Hoping for a New Fürerprinzip

Odd, isn’t it that when the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to a leader of government or governmental organization, it’s intent is to try to swing in one direction or another the motives of a dictator or disliked figure who presents themselves as being able to be persuaded to change their ways. Past nominees of the Nobel Peace Prize have included Josef Stalin and Adolf Hitler for just that presumed reason.

In light of this, the Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to Barack Obama for having made a few statements here and there on things he is unlikely to act on comes as something of a surprise, unless you look at it as a measure taken by members of that committee to influence the internal politics of sovereign nation states. The problem here is that the US is not a dictatorship. The award is a telegraphing of political opinion which may have been more venal and reactionary than ‘aspirational’, spending heavily the capital of it’s past legitimacy.

The recent trend in Europe, the region where the likes of the Nobel Committees imagines as representing world opinion, has been to a rejection of leftism, and this award may me a sort of political influence “twofer” in opposition of those societies who voted to make it that way.

Sarkozy was elected with a firm mandate, Merkel was re-elected, Cameron seems like a practical shoe-in, and so forth. So the message transmitted from the rarified air of that northern latitude to democratic practitioners of their own choices is to fall into line. It’s sad to see that they have mounted this kind of effort on the pluralistic societies of the world to the willful ignorance of places like Belarus and the racketeer-like leadership succession practices of Russia.

As to the pretext of reducing nuclear weapons stockpiles, and channeling the dream of a world without peaceful deterrents, you have to wonder if they are really giving it to the right guy:

On the eve of this week's summit between President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin, negotiators from both countries huddled in New York Sunday to hash out a plan to substantially reduce their arsenals of nuclear warheads.

Secretary of State Colin Powell and U.S. arms specialists and their Russian counterparts were trying to work out details of how to make deep but uneven cuts in their stockpiles of nuclear arms in the next 10 years or more.

Putin arrives in Washington Monday night and will meet with Bush Tuesday to continue discussions over ways to reduce the number of offensive nuclear weapons. The two leaders are simultaneously working out a weapons negotiation blueprint that may allow Bush to proceed with his plans for a missile defense system.

"We see the capability to negotiate on the U.S. side and we have the same capability, but we want to know what we'll be negotiating about, in military and technological terms," Putin told a group of American journalists at the Kremlin in Moscow before departing for the U.S.

The two leaders begin their summit in Washington, but White House officials have suggested they would announce any agreements later at Bush's ranch near Crawford, Texas.

Bush is hoping to announce cuts of about two-thirds, from 6,000 warheads to about 2,000 on the U.S. side, when he and Putin meet. The reductions would be verified under guidelines established under previous nuclear treaties.

The entire affair was derided by those passionate about arms reduction as Putin and Bush playing a child’s game of cowboys and Indians on his ranch in Crawford, Texas, but the arms control ‘achievement’ being attributed to Mr. Obama, something he announced too shortly after entering office to have actually accomplished with his shambolically under-organized early administration, was not his at all, but a statement by a man they seek to turn into a Manchurian Candidate for their world view is sufficient for their Prize and their admiration.

In a summit that was said to "end a long chapter of confrontation," Presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia and George W. Bush of the United States met in Moscow on May 24, 2002, where they signed the Treaty on Strategic Offensive Reductions. Hailed as the beginning of a new relationship between the former Cold War foes, the Treaty calls for each state to reduce its deployed strategic nuclear weapons to approximately one third of the current level.

Which is all Obama will ever get, however much anybody believe that a few words from his lips will start a decades-long love parade leading to the Russians and Americans having NO nukes, while India, Iran, Israel, Pakistan, France, and the UK will likely serrupititiously retain theirs’, despite what they say when their lips are moving. No-one will be making arms verification trips to Pierrelatte.

Among the very dependable ‘known knowns’ of those who pretend to speak for the larger opinion of the world, is that the more they dislike America and Americans, the greater a need they feel to support Barack Obama. What the Nobel committee seeks is a conformity of opinion on the part of world leaders, even if they are accidental ones, to limit the diversity that makes man who he is, and the tension in opinion that maintains the breadth of ideas that keep us all safely in check.

Expect it to only get 'better' as time goes by for this academy award of political influence peddling:

Among those who have the right to nominate candidates for the coveted award are parliamentarians, academics, former peace prize laureates as well as current and former members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

The BHO honeymoon is over: Doubts about the Obama administration have been a dirty secret in European policy circles for months

The Apologizer-in-Chief may have won the Nobel Prize, but still, The Economist tells us (or told us prior to the Nobel Committee announcement), "The honeymoon between Europe and Barack Obama's America is over", with the London weekly noting that

From the American side, there is frustration that the Obama administration’s multilateral humility has not been matched with more European help in Afghanistan, or a promise in every European capital to back tougher sanctions on Iran.

… The sense of a honeymoon ended is widespread, at least at official level. … Doubts about the Obama administration have been a dirty secret in European policy circles for months, even as polls like the latest German Marshall Fund’s “Transatlantic Trends” survey continued to find Obamamania in western Europe. But the grumbling is slowly becoming public.

The Nobel Peace Prize: Finally, the Apologizer-in-Chief Gets Returns on His Denigration of America

The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize this year is none other than Barack Hussein Obama. (Maybe the Scandinavians wanted to send a reassuring note to BHO after the Olympic Games debacle?)

In any case, this means that the Apologizer-in-Chief has now been endorsed (but we already knew that, didn't we?) by Europe's extremist pacifists (in addition to Chávez, Kaddhafi, Putin, etc etc etc…) and that he will be able to travel — once more — to a foreign nation to make more apologies for the United States

The "Absolute Crime": For "the Battle of His Life" —the Fight Against the Kremlin's Rule— André Glucksmann Is Hated By His Fellow French Intellectuals

Marie-Pierre Subtil has an article on André Glucksmann, the French intellectual loathed by French intellectuals (and much of the French public) for "the battle of his life", the fight against the Kremlin's hegemony, coupled, naturally, with its corollary, i.e., support for Russia's biggest adversary, Uncle Sam, and, more recently, his backing George W Bush in the Iraq War.

Needless to say, Le Monde's readers join in castigating the man who committed the "absolute crime".

Son ami Pascal Bruckner : "Il a accompli la transgression qui est un crime absolu pour les intellectuels en France, le passage de l'extrême gauche à la droite. Il doit y trouver un certain plaisir."

Il ne s'en cache pas : "Ça me satisfait assez de décevoir des gens qui m'avaient collé une étiquette que je n'avais pas choisie." Ce qui le surprend, c'est l'"exécration" dont il a fait l'objet. Le rejet a été plus fort que lorsqu'au milieu des années 1970 il s'était fait le chantre d'Alexandre Soljenitsyne. Plus fort que lorsqu'il avait pris position contre François Mitterrand, coupable d'avoir été le ministre de l'intérieur du gouvernement qui a fait la guerre en Algérie. Plus fort que lorsqu'en 2003 il s'était engagé derrière les Etats-Unis partant en guerre contre Saddam Hussein. "On me faisait endosser de gré ou de force le costume de l'intellectuel de gauche", sourit-il. Un temps, puis : "Je ne me considère pas comme un intellectuel de droite."

Ni gauche ni droite. Tel est son credo depuis qu'il a lu Soljenitsyne, assure son fils. Raphaël Glucksmann a gardé des dîners de son enfance le souvenir de grandes tablées où moudjahidin afghans, féministes algériennes, dissidents soviétiques et opposants sud-américains "s'engueulaient mais avaient un fonds commun, la révolte contre l'ordre établi". Dans la famille Glucksmann, "une sorte de PME militante", dit un proche, il y a la mère, Françoise, dite "Fanfan", qui joue "un rôle moteur" d'après tous les amis, le père, André, pourvoyeur du carnet d'adresses, et Raphaël, 30 ans, héritier des causes du couple, installé à Tbilissi où, salarié d'une fondation estonienne, il conseille le président géorgien Mikheïl Saakachvili.

Dans les années 1990, il y a eu la Bosnie, le Rwanda, le Kosovo, la Tchétchénie, l'Afghanistan. Aujourd'hui, c'est l'Ukraine, et surtout la Géorgie. De sa lutte contre l'hégémonie du Kremlin, Glucksmann dit : "C'est la bataille de ma vie." Pour l'enfant de communistes autrichiens, né à Boulogne-Billancourt en 1937, Vladimir Poutine incarne le mal.

…Ses détracteurs lui reprochent sa vision binaire du monde, ses indignations "de rente", voire "sélectives" : pourquoi les Tchétchènes et pas les Palestiniens ? Réponse en trois temps. Un : pourquoi le monde se mobilise-t-il pour les Palestiniens et pas pour les Tchétchènes ? Deux : sur 1 million de Tchétchènes, 200 000 au moins ont été tués, beaucoup plus, proportionnellement, que de Palestiniens. Trois : "La question laisse entendre qu'il y a un fort et un faible, or, au Proche-Orient, Israël est le faible." Cette position expliquerait-elle son attitude vis-à-vis de Nicolas Sarkozy ? "Son ralliement était en fait motivé par l'espoir d'un abandon de la politique arabe de la France", estime Pascal Boniface, le directeur de l'Institut de relations internationales et stratégiques.

A couple of rare Le Monde readers set the others straight:

• Il faudrait souligner, qu'en général, le conformisme des "intellectuels critiques" français rappelle beaucoup la sainte inquisition de l'église catholique.

• L'unanimité en France depuis 20 ans (en résumé: pro-palestinienne, anti-israélienne, pro-russe, anti-US, anti-GB) est étouffante, elle ne rend pas compte de la complexité du monde. C'est pourquoi une voix discordante telle que celle d'André Glucksmann est rafraîchissante, même si elle est minoritaire. Mais la gauche française, et la France en général, détient le monopole mondial de l'intelligence: du moins est-il bien confortable de le croire. Le reste du monde, lui, reste sceptique.

Bragging Rites

Frédéric Mitterrand our favorite passive-aggressive crypto-pederast tries to “channel” his way around a controversy that only came to light in view of the cultural elite’s passive defense of Roman Polanski which Erik commented on.

From an interview which appears arranged for the “reconstruction” of his image we find:

“This is in no way condoning sex tourism", said Mr. Mitterrand on the TF1 channel. "There is no apology for pedophilia and relationships with young boys," he added.:

Pleasing himself: from a program named “You can’t please everybody” 20 March 2005

"I condemn sex tourism as a shame, I condemn pedophilia that I have never participated in in any way," he stressed.

It is "probably a mistake, but not a crime, nor even a poor choice," he further added, when asked about the story of episodes of sex tourism in his book.

He said he never had any intention to resign and has the confidence of President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Frédéric Mitterrand, nephew of former Socialist President François Mitterrand, joined the [Sarkozy] government in June, is at the center of a political controversy generated by his book « La Mauvaise vie » ("Bad Life"), published in 2005. n one chapter of this book, the narrator recounts sexual experiences with boy prostitutes in Thailand.

It’s funny how his pride is protected by a “no apologies” air that tries on one level to rationalize the very thing he wants to appear to be criticizing.

As Erik reported, his “hypno-autobiography” is as much an exercise in playing to technicalities as his interview – he wants to brag about violating children without having to bear any of the consequences of it. These children he all-but admits he indulged himself in sexually were sexualized at a pre-natural age for the sole purpose of the pleasure of those who like to have an absolute control over others without risk of their person being rejection in any way that would matter to them. That, and a sexual affection for children, and a thirst for something that is forbidden for the sole purpose of protecting children.

In his book, Mr Mitterrand, the nephew of the late Socialist president François Mitterrand, wrote: “I got into the habit of paying for boys...All these rituals of the market for youths, the slave market excite me enormously.
“One could judge this abominable spectacle from a moral standpoint but it pleases me beyond the reasonable.”

An odd appeal to pity where even the normative people in a similar place in life reach for empty temporary pleasures.

If the destruction of their good development for the sole purpose of an old man’s pleasure isn’t proof enough to someone of the degeneracy and uncaring of someone, they should probably find a society somewhere where it is accepted – if they can. Ancient Greece, as well as Sparta, destroyed themselves.

Marine Le Pen quoting from Mitterand’s auto-biopic of a “novel” on television outlines the very pathology that causes so much harm:

Miss Le Pen read out a passage in which Mr Mitterrand wrote: “The profusion of very attractive and immediately available young boys puts me in a state of desire that I no longer need to hinder nor hide...as I know that I will not be refused.”

Mitterand’s response was to treat the whole thing like it was a minor political scuffle, with the sort of typical bombast of a man trying to shock his way out of a bind. In truth, Marine Le Pen understands where the populism of this position comes from: virtually the entire population, and especially of parents, which unlike the elite of the culture appears profoundly offended by the idea of defending the past actions of Roman Polanski or Frédéric Mitterrand. Especially since the argument was limited to “but they all had such a great time!”

Wanting access to others’ children, what is coveted by these vile adults is the physical, emotional, and mental enslavement of children. Setting his admission aside, even were it an unpracticed amelioration of the idea alone, it should tell you something about this “de facto CEO of Culture” and his world view.

Never mind the fact that people of importance in government or critical media didn’t do a good job of largely blowing off the moral component of a fellow member of their caste back 2005, where all but a few had an equally repugnant disregard of the public interest when « La Mauvaise vie » was published.

"Don't ever let homosexuals tell you that they 'just want to be left alone'"

For some strange reason, Benjamin Duffy has a problem with "gay people" and doesn't really believe it when "homosexuals tell you that they 'just want to be left alone'." (Very strange that he should think that, I know…) He adds: "They are the aggressors in this culture war, no two ways about it…" Tony Perkins:

Few Obama administration appointments have been as startling as Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s appointment of Kevin Jennings, the homosexual founder of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), to head the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools.

…Jennings does not limit his promotion of homosexuality in schools only to high schools or middle schools. He wrote the foreword for a book titled Queering Elementary Education, which includes an essay declaring that “‘queerly raised’ children are agents” using “strategies of adaptation, negotiation, resistance, and subversion.”

Avast!

There is much to mock here, but I won’t. The absurd events do a good enough job of it without any assistance.

Somali pirates in two skiffs fired on a French navy vessel early Wednesday after apparently mistaking it for a commercial boat, the French military said. The French ship gave chase and captured five suspected pirates.
No one was wounded by the volleys from the Kalashnikov rifles directed at La Somme, a 3,800-ton refueling ship, French military spokesman Rear Adm. Christophe Prazuck said.
La Somme "was probably taken for a commercial ship by the two small skiffs" about 250 nautical miles (290 statute miles) off Somalia's coast, Prazuck said.

This vessel, 18% grey paint, radomes, numbering and all, was confused by Somali pirates as a commercial vessel. Even in the dark, its’ profile couldn’t be mistaken for a commercial cargo ship:



What the hell were they thinking?

That isn’t the sad part. Having been bled dry over the decades, making them hard up for a viable fleet, they were using a lightly armed ship loaded with fuel as a command information center.

La Somme is the French command vessel in the Indian Ocean, overseeing French air, sea and land forces fighting Somali pirates and hunting terrorists under the banner of the US-led Operation Enduring Freedom.

How, I wonder, could they have gotten that close without local radar and a nervous wizzo letting them know? After all, this isn’t the first time, unless they’re so structurally understaffed or aren’t permitted to stand a few sailors on their watch shift on the deck.

This was not the first time that Somali pirates have mistakenly attacked a French naval vessel. Several pirates were captured in May when they attempted to board a frigate in the area.

Elsewhere: how NOT to make the sale:

The plane was on a demonstration flight at an air show at Maatiga military airport when it crashed in the nearby Soug-Ejemaa district. There was no immediate word on the cause of the accident.

The South African Press Agency report failed to mention that the aircraft hit a house and that 3 residents were killed.

Omitted information and Arabs buying Russian weaponry in bulk... Is it 1971 yet? Industry press releases report that Russia has brokered 5 military contracts with the Libyan government..

Russia has five military procurement contracts underway with Libya, as reported yesterday by the news agency "RIA Novosti", quoting Alexander Mikheyev, deputy director general of Rosoboronexport, the Federal Agency in charge of managing former Soviet Union's military exports, and head of the Russian delegation at the "Lavex 2009" air show in Tripoli until today.

"The contracts involve military equipment for the Ground Forces and the Navy -Mikheyev explained- including the modernization of T-72 tanks, and the general supply of spare parts for the above-mentioned branches of the Armed Forces. We are also participating in a Libyan tender on the delivery of aircraft and air defense systems".

The 12h22 UT report cribbed from RIA Novosti was followed by a 17h23 UT report of the crash that neglected to make mention of the dead civilians.

France's Culture Minister (a Polanski Defender) in Trouble Regarding the Sex Tourism for Young Boys He Admits to in His Autobiography

A major article on Prague by Piotr Smolar in Le Monde, on 2 full pages, inaugurating a 5-part series on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and of the Soviet block throughout Europe — entitled "Mémoires à vif du communisme" — has led to not a single comment from any of its readers.

By contrast, the imbroglio involving Frédéric Mitterrand has led to almost 250 "réactions" from Le Monde's readers.

The culture minister's problem concerns a book he published in 2005. In the "semi-real, semi-dreamt autobiography", the defender of Roman Polanski and the demonizer of the American heartland tells of sexual tourism to places such as Thailand and Jakarta.

Parmi les scènes les plus fortes des pages hallucinées dans des maisons closes de Thaïlande où des jeunes gens défilent devant des hommes venus du monde entier, des nuits pluvieuses à Djakarta où le narrateur cueille un "boy" aux allures de paysan athlétique. "L'argent et le sexe, je suis au cœur de mon système, celui qui fonctionne enfin, car je sais qu'on ne me refusera pas", écrit l'auteur, face à cette profusion de chair à l'étal.

But actually, quite a number French politicians (and citizens) seem shocked, indeed disgusted, by the fact that the matter was brought up by the far-right Front National than by Mitterrand's antics. (Didn't Nicolas Sarkozy say, when presented with accusations that in some instances durig his presidential campaign, he was close to the positions of the FN: "It's not because Jean-Marie Le Pen says the sun is yellow that I am going to say it is blue"?)

And what is the punchline? you ask…

La Mauvaise Vie is being translated into English.

Lessons in Savoire-faire from our Continental Betters

Treated for depression after finding it difficult to come to terms with leaving the Elysée Palace

(Woof to Valerie)

No, Georges, the Future of Blogging is Here.

The Kindle e-book reader is to plunder Europe by the end of the month, and the Kindle Edition of ¡No Pasarán! will be there to enjoy the view. That is to say: we are who we’ve been waiting for.

The future of blogging?

20 Years After Half of Europe Was Freed, a New Wall Is Being Built: on the Sovereign Territory of Georgia

As Europe remembers the shame of the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact of 1939 and the Munich agreement of 1938, and as it prepares to celebrate the fall of the Berlin wall and the iron curtain in 1989, one question arises in our minds: Have we learned the lessons of history? Put another way, are we able to avoid repeating the mistakes that cast such a dark shadow over the 20th century?

A dozen European luminaries, several of them leaders from the former Soviet block (Vaclav Havel, Valdas Adamkus, Mart Laar, Vytautas Landsbergis, Otto de Habsbourg, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Timothy Garton Ash, André Glucksmann, Mark Leonard, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Adam Michnik, and Josep Ramoneda), sign an article in Le Monde called Le test géorgien, un nouveau Munich ? Is the Georgian Test a New Munich? they councel action from the the European Union, which, they remind us, "was built against the temptation of Munich and the iron curtain."

In order for the … historic commemorations to be meaningful both for Europe's collective identity and for its future, we urge the EU's 27 democratic leaders to define a proactive strategy to help Georgia peacefully regain its territorial integrity and obtain the withdrawal of Russian forces illegally stationed on Georgian soil.

…a big power will always find or engineer a pretext to invade a neighbour whose independence it resents. We should remember that Hitler accused the Poles of commencing hostilities in 1939, just as Stalin pinned the blame on the Finns when he invaded their country in 1940. Similarly, in the case of Georgia and Russia, the critical question is to determine which country invaded the other, rather than which soldier shot the first bullet.

As Le Monde's readers castigate the article, one of them writes:

Beaucoup d’européens et de français défendaient l’idée que l’annexion des Sudètes était conforme au droit des peuples à disposer d’eux-mêmes…Effectivement, la situation présente énormément de similitudes avec la situation en 39/39: L’europe libérale de l’ouest ne veut pas se battre pour de lointains alliés et est adepte d’idéologies américano/anglo-phobes qui amènent les foules à soutenir hier l’Allemagne nazie et/ou URSS et aujourd’hui Poutine.

Beaucoup de lecteurs du Monde ne réalisent pas une chose fondamentale concernant les pays de l’ex Europe de l’est:ils se sont toujours méfiés de la Russie expansionniste et se méfient de l’Europe de l’ouest qui les a trop souvent abandonnés aux ambitions impérialistes et totalitaires de la Russie.Cette sensibilité explique leur attachement à l’OTAN. On doit les écouter et oublier nos réflexes pro-cocos/pro-soviets/anti-US si nous voulons construire l’Europe politique et militaire avec ces Etats.

Seasonal Crap Rotation

Angry men on tractors protest global commodities markets. As if they could be controlled. Much as before.

We Need to Remember Who the Real Victim Is: Big Government

(Merci à Valerie)

Chicago's Olympic Defeat, to the French, Is Obama's First (and Hence So Far Only) Failure

While a photo selection in Le Monde denigrates the demonstrations protesting against the Apologizer-in-Chief as nothing but one "big circus" of "anti-Obamas", the daily's New York correspondant, Sylvain Cypel, refers to Chicago's Olympic defeat as Obama's first failure.

Lorsque, lundi dernier, Barack Obama avait opté pour le déplacement à Copenhague, de nombreux élus républicains avaient fustigé un président qui abandonne son pays pour une vétille au moment où tant d'urgences sont à régler. Hier soir, les mêmes venaient sur Fox se gausser de son échec, "une défaite de l'Amérique". Sale journée.

Democrats Will be Democrats

The Gary Glitter of the (court) circuit appears to be firing on all corrupt, lefty thrusters: patronage, rationalizing deviancy down, reserving corporal punishment for pleasure, coerced anal sex worthy of a lauded European film director. You name it.

Just think of it as giving time off for ‘good behavior.’ The defense, of course, will be seeking ‘social justice’

a civil rights organisation, has said that Mr Thomas is being prosecuted because of his race.

Moreover, just because prisoners were being abused, even though we all know that they’re all innocent due to society’s unjust ways, one may not be judgmental:

If someone has a sexual fetish that involves beating young males without their pants up and that is sexually stimulating to them, then for them that's a thing of value.

To whom exactly?

That unbelievably unfair and horrific US healthcare system on parade for the whole world to see

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded this year to three American scientists who solved a problem of cell biology with deep relevance to cancer and aging. The three will receive equal shares of a prize worth around $1.4 million.

Over 64 million Arrogant Paranoiacs Served

No doubt, a million “cultural theories” will abound...



Success, my friends, has a secret ingredient. A sort of overlooked special sauce, if you will. It’s called cleaning your shop and the bathrooms, and it’s why Americans have managed to succeed in the business of street food.

Stop the presses!

Shock/horror:

Irish government: There will be no third referendum

Chasing Lance Armstrong

They're still going after Lance Armstrong.

For reasons good or ill, this time the French are targeting the Union Cycliste Internationale (the UCI or International Cycling Union is in charge of controlling the cyclists for illegal substances), which they claim favored Armstrong and Alberto Contador's Astana team, among others by giving team members 45 minutes' advance notice of the upcoming test (when none, obviously, should be given)…

Offhand, there may be truth to some of the accusations, but it does seem that a government agency wants/wanted, as usual, to meddle and that it — l'Agence française de lutte contre le dopage (AFLD) — is miffed for its "escorts" being denied access by the UCI to the testing places…

Update: Pat Patterson adds some needed perspective:

Any drug that a cyclist is taking now that is popular will not magically disappear in 45 minutes. In some cases the residue of the byproducts of these drugs can last up to weeks not minutes. They are simply trying to imply that this 45 minutes is critical when it is not.

But The Tour is a private race that is not part of any of the other administrative groups but AFLD is quite anxious to take over the tour and has tried this tactic before.

The Official Victory Guide to the Irish Re-vote

The follow-up edition:

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.