The Wikileaks Scandal Debated on France 24's Cable Channel

Another debate on the France 24 news cable channel, the day before the channel held a debate on America's mid-term elections, concerned the Wikileaks scandals.

Wikileaks : pour le meilleur ou pour le pire ? partie 1 et partie 2.

Journalisme d'investigation ou site à abattre ? Pour certains, Wikileaks.org incarne l'avenir du journalisme d'investigation et pour d'autres, c'est le site à abattre. Vendredi 22 octobre, WikiLeaks révélait 400 000 documents sur la guerre en Irak - « Iraq War Logs » - soit la « plus grande fuite de l'histoire », a titré la presse. Alors peut-on encore mener une guerre en toute transparence et doit-on tout dire ? Quels sont les risques liés à ce site d'information ?
LE DÉBAT

* Tristan MENDÈS-FRANCE, Documentariste, blogueur d’Egoblog.net
* Ellen WASYLINA, Analyste géopolitique, Republicans Abroad France
* Rémy OURDAN, Journaliste, Le monde
* Michel GOYA, Auteur de « Irak, les armées du chaos », Directeur d'études à l'IRSEM

Pipe Down an' Cool It

Climate catastrophe? The end of civilization as we know it? Cool It is based upon the book of the same name and lectures by Bjørn Lomborg, the controversial author of The Skeptical Environmentalist. Award-winning filmmaker Ondi Timoner travels the world with Lomborg exploring the real facts and true science of global warming and its impact.

What do you Expect from a Delusional Ideology?

Very little, especially when it comes to being imaginative or having good aim.

A WAR critic last night threw two shoes at former prime minister John Howard during a live television show and yelled "that's for the Iraqi dead".

Saddam Hussein’s victims were unavailable for comment.

Neither shoe hit Mr Howard during the program which also saw him blindsided when he was quizzed by David Hicks about why he was left at Guantanamo Bay military prison for 5½ years.

Simple:



The “Man of Peace” in Kosovo

At 7 pm, French Time, I Will Be Joining in a Debate on France 24 (en français) on America's Mid-Term Elections

Ce soir, à 19h heure continentale, je participe à un débat sur France 24 concernant les mid-term elections et si Obama peut se relever du désastre annoncé…

Also at 7 pm local time, the TV channel's English-language studio will be hosting a debate on the same subject in English…

(My own previous appearances on France 24 have been in English as well as in French…)

Today in History: A Birthday

"Je fais don de ma personne au maréchal Pétain comme il a fait don de la sienne à la France.
Je m'engage à servir ses disciplines et à rester fidèle à sa personne et à son oeuvre."

"I give of myself to Marshall Pétain as he gave of himself to France.
I pledge to serve his goals and to remain faithful to him and to his work. "

- François Mitterrand

Sandbox Journalism

Observing Hermann on those benighted sophisticates that call themselves European journalists:

This is the most pitiful article I’ve ever read on Spiegel Online, and that’s saying a lot–and that despite the fact that the guy at least got the title right: Obama’s Lost Magic.

Take a minute and read what informed, intelligent and sophisticated European journalists have to say when writing about Obama and the United States today. I would expect sixth graders to think this way, but… Whatever.

I.E.:

Now they are calling Obama a “weakling.” But that’s not fair.

If you can stomach this sort of “banging their spoons on their high chairs” sort of “news analysis”, then by all means feel free to read the whole thing. I just couldn’t.

David’s Medienkritik, deep into it’s gold-lamé unitard-wearing comeback tour, also found it infantile.

Gun Control in Europe: Vendettas With No End in Sight for Southern Corsican Town

Whenever Europeans (or leftist Americans) criticize America for its lack of gun control, its violence, and/or its high murder rate, I usually reply by a question: do you mean the violence and murders and lack of gun control in American cities such as Nice, Marseille, Palermo, and Bastia?

Pointing out that violence, gunplay, et al are hardly exclusively American — far from it — in spite of the leftists' (self-serving) fairy tales is not usually to the leftists' liking. And they would like nothing better to be able to ignore any examples to the contrary…

That is why on No Pasarán, we enjoy entertaining our readership with such cartoons as Merlin's and/or with such Le Monde articles as Yves Bordenave's.

Quand deux hommes cagoulés se sont dirigés sur [Pierre Balenci], armes pointées dans sa direction, il a d'abord eu le temps de mettre son fils à l'abri avant de prendre cinq balles — une au ventre, une à la jambe, une au pied et deux aux fesses — et enfin de riposter et de toucher mortellement Jacques Ettori dans le bas du dos.

Yves Bordenave also has a couple of articles on the death of Antoine Nivaggioni, who was gunned down near his Ajaccio home.

From the articles, it is possible to discover to what extent gun control is working in Europe (no, it is not just Corsica or Southern Europe) and to what extent the little people, honest breadwinners and gangsters alike, feel vindicated in trusting the police to protect them.

Antoine Nivaggioni, 49 ans, a été tué, lundi 18 octobre, à Ajaccio, peu avant 9 heures. L'ancien dirigeant nationaliste du Mouvement pour l'autodétermination (MPA) sortait de chez une amie demeurant en plein centre-ville, sur le boulevard Sylvestre-Marcaggi. Il s'apprêtait à monter dans son véhicule, lorsque deux tireurs armés d'un fusil à pompe et d'une kalachnikov, cachés dans le coffre d'une voiture, l'ont criblé de balles au thorax et à la tête.

Les enquêteurs ont prélevé 29 impacts autour de la scène de crime. "Il s'agit d'un schéma classique du mode opéré pour les règlements de comptes", a commenté Gilles Leclair, chargé de la coordination des forces de sécurité en Corse.

…Avec son ami Alain Orsoni, Antoine Nivaggioni symbolisait la reconversion dans le monde des affaires de ces nationalistes revenus des combats menés armes à la main jusqu'au milieu des années 1990. De cette période marquée par des violences et de nombreux assassinats, Antoine Nivaggioni avait conservé de l'entregent et une certaine autorité.

Son élimination par une équipe rivale, dont on ne sait si elle venge un proche, si elle cherche à conquérir un espace ou si elle défend un territoire, s'inscrit dans une longue série de règlements de comptes qui ensanglantent la capitale insulaire depuis près de cinq ans. Parvenu à ce stade où un homicide en appelle un autre, il y a toutes les raisons de redouter les conséquences de ce dernier épisode tragique.

Quant à "la série macabre qui ensanglante" Sartène ("la plus corse des villes corses" selon Mérimée), la

commune est en passe de devenir la capitale insulaire du crime : huit morts par balles en deux ans et dix tentatives. … Pour le procureur Thomas Pison, cet enchaînement relève du règlement de comptes local, à la lisière du grand banditisme. Rivalités ? Vengeances ? Sûrement les deux. Ici, le meurtre appelle souvent un autre meurtre, et, si la mort des uns ne répare pas celle des autres, elle lave dans le sang l'honneur des hommes.

The Internationale of the 21st Century?

"It's time they heard these words…"

“You Just Can't Allow a Bunch of Regular People Express Brilliance...”

The great schnitzeller make the simple point that skill and rigor are nothing without the element of trust, and the willingness of those in the know and in the capital to send out the signal to a society of potential innovators that they can think and act outside the box (inside their society).

German society, he asserts, is one that suppresses ingenuity for the sake of “things that just are.”

A guy like Bill Gates coming up with an amazing idea and launching it into a major enterprise within twenty years in Germany?  Never.  It simply can't happen.  The banking structure, the political structure, the national media, and various other stumbling blocks would ensure that something like that can't happen.

While the elite are busy tut-tutting you for not fitting the curve, and measuring your leistung, they are fearful of those who are really radically different in a positive way, if not bound up with the fake bombast of the public arts.

I had an American make the simple analysis that the last time that a regular German came out of nowhere to take on the "machine"....it was Adolph Hitler.  I laughed over the analysis and kept thinking I would find lots of regular people that launched careers and beat the system.

Either that, or they just leave to do their thing. While the rest of civilization clearly benefits from the dynamic, the malice quietly sprinkled on those ingenious folk who were not “engineered” by curricula and career paths that are chiseled into your tombstone, only serves to spike the creative spirit, not to mention smothering the joie de vivre of personality types not shared by that elite.

But on the whole of things.....this mighty nation is faced each Sunday evening with the thought and analysis of university elites.  For those who tune into channel one around 9:45 after Tatort....it's 75-odd minutes of political thought by elites, and not much else.

This recent topic of integration?  Well....the majority of the cultural and university elites don't see a problem.  They'd keep this train running on the same track.  The guys from the local plant?  The folks from the local pub?  The crowd that hangs out at the soccer stadium?  They have a vastly different view.  It doesn't matter where you go in Germany....they see too many foreigners and an influence that they dislike.

And What If Obama Had Simply Been Elected in the Wrong Country?

As riots play out in the streets of France, demanding more government money, a ridiculously low retirement age, and other state-distributed largesses, J C Durbant quotes from Guy Sorman's Wall Street Journal article and asks

Should Obama run in France next time?

Shovel Ready Song

(Thanks to Valerie)

Syria is a Backward, Third World Gaping Hole of Suck

It isn't that way for a lack of skill, ambition, or resources. It's caused by their increasingly de-christianized culture, tempered by half a century of Ba'athist fascistic Socialism.

Homs: a 5 year old boy is married off to a 3 year old girl.

Berlin's B-Z:

For little Khaled (5) and his fiancé Hala, two years his junior, the ceremony in the Syrian city of Homs was probably just a game. But their parents are serious: If the kids are younger than 15 and 13 years old, they can be married according to the will of their parents.

Local and international human rights groups are up in arms against the engagement. In Syria, the marriage of minors is not unusual.

Kulturschande? You bet. Let's see if those “international human rights” types will, after all of these decades demonstrate their usefulness and efficacy. Don't hold your breath.

Joining WikiLeaks' Latest Iraq War "Spill", Le Monde Lambastes Yanks While Ignoring the Fact that Most Iraqi Civilians Were Killed by… Other Iraqis

Referring to Hannah Arendt's "banality of evil" phrase (in its main article's final sentence) and thus, directly or otherwise, to the heinous crimes of the Nazi era, Le Monde reveals that it is among the newspapers and/or associations involved with the latest WikiLeaks "spill" of Pentagon documents on the Iraq War.

Le Monde, conjointement avec le New York Times, le Guardian, le Bureau of investigative journalism et le Spiegel, a pu consulter en avant-première 400 000 rapports de l'armée américaine en Irak, rendus publics ce vendredi par le site Wikileaks, spécialisé dans la publication de documents confidentiels. Il s'agit des rapports d'incidents, rédigés par les officiers sur le terrain, qui constituent le fichier SIGACTS ("significant activity") des forces américaines de janvier 2004 à décembre 2009. Une masse de documents qui décrivent, jour à près jour, les attentats, les échanges de tirs, les fouilles de caches d'armes, les arrestations, et les violences contre les civils.

Le Monde's team of reporters — Patrice Claude, Yves Eudes, Rémy Ourdan, and Damien Leloup — also has articles on Iraqi policemen's use of torture and on civilian deaths at military checkpoints, along with a graph of the conflict's victims.

The first thing to notice is that the leftist media still has no idea about what a country at war — never mind a country (previously) run by a bloodthirsty psychopath — is.

Les violences des soldats américains, notamment lors de l'arrestation des suspects, est aussi évoquée par les 400 000 fichiers.

"The violence of the American soldiers, notably during the arrest of suspects, is also mentioned in the 400,000 files." Le Monde speaks of "suspects" as if they were lethargic Amsterdam marijuana users and not heavily-armed fanatics ready, and eager, to use their weapons.

But most revealing, perhaps, is how all the violence is attributed to the Americans and/or to their allies (Iraqi or foreign) and to the very fact of their presence in Iraq. The money quote of blame by association remarks goes to the following sentence, in the main article, whose passive tense suggests that Yank soldiers are to blame for the "victims of summary executions" by the very fact of… simply discovering the "corpses of thousands of women and men"!

Les cadavres de milliers de femmes et d'hommes, victimes d'exécutions sommaires, ont été découverts par les soldats américains.

To hammer the blame by association home, the article immediately segues into the sentence "ading" that "in the span of six years, those same soldiers [!] killed at least 600 civilians at checkpoints"

Ces mêmes soldats ont tué au moins six cent civils en six ans aux checkpoints, ou en ouvrant le feu sur des véhicules pris pour une menace.

(Ain't it nice to know how nicely our French allies treat their American friends?)

The blame by association is shown again in the article referring to the graph of the conflict's victims, which opens with a sentence stating that those who — "by far" — have paid the heaviest price in the war are "civilians, victims of political and criminal assassinations as well as of attacks and 'collateral damage' provoked by the American army and the Iraqi police".

Les civils, victimes à la fois des assassinats politiques et crapuleux, des attentats et des "dégâts collatéraux" provoqués par l'armée américaine et la police irakienne, ont payé de très loin le plus lourd tribut à la guerre.

Notice the wording? "Civilians, victims of political and criminal assassinations" — oh yes, when we are speaking of political and criminal assassinations, i.e., crimes by other Iraqis (more than a few of who must be members of Saddam Hussein's former Ba'athist party), we do not hear who the perpetrators are — "as well as of attacks and 'collateral damage' provoked by the American army and the Iraqi police" — but when the damage is done by the Americans and their Iraqi allies, then, by all means, we must hear (all) about it, we do hear (all) about it (and how!)…

And as this part of the sentence comes in second and last (if it was really felt to be necessary not to mention the legions of Iraqi killers, it would have been more honest to turn the two phrases around, so that the sentence read "civilians, victims of attacks and 'collateral damage,' provoked by the American army and the Iraqi police, as well as of political and criminal assassinations"), it follows that Americans and their Iraqi allies are viewed as responsible (as guilty?) for all the violence…

There is another "by far" — see below — but, because it doesn't reflect badly on the Americans and because it doesn't make the Iraqi population look like poor harmless victims, nowhere does Le Monde specify this statistic. At least the New York Times does so:

The reports make it clear that most civilians, by far, were killed by other Iraqis.

Update: Needless to say, the French mention nothing about the bogus, trumped-up figures of lost Iraqi lives along with the discovery of, yes, WMDs in Iraq…

Moynihan at Harvard in 1971: “My impression of our graduating class was of persons who had apparently scarcely had an adult conversation in 4 years"

The liberal project began to fail when it began to lie

In a book review of Steven R. Weisman's Daniel Patrick Moynihan: A Portrait in Letters of an American Visionary, the New York Times' David Brooks knows to bring out what really stands out.

Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan was a liberal, but was suspicious of upper-middle-class liberals. … [He] grew increasingly alarmed as he watched the Democratic Party become more defined by the salon liberalism of the Upper West Side. …

Moynihan opposed the Vietnam War even while serving in administrations that waged it, but he became appalled by the effect late-’60s radicalism was having on the professoriate. “The elite intelligentsia of the country are turning against the country — in science, in politics, in the fundaments of patriotism. How can we not pay for this?” he wrote in a memo to Richard Nixon in 1969.

When Moynihan returned to Harvard in 1971 he found pervasive intellectual decay. “My impression of our graduating class this year was of persons who had apparently scarcely had an adult conversation in their full four years.”

The problem was that liberals were no longer willing to test their own assumptions. “The liberal project began to fail when it began to lie,” he remarked in 1991.

Also, it is interesting to note that, as David Brooks points out,

The problems were caused not merely by white racism, he argued [in a 1965 memo to LBJ regarding the troubles blacks suffered under within American society], but also weak family structure. “Probably not much more than a third of Negro youth reach 18 having lived all their lives with both parents,” Moynihan pointed out. “The breakdown of the Negro family is the principal cause of all the problems of delinquency, crime, school dropouts, unemployment and poverty which are bankrupting our cities.”

Single moms want their babies and confidently expect Big Brother to provide for them

The attack on the institution of marriage is not only the biggest cultural but also the biggest fiscal issue of our times

writes Phyllis Schlafly,

and political and judicial attacks by gays are only part of the problem. Marriage is being assaulted by unilateral divorce, feminist hostility toward marriage, the bias of family courts against fathers, and the taxpayer-paid financial incentives that subsidize illegitimate births.

…out-of-wedlock births in the United States have grown to 72.3 percent for blacks, 52.5 percent for Hispanics, and 28.6 percent for whites (non-Hispanic). For the population as a whole, out-of-wedlock births have risen from 6 percent in the 1960s to 40.6 percent today.

Sounding a Moynihan-style alarm today is Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation. He has assembled figures from U.S. Census Bureau and Centers for Disease Control data, and they are downright scary.

This is not, as Moynihan indicated, merely a black problem, and it's not just a cultural problem as the RINOs (Republicans In Name Only, the fiscal conservatives who disdain social issues) like to portray it. It's a very big money problem because the government is transferring nearly $1 trillion in taxpayer-funded handouts to the 40 percent of Americans who rely on government for all or part of their living expenses.

The crux of this problem and its costs is that a lack of marriage causes poverty. The poverty rate for single parents with children is 36.5 percent, while it is only 6.4 percent for married couples with children.

We just suffered the largest increase in government-designated poverty: 3.7 million more Americans moved into the "poor" column in 2009. The number of Americans receiving food stamps just rose to a record 41.8 million.

Obama's solution for the poverty problem is more redistribution of money from taxpayers to the poor. But there's no evidence that more money is the remedy because we've been increasing handouts every year and the problem keeps getting worse.

Contrary to a lot of chatter, this isn't a teenage problem (only 7.7 percent of new single moms are minors), and it isn't a failure of birth control, and it isn't the accidents of unplanned pregnancies. These single moms want their babies and confidently expect Big Brother to provide for them.

Rector's solution to the poverty problem is marriage. He urges government policies to promote and strengthen the institution of marriage instead of providing incentives to discourage it.

…Ronald Reagan's advice is still pertinent. If we subsidize something, we'll get more of it; if we tax it, we'll get less of it.

Why not ask for a lawyer while you're at it?!?!

— Huh?!… You want a cup of coffee?! Why not a lawyer while you're at it?!!

Plantu: Europe criticizes France's police custody (garde à vue) regimen

Apocalypse arriveth

Democtatorship: "As Expected From France's Newspaper of Reference, a Damning Article on the Tea Party Replete With Pejoratives and Caricatures"

A hand-wringing full-page article in Le Monde speaks with ill of Hungary because following the latest elections, a Hungarian rightist party has won commanding control over the nation. Asks Marion Van Renterghem:

Should we be afraid of Viktor Orban? … Triumphantly elected in April, the conservative prime minister and nationalist, 47, is no longer the man who led the country from 1998 to 2002. For the first time ever, he has full power in his hands. His party, Fidesz, has an overwhelming majority and municipal elections on October 3 confirmed its grip. … The writer [György Konrad] has his definition of the new regime: a "democtatorship" — something between democracy and dictatorship.

Le Monde regrets that

the Prime Minister [commands] a two-thirds majority in Parliament and total control of the legislative and executive branches. Facing him ... no powerful opposition force.

So far, so good.

The problem is that in another full-page article in Le Monde, on America's Tea Parties, Denis Lacorne multiplies caricatures of Republicans, ridicule of conservatives, and demonization of America's democracy ("une émeute", "rappel farfelu", "ses incohérences", les "plus extrémistes", "un chacun pour soi généralisé", "sans la moindre considération", "la hantise", "des amateurs", "une néophyte de la politique", "la risée des médias", "de façon hystérique", "des opinions aussi délirantes", "parodie du mouvement des droits civiques", "un discours insipide", "travestir la pensée de Martin Luther King", "partisans de l'ultralibéralisme", "un discours répressif", "cette maladie infantile de l'ultraconservatisme")…

After reading about the "supporters of ultra-liberalism", and about the "delusional" opinions among those "hysterically" opposed to Washington (and to the ruling party), and about the danger of "a comprehensive legislative paralysis" — if by (the largest of) misfortune(s), the opposition were to win too many seats — one gets the distinct impression that nothing would please France's newspaper of reference and the French élite more than if the U.S. were to become a "democtatorship" (just like, indeed, few things would seem to please the American left more)…

Nothing would be more wonderful than if Barack Obama commanded "full powers." Nothing would be more wonderful than if "his party," the Democratic Party, "had an overwhelming majority." Nothing would be more wonderful than if the One commanded a "two-thirds majority in Parliament, along with total control of the legislative and executive branches." And nothing would be more wonderful than if "Facing him, [there was] no powerful opposition force."

Ultimately, nothing would be more wonderful than a "democtatorship" when this democtatorship is a leftist democtatorship, and in the hands of an Great Helmsman of the caliber of Barack Obama, a spiritual guide for the American nation (and for the whole planet).

Sarkozy Learns That Taking Candy From the French is a Bitch

A Parisian teen I know has been telling her friends:

La fac veut qu'on aille manifester, les absences ne seront pas comptés! Jusqu'a Jeudi! génial Grasse Mat'! :D

Or in other words:

Our university wants us to join the demonstration, absences won't be counted! Until Thursday! Awesome — we can sleep in late!

Sarkozy Learns That Taking Candy From the French is a Bitch, writes Greg Gutfield (merci à Valerie et à Benjamin).

…what is France today?

It’s bankrupt …

And…what’s driving this heroic protest? Oppression? Fascism? Threat of war?

No – vacations. Really.

You know how folks in France enjoy not working for really long periods of time? Well, it turns out that, after a while – when you don’t work, you can no longer pay for stuff – like the pensions that allow you to loaf around.

The protesters are trying to stop a bill that would raise retirement age from 60 to 62. Yeah – 62 – still pretty much the youngest retirement age anywhere. But workers feel it’ll ruin a good time- including the long playful summers, subsidized health care, free berets and mime welfare.

… This is what happens when you give something to someone, and then – in order to survive – try to take it away.

We were wrong: Taking candy from a baby is actually a bitch.

And only the truly ballsy can pull that off. Sarkozy – bless him – has more balls than a McDonald’s play pit.

One Component of French Authorities' "Repressive Hysteria" Towards Its Citizens (la patrie des droits de l'homme?!) Declared Incompatible with EU Law

Five days after France was condemned by the European Court of Human Rights for the French police's heavy-handed approach towards its citizens (garde à vue), France's own supreme court (or the equivalent thereof) declared the garde à vue incompatible with European law, writes Le Monde.

La Cour de cassation a ouvert mardi 19 octobre une nouvelle brèche dans le régime de la garde à vue en France, procédure policière coercitive qui concerne chaque année plus de 900 000 personnes. … Plus de 790 000 mesures de garde à vue ont été décidées en 2009, dont plus de 170 000 pour les seuls délits routiers.

More than 170,000 people taken into police custody in 2009 for simple traffic violations?! (While the police stand by and refuse to intervene as (empty) schools are blocked by protestors and as school employees come under violent attack by masked thugs?!) No wonder that one reader opines:

790000 GàV pour un pays qui a un degré de délinquance normale par rapport à ses voisins c'est consternant et donne une idée de l'hystérie répressive de ce gvt et des orientations qu'il donne à la police. Tout ça pour faire oublier le reste, dont la politique sociale exclusivement en faveur des invités du Fouquet's à la sauterie d'après élection. Et en plus on réduit le nb de policiers ce qui aggrave leur condition de travail et celles des GàV. Le comble c'est que la violence augmente.

The first reader to react writes:

Enfin ! Après avoir été si longtemps la lanterne rouge de l'Europe en matière pénale (garde à vue, état des prisons, etc.), ce qui n'est quand même pas très brillant pour la supposée patrie des droits de l'homme, peut-être allons-nous faire quelques progrès ? Bravo à la Cour de Cassation !

EU Demonstrates that it’s Easily Defeated by Passive-Aggressive Taunts

"Such actions by EULEX do not at all contribute to stabilizing the situation on the ground, rather they only serve to fuel doubt and distrust among the Serbs," Bogdanović said, according to Beta news agency.

End of the world, you say? Serbs angered to a feverish pitch? What hideous sort of transgression are we talking about, anyway?

The Serbs from northern Kosovo held a protest rally at the Jarinje crossing on Oct. 7 against the installation of the antenna pole. Local government representatives said they had not been notified of EULEX's action.

Surely, the great peace loving master-diplomats of the universe will be able to get the situation in hand.

Elsewhere:

BELGRADE, 12. 10. 2010. President Boris Tadić meets with U.S. State Secretary Hillary Clinton in Belgrade

So which of them doesn’t look like they want to be there? Note too, the distinct lack of sniper fire to verify future claims.

Perhaps the most sycophantic article ever...

...and that says alot ..................and then some:

Lost Dreams

Now they are calling Obama a "weakling." But that's not fair. Naturally Barack Obama reacts in a more mature, adult way than his predecessor, George W. Bush. The problem is simply that Obama is smaller than the promise he made, and tiny in comparison to the hopes an entire nation placed on him in 2008. There's one thing that Barack Obama failed to do. That was his real failure, the big mistake he made, back when everything seemed possible.

This one goes out to a young man in Paris named Erik......

When discussion turns to France’s antiquated and underfinanced system of higher education, Gallic pride gives way to defensiveness and embarrassment

From food to fashion to architecture to transportation, the French take a justified pride in their country’s reputation for innovation

reports D. D. Guttenplan in the International Herald Tribune (more in Le Monde).

But when the discussion turns to France’s antiquated and underfinanced system of higher education, Gallic pride gives way to defensiveness, and even a certain embarrassment. In 2006, the best any French institution could do was 46th in the influential Shanghai rankings; this year France managed 39th place in two different rankings.

Denunciations of the “Anglo-Saxon” bias and arbitrary methodology of the rating systems was a common theme last week, when representatives from some 135 grandes écoles — literally “great schools,” the specialized academies of engineering, business, science and management that form the elite of the French higher education system — gathered in Paris for their annual conference.

…Born out of the French Enlightenment, the grandes écoles have long been the cradle of the governing class. [Their graduates] occupy a place in French national life similar to Oxbridge graduates in England or the Ivy League in the United States.

Internationally, however, these institutions have far less clout than their Anglo-American counterparts.

… Pierre Tapie, who heads the Conference of Grandes Écoles while also serving as president of the business school Essec, said foreigners found it difficult to understand France’s two-track system of higher education, which distinguishes between universities and the grandes écoles.

Why I'm Depressed (a Chain E-mail)

Over five thousand years ago, Moses said to the children of Israel, "Pick up your shovels, mount your asses and camels, and I will lead you to the Promised Land."

Nearly 75 years ago,(when Welfare was introduced) Roosevelt said, "Lay down your shovels, sit on your asses, and light up a Camel, this is the Promised Land."

Today, the government has stolen your shovel, taxed your asses, raised the price of camels and mortgaged the Promised Land!

I was so depressed last night thinking about Health Care Plans, the economy, the wars, lost jobs, savings, Social Security, retirement funds, etc . . . called a Suicide Hotline. I had to press 1 for English. I was connected to a call center in Pakistan. I told them I was suicidal.

They got excited and asked if I could drive a truck......

Shocker: Leftist Pacifist Who Ended France's Death Penalty Made Liberal Use of the Guillotine During Algerian War 25 Years Earlier

There are few things that enlightened Frenchmen enjoy more than attacking, ridiculing, and/or demonizing Americans for abhorrent features of American life, such as the death penalty and alleged wartime atrocities (along with racism and human rights violations). This is easier to do, needless to say, when their own failures are ignored and/or kept secret for an extended period of time, say, oh, 50 years or more. For example, François Mitterrand managed to win two seven-year terms to the French presidency without anybody — in the opposition, in the press, among historians — pointing out until the last year or so (and only with Mitterrand's connivance) that the proud leftist had served prominently in the Vichy government that collaborated with the Nazis during World War II. Now, 15 years (!) after the Socialist leader left the Élysée palace, it transpires that the man who famously abolished the death penalty in France (after coming to power in 1981) liberally made use of the guillotine for Algerian rebels captured during the Algerian War…

Death sentences come raining down. The guillotine, never used against a nationalist from the beginning of "the events" [the Algerian uprising], started doing its work in Paris as well as in Algiers. The heads of the Fellaghas are lopped off at a rate not seen since the German occupation: on some days, up to five.

Look Ma, No Commies!... Wow! What a Difference!

Spiegel Online has a gallery of before and after photos of buildings and places in the Former East Germany. Much as it is that the word “utopia” actually means nowhere, collectivism means “it’s no-ones’”.

Confidence in and loyalty to the traditional parties of the German middle ground have markedly diminished

The Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark: passionately democratic countries with strong creeds of tolerance, where parties of the right have now entered the political mainstream pushing anti-immigrant and anti-Islamic agendas.

That is how John Vinocur starts his International Herald Tribune article. The question that he (and it) asks — even as Chancellor Angela Merkel admits that attempts to build a multicultural society in Germany have "utterly failed" (actually, he asked it one week prior to Merkel's CDU speech) — is:

What are the chances that Germany escapes the emergence of its own version of the Sweden Democrats (who have just entered the Swedish Parliament), or Danish People’s Party (whose support props up a minority government in Denmark), or a figure like Geert Wilders, whose Party for Freedom now sits in third place as a Dutch vote-getter?

…confidence in and loyalty to the traditional parties of the German middle ground have markedly diminished.

These days, when it comes to the issue that has propelled anti-immigrant, anti-Islamic parties into greater power in Northern Europe — a sense among some citizens that Muslim newcomers are encroaching on their society without regard for its laws and standards — mainstream parties in Germany are starting to acknowledge they have not dealt with the concern anywhere near adequately.

…Intolerance, unmistakably, is part of the stock in trade of the new far-right outside Germany, but in most cases it does not replicate all of the classic rant of a party like France’s National Front: anti-capitalism, anti-American, and bigotry.

See You in November…

(Thanks to Damian…)

Origins: Anti-Globalization Founded as Marxist-Leninist Propaganda

Founded on the theory that those Mexicans didn't need jobs anyway, a typical "editorial" from the golden age of self-delusion. As if these regimes weren't in fact founded on the notion of making sure their entire population was an ill-remunerated near-slave workforce.



A Radio Berlin International broadcast from 1972. The goal wasn't to "liberate" anyone, but to nag , demonize,and construct another blood libel.

How to Seduce a Rich Girl

Conseil de drague de Mister W n°5 : séduire une fille riche
envoyé par Scoflaire_video. - Cliquez pour voir plus de vidéos marrantes.

Apparently, Mister W never reads Instapundit and the problems caused by pretending to be rich…

France Condemned by the European Court of Human Rights for the Police's Oppressive Treatment of the Country's Citizens

While enlightened Frenchmen are busy condemning those clueless American clods for their alleged human rights violations (as well as for their alleged racism and for their alleged war crimes), France was condemned by the European Court of Human Rights (see Plantu cartoon) for the French police's heavy-handed approach towards its citizens (garde à vue)…

Hello Again, from “Cooking with Joe”

Tabbouli Salad

½ lb. medium fine burghul (crushed bulgur wheat)
2 bunches of green onions
5 bunches of parsley
2 bunches of fresh mint
2-1/2 lbs. fresh tomatoes
4 oz. olive oil or other salad oil
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon pepperWash the burghul half an hour before preparing the tabbouli. Dice the tomatoes. Chop parsley, green onions, and mint very fine. Mix all the ingredients together, adding oil and lemon juice gradually.

Serve on a platter leaving some of the chopped tomates to decorate the top of the platter, by making a one inch wide row along the circumference of the platter.
Beside this, one may also serve fresh leaves of lettuce, grape vine leaves, tender cabbage, or a combination of the three to be eaten with the tabbouli salad instead of pita bread.

Every Progressive Scion Has His Billy Carter

Jeb he ain’t.

Expect the media to suppress the hysteria that would otherwise be mandatory had a Republican been in the White House.

The Clausewitz approach

When your political/intellectual argument fails to persuade, there are always other ways to achieve your goals:

The best chance Sarkozy's opponents have of bringing down his pension bill is if strikes at oil refineries continue and start to threaten fuel supply, or if youths hit the streets en masse and set off violent scuffles.

No doubt the media would have the same David v. Goliath positive vibe if it were Le Pen's supporters whose best chance at foisting their ethos was to, "hit the streets en masse and set off violent scuffles".

Hatred, Neo-Nazi Messages, and (Filmed) Koran Burnings in a Peaceful French Region

"Leur violence, leur lâcheté, leur gratuité provoquent un sentiment de consternation et de dégoût."

While enlightened Frenchmen are busy condemning those clueless American clods for their alleged racism (as well as for their alleged human rights violations and for their alleged war crimes), Alsace erupts in an orgy of hatred, xenophobia, and racism coupled with neo-Nazi messages, car- and Koran-burning (followed by urinating on the smoldering embers of the Muslims' holy book), etc…

For some reason, French cartoonist Martin Vidberg manages to implicate John McCain ("McCain fries"?!?!) in the Koran burning! (Then again, the Arizona senator is emblematic of American conservatives…)

It’s Not a Haiku

If I could rename the “International” Geneva-based institutions to anything else, I would call it the “Fake-Crisis Emergency Management Center”

Defending Obama's Record As Compared to Bush's, NYT's Maureen Dowd Invokes… a Hollywood Movie?!

As even Maureen Dowd is forced to come to terms with the fact that larger and larger sections of America — even CNN — are asking “Was Bush Better President Than Obama?”, the indignant New York Times columnist goes on to make a colossal effort to remind Americans how the Bush White House "broke creative new ground in thuggery and skulduggery."

How does she proceed to do that? By writing …a review of …a Hollywood movie. The film about

…a respected undercover spy tracking Iraqi W.M.D. efforts … being hounded by the most powerful men on earth [Valerie Plame] … is a vivid reminder of one of the most egregious abuses of power in history, and there are deliciously diabolical turns by actors playing Scooter Libby, David Addington and Rove. Plame’s C.I.A. bosses are portraits in cravenness, cutting her loose at the moment she starts receiving death threats and her Iraqi sources become endangered.

Well, yes. Notwithstanding the fact that Fair Game is collaborative effort by leftist Bush- (and Cheney-)haters — director Doug Liman "does not use an Oliver Stone sledgehammer on history" is the best Maureen Dowd can say in the filmmakers' defense — it is the movie that Brent Bozell calls

the ridiculous Valerie Plame "docudrama" titled "Fair Game," complete with sound bites of her real-life congressional testimony. Those evil-Bush-years commercials will run in the [2010 mid-term] campaign's final weeks without a single reporter batting an eye.

Indeed. Remember that all this comes in the wake of Obama, and the Democrats, complaining about Republican propaganda and the undue influence of foreign operatives in the 2010 elections. However:

"Citizens United" is a court case that demonstrated how media and entertainment conglomerates get more power in a democracy than every other institution, and how conservative voices are often squashed and mocked by the liberal media. … By contrast, powerful Hollywood leftists had no problem getting their documentaries with political overtones widely distributed in theatres as Citizens United was being squashed.

But wait for the punchline.

And guess who's financed that "Fair Game" movie? A film company named Imagenation Abu Dhabi. The executive producer is Mohamed Khalaf al-Mazrouei, chairman of the Abu Dhabi Media Company. But [Barack] Obama won't be pounding the podium against that foreign influence.

The birthplace of de Beauvoir and Bardot may look Scandinavian in employment statistics, but it remains Latin in attitude

Courtesy of the state, French women seem to have it all

writes Katrin Bennhold on the front page of the International Herald Tribune as the New York Times bemoans, yet again, the alleged horrors of society (needless to say, Nordic nations were as usual top candidates for eulogies):

multiple children, a job and, often, a figure to die for. What they [French women] don’t have is equality: France ranks 46th in the World Economic Forum’s 2010 gender equality report, trailing the United States, most of Europe, but also Kazakhstan and Jamaica. … A recent 22-country survey by the Pew Research Center summed it up: three in four French people believe men have a better life than women, by far the highest share in any country polled.

“French women are exhausted,” said Valérie Toranian, editor-in-chief of Elle magazine in France. “We have the right to do what men do — as long as we also take care of the children, cook a delicious dinner and look immaculate. We have to be superwoman.”

The birthplace of Simone de Beauvoir and Brigitte Bardot may look Scandinavian in employment statistics, but it remains Latin in attitude. French women appear to worry about being feminine, not feminist, and French men often display a form of gallantry predating the 1789 revolution. Indeed, the liberation of French women can seem almost accidental — a byproduct of a paternalist state that takes children under its republican wings from toddler age and an obsession with natality rooted in three devastating wars.

…as the philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy put it: “France is an old Gallic macho country.”

France crystallizes the paradox facing many women across the developed world in the early 21st century: They have more say over their sexuality (in France birth control and abortion are legal and subsidized), they have overtaken men in education and are catching up in the labor market, but few make it to the top of business or politics.

“Gandhi, the Satanic God of Peaceniks”

Michael Phillips discusses the idol of so many unwitting, unread buffoons who are otherwise easily distracted with fake Dreamcatchers and getting worked up over the great bee crisis just as easily.

My slight distaste for Gandhi, after reading dozens of dishonest biographies of him, comes down to the fact that he tried to win independence for parts of India, by threatening to have his followers support Hitler in WWII.

Because, y’know, he was into non-violence, and even though there would have been a lot of violence in Britain had Hitler turned the Indians on the UK, it would still be, like, non-violent.

And that’s, like, y’know, I can grok on that. Speak to us, O giant sculpture dude!

No Pasarán! Picking Up the Noble Fight Against Discrimination in Spain

In the latest battle in the age-old war against intolerable sexual discrimination, the Daily Telegraph's Barney Henderson reports that Spanish fathers have been given entitlement to breastfeeding leave from work (gracias para Duncan):

Europe's top court has declared that working fathers in Spain are entitled to take 'breastfeeding leave' everyday, even if the mother of the child is not employed.

Don’t let anyone fool you into thinking that when the government taxes the rich, only the rich bear the burden

The New York Times gives some space to N Gregory Mankiw, a professor of economics at Harvard who makes the case against higher taxes for the rich…

I have to acknowledge that the Democrats are right about one thing: I can afford to pay more in taxes. My income is not in the same league as superstar actors and hedge fund managers, but I have been very lucky nonetheless. Unlike many other Americans, I don’t have trouble making ends meet. …

Nonetheless, as Republicans emphasize, taxes influence the decisions I make. I am regularly offered opportunities to earn extra money. It could be by talking to a business group, consulting on a legal case, giving a guest lecture, teaching summer school or writing an article. I turn down most but accept a few.

The author of some popular textbooks then supposes that some editor offers him $1,000 to write an article, showing what would happen should there be no taxes of any kind as compared to should the Bush tax cuts expire (Instapundit has more).

HERE’S the bottom line: Without any taxes, accepting that editor’s assignment would have yielded my children an extra $10,000. With taxes, it yields only $1,000. In effect, once the entire tax system is taken into account, my family’s marginal tax rate is about 90 percent. Is it any wonder that I turn down most of the money-making opportunities I am offered?

By contrast, without the tax increases advocated by the Obama administration, the numbers would look quite different. I would face a lower income tax rate, a lower Medicare tax rate, and no deduction phaseout or estate tax. Taking that writing assignment would yield my kids about $2,000. I would have twice the incentive to keep working.

Now you might not care if I supply less of my services to the marketplace — although, because you are reading this article, you are one of my customers. But I bet there are some high-income taxpayers whose services you enjoy.

…Like me, these individuals respond to incentives. (Indeed, some studies report that high-income taxpayers are particularly responsive to taxes.) As they face higher tax rates, their services will be in shorter supply.

Reasonable people can disagree about whether and how much the government should redistribute income. And, to be sure, the looming budget deficits require hard choices about spending and taxes. But don’t let anyone fool you into thinking that when the government taxes the rich, only the rich bear the burden.

No pop stars, no vocal show offs, just the Star Spangled Banner and the combined choirs of all four armed forces academies

(Thanks to Edy — I like the reaction of the Philadelphia Eagles' Jeremiah Trotter (#54) at 2:13…)

Just Another Lefty Gautag

Check out the leftynomics:

Solar panel operators receive a fixed tariff for every kilowatt hour of power they produce. That tariff is well above the standard market price for electricity, guaranteed for more than 20 years. The total subsidy payout over the last 10 years has been €60 to €80 billion. The yield has been modest by comparison. Solar power covers just 1.1 percent of German electricity requirements.

What’s even more hilarious, is that the author blames the Conservatives for “withholding the costs” of what the left’s fantasies of dystopic backwardness really are. Somehow, the Conservatives in power who are being buffaloed and berated into shutting down nuke plants and “transform” Germany are responsible for the fact that it might cost money, and not wishes or daisies.

That this notion would be expensive and unreliable was painfully obvious 20 years ago when households in Germany were still regularly taking delivery of oily Lignite coal. The fact that someone has waited until now to establish that their fantasies of power generation would cost 5 to 7 trillion Euro-smackeroos (2-3 YEARS for German GDP, by the way,) reveals the short term thinking of these louts so fond of telling others that they are such fantastic long term thinkers.

The Awakening of the Conservative Woman

Fire From the Heartland (thanks to Valerie)

Trying to Milk a Bull, are we?

In Spain it is now becoming increasingly difficult to show children the ways in which a man and a woman are different:

Europe's top court has declared that working fathers in Spain are entitled to take 'breastfeeding leave' everyday, even if the mother of the child is not employed.

Of course this is just a shrugged-shoulder matter of simply employing logic without any intent, rather than for judicial reasoning. Is the employed husband of an unemployed woman going to run home to attend to the wife’s nursing? Sure he is, right after he stops bitch slapping her.

The new legislation means that both the mother and father are allowed to leave work for an hour during the day or reduce their working day by half an hour during the first nine months following the birth of a child.



The European Union Court of Justice in Luxembourg ruled on Thursday that the Spanish law caused an "unjustified discrimination on grounds of sex" because fathers do not have the same rights as mothers.

The way to a European’s heart, and EU institutions know this, is for governments to be appearing to give people something for nothing, and this sounds like just that.

Socialism: Building a Bridge to the 18th Century

This is what happens when your choices in life are socialized:

This Saturday, one of Greece’s most respected newspapers, To Vima, reported that the nation’s largest government health insurance provider would no longer pay for special footwear for diabetes patients. Amputation is cheaper, says the Benefits Division of the state insurance provider.

To use a dental analogy, in East Germany crowns and fillings were not done to the degree that they would be in any civilized society. They simply pulled teeth until enough of them were gone by a certain age to justify dentures – one set – the lifetime allotment.

Greece’s National Healthcare System was created in the early 1980s, during the tenure of Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou. Papandreou, an academic, won election under the slogan, Αλλαγή, which is the Greek word for Change.

Emphasis mine. Sallow dyspepsia theirs.

Never mind the ways that they could be cut up, redistributive policies lead to degeneration of the WHOLE pie. It’s something that brings the motive and outcome of candidate Obama’s exchange with Joe the Plumber into sharp focus. Redistributive policies even shaft the people they try to help.

A European defense intellectual on Obama's resolve: “An America that debates whether it should win a war it’s in is a very frightening prospect”

Bob Woodward’s new book, “Obama’s Wars” … tends to reinforce the questions of some of the allies about the Obama administration’s resolve to stop the mullahs’ drive

writes John Vinocur in the International Herald Tribune.

… in describing how the administration’s goals became fixated on finding a date when U.S. forces would begin to leave the country, and how the original objective of “defeating” the Taliban became “disrupting” them, and then “degrading” the insurgents, the book’s essential meaning for allied governments is likely to be in the indications it provides of a United States for which “winning” has become a soft notion, open to interpretation.

…a notion of nonurgency concerning Iran — while “Obama’s Wars” quotes Mr. Obama’s maxim for Afghanistan as being “Faster in, faster out” — has not gone down easily with countries like France, Britain and Israel who rely on their own estimates of a narrower time frame for confronting Tehran.

Indeed, it contrasted with a statement from a high official of a European allied nation three weeks ago that, in relation to Iran’s nuclear plans, any “further loss of time will be disastrous.”

As for the book, it goes to doubts — expressed semi-privately by President Nicolas Sarkozy of France — about the U.S. president’s basic views of the world and America’s concept in 2010 of victory and defeat.

…the author told of asking the president directly, “You can’t lose a war or be perceived to lose one, can you?”

Mr. Woodward said Mr. Obama replied: “I think about it not so much in the classic, do you lose a war on my watch? (sic) I think about it more in terms of, do you successfully prosecute a strategy that results in the country being stronger rather than weaker at the end of it?”

The remark might sound vague in relation to America’s presumed instincts. It is neither the omnipresent win or lose of American sports, nor the profit-and-loss, black-ink, red-ink ledgers of American business and American life.

I asked someone who might be called a European defense intellectual with close ties to the French government about that. The reply: “An America that debates whether it should win a war it’s in is a very frightening prospect.”

Readers of Mr. Woodward’s book will also note that it does not prophesy less ambiguity soon about the United States’ level of military determination.

From the Empty World of Leftist Propaganda

Permit me to present an excerpt from a 1981 East German publication for agitators. It was meant to give small-time propagandists who were supposed to work the barracks, the factory floor, and the like, examples of successful preaching to the imprisoned.

One choise piece provides an example of the limits of truthiness:

Italy: What are the Causes of Terrorist Actions?

The new year began in Italy as the old one had ended: with terrorist actions. On 31 December, Police General Enrico Calvaligi was shot at the front door of his home. In January, the kidnapping of Judge Giovanni D’Urso occupied public attention until he was a released. These were only the latest in a long chain of events that began on 12 December 1969 with a bomb at the Agricultural Bank in Milan and reached its high point so far on Bologna on 2 August 1980 when 85 people were killed and more than 200 injured. What are the causes of these terrorist actions, which have affected Italy in particular, but also other capitalist countries?

Bourgeois and social reformist ideologists and politicians generally, reject the claim that the roots are in the capitalist system. Explaining the causes, however, requires considering the whole interrelated complex of objective and subjective of economic, social, political, and ideological factors, and they develop from the nature of the capitalist system!

In the socio-economic area, terrorism is bred complex of factors of new and old contradictions, in the backwardness of the south, and particularly the sharpness of the economic crisis and its results. The inflation rate in 1980 was above 20 percent throughout the year, at the top of the leading capitalist states, and unemployment according to official figures remained at about 1.7 million, about 50 percent of whom are young people. In a situation of general uncertainty, extremist and anarchist ideas spread among dissatisfied and politically immature young people who want revenge on the bourgeois state. In this milieu, adventurers find an audience for their calls for “direct action” and terrorist acts, which they claim are the quickest path to social change. The crisis is also hard on the middle class, and produces not only anti-monopolistic views, but also radical views to the right and the “left.” Demagogic appeals to national sentiments, or to economic and social difficulties and social problems, allow neo-fascist and “leftist” extremist groups to win supporters in various social levels — from the poorest farmers in the south to some tradesmen, businessmen, civil servants, and students.

The two were, of course, kidnapped by the Red Brigade, well known for their “right wing views” to the East German listener of this bromide, and who were trained, plosletyzed to, and funded by the intelligence agencies of the Warsaw pact,making the entire thing a “Daddy drinks because you cry” type of argument.

Texas drinks a mojito

(…although how can you enjoy a mojito if there is no alcohol inside?!)

Plantu: “I Detest You, but keep Spending your Dollars Here”

To me, Plantu brings to mind the image of a grinning idiot in a ragged suit cranking the handle of a calliope. And that's largly how he's characterizing the President if you look more closely.

It's interesting to see that he signifies the President by drawing his non-specific generic negro minstrel figure. Good work there, spanky. You'll really get somewhere with that attitude.

The Birth of Freedom

The Birth of Freedom: Why would anyone believe that all men are created equal? That all should be free? That all deserve a voice in choosing their leaders? Why would any nation consider this a self-evident truth?