Quick! Call Bono! Where the hell is Sean Penn!

Terrorism: A direct consequence of Family Values!

Comrade Smirnoff asks mocks the question: Is terrorism a direct consequence of family values?

Gulag? In Cuba? Nah!

Doctor, the patient keeps trying to kill himself!

Amotz Asa-El comments in the Jerusalem Post on the persistent economic and social failures of Old Europe, which are connected, but hardly worth pondering over: which came first, the chicken or the egg?. In truth, if you find yourself in the bottom of a hole, stop digging. But if you are a French trade unionist, demand a larger trenching crew:

«The morning after the effective demise of the United States of Europe vision, it is clear that the project's collapse was largely caused by the Old Continent's growing misunderstanding of work and money. The French voters who torpedoed the proposed European constitution are believed to have expressed their fear for their 35-hour work week. The Dutch who opposed the scheme were often the very same voters whose aversion to low-paying work has brought into their midst the very foreign workers whose presence they increasingly resent. And the Italians who now miss the lira think their problems stem from the euro's ostensibly excessive strength.

Having sensed his [Chiracs] cowardice, the French suspected that the constitution he was promoting was effectively a nicer way of leading them to the same operating table they so much fear. A true leader would have told the unions - not now but already back in 1995 - that he had been elected and not them, and that he would do what he thinks is right, and that he does not care even if they paralyze all of France indefinitely.

And yet, all this political cowardice is dwarfed by the lack of historic intuition that the failed constitution represents. »

The indicators support the obvious repercussions. Social support doesnt grow on trees. Bloomberg reports that in a economically healthy global economic environment and mainstreaming in Europe, all they can conclude is:

«French industry is on its way to recession,'' said Marc Touati, chief economist at Natexis Banques Populaires in Paris. He forecast a 0.2 percent drop in April.

Economic growth in Europe is slowing, putting the euro region on pace to lag the U.S. for the 13th year in the past 14. The European Central Bank last week cut its 2005 growth estimate for the third time in six months. It forecast an expansion of about 1.4 percent. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development predicts the U.S. economy to grow by 3.6 percent.

A 2 percent expansion doesn't seem very realistic, said Maillard, who predicts 1.4 percent growth this year.

The outlook in the short term is fairly bleak, said Elwin de Groot, an economist at Fortis Bank Nederland NV in Amsterdam. We shouldn't expect too much in the coming months.''
In April, French production of cars rose 0.7 percent after a 1.4 percent drop in the previous month, today's report showed. Production of consumer goods, including pharmaceuticals, advanced 0.7 percent, and production of capital goods such as planes and machines increased 0.6 percent. »

Reform is impossible with the population having this need to demand more porridge from the schoolmaster, and elevating the state of the population is impossible without reform of this very affliction.

- Many thanks to Carine for the voila.fr link

You really must come to our car-beque. I insist.

They aren't just suicidal murders. Now that it turns out that they're being forced to kill themselves, you might be able to actually start calling them martyrs. But it's the insurgents who are "martyring" them.

Dog-Whistle Communications

The Strange Ideological Battlegrounds of Telstar 5 [footprint], AsiaSat 3S [footprint], and Optus B3 [footprint], as well as others.

The broadcasters that rent these frequencies have a few things in common channels from cultures which are clashing in one way or another share space on them. There are channels broadcasting to émigré communities in free places like the US and Australia, and a subtext of hostility within.

Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, channels have slots peppered in with one another along with Christian Evangelical programming and a number of encrypted and subscription carriers from industries and big western media outfits.
In a way its a reflection of what the global media is turning into so specific and factional in view. Like the European that has to learn one more language or two just to find out that his fellow European neighbors actually hate him, collisions are inevitable, and ignorance of what another cultures public temperament really is remains a mystery.

Baiting populations into anger and the tales of hatred from the Arab media are legendary as Memri.org documents daily. Without any great interest in learning those languages, the natives, such as we are, have no idea whats being said and respond when the margins are pushed. Broadcasting in a free society is nearly sacred in the Western view, as is the hutzpah of writing back which is the only thing that keeps the media honest.

The irony is that now that communications IS global, what the research intensive blogs are doing to keep the western media honest could well work with the medias of those cultures which are dueling with the world with cemtex undies and duped car-bomb drivers.

Where then are these broadcasters ubiquitous in their spill-over? [footprint] A place where rebuttal may be too late.

Note too the presence of either DW-TV or a version of BBC World intended for local consumption. just as TV5 tries to make itself similarly ubiquitous.

Seymour Hersch's "Coming Wars" that have never come

Like many of his stunt predictions, this one from

The New Yorker have never amounted to anything but a display of his own paranoic search for a demon outside his ideological bunker. He should be looking within.

So deep is his paranoia that he ate up the European press releases about "doing something" about Iran's nuke program:

«For more than a year, France, Germany, Britain, and other countries in the European Union have seen preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon as a race against timeand against the Bush Administration. They have been negotiating with the Iranian leadership to give up its nuclear-weapons ambitions in exchange for economic aid and trade benefits. Iran has agreed to temporarily halt its enrichment programs, which generate fuel for nuclear power plants but also could produce weapons-grade fissile material.»

Which they "dramatically" showed later their great indignation about something or other and fired up the process all over again.

Thanks Seymour - thank you for hoping that the popular will will delay the Bush administration, and that the Iranians who internally have more factions than dental fillings get nukes to threaten the powderkegs of civilization with.
The Umma is at war with the entire world, and Hersch thinks the least stable of the lot need to be taken seriously while they buy time to build nuclear weapons.

Oddly enough, his use of a single, anonymous source withing the US department of Defense didn't just smack of a lie, it forced the DoD to refute his allegations with facts:

«Mr. Hershs source(s) feed him with rumor, innuendo, and assertions about meetings that never happened, programs that do not exist, and statements by officials that were never made.

A sampling from this article [The coming wars] alone includes:

The post-election meeting he describes between the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff did not happen.

The only civilians in the chain-of-command are the President and the Secretary of Defense, despite Mr. Hershs confident assertion that the chain of command now includes two Department policy officials. His assertion is outrageous, and constitutionally specious.

Arrangements Mr. Hersh alleges between Under Secretary Douglas Feith and Israel, government or non-government, do not exist. Here, Mr. Hersh is building on links created by the soft bigotry of some conspiracy theorists. This reflects poorly on Mr. Hersh and the New Yorker.

Mr. Hersh cannot even keep track of his own wanderings. At one point in his article, he makes the outlandish assertion that the military operations he describes are so secret that the operations are being kept secret even from U.S. military Combatant Commanders. Mr. Hersh later states, though, that the locus of this super-secret activity is at the U.S. Central Command headquarters, evidently without the knowledge of the commander if Mr. Hersh is to be believed.

By his own admission, Mr. Hersh evidently is working on an alternative history novel. He is well along in that work, given the high quality of alternative present that he has developed in several recent articles.»

I'm not sure if he can be taken seriously again in the U.S. He sould just move to London where he can get all the strokes he wants, provided that he keeps performing for unquestioning Guardian readers.

Like the marchers in New York who were protesting a non-existant military draft, he is trying to construct a story that places his scoop at the center. As for motive, he should look within and wonder why he wants to relive his salad days and prop up his illusion that he has a reliable inside source anywhere where the work of nations actually takes place.

More of the usual pedantic anger

Another Dave Brown (The Independent/UK) hatchet-job caricature of George Bush as a monkey, abandoning Africa, because, after all, EU-vians and the transnational Cadres did SO well in Rwanda, Côte DIvoire, The Congo, and now enjoying glorious success in the Sudan.

Well done. You can stop banging your spoon on your high chair and pat yourself on the back, Dave Brown. Thanks for the misplaced anger, vulgar imagery, and hate-baiting to cover for a failure of your countrymen.

The irony in this cheesy scribble is that Africa is in Europe's back yard, not in the White House's patch.

Socialists worried about erections

Erection of Buddha statue produces communal tensions in Sri Lanka.

But you notice, that it's only tension felt by certain people that bothers them: by religious extremists who can't bear the notion of other people thinking differently, and by socialist sisters and non-sisters, who can't bear the notion of other people thinking differently.

Interesting position for a group of people to take who are otherwise pimping for Jihadists and other suitably useful idiots.

Deplete this, swampy...

Why don’t you hear about Ozone Depletion anymore? Because it not politically useful to leftist anymore, and it was a total scam.

«Despite all the information you may have read, there is not one shred of supportable evidence that CFCs have found their way 40 miles up above the Earth. No one has ever found any up there because they are roughly five times heavier than air. They are like a brick in a swimming pool. It is not often that you will see a brick floating to the surface of your pool. CFCs are so dense that even as a gas you could fill a bucket with it and pour the contents of one bucket into another. Secondly there is no evidence that they can destroy anything because they are very stable and unreactive substances. Most dictionaries and chemistry books describe them as inert gases.»

That’s right, something 5 times heavier than air magically ended up in the iso-ionosphere. I guess those spray cans have a 40 mile range that only obvious to all of those kids who failed math.
So if the complaints about ground level ozone won't tip off someone carrying a sign and shouting their head off, what will?

But like all crazed zealots, giving up is not easy. Expect to see sandwich panels with “The world is ending” on people wearing Sierra Club T-shirts at a railway station near you:

«There is, too, another difficulty with the theory: the fact that all the CFCs in the world are insufficient to even dent the known amount of ozone. The factor is 1 in 100,000. So we get told of yet another scenario – that in some imagined chain reaction, chlorine would keep on getting released by the UV until all the ozone was destroyed. But even if we supposed that this could happen, then all of these reactions going on would only further absorb UV, protecting us even more. We would right now be dying from lack of UV light and vitamin D deficiency.»

The cost of dealing with this little bit of Greenie hurt-feelings and bad science went into the billions world-wide - billions that could have been spent giving protesters shower facilities and dental attention. Greenleft Weekly has yet to issue an apology.

Tip o’ hat to John Ray.

Confusion in L'Hexagon

Is this the consequence of the French government spinning too hard in any and all directions? Are they a rich nation, a poor people? Who can even tell anymore?

Selected, not elected, Dominique de Villepin has been appointed PM under what are being made out to be emergency conditons. says he's got a 100 days to structurally modify France's economy to reduce unemployment. His honesty in this matter is refreshing, as are his effort to construct some optimism. In a healthy economic environment, France is showing a disppointing batting average.

A roundup of the european bankers had the following advice for De Villepin:

"My basic message would be to cut regulation...

-Julan Callow, Chief European Economist, Barklays Capital, London

"If Villepain is to succeed, he's going to have to seriously deregulate the French economy, and scrap the 35 hour work week entirely"

- Jim Power, Chief Economist, Friends First, Dublin

We were a socialist country with huge social security payments. We had to reform that, and we are still going through that process. I don't think France really is taking the right approach.

- Gyorgy Barcza, Economist, ING Bank (Hungary), Budapest.

The French elite view some markets as a kind of enemy...

- Carsten Valgreen, Chief Economist, Danske Bank, Copenhagen

In the IHT (Wednesday, page 6), Margaret Blunden points out that not only is Britain quietly more "Gallic" than it's image would indicate, that France is a lot more "Anglo-saxon". Setting aside the tribalist or racial foundations of these characterizations which have become popular in France, she also says that France has already swallowed the "bitter pill" of economic liberalization. The basic indicators show little sign of this, as does a having the most job protection as well as the most job security.

In the same days fishwrap, Thomas Fuller (page 3,) points out that: «The paradox for the French according to the OECD is that despite the layers of job protection, they [the French] feel significantly less secure in their jobs than Americans, Danes, [the] British, or Canadians - all of whom have less legal job protection.»

What they really needed was an enema, not a pill:

"They cannot continue to complain and do nothing," [said the OECD's Raymond] Torres said of France.

The rest of the world is accustomed with today's economic theories, which have benefited billions of people worldwide. France public view (I think somewhat falsely) seem to join a small group of cultures that seems bewildered by the way it functions, among whom are the likes of North Korea and Zimbabwe who are trying hard to keep the world out in one way or another. The policies and indicators reveal what's going on - and it's something which no public affairs effort acting as a placebo can rewrite.

The script, though is a familiar one. Constructed hatreds are made useful by those who want neither to change, nor support themselves. The familiar term is “moocher”, and the socialists of Europe suffer from this affliction greatly. How long, do you think, will the world keep listening to complaints and accusations pointed at any and all directions?

Cut on the Bias

This from Andrew Kinsman, a commenter on Biased-BBC, we find a BBC personality revealing the state of the journalistic bias that they refuse to recognize or address:

«A bit of Googling found THIS on the web (in connection with an industrial dispute in Bradford)

Dear brothers/sisters

Just a short personal message of solidarity - I will raise your dispute in our Chapel when we meet next. I am constantly struck by the small minded penny pinching of media owners who spare no expense for their own largesse.

Your fight is part of a resurgence of grassroots trade unionism that is telling the managers "we're back" in every sector of the economy.

A donation follows.

Venceremos!

Paul Mason
Business Correspondent, BBC Newsnight (personal capacity)

First of all, what's this "we" shit coming from a business correpondant?!? Does he pretend to speak for the BBC? IF he’s speaking for himself, does he thing burying the words “personal capacity” at the end inoculate him from criticism?

Ignore a German

Yes, but only if you’re in an self-abusive mood.
Is wanting to be lectured and guilt-tripped a form of S&M?

Dufus wit' da' rufus	Ducon ou dugenou ?
With lackluster grades in French.	En plus, il parlait le français comme une vache espagnole.
Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ?

Profiles in discouraging arrogance

Mark Steyn points out the obvious common thread in the non-democracies of the world and the low leftist view of pluralism. Delighting in the concentration of power, the European Union elite that wont take no for an answer.

«A couple of days before Sundays referendum on the European constitution, Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Union, let French and Dutch voters know how much he values their opinion:
If at the end of the ratification process, we do not manage to solve the problems, the countries that would have said No, would have to ask themselves the question again, President Juncker told the Belgian newspaper Le Soir.
Got that? You have the right to vote, but only if you give the answer your rulers want you to give. But dont worry, if you dont, well treat you like a particularly backward nursery school and keep asking the question until you get the answer right. Even Americas bossiest nanny-state Democrats dont usually express their contempt for the will of the people quite so crudely.

I didnt see the actual Euro-ballot, but evidently its Check the Yes box if you favor ratification of the E.U. constitution. Check the No box if you favor ratification of the E.U. constitution. For Neither of the Above, check Both of the Above.

Then, as the French polls headed south, we were told, oh well, if its a narrow defeat, that wont make any difference either. Well get the French to vote again and make them give the correct answer this time.

So now were told that French voters 5545 rejection of the constitution is nowhere near the massive overwhelming defeat that would be necessary to derail the thing.

But, in its own perverse wrinkle on this thesis, Europe says gravely that it wont make big constitutional changes on too small a minority

if the French had rejected the constitution by, say, 92% to 8%, well, that might have prompted the E.U. to consider possibly perhaps at least partially rethinking clause 473 paragraph H.

The European establishments occasional acknowledge of the E.U.s democratic deficit hardly begins to cover their disdain for the people...

But it did set me thinking about my post-9/11 trips to the Middle East, where, until Bush and his insane Zionist neocon democracy fetishists came along, Americas allies in the region had spent four decades selling themselves to Washington as a necessary antidemocratic restraint on the baser urges of their primitive peoples. Now who does that sound like?

If the U.S. Constitution begins with We the people, the starting point for the European Constitution is We know better than the people. And in the long run, in Europe as in the Middle East, that wont work.

Unfortunately, the institutional arrogance of the entrenched Eurocracy is all but indestructible. ...The European Union isnt floundering because of a lack of leaders. Its the lack of followers.»

I think that this arrogance of theirs is the cause of their abject inability to win hearts and minds would paste anyone else with. Isn't ironic that leftists and middle-eastern flag burners who are angry about a soldier taking a leak near an airvent reserve the exact same complaint for Americans and the US military?

Show a little blogspheric pride.

As Ray says; Thanks for your support

Going nowhere fast

Encore une chance pour la Fwance

Touche pas à ma came.

Jan Peter Balkenende Endures More Stale Harry Potter References

Mijnheer Eerste Minister loses his halo for presiding over a nation that thinks for herself.



RNW reports in their roundup of the Dutch press a most un-diplomatic scrap arising from the vile EUtopian view that referenda should be a rubber stamp affair, with a 300 million member Supreme Soviet:

«On Saturday, the Belgian Foreign Minister, Karel de Gucht gave what De Telegraaf generously termed an "un-nuanced interview". The intention was to explain his viewpoint on how badly the Dutch government sold the EU constitution referendum in the lead-up to last week's resounding defeat. »

How dare a population think for themselves, eh? True to form, the criticism gets abusive. Nutty tho it is, its a lot more interesting than the usual dreck that we find in the press. Guchts point might have a little to do with the Dutch showing too much free will but mine would be that except for certain departments in life, they dont show enough

«To each his own opinion, one might think. Except, in the interview, he managed to criticize in no particular order: the sexuality of our fallen political warrior, Pim Fortuyn, the haircut of maverick MP Geert Eraserhead Wilders and the fickle decision-making process of the entire Dutch public.

Not content, he went on to deliver a good old-fashioned personal attack on the Prime Minister himself, describing Jan Peter Balkenende as a cross between Harry Potter and a well-behaved, but somewhat stiff, middle class kind-of-guy.»

As if there was anything wrong with not being an self-absorbed twit, or being gay, or the worst crime of all, occasionally respecting the broad range of the public's political views.

«"In whom", he went on to say - digging deeper and deeper - "I can detect no trace of charisma".»

Which is one of the reasons they also dont like George Bush: he is straightforward and rather honest a VERY rare trait in a Western European politician.

Algemeen Dagblad further reports on de Guchts plonk:
«...the government finds these insults "unacceptable". Specifically, Dutch Foreign Affairs Minister Ben Bot is furious...» As well he should be. The Euro-nitwit leadership class is starting to treat one another like they treat Americans. What next? Blame 'hegemony' on the late Pyn Fortuyn?

De Volkskrant adds that according to survey of voters, they found public interest to be reasoned and related to the issues, not braying ignorance:

«Subjects on which they would like to have a say include the issues of elected mayors, the welfare system and the future of the euro.»

But not if Karel de Gucht has anything to say about it.

Frogs make history Frogs still number One	Les grenouilles font un coup historique Les grenouilles toujours numéro Un
No, not the French.	Non, pas les fwançais.
Image : merci à GeorgeS.