Obama, You're No Ronald Reagan

Welcome to the Hotel California

Europeans are learning something is wrong with their long held utopian ideals. When even the slightest difficulty is presented to the Europeans as a whole, they passive-aggressively turn on one another – each threatening to take their football and go home.

On a recent BBC Newsnight debate, Jeremy Paxman drew applause by popping up on a screen a photo of Herman Van Rompuy, the rather nondescript Belgian president of the European Council, and asking the audience whether they had voted for him and even knew who he was. Argument over: of course we’d rather not be bossed about by unelected officials whom we can’t even name.

Except for this. It was tosh. Why didn’t he also put up photos of the Secretary General of Nato, or the head of the World Trade Organisation, or the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the International Maritime Organisation, or even the head of Fifa? We didn’t vote for any of those either; they come from funny foreign countries and we don’t even know their names – except perhaps the President of FIFA.

But naturally, it take a Briton to really understand that the issue is one of self-interest, having long-since shed the notion that there is such a thing called enlightened self interest. Writing in the Times of London, Bill Emmott reminds us that there are even bigger temples of dysfunction trying to exercise “global governance”, and that Europeans have been following along with all manner of nonsense with the UN, IMF, and a bunch of other alphabet soup outfits with a childish optimism about human nature.

The side effects have been the shaky legal ground this leaves them on, insofar as they really don’t actually say they’re ceding sovereignty on one matter of another when they are, and the irreversibility of it all:

The point is that a crucial part of British policy since 1945 has been that of setting up, and joining, international organisations to agree upon common rules for various activities, to foster co-operation rather than conflict, to increase collective security, or to promote freer trade. All of them involve the pooling of sovereignty in exchange for an expected benefit – rather as the FA joined Fifa to play in international tournaments and to all follow the same rules of football. We could be independent and set our own rules. But it wouldn’t get us very far.

[ ... ]

Is the extra degree of sovereignty regained enough to make it worthwhile? Is the then less Common Market still common enough? Is the loss of Britons’ automatic right to live and work in Spain, Italy, Germany or elsewhere a price worth paying?

No-one asked you that either, did they?

What’s the end result of all of this? Pretending to be a helpless, servile victim of these imagined external powers with a sort of universal power ascribed to them by the well promoted feeling that international institutions are of man’s way to build some sort of “heaven on earth,” with harmless, pointless lives for everyone. A case in point is a headline. Forget the content, just look at the tone, and the assumption of who’s in charge:

IMF tells eurozone to turn on printing presses

Actually, you really don’t HAVE to, friend.

Like Babes in the Woods

Free-riding is a problem. Eventually, the free-riders either believe that they are entitled to the position that they’ve put others into, or convince themselves of some other world view in order to ignore their real behavior.

Case in point: Lecturesome pacifist Germans being willfully ignorant of their nations’ arms sales.

Observing Hermann:

These pacifistic (German made) and very expensive peaceships not only make big profits for traditional Waffenschmiede (weapons makers) like Thyssen-Krupp Marine-Systeme, they finally give Germany’s alibi army something vernünftig (reasonable) to do: Train the folks who might actually be using these weapons one day.

Of course when sold to the right parties, the DO keep the peace, but it doesn’t square with the broadly held view among Germans that they can
1) ...somehow check out on having any responsibility in the world, and,
2) ...continue imagining the world can be some peaceful little dorf where people get along without making anyone else uncomfortable, shed anyone elses’ blood, or seize one anothers’ resources (as if there even exists such a dorf in Germany,) and,
3) ...abide by the vision of “peace” held by dewey-eyed adolescents.
4) ...keep that scary, icky world “away”, (after all, it’s just too far to go to these places other than on vacation,) and pretend it’s not there.

While they prefer to not be distracted by pretending their making totally unique art, or making money and expanding their economy on the back of goofy currency manipulation, they can’t keep it up for long.

It Doesn't Matter What Mitt Romney Says at the NAACP, They Are Going to Call It Racist Anyway

Ann Althouse notes that Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi goes all racial on Mitt Romney's appearance before the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ("a genuinely repugnant human being [and] a grasping corporate hypocrite", thanks for the link to Instapundit), as do, elsewhere, The Daily Mail's Toby Harnden, Salon's Alex Seitz-Wald ("what if Romney went to Houston intending to spark boos all along?"), and the Daily Beast's Michael Tomasky (Romney is nothing but "a spineless, disingenuous, supercilious, race-mongering pyromaniac").

This leads No Pasarán to make the following observation, which I think all can agree is highly astute, highly original, and highly unexpected (with apologies to Harry Stein):

It doesn't matter WHAT @MittRomney says at the #naacp, the @naacp is going to call it #racist ANYway! (As will the usual racebaiters…)

— ¡No Pasarán! (@nopasa) July 14, 2012

To Win at the Communist Monopoly Board Game, Your Piece Must Wait in Line for Hours to Buy a Sausage

A game can last several hours, during which not a whole hell of a lot is happening.

"The most boring game in the world" is how Le Monde quotes the makers of Kolejka ("line" or "queue") defining their own board game. Also known as the communist version of the Monopoly board game, where communist "rules" replace the capitalist rules of Wall Street, the box asks if you are "courageous enough to confront daily life in the 1980s?"

At Kolejka, whose surface is, inevitably, dominated by gray — the game is made by Poles who work for the Poland's Institute of National Remembrance and who want today's youth to understand the hardships of daily life prior to 1989 — the winner is the player who manages to buy all the products on his list, from butter and gasoline to cigarettes and toilet paper. Special cards allow you to gain time, by going to the black market (but prices are twice as high), by having a Communist Party "friend" open the door of a special store for party members, or by having a "mother with a baby in her arms" loan you her child to go to the front of the line.

Spoiling for a Fight: French Foreign Legion Versus Jungle Gold Diggers

Popular Mechanics' Joe Pappalardo goes to South America to find France's elite jungle warriors readying for a deadly new phase of a hidden conflict. Their targets: black market gold miners who have killed French officers (Merci à Instapundit).

The Legion is spoiling for a fight. In the weeks ahead, their jungle warfare skills will be tested in an escalating battle between illegal gold miners and French authorities. Last week a gang of these miners (garimpeiros) killed two French military noncommissioned officers during a raid near the isolated jungle town of Dorlin. The operation to disband the miners was met with violence from the start. First, a helicopter was peppered with bullets from below as it flew over the camp. The subsequent raid on the ground was met with a well-coordinated attack; in addition to the two soliders killed, another two were seriously wounded. The attackers fled toward nearby Suriname as French forces sought to seal off the border. As of this writing they have not been found.

Read more: Deep in the Jungle With the French Foreign Legion - Popular Mechanics

Muslim Toulouse Killer: I Dressed and Acted Western to "Fool the Enemy"

"War amounts to ruse" declared a Muslim terrorist to the French police as he was besieged in his apartment during the last hours of his life. According to the transcript of negotiations between Mohamed Merah and the French police (illegally) obtained by TF1 (to the anger of the victims' scandalized families), the Toulouse killer said that his decision to act western, by going to nightclubs and by dying his hair (or part of his hair) blond one day and red the next, was a trick to "fool the enemy" and make them "think that I am not … on the path of Allah."

Besides faking the role of "a non-serious Muslim", his brother Abdelkader Merah adds in the page-long Le Monde article by Laurent Borredon and Emeline Cazi, Mohamed also pretended to act like a tourist. As his handler, "H", tells the Toulouse killer, "you really pulled one over me" (tu m'as bien roulé dans la farine).

Muslim deception and deceit should hardly be an uninteresting subject in the West, for while all Muslims do admittedly not belong in the scooter killer's category (or in a terrorist category or in any violent category at all), the Left's excusing, ho-hum viewpoint on the matter of integration (either Muslims are obviously integrated — and can't you see so for yourself?! — or else their failure to integrate is of no concern to anybody, indeed they should be respected for remaining true to their faith and culture) can be dangerous for us all…

Mohamed Merah admitted that his primary target were members of the military, in view of the fact that the French army is deployed in Afghanistan. When a plot to kill a fourth soldier went awry, he fell back on the secondary target on his list of "enemies" — the Jews. (Somewhere down the list came people such as diplomats, notably the ambassador of India.) The Toulouse terrorist never had a kind word or a word of regret for any of his victims.

COQUETTERIES CAPILAIRES ET SORTIES EN BOÎTE POUR "TROMPER L'ENNEMI"

Est-ce au Pakistan qu'on lui apprend à se fondre dans la masse pour mieux tromper l'ennemi ? A ne pas attirer l'attention avec des tenues trop connotées ? Hizia, la jeune fille qu'il avait épousée religieusement en décembre 2011 -l'union dura deux semaines - s'était étonnée de le voir enfiler des jeans et des New Balance plutôt que la robe traditionnelle. Elle avait trouvé curieux qu'il ne fréquente pas la mosquée, ne porte pas la barbe, lui qui se disait si religieux. Son mari avait rétorqué "avoir 'ses' raisons, sans les préciser."

A son "ami" du renseignement, Merah daigne s'expliquer: "La guerre est une ruse." Ses coquetteries capillaires - la nuque longue et blonde un matin, une crête rouge le lendemain - ses sorties en boîte de nuit? C'était pour "tromper l'ennemi" et "faire croire que je suis pas (...) dans le chemin d'Allah".

"Mohamed se faisait passer pour un touriste et c'est comme cela qu'il a trompé son monde, exposera Abdelkader aux policiers lors de sa garde à vue. Il a même réussi à tromper votre service [en donnant de lui] une image de musulman pas sérieux."

… Tuer n'était pas son seul but. Diffuser les images de ses crimes et s'assurer qu'elles soient vues par le plus grand nombre, semer la terreur fait partie intégrante de son entreprise funeste.

Merah a acheté "la meilleure" caméra, une "full HD", dans un magasin spécialisé. "J'ai fait un excellent montage vidéo avec des versets, (...) on voit toutes les exécutions, crâne-t-il. Elle va être mise sur le Net. (...) Elle sera prise par les moudjahidines. Elle sera prise par certaines chaînes télé. (...) Je sais que quand elle va être vue inch'allah ça va mettre l'effroi (...) dans vos cœurs et ça va motiver d'autres frères."

JUSQU'AU BOUT LES NÉGOCIATEURS ONT PENSÉ OBTENIR SA REDDITION

Jamais Merah n'aura de mot pour les victimes. Avec une précision clinique, il liste toutes les autres cibles qu'il envisageait d'abattre. Ses "frères" lui auraient soufflé quelques idées: des "diplomates", l'ambassadeur d'Inde notamment. Mais l'enfant du quartier des Izards avait son propre programme. Les militaires d'abord, parce qu'ils "sont engagés en Afghanistan". Le 19 mars, c'est à nouveau l'un d'eux qu'il visait. Mais il a raté sa cible, et a décidé de passer à la catégorie suivante sur la liste de ses "ennemis", les juifs. Ce sera l'école Ozar Hatorah.

Il avait également "repéré une maison juive où il y a beaucoup d'habitants dedans", et la "synagogue à Bagatelle", une cité de Toulouse. Il avait aussi noté l'adresse d'un gendarme, celles de policiers.

"Même tu veux que j'te dise une chose, H.?

- J'espère que tu m'avais pas ciblé quand même?

- Si, crois-moi que j't'avais ciblé. (...) Mon but c'était de t'appeler, de te dire que j'avais le nom [du tueur] pour que tu viennes à moi et t'en aurais pris une en pleine tête."

As for Mohamed Merah's handler, "H" says:

"On reprend la discussion qu'on a eue en novembre, et là bon, sur de bonnes bases, quoi, avec un peu plus de sincérité, résume le policier. Parce que bon, tu m'as bien roulé dans la farine, hein, avoue-le. T'as été bon sur ce coup-là." Derrière les mots destinés à mettre Merah en confiance, on sent poindre le désarroi du policier qui découvre l'ampleur de ce qui lui a échappé. Il lui avoue : "On va se faire engueuler. (...) On savait pas grand-chose de toi."

Update: Michel Garroté adds:

La diffusion des conversations de Merah aura au moins eu un mérite : tordre le coup à ces « analyses » qui, au moment des assassinats de Toulouse et de Montauban, ont fleuri dans la presse, nous présentant l’homme comme un pauvre garçon des cités un peu perdu, sans repères familiaux, une sorte de victime d’une société qui n’aura pas su l’écouter, le comprendre et le remettre à temps dans le droit chemin. Le cynisme de Merah, sa froideur, son arrogance, sa haine de la France, sa détestation des Juifs, cette « ruse » dont il se prévaut : peut-être les plus obtus, les plus inconscients vont-ils enfin ouvrir les yeux sur ce qu’ils ne veulent pas voir, sur cette haine de l’Occident et des Juifs qui habite une partie de la jeunesse musulmane de nos banlieues. Un aveuglement qui explique, peut-être, comment, pourtant entendu par les services de renseignement, Merah a pu passer entre les mailles du filet, conclut Robert Ménard.

The Sewer of Revisionism Eventually Flows into the River of Implausible Stupidity

Jean Birnbaum writing in France’s newspaper of record, Le Monde uses his unresolved feelings about a violent murder to pen a loving portrait of Karl Marx. lumpenproletariat was not a sub, but an anti proletariat.

Mikhail Kalashnikov is part of this tradition. As noted by Olivier Rohe in his superb text called Ma dernière création est un piège à taupes ("My Latest Creation Is A Mole Trap"), the ex-sergeant of the Red Army, who is now approaching 100 years of age, is basically an homme d’ordre, passionate by work done well and an abiding hatred towards criminals.

By inventing the AK-47 assault rifle in the aftermath of World War II, he wanted to arm the hand of the workingman along the road to emancipation. In another of those ironic twists of History, this globalized gun is now one of the most destructive tools in the service of international capitalism. It is seen also as a fetish for bling-bling gangsterism all over the world, and even in the heart of this urban France, of which Marx and Engels once so admired the lucidity.

On Sunday July 1, in the northern French city of Lille, a thug unloaded his “kalash” in front of a nightclub, where he'd not been allowed to enter. Two people were killed: a 25-year-old man, working for a company that manages low-rent housing, and a 26-year-old woman, who worked at the nightclub's coat-check to help pay her university fees. These two young workers have been killed by the bullets of a weapon, invented once upon a time with the aim of brightening the future for the underdogs of the world.

Just as his friend Karl Marx used to do, Friedrich Engels was telling the workers of the world to get rid of the “scum.” He used this term with no hesitation, while describing “these dredges of deprived persons,” those whom he viewed as the most dangerous enemy of the working classes. “At every revolution, when the French blue collars wrote on the walls of the houses “Death to thieves” and when they shot several of them, they were not acting out of enthusiasm for the ownership, but rather because they know they had to first get rid of this gang,” Engels said.

He doesn’t get around to mentioning that the crimes would come to mean “disagreeing with the revolution”, or for that matter, that the man with the “kalish” is more likely to have thought that HE was the lumpenproletarian, who, turned away, needed to address “the crime,” and wanted to emancipate the vicitms in his very own special way.

This is especially cute, in that the crime took place in Lille, a place where anarcho-syndicalism IS the only idea in the air. In fact, it runs a close secont to "red Brest" in it's communist-mob-rule tendencies.

Also by Birnbaum are titles such as:

Is our future democratic ? and
Is Nationalism about being Gay ?

...wherin he explores the “xenophobic excesses” of gays questioning the abuse of gays by extremely common and “mainstream” Moslems.

What’s curious about all of this is that Birnbaum was one of the last people to interview Jacques Derrida, who, while broadly known for his post-modern uncaring rubbish, was morally clear when it came to the defense of individuals rights against the oppressive force of a politically correct group, dominant world view, or social tribalism that hangs like a damp, cold, fog over published ideas and “philosophical conversation” in much of Europe.

At about the same time, Birnbaum was also feeding lines to pointless hater Thierry Ardisson for “Tous Le Monde en Parle”

I think the Buzz Wore Off

After, say, a week.



Zee street art, she says it oll.

First Smoking, Then Sodas, Now There's No Dancing in Mayor Bloomberg's New York…

First smoking, then soda

quips Kathianne Bonielle

— now there’s no dancing in New York City.

The story of New York cops arresting a pair of midnight dancers in the (almost empty) subway (thanks to Valerie) also involves the war on photography, with the appearance of a video camera making New York's finest even more vicious (and leading them to call for… backup(!)). "When Hess began trying to film the encounter, things got ugly, Stern said."

Last year, of course, a similar story took place down in Washington with people dancing, relatively quietly, in front of the Jefferson Memorial being confronted by Park Rangers and Police (thanks to Carine), leading to these dangerous and vicious dancers getting unceremoniously thrown to the ground, choked, and hand-cuffed.

Caroline Stern, 55, and her boyfriend George Hess, 54, claim they were handcuffed for having happy feet on the platform of the Columbus Circle subway station — and spent 23 hours in custody as a result.

“I’m a dentist, and I’m 55, and I got arrested for dancing,” Stern told The Post. “It was absolutely ridiculous that this happened.”

It was nearly midnight when Stern and Hess, a film-industry prop master, headed home last July from Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Midsummer Night’s Swing. As they waited for the train, a musician started playing steel drums on the nearly empty platform and Stern and Hess began to feel the beat.

“We were doing the Charleston,” Stern said. That’s when two police officers approached and pulled a “Footloose.”

“They said, ‘What are you doing?’ and we said, ‘We’re dancing,’ ” she recalled. “And they said, ‘You can’t do that on the platform.’ ”

… When Hess began trying to film the encounter, things got ugly, Stern said.

“We brought out the camera, and that’s when they called backup,” she said. “That’s when eight ninja cops came from out of nowhere.”

Hess was allegedly tackled to the platform floor, and cuffs were slapped on both of them. The initial charge, according to Stern, was disorderly conduct for “impeding the flow of traffic.”

“There was nobody on the platform. There were, like, three people,” she said.

3rd "Summer of Recovery", AKA #Obamatopia

Steal This Book. (Club the Busboy to Death with it.)

On one hand, you have MEPs bloviating about how the piracy of intellectual is some sort of human right. On the other hand, after tch-tch-ing those clueless Americans (even using sock-puppets) about Arizona’s border enforcement code being some sort of RacistApartheidWallOfFascism, Maltese citizens beat illegal border-runners to death.

The Malian asylum seeker had escaped from Malta's Safi detention centre in August 2009. On Friday evening, he sought medical treatment at a clinic but staff alerted the authorities who picked him up in a van and transported him to a detention facility, report Maltese media. By the time he arrived at the facility early Saturday morning, he was found dead inside the van.

“He had blows to his groin. He did not die of natural causes,”

Le Monde Hides Muslim Teen Killer's Identity By Giving Him a Russian Orthodox Name

Pascal Galinier, the ombudsman of Le Monde, has received a flurry of angry letters after Serge Le Luyer's decision to hide the identity of a Muslim teen killer under a Slavic name.

Hiding the identity of alleged teen criminals is hardly an abnormal way to proceed in France, since protecting the identity of minors is required by French law, and the decision to use the name "Vladimir" for the 16-year-old who strangled a 13-year-old might sound logical at first since the high school student was indeed born in Russia.

But that does not take into account the fact that the region of the Russian Federation that "Vladimir's" family hails from was not the Slavic part but the Chechnya republic, meaning of course that the presumed killer and all of his family are Muslim.

"Vladimir? Why not Bjorn Borg?" asked one witty reader, tongue-in-cheek.

Giving the alleged killer a (fake) Muslim name — Mohammed, Abdullah, Ali, Samir, Suleiman (since his real first name does start with the letter S) etc — instead of "Vladimir" would thus have made more sense, say the readers in protest of what they perceive as political correctness — "transforming a Muslim connotation into an Orthodox Slav" — especially since "the great persecutor of Chechens is a certain Vladimir (Putin)…"

"Manipulations dignes des pires heures soviétoïdes !", accuse Paul Pottel, de Reims. "Manière insidieuse de désinformer", selon Jean-Christophe Antoine (Paris). "Désinformation qui vise bêtement à protéger les musulmans tchétchènes, totalement contre-productive, et injuste vis-à-vis des Russes", estime Claude Courouve.

Reflecting the extent of the protest, "Vladimir" was changed in the online version of the article to the teen's (real) first-name initial, "S." But needless to say, ombudsmen in the mainstream media are rarely the neutral arbiters they pretend to be, and so, while denying any evil intent, Pascal Galinier goes on to call the letters he has received as "abusive" and "sometimes delirious", ridiculing the people who would dare put into question Le Monde's entirely innocent choices…

Something MUST be Done, Dammit!

Despite being obscenely expensive and Bloomberg-esque in its degree of a paperwork frustration, all drivers in France are being treated like ex-DUI offenders:

In an attempt to cut back on the number of alcohol-related traffic accidents, each driver will from now on be required to keep a breathalyzer test in his or her vehicle. Those caught without the test, which cost between 1 and 3 euros a piece, can expect to pay a fine of 11 euros as of 1 November.

While that doesn’t seem like a lot of money, what we’re talking about here is a portable test that the police can make you take when they pull you over. YOU’RE supposed to have purchased it and have it on hand. Innocence not being assumed in the least, YOU need to have bought the test kit used to prove your sobriety.

According to an Ifop poll published in Dimanche Ouest France, only 39 percent of French drivers owned the test as of Saturday, just one day before the law came into effect.

Remember that Nanny doesn’t just loves you, but is always ready to hug you to death.

Also to include in Nanny’s pointless, morally vane strangulations is this sort of thing that the average European is so used to getting forced on them on a daily basis that they are conditioned into a sort of weird bliss of the servile:

In a measure to bring down electricity consumption, neon lights and illuminated advertisements will be forced off during the wee hours of the night. From 1 to 6 o’clock in the morning, even the town Christmas tree will have to go dark overnight.

Next week it will be something else. There always is.

The measure could cut CO2 emissions by 120,000 tons.

Irritating 60 million people in one small way or another, this will make up for the annual carbon dioxide output of a mere 7868 households.

They must be so proud.

Some Thoughts on American Patriotism

Some Thoughts on American Patriotism was written during the Bush years, but it still holds up today and will continue doing so, hopefully, many years from now…

France sings for the USA

(Merci à Carine)

The Trailer to A Face in the Crowd, 1957

A notable motion picture starring Andy Griffith who died today.



He almost seems to create an imprint of the political characters of the left whose views he would espouse later in life.

It Only Took 16 Hours

For someone to blame “man caused climate disruption” for the US mid-Atlantic derecho, or “land hurricane”.

And it was done using the most passive-aggressive yet evasive language possible:

As the intensity of the heat wave, without reservation, was a key factor in the destructiveness of this derecho event - it raises the question about the possible role of manmade climate warming (from elevated greenhouse concentrations). It’s a complicated, controversial question, but one that scientists will surely grapple with in case studies of this rare, extraordinary event.

Why doesn’t he go pound sand so we can study what the anthropogenic contribution to gasses in the atmosphere that might have an impact on.

The Chronicles of Prolixity

Zerohedge brings you a glossary of leftist economic illiteracy:

Fairness: Definition: A word used to motivate making sure outcomes do not match abilities or effort. Note, pre-1970 it meant roughly the opposite.

Many gems, many, many gems...

Our Heritage, from 1976

Our heritage is one of great ideas, not ethnicity, greed, and factional strife.



“Champions of the dignity of man, throughout the world.”