An Outbreeder's Modest Proposal for Inbreeder Tolerance

Who is anybody to judge Mackenzie Phillips and Papa John? (danke zu Ben).

And with awareness will come acceptance. Supportive bumperstickers, marriage equality, an end to outbreeder sex-police targeting inbreeders, campus "safe spaces," incest pride marches, and corporate sensitivity training will be the signs that the campaign from out of the closets and into the streets has made headway. When all this is accomplished, our world will be transformed from one in which the incestophobes who now hatefully condemn incest without fear of repercussion will be reduced through social pressure to criticism of the most oblique and satirical sort.

Fig Leaf Internationalism

The graphic chosen says it all:

Morales, Castro, and Chavez lionized by Europeans wanting to oppress a populace vicariously through others.

The EU, which is the leading donor of development assistance to Latin America, also hopes to set up a new financial instrument to leverage millions of euros to bank-roll energy infrastructure, environmental projects and combat poverty.

Oddly enough it’s the Europeans are the ones looking for energy. South and Central America have plenty of it. Money too. This is obviously a kind of bribe to stave off the continent’s Leftists penchant for nationalization, making it look rather like a sign of love and concern, as if governments really could love and be concerned.

They refer to themselves as the "biggest doners" to Latin America, but as usual it reveals little more than an obsession with statism. European government aid to governments for the model of program is greater than anyone else's, but as development aid goes, it's a pittance and an insult compared to the aggrandisement they find in it. In this case, they get to aggregate individual European governments into the EU to look big, and aggregate the varied societies in Latin America to make it look braod, as if there was a generic Latin America which is uniformly poor - for the purposes of the sympathies they may appear to have for the European generic image of peasants.

In reality, private doners, largely American improve the lives of others in many part of Latin America to a far greater degree than even Latin American governments do. What this looks like, is a sale and purchase of access to mineral rights, preferably through an absolutist who can inforce that franchise as long as the money keeps flowing. After all, Total had decades of experience operating that way on the African continent.

How Is That New Respect for Our Friends'n'Allies Workin' fer Ya, BHO (V)

Thanks to the absence of George W. Bush from the Oval office, America — and Chicago — get all kinds of respect these days (all links in Danish)..

Plus: Contrary to what Obama thinks of himself, former IOC member Kai Holm said (prior to the Rio win), Chicago showed nothing if not disrespect by having Obama show up, business-like, out of the blue and think the One's very presence could influence the outcome of the 2016 Olympic Games city vote (by contrast, Holm says, when London was chosen for 2012, Tony Blair had spent three days of lobbying and talking to all kinds of people, right and left…)

A "global climatic upheaval" whose "effects could be extremely serious, if not catastrophic"

"I don't believe that the world's present population is sustainable if there are more than three years like [the year we had two years ago] in a row."

Time Magazine comes with a timely warning of "extremely serious, if not catastrophic" climate change (merci à Harrison Colter who perceptively points out that it "seems foolish … not to heed calls to solve the problem").

As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval.

…Whatever the cause of the cooling trend, its effects could be extremely serious, if not catastrophic. Scientists figure that only a 1% decrease in the amount of sunlight hitting the earth's surface could tip the climatic balance, and cool the planet enough to send it sliding down the road to another ice age within only a few hundred years.

Update: According to Jerome R. Corsi, back then (in the 1970s and 1980s), global warming — the artificial type attributable to mankind — was something to be… welcomed and… desired, even… actively worked for!

In their 1970s textbook, "Ecoscience: Population, Resources and Environment," last revised in 1977, [future White House science czar John] Holdren together with co-authors Paul and Anne Ehrlich argued on page 687 that "a man-made warming trend might cancel out a natural cooling trend."

Update: Newsweek picks up the good work…

No, It’s not Man Ray Appreciation Night

Drunken man in fur hat carrying rifle and bumping into trees make newspaper.

Plantu Uses the Death of Michael Jackson to Castigate… the U.S. Army (?!)

Newspaper headline: Tragedy in the United States
American soldier: It's horrible! I must go home!

Michael Jackson's death was another opportunity for Le Monde's Plantu to make caricatural, derogatory remarks about Americans and the U.S. Army.

Well, of course: forget about the horrors of the Saddam Hussein years, forget about Saddam's killing fields (forget, especially, about Saddam's foreign abettors, Monsieur Plantu), forget about all the rebuilding done thanks to the army of the United States, forget how far Iraq has come, and (last but not least) make a caricature of the situation in Iraq, where all is — still — nothing but desolation, all of which is — bien sûr — the lone fault of the United States army and America itself…

Of Jackboots and Footnotes

Man about town Mark Steyn dissects Yale University Press’ self-censoring of depictions of both Mo and the Mo-toons, even in what will be a forgotten academic publications. Mimicking the numb intellectual monoculture of the European “intelligentia”, the reasons are Grade A venality.

notwithstanding the damage done by Euro-Canadian appeasers, an American institution has now effortlessly outpaced them. Having commissioned a book on the subject, Yale University Press has decided that it will appear without any illustration of said subject matter. The author is not a scaremongering blowhard like Ezra and me but a respected Brandeis University professor, Jytte Klausen. Insofar as I understand the thesis of The Cartoons That Shook The World, Professor Klausen argues that the crisis was artificially whipped up for political purposes and that, therefore, one should draw no broader conclusions about Muslim culture and its relationship with the west.

Which gives the benefit of the doubt to the symbolic ‘victims’. Sorry. Not good enough for the grand Troika of Victimhood!

The official explanation was the threat of violence. Not any actual violence, and, as it turns out, not even any actual threats. After Roger Kimball poked around a bit, it emerged that the decision to ban both the Danes and Dore was driven not by editors or publishers at YUP but by the very biggest bigwigs of the University itself. The experts were contacted by “the Office of the President”, no less. On its face, the decision to gut its own reputation for editorial and scholarly integrity seems to owe less to unspecified fears of jihadist nuts blowing up a university bookstore than to a cooler calculation of its strategic interests, including (so Mr Kimball suggests) continued access to wealthy Muslim benefactors.

It’s all about the bling-bling, baby!

In Denmark and other countries, craven accommodationists can at least plead that they have incendiary majority-Muslim suburbs with 50 per cent youth unemployment. That’s not true of New Haven, where the honchos seem to be using fear of violence as a cover for the appetites of their endowment. In other words, they’re merely posing as contemptible Euroweenies. Which, when you think about it, is even more contemptible.

In 2006, during the original cartoon jihad, a Muslim demonstrator in Toronto spelled it out: “We won’t stop the protests until the world obeys Islamic law.”

Alas double secret probation!



All of those willing to cede New Haven to the Umma, raise your hands. I thought as much. Put them down now. You’re freaking me out.

It takes a Priest to make it a Scandal

"This affair is frankly a bit sinister ... Here is a man of such talent, recognised worldwide, recognised especially in the country where he was arrested. This is not nice at all."

- Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner

How would the French cultural aristocracy or the sirens of Hollywood feel if a Roman Catholic Priest were detained by Swiss police for a 30 year old molestation, rather than Roman Polanski? Wouldn’t it just be another case of “American style” overzealous prosecution (oddly enough, executed by the Swiss) of an old man?

Swiss Church leaders have conceded that a priest suspected of molesting children in France was quietly transferred into Switzerland in the 1990s.

French law-enforcement officials are now seeking to question the priest, who has been identified only as a 67-year-old Capuchin. He has reportedly been living in a monastery in Switzerland.

Experience tells me that half of the ire comes from the fact that Polanski is a French national, and more importantly considered culturally French. The other half comes from a false argument that ‘he’s suffered enough’ founded on his chosen profession. Polanski's position in that cult of culture makes him a sort of high-priest. As with the church, it was the higher-ups that too came to the defense of the violator. The irony here is that while the parishoners were the most adamant to see justice served, there appears to be no great sense from the European public, save for a few parents, that THIS child abuser should at least come in under the law for the crime he pleased guilty to.

“Judicial lynching,” said Jack Lang, the former French culture minister. “Absolutely horrifying,” echoed the current French culture minister, Frédéric Mitterrand. “Provocation!” shouted Andrzej Wajda and other Polish filmmakers. From across Europe, nearly 100 representatives of the entertainment industry, including Pedro Almodóvar and Wim Wenders, signed a petition declaring themselves “dismayed” by the arrest

Their dismay seems to say a lot about these men.

The AFP "Exists Only Because of the Will of the French State"

Claude Moisy, a former head of the Agence France-Presse, admits in Le Monde that the AFP exists only because of the will of the French state.

Entreprise bâtarde [qui] n'existe que par la volonté de l'Etat français.

Meanwhile, in an unrelated matter, Alexandre Tylski defends Roman Polanski, which leads a number of readers to react. (More from JustOneMinute, merci à Larwyn…)

And the delayed closure of Guantanamo gives Le Monde grounds for an editorial.What they don't say is, "Hey, maybe Dubya wasn't as big a dumb*ss as his opponents — American as well as foreign — said he was"…


Meanwhile, Plantu demonstrates what happens when your brain has fried and you can no longer emit rational thoughts and use common sense…

Incongruity Alert

NYT: Europe’s Socialists Suffering Even in Downturn

However there’s always that strange sound of zombies out in those woods on the other side of the railroad tracks when the American provisional wing of the European socialist rose-bearers rings in on an issue like this. The online article’s properties list a different title altogether: “Even in Capitalists’ Bad Times, Europe’s Socialists Suffer - NYTimes.com”

As appealing as the idea is, European Socialists are not disappearing. They are just experiencing less control over their political challengers’ avenues to state their positions.

German voters clobbered the Social Democratic Party on Sunday, giving it only 23 percent of the vote, its worst performance since World War II.
Voters also punished left-leaning candidates in the summer’s European Parliament elections and trounced French Socialists in 2007. Where the left holds power, as in Spain and Britain, it is under attack. Where it is out, as in France, Italy and now Germany, it is divided and listless.

It being the New York Times, random, unrelated, and spurious political hobgoblins have to be introduced or course:

Some American conservatives demonize President Obama’s fiscal stimulus and health care overhaul as a dangerous turn toward European-style Socialism — but it is Europe’s right, not left, that is setting its political agenda.

What Mr. Obama, idolized by many no longer questioning reality, has to do with this story, one can only speculate. It does, however, reveal the author’s hand – to the blind.

And as if it one little buzz-phrase caught in their jaws was the essence of capitalism, the unfamiliarity that the stupid hold for the object of their hatred...

Even in the midst of one of the greatest challenges to capitalism in 75 years, involving a breakdown of the financial system due to “irrational exuberance,” greed and the weakness of regulatory systems

You might as well throw in the Mummenschantz Players while you’re at it, if you’re trying to maintain some congruity:

France Wants Its Share of the Iraq's Large Market

"Les entreprises qui m'accompagnent sont venues avec la ferme intention de développer leurs activités en Irak", a déclaré le premier ministre, estimant qu'il n'y avait "aucune raison que nous ne retrouvions pas la qualité de la relation économique qui était la nôtre" dans les années 1970-1980, lorsque la France était le partenaire privilégié de l'Irak de Saddam Hussein.

Last summer, shortly after American departure from Iraq's cities, François Fillon paid a surprise visit to Baghdad as a salesman (VRP), accompanied by several business tycoons (the heads of Total, EADS, Schneider, Suez, Lafarge, Veolia, etc), under Le Monde's blaring front-page headline, France Wants Its Share of the Large Iraqi Market.

Not much to say about that — unless it be Nouri Al Maliki's comment, which ought to sound bitter to some ears:

"Nous ne partons pas de zéro. Nous reprenons, nous retrouvons une longue histoire commune", a-t-il dit.

As for Plantu, his joke is more about the sorry state of the opposition Socialists in France. Still, notice his (typical) assumptions (via the cartoon Fillon's words):

"Democracy must be rebuilt" as if nothing had happened since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, as if three or four elections — the first ever in Iraq — had not taken place.

"Here there is no opposition" as if it was only France's arrival that will bring democracy about…

Word Got Out That the Nazis Would Deport Denmark's Jewish Population

Today is the 66th anniversary of the rescue of the Danish Jews (mange tak til Larwyn)…

Case in point

So, if this individual makes it across La Manche into France, will the same great and good among us be howling against his extradition too?

It’s only Called Rendition when Americans do it

"Conditions ... generally qualify as inhuman and degrading," the report says.
"One member state is going out and openly violating international law by intercepting migrants and maybe many refugees, sending them off to undergo degrading treatment, giving them no opportunity to seek asylum," Bill Frelick, author of the report, told EUobserver.

But it’s rendition on a much larger scale, of course.
Purpose? Moolah.
And oil.

The EU remains keen on enhancing ties with Libya despite its poor treatment of the scores of African migrants intercepted and sent back by Italy, a report by Human Rights Watch reads.

A 92-page Human Rights Watch report, released on Monday (21 September) as EU justice ministers were gathering in Brussels for their monthly meeting, with immigration high on the agenda, examines what it describes as the "brutal" treatment of migrants, asylum seekers and refugees in Libya through the eyes of those who have managed to leave and are currently in Italy and Malta.

Elsewhere, the Canadian government is tired of EUvians disposing of those dependants on the state at their border. Purpose? Moolah.
And the tacit belief integral to the European outlook that holds that some people are human trash.

The EU commissioner for justice and home affairs, Jacques Barrot, has warned Canada it could face "retaliatory measures" if it does not scrap the visa obligation imposed on Czech citizens by the end of the year.

Ottawa abolished visas for Czechs in 2007, but re-introduced them in July after hundreds of Roma from the central-European country applied for asylum in Canada, citing discrimination in their home country.

The Canadian move just serves as a reminder that the EU’s lectures about other people’s humanity are about as welcome as the way they treat the Roma.

Information coming on-line

Remember back in March when we had a giggle (for lack of a better word) about the never-ending fantasy of soaking the rich and all things being pure in the world? Well ,the tax hikes on the evil rich were put in place, claims were made and all was right with the world. Now, the results (for lack of a better word) are starting to trickle in:

This year, New York's deep-pocketed rich were required to dig even deeper to help shore up state finances.

They now pay higher taxes on their income and on limousines and yachts, more to enter a horse in a race and more to dabble in real estate. Meanwhile, many are losing millions from the closing of business tax loopholes and those making over $1 million are losing tax deductions others get.

It even costs more to hunt foxes or pheasants and have their taxes prepared.

Now, a half-dozen states in this recession-driven movement are nervously eyeing New York to see if it's wise to demand so much from people rich enough to have a second home in less taxing states — and for whom a change of address can be its own tax break.

Early data from New York show the higher tax rates for the wealthy have yielded lower-than-expected state wealth. Gov. David Paterson, who had always warned targeting the rich could backfire, fears that's just what happened.

Paterson said last week that revenues from the income tax increases and other taxes enacted in April are running about 20 percent less than anticipated.

No doubt, just the beginning.

Good-Bye Friend

William Safire, 1929-2009 (tip du chapeau à Instapundit)

Read 'em and weep

Polling numbers can be an interesting guide to the mindset and thoughts of the great unwashed masses. Political hacks like to look at the numbers and divine any path possible to appease the most number of people in any bid to stay in office. Even when poll numbers are absolutely set against whatever pet issue being pushed by a political hack they will look for any numeric thread by which they can glom on to and keep trying to expand their business (government), voters be damned. Usually the thread grasped is along the lines of the "Polls show that, left-handed people born during a leap-year on a Wednesday and have a hermaphrodite sibiling want the government to act on this issue. WE MUST ACT NOW TO SAVE ALL CHILDREN AND PUPPIES FROM STARVING TOMORROW!" routine.

That is what makes poll numbers like this so interesting. The topic: government-run healthcare. The responses range from: no, hell no, STFU/STFD:

- Just 41% of voters nationwide now favor the health care reform proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats.

- 56% are opposed to the plan.

- 33% of seniors favor the plan while 59% are opposed.

- 16% of the over-65 crowd Strongly Favors the legislation while 46% are Strongly Opposed.

- among all voters 23% Strongly Favor the legislative effort and 43% are Strongly Opposed.

- 68% of American voters have health insurance coverage they rate good or excellent.

- If the plan passes, 24% of voters say the quality of care will get better, and 55% say it will get worse.

Good luck to anyone looking to make chicken-salad out of this one.

FINALLY!

Thankfully the truly dire issues facing (hu)man-kind are finally being addressed:

Now hear this, if you still can: The European Union said Monday it wants makers of popular digital music players to recommend users turn the volume down to preserve their hearing.

The EU's Consumer Affairs Commissioner Meglena Kuneva said experts and industry will together draft tougher standards to limit hearing loss.

Let's just hope it is not too late...

Euro-Doofus Alert

Plan 9 from Outer Space meets the unintentionally absurd German hobbyist.

Der Indianer: Why do 40,000 Germans spend their weekends dressed as Native Americans?

Because too many of them live vapid little lives, take something up as a hobby, eventually think it “spiritually fulfilling” (as opposed to the bad, condescending mimicry that it is,) and seem extremely weird as a result. I.E.: believe in nothing, and you will believe anything, especially if it doesn’t involve any sort of serious personal examination.

...Next...

Carmen Kwasny, who chairs the Native American Association of Germany, is convinced that Germans’ fascination with der Indianer comes from a lack of interaction with the natural environment in the country’s increasingly crowded, industrial cities. Kwasny grew up in Bavaria in an area surrounded by towers and factories; she remembers longing for an intimate connection to nature. “People in Germany are looking for some closeness, a new religion, new way of thinking,” she says. “The conflict is they have to find out that Native Americans are just people.”

As if this was an actual issue... What WOULD we do without our sophisticated cousins?

Polanski Case: "There is a Generous America That We Love, There Is Also a Certain America That Frightens, and That America Has Just Shown Its Face"

While I have mixed feelings about Roman Polanski's arrest (If the account I have heard is to be believed, the teen not only was already sexually active but was having an affair with none other than her step-dad, her mom's boyfriend; in addition, Samantha Geimer … s'est en effet prononcée pour la clémence en affirmant que l'exclusion de Polanski de Hollywood pendant une si longue période constituait un châtiment suffisant), I have none about French officialdom's (and artists') reaction to it, notably the eternally arrogant one haughtily uttered by culture minister Frédéric Mitterrand:

"On sait les conditions dans lesquelles c'est arrivé, et de la même manière qu'il y a une Amérique généreuse que nous aimons, il y aussi une certaine Amérique qui fait peur, et c'est cette Amérique là qui vient de nous présenter son visage", [a dit le ministre de la culture et de la communication].

Nevertheless, a surprising number of Le Monde readers are countering the élites and defending American officials (maybe more because George W. Bush has been replaced by Barack Obama than for any other reason? That would be ignoring that Tinseltown, and California, are more associated with the progressive Democrats that "we love")… (The words are all the more ironic coming from Frédéric Mitterrand, who wrote an autobiographical "novel" — is that supposed to be a phallic symbol on the cover, or what? — about going on trips to Asia for sex with young boys…)

Truth is, you cannot think of the whole affair without taking into account the sexualization of society — due to (the intense efforts of) the left — which leads to an acceptance ("tolerance", again) of young teens (even pre-teens) dressing and acting provocatively and thinking sex is cool and making themselves available; along with the left's equally-strong desire to a series of criminalize every part of society — creating laws and regulations for one and for all, along with activist judges, out-of-control courts and the ingérence of the state into every sphere of private life. (I notably remember a series of John Stossel stories about a man registered as a sex offender because he had sex with his grilfriend when he was 19 and she, 17; she was not some unknown "chick" but they were sweethearts and married, and today they have three children, three kids — his own! — whom he whom he cannot see alone!) This all serves to lead, among other things, to an abandonment of family values, to a feminization of men, and (therefore) to a father's relinquishment of his responsibilities (including protecting their teenage daughters)…

NB: While the much-ballyhooed religious right may be most vocal in favor of family traditions and in opposition to premarital sex (and to schools curricula that condone same, overtly or otherwise), I think that, as good conservatives, they have les to do with all the sorts of legalization we have witnessed in the past years than the left. I therefore consider the criminalization of the past few years to be a product of the left. In fact, I consider it an example of the state creating a problem and then intervening to correct said problem: first, they (and their artist abettors) make the sexualization of society something that is normal and, in fact, desired (so to speak), and then, when people (adults or otherwise) act out — leading to a sense of scandal, and not only from people on the right — leftists scream about, say, society's dark underground closet of pedophilia and jump in to assert more government control, punishing those who grew up in the society that they helped to create in the first place, thinking that desire and lust was normal and to be acted upon.

You get the 1960s and its "liberalization" of sexuality; then (by the greatest of coincidences) you get an onslaught of teens engaging in sex and things such as (in no particular order) adultery, divorce, and pedophilia; then you get such things (from the state) as an invasion of divorce courts and of rules against underage sex. But maybe the best thing would have… not to go so far in "liberalizing" sexual mores in the first place?

France, Sermonizer on Race Relations? Europe? "Un homme me regarde froidement en me lançant : 'J'aime pas les Arabes'"

The only problem with French criticism of alleged American racism and with the donneurs de leçon that are always giving Americans lessons in tolérance and solidarité, is that the deeds of their society, the deeds of the French, do not always — ahem — match their words…

(This, incidentally, brings us back to the main raison d'être of this blog: Not anti-Frenchism, as a number of our detractors are wont to sputter, but "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…")

A Muslim (or an Arab?) journalist of Le Monde testifies first (leading to the unprecedented reaction of over 450 readers), and he is followed by a Jewish journalist — or, at least, a journalist with a Jewish name…

Mustapha Kessous:

Je couvre le Tour de France. Je prépare un article sur ces gens qui peuplent le bord des routes. Sur le bitume mouillé près de Blain (Loire-Atlantique), je m'approche d'une famille surexcitée par le passage de la caravane, pour bavarder. "Je te parle pas, à toi", me jette un jeune homme, la vingtaine. A côté de moi, mon collègue Benoît Hopquin n'a aucun souci à discuter avec cette "France profonde". Il m'avouera plus tard que, lorsque nous nous sommes accrédités, une employée de l'organisation l'a appelé pour savoir si j'étais bien son... chauffeur.

Je pensais que ma "qualité" de journaliste au Monde allait enfin me préserver de mes principaux "défauts" : être un Arabe, avoir la peau trop basanée, être un musulman. Je croyais que ma carte de presse allait me protéger des "crochets" balancés par des gens obsédés par les origines et les apparences. Mais quels que soient le sujet, l'endroit, la population, les préjugés sont poisseux.

J'en parle souvent à mes collègues : ils peinent à me croire lorsque je leur décris cet "apartheid mental", lorsque je leur détaille les petites humiliations éprouvées quand je suis en reportage, ou dans la vie ordinaire. A quoi bon me présenter comme journaliste au Monde, on ne me croit pas. Certains n'hésitent pas à appeler le siège pour signaler qu'"un Mustapha se fait passer pour un journaliste du Monde !"

Ça fait bien longtemps que je ne prononce plus mon prénom lorsque je me présente au téléphone : c'est toujours "M. Kessous". … J'ai dû amputer une partie de mon identité, j'ai dû effacer ce prénom arabe de mes conversations. Dire Mustapha, c'est prendre le risque de voir votre interlocuteur refuser de vous parler. Je me dis parfois que je suis parano, que je me trompe. Mais ça s'est si souvent produit...

Des histoires comme celles-là, j'en aurais tant d'autres à raconter. On dit de moi que je suis d'origine étrangère, un beur, une racaille, un islamiste, un délinquant, un sauvageon, un "beurgeois", un enfant issu de l'immigration... Mais jamais un Français, Français tout court.

This led Le Monde to ask its readers for personal testimony (which only led to another 100 comments):

Refus à l'entrée des discothèques, difficultés à trouver un appartement ou un travail malgré mon diplome d'ingénieur, tout ça je l'ai vécu. Mais le plus pernicieux, le plus écœurant, ce sont toutes ces remarques du quotidien, qui n'ont l'air de choquer personne et qui suscitent le silence dans le meilleur des cas. Un soir, lors d'une fête d'entreprise, on me présente au directeur en tant que nouvelle recrue. Mon responsable donne mon nom à consonance arabe et s'empresse de préciser : "mais ne vous inquiétez pas, c'est quelqu'un de bien."

Then, Le Monde's Léon-Marc Levy joins the debate:

Je ne crois pas que … la haine du Juif soit moindre que la haine de l'Arabe. Loin s'en faut. Et, dans tous les cas, quel sens aurait une "hiérarchie des phobies", un "Palmarès des haines" ? Il faudrait plutôt chercher du côté du tabou. "Je n'aime pas les Arabes" est une déclaration beaucoup plus imaginable aujourd'hui que "je n'aime pas les Juifs".

…Mon propos, c'est le nom qui tue. Le nom sans homme. Le nom propre qui devient nom commun pour charrier la haine collective de l'Autre. M. Arabe Kessous. M. Léon-Marc Juif. … Le nom-sans-homme le fait basculer du côté des victimes de la haine. C'est que la haine raciale ne porte pas sur des individus en tant qu'individus. Elle porte sur une entité haïe. Tout le monde a entendu la pitoyable "défense" : "Mais je ne suis pas antisémite, d'ailleurs j'ai des amis Juifs". Ca marche aussi, bien sûr, avec les "amis Arabes, Noirs, Asiatiques..." Et alors ? Qu'est-ce que ça prouve ?

French Schools Losing Interest in Arabic Lessons

…en France, … l'enseignement de l'arabe, pourtant centenaire, est laissé à l'abandon par l'éducation nationale, au profit des mosquées qui ont capté la demande.

French high school students are losing interest in learning the Arab language, leading Brigitte Perucca to write in Le Monde that Arabic has been chased away from the classrooms.

Que quelques lycées prestigieux de centre-ville regroupent des classes d'arabophones ne doit pas faire illusion. Reléguée dans les zones d'éducation prioritaire, la langue arabe ne parvient pas à quitter son ghetto.

…Le dernier rapport de l'éducation nationale consacré aux ELCO, publié en mars 2006, relève que les cours d'arabe "ne sont pas convaincants". Non qu'ils se soient transformés en cours de religion, comme les inspecteurs l'ont maintes fois entendu, mais à cause de leur piètre qualité : méthodes jugées d'un autre âge, absence de lien entre l'arabe dialectal et arabe standard, rappel constant au pays d'origine et à son régime politique...

La comparaison avec les autres langues "rares" joue en la défaveur de l'arabe. Le chinois, porté par un effet de mode qui ne faiblit pas, attire environ 15 000 élèves dans le secondaire, le portugais 12 000, le russe 14 000 et l'hébreu 7 000. Cet échec sonne, pour nombre d'arabisants, comme un symptôme du rejet des Maghrébins dans la société française. "L'enseignement de cette langue se porte aussi mal que les populations qui la parlent", résume Abdellatif Naguaoui, professeur d'arabe au lycée Alfred-Noble de Clichy-sous-Bois (Seine-Saint-Denis). Traduire : l'arabe est aussi mal aimé que la communauté qui le parle.

…Le motif [du rejet], exprimé ouvertement ou non, étant toujours le même : proposer l'arabe, c'est prendre le risque de "stigmatiser" des collèges. D'où un double échec : cette langue ne trouve pas sa place dans les établissements en quête d'excellence et déserte les plus en difficulté.

But there is some good news (?):"…si l'arabe est en crise au collège et au lycée, il est en plein boom dans les mosquées." Also, private schools have taken up the torch, says Stéphanie Le Bars in Le Monde.

…ces ouvertures d'établissements répondent au désir des parents d'offrir à leurs enfants un "environnement musulman" et un "meilleur encadrement". Outre le programme de l'éducation nationale, les élèves y suivent des cours de langue arabe et de une à trois heures d'éducation religieuse, selon les projets.

La plupart des établissements ont été lancés à l'initiative ou avec le soutien de l'Union des organisations islamiques de France (UOIF), en pointe sur ce dossier. Le projet de Toulouse fait, lui, directement référence à la loi de 2004. "Que faire, sinon, des filles qui désirent rester voilées ?", s'interroge son responsable, Abdelfattah Rahhaoui.

This leads one reader to exclaim:

AU SECOURS !moi petite algérienne,la chance que j'ai eue en 1960, d'être sortie et tirée des griffes de la religion musulmane,par l'école française, bien des fillettes aujoud'hui ne l'auront plus. Elles seront voilées, subiront la discrimination et le sexisme de l'islam!! Tout cela sur le sol de la REPUBLIQUE FRANçAISE. Dans mon pire cauchemard, je ne pouvais l'imaginer . L'horreur absolue, pour toutes les femmes du monde musulman qui vaoyaient en la France et l'Europe un havre de sécurité.

They'd Prefer that we would all be Unequal Under the Law

PARIS, Sept 27 (Reuters) - France's political elite rallied to the defence of Roman Polanski on Sunday, calling on Switzerland to free the 76-year-old film director rather than extradite him to the United States. Artists and film makers also urged the release of Polanski, who faces charges of having sex with a girl of 13 in 1977, accusing Switzerland of being overzealous in pursuing the case.

True to form, European cultural lites come the the defense of a pedophile.

French Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand said he was "stunned" by the news, adding that both he and French President Nicolas Sarkozy wanted to see the acclaimed director returned swiftly to his family.

Let's set aside the fact that if your culture needs a government minister, it is rather likely to be in orbital decay, especially given the narrow way in which culture is being drawn.

Culture used to also mean something about civilization. Civilized cultures don't permit precedents like these to become normative in a culture.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner also issued a statement, saying he had spoken to his Swiss counterpart to demand that Polanski's rights were fully respected and that a "favourable" solution be rapidly found.

Sure. Is their culture reduced to a Kennedy-esque "fixing" of violations of an elite? May great moral lessons that sustains cultures without "ministries" be lost on that morally repugmant elite?

Born in Paris, Polanski moved to Poland with his Jewish family when still a toddler shortly before World War Two. His mother died in a Nazi concentration camp, but Polanski avoided capture and spent his youth in Poland before moving to the West.

Time to show what you can do ......

.... now that you have succeeded in shedding the albatrossic carcass:

Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives have won enough votes in Germany's election to form a center-right government with their preferred partners, the Free Democrats (FDP), early results showed Sunday. That brings to an end an awkward "grand coalition" over the past four years between Merkel's conservatives and the Social Democrats (SPD).

Hopes will be high, but judgment will be reserved.

P.S. Where is that much bally-hoo'd voter stampede to the left in Europe? Seeking shelter in the loving arms of government due to the economic crisis and all that.....

We do requests

This one goes out from Gordon B. in Brighton to anyone who will listen, with the message, "Can we just give it one more try? I promise I'll change."

Exterminating Humanity by Discouraging one Breeder at a Time

Adloyada makes note of something that has ALWAYS cracked me up – the naïve and awkward way that the BBC parrots whatever political Agitprop is available to them, which they then dramatize in such childish fashion that the only people who take it at face value are the very thoroughly programmed whom even the left don’t trust to think for themselves without continuous reinforcement.

This hilarious bit of tendenz literatur was read aloud, complete with the bit where nice, liberal Mr Jones transformed the homophobia of his wife, grumpy Mrs Jones, to the gay male couple with daughter living next door by the simple expedient of explaining to her that he had once loved a man, but decided that he loved her better and married her. Don't try that one at home, folks.

Clearly, they aren’t content to let society take its’ course, and that it must be conditioned and engineered away from what they must suspect are inborn tendencies to not act in favor of their social visions. Misguided as it is, it’s deeply stupid to say that if nature “created them as they are” that that same thing must also be fought and contained through humiliation and conditioning. The subtext is, of course, that social conditioning into a philosophical view that defies procreation is rather quite necessary for them to make the claim that it’s as natural as anything else, and that somehow heterosexuality is learned behavior.

The idiocy of all of it is rife. Among the population of the western world, hardly a soul or a crank “opposed” the rights for gays to exist. So the question is why the social warfare? Why the paranoia and driving need to restructure social thought? Why in a free society, is there some need to define outcomes with such a deep neglect for the fundamentals of freedom, such as the right to be disagreed with?

I suspect that the identity-related undercurrent, that one that rationalizes the bypassing of accepting the speech of others is not unlike the vulgar nature of the respect that the servile have for dictatorial leadership. It’s the only, slightly less-cold cold comfort that there is to the fear of a society trying to control the individual. The “proletarian” is supposed to take the leader whole, in a way greater than that of faith for god or the self-definition of the citizen’s ideas, with who the leader is afraid to have to compete with.

You almost wonder if they have conceived (no pun intended) of any use of non-homosexuals, other than provide them with fresh meat and new children to traumatize in early adolescence. However in Britain, one could not even joke about this with anyone for fear of the screeching of the thin skinned who have no tolerance for the freedom of conscience. Much to the joy of that sort of social autocracy, we, the vile unwashed masses will be found begging that we’re more than just walking protein.

That the apparent majority of people in sexual minorities deflect away from Classical Liberalism in favor of state enforced social controls is something I find not so much a reflection of the stupidity of its’ advocates, but a sort of weakness for, and inability to challenge the behavioral conditioning that was imposed on them. How is it that people can’t see that they are better off and FREER without the overbearing campaigning?

She proclaimed that the opposition to the circulation of propaganda books about happy gay male couples bringing up daughters represented anxiety that if knowledge of gayness as a valid lifestyle became widespread, it would threaten the continuation of capitalism.....

As if there was EVER ONE non-capitalist society anywhere in the history of humanity that left homosexuals unabused. Taking autocracy in the form of Communism at face value, no doubt, Davina Cooper whom Adloyada cites must surely have never seem it in action, or noticed that its’ motives were to construct conformity from the social level down to the very personal level, presumably in the interest of the rest of the zombies inhabiting their Marxist-Leninist, or even Maoist dream-world that is appealing to those who would suffer under it as a tool of social control over others.

The ignorance is implausible.

Get Real, Mec!

What world are we in when French leaders give lessons (correct ones) to America's president?! (Dieu merci Nicolas Sarkozy beat Ségolène Royal…)

At the United Nations, Nicolas Sarkozy tells Obama to get real (merci à Instapundit) regarding nuclear weapons and proliferation…

See the cover of Canada's National Post…

Obama: “We must never stop until we see the day when nuclear arms have been banished from the face of the earth.”

Sarkozy: “We live in the real world, not the virtual world. And the real world expects us to take decisions.”

Outstanding French Documentary on World War II

French TV has aired an outstanding documentary on World War II (the only problem — at least to some — being that the images have been colorized).

In Apocalypse — La 2e guerre mondiale, unlike other modern documentaries (American or foreign), we get a sense of the horror of the fighting and death tolls on the Pacific islands that led to the atomic bombs and Stalin is not whitewashed (or not as much as usual); we learn notably that "after liberating Birkenau, Stalin kept it open for his own purposes." (Biggest regret: Patton does not get much airtime; also, some France 2 suit seems to have omitted any Yanks in the trailer below…)

See the six 52-minute-long episodes if you can catch 'em…

Apocalypse, la 2e Guerre Mondiale
envoyé par sunnysideofthedoc. - Regardez plus de courts métrages.

“Julia Child’s cuisine is academic and bourgeois”: French food experts are divided about Ms. Child and her cooking

"Julia Child may have been America’s best-known 'French chef'," writes Maïa de la Baume, "but here in Paris few know her fabled cookbooks, let alone her name."

…French food experts are divided about Ms. Child and her cooking. Some say she caricatured French cuisine in her book and cooking show, making it seem too heavy and formal. Others believe she demystified it and see her as a role model in France, where cooking shows are rare and cuisine is not necessarily viewed as something anyone can interpret.

“Julia Child’s cuisine is academic and bourgeois,” said Julie Andrieu, a television personality and cookbook author. “It shows that in America, the cliché of beef, baguette and canard farci remains.”

…Ms. Andrieu, the cookbook author, said that despite Ms. Child’s clichéd recipes, her style could be defined as a “combination of scientific and empirical virtues” that helped explain why Americans wrote better cookbooks than the French.

“The French think that they are natural-born cooks; they prepare a dish off the top of their heads, without testing it,” she said. “In France, we rush over explanations.”

After watching “Julie & Julia,” Ms. Andrieu said, she felt compelled to go home and make boeuf bourguignon according to Ms. Child’s recipe. “I cut the flour in half, and it turned out to be the best I had ever made,” she said.

Mr. Epié even thinks that Ms. Child’s story should encourage the French to discuss their cuisine in a more democratic way.

Call in an Airstrike

Zapatero’s revolutionary paradise is a shambles.

According to the estimates of R. R. de Acuña & Asociados - as outlined in the Expansion article - there are currently 1.67 millon flats and houses on the market and looking for a buyer in Spain. To this number need to be added the 327,350 properties under construction but still unfinished, together with the 1.098 millon for which planning permision has been granted and which now have two years - by law - to be completed. No half measures here. Whatsmore, the 1.098 million with planning permission have already been allocated a credit line of 52.947 billion euros by the Spanish banking sector.

On the bright side, the migrant workers might actually find decent housing. You remember them. They’re the people in Spain who show up to work sober.

Firstly the estimate of 25% unemployment by the end of next year contained in the report may well be on the low side, especially if the Spanish government is running out of funding for the stimulus programmes. Spanish INEM employment department officials have already leaked estimates that if the Plan E type projects are not renewed, then we could see something like 700,000 additional unemployed in October and November of this year alone. If these warnings turn out to be realistic then my feeling is that we will hit 25% unemployment around Easter, and then start heading up towards 30%. We should break through the 30% level around the turn of 2010/11 or by the spring of 2011

See? Socialism WORKS!

That whole rule of law thing

It can be tricky.

Two litigants come before the judge, present evidence, argue the law, plead their case, and judges rule. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose:

Poland and Estonia have won a court challenge to European Commission attempts to rein in their carbon emissions, a move that could threaten the European Union's flagship mechanism for combatting climate change.

The European Court of First Instance on Wednesday backed complaints from the two eastern EU member states, saying that the commission had "exceeded the limits of its power" when it rejected their national carbon emission reduction plans.

Justice is never perfect. Especially when one side can self-adjudicate if they don't like the verdict (forget about letting the judges issue the stays until the appeals process is over, we have agenda-foisting to do):

Despite a court victory over the European Commission, Poland and Estonia cannot issue additional carbon permits, the EU executive has said.

The European Court of First Instance on Wednesday backed complaints from the two eastern EU member states, saying that the commission had "exceeded the limits of its power" when it rejected their national carbon emission reduction plans.

The commission does not believe there will be much change to the distribution of allowances.

On Thursday, EU environment commissioner Stavros Dimas said that as a result of the court's ruling, the commission would now have to reconsider its decisions on the two countries' emissions strategies, but that the two countries should wait until it did so.

"Ahead of these decisions, those countries are not allowed to issue any additional allowances beyond those created in the E.U. ETS registry system," he said in a statement.

So much for the spirit of the law in which two parties place themselves before the impartial bar of justice and ask the judge to decide. How do we know the fix is in? Fortunately, a member of the gadfly/hangers-on community spills the beans:

Sanjeev Kumar, the emissions trading scheme co-ordinator for conservation group WWF told EUobserver: "I've never seen a ruling as direct and aggressive."

"But at the same time in the end it's a lot of fuss about nothing. The ruling only applies to phase two of the ETS [until 2012], after which allocation is centralised."

Translation: Slow walk the appeals process and drag it out until 2012 when we are calling the shots fully. Small member states? Screw 'em.

Ireland, are you paying attention?

That FREE Healthcare

Weekend praise: the Dirndl

From a strictly cultural point-of-view, of course....

How does the U.S. say no nowadays to Russia on a major military transfer when the administration does not want to consider Russia a strategic threat?

When Russia issues a reminder that it wants to buy an advanced, helicopter-carrying warship from France that’s built for amphibious assaults — hello all you folks along the Black, Baltic and Caspian Seas — then it’s pressing deeper its own reset button on altered relations with the United States and NATO.

That is how John Vinocur starts his (aptly-entitled) article, Russia Tries to Control the Reset Button.

The Americans can insist that scrapping plans for a ground-based missile shield on Moscow’s borders is all about Iran and not Russia, and that the Obama administration has traded away nothing to the Russians in the process.

But the Kremlin has made clear its will to extend what it considers a triumph. It’s talking up a plan that Russia sees as containing an alliance-splitting downside for the United States whichever way it turns.

The latest gambit is the warship purchase bid. Trumpeted by Russia three times over the last month — think Moscow wants to grab Europe’s attention? — and confirmed by the French Defense Ministry, the Russian proposal involves buying a 21,300-ton Mistral class helicopter carrier and eventual joint production of four or five more.

A response of silence over the long term from the American side could look like another cave-in to Russia in the minds of the European and Central Asian allies who consider Moscow to have vetoed the ground-based missile defense system.

Even more problematically, should a deal for the helicopter carriers materialize, it would open the door — at least in the view of an American specialist on international arms transactions — for European allies to sell arms to China.

That’s a horrific idea for the American military, yet it remains a suspended project on a low flame inside the European Union. Indeed, China arms sales continue to have the open backing of President Nicolas Sarkozy.

But how does the United States say no nowadays to Russia (and France, if it agrees to build the ship and share the technology) on a major military transfer when the administration does not want to consider Russia a strategic threat?

…Russia, though, is exulting in a process in which its influence appears to be growing while American policy setbacks wobble from diminished control over events in Iran, North Korea and Afghanistan to taunting Russian arms sales to Venezuela.

In relation to the ship purchase talks — against the background of Russia’s invasion of Georgia last year and its virtual annexation of two Georgian provinces — the Russian Navy’s commander in chief, Adm. Vladimir Vysotsky, rhapsodized over how he could have done the Georgia job in 40 minutes instead of 26 hours if he had had the French warship.

Caption Call - Bellissimo Edition

Air France Pilot to French Air Traffic Controllers: "Vous ne foutez rien! … Connards! Vous êtes des enfoirés, vous travaillez comme des cons!"

While the French are busy praising Barack Obama and his efforts to make government in America as intrusive as it is in France, and as present as France's much-ballyhooed service public, Fabrice Amedeo has a report in Le Figaro (merci à Duncan Hill) saying the France's air traffic controllers (i.e., the French government's air traffic controllers) are basically irresponsible.

Plusieurs incidents liés à un sous-effectif en tour de contrôle ont ainsi été rapportés par les pilotes d'Air France. L'un d'entre eux, contacté par Le Figaro, raconte être passé près de la catastrophe au-dessus de Paris. «C'était un Airbus A 300 de la Kenyan Airlines dont le système anticollision ne marchait pas, rapporte le pilote. C'est le nôtre qui a assuré la manœuvre : nous avons plongé à 4 000 pieds par minute.» À cette vitesse de descente, l'avion est à une minute de l'impact au sol. «Du cockpit, j'ai entendu l'Airbus me passer juste au-dessus, explique le pilote. Une fois posé, le contrôle me donne l'autorisation de traverser la piste. J'aperçois alors en visu un avion au décollage et je m'arrête net. En quelques minutes, j'ai vécu deux risques d'accidents majeurs.»

Why might this be? Well, it has to do with people who do not want to work more or taking off to have and enjoy their free time, not least female controllers who somehow seem to be absent during vacation time and when school starts again.

And why don't the people responsible do anything? "Nous restons très en retrait sur ce dossier car nous craignons des représailles telles qu'une grève" says one airport director — anonymously.

We also learn that in Paris, several catastrophes have been avoided only in the nick of time, and that one pilot — upon learning that only two runways were open at aéroport Charles de Gaulle (one of th biggest airports in Europe) — sputtered, "You're useless!" in reply to a controller saying, "I don't give a damn." The pilot continues: "You're a**holes, you work like jerks" (which makes the air traffic controllers laugh and give lectures in politeness)…

In addition, a pilots' union representative, Bruno Sinatti, says he is not satisfied with the steps that Air France took for its fleet's safety after the crash of a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris four months ago…

The New State Religion Needs its’ Saints

If you think I’m exaggerating in calling the directionless pap that they call global environmentalism a state religion, why then do they want to rig up a druidic anthropomorphic idol to worship?

The president of the United Nations General Assembly, Rev. Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann, on Saturday declared Bolivian President Evo Morales as “World Hero of Mother Earth” in a ceremony at the presidential palace in this capital.

With a medal and a parchment scroll, the General Assembly of the United Nations Organization named Morales “the maximum exponent and paradigm of love for Mother Earth” in the resolution for his decoration that was read during the ceremony.

This came with no mention of Morales’ nationalization of the local gas industry, making the government itself a purveyor of “magical matricide agent” they call “human development.”

He added that he will continue trying to get the international community to acknowledge the rights of Mother Earth.

Besides Morales, the former Cuban head of state Fidel Castro has been named “World Hero of Solidarity” and the late ex-president of Tanzania, Julius Nyerere, will be honored as “World Hero of Social Justice.”

Isn’t it comforting to see Marxist oppressors accepting religion, just as the Arab nationalist have in their death throws as Saddam Hussein did to appeal to the gullible and those with part-time faith in something read solely as a elementary factional and political communication tool?

Part of the appeal of “earth worship” is that it predates any sort of significant philosophical thinking, especially about the complexities of free will, and the cultivated understanding of right and wrong. All the new “nature worship” is, is a self indulgent attempt to mimic the rituals of evolved and deep philosophical investigations. The greatest feature of this “tree love” crap is that (like communism was) is utterly materialistic – it’s a ritual begging for nourishment and good weather as if belief was nothing more than a transaction. It is neither compelling or challenging to the soul. It requires no introspection. All it is, is a bit for literal and material comforts and little else, despite what the idiots promoting it sell it as.

All the while, the budding strongmen depending on the propensity of enough people to NOT be introspective are employing it in a bid to recreate the unhealthy complex of civil leadership and enforced belief that characterized the worst times of medieval Europe, and epitomizes the paranoid cultures of the near east. In other words, “it’s good to be the King”

“Obama Renounces the USA’s Claim to Leadership”

John Rosenthal points out that a German news site headlines the Apologizer-in-Chief's UN address as follows: “Obama Renounces the USA’s Claim to Leadership”. The Europeans have understood it all…

But hey! What can you expect when you must devote all your energies on the planet's real problem: challenging those pesky, clueless conservatives from America's heartland…

How Is That New Respect for Our Friends'n'Allies Working for You, Barack? (IV)

… it is extraordinarily significant that a major ally supposedly wowed by Obama’s charisma and popularity, can publicly do the equivalent of throwing a pie into the president’s face with no consequences

writes Barry Rubin (shookhran to Larwyn) as he points out that

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner … stated that he doesn’t favor blocking the export of refined oil products to Iran, the keystone of the new sanctions proposed by Obama.

Could it be any more obvious? Obama’s salient international characteristic is not popularity but weakness. Already, Obama has been defied [by] or has buckled under to a long list of countries including: China, Egypt, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Venezuela, and now perhaps France.

…Nahum Barnea, arguably the Israeli left’s most distinguished writer, who backs a complete settlement freeze and would like to support Obama, wrote [that] Obama “is cool….Yet the U.S. president is not Brad Pitt or George Clooney. He’s supposed to bring results.”

Well-put. While American opinion-makers continue to focus on Obama’s “coolness” and Western Europeans cheer him—what’s not to cheer in an American president who let’s you do whatever you want?—the world is giving him the cold shoulder.

What they really meant to say was .....

Why Can't Those Greedy Capitalist Pigs in America Take the Compassionate European Health Systems as an Example and — Wait a Minute!

The American Right Protests Obama's "Socialism"
[On the rich capitalist pigs' signs:]
No [Health] Care for the Poor!

The ever-lucid Plantu, who always has got the Americans figured out (those money-grubbing, treacherous louts!), has made a total caricature out of tea parties as well as conservatives' concerns and demands. Obviously, those greedy capitalistic pigs in America should follow what the charitable, compassionate, ever-solidaristic Europeans are doing and emulate their…

Except, wait! Two months prior to Plantu's anti-American cartoon, Le Monde came out with an interesting article (to say the least) on its front page…

In it, Cécile Prieur informs us that more than 25% of Paris doctors (and nearly a third of dentists and almost 2/5 of gynocologists) refuse to treat poor clients. The denials of the CMU — a name someone like BHO should love: couverture médicale universelle or universal medical cover — are illegal but rarely sanctioned…

But wait; that's because the French capital's doctors are as greedy capitalist pigs as Americans as a whole are, and that's all the more reason for the government to intervene and establish — No!

La première raison invoquée est la lourdeur administrative et la "paperasse" qu'impliquerait la prise en charge des patients CMU : ces derniers ne payant pas leur consultation, le remboursement du médecin s'effectue par l'assurance-maladie, ce qui peut prendre du temps si le praticien n'est pas informatisé.

But they Made the Deathtraps Run on Time

Berlin: The S-Bahn, she is broken. And all this in a place where whining and self-loathing is the city’s official sport. The city’s commuter trains, having once been entirely run by the East Germans (even in the west), appear to have barely benefitted from the cursory face lift that it’s gotten since then. Seriously, if the 50’s were in again, they’d be stylin’!

Maybe they can call the whole thing a living museum of the former Communist state, or something. But then again they only take historical memory as long as it doesn’t really hurt.

Thanks to Observing Hermann: it’s still better than bad art.

Compounding to that Additional Irony Nuance

Erik’s post of this morning reminds us that vigilance comes, and vigilance goes. What matters is the moral position from which your partis begins. From John O Koehler’s excellent overview, Stasi: The Untold Story Of The East German Secret Police, we find an odd relationship between the continuation of the German left’s strange relationship with violence from both a position of heroically imaged vainglorious rebellion, and violence of a vainglorious state:

Although some guerrillas were schooled in Cuba, the most important training was handled by the Stasi.
Leftist urban guerrilla groups began a reign of terror in Chile in 1983 with bombings and assassinations, exactly the kind of actions for which the Stasi had provided training. Bombs were exploding in Santiago, Vina del Mar, Quilpue, Concepcion, and Talca, damaging supermarkets, buses, government offices and four stores in Santiago's largest shopping center. Between 1983 and 1986 there were more than a thousand bombings attributed to the clandestine Communist Front and the Revolutionary Movement, which also was blamed for killing twenty-one military officers and policemen.25 Between 1984 and 1988 the East Germans contributed $6,795,015 to the Chilean Communist Party for the financing of terrorism.

As the Stasi, the Nazis, and the thousand turdblossoms that the Comintern let bloom, populations cower before violence and enable another in a history of many ideological minorities brutalize the public again. They've been trained in to this Groundhog Day pattern, and they can't really see a freedom from it - not at least among the trees in the forest where they stand.

Until the fall of the East German communist regime, few suspected that more than two hundred of the most dangerous terrorists had been trained by specialists of the Stasi in East Germany. The last class graduated in August 1989, when the DDR was already heading toward disintegration. It appears that not all graduates of the last East German terrorism course for Chilean radicals returned to their homeland. A West European antiterrorist investigator told me, on condition of anonymity, that there were strong indications that some of them had joined the Basque separatist movement ETA, which had been terrorizing Spain for years.

It’s the story of Europe. It’s how small, violent cells later find themselves in power, and there’s always a rogue state involved – whether it’s a Syrian faction, well connected Saudis, the former Stasi or the former KGB.

A Remake of the Madrid Bombings in Germany's Elections?

The "next strike is very near, a strike that will surprise everyone in its effect, which will be much more shocking than that of 9/11/2001.”

From Ryan Mauro's FrontPage article, we learn that

The German security services are about to be tested…

Western intelligence agencies have been picking up signs of a brewing Al-Qaeda plot against Germany throughout 2009. The German newspaper, Der Spiegel reported in June that U.S. intelligence believed that Al-Qaeda had outsourced the plan to attack Germany to one of its affiliates called Al-Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb, previously known as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, which has been focused primarily on fighting the government of Algeria.

Thanks to Ben Duffy who spent three years in Germany and who adds:

An attack on German soil would totally work too. They'd do whatever the terrorists told them to do after that, and be so damned proud of their sensibility for doing so. I know Germans. They would also blame it on the United States.

Update: John Rosenthal says that "Harrach’s message to Germany was highly ambiguous", pointing out that

Bekkay Harrach, a German Islamist of Moroccan descent who goes by the nom de guerre Abu Talha Al-Almani or “Abu Talha the German” … begins his speech by stating precisely his gratitude toward Germany … Harrach then goes on to stress more general grounds for al-Qaeda as such to be grateful — or at least not particularly hostile – toward Germany. … Harrach repeatedly returns to the theme of the general forbearance of al-Qaeda toward Germany.

If, however, Harrach shows forbearance and even gratitude toward Germany, the same cannot be said of his attitude toward German Chancellor Angela Merkel. … The upshot of Harrach’s video warning appears to be that Germans should vote out Chancellor Merkel and her Christian Democrats next Sunday if they want to avoid an attack on German soil.

A Mindless Montage of Beliefs all Around, like being a Pro-Choice Vegan Pet Owner Wearing Uggs

Nag, nag, nag, nag.

In Brussels, European Union officials have grown increasingly frustrated at the US stance, saying it has fallen short on both its level of ambition to reduce emissions and on offering aid to developing nations.

“So far, we thought the basic problem was the Chinese and the Indians. But now I think the problem appears to lie most clearly with the US,” a European Commission official said. Talks were “not going well”.

European officials say the Obama administration lacks focus because its top talent is wrapped up in the all-consuming debate over healthcare.

So Osama bin forgotten again, eh?

But the European delegation appears to be turning the appearance of the situation around. Having been permanently pussy-whipped by NGOs as these Europeans are, with a larger GDP than the US, they trying to look like they’re speaking truth to power and imply that the US government is cheap, thoughtless, hates the poor, etc. with resembles a kind of tongue in cheek irony of a drunk trying to talk his way out of being pulled over for running a red.

EU criticised for 'inadequate' climate fund
Civil society groups worry that if the West does not stump enough cash for adaptation and mitigation, any global climate deal is off

11.09.2009 @ 07:39 CET
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Commission has proposed that the EU pay as little as €2 billion a year to fund third world carbon reduction measures and adaptation to unavoidable climate change.
Climate finance for the third world has become the main focus of discussion in the lead-up to the Copenhagen climate change summit in December. If the EU and US stump up significant chunks of cash for cutting emissions and climate adaptation, developing countries may in return commit to considerable CO2 reductions, even though it is the industrialised north that is responsible for most of the emissions that caused the problem.

Look, that butch act might work in the bushes at the park, but a certain bulging plain manila envelope has been forgotten.

Last December at the UN climate talks in Bali, Indonesia, the EU committed to such monies, but it was only today for the first time that the EU executive has proposed any specific figures.

So over the past year, unspecific figures have been transmitted to some fashionably poor society? Will the wonders of their love of humanity ever end?

The EU "will not and cannot bankroll the negotiations alone," Dimas said.

Which sounds a lot better that saying that even though you think it’s a Star Trek like planetary emergency, you haven’t thrown in a centime.