Foreign Policy: Obama is learning the price a president pays when lofty rhetoric meets hard reality.

The second year of President Obama's foreign-policy and national-security management continued the pattern of decline established in his first year

editorializes Washington Times as it turns out that the Obama administration is ramping up its secret war on terror and as the paper notes that the "total deaths in Afghanistan in 2010 are greater than the sum of the deaths suffered in the first seven years of the war, a period the president reflexively derides as a failure.".

The unbridled and naive optimism that ill-served the country in Mr. Obama's failed freshman outing gave way to a sense of policy drift in 2010. Even the president began to question whether the United States should maintain its primary global leadership role.

My only problem with this editorial is the language in the previous sentence, "Even the president began to question…" The whole point about a self-proclaimed (and proud) alarmist of Obama's bent is that his raison d'être is believing in the sins and in the guilt of America and/or the West, forming his entire outlook and making him tick in the first place, so that he can take on their illegitimate and unjust dominance over the rest of the world… Thus a leftist would not only "question whether the United States should maintain its primary global leadership role", he would outright oppose that role. Hence Obama's own role — as Apologizer-in-Chief…

…Now the White House is on the verge of declaring defeat and issuing an executive order affirming the unlimited detention of terror suspects. Mr. Obama is learning the price a president pays when lofty rhetoric meets hard reality.

Mr. Obama's unprecedented outreach to the global Muslim community has gone bust. Despite continued obsequious gestures in their direction, [the] effort has had no impact in reducing the threat of international terrorism and has engendered a sense of American weakness in the region.

…The Middle East peace process is no farther along than it had been a year ago. … Mr. Obama's 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, which was characterized as "a down payment" for future achievement, remains frozen in escrow.

The war in Afghanistan continued with mixed results. … The total deaths in Afghanistan in 2010 are greater than the sum of the deaths suffered in the first seven years of the war, a period the president reflexively derides as a failure.

…The year saw no solid progress in dealing with the threats posed by the North Korean and Iranian nuclear weapons programs.

…The politically wounded president enjoyed two last-minute victories when the lame-duck Congress flew to his rescue by ratifying the New START nuclear-arms treaty and repealing the ban on homosexuals serving openly in the military. These were only victories for Mr. Obama on the domestic political scene. The START agreement will weaken the U.S. nuclear deterrent and hamper future missile-defense deployments. Having openly homosexual troops will be devastating to morale in the armed forces, and in practice the new policy's implementation will lead to the establishment of a privileged homosexual protected class with ramifications that will reach beyond military service.

Indeed, George Neumayr opines that Political correctness in Obama's military will assume a paradoxical character, becoming at once permissive and puritanical.

…Other notable events include the administration's failure to rally the international community to impose global energy restrictions to counter purported global warming - a White House letdown that was a victory for everyone but climate alarmists - and continuing to expand the use of drone strikes against terrorists, a sensible policy that is generating low level murmurs of "war crimes" among Mr. Obama's disappointed former supporters in the peace movement.

During his trip to India in November, Mr. Obama acknowledged and accepted America's decline. "For most of my lifetime," he said, "the U.S. was such an enormously dominant economic power ... that we always met the rest of the world economically on our terms." Now those days are over, which the president considers a good thing. Our nation also faces increased political competition from assertive rogue states, a resurgent Russia, looming China acquiring more U.S. debt and a variety of challenges the Obama national-security team has shown no ability to confront effectively. Mr. Obama would have us believe that American decline on his watch is inevitable, but he is as much its cause as its casualty.

Pliant and Servile is Just the Way they Like ‘em

What a “world” unceasingly critical of America can’t grasp:

No man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent

- Abraham Lincoln

Political correctness in Obama's military will assume a paradoxical character and be at once permissive and puritanical

The odd admixture of relativism and rigidity that now defines political correctness in the military guaranteed [Owen Honors'] firing, though it took public exposure several years after the event to trigger the termination

writes George Neumayr.

Obviously, Honors has dishonored himself. But it is not at all clear why advocates of open sexuality in the military should be so appalled by his behavior. Do they really find "raunchy" behavior shocking? If so, why do they endorse gay pride parades that exhibit the same juvenile and licentious behavior?

…Spokesmen for military groups representing gay soldiers also expressed dismay at the conduct of Honors. These groups appeared very eager to prove their disciplinary bona fides and apparently saw in this episode, which involved "anti-gay slurs," a propagandistic chance to appear pro-gay and pro-discipline at the same time.

None of this moral outrage, however, is very convincing, for the philosophy underlying political correctness in the military is on the side of permissiveness and aberrant sexual expression. The whole point of the gay rights movement is to say that "no one chooses" their sexuality and thus it is an inherently undisciplined area of life. Since the now-officially approved moral philosophy of Obama's military says that disciplining one's sexual desires means "living a lie," we should expect many more "expressive" episodes in the military's future.

…It appears that political correctness in Obama's military, like political correctness on Ivy League campuses, will assume a paradoxical character and be at once permissive and puritanical, endorsing liberation from traditional morality while arbitrarily regulating the terms of that release. In Obama's Animal Farm, some sins are more equal than others, and homosexuality is chief among them.

No sooner had the policy of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" fallen than Joe Biden was blurting out happily that "gay marriage" is "inevitable," which removes any doubt about Obama's actual position on the subject. Biden's comment exposes Obama's stated opposition to gay marriage as nominal and meaningless -- a temporary opposition on cravenly political, not philosophical, grounds. He favors gay marriage, but the coast isn't quite clear enough yet for him to endorse it formally.

Also take a moment to read Frank Gaffney's Obama is hoping to capitalize on our ignorance of the men and women in uniform who defend this country and of the phenomenon known as forced intimacy…

Meanwhile, the Washington Times editorializes that

Having openly homosexual troops will be devastating to morale in the armed forces, and in practice the new policy's implementation will lead to the establishment of a privileged homosexual protected class with ramifications that will reach beyond military service.

Obama : l'année de la déception ?

Aux Etats-Unis, l'année 2010 est marquée par les élections de mi-mandat et la défaite du camp démocrate de Barack Obama. Mais si, au lendemain du scrutin, la fin de l'année s'annonçait catastrophique pour le président américain, les dernières semaines ont finalement tourné en sa faveur. Quel est le bilan de Barack Obama durant l'année 2010?

Les invités :

• Joseph SMALLHOOVER, Democrats Abroad
• Ellen WASYLINA, Republicans Abroad
• Vincent NOUZILLE, Journaliste reporter, Auteur de Dans le secret des présidents (Fayard, 2010)

Émission préparée par Bilal Tarabey et Yi Song.

Nicolas Sarkozy on Islam: the French "Republic will never allow any religion to impose its rules"

As the troubles in Tunisia lead to an embarrassed silence prevailing throughout Europe, says Le Monde's Isabelle Mandraud — how different the reactions (or absence thereof) when troubles, alleged or otherwise, break out in America, n'est-ce pas? — and as Yves Bordenave covers the Paris trial of eight Jihadist Muslims for engaging in hold-ups, Le Monde's Stéphanie Le Bars reports that Nicolas Sarkozy has given a speech referring to the perceived threat of Islam in France and stating that the French "Republic will never allow any religion to impose its rules."

Sans évoquer explicitement le supposé choc des cultures entre l'Orient et l'Occident, M. Sarkozy a estimé que "le sort des chrétiens d'Orient symbolise les enjeux du monde globalisé dans lequel nous sommes entrés, irréversiblement". "Nous ne pouvons pas accepter que cette diversité humaine, culturelle et religieuse qui est la norme en France, en Europe, disparaisse de cette partie du monde. Les droits qui sont garantis chez nous à toutes les religions doivent être réciproquement garantis dans les autres pays". "La liberté de culte et la liberté de conscience sont consubstantielles à la démocratie", a-t-il rappelé.

…Sans jamais employer le terme de "laïcité positive", théorisée au début de son quinquennat, le chef de l'Etat a aussi, devant les responsables religieux, redit sa conception de ce principe républicain et du rôle des religions dans le débat public, estimant notamment que les croyants ne devaient pas être enfermés "dans leurs églises, leurs synagogues, leurs temples ou leurs mosquées".

"Une République laïque entretient un dialogue permanent avec les religions, de façon à les entendre et parfois, pourquoi pas à les écouter." Même si, précise-t-il, "la République ne laissera jamais aucune religion lui imposer sa loi".

Assumant sans la citer la loi interdisant le port du voile intégral, M. Sarkozy estime que la République doit en revanche intervenir "lorsque des pratiques, présentées souvent à tort comme religieuses portent atteinte à d'autres principes démocratiques". Il évoque enfin sans s'appesantir le paradoxe qui entoure la question de la construction des lieux de culte musulman et les récentes polémiques soulevées par Marine Le Pen sur "les prières de rue". "La République ne peut pas accepter qu'une religion investisse l'espace public sans son autorisation mais cela implique que la République tienne ses promesses en permettant que chacun puisse prier dans des lieux dignes", a-t-il indiqué, sans rappeler que la loi de 1905 interdit de subventionner les cultes.

Riots in North Africa

— HELP!!
— Poor souls…

— We want to seek refuge in Europe!!
— ARGH!!

Here Kid, Pull my Finger (redux)

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”.