18 Years Later, France Still Divided Over Its Role in the Rwanda Genocide

Eighteen years after the genocide in Rwanda, write Christophe Ayad and Philippe Bernard in an article that fills an entire two-page spread in Le Monde, France is still wondering if it has a part of responsibility, direct or otherwise, in the killing of 800,000 people over the period of a single month.

Beyond that rises the issues of France's role in Africa, in the world, and in history.

C'est l'une de ces zones d'ombre de l'histoire récente de la France, l'une de ces plaies mal refermées qui nourrissent guerres idéologiques et anathèmes. Une de ces passions françaises qui enflamment régulièrement intellectuels, politiques et militants. Elle tient en une question, simple et terrible à la fois : la France porte-t-elle une part de responsabilité dans le génocide rwandais qui fit 800 000 morts en un mois ?

Bientôt dix-huit ans après, la question reste le sujet de violentes controverses qui en disent au moins autant sur les fractures politiques et intimes de la France que sur le génocide de 1994 lui-même.

… Tout comme l'attentat et le génocide lui-même, [l'opération militaro-humanitaire] Turquoise divise : seule tentative de sauver des vies selon les partisans de l'armée française ; ultime tentative pour stopper l'avancée de la guérilla tutsi et sauver le régime hutu, selon ses détracteurs.

Pour d'autres, notamment des journalistes non présents sur place à l'époque, mais très audibles dans les médias actuels, le Rwanda est devenu une formidable caisse de résonance de leur vision du monde. "Certains sont tentés de faire entrer leur petite personne dans une histoire qu'ils n'ont pas vécue, dit Christophe Boisbouvier, journaliste à RFI et envoyé spécial de la chaîne au Rwanda, au printemps 1994. L'atrocité du génocide est telle qu'elle permet de faire passer ses idées sur l'armée, sur la France et l'Afrique, sans risquer d'être critiqué, surtout si l'on prétend se placer du côté des victimes. L'horreur laisse les gens bouche bée." Plusieurs médias - RFI, Libération, Le Figaro ainsi que Le Monde - ont été déchirés par des querelles internes.

Illustrations extraites de Turquoise, d'Olivier Bramanti et Frédéric Debomy (Buchet-Chastel, " Les Cahiers dessinés ", 96 p., 23 ¤).

The (Anti-) Capitalism of Fools

An editorial in Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten displays an undercurrent common to Europeans who are just as nominally supportive of authoritarianism inducing central planning economics, more likely in a form of nicey-nicey seeming government management of enterprise, and are also nominally supportive of free markets.

Oddly enough, the odd reasoning behind the quivering lips are visible even behind the centrist positions typically held by Jyllands-Posten:

The gap between rich and poor increased. The global financial crisis has shown that we have to rethink a capitalist model, which meant that financial institutions without the necessary checks could throw first USA and then Europe into a deep crisis that it can take decades to fix the economy up.

We’re all familiar with what this bemoans, and how it can never be salved outside of assigning every working person with the same income and benefits, something even Marxist-Leninism couldn’t achieve – so why even bother saying it if it wasn’t part of the usual atmospherics – no different than saying hello when you picking up a telephone?

It gets worse.

It is an economic crisis that has also become a political crisis because it is about lack of leadership. It is now so deep that it has started to weaken democracy.

No, being skeptical about or dissatisfied with your elected officials doesn’t weaken democracy, it gives you a reason to not vote for them again and embolden democracy by using it and letting it operate.

The crisis of capitalism in the West certainly raises many issues in Asia, whose interventionist economic model so often been criticized by the West but whose economies are nevertheless going ahead. The western model has taught them that the economic downturn has gruesome consequences and that one should be cautious in liberalizing the economy too much. So it's safer to have the state on track with the adjustments, such as the banking sector, as the U.S. and Europe lacked.

Sure, you say that now, but could you live in that kind of ‘company store’ society? Not likely.

Worse still is a total forgetting of who Nick Leeson was, and under whose laws he operated under, and .

The crisis of capitalism in the West certainly raises many issues in Asia, whose interventionist economic model so often been criticized by the West but whose economies are nevertheless going ahead. The western model has taught them that the economic downturn has gruesome consequences and that one should be cautious in liberalizing the economy too much. So it's safer to have the state on track with the adjustments, such as the banking sector, as the U.S. and Europe lacked.

Which oddly enough is that same ‘pirate capitalism’ that made Hong Kong’s economy grow and robustly resist a state of aggression that Havana can only dream of whining about.

Worried about democracy? Then stop alluding to the value of the Asia’s crypto-authoritarian factory states. The pointless bedwetting must stop.

Becoming Mortimer Snerd

You remember Hee Haw! Don’t you? In the same spirit as “Russia Today”, Kremlin TV is giving global identity thief Julian Assange his own TV show.

RT television stepped forward Wednesday to say it will be broadcasting the show, a series of 10 interviews with what it described as "key political players, thinkers and revolutionaries - figures who in the author's opinion will be shaping the political agenda of tomorrow."

The names of the guests are still to be disclosed.

And now for the “no shinola, Sherlock” statement of the century, fitting in with the grand theme of Assange’s linear existence:

RT, which also broadcasts in Spanish and Arabic on its cable networks, often takes a critical stance on U.S. policy.

Possibly because RT, a channel no-one is willing to pay to watch, is an obscuritarian near-complete FSB propaganda operation that Assange, the presumed hater of secrecy finds himself hitching his fate to: an operation propped up by people who keep secret files on people for a living.

Otherwise how do you think they can afford to buy capacity on 25 different satellite transponders without any real advertising? We’d follow the money, but Assange’s choice of venue is as opaque as the drinking water was in east Berlin.

Certainly intended to either propagandize TO Americans if not ABOUT Americans, it least it stands the chance of being less unwatchable as European television.

"We're proud to host Julian Assange's new project," editor in chief Margarita Simonyan said in the statement. "RT has rallied a global audience of open-minded people who don't take things around them for granted."

No, they prefer getting their received wisdom from an illiberal paranoid crypto-police state reminiscent of the days of Moscow Central.

Dominique de Villepin's Opposition to Bush and Rumsfeld Compared to Charles de Gaulle's Resistance to Pétain and Hitler

C'est son 18 juin 1940.

In a one-page spread in Le Monde Magazine called Le Roman-Photo de Villepin le Magnifique, Bastien Bonnefous compares Dominique de Villepin to Charles de Gaulle, no less — both in the title of the caption (L'homme qui a dit non) and in the caption itself. When Jacques Chirac's foreign minister appears at the United Nations to oppose George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld in their decision to oust Saddam Hussein, Bonnefous says that

It is his June 18, 1940.

Uh, is that so, Monsieur Bonnefous? Charles de Gaulle was not a minister at the time he launched his appeal over the BBC, far from it, and he was not opposing a fellow democratic republic. He was an outcast, battling Nazi Germany, and an outcast whose (French) government would pronounce the death penalty against him… Dominique de Villepin was hardly in danger of death, or of anything else, for opposing Washington. So… Let's not mix things up, shall we?

Defining sexual violence in impossibly elastic ways and letting the surveyors, rather than subjects, determine what counted as an assault

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius hailed [the CDC’s National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey] for giving “a clear picture of the devastating impact these violent acts have on the lives of millions of Americans”

writes Christina Hoff Sommers in the Washington Post (thanks to Instapundit).

In fact, what the study reveals is the devastating impact that careless advocacy research can have on truth.

The FBI found that 84,767 rapes were reported to law enforcement authorities in 2010. … where did the CDC find 13.7 million victims of sexual crimes that the professional criminologists had overlooked?

It found them by defining sexual violence in impossibly elastic ways and then letting the surveyors, rather than subjects, determine what counted as an assault.

… [This] shows how the study fits into the administration’s effort to apply the advocacy agenda of the women’s lobby to rape research.

In addition, I added the following to the comments section, responding to an outraged feminist:

Notice the precise — and misleading — wording in the outraged question asked by sammy328:

"Are you implying that if a girl is drunk it is acceptable for someone to rape her?"

That is what noone, that is PRECISELY what noone, is saying, yet alone implying.

What the point is, is that if a girl has sex while tipsy or drunk, and this holds true whoever initiated it (she or the man), one should not — automatically — assume afterwards, like the CDC seems to be doing, that she was incontrovertibly raped.

Let's turn the question on sammy328:

Are you implying that if a girl is tipsy or drunk (probably like the other girls and guys in her presence) it is unacceptable for her (for them) to be in the mood or for anyone to else to be in the mood (for sex with her)? Lest whatever happens afterwards be described indubitably as rape?!

sammy328's outrage is a deliberate attempt, whether she recognizes it consciously or not, to prevent people from thinking this issue through thoroughly.

Pretty much any time you read something to the effect that "This comment is incredibly insensitive, ignorant, and offensive", you can be pretty sure that the underlying motif is to prevent rational thought (not to mention "thought-provoking, timely comments on politics, national and international affairs"), and, in this case, to prevent readers (and voters!) from putting the feminists' (self-serving) victimhood status into doubt.

On the Left and Religion

I find a disturbing similarity in the outlook of the political and institutional “lights” of our age, and a memorandum on how religion should be maligned written by Gorky to Stalin.

We need to know the "fathers of the church," the apologists of Christianity, especially indispensable to the study of the history of Catholicism, the most powerful and intellectual church organization whose political significance is quite clear. We need to know the history of church schisms, heresies, the Inquisition, the "religious" wars, etc. Every quotation by a believer is easily countered with dozens of theological quotations which contradict it.

We cannot do without an edition of the "Bible" with critical commentaries from the Tubingen school and books on criticism of biblical texts, which could bring a very useful "confusion into the minds" of believers.

It also brings to mind Howard Zinn’s efforts to rewrite history and work it into the curriculum of the American public school systems.

For this reason, there should be courses set up at the Communist Academy which would not only treat the history of religion, and mainly the history of the Christian church, i.e., the study of church history as politics.

Even the willfully constructed ‘soft touch’ when it comes to managing the news and the minds of youth:

By strongly emphasizing facts of a negative nature, we open ourselves up to our enemies, providing them an enormous amount of material, which they in turn very aptly use against us, compromising our party and our leadership in the eyes of Europe's proletariat, compromising the very principle of the dictatorship of the working class, because the proletariat of Europe and America feeds on the bourgeois newspapers for the most part—and for this reason it cannot grasp our country's cultural-
revolutionary progress, our successes and achievements in industrialization, the enthusiasm of our working masses, and of their influence on the impoverished peasantry.

The imperative to destroy faith by those who want control over a people is clear:

Our youth is very poorly informed on questions of this nature. The "tendency" toward a religious disposition is very noticeable--a natural result of developing individualism. At this time, as always, the young are in a hurry to find "the definitive answer."

Which is why those who like the idea of controlling a society feel such a strong need to manipulate education and the spinning of news. They know that a society left to make its’ own choices simply wouldn’t guarantee them the power over others that they seek.

An Unreconstructed Kremlin

The mental leap to freedom is hard for those programmed into the ideology of the revolutionary left.

“When I was a teenager growing up in Chicago, I went through the standard teenage rebellion,” Bill Browder told me one afternoon in the Hermitage office in London, during the first of several conversations I had with him in 2011. “But instead of growing my hair long and joining a rock band, coming from my specific family, I decided I was going to become a capitalist. There was nothing that would piss off my family more than that.”

Bill Browder is CEO of Hermitage Capital Management, and...

was the largest capitalist in Eastern Europe for a while, but he’s now known as an international justice crusader. In the past two years, he has singlehandedly waged an intercontinental lobbying campaign to get Western governments to pass a suite of sanctions and travel restrictions on Russian officials involved in the conspiracy to arrest, torture, and murder Browder’s thirty-seven-year-old Moscow-based attorney, Sergei Magnitsky, who had uncovered a $230 million tax fraud pegged to companies that had been expropriated by Russian officials.

If you have not heard or read about Magnitsky’s rectitude, bravery, and suffering, I urge you to right away.

The way to neuter opposition to intrusive government measures is to present them as being “for the children”

Imagine a law in America that could set children against their parents, centralize power away from the states toward the federal government, mandate increases in government spending regardless of taxpayer wishes, bypass the House of Representatives, and abrogate constitutional limitations on government power

wrote Stephen Baskerville in an issue of Touchstone last year (he is the author of Taken Into Custody: The War Against Fathers, Marriage, and the Family whose latest article is "The Rape of Justice" (PDF), published in the Salisbury Review ).

Such a measure may soon come up for ratification by the US Senate: the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).

Children have become today’s favorite political weapon. From gun restrictions to mandatory seat-belts, the way to neuter opposition to intrusive government measures is to present them as being “for the children.” But the first casualties in the politicization of children are parents and therefore the family. Professionals who advocate for other people’s children inevitably do so at the expense of those whose first responsibility is their own children.

The CRC illustrates how radically human rights law has turned from its fundamental purpose, to be a shield protecting individuals from government intrusion, to being used as a tool of government intrusion.

…Geraldine Van Bueren, a law professor and one of the drafters of the CRC, … bluntly states that “the CRC provides an ideology for state intervention” into social and economic life. It is not a limitation on state power but a rationale for expanding it.

Subverting Sovereignty

… in America a ratified treaty becomes by constitutional stipulation the “supreme law of the land,” equal to the Constitution itself. That means that domestic courts are automatically required to enforce its provisions, without recourse to international tribunals. Treaty-making thus presents a loophole through which various interest groups can effectively legislate American domestic policy while bypassing the people’s elected lawmakers in the House of Representatives and in state legislatures.

… Anyone who doubts this need only glance at the family policy of the European Union. The EU has no legal authority to legislate in areas of family law or policy, which theoretically are left to national governments. Yet in practice, the EU sponsors many activities that undermine parents and traditional families. Driving much of this activity is EU collaboration with the CRC. …

The Dubious “Best Interest” Standard

One seemingly unexceptionable requirement of the CRC is that governments ensure the “best interest of the child.” In fact, however, the “best interest” standard is highly destructive of parental rights, because it allows government officials to decide the “best interest” of other people’s children, usurping that prerogative from parents.

Traditionally, legal authority over children has been recognized as residing with their parents, unless they somehow forfeit it. In Parham v. J. R. (1979), the Supreme Court recognized “that natural bonds of affection lead parents to act in the best interests of their children.” As Justice Potter Stewart observed in that case, “For centuries it has been a canon of the common law that parents speak for their minor children. So deeply imbedded in our traditions is this principle of law that the Constitution itself may compel a State to respect it.”

This principle has been so eroded in American domestic law that it is now the norm to assume precisely the opposite: that “the child’s best interest is perceived as being independent of the parents,” as family law practitioner Robert Williams writes, “and a court review is held to be necessary to protect the child’s interests.” …

More Dubious Provisions

Then there is Article 12, which provides that signatory governments

shall assure to the child who is capable of forming his or her own views the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting the child, the views of the child being given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child.

This provision essentially institutionalizes the right of children to rebel against their parents’ authority and puts the state on the side of the child, with the backing of international law. “The Children’s Convention potentially protects the rights of the child who philosophically disagrees with the parents’ educational goals,” writes Van Bueren.

Any parent can recognize the threat. What makes the disagreement “philosophical”? What is the difference between a child who “philosophically” disagrees with his parents and one who simply doesn’t want to do his homework?

Consider also the provision regarding children’s “privacy.” Article 16 says that “no child shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his or her privacy, family, home, or correspondence” and that “the child has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.” But against whom is the child’s privacy being protected? His parents?

Ironically, authorizing the state to protect a child’s “privacy” justifies massive state intrusion into family privacy. This illustrates how the concept of privacy—while valid (and in my view undervalued by many family advocates today)—is meaningless outside the context of the family.

These types of provisions might be innocuous when used to protect adults against government repression. But when applied to children, they have the effect of abolishing parental and all other authority between children and the state. This starkly illustrates how the family is essential to freedom, and how the state, when it claims to be protecting “freedom” and “privacy” and “rights”—without the mediating authority of the family—is the fox protecting the henhouse.

Out of the Mouths of Lawyers

The CRC’s provisions allow government officials to pose as the mouthpieces and defenders of other people’s children, children they do not know and do not love. The altruism of these officials is assumed without question, while parents are depicted as selfishly promoting their own interests, which are cast as contrary to those of their own children. …”

Payoffs & GONGOs

The CRC also allows UN and government officials to demand that expenditures be made to implement certain of its policies. … Thus, under the guise of “human rights,” the UN is trying to control the spending priorities of sovereign nations.

This paves the way for patronage payoffs to favored clients, in this case groups professionally involved in child welfare. … [For instance] UN officials are attempting to funnel Moldovans’ money to their cronies, who become extensions of the government.

The French Cultural Exception Explained

It’s an exemption from the shackles of reason and truth-telling. It’s purpose is to fit whatever uninformed view of reality that you have – because there is simply no way you can’t be right.

What’s all that about? You ask... An Elle blogger, like a typical higher-being of the continent decided that all African-Americans could and should be defined by the three or four African-Americans that she’s familiar with in passing.

In an blog post titled “Black Fashion Power,” writer Nathalie Dolivo managed to insult American blacks as a whole while offering left-handed compliments to the First Lady Michelle Obama for taking on the Jackie O role in a “jazzy” way.

The writer imagines that the Obamas are the first to bring true style to African-Americans.

See, there you go. She did her national duty by defining nearly 37 million people she has no knowledge of outside of the doctored appearances found in photographs and videos, and there you have it.

And throw in some of that Jazz stuff too while you’re at it, it still being the hip thing with the kids, you see, at least in the minds of those Europeans who we are told simply know everything there is to be known.

I was reminded of this again just a few weeks ago when a Parisian in a bar was inquiring about the south as if the world that they lived in was straight out of ‘Mississippi Burning’. The man’s age, mature nature, and outward air of intelligence almost made me confuse him with someone with a shred of decency and intelligence. While willing to be ignorant of a culture, he was more than willing to have an opinion about who he thought were the good-guys and bad-guys in it.

Typische Deutsche Schlamperei

One in five Germans are unaware of Auschwitz.

The poll comes ahead of the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet troops on January 27, 1945, which Germany has marked since 1996 with official memorial ceremonies for Holocaust victims.

In other news of the no-duh!

According to a report by independent experts commissioned by the German parliament and published earlier this week, about one in five Germans is latently anti-Semitic.

And as long as it doesn’t get in the way of making money, Germans are not likely to even care. It makes the received wisdom behind European anti-semitism all that more special, especially since the breadth of German antisemitism only ranks them in the middle of the Euro-liga of irrational hatred.

Will a Remake of 2002 See a Le Pen Become One of the Two Winners in the First Round of France's Presidential Election?

April 22 is the first round of France's 2012 presidential elections, which will thus take place exactly 10 years to the day after the first round of the 2002 presidential elections put a Le Pen in the runoff for the second round, writes Le Monde's ombudsman, Pascal Galinier. And this year people are frightened that the same scenario might occur again…

Pour Pierre Bonn (Toulouse), c'est entendu : "Je pense que malheureusement Marine Le Pen va atteindre le second tour." Ce président d'une association de défense de l'environnement pointe du doigt la montée en puissance d'"une autre catégorie d'électeurs : ceux qui ne sont d'accord ni avec Hollande ni avec Sarkozy. Comme le bulletin blanc n'est pas comptabilisé, leur seul moyen d'expression est de "casser la baraque" en votant FN, même s'ils ne sont pas d'accord avec les idées et le "programme" du FN." Robert Nadot (Arradon, Morbihan) semble être de ceux-là : "Je pense que la majorité des Français feront comme moi : si Sarkozy est au deuxième tour, je voterai pour son adversaire quel qu'il soit, sans états d'âme, les yeux et les narines fermés. A bon entendeur, salut." Dominique

Destroying America one family at a time

Living a nightmare the last few years dealing with Family Court, Nick Tufaro testifies on

The Destruction of American Society – One Family At A Time

With regard to the best interest of the child(ren), the truth is that no one, besides the family, including the extended family, is expert enough to determine that. Truth be told, there have been significant studies to indicate that in the best interest of the child, it is both parents that need to have equal contact with the children. However, Family Court in the United States, has become so adversarial between the parents that the minor children are destroyed by the events of a hostile divorce. According

The Never-ending Game of Diplomatic Slap and Tickle Continues

EU ministers agree new bail-out fund, criticise Greece

But the tentative agreement to have non-meetings continues:

A deal on the final wording of the fiscal treaty has not been achieved yet. Participation of non-euro leaders in eurozone summits remains an open issue that will have to be agreed by EU leaders when they meet on 30 January, he added.

It does sound better this way, though:

What Is Wrong (or Indeed Atypical) About Wanting Obama to Be a 1-Term President and Desiring His Policies to Fail?

I left this comment on the webpage of a New York Times article but, unless I am mistaken, they seem to have refused it (I just submitted a shorter version of it for a third time)…

"McConnell's prime wish for Obama was that he be a one-term president" complains a Democrat.

Uh, hello?…

Forgive me if I cannot build up the level of sputtering outrage that Jim Steinberg is obviously seeking.

Wasn't the prime wish for many a Democrat in 2004 (as well as in the years leading up to that year) that George W Bush should be a one-term president? Wasn't their prime wish in 1992 that Dubya's father should be a one-term president (one wish that came true), and in 1984 that Reagan should be one? And in 1972… (you get the idea)

Wasn't the democrats' goal to see Bush, and Bush, and Reagan, etc, uh (let me find the word)… fail?

Ever since Rush Limbaugh was assaulted for making his hope-Obama-fail statement in 2009, I have found the outraged over-the-top reaction of the Democrats absurd…

Now, suddenly, when the Republicans react no differently with a Democrat in the White House, the Democrats go berserk.

Note to Democrats: the USA is not a cult of the personality, with the One towering benevolently over the flock of little people, a Dear Leader and protector who is deserving of nothing but respect and gratitude from his always-reverential subjects; it's a republic where the citizen is king and the "leader" his servant. And when we, or a majority of us, do not like the job he's doing, he's out of the White House.

As for "the fact" that wishing that Obama fail "means our nation would fail along with the president", you may not have noticed, but on the watch of the Apologizer-in-Chief (a man who said in 2008 that his goal was to cut the debt in half), the debt has quintupled. Now, you can go on and on with saying that that ain't his fault, but for a number of us — and hey! maybe we are wrong — it's proof positive that the socialist-imbued college professor that he is, who has famously never worked in the private sector, has been nourished with leftist fairy tales and has no idea how to work a real economy…

Against it Before they Were for it

The EU will this week outline an overhaul of its 17-year- old data-protection policies addressing online advertising and social-networking sites. The bill, which includes stricter sanctions and will equip national data-protection authorities with powers to levy administrative sanctions and fines, will “become a trademark people recognize and trust worldwide,” Reding said at a conference in Munich yesterday.

Anticipating an opportunity to pander, the EU’s trinity (the perpetually promoting rarely elected Commissars Kroes, Malmström and Reding) become the faces of a new privacy rule, despite a uniform continental history of ignoring your privacy. And they also should have made the announcement in Berlin:

Since 2008, the Berlin police has collected data on 4.2 million mobile phone connections, reports German daily Tageszeitung. Most of the data has been collected in order to capture those who have set fire to luxury cars, a phenomenon that has been rampant in the German capital for the last five years. In 410 data requests by the judiciary to mobile phone operators, the police were able to identify the names and home addresses of people located near a burning car. "The only problem is they never identified any suspects," the paper notes.

Elsewhere, they’re promoting their presumed monopoly on human rights as happy hoo-hah in an initiative that duplicates what the CIA managed years ago.

EU Vice President Kroes appoints the discredited Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg to run it.

Kroes defends her pick of zu Guttenberg in her blog post, saying that she's looking for "talent, not saints." Fair enough. On the other point, I think that the irony of the battle over access benefits us more than the IP interests, as well, but I certainly understand people who are stunned and spluttering.

”Access” of “Intellectual Property”. In other words, if it’s not bolted down, and it comes from abroad, it’s yours, and it spills an interesting shade of ochre on zu Guttenberg street cred as an academic plagiarist.

French Elections: Neither Nicolas Sarkozy nor François Hollande is talking about the perspective for painful change

What kind of country would France be if it abandoned its 35-hour work week (it actually kills jobs), set up an affirmative action program for its Muslim immigrants (featuring a zero-tolerance framework for their assimilation), and scaled back its ambitions for Europe as a global political force to more attainable goals?

asks John Vinocur flippantly in the International Herald Tribune.

Answer: An imaginary one. There are no signs of it happening.

…100 days before voting in an elimination round April 22, and then in a final ballot on May 6, the French presidential election campaign so far involves back and forth on possible variations in French comfort — tinkering with, adjusting and applying new coats of paint to familiar and nonthreatening aspects of national life.

There’s something surreal here. Neither Nicolas Sarkozy, who has been a brash president for the last five years, or the presumedly bland François Hollande, named Socialist candidate on Oct. 16, is talking about the perspective for painful change.

… For all of France’s accomplishments and uniqueness, a sense of lost identity and decline resonates.

At a moment that seems to command existential choice, the candidates are responding piecemeal and with calculation in a manner the French call “petit bras” — taking hesitant, little strokes where a full swing is needed.

… Their refusal so far to confront sweeping structural change reads as if [Mr. Sarkozy and Mr. Hollande] agree with the notion that the French perceive almost any change in the system as a threat because virtually everyone’s self-interest is wired to a state-protected status quo. The biggest issue of avoidance for the election campaign is structural reform of the labor market.

… Mr. Hollande thinks that by avoiding a clear set of campaign commitments, he can circumvent anything specific that might threaten his wide lead over Mr. Sarkozy in current polling. The president concentrates on casting himself to the French not as a dispenser of much-need reform medicine, but as their worldly, combative protector.

That common burst of subterfuge means an election campaign poor in meaningful, coherent ideas. In this country, normally so productive in inventiveness and nerve, there’s nothing new or promising going on as it stutters and drifts toward choosing a president.

The Zombies Among Us

A dull, “housekeeping” style article presumably penned by DSK spouse and enabler Anne Sinclair rouses “bravos” from the HuffPo.fr readership, which plainly shows how empty their heads are.

In any case, our space, one that brings together the team that chose to devote to this project: to create The Huffington Post in France, was welcomed today to bring his modest stone to the plurality of information.


The Huffington Post has, for seven years, to blow on the U.S. press in line with an air of freedom, controversies, "conversations", a word dear to Americans, which means first exchange of ideas, discussions, debates. Arianna Huffington, founder of what became the first news site in the United States brings its expertise, experience, its platform, its technological tools. The other stakeholders, the Le Monde group and New Independent Publishing also give us the chance to have this French adventure.

This is all in French society today, and nourishes the columns of prestigious journals and news sites developing in front of us.

To those who say that sometimes shrinks, we want to answer that, together with our colleagues is also an obsession, we will expand the space, provide places of expression to those who do not have easy access.

We’ll ignore her moronic Kim-Jong-Il-esque claims about Ariana’s technological insight, and not even wonder why banal congratulations of other media babblers would provoke wooden (almost fake sounding) sounding huzzahs being heard from the party membership.

Rather, let’s do the typical French Blab-erati thing and try to infer whatever specious meaning we want - or one that strokes a passive-aggressive ego whose childish missives are read by no-one, and say with complete certainty that she is into pegging DSK.

That’s usually all it takes to get onto a French daytime talk show that has a epilepsy provoking set and a host who thinks they’re a political expert.

All of this comes on the heels of the launch (after the totally ignored prior launch) of a French edition of the Huffington Post, headed by Anne Sinclair. What she has in common with Ariana Huffington is rather Stepford child like. Neither of these two members of the 0.0001% earned their billions, pretend to be for the masses, steal wire pieces, got their momentum from other equally pointless fellow travelers, and bully writers into working for them for free.

A court like no other

Jim's first indication that his life was about to be turned upside down came the night he got home from work and was approached by an off-duty sheriff's deputy

writes Nina Shapiro (thanks to Arf) whose Seattle weekly article helps explain what prompted Stephen Baskerville to write the book Taken Into Custody (The War Against Fathers, Marriage, and the Family). His latest article is "The Rape of Justice", published in the Salisbury Review (PDF).

"Are you Jim?" the deputy asked.

"I am," he replied.

The deputy then informed him that not only was he no longer welcome inside his own house, he wasn't allowed even to collect his things. The officer handed him a suitcase his wife had packed and a $3,000 check—also from his wife, who earned far more than he did.

… Had he been charged with domestic violence in criminal court, where guilt must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt and the standards of due process are high, this might not have happened. But Jim's fate was decided in a very different venue: family court.

It's a court like no other—a hugely busy and rancorous place where the most personal aspects of people's lives are not only on display, but judged and reshaped in proceedings that often last no longer than 20 minutes. Appointed commissioners, rather than elected judges, make many of the most crucial decisions. And the standard of evidence (known as "preponderance of the evidence") is the lowest allowed by law.

For years, dads'-rights groups have claimed that family court overwhelmingly favors women, particularly when it comes to custody. In former times, when dads generally did far less hands-on child-rearing than moms, those claims tended to be viewed as the ranting of bitter misogynists.

… the most damaging allegation—the one that can change everything in an instant—is domestic violence. That's why, Rolfe says, "there are attorneys who will advise a client to accuse the other party of domestic violence in order to gain an advantage."

The accusations may not constitute what the general public thinks of as domestic violence. "Frequently, it's not a big thing that you did, but the woman claims to be afraid," says Rolfe.

Yet commissioners—and what Bianco calls a "little cottage industry" of professionals used by the court to assess and treat domestic violence—tend to give those allegations credibility and see a man's denials as further proof of his guilt—the ultimate catch-22.

… the most precious relationships in people's lives—relationships that impact not only the adults standing before a commissioner but the unseen children used to being around both parents every day—are reconstituted according to whatever spin embittered spouses can put forward in the time it takes to walk around the block.

Related Content

• Family Court: Dads Regularly Lose Access to Kids, Sparking Claims of Anti-Male Bias
  January 18, 2012
• Sky Metalwala's Dad Is Victim of Family Court Bias, Activists Say
  January 20, 2012

Also check out James Christianson's How I Got Custody (thanks to Arf, again)

Women and Children First!

Serguei on the Costa Concordia:
• Women and children first!
• Aye, aye, skipper!

Less Than 100 Days from France's Presidential Election, Sarkozy Is Tempted by a Speedy Retreat from Afghanistan

There must be no debate on Afghanistan

That is the message to army commanders from l'Élysée during France's presidential election.

The war in Afghanistan is entering France's presidential election, writes Nathalie Guibert in Le Monde, as Nicolas Sarkozy — who is torn between domestic politics and the demands of France's allies, the countries of the coalition, writes Natalie Nougayrède — suspends all military operations and ponders whether to leave the country.

In the wake of a man wearing the uniform of Afghanistan's national army machine gunning two dozen unarmed soldiers on a French base, four of whom have died, the French government, which has been pressuring army commanders to avoid losses for some time, sent the defense minister (Gérard Longuet) and the head of the armed forces (Admiral Edouard Guillaud) to Kabul.

Meanwhile, the socialist candidate, François Hollande, reacted by saying that "we must have the intelligence to recognize that this mission is over."

" Toutes les opérations de formation, d'aide au combat, de l'armée française sont suspendues ", a annoncé le président Nicolas Sarkozy. Si " les conditions de sécurité ne sont pas clairement rétablies, alors se posera la question d'un retour anticipé ", a-t-il ajouté. Le ministre de la défense et le chef d'état-major des armées ont été dépêchés à Kaboul.

… Sur le terrain, les chefs passent le message : il faut " un niveau de pertes compatible " avec l'état de l'opinion. Les soldats comprennent qu'on les prive de la possibilité de " finir le travail " qui a coûté la vie à 82 d'entre eux depuis 2001. Un haut responsable militaire explique au Monde : " Il ne doit pas y avoir de débat sur l'Afghanistan. "

Mormons to Build Temple in Versailles, Protesters Against this Christian-Inspired Religion NOT to Be Labelled Racists

Méconnus en France en dépit de leur prosélytisme aux effets incertains, les mormons sont ces dernières semaines sortis de leur relatif anonymat.

Basically unknown in France until presidential candidate Mitt Romney made their religion prominent, writes Stéphanie Le Bars in Le Monde, the Mormons are to open their first temple in France. However, the purchase of a piece of land next to the (very Catholic) château de Versailles has given rise to a protest movement against the building of a temple there. Needless to say, the protesters will not, in any way, be depicted as racists — as they would were they protesting the building of a Muslim mosque.

Grâce à Mitt Romney, certes, le favori des primaires républicaines pour la présidentielle américaine, qui fut, entre 1966 et 1968, missionnaire à Brest, au Havre et à Bordeaux. Mais aussi parce que l'année 2012 pourrait être en France celle de leur "visibilité". Après treize ans de recherches et de déconvenues, l'Eglise vient d'acquérir un terrain au Chesnay (Yvelines), pour y construire le premier temple mormon du pays, un imposant bâtiment sans fioritures.

… Mais cette implantation sur des terres très catholiques, à deux pas du château de Versailles, a suscité un début de polémique. Une pétition qui aurait recueilli près de 4 000 signatures circule sur Internet pour demander "une consultation publique" sur ce projet, susceptible de "modifier la ville et ses environs", et qui, selon ses détracteurs, "ne correspond pas à un besoin". Contestant le permis de construire accordé par le maire (UMP) et sur fond de bataille politique, un de ses adjoints a même démissionné.

… "La plupart des gens sont polis, mais ils n'ont juste pas le temps de parler de Jésus-Christ", reconnaissent les deux garçons, qui font partie des 300 missionnaires présents en France.

Smell You Later

The smart ones are booking ass as quick as they can.

Economic distress is driving tens of thousands of skilled professionals from Europe, and many are being lured to thriving former European colonies in Latin America and Africa, reversing well-worn migration patterns. Asia and Australia, as well as the U.S. and Canada, are absorbing others leaving the troubled euro zone.

In fact monarchs are reduced to begging:

King Juan Carlos highlighted Spain's losses with a poignant remark while handing out scholarships to young Spaniards for postgraduate study abroad.

"I sincerely hope and wish that when your time comes to return home there will be more jobs for you and that you can stay here," he told the 121 assembled winners in March. "We really need you in Spain."

In the meantime the enterprising aren’t fighting their way into EUtopia either.

At the same time, an influx of Third World immigrants whose labor helped fuel Europe's growth over the past decade is subsiding. Hundreds of thousands of them, including some white-collar professionals, have been returning home.

“U.S. Americans”

The term is as absurd as “États-Unien” (FR: “United-statesian”), and I hear it more and more.
My simple retort to the pinheaded who argue to me that they have the right to define the terms by which we Americans describe ourselves is to enlighten a lower being and ask how many other nations that have the word “America” in their name.

In ignorance, the answer nearly without fail is “all of the nations in the Americas.” I then ask them to name them.

The only nation other than the Unites States of America that has the word America in its’ name isn’t in the Americas: it’s American Samoa.

Remember, because they are inherently higher beings whose egos generally cannot bear even the most discreet bit of correction or presicion, you must insist that they’re right in order to make them go away or give you your measly €0,14 in change at the register.

États-Unien » est parfois préféré à « américain » afin de différencier les États-Unis du Canada et du Mexique.

No it isn’t.

Is This Who?!?!

iPhoto has gotten its face recognition technology wrong before, but this! this… is over the top!

Go, Newt!

(In case you can't see the name that iPhoto proposes for Mitt Romney, the question it asks is, "Is this Ronald Reagan?")

Alas, the Fickle Finger of Pols in Need of Populist Love

September 23, 2010:

The European parliament pressed on Wednesday for a crackdown on film and music piracy on the Internet, raising fears among online rights groups that a new law will soon follow.

January 20, 2011:

Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes has joined the throng of high-profile opponents to the controversial US internet legislation Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). In a message on her Twitter feed, Kroes said: "glad tide is turning on SOPA: don't need bad legislation when should be safeguarding benefits of open net".

It’s nothing new: the cultural mucki-mucks of the continent’s zeitgeist, even former Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes: they’ve always like the idea of legalizing the theft of other people’s IP, as long as it isn’t European.

Don’t Mention Les Talibanlieusardes

Reality being insufficient for their perennial hatred and demonization, French academics turn to fiction, turning to the lecturesome US crime series “The Wire” which another scholar plainly calls a vehicle to convey a political message

I suppose the point is to throw red meat at their own delusions and find some contrivance of "social realism” that feeds their prejudices that the whole of the United States (apart from those who are too well off are a slum.

To delve into the topic of social inequality in the United States, a French university has turned to a slice of American popular culture: the HBO series The Wire.

The critically acclaimed show, created by former journalist David Simon, had previously been the subject of a course at Harvard, but now will be used by students at Paris' University Nanterre La Défense to look in on American social ills from the outside.

From January 13 to June 1, several seminars will take place within the walls of the university, the latest tribute to the gritty realism of a series depicting the largely African-American, crime-plagued neighborhoods of Baltimore. The course will focus on subjects such as the American city, the representation of African Americans and the role of institutions as they are depicted in The Wire.

So they turn to ‘political art’. How cute. Never mind the fact that most French people who ask about life in America still think that it’s 1958 in the American south, most of them also seem to condescendingly want to believe by extension that dramas like “The Wire” represent all urban America, and all African Americans.

As if these things weren’t universal enough to make them realize that they are no better, while their strange fantasies about American society continue: they play at detesting it, and pretend that they need to prove they’ve got a “street cred” in that same “fake thug” fantasy world that their own pop culture is assuming American cities to be.

Nanterre c’est west side yo. Pour faire un « The Wire » en France faudrait surtout trouver un journaliste qui limite pas ses enquêtes à son compte twitter.

Photos From the Tuscany Coast

Le Monde offers a batch of photos from the Costa Concordia shipwreck.

Le naufrage du navire, qui a coûté la vie à 11 personnes, a offert une série d'images plus saisissantes les unes que les autres, illustrations de la course au gigantisme que se livrent les armateurs.

A Non-2-Dimensional European Reads the Newspaper

Affordable energy = growth. Expensive energy = impoverishment for the poor and middle income and no growth. “Renewables” = bogus moral vanity of the non-productive, non-producing, and detached.

The truth is that Italy wastes its subsidies and uses the costliest sources. Nuclear energy was mothballed before the power stations were fully depreciated, bringing forward billion-euro decommissioning costs by decades. In 1992, Italy adopted the CIP 6 measures, which for assimilated energy – gas treated as a renewable source – will end up adding €20 billion in incentives to bills over its 15 or 20-year lifespan. In 2007, energy watchdog chair Alessandro Ortis managed to put a €600 million cut in place by interpreting the avoided fuel cost’s tariff component very strictly. But this only lasted two years until the Council of State upheld appeals from the big groups that had cornered all the public resources. Compensatory price hikes loom.

In 2012, aid for renewables gets into full stride. Some €160-170 billion is budgeted from 2005 to 2034, much of it concentrated in this decade. It’s a huge burden on household energy bills without even creating a national manufacturing base for the sector,

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?