Erik Svane sort la suite des aventures de Leonardo da Vinci

Erik Svane sort la suite des aventures de Leonardo da Vinci

Croisade vers la Terre Sainte

Vedette américano-danoise de la BAF, Erik Svane a fait paraître le deuxième volet de sa série de BD (voir le premier tome ici) avec Dan Greenberg aux Éditions Paquet.

Dans ce Tome II, Croisade vers la Terre Sainte, nous découvrons qu'après avoir "embrigadé" un Leonardo réticent et réquisitionné ses inventions militaires pour une nouvelle Croisade, les forces du Vatican, commandées par le général Scharano, mettent les voiles vers Rhodes, bastion chrétien du Proche Orient assiégé par la redoutable armée ottomane. Mais les soldats du Saint-Siège ne sont pas aussi invincibles qu'ils croient l'être devenus, et... il y a de la trahison dans l'air...

Le commander sur Amazon (ou aller l'acheter dans une Fnac quelconque)…

Plantu's Demonization of Sarkozy Continues Until the Very Last Days

…as did his concurrent beatification (although it is admittedly tongue-in-cheek, as you can see, it is just barely so, with all those brave innocent followers of hers, aka "the people") of Ségolène Royal (and that, on Le Monde's front page, natch)…

Update: Appealing to the Vote for a Woman crowd, Serguei weighs in (click on 2 above left) with a joyful Ségo looked upon tenderly by a motherly Marianne while a spiteful Sarko sweats with hatred… (Plantu's cartoon has to do with Afghanistan's Taliban putting off their ultimatum about the fate of their French hostage until the end of the voting.)

Update: Three months later, Pancho weighs in…

It's always fun watching Leftists lose ...

... but other than that, don't get your hopes up. We're still in Europe, after all.

1,5% of “Growth?”

On Air, but not in print the BBC is continuing the report that “combating” Anthropogenic Global Warming will ONLY cost 1,5% of global growth. Nonsense. The Stern report softened the ground by pricing this salve on the unscientific conscience at 1% of GDP, not “growth. Globally, the GNP grows at a rough average of 2%. A 1,5% burden, itself a figure intended to seem acceptably low to get civilization to sign on the bottom line, is actually 75% of all growth, and as such 75% of all real poverty eradication, development, and definable and certain improvement of the quality of life.

To begin with this 1/1,5/3% business is nonsense. To impose a burden of a 50-150% on growth will cause more contraction that the actual loss of growth itself. Think of it as reverse compound interest. The throw-away line greens have about suggesting an area pursue “eco-tourism instead” falls into the same category of condescension for humanity.

All this to accomplish what? A supposed 2º C “correction” to the neam global temperature in 40 years. So instead of eradicating poverty, this pernicious obsession of the whingerati will instead eradicate the poor.

The BBC’s global reach makes this more than a mere slip. Their world service radio and television programming reaches a good part of the world, and in many underdeveloped parts of it, is considered the only access people have to “real” journalism. Instead, they prefer to lie to the inhabitants in under-developed society about their own fate.

See this (skip to 12 min. for the skinny) to imagine the moral repugnance of what they’re trying to promote: in half a century, what would we tell the descendants of those we’re taking opportunity from today?

Pour le PS, ça part en couilles

The final poll before the actual vote gives Sarkozy 55%, a score which has been rising steadily since the debate earlier this week (which the French preSS saw as a win for the combative and pugnacious Ségolène -- it would seem that the French public, for whom she came across as shrill and hysterical, begs to differ). Ségolène Royal, when not making catastrophic proclamations of impending doom should Sarkozy be elected, is making impassioned calls to the French to ignore all polls before Sunday's vote. Behind the scenes, Socialist top guns are already thinking about how to get rid of head honcho François "Flanby" Hollande who is on the verge of losing a 3rd straight Presidential election for his Party. The défaitisme at the Socialist Party is such that certain talking heads are stating that, at 47% of the vote Ségolène Royal will chalk up a symbolic victory.

Better Than Borat

(…not to speak of, Better than ABC News "reporting"…)

Inside Iraq: The Inside Stories by Mike Shiley (excerpt)

Ségolène the American

The rancor, the anger, the spite, the accusations... the narrative of “Anybody but Bush” among the other Pavlovian drools translated directly. To put it in perspective of accusing people of “being American”, take into account the exchange I had with a lefty American blogger and a completely fake populist:

"Two days until France becomes a police state, which you apparently support. So much for 'freedom'."

Hey, before you know it they’ll be segregating the lunch counters, and the rest of the canned spiel and freshly potted bile. Behold how the "warnings" of the wise look like threats by a typical peace-camper:

"The term police state is a pejorative term for a state in which the government exercises rigid and repressive controls over the social, economic and political life of the population (or a segment), especially by means of a secret police force which operates above the normal constraints found in a liberal democracy. A police state typically exhibits elements of totalitarianism and social control, and there is usually little distinction between the law and the exercise of political power by the executive."

Wait for the riots that will erupt if he is elected. You think those riots last year were bad?

I'd hate to be a Muslim in France come Monday morning.

That the overraught left in the magical land of € sounds so much like America’s own “special” people should come as no surprise. The similarities are striking when it comes to the casualness with which they’d dispose of both pluralism and civil calm when they don’t have their way:

Tony Essono, 32, an unemployed economist whose parents emigrated from Cameroon before he was born, said that despite years of anger and discrimination, people in La Courneuve were willing to put their faith in the ballot box "because they understand they can change something" by voting. But, he added, "if Sarkozy is elected, it means we haven't been heard, and we'll trash everything."

As U*2 said: just wait for that 3e Tour.

Not only is she hysterical

She's a hysterical liar.

1968ers head for the lifeboats

And hopefully, there will not be enough lifeboats to go around. Le Monde Al Jazeera on the Seine is sending out a distress signal with this afternoon's edition headlined with a gasping "Sarkozy-Royal: the gap widens". Seems like everyone saw what the still politically correct straight jacketed French preSS refuses to report: that Royal was a hysterical, scatterbrained, hormone-addled, castrating ballbuster during her debate with Sarkozy. Definitely not figurehead material. Not even for the French.

"The French have been sitting around talking to themselves as if the world didn't exist"

When an interviewer asked Valéry Giscard d'Estaing the other day what he thought of the minimal attention paid to international affairs in France's presidential election campaign, he corrected his questioner

remembers John Vinocur in the International Herald Tribune.

There was no interest at all, the former president said. "It's a France living with the shutters closed," he said. "The French have been sitting around talking to themselves as if the world didn't exist."

… A country confused about how to end the misery of its high unemployment and low growth, France likes the prerogatives that come with United Nations Security Council membership and its hold on big-power status as a nuclear-armed nation. But it doesn't want to hear and think much about its diminished place in the world, or the prospect of new responsibilities and having to take sides.

• Bonus NYT article: After Chirac, a Question Mark on French Foreign Policy


• Bonus AP article: Sarkozy more pro-American than Royal — but may not be the lapdog critics say

"Il faut voter SR pour sauver le PS"

Hemming and hawing in a front page editorial, Le Monde's Jean-Marie Colombani ends up by coming out for Ségolène in order (see last two paragraphs) to …save the Socialist Party! (Since this would allow le PS to reinvent itself…)

Most Le Monde readers have already shown their partisanship, but as one of them says,

Je n'ai jamais rien lu d'aussi révolutionnaire. En appelant à l'élection de Royal pour permettre la réinvention (sic) du PS, JMC prend la France et les français pour le laboratoire de ses délires. Que le PS et ses fossiles se modernisent seuls sans leur présenter la France en offrande. Les jeux de la gente Rive Gauche n'amusent qu'eux même. Organisez vous une garden party à Versailles pour un évènement royal.

Or to quote U2, Folks, you can't make this shit up. It's a French Socialist mindset sputtering away on all cylinders.

After the Hissy Fit, we now have to put up with Crazed Cries of Impending Danger

Never mind that, as a Socialist, Ségolène speaks in the name of the most brutal ideology of what was an already very brutal 20th century -- she is now sounding the alarm that a vote for Sarkozy is a dangerous choice that will plunge France into the throes of a brutal system. Socialists are shameless bastards.

One Webmaster's Prediction

As the debate ended on Wednesday night, I said: Sarkozy wins on Sunday with 53-54%.

(Unless, of course, the socialists are "lucky" enough to get a totally unexpected windfall à la Madrid bombing…)

The socialists are so imbued with their Sarkozy hatred that they failed (or Ségolène failed, at least) to see that one point of the debate (the main point, indeed) was to appear presidential, especially for the undecided voters, centrist or otherwise. Somewhere, they did realize this, as Ségo tried relentlessly to make Sarko lose his temper and appear like the brute we all know he is. But with her eyes full of contempt (they rarely seemed to leave him), she was clearly out for blood while Sarkozy was (or at last appeared) only interested in ideas and having a back-and-forth discussion, addressing the journalists as well as his adversary (and thus the French people).

Question to the French (those decided and undecided alike): Who would make a better representative for France at, say, the G-8?

Good idea. Just one question. Who will be escorting the escorters?

One tragicomic moment during the Sarko-Ségo debate was when Royal attacked Sarkozy on France's high crime rate by shamelessly exploiting the recent rapes of 2 off-duty policewomen in Bobigny. After laying the blame on Sarkozy's stint as Interior Minister she went on to expose her solution to the problem: if she is elected, she promised to have all off-duty policewomen escorted by... the police! Folks, you can't make this shit up. It's a French Socialist mindset sputtering away on all cylinders.

As for the rapists. Well. She had nothing to say about them.

Ségolène's brainstorm can be seen here. Part 2 at 1:46 (8:27 if the timer counts backwards).

Hey Ségolène, why not create special emploi jeune McJobs and have the policewomen escorted by French youths?

“At Peace with Itself”

• “Traditional” May Day riots

• Violence mars global May Day

• “Resistance” against who knows what. I’m not sure it matters to them.

• Hate is only not a family value when you can pin it on a non-revolutionary.

• Tangent! "Battle for Power" in the interest of peace and all thigs good: Ad Melkert got the memo, but while he advised Wolfowitz’ on his ethics issues initially, he found it more interesting to go after him instead of telling his own committee what a ethical basket case he was himself. He hired an official from his political party in the Netherlands in a cozy position, didn’t submit a disclosure statement about his financial interests as Wolfowitz had, and amounts to just another parasite job hopping from one transnational booby-hatch after another. The Klingons can’t seem to remember their own proverbs about vengeance, can they?

• Obviously at peace with itself. Caveat emtor, peeps.

• Speaking of space: American are from Mars, the EU is orbiting your anus. 2005-2007: the message hasn’t changes.

• At peace with itself during naptime.

Battlegroup!:

An important part of the EU’s military ambitions is to have the capability to react fast and forcefully in trouble spots outside EU territory...

• Solana: "The world is not standing still" (08 March 2006)

• EU reluctant to send troops to Congo (24 February 2006)

It’s the siesta after the fiesta: they can’t yet count as their first success the ambush on the Mount Wolfowitz.

• Oh, and strangling. In the name of peace of course.

Still Waiting for the De-Nazification of Discourse?

Don't bother.

This shithole, that shithole. What's the difference?

Bat Ye'or discusses the Palestinianization of Europe.

The Debate

The Economist has coverage of the debate.

Hissy Fit Nation

In France, when a Right Wing Guy gets angry he is considered to be uncontrolable and dangerous (and something akin to a Nazi). When a Left Wing Broad totally loses it, she is simply expressing her righteous indignation. Last night, after a smear campaign of several weeks during which French Socialists painted Sarkozy as unstable and prone to temper tantrums, Ségolène Royal had a hysterical meltdown during her debate with Nicolas Sarkozy. This morning, French Lefties are boasting about the fighting spirit of their candidate. It wasn't anger you understand (as they talk down to you as French Lefties always do) -- it was healthy ire in the face of injustice.
UPDATE: Ségolène's hissy fit can be seen here.
UPDATE: LCI news is announcing that, according to a poll by OpinionWay, Sarkozy was considered to be more convincing by 53% of debate viewers. Royal was judged more convincing by 31%. The Socialist Party has already issued a statement trashing the poll.

While We're on the Subject…

The job comes…

…with six châteaux…

Sarko vs Ségo: The Debate

The entire debate in 16 Youtube segments. The build-up to Ségolène's hissy fit is in part 12 starting at 3:12 (6:58 if the timer counts backwards). The aftermath continues into the first seconds of part 13.

A full transcript of the debate can be found here.

1:


2:


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All eyes on the election, except that it's not the same one the French are talking about

The French, flattering themselves as they always do, are convinced that all eyes, especially those in Europe, are turned towards France as their Presidential election draws to a close. They need to get over themselves. All European eyes are indeed turned towards an election except that it isn't in France. It's in Turkey.

Sarko and Ségo's Programs Compared

Comparing both candidates' programs, La Baf takes no prisoners.

Entre deux tours d'élection
Uploaded by Labaf

To anybody getting uptight about that hooker scandal in DC

Don't sweat the small stuff, boys.

Our history lessons gloss over the war's aftermath precisely because Vietnam became the slaughterhouse that war supporters had predicted

One philosophy is that an American retreat from Iraq will actually have a stabilizing effect on the country. This tired old argument is usually some variation of the idea that U.S. troops are "driving the insurgency," that the only reason there is violence in Iraq is because there is a target: U.S. troops. Simply remove the troops and peace will fall on Iraq like rain.

Thus writes Benjamin Duffy.

I have never heard of a war being won by retreating, but let's analyze this. If going home now were all we had to do to pacify Iraq, I would support the policy. But are U.S. troops really the only target? Of course not. They aren't even the main target. Iraqis are killing Iraqis in far greater numbers than Iraqis are killing Americans. Removing the Americans will not make the terrorists lay down their arms.

Since Iraq is always being compared to Vietnam, Benjamin Duffy tackles that next.

Don't worry if you don't know much about the aftermath of American retreat from Vietnam. Our history lessons gloss over the subject precisely because Vietnam became the slaughterhouse that war supporters had predicted. Much to the embarrassment of John Kerry, nothing vaguely resembling peace materialized.

After our troops came home, North Vietnam attacked South Vietnam in direct violation of the Paris Peace Accords. One million dissidents were herded into "re-education" camps under deplorable conditions, and some were not released until 1986. The victorious communists executed 65,000 Vietnamese, and that does not include those who died slowly in the "re-education" camps, for which there are no reliable figures. A flood of 800,000 Vietnamese "boat people" fled onto the dangerous high seas, where many drowned. And above all, the power vacuum remaining after American retreat led like night into day to the rise of Pol Pot in Cambodia, and his massacre of 1.7 million people, or about a quarter of the population.

The war supporters' predictions were validated because they understood that such atrocities always follow communist victories. Unfortunately, we allowed ourselves to be worn down by a domestic "anti-war" movement that made victory impossible. The rest is history.

Benjamin Duffy ends with the following conclusion:

Don't be fooled by the Left's imagery of peace. They would have you believe that going home now will make violence in Iraq disappear, when in fact it is a recipe for disaster.

Information from Useful Idiots: How Liberals Got It Wrong in the Cold War and Still Blame America First by Mona Charen was used in this article.

It Must Have Been a Dry Heat

Cultwatch!: Alert Thierry Meyssan again: here’s some steel that, contrary to the new Aryan Science of “Truthers” deforms under impact and in contact with temperatures achieved by burning fuel. It seems that the hand of justice has taken this to the home of the hive-mind in San Francisco to explain this.

It happened early this morning, reported at 3:42am, when the driver of a refinery tanker was speeding along a freeway overpass, lost control and the tanker, holding 8,600 gallons of unleaded fuel, hit the guard rail and flipped.

But then again, we live in a brave new world, and I’ve invented a new greeting for May Day:

May the turnip of the collective’s wisdom fall on your head.

I think it’ll catch on if I repeat it often enough. This blog’s friend Valerie replied: “And a bottomless bowl of gruel to you Comrade!”

You couldn’t imagine by delight at the joyousness. So too, it seems is Carine, rounding up the May Day Mayhem.

Speaking of cults, get a load of these clowns who seem to be waiting for rapture:

Visitors to the Gaia Napa Valley Hotel and Spa won't find the Gideon Bible in the nightstand drawer. Instead, on the bureau will be a copy of ``An Inconvenient Truth,'' former Vice President Al Gore's book about global warming.

Remember, sometimes heat does nothing, pointing to the evils of non-leftists, and sometimes it’s the only that could possibly ever matter, pointing to the evils of non-leftists.

Wall Street Poet

Eugene Schlanger will be reading poems from September 11 Wall Street Sonnets and Other New York City Poems at The Writing Center, Marymount Manhattan College, The Regina Peruggi Room, 221 East 71 Street, New York on Wednesday May 2 at 6:30PM.

Pathetic

Al-Jazeera sur Seine is using pink and baby blue like a 1960’s maternity ward, and placing the lower vote getter that their writers are pulling for on top. What sophistication.

A Tried and True Election Tactic: Lie

First of all, to accuse your opponent of “apologizing” to America for the torrent of hatred that’s been a part of their lives for decades, you first have to actually have an apology, but there wasn’t one.

Ségolène Royal, the Socialist candidate in the French presidential election on May 6, accused Nicolas Sarkozy, her conservative opponent, on Wednesday of having “apologized” to President Bush for France’s decision not to back the United States militarily in Iraq.

Mr. Sarkozy’s campaign team called her words “lies.”

“I am not for a Europe that aligns with the U.S.,” Ms. Royal said on France 2 television. “I have never been, and will never, go apologize to President Bush for the position of France on the issue of refusing to send our troops to Iraq.”

The interviewer noted that Mr. Sarkozy’s official position was that he had supported President Jacques Chirac’s opposition to the war and to French participation in military operations in Iraq.

“Yes, well, listen,” Ms. Royal responded. “He still did this.”

Let’s look at this in a clearer light: Royal is indulging the egos of potential voters by assuming that French people venting to other French people about the US would somehow matter to the US when in reality the US merely ignored the French stance on Iraq, or any of the other flavor-of-the-week screaming in the pediatrician’s office.

Just what part of the chicken in she trying to stroke? The one that assumed that the bleating of a needy European public that navel-gazed over a decade of open warfare in Balkans would matter to anyone in the world.

America acting alone, not giving Europeans who sheltered terrorism the right of refusal over its’ actions, as some sort of sin? If Ségolène Royal imagines that “Europe” should not align with the US, who’s the lone wolf here? With who would they prefer an alignment? Those paragons of human rights in the Africa, the Arab world, Russia, or China?

Seriously. Who ARE these imaginary allies of theirs’? Who are these mystery societies that share their sensitivity and world view? When have they ever demonstrated this sooper-dooper über-greatness they keep assuming undergirds their actions?

They can’t because none of it is real.

The demonisation of Sarkozy

Sarkozy démonisé en sosie de Richard Bohringer.

The Bogus Scandal of the World Bank

The Wall Street Journal has been investigating what it regards as the bogus scandal surrounding Paul Wolfowitz in the World Bank…

May Day message

Better dead than red!

Sclérose soixante-huitarde

Time to put 1968 out of its misery. Maurice G. Dantec spoke about France's 1968 problem in this 2003 interview.

Red on red

Rip 'em to shreds. More heartache for French youths ahead of Sunday's election.

The news show most appreciated by latté-gulping, museum-going, opera-listening, convinced-everything-European-is-so-damn-cool, Bush-hating yuppy snobs

Sarkozy Derangement Syndrome can be fatal to your employment. The American translator for French State TV France2's US rebroadcast of the evening news has been fired after slipping anti-Sarkozy messages into the subtitles.

"We are like a tiny bird born in a cage"

We did not know what democracy was
Until America brought it against our will

We are like a tiny bird born in a cage
Its father and mother were born in the same cage.
And so were its ancestors
— For the past 1,400 years…
Along came America and
Broke the cage open.
But the bird does not know how to fly.
Because it has never used its wings.
We do not know what to do
With the values of freedom
— Because we were born slaves, the sons of slaves,
the sons of slaves for the past 1,400 years…

(Shookhran to the Resilient)

Vote Royal to Thwart the Racist, Fascist, and Hate-Mongering Bush Poodle Sarkozy

Worse than Hitler! Simple citizen, lucid militant, and Ségolène supporter Jean-Marx Attaque (reminder: a simple citizen just like the rest of us) warns La Baf of the evil that lurks in the minds of Sarkozy and his neo-conservative henchmen (and of the terrifying danger of being ruled by a George W Bush poodle).

Charnier sarkoziste - votez Royal
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Oh, Brother!

Brutalité et prolifération sont les maîtres mots de ce film dans lequel des menaces terrifiantes évoquent l'état du monde depuis la chute des tours.

Covering the third Spiderman movie, Isabelle Regnier discovers that the Peter Parker alter ego, the Venom character (created at least a decade before Dubya even became governor of Texas), is a metaphor for George W Bush's America…

Sigh…

(More immortal film reviews here…)

Message for Thierry Meyssan

"Je construis une majorité dans la cohérence, la clarté, le respect des partenariats et les valeurs du progrès économique, social et écologique"

Ségolène Royal is interviewed by Eric Fottorino, Patrick Jarreau, Arnaud Leparmentier and Isabelle Mandraud.

Céline on Wheels

Encore une virée à Paris.

In Europe, this passes for due process

Wolfowitz now better understands the expression "people in Dutch".

How Green is thy Zombie

Before and after: George just couldn’t help himself.



If British readers can be trained to believe that it was 40º C anywhere in the UK last week, they can believe anything.

Teacher! Leave the Kids Alone!

Luís Afonso, who suggests that parents read Charlotte Iserbyt's The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America, has posted the complete (1 hr 11 min) Celsius 41.11 rebuttal to Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11.

Update: LA also has The Cabinet of Dr Caligari as well as a 1 hr 21 min film on how Chávez has manipulated the story of the "coup" against him…

American Fast Food: serving France's homeless and working poor since 1981

Boring!

Get this shit over with already. It's not like anything is going to change (for the better, that is) afterwards.

French youth send message to Sarkozy

The Nine-Three is gearing up for a showdown 3rd round following Sarkozy's election. A young off-duty policewoman was raped Sunday in Bobigny after leaving her station house. This is the second such incident in the last 6 weeks. Several suspects have been questioned and released. On March 18, an off-duty policewoman was raped in similar circumstances in the same general location. As both victims were off-duty, officials cannot determine if the the women were targeted because they are with the police.

The Presidential Dacha is Airtight

Is it a stunt to hold on to the Greenie vote? A sexist rumor? Toying with the one-track minds? Who can tell.

Conservatives as Nazis: the Non-Argument of Last Resort

The derangement syndrome seems perpetual, and Plantu has been warming up for SDS for about three. Woop-dee-doo, I say – what do you expect from a society where this kind of grand-parental behaviour is normal enough to figure into the public mind:

"I'll miss Chirac in the same way you'd miss your granddad who used to nick the cash you left in the kitchen," says Le Monde's cartoonist Plantu.

That unwittingly bizarre reflection about Chirac just might be finest paean of the man ever written.

An Odd Outpost in Search of Some Meaning

Puzzled?

Lately Americans have had to recognize the power of Europe - often for its bite. It was Old Europe that sniped about the war in Iraq, while regulators in Brussels have derailed U.S. mega-mergers and taken on Microsoft.

Even if you can call any of their reconstructed protectionism “real”, there is a simple explanation for the temporary lack of malaise they’re experiencing in the greyer parts of “old Europe.” It isn’t their money, technology, or effort that’s driving that particular train:

The recent earnings boom of European companies has to an extent been "made in America." Texas last year ranked as the top state for European investment; the $55.3 billion that European companies invested in the state exceeded combined U.S. investment in Japan and China. The top investor? France.

The operative word here is slow when it comes to dealing with the objects of their fears, in this case, the unemployed.

A multitude of business issues are also slow in being resolved. For example, it took four years to clinch a new aviation treaty, global warming is dividing the United States and the EU, and European regulators often act unilaterally in setting standards that have global influence.

Other matters, though are taken care of tous de suite when the all-important slowness to address your fears is concerned:

Brussels officials have confirmed the existence of a classified handbook which offers "non-offensive" phrases to use when announcing anti-terrorist operations or dealing with terrorist attacks.

Banned terms are said to include "jihad", "Islamic" or "fundamentalist".

The word "jihad" is to be avoided altogether, according to some sources, because for Muslims the word can mean a personal struggle to live a moral life.

One alternative, suggested publicly last year, is for the term "Islamic terrorism" to be replaced by "terrorists who abusively invoke Islam".

As true as the story’s title is, those wanting the “European street” to ignore transnational terror in “abusively invoke Islam” by trying to put beyond discussion the terrorism itself.

Good luck with all that, and make sure you convince yourself to avoid all other aspects of modernity at all costs otherwise:

A stream of doctors, complementary practitioners and Chinese herbalists all failed to alleviate any of her symptoms or come up with a diagnosis.
Instead, she found an answer on Google - through websites such as electrosensitivity.org.uk.
All her symptoms seemed to match those of people who believe they are allergic to modern life.

Not seen in the French PreSS

Semper Fi.

Who's helping Africa?

Not Europeans.

Strategic yogurt production

Good news for French foodheads: Ségolène Royal has assigned a special mission to José Bové©®. She has requested that he study "Globalisation and Alimentary Sovereignty".

peut-être Bayrou s'en fout après tout, il a une super marque "PD" maintenant !

Marca Registrada baby!

Marianne asks: Are the French going to vote for what Americans no longer want?

The French Left resorts to the usual rank anti-Americanism in an effort to knock down Sarkozy.



The cover promises to reveal "What is Bush about Sarkozy..."

If I were French I'd hate myself too

But I'm not.

"Je ne suis pas un homme de demi-mesures, j'ai des passions, je poursuivrai … ces passions, convaincu que, dans la vie, on a plusieurs vies"

The man whom Bernadette Chirac calls Nero, on whom her husband became "Villepin-dependant", and who tried to do to Nicolas Sarkozy what Jacques Chirac did to Edouard Balladur is given near-heroic treatment by Christophe Jakubyszyn in the prime minister's final weeks at Matignon.

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