BBC on a Muslim's Killing and Wounding of Half a Dozen Christians in Egypt: "it is unclear whether the attack was sectarian"

After all the hoopla concerning the inescapable guilt of the Tea Partiers and Sarah Palin for the shooting spree in Tucson, you have to love the subhead of the BBC's story about a train attack in Egypt: It goes — are you ready for it? — "An off-duty policeman has opened fire on a train in Egypt, killing a Christian man [and wounding (at least) four other Christians], but" — and here we get the gist of the "but":

An off-duty policeman has opened fire on a train in Egypt, killing a Christian man, but it is unclear whether the attack was sectarian.

It is unclear whether the attack was sectarian! We learn that "Officials said at least four of those hurt [there were five wounded altogether] were Coptic Christians" and we learn that "Witnesses said hundreds of Christians later clashed with police outside the hospital where the wounded were taken" and we are reminded that "Tensions between Muslims and Christians in Egypt have been high following a bomb attack on a Coptic church in Alexandria at the new year that killed 23 people." But! It is unclear whether the attack was sectarian!

As unbelievable as it sounds, it may be entirely true that the attack might turn out to have nothing (or little) to do with religion — Indeed, we (lucky) readers are (blessed to be) provided with a (welcome) warning:

The BBC's Jon Leyne reports from Cairo that it is difficult to see how the gunmen would have known he could target Christians by boarding the train.

Perhaps, but still, what with the rush to judgment regarding Jared Lee Loughner in the Arizona case, you get a slight feeling for the double standards of the West's mainstream media…

Update: "We don’t want to jump to conclusions" adds Instapundit (shookhran for the link, Professor Reynolds). "That might promote hatred."

Update 2: That was quick! Only a day or two ago, Joe Kovacs was reporting on Rush Limbaugh's posing a new question.

"Just ask yourself this. If the shooter had been a 22-year-old named Muhammad, would we be hearing that Muslim talk radio and the Muslim Internet blamed for it?" the top-rated host asked today. "No, we'd have been told that we can't blame Muslims for the action of one kook."

We didn't expect a bona fide illustration of the (all-too-obvious) answer to come all the way from the Red Sea, but now we have one, don't we?

More Crosshairs, More Death Threats, More Incendiary Rhetoric, and More Threats — Albeit That Do Not Warrant Condemnation Since It Comes From the Left

The American Patriot Foundation has received dozens of threatening phone message, e-mails and letters during … the past few months

writes Brian Fitzpatrick,

including two letters that view the words "GOP" and "Birthers" through a sniper scope.

The WND article follows with an example of an email containing "incendiary rhetoric and threats", however it is not language that the Left does not find offensive, or certainly not offensive enough to warrant condemnation, precisely because… it comes from the Left.

This is to inform you that LTC Larkin (sic) is a F------ COWARD who should be put in front of a firing squad and shot. If I see his a-- on the streets of Washington I will save the government the expense of a trial, I'll dip a bullet in s--- and shoot him in the head. This f--- off deserves to die on the streets of America.

Of course, all this does nothing to address the theory that the alleged crosshairs symbol, whether employed by Sarah Palin or by Daily Kos and the Democratic Party (and contrary to the one employed by the Militant Association of Democrats), in fact turned, and turns, out to be a surveyor’s symbol…

Jared Lee Loughner: Just Like Your Average, Garden Variety European

That is, if you’re really looking for comparisons, similarities, and “linkages”, why not try seeing what the guy said and did?





9-11 Troofer
Atheist
Heeb-obsessed
Buys conspiracy theories
Has a sick obsession with the personal lives of political personae
Like the Francophonie, believes that grammer has a social intent
and an incoherent, cannabis-smoking loner

Now what continental zeitgeist exactly DOES that sound like?

He lists reading under interests, as well as "conscience dreams," and among his favorite books are "Mein Kampf," the "Communist Manifesto," "Animal Farm" and "Brave New World."

Yadda, yadda, yadda. Must be a teabagger, I guess.

Sparks fly on France 24 channel as Republicans and Democrats spar over the ups and downs in 2010 of a certain Barack Obama

This government lacks prioritization because it lacks leadership and management skills. Barack Obama has never run anything in his life, so — he runs his mouth, and proclaims he is going to do everything at once. (15:04)

Sparks fly in the France 24 Debate as Republicans and Democrats spar over the ups and downs in 2010 of a certain Barack Obama. He signed landmark healthcare legislation into law, but his Democrats got thumped in the midterm elections. Now can he rebound? You won’t find consensus on François Picard’s panel.

• Stuart HAUGEN, Former Chair, Republicans Abroad France
• Meredith GOWAN LE GOFF, Chair, Democrats Abroad France
• Pierre GERVAIS, Associate Professor of American history, Université Paris 8-Saint-Denis

Program produced by Bilal Tarabey and Yi Song

Due to the Tucson Schooting, According to the French, the "Tea Partiers Are in the in the Dock"

The shooting in which a Democrat was seriously wounded in Arizona has appalled the American Left, which denounces the "poisoned rhetoric" of the ultraconservatives…

(Updated below) Go to Instapundit to see (a massive amount of) evidence to the contrary, especially Glenn Reynolds' own article in the Wall Street Journal, The Arizona Tragedy and the Politics of Blood Libel.

As for martial metaphors, Le Monde itself has a doozy, featuring a (sports) article called Que signifie selon vous l'hécatombe des clubs de Ligue 1 en 32es de finale de la Coupe de France ?, i.e., referring to the (sorry) fate of the predominant league in French soccer clubs in the 32nd-finals (!) towards the Coupe de France, whose mass elimination is described as a "massacre" or a "slaughter".

And as far as the former Alaska governor's allegedly disturbing maps are concerned, it turns out that the issue is moot (thanks to Larwyn), because "what Palin had on her webpage was a graphic of a surveyor’s symbol. Not cross-hairs." (Compare and contrast.)

Sylvain Cypel ajoute :

Chacun interprétait à sa façon les "écrits" laissés sur la Toile par Jared Loughner. Ils manifestent effectivement une grande incohérence - des spécialistes ont parlé de "schizophrénie" -, mais aussi des détestations qui, sur certains points, rejoignent des thèmes usuels de la mouvance du Tea Party : la détestation du "gouvernement", c'est-à-dire de l'emprise de l'Etat fédéral, ou le retour à l'étalon-or, une idée promue par ceux qui prônent l'abolition de la Réserve fédérale (banque centrale américaine).

Le problème, évidemment, c'est que c’est (beaucoup plus) facile de mettre tout sur le dos de la droite quand on ignore délibérément les preuves — beaucoup plus conséquentes — que Jared L. Loughner est à (l’extrême) gauche…

Back to the Wall Street Journal:

With only the barest outline of events available, pundits and reporters seemed to agree that the massacre had to be the fault of the tea party movement in general, and of Sarah Palin in particular. Why? Because they had created, in New York Times columnist Paul Krugman's words, a "climate of hate."

The critics were a bit short on particulars as to what that meant. Mrs. Palin has used some martial metaphors—"lock and load"—and talked about "targeting" opponents. But as media writer Howard Kurtz noted in The Daily Beast, such metaphors are common in politics. Palin critic Markos Moulitsas, on his Daily Kos blog, had even included Rep. Gabrielle Giffords's district on a list of congressional districts "bullseyed" for primary challenges. When Democrats use language like this—or even harsher language like Mr. Obama's famous remark, in Philadelphia during the 2008 campaign, "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun"—it's just evidence of high spirits, apparently. But if Republicans do it, it somehow creates a climate of hate.

There's a climate of hate out there, all right, but it doesn't derive from the innocuous use of political clichés. And former Gov. Palin and the tea party movement are more the targets than the source.

Update — from The National Review:

We barely knew all the facts in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, though, before this vicious act was being milked for political advantage by ghoulish opportunists on the Left.

…The irony of criticizing the overheated rhetoric of your opponents at the same time you call them accomplices to murder apparently was lost on these people, most of whom have never been noted for their subtlety (or civility). It is vile to attempt to tar the opposition with the crimes of a lunatic so as to render illegitimate the views of about half of America.

Glenn Reynolds adds a link to the Washington Post's Marc Thiessen's piece on the "blame the Tea Party" chorus:

…why is it acceptable to condemn vitriol in politics while contributing to it in the same breath? This is what passes for restoring civility to our nation's discourse?

What is really outrageous is how quickly so many jumped at the opportunity to politicize this tragic shooting — blaming the Tea Party and conservative political rhetoric without a shred of evidence to back those claims.

…On Sunday, the New York Times published a front-page story, "Bloodshed Puts New Focus on Vitriol in Politics." Nowhere did it mention the vitriol hurled at Tea Party activists, who are routinely derided to as "tea baggers" and racists, and now stand accused of incitement to murder. If you want an example of the lack of civility plaguing our political discourse, look no further than this weekend's shameful efforts to use this tragedy to demonize the Tea Party.

"France Is the Evil Empire as Far as Technology Theft Is Concerned"

France is in the midst of an industrial espionage scandal involving Renault and the "automaker has suspended several executives who are suspected of compromising its electric car technology" (the most likely culprit would appear to be China).

Meanwhile, it turns out that, according to documents from the U.S. Embassy in Berlin obtained by a Norwegian newspaper from the Wikileaks trove, France is the most active country, moreso than Russia and China (and causing more damage than any of those countries), in engaging in industrial espionage upon its European allies. In the words of Le Monde and the AFP,

"L'espionnage français est tellement étendu que les dégâts [qu'il provoque] pour l'économie allemande, dans leur totalité, sont plus importants que les dégâts provoqués par la Chine ou la Russie", selon une note non datée de l'ambassade des Etats-Unis à Berlin.

Aftenposten, qui a obtenu par un moyen non connu en décembre la totalité des 250 000 documents diplomatiques de WikiLeaks, reproduit aussi, en norvégien, les propos en ce sens du patron d'un groupe allemand cité par une note de l'ambassade. "La France est l'empire du mal en ce qui concerne le vol de technologies, et l'Allemagne le sait", aurait déclaré en octobre 2009 Berry Smutny, directeur général du petit fabricant allemand de satellites OHB Technology.

Dennis Miller — The Big Speech

(NSFW — Thanks to Duncan)

People in the private sector are just beginning to understand how much of a banquet public-sector unions have been having at everybody else’s expense

Unions across Europe have promised strikes in 2011 on a scale not seen since the 1980s.

This week, The Economist has an issue devoted to the subject of the (worldwide) need to confront public-sector unions (thereby unwittingly giving ammunition to those, in America and elsewhere, who support the rise of the tea party).

Articles in this week's issue related to the main subject include:
• The battle ahead
• (Government) workers of the world unite!
• What Barack Obama can and can’t learn from Reagan’s blithe spirit
• Improving teachers (At last, America may change the way it trains, recruits and rewards teachers)
• The tussle for talent (The best companies are obsessed by “the vital few”)
• Chris Christie: The conservative crush

The London Weekly's main article is entitled (Government) workers of the world unite! (Public-sector unions have had a good few decades. Has their luck run out?) From the Leader (The battle ahead):

People in the private sector are only just beginning to understand how much of a banquet public-sector unions have been having at everybody else’s expense … And in public services union power is magnified not just by strikers’ ability to shut down monopolies that everyone needs without seeing their employer go bust, but also by their political clout over those employers.

Excerpts from The Economist's "briefing [which] will look at what the future holds for them. But first it will try to answer two questions: how did public-sector unions become so powerful? And what impact has their power had on the way the public sector works?":

This private-public shift has transformed the trade union movement. In the 1950s unions were solidly working class, dominated by men who had left school at 16 and leant left on economics but right on social issues. Today they are much more middle-class: more than a quarter of American unionists have college degrees, and even more have liberal views on social and environmental issues. The shift has also created tension between the public and private sectors.

…Private-sector bosses are accustomed to playing hardball with unions because they know they can go bankrupt if they don’t. Politicians have no such discipline: they can always raise taxes or borrow from future generations. Those who have challenged the unions have often regretted it.

…In California, as Mr DiSalvo points out, the prison guards’ union has been one of the leading advocates of getting tough on crime. The result of this policy has been a dramatic increase in both the size of the state’s prison-industrial complex (from 12 prisons in 1980 to 33 in 2000) and the pay of the people who run it (prison guards in 2006 made $70,000 a year in base salary and $100,000 with overtime). But public-sector unions can prosper simply by opposing rationalisation: Buffalo, in New York state, has as many public workers in 2006 as it did in 1950, despite the fact that the city has lost half its population.

Public-sector unions combine support for higher spending with vigorous opposition to more accountability. Almost everywhere they have demonised competition, transparency and flexible pay. Teachers’ unions have often acted as the Praetorian Guard in this fight. … In America they have fought relentlessly against charter schools (which escape union rules about pay and promotion) and scholarship schemes (which give choice to parents). The teachers’ unions have an impressive record of terminating reformers [e.g., Greece's Marietta Giannakou and DC's Michelle Rhee].

…It is impossible to calculate the cost of the unions’ inflexibility. But several recent studies provide some indications. … Eric Hanushek, an economist at Stanford University, argues that replacing the bottom 5-8% of American teachers with merely average performers could move the United States from near the bottom to near the top of the international maths and science rankings.

The rigidity of the public sector does not merely reduce the quality of services.

…Public-sector unions now face the biggest challenge in their history.

…Even people on the left are beginning to echo these complaints.

…The unions have responded by proclaiming war on cost-cutting governments. … Unions across Europe have promised strikes in 2011 on a scale not seen since the 1980s.

Public-sector unions will find it hard to win these battles. … They are also discovering that many people in the private sector regard their public-sector colleagues as an overprivileged elite.

…The pressure to rationalise the public sector is likely to continue in coming years.

…It would be a mistake to write off the public-sector unions. They are masters of diverting attention from strategic to tactical questions. Undoubtedly the unions will lose some of their privileges over the coming years; the scale of the debt crisis makes this inevitable. But will governments have the courage to tackle the root causes of the problem (such as pensions) rather than dealing with secondary problems (such as wages)? And will they dare to tackle questions of power rather than just pay and perks?

From Improving teachers (Lessons Learned: At last, America may change the way it trains, recruits and rewards teachers):

…politicians might be expected to do all in their power to ensure that America’s teachers are good ones. For decades, they have done the opposite.

More on The Economist…

Ronald Reagan and Chris Christie, Two Men Who Could Teach Barack Obama a Thing or To If he Were Less Ideological and Willing to Listen

Perhaps the hardest thing for Mr Obama to accept about Reagan is that Americans warmed to him not just because of what he did but also because of the sort of person he was. [Lou Cannon (“President Reagan: the Role of a Lifetime”, a whopping biography of more than 800 pages)] argues that his political magic did not reside only in his happiness and folksy charm. His greatness was that “he carried a shining vision of America inside him.” He had a simple belief that nothing was impossible in America if only government got out of the way. In rejecting the idea of limits, says Mr Cannon, he expressed a core conviction of the nation

While Lexington has a story on What Barack Obama can and can’t learn from Reagan’s blithe spirit (which, in good ol' MSM fashion, seems intent on highlighting the Gipper's failures — alleged or otherwise), The Economist, in accordance with a cover story on the worldwide need for a confrontation with the public sector unions, also publishes a much more positive story on Chris Christie.

The governor has also faced down the teachers union. He has told pupils it is the union’s fault, not his, that they don’t have pens and paper. He has blasted the union for “using students like drug mules to carry information”. He hates teacher tenure, which he says protects bad teachers, who should be “carried out on a rail”. The unions are listening. In December they put forward a tenure-reform proposal; Mr Christie thinks it is still inadequate.

…Polls show that he is viewed more favourably now than when he was elected. His message is resonating not just in New Jersey, but across the country, tapping into the same frustration that created the tea-party movement. Mr Christie is using his bully pulpit in a way no other New Jersey governor has done in modern history. And he has another useful political skill: he keeps people off guard, never quite knowing whether the extra-large governor is going to beat them up or embrace them.

No wonder some conservatives hope for a Christie presidential run.

The "Conservative = Violent / Liberal = Non-Violent" Myth

(Thanks to Val)

One entry for the Oscars' best foreign film category features Algerian martyrs and another French martyrs

The French colonial experience in Algeria, marked by warfare, terrorism and torture, is a wound that never quite seems to close. Anger and guilt about Algeria infuse some of the anxiety today about the heavily immigrant and Muslim banlieues, or suburbs, about the French concern with national identity, radical Islam and veiled women.

Thus Steven Erlanger starts his New York Times article, which is heavy on the blanket condemnation of colonialism.

Lately, France has been moved and angered by two films about Algeria and the French confrontation with its colonial past. The films could not be more different: one, made by Rachid Bouchareb, a Frenchman of Algerian descent, is a raging historical fiction about the Algerian fight for independence; the other, made by Xavier Beauvois, is suffused with religious belief and saintliness.

…One film features Algerian martyrs and the other French martyrs. Both are remarkably unbalanced, and both use the “other” as puppets in a historical drama. One glorifies criminality and terrorism in the name of Algerian freedom and justice, while the other, set in the mid-1990s, looks on horrified as religion mixed with Algerian politics seeks to justify murder and terrorism.

Yet both films have been chosen by their respective countries, France and Algeria, to represent them for the foreign-language Academy Award, which will be presented on Feb. 27.

…For [Benjamin Stora, one of France’s best historians of Algeria and French colonialism], the films make various arguments about politics, sacrifice and faith. But in both films, he said, “Algeria is absent.”

Algeria is not France’s Vietnam, he said, but something more ingrained. “It is much more complicated to exorcise it here, and then on top of that we have the pieds noirs and the harkis,” he said. “France is now getting slightly more involved in this part of its history,” with more documentaries on television. “But the French can’t, for now, see their tragedy on the big screen.”

Rewriting history: In Argentina today it is off limits to even mention in public the victims of the country's left-wing terrorism in the 1970s

Justice is not easily secured anywhere in the world

writes Mary Anastasia O'Grady (gracias para Fausta) as the Wall Street Journal journalist quotes Big Brother's party slogan in George Orwell's "1984" (Those who control the past, control the future: who controls the present controls the past).

But in Argentina today it is off limits to even mention in public the victims of the country's left-wing terrorism in the 1970s, let alone make an effort to win them or their surviving kin a day in court.

Try it and you are likely to be tarred by the Argentine left as a fascist friend of the former military government. The politically correct know that those who were brutalized by the guerrillas that Juan Perón once called "marvelous youth" are supposed to be erased from the national memory.

…Everyone knows the story of how the Argentine military took over the government in 1976 and proceeded to crush subversive movements ruthlessly. Its abuses of power are legion, and in 1983 it finally stepped aside in the midst of hyperinflation and economic chaos.

But Argentina lived another tragedy prior to, and for some time after, the military seized power. It was a wave of carnage and destruction brought on by bands of Castro-inspired guerrillas who sought to take power by terrorizing the nation. Their actions provoked chaos on a national scale that led to the military coup.

Yet because of the military government's ignominious demise, terrorists and their sympathizers have succeeded in rewriting this history, describing only the crimes of their uniformed enemy. Some current or former members of the Kirchner government, others who are in Congress, and others who work in the media were well-known members of subversive organizations.

In an interview in Buenos Aires in November, [Argentine lawyer and human-rights advocate Victoria Villarruel] told me that even opposition politicians don't speak up for the terrorists' victims because it has become "taboo" to do so. The state, she said [from her Center for the Legal Study of Terrorism and its Victims], treats them "as if they were never born."

One result is that a generation of Argentines has grown up with no awareness of the full story of that time of terror.

…It is interesting to note that the number of court cases filed against the military government charging abuses of power totals less than 9,000. Meanwhile the Kirchner government's justification for writing off the victims of left-wing terrorism is a claim that they were victims of ordinary crimes and that their perpetrators are now exempted from liability by the statute of limitations.

Elsewhere (needless to say), the leftists' (self-serving) narrative is working as, in typical fashion, Le Monde readers react with anger at a Jean-Pierre Langellier report from Caracas stating that of 16,094 homicides committed in 2009, 93% remain unpunished, four times more than before Hugo Chávez's rise to the presidency, the outraged Le Monde readers stating that in neighboring Columbia, the situation is (allegedly) worse and blaming (who else?) America and the CIA…

Try THAT with your Feeble State Subsidized Windmills

Yngwie Malmsteen: Call your Attorney. Putin Stolen your Look

The next step, of course, if for the Neo-Soviet Russian strongman to appear in a gold lamé unitard.

The School of Acquiescence and Denial: Europeans' standard metric regarding the long-term influence of Muslim populations on European society

Of all Europe’s great and present miseries, the one receiving the most uncertain remedies is the failing integration of its increasingly large and alienated Muslim communities

warns John Vinocur in his article With Muslims, Europe Sees No Problem, and That's the Problem.

Valentine's Day Banned in Iran
by Plantu in Le Monde
— Here, sweetheart, a brand-new Koran!
— Oh you shouldn't have!

…denial is [the Europeans'] standard metric: That bomb didn’t go off here, our national soccer team is full of Muslim players, and we haven’t elected any anti-immigrant parties to Parliament, or if we have, they’re ultimately manageable. The less we talk about this stuff the better.

Then something happens. A conflict comes into focus that, beyond its particulars, raises the question of the ultimate compatibility of Islamic communities in Western environments. An issue that, most comfortably, is kept vague, suddenly demands that Europe — in this case, the Netherlands — draw the line. But where is the line?

What has taken place here is that Frits Bolkestein, the former leader of the Liberal Party, which now heads the Dutch government, has advised “recognizable Jews, orthodox Jews” that their children should emigrate from the Netherlands to Israel or the United States. He said, “I see no future for them here because of anti-Semitism, above all among the Moroccan Dutch, whose numbers continue to grow.”

The remark last month twice shocked the Netherlands.

…Concerning the harassment of orthodox Jews in public places, Mr. Bolkestein, who is not Jewish, says that it is an “outrage” and “a tragedy” and that he sees similar circumstances existing in France and Sweden.

…Population growth that is faster than the native population’s, extremists’ murderous plots, sharp-edged disaffection for their adopted countries among third-generation Muslim males, and societies where large segments of the ethnic majority insist they feel increasingly less at home — what should the Netherlands, and by extrapolation Europe, do?

Revert to a kind of multiculturalism that Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, at least, insists is dead?

In fact, the School of Acquiescence and Denial has its followers. … Frits Bolkestein, whose father was a Buchenwald inmate, described Mr. Cohen’s vision of reality [the Labor Party's Job Cohen jabbering on about "Muslim suffering and exclusion from European society"] to me as “cultural masochism.”

Pétain's Last Stand

After World War I, virtually every town in France had its Rue or Avenue Pétain

recounts John Tagliabue. Among the French towns was tiny Tremblois, a village on the edge of the Ardennes Forest across the border from Belgium which

has only three streets, and they are named for three French heroes of World War I: Marshals Ferdinand Foch, Joseph Joffre and Philippe Pétain.

The problem is that Marshal Pétain had a second act as head of state during World War II, when his administration in the unoccupied part of the country that was known as Vichy France collaborated with Nazi Germany in eliminating its enemies, notably the Jews.

So under pressure from the national government, veterans and Jewish groups, the council voted unanimously to drop the name Pétain from a little street about 600 feet long, renaming it Rue de la Belle-Croix, for a chapel that stands in a wood at its foot.

…But when the signs here change this month, the last street in France bearing his name will have disappeared. Not everyone is happy with the decision. [Said a journalist, Guillaume Lévy:] “it got all polemical.”…

C'est leur Boulot

If you don’t think the European ‘sense of self’ requires an irrational hatred of the US, then read this article. Don’t read it for the content – read it for the authors' forgone conclusion, and (what are likely the editors') specious, unrelated comments.

Reeking of retrograde supremacism, the author laments that Europe being ‘only’ 10% of global GDP where it was once 20% requires an ignorance of what is taking place in the world: the percentage of the world living poverty is shrinking, and no-one sought Europe’s permission for that to take place.

Sounding like the Soviet Flunkies of old

Miss ‘em? I don’t.

However, with ‘Wikileaks’ shaking the tree, it’s easy to see which nuts fall out: anyone who has a sort of ‘passionate’ and reflexive need to defend their actions.

Target? Your false consciousness! Fill it with perfect (approved) knowledge like this!:

Campus Watch is a Philadelphia based organization. It is essentially a neo-McCarthyite attempt to intimidate US college professors into toeing the Likud Party line whenever they talk about Israel and Palestine. A project of the extreme Zionist Middle East Forum, it claims that "it reviews and critiques Middle East studies in North America with an aim to improving them."[1] However, the agenda has little to do with America as professors are singled out for 'their views and teachings on Palestinian issues and Islam'

...because THEIR propaganda and operant conditioning on campuses is SACRED! Otherwsie, an resemblance they have to bored Troofers in needs of something new to get gastrically disfunctional about – is mere COINCIDENCE.

Even though they believe that there ARE NO coincidences. To think of all the risks they’re taking knowing that the cabal is after them!

By stigmatizing a bad habit, do-gooders have granted themselves leverage to extract freedom and money from a health-conscious population

…you’re probably stumbling over corpses on sidewalks since, according to the surgeon general, exposure even to second-hand smoke can cause immediate disease, including heart attacks

warns David Bozeman.

One takes scant pleasure in defending the tobacco industry, but the pertinent question, now more than ever, is how much latitude will a freedom-loving people grant its government to tax, regulate, demonize, harass and suck the life out of a sector of our economy that is still legal?

…If the government believed that its concerns were valid about the public health of children and bystanders that they claim are subject to immediate disease and death — then why are they not arguing for an all-out cigarette ban? It sounds as if the cause of big government is better served by a living, breathing monolithic boogeyman worth billions of dollars to sate the gluttonous appetites of public do-gooders?

The amount of revenue generated by tobacco taxes at federal. state and local levels is practically incalculable. Anti-smoking advocates claim that making the habit more expensive actually discourages smoking and saves lives and billions in medical costs. Some even consider higher taxes a “user fee,” but, in fact, smokers, who typically die younger, are funding health care for older citizens, whose medical and personal care needs increase with the onset of old age. Government-funded health care? More like health care courtesy of your neighbor.

The anti-smoking crusade fuels what author Jacob Sullum called in 1998 “the tyranny of public health.” … Banning menthol and mandating graphic warning labels may well decrease consumption of cigarettes, but the Big Government mentality will never kill the golden goose. By stigmatizing a bad habit, do-gooders have granted themselves leverage to extract freedom and money from a health-conscious population. Public health is a noble cause, so we are to believe, but the health the current state is obsessing over is clearly its own.

Don't miss the Finalists for 2010 Lie of the Year Award

Muslims' "Wild West Weddings" Lead to One French Town's Banning Civil Marriages on Saturdays

It may not exactly be jihad or the imposition of sharia, deliberately or otherwise (or is it?!), but the Muslims' "Wild West weddings" — with their attendant "incivilities", including convoys of "youths" sitting on cars' hoods honking foghorns and often waving Algerian flags, and drivers engaging in gymkhana-style competitions — has proven enough for the town hall of Roubaix and led the mayor to vow no more civil weddings on Saturdays from January 1st on. Needless to say, MSM reporter Geoffroy Deffrennes sides with the poor, down-trodden Muslims (victims of racism, of course), but Le Monde readers still manage to get a feel for the problem.

Si la mairie de Roubaix ne revient pas sur sa décision, à partir du 1^er janvier, sauf autorisation exceptionnelle, on ne convolera plus le samedi après-midi sur son impressionnant perron. René Vandierendonck, le maire (PS) de la ville, souhaite mettre fin aux gymkhanas de voitures accompagnés de cornes de brume. Les agents municipaux se disent excédés par les incivilités lors des mariages.

…Des forums locaux, sur Internet, pointent "la stigmatisation" de la communauté musulmane. Celle-ci est très loin de se reconnaître dans ces débordements, comme dans la poignée de drapeaux déployés par des jeunes assis sur les capots.

…Depuis 2008, ces quelques mariages au style Far West fâchaient [Arnaud Verspieren, l'adjoint MoDem chargé du développement économique]. L'élu centriste a présidé une commission chargée de régler le problème... Une interdiction du samedi après-midi a été mise à l'essai durant l'été.

Here Kid, Pull my Finger

Alas, my Muse(s)

I've established the precise moment when civilization reached a dead end:



CPO Sharkey meets the strangest person ever to be deported from a Communist country.

From the Bottom of…

European Culture Pretends itself to be a Delicate Flower about to be Sodomized by Mandingo

When freedom is called “freedom”, Markets are simply called in generalization to be called “capitalism”, and anti-campitalism is called “democracy”...

You see where this is going. While it’s cropped up many times before, the recipients of the message grew no more intelligent. The “leading lights” of the culture are using a fake global-warming crisis to rationalize individual will and democratic freedoms away.

It’s because without it, there would be no forum for anyone to disagree with them.

The debate about imposing authoritarian restrictions on basic human rights in order to safeguard the survival of the planet is fuelled by doubts about whether parliamentary democracies can provide answers to questions of ecological survival. The facts suggest they can’t: the US, the foremost proponent of democracy and the market economy, is among the world’s leading polluters. The cumbersome UN won’t be able to ward off the climate catastrophe. Even Germany, a self-appointed paragon of climate protection and environmental technology, is hardly making any headway.

No, authoritarianism is embraced by European elites whenever there is even the slightest possibility of them not getting away with shoving their egotistical, extremist notions on populations. Period. “Eco”-this and that is only this decades’ vain sales-tag.

The global community will be watching very closely to see who puts forth the best answer to the question of prosperity, stability and liberty: will it be unbridled capitalism made in the USA, the Chinese blend of state socialism and rampant capitalism, or an authoritarian raw materials-based regime à la russe? Europe, in contrast, could put forward a politico-economic export hit that might appeal to aspiring democracies like India, South Africa or Brazil.

Or not. Despite the writer’s notion that democracy is ‘just some sort of option’ worth expending when the going gets tough, it’s (basic notion of freedom of speech which some democracies still actually protect) in fact the tool by which such a foolish notion can be entertained. Advocating de facto smiley-face autocracy calling itself a free society for ANY purpose, as European “culture” has advocated persistently for the past century, has been a failure, and has always ended in tears and blood-bathes.

From Marburg in northern Hessen to the deluxe spa resort of Cancun, it’s about 8,600 km as the crow flies. The two places are a 12-hour flight and worlds apart. But they have one thing in common these days: they’re both grappling with the question how much freedom or constraint is needed to ensure our survival on the planet Earth. The question is whether we are heading towards an environmental autocracy.

No. Speak for yourself, asshole. You aren’t all of humanity, no matter how much the meeting look like the “It’s a Small World” ride at Disney World.

Knowing the moral turpitude and wrongness about calling for a suspension of people’s individual rights, they’re taking the passive-aggressive approach against by trying to redefine it as a desiccated form of its’ former self. It’s a clue: the ultimately don’t get it, or individual will, OR tolerance for others’ reasoning, OR what is genuinely regarded as diversity. They prefer the forced march, the one, the put-upon are told, is for the good of mankind, or in this case for the good of the planet because thinking people no longer buy the crypto-Troskyite rationalization for having things thrust upon them.

The question remains: is this issue even real, and why is there a class of intellectual ciphers pretending that man’s responsibility to a non-science – one whose “cure” could murder millions with privation – is “ours”.

Good-Bye, Friend

Geraldine Hoff Doyle was the real-life model for the World War II era We Can Do It posters, an embodiment of the iconic World War II character Rosie the Riveter.

Oooooooooh New Year! Thass th'Time I Wanna See

(thank yuh to Duncan…)

Voilà la Culture Gogo-gôchistes qui Rayonne sur le Monde

One of the underlying arguments commonly raised against commerce is the Marxist presumption that all wealth is derived from either exploiting natural resources or forcing humans into slavery.

Notes business guru-cum-evil-genius Michael Phillips.

When confronted with the Marxist view that all commercial productivity is inherently imperialistic, simply ask the question: ‘Could one salaried employee out produce five slaves?’ The answer is 'Yes'. Slaves are very unproductive, very difficult to manage and Marxists are hanging on to the slavery idea long after the commercial world has discarded it.

Nowhere is this rhetoric more commonly found (at every turn) than in the workers’ paradise of western Europe. The first clue is the misidentification of any and all non-governmental economic activity taking place in civil society as capitalism. It displays an identical ignorance of it that I came to know behind the iron curtain: founded on what little information about it that had been offered to people, and all of it was deliberately negative.

The idea that the idea... the rhetorical grenade to be precise, is something the syndicalist / lynch-mob fantasy left is hanging on to with all of its’ will is precise. Precisely because it is such a fake argument, and is simple enough to thrust onto children who have no life experience to differentiate it. It’s done in the hope that it will produce in them an adherent, knowing full well that ideas that contrived can only be inculcated where there are opportunities to program the target at a vulnerable developmental stage.

The reason is simple. The level of management (and government support) required to use slaves is great and their productivity is nil.

Which, rather ironically, is exactly how the Comecon Marxist-Leninist economies operated: they were filthy with regulatory carpriciousness and ineffectual middle-management, and treated the worker for what he and she was: a captive of the state. Every instiution you were tied to was its’ own plantation, and leaving the society or dropping out was rarely an option.

How a modern leftist can observe those truths, and process the difference between what they want to call slavery with what was an objectively real, living, slavery is most telling.

The counter-argument was that these states didn’t practice “real” socialism. How would they know? The practices of these states were as philosophically consistent as Marx and Engels’ teachings had proscribed. Is what was really there – slavery – not real enough for them?

Whiffs of Tom Lehrer: It's in the Koran

(Shookhran to Damian)

A Classic case of Being Irrelevant

Justice commissioner Viviane Reding on Monday criticised the US for lacking interest and not having yet appointed a proper negotiator on an over-arching data protection agreement with the EU. Her words came as the bloc's own data protection supervisor slammed the EU internal security strategy for being unclear about privacy.

Yadda, yadda, yadda...

"From the outset, we have noted an apparent lack of interest on the US side to talk seriously about data protection," Ms Reding said in a statement, two weeks after holding talks with US attorney general Eric Holder and interior minister Janet Napolitano.
She said that the US is interested in negotiations on specific data-sharing deals with Europe, but that there was less movement on the over-arching data protection agreement [than] she had the mandate to negotiate.

The officially irate Reichsminister Reding continued to expect someone to show up anyway, I suppose for the pointless Kabuki theater that they need to look relevant:

"They have not even appointed a negotiator," Ms Reding pointed out, adding she "expects" the telephone number of the negotiator before the end of the year.

The possibility that others don’t agree with the efficacy of negotiating domestic laws with a foreign entity may not have fallen upon the infallable Empirial Adjutant Reding.

As in: there’s nothing of any note to discuss until the EUvians get a policy, and Congress empowers a mandate. Elsewhere from by bulging “sign it and forget it” pile:

"The EDPS regrets that although the communication refers to privacy and data protection as fundamental rights, the EU commission does not explain how this will be ensured in practice," it noted.

That's alreight. It looks like the world is unwilling to take you seriously anyway.

Is France Pioneering the Sale by NATO Countries of High-Technology Military Equipment to the Kremlin?

Since a low-key Christmas Eve announcement of a French sale of assault ships to Russia,

reports Doreen Carvajal regarding the Mistral from Paris,

high-level government deal makers have boasted about the multimillion-euro deal like it was a soccer game triumph. “France wins,” declares the Web site for the Élysée Palace.

But critics — particularly among Russia’s neighbors including Georgia, Estonia and Lithuania — are raising alarms that France may have pioneered the way for other Western countries to sell Russia whatever they have to offer, from high-technology military equipment to rights for oil pipelines.

“It’s a scandal,” said André Glucksmann, a French philosopher and critic of the deal. He said in an interview on Tuesday that the announcement was timed for the busy Christmas season to bury the “dirty details.”

The boxy, 600-foot-long Mistral vessel is an advanced helicopter carrier equipped with a command center and hospital for military landing operations. It is the first major arms purchase by Russia abroad and the first sale by a NATO country, illustrating the shifting role of an alliance once conceived to counter Soviet military power.

One of the sticking points in negotiations was whether the deal would include advanced naval weapons and defense systems. In the months leading to the deal, a series of French officials softened their stand, saying that France was willing to supply the technology without restrictions.

Naval Industry: France Wins!
Russia chooses Saint-Nazaire to build its new boats
Besides using an infantile term (boats instead of ships, or navires), the Elysee website completely ignores the military aspect of the deal…

…The Baltic states have long raised concerns, keenly aware of the comments of Russia’s naval chief, Adm. Vladimir S. Vysotsky, who last year bluntly evaluated the potential benefits the equipment could have offered during the five-day Georgian war in 2008: “Everything that we did in the space of 26 hours at the time, this ship will do within 40 minutes.”

…Much of the geopolitical wrangling about the deal emerged in secret American diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks. In February 2010, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates raised the issue with President Nicolas Sarkozy and France’s defense minister at the time, Hervé Morin.

According to the ambassador’s report of the meeting, Mr. Gates noted that Russia failed to honor an armistice in Georgia brokered by Mr. Sarkozy. Mr. Gates also was scornful of the top deal makers: “Russian democracy has disappeared, and the government is an oligarchy run by the security services.”

Update: Autonomous Mind has more on "France’s traditionally self serving actions":

Russia was delighted that the Élysée was on board, on message and sowing disunity around western Europe. … The obvious conclusion to draw was that French had identified in Russia an opportunity for an advantage and vested self interest was at play

Moral Repugnance at a Glance, even by the Standards of a Death Cult

Two European quasi-thinkers write a tome about the world that they would like to shove down humanity’s throat, and then interview one another.

Smugness and the pretense that we will “all be shocked”, it seems has become a virtue.

Taz: Herr Leggewie, Herr Welzer, the economy is showing signs of recovery. Isn't the global financial meltdown going rather well?

CL: It depends how you look at it. At least greenhouse gasses emissions are dropping. I haven't seen any bankers dangling from the street lamps but the stock exchange tickers are up and running again, and trade in those idiotic derivatives is booming.

HW: It's business as usual, it's as if it'd never happened. Except that the bill for crisis management will have to be footed by the generations to come.

As if there will be no “price for generations to come” for what they want:

HW: Quite the opposite. We are calling for cultural change, which would be worthwhile even without a crisis. It still makes sense to reject the hegemonic culture of waste and the civil religion of growth even without climate change and economic crisis – and it's fun too.

CL: We've had a lot of very positive feedback from people who've had it up to here with the world as we knew it and who believe that now is the time to build a better world by pooling our resources. The political class has no idea that all around them, a new type of extra-parliamentary movement is forming?

What form is it taking?

CL: The Pirate Party, for example, or the climate alliances and new protest movements.

The morons actually think they’re funny too.

You obviously enjoy making apocalyptic jokes. Or how else should we interpret your romance with crisis?

HW: Why do people always have to talk about the apocalypse and loving crisis whenever you tell it like it is?

Why indeed?

HW: Look, I'll put it very simply: what they sell us as realpolitik these days is a complete illusion, because it doesn't address any the problems of the future – climate change, dwindling resources, mounting water and food deficits, the escalating global conflict potential, the exploitation of our children's future. If you look at it this way, it's the realpoliticians who seem who have a fondness for crises. Crises also provide an excellent opportunity to score points for tireless crisis management. This is good for distracting from the fact that there is nothing on the political agenda.

None of which is real. So, by all means, start up that entirely pointless and fake “zero population growth” movement again. Advocate mass suicide, genocide. Bring back that authoritarianism for the sake of man crap if you think it germaine. Bring it back even if you think it’s Jackie, Tito, Marlon and/or Michael if you think you should... Just impose it on yourselves, you noisy parasites.

Nor is getting caught up in every detached, uninvolved whiner’s complaints become an actually theory of anything, which is why you end up resorting to the only theme that DOES fit, which is that the Apocalypse is nigh, so hand over your dope and underaged girls or something.

Look, it’s very simple: humanity has heard this argument, and it hasn’t just been debunked by reason, it’s disproved itself. Interestingly enough, it managed all of this without the promulgators of the theory being “in charge” of it, or to their apparent disappointment, others.

But for the crown that falls for this routine, it seems that any kind of “sciency” sounding credentials will do.

Harald Welzer is a professor of social psychology. His lastest book is called “Climate Wars.”

Claus Leggewie is director of the German Advisory Council on Climate Change. Leggewie is also a member of the the scientific advisory council of Attac

Modern Social Graces in the Age of Politcal Correctness

Leftism is Now Little More than an Adolescent Lynch-mob Fantasy

Proven to us every day by those that promote it. Even adherents to the (more or less) decayed ideas of envy-laden, class-warfare promoting Marxist-Leninism find that to be true. Don’t be surprised:

Then almost immediately, [the blogger] History is Made… told me, he turned to Indymedia to find it full of claims that Wikileaks is a Mossad/CIA false flag operation to deflect us away from the real conspiracies…

It’s a natural fit for “troofing” in it’s many forms, repeated over and over, over time with no actual examination of the events, outcome, origins, or anything else. For these buffoons, it all comes out the same way:

“Sadly, Indymedia offers a platform to invent caricatures of the Israeli state and of its policies. Instead of recognising the political context, it helps to perpetuate an image of Israel, and of Jews, as sinister conspirators with a secret plan to turn the world into one massive settlement.”

Once the lying starts, expect it to continue. The question really isn’t one of the promoters of these idea thinking that people are after them, (given their importance, and all that divine illumination that they offer,) but why people really AREN’T after them.

Chalking it up to yeaning for a hip edge, those that want to remain respectable are in on the act too.

Obama's Failure to Close Guantanamo? It's the Fault of Bush and of the Trap Laid by His Evil Henchmen

It's all Bush's fault! Bush Derangement Syndrome is back in force in France (but did it ever leave Europe's shores?), as Le Monde — which obviously has no idea of the contents of the Geneva Convention — describes the Guantánamo situation as a "judicial trap" (and "a pure illegality" concerning "that camp of shame") laid by lying, conniving, treacherous officials of the Bush administration. With most Le Monde readers adding their habitual hooey, this of course means in turn that Barack Obama is but a poor defenseless victim of the evil Bush — as you can see in the piece's title (Barack Obama Caught in the Guantanamo Trap) and in very first sentence.

Le piège juridique installé par l'administration Bush, ancrée dans l'idéologie de la "guerre au terrorisme", se referme sur l'administration Obama. En janvier 2011, le président américain devrait signer un décret présidentiel autorisant l'internement sans jugement et pour une durée illimitée de certains des détenus de la base militaire de Guantanamo, à Cuba.

…Ce piège, mis en place après les attentats d'Al-Qaida du 11 septembre 2001, a d'abord consisté à inventer une catégorie juridique, nommée "combattant ennemi illégal", dans le seul objectif de déroger au droit américain et international, en particulier au droit de la guerre codifié par les Conventions de Genève.

Dès lors que lesdits terroristes n'entraient pas dans les catégories usuelles du droit, on pouvait aussi bien créer la prison de Guantanamo que pratiquer sur eux la torture, pour peu que des "avis juridiques" les décrètent conformes au droit.

…Selon le principe de la prophétie autoréalisatrice, en légalisant de facto un "trou noir" juridique, l'administration Bush a créé des prisonniers non justiciables.

Le 21 mai 2009, M. Obama reconnaissait que ceux-ci constituent "l'enjeu spécifique le plus difficile qu'affronte" son administration. Aujourd'hui, par décret, il se retrouve empêtré dans cette situation exorbitante et en passe de confirmer, à son tour, une pure illégalité : la privation de liberté sans fin imposée sans jugement à des êtres humains.

"You broke it, you fix it", dit un dicton américain : celui qui casse doit réparer. Washington, sous George Bush, a "cassé" le respect que devait son administration au droit international. Barack Obama entendait le rétablir. Face à un Congrès où les républicains (massivement) et les démocrates (majoritairement) privilégient les impératifs de sécurité sur toute autre préoccupation, il assure toujours vouloir y parvenir. Et, à terme, fermer ce camp de la honte.

Mais, en attendant, il en vient, lui aussi, à déroger au droit international. La facilité consisterait à suivre le point de vue d'un Jack Goldsmith, ex-rédacteur des "avis juridiques" de George Bush ; il conseillait récemment à M. Obama de s'en tenir à une norme simple : "Ne jugez pas les terroristes, enfermez-les." Le réalisme est de se souvenir que l'abandon du droit finit toujours par se retourner contre celui qui s'y laisse entraîner, même s'il croit ne le faire qu'à titre conjoncturel.

related: What should enrage every decent citizen is that the real torturers — from Zimbabwe to China, from Syria to North Korea — get a pass from the political left ("The demands to shut down our Guantanamo lock-up for terrorists have nothing to do with human rights. They're about punishing America for our power and success.")

Gogo-Gôchistes Pédophiles

John Rosenthal follows the money on the state sponsored hate speech behind Roman Polanski’s film The Ghost Writer. It won “best picture” in the European Film Academy awards, and like virtually all European films shows in the credits a gaggle of state funded sponsors, and other barriers between the product and its unviability.

The entire effort is to advance the “lapdog” argument, as if the tunnel of mirrors, the same one that convinces people to ignore or even defend Polanski’s pederasty, isn’t one big lap of operant conditioning and servility.

The film is a kind of amalgam of “good European” pieties (e.g., the righteousness of the International Criminal Court) and delirious anti-American phantasms. It follows the trials and tribulations of a ghostwriter working on the memoirs of a former British prime minister. In the midst of his assignment, the ghostwriter gradually uncovers the “appalling truth” — as the official synopsis puts it — that his employer had been under the control of the CIA while residing at 10 Downing Street.

Never mind that the population is so cheap and lethargic that “Culture Ministries” are needed to buoy the arts, films, and the like, even those that pander to the obvious which one would think not need state support, get it.

Full of delusions and excuses, dependant on enablement and ignoring the norms of right and wrong, we might as well call it the politics of pedophilia. A fitting end to a society that largely believes that children aren’t worth having, were it not for one’s need to see others as creatures only worth keeping around to exploit for your ego and pleasure.

Selective WikiLeaks and its handpicked print media: the 5 papers that do most to propagate the dismal view of American power and U.S. foreign policy

A more glaring violation of WikiLeaks’s supposed commitment to “radical transparency” could hardly be imagined

notes John Rosenthal as he examines what turns out to be 'the farce that is WikiLeaks’s self-styled “Cablegate”,' pointing out that

whereas WikiLeaks has withheld the documents from the public [not even 1 percent of the reported total have thus far been published on its website], five handpicked media organizations have enjoyed exclusive access to the complete stash. … the selection of the five newspapers enjoying privileged access has clearly not been arbitrary.

Germany’s Der Spiegel, Britain’s Guardian, Spain’s El País, France’s Le Monde, and America’s own New York Times. Not only are these five of the hoariest dinosaurs still roaming across the international old media landscape. Taken together, they are probably the five print media of reference that have done the most over the last decade to propagate the dismal view of American power and American foreign policy that passes for “leftism” nowadays in both Europe and the United States itself. (Italy’s La Repubblica could be added to the list.) Why were precisely these media and not others given privileged access?

The exclusive access provided the five old media dinosaurs has given them an unfair competitive advantage vis-à-vis their competitors and thereby an obvious economic boost. … But the exclusive access has also given the fabulous five old media organizations the opportunity to pick and choose among the cables and to spin their content in accordance with the precepts of the anti-American Weltanschauung.

And spin they have. Der Spiegel and its treatment of the story of the Egyptian imam Abu Omar provides a revealing case in point.

Read the whole thing, notably the (numerous) times that the papers' "editors appear to have not deemed the revelations regarding [subjects such as Khaled Al-Masri] as newsworthy" ('Whether out of ignorance or deceit, news organizations like Der Spiegel and WikiLeaks’s other privileged “media partners” have as a rule neglected to divulge its contents [those of an Italian arrest warrant published years ago] or even its [the warrant's] mere existence to their readers')…

The Pause that Refreshes

Crazy Mixed Up Pup, 1956



An animated fillum directed by the criminally insane Tex Avery, inventor of characters like Screwy Squirrel, Chilly Willy, Daffy Duck, and Porky Pig. Find me JUST ONE of those characters that isn’t struggling with their inner demons, why dontcha?

Don't Ask Don't Tell Repeal Makes Super Marine Come True

(A big nice thaaank youuuu to sweet Duncan)

Trees are Farmed, You Snapperheads

As in, they are no different than any other agricultural product. A trained chimpanzee could figure than out. Then again, we have confirmed to us the fact that Greenies aren’t quite as intelligent as trained chimpanzees.

Via Tim Bleeeah, we find something I’ve run into elsewhere, (with the evil LEED mafia,) wherein they do not want you to print their document in order to “save the trees”. They do this by locking the PDF file that it’s formatted in.

These people are inept:

The WWF format is a PDF that cannot be printed out. It’s a simple way to avoid unnecessary printing. So here’s your chance to save trees and help the environment. Decide for yourself which documents don’t need printing out – then simply save them as WWF.

To illustrate the enfeeblement of these louts, think of it this way. Not printing a document that you will use, as if the tree it came from wasn’t already replanted, is like not eating corn because you're worried that the world will run out of corn cobs. After all, what with all of those corn-type farmers committing suicide in India, and all... even if you won’t buy the fact that it’s old growth corn, that there won’t be anyone left to plant it.

Green Eggs and Epistemological Certitude

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.

- Dr. Seuss (1904 - 1991)

Nicolas Sarkozy: a common French-Chinese front against the United States?

Europe is so besieged by problems that on some days it looks as if its common currency and hopes for unity are disintegrating

writes John Vinocur as Barack Obama, according to Nicolas Sarkozy’s annotators, is preparing to receive the French president on Jan. 9.

All the same, Nicolas Sarkozy will head to Washington early in January for a conversation about reorganizing the world monetary system in a way that might just mark the United States as the real global force in decline.

For the last two years, the French president has been arguing that the dollar’s role as the single global reserve currency doesn’t reflect what he insists is a multipolar world with no further reason to kowtow to the greenback.

Now, as president and agenda setter in 2011 of the Group of 20 consultative body of leading economic nations, Mr. Sarkozy is leaving his bully pulpit’s specific aims and tactics on the dollar fluid — an imprecision difficult to avoid against a background of the euro’s daily ducks and dives.

Still, in the words of Le Monde last month, he is “counting on making the G-20 his magnum opus and finding a solution to the world’s monetary imbalances with, if necessary, a common French-Chinese front against the United States.”

…In his own pre-election year circumstances, Mr. Obama seemingly could not let pass an argument that tacitly centers on nudging or shoving the dollar aside or to a diminished role among the world’s currencies, and is based on a premise (or creed) of American decline.

Troublingly to some, Mr. Obama said this year, in reference to Afghanistan, he does not hold classical views of what constitutes America winning or losing a war. But he has never gotten into the business of reinforcing widespread assumptions of an American acceptance of multipolarity — a notional world of “equal” and competing powers in which the United States concedes loss of its primacy, whatever its many qualifications.

The dollar is not just a symbol of that primacy. The surrender of its prerogatives would damage the United States’ position in the financial and monetary worlds, and very possibly impair America’s military commitment to its allies in Europe and Asia.

Mr. Sarkozy embraces multipolarity, a decades-old Gaullist notion, as if it were a kind of divine commandment.

Where are the Left’s Professional Complainers on THIS One?

Hardly a day goes by when there isn’t some verbal drive-by shooting of Vatican: the actual closure of the Galileo trial issues, or statements about the use of condoms notwithstanding, the play only makes reference to they “having taken so long”, not that they actually took place. It all arises from the Leftist commentariat’s culture of complaint. Perspective is never sought, and events are only cited as examples of their dissatisfaction at something “the others” are insulting their sensibilities with.

As with the bizarre, unrecanted and unrevised defense of the likes of Pol Pot and Mao, it’s not real. It’s only a show. It only bears mention when it is so far outside of common sensibility that it is morally indefensible. So where are they on this subject? A whole movement was silent about the Cultural Revolution, even as it was trying to convince us that the riot s were for “free speech”, despite the fact that all sundry knew that it was just another one of history’s Communist totalitarian roundups.

After 40+ years, the occasional former “students” in China who played out a much more vast Salem Witch Hunt in the Cultural Revolution are admitting some fault and express regret for the personal and social harm that they caused.

The reconciliation and apologies took place among a group of old people: Cheng Bi, retired teacher from the Beijing Foreign Language School, 86 years old; Guan Qiulan, retired teacher from the Peking University Auxiliary Middle School, 81 years old; Li Huangguo, retired teacher from the Beijing Mineral Industry Auxiliary Middle School, 79 years old. Across them are their former students: Shen Xiaoke, Hu Bin and Guo Canhui, all over 60 years old.

Which age, too much age if you ask me, they are seeking redemption and forgiveness to salve their souls.

Now, the Red Guards want to apologize to those teachers whom they and their "comrades" slapped and spit upon many years ago.

I say don’t give it to them, if they waited until the age in which one needs it to do it.

In recent years, Li was clearly suffering from dementia. She could not eat, she could not talk and she was clearly confused. It was hard to say if she was aware that someone was making an apology to her. When people visit her at night, she can occasionally name one or two of them. Her husband Dan Zhongjian told her, "Your students came in the afternoon to apologize to you." Li Huangguo nodded her head.

Which I suppose makes it an awful lot easier if a response isn’t expected due to dementia, emotional exhaustions, and the like.

It’s the kind of face saving that these “Talibs”, former “students,” simply do not deserve. They’re only doing it so that they could stop feeling bad, as if it was about their hurt feelings to begin with.