Sputtering with Indignation, Western Europeans Stand Up for Human Rights in Poland (after fiddling about for 50 years)

Poland never received as much opprobrium when it was a communist dictatorship and part of the Warsaw Pact. Nor was any Soviet-era dissident ever lauded as much or given as much space (front page, no less) as Bronislaw Geremek is now as he speaks out against the country's decommunization process. (But then, at the time, Poland was neither capitalist nor pro-American, the mothers of all sins.) From Le Monde editorials to French lawmakers decrying the country's Stalinist or Fascist methods, just about everybody knows what is democratic and what is proof of tolerance and what is best for Poland.

Update: Because of a reader's remarks putting the above facts into doubt, I am adding the following excerpts from previous posts:

• "Another myth was that European governments, which now praise Solidarity as the movement that precipitated the collapse of the communist system, were right behind the movement" writes Judy Dempsey in the International Herald Tribune. "There were always 'ifs' and 'buts' or 'maybes' or 'let's wait and see," said Gienek Smolar (Europe Responds with More Sophistication and Better Understanding than the Trigger-Happy Cowboys Do…)
• 'The French left declined all support because it itself was too close to the former Soviet Communist Party. The French right did not want to foster instability anywhere in Europe. As for German leaders, they feared that a political explosion in Poland would undermine their efforts at détente with the Kremlin, which they believed was crucial for establishing closer ties with Communist East Germany. "The West European governments were concerned with the stability. They did not want Poland to rock the boat," says [Gienek Smolar], who when living in exile in London had helped garner international support for Solidarity.' ("The West European governments were concerned with the stability", not peace nor justice)
• "As for freedom, the Polish mind-set on Western Europe had been indelibly marked by considerable hesitation there to openly support the Solidarity trade union's rebellion against Communist rule in 1981. No joke, an Austrian speaker recalled, but his country's labor officials didn't recognize Solidarity until 1989!" (The Poles refuse to define a European future that could ever be in opposition to the Americans)
• Krauthammer's conclusion is that the European Left's "concern for human rights turns out to be nothing more than a useful weapon for its anti-Americanism" [against America as well as against Washington's allies!] (It would be a misreading of Europe's elites to see anti-American complaints as isolated gripes which can be overcome through patient dialogue)
• The death penalty, an insulting cartoon, a Berlin exhibit on European expulsees, everything is Poland's fault. "Poland's relations with the Union have become more complicated since last spring's formation in Warsaw of a coalition between conservatives, populists, and the far right." (It's All Poland's Fault)
• "Isn't that depressing! Isn't that sad? All those lucid, intelligent, humanistic, pacifist, reasonable groups (like the former communists), wanting to wake the Poles up to the reality of the US war, and those apathetic beings, not listening to them." (The Devil Is in the Details: How to Turn a Neutral Story into an Entirely Anti-American Article)

Update 1: Europeans (and France) were largely silent as recently as one week ago when Geremek (along with a dozen others, most of them former leaders in Europe) issued a declaration in favor of Ukrainian democracy.

Update 2: A Polish émigré weighs in:

…it does not strike you as odd that the people who rush to the side of "justice" were once very happy to forsake justice because we were not proving their social theories correct. It bothers you not at all that the people defending Geremek did not defend him twenty years ago. It bothers me very much, because seventy years ago, these same people "defended" us. I do not want this defense again.

Let me offer some quotes that to me are very telling:

"His moral authority, his commitment to Europe, his fight for freedom have made (Geremek) a figure symbolic of Europe and its values," Douste-Blazy said.

M. Douste-Blazy, Geremek's moral authority was established decades ago. You chose to ignore it until it served your purposes to attempt to harm Poland. I am not impressed.

French presidential candidate Segolene Royal urged Poland in the affair "to conform to the European Union's democratic values," which she described as "not negotiable."

Au contraire, Mdm. Royal, these values have always been very negotiable. When the Germans and Russians signed an agreement to bypass Poland with a gas pipepline through the Baltic, where were our French "friends?" Is M. Putin conforming to the EU's "democratic values?" When Poland was fighting to keep an agreement regarding representation in the EU from being arbitrarily changed by France and Germany, where were your "democratic values?" They are as ephemeral as the French "offensive" in 1939.

…If Poland is to survive in the EU in anything but a subservient role to the French-German axis (or should I say the Vichy-Nazi Axis), it cannot allow hostile neighbors to intervene in its attempts to shed the political turpitude which is a direct consequence of the cowardice those neighbors showed (and in the case of the Germans, far worse) when we could have most used courage.

…the attitudes of individuals must have made an impact on subsequent positions after the Cold War. I suggest that based on the feelings of those people with whom I spoke at that time, who would be contemporaries with those who now denounce Poland, this is not a new sentiment. It was disdain before, and it is disdain now. The rhetoric has adjusted to support current interests. Its hostility to Poland itself is unchanged.

La docilité requise : "Il fallait penser communiste, dormir communiste, parler communiste"

Stéphane has a book review of the autobiography of Hour Chea, a believer who spent four years with the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and several years with the …leftists in France.

Fofana fans

French youths in Marseilles provoked by Jewish woman.

Sale PD

Que ce foutu pays de merde aille droit dans le mur !

Guy Millière elaborates on the disaster that would follow Ségolène Royal's election if she were to win 10 days from now. French version here, English translation here.

Call them the Solana Battalion

So long as there is an audience to be pandered to, in the interest of posing an air of open-ness and debate, the EU mandates that all mouths shall speak out of both sides:

In an effort to cut the numbers of illegal migrants arriving to Europe by sea, EU interior ministers have given the green light to setting up a rapidly deployable force of border guards which would assist countries facing an immigration emergency.

Is it different when they aren’t Mexican or Palestinian?

Those Dashing Men and Women Making Laws in Europe's Parliament

A reader writes because he would "like to bring to [our] attention the latest attempt by the EU Marxist Thought Police to regulate blogs and the Internet": Providers are called on to do more against "hate pages" on the Web. John O'Connor adds:

Note that two of the instigators are UK MEPS. I'd never even heard of Glyn Ford but [this member of the Foreign Affairs Committee (AFET) in the European Parliament (!)] turns out to be an unreconstituted Hard Left relic: determinedly anti-American and totally besotted with the Worker's Paradise that is North Korea. His paeans of praise to that progressive wonderland are uncannily reminiscent of the emanations from Radio Tirana a couple of decades ago.

America, he says, is 'almost as bad' as NK when it comes to human rights abuses. And the only reason NK has any shortcomings at all is because of unwarranted interference and threats from the US Imperialists.

Ford comes across like the Lord Longford of Anti-Racism: hence his fervent mission to purge the ether of the mildest criticism of Islam (that well-known racial grouping.) The Danish cartoons are, he maintains, 'racist', and Islamophobia is not to be tolerated. He is also alert for anti-Semitism, but predictably condemns Israel for its 'aggressiveness.'

A professed champion of both Muslims and Jews, he attempts to reconcile the two by blaming the desecration of Jewish cemeteries in France... on the ubiquitous Far Right! This is a boy who's never peeked inside a copy of the Koran in his life. And if he ever did, he'd claim it was something faked up by the CIA in some Black Ops lab.

…here's his page on North Korea, complete with approving photo of NK propaganda poster…

Please turn your searching gaze on Mr Ford — and his fellow censorshits — and share your findings on No-Pasaran. Such people must not be allowed to impose their narrow ignorance and prejudices on the rest of us without a fight!

Ladies and gentlemen, never must you forget that America's two-party electoral system is totally anti-democratic. Europe's way of electing its officials is far more democratic and far more reasonable. Take a page from the EU and learn from it!…

Demonstrating “Against Violence”

With RPGs, of course.
Trained to mouth the words - Reuters:

Palestinians attend a demonstration against violence in Gaza April 23, 2007.

Did anybody register sclérotique.gouv.fr?

Why is it easier to create a Delaware Corporation than it is to register a dot-fr domain name? Anybody?

Another Great Bové-an Success

I’m lovin’ it.

Still Shaking Their Tiny Fists in the Air

Gramscian lie-ing redefined as “heroism””:

Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the German Green MEP and hero of Paris's student protests in May 1968, said a leftwing campaign would be "hopeless" for Ms Royal. He held crucial talks in the early hours of yesterday morning at the Socialist party headquarters to convince Ms Royal, whose campaign has been a mixture of leftwing economic policy and conservative social values, to move away from the traditional left. He told the Guardian: "If she tries to play it on the traditionally socialist card, she will lose, because France has veered right."

This is as close as they ever get to admitting that decades of Socialist ideas have been a failure – which is to say that people still aren’t “ready” for it and a are unwilling to be as “brave” as this warm, caring “man of the people” who’s just trying to defend free speech or something:

A man accused of threatening a Nevada Republican Party official with a rifle was arrested Tuesday in a vehicle in which police found swords, knives, a shotgun, shells and a flare gun, authorities said.

Zachary Moyle, executive director of the state GOP, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that Kramer invited him to look at something in the trunk of his Mercedes before pulling out a rifle, pointing it at his face and warning that he would be back if President Bush vetoed an emergency war spending bill being considered by Congress.

Agitateur d'idées ?

Non. Patron voyou. La FNAC supprime 300 emplois.

The Spanish Artist Who Would Not Go to America

I was having una conversación with a Catalan artist during a weekend in Barcelona, when he told me he would never go to los Estados Unidos. My eyes must have rolled around while I let out a sigh…

• Everyday Meetings with Common Europeans

"¿Porqué non?" I asked, not really interested and not really curious (i.e., too blasé) about what kind of inanity I would hear this time around.

In complete seriousness, he gave me his reply:

Because zee police weell shoot you!

Apparently, a number of Europeans think that not one of America's 300 million citizens is without a (at least one?!) gunshot wound…

Mike Lester's Killed Cartoon

The cartoon Mike Lester's editors refused to publish…

Le monde multipolaire se développe sans nous demander notre avis et sans correspondre à nos schémas

While Tony Blair says he has absolutely no plans of ever becoming president of the European Commission, Hubert Védrine tells Daniel Vernet that

Le fil conducteur de politique étrangère de la Ve République depuis que de Gaulle l'a reformulée vers 1966-1967, avec les inflexions liées à la personnalité de chaque président de la République et, dans quelques cas, à la personnalité des ministres, c'est l'idée d'une autonomie de décision. L'idée que la France a sa propre politique étrangère. C'est là-dessus qu'il y a consensus. Ce n'est pas évident pour les Américains et pour certains de nos partenaires. Cela suppose une autonomie de pensée.

… Depuis que nous sommes sortis de la guerre froide, il a fallu repenser la politique étrangère française. La France estime avoir le droit, dans certains cas, de contrer la politique américaine. D'avancer ses propres propositions sur l'avenir de l'Europe, sur l'organisation du monde, etc. Même si, sur chaque point d'application concret, sur les rapports entre réalisme, démocratie, et droits de l'homme, il y a des différences, voire des clivages, à l'intérieur de la gauche comme de la droite.

Sounding profoundly principled, Védrine states that he is thinks that France's anti-American consensus is "threatened" and that he is "opposed" to certain tendencies on the right ("and even sometimes on the left", how horrid) to go "in the other direction." The man who invented the term "hyperpower" while foreign minister (meaning that for whatever situation is being discussed, Uncle Sam is automatically in the wrong) evokes "the most insidious threat" as well as an "ingenious and dangerous vision", for which he has invented a term, Irrealpolitik.

Védrine goes on to say that

Dans le discours français, il est implicite que, parmi les pôles, il y a une Europe forte et, au sein de cette Europe forte, une France très influente. Or le monde multipolaire se développe sans nous demander notre avis et sans correspondre à nos schémas !

Le décret en préparation exprime le fantasme « Big Brother »

Pointing out that "even George W Bush's America and its post-September 11 Patriot Act have never contemplated such rules" (now that, in France, shows how bad it is!), Philippe Jannet asks whether the French state is trying to kill the Internet in France and charges that a Big Brother bill is underway that would allow the authorities to stock all kinds of personal information, from pseudonyms and passwords to payment details and credit card numbers…

The Way of the Quero

The creation of Europeana is "for France and Europe an important challenge and a great ambition to the service of spreading knowledge, cultural diversity, keeping the value of languages and the information that is the base of our shared identity,"

They still don’t get it. All leaving it to a government could do is to create a monoculture.

US Internet search giant Google triggered an international race to build an online library when it announced plans in December 2004 to digitise books and documents from a handful of big libraries.

US Internet and software giants Yahoo, Microsoft and Amazon soon announced separate plans while France, angry that private companies took the lead, instead pushed for the creation of a public digital library.

Lame attempts to nationalize the people all culture continue. The fact that private interests in Europe aren’t doing anything like this is a sign of the diminishing interest that comes with the suffocating effect of government trying to personify, if not entirely dominate the life, history, and management of all life.

Do they have a spiffy bar?

A Bloody Mary, please.

Anti-Hedge Fund Sarkozy Advances Toward French Presidency

That's the headline of the day. I like it. I'm pro-hedge fund, personally. Put me in the exotic beta category.

Regional breakdown

The first polls done after last night's announced result give Sarkozy 52%-54% to Royal's 46-48%.

Pouting. Bewildered. Standing Akimbo.

Greenies lose big on “Earth Day.”

Extra: One hour after Le Monde called it 29,8% for Sarko versus 25,6% for Ségo, TF2 calls it 30,4% for Sarko to Ségo’s 25,0%. It’s also worth noting that 26,1% of the vote, nearly as many as the leading candidate, went to freaky, hopeless fantasy candidates.

It's Sarko vs. Ségo

The official results are in.

Election Watch

Turnout for the first round of the French Presidential election is announced at 73.8% at 5PM compared to 58.5% at 5PM for the 2002 election.

Election Watch

Nidra Poller reports on the day's events.

That makes one vote less for someone

Sudden death. Je savais qu'on faisait voter les morts en Fwance, mais tout de même ...

The Greens of Wrath

What is Earth Day really all about? Virtually nothing but greed and fantasy determinism. While some miss the entire point of the strife of the 20th century to respect the autonomy of the individual, they try to recreate “creating the new man” arguments, others are just playing at your emotions to pick your pocket. Appealing to good-old fashion group hatred, a company selling shoes used this layout in a recent fake “magazine” mailer curiously named “The Stool Pigeon.”

Their faithful customers will be forgiven for not knowing that this company which presumes to be all about environmentalism, proximity of production, and all of the fetishes now though of as some sort of virtue, their SEC filing tells another story about this peddler of expensive shoes pretending to be “all Santa Barbara” (California), mailing out of Arizona, and trying to seem Hawaii surfin’ cool:

Simple.

Simple is our moderately priced “anti-brand,” serving the needs of a youthful, irreverent consumer base seeking the comfort of athletic footwear but the styling of more traditional, understated, _back-to-basics_ footwear. Simple was launched in the early 1990’s and has been recently revised to focus on its successful legacy categories, including sandals, clogs and casual athletic footwear. Simple enables us to leverage our core footwear design and production competencies in channels of distribution not served by Teva or UGG.

Our independent manufacturers are located outside the U.S., where we are subject to the risks of international commerce.

All of our third party manufacturers are in the Far East, Australia and New Zealand, with the vast majority of production performed by four manufacturers in China.

In other words they are a subsidiary of one of those vaunted “corporations!” engaging in “globalization!” which will give $5 with every pair sold to yet another outfit of self-proclaimed do-gooders called StopGlobalWarming.org for purposes they refuse to state.

Earth Day is an “anti-brand” for a lot of things, virtually all of them discredited, including planned societies and economies where industry, consumption, and daily common behavior is regulated,

It is an “anti-brand” for the vehicle with which people can hate the success of others and displace their own individual failures, inabilities to realize personal success using science and reason,

It is an “anti-brand” for discredited notions of radicalism which lost all hope of being accepted as anything other than a violent ideology imposed on an unwilling majority by an adolescent minority who are acting out emotions of envy and hatred on others, using as a pretense their efforts at your “salvation”. Heaven knows, you’ve been naughty, and as long as you can be placed in a subservient position, someone who is otherwise a personal failure by any normal metrics will chide you.

Somehow, Mr. and Ms. Inhabitant of earth, you aren’t just their enemy, but you MUST do what they tell you, and you MUST support them at the same time. If you aren’t already suspicious, you should be.

Election Watch

Turnout for the first round of the French Presidential election is announced at 31.2% at noon compared to 21.4% at noon for the 2002 election.

Why do they get to vote at all?

As we’ve learned before, where prisoners can vote, they vote for the left for one simple reason: it’s in their interest and they get to join the cult of victimhood, each with a special place in the hierarchy of guilttripping and pity-sseking, which, they say, will somehow make us all more equal.

The presidential election from behind bars

At Nanterre prison, most of the prisoners are very young and come from the cities [suburban high-rise ghettos], display a kind of disillusionment and depoliticization. Out of 850, 22 will vote by proxy.

After all, why not add voters who are more likely to advocate negative measures on society? It’s not like civilization has a future or anything!

Typical Palestinian family gathering

Warming Up His Audience with a Joke

Javier Solana, the EU’s rotating minister of everything in every transnational organization, criticized US policy as it related to the US-Mexico border, saying:

A wall that separates one country from another is not something that I like or that the European Union members like.

Apparently there must be some other European union out there he must be talking about, because the one we have to pretend is a real and mature entity seems in an panicked state to send naval vessels to islands to keep Africans out of the south, permits all but the smuggling of women for prostitution at its’ border to the east, and dispairs at having no structured borders at the north.

But other than that, they can’t see why another nation which spent half a century protecting Europe’s borders, would have the temerity to demark its’ own.

Mr. Solana did, after all, have a Mexican audience to pander to. What use this has to him, one can only speculate.

Economics Lessons for the National Front

Members of La Baf try to give economics lessons to members of Jean-Marie Le Pen´s Front National.

Wouldn't It Be Nice

Remind me not to toss her salad

Does this explain the Brown segment of the Red-green-brown alliance?

A Voice of Reason

Guy Millière comes out with his take, unique among French commentators, on the events in Blacksburg.

The English translation has been posted here.

Clichy « une des villes les plus réactives radioactives aux résultats du premier tour »

Clichy is looking to Rock the Casbah this Sunday.

Sarkozy Derangement Syndrome spotted in Paris

Blast from the past

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Same Old Ideas, Same Consequences

My anti-Americanism has become almost uncontrollable. It has possessed me, like a disease. It rises up in my throat like acid reflux, that fashionable American sickness.

- Margaret Drabble

I hate its bogus two-party system, its one-size-fits-all culture, and its income gap. I could go on for pages but I'll sum up with this: I hate America for being a hypocritical white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.

- Counterpunch writer ”Mickey Z.”

I have a suggestion for clarifying our consciousness: learn to hate the rich. Hate, yes. You can dress up the language and call it rage. But, hate is a concept underrated. Everyone does it, but no one wants to admit it, usually hating the wrong person. Hate is the opposite of love. Do you love the rich? Like the rich? If not, than maybe you can learn to hate the rich. I don't mean shame the rich in order to get money out of their guilt, as has been a long practice on the left and among non-profits. I mean NOT taking money from the rich, isolate the rich, make them build tall walls around their estates and corporate headquarters as the people force the rich to do in Latin America.

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, CounterPunch

You had everything you wanted. Your Mercedes wasn't enough, you brats. Your golden necklaces weren't enough, you snobs. Your trust fund wasn't enough. Your vodka and Cognac weren't enough. All your debaucheries weren't enough. Those weren't enough to fulfill your hedonistic needs. You had everything.

- Mass murderer Cho Seung-Hui

And It’s All Your Fault

Now turn out your pockets to these bums.



Regarding the strikes at a Citroën pland, L’Humanitéfeatures “championship” striking

“Several hundred workmen rebelled against low wages. An increase in their purchasing power is at the center of the conflict which will weigh in at the ballot box”

Lost in Space

How do you find direction in the quagmire of soft power multilateralism?

Semper Fi

Freedom is Worth More than their Power

E-nough! has found some curious graffiti on the campaign posters of the nagging poodles of Marxism.

Motto: “Our lives are worth more than their profits!”
Graffiti, succinct rebuttal: 100 million killed.

The art of sounding reasonable while at the same time spewing garbage

…plenty of charlatans have mastered the art of sounding reasonable while at the same time spewing garbage

says Benjamin Duffy, a man who loathes "race pimps and grievance mongers like Clyde Bellecourt, Elaine Brown and Jesse Jackson", who detests "their air of infallibility, their presumption of entitlement and their ability to tar all opponents as bigots", and who hates "the way that every grievance monger tries to outdo every other grievance monger, trying to prove that his group's sufferings are the greatest in the history of the world and therefore justifying the most compensation."

French Laws for Illegal Space Aliens

As a handful of space aliens tries to discover how welcome they (and their soon-to-be- born 50,000 children) are under current French immigration laws, La Baf tries its hand at science-fiction…

National Dogpile

Time is dwindling. Read up. 40% of all voters, more than any one candidate has committed to them, have yet to decide, and for obvious reasons. Generally, they stink.

5 of them are in the category of orbiting Pluto, ranging from Fantasy trotkyite, new-com, watermelon Marxist, a fake-peasant anarchist, and a hunter to a geriatric fascist. Add to that a “centrist” who looks suspiciously like Judd Hirsch. In the civilized world this would be readily identified as a failure.

Good luck with all that, but remember: don’t bend over to pick up the soap.

Fractured Fairy Tales

Boris and Natasha are steel trying to make beeg trabul for crazy Moose and Squirrel. Elsewhere, Russia’s high quality journalism covers more meaningful matters.

- Tip of the lid to George.

Personally, I thought he was indirectly responsible for the spread of morbid European euthanasia policies inspired by Soylent Green

I love reading decadent, knee-jerk, hack European newspapers like Der Spiegel and if you want my copy you'll have to pry it from my cold, dead hands.

More on German press reactions at Medienkritik.

The French Had Lots of Information

Guillaume Dasquié has a long article of two full pages on what French secret services knew about Al-Qaeda before September 11, 2001…

On Iran, Darfur, China, Russia, and America's Anti-Missile Shield

The three front-runners answer 10 questions about foreign policy (but Le Monde's readers aren't all that impressed).

You Read It First on ¡No Pasaran!

…in trying to transmute the fog of [France's] runup to the war into glory, the book may provide more clarity than intended: L'Inconnu de l'Élysée, the country's top nonfiction best seller, while idealizing Chirac's role, brings unexpected new support to a thesis that France's government was not so much struggling to save humanity as looking out for Numéro Un.

Innumerable Frenchmen, -women, pundits, journalists lionized Jacques Chirac for "having the balls" to stand up to George W. Bush in the Iraq crisis (not least in our comments section), but as John Vinocur points out, the French government was flip-flopping all the way. As he says, "France's lurching pursuit of the best yield for itself in the runup left it totally short of what its leaders hoped their opposition would bring."

[The book] credits the idea that France maneuvered for months while considering whether to participate in an American-led invasion of Iraq. And it suggests that Villepin, after summoning the United Nations Security Council to rise in opposition against America, actually thought that France could not sustain its position and would "link up with the United States" before the war began in March 2003.

John Vinocur asked Pierre Péan about

Villepin's wobbling. He replied, "It's an ultra-sensitive subject, an essential subject, but one I didn't sort out. No one wants to talk about it today. It's a place where there was a problem."

No wonder; it's easier (including for Péan himself) to talk (and to crow) about principles, standards, and glorious times.

Fear and Loathing in France

John Vinocur and Laurent Greilsamer discuss fear and loathing in the French elections.

Update: Vinocur also has an IHT article translated in Le Monde about Ségolène Royal (the apostle of a nation of victims).

Roger Cohen goes on to say that France's frivolous campaign nears its overdue close.

European Terrorists, Unlike Europeans, are Multiplying like Rabbits

All that tolerance and understanding must be starting to kick in.

Almost 500 terrorist attacks were reportedly carried out in 11 member states last year with separatists and nationalists in the Basque region of Spain and on the French island of Corsica responsible for most of the attacks.

Gentle Europe

Where a fascist political punter can find flaws in admitting to any sort of inhumanity, even 60 year later.

Jean-Marie Le Pen "regrets" that President Jacques Chirac acknowledged the French government's responsibility for deporting French Jews during the Holocaust. In an interview published Sunday in Le Parisian, the extreme right-wing candidate in France’s presidential elections said, "Chirac was the only president to do it. Not even [Francois] Mitterrand did it."

Nonetheless, one thing is clear, the public shows itself to be even more uncouth, not to mention vulgar and violent.

"In two countries - France and Norway - chief rabbis are calling on Jews not to step outside with Jewish symbols on their person," said Prof. Dina Porat, who edited the report along with Stauber.

[ ... ]

The breakdown of anti-Semitic incidents worldwide is heavily tilted toward Western Europe, which witnessed 54% of them, followed by North America - whose Jewish population is over five times the size of Western Europe's - with just 17% and the former Soviet Union with 13%.

To translate that into simpler terms, the risk to the individual is nearly 16 times higher in western Europe than in North America.

Islamist Porn Snuff Film to be Released Shortly

A Jihadist Palestinian militia claims to have killed BBC Gaza reporter Alan Johnston. Apparently they can’t control themselves. Those who claim to have killed him say Britain is somehow responsible, inspite of the fact that they kidnapped him, (or appropriated him from a ringer,) and claim to have murdered him.

"The whole world knows of our just cause in demanding the release of our prisoners, who are waiting under the fire of the occupation," the statement began. "Our demand was that all of those who are responsible for the journalist... release our prisoners who are being held in the prisons of the occupation," it continued.

Despite the fact that these groups are notorious liars about their claims, they may have actually taken his life. Either way, it’s your fault.

Islamist porn to follow:

"We will disseminate a video in which we show his killing soon to the media outlets," the statement said.

In closing, it captured the limit of the depth of their moral underpinning:

Allah is great, for it is either victory or martyrdom," it concluded.

Who’s next? Adloyada has more.

- H/T to Avary.

“Reporting News” Not Part of Their Agenda

In a bid to squelch any scrutiny on their bias and motive, the press tend to armor themselves with claims of their own political detachment. When caught out many claim that the selectiveness of their reporting has a “social role.”

Nonsense. Most of the European press are little more than political hit-men.

By a vote of 66 to 54, the annual delegate's meeting of Britain's largest trade union for journalists called for "a boycott of Israeli goods similar to those boycotts in the struggles against apartheid South Africa led by trade unions, and [for] the [Trades Union Congress] to demand sanctions be imposed on Israel by the British government."

Some of the union's 40,000 members decried its "trendy lefty" agenda. Other motions before the four-day meeting in Birmingham, which ends Sunday, included condemnations of the US detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and support for Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez.

Yet only “some” noticed that the press had an agenda. Given the divine illumination you can feel coming off of their own Code of Conduct, the very notion that it sould even get as far as showing any kind of evidence of the presence an agenda means that they are long past the point of just seeking out flaws, they are in a catastrophic state of failure as a profession.

A journalist shall at all times defend the principle of the freedom of the press and other media in relation to the collection of information and the expression of comment and criticism. He/she shall strive to eliminate distortion, news suppression and censorship.

[...]

A journalist shall strive to ensure that the information he/she disseminates is fair and accurate, avoid the expression of comment and conjecture as established fact and falsification by distortion, selection or misrepresentation.

[...]

No journalist shall knowingly cause or allow the publication or broadcast of a photograph that has been manipulated unless that photograph is clearly labelled as such. Manipulation does not include normal dodging, burning, colour balancing, spotting, contrast adjustment, cropping and obvious masking for legal or safety reasons.

They are simply hopeless.

Putain de sales schleus

The core of Europe - France, Germany, and Belgium - are hateful shitholes where anti-Semitism, racism and anti-Americanism of the filthiest kind are fully accepted as normal behavior. Here, German soldiers are trained by having them shoot at imaginary targets made up of American blacks from the Bronx.

The instructor tells the soldier, "You are in the Bronx. A black van is stopping in front of you. Three African-Americans are getting out and they are insulting your mother in the worst ways ... Act."

More here.



Flashback: We've already seen the same kind of anti-Black American racist rubbish from the already forgotten French Prime Minister de Villepin.

While We're in the Neighborhood…

By the way, did I miss something or am I right in believing that during her trip to the Middle East to pay a visit to Syria's dictator, Nancy Pelosi didn't even see fit to cross the border and pay a visit to American troops?

They Expect You to Love Them Because They Hate You

”Not gay enough” 80’s bubble-gum pop washup George Michael has put John Lennon’s piano on tour of sites “of violence”, with a curious selectivity: it’s reported that it will be tour locations in the US such as Ford’s Theater (where Lincoln was shot), the site of the Kennedy assassination, and so forth as a warm-up to set the groundwork for a collection of locations leftist cite appropriate as politically “theirs” for the purpose of imposing guilt for past events to draw attention to their political views.
The organizers have a full and precise schedule in the US, but have only made a vague reference to events in Europe – as if to imply that nothing violent ever happened there.

No word on whether or not this inanimate object that some would try to imbue with meaning will be touring the Communist Gulags, the killing woods of Poland, Daniel Ortega’s prisons where 25,000 people are estimated to have been killed in less than 2 years, the Armenian Turkey, Castro’s mass killings and imprisonments, the Nazis’ concentration camps, or any location in China, Cambodia, Vietnam, or the train-yards of France, Belgium, The Netherlands Switzerland, Austria, and Italy where people were packed into boxcars to be sent to their death.

Apparently, none of that is wrong enough for people who these hostile passive-aggressive types who call themselves “pacifists.” They will ignore hundreds of millions of deaths at the hands of leftist ideologies for those that they’ve appropriated as somehow being uniquely wicked because they are American, such as 3,445 lynchings of black people over 87 years.

The fact that Americans have made a genuine effort in the past half a century to redress its’ own social errors is what gives cause to the likes of these “pacifists” to blame her even further because the goal is not the making of a less violent world, it is use of their own complaints as a instrument for the rest of us to “imagine there’s no religion” which would surely puzzle Rev. Martin Luther King, and the genuine figures in the advancement of Civil Rights whose reputations they want to rob society of to describe themselves with.

Theirs’ is an act of taking the path of least resistance to anyone calling them on their underhanded motives.

Flashback 2003

“Shoving democracy down people’s throats”


Oh! The horror of regime change!

So much for that France-led post-national citizen-of-the-world multicultural hyper-relativist avant-garde anti-America-driven foreign policy thing

Begging for their lives. I thought that de Villepin's UN speech and Chiraq's hyper-evolved foreign policy were supposed to shield the French from things like this. Guess not.

"I've Thought of That"

Snow won't dampen global-warming rallies

The weather forecast for Saturday's global warming rallies in Grand Rapids and Holland calls for snow and cold rain and temperatures in the 40s [degrees F] -- about 10 degrees below normal.

For some, this might make global warming a tough sell.

Really? Not wanting to be the object of ridicule, the spokes-bot said:

"I've thought of that,"

But apparently not for long enough to realize that man had nothing to do with the cold snap.

Les chances pour la France

One French policeman out of luck.

Walking Down the Corridor is Not an Option

One wonders, who’s holding back vital information which could undermine people’s liberties? AmeriKKKa again? No. MEP’s want to know what their own negotiators are up to, so they have to go somewhere where dissent isn’t stifled!

MEPs are hoping that a meeting with members of the US Congress in Washington, DC, next week (17 April) will reveal details of how negotiations are progressing on the transfer of European citizens’ data for counter-terrorism purposes.

“I hope the trip will be useful in helping get some overview. We might get information on what is happening on the EU-US dialogue. Our [US] counterparts might be better informed,”

Elsewhere with all the detachment of a small, compartmented mind, Europol is proving a dictum without anyone’s help:

Brussels is keen to extend the agency's mandate to criminal issues that are not strictly related to organised crime and give the organisation greater access to various data on people under investigation, prompting concerns that privacy protection laws could be violated.

"These proposals give Europol a carte blanche to collect whatever information it wants, regardless of its relevance," said UK conservative MEP Syed Kammal in a statement.

Chuck Barris said as much to NBC

What Imus should have said to NBC.

Johnny Cash sings Gordon Lightfoot

But, of course, we are so much better entertained in shithole France by no-talent hacks like Cali, Benabar, and Corneille. If you could read my mind. Donc, voici mon message pour la galerie de franchouilles qui passent par ici de temps en temps (pas la peine de lire dans mes pensées bande de nazes : Que ce foutu pays de merde soit déclaré infréquentable et implose entre les deux tours ! Qui vous savez, vite ! En attendant, on peut toujours passer le temps agréablement.

France's new surrender

Detailed by the New York Sun.

This is happening in a climate of ambient anti-Semitism and political correctness that permits attacks against Jews to be carried out with more frequency than any nation that collaborated with the Nazis and claims to have atoned for it. There was the brutal torture and murder last year of Ilan Halimi, a young Parisian singled out because he was Jewish. He was reburied earlier this year in Israel. On March 31, another Jewish cemetery was desecrated, this time in the northern city of Lille. Neither event — the Halimi reburial or cemetery attack — was covered on France 24, in any language. How do I know that? I work there. The Web site, France24.com, receives so many anti-Semitic hate mails that the editors have considered eliminating user reactions to news items altogether.

José Bové couldn't find 3 globophobic hacks to do the job

Clear Channel does the work that no French want to do.

Check out Ségolène Royal as Morticia Addams ...

Anti-American explained rationally

at the BBC of all places.

And Paris. Paris? Yes Paris - where it all began.

Anti-Americanism was born in France. And here's a fascinating fact: it was born well before the United States existed. It was not caused by Coca-Cola, or McDonald's, or Hollywood or George W Bush.

The prevailing view among French academics throughout the 18th Century was that the New World was ghastly. It stank, it was too humid for life to prosper. And, as one European biologist put it: "Everything found there is degenerate or monstrous."

In their heart of hearts, many French people still believe that to be true.

Yes, that's exactly the way they think.

Dedicated to the boyz in the Nine-Three and la filière du XIXè

Coming Soon: a Novelty Called “the Telephone!”

Fake peasant alert

Zéro: « José, si tu es élu, ça sera qui, ta politique internationale ?

Bové: « En tous cas, ça ne sera sûrement pas un politique d’alignement sur les Etats-Unis. Pour moi, la France, elle doit d’abord faire respecter le droit des peoples.

Zéro: “José, if you’re elected, what will be your international policy.”

Bové: “In any event it won’t involve a political agreement with the United States. To me France must above all respect the rights of the peoples.”

People are largely immune to noticing the same stale anachronistic trash the rest of the world moved on from 50 years ago, not knowing the difference between the individual (the person) and a politically manipulable lumpenproletariat these crackpots are fond of calling “peoples” and the “the people.” Wow. There’s a winning concept to dealing with complex issues and affairs: parade your feelings around for the empathy and votes of equally naïve luddites.

And that pretty much sums it up. While the other candidates simply made a platform statement (with variable degrees of interest,) Bové’s involved a overexposed TV comedian (who as a kind of nagging political fishwife,) and interviews with a bunch of old hippies and people the viewer are supposed to think look like the unemployed, if you can get over the fact that they can afford better clothes than the average voter.



Others still, have yet to enter the 20th century.
Dead enders in every way.

Of course peace and love also means the usual tacit violent threats of fist-pumping too, which the Marxists and Trotksyites who couldn’t agree to come up with one candidate and ended up with six will be forgiven for having forgotten.

He talks the talk, but he won't walk the walk

The Economist calls Sarkozy France's best hope.

This election matters. France is the euro zone's second-biggest member and home to ten of Europe's 50 biggest companies. But it is deeply troubled. It has the slowest-growing large economy in Europe, a state that soaks up half of GDP, the fastest-rising public debt in western Europe over the past ten years and, above all, entrenched high unemployment. Over the past 25 years French GDP per person has declined from seventh-highest in the world to 17th. The smouldering mood of the suburbs (banlieues), home to many jobless youths from ethnic minorities, blazed into riots in 2005 and lay behind new trouble that flared recently at a Paris railway station. The disenchantment of voters is reflected not only in opinion polls but also in their rejection of the European Union constitution in 2005. Tellingly, they have not re-elected an incumbent government for a quarter-century.

L’Europe est en plein effondrement moral

Guy Millière rentre dans le lard avec cet article incisif sur le relativisme zéropéen.

Enfin quelques paroles censées

Courte intervention mardi soir par Guy Millière lors de l'assemblée générale (et cérémonie du meilleur livre libéral) de l'ALEPS.

The Land that Time Forgot

Welcome to the lad where it’s always 1923:

the field of 12 presidential hopefuls contains six candidates to the left of the Socialist Royal, including “three Trotskyists [and] a Communist.” You know a country is serious about Marxism when there are so many Marxist candidates that the Trotskyists are listed separately from the garden-variety Communists.

But these fine distinctions are apparently still taken seriously on the far left. The World Socialist Web Site, for example, published a broadside against Olivier Besancenot, the presidential candidate of the Revolutionary Communist League. Accusing him of denying Marxism by publicly disassociating himself from Trotsky, the website quoted Besancenot as voicing tolerance for different strands of communism “such as libertarianism and syndicalism.”

It’s certainly touching to see that French presidential candidates are so inclusive, embracing everything from communist libertarianism to communist syndicalism. Amazingly, that’s not even the full extent of the anti-capitalist choices on the French ballot. Voters can also choose Jose Bove, a sheep farmer and anti-globalization crusader. Candidate Bove preaches ''an electoral insurrection against economic liberalism'' and ''a social, feminist, democratic, anti-racist and ecological revolution'' -- a program rarely advocated outside American university classrooms.

But the most puzzling anachronism about the pre-cambrian European left is the absolute lack of attention to their own world view. For example, it’s perfectly okay to refer to a female candidate in the most condescending sounding and entirely maternal terms:

Royal's bedside manner leaves the French voters cold

A word here, a handshake there, a smile everywhere. This is what Mme Royal is supposed to be good at: retail politics; bringing the aloof, ruling classes of France closer to real people and real issues.

That is the theory. In truth, Mme Royal is not particularly good at it. She is not a natural, I-feel-your-pain, bear-hug politician like a Jacques Chirac or a Bill Clinton. There is something stiff about her, something almost haughty, like an old-fashioned hospital matron doing her rounds.

"I tried to talk to her but she just smiled and walked on," said Louise, 43, a nursing assistant."I do like her, or I want to like her, but I just don't know. I am just not quite sure who she really is."

Ruling classes? Are they kidding? Never. They’ve been using the same barbaric terms for a century, and in the hothouse free from reality will continue to.

Feminists talk ad nauseum about the “glass ceiling” w/o acknowledging the men tied to the “glass cellar”

Demosthenes has some remarks for "the myrmidonic horde of feminists":

Anecdotal experiences WRT women & the military:
-Freedom of speech doesn’t exist in the MILITARY: privately criticize the “double standards” applied to FEMALE personnel in front of the wrong person & you career will end that day
- While in country in HAITI I had to evacuate “98 lbs wet” FEMALE O-1 right out of OCS out of harm’s way because I thought she was going to be snatched & assaulted by the natives. Her presence compromised the mission.
-At the Academy, underclass females routinely engaged in affairs w/ upperclass “ALPHA” males- nothing ever happened to them.
-When one of the female underclassman under my purvey was warned repeatedly to stop harassing a male underclassman to point where she physically assaulted him- the gutless Administration refused to press charges and court-martial said female. Why? Because the military, like society, doesn’t hold women accountable for their actions, e.g., US Naval Academy-educated USN CAPT Lisa Nowak
-I graduated w/ a BS in Electrical Engineering - 95% of all EEs in my class were MEN (Big Surprise)
-I dated a USNR nurse who told that married USNR enlisted females in her unit routinely had affairs w/ their male counterparts during drill weekends. One female in particular had committed paternity fraud on two separate occasions. It was an open secret and no one did anything about it.
-I had an academy classmate who committed adultery with an E-8 and then attempted to commit paternity fraud on her husband. What eventually happened? Nothing: Academy-educated women don’t exploit their authority & engage in group relations w/ subordinates. She later divorced her husband (got the house, kids etc. after making unsubstantiated “domestic violence” charges.) CAPT Nowak is hardly the exception to the rule.
-At my current reserve unit, an EMAIL has been promulgated by all the militant females and their chivalrous male enablers: The obituary of recent outstanding West Point graduate killed in Irag by an IED. Why? Because she was a minority female and the implication is that her life is more valuable than the lives of her minimally-franchised white male classmates.

Feminism verses reality:
“First Wave” Feminism was ostensibly sold as “equality of opportunity.” When that didn’t produce enough engineers & scientist to suit the feminists, “Second wave” Feminism became all about allowing upper-middle class women the luxury of “equality in outcome” (e.g., Affirmative Action, quotas, Title IX set asides and other forms of Fascism) in the world of men while retaining their domestic power-base. Gender is course a social construct when it applies to the traditional world of men, but women should have the privilege of maintaining their traditional “matriarchal” power monopoly because they have an innate “nurturing” nature endemic to a uniquely “esoteric” female insight into reality in general. “Third wave” feminism is all about “female-chauvinism” in the guise of gender neo-marxism:
+ “pregnancy should be seen as a super ability” that should be compensated/subsidized by society rather than a disability,
+ “comparable worth”: Nurses (female dominated profession) should be paid the same as Engineers (male dominated profession) , etc.
But, speaking as member of the “disposable” gender, I’m all in favor of an ERA (“Equal Responsibility Amendment”) which should contain the following items:

(a) Women are legally held accountable for their actions (e.g., CAPT Nowak, Mary Winkler, Andrea Yates, Debra LaFave, etc.) like their male counterparts;
(b) Current paternal court system is overhauled to be gender-neutral WRT divorce, alimony, child custody & child support
(c) The law mandates automatic paternity tests for all children born in the U.S. (NOW will fight this tooth & nail)
(d) Women accept the consequences of engaging relations w/ men with whom they really don’t want to have children rather than using abortion as de facto birth control (apparently 20% of U.S. children conceived are currently aborted- pretty pathetic behavior on the part of the “morally superior” gender);
(d) Women are prosecuted for committing the most despicable form of domestic abuse: PATERNITY FRAUD (we will need to build more prisons because this will apply to at least 10% of the female population)
(d) The U.S. government spends as much $ financing male specific disease research as it does female specific research (e.g., prostrate vice breast cancer research) which includes the average life-span disparity (men on average lived longer that women prior to the 20th century)
(d) Women comprise 50% of mining, construction & other work-related deaths (not likely since the lives of women are more valuable than men), e.g., “poor” women should be taken off the welfare rolls IOT be given the opportunity to die along side poor men since gender is a social construct;
(e) Women work 50% of all overtime;
(f) Women pay 59% of all income taxes (59 cents on every dollar collected by the federal government goes to pay for entitlements that almost solely benefit WOMEN)
(g) Men are accorded the opportunity to stay at home to raise their children without being subjected to the usual misandrist “shaming language”, nor losing their home & children
(h) The Social Security Retirement age for women should be extended to 72 IOT compensate for their artificially enhanced life spans;
(i) “Chivalry” (i.e., Pro-female sexism) will be treated as a felony; and
(h) Women do 50% of all standard dirty/analytically-challenging male domestic chores: e.g., replace/re-wire dishwasher, move 8 tons of river rock around the pool area, repair sprinkler piping, inspect crawl space, rip out & replace crawl space door, administer home WLAN, etc.

Feminists, like children, see rights without the associated responsibilities. They see a “Patriarchy” w/o acknowledging the power of the traditional domestic “matriarchy.” They see the female as “Goddess” but not likewise as the “Devil.” They talk ad nauseum about the “glass ceiling” w/o acknowledging the men tied to the “glass cellar”, e.g., men still dominate the 20 most dangerous, low-paying professions & suffer 95% of all workplace-related deaths & injuries. There are pathetic, petulant, pedantic women-children & if they aren’t careful, the ADULTS with get tired of doing all the heavy lifting and allow the Bogymen to come in and put all of the women of this country in Burkas.

Ladies, don’t bother to consider the merits of anything I have stated. Merely brand me a “woman hater” & start to attack my manhood. Let the “invalidation games” begin…

You can not be both a scientist and a global warming crusader at the same time

"…we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts we might have."

Benjamin Duffy takes on global warming.

Dr. Robert Giegengack of the University of Pennsylvania has firsthand knowledge of what it means to be working among scientists who double as advocates. When the Ivy League professor suggested that other sources (not simply carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases) were responsible for the slight warming of recent years, he was shunned by some colleagues. "People would come to me and say: 'Stop talking like this. You're hurting the cause.'" In case you were wondering, the "cause" was not the unbiased pursuit of the truth, as you might expect from scientists. The "cause" was making the theory of manmade global warming as commonly accepted as gravity.

These advocate-scientists already know what they want the science to reveal. The evidence is then fitted to the theory, not vice-versa.

Pointless. Newsless. Meaningless.

And contextually nonsensical. But it doesn’t matter.



Published in Al-Jazeera Sur Seine nonetheless.

Mahmood’s “Gift”

And the only way you can use the word “gift” is in the original German. To put into context what “shnuggums” is up to, I leave you to the brutally honest characterization of Ahmedinejad’s treatment by the peaceniks and the press by the charming and talented Ex-Blond:

Have a nice day.

French youths send message to Sarkozy ...

... and it's in a bodybag.

15 French youths start fighting while taking a spin on an amusement park attraction. When a policeman tries to put a stop to the violence, he is pushed in the way of one of the attraction's moving parts and is wacked. A second policeman just barely escaped when he was pulled out by the ride operator.

Sounds like an ambush by angelic French youth.

Let them eat yellow cake

Mycle Schneider, the Paris-based nuclear consultant who wrote the report for the MEPs, was shocked by what he discovered. "The continuous deep involvement of Iran in the world's largest multinational uranium enrichment plant in France is the perfect illustration of the stunning level of hypocrisy that has governed the non-proliferation treaty," he said.

You and what army?

Europeans, as usual, wait for someone with balls to do the dirty work.

Hard Power = "Let's Roll"

Soft Power = "Let's Roll Over"
UPDATE: Cream Puff Power = "Let's Roll Over All The Way To The Bank"

For the Corporate Dead

Eugene Schlanger, the Wall Street Poet, will be reading poems from "September 11 Wall Street Sonnets and Other New York City Poems" at the Cornelia Street Café, 29 Cornelia Street, New York on April 9 at 6PM.

Le Pen welcomed by the French youth

The French preSS still refuses to believe that Le Pen will score big in France's suburban shitholes.

Just a Spoonful of Sugar...

...makes the hatefulness go down...

Let's face it: even the most confident and stylish among us knows that some considerable proportion of French people we encounter are sizing us up by sizing us up. Other countries produce fat people too, but the association of America with obesity is not only — and unfortunately — statistically a truism but an image of which the French media just can't get enough. It's hard to find a story about French obesity rates in the French press that doesn't at some point raise the frightening possibility of French people looking one day like: Americans.

Speaking of going down, (or not), I always knew Le Pen was a wanker. Oh – sorry. That’s that extra special sooper-dooper quirky and sophisticates of politics that no-one’s ever allowed to criticize. I don’t know about you, but I start getting a little edgy when I hear any kind of European use the word “genetics,” especially the fat ones.

From Les 4 Vérités

Guy Milliere- Wednesday March 28, 2007

The whole of the French media did not fail to mention that four years have passed since the American decision to intervene militarily in Iraq.

The comments, of course, spoke (as ever) of it as a “quagmire”, to list of the attacks, note the number of dead which “does not cease growing”. It was added that George Bush, very “insulated”, still required “a little time” before withdrawing the troops. It was said that the Americans are “increasingly isolated”. The current political topic is dominated by discussing the greater “wisdom” of the decision of Chirac during his second term was his opposition to the war.

In the countries where information is free, that’s all that’s said even if a few scrupulous journalists hint at refuting it. In France, it is particularly difficult to do as much of that, and I often think that if I didn’t write about it from time to time there would be near or total silence.

The reasons I don’t remain silent are varied, but can be summarized in two points. First of all, although I don’t want to invite insults or be boycotted, I learned from my mentors that professional work requires scrupulousness courage. Then, I then notice that the lie, even by omission is not something I can resist opposing. It’s in my nature.

Given that I have to note:

a) There are difficulties “achieving peace” but the initial objectives of the war were achieved long ago. Iraq is no longer a base for terrorism and took considerable steps towards freedom, with all due respect to leftists, along with the gaullists, islamist and the French extreme-right.

b) Since the change of strategy implemented by the General Petraeus considerable progress has been made in security, so much so that Robert Kagan, writing in the Washington Post wondered if those who hoped for the worse might soon have to face their own attitudes. According to Kagan, to win from now on is a question of months.
c) It was long known that the alternative to the liberation of Iraq had been continuing the intolerable sanctions, mass graves, and corruptions which were impossible to lift except through war, which while allowing Iraq to become unruly again. It’s also well known that the Chirac’s “wise decision” had entirely to do with that corruptions and fear.

D) We are in a global war declared on the free world by radical Islam. The beginning of this war (which goes beyond Iraq), is much older. Some say it began with the first attack on the Twin Towers in 1993, others date it to Khomeini’s seizure of power in 1979.

This war will mark the 20th century. If (what I do not dare to imagine), it was not to show the victory of freedom, that would mean the end of civilization in which we let us live.
The American leaders distinguish it, just like the most enlightened thinkers of the Moslem regions. The American left, in prey with the phantasms come from the time of Vietnam, does not distinguish anything. The left, the gaullists and the extreme-right-hand side in Europe do not distinguish anything either, hide their contempt for the Arab populations behind weak remarks, dissimulate their cowardice behind the illusion which the appeasing can function, and prepare, in fact, consciously or not, a total tender with the radical Islam which they seem to find preferable with a victory of a free world led by the United States.

As an economist and a liberal geopolitical observer, I regard it as an honor to be insulted in the same terms by the descendants of Pétain, Mussolini and Chamberlain and by the distances disciples of Marx and Lenin. I leave all and sundry to their mental indigence. I carry on. And by doing this I wish good luck to the American armies of liberation, the free Iraqis who still face the test, and with all the friends of freedom and clarity on earth.

Football Factory

Boys will be Boyz.

Animal Europe

Gang muggings and beatings during 2006 Paris student protest

Don't ever let the French forget to what point they are an animal society.

Our Gallant and Intrepid Media

Ah, yes, the media's fair and balanced coverage of The Eagles vs The Idiots

writes Valerie.

Happens here too unfortunately. In a pouring deluge we went to a support the troops rally. Amazing thunderstorm. Hundreds of pro-troop/Bush supporters turned out. Folks from all walks and stripes of life. There were Kurds and Iraqis there too. Just wonderful. And across the very broad street? Twelve bedraggled, woe-begone looking losers who had come to "shout you down!" Their exact words.

Guess which side of the street the media covered?

But that IS their History

André Glucksmann points out how action can speak for themselves:

The protagonists of this shady entanglement include not only heads of the military industrial complex (like Gergorin, who worked at Lagardere, EADS, Airbus and Ariane), top figures at the foreign ministry (Villepin) and secret service spies (General Rondot), they also include members of the government's geopolitical think-tank CAP, which works out diplomatic and strategic initiatives of the Elysee, for example France's "Arab" and "African" policies, and its support for Milosevic and Saddam Hussein in their heydays. This heterogeneous black cabinet which prefers to avoid publications and media attention, quietly gathers together post-communist intellectuals and post-Gaullist elite-bureaucrats under the banner of a respectable anti-Americanism, open to both left-wing anti-imperialists and right-wing sovereigntists: Regis Debray and Emmanuel Todd are esteemed advisers.

This endearing family presides - without either undue modesty or parliamentary control - over the worldly destinies of France. A country with a mere hundredth of the world's inhabitants has worked its way up to be the planet's third-biggest arms dealer. Cock-a-doodle-doo! In a demonstration of "soft power" and universal moral sovereignty, Dominique de Villepin's famous speech at the UN in 2003 revealed to the four billion people of the world, in Jacques Chirac's words, that France was still France. The Paris-Moscow axis pursues its objectives to the detriment of Europe of the 25; arms and patents are delivered to China to the detriment of the Atlantic Alliance: all this raises our camarilla far above the classic, measured anti-Americanism from De Gaulle to Mitterrand which in times of danger (be it the Cuba Crisis or the question of the Russian SS20 missiles) always came home to the fold of Euro-American democracies. Today, all of that is history. Down with "hyper power"!

Translation of Erik’s post: « Il n'y a pas de médias qui traitent l'information correctement sur les Etats-Unis »

From ¡No Pasarán!: Il n'y a pas de médias qui traitent l'information correctement sur les Etats-Unis : “None of the Media [in France] Describes Anything About America Accurately”

So said Nicolas Lecaussin to France-Etats-Unis's Carine Martinez.

Don’t forget that we are the only country to have published a review devoted entirely to anti-Americanism called Empire. Another example is a publication handed out for free in the subway called “Practical Voyage”, which is supposed to give travel advice. The lead article was an anti-American item about the biometric passports there by blaming Americans for not wanting to give us to get passports to go over there when everyone knows the passports were held up by the national printing trade unions which refused to lose their monopoly on of printing passports.
None of the media describes anything about America accurately. Two months ago in Le Figaro an article compared Guantanamo to a Gulag. It is an insult to the victims of the Gulags, if one had compared it to Auschwitz, I think that it would be an insult to its’ victims.
The Gulag was an extermination and concentration camp, where million of people died by being exterminated, massacred, from hunger, and cold in the depths of Siberia. When one sees an article in Le Figaro making this comparison, one can only wonder just how dishonesty of our journalists are.