What a Bunch of Freaks

The Swedish government and responsible authorities ‘ignore’ child sex tourism offences, according to child rights organisation Ecpat.

Those most likely to claim some sort of monopoly on humanistic thinking seem to have the wobbliest spinning moral compasses of them all.

The group furthermore slammed the Swedish police for not having investigated more than 100,000 images depicting sexual abuse against children.

In a letter to the UN signed by Ecpat and 30 other child rights organizations, they maintain that Sweden fails to take the appropriate measures in the fight against child trafficking.

Further blowback to ‘being social’?: people posing as concerned-type humans trying to ‘socialize’ your kids for their uses.

France's riot police have accused the Interior Ministry of "trying to make us priests, but without the sacramental wine"

France's infamous riot police are threatening to strike over a new rule forbidding them from drinking wine with lunch, a cherished — and in many cases legally protected — French tradition.

That is how Dana Kennedy starts her article (merci à Damian) about "the right of CRS police" to have a "small quarter-liter of red to accompany meals on the ground".

The riot police in turn have accused the Interior Ministry of "trying to make us priests, but without the sacramental wine."

The 14,000 dark-blue-uniformed members of the Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité, or CRS as they're known in France, have a reputation for heavy-handed tactics and abuses of power when responding to riot and crowd-control situations. They first gained notoriety during the May 1968 student uprisings in France.

So it was no surprise when they angrily denounced the new ban on drinking alcohol -- brought about after pictures of armed CRS police drinking beer while in full body armor and policing a student demonstration in October outraged officials and the public.

… Didier Mangione, the national director of the French Police Union, … said CRS officers were "not happy with being treated like children" and complained further that the Interior Ministry was trying to deprive the CRS of France's long-standing "tradition of conviviality."

The Mask Keeps Falling Off

The bizarre protest was by leftists angry at the incarceration of someone who commits the kind of treason that they like. Half a dozen protesters paid $76,000 for tickets to a the event in order to punk Barack Obama for not being their bought-up flunky. The only way we know of this is due to the San Francisco Chronicle’s Carla Marinucci.

She then lost her press credentials to cover Obama.

White House officials have banished one of the best political reporters in the country from the approved pool of journalists covering presidential visits to the Bay Area for using now-standard multimedia tools to gather the news.

Edgy, hip, proud of that transparency thing, I see. In true leftist fashion, a reporter is punished for not toeing the line.

Just the day before Carla's Stone Age infraction, Mr. Obama was at Facebook seated next to its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, and may as well have been wearing an "I'm With Mark" t-shirt for all the mutual admiration going back and forth.

"The main reason we wanted to do this is," Obama said of his appearance, "first of all, because more and more people, especially young people, are getting their information through different media. And historically, part of what makes for a healthy democracy, what is good politics, is when you've got citizens who are informed, who are engaged."

Informed, in other words, through social and other digital media where videos of news are posted.

Or at least had the kind of information gatekeepers that suit the Obama campaign. However, now that people have noticed:

Late today, there were hints that the White House might be backing off the Carla Fatwa.

Barack Obama sold himself successfully as a fresh wind for the 21st century. In important matters of communication, technology, openness and the press, it's not too late for him to demonstrate that.

Oh please – of course it’s too late. The campaign/White House can only do this because the flabby-minded left-leaning press panders to him and his every need.

Helplessness Was Never made to Sound so Good

EU thumpers always seem to come up with the saddest and most implausible spin. Take for example the motives behind an article that prattles on for 13 paragraphs of criticism of Action Ashton, but lands on words like these:

For the moment, Europe is satisfied to remain the “narrative power” described by political scientist Zaki Laïdi –able to talk about the world, to state its values, but not (yet?) able to impose itself as a true power.

”Narrative” being the best one can do to describe a nation with a Peter Pan disorder. It gets even better when the critics of inaction can’t quite digest the idea that EU foreign and defense policy are a light comedy film given an award by it’s own director when they get angry at the idea that the EU takes up policy positions driven by the commentary of its’ member states, who are the only genuine conduit of communication with the EU that the population has.

Will Ms Ashton be able to elaborate this vision despite her tendency to adopt, at best, the policy most acceptable to the States thus ignoring the latitude and the prerogatives allowed by the Lisbon Treaty? The Baroness seems to desire little more than being a “facilitator” between the Member States. Before Socialist MPs on January 12, she used the same term – “facilitator” – to define the possible action of the EU on the world stage.

Besides: “facilitation” is all they have, when you’re trying to still get in on the significant affairs of the world, but are prepared to risk nothing more than part of a loan guarantee and a handful of peacekeepers long after the peace is won.

“Inclusion” is thought to purchase peace. For a while, even though they’re already in on the joke. To these clowns tolerance is warm gun.



Good luck “facilitating” your way out of that.

Leftists Liberating Carbon Dioxide Again

They also like to promote “peace”. Combustion be don about it?

Warming up for May Day, German leftists are rather predictably doing their thing, and with the goal of whatever stock issue they can get mad about this week.

The Berlin police department is not permitted to intervene in any meaningful way that could possibly hurt the protestors’ feelings, however, this out of respect for the event’s radical leftist origins and the many aging left-wing romantics who will still somehow manage to take part if not vacationing on Mallorca.

All are welcome to attend. Barricades and stones will be furnished for free. You will have to resist arrest on your own, however.

Royal Wedding Super Ideas

Some ideas for souvenirs from this memorable day
(cheers to Sir Damian of the House of Bennett)…

French hoopla over Britain's royal wedding: Since the 5th Republic, France has had "a kind of elected king"

For a country proud of its republican streak, France is making quite a fuss over the British royal wedding

notes Matthew Saltmarsh (while from another part of the globe, the Associated Press observes that "Interest in Friday's nuptials between Prince William and Kate Middleton is breaking down along generational lines in the ethnically diverse British Caribbean").

Despite the fact that the major royal events are rare — the wedding Friday between Prince William and Kate Middleton will be the first big British royal celebration since the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer in 1981 — the ceremony and the surrounding hoopla this week serve to remind the French of their own tempestuous associations with royalty, which retains associations in this secular country.

Since the engagement was announced in November, media coverage has been building. … As in many other countries, sales of royal memorabilia have been brisk in France. … Even if they cannot always explain why, among many French, there remains a certain fascination with their cross-Channel neighbors.

“We’ve always had a very specific relationship with the British,” said Bruno Jeanbart, director of OpinionWay, a Paris-based research and polling firm. “In the 20th century, the enemy was Germany. Or was the real enemy the British? There’s always been a kind of competition between the two countries.”

While many Frenchmen enjoy chiding their cross-Channel cousins about their culinary shortcomings, poor weather and generally quirky ways, the fact that an estimated 300,000 to 400,000 French people live in London alone tells a different story (the number of British living in all of France is estimated at about 200,000). A poll in Le Figaro last weekend found 95 percent of the French expatriates were happy in the British capital.

But beyond the love-hate relationship with Britain, the French have conflicting feelings about monarchy, secularism and the intersection with politics.

“There’s always been a significant interest in royalty in France,” Mr. Jeanbart said.

… In the highly unlikely event of a restoration, the throne could pass to Jean d'Orléans, the duke of de Vendôme and son of the Count of Paris. … Another potential claimant would be the Spanish-born Prince Louis Alphonse of Bourbon, the duke of Anjou.

Apart from the French royal line, there is the House of Grimaldi, which serves as something of a surrogate royal family in France. In July, Monaco will celebrate the wedding of Prince Albert II to the South African former Olympic swimmer Charlene Wittstock, though the impending nuptials have been overshadowed by the grander preparations in London.

Superior Euro-humanism at a Glance

AKA: Keeping your head planted as deep in your ass as possible.

Dutch Jews now complain of growing anti-Semitism in the country. But historian Jan Dirk Snel gives a different interpretation to such cries in the daily Trouw: "In fact the anti-Semitism people complain about is really criticism of Israel. Those are two entirely different things. ... There are in fact signs that some Dutch Muslims do not distinguish between the state of Israel and Jews in general.

Which is precisely the inverse of reality. Unceasing anti-Israeli sentiment has little to do with the doings of the only woman-respecting, gay-friendly, social democracy in the Near East, but with European anti-Semitism.

Sadder still is to use the obviously light-hearted “Gas the Jews” chant used at Ajax Amsterdam football club games, as the team is casually called “The Jews”:

A player for the Dutch football club Ado Den Haag celebrated his team's win over Ajax Amsterdam with the battle cry: "We're going on a Jew hunt!" Dutch Jews now complain of growing anti-Semitism in the country.

I guess these people “just didn’t mean it” in 2004:

Verbal and violent anti-Semitism in the Netherlands is probably greater today than it has been during any other time in the last two centuries except the Nazi occupation.

Or mean to mention that anti-semitic violence was up 64% in 2007, of up another 48% in 2009. A report on the problem was even sandbagged by an EU committee.

They just didn’t mean it. They only meant to criticizing Israelis by cracking Dutch heads open.

It looks like the kind of cover and (if you’ll excuse the term,) pulling a fast one with casting the violence on politically shunned people by the likes of Dirk Snel is now acceptable.

French prisoners imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay were noted for their lack of discipline

A perusal of the WikiLeaks documents reveals that the seven French prisoners imprisoned in Guantánamo Bay were noted for their lack of discipline, reports Piotr Smolar. Portraits of all seven — aged 22 to 41 at the time of their arrest in late 2001 (and all bearing Arab names) — can be read in Le Monde (whose author, as several several Le Monde readers note below, is kind of lackadaisical in his description of their fate). The lack of discipline — including, for some of them, lying and the throwing of fesces and urine — leads one Le Monde reader to write "Sacrés français !!" and another to write "Cela ne fait malheureusement que confirmer la mauvaise réputation des français en vacances à l'étranger" (!) while a third commented:

Partout où les français passent, ils se font remarquer ! Désormais nous parlons et donnons des leçons d'anglais ! Merci l'Education Nationale. Nous éviterons d'autres sujets qui nous aurait fait marré ! La France est éternelle !

More seriously, another Le Monde reader writes:

Leur tort : s'être trouvés en Afghanistan au mauvais moment". Ah d'accord, les pauvres, ils étaient en vcances sans doute.

Yet another opines:

"Leur tort : s'être trouvés en Afghanistan au mauvais moment, mus par leur foi radicale(...)" Encore un peu et l'auteur de l'article va nous expliquer que ces gens-là, dont la foi était radicale, étaient en Afghanistan pour y pratiquer la randonnée. Soyons sérieux, même si rien ne justifie Guantanamo ces personnes ne sont pas des anges.

The White House Releases Barack Obama's Birth Certificate

Barack Obama released his birth certificate, mocking those who do not believe every word uttered (about his private life, his official policies, or his government promises, etc) by the politician that he (in spite of everything) is, and who remain skeptical about taking the claims of his supporters for holy writ. The occupant of the Oval Office said that

We’re not going to be able to do it [come together and solve America's problems] if we just make stuff up and pretend that facts are not facts, not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by side shows and carnival barkers.

As Lloyd Green has written,

It is not necessary to have an opinion about where President Obama was born to know that his lack of candor has cost him public trust. Obama’s approval ratings are in the mid-40s, while his disapproval ratings hover at the 50 percent mark. The president's release of his birth certificate feels forced. Obama should have released his birth certificate as a candidate.

In this hyper-media driven world, the public expects to know everything about their elected officials, and they often do. And when they do not, they become curious and then they become suspicious. And once those suspicions set-in, critics and others feel free to fill-in the gaps. This is what happened to Obama.

As Scott Shapiro has written,

Mainstream news organizations did not want to get grouped in with “birthers” because they had been compared effectively to the Sept. 11 “truther” movements, and anyone who raised birth-certificate questions was labeled paranoid, crazy and even racist.

However, there’s a big difference between people who just wanted to see Mr. Obama’s birth certificate and those who believe that our own government caused the worst terrorist attack in American history, especially when there already is a mountain of evidence pointing to al Qaeda as the perpetrator. With the Obama birth-certificate issue, the archive of evidence was slim, and his refusal to release the more extensive version of his birth certificate rightfully created more suspicion.

In fact, the Obama birth-certificate issue is more similar to what happened when President Clinton refused to give a straight answer about his indiscretions in the White House. The more the president evaded the issue, the more curious and upset people became.

Indeed; as I have written in an in-depth post on the subject, there is an unseen side to the issue that has remained, and that remains, uncovered:

Most damning of all, when you pause to think of it, the castigators' proof — if it can be called that — all lies in one fact … and that fact is that Obama is a man, a person whose word should never be doubted, who is capable of no lying, no evil, no chicanery. The person who ridicules the "Birther" theory as inane has no more proof [or didn't have any until today] than the born-in-Hawaii skeptic of where Obama was actually born: his only argument — beyond the contention that the certificate of live birth and the newspaper clipping are incontrovertible proof that are not, can not be, fakes, bureaucratic mistakes, or misinterpretations — is the indisputable "truth" that Obama is someone whose honesty should not — should never — be questioned.

When you think about it, it might be less worrying that some do not believe Obama was born in the United States (because of the circumstances linked to his entire childhood, much of it abroad) than that some are utterly convinced he must be born in the United States (because the Chicago pol is allegedly a sainted figure who can do, who can say no evil, who is incapable of lying or of falsifying documents).

Is the Tea Party's Opposition to Obama Really Motivated by Racism?

If Tea Partiers are against excessive spending and deficits, ask liberals like Bill Maher smugly, why didn't they protest against the White House budget when George W Bush was in the Oval Office?

The underlying assumption is of course that the protests can only be due to Obama's race and that the "Tea-Baggers" — along with other mainstream Americans — can consequently be nothing if not racist hypocrites (with Bill Maher in addition proving typically thin-skinned as he finds a term like "ObamaCare" beyond the pale, although, needless to say, he had no compunction using phrases, or with fellow liberals using phrases, like "Bush's war").

The Straw That Broke the Camel's Back

As is made clear by the following graph, which graced Sylvain Cypel's article on the front page of Le Monde, there is another explanation. A far simpler one, as it happens. The decisions of 2009 — whomever they were made by, of whatever party the leader was from, and whatever was the color of his (or her) skin — were simply the straw that broke the camel's back.

Had a Republican president — such as George W Bush or John McCain (had the Arizona senator won the 2008 election) – continued to push the deficit to new heights (especially to the astronomical ones reached, as it happened, by Barack Obama) — or to new depths, perhaps — the American people would likewise have formed Tea Parties.

Alternatively, had Barack Obama kept the debt to George W Bush's (admittedly — too — high) levels, Americans would have remained at home and not come out in droves in 2009, 2010, and 2011…

As leftists like Bill Maher can never understand, there are perfectly valid reasons for Americans to do what they do, or to refrain from acting, other than they're having to be hypocrites, liars, racists, nincompoops, and/or other types of treacherous beings…

Who’s Really Buying What they’re Selling?

Joe Carducci has a term for the power play being acted out by a dysfunctional Arab society, calling it a “powerful weakness” being thrown on the west’s plate.

With little irony, Catherine Ashton is proud of the same enfeeblement and ineffectualism:

The strength of the EU lies, paradoxically, in its inability to throw its weight around. Its influence flows from the fact that it is disinterested in its support for democracy, development and the rule of law. It can be an honest broker – but backed up by diplomacy, aid and great expertise.

To which observer of strategy James Rogers notes:

What? Like in the Caucasus and North Africa? Or, previously, in the former Yugoslavia? Should our willingness to allow whole countries to fall apart or get invaded – countries in our own neighbourhood – really be seen as our ‘strength’? Is it not because Brussels (and the Member States) has been so ‘disinterested’ in its support for constitutional government abroad that its policies have been so ineffective? Mrs. Ashton should perhaps express a little more humility here, particularly in light of recent events. If anything, given the turmoil in the eastern neighbourhood in August 2008 and the southern neighbourhood now – in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya – far from ‘great expertise’ among European diplomats and strategists, there seems to be a certain lack of it!

With stunning ignorance about the world, Aston continues:

Whatever the subject, the ambition of countries round the world, from the biggest and richest to the smallest and poorest, is the same: to make the EU their ally.

Hardly. The Russians don’t. The American just deal with you because you’re even more of a strategic threat if you fail, and immigrants as a rule aren’t attracted enough to your societies to integrate amicably.

That isn’t love. That’s called making yourself irrelevant. Her position is the equivalent of palliative care. One certainly not buying it is M. N. Silva, a graduate of International Relations and a critic of security and intelligence affairs.

The European Union though is a house of cards. Its growth/integration is built on incompatible cultures, on divergent legal systems, clashing strategic interests, and an ever growing lack of orientation and strategic thought – if there ever was one. In September I asked a panel of EU experts what the strategy of EU enlargement was, they smiled and rhetorically asked what the strategy of the EU itself was – the strategy was just the success of the project. They continued to smile, I did not. This is the typical pink destiny blind faith that Liberal Internationalists always display, believing themselves to be the creators of an end-of-history chronological exception which will generate paradise on Earth. I refuse to reckon an ounce of rationalisation in people who dismiss the need for strategy in a civilisational revolutionising endeavour.

And I think it’s safe to say that the likes of the Baroness who once was heavily involved with the KGB’s most destructive wet dream, the CNDUK. It fits into this European preoccupation with self as well. While she doesn’t state it, many a continental thinker genuinely believes that the rest of the world cares about their union, and sees its’ formation as a pattern for international policy itself. It isn’t – it’s been a decade of chaos with no sign of ending, and if it weren’t for having the United States to guarantee its’ security, it would be overtly chaotic to the point of lawlessness.

As I’ve stated, European cooperation would be essential to the strategic success of the different European nations in a world of civilisation-states. To have delegated that strategic goal to universalists will unfortunately prove to be a historic mistake of epic proportions.

The French: World Champions of Breaking Wind

Reversible wind farms form shield.

In the event of nuclear accidents abroad, the turbines will turn to face the wind, switch to blow, and repel the approaching radioactive cloud.

A secret trial of the technology in the 1980s proved a success, when in 1986 French weather forecasters announced that an area of high-pressure over the country had spared the country, pushing radiation from the Chernobyl nuclear power station north to Britain and south to Corsica.

It seems that Britons and Corsicans must have neglected to thank them for this.

The project was scrapped by President Mitterrand, who believed it would be interpreted as an apology to Greenpeace, but was reinstated by Nicolas Sarkozy last week.

Radiating your neighbors – is that “European solidarity” or what?

Europeans'Never-ending Atmospheric Abuse of Others

Lectures by Europeans, particularly from French people about the flying of the American flag, excessive that it is in the US to the point that they feel offended, is eclipsed by the hackneyed over-use of the American flag in fashion and marketing by non-Americans.

Old Europe, unchanged in centuries: fashionably amusing themselves by abusing others.

In a fashion statement only the French would make, a Parisian designer is selling a $1,395 tank top made to look like a tattered American flag marred by cigarette-burn holes and held together by safety pins. And it’s turning into one of spring’s hottest sellers.

So fantasies of trashing America to shreds yields to playing dress-up about it. If you can’t understand what all the fuss is about, it’s on par with Tricolor toilet paper. We all know that Europeans are incapable of hypersensitivity. After all, only after a decade have they stopped acting like a spurned boudin over the single, mere uttering of the term “freedom fires,” and “axis of weasels”.

Their feelings, it seems, are special, and more important than anyone elses’

Forever 21 and Topshop designed knockoffs of the protest-chic tank, which model Gisele Bundchen wore in a Chinese Vogue spread. But neither tear up Old Glory as much as Balmain’s original, designed by Christophe DeCarnin, who recently left the fashion house after reportedly checking into a mental hospital for exhaustion and depression

Burn your own damned money.

Steinbeck's "Quintessential American Characters" Who Made Up a "Tea Party Before the Fact" Were Exaggerated? "Who Cares?" Yawns Le Monde

Even great writers sometimes have trouble finding inspiration

writes Corine Lesnes as she tackles Bill Steigerwald's Travels with Charley de-hoaxing. Le Monde's America correspondent goes on to devote about four-fifths of the space of her column to (re-)chronicling, with utter delight, John Steinbeck's travels across America with his dog (described as a French pooch, "born in Bercy") — discovering in the process the American heartland and the many truths thereabout, thanks to those quintessential American characters whom she alludes to as a "Tea Party before the fact".

Not before the last three or few paragraphs do we learn why this 50-year-old trip (1962) is of note in 2011. Reason's Steigerwald, of course, has proven that the whole book was, if not a lie then a very exaggerated recounting of what Steinbeck (and Charley) did and whom he (they) met.

What, then, is the purpose of devoting four fifths of a column to what turns out to be fiction in the first place?! Many, most of, or all of the encounters are made up, and if all of them are not, how are we to know which ones are and which ones are not? The three or four final paragraphs negates the reason for using the first four fifths of the column to retell several of Steinbeck's "true-life" (non-)adventures. Corine Lesnes admits that

Some of the colorful characters were not at the places where he [Steinbeck] says he ran into them.

But the truth, of course, is worse: several of the colorful characters seem to have been outright inventions. The column ends as follows:

La découverte a suscité quelque émotion dans les milieux universitaires spécialisés, pris en défaut d'esprit critique. … D'autres ont dit : peu importe. L'écrivain a tous les droits.

"The writer has all the rights."

Apparently, when it turns out that the prediction, the reasonable prediction, of someone from the right — be he an artist, a politician (George W Bush), or other — is mistaken, then it means that he is nothing less than a despicable liar who must be castigated endlessly, with every weapon at one's disposal.

When it turns out that the the personal testimony from someone on the left is wrong (and therefore is a real lie), then it means that… he is… still a great man ("a great writer") having "trouble finding inspiration" who is among those beings who have "all the rights"…

France Télécom Worker Commits Suicide by imolation

In most countries, people choosing to immolate themselves do so to protest tyrannical government or foreign occupation. I'm sure there are lots of different issues to think about (including low salary) in the following France Télécom-Orange story, but still: in France, the government's bureaucrats (or semi-bureaucrats or previous bureaucrats) choose to immolate themselves for losing job security…

Un salarié de France Télécom-Orange âgé de 57 ans s'est suicidé mardi 26 avril au matin en s'immolant par le feu sur le parking de l'agence entreprise de Mérignac, près de Bordeaux, a annoncé la direction du groupe, qui s'est déclarée "bouleversée".

…ce salarié "travaillait dans l'entreprise depuis plus de 30 ans", et … il avait "exprimé [à ses collègues] sa difficulté à retrouver un équilibre" après cette période de tension sociale.

France Télécom avait été marqué par une crise sociale d'ampleur après une vague de suicides de salariés entre janvier 2008 et fin 2009, au sein du groupe de quelque 100 000 salariés. Le système de management mis en place à partir de 2004 pour inciter au départ 22 000 salariés en trois ans a notamment été mis en cause.

Berlin Sera Tousjours Berlin

Americans weeping for a fabled EUrotopia of their very own have a hard time coming to grips with the real, living, every day life of “EUrotopia”

An incident at a Berlin subway station at the weekend in which a man was savagely beaten by a drunken youth has raised concerns that penalties for crimes of this kind are not severe enough.

The incident in question – one of a string of similar crimes in recent years - involved a 28-year-old who was confronted by an 18-year-old youth on the platform of the Friedrichstrasse subway station in the early hours of Saturday morning.

The youth provoked the man, then punched him in the face and repeatedly kicked and stamped on his head. The brutal attack was captured on the station's CCTV. A passing tourist stepped in to diffuse the situation and was himself attacked by the youth who then fled, together with an accomplice.

Nonetheless, the hand-wringing at Deutsche Welle can finally end: Tougher crime laws to follow U-Bahn bashing.

The Justice Ministry would draw up draft legislation within the next two months, Krings said.

“Young offenders properly discover what it means to be behind bars and are at the beginning of their probation period faced with the clear consequences of re-offending.”

Greens MP Christian Ströbele rejected the plan as “absolute rubbish,” saying that existing maximum penalties were rarely used, so it made no sense to toughen them further.

Warning shots wouldn’t have helped in the current case because the main offender hadn’t appeared in court before, he added.

Which proves nothing, but these kinds of silly arguments work with the German public most of the time. "I'd let you get tough, but it won't work because it isn't tough enough. So just keep not getting tough on this kind of thing. M'kay?"

Better Living Through Meddling ?

Government, it is said, should only have the remit of those things which civil society can’t do without laws to compel it. The EU takes the reverse tack: it tries to offer whatever services appear to have been successfully without the cold and clammy hand of government on its neck:

Yesterday the energy saving lamp, today data retention. Tomorrow: recording your frequent flyer points and what hotel you stay in. Its highly questionable and intrusive meddling is costing the EU the trust of the public.

Like mobile phone chargers, and the like, one wonders where they get this communistic sisyphean exercise with the state keeping up with the rest of the world’s capacity to provide quality goods and services.

I’ve got an idea! Why don’t they run a chain of grocery stores?!? with a view to acheiving harmony.

Criminal Femme Fatale Continues Her Deeds Behind Bars

Five years after serving as bait for Ilan Halimi — resulting in the young Jewish man's torture at the hands of le Gang des Barbares and in his death under ghastly circumstances — the young femme fatale (Emma Arbabzadeh was 17 at the time and she seems to have been unaware of how horridly Ilan Halimi would be treated) is back in the news for helping to destroy the career of the director of the prison in which she had been sentenced to serve nine years.

Florent Goncalves has been suspended as head of the Versailles women's prison and the 41-year-old father now risks serving three years in jail himself. After several prisonières complained that Yalda (another name under which the woman — born Sorour Arbabdzadeh in Iran — is known) had been receiving preferential treatment, the director admitted that he had fallen in love with her and that he had brought her a phone with which to exchange messages on FaceBook. Like teenagers…

On two occasions, Florent Goncalves admits, they also had sex in jail… He hopes to marry her when she is released from jail — which may be as early as next year — and this, in spite of the fact that one of his guards also seems to have been seduced by the young woman described by Paris Match's Clément Mathieu as a praying mantis…

Click here to see Chimulus's (offensive) cartoon

Paris Sera Toujours Paris - VII

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

Does Gaia Enjoy Irony? There's Only One Way to Find Out

And a Joyous and Festive Penguin Day to You Too

Our best dressed beasts of the wild don’t just have ONE day, but TWO days named in their honor, by, um, someone out there. April 25th, you’ll be happy to know is World Penguin Day, not to be confused with Penguin Awareness Day.

These days are also a time to wear black and white---penguin colors. However, wearing a tuxedo in their honor is optional. It is also popular today to tell a penguin joke or two.

I’ll have you know that I sent out greeting cards. It’s the least I could do for our hardworking waddling and swimming paesanos.

Cartooning for Peace (According to the Left's Definition Thereof)

For once — thanks to the current revolts in the Arab world — Kofi Annan and Plantu's annual Cartooning for Peace reunion at Caen's Memorial museum does not seem to be an anti-Israeli and an anti-American slugfest; nonetheless, one Le Monde reader derides the entire concept:

Vulgaire et basique, pleine de certitudes, la sélection s'adresse a des illettrés du dessin. j'attends d'un dessin qu'il m'interroge et non qu'il apporte une réponse de salon de coiffure. Et surtout, à quoi ça sert, ce truc pour la paix, à part flatter quelques nombrils de bobos devant une coupe de champ ?

Freedom of Expression in the Arab World

Two debates on Arab television stations, uploaded by Drzz's Jean-Patrick Grumberg (who wouldn't mind if someone would help translate at least some of the debaters' comments as well as some of the subtitles), will give an idea of the extent to which understanding, consideration, and culture are vital in the Muslim world — in the context of the Religion of Peace, naturally.