Calling In and Airstrike

Antoine di Zazzo, identified by AFP as "one of the biggest Taser representatives" outside the United States, said his company is "developing a mini-flying saucer like drone which could also fire Taser stun rounds on criminal suspects or rioting crowds.

The roadblock obviously is that because it’s been used in the US and Canada, that the UN determined that it is a form of torture. Otherwise they’d be abusing themselves to the sound of Nicholai Tesla’s words, zapping “youts”, and going on smugly about the superiority of their export numbers.

And in the national interest, of course, the AFP’s notion of fair journalism lives on: some German guy uses Chinese prisoners remains are used to make art, a flying taser is seen uncritically, but the same lot lose their continence over Gitmo.

What I don't get is that AFP put the flying saucer thing at the end of the freakin' story about TASER! What the heck!? Are stun-gun equipped flying saucers just sort of ho-hum in France? This should have been a huge headline with pictures of children running for their lives, as the evil alien-looking TASER saucers attack.

This shouldn’t be confused with the culture’s more normal sounding loopiness preoccupied with the “Bush Junta”.

"Vous n'avez ici que des amis, Excellence"

Although Kadhafi's Paris visit has led to a number of criticisms by French lawmakers (notice reactions like the crybaby Christiane D's agreeing with the dictator as well as pouting how much the Iraq war had led to suffering for… Europe — Europe, for Christ's sake!), heaven forbid that there be any demonstrations like that in Paris when George W Bush came to commorate the 60th anniversary of D-Day.

Heaven forbid as well that there would have been a glowing reception given to the American president like the Ritz event described by Ariane Chemin in Le Monde in which Kadhafi is told he has nothing but friends and is oohed and aahed over by Paris's intelligentsia.

Ambassadeurs, admirateurs, éditeurs, on se rue sur la petite table où Kadhafi signe ses oeuvres.

One woman is "delighted" that her book has been signed by Kadhafi with the word "friendship". Meanwhile, André Fontaine is taken out of the mothball closet to explain how an insult made during his first Paris visit 34 years ago (the Guide of the Libyan Revolution had more criticism for France this week) had to be answered by then-Le Monde editor Fontaine. He then goes on to say, obviously with a nodding attitude, even with admiration (for the interpreter):

Mais la manière dont l'interprète libyen traduisit ma réponse fut assez habile pour satisfaire Kadhafi, dont le visage s'illumina.

I thought that when it comes to a free country like France, the point is to be upright and always to tell friends and enemies alike the truth outside of all fear? If your translators are going to mis-translate the words, or the sense of the phrase, then what's the point?!

Don't think that these monuments to France's lucidité at the Ritz don't have principles, however. They are in rage. Over what? Over Bernard Kouchner's refusal to attend the Kadhafi love-fest, as well as his refusal to explain his reason for not attending, which Roland Dumas deems nothing less than… "a dual cowardice"!

Update: Axel Poniatowski answers questions from Le Monde readers (teaching them — and us — that, among other things, "à partir du 1er janvier prochain, la Libye va présider le Conseil de sécurité de l'ONU")…

The left's one-dimensional conception of racism is entirely unsatisfactory and needs to be revised

The American left's perception of racism is contradictory at its base

writes Ben Duffy.

On the one hand, they see racists under every bed, but on the other hand, they don't recognize someone like Bob Green as the bigot that he is. …

If you listen to his program for 30 seconds, you will know that Mr. Green is black because that's all he ever talks about. He allows his identity to be determined by his pigmentation. Bob Green is also incredibly racist. His racism is usually directed towards white people, but our society is so constrained by white guilt that we don't recognize anti-white racism as a form of bigotry.

Stand procedure in these parts

Down-and-out French journalmists with no money obsess about Jews with money.

So How’s That “Weapons Free Zone” Thing Going

Woman's Square or Woman's Station?

Oddly (or appropriately?) enough, Place de la Femme can mean both Woman's Square (the supposed meaning on the sign on this Moroccan statue's pedestal) and Woman's Station (as in her station in life, vis-à-vis men)…

Y aura des rediffs de la Famille RamDam ?

EurabiaTV.

Just do it

Wait a second before you jump so I can get my videocam and post it on Youtube (peut-être même j'y mettrai des bruitages rigolos pour envoyer à VideoGag).

Bad Boys, Bad Boys, Whatcha Gonna Do?

There’s naïve, and then there’s this:

...last year, the 24-year-old German reached out to a convicted killer on Texas' death row. Her motives were altruistic, she said, not romantic. In time, after more than 50 letters posted back and forth across the Atlantic, Ms. Deeken said, mutual feelings grew.

"I have a connection with him," she explained recently, shaking slightly, tears running down her cheek. "Everyone in life has a vision, has dreams, has fears, is searching for something. He is the person I can talk deeply with about these things."

It seems that in the absence of a more grounded existence to help put things into context, let’s say, one where they try to legislate the trials and tribulations of human life out of existence, it should come as no surprise that loneliness and a need for irredeemable empathy would bubble up to the surface as a preoccupation. Perhaps it’s thought of as a sort of “giving back” or charity, but of a sort selected to give one ultimately the greatest degree of personal anguish in the end. Where some who have no family or close relationships fall into bad habits, others genuinely give of themselves. Some, it seems want to appear to be generous, but choose as vessel for those emotions something that could only result in ones’ own helplessness:

Each month, dozens of travel-weary, love-struck European women arrive in Livingston for visits with condemned inmates, a pair of four-hour chats through Plexiglas. There is no touching.

There are people out there who see something out there in the world that gives them pain. Some try to understand the phenomenon, while others foolishly believe that they can go make that painful thing go away, in spite of the reasons they have for exiting to begin with.

In other words, they are sick people who have been living in comfort so long that they are no longer able to interpret the value of their emotions, the hurt feelings of the convict, and the actions of the convict. It’s all equally incomprehensible it it’s purpose or reasons for being. It all seems intended when they all stem from the consequences of the actions of the convict. To the simpleton, retribution and justice are the same, they are riddled with things that are hurtful to think about, therefore the circumstances must be done away with.

In 1995, Mr. Martinez was convicted of stabbing to death a 68-year-old woman and her 4-year-old granddaughter. He sexually assaulted the older woman, defiled the corpse of the child, and reportedly threatened the victims' family as he was led from the courtroom, saying, "It's not over yet."

The reasons usually speak for themselves when you consider the alternatives are to let them walk, leave them to inflict yet more non-therapeutic violence on the prison population, or even creating a society where ones’ harmful actions don’t result in consequences of any sort.

- Vielen Dank, Corbusier

It Makes Me Think of Haute Couture, ‘n Stuff...

Have a Richard Dawkins Christmas

Looking for psychotic murderers? Look no further than products of that leftist hobby horse, the social welfare system!

Hey, I think I can Smell the Exit Over Here!

Didn’t low-brow roadside attractions pass their prime in the late 60’s?

From Bagram to Atlantic City

Medic!

“Ambitions have not been matched by resources”

Other contributing countries include Poland, the Netherlands, Austria.

But some, notably the UK, have "offered to give political support, and where appropriate any technical advice", but stopped short of "any promises to offer any money or forces", UK European minister Jim Murphy said earlier this month

Of course, when in doubt, form a committee. Draft a white paper. Blow off another six months. It’s the typically European quietly inhumane thing to do while you’re promoting your own virtues.

The planned force still lacks ten helicopters, a third medical facility and other support assets, French General Henri Bentegeat, head of the EU's Military Committee, said earlier this month according to Reuters.

blog.libero.it/putans nopasaran.blog-libre.net nopasaran.samizdat.net www.nopasaran.es/

Grampa's Arrival in America

Ancestry.com allows you to search U.S. Passport Applications from 1795 to 1925…

Giving in to their Homoerotic Love of Dictators

French broadcaster TF1, majority owned by construction, energy, and cellular magnate Martin Bouygues produced a program which reasons of favoring a business to a state long known to be brutal and corrupt. The documentary was so far out, it had to stay in the can.

The big network TF1 has kept in the closet a program that it will never run. It is a plateau television she has done for the sake of a dictator. Bakchich-TV published the best excerpts from the video, and discusses how TF1 took liberties with their own ethics.
 
The story begins in 1996, at the offices of the giant BTP and owner of TF1, Martin Bouygues. The group Bouygues then concocted a fairy tale about a small republic in Central Asia that’s rich in natural gas: Turkmenistan. Its president, Saparmurad Niyazov, then offers the French company a 200 million concrete contract for a mosque in the desert, a palace, and a parliament building. To be specific, let's get clear the fact that it’s a ghost parliament, as Niyazov was classified by Amnesty International among the worst dictators of our time. Before his death in 2006, the man has had time to be elected by parliament as president for life, to imprison incommunicado and tortured his opponents, to give months of the year the names of members of his family, to prohibit freedom of the press, and the expressive arts, as they were deemed “contrary to the spirit of the people"
Niazov is not a democrat, but signed contracts with France’s BTP. So when he landed on an official visit to Paris in September 1996, his closest French friend, Martin Bouygues, began right away to flatter his cult of personality.

The builder is mobilizing its selling point, it is the only one to have: TF1, Europe’s leading television channel. Bouygues promised Niazov a prestigious program devoted entirely to the splendor of Turkmenbashi, "the father of the Turkmen" (as he renamed himself). The studios TF1 are mobilized to turn out an exceptional effort. Martin Bouygues himself, and TF1 and Gaz de France CEO Patrick Le Lay are sitting facing the President Niyazov, which to be interviewed by the deputy news director of TF1, Jean Narcy. The title of this special edition to run in primetime: "Turkmenistan and its economic future! Wow.

The show begins with images as generic as one can get since the founding of the ORTF, in 1964: a picture of Paris, peaceful, with the Seine, the Eiffel Tower, and on top of that the sound of a loud fanfare that sent the gladiators in the arena of an Italian peplum. It's stale and has everything that would put TF1 viewers to sleep punctuated with fast-flowing images to flatter Niazov!

Then comes a 45 minute long disturbing interview. Jean Narcy, forgetting that 50% of the Turkmen population is unemployed, continues to ask the dictator about his country’s wealth. Probably quite shocked, Niazov returns the flattery by describing TF1 as the "most powerful force in television in the world, and the largest carrier of culture." What the CEO of TF1, Patrick Le Lay, reply with is doubly impertinent: speaking of Turkmenistan as a "country at the crossroads of the world's great movements," the television quoted Turkmen as "the memory of a people and a civilization ", and suggested that the Father of the Turkmen should help, (don’t laugh,) "to produce programming devoted to his country and its culture." Unsaid is that we know that the President Niyazov, culture is restricted to folk music and readings officially imposed on schools and universities, a book of thoughts which Niyazov himself authored, and whose quotations adorn buses.

Poor Niazov! Narcy keeps the viewer from dozing off with a long speech without rhythm or relief. Narcy droned on but earned his salary: he goes on to give the floor to the boss of Gaz de France, invited and jumped in himself to discuss… gas, and then the construction contract by Bouygues: a Conference Center open to the Turkmen population. He even goes into the importance of culture and welfare of the population not just once, on the occasion of this historic interview, he’s even asked the Turkmen president to give his position on the opponents and journalists he had jailed.

What was so funny about it? That Niazov took the interview very seriously, although it is being run by his friend French. The stage and the actors are real, but they know very well that there would be "special edition" on Turkmenistan running on French television. Once Niyazov was gone, the TF1 recording of the broadcast was carefully locked away.

No pipeline, no problem!

So where is the false outrage of the likes of Michael Moore for this kind of “national champion” business with a red “hey, let’s get into cahoots” line to a national government? No-where. It doesn’t flatter their ideology or prop up their illusions about a “Bu$hChimpyHitlerburton” straw-man hiding under the bed, lest you hand them your brain. After all, you know that only Americans les Ricons do that!

Proof that Paris’ Massive Army of Street Cleaners Are Worth Every Cent

Paris sous les bombes (bis)

Here is a promotional video of the law firm hit by the package bomb attack:



UPDATE (5:31PM Paris time): Interior Minister Michèle Alliot Marie has arrived. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack at this time. Olivier Brane, the lawyer shown in the above video, is the lawyer injured in the attack. He has been hospitalized and is expected to pull through.



UPDATE (6:55PM Paris time): In a short statement to the press, Interior Minister Michèle Alliot Marie stated that investigators are working with witnesses in an attempt to identify the messenger who delivered the package bomb.

UPDATE (7:33PM Paris time): Police are now looking for a dark haired female messenger, 1m55 tall.

UPDATE (9:26PM Paris time): France3 reports that the lawyer to who the package bomb was addressed, Catherine Gouet-Jenselme, has been the target of sexual harassement since January 2005. Legal proceedings were initiated in June of this year. According to France3 State TV, investigators are now going with a sexual-harassement-personal-vendetta motive. Judicial authorities are denying this report while confirming that a sexual harassement case was being handled by the law firm in question but that it is still too early to be able to identify a motive for the bombing.

Paris sous les bombes

A package bomb has gone off in the 8th arr. of Paris in the office of a law firm co-founded by French President Nicolas Sarkozy. 6 people have been injured and radio reports now announce 1 law firm secretary dead (with 1 laywer among the injured). A second package is being taken in by the bomb squad. The explosion occured at 1:30PM Paris time.

UPDATE: Reports now indicate that two likely targets are located in the building where the explosion took place. A law firm co-founded by Nicolas Sarkozy and a Holocaust Memorial Foundation ("Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah").

UPDATE: One death now confirmed. French MSM cable news now getting up to speed on this. At this point, French MSM insists that there is no confirmed link between the explosion at that location and the Holocaust Memorial Foundation.

UPDATE: Reports now indicate that the explosion took place in a 4th floor law office. Sarkozy's ex-law firm is located on the 1st floor. French MSM is downplaying the presence of a Holocaust Memorial Foundation at the same address. There is 1 confirmed death and 5 injuries.

UPDATE (4:03PM Paris time): the package that exploded was delivered by messenger and addressed to Olivier Brane and Catherine Gouet-Jenselme. The law firm hit by the explosion deals mainly in divorce and insurance cases. It is not known for dealing in sensitive cases. I-Tele cable news now reports that the law office targeted is on the same floor (4th floor) as the Holocaust Memorial Foundation.

UPDATE (4:46PM Paris time): Interior Minister Michèle Alliot Marie is expected to arrive on the scene any minute. She was in Belgium at the time of the explosion.


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Today Schengen, Tomorrow ‘Ze Vurld

In someone’s mind, Europe has grown to include all of Turkey, half of the ‘Stans’ and all of Asian Russia. Ew-key. Plan on telling those people in Siberia that?