The unspoken oath: Infantry soldiers, Marines ... Americans don't break contact

Still we have partisans and defeatists climbing over themselves to define what it is we fight against and why it is important to leave before victory is achieved

says SSG David Bellavia, one of the lone ambassadors of America's Warrior Class.

In the name of partisan election cycle politics, television commercials and campaign talking points are now openly designed to sap the will of the American people. This is an effort to take from veterans the honorable and attainable victory our beloved friends gave their lives in exchange. Like the Islamist threat overseas, this dogma will be met head on. We cannot allow the selfish advancement of political agendas to transcend the blood sacrifices made in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"Ingrid m'a demandé ce que je faisais avec les trois Américains, puisque c'étaient les ennemis des FARC"

"El problema fue que los políticos se pusieron celosos porque a mí me gustaba sentarme a hablar mierda con los gringos y me daba la noche con la barriga adolorida de reírme de ellos. Íngrid me llamó y me hizo el reclamo. Me dijo que qué hacía yo con esos gringos, que si acaso ellos no eran los enemigos de nosotros (Farc)." — Martín Sombra aka Helí Mejía, former FARC jailer

Through the Colombian weekly Semana's interview with Ingrid Betancourt's former FARC jailer (now in his own jail cell), writes Marie Delcas in Le Monde, it would seem to transpire that a Frenchwoman's petty jealousy, smug anti-Americanism, snotty moralizing, and starry-eyed support for revolutionaries has hardly been tempered by her six years of imprisonment by said revolutionary group.

Martin Sombra a enseigné des rudiments d'espagnol aux trois Américains capturés en 2003. "Ils m'ont bien eu. Ils me disaient sanavebitch (son of a bitch, "fils de pute") et je croyais que cela voulait dire montagne. Après j'ai su", raconte le guérillero. Il riait tellement avec les "gringos" que les politiques ont fini par être jaloux. "Ingrid m'a demandé ce que je faisais avec eux, puisque c'étaient les ennemis des FARC", dit-il.

Matamoros

Whilst at CPAC, I had the luck to meet the writer of Matamoros, a comic illustrated by John Cox of Cox & Forkum fame…

See Darius LaMonica's explanation of the cover (his next-to-last answer) and check out some of the pages…

Guess What? Maybe Those Clueless Yanks Aren't That Stupid After All…

Les travaux d'agrandissement et de modernisation en cours dans près d'une demi-douzaine de bases militaires présentement occupées par les forces américaines pourraient leur permettre d'héberger "autour de 100 000 hommes", nous disait récemment, à Bagdad, un haut fonctionnaire irakien familier des négociations

writes Patrice Claude in Le Monde.

En d'autres termes, quelles que soient les ambitions iraniennes dans ce pays, et mis à part les échanges économiques, culturels et religieux qui se multiplient entre les deux peuples, majoritairement chiites, l'Iran islamique n'aura pas le champ complètement libre en Irak avant longtemps.

De fait, la victoire iranienne, qui serait née des erreurs de l'administration Bush dans la région, doit être sérieusement relativisée. Pour un politologue iranien en exil comme Kaveh L. Afrisiabi, auteur de nombreux ouvrages sur la République islamique, tout le trompe-l'oeil de "la prétendue avancée des intérêts iraniens dans la région" est là. "L'Iran est désormais encerclé de bases américaines", écrit-il, et, pour ses dirigeants, "c'est devenu une préoccupation permanente".

Selon cet expert, "malgré la chute des talibans et des baasistes irakiens, l'Iran, depuis le 11 septembre 2001, a perdu du terrain dans sa région d'influence".

The Ugly American

Obama wants to put Americans Anonymous out of business.

Another Story Minimized, Underreported, or (Most Likely) Ignored in the French Media and Blogosphere

(…unless of course Spc. Nicholas Colgin were to come out ragin' against Bush and his policies…)

It's Nothing That Calling In an Airstrike Can't Cure

Suburban bliss, EUtopian style:

Alliot-Marie called for help to identify the shooters so they could be arrested, the British newspaper said.

Police said when officers arrived at the complex, officers faced "around 30 people whose faces were masked and several of whom were armed.

Also in the southern bidonvilles-like bedroom communities of Paris, the jew-hunting continues:

Six youths were detained last week for having kidnapped and beaten a 19 year old man of Jewish origin, the court heard Wednesday. This act has aroused the indignation of many organizations opposed to racism and anti-Semitism and the mayor of Bagneux (Hauts-de-Seine), where it occured.

The victim had voluntarily followed youths he knew Feb. 22 in an apartment owned by one of them, "says one legal source. Once there, he was accused of stealing a mobile phone and a camcorder, accusations he denied. His attackers then began to beat him, providing him with kicks and punches.

Nothing to get worked up about... he was there voluntarily, y'see... being smacked around for only 9 hours by a bunch of twerps showing the only kind of individual justice the public can tolerate (if not idolize): imaginary class warfare against a symbol of their shallow sectarian view of human nature.

Contrary voices are regulated, barred, banned when possible, mocked and marginalized when not; Progressive voices are encouraged, lionized, amplified

In a book which says that (and how) "liberals use the word 'fascist' to describe anything outside the control of the state", Jonah Goldberg clears up a lot of stuff, notably "one of the underappreciated consequences of the explosion in the size of government" (from chapter 8, Liberal Fascist Economics, emphasis mine):

So long as some firms are willing to prostitute themselves to Uncle Sam, every business feels the pressure to become a whore.

…This is the hidden story of big business from the railroads of the nineteenth century, to the meatpacking industry under Teddy Roosevelt, to the outrageous cartel of "Big Tobacco" today: supposedly right-wing corporations work hand in glove with progressive politicians and bureaucrats in both parties to exclude small businesses, limit competition, ensure market share and prices, and generally work as government by proxy. Big business rallied behind LBJ, not the objectively free-enterprise Barry Goldwater. Free marketeers often decry Richard Nixon's wage and price controls, but what is usually forgotten is that big business cheered them

…There's no sector of the American economy more suffused with corporatism than agriculture. Indeed, both Democrats and Republicans are decidedly fascistic when it comes to the "family farmer," pretending that their policies are preserving some traditional völkisch lifestyle while in reality they're subsidizing enormous corporations.

But corporatism is only part of the story. Just as corporations were enmeshed in the larger Nazi Gleichschaltung, supposedly right-wing big business is central to the progressive coordination of contemporary society. If big business is so right-wing, why do huge banks fund liberal and left-wing charities, activists, and advocacy groups, then brag about it in commercials and publicity campaigns? How to explain that there's virtually no major issue in the culture wars — from abortion to gay marriage to affirmative action — where big business has played a major role on the American right while there are dozens of examples of corporations supporting the liberal side?

Indeed, the myth of the right-wing corporation allows the media to tighten liberalism's grip on both corporations and the culture. John McCain perfectly symbolizes this catch-22 of modern liberalism. McCain despises the corrupting effect of "big money" in politics, but he is also a major advocate of increased government regulation of business. Apparently he cannot see that the more government regulates business, the more business is going to take an interest in "regulating" government. Instead, he has concluded that he should try to regulate political speech, which is like decrying the size of the garbage dump and deciding the best thing to do is regulate the flies.

These speech regulations in turn give an unfair advantage to some very big businesses — media conglomerates, movie studios, and such — to express their views in ways exempt from government censorship. It's no surprise that some of these outlets tend to celebrate McCain's genius and courage and use their megaphones to expand on the need for him to go even further and for other politicians to follow his lead. Of course, this dynamic is much larger than mere regulation. The New York Times is pro-choice and supports pro-choice candidates — openly on its editorial pages, more subtly in its news pages. Pro-life groups need to pay to get their views across, but such paid advertising is heavily regulated, thanks to McCain, at exactly the moment it might influence people — that is, near Election Day. One can replace abortion with gun control, gay marriage, environmentalism, affirmative action, immigration, and other issues, and the dynamic remains the same.

That is how the liberal Gleichschaltung works; contrary voices are regulated, barred, banned when possible, mocked and marginalized when not. Progressive voices are encouraged, lionized, amplified — in the name of "diversity," or "liberation," or "unity," and, most of all, "progress."

…In the brave new corporatism, we are all "partners" after all. Environmentalism in particular offers a number of eerie parallels to fascist practices, including as an overarching rationale for corporatist policies. According to generic fascism, an atmosphere of crisis must be maintained in order to circumvent conventional rules. Today, while Hollywood and the press relentlessly hype the threat of global warming, big business works assiduously to form alliances and partnerships with government as if the fight against global warming were the moral equivalent of war. Indeed, Al Gore — who makes much of such public-private partnerships — claims that global warming is equivalent to the Holocaust and anybody who denies it is the moral equivalent of a Holocaust denier.

PS: I typed these notes 10 days ago in preparation for a post of this type and it should in no way be construed as a reaction to the Texas/Ohio vote nor as a suggestion to vote for Hillary or Obama nor as one to refrain from voting altogether.

Even the Int'l Press is Treating Hillary Like a Republican

Seen on Canada.com

It's as sad and transparent as the whole sad, torrid, distracting psychodrama of identity politics. Once it's all over, no-one on the left will be able to remember what a political platform is anyway, what with so much avoiding of one thing or another the winning democrat will still be around and "carefully re-engineering their image" in 5 or 9 years.

If it makes them feel any better, if they keep it up, the guy who's already been tortured by the power obsessed collectivists and their sympathists in the domestic press once before will win. That should still fit nicely into the leftist heirachy of symbol-triggered guilt that people have trained themselves into. The saving grace will be less entitlement politics, less concealed contempt for the traditions of the majority, and less suicidal economic nativism.

Even George Romero Couldn’t Dream these People Up

Somewhere trapped in between the now parochial hatefulness found to be nearly ubiquitous in Arab public life, and the now parochial social position of the over-the-top trannies and bobos of European public life there’s Wendy to shield you from this lunacy, who unlike our two friends is not into ritualistic abuse or dressing entirely in black in summer, and appears to corner the market in common sense.

Too rah.

These Two Things are the Same, Only Different

Why don't you go and give a billionaire another tax cut, then enslave your citizens in debt in order to pay for killing foreign children with weapons that are contributing to the heat death of the planet? I know that's how I'm spending my Sunday.

or

"The Israelis and Bush are really disgusting and evil.  When I'm big, I will pound them on the head." The words are those of a 4-year old girl in a kindergarten in Nørrebro, Copenhagen.

Several institutions describe similar cases, while other kindergartens haven't experienced such things. 

A kindergarten teacher tells of a little boy who last week said: "The Danes are really dumb.  They hate all the Arabs and will slay us.  But then I'll shoot them first."

The children say in several cases that they had heard that on TV.  Most Danish families of Arabic background can see over 400 Arab channels via satellite.

That is to say, the difference between the indoctrination of a comment poster on the Grauniad’s bileous “Comment is Free” site or a 4 year old trained to hate by their parents who only watch any number of the 400 Arabic language channels available in Europe by satellite.

- Thx to Georges and Hervé

An Indecent Proposal on Alexander Graham Bell’s Birthday

Globalstar has 50 mhz, and the Iridium low-earth, non-stationary orbiting satellite communications array is in possession of 25,5 mhz of bandwidth which can reach any stationary or moving object in virtually the entire planet without a directional antenna. Designed as system of global satellite telephony systems, they also provide low speed data tx/rx to remote and unconnected areas of the world such as at sea and at great distances away from the nearest fixed lines or cellular tower. They could also be used for much more

At the same time in many parts of the world the precious slice of the L- and S-bands that the Iridium, Inmarsat and Thuraya satellite are competing with regional efforts to implement mobile one-way media delivery systems in a cost effective manner after the fashion of Sirius and XM in North America, and to a similar degree to the Worldspace radio and data delivery system covering Africa, portions of Asia, Europe, and soon in South America.

This excellent and more modest proposal from Australia found a way to answer the question as to who something like Sirius or XM could be provided in Australia, but the same could clearly be done in other regions and the diameter of the drinking straw it’s delivered through could actually provide a good bit more on the global level.

In fact there is a lot of capacity, most of which goes unused over the world’s highly developed or moderately developed and populated land mass. Using what could be done with Iridium’s 25,5 mhz of capacity, a great deal is possible for all 4 of those providers which could reflect light into the areas of the world shaded from the information age, provide travelers and migrants worldwide with access to news, culture, music , and sports wherever they are, and solve a nettlesome frequency allotment problem that developed regions have been struggling with the UN hosted dinosaur-like ITU / IBU to resolve.

* A format in between Standard Definition (640 x 480) and Low Definition (320 x 240), say 480 X 360 pixels x a 25 (in lieu of 30) fps would requires only 47% of the (nominal) 3 mbits/sec capacity of a SD television channel, and could fit inside of 0,8 mhz of the delivery systems conduit using mpeg-4, AVC. Moreover, if the content is delivered at a compressed rate over the whole of the bandwidth allotted to visual content.

Since it’s designed to look for a terrestrial connection first, to a satellite which relays to the public switch, and to a satellite which communicated to another satellite in the array as a last resort, the telephony and wireless IP component can have its’ capacity easily improved by adding more ground stations. This allows for the relief of some of that capacity to construct “regional” XM or Sirius subscriber audio services bundled to serve regional languages and interests, as well as provide a global, multilingual radio and TV delivery mechanism that can be held in the hand, watched and heard in the air, at sea, or middle of the desert or jungle,...

... and not be fully controllable by aggressive governments that opposed the free flow of information,
... and support the profitability of the systems which will allow the satellite array to be completed and enlarged.

And that’s just what’s possible from one of the 4 portable global satellite telephony providers. At lease one of the others could create yet more competition and capacity that that. What’s needed is a range of devices which will take a subscriber SIM or smart card that will use this or any competitor’s delivery mechanism. They could take the form of a PDA that can access all the services except radio and television, shuttling radio only receivers for homes and automobiles, receivers for media distribution in ships and aircraft, a simple medium sized video display for use about a boat or vehicle, or a compact combined device for all the services that might resemble an oversized version of the iPhone or gPhone prototypes, along with all the other asset tracking devices that use GPS and are already in commercial use. In fact the presence of a two-way data system might even permit the customer to use the full service system on a pay-per-use basis.

So there it is, right off of the top of the head and probably in need of a slap to straighten me out. Your opinions please...

Make the myths

This kinda shit can only be born and nutured in the streets of NYC. Fuck these EU museums mausoleums.

No, You’ll be Taught to Care, Silly!

A new state broadcaster for the super-state is going to air, and heaven knows where it’s going from there. In a bid to engineer consent by pretending it isn’t propaganda, the new “Euranet” seems to have more of an air of Radio Mockba under Brezhnev.

The station was officially launched in Brussels by Margot Wallström, Vice-President of the European Commission and in charge of the EU's communication strategy. The EC felt there was a need for fair and balanced information on EU affairs, she said. One aim of Euranet, in response to a demand felt by the Brussels leadership, is to get closer to the citizens, particularly the young. Ms Wallström stressed that a charter will guarantee the station's editorial independence.

How this independence will be shown is still quite unclear to me:

The sixteen broadcasters are targeting a young section of the population: the 20 to 45-year- olds. They are commonly seen as a difficult target group that is perceiving the European Union as a boring and complicated phenomenon.

I wonder why this is even necessary? Why isn’t a popular interest in integration allowed to grow in a substantive, meaningful, and natural way without being structured by a body somewhere? Are they that untrusting of a population to go on the past twenty years of advertising?



Speaking of a sell job, my favorite fake blogger and Frau Commissar of the Commissariat Margot Wallström is being employed as a sort of token living smiley for this peacetime propaganda operation. In fact it’s rather hard to tell if she’s been airbrushed for this one or had “a little work done”, but either way, her use here as a poster child really gives away the fact that a century of state operation of cultural management (with banal, implausible, “it’s a small world afterall”-like results) has taught them nothing, as has centuries of wars and violence in Europe which stemmed from the strange and pervasive cult of state power that has been it’s hallmark.

Anyway, her “blogging career” has been so illustrious by the standards of the überstate’s mandate to tell their public faces to “get out and blog” like it’s going to make people love them, that just one measly comment on it yielded this dopey email: a request from a grad student to respond to canned-sounding survey questions about a canned-reading blog.

Hello,
I am a student in communication at the University of Paris-Est, France, and I'm making a memoir (= a small thesis) about several blogs and their roles in the European communication and debate.
To that purpose, I need your contribution, as a commentator of Margot Wallström's blog. I would really appreciate it if you could spend a few minutes to answer my questions (les francophones peuvent répondre en français bien sûr!).

And a sample of the sort of questions that come up when considering the grand and glorious Instapundit and Boing-Boing killing nature of the blog:

Your activity on M. Wallström’s blog ?

A good question I guess, but that was the title. Remember, graaaad student!

- Which types of comments do you usually make (reaction to a post of M. Wallström, to another comment, offer or request of a complement of information) ?
- What incites you to intervene ?
- When you make a comment, do you expect an answer ?
- Which other information technologies do you use to get information or to debate on European questions ?
- Do you only go to English-speaking websites, or do you also go to websites in other languages ?
- Have you ever established relations with other commentators (email exchanges, instant messaging, “real” meetings…) ?
- How did you come to know this blog ?
- How long have you visited this blog, and how often do you go there ?
- To which factors do you attribute the high participation to this blog ?
- Do you go to other blogs partially or totally dedicated to European questions, and which ones? Do you also make comments on them ?
- Have you created your own blog, and if you have, does it deal, partly or wholly, with European questions ?
Could you tell me more about you ?
- Where do you live, where do you come from, how old are you, what is your gender, which diploma have you got ?
- What is your job, and is it related to European questions ?

Thank you very much !

The warning sign here is that if you have to “nation-build” at home and bypass the voting public’s referenda with a treaty passed with perfunctory preceduralism to a disinterested “legislature”, you’re off to a hell of a start.

In the struggle between democracy and dictatorship, no one can be neutral

To the question, "Is there anything you would have done differently, Mr. President, if you had known back then in 2003 what you know today?", George W Bush replied

One thing I wouldn't do differently is leave Saddam Hussein in power

as he met with Denmark's Prime Minister on the Crawford ranch.

It was the right decision then; it's the right decision today; and it will be viewed as the right decision when history is finally written.

As for Anders Fogh Rasmussen, he said:

freedom, democracy and human rights are the core values that unite us. Freedom and dignity of the individual are universal values. It is values that people living under oppression and brutal regimes strive for. We have an obligation to stand by these people in their struggle for liberty and democracy. This is our common challenge. And you, Mr. President, and the United States, have, above anyone else, advanced this vision of liberty and democracy around the world. Allow me to pay tribute to you for this. …

And it is no easy task. There are obstacles and opponents. But I do share your vision: Freedom is universal. And in the struggle between democracy and dictatorship, no one can be neutral. It is as simple as that.

That is why we are in Afghanistan to fight the Taliban. That is why we removed a brutal dictator in Iraq. That is why your leadership in the Middle East is crucial. …

Ingrid sulla strada

Columbia hits hard at Marxists narco-terrorists. French appeasers squeal.

Spanish fly

Ignorant cunt

De toute façon on pourrait faire passer un TGV dans sa chatte qui a tellement servi qu'elle arrive à utiliser sa statue des Oscars comme sextoy.

"Whip Me, Beat Me, Make Me Memorize Another Law"

"Il est interdit d'interdire" Meets "the precautionary principle"

Now Stay in your Playpen This Time

Mark Boyle was a man with a dream. He was so convinced that a world without the evils of money is possible that he set out to walk from Britain to India without spending a penny in order to prove it.

But that cruel, cruel world struck back. He didn’t make it past Calais.

Adding insult to injury, he had to "touch money" in making the trip.

which is even funnier considering his stated profession.

Specifically, the 28-year-old businessman and his two travelling companions had failed to consider the likely reaction when they arrived in Calais and attempted to blag their way across the proud Gallic nation without being able to speak French.

What? No “we are the world” altermondialistes to share mung beans and hemp sandals with them? Was is because he’s a hated bidniss-man? Who knows and who cares. His burning quest to walk to the “anti-money” cliché in his mind, a Ghandi’s India that never really existed, would surely meet with resistance in that heated Indian business environment, as well as all those capitalism-hating cultures on the way. Which reminds me on an old joke...

How many Sephardic Jews does it take to outsmart an Armenian businessman?

Which makes me wonder if this guy with primitive notions of economy (why barter money when you can barter big heavy rocks?) kind of guy appreciated the fact that money actually got him home after he was 1% of the way into a journey that mooching (and other Europeans) couldn’t.

Explaining Thanksgiving Christianity to the French

Le Salon Beige brings us us this status report on the decay and deorbiting of the that society of well educated "great thinkers":

A reader tells us of a visit to the Basilica of the Kings of France with his children, he was surprised by a book there titled "Journey of Discovery for young people"

On the one hand, on page 8 we find it says, "Dagobert, the first king buried in Saint-Denis." The first sentence of paragraph is "A contemporary of Muhammad, Dagobert is the king of the Franks from 629 to 639." On the other hand, on page 9, in a paragraph titled "Question", the first sentence is: "In the Bible it says that the angel Gabriel, the same people who brought the Koran to Mohammed, came one day announce to Mary, betrothed to Joseph, that she would soon have a son named Jesus. "

The booklet does not (yet) end with "a long, long time ago, the mosque in Saint-Denis was the Basilica of the kings of France."

Dial-A-Blog, Numéro Indigo?

Peering into the EU political blogsphere, one can’t help but find an in-genuine feature or some sad absurdity when you look closely at a great many of them. While there are some really good and original ones out there, almost any of the blogs found looking for a substantive discussion on political, budgetary, economic, “macro-level” social issues, and international relations, one finds the type of blog funded by commissions, commission or government funded institutions, and so forth. I can’t help but ask where the enthusiasm is if it requires a committee, a grant, and a dance on the fine line between a government outreach website, and something trying very hard to look creative and genuine only to seem academic.

Outcome?: one hell of a sedative, and in most cases less traffic than gonzo blogs like this one which is funded by nothing, isn’t networked to much of anything, let alone anything official, and doesn’t require interns, employees, or anything else. It’s as though they never heard of the invisible hand.

Some absurdly appear to be about the EU, but are little more that a compilation of news feeds about the UN. While most of these are in fact supposed to operate as a dialogue mechanism for think-tanks and journals, it looks like something did because it was suggested a blog was something a respectable operation could not do without, over some sort of social anxiety one had to do – not seeming to have wanted to do.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. If the fabulous brainiacs involved in a think-tank end up being characterized by a depressing looking thing that captures less interest than a monthly newsletter, I don’t see what good it does. Oddly enough it’s the authors and operators themselves, who are probably interns or the least-senior employees that provide for far more provocative and interesting reading on their own blogs – which is to say that this is not the kind of thing one can program and buy in the way so many European social and development efforts are engineered, while others still have parenthetical relationships to semi-publicly funded entities, press operations, but have distinctly political goals.

It leaves the impression that in the EU there isn’t much of a ‘line’ left between the roles of those speaking on behalf of government, private political players, universities, and the individuals who write for them. One already sees that most anyone under 25 can’t understand their distinct state roles, and just why separation produces its’ own transparency.

It won’t be long for that sort of society to assume everything they hear or read comes from the same ‘giant it’ whose motives will be so entirely opaque that people will give up on asking what their motives and intentions are. Something like Oceania, here we come...

Forgiven For Simply Being Human

Not in London, Milan, or Paris. Surprisingly, only in New York

Communism Has Only Killed 100 Million People…

…Let's give it another chance!

Jean-Claude Milner and Fabrice Jambois wax eloquently about Karl Marx as Le Monde puts a volume of (Marx's) philosophy on sale, while stating (reassuringly?) on the front page (top right, in reddish purple) that Karl Marx has not said his last word. (While France's élites and Le Monde's editors think it educative to add a volume of Marx's thoughts to a collection of philosophers for the undying benefit of the country's citizens, Atlas Shrugged has still not been translated to French…)

In Jean Birnbaum's interview of Jean-Claude Milner, the philosopher (?) states that Marx's economic doctrines "entirely" deserve the interest they are currently regaining — this in spite of the fact that, as Milner himself acknowledges, the "great thinker" had nothing but contempt for matters as diverse as the State, suffrage, the institutions, powers, the right of law (just about anything, really, that had to do with… the functioning of a state and a nation!, something you come to realize as the list starts reading like Monty Python's What have the Romans ever done for us?). Milner adds that although Lenin's "improvisations" in statesmanship led to catastrophe, they happened to be nothing if not "brilliant".

Je serai le premier à soutenir que les doctrines économiques de Marx méritent entièrement le regain d'intérêt dont elles bénéficient. Mais est-ce là l'essentiel ? Je ne le crois pas. Pour la politique, on ne peut pas passer sous silence le prix que Marx a dû payer pour se détacher de Hegel : l'absence de toute réflexion véritable sur les institutions. Sur l'Etat, sur le suffrage, sur les pouvoirs, sur le droit, rien que de la critique hautaine. C'est pourquoi il a fallu que Lénine improvise - brillamment, certes, mais l'improvisation dans ces domaines est interdite : elle a conduit à la catastrophe.

…"rien que de la critique hautaine"! Isn't this the reason — the real reason — that Marx is so beloved by the Left in the Western world?

As David R Henderson recalls from his youth in The Joy of Freedom, a

former communist told us of his intense resentment of the fact that he was smart and had nothing, while the rich were dumb and had a lot. "That," he said "was how I became a Marxist. I hated the rich." We were shocked. We had thought that virtually all intellectuals came to their views via their intellect, not via their resentments … His route to Marxism was a very common one. "The number of people who become Marxists by reading Marx," I still remember him saying, "can be counted on the fingers of one hand."

When truth is stranger than fiction

"...get loaded and phone up your ex-girlfriend and call her a whore...warm beer and misogyny, does it get any better?"

You mean, that's a video game?!? I thought it was what I've been doing in real life for the past 26 years.

Bureaucrates voyous

The pretentious, lazy lesson-givers that run this shithole of a Continent have found their own personal ATM machine. Time for the EU's robber barons to see the Blue Screen of Death on their ATM.

The Inexplicably Huge Conspiracy Will Not Be Televised

It's all plain for those interested in "open democracy" to see...

Eastern Exposure

The New York Crank mourns the probable withering away of a town in Ohio that was host to non-conformism due to its’ proximity to a college. I wouldn’t be as pessimistic as he is. I’ve run across quite a few towns that fit the bill, many of whom don’t have a student population but remain slightly warped. They are different in the sense that they’re blue collar and slightly warped, but the warpees feel far less compelled to write novels about their buds who live in the hallucination down the street (it’s the third yurt on the right, in fact, but don’t let the cat out...)

An Obscenity of Reasoning

"Those who want to destroy the common agricultural policy don't believe in Europe. There is no reason to leave the field open for our American friends, U.S. farmers," said Sarkozy.

Lou Minatti points out a flaw in buried deep in the foolish rationale of behind which European subsidies in general and French subsidies in particular. That is, that the US as the standard big bad wolf of all things rationalized to be digestible and acceptable to the European listener:

"They don't do it for us, why should we do it for them?"
Population of France: 64.5 million.
Agricultural subsidies: $58.5 billion/year
French annual agricultural subsidy per capita: $906.98

Population of the US: 301 million
Agricultural subsidies: $7-8 billion/year
US annual agricultural subsidy per capita: $26.58

The weenie being hidden here being not just a severe manipulation of the way farm business is treated, but to the tune of $2.47 per person per day, shows it to be a de-facto nationalized economic sector. Underlying this crop cult is that it’s also the third (if not the sixth or seventh) third rail of political discussion in France, and in the perfunctory statements on the subject get their perfunctory straw man of America attached to it as if it was strategic, as if it was 1958, and as if they were Soviets. They feel completely at ease making an equivalency comparison when their intervention is 34 times greater than that of the US.

Our Lady of Perpetual Regulation

Photo: Radio Netherlands who gave the poster child of this week's spate of Microsoft abuse a halo as if she was the post-modern Virgin Mary of Europeans' almost completely unquestioned anti-captialism.



Nonetheless, the EU deserves the thanks of Microsoft shareholders for the little bump in Microsoft's share price that has come on the news. You can see the effect of having these thieves rule that you aren't allowed to charge for your own intellectual property can have. As incredibly parochial as they are, the connections between business and government in Europe remind one of a real form of collusion that the twits yelling and screaming about Halliburton, Exxon, and Coca-Cola can only dream of.

Maybe they need to do business the European way, and perhaps "justice" would turn its' head away if Microsoft expanded it's workforce in Ireland.

Kouchner always knew what he wanted to be when he grew up — a résistant

[Bernard] Kouchner is a devotee of crisis, drama, danger — a résistant eager for an evil worth resisting

writes James Traub.

Over time, like a number of European intellectuals, Kouchner migrated from the radical left to the antitotalitarian center. In 2003, he argued for a humanitarian intervention to oust Saddam Hussein. He is, by French standards, stoutly pro-American. On foreign policy, with only a few exceptions, he shares the views of the conservative Sarkozy. In less than a year, the two have torn France loose from its Gaullist moorings. They have, however, run into opposition at home; the French seem to be suffering from a serious case of motion sickness.

…Christine Ockrent, Kouchner's wife and one of France’s most admired journalists, told me, “The reason they get along so well, which is kind of surprising, is that they prefer action to theory.” They share a metabolic intolerance for the great French indoor sport of abstract speculation.

…Kouchner had just come from Washington. “There is a change in the relationship,” he said. “It’s not the return of France to the U.S., but the return of confidence between France and the U.S.” Important disagreements remained, but he had told Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, “I will never betray you” — a blunt reference to January 2003, when Dominique de Villepin, then foreign minister, shocked Rice’s predecessor, Colin Powell, by abruptly announcing that France would never support an invasion of Iraq.

…But the French are far more comfortable with, or at least accustomed to, Gaullist realism; and, at least in the cafes and parlors of Paris, Kouchner is routinely tarred as a “neoconservative.” This term, which has virtually replaced “fascist” as the epithet of choice on the left, more or less means “one who wishes to use the instruments of state to promote values,” though of course, post-2003, it carries the whiff of “warmonger” and “American lackey.” Kouchner did, in fact, envision a humanitarian intervention in Iraq, blessed by the U.N., as the supreme achievement of the doctrine of ingérence.

…For Kouchner, all this is part of the same battle he’s been waging with the left since he started picking up boat people in Vietnam: “Are they concerned about victims? No, they are not. They were not. The first slogan before the creation of M.S.F. was ‘There are no good and bad victims.’ For them, bad victims exist.” Abstractions mattered more than people. It was, in other words, something Kouchner — and not only Kouchner, perhaps — disliked about the French.

…I asked Kouchner if he had accomplished what he hoped to accomplish in Islamabad. “Yes, but it’s only the beginning,” he said as we drove through the silent streets of Paris. “What matters is that we are back in Pakistan. And we are back in the Middle East and in the gulf and in Africa. And we are now back in the heart of Europe.”

“What do you mean ‘back’? Are you saying that the French had disappeared?”

“We were there; but we were not a factor.”

“Because of Douste-Blazy?”

“No, no, it was Chirac. Chirac!” And now Kouchner told me that when he and Sarkozy met with Bush, Bush said, “Chirac promised me that in the end he would be with us on Iraq. And then he betrayed us.”

"For all sorts of reasons, the U.S. is more advanced than France in terms of race relations"

Moussa Deme laughs out loud at the idea that the French would elect someone like [Barack] Obama, 46, to any political office

writes Celestine Bohlen in the International Herald Tribune.

"In France? Never," Deme, a 22-year-old Senegalese-born student, said on the way home from his job at a restaurant in Paris. "In France, it is impossible for a black man even to be mayor. They think it is enough that we are on their football team."

…"The French political system is archaic," Jazouli said. "In business, sports, music, entertainment, you find diversity in France. Not in politics."

Holding to the "republican" principle, France makes no distinction among its citizens by race, religion or ethnic origin. Still, minority representation in its political sphere remains a distant dream.

…His candidacy holds out hope for France's minorities, says Christine Ockrent, host of a popular French TV talk show and author of a book on Hillary Rodham Clinton, Obama's rival for the Democratic presidential nomination.

"The fact that he is of mixed blood brings out the idea of reconciliation," she says. "For all sorts of reasons, the U.S. is more advanced than France in terms of race relations. Remember, until eight or nine months ago, we had an all-white government. France is in no way an example."

Hey, No Anxiety There!

There are times when I sit alone on my balcony by moonlight and gaze out over the fir trees toward the pastures, shrouded in mist and lost in the silence of a village forfeit in time, and I wonder if this is the world in which I was meant to be born.

From a self-absorbed, fevered Jew hating, American hating self-isolating mountain man to gangs of violent skanks, Eutopia's great “investment in people” is really paying off.

But even the most hardened officers were stunned as they arrived at the scene. The participants in what has become known as the battle of Chelles bus station were all girls aged between 14 and 17.

The Times of India calls this (toungue in cheek?) “The New French Revolution”

A recent battle at a Chelles bus station highlights the problem seen throughout French cities, Sunday Times reported. When police learnt that rival gangs were planning a showdown in Chelles, east of Paris, they prepared for the sort of violence that has become routine in France's troubled suburbs.

And with a society where that's increasingly normal, the likes of the “truth seeker” doesn't see any need to rethink his pet criticisms Europeans have of the rest of that world that they just don't understand. It's amazing that these culture-wide obsessions could go on for a century without more people noticing it and discussing it, especially in those superior “self-actualized” societies.

The Socialism of Pavlov’s Dog

DownEastBlog turns its’ gaze at Belgian socialist dingleberry Dirk Van der Maelen and his ilk. He’d like to see the US negotiate with the Taliban and al-Qaeda (as if there were a command structure that could commit their ‘cells’ to anything,) and thinks that sending a mere four Belgian fighter-bombers to Afghanistan is too much.

Remember, these were the Europeans who wanted more than anything to be involved, and not have the United States ‘go it alone’, and aver now that no war is winnable, unless you take into account their desire for the Taliban and al-Qaeda to win their wars.

"Now that George W. Bush sees the end of his term, he realizes all the more that he will enter history as the president who lost two wars (Iraq and Afghanistan). Hoping that American troop reinforcements can turn the tide in a lost cause, the US are pushing for more. But do we really want to go to Afghanistan to save the honour of Bush?

...

Therefore we plead to open the debate and, e.g., think about a bigger role for the UN. A greater UN-mandate directed at development and stabilization, reinforcement of the institutions... that is what the country needs. No poodle wagging his tail running after Bush without a thought, in the process wasting money which harms purchasing power or, worse, endangers the lives of soldiers and/or citizens."

He goes on to conflate the miserable 1.3% of their GNP that goes to the military, and mainly to pensions loaded into it at that, as the straw that’s breaking the Belgian camel’s back. Never mind the social boondoggles and near world record taxes... their budget deficit is George Bush’s fault. I wonder if anyone cares to remind him that two decades before Bush entered office, their dept was 2-1/2 times that same GNP, a proportion of debt to output five times greater than that of the United States.



Actually, they seem to be adapting pretty nicely.

Make no mistake about it, by channeling their hatred of the realities of conflict in the world at America, their desire to see express pacifism is a lie hiding behind a tacit desire to see the west suffer attack.

And now they are dead wrong in opposing the dispatching of a mere flight of four fighter bombers to Afghanistan to be deployed against islamic extremists of the worst possible kind - who just days ago blew up 80 marketgoers in the worst carnage since the country was liberated in 2001.

What do our moral betters from the SP.a propose then, apart from getting the UN involved? Well, as you probably know by now, Messrs. Claes, Vandenhove, Vandelanotte and Van der Maelen, to name but a few, are the co-authors of a pact between Belgium's so-called democratic parties to never talk or form coalitions with the Vlaams Belang, Flanders' only truly conservative party. This situation is called the so-called cordon sanitaire. With regards to the Taliban, however, the gentlemen propose to hold talks with the "moderate ones" among them.

They consider the ¼ strength battalion they have doing what amounts to traffic control at the airport a huge sacrifice and support by the socialist, and yet the Belgian government wanting to commit four measly aircraft and crews is supposed to bring the rest of the world to tears for their commitment to global security.

DownEast concludes:

I get it. For socialists, talks with the VB are haram. Talks with the Taliban however are halal. You know what talks I prefer? I can't wait till those four F-16's start pounding Dirk Van der Maelens preferred speaking partners.

He can also ask them just how it is that his conversation and friendship could have averted 9-11 too. Vanderhofe encapsulates the ignorance of that world view perfectly.

If the government decides to commit our country and our soldiers to such a dangerous, lost war, it is only logical that this decision is explained as quickly as possible in Parliament. In addition, because of this engagement, Belgium will become more than ever the target of terrorist attacks."

Make the myths

It's his birthday today.

France to Increase Its Military Efforts in Afghanistan

Paris réfléchit au déploiement de centaines de soldats supplémentaires hors de Kaboul, où est actuellement concentré le contingent français

writes Natalie Nougayrède in Le Monde.

Leur destination serait des zones de combat potentiellement intense, de préférence la région est de l'Afghanistan, face aux régions tribales pakistanaises, indique-t-on à Paris.

…L'Elysée semble déterminé à renvoyer en Afghanistan des commandos des forces spéciales françaises. Celles-ci avaient été partiellement retirées en janvier 2007 par Jacques Chirac (sur 200 hommes, seuls 50 étaient restés pour former les forces spéciales afghanes).

…Pour Paris, le dossier afghan s'insère en outre dans une séquence diplomatique plus large, qui met en jeu l'ambition affichée par M.Sarkozy de relancer l'Europe de la défense à l'occasion de la présidence française de l'Union européenne, au second semestre 2008, de même que l'idée, lancée en août 2007, que la France puisse "reprendre toute sa place" au sein d'une Alliance atlantique "rénovée". Ce dernier point pourrait, indiquent des diplomates, faire l'objet d'annonces au printemps 2009, lorsque sera célébré le 60e anniversaire de l'OTAN.

Par un affichage fort sur l'Afghanistan, en rehaussant le profil de la contribution française à l'ISAF – faible, en comparaison avec celle d'autres pays européens, et en proportion des capacités de projection françaises –, Paris veut améliorer sa position de négociation face aux Alliés sur les grands chantiers de la sécurité et de la coopération transatlantique.

Highly Recommended

 

Jonah Goldberg:

Fascism, at its core, is the view that every nook and cranny of society should work together in spiritual union toward the same goals overseen by the state. "Everything in the State, nothing outside the State," is how Mussolini defined it. Mussolini coined the word "totalitarian" to describe not a tyrannical society but a humane one in which everyone is taken care of and contributes equally. It was an organic concept in which every class, every individual, was part of the larger whole. The militarization of society and politics was considered simply the best available means toward this end.

 … In the liberal telling of America's story, there are only two perpetrators of official misdeeds: conservatives and "America" writ large. Progressives, or modern liberals, are never bigots or tyrants, but conservatives often are. For example, one will virtually never hear that the Palmer Raids, Prohibition, or American eugenics were thoroughly progressive phenomena. These are sins America itself must atone for.

Meanwhile, real or alleged "conservative" misdeeds — say, McCarthyism — are always the exclusive fault of conservatives and a sign of the policies they would repeat if given power. The only culpable mistake that liberals make is failing to fight "hard enough" for their principles. Liberals are never responsible for their historic misdeeds, because they feel no compulsion to defend the inherent goodness of America. Conservatives, meanwhile, not only take the blame for events not of their own making that they often worked the most assiduously against, but find themselves defending liberal misdeeds in order to defend America herself.

Click to read more quotes from Liberal Fascism…

Send Lawyers, Guns, and €

Much of EUtopia is a developmental backwater that can’t but help wag it’s finger at the world over some imaginary virtues that they pretend to report. Among them is some notion that they have no gun crime. As if to say that human nature was somehow different on their patch, and that they’re immune to theft, jealousy, hatred, and greed, they’ll joyously sneer at the US when they objectively know how much worse it is in Brazil, Venezuela, or even Russia and large parts of eastern Europe.

It’s what makes this kind of report add some cognitive dissonance to the way some are enamored with their precious little state religion of social protection:

A Beretta? A Taurus? In Brussels the number of weapons in circulation have tripled in five years! The prices!

Oh boy!

In Brussels, a clean, never used handgun sells for € 500 to € 2,000 for the most popular gauges. The Kalashnikov goes for 2,000 to € 2,500. Heavy weaponry (the basic type RPG-2 rocket launcher) can be ordered from € 3,000 to 3,500.

And a Beretta handgun, probably a 9mm is selling for € 2,000. A real rip-off if you tell me. Something only a criminal can afford. The honest people will likely have to opt for a cheap Brazilian Taurus, but then again, no American should talk. Most of our handguns come from European manufacturers anyway. The very same manufacturers are virtually barred from selling their own product in their own countries. But Hey, who are we to viciously make european employees redundant...

Without giving an address nor explain everything in detail, note that the process is already extremely convenient. The activity has always been closely connected with prostitution.

Which was legalized in order to “make safer”. In the land of superior social management and intervention, I though there was no need to be concerned with street crime? Which makes you wonder why prostitution had to be decriminalized to begin with.

A good place to start for those who want an illegal firearm is the Brussels railway stations of [the shabby] Gare du Nord and [newly rebuilt] Gare Midi. We saw yesterday many weapons stashed behind concrete slabs and false ceilings, in a search with the police.

They confirmed that they aren’t just sought out by crooks anymore.

Gee! I wonder why a non-criminal would need such a firearm?

Who Has the Cutest Face and Whose Tongue Is Sexier?

This person or this person?

Sex on the Seine, Sex on the Potomac

The Americans were Puritans or adolescents or naïve or God-fearing moralizers. The French were cynical, incorrigible, discreet and suave. Sex on the Seine and sex on the Potomac were distinct sensations, the former enriched by intrigue, the latter threatened by exposure

Thus writes Roger Cohen in the New York Times as he denotes changing customs.

Images such as these comforted the French and Americans in their different views of civilization. There was no point in each country having a universal messages if it was not dissimilar even at the very point of Yeats’ “shudder in the loins.”

But of late some of these images, stereotypes if you prefer, have begun to blur or even cross over.

Which president, after all, currently speaks of God as the “the rampart” against “the folly of men”? Which president is suffering heavily in the polls for the roller coaster of his amorous adventures? Which public seems more concerned with the personal sexual foibles of its political leaders?

Our Lady of Perpetual Forgetfulness

Saint Hedwig’s Catholic Church in Mitte district of Berlin, part of the former East Berlin

Under Erich Honecker’s Communist regime, the faithful in the DDR had to be brave to attend services. I vividly remember these defiant souls filling it on Sundays having to contend with the fact that at high Mass 4 men, (plainclothes cops,) sat in the back row of the church with cameras. Even though they were there to intimidate worshippers and gather anything they thought useful to use as blackmail, they would even stand and kneel when they should have.

Impetuous young man that I was, I made a point one Sunday of sitting right in front of two of them who were sitting side by side, and decided to NOT kneel to make it hard to get a good shot in, and remained standing during communion to obstruct (for once) their picture taking. After hearing from them something that almost seemed like a mumble, I took my laissez-passez out of my front pocket and put it in my back pocket so that they could see part of it sticking out.

Fast forward to the present day: adjacent to two buildings undergoing renovation, and undergoing some renovation itself, the church is wrapped in a car ad. Even without the legacy that makes St. Hedwig’s a sort of denkmal (monument) to at least two of the four freedoms, I wonder, dear readers, if you think it’s appropriate to temporarily turn the narthex into a billboard, or if going through a few months of tastelessness is acceptable. It’s worth noting that in Germany churches receive state support from a steuer that tax-payers can opt in to by indicating their membership in a church and a willingness to support the fund. It’s then not that likely that the screened ad on the tarp was needed for unavoidable financial reasons.

Chime in.

Sarko to slack-jawed hick: "Get lost, dumb ass"

Gotta love it.

If/when similar types of information shows up in the hands of the Russians, Chinese, no squirming if you approve of these sorts of tactics

Remember the

European Union panel [that had] serious doubts about the legality of a Bush administration program that monitors international financial transactions [and that planned] to recommend tighter controls to prevent privacy abuses?

asks Nosferateux. How dare the Americans?! How dare they act so frivolously and how dare they attempt to subvert democracy in that heinous manner?!

Well, it turns out it is all about double standards…

A really easy test for those who approve of the British and German governmental tactics in "obtaining" this type of personal financial information on individuals: Would your reaction of "stick it to the man" and "right on brothers/sisters" be the same if "BushCo" was the one paying the tab for the very same information?

I Guess They Just Don’t See the Same ‘Entertainment Factor’ That I do

Check out the basic idiocy of this idea. Better still, try to tease out of this if the author is actually saying anything at all:

A common theme in the two studies is to situate regionalisation at the “meso” or intermediate level between domestic imperatives and the exigencies of globalisation. It is by teasing out the interplay between these three levels that the authors of these two nuanced and detailed studies provide an innovative contribution to our understanding. In doing so, they provide us with further keys to understanding the role of the European Union as an international actor in relation to other regions.

La victoire des barbudos a réveillé en l'intelligentsia française une vieille passion française pour la révolution

Des années durant, la gauche s'était passionnée pour une aventure dont les prémices portaient pourtant en germe une vérité déprimante : le castrisme était un totalitarisme. Les décennies ont passé, mais les admirateurs du régime cubain n'ont pas tous désarmé. Aujourd'hui encore, alors que "Fidel" quitte la scène, le castrisme compte toujours des partisans, qui entretiennent la flamme de cette durable exception française.

Thus writes Bertrand Le Gendre in Le Monde before he goes on to evoke Hugo Chavez and "l'intouchable" Che Guevara (even taking on Le Monde diplomatique).

A l'heure où Sartre et Le Monde s'extasient, "Fidel", Raul Castro et Guevara ont déjà fait exécuter plus de six cents partisans du dictateur Batista, ou prétendus tels. Le nouveau régime refuse d'organiser des élections. La presse est bâillonnée et les prisons se remplissent d'opposants. Tout cela est connu, public. Mais l'intelligentsia française vit à l'heure du tiers-mondisme. Elle préfère fermer les yeux. La victoire des barbudos a réveillé en elle une vieille passion française pour la révolution. Elle croit dur comme fer à l'avènement d'un homme nouveau dans cette île à la douceur tropicale qui ne s'est pas encore acoquinée avec Moscou.

Just in case you think Bertrand Le Gendre, Le Monde, and/or France are finally coming to their senses, it is good to remember that in April 2002, Le Gendre was the man excoriating Uncle Sam for its "obsessions" with "evils" like communism and the Axis of Evil (but not, strangely — and significantly — enough, Nazism); this, after admitting that, sure, Saddam Hussein was ("is" at the time) a tyrant, but immediately tempering this "acknowledgment" with the remark that his rule could not ("cannot") be summed up by a detail like that.

Thus members of the Left are constantly waking up to the Left's mistakes (and/or crimes) of the past. They are rarely, if ever, awake, to the Left's mistakes (and/or crimes) of the present. Thus they can continue to vehicle endlessly this heroic vision of themselves as prophets and fighters of injustice. As I write in my book,

Une grande partie de l’Histoire de l’Europe (et d’une bonne partie de la Terre entière), c’est l’histoire qu’on découvre 40, 50, 60 ans après, voire plus. C’est mieux que rien, je suppose, mais ce qui est intéressant, c’est que cette tradition permet aux citoyens de continuer à (se) dire qu’ils sont des parangons de la vertu, de la raison, et de la générosité. Et quand ils sont confrontés à ces révélations, ils peuvent (se) dire : oui, c’est terrible, mais c’était une autre génération, nous avons heureusement (beaucoup) évolué depuis lors. Sauf qu’évidemment, les citoyens de l’époque (les ancêtres des autres) se disaient... exactement la même chose (cf. les pacifistes des années 1930 …)

Trouble in Paradise

Discontent amongst 'dem unemployed and minimum wage hacks over at Rue89.com. Looks like some of the idealists are starting to realize that Rue89 and Mediapart.fr, far from pulling off the renewal of French journalism that they blather on about, are simply racing to the bottom of a Marxist-Leninist(in terms of their content)-Stalinist (in terms of their management) shitpile.

Europa, Isolated

Victor David Hanson points out that Europeans will probably have to start asking themselves "why do they hate us!?!?"

Europe is short on energy and depends on illiberal Russia and the Middle East for its fuel. Both these regions are sick and tired of Europe’s empty lectures about human rights and feel only disdain for its absence of military might to back up its sermonizing. But Europe is also anti-American, and now in a world of Ahmadinejihads, Putins, Chinese communist apparatchiks, and thuggish Latin American strongmen, it has more or less alienated the only reliable and capable resource it might have drawn on — the goodwill of the United States.

[ ... ]

Our response to this Euro-neuroticism?

We are weary and tired of it. As our ancestors out West used to sing, “Yippy ti yi yo, get along little dogies, It's all your misfortune and none of my own…”

Speaking Truth to Impotence

A recent Wall Street Journal Europe’s editorial reflects on the wet noodle of European non-nationhood when anything, and I mean ANYTHING comes up.

The European Union got a chance to redeem itself for a big sin of the previous decade and show its vaunted "common foreign policy" in action. We'd like to report it didn't blow it. Alas, we can't.

The occasion was Kosovo's declaration of independence on Sunday. A unified EU stance might have started to make good, at last, on Jacques Poos's infamous 1991 declaration that "the hour of Europe has dawned." Soon after, the EU broke up over Yugoslavia, which collapsed in a series of wars that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. The U.S. had to step in to save the EU and the Balkans.

This week seemed like déjà vu all over again, fortunately without the blood. Spain opened the EU meeting on Kosovo by proclaiming that the U.N. protectorate's declaration did "not respect international law." The ruling Socialists were apparently enraged that the Kosovars didn't have the decency to wait to claim their sovereignty until Spain held national elections next month.

Kosovo is precisely that sort of ‘anything’ that, being in their front yard might just require some sort of attention, which the über-mega-sooper-dooper-nation of superior everything-ness managed to treat like it barely deserved a press release written by a flunky who’s expertise isn’t even in waste management.

In the meantime, the Greeks again threaten to torpedo the EU's grand designs for the Balkans all over a name for its northern neighbor, which Athens insists must be called Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, or the Orwellian FYROM. Unless the Macedonians stand down, Athens will veto its EU and NATO membership. The U.S. and most EU countries recognize Macedonia by its chosen name. A U.N. mediator yesterday put forward new proposals to settle this absurd and costly 17-year-old dispute.

So let there be no illusions. About the only thing that's "common" about the EU's foreign policy is its sheer pettiness, absence of strategic vision and unwillingness to back up grand claims to global leadership with resources or political will.

Say what you will about the Greeks... after all, other Europeans will when they try to waive this embarrassment off in a way that seems socially acceptable, even as they tch-tch the rest of the world’s terrible addiction to nationality and such.

Meanwhile back in Manhattan, Kissinger, the left’s original hate-puppet and singin’-n’-dancin’ prince of darkness, sums up the risk to humanity that Europe is encouraging if not then becoming:

Kissinger: The major events in European history were conducted by nation-states which developed over several hundred years. There was never a question in the mind of European populations that the state was authorized to ask for sacrifices and that the citizens had a duty to carry it out. Now the structure of the nation-state has been given up to some considerable extent in Europe. And the capacity of governments to ask for sacrifices has diminished correspondingly.

SPIEGEL: Thirty years ago, you asked for one phone number that could be used to call Europe.

Kissinger: ... and it happened. The problem now is: Nation-states have not just given up part of their sovereignty to the European Union but also part of their vision for their own future. Their future is now tied to the European Union, and the EU has not yet achieved a vision and loyalty comparable to the nation-state. So, there is a vacuum between Europe's past and Europe's future.

I would just call them emotionally needy bozos aspiring to globally be the Pookie Adams character in ‘The Sterile Cuckoo’, but I’m not selling books like Dr. K. is, and frankly, I though Pookie was talented and kind of cute in a psychotic kind of way.

Kissinger: I think Angela Merkel, like any leader, has to think of her re-election. I have high regard for her. But I do not know many Europeans who would deny that the victory of radical Islam in Baghdad, Beirut or Saudi Arabia would have huge consequences for the West. However, they are not willing to fight to prevent it.

SPIEGEL: For example in Afghanistan. Does NATO need more German troops in the southern part of the country?

Kissinger: I think it is obvious that the United States cannot permanently do all the fighting for Western interests by itself. So, two conclusions are possible: Either there are no Western interests in the region and we don't fight. Or there are vital Western interests in the region and we have to fight. That means we need more German and NATO troops in Afghanistan. What I am not comfortable with is that some NATO members send troops primarily for non-combat missions. That cannot be a healthy situation in the long term.

Meanwhile the old goat of latter-day ‘realpolitik’ speaks. Too bad he doesn’t make any sense.

Dear Americans... What can the world expect from you? Twelve questions for the candidates – By Helmut Schmidt

Where he lost me was in the ‘nuanced’ part of his spoken disposition – the one where he believes that Europe both needs to be taken seriously, if not outright obeyed, and the Europe that is still somehow a ward of U.S.

Europe’s faith in the United States may be shaken, yet we wish to maintain the transatlantic partnership. We want to be able to love America again but we have become skeptical, because for the past 10 years, Washington has turned to us only when it has needed troops or money.

Which the US did after the bellowing calls from across the Atlantic that the US shouldn’t leave them out or go it alone. As for the troops and money, the loudest boors in Europe never managed to actually provide either in any manner that wasn’t a symbolic pittance played to their ignorant audiences at home.

All the same, we Europeans are well aware of our own weaknesses. Although we work together in regulating our funicular railways and the depth of water pools in our zoos, a “common foreign policy” in the European Union still exists in theory only. That is why we hope the new president will lead rationally and multilaterally – not least because we are convinced of America’s vitality.

Yet another “Daddy drinks because you cry” sort of sales pitch, and you can hardly hear the violins.

For the First Time

Cluetrain Manifesto

Lessig for Congress, my ass! Now this is what I call effective intellectual property rights protection.

There is only one guaranteed way you can have peace--and you can have it in the next second: surrender

How much has changed in half a century?

If you and I have the courage to tell our elected officials that we want our national policy based upon what we know in our hearts is morally right. We cannot buy our security, our freedom from the threat of the bomb by committing an immorality so great as saying to a billion now in slavery behind the Iron Curtain, "Give up your dreams of freedom because to save our own skin, we are willing to make a deal with your slave masters." Alexander Hamilton said, "A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one."

Let's set the record straight. There is no argument over the choice between peace and war, but there is only one guaranteed way you can have peace--and you can have it in the next second--surrender.

Admittedly there is a risk in any course we follow other than this, but every lesson in history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement, and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face--that their policy of accommodation is appeasement, and it gives no choice between peace and war, only between fight and surrender. If we continue to accommodate, continue to back and retreat, eventually we have to face the final demand--the ultimatum. And what then?

When Nikita Khrushchev has told his people he knows what our answer will be? He has told them that we are retreating under the pressure of the Cold War, and someday when the time comes to deliver the ultimatum, our surrender will be voluntary because by that time we will have weakened from within spiritually, morally, and economically. He believes this because from our side he has heard voices pleading for "peace at any price" or "better Red than dead," or as one commentator put it, he would rather "live on his knees than die on his feet." And therein lies the road to war, because those voices don't speak for the rest of us. You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery.

If nothing in life is worth dying for, when did this begin--just in the face of this enemy? Or should Moses have told the children of Israel to live in slavery under the pharaohs? Should Christ have refused the cross? Should the patriots at Concord Bridge have thrown down their guns and refused to fire the shot heard 'round the world? The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well, it's a simple answer after all.

You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery. If nothing in life is worth dying for, when did this begin--just in the face of this enemy? Or should Moses have told the children of Israel to live in slavery under the pharaohs? Should Christ have refused the cross? Should the patriots at Concord Bridge have thrown down their guns and refused to fire the shot heard 'round the world? The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well, it's a simple answer after all.

You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, "There is a price we will not pay, there is a point beyond which they must not advance."

Rendezvous with Destiny

It's their default mode

Europeans at each other's throats.