Barosso feels Hurt

José Manuel Barosso must need the Special massage with ‘happy ending’ and maybe some ‘Anger Management’ too, I guess, because his feelings matter more than the economy of alf a billion Europeans and that of the developed world:

“I feel hurt when I see some in other parts of the world, the patronising way they say to us Europeans, what we need to do. I think frankly that we have problems, very serious problems, but I think we do not have to apologise for our democracies. We need not apologise for our social market economy,” he said, in a veiled reference to the American criticisms.

This would be especially hilarious if Europeans had actually dealt with their problems over the past 3 years, other than the zen-like “stress tests” that nobody took seriously.

Please mister world, make Mr. Barosso unhurt... and pay for it too, while you’re at it.

The failure of regulators worldwide to address European banks’ fragile dependence on short-term funding is “putting the Fed in a really awkward position,” said Karen Shaw Petrou, managing partner at Federal Financial Analytics, a Washington regulatory research firm whose clients include the biggest U.S. banks. The swaps with Europe “are an extremely advantageous political football” for critics of the Fed, she said.

Don’t worry, kids, the Europeans supply of childish passive-aggression will never run out. It’s part and parcel of the fact that the Bank-saving recapitalization program that the Europeans called for was precisely what they scorned Geithner about publicly.

Schäuble was referring to strongly worded comments made by US President Barack Obama and US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner in recent days. At an event in California on Monday, Obama warned Europeans that their inaction was "scaring the world." The Europeans, he said, "have not fully healed from the crisis back in 2007 and never fully dealt with all the challenges that their banking system faced

Which they were only made public to try to shut the US up. A strange thing for the world’s champions at lecturesome finger wagging to say.

But perhaps the Europeans simply don't like a taste of their own medicine. When a US default was looming back in July when Congress was unable to agree on raising the debt ceiling, European commentators were quick to weigh in and give Obama and the US unsolicited advice. "The global economy needs an American agreement," said a French government minister at the time.

Ya think?

Never do they ask the question WHY it is they felt a need to interfere. After all what’s so bad about dithering for 18 month while your economy will, without action being taken, tank the developed world.

Basically, the adults had to speak up at some point.

Otherwise, Mr. Barosso, we’re really sorry to have hurt your feelings.

"Consider the energy and resource-intensive process required to produce a computer": Is There Really an Enviromental Benefit to Going Paperless?

Stefan Nowicki of Fort Mill's (South Carolina) Domtar Paper Company takes issue with, and seems to tear apart, another liberal belief:

[The Economist's] article on the United States Postal Service suggested that sending electronic Christmas cards over the internet is more “green” (“Neither snow nor rain”, August 20th). I take issue with that. When you take into account the entire life cycle of a piece of paper versus what it takes to send an e-card, it becomes clear that there is no environmental benefit to going paperless. Consider the energy and resource-intensive process required to produce a computer: extensive mining and refining operations of dozens of minerals and metals, many of which are not recyclable and will inevitably end up in a landfill once the device is rendered obsolete by the next generation of computer, tablet or smartphone. Add to that the carbon-generated electricity needed to power computers.

Contrast that with paper, which is one of the most recycled products; last year 63% of all paper purchased in the United States was recovered for recycling. In addition, more than 60% of the energy used to manufacture paper is generated on site from carbon-neutral biomass and recovered materials from the papermaking process. In fact, many of America’s paper mills are entirely energy self-sufficient.

A Formerly Sane Nation Finally Coming Around, Sort of

The Netherlands is having DTs:

Researchers want driving under the influence of drugs to be made illegal.

The world champions of moral compartmentation seem to be emerging from their haze and are finally becoming slightly aware. While drunk driving has been unlawful in the Netherlands for some time, driving under the influence of pills or grass hasn’t been.

While the number of deaths resulting from drunk driving has decreased from 30 to 20 percent in the past ten years in the Netherlands, there are more fatalities from the combination of alcohol and drugs.

But don’t get too hopeful if you find yourself having to drive through the magical forest – this is just a trial balloon. Since the use of narcotics is about all that most narrow-minded Europeans can perceive to be a right and the essence of freedom, it will surely be challenged.

Situational awareness now, even through that purple haze, as before, has always seemed to be a low priority there.

Roman Polanski: "I Have Become Accustomed to Death, Yes"

For the first time since his 2009 arrest, Roman Polanski gives an interview, an hour's length worth to Télévision Suisse Romande's Darius Rochebin (26 minutes of which can be seen on the TSR website).

Sheenpocalypse Now

Roast of Charlie Sheen

You Can Say All of This. Really. You Can. It’s Actually Allowed.

Freedom means you can tell the world to bug off. It means that you can tell them that you don’t like their taxes, their “public-private partnerships,” their attempts to rig industries they like, attempt to Unionize the unwilling, and their social coercion, not to mention their attempts to construct a political monoculture.

If the present leadership’s idea of freedom doesn't include the freedom to tell them to be disagreed with without their media cheerleaders and outsourced social complex being put to work on it, then they don’t really believe in human freedom, and are just using the vocabulary they think merely common buzzwords in middle America as a prop to hide their authoritarian impulses.

If Mr. Obama really is all of America’s President, then he needs to respect and understand those who respectfully disagree with him. There appears to be no evidence that he and the subculture around him are capable of that.

Kicking the habit: Less soaring, more boring

Tired of reading the Economist's endless praise of Barack Obama and his supposed unequaled eloquence, Russ Ross of St George, Utah, writes a short and to-the-point letter to the editor:

SIR – I used to throw back a shot every time I read the phrase “soaring rhetoric” in an article about Barack Obama, but I eventually kicked the habit. Perhaps you should consider doing the same (Lexington, August 27th).

And so, the headline chosen for the item became:

Less soaring, more boring

The Proletariat Will be Transported in Comfort

The Jersey Girls method of argument: You can't disagree because of the sacred status of the questioner – or else we'll cry

I knew all along there was something wrong about the audience "booing a soldier" during last week's Republican debate, but couldn't put my finger on it (you can read some thoughts on gay marriage here). Fortunately, Ann Coulter stepped in:

…the audience was not "booing a soldier" during one of the video questions, as the media, president and vice president have alleged. The audience was booing the soldier's demand that Republican presidential candidates commit to not overturning a sleazy partisan vote taken in the twilight days of the heavily Democratic 2010 Congress.

In my job as communications director of Defenders of Republicans Unfairly Attacked by the Media and Then Immediately Sold Out by Their Fellow Republicans (DORUAMATISOTFR), I am required to point out that the question and audience reaction went like this:

"In 2010, when I was deployed to Iraq ..."

(No booing.)

"I had to lie about who I was ..."

(No booing – despite the fact that not talking about your sex life with your co-workers is not lying about who you are. In fact, many Americans manage quite easily to go days and days without talking about their sex lives with co-workers.)

"because I'm a gay soldier ..."

(No booing, although we didn't ask and would prefer that you not tell.)

"and I didn't want to lose my job."

(No booing.)

To recap: So far, a remarkably boo-free interaction.

Finally, we got to the question:

"My question is, under one of your presidencies, do you intend to circumvent the progress that's been made for gay and lesbian soldiers in the military?"

Then there was booing. And for good reason.

It is beyond absurd to demand that Republican candidates pledge not to consider altering a recent rule change overturning a military policy that had been in effect from the beginning of warfare until the last few weeks of the 111th Congress.

Of course there was booing for that!

At the time of the vote – five minutes ago – only eight Republicans in the entire U.S. Senate supported eliminating Don't Ask, Don't Tell. It's safe to assume that no one on the stage supported this sexualization of the military, except maybe one of the nut candidates polling at 3 percent.

This is not an anti-gay position; it's a pro-military position. The basic idea is that sexual bonds are disruptive to the military bond.

Soldiers, sailors and Marines living in close quarters who are having sex with one another, used to have sex with one another or would like to have sex with one another simply cannot function as a well-oiled fighting machine. A battalion of married couples facing a small unit of heterosexual men would be slaughtered.

That's why instead of pushing openly gay servicemen on the military, patriotic gays should come out against girls in the military. Fair is fair. (In 1994, the first year servicewomen were allowed to serve on naval aircraft carriers, 39 women assigned to the USS Eisenhower alone ended up pregnant.)

But liberals enjoy engaging in wild social experiments with other people's lives, safety and money in order to feel better about themselves. So now the next Republican president is going to have to repeal open sexuality in the military along with Obamacare.

Let's just hope the Germans don't start feeling militaristic before then.

What if, instead of asking Republicans to agree that gays should forevermore serve openly in the military, the soldier had asked Republican candidates for president to promise not to repeal Obamacare – or agree to establish Marxism in America? Would liberals demand that Republicans not "boo a soldier" in that case?

This is the Jersey Girls method of argument: You can't disagree because of the sacred status of the questioner – or else we'll cry.

Step Two is to demand abject groveling from all other Republicans, on behalf of people they've never met.

…The reason liberals have to engage in these bullying tactics in political discourse is that their ideas collapse whenever exposed to the warm breeze of logic. Their hysterical sobbing blocks reason.

Leftism = Coveting Thy Neighbor's Paycheck

I'm sure you've seen the endless drip of announcements and adulations. They give away Free cash money for free to put super-duper, earth transforming solar panels on you roof:

City, federal incentives make installing a solar panel a zero dollar investment

To whom, exactly is it of no cost?

So, if I understand this, $18,000 in tax money (coming from renters, for example) is going into putting in 4100 watts of capacity, which is sufficient to run a vacuum cleaner and a coffee pot when the sun is shining. Watts=amps x volts, so it's 37 amps, or one or two circuits in a household panel.

That part of somebody's electric bill probably amounts to $250 a year, at most. The return in the government's "investment" comes in 72 years, assuming that the panels don't get damaged in a hail storm within 5 years.

More importantly, knowing that there is a subsidy for it, what's the panel manufacturer has no incentive to keep his price down. Knowing that the $18k were being given away out there, they'd most likely ADD at least $9000 of that back into their price.

Since the average income earner's median income produces about $5000 in tax revenue a year, putting 4.1 kw of solar panels on one person's house is equal to the entire annual federal tax revenue generated by more than 3 people, and that's assuming the government does absolutely nothing for them, including using a border crossing, an interstate highway, or calling a government agency with a question.

And who is this lucky chap who chose what was behind curtain number 3? The man mentioned in the article is one Peter Bahor, an Environmental Protection Specialist at the EPA, whose income is subsidized up to 100%, and 140% considering retirement and other benefits. He has a highly scientific degree, a Bachelor of Arts in Urban Studies specializing in "Community and Social Planning", as if we were living in a managed, collective society. Apparently this qualified one to do science as an Environmental Protection Specialist. Variably, he is listed as a specialist in dealing with clean water, and issues related to the use of concrete in construction. In other words, his job is (or has been) to frustrate the price-viability of construction, a sector of industry which is presently near death, and one which accounts for virtually all of the extraordinary unemployment facing Americans right now since the beginning of 2009.

Oddly enough, reflecting on life in East Germany, one had this sort of state managed and collectivized society, all of which meant to see people as production units and socially and politically compliant fixtures. They also had a quietly disliked class of people who, through connection and position were receiving benefits that they weren't paying for. To think we left that behind for all of this.


It's absolutely hilarious when I think about it, because it would be cheaper to pay the man's entire electric bill for approximately 10 years.

Next time you look at your pay stub, take a good look at it, America. Add your FICA, state, and local taxes, and add them up. Don't include the withholding for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Take $18,000 and divide it by that sum. That's how many pay periods you will be working to pay off Bahor's solar panels.

Remember, you might think it's your income, but it's somebody else's irrelevant fun house.

Jammed with Government Cheese

Toilet explodes at GSA building, injuring at least one employee

An internal memo issued to building employees warned them not to even attempt to go to the bathroom at work.

“DO NOT flush toilets or use any domestic water,” read the memo, first reported by WUSA News Channel 9. “Due to a mechanical failure, there is high air pressure in the domestic water system that resulted in damage to toilets.”

Actually, it sounds like a failed Pressure Reducing Valve. The really pathetic thing is that GSA contracts-out and oversees the construction of Government buildings.

Don’t Give them One Red-Eye Abe Lincoln

The plan, which would aim to build a "firebreak" around the indebted eurozone countries, emerged at the IMF annual meeting in Washington where global leaders united to demand urgent action from European politicians.

They should have just called it the “EMF” to begin with. The rest of the developed world will be made to pay for Europe’s addiction to welfare.

The head of the IMF has warned that its $384bn (£248bn) war chest designed as an emergency bail-out fund is inadequate to deliver the scale of the support required by troubled states.

Just a reminder: the EU is the single richest nation-state entity on earth, and yet it’s the Europeans who have used the IMF more than any other region on earth in the history of the institution.

Now you know why they push this “we’re so globally minded” trash.

Unity, If it Means Anything, Means we are Reduced to Gesticulation

And to think we missed this festive occasion:

The first European Day of Languages, celebrated in 45 countries, was held in 2001 at the initiative of the Council of Europe. It aims to raise public awareness of the languages used in Europe, to promote cultural and linguistic diversity and to encourage people to learn languages.

45 countries, my friend! I’m sure those Rwandans and Mauritians were all for that first European Day of Languages, if it commanded a small fee.

"The benefits of speaking a language other than your native tongue are easy to see. Whether you're working abroad in Germany, studying in France or on holiday in Cyprus, it's a huge advantage to be able to communicate directly with the local population. Languages broaden the mind, open up new horizons and will increase your employability," said Commissioner Vassiliou.

I doubt that there will be much change of mind-broadening going on. After all, how does a Greek intelligibly tell a German “cough up your milk money poutsokefalo!”

The Che-mobile is in Good Company

They see the world as a demolition derby anyway.

What’s Mine is Mine, and What’s Yours’ is Mine

‘Free’, ‘open’, and especially ‘transparent’ are the buzzwords that have been shaping the platform of the Pirate movement since it first took shape five years ago in Sweden as a party born out of the struggle against existing copyright laws.

Only in Europe could you guarantee that this mutates into hypocrisy: meet the world’s neediest “Libertarians”

The emphatic concept of freedom put forward by the Pirate Party appears throughout all society to be more realisable than the hair-gel-and-tie-liberalism of the FDP.

The party principles and the electoral programme of the Berlin Pirate Party, including points such as free public transport and the right to an unconditional basic income.

In other words, “freedom” in Europe means “Free Stuff” from other people.

This is their brain trust. They think copyrights on music are a form of oppression.

Someone PLEASE tell them that there is no such thing as an “Entitlement Libertarian”.

Droit au Logement 101

Added to a pile of things to ignore, get wrong, and undermine the meaning of, housing has been made a “human right” in France and the notion is gathering legal steam in the EU as well, especially when it comes to highly stationary crop-wrecking and park-trashing squatters euphemistically called “travellers”. Of course the idea of having to limit some people’s rights over their own property and earnings to dispense that “right” selectively doesn’t appear on their monomaniacal radar.

So if that’s the case, what can one make of this ? :

Italian parents bring in lawyers to evict 41-year-old stay at home son

An exasperated Italian couple has resorted to legal help to kick their 41-year-old son out of the house, in the latest case to highlight the phenomenon of Italy's stay-at-home "bamboccioni" or mummy's boys.

Aren’t his “rights” being violated?

"He has a good job but he continues to live at home and wants his clothes washed and ironed and his meals cooked for him. He never wants to leave." The couple took their case to the association after reading that it had experience in dealing with dozens of similar cases.

Which I suppose also makes these “adults” an abused “class”.

After the report was released, a cabinet minister came up with a drastic solution to the problem, proposing legislation which would make it compulsory for teenagers to leave home once they reached adulthood.

Oddly enough, since it all about how you raise them, these parents only have themselves to blame.

Renato Brunetta, the minister in charge of streamlining the country's bureaucracy, admitted that in his youth he too was a "bamboccioni", which translates as "big baby", and that his mother made his bed for him until he was 30.

I guess this is what you devolve into when ‘the personal becomes the political’. So how’s that working for ya?

Blog Repair

As you can see, we're trying (hard) to get the blog back to normal.
We're still having problems with the comments
but apart from that, we seem to have made some progress…
Patience…

The Joy of Prose

Andrew Ferguson is an evil genius.

On Tom Friedman:

As a writer, Mr. Friedman is best known for his galloping assaults on Strunk and White's Rule No. 9: "Do Not Affect a Breezy Manner." "The World Is Flat" & Co. were cyclones of breeziness, mixing metaphors by the dozens and whipping up slang and clichés and jokey catchphrases of the author's own invention. (The flattened world was just the beginning.) The breeziness would accelerate into great gusts of rhetoric about "an America we could be . . . an America we once were . . . an America we can be again," as though the author were poking fun at a slightly drunk Ted Sorensen.

May his volcanic island secretly pen many submarines.

The slovenliness of our language, George Orwell wrote, makes it easier to have foolish thoughts, and while Mr. Friedman's language has been tidied up a bit, the thinking remains what it has always been.

A class of bureaucrats and crony capitalists trying to rise above the rest of us, call the shots, rig the rules, and preserve their place atop society

If we succumb to this view that our problems are bigger than we are — if we surrender more control over our economy to the governing class — then life in America will become defined by a new kind of class warfare: A class of bureaucrats and connected crony capitalists trying to rise above the rest of us, call the shots, rig the rules, and preserve their place atop society at the expense of working Americans, entrepreneurs, and the small businesswoman who has the gall to take on the corporate chieftain.

Paul Ryan made a brilliant speech commemorating the Constitution on September 17 (Constitution Day), tying its principles to our current troubles, and giving "a few examples of how the rule of law in this country has been degraded over the past few years, and replaced by the rule of man" (monetary policy, energy, financial services, labor, health care, etc). Read the whole thing, as they say.

Freedom is lost by degrees, and the deepest erosions usually take place during times of economic hardship, when those who favor expanding the sphere of government abuse a crisis to persuade free citizens that they should trade in a little of their liberty for empty promises of greater economic security.

… I am not trying to question the intentions of those who have decided to make Medicare spending less accountable to the democratic process. I think they truly believe that it is better to let government-appointed experts make these kinds of decisions, free from the checks and balances that define our messy democratic process.

But in weakening the rule of law in the United States, their intentions are totally irrelevant. The damage they have done is real. And the relevant question we have to ask ourselves is whether, as Reagan put it, “we believe in our capacity for self-government, or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.”

… House Republicans have proposed a policy agenda to do just that: reclaiming America’s exceptional promise, charting a path not only to fiscal sustainability, but also to renewed prosperity.

Restoring the rule of law — reducing the influence of bureaucrats in the lives of Americans and empowering them to take more control over their own lives — is central to the budget we passed earlier this year. In fact, such reforms go hand in hand with our efforts to lift the crushing burden of debt, secure our social safety net, and spur job creation and sustained economic growth for all Americans.

“There are no more locomotives” in Europe, not in Germany, “Not anywhere”

A counterinstinctive nugget: The rich countries’ own agency for economic and social forecasting and analysis, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, now projects that the German economy will fall sharply in the last quarter of the year, performing at bottom level among industrialized countries during the period.

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

Germany’s research institutes don’t challenge the calculation. The Kiel Institute for World Economy even unveiled the “r” word last week, writing, “In no sense is it excluded that the economy falls into recession” — which would be two successive quarters without growth.

Coming at a point when Europe creaks like a foundering ship in a heaving sea of sovereign debt, and the world fights doubts about the European Union’s cohesiveness and stability, this is one ugly notion.

It challenges the assumption that a seemingly recovered German economy is the hard central core and example for the world economy that the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel has cracked it up to be. Combined with the effects of the sovereign debt crisis, it refocuses questions by German experts about the solidity of German banks.

Above all, inside Germany, it creates a reflexive populist scenario that would place the responsibility for a steep German downturn on spendthrift, layabout neighbors — reinforcing the Europe-isn’t-our-problem sentiment shown in a poll over the weekend that said 66 percent of Germans are opposed to further help not only for Greece, but to any other state with debt problems.

… After the O.E.C.D. report, Mrs. Merkel attempted to shore up that credibility by citing growth figures from earlier in the year and saying, “We’re the locomotive again” — one presumably chugging ahead, although imports are down, with everyone’s boxcar in tow.

I asked Wolfgang Franz about this. He is chairman of the German Council of Economic Experts, a counterpart of the White House council of economic advisers — the panel is officially independent of the chancellor though it meets regularly with her.

“There are no more locomotives,” Mr. Franz said, startling me with his directness. “Not anywhere.”

Major Le Monde Article Suggests that Tea Partiers and Members of Hate Groups Are of the Same Irrational Stock

Corine Lesnes has a full two-page spread in Le Monde on the hunters of hate, as she admiringly calls the leftists in charge of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Needless to say, the Le Monde articles are all about the valiant efforts of the generous and avant-garde militants of the SPLC against the hate groups and, more generally, the racist and/or the clueless neanderthals of middle America, as she compares today's climate to that in place when a federal building in Oklahoma City was bombed, managing in the process to send a barb against Thomas Jefferson as well (by quoting a phrase of his out of context) and thus against the very founding of the nation (a nation of barbarians).

Lors de son arrestation, Timothy McVeigh portait un tee-shirt marqué d'une phrase de Thomas Jefferson qui figure sur la page Facebook de tous les extrémistes d'aujourd'hui : "L'arbre de la liberté doit être arrosé de temps à autre du sang des patriotes et des tyrans"...

Joseph Roy est le responsable des investigations au Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), une fondation qui traque depuis 1971 tout ce que l'Amérique compte comme extrémistes de droite, "suprémacistes" blancs, skinheads, milices et restes du Ku Klux Klan. Les enquêteurs du SPLC surveillent plusieurs dizaines de milliers de militants d'extrême droite. …

Dans la catégorie "hate groups", le SPLC range le Ku Klux Klan (221 groupes), les néonazis (170 groupes), les nationalistes blancs, les skinheads racistes, les séparatistes blacks, les néoconfédérés, et une nébuleuse de groupes antigays, anti-immigrants, antimusulmans, négationnistes, l'Eglise baptiste de Westboro, qui manifeste lors des funérailles des soldats tués au combat pour dénoncer l'homosexualité, ou les antiavortement qui traquent les médecins, tel Justin Carl Moose, 26 ans, qui s'est décrit comme "l'homologue chrétien d'Oussama Ben Laden". Tous sont obsédés par une cause unique. "C'est une culture, dit Joseph Roy. Ils ne veulent pas vivre avec nous."

What follows in Le Monde is one horror story after another concerning the United Klans of America, the Christian Knights of the KKK, the Aryan Nations, the Imperial Klans of America, etc, etc, etc, as well as other groups that — as we all are aware of — are incessant and ubiquitous in America's daily news cycle and that — as we all cower in our homes — cast a web of fear over America's heartland.

You see where we're getting at, dont'cha? Corine Lesnes is going to cast a wider net, don't you know it…

She goes on to include in the category of "obsessed" people, the anti-immigration "nativists" and the anti-government "patriots" who "like to put on uniforms and play with their guns in the woods". Well, right: basically, it's just about everyone in the United States, not withstanding a few leftists in government and academe whom, if only we would realize our luck, we would all be so grateful for. Just to make sure, Corine Lesnes does not mention that the Tea Party is part of the hate group — although that is clearly where we're headed — and, indeed, her wording of the "denial" is done in a very oblique manner: "The Tea Party is not on the SPLC's listings."

In one sentence alone — out of two full pages — does Corine Lesnes allow for a slight amount of the criticism that conservatives have bestowed on leftist organizations like the SPLC. Which… she immediately proceeds to dismiss with a single sweep.

Les adversaires du Centre lui reprochent de monter la menace en épingle, notamment dans leurs appels à contributions financières. Mais le SPLC est inquiet du climat actuel.

The Wages of Cultural Hostility Toward Americans

Europe, they're just not that into you.

What does all of this mean? Although Barack Obama rehabilitated the image of the United States in Europe, Europe has so far failed to reinvigorate its image in the United States, particularly among younger Americans who do not necessarily have strong links to European ancestry or positive memories of Cold War-era alliances. For transatlantic relations to thrive in the future, Europe needs to do a lot more to capture the imagination of a new generation of Americans.

I suppose what they mean by "Transatlantic Relations" is suckering and mooching off of the US, but we get the idea. We expect the sale reps to not sneer, but that's about it.

Paris vs NYC

Paris Vs. NYC (merci à Duncan)

The Greeks Know a Sucker When They See One

Greece Purposefully Inflated Its Deficit Numbers To Get EU/IMF Assistance

Per professor Zoe Georgantas "The deficit was artificially inflated in 2009 to show that the country had the largest deficit across Europe, including that of Ireland was 14% in order to justify all these severe measures against the country. And we presented in the Eurostat 15,4%." While there appears to be a substantial political back story here, and we would be careful at taking these claims at face value, the last thing Europe needs is for its people to realize that they have been duped

The old fashioned way to live the good life off of the work of others, is to earn the pity of those who don't.

German Humor

If you can call it that,



includes getting „big laughs” with blackface. And palms. Clueless.

God-Fearing Americans and Al Qaeda Terrorists? "They Can All Go to the Devil"

Just like American TV's Jon Stewart, French TV parodies are supposed to be fair and neutral, distributing their satire equally on all, but it turns out that they just happen to have a leftist bent, which is also the case of Canal +'s Groland, supposed to be the TV news of the imaginary great duchy of Groland (to witness the show's popularity, the country's alleged car code identity (aka Distinguishing Signs of Vehicles in International Traffic) can be seen on decals (GRO) stuck on cars all over France).

The crew is definitely talented — especially the final sketch in this Groland show of the retiree taking his breakfast to his balcony — but one sketch after another are based on the roots of class warfare, with the poor being exploited by the rich.

The Groland show comes from the same TV channel as the Guignols muppet show, whose only puppet representing an entire people is an inhuman Stallone as the average American and whose first show after the 911 commemoration showed French visitors and French reporters saddened at the Manhattan commemorations because they showed up in New York and — bummer — there were… no new attacks to celebrate the tenth anniversary. (For something in better taste, see the Guignols' Planet of the Apes parody with Barack Obama in a Chinese factory at 02:37.)

As for the most recent Groland show (prior to segueing into the obligatory anti-rich sketches), it begins (at 01:15) by noting the references to God in Barack Obama's speech before condemning religion in general (they're leftists, remember?) while making moral equivalence between Christians and Islamists. The president of Groland, therefore, also makes a speech on September 11 commemorating the attacks — of Al Qaeda on a country whose motto is "In God We Trust" — in which he decides that from now on, any and all religious people (des "culs-bénis") will be turned away from the grand duchy's borders. To which the TV announcer adds,

They can all go to the devil — who is someone who [contrary to God] really exists.

America’s failure to live up to French expectations is a much-cherished French tradition, nearly as old as the United States itself

In an equally leftist screed rebuttal to Dominique Moïsi, Ted Widmer gets it right once in a time:

It has become rather easy to criticize President George W. Bush for the mistakes he made, especially in Paris, where America’s failure to live up to French expectations is a much-cherished local tradition, nearly as old as the United States itself. But to fall into undisciplined thinking about the past risks perpetuating the same mistakes.

Multiculturalism is a doctrine of avoidance, placing emphasis on heritage rather than openness, and tolerating pretty much everything

Surely, you could think, the Oslo mass murders might well bring some moderation to Europe’s far-right populist parties in their unyielding denigration of Islam and their Armageddon-is-nigh vision of a future shared with Muslim immigrants

writes John Vinocur in the International Herald Tribune.

At the same time, since Norway’s massacre led to statements by populist leaders rejecting violence, you might also suppose that the European left could ease up on its resistance to the idea that multiculturalism has brought parallel societies, disrespect for national laws and traditions, and a threatened sense of identity to countries with hundreds of years of democratic history.

Neither assumption is hopeless. But each enters the area of very wishful, perhaps naïve surmise.

… Now the Dutch are dealing with the fact (and its potential political impact and manipulation) that Anders Behring Breivik, the confessed Oslo killer, spoke in his 1,518-page manifesto of his admiration for Geert Wilders.

Of course, alongside his stated hatred of multiculturalism and Muslim immigrants, Mr. Breivik also said confusedly that the Europeans he most wanted to meet were Pope Benedict and Vladimir V. Putin (whose vision of “democracy” appealed to him), that he read Homer, Kafka, John Stuart Mill and Winston Churchill, and liked Lacoste shirts and Chanel Platinum Egoiste cologne.

In any case, the reaction here, at its most shrill, was at screech level.

At one extreme, talking of Mr. Wilders in a radio interview, Gerard Spong, a lawyer, accused him of having “Norwegian blood on his lips.”

“Wilders has full responsibility for this,” Mr. Spong said of the murders. “He contributed to the development and the acts” of the killer. (An attempt supported by Mr. Spong and Islamic officials to bring defamation charges against Mr. Wilders for anti-Islam statements ended in his acquittal this year.)

Now the Dutch are dealing with the fact (and its potential political impact and manipulation) that Anders Behring Breivik, the confessed Oslo killer, spoke in his 1,518-page manifesto of his admiration for Geert Wilders.

Of course, alongside his stated hatred of multiculturalism and Muslim immigrants, Mr. Breivik also said confusedly that the Europeans he most wanted to meet were Pope Benedict and Vladimir V. Putin (whose vision of “democracy” appealed to him), that he read Homer, Kafka, John Stuart Mill and Winston Churchill, and liked Lacoste shirts and Chanel Platinum Egoiste cologne.

In any case, the reaction here, at its most shrill, was at screech level.

At one extreme, talking of Mr. Wilders in a radio interview, Gerard Spong, a lawyer, accused him of having “Norwegian blood on his lips.”

“Wilders has full responsibility for this,” Mr. Spong said of the murders. “He contributed to the development and the acts” of the killer. (An attempt supported by Mr. Spong and Islamic officials to bring defamation charges against Mr. Wilders for anti-Islam statements ended in his acquittal this year.)

“Wilders has full responsibility for this,” Mr. Spong said of the murders. “He contributed to the development and the acts” of the killer. (An attempt supported by Mr. Spong and Islamic officials to bring defamation charges against Mr. Wilders for anti-Islam statements ended in his acquittal this year.)

… In a new book, “Immigrant Nations,” Paul Scheffer, a Dutch political scientist, has restated his opposition to multiculturalism in nonconfrontational terms that may have appeal to the left. He says that the reality of multiculturalism is that it is a doctrine of “avoidance,” sustaining immigrant groups’ focus “on what they’ve left behind,” placing more emphasis “on heritage rather than openness” and tolerating pretty much everything “as long as cultures are spared all criticism.”

9/11 ten years on: Bush and Blair were right

In the last ten years, it has become increasingly fashionable to knock both George W Bush and Tony Blair for their response to the attacks of 9/11

writes Peter Cannon, the Governance, Strategy and Terrorism Section Director at the Henry Jackson Society. Read also Jim Lacey's "Saddam: What We Now Know" (the first sentence of which states "Saddam Hussein was a WMD threat and a terror threat to the United States and its allies.")

But ten years on, I would argue that — while mistakes have certainly been made — Bush and Blair basically got it right. (

It is difficult to argue that the war to oust the Taliban from power in Afghanistan was not the right response. Here was a clear-cut case of a just war — the US was responding to an attack on its soil, by a terrorist group based in Afghanistan and hosted by the Islamist regime there. Any lesser response would have looked pathetically weak and left Afghanistan as a base for Al-Qaeda.

But what about Iraq? The lesson the US administration and British government took from 9/11 was that threats should not be left alone until they struck first. Saddam Hussein had been an ongoing problem for years, repeatedly obstructing UN weapons inspectors, while the sanctions regime against him was crumbling due to a lack of support from other countries. Here was a dictator who was in breach of seventeen UN Security Council Resolutions, had used chemical weapons against his own people and who had a record of harbouring and collaborating with Islamist terrorists.

Many people became legal experts overnight and declared the war ‘illegal’, despite the Attorney General’s advice that it was lawful, despite the seventeen UN Security Council Resolutions and despite a vote of Parliament.

Many more condemned the US and the UK for the number of civilian casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq. Yet they ignore the plain fact that the vast majority of civilian casualties have been caused not by US or allied forces, but by the Islamist insurgents fighting against us — who have received notably less condemnation.

Yet many in the West find it much easier to condemn the US and Britain rather than accept that we are genuinely facing a vicious enemy and have the right to defend ourselves. We were even blamed for ‘creating’ the forces that we were battling, with it still being wrongly claimed that the CIA funded Osama Bin Laden during the 1980s. In the case of Iraq, it was often said that it was the US that had armed Saddam Hussein in the first place, during his war with Iran. In fact, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the US and UK combined provided Saddam Hussein with less than one per cent of his purchased weapons — against fifty-seven per cent from the USSR, thirteen per cent from France and twelve per cent from China.

Similarly, it was claimed that the War on Terror, and particularly the Iraq War, radicalised many Muslims. It should hardly need pointing out that it was Al-Qaeda that started the war, not us. And arguing that we should not do anything which might radicalise would-be terrorists would be to hand Islamist terrorists a veto over our foreign policy.

It has often been argued that the War on Terror alienated Muslim opinion worldwide, and was perceived as a ‘war against Islam’. Yet George W Bush and Tony Blair repeatedly went out of their way to emphasise that this was not a war with Islam and that Islam was neither the enemy nor the problem.

It has also been said that the US should have done more to ‘reach out’ to the Muslim world. In fact, in the early days after 9/11, there were many attempts at reaching out, particularly by Tony Blair, but beyond expressions of sympathy for the victims of the 9/11, there was little reaching back.

Incredibly, after 9/11, some still persisted in claiming that the terrorist threat was ‘exaggerated’ or even ‘manufactured’ by governments. But the reason there have not been even more terrorist attacks is not because Al-Qaeda and its affiliates have not had the intention of launching them but due to concerted military action and the constant vigilance and undercover work of our security services.

Many have criticised the terminology of the ‘War on Terror’, pointing out that you cannot fight a war against something which is a tactic rather than a group or an ideology. They may have a point, but such quibbles over terminology are hardly helpful. Given the scale of the 9/11 attacks and the threat of further atrocities, conceptualising the response as a ‘war’ was surely the right thing to do. Bush and Blair were absolutely right to recognise that these were not just isolated terrorist attacks against specific targets, but that they were indeed an assault on our values and way of life.

Thankfully, Osama Bin Laden is now dead, his organisation weakened, and his ideology dwindling in popularity. These things did not happen by accident, but as a result of the War on Terror and the efforts led by George W Bush and Tony Blair.

The ‘Arab Spring’ demonstrates another thing which Bush and Blair got right: that democracy could be spread to the Middle East, that freedom was not an exclusively Western value that was incompatible with Muslim or Arab societies. It is impossible to tell whether or not the Arab Spring would have happened if Saddam Hussein was still in power in Iraq. If it had, then he would almost certainly be doing his best to crush it with a bloody campaign of repression to rival what has been done in Syria and Libya. Instead, we had a democratically elected Iraqi government calling for action against the regime of Colonel Gaddafi.

While we have had numerous successes in the War on Terror, the fight goes on, most notably in Afghanistan. The last decade has been tough, not least for the US. Tough but — given the enormity of 9/11 — necessary.

At the end of the decade, it needs to be said: Bush and Blair did the right thing, and we are in a better position now than we would otherwise have been.

Decent onto Medievalism Assured

British progressives go from merely promoting their ideas through coercion to banning unapproved thoughts.

Football fans who make offensive chants about wind turbines could face stiff jail sentences under plans by the government and the Football Association to 'get tough' with climate change deniers.

Get tough? By not letting them have opinions? The cowardice and intolerance of progressives is blinding.

Notice from the Management

As you may have noticed from the look of the blog,
there seems to have been a foul-up somewhere,
and we are working at getting No Pasarán working as usual,
although this may have to wait until next week.

In the meantime, the content seems to be working as usual…

Merci for your patience…

Salvadore Allende, Martyr of the International Left, was a Totalitarian Assmonkey

The man hits all of the usual "how many millions must die to make a perfect world" talking points in crazy-leftist land:

Allende, who killed himself in 1973 during a coup which saw General Augusto Pinochet depose him, is accused of having "stifled the media".
The book adds that he started "a project of socialist doctrination in schools and almost installed a law of sterilisation, inspired by a Nazi law" aimed at reducing genetic illnesses.

All of this coming from a book by Brazilian journalists Leandro Narloch and Duda Teixeira, who wrote it with the impulse of trying to get more people to look at parts of history that have been turfed over for the sake of political ideology.

It claims that Simon Bolivar, the hero of Latin America's independence wars, was scared that blacks and indigenous Indians would seize power and that Salvador Allende, the Marxist Chilean president of the 1970s, considered a Nazi-inspired policy of sterilisation.

True to form for the humanist "heroes of the working man", Eva Peron is reported as well to have lasciviously coveted items taken by Nazis from Jews, as if it were some prize wrested from an enemy.

Here We Go Again!

The "Anglo-Saxons" are — again — accused of (sigh) plotting against Europe — and its Euro, writes Claire Gatinois in Le Monde.

From alarmist statements to petty remarks, the media, economists, and financiers on Wall Street or in the City are regularly suspected of participating in an attack in good standing on the euro. … In Paris, an operator said he too is "tired" of seeing traders panic when reading the latest Euro-sceptic article in the British newspaper Financial Times. "The Bible" of markets, he explains

Real or imagined, this conspiracy theory is driven by the idea that people in the U.S. or the UK could benefit from the ills of the monetary Union. No one can ignore that some would thus pocket heaps of money.

Reactions from Le Monde readers pour oil on the fire, varying from international finance without morals to a desire to neutralize Europe via the Americans' evil wish to scuttle Europe's admirable pro-Palestinian policy.

You Can Lead Them to the Enlightenment, But You Can't Make Them Think

With thanks to the razzzzberry we discover what a bunch of hopeless dopey vapidity the UN encourages. Ban Ki Moon, speaking in the Solomon Islands:

Your very existence is threatened. Therefore the UN shares your concerns very much. Climate change is the greatest threat to the livelihood, security and wellbeing of the people of Solomon Islands and the pacific region.

With this, he panders to the Brahmins elsewhere as he lectures these people who have just emerged from a civil war, that their highest priority is a fake transnational racket to turn them into dependent ghetto-dweller types.

...you are on the front line of climate change. I am here to sound aloud to the international community your concerns...

which would be interesting if it actually WERE their primary concern at the moment.

But in the absence of having to deal with anything real, the bottom feeders of the international woe-and-pity racket prefer a fake crisis that was custom made to be more useful to them.

The Star-Spangled Banner Under the Moon of Paris

During the concert at the end of the tenth anniversary commemoration of the 9-11 attacks in Trocadéro square in Paris across from the Eiffel Tower (the second largest 911 commemoration in the world next to those in Manhattan itself, according to the organizers in The French Will Never Forget association), Grace Weber and Blaine Krauss sing National Anthem under Jean-Pierre Heim's recreation of the World Trade Center's Twin Towers and under a full moon.

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

• Personal Memories of September 11, 2001, in Paris

• The Legend of the Squandered Sympathy

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

• Still Looking for "Another" September 11th?

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

• Le Monde's 911 Commemorations

America the Beautiful Rings Out Over Paris

During the tenth anniversary commemoration of the 9-11 attacks in Trocadéro square in Paris across from the Eiffel Tower (the second largest 911 commemoration in the world next to those in Manhattan itself, according to the organizers in The French Will Never Forget association), Grace Weber and Blaine Krauss sing "America the Beautiful" under Jean-Pierre Heim's recreation of the World Trade Center's Twin Towers before doves are released into the skies.

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

• Personal Memories of September 11, 2001, in Paris

• The Legend of the Squandered Sympathy

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

• Still Looking for "Another" September 11th?

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

• Le Monde's 911 Commemorations

The Invisible Hand Falls for the Joy Buzzer Again

Market Soars Following Latest "China Bails Out Europe" Rumor: Expected Rumor Half Life - 15 Minutes

Sez Zero Hedge:

Ok seriously, enough with this bullshit, please.

How many times can the idiotic market keep falling for the same old rumor over and over and over again?

You'd be surprised how often, and how desperate a financial industry locked in a trap with amateurish small governments will fall for it, hoping above hope.

That said, this is at least the 4th time that China has "bailed out" Europe in 2011.

BREAKING: Massive Attack on NATO's Kabul HQ By Waves of Taliban Suicide Bombers

According to Danish news reports (the secretary general of NATO, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, is Danish), including Berlingske Tidende, NATO's headquarters in Kabul are under a major attack, with the Taliban issuing a statement that suicide bombers are involved in a "mass suicide action."

NATO headquarters in Kabul is under attack, and there is strong shooting at a central square in the city.

"ISAF headquarters is currently under attack," says a military source.

But a spokesman for ISAF would not confirm that information. The International Security Assistance Force is the NATO-led force in Afghanistan.

Previously, the Afghan capital was rocked by at least six powerful explosions, and a Taliban spokesman stated that its rebels are engaged in a "massive suicide attack", which targets government offices as well as the Afghan and foreign intelligence services.

An eyewitness told Reuters that the attackers have penetrated a tall building under construction and that shots are being fired against soldiers who are returning the fire.

The fighting is taking place next to a barracks and the Marriott hotel.

The first explosion was heard in the embassy area and the roads there were closed shortly after.

Soon thereafter followed more explosions.

"There are a number of fighters by Abdul Haq Square," the head of Kabul's criminal police, Mohammad Zahir, told Reuters.

Several Taliban insurgents have taken up positions with rocket launchers, AK-47-rifles, and bulletproof vests near the embassy district, said a spokesman for the Islamic insurgency movement.

Maybe the explosion was not that big.

This could indicate that the explosion was not as great as first reported. Indeed, the Danish Refugee Council's representative in Kabul, Stefano Cordella, reported that neither felt nor heard the explosion.

"Our office is located two kilometers from the embassy area, but we didn't hear the explosion. Right now we are following the developments on television."

/ritzau/AFP

This Tea Party Here, Who Are Its Members Anyway?

Obama's 911 Comment Published in Le Figaro With Pride

TRIBUNE - Le président des États-Unis Barack Obama a choisi Le Figaro pour commenter l'après-11 Septembre. Dix ans après les attentats suicides contre la première puissance mondiale, il renouvelle son soutien aux nations et aux peuples en quête d'un avenir de paix et de prospérité.

Le Figaro takes pride in the fact that Barack Obama allegedly chose its pages to publish an op-ed.

Killed by Government Love

I blame Global Warming:

Meltdown for the country's estimated 5,000 ice cream vans started with the rise of the domestic freezer in the Fifties but has been compounded more recently by new EU rules introducing lower emission limits. These mean that many older ice cream vans face costly conversions or face being taken off the road.

In London, meanwhile, tighter emissions standards will come into force from January next year. Some ice cream vans will be able to fit a filter, but the charge for those that don't will be £100 a day.

So rather logically, taxing things will "save the world", "heal the earth" and part the seas, dontcha know. So what if you have to take happiness away from kids - you're already traumatizing them anyway!

The Skies Shed Tears During Paris Commemoration of 911 Attacks

During the tenth anniversary commemoration of the 9-11 attacks in Trocadéro square in Paris across from the Eiffel Tower (the second largest 911 commemoration in the world next to those in Manhattan itself, according to the organizers in The French Will Never Forget association), Grace Weber and Blaine Krauss sing America the Beautiful under Jean-Pierre Heim's recreation of the World Trade Center's Twin Towers before doves are released into the skies.







The hero of the day was Tony Benetatos, the FDNY firefighter featured in the Naudet brothers' "9/11" documentary, who was given several medals, including one by U.S. Ambassador to France Charles Rivkin.



Eventually, the rains stopped, the sky got lighter, and the sun came out and that night, a concert took place under a full moon…



















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

• Personal Memories of September 11, 2001, in Paris

• The Legend of the Squandered Sympathy

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

• Still Looking for "Another" September 11th?

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

• Le Monde's 911 Commemorations

Still Looking for "Another" September 11th?

Obfuscaters have selective memories. Always looking for something to compete with the obvious yearning of the aggrieved or abused, come the "lamentations" of the disinvolved and confused thought-mafia. Just as it was with the left after 9-11, the tut-tutting has a predictable familiarity:

Ordinary Berliners on both sides of the now-derelict Wall were certainly excited over the prospect of unity, but the city's opinion-makers were often blase or even hostile toward the project. It became fashionable among the leftist intelligentsia of West Berlin to condemn the easterners' longing for unification as a lamentable submission to the lure of Western materialism.

Today marks beginning of another war: the "peace movement," looking for Islamophobia wherever it could be inferred, the mothers of fallen troops, and in every other way preferred the failure of their own society, preferring it to negotiate from a position of weakness with a barbaric, illiberal violent movement seeking the violence that they craved in their "revolutions" to "make the world better."

Add to that the banal, the banalization, and the misuse. Such as it is, one Euro-policy blogger is looking for other ways to "celebrate 9-11", and tries to use it to point attention to two aged and pointless press statements by Eurocrats.

Personal Memories of September 11, 2001, in Paris

Since commemorations of 9-11 are taking place all over the world, I thought we should search the archives of No Pasarán for the personal memories of two of the blog's bloggers. Erik and Bill's posts will help explain why they started to blog:

September 11, 2001, in France

(September 09, 2005)

For no particular reason (except that the anniversary is this weekend), I thought I should recount my experience of 911 and the numerous instances of French solidarity I encountered in the following days.

• Everyday Meetings with Common Europeans

On the afternoon of September 11, 2001, I was having a drink in the TGV's dining car (yes, I know, I take the train a lot), heading north to Paris.
Cel phone communication is hard to come by on trains, but at one point I heard I had a message on the answering machine. I called the number to hear the message. It was my (New York-born) mother, and all the message said was to please call back: "There has been a series of catastrophes in the States".
Befuddled, I headed out into the corridor and called my parents, and after answering, my mom said I should talk to my dad. I listened incredulously as my father explained that planes had been deliberately flown into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and that both Twin Towers had collapsed.
Needless to say, I headed back to the dining car in another state of mind, totally closed off and unable to communicate with anyone.
At one point, three or four members of some state-owned company (they may have been EDF) entered the dining car. . Although they discussing the day's events, they were obviously heading to Paris to demonstrate against the government, and during their conversation, I overheard one of them making a joke (sic). With a snicker, he said "Ils l'ont fait exprès pour saboter notre manifestation" (They [obviously meaning the Americans] did it on purpose, in order to sabotage our demonstration). Alhough the others barely laughed at what was obviously an instance of sophisticated humor à la française (smiles were in order, though), the comment should give a better idea of the real state of friendship harbored towards America then the presumed one extant in the myth of the squandered sympathy.
I was too emotionally drained to react to this comment, and anyway without a radio and a TV set to get a better idea of the situation, the extent of the terrorist attacks was hard to believe. I had listened to learn more, and had certainly not expected anything but empathy for Americans.
(Meanwhile, fellow webmaster Bill was taking a drink in a Paris café — listen to his experience with French proclamations of ever-lasting friendship [or read it below].)
Anyway, another two hours went by without news, without images of any kind, and when I arrived at Gare de Lyon, I rushed home faster than I ever have before, arriving drenched with sweat just in time for the 8 o'clock news. That night I hardly slept, as I stayed up in front of the TV all night long, wishing, wishing drastically that the news wasn't true.
For the next couple of weeks I wore a bandanna with the Stars and Stripes everywhere I went.
At my office the following day, there was certainly nobody among my fellow journalists who had anything sympathetic to say about 911 (or what they had to say they certainly weren't sharing with the guy wearing Old Glory on his head).
The previous August, I had joined a group of a dozen hikers (all of them French) in crossing the Himalayas at a point in northern India, and we had decided to meet again at one of our apartments on the Saturday three weeks after our return from the trek. This turned out to be September 15.
A couple of people brought their companions along. Eventually discussion turned to the events of the previous Tuesday. I never expected anything but sympathy to be shown (like I had on the train), but one female hiker's boyfriend obviously had none. I don't remember if he actually said he was happy about 911 or in so many words that Americans deserved it, but he certainly had not the smallest empathy for them, saying he hated their guts.
That is where I lost my cool.
"So that is the famous French solidarity, huh?!" I interrupted from my chair.
He tried to say something, but he wasn't about to get the chance.
"So that is the famous French generosity, huh?!" I bellowed.
He again replying, but…
"So that is the famous French tolerance, huh?"
I got up.
The others were begging me to drop the matter, to shut up.
"So that is the famous love of fellow human beings, huh? I am so-o-o-o impressed!"
His girlfriend was begging me, begging both of us, to let the matter drop, but I piled on with acerbic irony.
"Do you have any other examples of France's famed lucidité, we would love to listen to them!"
The other people were alarmed, they seemed to think we were going to come to blows, and, truthfully, both then and later, I felt like I was battering him, except by the use of words instead of fists.
"Oh, I am so impressed by your avant-garde feelings of solidarity towards the entire world — please, please, can you give us some lessons!"
Suddenly, the guy got up, crossed the room towards the front door of the fifth-floor apartment, and — walked out. Leaving his girlfriend behind, he started running down the stairway. In my fury, I still managed to register surprise, because that was the last thing I expected.
I sat down again, fury still registered on my face, and the topic quickly changed to something totally unrelated to international news.
The point is that, as John Rosenthal (among others) has pointed out, the story of the squandered sympathy is nothing but a myth: Over the following months, or years (weeks?), we are told, America's president (i.e., Bush) and his government squandered the sympathy that the world generously bestowed upon America in the immediate aftermath.
As it happens, the comment I heard in the apartment occurred four days after the terrorist attacks, and the comments that I heard in the train and that W heard in the Paris café occurred within hours (if not dozens of minutes) after learning of the terrorist attacks.
Those give quite a different context to the expressions of friendship such as those seen by clicking on the photo above. As many of our French commentators make clear, what is said in public (and nobody denies Europeans' mastery in handling the délicatesse of diplomacy) and what is said behind one's back can be quite a different matter; in any case, the friendship is tinged (soaked, rather) with (self-serving) paternalism.
Close friendship with America: it is all a lie, folks, it is all a lie. (Or if you want to be charitable, at best it is self-deception.)

Let's set the record straight for all the politically correct, terrorist appeasing, revisionists out there

(March 18, 2003)

9-11 in Paris

11-9-2001 à Paris

Quite a few falsehoods are being spread about America 'squandering' French sympathy in the aftermath of 9-11. So let's set the record straight for all the politically correct, terrorist appeasing, revisionists out there. There was no French sympathy, period. The first images I saw of the attacks were on the TV in a Paris café shortly after leaving the office. As images of people jumping from the Towers were shown a French guy at the bar made a back handed wave at the TV screen and said, 'to hell with them'. All the customers' discussions in the café were along the lines of 'its a terrible thing BUT ...' quickly followed by vague justifications why it was not such a terrible thing after all. Kids were running down the street yelling 'the States are fucked'. In the days following the attacks, graffiti praising Osama bin Laden appeared daily on the ATMs throughout the neighborhood. Dope using French judo champ Djamel Bouras, appearing on the first edition of 'Tout le Monde en Parle' following the attacks, stated 'Why do the French newspapers declare that we are all Americans? Why a minute of silence for the dead Americans? What about a minute of silence for the dead Palestinians?' Answer to Bouras: because the Palestinians are bloodthirsty murdering terrorist scum, that's why. Now go use your smack. French celebration of 9-11 continued thereafter. Dubya said it best, 'Never forgive, never forget'.

Enormément de mensonges circulent au sujet de la sympathie française qui a été 'gaspillée' par l'Amérique suite aux attaques du 11-9-2001. Remettons les pendules à l'heure pour tous les révisionnistes politiquement corrects qui font des accomodements vis-à-vis du terrorisme. Il n'y a jamais eu de sympathie française, point barre. Les permières images des attaques que j'ai vues étaient à la télévision dans un café parisien peu de temps après avoir quitté le bureau. Au moment où les images étaient transmises de gens qui sautaient des Tours un mec français au comptoir a fait un geste de la main vers le téléviseur en disant, 'qu'ils aillent au diable'. Toutes les discussions parmi les clients consistaient à dire 'c'est une chose affreuse MAIS ...' vite suivies de justifications pour dire qu'il ne s'agissait pas de quelque chose de si affreux en fin de compte. Des mômes courraient dans la rue en criant, 'on a niqué les USA'. Dans les jours qui ont suivi les attaques, les guichets automatiques du quartier étaient recouverts de graffiti faisant l'éloge d'Oussama ben Laden. Djamel Bouras, champion français de judo et consommateur de produits dopants, lors de son passage à la première émission de 'Tout le Monde en Parle' après les attaques, a déclaré 'Pourquoi les journaux français disent qu'on est tous des américains? Pourquoi il faut faire une minute de silence pour les américains morts? Pourquoi pas une minute de silence pour les palestiniens morts?' Réponse à Bouras: car les palestiniens sont des fumiers de terroristes meurtriers et sanguinaires. Alors, occupe-toi de ta came. Par la suite, le culte français autour du 11-9-2001 a pris de l'ampleur. Bush l'a bien dit, 'Ne jamais pardonner, ne jamais oublier'.

See also:
• The Legend of the Squandered Sympathy

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

• 911 Commemorated in Paris's Luxembourg Garden

• The Skies Shed Tears During Paris Commemoration of 911 Attacks

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

• Still Looking for "Another" September 11th?

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

• Le Monde's 911 Commemorations