Compare with Bin Laden's Death at the Hands of the U.S.: When a Cuban Dissident Is Killed by Havana, Only a Couple of French Readers Bother Reacting

While a Cuban dissident dies in the custody of the Santa Clara police, excitement is the order of the day as the AFP recounts in Le Monde that Che Guevara's unpublished journals from his guerrilla years in the Sierra Maestra are to see the light of day…

Le journal d'Ernesto Che Guevara, écrit pendant la campagne dans la Sierra Maestra, avant la révolution cubaine de 1959, devait être publié pour la première fois mardi 14 juin à Cuba, ont annoncé lundi les éditeurs. Le Journal d'un combattant recueille, selon la quatrième de couverture, "des moments uniques de la lutte armée à Cuba, depuis l'arrivée du yacht Granma" le 2 décembre 1956 sur la côte avec 82 révolutionnaires à bord, jusqu'au triomphe de la révolution dirigée par Fidel Castro.

"Le témoignage humain de grande valeur qui ressort de sa lecture permet d'approcher les perceptions du Che sur la réalité de l'île, sa culture, son identité et le contexte politique", ajoute le texte de présentation du livre édité par la maison australienne Ocean Press-Ocean Sur. Cette dernière a travaillé main dans la main avec le Centre d'études Che Guevara dirigé par la veuve du guérillero, Aleida March.

To return to the article Un dissident cubain meurt sous les coups de la police: noting that there are only a handful of reactions to Juan Wilfredo Soto's death in the article's comments section, one Le Monde reader points out the double standard, comparing the reactions to the Cuban's death with those to a hypothetical case of a similar nature in the United States and with those to a real killing five or six weeks ago that nailed America's public enemy nr 1:

2 réactions ! C'est tout ! Changer de titre. " Un contestataire américains...police" : minimum 50 réactions scandalisées. "Ben Laden est tué par des militaires" : 90 réactions scandalisés ! Les citoyens français sont des défenseurs des droits de l'homme, mais il y a les petites préférences et les petites obsessions ; il y a homme et homme.

A couple of reactions! Is that all?! Try changing the title: "An American Protestor Dies Because of Police Brutality" — there would be at least 50 incensed comments. "Bin Laden Killed by Soldiers": 90 comments voicing outrage! French citizens are defenders of human rights, but they have small preferences and small obsessions; there are humans and then there are humans.

Highly Recommended

David Mamet's The Secret Knowledge
(On the Dismantling of American Culture)

The European Members in NATO should just “Declare Victory and Go Home”

In a policy speech given in Brussels, outgoing US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates took umbrage with NATO’s European members’ dismal non-participation in an alliance that they insist on remaining members of.

The U.S. has tens of thousands of troops based in Europe, not to stand guard against invasion but to train with European forces and promote what for decades has been lacking: the ability of the Europeans to go to war alongside the U.S. in a coherent way.

The war in Afghanistan, which is being conducted under NATO auspices, is a prime example of U.S. frustration at European inability to provide the required resources.

"Despite more than 2 million troops in uniform, not counting the U.S. military, NATO has struggled, at times desperately, to sustain a deployment of 25,000 to 45,000 troops, not just in boots on the ground, but in crucial support assets such as helicopters, transport aircraft, maintenance, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, and much more," Gates said.

Call it “tough love” if you like, but to be it looks more like a warning that much of Europe’s parasitism is going to have to come to an end if they don’t want to lose American support altogether.

The question is simple: do you want to put in half a loaf and get some? Or will you rationalize some more nonsense about not needing NATO to function as Europe’s continental defense and deterrent and get nothing from the US?

It’s a simple, simple question.

To illustrate his concerns about Europe's lack of appetite for defense, Gates noted the difficulty NATO has encountered in carrying out an air campaign in Libya.

"The mightiest military alliance in history is only 11 weeks into an operation against a poorly armed regime in a sparsely populated country, yet many allies are beginning to run short of munitions, requiring the U.S., once more, to make up the difference," he said.

And when it comes to dealing with a third rate thug with aging Soviet and Russian equipment, most of Europe’s over-downsized armed services remain flummoxed.

"While every alliance member voted for the Libya mission, less than half have participated, and fewer than a third have been willing to participate in the strike mission," he said. "Frankly, many of those allies sitting on the sidelines do so not because they do not want to participate, but simply because they can't. The military capabilities simply aren't there."

"A victory for biodiversity in Europe”: EU Court Backs French Hamsters

The wheels of justice have spun in favour of the Great Alsatian Hamster,

reports the Wall Street Journal's John W. Miller from Brussels,

as the European Court of Justice, in one of 11 decisions released on Thursday, ruled that France needs to do more to protect the little golden critter.

(Merci à Damien, whose e-Nough carries the whole backstory and who, indeed, has been reporting on the situation for three (!) years…)

Enjoy that Amish Future of Yours’, Deutschland!

Germany’s phasing out of nuclear power generation will make them more vulnerable that they already are to manipulation by commodity producers such as Russia.

As Steve LeVine recently pointed out in Foreign Policy, “Germany—already reliant on Russia’s Gazprom for 30 percent of its natural gas—will be buying much more gas in order to compensate for the loss of nuclear power, which provides 28 percent of Germany’s electricity.” Of course, maybe the Germans will rely more on coal or hydraulic fracturing instead—surely the Greens would have no objection, right?

It’s interesting, because you would think a nation where half of the politically-active students and the foam-at-the-mouth activist types who seem so fond of rattling on about the US being Saudi Arabia’s lapdog don’t seem to register much concern for their own bogeymen: Gazprom and “big solar”.

Meanwhile, Merkel’s conservative critics—those in the media and in the business sector—are already scoffing. They talk of impending blackouts. Some nuclear energy companies are threatening to sue for damages in the billions. According to Die Welt (translation by Der Spiegel), “The nuclear phaseout marks a creeping rejection of the economic model which has transformed Germany into one of the richest countries in the world in recent decades. .  .  . What will the new energy age cost us Germans in terms of money and jobs?”

What about all of those “green jobs” making windmills and the need for masses of manual labor after power outages force de-mechanization?

I mean, do the proponents of this trash REALLY hate the blue-collar working class THAT MUCH that they would lie to them, and themselves about “green economy” lunacy? Have they forgotten that it was just a talking point to deflect anyone who disagreed on reasonable economic terms?

Droit du Dirty Old Man

SINCE … Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund, was arrested on sexual assault charges in New York, French politicians have been loudly expressing their horror at his “violent” treatment at the hands of America’s criminal justice system

writes Stephen Clarke, the author of 1,000 Years of Annoying the French, while Martine Laronche tackles le mur du silence in Le Monde.

France may think it had a revolution, but in fact it just got a new, and even more powerful, elite. They believe themselves so indispensable to the running of the country that trying to topple one of them is a bit like threatening to shoot a prize racehorse for nibbling your lawn. You’re meant to shut up and let them nibble.

This is why the French establishment sees Mr. Strauss-Kahn — rather than the traumatized chambermaid the police say he attacked — as the victim. The same case would never have come out in the open in Paris. The woman would have been quietly asked whether she thought it was worth risking her job and her residence permit. She would have been reminded that it was her word against his, and frankly, whom would people believe? The witty, famous man with the influential friends, or the nobody?

French politicians are known to be serial seducers, and as a rule no one bothers them about it. …

… The most telling parallel with the Strauss-Kahn case is that of Roman Polanski. Whatever his talents as a filmmaker, he fled the United States to France in 1978 to avoid being sentenced for unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl. When he was arrested in Switzerland in 2009, at the request of the American authorities, the whole of the French cultural establishment rose up to defend him.

At this year’s Césars ceremony (the French equivalent of the Oscars), Mr. Polanski received an award for “The Ghost Writer,” which, to quote France’s most respected newspaper, Le Monde, “marked his return to the family after his legal troubles.” They made it sound like a speeding ticket.

All of which leads me to my belief that even if Dominique Strauss-Kahn is convicted and has to serve time, he will someday return to France, publish his autobiography (which will, of course, be adapted for the big screen by Mr. Polanski) and eventually be made a government minister. Minister of gender equality, perhaps?

Kameradschaft, 1931

The film was a landmark in cinéma verité stylization, but that’s not what’s interesting about it. What’s interesting about it was that it was that it was just another case of the arts being used as a platform to promote socialism, and a phonied-up “internationalism” of promoting German-French "solidarity" like so many dopey, government funded foundation exercises today.

It’s time to celebrate eighty years of that sort of awkward propagandizing, so rah-rah, and all that. It’s just as wooden then as it is today.

As it is with Socialism, the film has the vague stench of Communist era “brother-nation to brother-nation friendship parades” which amounted to a compulsory attendance for school children, troops, and factory workers. Drag out the German-Mongolian comradeship banners again Fritz!”

How much of this day and age's EU happy horseshit amounts to the same sort of rah-rah-ing that only the young really buy?

I Call it Terroirism

Behold the monomaniacal European mindset on display.

The French government regulates speech for no reason other than commercial purposes. Twitter and Facebook may no longer be mentioned in television unless the story is about Twitter or Facebook, and you can expect the same sort of passive-aggressive resentful coverage to be all that the two operations will be left with.

Why? Because they are foreign businesses. They would do this to other Europeans if need be.

President Nicolas Sarkozy's colleagues have agreed to uphold a 1992 decree, which stipulates that commercial enterprises should not be promoted on news programs, the Daily Mail reports.

Broadcasting anchors would be forbidden to refer to the popular social networking site and the microblogging phenomenon, unless it is relevant to a news item.

...unless it’s a domestic commercial enterprise, of course, especially if the state still has an ownership stake in it.

When you really see what laws are on their books, or when domestic motives are exhibited, there is no point in calling them free societies in the slightest way.

Christine Kelly, spokesperson for France's regulator of broadcasting Conseil Superieur de l'Audiovisuel (CSA), believes that the government is correct to uphold this law.

"Why give preference to Facebook, which is worth billions of dollars, when there are many other social networks that are struggling for recognition?" Kelly said.

Regulating television content and speech using free enterprise as a pretext. The fact is that most of the natives are too far gone to grasp just how bizarre that statement really is.

The Reference Book That Has Been Missing from Your Bookshelves

…cet énorme dictionnaire coordonné par Christophe Bier et requérant les compétences d'une petite trentaine de rédacteurs entend constituer une étape vers une meilleure compréhension d'une cinématographie aujourd'hui disparue (c'est désormais l'affaire des productions vidéo, exclues de l'ouvrage)

writes Jean-Luc Douin in his Le Monde book review about (editor) Christophe Bier's "enormous dictionary" which "intends to constitute a step towards a better understanding of a cinematography that has vanished".

At almost 1200 pages, the Dictionnaire des films français pornographiques et érotiques — listing French erotic and porn movies from Les Brouteuses to Dehors-dedans through Hippopotamours and Miss Partouze — costs 89 Euros and it gets rave intellectual reviews from Jean-Luc Douin. (The reason that this is a cinematography that has supposedly "vanished" is that porn films are no longer shot on 16-mm and 35-mm film but on video, and porn videos being excluded from the encyclopedia, the titles are limited to 1,813 "films", most of them shot between 1974 and 1996 — although there is also space for Luis Buñuel's L'Age d'or ("anthropologie psychanalytique et surréaliste étonnante"), Bernardo Bertolucci's Le Dernier Tango à Paris ("grand film d'auteur, polémique et dérangeant"), Jean Becker's L'Eté meurtrier ("cinglant réquisitoire contre le viol"), and Georges Lacombe's La Lumière d'en face.)

Ce cinéma-là plaide ici pour un droit à être étudié avec son histoire, ses codes, ses modes, ses auteurs, ses stars, et cet outil de référence sur un genre déconsidéré, oublié des histoires officielles, affiche son ambition d'expliquer pourquoi il appartient au patrimoine culturel du cinéma français. "L'ambition n'est pas d'écrire un guide, mais bien cette évolution des représentations de la sexualité et du désir", écrit Christophe Bier.

Oh, and by the way, in pure intellectual fashion, in this dictionary of movies, XXX or otherwise, there are no… photos, no outtakes, no posters, no on-the-set shots, or any other image of any kind (never mind a DVD)…

Aucune illustration ne vient troubler les motivations d'un lecteur ciblé comme historien, sociologue, cinéphile plutôt que voyeur.

Comments by Le Monde readers include:

Un livre à lire de la main gauche ?

Ecrire un tel dictionnaire: quel b(l)eau job pour cette trentaine de raides-acteurs!

Chirac at the Helm of the Republic: 12 Years of Solitude

At 78, Jacques Chirac is publishing the second part of his memoirs, writes Béatrice Gurrey in Le Monde, that take us from the end of François Mitterrand's presidency to the beginning of his successor's term, via his problems with Israel and his alleged sagacity vis-à-vis Bush regarding the Iraq War. But Nicolas Sarkozy appears throughout the book, often engaging in what Chirac takes for actions undermining his authority.

…ce qui reste sa passion durant deux mandats : la politique étrangère. Nul n'a oublié le voyage à Jérusalem, où le président français, bousculé par le service d'ordre israélien, finit par exploser de colère.

Chaque détail de cette journée vaut d'être lu, jusqu'au clou, la rencontre en tête à tête avec le premier ministre israélien, Benyamin Nétanyahou. "Jacques, je suis vraiment désolé, me dit-il d'un air un peu roublard, mais si tu savais comment "ils" me traitent moi aussi. Je reçois des coups dans les côtes en permanence !" Lui aussi, se dit pourtant in petto le Français, ressemble "à un garde du corps".

… Si le septennat est marqué par la guerre des Balkans, sur laquelle M. Chirac s'explique longuement, la grande affaire diplomatique du quinquennat reste la guerre d'Irak. "Voilà exactement ce qui va se passer. Dans un premier temps, vous réussirez à prendre Bagdad sans trop de difficultés", dit-il à George W. Bush, avant de lui prédire d'inextricables problèmes entre chiites, kurdes et sunnites. Malgré quelques longueurs, le récit du suspense sur le veto aux Nations unies contre la guerre tient la route.

Weiner Caption Contest

(Thanks to Frank)

MSM in France: French Citizens Remain with That Bad Taste in the Mouth of Always Reading, Watching, or Listening to the Exact Same Information

There was a time when the officials of the 8pm newscasts were waiting for the afternoon appearance of Le Monde on the newsstands in order to figure out with which stories to lead their broadcasts

explains Daniel Psenny in his Le Monde book review of Hervé Brusini's Copie conforme : Pourquoi les médias disent-ils tous la même chose? (Certified Copy: Why Are the Media Outlets All Saying the Same Thing?), which shows just how similarly countries' respective mainstream media work (i.e., à la JournOlist).

Regarded as the "newspaper of record," the evening daily would give the tempo of information even if it so happened that, prior to its printing during the morning hours, its reporters had listened to the radio while reading ​​the dailies of the competition, which had themselves, in turn, been more or less inspired the night before by the 8pm newscasts... In short, each outlet turned out to be a "certified copy" and there was little chance of getting an echo of information from elsewhere!

With the emergence of the Internet and the social networks which, often without hindsight or analysis, make information instant, the tectonic plates of journalism have moved. Anyone can, if desired, learn where and how he so desires. Yet there remains this bad taste in the mouth of always reading, watching, or listening to the exact same information.

…Formatting, competition, economic pressures, acceleration of time, "googled" information, use of pictures for decoration, and infotainment, "the trade is reaping the costs of its own failures," [writes Brusini] as he stigmatizes "uniformity" and the "standardized information" of newsrooms overcome by "an editorial laxity and a laziness without equal."

Suicidal Dissemblement is the New Black

In a convoluted juxtaposition, the childishly scholastic world view of European “strategic thinking” is on broad display here. First off, retelling without any notion of the optional consequences, and exhibiting selective outrage through omission of the enemy’s horrors, nukes are simply called bad. It’s not naïve, it’s a willful to condemn the good societies of the world to act out some penance for the strange, guilty feelings of its’ academic leisure class – or their desire that we all “Do something! Anything!” about the things that keep them up at night.

Otherwise programming and behavior modification for the young is advocated, probably because they are pliable and don’t ask questions, and the blindingly obvious is overlooked:

Although more advanced weapons are proliferating, the question is actual again today, under the shadow of, for example, North Korea having tested rockets. The Secretary-General of the UN, Ban Ki-moon, said today that as long as the nuclear weapon exists, we will live under the threat of it. He also stressed the need for disarmament education in schools, including teaching that “status and prestige belong not to those who possess nuclear weapons, but to those who reject them.”

In other words, the construction of status and prestige needs to be reserved for oppressive dictators who build personality cults, and murderous theocracies.

Otherwise depend on the UN to save us from it all. After all, years of European negotiation with Ahmedinejad’s Iran over his “peaceful, energy only” nuclear program have been so fruitful.

College students' judgment of Obama has cooled significantly — sometimes to the point of disillusionment

Oberlin is one of the United States’ most traditionally — read doggedly — liberal and distinguished small colleges.

As the Ohio school is "Always earnest, often estimable and not particularly wacky in terms of lifestyle," muses John Vinocur (the most conservative commentator working for the New York Times) in the International Herald Tribune, that is a reason why it is significant to note that a

professor of politics at the college, describing Oberlin students’ judgment of President Barack Obama, said it had cooled significantly — sometimes to the point of disillusionment.

…Oberlin students now being described as “disheartened” by the performance of their President Obama, or standing at a distance from Oberlin’s badge of honor of engaged, left-wing politics?

That’s a speck of confetti in a storm of pre-2012 election indicators in America, but it’s also a fact that Mr. Obama’s most diligent canvassers in 2008 often came from the country’s campuses. Without the enthusiasm and activism of millions of students — and their authenticating support for the would-be president’s pitch as the unifying candidate of change — Mr. Obama might not have found a bridge for bringing groups of independents and Reagan Democrats into his camp.

… Michael Parkin, the faculty voice who described the Oberlin trend, placed the change of affection in relationship to the president in an emotional framework.

In a conversation after the symposium, he spoke of a love affair that, to a palpable degree, had wound down. “It started hot and heavy,” he said. “And with extremely idealized notions. Then a reality dawned in the way that a once charming laugh becomes an irritating giggle: He’s a politician who no longer corresponds to the grand ideas that many students had in their heads about him. And that’s deflating and disheartening for them.”

… Potentially pleasing to his campus activist supporters, his initial areas of focus — a world without nuclear weapons, or an apologetic refusal to hold up U.S. democracy as a model for the Arab and Islamic world — have been scaled down as presidential hallmarks.

So where are the “Peace Protesters” in Orange Jumpsuits Now ?

And were they so fond of comparing Gitmo to a concentration camp, when this kind of thing is perfectly normal in much of the Arab world?

Hamza was picked up by security forces at a protest in Jiza, a village in the rebel province of Dar'a in Syria on April 29.

For an agonising month, his desperate family waited for him to go home, terrified of what had become of him.

And when his broken body was finally returned, the injuries which disfigured almost every part of his flesh told the horrific story that he could not.

Amid the mass of cigarette burns, the bullet wounds and bruises, it is impossible to know what finally killed him.

Elsewhere: getting the attention that they deserve. That is to say, little to none.

Zukunft? Nein danke!

Thanks to Observing Herrmann for pointing this out: Europeans have been carrying around prejudices of one another around forever, despite all facts the most enduring trope is the Protestant work ethic, a.k.a. the superior productivity and output of the northerner:

A statistics-based report published by French bank Natixis chief economist Patrick Artus said Germans worked less annually and during their lifetime than Southern Europeans, and did not work more intensely than their neighbours either.

The study, based on OECD and Eurostat figures, said a German's average annual work duration (1,390 hours) was substantially lower than for a Greek (2,119), an Italian (1,773) a Portuguese (1,719) and a Spaniard (1,654).

A French person works 1,554 hours per year, said the study which was published on Monday.

"Germany's productivity per head remains close to the average of southern European countries. Its hourly productivity rate is above average but not better than France or Greece," the study added.

They do seem more productive somehow, or at least more prone to sweep the streets. But how long will this last?
The only other visible differences could be a result of:

A) higher value of the goods that Deutscher und Detscherinnen are making/adding value to, or:
B) There is a higher percentage of population in the workforce, or,
C) cheaper (relative) inputs to that output.

Either way, it doesn’t bode well. The Asians will be spanking them on (A), the workforce is aging which will nuke (B), and the biggest single input into everything (C), energy is now wholly controlled by loons who think that their little life, their coffee in the morning, their bus ride, etc. somehow is immune to relying on solar panels, windmills, opposing hydro power, not allowing a coal mine to operate, and nuking nuclear power.

Once again, some observer might note that “the lights are going out across Europe”. Again it will be a result of self-induced popular hysteria.

Many Men Are Tired and Weary…

The story of D-Day.

So I Belong in the Crowbar Hotel... What’s it to Ya?

Even Swedes think All Swedes Look Alike

It turns out that Ingmar Bergman (not the famous ventriloquist, nor his dummy,) is not Ingmar Bergman.

Ingmar Bergman, the famed Swedish director who died in 2007, was not his mother's biological son, according to the results of an investigation by his niece published on Thursday.

Sure. And I guess I’m supposed to believe that this really isn’t his work!

EU's Human Rights Budget Being Used to Promote Left-Wing Causes in the U.S.

So in which of the world's troubled hotspots and seats of oppression do you think that the European Union is advocating human rights and battling despotism? Syria? Yemen? Zimbabwe? North Korea? Belorussia? You will be happy to learn, courtesy of The Daily Mail's Tim Shipman (merci à Hervé), that

Brussels is pouring nearly £20million a year from its human rights budget on lecturing the Americans on left-wing causes.

The EU Human Rights Fund is intended to help promote Western values in the developing world. But a shock report has found at least £17million of cash – around £2million from British taxpayers’ – has been ploughed into promoting the pet causes of Eurocrats in the U.S.

It is being spent on promoting abolition of the death penalty, discussion of climate change, green energy, and the International Criminal Court – all controversial subjects in the U.S.

The study by the Heritage Foundation, a centre-right Washington think-tank, found a further £4million has been ploughed into pro-EU propaganda in the U.S., including funds for advertising and publicity material.

More than £3million has been funnelled to American universities to promote the benefits of European integration and a further £3million to think-tanks who want to study EU affairs.

The European Commission’s own accounts show millions have also been paid to unnamed individual opinion formers in the U.S.

The report’s British author Sally McNamara said: ‘It is impossible to justify EU human rights budgets being spent in one of the world’s freest nations.’

Tory MP Douglas Carswell said: ‘The U.S. was founded by North Americans fed up with Europeans interfering in its internal affairs.

'The U.S. as a country has done more to bring liberty and human rights to the world than anyone in Europe. They don’t need any lessons from Brussels.’

Stephen Booth, research director of the Open Europe think tank said: ‘The EU has absolutely no mandate to wade in to politically sensitive debates in the U.S.’

That makes but an additional reason why some of America's university professors are always so impressed with the EU's social democracies and so eager to have the United States follow their path…

France restricts mentions of Twitter and Facebook on the airwaves

French regulators have forbidden broadcasters to direct their audiences to Twitter or Facebook

the Global Post quoted CBS News as reporting (merci à — may I mention his name?! — Duncan).

According to a ruling this week, French radio and television broadcasters aren't allowed to mention either of the big social networks on the air unless they are covering a story about the specific network, Atlantic Wire said.

As a Business Insider article explained, citing expat blogger Matthew Fraser, if Facebook or Twitter make the news, they can be mentioned on a strictly “information” basis. But broadcasters are not allowed to urge their audiences to connect via Facebook or Twitter to learn more, ask questions, give their opinions, and all the rest of the things that broadcasters and media outlets do with social networking.

Those wacky French, you might say. What were they thinking? Well, the reasoning goes like this: citing a 1992 law that prohibits surreptitious advertising, the ruling is meant to keep networks from giving an unfair advantage to the two already very popular services, Atlantic Wire said. …

Fraser has a possible explanation for the baffling move:

Facebook and Twitter are, of course, American social networks. In France, they are regarded — at least implicitly — as symbols of Anglo-Saxon global dominance — along with Apple, MTV, McDonald’s, Hollywood, Disneyland, and other cultural juggernauts. That there is a deeply-rooted animosity in the French psyche towards Anglo-Saxon cultural domination cannot be disputed; indeed, it has been documented and analyzed for decades.

All of this is reminiscent of another august French body, the Academie Francaise, and its decidedly interesting rules that are meant to protect the French language. …

Bring a Pair of Hookers and Some Smack, and We’ll Talk Business

Some of My Friends Call me Maurice

Luc Ferry : « Virez-nous ces vieux pervers ! »

The French prosecutor's office opened a preliminary investigation Wednesday after a former government minister alleged that another ex-minister had participated in an orgy with young boys in Morocco.

Sure. Whatever. CIA plot. It’s the “mature” attitude about ”romance” molesting and exploiting the weak that we’re all supposed to stay in awe of.

Ferry, who was education minister from 2002 to 2004, did not name the minister or the government in which that minister had served, but said during a television show Monday that he heard about the case from a prime minister. He did not specify which one.

He goes on to display just WHY there are so many vociferous calls by politicians to protect the “private lives” of politicians: virtually no-one in the “débat-o-sphere seems to want to back him up in his effort to cut away the rot from the tree.

"Me, I know and I think I am not alone," Ferry said on the show on Canal Plus cable TV debating the long-standing French tradition of respect for private lives.

I think it will be lonlier there than he thinks, unless a virtue can somehow be made of virtue in such a fashion that people, even if begrudgingly feel forced to show their clean hands, even if this requires the same kind of ritualistic display that is required of public figures where the “social state” is concerned.



Along the same lines an associate of Ferry’s former boss, Jacque Chirac, has been sentenced to 6 months in the pokey for using his position to abuse women.

Jean-Claude Raynaud, 75, former deputy prefect and former chief of staff for the office of Rocard Fabius and Chirac, appeared [in court] on Wednesday for "attempted sexual assault abuse of office, and harassment to the obtaining sexual favors, "against three women. Between 2005 and 2007, while serving as a representative of the prosecutor, he was responsible for notifying accused of the law. He then took advantage ...

On March 13, 2007, Emily (pseudonym), aged 35, was summoned from the delegate of the prosecutor for a [warning and a] reminder of the law after hitting her child. Once in the office of Jean-Claude Raynaud, posing as the prosecutor of Evry and recounts his past as prefect. He says he has the power to include or not the sentence on his criminal record, which means loss of work and childcare.
Distraught, she cries. Jean-Claude Raynaud leans over and kisses her on the cheek, then twice on the mouth.
Four days later, she comes to a new venue, equipped with a dictaphone to give evidence ... This time he takes her car in a parking lot, fondle her breasts and body and asked to be massaged sexually. To reassure the young wife, he leaves a sign "police." A few days later, Emily filed a complaint.

A government type in a nanny state threating a loss of benefits to get his way. My my. Shocked, anyone? Does anyone now wonder why the benefits of a large, all-encompassing government, involving itself in every feature of peoples’ lives, particularly that of women and children, so vigorously defended by the political class? It’s more than just their meal ticket.

Obama's general approach to foreign policy — selling out our allies to curry favor with our adversaries

The only thing surprising about Barack Obama's latest blow against Israel is that there are people who are surprised

writes Thomas Sowell (also check out Obama's foreign policy is to speak loudly and carry a little stick).

Obama's declaration that Israel must give up the land it acquired, after neighboring countries threatened its survival in 1967, is completely consistent with both his ideology of many years and his previous actions as President of the United States.

Whether as a radical student, a community organizer or a far left politician, Barack Obama's ideology has been based on a vision of the Haves versus the Have Nots. However complex the ramifications of this ideology, and however clever the means by which Obama has camouflaged it, that is what it has amounted to.

No wonder he was moved to tears when the Reverend Jeremiah Wright summarized that ideology in a thundering phrase-- "white folks' greed runs a world in need."

Israel is one of the Haves. Its neighbors remain among the Have Nots, despite their oil. No wonder that Barack Obama has bent over backward, in addition to bowing low forward, to support the side that his ideology favors.

Israel is not simply to have its interests sacrificed and its security undermined. It is to be brought down a peg and-- to the extent politically possible-- insulted. Obama has already done all these things. His latest pronouncement is just more of the same.

Whether at home or abroad, Obama's ideology is an ideology of envy, resentment and payback.

… All of this is consistent with Obama's general approach to foreign policy-- selling out our allies to curry favor with our adversaries. He flew to Moscow, shortly after taking office, to renege on the American commitment to put a missile shield in Eastern Europe, in hopes of getting a deal with the Russians.

Obama is politically savvy enough to know how to get his point across without blowing his cover.

Europeans Who are Unable to Differentiate Between Austria and Australia Running Tuned-in Blog Aggregator

Me tawk gud some day.

Sure, but what about the Sequel Eagerly Awaited all over Europe ?!?

David Pryce-Jones discusses a French film about the collaborationist rounding up of Jews in Paris during the Nazi occupation. It seems that the French public and critics are willing now to live with the idea on film. Possibly for reasons of renewed enthusiasm?

For a long time the French have been unable or unwilling to face their collaboration with the occupying Nazis. Marcel Ophuls’ pioneering film Le Chagrin et la Pitié was for years virtually boycotted. The films Au revoir les Enfants and Lucien Lacombe broke the taboo, and French historians at last began to research occupation and collaboration. The Round Up is based on the reality of the first mass arrest of Jews in Paris in July 1942. The Germans did not have the manpower or the desk-work intelligence for this, but relied on the French authorities, the police and the transport systems, to do it for them.

Two Pointless Summits Rolled Into One!

Wait long enough, and the circus will come to town. Wait long enough, and a high-minded-sounding bloviating and forgettable declaration will be named after your city, village, or hut.

EU institutions would like to clip one of the two yearly Russia summits due to lack of content, but decorum forbids making the first move.

And as if that weren’t not enough to be enough,

The two sides are seeking to identify specific projects to make the partnership a reality.

A Pentagon à la Française

The French have unveiled their latest work for Paris, writes Frédéric Edelmann in Le Monde, and it concerns the military: a French-style Pentagon, as it is called, a military headquarters grouping the various service buildings (previously dispersed around the capital) in one, which will be situated in the southwest of Paris (check out the portfolio). Already, it is being criticized for its astronomical cost (3.5 billion Euros).

Présentée mardi 31 mai par le ministre de la défense, Gérard Longuet, après quatre ans de grandes manoeuvres, l'architecture du "Pentagone à la française", construit à Balard, dans le 15^e arrondissement de Paris, représente un projet colossal (467 000 m² à construire ou à rénover) au budget proportionnel (plus de 3 milliards d'euros).

L'objectif est de regrouper, sur un site unique de 16,5 hectares, 9 300 fonctionnaires de la défense jusqu'à présent dispersés dans une douzaine d'édifices de la capitale. Vinci, Bouygues et Eiffage, les trois majors du BTP — qui luttent régulièrement pour les marchés des grandes infrastructures ferroviaires ou routières — se sont retrouvés en concurrence chacun avec une équipe d'architectes, d'ingénieurs et de paysagistes.

Une lutte sans merci qui s'est soldée par la victoire du projet de Bouygues, avec les architectes Nicolas Michelin, Jean-Michel Wilmotte et Pierre Bolze, de l'Atelier 2/3/4 l'Atelier 2/3/4 … Les projets des lauréats, ceux des deux finalistes et la kyrielle de ceux qui avait tenté de se faire admettre à la table des grands sont présentés à la Cité de l'architecture et du patrimoine (Palais de Chaillot) du 1^er au 19 juin.

… Soumis à un embargo aussi inflexible que le secret-défense, le projet Opale, longtemps entouré de rumeurs, est le plus gros chantier français dans le secteur du bâtiment. Le montant réel de l'investissement reste toutefois peu lisible derrière les chiffres du bail signé début mai. Le contrat, cumul des 130 millions d'euros de redevances annuelles sur vingt-sept années d'exploitation de 2014 à 2041, est évalué à 3,5 milliards.

… D'une cour à l'autre, les passages sous les bâtiments restent libres. Sauf au point central où se trouve le commandement général du ministère. En fait de Pentagone à l'américaine, celui-ci s'organise autour d'une cour de forme hexagonale. Symbole cocardier, croisement de deux triangles maçonniques ou étoile de David ? Le public y verra ce qu'il veut, le temps au moins de l'exposition et en attendant l'achèvement des travaux d'ici à 2014.

Jerkin’ your Gurkens Again?

An E. Coli outbreak which has impacted about 200 people and killed 14 is in the process of paralyzing EUtopia. The flummoxing ranges from the eternally organized and nannyistic Dutch asking for help from the hive mind to class and gender interpretations.

It’s also being called a crisis, and Spaniards are demanding compensation from the German government for impugning them with facts.

cri•sis/ˈkrīsis/Noun
1. A time of intense difficulty, trouble, or danger.
2. A time when a difficult or important decision must be made: "a crisis point of history".

As bad as an E. Coli outbreak is, this is not a notable point in history. There’s a more appropriate term:

hys•te•ri•a/hiˈsterēə/
Noun: Exaggerated or uncontrollable emotion or excitement, esp. among a group of people: "the mass hysteria that characterizes the week before Christmas".

What the beknighted continent desperately needs is lawyers who advertise on the sides of busses, a nap, and a (non-recreation) enema, for once, and possibly some mallard spunk.

In a surprising turn of events, semen from a species of duck has been found to totally destroy Esterichia Coli, a rather commonly and dangerous bacteria.

Obama's foreign policy is to speak loudly and carry a little stick

Theodore Roosevelt said that his foreign policy was to speak softly and carry a big stick.
Obama's policy is to speak loudly and carry a little stick
And we see the disaster that is starting to unfold in Libya as a result.

— Thomas Sowell, Uncommon Knowledge 32:00 or Segment 5, 05:49 (slightly paraphrased). (Also check out Obama's general approach to foreign policy — selling out our allies to curry favor with our adversaries…)

It only Hurts When I Laugh

Some wild and crazy guy from Bratislava finally got back at Steve Martin:

German police believe that American actor, comedian and collector Steve Martin played a minor role as a victim in what may be Germany's biggest-ever art forgery scandal.

A reflexive equation linking concern about immigration with reactionary thinking has been dulled in Europe, but not without embarrassment

When the leaders of the Group of 8 meet … — among them, Barack Obama, David Cameron, Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy — one of their official concerns will be supporting attempts to make democracy emerge in some kind of recognizable form from the Arab revolts in countries like Tunisia and Libya.

John Vinocur takes on the issue of Arab Spring migrants due to cast a shadow on next week's G-8 talks.

Unofficially, and perhaps even without public mention at the summit meeting in the French resort town of Deauville, that helping hand also means providing sufficient economic incentive to hold off a wave of Arab migration toward Europe. The potential human flood gets described by the apocalyptically minded as “biblical.”

Of course, no one in Deauville would talk in those terms. … But reality doesn’t sit still. What is changing now is that none of the heads of the four big Western countries at Deauville in 2011 can avoid immigration as a domestic/international political issue that carries with it the emotional vote-getting-or-vote-losing volatility of war or taxes.

… signs are emerging of left-of-center politicians’ acknowledgment of the legitimacy of European voters’ concerns about how their lives are affected by the failed integration of many Muslim immigrants.

… A reflexive equation linking concern about immigration with reactionary thinking has been dulled in Europe, but not without embarrassment. In a clumsy attempt to cozy up to its wavering white working-class constituency, the German Social Democratic Party leadership voted last month not to expel Thilo Sarrazin, a party member who wrote a best seller, larded with genetics-based arguments, designating Muslim immigrants as a drag on German society.

Yet for parts of the European left, a serious question exists about a way to move closer to the immigration themes it once rejected as reflecting bigotry.

Screaming Eagles by Sabaton

Others with Nothing to Declare

Jakob Augstein, the spawn of Spiegel Magazine's founder, has put up a screed in Spiegel declaring that Conservatives holding conservative opinions are "a virus". I'm sure he believes his argument quite logical in a "so there!" kind of way. Spiegel, the house organ of empty-headed middle mindedness for it's part has nothing to declare - like the fact that Augstein is a political hack employing SPON for ideological propagation.

The blog he contributes to is titled "Talking up a New World" has a blogroll dominated rather strangely by the American far-left media farm peppered with links to Robert Reich essay, but also linking the unwittingly pro-totalitarian "New Deal 2.0". Strange as this may seem, he would HAVE to link to the American branch of the new Internationale if he wants to seem reasonable: if there ever was a test tube in which the ideas of leftism failed, it is in Germany.

Happy Memorial Day

(Or dare we call it Meowmorial Day? Merci à Carine…)

Wanks for Wonks

Irrationally exuberant EU directive-ing-ing is being unflatteringly compared to Onanism, which is a palliatively used term to make noble the practice of dating Rosie Palm and her five sisters.

Perhaps it should be better thought of as a school shooting. Gawain Towler does the body count on an interactive flash animation celebrating legalism, activism by edict, and meddling in the lives of the humble peasantry:

Go on, have a play. See how many regulations were created about Agricultural policy in the field of Afgricultural Structures by 1980, I can tell you. 38 Directives, 52 Regulations, 242 Legal Decisions and 342 Legal Acts.

Well, at least they’re getting off with someone they love. What do you expect from a continent of hard-up, lonely, freaks.

Down with Transit!

Berlin “radicals” set off a bomb at Ostkreutz, a Berlin S-Bahn station. It’s a strange choice. Maybe they want to enflame “the German street” in that grafitti-riddled, mostly unemployed proletariats-in-waiting neighborhood. After all, you need to actually be employed to be an oppressed worker, don’t you?

They’ve recently rebuilt the platforms. The place in such a shambles, that it was even an embarrassment to the DDR, but they didn’t do anything about it because no Wessies or foreigners went out that far.

The perps are a rather consistently syphilitic looking bunch of adolescents who call themselves “Black Bloc”. They are prone to Emo-like self-absorption, and cover their faces (in what they must believe is a fashionable manner) out of a paranoid “fear of the state”. The irony is that they always seem to smash property in support of causes that require a big, ham-fisted authoritarian state to realize. The sad thing is that the same is true of the Pirate Party, a group of people who seem to think that they’re intergalactic pimp-daddy Jedi Knights disguised so as not to shock us mere humans. And to think that they’re supposed to be ADULTS.

Otherwise they wall for anything, such as the long love affair they had with Trutherism.

After Admitting That He Has Never Heard of Ayn Rand, French Journalist Proceeds to Denounce Her "Frightful Theses"

Connaissez-vous Ayn Rand ? Votre serviteur, jusqu'à récemment, n'en avait jamais entendu parler.

A Le Monde journalist admits that until a couple of days ago, he had never heard of Ayn Rand. After he states his (admirable) desire to learn more, Sylvain Cypel then proceeds to quote a Slate article that is totally negative, and from there to go on and on about Rand's "frightful theses."

France's Mistral Sale: For the First Time Ever, a NATO Member Will Deliver Sensitive Military Technology to the Former Soviet Union

The French-Russian agreement is symbolic, says Le Monde: Thanks to the deal with the Kremlin for the purchase of French Mistral ships, a NATO country will be, for the first time ever, delivering sensitive military technology to a country of the former Soviet Union.

The Mistral (check for previous articles on the ship and its sale) is nicknamed the "Swiss Army knife" by members of the French military because if it was expressly built to carry (some 15) helicopters, the latter can be replaced by some 60 armored vehicles, or a dozen tanks, or a dozen amphibious vehicles, or 700 troops, or a hospital with two operation rooms, or (obviously) a combination of the above.

There will inevitably be a technology transfer to the Kremlin, whose naval yards have not built a warship in over 10 years, as two of the four bâtiments de projection et de commandement (BPC) sold will not be built in France, according to the contract, but in Russia.

This led to tension between Paris and Washington, but as John Vinocur explained back in January, the Americans could hardly complain when their leaders were constantly touting the reset button with Russia.

Indeed. At the time, then-defense minister (now foreign minister) Alain Juppé quoted who else but America's Apologist-in-Chief:

In Lisbon, I heard Barack Obama tell Dmitry Medvedev: "You're not just a partner but a friend." You can not blame France for delivering boats to a friend.

Next on the agenda: the sale to our newfound Russian friends of 500 to 1,000 of France's Panhard-built light armored vehicles.

(And what comes after that? Military sales to China?!)

From the original article by Dominique Gallois in Le Monde:

Après trois ans de discussions, la France et la Russie sont parvenues à un "accord définitif" sur la fourniture à la marine russe de quatre porte-hélicoptères Mistral. …

L'accord est symbolique : c'est la première fois qu'un pays de l'Alliance atlantique (Otan) livre du matériel militaire " "sensible" à un pays de l'ex-Union soviétique.

… Les deux dirigeants ont confirmé le montage industriel : deux exemplaires du Mistral seront construits pour l'essentiel par les chantiers STX de Saint-Nazaire (Loire-Atlantique), les deux autres en Russie. Ils n'ont cependant donné aucun détail sur le montant du contrat, estimé à 1,5 milliard d'euros. Encore moins sur les équipements, notamment électroniques, prévus à bord. Conçu aux normes civiles, le BPC, long de 200 mètres, est le plus gros bâtiment de la flotte française après le porte-avions Charles-de-Gaulle.

La question du transfert de technologie a longtemps retardé la conclusion de ce contrat. Dès le départ, MM. Medvedev et Poutine n'avaient pas caché leur intérêt pour la technologie du Mistral et exigé la livraison d'exemplaires dotés de tous les systèmes de commandement sophisitiqués équipant les deux bâtiments déjà en service dans la marine française. Se voulant rassurante à l'égard aux pays alliés d'Europe centrale, la France affirmait que les porte-hélicoptères seraient vendus "sans équipement militaire".

L'une des spécificités et des principales qualités de ce bâtiment, baptisé le "couteau suisse" par les militaires français, est sa polyvalence. Il a, en effet, été conçu pour transporter une quinzaine d'hélicoptères et, au choix, une soixantaine de véhicules blindés, une dizaine de chars ou d'engins amphibies pour une opération de débarquement. Il peut embarquer aussi 700 combattants, un état-major de grande dimension, et un hôpital contenant deux salles d'opération.

…Au fil de mois, ces discussions avaient fini par provoquer des tensions entre la France et des pays d'Europe centrale et orientale, et par susciter la réprobation des Etats-Unis. En octobre 2009, le ministre des affaires étrangères de l'époque, Bernard Kouchner, avait espéré que Moscou puisse acheter "ce merveilleux navire".

… Outre le caractère stratégique du Mistral pour les militaires, ce contrat permettra aussi aux industriels russes de se remettre à niveau. Leurs chantiers navals n'ont pas construit de bateaux de guerre depuis dix ans. Côté français, d'autres contrats sont en cours de discussions, comme l'achat par la Russie de 500 à 1 000 véhicules blindés légers (VBL) fabriqués par Panhard.

Caption contest: What's Going Through Michelle's Mind?

The Way of the Cosa Nostra

Associates of a populist-leftist-elite-proletarian-sooper-dooper-friend-of-humanity “alleged” ass rapist offers “alleged” victim hush money.

"They already talked with her family," a French businesswoman with close ties to Strauss-Kahn and his family told The Post. "For sure, it's going to end up on a quiet note."

Prosecutors in Manhattan have done their best to keep the cleaning woman out of the reach of Strauss-Kahn's supporters, but the source was already predicting success for the Parisian pol's pals.

"He'll get out of it and will fly back to France. He won't spend time in jail. The woman will get a lot of money," said the source, adding that a seven-figure sum has been bandied about.

That must make him super-extra-innocent.

"Please, please stop. No!" she cried as he pinned her to the bed, law-enforcement sources said. "Please stop. I need my job, I can't lose my job, don't do this. I will lose my job. Please, please stop!"

In a heartless reply, Strauss-Kahn, allegedly told her, "No, baby. Don't worry, you're not going to lose your job," sources said, adding that he again repeated, "Don't you know who I am?"

While she begged him to stop, he allegedly pressed the attack, dragging her down the hall and forcing her to perform oral sex.

Gosh, all he wanted to do was to leave a little something to the working class!

Investigators also confirmed a DNA match between Strauss-Kahn and a semen sample found on the maid's shirt.

Elsewhere, Bernard-Henri Lévy defensive task once executed by bitter class-warfare dead-ender Gloria Steinem still looks stupid.

France’s voodoo doll

When Dominique Strauss-Kahn was arrested in New York on sexual assault charges, 57 percent of the French said he was the victim of a plot, according to a poll by four Paris media groups. Who set him up? A separate description of public opinion pointed to Nicolas Sarkozy. … The contributors’ list [on a website for the news magazine l’Express] of suspected instigators began … with the president, followed by “the Americans.”

In the International Herald Tribune, John Vinocur takes on the président described by Franz-Olivier Giesbert, author of M. le President, as “a man from nowhere” and “a little tyrant,” in love with money and rich people.

This reaction in French public opinion looks like another turn in what appears increasingly as Mr. Sarkozy’s demonization. …

But in France, a segment of the French was reported imagining Mr. Sarkozy’s hand in the fall of the probable Socialist candidate.

Why? There are, by unscientific count, three books out now, all explaining how the president inspires or is portrayed as inspiring hatred. They contain rationalizations, defenses, prejudices and varying examples of meanness (from both the authors and their subject) that provide no single answer — while leaving Mr. Sarkozy, in the phrase of essayist Pascal Bruckner, as “France’s voodoo doll.”

Explanations abound for his negative performance rating of 72 percent. There’s the obvious stuff: 9.6 percent unemployment last month, the nonappearance of a promised “buying power presidency,” and a sense among a meaningful slice of voters that French specificity is drowning in a globalized world.

But how does this add up to rage, hysteria, or indeed to what Mr. Bruckner has called “this hatred, out of all proportion, against him”?

… Dominique Wolton, a French academic and media critic, has since described a type of relationship between “a little caste of columnists and star journalists” and many French politicians as “intolerable collusion.”

Get your Laws off Junior's Willy!

San Francisco's proscribers of thought want to make circumcision a misdemeanor.

To say that New York's special election defeat of the GOP is a repudiation of the GOP’s efforts on Medicare is laughable on its face

Republicans suck in New York. Period. End of Story.

In two separate articles on Red State, Erick Erickson takes on the Empire State's special election.

To say that this special election defeat of the GOP is a repudiation of the GOP’s efforts on Medicare is laughable on its face.

The truth of the matter is that the Republican Party of New York sucks and has sucked for a while. It is especially terrible at special elections where the out of touch party leaders pick state legislators who everyone hates and runs them.

More generally, Erick Erickson adds that

The press’s ready willingness to believe Democrat spin is yet again driven home this morning by the Republican loss in New York … Immediately, the press was adopting Democrat spin that this was all about medicare. The press has a history of doing this.

… In fact, throughout 2009 and into 2010, the media embraced the Democrats’ wholesale message that the GOP was too divided to win and the public held against the GOP that it was “the Party of No.”

… Now the media is in a full tizzy that the GOP is going to get beat down on Medicare because of a special election in New York last night. Just like they did with Tedisco. Just like they did with NY-23.

As I noted last night, the race last night had far more to do with New York than with Paul Ryan. To make broad assertions about medicare is silly and disingenuous.

Is This Why You Keep Saying You Miss Home?

The staff of the IMF, like turds floating around in the fetid pool of quasi-diplomatic international institution, prove what's said about the place. It is said to be one giant social distraction, preoccupied by people dating work peers, and pressuring each other for sexual favors.
The NYT reports:

Some women avoid wearing skirts for fear of attracting unwanted attention. Others trade whispered tips about overly forward bosses. A 2008 internal review found few restraints on the conduct of senior managers, concluding that "the absence of public ethics scandals seems to be more a consequence of luck than good planning and action."

This, my friend, is that much-lauded "internationalism" that we're supposed to supplicate our national cultures and norms to. From acquaintances it's gleaned that they behave like they're either living like the privileged caste in a third world, or like the selfish, uncaring types well understood to anyone who's ever lived in a Mediterranean culture, where grown men generally only trust their mothers, and for biological reasons alone, at that.

This seems to include those "visigoths" as I like to call them that seem to want to broadly identify those they want to denigrate culturally as "Ango-Saxons".

"What are we supposed to make of this when we go into Strauss-Kahn's office?" Ms. Schadler [a former deputy director of the European department] said, recounting conversations with former colleagues. "Do we sit there and think, 'He's sizing me up as a potential sexual object?' "

Free of the market and functional society's realities, they also seem to be free of functional social norms and conventions: not to mention the fact that we're talking about the frequently hideous and selfish judgment of those who weren't raised with what are generally good graces passed on to a large part of the population in the anglosphere.

Interviews and documents paint a picture of the fund as an institution whose sexual norms and customs are markedly different from those of Washington, leaving its female employees vulnerable to harassment. The laws of the United States do not apply inside its walls, and until earlier this month the I.M.F.'s own rules contained an unusual provision that some experts and former officials say has encouraged managers to pursue the women who work for them: "Intimate personal relationships between supervisors and subordinates do not, in themselves, constitute harassment."

Be it known: the IMF like all the UN affiliated entities in the US, has a "quota cap" for American hires.

In another case, a young woman who has since left the I.M.F. said that in 2009, a senior manager in her department started sending her increasingly explicit e-mails seeking a relationship. She complained to her boss, who did not take any action.

The next time you're given the passive-aggressive glancing blow of someone rattling on about "anglo saxons" ask yourself why "their" women seem to like "our" males. To use an old adage of an old friend of mine in the Navy, a high number of Italian women he got to know when stationed in Italy were attracted to American men for rather simple reasons: generally they are "grown ups," and are nice. Even those who had a modest upbringing are less prone to loutish thinking than the middling domestic variety.

So the next time you see someone trying to pass off their exploitation and abuse as "a mature attitude towards sex", tie them down, defecate on them, and tell them that it's "your thing" and that it makes you happy. Do that right after you thank them for providing you with the satisfaction you deserve despite what's running out of their nostrils. At that point, they might develop an understanding.

DSK's New Holding Pen

DSK's torturous stay in corporate housing for the average joe, even for those from IMF bailed out countries, is coming to an end

writes Zero Hedge (a dozen more photos at the link, along with a brief description of the 4 bedroom, 4.5 bathroom townhouse which was recently listed by StreetEasy as costing $13.995 million — merci à Frank). Plus Instapundit links a story on the conspiracy-believing French, something that was recently highlighted in a Serguei cartoon.

Next stop: a $14 million palace just purchased by the missus at 153 Franklin Street, half a block away from iconic TriBeCa eatery Bubby's. From the WSJ:

"David Bookstaver, a spokesman for the state court system, said that New York Supreme Court Justice Michael Obus approved [Dominique] Strauss-Kahn's move to a new residence during a conference call with his defense attorneys and prosecutors on Wednesday afternoon. Mr. Bookstaver said he doesn't know where Mr. Strauss-Kahn's new residence will be or when he will be moved."

Damn it sure is good to be married to a billionairess, who will do everything in her power from preventing her husband's improprieties from spilling over into her own social scene.

The " D " in " BRD " Stands for Dull

From the nation that brought you stylish Prussian Jack boots, and the phrase "Ausweis Bitte!", we find a seemingly never-ending "reality TV" series about Customs agents, which I can tell you first hand, is as boring as watching cops go through people's luggage and listen to evasive answers about questions like "who told you that you could import a wild cane toad as a pet?"

Wait a minute. That IS what they do in the series. The series I saw that was shot in Germany's airports boiled down to one long, unintended lesson in why taxes are bad.

When Obama wants to make a show of his exquisite diplomatic sensitivity he knows how; And when he wants to show his contempt, he knows how, too

…it isn't often that this or any other U.S. president welcomes a foreign leader by sandbagging him with an adversarial policy speech a day before the visit

notes Bret Stephens of the Apologizer-in-Chief. At a time like this, it's hardly a bad idea to remember Frank Gaffney's definition of the Obama Doctrine…

Remember when the Dalai Lama visited Mr. Obama last year? As a courtesy to Beijing, the president made sure to have the Tibetan spiritual leader exit by the door where the White House trash was piled up. And that was 11 months before Hu Jintao's state visit to the U.S.

When this president wants to make a show of his exquisite diplomatic sensitivity—burgers with Medvedev, bows to Abdullah, New Year's greetings to the mullahs—he knows how. And when he wants to show his contempt, he knows how, too.

The contempt was again on display Sunday, when Mr. Obama spoke to the Aipac policy conference in Washington. The speech was stocked with the perennial bromides about U.S.-Israeli friendship, which brought an anxious crowd to its feet a few times. As for the rest, it was a thin tissue of falsehoods, rhetorical legerdemain, telling omissions and self-contradictions. Let's count the ways.

French Leftists Call DSK's Downfall "Our Very Own September 11"

As usual, common Frenchmen refuse to see any tragedy involving Americans (or capitalists) as …tragic, while they magnify every one of their own (alleged) misfortunes — as well as any adversity occurring anywhere, so long as it is allegedly the result of misdeeds committed by clueless Americans and/or by evil capitalists (such as DSK's arrest being the result a nefarious Yankee plot).

In that perspective, reports Patrick Roger in Le Monde, one leader of DSK's fellow socialists calls Dominique Strausss-Kahn's downfall the equivalent of September 11.

For the Socialist deputies, it is as if the sky had fallen on their head. "This is our very own September 11" confides one of the group's leaders. All of the MPs are devastated.

Pour les députés socialistes, c'est comme si le ciel leur était tombé sur la tête. « C'est notre 11 septembre [2001] à nous », confie un responsable du groupe. Tous sont totalement abattus.

This follows a tradition in France and Europe — especially among commentators, intellectuals, and cartoonists — of trivializing 9-11 and making inappropriate references about the 911 attacks…

And in this case, the false analogy leads one Le Monde reader to react:

Le 11 septembre 2001 : 3 000 morts ce jour-là, et innombrablement plus par la suite (Afghanistan, Irak...). L'affaire Strauss-Kahn : une victime certainement, et peut-être deux, car quelle que soit l'issue du procès, la carrière politique du directeur général du FMI semble singulièrement compromise. En tout état de cause, zéro mort. Le responsable du groupe socialiste à l'Assemblée nationale qui a cru bon d'affirmer que l'affaire Strauss-Kahn, " c'est notre 11-Septembre à nous ", manque du sens des mots, du sens de la mesure et du sens de la pudeur, tout simplement.

Edouard Reichenbach
Antony (Hauts-de-Seine)

The Market: An Inept Haiku

Anticipation aches shorters
S&P bottoms
Buy