Doing What They Do Best

Behold a perfect metaphor for their International Policy. Two performance artists come from France to “express themselves” in Rapid City, South Dakota:

After stripping off their grubby clothes, the pair gobbled potato chips and spit them on the crowd, vomited into a filthy commode and threw around fake feces and urine before being shut down about a half hour into what was to be a 45-minute performance.

Costes, a French performance art duo consisting of one 50-something man, Jean-Louis Costes, and a 20-something woman, Lisou Prout, were the fourth act of five scheduled to perform Wednesday at the Dahl.

Naturally, there had to be a “concept” – one which, as usual, leads to the wise übermenschen of the continent treating others like they’re a different, lesser species.

It was all in French, but people who saw it said it was basically a depiction of American life from birth to death, portrayed in the most extreme way possible.

Michelle Malkin has more.

A Religious War Against a Contrived Enemy

To quote one of our more unselfconscious trolls:

Our latest nuclear submarines can dispatch 90 million Americans million from the East coast off to paradise.

I offer this example based on the question Michel Druker of French TV posed to the [French] chief of subsurface naval warfare “so that the missiles reach the USA?” It was not China, Iran, or Russia, but clearly the USA.

In other words a nation suspected of possibly going to war over resources to keep its’ massive population occupied, a economically defunct theocracy that supports terrorist sleeper cells in Europe’s cities, and a nation ritually making thinly veiled threats to Europe’s energy supplies in winter. No. The fantasies are of nuking the nation that acts as their bodyguard guaranteeing their safety, precluding them from the need to engage in the ugliest tasks of geopolitics, making the sea-lanes safe, and the financial environment stable enough for them to peddle their overpriced rubbish all over the third world, and have the luxury of imagining themselves dueling with windmills.

I'm sure Freud had a name for it.

Drucker is among those uniquely European media phenomena – one of those variety/talk show hosts who is equally unqualified to do a serious interview as they are to have a conversation based on cringing flattery with a third rate bubble-gum band or B actor.

The « Sandalista’s » Dillema

The love of their old squinting and mumbling hero of their violent youthful fantasies has brought the arthritic left a conundrum: Daniel Ortega made abortion illegal, and the EU has threatened to cut off aid to the leftists’ erstwhile holy land of Nicaragua in retaliation.

Can someone say sovereignty? Or perhaps call it ham-fisted “social justice” action?

It’s odd, really. During the Iraq war, Euro-sophists kept telling us that it was not for the US to impose its values on the world and that it was up to Iraqis to decide their own future. Fair enough. So why is it that, when it comes to hectoring Africans about the death penalty, or ordering South Americans to form a supra-national bloc in mimicry of the EU, or insisting that abortion be made easier, Brussels suddenly comes over all colonialist?

If abortion is a fundamental human right, why isn’t parliamentary democracy? If the EU can demand the former in Nicaragua, why can’t the US demand the latter in Cuba?

Perhaps the answer is that Brussels has never been all that keen on democracy.

Perhaps?

- Kudos to a good friend
of this blog, Stavn

It’s become a daily event

While getting intensely worked up about transatlantic passenger data, Europeans persist in monitoring ISPs, telephone calls, and emails for no clear reason. When they impose even more sever measures with less oversight, there is a refusal to admit to the outrage they reserved for American authorities monitoring the communications of people with hostile intent to Europeans and Americans alike.

It makes no difference – the goal is to find an authority figure to hate. Since Europeans feel foolish doing this with other Europeans, the US comes in quite handy. It’s petty and hateful, and causes many to persistently raise the meaningless to the level of “news”:

(Reuters) - Mayan leaders will spiritually "cleanse" ancient ruins in Guatemala after a visit by U.S. President George W. Bush, unpopular here because of foreign policies going back to Central America's civil wars.

The leaders said they would hold a spiritual ceremony to restore "peace and harmony" at the Mayan ruins of Iximche after Bush tours the site on Monday.

"No, Mr. Bush, you cannot trample and degrade the memory of our ancestors," said indigenous leader Rodolfo Pocop during a press conference. "This is not your ranch in Texas."

How his memories of his ancestors is degraded is unclear. Despite the fact that they were decimated by Spaniards, some flunky panders to the ideologically predictable world press, and the press can’t but wait to dish it up to an eager European public to eat it up.

Reuters also seems to forget how the word “new” figures into the word “news”:

Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, Washington's principal antagonist in Latin America, has called Bush "the devil" and at a United Nations debate last year said the U.S. leader left a smell of sulfur lingering in the room behind him.

But it doesn’t matter. It’s reporting without purpose, but does a nice job of tacitly describing the real story: people whining about America need to get over themselves, stop dwelling on an imaginary enemy they’ve created, and get out of the tight little shells they built around themselves.

Good News Buried

White Euro-sclerosis has unemployment at twice that figure, the NYT buries the news. If the left were in charge, and if they’re smart enough not to impose any of their “economic theories” on it to destroy it, the New York Times would call it the end of another successful 5 year plan.

- thanks to some guy in Baghdad.

Nobody is paying attention

"THE eyes of the world will be on the European Union's summit in Brussels this week. So claims the European Commission's president, José Manuel Barroso, anyway. He may just be wrong; powerbrokers in Washington, Beijing and Delhi probably have better things to do with their time."

Not a bug, a feature

Because it's a structural, built-in part of the French economy. French unemployment is largely underestimated.

Rising to the Level of Meaninglessness

One of the aspects of a cult is that it tries to intrude on every area possible sphere of people’s lives. Call it the drip, drip, drip of meme affirmation.

You've heard of green cars, green tourism and green weddings. Now Canadians should ready themselves for green sex.

All those things sound so damned green, don’t they?

BanPerish the Thought

And perish thinking about it! Eurovision Song Contest organizers might ban the Israeli entry, Teapacks' Push the Button, because of its’ political message threatens the public’s ignorance about the potential nuclear threat from Iran.
Another one of EUtopia’s countless “central committees” speak:

It's absolutely clear that this kind of message is not appropriate for the competition," said Kjell Ekholm, an organizer of the contest. "We'll have all the delegation leaders here in Helsinki next week, and I'm sure we'll talk about this case within the EBU [European Broadcasting Union] group."

French National Pasttime

Like Babe Ruth, Raymond Barre calls his shot and hits one out of the park.

“The People” are Just too Dumb for Socialism

We failed, therefore the world and all of the vulgar shlubs living in it in it must be big fat idiots...

Andrew, I spent many years with you (idealogically at least) but life on the front line of socialism, both campaigning and administrating at local authority level, taught me one overarching truth. The people are simply not up to Socialism. It's too difficult, it's too hard and it's too 'intellectual' for the people. The people have shown themselves, the world over, to be fundamentally lazy, greedy, selfish and myopic.

Did you watch the wall come down? The glee with which the people pulled down those bricks and threw themselves and their families headlong into unemployment, shabby education, poor health and CocaCola showed more clearly than anything else that the people are just too dumb for Socialism.

Socialism is indeed a better way to run things than capitalism, but first we have to find ourselves another 'people'.

Move on mate. You'll only cause yourself heartache.

Don’t you just love the distinct lack of mortal, fiancial, or personal risk of his efforts “on the front lines”? Having lived behind the iron curtain, I don't think the comment's author realizes how meaningless people's work was, just how shabby the education and housing really was, or even how bad the knock-off "coca cola", or any other available goods were.

- Vielen Dank, Georg

Want Good News?

Just make it up. Start cherry-picking in 2007 for a good-looking trend in data for 2004 to 2005!

According to the Commission's Joint Employment Report, published on 19 February 2007, "unemployment in the EU-25 fell from 9.1% in 2004 to 8.8% in 2005 and employment rose by 0.8% in 2005 - the largest increase since 2001.

Indeed. The Lisbonian magic is clearly at work. By 2010, the hard-working elves of the EU were scheduled (through the miracle of saying so,) to have the worlds leading economy. Instead a recent report warned that by some measures they were 22 years behind the US (where supposedly people live in cardboard boxes and eat cat-food.)

In two years’ since 2005, the gap EU-US has widened for all economic indicators:

- Income (GDP per capita). The current EU level for income was achieved by the US in 1985. Since the first edition of the study, the time gap has increased by 3 years;

- Employment and R&D. Both the current EU levels for employment and R&D investment per capita were reached by the US in 1978. (+3 years and +5 years respectively);

- Productivity (GDP per employed). The current EU productivity level was achieved by the US in 1989 (+3 years).

- The current EU level of Internet users per capita was reached by the US in 2002. Obviously, there hasn’t been enough ranting about predatory capitalism this winter to keep the good burgers of Outer-Lisbonium warm and dry long enough for them to enjoy the way high taxation and low wealth-creation is breaking their knees.

Sophisticated French show thuggish Americans the correct way to treat the ladies

It's happening in the notorious 9-3 (faut dire "neuf-trois") and the French preSS, while expressing astonishment at the levels of violence indicated by the results, is not even beginning to connect the dots leading to the 800 pound gorilla in the room. In a study of 1600 women between the ages of 18-21 in the Seine Saint-Denis 30% have been victim of physical violence during the last year (16 girls claimed that someone had attempted to kill them). Those conducting the study were particularly surprised by the levels of violence and sexual abuse committed by family members. Rather than confronting the reality of what is going on in these suburbs, look for the French establishment to put all this down to social problems arising from unbridled America-instigated globalisation.

PS - Too bad those 9-3 girls don't live in Tennessee.

Stop the presses!

Vagrants and loiterers told by the French police to "hit the bricks".

Make mine a double Jameson, neat, no ice

Election Possibly Rising to the Level of Ebay

Owing to the usual democratic-sounding un-democratic ideas, French Presidential elections require that 500 Mayors sign a petition to get a candidate on the ballot. One mayor of a town in Calvados (Noron-la-Poterie,) is giving his vote to the highest bidder. Any punters?

Funnier still is the dim starethat the news elicits. The story's been up all day without a single comment at Libération.

It’s Good to be the King

Remember, Chavs is people too.

Mesrine says ...

... let's blow this joint. Il ne voulait pas finir en "gueule triste" comme ses compatriotes.

Break out the café lattés ...

Because we is celebrating Zeropean muzak at its best, and with regards to Zeropean muzak and you can't get any better than this. An Italian singer (Sabrina Salerno) warbling on a German TV show. Imagine the impact ...

When Going Too Far is Never Enough

Funny how we come across some people: author and apologist for Syrian dictators Jürgen Cain Külbel seems mad at Medienkritik’s Ray, and oddly enough mad at the US, Israel, and even mad at most of Lebanon too. He’s even nearly expressing genuine emotions in his desperate comparison of the US’ dealings with the eastern Mediterranean as a “puppet play”, and implying that the Siniora government is a puppet of the US. The poodle meme dragged out one more painfully boring time.

How did we find this guy? He’s got his panties in a bunch over the fact that David’s Medienkritik organized a public demonstration in Mainz last year in support of President Bush and the war on transnational terror – something the Syrians have done more for through direct arming and tacitly allowing advanced terrorist training and technique development in the Be’kaa Vally of Lebanon for more than a decade. Using an accusation as a defense of his hatefulness, he accuses Ray of “working for the CIA”. Among idiots, this might actually seem novel. Evidently a handful of people practicing their right to free speech is a problem for this guy. He can’t wrap his brain around where the pluralism that permits him to trash others comes from or how to preserve it. It isn’t a matter of him disagreeing with anyone else’s VIEWS, he seemed apoplectic that they were allowed to be there at all.

What drew my attention to him was his blatant mendacity when it comes to the Lebanese which I'll get to later. But to get an idea of what passes for "advocacy journalism" these days, and what passes for intelligent discourse in the adolescent anti-western camp, you need to look at their actions and habits.

Forget free will, anyone who chooses anything other that his favorite repressive ideologues is “a puppet” – as if he isn’t. Talking straight through his teeth, he all but admitted to certainty that the Syrians killed Rafik Hariri while accusing the US and Israel of the deed, and seems a lot more concerned with constructing houses of cards to be fawned over in places which have no free press than making any informed or useful theses.

By way of German bloggers we learn that he's currently writing a book about Osama bin Laden entitled "Osama bin Laden -World Theater with a Corpse." In an interview he did with "Muslim Markt", he explains that his book will talk about how "USAma bin Laden" was already dead by the time of the 9/11 attacks, implying that he is a fiction created by the US to justify its' actions therafter. I suppose anyone with time-penetrating precience is sure to be capable of that sort of conspiracy! What's sad is that even in German the "corpse thing" is dated and tasteless, and if countless other attempts to make this same silly argument haven't grown stale yet, here he is trying to make it again. Too bad it only works once or twice with the same gullible audience, but by indulging the Syrians to find flattery in having a European writing it while focusing on their pet peeves, that a new field of interest might open up.

Like any bad propagandist, he also seems to have himself convinced of his own nonsense, and can’t seem to recognize that the majority of Lebanese detest the Hizballah, but like anyone with any serious criticism of the Ba'athists in Syria, are too scared by them to speak out. The fact that the far more serious problem that Hizballah, once a puppet, is now a barely controllable possessed puppet of Iran and Syria registers no-where in his work. One can hardly call that due dilligence.

Maybe this guy is grabbing his ankles for money, ideology, readership among fevered single-issue simpletons in the German-speaking geographic pocket, or simply doing it to get access to senior figures in Damascus. What seems particularly un-natural for any kind of writer is that he seems to be making quite an effort on their behalf of a state long obsessed with a neighboring state that has an actual free press.

Take look at his incredibly ignorant choice of images:

Puppets in blackface.

What century is he living in?
Apart from he seeming obsession with anti-capitalism (Syria is still a command economy), and manipulating the timeline and causes of Siniora’s appointment, here’s a sample of his rubbish:

Siniora obviously still believes in the US-American neoconservative idiocy of „nation building“ and to the spreading of western style democracy in the entire elbow from Morocco to Indonesia. And it obviously recognizes from Bush and cohorts would only install „democratic“ revolutions so long as only valid ones were established...

„L’état c’est moi”, is what Siniora thinks, because he’s following on a November 2006 opinion poll that didn’t take place in Lebanon, but mainly among the exiled Lebanese living prosperously in California, Ohio, and elsewhere under the star-spangled banner along with a few Parisians, the Israeli Prime Minister, and the former East German girl-scout leader who are behind him.

He goes on to question the motives of the protesters who wanted Syria-supporting President Emile Lahoud to step down, and also calls the Lebanese Prime Minister a “Guerrilla fighter for US democracy” and the first “Democratic Dictator” in Beirut.

There is absolutely no evidence that Siniora thinks any of this, or theorizes anything whatsoever about democratizing “ze elbow from Morocco to Indonesia.” It is far more likely that he has managed to see the same thing any humanist would: in democracies, ethnic and religious minorities aren’t singled out and slaughtered by unelected thugs. That this would have some appeal to the many religions and political views that very notion of The Lebanon was founded to protect should not shock this little man. But apparently it does.

And yes, Siniora does seem to believe in nation-building, just as Hariri did, he believed in the need to build back into existence from the dark days of Syrian “protection” that seemed to get a lot of people killed, a nation. His own nation. What WAS the Taïf accord if not just that?

As for taking potshots at Merkel, I can’t help but laugh at how much of a political slut this man is. Does he really believe that German foreign policy could have “made” anyone?, much less made a difference to anyone in the near east when they aren’t just disengaged from it, but aren’t even among the parties who have been historically entrenched in it? In Lebanon, German engagement is less than that of Canada's, and is limited almost entirely to selling them costly German goods inflated even more by an overvalued Euro. That lack of magnitude notwithstanding, he’s as blinkered as Michael Moore on 9/12 who stupidly believed that jihadists cared enough about the same issues he did to be shocked that they would attack states that voted for the Democrats.

Combining a fake populism by trying to throw red-meat to a potential audience and a racist's condescention of "who people are," Külbel is an example of the logical outcome of a societally trained incapacity to judge right from wrong. One that falls for the sort of relativism that gives ciphers and idiots way to think themselves intelligent and “fair”. It isn’t. It leads one from a lack of intellectual depth to making an entirely repugnant choice when they do finally think they know what they believe in. It also finds itself leading ultimately to supporting an unelected dictatorship that keeps political prisoners out of sight for decades in a callous bid to preserve its’ inner circle. It apologizes for the actions of tyrants, and does it to the cost of mankind's humanity.

Gôche caviar

Ségolène Royal and her faggoty effeminate buffoon of a partner (who has stated that he doesn't like the rich) have been caught understating the total value of their very significant wealth.

After all, La Fwance is a cultural desert

Le Louvre opens a subsidiary in Abu Dabai.

Le Louvre is not the first to délocaliser French culture:

It Seems That They Can’t Just All Get Along

From the “rights of man” to the flight to ban:

The French Constitutional Council has approved a law that criminalizes the filming or broadcasting of acts of violence by people other than professional journalists. The law could lead to the imprisonment of eyewitnesses who film acts of police violence, or operators of Web sites publishing the images, one French civil liberties group warned on Tuesday.

What began as a good natured attempt to suppress whistle-blowing by abusive care-givers in old age homes, as well as propagation of mobile-phone videos by “happy slappers”, finds itself fitting in perfectly with the continental predilection to suppress any telling but illuminating showing of their warts - without which there is no improvement or change.

The council chose an unfortunate anniversary to publish its decision approving the law, which came exactly 16 years after Los Angeles police officers beating Rodney King were filmed by amateur videographer George Holliday on the night of March 3, 1991.

Basically, this tries to make it illegal to report bad news to anyone other than the Police, unless you’re a “professional” journalist – which means, of course, you’ve been thoroughly indoctrinated into believing in the preciousness of the social status quo by having fear of one thing or another drummed into you.

- With thanks to Strummin’ Joe

Civilian killed by French military in Ivory Coast

Not to worry though. French soldiers aimed for his vehicle in accordance with the legal procedures regarding the use of their weapons.

Enfin une bonne nouvelle : Les nanas du 9-3 ont trouvé du boulot

After entering into a treaty agreement with the EU looking to attract more bankers, managers, and academics, Switzerland simply wound up with an influx of hookers.

Stone them back to the bomb age

José Bové does an excellent job of explaining exactly what he wants the French to aspire to (hint: $1600 monthly salary and compost toilets) as he proudly shows off the medieval style living conditions of his home and farm to gullible French journalists.

I always knew he was a faggot

French Presidential candidate François Bayrou read and appreciated Cindy Sheehan's "Peace Mom". Il en a parlé sur le plateau de Anal Plus.

Spanking their Monkeys

The way you do a poll that sees air in Europe is to flatter and indulge the reader, and in effect, rigging up the outcome. A “world” public opinion poll excluded Americans from answering questions about the US, but asked Europeans questions about Europe.

A majority of people polled for the BBC World Service across 27 countries believe Israel and Iran have a mainly negative influence in the world with almost as many saying the same about North Korea and the United States.

The outcome is obvious, and the BBC will flog it on the air for a good solid week without revealing the fact that it was ginned-up.

Canada, Japan, the European Union, and France were judged most positively. Britain, China, and India received more positive than negative evaluations while Russia was viewed slightly more negatively than positively.

Of course they’ll flog the results on the World Service for 3 days, and try to keep the story alive tomorrow a few days after that by doing a story about their own poll.

Opinions about Venezuela were evenly divided.

Of course they were, all things, ALWAYS being equivalent equal... but it isn’t very hard to explain:

They met, fell in love and had four children. But their story has horrified Germany. They are brother and sister, separated at birth and reunited years later.

The writer goes on to explain in the money quote:

And their story is astonishingly common.

- H/T to Georges

It might sound like the rant of an anti-American foaming at the mouth,

except for the fact that it’s not about America, and that it’s true:

In five decades of France-Africa summits, France has offered continued material and military aid to prop up unelected leaders, some of whom have been around for decades thanks to elections that have largely become a mockery of democracy.

FRENCH COMPANIES are equally guilty. For instance, Elf Aquitaine has been closely related to the enduring system of Franco-African relations, “Francafrique.”

Beyond the formal institutions, “Francafrique” worked through a system of international clientelism, combining corruption and force, economic, political and social exchanges, and public and private relations.

and right after their latest lecture promoting their faux euro-humanism to the rest of the world, they’ll be heading back down to the plantation to see what the Pinkertons of their state-run industries can wring out of those people getting “too many concessions.”

Le rayonnement de la Fwance

Terrorist dry runs emanating from Paris.

Chiraq and his Jagged Little Pill

After Chiraq boasting that France would be showing off a Viagra-like "rock-hard firmness" with regards to WTO talks, Dominique de Villepin today declared that France had no intention of blocking negotiations but intended to "re-establish some common sense".

100% hyper-marrant

50% Djian, 50% Rabelais. La France a grand besoin d'écrivains décomplexés comme Le Chaffeur de Limousine.

Pschitt!

The Presidential campaign of the globally reknowned globophobe, vandal, and McDonald's demolition expert, José Bové©®, is not making much of an impression back home.

“Only?!?”

Only 45% of the French want to work more to earn more.

As if that’s all bad. But for some bad is never bad enough. Le Monde publishes the result of a survey not so much on an attitude towards work, by on philosophizing about the concept of thinking about work... or something:

A majority of the French (53%) want to have “their current working hours guaranteed by law” rather than “to be able to work more to earn more” (45%), as proposed by UMP presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy, according to a LH2 survey for [the magazine] 20 minutes and [talk radio operation] RMC published on Friday March 2nd.

Asked about their definition of work, 78% of the people surveyed saw it as “a way to earn a living”, ahead of being “an important value to pass on to your children” (63%), “a source of wealth” (42%), “the way to being useful to your employer” (28%), “a source of pride” (21%).

[work is] “A PLACE OF INJUSTICE” to 5% of those surveyed.

Only a minority of the French regards work as “a source of inequality” (9%), “serious constraint” (5%) and “a place of injustice” (5%). The total of the percentages is higher than 100 because multiple responses were possible with question about work.

I’ll leave the heavy editorializing to your imaginations, dear reader, but consider the spin: 45% is still a lot of people, particularly in a society that has talked itself in circles and has had two generations of Socialist bunkum sold to them as an essential morality to the exclusion of all others.

Imagine a place for a moment where the society tells you what to do with a basic matter of personal choice like whether or not you want to work hard of your own free will.

EU policy hostage to French radical anti-Americanism

The EU looks more and more like an unmanned drone.

Is it because French elections are for the birds?

... ou plutôt parce que les fwançais sont des pigeons ? Danish artist "Lord B" enters his parrot in the French Presidential election.

They’re in Their Happy Place

It looks like the EU finally found the place to drone on about their imaginary problems.

The European Union is looking into entering the virtual world and opening up an office in Second Life - an increasingly popular internet-based virtual world - which the Swedish government and the French presidential candidates have already entered.

"It is certainly an idea we are looking into," commission spokesman Mikolaj Dowgielewicz told EUobserver.

"But we do not have enough people dealing with the internet - we could but they are bogged down with other work such as for the EU's 50th birthday,"

It gets even more ridiculous. Far from “experimenting” with alternate universes, it turns out people are being as stupefyingly predictable in Second Life as they are in meat-space:

the socialist Segolene Royal, centre-right Nicolas Sarkozy and far-right Jean-Marie Le Pen - have all opened election headquarters in Second Life sharing out free pizza slices and t-shirts while promoting their campaign.

However, the presence of Le Pen's anti-immigration, ultra-nationalist National Front has proved particularly divisive among virtual users, some of whom protested outside the party's first headquarters until it moved.

That's mighty big of you Javier, considering how some of your own member countries don't feel so secure inside their EUtopia

EU membership, the gift that keeps on giving shafting.
Solana on external threats to Europe ...
"We are not as Europeans concerned to establish a mechanism of that type," Solana said. "This is for every country to decide."

That's mighty big of you Javier, considering how it's in your own backyard and all

On Solana on Kosovo ...
The European Union hopes the future of the province can be sealed by a UN Security Council resolution this year.
Solana said that when that happens, "the European Union will have to play a role" in security.

Eurofaggots soil their panties

Eurovision song contest organizers are shitting in their pants because Israel's entry is a bit too edgy for them. Push the button, Teapacks!

Calling a spade a spade

The French Left, as always, cozying up to the more violent fringes of their society.

Deep down, in a secret place where the lights of smart dinner-party conversation and clever debating-society repartee never shine

Somewhere, deep down, tucked away underneath their loathing for George Bush, in a secret place where the lights of smart dinner-party conversation and clever debating-society repartee never shine, the growing hordes of America-bashers must dread the moment he leaves office

writes Gerard Baker (thanks to Tom Pechinski).

When President Bush goes into the Texas sunset, and especially if he is replaced by an enlightened, world-embracing Democrat, their one excuse, their sole explanation for all human suffering in the world will disappear too. And they may just find that the world is not as simple as they thought it was.

It’s been a great ride for the past six years, hasn’t it? George Bush and Dick Cheney and all those pantomime villains that succour him — the gay-bashing foot soldiers of the religious Right, the forktailed neoconservatives with their devotion to Israel, the dark titans of American corporate boardrooms spewing their carbon emissions above the pristine European skies. Having those guys around for so long provided a comfortable substitute for thinking hard about global challenges, a kind of intellectual escapism.

When one group of Muslims explodes bombs underneath the school buses of another group of Muslims in Baghdad or cuts the heads off humanitarian workers in Anbar, blame George Bush. When Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia, denounces an imbalanced world and growls about the unpleasantness of democracy in eastern Europe, blame George Bush. When the Earth’s atmosphere gets a little more clogged with the output of power plants in China, India and elsewhere, blame George Bush.

Some day soon, though, this escapism will run into the dead end of reality. In fact, the most compelling case for the American people to elect a Democrat as president next year is that, in the US, leadership in a time of war requires the inclusion of both political parties, and in the rest of the world, people will have to start thinking about what is really the cause of all our woes.

Take a look at the miserable mess that is unfolding in what is supposed to be the “West’s” fight in Afghanistan against the Taleban and al-Qaeda. Afghanistan was, remember, unlike Iraq, “the good war”. Within days of September 11, 2001, all the European members of Nato readily signed up to assist America in righting the wrongs of international terrorism by defeating the Kabul regime and its allies.

Even after the alliance fell out over the Iraq war, those who opposed that conflict reiterated their dedication to winning the one in Afghanistan. When the Spanish socialists pulled their nation’s troops out of Iraq in 2004, they insisted they were fully committed to the war against the Taleban.

But what is the state of that struggle? These days, despite the notional presence of a Nato force involving more than 15 countries, only a handful — Britain, the Netherlands, Canada, and plucky Lithuania included — are putting anything like the effort required in terms of resources and willingness to take the fight to the enemy.

Others — such as the Germans and the French — will commit troops and equipment but won’t let them fight, preferring noncombatant roles. Last week the Italian Government collapsed because some of its members actually want to make friends with the Taleban. European countries are not failing to fight the war in Afghanistan because they don’t like George Bush. They lack either the perception of the threat or the will to deal with it.

…Even as some future Democratic president proclaims his commitment to renewing alliances, he is sure to be greeted with all kinds of explanations as to why the Europeans are just not quite ready to make that a joint ownership. When that moment comes, everyone will be urgently wishing they still had George Bush to blame.

Le héro des banlieues

L'idole des jeunes.

Multilateral European business on the March towards a Lisbon Statement 2.0 Utopia

Airbus has the empty order book blues.

A Communist Solution to a Non-Existent Problem

Bizarrely, having to do with sports:

The review talked of a democratic, European sports model, "deep-rooted in civil society, an important expression of our culture" and characterised by "solidarity" between the elite and community grass roots, specifically contrasting that with the US view of professional sport as pure big-business entertainment. The review's specific recommendations did not match the grand ambition, but did terrify our rich clubs by arguing for "competitive balance" to be restored with salary caps and for UEFA to share Champions League money more fairly.

Just how is it that the existence of professional sports takes something away from local, individual, or any other sort of sport goes unexplained. If anything, it encourages kids to get hooked on the games that they enjoy for the better part of a lifetime.

The American habit of locally formed league sports not requiring anyone's benevolent "regulation" notwithstanding, the fact that the grand sporting “traditions” seem to unduly influence the world by stacking the deck in favor of their preferences remains hidden. More than 80% of the members of the International Olympic Committee are European, seem to enjoy being bought-off, and when they spread a monoculture... well, that’s called ”wisdom”

It Never Ends

”Europe” is going after Microsoft again.

Microsoft was on Thursday dealt a serious setback in its long-running antitrust battle with the European Commission when Brussels threatened to impose yet another massive fine on the US software group for failing to comply with a landmark competition ruling handed down almost three years ago.

Europe’s top antitrust regulator on Thursday issued a new set of charges against Microsoft, a step that is likely to result in another ruling and a new fine against the group.

Never mind the fact that the threat to charge isn’t about competition, but the very opposite, and all feels okay. They are trying to eliminate the problem of European software companies from having Microsoft as competition.

The lame excuse this time?

The EU and Microsoft just can't seem to see eye to eye. After years and years in the courts and a guilty verdict a few years back, the EU has forced Microsoft's hand in releasing certain information that will help other companies create inter-compatible software with Windows and its components. Now, however, the EU is displeased with the way they are making that information available, and is threatening more fines. The reason? They are charging too much for it.

Again it seems that this is a sort of stopgap measure to frustrate the success of the foreigner to give their own producers a better shot at success, but in a malicious manner. It’s really not that different as common behavior on a larger level that have led to intense enmity between immigrants and the indigenous, except for the fact that the object of their effort is far away, and as a corporation (simply a collection of people,) carrying the trope of dreaded capitalism and is too far away to have to face personally.

"News You Can Use" Otherwise Eclipsed

Ironically, news like this gets no airplay, while criticisms of Americans' health, weight, "inequality of outcome", this that, and the other thing dominate the media.

There are wide variations in healthcare outcomes across the EU – for example, five year survival rates for bladder cancer range from 78% in Austria to 47% in Poland and Estonia.
Regions where income inequality is high tend to have a significantly lower life expectancy than regions where income inequality is comparatively low.

7% of Europeans had taken prescription drugs in the previous 12 months due to psychological or emotional health problems and 3% had received psychotherapy in that period (7% in the Netherlands).

As for obesity, the health risks can be as large as from smoking. Yet a Eurobarometer Survey showed that half of 15 -44 year olds had indulged in no vigorous physical activity in the previous seven days and 40% had not even taken part in moderate physical activity like walking for more than 30 minutes.

Oddly, this kind of story in the US about the US dominates the media, in exactrly the same way that the story about the US would dominate the news in Europe, but certainly not because it matters in Europe in any way.

In the US the story would be founded out of concern for public well being much as this one does, but in Europe out of mere ridicule - a mad degree of attention and at the expense of noticing "news you can use".

Burning the House Down to Stay Warm

The 80’s revival rages on. Transnational economic turf-warfare, greed, and meddling in business lead straight to Airbust:

Union officials, who were informed of the proposals earlier on Wednesday, expressed anger at the scale of the cuts.

"We totally oppose the closure of any site and we won't accept any firings," said European Metalworkers Federation head Peter Scherrer.

They would prefer the entire company go under and every employee lose their jobs? As usual, union blackmailers with nothing immediate to lose resoundingly say Yes!

- with thanks to George

Inquisitive Adolescents Expressing their Political views Through Interpretive Dance

A few more of the “Zionist spies” of one of our, intemperate troll commenters.

A tragedy was avoided on Sunday after a smoke bomb, thrown through a window of a Jewish kindergarten in Berlin, failed to ignite.

However, the school, located in a northwest neighborhood of the German capital, was not spared by the spray painting of swastikas, other Nazi symbols and anti-Semitic phrases, such as “Auschwitz,” “Juden Raus” (Jews, get out) and “Sieg Heil”, on its outer walls, as well as on toys that had been lying around in the school’s playground.

Targeting a place where these "dangerous" 4 and 5 year olds play. Perhaps to induce fear, but more likely because the people who did it have had their revusive reflex trained out of them with ideology, only to be replaced by some notion of "social justice" as an excuse. The new form youthful idealism takes is little more than loutish repugnance.

Time, perhaps, for “Altermonidialist” types to take a personal inventory. I’ll leave the colorful phrases found in the image to individual translation, but it needs to be said that the part of Berlin in question (Wedding, I believe) is by no means poor or “immigrant”, it’s a pleasant, wooded area free of the tension used to explain away this hatefulness which is actually old hat

O Canada!

In response to Ségolène Royal's attempt to appropriate Québec for France, La BAF's Canadian division joins the socialist candidate's Villepinte meeting to defend the unity of Canada.

Is That Yellowcake On Your Face?

Once again, the idiotic potbanging by the agitational left is founded on a lie. The “16 words” that the left are so cranked up about came from British intelligence that knew full well what France gave Saddam.

This reassuring assumption [that Mitterand had limited nuclear fuel shipments to Iraq], however, is massively belied by the contents of a 1987 letter from none other than current French President Jacques Chirac to Saddam Hussein. By 1987, Chirac was again French Prime Minister. His letter was leaked to the French press and widely interpreted at the time as a thinly veiled offer to rebuild Osirak. Waxing nearly rhapsodic in his praise of French-Iraqi relations, Chirac refers in the letter to "the cooperation begun over 12 years ago on our joint personal initiative in a domain that is essential for the sovereignty, independence and security of your country" (my emphasis - JR). (The full letter from Chirac to Saddam Hussein, dated June 24, 1987, is reproduced in Claude Angeli and Stéphanie Mesnier, "Notre Allié Saddam" [Oliver Orban, 1992], annexe VII.) The allusion to Iraqi security concerns is especially notable, since it suggests that Chirac was fully aware of the military significance of the Osirak project.

People don’t discuss “sovereignty” when it comes to electricity generation or worst still in the present date, the euphemism “right to technology". The goal was to give Saddam nukes. Nothing more.

The New Newspeak

Hilarious,considering the left’s “Non” Votes.

Just French good ole boys havin' some fun

French youths just want to have fun. 2006 saw a 45% increase in physical anti-Semitic acts in France with spikes occuring just after the torture and murder of Ilan Halimi and during the confrontation between Israel and the Hezbollah.

France offers hope to heroin addicts the world over

Shoot up to the beat. Gainsbourg says "Blow me."

Make the myths

Who's gonna be on top?
USA = Manifest Destiny = Legend factory = Europe sucks.



Don't miss 5 Years Later.

Squabbles and Characters like Flat Paper Cutouts

It’s got all the usual ingredients: fighting over nothing, a “declaration” named after a city, and a bunch of characters with no depth. The end product is a non-news story worthy of the gossip page.

A grand statement - the Berlin declaration - is planned next month to commemorate the founding in 1957 of what is now the EU, but the 27 member states are increasingly divided about what to celebrate.

Luxembourg is pushing for a prominent mention of the euro as one of Europe's greatest achievements.

It sounds like the start of a bad joke: “A German and a Frenchman are stuck in a rowboat...” Nonetheless, the usual subtext is always there:

Former Iron Curtain countries are growing increasingly concerned that their experience under communism will be airbrushed out.

Smoking Smoked Out in France

La BAF heads to France's health ministry to light up a stogy or two…

Who Deserves What; Double Standards

The people who say (reasonably enough) that Serbia proper was not guilty of the enormous crime of genocide are the same who find it not at all abnormal to say America deserved 9-11 because of September 11, 1973. (Or America deserved 9-11 just because of what America is. Or because of what it was. Or because of what it has done. Or because of what it hasn't done. Or because of…)

La littérature en français déposée offshore

Nous ne présenterons point d'excuses à l'Académie Franchouille ...


Thanks to George & CC.

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.