France, the Eldorado of America's Fast-Food Chains

La France est le pays où les KFC sont les plus rentables, avec un chiffre d'affaires par restaurant de 3 millions d'euros en moyenne, à peine inférieur à celui du leader du secteur, McDonald's (3,4 millions d'euros). C'est pour cette raison que KFC a démarré sa conquête de l'Europe par l'Hexagone.

   Remember all the brouhaha about America's awful food and the malbouffe that their fastfood joints are introducing to le pays de la gastronomie? No, neither do we.

In a full-page Le Monde article (La France, paradis du fast-food américain), Chloé Hecketsweiler and Julien Dupont-Calbo explain that for fast-food chains, France is a paradise and an Eldorado, a country that provides the largest number of restaurants and in which they make their best sales, in addition to being the nation that the Yanks in the mold of Ray Croc invariably use as a stepping stone to other markets in Europe.

   The hamburger has become haute couture in France, the country has become the second-largest market for McDonald's, Burger King's Marseille outlet attracts 2,000 customers per day, and Kentucky Fried Chicken opened its 150th restaurant recently (KFC is already busy planning for the next 150).

More McDonald's articles here…

Ivan Schofield, le directeur général pour l'Europe de l'Ouest de KFC … [le] patron britannique du groupe américain n'est pourtant pas très enclin à discuter malbouffe, même avec son français impeccable. Il voudrait plutôt parler de l'inauguration du 150^e KFC de France, situé dans le centre commercial de Rivesaltes (Pyrénées-Orientales), au bout des pistes de l'aéroport de Perpignan.

Pour KFC, ce chiffre est un vrai cap. "Nous voulons ouvrir 150 restaurants [de plus] d'ici à 2017, ce qui devrait représenter 17 % de croissance annuelle jusqu'à cette date", dit M. Schofield. Les ventes dans l'Hexagone ont déjà bondi de 8 % en 2012. Devant son expresso, il ne doute pas un instant que ses poulets figureront souvent au menu des Français, aux côtés des burgers de McDonald's ou des sandwichs de Subway. …

ELDORADO

Véritable eldorado pour le groupe américain, la France n'est pas pour autant un marché facile à conquérir. "Le déploiement demande beaucoup de temps et d'argent", explique M. Schofield. KFC cherche "des emplacements en périphérie [des villes], idéalement situés sur un rond-point en face d'un hypermarché".

 … Depuis 2001 et la relance de l'enseigne en France, la maison-mère, Yum ! Brands (aussi propriétaire de Pizza Hut et de Taco Bell) a investi près de 500 millions de dollars (380 millions d'euros) dans le développement du réseau.

Pour séduire la clientèle, le roi du poulet pané a aussi dû adapter ses recettes, suivant les traces de son rival McDonald's, le premier à avoir fait le pari d'une "francisation" de son offre. Ainsi, les Français ne raffolent pas des "buckets", ces "seaux" d'ailes ou de pilons frits qui ont fait la réputation du "colonel Sanders", l'homme qui fonda KFC dans les années 1930 – ils ne représentent que 10 % des ventes en France. Les petits soldats du colonel ont ainsi concocté une gamme de sandwichs, tel le "Brazer" – du poulet mariné cuit au four –, adaptés au goût des Français.

Et pour limiter l'effet "bombe calorique" (1 300 calories pour un repas complet tout de même), KFC propose de remplacer les frites par un épi de maïs ou une salade. …

 … Les poulets de KFC pourraient quoi qu'il en soit bientôt se lancer à la conquête de l'Europe. "La France est un modèle. Si l'on réussit ici, on réussira partout", plaisante M. Schofield. Ce que cette expérience lui a appris ? Mieux vaut jouer la carte de l'outsider que celle du leader mondial. Une "french touch"... pas très française.

Marriage has always been a forward-looking institution aimed at nurturing the next generation of children, not a love license for the adults of the present

Before the judiciary settles [the same-sex marriage] question — or perhaps leaves it unsettled — it would behoove us to pause in this rush, and ask what purpose the institution of marriage serves in our society

says Ed Morrissey (thanks to Robert Tracinski) in a The Week post which mirrors my own post from almost two years back (To Understand Liberal Issues Like Gay Marriage Correctly, It Is Vital to Get the Basic Premises Right).

Let's start by refining the argument. Supporters of same-sex marriage talk of "legalizing" gay marriages, but that's not an accurate depiction of current law. No U.S. state, regardless of its definition of marriage, will prosecute same-sex couples who call themselves "married," nor should they, outside of an intent to defraud — which is a crime regardless of the sexual circumstances. In fact, the government has a very limited legitimate interest in sexual or living arrangements. Especially after the Lawrence v. Texas case, the government has no role in regulating sexual activity with the exceptions of consanguinity (close blood relations), use of force and victimization, commercial trafficking of sexual favors, and exploitation of minors.

No one wants the government to dictate who may or may not share a bed, outside of those exceptional circumstances. Those who choose to cohabit in non-traditional relationships have ample options for formalizing their arrangements through the private contract process, which government enforces but does not sanction. That leaves adults free to choose whatever sexual arrangements they desire outside of the actual prohibitions that are objectively applied to everyone. That is actual freedom and equality.

Marriage, however, is a unique status even apart from religious concerns, which I'll address later. Marriage licenses exist as government recognition of the unique procreative potential of heterosexual relationships. The government takes a special interest in that potential for good reason — because a failure of the procreators to act as proper guardians forces the government to build safety-net systems for children whose parents either cannot or will not provide for them. Marriage provides a structure for assigning responsibility for children potentially produced by heterosexual relations. Put simply, it fixes responsibility for paternity on the husband, regardless of who may have fathered the children during a marriage — a fact that more than a few cuckolded husbands have discovered during divorce settlements. That structure ensures that the state can enforce responsibility for the care of its most vulnerable citizens, even to the extent of criminal prosecution for neglect.

In Western societies, including the U.S., marriage has always been a forward-looking institution aimed at protecting and nurturing the next generation of children, not a love license for the adults of the present.

Most states, until relatively recently, provided incentives for marriage and disincentives for divorce. Social experimentation undermined both, and safety-net programs accelerated the process. Thanks to no-fault divorce laws that put the whims of adults over the needs of children, the results of devaluing marriage for heterosexual unions have produced heavy social costs for the past few generations that have fallen outside of the traditional family structure.

 … In pushing to overturn a referendum passed by a large majority in California that enshrined the traditional definition of marriage into the state constitution, the opponents of Proposition 8 argue in essence that both the process and the policy chosen by the voters are entirely illegitimate. Voters used a direct-democracy mechanism that has existed in California for decades to amend the constitution no differently than other such propositions, and affirmed the definition of marriage that has existed during the entire history of this country. The challengers don't like the outcome, and argue that nine justices should only accept as a legitimate result of that referendum a definition of marriage that until the last few years few would have accepted, and negate a legitimate outcome in an election. That's an argument for an oligarchy or an autocracy, not a democracy. 

Tolerance, it seems, works only in one direction — and that brings us to the religious argument, but not in the manner one might think. 

While as a practicing Catholic my definition of marriage involves its sacramental character, I understand that others may not share my faith and perspective on its meaning or value. That, however, will not work both ways, as recent examples have made plain. For example, a baker in Oregon faces potential criminal charges for refusing to provide a wedding cake for a same-sex couple because of his religious beliefs. What happens when churches refuse to perform such ceremonies for the same reason?

Most people scoff at this question, but religions have partnered with the state on marriages in a way that bakers have not. Priests, ministers, rabbis, and imams act in place of the state when officiating at wedding ceremonies, and states that legalize same-sex marriage are eventually going to be forced by lawsuits to address that partnership, probably sooner rather than later. In similar partnerships, that has resulted in pushing churches out of business. 

… It's not difficult to see the writing on the wall when it comes to the ability of churches to perform a core sacrament in any meaningful sense once the government changes the definition of marriage.

The best outcome would be for Americans to recall the limited state interest in marriage and preserve it as a forward-looking institution, and return to incentivizing families rather than lowering barriers to failure.

Indeed. To return to the no-fault divorce laws "endemic to a governmental regime whose very existence is predicated and dependent on the power to remove children from their parents", Stephen Baskerville writes that the

practices and powers [of the nation's family courts] are undermining constitutional government in its most fundamental principles. The power to take children from their parents for no reason is arbitrary government at its most intrusive, since it invades and obliterates all of private life. Yet we have created a governmental machinery that exists for no other purpose.

Lenin: "Destroy the family, and you destroy society"

Those Wicked, Wicked Bankers! You Know Where All Those Bastards Are From, Dont'cha?

Xavier Gorce:
• So many bank charges for one tiny overdraft?!
• I hate bankers!
• They're all Krauts!
• So they're not Jews anymore?!

The Tsunami's Japanese Ghost Town

Le Monde carries Google's virtual visit of Namie, a ghost town a few kilometers from the Fukushima nuclear plant.

It Ain't Easy Livin' with a Femen Protester!

Ukraine's bare-breasted female protesters from the Femen movement with messages written on their (not unattractive) bodies have inspired copycats in France, leading Plantu to make a topless cartoon:

• T'ain't easy livin' with a Femen protester!

• Today is the day to take out the garbage!

Rest in Peace Hugo Chávez, Says a Mural in Paris Filled with Portraits of Venezuela's Caudillo

This Maria Thunholm photo of a mural from the Northwest of Paris saying "Rest in Peace Hugo Chávez" adjoining a massive portrait of Venezuela's late Caudillo was shared with us by Carine, a New-York-based Frenchwoman who asked if we now understood why she doesn't miss France…

Indeed, melanietoulouse comments :

you have to see it, to believe it… Comme les larmes et les phrases de Jean-Luc Mélenchon qui n’a jamais vécu sous une dictature communiste, brrr…

Apart from that, feel free to visit the Swedish photographer's photo website…

On the same wall in the same street (Rue Ordener) is another mural saying "Long Live Chavez!" along with "Patria O Muerte" (Fatherland or Death).

Obama is going to use the same tactics Communists used to control public opinion

Obama is about to launch a new campaign that will pick up where the old one left off

writes Thomas J. Basile in Forbes.

He’s going to use the same tactics Communists used to control public opinion. Back in the days of the old Soviet Union, the massive state-run information apparatus would fill news outlets with a persistent message about how ‘evil’ the United States was and the danger it posed to the world.

The Obama strategy is to do the same thing, leveraging liberal media bias, the latest technology, robust data and grassroots community organizing techniques, to smear the Republican Party as extremist, out of touch and disconnected from the needs of the majority of Americans.

  …What does the national GOP have to counter this juggernaut? In short – nothing. Of course, Republicans are quick to remind anyone who will listen that they supposedly have the intellectual high road and to a degree they’re right. More people in this country self-identify as conservative as opposed to liberal. Ask virtually any group of people and the majority of them will tell you they would choose a government that costs less, taxes less and provides fewer services over a government that costs more, taxes more and provides more services.

The problem is that in any pitched battle with [Obama for America, transformed into a 501(c)4 organization, Organizing for Action (OFA)], Republicans are faced with their own records of spending and giveaways that makes the President seem less radical than he actually is.

Republicans need to both hear and understand this point: Obama’s victory was not a vindication of his policies. It was the result of effective communication and an aggressive political infrastructure. He will win again and again without organized opposition.

 …We can’t rely on solely Congress to combat Obama and drive a rehabilitation of the conservative brand. Bottom-up organizing on a national level is what is needed. Go around Congress. Look beyond tired institutions like the national political committees to solve the problem if they are too paralyzed to act. Stop thinking about the beltway and start acting locally.

 … This is the way our system is supposed to ensure that the natural tension between freedom and collectivism is sustained.
Obama understands this better than anyone in recent history. He’s benefitted from not having an organized opposition. OFA will sell ice to Eskimos while conservatives worry about labels, party affiliation and litmus tests when they should be worrying about how best to preserve freedom. The infighting, the lack of vision and the insular thinking on the right has to come to an end.

If the Republicans are just going to rely on Obama moving too far to the left for moderates and conservative Democrats, they have another guess coming. It’s time for a summit of conservative leaders and organizations to define a series of priorities and commit to aggressive, coordinated outreach to a broader range of people than ever before. It’s time for conservatives to stop the bickering and start cooperating and organizing. It’s time to raise an army to turn this mismatch into a fair fight for freedom.

Illegal immigration is to immigration what shoplifting is to shopping

Arresting people for illegal activity is scandalous?!

 … Robbers are real people too, but we don't rush to their defense with the argument that they're somehow too special to get arrested…

Jerry Agar points ou that Illegal immigration is to immigration what shoplifting is to shopping (thanks to Instapundit).
 
• Related: It So Happens That Every Illegal Alien in America Already Does Have Papers

• No one talks about legal immigrants who are hard working men and women, who wait for the frustratingly slow process that seems to discriminate against those who want to do it by the book

• Sarah A. Hoyt on Being American

• Phyllis Schlafly's Rules for Addressing Amnesty

Remembering (would-be) black slave-owners in Africa

Kathy Shaidle mentions some things that would never appear in the mainstream media (or only in the last section, in the next-to-last paragraph of page 23), from a 1959 story reminiscent of Borat or Ali G …

Crowds of Africans who wanted to buy wives for $7.14 each [in 1959 were shortly after] told by the government that those stories about slave auctions were only rumor.

Local official W.P.M. Maigacho had to issue an official denial of the rumors after men from outlying tribes twice gathered in the town of Tononka, expecting to take part in a slave auction.

According to the rumors, native girls from a local mission were being sold for the equivalent of $7.14. The purchaser could take the girl to Mombasa and marry her, the rumors said.

A political bombshell? Merkel's election campaign paradigm change might be "so enormous that no one in Berlin will talk about it publicly”

FOR Angela Merkel to get re-elected on Sept. 22,

notes John Vinocur, the most conservative commentator working for the New York Times, in the International Herald Tribune,

a risk she must avoid is arousing German voters’ fears of painful economic reforms by the governing coalition. On that score, so far so good, according to Renate Köcher, who runs the Allensbach Institute, one of Germany’s elite polling organizations. In her view, stoking those fears is a big part of a potentially winning formula for the opposition — but she adds that “an overwhelming majority are not concerned about having to face such reforms in the foreseeable future.” 

All the same, she writes that only 19 percent of the voters think continuation of the Merkel-led, right-of-center governing coalition is a good idea. In spite of the chancellor’s general popularity, Köcher believes the election to be “everything other than locked up” and the campaign so far without a decisive theme.

How about this one: Germany embarking on an economic “paradigm change,” which means standing its old export-export-export/save-save-save model on its head. The idea would be to encourage growth through higher German salaries and consumption, more imports and, in a sense, less competitiveness.

This theme entered the election campaign picture last weekend with what seemed like a careful leak to a newspaper. “It’s so enormous that no one in Berlin will talk about it publicly,” the weekly Die Zeit reported. As its sources, the newspaper cited both “an official” said to be helping to formulate the government line, and “other members of the government” who insist the policy turnabout plan is for real.

Theoretically at least, this could be a political bombshell because the shift in approach equals a move away from the creed of austerity that Germany has preached to the rest of Europe. Die Zeit — its seriousness embodied by Helmut Schmidt, who serves as its co-publisher — wrote, “Silently and softly, Angela Merkel is planning the next big change in the economy.”

But maybe a little skepticism should enter here. …

France Much Less Civilized And Much More Savage Than the French Like to Admit

The whole wild-violent-America vs. civilized-benevolent Europe spiel?

It's a flat-out lie, says The Daily Telegraph's Henry Samuel (merci à RV), quoting the book La France orange mécanique.

(Time for a reminder and to point out that this blog's primary raison d'être (Behind the Façades in France) is to explore "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".) But back to Laurent Obertone's book:

Flying in the face of the traditional image of a country seen as the land of good living, 'France, A Clockwork Orange' claims that mainstream politicians and the media have long masked a far more disturbing reality: it is rapidly descending into mindless violence and incivility.

"Nobody should ignore the reality," the book claims, namely that "every 24 hours 13,000 thefts, 2,000 attacks and 200 rapes" take place in France – figures far higher than official national statistics.

Claiming to lift the lid on a taboo – "the 'ensavagement' of a nation" - it has been dismissed by some commentators and criminologists as biased, unscientific and downright racist, peddling far-Right theories linking crime and immigration.

 … In the book, [Laurent Obertone] clinically enumerates one gratuitous crime after another gleaned from the press, police and judiciary, before coming to the conclusion that "ultra-violent crime" is exploding in France.

"The real level of insecurity, probably the worst in the history of the French Republic, is around 12 million crimes per year," he claims. To reach this figure, the author contends that true crime rates are "three times higher" than official figures as these only take into account registered or solved crimes.

Speaking on France 2, Mr Obertone said: "I am fighting for a truth I have felt and that does not get the media exposure it deserves." The book, which calls for a hard line on prison sentences, has struck a nerve as France's parliament this week begins a debate on reforms aimed at making prison a "last resort" by using fines, probation, treatment and training for less serious crimes.

 … Sales of Mr Obertone's incendiary jumped after Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Front, urged everyone to "read it and get others to read it".

Mr Obertone denies being a far-Right sympathiser saying he has "no political commitment".

Evangelical Christianity Called "Radical Religion" by the HuffPost, Presented as Clear and Present Danger in an Army Story Titled "Bombing for Jesus"

In a Huffington Post story entitled Bombing For Jesus — you can just hear the lefties snickering at their own cleverness — "evangelical Christianity" is called a "radical religion" and a "fundamentalist religion" and is presented as nothing less than a hotbed of extremists and therefore a clear and present danger…

No, nothing about Islam (extreme or otherwise), whose members apparently are owned nothing but apologies… Why do you ask?

In other news, the HuffPost describes — matter-of-factly — America's armed forces, along with the U.S. Army's military contractors, as "America's military industrial complex". A story ominously entitled Remember Blackwater? starts out with an inane (or fear-provoking) comment, also presented as nothing but an indisputable fact, about how closely America allegedly avoided the military draft and thereby how close we allegedly came to sending America's sons and daughters to the perils of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Uncle Sam Portrayed as an Evil, Bloodthirsty, Gun-Crazed Monster With No Love for His Fellow Man

In Le Monde's Serguei cartoon on the gun lobby, Barack Obama is again shown as a Messiah-like outsider — a messiah bringing (or trying to bring) the blessings of European society, with its tolerance™ and its compassion©, to their clueless American cousins — so, to no one's surprise, we get the symbol incarnate of that clueless Yankee clod, Uncle Sam, appearing as a deranged, violent, gun-crazed, bloodthirsty monster, without an once of love for his fellow human being.

Superb Illustration of the Left's Devious Ways of Reporting the News in General and About Conservatives in Particular

I wish to extend my deepest gratitude to the Huffington Post for the article about Steven Crowder's alleged inane CPAC comment about rape (via Instapundit) because it illustrates perfectly the left's devious ways of reporting about the news in general and about conservatives in particular.

Short story:
The person who made an inane comment about rape was NOT Steven Crowder;
it was ASHLEY JUDD!

Ashley Judd!

(Get it?)

In case you're interested, “Ashley Judd … tweeted that purchasing apple products is akin to rape" (Oh, and by the way, "the intelligent, young, successful and beautiful Ms. Judd" tweeted that comment from… "her iPhone”!)

Hence the Huffington Post's outrage and…
hence Steven Crowder's mockery.
Indeed:
hence Steven Crowder's like-minded (!!!!!) mockery.

That's right: Crowder's reason for mentioning rape
was the exact same as the Huffington Post's reason for writing about rape,
i.e., not to make an inane comment about the crime,
but to highlight a VIP's inane comment about the crime.

 EXCEPT!
1) the Huffington Post got it (deliberately?) wrong;
Crowder got the identity of the "idiot" (for want of a better word) correctly
while Ariana Huffington's article got it wrong (indeed, what it did
in a sense amounted to — gleefully — shooting the messenger)
And this brings us to the next point:
2)
— BECAUSE Ashley Judd is a liberal making an inane rape comment, and — BECAUSE she was comparing a hideous crime to the ultra-evil nightmarish capitalistic system, it turned out that, indeed, there was no outrage, either at the time or later (now), from the Huffington Post or from other liberals. (Indeed, that's the reason why I felt it necessary to add: "In case you're interested"…)

And when a conservative makes a comment not about rape per se but about an inane comment about rape (Ashley Judd's), the left went,

Gotcha! — now we can do our usual bit, ignore the backstory completely and pin this on those awful, terrible, heartless conservatives!

Update: Good Deed Department — Thank you for going to the Huffington Post's original reporting (sic) of this event and favoriting my similar-sounding comment (not for my sake, but for Steve's and, yes, for the entire conservative movement's)…

Revisiting the Extent of Stalin's Terror Régime

To commemorate the 60th anniversary of Stalin's death, Le Monde's Nicholas Werth has assembled a portfolio of faces of prisoners condemned to death plus a portfolio of the Great Terror's "invisible vestiges", as well as an editorial and a map of the gulag archipelago.

 • La Grande Terreur, un massacre dicté par la paranoïa du régime stalinien

• La photo d'identité, dernière trace des victimes de la Grande Terreur

• Les visages de la Grande Terreur stalinienne

• Vestiges invisibles de la Grande Terreur
  • Soixante ans de la mort de Staline : un fantôme omniprésent

Soixante ans après la mort de l'homme qui régna sur l'URSS durant trois décennies et envoya à la mort entre 10 et 20 millions d'individus (sans compter les victimes de la guerre), [et avec] l'arrivée au Kremlin de Vladimir Poutine, Staline est redevenu un personnage mythique, victorieux du nazisme en 1945 et bâtisseur "de la société la plus juste au monde (...) et d'une grande puissance industrielle", selon l'un des principaux manuels scolaires. Rien ou très peu n'est dit des massacres perpétrés par une police politique dont le président russe est si fier d'être issu.

Pour les soixante ans de sa mort (le 5 mars 1953), c'est aux victimes de Staline que Le Monde consacre un supplément, plus particulièrement à celles de la Grande Terreur de 1937-1938, lorsque 1 600 personnes étaient exécutées chaque jour. Ces documents exceptionnels, les Russes n'y ont pas accès. Les archives du KGB sont hermétiques et ceux qui s'y intéressent sont soupçonnés de trahison.

 … Les Russes n'ont jamais été aussi libres de surfer sur Internet, de voyager et de consommer, à condition de ne pas faire de politique. Les opposants qui ont osé élever la voix contre la "démocratie dirigée" à l'hiver 2011-2012 sont harcelés. Depuis le retour de M. Poutine au Kremlin pour un troisième mandat, on se croirait revenu à l'époque des campagnes contre le "cosmopolitisme".

Deux mémoires se chevauchent. Staline le bâtisseur de l'empire soviétique fait oublier le tyran sanguinaire. C'est comme si la Russie tout entière était frappée de schizophrénie. L'élite politico-militaire au pouvoir achète des propriétés en Floride ou sur la Riviera tout en fustigeant les "agents étrangers". L'homme de la rue, lui, révère Staline mais ne voudrait à aucun prix se retrouver dans l'URSS des années 1930. En jouant sur la psychologie de l'Homo sovieticus – la peur, le paternalisme, la forteresse assiégée –, Vladimir Poutine prive le pays de son devoir d'inventaire. Difficile de moderniser la Russie avec un tel héritage.

If the "Costs of the War" Study Proves Anything, It Is That the Left's Numbers of Iraqi Dead Through the Years Were Highly Inflated

If the findings of a Brown University project are to be believed, the U.S.-led war in Iraq claimed 190,000 lives and will cost the U.S. government at least $2.2 trillion.

Deutsche Presse-Agentur adds that

The total estimate far outstrips the initial projection by President George W. Bush's government that the war would cost $50 billion to $60 billion.

What Pat Reber does not note is that the number of dead — if true — is far inferior to the hysterical numbers made up at one time or another (out of the blue?) by BDS-infected leftists (half a million Iraqis dead, one million, etc).

By 2006, The Lancet's October (2004) surprise of 194,000 Iraqi deaths (Iraqis alone and over only the first year and a half of the conflict) had risen to over 600,000, while a year later, Opinion Research Business came out with a figure more than double that, at over 1.2 million deaths.

Those figures, moreover, had the additional particularity, needless to say, of ignoring the huge numbers of Iraqis who would have continued to die in the killing fields of Saddam Hussein had Bush and Tony Blair not invaded his Ba'asist Iraq.

More than 70 percent of those who died of direct war violence in Iraq were civilians, or an estimated 134,000 people. A small number of the 190,000 dead were U.S. casualties: 4,488 U.S. military members and at least 3,400 U.S. contractors, according to the report.

"The staggering number of deaths in Iraq is hard to fathom, but each of these individuals has to count and be counted," said Catherine Lutz, a professor at Rhode Island-based Brown University who helped lead the study.

"The staggering number of deaths in Iraq"? Indeed. Except that, again, it is far inferior to that professed by the hysterical anti-war activists. Additionally, we still do not know if this lowered figure isn't similarly exaggerated as well: I am not sure to what extent the make-up of the Costs of War report ("released ahead of the 10th anniversary of the war on March 20") is conducive to trust:

The Costs of War project involved 30 economists, anthropologists, lawyers, humanitarian personnel and political scientists from 15 universities, the United Nations and other organizations.

Offhand, that doesn't sound like many conservatives were involved. Although the UN was. Oh, and speaking of which: does the Costs of War study tackle the dollar amounts involved in the UN's food for oil scandal? I thought not…

A Pope from… the "Southern Hemisphere"?!

Plantu's take on the (s)election of Franciscus I to the papal office is to give the event a definite anti-racist bent of the (habitual) inane variety.

You've heard (or read) of Francis I being the first pope from South (or Latin) America, the first pope from the Americas (in the plural), the first pope from the New World, indeed the first pope from outside of Europe.

Well, what take does Plantu take on that? He calls Francis the first pope from the… Southern Hemisphere, with the world's downtrodden (all Southerners and most if not all "colored") all joining in a rush of joy and song, as if the world is only, or mainly, divided between the evil rich Northerners (look at the other — clueless, joyless, and heartless — "insider" cardinals in Plantu's cartoon) and the poor innocent victims of the South. Thus, the poor Southerners, arrive in triumph to see one of their own kin, one of their protectors, finally in power. (Because "insider" popes like Benedict XVI and John Paul II, you realize, had not an iota of love for them — well, certainly not for those rotten Southerners…)

I guess that all this Southern unity of the downtrodden will be news for Paraguay and all its neighbors, as well as the Hutus and the Tutsis, and I could probably come up with many other examples, if I didn't want to go to bed now…

In addition, Plantu has obviously not heard the theory that in turning to Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the (mainly Italian) cardinals of Rome chose deliberately chose a man, even if (Latin) American, of Italian extraction.

Incidentally, check out Plantu's previous take on the Vatican, before the choice was known:

For the left (those nuanced souls, those deep thinkers), when everything in the world doesn't boil down to racism, it all boils down to sexism.


Black-out at the Vatican's conclave

• So? Any hints?

• They believe it will be somebody male!

Lure of Islam Grows in France; and Western Converts Represent a Critical Element of the Terrorist Threat in Europe

French antiterrorism officials have been warning for years that [Western] converts [to Islam] represent a critical element of the terrorist threat in Europe, because they … do not stand out

writes Maïa de la Baume in a New York Times "Memo From France":

Agnes Dherbeys for The New York Times

The Sahaba mosque in Créteil, a Paris suburb, popular with those converting to Islam, which is a small but growing number.

CRÉTEIL, France — The spacious and elegant modern building, in the heart of this middle-class suburb of Paris, is known as “the mosque of the converts.”

Every year about 150 Muslim conversion ceremonies are performed in the snow-white structure of the Sahaba mosque in Créteil, with its intricate mosaics and a stunning 81-foot minaret, built in 2008 and a symbol of Islam’s growing presence in France.

Among those who come here for Friday Prayer are numerous young former Roman Catholics, wearing the traditional Muslim prayer cap and long robe.

While the number of converts remains relatively small in France, yearly conversions to Islam have doubled in the past 25 years, experts say, presenting a growing challenge for France, where government and public attitudes toward Islam are awkward and sometimes hostile.

French antiterrorism officials have been warning for years that converts represent a critical element of the terrorist threat in Europe, because they have Western passports and do not stand out.

In October, the French police conducted a series of antiterrorism raids across France, resulting in the arrests of 12 people, including at least three French citizens who had recently converted to Islam.

Converts “often need to overdo it if they want to be accepted” as Muslims, and so veer into extremism more frequently than others, said Didier Leschi, who was in charge of religious issues at the Interior Ministry under former President Nicolas Sarkozy.

There are persistent concerns that French prisons are fertile ground for conversions and for Islamic radicalism; observant Muslims are thought to make up a least a third of the inmate population, according to French news reports.

Many Muslims counter that they regularly face prejudice, and consider a 2010 law banning the full-face veil from public spaces and the growing concern with conversions as reflections of French intolerance.

Whatever the impact, there is little doubt that conversions are growing more commonplace. “The conversion phenomenon is significant and impressive, particularly since 2000,” said Bernard Godard, who is in charge of religious issues at the Interior Ministry.

Of an estimated six million Muslims in France, about 100,000 are thought to be converts, compared with about 50,000 in 1986, according to Mr. Godard. Muslim associations say the number is as high as 200,000. But France, which has a population of about 65 million, defines itself as secular and has no official statistics broken down by race or creed.

For Mr. Godard, a former intelligence officer, it is the “nature” of conversions that has changed.

Conversions to marry have long been common enough in France, but a growing number of young people are now seen as converting to be better socially integrated in neighborhoods where Islam is dominant.

“In poor districts, it has become a reverse integration,” said Gilles Kepel, an expert on Islam and the banlieues, the poor, predominantly Muslim neighborhoods that ring Paris and other major cities.

Many converts are men younger than 40, experts say, often born in France’s former African colonies or overseas territories.

 … In many banlieues, Islam has come to represent not only a sort of social norm but also a refuge, an alternative to the ambient misery, researchers and converts say.

Map

 … Hassen Chalghoumi, the moderate imam of Drancy, another suburb near Paris, says he thinks conversions have also been propelled by France’s official secularism, which he says breeds spiritual emptiness.

“Secularism has become antireligious,” Mr. Chalghoumi said. “Therefore, it has created an opposite phenomenon. It has allowed people to discover Islam.”

Many experts note the influence of celebrity converts, particularly soccer players. Nicolas Anelka, who played on the French national team and whose parents came from Martinique, changed his name to Abdul-Salam Bilal Anelka when he converted to Islam in 2004. Franck Ribéry, a popular player from northern France, converted to Islam in 2006 to marry a Muslim woman, Wahiba, and took the name Bilal Yusuf Mohammed.

 … Recent arrests of radical Muslim converts have also increased concern among public officials and Muslim leaders, though radical Islam is by no means the norm among converts.

One Black Nobel Peace Prize Winner Complains About the Decisions of Another

From Desmond Tutu comes opprobrium, the kind of which can always be counted on being leveled against America alone, and perhaps the West in general, but never against anybody else…

Also notice how the United States in general is being criticized when a leftist is in the White House, whereas during the Bush years, Dubya would have been ostracized…

I am deeply, deeply disturbed at the suggestion in “A Court to Vet Kill Lists” (news analysis, front page, Feb. 9) that possible judicial review of President Obama’s decisions to approve the targeted killing of suspected terrorists might be limited to the killings of American citizens. 

Do the United States and its people really want to tell those of us who live in the rest of the world that our lives are not of the same value as yours? That President Obama can sign off on a decision to kill us with less worry about judicial scrutiny than if the target is an American? Would your Supreme Court really want to tell humankind that we, like the slave Dred Scott in the 19th century, are not as human as you are? I cannot believe it. 

I used to say of apartheid that it dehumanized its perpetrators as much as, if not more than, its victims. Your response as a society to Osama bin Laden and his followers threatens to undermine your moral standards and your humanity. 

DESMOND M. TUTU
Aboard MV Explorer, near Hong Kong Feb. 11, 2013

The writer, winner of the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize, is archbishop emeritus of Cape Town.

French Cartoon Has Snickering Devious Yanks Thrilled to See "Their War" Being Fought by Their Unsuspecting Victims, the French

While Selçuk pens a strange (and gratuitous?) "clash of the titans" in Le Monde between a foreboding American eagle and a puny French rooster, anti-Americanism is back in vogue at Le Canard Enchaîné with the ugliest possible of Americans, the devious and treacherous kind (hat tip to Bill):

Americans Overjoyed
• Snickering, gun-loving, devious Yank:
Cool! Our war is being fought by the French, now!