Ah Those Loving, Peaceful, Friendly Europeans

Bigoted hypocrites...
And they think we should be looking up to them for some reason.

Socialist Party enraged at increase of French troops in Afghanistan

Le parti politique préféré des talibanlieusards.

Sarkozy said he would go out and get missing growth with his teeth

He really said that. He must have been talking about those calcium treatments.

The fact of the matter is that this country is just one big death cult. With regards to the world at large, the French want out.

Aggravating factor: If the world is going to more or less follow in the direction of an American inspired globalisation, the French would rather snuff it. Maybe someone should help them.

One More Sign of an Overbearing, Empirious Super-State

All meddling is local.

A Brussels ruling has banned local services longer than 30 miles to ensure drivers don’t spend too long at the wheel.

As a result, drivers have to pull in as they hit that limit and order everyone OFF their bus.

They then change the route number on the front and invite passengers to jump back ON before resuming the trip.

Maybe they can call it an "environmental" measure.

Some of Them Don't Even Seem to Have any Blood to Give

The usual slander about what it means to be a conservative have little changed. Caricatured as tightwads, uncaring, wealthy, and venal, George Will recently reminded us how the data show the opposite to be the case. It’s also worth noting that the non-Washington Post reading public read all about this 16 months earlier.

If many conservatives are liberals who have been mugged by reality, Brooks, a registered independent, is, as a reviewer of his book said, a social scientist who has been mugged by data. They include these findings:

• Although liberal families' incomes average 6 percent higher than those of conservative families, conservative-headed households give, on average, 30 percent more to charity than the average liberal-headed household ($1,600 per year vs. $1,227).

• Conservatives also donate more time and give more blood.

• Residents of the states that voted for John Kerry in 2004 gave smaller percentages of their incomes to charity than did residents of states that voted for George Bush.

• Bush carried 24 of the 25 states where charitable giving was above average.

• In the 10 reddest states, in which Bush got more than 60 percent majorities, the average percentage of personal income donated to charity was 3.5. Residents of the bluest states, which gave Bush less than 40 percent, donated just 1.9 percent.

• People who reject the idea that "government has a responsibility to reduce income inequality" give an average of four times more than people who accept that proposition.

On the surface of these facts there is also a sort of forboding to be found when it comes to our sophisticated continental friends as well. If no-one else in this world believes that government must attend to the management of human life, it is the Europeans, the very people who conceived of every variant of socialism, communism, fascism, and today’s Gramscian Brave New World-like statist neediness.

I can’t also think of any place which is so developed, yet has so much helplessness, nihilism, and social anxiety. If anything dooms a people, it is just that.

My Anglo-Saxons are better than Your Anglo-Saxons

While the term “Anglo-Saxon” is used in France as a way to extend the B-word (Boches!) to the non-French, many Boches themselves see it as a compliment since it reflects well on them, and is often considered a global export on the order of, say, Champagne.

From the “Social Europe Journal” of all places, we find historian Heinrich August Winkler quoting historian Gerald Stourzh.

When we speak of the European Union as a community of values, what we really mean is that Europe is a community of states that embrace Western values. No one expresses the difference between Europe and the West as incisively as Viennese historian Gerald Stourzh when he writes, ‘By itself, Europe is not the West. The West extends beyond Europe. But Europe also extends beyond the West.’ The West’s identity as a community of values comprises the great Anglo Saxon-influenced democracies of North America, the United States, and Canada, as well as Australia and New Zealand, and, since its founding in 1948, Israel. Large parts of Europe, by contrast, have not shared in the development and adoption of values and institutions typically associated with these nations.

Never mind the little white lie about the European Union being the height of the Enlightenment. It’s not, especially what it promotes by example.

But even in this context I’m trying to figure out the angle of the insult, but I think it could be this: while some in the Francophile yack-space use the phrase as a way of distancing outlying events from their presumed nationally shared world view, what they’re really trying to say is that their better than someone else, and if not, they are otherwise special and not to be compared with those wild and crazy Anglo-Saxons wearing horned helmets and eschewing the codpiece of the civilized man. Instead when they call something “Anglo-Saxon” they want you to think of this as if Asterix and Obelix were still fighting off the dreaded European foe (albeit a “Latin” one). It’s auto-tonsil-hockey, and history demonstrates otherwise. In fact the best indicator of just who it is who will manage to make the worst out of enlightenment ideas, turn them on their head, and convince you that their new brutal -ism is okay, is being a European thinker.

P.S. – This edition of the journal also features Clinton Administration Labor Secretary Robert Reich, who warns the notoriously deaf European left that Capitalism actually works if you can stand it. He points to some reasons to hold your nose, but one thing I respect greatly about him is his defense of the free market model and where it fits into a free society.

As if the fixation with the US wasn’t enough, they also include a chart with reasons why they’re better than Americans. Some of their factors in their recitation that singles us out include a “robust, state run media”.

If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium, Europe, Appeasement

Please don't hurt us. We'll shut up. Promise.

Sucking the life out of everything

Europe is a black hole after all.

US “Hearts and Minds” Campaign More Successful in Beirut than in Islington

Former "Nightline" reporter Dave Marash has quit Al-Jazeera English, saying Thursday his exit was due in part to an anti-American bias at a network that is little seen in this country.

But it isn’t over the lack of cultural sensitivity of anyone in Qatar, it’s coming from that other presumptive “Religion of Peace”, the European left that virtually monopolizes the European media, especially the state-run media.

Marash said he felt that attitude more from British administrators than Arabs at the Qatar-based network.

Fitna, The Movie

Loved to Death

The “climate of violence” slag oft parroted on the BBC and in the MSM appears to have either paid off for the underhanded involved in it, or must prove to the ignorant that insurgants aren’t the thoughtful, reasonable people the people in the press suppose they are:

Periods of intense news media coverage in the United States of criticism about the war, or of polling about public opinion on the conflict, are followed by a small but quantifiable increases in the number of attacks on civilians and U.S. forces in Iraq, according to a study by Radha Iyengar, a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in health policy research at Harvard and Jonathan Monten of the Belfer Center at the university's Kennedy School of Government.

The increase in attacks is more pronounced in areas of Iraq that have better access to international news media,

This is rather obvious to say the least. Knowing that “world” sentiment is behind you when you’re about to maim civilians and troops probably makes the difference in the minds of those wondering if they suspect their actions might not have repercussions for them personally later in life.

The study also found that attacks increased more in parts of Iraq like Anbar province, where there is greater access to international news media, measured by the proportion of households with satellite TV, which its authors say increases the credibility of their findings.

Let’s not kid ourselves. All of this gives a certain class of people more worried about their psyches than stability a real woody:

But not the right way. Consider this: what “alliance” consists of member states that actively try to undermine each other’s dearest security initiatives, in the process endangering the lives of soldiers sent to the battlefield? This is what happened in the run-up to the Iraq war, when President Chirac and Chancellor Schroder crawled all the way to Moscow (both countries were of course, historically speaking, familiar with that road) to enlist resurgent Russia’s Vladimir Putin in their anti-American alliance.

Vladimir Vladimirovitch couldn’t believe his luck. One of his central aims – destroying American hegemony – suddenly seemed within reach, with help from the inside! If he’d been paying attention, Putin would have noticed that his guests had already been pursuing the very same agenda for a number of years.

[snip]

The difference on the ground could have been enormous, as the experience of Bush senior’s Gulf War shows: a solid Euro-Atlantic coalition could have forced in more of the Arab countries as well – and made the cost for subversive action by countries like Syria and Iran much more punitive. That could have saved the Americans from dealing with a lot of crazies that were set loose in Iraq by those countries after the invasion.

And this is a result of the European model of “statesmanship”: the one where any sort of inaction is justified by waving the word “peace” around, and any other form of inaction is justified by tacitly propping up a dictator and undermining an “ally”.

Brave, Brave Sir Robin

Thanks to people on the left — as you all doubtlessly realize — we are heading towards a world of peace, of wisdom, of tolerance, of mutual understanding, and towards a world where all problems will be resolved through courageous talks, heartfelt discussions, and deep respect for one another.

To strike this point home, peace protesters wanting to bring peace to the world (or at least to West Chester, Pennsylvania) decided to hold a protest in said borough where they proceeded to live out their glorious ideology.

They started by looking loving, wise, and tolerant, they went on by having polite, respectful, and gracious talks with evil counter-protesters, and they ended by… showing the utmost courtesy to a young female blogger.





The young female blogger in question is on the right in the photo on bottom (no link to Code Pink despite the color of her cap). You can undoubtedly see what a threat someone like Skye would pose to a gallant and chivalrous peace protester like the white-bearded knight in her video…

Catch the Drift

A new blog, The Reactionary, sees the light…

The trickle down economy finally comes to Europe

The French get a chance to lap up Germany's crumbs. "Germany is doing fine, and that's trickling down to France..."

It’s for the Children!

” Progressives’ ” notions of free expression. If it’s social suicide, they’re all for it.

A bizarre battle has erupted over the arrest on child pornography charges of a man at a California public library, with library and county officials siding against the staffer who called police to arrest the alleged criminal.

Librarian Brenda Biesterfeld was fired from her job after disregarding her supervisor's orders not to call police.

Mercy buckets a RV

Obama tried to claim that the outbreak of Wright's poison was a distraction, not a real issue, and the press obediently echoed his complaint

Embracing Wright is not a distraction. It is a disqualification.

…The controversy was not about race. It was about [Obama's] longtime association with such a hatemonger and whether he shared the Reverend's vision.

…And if I just fall asleep, I, too, can live in the pod people's dream palace, where every conversation about race is our first conversation about race …for [a number of people] - like La Raza or the college professors scrambling to follow Obama's lead - when they say we need more conversation, they really mean their version of reality should win the day. Replace "conversation" with "instruction" and you'll have a better sense of where these people are coming from and where they want their "dialogue" to take us.

… Is "divisiveness" defined as disagreeing with the agenda of the left? Who on the left was ever called divisive by Obama before that became politically necessary in order to respond to revelations about Jeremiah Wright? … Since all things are the same, except for the differences, and different except for the similarities, it is always possible to make things look similar verbally, however different they are in the real world.

Around the World on All Fours

The poignant story about the man who went around the world on all fours, for change, for hope, for his beliefs, for all Mankind...

La BAF brings the world another stirring epic adventure wrapped inside another piece of outstanding cinematography…



(avec sous-titres français)

Banging their Spoons on their Highchairs

They’re garden-variety violence advocating neo-marxists who will probably tell you that they’re all for “peace”. A French “resistance” outfit can only get their loony drivel printed in Paris Match. It’s a little like as if the only press the Unabomer Ted Kaczynski could get was from People magazine or maybe Home and Garden based on his creative domestic use of leaf mold.

They’re demanding a “revolution tax” from the Élysée, but seem to be losing out on the pan-European competition for who can be the most resourceful and innovative. They should join the rest of the proletariat, and demand guaranteed unemployment for life.

They Do Impressions Too

Taking the edge off of Europe’s Obama-rama, a junket to Paris by American republican presidential candidate John McCain must be giving a moment of either cognitive dissonance or the kind of flattery that would remind them of an earlier age when they France was a world power.

LeMonde Al Jezeera sur Seine puts it in a subdirectory called “poubelle,” of course.

Meanwhile the bed-wetters over at Rue89 think that the whole thing is some sort of coup by an evil wizard named Sarkozy, who they think is American (as if we’d ever accept anyone European in our horrible baby-eating prejudice!) They forget that it was a stop on the way to Berlin from London, and are horrified that he’s a “francophobe,” even if he’s never said so because of this:

The reason for his bitterness against the French? John McCain was in the Vietnam War. In 1967, he was captured in the north of the country and spent five and a half years in captivity. He explained that during his years of detention, he has seen a French television team which appeared to show some sympathy for his jailers and indifference to American prisoners. He has not forgotten.

Remember, somehow he became a francophobe, but has also (somehow) been seduced.

Among the deliciously crazy comment posters, McCain, has now been christened a “theocon”. It must mean something to them. Of course these are European leftists, which means that they know everything there is to be known and corner the market (sorry, capitalist pun) on good sense. Their reaction are typified by:

I don’t know anything about American elections, but I think Obama has a good chance of being elected.

A people speak!

Sarkozy is a hack

No tax reductions. No reduction of social contributions by companies. The French won't be satisfied until they obtain the same standard of living as Bolivia.

Usine à gaz

The hot air of Zeropean hypocrisy.

Scripting the News

BBC celebrates the fall of Saddam by trying to pretend he didn’t even exist.

In a series of short (10-minute) films, dramatic haikus to mark the five-year anniversary of the preparations for the March 2003 invasion of Iraq (BBC2, Monday-Friday), the BBC has again shown the narcissism of small imaginations. Narcissism, because like so much of what passes for debate on Iraq, the programmes stare obsessively at the images the media themselves create of the conflict and its causes; small imaginations, because these images are tightly bounded by a tacit but iron will to confine all debate within variations on the theme of Americo-British responsibility for a disaster.

The films were shot in grainy sepia with a things-are-getting-worse musical score, and actors of the quality of Juliet Stephenson, Patrick Malahide, Stephen Rea and (next week) Kenneth Branagh playing such roles as Elizabeth Wilmshurst (Stephenson), the Foreign Office legal adviser who resigned because she judged the war illegal before it began; Sir Jeremy Greenstock (Malahide), the UK's ambassador at the UN charged with the impossible task of building a majority for war on the UN Security Council; General Tim Cross (Rea), the British Army's most experienced rebuilder, who struggled in vain to persuade Donald Rumsfeld to plan for the postwar Iraq; and Colonel Tim Collins (Branagh), who will - to shift from review to preview - next week re-enact the speech Collins made to men about to do or die - "We go to liberate not to conquer".

Biased-BBC also note the deep seeded one-sidedness of the tone of the reportage, complete with bringing on Richard Perle to play the goat. Why he keeps getting on the various BBC “newsy” opinion products, I’ll never know.

In all of this, there was not one hint of more than a sentence that the war was fought against one of the 20th century's greatest monsters. It was as if we were to dissect the crassness of Abraham Lincoln before the Civil War, with no reference to slavery; the tactical blunders of Winston Churchill without the Holocaust; or - let us be up to date - the ramshackle nature of the US-British-French coalition, with Milosevic's ethnic cleansing brushed out. This, for the defining conflict of the early 21st century, is what our media do: that is, they render it unintelligible.

Which is no exaggeration. It’s exactly the impression I got, which was to crane their necks to NOT mention key facts and events to prop up the angle of their coverage, more than the coverage itself.

At least they're good for something

Looking for a market bottom? It's here. Today's Sunday New York Times has 3 section feature cover stories (style, week in review, business) covering the recession. If the laggards over at the NYT have managed to pick up on this then you can take that as a contrarian buy signal.

Sitemeter Bingo

With thanks to our faithful readers, ¡No Pasarán! Has inched along to 3 000 000 visits since 2004.

On this day in ’04, Jonathan discussed the un-quiche-like health benefits of the Big Mac and French government's response to Sheik Ahmed Yassin's assassination. Prolific chap, that Jonathan.

In ’05, I got cranked up somehow over nostalgia for sayings misattributed to 18th century aristocracy, Castro’s huge personal worth, and Truthers making up allegations of Genocide. Erik, as always was chasin’ the ladies, and Pete DuPont. Otherwise silence set in.

W said “Get Whitey” and told Hermann to get a yob. He also reminds us of the persistence of the purple helmets of peace.

2006 was a riot

2007 saw a sharp rise in Scimitars with U*2 reminding us of what cretins and liars AmeriKKKans really are. Son, can you smell the mendacity?

In ’08, we welcome the welcome the third day of spring with a refreshing romp through the glade

If Islam were not the way it is, the Danish cartoons would never have appeared in the first place

…if Islam were not the way it is, those cartoons would never have appeared

in the first place, Wafa Sultan is quoted as saying on the blog Danish Affairs.

They did not appear out of the blue, and the cartoonist did not dig them out of his imagination. Rather, they are a reflection of his knowledge. Westerners who read the words of the Prophet Muhammad ‘Allah has given me sustenance under the shadow of my sword’ cannot imagine Muhammad’s turban in the shape of a dove of peace rather than in the shape of a bomb.

…The reactions of the Muslims, which were characterized by savageness, barbarism, and backwardness, only increased the value of these cartoons, and gave them more importance than they merited, simply because they proved that these cartoons were true, and that the message they were conveying was true.

Let me Schpank you Again, Liebchen

The EU is working hard to build an uneven playing field as a precedent for their thousand year empire. I used to suspect that the courts were being abused by EUbatting average) against large foreign companies, but am now quite convinced that the competent courts in these cases are playing along, and taking it as an entertaining or academic exercise at the expense of the eventual consumer.

Intel Defends Itself in Europe: Executives and lawyers representing microprocessor giant Intel appeared before EU regulators this week in a last-ditch effort to fend off antitrust action against the company similar to that which has plagued Microsoft recently. The hearings will continue today with representatives from Intel rival AMD explaining why, in fact, Intel needs to be curbed. "We're trying to convince the [European Commission] that this is a competitive market and that it behaves as one would expect a competitive market to behave, to the benefit of consumers," an Intel spokesperson explained. That's so cute, and I'm sure the EC will see things exactly that way, given that Intel sells over 80 percent of the microprocessors sold each year.

EU Worried that Microsoft Actions Might Harm Investments: And speaking of the EU, it turns out some there have concerns that its aggressive pursuit of Microsoft will have a negative effect on corporate investments in Europe. In a speech this week, former EU president of the Court of First Instance Bo "Duke" Vesterdorf said that slowing investment in the EU could result in slowing innovation and consumer suffering, the exact opposite of the effect the EU was shooting for when it went after Microsoft. Amazingly, Versterdorf said he regretted that Microsoft never appealed his court's decision against the company, though such an appeal had little chance of success.

After all, he might lose his meal ticket. The court’s racket is no different that the EUvian view of favoritism for well-connected and often partially state owned domestic industries. It is nothing more than trade-protectionism by another name, and it’s goal is to take without giving back, with consumers paying the difference, just as they do with their own protected industrial monopolies. If they plan on being a relic, maybe everything they do deserves to be treated as a cultural exception.



Sudden Sainthood

Miscellaneous Europeans Willing to Fight to the Last Canadian

I guess they ran either ran out of skulls, or someone thinks that being tacitly pro-Talibanwill protect them.

Canada's forces in southern Afghanistan are getting a boost from the U.S. Marine Corps.

[snip]

The deployment is a stop-gap to bolster the Canadians, who have been battling insurgents and insisted on help as a condition of extending their deployment. After Germany, Spain, and several other NATO states refused (again) to send troops south, the U.S. offered a Marine unit. For the next seven months, the North Americans will be fighting shoulder to shoulder in the province. Hell, if the Mexicans chip in a brigade, Kandahar could join NAFTA.

I’m sure the Spanish and German “street” will rationalize something post cultural. In the mean time a German splodey-dope detonates his bad mono-cultural self.

We’re Dealing with Idiots

al-Qaeda threatens the EU again. Europeans cover their ears.

In a new audio message purportedly from Osama Bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader threatens the EU over the re-printing of a cartoon offensive to Muslims.

The voice on it says the cartoon, re-published recently in all major Danish newspapers, was part of a crusade involving Pope Benedict XVI.

Oh that warmongering pope!



In fact what's sadder is that in view of this purported threat which "premiered" on Al Jazeera and is purported to be from "Ben" Laden, a search of Le Monde's archives, that "independant" news paper of record, yields something even sadder: a goofy bit of artist-dabbling-in-politicking taking a kind of one-man-show vainglory.

More of that feel-good European snake oil

Feel the heat carbon neutralness. Not so much carbon neutral as carbon neutered.

Bande de sauvages

Claude Goasguen is a French politician who is not afarid to tell the truth.

Fun with Speculated “Facts”: Consider the Audience

At one point (April 2006) he said making Iraq dictator free was one trillion dollars, a clean, round number that even an old hippy can remember. Then a January 2006 of his statement was used to raised the alarmism to two trillion dollars

Now Stiglitz says it’s three trillion dollars.

I think I found out where he gets his routine, and why corrupting the figures is so useful. Of course, not to be out-done, Pravda raised it to six.

Strange, How Few Pundits and MSM Outlets Commemorated the Fifth Anniversary of the Iraq War

Five years after the start of the war in Iraq, it's become common wisdom — among mainstream media and Beltway pundits, anyway — that it's all been a failure

writes Investor's Business Daily, as it quotes George W Bush.

They couldn't be more wrong.

The U.S. war in Iraq — and by extension, President Bush — started coming under withering criticism not too long after it started in March 2003. Quickly forgotten were these salient quotes, made just the year before:

"We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction." — Sen. Ted Kennedy, on Sept. 27, 2002.

"It is clear . . . that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons." — Sen. Hillary Clinton, Oct. 10, 2002.

"We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country." — Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002.

We could go on and on. Others said similar things. Suffice to say, support at the time for "doing something" about Iraq was wide and deep. They even egged Bush on, urging him to get tough. Then, in the fall of 2002, Congress authorized Bush to go to war.

Only later, in late 2003 and 2004, as polls showed public support waning, did many of those same prominent politicians who once enthusiastically stumped for war and even voted for it in Congress suddenly do an about-face. It stands as one of the most shameful political turnabouts in U.S. history.

Opponents suddenly claimed the war was a sham, that they were fooled into supporting it by cooked intelligence, that we should have never removed Saddam, that Iraqis were better off with him in power than with us as occupiers.

The war in Iraq, in short, simply wasn't worth it. But they were wrong on all counts.

The data on the war weren't cooked; virtually every major foreign intelligence service, including those of France, Germany and the U.K., among others, believed Saddam Hussein was pursuing nuclear and biological weapons — weapons of mass destruction.

Moreover, Saddam's ties to al-Qaida, despite recent news reports to the contrary, were clear. He openly tolerated Ansar al-Islam, an al-Qaida affiliate, in northern Iraq. He welcomed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi with open arms before the war began.

His intelligence service met with al-Qaida cell leader and 9/11 terrorist Mohammed Atta months before he attacked the Twin Towers. Osama bin Laden even wrote a now-infamous letter to Saddam in the 1990s, asking for help.

As 9/11 Committee co-chairman and former New Jersey Gov. Tom Kean said, "There was no question in our minds that there was a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida."

We achieved many concrete benefits from taking Saddam out — none of them, by the way, related to "blood for oil," the libelous and patently false phrase used by the left to tarnish the U.S. war effort.

For instance, Libya's Muammar Qaddafi gave up his nuclear weapons just weeks after the U.S. deposed Saddam. Coincidence?

Syria pulled its troops out of Lebanon, a country it bullied for decades. Elections followed. Iraq and Afghanistan had free and fair elections, while Saudi Arabia, Egypt and even Syria recognized democratic movements. North Korea suddenly decided to talk.

Oh, but we didn't find WMDs?

On the contrary, U.S. troops found more than 500 weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. True, we didn't find an operational nuclear weapon, but U.N. inspectors found lots of equipment and plans clearly showing that Iraq had been working on one — and intended to do so again.

All of these are facts. And so are the following:

Iraq is today a growing economy again. From 2002 through 2006, the most recent year for which data are available, per capita GDP in dollars jumped 110%.

Before the war, there were some 833,000 people with telephones. Today, there's 9.8 million. Fewer than 5,000 people were on the Internet during Saddam's rein of terror; today, it's a quarter million.

There were no private TV stations under Saddam; today Iraq has more than 50. There are at least 260 independent newspapers and magazines in Iraq, vs. none under Saddam. Just 1.5 million cars were registered before the war; by 2005, that had hit 3.1 million.

In short, by almost any objective measure one might choose, Iraqis are today much better off than they were under Saddam. Those that deny this are, frankly, deluded.

Better still, Saddam's jackbooted minions no longer pull people screaming out of their homes for torture sessions and murder.

By some estimates, an average of 50,000 people died each year from Saddam's campaigns of genocide, ethnic cleansing and political murder. Last year, the peak of the surge, there were 18,000 civilian deaths — mostly by terrorists.

Today, Iraq's nascent democracy, though imperfect, seems solid. A recent look at the Index of Political Freedom shows Iraq ranking as the fourth-freest country in the Mideast, out of 20. Those who term the war a "failure" need to define that term.

Since the surge began a year ago, nearly every indicator of violence in the country is down, and down sharply: civilian fatalities, off 80% from the peak; enemy attacks, off 40%; bombings, off 81%.

Yes, U.S. fatalities are nearing 4,000. And every death of every brave soldier is a tragedy. But we lost more soldiers on D-Day.

In 2007 — widely reported by the media last summer as the "worst" yet during the war — 901 American troops lost their lives. By comparison, during the Clinton administration, an average of 938 American soldiers died each year in the military. The notion that we've suffered unconscionable troop losses is false and misleading. This is the most bloodless war in history.

So far, we've spent about $500 billion on the war — less than 1% of our GDP over the past five years. Yet with that money, we've perhaps recast the history of the Mideast, giving its people a chance to throw off the shackles of tyranny and to live in peaceful democracies. We've bashed al-Qaida severely, killing key leaders and demoralizing the terrorist group's followers.

We've not had a single major terrorist attack since 9/11 — no doubt, in part, because we showed our mettle when attacked. Just as important, we've helped make the threat of nuclear annihilation by rogue states a focus of international diplomacy — something that might end up saving the West.

Not bad for an unpopular war. Democrats may propose a total withdrawal of all our troops, as Barack Obama has done, but increasingly Americans look to be siding with President Bush. On Wednesday, he called for us to stay in Iraq until the war is completely won. We agree.

Kim Jong Il Has Met his Match

How about throwing in a James Earl Jones voiceover on that cat first?

The Dance of the Monkeys

Funny that. All they needed was a piece of ass. Instead we ended up with decades of hideous social policy and scores of miserable “liberated” human failures, and the inappropriate parade of self-absorption celebrating the personal becoming the political. Is that crowd waiting outside in the cold for the Methadone Clinic to open up something to really be that proud of?

Götz Aly:

If the ratio of men to women had been more balanced, things would have gone differently. It was like the dance of the monkeys. There were few women at the universities, and at the same time there was the Pill and the sexual revolution. Reimut Reiche has noted that Freud said protesting men have a very special sexual attraction – they are XXL men. With this in mind, there was a very clear purpose to sexual liberation. It was fun, but it had little to do with emancipation.

Q: Didn't you perceive 1968 as a liberation?

Of course. In 1967 German students still addressed one another formally, as Fräulein Schmidt or Herr Aly. They wore pleated skirts or ties and jackets, and had nervous breakdowns every time they had a meeting with a professor. But all the writing about emancipation from that era is unbearable junk. Not only the theoretical stuff, even publications about private kindergartens. They don't contain one reasonable sentence, nothing that one could profitably read today.

Oddly enough there was no sit-com called Joschka’s Heroes, but there really should have been – featuring fist-pumping Socialists who were rather willing to kill people, the Bader-Meinhoff Gang, the KGB funded Red Brigade, their instinct to passively accept totalitarianism, and every crappy idea they’ve latched onto since.

With the hard-drug addiction, suicide, and divorce rate being as high as it is, the attendant loneliness of huge numbers of people who then had to invent absurd analogs to the intimacy of family life... with all of that, can we actually call it a failure and move on, or do we have to keep pretending that these incredibly fragile, touchy people really did create that miracle of social revision they keep claiming the rest of us should thank them for?

Further About the Palestinian Boy Killed for the Exploitation of Political Radicals

An excerpt from the conclusions of an independent ballistics report concerning the death of Muhammad al Dura, a Palestinian boy who has, since 2000 become a lionized figure due to a report with footage showing his and his father’s death by France 2’s Charles Enderlin. A great deal of controversy has risen over that report. He was said to have been shot by Israeli troops, which made the child a poster image of the Palestinians and the western radical left. Technical analysis of their relative positions done shortly after the event, and reports those on the scene have demonstrated that the report was a fabrication using the local stringers working for the world press as a means of fabricating this event for political purposes. Since France 2 wanted to indulge its’ audience and sell the footage worldwide, it practiced as it often has a sort of transparent side-taking in reporting news that it thinks it can conceal, even when it contains fabrications.

From the ballistics report:

The protesters, mostly adolescents and children, threw stones at the Israeli checkpoint. The general atmosphere was good-natured, people walk quietly and vehicles drove along the road from Gaza. Some young and people and a man near a jeep appear injured, but they are simulations, with several subjects identified. Many shots were fired, but it is not possible to identify their source. Many journalists covered the event.

The one minute long report by France 2 was titled “the death of Mohamed AL DOURA” and was aired on September 30, 2000. We found a shot the wall above and Mohammed Jamal. A total of eight Impacts are present on this wall, after which the AL DOURA child is seen lying motionless, and not through an impact on the barrel (behind which they were shown taking cover). The sequence matching the moment when Mohamed was injured is unclear. Many factors are likely create doubt that the father and son were hit by projectiles.

According to the statements, Mohamed was injured in his right knee and his stomach, but no trace of impact or blood was visible on his clothes. Although France 2 photographer Talal Abu Rhama said that the child had bled for ten to fifteen minutes, no trace of blood was visible on the ground.
A doctor indicated that if the wound in the stomach was from a bullet that fully entered him, projections of blood and flesh would be visible on the wall (which they were up against), which does not appear on the Photographs of the BBC covering the ten seconds after the France 2 report.
It was said that Jamal was hit on the right arm, abdomen, and legs, while no trace of impact or blood was visible on his clothes. In addition, the location of these indicated injuries was hidden either by the barrel and by the body of his son, who were between him and the direction of the rounds.

Therefore he could not be in the condition described by France 2’s report. Talal Abu Rhama said that gunshots were directed at Jamal and Mohamed AL DOURA for at least forty minutes. Had that been the case, and assuming that a single shooter has concentrated his fire in their direction during the entire time, more that eight impacts that would have been shown to be on the wall above them, but a minimum of two thousand.

While many other cameramen were present at the scene, only France 2 filmed the episode of the "death" of the child. The Israeli police post is located 80 yards from where Jamal and Mohamed AL DOURA took cover. Depending on the plan which we have been provided, the angle of fire is about 36 degrees to the wall behind them. In this situation, the father and the child could not be fired on by the Israeli post for the following reasons:
Jamal Mohamed AL DOURA and were protected by the barrel they used for cover, and it shows no trace of shots through it. In this position, they certainly could not been hit in the lower limbs [as France 2 stated].

The test firing conducted with the weapons used at the time by the Israeli army showed that the impact characteristics of allegedly oblique gunfire have been substantially elongated and are almost horizontal. Those visible on the wall are generally circular, which corresponds to shots fired
Perpendicular to the plane of the wall [not at the oblique angle].
Talal Abu Rhama said that fire came from behind him, while the Israeli checkpoint was sharply to his right and slightly behind his camera location.
It is not likely that the cameraman from Reuters and another journalist would be located next to Mohamed AL DOURA before his death because they would have left them open to the direction of the Israeli fire [not covered as the al Duras were].

The boy was killed for the exploitation of political radicals with the aid of partisans in the press who are too dihonest to state their political motives, and are willing to fabricate news stories that advance causes that fit in with their own opinions.

At Le Monde, Colombia's drug traffickers and kidnappers are victims, while those who fight against them are to blame

According to one Le Monde reader, Marie Delcas' article on Alvaro Uribe ought to be "studied in journalism schools", so tendentious it is in its "soiling" of Colombia's president.

In the simplistic or dishonest universe of Mrs Delcas, drug traffickers and kidnappers are victims, while those who fight against them are to blame.

.

Meet the Feebles

Serial media buffoon Jackie Ashley finds the perfect platform to peddle her idiotic fantasies that everyone is like the Europeans she is willing to talk to. She advocates talking the headless hydra that is al Qaida. Of course, this is the Guardian we’re talking about, so in the unintentionally hilarious comments the usual theme that al Qaida doesn’t exist – and that even if it did, it was created by the CIA, and even if it was, the Israelis were behind it, just like they were behind the Northern Ireland “troubles”. Never mind that the genius behind the structure of al-Q is that it isn’t structured in a way that a leader can control or readilt comprimise a significant number of cells, and that it would fragment into hundred of “Real IRAs”, and that it is structured not to ever take a U-turn. These guys are a self-detonating self-guided weapon the moment you pay the rent on their crib.

Also orbiting planet Graun, the usual fevered minds are advocating perpetual autocracy in Cuba to a piece by Vaclav Havel, a man once imprisoned in similar “paradise”.

In fact the same readership who are apoplectic at Havel for wanting to open up a serious dialogue with Cuba about a pluralistic future free of oppression are eager to talk to murderous, illiberal fanatics.
I must however correct Ashley on one point: al Qaida has frequently offered “peace” with civilization, but our governments have to forcibly convert their populations to Islam first.

The garden variety Guardian reader’s willingness to accept the living death of having things forced on a population is nothing new. In fact I cant think of any group of people whose tirades and examples are as unchanging, consistent, and impervious to their own statements of concern for people as these. We’re also sure to see them shortly gleefully going after someone else tortured by communists. It’s just something they do.

Photos from a Brussels street courtesy of RV

Tedious Euro-narrative of American Prudery Temporarily Out of Service

Miss France tut-tutted off stage for a lack of that rotten patriotism eeeeevil nationalism that TV-show inhabiting parasites suggest is a malady that singles out the US as some sort of burden on their relativism. It’s also supposed to be the thing that taxes their benighted tolerance, because they actually have to tolerate other people.

Photos of a naked Bègue Valerie, Miss Reunion and recently selected Miss France for 2008, provoked the anger of Genevieve de Fontenay. Ces photos seraient contraires à l’image que défend Geneviève de Fontenay et le comité Miss France. These pictures are contrary to the image that Genevieve de Fontenay and the Miss France Committee promotes. Les miss doivent être glamours, défendre l’image de l’élégance de la France. Miss France must be glamorous, and defend the image of the elegance of France.

The US has creative destruction, France has slow death

Les bloggers franchouilles take it all for des conneries. The fact is, the French cannot face the facts. The pace of change in France? Going nowhere fast.

France: "No PROOF of DIRECT Ties Between Saddam and Al Qaeda" Becomes "Pentagon Discretely Admits That There Were NO Ties Between Saddam and Al Qaeda"

Le diable est, dit-on, dans les détails

écrit JC Durbant: en évoquant, entre autres, l'article Le Pentagone avoue discrètement qu’il n’y avait pas de lien entre Saddam Hussein et Al-Qaida paru dans Le Monde.

Démonstration, à la veille du 5e anniversaire de la libération de l’Irak, avec ce nouveau petit joyau de désinformation dans la dépêche AFP du jour du quotidien de révérence d’hier qui n’a bien sûr jamais entendu parler de Zarqaoui, formé dès les années 90 en Afghanistan par Al Qaeda même, ou de Mougnieh ou des camps d’Ansar Al islam soutenus par Saddam dans le nord de l’Irak dès décembre 2001, soit avant même l’invasion alliée.

Et qui, s’appuyant sur ABC dont il se contente de traduire un ou deux extraits bien choisis, commence par évacuer, sans parler du mot “preuve”, un petit mais crucial adjectif de son titre: le fameux “direct” (”il n’y avait pas de preuve de lien direct entre Saddam Hussein et Al-Qaida” devenant ainsi: “Le Pentagone avoue discrètement qu’il n’y avait pas de lien entre Saddam Hussein et Al-Qaida”).

(Plus prudent ou moins pressé, Le Figaro se limite, lui, à l’évacuation du “preuve”: “un rapport publié mercredi par le Pentagone établit avec certitude qu’il n’y avait aucun lien direct entre le régime de Saddam Hussein et le groupe terroriste al-Qaida.”)

Se retrouvent ainsi passé à l’as, les passages sur (en plus des primes et prises en charge des familles de ses recrues) l’activité non “privilégiée” mais notoire de formation, pour tout le Moyen-Orient et notamment Israël, de terroristes-suicide à la voiture piégée ou à la ceinture de dynamite.

"Societal anti-Semitism" in France

That's a nice way of putting it.

Pour une étude minutieuse de l'anti-sémitisme en France, lisez Houdna de Guy Millière, le hit underground de 2008 aux Editions Underbahn.

That's what happens when you try to report everything from the hotel bar

Don't sweat the small stuff, sweetheart.

Obama confirms it on Fox

Being faithful comes in spurts (@57 seconds).

The Human Zoo is now an animal zoo as well

Sounds like Sarcelles.

Monopolist, Heal Thyself

Funny how they’ll engage in triple jeopardy with any American tech company, but can’t get a single little public award to be competitive. Or cough up what is in this case, probably about 3 1/2 pages of interoperability information.

With these clowns the thing is never really about the thing.

The UN surrenders...

... to Kosovo Serbs.

Understatement of the year

France gets EU loot to go ahead and build the "European" search engine Quaero, which has been revealed to be a shill for Thomson's IPTV and other TV-on-demand gigs. After Chiraq's bluster and the frequent preening by his various stooges, we learn that this grand European project was really just a shallow Franco-French gimmick to prop up sales for strategic yogurt production.

Don't Tell the French That Barack Obama's Middle Name, Hussein, Should Not Be Mentioned…

You know, of course, about the controversy in the United States about using Barack Obama's middle name when referring to the Senator from Illinois. Hussein t'is, and why referring to the name is beyond the pale might seem strange, offhand, when most people know about the (respectively English, Irish, and Italian) middle names of Ronald Wilson Reagan, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

It is true that the name is Muslim, that Hussein was the name of a foe of the United States, and that both (both Muslims in general and Mr Hussein in particular, that is) are known to have given Americans, and Westerners, a few headaches over the past few years. Still, to suggest that Barack's middle name provides a direct link with Saddam Hussein, directly or indirectly, seems specious indeed. Like saying FDR's Germanic-sounding name in the World War II era was a sign to keep one's distance from the New York governor.

Unless you're French, of course. As any Amazon.com reader knows (from whichever language Amazon website he orders from), they get a regular (a weekly?) email stating something to the effect that

We've noticed that customers who have purchased or rated Such-and-Such-a-Title have also purchased Similar Title by Such-and-Such-an-Author. For this reason, you might like to know that Similar Title will be released on Such-and-Such a Date. You can pre-order yours for just $(Price-of-Item) by following the link below.

In that capacity, it might interest some that people (like myself) who ordered Le Livre Noir de Saddam Hussein (The Black Book of Saddam Hussein) when it came out (two and a half years ago) all seem to have gotten the email below, which reads as follows…

We've noticed that customers who have purchased or rated The Black Book of Saddam Hussein by Chris Kutschera … have also purchased Dreams from My Father by Barack Hussein Obama. For this reason, you might like to know that [the French translation of] Dreams from My Father will be released on 15 March 2008. You can pre-order yours by following the link below…

Incidentally: FYI, the translation of BHO's book loses the unconventional "from" form in French, making the title sound like a less distinctive Dreams of My Father (the only way to keep the original meaning would have been to make the French title much longer, say, as Les rêves qui me viennent de mon père)…

Leveraging France's leading civilian nuclear technology to gain diplomatic, commercial, and military advantages with countries in the Middle East

The recent war games in the Gulf with France, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates are connected to French President Nicolas Sarkozy's nuclear diplomacy

write Michelle M. Smith and Charles D. Ferguson.

Sarkozy has been leveraging France's leading civilian nuclear technology to gain diplomatic, commercial and military advantages with countries in the Middle East, as well parts of Africa and Asia.

In (somewhat) related news, Reuters' Muriel Boselli reports that

France, one of the world's largest producers of atomic energy, must act fast to avoid a shortage of skilled staff to run its reactors and win a role at the heart of a global nuclear revival.

An aging work force, a lack of courses and low enthusiasm among young engineers, for a field that is often seen as secretive or unsafe, all threaten France's ambitions for nuclear power.

…But nuclear power is getting new attention in the United States and in Europe as concerns mount over the contribution of fossil fuels to global warming and over energy security. Europe's dependence on natural gas from Russia and North Africa is another concern.

Among companies vying for the business are Areva, a French builder of reactors for nuclear operators; Électricité de France; the German utility giant E.ON; and GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy.

…The number of schools that train nuclear engineers and plant operators has halved in the last 25 years … EDF, the world's largest nuclear operator, has acknowledged the problem, especially as it is trying to expand abroad.

To Punish and Enslave

Ain't America great?

Le discours belliqueux du Lt. Col. Chavez permet de resserrer les rangs et de disqualifier les opposants, aussitôt accusés de trahison de la patrie

Certains observateurs estiment que les discours [belliqueux] de M. Chavez ne doivent plus être pris au sérieux

writes Paulo A. Paranagua in Le Monde.

La preuve, disent-ils, c'est que l'escalade est retombée en une semaine. Une vision qui permet d'esquiver la question. Car à partir du moment où on déplace des forces aux frontières, les risques de dérapages ou de provocations augmentent.

…Criminalité et inflation incontrôlées, corruption sans limites, panne de l'industrie pétrolière, pénuries d'aliments et de gaz, fronde de la jeunesse, saturation des téléspectateurs qui se détournent des chaînes publiques, épuisement des programmes sociaux, les signaux d'alarme ne manquent pas pour le gouvernement vénézuélien. Mais la crise du "chavisme" englobe et dépasse toutes les difficultés. Le Parti socialiste unifié du Venezuela, la nouvelle formation présidentielle, prétend compter plus de 5 millions d'adhérents, mais à peine 80 000 militants se sont déplacés pour élire leurs dirigeants, le 9 mars. Le discours belliqueux du lieutenant-colonel Chavez, se posant en chef de guerre, permet de resserrer les rangs et de disqualifier les opposants, aussitôt accusés de trahison de la patrie.

And They Claim to Have a Monopoly on Tolerance and Decency

Rival Democratic camps battle over race and gender

The latest explosion followed a comment from Geraldine Ferraro, a Clinton supporter and onetime vice presidential candidate, that as a black man, Obama had received preferential treatment.

Leftie politicking is clearly a mental health issue.. It’s as skin deep as their deep, deep concern for “middle class families” and it typified by this bit of loony OCD about one reflexively “I’m not partisan” partisan of the press prodding another “I’m not partisan” partisan of the press.

...and in other news: Paying that kind of money, it’s probably a rather small tip. Besides, as an Uber-Alpha-dog, what is he doing paying for it to begin with?



So much for “The Caped Avenger” of fake populism and anti-commerce who some Democrats were hoping would be the “first Jewish President.” Why are these people so obsessed with genetics?





(wait for it!)

French concern with the damage America has suffered to its reputation during the Bush presidency

Bernard Kouchner, the foreign minister of France and a longtime humanitarian, diplomatic and political activist on the international scene, says that whoever succeeds President George W. Bush in the White House may restore something of America's battered image and standing overseas, but "the magic is over."

Thus reports Alison Smale in the International Herald Tribune's Roger Cohen conversation.

Asked whether the United States could repair the damage it has suffered to its reputation during the Bush presidency and especially since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Kouchner replied, "It will never be as it was before."

"I think the magic is over," he continued. U.S. military power remains, he noted, and the new president "will decide what to do — there are many means to reestablish the image." But even that, he predicted, "will take time."

The wave of French entrepreneurs going to England shows no signs of abating

…legislation limiting the workweek to 35 hours hurts small businesses more than large corporations. Contrasting France with Germany and Italy and their networks of robust - often family-run - multinational companies, [Elie Cohen, a leading French economist,] said: "We don't have a fabric of small and midsize enterprises; it's an essential weakness.

"The rules are made for the big enterprises, not for the small," Cohen added. There are an estimated 500,000 French men and women living and working in England, most of them younger than 35. The wave of entrepreneurs going to England shows no signs of abating.

Thus writes John Tagliabue in the New York Times.

Among the first young entrepreneurs to reach Kent, Mr. Cothias founded Eikos in 1998 after the French company that had employed him refused to let him establish a subsidiary in Britain. To register his company in Britain cost him £1, or about $2. In France, his parents would have had to mortgage the family home to pay the applicable fees, he said.

He also learned that while an employer in France must pay pension, unemployment and social security charges that add up to 48 percent of an employee’s salary, British employers pay only about 10 percent.

He says he believes that such differences reveal a deeper philosophical divide. “The economy is viewed here as something needed, one of the most important parts of society, if you want everyone to be clothed and fed,” Mr. Cothias said. “This creates a totally different environment for business.”

NATO: France to prepare the implementation of permanent structured cooperation open to all the EU's 27 member states

Trust is built over time and through reciprocity

concludes Bernard Kouchner, France's minister of foreign and European affairs (in Le Monde).

Our openness to the United States and American support for the EU autonomously assuming its responsibilities shall advance hand in hand.

European defense and Europe's anchorage in the Atlantic alliance are two facets of the same defense and security policy, pursued in the name of the values we share.

The EU presidency, which France will assume on July 1, must allow us to open new perspectives in the field of security and defense, to fight against terrorism and proliferation more effectively, to reinforce our energy security, and to prepare the implementation of permanent structured cooperation open to all 27 member states, as made possible by the new treaty. We will resolutely strive toward that aim. We are already preparing ourselves under the presidency of our Slovenian friends. This progress will give full meaning to the renewal of our relationship with NATO.

Dogging for Diversity

Euro-enlightenment watch:

The police's National Diversity Expertise Centre (LECD) wants sex allowed in all public parks in the Netherlands. The police institute has advised the cities to follow the example of Amsterdam, De Telegraaf newspaper reported Friday.

In Amsterdam's Vondelpark, owners of dogs let off the leash can be fined, but sex will shortly be permitted. "Why should we try to maintain something that is actually impossible to maintain, which also causes little bother for others and for a certain group actually signifies much pleasure?"

Diversity. Okay. Do you happen to know any other words? Oh, I forgot... there’s “group pleasure” which in previous generations was expressed as a passive acceptance of mass slaughter and waiting in bread lines, and other forms of meagerness with some kind of literary potential.

Strangely enough though, it’s those dog people that are mad about it, basically over their hurt feelings and the possibility of having to take care of potential “Rover took over” moments. The old saw about the Dutch caring more about their pets than their children seems to have panned out.

Dog owners in Amsterdam are angry after the city legalised public sex in one of the city's most famous parks.
Councillors agreed that heterosexual and gay couples could have sex in the Vondelpark which has ten million visitors a year.
But they promised to clampdown on dog owners who let their pets walk in the park without a lead.

But in that quintessentially Dutch way, they make even this un-fun in their robotic and disinterested way:

"There still are rules," he added. "They must take their garbage with them afterwards and never have intercourse near the playground. The sex must be limited to the evening hours and night."

I will give them this: this is the first evidence of ‘two legs good, four legs bad’ that’s been heard of from the continent of divine wisdom in decades. It’s just that “diversity” usually means never offending anyone with guilt-derived political clout, like say Moroccans “youths” who are unlikely to find much appeal in either dogs nor boinking bipeds (or both) in the normally bog-like Dutch topsoil. I guess if we’re lucky, the fatter child molesters will even get stuck in it.

Believable and well-researched stories that bring pleasant surprises and that are a delight to read is the most important ingredient for the reader

Because of General Leonardo, I have been interviewed by Giampietro Stocco, the webmaster of the alternate history website, UChronicles.

This is what Saber-rattling looks like...

...in a Eco-touron’s idea of a “idyllic society.” It involves a female senior citizen in Mauritania hacking away at her napping neighbor until he’s in a coma.

Sing it!

We are the world
We are the children
We are the ones who make a brighter day
So let's start giving
There's a choice we're making
We're saving our own lives
It's true we'll make a better day
Just you and me

Then again maybe it doesn’t really matter these winners

When is the mother going to be charged by the UK police? She took a 15 year old out of school for 6 months and then allowed her to drink, take drugs and sleep around. She then left her in the care of an unknown character.

A Nitrogen Rich Self-Image

Chide as they might that Americans keep themselves psyched up about being a great society, it isn’t driven by the arrogance we see above that requires something about us to be the center of everyone else's world.

The Veiling of Sculptures

Confused as they are about diversity having something to do with human rights, they definitely are on the right track.



Bagged the old fashioned way

That Sure Is a Lot of Global Warming to Shovel

What Are We Waiting For?! Put Al Gore in Charge!…

We see the side effects of these policies today, as the Germans and British are assailing the legal barriers that have made Liechtenstein a tax haven

According to John B. Taylor's book Global Financial Warriors, the recent tax scandals in Europe are but a by-product of the war on terror.

Here’s That “Social Rebellion” they Always Adored

Thank your local deluded old hippy for the world they left us with... Every day in that self-described “socially superior” society of France, 60 teachers are assaulted.

America: Stupid, Unclultured and Backwards

Whether it’s true or not, it’s said and repeated de rigeur. James Harkin writing in the FT thinks otherwise:

If distinctively European thinkers such as Isaiah Berlin and émigrés from Europe to America such as Hannah Arendt had dominated the battleground of ideas during the age of ideology (defined, by the British historian Eric Hobsbawm, as the years between the first world war and the fall of the Berlin Wall), one of the oddities of this new landscape of ideas is that Americans seem to be much better at generating them. There are still some heavyweights around in Europe with novel things to say - Jürgen Habermas in Germany and Slavoj*Zizek in Slovenia, for example - but they are few and far between.

This might seem like an exaggeration until you look at the figures that pop up in the yackity-yack-arati are small in number and recurring, regardless of the size of the population. It’s also not hard to picture Europe’s not so distant past it was characterized by a large, difficult, ungovernable population being made into a passive, insatiable, debilitated large population thorough the horrors inspired by a small intellectual elite.

When France's Jean Baudrillard died in March last year, at the age of 77, it seemed to signify the close of an intellectual era. In any case, Baudrillard was canny enough to know which way the intellectual wind blew. For all his criticism of American culture, he was enchanted by this place he called "the original version of modernity". France, he pointed out, was nothing more than "a copy with subtitles".

Which brings us to WHY Baudrillard would have to put it in this way. The double standards are so pervasive and the habits are so deep as to even require an admired public intellectual figure to have to salve a statement with something that indulges the foregone conclusions accepted by the wider public.

However, America's dominance in the new global landscape of ideas is not only a matter of resources. Americans have also become expert packagers of ideas. American writers and thinkers seem to have acquired the knack of explaining complex ideas in accessible ways for popular audiences. The success of idea books such as The Tipping Point and Freakonomics and a rather depressing glut of books about happiness has signified to cultural commissars a thirst for good ideas clearly expressed. It helps that journalism in America is taken more seriously than it is in most other countries; its newspapers and magazines have been happy to whet the public appetite for interesting ideas, clearly articulated.

Which is a foregone conclusion, unless the way you see the world and roles people play in it as fixed.

Assaulted by this battery of sometimes flaky new ideas, it would be easy for European thinkers to sit back and sniff. Some of it is mere gimmickry - zappy headline titles that seem to capture the essence of a complicated idea while intriguing the reader enough to read more.

Which used to give rise to the tired saw du jour that Americans were obsessed with health and exercise and seemed to know the terminology inside out. The slag then moved on to computing and finance. But perhaps between the best-seller list and the dominant themes of the insults, we have a sort of contrarian way of seeing things as they really are.