the History Channel in Brad Meltzer's DECODED. She is also a former jockey and rescues abused animals on her farm.

She calls herself a “political spin examiner”, if you can believe it. Her “journalistic” magnum opii includes fact-of-the-title-statement masking items with titles such as:

Gov. Rick Scott plans to add 12,300 to Florida unemployment lines.
Republican Tea Party conservatives plan big govt. regulation of women’s rights.
Republicans get failing grade in new poll.
Republicans begin Muslim American terrorist hearings.
Republicans take collective bargaining rights with no democrats present.
Republicans want to cut funding for tsumani warning system

Without irony, or noticing that Unions are little more than a movement corrupted and exploited by the left:
Republican Governors use union busting to go after democratic campaign funds.

(because union money are THEIR campaign funds)

Is Fox News running scared from Huffington Post, AOL deal?.

and the utterly implausible notion:
Republican bill takes Food Stamps from union workers children and families.

Because union workers are starving, underpaid, and are poor enough to qualify for the same food stamps that no pre-packaged anti-Walmart tirade fails to include, saying “they make just enough to not qualify for food stamps”.

And scrambling feverishly into the past centuries for personal opinion justification:
Can Republican Budget Cuts lead to Another Triangle Fire Disaster?

As if the Federal government budgeted for local fire departments... Etc. You get the picture - reporting MSNBC opinion as newsworthy facts, and the like.

She has also lent her crack-reporting skills to something she is quite proud of: some production on History Channel called “Decoded”.

Brad Meltzer's Decoded, (or simply Decoded), is an American mystery and conspiracy theory investigation television series, produced by Go Go Luckey and Berman/Braun, that premiered December 2, 2010 on the History channel.[1] The series is hosted by political thriller author and non-fiction writer Brad Meltzer and follows a team of investigators who try and determine the meanings behind various symbolism, alleged secret codes and conspiracies that surround us everyday.

So goes the search for fining that all adversity in the world is caused by Jewish Bankers, the British Royal Family, and Fluoride.

You get it. “Journalism,” indeed. To call herself a Political spin examiner is laughable. Her entire occupation is to spin others’ journalism for her own, and her uses. She aggregates from wire items like a politically programmed adolescent would blogs.

One does have to give her points for consistency. “Decoded” the serialized mimeograph-grade cult pamphlet that she posed as a journalist with a sound reputation for to ligitmate it, somewhere among heaven knows who, was received thus:

New York Times reviewer Ginia Bellfante, gave Decoded a negative review saying; "[there] are the languorous crackpots who wonder if codes are embedded in their Home Depot receipts, or if George Washington's wooden leg hid an alternate Constitution. It is for this group that the series 'Brad Meltzer’s Decoded' has been conceived"

There it is, folks... the Black Helicopter crowd, and they appeal to the kind of lefty fake-crisis gin-ups and populist pandering that have done more to tar the American people’s reputation than anything else. In other words, the new generation of the left.

Remind me to send out the Bilderburg hit teams on our Alien technology transporters later this week.

I always wanted to bring my kids to Paris, yet waited as their palates grew up from macaroni and cheese and pizza to salmon and a good cut of steak

Food is often an afterthought to parents planning a vacation

muses Stephen Jermanok during a visit to Paris.

For my family, food is an essential ingredient, the necessary spice that, when added properly, can turn a bland trip into a memorable experience.

… I had always wanted to bring my children to Paris, yet had waited as their palates grew up from macaroni and cheese and pizza to salmon and a good cut of steak. No way would I fly my family of four overseas, only to dine at the McDonald’s on the Champs-Élysées. I had no desire to force sweetbreads down their throats, but I did want them to try new dishes they could find only in Paris.

Soviet Fears That Gagarin Might Use His Space Flight to Defect, Parachuting Into America

Mistrust prevailed. ... The capsule could be operated manually, but the risk was great. What if the cosmonaut were to take the opportunity to say "nyet!" to the [Soviet Union's] bright future and parachute into the American enemy's territory? A solution was quickly found: the manual controls of the aircraft were blocked by a padlock whose secret code was hidden in the cabin unbeknownst to its passenger. ... This Byzantine and risky system was foiled by colleagues of Gagarin, who, despite the top secret arrangement, promptly whispered the code into his ear before his departure.

As Russia — and the world — celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first human space flight, Le Monde's Marie Jégo points out — "cette obsession du secret !" — that the Soviet authorities were suspicious that Yuri Gagarin might use the occasion, and his Vostok space capsule, to try to defect to America.

La méfiance régnait. … La capsule pouvait être gérée manuellement mais le risque était grand. Et si le cosmonaute en avait profité pour dire "niet !" à l'avenir radieux et se parachuter chez l'ennemi américain ? Une solution fut bientôt trouvée : les commandes manuelles de l'appareil furent bloquées par un cadenas dont le code secret fut caché dans la cabine à l'insu de son passager. … Ce dispositif byzantin et hasardeux fut déjoué par les collègues de Gagarine, qui s'empressèrent, malgré l'interdiction, de lui souffler le code avant son départ.

EU Changes Tack

Henceforth they will now provide advance of any upcoming impotent hand-wringing.

EU ministers to 'deplore' Syria killings, threaten sanctions

what is a lot more serious that “expressing concern”, or even “deep concern”, I gather.

EU foreign ministers will next week step up pressure for Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad to stop killing protesters and to make good on promises of reform.

Well, there goes the big surprise as far as their heavy ammunition is concerned.

And if that doesn’t do it, there’s always the magical power of Roget’s Thesaurus and their other secret weapon: the menacing Petit Larousse, or perhaps even the Langenscheidt of doom.

The EU vocabulary puts Syria on a par with Yemen, up to now seen as the most dangerous and unstable regime in the region.

This is supposed to make them seem forceful, robust, and effective.

You are asked to wear the costume they gave you and play along:

Deep Inside the Machine

Don’t forget that these are the polished, polite, and compliant elite that the North Koreans are letting the camera see.



This is a view of the engine room of a state propaganda apparatus.

Executed in a "quiet" neighborhood of gun-controlling France by gangsters firing 9-mm caliber rounds from an automatic pistol

Those — in France, in America, or elsewhere — who think that Europeans (unlike clueless American gun-worshipers) have attained an unprecedented lack of violence should read Yves Bordenave's Le Monde article detailing what happened in Villepinte last Sunday.

They smashed the gate, shouted "Police", then pulled Bilal, 20, out of his bed, before gunning him down in front of his family — his parents, two sisters aged 16 and 9, and his 12-year-old brother — in the living room. Four shots including one in the chest and another in the neck that hit the carotid artery. 9 mm caliber rounds fired from an automatic pistol, the weapon of a professional. …

It was about 5: 45 am, Sunday, April 10, when … four men covered in black wearing hoods, gloves, and bulletproof vests, broke into the Villepinte (Seine-Saint-Denis) home of this family of Moroccan origin which has lived in this rather quiet neighborhood for years. Once their execution accomplished, they left as if nothing had happened, taking care beforehand to seize all mobile phones in the house, then vanished.

In neighboring Sevran, the mayor is interviewed by Luc Bronner. To rid his town of dealers, Stéphane Gatignon has written a book on decriminalizing cannabis.

Pourquoi un tel niveau de violence dans votre ville ?

Nous vivons dans un état d'exception avec des bandes qui se tirent dessus pour le marché de la drogue. Un hall d'immeuble pour faire du trafic peut rapporter 30 000 euros par jour. Avant, ils se négociaient entre bandes, aujourd'hui, cela se règle à la kalachnikov.

…je propose la dépénalisation du cannabis pour mettre fin à ces dérives criminelles.

N'est-ce pas un renoncement ?

La prohibition est aujourd'hui une immense hypocrisie alors qu'il y a quatre millions de consommateurs de cannabis en France. Sur la drogue, il faut accepter l'idée que les trafiquants ont sans doute gagné.

You can read Yves Bordenave's original article in French (while musing over an unrelated story, the murder of a(n unarmed) jeweler killed during a hold-up in the center of Paris):

Ils ont défoncé le portail, ont crié "Police", puis ont sorti de son lit Billal, 20 ans, avant de l'exécuter sous les yeux de sa famille — ses parents, ses deux soeurs âgées de 16 et 9 ans, et son frère de 12 ans — dans le salon. Quatre tirs dont un dans le thorax et un autre dans le cou qui a atteint la carotide. Du calibre 9 mm tiré au pistolet automatique, une arme de professionnel. …

Il était environ 5 h 45, dimanche 10 avril, lorsque dans ce pavillon du 21, avenue Jussieu à Villepinte (Seine-Saint-Denis), quatre hommes cagoulés, gantés, revêtus de noir et protégés de gilets pare-balles, ont fait irruption au domicile de cette famille d'origine marocaine qui vit dans ce quartier plutôt paisible depuis plusieurs années. Ils sont repartis comme si de rien n'était, une fois l'exécution accomplie, en prenant soin de s'emparer de tous les téléphones portables de la maison, puis ont disparu.

Greens Former Fixation on Earth’s Corn Hole Long FOrgotten

Remember waaaay back, right after the paper bag hysteria based on the idea that the world would run out of trees, and that paper bags were by-some-miracle linked to the loss of old-growth forests (when we were supposed to start using PLASTIC bags)... there was this impending apocalypse called the hole in the ozone layer. Apparently, it hasn’t changed much at all in 20 years, despite eliminating spray deodorant and going through the costly effort of changing the refrigerant used in, say, everything.

John Ray links to one rather telling quotation that a few bitter clingers in the cult of ecological millennial madness can’t quite square: the fact that the Ozone layer Jihad really was as much of a big fat pile of mendacity that “the deniers” said it was. Even the author of the Gaia theory, James Lovelock, reacted the way any as-yet unprogrammed person would with the 2009 leaking of the Climategate emails.

“I was utterly disgusted. My second thought was that it was inevitable. It was bound to happen. Science, not so very long ago, pre-1960s, was largely vocational. Back when I was young, I didn’t want to do anything else other than be a scientist. They’re not like that nowadays. They don’t give a damn. They go to these massive, mass-produced universities and churn them out. They say: “Science is a good career. You can get a job for life doing government work.” That’s no way to do science. I have seen this happen before, of course. We should have been warned by the CFC/ozone affair because the corruption of science in that was so bad that something like 80% of the measurements being made during that time were either faked, or incompetently done.

It’s really just their followers that are coo-coo for Cocoa Puffs. Aside from the flunkies and dupes, the true proponents are just proving themselves to be evil.

“The warmers are getting more and more like those traditional predictors of the end of the world who, when the event fails to happen on the due date, announce an error in their calculations and a new date.”

Otherwise, top of the icecap to you, friends. May your endless wait for the violent, dramatic, and sudden sea level rise be as uneventful and contrived as every other feature of your lives.

Libya: The French seem proud that their country is active on the international scene and getting recognition; But will Sarkozy benefit?

With Barack Obama having largely backed the United States out of the alliance’s airborne support of Libya’s anti-Qaddafi rebels, France now plays something very close to the lead role

states John Vinocur in his International Herald Tribune.

By Élysée Palace logic, underpinned by Germany’s skipping out on joining the interdiction force, France has turned the war into a demonstration of its unique and pre-eminent role managing both Europe’s defense pillar (with Britain) and its economic stewardship (albeit as a German junior partner).

…An unidentified voice, sounding remarkably like Mr. Sarkozy’s, said in a conversation with Pierre Rousselin of Le Figaro over the weekend that [the] French seemed proud that their country was active on the international scene and getting recognition for it — which was fine for morale.

I take that as meaning that any trace of bankable, politically fungible fallout from the lovely war doesn’t exist for now. In the Sarkozyian frame of reference, which leans toward triumphalism, that’s no small measure of circumspection.

In fact, reality says there isn’t a poll anywhere that foresees the president’s re-election.

… The buzzword these days to characterize the country’s feelings about Mr. Sarkozy is “désamour” — meaning disaffection, but closer, really, to the blank coldness that can come at the end of an affair.

Thinking I might get a dose of urbane, intelligent counterspin on this from the chief of the Gaullist party, I asked Jean-François Copé for his take on “désamour.”

He replied, “The word fits the situation. We’ve got to deal with it.”

… Various projections on the first-round outcome indicate the president could be eliminated from reaching the head-to-head final, with a significant part of his support having gone to Marine Le Pen of the extreme-right National Front. She seems to be succeeding in giving an aura of respectability to the party, whose anti-immigrant pitch was embedded for decades in a vocabulary reeking of racism and anti-Semitism.

Two Old French Broads Dispensing Pro-Gadaffi Propaganda in Beirut

Neglected since 30 March:



Some women would work the donkey show for enough money. Others just naturally love dictators.

...and the Horse You Rode in on.

Can fragile, sensitive Europe take it?

Almost 60 percent of Iceland's citizens have voted for the second time against compensating the foreign customers of the bankrupt online Icesave bank. In the eyes of the left-liberal daily Tages-Anzeiger the referendum is also a "No" to EU membership: "What does the entire process mean for the Eurozone, of which Iceland is not a member? Before the vote the Icelanders were told that if they voted against compensation the British and Dutch governments would sue for the money. But that wasn't the greatest threat because the outcome of such a court case is not certain.

More significant was the threat that the Icelandic governments plans to join the EU might have to be postponed. But the citizens of Iceland obviously weren't intimidated by the prospect

They seem pretty happy to me.

The Search for Intelligence Continues

German Curveballs and Italian Yellowcake

The EU's intelligence bureau, the Joint Situation Centre, has recently sent people to Libya. But its new director says there is little prospect of turning it into a genuine intelligence-gathering service even in the "long term."

In fact, they seem so harmless, that even the enemy of their member states received and ignored them.

Joint Situation Centre chief Ilkka Salmi confirmed that one of his staff accompanied a European External Action Service (EEAS) fact-finding mission to Tripoli on 6 March and that another one took part in a visit to Benghazi on 5 April.

"We want to avoid the impression that these were spooks of any kind. They were technical specialists who went to help with satellite phones and that type of thing. There was certainly no tasking," he explained. "These are the only missions of this kind that we have carried out since I became director two months ago."

'Tasking' is intelligence jargon for being asked to get information on a given subject.

Outside of obvious comparisons to phone company linemen, who they were there to support goes unexplained: EU diplomats? Member state Diplomats? A extra-special surrender phone to the trailer trash dictator himself? Serious brown-nosing?

A contact familiar with the work of SitCen earlier told this website: "These are fairly normal people who have perhaps in their lives had some experience of being out in the field in a place less comfortable than Washington … They are people who can write reports. Who do not mind not staying in five star hotels. Who know how to take precautions when they go out at night."

FOUR star hotels?!? They’re SO butch!

Another week, another lumbering, leaden polemic from Paul Krugman

From England's Fawley, one British reader of the International Herald Tribune has had his fill of the New York Times' star economist. Writes Robin Somes (second entry):

Another week, another lumbering, leaden polemic from Paul Krugman over the twin evils of Republicanism and the cutting of government spending (“The Mellon doctrine,” Views, April 4).

As a Briton, I object to Mr. Krugman's continual and inaccurate sneering at my government’s austerity policy. Imperfect as it may be, the alternative is to continue the never-ending and gargantuan cycle of debt foisted on us by Gordon Brown.

While the Republican Party may well be wrong, Mr. Krugman is not necessarily right. When, not if, the rest of the world tires of buying U.S. debt, who then will pick up the tab? It’s a simple question, but I see no answers from Mr. Krugman.

Paris Sera Toujours Paris - V

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

They’re all Special, and All Equally Irrelevant

Like a Chamber of Commerce from hell, or a disturbing recurring clown dream, the EU is replete, if not festooned with “Presidents.”

Overview:

The Lisbon (Portugal) Treaty creates an all-powerful “President of the European Council” (POEC).

This is additional to the existing roles of “President of the European Commission”(POCO) and “President of the European Parliament” (POPE). There is also a “rotating” President-in-Office of the European Council (PORC).

This is the same “European Council” as mentioned in the first paragraph. However, we observe no matching rotating “President-in-Office” of either the Commission or Parliament. Thus, the “Council” is the only EU institution with a rotational element in its presidential structure.

There is also a “President of the Committee of the Regions” (POCE) and a “President of the Economic and Social Committee” (PESC), two EU institutions operating quietly in the background. These two Committees (not real committees as they are not subordinate parts of a bigger entity) are nothing to do with the 22 committees of the European Parliament, which are subordinate but nevertheless have their own “presidents”.

Maybe they can use a kaleidoscope of other superlatives, like El Hefe, Pimp Daddy, or maybe just Christ almighty to differentiate themselves from one another.

We need more time to reach considered conclusions as to the purpose and relative values of all these presidential positions, and the many others we have uncovered.

For instance, the European Court of Justice has a “President” as does the European Court of Auditors and the European Central Bank. Other EU-related bodies using the term include the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market and the Community Plant Life Variety Office. The term “president” seems to be accorded to anyone of even marginal authority in the EU system.

Unlike our own system, there is little appetite in Europe for terms such as “Speaker”, “Governor” or “Chairman”. The idea of, for example, US Senate and House Committee leaders being titled “Chairman”, to ensure clear (downward) separation from the Head of State, is unfamiliar.

This confusing focus on “president” status in Europe is blamed on the French language, which uses the term for both “President” and “Chairman” in political life. Without the French influence, the vast majority of EU positions carrying the term “president”, would, in English, be reduced to “chairman” or something less.

The French language is also blamed for the plethora of EU committees often termed “commissions”, causing confusion with the status of the European “Commission”, which is not a committee.

That implies that there is some actual reason to communicate with any of them or try to sort out their gauntlet of completely unjustified self-importance.

The Greenest Kids U Know

Nature has a way of thinning out the herd.

Large sections of Australia’s rich are engaged in a conspiracy to screw the poor in the name of saving the planet.

The Friends of Which Workers, Exactly?

11 September, 2001 – the Communist Party of the Workers of France issues a press statement indifferent to the cause of the Jihadists because it would not serve any “progressive” causes or the people of “Palestina”, but did manage to denounce what America might do.

The symbols of the financial, military and diplomatic power of US imperialism have become the target of attacks of an extent hitherto unseen on American soil. The strongest power on the planet, sure of its invulnerability, has promised to avenge itself. One must fear the worst!

The attack psychosis has spread to all capitals. Plans of control and of police and military surveillance, such as the "vigipirate" plan in France, have been set up. NATO has been placed on maximum alert. The declarations of war are multiplying.

These attacks do not serve any progressive cause, neither that of the struggle of the Palestinian people nor the popular protest which is developing against the politics of US imperialism and other imperialist powers, as the huge demonstrations against imperialist globalization show.

We denounce in advance all the acts of reprisal that will be taken against the peoples, in the name of a so-called "war on terrorism."

We denounce as well the measures against democratic rights, particularly the right to demonstrate.

We reject the calls for a "holy alliance" with the imperialist power of the United States, which has to its account, the largest number of wars of aggression.

Our total disagreement with the methods and goals of those who have ordered these attacks will not cause us to lose sight of the antagonistic class interests between us and the imperialist powers.

The imprint of the structural aggrieved insanity of the far left is all right there. Who was denied the right to demonstrate, or lost their rights to vote or speak? Who exactly was it, through either words or actions that declared war that day? It doesn’t matter: they have an imprinted attitude easily filled by a predetermined pattern, and a mechanism that lets them ignore a defense of ‘the people’, so long as ‘the people’ match a constructed mental image that they have.

May revolution indeed find you. May you suffer for what you wish for.

"Brazil's Columbine": As soon as the killer's Islam connection emerged, the media started cleansing the narrative

Last Thursday (April, 7th) Wellington Menezes de Oliveira killed 12 children in a school in Realengo (Rio de Janeiro). … He brought two guns (no registered) and reloaded the gun 9 times before he was shot and killed himself.

He wrote a letter with strict rules that must be applied to his funeral, with outstanding references to that written by Mohammed Atta (one of the perpretators of 9-11 attacks).

When the news emerged the connection with Islam was clear: he declared himself as a muslim (after left Jehovah Witnesses four years ago).

But as soon as it emerged, the "cleansing" of the Islam connection started.

Thus writes Luís Afonso Assumpção, who points out that despite the fact that the massacre occurred in a school, what Brazil's media have called the "Brazilian Columbine" should more realistically be considered a twin of the Fort Hood case.

Many people in Brazil wrote on the case as the "Brazilian Columbine". Despite they had been occurred in a school, the Brazilian case must be considered as a twin of the Fort Hood case.

He received some instruction by the internet. He was a part of a group called "group". He broke his computer at his home to avoid investigations to find some link.

Just like in US, the "investigators" don´t want to pursue such leads. They believed Wellington was a lone lunatic that acted on his own.

The Pointlessness of European Political Life: a Case Study in Dessicated Old Commies

1992: A defensive/ passive aggressive statement titles ”News” from Katyn in Roter Morgen (Red Morning), the house Organ of the Communist Party of Germany tries to mock the Soviet massacre of Polish officers in 1940.

Imagine that, the whole Politbureau leadership had signed! What a "find"! However: "Political observers in Poland expected that Warsaw nevertheless would not decide to appear as accuser of the CPSU" (FR). Perhaps Lech Walesa is a secret Stalinist?

This cheap melodrama shows clearly what is to be made of the whole propaganda cry about the alleged "proofs" of Soviet responsibility for Katyn. For decades even in the West it was assumed that the Hitler-fascists were the criminals at Katyn. And then all of a sudden things were turned upside-down. Without a single document being presented. Simply because it was politically convenient.

Operating on the theory that they all killed themselves, I suppose. Otherwise the inflammatory style of Communist “public relations” (when not massacring) normally involves:

1. Insisting something pointing to their ideological fellow travellers didn’t really happen.
2. Insisting someone else did it.
3. Insisting loudly that the proof is fake without any actual proof.
4. Obfuscation

2001: Facts still aren’t good enough.

Yuri Zhukov, senior scholar at the History Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, claims that documents proving Stalin’s security service (NKVD) murdered over 20,000 Polish officers in the Katyn massacres are “counterfeit”.

Operating on the theory that they all killed themselves, I suppose. Otherwise the inflammatory style of Communist “public relations” (when not massacring) normally involves:

1. Insisting something pointing to their ideological fellow travellers didn’t really happen.
2. Insisting someone else did it.
3. Insisting loudly that the proof is fake without any actual proof.
4. Obfuscation.

Zhukov is taking issue with documents made public last April which show that on 5 March, 1940, the Soviet politburo decided to kill several thousands of Polish prisoners, who they claimed were, “nationalists and counter-revolutionaries”.

On their release, President Medvedev said of the documents, signed by Stalin: “'Let people see it, let them know who made the decision to kill the Polish officers. It's all there in the documents. All signatures are there, all the faces are known.”

Same old, same old. A Red Army smokescreen with fakes supporting evidence were even presented in an attempt to use the proceeds at Nuremburg as a Soviet-style post-revolutionary show trial. No matter: when you only know one chord, repeat it over and over and play it as loudly as possible. What you’re left with is a European leftist.

This Report is superbly characteristic of Nuremberg evidence. The ‘testimony’ consists of ‘written statements’ signed by ‘eye-witnesses’ but which only appeared in a report written at Stalin’s behest and read aloud (in excerpt form) by a Soviet prosecutor. The ‘statements’ were not attached to the report, the ‘witnesses’’ did not appear in court and the original documents were not available.

Most Nuremberg evidence was considerably less substantial than this document. The ‘forensic report’ reproduced here was the only forensic report ever introduced into evidence at Nuremberg.

In April 1943 4,500 bodies were discovered buried in the Katyn Forest. At first the Russians claimed it to be an archeological find but shortly afterwards the British, American and Russian Allies laid the crime at the door of the Nazi enemy. Another 10,000 Polish officers remained unaccounted for.

Following numerous Russian excuses and pretended searches, the British and American authorities both knew of Soviet responsibility by the time the Nuremberg Tribunals were held. The charges of German guilt brought at the IMT placed the British Government and the Tribunal in an intensely difficult position. Relations with the Polish Government-in-Exile were strained and to have acquitted Göring and the other twenty IMT defendants of the crime would have implied that the Russians were guilty, and they shared the bench. When judgement was eventually delivered by Lord Justice Lawrence on 1 November 1946 the charges relating to the Katyn massacre were simply passed over, as if they had never been brought at all.

A Dull Persistence

In one random post a few weeks back, Erik used a picture of Hitler to illustrate some point or another. Since then, an overwhelming amount of our traffic originating in Europe has stumbled across us in search engines because they’re looking for an image of the world-famous mass murderer that’s suitable for framing.

Look – he’s your butt-buddy Europe. You can keep him.

He Calls Himself Russell the Love Muscle

French reporting-of-self yields to bragging about their meatwhistles. The same study shows that those self-reporting are being mendacious about their pecker-hood, Mister Happy, and growling trouser snakes, by the same difference between the great national French Johnson and –measured- American willies.

Predictably, Arabs, Italy, and other sad, real-life reflections of their stereotypes, seem to report the most “grade inflation”, all reflecting a similar level of “great national” powerlessness and propensity to blame anything they don’t like on someone else. They are also places where men are the most p-whipped.

Un Frenchy Chez les Yankees: A French Pilot Trains American Flyers

Lt. Tristan Isorce trains American pilots on Hornets at Naval Air Station Oceana (merci à Christine), a place the French pilot was trained at himself five years earlier.

Pour des questions d'économie, tous les pilotes de l'aéronavale sont formés aux États-Unis (1:24)