Behind the Façades in France: What expats and the mainstream media (French and American alike) fail to notice (or fail to tell you) about French attitudes, principles, values, and official positions…
When the Democrats' Congressman, Keith Ellison, compares George W. Bush to Hitler, media outrage is noticeable by its absence. Media snorts and snickers, in fact, are notably directed at the Republican ticket for making too big of a fuss about William Ayers.
And yet, if fascism is about seething hatred and mass murder, Confederate Yankee has the info about exactly who it was who was for "plotting the extermination of … 25 million" people ("four times greater than the Holocaust" — and what for? "for daring to cling to the American way of life").
Remember, Billy Ayers is the man who states that he has few, if any regrets, his regrets being confined to not doing more.
Confederate Yankee also links to Zombie Time's excerpts of Prairie Fire (and comments thereon, followed by comments about what the connection, if any, with Obama is all about).
Ayers was not simply protesting "against" the Vietnam War. Firstly, he wasn't against war in principle, he was agitating for the victory of the communist forces in Vietnam. In other words: He wasn't against the war, he was against our side in the war. This is spelled out in great detail in Prairie Fire.
A fellow American living in Paris who (for some unfathomable reason) doesn't think that Barack Obama speaks for him — and who, indeed (for some unfathomable reason), thinks that Barack Obama may be naive — sent a letter to the editor of New Hampshire's Granite State News. (Don’t be confused by the small town appearance of the paper, it is part of Salmon Press, a media group with multiple papers, a daily print circulation of over 200,000 in a small state, and a major online presence.) What he asked to be printed was the following viewpoint:
At the World Policy Forum in France, Jesse Jackson said that Barack Obama would “apologize for our [American] arrogance”. He also said that our support for Israel would end.
As a proud American living in France, I am offended at how Barack Obama feels he needs to apologize for America as he did during his European tour. Europeans do not want apologies. They want a strong America. Obama is naïve. Kruschev looked JFK in the face and saw naiveté leading to the Cuban missile crisis. Jimmy Carter’s “love the world” approach led to the Iran hostage crisis.
Now Obama’s campaign has foreigners contribute financially and calling voters in “swing states” to influence their vote. That is wrong and it is un-American.
I want a president who insures that America is respected, not one that worries about being loved by the French. Barack Obama is frighteningly naïve and unfit for the presidency of the United States.
Now, as you probably know, editors virtually never respond to emails or letters, they either publish or toss them in the trash. However, our friend was fortunate enough (?) to get a reply. He was not fortunate enough to get his viewpoint published, but he got the consolation prize (?) of a long (sic), a well-thought-out (sic), and a courteous (sic) reply. A reply showing that Tom Beeler, editor extraordinaire of the Granite State News, understands the world, politicians, preachers, Republicans, Barack Obama, Jesse Jackson, common courtesy, and, last but not least, the independence of the media better than anyone…
No one listens to Jesse Jackson, even if he did say those ridiculous things, and Jesse Jackson is not Barack Obama. And Obama is anything but naive.
I forget the exact quote (anybody have it along with a link?), but Howard Dean once was quoted as saying: "I will do anything, say anything, promise anything to get you elected" (you being whoever the candidate and whatever the race in question was).
As the patron saint of NP is of Argentine lineage we are duty-bound to take a peek from time to time at what gives south of that equator. Ugh:
Argentina's President Cristina Fernandez has signed a bill that will nationalise the country's 10 private pension funds.
...
Ms Fernandez said that Argentina needed to protect those with pensions amid falling stock prices around the world.
However, expectations of the announcement sent Argentine shares 11% lower and critics said the government simply wanted its hands on the money ahead of a tough budget year.
As can be seen elsewhere, the lock-step vanguard of the hard-left is eager to use the current financial system turbulence as subterfuge for their insatiable statist thirst for ever more money, your money of course. Previously the monetarily-grabbing vultures on the hard-left had to use a wee bit of stealth to hide their propensity to pick your pocket. With financial turmoil the gloves are off and the current play on the hard-left is the straight-up smash, grab, and gobble, all in the name of "social justice" mind you.
Argentina's 2001 default at least was wrapped in the faux-plausible radical blasé-chic liberation rhetoric of "sticking it to the man!". The 2008 version of events is nothing more than a blatant confiscation on the part of hard-left statists.
In surveying the very possible hard-left wave breaking against the barricades the thought does arise regarding the need for a new anthem of solidarity amongst the statists. Forget about dusting off that old copy of the Internationale you may have found while looking for your autographed copy of the Little Red Book. This is a new time in need of a new anthem befitting our smash-grab-and-gobble comrades on the hard-left. Two possible, and very appropos, offerings: Gimme, Gimme, Gimme and Money, Money, Money.
The most important part in all of this is that the media and the left need you to be demoralized. They need you to think it's hopeless … not only so that they get the presidency, but so that they get a filibuster-proof Senate as well.
Thus writes Christopher Cook, who is optimistic and gives arguments and reasons for you to be as well, adding that
Everyone is forwarding stuff around on Ayers and FannieFreddieMaeMac and ACORN. And well we should.
But in a way, those poll numbers are the most important thing to forward right now.
Think of it: You've read these emails, and surely you've noticed that in some, there's touch of resigned desperation, as if to say, "can you believe this guy is this corrupt and he's going to win anyways?".
But that's EXACTLY how the media and the Democrats want you to feel.
No, scratch that. That's how they NEED you to feel.
Americans are being told, by their fellow citizens as well as by foreigners, that in order to prove that they no longer are racist, they must elect a black man to the White House.
That is good to know.
But one question arises. By how many percentage points must Barack Obama win for "America" to "prove" (to itself as well as to others) that it is no longer racist? It would seem that only something in the neighborhood of a 99% victory could effectively determine that. But that is the kind of "victory" only seen in dictatorships, so hopefully a victory in that kind of numbers won't be required.
What if the Illinois senator wins by, say, 60%? That's a pretty impressive victory by any standard. But does that mean that the other 40% must necessarily be racists? Must race be the only, or the main, reason for their voting against Obama?
What if it's a razor-thin victory? Should the former community organizer win by only, say, 50.02%, will that mean that Americans aren't that ready to give up the racism that has (allegedly) characterized them for so long?
And how about four years from now? Must Americans again prove that they are not (or that they are no longer) racist? Come the 2012 election, must Americans reelect President Obama to the White House to prove they are not fettered by racism? Again, by how many percentage points? And what if a hypothetically impressive 2008 victory turns into a hypothetically lackluster 2012 showing? Will we then be told, ominously, that that proves that racism "rears its ugly head" again?
And what if the results of the election aren't that straightforward? Remember 2000? What if Obama comes out ahead (barely), only to have John McCain — for valid reasons or otherwise — mount a campaign to recount the votes in some state(s) or parts thereof? What if Obama's victory is not ascertained until several weeks after November 4? Can you imagine the outcry that will cause? (Let's not even imagine the hollering, the wailing, and the gnashing of teeth among American leftists as well as foreign ones, should Obama be the candidate who loses after a year-2000-election scenario!)
And how about the future? Given that one in seven Americans is black (it's actually about 12.85% or closer to one in eight, but since we are talking about presidential terms, seven is an easier figure to handle), must Americans from now on elect an African-American every seven election cycles to prove they aren't racist? And must they not just have a black person run, but actually win the election — meaning that any white person's campaign (for the presidency or simply to be his party's candidate) is doomed ahead of time, meaning in turn, the parties may have no whites even thinking of being a candidate every seventh election cycle? By the way: must Americans elect an African-American exactly every 28 years — regardless of circumstances — or must they elect every seventh president a black man, i.e., taking into consideration the number of terms of the intervening six presidents, that is, counting a (supposedly white) single-termer's four years in the White House and a (supposedly white) two-termer's eight years as one each (i.e., as one each of the intervening six presidents)?
Maybe the solution is even more drastic: instead of electing a black man every seven election terms, Americans must make up for the 220 years without an African-American at the helm; meaning that the next six presidents (the total number of white males in the White House, 43, divided by 7) must be black. This, in turn, can only mean that no white politician may run for the supreme office (or even for the party's candidacy), whether in the Democratic party or the Republican Party, at least, until 2032 and possibly (should all candidates win reelection) until 2056.
And while we're at it, how about women? Must we elect a woman every second presidential contest? And again, must we start afresh (i.e., electing every seventh president a black and every second one a woman) or must we — again — make up for the previous 220 years — meaning we can only have blacks as president until 2032 and only females as presidents (one out of seven of whom is a black female, naturally) until the year… 2228?
What is the point about these questions? The point is as follows: Make no mistake about it. Should Obama win the election, the hand-wringing and wild charges about American racism — both at home and abroad — will at best cease temporarily. Any opposition to President Obama's policies will be construed as racism "rearing its ugly head" again.
And at best (at best, according to the — non-thinking — bean-counters, that is), in the faraway future, we will be told by the snickerers and the snorters: "Well yeah, a black American was elected in 2008 (even reelected in 2012), but that was a one-time travesty!"
Or they will say that oh, sure there is an African-Americans (there are African-Americans) whom Americans have elected president, but… his (but their) skin color wasn't dark enough. "Would they ever" — insert knowing ironic smile here — "elect a really dark Negro?"
Why do I think this? Why do I know this? How can I be so sure of it? Because it has already come up. Every time Obama inches forward, we see a resurgence in the tales of Barack Obama getting assassinated.
So first, we get snickering and snorting that (of course) America will never elect a black man president. When the prospect of a black man acceding to the presidency becomes distinctly possible (and even probable), we get snickering and snorting that (of course) that president (or that candidate) will be shot dead.
Why does this come up? Because Americans — or certainly, conservative Americans from small town America — must be accused of something sinister.
It doesn't matter if the nation's sports stars are black, it doesn't matter if the nation's top film stars are black, it doesn't matter if a nation's top generals are (or have been) black, it doesn't matter if the largest cities' mayors are (or have been) black, it doesn't matter if the secretary of state is black, it doesn't matter if a main party has chosen a black man to run for the presidency (whether he wins or not). As for electing a black man president, I would happily vote for a person such as Michael S Steele, Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Larry Elder, Shelby Steele, and (until recently) Condoleeza Rice.
But, again: all that doesn't matter: Americans — or certainly, Americans from small town America (the conservatives who usually vote for Republicans) — must be accused of something sinister. If it isn't racism, it's fascism. If it isn't fascism, it's something else. Americans must be treacherous, they must be greedy, they must be warmongers, they must be reactionary, they must be clueless. And… they must be racist. (Incidentally, has it ever occurred to you — has it ever occurred to our Liberal friends that what they think — what they are convinced they "know" — about run-of-the-mill Americans from small town America might actually be perfectly representative of the alleged racism that they deplore in those run-of-the-mill Americans' sentiments towards the black race? Notice that what the leftists accuse white, conservative, Waspish Americans of — nay, what they are convinced represents those Americans' entire reality — is far more derogatory and denigratory than the alleged racism that those Americans allegedly feel towards a race such as the black one.)
This is why we have what Mark Steyn calls it "Obama assassination porn." If/When Obama is felled by a bullet, the liberals will have a field day (or rather a field, week, month, year, decade, etc…) bemoaning that "America", i.e., that conservative racist America is what killed America. (But nations do not commit assassinations, nor do unorganized racial groups; only individuals do.)
Incidentally, what is frightening to envision, with all these martyred Obama fantasies and all this alleged racism floating around, is that the theoretical murder of Barack Obama would be (far) more profitable to the Democratic Party than to any racist individual or, certainly, to anybody supposedly embodying conservative America. If a Democrat really wanted his party to win, having their black candidate assassinated a few days before the election (along with the ensuing outrage and commotion) would ensure the party's near-certain capture of the White House. (Difficult to envision? As Jerry Bowyer points out, most presidential assassins have been rather of a leftist bent.)
Whatever the case, the basic truth about racism is as follows: racism is far less an accurate description of an attitude prevalent in a given society, in a given individual, than it is a weapon that is wielded to demonize one's opponents while making oneself appear heroic by parroting (and by doing nothing else than parroting) politically correct platitudes. More often than not, in other words, the fight against alleged pockets of racism is nothing more noble than a self-serving act of self-praise.
Four of five years ago, a furious leftist in France lashed out at me, asking me (rhetorically) whether I thought it was democratic and whether America was a democracy when the Republican (the conservative) candidate outspent the Democratic (the leftist) candidate. The unspoken message being that when one candidate outspends the other, there is no democracy, such things ought not to happen, and that if a man with leftist ideals were at the helm, a measure of justice would be at work and such things would not occur.
Now, we learn not only that the leftist candidate is outspending the conservative one, but that Barack Obama alone (that is, the political machinery behind him alone) is spending as much as George W Bush and John Kerry did in 2004 together!
But do we hear any kind of questioning of this kind of inequality, from the usual purveyors of political correctness and social justice (and alleged electoral fair-play)? You know the answer, do you not?
For the past eight years, Americans have been bombarded nearly nonstop by cries of "Bush stole the White House," without a single proven shred of evidence, without a single indictment or conviction of Republicans on vote fraud, vote rigging or anything even close. Meanwhile the only group indicated and convicted in actual vote fraud cases in the last two elections -- ACORN -- is fully mobilized still, claims to have registered 1.3 million new voters this year, and is tied historically and inextricably to our front-running candidate for President, Barack Obama.
This third story is more than just another bimbo eruption for Domenique Strauss-Kahn.
Blog aggregation site Agoravox.fr reported late yesterday, having later changed it's more accusitory seeming headline, that a woman has come forward saying that the IMF chief and French Socialist Party big-wig attempted to rape her.
Is the DSK affaire is the tree hiding in the forest? At the worldly Parisian dinner parties, director of the IMF is apparently well known for his amorous conquests. His supposed affair with a Hungarian economist is in the headlines right now, but this relationship between consenting adults is, after all, as inconsequential as DSK himself, merely a banal exchange. It gets more serious. A video posted on the web explains how DSK tried to rape Tristane Banon, a young journalist and novelist. If the facts are proved, the charge would indeed be terrible. But the victim does not conceal herself, but rather accuses the director of the IMF of bullying.
It also seems that that the matter was hushed up in February 2007, even though it was well after the presidential election that early on gave him a good bit of exposure, and Strauss-Kahn was far from Paris with conciderably less exposure, having already been appointed head of the IMF.
After her segment on Tous le Monde en Parle hosted by the terminally anti-American Thierry Ardisson, she mentioned it to the muckraker investigative journalist, who didn't think much of it. In his arrogance, he suggested that "it not what I asked you here".
In other words, to Ardisson a senior politician attempting rape is perfectly normal, and unworthy of his attention. What do you expect from a man that treats political discourse on TV the way Jerry Springer used to cover bisexual midgets who are unfaithful to their spouses.
A German bank is tagged as "Germany's Dumbest Bank", see if you can spot the clue which may have tipped off any reasonable person long before any problems cropped up:
German prosecutors and police today raided the Frankfurt headquarters of state-owned bank KfW, looking into a case suspected criminal breach of trust.
Prosecutors said they had opened an investigation into whether the bank's executives acted criminally in allowing KfW to transfer €319m (£251m) to US investment bank Lehman Brothers on the day it went bankrupt.
17 percent of French voters take a shine to a relaunched LCR as an anticapitalist party. It’s run by the boy-wonder mailman Olivier Besancenot who never worked. It should prove popular among idiots who seem especially disturbed in their unionized jobs, especially in these confusing times where one might have to add up numbers from time to time.
Michael Gurfinkiel, writing the The Weekly Standard has more:
The Soviet empire disintegrated in 1991. The KGB networks, however, have continued to operate, both inside and outside Russia. And Havana continues to serve as a capital in exile for many of them. This accounts for both the spread of Castroite regimes in Latin America in recent years and the consolidation of a global anti-Western alliance, from Hugo Chávez in Venezuela to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran. It may also explain the current attempts to resurrect hard left parties in Europe, whether Die Linke in Germany or the NPA in France. In any event, commenting on the recession in France last month, Besancenot expressed confidence that things were ripe once more for "good old revolution."
The party elite of the French far-left are genuine stooges straight out of the 1970’s who look to authoritarian prison states for inspiration – having learned nothing in the mean time, other than the parties themselves are a sort of meal-ticket for the ruling class that lead it. In Germany, Die Linke tried to promote in the last election to head the federal republic with the slogan “Luxus für Alle” or “luxuries for all” to appeal to the same mathematically deficient population that so many times before had made a name for Europe in the world as the continent of blood. Olivier Besancenot is surely aware of that he shares such a noble heritage with both the legacy of what the ideas he’s adopted have produced, and the simplistic methods by which it continues to peddle itself. The historical ignorance, as well as outright stupidity about economics are key. It’s why revolutionaries target the young and the educational establishment.
First, he has no working class background at all. His parents were solidly middle class (his father was a high school teacher and his mother a school psychologist). He went to college--Nanterre University in Greater Paris--and earned an M.A. in contemporary history. He is first and foremost a Revolutionary Communist League apparatchik who joined the working class at the party's request, first as a supermarket warehouse worker and then as a mailman, in order to acquire the politically necessary proletarian credentials. Tellingly, he was co-opted to the LCR's Central Committee in 1996, before he went to work for the postal service.
Besancenot, moreover, never actually worked much as a mailman. Under French law, workers are entitled to long leaves, on full salary, if they serve as officers of unions or political parties. Besancenot is both. And he knows how to make the most of it. He has been on leave almost continuously, either as a union activist or as an LCR figure--assistant to an LCR member of the European Parliament, party spokesman, or presidential candidate. This was his real job, and it was much better paid than his nominal job at the postal service. As a European Parliament assistant, he apparently made 5,000 euros a month.
Besancenot's private life is even more intriguing. His early rise within the LCR was due in large measure to the fact that he was living with a daughter of Alain Krivine, the group's founder and head, who himself ran for president as a Trotskyite in 1969 and 1974. Besancenot later separated from her, but remained Krivine's protégé. Then he met his current companion, Stéphanie Chevrier. A radical activist, Chevrier, 38, is also a top editor at the publishing house Flammarion and reportedly makes 10,000 euros a month with numerous perks. She owns an apartment in Paris on the exclusive Left Bank, where she lives with Besancenot. Her contacts in the French media have apparently been crucial in her common-law husband's meteoric rise.
To whom--one may ask, then--do Krivine, Chevrier, and Besancenot ultimately answer?
From its very inception in the 1960s, Krivine's Revolutionary Communist League was closely tied to the Castro regime in Cuba. Today, Besancenot describes Cuba as a "truly progressive" society. He coauthored a book in praise of Che Guevara in 2007. Last spring, shortly before launching the NPA, he visited his "friends" in Havana, where he "met with various militants." On May 6, in an interview with Rouge, the LCR magazine, he praised the "internationalist" dimension of the Cuban Revolution.
In truth, only in a corroded society where families are temporary things subject more to whim than love, and the state is one’s husband and breadwinner, could such a man thrive – one who, at 34 is considered a “kid” and given a pass on all of those things “kids” do:
The chief reason for Besancenot's popularity is that, like Barack Obama (to quote Michelle Obama), "he's cute." With his boyish face, broad smile, and big eyes, Besancenot appeals to his generational peers, women, and even older people, who tend to see him as their virtual son.
Change and hope, 60's style: Ayres Weather Underground planned to kill 25 million Americans in re-education camps
"I bought up the subject of what's going to happen after we take over the government. We, we become responsible, then, for administrating, you know, 250 million people.
And there was no answers. No one had given any thought to economics; how are you going to clothe and feed these people.
The only thing that I could get, was that they expected that the Cubans and the North Vietnamese and Chinese and the Russians would all want to occupy different portions of the United States.
They also believed that their immediate responsibility would be to protect against what they called the counter-revolution. And they felt that this counter-revolution could best be guarded against by creating and establishing re-education centers in the southwest, where we would take all the people who needed to be re-educated into the new way of thinking and teach them... how things were going to be.
asked, well, what's going to happen to those people that we can't re-educate; that are die-hard capitalists. And the reply was that they'd have to be eliminated. And when I pursued this further, they estimated that they would have to eliminate 25 million people in these re-education centers. And when I say eliminate, I mean kill. 25 million people.
I want you to imagine sitting in a room with 25 people, most of which have graduate degrees from Columbia and other well known educational centers, and hear them figuring out the logistics for the elimination of 25 million people.
And they were dead serious."
Larry Grathwohl, former member of the Weather Underground.
Also in September, American Craig Loehle, a scientist who conducts computer modelling on global climate change, confirmed his earlier findings that the so-called Medieval Warm Period (MWP) of about 1,000 years ago did in fact exist and was even warmer than 20th-century temperatures.
Prior to the past decade of climate hysteria and Kyoto hype, the MWP was a given in the scientific community. Several hundred studies of tree rings, lake and ocean floor sediment, ice cores and early written records of weather -- even harvest totals and censuses --confirmed that the period from 800 AD to 1300 AD was unusually warm, particularly in Northern Europe.
But in order to prove the climate scaremongers' claim that 20th-century warming had been dangerous and unprecedented -- a result of human, not natural factors -- the MWP had to be made to disappear. So studies such as Michael Mann's "hockey stick," in which there is no MWP and global temperatures rise gradually until they jump up in the industrial age, have been adopted by the UN as proof that recent climate change necessitates a reordering of human economies and societies.
One item of interest though. An oft-asked but never answered (not that we have seen) question: out of the 100% of GHG in the atmosphere, what % is man's doing?
An analytical chemist who works in spectroscopy and atmospheric sensing, Michael J. Myers of Hilton Head, S. C., declared, "Man-made global warming is junk science," explaining that worldwide manmade CO2 emission each year "equals about 0.0168% of the atmosphere's CO2 concentration ... This results in a 0.00064% increase in the absorption of the sun's radiation. This is an insignificantly small number."
We see if the science holds up. Much better to rely on science and data in these matters vs. religious feelings.
For no reason other than to grab any vote that they can, the way the loony left will suddenly start pretending to embrace military people whom they otherwise reflexively accuse of abuse and stupidity should prove amusing. Reserving their hatred for them until it seems politically expedient to "suport the troops", Powell's endorsement of a man with no executive experience or accomplishments.
It's as mercenary as the hypocrity that French politicians are trying to paper over Dominque Strauss-Kahn's abuse of his office in pursuing an affair with a subordinate at the IMF. They are biting the bullet for no reason other than their own advancement at the cost of anything they used to think was right an wrong, because like Powell, he's all they've got. All must agree to the exclusion of anything else. Even to the point where someone will censor the Wikipaedia page about the victim.
What, then, are the consequences? The perp's wife, Anne Sincair, is television political interviewer in a nation where repeating the fashionable superlatives is manditory to the exclusion of anything else and any other assertions even when they aren't true, is for now reserving her comments – much like Hillary Clinton after if became obvious that Bill couldn't suppress his appetite for any reason, is biting her lip for the sake of her own future value, and nothing more.
The hypocrity that the hardest core or Obama's supporters will have to engage in now, having over the past 7 years carried signs that say “Bush is te real terrorist” and the “Bush-Cheney did 9-11” should be amusing. What it will reveal is their lack of value and fidelity if their candidate actually wins.
Aren’t you glad the police are on the case? The quickest way to destroy a concept is to overuse the terminology associated with it. Ergo, anything in Europe is raised to the level of a right whether it really is or not. Blink twice and you’ll be able to kiss those rights goodbye.
Public homosexual activity in parks and public bathrooms must not be impeded by law enforcement officials except as a last resort, says a new set of draft guidelines for UK police.
Nonetheless, even though they are not to interfere, officers are told to go home and do their required reading in order to expressly not enforce any sort of public order.
The constable encouraged police to study sex websites for insight into the whereabouts of homosexual sex hot spots. Such websites show, among pornographic advertisements, dozens of public haunts for homosexual men seeking anonymous sex - among the most notorious being Dartford Heath, where public sex has been said to have spiraled "out of control."
Which is pointless, even if you are trying to “build trust” with 2% of the population, but enforcing the law on others.
The ACPO already enforces guidelines for police officers handling the public indecency claims against homosexual cruising, which emphasize "the value of building trust with local LGBT communities" to ensure that action against homosexual activity be "fair, necessary, and legitimate." The guidelines were authored by the ACPO Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Working Group in 2000 to provide "a comprehensive LGBT policing strategy centered around anti-homophobia."
Let SOME adults fuck in public, force people to explain this to their children, and there will be no more homophobia – I get it!
Islam should be treated more sensitively than Christianity: BBC
Mark Thompson claimed that because Muslims are a religious minority in Britain and also often from ethnic minorities, their faith should be given different coverage to that of more established groups.
As if the grand span of other world religions who are minorities in the UK don’t deserve preferential coverage, or that there is some reason to behave preferentially to any private group or institution.
Must pick your enemies to detest, must pick your fashionably oppressed to champion, even if you’ve got no clue: lefty moral vanity demands it. In that prism, some must always be more equal (or pitiable in a politically useful way) than others, especially if they represent the fewest people and the treatment itself manages to dispossess the largest number of people of equal treatment.
Why? Because hating normal, happy people makes them feel smart.
One may want to read this article from the EU Observer regarding the EU-15 indeed reaching those Kyoto emission targets:
The 15 'old' European Union member states are on track to meeting their targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions that they signed up to under the 1997 Kyoto Agreement.
So, how did we do it? What is our secret? Greater use of technology? More nu-clear power generation? A bit of belt-tightening? More individuals walking? Thinking globally whilst acting locally?
Well, it appears ..... well, perhaps the reader should decide:
Most of the EU-15 are planning for reforestation to achieve much of their Kyoto target. However, the total amount of carbon dioxide that could be removed annually between 2008 and 2012 is relatively small (1.4 percent compared to 1990), according to the EEA, although it is somewhat higher than the projections made in 2007.
This means that the countries may have to purchase more carbon offset credits to make up the difference.
I thought most modern religious movements had done away with paying for indulgences.
In the interest of creating the most and best unhinged and unbalanced reporting, Radio-Tele-ganda France is employing serial liar Dan Rather to do their US election night coverage. I hope Dan can add: for his audience it will be the middle of the night, and they will come to hate whoever Americans elect.
Rather has been tapped by Canal Plus to cover the U.S. presidential election. Rather will appear live from New York on Nov. 2 in the program "Dimanche Plus," dedicated to the elections. He will then host an Election Day special on Nov. 4, and will be back on the air the following morning for post-election comments on the show "La Matinale."
Fire his ass and give us Schneidermann.
The former CBS News anchor is joining the list of Yanks who get more respect from the Gauls than they do at home.
Geez, if they only knew... I can't wait for them to try to translate some of his stranger gaffes and fake folksy expressions!
IMF head Domenique Strauss-Kahn is being investigated for going out of his way to initiate a romantic affair with a married employee of the IMF. The size of the severance package offered to her to quietly disemploy herself before someone blew the cover on the story is not known.
Nonetheless, the Gallic mind turns to only one thing: self-evasion. The essence of it is in this dimwitted comment featured on the unctuous Rue89 site:
The key in all this is that this will not be in our interest, because the tradition that it is a European (mainly French) who inherit the position of Director of the IMF is being challenged.
I am afraid that they will appoint an Englishman (as a "compromise" choice) instead of DSK. I see that the residents are well informed about the extra-conjugal escapades of DSK, which was not my case until this article! The IMF is not an American but international institution, we should not overexpose this story, because sexual adventures are usually not a determining factor for non-Americans. Americans do not appoint the director of the IMF, but that of the World Bank.
In any case, someone wanted to kill Strauss-Kahn in crisis, is obvious. For what purpose? Could it be that we wanted to torpedo a re-regulation "in shock" from DSK?
To “re-“ regulate something that wasn’t regulated to begin with? To revise the French manipulated Basel II banking rules? Which is it, papito? If all that matters here is that a Frenchman will be replaced by an Englishmen, despite his sexual greed wrecking a promising subordinate’s career and possibly her marriage, then it should have just gone unreported, right? Wrong. The world is not France. Very few parts of the world contain people who would brook no objection to that kind of abuse of a position, especially with a woman in a lower position in an organization. The very idea that it’s okay otherwise betrays all of the leftist howling and screaming about sexual freedom, womens’ rights, and their freedom from abuse. THAT kind of pliability might be common to you and most of the western left, but it is far from universal. Other people actually have principals.
The commenter is naturally worried that it’s those “money people” behind the hideous enforcement of ethics guidelines, all due no doubt to the heroic Asterix-like figure in Strauss-Kahn’s desire to “regulate” them. The ill informed buffoon forgets that when the Wall Street Journal broke the story, the investigation was initiated at the request of an Egyptian delegation with the backing of the Russian representative.
The really sad thing is that DSK is the only socialist party mucky-muck with a shred of common sense.
Imagine someone running for the highest office in Germany, the position of Chancellor, but was the political protégé of, and announced ones’ political career at a social event in the home of a member of the Red Army Faction or the Baader-Meinhof gang. Now imagine dad ort in them there Vereinigten Staaten, 80 to 90 percent of the population wanted Germans to vote for that candidate because there’s something superficial about the candidate appeals to their vanity.
That’s an analog of the example Clarsimonius uses when discussing German ideas of how Americans should vote, and for that reason alone, Americans shouldn’t vote their way. Much in the way that looking through a child’s eyes and hearing their comments tells one a great deal about what they are shown and how they were socialized, it’s revealing.
But having said that… I want you all to know that Germany and the Germans are expecting a whole lot of you this US-American Presidential Election year 2008. And you may or may not be aware of this, although I wouldn’t know how you could not be, but 80 to 90 percent of the German population expects you to vote for you-know-who. That’s right, him. And by you-know-who I mean you-know-who, not that other guy, what’s-his-name. I’m serious here, by the way. With the numbers, I mean. When I say 80 to 90 percent of the German population expects you to vote for you-know-who and not what’s-his-name, I mean 80 to 90 percent of the German population. No fooling.
Stop and think about this for a minute. This is significant. Unlike us in the US, Germans regularly go 80 to 90 percent for people, things and ideas they like and then later reject. It’s just the way they are. We are a bit backward in that respect, I suppose, rarely able to get half the population to agree upon much of anything, especially these days. I don’t know why we are that way, but we are. Germany has it much better than we do in this regard. Things are so much more, well, homogeneous here.
Via the formerly dormant David’s Medienkritik, a portrait of the populist German view of the United States tells you even more about this wisdom – it delights in any shred of a theory about the smiting, hopeful downfall, or debasement of the US. They also as an almost uniformly simplistic and near monolithic social entity, want Americans to vote for Barack Obama, who has such poor judgment that Ayers’ terrorist acts (having occurred when Obama was 8,) has given Barack Obama his entire adult lifetime to realize that the Weather Underground hated America in the exact same way the RAF, Red Brigade, and the Baader-Meinhof gang hated their nations and were willing to use violent coercion to force on the population changes that the public would not have wanted.
It seems that what they really want is to see a snuff film starring America, and they would also tell you it’s because they’re a concerned friend offering advice.
Well, thank goodness there will now be drilling off the coast of Florida. It may take a few years but this will help with world supply, world prices, and help elevate the standard of living a little bit.
The state-owned Cuban oil company says the country may have more than 20bn barrels of oil in its offshore fields - more than double the previous estimate.
Cubapetroleo's exploration manager said drilling in the offshore wells would begin as early as the middle of 2009.
Such reserves would place Cuba among the top 20 oil producing nations.
Glad to see that at least someone is taking energy sufficiency issues seriously. As capitalist countries become more socialist, why not the socialist ones becoming more capitalist?
Yes, the insanity of the US-centric environmentalist movement is clear to see.
Despite being possibly the only member of the NP staff (an admittedly junior member) who would consider voting for Senator Obama if possible, this editorial from the New York Times is beyond absolutely unbelievable and incredulous. Even a casual observer not living in the US is quite aware of what ACORN is and what they have been up to in terms of fraudulent activity. Still the NYT sticks its journalistic head (and its few remaining shreds of credibility) in the sand, deep:
In Wednesday night’s debate, John McCain warned that a group called Acorn is "on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history" and "may be destroying the fabric of democracy." Viewers may have been wondering what Mr. McCain was talking about. So were we.
Acorn is a nonprofit group that advocates for low- and moderate-income people and has mounted a major voter-registration drive this year. Acorn says that it has paid more than 8,000 canvassers who have registered about 1.3 million new voters, many of them poor people and members of racial minorities.
In recent weeks, the McCain campaign has accused the group of perpetrating voter fraud by intentionally submitting invalid registration forms, including some with fictional names like Mickey Mouse and others for voters who are already registered.
Based on the information that has come to light so far, the charges appear to be wildly overblown — and intended to hobble Acorn’s efforts.
Someone needs to alert the FBI that they are wasting their time on the investigation into ACORN's activities.
Whether it be the Guardian, Der Spiegel, Liberation, etc, Americans (US) are constantly harangued about their fast-food, Texas-laden, faux-nouveaux, Jerry Springer culture.
Why can't those bloody Yanks take a page from the European model, grow-up and behave appropriately:
Jobless George Lee, 28, hugs his pregnant wife Stacey, 21 — yet the baby boy she is carrying proudly is NOT his.
She inseminated herself using a 50p turkey baster and sperm from George’s stepfather Paul, 57.
Stacey and her hubby already have one child each from previous relationships but both youngsters are being looked after by Social Services.
Sit back and let the high European culture wash over you in waves.
One of the many ways that actual spending on Obama’s campaign got past the $1 Billion mark when you include the unions and organizations tacitly running on his behalf without the direct consent of their members.
Do as I say, not as I do. This is the left. FABulous elitism and a bunch of people who give themselves a million reasons to both burden everyone else to satisfy their needs to absolve themselves of guilt, while at the same time grinding others under their heels.
Finally, the working class proletarians can “reduce their carbon footprint” while they take a private jet tour around the world to tromp all over otherwise undisturbed areas that are only undisturbed because they want to take them out of any form of productive use to the people who live there.
This is all that this famous “but you can run your economy on eco-tourism” amounts to – setting it up so that happy peasants can appear to be stroking their dolphins, living happily in the 18th century to prop up their world view while they jet overhead. They will no doubt also be the recipients of even more influence and abused political power if Obama is elected.
A meme thing: Fausta sends us to Brian where the fun begins. The topic, a press release by Senator Obama's campaign that mysteriously appears situ verbatus in a New York Times article. No beef with the Senator's campaign, they are just doing their job. The NYT, well ..... perhaps they think they are just doing theirs as well.
The end of modern journalism? Nah, just another day at the office.
Wonder no more. Mark Levin reads verbatim from Saul Alinsky's book Rules For Radicals (Thanks to Comrade Frank), "the book that Obama taught from — that Obama organized from".
No thanks – because it’s precisely why Americans are always said to turn their backs on the world:
About 50 parishioners were locked into the Assemblies of God church before it was set ablaze. They were mostly women and children. Those who tried to flee were hacked to death by machete-wielding members of a mob numbering 2,000.
The 2008 New Year Day atrocity in the Kenyan village Eldoret, about 185 miles northwest of Nairobi, had all the markings of the Rwanda genocide of a decade earlier.
Thank you, Mr. Odinga. Which means it’s now time to trot out the idiotic buzz-phrases and fake adolescent 80’s poetry slam anger in the interest of Hope and Change.
Mr. Odinga and Mr. Obama were nearly inseparable throughout Mr. Obama's six-day stay. The two traveled together throughout Kenya and Mr. Obama spoke on behalf of Mr. Odinga at numerous rallies. In contrast, Mr. Obama had only criticism for Kibaki. He lashed out against the Kenyan government shortly after meeting with the president on Aug. 25. "The [Kenyan] people have to suffer over corruption perpetrated by government officials," Mr. Obama announced.
"Kenyans are now yearning for change," he declared. The intent of Mr. Obama's remarks and actions was transparent to Kenyans - he was firmly behind Mr. Odinga.
Mr. Odinga and Mr. Obama's father were both from the Luo community, the second-largest tribe in Kenya, but their ties run much deeper. Mr. Odinga told a stunned BBC Radio interviewer the reason why he and Mr. Obama were staying in near daily telephone contact was because they were cousins. In a Jan. 8, 2008, interview, Mr. Odinga said Mr. Obama had called him twice the day before while campaigning in the New Hampshire primary before adding, "Barack Obama's father is my maternal uncle."
These aren’t the ties that bind, and when it comes to ridiculous requests and demands based on that relationship, I’m sure President Superman will ignore them, unless there’s some sort of extortion opportunity involved that ‘his divine munificence’ has opened himself up to.
Mr. Obama's judgment is seriously called into question when he backs an official with troubling ties to Muslim extremists and whose supporters practice ethnic cleansing and genocide. It was Islamic extremists in Kenya who bombed the U.S. Embassy in 1998, killing more than 200 and injuring thousands. None of this has dissuaded Mr. Obama from maintaining disturbing loyalties.
Ahhh governmentalism, keeping it real during financially chaotic times:
Any football match in France before which the country's national anthem is booed will now be "immediately stopped", French Sports Minister Roselyne Bachelot said Wednesday after meeting with President Nicolas Sarkozy.
The dramatic move followed the booing of "La Marseillaise" during France's 3-1 friendly win over Tunisia at the Stade de France in Paris on Tuesday.
"Any match when our national anthem is whistled will be stopped immediately," Bachelot said after talks with Sarkozy and French Football Federation president Jean-Pierre Escalettes.
"Government members will immediately leave the arena where our national anthem has been whistled.
"When whistling of our antional anthem happens, all friendly games with the country concerned will be suspended for a period yet to be determined by the federation president."
Could they be any more condescending? The interviewer is a French dork who split from his shithole country to work in an Silicon Valley start-up headed by Loïc LeMeur (ex-Internet consultant for Sarko's electoral campaign).
What is it about leftist politics that you don't understand, John McCain? You who defend Barack Obama as a good family man who would make a terrific president…
Listen, if you haven't understood yet, this ain't officers' promotion roll, where in general, one officer's promotion to higher rank over another is, in the long run (and beyond the losing officer's entirely personal disappointment), no big deal. If you haven't understood yet, Barack Obama is, or is equivalent to, Jane Fonda. (Yes, that Jane Fonda.)
How do you think that, say (just to pick an example out of thin air), the prisoners of Hanoi Hilton would have fared had Richard Nixon run against Jane Fonda in 1968, had Nixon said that Henry Fonda's daughter had family values second to none and would make a terrific president, and had Jane won the elections of 1968 (and 1972)?
That may be stretching the truth a little bit, some might say, but certainly it is hard to say that Barack's friends and entourage are different from Jane's — unless you take into account that Obama's have a lot more power.
And as far as friends (and buddies and colleagues) are concerned, John McCain, it's time you stopped looking at the Illinois senator as one — he is not a fellow officer, not a brother in arms — and you started looking at the members of your party base as as many intimates. Certainly, any friendship you get from Barack is, if not feigned, at best a stepping stone to personal power and to victory.
Marina Petrella's weakened state and "profound depression" is potentially life-threatening, the office of President Nicolas Sarkozy said, announcing that the French chief of state had annulled an extradition decree for humanitarian reasons.
Former Red Brigade terrorist Marina Petrella was imprisoned last year for life, convicted in absentia by an Italian court in 1992 for killing an Italian police commissioner. Since her health is poor, and that alone is an adequate reason to in all but name, absolve her of any guilt, the French government sought to release her back into the wild, rejecting an appeal by an Italian court to extradite her to Italy.
It Seems that the Snapper is Mightier that the Sword
It was sped up by Sarkozy sister in law, and was even made light pleasant by a call to Patrella by Carla Bruni, purportedly at the request of the President. Meddling in this whole matter is Carla’s sister, who took on the role of an advocate for Patrella using Carla to get the ear of Sarkozy.
Elisa Novelli, the daughter of Marina Petrella, also received a call Saturday for the first lady of France. "I was at home when I get this call. Madame Bruni-Sarkozy introduced herself and said the military clause had been applied on my mother (...). Of course I was surprised and saddened. I was extremely touched by his involvement, "she said on RTL." "We appreciate the humane commitment of Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi and her sister Carla Bruni-Sarkozy", said Scalzone Oreste, a member of the committee to support Marina Petrella.
Thanks to the "pugnaciousness" of Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi, who "throughout the past two months has frequently spoken about this subject with my husband," that role "alert" played with the Chairman was possible, insisted Carla Bruni-Sarkozy to Libération.fr.
She stressed first be Marina Petrella went to prison in order to provide "a personal and very direct", then explained his views to his sister who "gave its assent to her husband."
"I just thought it was a terrible thing to die," the actor insisted.
Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi is said to have also spoken directly with President Nicolas Sarkozy, who, she says, "absolutely listened. Then he met, I think on several occasions, doctors and lawyers. He studied the case," she went on to say.
There is no reason to believe that she would die, not that her murder and terror isn’t a reason to believe that she forfeited her life to begin with, but that just doesn’t matter.
After all, in Left-world, imprisoned terrorists are a cause, released terrorists are rock stars. Just as the likes of William Ayers is a trophy signaling to others that one is a elite of edginess, Marina Patrella who killed for the same causes and same ideology as Ayers will be no different.
Just watch as the posers and attention-seekers gravitate to her.
After speaking, dramatically, of how others have “died so I can vote" and after evoking "one nation, indivisible with liberty and justice for all", Maryland ACORN president Rev. Gloria Swierenga adds that "the Palin campaign speaks for itself.”
If ACORN is non-partisan, as it claims to be, the attack on the Palin (or the McCain) campaign is out of bounds and shows its true colors.
True, this should not be surprising to anyone — as ACORN has publicly come out for Barack Obama — but the voter registration is depicted as a patriotic duty, and that ought to be non-partisan. But the people whom ACORN's workers are registering can't be described as voters, or even as American citizens; what they can only be described as is as Democrats — Democrats who think exactly like ACORN, to be specific… (Of course, some of the registered people can also be described as dead persons, but that's another story…)
So it isn't voter registration. It's Democrat registration, or, People-who-think-like-me registration. There's nothing incriminating in that in and of itself, of course… No…
Only: don't tell us that this is ACORN's patriotic gesture (as in its ALL-American gesture)!
Caption: Heeding the call, another voter feels it is his most solemn duty to join the Obama drive! (Merci à RV pour l'image et le hyperlien…)
Howard Stern's radio show adds a follow-up question (merci à Larwyn et François Guillaumat) while taking McCain's policies and pretending they are Obama's:
Now, if Obama wins, do you have any problem with Sarah Palin being his vice-president? … Are you glad he elected her to be the VP if he wins?
Just as they did in France, suggesting that violence would break out if the conservative is elected, the Left in the US are injecting similar threats of violence in the rhetoric in another way. They’ve always used the same old word-dropping silliness, using the word “dangerous” in reference to their opponents, just as they do with those that disagree with them, but in this case it’s an attempt to revive fears of Dixiecrat style violence.
It’s a stunning inversion of the violence found in their own world view. Between one blogger referring to Palin as a M.I.L.P. (mother I’d like to punch), to former comedian Sandra Berhardt’s threat that “her in thin air, it’s patently obvious that Obama’s supporters are the ones desperate with rage.
Same difference, and it probably took place between long-winded lectures about American lawlessness or maybe America being a ‘police state’ or something:
A police crew was caught in a real ambush yesterday around 4 pm on Rue Vestrepain in Toulouse. The patrol car was targeted by a about 40 individuals who hid their faces and threw projectiles at police: stones, cans and whatever they had on hand. To escape police used flash-ball rounds
[ed.: a non-lethal weapon] on as well as tear gas. The policemen managed to leave the area without being hurt. None of the attackers has been arrested despite the arrival of reinforcements.Otherwise there are sock-puppet Euro-intellectual types who are willing to crane their necks far enough to call a dump like that ‘a treasure’ – up until the moment they get treated like the Samoan in Pulp Fiction.
It is not enough for John McCain to discuss specifics and attack specific details of Barack Obama's record every time they pop up. He must also speak of patterns.
It is not enough for John McCain to describe the present and state what he will do. He must also speak of the past make comparisons with the past. Specifically, his opponent's past.
In fact — what I am going to say now may sound senseless and outrageous at first, but read it through and see if you do not agree — in fact, that is the only (or at least the main) thing McCain should speak about. He should forget about challenging Obama and only speak of patterns in the Illinois senator's life, career, and speeches.
Challenging Obama — unfortunately — does nothing, or little, to make a dent in the Illinois senator's poll numbers.
Simply describe Obama's pattern(s) and leave it at that.
Stop looking for explanations or apologies from Barack Obama or his campaign on this topic or on that topic.
No. What must be adopted is a matter-of-fact tone that pictures Obama for what he is.
Not because this is a strategy. Not because this is campaigning.
But because this is — precisely because this is — the truth.
There is nothing to attack. No matter what he has said in the past, no matter what he will say in the future, Barack Obama is surrounded by radicals with radical ideas — end of story.
Simply describe Barack Obama for what he is.
It is vain to ask for repudiation of this associate of his and apologies for that other associate of his. What counts is to point out that his entire entourage bathes in radicalism. Point it out as a fact. A fact that asks for no explanations and no apologies — nothing more than a vote against the Democratic Party at the polls.
And a note to John McCain: By doing what I write about here, you are not using unfair tactics. You are doing nothing more and nothing less than giving a description — a highly accurate and objective description — of who is likely to be in the highest spheres of power should Barack Hussein Obama win the presidency. It is vital — even patriotic and, yes, honorable — to point out exactly what awaits America should Americans make the leftish choice at the polls.
Domestic Policy and the Content of Obama's Character
The point about the Reverend Wright was never the "God Damn America" epithet itself. It was, first, that, given the evidence, this could only be illustrative of the personal pastor's message throughout the years (including the 20 (!) years the Obama family sat in his pews) and, even more importantly, that he is illustrative of the type of people that Obama has associated with before, associates with now, and will associate with in the future, especially if he wins the White House.
If you focus on the "God Damn America" alone or on a Weatherman's past alone — or one at one moment in the campaign and the other at a totally different moment — Obama's repudiation of Jeremiah Wright or claim of not knowing much about William Ayers puts an effective stop to the criticism or makes it look like unreasonable rants. But point out — matter-of-factly, with little or no emotion (and keep pointing out, without respite) — that these phenomena (violent ravings in the pulpit, violent attacks on American institutions) are only indicative of the (simplistic) beliefs of a great deal of people surrounding Obama and likely to be in his inner circle when/if he enters the Oval Office — they even seem to be the beliefs of his wife (if nothing has made her, will make her, proud of her country until her husband is elected president, then somewhere, in her opinion, it can only be true that America must be a pretty damned-awful country) — and there you get people (even, perhaps, some members of the mainstream media) to think.
Again, it does little good to focus on Jeremiah Wright for weeks or months (only to have Obama repudiate the Reverend), then, months later, on Billy Ayers (only to have Obama belittle the relationship and perhaps repudiate the former (?) Weatherman by the time of the election), then (if time allows) on someone else. From the beginning, the constant drumbeat should have been — and it must be from now on — on all the significant others, all the associates, and all the foreign "fans" (not to mention the spouse) whose just-as-constant refrain through the years (and through the decades) has been "God damn America" — or words to that effect ("America be damned", "a goddamn awful place to live", "Allah damn America", etc, etc).
It is next to worthless to make demands and requests upon Obama (i.e., ask for apologies or to denounce a certain person's views). This is what the mainstream media does — asking him to "explain" himself, saying "how do you respond to this (obviously unfair and hateful) attack?" and "What can you do — what can we do — to put this behind us and focus on the real (sic) issues", allowing him to spin an answer, however much truth there is in that explanation or not. If you come back to the issue in attack mode, Obama simply says — and his allies (and those include the media, naturally) simply say — that McCain is obsessed, extremist, and vindictive or that because of the polls, these are a campaign's act of desperation.
As I have written elsewhere, from the beginning, John McCain should have said as follows (and in the remaining three weeks this must his campaign's constant drumbeat):
You object to the Republicans' making an issue of your associations, your friends, and your allies. The problem, as I see it, is the number of radicals you are surrounded with whose basic message is (or is akin to) "God damn America"; and whose tenet that has been for the past two decades or more.. The Reverend Jeremiah Wright says "God damn America" — and it is hard to believe he hasn't been preaching as much during the past 20 years. The Weatherman terrorist from whose residence you launched your Illinois senate campaign, Bill Ayers, spouts — and continues to this day to spout — words to the effect of "God damn America." During his lifetime, the Communist Party USA member Frank Marshall Davis, whom your campaign has admitted was the "Frank" mentioned in your autobiography, used to shout (in so many words) "God damn America." The basic message of Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam, is "God damn America."
How about organizations such as ACORN and MoveOn? Is it unfair to say that the basic essence of the message in such damn-civilized-debate,-damn-the-voter-process groups is God damn the American Way? How about Tony Rezko — what does his travails say about his respect for America's rules and laws? And how about Michelle Obama? Being proud of her country for the first time if and only if her husband wins the presidency is akin to saying what, pray tell… The Middle Easterner Ahmed Yousef who spoke out in your favor, is a senior leader of the Hamas terrorist movement whose members regularly march through the streets, chanting God damn America. And what, pray tell, does Mahmoud Ahmadinejad say? Should Iran's president wish to meet with an American president (in order to be told that his country should not build nuclear weapons, a request which he can then ignore, as we know since George W Bush has been saying the same thing for years, as have the governments of France, Germany, and Britain), then you are his man.
All in all, that's a lot of friends and allies in your inner circle who dance to the tune of "God damn America!" That's a lot of admirers in the world, as well as same-minded activists, whose basic message is (or is akin to) "God (or Allah) damn America!"
The Jimmy Carter Style of Foreign Policy
What is the major reason that Iran is our enemy today instead of our friend? Because Jimmy Carter wanted to teach a lesson to a faithful (if embarrassing) friend of America's.
Did you notice this at the debates? Most people don't seem to have: at one point, Barack Obama skewered John McCain and/or the Bush administration for not acting friendlier toward Iran or North Korea. At another, he issued threats to Iraq and Pakistan.
When Barack Obama criticized, first, Iraq and then Pakistan, McCain should have gone into pattern mode — evoking Jimmy Carter then and there.
Have you noticed how my opponent is always talking about having talks with our adversaries? He speaks of acting friendly with North Korea's Kim Jong Il and heading to Tehran to hold talks with a Holocaust-denyer (and a Holocaust-promiser!).
Yet Senator Obama also speaks about talking tough. Who does he speak about talking tough to? America's friends and allies. Iraq. Pakistan.
It's been tried before, my friends.
Some of you are too young to remember it, but back in 1976, Americans were hungering for change. And so they elected a man who was almost as young as Senator Obama. An idealist who spoke the same language and who boasted the same promises of hope and change, all with a winning smile and obvious reserves of good faith.
Jimmy Carter also spoke of dialogue. He spoke of solving all the problems and having his intervention solve all problems or inititiate a beginning to a solution for all problems.
In all this, the former Georgia governor was quite honest.
He opened up to our enemies and he closed the hatch down on our friends.
A man almost as young as Senator Obama, Jimmy Carter also thought that having talks with our enemies could solve — would solve — must solve every problem.
He criticized our friends notably in the Nicaraguan government and the Iranian government, talking tough with them. Those allies were sometimes distasteful allies, but in an imperfect world, they were America's allies nonetheless.
Thanks in great part to Jimmy Carter, those friends were overthrown. And in both cases, they were replaced not only with régimes that were inimical to America and to the West, but with régimes far more repressive and with far worse human rights records than those the criticized friends had reigned over.
The most conspicuous of these was Iran. And now Iran is in worse shape than ever. It is still a dictatorship — it is, in fact, a worse dictatorship than under the Shah — and it is now America's enemy and the enemy of the free world. And — need I tell you — it's in the process of getting nukes!
The Jimmy Carter version of foreign affairs has been tried before, my friends, and it doesn't work. It must be pushed out of the body politic.
It's a based on wishful thinking where no hard decisions must ever be taken, and all we must do is elect a young handsome candidate with a winning grin, and all will be well.
Not only does the Jimmy Carter version of foreign policy not work, but it is actually counter-productive. My friends, we do not need another four years like the Jimmy Carter era.
In an interview, Moratinos told Syrian TV: "Were it not for Syria's positive and helpful participation, the Doha Agreement and the steps that followed it would never have been achieved... Europe recognizes Syria's status and role, and that is why we are now seeing so many European foreign ministers lining up to visit Syria. As a matter of fact, all E.U. member states have good and positive relations with Syria."
On Spain's relations with Syria, Moratinos said: "There is nothing to prevent [us] from developing these relations, especially in this new era... In 2010, Spain will assume the E.U. presidency, and we must strengthen the strategic relations between Spain and Syria and include Syria in the E.U. framework. We share a long history and a rich culture, and there are many [potential] areas for cooperation between Spain and Syria
.Maybe this is more of that "telling people whatever they want to hear... maybe it's a sort of desperate latent desire to become a superpower for no particular reason, having had no particular role - especially in the making of any sort of just and durable peace for anyone, anywhere.
Maybe we can call this the Spanish fastasy pole.
"The unipolar world [order] has come to an end, as I have noticed in all my diplomatic activities. I have seen that countries and regions [now] shape their fate by themselves, without having to receive permission from Brussels, Washington or any other capital. This is a good [development], and its impact on the world will be a positive one."
Oddly enough, in this case the appeal comes at the expense of the Lebanese and Israelis - two societies that actually DO share a value systemn that resembles those of the Europeans... but what does THAT matter when you're pandering to an audience?
Hmmm, watching a live presser from Paris in which the bigs of the EU are announcing the latest governmental plan to "tackle" the current economic situation.
Plenty of praise for President Sarkozy, as to be expected for the host and current holder of the EU Rota Presidency.
Oddly enough, from a European perspective, Chancellor Merkel is not on the dais and has not been mentioned except in passing. One would think that an issue of paramount EU-importance would include the leader of the largest country/economy on the continent.
It will be interesting to see/hear/read why she was absent.
Not to be out-done by those hacks at the Guardian, Ellen Barry of the IHT lays it on thick in beatifying the previous death throes of that loving, caring, and simpler communal form of existence, the Soviet:
Their faces registered grief: They had lost Russia. They were dying off themselves. On the sidewalk, Valentina Ivanova, 56, was wiping away tears. "We once were a great country," she said. "Now we are divided into the rich and the poor."
They were poor, the people marching in front of us. The posters read, "No more increase in the price of food!" and "Revolution will return!" and "Capitalism = Death." Igor Mishenev, marching at the end of the procession, described Russia's post-Soviet history as a long heartbreak: The life expectancy for men is 59; the birth rate is half what it was in the late 1980s.
A small portion may have become wealthy, he said, but millions suffer. "All our slogans," he said. "They all came true."
Oddly enough, no mention of the gulag, mass famine, Red Terror, or millions dead can be found in the article. Then again, that really isn't the point now is it?
Leftists, while always willing to accuse anyone who disagrees with them of being obsessed with Soviets, Communism, or some feature of the past, can't seem to realize that the past is something they're still living in and clinging to as if it will lend them comfort. Worse still, it's romanticized to forget the millions murdered by the shining lights of the left in the past: Hitler, Mao, Stalin, etal...
The men and women of the International Brigades came from across Europe and beyond, and from all sorts of backgrounds too. In one of the Manchester Guardian's regular lists of those killed, the name of Jim Foley, "an old member of the Irish Republican Army", is followed by that of Christopher St John Sprigg, "the author of a number of detective novels and books on aeronautics".
Winston Churchill's nephew Esmond Romilly cycled across France in order to fight, one of over 2,000 people from Britain, Ireland and the Commonwealth who joined the Brigades. Many were communists; all were driven by a loathing of fascism. They confronted it out of choice when Britain and France were still trying to appease Hitler.
They were heroes, but not treated as such, attacked in rightwing British papers as mercenaries (the Guardian published plaintive denials from the frontline) and neglected after Spain fell in 1939.
A little criticism from the beggining of the last century, and they still haven't gotten over it. Amazing. If the author had any idea what the scale, persistence, and nature the slander that his fellow travellers emit reflexively... Even though an individual's choice is the last thing that the left's world view would accept. ALL is for the guided greater good of the state and the Jesus-like sacrifice that whatever el lider type they have to lionize at the moment has made for them.
....for the coming apocalypse and how to solve the most pressing problems facing man-kind:
Bars are to be banned from offering free alcohol to women and free wine and beer tastings will be curbed under a new system of government restrictions to cut public drunkenness.
There will also be rules to limit "happy hour" offers that encourage speed drinking and soft drinks will have to be sold at the same discount during promotions. Wine in restaurants will have to be served in glasses with marked measures.
The proposals, drafted by the Home Office and the Department of Health, seek to transform social attitudes towards drinking by breaking the association between drink and sexual, financial and social success.
The nanny-statists and extreme environmentalists will no doubt have a hard time straight-facing the nonsense they peddle should the current slouch indeed slump long and hard.
