Prescience from the Top of the World

In the storied land of Svalbard, a career journalist who landed near the top of the world as he bounced. That alone is a blogworthy item (or is that bløgworthy...), but I digress. He’s brave enough to come right out and say what we’re all thinking when we see a news story about protestors on TV: what a bunch of maroons.

The cause of these folks, or how angry they are at these idiots?

They throw pies at world leaders. I admit it's a great photo, but I haven't got the slightest idea what their cause is.

That I share a fairly similar view of the likes of the adolescents at Greenpeace is beside the point. If the point of protesting is to be seen, gather attention, and sway the unmoved, the best that these snapperheads will do is make more people into confirmed carnivores.

Climate change is bad. But among the leaders and citizens who aren't convinced, are demonstrations like this and stripping naked by the hundred in vineyards more likely to advance serious debate or generate "hey, Martha, look at what those whacky Greenies did today" comments?

Whoever Iceman is, he is an evil genius likely plotting in obscurity to take over the world. The notion of inadvertently finding oneself someplace that remote makes me want to move to Longyearbyen and open a Burrito cart.

Hate is not a Family Value, you Bu$hChimpMcHitlerBurton tool!

- with thanks to Melanie Phillips.

"Pas une victoire pour les Républicains, mais une sanction pour les Démocrates"

Je ne suis pas sûr qu'Obama va avoir la même souplesse que Bill Clinton a eu en 1994

Lucie Nuttin welcomes Republicans Abroad's Thomas McGrath to LCP Info's studio to discuss America's mid-term elections (en français) during the first 7 and a half minutes of the Assemblée Nationale's news hour…

France24 and the US Mid-Terms: America Decides

While the counting of America's mid-terms was going on, France 24 decided to seek out the voices of America (or, at least those American voices in Paris like the Republicans' Judith Bingham and the Democrats' Zachary Miller).

US mid-terms: America decides

It’s finally time for America to decide. Millions of people are voting in today's mid-term elections, the results of which will determine the political landscape for years to come. President Barack Obama's Democratic Party is braced for its worst results in a generation. So is this a referendum on the president? Or on the economy? Or both?

GUESTS:

• Judith BINGHAM
Republican Abroad

• Zachary MILLER
Vice-Chair, Democrats Abroad

Satellite from Washington DC

• David MERCER
President, Mercer & Associates, Inc
Democratic Campaign Advisor
Democratic Strategist for the French American Foundation

Presented by Laura BAINES
Prepared by Perrine DESPLATS and Bilal TARABEY

I Guess they’re Running out of New Material

Having long run out of fresh hateful tirades about the United States, one crank in Sweden (who wonders why Americans stop being so eternally inferior and take their instructions), has resorted to channeling the dead.

That imaginary contrivance being insufficient, he quotes a Swedish musician who used ancient, stale, contrived imagery that most Europeans have continued to gasbag on about for half a century:

I have seen your cowboys and heard your gunshots, fatal lead

I have read your books and drunk your Coke,

The fatal dead couldn’t even include Stalin’s, Mao’s or Uncle Ho’s. That would require a moral foundation of some sort.

More to the point when it comes to assigning roles to fill in the blanks of your fantasies, Olaf Palme was murdered in 1986. He is unable to comment on the use of his name when it comes to feeding someone’s pedantic fixation with the United States, and a mid-term election that had nothing to do with what he wishes it does to suit his recreational hatred.

He was a good man, I suppose, but he was otherwise a typical stooge when it comes to mass murdering leftists..

In 1972, Prime Minister Olof Palme compared the Hanoi bombings to the Holocaust, having marched side by side with North Vietnam’s ambassador to Moscow through the streets of Stockholm a few years back. Diplomatically as well as socially, the bilateral relations were at their worst ever.

”Bilateral” meaning what? While US-Sweden matters to Sweden, the US can’t waste it’s energy worrying about them if they’re founded on people merely parroting political opinions. Nations like the US are, and have always been more preoccupied with policy positions and real events in meatspace.

The Republicans Ride In

Change, Mutual Respect, and Russian-EU Relations: When the Obama administration stamps its foot, no one any longer snaps to attention

…“the Russians now have far more leverage in the U.S. relationship [with Europe] than they should”

John Vinocur quotes a former senior State Department official with responsibility for Russia (David J. Kramer) as saying in the conclusion of his International Herald Tribune article.

The United States used to call wayward members of NATO back to the reservation with a whistle or a shout. It decided what was deviation from doctrine, and that decision was pretty much law.

When the Obama administration stamped its foot this time, no one snapped to attention.

Rather, Germany and France, meeting with Russia in Deauville, northern France, last week, signaled that they planned to make such three-cornered get-togethers on international foreign policy and security matters routine, and even extend them to inviting other “partners” — pointing, according to diplomats from two countries, to Turkey becoming a future participant.

That can look like an effort to deal with European security concerns in a manner that keeps NATO, at least in part, at a distance. And it could seem a formula making it easier for Russia to play off — absolutely no novelty here — the European allies against the United States, or NATO and the European Union, against one another.

… As for the Obama administration stamping its foot, what it came down to was a senior U.S. official saying: “Since when, I wonder, is European security no longer an issue of American concern, but something for Europe and Russia to resolve? After being at the center of European security for 70 years, it’s strange to hear that it’s no longer a matter of U.S. concern.”

So, a follow-on burst of European contrition? I asked a German official about it. He spoke of German and French loyalty to NATO. And he said, “I understand there are American suspicions.”

“But,” he added, “the United States must accept that the times are changing. There are examples of it having done this. Why wouldn’t it accept our view in this respect?”

The official did not list them, but there are obvious factors explaining the French and German initiatives.

A major one is President Barack Obama’s perceived lack of interest and engagement in Europe. His failure to attend a Berlin ceremony commemorating the end of the Cold War and his cancellation of a meeting involving the E.U.’s new president has had symbolic weight.

… Consider this irony: the more Russia makes entry into the E.U.’s decision-making processes on security issues a seeming condition for deals the French and/or Germans want (think, for example, of France’s proposed sale to Moscow of Mistral attack vessels), the more the impression takes hold that the administration’s focus for complaint about the situation has been off-loaded onto the Europeans.

… When Mr. Medvedev bestowed Russia’s highest honors at a Kremlin ceremony on a group of sleeper spies who were expelled from the United States last July, a State Department spokesman turned away a reporter’s question with a “no comment.” Washington chooses not to say anything either about Mr. Medvedev’s support, repeated in Deauville, for Mr. Sarkozy’s plan, as next year’s president of the G-20 consultative grouping, to focus its attention on limiting the dollar’s role as the world’s reserve currency.

Prior to John Vinocur's article appeared an IHT editorial page column in which Roger Cohen appraised us that

France is in a quiet sulk. Nicolas Sarkozy is the most pro-American president of the Fifth Republic. He brought France back into NATO’s military command, rejected the de rigueur cynicism of French political discourse on the United States, and reached out to Obama. For all of which he got nothing. He must hear de Gaulle’s ghost at night whispering, “I told you so.”

In London, the British are shaking their heads. … “Beside the E.U., is there another bunch of countries anywhere willing to work as closely and permanently with the U.S. on almost all issues of global and regional concern?” asked Wolfgang Ischinger, a former German ambassador in Washington. “I wish Obama would say just that.”

Somewhat related is Virginie Malingre's interview in Le Monde with Alastair Cameron, who "est chargé des questions européennes au Royal United Services Institute, un think tank londonien spécialisé dans les questions de défense et de sécurité. Ce Franco-Britannique a fait ses études à Londres et à Paris, où il a travaillé quelque temps pour le ministère de la défense."

…on peut penser que la guerre en Irak a mis en évidence le déséquilibre de la relation. On a parlé de la Grande-Bretagne comme du "caniche de Washington"...

William Hague, le ministre des affaires étrangères britannique, et David Cameron, le premier ministre, ont tous deux dit qu'ils étaient les alliés des Etats-Unis mais qu'ils ne seraient pas "son esclave ". C'est une manière d'admettre que les Britanniques, ces dix dernières années, ont eu le sentiment qu'ils étaient trop souvent à la botte de Washington. De ce point de vue-là, la coopération avec la France sera la bienvenue. Mais, sur le fond, rien n'a changé.

A Festival of Self-Delusion

Don’t be mislead by the American mainstream media, or anything else you may have seen or heard.

Observing Hermann points out that that Germany’s “authoritative” Focus newsmag was quick to declare the mid-term election “undecided”. I guess their hoping for some Washington-state democrat-style ballot box stuffing and “found” votes. All in the spirit of fairness, legality, and social legitimacy, of course.
keep their dignity intact.

The Nanny State: First, They Came for…

While Valerie writes from Hawaii, saying "They'll have to pry my McDo meal from my cold, dead hands", Damien Bennett adds:

First Nanny came for my neighbor's saccharine, and I did nothing.

Then Nanny came for his cigarettes, and I turned away.

Next Nanny took my trans-fat, and I moved out of state.

Now Nanny is closing in on V de HI's Happy Meal.

Are we men (please make gender substitution of your choice) or are we DEMOCRATS?!

Ammo-up!
(If Eric Holder is reading this, it's just an expression. A trope. All in good fun.)

Riots, Looting, and Chaos in France: How Societies Perish

The Obama administration's policies and projects bear a strong resemblance to those that led Europe — especially France — to founder on the brink of total self-destruction. Redistribute the wealth? It has already been tried and failed in Europe, and particularly in France. Establish a socialized healthcare system? This was also done in many European countries, including France. Multiply the number of people living on welfare, maintain high long-term unemployment, inject resentment into the business sector, and replace knowledge by propaganda? This was also done across European countries, including France. The results are obvious.

During France's 2005 riots, Guy Millière wrote that France was

no longer a "western country" and that rule of law had nearly ceased to exist. Since then, the situation has worsened. Approximately 700 "no-go zones" pepper France: enclaves ruled by gangs, drug traffickers and imams. Firefighters and doctors venture into these places rarely and only with extreme caution, when they have no other choice. Graffiti on the walls read: "French out!" or "Jihad."

Subjects like the Holocaust are no longer taught in many classrooms, and the word "Jew" has become an insult in many playgrounds. The burqa ban was passed, but will probably never be enforced. In a growing number of communities, young women without the Islamic veil risk assault or rape if they walk unaccompanied in the street.

France is a country in disintegration. … A small minority of the population still lives comfortably in the more affluent neighborhoods, striving to maintain the property they purchased or inherited, while at the other end of the social spectrum, the ranks of those living in dire poverty are swelling fast. 15% of the population subsists exclusively on government welfare benefits. …

The French middle classes are disappearing and observe with anxiety the irrepressible growth of an underclass of immigrants increasingly marginalized and marinating in degrading frustration that's highly conducive to all sorts of radicalization.

… French education is in the hands of communists, socialists and greens, who disseminate anti-capitalist doctrines and distorted views of history. The media echo these inept and fraudulent ideas, never offering a means to actually understand how the world works and the basic rules of economics. This encourages dangerously stupid and divisive slogans such as "The solution exists. The rich must pay," to achieve wide support. More than twenty years ago, French jurisprudence was usurped by radical groups proclaiming that a criminal is primarily a victim of society, and that the duty of those who have more is to share with those who have less. Today, many French judges make rulings on ideological grounds, with little regard for the law. Major reform, or even a return to sanity, appear unthinkable in these conditions.

… A xenophobic extreme-right stirs the anger of some; a nihilistic extreme-left excites the hatred of others.

The left has failed to come up with anything resembling a novel strategy to turn the economic switch back to full speed

Europe's left adrift in its inconsistency is how John Vinocur's IHT article reads in the paper version — perhaps bearing something of a mirror image to the leftists' American counterparts and perhaps bearing a(nother) lesson for Barack Obama's politics?

Spain’s Ministry of Equality is gone now, its rainbows packed away into the gray corridors of more earthbound politics. Mark that as a blow to utopians, but even more as a defeat for European social democracy.

In eliminating the ministry, and tucking its crusade for equal rights for women and gays into a subsidiary role in another department two weeks ago, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero — the Spanish prime minister who’s easily the most recognizable figure among a handful of socialists still running countries in the European Union — was conceding a point and not contesting another:

The concession was that his old social democratic notions of what sounded progressive and forceful were basically not the stuff on voters’ minds during these days of profound economic insecurity.

And in juggling his cabinet and choosing hard, stability-oriented measures to keep Spain’s finances afloat, Mr. Zapatero (after regular socialism-solves-everything sound bites over six years in power) hardly seemed to challenge the idea that the European left has failed to come up with anything resembling a novel strategy to turn the economic switch back to full speed.

How do you confront low growth and, according to E.U. figures last week, a new increase in Europe-wide joblessness? Europe clearly does not say the middle-ground left has the answer.

… Policy Network, a center-left research organization that tracks the fortunes of European social democratic parties on a comparative basis, has found nothing to be encouraged about in its latest reading. Noting national election defeats this year in Britain, the Netherlands and Sweden, it wrote:

“There’s little sign that the center-left is regaining the confidence of the electorate, let alone presenting itself as a competent contender for power. If social democrats step back from their own national focus and look at the bigger picture, they will realize just how vulnerable and ideologically staid European social democracy as a political movement currently is.”

… Beyond acknowledging the reality of its decline, Europe’s left has dilemmas that it finds harder to discuss. … the middle-ground left to some voters has looked blindly irresponsible or traitorous to its welfare state ideology … Social democracy has also been particularly quiet about a re-nationalization of policy among some of its national parties and, with it, a corresponding loss of legitimacy for the idea that the left is the dominant source of solidarity among Europeans.

“Solidarity, the left’s ultimate rallying cry,” wrote Olaf Cramme, director of Policy Network, “is not in good shape at all.

…Perhaps hardest of all to acknowledge is that the social democrats have not come up with a confident response to growing resentment in Europe about its problems in integrating Muslim immigrants.

To Hell with the Numbers, Give me my Candy!

About 100 protesting airport workers played music, chanted slogans and blocked cars from accessing one of the terminals at Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport on Thursday.

Moronic, Selfish French union crybabies continue to protest against the solvency of their own retirement system.

France's unions are angry about the government's plans to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62. They have waged massive strikes this month that disrupted travel and caused gasoline shortages.

Because it’s important to kill off what’s left of the productivity private part of the economy that subsidizes the leisure class exporopriation-style taxation and artificially high prices.

Are you Feeling Simpel ?

Ein ganz normaler Deutscher, no different that the louts at Die Welt.

Package Bomb: The Trap of Democratic Elections

In an odd Le Monde cartoon combining the current scare regarding Greece's package bomb plots (the literal translation of colis piégé is not package bomb but booby-trapped package, bringing with it more of a suggestion of treachery and deceit) with the colors of… the stars and stripes (?!?!), Plantu depicts America's conservatives as… exactly that, plotters, and criminals and terrorists to boot… Terrorists who used the terroristic trick of free elections to harm the stoic Barack Obama…

I Guess they Really ARE who They’ve Been Waiting for

And judging by the turnout, they’ll have to keep waiting, because our mildly deranged friends of the left just won’t get out of bed unless there are free donuts involved, and someone around to drive them to the polling station.

If normally being that easily bought off doesn't speak to their committment and sincerity, I don't know what does.

At 4 am, French Time, I Will Be Commenting America's Mid-Term Elections Live in French and English

Tonight, at 4 am French (continental) time, I will be covering America's mid-term elections on the France 24 cable news channel, both in French and in English.

Wednesday at 11:30 am (French time), I will be debating the results in French (only) on their Opinions show. But an English debate will commence at 11 am. At 12:30, I will be on LCI…

Ce soir, sur France 24, à partir de 4h du matin, je vais suivre et commenter les mid-term elections aux États-Unis, suivi d'un débat sur Opinions à 11h30…

(The video of the mid-terms debate I joined in a week ago — en français — can be seen here…)

Postcards from Pétainistan

Europeans speculating on Tuesday’s vote in the US fall into the old trope: either way they will pity themselves, either way Americans are wrong, either way they lose, either way they are disappointed that the US election is not all about them.

EU Observer features an item that they had hastily re-written to remove any reference to the fact that relations US-European have gotten worse because of Obama:

EU onlooker wary of introspective US vote

And why is this important to Americans voting on their own representation in Washington?

EU relations and foreign affairs in general are playing hardly any role in the US midterm elections on Tuesday (2 November), the European Parliament's top man in Washington has said. But any deficit in EU-US relations will have an associated "cost," he warned.

This in spite of the fact that the expected outcome will blunt the power of the left, a party that supported a president who snubbed European government heads and sent a bust of Churchill, the symbol of the strong bonds built between the US and the UK, BACK.

The EU has for a long time fretted about whether or not it has its due weight on Capitol Hill.

Join the club. Americans are asking themselves that very question right now as well.

The climate change talks in Copenhagen last year, when the US left the EU out of the final deal-making, and President Obama's abrupt cancellation of a summit in Madrid earlier this year, deepened anxieties. An EU-US will now take place in Lisbon on 20 November, on the margins of a bigger Nato event which President Obama was to attend anyway.

Then again this will go into my bulging “whose country is this anyway?” file:

"There is a disappointment in Europe that on on many issues he didn't make a u-turn on policies from the Bush era, as the EU would have liked," Ms Guerot added.

What does it all boil down to? Self-serving narcissism. The “onlooker” seems disappointed that the EU’s interests don’t dominate the US’ internal affairs.

In Order to Change the Political Landscape, Who Is the Hero That America Needs?

(Thanks to Valerie)

A Generational Choice

A Generational Choice

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?