What they say:
What it means:
For years, Europe's more-regulated model of capitalism has been maligned by many economists as a study in second-rate market economics. Now, as world leaders seek a way out of the crisis -- and aim to avoid repeating it -- U.S.-style capitalism is under siege and the European model is getting another look.German unemployment rose almost twice as much as forecast in January as an economic slump sparked by the global financial crisis spread to industries from cars to software.
That’s the ‘socially aware’ forecast of the ‘socially advanced’ economy. Can the population afford to be any more ‘aware’ of their superiority to their own “just please don’t call it a market economy” market economy? Or the “we’ll keep touting our nonexistent social collectivism?”
The number of people out of work rose by 56,000 in seasonally adjusted terms to 3.27 million, the Nuremberg-based Federal Labor Agency said today. Economists forecast an increase of 30,000, according to the median of 33 estimates in a Bloomberg News survey. The adjusted jobless rate rose to 7.8 percent from 7.7 percent. In unadjusted terms, the number of jobless increased by 387,000.
“We’ve reached the turning point on the labor market,” Rainer Guntermann, an economist at Dresdner Kleinwort in Frankfurt, said in an interview. “Sooner or later, we’ll see major restructuring programs and job cuts.”
Just don’t say it, please... after all isn’t it that American invention, “the blind pursuit of profits” that has cause every ill in the world? We all know that the Chinese and Russian don’t pursue profits! Why? Because our delusions about them say so!
government leaders decided not to make new investments in a number of US companies that sought China's capital. China's pullback from Fannie and Freddie debt helped push up rates on US mortgages last year just as Washington was seeking to revive the US housing market.
So they poured fuel on the fire by investing in US mortgages, triggered the economic crisis by spiking the demand in energy and commodities to sell goods to the world using previously sound credt, and not they want a “new world order” that will guarantee them 8 percent growth in GDP.
Mr Wen said the crisis had posed "severe challenges" for China and that it needed 8 per cent growth this year to maintain social stability while the International Monetary Fund predicted 6.7 per cent for this year. The Chinese leader called for faster reform of international financial institutions and for a "new world order" for the economy.
Oh, and it isn’t “their capitalism” that’s at fault. It’s someone else’s. Yeah right.
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…
Sunday, February 01, 2009
What Would “the World” to without the US as a Distant, All-Purpose Scapegoat?
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Missing the point
Utility crews renewed work in subfreezing temperatures Saturday in their effort to put the power back on for nearly a million customers left in the dark by an ice storm that crippled parts of several states this week.As this is winter in the northern hemisphere, everyone should have known this was coming. Just as "hurricane season" denotes the possibility of hurricanes, winter denotes the possibility of snow, ice, and cold temperatures.
....
Local officials grew angrier at what they said was a lack of help from the state and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
In Kentucky's Grayson County, about 80 miles southwest of Louisville, Emergency Management Director Randell Smith said the 25 National Guardsmen who have responded have no chain saws to clear fallen trees. He said roads are littered with fallen trees and people shivering in bone-chilling cold are in need.
"We've got people out in some areas we haven't even visited yet," Smith said. "We don't even know that they're alive."
Smith said FEMA was still a no-show days after the storm.
One element which is missing from this current natural disaster is the now curiously quiet chorus of US media types normally ready to pounce on every shivering shiverer in order to make political points. The New York Times editorial page, silent; Maureen Dowd, silent; Paul Krugman, silent; Bob Herbert, silent.
If only they showed the same Katrina-esque zeal during this particular natural disaster......
Then again, with a new and more amenable ruling class in Washington, pointing out the silence of the New York Times on the failure of government now rather misses the point of the whole exercise.
All hail the new laconicism.
A Complex of Small Minds and Lame Excuses
If we could only have another one of those Abba Eban style studies on the European mind, we could see just how simplistic and flawed the general reasoning is: a “modern” Paris Imam says that the Gaza conflict makes it hard for him to talk to French Jews, because he “differentiates them from Israelis?” No. Certainly not. The palpably lame Christian Science Monitor thinks it has to find a moral equivalency argument of its’ own to merely report the story saying:Esther Benbassa, chair of Jewish studies at the Sorbonne in Paris, says one effect of the Gaza bombing already visible is "to remove the taboo of the Holocaust" in common speech, both among Arabs and ordinary French. "I don't agree that Gaza and the Holocaust can be compared, but I note a willingness to do so. I understand that, even if I don't agree with it. It's something new."
All those “venomous Jews” eh? As if opening up their mouths to incessantly apologize for something that they themselves haven’t done to people whose victimhood is limited to being offended that something is happening to SOME PEOPLE they want to identify with and not others.
But never mind that, these are the great minds of the conversational, intellectual society that Parisians continually claim to be. Their tender sensibilities and humanism require a tap-dance to even mention the fact that the French to compare the Israelis retuning fire at people who fire rockets at them as a Holocaust.
This doesn’t come as a novelty. That meme has been bouncing around in the Arab mind for the past 40 years when the Holocaust could no longer be plausibly denied. It is, however only been 20 years since this madness has dominated the majority of Europeans, who should know something of the Pagroms, Holocaust, etal., and reveals the ethnological bigotry and simplistic reasoning widespread in the population: that the nationalities, or more to the point their image of the nationalities forms comparisons by way of involvement. Jews figured as the biggest group of victims of the Holocaust, therefore the feel like you sound smart, one must find an inversion by which one can point a finger in the air at false surprise. “Those Jews” (as if the survivors of Auschwitz and Birkenau were the ones returning fire today) must be at fault as they are magically connected because they fit into the same simple category that that average european can understand: the tribal pigeon hole."Solidarity with Palestinians has at its roots a feeling of disenfranchisement in France," says Ms. Benbassa. "Migrants from North Africa are astounded to find that when something happens to Jews it is treated with great importance in the media, but when something happens to Arabs or blacks, it is not."
As though this was anyone’s fault but that of the paranoiac society that they live in, “in the heart of Europe”.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Does banning freikörperkultur contravene Schengen?
Amazing to see what gets people all hot and bothered. Confiscatory taxation, no. Ever growing governmentalism, no. Diminishment of civil liberties, no. Feckless leadership in government and/or commerce, no. Mindless labour unionism, no.Naked German ramblers, yes:
When the first nude walkers came over the border the tranquil, neutrality-loving Swiss tried to pretend it wasn't happening. It was only when it became clear that the invaders had a plan of conquest — even if they had no clothes — that the Alpenhorns sounded the alarm.Don't forget the bug spray.
Now the Swiss authorities are trying to fend off hordes of German ramblers dressed in nothing more than a rucksack and walking boots. The influx appears to have been started after a German mountaineering website declared the Swiss wilderness a "paradise for naked ramblers".
Populism Ran out of Reality a Long Time Ago
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Behind the crickets
Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Europe's largest oil company, posted its first quarterly loss in 10 years following a record plunge in oil prices, and warned that industry conditions "remain challenging."Oddly no word from the usual suspects who pushed the favoured saw of the statist hard-left tax-and-destroy ethos crowd back in the very same day as a way to "punish" those very same oil companies. Tim Worstall muses regarding one such group of usual suspects, Compass:
The fourth-quarter net loss was $2.81 billion, or $0.44 a share, compared with a profit of $8.47 billion, or $1.36, a year earlier, The Hague-based Shell said today in a statement. Revenue fell 24 percent to $81.07 billion.
However, if, logically, those "excess profits" should be windfall taxed away in the good times then those "excess losses" should be subsidised in the bad times, no? So why isn’t Compass out there calling for a subsidy to Shell?Rinse and repeat, inserting your own favourite statist hard-left socialistic pressure group in lieu of Compass.
Two possible reasons I suppose. The first being that they’re too dim to understand what is going on, the logic of their own position. The second is that there was no logic to their earlier demands for a windfall tax. That it was just a circle jerk for frothing lefties.
I have to admit that I can see truth in both explanations.
The intellectual, cultural war waged against the USA
This interview with Dr. Walid Phares might be of interest to lateral thinkerswrites Ellen Sundstrom.
Dr. Phares claims there is an intellectual, cultural war waged against the USA. That over the years sums of monnies have been invested in Ivy League Universities i.e. Harvard and Georgetown and that the Jihadist lobby is impacting the classrooms.
Europe Loves Gitmo
Indeed they do love it. Without it, how could their politicians keep feigning to have meaningful, strident opinions that they can fill the airtime with and by which try to seem relevant.
Now it’s okay. Now it isn’t. Now they want them, now they don’t.Barack Obama has signed an executive order to close the GuantánamoBay detention center – among other things, in response to a barrage of “international” criticism of the center and of the Bush administration’s policies toward its inmates. But – believe it or not – in February 2002, the EU Parliament passed a resolution approving of the Bush administration’s policies and explicitly stating that the Guantánamo inmates do not qualify for Geneva Convention protections.
It’s the same old passive-aggressive fear and loathing in Europe. Once upon a time, they were all for Gitmo because it gave them a way of not having to take their “one-time residents” “nationals” and “citizens” who were ready to murder their way to paradise, now after years of publicly telling their populations that they then wanted it to end, they were privately telling Washington that they wouldn’t take the detritus of war on splodey-dopes.
Now the stalling tactic is different: they aver that they want “the innocent ones” whoever they are, and they want the US to declare them the innocent ones, so that they don’t have to put their money where their fat fotzen are and blanketly declare the innocence of Gitmo “alumni” themselves.BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) — European Union leaders said Monday they were willing to take in prisoners being released from the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay — but stressed that American authorities must show ex-inmates pose no security threat before they can be resettled.
Let’s face it: those remaining are the ones who either have a much worst fate going to any of the countries that will take them, or they really are a threat.
Foreign ministers from the 27-nation bloc discussed the fate of up to 60 Guantanamo inmates who, if freed, cannot be returned to their homelands because they would face abuse, imprisonment or death. The prisoners come from Azerbaijan, Algeria, Afghanistan, Chad, China, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
The EU's foreign and security chief, Javier Solana, said Europeans wanted to help on humanitarian grounds.
But he said no EU state could act until President Barack Obama's administration gets its Guantanamo case files in order and can demonstrate that prisoners do not pose credible security risks.
So, which is it? Apart from the fact that the entire conversation they’re having is with their “imaginary friend in Washington”:Finland's foreign minister, Alexander Stubb, said Guantanamo inmates would become eligible for resettlement only once they passed through U.S. scrutiny and courts and were granted official status as political refugees.
"Then, we'll have to have a look at that individually," said Stubb, who also is chairman of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. "If there are people who are not tried and are let free, but they can't go back to their own countries, I think we in Europe should take our responsibility."
But Stubb emphasized the widespread view that the U.S. administration was not yet in position to clear any terror suspects.
"We are jumping the gun here a little bit, because the Americans haven't given us an offer or required us to take anyone on board," Stubb said.
Burning down the House
Yet again the French are on strike. This time, among the usual collection of everybody striking over their own petty demands that they expect the rest of society to attend to for them, is the over-arching theme of this economy wrecking event – they are striking against the global economy.
The best I can gather from interviewed agonists and such is that in large part people are mad at the French government’s intervention to prop up the banks and major industries, something the blithering idiots are usually all for. Normally, a trend away from socialistic dirigisme would be a good thing for the overall potential of a healthy economy, but these protestors, including the bolshy CGT, Reds, etal., are protesting that the largesse of the state is being directed at the economy at all and not limited to relieving them of the cost of social free-riding.
Even the employees of the Euronext stock exchange are marching. Just what is it that they think the ‘social compact’ is supposed to do for their racket that the rest of the people in their same union won’t protest?
Never letting a crisis go to waste, the left are ready to exploit your misery for the sake of their power-grab, and opportunity to wreck the economy for good with methods borrowed from the largely agrarian 1930s. As per the Boy wonder Olivier Besancenot:
Olivier Besancenot, the young leader of France’s extreme left is hoping Thursday’s strike will be the first step towards another French revolution as the recession bites and protests multiply across Europe’s second largest economy.As usual, the thing they don’t get when they are pretending to care about the larger society is that they don’t – they want someone to cover their individual wants and needs, and can’t get past the fact that sooner or later there is no-one else left to tax, and that the pitiful little sums that ARE broadly redistributed reflect that ugly fact. Irrationally, they demand some more, demand anyone who makes a shade more than them pay higher taxes, and slows the process of productive wealth generation (the only thing one CAN tax) even further. Grim a bunch as they are, relatively speaking, they are still the leisure class. What the public sector workers are accomplishing by striking is beyond me.
“We want the established powers to be blown apart,”
They are even dumber than the American far-left.
Only a small part of the dialog seems to have anything to do with aiding those who were made unemployed or are facing hardships related to being out of work or unemployable for one reason or another.
If you can get though the unfocussed clamor of broad, universal complaints, it is in effectas though they are protesting the unrelenting persistence of gravity, and think the government, the collective, or anyone other than they themselves – can somehow reverse it.
There ain’t no cure for gravity, people.
"Les talibans semblaient moins craindre les observations aériennes que leur localisation grâce aux cartes SIM de leurs téléphones"
Les gardiens alternaient entre les combats et la garde du prisonnier. L'otage se souvient les avoir entendus raconter certaines de leurs opérations. "Ils avaient attiré des commandos américains dans un guet-apens en laissant un portable allumé, avec lequel ils avaient communiqué en arabe dans une maison abandonnée, puis avaient miné le lieu ; ils étaient contents, le piège avait semble-t-il fonctionné."
… Le 19 juin, alors que la routine de la vie d'otage s'est installée, Johan Freckhaus saisit une conversation entre deux gardiens : "Il va être échangé", se disent-ils. "Je pensais qu'ils parlaient de mon codétenu irakien, mais c'était pour moi."Il est transféré, en plein jour, sur une moto, les yeux bandés, dans la cour de la maison d'un mollah local, proche des talibans, où il retrouve ses deux ingénieurs. Une liaison téléphonique avec un négociateur français, chargé par la France d'obtenir sa libération, annonce l'issue de l'épreuve, alors que, cachée dans un recoin, la fille du mollah fixe l'otage du regard. En guise d'au revoir, "Elias" lui glisse, "si on te reprend, on te tue, on n'est pas copains", puis lui demande, peu après : "Qu'est-ce que tu penses de moi ?"
L'un des deux hélicoptères Caracal de l'armée de l'air française basé à l'aéroport de Kaboul récupère alors les otages. Rapatrié sur l'une des bases des services secrets (DGSE), à Orléans, l'ex-détenu français est interrogé quelques heures après avoir atterri. Dans l'avion du retour, Johan Freckhaus, comprenant la somme de moyens déployés pour sa libération, s'inquiète, en souriant, de la facture qu'il va devoir acquitter. Un membre de la DGSE lui rétorque, sur le même ton : "T'inquiète, tu pourras jamais rembourser."
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Trying out their new Vainglory
Since when is it that an a UN type like Manfred Nowak, albeit a political beast of a UN type, would need to throw red meat at an ugly mob? It did not take long. On January 20, the very day of the swearing-in of Barack Obama as the new president of the United States, Germany’s ZDF public television broadcast a report in which UN “torture rapporteur” Manfred Nowak called for the new American administration to prosecute outgoing President Bush and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on torture charges.
Assmonkey. When have you ever once tried to get even so much as an "operational pause" out of Mobutu, Mugabe, or a genuine despot torturing to maintain a grip on unelected power?
Nowak, you might recall, was a perennial fixture on the UN missing persons/human rights racket in the former Yugoslavia where a suspiciously small to non-existent number of actual genocidal murderers were detained. He at once called human rights in Bosnia “a local matter” and calling for this silly bit of super-national overreach by which to masturbate.
That said, let’s have a look at the man’s intentions: to make people parrot a few words that reassure him on the subjects of human rights – I assume by this he means to say that this is the leaving unabused the innocent, but I haven’t found his definition of it. To Prof. Nowak, human rights in general is a worldwide issue and not a western society issue. There have been many positive changes in the last 20 years, especially concerning the widespread public awareness of and respect for human rights. It is important to promote the dissemination of human rights standards and democratic values in order to create a basic human rights culture which involves all people and cultures around the world.
So go ahead, world: be primitive and savage. Just say the magic words and you can get away with it. In the mean time, we’ll go after the government that says what they’re doing, who they’re doing it to, and isn’t by any normal definition of torture doing anything those blessed, angelic, Europeans aren’t doing.
Don’t Forget to Hide
The irony of risk adversity in Europe is that a mere threat on the internet can both scare the bejeezus out of the public, stir governments to do whatever they can to be taking no action to stop it, and immediately prompt a public display of self-abuse. As is some anonymous outfit called “Islamic Jihad Union” will be more deferential as a result or that there is anyone among them that one could negotiate with in a way that will assure anyone of anything.
The Belgian stiffie has re-emerged in Germany, again.The German public television station first reported on the video, which is being attributed to Islamic Jihad Union, a radical group active in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
In case you’re wondering, the al-Qaida flavor of Jihad had not started fixating on Israel until well after 9-11, and it’s purpose was merely to prop up its’ waning popularity. Then, as now, and potentially into the future, the aversion therapy the Americas put them on has done on “the Arab/Muslim/irate crowd” street what appeasement has never done: caused the angry to stop and think of the real consequences of the casual, decades long call for the blood of Jews, Americans, Europeans, Gays, Secularists, Pluralists, etc., etc., the straw men they had built up in the societies they live in.
In the video, which features details of dead children and injured people, six men threaten violence against Germany.
"We have a few surprise packages prepared this year," the men reportedly say. "Allies of the occupation powers must always reckon with our attacks."
Germany currently has 3,600 troops in Afghanistan as part of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in that country.
The video also made reference to the latest conflict between Israelis and Palestinians and to German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
"For 10 days the world has watched as Muslims in the Gaza Strip have been massacred," the men in the video reportedly say. "Where is the US? Where is Mrs. Merkel and her cabinet?"
Which is to say that this is the first time in the more savage corners of that broad collection of subcultures we misidentify as the “Muslim World” the “Arab World”, etal., that the concept of coexistence and compassion have had to be grappled with. You can thank George Bush for that.
C'est comme ça
Leftist, as usual, are trying to criminally prosecute people for disagree with their world view.Michigan Rep. John Conyers, Democratic chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, on Monday issued a subpoena to Mr. Rove, seeking his appearance at a deposition Feb. 2. Mr. Conyers wants the former aide to President George W. Bush to answer questions on the Justice Department's firings of U.S. attorneys in 2006, among other matters.
[ ... ]
"Change has come to Washington, and I hope Karl Rove is ready for it," Mr. Conyers said.If the rhetoric sounds familiar, just rip a page out of history: a 1967 East German “documentary” interviewing US Air Force pilots and Navy aviators downed over North Vietnam. The only difference is that even Conyers isn’t capable of matching the false rhetoric of an East German propagandist, as mendacious as it really was.
Interviewer: Lieutenant, you are experiencing in practice an example of socialist humanity. The President of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh, has stated that the people here are capable of differentiating between real criminals in the background, who hold the decisive positions of government, and their tools who carry out their plans by dropping bombs and firing rockets. You are enjoying here more or less the advantages of this socialist concept which does not absolve you of guilt or minimize your actions, but does differentiate in each case between the initiators of a policy and their mere tools.So let’s be frank. The goal of that Kangaroo court questioning was the same as Conyers’.
Peter Hitchens marks just such a signpost on the way: the left would like to revive memories of the “great society” while they turn us into a latter day Yemen.
Anyone would think we had just elected a hip, skinny and youthful replacement for God, with a plan to modernise Heaven and Hell , or that at the very least John Lennon had come back from the dead.[ ... ]
The swooning frenzy over the choice of Barack Obama as President of the United States must be one of the most absurd waves of self-deception and swirling fantasy ever to sweep through an advanced civilisation. At least Mandela-worship, its nearest equivalent, is focused on a man who actually did something.
I really don't see how the Obama devotees can ever in future mock the Moonies, the Scientologists or people who claim to have been abducted in flying saucers.
Just look at his sermon by the shores of Lake Michigan. He really did talk about a new dawn, and a timeless creed, (which was yes, we can!). He proclaimed that change has come. He revealed that, despite having edited the Harvard Law Review, he doesn't know what enormity means. He reached depths of oratorical drivel never even plumbed by our own Mr Blair, burbling about putting our hands on the arc of history (or was it the ark of history?) and bending it once more toward the hope of a better day (Don't try this at home).To wit:
The United States, having for the most part a deeply conservative people, had until now just about stood out against many of the mistakes which have ruined so much of the rest of the world.Even the “economic recovery plan” and the idea that international relations will make your citizens personally liked abroad has a familiar sounding ring to it:
Suspicious of welfare addiction, feeble justice and high taxes, totally committed to preserving its own national sovereignty, unabashedly Christian in a world part secular and part Muslim, suspicious of the Great Global Warming panic, it was unique.
There has been many a confirmation of our firm conviction that the internal development of socialism necessitates an objective growth of the possibilities and requirements of international cooperation between the fraternal countries. The results attained by each individual country will be all the better, the more comprehensive use is made of the chances offered by internationalist cooperation. For this reason the GDR pursues an active policy of intensified dovetailing between the economies of the GDR and the USSR and of deepening socialist economic integration.Really, there IS no place like utopia.
Major projects such as the joint power grid, participation in the construction of a natural gas pipeline, the GDR's modern power stations and the ESER data processing system are the outcome of this policy. Nowadays there is no task of major importance which the GDR does not tackle in fraternal cooperation with the USSR. Suffice it to mention the efforts made to ensure the raw materials and energy base or to master promising spheres of scientific and technological progress such as microelectronics. At the same time, the wide range of ties between the GDR's combines and scientific institutions and their partners in the fraternal socialist countries is becoming even more ramified. Economic efficiency and also the personal experience of friendship and internationalism, that leaves its impression throughout a lifetime, are the result of this cooperation in training, research and production ...
It will be one of our vital concerns in the years to come, together with the Soviet Union and the other states of the socialist community, to achieve scientific and technological advances that embody top standards, to harness them for the people's well-being, which will also help strengthen the economic positions of socialism in the world. The good results obtained encourage us in our intention to tackle projects of even greater dimension with optimism and consistency.
France's convoluted internal political debate on NATO
… the French message can be confusing, especially at the point where its convoluted internal political debate on NATO, weighted with factionalism worthy of Italy's 12th century Guelphs and Ghibellines, runs into the reality of just what France wants in terms of a European NATO pillarwrites John Vinocur in his article about "a country that for close to a half-century maintained a gap between itself and NATO for its own advantage."
Bruno Le Maire, the new French minister for Europe, speaking last week at a symposium in Paris on relations with the Obama administration, said three things that were not readily understood by all of France's allies.
First, that Europe had to have "our own doctrine on Iran"; that NATO must be redefined in April "so that we know what organization we're entering"; and that a Europeans-only military operational headquarters in Brussels "had been agreed to in principle."
What?
The puzzlement is that NATO has been redefining itself for a decade, that the operational center has little future in any realistic time frame, and that a "European doctrine" on the Iranian threat — not exactly a unifying notion since Le Maire himself said intra-European agreement on security issues was "unbelievably difficult" — sounds plain baffling.
For a U.S. official, Sarkozy's real task before giving the final go-ahead is to resolve the internal French debate and make sure his base is with him. The official said, "You want it all lined up in advance."
Beyond their internal debate, the fact is also that very little has been done by the French (while reducing their defense budget and cutting back their military presence in Africa) to support the American expectation that they would be a leader in steering the rest of Europe toward greater investment in defense.
This too: Sarkozy's perceived haste in resuming the EU's "strategic partnership" talks with Russia after it invaded Georgia — coupled with his placing more blame on Ukraine than the Kremlin during their gas supply dispute — hardly advanced France's self-portrayal as a more consensual future leader for all NATO's members, particularly those from the old Soviet bloc.
Gibing at Europe's "most important politicians" last week, Poland's conservative president, Lech Kaczynski, said their failure to stand behind the Ukrainians "proved once more that a country that gets drawn into a dispute with Russia cannot count on any effective help."
Update: Denmark's Uffe Ellemann-Jensen refers to the paper tigers of Europe while calling the EU's policy towards Russia "the Three Monkeys" policy: See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, and you won't be touched by the evil … the three monkeys is a precise picture of many big European countries towards Russia.
Le prisonnier "est en train de mourir"
Yet another report about a prisoner's death (this one not a suicide), is the subject of Alain Salles' article in Le Monde.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
The Origins of the French-American Conflict, as Seen by a De Gaulle Foe
While America was giving lavishly of her blood and her money for the great democratic idea of human liberty, General de Gaulle was inclining more and more toward a neo-fascism that was the very thing America had set out to destroy. Only the United States could liberate and save France, But General de Gaulle was unwilling to admit this. Even on D-Day when the Americans landed on the Normandy beaches, he refused in his radio "Appeal to the French People" to acknowledge their sacrifice and heroism. … In London, in Algiers, in Paris, wherever he has gone, he has left behind him a trail of mistrust, ingratitude, and hostility toward America.Henry de Kérillis, 1945
A 1945 pamphlet against Charles de Gaulle has been republished. Originally an admirer of the French officer, Henry de Kérillis turned against the general as World War II progressed. Because of the powers that De Gaulle kept accumulating, Henry de Kérillis warned that he would institute the equivalent of an effective dictatorship in France and, more to the point, that he was behind the French-American conflict (or, rather, the Gaullist-American conflict), a conflict which he (Henri de Kérillis) deemed entirely artificial.
If You Have Any Interest in the Doctrine of Free Speech…
Tom Trento interviewed Geert Wilders at The Hague, the day before the Dutchman was charged with hate speech.Think Locally, Act Feebly
Global Village Idiots: Zapatero’s Socialist industry minister, Miguel Sebastián is resorting to good old fashioned European nativism, urging Spaniards to “shop patriotically”, as if they were cloth-cap wearing, lunch-pail toting old-fashioned factory worker reds who occasionally show up to work sober.
That should do wonders for exports, and says quite a bit about the thought behind the call: when it doesn’t work, trade restrictions, even those within Europe, would have to be put in place to make the theory support the sentiment.
Between all the tribalism, small-thinking, and ego propping delusions, that benighted “globally thinking Europe” forming an “ever closer union” is looking more like a sitcom based on Orwell’s “Animal Farm.”
Good luck with all that.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Flip-side
Franz Müntefering, chairman of Germany’s Social Democrats, hit out against bankers on Sunday, describing them as "gangsters" and a threat to democracy, amid discussions over ways to step up support to the country’s ailing banks.Now, will the chairman agree that the very same comments hold true for many politicians, government officials, and trade unionists? Or, would that be missing the point?
"Most of the bankers are competent and responsible, but there are also some beatniks, pyromaniacs and gangsters," he said in an interview with German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.
"Some have lost track of what they were doing. Others risked everything. And further bankers have lined their pockets. This is a burden for democracy," said Mr Müntefering, famous for branding financial investors as "locusts" in 2005.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
The Left’s Conditional Love of Society
VDH asks “whither the shredding?”If you are a civil libertarian, if you are in the ACLU or a law professor, or a liberal in good standing who swore that George Bush from Texas, with strut and twang and mangled vocabulary, destroyed your liberties with FISA, with the Patriot Act, and with Iraq, then please extend that outrage to Barack Obama, for whom all such shredding of the Constitution suddenly has become merely complex and problematic rather than fascistic. Please list, cite, name just one instance from 2002-8 in which you lost your freedom, or you were censored on the library internet, or you were followed around by the FBI, or your letter to the editor earned a wiretap, or even one instance of the loss of any freedom under Bush—and if so, just one example of how the election of Obama has once again restored your lost liberty. Nothing in the abstract, please—something concrete, an example both real and personal.
Did you notice how the Constitution suddenly just unshredded itself? That wiretapping is just A1-OK and that no-one is unhinged, stamping their little feet, and holding their breath? Could have something to do with fantasies of being able to wiretap republicans… all in the interest of “social justice” of course.In a major August 2008 decision released yesterday in redacted form, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, the FISA appellate panel, affirmed the government's Constitutional authority to collect national-security intelligence without judicial approval. The case was not made public before yesterday, and its details remain classified.
Somewhere along the way we “un-apocalypsed”. How and why did that change so quickly?For all the political hysteria and media dishonesty about George W. Bush "spying on Americans," this fight was never about anything other than staging an ideological raid on the President's war powers. Barack Obama ought to be thankful that the FISA court has knocked the bottom out of this gambit, just in time for him to take office.
Begging the question
Across the whole of the UK, 49% of the economy will consist of state spending, while in Wales, the figure will be 71.6% – up from 59% in 2004-5. Nowhere in mainland Britain, however, comes close to Northern Ireland, where the state is responsible for 77.6% of spending, despite the supposed resurgence of the economy after the end of the Troubles.Southeast Iceland awaits.
Even in southern England, the government’s share of spending is growing relentlessly. In the southeast, it has gone up from 33% to 36% of the economy in four years.
The state now looms far larger in many parts of Britain than it did in former Soviet satellite states such as Hungary and Slovakia as they emerged from communism in the 1990s, when state spending accounted for about 60% of their economies.
One Suicide Every Three Days in France's Jails
One hundred and fifteen inmates committed suicide in French jails in 2008, or about one every three days, writes Alain Salles regarding a report disclosed in Le Monde.2009 seems a promising year, so far, for Frenchmen bragging about their superior system to clueless Neanderthal-like Americans, as 13 people committed suicide during the first 14 days — as attested in and by a full-page article on the 13 unfortunates in the dead-tree version that, (although it appears right next to Salles' 2008 report article in the newspaper) strangely enough, does not appear on Le Monde's website…
Saturday, January 24, 2009
And you thought the relationship between government and the media is cosy now...
President Nicolas Sarkozy on Friday unveiled a mini-stimulus package worth €600m to help "save" the French newspaper industry from a plunge in advertising revenues, high production costs and the effects of its difficulty in adapting to the internet age.No doubt the New York Times is drooling with anticipation to write an editorial praising the forward-thinking progressive nature of this programme. Well, can you blame them:
The measures costing €200m ($260m, £188m) a year over three years include doubling the amount of government advertising in newspapers, reduced social charges for newspaper delivery workers, a postponement of a planned increase in postage costs, and more generous tax breaks for investment in digital services.
(Editor's note: As of 2135h CET no decision has yet been made as to whether ¡No Pasarán! will be lining up for a piece of the action. Should regular readers notice a marked change in the tone of posts, rest assured the decision was made and the cheque has cleared.)
In Large Part, the Media are Little more that a Self-Managing Propaganda Operation
This, from a friend:
Headlines On This Date 4 Years Ago:
"Republicans spending $42 million on inauguration while troops die in unarmored Humvees"
"Bush extravagance exceeds any reason during tough economic times"
"Fat cats get their $42 million inauguration party, ordinary Americans get the shaft"
Annnnnnnnnd.......
Headlines Today:
"Historic Obama Inauguration will cost only .....$120 million"
"Obama spends $120 million on inauguration; America needs a big party"
"To everyman Obama shows America how to celebrate"
"Citibank executives contribute $8 million to Obama Inauguration" (after their bail out).
Swirling information
France’s AAA rating may be at risk as the deepening economic slump erodes tax revenue and forces the country to raise borrowing, according to ING Groep NV.S & P hedges in their outlook with a jargoned comment:
“I’m not saying France is going to be downgraded, but the level of debt puts them in a spot of danger,” Padhraic Garvey, head of investment-grade debt strategy in Amsterdam at ING, said in an interview. “Their AAA rating is under stress.”
Standard & Poor’s affirmed France’s AAA rating last week, assigning it a "stable" outlook.
The French economy "will again begin to expand once the global economic uncertainties fade," S&P said Jan. 13. "Should the large budgetary imbalances and relatively high gross debt deteriorate over the medium term beyond our expectations, the ratings would likely come under downward pressure."Translation, maybe a 40ish% chance of being downgraded. Despite being with the New York Times, Landon Thomas has an informative article and points to a key problem for our euro:
For some of the countries on the periphery of the 16-member euro currency zone — Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain — this debt-fired dream of endless consumption has turned into the rudest of nightmares, raising the risk that a euro country may be forced to declare bankruptcy or abandon the currency.The important part being the euro has been run as a political rather than economic currency. None of this is "news". The very rules for euro entry and membership, written by the Germans in the 1990's, were meant to keep the less fiscally sound in Europe (Italy, Greece, Portugal) from free-riding on the back of, at the time, more prudently fiscal members of the EU. These rules, the Stability and Growth Pact, were of course jettisoned for political reasons in the early 2000's when France and Germany ran afoul due to cratering economies and mountains of governmental spending (aka "social justice" to some). Should we even go into the strong suggestions that the whole convergence process when the euro began may have been built on rather questionable economic data being reported?
The prospect, however unlikely, is a humbling one. The adoption of the euro just a decade ago was meant to pull Europe together economically and politically, ending the sometimes furious battles over who could devalue their currency the fastest and beggar their neighbor.
One wonders if the first president of the European Central Bank, Wim Duisenberg, had it right when he said in an interview with Deutsche Welle in 2002:
DW: A central part of the treaty would no doubt be the Stability Pact, the criteria now in place for current euro zone countries. Those criteria are now being discussed in European capitals -- especially the three-percent cap on deficit spending. What do you think about suggestion criteria should be softened, especially in light of Germany's economic troubles?A currency can and should be used for political reasons, sparingly and when needed, but this should not ecplise the over-riding purpose of a currency, which is to provide a relatively stable economic instrument allowing for the facilitation of the transfer of goods and services.
WD: I would be very much against it. The criteria are only just in place. It's natural that there are times when it really bites and causes difficulties for some European countries. Then countries talk about changing it. But I'm one who thinks you should never change the rules in the middle of the game. The fact that some countries are now having difficulty meeting the criteria -- like Germany, France and Italy. It is precisely because of the fact that in the recent past, when everything was going well, they didn't grasp the opportunitiy to better consolidate their public finances. Now, because they haven't done that at that time, they are sitting on their blisters. But that's no reason to change the rules. It's all the more reason to finally do what should have been done long before. Out of the 12 euro zone countries, eight have already reached that goal.
Regardless of what should be and what actually is at the moment, this current spate of articles, coupled with the sterling plummet in the UK (aka southeast Iceland), foreshadow nothing good for the euro, Europe, or the global economy.
Still think politicians and ever more governmentalism are the answer? Enjoy the blisters.
Bloatware
The European Union is considering forcing Microsoft to distribute rival browsers as part of Windows, the software maker disclosed in a regulatory filing this week.Lest you think this is all about helping the poor defenseless consumer, please disabuse yourself of such a quaint notion:
As part of its quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission filed on Thursday, the software maker offered more details on the EU's statement last week that it believes Microsoft's inclusion of a browser in Windows violates antitrust law.
Microsoft said that the EU is considering forcing computer makers, known as original equipment manufacturers, or OEMs, to offer multiple browsers with new Windows PCs.
Microsoft also noted that the EU is also seeking to "impose a significant fine based on sales of Windows operating systems in the European Union."Does an individual who is unhappy with Internet Explorer yet totally incapable of finding and downloading any number of readily-available, non-Microsoft, and free web browsers actually need to be engaged on the internet in the first place? A user cull via digital Darwinism might be what we all need anyway.
Added bonus to help insure the European
And that's not the only area where Microsoft faces further EU action. Microsoft confirmed that an investigation into Office may still be ongoing.Note to Redmond, consider the Gazprom solution.
"In January 2008, the commission opened an additional competition law investigation that relates primarily to interoperability with respect to our Microsoft Office family of products," Microsoft said. "This investigation resulted from complaints filed with the commission by a trade association of Microsoft's competitors."
Friday, January 23, 2009
The crushing wisdom of crowds...
Some may not be happy that the very same people voted for President Obama (get over it), however the very same crowd does seem to have their priorities in order for 2009:As Barack Obama takes office, the public’s focus is overwhelmingly on domestic policy concerns – particularly the economy. Strengthening the nation’s economy and improving the job situation stand at the top of the public’s list of domestic priorities for 2009. Meanwhile, the priority placed on issues such as the environment, crime, illegal immigration and even reducing health care costs has fallen off from a year ago.No points for coming in dead last.
Wouldn't a cash advance on the credit card have been cheaper?
While this transaction still qualifies as a gift to charity, Mr. Slim makes sure the 14% vig is firmly in place.
Stop the "presses"?
Shock, horror, alert The Hague:Timothy F. Geithner, who took a big step toward confirmation as Treasury secretary on Thursday, told senators that the Obama administration believes China is "manipulating" its currency, suggesting a more confrontational trade stance toward that country than under the Bush administration.The article then goes on to detail nothing in terms of background on the issue or how this "manipulation" may or may not be happening. Putting aside the factless article and the sheer hubris of any western government at this time lecturing the Chinese (or any country) on currency and/or economic manipulation, there is a silver-lining to be found:
Mr. Geithner’s comment, made in writing to the Senate Finance Committee hours before it voted 18 to 5 to recommend that the full Senate confirm him, is certain to anger the Chinese government and raise fears that it could sell off some of its huge reserves of dollars.Could this not help the US Treasury and US Federal Reserve in terms of "providing liquidity into the system"? Outside of that, just think of all the electricity, labor, material, and printing costs the Chinese would be helping to offset should they decide to help the west with a little ad hoc "quantitative easing".
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Left-leaning Mushy, Middle-mindedness is a Political Creed Founded of Stereotypes and Slander
David Frum, writing in Canada’s National Post comments on some B-actress’ infantile ramblings employing universal morality as a way of saying people don’t agree with her are somehow lesser people. It goes along with the dimness that a logo-branded presidency would appeal to.
It is telling just how it is that kind of thought attempts to divide people along the lines of who they are, not what they do, or of the content of their character while advertising some “unifying” magic that they’d like to think they have some sort of franchise over: seem European? Good. Spout leftist sayings: good. Seem “Canadian-ish”: good. – all this in spite of the reality of the individual, as if one could extend this to ur-Europeans Hitler and King Leopold, or to ur-lefties Stalin, Erich Honecker, etal.It's almost a psychological rule: The more you espouse "compassion" in your politics, the more likely you are to be selfish in your personal behaviour.
Why would anyone need to continue to make this point? Simple: the pedantry of the left who promote themselves as having a monopoly on wisdom, compassion, caring, and anything else that might garner the love of strangers continues to not bear out as speciousness, as they employ their stated compassion as a weapon against those who don’t agree with them – to brand them with some sort of logo.
How often do we hear the generosity of Europe contrasted to the "savage individualism" of the United States? Yet Americans give vastly more to charity: per person, more than twice as much as the Spanish, more than three times as much as the French, seven times as much as the Germans and 14 times as much as the Italians.
Despite working an average of 400 hours more per year than their European counterparts, Americans are 15 percentage points more likely to volunteer their time than the Dutch, 21 points more likely to volunteer than the Swiss and 32 points more likely to volunteer than Germans. (Indeed, 80% of Germans never volunteer their time for any cause at all.)
If we must have stereotypes, let's at least have accurate ones. Not only are conservatives sexier than liberals -- they are kinder too.
Pourquoi ceux qui manifestent ne se révoltent-ils pas quand on massacre les Indiens du Chiapas, les Tibétains ?
Update: "Shame!" "racist" shout the latest comments from Le Monde readers, which have now risen above 170, including one (from a h.ouriemchi) which states that Pierre Jourde's column defending Israel should only be allowed if Osama Bin Laden is also allowed to write a column for Le Monde ("Le jour où le MONDE publierait une tribune de Ben Laden je dirai que cet article est un droit de réponse juste et équitable")! Meanwhile, while one of my comments was accepted, another — the last paragraph and last line of this post sent in as quotes from Guy Millière's book — was refused twice, without any reason whatsoever given… (End of update)
("Je suis surpris par tant de 'simplisme' de la part de cet enseignant", "Je suis surpris de voir que l'auteur travaille à l'université", "J'ai honte que l'université soit à ce niveau la. sans doute fallait il une signature de prof pour donner de l'autorité à cette opinion (je ne dis pas "pensée) nullissime", "Cette rédaction de M. Chose est clairement hors sujet", "Quelle série de clichés et de contre-vérités!", "Quelle arrogance", "Un texte d'une rare faiblesse", "assez faible intellectuellement", "sans interet", "un raccourci indigne d'un universitaire", "propagande",
"Pure propagande", "C'est de la propagande de bas étage qui dessert la cause qu'elle essaye de défendre … Laissez ces articles à Paris Match, on attend mieux du Monde", "M. Gourde se gourre complet", "Le magicien a parlé", "un article indigne", "Pitoyable", "INSIGNIFIANT", "Insupportable", "le mensonge devient grotesque", "Une analyse indigne d'un intellectuel", "le galimatias de ce prof", "Tribune assez nauséabonde", "do not feed the troll", "cette grosse bète pleine de haine et de fureur", "Enfumage des cibles, bombardements verbeux, tirs de missiles vipérins", "ils me font vomir tous ces écrivains sans talent, ces philosophes 'experts en tout' qui veulent nous imposer leur iédologie et leur propagande", "Franchement, quand on lit un tel torchon, on comprend pourquoi croît la haine de l'Occident. Texte odieux !", "Quelle folie pousse donc Israël et ses soutiens de l'acabit de P. Jourde à toujours alimenter la haine et la guerre ?", "Mais quelle horreur que ce texte! ... vous devriez avoir honte!", "Ce passage est le plus ignoble que j'ai lus dans Le Monde depuis des années", and the very first comment: "Article absolument insupportable, mal écrit, et bourré d'autant de préjugés que les coupables de crimes antisémtites contre lesquels il prétend s'élever." [… By the way: "la polupation"? "Le Didacteur"? "un raccourci [qui] désert la cause"?])In Houdna, Guy Millière explains the strong sentiments against Israel as well as against Uncle Sam (or: let's get to the root problem of the hate):
Marxistes, tiers-mondistes, communistes, socialistes, «anti-impérialistes» qui commençaient à être en manque avec la fin de la décolonisation, ont eu ainsi, quasi providentiellement, un nouveau peuple à libérer, et c'était un peuple fabriqué tout exprès pour qu'ils veuillent sa libération. Ils ont eu peuple souffrant sur lequel se pencher, et cétait un peuple fait tout exprès pour qu'ils se penchent.…Ceux qui voulaient jeter par dessus bord ce qui pouvait leur rester de culpabilité par rapport au génocide entrepris par Hitler ont trouvé une extraordinaire opportunité : si des juifs se conduisaient comme des Nazis, le passé honteux de l'Europe était effacé. Si en plus, les Américains soutenaient les nouveaux nazis, la libération de l'Europe par l'Amérique était effacée, elle aussi.
Table rase égale : Europe propre.
Affable donut -or- Crushing vise?
Sometimes things move fast, per the EU-Observer:A major new gas pipe connecting Russia to Germany will be up and running by 2011 Russia predicts, with Paris expected to join Berlin in giving the scheme political backing inside the EU.His Excellency the ambassador is entirely correct in calling for the diversification of energy routes into the European Union. What His Excellency fails to mention is the flip-side of the very same coin, diversification of energy sources into the European Union.
"The need to diversify routes of supplying gas from my country to EU member states has been underlined by this crisis," Russia's EU ambassador, Vladimir Chizhov, told EUobserver on Tuesday (20 January), as Russia's transit deadlock with Ukraine came to an end.
"The Nord Stream project will now be expedited and I believe that in early 2011 it will able to provide gas," he added.
The easy thing to do is shake tiny fists of rage at Russia for not being a dependable source of energy. This dance takes two. Russia, now and in the future, is merely putting their own national interest and goals in the forefront of this somewhat pressing issue.
It is the European Union who is truly acting poorly in this current and future saga. A "union" is defined as:
a. The act of uniting or the state of being united.Those European Union members who will "benefit" from the Nord/South Stream pipelines must know they are hanging fellow European Union members (Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) out to dry post-2011. The failure to recognise this reality, the failure to even mention this reality, and the failure to plan for this reality will further belie the hollow notions of "solidarity" and "union" in the European Union. In short, the continued failure of leadership.
b. A combination so formed, especially an alliance or confederation of people, parties, or political entities for mutual interest or benefit.
Again, do not turn east and shake tiny fists of rage at Russia, they are playing the long game of national interest and strategic planning. Moscow is not playing tricks, no hiding, completely transparent and upfront as to how this will play out. In the meantime Brussels is playing right into their hands.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Free-riding Freddy
As did the Irish commander of the Darfur and Chad expedition did, British defense secretary John Hutton points out that Europe’s money isn’t where its’ mouth is in Afghanistan."There should be no-one in NATO who believes that all that is needed is a bit of soft power, a bit of nice warm words for the Afghan government. That is not going to beat Al-Qaeda and the Taliban," Hutton said in a press conference in London ahead of a keynote speech later.
The point has been made often enough before by authorities in European NATO member states. There too, virtually nothing became of the complaints. Even Nicolas Sarkozy, someone who actually gets the problem, could only commit another 600 troops and get away with it politically, while the US has scheduled a surge of 30,000 troops to oppose what is expected to be a post-winter assault by the Taliban and al Queda to take large parts of territory out of the hands of the Afghan government. Those 600 French troops, as professional as they are, still represent a relative commitment by population of 1/10th of the force the United States is.
"We need a full complement of effective forces and we don't have those in theatre at the moment."
Without naming specific countries who he wanted to do more, Hutton added that it was not fair to expect the Americans to do all the "heavy lifting."
"We are going to have to do more, all of us in ISAF need to understand that, if we want this mission to be successful," Hutton said.
The problem is quite simply that the public in European societies aren’t ever convinced that there is much of anything worth defending, correcting, or fighting for. It’s why so many are willing to resort to calling for any other instrument (talks, dropping aid in the zone, placation of one form or another) because at the moment the question comes up, it doesn’t sound openly like the language of evasion.
It doesn’t ever seem to be a matter of dealing with an issue like supporting Afghanistan’s nascent pluralism, but of dealing with what someone is asking of them.In his speech Hutton was set to accuse other European countries of "freeloading" on the back of US and British military commitments in Afghanistan, according to the Daily Telegraph and Financial Times.
And if a statement like that, like so many we’ve heard before, moves the issue an inch in one direction or another, it would be a miracle. Just when it is that the European public at large is moved to act on any of their famous empathy for those suffering and for the concept of defending the freedoms and human rights remains to be seen.
Speaking to reporters, Hutton added: "We've got to step up to the plate, everyone in NATO's got to do that and the point of my remarks later on today will be to say it is not honest, credible or I think sustainable for us constantly to say, 'well the Americans can do it all.'
"That isn't an alliance, that's one-way traffic. That's not good enough."
Surely they already get the fact that for America, unilateralism is still the only option, but other than the likes of John Hutton, the issue is one of managing the “social awkwardness” of continuing to milk America’s capacity to commit.
For the Europeans though, that complex is actually a lot closer to home. In their back yard, in fact:That NATO cannot work effectively with the European Union - particularly in Kosovo and Afghanistan - is incomprehensible to me. I do not disregard national concerns about the lack of formal agreements for contact between EU and NATO missions. But I do not accept that our armed forces should suffer the consequences. Nor that we should be hampered in addressing shared security concerns.
To contextualize just how close something has to be to barely matter to them, Kosovo directly abuts the border of an EU member state, Pristina is 243 km from Thessaloniki, and yet not only was an American intervention required, 10% of the personnel there are American. The EU’s outward disposition and structure, as well as that of any bilateral effort by more than one EU member state at present is such that it can literally do nothing relevant for itself by itself.
The public seems unconcerned.
You have foolishly traded your freedom and mine — what little there is left — for the chance to feel good
I cannot join you in your celebration. I feel no elation. There is no smile on my face. I am not jumping with joy. There are no tears of triumph in my eyes.Thus writes Anne Wortham (center) who is black and who grew up in the segregated South (merci à Stu et Trish) but who says "I do not require a black president to know that I am a person of worth, and that life is worth living. I do not require a black president to love the ideal of America."
For such emotions and behavior to come from me, I would have to deny all that I know about the requirements of human flourishing and survival – all that I know about the history of the United States of America, all that I know about American race relations, and all that I know about Barack Obama as a politician. I would have to deny the nature of the "change" that Obama asserts has come to America. Most importantly, I would have to abnegate my certain understanding that you have chosen to sprint down the road to serfdom that we have been on for over a century.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
The Change in Washington’s Culture is Obvious
“A New Birth of Freedom,” you say? “Renewing America’s Promise?” How cute. They get to sound all sweet and bubbly while kicking the other half of the population in the shins about somehow taking away people’s freedoms and breaking society’s compact. Underhanded invective - it’s so like the left to try to make it all sound so mom-and-apple-pie.
I wonder if these whiny dookie digging elves had a hopey-changey tag phrase too.
Bush Sells His Soul for Foreign Oil. Oh! Wait!
Gerhard Schröder, the former German chancellor, will join the board of the Russian oil company TNK-BP as part of a peace deal between its co-owners, BP of Britain and a group of Russian billionaireswrites Reuters in the IHT.
A spokeswoman for TNK-BP said Schröder's popularity and connections in Russia made him a good hire.
France 24 Talk Show
Tuesday, between 4 pm and 5 pm (French time), I will be in a debate with a Democrat Abroad on France 24's English channel…
Naughty, naughty
For the Met Office the forecast is considerable embarrassment. It has spent £33m on a new supercomputer to calculate how climate change will affect Britain – only to find the new machine has a giant carbon footprint of its own.From the very same:
"The new supercomputer, which will become operational later this year, will emit 14,400 tonnes of CO2 a year," said Dave Britton, the Met Office’s chief press officer. This is equivalent to the CO2 emitted by 2,400 homes – generating an average of six tonnes each a year.
The Met Office recently published some of its most drastic predictions for future climate change. It warned: "If no action is taken to curb global warming temperatures are likely to rise by 5.5ºC and could rise as much as 7ºC above pre-industrial levels by 2100. Early and rapid reductions in CO2 emissions are required to avoid significant impacts of climate change."Just not that rapid it seems. Also:
Alan Dickinson, Met Office Director of Science and Technology, said: "We recognise that running such massive computers consumes huge amounts of power and that our actions in weather and climate prediction, like all our actions, have an impact on the environment. We will be taking actions to minimise this impact."Sleep mode? Hibernate?
Naturally, just as the warming causes the cooling and the cooling causes the warming, this dump of massive CO2 into the atmosphere will actually mean less global warming/cooling not more:
Dickinson believes, however, that the new computer will actually help Britain cut carbon emissions on a far greater scale than those it emits. He said: "Our next supercomputer will bring an acceleration in action on climate change through climate mitigation and adaptation measures as a consequence of a clearer understanding of risk. Ultimately this will lead to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions."Mr. Dickinson may very well be correct. The point being that if any non-government body (eg. private sector) took actions which introduced this amount of CO2 into the atmosphere they would immediately be dragged to The Hague or worse, endlessly harangued by the type of folks populating the Met's "climate change" office and the echo chambre at the Guardian.
…that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.' ... I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. ... And if America is to be a great nation this must become true.
Monday, January 19, 2009
March of the Sycophants
Ségolène Royal announced on Monday in Poitiers that she's going to Washington to attend the inauguration ceremony that will install Barack Obama as the 44th U.S. president on Tuesday 20 January at the White House. « I will visit the United States to attend the inauguration ceremony of Barack Obama.»
Gee, thanks, but I though it was “the Danish model” you were trying to peddle in France, if memory serves.
« I will leave on Saturday (January 17) and return the following Thursday,» said Ségolène Royal, on the sidelines of the wishes to the press, the regional council.
Never mind that it sounds like she wasn’t invited and was gate crashing, just get a look at the foregone conclusions swimming around in the vocabulary and conception of leadership as power: it’s “his” country, he’s “relaunching” it, Obama is being “installed” of all things. The tools of the “new model” you see, are a bunch of things that we’re instructed to worry about, and fight “the man” – whoever it is we’re told is “the man”.
Ségolène Royal political deathwatch update: one can’t stress enough how much her trip to Washington is so much like her desperate campaign attempt to have an International affairs cred by going to China. She recently got her block knocked off of as her party’s chief starving proletarian by someone far to her left. From her blog we see that she’s out-and-about in DC free of the burden of anyone politically useful paying attention to her.
From her blog, we find that she’s more than willing to bow and scrape to Mr. Obama if it can get her back on the good side of her own party by comparing him to a pantheon of Presidents, civil rights leaders , and tries to tell us that her new hero is fulfilling the life work of any American the French happen to respect. In this rather sad opportunity she’s taking to get herself onto her potential voters’ radar, we discover a rather loony notion she has that the White House has the levers over what she thinks is a simple, 2 dimensional command economy.This reconciliation has also expanded political and economic determinants in the current crisis. Barack Obama gave to political legitimacy, which between Reagan and Bush had too often been denied. He may thus be supported by the central government to boost and regulate the U.S. economy. Admittedly, there's Lincoln and Martin Luther King in Obama, but also of Franklin Roosevelt.
Yes, her supporters are in large part stupid enough to believe all of that. Especially the part where there was no 8 year Clinton presidency between Reagan and Georges Boosh.
According to the shallow in Europe, which in France includes a large number of her supporters, the dint and trope of American black men is somehow part of the civil rights movement in some roundabout, tropish sort of way. Even if they weren’t even alive at the time, and they don’t take into account what the actual person being compared is saying or doing. It could just as well be your accountant, and the thought would come to mind with most European socialists.
Sooner or later, she has to get back on the campaign bus, of course:For France, I draw from two perspectives. First, take the initiative of European integration. On the other hand, diversify our friendships. We must open a constructive dialogue with South America, Africa, India, China, the Middle East. On my way to Chile, the Middle East and China during the presidential campaign, on my way from Argentina, India and Morocco, I have tried my position, to show that concern.
This, despite that fact thatshe wont make any distinction between governments IN the Middle East (Lebanon or Syria?), South America (Venezuela or Columbia?), and Africa (Sudan or Chad?), which makes it, like this trip to DC a picture tour to energize her supporters back home. Both of them.
From her weekend plans we discover that she’s going to museums, memorials, and:A working meeting with associations involved in community leadership and the organization of communities (community organizing).
Inspired by the action and method of Saul Alinsky, this form of social intervention aimed at strengthening the capacity of the residents of neighborhoods to act on their lives and become master of their destiny. It deeply influenced Barack Obama, who was himself community organizer in a black neighborhood of Chicago and Hillary Clinton, who wrote a dissertation on the work of Alinsky.Yes, that underhanded Gramscian bait-and-switch artist Saul Alinsky.
Kudos to the French Air Force's Pilots
writes Le Monde.n pilote français a mené une opération de sauvetage aérien dramatique en Ecosse, venant au secours de deux jumeaux nés prématurément sur une île des Hébrides extérieures, un archipel au nord-ouest de l'Ecosse
Le major Oliver Luneau … qui a servi à deux reprises en Afghanistan devrait passer encore quelques mois sur la base de Lyneham (sud de l'Angleterre) avant de réintégrer l'Armée de l'air en France.