The New-Old Objectification

In Sunday’s Telegraph, Niall Ferguson continues to flog his notion that present day America can be compared to the British Empire, on that he’s admitted is different because it is not an empire. One of the fantastic differences between the Telegraph and pathological nature of the BBC’s editorial ideology is that the Telegraph invites comments far more directly and without making a show of “letting you” Have Your Say, albeit with heavy editing by beeboids.

“The usual” view is always present. It has this vision of the world being a playground where all the children need to be equal for their own good despite the fact that some have given the world a reason to be on the “time out bench.” For the likes of these folks, even the Darfur genocide doesn’t get you an off-side whistle while “the good” in the world spend years on end trying to define the meaning of genocide anew.

Maybe it's because they are ignorant, arrogant, parochial and jingoistic.

Maybe it's because they have either invaded or forced regime change in more than 200 countries, many with democratically elected goverments.

Maybe it's because they would rather spend their time watching non-stop 'news' of such luminaries as Britney Spears and Anna Nicole Smith, than to bother to discover what their own government is doing to them and to other populations of the world.

As ever, the implied self-as-high-culture tries to form comparisons to American low culture. Low-culture to low-culture are quite typically strenuously avoided for the reason that they might produce some actual empathy. However, the matter of low-brow behavior cant be entirely hidden:

I am an American living in Britain and I have been abused many times by British people trying to get their jabs in at Americans. Mostly from teachers, believe it or not!

Believe me, I know. The inability to dislodge the prejudice for a person and a nation is a telling and ubiquitous feature of American dealing with Europeans’ lectures on a daily basis.

The difference is refreshing and enormous, and show a great breadth missing at the BBC. Between the highly predictable notes left by readers are those like the following:

As I see it, having visited the United States, the great advantage it's citizens possess is the ability to succeed, should they so wish. There is no class culture, consequently those who are successful are admired and indeed encouraged to achieve more. Envy and jealousy simply do not exist. It is something the rest of the world cannot understand and this is manifested by the so called "hatred" expressed against a country which is totally different to the class system which dominates all other nations.

Well, there’s always a “root cause” argument to be made too.

People hate America because they want the romance of the hammer and sickle, or the romance of a martyr.
...
The truth is it's not the US that's arrogant, it's the romantics that want a cause that exaults humanity into some kind of superman, when what is actually being offered is the chance to be ordinary.

A Typically European, Worthy of Locking Up in the Attic

...and a human embarrassment.


Le Pen morally unclear on Nazis:

"Our servicemen were not politically motivated. We were fighting for our country. There is no comparison between terrorists and the RAF."

Although renowned for his extreme views, Mr Le Pen remains one of the most influential politicians in France.

At least he’s honest. Euros wetting their beds over “Germania” is nothing new.

Engaged, Involved, and Curious

Maybe it’s the divine illumination they give us that makes them completely unremarkable

...in Britain, where 76 per cent of respondents ticked off the response "I don't know any of these candidates," though the country is just across the Channel from France.

In Germany, 62 per cent said they were not familiar with any of the four candidates, while the figure was 47 per cent in Spain and 43 per cent for Italy.

All of which is a sign of tremendous wisdom rather than apathy since all trends point to their leadership not mattering a great deal anyway:

...of la vie française (such as myself) need to stand back. In 1979, the British were 20 per cent poorer than the French, as measured by GDP per head. We are now 5 per cent richer, and the outlook is for that gap to widen further. The general economic background is a major part of this - the French economy has crawled along at a growth rate that has averaged half that of the UK's in recent years. Unemployment is stubbornly high, and even after a recent recovery, remains nearly twice the UK's.

The term “sick man of Europe” used to be used for places like Albania, now it’s used to point out those who used to point the “sick man” out. The common thread is obvious: socialism is necrotizing. It sounds like someone needs some peristroyka for the global public to pay attention to them.

Dominque de Villepin (who is a man) says ...

France is not a beat country.



Beaten down is more like it.

They do however, dispose of a few nickels and dimes

This whole single market thing might work out better if Europeans only had something known as disposable income.

Can Italian Leftists chew spaghetti and walk at the same time?

Not likely. If they would just stop looking over towards the USA constantly, they just might be able to put one foot in front of the other without tripping.

No problem, just have them set up a new deadline and call it "Lisbon 2.0"

Oh my. Looks like that whole Airbus thing is going from mess to hopeless mess and EU kommissars now fear that the same problems might befall Galileo.

Their Much Lauded Tolerance

Title: "Hillary" and "Obama" – A Woman and a Negro are Participating in the Campaign for the American Presidency



Religious Man: "This is another sign of the collapse of the Western civilization"
This is the advanced civilization that the left frets over offending, and ironically this cartoon is a sign of reform. Consider that it can be interpreted to mean that mocking the intemperate opinions of those who hide them behind their position in society is no longer the object of great fear.

-With gratitude to Hervé.

Only in the “Holy Land” of Europe

...is using the same, stale excuses for 37 years to cover for your hatefulness considered fresh and new. Of course since America is controlled by greedy atheistic corporations, bible-belt tub-thumpers, and those evil Jooooz (since in the minds of Guardian readers, there are no other Americans), as opposed to the Illuminati, Masons, those evil Jooooz, we can actually call it a centuries old European obsession with finding a bugbear and pantomime villain.

From the same fever-swamp:

Are you crazy! It's not just the foreign policy. Americans hearts are black with evil. That's why we don't like them.

So at the same time we’re powerless as a population, but all thoroughly responsible for American Foreign Policy – all at the same time. That’s one fantastic trick.

“Daddy Drinks Because You Cry”

Only in La-La land can terrorizing your children with fear be considered a virtue. After all, we all know how much an 8 year old can impact the output of CO2, what with all that irresponsible joy-riding they do and such.

Half of young children are anxious about the effects of global warming, often losing sleep because of their concern, according to a new report today.

What’s paralyzingly stupid, is that the author chooses not to notice that the kids are being propagandized out of their childhood joy - again, as if it’s perfectly sensible to channel your fears, politics, and obsessions on them.

Are you doing enough?

One in seven of those questioned by supermarket giant Somerfield said their own parents were not doing enough to improve the environment.

Children learn abstract concepts like this sort of fear from adults, and increasingly adults who are not their parent(s), only parrot them back to adults, increasingly their parent(s) for affirmation. Anyone unaware of this is either a post-modern idiot, doesn't have contact with kids, or couldn’t care less about them. In general, wanting to use them to reinforce your world view leads to them being little more than a mal-adjusted outcome of an experiment for the selfish.

The most feared consequences of global warming included poor health, the possible submergence of entire countries and the welfare of animals.

I guess that every time you turn the lights on, Jesus kills a puppy.

"While many adults may look the other way, this study should show that global warming is not only hurting the children of the future, it's affecting the welfare of kids now.

Now, just who is it hurting those children’s feelings?

Taking to Fascism Like a Fish to Water

In Europe again:

PARIS, Feb. 19 — European governments are preparing legislation to require companies to keep detailed data about people’s Internet and phone use that goes beyond what the countries will be required to do under a European Union directive.

In Germany, a proposal from the Ministry of Justice would essentially prohibit using false information to create an e-mail account, making the standard Internet practice of creating accounts with pseudonyms illegal.

[ ... ]

A draft law in the Netherlands would likewise go further than the European Union requires, in this case by requiring phone companies to save records of a caller’s precise location during an entire mobile phone conversation.

Now let’s try so square that with the complaints of people banging their spoons on their high-chairs that the US Government tasked the NSA analyze patterns in who terror suspects are calling on the phone.

I think I hear crickets.

- with thanks to Joe “Tiberius” Strummer

Leftist Feeding Frenzy

It’s nearly over, but oh, what fun! They didn’t realize that grown-ups were watching.

José Bové Must be Drooling

It’s all so continental. Canal+ runs a comic parody of Brokeback Mountain (their kind of good Americans) where the sheep are taken to an amusement park, ride a rollercoaster and the sheep-herder falls for a sheep. The sheep falls off the ride... The sheep-herder weeps over the sheep at the hospital. Cute and silly, but like the gender-bent "vachibou”, is a slightly sick way to entertain the kids.

Ain’t love grand?

- Muchas gracia to Val and her
delightfully nutty sense of humor.

The difference between a liberal and a leftist

The easiest way to tell the difference between a liberal and a leftist is that a liberal cheers against his country only when a Republican is in the White House, while a leftist cheers against his country all of the time

writes Benjamin Duffy of the University of Massachusetts.

Simply change the party in power, and liberals will change their minds on just about everything. Leftists on the other hand, are a lot more consistent. They're consistently wrong, venomous, anti-American and misguided, but at least they're consistent.

A Few That Get It

Imagine a world where the European Left went unchecked, and the moronic protesters in the “European Street” had their way. The obsession has arrived at it’s natural conclusion. Even many Europeans feel threatened by the disease of anti-American hatred.

Russian Thugs? Well, Now That’s Okay!

...The Americans are making us build an anti-missile defense!...

True only if you call a plain threat by Putin to attack an ABM site an anti-missile system. The notion of siting an ABM defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic (similar to the one that proudly and famously defended Moscou), is to defend Europe, and defend the US from Iranian, Pakistani, Russian, or n'importe qui rope-a-dope and double whammy.

The two-fer in this case is to blackmail North America by threatening Europe. A Europe not slavishly defended by the US gives in. Alliance ended, and n'importe qui exacts their economic and political terms over a thin-skinned western Europe. To boot, Polonia and Czechia are on the flight-path to the East Coast. No brainer then, eh? Nope. Not to Pancho who has no problem taking sides, and has no difficulty giving EUtopia over to a threat if he can have feel Euphoric about the prospect of New York, Toronto, or n'importe qui being vaporized.

Were the system only intended to defent the US, it would only be deployed in Maine and Alaska, in which care Pancho would point out some theory about an insular, but selfish America which as always is "damed if it do, and damned if it don't."

Were We to Use European Post-Katrina-esque Logic

We would tut-tut, imagine ourselves uncharacteristically faithful for the first time in our lives, and say that the Gods must be angry.

- with thanks to George,
who is still a smartass.

Even If THEY Think It's Kitsch, It's Still The Saddest Thing I've Ever Seen...

More here, unfortunately, including some good old fashioned anti-tourist bigotry too.

”Why don’t the bastards spend their money and leave!?!”

Les Lumières ont tendance à s'éteindre par ici

Pascal Bruckner blasts multiculturalism back to the stone age in a devastating essay (français / English).

Papon conserve sa médaille

Et puis, Mitterand avait bien sa Francisque. Deux personnalités de Vichy Fwance médaillées.

Blanc bonnet et bonnet blanc

The press can spin this by stressing the fact that Le Pen said it, but the fact is that Le Pen was only expressing a typically French point of view which is shared
across the political spectrum here -- from the extreme Left to the extreme Right.

Happy Birthday to We

Three years ago, ¡No Pasarán! started with a story reflecting on what remains a bugaboo and greenie strawman called VOCs , Dieudonné, who is still a fascist crackpot, and some dude with the hutzpah to name himself W.
imploring himself to hang loose and let the therapetic coolness enter the vertebrae.

Being a tad worried about my reputation [over at the blog Merde in France] I have decided to not write any controversial posts on this blog. Therefore, I will commentate on France's current events with all the psychotic calm and serenity of a Palestinian father who explains that he can't wait for his two surviving sons to become martyrs. How's that?

Sounds great. If anything changes on the blighty continent. we'll let you know.

High Density Mendacity in Marker and Ink

One minute, she’s a sweet, little middle aged milf “girl” in her 50s, the French Social Model is bad, and the Danish one (involving heaps of free-market economics by French Stalinistic standards), and the next minute, she’s a “raging” representation of Marianne, the embodiment and keeper of the state, culture, and the advertized good they say they do for humanity.

With all the contorting, and abandonment of their sacred cows, I’d say they’re desperate to get any candidate that might have ever used the word “Comrade” to neutralize whatever objective reality survived the press’ cognitive sterilization. It’s telling – they’re willing to pull out the magic wand of gender, a candidate's (nonexistent) political innocence, and the childish smears of a “happy-face/miserable face” comparison. And to think she started at the top when someone made a few phone calls on Royal's behalf to Mitterand.

The “independent” newspaper of record - balanced, nuanced, thoughtful, always seem to resort to their old Kärcher. You big, mean man! How could you say anything critical of a politico if she’s female and a lefty?!? I'll cry "rape!"

Funny word that, “Kärcher”... The name of a company that makes cleaning equipment, the French use it to describe anyone overbearing, intolerant, or aggressive. Itself a verbal blunderbuss with a menacingly teutonic-sounding name, it relies on their natural bigotry to impress you with the fact that’s just a freaking pressure-washer marketed by freaky power ranger models which appear to be adults, and employing some typically European quasi-S&M chic, vinyl body-suits, and names for products like “powerslave” that brings Gustav, Jean, und Ute to their happy place.

Coo-Coo for Coco Puffs

George Monboit points out in plain sight what no-one has been able to contend with in private. Conspiracy nuts are making the left look bad. In fact they make all of humanity look bad, and they are beginning to characterize a whole ideology of the left. They are the "black helicopter crowd", only 1000 times more numerous, and they fell off their barstools a long time ago.

The obvious corollorary to the belief that the Bush administration is all-powerful is that the rest of us are completely powerless. In fact it seems to me that the purpose of the "9/11 truth movement" is to be powerless. The omnipotence of the Bush regime is the coward's fantasy, an excuse for inaction used by those who don't have the stomach to engage in real political fights.

Let me give you an example. The column I wrote about Loose Change two weeks ago generated 777 posts on the Guardian Comment is Free website, which is almost a record. Most of them were furious. The response from a producer of the film, published last week, attracted 467. On the same day the Guardian published my article about a genuine, demonstrable conspiracy: a spy network feeding confidential information from an arms control campaign to Britain's biggest weapons manufacturer, BAE Systems. It drew 60 responses. The members of the 9/11 cult weren't interested. If they had been, they might have had to do something. The great virtue of a fake conspiracy is that it calls on you to do nothing.

The 9/11 conspiracy theories are a displacement activity. A displacement activity is something you do because you feel incapable of doing what you ought to do. A squirrel sees a larger squirrel stealing its horde of nuts. Instead of attacking its rival, it sinks its teeth into a tree and starts ripping it to pieces. Faced with the mountainous challenge of the real issues we must confront, the chickens in the "truth" movement focus instead on a fairytale, knowing that nothing they do or say will count, knowing that because the perpetrators don't exist, they can't fight back. They demonstrate their courage by repeatedly bayoneting a scarecrow.

Much as I disagree with the left, we all need them. The world needs to have a dialogue that challenges us to discover just what it is we advocate and why. A counterpoint keeps an individual from falling in love with his own ideas and his own image. In other words as frothing-mad as Monboit can get about the US, for example, he’s intelligent enough not to let himself be convince into comforting fantasies that prop-up his world view.

Just watch them. Watch them attack, even Monboit, whom even crackposts like to use as a generator of factual crutches. The swarming behavior of these loutish attacks isn’t consistent with any form of skepticism of a “scholar for truth.” It’s the exact opposite, and because they go so far to engineer a truth which is neither leading to their conclusions on its’ own, they invent it. Plainly, it’s evil.
It might seem cute when it involves a wish-seeking “UFO community”, but to concoct conspiracies in an effort to convince yourself of superior insight that an ignorant universe simply can’t grasp?

Can we say sociopath, kids?

Tales from the Human Warehouse

The entire society seem to suffer from the social complex of the ghetto.

The European Commission's annual report on "social protection and social inclusion" also found 10 percent of people living in households without anybody working as well as wide discrepancies between life expectancies between EU member states.

It’s not so much that ther circumstances are the cause of this mediocrity, but the symptom. The problem is that they imagined – have always imagined – that life could be engineered, at least the life of the non-elite.

It requires a low view of human nature to believe anything that powerless and disjointed can be made good, if not anything other than lifeless. They are, of course better than you and me, and we know this because they say so.

- With thanks to the studious and scholarly Arf

A fate worse than death

Having your passing analysed, Derrida style, by French pseudo-intellectual journalmists.

An Obsessive Impulse, Acted Out Even to Their Detriment

Compare and contract: “deep” European style news analysis which amounts to a recitation of old facts which an equally peevish American newspaper and magazine are willing to repeat. It has neither an outline, theory, or conclusion, and the reader comments display the same pedantry.

That fact ordinary citizens of European liberal democracies feel more threatened by America than Iran (or Putin’s Russia) is not just because of a lapse of judgment that can easily be dismissed. It is cause for alarm.

I don’t think nutty opinions and a zeitgeist are any reason for the US to structure international policy. Historically the reasons haven’t mattered to the anonymous street-corner critics of Europe. One year it’s staring down at the American “Health Craze”, the next year, we’re all obese. It never ends, and European public opinion certainly isn’t a meaningful guide to achieving anything – even things that (like maintaining pressure during the end of the cold war) result in a benefit to those critics themselves.

But all of it comes at a price, as we see in this item by a former Brazilian diplomat who quit in protest over the harm being done by the obsession of anti-Americanism by Brazilians on Brazil’s standing in the world and choices she makes. H. E. Roberto Abdenur made his feelings about this new infantilism known, and has paid a price:

According to reports in the Brazilian press, the ex-ambassador has been snubbed since openly criticizing Brazil's decision to recognize China as a market economy. Amorim gave him a chance to recant but Abdenur preferred to maintain his principles. The old friendship is gone now.

"There is a very strong ideological element present in Brazil's foreign policy," Abdenur told Veja. "The South-South idea as the dominant axis shows a backward anti-Americanism. This has been showing inside the Itamaraty (the Foreign Ministry) in several ways. There has been an indoctrination.

"Veteran diplomats, not only the young ones, have been forced to read some texts when they arrive or leave Brasília. Books with this ideological posture's bias. This is something irksome. You don't need a dean of discipline at the Itamaraty."

According to the retired ambassador his ex colleagues in the Foreign Ministry feel that Brazilian diplomats nowadays only get promoted when they are attuned with certain political and ideological line and not due to their capacity or skills. He also charges that there is no respect for plurality of opinions.

Now, like in a medieval show-trial of witchcraft, one must “recant.”

The Crushing Stupidity of Crowds

It takes some of that fantastic magical thinking to try to plausibly say that Maoism, or any other mutation of Marxism is “green” or ever was. They were the biggest polluters that ever were, completely against anything non-standard or biologically diverse, and were the lovely sort who tried to force people into a mono-culture using as their tools good old fashioned lefty “re-education” camps, mass-starvation, and repression.

And yet, and yet, there is a large subculture of zombies out there who think that red-makes-green. It might, but only in the way Arbeit macht frei, and there’s no-one left out there to pollute the world with their horrible dependence on oxygen. Despite all the facts, despite reason, they still believe that the environment would somehow be better when more people are farming smallholdings, and being less productive – which is defined by the amount of activity, including energy, chemical, and human that it takes to produce anything.

They continue to believe this trash because they are a cult. They are offered the grand, redemptive perfection of a future bucolic existence that would require them to spend they shortened lives in backbreaking work in the fields, even though the adherents are almost entirely urban, young, and employed for 35 hours a week if they have work at all. They are scared with a Armageddon story, but not SO MUCH or SO MEANINGFUL an Armageddon story that you cant repeat it to them incessantly to keep them hooked in. They are fed a steady repetition of the exact same “it’s worse than we thought” story every 2 to 3 weeks. The world-view sold to them is meant to reinterpret modernity, just as a cult tries to keep adherents well programmed by destroying their understanding of the outside world.

The buzzword is "decroissance" or dismantling of the sustained civilization we live in for one sustainable at a miserable level. They literally want to dismantle the product of active human effort of the sort that feeds, heats, employs, inspires, and entertains civilization. They don't want to be the only ones to pack up and leave town to live a third world existence, they want everyone else to as well. Granted, going back to a subsitence level would make "happy valley" a crowded place, which is why virtually all of humanity doesn't actually do this anymore by choice, so I guess 95% of us will just have to die for their sustained happiness.

They want to impose this on people by taking development away. Living in a developed socity would no longer be a choice you could make, because they would have it dismantled, presumable by people with some mechanical skills that aren't exactly agrarian in nature. I suppose they will compensate us all their concept of an sustainable afterlife.

To the hardcore greens the human world is irredeemably cruel, and there is no method such as reason, limits, or force that can deal with it, so one must make a paralyzingly large set of rules for all of those scary people. Capitalism, the individual act of creating something of value, is of course, very, very bad – but occasionally and regrettably seen as sufferable, but not normal, and only temporary – as if the notion of a entirely ruled and managed society and world is somehow normal, good, or fit for adults. It isn’t.

In turns there is affirmation, scares, engagement, and opportunities for public displays of redemption. “Greens” are nothing more than a cult. Your life really doesn’t matter to them – regardless what they say. All captured assassins who are sociopaths pretend they’re destroying someone or something in the interest of the common man. They wat your attention, and they want to believe that they died for your sins.

Even stranger is the link right under this image, offering comebacks to people who offend members of the crop cult greens. It includes comebacks like: “so you think material gain is economic development?”

True, but only when you’re wrong. China will surpass the US in the carbon emissions in 2009, but it’s economy is smaller. Will these Greens bring themselves to march against China or India? Certainly not. It doesn’t fit their simplistic script of class-struggle theory replacing reason and action, which is something they as a group are less likely to be capable of. Think back - these people were not the kids in school that excelled at math, they were the kids who did well at Sociology, and it was probably because they were looking for answers to personal questions that would otherwise require them to fess-up to family or friends without a written theory to fall back on. So too the imagined ills of society, and an imagined end to life itself. They came looking for answers, and they left as evangelists, kool-aid in had and ready to (once again) starve China to see if their theory is sustainable.

Pacifism, Brotherly Love, and Hypocrisy

Another great moment in Euro-double think: Austria defended the sale of 50 caliber sniper rifles to Iran (which has nothing to do with the insurgents in Iraq, natürlich!).

American troops have recovered more than 100 "Steyr .50 HS" rifles in Iraq, part of an Austrian consignment of 800 such weapons delivered to Iran over American protests that they could be given to insurgents, the Daily Telegraph reported.

The Austrian government approved the sale of the rifles, made by precision weapons maker Steyr Mannlicher GmbH, after it concluded in 2004 that they would be used to fight narcotics smugglers.

They called the sale “unimpeachable” – whatever that was supposed to mean in this context.

Imagine, if you will anyone actually believing that any of this fine Austro-Iranian weaponry would actually be used in close-quarters work like drug interdiction and not an infantry setting or channeled directly to their mass-murdering “partners is peace” to pick off coalition troops and their armored equipment.

As usual, European industry and society has whored itself just to make a few bucks. How much of their strange little lives is spent trying to rationalize this stuff and consolidate it with what they like to think their societies hold up as virtues.

State of Denial

It's an old story that has been repeated so many times before, but Leftists Snake Oil Salesmen continue to peddle their wares, and French pseudo-Intellectuals continue to blame the revolution-gone-wrong on Imperialist American meddling.

Hell and High Water

In France's vast ocean of despair, this stuff isn't even on the radar. The French preSS would rather report on Sarko's flotsam and Ségo's jetsam.

If It Succeeds, Kill It

So goes the mantra of the EU that wants to “crack down” of Swiss tax rates. Sovereignty is irrelevant to them, even the unwilling.

This week, the European Commission identified the capital of the eponymous canton, and neighbouring Schwyz, as examples of “unfair” fiscal competition practised by Switzerland to the detriment of European Union members.

Cut it out! You’re hurting their feelings! It seems the Swiss cramp the EU’s style by, like, existing and stuff.The Fuse is Lit (No Pasaran!)

Statement cum News Story

How often have we seen this before? It always has to do with a future projection.

EU: Our economy will outpace U.S. in '07

It forecast both the entire European Union and the euro currency area would grow at a brisk pace this year, upping its prediction for the euro10.9 trillion (US$14.3 trillion) EU economy to grow by 2.7 percent -- instead of 2.4 percent -- and raising its euro-zone forecast to 2.4 percent from 2.1.

The EU executive said the United States will grow 2.5 percent.

"According to our assumptions, the United States will grow this year below the EU growth rate and slightly above the euro area growth rate," EU Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Joaquin Almunia told reporters.

Whatever the hell than means. In any event, let’s make a note of this story, shall we? An independent forecaster is calling down US growth at 3.5% from 4.2%, and the White House is probably trying to mollify both optimistic and pessimistic prognosticator by calling it closer to 2.9%. All a far cry from another disappointing talk-up from Brussels.The Fuse is Lit (No Pasaran!)

Bravitude

Les aquoibonistes qui siègent se paluchent à Bruxelles

The Zeropean Union says, "What's the use?"

Al Qaeda sur Seine

11 caught, and hundreds still on the loose.

Even by French standards this is completely idiotic

From the back cover of the book "Google-moi (America's second mission)":
"Our mission is to organize all the information in the world" ; "Don't be evil". These are the two mission statements of Google Inc. studied by Barbara Cassin in this political essay. She demonstrates that this mission can be expressed through two concepts : "organize" and "do good". How can one not make the parallel with the final words of Bush's speeches, following 9-11, when he prays to God to wage a "just war", "the combat of good against evil". The extraordinary story of the creation of Google, and its development leading up to its spectacular IPO, the "best" search engine, by two Stanford students, allows Barbara Cassin to take a new look at the decisive question of democracy's cultural dimension. Google is the champion of cultural democracy, but without culture and without democracy. Because it is not a cultural leader (information is not knowledge), nor a political one (click-through democracy is not democratic).

Even if they were, it doesn't make a difference

Not everyone in Europe is a scumbag anti-American pussy like the French.

Lovefest for a Dictator

Never mind the prison camps, the failed economics, the cult of personality, or the repressive nature of the entire society, Le Monde Diplomatique Director Ignacio Ramonet is gathering a “consencus” of French journalists to write an “authorized” retrospective of Castro’s paradise on earth.

"I am optimistic. I think the book is going to work in France, where there are honest journalists that have already started to work on the text. I am telling you, I have already 15 invitations to promote it in 15 cities of this country" [Cuba], he said.

Get a room, already.The Fuse is Lit (No Pasaran!)

Give them what they want Mr. Harper

Seriously, just give it to them. The Libs want to use an alien concoction to mandate an impoverishing state of Kyoto compliance on the population and the Conservatives in 60 days that they wouldn’t even have been capable, stupid, or audacious enough to attempt in all of their years in power? Fine! Propose something really effective. Something that they really want that will meet Kyoto, Then let them face the real consequences of it – not just their decade of wheedling, evasive PR, and lame guilt trip.

Put in for a first reading a law banning all mechanized transportation.

No more self-investigative trips to Nepal. No more trips back home to lash out at Mom and Dad now that you're hitting 40. No more pedantic conferences, interfaith 12 stepping, and above all no more industry or human productivity!

Kyoto targets? Achieved prestissimo and sofort.

Let the grey-haired aging children too old to care about the future figure out how Canadians will live with the persistent and hypocritical luddism of the left. After all, it’s the perfect day for it. February 14th is the day where women can blackmail expensive trash out of men without actually having to face them with the terms of surrender simply out of opportunistic zeal – just because (for the same reason the left demands and marches and trashes civilization’s achievements) because they can, and it feels good to them.

Oh and by the by, keep the grown-ups in charge to deal with the real risks - the ones that weren’t invented by feelies who need easily digestible issues to give their empty lives meaning.

The Prize goes to Pasty Pascal

The most completely implausible rationalization of European Anti-Americanism that I’ve heard all year. It comes from serial "triangulator-but-I-don't-know why" Pascal Bonface interviewed in a propaganda rag that doesn't even bother running news - they depend entirely on wire stories, and pepper them with outbursts of tree-worshipping polemical tract that appear to predate the age of reason.

HUMA[nité]: Faced with American domination, how can France and Europe favour multilateralism and the research of diplomatic solutions to conflicts?

BONIFACE: First of all, the “anti-American” debate has to be brought to an end. As soon as George W Bush’s foreign policy is opposed, accusations of anti-Americanism pop up here and there. Incidentally, the phenomenon is similar to the anti-Semite accusations made as soon as the Israeli government is criticised. These shortcuts can be accounted for by the intellectual laziness which consists of demonising those who do not agree with such and such a policy. The problem with America is not American society, which in many ways could be a source of inspiration for France (representation of minorities/diversity, integration), but the USA’s foreign policy. This is illustrated by the war in Iraq. It is essential that France, and the other European countries constitute a counterbalance to curb the most harmful tendencies of American foreign policy.

In other words; “have you stopped beating your wife, and if you didn’t, didn’t she deserve it anyway?”

French anti-Americanism is as older than Boniface, older than me, and older than George Bush. The continuation of his argument also assumes that European demonisation is the only type that can be labeled criticism. Like the Iranian “limits of free speech” argument to “question” the holocaust, add to L’Humanité’s groaner the use of the counterpoint offered by neo-Nazis when you show them a picture of the gas chambers, and you have a real winner on your hands: the kind of European who think their criticism should never be permitted to suffer from having to face retorts.

In 2003, Chirac, Shroeder, and Putin wanted above all else to maintain the “balance of power” that provided them with an economic franchise, and provided the rest of us with the repression and decay in Arab and Iranian culture which bubbles over into every part of the world. Thinking that “balance” precious is more than just laziness, it’s a policy blunder, and at it’s core entirely absent the promoted euro-morality which imagines itself upholding human rights, even yesterday’s newly invented ones – all of that done in favor of selling their laundry detergent and automobiles.

To understand just how ignorant this “expert” is, you have to imagine that this is a new and recent phenomenon which should get any “thinking” person stoked about transnational warm-fuzzies:

We are now living in a world where what happens outside of our country has direct repercussions on our daily lives. On both economic and strategic fronts, globalisation has ruled out the notion of boundaries.

In other words, something that has been true since the invention of the boat is suddenly a threat. What would the world do without this man’s wisdom.

Putin’s Penetrating Analysis of America Ignored Putin’s Russia

It must be due to hideous American lording over of people, if not in fact but in spirit... somehow...

Russian military prosecutors pledged Monday to investigate allegations that young conscripts were forced into prostitution by fellow soldiers – the latest claim of rampant abuse in the nation's armed forces.

How very professional. That deserves a big ol’ Army Hoowah!, eh Vlad? Ignored likewise by a press that won‘t question the tzar-like power some will confer to themselves, as long as a democracy like the US where there are presidential term-limits, and the very concept of anti-imperialism was founded – lo’ that they would provide is with this sort of spew: “Putin reclaims Russian clout”

Squeal like a pig, Private. You realize that there are anti-military, anti-establishment types who will pay big money for someone to serve them up the fantasy that you get to live in the first person. They come up with headlines like this: “Russia Military Allegations to Be Probed.” Probed. That’s hilarious, up until the moment that you imagine that it’s far more degrading than the dozen or so real criminals abused by American soldiers at Abu Greib, and that no Spaniard, German, Dutch would ever march for an abused and violated Russian enlistedman.

Anti-ism

Froemr editor of Die Zeit, Josef Joffe writes in The American Interest magazine:

"It is impossible to make a Norwegian say that Americans are intelligent", notes a Norwegian author of a book on anti-Americanism. Asked whether it didn't mean "anything that 70 percent of the Nobel Prize winners in history have been Americans", he responds: "No, it does not help. Even if all Americans were professors, we would call them stupid." Why? "Because by speaking negatively about them, we elevate ourselves. It confirms that we are the opposite. We Europeans have refinement, culture, and intellectual life. To think this way raises our image of ourselves."

The litany continues. America gorges itself on fatty fast food, wallows in tawdry mass entertainment, starves the arts and prays only to one God: Mammon. Instead of subsidizing what is serious and high-minded, as do the Europeans, the United States ruthlessly sacrifices the best of culture to pap and pop—never mind the Metropolitan Opera, MoMA and the world's leading research universities. Although these schools are much admired, the compliment is routinely followed by, "But they are for the rich and well-connected, only." Like all such anti-Americanisms, the myth is promulgated in blissful (or willful) ignorance of the fact that Harvard, Stanford and the like subsidize 60 percent of their students with loans and grants, while Ph.D. students normally have both tuition and living expenses paid for by the university. Even though this complaint is routine lore in Germany, German data show that despite open admission and no tuition aid, 85 percent of all German students are middle-class and higher.

More poignant still is its’ vintage fron Vienna in 1999:

The posters grew increasingly threatening: 'USA = Nazi', . . . '1939 = Hitler, 1999 = Bill Clinton; Jews = Then, Serbia = Now'. . . . Replicas of the United States Flag were all over the rally, many with a swastika covering the blue and white corner. . . . It was clear this was more than a political statement; it was a war against our country's mentality.

And some wonder why Americans ignore and even sometimes detest European views: Sarajevo is closer to Paris than New York is to Saint Louis, and European let a genocide continue for almost a decade waiting for people to cross an ocean to end it, and yet they’ll stand there and call anyone else the epithet that Europe made famous as the cost of 52 million dead. They call Americans “Nazis”, and conceal their view from their own obsessive delusions which give them license to blame others.The Fuse is Lit (No Pasaran!)

Dismayed

From “tomorrow’s” eternally post-dated Le Monde:

The intellectual Alain Finkielkraut said Tuesday that he is “dismayed by the current state of the left”. “The socialist Party is in a coma.” “The left chose the way of Mitterrand.”
[...]
“There are other possibilities which are offered to the voters” for the presidential one, he declares. “There are perhaps candidates who are more suited than the left to take into account the problems and deal with the disaster”, he said.

He spoke also of consistency and of wishing to see TV enviro-vangelist Nicolas Hulot as their candidate.

“If I speak out in the countryside, it won’t take the form of a rallying. It will be by an analysis of the problems” because “we’re living a kind of disaster”, he explains it. “I think that the schools are in a disastrous state, I think that civic morals is in a disastrous state, I think that the rise of incivilities took absolutely terrible proportions”, he detailed. He concluded “Ecology requires we that we change.”

I’m a lot more worried about people trying to “live off the land” in an inefficient, starvation inducing, pre-scientific fashion than that, but so be it. Though his frame of reference is not that different than those he sees flaws with, Finkelkraut is part of the way there, and at least moving in direction of returning to the classical rationalism that in the past sought a morally sound and serious view of human affairs that made real efforts to alleviate burdens and difficulties – not just calling out for one outrageous measure after another to display a desire for life, somehow, to be ”perfect” though Socialist meddling in people's lives.

Kabuki Theater

Israeli lefties looking for someone to in indulge their good intentions, had to go to Washington to find a Syrian reasonable enough to talk to, in spite of decades of Syrian window dressing about wanting to make peace while they willingly set up terror organizations pointed at Israel such as Hizballah and the Pali hijackers, but only managed to get scores of Arabs killed, especially if they imagine that anyone can get beyond the narrative of hate and death.

Don’t waste your time.

Meanwhile the usual tossers blame America for the dashing of their moment of charitable feeling of peace and lurrrrve that they’re willing to withdraw at a moment’s notice.The Fuse is Lit (No Pasaran!)

It's part of the building's foundation

Much like high unemployment, anti-Semitism is a structural problem in France.

Demanding a Two-State Solution to a Non-Problem

Arthur asks why a French political meddler would want to see a Yugoslavian Canada – without asking Canadians if they’re interested in ‘regime change.’

Je parle français très mieux que vous et je vous merde

Ségolène lurches far-Left but sometimes it's hard to tell because her spoken French is so poor.

“Like giving a child a loaded gun”

A sickly view of the power of law: make criminal whatever fashionable nonsense will seem nice.

But what is to stop zealous Brussels officials fulfilling the Napoleonic tendencies often ascribed to them by eurosceptics and laying down the law to member states?

The first limit was applied by the European court, which said the EU could only use criminal law to achieve its objectives when it could show that "effective, proportionate and dissuasive" penalties were essential to combating serious environmental offences.

Sophisticated, sophisticated, sophisticated, but the clothes don’t always make the man when they’re so simplistic about structuring law as to replace the prosecutorial powers of “lower” bodies as if the pecking order were more important than checks and balances or the propriety of who enforces what. What is left of democracy when people receive law from on-high and not permitting the “devolved” state of populations deciding law closer to home?

Look out shortly for a turf war compelling states to dispose of a millennium of common law or centuries of Civil Code.

In many cases where the EU makes law, member states may already apply criminal sanctions across the board. However, in cases - like environmental crime - where some countries only apply civil penalties, the Commission may be tempted to act to bring consistency.

Ooh, that sound so... how shall we say... “efficient.”

Chocolate Makers Killing Them with Kindness

Whacky Dutch activist wants to bankrupt a developing nation in Africa.

Guess, Just Guess the City of Origin...

of “mantyhose”. Now be a good girl, and follow whatever trend you’re told to. I'm sure they'll sell like hot cakes.

Update: in view of all that, I can't even gage the coolness of this comment by Linda:

All those years we women have been wanting to rid the world of the abomination known as pantyhose and now the manufacturers want to subject "men" to it?

Kiss me, you fool.

- With thanks to Papertiger

Sanctimonious Nonsense Favored over Reporting

The BBC, ready to report yet more of that comfort food for aging radical-symps that they like to call news, leaps on a statement by Putin that the US is “very dangerous” and is using almost unconstrained force around the world. This from a man more than willing to use unconstrained force on journalist and his own population. After all, THAT’S okay – there’s a long, auspicious tradition of that... Lost is the fact that Putin has a stranglehold on Europe’s energy, and is manipulating it to effect.

The irony is that Putin’s statement isn’t carried on the World Service or Radio 4, but appears on the top of their news page today along with what amount to an advert for Airbus, which BBC listeners might be shocked to find out is actually a corporation.

Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani is among delegates at the conference.

The conference, founded in 1962, has become an annual opportunity for world leaders to discuss the most pressing issues of the day.

On their planet, the Soviets attended western power security summits in 1962.

Funnier still, the story titled with Putin’s slag has virtually nothing to do with the US, and reveals quite plainly that the dynamics of the event reported were over a disagreement in approach between Merkel and Putin vis-à-vis Iran and nukes. The smear of the US was a throwaway line, and a distraction, and yet the all-knowing anonymous sophisticate from the BBC fell for it.

Nonetheless, modesty must be stopping them from addressing this part of the report:

European diplomats are hoping to hold informal talks with Mr Larijani at the two-day summit.

It would be their first meeting since the collapse of talks last year and the imposition of limited UN sanctions on Tehran for its failure to stop the enrichment of uranium.

It’s baffling that they won’t discuss that tremendous bit of diplomatic success. After years of pressure, the Iranians might talk to Europe about the nukes that they’re building to put on the missiles with a range designed specifically to hit Europe.

Hope for French suburbs

Africa shows the way for French youths to create jobs in their own slums. Next stop, Sarcelles.

Make 'em eat sour cheese and salsa pork rinds

Merguez Party

French Court decides that the kids are alright.

San Francisco Values

Little wonder that San Francisco is so appreciated by the French.

Pancho's New Nose Fetish

How very retro.

Generally reserved for demonized Rabbis and Robber Barons, we find this new bit of sur-text found otherwise in Munich circa 1942 or in Tehran today.

But They're Just Looking for a Little Tongue

The Pierre Trudeau strategy: get an adequate number of language laws in, so that your citizens end up taking charge over everyone else. Now control freak language-eugenicists are trying it in Europe, and are using a "more equal than others" type argument. Maybe they imagine no-one will react to the proposal because the overwhelming graciousness of the statement. After all, they did use the magic word "equality," even if they actually mean to impose its' opposite.

The CPLDE proposes that French should have the ultimate linguistic primacy in situations where EU officials or politicians are squabbling over what an EU text actually says when written in several languages.

"All languages are equal and all the national sensitivities are duly protected. However, as regards the interpretation of texts it is better to be certain what we are writing," said Mr Druon.

He argued that French should be "the authoritative" language as it is both related to Latin - in which Roman law was written - as well as the language of the Napoleonic code.

All the while making moronic assumptions about which languages are scientific sounding, romantic sounding, and other corner-store codswallop that hasn't been true for a century. Were that the case, German speakers would dominate science, Italians would be ubiquitous in contemporary art, and the French would actually seem the least bit precise in their logic.

Wow, he must sure think he's "deep," y'know man?

Pink Floyd's peddler of paraded perpetual pain ignores just where it is the terror has come from for 40 years, and like the Euro-preSS, refuses to direct attention to
insurgents killing Iraqis, only Americans killing anyone they can feature on page 1. Daily they become more and more enamored with those rollicking days of 70's era murders, hijackings, and kidnappings by nebulously well funded bands of "passionate youth".

Face people like this, and you get a long, irrational story of how they contextualize their life, and whatever selective experience they tell you about, into their opinions. It's a poor substitution for making moral and ethical choices. When you transpose their opinions into the world of domestic crime, the conclusion would be to not bother investigating murder for reasons they assume are not worth explaining.

As for Searle, I don't care how he tries to explain his lack of perspective to himself, or tries to explain that it's due to some interpretive Catholicism, or because he really loves his country, or any number of other lines I've heard – these people are covering for murderous gangs, just as they did when they were in love with Castro, the Sandanistas, and Pol Pot.

Sentimental Journey

Warm fuzzies all around:

With the collapse of Communism, the ideology of the Red Army Faction seems anachronistic to the point of quaintness, and certainly no longer threatening.

Except for the fact that they weren’t just murderers, but also a bunch of complete tools.The Fuse is Lit (No Pasaran!)

Mindless Shatner Worship

Oh, Lighten up. Will ya?!?The Fuse is Lit (No Pasaran!)

Not as “Aware” as They Think

5 cm of snow over part of the nation bring
“environmentally aware” Britain to a screeching halt.

However, the Arctic blast is not expected to last; there should be a return to the wet and milder weather over the weekend.

Righto. As soon as we get rid of global warming we can “start controlling the weather again.” In the mean time, the evil, SUV driving residents of Oswego, New York are expected to have 2,5 meters of accumulation by Sunday.The Fuse is Lit (No Pasaran!)

The resentments constitute common fare not only among Western Europe's cultural and media elites, but also throughout society itself

What irritates me the most about the constant harping of the German media is that they seem less concerned with what is wrong in their own backyard than with what is wrong with the United States. School shooting in Colorado? Big news. School shooting in Erfurt, Germany? Not really that important. Race riots in Los Angeles? Extremely newsworthy. Race riots in France? Not so much. It seems to spring from malice towards the United States, as if every news item is supposed to be a stick in our eye. It’s almost if they know who their enemy is (the US), and then intend to follow their enemy around and make sure that every slip-up (real or imagined) is shown to the world in the worst light possible. Then they wonder why we think that they’re anti-American.

Benjamin Duffy explains why the Americans have replaced Germans as the new Nazis. Meanwhile, Andrei S. Markovits points out that anti-Americanism is essential for Europe's identity. The resentments

are present in polite company and acceptable in the discourse of the political classes. They constitute common fare not only among Western Europe's cultural and media elites, but also throughout society itself, from London to Athens and from Stockholm to Rome, even if European politicians visiting Washington or European professors at international conferences about anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism are adamant about denying or sugarcoating that reality.

Radical, Revolutionary, Socialist “Equilibrium”

How a Socialist former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas learned to love the (Iranian) bomb. This makes collective and socialistic sense: because Iran’s missiles are pointed at Socialism’s great rhetorical enemies – any society that looks like his own.

As such, he’s willing to imagine that some body “makes the law” which can’t be true or necessary in a world where strategic balances determine the state of relations, and is more than willing to cave in to threats for one simple reason: the US, he believes, will permit it’s well being to be jeopardized by fickle European elite playing PR to a fickle European public.

For François Mitterrand’s former [foreign] minister, “it is not inevitable that to have the atomic bomb is a worsening factor”. “It is a function of reestablishing of the balance and which says balance, known as maintenance of the peace”, he added. “On the contrary, if in an area of the world an over-armed powerful country has the atomic bomb they get to make the law”, explained Roland Dumas. He called for “a general negotiation with Iran to begin very quickly”. Last week, a maintenance with Jacques Chirac to the New Observer, New York Times and International Herald Tribune caused a sharp reaction. Before reconsidering his remarks, the president had considered openly that Teheran could become a nuclear power.

As if there ever was a strategic balance or a moment of peace between the parties in the Gulf to begin with, and blocking Iran’s nuclear ambitions were even in Chirac’s power, or that anyone will even ask France what it thinks.

Except for an ability to make the law by threatening to nuke Iran in retaliation of a nuclear strike, they have nothing to say to this point – period – and they certainly aren’t going to use their world-beating ”bravitude” to “lay down the law.”

The only way to believe that an nuclear armed Iran would create a strategic balance would be to assume that Saudi Arabia doesn’t exist, and heeb-hating mites are nesting in your overly coiffed aging scalp.

What? Are they High?

Writing about the Charlie Hebdo/MoToones court fight, these leftist assclowns are accusing the center-right of colluding with islamists, while blindly failing to notice the blatant, habitual, and pointless Fasco-Green-Red undermining of any kind of available social order that reminds them of their parents.

...last December 9th in Lyon the Minister of Interior had required that in the preamble a sentence appear recognizing the right for any Moslem to change religion, or to declare themselves an atheist. Let us recall that in Koran, this fact is punishable by death.
Banding together, the religious organizations rejected this preamble, and the government backed off.

Ironically, in what they state as a defense of secularism and a social “solidarity” they’re attacking their political foes and accusing the equally weak-kneed center-right of somehow making the left-leaning Charlie Hebdo publication print the Mohammed Cartoons in the first place. With deep concern for what the Koran declares legal under their canon laws, they are offended by the suggestion of making it self-limiting in scope in civil law. Faced with the non-compliance of a nearly-meaningless interfaith lovefest, they criticize anyone for backing down.

It’s puzzling how stupid some people can be to the ways of the world. The internet makes the kind of banishing of information that lefty is accusing the right of not engaging in rather meaningless. Right or wrong, truth or lie, the information goes out there – and so do the critiques, fiskings, and corrections – something lefties enamored with an affection for only permitting private media competition if it’s zombie-like in it’s taste for intellectual diversity and prefaced with the words “indy-“ or is “ATTAC”.

By letting the Charlie Hebdo court case continue for the offence of blasphemy made up in racist offence (did they take Mouloud Aounit like advising?), Boubakeur and the UOIF can maintain a pressure on the whole of French society. If they win, they will have to the great pleasure of the Catholic Church and other religious dogmas, to insert an important corner against the freedom of expression and the right to free criticism of all the dogmas.

Since when have these people ever cared about defending a Church or any other domestic seeming religious body’s right to free speech? They might as well buy this line of crap style of rhetoric about “legality” and the “right to question this or that” that pleases them politically, and take it for truth, and rattle on about what they think “the culture” is or that it’s merely to be employed for their goals, not preserved as a plain upon which people can freely conduct their lives in.

The Author's Name Says It All

...George Bush's legacy will be all about the war. It seems certain that he'll be remembered, mostly, for soldiers killed, billions wasted, terrorism spawned and worse decisions on top of bad ones. ...

Unless you can’t even agree with yourself:

They'll remember George Bush in near apocalyptic terms. He'll be the denier-in-chief who failed to acknowledge, much less confront, the coming ecological catastrophe.

etc., etc., Katrina, Katrina, etc., etc.

Weather patterns and ocean currents, the product of ''unevenly heated rotating fluids,'' are already difficult enough to predict. ``It's like being at a bank when a crack addict robs it. You don't want to get the crack addict excited.''

You see, they USED to be able to predict the weather, and as for not wanting to anger a crack addict, the red-cum-green left were the ones most likely to appease the Soviets and Eastern Europeans whose “robust,” "solidaristic," and cheerful collective industries polluted beyond belief, and had no difficulty romanticizing that form of labor by compulsion. That CO2 emissions are rising 3 times faster in Holy Land of Europe than they are in the US doesn’t seem to matter to this clown when he’s dispensing other peoples' “legacies” while his appears to be, well, his miserable nature, and this hateful column of his.

- The scribbler’s name is Fred Grimm

The Fuse is Lit (No Pasaran!)

Le nain de jardin est près de ses sous

La Fwance. Où les chefs de partis communistes descendent dans des palaces et laissent zéro pourboires au peuple.

Auf Wieder-bye-bye!

Exodus: Germans are leaving the EU in droves for the US, Switzerland, and Canada.

Dr. Nina Lenhoff, 31, from Münster, moved to London for training in psychiatry because she thought it would be nice to live in another country. “But once I got here, I was just amazed,” she said.

Her salary is nearly double what she earned in Germany, and when she had a baby 18 months ago she was able to work part time — something she said would not have been possible in Germany.

The same is true for Dr. Boettner, 35, who studied orthopedics in Münster and got a taste of New York when he trained for a year in arthroplasty, or joint replacement, at the Hospital for Special Surgery.

Back home in 2001, Dr. Boettner found that Germany did not appreciate that specialty. He also dreaded the formality of the medical system, rooted in a society where people still address their superiors with formal titles like “Herr Professor Doktor.”

- from the NYT

The Voices! The Voices! Arrrrgh!!!

We’ve had to hear about his imaginary enemies and put up with the people he imagines are his friends, now we have to listen to the damned voices in this crackpot’s head.

Marxist inspired writer and polemist Alain Soral defended Tuesday his endorsement presidential candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen, being convinced that today Marx “would compel him to vote” for the FN president Le Pen.

- with thanks to
alert reader RV

The Fuse is Lit (No Pasaran!)

Low Rent Journalism

Midnight Monday: France24 calls the proposed B$622 US 5-year military budget increase ‘over $700 billion!”, and refers to the Army 1st Lieutenant who refuses to ship out to Iraq as a ‘high ranking officer.’ Wow – I've heard of 1LTs who think of themselves as ’high ranking’, but I didn’t know that there were French journos who would agree with them,
especially given the obscurity of the chance that any of these scribblers would hop off the Madonna and Penelope Cruz beat, and get to know anyone remotely connected to the big green machine.
It's a shame. It would make for nice conference for Soviet-American cultural exchange.The Fuse is Lit (No Pasaran!)

I hate Socialists

In the words of Dov Charney, "I cannot placate the Left".

Stalker rips on Ségolène:

"Montons donc à bord de ce bathyscaphe participatif, et, en nous pinçant bien fort le nez, n'ayons pas peur de nous lancer dans l'exploration d'un gouffre de médiocrité bavarde où nous sommes tous conviés à descendre, entraînés par notre propre poids, sans doute pour nous rassasier d'un plantureux banquet de plancton translucide, cette soupe de micro-organismes que filtrent sans relâche les cétacés acéphales parcourant les ténébreuses abysses socialistes."

Just when he thought it was safe to rev up the Rayonnement

The previous talking point constantly repeated by French mainstream preSS was that France had the most advanced health care system in the world. This State Party Line©, exploited from the extreme Left to the extreme Right of the French political spectrum, was emitted for years to a clockwork drumbeat on French State TV and radio. That got shot down after 15000 elderly French died in the 2003 heatwave (many of them waiting in vain for ice water or ice cubes in un-air conditioned French hospitals).

A new talking point had to be found. And found it was.

Even if Chirac's adversaries claim that his presidency has been a miserable failure, every political figure from the extreme Left to the extreme Right agrees that his opposition to the Iraq war is nothing less than visionary and that thanks to his stance France is at the vanguard of some kind of post-9/11 planetary geopolitical realignment.

Until his recent "Iran gaffe" showed everyone just how out of touch the inconsequent wanker really is.

"In playing down the danger of an Iranian nuclear weapon, President Jacques Chirac of France showed just how marginal he has become as his presidency nears its end."

The fun never stops

French youths just want to have fun.

The female officer, reportedly pulled from her car and hit in the face in Chanteloup-les-Vignes, was hospitalized overnight and released, the prefecture said.

On Friday night, youths forced a bus driver out of his empty bus in the Noe housing project in Chanteloup-les Vignes before setting it afire, officials said. When police arrived, clashes with the youths began.

Some 15 youths masked and armed with Molotov cocktails also went after several police officers as they headed home. Thierry Couture, head of public safety for Yvelines, said they retreated after they realized they were outnumbered. However, the female officer's car stalled and they went after her. She called in reinforcements but not before being injured in the face and wrist.

No arrests were reported in Chanteloup-les-Vignes.

"Superior Lucidity" Watch

Take it as a sign of genius that the voting block for who there's the least hesitation is the one pumping for a nativist, socialist, Archie Bunker type who's willing to bring back the concept of the Jew-as-straw-man to revive some sort of imagined national "glory".
"Glory" might be too broad a term. Better to call it a practice of tribalistic fascism that you try not to explain to others with the latest mumbo-jumbo.

Culottes républicaines bien souillées

Here are some comprehensive updates on the Islamic Creationism textbooks now circulating in French schools. If the French are upset about this (given the source of these textbooks they're not saying much) it's only because they can't pin this one on George Bush and Fundamentalist Christians.

Céline on wheels

Ça roule.

El Gato Gets it

This cat is right on the money:

In 50 years, Martha's Vinyard might have smaller beaches. Long before that, tens of millions of people living in socialist countries will have been poisoned by unrestrained development. For that reason alone, the Greens ought to support the war in Iraq. It's hard to find a democracy with an environmental record as bad as the totalitarian part of the world.

Ideological greenies always seem to want to line people up and shoot them. Too bad they're structurally incapable of doping out the good guys from the bad guys.The Fuse is Lit (No Pasaran!)

A garden of pure ideology!

We are one people… with one whim!… one resolve!… one cause!…

We… Shall… Prevail…

A look at the brave men with the toughest job in the world

An inside look at the brave men steering the herds across the plains…

(More here)

Alas, EUtopia... Wallowing in a Slimy Leg Press

Little Jake might be digging that shake on that elliptical, but you’ve got to watch out for that cable on the rowing machine: Dutch gym to introduce 'Naked Sunday'The Fuse is Lit (No Pasaran!)

European Hypocricy: Now With 50% More Élan

Don’t worry, inspite of massive failure, they’ll still find a way to spin it.

One would never know this from reading European Union press releases, most any media account or even White House statements on the issue. The latter fact is deeply troubling given the political and diplomatic capital lost over public misunderstanding of this matter, and also the traction that proposals to mimic Europe's failed approach are gaining in Congress. In truth, Europe's CO2 emissions are rising twice as fast as those of the U.S. since Kyoto, three times as fast since 2000. This figure balloons to more than five times as fast when one tallies the individual country average of the EU-15.

The Fuse is Lit (No Pasaran!)

Chiraq wants to tax the US of A

Even though more than half of the top 20 most polluted sites in Europe are in Russia, Chiraq doesn't dare utter the same nonsense to Putin because if he did Putin would shutdown the natural gas pipelines so fast that Chiraq would have to move his sorry ass to Southern Portugal just to get a bit of warmth. Chiraq is a coward and a Socialist Stooge who will, thankfully, soon exit the French political stage.

De-nazification and the new French exception ideology

A French doctor insinuates that, with regards to eugenics and pre-natal selection, France will soon require a de-Nazification process to deal with this new "French ideology".

"En revanche, je suis persuadé que si la France avait été confrontée, à l'occasion d'un régime nazi, à des pratiques eugénistes similaires, elle répugnerait aujourd'hui à s'engager sur une pente particulièrement dangereuse."


Guess Joey made it through the Selektion process.

It's fun watching French secularism cave in like a house of cards

Muslims against free expression (yes, Muslims. Not Islamists).

On the Seventh Day, the French secular-lesson-givers shit in their pants

As long as "Creationism" was perceived to be a uniquely American phenomenon, brave French journalists (ainsi que les toujours courageux pédés-bloggeurs franchouilles) had lots of fun yelping it up and denouncing the dangers of Bush-fueled fundamentalism, the Bible, Christianity, and what have you. Now that it is making significant inroads within the French school system (where French youth are refusing to study Rousseau, Voltaire, and the Theory of Evolution), all thanks to a certain minority, all of those secular-lesson-givers have suddenly shut their mouths. En fait, ils sont tous trop occupés à souiller leur culotte républicaine.

Traders' Call To Arms

Bush applauded and cheered on Wall Street. "But this is a guy with more character and more faith than almost anyone else in public life." Plus que Chiraq ? Plus que les accros aux allocs de crypto-cocos en Fwance qui se cramponnent à leurs acquis ? Plus que les trouillards de socio-laïcs en Zéropa qui passent leurs temps à souiller (et puis baisser) leurs culottes républicaines ? Pas possible.



Notre pseudo cupidité brocardée par les média ;
Notre faim insatiable que condamnent les maîtres
Qui condamnent le matérialisme, de peur que leurs
Discussions sur Foucault ne riment à rien. Tant que
Vous n’aurez pas fréquenté une salle de marché, vous ne
Comprendrez pas cette fièvre devant ces écrans
Temps réel, ces offres d’achat qui augmentent,
En un instant, les cours des courtiers de par le monde,
Unissant acheteurs et vendeurs dans une entreprise
Qui promeut l’Entreprise. 3.000 morts victimes
Du terrorisme. À découvert l’Afghanistan
Je vends, des obligations je prends. La
Liberté est illusoire sans une saine et
Dynamique économie. Prenez position.
-- Eugene Schlanger, Wall Street Sonnets du 11 septembre et autres poèmes new-yorkais
Editions Underbahn

It's true! It's true!

"... most of the Europeans are rather duplicitous ..."

Ça se passe au deuxième sous-sol

Je ne sais pas qui c'est, mais ce mec me fait marrer.