Behind the Façades in France: What expats and the mainstream media (French and American alike) fail to notice (or fail to tell you) about French attitudes, principles, values, and official positions…
Le Monde Al-Jazeera on the Seine equates peaceful Christian evangelists, fast growing despite France's secular ayatollahs, with dangerous cults and sounds the alarm in a full page article.
Mais Le Monde Al-Jazira sur Seine, toujours aussi lâche, ne pipe pas mot au sujet des vrais dangers posés par la deuxième religion de la Fwance.
Sarkozy explodes the myth of the hypothetical far-right bogeyman regularly brandished by the France's dying establishment press (Libération and Le Monde are both surviving thanks to a drip-feed) and states clearly that the danger of political extremism lies squarely to the left of the French political spectrum.
N'en déplaise aux vieux pédés aigris du 8ème arr., les sidaïques violents d'Act-Up sont renvoyés dans les cordes par un Sarko combatif qui cloue le bec à un Libé PropagandaStaffel qui perd son latin.
…nearly two months after the $35 million U.N.-backed probe that collected all those documents exposed just how troubled the program was, there has been no rush by the authorities in question to study itwrites the AP's Nick Wadhams (merci à Robert Tracinski). Nor do any of the European media outlets seem to have made much about it. (And why should they? It is not a scandal that involves the continent's favorite bogeyman. It's true that it's a subject far less interesting than tales of American torture.)
Some experts suspect there are governments that don't want to investigate their own complicity, or that treat bribery as the price of doing business abroad, or simply have judicial machinery that grinds slowly.Of course, we are told that besides the United States, some "of the most active prosecutors are in … France".
…the most prominent Jordanian mentioned in the report, Fawaz Zureikat, … who has denied any wrongdoing, offers a widely held claim that the oil-for-food investigation is a largely U.S.-led campaign to discredit the United Nations.What did we say?
Mr Haidari recalled the 1982 massacre at Dujail, where Saddam is accused of orchestrating the mass reprisals in retaliation for an alleged attempt on his lifewrites the Daily Telegraph's Adrian Blomfield (shookhran to Robert Tracinski) in news which, unless I am mistaken, French media has not made a whole hell of a lot about. (It's true that it's a subject far less interesting than tales of American torture.)
Mr Haidari, who was only 14 at the time, told how he and all 43 members of his family were rounded up and taken to the Ba'ath party headquarters in Dujail.
"I saw my brother being tortured in front of my eyes," he said, looking straight at Saddam. "I was terrified. They would take one of us away and he would return in a sheet, dripping in blood."
Seven of his brothers were executed, he testified. Like so many Iraqis, he has no idea, he said, where they were buried.
The killings at Dujail were by no means the worst of the atrocities that Saddam and his henchmen are alleged to have orchestrated.
In comparison to the massacre of thousands at a time in the Kurdish north or the Shia south, only 147 people were killed. But prosecutors say the evidence in Dujail was easier to compile and have promised that there will be more charges brought against the former president.
Mr Haidari told the court that he was taken to a prison in Baghdad where children even younger than he, some only nine years old, were held in terrible conditions.
Beatings and electric shocks were regularly administered. Some of his fellow prisoners had the skin ripped from their bodies. "I cannot express all that suffering and pain that we suffered in the 70 days inside.''
…The more Saddam seemed to shrink, the bolder the witness became. "I hold Saddam responsible for detaining me and my family and ruining my future," he said.
"What do you want for Christmas?" the young Marine asked.Oliver North takes on local perspectives as he discusses many Americans' (and most Europeans') conviction that to have service members leave Iraq asap is the best thing the Bush administration can do — for everyone involved.
It was the middle of the night, and we were standing atop a heavily sandbagged "strongpoint" known as "Outpost Horea" in downtown Ramadi, Iraq -- long the bloodiest city in this very bloody country. In the dark, the Iraqi soldier standing watch beside the American looked toward us as a cold breeze rustled through the camouflage netting over our heads.
"What do I want for Christmas?" I repeated, somewhat surprised by the question. "I want you to get home safely."
The 21-year old Tennessean, girded in 65 lbs. of armored flak jacket, a night-vision equipped helmet, grenades and several hundred rounds of ammunition reflected on that for a moment and replied, "so do I."
Then, quietly, from the young Iraqi soldier beside us, words in broken English that stunned me: "As do I -- but not too soon."
"I HATED IT" — Suzy Wetflower, BSU Business Review
"It's the worst piece of junk to come onto the market in 50 years"
— Bobby Sludgeworm, New York Mail
"The writers should be taken out and shot to put us all out of our misery"
— Bradley Sleeswart, Fibbes
From a renegade team of international corporate surveillance experts comes a behind-the-scenes, riveting tale of one of America's biggest corporations struggling to bring best practice to life in a cruelly competitive businessworld.
Features business story from a team of international corporate espionage experts, detailing the actions of the board and senior managers in one of America's biggest corporations, as they struggle to bring best practice to life.
Newsbusters.org points out an article published in the New York Times on Nov. 7, 1982:«A Federal appeals court has ruled that the National Security Agency may lawfully intercept messages between United States citizens and people overseas, even if there is no cause to believe the Americans are foreign agents, and then provide summaries of these messages to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. »
Best of the Web points out the irony of Democrats going after the White house on this since they insisted a year ago that the war on terror should be fought by aggressively using intelligence assets instead of the military:«This is looking increasingly like another effort by hostile journalists to gin up a fake scandal and discredit the administration. And once again, Democrats are falling for it. From the Associated Press:
Or not prevent them, as the case may be.
Domestic spying authorized by the White House "doesn't uphold our Constitution" and President Bush offered a "lame" defense in recent public appearances, Sen. John Kerry said Tuesday.
This is proof, as if any were needed, that Kerry is not serious. Remember that in January 2004, Kerry described the war against terror as "primarily an intelligence and law-enforcement operation" rather than a military one. If he is to be believed--admittedly, a big "if"--a President Kerry would have been more concerned with terrorists' "rights" than with gathering intelligence to prevent terror attacks.»
What’s always been true to a degree, it regardless of the delusions the artistic have about how a society can be run, they hate to be “collectivized” themselves.
EU Rota: Elites Howlin’ Wolf.«A French government crackdown on digital piracy backfired Thursday as lawmakers rebelled by endorsing amendments to legalize the online sharing of music and movies instead of punishing it.»
On hearing of the announcement that property rights would not be enforced, the musicians’ union, whose members are normally what we think of as the core of the morally repugnant elite in that it’s wealthy members idolize socialism were rightly disturbed. Rightly disturbed in a right-wing kind of way:«The proposed royalties duty amounts to a "Sovietization" of the arts, said Bernard Miyet, president of the French music composers' and publishers' organization SACEM.
Yes, they are. And so was the membership, generally, dreaming of this when it came to everyone else.
"You're talking about an administered price, set by a commission without regard to the music and film economy," Miyet said.»
Miyet has long fought this one with the GATT as a “roving ambassador for privacy issues” to the U.N., and is rather sincere. His statement points out several things though – that the GATT (and by extension, the UN,) permitted the value of an artists work to decay by not paying much attention to copyright issues when it came to anyone, and that an international body can’t accomplish something that national laws and private organizations can do better on their own.
All the fits of badly thought out “good intentions” in the EU, and some of its’ member governments risks turning them into miniature UNs, only more dangerous. They can enforce their lunacy with the instruments of government and not just an imaginary body of undocumented and undemocratic international law.
Alain Frachon has an article about Pascal Lamy, the French "free-market leftist" heading the WTO.
Strange, then, that Piotr Smolar (and Jean-Pierre Langellier) should now be reporting that
two months ago. Abdelmalek Droukdal [the new emir of the Groupe Salafiste pour la Prédication et le Combat] pointed at France as being Islam's "enemy nr 1" … the most troubling part of the Uclat report [Unité de coordination de la lutte antiterroriste] concerns "the Islamists' perception of France's foreign and domestic policy." "Our country is one of the most criticized by the Islamist movement on the planet".Meanwhile, Richard Schittly and Michel Bôle-Richard reports on Bernard Planche, a French hostage in Baghdad. As for Catherine Bédarida, she notes that during a speech by Saddam Hussein at his trial, the sound was cut off. The France 3 journalist's comment?
The rest of his declaration was censored by the United StatesSince the dictator had been talking about being beaten and tortured (by the Americans), the logical conclusion that the viewer must make is self-evident: America's policies — once again — are wrong, hypocritical, treacherous, criminal, and self-defeating. If only the Yanks would listen to the French, things would go much better for them…
«Apart from Adolf Hitler, Gerhard Schröder is Germany’s most repulsive chancellor ever.»
says Paul Belein«During his seven years in office – which ended last month – the Socialist politician forged Berlin into an alliance with France, where his friend, the French crook Jack Chirac, is in charge, and with Russia, through his friendship with former KGB chief Vladimir Putin. A compulsive America-basher, Schröder did tremendous harm to the Atlantic Alliance. We now know why. Barely three weeks after his resignation on November 22 it turns out that Herr Schröder’s private pension scheme is a lucrative job on the Kremlin’s payroll. Last Friday the former German chancellor was appointed foreign policy advisor of Gazprom, the Russian state-owned oil and gas company, and chairman of the board of commissioners of NEGP, the Russian-controlled consortium that is building a gas pipeline from Siberia to Germany.»
There is further brilliance from the constellation Belein. Read up. Word. Moustache man knows.
Salut Frank,
Yesterday, on TV, I saw your president admitting he went to invade Iraq based on wrong information. I thought, we are lucky that we are no more during the cold war. Otherwise, he would have blown up the planet.
He is still acting to destroy the planet by not doing anything to preserve the planet in favor of business.
Hope soon you will find a more responsible man at the top of the most powerful country!
That's for politic, as my good friend, I wish you a merry Christmas!
Regards,
Frank
«Early on Wednesday December 13 at Hargnies, close to Maubeuge in a camp of itinerant ‘travelers’[in the British use of the term], Police discovered six men held in a van and an RV. In a state of hypothermia, they were led to the hospital of Maubeuge. The victims, all men of roughly forty years in age, left the hospital of Maubeuge in the afternoon before being questioned by Police. According to sources close to the investigation, the victims were sequestered for several months to divert their social security benefits. Eight people suspected of holding the victims against their will to take their benefits money were placed in police custody at Avesnes-sur-Helpe.»Yet another reason to be 'compassionate' in that lefty kind of way.
«A hurricane exposes the poverty of America's inner cities, and the champions of big government make political hay out of it. Riots lay bare the underclass in Paris's suburbs, and the French are astounded that such a thing could exist in their country.»
Patrick Chisholm writes in the Christian Science Monitor. «Bill Clinton, John Kerry, John Edwards, and others seized on the New Orleans issue to blame the Bush administration for causing or exacerbating that city's poverty. This took an amazing amount of chutzpah, considering that New Orleans and Louisiana are longtime strongholds of their own political party.
Regardless of anything else going on, it’s hard to say that the economic argument isn’t also valid in any event. Only ideologues who can’t cool it from time to time find a ‘single bullet’ theory to explain the world to themselves.
In fact, Democrats have long controlled almost all of America's inner cities. The Brookings Institution recently ranked the 50 largest cities in the United States according to their concentrations of poverty. A quick check reveals that the 10 cities with the highest concentrations of poverty have Democratic mayors, with the exception of New York City (whose Republican mayor is something of an anomaly in a Democratic-dominated city). By contrast, the few Republican big-city mayors hail mainly from cities with the least concentration of poverty.
So why is there so much unemployment in America's inner cities and in France's suburbs? It is largely because onerous government regulations dissuade employers from offering jobs to low-skilled people.
Probably the biggest barrier to job creation for the low-skilled is the minimum wage. This problem is most pronounced in France, where the national minimum wage is about $9 per hour. It is a no-brainer why unemployment among rioting Muslim youths is so high: French employers do not consider their skills valuable enough to justify paying them $9 per hour. Not helping the situation are the country's rigid labor laws, which make businesses even more reluctant to hire.
So the solutions advocated by the champions of big government produce a pull/push effect: the poor get pulled into certain areas, and employers get pushed out. Poverty deepens.
Unless that cycle is broken, expect a continuation of poverty in America's inner cities, and additional manifestations of discontent among France's underclass.»
They all volunteeredwrite USA Today's Tim Kane and James Jay Carafano (thanks to Jack Wakeland).
The U.S. soldiers pitching in with hurricane relief along the Gulf Coast and those fighting and dying in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere decided, on their own, to serve their nation.
Or was the decision made so freely? Could it be that unscrupulous Pentagon recruiters duped them, taking advantage of their poverty, their lack of education and the bleak futures they share as members of the USA's urban underclass?
That's the view of some critics, such as New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, who writes that “very few” of the soldiers fighting in Iraq “are coming from the privileged economic classes,” and that there would likely be no war if rich kids had to fight. According to Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., social equality demands reinstatement of the draft, which he justifies by asserting that “the most privileged Americans are underrepresented or absent.” Herbert concludes that there is “something very, very wrong with this picture.”
What's “very, very wrong” with the Rangel-Herbert picture is that it has no factual basis.
According to a comprehensive study of all enlistees for the years 1998-99 and 2003 that The Heritage Foundation just released, the typical recruit in the all-volunteer force is wealthier, more educated and more rural than the average 18- to 24-year-old citizen is. Indeed, for every two recruits coming from the poorest neighborhoods, there are three recruits coming from the richest neighborhoods.
… In fact, since the 9/11 attacks, more volunteers have emerged from the middle and upper classes and fewer from the lowest-income groups. In 1999, both the highest fifth of the nation in income and the lowest fifth were slightly underrepresented among military volunteers. Since 2001, enlistments have increased in the top two-fifths of income levels but have decreased among the lowest fifth.
Allegations that recruiters are disproportionately targeting blacks also don't hold water. First, whites make up 77.4% of the nation's population and 75.8% of its military volunteers, according to our analysis of Department of Defense data.
…Maintaining the strength and size of our all-volunteer military isn't always easy. But Americans step up when their country needs them. To suggest the system is failing or exploiting citizens is wrong. And to make claims about the nature of U.S. troops to discredit their mission ought to be politically out of bounds.
