"Attacks of an Extreme Virulence", aka "Signs of Defiance Against His Profession" as a Photographer

Claire Guillot presents a full-page portrait of a New York Times photographer. Having thus built up the sympathetic side of his character, and the courageous side of his personality, and "the serious Tyler Hicks who has sacrificed a lot … for his calling" (while making the most out of the alleged crimes that occurred in Afghanistan and Iraq during the American interventions), it is not until then that we learn that his photographs have not always been without controversy.

Just like with the Al-Dura affair's Charles Enderlin, however, a French media outlet does nothing about the scandal but present the reporter as nothing more than a poor innocent martyred victim and his critics as nothing less than shameless, treacherous, envious (!), and "extremely virulent". (In fact, here, too, Le Monde builds up readers' emotions, starting with a non-committal "envied job", going on to a more judgmental "not always kind criticism", and ending with a frankly castigating "attacks of an extreme virulence" as well as, later, "these signs of defiance against his profession" (italics mine!).)

Ce poste envié a aussi exposé son travail à une critique nourrie et pas toujours bienveillante. En 2006, pendant l'offensive israélienne au Liban sud, une série de photos prises à Tyr a fait l'objet d'attaques d'une virulence extrême. Pendant des mois, les blogueurs l'ont accusé de manipulations et de mises en scène visant à diaboliser l'armée israélienne. "Il y avait eu une erreur de légende, qui n'était pas de mon fait. Elle a été très vite corrigée, mais le mal était fait. Tout s'est emballé."

He Hates White People

It's finally time, Benjamin Duffy says, to admit that he is a racist and that he is ashamed of his own color, to boot…

"Nous sommes ceux qui chipotent et qui barguignent, comme si nous voulions donner le sentiment de vouloir empêcher l'OTAN de se transformer"

"L'Europe de la défense ne progressera pas si nous ne changeons pas de comportement politique au sein de l'OTAN"

To the criticism of the socialists, France is considering a full reintegration of NATO, write Laurent Zecchini and Dominique Gallois — albeit with conditions, needless to say — while defense minister Hervé Morin has some criticism to offer for previous French attitudes of confrontation towards the organization as well as for a number of French weapon systems.

La France, a expliqué M. Morin, est l'un des meilleurs élèves de l'OTAN, mais "trop souvent, nous sommes ceux qui chipotent et qui barguignent, comme si nous voulions donner le sentiment de vouloir empêcher l'OTAN de se transformer"

"Dominique is not a person who lies; he is a character of successive truths"

Dominique de Villepin est-il crédible dans ce rôle d'alternative à droite ?

ominique de Villepin, embroiled in the Clearstream affair, "wounded" by some of Nicolas Sarkozy's words at Dakar in Africa, and using the maxim of his favorite hero, Napoléon ("la meilleure défense, c'est l'attaque"), wants to become the leader of the majority's opposition to the president, writes Christophe Jakubyszyn…

A bit hard to do, though, as général Philippe Rondot has just confirmed that Villepin was the scandal's "mousquetaire" (as the plot's insiders called the prime minister at the time).

More revealing than anything, though — especially in view of all the ways that Bush and the members of his administration have been dragged through the mud as liars by everybody in France, from common citizens to élites and journalists — is the fact that not only are the friends of the "musketeer" allowed to present his lying in a positive light (in Ariane Chemin's story of Villepin's tumultous summer), but that Le Monde lets them get away with it, unchallenged.

Là-dedans, allez savoir ce qui est vrai ou faux, soupire un autre [ami]. Dominique n'est pas un personnage qui ment, c'est un personnage de vérités successives. Peut-être que son bras droit ignore ce que fait son bras gauche. Il est tout le temps dans ses paradoxes.

So with an American, we have treachery of the highest degree, deliberate and malicious lies, and evidence that is damning to the fullest; with a Frenchman (or an internationalist of any nationality), we get the high-falutin' psychological "explanation" from his "sighing" friends (see, these wizened friends are trying to show indulgence although they know the poor man hardly deserves it) that he "is not a person who lies; he is a character of successive truths. Maybe his right arm ignores what his left arm is doing. He is always inside his own paradoxes."

The Ardent Champion of Columbia

If a Le Monde article is to celebrate a South American leader, as the Marie Delcas portrait of Piedad Cordoba does, naturally it has to be an adversaries of an ally of Uncle Sam who doubles as an admirer of Hugo Chávez… Although the French interest is in the liberation of the FARC guerillas' hostages (especially Ingrid Betancourt), it is suggested that Alvaro Uribe is nothing but a political wheeler-dealer, that her view of the president's politics (as "inadmissable compromises with the Mafia and criminals") are nothing but the truth (in a region where the "progressive governments of Latin America", including that of Chávez, deserve little else but admiration), and that "Cordoba la Noire's" adversaries are nothing but racists.

On average, poor Americans have more living space than the average person living in European countries, such as France, Italy or England

When you look at the people who John Edwards insists are poor, what you find is that the overwhelming majority of them have cable television, have air conditioning, have microwaves, have two color TVs; 45 percent of them own their own homes, which are typically three-bedroom homes with 1{1/2} baths in very good recondition.

Bill Steigerwald interviews Robert Rector of The Heritage Foundation, a national authority on poverty and the U.S. welfare system. "Specializing in welfare reform and family breakdown, Rector has done extensive research on the economic and social costs of welfare."

On average, poor people who live in either apartments or in houses are not crowded and actually have more living space than the average person living in European countries, such as France, Italy or England.

Also, a lot of people believe that poor people are malnourished. But in fact when you look at the average nutriment intake of poor children, it is virtually indistinguishable from upper-middle-class children. In fact, poor kids by the time they reach age 18 or 19 are taller and heavier than the average middle-class teenagers in the 1950s at the time of Elvis. And the boys, when they reach 18, are a full one inch taller and 10 pounds heavier than the GIs storming the beaches of Normandy. It’s pretty hard to accomplish that if you are facing chronic food shortages throughout your life.

…since the beginning of the War on Poverty the politically correct thing to do is to just exaggerate the amount of poverty that exists in the United States as a way of encouraging more welfare spending.

French Cable Channel “Celebrates” 9-11

Somewhere in between the porn reality shows, deadly animal handling, cop car-chase shows, ghost-hunting shows, and other sundry signposts in the highly evolved humanism of the land of the cultural obsession, cable channel “Planète No Limit” did the really thoughtful and warmhearted thing on September 11th, and gave Thierry Meyssan a platform in a “Documentary” on 9-11, right after a warm and sentimental showing of “Loose Change 2” from what is becoming a successful franchise in the spirit of the “Holloween” series, but with the seriousness and moral weight of “Porkys”.

What makes it slightly less preposterous, and at the same time more, is the treatment of the event as a drama:

The same correspondent recalls that last year, its’ parent channel, the leading French documentary channel Planète Loose Change on 9-11 as well. Planète appears to be a subsidiary of Canal +

Based on a best-seller, and of those of the same type published with success in Germany, our reporters carry out their investigation. The effects of these books are devastating. In Germany for example, a person on five believes that the American government itself is implied in the attacks.

In Germany, they meet Thierry Meyssan’s editor, Pierre Krebs, also president of a far-right pagan sect, the Thule Union. In Egypt, a persistent rumor starts: that four thousand Jews which worked in the towers were advised not to go to work the day of the attacks. Also in Egypt as the program’s creators collect astonishing testimony from Montasser Al Zayad a lawyer for the jihad and a friend of al-Queda’s second in command, which definitively blows the cover off of all the theories of the plot.

- Hat-tip to Kevin (who seems to be able
to watch this stuff w/o gagging.

What was overlooked in the English-language reports is that Védrine was in fact calling for an essential continuity of substance

…what was, above all, overlooked in the English-language reports is that in recommending a change -- merely -- of "tone" in French foreign policy, Védrine was in fact calling for an essential continuity of substance.

John Rosenthal — aka the expert in going behind first impressions — sheds new light on Hubert Védrine's foreign policy report.

World Politics Review here presents translated extracts from Hubert Védrine's report to the French President. Readers will be able to judge for themselves the degree of "modesty" they exhibit..

Ce délire d'une France admirée pour ses performances multiples et appelée sur tous les continents en arbitre suprême des tensions internationales

Aucun pays au monde, pas même les Etats-Unis, l'Inde, la Chine ou la Russie, ne prétend, comme nous, éclairer la planète. Jusqu'ici, cette prétention à une sorte de magistrature morale de l'humanité tenait encore lieu de poil à gratter dans la communauté internationale, elle a aujourd'hui l'effet limité d'un gaz hilarant.

Paul Giacobbi, député PRG de Haute-Corse, membre de la commission des affaires étrangères, évoque dans Le Monde le "décalage calamiteux entre notre délire diplomatique et une réalité cruelle".

l'inverse des discours lénifiants qui se répètent rituellement de président à président et de ministre à ministre sur le rôle, phare bien sûr, de la France dans le monde, notre diplomatie cache de plus en plus mal son état cadavérique, entre arrogance et médiocrité, feux d'artifice et misère, inefficacité et autosatisfaction.

…Mais son discours reste imprégné de l'idée que notre diplomatie a vocation à éclairer le monde de nos lumières et à étonner l'univers par nos performances. Qui dans le monde peut entendre sans rire que "la France a encore beaucoup à apporter au monde parce qu'elle a l'un des peuples les plus dynamiques et les mieux formés, l'une des économies les plus performantes, une diplomatie et des forces armées parmi les meilleures", comme l'a affirmé Nicolas Sarkozy ?

…Cédant à cette manie de croire que le monde se réveille la nuit pour nous appeler à l'aide, Bernard Kouchner, qui est pourtant un réaliste et un connaisseur de la vie internationale, se laisse aller à dire que "de l'Amérique latine au coeur de l'Afrique, en Europe comme en Asie, dans les situations les plus embrouillées et les plus dangereuses, on nous appelle".

…A force de rechercher une flamboyance qui n'éclaire plus que nos propres yeux, nous en oublions que le seul but d'une politique étrangère est de servir nos intérêts nationaux. Bernard Kouchner évoque avec réticence nos intérêts nationaux et s'il concède en fin de son discours aux ambassadeurs qu'il "est essentiel de définir et de mieux servir nos intérêts nationaux", c'est pour nuancer aussitôt : "L'appréciation de nos intérêts ne s'applique pas seulement à ces ambitions objectives. Elle touche aussi à l'image que nous avons de nous-même, à la fidélité à nos valeurs, notre vocation."

Aucun pays au monde, pas même les Etats-Unis, l'Inde, la Chine ou la Russie, ne prétend, comme nous, éclairer la planète. Jusqu'ici, cette prétention à une sorte de magistrature morale de l'humanité tenait encore lieu de poil à gratter dans la communauté internationale, elle a aujourd'hui l'effet limité d'un gaz hilarant.

If these measures don't work, there's real unpleasantness to come

…unlike in the Cold War, there are no clear limits on how far this Russia feels it can push this America

writes John Vinocur in his reflections of Vladimir Putin's Kremlin.

The sanctions Sarkozy is talking about are hard, new measures outside the United Nations that would probably involve an ad hoc group including the United States, Britain, France and Japan at its core.

This approach specifically means forgetting about the Security Council, and giving up on Russia, barring sudden and unlikely cooperation. The sanctions have to be so penalizing, obviously disadvantaging Western banks and industry, to become truly dissuasive. This requires real resolve.

Sometimes Thomas Sowell feels as if he must be one of the few people left in America who is not a military expert

…all sorts of politicians have been talking about all sorts of ways we ought to "redeploy" our troops

writes Thomas Sowell.

The closest I ever came to deploying troops was marching a company of Marines to the mess hall for chow.

He goes on to say that

people who have never even put on a uniform are confident that they know how our troops should be redeployed. Maybe this is one of the fruits of the "self-esteem" that is taught in our schools instead of education.

Sowell ends his column with some observations about comparisons with Vietnam.

Iran: The Resort to Weapons?

Even though the daily's excerpts is replete with sentences such as "President Bush's expedition in Iraq", "the American propaganda machine", "the Bush administration's propaganda on the eve of the Iraq invasion", and "the Bush administration's catastrophic record" (few such sentences about Tehran; in fact the author spends most of the time not only denying Washington any good marks but making sure his readers understand that it is in spite of America's policies, and not because of them, that it is — tentatively [hence the question mark] — that he is coming to a bitter conclusion), François Heisbourg's book, Iran, le choix des armes ?, does not seem to convince Le Monde's smarter-than-thou readers…

You’ve Learned the European Way Well, Grasshopper

Any possible blowback for the Wolfowitz witch-hunt has been otherwise buried in the Lame-stream Media.

In April, World Bank Managing Director Graeme Wheeler earned his 15 minutes of media fame when he publicly called on Paul Wolfowitz to resign for "the fantastic damage [Mr. Wolfowitz had done] to the bank's reputation and effectiveness." Mr. Wheeler may yet see those words turned against him.

Mr. Wheeler is among the bank employees behind a bureaucratic putsch against Suzanne Rich Folsom, the director of the bank's antigraft unit

He must be so proud.The Fuse is Lit (No Pasaran!)

Europe the Orwellian Animal Farm

A demonstration in Brussels was initially planned in sympathy with 9-11 victims, it's banning became quite obviously a signpost of something else altogether. Pointed at the political force driving the banning of such an event, it made the point of addressing a grand cultural hijacking. We then find this chilling quote by a non-authority feigning authority:

The head of the Council of Europe - a mainly human rights watchdog based in Strasbourg, France and not an EU institution - branded the protesters bigots and said they were a threat to Europe's values.

"It is very important to remember that the freedom of assembly and expression can be restricted to protect the rights and freedoms of others, including the freedom of thought, conscience and religion," secretary general Terry Davis said.

Gates of Vienna notes that in an act of good old fashioned act of traditional European repressiveness, that the Police went straight for the suits

Here, the police are openly brutalizing a member of the EU parliament. The Baron thinks this poor guy is probably Frank Vanhecke, president of Vlaams Belang, though he would welcome correction from anyone who is sure of the man’s identity…

…oh, at this point of course, one is supposed to mention Vlaams Belang as the mandatory “extreme right wing” party. Remember the rules: the Left are activists and the Right are extremists. It’s from the international MSM-journalism style book.

It’s interesting how the police deliberately targeted many of the suits, who were not inciting anyone or threatening revolt.

Never Forget

(Thanks to Valerie)

Plantu's Two Minute Hate

To celebrate 9-11, Plantu compares George Bush to OBL (see Erik's post below) and throws in a reference to a French commie to boot. Guy Moquet, French communist and figure of the "French Resistance" [sic], has been carted out of the memory hole recently and is being served up as some kind of inspirational figure for French youth.

On 9/11, French Movie Likening the Symbol of the World Trade Center — Big Business — to Nazism Appears on Le Monde's Front Page

As Plantu — again — compares (the sightless) Uncle Sam to (the sightless) Osama Bin Laden — with all their common victims (in fact, there seem to be more in America's hair) entangled in their common bloody beard (replete with whiskers that looks like military-style barbed wire) — Le Monde uses the 9/11 anniversary to treat us to its usual pompous editorial ("total war" against terrorism, ignorance or minimizing of December 7, 1941 (only six years after 9/11 was ubiquitously called a modern-day "Pearl Harbor"!), "petitions of friendship for a great people that is making a mistake") along with a front page article about a movie (by Nicolas Klotz, due to be released on September 12, and based on a book by François Emmanuel) that compares the average multinational company (i.e., the typical American creation as well as the symbol of New York and its World Trade Center per se) to Nazi Germany.

La Question humaine … un film noir qui … établit en effet un lien entre le monde des multinationales et l'idéologie nazie. A mesure [qu'un psychologue d'entreprise, magistralement interprété par Mathieu Amalric] perce à jour la nature du pouvoir de son entreprise, une effarante proximité lui saute aux yeux entre la langue administrative nazie et celle qu'il emploie dans son travail.

Update: In an interview with Jacques Mandelbaum, Nicolas Klotz and Elisabeth Perceval state that

C'était frappant de voir à quel point [les étudiants d'HEC ou de l'Essec qui ont tourné dans La Question Humaine] comprenaient le film, pour ainsi dire de l'intérieur : ces jeunes gens se considèrent eux-mêmes comme des guerriers, des tueurs, et ont tout à fait conscience de servir une logique de productivité et de profit exponentiels où les plus faibles sont impitoyablement éliminés.

In addition, it turns out that the movie is the third in a trilogy (the first two were about the homeless and foreigners without documents — you can see that this movie follows in the same logic) and (as we learn from Le Monde's review) that the name of the bad guy (played by a "very disturbing" Jean-Pierre Kalfon) in this movie (which Isabelle Regnier tells us "keeps its promises from end to end") is… Karl Rove! (Actually, the movie lists his name as Karl Rose — as does the book — but Regnier (or the daily's spell-checker) seems to have gotten the screenwriters' intention right!) Karl Rove (or Karl Rose), it turns out, was born in a Third Reich Lebensborn and was involved somehow with the SS Einsatzgruppen! We then learn how the "striking proximity" between the multinational firm (whose workers are "warriors, killers" and from which "the weakest are pitilessly eliminated") and the Holocaust:

To gas the Jews, or fire an alcoholic, the same dehumanizing terminology allows the human being to be treated as a production unit, valid or not.

Mon Dieu! The filmmakers have discovered the meaning of life (or death)! How can one avoid being dazzled by so much lucidité?! Regnier couldn't, as shown in her conclusion (about the movie in which there is a scene during which, "alors que les acteurs parlent parfois sans qu'on entende leur voix, un magnifique et interminable chant de flamenco est filmé en temps réel"):

La Question Humaine is a sophisticated film. It is also a beautiful film, a loving film, because its author likes his characters. … it is a great political film.

How wonderful. The viewpoint of one Le Monde reader is slightly different:

The raison d'être of this film is shameful, first and foremost in consideration of the victims of totalitarianism who [unlike the movie's authors] are no longer around to engage in mental masturbation.

Update: See how French (and European) TV commemorated the sixth anniversary of 9/11 (and the murder of 3,000 people)…

The appropriation of issues like Iraq to vindicate a pre-existing chauvinism against America is despicable

Roger Cohen (September of Hope, Globalist, Sept. 3) elegantly reflects on the demise of America's international reputation following the attacks of 9/11

writes Stephen Jones from Tokyo.

Undoubtedly, President George W. Bush's foreign policy has provoked widespread acrimony, but this alone does not account for the global disdain of all things American.

In the late 1990s, I worked in Japan alongside several young Brits, Canadians and Australians. Dispensing frequent invectives against the United States, including its people, was common practice, with one Canadian boasting how she routinely expressed her hatred of Americans to impressionable Japanese junior high students.

There was little goodwill to lose in 2001. While Iraq, Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay irreparably tainted America, the appropriation of these issues to vindicate a pre-existing chauvinism is despicable.

France and Germany both opposed the war in Iraq and both have been targets of terrorist plots by Islamic extremists, some of them before 9/11

France and Germany both opposed the war in Iraq and both countries have been targets of terrorist plots by Islamic extremists, said François Heisbourg, a French expert on terrorism and a special adviser to the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris.

Thus reports Jane Perlez in the New York Times.

A French government white paper in 2006 described 11 attempts by Islamist jihadists to blow up targets in France in the past 10 years, some of them before 9/11, Mr. Heisbourg said. This showed, he said, that just because France has criticized the Bush administration and stayed out of Iraq, it enjoys no immunity from terrorism.

Because you are feckless pussies

Europeans ask: "Why do they hate us?"

UK's C4 “Celebrates” 9-11

Al-Dura Affair: France 2 Still Weaseling

The Blogs Extreme-Center and the Augean Stables continue to monitor the al-Dura affair, more to the point – monitoring the very typical “social management” of the deliberate lie’s effect on the reputation of a public institution.

To Patrick de Carolis, France2 Television
France2: Release the Secret Muhammad al Durah Tapes!

People around the world who depend on the media for reliability, accuracy, and transparency in reporting, demand that France2 release the unedited video tapes (”rushes”) that its Palestinian cameraman, Talal abu Rahmah, sent them on September 30 and October 1, 2000 from Gaza.
On September 30, 2000, your Middle East correspondent Charles Enderlin, broadcast a story about Muhammad al-Durah, a 12-year old Palestinian boy. Using the footage and the testimony from his cameraman, Talal abu Rahmah, Enderlin reported that Israeli soldiers had targeted and killed the boy. That allegation of deliberate murder spread instantaneously around the world.

Click here to sign the petition.The Fuse is Lit (No Pasaran!)

Hatred is its’ Own Reason

That is... when you’re a leftist

There they were, the determined self-flagellators, flooding the talkback radio lines moaning about what they saw as Australia's and Prime Minister Howard's misplaced but slavish devotion to the US and President Bush.

What's wrong with us, they whimpered, wailing even more when the President said America had no better friend than Australia. They whined about the inconvenience of roadblocks caused by the presidential motorcade: did he really need that many gas-guzzlers? they griped

But for all people of that ilk, the world is static, dictators can mean well, time is something that long ago stood still.The Fuse is Lit (No Pasaran!)

Celebrate Liberty

Fête de la Liberté

Sunday 16 Sepetember 2007 from 10-4

at the Charenton Conference Center
323 bis Rue de Charenton; 12th arrondissement, Paris Metro: Porte de Charenton/Line 8 [Balard - Creteil-Prefecture]Walking distance from the RER A and D lines from Gare de Lyon

5€ at the door. Students enter free. Dedicated child-minding area.



Map

Année Soixante-Neuf

Legacy Comes to a Close

Reporting from Berlin from the blockade and airlift to the fall of the wall, RIAS radio signs off.

Founded by the United States of America, DIAS (Wire Broadcasting in the American Sector), later to be known as RIAS (Radio in the American Sector), started broadcasting on February 7, 1946.
From the Blockade of 1948/49 to June 17, 1953, from the Khrushchev ultimatum to the erection of the Wall, from the Kennedy visit to the first Agreement on Permits, up to November 9, 1989, when the Wall finally came down: RIAS BERLIN was the Berlin radio station reporting live from the scene.
RIAS BERLIN, as the radio station in the divided city, was always at the center of the East-West conflict. At no time, however, did it run the risk of turning into a propaganda station. RIAS remained committed to the tradition of rational, critical American journalism.

Authority obsessed European critics of the US who ironically accuse it of just that – including allegations of “propaganda” and “imposing American culture may want to take note.

via Glenn Hauser

Soft Limp Power

In the same issue where it is suggested that Belgium would do well to snuff itself, The Economist argues that Europe should aim a little bit of its own celebrated lucidity at itself.

"And that is the final problem: even if the EU could unite, a Europe that has a static or even shrinking population has far less weight in the world than it once did. This leads Mr Sapir and his co-authors to an intriguing argument in favour of more centralisation. If relative decline is inevitable, Europeans might as well consolidate what clout they have left, and get some credit for being generous to rising powers. Take the question of pooling EU seats at the IMF, to free up chairs for emerging economies. If Europeans do not budge up, bodies like the IMF may simply lose credibility. In a phrase nicely calculated to get the attention of well-lunched Eurocrats, the book suggests: “If Europe refuses to share its place at the table, it may find itself increasingly short of dining partners in consequence.”"

Learned to Feel Guilty When Caught

Meet a PhD who just “couldn’t seem to realize” an abundance of things over the course of 3 years that your average high school drop-out could dope out in half an hour:

Despite having worked on South Africa's secret apartheid-era nuclear programme in the 1980s, when he was approached in 2000 by a nuclear industry contact about manufacturing a "compact pipework system" for an unnamed client, he'd said he hadn't batted an eyelid.

The client had paid him a handsome fee of 1 million euros (1.3 million dollars) to find a company in South Africa to manufacture the system.
On examining the plans Wisser and his employee Swiss-born engineer Daniel Geiges realized the drawings were for a uranium enrichment plant, but it never occurred to him that it could be for use in a nuclear weapons programme, Wisser previously claimed.

An old friend and fellow engineer with experience in the nuclear industry, Johan Meyer, of Tradefin Engineering near Johannesburg, was the recipient of the contract.
Wisser repeatedly claimed he did not suspect he was abetting Libya's nuclear programme until mid-2003 and that he believed he was working for Pakistan's nuclear energy programme.

The penny still did not drop when two Libyan engineers arrived in South Africa to inspect the plant in 2002.

Even after "the realization dawned" - when Johan Meyer received a payment from Libya in 2003 - Wisser did not immediately intervene to pull the plug on the plant.
It was only when Italian and US authorities intercepted a ship carrying parts for Libya's nuclear programme off the coast of Italy in October 2003, exposing Moamer Gaddafi's then atomic ambitions, that he gave the order to destroy it.

These are not disillusioned post-Glasnost Russians with doctorates driving cabs, these are Grade A European Science Sluts.

What do you get for this serious a threat to world peace? Three years at home wearing an ankle bracelet.

Meet Someone Who Gets It

From an oddly titled blog:

The United States, with increasing trade and interests in Asia and the Pacific Rim, is unlikely to maintain large military forces in defence of the European Union; and it would be very wrong for Europeans to expect it to do so. Indeed, many American forces have already been redeployed from Britain and Germany to Central Asia and the Middle East. The future will hold only more of the same. And why should Americans defend Europe? Are we not rich enough to defend ourselves? Do we not have the political will to browbeat our enemies into doing our will? Are we unable to stand up for our values and interests with the use of armed force? Europe’s future is bleak if the answer to all of these questions is not a firm ‘yes’. A strong European Union will have the military and political cohesion to work with the United States in order to sustain Western primacy. A weak Europe will distract American concerns, and empower forces hostile to Western civilisation.

Anyone wondering where the "grow a nutsack" attitide from Americans comes from, look no further.

Comment gérer les inévitables désaccords lorsqu'il s'en présente : en les théâtralisant ou en les maîtrisant ?

Il sera difficile en réalité de sortir de la formule "amis, alliés, pas alignés". (...) Si nous oublions un des trois thèmes de cette formule, la réalité nous y ramènera. Ces relations comportent d'ailleurs une seule difficulté sérieuse : comment gérer les inévitables désaccords lorsqu'il s'en présente : en les théâtralisant ou en les maîtrisant ?

Le Monde publishes excerpts from Hubert Védrine's report.

Soirée Dantec

"Well that would be a real big problem for us, no question about it"

The Petraeus Report might prove to be entirely too positive for some "anti-war" liberals to believe. It seems that since the day this war began there has been an echo chamber of nay-sayers who have proclaimed that we "just aren't seeing any progress in Iraq." When progress actually emerges, they choose not to believe it.

Benjamin Duffy goes on to ask why liberals seem so intent on not believing that General David Petraeus might be making a difference in Iraq?

I have a few guesses on that. First, liberals are so bent on losing this war that they cannot tolerate success. Second, losing the war in Iraq and blaming it on conservatives would benefit them in elections for years to come. Third, the idea of this whole Iraq project backfiring on us gives them a rush of schadenfreude.

Vermin

Useless Old Europe thigamajig

The Economist says that Belgium should pack it in.


They were good for a few laughs. Especially during beer-fueled drunken rampages.

Plantu remembers 9-11 a few days early

How nice of the prick.


The airplane is labeled "American mortgages"
Cécilia: Should I go to Prada, yes or no? Sarkozy: wait a second, dear.


It's a yearly fixation with him.

"Dude, I am on Marx's Tomb!"

In the States, mainstream media types have called Michael Moore's Sicko his "least political film". But in his interview with Thomas Sotinel, the Le Monde reporter states that this seems to be Michael's coming-out as "a socialist". To which Moore answers (retranslated from the French) that, in a scene in Sicko,

I film myself on Marx's tomb. Nobody mentioned it. In the reviews in America, they wrote, "it's his least political film." And I say: "Dude, I am on Marx's Tomb!" Do I need to take out a baseball bat and hit them on the head [for them to understand]?!

In case you hadn't understood, this says — and this reveals — almost more about the powers-that-be (both in the U.S. and abroad) than about Michael Moore: being on the socialist/marxist-bordering left, for the MSM and America's Eastern élites (as for Europe's MSM and élites), is mainstream, is normal, is understandable, is OK, is cool. It is avant-garde. Beyond being (naturally) avant-garde and therefore (obviously) a positive and endearing trait, it hardly bares mentioning. And it is "not political" (that's only a dirty game that America's hit-below-the-belt Republicans play).

Update: As far as I know, the best answer to Michael Moore's Sicko arguments is provided by Stuart Browning's Free Market Cure films…

More on Michael Moore in the archives (2004-2016)…

You have one year to kill your baby and still get away with probation plus counseling

Just when you think that you actually share a little common ground with liberals, writes Benjamin Duffy, they will surprise the heck out of you with an absolutely outrageous new policy proposal.

Dan Greenberg's Artwork

In preparation for the publication of the second volume of General Leonardo, Dan Greenberg has opened his new blog…

Gitmo alumni already miss their Alma Mater

You can't go home again.

Belgium "shocked to the core"

All the more interesting following the recent attempted attacks in Denmark and Germany. The official party line in Fwance is that such problems absolutely do not exist here. The French youth rise up, from time to time, solely as a means of social protest and they fully adhere to France's Republican values. N'importe quoi.

The report was authored by the hyper-arrogant Hubert Vedrine

French study finds that the French are arrogant.

What’s A Scribbler To Do When Events Don’t Match His World View?

In reporting the foiled terror attacks in Germany, an AP hack implies that even though the targets were centered on US citizens in Germany, with the obvious intention of scaring the German public into placing distance between itself and the US (Zapatero style) through the use of terror, that deposing Saddam Hussein is somehow behind it.

Germany, which did not send troops to Iraq, has been spared terrorist attacks such as the mass transit bombings in Madrid and London - although its involvement in the attempt to stabilize Afghanistan has led to fears it might be targeted.

Why use Europe for this? Apart from the fact that Zapatero’s actions have conclusively proved to the drooling fanatical observer that they are pushovers and readily manipulated, but that they also have a kind of inability to lead an idea domestically as well. In short they are the softest of soft targets from top to bottom.

I suppose al-Qaida have spiritual time machines in the AP writer’s mind, since the US involvement in Iraq must surely have had a lot to do with this kind of thing in 1999, and long since forgotten since the rump of the European public found the US as an enemy instead of the savages trying to bomb their people, cities, and public institutions.

Serguei’s Vane Fantasies about the World

”... It’s so unusual to see you here ...”
“... I feel a bit like I’m at home ...”

1. Implying that Bush has not come to Iraq often enough
2. Implying that the US is some kind of military regime (which he would LOVE if it involved south American leftists,) and that being surrounded by soldiers is “like home.”
3. That the soldiers have to string together a busted flag staff
4. That there are nothing but US soldiers in Iraq.
5. That they are faceless to the point of being inhuman.

I could go on, but why bother when Serguei through his actions proves himself to be no better than the filthy illiterate savages that are being tacitly supported in a Hizballah-loving “celebration” of 9/11.

The Antidote to Euro-Lethargy

So Howard Husock quotes one reader in the Wall Street’s Journal’s Opinion Journal Taste Commentary:

It has been 24 years since I last moved, but in the decade before that I had ten different addresses. The ability to move and to adapt to a new adventure is a function of personal ambition and a willingness to pursue new adventures. It often accompanies youth and fundamental personal change such as having children and getting married. I have acquaintances who are so place-bound that they voluntarily impose a ceiling on themselves which traps them in a world of low incomes and narrow social contacts. Staying home limits our range of choices and is almost an un-American habit. I prefer to throw in with Horace Greeley and "Go west, young man."

- Thanky-thanky to Val

Minimum Wage, Minimum Effort

Wage-parity freaks are running a race to the bottom:

Luxembourg, which has by far the highest per capita income in the EU, also has the highest minimum wage. But the country also has the highest percentage of workers having to live on that minimum wage. In some other countries which do have minimum wages, they mark little more than a lower ceiling of workers' payment, with just around 1% of the workforce being on minimum wage.

It might be twice as high, but 11 times as many French workers are stuck at the minimum wage as they are in the U.S. Hint: when you try to divert attention from the lack of growth by discussing abstractions of relative purchasing power vs. income, you’re missing the fact that one never hears of economists getting stoked about the future poverty reducing potential of “Purchasing Power Parity” when there is little in the way basic growth. This is the detritus of decades of micromanagement.

"Ever since the introduction of the 35-hour week, we've heard discussion about purchasing power, not about salaries," Sarkozy said — rebuffing the business leaders' frequent retort that purchasing power is mostly an old union chestnut to justify demands for pay hikes. "Explaining there's no problem of purchasing power in France is trying to pull the public's leg...

- Shukran to überchav Georges who has the
stomach to dig through the confusion at Euractiv.com.

The Trifecta !!!

Rival gangs wage urban warfare at the Gare du Nord for the third time in one week and French police are worried. But you ain't seen nothin' yet. Pretty soon, French police will make with the furrowed brow and the stern look of disapproval.

La Fwance: quand les assistés trucident les travailleurs

When welfare recipients make a stand against the man they go for the jugular.

"If none of the above is possible, then smile."

You would think that being friendly is obvious to most everyone in the hospitality business. That only seems to apply outside of the land of the forcefield of cultural superiority cultural exception.

France was last week jolted by the realisation that, while still blessed with 79 million annual visitors, the country has slipped to third place - behind the US and Spain - for income from tourism.

But it's still the destination no. 1 for those who enjoy being personally abused.

Europeans: working hard or hardly working?

In any case, Americans are busting ass.

Authorities Blow Meat Whistle

Superior, superb, deeply caring social management rapidly deals with public health problem... after 14 months:

Berlin - Around 150 tons of rotten meat have been shipped from the southern German state of Bavaria to Berlin companies making Turkish-style doner kebab skewers and then distributed across Germany, prosecutors said Friday.

Bush! Isn't it obvious?

Trendy Celebrity Truthers

In the wake of Thierry Meyssan, who went from unknown activist to celebrity author overnight thanks to Trutherism and Thierry Ardisson, there is no shortage of well known French who are trending towards Trutherism. The recent surge in Trutherism among celebrity french was kicked off by Karl Zero who, after losing his cushy position on Canal+, started his own web based TV show and made heavy use of Trutherism to boost his audience.

Suckers

An Italian study has concluded that French taxpayers financially support the most expensive bureaucracy in the EU. Thanks to Bertrand.

<LMAO/>

French über-adviser and soothsayer extraordinaire, Jacques Attali, states (with a straight face no less) that France must aim for 5% economic growth. No word yet on whether the 5% should be attained before or after the EU growth target stated in the long forgotten but fast approaching deadline put forth as part of the Lisbon Strategy. <ROTFL/>.

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.