BSP8R, Private Doofus

The passive-aggressive “pacifist”left has lost its’ hobgoblin and its’ imaginary foil: the German CDU-led government has decided to end conscription and rely on a an all-volunteer force. Not only does thin out the ranks of the thoughtless buffoons that a soldier in harm’s way need no longer depend on with his life, takes the Mickey out of the endless blathering rhetoric of the German far left’s argument that “our children” (whom they can’t seem to stop hating,) are cannon fodder for whatever war that comes along.

While compulsory service will be abolished, the alternative Berlin daily wonders aloud if this is truly "a triumph for the pacifist left". Its answer is a firm nein: "On the contrary, when Germany is called on to take part in a war more than 1,000 km away, (the army) doesn't need a horde of fresh recruits, but rather teams of specialists in security and modern weaponry".

Funny that with all the “hey, I play fist-person-shooter games too” talk of robocops with sooper-dooper death ray weapons, that they can’t even imagine what the social dynamics of an all-volunteer force are.

Never mind the fact that their deployments since 1945 have been limited to police duty in the former Yugoslavia and Afghanistan, unless you count the DDR’s “advisors” to the Sandinistas and to South Yemen.



For two generations, the only group of people that have benefitted more from the spilling of other people’s blood and treasure have been Kim Jong Il’s cronies, and Swiss bankers. It’s time that the war-obsessed anti-defense suicide cult in Germany did the halts Maul! and get real for once.

In the mean time, Die Welt reports that:

"The nostalgic invocation of the usefulness of conscription could no longer stand up to the facts: When fewer than 7,000 out of a total of 250,000 soldiers are available for missions abroad; when just 14 percent of young men are drafted; when even the majority within the military itself supports reform -- in such a case, renewal is unavoidable."

(Translation by Spiegel Online.) The protesting types are angry armies even exist, so it comes as no surprise that they wouldn’t “support the (conscription of) troops” so long as they remain in an ineffectual state. Some Conservatives, on the other hand, have always seen it as a means toward social cohesion, and to keep otherwise feral youts under control long enough for them to get a grip on their warm and charming personalities. Either way, they cannot afford it, or are unwilling to go on as they have in an embarrassingly low state of readiness.

One Fourth of the Citizens of Brussels, the European Capital Where the Very Rich and the Very Poor Work Side by Side, Live Below the Poverty Level

Capitale internationale, belge et (officiellement) flamande, [Bruxelles] génère près de 25 % du produit intérieur brut du pays mais un quart de ses habitants vivent sous le seuil de pauvreté.

According the information in the Jean-Pierre Stroobants article in Le Monde, the capital of the European Union, i.e., the capital of those hundreds of millions of people who are constantly giving Americans lessons in social norms and in generosity and in redistributing riches — and that Americans such as, say, Barack Obama constantly eulogize and desperately want to emulate — has a poverty level that covers fully one quarter (!) of its inhabitants. And that ain't all: the unemployment rate in Brussels is the highest in Belgium, which the French daily calls the "city where the very wealthy and the very poor live side by side."

Et puis, le chômage y est le plus élevé du pays (20 %, et même 35 % chez les moins de 25 ans). Enfin, des études évoquent le risque d'une explosion sociale, liée à la "balkanisation" de cette ville où se côtoient très riches et très pauvres.

I am not Above Torturing Our Readers

¡No Pasarán! presents ”The Final Countdown” on the KazooKeylele.



Respect!

A Portrait in Cognitive Dissonance

It will be a hard day for some on the benighted continent to get through. The vessel of their political hopes, Fidel Castro has urged the character idolized for his “Russell the Lovemuscle” approach to the Great Satan™ and the Little Satan™, Ahmedinejad, to stop using the foaming blather of his delusions as an intelligence report.

Castro reportedly said "the Iranian government must understand the consequences of anti-Semitic theology" while urging Ahmadinejad "to abandon Holocaust denial and refrain from slandering Jews."

Minds all over Bobo –town must be imploding.

The reporter asked him if he would be prepared to say that to the Iranian president and Castro responded: “I am saying this so you can communicate it.

That’ll leave a mark.

The story of Dien Bien Phu’s fall is an epic of endurance—like Bataan or Stalingrad—of men fighting to the limits of body and spirit

A conservative American magazine, the Weekly Standard, pays homage to Marcel Bigeard, with Robert Messenger praising his French troops at Dien Bien Phu (merci à Pat Patterson).

Popular historians tell us the French staked everything on Dien Bien Phu. But just 4 percent of the French troops in Indochina were holding down 60 percent of [Vo Nguyen] Giap’s fighting units. … The story of Dien Bien Phu’s fall is an epic of endurance—like Bataan or Stalingrad—of men fighting to the limits of body and spirit. Though [Pierre] Langlais never got the reinforcements he wanted, each day volunteers parachuted into the camp, between 1,800 and 2,600 soldiers during the battle’s last month, most at night, through heavy flak, and uncertain they would even land on French-held ground. Some arrived the night before it fell, jumping into a fortress that they knew was doomed. … The French at Dien Bien Phu had found their Thermopylae, but there would be no Salamis or Plataea.

Heeb-Hating Surrender Monkeys

Jacob finds this interesting piece on Europe’s “Jewish problem,” as in “Europeans and their problem with Jews,” as in “What’s your problem”...

In short, the answer is jealousy.

Actually I prefer to call it penis envy.

Sarkozy's ambitions seem to have shrunk along with his poll ratings

The incredible shrinking président
His ambitions seem to have shrunk along with his poll ratings. Time to rediscover the original grand vision


Je t'aime, moi non plus

Of Dictators and Cuckoo Clocks

The city of Trier, spitting distance from the border with Luxembourg, a nation once thoroughly sodomized by Germans, has after 75+ years finally taken away Adolf Hitler’s honorary citizenship.

Believe it or not, some 4000 German cities gave the dictator honorary citizenship between 1933 and 1945.

The official observer of Hermann observes (quite frequently) something that hints that last century’s denazification program either was not entirely successful, or got that famous flaccid hand wave and “Ja, Ja!” gesticulation:

How many gave him honorary citizenship after 1945 is unclear.

Nobel Peace Prize winner to sign largest arms deal in U.S. history

Barack Obama, aka the latest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, aka the man to bring about a better (and more peaceful) world, is to sign the largest arms deal in the history of the United States, writes The Daily Mail.

A source close to the talks [with Saudi Arabia] told the Wall Street Journal: 'It's a big economic sale for the U.S. and the argument is that it is better to create jobs here than in Europe.'

The move could help ease intense criticism of Barack Obama over the ailing U.S. jobs market.

But it is also likely to attract opposition to selling arms, especially considering Mr Obama is a Nobel Peace Prize winner.

Pro-Israel politicians have in the past voiced concerns about selling arms to Saudi Arabia, which they say could undercut Israel's military dominance.

Headline Bingo

Jerusalem Post: IDF foils attempted terror attack at Gaza border fence

INN: IDF Kills Two in Firefight with Gaza Terror Infiltrators

AP: Hamas: Israeli strike in Gaza kills 3 Palestinians

The right omissions seem to be what makes the right journalist.

- Thanky thanky, to Shy Guy

Here in France, the French Will Never Accept Us, "They Will Never Love Us"

From the country, and from the continent, that is always giving lessons to the United States — in the struggle for brotherly love, in the fight against racism, etc etc etc — Caroline Fourest testifies in Le Monde about the case of a fellow — an agnostic — named Mohamed…

a décision est prise. Je rentre définitivement au Maroc en 2011. » Des mots signés Mohamed. Une profession de foi symptomatique du malaise ambiant, parue sur le site d'information Rue89. Pierre Haski, son directeur, a rarement vu un article susciter un tel intérêt au coeur de l'été : « Près de 200 000 lecteurs, plus de 1 200 commentaires, en plein mois d'août ! »

Mohamed n'est pas un aigri ni un excité de la cause victimaire. Mais un ingénieur de 25 ans. Il gagne 2 700 euros par mois et a choisi de vivre en France. Parce qu'il manquait d'air au Maroc, de cinémas, de pluralisme et d'offre culturelle. Aujourd'hui, c'est en France qu'il étouffe.

Les blagues racistes dont il se moquait jadis sont devenues bien trop sérieuses depuis qu'elles tournent dans la bouche d'un ministre : « Le fait qu'un ministre de l'intérieur fasse une de ces blagues montre à quel point les clichés sont profondément implantés dans l'imaginaire français. Et le fait que l'on me rapporte à un cliché m'est devenu insupportable. »

A tort ou à raison, Mohamed se sent regardé de travers. Sa peur a la forme d'« une petite vieille » : « Son regard est plus vif. Son sac est plus serré entre ses bras. Ses jambes bougent plus vite quand je passe trop près. » Il a beau se répéter que cette petite vieille n'est pas la France, qu'il est entouré de Français ayant les yeux de l'amitié, il a décidé de repartir vers un pays où il n'aura pas à se demander s'il fait peur. Quitte à l'enjoliver. Le Maroc qu'il voyait jadis comme un désert est dépeint en palmeraie. Tout y serait plus vert. Même la liberté de conscience !

… D'autres Mohamed ou Ahmed qui songent, eux aussi, à partir. A Londres, où le droit à l'exotisme repose. Au Québec, où aucun passé colonial avec le Maghreb ne vient gâcher le rêve égalitaire. Nous ne parlons pas de jeunes faisant une crise identitaire ou réislamisés, mais de gens mûrs et cultivés, souvent agnostiques, en tout cas laïques, qui combattent l'islamisme... Et qui ne trouvent plus leur place.

…[La mère d'un ami, fils de harki] ne supporte plus de le voir au tribunal à cause d'arrestations au faciès. Elle a pris le voile et lui répète : « Ils ne nous aimeront jamais. »

Travel Ideas for the Lighthearted Gadabout

For fans of the gloriously miserable, why not head out to Siberia to see the world's largest head of Lenin?



It only takes 5 days by train out of Moscow, after all.

"Speak to us, oh giant head!!!"

Headline Contest

With no Republicans/Conservatives/Libertarians/Haters in positions of US leadership, this story is out there in the wild all on its lonesome:

The number of people in the U.S. who are in poverty is on track for a record increase on President Barack Obama's watch, with the ranks of working-age poor approaching 1960s levels that led to the national war on poverty.

What the story needs is a good headline (shockingly, even the NYT has taken a pass on reporting the information). Any suggestions?

In France, "policemen are becoming fine-writing or arrest-making machines" and "they are cutting themselves off from the citizenry"

As France has relaxed the rules on times when police custody (garde à vue) can be resorted to, writes Benoît Hopquin in Le Monde, more and more citizens are put behind bars "temporarily", often for trivial reasons. The reputation of the police, says a veteran policeman with 37 years of experience (which amounts to a personal total of 40,000 instances of taking people into police custody) — who has written a book called Have Cops Become Incompetent? — is suffering from the resulting dehumanization.

In the eyes of public opinion, policemen are becoming fine-writing or arrest-making machines. Little by little, they are cutting themselves off from the citizenry.

Communist Family Values

Surely you jest.

This has got to be the most insidious commi plot yet, or even ever. The German Communist Party in Essen (yes, it actually still exists) handed out pens to six-year-old kids that can project erotic images of women on walls and, well, I dunno, all over. And like, they even did it by accident.

Un hunh. Right. Whatever you say. I guess training the young to objectify women as nothing more that fuck toys is all part of that “social cohesion” agenda.

Remembering September 11, and Renewing the Pledge

9/11 brings out the Dissident Frogman (non-politically correct video)…

Never forget.

Never forgive.

And never surrender — ever!

Le Monde Joins Time in Suggesting That Clueless American Clods Can Only Be Motivated by Islamophobia and/or Racism

It could only be a matter of time before Le Monde joined in the leftists' (self-serving) horrors-didn't-you-know-that-Americans-are-Islamophobes movement and when they did so, naturally, they had to give Corine Lesnes's article the place of honor, i.e., on the top right-hand side of the front page, complete with the title Are Americans Islamophobes? and the subtitle Nine years after the 911 attacks, have the extremists won?

Upon closer examination, the front-page article turns out to be a chorus of leftist hand-wringing, from NPR's Barry Lynn to CAIR's Muhammed Musri, but most of all one Peter Beinart whose brooding and angst take up more than the first third of the article…

Our fellow blogger, Pamela Geller, gets a mention — as a right-wing "extremist" (wouldn't you know?!). Mentioned in (the front-page article (!) of) France's premier daily? Pretty good for someone who was "only" a blogger a couple of years ago (they might have mentioned that she is the author of a best-selling book as well)…

Besides side articles on freedom of speech and on the Ground Zero mosque, Corine Lesnes treats us to an online chat with readers (moderated by Pascal Galinier, in which Pam Geller is mentioned again, albeit not by name) in which she (Lesnes, not Geller) tries to project the leftists' typical I-understand-it-all-i.e.-everybody-is-an-intolerant-clod-except-lucid-detached-leftist-intellectual-types-like-myself mindset…

Thank goodness (most of) Le Monde's readers bring some sanity to the "debate"…

This, from a Continent of Neglected Geniuses

It’s everything you need to know about the German exception:

“While America’s super-rich congratulate themselves on donating billions to charity, the rest of the country is worse off than ever.”

PS: The word “Obama” cannot be found in this article.

As if all Americans were expected to somehow be easily categorized as the same, with neither accents, distinctions in income, or anything else. I know, I know... we’re a puzzle, aren’t we?

It isn’t really “concern”, it actually more of a case of Schadenfreude + worries that the people who traditionally buoy their economy by buying their overpriced rubbish, just might buy less of their overpriced rubbish. Since the usual tack of theirs’ is to take joy in repeating over and over, for ALL of the decades that I’ve been alive, that the American dream is finally dead!!!, it’s ridiculous to take seriously, even for a moment, anyone in Spiegel being “concerned” about Americans. The only time any of Americans’ dream weren’t dead, is when they would bloviate endlessly about its “dark side”, or for some other European-life-affirming disparagement. We struggle foolishly to achieve it, but it’s dark, evil, and doesn’t exist, unless it’s at the expense of the pure-hearted, innocent inhabitants of the Smurf village, like themselves. We’re just that stupid for wanting to improve our well being, as if no-one else does anything like it themselves.

From the article, one which anticipated non-existent resentment to Bill Gates for being so generous to assuming that “the recovery” has been actually taking place from the moment Obama took office:

Many Americans are beginning to realize that for them, the American Dream has been more of a nightmare of late. They face a bitter reality of fewer and fewer jobs, decades of stagnating wages and dramatic increases in inequality. Only in recent months, as the economy has grown but jobs have not returned, as profits have returned but poverty figures have risen by the week, the country seems to have recognized that it is struggling with a deep-seated, structural crisis that has been building for years. As the Washington Post writes, the financial crisis was merely the final turning -- for the worse.

And that’s just part of it, dwelling on opinions made on some kind of opinion data, and the like, citing noted data-donkeys like Ariana Huffington, and a variety of editorialist who cite the situation of the long-term unemployed as being “not seen since World War II”, while forgetting the late 70s and ignoring the full employment of World War II. In essence, this fool cites facts based on “this or that opinion writer/journalist said it was a fact.”

Don’t you think that, regardless of bad news being real, but even that being mangled by -bad journalism- is a sign of an even deeper, less fact indicated malaise? A crisis of the soul? An unknownable unknown? Or, in short, the Spiegel writer’s lazy ass standards?

What the non-journo opinion writer can’t quite square (or admit to,) is that the recession didn’t really get bad until get bad, and unemployment didn’t really rise until Obama stepped in bewildering businesses with his “help” by adding to their mandates, tacitly threatening de facto nationalization of one sector of activity after another, etc., etc.

Thanks for nothing, you ignorant oaf. Didn’t you realize that all those people (almost all of them European,) who though they were “giving us lessons” in how to do this their way just like to hear the sound of their own voices declaring that they’re right?

In short, Thomas Schultz, and the rest of the writers of the European media: you loved Mr. Obama so much and wanted to see him elected... why don’t you take him home with you and put him in charge?

In Memoriam…

Tony Blair: Not a Poodle, But a Bulldog

Strange — but all too typical — the double standards involved in The Poodle Speaks, Maureen Dowd's review of Tony Blair's autobiography (Sept. 4).

The International Herald Tribune published the reply (parts of which are based on a post I wrote not long after the Iraq War started, entitled Poodles and Other American "Vassals") that I wrote to the paper concerning Maureen Dowd's New York Times article on Tony Blair.

Why is it that the allies of Washington must always be mocked and demonized for their siding with the United States — a republic and a democracy — while the abettors (conscious or otherwise) of America's enemies, or its adversaries — such as Saddam Hussein, the psychopathic overlord of a horrific dictatorship — must not only escape such stigma but must be rewarded with eulogizing descriptions of their "heroic" opposition?

Offhand, I have no problem with "Phony Tony," or with Britain itself, being called "W.'s peripheral poodle." But why is it that Belgium and Luxembourg, which modeled their opposition to the Iraq War on the policies of France, were not called the poodles of Jacques Chirac? Indeed, why weren't Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Germany, Russia, and China called the poodles of Saddam, the Butcher of Baghdad?

It's easy to demonize someone like Tony "Bliar" when one has a fairy tale view of the conflict that transformed Saddam's Iraq into a harmless country barely more dangerous than the (aforementioned) Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.

Whenever I hear the nonsense about London being the poodle of the American democracy, I think back to the early days of World War II: when most of Europe was, willingly or not (admittedly, a very important distinction), sucking up to the Nazi dictatorship, the British bulldog was virtually alone in its resistance to becoming the poodle of another psychopath — Adolf Hitler.

British grit is a tradition that Tony Blair has, to his everlasting credit, carried on.

Welcome to Carbeque Country

AKA Hamburg, in spite of a culture festooned with “peace movements” and one forever pointing out their civilized, socially democratic nature to any gullible type who will listen:

One rrrrrrockin’ weekend

Korea's Little Angels: In Memoriam of the 60th Anniversary of the Breakout of the Korean War

The Republic of Korea would not exist today without the noble sacrifice of the U.N. Korean War veterans

and as part of the Korean War 60th Anniversary Memorial Project (KW60), along with its 16-Nation Tour to thank those nations that sent troops to the Korean War, The Little Angels Children’s Folk Ballet of Korea gave a memorable performance at UNESCO yesterday (merci pour l'invitation, Edy). Among the many people who spoke in introducing the group, the words of war veteran Bo Hi Pak, 80, were the most memorable.

Remembering the Warsaw Uprising

For Janina and Carine (Dziękuję to Valerie)

Compare and Contrast

David Lynch’s The Elephant Man and implausible Basque terrorists

BlogThis!