Some of My Friends Call me Maurice

Luc Ferry : « Virez-nous ces vieux pervers ! »

The French prosecutor's office opened a preliminary investigation Wednesday after a former government minister alleged that another ex-minister had participated in an orgy with young boys in Morocco.

Sure. Whatever. CIA plot. It’s the “mature” attitude about ”romance” molesting and exploiting the weak that we’re all supposed to stay in awe of.

Ferry, who was education minister from 2002 to 2004, did not name the minister or the government in which that minister had served, but said during a television show Monday that he heard about the case from a prime minister. He did not specify which one.

He goes on to display just WHY there are so many vociferous calls by politicians to protect the “private lives” of politicians: virtually no-one in the “débat-o-sphere seems to want to back him up in his effort to cut away the rot from the tree.

"Me, I know and I think I am not alone," Ferry said on the show on Canal Plus cable TV debating the long-standing French tradition of respect for private lives.

I think it will be lonlier there than he thinks, unless a virtue can somehow be made of virtue in such a fashion that people, even if begrudgingly feel forced to show their clean hands, even if this requires the same kind of ritualistic display that is required of public figures where the “social state” is concerned.



Along the same lines an associate of Ferry’s former boss, Jacque Chirac, has been sentenced to 6 months in the pokey for using his position to abuse women.

Jean-Claude Raynaud, 75, former deputy prefect and former chief of staff for the office of Rocard Fabius and Chirac, appeared [in court] on Wednesday for "attempted sexual assault abuse of office, and harassment to the obtaining sexual favors, "against three women. Between 2005 and 2007, while serving as a representative of the prosecutor, he was responsible for notifying accused of the law. He then took advantage ...

On March 13, 2007, Emily (pseudonym), aged 35, was summoned from the delegate of the prosecutor for a [warning and a] reminder of the law after hitting her child. Once in the office of Jean-Claude Raynaud, posing as the prosecutor of Evry and recounts his past as prefect. He says he has the power to include or not the sentence on his criminal record, which means loss of work and childcare.
Distraught, she cries. Jean-Claude Raynaud leans over and kisses her on the cheek, then twice on the mouth.
Four days later, she comes to a new venue, equipped with a dictaphone to give evidence ... This time he takes her car in a parking lot, fondle her breasts and body and asked to be massaged sexually. To reassure the young wife, he leaves a sign "police." A few days later, Emily filed a complaint.

A government type in a nanny state threating a loss of benefits to get his way. My my. Shocked, anyone? Does anyone now wonder why the benefits of a large, all-encompassing government, involving itself in every feature of peoples’ lives, particularly that of women and children, so vigorously defended by the political class? It’s more than just their meal ticket.

Obama's general approach to foreign policy — selling out our allies to curry favor with our adversaries

The only thing surprising about Barack Obama's latest blow against Israel is that there are people who are surprised

writes Thomas Sowell (also check out Obama's foreign policy is to speak loudly and carry a little stick).

Obama's declaration that Israel must give up the land it acquired, after neighboring countries threatened its survival in 1967, is completely consistent with both his ideology of many years and his previous actions as President of the United States.

Whether as a radical student, a community organizer or a far left politician, Barack Obama's ideology has been based on a vision of the Haves versus the Have Nots. However complex the ramifications of this ideology, and however clever the means by which Obama has camouflaged it, that is what it has amounted to.

No wonder he was moved to tears when the Reverend Jeremiah Wright summarized that ideology in a thundering phrase-- "white folks' greed runs a world in need."

Israel is one of the Haves. Its neighbors remain among the Have Nots, despite their oil. No wonder that Barack Obama has bent over backward, in addition to bowing low forward, to support the side that his ideology favors.

Israel is not simply to have its interests sacrificed and its security undermined. It is to be brought down a peg and-- to the extent politically possible-- insulted. Obama has already done all these things. His latest pronouncement is just more of the same.

Whether at home or abroad, Obama's ideology is an ideology of envy, resentment and payback.

… All of this is consistent with Obama's general approach to foreign policy-- selling out our allies to curry favor with our adversaries. He flew to Moscow, shortly after taking office, to renege on the American commitment to put a missile shield in Eastern Europe, in hopes of getting a deal with the Russians.

Obama is politically savvy enough to know how to get his point across without blowing his cover.

Europeans Who are Unable to Differentiate Between Austria and Australia Running Tuned-in Blog Aggregator

Me tawk gud some day.

Sure, but what about the Sequel Eagerly Awaited all over Europe ?!?

David Pryce-Jones discusses a French film about the collaborationist rounding up of Jews in Paris during the Nazi occupation. It seems that the French public and critics are willing now to live with the idea on film. Possibly for reasons of renewed enthusiasm?

For a long time the French have been unable or unwilling to face their collaboration with the occupying Nazis. Marcel Ophuls’ pioneering film Le Chagrin et la Pitié was for years virtually boycotted. The films Au revoir les Enfants and Lucien Lacombe broke the taboo, and French historians at last began to research occupation and collaboration. The Round Up is based on the reality of the first mass arrest of Jews in Paris in July 1942. The Germans did not have the manpower or the desk-work intelligence for this, but relied on the French authorities, the police and the transport systems, to do it for them.

Two Pointless Summits Rolled Into One!

Wait long enough, and the circus will come to town. Wait long enough, and a high-minded-sounding bloviating and forgettable declaration will be named after your city, village, or hut.

EU institutions would like to clip one of the two yearly Russia summits due to lack of content, but decorum forbids making the first move.

And as if that weren’t not enough to be enough,

The two sides are seeking to identify specific projects to make the partnership a reality.

A Pentagon à la Française

The French have unveiled their latest work for Paris, writes Frédéric Edelmann in Le Monde, and it concerns the military: a French-style Pentagon, as it is called, a military headquarters grouping the various service buildings (previously dispersed around the capital) in one, which will be situated in the southwest of Paris (check out the portfolio). Already, it is being criticized for its astronomical cost (3.5 billion Euros).

Présentée mardi 31 mai par le ministre de la défense, Gérard Longuet, après quatre ans de grandes manoeuvres, l'architecture du "Pentagone à la française", construit à Balard, dans le 15^e arrondissement de Paris, représente un projet colossal (467 000 m² à construire ou à rénover) au budget proportionnel (plus de 3 milliards d'euros).

L'objectif est de regrouper, sur un site unique de 16,5 hectares, 9 300 fonctionnaires de la défense jusqu'à présent dispersés dans une douzaine d'édifices de la capitale. Vinci, Bouygues et Eiffage, les trois majors du BTP — qui luttent régulièrement pour les marchés des grandes infrastructures ferroviaires ou routières — se sont retrouvés en concurrence chacun avec une équipe d'architectes, d'ingénieurs et de paysagistes.

Une lutte sans merci qui s'est soldée par la victoire du projet de Bouygues, avec les architectes Nicolas Michelin, Jean-Michel Wilmotte et Pierre Bolze, de l'Atelier 2/3/4 l'Atelier 2/3/4 … Les projets des lauréats, ceux des deux finalistes et la kyrielle de ceux qui avait tenté de se faire admettre à la table des grands sont présentés à la Cité de l'architecture et du patrimoine (Palais de Chaillot) du 1^er au 19 juin.

… Soumis à un embargo aussi inflexible que le secret-défense, le projet Opale, longtemps entouré de rumeurs, est le plus gros chantier français dans le secteur du bâtiment. Le montant réel de l'investissement reste toutefois peu lisible derrière les chiffres du bail signé début mai. Le contrat, cumul des 130 millions d'euros de redevances annuelles sur vingt-sept années d'exploitation de 2014 à 2041, est évalué à 3,5 milliards.

… D'une cour à l'autre, les passages sous les bâtiments restent libres. Sauf au point central où se trouve le commandement général du ministère. En fait de Pentagone à l'américaine, celui-ci s'organise autour d'une cour de forme hexagonale. Symbole cocardier, croisement de deux triangles maçonniques ou étoile de David ? Le public y verra ce qu'il veut, le temps au moins de l'exposition et en attendant l'achèvement des travaux d'ici à 2014.

Jerkin’ your Gurkens Again?

An E. Coli outbreak which has impacted about 200 people and killed 14 is in the process of paralyzing EUtopia. The flummoxing ranges from the eternally organized and nannyistic Dutch asking for help from the hive mind to class and gender interpretations.

It’s also being called a crisis, and Spaniards are demanding compensation from the German government for impugning them with facts.

cri•sis/ˈkrīsis/Noun
1. A time of intense difficulty, trouble, or danger.
2. A time when a difficult or important decision must be made: "a crisis point of history".

As bad as an E. Coli outbreak is, this is not a notable point in history. There’s a more appropriate term:

hys•te•ri•a/hiˈsterēə/
Noun: Exaggerated or uncontrollable emotion or excitement, esp. among a group of people: "the mass hysteria that characterizes the week before Christmas".

What the beknighted continent desperately needs is lawyers who advertise on the sides of busses, a nap, and a (non-recreation) enema, for once, and possibly some mallard spunk.

In a surprising turn of events, semen from a species of duck has been found to totally destroy Esterichia Coli, a rather commonly and dangerous bacteria.

Obama's foreign policy is to speak loudly and carry a little stick

Theodore Roosevelt said that his foreign policy was to speak softly and carry a big stick.
Obama's policy is to speak loudly and carry a little stick
And we see the disaster that is starting to unfold in Libya as a result.

— Thomas Sowell, Uncommon Knowledge 32:00 or Segment 5, 05:49 (slightly paraphrased). (Also check out Obama's general approach to foreign policy — selling out our allies to curry favor with our adversaries…)

It only Hurts When I Laugh

Some wild and crazy guy from Bratislava finally got back at Steve Martin:

German police believe that American actor, comedian and collector Steve Martin played a minor role as a victim in what may be Germany's biggest-ever art forgery scandal.

A reflexive equation linking concern about immigration with reactionary thinking has been dulled in Europe, but not without embarrassment

When the leaders of the Group of 8 meet … — among them, Barack Obama, David Cameron, Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy — one of their official concerns will be supporting attempts to make democracy emerge in some kind of recognizable form from the Arab revolts in countries like Tunisia and Libya.

John Vinocur takes on the issue of Arab Spring migrants due to cast a shadow on next week's G-8 talks.

Unofficially, and perhaps even without public mention at the summit meeting in the French resort town of Deauville, that helping hand also means providing sufficient economic incentive to hold off a wave of Arab migration toward Europe. The potential human flood gets described by the apocalyptically minded as “biblical.”

Of course, no one in Deauville would talk in those terms. … But reality doesn’t sit still. What is changing now is that none of the heads of the four big Western countries at Deauville in 2011 can avoid immigration as a domestic/international political issue that carries with it the emotional vote-getting-or-vote-losing volatility of war or taxes.

… signs are emerging of left-of-center politicians’ acknowledgment of the legitimacy of European voters’ concerns about how their lives are affected by the failed integration of many Muslim immigrants.

… A reflexive equation linking concern about immigration with reactionary thinking has been dulled in Europe, but not without embarrassment. In a clumsy attempt to cozy up to its wavering white working-class constituency, the German Social Democratic Party leadership voted last month not to expel Thilo Sarrazin, a party member who wrote a best seller, larded with genetics-based arguments, designating Muslim immigrants as a drag on German society.

Yet for parts of the European left, a serious question exists about a way to move closer to the immigration themes it once rejected as reflecting bigotry.

Screaming Eagles by Sabaton

Others with Nothing to Declare

Jakob Augstein, the spawn of Spiegel Magazine's founder, has put up a screed in Spiegel declaring that Conservatives holding conservative opinions are "a virus". I'm sure he believes his argument quite logical in a "so there!" kind of way. Spiegel, the house organ of empty-headed middle mindedness for it's part has nothing to declare - like the fact that Augstein is a political hack employing SPON for ideological propagation.

The blog he contributes to is titled "Talking up a New World" has a blogroll dominated rather strangely by the American far-left media farm peppered with links to Robert Reich essay, but also linking the unwittingly pro-totalitarian "New Deal 2.0". Strange as this may seem, he would HAVE to link to the American branch of the new Internationale if he wants to seem reasonable: if there ever was a test tube in which the ideas of leftism failed, it is in Germany.

Happy Memorial Day

(Or dare we call it Meowmorial Day? Merci à Carine…)

Wanks for Wonks

Irrationally exuberant EU directive-ing-ing is being unflatteringly compared to Onanism, which is a palliatively used term to make noble the practice of dating Rosie Palm and her five sisters.

Perhaps it should be better thought of as a school shooting. Gawain Towler does the body count on an interactive flash animation celebrating legalism, activism by edict, and meddling in the lives of the humble peasantry:

Go on, have a play. See how many regulations were created about Agricultural policy in the field of Afgricultural Structures by 1980, I can tell you. 38 Directives, 52 Regulations, 242 Legal Decisions and 342 Legal Acts.

Well, at least they’re getting off with someone they love. What do you expect from a continent of hard-up, lonely, freaks.