Behind the Façades in France: What expats and the mainstream media (French and American alike) fail to notice (or fail to tell you) about French attitudes, principles, values, and official positions…
The dirty little secret is that many of those people on Wall Street who are getting ridiculously rich are Obama supporterswrites Erick Erickson.
But then the Democrats are so loudly demagoguing Republicans as tools of Wall Street that they hope you don’t notice that fact.
If you have to set up programs, and pay people to do journalism, or even think about the specific things that you want them to, then your society is dead. Period.
Generous campaign doners have historically been given easy Ambassadorial posts. Knowing full well that the DCM, or Deputy Chief of Mission is really doing they job, the State Department is used to putting up with a lot.
But one of Obama’s appointments really takes the cake.
The situation was so bad that the inspector general recommended that the State Department dispatch medical personnel to Luxembourg to test the stress levels of embassy employees. It said at least four staffers quit or sought transfers to Iraq and Afghanistan during her tenure, unusual steps for diplomats assigned to a modern, Western European capital.Much as Pelosi, the spouse of a billionaire, first ran as “a Mom in tennis shoes”, Cynthia Stroum has also channeled a lot of that inept, imperious “don’t they know who I am” self-indulgent adolescent behavior that has grown to characterize the wheelers-and-dealers of the gauche-cavier.Nonetheless, even a press that find this kind of thing hilariously juice call this nightmare a “businesswoman and philanthropist”, when in fact she was a personal investor and political action committee boarding party type.
But the report paints a picture of a corrosive atmosphere at the small embassy, with the ambassador running roughshod over staff, threatening to read their e-mails, largely concerned about job-related perks and involved in improper purchases.
In recent years, Stroum has contributed $10,000 to Cantwell and an equal amount to Murray, as well as making four-figure donations to Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and former Sen. John Edwards, D-North Carolina. She gave to the successful 2006 campaign of Sen. Jon Tester, D-Montana.Barrier. Valor. Whatever. This is the kind of reception this barrier busting, “valorous” dark-pool-style private equity investor elicited:
Stroum was recently honored as a "Woman of Valor" at a closed-door Cantwell fundraising luncheon.
The Luxembourg embassy has long been used to reward political donors, but also to break barriers.
As an American presently living in Luxembourg, I wonder why this country can never get an ambassador who is actually a diplomat? Granted, Luxembourg isn't France, but is it too much to ask to get someone who has passed the Foreign Service Exam, or who speaks French?as well as the most logical of comments:
Stroum - a "Woman of Valor?" Only in a society that lacks any virtue. Such titles belong to individuals who risk their lives in order to save the lives of others - not people who shell out their political bribery money to prostituting politicians.In fact the words success, generosity, understanding, understanding, hard work, success, and valor DO apply to the Stroum family name: her father
[...]he joined the Army Air Corps.But in the fall of 1941, months before the U.S. entered World War II, Mr. Stroum took a leave to attend a sister's wedding, and while he was gone, his squad shipped out to the Philippines. Mr. Stroum became a crew chief and flight engineer, and came to Seattle to ferry Boeing B-17 bombers throughout the nation.When he first arrived in Seattle, Mr. Stroum lived with the other aviators at the Sorrento Hotel. He met his future wife at the nearby Jewish USO center. They were married Aug. 9, 1942, and Mrs. Stroum paid for the $3 marriage license. They were the first couple married by Temple De Hirsch-Sinai's new rabbi Raphael Levine, who became one of Seattle's great religious leaders.Briefly living in Portland, he sold different items including auto parts.He settled in Seattle in the late 1940s and formed several sales companies to representing automotive- and radio-parts makers. In the mid-1950s he became an electronics distributor.He named his main company ALMAC/Stroum Electronics, combining the names of his wife, Althea, and his two daughters, Marsha and Cynthia.He also began distributing parts for Erna Jorgensen and Harry Schuck, who had founded Schuck's Auto Supply. In 1967, when the pair retired, Mr. Stroum bought their business with their help and oversaw expansion of the chain to seven stores.Stroum sold ALMAC in 1974 for some $2 million. He then made his first major charitable gift: $600,000 to the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle. He sold Schuck's to Pay n' Save in 1984 for $70 million, beginning a new career of giving.So it seems that it isn’t juts genius that seem to skip a generation.
The United States is acknowledging that the hardline Muslim Brotherhood may play a role in Egypt's transition from autocracy if it agrees to a peaceful, democratic processreports the AP.
State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley says the U.S. isn't dictating Egypt's shift from President Hosni Mubarak's three decades in power. He says it is up to Egyptians to determine the process, but he called on the Muslim Brotherhood - which is a banned group - to respect democratic processes. …He acknowledged Wednesday the hardline Islamist movement is "a fact of life in Egypt."
And so? The Mafia is a fact of life in Sicily — as well as in various places in the New York/New Jersey areas… Is that a reason to insist that the Cosa Nostra play a role in Italian and/or in Northeastern politics if it were to renounce violence and agree to a peaceful, democratic process?
Doesn't the term "lip service" ring any bells in the State Department?The attack on the institution of marriage is not only the biggest cultural but also the biggest fiscal issue of our timeswrites Phyllis Schlafly (who is also telling Congress that We Want Our Light Bulbs).
Marriage is being assaulted by unilateral divorce, feminist hostility toward marriage, the bias of family courts against fathers, and the taxpayer-paid financial incentives that subsidize illegitimate births.From Phyllis Schlafly's (smashing) list — read them all — of New Year's Resolutions for State Legislators:
…Sounding a Moynihan-style alarm today is Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation. He has assembled figures from U.S. Census Bureau and Centers for Disease Control data, and they are downright scary.
…It's a very big money problem because the government is transferring nearly $1 trillion a year in taxpayer-funded handouts to the 40% of Americans who rely on government for all or part of their living expenses.
A lack of marriage causes poverty. … single moms want their babies and confidently expect Big Brother to provide for them.
Rector's solution to the poverty problem is marriage. He urges government policies to promote and strengthen the institution of marriage instead of providing incentives to discourage it.
Marriage drops the probability of child poverty by 82%. Marriage has just as dramatic an effect as adding 5 to 6 years to the parents' level of education.
If single moms were to marry the fathers of their children, the children would immediately be lifted out of poverty. Eight out of ten of these fathers were employed at the time of the births of their out-of-wedlock children.
Government should reduce or eliminate the marriage penalties in welfare programs, in tax law, and even in ObamaCare.
…Ronald Reagan's advice is still pertinent. If we subsidize something, we'll get more of it; if we tax it, we'll get less of it.
Topical or not... On what is meant to be an authoritative cartoonist website, what religion having a great deal of difficulty fitting in with the modern European society eradicating relativist outlook do you not see represented under the rubric of “sacrilege” ?
You will, however find this kind of thing all over the site:
• Jacques Chirac: Pff… How does that doodad work? I gotta head for the courthouse! Where is that anyway?"J'ai en face de moi chaque jour un homme qui peut être éblouissant et qui en étonnerait plus d'un",a-t-elle dit. Quant à son procès, "il a toujours dit qu'il voulait être traité comme un justiciable comme un autre. Il a dit qu'il irait à son procès et il le fera", a aussi garanti Mme Chirac.
…Olivier Besancenot, porte-parole du Nouveau Parti anticapitaliste, a estimé sur RMC/BFM TV qu'il fallait,"bien sûr", juger Jacques Chirac. "On nous fait le coup à chaque fois (...), à chaque fois qu'il y a un responsable politique qui pèse un peu, qui est dans le collimateur de la justice (...), ça dure, ça dure, ça dure et puis, à un moment, il est trop vieux et puis on nous dit : 'C'est trop tard.'
EU envoy to Belarus suffered from 'stress,' not beating
Your diplomats aren’t worth beating anyway. For WHAT? Their intelligence? What’s more, is that their guy sounds like someone defending themselves against a workplace sexual harassment claim:He confirmed that there was "no physical contact" between any Belarusian policeman and himself during anti-government demonstrations in Minsk on the night of 19 December.
Elsewhere, the European Council on Foreign Relations has published a study that confirms the obvious: Europe will not be “a pole” in the popular model of the “multipolar” world. The appeal of thinking the world’s multi-polarity permitting EUtopia to be at the center of all triangulations, but alas ther will be little pole-dancing for them.
Now they take solace in the world evolving into a “post-western” one. In other words, if they can’t run it, there must be a bigger trend cheating them out if it, and it couldn’t possibly have anything to do with their apathy in dealing with strategic risks. There is: they decided that they were too busy hating their allies and themselves to preserve their own well being.
It’s about this simple: now that they have shot western culture in the foot, an expansive weathly, still largely Maoist state who are amateurs in any sort of statecraft that doesn’t involve commerce will soon have the biggest say when it comes to human rights and international relations.
Aren’t you glad that there are unions to protect “the oppressed” workers such as Miami Elementary School teacher Cheryl Grampa?Grampa "engaged in inappropriate conduct and contact with a minor student ranging from soliciting and allowing students to massage her, in exchange for rewards, allowing students to touch her in an inappropriate manner and failing to take reasonable and corrective action with respect to improper touching," according to a formal complaint by the School Board.
Thanks to the collective, the disciplinary action taken against this 45 year old who should not be near students of ANY age is more like a vacation.Grampa, 45, will miss five days of school without pay for her actions, which stems from a massage request during the 2009-2010 school year.
In fact, they’re all rotten and self-absorbed, considering that the School Board’s statement seemed more concerned with maintaining the profile of the teachers than protect the young that they’re entrusted with.Her actions were "sufficiently notorious to bring [Grampa] and/or the education profession into public disgrace or disrespect," the complaint states.
Excruciating new problems never nullify the old ones
states John Vinocur as the International Herald Tribune pundit notes the difference in the Apologizer-in-Chief's support for Egyptian protesters versus his total lack thereof concerning Iranian demonstrators.In the case of Iran’s potential nuclear threat, Egypt’s gathering implosion — joined by some new elements of concern — is only more bad news for the West.
… A situation in Egypt where the West, including the Obama administration, looks both challenged in articulating its support for the protesters shaking an apparently futureless regime in Cairo and unwilling to openly assert that it wants a successor to Hosni Mubarak who would hold to his clear line against Iran becoming a nuclear power.In Tehran, the mullahs have been comparing the wobbling Mubarak regime to the fall of the shah in 1979.
Indeed, a better comparison might be with the circumstances around the mullahs’ stolen election in 2009. At the time — and since — President Barack Obama of the United States didn’t (and hasn’t) offered either verbal or practical backing to the Iranian opposition against a government whose history of oppression and contempt for the law is well documented, and well known.
Now check out this cornucopia of emerging and baleful ironies relating to Iran that might be delighting the mullahs:
• The man mentioned in Washington as a possible leader of a caretaker government in preparation for an election in Egypt is Mohamed ElBaradei, the former director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the global nuclear watchdog.
Over the weekend, the French newspaper Le Figaro described Mr. ElBaradei’s tenure as bent on minimizing the danger of Iran’s nuclear program. Its security affairs writer quoted a former French high representative at the agency as saying of the Egyptian, who was given the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize for his leadership at I.A.E.A.: “He systematically underestimated the progress of the Iranian program, used deliberately vague language, and concealed certain essential elements. He contributed to delaying sanctions against Iran.”
Washington provided the irony: An American official, referring to the Egyptian, said: “He’s shown an independence from us that will squelch any argument he’s doing our bidding.”
• Russia’s moment of seeming helpfulness involving Iran may be replaced by another attempt by Moscow to wield its cooperation on the issue as a new quid pro quo.
… The possible maneuver: Over the past two years, Russia could regard that it had some success in trying to leverage its position on Iran in exchange for modifications in NATO’s plans for a missile defense shield or the New Start nuclear arms agreement with the Americans. Now, just as it refashions its view on Iran, it is making clear, according to articles last week in the Russian newspaper Kommersant, that its view of cooperating with NATO on missile defense must involve “sectorization,” or giving Russia responsibility for an area in Eastern and Northern Europe that NATO believes would recreate a Soviet-type zone of influence.
All this has the look of renewed Russian hardball, with Iran potentially reappearing in the game as a pressure point. Irony? Mr. Medvedev, everybody’s pal in the Kremlin, chose a tone of friendly regret last week to say that if there’s no acceptance of Russian terms on missile defense, “In the future, we’ll have to take unpleasant decisions on the deployment of nuclear strike units.”
• The French, who uncovered the Iranians’ secret nuclear reactor in Qum in 2009, are now making the case to the allies that they have hard evidence that North Korea has exported significant quantities of highly enriched uranium to Iran.
That is an assertion that wilts irony. Basically, it seems to mean: How can anyone say there’s a lengthened timetable for dealing with Iran and less urgency for tougher unilateral measures that skirt the U.N. Security Council?
A European blogger on Obama’s State of the Union Address finds his Eurocentrism would normally not permit him to observe the activities in the wild of non-Euros. Nonetheless, mere mentions are still longed for:As I am currently living in the US who heard throughout the media for the past weeks how much this would be an important speech , I could not not watch it ; and as a Euro-blogger, I could not not look for references to the old continent.
Newsflash Mr. Henning: it wasn’t an important speech. It was a platform using Kabuki and forced seating arrangements to raise the President’s profile. It’s eroding unavoidably due to public observation of the predictability and mediocrity of the POTUS and his political entourage.The SOTU surpassed my expectation with TWO mention of Europe. The first about our rail and road infrastructures, the second as a NATO ally.
This certainly speaks to an anxiety, if not a level of self-absorption in the continental brain trust. The question that goes unasked is: how is it that the wealthiest entity on earth, one with a population of half a billion, not be up to anything worth noting outside of the usual pedantries about state subsidized high-speed trains, inefficient windmills, and the like?
Those two mentions have to be compared to China (4 mentions), India of Chile (3 mentions both) or South Korea (6 mentions). We (Europe) are on the same level as Russia (2 mentions also) and just before Brazil (1 mention).Let’s just notice the Energy goals stated by B Obama: 80% of the US power from clean energy by 2035. Hard to say if this will become reality, but that’s a courageous goal.
Giving away other people’s resources is courageous? Is that what the kids are calling it these days?
Carla Bruni finally purged herself of a disease of the mind.Only two years ago Mrs Bruni-Sarkozy had claimed that she was "instinctively left-wing" after at one stage supporting her husband's Socialist rival in the 2007 presidential elections.
It isn’t an instinct. It’s actually called operant conditioning, and it’s why leftists expel the demonizing, divisive invective that they do, and feel a burning need to overwhelm institutions that groom the young, and make every effort to turn them into ideological monocultures.But in Monday's interview with Le Parisien newspaper, she said her previous political persuasion was only due to her belonging to a "community of artists." "We were bobo (bourgeois bohemians), we were left-wing but at that time I voted in Italy (her native country)." I have never voted for the Left in France and I can tell you, I'm not about to start now. I don't really feel left-wing anymore," she said.
Some hang on as if HAVING the delusions of the left’s paradise will somehow bring it on. Most others, on genuine reflection, find their paradise dystopic.
However, looking honestly at their buffoonish ideas and reactions is usually sufficient for the unprogrammed to come to Bruni’s conclusion.She said her political U-turn was down to the recent behaviour of the French Left. "I have heard Socialist officials say the same kinds of things as the National Front say, and I have been really shocked," she claimed.
Actually, Chris Matthews' mention of Egypt's Panama Canal (sic) may turn out, in a way, to be prescient, since there is a way of comparing Egypt with Panama as well as with Iran, and both of them related to Jimmy Carter to boot.
— gave away the Panama Canal…It’s comic to see an authoritarian budding Marxist decry “meddling”.Chavez scoffed at what he said was the United States' chameleon-like foreign policy.
Because even when the accusations are fake, he assumes that he is accurate."See how the United States, after using such-and-such a president for years, as soon as he hits a crisis, they abandon him. That's how the devil pays," he said.
This, from a man using his population as a crash-test dummy, retesting a century of Socialist failure.
"They didn't even give a visa or anything to the president of Tunisia," he said, referring to President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, who lost power this month after failing to quell the worst unrest of his two-decade rule.
I really believe that Chávez the fact that he will suffer from the same kind of blowback that Ben Ali and Mubarak are. I’ll bet he’s pooping his Vladimir Ilyich Lenin Pol Pot Underoos right now.
What’s even more hilarious, even proud former pederast Daniel Cohn-Bendit thinks Hugo is an ass.Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban was compared on Wednesday with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. "You are becoming a European Chávez," said the leader of the Greens parliamentary group, Daniel Cohn-Bendit.
Mm. Not Quite. It’s Chávez who’s actually becoming a rather typical European politician of the 20th century. He’s only saying what most of the European left wish it could, despite their praise for ‘Ugo’s ideas and methods.
If you would like to know what the White House really thinks of Obamacare, there’s an easy wayopines Dr. Milton R. Wolf, a board-certified diagnostic radiologist and a medical director who happens to be cousin of Barack Obama.
Look past its press releases. Ignore its promises. Forget its talking points. Instead, simply witness for yourself the outrageous way the White House protects its best friends from Obamacare.From Dr. Milton R. Wolf's blog:Last year, we learned that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) had granted 111 waivers to protect a lucky few from the onerous regulations of the new national health care overhaul. That number quickly and quietly climbed to 222, and last week we learned that the number of Obamacare privileged escapes has skyrocketed to 733.
…Not only are the payoffs an affront to our democracy and an outright assault on our taxpayers, the timing itself of the latest release makes a mockery of this administration’s transparency promises. More than 500 of the 733 waivers, we now know, were granted in December but kept conveniently under wraps until the day after the president’s State of the Union address. …For this administration, transparency promises last only until the teleprompter is unplugged. …
Backroom deals and cover-ups may be business as usual for Washington, but understanding why the Obama administration protects its friends from Obamacare offers special insight into what the purveyors of the mandate themselves think about their own law. This is key: The waivers aren’t meant to protect victims from unintended consequences of Obamacare; they are meant to exempt them from the very intentional increased costs of health insurance that the law causes. …
In short, the administration has decided that you will face increased health insurance premiums, but special friends in the unions will not. …
The question remains: If Obamacare is such a great law, why does the White House keep protecting its best friends from it?
The EU’s “we started it, but it isn’t really ours” answer to the existence of the blogosphere yields hits about Australia under the Austria tab. This, of course is one of the many mythical bugaboos that European HateRz have about the U.S., something that I have never personally witnessed, which is the narrative that “all Americans cannot tell Australia from Austria”.
That someone, somewhere saw one child mix up Austria and Australia is the likely source, but the meme required hate to remain alive for decades.
Just in the interest of the edification of those who run the omni-loquasious blog-feed-plex, Australia is NOT, I repeat NOT, a nation in Europe, nor is it a member of the EU.
they content themselves with commenting on the news that the mainstream media create.Too often, … they turn this commentary on those who would challenge mainstream orthodoxy.
Without intending to perhaps, these "respectable" conservatives have created a firewall around the White House and serve as something of a Republican Guard for its chief inhabitant.
Which is to say: doing nothing about a thuggish regime on the fringe of the supposed “Human Rights paradise”., and benignly ignoring them while playing something out to the EU’s domestic audience.The Commission's spokespeople have said that one aim of the discussion is to sign an energy memorandum, as part of a wider programme of "constructive engagement" with Uzbekistan, which also includes issues on which the EU and Uzbekistan do no see eye to eye, such as human rights. Even if a few references to human-rights abuses do sneak onto the agenda, it is doubtful that this high-level discussion will be much more "constructive" than any of the annual human-rights dialogues between the EU and Uzbekistan, or indeed that the Commission is really motivated by this aspect of the meeting. What matters here is energy.
The timeline say it all.
The EU’s efforts to confront Uzbekistan over the May 13 2005 Andizhan killings - when Uzbek government security forces fired on a demonstration, killing hundreds of people - have been characterised by these knee-jerk changes of priority, and a failure to see any policy through in a consistent way. In the immediate aftermath of the killings, the EU’s priority was indeed human rights. An arms embargo and other smart sanctions were placed on Uzbekistan, and the EU’s "partnership and cooperation agreement framework" was partially suspended.
In 2007, the EU launched a human rights dialogue with Taskhent. But only two years later, its sanctions were dropped despite a lack of commitment from the Uzbek side, a reported worsening of repression in the country in 2008 and 2009, and no credible investigation being allowed into the Andizhan events. Strong pressure came from Berlin to do so, because the Germans were reluctant to allow the sanctions to jeopardise their use of a strategic airbase in Uzbekistan.
- In 2005 they wanted to confront Karimov (verbally), but didn’t.
- Two years later, they talked about possibly confroting him (verbally) again, but didn’t.
- 2008-09: with further handwringing over deepening repression, but no mention is made of it.
- 2011: the brave and bold lights of the EU-3 flap their gums at ONE ANOTHER again, but not at the Uzbeks.
To underscore just how naïve they are, the excuse used is the use of an air base. In reality, that’s as much of an instrument of leverage for the Germans than anything else, not to mention the fact that they hardly want a resurgent Taliban seeding the population with fresh ideas for how to dispose of the Karimov regime, if nothing else.
The article’s seemingly unintentionally probing title, “A backdoor guest?” is more apt than it would seem. Having set this as another precedent in the eyes of Iran and Russia, the Bunga-Bunga is on Europe.
"L'enseignement des langues est en train de devenir catastrophique. Luc Chatel l'a diminué au lycée, et il perpétue des épreuves de baccalauréat qui ne mesurent rien. Surtout pas un niveau en langue", déplore Michel Morel, de l'Association des professeurs de langues vivantes (APLV). En fait, l'offre n'est pas la même pour tous. "Il est faux de dire que rien ne va dans le système éducatif. Les classes européennes, où l'on fait par exemple des maths ou de la géographie en anglais, permettent d'apprendre une langue", se réjouit Natanaël Wright, le président du Wall Street Institute. Mais ces classes-là n'accueillent que 270 540 des 5,2 millions de lycéens et collégiens.
…En théorie, la quantité d'exposition est suffisante. En pratique cela ne fonctionne pas. "Trente élèves dans une classe, deux à trois heures par semaine, trente-six semaines par an... calculez donc le temps de parole de chacun !" s'agace Michel Morel.Cet enseignant ne croit pas à la "révolution" Chatel. "Ce sont des déclarations clownesques. Installer un enseignement en maternelle grâce aux nouvelles technologies est grotesque", s'étrangle-t-il. Un avis que n'est pas loin de partager la responsable de l'Association générale des écoles maternelles, Lucile Barberis. "C'est une méconnaissance des enfants de 3 ans, de la manière dont ils apprennent", confiait-elle, le 23 janvier, à l'Agence éducation et formation.
Of the popular insurrection taking place in North Africa, Italian Foreign minister, Franco Frattini called for a European “Superfriends” intervention, albeit one promising some aid (or ade,) ‘n stuff. "...the EU should send a high-level "political support team" to calm tensions in Algeria, Egypt, Tunisia and other countries in the region hit by deadly civil unrest in recent days.
This should give one a good idea of Europe’s intellectual boundaries and its’ self-regard: The Eurocentric European Citizen looks at Frattini’s statement and adds a caveat without irony:
"The European mission ... [should] take contact with the highest levels, beginning with the authorities in Tunisia, with civil society, mayors, opposition parties, to collect information, not to give orders," he said, Italian newswires report.
"I do not think this can be dealt with by sporadic initiatives of this or that country in Europe, but only by a European initiative."To calm tensions, but to not give orders? The EU would have to be very clear about what it wanted to see in the region after the protests ran their course. Does it want to see a return to the status quo, or does it want to ensure a stable transition to more democracy or an accommodation of the protesters' demands? Sending in a clearly political mission without figuring out what kind of role it is to play could backfire pretty easily - what would be the reaction to the mission if the protesters failed or succeeded? Would the EU mission get some of the blame for the outcome, even if it didn't really do anything?
NOT Guaranteeing security, and promising an unknown future ruling entity some aid, does not necessarily entitle then to give orders. After the colonial legacy, the world was supposed to be different, but these are states that have had decades of grooming by, and engagement with their future lesson-givers.
It should also be noted that this crisis “in their neighborhood” caught the Europeans by surprise. Not much of a neighborhood watch in Mudville, I guess, because the CIA saw it a mile away, and were all over it like white on rice. All this gets you in “the neighborhood” is damning accusation that the entire revolution was a CIA plot... even if that IS true, who the hell are these clowns siding with?
At Sharm el Sheikh on 19 May 2008, President George W. Bush addressed Arab leaders at the World Economic Forum with a page from the overarching theme of his Presidency: his Freedom Agenda.
Arab states need to promote freedom at home and resist Iran's nuclear
ambitions, George Bush said yesterday, while insisting in the face of widespread
scepticism that he is committed to achieving peace between Israel and the
Palestinians.
The US president used a speech in the Egyptian resort of
Sharm el-Sheikh to appeal to leaders in the region to take the future into their
hands and "
"The light of liberty is beginning to shine," he added,
praising advances for democracy in Turkey, Afghanistan, Iraq, Morocco and
Jordan, but only hinting at stagnation and repression in Saudi Arabia and Egypt,
his two stops after joining Israel's 60th anniversary celebrations in Jerusalem
last week.
Be careful for what you wish for, but wish you still should, especially if you aren’t free.
Bush also attacked Syrian and Iranian support for the Shia movement Hizbullah
in Lebanon. "Every peaceful nation in the region has an interest in stopping
these nations from supporting terrorism," he said.
Democracy, and the removal of the footprint of the state from the neck of a people are to those enamored with Realpolitik a tool. To Bush it was a goal.
Guido Fawkes notes a strange silence among UK’s rose-clutchers. Not only was Ben Ali’s nominally-democratic autocratic party a member of the Socialist Internationale, but so is Mubarak’s nominally-democratic autocratic party.
Let’s not forget the Ba’athists once supported by the Soviets. See the trend yet? Nominally at least?
Poverty
Potential sovereign debt failures
Terrorism and war
Instability in the energy supply
AIDS
The EU peddling mobile phone chargers that are already commonly available.
Read the original letter in FrenchThe Contagion of Freedom
What a shock it was to receive the january 19 issue of Le Monde headed by the following title: North Africa: The Risks of the Tunisian Contagion. So: Democracy is contagious and it entails risks!! Quickly, let's vaccinate all Arabs and all the oppressed peoples of Africa, America, and the world at the same time! More seriously: since the items on pages 5 and 6 and on the Debates pages are far more balanced than this awkward title, why not have chosen instead "The Hopes of the Tunisian Contagion"?
Millions of people worldwide have based huge expectations on the experience of a popular revolution supported by the Internet and by the determination of millions of oppressed citizens in Iran, in Egypt, in Algeria, in Libya … who are dreaming of a contagion of freedom …
All hope for a contagion of fear for dictators and of hope for the peoples ...
I regret that Le Monde seems to be adding its voice to the anguish of the colonialists and of the post-colonial profiteers who supported Ben Ali and who will continue to support the successors who are doing their best to avoid contagion.
26-JAN-2011: EU to Cairo: respect 'legitimate yearnings' of citizens
27-JAN-2011: CAIRO — Political protests may be rocking Egypt with a new, nonideological force, but President Hosni Mubarak and his allies have not veered from a playbook they have followed through nearly three decades of one-party rule.
As always, the government has responded to the unrest primarily as a security issue, largely ignoring, or dismissing, the core demands of those who have taken to the street.
Greece to Turks: beat it.Minister says country can't take in anymore illegal immigrants; says barrier will be similar to wall built on US-Mexico border.
So do they still qualify to be morally superior adroit, thoughtful, caring Europeans now?
Send in the boat of delusional inept smugness! Tous de suite!
This mook really does reflect fairly well what many of the natives think in old Europe think. It reflects fairly well the extent to which they’re generally as badly informed about the world as an illiterate living in a Yemeni village.
I suggest citing his “climate of hate” the next time a cheap explanation for a mass-shooting is being sought. It would be a lot more accurate than his melodramatic masturbatory fantasies about “those rich people”, all being alike, as they are.
The French are more opposed to free market capitalism than the inhabitants of Communist China and other advanced economiesconclude the results of an IFOP opinion poll quoted by Daniel Flynn and Elizabeth Fullerton for Reuters (Shihsheh to Hervé).
…33 percent of French people believe it is time to abandon capitalism, the highest proportion among the 10 countries surveyed.
In China, which is ruled by the Communist Party but has embraced its own brand of capitalism, just 3 percent of those questioned thought that the market system was working badly. …
Some 65 percent of the Chinese surveyed said the current system was working well and should not be changed, the highest percentage in the poll, followed by Australia with 63 percent, Brazil with 57 and the United States with 55 percent.
…The poll came hot on the heels of another survey by BVA-Gallup earlier this month showing the French were more negative about their economic prospects than many countries including Afghanistan and Iraq.That survey showed 61 percent of French people believe this year will be plagued by economic difficulties.
Corriere della Sera: The body of Mike Bongiorno was stolen in the night from the cemetery at Dagnente, a small district of the municipality of Arona, in the province of Novara. The thief or thieves broke the plaque sealing the tomb to steal the mortal remains of the much-loved television presenter, who died on 8 September 2009.
As vulgar as that is, it puts into perspective the misuse of pain and misery in entertainment by and for the culturally inept, and the horror with which the vile choices they make, and how a predictably flippant and childish blab-arati treats matters of any actual import. The nearly six-minute clip features an onslaught of depraved scenes: hanged models dangling from the ceiling on chains; West rapping while casually holding a woman's severed head that is still dripping blood; a bloody amputated hand; and Jay-Z spitting rhymes while a semi-nude woman in heels is splayed across a couch with the first signs of rigor mortis setting in.
So is necrophilia the new “final frontier” in what will be told is arty/edgy/”everybody does it” cool?
I’m not sayin’, I’m just sayin’. It is also an extension of the horror aesthetic that has infiltrated popular culture in the last decade - the TV series Dexter, the various incarnations of CSI and torture porn movies like Saw and Hostel.
Just to clear things up, West, a fat oaf, virulent Bush-hater and “peace proponent”.
Sure. Whatever you say. You’re fans are largely too stupid to take you up on the contradictions, so, like, WHATever on the politics and icky war stuff.
Successful propaganda is composed of equal parts deception and suppression, and the apparatchiks in the mainstream media are much better at the lattersays Jack Cashill (merci à Hervé).
They may have erred in pushing the Arizona assassination attempt beyond its ideological limits last week, but they succeeded brilliantly a few months earlier in suppressing news of a nearly lethal attempt by a genuine leftist.
In September 2010 Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon was scheduled to speak at Penn Valley Community College in Kansas City.
At some point, wearing black clothes and a bullet-proof vest, 22 year-old Casey Brezik bolted out of a classroom, knife in hand, and slashed the throat of a dean. As he would later admit, he confused the dean with Nixon.
The story never left Kansas City. It is not hard to understand why. Knives lack the political sex appeal of guns, and even Keith Olbermann would have had a hard time turning Brezik into a Tea Partier.
Indeed, Brezik seems to have inhaled just about every noxious vapor in the left-wing miasma: environmental extremism, radical Islam, anti-capitalism, anti-Zionism and Christophobia, among others.
In his “About Me” box on Facebook, Brezik listed as his favorite quotation one from progressive poster boy, Che Guevara. The quote begins “Our every action is a battle cry against imperialism” and gets more belligerent from there.
… For the last century or more, it is the progressive fever swamps that have nurtured most of the world’s hate and virtually all of its violence, including, paradoxically, radical Islam.
As Casey Berzik cried out with multicultural flair, “El Futuro es La REVOLUCION!” But if an assassin strikes in a media vacuum, and no one hears him, can there ever be a revolution?
They’re as predictable as the guy in the back of the hall who yells out “play Freebird!”Rank and file Europeans are some of the most self-obsessed, information-crippled boobs I have ever encountered. Our own bumbling nitwit society looks pretty sharp by comparison.
- from a comment left on Michael Phillips’ excellent Pro Commerce weblog.
The “Failed state” narrative finally finds the obvious. In Europe. Failed States are usually those African countries blamed by westerners for not having started their democratic and economic ascend, ravaged by poverty, corruption and a clear lack of good governance. But what if this vocabulary of “Failed State” could apply to European countries having failed over the last decade to foster growth and radically change their society in the light of the upcoming challenges? This is particularly the case of Belgium, and this is dangerous for the Europe.
What do you mean “what if?” It already has. Plus, what’s all this sudden talk of “intervening to save” Belgium? Didn’t they have this thing against meddling and nation-building being, like, y’know, like wrong ‘n stuff?
So, we do we bother with them at all? Because in the U.S., a driver's license is really an ID card. A sort of internal passport we're all compelled to carry -- and produce, upon demand. It has very little to do with driving -- and much to do with herding us like the cattle we've become.I go too far? Well, see how far you can go without a driver's license -- even if you never get behind the wheel of a car. Banks want to see your driver's license before they'll open an account -- which you need to cash your check from your employer -- who won't hire you unless you produce the government-issued internal passport -- which you also can't board an airplane without and do many other things besides.
All of which have exactly zilch to do with operating a motor vehicle.
Of course, it was the Germans who invented the "driver's" license. (Stifle the PC outrage; your angry correspondent is as ethnically Volkdeutsch as sauerkraut.) … The Germans have a DNA-encoded fetish for controlling things -- including other humans.
…We now have to carry around these infernal internal passports that have nothing to do with driving ability, in order for the authorities -- government and corporate -- to be able to identify, record and process us.
Like the Fourth Amendment and other former freedoms we've surrendered over the years, the freedom to travel thus no longer exists in this country. … the "driver's" licenses almost all of us carry today are nothing more than the equivalent of the yellow tags you see stapled into the left ears of cows. And serve the same purpose.
I think it's time for the cattle to question the whole business…
Following their shellacking in the first regularly scheduled federal election of the Tea Party era, the political left and the ruling-class media made predictable calls for civility in political discoursenotes Richard Viguerie, offering perspective from 50+ years' worth of leadership in the conservative movement.
I say predictable because, as a general rule, the left and their media partners make calls for bipartisanship and civility only when conservatives ascend to political power, and they direct it only at conservatives, not at the extremists on their side.The recent tragedy in Tucson, however, displayed in condensed hours and days the visceral, disgraceful desperation of the left and ruling-class media.Americans, through the Tea Party movement, are in a peaceful political war against the ruling class. To the everyday Americans-turned-political-activists, this is a war for the future of the America we cherish. The ruling class understands this is a war against the self-dealing privilege and kleptocracy they've created over many decades.The verbal and printed attacks on Tea Party conservatives following the Tucson tragedy, however, show that the left and ruling-class media are in kamikaze mode. They are sacrificing all semblance of decency and credibility -- or what little they have left -- to defeat the rise of small-government constitutional conservatives.The ruling class has usurped power for decades in the face of relatively meager, often somnolent opposition from everyday Americans. But the ruling class now understands that the Tea Party movement is a force unlike others they've met. The Tea Party movement insists that government abide by the limitations mandated by the Constitution. This results in a threat to such phenomena as crony privileges, big bank bailouts, and forcing Chrysler and GM to give ownership interests to unions.
The mainstream media is of the left and the ruling class. Even while it knocks big business, it is big business, and therefore, it sides with the ruling class and against the Tea Party. The mainstream media is threatened by the Tea Party movement every bit as much as other members of the ruling class are.
In this war between the ruling class and the middle-class Tea Partiers, the mainstream media has abandoned the role of being on the sidelines as a referee and has joined the battle on the side of the ruling class. No longer is it a watchdog against abuses by the powerful or against institutional corruption. The media is now the attack dog against the Tea Party movement, the Constitution, and the populist revolt of middle-class Americans.If media attacks on conservatives since the Tucson shooting were intended to harm the Tea Party surge, they are having, and will continue to have, very much the opposite effect, as even some on the left now seem to recognize.Let me step back with some perspective.People have asked me over the course of my fifty-plus years in the conservative movement whether it's too late to save America.But for short bursts of conservative political energy and successes, such as the election of Ronald Reagan and the Gingrich Revolution in the 1994 election, both the Democratic and Republican Parties have moved to the left, and our government of constitutional limitations has suffered.Our Founders created a constitutionally limited government -- designed to "establish Justice" and "insure domestic Tranquility" -- by protecting individual liberties and private property rights for "Posterity." For decades those constitutional protections have been gradually but assuredly eroding. The conservative movement has been, in large part, a reaction to that, although the movement diminished its effectiveness by becoming an appendage of the Republican Party.Conservatives, and now Tea Partiers, also understand that it's not only the Republican and Democratic Parties that are to blame. Save for the military, leaders of every major institution in America -- Wall Street, banks, Fortune 500 companies, the mainstream media, higher and lower education, labor unions, Hollywood, charities, organized religion -- have aligned themselves with big government and against the people. The ruling-class leaders of these institutions have participated side-by-side with the three branches of the federal government in eroding the Constitution.Too often, state governments have been active partners in the erosion of rights to the detriment of the people and even the states themselves. We are, however, seeing more constitutional conservatives elected at the state level. Before this election, for example, there was Rick Perry of Texas and Ken Cuccinelli of Virginia. Now, after the first widespread Tea Party election, we have Nikki Haley in South Carolina, Paul LePage in Maine, Scott Walker in Wisconsin, and dozens if not hundreds more in statewide and legislative offices.So in response to those questions before the rise of the Tea party about whether it's too late to save America, my answer was always that we had one chance and only one chance, and that's if things got real bad, real quick.Had John McCain been elected president instead of Barack Obama, Americans would not have risen up with the force of the Tea Party movement to save America from the gradual but certain depreciation of our rights and eradication of our republican, constitutionally restrained form of government.With the election of Barack Obama, however -- combined with a Congress led by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and filled with Democrats, ranging from Blue Dogs who caved in to left-wing zealots all the way across the left's spectrum to true Marxists -- Americans saw the future fast-forwarded.It is that future on steroids that the overwhelming majority of Americans reject. The reaction from grassroots conservative Americans was accelerated in response.Americans who were previously satisfied, as rightfully they should be, to tend to their private matters of work, family, worship, recreation, and the like became aware that they needed to stop the surge toward national bankruptcy, crony capitalism, and kleptocracy, and the extinction of constitutionally limited government.Center-right Americans generally aren't political activists. Now, however, Tea Partiers who have been driven to political activism have experienced firsthand what we long-time conservative activists have encountered for over fifty years -- the dishonest, mean, libelous vitriol of the left and the ruling-class media.One mistake of the left and the ruling-class media before the Tucson tragedy was to make it personal against everyday Americans, who were merely seeking to protect their simpler, more private American way of life.In the hot lights of the Tucson tragedy, however, the left and the ruling-class media exposed themselves in spectacular fashion to be everything long-time conservatives and new Tea Partiers claimed them to be: biased, dishonest, mean zealots.The attacks on the Tea Party were like mass public burnings of Norman Rockwell paintings. It was an assault by crazed radicals on small-town America. Based on decades in the conservative movement, I can assure you that the left and the ruling-class media aren't sorry about their disgraceful, hypocritical conduct against Americans who are justifiably fed up and taking peaceful steps consistent with their rights.As someone casually acquainted with Rep. Gabby Giffords -- in fact, as someone who was on a panel with her the weekend before the assassination attempt -- I issued a press release on the day of the shootings. It was, in my opinion, an expression of how most conservatives would respond to the Tucson madness -- with sadness and prayer.Sarah Palin was among many falsely and desperately blamed for the Tucson shootings. Palin's response to the Tucson tragedy was, like most conservatives felt, filled with sadness and prayer, but it was issued days after the left's blood-libelous reaction.In her response, Palin included a plea not all that dissimilar to what President Obama sounded at the memorial service for the victims, except she was more direct in addressing the false charges against conservatives. The left and the ruling-class media praised Obama but criticized Palin.Palin then received "increased" death threats and wishes, meaning she had been receiving them before. At first, the media did not report the open and notorious death wishes against Governor Palin. Only when they became impossible to ignore because they were exposed by the conservative new and alternative media did the ruling class media acknowledge the rise in death threats against Palin. CBS News reported an "uptick," as if it were reporting on the stock market.This highlights not only the double standard conservatives face, but also the false standard. Of course, the media has yet to accept blame for fueling those death threats with its accusations, innuendo, and false reporting.And, of course, the left was quick to lay blame at the feet of conservative talk radio hosts such as Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, and others. Levin was equally quick -- but accurate -- to remind the left that the laws of libel predate the First Amendment, and he is willing to sue.The kamikaze desperation of the ruling class media and the left following the Tucson tragedy wasn't just the blood-libelous attacks on constitutionalist Tea Party conservatives. It included calls to violate a host of rights, ranging from trying to silence conservative talk radio to creating no-gun zones near our self-centered political leaders.In other words, the immediate response was to propose unconstitutional measures aimed at a movement whose mission includes protecting the Constitution. The threats against 2nd Amendment rights resulted in a spike in gun sales. Was the left, therefore, acting out of provocation, stupidity, opportunism, or all three?The foremost authority on the ruling-class media's war on conservatives, Brent Bozell of the Media Research Center, called the media's coverage of the Tucson tragedy a "campaign to criminalize conservatism." That sentiment has been simmering for a while now, but it was accelerated in the condensed aftermath of the Tucson tragedy.The ruling-class media and the left learned nothing from the response of Americans to the bullying statism of the Obama-Pelosi-Reid triage. Instead of moderating their attacks, lies, and libel, which helped fuel the Tea Party movement in the first place, they increased and amplified them.What will be the response from constitutional conservatives and Tea party activists? Not what Conrad Black writes at National Review: "A very mild-mannered and civilized friend remarked to me today that if he encountered anyone else on the Fifth and Park Avenue social circuit who blamed the Tucson shootings on the Tea Party, he would resort to violence."No -- although quite arguably the left seems to be trying to provoke that type of response, Americans who are center-right, peaceful, charitable, faith-oriented, and patriotic won't respond that way.We will redouble our efforts. We will continue to speak out, passionately and with even more resolve. We will organize and train in the arts of politics. We will, to the last of our civil energy, seek to overcome the forces arrayed against us, our Constitution, and our country's future.Ruling-class leaders have been willing accomplices to the usurpation of rights of Americans. We will do as James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 44 about restoring our usurped rights:We are doing and will do more, however, than just elect faithful representatives to annul acts of usurpers. We are organizing against the ruling-class leaders of institutions who have betrayed everyday Americans.If it be asked what is to be the consequence, in case the Congress shall misconstrue this part of the Constitution, and exercise powers not warranted by its true meaning . . . The success of the usurpation will depend on the executive and judiciary departments, which are to expound and give effect to the legislative acts; and in the last resort, a remedy must be obtained from the people, who can by the election of more faithful representatives, annul the acts of usurpers.And, God willing, we will restore America to the Founders' vision of government ruled and limited by the Constitution before it's too late.As the response to the Tucson tragedy shows, the left and the ruling class media are escalating this battle to the point that they completely destroy their own credibility in the process -- even to their own detriment. They are, like kamikaze pilots, dangerous in their desperation.As to those calls for civility and for the political discourse to "calm down"? We Tea Party conservatives were behaving quite well already, thank you very much. The problem is and has been on the left. It is apparent to everyone but the political left and ruling-class media that their calls are cover-ups for the extremism of their own side.
U.S. Democrats seem to have taught the European Left the reflexive accusation game:Socialists and conservatives in the European Parliament have accused each other of cosying up to Tunisian ex-dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, with senior figures in the French political establishment also tainted by association.
This being Europe, the best you can get is the mindless pap of an “all sides are guilty” (but innocent in their child-like ignorance) angle out of the headlines. The other flight-of-fear specious assertion is to call the Socialist Internationale “center-ANYTHING”, since the membership are engaging in the usual evasion: trying to re-brand their leftist-dictator erstwhile butt-buddy a “pro-US dictator” using classic Soviet-era obfuscation tactics.
Left-wingers and human rights organisations have been strident in their criticism of conservatives such as French President Nicolas Sarkozy for his government's close ties and support of the ousted Tunisian leader.
But on Tuesday (18 January), after it was revealed that Mr Ali's political party, the Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD), was a member of the Socialist International, the global alliance of centre-left parties, the RCD was expelled.
Elsewhere: venal Turkish crypto-Islamist thinks his country is the little blue pill, to Europe’s Limp Larry.
GREEN BLOB IN SPACE
Weekly World News "This blob can be one hundred times more devastating to Earth, than any asteroid," said James V. Bellanca III, the chief blob expert at NASA.
What Will Happen on December 21 2012?
Lankaweb The story started with claims that Nibiru, a supposed planet discovered by the Sumerians, is headed toward Earth.
The Day After Tomorrow….Today??
Independent (UK)
The Mayans were right, the planets have aligned, an asteroid is heading for earth, the molten core at the centre of our planet has stopped turning (again) ...Yet another dytopic environmentalist "looking out for the children, and the future", no doubt. They all seem to sound like that...
our time on planet earth is up.And that’s just the sports page, kids. Why not do the right thing, and off yourself know - before we get to, say, paragragh 8?
I mean, first of all the natural disasters that have been happening with alarming frequency lately, the floods, forest fires, earthquakes, Tsunami’s, birds mysteriously falling from the sky….well it is enough to get any normal movie goer freaking out, but then, add to it the financial crisis (the banks know what’s coming obviously), the fact that no other reporter seems to have put this together (clearly a government cover up) and of course, the fact that our TV Schedules constantly pump out reality drivel like X Idol, Celebrity Strictly Come Dining, and my favourite Cat in the Attic,( why do people watch these things……….I just don’t get it, go out and play rugby instead damn you!) and it becomes clear that the powers that be are trying to lull us into some sort of apathetic coma so that we don’t go out and panic.
You may no longer speak your mind, unless Wikileaks either wills it, or they blackmail you.
OHB-Technology CEO Berry Smutny was sacked for having an opinion that could easily be constituted as responsible advice to a client.
The ignorant and superficial, of course all hail Wikileaks.
OHB is one company taking part in Europe's satellite project Galileo, which is seen as a challenge to the American Global Positioning System but has been plagued by problems and cost over-runs.
In the leaked cable, Smutny also called the Galileo project, which is due to come into operation in 2014, a waste of EU-taxpayers' money.
Why a critic of Galileo was punished is rather obvious. It wasn’t for wrongdoing or misrepresentation, it was for catching on to the fact that the execution of the Galileo GPS array is a mess at best, and a racket at worst. European Industry Commissioner Antonio Tajani rejected the additional €1.5-1.7 billion for startup and an estimated €750 million annual operating budget as exorbitant."I don't know where these figures come from," Tajani told a news conference, adding that any budget overruns would be calculated after all contracts for the projected are awarded.
So Wikileaks does a nice job of getting someone fired and/or silenced for “speaking truth to power”. It is, as more than one critic said, become a censor to the world.
As was the case behind the Iron Curtain, reality may now be discussed in hushed tones, and never, never, written down unless the defiant are suicidal in their bravery.
