Castigating Bush and the Neo-Cons, Former French Foreign Minister Says that the War on Terror Should Have Been Carried Out "With Discretion"

Gaïdz Minassian and Nicolas Weill have an interview in Le Monde of Hubert Védrine, the French foreign minister in 2001 who, needless to say, enjoys the benefit of hindsight.

In the interview, Védrine says that the fight against the terrorists should have been carried out "with discretion"; he castigates the neocons' takeover (from realists like Colin Powell) of George W Bush' foreign policy; he refers to "Bush's Manichean policy" as America's worst foreign policy since the foundation of the republic; he brings us a caricature of the hawks during the Cold War who allegedly wanted nothing but (a real) war with the Soviet Union; he supports a second Obama term ("l'intelligence de Barack Obama est éclatante"), "expecially if he is opposed by a Republican extremist"; and he pays honor to the… honor of France for opposing the Iraq conflict.

Prétendre créer, de l'extérieur, un Afghanistan moderne était illusoire. Et surtout, c'était une erreur tragique de proclamer, comme l'a fait George W. Bush, la "guerre contre le terrorisme" (formule bizarre, le terrorisme n'étant pas une entité, mais une technique) comme le problème numéro un du monde, et de tout articuler de façon binaire autour de cette seule question.
Quel cadeau inespéré aux terroristes, qu'ils aient été capables d'atteindre ce niveau de nuisance et que cela soit reconnu par la première puissance mondiale ! Et quel simplisme ! Il fallait être implacable, et il faut continuer aussi longtemps que nécessaire, mais le faire discrètement.
Est-ce que, dès 2001, vous pressentiez une volonté américaine d'en "découdre" avec l'Irak et se profiler les futures tensions entre Paris et Washington (guerre de 2003) ?
Oui, c'était perceptible, avant même le 11-Septembre. Déjà au printemps 2001, lors d'un voyage à Washington pour rencontrer la nouvelle administration, j'étais revenu convaincu de la volonté de cette équipe — le vice-président Dick Cheney en tête — de s'en prendre à l'Irak dès qu'une opportunité et un prétexte se présenteraient. Et c'était évident à l'avance que la France ne pourrait y souscrire, sauf suivisme aveugle.
On le sait maintenant : dès le lendemain du 11-Septembre, Dick Cheney a convaincu George W. Bush, hésitant, d'attaquer l'Irak. Pays sans aucune responsabilité dans le 11-Septembre, mais cible idéale : régime détestable, indéfendable, accusable sans preuve des pires choses, assez fort apparemment pour que sa défaite lève l'humiliation américaine, pas assez pour ne pas pouvoir être facilement écrasé.
On a le sentiment que, avec ces attentats, la politique étrangère américaine est passée des mains des "réalistes" (Colin Powell, etc.) aux "néocons" (Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, etc.). Quel jugement portez-vous sur cette prise en main ?
Il y avait eu au début de la présidence de George W. Bush des réalistes pondérés (Colin Powell), mais aussi des nationalistes durs voulant "finir le job", interrompu selon eux après la libération du Koweït (Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney), des néocons "occidentalistes", et un président incertain sur son rôle et sa mission.
Après le 11-Septembre, il y a eu clairement une OPA complète des néoconservateurs sur la politique étrangère de George W. Bush, et même, Richard Perle — président du comité des conseillers du Pentagone — s'en vantait publiquement, un alignement sur la politique de la droite israélienne, le Likoud. Mais cela dit, la conseillère à la sécurité nationale, Condoleezza Rice, était déjà sur cette ligne au printemps 2001 à propos du Moyen-Orient.
A mes yeux, il en est résulté la plus mauvaise politique étrangère américaine depuis la fondation des Etats-Unis, la plus intelligente ayant été celle d'Harry Truman, de Marshall, de Dean Acheson après la guerre pour concevoir une stratégie de longue durée envers l'URSS : dissuasion, fermeté, ténacité et patience face à la menace soviétique, sans reconquête ni aventurisme. Cette politique tenace fut poursuivie jusqu'à la fin de la guerre froide avec succès, à la grande fureur des "faucons", ancêtres des néoconservateurs, qui voulaient en découdre sans attendre la chute de l'URSS.

See also:
• Le Monde's 911 Commemorations

• Looking Over TV Shows Inspired by 9-11, Le Monde Discovers (Surprise!) "a Culture of Fear"

• The America-Bashers' Use of Symbolism on September 11

• André Glucksmann: Bin Laden Is Gone, Not The Strategy of Radical Hatred Without Quarter

• The French Will Never Forget

• 911 Commemorated in Paris's Luxembourg Garden

• The Legend of the Squandered Sympathy

Le Monde's 911 Commemorations

Needless to say, Le Monde joins in the 911 commemorations, which include the obligatory reference to the decline of the American empire since the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Cartoonwise, we have the publication of a graphic novel with various artists, French and American, in addition to Plantu's take in the form of an artistic "dialog" with Daryl Cagle.

See also:
• Looking Over TV Shows Inspired by 9-11, Le Monde Discovers (Surprise!) "a Culture of Fear"

• Hubert Védrine: Castigating Bush and the Neo-Cons, Former French Foreign Minister Says that the War on Terror Should Have Been Carried Out "With Discretion"

• André Glucksmann: Bin Laden Is Gone, Not The Strategy of Radical Hatred Without Quarter

• The French Will Never Forget

• The Legend of the Squandered Sympathy

The French Will Never Forget

On the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, a Paris organization, The French Will Never Forget 911, will be holding an official commemoration on the Place du Trocadéro, with a concert following in the evening…

"On behalf of my fellow citizens, I wish to thank the association « The French Will Never Forget» for organizing this event which bears witness to Franco-American friendship. This friendship began with the birth of the USA, and will continue as our two nations continue to share certain essential values, such as freedom, tolerance and solidarity among nations."

His Excellency Charles H. Rivkin, United States Ambassador to France

"I would very much like to congratulate the association “The French Will Never Forget” on this key event which is remarkable in terms of both its scale and its symbolic value. Ten years after the tragedy of September 11, the entire French nation will express to America its friendship, compassion and support. And on that day, in the presence of the names of the victims whom we will never forget, we will all once again be Americans"

His Excellency François Delattre, French Ambassador to the United States

Dogooderism reaches its' Logical Conclusion

So what if they meant well. They're morons.

The guns being bought back from the streets weren't 9 mm handguns or Glocks. Instead, they were Nerf guns or toy pistols.

More importantly, victory was declared. And all without a single shot fired.

Lane said the five-hour gun buyback was expected to take about 100 toy guns from young people.
"We've got to be willing to exchange everything and anything to get guns off the street," he added.

Bin Laden Is Gone, Not The Strategy of Radical Hatred Without Quarter

Le 11-Septembre fut d'emblée vécu comme impossible

writes André Glucksmann as Le Monde readers accuse him of being (horrors) pro-American and pro-Israeli while ignoring Arabs' aspirations and their (well-founded) hatred.

Les témoins n'en croient pas leurs yeux, les responsables désemparés s'estiment en pleine science-fiction, les prudents qui veulent raison garder la perdent en fabulant de délirantes conspirations (la CIA, les juifs, de mystérieux spéculateurs immobiliers). Reste que l'impossible a eu lieu et que ce lieu a été nommé sans hasard "Ground Zero", soit l'espace dévasté des premières expériences atomiques.

… Si fulgurant qu'il paraisse, un événement n'est jamais un commencement absolu. Une fois l'effarement général dissipé, force est de constater que l'attaque de New York n'est inouïe ni dans son inspiration, ni par ses acteurs, ni même dans son mode opérationnel. La stratégie de la panique par l'incendie des villes et l'affolement délibéré de la population fut théorisée il y a un siècle et demi par le nihilisme russe, Bakounine, Netchaïev – voyez Les Possédés, de Dostoïevski.
Viser sans discrimination des civils, le projet ne date pas davantage de septembre 2001 : depuis Guernica, les fanatismes profanes ou célestes ont dépeuplé sans remords le XX^e siècle. Le mode opérationnel lui-même n'est pas privé d'antécédents : la cible fut attaquée en 1993 (en sous-sol, une voiture bourrée d'explosifs) ; le moyen, un avion détourné, fut essayé à Noël 1994 (l'Airbus d'Alger devait s'écraser sur Paris). Quant au côté suicidaire des tueurs s'érigeant en missiles humains, il n'apparaît invraisemblable qu'aux ingénus : bolcheviques, nazis, intégristes de tout poil abondent de sacrificateurs professionnels résolus à faire don de leur vie pour le "bien de la cause". Les pièces du puzzle s'étalaient ainsi dans le désordre, il manquait le concept qui permet d'imaginer l'inimaginable.
… Le 11-Septembre n'était pas fatal, à condition d'en prévoir la possibilité. On explique l'aveuglement général par la paralysie bureaucratique (CIA contre FBI) et les rivalités au sommet. Explications trop courtes: une vue acérée et consensuelle des risques courus en commun aurait balayé ces conflits rituels et lassants. Tout au contraire, le préjugé de vivre "la fin de l'histoire" enivrait nos bons apôtres: la guerre froide est terminée, les menaces majeures sont abolies ! L'optimisme stratégique célébrait la disparition du grand ennemi unique : plus d'adversaire omniprésent, donc plus d'adversité. Ce raisonnement fallacieux valait passeport pour le meilleur des mondes; les budgets militaires fondaient, la paix universelle était à portée de main, seuls subsistaient des "conflits de faible intensité" qui dévastaient les banlieues du monde sans inquiéter les métropoles vautrées dans leur sécurité.
… Dix ans plus tard, avons-nous franchi le cercle enchanté de nos sommeils euphoriques si cher payés ? Oui et non.
Oui : l'Amérique réévalua ses alliances inconditionnelles. L'Arabie saoudite n'avait-elle pas fourni à Al-Qaida son idéologie (le salafisme), son financement et une base de recrutement (quatorze sur dix-neuf des pirates sont enfants de la bonne société saoudienne) ? Conséquence théorique : "Le fait que, soixante ans durant, les nations occidentales ont excusé et se sont accommodées du manque de liberté au Moyen-Orient n'aida en rien à notre sécurité parce qu'à long terme la stabilité ne peut être achetée au prix de la liberté." (Déclaration de G. W. Bush, le 7 novembre 2003.)
Conséquence pratique : Saddam Hussein, épargné en 1991 sous pression saoudienne au prix du double massacre des Kurdes et des chiites, est pendu. Depuis, les despotes en proie aux soulèvements populaires sont "lâchés" (Tunisie, Egypte, Libye). Méditerranée, Proche et Moyen-Orient s'extirpent d'une histoire froide et de sociétés gelées. La chape de plomb saute pour le meilleur puisque partout les revendications démocratiques étoffent des rêves de liberté.
… Le Vieux Continent navigue à l'aveuglette. Ses complaisances à l'égard de la Russie poutinienne, corrompue jusqu'à l'os, violente et nihiliste, protectrice des Assad, prouvent combien la leçon dissuasive du 11-Septembre s'oublie.
… "Une fois renversées les bornes du possible, il est difficile de les relever", stipula Clausewitz, annonçant que l'ère des batailles méga-massacreuses ne finit pas avec Napoléon. La Belle Epoque se gaussa, mais le siècle suivant confirma. Ben Laden a disparu, pas la stratégie des haines radicales et sans merci.

The story of how Coco Chanel metamorphosed from a mere “horizontal collaborator” into an actual German secret agent

Gabrielle Chanel — better known as Coco — was a wretched human being

writes Judith Warner in her book review of Hal Vaughan's Sleeping With the Enemy (Coco Chanel's Secret War) — something that brings to mind other female celebrities who were far from reluctant to take Nazis as lovers in occupied France during World War II.

Anti-Semitic, homophobic, social climbing, opportunistic, ridiculously snobbish and given to sins of phrase-making like “If blonde, use blue perfume,” she was addicted to morphine and actively collaborated with the Germans during the Nazi occupation of Paris. And yet, her clean, modern, kinetic designs, which brought a high-society look to low-regarded fabrics, revolutionized women’s fashion, and to this day have kept her name synonymous with the most glorious notions of French taste and élan.

…Chanel’s … anti-­Semitism was vociferous and well documented …

It wasn’t much of a stretch, then, for Chanel, during wartime, to find herself the mistress of the German intelligence officer Baron Hans Günther von Dincklage, a charming character who had spied on the French fleet in the late 1920s, and who found himself pleasingly single in occupied Paris, having presciently divorced his half-Jewish German wife just before the passage of the Nuremberg Laws. It wasn’t any particular betrayal of her values, or morals or ideals either, for Chanel to find herself traveling to Madrid and Berlin to engage in cloak-and-dagger machinations with her country’s occupier.

The story of how Coco became Chanel has been told many times before over the past half-century, most recently (and, sad to say, much more engagingly) in last year’s “Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life,” by the British fashion columnist Justine Picardie. The story of how Chanel metamorphosed from a mere “horizontal collaborator” — the mistress of a Nazi — into an actual German secret agent has been less well known, though earlier writers have reported that she had worked for the Germans. It’s here that Vaughan makes his freshest contribution, using a wealth of materials gleaned from wartime police files and intelligence archives, some of which were only recently declassified by French and German authorities, to flesh out precisely how and why she became an agent, and how she sought to profit from her German connections during the war.

Despite her indisputable collaborationist activities, and after a brief period of uncertainty during which she was questioned by a French judge, Chanel eventually got off pretty much scot-free after the war, once again using her wiles to protect herself most expertly. She tipped off the poet and anti-Nazi partisan Pierre Reverdy, a longtime occasional lover, so that he could arrange the arrest of her wartime partner in collaboration, Baron Louis de Vaufreland Piscatory; she paid off the family of the former Nazi chief of SS intelligence Gen. Walter Schellenberg when she heard that he was preparing to publish his memoirs. (It was Schellenberg who had given her the “model hat” assignment.) Vaughan could have done better in providing the context to the seemingly incomprehensible ease of Chanel’s reintegration into French fashion and society, telling more, for example, of the widespread desire for forgetting and moving forward that held sway in Charles de Gaulle's postwar France.

Some Facts About Hiroshima and World War II That You Hear Neither From America's MSM, University Élites, and History Books, Nor From Japan's

…most Japanese are shocked to hear that their nation also tried to build an atomic bomb. “I have no doubt Japan would have used it if it succeeded,” [former schoolteacher Kiwamu Ariga, 81, said].

Independantly from Martin Fackler's New York Times article, it's good to again listen to Bill Whittle take on the liberals' Hiroshima myth (aligato to Instapundit).

Jon Stewart gets his facts wrong about America's use of the Atomic bomb in World War 2. Should Harry Truman have been prosecuted as a war criminal? Whittle takes you back to those fateful days and tells you the facts about the history altering decisions to drop two Atomic bombs on Japanese cities.

As it turns out,

for decades Ishikawa’s role [regarding Japan’s secrecy-wrapped efforts to build an atomic bomb during World War II] went largely unnoticed, as an economically resurgent Japan tried its best to put its wartime past behind it. Since the 1990s, major media have become less inhibited about discussing the war, including Japan’s atomic bomb programs. However, the programs still seem to be easily forgotten in a nation that is more accustomed to thinking of itself as the victim of the deadly American atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

… “We were brainwashed during the war, and we were brainwashed again after the war,” Mr. Ariga said. “Maybe we will get wise the third time.”

Marhaba, Michael Savage fans!

Thanks also to Michael Savage for da linky love to ¡No Pasarán!.

You’re an evil genius, and Britons don’t deserve you, your observations and commentary, NOR your mushroom sauce recipe... Britannia rules the knaves, anyway.

It’s as Entertaining as Watching a Bear Peddling a Unicycle

When the lights went out across Europe:

As of 1 September, conventional light bulbs of more than 40 watts will be taken off the market. In the countries of the Arctic Circle, it’s a step into the dark that’s being badly received.

Actually it’s more like watching a bear peddling a unicycle without any background music in a basement full of silent, ruminating Iggy Pop wannabees.

Next will be vacuum cleaners, fans, coffee makers, hair dryers.

Every time you use a coffee maker, Gaia strangles a puppy.

2 Leaders Try Not to Join the Jobless

Nicolas Sarkozy, Barack Obama: two presidents now on parallel paths of bad unemployment numbers, lousy poll scores, and prospects for re-election next year that run from diminished to dubious.

Thus starts John Vinocur's article in the International Herald Tribune.

Not to mention weakening economies, a couple of shooting wars in Libya and Afghanistan, and countrymen who view their nations’ roles in the world as exceptional and universal — although the Americans more in terms of a burden of responsibility and the French as a pick-and-choose entitlement.

… Coming back to France after close to four weeks of unscientific watching and listening on the other side of the Atlantic provides an interesting contrast.

In the United States, the impact of markedly bad unemployment figures of 9.1 percent — the net job change of zero in August was the first of its kind since 1945 — has immense shock value in a country used to jobless rates regularly half those of Western Europe. People are truly taken aback.

Reporting on Mr. Obama’s August vacation island of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, a center of left-wing chic, The Boston Globe said “Obama fever” on the island had become a memory, replaced by disaffection over partisan deadlock and the stalled economy.

But that was mild stuff compared with criticism coming from core constituencies — environmentalists who describe as a brazen sellout the president’s abandoning a major anti-pollution effort, or blacks complaining that he was avoiding focusing on dramatic employment rates in black communities.

America’s ambient noise has clearly changed. Strikingly, words like weak, ineffectual and mediocre to describe Mr. Obama have migrated and been transmogrified from talk-radio screech into reasonable on-air discussion.

… Mitt Romney, a possible mainstream Republican candidate asked, “Have we ever had a president before who was eager to address the world with an apology on his lips and doubt in his heart?”

… So a little more than three months before an election year, who’s better off? Mr. Sarkozy, who has limited popularity but a certain credibility in crises, or Mr. Obama, whose lifestyle and mannerisms don’t find contempt, but whose competence managing the American economy (and foreign policy) is increasingly in doubt?

… For both French exceptionalists and the general French public, victories are a relative notion — being in the game, being respected, and, when possible, doing things differently, à la française.

That’s a million miles from predicting a Sarkozy victory or an Obama loss, or vice versa. But while the two confront similar issues, an American president has unquestionably higher hurdles to clear in a nation where winning — and not oozing around the edges of loss or decline — is still an instinctive, national expectation.

Our Chinese Future

Xie's family asked why Xie would choose to severely mutilate so much of his body in a suicide attempt.

Voila les Chinoiseries:

Anti-corruption official found dead with 11 knife wounds, police declare it a suicide

Enjoy your “post-American-century, folks!

It was suggested that Xie's suicide was possibly related to work issues, stemming from his failure to be promoted to the standing committee at his office.

And remember: Daddy drinks because you cry!

Looking Over TV Shows Inspired by 9-11, Le Monde Discovers (Surprise!) "a Culture of Fear"

…jamais un événement historique n'aura été si vite, si abondamment représenté et commenté de manière fictionnelle.

Le Monde has a dossier by Macha Séry on TV films and TV series [but not movies] inspired by the 9-11 attacks (The Event, Rubicon, and The Killing, along with even Mad Men and episodes of West Wing), which of course includes the subhead "a culture of fear"; which misspells the name of Georges Bush, while castigating Fox News' alleged "propaganda" in Dubya's favor; and which includes Martine Delahaye's fillers on shows such as Fringe (Fringe), FlashForward (FlashForward), Rescue Me, les Héros du 11-Septembre (Rescue Me), and of course 24 Heures Chrono (24) as well as the documentary Les Routes de la terreur.

Après le 11-Septembre et la guerre en Afghanistan, deux perspectives se sont ouvertes aux scénaristes : dépeindre une Amérique qui doute, traversée par une perte de confiance (séries conspiration-nistes, type « Alias ») ou renforcer le patriotisme en suggérant la victoire morale des Américains.

Dans "Science-fiction et paranoïa", un documentaire américain de 2011, Steven Spielberg avoue qu'il n'aurait jamais fait Rencontre du troisième type et E.T. : « Je pense qu'après le 11-Septembre, j'ai perdu un peu de mon innocence. L'inconnu n'est peut-être pas aussi bienveillant que ça. » Aux espions de l'Est, aux communistes armés de la bombe nucléaire, au fantasme de cinquième colonne, a succédé à l'écran, jusqu'à y proliférer, la figure du terroriste, de l'ennemi invisible, des cellules dormantes.

« A partir de 2002, nota l'historienne Olivia Brender dans une étude publiée en 2007 par l'institut Pierre Renouvin, les personnages d'«Arabes» se multiplièrent dans les séries télévisées. Si, par le nombre d'intrigues où des Arabes furent suspectés à tort d'être des terroristes, la fiction télévisée hollywoodienne sembla assumer un rôle pédagogique en combattant les clichés qu'avaient pu faire naître les attentats du 11-Septembre, force est de constater qu'elle participa insidieusement à alimenter la peur à l'égard des Arabes vivant sur le sol américain. (...) Par sa seule présence physique, le personnage «arabe» crée un danger potentiel. »

As for Radio France, writes Alain Constant, it has prepared a theme for every day:
• terrorisme, état de la menace (jeudi 1er septembre),
• génération 11-Septembre (vendredi 2),
• le 11-Septembre inspire la culture (samedi 3),
• ma vie a changé (dimanche 4),
• la guerre de dix ans (lundi 5),
• l'économie mondiale (mardi 6),
• les religions (mercredi 7),
• les transports (jeudi 8),
• les dix ans des Etats-Unis (vendredi 9).
• Des reportages en direct de New York et du Pakistan seront diffusés
samedi 10, et dimanche 11 pour les cérémonies de commémoration.

France Bleu programme mardi 6 septembre sur ses 43 antennes une journée spéciale, en partenariat avec le Mémorial de Caen. Le lendemain, c'est France Culture qui propose une journée intitulée " New York/Le Caire : le choc des civilisations est-il derrière nous ? ", avec des rendez-vous en direct du Caire, de New York et de Kaboul. Vendredi 9, de 6 heures à minuit, France Inter propose, en direct de New York, des rendez-vous avec de multiples invités, dont Jay McInerney et Patti Smith. Toujours vendredi 9, Le Mouv' diffuse les reportages d'Antoine Giniaux en direct du French Institute.

French Puss in the Big Apple

After his French owners emigrated to New York, Texas (that's the cat's name) opened his own blog.

Welcome to my weblog!

I finally got my human to finished my weblog so we can have more serious conversations about serious issues: cat food, catnip, napping, playing with your human, domesticating your human…

(Dogs welcome too if they can behave)

Don't Mess With Tunisia

On either side of a skull and crossbones on a wall in the Tunisian city of Tataouine (which inspired George Lucas, who filmed scenes of the first Star Wars movie near the town, for the name of Luke Skywalker's home planet) are the words "Texas Liberty" and "Don't Mess with Tunisia." (، والقراء Instapundit ترحيب)

P.S. However, those aren't longhorns above the word "Texas" but some sort of Arabic script (Yeah, I too wonder what they mean)

"More taxes, not less spending, is their underlying creed": The patent nonsense of Europe’s most unreconstructed Socialist Party

France’s Socialists have yet to come to terms with the modern world

comments Charlemagne as The Economist analyzes those whom it calls "the dinosaurs".

The oddity is that almost everywhere the European left is in decline. Among the large countries, Socialist parties rule only in Spain, where they look likely to lose November’s election. The only big place where the left has a good chance of returning to power is France, at next spring’s presidential election. Yet France’s Socialist Party also stands out as Europe’s most unreconstructed. Hence the contorted spectacle of a party preparing for power at a time when the markets are challenging its every orthodoxy.

… Next to such patent nonsense [i.e., the French Socialist thinking of an “anarchic globalisation”-denouncing Ségolène Royal or of a “deglobalisation”-promoting Arnaud Montebourg], promises by the two front-running candidates, Martine Aubry and François Hollande, seem merely frozen in time, circa 1981. They want to return to retirement at the age of 60 (it has just been raised to 62), and to invent 300,000 public-sector youth jobs. Each supports Mr Sarkozy’s deficit-reduction targets, but refuses to approve his plan to write a deficit rule into the constitution. More taxes, not less spending, is their underlying creed.

The party is not out of tune with public opinion. The French are almost uniquely hostile to the capitalist system that has made them one of the world’s richest people. …

The causes of French left-wingery are various, but a potent one is the lingering hold of Marxist thinking. Post-war politics on the left was for decades dominated by the Communist Party, which regularly scooped up a quarter of the votes. In the 1950s many intellectuals, including Jean-Paul Sartre, clung to pro-Soviet idealism even after the evils of Stalinism emerged. Others toyed with Trotskyism well into the 1970s. François Mitterrand, who mentored Ms Royal, Ms Aubry and Mr Hollande, was swept to the presidency in 1981 by offering a socialist Utopia as a third way between “the capitalist society which enslaves people” and the “communist society which stifles them”. …

Please allow us a moment of madness

All this requires heroic faith among centrists considering voting Socialist that reason will triumph over fiscal folly. Moreover, experience suggests that the Socialists, if elected, may feel compelled to introduce some signature policy as a sop to their disappointed base. Under Mitterrand, it was the wealth tax. Under Mr Jospin, it was Ms Aubry’s 35-hour working week. With France’s recovery fragile, the prospect of more such lunacy is chilling.

Reporting Data on Things That Have Yet to Happen

The apocalypse brigade continues to onanisticly fools itself:

RATES of mental illnesses including depression and post-traumatic stress will increase as a result of climate change, a report to be released today says.
The paper, prepared for the Climate Institute, says loss of social cohesion in the wake of severe weather events related to climate change could be linked to increased rates of anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress and substance abuse.
As many as one in five people reported ''emotional injury, stress and despair'' in the wake of these events.

...in the past tense. Honest of them isn’t it?

The conclusion?

Mental illness rise linked to climate

Surely. But isn’t everything?

The report also looks at mental health in the aftermath of major weather events possibly linked to climate change.

It shows that one in 10 primary school children reported symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder in the wake of cyclone Larry in 2006. More than one in 10 reported symptoms more than three months after the cyclone.

Which is weather, despite the fact that we are told that weather is not climate. Sometimes.

Market Economy the Leftist Way

I guess with all of that “most ethical congress” transparency stuff on their minds, they forgot to hide their graft and cronyism.

Since Regina Dugan became the director of Darpa, the Pentagon’s top research division has signed millions of dollars’ worth of contracts with her family firm, which in turn owes her at least a quarter-million dollars. It’s an arrangement that has raised eyebrows in the research community, and has now drawn the attention of the Defense Department’s internal auditors and investigators.

She was a program manager at DARPA from 1996-2000 when Clinton was in office. She then founded RedXDefense, the recipient of the contracts in question in 2005.

Her strength was not in engineering as is so firmly touted, but rather in the business of gaming tax money:

The company allowed Dugan to dig into a range of business activities -- she worked on developing relationships, fundraising, legal and financial work, as well as marketing.

It’s Hard Work, but Somebody has to do it

It’s a side effect of France’s one psychosis policy.

Chinese women come home super sluts after studying in France, according to an associate judicial professor lecturing his class.

Poverty in France Has Worsened

On est loin de la promesse faite par le gouvernement, en octobre 2007, de réduire la pauvreté d'un tiers en cinq ans.

After a dip in 2008, poverty in France resurged in 2009 ("France's worst recession since the Second World War"), writes Philippe Le Coeur in Le Monde, with the poverty rate reaching 13.5% (although the median standard of living improved that year) and with the government promising to bring an "exceptional" tax for the country's richest citizens.

Meanwhile, Louis Maurin points out that the number of people living under the poverty level has grown (from 7.5 million to 8.2 million people) between 2002 to 2009, as has the poverty rate (from 12.9% to 13.5%). Needless to say, the Observatoire des inégalités director, interviewed by Anne Chemin, castigates tax decreases (as "wasted money").

…la pauvreté augmente dans notre pays. C'est un tournant historique…

…Si l'on veut améliorer de façon durable la situation de ceux qui sont le plus en difficulté dans notre pays, il faut agir de façon concrète. Imaginez quelle serait la situation de notre pays si les 80 milliards d'euros gâchés chaque année en cadeaux fiscaux aux catégories aisées avaient été consacrés pour moitié à réduire les déficits et pour moitié à des programmes d'investissements concrets, qu'il s'agisse de transports en commun, de logement social, d'accès aux soins !

L'un des volets les plus importants est une vraie réforme du système éducatif, de la maternelle à l'université. Taillé sur mesure pour les milieux favorisés, c'est lui qui fait que les plus démunis le restent de génération en génération. Bref, dans les années 2000, la France a loupé l'occasion de se moderniser. Tout ce que l'on peut espérer, c'est que la crise actuelle débouche sur une véritable remise à plat. Les niches fiscales n'ont déjà plus la cote.

To Understand Liberal Issues Like Gay Marriage Correctly, It Is Vital to Get the Basic Premises Right

There are few times that I do not agree with John Stossel, but the Fox News libertarian doesn't understand what could possibly be wrong with gay marriage, ending a recent column with the words:

Sorry, but I still don’t see what divorce and unwed motherhood have to do with gay marriage. It’s mostly straight people who are doing the divorcing and unwed mothering.

1) John Stossel doesn't seem to realize it, but when he mentions "alimony, child support", "divorce and unwed motherhood" as well as "straight people" — along with comments such as "I don’t care if there are three fathers and six mothers [if] it’s a stable relationship and the kids are connected with their parents" — he is answering his own question (notwithstanding the fact that the libertarian does not seem to be noticing all the ways in which judges, lawyers, divorce industry experts, and other government bureaucrats and parasites have managed to infiltrate themselves inside what was once called the sacrosanct family unit — check out Stephen Baskerville to see how bad that problem is).

First of all, no one is preventing two people from living together and from loving each other and from "commit[ting] to a life partner", and to a certain extent, nobody ever has. The gay sense of victimization throughout the centuries has been exaggerated, certainly this past century or two. In its obituaries of the 19th century, for instance, The Times of London would note that a certain person had been a "lifelong bachelor", and everyone understood what the newspaper meant by that.

So is there still a good reason to prevent gays from marrying? Well, the problem is — and I think that, upon thought, many a gay person would not disagree with me here (in fact, I believe that a gay person — a Log Cabin Republican? — could have written this post in the exact words I did) — not that gays want to get married, but what had to happen for them to want to get married in the first place…

Tell me if I'm wrong (I admit to being no expert on the new-fangled college courses on gay history or gay literature), but throughout the centuries, throughout the millennia, there have been no calls, and no examples of longing (or very very few) for marriage between two men or between two women — nor indeed were there (m)any calls to "commit to a life partner" in the first decades of the gay rights movement.

For lifelong love, yes, and for tenderness and sweet nothings, yes, for lust for lean or muscular bodies, certainly, but for the desire of nuptials and a life spent together as "husband" and "wife" in a single bourgeois-type home, not really (or they are few and far between or with a touch of a smirk attached).

These calls came about only after — and only because of — the decline of traditional marriage (agreed, between straight people) along with the advent of open marriages and no-fault divorce. In other words, the desire of gays, male or female, for the "benefits" of matrimony only came about after, and only came about because, feminists and leftists dumbed those "benefits" down by making it OK to divorce on a whim and by making it alright to commit (what is now considered passé to be called) adultery.

Again — tell me if I'm wrong, but gayness has mostly to do, rightly or wrongly, with lust (and I mean that in a neutral way, neither in a positive nor in a negative sense), which is the same that we feel (or some of us feel) for a member of the opposite sex. Now, many heterosexuals are attracted to "hot chicks" (guys) and "hot bods" (gals), which is normal and neither good or bad, but our grandfathers and our grandmothers would have told us (or they would have told our fathers and our mothers) that marrying someone, solely or mainly, because of lust (say, a "bad boy" or a "trophy wife") was not necessarily a good idea. Get rid of your lust first (whether for same-sex partners or partners of the opposite sex), get it out of your system, if necessary, and then marry; but do not marry (solely) because of the lust and/or do not lust for others once the wedding is consummated…

Certainly, marriage due to lust, or with widespread lust remaining in the "hearts" (and in the loins), was commonly understood not to be a good idea until the feminists and their allies on the left brought us open marriages and no-fault divorce. The same can be said for gay marriage, and the calls for gay marriage, like the tendency for quickie marriages between heterosexuals, would start vanishing when and if (as soon as, in fact) the legal underpinnings as well as the cultural support for open marriages and/or for no-fault divorce came to an end.

2) Now, from a libertarian perspective, Amy D asks:

Why should the government have a bloody thing to say about marriage other than recognizing the legal contract issues?

You other conservatives say you want smaller government with less intrusiveness....would this not be the way to go?

The answer has been given in Harry Jaffa's A New Birth of Freedom: Marriage came before society; the advent of married couples came before the advent of individuals organizing themselves into societies; the one led to the other. All of the left's theses in the past century or so are basically based on the premise that society, and government, came before, and/or is superior to, marriage and that the bonding of two (necessarily clueless) people (of different sex or of the same sex) is hardly more important than — it is but one more issue for the state (for government) to solve — fixing the roads or organizing society's defense. Therefore, the raison d'état predominates, and a (married) couple, like an individual, exists to serve the raison d'état. And if the government decides to "make" individuals, say, "tolerant" — if only to make those who govern look good by making them feel like the heroic defenders of the (allegedly) downtrodden — then that is how those individuals should act…

What Jaffa states eloquently is that originally, society did not "create" matrimony; the fact of matrimony was what led to the creation of societies — and of governments. There is no mention of gay rights whatsoever in any of his books (that I remember), but the following premises will give you an idea of why details such as gay marriage cannot be seen without getting the premises correct and why, in conclusion, strong marriages (necessarily between a man and a woman) are important.

Individual rights become valuable only insofar as they result in a good society — a society in which man's moral and intellectual virtues can find their fullest measure of opportunity. There is in Jefferson none of that radical individualism that sees the rights of the individual transcending and opposing the moral demands of a good society. The opposition between the demands of society and the rights of the individual, so familiar in our time, arose only as those rights were no longer understood to be natural rights subject to the natural law.

…Self-realization was in fact the only correlate of the new atheism. As there could no longer be any distinction between man and God, which distinction is as fundamental to the Declaration of Independence as to the Bible, there could be no distinction between base and noble desires. All desires were understood to be created equal, since all desires were seen as originating in that highest of all authorities, the self-creating self.

…fathers as well as mothers usually prefer the preservation of their young to their own individual preservation. It follows from this that among humans it is the family, rather than the individual, that seeks survival…

…it is human families or their representatives, rather than "abstract" human individuals, who found or institute political communities…

…Only as one understands the priority of the partnership of male and female in the generation, nurture, and education of the young can one understand the relationship of individuality to community in the political order…

Update: Back in the 1830s, Justice Joseph Story wrote:

Marriage is … in its origin a contract of natural law … It is the parent, and not the child of society; the source of civility and a sort of seminary of the republic.

Update 2: Ed Morrissey:

Marriage has always been a forward-looking institution aimed at protecting and nurturing the next generation of children, not a love license for the adults of the present

Update 3: Canada's Precedent in Legalizing Same-Sex Marriage:

… marriage and family become mere adjuncts of the state after the removal of the de facto conditions that make the traditional family a pre-political institution in the first place. No longer is family something that, in the words of Douglas Farrow, “precedes and exceeds the state.” No longer is the family a hedge against the totalitarian aspirations of the state because no longer is the family prior to the state.

Update 4: 5 Gay Marriage Myths:

It is those who oppose same-sex marriage who are the true champions of liberty. Indeed, if gay “marriage” is ever legalized, it is likely to result in unprecedented restrictions on freedom of speech and even thought.

The Term "Shoah" Is Non Grata in French High School Textbooks, While Palestine's "Nakhba" Is Acceptable

A type of negationism is infecting France's high school history textbooks, warns Claude Lanzmann in Le Monde (the day after a post on France's obvious anti-Americanism and antisemitism appeared on No Pasarán), with the word "Shoah" for the Nazi Holocaust of World War II being banned (but only for grammatical reasons, you understand, "because it is a foreign word", and so it has been replaced by the "annihilation"). Read on:

Une circulaire … sur la nécessité de supprimer le terme "Shoah" des manuels scolaires. …

Il y a une douzaine d'années, après une réunion à Stockholm de tous les chefs d'Etat et de gouvernement accompagnés de leurs ministres de l'éducation nationale, dont le but était d'élaborer un compendium sur la Shoah qui aurait force de loi et d'usage dans le monde entier, M. Dominique Borne, doyen de l'inspection générale d'histoire au ministère français de l'éducation nationale, déclarait sans précaution ni fard : "Il faut bannir le mot “Shoah” des manuels, car c'est un mot étranger."

M. Borne n'est plus doyen, mais il demeure puissant et sa tendance semble largement majoritaire, il est en tout état de cause suivi par les éditeurs de manuels mis en vente à la rentrée 2011, puisque le mot de Shoah n'y apparaît plus sauf, pour certains, en note de bas de page indiquant que c'est le terme par lequel Israël désigne… quoi au fait ? Le manuel des éditions Hachette, qui suit à cent pour cent la recommandation du bulletin de l'éducation nationale, nous le dit on ne peut plus clairement : il faut utiliser désormais le mot "anéantissement".

There is only one slight problem — besides the fact that the Shoah (sorry, the "annihilation") of the Jews is said to be comparable to the "annihilation" of the gypsies, no more and no less — because while Shoah is non grata in France's high school history textbooks (remember, it is a foreign word), Nakhba is acceptable and does in fact appear in the textbooks. Needless to say, a vast number of Le Monde readers have reacted in the comments section, most of them seeming to castigate Claude Lanzmann and wax ironic, and scornfully, about his column in the daily.

… Savoir si la guerre contre le nazisme était une juste guerre n'intéresse pas nos nouveaux concepteurs, qui mettent en parallèle et sur le même plan les bombardements des villes allemandes par l'aviation alliée, Hiroshima, et la Shoah. Pardon, non, l'anéantissement. C'est une vieille histoire : refuser l'unicité ou la spécificité des événements historiques, les noyer dans des catégorisations abstraites et réductrices, tout cela se préparait de longue date. Aujourd'hui on passe à l'acte. Le mot "Shoah" est éradiqué, mais pour la première fois, dans un manuel d'histoire (Hachette), apparaît celui de "Nakhba", terme en miroir, forgé par les Palestiniens pour nommer leur propre catastrophe : la création de l'Etat d'Israël. Lequel Israël tient très peu de place dans ces nouveaux livres, qui prennent les choses de plus haut, faisant référence au seul "Moyen-Orient, foyer de conflits".

Manuela Wyler has more, as does Jean-Marc MOSKOWICZ…

Even if Handguns were Banned, they would still find a way to Shoot Us in the Foot

Russians of virtually every sort seem to get along rather nicely with America’s left – for the simple reason that they like to promote the same, convenient “Hate America” causes and campaigns.

Experts are looking for a reason behind Tuesday afternoon’s unlikely 5.8 magnitude earthquake that shook people up and down the East Coast, and some are saying that a recent rise in fracking could be the culprit.

Hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” is the man-made splintering of underground rocks to expedite the exploiting of natural resources. It’s become a widespread phenomenon since its introduction in 2004, and though the practice can help increase supplies of oil and gas without reaching out internationally for imports, the result it can have on the geological make-up of the Earth can be ravaging. Now some experts say the rise in fracking could be to blame for yesterday’s quake.

So long as it denies employment, prosperity, or self-sufficiency to Americans, they both agree that it must be opposed. Alas, why, you ask?


The irony is that the American Left probably don’t understand WHY Russian might want American to not extract fuel that they might otherwise import. Russia is basically little more than a Banana Republic of petroleum at this point, and RT is a sort of occasionally “not completely unhinged-seeming” house organ. The more rabid and impractical your environmentalism, the better it is for sales, if not to Americans, that to others who reduce the supply of energy on the market through their demand.

The left’s hatred of their own societies has made them into permanent and predictable suckers. In effect, they shill for polluting de-facto dictatorships.

Because the Poor Still aren’t Hiring

Thank God that someone on the continent permanently blighted with envy and class-hatred is saying it.

In Portuguese daily Público professor and political scientist João Carlos Espada criticises the notion of levying an extraordinary tax on the super-rich. “Taxes are not the primary source of improving the living conditions of the majority. The wealth of Europe and the West – which even today is worthy of the admiration of the rest of the world – was not the product of redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor through taxes. It was the product of the creation of wealth in a climate of economic freedom, generally associated with low taxation, swift justice and, above all, the absence of barriers to the entry of new competitors”.

Espada argues that “the best contribution of the rich to the common good lies in ensuring that goods or services are being produced in a way that is most affordable to the greatest number of people; it consists of guaranteeing that this good or service is not artificially protected from competition and that it is chosen willingly by those who consume it”. Espada believes that this is the factor that was the great “social elevator” in Europe and the West that enabled successive generations of ordinary people to afford goods and products that previous generations never dreamed of having.

As you can expect with apostacy, the article was deleted.

As early as 1945, France, instead of recognizing mistakes, opted to divert attention by cultivating an ungrateful and hypocritical anti-Americanism

… Thanks to General de Gaulle, France, instead of recognizing its [World-War-II-era] mistakes, opted to divert attention by cultivating, as early as 1945, an ungrateful and a hypocritical anti-Americanism

writes Michel Garroté as he launches into a rant against "That Judeophobic and Americaphobic France".

Today, in 2011, the anti-Americanism and the antisemitism in France are obvious. And one must be deaf and blind — or an accomplice? — to fail to notice.

Indeed, France, instead of reducing — immediately and dramatically — the Pharaoh-sized costs of the apparatus of the French state, prefers to continue its borrowing habit in order to live. But to do this with impunity, it is necessary for France to have scapegoats, "guilty" bodies who in fact are not guilty. As early as October 2008, I warned on this blog of the formulas against "international finance", "financial oligarchy", "New York finance", and other neo-Pétain slogans which implicitly accuse the Jews and the Yanks of all the ills of Europe, and even of the entire planet.

... Le Point comments: "Professor Philippe Dessertine [thanks to him for his good common sense in this matter] says that the outburst of Laurence Parisot reflects the French temptation to look for scapegoats to deflect the responsibility of public and private officials in the crisis. It's very, very dangerous to move towards the idea of ​​an Anglo-Saxon economic news business that is beholden to a political ideology, this is absolutely false. It [the Anglo-Saxon business press] is one of the few to provide accurate information" [finally a French professor of economics who recognizes that].

... On the one hand, the false allegations against the United States on an economic basis, and on the other hand, the conspiracy theories against the so-called "Jewish power" are part and parcel of a single fraud. It is both disturbing and distressing to see France, in 2011, in the twenty-first century, in the third millennium, resorting — once again in its history — to such processes.

Can you Smell that, Son? Can you Smell the Mendacity?

The relationship between climate change and hurricanes is one that scientists are still trying to understand.

This somehow leads to this level of certainty:

Irene’s Potential for Destruction Made Worse by Global Warming, Sea Level Rise

We live in an age of propagandists, and the bien pensents simply accept that as a social good.

The Reality? Enh! Don’t believe ‘da hype!

Scientists Slam Link Between Hurricanes and Global Warming

Just like the hyped predictions of disaster to the East Coast from Irene over the weekend, the new report says that models used by global warming scientists "over-estimate" the the warming trends of the globe to back up their warnings of future droughts, killer storms, and famine.

Meanwhile back in the land of politics of trying to prove that you’re Moses: Obama Narrowly Escaped 31 MPH Winds And 0.03 Inches Of Rain At Martha’s Vineyard

And to think that we nearly lost him!

"The poor" are the human shields behind whom advocates of ever bigger spending for ever bigger government advance toward their goal

While Bill Whittle reports that "Despite what you hear from the media and the Democrat party, the poor are getting richer" and while Star Parker writes that "The Poor Are Not Poor Because the Rich Are Rich" ("The formula for more black wealth: less government, more ownership and initiative"), Thomas Sowell steps up to the plate and lays it out, black on white:

The whole future of the welfare state depends on how poverty is defined. "The poor" are the human shields behind whom advocates of ever bigger spending for ever bigger government advance toward their goal.

If poverty meant what most people think of as poverty — people "ill-clad, ill-housed, and ill-nourished," in Franklin D. Roosevelt's phrase — there would not be nearly enough people in poverty today to justify the vastly expanded powers and runaway spending of the federal government.

Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation has for years examined what "the poor" of today actually have — and the economic facts completely undermine the political rhetoric.

Official data cited by Rector show that 80 percent of "poor" households have air-conditioning today, which less than half the population of America had in 1970. Nearly three-quarters of households in poverty own a motor vehicle, and nearly one-third own more than one motor vehicle.

Virtually everyone living in "poverty," as defined by the government, has color television, and most have cable TV or satellite TV. More than three-quarters have either a VCR or a DVD player, and nearly nine-tenths have a microwave oven.

As for being "ill-housed," the average poor American has more living space than the general population — not just the poor population — of London, Paris and other cities in Europe.

Various attempts have been made over the years to depict Americans in poverty as "ill-fed" but the "hunger in America" campaigns that have enjoyed such political and media popularity have usually used some pretty creative methods and definitions.

Actual studies of "the poor" have found their intake of the necessary nutrients to be no less than that of others. In fact, obesity is slightly more prevalent among low-income people.

The real triumph of words over reality, however, is in expensive government programs for "the elderly," including Medicare. The image often invoked is the person who is both ill and elderly, and who has to choose between food and medications.

It is great political theater. But, the most fundamental reality is that the average wealth of the elderly is some multiple of the average wealth owned by people in the other age brackets.

Why should the average taxpayer be subsidizing people who have much more wealth than they do?

If we are concerned about those particular elderly people who are in fact poor — as we are about other people who are genuinely poor, whatever their age might be — then we can simply confine our help to those who are poor by some reasonable means test. It would cost a fraction of what it costs to subsidize everybody who reaches a certain age.

But the political left hates means tests. If government programs were confined to people who were genuinely poor in some meaningful sense, that would shrink the welfare state to a fraction of its current size. The left would lose their human shields.

Over at the National Center for Policy Analysis, John Goodman quotes the same Heritage Foundation report, then responds to a liberal criticism of the report.

More than 30 million Americans are living in "poverty," according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That’s one out of every seven people. But what does it really mean to be "poor" in America? …

To most Americans, the word "poverty" implies significant material deprivation, including inadequate food, clothing and shelter. The actual living conditions of America's poor are very different, however. …

The home of the average poor family was in good repair and not overcrowded. In fact, the typical poor American had more living space than the average (non-poor) European, the Heritage scholars note. The poor family was able to obtain medical care when needed. When asked, most poor families stated they had had sufficient funds during the past year to meet all essential needs.

Does that mean it’s game, set, match. Case closed? Well not quite. Liberal blogger Matt Yglesias says the Heritage report leaves out three things: housing, education and health care. …

But what do these three sectors have in common that’s missing from the market for television sets and video games? Government.

… Don’t blame it on capitalism.

If Nations were Lawyers, Germany Would Advertise on the Side of a Bus

On Libya:

Germany Just Wants To Help
To help itself to a piece of Libya’s reconstruction pie, that is.

The funny thing is that most European anti-semitism is inaccurately founded on accusations of mercantilist parasitism that German society actually practices, and actually calls "pacifism".

And they will get it, too. They always do, although they may have to squirm and grovel around for a bit first. Damn. If this were the US we were talking about here I’d have to say that they are only in it for the oil.

Things Which May not be said "for the Good of the Man".... Sound Familiar?

Gore explained that in order for climate change alarmists to succeed, they must “win the conversation” against those who deny there is a crisis.

Al Gore has reduced himself to the social tactics of fascism.

So to please him, some may not utter specific opinions, or otherwise be sanctioned for saying them. That's okay by Al. Those are the tactics of totalitarians.

In one respect, he's gotten it right... about apocalypse peddlers who confuse political fealty with propriety. Scientific investigation must be banned from his little world to uphold his absolutism:

“This is an organized effort to attack the reputation of the scientific community as a whole, to attack their integrity, and to slander them with the lie that they are making up the science in order to make money,” Gore said.

Planking for Ché

Here it is reaching its’ natural conclusion as he would have had it.

Good for society: Child labor, ticket scalping, price gouging, kidney selling, blackmail

We grow up learning that some things are just bad

writes John Stossel:

child labor, ticket scalping, price gouging, kidney selling, blackmail, etc. But maybe they're not.

What I love about economics is that it can show that what seems harmful is actually good for society. It illuminates what common sense overlooks.

This is all covered in the eye-opening book Defending the Undefendable by economist Walter Block. …