In the next few weeks, unless you stop it, your president will sign your freedom, your democracy, and your humanity away forever

At the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, this December, weeks away, a treaty will be signed, stated Lord Christopher Monckton (former science adviser to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher), speaking before the Minnesota Free Market Institute at an event at Bethel University in St. Paul on October 14.

Your president will sign it. Most of the third world countries will sign it, because they think they’re going to get money out of it. Most of the left-wing regime from the European Union will rubber stamp it. Virtually nobody won’t sign it.

I read that treaty. And what it says is this, that a world government is going to be created. The word “government” actually appears as the first of three purposes of the new entity. The second purpose is the transfer of wealth from the countries of the West to third world countries, in satisfication of what is called, coyly, “climate debt” – because we’ve been burning CO2 and they haven’t. We’ve been screwing up the climate and they haven’t. And the third purpose of this new entity, this government, is enforcement.

How many of you think that the word “election” or “democracy” or “vote” or “ballot” occurs anywhere in the 200 pages of that treaty? Quite right, it doesn’t appear once. So, at last, the communists who piled out of the Berlin Wall and into the environmental movement, who took over Greenpeace so that my friends who funded it left within a year, because [the communists] captured it – Now the apotheosis as at hand. They are about to impose a communist world government on the world. You have a president who has very strong sympathies with that point of view. He’s going to sign it. He’ll sign anything. He’s a Nobel Peace Prize [winner]; of course he’ll sign it.

As we noted before, The Nobel Prize Was to Get BHO to Scandinavia at the Exact Same Time that the UN's Climate Change Conference Is Taking Place (also, The Nobel Prize is really Obama's payback for disciplining the unruly United States and taming it to be a member of the European family of nations)… Incidentally, a lot more studies will need to be conducted regarding foreign countries' contributing funds to BHO's campaign last year to help bring all of this about…

Every Time You Drive a Car, Jesus Strangles a Puppy

Scaring children about something that they can do nothing about for reasons of political vanity.



In the UK, government sponsored child abuse is okay if it’s “for the cause”.

This is what activists of the civilizational dead-pool call “raising awareness”. Meanwhile the “huge number of people killed by Global Warming” might starve and impoverish due to natural coldening.

A French Father, a French Vigilante, a French Hero

Because the justice system (the German justice system) refused for more than 10 years to extradite the man who killed his teenage daughter 27 years ago, writes Yves Bordenave in Le Monde, André Bamberski decided to take matters into his own hands and have the murderer kidnapped in order to bring him to justice in France.

For kidnapping Dieter Krombach (too bad — I shouldn't say this, I guess (?) — too bad Bamberski didn't kill the dirty piece of human scum), Bamberski is risking 10 years in jail.

After leaving her husband three decades ago with their child, Bamberski's former wife moved in with Dr Krombach, who proceeded to abuse the Bamberskis' daughter, and finally, one day (when Kalinka was 14), poisoned her. In the ensuing 27 years, Germany and France both judged Dr Krombach, with Germany declaring the case closed and France condemning him to 15 years behind bars. Germany has refused to extradite the "good" doctor, and has repeatedly put pressure on the French not to go forward with asking for extradition.

Les autorités allemandes n'ont eu de cesse d'interférer auprès des autorités françaises. En mars 1995, à la veille de l'ouverture du procès de M. Krombach en France, l'ambassadeur d'Allemagne s'était déplacé jusque dans le bureau du président de la cour d'assises, Didier Wacogne, afin que celui-ci renvoie l'affaire aux calendes.

In the land (on the continent, really) that is always blasting Wild West America and its vigilante justice, reader comments are almost universally in favor of France's vigilante.

Among the reactions are those of two readers:

Honneur au père qui venge son enfant

Si l’Etat et la Justice manquent à leurs devoirs, alors, le monopole de la violence légitime dont profite l’Etat doit être considéré comme caduc et c’est un droit, et même un devoir, pour le citoyen que de palier lui-même à ces manquements.

A support committee for André Bemberski has been set up on Facebook…

What Part of This Would a Bien-Pensant Twit NOT Find Spiritually Disturbing?

Those terrible Americans...

....always standing in the way of the rest of the world:

Discord reigned supreme at a meeting of EU finance ministers in Luxembourg on Tuesday (20 October), with the most notable failure in the area of climate financing.

The Swedish EU presidency had hoped to reach an agreement on individual member state contributions towards a EU pot of funding, destined to help developing countries tackle climate change.

"It is a disappointing outcome, that we weren't able to reach an agreement," said Swedish finance minister Anders Borg after the meeting.

Greenpeace EU climate policy director Joris den Blanken described the meeting as a "fiasco", adding that the likelihood of failing to secure a global deal in Copenhagen this December to replace the Kyoto protocol was now "very real."

Yes, those terrible, terrible Americans.

Western MSM Reporter "Stupefied" to Learn that the Estonians Consider Soviet Occupation As Bad As, Or Worse Than, Nazi Occupation

Following Czechia and Poland, the third article in Le Monde's "Mémoires à vif du communisme" series is devoted to Estonia. In The War of Memories in Estonia, Piotr Smolar tells of learning with "stupor", first, the fact that in Tallinn's occupation(s) museum, there are two twin locomotives on display — one with the Nazis' swastika and the other with the Soviets' red star — and second, the content of the museum's signs, which state that

from the point of view of the number of lost lives and the intensity of oppression which the people suffered from, the German occupation was not as hard, in truth, as the Soviet occupation which predated and followed it.

Piotr Smolar feels the need to qualify the reality of the sentence being "factually correct" with the fact that it is "intolerable to a Russian". It already says a lot (about Western media as well as about Western education) that a reporter from the West's mainstream media who has grown up in Western society should be "stupefied" by the fact that the victims of communist oppression (the period from 1940 to 1991 is known as "the 50-year war" in Estonia) think — and say — that it was no better (sometimes, it was worse) than fascist oppression.

Some outtakes:

En pénétrant dans le Musée de l'occupation à Tallinn, … Les visiteurs … se retrouvent aussi nez à nez avec deux locomotives jumelles. L'une porte l'étoile rouge, l'autre la croix gammée. Première stupeur.

La deuxième arrive. Il faut lire les panneaux d'explication. On y découvre des faits, mais aussi beaucoup de commentaires. "Pour l'Estonie, ce fut un demi-siècle divisé et schizophrène dans tous les aspects de notre existence." Ou encore cette phrase, factuellement exacte mais insupportable pour un Russe : "Du point de vue du nombre de vies perdues et de l'intensité de l'oppression dont le peuple a souffert, l'occupation allemande n'a pas été aussi dure, en réalité, que l'occupation soviétique qui a précédé et celle qui a suivi."

L'histoire, en Estonie, n'est pas une simple matière scolaire ou un objet de colloque pour chercheurs aux bonnes manières. C'est un combat. Une reconquête, un affranchissement, lié de façon étroite à la nouvelle indépendance, acquise en 1991.

…En juin 1940, les troupes soviétiques occupent le pays, incorporé sous peu dans l'URSS. Près de 8 000 "ennemis du peuple" sont arrêtés. Près de 30 000 hommes sont enrôlés de force dans les rangs de l'Armée rouge.

A l'été 1941, les Allemands envahissent à leur tour l'Estonie. C'est difficile à admettre, vu de l'ouest du continent européen, mais nombreux sont ceux qui accueillent les nazis favorablement. Près de 40 000 personnes se portent volontaires pour combattre dans la Waffen-SS. Ils ne sont pas mus par une conviction idéologique, mais par l'idée de porter un coup décisif à l'oppresseur soviétique. On trouve donc des Estoniens dans chaque camp totalitaire, de gré ou de force.

"Le passé nazi, c'est quatre ans. Le passé communiste, c'est cinquante ans, rappelle Marek Tamm, jeune et brillant historien. … Après la guerre, la répression soviétique est terrible. En quelques jours, en mars 1949, plus de 20 000 Estoniens sont déportés en Sibérie. 3 000 meurent en route.

3,000 victims, that's as many as died during General Pinochet's entire career (you know, the piece of fascist scum whose acts to destroy democracy — contrary to those of communist régimes whose "intentions" were "good" — were entirely unforgivable) and those occurred during the 1949 deportation alone. The article goes on to speak about current relations between Estonian-speakers and Russian-speakers, but when speaking about the monument to the Red Army that the Tallinn government moved from the center of the capital to a military cemetery, Piotr Smolar — just like the New York Times before him — forgets the Russian cyber-war that the republic's giant neighbor visited upon it (again, two full pages do not seem to be enough to find the space for this despicable treatment of a tiny country).

[Selon les] Russes hostiles à toute politique d'estonisation du pays … la communauté russe serait systématiquement humiliée. Cet état d'esprit est résumé avec humour par le professeur de droit international Evhen Tsyboulenko, Ukrainien vivant dans le pays depuis 2003 : "Un alcoolique estonien ne se cherche pas d'excuse. Un alcoolique russe a toujours une bonne raison de boire : on le discrimine !"

… Maksim Reva, 34 ans, expose un point de vue inverse. Il raconte posément son engagement au sein de Notchnoï Dozor ["ronde de nuit"]. "Je me considère russe. Ce n'est pas une nationalité, mais une civilisation", dit-il en préambule. … Il manque un mot, le plus lourd, le plus connoté, dont les Russes abusent au point de le vider de son sens. Il arrive, après une gorgée de bière au miel. "Nous avons été victimes d'un lent génocide."

…Et alors, les répressions staliniennes ont eu lieu partout, pas seulement contre les Estoniens. Ce sont les Russes qui en ont été les principales victimes."

Le même argument est utilisé vis-à-vis des Ukrainiens, dans la grande polémique historiographique sur l'Holodomor, l'extermination par la famine de 1932-1933. Là aussi, les Russes s'accrochent au fait que les millions de morts étaient de toutes nationalités, comme s'ils étaient terrassés par un virus, plutôt que victimes d'une planification politique dont il faudrait identifier les auteurs, au sommet du régime stalinien.

With Russians complaining of "a slow genocide" — notably in the town of Narva — the article ends with an upbeat note about a Russian businessman who made the voluntary decision to make Estonia his home, and was recently rewarded for "exceptional merit" with the rare honor of receiving Estonian nationality.

Has the American Family Court System Become Totalitarian?

Has the American Family Court System Become Totalitarian? asks Jennifer Roback Morse, as the founder and president of the Ruth Institute (a project of the National Organization for Marriage) reviews the books of Alec Baldwin and Stephen Baskerville.

Easy divorce opens the door for an unprecedented amount of government intrusion into ordinary people's lives. This unacknowledged reality is the subject of Taken Into Custody, by Stephen Baskerville. With penetrating insight, the political scientist exposes the truly breathtaking consequences of no-fault divorce for the expansion of state power and the decline of personal autonomy.

First, no-fault divorce frequently means unilateral divorce: one party wants a divorce against the wishes of the other, who wants to stay married. Kim Basinger dumped Baldwin for no particular reason, unleashed the power of the Los Angeles Family Court system to inflict pain on him and, in the process, inflicted untold damage on their child. Second, the fact that one party wants to remain married means that the divorce has to be enforced. Baldwin wanted to stay married and to continue to be a husband and father. Yet, the coercive and intrusive machinery of the state must be wheeled into action to separate the reluctantly divorced party from the joint assets of the marriage, typically the home and the children.

Third, enforcing the divorce means an unprecedented blurring of the boundaries between public and private life. People under the jurisdiction of family courts can have virtually all of their private lives subject to its scrutiny. If the courts are influenced by feminist ideology, that ideology can extend its reach into every bedroom and kitchen in America. Baldwin ran the gauntlet of divorce industry professionals who have been deeply influenced by the feminist presumptions that the man is always at fault and the woman is always a victim. Thus, the social experiment of no-fault divorce, which most Americans thought was supposed to increase personal liberty, has had the consequence of empowering the state.

Green salad tossers

Mounds of hypocrisy, served with a heaping helping of nuance:

NOBODY goes out to dinner in the San Francisco Bay Area to eat food flown in from Europe. Right here is the spiritual center of the Eat Local movement, which has persuasively argued the political, environmental, ethical and culinary benefits of cooking with local ingredients and supporting local agriculture.

San Francisco is also in the heart of the California wine country, with Napa and Sonoma to the north, and the Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey wine regions to the south. Restaurants here that so prominently credit their local food purveyors on their menus no doubt feature local wines loudly and proudly, right?

Not quite. A surprising number of Bay Area restaurants, including many dedicated to cooking with local ingredients, offer wine lists dominated by European bottles.

What gives? Is this hypocrisy pure and simple?

"We recognize that it's a tricky thing, and it's a little hypocritical, but we also recognize there's a certain style and authenticity that you can't get anywhere else," said Chris Deegan, the wine director at Nopa, a popular restaurant north of the Golden Gate panhandle. Nopa's Web site declares, "We serve simple food created with seasonal ingredients sourced from local purveyors," but its wine list is overwhelmingly European.

Funny how the allowed foibles of our green authoritarian betters are merely giggled away as a certain joie de vivre. For those unallowed foibles which other individuals may enjoy, a one-way ticket to Folsom.

MSM Reporter's Seven-Month Captivity in the Hands of the Taliban Opens His Eyes to an Incredible Revelation

If anything is the special report of the week, if not of the month, for the New York Times, then it can only David Rohde's multi-part series on his seven-month captivity by the Taliban.

But the money quote from this mainstream media reporter came in part one:

Over those months [of captivity], I came to a simple realization. After seven years of reporting in the region, I did not fully understand how extreme many of the Taliban had become.

How extreme many of the Taliban had become. Are you kidding?! Hello! This is what American conservatives have been saying for years! I know we are all clueless and beyond the reach of help, but maybe the (remote) possibilty exists that now and then, we have something (remotely) wise to say…

In a similar vein, now that Barack Obama's foreign policy (or lack thereof) has been criticized not by American conservatives, but by Václav Havel (namely BHO's refusal to meet with nothing less than a modern-day Gandhi), suddenly Maureen Dowd drops all the scorn and the irony, and jumps (somewhat) on the bandwagon. Apparently, a fellow American (any fellow American) who criticizes the Apologizer-in-Chief is nothing but a racist dreg of society, but a member of the European élite who does so — and noone is saying that Vaclav Havel should not be listened to (au contraire) — is the source of all wisdom. In Dowd's words:

The tyro American president got the Nobel for the mere anticipation that he would provide bold moral leadership for the world at the very moment he was caving to Chinese dictators. Awkward.

Well, Maureen, you know what? That is, basically, the exact same type of message that we conservatives have been voicing (or trying to voice, when you deign listen to us without snorts, snickers, or eye rolls) for months… But it is only when a member of the European élite jumps in that she is ready for a bold suggestion:

Our president would be well advised to listen.

But American conservatives? Listening to them doesn't make sense (in fact, the quicker we can shut them up — Fox News, talk radio — the better). So why, specifically, is it that listening to the former Czech president makes sense?

Havel is looking at this not only as a moral champion but as a playwright.

"Not only… but also…" Oh, but of course — that explains everything…

Spengler knows Donkey-nomics

When they’re done with today’s mindless, unquestioning idolatry of a politician, they might want to try to figure out how to spin what will be his miserable legacy.

Starving the economy of funds by “trying to help it” does not get you a Nobel Prize.

Was Anita Dunn’s ‘Maoism’ Prattle Still Just Said in Jest?

Obama’s “Manufacturing Czar” (who knew we had one of those), makes an interesting point by also invoking Mao as “the communications Czar” has – except, he pretty directly brings up and sums up Maoism, a variant on Marxism/Leninism that doesn’t even have a pretense of social concern to it. He notes that all power comes from force, which is an interesting obsession for an elected administration to have.

Call it a sort of international solidarity with the likes of the budding and practiced tyrants in Venezuela, Belarus, Iran, Cuba, Bolivia, and such. Maybe he’s reflecting on the fact that the left didn’t even have to say “make your last vote count”.

Why we (heart) the 1980's, v.37

“It is only a minor compromise,” Havel says of Obama's snub of the Dalai Lama; “But with these minor compromises start the big and dangerous problems"

Vaclav Havel had a question as he opened a meeting with the New York Times' Alison Smale.

Was it true that President Obama had refused to meet the Dalai Lama in Washington?

Mr. Havel is a fan of the Dalai Lama, who was among the first visitors to Prague’s storied castle after Mr. Havel moved in there as president, the final act in the swift, smooth revolution of 1989. A picture of the Dalai Lama is displayed prominently in Mr. Havel’s current office in central Prague.
Told that Mr. Obama had made clear he would receive the Dalai Lama after his first presidential visit to China in November, Mr. Havel reached out to touch a magnificent glass dish, inscribed with the preamble to the United States Constitution — a gift from Mr. Obama, who visited in April.
“It is only a minor compromise,” Mr. Havel said of the nonreception of the Tibetan leader. “But exactly with these minor compromises start the big and dangerous ones, the real problems."

One letter to the editor noted that the Nobel Prize winner (i.e., the Tibetan leader) snubbed by the Nobel Prize winner (i.e., the Apologizer-in-Chief) is nothing less than a modern-day Gandhi and that

The American president would do well to heed Mr. Havel’s warning that coddling of rights-abusing nations is a “road to hell.”

(Incidentally, at least four paragraphs of the International Herald Tribune version were omitted in the online version of Smale's Václav Havel report, including the final para with the "road to hell" quote.) Even Maureen Dowd has dropped her usual scorn and irony to say that

The tyro American president got the Nobel for the mere anticipation that he would provide bold moral leadership for the world at the very moment he was caving to Chinese dictators. Awkward.

"Crypto-intelligentsia of our country": France's conspicuous network of socially connected, similarly schooled politicians, artists, and intellectuals

Regarding the Roman Polanski case, Michael Kimmelman presents an unusually good article on French intellectuals, on what regular French folks call “the crypto-intelligentsia of our country,” and on the French élite's (if not the people's) long history of lionizing celebrities, as well as on the élite's collective "Gallic shrug"…

Fort Apache Redux

Below is a translation of an article by Luckas Vander Taelen, Flemish Parliament Green Party MP, “The Ghettos of Brussels” published in Belgium’s Le Soir newspaper on 6 October 2009

I live in Forest, near an area that stretches from the Rue Merode to the Midi railway station and that can only be described as a ghetto, even with the largest bias for multiculturalism.

My daughter has long since abandoned to entering the area. While she feel comfortable at home, she has quite often (and once too often) been insulted. I cross the area daily by bicycle and daily find it a new adventure. Cars are double parked, drivers block intersections to talk to one another, youths follow you and stare as if you were on their turf.

Do not try to speak up when you feel a need to: the last time I ventured that myself, I took caught the undivided attention of an observer who could not have even been 16 years old, who went into an offensive tirade ending in him telling me he was "fucking your mother." It was much less serious than last time, when another young Moroccan driver had been annoyed by my behavior: I dared to take my right of way. His honor was so offended that he could needed to restore it by spitting in my face.

So above all: people keep silent, because when you try to explain that 70 km/h is too fast in 30 zone, you hit head on the dignity of a new young Belgian who can not bear that someone ban something which is ready to do battle.

Some twenty years ago, I was convinced that the new young Belgians were assimilating quickly. But now, in Brussels, a generation of "rebels without a cause" have been raised that continue to feel aggrieved and annoyed. Everything is always the fault of others: Belgian authorities are racist, while within their own families, young North African boys are untouchable. When police arrested a youth in Molenbeek, the father immediately organized a protest because her son "did not even steal an apple."

Last year, a ULB (Université Libre de Bruxelles ) study showed that efforts by authorities in problem areas have meant that young people no longer see the need to leave them. This creates a village mentality in a big city.

The daughter of Moroccan friends has a Belgian boyfriend. She never goes out with him in this neighborhood because she will immediately be scolded. While almost all young immigrants have Belgian nationality, they do not identify with this country. Quite to the contrary: "Belgian" is used as an insult.

You hardly ever meet young single women in the neighborhood, even less so a tavern: they are not even tolerated. When a friend in town ordered a coffee, she quickly understand that she should not expect to be served. When I go biking in the Merode neighborhood, I know that until I pass the Gare du Midi, I will not find a woman by herself at an outdoor café, never mind the hypocritical sexual morality that requires young ethnic minority women to remain virgins until their wedding night when everyone knows that hospitals Brussels will repair a woman’s hymen in a simple operation ...

Until last week, a French-Moroccan artist exhibited a remarkable exhibition in Brussels: a series of prayer rugs with shoes. The art gallery was immediately the target of telephone threats to send the message that the work was vulgar. The unrest was triggered by a pair of red shoes with high heels exposed near a prayer rug, because the artist wanted to address the issue of "the place of women in Islam." But this is no longer possible in Brussels: the exhibition was dismantled after a few days.

We should perhaps ask ourselves why we agreed that principles like artistic freedom and the equal rights of men and women do not apply to everyone in this country.

Why do we not dare to stand up for what is fundamentally important?: a respect for the laws and values of countries in which we live? Banning the headscarf is not a solution. But yet how strongly do we dare defend what we consider important?

The merit of the left was to claim more attention to discrimination and social exclusion. Unfortunately the problem is more profound: we were afraid of being accused of imposing our values on immigrants.

These are my values too, and they are too important to let them be lost.

Controversy Over Afghan Ambush Erupts Between France and Italy

Le Monde's Natalie Nougayrède brings us an article concerning the Afghans' alleged hostility against French troops, while Jacques Follorou points out that the battle deaths of a dozen French soldiers in an ambush last year has led to controversy between the French and the Italians, who were in the area previous to the French taking over.

According to the Times of London, the French let down their guard because the Italians had not informed them that if the area seemed peaceful, it was because they were paying bribes to the local Taliban chieftans. Conversely, gli Italiani failed to inform the local Talibans that they were going to be replaced by the French, and the latter's patrols were seen as a break in the agreement…

Besides being fairly insulting to les Ritals, Le Monde's readers included one saying that we might as well replace Hervé Morin (the defense minister) with Jean Sarkozy…

Geronimo: More Lessons in Simplistic U.S. History

What with Geronimo's great-grandson touring France, Annick Cojean has an article on the Apache warrior in Le Monde, in which we learn that Harlyn Geronimo is suing the American government, demanding that the U.S. government allow the body of his great-grandfather to be reburied (from Fort Sill, Oklahoma) on the Apache people's ancestral lands near the place (on the Gila River in New Mexico) where the Apache warrior was born.

L'avocat chargé de l'affaire, Ramsey Clark, ancien ministre de la justice sous Johnson, et volontaire pour des défenses généralement plus sulfureuses (Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic...) l'a assuré que la loi de 1990 sur la protection des tombes indiennes et leur rapatriement conférait toute légitimité à l'initiative des descendants du héros apache. Et il n'est que temps, dit-il, de rendre justice à la sagesse ancestrale des plus anciens habitants d'Amérique.

Annick Cojean's filler on the alleged theft of the Apache Indian's skull mentions three generations of Bush family members who belonged to the Yales secret society of Skull and Bones, without mentioning leftists such as John Kerry, and ends with Harlyn Geronimo recounting ominously that "President Bush [presumably, 43] never deigned answer my letter" in that regard…

Not until the end of the main article do we learn, incidentally, that Harlyn is suspicious of Obama's claims regarding minorities and, indeed, that he voted for John McCain…

Nowhere, however, in this page-long article on Geronimo, do we deviate from the simplistic tale that the peaceful natives were nothing if not the victims of the United States. Nowhere do we learn that the Apache people's ancestral lands were not the barren lands of Arizona and New Mexico — that is where the Apaches had to resettle after their true lands, the plains, were stolen, yes, but not by the whites albeit by… the (peaceful?) Comanches — or that the earliest tragedy in Geronimo's life was the massacre of his family by… the Mexican army.

Indeed, contrary to American soldiers (!!), Mexican soldados in the field knew that they had no pity to expect from Geronimo's Apaches; if the man born Goyakhlay is known by a Spanish surname, it is because when Mexicans knew who they were up against, they would pray to Saint-Jerome…

The Nobel Prize Was to Get BHO to Scandinavia at the Exact Same Time that the UN's Climate Change Conference Is Taking Place

Addressing Barack Obama with the familiar "tu" (nice how BHO's "new direction" is leading to more respect for the United States as well as for his own person, n'est-ce pas?), Le Monde's Hervé Kempf has figured out the reason why BHO won the Nobel Peace Prize: the Apologizer-in-Chief will be heading for Oslo, meaning that (since Norway is neighbor to Denmark) he will be right next to Copenhagen at the exact same time that the UN Climate Change Conference is taking place in the Danish capital — a summit to which he will invariably be invited — and having the moral obligation to go (back) there, he is likely to (in Hervé Kempf's words) "shake opinion in your country" and sign (on to) the global climate deal.

Les jurés t'ont décerné le Nobel de la paix pour que tu viennes à Copenhague, lors de la conférence mondiale sur le climat. Recevant le prix à Oslo, le 10 décembre, tu seras moralement obligé d'aller à Copenhague dans la foulée, et de signer l'accord. Les jurés d'Oslo t'invitent à forcer ta nature de compromis, à bousculer l'opinion de ton pays. Ils pensent que la paix du monde dans les décennies à venir va se jouer là, à Copenhague, et que les Etats-Unis, donc toi, en détiennent la clé.

Listen to what COP15 president Connie Hedegaard declares, in no uncertain terms: the Danish Minister for Climate and Energy at the head of the UN Climate Change Conference

is adamant that Copenhagen will “seal the deal”.

“If the whole world comes to Copenhagen and leaves without making the needed political agreement, then I think it’s a failure that is not just about climate. Then it’s the whole global democratic system not being able to deliver results in one of the defining challenges of our century. And that is and should not be a possibility. It’s not an option,” Connie Hedegaard tells cop15.dk in an interview.

She calls Copenhagen a “window of opportunity” which should not be missed, arguing that it may take years to rebuild the momentum.

“If we don’t deliver in Copenhagen, then I cannot see when again you can build up a similar pressure on all the governments of this world to deliver. So I think we should be very, very cautious not to miss the opportunity,” says Hedegaard, adding that “it would be irresponsible not to use the momentum now”.

The momentum would seem, deliberately or otherwise, to get the Apologizer-in-Chief involved by any and all means possible. As Dick Morris and Eileen McGann wrote, the

Nobel Prize is really Obama's payback for disciplining the unruly United States and taming it to be a member of the European family of nations. Europe wants to reverse the American Revolution and re-colonize us, and it sees in Obama a kindred spirit willing to do its bidding.

They can start with “Ode to Joy” and end it with “Play Ball”

Guess what only took them 16 months:

Parliament sets up economic crisis committee

While speculation on future high-profile jobs continued apace on Wednesday (7 October), parts of the EU institutions attempted to concentrate on the job in hand – namely the tackling of the economic crisis.

And that crisis was committeed just in time.

Not to be outdone, the commission issued its Annual Report on the Euro Area 2009 also on Wednesday.

The document says "signs of economic stabilisation are emerging", but warns that "the strength and resilience of the recovery has yet to be fully tested".

Tackle away. Tackle away. In the mean time, we’ll be trying to figure out who it was you weren’t being outdone by. Another EU in a parallel universe, perhaps?

You might want to pass a law making deflation unlawful or something... that should take care of it in time for the cocktail hour.

We've learned so much since the Roman epoch

We look back at the Roman epoch with a sense of relief

sighs J R Dunn (Gratias tibi ago, Larwyn).

We've learned so much since then. No longer do we consider our leaders to be gods among men. No longer do we hand them unearned and meretricious awards and prizes. We don't turn on and destroy members of previous administrations. We don't tolerate incompetent and corrupt sycophants in high office. We've learned to recognize disorders such as pathological narcissism and assure that the victims do not gain high office. Any president who placed his prestige on the line with an athletic contest would be laughed to scorn.

And as for political bloodshed, that kind of savagery has no place in a modern democracy. Any party that called for the assassination of an opposing leader -- say, George W. Bush -- would simply be run out of the public sphere. Unlike the Romans, we all understand the concept of consequences, that what goes around comes around.

Don't we?

Love is a Warm Molotov Cocktail

Paris, the city of lurrrrve: « Beating and Scaring people “is funny” »

Elsewhere, and not to be missed is the high school chick kicking some dude in the nuts in a “student protest” over heaven only knows what, really.

¡ Но пасаран !

Either way this stuff is taking place at “festivals”.

The attacks are increasing at festive events in the capital. Long spared the violence that tarnished at regular intervals of other gatherings, many festive events in Paris have recently been targeted by gangs "formed" clearly from the Seine-Saint-Denis and Val-de-Marne.

This week, the incidents that occurred last September 19 in conjunction with the Technoparade came up in a "debriefing" held in the Police Prefecture. At that time, a strengthening of security measures surrounding these events was emphasized. "The presence now of recurrent violent gangs on the Gay and Lesbian Pride Walk, the Celebrations by College Graduates or the Technoparade are disturbing to us," said Jean-François Demarais, Police Director for Public Order and Traffic.

A vote for communitarian spirit if there ever was one. So much for that ‘siesta after the fiesta’.

Extra Charges, Bribes, and a Yoke that Fetters Innovation: The Reality of France's State Health Care Is "Rather Insidious"

As Laetitia Clavreul reports in her Le Monde articles, the whole "Let's get a health system to make the society simpler and better" ain't as easy as it sounds… America's Democrats will hardly be overjoyed to hear one Le Monde reader testify:

aujourd'hui on est si mal soigné et il y a trop de médecins peu compétents. Il y a donc de ce fait une médecine à plusieurs vitesse et avec des niveaux de qualité très différents.

While another writes:

ce qui coute cher à la SS, ce n'est ni les médecins, ni les infirmières, ni les para médicaux, ni les médicaments, ni les dispsitifs médicaux, et si c'était des coûts de fonctionnement de la SS de l'URSAAF, du RSI de la DDASS, de la DRASS des ARH, des ARS, de la CNAM, de la MSA, de la SS étudiante [all kinds of French health care "inspirations"].

Meanwhile, as one reader castigates the "budgetary yoke that fetters innovation" (un carcan budgétaire qui limite fortement toutes les pistes d'innovation), Christian Saout, président du Collectif interassociatif sur la santé (no less), testifies that — because of "under-the-counter payments" — the reality is "rather insidious."

Les dessous-de-table sont interdits, contrairement aux dépassements d'honoraires. La difficulté, c'est la preuve, car le dessous-de-table est payé en liquide. Il faudrait le payer en chèque. Cela étant, il y a des sanctions très graves du Conseil de l'ordre sur les dessous-de-table : la radiation ou la suspension du médecin. Mais là encore, il y a peu de saisines du Conseil de l'ordre. Les Français se taisent sur tout ce qui se passe. Je ne sais pas s'ils le comprennent, car c'est assez insidieux.

And then there is yet another problem to factor in, as Catherine Rollot writes, also in Le Monde: The figures in France's poverty rate seem to be a total fantasy…

In any case, let us not forget that more than 25% of Paris doctors (and nearly a third of dentists and almost 2/5 of gynocologists) refuse to treat poor clients (and no, not because they are greedy capitalists, but because the administration imposes too much paperwork)…

Related:

• The French healthcare system, even if taken at its best, is like an expensive jewel on a beggar’s neck by Bojidar Marinov

• What the American enamored with French health care doesn’t realize is that the French, too, would love to have such a perfect health system by Guy Sorman

• Call it the grass-is-greener syndrome: the French have their own problems that show there's no such thing as a free lunch — or a free doctor's visit by Investor's Business Daily

I’d Like you to Meet my Wife and Sister

Go easy on the horses Habibi.

The genetic research institute found that around 63 percent of the genetic conditions found in Arabs, who often practice marriage between relatives, were related to consanguinity and warned the numbers were likely to rise as more research is conducted and more disorders discovered.

In the United Arab Emirates, a country with the fifth highest rate of inter-family marriages, there are currently more than 250 types of genetic diseases, the second highest after neighboring Oman.

No, it isn’t about wanting to ride that pony hard, it’s about an extreme lack of trust that's extremely common in the Gulf societies... Not trusting your children’s independently formed choices in who they seek to marry, not trusting anyone too far outside the brood, and not trusting that no part of one’s inheritance will end up outside the klan, even if needed to support a spouse and children with no ill intentions.

Despite the fact that it is widely practiced across the Middle East, marrying within the family might not be such a good idea, according to a report published Tuesday.

Newsflash!!!

Poland's General Jaruzelski Basically Described as a Victim of the Polish Right's Witch Hunts Against Communists

Following the first in-depth article in Le Monde's "Mémoires à vif du communisme" series, devoted to Prague, Piotr Smolar devotes the second entry to Poland's General Jaruzelski.

Needless to say, the left-leaning French journalist invokes today's search for justice (equally naturally, that is never an expression that he uses) as "the witch hunt against communists", describes Wojciech Jaruzelski as being pursued like "a common criminal" for "communist crimes" (in quotation marks in the original), and mentions the Polish right's "toxic grains, already sown, [which] continue to grow."

Only in the second half of the article do we learn — in (very) rapid succession — of some of the acts of repression that occurred during communist times ("Le général symbolise cet ancien régime appelé avec dédain "komuna", qui a envoyé les dissidents en prison, contraint d'autres à l'exil, privé les citoyens de leurs libertés civiques, assassiné le père Jerzy Popieluszko, enlevé et torturé à mort en 1984"), but they are treated as passive tragedies that — contrary to the right's "toxic" search for revenge (it's for justice, actually) — ought to be forgiven and forgotten.

And the communist régime's acts of repression are immediately minimized by a truly scandalous deed, the comparisons with the left's international bogeyman, General Pinochet, that the Polish general had to undergo ("on a même comparé Jaruzelski à Pinochet" — he was even compared to Pinochet; imagine! how much humiliation must a (strong)man undergo?!), a comparison that Jaruzelski protests vigorously against, with Piotr Smolar managing, in the process, to make the Polish autocrat sound heroic and principled.

“Don’t Make a Federal Case out of it!”

With a characteristic ignorance for the concept of separation of powers that keeps governments from turning into top-down quasi-dictatorships, EUvians are shocked by the Czech Republic wanting to add a condition to the Lisbon Treaty, as would be his right to propose. It is a simple one: to guarantee some sort of partitioning of court rights such that national judiciaries retain some powers traditionally held locally, much as they do in a German Land, a US State, or a Canadian Province.

Not only does his proposal offend on the basis of him using his political position to do politics (after all, he didn’t just sit down and shut up, but add to the debate surrounding just what form of government the EU is to take), but was treated with such incredulity that the EU’s state-press operation, Euranet, would not publish in written form what Czech President Vaclav Klaus’ proposal entails.

The cackles raised against it amounted to: “we won’t do federalism, so don’t even mention it” and “by the way, you’re still supposed to call this a democracy”. In short, the reaction reinforced a lack of commitment pluralism and to the potentially rich and meaningful debates we find in history regarding the formation of nation-state organization.

The anti-federalist position which is trying to cut off the mere mention of member states of any philosophically meaningful matters, perhaps even “missing an opportunity to shut up” when it comes to the future of the laws their population will have to live under is obscene.

The amusing thing about it is that it makes a “Federal case” out of all legal claims concerning property rights, something that can be readily resolved at the level of contract law on the nearest, lowest level of a judicial structure, and only slightly above that of a traffic court.

But since hurt feeling and ideological wars of attrition are the real issue at hand here, and not a population having a hand in how the super-state will be shaped, it’s reduced to a spitball fight over whether or not Vaclav Klaus gives you the creeps for talking about the basics of a democracy.

If anything needs “more Europe, not less Europe” to resolve itself, it is the genuine constitutional formation of a European democracy, instead of the Potemkin village just mounting the words “we aren’t a de facto autocracy” that it now appears to believe to be its’ only viable course.

What it amounts to is little more than an attitude about participatory government not matched by anything genuinely resembling a bottom-up model, and it appears to be trained-in like a dog conditioned to pee on cue. If you merely mention ‘rights’ to the ur-EU citizen, the notion that it means an entitlement to resources taken from someone else is the first thing that springs to mind, when in reality, a right is an inviolable freedom to act on a matter on your own behalf – the freedom of the individual, the thing slowing having been conditioned out of most Europeans over the past century.

"Yes, We God"

Just in case you are not convinced that Europe's honeymoon with the Nobel Peace Prize laureate is over, take a look at an editorial that appeared on the front cover of Le Monde's Éducation supplement — over three months ago!

Marc Dupuis's title says it all — « Yes, we God » (and ain't that the epitome of profoundness?!) — and please be aware that this lampoon on Obama's (just as utterly profound) campaign slogan was written back in June, in response to Barack Obama's visit to the beaches of D-Day.

Il était venu commémorer en Normandie le débarquement du 6 juin 1944, il a lui-même débarqué. Puis il s'en est allé, non sans avoir semé le trouble en dictant à la France le droit pour les femmes musulmanes de porter le voile.

All pretense of the solemn officialdom due to the respect for the hallowed dead at Omaha Beach, swept away by BHO's invocation of (or paying lip service to?) the Almighty and by his alleged meddling (Obama's, not the Lord's, although it's true that the two are often confused these days), real or otherwise, into France's secular society. (Merci à Marie-Rose pour la photo.)

Oh, and by the way, remember that after Bush's six or seven years in the White House (20 in the public eye if you count his same-named father), they still couldn't spell the name of "Georges" Bush right (or that of "Condy" Rice)? The Apologizer-in-Chief has dominated the news for what, two years, three, now? And that still isn't enough for them to get his name right either!

Barak Obama risque de réveiller ici le conflit sur la laïcité.

Who Said Dada was Dead?

Raising Warning Flags: This Time, the Hawks Are French

As Russia thanks the Obama administration for its reset button and for its abandoning Central Europe's missile shield by… refusing to go along with sanctions against Iran, John Vinocur jumps in with an article entitled This Time, the Hawks Are French.

When a country gets certified as a Multilateral Good Guy as the United States did last week, thanks to the Norwegian Nobel Prize Committee, one of the obligations that comes with the designation is listening seriously to warnings from less powerful partners.

Against the background of America’s recent past, these circumstances would ordinarily mean the United States hearing about its insufficient nuance, inadequate patience, and fatal reliance on force. Hand on throat, or finger to trigger — that’s not the way to do it, the classic admonition went.

Prepped and practiced, the Yanks could comfortably answer these days (even to applause), we’ve understood.

But there’s something that’s not clear: how this America reacts now when it’s told it’s behaving weakly, indecisively, or perhaps deceptively in inadequately trying to stop Iran’s rush toward a nuclear weapon.

… Their warnings can be blunt: that the United Sates is playing a flabby, losing game against Iran … Could Mr. Obama be well served by explaining more clearly why people should have faith in him on these issues which, at least at the leadership level of this country, are dead serious matters of concern?

John Rosenthal adds:

Back in the day, the mainstream news media used to revel in the political misfortunes of the European leaders that had supported George W. Bush and “his” Iraq war. The depiction of their downfalls constituted a veritable morality play. Think José María Aznar, Silvio Berlusconi, and Tony Blair.

… Never mind the facts. The grand narrative of the European masses rising up against the “deeply unpopular” Iraq war dictated that the (supposed) difficulties of the Bush allies had to be the story.

If Aznar, Berlusconi, and Blair were the villains in this narrative — traitors to the law-abiding, peace-loving European cause — the heroes also came in three: German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and the dynamic French duo of President Jacques Chirac and Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin. Oddly enough, however, when these leading lights of the Franco-German “axis of peace” themselves went down to defeat or bowed out without a fight as their electoral prospects dimmed, this was not a story.

… one comes to a startling realization. Some six and a half years after the start of the Iraq war, continental Europe’s three largest and most powerful countries are all led by politicians who more or less openly supported the war and/or severely criticized the Franco-German efforts to prevent it.

By a bizarre historical irony, however, the politics of the “axis of peace” continue to lead a sort of shadow existence in Washington — in the person of Barack Obama. … notwithstanding the Nobel committee’s condescending pat on the back for their disciple, Obama’s European role models are all gone. He is on his own now and should his pursuit of “peaceful dialogue” give rise to a nuclear Iran and threats of greater and more terrible wars, this will be his responsibility.

We hope Václav Klaus has a trusty food taster

This "respecting democracy" business can get a bit nasty:

The Czech Cabinet meets in emergency session today to consider how to persuade their stubborn President to sign the Lisbon treaty — under intense pressure from Paris and Berlin to complete the ratification as soon as possible.

With President Klaus demanding a last-minute amendment as the price of his signature — the final approval required in the 27-nation European Union — the Government is locked in a trial of strength with its head of state and on the brink of a constitutional crisis. If it supports his demands the treaty might have to be reopened amid lengthy delays, possibly allowing time for David Cameron’s Conservatives to win the next British election and hold a referendum on the treaty as they have promised.

If the the Czech Government opposes President Klaus then it may have to resort to a form of impeachment or strip him of his treaty-signing powers so as to complete ratification.

Ever Been in a Swiss Prison, Joey?

The unsurprising non-news item of the day is that Polanski feels depressed in jail.

Elsewehere: Gideon Rachman redefines doom: the curse of “peace”.

Of Many, Many Minds

Inconsistent ones, especially when it comes to Polanski, Mitterand the lesser, and chemical castration, and based in large part on your importance in society.

France is considering the compulsory "chemical castration" of sexual criminals after a woman jogger was murdered in a forest south of Paris by a convicted rapist.

The choc of the case that raised this issue over the past three weeks has a curious familiarity in the details to things others find rather forgivable in the Arts community.

Manuel da Cruz, 47, had already been sentenced to 11 years in prison for the kidnap and rape of a 13-year- old girl in 2002. He was released in March 2007 and went back to live in the same village as his young victim.

The case has generated an outcry against the French judicial system and pressure for the hardening of a law introduced in 2005 which allows sexual offenders to volunteer for so-called "chemical castration" – the use of anti-hormone treatment to reduce or destroy the sexual appetite.

While each of these narratives has revealed something else altogether about the feelings of the elite and a population that feels neglected and unprotected, it brings to mind the dozens, if not hundreds of tirades by the Chavista Steno Pool that characterizes the French blogosphere, especially the unemployed hacks at Rue89 regarding the “meanness” and “inhumanity” of Americans registering sexual offenders who have served their sentences or are on parole.

Interestingly, no flag went up when Michele Alliot-Marie declared in response to the murder-rape in Fontainbleau that

'We have to look at how, as part of surveillance and control measures after someone leaves prison, we might make this more restrictive if necessary.

...because to such great abstract social thinkers, it’s philosophically different when people are raped in a society that you’re reflexively biased against.

And how’s THIS for meaness? On requiring past offenders to be administered hormone suppressing, the one-time French critique was that Americans were barbaric control freaks. I suppose those same ‘culture warriors’ will have to find something else to beat off to for a while. Alas now, even our favorite post-menopausal space kidette is ready to make them bend over and give them the jab in the name of women everywhere.

They were supported by some politicians on the left, including the Socialist former presidential candidate, Ségolène Royal. "Everything which goes in the direction of preventing sexual predators from attacking again must be tried," she said.

Is it time to start calling her “Caribou Barbie” and “that bimbo” for wanting society to stand between the genuinely evil and the genuinely vulnerable? Good heavens, no. That’s only in bad taste when it’s a leftist being smeared, and it is now officially speaking NOT too harsh to judge when your political image is at stake.

Otherwise, one can only wonder how Daniel Cohn-Bendit feels about the wave of perversion pop-culture right now, knowing that he was once a man who was all too proud to discuss his conneries pédophiles in 1976 when he was running a kindergarten. Guess what... he’s « ill at ease » to let Polanski get entirely off the hook, either out of a surprising maturity or something that his political radar set off, especially when fellow political crash-test dummy Bayrou accused him of “enabling pedophilia”.

All of this kind of thing, if it involved any sort of violation of trust on the part of a social and political elite (frankly they’re merely entertainment figures), used to be called “Americanized politics”. Alas, the “Americanization” that’s effectively forcing that same social and political elite to operate under the same laws as the population is doing rather a fine job, and even bringing the suspect sorts to start by demonstrating some of that old-fashioned, long-hated, guilt-inducing repentance.

Meanwhile the scramble to contain stories of those who just couldn’t contain it continue apace. Mr. past pederast pride, Frédéric Mitterrand has been trying to deflect a past use of his name and political weight to get two teenagers convicted of rape off of the hook in far off Réunion.

"I gave my testimony about the morality of a family"

That was back when he “sure was one to talk”, but 4 years after he was proud, so proud of his travel adventures. He was used as a character witness for the nephews of his former makeup artist at France 2, who is a godson of his, and had only met 5 times in his life.

I suppose a great deal of a person’s character can be discerned that quickly. Especially when the truism that always seems to override the judgment of a person’s actions and the way up and out of the cretinous lack of control of them is that continental 1st commandment that “one hand washes the other”.

I think they could use some of that stuff they used to deride as “Americanization” of this or that, with that “façade of piety”. You can also be certain that it will be renamed first.

Still think green governmentalist mandates won't cost you a thing?

We won't even delve into the issue of reliability.

Photo Caption Contest

(Thanks to Duncan, I think it was, for "The Studious Apologizer in Chief")

Tales From the Land of Milk and Honey

Now it’s all just another lifestyle choice.

"They are extremely well organized, extremely well trained. I say that given the methods used, the objects bound weapons they used, so it's ultra-violent ,(...) who can crack anywhere in France on commando-type operations, "said the prefect of Poitou-Charentes, Bernard Tomasini, on France Info.

This, town the Poitiers town of Vienne, spitting distance from Strasbourg, where the CERN employee with suspected al-Qaeda links is from. So much for that reputation of reminding people of a cheesy coocoo clock.

The provisional wing of the “peace movement” in this case the adolescent ninnies of the Black Block are protesting the fact that prisons exist.

In the afternoon, claiming 200 supporters of an anti-prison had gathered in the downtown area where they attended the festival of street theater of "expressions".

The event organized by the Collectif contre la prison de Vivonne drew police said militants from neighboring departments and very organized.

Taking advantage of the [local street] festival, the demonstrators in the hoods or scarves, sometimes armed with sticks, smoke bombs or firecrackers, attacked the windows of some twenty shops, smashed the windows of bus shelters, street furniture, and "tagged" monuments.

I guess somewhere in their kiddie logic, their crime-wave will bring that kind off world peace where prisons aren’t needed.

According to the regional prefect, there was no prospect of such action, apparently designed to protest against the transfer of 118 inmates from the prison of Poitiers in the new prison in Vivonne.

My guess is that the transferred prisoners would probably want protection FROM the Black Bloc more than the “liberation” by these morons who claim to want anarchy and authoritarianism. Now if any of them could only hold down a job...

The Nobel Prize is really Obama's payback for disciplining the unruly United States and taming it to be a member of the European family of nations

Whether it was rewarding Jimmy Carter for criticizing the Iraq war or supporting Al Gore in his crusade against global warming, the Norwegian parliament, which chooses the winners of the Nobel Peace Prize, has sought to use the award as a political tool to influence American politics.

Dick Morris & Eileen McGann explain the true reason why "they hate us" (nope, it's got nothing to do with Bush or Reagan…).

Its prestige and moral power make the prize a potent weapon with which to help steer the direction of the colossus beyond the seas that controls a quarter of the world's economy and most of its military power.

Now, the Norwegians have weighed in to support Barack Obama in his bid to reshape America so it looks more like, well, Norway, or at least like Europe.

European socialism cannot succeed without conquering the United States.

If the European Union has high taxes and the U.S. keeps its levies low, business and brains will flow to America. If the EU's labor standards require long vacations, high benefits, and proscribe layoffs and ours do not, employers will migrate across the ocean to do their business in the States.

If the Old World curbs ambition by taxation, regulation, and social opprobrium, the ambitious will flock to the New World as they have done for 400 years.

So, Lenin was right. Socialism cannot exist in just one country — or one continent. It must dominate worldwide or wealth and power will flow to those who remain committed to the free market. Europe realizes this reality, and it makes Obama's election as president of the United States all the more welcome.

The Nobel Prize is really Obama's payback for disciplining the unruly United States and taming it to be a member of the European family of nations. Europe wants to reverse the American Revolution and re-colonize us, and it sees in Obama a kindred spirit willing to do its bidding.

Does the United States let its entrepreneurs run wild, coming up with fanciful new ideas and making billions from them? Obama will regulate and subdue business just like they do in Europe.

Do U.S. businesses compete by slashing prices, aggressively pursuing markets, and jockeying for market share? Obama will make them behave themselves and stay in line just like European companies do.

Do Americans work hard and push aggressively to make as much money as they can? Obama will raise taxes, emphasize community values, and narcotize their ambition by offering government largesse.

And does the United States still believe in a sloppy, contrarian democracy in which ordinary people can directly affect their government, states have powers, and courts can reel in executive authority? Obama will use his rubber stamp majority in Congress to pass new laws regardless of public opinion and make us obey.

In foreign policy, is the United States still willing to stand up, alone if necessary, to protect human rights in Bosnia, in Iraq, and in Afghanistan? Obama will curb this unruly independence and mold it within the fabric of appeasement that has dominated Europe for the past half a century.

All this heavy lifting, this conversion of America into a European state, deserves a reward. And what is a more fitting one than to give Obama than the Nobel Peace Prize?

He obviously doesn't deserve the award for economics or, given his healthcare ideas, for medicine. But the Peace Prize expresses Europe's longing: to take back the nation its overly ambitious and uppity children founded.

Update: Dick Morris Brings Up Mitterrand and Lenin As He Analyzes Obama's De Facto Attempt to Bring the US Into the European System

In other words, Dambisa Moyo is right...

...although the "experts" at the international aid/assistance funding trough would never (could never) admit it:

The question is why. The criticism that development aid isn't working, or is counterproductive, is almost as old as development aid itself. And experts have torn Moyo's book apart because of its juggled statistics, one-sided interpretations and lack of a credible alternative to development aid.

Ton Dietz, scientific director of the institute for development issues at the University of Amsterdam, offers an explanation: "She's cute, glamorous and well-spoken. This works well in an entertainment-driven society."

Farah Karimi, director of Oxfam Novib, also refers to Moyo as a 'media hype'. Karimi attended Moyo's lecture on Wednesday in Amsterdam, where an extra room had to be opened up to accommodate the hundreds of people who showed up. Karimi says it's a good thing Moyo has given the debate about the effectiveness of aid a new impulse, but she feels the "shortsighted" way she has done so is "inherent of the times we live in".

Karimi compares Moyo to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-Dutch anti-Islam crusader. "In the end, what has Hirsi Ali really accomplished with her harsh criticism of Islam? She offered few solutions for the integration issue, and she polarised people. Who still talks about her now?"

Dietz is afraid the media's portrayal of Moyo as an expert has undermined the support base for development aid at a time when more nuance is what is needed.

Yet Another Hall of Mirrors Structural Glass

Richard Laming comments in the EU Observer on the subject of what buildings tell us about the state of governance in a society, pointing out that there is a direct form of expression in the buildings built to represent those governments. However, he’s overlooked entirely the dynamics of design and the patronage of design and instead gives us a lauditory argument about seating and how cheap it is to build yet another behemoth in Brussels.

Designs such as these are driven by the degree to which a designer thinks it can gage a committee’s notion it has of its’ institution and the significance thereof, and that committee’s concept of the ‘nation’ it represents.

In the case of the Council of Ministers building, one of a dizzying array of relevant sounding bodies, it is nothing other than any modern airport design: sterile, distant, and with the obvious cliché of using glass as an analog for the notion of transparency. Reflective glass being “a mirrors reflecting society” is another one of these sad rationalizations that I hoped was long abandoned since its’ height in the late 1980s as well.

It’s also touted as so many things now are as touching and attentive to the Euro-Ur-human Jedermann type through symbolic, fig-leaf environmentalism that is already regarded by the public, and not just a great many design professionals as pandering and fixated on whatever symbolism works today.

Thirdly, there is the way the building reflects our political times. Much emphasis has been put in the design, and in the PR, about the ecological considerations that have been incorporated: the building will generate some of its own electricity through solar panels on the roof and it will recycle all the rain water.

These are NOT remarkable things, but as with the clatter of all the sorts of things being promoted as good measures in Architectural practice now that academic Architects are trying to rebuild a long discredited Hegelian noblesse oblige, is costly beyond the wisdom of it’s benefits, and appear far more absurd that they realize. For example: trying making your own power with solar panels is a disastrous use of resources. It requires more energy than a city plant, and costs quite a bit more.

And in case you’re wondering where ALL the water coming out of your tap came from, all of it was once rainwater. Evidently Rube Goldberg illustrations of how nature works are what sensitivity to resources in Architecture is now reduced to, and is growing into a kind of perfunctory and pedantic acting out of ritual statement and presentation. It is now, more than ever, becoming a kind of self-inflicted stigmata, once found in medieval society as a way of displaying your faith to others, with no evidence of a personal belief in it at all.

Too harsh, you say? No. When you expend more in resources than is ever to be returned compared to the non-promotional conventional means of doing the same thing, then it too proves that it’s taking place to make such a display of oneself to the detriment of the thing one wants so much to be loved for. It’s sad.

You can tell a lot about a political system from the buildings it erects to house its decision-makers. They provide a literally concrete expression of the collective self-image of the politicians inside.

True that, bro. It’s unselfconsciously called “The Résidence Palace” after the exisiting building is proposed to engorge, a cozy and warm place from which no lucky palace resident is ever likely to be removed but by their own free will. Like the sad concealment of primacy of calling a leader “fist among peers” it is hard to believe that a name like that can bring to mind the notion of democracy. We are to believe that this is a catharsis: from the old to the new, or more precisely: from the old to the soon-to-look-dated which has never permitted any sort of confidence in knowing what time the founders lived in.

Like all new prominent European designs, it’s “over the top”, over-designed, with over-scaled elements speaking to a supremacism immune from lese majesty, and states quite firmly in form and execution that the public’s money is to be misspent and considered little more than an instrument of a governments aspirations for glory, much as a it was in the distant past where usurious taxes were levied to gild an oblivious monarchic elite’s cage. Throwing the peasants a few things about salvaging some rainwater here as opposed to there is one of those things wrongly believed to ameliorate that arrogance. Awkward design antics and a Greenie veneer will do nothing to blunt it, not even to the uncritical citizen.
The greatest cultural miscalculation is that It (as do many other new “state-managed-utopia” designs,) demonstrates with scientific empiricism exactly where it is that the money embedded in the project ISN’T going. As with the new Euro-designed and contracted NATO headquarters, it demonstrates quite clearly that someone ISN’T getting their new up-armored vehicle in favor of the cost of “good design” when even the larger member states can’t seem to acquire heavy-lift aircraft made by their own industries. Since one must believe that government monies didn’t come from the public to do this, and believe this they must for the show to go on.

Europe, we are told over and over by the pedantic promoters of its’ wonderous nature, is supposed to be rife with those who understand the universal nature of man, have superior design skills and taste, etcetera, etcetera, and so on, but the same promoters can’t seem to identify the obvious: the barrier of a world view wracked with elitism, especially in matters of the role of a government institution in a free society. This is where the cold, ham-fisted, and architecturally indulgent design hits the nail right on the head. It indentifies the cream of a continent’s governmental elite beautifully: the warmth and understanding prominently found on the label just isn’t in the box.

The hilarious part is in the execution. By overusing the same architectural vocabulary as so many projects before, it becomes indistinct. One glass prima donna competing for attention abutting too many others to not be confused for the corporate head office of contrived “national champion”.

Cat on a Dark Wind Shield

A daredevil cat (by the name of Jixie Juny) rides on the hood of a moving car…

Like it never even happened

Reflections on a Current Presidential Administration

Quoth a Turkish General once:

"The problem with having the Americans as your allies is that you never know when they'll turn around and stab themselves in the back."

- 1000 thank yous and all of my rhuminant livestock
to Lord High Executioner Michael Philips

In America, France's “accumulation of mandates” might be more aptly referred to as “petty dictatorship”, or even “corruption”

Among the topics in Rachel Marsden's column, What France Is Debating While America Tackles Health Care, is that of "Accumulation of mandates":

There are at least six levels of elected political office available to politicians in France, and they’re allowed to hold more than one simultaneously. They can also be concurrently employed as a lobbyist for a private enterprise, enabling them to directly lobby themselves and their friends in their various elected roles – sometimes over the lunch hour break during their legislative sessions. About 70% of the French National Assembly (equivalent of the American Congress) has such a private sector gig.

Some in France have identified this as a problem, and it’s a constant topic of debate here. But why fight it too hard when you could one day benefit from it yourself? “Accumulation of mandates”, it’s called. You know who else has a problem with “accumulation of mandates”? Fidel Castro. Hugo Chavez. Guys like that. In America, it might be more aptly referred to as “petty dictatorship”, or even “corruption”. Here it’s not really a problem so much as a perpetual opportunity to appear concerned and pro-democratic – all while maximizing one’s income.

Now you know why French leaders, élites, and intellectuals — as well as those of the world — are always demonizing, skewering, and ridiculing America, its society, and its capitalist ethics: it's not because of Bush, or Reagan, or the poor, or Hiroshima; to provide a the populace with a preemptive vaccine against any one citizen standing up and saying: "les Américains may have their faults, but still, they're better off than we are. Why can't we too do it that way?"