Who listens to José Bové?

Only idiots who prefer living like clochards (quelqu'un a dit sales tentes ?). GMOs are spreading despite Bové and his globophobe ilk, and not just for food --- 40% of the world's cotton is GMO.

Not listening to Bové pays off nicely -- those who bought at the height of the globophobe anti-OGM protests have gained six fold.
J'aime l'ultralibéralisme débridé et triomphant.

American employment

American employees work better and are getting paid more. In contrast to the Fwench workers' paradise where disposable income is an unknown quantity.

Can't decide between the green and red Kool-aid?

Though growth in the US is tapering off, the rate is still staggeringly high compared to other parts of the developed world, and nearly matches those of the much-lauded emerging markets.

Economic activity, as we all know is an enemy of the vicious mother Gaia. At least the luvvie mystification with all thing empirical is reported in the right department heading.
The BBC, though still manages to find a cloud in every silver lining whenever possible with the US, to the point where in the recent "Día sin los Inmigrantes", only the business programs made a passing acknowledgment that it was actually an uneventful " un día sin noticias". How folk-Marxist types could get weepy about the undermining of wages by making an over-supply of it available to the US is still bewildering to me.

Though repeated incessantly, Auntie failed to make a key distinction between the 3 categories of intention in the "movement": there are non-US citizens who are simply in the US to work and have no intention of settling permanently, non-US citizens who are working, but are here illegally, and then there are immigrants who actually want to become US nationals. They also repeated that there is a demand for "rights", but none that they would explicitly specify.

I'm sure a moving target would be to the activists' (and the reporters') preference. Either way, they'll expect something more from the natives than the natives (the citizens) expect from one another.

Non Illegitimus carborundum est, as a good friend of mine would say. Opera and common sense have always been his guide, and the peril of anyone trying to sell him a bill of goods.

Clueless

Legal? Fly with the eagle.

Fraud Night in Canada

One the planks on the Conservative Party’s platform was to establish a genuine and robust intelligence service to protect Canadians and keep any trouble coming their way to actually not come their way.

It turns out that Canada’s own Mister Evil, former chairman of a curiously named launch pad for evil-hood has already done it. It’s semi-private, and obviously is meant to look out for him.

Kevin Steele at the Western Standard’s Shotgun group blog has more.

The only thing there is left for Maurice Strong is to have a Bond movie bad-guy modeled after him.

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Nothing so important that it shouldn’t be undermined

John Rosenthal opines on a report in Le Figaro that "someone" is doing the sneaky Pete to make sure Hamas remains unpressured to behave like adults.

Meanwhile the paranoia of their paesanos perpetuates itself. Modernity, common sense, gravity... all offenses that merit a hand-chopping.

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Culturally enlightened Parisian residents show simplistic Americans what decorating and design are all about

Les franchouilles ... que des tantes ! Clusters of homeless people in tents are popping up all over Paris, especially next to French government or administration buildings from which they will not be chased away (for the time being). Here is a cluster right next to the Centre Pompidou Museum.

My R-M-I, myself, and I


They're using the traffic cone as a Eurotrash sex toy. Dig the cowskin pattern on the chair

Just nod and play along, and they might wander away.

When the non-professionals and the uninitiated meddle

Why these people who promote environmentally damaging ideas can’t be removed from Government, I’ll never know. It’s likely a PR game where leftist will call “devastation” and again say that the world will end if you move their cheese.

The First National Sustainable Design Expo

Contact: Suzanne Xxxxxxxx, (202) 564-#### / xxxxxxxx.suzanne@epa.gov

(Washington, D.C. - May 3, 2006) Imagine a world where houses are built from plant materials* instead of cement and bricks. Drinking water is disinfected by solar energy, not chemicals. And homes are designed to harvest rainwater to supply hot and cold water. It's not a far away dream - you can see it next week at the first National Sustainable Design Expo on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., May 9-10 which showcases the best new designs for sustainable products and technologies, also called "green technology."

Amazing. Here’s someone organizing an event that they want Builders, Architects, and Engineers to take an interest in and they use the colloquial term “Cement” that even most homeowners don’t use.

All frame houses in north America have been traditionally made from a “plant material” called Mister Tree. The goal of the past half century for the profession at large, and for all people who could afford it, was to build out of materials that make for “sustainability” because they don’t decompose – typically “cement” and bricks. In other words they have a long, meaningful lifespan. Significant ammounts of energy don’t need to be expended rebuilding them, or demolishing and replaceing them.

As for collecting you drinking water from your own roof – that’s where drinking water comes from anyway. By trying to do this yourself, all you’re doing is spending wads of money to replicate what municipal systems already do, all without having a pump in your house that will eventually fail.

Case in point, anyone who has had to draw their domestic water from a well (known in some parts of the world as a borehole,) is usually delighted when utilities are extended to their area.

The ground, by the way might either be drawing from that very same rain, or from an aquifer recharged by those rains. So all you’re doing is spending money and effort on a cistern and pumping system, each of whose parts as well as the effort it takes to install it, contains embedded energy wasted on ones’ own moral vanity. I’m sure it might make sense to you if you’re a enviro Ted Kaczynski type, but hardly a myth worth promoting among those who cant seem to add.



* Kaczynski’s rotting crib – formed nearly entirely from “plant matter.” It will haveto be demolished and disposed of within 20 years of its’ construction.

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The Cask of Amontillado

The French lost their chance to accuse Americans of being blood thirsty savages quick to resort to the death penalty -- but they've managed to recuperate from their momentary loss of words to come up with a great headline: Moussaoui "Walled up alive in Colorado". The article has full details of Moussaoui's future life-worse-than-death explained in such a way as to make any French idiot cry great huge tears of pain and anguish for their fellow countryman. According to the Fwançais, it's Moussaoui all alone against the great American Supermax.

Watch out for an upcoming intimidating expression of disapproval

Those notoriously firm Zeropean bureaucrappers.

An electrician from Gdansk who had faith and courage when it mattered most.

Lech Walesa:

"Until not so long ago, there was another superpower -- the Empire of Evil, which could be blamed for much that was wrong in the world." And if the Soviet Union was an evil empire, Walesa said, the United States was "an empire of good" -- a beacon of hope to millions trapped behind the Iron Curtain. But "today, there is no longer an Empire of Evil -- so who gets blamed for everything that goes wrong?"

While also offering constructive criticism of the US, he said:

"If the superpower had not recognized the dangers after September 11" and reacted as it did, he says, Al Qaeda and its supporters would have grown even bolder. "Today the world would be in total chaos, total revolution -- a total mess."

The fuse is lit!

Patron voyou

La boîte de Karl Zero va déposer le bilan et licencier 34 employés.

Typical French family gathering

French drug dealers use dogs to mule dope to a rave party and then gut them to recuperate the stash.

Zarqawi essaie d'amuser la galerie à Sarcelles

Zarqawi hams it up for the French youth in the 9-3.

Jospin, his forgetting the lessons of history, and the laughter it brings.

Taking exception to the EU policy on cutting off Hamas, Lionel Jospin writes in Libération. He also seems to have not learned that it takes both a carrot and a stick to use Palestinian financial dependency on the EU as a motivator to be peaceful enough to deserve a state.

Perceptive as ever, he also forgot that unanimity and speaking with one voice was what the whole “EU experiment” was supposed to be about. The difference between exceptionalism of this sort and “agreeing to disagree” is basically treason.

« It is necessary to maintain European assistance to the Palestinians. This is just as the president of the Republic said to the Egyptian and Palestinian presidents. He is right. But one wonders then why prior to that he let his government before adopt the position of the European Council, which was exactly the opposite of it.

Undoubtedly is will take delicacy to define the position properly. Hamas remains on the lists of the terrorist organizations, it does not condemn the attacks perpetrated in Israel, it does not recognize the existence of this State, and its notion of the relationship between the religion and state is opposite ours’. To grant them our assistance could, according to some, seem like recognition of this or an acceptance of its standards and its methods. Hamas, in spite of the international pressures, did not agree to yield to our preconditions. Would it no otherwise be necessary to help the new Palestinian government, in spite of what it is and with the risk of contradicting our values because of the very precarious living conditions of the Palestinians? »

It is precisely because they are so destructive and abhorant that this needs to be done acutely so that it ends as quickly as possible. What other non-military alternative is there? Wouldn’t a non-military solution to the situation, say, SANCTIONS be what the garden variety leftist want FIRST?

« Would such a situation be at least likely to lead Hamas to change its positions, in particular with regard to Israel? In the short term, on foreign policy to be effective, and without anything in exchange, nothing does not make it possible to discount it. What can make evolve/move Hamas, it is time. It is the logic of the responsibilities, they are the governmental constraints, it is the inevitable cohabitation with Israel in the exiguity of the territories already obtained or disputed: on the questions of water, provisioning, work, safety. Reality [of leadership] can lead Hamas to change gradually. It can also lead the Palestinians to ignore Hamas in the next election. »

So, no disincentive can ever be used with Hamas, right? So do what they want, and they’ll do what you want, right? DON’T EVER withdraw your funds from a situation that you find morally repugnant even if it’s for the larger good of the Palestinians because leading by example is irrelevant, right?

« Is this what we want? We hoped for democratic progress in the Middle East, but when free elections took place in the Palestinian territories, the result was not what we wanted. »

And this man wants to be President? Pluralism means the large poweres don’t always get what they want, but the root of the word is still PLURAL. Hamas’ ugly habit of killing off Israelis, Palestinian Christians, Gays, and anyone else they would need to, like get plural with is reason enough for even a Socialist to hold the line.The fuse is lit!

MDR

LOL. Des connards de franchouilles, accoudés au zinc, dans un débat chauffé à blanc, pour décider si Zacarias Moussaoui devrait être libéré au bout de 20 ans ou au bout de 40 ans. Quelle bande de pédés.

A simple explanation to why Chavez rare moments of silence.

Messing with Lula doesn't help either.
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Better luck next time, shitheads

Moussaoui gets life and the French are at a loss for what to do. The little anti-American bash they were preparing is spoiled. The French wanted to forget about Clearstream, Polish plumbers, their 10% structural unemployment, their rotten kids that dream about working at the post office, their shithole suburbs, their death spiral nation, their diminished standing in Europe, their virtual standing in the world -- and hyperventilate about those bloodthristy death-penalty-slinging Americans.

The worst thing? You mean besides actually giving birth to the piece of shit?

The best part of him ran down her leg. Aïcha el Wafi, mother of French terrorist - French suburban poster boy - and failed martyr, Zacarias Moussaoui declares, "To have one's son condemned to a life sentence for something he didn't do, is the worst thing that can happen to a mother"

A foreign-language Anthem. For Germany.

Sure to go over like a turd in the punchbowl.

But a politician has stoked a debate by calling for an official Turkish translation of the third verse of the song -- the only verse sung on official occasions because the others, including the first one starting "Deutschland, Deutschland Über Alles" and the second one ending "German Women, German Loyalty, German Wine and German Song", are deemed outdated, subject to misinterpretation, and a bit too fervent.

Courtesy of Allahpundit via Hot AirThe fuse is lit!

Briefly clearing the smell of mendacity

It seems fairly obvious, unless you take seriously the echo chamber of the left, and the raving madness of conspiracists when the only people they can accuse of oppressiveness is the societies they grew up in, and for reasons of adolescent immaturity hate. A sample:

No doubt the influence of the Knights of Columbus with its membership of 1.5 million means that the American press is not free to report on matters that threaten the security-survival of the Papacy. But as if this were not sufficient, in recent years a new organization has been created to serve as the point of attack on the American freedom of the press -- the Catholic League for Religion and Civil Rights. The next chapter is devoted to a survey of the League's chilling effect on this freedom in the 1990s.

Henceforth, their name shall be “the Bongmeisters”...


What IS obvious is where the press is clearly not free. Hard on the heels of a BBC/Reuters fearfully circumspect poll by Globescan asking where their own believability lies, a study finds the least free environments for speech, and the worst of them have either the totalitarian necklace of Socialism around their neck, or factions of Jihadists who are actively hostile to freedom of speech:

The list of worst offenders ranges around the world, also including Libya and Eritrea in Africa; Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan in Central Asia, and Syria.

"North Korea is the world's deepest information void," said CPJ Executive Director Ann Cooper, whose group prepared the list to coincide with World Press Freedom Day today. Not only do all journalists work for the Korean Central News Agency, she said, but all radios in the country are made so they can only pick up government-run stations.

The CPJ panel that compiled the list apparently had no shortage of candidates. Governments routinely associated with strict press controls, such as China, Zimbabwe, Iran and Ethiopia, didn't even make the list. Nor did countries where journalists are intimidated, injured or killed for their work, such as Iraq, Congo, Lebanon, Egypt and Pakistan.

Miss Cooper said that all the countries on the list are run by dictators, have almost no independent media, and severely restrict Internet usage where it is available at all.

Funny enough – the BBC in revising the reporting of the story they made by commissioning a poll was quick to play down why so many Americans no longer trust the press Far from a matter of being free, the problem is that much of their product is bought from and sold to the U.S.

The fuse is lit!

Cette annonce vous est transmise en Zerorama

Karl Zero, along with his filthy racaille anti-American, anti-Semitic studio audience are out.

So, which one is Goofy?

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If Michael Moore didn't direct it, the French don't like it

Libération PropagandaStaffel trashes United 93. Already dissed by French critics who deem the film racist for showing Islamofascists praying before going into terror mode, Libé nitpicks and offers up a set of very French objections to the film. If Thierry Meyssan had been involved, Libé would have been much more indulgent.

Yet another forgotten high-minded statement

After the forgotten public statements “expressing support,” little to none came from Europe on the UN Democracy Fund.

Contributions from Germany, Britain and France to the fund -- that had received 32.48 million dollars from 16 countries by the beginning of March -- amounted to no more than 1.6 million dollars, 609,350 dollars and 588,100 dollars respectively.

UNDEF expects an additional 16.54 million dollars in the coming months from five countries including Chile and Bulgaria.

Apparently exporting to dictators requires less customer service, or at least represents effective “constructive engagement” with them, regardless of what they tell the public.

Helle Dale:

What's the problem? Isn't Europe in favor of democracy promotion? Now, Europe likes to blow it own horn regarding its record on foreign aid, and Europeans constantly find ways to shame the United States on this issue. British Treasury Secretary (and likely the next prime minister) Gordon Brown are among those who have pushed for each developed nation to commitment 0.7 percent of its gross national product to foreign aid.
Few Europeans countries beyond Scandinavia actually attain this goal. But by dint of counting everything from student aid programs tointernational broadcasting to assistancetoformer colonies, European governments do look like they are giving more than Washington. As official accounting also mostly fails to add up private international charity, which has a much longer tradition in the United States, the disparity often does look embarrassing. Here, however, is an excellent opportunity for the United States to ask Europeans to put their money where their mouth is.
[ ... ]
Despite lip service from the German and French U.N. ambassadors praising the project, and despite the wealth of Europe, Germany has so far contributed just $1.6 million, Britain $609,350, and France $588,100. The figures were compiled by Thierno H. Kane, director of the civil organizations division at the U. N. Development Programme, and were circulated at a meeting in Berlin last week. A number of other European nations have pledged just $10,000 each year, though it should be noted that many of them are Central and Eastern European countries whose economies are still struggling

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Business as usual

Clearstream explained.

Abdullah the Butcher

Yes, but it's halal. French youth, Abdullah, attacks teacher while his bud films the action.

Kill faster, total war

Der Kompressor is back again.

And it’s better that a 3 a.m. pre-hangover döner kebab.

Zis week, Kompressor seeks de dog king.

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It’s like intervening on a drunk

The Washington Post published an editorial of uncharacteristic opinion and subject – the Doha round. Were not so much global economic activity not tied to it, it would hardly be their usual cup of tea.

The item was titled Rescuing Trade. Excerpts:

The chief obstacle to a deal is the European Union, driven by countries with highly protected small farmers – Ireland, Poland and, above all, France. Last year the Bush istration proposed cuts in farm subsidies that, even after stripping out the accounting tricks, amounted to a genuine concession. It was then up to the European Union to reciprocate, but removing such tricks from the proposal left virtually nothing of substance. When negotiators tried to shoft the Europeans at the Hong Kong meeting, French President Jacques Chirac personally called officials to ensure that progress would be blocked.

[...]

Where they have alluded to French obstructionism, they have been quick to add that the US farm offer is not perfect...

These qualifiers are true; but the larger truth is that French farm politics is the single biggest holdup.

The Post which is normally the protectionist when it comes to any critic of Bush said further of Chirac:

He needs to be made to feel that things he cares about – France’s reputation as a friend of Africa, France’s close political ties with Germany – will suffer if he allows the Doha round to die.

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I'm lovin' it.

Blogger Hou-Hou (Houssein) says one snarky thing about some cranked up anti-American about the movie United 93, and he gets it from a bunch of weaselly comments having nothing to do with 9/11, the film, or anything else but their unblinking, irrational hatred of the only “strong horse” against the intemperate mass murderers who want to dress your daughter like a potato sack.

Julie (whom Hou-hou is quoting) has a fit. The type you have when world events don’t concider, not for one moment your mood:

I wanted to vomit in front of the film United 93 which still will show us how the Americans are good, fine and how the good people sacrificed themselves for freedom

(Hou-Hou): I like it when she’s irritated!

Then the commenters bounced in off of the turnip truck:

Max: When Independence Day was still playing in the USA, certain American rose the hand on the heart during the speech of the president. I hope that their patriotic feelings will not go further when this film is played. It was already rather ridiculous the hand on the heart.

Flying camel: There is nevertheless a little hope in the land of Uncle Sam at the time when one hears a significant director like George Lucas says: "[...] the United States is a "provincial country" whose culture invaded the rest of the world by the means of the Hollywood productions."

In short, keep hope... The sleeper will finally wake up, as they say...

As if Max really knew if anything of the sort actually happened, the magnitude, or whether or not a handful of people doing something matters in a nation of 300 million people. All that seems to matter is that he finds an example of something to prop up his small-minded whining and penis envy.

Does, er…, “Mr. Camel” really think we’re going to “wake up” to his own, personal vision? That movie directors have anything whatsoever to do with the temperament of a culture?
Does Camelboy get that most Americans crack up laughing when they hear George Lucas’ quote? After all it’s Lucas himself that has the guilt-ridden lefty conscience because he isn’t much of an intellect, and is the one producing and capitalizing on this unfortunate, low-brow export.

Which seems to sell very well. What Herr Fliegende Kamel would think of a ticket buyer in Karachi or Berlin is not known.

All were preoccupied with anything but the actual story in the film except for the charming and Leilouta

I can't wait to see it!

The fuse is lit.

Mort de rire

French Web 2.0 dans toute sa splendeur.

Good-bye, friend

The celebrity follies that will never go away

George Clooney might be trying to make the genocide in Darfur a notch in his social bedpost, saying that "it's the first genocide in the 21st century" as if no-one knew, but it isn't. It was one of many at the close of the 20th century, and the only reason he didn't notice it is the same reason the modern and decayed left has been enabling evil. It is another by-product of militant Islam's indulgence in the evil of ignoring their own tradition of moral philosophy. It is nothing other than a convenient blindness to the notion of right and wrong - the very disease that the left suffers from.

They have refused to pay attention to the Americans who were desperately trying to call attention to the genocide in Sudan for two decades because the voices desperate to be heard were Christian with whom they have a political truc, and traditionally observant Jews whom they mete out a special hatred for. Face it dickhead – they’re dieing because your political ilk were looking for evil among the rural American Christians while those very same faithful were left to beg their neighbors for cans of food to send to Sudan.

Wake up. They're human. As human as those that attract the sudden pityof celebrities from the studies in your Los Angeles Schindler and Wright houses and condos in Manhattan and Monaco, skillfully appointed to convince someone that a human hand has touched them.

I recommend that you stick to your craft and stop obstructing the people who spent their lives in sincere exploration of human need. Let them aid the miserable in Darfur by getting out of their way. Now that it's convenient for you, they don't need the shade of operating in your self-promoting shadow. The world doesn't need another twit like Bono, and we just finished spending 25 years getting the ilk of Galbraith out of the way of alleviating poverty.

Make a movie or something, and stop seeking the love of detached strangers. If you can’t manage that stick to baby seals or some other distraction.

the fuse is lit!

Marxists in the mist

Inclusion and the socialist mind.

Man’s self respect is, of course, unfounded when relativism is the guiding principle of a person’s hatred of others. It’s only natural that since leftists are obsessed with race and genetics, that the ‘genetic diversity’ argument would eventually trump any notion that it’s about protecting a diversity of opinion.

Either that, or they’re desperately looking for a new voting block or perhaps even running out of victim groups to parade around for their supporters’ pity.

Via John Ray, we find this bit of headache inducing oversimplification of the soul reported by Libertad Digital.

Using the justification that man shares 98.4 percent of his genes with chimpanzees, 97.7 percent with gorillas, and 96.4 percent with orangutans, the Socialist Party will propose that simians are entitled to "human rights."

El Mundo reported on Tuesday that the socialist coalition has called for a press conference in which they will propose measures in Congress to immediately include advanced simians in a category shared with humans granting them "the moral and legal protection which, at the moment, only humans enjoy".

An international organization is seeking a declaration in the UN which will guarantee the rights of simians, and to defend their interests just as they do "of minors and the mental challenged of our species."

The journalist and writer Joaquin Araujo, who is also the president of this organization, will present the report with which he will seek "to defend the establishment of protected territories, so that chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans can continue living like free beings, by their own means".

He persecutes himself, therefore, this that "recognizes their rights to them the life, the freedom and not being tortured with experiments, with the hope to end this new form of slavery". According to the people in charge of the Proyecto Gran Simio "today only Homo Sapiens are considered members of the community of those equal ones to our species. The chimpanzee, gorilla and orangutan are our nearest relatives. They have sufficient mental faculties and a touching life to justify their inclusion in the community of equals".

The notion that all beings are helpless, and that this is a justification of the treatment of man is a natural next step for this argument of theirs. All food, housing, all needs of every sort, has to be provided by the state – just as a zoo or reservation must.

It proves something which is patently obvious about the Socialism’s “vision” - that if man does have all of his basic needs provided for in some impossible deus ex machina fashion, there is no need to be anything other than a beast obsessed with eating, eliminating, sleeping, reproducing, and with power within a clan. Somehow, I suppose this is supposed to justify something about their notion of man, or perhaps just the normalcy of sticking their opposable thumbs up their asses instead of being productive participants in the real human coexistence project that we call civilization.

Fiddlesticks, Green Goofballs. There is this little detail called free will that you’ve always managed to ignore and show contempt for. That lack of free will is the reason for our concern for them in their innocence. Why undermine it?
This notion that the animal world is a good analog of egalitarian society, and picture gay penguins coexisting with feminism-friendly Bonobo monkeys in the same big union local, I say simply –go camping- for once, and stop picking and choosing species to the exclusion of nature the way you do aspects in reality. Real, non-idealized animals fight over resources and do their best to NOT coexist. This behavior is the last thing greenies think about when they have their faked stigmatas and epiphanies on the environment.

Hilarious

Cyrille is having one of those great moments in contemporary art, and doing a nice job of poking fun at the fakers like those I used to detest in my student atelier.
Lost? Look for episode 20
Wait, wait. It gets better.

Celebrate Meat

Thanks to Tim Bleeeah’s polluted mind:

Even the Queensland Premier says they got what they deserved, as Melanie Christiansen reports.

MELANIE CHRISTIANSEN: The World Meat Congress has drawn the industry's leaders to Brisbane this week, closely followed by animal liberation activists, who've staged a series of protests.

This morning they invaded an abattoir at Ipswich just south of Brisbane, where they chained themselves in.

Protester Patty Mark says what followed was frightening.

PATTY MARK: The abattoir workers were very violent to us. We were chained right over the killing room floor. The owner came in with an angle grinder and started to… We begged for the police.

Amazing – they attack someone’s workplace and their line of work and expected to be treated with deference. How typical of people accustomed to shouting straight over anyone who disagree with them.

Bake a tête de nègre and go to jail?

Remember, some things because of their name or origin are magically less wrong than others. In a fit of zeal, elements and factions of the EU want to bring the humble hamburgers under their loving wing of regulation. Never mind the Dutch predilection for mayonnaise on pomme-frites, or raw herring, never mind the dubious biology of sushi inside the Périphérique, or the bizarrely names tête de nègre.

Yes, the Commission is a place of paradoxes, and frankly, the Eurocrats wouldn't want it any other way. As they sit in Michelin-starred restaurants, washing down the foie gras with champagne, conversations among the Eurocrat heavyweights inevitably turn to the poor diet of the average European. Apparently, the great unwashed of the old continent eat pizza, fries, and even that most unspeakably vulgar American snack, the hamburger. The results are there for all to see: healthier populations, rising life expectancies, more balanced diets than previous generations and ... Wait! Wrong spin sheet! What I meant was: rising obesity levels, bordering on the epidemic!

Remember, habits don’t kill people, it’s the specific, politically incorrect nation-of-origin of the things that are plugging the übermenschliche artery of the old-world man. Traditions get a pass, unless they're not "fair trade" and are intellectually linked to revolutionairies or starving pastoralists, or something, but they're only nearly wrong for now.

Or is it?

Unfortunately, it's unlikely these measures will stop European policy-makers from taking matters into their own hands. Take the recent proposal by the Dutch Health Minister Hans Hoogervorst. In what we can only assume to be one of his more frivolous moments, Hoogervorst suggested forcing food outlets to reduce the size of the hamburgers they sell. It's an idea right out of the Soviet Union cookbook: the government issuing decrees on the maximum diameter of your burger (it makes you wonder what Hoogervorst would make of this initiative, by the way).

Others aim to shrink not the size of the average burger but the number of burgers sold. The way to achieve this aim is, apparently, to slap a big, fat tax on every burger sold -- a fat tax, if you like. In order to drum up support for this initiative, European politicians are even willing to sell the odd big fat lie, for instance when a British government minister claimed that no fewer than 900,000 people in his country were claiming incapacity benefit because of obesity, costing the British taxpayers a shocking £3.5 billion a year. Stunning figures indeed. Unfortunately, they were based on a small clerical error. The real figure, the minister in question, Lord Warner, later admitted in a press release, was not 900,000, but a rather less impressive 900. That's n-i-n-e h-u-n-d-r-e-d, a mere 899,100 fewer than first suggested. The real benefit costs of obesity were therefore approximately £3.5 billion less than the £3.5 billion mentioned above.

Amusing, yet stupid. Since you’re entirely incapable of choosing for yourself, you need to be saved from the impulse of the evil, round, nearly Atkins-compliant bit of bouffe, and stick to that unidentifiable thing drowning in Hollandaise. The croque, somehow, won’t make you croak. After all, it might even have an ISO 9001 label on it.

Agitators have long learned to cook the books, but doing it by two orders of magnitude is normally a desperate measure reserved for cases when the claim is so wrong that you have to try something new after people stop buying the previous crock of scaring the money out of them.

Creeping socialism for thee, but not for me.

Creeping socialism always seems to follow the pattern of a successful society's non-productive sector promoting a growing ignorance of economics. While ‘our betters’ in the MSM are too well educated to let common sense get in the way, they go wild over the 7 percent Exxon makes. Not surprisingly there is no outcry over the 19.5 percent margin of profit on a newspaper. We find no hew-and-cry for investigation into the secretive and large scale effort to create a public addiction to those delusion inducing opinion-makers.
All we find is the usual bitching and moaning about others' success. It's as hypocritical as we've said here earlier about Microsoft and Apple's only "crimes": not being European "champions."

But I digress. Getting back to oil - it seems to become a commodity that's magically different than others when the left is angry and needs some press. The old routine where they feign a concern for people must feel pretty good to those idiots who need others to be miserable in order to nobly pity them.

Rich Tucker highlights the finer points of this ridiculous routine the left keeps using:

It’s critical to be aware of memes, because these days we’re all falling under the sway of a powerful one -- a meme that insists gasoline prices are too high because oil companies are gauging us. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi nicely encapsulated this. “We have two oilmen in the White House. $3-a-gallon gasoline is no mistake. It’s a logical follow-up,” she told reporters.

But oil prices aren’t set by the White House. They’re governed by the laws of supply and demand. Worldwide demand for oil is surging, especially in developing nations such as India and China. In fact, most of “big oil’s” profits come from overseas; three-quarters of ExxonMobil’s $8.4 billion first-quarter profit was earned abroad.

Lawmakers won’t tell you this, but taxes are a big reason gasoline is so expensive. The Energy Department says that in 2004, 23 percent of the price of a gallon of gas was taxes, while 18 percent was for refining costs and company profits.

And oh, by the way, Exxon’s “excessive” earnings were 7 percent higher in the first quarter -- exactly the same percentage growth as the 7 percent announced by media company E.W. Scripps Co. And former Los Angeles Times Editor John Carroll recently noted that the average newspaper profit margin remains 19.5 percent.

Indeed, I really would like to see if a nagging cabal of Nancy Pelosi types DOES succeed in artificially suppressing the price of energy when it’s supply is low, and it’s cost is HALF of the real value that it was 30 years ago. It takes the piss out of the other leftist lie that (supply and demand be damned,) energy should cost more.

No doubt they will propose a social solution: dispense cheaper fuel to the least economically successful who are going to be the least productive with it... We’ve seen this before. That creeping “redistributionism” cum folk-Marxism brings the stagnation that impacts the disadvantaged the most.

But folk Marxism is not limited by this economic classification scheme. All sorts of other issues are viewed through the lens of oppressors and oppressed...

Under folk Marxism, the oppressed class has inherent moral superiority to the oppressor class ... Class membership trumps individual character in determining moral standing ... It should be no surprise that this belief has failed to improve the lot of those regarded as "oppressed." It inverts Martin Luther King's call to judge people by the content of their character.

SO – according to this morally repugnant elite, there should be no open market for anything except the social classification that is the most irrationally revered. As ever, prejudice and racism has never benefited anyone, except for those selling the rest of us on it.

Alas if the Lamp of Liberty can illuminate in Arabic, why would the likes of the New York Times shun the same discussion of it in English?

The only way to know is to follow the money.

Anti-Americanism disguised as business regulation

If Apple and Microsoft were European companies, instead of being investigated by EU bureaucrappers, the companies would be given piles of EU taxpayer cash and be hailed as European champions (anybody heard of Airbus ?). Europeans wouldn't know a truly free and open market if it bit them on the ass.
Money quotes:
"the ruling shines light on a mindset that explains why Europe is becoming a continent where things are no longer invented."
(click thru to Wall Street Journal editorial) -- "We're not kidding when we say there's a connection between the Microsoft case and the European 20-somethings who riot in the streets because they'd rather have no job than take a job from which they might fail and be fired."

Separated at birth

What me, worry isolated?

Remembering the first Americans to fight back in the War on Terror

Anyone who say’s it’s ‘too soon’ to make films like this simply doesn’t want anyone to remember that 9/11 happened. They forget how many WWII films were made during WWII, and that they actually mentioned who the enemy is.

Chiraq à la masse

After his air travel tax, Chiraq should just create a 'Hamas Tax'.

French youths are not guilty of being violent scum ...

... American GIs are guilty of getting those French kids all worked up.

What Europeans are good at ...

... besides museums and opera houses.

Total lack of service notice

As capitalist lackeys, we are all rather busy right now. In fact we’re all working for the weekend, which is when you’ll likely see us a-bloggin.’

As for Erik, he’s actually locked in a (neo-modern yet elegantly appointed) apartment being held hostage by a ravenous pack of empowered women who simply can’t resist his charms.

Zeropean politicians' fave pasttime

If you can't win at home (and they never can), then attack the USA. Chiraq tries to create the Zeropean Google. With rivals like that, I'll take that as a buy signal for 'GOOG'.

Girls on film

Abu-sockhead’s feature video sends an obvious message – that things aren’t going well for him. The bosses need young flesh, and he probably can’t communicate to some of his own elements very easily, but has to try to prop their spirits up, especially since all but a handful of Iraqis (and Jordanians for that matter) seem to think he’s an idiot and a cretin.



Just after the cooking segment about subtituting kidnapped contractor as a low-fat alternative in your Shetland Sheep's Head soup, you can groove on the rockin' special effects! Makes you just want to up-n-kill a market full of civilians, eh?

Hot for Teacher

Forget the ‘ooh, ooh Mr. Kotter, Mr. Kotter,’these punks are getting an A in assault:

The assault on a teacher by and 18 year old pupil was filmed by a pupil on Monday, in a class at a a vocational school in Porcheville. The scene was filmed by an accomplice to the attacker, who then distributed the video around in the town of Val-Fourré in Mantes-la-Jolie.

Le Parisien published some of the images on Wednesday which show a young man throwing a chair at his teacher. The 18 years old suspect shown was later arrested.
[...]
The police officers now seek the accomplice of the attacker who could be charged with "grievous bodily harm". This sordid affaire is not an isolated phenomenon. According to police, filming assaults and trading the images has become a new fad among delinquents.

Woof, alors!

Monsieur le chien is at it again.

"A New Oslo Peace Process?"

Only if you call this peace.

Fjordman is back, and he seems to be tom-catting around to various blogs, including Gates of Vienna:

"The most basic instinct of all living things, even down to bacteria level, is self-preservation. In 2006, you have a natural right to self-preservation if you are an amoeba, but not if you're a Scandinavian."

He goes further. An excellent read.

The Jihad Against Free Speech

(Shookhran to Tom Pechinski)

Practical Use for China's Executed

While Europeans sputter with rage and indignation about such atrocities as capitalism, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and the death penalty in America, they ignore such things as Russian prisoners' (mis)treatment in Siberian gulags and the the situation in China (unless they can blame the Jews for it)…

"Marxism is not bad," one person wrote. "But it is a dream, beautiful only as philosophy."

Check out one of the favorite Chinese tourist destinations in Germany.

René Burri & David Alan Harvey

On Every Battleground, a Surprising and Formidable Life Force, a Love of Life, a Generous Idea, Words Full of Audacity and Decency

Not to put down the travails of the poor and downtrodden, but the descriptinves in Patrick Kéchichian's book review of a prostitute's autobiography are so far out, you would think they were a conservative's parody of a liberal's description of their idea of hero(ine).

Sedition, the light musical comedy

E-nough! has the straight dope on the adolescent rebellion they call European culture. In fact she keeps a funning tab on it. Having already acquiescing when faced with a deep seeded illiberalism that believes in the exact opposite of what it does, where does it go from here?

Once more, with FEELINK!:

Springtime for Hitler and Germany
Deutschland is happy and gay!
We're marching to a faster pace
Look out, here comes the master race!
Springtime for Hitler and Germany
Rhineland's a fine land once more!
Springtime for Hitler and Germany
Watch out, Europe
We're going on tour!
Springtime for Hitler and Germany...

"It is like wanting to display a dead elephant at the zoo"

"It may be good if the EU gets so big that it can no longer function — it will be like a rat with its hypothalamus removed, who keeps eating until it explodes," [Timo Soini] said, using the kind of colorful analogy that has made him popular with some voters.

Dan Bilefsky has more about Finland's self-described hairikko or "hell-raiser" (parts of which text were left out of the online version).

"The EU structure is very catholic," he said. "The commission president behaves like an unelected pope, the commissioners are his cardinals, while there are 83,000 pages of regulation that it likes to think are the gospel."

"I already have my church," he added, "so I don't need another religion in Brussels."

Soini compares Finland's relationship with the EU to its appeasement of the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

"Everyone knew that the Communist dictatorship was a harmful system, yet we talked about it bringing peace and prosperity," he said. "Now we use this same doublespeak when talking about the EU."

The doeskin-gloved conciliator: the EU approach of hedging, neither-norism, and willfully playing the contrarian to whatever the US position might be

The idea of the European Union achieving world heavyweight status through playing the doeskin-gloved conciliator — soft solutions to dangerous situations offered up at good hotels in pleasant locations — is dying an obvious but perhaps promising kind of death

writes John Vinocur in the International Herald Tribune.

The causes are self-incriminatory.

… Peeked at through the Brussels curtains, the view of what lies beyond is now one that makes untenable the old EU approach of hedging, neither- norism and willfully playing the contrarian to whatever the American position might be.

… But delusional thinking about how Europe can have a say in the world's problems without risking trouble or confrontation is growing fainter. At the very least, the EU's powerlessness is no longer coming as virtue wrapped as the equivalent of effective policy.

Rather, an acceptance of the old methods' failure as a real lever for world influence has seemed to emerge. Some indicative things have happened.

… In its weakened state, the EU can't talk seriously about pan-European armies to replace NATO, or, junior high guidance counselor-style, call for new multilateral conferences to win the confidence of repulsive rulers and regimes.

Nor is it portraying itself any longer as the Counter-Answer. For difficult months to come, you could call that promising.

OBL targets the French ...

.. and the French, showing off their usual bravery and self-flattering and illusional delusional résistance, attack an unthreatening target.

My drawing is no good. We look to much alike.

Zeropean social problems

Belgium has them too.

Bored of Education

Maybe they can get Dieudonné to play Buckwheat.

That hideout called the 9-3

Pamela reports, and the ideological decay of free states continues.

Sadly this news is not on the online edition, but today's UK Daily Telegraph has an interesting story on its print edition, page 16. Charles de Gaulle is one of Paris's three main airports, and is the newest. In a book to be published next week by Philippe de Villiers, entitled The Mosques of Roissy, the author states that the French frontier police have identified 50 baggage-handlers who hold extremist Islamic views.

Hot Air

The world’s first, full-service conservative Internet broadcast network has not been banned in China

…yet

EUtopian new-speak on terror

It’s the love that dare not speak his name.
Diana West:

How wunderbar, merveilleux and perfectly ripping that the European Union is creating a new "lexicon" to discuss Islam and terrorism so as never to conflate the two. The Telegraph tells us that EU officials -- having double-checked that George Orwell and his satirical pen are dead and gone -- are putting together a "non-emotive lexicon for discussing radicalization."

In other words, this lexicon speech code will prove the rightness of the inane accusations of oppression, thus linking all terror and all of Islam, even though it isn’t true. All subjects are now off the table unless one uses the new code-words.

All it will do is provide a cover for the promoters of terror by shrouding it in what’s left of the European understanding of religion.

Kennedy, Kerry, side with al Qaeda

Ted Kennedy and John Kerry leapt into action. Both used the nebulous, hateful pronouncements of a mass murder to criticize their own country. Treason? Aw, shucks no. They’re just plain folks. They can’t be responsible for anything they say or do.