For a Country Always Giving Yanks Lessons on Civility and Gun Control, There Has Been an Amazing Amount of Kalashnikov-Related Killings

[À Marseille] le mois de décembre a vu s'enchaîner des meurtres spectaculaires.

In the land that is always giving clueless Yanks lessons on gun control and on remaining civilized and in a Zen state of conscience, Le Monde features on its front page the photo of… a 17-year-old gunned down by a Kalashnikov burst.

Indeed, while Frenchmen remain blinded (or because they remain blinded) to all types of crimes — as noted in Pamela Gellar's Atlas Shrugs story on the Serial Rapist in France [Who] Asks Victims Their Nationality and Religion Before Raping Them (hmm — what religion might he be part of?!) — we learn that homicides and attempted homicides are rising amidst bursts of Kalashnikov fire and spectacular murders.

An investigation by Yves Bordenave and Laurent Borredon into the Marseilles drug rings teaches us the following:

Le rituel est le même dans chaque cité. Les policiers ont à peine montré le bout de leur calandre que le "Arrraaah !" retentit de bloc en bloc, d'immeuble en immeuble, de cage d'escalier en cage d'escalier. Les guetteurs, des gamins, pas plus de 15 ans, veillent avec vigilance sur le commerce de la drogue. Parfois, un ou deux scooters escortent le véhicule jusqu'à ce qu'il sorte de la cité. Font-Vert, le Clos la Rose, la Castellane... toutes sont touchées, organisées, structurées par le trafic.

… cela fait en réalité trois ans que ces cités se mènent une guerre qui ensanglante la ville. Dans son bureau de l'hôtel de police, à l'Evêché, Roland Gauze, le patron de la police judiciaire (PJ) marseillaise, fait ses comptes : "En 2010, dans Marseille, on a dénombré 54 homicides et tentatives dont 17 relevaient de règlements de comptes ; en 2011, on a fini à 38 homicides et tentatives dont 20 règlements de comptes."
Une année plus calme donc, mais gâchée par un mois de décembre particulièrement meurtrier. Cinq morts en quatre semaines. Cinq jeunes hommes, dont un policier, tombés sous les rafales des kalachnikovs. Les victimes ont entre 18 et 38 ans. Elles sont plus ou moins connues des services de police pour leur implication à des degrés divers dans des trafics de drogue. Le scénario : deux ou trois individus cagoulés font irruption dans une cité, armés le plus fréquemment d'une kalachnikov. Ils s'approchent de leur cible, vident le chargeur et repartent à bord de puissants 4 × 4 aussi vite qu'ils sont apparus. "Les gains en argent sont tellement faciles, alors on tue", explique Yves Robert, délégué du SNOP, le syndicat majoritaire chez les officiers.

Parfois, la violence monte d'un cran encore. Dans la nuit du 25 au 26 décembre 2011, trois cadavres de jeunes gens ont été découverts en partie calcinés sur le siège arrière d'une Audi A3 aux Pennes-Mirabeau, à quelques encablures de la Canebière. Ils avaient 19 et 20 ans. Les hommes de la BAC se souviennent d'avoir contrôlé l'un d'eux quelques jours avant sa mort : "Il portait un gilet pare-balles !" Leurs assassins les ont exécutés à l'arme automatique avant d'incendier leur voiture pour faire disparaître toutes traces, certes, mais aussi pour marquer les esprits. Pour impressionner l'ennemi, on ne lésine ni sur les moyens ni sur la méthode.

Yves Bordenave and Laurent Borredon point out that there are places that the police do not dare go.

Une course-poursuite débute. Elle tourne court dans un cul-de-sac. Le passager s'enfuit en courant. Un policier le poursuit, mais revient vite : l'homme s'est engagé dans une zone d'ombre, où une dizaine de personnes veillent. "Trop dangereux", explique-t-il. Rien à reprocher au conducteur, connu des policiers mais resté sur place. Un coup pour rien.
… Des réseaux, il y en a des dizaines. "Impossible à chiffrer", indique prudemment Roland Gauze. Chacun veille, arme au pied, à défendre son territoire, sa part de marché. Le kalachnikov, c'est le nec plus ultra, un signe ostensible de puissance qui a remplacé le fusil à pompe d'antan. Ça fait du bruit. Ça impressionne. Mais les récentes saisies ont mis fin au fantasme d'un déferlement de mitraillettes sur le Vieux-Port. Il s'agit souvent d'armes anciennes ayant déjà servi.
A chaque opération, les enquêteurs mettent la main sur des butins à peu près identiques : quelques dizaines de kilos de cannabis, quelques milliers d'euros en liquide et quelques armes. A la Visitation, les salaires mensuels variaient de 5 000 euros pour les plus mal payés (les guetteurs) à 10 000 euros pour le "charbonneur".

Alan’s Parsing Project

Manning the ideological ramparts: behold yet another douchebag who doesn’t get that Nazis and Neo-nazis are actually leftists.

A Love that Dare not Speak His Name

Bruce Brawer on “Urinegate”:

Anti-Americanism is, of course, as European as Apfelstrudel

He goes on to detail implausibly stupid Norwegian attempts at comparing US troops to, you guessed it, the Nazis:

Still, it wasn’t until I ran across an article the other day in the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet that I realized European anti-Americanism, thanks to Urinegate, is once again in full bloom. The article, written by somebody named Asbjørn Svarstad, begins by noting that the American soldiers who filmed themselves urinating on dead Taliban members may not be the first GIs to have behaved in such a manner. “American commandos who were dropped over Snåsa [in northern Norway] toward the end of World War II,” writes Asbjørn Svarstad, “are suspected of having displayed the same kind of contempt for their enemies.”

The main character in Svarstad’s story is none other than William Colby, who would later become head of the CIA but who back in 1945 was a 24-year-old major in charge of the Norwegian Special Operation Group (NORSO) under the command of the OSS. NORSO, which sounds rather like Brad Pitt’s unit in Inglourious Basterds, consisted of Norwegian-Americans and Norwegians who were operating behind enemy lines on a mission called Operation RYPE. On May 2, 1945, Colby’s men, who were stationed at a farm called Gjevsjøen, were discovered by five German soldiers, whom they quickly dispatched. According to Svarstad, local Norwegians – and here’s the meat of the story – later claimed that they were then invited by the Americans to urinate on the Germans’ corpses.

One of Svarstad’s sources is Norwegian journalist Ola Flyum, whom he describes as an authority on how northern Norway experienced World War II. Flyum’s verdict on the NORSO episode is as follows: “This kind of behavior says a great deal about the way in which the Americans conducted themselves. The Norwegians were shaken. Such a culture was unknown to them. I see many reasons to examine whether this was a war crime.”

Yes, you read that right. The local Norwegians had lived for five years under the Nazis, who had come to subdue and tyrannize them, to execute troublemakers and cart Jews off to their deaths. But, if Flyum is to be believed, the real trauma for these folks was being invited by their American liberators to relieve themselves on the bodies of their oppressors

It’s also worth noting that this blog gets a great number of its’ hits from the European continent from image searches, having posted a few pictures of Hitler in various articles, we have become enlightened to a larger European public, not just those we meet having a “nuanced” view of the murderous Charlie Chaplin impersonator.

So it comes as a shock to us that those same anti-Americans also use him their silent hero as a stick to beat people with. The posted articles’ comments he cites are even more masturbatory:

A couple of readers cited the Allied bombing of Dresden as proof that America and the western Allies were at least as bad as the Nazis; one recalled having “seen videos from WWII of P51 planes mowing down German farmers in May 1945.” Several readers insisted that it wasn’t the Western Allies that whupped the Nazis and freed Norway, but the Soviets: “America would have been a**-f***ed in a one-on-one against Nazi Germany.”

And in a unsurprising turn among leftists, we find elitism, racism, cultural condescention, and fictional assumptions about their straw-man, one no different than the type the Nazis cultivated in “The Eternal Jew”:

A running theme was that American soldiers are, as one reader put it, “typical American white trash.” Indeed, the words “white trash” recurred frequently. Left-wing readers who undoubtedly pride themselves on their purported respect for people (especially the underprivileged) of all races and religions, and who fret about the human rights of even the most loathsome members of the species (such as Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden), were quick to deride American GIs as poor, dumb – and, indeed, barely human – hicks: “There’s no doubt that white trash from the US…have lukewarm attitudes toward morality. Without the local minister and sheriff they fumble around, unwashed and drunk, and rape, kill, and film their crimes. They’re garbage.”

I only point this out because it is banal and typical of any bar-room on the continent, and because it seems to be the only public evidence of Europe’s cultural legacy, having otherwise abandoned any virtues not connected with the kind of enforcement of public morality that the state would dispense.

What then is the result of all of that helpless grasping for proof of their being right in their attitudes? A strange, nearly erotic affection for Nazis.

Le Monde Suggests that the Fault for the Concordia's Shipwreck Belongs Not to Captain Schettino, But to… American Capitalism!

Elsewhere in Le Monde, we hear (from Sylvain Cypel) that the Republicans, or that their debates, as well as their focus on capitalism (imagine: private equity!), let off a nauseous stench, no less.

And so, it should come as no surprise that, even if it is only one paragraph in a major article in Le Monde, at one point in his portrait of the Concordia's skipper, Philippe Ridet seems to find that the fault for the shipwreck lies not with Francesco Schettino, but with… capitalism — making sure to point out that the culprit is American capitalism!

Francesco Schettino, un coupable idéal ? Pour la compagnie, propriété de la société américaine Carnival qui règne sur les trois quarts du marché des croisières avec Royal Caribbean, la thèse de l'erreur humaine est essentielle. Alors que l'action de Carnival a perdu, le 12 janvier, 17 % à la Bourse de Londres, l'entreprise doit à tout prix sauver au moins sa réputation. Costa, qui avait prévu de serrer ses prix en 2012 pour affronter la crise, prévoit une perte de 90 millions d'euros, soit le chiffre d'affaires attendu par le Concordia en 2012. Le navire, assuré pour une valeur de 450 millions de dollars, effectuait une rotation par semaine sur un parcours passant par Savone (Ligurie), Barcelone, Palma, Tunis, Palerme, Civitavecchia (Latium).

I know the Taste of our Readership...

WASHINGTON -

All Metrobuses are now equipped with drivecam systems, which capture these types of incidents. When WTOP asked for drivecam videos from August and September, we received 134 near-collision videos, along with dozens showing collisions, traffic violations and even pedestrian accidents.

Ah, l’Éloquence: Politics Highlights Importance of Language in France

The French are in love with words

writes Christine Ockrent.

Written words, spoken words, words to sing or to scream or to declaim. Their elite schools train them to believe that once they forge an elegant formula, the problem they have to confront is already half solved.

Nowhere does it show better than in politics.

…a few days ago [François Hollande] published an “open letter to the French” in the newspaper Libération. It is two full pages long, beautifully written, an ode to the basic principles of the Republic and a description of the many evils the Sarkozy regime purportedly inflicted on the country.

All the right words are there: truth, willpower, justice, hope, the suffering of the common people; the need to contain the deficits, reduce inequalities, share wealth and regulate markets; the decisive moment for our future and that of our children. In short, a great piece of French political literature — completely abstract and theoretical from beginning to end, and almost impossible to translate into any other language.

Here’s a sample: “The French are suffering. They are suffering in their own lives ... . They are also suffering in their collective soul; they feel there is contempt for the values and the institutions of the Republic, the social contract is under attack, the influence of the country is damaged and they watch with anger France being humbled, weakened, damaged, downgraded.”»

… Language in France is a major issue. Politicians feel compelled to publish a book if they want to be taken seriously. Whether they actually write it is another matter — it is not considered proper to name a ghostwriter. [Nicolas Sarkozy] has put his name to three books, Hollande to at least four.

The latter is a master at the profuse and crisp vocabulary of the well-educated senior civil servant. The former, a business lawyer, tends to take liberties with grammar — and the French do not like that. …

Sarkozy believed that at the start of the 21st century, the French wanted a young, energetic, modern leader who talked like them, after 26 years under two aging presidents locked in old-time rhetoric. It turned out he was wrong. He has since assumed the sort of public restraint and presidential solemnity expected of their president by the French.

The Rest of the Time the Bien Pensants are Enamored with Jew Killers

Europeans nearly universally support Hamas and Fatah, but then they get cranked about this? Especially given the all-too-common graffiti found at a highly visible passageway near Les Halles in Paris, not painted-over for at least two years.

"SS canonised," leads Tageszeitung, with a front-page photo of the leader of the Nazi organisation, Heinrich Himmler, on a visit to SS volunteers in Estonia in October 1943.

The Berlin daily is referring to a bill that the Estonian Minister of Defence is hoping to have adopted in March. According to the text, all those who took part in the fight against the Soviet Union during the Second World War will be granted the status of “freedom fighters,” which includes Estonian members of the SS

The most amusing part is the sudden shock that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” might apply to their ugly past.

According to Clint Eastwood's Screenwriter, J Edgar Hoover Is the Dark Side of Harvey Milk, the Latter Being a Hero and the Former a Monster

According to Dustin Lance Black, the subject of his first biopic, Harvey Milk, is an American hero, and the subject of his second, J. Edgar Hoover, is a monster, the second being the dark side of the first.

In an interview with Le Monde's Samuel Blumenfeld (that accompanies Thomas Sotinel's Behind the FBI, Clint Eastwood Targets America), Dustin Lance Black makes the following comparison (retranslated back from the French):

I cannot help but see in Hoover the dark side of Harvey Milk. The latter came out of the closet to start a fight for freedom. Hoover repressed his homosexuality to become, in the end, a monster.

Je ne peux m'empêcher de voir en Hoover la part obscure d'Harvey Milk. Ce dernier est sorti du placard pour engager un combat pour les libertés. Hoover a refoulé son homosexualité pour, au final, devenir un monstre.

I Never Ask for an Explanation of Past Positions

Especially when it comes to the basic practice of European humiliation politics:

Germany and Italy undermine French bid for financial tax

German and Italian leaders at a meeting in Berlin said they would only back a financial transactions tax at the level of the EU-27, not just the eurozone-17, dampening France's campaign for the levy. Merkel said her earlier comment on Monday backing a eurozone-17 tax was a "personal opinion" only.

So if we use the EUvian attitude toward Britain as an example, aren’t Germany and Italy “isolating themselves”? Seriously, where are the comparisons to the sinking of the Titanic here?

Otherwise They Hate You, America

The US’ rebalancing of military forces away from Europe and into the Asia-Pacific region is causing consternation in the land of the rich yet needy and helpless. Helsinki lawyer Ralf Grahn summarizes:

While both sides want to maintain the NATO alliance, this long expected move leaves European leaders naked with regard to the state of EU foreign, security and defence policy, especially their inability to even begin the construction of a common European defence.

Since a press statements on every mishap in the world seems to be the extent of EU foreign policy, perhaps the high representative Catherine Ashton could crank out a few lines to let the heads of state or government continue sleeping on the job

This, only being the befinning of the third decade that ”United Europeans” have said that they might get around to something substantive in the interest of their own defense and deterrence that the US has been supplying them.

Is Wikipedia Really Trustworthy? Asks Le Monde — as It Proceeds to Get Bush's Middle Name Wrong

As the main title on the front page of its weekend edition, above the fold and across three fifths of the page, Le Monde has a heading asking whether Wikipedia is really trustworthy. Inside, Frédéric Joignot has an article pointing out Wikipedia's mistakes (while interviewing Jacques Florent), but what is perhaps noteworthy is that Le Monde might itself be in need of Wikipedia, since it still (!) gets the name of George W. Bush wrong (confusing Walker with Walter)…

…comment, en faisant appel au public, rédiger une encyclopédie fiable, sans amateurisme, qui ne devienne pas une foire d'empoigne ou un lieu de toutes les manipulations ? C'est très difficile. Depuis sa création, Wikipédia se trouve écartelée entre ses deux exigences originelles : le souci de la relecture experte voulue par Larry Sanger, dans la tradition des grands encyclopédistes depuis Diderot et d'Alembert, et la richesse d'une matière éditoriale parfois approximative, de parti pris, peu référencée, apportée par des milliers de passionnés ou des esprits sectaires.

Quant aux fameux " trolls ", les vandales et farceurs du Net, ils sont désormais repérés plus vite quand ils changent le second prénom de George W. Bush, Walter, en " Wanker " (branleur), prétendent que la boisson Red Bull contient du " sperme de vache " ou annoncent à tort le décès d'une star.

Those Who Are Against Shariah, Raise Your Hand

Plantu in Le Monde:
• Those of You Who Are Against Shariah, Raise Your Hand!

Arm aber Hässlich

63% of working Spanish households are now living off of €1000 per month.

To get to the end of the month on this kind of money in your pocket is a Herculean task. Many families are counting the cents closely before they head out to shop. For thousands of Spaniards today, buying something has become an act of renunciation.

That’s a hard fact, one which I wish on no one, but a hard fact that makes this argument about non-rising lower-tier America look especially foolish. It also takes the mickey out of the endless grinding griping about the WalMart-ization of America, and the Americanization of Europe since 63% of Spaniards now appear to be needing their sources of WalMart-ization and hideous Americanization to subsist with any dignity:

Against this harsh backdrop, the low-cost shopping phenomenon is flourishing, and it does not look set to die out any time soon. Quite to the contrary, it's becoming a more and more prominent feature of society and its economy. Restaurants, travel, cars, insurance, electronics, real estate, leisure, clothing, food: nothing seems to escape the pull of low-cost shopping.

The question, though, is whether low-cost shopping will still be around once the crisis has passed. Is it a structural or temporary strategy? How will the consumer have changed by then? Will he or she be more rational, less impulsive? Dare we assume that the search for the lowest price has become a new way of life?

Dare we not ask pointless questions about the survival skills of people and second guess individuals? Sit on your extra-special world-beating super-duper everything and spin – Spaniards are getting by without the luxury-aspirant subtext of the new Europe.

In the meantime, the low-cost concept is spreading fast and wide. “The consumer has gone from looking for what I call a 'superior functionality' to looking for the 'good enough functionality', which is cheaper. In other words, why should I buy a car with all the extras if I don't really need them?”

As with everything, unless it’s Europeans talking about Europeans, all European discussion of the state of the economy takes the form of either economically illiterate and emotionalized fits of kicking the victim, or using the usual straw men as a point of reference. That much-lauded compassion comes last.

But I digress. Let’s go back to those folks that should be thanking Sam Walton:

In any case, at bottom this phenomenon conveys a sense of urgency and need. As paradoxical as it sounds, it also conveys a desire to keep up one's standard of living and to go on enjoying a product or a simple luxury.

Rwanda: An Inconvenient Truth for France

A truth that is inconvenient for France, titles a Le Monde editorial as Christophe Châtelot returns to the Rwanda for new revelations on the genocide of the Tutsis, asking why it took 18 years to investigate the missile that brought down Juvénal Habyarimana's plane and determine that it was fired not from a Tutsi camp, as previously believed, but from a Hutu one (harboring the president's own troops, including extremists who used the occasion to go on a genocidal rampage against the Tutsi "culprits").

These revelations did not come out until France's head of state was Nicolas Sarkozy, whose government has little to fear from revelations that discredit François Mitterrand and Édouard Balladur, who supported both the Habyarimana régime and the Rwandan army…

L'enquête établit donc que ce sont les extrémistes hutu qui ont assassiné le président Habyarimana parce qu'il venait d'accepter un partage du pouvoir avec les Tutsi. Et non par des combattants tutsi proches de l'actuel président Paul Kagamé, en guerre contre le régime Habyarimana, comme le juge Jean-Louis Bruguière, prédécesseur de M. Trévidic, l'avait affirmé en 2006 sans jamais avoir enquêté sur le terrain. A l'époque, ses conclusions avaient conduit le Rwanda à rompre ses relations diplomatiques avec la France.

… Parce qu'elle dérange beaucoup de monde, cette vérité a mis longtemps à être établie. Elle ne gêne pas tellement la France de Nicolas Sarkozy, qui a renoué avec le régime de Paul Kagamé et qui, à Kigali, a reconnu les "graves erreurs d'appréciation" de Paris. Mais plutôt la France de la cohabitation Mitterrand-Balladur, qui a soutenu jusqu'au bout le régime Habyarimana, et celle d'une armée tricolore qui, longtemps, a approvisionné et entraîné les militaires rwandais, dont certains allaient participer au génocide.

Why the Greeks are Quintessentially European

They put pederasty and welfare over the fate of the genuinely disabled, the future, and the debt passed on to their children:

The National Confederation of Disabled People called the action "incomprehensible," and said pedophiles are now awarded a higher government disability pay than some people who have received organ transplants.

The Labor Ministry said categories added to the expanded list - that also includes pyromaniacs, compulsive gamblers, fetishists and sadomasochists - were included for purposes of medical assessment and used as a gauge for allocating financial assistance.

So is this is the slow food-esque “quality of life” thing we get a finger wagged at us about, or the compassion and humanism thing we get a finger wagged at us about?

The new list gives pyromaniacs and pedophiles disability pay up to 35 percent, compared to 80 percent for heart transplant recipients.

"It's really not serious to grant Peeping Toms a 20-30 percent disability rate, and 10 percent to diabetics, who have insulin shots four or five times a day," said Vardakastanis.

Greece has been fighting to avoid bankruptcy since 2009. Public spending on health and welfare programs has been sharply cut under austerity measures imposed as a condition for receiving emergency loans from the International Monetary Fund and other countries using the euro currency.

So it seems that compassion and humanism®©™ come in state approved percentages of last years’ income. Who knew?

The Quadrennial Retelling of the Same Old Stories

Well know globally for their lack of curiosity for anything other than ego-reinforcing rationalizations, European critics of the US (who detest the US anyway) are whining that using European society and a point of comparison with the US is “European bashing”.

What they conveniently ignore is that American Dream is not what it used to be. (Neither is the European Dream of an ever closer union, but that's another story).

Yes, it’s ALWAYS another story when you don’t want to tell the story.

In fact, it arrives to the usual level of stupidity Spiegel readers are familiar with, to the extent that one example is enough evidence to call it a trend, or perhaps a scourge. In fact to the extent that they start to make things up:

Europe is socialist, bloated and a threat to the global economy. That appears to be the message from the ongoing presidential campaign in the US. Republicans in particular have discovered Europe as a convenient punching bag -- and have even begun accusing each other of being too "European."

That message, also happening to be identical to many Europeans’ criticism of European society, but that’s not the point. Even as German growth is expected to be the strongest in Europe in 2012, and expected to top out at 1%, expect more of this, as well as the ritual retelling of the “American dream is dead”, for which there are vivid examples in the German press dating back to 1954.

Chock this up to “Freedom Fries” syndrome, a one-week story in the US which has reached its’ first decade of smug anger in the precious and benighted continent.

To back it up, an unrelated sneer has to be tangentially attached: an article in the NYT which selectively looks at a variety of unexplained studies to say that the US, where the poor live in comforts many middle income Europeans don’t have, and is the focus of criticism of “Americans being too well off” in turns, that Americans are less upwardly mobile than Europeans.

How, exactly? The same old saw: income disparity, the statistical tool of propagandists for more than a century. For example: how long a period is the trends mapped in multiple unexplained “studies” sampling? Are we being shown a delta founded on the 2008 contraction as the centerpiece? Is aggregate improvement in the state of what “bottom fifth” actually means being taken into account?

How, in our inexorable downward mobility spiral, can we also be criticized for also using too many resources, especially in a broad way across the income spectrum? How is it that we allow our unwashed and uneducated “lower 5th” or people like them, out of the country to find out that they are the boors so broadly offensive to Europeans as ignorant tourists? HOW doesn’t matter.

I’m not sure it even matters to the local reseller of meme X this week, given the notion of what they think “equal opportunity” means:

If equal opportunity is essential to freedom, then freedom is under attack!

So many misused truisms, so little time. Equal Opportunity, for one thing is assumed to mean Equal Outcome, an entirely Marxist jerking point, and one that Marxist-Leninism did a particularly bad job of actually achieving. This actually ADDS credence to the Americans are from Mars, Europeans are from the Politburo argument more than anything else.
And who knew that the lack of forced redistribution of wealth was critical in protecting freedom from attack, when freedom, and rights of all sorts can’t be redistributed, aren’t based in getting resources from others in society that aren’t earned, and are inherently equal before the “liberators from the shackles of common sense” like the author of “If equal opportunity is essential to freedom, then freedom is under attack!” can manage a go at them.

In fact the notion that one can shun Americans into using European society as a point of reference is, if anything, an attempt to obfuscate a curtailment of freedom.

But that doesn’t matter, because the guy behind that organ grinder author, like one European critic too many, is more interested in irrational point-scoring that the content of people’s arguments. That paragraph two has nothing to do with paragraph one outside of an old assumption having nothing to do with wither source is irrelevant.

The Narrative Couldn’t Get any More Lame

After the Washington Post finally stopped sitting on the Solyndra “theft by greenist compassion” scandal, they manage a rather ludicrous and emotive revision.

David Burge:

« There you have it. In the Post's sob story narrative, the problem is not that a politically-connected network of donors devised a con to loot taxpayers of a half billion dollars; to the contrary, it's that the government negligently allowed the Solyndra scam to collapse, thereby depriving Ms. Sterio of her "clean-energy job." And, by implication, it continues to "betray" her by not creating another clean-energy job for her elsewhere. »

In fact it’s worthy of the weeper-style use of stage theater by FDR’s crypto-Communists covering for the confusing and useless policies of the time – which, as now, did little more than scare the economy’s real driving forces from wanting to even get out of bed. I’m reminded of the cause of all of this chaos which gives those selling green power and magic carpets an opportunity at mischief by Roosevelt himself quoted in Amity Schlaes’ “The Forgotten Man”:

« The main tasks Roosevelt assigned himself were simple. The first was that there be a broad sweep of activity; Americans must know Washington was doing something. If there were contradictions between experiments and within them, well, that did not matter. Partly this came out of the restlessness of the invalid; Roosevelt had risen politically but he still could not stand unaided. But partly it came out of a grandeur of spirit. “Do I contradict myself?” Roosevelt seemed to be asking, as Walt Whitman had. “Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes.” »

All encompassing! To the point of near-infalabilty and super-human intelligence and ability no less than that mocked by Frank Flemming epic poem about another dissembler:

« If Obama is not listening to you, you can sleep soundly at night knowing your concerns are stupid. »

- from “Obama: The Greatest President in the History of Everything”, (Frank J. Fleming)

And the Progressive beat goes on. Even in the case of enabled and rationalized graft, their echo-chamber of protectors permits no questioning.

Steven Pinker on the Myth of Violence

Steven Pinker on the myth of violence (merci à Patrick)

The Return of ShadyRAT

Remember that endless whinging by people using the EU venue to complain about onerous US data security criteria? Remember the endless hammering on and on about SWIFT and information required of travelers invading the precious, immutable, eternally superior privacy and online identities of Europeans?

Well, ask your beloved activists and miscellaneous Wikileaks and Anonymous loving people who are into “revealing hidden truths” about this sort of “truth” telling.

A number of people working for the EU institutions have had their emails, passwords and credit card details hacked and released to the general public over the Christmas break.

A partial list was recently published online by Anonymous, a loose network of cyber activists campaigning against the so-called 'New World Order'.

Among the victims are administrators and officials at the European Commission, Eurojust (an EU body fighting organised crime), the European External Action Service, the European Parliament and Brussels-based think-tank the European Policy Centre (EPC).

That’s right! It’s that same pacifism brigade again. Their target? Their ever expanding Pantheon of imaginary hate puppets along the lines of Bu$hChimpHitlerBurton fetishisms, which now seems to include the EU and anyone else old enough to tie their shoe laces.

All together, some 850,000 confidential details were released when Anonymous hacked into the Texas-based Stratfor Global Intelligence security firm.

Stratfor is a widely used private security research company. About 75,000 of its paying subscribers also had their credit card details disclosed, including some working for the EU institutions.

The leaked database has 19,000 email addresses ending in the .mil domain of the US military according to the Guardian newspaper. The list also included 242 Nato staff members.

Peace out, peeps, because the blame goes back to where it always does: elsewhere. Apparently it’s American lobbying the administrative issues that caused this breech!

The entire operation could cast a long shadow over intense US lobbying against a leaked draft proposal for a Data Protection Regulation from the European Commission this past December.

Among the US complaints are the European Commission's views on data breach requirements, which they consider as "overly" severe and could undermine corporate data security practices.

"It is interesting to note that the US document tends to oppose specific proposals, such as the notification deadline and fines, in support of the vague issues such as not distracting businesses from improving corporate data security practices,"

Vague things like the real effect of minutae in regulation getting in the way of data security, something that you're not going to do anything about unless the never-ending threats to change reporting requiements and practices is done.

Happy Birthday to Elvis, from… Denmark?!

A replica of Elvis Presley's Graceland estate is opening in Denmark

reports the BBC.

The Danish tribute to 'The King' has been built in the town of Randers, and will be known as Graceland Randers.

The building is almost identical to the original, although it is twice the size to house a shop, restaurant and museum.

In a more detailed report, the BBC adds that

The building is the brainchild of Henrick Knudsen, an Elvis fan who … said the project has the backing of Elvis's widow Priscilla.

Web Goes Viral After Naked Man Turns Up in French Store's Kid Clothes Photo

Unfortunately for one of the French equivalents of Sears Roebuck, a number of mistakes appear on its online catalog. If only it had been solely the fact that the English spelling and grammar on one of La Redoute's T-shirts was questionable (Enjoy Holydays). Far worse, indeed, was discovering that lurking in the background of a beach photo for kids' clothes (one of the kid models is wearing a light blue version of the incriminating T-shirt) was an unsuspecting nudist walking delicately through the ocean water.

La Redoute promptly removed the photo, but not quickly enough to prevent the photo of the Naked Man (as the so-far-unidentified individual has been dubbed) from going viral (more examples here and by clicking on each of the pictures below). The second Redoute parody shows Nicolas Sarkozy from the back heading into the water and says "Black Swim Shorts (Sold Without the Rolex Watch)"

Parisian Truffles

I'll bet you thought I was done speaking glowingly of the city of lights...

According to One (Disgusted) Leftist, 90% of Frenchmen Support the 18-Year-Old Mother's Killing of an Oklahoma Burglar

According to one outraged and disgusted leftist responding to Corine Lesnes's post on the Sarah McKinley shooting, almost 90% of Frenchmen support the 18-year-old Oklahoma mother's killing of the burglar trying to enter her home while supporting the introduction (or the reintroduction) of something akin to the Castle Doctrine in France…

Et alors ? Où est le problème ? Ce qui me choque plus, c’est que, si cette scène était transposée, disons, à Orléans, la jeune femme serait aujourd’hui en prison…

Rédigé par : demari | le 05 janvier 2012 à 15:49 | Répondre | Alerter |

Il est bien dommage que la législation ne soit pas la même en France.

En France, vous êtes priés de vous laisser égorger avant de prétendre être victime.

Se faire flinguer quand on rentre par effraction dans une maison me semble être un risque du métier parfaitement normal. Si on n’assume pas ce risque, il faut faire un autre métier que voleur.

Rédigé par : FbS | le 05 janvier 2012 à 15:37 | Répondre | Alerter |

Quand on a le choix entre tuer ou être tué, on ne prévient pas. Un cambriolage crapuleux n’est pas un duel entre chevaliers du Moyen-Age…

Rédigé par : thôt | le 05 janvier 2012 à 19:12 | Répondre | Alerter |

He bien oui, moi, je salue le courage de cette jeune mère. Je ne suis pas un partisan du tout arme à feu, mais je constate qu’en France, la victime ne peut se défendre à mort avant qu’elle ne se soit elle même fait couper un bras par l’assaillant.
Ici, en Alsace, un agriculteur père et grand père de famille, encours actuellement plusieurs années de prison pour avoir lègérement blessé à la chevrotine un membre d’une bande d’Europe de l’est qui était en train de dérober tranquillement l’un de ses tracteurs sous ses yeux. Le criminel a porté plainte contre sa victime et cela semble evidemment normal aux bobos de tous poils ?

Rédigé par : Gaillus | le 06 janvier 2012 à 03:52 | Répondre | Alerter |

En France, le voleur entre, la viole, la tue, tue son bébé, vole la télé, l’ordi, le iphone, prend 5 ans, rejoint ses potes en prison, fume, joue à la play, fait du sport, sort après 3 ans, recommence.

Rédigé par : Jean | le 05 janvier 2012 à 15:42 | Répondre | Alerter |

je suis francais , vivant aux USA depuis bientot 7 ans , ma femme et mes enfants sont americains et nous vivons a Memphis et je bosse en majeure partie sur NY .
je me sens 2000 fois plus en securite a Memphis ou a NY qu a Paris ou j ai pourtant vecu pres de 30 ans !
et j ai ce sentiment d insecurite a chaque fois que je passe en France , malheureusement .

Les USA ne sont pas un pays plus violent que la France , loin de la .J ai moins peur d aller dans le Bronx que dans les banlieues pourries de Bordeaux , Pau ou Montpellier ( je parle de celle que je connais )

Rédigé par : karl | le 05 janvier 2012 à 17:25 | Répondre | Alerter |

On the One Hand, a Dictator Who Starved His People; on the Other, a Freedom Fighter Like Walesa — And Whom Does Le Monde Choose for Its Main Headline?

In the wake of reading the issue in which Le Monde announced the deaths of Vaclav Havel and Kim Jong-il, a Le Monde reader protested in a letter to the editor:

Le Monde of December 20: huge headline on the death of Kim Jong-il, along with his photo. Only a modest column a fifth of a page wide is allocated to the day's other passing, Vaclav Havel. On the one hand, a dictator who starved his people while enriching his clan by putting his country under an iron fist. On the other, a freedom fighter of the same mettle as a Mandela, a Walesa, a Lula. And whom does my newspaper choose for its main headline? The North Korean tyrant! Is Le Monde's mistake not obvious to everyone?!...

Fifty years from now, who will remember this obscure North Korean "son of"? By contrast, the name of Vaclav Havel will remain a universal reference for all those who still believe it possible for man to change the course of events when these become unbearable and contrary to dignity.

His is the photo that we would have liked to see on the front page, not that of a character who will end up in the ash heap of history, as will his Tunisian, Egyptian, Libyan, and Syrian comrades tomorrow!

Christian Colas,
Paris

It is unconscionable to recommend marriage to any man under a legal regime in which he has no protection under the law

Echoing Stephen Baskerville, Vox is quoted by Instapundit as saying:

Nancy French asks what marriage has to offer men and decides that some major changes have to take place if young men are going to start considering marriage part of the normal and anticipated process of adulthood:

[P]arents have to stop getting divorced for less than dire reasons. …

Second, we must retract the message Boomers sent young women about female empowerment. Indeed, it isn’t a coincidence that marriage rates have plummeted alongside America’s fascination with the feminist movement. Empowerment for women, as defined by feminists, neither liberates women nor brings couples together. It separates them. It focuses on women as perpetual victims of the Big Bad Male. Why would any man want to get married when he’s been branded a sexist pig at “hello”? In the span of just a few decades, women have managed to demote men from respected providers and protectors to being unnecessary, irrelevant, and downright expendable.

Changing both of these things won't accomplish anything. It's not true that men have no idea what to look for. They know what they want, they're just not finding it as easily anymore. And it's not being branded "a sexist pig" that turns men off to marriage, it is the guarantee of severe economic liability and the unacceptably high possibility of losing his house, his children, his savings, and reducing his future net income.

It is unconscionable to recommend marriage to any man under a legal regime in which he has no protection under the law and can be forced out of his own home by a single false charge. While this state of affairs is fair to neither individual men nor individual women, the lamentable fact is that very, very few women, even conservative, politically minded women who are correctly concerned about what low marriage rates will do to American society, are willing to speak out against Marriage 2.0 because they still wish to retain the legal benefits it affords married women in the event of divorce.

Marriage is extremely important for societal stability and survival. But the current legal form of marriage is evil and is not only deleterious to society, but to men, women, and children alike.

A Nuremberg-scale trial for all the corporate agents and treasonous capitalisto-fascist architects of our democracy’s current and most pressing misery

“The scale of Right Wing sociopolitical sabotage necessitates a Nuremberg-scale trial for all the corporate agents and treasonous capitalisto-fascist architects of our democracy’s current and most pressing misery. From the blatant Republican policy doublespeak emanating from think-tank sponsored word doctors to the outright obstruction and lies expectorated by Republican congressional representatives and senators, the very concept of governance can only be considered once the culprits are removed. Driven to real madness by unadulterated greed they have embraced an ideology, the success of which hinges upon the very ruin of this nation.”

— Actor Steven Weber (from the 1990s NBC sitcom Wings) writing at the Huffington Post, October 24 (MRC Notable Quotables)

Like I wrote back in July 2010, if liberal opinions are

taken to their/to its logical conclusion…

…then Americans should go through some sort of reeducation centers to be made to understand the good they are being bestowed, and to be made to refrain from criticizing (at least, not too much) the Spiritual Guide who is benevolently bestowing them upon us;

…then democracy should be curtailed and elections banned (polls as well, probably), at least temporarily, so that the benevolent Great Helmsman can implement his (benevolent) policies in the absence of obstacles from clueless idiots— be they common citizens or the unpatriotic naysayers in the opposition;

…in fact, then Barack Obama should be allowed to dictate his (benevolent) policies to the nation (the nation of clueless clods who are preventing him from carrying those dashing avant-garde ideas of his through to completion).

While there have always been differences about how proactive government should be, few Europeans question the basic premise of a welfare state

Most Europeans associate democracy with a social safety net

writes Katrin Bennhold in The Female Factor in an International Herald Tribune article in which the German reporter manages to mock "the bellows of nostalgic 'bulldog' conservatives in Britain" while shrugging off memories of World War II as "this fixation with 1945 [which] has long been easy to dismiss as island mentality, empire nostalgia or perhaps compensation for repeated defeats by Germany on the soccer field." (That's the left for you — they hate to be reminded of the good the West has done (and enjoy dismissing memories thereof), but they adore "commemorating", ad infinitum, the West's sins, alleged or otherwise, and even when they are far older, like slavery and colonialism.)

Still, Katrin Bennhold's observations on the differences between Europe's health care systems are interesting, not least because they are based on personal knowledge, i.e., her "recent experience of pregnancy and birth in Europe’s three biggest economies". The most interesting observation? Perhaps the fact (or the alleged fact — I have tended to get skeptical over liberal observations over the years) that the "higher the birthrate, the higher the proportion of women in work — and the degree of state support for working mothers."

While there have always been pronounced differences about how proactive government should be, few Europeans question the basic premise of a welfare state.

… As the past three years of financial and economic strife have made plain, Europe does not have a common narrative for the 21st century. There is no European Union of welfare states, no common philosophy on how to run one’s economy or manage public finances, let alone European public opinion. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s efforts to make all Europeans more German have borne some fruit, but also rankled those who felt lectured and stymied.

Partly as a result, nationalism is increasingly prevalent across the 27-country bloc. A familiar fault line has emerged: “The euro crisis has sharpened the focus on old divisions over the role of the state in the economy and in people’s lives,” said Ute Frevert, director of the Center for the History of Emotions at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin.

This fault line runs across society. Just how differently the state treats one of the most basic experiences — motherhood — has been plain in my recent experience of pregnancy and birth in Europe’s three biggest economies.

In London, where I just had my second daughter in a public hospital by Caesarean section, I was sent home after three nights. Midwives who were supposed to check up on me and my baby at home in the days after never showed up.

In early 2009, when I had a first Caesarean section in Germany, I was in the hospital for more than a week. Pediatric nurses gave me one-on-one lessons on how to pick up my baby, bathe and even massage her. A specialized physiotherapist exercised with newborns every morning.

Meanwhile in France, where I spent most of my two pregnancies and the time between, I was offered months of physiotherapy to get abdominal muscles back into shape after giving birth.

The differences do not stop at the degree of pampering.

In Britain, more than one midwife evangelized about the benefits of giving birth at home, breast-feeding and drug-free “natural” birth. In France, when I inquired about waiting on an epidural, the doctor brushed me off by saying that 97 percent of French women have epidurals — “and for a good reason.” The same doctor informed me about hormones to stop the milk flow if I preferred not to nurse.

… as Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, chief executive of 20-first, a gender management consultancy, points out: “You can tell the different approaches to motherhood in Europe by looking at birthrates.” The higher the birthrate, the higher the proportion of women in work — and the degree of state support for working mothers.

“There are the countries that get it, like France and the Scandinavian countries, and the ones that don’t, like Germany, which has been losing population since 2003,” Ms. Wittenberg-Cox said.

In Iraq, once-dead streets now bustle with Thursday night shoppers and acres of razed buildings have been replanted with palatial new houses

In Iraq, the [war's] legacy will be lived, day by day, with fatalism and frustration at the country’s intractable political crises

writes Jack Healy somberly in an article that accompanies photographer David Gonzalez's Portraits of Iraqi Pride.

But it will also be lived with an undercurrent of optimism, particularly among the young, and a broad Iraqi resilience that predates the arrival of any American soldiers.

In Jack Healy's New York Times article, it is almost as an aside that we learn that the hellish nightmare that Iraqis have gone through since George W Bush sent the US Army to flush out Saddam Hussein's dictatorship in "an unpopular war" (aka a disaster) was perhaps not that bad after all.

… if the war gouged Iraq’s soul, it left lighter fingerprints, too.

… Soldiers or journalists returning for the first time since the depths of civil war sometimes marvel at the transformation of public and private life, how once-dead streets now bustle with Thursday night shoppers and acres of razed buildings have been replanted with palatial new houses. The muffled report of car bombs is startling, not inevitable.

Perhaps two million people have fled Iraq, but Iraqis like the ones pictured here have lived through the painful and terrifying gap between then and now. One raised two daughters. Another built a library of cookbooks and opened a pastry shop.

They are living and working and getting engaged and bringing up a new generation. They are more than a postscript to an unpopular war. For Iraq, they are what comes next.

Well? Should It?

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and days of auld lang syne?
(Thanks to Duncan)

That Old Meme: We WOULD Support You, You Understand, exCEPT for Your "Set of ideas" ("That are Cranky, Extreme, and Backward-Looking")

It is a sad commentary that this late in the day “the right Republican” does not even seem to be running yet.

Again, The Economist — which just happened not to support George W Bush in 2004 and John McCain in 2008 — proves it has taken a hard turn towards the left as it castigates "compassionless conservatism" in its search for The right Republican.

Rather than answering the call for a credible right-of-centre, pro-business party to provide independents, including this newspaper, with a choice in November, it is saddling its candidate with a set of ideas that are cranky, extreme and backward-looking.