It Doesn't Matter What Mitt Romney Says at the NAACP, They Are Going to Call It Racist Anyway

Ann Althouse notes that Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi goes all racial on Mitt Romney's appearance before the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ("a genuinely repugnant human being [and] a grasping corporate hypocrite", thanks for the link to Instapundit), as do, elsewhere, The Daily Mail's Toby Harnden, Salon's Alex Seitz-Wald ("what if Romney went to Houston intending to spark boos all along?"), and the Daily Beast's Michael Tomasky (Romney is nothing but "a spineless, disingenuous, supercilious, race-mongering pyromaniac").

This leads No Pasarán to make the following observation, which I think all can agree is highly astute, highly original, and highly unexpected (with apologies to Harry Stein):

It doesn't matter WHAT @MittRomney says at the #naacp, the @naacp is going to call it #racist ANYway! (As will the usual racebaiters…)

— ¡No Pasarán! (@nopasa) July 14, 2012

To Win at the Communist Monopoly Board Game, Your Piece Must Wait in Line for Hours to Buy a Sausage

A game can last several hours, during which not a whole hell of a lot is happening.

"The most boring game in the world" is how Le Monde quotes the makers of Kolejka ("line" or "queue") defining their own board game. Also known as the communist version of the Monopoly board game, where communist "rules" replace the capitalist rules of Wall Street, the box asks if you are "courageous enough to confront daily life in the 1980s?"

At Kolejka, whose surface is, inevitably, dominated by gray — the game is made by Poles who work for the Poland's Institute of National Remembrance and who want today's youth to understand the hardships of daily life prior to 1989 — the winner is the player who manages to buy all the products on his list, from butter and gasoline to cigarettes and toilet paper. Special cards allow you to gain time, by going to the black market (but prices are twice as high), by having a Communist Party "friend" open the door of a special store for party members, or by having a "mother with a baby in her arms" loan you her child to go to the front of the line.

Spoiling for a Fight: French Foreign Legion Versus Jungle Gold Diggers

Popular Mechanics' Joe Pappalardo goes to South America to find France's elite jungle warriors readying for a deadly new phase of a hidden conflict. Their targets: black market gold miners who have killed French officers (Merci à Instapundit).

The Legion is spoiling for a fight. In the weeks ahead, their jungle warfare skills will be tested in an escalating battle between illegal gold miners and French authorities. Last week a gang of these miners (garimpeiros) killed two French military noncommissioned officers during a raid near the isolated jungle town of Dorlin. The operation to disband the miners was met with violence from the start. First, a helicopter was peppered with bullets from below as it flew over the camp. The subsequent raid on the ground was met with a well-coordinated attack; in addition to the two soliders killed, another two were seriously wounded. The attackers fled toward nearby Suriname as French forces sought to seal off the border. As of this writing they have not been found.

Read more: Deep in the Jungle With the French Foreign Legion - Popular Mechanics

Muslim Toulouse Killer: I Dressed and Acted Western to "Fool the Enemy"

"War amounts to ruse" declared a Muslim terrorist to the French police as he was besieged in his apartment during the last hours of his life. According to the transcript of negotiations between Mohamed Merah and the French police (illegally) obtained by TF1 (to the anger of the victims' scandalized families), the Toulouse killer said that his decision to act western, by going to nightclubs and by dying his hair (or part of his hair) blond one day and red the next, was a trick to "fool the enemy" and make them "think that I am not … on the path of Allah."

Besides faking the role of "a non-serious Muslim", his brother Abdelkader Merah adds in the page-long Le Monde article by Laurent Borredon and Emeline Cazi, Mohamed also pretended to act like a tourist. As his handler, "H", tells the Toulouse killer, "you really pulled one over me" (tu m'as bien roulé dans la farine).

Muslim deception and deceit should hardly be an uninteresting subject in the West, for while all Muslims do admittedly not belong in the scooter killer's category (or in a terrorist category or in any violent category at all), the Left's excusing, ho-hum viewpoint on the matter of integration (either Muslims are obviously integrated — and can't you see so for yourself?! — or else their failure to integrate is of no concern to anybody, indeed they should be respected for remaining true to their faith and culture) can be dangerous for us all…

Mohamed Merah admitted that his primary target were members of the military, in view of the fact that the French army is deployed in Afghanistan. When a plot to kill a fourth soldier went awry, he fell back on the secondary target on his list of "enemies" — the Jews. (Somewhere down the list came people such as diplomats, notably the ambassador of India.) The Toulouse terrorist never had a kind word or a word of regret for any of his victims.

COQUETTERIES CAPILAIRES ET SORTIES EN BOÎTE POUR "TROMPER L'ENNEMI"

Est-ce au Pakistan qu'on lui apprend à se fondre dans la masse pour mieux tromper l'ennemi ? A ne pas attirer l'attention avec des tenues trop connotées ? Hizia, la jeune fille qu'il avait épousée religieusement en décembre 2011 -l'union dura deux semaines - s'était étonnée de le voir enfiler des jeans et des New Balance plutôt que la robe traditionnelle. Elle avait trouvé curieux qu'il ne fréquente pas la mosquée, ne porte pas la barbe, lui qui se disait si religieux. Son mari avait rétorqué "avoir 'ses' raisons, sans les préciser."

A son "ami" du renseignement, Merah daigne s'expliquer: "La guerre est une ruse." Ses coquetteries capillaires - la nuque longue et blonde un matin, une crête rouge le lendemain - ses sorties en boîte de nuit? C'était pour "tromper l'ennemi" et "faire croire que je suis pas (...) dans le chemin d'Allah".

"Mohamed se faisait passer pour un touriste et c'est comme cela qu'il a trompé son monde, exposera Abdelkader aux policiers lors de sa garde à vue. Il a même réussi à tromper votre service [en donnant de lui] une image de musulman pas sérieux."

… Tuer n'était pas son seul but. Diffuser les images de ses crimes et s'assurer qu'elles soient vues par le plus grand nombre, semer la terreur fait partie intégrante de son entreprise funeste.

Merah a acheté "la meilleure" caméra, une "full HD", dans un magasin spécialisé. "J'ai fait un excellent montage vidéo avec des versets, (...) on voit toutes les exécutions, crâne-t-il. Elle va être mise sur le Net. (...) Elle sera prise par les moudjahidines. Elle sera prise par certaines chaînes télé. (...) Je sais que quand elle va être vue inch'allah ça va mettre l'effroi (...) dans vos cœurs et ça va motiver d'autres frères."

JUSQU'AU BOUT LES NÉGOCIATEURS ONT PENSÉ OBTENIR SA REDDITION

Jamais Merah n'aura de mot pour les victimes. Avec une précision clinique, il liste toutes les autres cibles qu'il envisageait d'abattre. Ses "frères" lui auraient soufflé quelques idées: des "diplomates", l'ambassadeur d'Inde notamment. Mais l'enfant du quartier des Izards avait son propre programme. Les militaires d'abord, parce qu'ils "sont engagés en Afghanistan". Le 19 mars, c'est à nouveau l'un d'eux qu'il visait. Mais il a raté sa cible, et a décidé de passer à la catégorie suivante sur la liste de ses "ennemis", les juifs. Ce sera l'école Ozar Hatorah.

Il avait également "repéré une maison juive où il y a beaucoup d'habitants dedans", et la "synagogue à Bagatelle", une cité de Toulouse. Il avait aussi noté l'adresse d'un gendarme, celles de policiers.

"Même tu veux que j'te dise une chose, H.?

- J'espère que tu m'avais pas ciblé quand même?

- Si, crois-moi que j't'avais ciblé. (...) Mon but c'était de t'appeler, de te dire que j'avais le nom [du tueur] pour que tu viennes à moi et t'en aurais pris une en pleine tête."

As for Mohamed Merah's handler, "H" says:

"On reprend la discussion qu'on a eue en novembre, et là bon, sur de bonnes bases, quoi, avec un peu plus de sincérité, résume le policier. Parce que bon, tu m'as bien roulé dans la farine, hein, avoue-le. T'as été bon sur ce coup-là." Derrière les mots destinés à mettre Merah en confiance, on sent poindre le désarroi du policier qui découvre l'ampleur de ce qui lui a échappé. Il lui avoue : "On va se faire engueuler. (...) On savait pas grand-chose de toi."

Update: Michel Garroté adds:

La diffusion des conversations de Merah aura au moins eu un mérite : tordre le coup à ces « analyses » qui, au moment des assassinats de Toulouse et de Montauban, ont fleuri dans la presse, nous présentant l’homme comme un pauvre garçon des cités un peu perdu, sans repères familiaux, une sorte de victime d’une société qui n’aura pas su l’écouter, le comprendre et le remettre à temps dans le droit chemin. Le cynisme de Merah, sa froideur, son arrogance, sa haine de la France, sa détestation des Juifs, cette « ruse » dont il se prévaut : peut-être les plus obtus, les plus inconscients vont-ils enfin ouvrir les yeux sur ce qu’ils ne veulent pas voir, sur cette haine de l’Occident et des Juifs qui habite une partie de la jeunesse musulmane de nos banlieues. Un aveuglement qui explique, peut-être, comment, pourtant entendu par les services de renseignement, Merah a pu passer entre les mailles du filet, conclut Robert Ménard.

The Sewer of Revisionism Eventually Flows into the River of Implausible Stupidity

Jean Birnbaum writing in France’s newspaper of record, Le Monde uses his unresolved feelings about a violent murder to pen a loving portrait of Karl Marx. lumpenproletariat was not a sub, but an anti proletariat.

Mikhail Kalashnikov is part of this tradition. As noted by Olivier Rohe in his superb text called Ma dernière création est un piège à taupes ("My Latest Creation Is A Mole Trap"), the ex-sergeant of the Red Army, who is now approaching 100 years of age, is basically an homme d’ordre, passionate by work done well and an abiding hatred towards criminals.

By inventing the AK-47 assault rifle in the aftermath of World War II, he wanted to arm the hand of the workingman along the road to emancipation. In another of those ironic twists of History, this globalized gun is now one of the most destructive tools in the service of international capitalism. It is seen also as a fetish for bling-bling gangsterism all over the world, and even in the heart of this urban France, of which Marx and Engels once so admired the lucidity.

On Sunday July 1, in the northern French city of Lille, a thug unloaded his “kalash” in front of a nightclub, where he'd not been allowed to enter. Two people were killed: a 25-year-old man, working for a company that manages low-rent housing, and a 26-year-old woman, who worked at the nightclub's coat-check to help pay her university fees. These two young workers have been killed by the bullets of a weapon, invented once upon a time with the aim of brightening the future for the underdogs of the world.

Just as his friend Karl Marx used to do, Friedrich Engels was telling the workers of the world to get rid of the “scum.” He used this term with no hesitation, while describing “these dredges of deprived persons,” those whom he viewed as the most dangerous enemy of the working classes. “At every revolution, when the French blue collars wrote on the walls of the houses “Death to thieves” and when they shot several of them, they were not acting out of enthusiasm for the ownership, but rather because they know they had to first get rid of this gang,” Engels said.

He doesn’t get around to mentioning that the crimes would come to mean “disagreeing with the revolution”, or for that matter, that the man with the “kalish” is more likely to have thought that HE was the lumpenproletarian, who, turned away, needed to address “the crime,” and wanted to emancipate the vicitms in his very own special way.

This is especially cute, in that the crime took place in Lille, a place where anarcho-syndicalism IS the only idea in the air. In fact, it runs a close secont to "red Brest" in it's communist-mob-rule tendencies.

Also by Birnbaum are titles such as:

Is our future democratic ? and
Is Nationalism about being Gay ?

...wherin he explores the “xenophobic excesses” of gays questioning the abuse of gays by extremely common and “mainstream” Moslems.

What’s curious about all of this is that Birnbaum was one of the last people to interview Jacques Derrida, who, while broadly known for his post-modern uncaring rubbish, was morally clear when it came to the defense of individuals rights against the oppressive force of a politically correct group, dominant world view, or social tribalism that hangs like a damp, cold, fog over published ideas and “philosophical conversation” in much of Europe.

At about the same time, Birnbaum was also feeding lines to pointless hater Thierry Ardisson for “Tous Le Monde en Parle”

I think the Buzz Wore Off

After, say, a week.



Zee street art, she says it oll.

First Smoking, Then Sodas, Now There's No Dancing in Mayor Bloomberg's New York…

First smoking, then soda

quips Kathianne Bonielle

— now there’s no dancing in New York City.

The story of New York cops arresting a pair of midnight dancers in the (almost empty) subway (thanks to Valerie) also involves the war on photography, with the appearance of a video camera making New York's finest even more vicious (and leading them to call for… backup(!)). "When Hess began trying to film the encounter, things got ugly, Stern said."

Last year, of course, a similar story took place down in Washington with people dancing, relatively quietly, in front of the Jefferson Memorial being confronted by Park Rangers and Police (thanks to Carine), leading to these dangerous and vicious dancers getting unceremoniously thrown to the ground, choked, and hand-cuffed.

Caroline Stern, 55, and her boyfriend George Hess, 54, claim they were handcuffed for having happy feet on the platform of the Columbus Circle subway station — and spent 23 hours in custody as a result.

“I’m a dentist, and I’m 55, and I got arrested for dancing,” Stern told The Post. “It was absolutely ridiculous that this happened.”

It was nearly midnight when Stern and Hess, a film-industry prop master, headed home last July from Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Midsummer Night’s Swing. As they waited for the train, a musician started playing steel drums on the nearly empty platform and Stern and Hess began to feel the beat.

“We were doing the Charleston,” Stern said. That’s when two police officers approached and pulled a “Footloose.”

“They said, ‘What are you doing?’ and we said, ‘We’re dancing,’ ” she recalled. “And they said, ‘You can’t do that on the platform.’ ”

… When Hess began trying to film the encounter, things got ugly, Stern said.

“We brought out the camera, and that’s when they called backup,” she said. “That’s when eight ninja cops came from out of nowhere.”

Hess was allegedly tackled to the platform floor, and cuffs were slapped on both of them. The initial charge, according to Stern, was disorderly conduct for “impeding the flow of traffic.”

“There was nobody on the platform. There were, like, three people,” she said.