Selfish, Inequitable America at it’s Very Worst

A man who immigrated to the US in 1924 made a gift to his town of origin in Sweden. While Americans would see this type of posthumous generosity as relatively common in America, they would perceive the late doner to be an American, a one time immigrant like many others who have added to America’s rich tapestry.

Because he did something nice for them, the European view would be to call this man a Swede. Had he behaved like a lout all of his life, he would have been called an American. You guessed it: Me!Me!Me!Me!Me!Me!Me!Me!

It turned out that John P. Johnson was actually born Per-Olof Johnson in Gothenburg in 1909, but emigrated to the United States in 1924.

“His parents were divorced and he had a rough childhood, from what we understand. He supposedly emigrated to the US to live with his father, but they never found each other,” Johansson explained.

“He ended up living with an aunt. He really had nothing.”

Over time, according to Johansson, John P. Johnson had also managed to transform himself from a penniless immigrant teenager to a successful economist.

That’s because America is such a rotten, inequitable, place where no-one can figure out anything without the government creating all your opportunities for you.

Elsewhere: Swedes snip out a Moyle with a twitch.

In how many other countries would a powerful populist movement demand less of government, rather than endlessly and expensively more?

After the clobbering Lexington got for calling Tea Partiers infantile, The Economist's senior America commentator had to acknowledge last week that race is not a reason for Obama's troubles.

Now Lexington — although he cannot prevent himself from ending on a sour note (and with a sour paragraph, "reflexively", "This means having something serious to say", etc) and he still states that "what strikes him [Lexington] as especially unfortunate for him [Obama] was the timing of events" — has no choice but to admit that

IT IS not hard, if you really try, to find good things to say about America’s tea-partiers. They are not French, for a start. France’s new revolutionaries, those who have been raising Cain over Nicolas Sarkozy’s modest proposal to raise the age of retirement by two years, appear to believe that public money is printed in heaven and will rain down for ever like manna to pay for pensions, welfare, medical care and impenetrable avant-garde movies. America’s tea-partiers are the opposite: they exhale fiscal probity through every pore. In their waking hours, and in bed at night, they are wracked by anxiety. How is a profligate America to cut borrowing, balance the budget and ensure that its billowing deficit will not place an unbearable burden on future generations?

The tea-partiers do not just have less selfish motives than the pampered French. They also have better manners. Let the French block roads and set things on fire: among tea-partiers it is a point of pride that their large but orderly rallies leave barely a crumpled candy wrapper behind them. Though some wear tricorn hats, and the movement takes its name from the Boston Tea Party, tea-partiers are peaceful folk.

…Corporate money has indeed found its way into tea-party coffers, but if you attend a tea-party event you will generally find that it is indeed a self-organised gathering of citizens dismayed by what they see as the irresponsible behaviour of an out-of-control government. … Here and there—in Florida and Alaska, for example—tea-party pressure has split the conservative vote, but in the grand scheme that is a small price for Republicans to pay for the revivifying energy the movement has imparted to a party that looked dead in the water two years ago.

Not French, not fabricated and not as flaky as their detractors aver: these are the positives. Another one: in how many other countries would a powerful populist movement demand less of government, rather than endlessly and expensively more? Much of what is exceptional about America is its ideology of small government, free enterprise and self reliance. If that is what the tea-party movement is for, more power to its elbow.

Lexington goes on to say that

His critics say he should have spent this period concentrating on jobs. But many of those critics are the same people who will tell you that it is not in the gift of governments to create jobs.

Some liberals don't seem to be able to get it through their thick skulls that for the government to create jobs, in a conservatives' mind, means getting rid of laws, rules, regulations, along with bureaucrats, that stand in the way of private entrepreneurship creating jobs… The difference is busybodies' active intervention versus keeping out of the way (and ensuring the rest of the government does likewise)…

Opposition to Barack Obama does not arise from fear, from anger, from hatred, or from racism; Opposition to Barack Obama arises from love

As I always tell whoever is willing to listen (be they American or foreign), opposition to Barack Obama does not arise from fear, or from anger, or from hatred, or indeed from racism. Opposition to Barack Obama arises out of love.

When the (American and/or foreign) liberals' burst of laughter dies off, and while they are wiping away their tears, I add: not from love of Barack Obama, of course (not that we fear or hate that man either, per se, or the color of his skin, for that matter), but from love of our family members, our homes, our neighbors (whatever their race), our communities (the black members as well as the white members), and, indeed, the entire country and, further afield, the planet, as well as our children and our (and their) descendants. (Don't even let me get into the way we feel about our pocketbooks, not to mention our freedoms, our liberty, and our constitutional rights…)

Chesterton may have been writing about the military, but with America the land of the citizen soldier, take a moment to think about the implications of the following quote and about what, in a republic or a democracy, the soldier has in common with the citizen:

The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.

And so it is that it is from love (love of country, love of countrymen, love of our offspring — as opposed to demonization of the average Tea Partier, scorn for the American heartland, and, last but not least, love for the Dear Leader) that we have started to gather in the streets and that we are willing to fight (without weapons) for our homes and for our principles.

It is from love that we are getting ready, on November 2, to turn to representatives who will not, unfailingly and ceaselessly, disparage their own country abroad and who, on the contrary, will vote to shrink deficits, who will block tax hikes, and who will roll back Obamacare, along with, more generally, putting an end to relentless growth in government and to irresponsible and inane fiscal policies.

European Reactions to the Presence of America's Tea Parties: Depicted as Fiendish and/or Clueless Foes of the Brave and Valiant Barack Obama

As America prepares for the 2010 mid-term elections a couple of days after Halloween, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung publishes a cartoon by Horsch in which America's valiant, but lonely, leader (brave, brave Sir Barack), aka none other than the president of the United States, alias the most powerful man on the planet (!), is depicted as a David taking on a Goliath (?!?!), while his opposition, aka the tea partiers along with the rest of the people of the United States exercising their constitutional rights (the Goliath in question), is depicted as a fiendishly-grinning demonic pumpkin head with the sulfur of hell oozing from his mouth, i.e., a monstrosity beyond all known proportions…

But as I always tell whoever is willing to listen (be they American or foreign), opposition to Barack Obama does not arise from fear, or from anger, or from hatred, or from racism. Opposition to Barack Obama arises from love.

In any case: No wonder that John Rosenthal says that

since the election of Barack Obama, the subject of European anti-Americanism is rarely touched upon even in new media [and] one could well have imagined that the phenomenon itself had simply disappeared.

But as the reactions of leading French and German newspapers to the Tea Party and the prospect of large Republican gains in the upcoming congressional elections make clear, “old” Europe’s anti-American impulse never in fact went away. At most, it merely went into a latent state, awaiting the proper conditions to become virulent again.

Consider, for instance, the sub-head of a recent article in the German daily Die Welt on Christine O’Donnell as the supposed “nightmare opponent” [Angstgegenerin] of the Democrats: “Christine O’Donnell is even simpler than Sarah Palin

— but the Democrats are afraid of her.” When applied to persons, as it is in this context, the German adjective simpel carries a strong whiff of “simpleton.”

Lest it be imagined that the crack is reserved for just O’Donnell and Palin and might somehow be construed as sparing their supporters and/or Americans more generally, the front page features a distinctly unflattering photo of a seemingly unhinged and cockeyed O’Donnell, accompanied — with a wink and a nudge — by the headline: “An entirely normal American.”

Europeans, as sly and lucid superior beings as their liberal counterparts in America, think — nay, they know — that nothing would suit the United States and its people better than a democtatorship…

Halloween

Wishing you a frightfully happy Halloween…

This week on “Cooking with Joe”

KIBBE (Lebanese tartar)

2 lbs. lean lamb or twice-ground beef
1 cup burghul (crushed bulgur wheat, crushed medium to fine)
½ medium size onion
2 tsp. salt (or to taste)
½ tsp. pepper
Ice water

Kibbeh is virtually the national dish of Lebanon. It’s traditional preparation is dramatic. It requires a stone mortar and heavy pestle called the jorn and modaqqa. The meat is pounded with rhythmic repetition until it is smooth and paste-like. Everyone in the neighborhood knows when kibbeh is in the making.
Select lamb from loin of the animal. Pound the cubed meat with a teaspoon of salt in a stone mortar with a wooden mallet or pestle. Remove meat from mortar when it becomes pasty. Now pound the onion with a teaspoon of salt and pepper until it is reduced to a pulp. Combine meat and onion and pound together until very smooth. Press to remove water. Knead burghul and meat with the hands. Pound together in mortar. Add salt to taste.
Dip mallet in ice water to keep meat moist and smooth. Properly prepared kibbeh must be pounded at least an hour. Then it is ready to be eaten as it is, or cooked in a variety of ways,
PREPARATION TIME MAY BE SHORTENED CONSIDERABLY by grinding the meat through the fine blade of a meat grinder. Grind onion twice. Grind onions with meat once. Combine the washed burghul with the meat-onion mixture. Knead well, seasoning with salt and papper. Grind this mixture three times, adding a tablespoon of ice water to keep it smooth.

To give it some more zing, one may add to the onion when grinding twice:

2 tablespoons of fresh sweet green pepper
A dash of allspice
A dash of powdered cumin
A ¼ of a leaf of fresh basil which has been pounded with a mortar
Garlic to taste

Method:

Grease a shallow 12 by 18 inch baking pan. Pat a layer of basic kibbeh smoothly and firmly over the bottom of the pan to a depth of one inch. Cover this evenly with a layer of stuffing*. Top with a second layer of kibbeh which is slightly thicker than the first. Score diamond shapes into the surface with a sharp knife. Pour one cup of melted butter over all. Bake in a moderate heat oven for 20 minutes, or until browned. Serve hot or cold.

Stuffing:

1 cup ground meat
1 cup chopped onions
½ cup pine nuts
½ cup butter
1 tsp. salt
½ tsp. pepper
½ tsp. cinnamon
½ tsp. allspice

Heat butter. Fry chopped onions in it until soft. Add meat and fry until lightly browned. Add pine nuts and continue frying until they are slightly browned and the meat has lost its’ pink color entirely. Season with salt, pepper, allspice, and cinnamon. Pour off excess fat.

There are various sorts of kibbeh, and here is another popular favorite:
Prepare a recipe of basic kibbeh and one of the stuffing. Form kibbeh into balls the size of a walnut. Smooth meat ball with finger dipped in cold water. With the thumb, form a well in the meatball. Fill it with half a teaspoon of meat stuffing, push meat into place, closing the opening, and patting the meat ball into an egg-like shape. Deep fry or bake in a moderate oven.

Serves eight.

France... "Spoiled and Selfish".... America's View

The French have reached a new low

writes Edy Halpert. The former public relations director in Washington DC is now a mother of four, a freelance writer, and a teacher in France. She never forgets the serial comma.

As an American citizen, married to a Frenchman living outside of Paris, I am astonished and ashamed at the audacity of this country and its citizens. France is a country with the greatest advantages in health care, education, and social benefits one could ever imagine. Food is abundant, delicious, and cheap. You can buy a whole camenbert cheese for one euro fifty and delicious baguettes for just 80 cents.

The transportation system is amazing, and cheap especially if you are a student. The country actually pays you (no kidding) to have children and education here is practically free, even going to University. The work week consists of 35 hours, unless you are a business owner and do real work, unlike the overpaid civil servants here.

And get this, the French have five to seven weeks of (believe or not) paid vacation. It's almost impossible to be fired in France, but if you are, even if you are totally incompetent, you still get unemployment and retraining at the government's expense and are paid an exhorbitant amount when you are asked to leave by your employer.

If you ever visited this country, you know it is one of the most exquisite on earth, culturally, architechturally and terrain wise.

Now I ask you, why in the world would anyone want to strike when they have all the advantages of such a generous country and government, more than anyone else in the world....especially in light of the misery of those living in the rest of the world in poverty, without food, water, healthcare, or jobs they so desperately need to feed their starving families?

God forbid the French actually have to work to keep the country going until the shockingly ripe old age of 62. What a concept?

Communist and socialist unions have so poisoned the thinking of the average French citizen and students here, that the concept of hard work is unthinkable. They are destroying this country and forcing all major corporations and companies to outsource manufacturing through their unreasonable demands and soon France will become bankrupt like other nations in Europe. It is inevitable.

In any other country in the world, the average citizen would jump for joy just to have a job (eg, America, which was hit by one of the world's greatest recessions in history; People would kill to have a well paying job with benefits). And what about your average Asian or Indian employee who would think nothing of putting in an 80 hour work week in order to succeed? Poverty stricken immigrants from bordering nations risk daily their life just for the possibility to live in this country and help their families back home survive.

What is wrong with the French?

"Selfish and spoiled" is what an American friend wrote from California and I couldn't agree more. I only hope President Sarkozy and Prime Minister Fillon have the tremendous courage needed to fight those who seek to undermine the work ethic here in this country and stand up to those who benefit from the system but are too lazy and selfish to work hard to continue it for the sake of the future generations to come. The union leaders, and Socialists should be charged for their instigation of the horrible atrocities they have caused here costing the government over 400 million euros daily and creating total chaos in this country. If this continues, France, will most certainly become the laughingstock of the world. Maybe what is needed for the demonstrators is to take a little vacation in Haiti and see what real suffering is all about.

A Precious European Ponders the End of the O-ligarchy

Euronews, in reporting on the US mid-term election, obviously thinks that the story is about Europe. Titled “EU-US relations ‘steady’, though admiration fairly ‘one-way’,” one can only wonder what this self-absorbed stance can possibly mean when the European public has been conditioned into detesting the US for the past half century. The explanation comes from an Israeli historian:

Barnavi said: “Obama is not spontaneously a European. He’s the United States’ first post-European president. He looks more toward the Pacific than across the Atlantic. So an ambiguous relationship set in. From one side there’s affection and admiration for the man who’s obviously exceptional but also some disappointment over a president who doesn’t seem to be as attentive towards Europe as Europe is towards him.”

Smallminded, the ignorant mook who wrote the peicve confuses Obama with the entire nation, history and all, because, after all, Obama was supposed to be their guy, give them stuff, and act against the interest of the population of the United States.

Need proof that our byline-less knucklehead thinks this way? Get a load of the opening line:

The United States’ Star Spangled Banner has lost some of the new luster Europe saw in it with Barack Obama’s historic ascension as president.

It apparently lost its’ luster to all of humanity, including Americans, because a Euronews writer and his fellow nodding zombies passively experienced some disappointment.

Too bad, Sparky. You get to complain when you get to vote for him.

Tea Partiers : "On ne veut pas de nounous ; nous ne sommes pas des mômes dans un jardin d'enfants"

Suite à un débat entre Démocrates et Républicains à l'Ecole Supérieure de Commerce de Paris (ESCP Europe) sur le sujet des mid-term elections, Pauline Fréour a interviewé, pour le compte du site du Figaro (merci à Bertrand), les deux intervenants, Thomas McGrath (Republicans Abroad France) et Joseph Smallhoover (Democrats Abroad France), ainsi que des spectateurs, dont… moi-même (il y a quelques erreurs dans ma description, quoique pas très graves — un tea partier, pour moi, n'est autre chose qu'un citoyen responsable et indépendant et le "virage plus radical" je l'avais pris il y a de nombreuses années, bien avant la réélection de Bush en 2004)… On retrouve aussi les interviews dans des blogs tels que La Pensée Néoconservatrice et Conservatisme Français…

Lost in Space

Europe sticks to hitching a lift into space.

Brussels has shelved its space policy, reports Les Echos. "What was to be a major priority for the European Commission, now that the Lisbon Treaty has granted it new prerogatives in the field of space policy, has discreetly been sidelined." In the current context of budgetary restrictions, the Commission wants "to avoid exposing the European Union to risks inherent in high-profile financing of major space projects" like Galileo. As the daily explains, the space industry has responded with disbelief to the news that the Commission has set aside the implementation of a programme for which it had assumed political responsibility.

Sparks Fly on France 24 Channel as Foes Debate the Mid-Term Elections

Sparks flew on Le Débat de France 24 as foes debated America's mid-term elections and to what extent, in the aftermath, Barack Obama will be able to pick up the pieces of his likely defeat.

Obama, une semaine pour rebondir — partie 1 et partie 2.

Il reste une petite semaine à Barack Obama pour redresser la barre. Les élections de mi-mandat aux Etats-Unis se tiendront dans une semaine et les sondages annoncent une vague républicaine. Les démocrates pourraient bien perdre la majorité à la Chambre des représentants.

Que peuvent changer ces élections de mi-mandat pour le reste du monde ?

Jean-Bernard Cadier reçoit:

• Chip Seward, membre du comité exécutif de Democrats Abroad France

• Anne-Elisabeth Moutet, correspondante, Weekly Standard
• Erik Svane, membre de Republicans Abroad France, auteur de "La Bannière étalée"
• Nicholas Dungan, conseiller spécial de l'IRIS

Emission préparée par Claire Brown et Perrine Desplats

(Un grand merci à Hervé pour avoir pris le temps de télécharger toutes les parties — l'émission dure 38 minutes au total — sur YouTube et pour avoir, en outre, créé une playlist…)

Plantu creates moral equivalence between the Iraq of a bloodthirsty psychopath and the Iraq that was liberated by the Americans

Former Iraqi minister Tariq Aziz sentenced to death

— Oh! I am so touched! It reminds me so much of the good ol' times under Saddam!

On the front page of Le Monde, Plantu creates moral equivalence between the Iraq of a bloodthirsty psychopath and the Iraq that was liberated by the Americans.

Note to Plantu: victims under the reign of Saddam Hussein had no recourse to a trial, being dispatched the same day their death was decided — usually in total secrecy — and no reporters or pundits, let alone anybody else, could criticize the courts and/or the government for their decision, whichever way it leaned.

And two months prior to his condemnation, incidentally, Saddam Hussein's former frontman denounced the Americans. For what reason?

He also criticised US President Barack Obama over the planned withdrawal of US troops, saying he was "leaving Iraq to the wolves".

How rich is that?! A professional pacifist and the world's most famous do-gooder, aka the Apologizer-in-Chief, being condemned for pulling American soldiers out of Iraq, not by an American conservative but by a leader of Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist party.

Enfin, A Man In Full

The adjustment of reality to the masses and of the masses to reality is a process of unlimited scope, as much for thinking as for perception.

- Walter Benjamin

Author Stephan Wackwitz writes with apparent embarrassment about his youthful affection for fantasy socialist and thus a willing idiot for totalitarianism, Walter Benjamin:

My admiration for some of Benjamin's writing, the elegance of his thinking and his language more than anything else, has accompanied me throughout my intellectual life. And this in spite of the irreparable damage I probably inflicted upon myself during my period of obsessive Benjamin reading. Because the confusion of his thinking exponentially propelled my own confusions to new heights, for many years. When you read Benjamin, you must learn to strictly separate admiration and criticism.

Or otherwise simply take him for what he writes. To some, his writing is as enjoyable as anything one may find. In itself, that does not give its’ content any more significance than can be rationally found in it.

After all, the concept of originating critical theory by obfuscation turned into a cottage industry that reached its peak in the academic industry sector in the 1980’s. It then migrated into the occupations of social thinking and political crash testing.

It is precisely the purpose of the public opinion generated by the press to make the public incapable of judging, to insinuate into it the attitude of someone irresponsible, uninformed.

- Walter Benjamin, telling us that facts are irrelevant when we suffer from “false consciousness.”

Wackwitz:

So how do you explain why his writing, which fails to meet any traditional criteria, has been been so phenomenally influential since the 1960s? The content argument points to Benjamin's combination of "scientific socialism" with cabbalist and messianic motifs (most prominently in his "Theses on the Philosophy of History) which struck a chord with students' illusory hopes of revolution against all odds. And the motifs in the essay on "The Artwork in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" would certainly have been useful for a generation where most people grew up wanting to become "something media-related".

A creature we frequently meet today, not to mention their enablers, well programmed by a monomaniacal, ideologically driven view found in the academy:

In 1972 I was twenty, a supposedly not entirely untalented, deeply impressionable and utterly confused individual. One week it was Maoism, the next it was poetry or fine art. The interminable vacillations of a young man. Ersatz military service in Bad Urach, holidays in Paris, a patchwork university degree in Munich. The obligatory hitch-hiking in Italy. The effects of Nietzsche's "Zarathustra" and three cans of beer in a youth hostel in Milan. An old man holds his head in despair over the diaries of his younger self.

Thankfully, he is now free of this sort of narcissism:

Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method.

There will always be people who will sugar-coat tyranny, just as there will always be young people who are sharp enough but lack the life experience to resist them. The irony is that it’s those people who are not ‘people of letters’ that are more likely to have the capacity to identify the theories and motives behind the intellectual child molesters.

That they prey on callow university students is no less wrong.

Barack Obama et son administration ont été un désastre pour les Etats-Unis, à la fois sur le plan intérieur et extérieur

Stuart Haugen, ancien président des Républicains en France, répond aux questions de Marianne Enault du Journal de Dimanche et affirme que "L'idée selon laquelle le Tea Party serait un ramassis d'extrémistes n'existe que dans les médias et dans les rangs de la gauche libérale" (au sens américain du terme).

Quel est l'objectif du parti républicain pour les élections de mi-mandat?
Atteindre un seuil suffisamment critique au sein des deux chambres [Sénat et Chambre des représentants, ndlr] pour bloquer les mesures les plus radicales de Barack Obama, les grands programmes gouvernementaux et commencer à s'attaquer au déficit massif et au problème de la dette qui s'aggravent depuis dix ans. Les républicains veulent aussi réduire la taille et le poids du gouvernement fédéral. Enfin, nous souhaitons créer un environnement économique stable, dans lequel le business se sentira à l'aise pour investir et donc créer de l'emploi.

… Aujourd'hui, le gouvernement est totalement hors de contrôle, à la fois sur le plan fiscal et économique. Il dit aux gens comment il faut vivre, ce qu'ils doivent acheter… l'arrivée apparemment soudaine du Tea Party n'est pas tant liée à Barack Obama qu'à cette colère accumulée à l'encontre d'une administration fédérale hors de portée.

Quel bilan faites-vous des deux premières années de mandat de Barack Obama?
Barack Obama et son administration ont été un désastre pour les Etats-Unis, à la fois sur le plan intérieur et extérieur. Il est en passe d'être un président pire que Jimmy Carter! Nous sommes peut-être un peu plus "aimés" à l'étranger mais nous sommes moins respectés, à la fois par nos "amis" mais aussi par nos ennemis. La Chine et la Russie traitent Obama avec un manque de respect total. L'Iran et la Corée du Nord se moquent ouvertement de l'administration américaine. Enfin, nos alliés en Europe nous font la morale - à juste titre aurais-je envie d'ajouter - sur nos dépenses incontrôlées.

FYI, as a minor critique of the interview as printed in a shortened form, Stuart Haugen adds that

I did not really claim the Iraq war spending as a major motivation for the rise of the Tea Party (I did include it in the long list but she applied her "French" bias to make it the primary motivator, not a disaster…) and on one quote where I talk about spending money to expand public sector while the "private sector" is dying, she made an error.

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......