Lefty Mental Masturbation At Its Best

Like the crazed American lefties who tried to prove to themselves that George Bush’s interest in his own physical fitness is some sort of character flaw which causes wars, you can always rely on Libé to construct preposterous ideas.

Some crackpot at Libération plausits that jogging is “right wing”:

More fundamentally, the polemic which is making a rage on the Internet on “running, is it right or left?” all started with comments surrounding the President’s running. Then on it’s the symbolism and further on its values. On the left, the author of a blog called “diner’s room” has a banner saying “No-jogging”. The reasons given are that “jogging is harmful for everything and in every way It harms your health, elegance, the way you walk, and the dignity of disabled ex-servicemen and prostitutes”

Quick to retort was Loïc Le Meur, a jogger, Sarkozy supporter, and adamant defender of successful young entrepreneurs who want to excel and take care of their bodies. Whether from the right or left, the argument makes [fitness writer] Odile Baudrier smile: “We went over this on our pages a few years ago. Jogging, of course, is associated with individualism, a values traditionally linked to the right. At the same time, in the research of the wellbeing, judgment is divided.” One could add that the contact you have with nature makes it something for the ecologically inclined. And that as a sport [tr.: form of exercise] accessible to those with any income, that it is straightforwardly Communist. “Traditionally, French intellectuals always had a certain contempt for exercise, Patrick Mignon points out. Only the head counts.
To the contrary, totalitarian ways always stressed the development of the body. Between the two, one too often forgets that humanists of the enlightenment preached for a completely balanced education including both the training of the body and the mind.” “Don’t obstruct him, Mitterrand” the saying went.

Never mind that they’re mimicking the jogging craze of the US in the 1970’s, they give rise to nutty tribalism about the cycling being proper exercise for good leftists.

Of course they will find a bunch of nodding morons who will agree that his holiness François Mitterand’s name can be invoked here, as everywhere, along with some throwaway trash phrase about the fascism of anyone who hasn’t drunk from their tub of kool-ade. They always do.

Some Thoughts on American Patriotism

Some thoughts on American patriotism

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Doctors With Borders

When I think of the detonating Doctors affair unfolding in Old Blighty™, it makes me think of just how impotent, uninspiring, and socially inept the zeitgeist of teh EUropean neighborhood really is. This blogger reflected on his great Uncle who happened a great long while back to be a sojourning physician of Arab origin in the UK. Instead of building a wall of hatred and carrying the modern Arab’s air of superiority (no different than a crowing rooster standing on a pile of dung,) he understood and respected their power and understood that it was built from something.

Wanting to be a part of it instead of just another foppish antagonist, he took an oath of abjuration to the Monarch as an officer in the Royal Navy. He took joy in the subtle irony of the English language. He took the citizenship of the nation he served.

When he returned to the place of his birth, he chose to take the citizenship of the nation where he actually lived. More than any time since, people understood that a citizenry and decent society is built, not granted. He would have recognized what these gas-can quacks have been doing as parasitism: these paragons of virtue have gone somewhere where they could look down on and hate the locals, and then kill them because "the border crossed them" or crossed their ideology, at least.

These modern-day Dr. Mengele types who are more than willing to be party to random murder are a bellwether of the state of decay and medievalism the culture they came from has let itself fall back into.

Bend over and take your shot. It’s the only way that nasty little itch will go away.

The World Can’t Wait

Condescending, maniacal, and beneath contempt, Zapatero (and his world view) managed to accomplish nothing substantive on the world stage since he entered office. It seems that his first grand policy move, conceived in fear (the withdrawal of Spanish troops from Iraq after the Madrid train bombings,) did little other than embolden a then otherwise apprehensive ETA.

By October of this year we will hold an early general election.” Instead, the pessimists got it right. Mr Zapatero appeared on television all right, after the shocking announcement by men in masks. All he said, in an tortured interview with his friend Iñaki Gabilondo on La Cuatro was that everyone should unite with him, including the Popular Party, in the fight against terrorism. He is quite right, but under what terms? And should not tomorrow’s crucial meeting take place in Congress, not in the privacy of the President’s drawing room?

Behold the horror:

after ZP won the general election in 2004 following the Atocha atrocities, he decided to present himself to the world as Blair had done in Britain – as the Great Peacemaker. Blair and his group had won the peace in Ulster, and ZP was going to do even better in the Basque Country – by hook or by crook. No-one, and especially no political party, would be allowed to block this crusade. If the chief opposition party found the peace process potentially explosive, or farcical, or a devilishly clever means by which ETA could recover from its then crippled and bankrupt state, and made this view public knowledge – then ZP and his companions would denounce the chief opposition party. They would be hounded in the socialist media, and on the Government-owned TV channels. They would be turned into an ogre by the Administration’s spokespeople. We would be taught to hate the Partido Popular.

In effect, it was a direct reward for the violence of ETA and al Queda. And it gets better and better for them.

Mr Rajoy will remind Mr Zapatero that without consulting the PP, or even seeking a bit of advice, he instructed Mr. Eguiguren in the Basque Country to make contact with ETA leaders, in order to bid them to secret meetings that the rest of Spain would know nothing of. Rajoy will gently remind Mr Zapatero that after due compromises had been made (which have come to be revealed after all) the terrorist band would declare (on 22 March, 2006) a truce and a ‘permanent ceasefire’; that ETA’s wish to become an international issue had been granted, by becoming part of the European Union’s agenda; that despite innumerable huge public demonstrations against Mr Zapatero’s dreamed-of peace process taking place across Spain and in its capital, he continued making concessions as if the contrary opinion of at least 50% of the population counted for nothing at all.

Rajoy can mention that when ETA felt the Government had not fulfilled all its promises made to them, they ignored the truce for a moment and blew up the carpark at T4, Barajas, incidentally killing two innocent bystanders; that after this atrocity, instead of shutting the book and concentrating on the demolition of ETA, Mr Zapatero carried on with the compromises and the promises made under the counter with the terrorist band; that Mr Zapatero’s faithful judges released a convicted criminal (De Juana Chaos) who had personally dispatched innocent men and women to another world in the name of politics, because he went on a hunger strike in jail.

A shining success, that great Socialist demonstration of solidarity and valor, yes? Against the wishes of an angered population, he sent someone to negotiate with ETA. All just to try to prove something to Blair and to the world that he would make some sort of great last stand for the euro-party of the euro-roses. Somewhere. Anywhere. Trying to prove positve something about itself, yet failing.

Friends of Yours'?

Sicko

The evils of socialized medecine.

Falling Apart

But they’ll tell you its’ part of the charm, but it’s actually the oldest rationalization in the Hexagon.

The New Anti-Capitalism...

...same as the old anti-capitalism.

Chiraq To Be Grilled Over 'Fake Jobs' Plot

No, not the French presidency fake job that he had. It's about a different fake job.

McDo surge in France

French journalist declares, "We're very anti-American in principle, but individually, if you're going to the movies and have to eat in 10 minutes, you go to McDonald's." The same journalist might have added that McDo is the place to go if you want to eat in a place that doesn't have a Turkish toilet.

Le Rwanda : "Il faut aider Habyarimana coûte que coûte et endiguer l'influence anglo-saxonne"

Comme tout l'entourage du président Mitterrand, obsédé par la préservation de l'influence française dans la région, le diplomate Bruno Delaye décèle une autre urgence que ces alertes. Dans une note du 15 février 1993, le conseiller Afrique de l'Elysée s'alarme du fait que le FPR est "en mesure de prendre Kigali", bénéficiant entre autres de la "complicité bienveillante du monde anglo-saxon" et d'un "excellent système de propagande qui s'appuie sur les exactions malheureuses commises par les extrémistes hutus".

"Le passé est le passé." Just released, the Élysée's archives on Rwanda give an entirely different version of what has hitherto been the official story of France's presence in the country of a thousand hills. The true reason involves the real problem that bedevils this planet (not the Russians, not the Chinese, not genocide, but: those perfidious Anglo-Saxons!).

"Il est patent que, tout au long de la période allant de 1993 jusqu'à l'attentat du 6 avril 1994 [contre l'avion du président rwandais Juvénal Habyarimana], la préoccupation centrale des autorités françaises est de soutenir inconditionnellement le président Habyarimana, même s'il fallait aller au-delà d'un appui indirect aux forces armées rwandaises", écrit Antoine Comte.

…L'Etat français ne semble pas disposé à favoriser les investigations en cours. Le 13 février 2006, la juge Brigitte Reynaud, qui a précédé Florence Michon au TAP, avait signé une commission rogatoire internationale à destination du Rwanda. Elle demandait aux autorités de Kigali de lui fournir tous documents ou auditions "permettant d'identifier les régiments et services français présents au Rwanda en 1994" et d'autoriser une mission sur place des policiers français. Pendant six mois, cette commission rogatoire est restée dans un tiroir du Quai d'Orsay, chargé de l'envoi. Le 24 novembre 2006, le Rwanda a rompu ses relations diplomatiques avec la France…

"Le passé est le passé." Officially, France had no inkling of what type of tragedy was being prepared.

C'est faux. A partir de la fin de l'année 1990, plus de trois ans avant le déclenchement du génocide, l'Elysée avait reçu des signaux d'alerte diplomatiques et militaires.

Des signaux aussitôt négligés, au nom d'une vision conservatrice façonnée par l'histoire coloniale de la politique africaine de la France. La preuve en est fournie par plusieurs volumes d'archives de l'Elysée transmis au tribunal aux armées, dont Le Monde a eu connaissance.

Ces archives dessinent bien une France "mithridatisée" à son sommet, c'est-à-dire accoutumée volontairement au poison, selon le mot de la mission parlementaire réunie en 1998.

Elles répondent à deux questions-clés : Que savait la France des préparatifs de l'entreprise génocidaire ? Quelle était la nature de la coopération militaire décidée par l'Elysée ?

…autour de François Mitterrand, dans ce palais hermétique, on veut défendre une autre perspective et justifier, à tout prix, la politique française. Le 3 mars, pour renverser les charges, le général Quesnot propose au président d'incriminer la rébellion en exigeant "une réorientation forte et immédiate de l'information des médias [français] sur notre politique au Rwanda en rappelant notamment (…) les graves atteintes aux droits de l'homme du FPR : massacres systématiques de civils, purification ethnique, déplacement de population…".

…La pression diplomatique monte, face à l'ampleur des massacres. Les ONG mettent en cause la France. Le 19 juin, l'Elysée publie même un communiqué exceptionnel, pour dénoncer les "procès sommaires" qui lui sont faits. Les médias n'auraient rien compris : la France serait au contraire à louer pour son engagement.

L'opération humanitaire "Turquoise" est lancée; elle va durer jusqu'au 22 août. "Toute cette mission doit être présentée comme une étape nouvelle de notre politique : le passé est le passé", écrit Bruno Delaye le 21juin.

"Le passé est le passé." What is the most important lesson to take from this? As it happens, it has little to do with Rwanda proper. As I explain in my book, the lesson has to do with the Old World's perennial tendency to put off the investigation of bad news (and crimes and/or criminal negligence) until years (or decades) later, allowing for a culture that always feels confident to cover itself with self-praise, in the process blasting Uncle Sam for every known sin imaginable ("we have known war", it is said in a tragic voice, "and that is why we are opposed to your presence in Iraq", conveniently ignoring — until years later — things such as the — far worse — Rwanda tragedy).

"Le passé est le passé." Of course, once (years, decades, later) the tragedy does become public, relatively little is made of it. Why? Because the Europeans are "now" busier with more important fare. I.e., pointing out, investigating, decrying (volubly), and countering the very latest horrendous sin(s) from America's shores (and contrasting said sins with Europe's far more civilized bahaviour/ideology/human interactions)!!

Maybe He Thought They Were With CBS News

They might as well be.

"Keeping an open mind": now required by EU diktat directive

The Dissident Frogman is keeping an open mind.

French Isolation Watch

France and Turkey? As fine Paris eateries will attest, the French are undisputed experts in the realm of Turkish toilet engineering, but other than that it seems that no one is listening to them.


EU Constitution in a Turkish Toilet located in a fine Paris eatery.

European Regime Change Fantasies

A film screened at the Venice Biennale put on display the continental complex: a desire to be the wise euro-jockey riding the American horse, one whose failure has elicited decades of passive-aggressive euro-rationalization, euro-tantrums, and throwing their tows out of the euro-crib.

BHL plays one of the candidates with an accent only an American electorate would thing to overlook. As reported by Erik earlier from Le Monde’s fawning interview:

[Former campaign advisor] Jim Mulhall: We set it in the context of a real campaign. In the United States, when a candidate throws their hat in the ring, their told what the race will consist of.
It is what we tried with Bernard: “OK, if you want to be president, here’s what you have to do to appeal to American voters.” At the same time, it was a chance to get Francesco’s opinion on the way political campaigns run. It was important for us to have a critical eye. ...An American president must set up his biography to fit that ambition. Very specific images were chosen, which characterize a modern democratic candidate to lead modern America: Opposition to the war in Iraq, but at the same time being strong and uncompromising on security to not to leave to the Republicans with a monopoly of the flag.
Bernard has certain points in his biography which point out these values.

Every last bit of this is horseshit for one simple reason: it looks at Americans as a bunch of zombies, and looks at a part of America through the same drinking straw use to resent it. Imagine for a moment the hackles that would rise should any foreigner, American or otherwise turned the same mirror on any election in France, Germany, the UK, Italy, or Spain. Imagine that the audience to whom this appeals (as predictable and easily amused as the voters this filmmaker thinks he’s writing about) thinking that their own elections are any better. They aren’t.

Spain’s last election for leadership turned on a population that caved in to terror. The UK just transferred power without the consent of the voter. Italy chose a party which has to live the threats, and is thus driven by parties of less than a thousand people. I could go on, but I wont. I’ll leave that to these film-makers who make a living gazing at other people’s navels. Get a euro-life.

Mulhall got one thing right: the American Democrats unwittingly have a light turned on their practice of looking and seeming like something will be bought off by the voter, everything like trying to pretend to their candidates being “common” (which shows you where their condescension places them above you in their minds), to “focusing like a laser beam” on an economy they had no part in repairing, to incessantly demanding social healing by creating as much class struggle, internecine anger, and resentment as possible. Apart from toying with the "no politics at all" image of the "third way", they don't seem to have any other views, platforms, or prospects.

Elections 2008: Democrazy

In Francesco Vezzoli's new movie, Jim Mulhall helps Bernard-Henri Lévy run as a Democratic candidate for the presidency of the United States in 2008, thus fulfilling the leftist Europeans' dream of having someone like-minded in the White House… (BHL's opponent: Sharon Stone!)

Jim Mulhall : Nous nous sommes placés dans le contexte d'une vraie campagne. Aux Etats-Unis, quand un candidat se lance, on lui explique en quoi va consister la course. C'est ce qu'on a essayé de faire avec Bernard : "OK, tu veux être président, voilà ce que tu dois faire pour plaire aux électeurs américains." En même temps, c'était bien d'avoir le regard de Francesco sur la manière dont on conduit une campagne politique. Un oeil critique, c'était important pour nous. … Un président américain doit organiser sa biographie pour qu'elle fasse sens. On a choisi des images très spécifiques, qui caractérisent un candidat démocrate moderne pour conduire une Amérique moderne. L'opposition à la guerre en Irak, mais en étant fort et sans concession sur la sécurité, pour ne pas laisser aux républicains le monopole du drapeau. Bernard a certains points dans sa biographie qui rappellent ces valeurs.

One hit wonder

Ses histoires de fesses flasques ont eu raison de son assise au sein du PS.

Where’s Dick Marty?

I wonder, will the EU’s secretive “Security Clearinghouse” get Dicked? He’s got to stop this immediately!

The group - which was set up in reaction to the 9/11 attacks in the US - is part of the EU's common foreign and security policy branch, with a December 2001 EU "common position" mandating that "information shall be exchanged between member states" to help curb terrorist financing.

Clearing House does not appear on any official EU listings of "working groups" - standard meetings of mid-ranking EU diplomats, which pre-agree EU decisions before they are adopted by EU ambassadors and, later down the line, rubber-stamped by EU ministers.

Then again, look at the part they want to make civilly “political”:

The group's main job is to decide, every six months or so, who should be on the EU's terrorist register and have their financial assets frozen, with the group meeting sometime this week to finalise contents of the next terror list before its formal adoption in early July.

What say, old bean? Do they get the treatment?

Sarkozy's "embedded spokesman"

"Pendant des années, j'ai biberonné du Madelin. A droite, c'était le seul qui moulinait vraiment. Mais j'ai compris qu'il n'aurait jamais le pouvoir, et Sarkozy m'a guéri de mon libéralisme théocratique."

The person in charge of Nicolas Sarkozy's communication department (aka the president's spokesman), explains Philippe Ridet in a page-long portrait, is David Martinon, a former deputy spokesman to foreign minister Hubert Védrine as well as a person once close to Alain Madelin until he understood that the closest thing in France to a free-market ideology would never gain power…

BitchGate

Given current usage, "bitch" is not strong enough of a translation into American English. I'd go with "cunt".

Shamnesty International

The NGO that's got to go.

BBC: Beach Break Channel

Flotsam and jetsam.

All the Same Buzzwords

From Pétain to PS



“European framework,” “tied to the land,” “struggle of the worker” – none of the arguments seems to change.

The Lisbon Strategy is working splendidly

"For anyone whose dream is still some ideal of European unity, the mere fact that each competing camp won at this summit was, of itself, a defeat."

From Chicago to Bercy

"En une minute, j'ai compris que l'immense liberté dont j'avais bénéficié, comme patronne d'un groupe d'avocats autonome, était restée au bord du lac à Chicago."

Coming to France's finance ministry, writes Marion Van Renterghem, is Christine Lagarde, who was "chairman" of the Baker & McKenzie law firm in Illinois.

One thing to notice in the piece is that although she lived, and worked, for umpteen years in America, no American, coworker or other, is interviewed about Christine Lagarde; in typical Gallic journalistic fashion, only Frenchmen (and -women) are. (As usual, only those lucid beings can be counted on to say anything profound.)

The Generosity of Europe's Solidaristic Health Care Systems

In yet another example of ultra-successful health care program in a society whose legendary generosity, solidarity, avant-gardism that Michael Moore's Sicko was correct to praise over the rooftops (although French officials might simply be James Bond fans), we learn from Robert Solé that an invalid by the name of Jean-Claude Paris will be taken in charge for a daily amount of 700, no, 70 Euros (uh, wait a minute, lemme check that amount again)…

Typical French family gathering

Encore un qui voulait voter Hollande. Some unemployed loser who dressed up like a woman and prostituted himself wound up getting snuffed by his main squeeze. Vive la Fwance !

Qu'ils crèvent tous la gueule ouverte dans leur propre merde

57% of those animals that are called Palestinians have a favorable view of Bin Laden.

Wall Street Poet

Jules Crittenden asks "I wonder if al-Qaeda plans to put out any of Daniel Pearl’s haiku?" Terrorist detainees scratch rubbishy gibberish into styrofoam cups and find a US university press to gush over the stuff. Around the same time, an acknowledged American poet has to go to a French language publisher to be read.



More terrorist poetry here ...

Money in the Bank?

Who would put their money elsewhere than in Fwance?

Moral high ground

The Germans don't have it and wouldn't recognize it if it bit them in their EUtopic asses.

If They Want To Count Corpses, Why Not Count These Too?

Hint: not civilians.

EUtopia at its Best

A spate of purple helmet stories can’t be far off:

Leading NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) has urged the EU and NATO to make its future peacekeeping operations in Kosovo subject to law, after a string of failures by existing "accountability" structures to investigate allegations of criminal behaviour by international personnel.

By “law” they seem to mean something they’d have a hand in writing, of course. That no-one ever elected HRW doesn’t seem to register any more in this one of their imperious declarations as any other one they’ve issues.

The EU effort - the biggest of its kind in the union's history - is to see 1,600 policemen and 72 civilian officials deploy in January, if UN talks on Kosovo's status end quickly. An EU preparatory office in Pristina - the EUPT - began work in April with 40 staff but has now grown to over 200 personnel, reports indicate.

The EU policemen will be supported by 16,000 soldiers drawn from 35 countries, including the US, Turkey and Ukraine, as well as most EU states. The military force - currently called KFOR - is under NATO command and has already been working alongside UNMIK since the end of the civil war eight years ago.

And to think that if deploying 1600 cops in their own back-yard for their own security isn’t a giant sacrifice in the interest of people in, say, South Africa and Thailand, imagine that it needs an “international” coalitions of 16 000 soldiers to back it up. 10 to 1, even when we all know that violence never solved anything!

But a fresh HRW report out Thursday (14 June) suggests the system is breaking down. In February 2006 the Ombudsperson lost his mandate to oversee international bodies. The human rights panel has not yet started work. The oversight committee last met in 2004. The UNMIK commission has been invisible so far.

Yup. You read that right: the controlling authority is being deemed by an NGO to be illegitimate to oversee and apply the law to alphabet soup “International bodies” and NGOs.

A two-state solution: just give up and let the NGOs administer the EU. Barring that, I’m sure temporary administration of the EU’s back yard by the UN might calm EUvian nerves over the state of their own administrative capacity. I suppose the wet dream for them would be blue helmets keeping the peace in Brussels, with all of its’ attendant zen and good PR juju.

Une "catastrophe sanitaire" et une "Omerta" : "L'hôpital a eu du mal à avouer ses bêtises"

"L'erreur, on peut la comprendre, même la pardonner, mais ce qui est inadmissible, c'est que rien n'a été fait pour soigner mon père. L'hôpital savait mais ne lui a donné aucune chance pour s'en sortir"

"On m'a menti" : Sandrine Blanchard has an article about the type of ultra-successful health care program that French government authorities didn't brag to Michael Moore about and that "Sicko" didn't tell the members of Michael Moore's fan club about. "Vous comprenez, dit [Jean-Luc Genay], l'hôpital Jean-Monnet a caché trop de choses, ils ont menti, alors on ne fait plus confiance."

Une "catastrophe sanitaire", a reconnu, le 8 juin, Roselyne Bachelot, la nouvelle ministre de la santé, dans un entretien accordé au Parisien. Un radiophysicien qui modifie le protocole de radiothérapie et se trompe dans le paramétrage, des médecins radiothérapeutes qui minimisent les plaintes des malades en les attribuant à des "complications classiques", des autorités locales qui ne mesurent pas l'ampleur de la crise... cette affaire comporte une chaîne incroyable d'erreurs et de défaillances.

…"Tout ça, c'est à cause d'un manque de personnel pour faire fonctionner ce genre d'appareil, pense-t-il. Les machines, elles sont de plus en plus sophistiquées mais il faut des hommes pour les utiliser."

…"C'est un péché d'orgueil de la part des médecins", considère M. Colombel. Mal suivis, peu écoutés, les malades "sont restés livrés à eux-mêmes", souligne l'IGAS. Solange Didierlaurent le confirme avec rage : "On a été abandonnés." Son père, âgé de 84 ans, est mort il y a quelques semaines.

…cette affaire dramatique est "révélatrice d'un dysfonctionnement dans la prise en charge de la souffrance des patients et d'un manque de démarche qualité". De son côté, M^e Welzer parle d'un "dossier emblématique" qui illustre "la chape de plomb qui prévaut sur les erreurs médicales".

Le Monde Critic Eats Bad Mushrooms, Survives

Despite the fuss over prices. the critics have given Streisand, 65, a warm reception. Le Monde's review said that carping over ticket costs was an injustice where the New York diva was concerned. "Streisand is a work of art. She is Broadway, love, la fête, perfection. She has absolute mastery of the stage and the talent and professionalism that demonstrate the power of America and the feebleness of the rest of the world,” said le Monde

Where the Morally Repugnant Elite Meet to Bleat

The Telegraph bills a new play it reviewed this weekend as a “skewering of the liberal rich” but like so many things in Britain, the title is a polite mask to what is often itself concealing what the chatter-ati, the “provision wing of Radio 4” do in the open: live on a hateful envy of one thing or another.

Clay and Kelly live in a luxurious home with their cute young daughter and their new baby son. Kelly has a well-paid office job, so Clay has become a doting house-husband, and this apparently enviable couple have invited the rest of the family for Thanksgiving.

Everything goes gloriously wrong. It's clear that Clay can't abide his cynical plastic surgeon of a brother, Cash, and the golden couple also look down on Cash's glamour puss of an East European girlfriend who has alarmingly non-PC views on everything from gipsies (kill them) to smoking (best done in front of the kiddies).

But here’s the twist. This is why it’s okay to detest con Panto these “elite” libs:

The play is American, which will give English viewers a chance to say: "Well, of course, we are nothing like as bad as that."

Wanna bet? Whose behaviour do these “we are all Tibetan” types affect when they feel so damn earthier than though? That’s right: Europeans, particularly those of the English southeast sub-species – the one of their imagination.

I hope you already ate, because it gets worse. Our “man of the people” director is himself doing this for more than just publicity, it has an ugly tint of the same complex of sneering condescension and attention-seeking behaviour to those who would are just as boxed in and objectified to being looked down on as the stage characters: the audience.

When Dominic Cooke took over as artistic director of the Royal Court this year, he promised to reflect the theatre's predominantly middle-class audience back to itself. For a venue best known for gritty, in-your-face, kitchen-sink drama, this was a revolutionary manifesto.

Or is it an S & M thing, some sort of constitutional vestige of Elizabethan Equusian winky-winky for the very, very special, wisdom dispensing lefty pestilence that keeps scratching around for a new “fabulous” cause?

In fact it almost seems like the reason they want so much to be like you and me, is because they can’t really stand themselves.

Spitting Fury at Anybody Who Might Disagree With Them

We have a vested interest in creating panic

says a scientist (John Christie) in a documentary from Britain's TV Channel 4, The Great Global Warming Swindle (check out Part 4 for apocalyptic warnings from the 1970s about …global cooling — see 3:10 minutes from end).

[The movement] could be used [by "the global warming fraternity"] to legitimize a whole suite of myths that already existed: anti-cars, anti-growth, anti-development, and above all anti-that great Satan — the U.S.

See Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore's testimony in Part 5 about the two reasons for the shift to climate becoming a major focal point; Tim Ball's broken car analogy at 1:50 from the end in Part 6 ("the science is that bad"); and scientists' responses to charges of being in the pay of multinationals in Part 8.

The World War II Martyrs That France's Communists Keep Secret in Order to Hide the PCF's Positions During the Early 1940s

…on a vu ressurgir … les stéréotypes et clichés d'une "histoire" de la Résistance et du PCF qu'on croyait définitivement rangée au magasin des mythes et légendes.

…un petit arrangement avec l'histoire … consista à mettre en pleine lumière des militants arrêtés avant la rupture du pacte germano-soviétique et à rejeter dans l'ombre mémorielle ceux dont l'attitude soulignait trop crûment les aspects les moins avouables d'un passé que le PCF devenu patriote, républicain et résistant voulait faire oublier.

During World War II, France's communist party not only appropriated heroes (as well as non-heroes) for political purposes (while attempting to negotiate the continued publication of L'Humanité with the occupying Nazis, in other words doing anything but joining the resistance movement), write Jean-Marc Berlière and Sylvain Boulouque in Le Monde, the PCF even obscured the memory of true heroes, washing "one of the most troubled and ambiguous periods of its history" with "the blood of the hostages" while setting up "a moral obstacle towards any criticism of its attitude."

Accaparer cette tragédie à son seul profit et pour sa seule gloire, comme l'a fait le PCF depuis 1942, relève de la récupération politique. Les otages fusillés n'étaient pas tous communistes, Guy Môquet n'était pas le seul jeune... On chercherait en vain dans les discours prononcés à Châteaubriant, sur les plaques et dans les écrits dressés à la gloire de la résistance communiste, les noms de Christian Rizzo, Marcel Bourdarias, Fernand Zalkinov et leurs camarades, arrêtés, jugés, condamnés et exécutés au printemps 1942 pour avoir fait ce que Guy Môquet, en communiste discipliné, n'avait pas fait.

Ces jeunes militants commirent les premiers attentats sur ordre d'un parti qui mit des années à en assumer la paternité après avoir calomnié leurs auteurs ("ceux qui ont tué le Feldkommandant Hotz sont ceux qui ont incendié le Reichstag"), avant de les effacer purement et simplement de la mémoire. Si la dernière lettre de Guy Môquet est émouvante, les leurs ne le sont pas moins, mais personne ne rappelle leur mémoire...

Avec le sang des otages, le Parti communiste lavait une des périodes les plus troubles et ambiguës de son histoire en même temps qu'il dressait un obstacle moral à toute critique de son attitude.

Support Denmark!

True West and real balls ...



Tomorrow it's going to be Carlsberg and Danish salami all day.

Fears of self-censorship at French news outlets

Censorship? Why would anyone think that the French preSS is anything but unbridled and impartial.?

Those Bitter Old Men in their Flying Machines

If it weren’t for that nasty Eurofighter and those dastardly dastardly Americans making some kind of aircraft or other, this world-beating, sooper-dooper, super-plane wouldn’t be... well... doing badly!

As for the world-beating salesman... who says people need to shave!

Thanks to Michael who adds:

I suppose that when you lose every sales campaign to the F15/F16, it must eventually not be your own fault. How lucid, how French.

The New Paranoia About Outsiders...

...same as the old paranoia about outsiders.

Fake Solidarity is not Charity

While some are “philosophizing ‘til it hurts”, others are being generous with their time and earnings:

Gaudiani said Americans give twice as much as the next most charitable country, according to a November 2006 comparison done by the Charities Aid Foundation. In philanthropic giving as a percentage of gross domestic product, the U.S. ranked first at 1.7 percent. No. 2 Britain gave 0.73 percent, while France, with a 0.14 percent rate, trailed such countries as South Africa, Singapore, Turkey and Germany.

Bloated governments try to convince their taxpayers that their usury goes to something they imagine is some sort of “collectivized compassion”. The more the government sells people on this, the less people give of themselves, and beyond handwringing, to less actual empathy itself. If it isn't someone else’s problem, it's the state’s problem.

This passive form of “humanism courtesy the state” is a delusion and a sort of placebo to make up the difference between the ‘humanists’ they think they are and the emotionally needy people they really are.

- with thanks to Martin

Here Kid, Pull My Finger

The usual continental passive-aggressive crap? Petulant envy? A retired British ace fighter pilot opines on de Villepin’s tack prior to the removal of Saddam Hussein:

“Let’s face it, the French have always been opportunistic when it comes to weapons deals. Maybe their military industry is flat on its face.

“But we took enough French-built Exocets during the Falklands for me not to feel too sorry for them.”

The Daily Express has been told by a senior diplomatic source that the former French Prime Prime Minister, Dominique du Villepin – he famously attacked Britain and the US at the UN for proposed involvement in the second Gulf War – was heavily motivated in his outburst by the fact that the French could not field an operational aircraft carrier.

Lowered expectations

As a senior official puts it, "the impact of Sarkozy will come mainly from the fact that France has been absent for such a long time."

Smug and Smart, Smug and Smart

Are you a bien pensent twit trying to figure out the Holocaust? Are you looking for any explanation other than evil?

Then why not just find a way to blame a jew?

A brief encounter with a Jewish prostitute may have led to Hitler's genocidal Holocaust, claim psychiatrists.

It's 1938. Do You Know Where your Children Are?

With no historical memory. Must be nice not to have a conscience.

The Nazi rock concert was held in Croatia’s biggest stadium, Maksimir, and although this time Thompson himself did not make any pro-Ustasha references or Hitler-style salutes, the kids sure did.

The reason you don’t see this kind of stuff in Germany is that everyone knows what the Germans did, and the Germans know what the Germans did, because they were made to admit and apologize for what they did.

- via Julia Gorin

As far as I’m concerned, they’re not that different than these clowns:

“Fuck Reformen, Luxus til alle” “Fuck reforms. Luxury for everyone”
In other words: “if it ain’t bolted down, it’s yours’”

So common that it is now largely ignored by the French MSM

Riots broke out on Sunday night June 17 in Cergy after a rap festival. 200 French youths went at it in a gang battle with rocks, knives, molotov cocktails, and an ax before attacking local police. A police car was torched.

Crackberry Hill

As if...

Top French government officials are ignoring warnings to ditch their cherished BlackBerrys -- smartphones with e-mail capacity -- despite warnings their messages may be intercepted by US spy agencies, a report said Tuesday.

[ ... ]

"The risk of interception is real, it's an economic war," Alain Juilllet, a senior French economic intelligence official, told Le Monde.

A bunch of wonderpups at the French Foreign Ministry won’t give up their Blackberries in spite of the security risks.

After all, they should know.

Some of the specific cases are shocking. According to a recent New York Times article by Peter Schweizer, `between 1987 and 1989, French intelligence planted moles in several U.S. companies, including IBM. In the fall of 1991, a French intelligence team attempted to steal `stealth' technology from Lockheed.' Other accounts report that French intelligence units conduct 10 to 15 break-ins every day at large hotels in Paris to copy documents that belong to businessmen, journalists, and diplomats. According to other accounts, the French have been hiding listening devices on Air France flights in order to pick up useful economic information from business travelers

Given that the US Government nearly never goes to bat for US businesses in nearly the same way, and often get audited out of existence. I wonder where they’re getting this idea if no-place other than their own experience.

Imagine you own a private company experiencing success in France. You have an IPO. A state owned company, possibly through another company suddenly owns a piece of your future success. The state could even skillfully time its’ sale of assets to exploit your “means of production”.

Bingo. Motive and opportunity. Direct interest in (and history of ) using intelligence assets for domestic industries.

Remember, they’re more lucid, more humanistic, more everything than you are. They even fart daisies.

Academic Fantasies Exploited

“Interhotel” chic?

BERLIN - The four clocks behind the reception desk of Berlin's new budget hotel Ostel show the hour in Moscow, Berlin, Havana, and Beijing. Time, however, appears to have stopped here sometime before 1989, when communism was still entrenched in all four capitals.

The Ostel offers a renewed whiff of life in the former German Democratic Republic, welcoming travelers with portraits of communist leaders adorning the walls.

I wonder, does the package deal come with beatings by the Volkspolizei and the Grenzschutz, or is that only in the abuse spa package?

Socialist Unity Party functionaries such as party General Secretary Erich Honecker and Prime Minister Horst Sindermann peer down from portraits in most rooms, giving the impression that one is under constant surveillance.

The fun never stops.

Vigil-Auntie

At roughly 1315 UTC, at the same time the BBC was having an on-air "silent vigil" for the release of kidnapped BBC correspondent Alan Johnston, a clan member of the group holding him had his head blown off by masked men.

Munir Dughmush was shot while standing outside a building in Gaza City's Zaitoun neighborhood, sources in the Gaza Strip said. They said masked gunmen opened fire at him, killing him instantly.

Following the incident, foreign journalists were advised to stay away from the Gaza Strip for fear of reprisal.

They recently said they were willing to talk about releasing Johnson.

How then does a highly influential subculture of fantasists with moral uncertainty and journalism degrees defend its’ own against another highly influential subculture of fantasists with amoral tactics and small arms? It doesn’t.

I‘m sure those who participated in the big BBC-staffer group hug believed that their vigils, websites, sign-bearing, and pot-banging will somehow appeal to the compassion of those who hold Johnston and get him released. This would only be possible if there was a way in Gazan militant society to actually act with compassion (if one was capable of it), and even yet not get shot by someone else if you try.
All their “campaigning” has done is raise the man's stock. The more of a pointless a stink they make about Johnston’s captivity, the more he's worth as a captive.

Which brings us to the the accompanying photo. Journalists without borders who seem to want to conceal their identity to even show empathy for one of their kidnapped fellow journalists. Even if they are just kids imagining their hearts are with him - Indeed they’re displaying the fear that they themselves have sewn by the over-reporting and giving too much importance and credence to the causes of Johnston’s captors. If they had enough self-awareness to see how screwy their tack is generally, they could let themselves seek the aide of the Israelis for the sake of Johnston’s life, even if it would undermine their rather fake “neutrality” of having to temper their reporting because of their vulnerability to the violence they would be exposed to.

Go figure.

What Were the Third, Sixth, Ninth, and Fifteenth Questions?

Davids Medienkritik's Ray Drake is interviewed by CBN and the BBC on Anti-Americanism and Blogs, as is Nidra Poller.

Rearguard Hoplite Taxpayers Raise Their Fiscal Shields

Valiantly, a rearguard of La Baf taxpayers head towards a Paris tax office to turn in their tax returns.

Le bouclier fiscal
Uploaded by Labaf

And Can You Tell Us the Promises That We Were Supposed to Trust You Believed In?

Ségolène Royal, who is to meet with Nicolas Sarkozy this morning (will she shake the president's hand?), did not believe in all the electoral promises she was giving…

Meanwhile, at the local EU trailer park...

Sounds like a scale model European Union replica.

They will live and work in a series of interlocked modules ...

Once the hatches are closed, the crew's only contact with the outside world is a radio link to "Earth" with a realistic delay of many minutes.

If they're working on an EU simulator, they better make that "many years".



Space is the place.

So, Do You Think He’s Got A ‘Type?’

I doubt a Ségo blow up doll would have done the trick, but Flanby seems to have found frightening analog to his former political opponent and common law co-parent to their hatchlings.

While hints of Hollande as a Joey Butafuco type wearing a wifebeater are sure to not be far off, this thing is far from one sided.

She was the socialist in stilettos, the woman who injected femininity, glamour and sex appeal into the French elections.

And as she embarked on her ill-fated bid to become France's first woman president this spring, Segolene Royal, an alluring mother-of four, appeared as a wonderful breath of fresh air who dared to challenge the macho forces of French politics.

Let’s set aside the fact that anyone finding a mother of 4 alluring needs to have their head examined. The idea that the press tried to sell it this way without the objection of a campaign certainly says that as far as the subject goes – that all bets are off in the abuse department. Keep in mind that this public display of flaming, twisted wreckage will certainly be spun in the direction of man-as-abuser, in spite of Hollande never being able to fit that bill, and in spite of the fact that Royal was supposed to be squared away, consensus oriented, and in possession of leadership skills.

At one point prior to the Presidential election, word had it that a certain candidate was playing naughty little Sprout to the Jolly Green Giant. Hinting that a eco-vangelist was doing a Presidential candidate was subtly floated as a sign of someone with a ‘nuanced’ social bearing doing what she could to ‘take care of the earth.’ I won’t touch the fact that the man is a Veteranarian.

Phooey! Sputum!, I say. The politics aren’t affecting this adolescent love-drome here, the personal circumstances are being used in the politics. Otherwise this would resemble a collapsing relationship between actual adult mammals and be mostly private and at least somewhat painful. That is, if they’re parents and are actually capable of normal emotions in some way. Clearly they aren’t.

At least they’re too old to breed.

“Managed” Out of a Job

Not free to choose: regulated and managed out of existence, some French wine-growers have taken direct action.

Trimming the vines in the 17 hectares of vineyard which used to support his family, wine-grower Francois Thiebaud is in despair because of plummeting wine prices.

He says that he and many other wine-makers in this region are now fighting for survival: "We're working at a loss," he tells me.

"We've lost between 40 and 50% of our income because of falling prices and the big cut taken by the middle-men.

"I can only afford to carry on working in the vineyards because my wife has another job.

"And some wine-makers have to claim social security benefits, because they earn so little that they can't feed their families.

Were these artisans able to get out of the political trap of demanding help, and then accepting it, they wouldn’t be in the position they’re in. The uncontrollable Euro-desire to ‘control’ the value of French wines in a pretext to protect the farmer has accomplished the reverse altogether. With a sterling reputation, and a history of producing the best wines anywhere in the world, the regime has even rendered the value of even the un-exported product sold locally to a market making 1st world earnings and an appreciation and willingness for wines has been undervalued.

Worldwide, the concept of the subsidy (as opposed to a low-threshold ‘safety-net’ to protect against weather and other events) has failed. It’s even worse when the commodity also requires specific craftsmanship, topography, and soil. These farms couldn’t grow oats or maize.

The failure is in Europe’s omnipresent ‘systems’ and ‘regimes’ that haven’t permitted these growers, or any other ones, to sort out for themselves how they’re operate at a profit. Even the system of apellations dooms some and protects others, some of which don’t deserve it.
Beyond that, they are talked out of figuring out for themselves whether they even belong in the business – the fetishization of ‘the land’ means that a wine-grower can’t just abandon his vines for something else without changing the terms of his state ‘support’ that manipulates the supply, and does as much to suppress prices as it’s meant to prop it up.

If you don’t buy that idea, look at where the expanding producers and markets are: Australia, the US, Canada, New Zealand... all places where the market for making, selling, importing, and exporting wines isn’t manipulated in the European manner.

Ever feel like you've been cheated?

Zeropean EUtopia. Where the little countries are told how to vote.

Caption Contest

Snooping on the Shadetree Fascists

Working in the same building a couple of "progressive" political lobbying firms can be both depressing and amusing. This normally dyspeptic group, themselves a pantheon of token hires (after the currently fashionable genetic groups) often offer some true anthropological interest.

One day I overheard one barely tinted woman of terribly middle-class and suburban upbringing chiding a man of terribly middle-class and suburban upbringing about being white.

They might be shocked to discover how thoughtless, outdated, and conventional the gender dynamic of their exchange really is. They should be continually bombarded by messages chiding both of them to raises their awareness to this, even if it's all for not particular or real social justice reason itself, but to be made all the less comfortable in their skin. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

It's the false-consciousness, man. Badger them for years to them apologize, child-like, to themselves in the mirror.

Also Causes Jock Itch

When people start to reason that you can avert genocide by cooling the planet below the temperature nature wants it to, you’ve really lost your marbles. Add it to: “Stop coming to work and save the planet”, “Having large families ‘is an eco-crime’”, but more than anything try to square it with this enthusiastic bit of earth-loving genocide.

Ever feel like you've been cheated?

The French, when they are not too doped up on reimbursed Lexomil, are just starting to realize that the future of their little shithole of a country was for some time the play object of a couple of self-absorbed latté Leftists whose delusions of grandeur were fueled by the spectacular banality of their mid-life crises. Des histoires de fesses flasques. À l'image du pays, quoi.



Message to Hollande Flanby : be a man, kill yourself.

“Decrypting”: a Smug Way to Make Spinning Feel Smart

« He left the house, but they both kept the chamber »
[Ed.: She dumped the cheat, and they gained fewer seats than the petulant pollsters and press hoped for]

Bound up, but unrelated. A message distraction from those who pretend to own the truth. An odd cartoon from Plantu’s cartoonish view of humanity tries to make an interference attempt, and is linked to a story titled: « Deciphering: a message sent to Nicolas Sarkozy ».

It’s revealing. Decades after the personal became the political, the political is now entirely personal. Let’s dope it out: Plantu makes Hollande look like an embarrassed, lost commuter on the “blue” side, and Ségo only slightly pensive, but still smiling and heroic, managing to float in mid-air. At least this time she isn’t drawn walking on water with even Jesus wondering who this un-naturally toothy, grinning Godzilla really is.

Meanwhile, France seems to have managed to dodge a bullet. The Clintonesque nature of this pair might appeal as a subject of the dim-witted, omnipresent talk shows, but it doesn’t mean that people really want or can stand this kind of thing from the leaders of a nation that keeps telling itself what a mature society it is.

Royal said the reason for the parting was the infidelity of her partner , Socialist leader François Hollande.

Further details will be revealed in Royal's autobiography, which is to be published this week.

I guess she needed a stunt held at the point of maximum attention to sell her upcoming book – or otherwise fall permanently off of the public radar, or into ridicule, or into a pattern of ridiculous, party-wide attention-seeking behaviour.

But with Royal asserting her ambition to challenge for the party hot-seat, the two are likely to clash then, or even earlier if the Socialists decide to call an early congress.

Can you imagine this party leading a nation that has nukes?

"La direction de France 5 n’était pas joignable ce matin"

"C’est une formidable émission, mais elle est usée."

With nary a word of explanation, France 5 cancels Daniel Schneidermann's "Arrêt sur images" (hyperlinked several times on NP), the best program on French TV.

Mais l’important n’est pas dans cette grossièreté. L’important n’est pas que Carolis et ses hommes décident, sans l’ombre d’une explication, de tuer Arrêt sur images. L’argument de l’ancienneté n’est pas un argument, ni dans un sens ni dans l’autre.

L’important, c’est qu’ils ne sont pas effleurés par l’idée que cette émission remplissait une mission indispensable de service public.

L’important, c’est qu’ils renoncent impunément, sans un soupir, à cette mission : critiquer à la télévision, avec les armes de la télévision, le pouvoir des images.

…A vous tous, si nombreux, si sincères, mais si dispersés aussi. Je partage votre désarroi, à tous. Mais les graines que nous avons semées sont en vous, maintenant. En vous et en d’autres. Le monstre médiatique est vulnérable. Sa lâcheté d’aujourd’hui en est encore une preuve. Ce travail continuera. Pas nous ou par d’autres, ici ou ailleurs.

Meet the Dissemblers

It’s Llke a Train-wreck alternate ending to ’ Raising Arizona’

Propagandastaffel chooses to cover the personal problems of lefties and the break-up the world press doesn’t seem to care about over the French parliamentary election results - even as the PS’ seat count appears to be closer to 180 than the 210 that the pollsters are selling.

Ségo and François Announce Their Separation

"J'ai demandé à François Hollande de quitter le domicile, de vivre son histoire sentimentale de son côté, désormais étalée dans les livres et les journaux, et je lui ai souhaité d'être heureux."

Gérard Courtois answers questions about the election (check out numbers 1, 5, 7, & 9), while Ségolène and François announce their break-up.

Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of my Hair...

Sarko wins, the NYT spins, and Ségolène Royal “divorces” Flanby to the extent that one can under common law - she ditches the bum:

We’re on good terms. We talk. There’s mutual respect.

Call in an airstrike.

What a brilliant thing to do on election day.

Meanwhile back at stately “Pinch” manor:

Those projected results marked the first political stumble for the hard-driving and U.S.-friendly Sarkozy since his emphatic election win last month. But both votes still handed him a mandate to revive French spirits and economic prospects by loosening up labor laws and cutting income and inheritance taxes among other ambitious reforms.


The projected results showed a stunning rally for the fractured and flailing Socialists.

Call in an airstrike.

They aren’t Mexican. This Story will go Nowhere.

Slavery in Europe:

Hunger, heat, and 13 hours back-breaking work a day: all for €1 an hour. Customs officials raided a strawberry plantation in Bavaria on Thursday and found [ed.: 118] illegal Romanian workers living in slave-like conditions. What was worse: the owner of the farm is a [ed.: retired] policeman.

German custom authorities raided a strawberry plantation in the village of Oberndorf in southern Germany at midnight Thursday night and discovered up to 60 Romanian farm laborers living in miserable conditions. The owner of the farm had been keeping the workers as virtual slaves and only paying them around €1 ($1.33) an hour, for up to 13 hours of work a day in the fields.

The officials were alerted by people in the nearby village where the workers had been begging.

Poverty of German policemen (pffnthpt!!!) notwithstanding, this occurs despite a loving, caring “subsidy” for German farm workers:

The Christian Science Monitor reported on May 24, 2006 that some 280,000 Poles were working in German agriculture, many harvesting asparagus. The German Labor Department is insisting that 10 percent of farm workers in 2006 be German. German farm workers can receive subsidies that give them €13 to €20 an hour tax free, or $17 to $25.

The Right's Tsunami Fizzles as the Left Manages a Respectable Score

The blue tsunami announced has not occurred as the ruling UMP wins "only" about 328 seats to 206 for the left. Still, that is obviously more than enough to wield all the power in the government.

Election Watch

An absolute majority for the President's UMP Party despite much blather from the Socialist Party about its performance which has resulted in an absolute minority. Now that Sarkozy has his absolute majority, what will he do with it?

Still on Stage…

Jacques Chirac is not out of the limelight yet…

One of Them, Wearing a Hood, Grabbed Her by the Neck, Hit Her on the Ear, Threw Her to the Ground, and Tossed Meat in Her Face

If a rival candidate appears to be getting too close to upsetting the seat of a PS bigwig (Dominique Strauss-Kahn) in the second round of the elections, call her a racist and let your power base know that she is to be threatened and harassed…

It's OK, Even Wise, Indeed Welcome, to Insult America's Leader, Question Its Policies, and Disparage Its People

But heaven forbid you do the same to Europe's!

The West is the Best

You just get here, we'll do the rest. How appropriate.

Let’s Call it John Bolton Envy

EUvians may no longer be Impressed by their own skilled displays of good intentions, but, ya know, they’re trying. They’re almost getting to the point where they’re copping the United States’ agenda on this thing they never seem to actually get around to do anything about called human rights.

European Union countries have threatened to pull out of the United Nations Human Rights Council if its developing country majority succeeds in an attempt to prevent scrutiny of the worst abusers.

Too bad it’s only about 5 years too late for this particular effort to actually matter.

Fine words aside, they’re really still a lot more worried about what the neighbors will think (as if their neighbors actually thought like them.)

EU diplomats, requesting anonymity, said they still hoped to negotiate a compromise accord.

Wow. You can almost smell the bold “unilateralism” from downtown Pyongyang, can’t ya?

The End of History and the Last Man ?

Behold the results of this self referential hell of their own making: EUtopia disappointed that bad people aren’t reading their memos.

Until now, the EU thought it was enough to fire off a flurry of press releases, killing more trees then people have died in Darfur, to express its worry.
But being ignored for four years has so irritated the EU that its previous strategy of sending off a letter, then another letter and another letter, expressing “concern,” and then “deep concern” and then “grave concern,” will be replaced with a new system expressing faux grief.

Reading the news, it’s actually hard to tell this is a mocking parody. Never in the history of civilization has so much “concern” amounted to so little of anything meaningful.

From now on, the EU will step up its concern. First, a special team of analysts in air-conditioned rooms in Brussels will identify world “hot spots” to figure out where the most people are being killed and then brief EU leaders on what to say to avoid angering anyone over anything. New Europe has obtained a memo outlining the steps that will be taken:
“The EU will follow the following steps that must be followed to follow before we follow-up,” it said:
l We will “urge” governments to take action against injustice and stop killing people. That will be followed by a letter of “urgent urgency” and then, only as a last resort, “gotta go to the bathroom right now urgency”

Meanwhile, one man gets it right without quite realizing it:

A German pensioner has been arrested for spraying rude graffiti.
The 70-year-old was caught splaying the word 'puff', German for whorehouse, on houses in the Bavarian town of Hof.

The Poodle of Germany?

…as the signs of disdain for Chirac among the French public — and even certain parts of the French media — multiplied in the months [after the resounding "no" vote in the May 2005 French referendum on the EU "constitutional treaty"], the mainstream of the American media continued to treat him with the deference befitting a great and influential statesman

writes John Rosenthal in his insightful article on Jacques Chirac's role (or lack thereof) during the Iraq war.

There is little doubt about the source of the media's obvious faith in Chirac's statesmanlike "grandeur": namely, his high-profile role in opposing the Iraq War in early 2003. In France, Chirac's anti-war stance predictably led to a spike in his popularity, as the "anti-imperialist" left suddenly found itself expressing pride in the courageous and upstanding leadership of a man who only the year before was being persistently referred to in "leftist" media as "Super-liar" [Supermenteur]: a leaden allusion to "Superman" that is as unfunny in French as it is in English. …

For the American media and the American public, however, the highly publicized French agitation in the run-up to the war left behind the enduring impression that it was Chirac who was the driving force behind the Franco-German "Axis of Peace" that attempted to prevent the American-led intervention. The notion that Chirac led the opposition to the war is common on both the "left" and the "right" and it is shared by both Chirac's admirers and his detractors. But a simple look back at the chronology of events makes clear that this notion is a myth. Chirac did not lead. He followed.

National Lampoon’s 72 Virgins

After providing Sopranos endings to Scarface and The Godfather, The National Lampoon takes a look at the director's cuts of Mel Gibson's Apocalypto and Clint Eastwood's Letters From Iwo Jima. Coming this summer (unless it's a joke): National Lampoon’s 72 Virgins.

Same old, same old

Roger L. Simon interviews Mark Steyn. To kick off the interview, Steyn tells Americans to not get their hopes up about Sarkozy.

Strategic yogurt production

Strategic dairy product management turns sour in China where authorities accuse the French of behaving like a bunch of "hommes d'affaires voyous". Comme quoi, on est toujours le voyou de quelqu'un.

Which Country Is the Worst Human Rights Offender?

While PBS purports to examine anti-Americanism in a neutral, objective light, Stéphane checks out a (Reuters-inspired and Amnesty-created) map for use in publications around the world.

Guess which country (with six sins, versus at the most four for all other countries) is the worst human rights offender on the planet?

Notice to the dissidents of the world: do not try to emigrate to the United States, do not too hard to reform your own régimes; as long as governments like Iran's, Russia's, China's, and Cuba's are opposing Uncle Sam, they are doing good work…



As usual, Stéphane is not content to respond by simply showing outrage. Deliberately and methodically, he calmly analyzes the data.

Certains intitulés me laissent dubitatif. Discrimination et violences contre les femmes? Dans la société américaine où la bise sur la joue d'une collègue d'entreprise peut vous mener au tribunal, difficile à croire.

Exécutions et exécutions "extrajudiciaires"? Cela ne fait même pas référence à la peine de mort, couverte par un autre symbole (qui n'intègre pas la notion d'un procès équitable.) J'imagine que cette référence fait appel à la "violence intrinsèque de la société américaine" ou à d'autres concepts du même tonneau, le genre de lieux communs constamment déversés dès qu'on parle du pays de l'Oncle Sam. Le verdict est injuste, car un régime politique n'est pas forcément responsable du comportement des éléments criminels présents sur son sol. Comme si les crimes des FARC étaient à imputer au régime colombien qui les combat!

Enfin, pour la "torture" on pensera inévitablement à Guantanamo - alors que Cuba, constellé des 300 prisons du régime castriste, n'a même pas droit à un pareil honneur...

Mais essayer d'expliquer la palme ainsi décernée aux Etats-Unis revient à s'enfermer dans la logique des critiques d'Amnesty. Or, à y regarder de plus près, il n'y a aucune logique dans cette image — sauf la volonté délibérée de salir les Etats-Unis.

…Les émigrés avides de se trouver une vie meilleure sont donc priés d'abandonner cette quête ridicule d'une carte verte. Qu'ils contactent plutôt l'ambassade ouzbèke ou chinoise la plus proche...

Ces approximations tendancieuses, trop appuyées pour ne pas être parfaitement volontaires, se combinent pour amener une planisphère peut-être conforme à l'idée des activistes d'Amnesty ou des journalistes de Reuters sur le monde, mais malheureusement très éloignée des souffrances réelles infligées aux populations de la planète.

Il serait bon que certains militants perdent leurs oeillères et jugent comme il se doit les régimes communistes ou ceux appliquant la Charia, au lieu d'être constamment obnubilés par leur croisade névrosée contre les Etats-Unis d'Amérique. Mais le respect des Droits de l'Homme est-il vraiment leur premier souci?

Are the "Opinions" of 11-Year-Olds Evidence of Their Own (Freely-Arrived-At) Anti-Americanism or of That of French Adults Coupled with Indoctrination?

"Damn it, you're doing stupid things that could screw up my world!"

THE ANTI-AMERICANS (a hate/love relationship) examines the complicated mixture of envy, pride, admiration, and cultural misunderstanding that characterizes European views. It’s a situation that has led some commentators to say that “Americans are from Mars, Europeans are from Venus.”

This film examines the current status of European attitudes towards America in three very different places: France, the United Kingdom, and Poland. Freely mixing humor with provocative commentary, the program shows how Old World attitudes can be both nuanced and simplistic at the same time – sometimes contradictory, sometimes predictable, but always worthy of our interest.

It may be that people such as Pascal Bruckner, Boris Johnson, and Agnieszka Graff are included in the new documentary in which PBS purports to examine anti-Americanism in a neutral, objective light, but offhand, one is wont to ask if the directors and producers have not wondered about the negative (not to mention preposterous) "opinions" of French 11-year-olds regarding America(ns) and how these may have something to do with the adults in whose trust they are (in school as well as at home, where they live with parents who went through the same schooling system), coupled with no little amount of indoctrination…

Update: "La version anglophone de ce dessin animé est fréquemment utilisée comme outil pédagogique par les professeurs d’anglais dans les collèges et lycées français."

The EU: that thing that's been behind the curve for 50 years

The EU is pleading with Palestinian terrorists on both sides to do everything possible to "avoid a civil war". At least, that is, until the EU can dream up a way to blame it on the Jews.

Reciprocity of the Standard Diplomatic Sort

Serving fewer Francophones as there are Anglophones in Paris, RFI is broadcasting in numerous American cities while the CSA, France’s “owners” of the airwaves act out their fear of the mythical Anglo-Saxon, what with their blue jeans and decadent rock and roll that might corrupt the proletariat: with the same effect as Cuban jamming transmitters, English language radio is not permitted on the air in Paris. Even the unctuous BBC transmits from beyond the frontier. One expat-radio entrepreneur resorted to secreting an Internet Radio operation from the UK.

Diplomacy being what it is should compel the FCC to boot RFI out of the US, if they didn’t have something that the CSA doesn’t: an actual belief in basic individual rights.

Boot them off the air. Period.