The Difference Between Labor Day and May Day

Much like the myth that socialism alleviates poverty, after hearing for years about how working less makes Europeans more productive, the lid gets blown off by those nettlesome facts. Le Figaro reported today:

Les Américains meilleurs travailleurs Les Etats-Unis se maintiennent à la tête de la productivité mondiale, creusant l'écart avec les autres pays développés, alors que l'Asie de l'est a doublé en dix ans sa production par travailleur, a indiqué le Bureau international du travail (BIT) dans un rapport.

Americans are the Best Workers Widening the gap with other developed countries, the United States [economy] remains the world’s most productive, while workers in the Asian Rim doubled their productivity in ten years – so indicated a report by the International Labour Organization (ILO).

I’m sure we’ll get a tirade any day now about the wrongness of reporting that, or how the editors of Le Figaro are secretly Americans who just “look out for their own”, or some similarly overblown emotional abstraction.

Katrina Hypocrisy to the Tenth Power

Like lefties’ erstwhile cause celèbre of post-Katrina New Orleans (not post-Katrina Mobile, Alabama, mind you), many Greeks tend to wallow in conspiracy theories and blame incessantly at the top of their voices.

But that’s where the similarities end. Within 48 hours there were more helicopters in the skies of New Orleans than could safely operate in civilian airspace. After more than a month of forest fires in Greece, the EU finally shows up for some PR and to toss some of their subjects a pittance, so long as it’s highly visible. That’s because they’re better people than you and me.

Perennial Whine-fest

Every year summer vacation ends. Every year kids go back to school. Every year parents have to get them school supplies. Cluebat: It’s why merchants have been competing with one another with “back to school” sales since Meseopotamians have put stick to clay, and little snot-nosed boys have been pulling the pony tails of snot nosed girls.

With kids returning to school, it’s time to buy school supplies. An investment which weighs heavily on the family budget.

Waaaah!!!! If you can recall, the nation’s brain was fairly sure that the Virgin Mary doesn’t really think kids should go back to school at all.

Like the other hypermarkets, Carrefour has been preparing for the return to school for several weeks. Setting it up has been going on since mid-July. “We hired five more people for two months”, said Christophe Chenevier, who is in charge of non-food sales. It is one of strong times of the year. In turnover, it’s equivalent to the sale of toys in December. ”From simple fountain pen ink cartridges to large dictionaries, hundreds of items are available.” To make life easier for customers, Carrefour Saint-Malo proposes a new service: “Come in with your shopping list and we’ll fill out your order for free in 72 hours. More people need to do this, it’s a real time saver.”

An aside: this ad brought to you free by the local paper – and one of the less dishonest ones at that.

Do these parents think that their kids don’t need pens and paper? The population at large is already paying for their schooling. Do these people think that their neighbors have to be responsible for what amounts to the kids’ personal property?

I’m sure you remember what condition the schoolbooks you didn’t have to buy were in. Reason: the kids knew that they were not theirs. It’s also why teachers had to inspect your book covers – so you’d learn something about taking care of things in spite of disinvolved inattentive parents.

But in only a few very “special” places are parents culturally acclimated to complain about it, showing that they don’t value education or take a stake in it. Not only are they extending the cultural exception to the personal one, they’re making one hell of an example for their kids, initiating them into the culture of complaint and personal passivity.

Never mind why “Johnny can’t read,” with every display of parental blubbering, Johnny can’t imagine doing relatively simple things for himself. Good luck with all that.

They aren’t alone in this - in the US, they observe this problem dominating in the ghetto, but not largely with the general population.

Encore des pingreries franchouilles

France to cut back on contributions to the UN's Global Fund to Fight AIDS? Pas étonnant qu'on n'a pas les moyens.

De la merde entre les deux oreilles

French arthouse veneer over a heaping pile of anti-Americanism. Starring a typical French broad: "Some things I forgot because it was just too much." Connasse.

Gosplan 2.0

Planned obsolescence.

Another Protest of Bronislaw Geremek's That Will Not Earn the Pole a Spot on the Front Page of Le Monde

Today the European Parliament will act as the host to a conference held by the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP). Despite the neutrally sounding title of its conference, CEIRPP has a proven record of anti-Israel bias, spreading propaganda that presents only the Palestinian narrative, including the delegitimization of Israel - a UN member state.

The CEIRPP casts a shadow on the UN role in the Middle East conflict and is first and foremost harmful to the UN. Its work only reinforces a long held Israeli suspicion vis-a-vis the UN and contributes nothing to the cause of peace. A recent example is a plan of action calling for boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel.

Will today's conference, in the halls of the European Parliament, issue similar directives? Though of little practical consequence, this conference, especially under the banner and auspices of the European Parliament, will harm the cause of peace and also damage European credibility as an honest broker.

We are told that Parliament is merely letting CEIRPP use its premises. Surely, the European Parliament is not just a convention center. As Members of the European Parliament, we are shocked that this biased event would take place within our institutional premises.

Several colleagues have already announced they will boycott the conference. We hope many more will join in condemning this event and call on the presidency to reconsider the damaging consequences this event will have for our institution. Behind the neutral banner of a UN committee and the seemingly respectable goals of this conference there lurks a biased agenda of radical anti-Israel organizations. The European Parliament should not give them a platform in the only representative body of the European Union, whose goals are to foster dialogue and understanding, not acrimony, mistrust and despair.

Frédérique Ries, Belgium, Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe
Bronislaw Geremek, Poland, Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe
Patrick Gaubert, France, European People's Party
Bernard Lehideux, France, Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe
Sarah Ludford, Britain, Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe
Marek Siwiec, Poland, European Socialist Party
Charles Tannock, Britain, European People's Party

The International Herald Tribune-published text entitled The wrong platform, signed by seven members of the European Parliament, represents yet another protest which is not among those that will earn Bronislaw Geremek a spot on the front page of Le Monde. (You could call it… the wrong platform…)

Tourette's Syndrome? "The European America-bashers launch free-associative rants that would be irritating if they were not ultimately so hilarious"

The signature moment in The Anti-Americans (a hate/love relationship) comes during a series of interviews with irate French citizens blathering on about how McDonald's is oppressing their country

writes Glenn Garvin in the Miami Herald (merci à Jay).

Though, one woman adds sternly, it won't last forever: ''We threw out the Germans, we'll throw out the Americans, too.'' Asks the interviewer in astonishment: ''The French threw out the Germans?'' Well, the Frenchwoman replies airily, ''you Americans helped a little.'' How long before we see a Jean-Luc Godard film in which Charles de Gaulle saves Private Ryan?

So it goes in The Anti-Americans, a sly and maliciously funny documentary airing as part of the PBS film series America At A Crossroads on the post-9/11 world. Like victims of some weird political form of Tourette's Syndrome, the European America-bashers launch free-associative rants that would be irritating if they were not ultimately so hilarious.

"The woman is almost always the first victim of a dictatorship"

There is another disturbing current in [Mario] Vargas Llosa's work that is less often discussed--mistreatment of women, ranging from disrespect to outright violence

writes Emily Parker in an interview with the Peruvian writer that seems to put the lie to the tale that in Saddam's Iraq, "at least" women were free and had rights.

The abuses are particularly horrifying in "The Feast of the Goat," a novel based on the life of Rafael Trujillo, the dictator who terrorized the Dominican Republic from 1930 to 1961. Mr. Vargas Llosa describes traveling to the Dominican Republic and being stunned to hear stories of peasants offering their own daughters as "gifts" to the lustful tyrant. Trujillo and his sons, he tells me, could abuse any woman of any social class with absolute impunity. The situation in the Dominican Republic, which he refers to as a "laboratory of horrors," may have tended toward the extreme, but it underscores a larger trend: "The woman is almost always the first victim of a dictatorship."

Mr. Vargas Llosa discovered that this phenomenon was hardly limited to Latin America. "I went to Iraq after the invasion," he tells me. "When I heard stories about the sons of Saddam Hussein, it seemed like I was in the Dominican Republic, hearing stories about the sons of Trujillo! That women would be taken from the street, put in automobiles and simply presented like objects. . . . The phenomenon was very similar, even with such different cultures and religions." He concludes: "Brutality takes the same form in dictatorial regimes."

Did this mean that Mr. Vargas Llosa supported the invasion of Iraq? "I was against it at the beginning," he says. But then he went to Iraq and heard accounts of life under Saddam Hussein. "Because there has been so much opposition to the war, already one forgets that this was one of the most monstrous dictatorships that humanity has ever seen, comparable to that of Hitler, or Stalin." He changed his mind about the invasion: "Iraq is better without Saddam Hussein than with Saddam Hussein. Without a doubt."

Media Moron Describes Recent Gang Violence in Paris as « A L’Américaine »

Which is secret code for not wanting to admit how normal and traditional it is.



« Les loups sont entrés dans Paris » / “The wolves have entered Paris” but not on the TGV as they’re trying to imply.

-Danke Schön zu Hervé

Mexican 300

"This...is MEXICO!"

Posted Aug 22, 2007

France: a new reality based community?

More on French foreign policy:

"There is a third idea, not articulated, but which seems to be guiding this new diplomacy: a fresh pragmatism, based on a more realistic assessment of France's rank, and a touch of opportunism. In his entire speech, Mr Sarkozy mentioned neither French grandeur nor gloire, both staples of Chirac-era discourse, preferring less ambitious terms such as France's “influence” and “role”. "

Who's afraid of Google?

You mean, besides the French?

Ça fait drole

Wow, imagine France doing something other than ankle biting.

"Nicolas Sarkozy made headlines this week by telling his diplomatic corps that 'an Iran with nuclear weapons is for me unacceptable.' But the French President did more in his speech than name the gravest current threat to global security, itself a feat of clear thinking. He also signaled that France means to be something more on the international scene than an anti-American nuisance player."

“But Officer, I Need To Hack My Way Home Through The Tall Grasses!!!”

Nouvel Observateur reports that:

Thirty people were arrested Monday night in the 18th arrondissement of Paris after brawls and armed violence between rival gangs, reported the police on Tuesday August 28th.
Six individuals, mainly from Hauts-de-Seine, were taken into police custody at the urban police task force (PUP) station which sees in this outburst a link with incidents on Sunday at Gare du Nord.

“Armed with machetes and kitchen knives”

Two people had been slightly wounded, probably with blunt instruments in the gang fight early in the evening inside the Gare du Nord station on Sunday. Three of the suspects were stopped shortly thereafter and placed in police custody.

You just wait. Before you know it, these punks will be learning to use stone, and then maybe even bronze tools.

The Wolfman Bites Again

Once upon a time, it was the New Soviet Man. Today, it’s the New Ecological Person, living in the New Sustainable Society. The new person is perfect because he consumes nothing.

Again, Gary Wolf takes up the subjects of civilization and the New Ecological Person…

Make the myths

Got Döner?

Eat your heart out, and don’t forger that hot ajvar stuff while you're at it.

- It’s always an after-party
at Observing Hermann

There are alot of French who would give anything to be poor in America

You haven't seen poor until you've seen French SDF-RMI-smicard-crevard poor.

Foot in mouth disease

This French "star" has it.

No surprise here

Racist attacks rise in Europe, says EU report:

These increases were recorded in Britain, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Poland and Slovakia ...

Fallout Boy

The fallout continues from the Dissident Frogman's ridiculing of the oh-so-venerable Agence Fwance Presse.



AFP is used to setting themselves up for ridicule.

Thank you Bill O'Reilly

Back in May, when Guy Millière appeared on "88 Minutes", political talk show on channel Direct 8, he confirmed that the French government had greatly underestimated the effects of the boycott of French agricultural goods by American consumers following the Vilpine's little song and dance at the UN. (comments are at 5:41 into the clip, or at 1:10 remaining depending on your viewer).



Part two of the show is here.

Evidence of the old glazzies

French Hate & Snuff Lit front and center at Paris' biggest bookseller: la FNAC Les Halles. Thanks to Xtofer.

Food for Thought

Scattered but interesting. a global politician blames America. Not everyone in America, just some:

This is how the European Union can claim to be the culmination of democracy, while in fact being entirely free from politics. The truth is that, except for a tiny minority of carping malcontents, all respectable Europeans agree on all significant political questions. Europe's educational system has simply done a fantastic job of eradicating dissent.

Fine. But what does this all have to do with anti-Americanism? How can an essentially American tradition be anti-American? This still makes no sense.

The truth, in my opinion, is that Europeans hate not America, but the American government. And they hate not the American government, but the red government - Defense, the White House, and maybe (quite anachronistically these days) the CIA. In other words, they are just like the San Francisco liberal who "loves her country, but doesn't trust her government." The fact that the overwhelming majority of American government employees work for the blue government simply does not occur to her in this context, and nor to the Europeans.

The foreign-policy institution of the blue government is, of course, the State Department - much as the foreign-policy institution of the red government is the Defense Department. So one way to see Europe is as a client state of State - much as Israel is a client state of Defense. No wonder they hate each other!

But only where dissent is eradicated can one find people blaming whole nation. People do, after all, try to find themselves in other people. So then how does one think of whole nations and whole peoples monolithically? By making ones’ society monolithic. In essence, this requires a society to become a minor subset of the state.

Call this touchy-feely cooperative zombie act what you will – nothing good can come of it. Time and again, the group hug became a beer-hall putsch. Time and again, America became an unwilling empire-crusher, either through force of arms, or force of ideas. That is the liberation – the real revolution. The physical and temporal myopia of the liberated standing too close to see the big picture always seem to resent the one who sprung them.

Sarko to the Mullahs: Read My Lips

Sarko lets loose.

"Un Iran doté de l'arme nucléaire est pour moi inacceptable."

"It is unacceptable that Iran obtain nuclear weapons."

... and ...

"Cette démarche est la seule qui puisse nous permettre d'échapper à une alternative catastrophique : la bombe iranienne ou le bombardement de l'Iran."

"This way forward is the only way to avoid a catastrophic choice: the Iranian bomb or the bombardment of Iran."

Isn’t Being Deified By Atheists Sort of Useless?

...” Is it an apparition? ” ...
... “ No, after the collapse it's the ascension. “...

First she was made to look bigger that Jesus Christ and walking on water. Now she’s sort of levitating in a non-specific, east-ish, new agey kind of way. Inasmuch as the Saints are now thought to be the state again and given the role of distributing Welfare checks and school vacations, in the absence of any sort of belief system in anything larger than themselves (and possibly government,) I wouldn’t expect much from this new lefty neo-medieval piety.

Press Distances Self From the Press

Some in the press have joined the rest of civilization in finding most of the press repugnant. What’s makes them register an 11 on hypocrisy index is all right there in the cartoon: a big chunk of the press hate Sarko, and fault him for somehow slavishly having in his thrall the very people who hate him.



Really. It’s time you had a nice little nap.

She makes Susan Sarandon look intelligent

Salope.

Doomed By Their Own World View

US based John O’Sullivan returns to the UK and sees little hope in its’ present social state.

My returning American friends sugar-coat their vacations to me. They enthuse over the historic monuments, the superb theatre, the cathedral cities, the improvement in British cuisine, the precision of the Royal Horse Guards, Fortnum & Mason, and the kindness of almost everyone they met.

Almost everyone? Yes, after a while, they admit sadly to the odd disappointment: the snide anti-American remarks directed at them, the warnings against crime near their hotel, the vomiting young people dominating the centres of every town at night.

"Going to a West End play today is like going to Broadway in the 1970s," said one. "You thread your way past the same sleazy porn shops, over the same junkies, and past the same drunks, except that the swearing doesn't stop when the play starts."

It didn't happen overnight. Breaking down a strong culture of civic self-control takes time and several social acids.

The first such acid was the cultural liberalism generally associated with the 1960s: the attempt to free people from irksome traditional moral customs and the laws that reflected them.

For all the “revolution’s” intent of fostering freedom, all they have made for themselves is precisely the opposite: a nanny state with neither the social ease of a safe street, or the confidence that one can freely air your views.

The result is a fractured, distrustful and disorderly society. And because a diverse society lacks agreed values and standards, governments regulate the behaviour of all, including the law-abiding, to maintain social peace.

Thus, we have far more officials supervising us than in the 1950s, but they are anti-smoking social workers and ethnic diversity officers rather than park wardens.

The police have become little more than the paramilitary wing of The Guardian, sniffing out "racist" or "Islamophobic" attitudes rather than investigating serious crimes that have some "cultural" excuse. Society gradually becomes more governed and less self-governing.

While some call their boorishness “art” others imagine that this is their freedom. In the end what that have to show for it is neither intellectually provocative and enriching nor do they the room to think freely.

The Only Tax Cut You Will Ever See the EU Support

EU giving people gas. Heresy! How dare they dispense hydrocarbons!

The Gaza Strip has power again. The European Union has resumed funding the territory's only electricity generating station. Brussels suspended the payments last weekend following reports that the new Hamas administration planned to siphon off some of the money. The EU decision looks to have been too hasty.

The shutting down of the power station led to a terrible situation. Residents were left to deal with the blazing heat, and even hospitals were without electricity. Many people found the European decision "unforgivable"

What goes unsaid is that this is Gaza’s only power station serving 25% of the population’s needs. The remainder comes from Israel.

A happy ending? There remain serious questions about the EU's performance. For example, Ms Torres declines to detail the grounds Europe had for suspecting Hamas.

It is thought that Hamas had plans for a tax on energy use, while the EU insists that all electricity profits are pumped back directly into the economy. The EU sees Hamas as a terrorist organisation which should not be allowed to profit from aid under any circumstances.

[ ... ]

If there are reports - following rumours begun by Israel or Fatah - that EU aid is being misused, Brussels has to follow these up. However, it appears that this time nobody stopped to think that the people of Gaza might be the victims of the EU move.

Money? Misused by Hamas? Impossible!

Can you feel the hatred?

Americans, you are hated here. Don't ever forget it.

This week kicked off the annual literary "rentrée" when France's most read authors have their new books released. Currently displayed (prominently displayed at that) among the bestsellers is a novel called "Répugnances - Parfums d’Amérique".

The story is about a French gigolo called Jean-Luc who is kept by a well off Chicago woman. Jean-Luc is quickly bored by life in America (which the book jacket describes as socially and economically one-dimensional). Happily, he is brought back from loneliness and boredom by the 9-11 attacks (emphasis mine, the terms are taken directly from the book jacket) and falls in with a group of French whose main activity is insulting, humiliating, and torturing American women (must be one of those French sleeper cells). Jean-Luc takes part in the activities of the group and massacres two American women (the book jacket insists that American women have horrible duck-like voices). He then marries the rich American and kills her, inheriting her estate. He happily returns to France a rich man, returning to Chicago from time to time where he owns a French sex academy.

From the back cover:

Jean-Luc, gigolo à la dérive, s'envole pour Chicago où il va retrouver Pamela, une riche Américaine qu'il a récemment séduite dans une boîte de nuit parisienne. L'espoir cède très vite à l'ennui, à la haine et au dégoût du monde qui l'entoure. A l'instar de la conformiste Pamela qui en vient très vite à l'entretenir, les gens qu'il rencontre sont lisses, dépourvus de substance, aussi fades que les étalages de nourriture dans ces supermarchés qui le dépriment, et le soi-disant écrivain en reste à la page blanche. Heureusement, la violence finit par l'arracher à la solitude et au néant. Les attaques terroristes du 11 septembre, d'abord, qu'il regarde avec une fascination malsaine, puis la rencontre avec un groupe de français dont la principale occupation est de médire de l'Amérique, d'humilier les Américaines et de les torturer. Il prend vite une part active aux activités de ses nouveaux amis et en vient à massacrer deux de ces Américaines aux horribles voix de canard. Puis, en application d'un plan soigneusement ourdi, il trouve moyen d'épouser Pamela avant de la faire assassiner et d'hériter de tous ses biens. C'est l'Amérique ! Alors il peut rentrer en France, riche, désormais libre de mener une vie de plaisirs et de débauche, retournant de temps en temps à Chicago pour fleurir la tombe de Pamela et s'occuper de son nouveau commerce : une école de sexe à la française.

He who smelt it, dealt it

It's not ethnic cleansing. It's more like social class cleansing. This is yet one more great advance for the glorious French Social Model, which, as any politically correct thinking commentator knows, is the envy of the Western World. In Argenteuil (yes, yet an other Northern suburb of Paris), homeless people have been dispersed through the use of a City Hall purchased stink repellant used to cleanse the areas where they congregate. Philippe Métezeau, the right-hand man for Argenteuil's mayor says that this is the best way to convince the city's bag people that they would be better off in a city-run shelter.

Thanks to 'Fane.

Typically Hypocritical Perfectly Reasoned Leftism

While accusing people of racism, xenophobia, homophobia, and anything else handy, lefties themselves exhibit as little tolerance as their venerable intellectual ancestors.

Only in America are the Homeless so Bad Off

La vie cachee du peripherique / The secret life of the Paris beltway - part 4

The city's outreach call center gets 40.000 new cases per year

- With thanks to Social Traitre

"It is becoming very important to get rid of the Quai d'Orsay … I have contempt for all these guys, they are cowards"

Quick to anger, [Nicolas Sarkozy] calls both his aides and political enemies unprintable vulgarities

writes Elaine Sciolino in her New York Times report on Yasmina Reza's upcoming book (Dawn Evening or Night) on Nicolas Sarkozy.

At a breakfast with French experts on Russia and Chechnya, he declares that the Foreign Ministry is useless. "It is becoming very important to get rid of the Quai d'Orsay," he says. Branding the previous French ambassador in Russia "a moron," and the ambassador in Lebanon "an infamous cretin," he adds, "I have contempt for all these guys, they are cowards."

In another scene he asks himself whether Ségolène Royal, his Socialist opponent, is helping his own chances, and replies, "It's not certain. It's not certain that being a zero is necessarily a disadvantage in France."

Feeling Oppressed by Paper

American lefty editorial cartoonist Jeff Danziger takes a refuge for the detestation of his countrymen regularly in Pouriel International. Like many of his ilk, going over the top with his arguments is never quite enough. This month, he feels his liberties are dwindling away because of... the watermarks in his passport:

On the third page, opposite my picture and personal information appears an enormous head of a bald eagle, a ear of corn, a flag, and the preamble to the Constitution. The eagle has a curiously empty expression. For some unknown reason the federal government, which uses it everywhere and even affixes it post office trucks and medical warnings, is not able to decide to give to the bird a furious expression, slightly irritated, or a paternal look. This eagle, which glances at my photograph where I have little expression has a more tolerant air than usual.

I don’t think the paper mean it personally, Jeff.

But this part takes the cake:

The final result is that any feeling of affection which one could have for the country or its’ history is transformed into a joke. These oft used symbols, these common scenes, these paste board versions of our heroes and these there whirring quotations are presented as the real America. We have, of course, a lesson to be learnt owing to the fact that this setting in scene was conceived under a government which is without question the worst in recent history. But I do not dare to imagine which.

He probably wants to be the one – the single one – or maybe among the very few with whom he shares a common view, a minority to be sure, to tell us all what that “true America” is, but he can’t.

Nor should he if he is so much more misanthropic than the population itself, and yet has so little meaningful to say about his country that the rest of us are supposed to identify with when considering images of its’ identity. I doubt he would put his choice of symbols to a popular vote. He thinks Bison, Totem Poles, and the Rockies are kitsch. Of course it would seem that way if you can’t identify with anyone who doesn’t live in the intellectual gulag of east-coast urban leftism which has failed miserably in the agora of ideas for 4 decades. He has probably failed to notice that a pluralistic society is more than that.

Americans Don’t Care About the Poor. They Throw them Out onto the Street.

La vie cachee du peripherique / The secret life of the Paris beltway - part 3

- Hat-tip to some Blogger

Unapproved Thoughts Made Illegal

Europa, Europa:Brussels Mayor Warns: 9/11 Demonstrators Are Criminals

I decided to forbid the September 11 demonstration “against the islamicisation of Europe.” […] Since 2001 I have allowed over 3,500 demonstrations. This is only the sixth one which I forbid. […] The right to demonstrate exists only inasmuch as it does not cause a disturbance of the public peace and order. […] First and foremost the organizers have chosen the symbolic date of 9/11. The intention is obviously to confound the terrorist activities of Muslim extremists on the one hand and Islam as a religion and all Muslims on the other hand. […] Such incitement to discrimination and hatred, which we usually call racism and xenophobia, is forbidden by a considerable number of international treaties...

Also sprach Freddy.

Never mind anyone else provoking a disturbance of the peace, or what’s left of it, this guy thinks that international treaties, even if they really DO ban opinions, would even supersede the laws critical to a open pluralistic democracy which were put in place by a population on itself.

"Since Iraq was liberated from dictatorship"

In an interview with Le Monde, Jalal Talabani tells Cécile Hennion that the caricatured view that French élites, leaders, and citizens have of the situation in his country is, er, hardly the correct one…

Unlike the patented holier-than-thou hyumanists dissing France's foreign minister from the comfortable seats of their cozy living rooms, Talibani points out that the man on the terrain that Bernard Kouchner is

est un ami depuis plus de deux décennies. Nous nous étions rencontrés dans les montagnes du Kurdistan alors qu'il était en mission pour Médecins sans frontières pour aider les civils victimes de bombardements et de déportation.

DFTV

The Dissident Frogman provides free instruction for Agence France Presse.

Texas to EU: Get bent!

Texans will decide, democratically, what happens in the State of Texas. Texas State Law will not be influenced by unelected Ivory Tower Euro-elitists.

"230 years ago, our forefathers fought a war to throw off the yoke of a European monarch and gain the freedom of self-determination. Texans long ago decided that the death penalty is a just and appropriate punishment for the most horrible crimes committed against our citizens. While we respect our friends in Europe, welcome their investment in our state and appreciate their interest in our laws, Texans are doing just fine governing Texas."

"Il y a deux cent trente ans, nos ancêtres ont combattu pour se libérer du joug d'un monarque européen et gagner la liberté de l'autodétermination. Les Texans ont décidé il y a longtemps que la peine de mort était un châtiment juste et approprié pour les crimes les plus horribles commis contre nos citoyens. Bien que nous respections nos amis en Europe, saluons leurs investissements dans notre Etat et apprécions leur intérêt pour nos lois, les Texans arrivent très bien à gouverner leur Etat."

America is Inequitable. There is no Social Solidarity.

La vie cachee du peripherique / The secret life of the Paris beltway - part 2

- With thanks to a special Blograde

Hooray!

French Social Model is back in action.

Merry Eco-Barbarian Luddites in Portugal

Last Friday (17 August) in Algarve in the south of Portugal, a Portuguese farmer who had planted a GMO crop legal even by tight EU standards, saw his lands invaded and the corn crop destroyed by activists of a fringe ecologist organization with complete impunity. Portuguese police did not act to prevent or stop the wanton destruction.

The vandals' actions were praised by the extreme-left party Bloco de Esquerda, which has supported the activist organization in the past. Miguel Portas, an MEP for the Bloco de Esqueda supported this action as a "precautionary measure", an act of "civil disobedience" and "non-violent conflict". Even tough he acknowledged the destruction of property, Miguel Portas wrote that there was a "wider social benefit" by raising the public awareness of GMO's.

Meanwhile, the Minister responsible for internal security said the police did everything they could to stop the crop destruction (although it was indeed destroyed...) and that those involved were to be prosecuted. In response, the spokesman for the eco-barbarians deemed this a "waste of public money" that would be better employed in a public campaign against GMO's. Their goal is to "re-establish ecological, moral and democratic order" even at the expense of others, so it seems.

- Via O Insurgente

La politique Chiraqo-Villepiniste de la France envers l'Irak a été karcherisée

Cleaning up Chiraq's mess.

Y'all Ain't in Kansas Anymore

But in zat case, where are iou, zen?
Over the past two decades, country and western festivals have sprung up in many parts of France, sparked by an abiding fascination with the trappings of the American frontier as well as by a craze for line dancing.

It's structural

A bug, not a feature.



"Accept loss forever." -- Jack Kerouac, In other words: learn to live with it, learn to love it. Jerkoffs!

Les fauves sont lâchés

The unemployed hacks at Rue89.com do their best to bite Kouchner's ankles.

Kouchner in 2003.

"Soiling One's Hands" Like "a Little Poodle"

When Moscow rattles its sabers at its neighbors (and the principle-minded leaders in the French government state that they will manage the sensibilities of the Russians), the French (including the opposition) have little to no reaction. When China threatens Taiwan (and the peacemakers in the French government light the Eiffel Tower in red for the visit of a Chinese leader while trying to resume weapons sales to Beijing), the French (including the opposition) have little to no reaction.

When Bernard Kouchner pays a visit to Baghdad, i.e., does something involving the Americans, all hell breaks loose. "France is like a little poodle" sputters Noël Mamère as the opposition (official and less official) erupts in indignation and even the government's friends and allies have their doubts and second thoughts. "It's a manner of soiling one's hands to go to Baghdad after Sarkozy's visit to Bush."

In France they call it a diplomatic surge

France's stance on Iraq shifting.

This Social Model is the Envy of the World

La vie cachee du peripherique / The secret life of the Paris beltway - part 1

- With thanks to the man with a camera

Could They Hack it?

Hurricane Dean (2007-08-21-1545 UTC) superimposed to scale on the heart of Europe. It would envelope all of Germany, Switzerland, Austria, the Benelux, and most of the Czech Republic. Greater London would fit in its eye.

So where are the Katrina-esque tirades? Bring ‘em on! Here’s the coverage from the commie anachronisms who so sure that they’re concerned with “all of Humanity” as the name might imply, this lot only seems to have seen fit to cover the fate of one small island in the Caribbean without so much as even a link to a wire story about the Yucatan peninsula getting whacked. This, regardless of who their “real heroes” are.



More no-event non-news and poodle-like
idol worship from their weekly magazine.

Paris made Mumia an Honorary Resident

What will they make this guy? France has a real soft spot for American murderers. Now Obama is involved.

There are too many of them and they are filthy and wasteful

French vacationers are destroying the environment.


The French say: take that Kyoto thing and shove it!

Americans Are Hardly Known to Speak of Jack Chirac or Francis Mitterrand

Seven (or 20?!) years later, French journalists like Raphaëlle Bacqué and Ariane Chemin (or Philippe Bolopion) are so entwined in their nation's language that they have still not learned how to spell the names of two foreign presidents, Georges W. Bush and Georges H. W. Bush (or if they know the name of George Bush, they will mess up that of Gérald Ford).

Pas de quoi fouetter un chat, probably, but this is from the nation that is always speaking of understanding and respecting foreign cultures, honoring foreigners and diversity and multiculturalism, learning from foreign travels (the French make a fuss out of their accents being mishandled abroad but still refuse to use Spanish accents on Hispanic names and still call Beijing "Pékin"), and (especially)… pointing out that clueless, egotistical, and self-centered zombie-like Americans (!) are the people who routinely, regularly, and randomly can be expected to mess those things up.

Ratatouille

France is not the place to be this summer as tourism has been hit hard by bad weather (expect les experts fwançais to put that on Dubya's tab along with the rest of the world's ills). Never mind the lies and rubbish spewed out on the usual French hate sites.

Maybe They Forcibly Sodomized him Because They Felt Oppressed

I’m still waiting for “Talk is Cheap” to touch this one:

Lawyers in Pakistan are investigating a report that up to 30 men tortured and gang-raped a young Christian man for refusing to convert to Islam.

The victim is seriously injured and unable to move, Release International’s partner in Pakistan has reported. However, according to the Centre for Legal Aid Assistance and Settlement (CLAAS) the police are keeping him locked up and have denied him medical treatment.

The police are also refusing to register the rape following a counter-claim made by his principal attacker – “a man of influence”, Release International has told Christian Today.

According to CLAAS, the Christian was invited to a game of cricket. A quarrel broke out and he was beaten up. Later that evening, the father of one of the Muslims asked the Christian over to his house.

Joseph Francis, the National Director of CLAAS, explained: “When he entered the drawing room, he found it filled with unknown people. They began to beat him severely. They threatened him with dire consequences if he did not accept Islam. After his refusal, they committed sodomy with him one by one for the whole night.”

And to think that there are people in the bien pensent cities of the west living in their own little universe who would pay big money for that.

Sauve qui peut.

Lucid, Nuanced, and Visionary French Élites

In his editorial for the last issue of Courrier International before the summer recess, Philippe Thureau-Dangin shows that all the nuance and the rationality of the French élites are all about Bush, and nothing else.

• La fin du mandat de George Bush risque d’être dur.

• Et, si jamais l’Iran passe du statut d’observateur occasionnel [au sein de l’Organisation de coopération de Shanghai] au statut de membre associé, cela aussi serait pénible pour George Bush…

• Tout cela ne serait vraiment pas de bonnes nouvelles pour George.

The British ally in Iraq, the Iranian foe in the Shanghai group, the WTO's negotiations in the Doha cycle, you name it, all international news revert to how it affects the Texan troublemaker, served with a spoonful of scornful schadenfreude that the news are hardly positive.

Forget about, ignore, the dangers posed by Tehran, Beijing, or international trade, real or otherwise. It's all about Bush being subject to bad news, Bush having a difficult time in the final months of his presidency, Bush not having a good summer this year…

Bon été à lui tout de même et à tous nos lecteurs.

All-Loving, All-Caring EUtopia

Which is superior in every way to America was deeply concerned about this man’s dignity:

A paedophile repeat offender, Francis Evrard, was sentanced Friday for the kidnap and rape of Enis in Roubaix (North). He had Viagra when he was arrested and says that it was prescribed to him before he was last released from prison, one confirmed source said on Saturday.

The 61 year old paedophile was arrested Wednesday evening in Roubaix with Viagra in his possession, according to one source close to the case.

Police officers indicated after his arrest that an investigation is underway to determine if this drug to treat male impotence was prescribed to him by a doctor in the Caen prison system where he was held.

Aren't you glad the Doctor went out of his way to enable him to get some of his physical manhood back in advance of his moral manhood?

Gratuitous Loony USA Reference № 2794

So Just Who is the Mad Cow?

Floaties: “ BCE “

Wifebeater shirt “ Love of risk “

Over at Libération PropagandaStaffel

Following French Minister of Foreign Affairs Bernard Kouchner's Baghdad visit, the reader comments over at Libération PropagandaStaffel are getting more hateful by the minute:

"J'ai mal au coeur quand je pense à M. Kouchner ..."
"C'est triste qu'un homme comme Bernard Kouchner s'abaisse à jouer les "Mickey" pour l'illusionniste de l'Elysée....Grave..!"
"... Koucner débarque pour se faire remarquer et bien 'nous' faire remarquer. A quand des attentats contre la France ?"
"A quand nos soldats à Bagdad ?"
"Trois hamburgers et un hotdog --
Je parie que Nick a promis à George d’envoyer les troupes avant la fin de l’année."
"Moi, je croyais que les visites médiatiques surprise à Baghdad, c'était le job de Blair. Ah oui, c'est vrai, Bush a changé de caniche... "
"le larbin --
le lobby francais a la solde de bush croit pouvoir sauver l'amerique.helas."

Bernard Kouchner in Baghdad

French Minister of Foreign Affaires Bernard Kouchner declares, "Now we have to face the reality, including the American view ... but this is an Iraqi problem and it must be solved by the Iraqis". Kouchner spoke to the press in English.

LCI French cable news video here.

French MSM will be in ape shit mode by this evening

French Minister of Foreign Affairs Bernard Kouchner has arrived in Baghdad for a 3 day visit.




De la lecture pour Bernard pendant son séjour.

Plantu is a Bigot

By that standard, would he caricature Rutger Hauer by putting him in wooden shoes?

I dare him to find even ONE Japanese woman who sees herself this way:

" Seven Japanese automakers accept a settlement in a lawsuit to compensate people for the harm done by pollution. "

After all, people don’t kill people, guns kill people. So by extension, cars pollute because people don’t have any free will of their own. Not in the well managed asylum Europeans like this strive for.

Soviet Sanitarium Redux

In today’s Le Figaro, Thibaut Danancher covers the story of one woman’s treatment by Paris’ city hall when she complained about vandalism and crime in her neighborhood in the 18th arrondissement: they referred her for Psychiatrist treatment:

By opening her mail last Saturday, Sylvia Bourdon discovered that it was invited to go to consult a psychiatrist at the Maison-Blanche hospital in Paris. An appointment planned for August 20 at 2 p.m. Subject of the consultaion: emails sent to the ministry for the Interior “to complain about what occurred in my neighborhood”.

Sylvia Bourdon then decides to take the things into her own hands. She created several blogs to denounce “this chaotic ghetto, this busted-up crime-ridden capital”. She spent June 14th at the window of her apartment taking photographs of what she qualifies as “persistent criminal activity”.

Tracked down by ten young men, her apartment was broken into a few days later. She had it. So much so that she sent angry emails to senior people at the Ministry for the Interior just to ask them to ensure her safety.

On one blog Sylvia Bourdon, a former porn and horror/ B-movie actress is shown to have been given the ultimate Scarlet Letter and being outed as some sort of xenophobe and racist, presumably for wanting to be able to walk safely down the street in a City in a Nation that won’t shut up about the wonders of its’ social model. In Paris, even when an argument to support someone’s views hints at any of this, the characterization becomes the kiss of death.

Last Saturday she received a letter which made it all clear to her: “Due to the various emails which you addressed to the Ministry of the Interior, the proper authorities required of us to contact you. If you wish, we can set up an appointment [with a Psychitarist] for you. I propose Monday August 20, 2007 at 2 p.m”, wrote someone from the hospital.

This last email was acted on at the request of the office of Mental Health Action of the Paris Police Prefecture, in particular the office responsible for involuntary admissions.

[ ... ]

Angered, Sylvia Bourdon has decided to leave Paris and France altogether. She announced that she will be migrating permanently to Greece in the fist half of 2008.

There goes the neighborhood. After all if you can’t cart off the citizens who speak up, what’s left?

- Hat-tip to Carine

Maybe Delanoë will make him an honorary resident of Paris à la Mumia

For Le Monde Al Jazeera on the Seine, Jose Padilla's guilty verdict symbolizes the excesses of America's war on terror.

It’s, like, all About the Environment, Dude

Which of course it isn’t. Not when you live in an apartment in a former industrial district, use a “macbook” (if you can even figure that out) and think that your over promoted, totally exploited thing is actually about “smashing PR” or “casseurs de pub”



And making America into a green Cyclopse, of course.

Today, they’re out on a marching protest to promote the act of walking! I’ll bet you didn’t know that big oil is trying to buy up peoples’ feet, did ya?!? You can smell the mendacity from here.

Zapatero’s Defense of Cuban Regime Explained

Socialists seeking youthful “solidarity”:

by all accounts, the country is a major destination for sex tourism, including child sex tourism. Cuba's thriving sex trade caters to thousands of European, Canadian, and Latin American tourists every year, and involves large numbers of Cuban girls and boys, some as young as 12. State-run hotel workers, travel employees, cab drivers, hospitality staff, and police steer tourists to prostituted women and children and facilitate the commercial sexual exploitation of these women and children.

Thousands of these lucid and thoughtful types are licking their chops over the revolution and class struggle no doubt.

It’s Becoming the Anus of Civilization

Pretend provocation, pretend sensitivity: This cartoon was published the day after the Feast of the Assumption, not that it really means much to your average Le Monde reader numb to the genuine beliefs of others. That very fake form of concern by way of telling oneself how fair one is, is the first step to not realizing how offensive this (and they) really are.

Virgin Mary matronly EU apparition: "What? The French only have 9 weeks of summer vacation and Bulgarians get 16? I foresee strikes at back-to-school time!"
Vacationers (who look like Plantu’s derisive characterization of Americans:"No-one will belive us."

The EU angle? There isn’t one. I suppose he’s trying to imply something about either traditional France or the EU commenting on the horrible “Anglo-Saxon-like” mechanization of their lives through the mere realization that there are schoolkids in Europe who get more vacation than they do.

News-people thinking that their own work is news. The public is predictably expected to bang their spoons on their high-chairs yelling “Me Me Me!” But this all comes out of a news item Le Monde brought out itself by reporting a survey of some of nationally mandated school schedules in Europe. More than one EUvian? Then think of it somehow connected with the EU and therefore paint it as a criticism... somehow.
In fact none of it is the case. As with many things the root cause of this great social horror is that someone actually reported it.

Big whoop. It IS in fact an indicator. If you look at the poorest and least intellectually developed or successful parts of Europe and the Middle East, they all have very short school seasons. This is due to a combination of weather and poverty. In fact in Germany, the summer school break used to be limited by law to 45 days or so. Their point of pride at the time were that Gerd and Uta were not dimwits. Meanwhile let’s teach François and Ingrid to demand more of something from the anonymous, objectifiable, all-powerful “other”

So, like all fake issues and fake buzz, how far can these detached Parisian take this? Invent a fake social problem, nay, a plague dogging their very lives! Serguei:

Girl on phone: "I’m in school in Denmark, François."
Surfer (too old to be a schoolkid anyway): "Maybe next year then, Ingrid."
Cupid: "That’s not the way to construct a single Europe."

Conclusion: the government and the rest of society should be responsible for your love lives, and that Anschluß unification means that Bulgarians and Danes should be forced to do as you.

Hence the title.

Where You Are Officially Free to Conform

... ”New idea: he fights against the evil power, but we'll make it less historically heavy and he can become the Harry Potter of the 1940s.” ...

... “Brilliant Mr. Cruise!” ...

Many Germans have been fearful of Tom Cruise, citing their own puzzling obsession with Scientology. If it wasn’t a religion, I’m sure many EUvians would surely ignore it with the same passivity they have for subcultures that actually cause harm.

Kerouac thinks they're pussies

While the French, like so many deers caught in the head lights, flip out over what's going down in financial markets (today's Libération PropagandaStaffel tells them how market swings will affect them on a daily basis without the slightest hint of how they might get a grip and benefit from such swings) -- Jack Kerouac (currently featured on a Le Monde Al Jazeera on the Seine blog) has a message for them ...


"Accept loss forever."

Cultural Awareness Day

For those of you who might have forgotten just how McDo-like the imposition of European culture really is, let us all sing, then kumbaya.

Staging the News: Magic Bullet Theories

AFP at it’s worst. I’ll leave finding the hook in this one to you.

"An elderly Iraqi woman shows two bullets which she says hit her house following an early coalition forces raid in the predominantly Shiite Baghdad suburb of Sadr City."

BAD coalition! BAD! NO-ONE else is BAD. (Hint: note condition of said rounds, and the bogus nature of the way the photo and the story was staged.)

- Thanky-thanky to Kevin

Confusion Over Which Petty Demand to Get Worked Up About

Ahead of a very flat piece about the American treatment of the poor little Iranian National Guard (“Les Gardiens” – they support the troops, you see...) comes a confused story about France lagging behind in the number of days kids are in school per year. Since it’s about “les congés d'été” and not these kids growing to be as smart as your average speedbump, their deference must be toward the class-struggle angle of these brats only getting however much of this thing they like to think of as a grand national tradition, only to find out that a bunch of other European countries, all less developed, get more.

Décroisse it on up, baby!

Dar el Harb

Preferring Jihadi total war, hacking “Cyber Protestors” post Anti-American invective on a UN website, of all places.

A page usually used to display statements from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon was yesterday showing remarks accusing the US and Israel of killing children.

The message on the site read: “Hey Ysrail and Usa don’t kill children and other people Peace for ever No war.”

Security experts believe a group of hackers known as Cyber Protest was behind the attack. The malicious users called themselves “Gsy”, “kerem125” and “M0sted”.

It’s a good thing that they’re idiots too:

the group, one of whom is from Turkey, has allegedly hacked into other sites, including those of the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, the University of California and the Japanese car manufacturer Toyota.

Ooh, Sass-ay!

Someone tell the hateful French and their puppet media

"We were trapped by the French musically correct"

The duo Rita Mitsouko unloaded a double barrelled assault on the French music industry in an interview in the hyper politically-correct Télérama of all places. They slammed French musicians in general for being too intellectual, anti-American and pro-Diversity to a fault. They targeted French rappers in particular for being anti-Western Civilisation and anti-White. This is some pretty heavy stuff coming from a duo long considered to be Oh-so-hip.

Éminence grisaille

Jack-of-all-Trades consultant, philosopher, and blowhard extraordinaire, French Secular High Priest to the 5th Republic Jacques Attali blubbers some easy fluff about the current financial market turbulence and states that it is all the fault of US banks and their scandalous lending practices. Guess his investment portfolio took a hit. Either that or he's on the rag.


He has some BNP "funds" to unload.

Libération PropagandaStaffel bemoans the lack of regulation and the
increase of competition among financial markets. It's true that the French know all about regulation and very little about competition.

Now calling play-by-play from that big "Money Store" in the sky

So Much for Those Leisurely Sunday Strolls

A vacationing Italian sportscaster/journalist was murdered on Sunday afternoon by two petty thieves in the 15th arrondissement at the Bir-Hakim (above ground) Metro station.

Sergio Vantaggiato, a journalist for Italian television on vacation in Paris, was attacked by two people who stole his backpack on Sunday in a accessway of Bir-Hakeim station. The man in his 40s died of his wounds.

It’s an otherwise decent neighborhood where I once lived. The irony is that the French press will take little notice of Parisian gangbangers in favor of 24/7 coverage of crime in America. The source for this story?: the only Parisian paper with a shred of integrity.

Libération sat on the story until Tuesday afternoon. That must mean that there can't be much crime, I guess.

Sonderkommando „Frieden” 2.0

It takes a special kind of amoral nature and stupidity to think this up, and parade around calling it kunst, with that detachment from decency that let’s one use the subject of a murderous micro-sect who were the wholly owned flunkies of the KGB as part of one’s attention-seeking behavior:

Today they'd probably form a rock group rather than a political one, and Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof and Gudrun Ensslin would play death metal rather than live it till their deaths. On the stage of Hamburg's Thalia Theater, the RAF veterans have reformed as an OAP band. One standing on a tripod, the other on a dolly, the two erstwhile rivals Gundrun and Ulrike wobble towards each other. Physically disintegrating but ideologically in tact, the RAF setptuageneriennes pose with their Andy, who can no longer close his biker jacket round his belly of affluence, Bond girls and their manchild with the golden Colt, fighting more over him than for a new world order. From the bitch fight with poisoned love, a menage sentimentale

Behold: gentle, lucid, humane, and solidaristic EUtopia. The idea that those happy go lucky terrorists wanting to be in nothing more than a band if they were running around today is undermined by the fact that they weren’t a band THEN. In fact if they were “Active” today, they’d be Jihad-and-kill-the-system-symps like Richard Reed, David Hicks, John Walker Lindh, Adam Yahiye Gadahn (a.k.a. Adam Perlman) and the “European Citizens” in Gitmo.

Méchant et pingre

Yep, sounds like the French.

Nidra Poller covers French media coverage of Sarko's lunch with Dubya.

"So, my friends, that’s how it was reported over here. Mainly mean and stingy. But don’t think you’re friends with yourselves alone. There are a whole lot of French people over here who would be glad to share hot dogs & hamburgers with you…if only they could get a word in edgewise."

The truth is out there

Surprise, surprise. There are a few ideologically challenged Europeans who can no longer hide the truth.


"The 'Hands of Victory' in Baghdad's Green Zone: The US military is more successful in Iraq than the world wants to believe.

Eurospin

"Europe had a lot of explaining to do last night on its conference call with analysts. The continent announced 2nd quarter growth that was slower than what had been forecast. What's more, the continent never gave a pre-announcement warning, leaving investors feeling blindsided. Of course, leaders tried to put an optimistic spin on things, citing seasonality and deal timing for the shortfall."

It’s not About what you Believe. In Europe it’s About who you are

Meet their gentle, thoughtful citizenry:

The European Jewish Press reported Monday that she was attacked in front of her house by two youths of "African origin" wearing hoods and scarves to cover their faces. One of the two was later arrested by police and taken into custody.

They shouted "You dirty Jew" at the woman before stealing the mobile phone she was using and beating her violently about the head and body, the EJP reported

These model citizens will no doubt get a stern, paternalistic talking to, but I’m sure it will stop just short of mattering to them.

The INSEE and the Banque de Fwance are on crack

France's economic growth not what it's cracked up to be.

There’s Always Hope in his Imaginary Universe

Georges Bouche: ... “Sometimes we think of you as Superman” ...
Sarko: ... “Thanks. That’s kind of you” ...
Georges Boosh: ... “Except – I’m Superman” ...

Imagine the number of delusions you need to harbor to nod dumbly at the sight of today’s scribble by Pancho

Everyone’s a Critic

Everyone’s a comedian

Opinions are like...

Um:

DES DIZAINES d'impacts de balles sur les murs, sur des voitures et sur la vitrine d'une banque voisine... Voilà ce qu'il restait de « la plus impressionnante fusillade de ces dernières années à Paris » - dixit un policier -, hier devant la boîte de nuit Plaza Madeleine, dans les beaux quartiers de la capitale.

or, as it were:

TENS of rounds hit the walls, cars, and the window of a bank...

Here are what remains of “the most impressive shootout of these last few years in Paris” a police officer said -, yesterday in front of the Plaza Madeleine night club, in the beautiful part of the capital.

Look, I’m impressed too, but I don’t think it’s the right time to dwell on their style or get too hung up on the stats.

Slow news day

So Libération PropagandaStaffel let loose with their "Decline of the American Empire" issue. All the news that's fit to print on how the US is history and how a France-led EU is ready to take its place. <insert_yawn_here/>

French socialized medecine watch

In France, where more and more dentists are proposing root canal treatment for simple cavities (some dentists are even teaming up with consumer credit agencies to better milk the clientele -- think "subprime dental"), patients are looking East to receive decent and affordable dental care. Specialized travel agencies have sprung up that provide dental junkets to Hungary for struggling French.

Great Moments in French House Music History

Summer musical interlude.

Alex Gopher, Party People.

All the News That’s Fit to Ignore for 16 Months

August 2007: frothing cartoonist Pancho finally gets all worked up about the Hamas-Fatah split.



Pancho finally noticing the Palestinian Civil War that started brewing in March 2006

French hatred continues unabated

The lunch didn't go down too well. Sarko is scolded by both the French Left and the Right. As we have seen with a certain French Hate Site, these are pavlovian animalistic reactions.

Comparative Dictatorship 101

We have so much to thank Europeans for.

The hatred continues

The French are hateful creatures.

Warning: Link is to French hate site.

Shoot out at Place de la Madeleine

Bandits armed with kalashnikovs rip off an after nightclub and shoot it out with police in Central Paris at 5AM this morning. One bystander was hurt.

Même face, même race

"I Hate My French Bank" is a group on Facebook.

To be run by a Frenchman, of course

As the subprime situation plays itself out, the remaining hacks at Libération PropagandaStaffel (those who have not B-lined over to Rue89) are calling for a new "world economic government" that would make those French economic girlie men feel more secure.

Great Moments in French House Music History

Etienne de Crecy, Am I Wrong ...

A French musical statement against American fast food, McJobs, and obesity.