Will the White House Recognize the US as a NATO Member?

It’s hard to tell. Mark C. Toner, Acting Deputy Department Spokesman, April 12, 2011:

That’s all I have for the top. I’ll take your questions.

QUESTION: Mark, on Libya, there seems to be some unhappiness in Europe among your European NATO allies, in particular your first ally ever, France, and its – enemy ever.

MR. TONER: You mean ever ever? (Laughter.) Yes.

QUESTION: Yes. And Britain. They seem to be teaming up on you wanting more U.S. military input – a bigger U.S. role in the NATO operation. Are there any plans to increase – to go back to where – to increase that role, to go back to where it was at the beginning?

MR. TONER: Matt, I’m aware of the remarks and I don’t know that they were necessarily ganging up on us. I think they were commenting on NATO’s tempo of operations. And I believe NATO briefed earlier on this issue today and addressed some of those concerns.
We have every confidence in NATO’s ability to carry out the tasks of enforcing the arms embargo as well as the no-fly zone and the protection of civilians in Libya. As the President said, the U.S. and other key partners had capabilities that they brought to this operation up front, and then our role would diminish as NATO stepped up and took command and control of the operation.
(Sneeze.)

MR. TONER: God bless you.
And that’s what’s happened, and we have confidence in NATO’s ability to carry out the mission.

QUESTION: Look --

MR. TONER: Yeah.

QUESTION: You talk about NATO as if it is some extraterrestrial being from another planet with which you have occasional meetings. (Laughter.) I mean, you are the largest country in NATO.

Laughter.

The Star-Spangled Banner Floating Over England's Premier League

Le milliardaire américain Stan Kroenke est devenu lundi 11 avril le propriétaire du club anglais d'Arsenal

writes Le Monde's Benjamin Pruniaux (you can also read Rob Hughes' English-language version).

Il devient le quatrième propriétaire américain dans le championnat anglais, à l'image de ses homologues de Liverpool, Manchester United et Aston Villa. …

"LA PREMIER LEAGUE ANGLAISE N'EST PLUS ANGLAISE"

L'Angleterre attire les capitaux étrangers à tel point qu'aujourd'hui, plus de la moitié des clubs de la Premier League appartiennent à des propriétaires étrangers. Au point qu'on entend dire maintenant "English Premier league is no longer English" ("La Premier League anglaise n'est plus anglaise"). "On assiste à une mondialisation du championnat anglais. Cette mondialisation a d'abord eu lieu par sa main-d'œuvre puisque 40 % seulement de ses joueurs sont Anglais, mais aussi par le produit car Manchester United est devenue une marque dans le monde entier."

Reporting for the HQ of the Office of the Propagation of the Faith...

Left think:

As if Tea Party Republicans have not done enough to undermine the working class in America, now they are going after children. New pro-business legislation threatens to make it even harder for adults to keep their jobs, or get new ones, in the struggling American economy.

Of course, one must first ignore the fact that the Tea Party ARE overwhelmingly the working “class” in America. You must also ignore the fact that the non-family-farm working age isn’t being lowered, and that 20 year olds are not children.

Instead of seeing every shadow, every leaf, every whistle in the wind as political ammunition for the gullible, why don't these cretins look at what the proposal really is: a youth unemployment measure to deal with the handwringing about young people delaying the start of work, and not developing skills.

To make her feeble “globally distributed” point, he tosses in a Youtube video of child labor in a grab-bag of places in the developing world, including “fashionably backward” societies like Kenya, and rapidly developing Brazil.

Maryann Tobin is a professional journalist who has appeared on the History Channel in Brad Meltzer's DECODED. She is also a former jockey and rescues abused animals on her farm.

She calls herself a “political spin examiner”, if you can believe it. Her “journalistic” magnum opii includes fact-of-the-title-statement masking items with titles such as:

Gov. Rick Scott plans to add 12,300 to Florida unemployment lines.
Republican Tea Party conservatives plan big govt. regulation of women’s rights.
Republicans get failing grade in new poll.
Republicans begin Muslim American terrorist hearings.
Republicans take collective bargaining rights with no democrats present.
Republicans want to cut funding for tsumani warning system

Without irony, or noticing that Unions are little more than a movement corrupted and exploited by the left:
Republican Governors use union busting to go after democratic campaign funds.

(because union money are THEIR campaign funds)

Is Fox News running scared from Huffington Post, AOL deal?.

and the utterly implausible notion:
Republican bill takes Food Stamps from union workers children and families.

Because union workers are starving, underpaid, and are poor enough to qualify for the same food stamps that no pre-packaged anti-Walmart tirade fails to include, saying “they make just enough to not qualify for food stamps”.

And scrambling feverishly into the past centuries for personal opinion justification:
Can Republican Budget Cuts lead to Another Triangle Fire Disaster?

As if the Federal government budgeted for local fire departments... Etc. You get the picture - reporting MSNBC opinion as newsworthy facts, and the like.

She has also lent her crack-reporting skills to something she is quite proud of: some production on History Channel called “Decoded”.

Brad Meltzer's Decoded, (or simply Decoded), is an American mystery and conspiracy theory investigation television series, produced by Go Go Luckey and Berman/Braun, that premiered December 2, 2010 on the History channel.[1] The series is hosted by political thriller author and non-fiction writer Brad Meltzer and follows a team of investigators who try and determine the meanings behind various symbolism, alleged secret codes and conspiracies that surround us everyday.

So goes the search for fining that all adversity in the world is caused by Jewish Bankers, the British Royal Family, and Fluoride.

You get it. “Journalism,” indeed. To call herself a Political spin examiner is laughable. Her entire occupation is to spin others’ journalism for her own, and her uses. She aggregates from wire items like a politically programmed adolescent would blogs.

One does have to give her points for consistency. “Decoded” the serialized mimeograph-grade cult pamphlet that she posed as a journalist with a sound reputation for to ligitmate it, somewhere among heaven knows who, was received thus:

New York Times reviewer Ginia Bellfante, gave Decoded a negative review saying; "[there] are the languorous crackpots who wonder if codes are embedded in their Home Depot receipts, or if George Washington's wooden leg hid an alternate Constitution. It is for this group that the series 'Brad Meltzer’s Decoded' has been conceived"

There it is, folks... the Black Helicopter crowd, and they appeal to the kind of lefty fake-crisis gin-ups and populist pandering that have done more to tar the American people’s reputation than anything else. In other words, the new generation of the left.

Remind me to send out the Bilderburg hit teams on our Alien technology transporters later this week.

I always wanted to bring my kids to Paris, yet waited as their palates grew up from macaroni and cheese and pizza to salmon and a good cut of steak

Food is often an afterthought to parents planning a vacation

muses Stephen Jermanok during a visit to Paris.

For my family, food is an essential ingredient, the necessary spice that, when added properly, can turn a bland trip into a memorable experience.

… I had always wanted to bring my children to Paris, yet had waited as their palates grew up from macaroni and cheese and pizza to salmon and a good cut of steak. No way would I fly my family of four overseas, only to dine at the McDonald’s on the Champs-Élysées. I had no desire to force sweetbreads down their throats, but I did want them to try new dishes they could find only in Paris.

Soviet Fears That Gagarin Might Use His Space Flight to Defect, Parachuting Into America

Mistrust prevailed. ... The capsule could be operated manually, but the risk was great. What if the cosmonaut were to take the opportunity to say "nyet!" to the [Soviet Union's] bright future and parachute into the American enemy's territory? A solution was quickly found: the manual controls of the aircraft were blocked by a padlock whose secret code was hidden in the cabin unbeknownst to its passenger. ... This Byzantine and risky system was foiled by colleagues of Gagarin, who, despite the top secret arrangement, promptly whispered the code into his ear before his departure.

As Russia — and the world — celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first human space flight, Le Monde's Marie Jégo points out — "cette obsession du secret !" — that the Soviet authorities were suspicious that Yuri Gagarin might use the occasion, and his Vostok space capsule, to try to defect to America.

La méfiance régnait. … La capsule pouvait être gérée manuellement mais le risque était grand. Et si le cosmonaute en avait profité pour dire "niet !" à l'avenir radieux et se parachuter chez l'ennemi américain ? Une solution fut bientôt trouvée : les commandes manuelles de l'appareil furent bloquées par un cadenas dont le code secret fut caché dans la cabine à l'insu de son passager. … Ce dispositif byzantin et hasardeux fut déjoué par les collègues de Gagarine, qui s'empressèrent, malgré l'interdiction, de lui souffler le code avant son départ.

EU Changes Tack

Henceforth they will now provide advance of any upcoming impotent hand-wringing.

EU ministers to 'deplore' Syria killings, threaten sanctions

what is a lot more serious that “expressing concern”, or even “deep concern”, I gather.

EU foreign ministers will next week step up pressure for Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad to stop killing protesters and to make good on promises of reform.

Well, there goes the big surprise as far as their heavy ammunition is concerned.

And if that doesn’t do it, there’s always the magical power of Roget’s Thesaurus and their other secret weapon: the menacing Petit Larousse, or perhaps even the Langenscheidt of doom.

The EU vocabulary puts Syria on a par with Yemen, up to now seen as the most dangerous and unstable regime in the region.

This is supposed to make them seem forceful, robust, and effective.

You are asked to wear the costume they gave you and play along:

Deep Inside the Machine

Don’t forget that these are the polished, polite, and compliant elite that the North Koreans are letting the camera see.



This is a view of the engine room of a state propaganda apparatus.

Executed in a "quiet" neighborhood of gun-controlling France by gangsters firing 9-mm caliber rounds from an automatic pistol

Those — in France, in America, or elsewhere — who think that Europeans (unlike clueless American gun-worshipers) have attained an unprecedented lack of violence should read Yves Bordenave's Le Monde article detailing what happened in Villepinte last Sunday.

They smashed the gate, shouted "Police", then pulled Bilal, 20, out of his bed, before gunning him down in front of his family — his parents, two sisters aged 16 and 9, and his 12-year-old brother — in the living room. Four shots including one in the chest and another in the neck that hit the carotid artery. 9 mm caliber rounds fired from an automatic pistol, the weapon of a professional. …

It was about 5: 45 am, Sunday, April 10, when … four men covered in black wearing hoods, gloves, and bulletproof vests, broke into the Villepinte (Seine-Saint-Denis) home of this family of Moroccan origin which has lived in this rather quiet neighborhood for years. Once their execution accomplished, they left as if nothing had happened, taking care beforehand to seize all mobile phones in the house, then vanished.

In neighboring Sevran, the mayor is interviewed by Luc Bronner. To rid his town of dealers, Stéphane Gatignon has written a book on decriminalizing cannabis.

Pourquoi un tel niveau de violence dans votre ville ?

Nous vivons dans un état d'exception avec des bandes qui se tirent dessus pour le marché de la drogue. Un hall d'immeuble pour faire du trafic peut rapporter 30 000 euros par jour. Avant, ils se négociaient entre bandes, aujourd'hui, cela se règle à la kalachnikov.

…je propose la dépénalisation du cannabis pour mettre fin à ces dérives criminelles.

N'est-ce pas un renoncement ?

La prohibition est aujourd'hui une immense hypocrisie alors qu'il y a quatre millions de consommateurs de cannabis en France. Sur la drogue, il faut accepter l'idée que les trafiquants ont sans doute gagné.

You can read Yves Bordenave's original article in French (while musing over an unrelated story, the murder of a(n unarmed) jeweler killed during a hold-up in the center of Paris):

Ils ont défoncé le portail, ont crié "Police", puis ont sorti de son lit Billal, 20 ans, avant de l'exécuter sous les yeux de sa famille — ses parents, ses deux soeurs âgées de 16 et 9 ans, et son frère de 12 ans — dans le salon. Quatre tirs dont un dans le thorax et un autre dans le cou qui a atteint la carotide. Du calibre 9 mm tiré au pistolet automatique, une arme de professionnel. …

Il était environ 5 h 45, dimanche 10 avril, lorsque dans ce pavillon du 21, avenue Jussieu à Villepinte (Seine-Saint-Denis), quatre hommes cagoulés, gantés, revêtus de noir et protégés de gilets pare-balles, ont fait irruption au domicile de cette famille d'origine marocaine qui vit dans ce quartier plutôt paisible depuis plusieurs années. Ils sont repartis comme si de rien n'était, une fois l'exécution accomplie, en prenant soin de s'emparer de tous les téléphones portables de la maison, puis ont disparu.

Greens Former Fixation on Earth’s Corn Hole Long FOrgotten

Remember waaaay back, right after the paper bag hysteria based on the idea that the world would run out of trees, and that paper bags were by-some-miracle linked to the loss of old-growth forests (when we were supposed to start using PLASTIC bags)... there was this impending apocalypse called the hole in the ozone layer. Apparently, it hasn’t changed much at all in 20 years, despite eliminating spray deodorant and going through the costly effort of changing the refrigerant used in, say, everything.

John Ray links to one rather telling quotation that a few bitter clingers in the cult of ecological millennial madness can’t quite square: the fact that the Ozone layer Jihad really was as much of a big fat pile of mendacity that “the deniers” said it was. Even the author of the Gaia theory, James Lovelock, reacted the way any as-yet unprogrammed person would with the 2009 leaking of the Climategate emails.

“I was utterly disgusted. My second thought was that it was inevitable. It was bound to happen. Science, not so very long ago, pre-1960s, was largely vocational. Back when I was young, I didn’t want to do anything else other than be a scientist. They’re not like that nowadays. They don’t give a damn. They go to these massive, mass-produced universities and churn them out. They say: “Science is a good career. You can get a job for life doing government work.” That’s no way to do science. I have seen this happen before, of course. We should have been warned by the CFC/ozone affair because the corruption of science in that was so bad that something like 80% of the measurements being made during that time were either faked, or incompetently done.

It’s really just their followers that are coo-coo for Cocoa Puffs. Aside from the flunkies and dupes, the true proponents are just proving themselves to be evil.

“The warmers are getting more and more like those traditional predictors of the end of the world who, when the event fails to happen on the due date, announce an error in their calculations and a new date.”

Otherwise, top of the icecap to you, friends. May your endless wait for the violent, dramatic, and sudden sea level rise be as uneventful and contrived as every other feature of your lives.

Libya: The French seem proud that their country is active on the international scene and getting recognition; But will Sarkozy benefit?

With Barack Obama having largely backed the United States out of the alliance’s airborne support of Libya’s anti-Qaddafi rebels, France now plays something very close to the lead role

states John Vinocur in his International Herald Tribune.

By Élysée Palace logic, underpinned by Germany’s skipping out on joining the interdiction force, France has turned the war into a demonstration of its unique and pre-eminent role managing both Europe’s defense pillar (with Britain) and its economic stewardship (albeit as a German junior partner).

…An unidentified voice, sounding remarkably like Mr. Sarkozy’s, said in a conversation with Pierre Rousselin of Le Figaro over the weekend that [the] French seemed proud that their country was active on the international scene and getting recognition for it — which was fine for morale.

I take that as meaning that any trace of bankable, politically fungible fallout from the lovely war doesn’t exist for now. In the Sarkozyian frame of reference, which leans toward triumphalism, that’s no small measure of circumspection.

In fact, reality says there isn’t a poll anywhere that foresees the president’s re-election.

… The buzzword these days to characterize the country’s feelings about Mr. Sarkozy is “désamour” — meaning disaffection, but closer, really, to the blank coldness that can come at the end of an affair.

Thinking I might get a dose of urbane, intelligent counterspin on this from the chief of the Gaullist party, I asked Jean-François Copé for his take on “désamour.”

He replied, “The word fits the situation. We’ve got to deal with it.”

… Various projections on the first-round outcome indicate the president could be eliminated from reaching the head-to-head final, with a significant part of his support having gone to Marine Le Pen of the extreme-right National Front. She seems to be succeeding in giving an aura of respectability to the party, whose anti-immigrant pitch was embedded for decades in a vocabulary reeking of racism and anti-Semitism.

Two Old French Broads Dispensing Pro-Gadaffi Propaganda in Beirut

Neglected since 30 March:



Some women would work the donkey show for enough money. Others just naturally love dictators.

...and the Horse You Rode in on.

Can fragile, sensitive Europe take it?

Almost 60 percent of Iceland's citizens have voted for the second time against compensating the foreign customers of the bankrupt online Icesave bank. In the eyes of the left-liberal daily Tages-Anzeiger the referendum is also a "No" to EU membership: "What does the entire process mean for the Eurozone, of which Iceland is not a member? Before the vote the Icelanders were told that if they voted against compensation the British and Dutch governments would sue for the money. But that wasn't the greatest threat because the outcome of such a court case is not certain.

More significant was the threat that the Icelandic governments plans to join the EU might have to be postponed. But the citizens of Iceland obviously weren't intimidated by the prospect

They seem pretty happy to me.

The Search for Intelligence Continues

German Curveballs and Italian Yellowcake

The EU's intelligence bureau, the Joint Situation Centre, has recently sent people to Libya. But its new director says there is little prospect of turning it into a genuine intelligence-gathering service even in the "long term."

In fact, they seem so harmless, that even the enemy of their member states received and ignored them.

Joint Situation Centre chief Ilkka Salmi confirmed that one of his staff accompanied a European External Action Service (EEAS) fact-finding mission to Tripoli on 6 March and that another one took part in a visit to Benghazi on 5 April.

"We want to avoid the impression that these were spooks of any kind. They were technical specialists who went to help with satellite phones and that type of thing. There was certainly no tasking," he explained. "These are the only missions of this kind that we have carried out since I became director two months ago."

'Tasking' is intelligence jargon for being asked to get information on a given subject.

Outside of obvious comparisons to phone company linemen, who they were there to support goes unexplained: EU diplomats? Member state Diplomats? A extra-special surrender phone to the trailer trash dictator himself? Serious brown-nosing?

A contact familiar with the work of SitCen earlier told this website: "These are fairly normal people who have perhaps in their lives had some experience of being out in the field in a place less comfortable than Washington … They are people who can write reports. Who do not mind not staying in five star hotels. Who know how to take precautions when they go out at night."

FOUR star hotels?!? They’re SO butch!

Another week, another lumbering, leaden polemic from Paul Krugman

From England's Fawley, one British reader of the International Herald Tribune has had his fill of the New York Times' star economist. Writes Robin Somes (second entry):

Another week, another lumbering, leaden polemic from Paul Krugman over the twin evils of Republicanism and the cutting of government spending (“The Mellon doctrine,” Views, April 4).

As a Briton, I object to Mr. Krugman's continual and inaccurate sneering at my government’s austerity policy. Imperfect as it may be, the alternative is to continue the never-ending and gargantuan cycle of debt foisted on us by Gordon Brown.

While the Republican Party may well be wrong, Mr. Krugman is not necessarily right. When, not if, the rest of the world tires of buying U.S. debt, who then will pick up the tab? It’s a simple question, but I see no answers from Mr. Krugman.

Paris Sera Toujours Paris - V

For those of you getting sentimental for the city of lights, art, fashion, etc., etc.™®©, ¡No Pasarán! Brings you truth in advertising.

They’re all Special, and All Equally Irrelevant

Like a Chamber of Commerce from hell, or a disturbing recurring clown dream, the EU is replete, if not festooned with “Presidents.”

Overview:

The Lisbon (Portugal) Treaty creates an all-powerful “President of the European Council” (POEC).

This is additional to the existing roles of “President of the European Commission”(POCO) and “President of the European Parliament” (POPE). There is also a “rotating” President-in-Office of the European Council (PORC).

This is the same “European Council” as mentioned in the first paragraph. However, we observe no matching rotating “President-in-Office” of either the Commission or Parliament. Thus, the “Council” is the only EU institution with a rotational element in its presidential structure.

There is also a “President of the Committee of the Regions” (POCE) and a “President of the Economic and Social Committee” (PESC), two EU institutions operating quietly in the background. These two Committees (not real committees as they are not subordinate parts of a bigger entity) are nothing to do with the 22 committees of the European Parliament, which are subordinate but nevertheless have their own “presidents”.

Maybe they can use a kaleidoscope of other superlatives, like El Hefe, Pimp Daddy, or maybe just Christ almighty to differentiate themselves from one another.

We need more time to reach considered conclusions as to the purpose and relative values of all these presidential positions, and the many others we have uncovered.

For instance, the European Court of Justice has a “President” as does the European Court of Auditors and the European Central Bank. Other EU-related bodies using the term include the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market and the Community Plant Life Variety Office. The term “president” seems to be accorded to anyone of even marginal authority in the EU system.

Unlike our own system, there is little appetite in Europe for terms such as “Speaker”, “Governor” or “Chairman”. The idea of, for example, US Senate and House Committee leaders being titled “Chairman”, to ensure clear (downward) separation from the Head of State, is unfamiliar.

This confusing focus on “president” status in Europe is blamed on the French language, which uses the term for both “President” and “Chairman” in political life. Without the French influence, the vast majority of EU positions carrying the term “president”, would, in English, be reduced to “chairman” or something less.

The French language is also blamed for the plethora of EU committees often termed “commissions”, causing confusion with the status of the European “Commission”, which is not a committee.

That implies that there is some actual reason to communicate with any of them or try to sort out their gauntlet of completely unjustified self-importance.

The Greenest Kids U Know

Nature has a way of thinning out the herd.

Large sections of Australia’s rich are engaged in a conspiracy to screw the poor in the name of saving the planet.

The Friends of Which Workers, Exactly?

11 September, 2001 – the Communist Party of the Workers of France issues a press statement indifferent to the cause of the Jihadists because it would not serve any “progressive” causes or the people of “Palestina”, but did manage to denounce what America might do.

The symbols of the financial, military and diplomatic power of US imperialism have become the target of attacks of an extent hitherto unseen on American soil. The strongest power on the planet, sure of its invulnerability, has promised to avenge itself. One must fear the worst!

The attack psychosis has spread to all capitals. Plans of control and of police and military surveillance, such as the "vigipirate" plan in France, have been set up. NATO has been placed on maximum alert. The declarations of war are multiplying.

These attacks do not serve any progressive cause, neither that of the struggle of the Palestinian people nor the popular protest which is developing against the politics of US imperialism and other imperialist powers, as the huge demonstrations against imperialist globalization show.

We denounce in advance all the acts of reprisal that will be taken against the peoples, in the name of a so-called "war on terrorism."

We denounce as well the measures against democratic rights, particularly the right to demonstrate.

We reject the calls for a "holy alliance" with the imperialist power of the United States, which has to its account, the largest number of wars of aggression.

Our total disagreement with the methods and goals of those who have ordered these attacks will not cause us to lose sight of the antagonistic class interests between us and the imperialist powers.

The imprint of the structural aggrieved insanity of the far left is all right there. Who was denied the right to demonstrate, or lost their rights to vote or speak? Who exactly was it, through either words or actions that declared war that day? It doesn’t matter: they have an imprinted attitude easily filled by a predetermined pattern, and a mechanism that lets them ignore a defense of ‘the people’, so long as ‘the people’ match a constructed mental image that they have.

May revolution indeed find you. May you suffer for what you wish for.

"Brazil's Columbine": As soon as the killer's Islam connection emerged, the media started cleansing the narrative

Last Thursday (April, 7th) Wellington Menezes de Oliveira killed 12 children in a school in Realengo (Rio de Janeiro). … He brought two guns (no registered) and reloaded the gun 9 times before he was shot and killed himself.

He wrote a letter with strict rules that must be applied to his funeral, with outstanding references to that written by Mohammed Atta (one of the perpretators of 9-11 attacks).

When the news emerged the connection with Islam was clear: he declared himself as a muslim (after left Jehovah Witnesses four years ago).

But as soon as it emerged, the "cleansing" of the Islam connection started.

Thus writes Luís Afonso Assumpção, who points out that despite the fact that the massacre occurred in a school, what Brazil's media have called the "Brazilian Columbine" should more realistically be considered a twin of the Fort Hood case.

Many people in Brazil wrote on the case as the "Brazilian Columbine". Despite they had been occurred in a school, the Brazilian case must be considered as a twin of the Fort Hood case.

He received some instruction by the internet. He was a part of a group called "group". He broke his computer at his home to avoid investigations to find some link.

Just like in US, the "investigators" don´t want to pursue such leads. They believed Wellington was a lone lunatic that acted on his own.

The Pointlessness of European Political Life: a Case Study in Dessicated Old Commies

1992: A defensive/ passive aggressive statement titles ”News” from Katyn in Roter Morgen (Red Morning), the house Organ of the Communist Party of Germany tries to mock the Soviet massacre of Polish officers in 1940.

Imagine that, the whole Politbureau leadership had signed! What a "find"! However: "Political observers in Poland expected that Warsaw nevertheless would not decide to appear as accuser of the CPSU" (FR). Perhaps Lech Walesa is a secret Stalinist?

This cheap melodrama shows clearly what is to be made of the whole propaganda cry about the alleged "proofs" of Soviet responsibility for Katyn. For decades even in the West it was assumed that the Hitler-fascists were the criminals at Katyn. And then all of a sudden things were turned upside-down. Without a single document being presented. Simply because it was politically convenient.

Operating on the theory that they all killed themselves, I suppose. Otherwise the inflammatory style of Communist “public relations” (when not massacring) normally involves:

1. Insisting something pointing to their ideological fellow travellers didn’t really happen.
2. Insisting someone else did it.
3. Insisting loudly that the proof is fake without any actual proof.
4. Obfuscation

2001: Facts still aren’t good enough.

Yuri Zhukov, senior scholar at the History Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, claims that documents proving Stalin’s security service (NKVD) murdered over 20,000 Polish officers in the Katyn massacres are “counterfeit”.

Operating on the theory that they all killed themselves, I suppose. Otherwise the inflammatory style of Communist “public relations” (when not massacring) normally involves:

1. Insisting something pointing to their ideological fellow travellers didn’t really happen.
2. Insisting someone else did it.
3. Insisting loudly that the proof is fake without any actual proof.
4. Obfuscation.

Zhukov is taking issue with documents made public last April which show that on 5 March, 1940, the Soviet politburo decided to kill several thousands of Polish prisoners, who they claimed were, “nationalists and counter-revolutionaries”.

On their release, President Medvedev said of the documents, signed by Stalin: “'Let people see it, let them know who made the decision to kill the Polish officers. It's all there in the documents. All signatures are there, all the faces are known.”

Same old, same old. A Red Army smokescreen with fakes supporting evidence were even presented in an attempt to use the proceeds at Nuremburg as a Soviet-style post-revolutionary show trial. No matter: when you only know one chord, repeat it over and over and play it as loudly as possible. What you’re left with is a European leftist.

This Report is superbly characteristic of Nuremberg evidence. The ‘testimony’ consists of ‘written statements’ signed by ‘eye-witnesses’ but which only appeared in a report written at Stalin’s behest and read aloud (in excerpt form) by a Soviet prosecutor. The ‘statements’ were not attached to the report, the ‘witnesses’’ did not appear in court and the original documents were not available.

Most Nuremberg evidence was considerably less substantial than this document. The ‘forensic report’ reproduced here was the only forensic report ever introduced into evidence at Nuremberg.

In April 1943 4,500 bodies were discovered buried in the Katyn Forest. At first the Russians claimed it to be an archeological find but shortly afterwards the British, American and Russian Allies laid the crime at the door of the Nazi enemy. Another 10,000 Polish officers remained unaccounted for.

Following numerous Russian excuses and pretended searches, the British and American authorities both knew of Soviet responsibility by the time the Nuremberg Tribunals were held. The charges of German guilt brought at the IMT placed the British Government and the Tribunal in an intensely difficult position. Relations with the Polish Government-in-Exile were strained and to have acquitted Göring and the other twenty IMT defendants of the crime would have implied that the Russians were guilty, and they shared the bench. When judgement was eventually delivered by Lord Justice Lawrence on 1 November 1946 the charges relating to the Katyn massacre were simply passed over, as if they had never been brought at all.

A Dull Persistence

In one random post a few weeks back, Erik used a picture of Hitler to illustrate some point or another. Since then, an overwhelming amount of our traffic originating in Europe has stumbled across us in search engines because they’re looking for an image of the world-famous mass murderer that’s suitable for framing.

Look – he’s your butt-buddy Europe. You can keep him.

He Calls Himself Russell the Love Muscle

French reporting-of-self yields to bragging about their meatwhistles. The same study shows that those self-reporting are being mendacious about their pecker-hood, Mister Happy, and growling trouser snakes, by the same difference between the great national French Johnson and –measured- American willies.

Predictably, Arabs, Italy, and other sad, real-life reflections of their stereotypes, seem to report the most “grade inflation”, all reflecting a similar level of “great national” powerlessness and propensity to blame anything they don’t like on someone else. They are also places where men are the most p-whipped.

Un Frenchy Chez les Yankees: A French Pilot Trains American Flyers

Lt. Tristan Isorce trains American pilots on Hornets at Naval Air Station Oceana (merci à Christine), a place the French pilot was trained at himself five years earlier.

Pour des questions d'économie, tous les pilotes de l'aéronavale sont formés aux États-Unis (1:24)

Le Monde, Fox News: On the Same Wavelength?

"Maybe they should send the flotilla to Syria instead - I'm sure it's more needed there."

Europeans are planning another Gaza “flotilla”:

The NGOs behind the project also expect several MPs from EU countries and MEPs from Brussels to join them when they set sail in late May.

Huseyin Oruc from the Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH), a Turkish NGO, said: "There will be many MPs on board. I don't think Israel will attack us. They did so much damage to their international reputation last time that I don't think they will repeat the same actions again."

Plans for the new project will be finalised at a meeting in Athens next week.

All that humanitarian aid, what with the issue being SOOOOO important in the Middle East right now. The doofuses.

An Israeli diplomat noted:

Noting the current turmoil in the region due to the Arab uprisings, he said: "It makes this attempt to make the situation in Gaza look like the most important thing happening in the Middle East even more out of place than before."

He forgets that the target audience is European, not so much Arab. There is little evidence that Arabs WANT Gaza to be “opened up”. In reality, it’s playing into the Iranian effort to open yet another military front on Israeli civilians.

Delegates are also expected from Canada, the US, Switzerland, the Nordic countries, Belgium, Germany, Greece, France, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK. Nobody from the former Communist EU member states or from Iran and Syria will be involved.

Around 15 boats are to set sail from a number of ports in the Mediterranean including Cyprus, Italy, Malta, Turkey and Tunisia. The route will avoid the Nato naval blockade on Libya and Israeli territorial waters, aiming to unload humanitarian supplies in Gaza and, later on, to sell the boats and donate funds to charities working in the strip.

Gazans don’t need that “humanitarian relief” nearly as much as those caught in the middle of a civil war in Libya, the people of Haitians and Pakistanis still suffering from the effects of their earthquakes.

No, the permanent ward of the UN is in need of this “emergency aid” first.

The Golden Age of Brit-Flicks

Further to my weakness for UK mid-century fillums, from 1959, it's I'm Alright Jack

They Love Death the Way that We Love Life

Yet another glance at that superior Euro-humanism.

An increasingly sterile and senile continent obsessing over more and newer ways to bring back the ham-fisted euthanasia of 20th century Europeans autocracies.

At a private conference in 1990 Els Borst, a well-known figure in the euthanasia movement, said that this progression was always the objective: "It was a matter of tactics: we could gradually win the field for the acceptance of euthanasia by starting with this category." By "this category" Borst, who later became minister of health and who saw to it that the Euthanasia Act was passed in parliament, meant the people who were able to ask for euthanasia. In other words: Borst started out presenting euthanasia as termination of life at the request of the person due to die, with the implicit aim of subsequently making it possible without request, for individuals who are unable to ask for euthanasia, for example people with dementia and babies.

Don’t forget that this all started with “strict conditions” caveats, etc.

What started with an appeal to self-determination ("if a person is in terrible pain and asks to be allowed to die, then that should not be a problem"), has led to termination of life in individuals who are unable to express their will and whose lives other people assume to be worthless ("it is better for him to be at peace now"). What happened to self-determination here? Is it not the ultimate act of paternalism to decide for a severely disabled individual that it would be better if they did not exist?

The imprint of the Nanny state will all over these notions that this is all “so humane”, and is the “dignified option. The fact is, it’s nearly cult-like in its’ motives.

Now the next step is under discussion. What if a baby can survive without treatment and is not suffering now, but will suffer in the future? Some physicians are deliberating whether termination of life is an acceptable option in this case. This future suffering does not need to involve physical pain; the Committee for Pediatricians, Ethics and Law of the Dutch Association of Pediatricians mention the inability to communicate, the burden of treatment and an anticipated long life-expectancy of the disabled or sick baby as suffering that could legitimise termination of life.

Soon, when people say that growing old is not for cowards, it will likely mean not just facing mortality bravely, but facing off with those dropping the idea in your head that you should take the “dignified option” that they will present repeatedly. After all, Europe will have warehouses of social liabilities to dispose of – and it seems to be increasing with the “death with dignity” campaign’s political timeline.

Is it possible to adequately organise such assistance for elderly people who feel they have lived long enough? Can it be done in such a way that we know what we are getting ourselves into and do not end up somewhere we never wanted to go? The people from Uit Vrije Wil are saying that this is for the elderly, that only people over the age of seventy should be able to get help to end their lives. But a meeting of Uit Vrije Wil and the Dutch Humanistic Union on 9 November 2010 in Amsterdam was attended by so many sympathisers, that a few individuals forgot that this was a public gathering. The famous neurobiologist Dick Swaab, one of the initiators, said: "The age limit is arbitrary. Just between you and me: this age limit was chosen for pragmatic reasons, so we would have a chance to obtain majority support in parliament."

The sad thing is that those who fight for their lives over this will probably face humiliation from caregivers or even from malicious and negligent relatives. Is this really the –social- humane, socialistic model of a society that they keep banging on about?

Congressman Paul Ryan accepts that the present system is unaffordable and destined to collapse

BARACK OBAMA, as we unhappily noted when he produced his budget in February, has no credible plan for getting America’s runaway budget deficit under control

editorializes The Economist (Praising Congressman Ryan), although the London weekly has been Democrat/leftist-leaning for the past dozen years and, therefore, fully Barack Obama-friendly since he became the Democrats' candidate in 2008…

On April 5th Paul Ryan, the young chairman of the House Budget Committee, laid out a brave counter-proposal for next year’s budget and beyond (see article)—brave both in identifying the scope of the problem and in proposing the kind of deeply unpopular medicine that will be needed to cope with it. It is far from perfect; but it is the first sign of courage from someone with actual power over the budget.

Unlike Mr Obama, Mr Ryan puts fiscal responsibility at the centre of his plan … Mr Ryan accepts that the present system is unaffordable and destined to collapse. Everyone else, including Mr Obama, is pretending that it isn’t. Mr Ryan’s willingness to confront the scale of the problem has set a standard by which other proposals will now have to be judged.

You can download Paul Ryan's PathToProsperityFY2012 plan here…

2 years after the financial crisis, the French feel more resentful vis-à-vis the banking system than Americans do

Après la crise, les Français [sont] plus rancuniers que les Américains vis-à-vis des banques

writes Cécile de Corbière in Le Monde. Unsurprisingly, the anti-capitalist French feel far more vindictive towards the banking sector than Americans do.

Selon une étude menée par l'IFOP et présentée par Groupama Banque, mardi 5 avril, 49 % des Français (sondage effectué par Internet auprès de 1 000 personnes âgées de 18 ans et plus) ont une bonne image du secteur en général, contre 73 % des Américains.

“The German reactions to the events in Libya and Japan appear hysterical on one hand, and on the other without any substantive basis”

Two thoughts about Angela Merkel’s weekend of political debacle: Her government’s shifts and pivots in an effort to avoid defeat in a regional election override in importance the loss itself. And they leave Germany’s governing coalition with a fracture in credibility affecting the country’s international role and notions of its leadership in Europe.

Thus does John Vinocur start his International Herald Tribune article on Germany's "election hangover".

…the government effectively turned its back on Mrs. Merkel’s supposed virtues of loyalty, resolve and calm as its dominant campaign message.

Instead, it appeared to pander to the electorate’s most hypersensitive instincts…

Across party lines, and before the voting, the political class picked up on the deepest ramifications of a contradictory-looking attempt by the government in Berlin to both spook voters and coddle their fears.

Patrick Adenauer, grandson of postwar Germany’s first chancellor and head of the Association of Family Enterprise — Christian Democrat roots don’t go deeper — told Handelsblatt, the newspaper: “The German reactions to the events in Libya and Japan appear hysterical on one hand, and on the other without any substantive basis.”

Hans-Ulrich Klose, the man Mrs. Merkel named last year as special coordinator for German-American relations (he has since left the post because of illness in his family), maintained that the situation damaged Germany’s reputation in Europe. The Social Democrat told me in a conversation that the election campaign’s pirouettes “raised the issue of our reliability. Germany has lost credibility.”

…Here was the essence of the problem that the German government, as Europe’s de facto leader, created for itself in a month of openly subordinating to very risky domestic political considerations what were thought to be its international credo and sense of responsibility.

For some, it had been caught out acting far beyond enlightened self-interest and, unpredictably, abandoning principles.

Update: Some voices in Germany are growing louder in portraying the Merkel government’s inaction as a disaster

The war in Libya can create "a new Iraq on the Mediterranean coasts"

(See Update below…) In response to the International Herald Tribune article on Bernard-Henri Lévy's view on and role in the conflict against Muammar el-Qaddafi, Umberto Eco (who was recently in Paris for the Salon du Livre) responds from Milan:

I totally disagree with the French writer Bernard-Henri Lévy. The war in Libya is a terrible mistake.

The situation in Libya now is catastrophic and the war is a real danger for the European economy and can increase the risk of terrorist attacks in Western countries. This war can create a new Iraq on the Mediterranean coasts. This war is stupid and dangerous for all.

Note that each writer happens to be reflecting the attitude of his respective government (or vice-versa)…

Update: Turns out that the Umberto Eco letter is a hoax:

In the newspaper of April 6, the International Herald Tribune published a letter over the name of the writer Umberto Eco, criticizing the military actions in Libya. This letter was a hoax and should not have been published. We take efforts to verify the authenticity of every letter we publish. In this case, however, we failed to contact Mr. Eco for confirmation. We have expressed our regret to him, and we apologize to our readers.

Totten Tours Hizb’allahstan

Ever wonder what it’s like to travel back in time?

“A guy from Hezbollah TV came down here to Fatima Gate once,” Leena said, “and some Israelis having a picnic on the other side recognized him. ‘Hey!’ they said. ‘You’re that guy from Hezbollah! What’s up?’ He was furious. He wanted to say something, but no one here is allowed to talk to Israelis. So he growled at them.”

She smiled. “He just clenched his teeth and went, ‘Grr.’”

The notion that we should feel “inclusive” of this culture is why I will never willingly go back there:

Hezbollah erected a billboard next to him that faced south and taunted Israelis with horrific images of violence and war — dead bodies gunned down in a street, a soldier with skin missing on one side of his face holding a rocket launcher, and a Hezbollah militiaman holding up the severed head of an Israeli man by his hair. Underneath these gruesome photographs was text written in Hebrew referring to Israelis who had been captured and never returned: “Sharon don’t forget, your soldiers are still in Lebanon.”

I felt embarrassed for Lebanon that this was what Israelis saw when they looked north. What on earth must they have thought when their eyes lit upon that barbarous billboard?

Why? Because they’re barbarians, and they don’t care. Hizb’allah are more than happy to turn Lebanese society into a Iranian proxy populated by angry, illiterate, and vulgar louts willing to use the general population as a human shield against their will.

Of all the cities in the world I could have relocated to, I chose Beirut, partly because I liked it, but mostly because it was the capital of the only country in the whole Middle East that had freed itself from the great Arab prison. Damascus was a dungeon, Baghdad was on fire, Cairo was choking with slums, and Dubai was a mall. Beirut was the light. From Israeli soil, however, Lebanon must have looked like Somalia.

To be more precise, from most of Lebanon, Hizb’allahstan looks like Somalia.

Old Fashion Spook Tools

An avid Shortwave radio listener reports:

A reliable source in the politburo informed me a few months ago that China Radio International's distribution of content on radio stations in Australia, United Kingdom, United States and Canada is not just way to have foreign listeners. My source informed me that since 2005/06 China's Ministry of State Security has been embedding messages into the Chinese programs. The messages are encoded in the audio. How the messages are encoded is unknown at this time.

The Pride and Dignity of the Diversity Agenda

It’s all sunshine and lollipops, as you know because it’s what we’re told with Stalinesque repetition. Let me correct that. It’s all sunshine, lollipops, and child abuse:

JEONJU (SOUTH KOREA): A transgender father of four was sentenced to a two-year jail term for abusing his children, who refused to call him "mom", according to South Korea's Yonhap news agency, citing a local court on Wednesday.

The poster children of diversity, as with every other one of the left’s cultural re-education efforts are normally exempt from the kind of attention borne by human frailty, of course. The same people who tell us not to feed the wildlife because it might change their nature, might make them greedy to violate norms, and make them dependent can’t seem to understand that this also goes for humans.

During court trials, he showed strong desire to receive a sex reassignment surgery to become a "real woman."

That was at HIS trial for the abuse of his children. Somehow, as predictably as a NYT tirade anything social aberrant to those with any common sense and kindness, it stops being about the issue at hand.

It became about him. It became about his identity. Little does any officially “socially aware” type realize that abusing his children just said a lot more about his identity than a reality defying hatred of how he was born.

French Deputies Vote on Whether to Release Secret Government Documents from the… 1870s

Ce mardi 5 avril, une question pour le moins inhabituelle sera posée aux députés : acceptent-ils, oui ou non, de rendre publics les débats tenus à huis clos par leurs prédécesseurs pendant la guerre franco-prussienne de 1870 et à la veille de la Commune de Paris ?

Come evening, the députés chose common sense and finally voted in favor — unanimously — writes Thomas Wieder in Le Monde, but still it seems odd to many that politicians in the 2010s should have a say concerning the release or not of a trove of government secrets from the 1870s and that there is no prescription rule to deal with events when they are up to 140 years old.

Conservées depuis cent quarante ans au fond d'un coffre-fort situé dans les caves du Palais-Bourbon, les 723 pages dont la publication est aujourd'hui soumise au vote des députés nous replongent dans quelques-uns des moments les plus dramatiques de l'époque. Ce mois d'août 1870, quand l'opposition républicaine à Napoléon III plaida – en vain – pour une mobilisation massive des Parisiens contre les Prussiens.

Pointing out that the last time a vote concerning the disclosure of the talks of secret committees took place was in 1968 (concerning the discussions of comités secrets from 1916-1917, the latest secret committee talks in French history having taken place during the Spring of 1940), Thomas Wieder explains the rule:

[Le règlement est] clair. Depuis la Révolution française, les comités secrets – la possibilité pour les parlementaires de débattre à huis clos – obéissent à des règles strictes. Les tribunes réservées au public doivent être évacuées. Le nombre des fonctionnaires nécessaires au bon déroulement des séances est limité au minimum indispensable. Afin d'éviter les fuites, les comptes rendus doivent rester confidentiels à tout jamais, sauf si la représentation nationale en décide autrement – d'où le vote de ce 5 avril.

What Do Julian Assange’s Thoughts Turn on Christmas Eve?

Things that give him a woody. 24 Dec 2006

The pending total annihilation of the US regime in Somalia

The US backed Somali "government", the Somali Transitional National Assembly (TNA), faces total annihilation, avoidable only by an Ethiopian invasion of Somalia and the creation of a Quisling regime.

In the past year the TNA has been routed from all regions of Somalia by the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) and now holds only Baidoa, a middling town close to the Ethiopian border. The "government" has already lost the capital, Mogadishu. The TNA is a US supported power broker club with many detested warlords, including those behind the 1991 atrocities in Black Hawk Down. Its hold on Baidoa is weak and has only been maintained in the last 24 hours by aggressive Ethiopian air-strikes, artillery and the invasion of 10 to 20 thousand Ethiopian troops. Ethiopia is the traditional, hated enemy of Somalis. Whatever legitimacy the TNA may have had with Somalias is now completely lost. The Molotov-Tribbentrop Pact is statesmanship compared to cynicism behind the TNA inviting Ethiopian troops and artillery into Somalia.

Not that he didn’t appear to take joy in it, linking all of the miseries of the Somalis to it when he gets the urge to write the words. Like a conditioned pigeon, parroting the fictional Manchurian Candidate’s behavior, he thinks wildly creative and witty to call his public thoughts about it: Black Hawk Down, White Wash Up

With the characteristic inferences drawn by a teenager trying to mimic the house organs of the Soviet age, he arrives to this: the American Revolution was illegitimate, nor is the notion of western-style participatory government, and...

...God.. Creator.. Men are created equal... Life, Liberty,... pursuit of Happiness.. Safety and Happiness... [followed by 26(!) paragraphs of hatred for the abuses of King George].

Because it’s in bad taste? Because it might offend someone named Julian two centuries later? The question with all of his thoughts, other than the proof that he is unpleasable as a shoeless Imelda Marcos, is to ask “what crawled up HIS ass and died? He prattles on:

In other words, religious feeling (x2), equality, life, liberty, happiness (x2), safety and above all, an extreme hatred for the brutal acts, preferment, and corruption of foreign influenced or controlled government.

It’s funny thing for a fellow traveller in Australia’s recreational revolutionaries taking up stance for a genuine and native anti-Commonwealth, Australian Republic movement to hold, as it seeks to divest itself of the symbolic allegiance to Great Britain and no longer have the British Monarch as its titular head of state.

Not once does democracy or shopping appear.

Where foreign influence is promoted in the American Declaration of Independence is beyond me. In fact it seems to rather explicitly seek to end it, which Assange views solely as “rudeness” toward the British Monarcy.

It seems that even past figures HAVING principals of their own that he doesn’t approve of is criminal. I wonder if he even notices what an authoritarian reflex he’s hiding under his awkward, affected manner.

The Philosopher Who Alone Persuaded Sarkozy to Intervene in Libya

Making his mark young as a philosopher, [BHL] was satirized neatly by a critic with the words: “God is dead, but my hair is perfect.”

Thus does Steven Erlanger start his New York Times article about the philosopher who alone, by his own reckoning, made Libya a French cause.

…in the space of roughly two weeks, [Bernard-Henri Lévy] managed to get a fledgling Libyan opposition group a hearing from the president of France and the American secretary of state, a process that has led both countries and NATO into waging war against the forces of the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.

It was Mr. Lévy, by his own still undisputed account, who brought top members of the Libyan opposition — the Interim Transitional National Council — from Benghazi to Paris to meet President Nicolas Sarkozy on March 10, who suggested the unprecedented French recognition of the council as the legitimate government of Libya and who warned Mr. Sarkozy that unless he acted, “there will be a massacre in Benghazi, a bloodbath, and the blood of the people of Benghazi will stain the flag of France.”

Mr. Lévy, a celebrated philosopher, journalist and public intellectual, gives Mr. Sarkozy sole credit for persuading London, Washington and others to support intervention in Libya.

“I’m proud of my country, which I haven’t felt for many years,” Mr. Lévy said in an interview. “When I compare Libya to the long time we had to scream in the desert about Bosnia, I must agree that despite all our disagreements, Sarkozy did a very good job.”

…[B.H.L.] has outdone himself on Libya, playing to Mr. Sarkozy’s vanity and need for success as well as gratifying his own, and it is hard to say who used the other more.

It is an extraordinary tale, about which neither the Élysée Palace nor the Foreign Ministry wished to comment, other than quietly urging a grain of salt.

Today’s Leftist “Statesmen”

Huffington Post discusses Dany the Red’s outrage at Germany’s non-action on Libya, and overlooks Daniel Cohn-Bendit pederasty.

Like the Jacobean queens and their horses, this seems to be "their thing."

The real question is: why is the outrage of an MEP over some nation NOT doing something news? It isn’t. It’s to artificially raise the sale pédé’s profile, and amplify his criticism of Merkel?

Oh, and in case you’re wondering why so many Europeans are eager to “enforce the No-Fly Zone”, it’s because Libya has virtually no airworthy aircraft. This way they can look like they’re doing something.

"In France there is a tradition of non-communication"

"Not only are they [French politicians] smooth talkers, but in France, the fact that a politician tells a lie is not considered very serious. While in the United States, in Great Britain, it is unthinkable."

Thus is France 2's David Pujadas quoted (speaking to Arrêt sur images' Daniel Schneidermann) in Franck Nouchi's Le Monde column.

"In France there is a tradition of non-communication", adds Philippe Chaffanjon, director of France Info. "Ask the foreign correspondents stationed in Paris. They are appalled by the way the system works."

Paris Sera Toujours Paris - IV

For those of you getting sentimental for the city of lights, art, fashion, etc., etc.™®©, ¡No Pasarán! Brings you truth in advertising.

REO Mistwagen

In December 2010, Frank Schneider, the president of the German Society for Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Treatment of Nervous Diseases admitted that the race and euthanasia policies of the Third Reich had not been forced upon German psychiatrists, but that they had been among its initiators.

Germans, always hypersensitive to the telling of any history or comparisons of present day German society with Nazism need to stop fretting, because you aren’t alone. No-one buys the routine any more, and humanity realizes that it comes a lot more naturally to Europeans that we want to believe.

Forty-seven percent of Germans are of the opinion that Israel is exterminating the Palestinians according to a poll undertaken by the University of Bielefeld for the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, affiliated with the German Social Democratic Party. These findings raise fundamental questions about the future of German society and not only about those Germans who falsely accuse Israelis of behaving like their own totalitarian or murderous ancestors.

It’s the few of them that aren’t conspiracy crackpots, that handful that don’t believe things for the sake for their egos that I have some slight hope for.

The recent data should not surprise anyone. It even marks some progress when compared with the past. This same university undertook a major poll in 2004. Some 68% percent of Germans then agreed with the allegation: “Israel undertakes a war of destruction against the Palestinians.” Fifty-one percent shared the opinion: “The way the State of Israel acts toward the Palestinians is in principle no different from the Nazis’ behavior in the Third Reich toward the Jews.”

All of those lesson-givers, going at it again...

At least they have Norwegians to keep them company. Alan Dershowitz offered to offer to speak without compensation at Norwegian Universities, only to be turned down for similarly one-sided reasons. These “tolerant” academics “in search of the truth,” it seems tend to stick to plugging their ears while yelling nya-nya-nya-nya

A third university, Bergen, answered that it was only willing to host Dershowitz provided he change his topic to an analysis of the O. J. Simpson trial, the American star football player who became a criminal. They did not want him to speak about Israel. Dershowitz rightly refused. The student unions of the three universities then quickly organized lectures by him, thus saving a little bit of the country’s honor.

Dershowitz told the small Christian daily Dagen that the refusals by the Norwegian universities to let him speak reminded him of his visits to the Soviet Union, and South Africa under the apartheid regime. He called the Norwegian universities propaganda tools, with leaders who are smart yet ignorant. Dershowitz added that Norwegian government policies were a hindrance to the peace process, as their double standards helped Hamas.

Americans to look down on, whodaguessedit? Somehow, I don’t think the Dersh takes requests, especially when it comes to offering a survey of the kind of law practiced by scheissters who advertise on buses.



Another new high for European culture

The Borders of the 'Hoods: "A Sort of Stairwell Patriotism"

• Yo! Where you from? Show some I.D!

France's borders are inside France's borders, says Plantu, in places (i.e., in 'hoods) where even doctors fear to tread…

The cartoon relates to the beating at a Noisy-le-Sec train station of a Sartrouville 19-year-old (he was almost beaten to death) by a dozen Rosny-sous-Bois "youths" who could not stand that he was dating a girl from their cité (from their 'hood).

"Les agresseurs seraient des jeunes d'une cité de Rosny-sous-Bois (la cité de Bois-Perrier) qui n'auraient pas supporté de croiser l'une des filles habitant le même quartier qu'eux et qui fréquentait un jeune de Sartrouville", a raconté à l'AFP une source proche de l'enquête. "Il est très probable que la jeune fille connaissait les agresseurs", a ajouté cette source. La jeune femme, choquée, devait d'ailleurs de nouveau être entendue par les policiers dimanche en début de soirée.

… Pour le responsable du syndicat de police USGP-FO de la Seine-Saint-Denis, Michel Marrec, "c'est une affaire de jeunes de cité qui n'ont pas grand-chose dans le cerveau".

Pour des sociologues, ce nouveau fait divers, après des rixes entre des bandes d'Asnières et de Gennevilliers, dans les Hauts-de-Seine, s'apparente à un nouvel épisode de rivalités entre jeunes de cités de la banlieue parisienne. "Il y a une identité de territoire très forte (...) en Ile-de-France car dans cette région, il n'y a pas d'identité régionale comme on peut en trouver à Marseille. Il y a donc une identité de quartier qui est surévaluée", dit le sociologue Marwan Mohammed. "Il y a toujours une rivalité entre cités, quelles que soient les cités, a expliqué une source policière. Mais avant il y avait des motifs bien précis, maintenant c'est pour n'importe quoi."

Claude Bartolone, député PS et président du conseil général de Saine-Saint-Denis, a pour sa part dénoncé un "repli sur soi d'un certain nombre de quartiers" où s'impose "une espèce de patriotisme de cages d'escaliers".

Ja, Aber... Na Ja.....

March 1981: Germans selling out to the highest bidding autocrat, otherwise complain about American arms trade and “hegemony”. In the meantime, they continued with the peacenik hair-shirt routine.

March 2011: Germans selling out to the highest bidding autocrat, otherwise complain about American arms trade and “hegemonyIn the meantime, they continued with the peacenik hair-shirt routine.

What's Old is Old Again

Wars caused by capitalism... Jews are behind everything bad... Evil central bankers lustily rub their hands at the thought of your personal misery... If all of the arguments sound familiar, don't be surprised. You could hear them on the airwaves of Nazi era German propaganda radio broadcasts just as easily as you can hear them on the streets of cities in Europe and the Near East today.





Nazi Propaganda, "back in the day" that the anti-everything (and supposedly anti-authoritarian) left should be honest about and get sentimentally reflective about.

Brzezinski: "We live in a very asymmetrical world; And this will remain a reality, unless the United States 'commits suicide' through stupidity"

Comment l'Amérique peut-elle défendre ses intérêts dans un monde multipolaire ?

Zbigniew Brzezinski is interviewed by Le Monde's Natalie Nougayrède.

Le monde est et n'est pas multipolaire. Ce n'est pas un monde uniquement fait d'un Léviathan et de Lilliputiens. C'est un monde dans lequel existent des puissances régionales significatives, dont certaines pourraient un jour, même si cette perspective reste pour l'instant lointaine, devenir des puissances mondiales. Bien entendu, la Chine. Peut-être — mais cela me paraît très peu probable — l'Inde. Je ne vois aucun autre candidat pour l'instant. (...) Que le Brésil soit une puissance régionale, cela ne fait pas de doute. Un acteur sur la scène mondiale, bien sûr. Mais y aura-t-il des soldats brésiliens stationnés en Corée ? Au fond, nous sommes dans un monde très asymétrique. Et cela demeurera une réalité, sauf si les Etats-Unis se "suicident" par stupidité.