Behind the Façades in France: What expats and the mainstream media (French and American alike) fail to notice (or fail to tell you) about French attitudes, principles, values, and official positions…
Wondering how Le Monde's Marion Van Renterghem describes the UKIP leader (or how the MSM outlet did so last year, at least)?Between Farage and his aides, talking ill of Brussels is part of the big jokes that they get as little tired of as adolescents do of dirty stories.
Entre Farage et ses assistants, dire du mal de Bruxelles fait partie des grosses blagues dont on se lasse aussi peu que les adolescents des histoires de fesses.
Then, borrowing from Goscinny and Uderzo's (Asterix and) Obelix, she concludes thatNigel Farage is the populist Italian clown Beppe Grillo who's fell into a Tea Party à l'américaine with the posh accent of an English conservative.
Nigel Farage, c'est le clown populiste italien Beppe Grillo tombé dans un Tea-Party à l'américaine avec l'accent posh d'un conservateur anglais.
Where does Bobby Jindal go to get his reputation back?asks Benny Huang.
The Louisiana governor and former presidential candidate took some heat following last January’s Charlie Hebdo attack when he spoke about Muslim no-go zones in Europe. No-go zones are Muslim enclaves, completely separate from civil law and authority, run according to street justice and Muslim tradition.Be sure to read Benny Huang's list of "a few things that liberals refuse to allow to exist", from False Rape Accusers to Black-on-Black Crime through Islamic terrorism and
Jindal was quickly rebuked by political commentators and even the mayor of London, Boris Johnson, who insisted that “no-go zones” are fictional. “Jindal condemns imaginary no-go zones” wrote Steve Benen on Rachel Maddow’s MaddowBlog. A Washington Post headline mused, “Bobby Jindal Won’t Back Down on no-go Zones. Why?” Geez, I don’t know—because he was right?
… Ten months later, after an even more horrific terror attack in Paris, we learned that in fact some of the perpetrators had emerged from exactly the no-go zones whose existence Jindal’s detractors had denied in January. When investigators followed the terrorists’ trail to Brussels, they raided homes in the Molenbeek neighborhood, which the New York Times describes as “working class.” That’s Times-speak for non-working class and, of course, Muslim. The Times tweeted: “Belgian Minister Says Government Lacks Control Over Neighborhood Linked to Terror Plots” That’s as good a definition as any for a “no-go zone.” Days later, French police laid siege to an apartment in Saint Denis, a heavily Muslim suburb of Paris known for its high crime and wide availability of guns. Saint Denis is by all accounts a no-go zone.
But don’t worry—there’s no such thing as a no-go zone. Never has been, never will be.
This habit of denying the existence of very real threats seems to be a distinguishing characteristic of the Left. Even more enigmatic is the fact that they simultaneously believe in a lot of things that happen to be pure fiction. Until recently I considered liberals’ primary malfeasance to be in stirring up hysteria through the fabrication of incidents that never happened.
Rape hoaxes are a favorite. These are the people who brought us the Rolling Stone rape hoax—not to mention the Lena Dunham rape hoax, the Duke lacrosse team rape hoax, the mattress girl rape hoax, and the Tawana Brawley rape hoax. Liberals recently experienced a mass hallucination at the University of Missouri, claiming that the KKK was roaming the campus. Some went as far as to claim that the klansmen were receiving police protection as they tossed bricks through dormitory windows. None of this actually happened. Liberals stage hate crimes, invent appalling statistics, and plant racist signs at Tea Party rallies. They subscribe to all sorts of unproven and unprovable theories such as the “gay” gene. They inhabit a world of utter fakeness—and that’s just the way they like it.
This delusional coin of theirs has two sides. On the one hand liberals embrace lies as truth, while on the other they reject truth as lies.
Nor is it enough to simply deny the existence of very real things; they have to defame others, like Bobby Jindal, who refuse to play along. It didn’t suffice to say that he was wrong about no-go zones in Europe—which he wasn’t wrong, by the way—they had to accuse him of far worse.
Some eleven years after the invasion of Iraq, the New York Times finally got around to publishing a story about the five thousand chemical munitions discovered since 2003. Yet the myth of “no WMD” persists to the present day. Even the author of the Times article, CJ Chivers, tried to perpetuate the falsehood that the weapons don’t count because they were left over from the 1980s and were thus not the weapons used to justify the war. He must have been expecting his readers not to read UN Resolution 1441, which laid out in explicit detail the rationale or the war. It essentially demanded that Saddam account for all WMD known to be in its possession at the time of his 1991 surrender, which would of course include 1980s weapons.Benny Huang, who might also have mentioned that Fox News felt compelled to apologize to Paris after the mayor (pre-November 13) harshly criticized its report on the French capital's no-go zones, concludes:
Liberals are like Ben Kenobi employing Jedi mind tricks to convince the rest of us that “These are not the drones you’re looking for.” With a wave of the hand they can make people disbelieve their very eyes. How a person can believe, despite all evidence to the contrary, that Matthew Shepard was killed for his sexuality is truly astounding, though not nearly as astounding as the idea that these people deny the very existence of ex-gays! They’ve invented this thing called the War on Women™, but vehemently deny that there’s any such thing as a war on Christmas. They deny the existence of voter fraud, non-citizens on the welfare rolls, and disease-carrying illegal aliens. How on earth could one group of people be so out of touch with reality? That’s liberals for you.
I'm hearing a lot of "if it hadn't been for the Iraq war, we wouldn't be in this mess". The Kurds right now are digging out Yezidi mass graves. Not so long ago it was us digging out Kurdish mass graves.
By all means, let's discuss what went wrong, but spare me the Saddam nostalgia by the historically illiterate. I can't eat as much as I want to vomit.
Jalal Talabani captured it beautifully when he said:
"Saddam's Iraq was a concentration camp above ground and a mass grave beneath it."
After I moved just over the Paris city limit to Pantinwrote the New York Times' Mira Kamdar a few months prior to the November attacks,
I realized my status as a foreigner in France had changed. In leaving Paris for the banlieue, I had ceased to be an American expatriate, and became just another immigrant in France.
… The immigrant’s life also means dealing with France’s bureaucratic maze. Police prefectures handle immigration matters here. In Paris, Americans — and foreigners from a few other countries — are sent to a room upstairs. There, I had taken a number and within a half-hour was sitting before an administrator’s desk. Downstairs, a room crowded with people, most of whom appeared to be from sub-Saharan Africa and the Maghreb, waited for their turn at a stand-up window. I now have some idea what they went through.
… Many of the foreigners at the Bobigny prefecture are from former French colonies in sub-Saharan Africa and the Maghreb. In seeking legal residency, they are asking for official recognition of their existence in France.
Most foreigners begin with a one-year permit. In principle, you are eligible for a 10-year permit after five years, and may also be eligible to apply for citizenship. In practice, many people must renew their residency permit every year, a humiliating exercise that makes it nearly impossible to do things that would actually help them integrate into French society, like getting a permanent job or applying for credit.
The real problem is France’s attitude toward immigrants. …