Bread and Circuses for a Domestic Audience at Time of Economic Misery: In the Brave New EU, Old Impressions Dominate

If this, theoretically, is Week One of the rest of the European Union’s new life of unity, power and global impact, then it looks pretty much like the place that has struggled so long to demonstrate its relevance and leadership

intones John Vinocur.

For starters, old impressions predominate. … The first six months of a notionally re-minted E.U. risk being scrambled, rather than a demonstration of new cohesion and strength.

For one thing, the calendar hurts. In 2010, there are important elections in Britain, Germany and France. Voting involving the E.U.’s big players invariably means those countries taking a quasi leave of absence from immediate European concerns. …

Spain took over this agenda-setting, pacemaking role on Jan. 1.

In spite of joblessness at an E.U.-worst of 19.3 percent, a negative rating on its sovereign debt, and a deficit close to 11 percent, Spain, no kidding, is supposed to provide impetus for a new 10-year E.U. growth strategy in time for an inaugural meeting in Valencia at the end of March.

…Madrid, as boss on its own turf, has set up a series of summits — E.U.-Balkans, E.U.-Morocco, E.U.-Latin America, a Mediterranean Union meeting, and possibly a Middle East conference — that look a lot like bread and circuses for a domestic audience at time of economic misery.

According to reports from Madrid, one of Mr. Zapatero’s biggest cheerleaders, Leire Pajin, is even talking about this semester’s routine E.U.-United States summit meeting (usually an hour’s chat, a joint declaration and lunch) as an event of “planetary” significance between “two progressive forces from both sides of the Atlantic.”

Their Own Private Idaho

At yet another fake, loony, long desiccated transnational meal-ticket so loved by Euro-polity we make an interesting discovery. The OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe) will be chaired by rotating head-cheese of the cheese board, Kasakhstan.

Human Rights Watch, another one of those things loved by Euro-polity, find the place to have an atmosphere of quiet repression. Quiet repression and self-important international bureaucracies – it’s a continental wet dream if there ever was one.

Slated to become the OSCE chairman in 2010, Kazakhstan will join the leading trio in 2009 already. It follows that it has just under a year to launch certain changes indicating that the Kazakh leadership means to keep its promises to Europe. As it turned out at the meeting in Brussels, however, the EU is upset by Kazakhstan's idleness these last two months or so. Kajegeldin informed Ferrero-Waldner that everything actually depends on President Nursultan Nazarbayev who only has to make his will known to have the tame parliament adopt all necessary amendments to the acting legislation.

So, as you see, a “tame parliament” is to be considered a good thing by Bruxellois trying to ram something through, not before they are forced to deal with post-soviet backwater public politics, but before they are embarrass themselves.

Kazakhstan's forthcoming chairmanship in the OSCE scheduled for 2010 compels Europe to focus attention on this Eurasian country, vast and rich in natural resources. Former (1994 to 1997) Prime Minister Akejan Kajegeldin, 55, remains one of the prime sources of data on Kazakhstan for European leaders. Kajegeldin aspired for presidency in the late 1990s, joined the Kazakh opposition, and found himself promptly sentenced to a decade behind the bars (in absentia).

Forget pandering for natural gas to Russians who like playing with the tap for fun and profit, this show is even better. Going hat in hand to a president for life for some kind of special access, only to get kicked in the head by the Russians lider maximo again.

You want it? You got it!

For all you "food miles" types, quit yer bitching:

Britons have been warned to brace themselves for an increase in food prices as plunging temperatures leave farmers unable to harvest vegetables and hauliers struggle to distribute fresh produce.

Concerns have now switched to food supply. Sub-zero temperatures have made it impossible to extract some vegetables from the ground. Producers of brussels sprouts and cabbages are all reporting problems with harvesting. Cauliflowers are said to have turned to "mush" in the sustained frost, with the result that only imported ones are available – at more than £2 each.

Waaah! Kapitalizm is Krool!

It’s socially unjust, and must be stopped in our lifetime – so we can be free to be slaves of the state.

Whatever It Takes?

"We are at war. We are at war against al Qaeda," [Barack Obama] said in one of his strongest and most direct speeches about the threat to the United States.

"We will do whatever it takes to defeat them."

Whatever it takes?

How about firing Eric Holder or at least putting the attorney general in his place and reverting to trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, and any other "suspects" in military tribunals?

Indeed: how about using waterboarding to get information out of the "suspects" on Al Qaeda's — no, not (just) Al Qaeda's, militant Islam's (or Islamic militants') — future plans for terror?

Prudence Dictates another Law

The French parliament has written into law a broad, unenforceable piece of legislation rigged up entirely for gal-Queda type feminists specifically outlawing mental abuse in marriage (interspecies or otherwise) in the same way that ‘hate crimes’ work – wherein one kind of murder victim is somehow more special than some other kind of murder victim on grounds of some sort of ‘social justice’ status.

There have long been laws against physical abuse of spouses, but France has gone a significant step further and criminalized “psychological violence” between men and women.

The law, which will apply to couples both married and unmarried who cohabit, was promulgated to coincide with the United Nations’ 10th International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and will take effect within six months.

The irony is that this announcement stuff, and shove a law through stuff is seen domestically as a way of practicing über-skilled Machiavellian foreign policy, even if the whole worldly, caring-looking “behold my poop stinks not” thing is internationally forgotten by 10:27 tomorrow morning. It’s a euro win-win when there are even minutes of that touchy-feely satisfaction that comes with passing a new social measure, followed by decades of joy taken in circumventing it later.

Surely making the entire law subjective is the recently publish finding by French psychologist Maryse Vaillant who is pandering to the complex of calling the rest of humanity prudish under some rationalization or another. Her these is that a husband's cheating, and the neglect and betrayal that comes with it, is good for marriage. Doubters need to think about the travails of an easy going wife who accepted this 'grand tradition' widely accepted to be normal, even for publicly prominent men in Europe.

At their wedding in 1983, when the mayor began reciting the vows of "fidelity, aid and support", she said Mr Besson commented: "Fidelity, no."

Miss Brunel, although "humiliated", convinced the shocked mayor it was a joke. He was, she claims, unfaithful for five years before their marriage and 25 years afterwards, adding: "I can't say I wasn't warned."

Mr Besson has been dubbed "the Traitor" by the opposition Socialists whom he deserted to join President Nicolas Sarkozy's cabinet. He left his wife soon after for a woman "almost as young as our eldest daughter" and who "oozed narcissism from every pore of her pretty skin", according to his ex-wife.

Mr Besson described her book as "shameless". She hit back, saying: "What's shameless is the way you've treated me for 30 years."

Years. Abuse. She’s got a case there under the new law, I would say. Nonetheless in the vacuum of “gee that sounds nice for this week’s article”, some ‘sex guru’ quack writer has called the acceptance of philandering as ‘pragmatic’.

Elsewhere, NPR’s American audience, which often seems to be made up what seems entirely of family therapist types of one kind or another, likely see in it another meal ticket.

If Psychological Abuse In Couples Is Criminalized, Treatment Will Be Key

Don’t worry, folks – if the history of lefty nanny state measures is anything to go by, the definition of ‘abuse’ will be expanded to make this whole thing into another legal or financial instrument, fashioning the whole thing into a venal burden on the former family’s earnings and savings, and surely infantilize another couple of million citizens, and rendering helpless to do right on their own initiative a whole generation of young people entering adulthood. After all, with law as your sole moral guide, why would one need to develop one's moral reasoning?

Success is easier to achieve in counseling for psychological abuse, Stosny says, than in cases of physical abuse. With physical abuse, he says, there's often "traumatic bonding" between the parties.

Sometimes, with some life-experience, and the taking of ones’ own life seriously, the bonding isn’t traumatic. Can you write up a law to cover that? No. Law can do no such thing.

In a report from the appropriately named Eleanor Beardsley, it’s all, as always about those special isolated cases, and never, ever, open to a future that banalizes abuse. It will. Meanwhile, in the land of pretend-bombast where men often pretend to be given to abusiveness as a way of exerting their adulthood (something ‘Anglo-Saxons’ are much less prone to,) how many days will it take to hear a bunch of these guys saying “well then keep it physical!,” banalizing it in THEIR way.

Billard rejects critics who say the new law would allow couples to be hauled in for having an argument. She says it must be proved that the abuse is repeated and done with the intention of destroying the victim's dignity.

Which also brings to mind the ‘therapeutic stance’ of accepting that BDSM is okay if you can intimidate your partner into consent, itself feeding the private game of calling you abuse "playtime" antics. It is, after all, all about metal abuse and conditioning the abused into taking pleasue in being servile. Or is it prudish to otherwise believe that THAT kind of abuse must, for reasons of being socially non-judgmental, be held aside as a special legal class? When will that play against the rules of propriety and respect need to be regulated for what it is?

I mean, just when was it that the all-knowing therapeutic do-gooder left dragged us back to the Victorian age where the population had social strictures that a social elite could ignore for their private pleasure? Much as there is an incentive to enjoy doing wrong (celebrated all too often as being creative), laws such as these make the incentive to be right one of merely avoiding punishment and conformity. Laws, unlike personal exploration and moral development, like domination, only teach through conditioning. With every law we compound on another we take away a little more of the faith one can have in the individual and the role of free will as a life coach.

No liquids near the keyboard

The vested interest brigades tell us (the great unwashed) how indeed the current cooling is indeed part of the current warming.

One wonders if the same nuanced approach of "this is just a one-off winter that does not disprove anything" will hold true next summer when any degree of heat on any given day will set off the "sky is falling, again" warmists.

Ho hum....

Sounding More Soviet by the Minute

Despite rapidly running out of capitols to name pompous, unrealistic declarations after, the EU is running headlong into a theatrical form of central planning philosophy that I like to call “mining the scrapheap of history” in an attempt to look like their doing something definite about the public’s economic malaise woes.

The next few months will be decisive for the European Union's future economic health, with the bloc set to agree a new 10-year economic plan in a bid to leave the recent recession behind, and chart a fresh course towards steady growth and job creation.

and the paean to the Rubber chicken internal summitry circuit MUST go on:

Memory of the EU's current economic plan - the Lisbon Strategy, due to expire in 2010 - is also likely to influence EU leaders as they prepare to discuss its successor at a number of European summits over the next six months under the Spanish EU presidency.

If 5 year plans never worked, how is a 10 year plan supposed to work? By giving one even more time to create a few months of diminished expectations before the whole PR exercise is forgotten?

Unaknowleged, even while admitting to the failure of the Lisbon Strategy to “make the union the most competitive knowledge-based economy in the world", is that innovation takes place when governments are not staring at private innovators, tapping their toes, fondling their mobiles, and checking their watches.

Still think it is all about peace, love and understanding?

Behold the Katrina-esque Chaos

A good part of the UK is socked in by the rather beautiful randomness of ‘climate’, and all they can do is whinge.

Oxfordshire was also braced for extreme weather. In North London, Harrow had only four days of grit left.

A spokeswoman said: "We ordered 1,000 tons of extra salt but the supplier has left us high and dry." Yesterday there were claims of people LOOTING roadside supplies of rock salt to sprinkle at their own properties.

Bush!

Any minute know, there will be reports of cannibalism, and dining from tins from the back of the cupboard. Oh the humanity! The media should soon need to show every womyn to be an Ernest Shackleton

Vive le Vent, Vive le Vent, Vive le Vent d'Hiver in a One-Horse Open Lay

What have THEY Been Smoking?

Proof enough for the French, I suppose. The success of marketing the idea of the nation beyond all plausibility goes on unfettered.

'The French love little window boxes filled with flowers, tidy gardens, pretty sidewalk cafes, and clean streets. Cities are well tended and with little crime.'

To punctuate the silliness of this survey, of the top 25 ranked nations, only 4 aren’t in Fortress Europe. Published by an Ireland based puffy travel magazine, this is by, for and of Europe’s image of self.

One also wonders what USA or Canada they’re looking at, given their breadth and variety, given that 12 of “nations” listed have a population less than that of Metro New York.



The other thing they “love” as much as tidy streets and window boxes, two things that have a museum-like air of rarity in every French city I’ve been to, is to make any attempt possible to compare their high culture to others’ low culture.

Living like a Teenage Radical Zealot to Survive

In Eurostan, there are retirees burning books to stay warm instead of the coal we are told that isn’t burned there because of their assumed continental eco-infallibility.

Bear in mind that this is in the UK where they are so thoughtful that their underequipped lives just can’t deal well with real weather, and are given to entertaining the notion that one should put snow tires on ones’ eco-pod transporters in the presence of 6-in. [15 cm] of snow.

For every degree the temperature drops below 18C, deaths in the UK go up by nearly 1.5%.

I suppose it keeps one young, doesn’t it?

"In very cold weather it may be best to stay indoors".

Alas, but for that sage advise...

Mr. Bean Goes to Brussels

Zapatero the hugely irrelevant is looking for new and interesting ways to use the 6 months that his government will “run Europe” for what that line is worth.

Practically, Madrid's overarching challenge will be dealing with the economic crisis. The European Commission will next year present a proposal for a 10 year strategy to bring the bloc to 2020, which it hopes to have a preliminary agreement on by a March meeting of EU leaders.

Something he has a proven track record in the rousingly reassuring state of economic rebound visible in Spain. One, which puts him in a position to pressure the leadership having the most contact with the ECB, to consider a bailout of the “PIGS”: Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Spain – another reason to short the Euro-Zloty for the next six months and invest in Norwegian bellwether and Poland as a whole.

Why lead when your term can be used for peevish personal politicking?

The treaty leaves plenty of scope for potential turf wars: Spain has said that it would like to host the EU-US and Latin America summits, in a move that will propel Mr Zapatero into the global spotlight alongside Mr Rompuy. The possibility of having Barack Obama on Spanish soil for a summit is already sparking protocol speculation, such as who will be the first to shake the US leader's hand.

Just imagine the stage being set for that “latin American summit” making President Obama the apparent equal of Daniel Ortega, Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, Castro II, and the like. In looking rather closely at Zapatero, the only distinction I can find is that he appears to not wear a uniform or theatrical native garb, and probably has table manners.

¡ Но пасаран !

As ideological signifiers, all Zappo would need is a moustache and military un-dress uniform that looks like it came from a Hamburg fetish discount supply shop to pull of the same sales schtick in the long-looked-down-upon post rebellion “colonies”. One can’t help but picture a sort of Army Surplus Store of stale European ideas, but the irony is that in Europe, one needs no such signifiers anymore. With no drama being required, there are enough people who vote who take post-modern tripe at face value that one need not start dressing like an extra from an early Mel Brooks picture.

France Admits that the Car Burnings Phenomenon Has Become Banal

In one decade, the phenomenon of car burnings has spread in France and become banal, writes Luc Bronner in Le Monde (En une décennie, le phénomène des voitures brûlées s'est étendu et banalisé). The yearly number has risen from 14,000 burnings in 1998 to probably over 40,000 in 2009 (which is still down from over 45,000 in 2005, over 44,000 in 2006, and over 46,000 in 2007).

Notice how politicians manipulate statistics by saying (and by congratulating themselves over the "fact") that the number of burnt cars this new year's eve has decreased from the previous year year's eve (by the impressive number of… 10 vehicles — from 1,147 to 1,137!) and by ignoring the new years' eves prior to that.

…le ministre de l'intérieur, Brice Hortefeux, peut se féliciter publiquement d'avoir permis aux Français de passer une soirée de Saint-Sylvestre "calme", alors que 1 137 véhicules ont été incendiés dans la nuit. "La tendance à la hausse a été enrayée", s'est réjoui M. Hortefeux en référence aux statistiques de l'année précédente, les pires jamais enregistrées avec 1 147 véhicules carbonisés. Mais cette appréciation positive est invalidée par l'analyse des années précédentes : 878 voitures brûlées en 2008, 397 en 2007, 425 en 2006, 337 en 2005, 324 en 2004, selon les chiffres officiels alors transmis à la presse par le ministère de l'intérieur [et à peine une centaine de véhicules incendiés en 1998].

It turns out that one of the factors that has contributed to the (minute) decline of car-burning — besides the massive injection of police forces between Christmas and New Year's — is television's reluctance to cover the phenomenon, nourished in turn by politicians' criticism in years past of having given it too much coverage. So, again, we somehow have an example of the mainstream media covering, if belatedly and if reluctantly, for the politicians.

Two Le Monde readers comment:

Je trouve choquant que Le Monde, comme d'autres journaux, prenne le communiqué officiel pour titre de l'article.

Le ministre et Le Monde ont bien raison puisqu'il y a eu, d'après le première : 1.137 voitures brûlées. L'an dernier, elles étaient 1.147. 10 de moins... Un bien plus grand calme en effet... :( Communiquer ou informer, il faut choisir

Oh, and while we're on the subject of banality, France's newspaper of reference, and French traditions, today's issue is online for free while Le Monde subscribers got this in the mail today:

Suite à un arrêt de travail d’une partie des ouvriers CGT de l’imprimerie, Le Monde daté mercredi 6 janvier ne pourra être imprimé. Nous vous présentons toutes nos excuses pour ce contretemps indépendant de notre volonté, qui vous privera de l’édition papier.

Vous pourrez néanmoins consulter votre journal au format PDF depuis la page d'accueil du Monde.fr et, à partir de 15 heures, profiter de la version électronique du journal directement sur www.lemonde.fr/je.

Nous vous renouvelons nos excuses.
Fidèlement,

Eric Fottorino
Directeur du Monde

PETN is Deadly, but Old Hat

AND it was engineered long ago which places the “brilliance” of the Yemeni al Qaida planners of the BVD-bombing on the intellectual par of a high-school chemistry student. The files of the Stasi reveal this interesting use of the stuff by Iraqi “diplomats” to EAST Berlin trying to kill Kurdish students in WEST Berlin prior to reunification.

On August 1, 1980, at about 8:30 A.M., detectives of the West Berlin police special action command watched Jaber and Mahmoud drive through the U.S. Army's Checkpoint Charlie, the diplomatic crossing point through the Berlin Wall. They were in a gray Mercedes limousine bearing East German foreign office diplomatic license plates CD-21-09. The West Berlin officers followed the Iraqis to the district of Wedding, where the Mercedes stopped. Jaber and Mahmoud got out of the car, and the chauffeur retrieved an attaché case from the trunk.

Both men walked a short distance to a street corner, where another man was waiting for the attache case. The third man was the Kurd who had tipped off the Syrians. After he walked away, the two Iraqis returned to their car.

When Jaber and Mahmoud were about to drive away, an unmarked police car stopped alongside the Mercedes and another stopped in front of it. Mahmoud reversed, sideswiped a parked car, and careened across the center strip dividing the road, but was blocked by another police car. Jaber jumped from the car and tried to flee. He was wrestled to the ground by detectives. Still at the wheel and trying to escape, Mahmoud rammed the police car. At that moment, a detective yanked the car door open and dragged the Iraqi secret service station chief out of the seat. A brief struggle ensued during which a loaded Walther PPK 9mm pistol with a silencer attached fell out of Mahmoud's jacket pocket.

The attaché case was taken to a bomb squad laboratory for x-ray examination. It was equipped with a coded numerical lock set on 0. Had another number been set, the bomb would have exploded in 44 minutes. Specialists dismantled the bomb and found that it held 575 grams (1.2 pounds) of pentaerythritoltetranitrate (PETN). Experts describe PETN as one of the most powerful explosives used as a base charge in sea mines, torpedoes, and antiaircraft shells.

- From John O. Koehler’s “Stasi: The Untold Story of the East German Secret Police”

That they were using cover as diplomats to assassinate and used the DDR as a safe-haven apparently found little opposition among the SED leadership and the Stasi spooks who knew about it.

Noone can represent a parent's issues better than that parent themselves

When it comes to custody, I believe that nonone can represent a parent's issues better than that parent themselves.

If John of Kansas, who was dragged through family court, is to be believed, "a pro se litigant who appears in court, arguing for himself, is his best advocate."

William Wagener is telling us:

We must abolish family courts completely and have an automatic system, when two people don't get along … it's 50-50 with each fit parent and zero child support … That's the only thing the judge can do without a jury verdict … and if the judge wants to do anything else, he has got to get a jury to be convinced that the mother or the father is so suddenly unfit … now that one's trying to screw the other one out of everything they've got, [in order to decide that that other] is suddenly unfit, you gotta get a jury.

Stephen Baskerville has more in his ground-breaking book, Taken Into Custody (The War Against Fathers, Marriage, and the Family)…

Human Extinction Program Going Just Swimmingly in EUtopia

I guess having a preponderance of the world’s skanks will ultimately reduce the continental carbon footprint by making preserving the species little to no fun. Especially when half the population reduces itself to becoming cheerless, disinterested, booze-addled mere breeding stock.

So mate, ‘ow dga know she ‘ad 'er orgasm?

She dropped her crisps.

The Theme is Quite Simple

The idea of one British journalist to make a Rubik's cube with all the potential candidates for the top jobs was picked up not only by Mr Reinfeldt, who held up the cube in front of photographers at the 19 November summit, but also by the Swedish press team who interviewed Erno Rubik, the Hungarian inventor of the toy.

Much as we find with the strange newsy-news that the a communist era toy has come to say something about the governance of the EU, it should be understood in its’ basic form for what EU politics is: a very fake set of issues that one is compelled to make a very face set of choices on. Such as who’s on first:

The problem with ‘our’ new president and foreign minister is not that they are nobodies, but that they are unelected, unaccountable nobodies.

Which might comfort leaders across the continent, but has the frightening side-effect of having surprised no one. They are used to this sort of thing where someone up above feigns to know better and care, and directs society below. It is the very opposite of the grassroots participatory society, and it isn’t just familiar, it’s widely held to be “all for the best” in the same manner that “scientific socialism” was.

Take for example the ‘broadmindedness’ assumed to be a part of this suggestion. It doesn’t stay that way very long. As the logical extension of another obsession that the population is sold on, one that Mr. Malthus is alive and well, hating humanity, and everything it does, we are expected to fall into line. Again.

When you go out shopping for your Christmas dinner on December 23, 2020, you will probably opt for grasshoppers, instead of shrimp. You will toss your tried and true turkey in favour of a real delicacy: juicy dragonfly larvae and beetle caviar. This is 2020 after all, and insects are the most environmentally friendly and varied source of animal protein available.

Sadly, what is assumed to be the easy part is the altering of the population and its’ desires.

If insects are to be effectively marketed as human grub, they will first need to rehabilitated in the public mind. Their current reputation as dirty, nasty creatures that are to be avoided at all costs can only be changed if society learns more about the cleanliness and beneficial properties of insects.

And since we’re already trained to fall into line, what does it matter? It’s no different than the lack of uproar over who’s opaquely appointed to be ‘the people’s choice’. The pattern has already been illustrated on the People’s Cube.

¡No Pasarán! (sie werden nicht durchkommen)

The Mistaken Assumption About the Yemeni Terrorists Released During the Bush Administration

When liberals and their sympathizers put the emphasis on the fact that two Yemenis who became terrorist leaders (again) were former prisoners released from Guantanamo during the Bush years — adding, "let's not repeat the mistakes of the past" (thanks to Instapundit) — they are making a basic mistaken assumption.

The difference is that the Bush administration, which would have liked nothing better than to keep every inmate in America's Cuban prison (and had you said anything different during the Bush years, you would have been subject to snorts, scorn, and ridicule), was operating under pressure from leftists to release prisoners, due to the latters' fairy tale of "be nice to everybody and we can all live together". ("Of course those poor innocent souls being tortured at Guantanamo — being tortured by their very presence at Guantanamo — are not terrorists; how can you be so clueless?")

While the Obama administration, which has those (self-same) leftists in power throughout the cabinet, is operating under the (self-same) "be nice to everybody and we can all live together" fairy tale and has been actively doing its utmost to push for as many of the prisoners' release at the very earliest possible date.

It's never too late to remember that context is everything…

An Open Letter to Democrat Politicians: America Rising

HillBuzz posts An Open Letter to Democrat Politicians (thanks to Larwyn)

Sarkozy's coolness towards Obama: France's current frustration is aimed at Washington's hesitancy or even weakness

Nicolas Sarkozy, the most pro-American president of France for half a century, has gone cold on Barack Obama, the most popular American leader in France in generations

writes the Financial Times' Ben Hall (Thanks to Janina who adds that this is the first time that she found something positive to say about Sarkozy).

Mr Sarkozy has expressed his frustration at the White House's perceived equivocation over how to deal with Iran's nuclear ambitions and the priority that Mr Obama attaches to the long-term goal of a world free of nuclear weapons.

Mr Sarkozy's frustration boiled over in September in a remarkably barbed speech to the United Nations General Assembly.

"We are right to talk about the future, but before the future there is the present, and the present is two major nuclear crises," Mr Sarkozy said, alluding to Iran and North Korea. "We are living in a real world, not a virtual world," he added, in a clear dig at Mr Obama's disarmament ambitions.

Policy differences have been compounded by friction over choreography and symbolism. The Elysée still smarts at Mr Obama's visit to France in June for the commemoration of the D-Day landings, when he declined an additional bilateral event with Mr Sarkozy.

The French press regularly publishes Mr Sarkozy's unflattering comments about Mr Obama's lack of prior government experience, his alleged difficulty in reaching decisions or his domestic electoral setbacks.

…Like his predecessor, Mr Sarkozy plays up differences with the US for domestic purposes. But there is a crucial difference. Whereas Mr Chirac's stance towards the US was determined by suspicion of US power, current French frustration is aimed at Washington's hesitancy or even weakness.

America's Heartland Again Shows How Clueless Americans Are

…and how much in need they are of government intervention for their own good (why can't they show some humility and learn from the nanny state example of those ever-lucid Europeans?)…
Thanks to Texas Val for this story that shows how clueless, how idiotic, and how unsophisticated those reactionary retards in America's heartland are (those Christians — really!)…

A Festival of Rationalization

José Manuel Barroso is working the only force-multiplier available to a European Union not interested in actually doing anything to earn that respect:

We need to revisit the structures of global governance, to ensure that they work better for people everywhere, and in the interests of both current and future generations. The EU has led the discussion within its own structures and taken it to wider international fora. We welcome the emerging economies' call for reform of global institutions.

In other words: the think the world should voluntarily come under the same undemocratic headlock that the populous entities are putting the smaller or less wealthy members of the EU, and we should, of course employ Europe-centered institutions to do it, the ones dominated by European employees.

The economic crisis has made progress in the negotiations of the Doha Development Agenda in the World Trade Organisation even more important.

The WTO framework, to which the EU has always given priority, is increasingly recognised as being fundamental to our prosperity. It helps to anchor the global economy in an open, rules-based system based on international law

That is, the Doha round that the Europeans killed to maintain tacit protectionism.

Multilateral engagement is essential for dealing with these threats. The EU has multilateralism in its DNA. Others, too, can benefit from its experience. Europeans are long-standing champions of the United Nations and international cooperation, and continually seek to ensure that stability, freedom, democracy, and justice prevail as cornerstones of international relations.

Which is an interesting way to put the passive-aggression that charaterizes anything that happens between EU member states or in the UN where the most extreme and vile resolutions, as unenforcable as they all are, come from nation-states that can do it without any consequence to themeselves, and at no cost to themselves. Pledging tp spend others' money and issuing a pandering condemnation of the politically unpopular hardly amounts to sane or responsible action, let alone "global governance".

As it is, what is in the EU's DNA is totalitarian statism whose only addition in the past 20 years has been to put a smily face on it. If, as Barroso claims, that the EU has a growing role, or lessons to teach the world, their historically-recent revelation that they should stop dragging the rest of civilization into their internecine wars and awful top-down authoritarian ideas about social organization (Communism, Socialism, Fascism, etal), there is scant proof that it won't do as much harm in this century as it did in the 20th century.

Our best and brightest

Wonderful news:

Twelve million low-energy light bulbs were posted to households over Christmas by an energy company as part of its legal obligation to cut carbon emissions, despite government advice that many would never be used.

The reason:

In 2008 the Government ordered the big energy companies to invest in measures for improving energy efficiency and cutting fuel poverty.

Who pays for the 'free' bulbs:

Companies can pass on all the costs of the scheme to their customers. Over three years it is expected to add more than £100 to the average household’s energy bills.

Once again, the reason:

In 2008 the Government ordered the big energy companies to invest in measures for improving energy efficiency and cutting fuel poverty.

Where would we be without our governmental betters?

2009 Closes with Less Veneration of Saint Sylvester

New Years' Eve was declared "relatively calm" in Paris, pot-shots are taken at the NYPD - just because, dontcha know.

Head smashing

Le Parisien report -only- 11 injured police officers and 405 arrests on the Champs-Elysées in Paris. The qualifier being that there were significantly less people out there this year, and the head-smashing took place over a 4 hour period.

The same report indicates that Strasbourg "only burned up a little bit," as if this kind of thing is normal.

Carbeques

After a 30% spike last New Years' Eve, last night's events are reported to have yielded a significant drop in vehicular arson. Some of it can be attributed to bad weather, and my sense is the senselessness of past years' chaotic public behavior has blunted much of it this year, even among feral youths.

International broadcaster RFI reports on its' news blog that the drop can be attributed to a committed intervention by police. Clearly, the use of the "broken windows" apprach to policing has been applied to effect.

The French police will be mobilized in large numbers for the traditional New Year festivities. The night of Saint-Sylvestre normally degenerates [in its' safety]. Last year more than thousand cars had been deliberately burned, or 30% more than last year. Update on the mechanisms put in place to fight against this crime.

Heal Thyself, Pokey

No good deed going unslandered, while taking a non-disapproving position on the improvements in Paris with the special deployment of 45 000 cops, "calm" in New York gets a different characterization. It's declared "draconian".

From east to west across the globe, millions of people thronged the streets of major cities around the world to celebrate 2010 and try to forget within a few hours, the climate of uncertainty surrounding and upheavals of the global economic crisis.

Hard to believe when the numbers out on the streets are down.

In New York, a huge crowd braved the rain and snow to welcome with enthusiasm the midnight descent of the famous crystal ball in Times Square, symbolizing the transition to the new year.

Draconian security measures surrounding the festivities, six days after the attempt of a young Nigerian to blow up an aircraft from a U.S. company flying from Amsterdam to Detroit.

So while the statist tendency give's AFP's scribblers the notion that all is well when it takes place in a relatively small celabration in Paris which had one-fifth the revellers, it's jack-booted when it's employed to protect the nominal one million people who converge on time square.

And the Children Still Blindly Follow his Wisdom

"To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary."

--Ernesto "Che" Guevara

You will Read the Numbers now, Liebschen

Is it a parody of stereotypical irritatingly self-absorbed central European experimental film or the crude tailings of cold war espionage? Be the judge.

N/A in the 2nd Year of Age of O

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty…

- Thomas Jefferson

Mr. Mota will take Care of that “Mr. Socrates,” Ha Ha Ha...

I tell ya man, they’re always working for the people! EUvian justice-ocrats finally catch up with corrupt Leftist official, 2 years after his appointment as the head of Eurojust, the über-mega-state's pan-galactic anti-crime agency.

Eurojust will not suffer any image damage because this was a "national matter" which did not involve the EU agency as such, its spokesman Johannes Thuy told this website.

Except for the fact that the guy in charge of the über-mega-state's pan-galactic anti-crime agency was implicated in the crime of the abuse of office, and the misuse of judicial processes.

I mean, like, so what!, eh?

José Luís Lopes da Mota is Vice-President and National Member for Portugal. He has 28 years’ experience in the judiciary as a prosecutor and as an assistant to the Portuguese Prosecutor General where he was responsible for matters related to management of the prosecution services at a national level and for international co-operation.

- Statement which at the time of this writing is still on
the über-mega-state's pan-galactic anti-crime
agency’s website.

A Massive Intellectual Regression In Which State Intervention Has Become the Panacea

As The Seventh Dimension is published, Michel Garroté brings us an interview with the book's author, namely Guy Millière.

On semble oublier tout ce que l’ouverture planétaire des marchés a permis en termes de recul de la pauvreté et des pénuries en deux ou trois décennies, et entrer dans une grande régression intellectuelle où l’interventionnisme étatique serait devenue la panacée.

Cow Mutilations are Up!

Yea, verily, ManBearPig hath spoken, and he makes about as much sense as nuts who can’t decide it cattle mutilations are caused by UFOs or nefarious secret military experiments.

Do you think that’s a stretch? Wheeeell, how cracked do you have to be to want to put a near septagenarian railroad engineer as the center and final judge of all geophysical science?

WWII-Era Higgins Boat in Action

Hugues Eliard's World War II-era Higgins Boat in action…

Challengelcvp "Objectif Omaha 2009" - Caudebec-en-Caux 31.05
envoyé par koucikoussa

Cette vidéo fait partie d’une série actuellement en cours de montage et tournées en mai/juin dernier durant l’opération "Objectif Omaha". Celle-ci est prise le 31 mai à Caudebec en Caux, lors de notre arrivée [à bord du LCVP PA30-4] à la station des Pilotes de la Seine, alors en route vers Honfleur.

As Revealing as a Barium Enema

The perpetual rigamarole surrounding the formation of the EU over the past 4 decades is rather more revealing of the state of the European political mind than one thinks. It’s an accounting of unredacted reactions, expressions of instincts, and the willingness to live with broad, warm-sounding feelings of communatarianism that wants to magnify it’s power around the world for no reason, while all the parties act like they want to take their ball, leave the sandbox, and go home.

Any detailed account of EU history reads like an endless list of failures, dissapointments, backtracking, non-compliance with commitments, unfulfilled expectations, hard bargaining, dull and unimpressive bureacrats, selfish national leaders, egoistic states, ever-growing scepticism, blatant behaviour of large member states, a ridiculous common agricultural policy, etc ., etc.

What I’m waiting for is the kind of commitment to “something-hood” (one cannot speak of nationhood, or cartel-hood for that matter), that, to a sufficient degree of confidence, will permit them to dismantle their 27 Embassies in every major capitol in the outside world in favor of a consolidated entity, ceding 26 of their UN General assembly seats, and one of their two UNSC seats, and live with the world in a way that the rest of the world must, and matches their own vision of the monoculturalism that they take to be inherent in any other national government on earth.

And what of the dull bureacrats? The European Commission has had 11 presidents since 1958. But who remembers presidents Rey, Malfatti, Ortoli or Thorn? You might remember Santer, but for the wrong reasons. Hallstein and Jenkins are somewhere in the back of the mind, but far from being household names. And only Delors looks impressive, but then many will tell you that he was appointed precisely because no one thought at the time he was a visionary.

And still the EU is somehow considered a big success. The truth is that the EU has almost always been an institution of dull bureaucrats pushing for incremental measures that mostly fail, and those that become successes are acknowledged as such only ten years later.

From without, the only reaction is “big deal”. Far from being a denouement of human advancement and the superiority of impotently wishing for good in the world, it’s a mere sign of incremental evolution from being a culture at war with itself and the rest of humanity for a millennium, an exporter of the most murderous ideas, especially that of the subservience of the man before the power of the state, only to construct an increasingly undemocratic super-state that takes the power people can have over their lives further away from them into a vague multi-lingual babble where one never knows what is getting lost in translation.

The only question at this point is “how long do the children have to be kept being told that they’re making history?” and “how long does Nana have to say they’re special?”

Bright Lights, Big City

Just curious if anyone else has experienced this phenomenon. Whilst preparing for one of the myriad holiday parties served up at Chez Moi, we replaced our regular light bulbs, in a rather longish L-shaped hallway (residential), with the new greendom CFL types.

Upon transiting the newly illuminated and environmentally friendly hallway, guests emerged in some combination of confusement, disorientation and/or irritation (one guest was found flushed, sweating and muttering that his name was Leonard Zelig). Do note, these events happened prior to cordials being served.

Suggestions?

"Just a Cute 'Lil Firecracker"?

Re-edited moments ago to say that "a passenger believed it was a firecracker"

The AP appears to be trying to minimize an attack on civilians, saying in a video report that Nigerian-British student Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, was merely playing with mere party poppers, and mentioning nothing about the significance of the date of the attack.

The man who tried to blow up a US airliner as it prepared to land at Detroit on Christmas Day had an explosive powder strapped to his leg which he tried to ignite by injecting chemicals with a syringe, Fox News reports.

The reasoning behing calling it a firecracker came from a passenger statement like this one, carefully omitting what law enforcement described the IED to be:

One US intelligence official said the explosive device was a mix of powder and liquid. It failed when the passenger tried to detonate it.

"It sounded like a firecracker in a pillowcase," said Peter Smith, a traveller from the Netherlands. "First there was a pop, and then [there] was smoke."

An Open Thread

Feel free to interpret.

Will Hillary Clinton Get it This Time?

Like a parody of history, the willing idiots will autonomically rally to rationalize the legality of illegality to pitch a "lite" version of Communizing revolutions, and it will sound as clumsy as the same tired rhetoric did in the 70's and 80's when said willing idiots were little more than the unwelcome result of a broken condom. The whole empty "coup" routine we heard with Zelaya's attempt to sieze power will be parrotted when this gofer pops up to talk his way into a "permanant Presidency".

Lawmakers are refusing to recognize a Supreme Court decision that would allow Ortega to run again in 2011 by overturning bans on consecutive re-election and serving more than two terms.

The question is, will the US State Department be as inept and spineless with Daniel Ortega as it was with Zelaya?

A Y Pestis of Youthful Ignorance

Suddenly, David Aaranovich’s observation of the Copenhagen festival of self-hatred started sounding historically familiar.

Suddenly there was the world, spread out in front of us, not like a bookcase full of travel guides, or even as represented in diplomatic simulacrum in New York by UN ambassadors, but in its own messy right.
The image that came to my mind was of some vast biblical trek, in which tribes make their way over various terrains to an uncertain land. Out front, and to the sides, were the little groups of activists and NGOs; some pathfinding in distant hills, some wailing and beating themselves and others with thorn branches, some praying loudly and piously, some shouting to the others to catch up, some predicting doom with an unacknowledged pleasure.

To my ear it seemed to start conforming to a pattern of human behavior that was a cross between the Donner party and Nero’s joy at the incineration of Rome.

As soon, however, as the Flagellant movement crossed the Alps into Teutonic countries, its whole nature changed. The idea was welcomed with enthusiasm; a ceremonial was rapidly developed, and almost as rapidly a specialized doctrine, that soon degenerated into heresy. The Flagellants became an organized sect, with severe discipline and extravagant claims. They wore a white habit and mantle, on each of which was a red cross, whence in some parts they were called the "Brotherhood of the Cross". Whosoever desired to join this brotherhood was bound to remain in it for thirty-three and a half days, to swear obedience to the "Masters" of the organization...

Much like the lethality, boredom, and pedantic constancy of medieval life, the ritual sit-ins and the public rioting had to take place with the cadence of the familiar chants, the banners and the parasitic circus of politicized mitlaüfer.

Twice a day, proceeding slowly to the public square or to the principal church, they put off their shoes, stripped themselves to the waist and prostrated themselves in a large circle. By their posture they indicated the nature of the sins they intended to expiate, the murderer lying on his back, the adulterer on his face, the perjurer on one side holding up three fingers, etc. First they were beaten by the "Master", then, bidden solemnly in a prescribed form to rise, they stood in a circle and scourged themselves severely, crying out that their blood was mingled with the Blood of Christ and that their penance was preserving the whole world from perishing.

The only question is who it is that the modern Carbon Dioxide cult will lionize and then compare themselves to.

Christmas Address From the White House

Not a Franciscan, but Rather a San Franciscan

Michael Phillips calls out the new authoritarians for what they have become.

The Liberal mantra used to be: 'Capitalism created too much change, inequality and poverty; that we need bigger government to redistribute wealth and control the 'means of production'.

A forced meagerness which they tried to associate with a materialist view has evolved into a different sort of asceticism-based meagerness:

It is an attack on our right to the pursuit of happiness.

It’s very nearly evolving into a kind of code associated in the past with religious adherence, and a firmly established one at that (in the traditional legal sense.)

The New liberalism tells us what kind of light bulbs we have to use, when we have to use helmets, what weight and size our children must be before they can stop using 5-point auto harnesses, when and where we can smoke, what we can smoke, how we can talk on the phone in a car, what kinds of foods we can't eat at all (horse, whale, dolphin etc),

And in that strange little world, PETA will be left to bless the animals. Like “meatless Mondays”, they are likely to take care to avoid meatless Fridays, the feast of St. Francis of Assisi, or any other virtue larger than nanny’s desire to control others.

Diplomatic Pauch

In the wake of the stench of sulfur that Chavez left in the Bella Center, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Eduardo Rodríguez Parrilla called U.S. President Barack Obama:

an "imperial and arrogant" liar Monday for his conduct at the U.N. climate conference, a reflection of the communist island's increasingly fiery verbal attacks on the U.S. government.

One of the many touted benefits of the perpetual “revolution” which the Cubans have always pimped was that they somehow magically eliminated all inequality and racism from the island. Which makes Rodriguez’ further comments somewhat more interesting to those not familiar with Communism, where you NEVER actually get what’s on the jar’s label.

Last week, the elder Castro, who stepped down as head of state in February 2008, wrote that Washington is looking to solidify its control over Latin America and that Obama's "friendly smile and African-American face" hide his government's sinister true intentions for the region.

Raul Castro over the weekend mentioned recent war games Cuba conducted to prepare for a U.S. invasion

So color blind, indeed that a portrait of their government looks like a “mafia” social club: one guy who looks like he might vaguely be Indian, 3 women, and a bunch herpetic looking old white men of Iberian origin with a stunning similarity to one another – truly – the portrait of the Caribbean if there ever was one.

You can virtually smell the diversity, which, like the university faculty of many of the social sciences, has about the same uniformity of thought.

Well, that didn't take long

From those who are never ever responsible for anything (sometimes literally, sometimes figuratively):

European Union leaders on Tuesday sought to deflect criticism that they had fumbled their strategy at the Copenhagen climate summit meeting, just as a feud between the British and the Chinese over whom to blame for the outcome worsened.

Andreas Carlgren, the environment minister of Sweden, the country holding the rotating E.U. presidency, said that the summit meeting had been a "great failure" partly because other nations had rejected targets and a timetable for the rest of the world to sign on to binding emissions reductions.

The E.U. went into the conference with a strategy of leading by example on emissions cuts, but has been widely criticized by industry and environmental groups for not marshalling other nations to follow and for ending up sidelined at the summit meeting.

"It was obvious that the United States and China didn't want more than we achieved at Copenhagen,” Mr. Carlgren said at a news conference in Brussels.

The obstacles created by those countries were "part of what we regretted," he said.

We seem to recall something about Europe wanting to be the "leaders" of green-everything? To my brothers and sisters in Brussels, here is your chance. No need to fret over the great failure, show everyone else on Gaia how it can be done. Just talk?

What's that? European-only leadership on greendom would put Euro-industry at a global disadvantage? How so, we seem to recall something about transitioning to green-jobs and green-economies being sure-fire money-makers. Europe will be that much further ahead of all the other economies, right? Just talk?

What is this:

Philippe de Buck, the director general of BusinessEurope, a powerful lobby group, suggested over the weekend that industries based in Europe would increasingly move their operations to less regulated parts of the world as a result of the weak accord struck in Copenhagen.

We seem to recall something about Europe being so far advanced and nuanced about the brotherhood of man and beyond such seedy things like money and profits. Just talk?

A Salvo of Domestic Desertions in Time of Peace

Because of the disastrous war in Iraq and Afghanistan, America's armies are plagued by waves of desertions, writes Nathalie Guibert in Le Monde, unlike the pacifist-minded armies of Europe, which have so many lessons to… No, wait a minute. Those soldiers deserting aren't Yanks; they are French!

The French army is the one that is plagued by une salve de "désertions à l'intérieur en temps de paix". One particularly memorable time (violence-minded Yanks will be happy to learn), a desertion followed a farewell party:

en août 2008, des sous-officiers très alcoolisés ont entamé une bataille rangée avec les premières classes qui s'étaient invités. Dans le garage où se tenait la fête, les gradés ont saisi pelle, hache, chaîne de tronçonneuse.

Got That, You &^#%#?! Cycling Jerseys That Make a Statement

6 inches of Snow Brings Much of the UK to a Screeching Halt

It seems that the upper lip, not to mention a great deal else, has long since gone flaccid.

6 Questions on Health Care for Foreigners and Expatriates

Saying that "we are on the verge of socializing our health care system", Louisiana Conservative wants to ask foreigners and expatriates half a dozen questions (please answer in the comments section)…

1. What do you like about the government ran health care system?

2. What don't you like about the government ran health care system?

3. What would you change about the government ran health care system?

4. How long does a normal visit to the doctor take?

5. How has the system affected you or your family positively?

6. How has the system affected you or your family negatively?

Ils se Sont Tiré Dans le Pied

Half of the arrogance of the Donkey Show is founded in ignorance. While the lauding of the health care provided outside of the US has diminished with a growing number of people who are familiar with alternate international systems speak up, the delusions are still there. Leftists want “what they have in ___” or more to the point, what Leftists THINK they have in ____, when in fact most western European governments have spent a politically agonizing decade privatizing medicine in spite of their domestic Marxist-Leninist leaning loonies in order to improve the quality and availability of the care.

The American Thinker has the run-down.

Shouting in a Classroom; Fighting Breaks Out; A Student Is Sent to the Hospital, Lacerated by a Knife

The violence in America's schools and universities is a disgrace, writes Maryline Baumard in Le Monde. A female teacher has even asked not to have to teach on late afternoons so she does not have to ride home on the night bus. Now, if only those clueless Americans could learn from the Europeans with their societies that tend to promote peace and har—… Wait a minute! Oops! The violence is taking place in a French university…

Lundi 14 décembre, il est un peu plus de 15 heures lorsque trois individus s'introduisent dans un amphi de Paris-XIII-Villetaneuse et commencent à chahuter. Un étudiant demande le calme. Invectives. Bagarres. Le bras que lève le jeune homme pour se protéger le visage est lacéré de plusieurs coups de couteau. L'étudiant en droit a été opéré mardi.

…Selon une main courante électronique, mise en place par le président de l'université, Jean-Loup Salzmann, 83 incidents ont été signalés : 10 agressions, 7 dégradations de biens publics, 7 dégradations de véhicules, 14 vols de biens privés et 45 perturbations de cours. "Et tous les incidents ne remontent pas. Ce n'est pas dans la culture universitaire", tempère un professeur.

The money quote:

"Oui, c'est l'omerta. Depuis pas mal de temps déjà, on fait comme si rien ne se passe. Je vote à gauche. Je n'aime pas le discours sécuritaire, mais je souhaiterais plus de présence policière", regrette Michel Renault, secrétaire pédagogique de l'institut d'études judiciaires.

And then, there are the usual apologists:

A l'instar de Faihina Saidani, étudiante en L3 information et communication, ils sont nombreux à se sentir bien "dans cet espace mélangé, où chacun trouve sa place, avec ses différences" et à estimer qu'il "faut arrêter de stigmatiser la banlieue en laissant penser qu'on est plus en danger ici qu'ailleurs".

One reader writes:

Tout universitaire véritable et informé sait que depuis ses origines soixante-huitardes, Paris XIII — comme Paris VIII — n'est qu'un parking où l'enseignement supérieur n'est qu'une activité occasionnelle et épisodique.

Orbitting EUranus Looking for Klingons

From the EU’s internal propaganda arm, it’s provisional wing in the war to be transnationally loved for no good reason, we get to discover many light and meaningless facts, though ones that undergird a rather vile world view.

The word Europe comes from Ancient Greek and means "wide-gazing"

Along with Europe this and Europe that that subtly obscures the definitions of Europe and the EU, until finally we come to:

The longest river in Europe is the Volga in Russia

Which is no different than some tourism promotion branch of the US government calling one’s attention to the natural wonders of the Canadian Rockies or the Sonora desert in Mexico.

Which, by the way, has forced me to have to politely suffer through dozens of tirades about the use of the word “American,” hoping that the crazies would get tired and wobble to the other end of what they think is a bar.

Alle Menschen werden Brüder

First, the eye-wash performance for the suckers:

Now, the back-story for those who even care at this point:

The lead negotiator for the small island nation of Tuvalu, the bow-tie wearing Ian Fry, broke down as he begged delegates to take tough action.

"I woke up this morning crying, and that's not easy for a grown man to admit," Mr Fry said on Saturday, as his eyes welled with tears.

"The fate of my country rests in your hands," he concluded, as the audience exploded with wild applause.

But the part-time PhD scholar at the Australian National University actually resides in Queanbeyan, NSW, where he's not likely to be troubled by rising sea levels because the closest beach at Batemans Bay is a two-hour, 144km drive away. Asked whether he had ever lived in Tuvalu, his wife told The Australian last night she would "rather not comment".

Not to be mentioned in polite company, of course.

Enjoy

Residents of the east coast of the United States will surely enjoy this old ditty as they spend the day digging out from under all of that white global warming stuff.

15 Hours in the Unbearable Heat of a Stopped Train Under the English Channel

Where to put this story? In the global warming department, in the French hospitality department, or in the let's-turn-everything-over-to-government-run-services department?

More than 2,000 people spent hours trapped inside the Channel Tunnel after five Eurostar trains broke down due to cold weather.

The trains failed as they left the cold air in northern France and entered the warmer tunnel.

Some passengers were evacuated via service tunnels to car trains, while others were kept on their trains. Many have faced gruelling 15-hour journeys.

…Lee Godfree, a passenger evacuated from one of the stranded trains, said he and his family had arrived in Folkestone at 0500 GMT, having left Disneyland Paris at 1837 GMT.

He said their journey had been a "complete nightmare".

"We were without power. We ran out of water, we ran out of food and there was very, very poor communication from the staff," he told the BBC.

"We lost air conditioning when we lost the power. We had to open the emergency doors ourselves.

"The evacuation procedure we followed was one that we set down ourselves."

Check out the video at Ashford International at 00:15

We was actually treated like animals … Everyone made out they couldn't speak English … They went mh, mh, mh [imitating the raising of shoulders in the Gallic fashion]

And at 00:54:

The people who run Eurostar, the French people over there, I've never met such a rude, ignorant bunch of people in my life! Disgraceful, disgraceful…

Good-Bye Friend

Roy E. Disney was a big fan of referring to the past to define the future. He told a biographer: “The goal is to look over our shoulder and see Snow White and Pinocchio and Dumbo standing there saying, ‘Be this good.’ We shouldn’t be intimidated by them; they’re an arrow pointing someplace.”

So Long and Thanks for All the Plonk

A former French government agra-flunky walks off the plantation. And after having learned about wine from the nacent California wine industry, sets out on his own to make wines of his own.

All Becomes Clear: Copenhagen's Failure Is America's Fault

The reason that COP15 is a failure belongs to Barack Obama who (in spite of being serial bower and Apologizer-in-Chief) "shot [the Copenhagen conference] down in flames", says Yannick Jadot. From the Europe Écologie député, we also learn that Obama caved in to the conservative element of the Congress (!) and that the Danes were lapdogs for the Americans (!)…

Patientez S.V.P.

Deep in our underground headquarters bunker, a team of wierdos in lab coats are busying themselves at a fevered pitch into a fit of madness repairing our comment system. After all, we won’t let the likes of evil genius Ernst Stavro Blofeld get the best of us, will we old chap!

In the mean time, imagine that you’re all slagging on each other with acerbic witticisms and cunning feats of triple-entendre. The rest of you, just try to keep your hands where I can see them.

French “Resistance” Imaginary Heroism

French Publishing Racketeers have employed the courts to prevent Google from digitizing books and documents.

Even if the case doesn't have much financial impact on Google or force a big change in its book-scanning strategy, it is a reminder that its ambitions are increasingly colliding with fears that the company is getting too powerful.

Read: successful.

"It shows Google that they are not the kings of the world and they can't do whatever they want," said Serge Eyrolles, president of France's Syndicat National de l'Edition. He said Google had scanned 100,000 French books into its database - 80 percent of which were under copyright.

The wedge was being able to read a sample of the work, much as you can in the bookstore itself, but ironically, not at the website of FNAC for reasons unknown, the nation’s largest francophone book, music, and gizmo and doodad retailer.

Eyrolles said French publishers would still like to work with Google to digitize their books, "but only if they stop playing around with us and start respecting intellectual property rights."

It has absolutely nothing to do with intellectual property rights, especially when the case is brought to court by an organization that has a literal monopoly on anything published in mass, short of small run limited edition publications, and the like. The AUTHOR has no right to bypass this syndicate at all, one known for occasionally practicing political editorialization when all they amount to is a glorified trucking company with a sweaty-palmed union boss. The only reasonable option an author then has, is to try to find a publisher in Quebec.

By contrast, the real effect that the national publishing cartel is having was summed up by Google’s Colombet:

"French readers now face the threat of losing access to a significant body of knowledge and falling behind the rest of Internet users," Colombet said an e-mailed statement. "We believe that displaying a limited number of short extracts from books complies with copyright legislation both in France and the U.S. - and improves access to books," Colombet said.

For once the fallacious term “Anglo-Saxon” was not used.

As Obama Lands in Copenhagen, Snow Starts Falling With Denmark Expecting a Weekend of Minus 20 Degrees Celsius

"It's starting to snow; of course [in view of the global warming conference], that hardly makes for an entirely optimal situation"

That was the laconic comment of a retired weatherman from Copenhagen Airport. As the world (and the Copenhagen conference) heads towards (an objective of) minus 2º (Celsius), writes Berlingske Tidende, Denmark is heading towards minus 20º. As Obama arrives in Copenhagen, the snow has started to fall.

The irony is palpable when the American president Barack Obama flies in on a Danish December weather day, whose snowfall, fog, and frost seems to disavow COP15's whole raison d'être. … According to the weather forecast Denmark will get a snow storm this weekend. The wind will make the temperature feel like minus 20 degrees.

Jacques Chirac Indicted

Jacques Chirac has been indicted (mis en examen) in the case of the fake jobs system that allegedly existed when he served as mayor of Paris (1977-1995).

From Our "You don't say..." Department

The climate change summit in Copenhagen was in jeopardy tonight with the complex negotiations falling far behind schedule as the climate secretary, Ed Miliband, warned of a "farce".