Ségolène Royal Shows Presence in the Polls and in the Media Coverage

A commanding figure among France's woman politicians, Ségolène Royal is showing a lot of popularity in the media, something that, according to
polls, is starting to gain her allies inside France's socialist party, as Patrick Jarreau explains.

How to be a winner in the game of life, collectivist style.

If clients can afford your product does that mean you're obliged to resent them? Below are what you find at a typical train station of the current type. This one isn't even a year old.


The stationmaster and employees reserved parking spots are closer to the station door and the platform than the parking spaces for the disabled, and the customers' paid parking spaces.

Typical. Whenever unions and leftists say that they're doing something for the public at large, don't believe them. They're trying to conceal their greed and condescension.

The Name of the Malaise is Tribalism

Any social contract based on buying the populace off with little checks actually stands for very little.

Bariza Khiari, a Socialist senator from Paris, suggests the greatest impediment to purposeful collective action is the array of different fears that are pulling different sections of the population apart. “There are now Arabs who speak of Islamophobia, Jews who speak of anti-Semitism, indigenous French who speak of anti-white racism and blacks who speak of discrimination. Each group is fixed in their own fears. That prefigures a fragmented society,” she says. “We must have a common fear. The principles of the republic are not a given. There is not too much of the republic, there is not enough of it.”

For the moment, France has lost sight of its common destiny. It desperately needs to rediscover it.

But rediscover whose, exactly? The “too much” and “not enough” usually refers to the government redistributing income from some to others while losing a lot of it along the way, as well as creating a whole class civil ‘servants’ larget than any other known since the fall of Communism.

"When we look at the government, we can't help but think there is no future in France," said Axel Cohen, a 16-year-old school student, brandishing an irreverent placard, at a massive march in downtown Paris. That disillusionment, he said, pushed him to protest.

[…]

"France's real problem is a gap between the government and the young people," Cohen said.

In other words, just another tribe seeking undeserved retribution from the rest of society . The only thing that will solve this ‘disillusionment’ is making others responsible for your personal matters, if not your emotional state as well. That’s an awful lot to demand from a stranger.

Barbaren in Frankreich?

Westwatch:

„Ever more Jews are leaving France for Israel. It’s no surprise to anybody, because for approximately five years Jews in France are increasingly being closed in on in frightening measure. Jewish cemeteries are violated, the suburbs are full anti-Jewish Graffiti, North African gangs attack Jews and kidnap them, and antisemites have been hitting it big in Showbiz.”

Dieudonné has said over and over that bin Laden is the worlds greates living public figure. With an ideology admiring fetishized and aestheticized violence and mass murder, what else can you call this admiration other than barbarism?

Worry about the image thing? Sure. It’s time to worry because Dieudo's spittle has been normalized and fed back to a new generation of Europeans. Call them "the leaders of the future" if you will.

Strategic Yogurt production - explained, sort of...

Socialists are learned fools. The difficulties of mathematic tend to scare them out of fields of science and mathematics, and as a branch of the social sciences, economics is best done with a solid mathematical basis. So it comes as a bit of a surprise to find a 59 year old economics instructor who finally comes to the realization that markets can work, and that the social component is made up of something more than the passion play of “the bosses” and “the workers.” Compound that with the fact that people who work by stocks, and the walls of the Marxist edifice keeping reality out starts to leak rather quickly.

The left uses academia as a way of planting its’ ideas deep into the ground of civilization, and rarely accepts the breadth of ideas or the evenhandedness that characterize good research. Nonetheless, observing people in the process of working and running business is unavoidable. From the IHT:

Danielle Scache tries to avoid using the term "capitalism" in her economics class because it has negative connotations in France.

Instead, she teaches her high school students about the market economy, a slightly less controversial term she started using last year after a two-month internship at the dairy giant Danone. That was an experience that did away with more than one of her own prejudices, she said.

"I was surprised to see that people actually enjoyed working in a company," said Scache, who is 59. "Some of them were more enthusiastic than many teachers I know."

[…]

In a 22-country survey published in January, France was the only nation disagreeing with the premise that the best system is "the free-market economy." In the poll, conducted by the University of Maryland, only 36 percent of French respondents agreed, compared with 65 percent in Germany, 66 percent in Britain, 71 percent in the United States and 74 percent in China.

The findings suggest that French reluctance to introduce flexibility into the labor market - the embattled new law makes it easier to fire young workers - goes beyond the reform fatigue and nostalgia for the post-World War II welfare state evident in some other European countries. As Finance Minister Thierry Breton put it last week: "There is a significant lack of economic culture in our country."

Then there’s the indoctrination which is meant to inoculate a student against reality:

And then there are the textbooks. One, published by Nathan and widely used by final-year students, has this to say on p. 137: "One must analyze the salary as purchasing power that you could not cut without sparking a deflationary spiral and thus higher unemployment." Another popular textbook, published by La Découverte, asks on p. 164: "Are there still enough jobs for everyone?" It then suggests that the state subsidize jobs in the public sector: "We can seriously envisage this because our economy allows us already to support a large number of unemployed people."

The truth of this form of economics is even simpler. If you can't make an economy function with concocted theories of that sort, you end up having to rewire nature somehow and accept the inherent flaws and inefficiencies that actually keep everyone poorer. The public is thus punished to prove a weak idea, and made dependant on it to make it indelible. What starts as a desire to please them make a slave out of them.

Thus protectionists, in the words of one economist, "want to do to their own country during peacetime what the country's enemies would wish to do to it during wartime--that is, close its borders to imports."

How this works in a transnational-union-cum-nation, I just don't know. Especially when it comes to harmonising labour practices and "domestic" ownership.

If the intent is to create jobs of stop the bleeding of trade and employment, it also seems like a low performing excercise in pandering and nationalist corporatism. It also eerily reeks of Nazism which remandered industries and constructed an immense welfare state, controlling everything in society that it could.

Economist Walter Williams has explained on many occasions just how flawed any legal measure can be in changing the way an economy functions:

The idea that minimum wage legislation is an anti-poverty tool is simply sheer nonsense. Were it an anti-poverty weapon, we might save loads of foreign aid expenditures simply by advising legislators in the world's poorest countries, such as Haiti, Bangladesh and Ethiopia, to legislate higher minimum wages.

Basically the only effective thing a government can do to positively influence the position of people in an economy is not cause harm to the forces that cause hiring to occur, or the forces that permit salaries to float. Intervention makes them only seem to stop them from floating upward and outsize the cost of living to earnings. That gap is the poverty issue in a nutshell, and no legislative campaign of leftist style good intentions can change that.

Berlusconi gets the Bush treatment

Euro-journalism as the height of sophistication, thoughtfulness, and nuance.



From Saturday’s Le Monde. Don’t miss the flies, the saucepans, or the fact that the artist drew him spanking his sopressata*.

* click on the nose for wisdom.

Pasqua Indicted in the Oil-for-Food Scandal? Hardly a Big Deal, N'est-ce pas?

While Corine Lesnes' two articles on Bush's so far informal troubles, regarding Plamegate as well as the war against terror (articles using harsh words and expressions filled with emotion and whose only domestic quotes come from opponents of the president, quotes which effectively end the article), take up two thirds of a page in the foreign affairs section on page 4; Gérard Davet's single straight-forward, matter-of-fact, ho-hum article on Pasqua's formal indictment in the oil-for-food scandal (Le Monde seems to have waited two or three days after the indictment before printing the piece) is relegated to a sixth of a page (it takes up a quarter page only if you count the Pessin cartoon) in the Politique & Société section on page 14.

A large bulk of the text is filled with quotes by the former interior minister, fellow defendents (and companies implicated, such as Total), and their lawyers (justifications, denials, accusations of witch-hunts, etc).

Okay, okay, so we've reported it. See? See how fair we are? Okay, enough already. Now that that's done — and over with (will you get over it, already?!) — let's get back to serious matters: castigating that horrendous Halliburton, castigating that awful Dubya (i.e., see the top Corine Lesnes article), and castigating that unforgiveable support that Bush has extended to countries such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

Never heard of ‘im, Guv!

Odds on, the issue will be raised in the press if for no other reason that to make the present government pay a price for their attempt to introduce some social and economic realism and sustainability to the intellectual landscape.

Among (psychological) avoiders, everything is about something else as soon as it turns serious, or until the emotional blackmail starts to look useful. Case in point:

«For [Royal], the new jobs law, which would allow younger workers to be hired and fired more easily, is "a scandal" and "a form of violence" against the youth of France.»

See? Violence has just been defined downward – and it’s all about the (26 year old) children.

As for the Pasqua affair, the only thing stopping the reds and greenies from kicking with both feet is that it might infer some legitimacy to deposing Iraq's longstanding tyrant.

After all, it establishes as moral standard which may require action again elsewhere.

Weapons, Weirdos, and Uniforms

Sigh. Le Monde 2 features Martin Kollar's photo portfolio on "another vision of America". As might be expected, the focus throughout is on weapons, weirdos, uniforms (or uniformity), and the lack of security…

Much more interesting is 20 years' worth of Hiroshi Hamaya photos from his native Japan…

"Les Français sont en train de scier la branche sur laquelle ils sont assis et s'accrochent alors même que l'arbre est en train de pourrir"

When a law gets enacted by the president of the land, but he says it must not be applied, what is this called?

asks Meg Bortin.

"Abracadabrantesque" is a word the French are using to describe the odd situation facing the country now that President Jacques Chirac has signed his government's youth employment contract into law, while at the same time instructing employers not to use it to hire anyone.

The law has been in effect since Sunday. On Monday, Labor Minister Jean- Louis Borloo caused more bemusement by sending a letter to 220 employer organizations repeating that they should not use the new law for hiring, and informing them that his ministry would not be printing any contracts of the type authorized by the law.

Never the sort to bow to authority, the satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaîné announced Wednesday on its front page that it had nonetheless hired a 25-year-old fellow under the new First Employment Contract, known here as the CPE.

"Nothing could be simpler," it said. "No form, no paperwork to fill in, it can be done in a split-second."

The newspaper also printed a catalog of words commentators have used to describe France's current predicament: "absurd," "incomprehensible," "surreal," "calamitous" and many more.

"Abracadabrantesque," which made the list, was used after Chirac addressed the nation on television Friday night to try to resolve the crisis, which has brought more than a million people into the streets. The head of the opposition Socialists' parliamentary group, Jean-Marc Ayrault, called Chirac's plan an "abracadabrantesque construction" concocted "in the singular aim of reconciling the diktat of his prime minister with the refusal of the French."

The Czechs and Slovaks don't seem to feel much sympathy for the "anachronistic" worries of the French or for "frigid", "sclerotic", and "lazy" France, write Martin Plichta and Anne Rodier, while Jean-Pierre Langellier interviews Chris Patten.

Le problème, c'est qu'ils résistent de plus en plus aux changements qui affectent, surtout, la qualité de vie de certains groupes bien protégés. Les étudiants défendent leur droit à un emploi à vie même si cela maintient au chômage beaucoup d'autres gens. C'est une manière excessivement conservatrice d'envisager la solidarité sociale.

La majorité des étudiants veulent être fonctionnaires. Il est admirable que les Français continuent d'être aussi fiers de servir leur Etat. Mais leur manque d'esprit d'aventure, cette volonté de faire la même chose toute leur vie, je trouve cela assez déprimant.…

On a dit aux Français pendant des années que leur modèle social était parfait. Il est donc difficile de changer de message, à moins d'expliquer clairement le but à atteindre. D'un autre côté, je ressens une certaine sympathie pour un premier ministre qui essaie d'améliorer ce modèle. Dans ce genre de situation, il y a toujours des gens qui disent, après coup, qu'ils s'y seraient mieux pris.

Oui, peut-être… M. de Villepin a au moins essayé. Le pire pour la France et pour ses nombreux jeunes chômeurs serait de renoncer purement et simplement aux réformes.

Pour moi l'essentiel, c'est d'expliquer de manière intellectuellement convaincante que la France ne peut opérer, avec son économie sophistiquée, derrière une sorte de ligne Maginot. L'Europe a besoin d'une France forte et confiante. Sans cela, on est condamné à une croissance chancelante, et on ne pourra résoudre les vrais problèmes démographiques qui nous assaillent.…

D'une personne à l'autre, les styles politiques diffèrent. Mais les syndicats ont-ils vraiment le rôle de faire descendre périodiquement les gens dans la rue pour empêcher les réformes? C'est économiquement inepte et politiquement égoïste.

Will the French ever learn? Don't bet on it. Acknowledging European scepticism, Alain Touraine uses a "but" to come down in favor of French sensibilities. As for the Czechoslovak story, by the use of their vocabulary, typically, the MSM reporters spin it in a favorable way for …the French (the few "solidaristic Czechs", those who are "understanding" and show "sensitivity", are mentioned by Plichta and Rodier, as opposed to the Slovak press which …"went wild").

Elle avait plus de couilles que Chiraq

Ses couilles sur un plateau ? N'est pas Thatcher qui veut. La Fwance, pays d'EUnuques.

When is Election Called a Coup?

We finally start to see the US MSM doing what the western Euro-lefty media have been pissing their pants over: lefty revolutionaries acting out the feelings of well-to-do lefties in the developed world, and are otherwise pleased by ANYTHING they think will upset the US. Today Peru, tomorrow the world, but not for them. They still need the capitalism that props up what's left of the first world economies, I guess.

Then again, the White House seems like it couldn't care less, as long as an election is representative and free. The fact is that the ones who have shown themselves to be really fearful of free elections are the ones who seem to find themselves unable to live with their outcomes.

«Then came Bolivia, where President Evo Morales, a socialist and former coca grower, won a landslide victory in December. Morales has been in office just two months, and although he hasn't instituted any major economic reforms yet, a picture of Che Guevara already hangs in the presidential palace.»

The want to call it a shoe-in another step in an October revolution. My Peruvian sources say it’s more like a toss up as the Buenos Aires Herald is reporting.

So much for an unbiased media that takes care to not influence public opinion, attitudes, and the zeitgeist. In the even of a victory for the candidate of the right, the word ‘coup’ is sure to pop up somewhere.

How would these same scribblers act if someone suggested to them that they should make their last vote count?

EU cuts off aid to the Pali death cult

Perhaps a fevered moment, possibly a flash of awareness, but hopefully a newfound notion of common sense.

After all without the sight of the stick, what good is a carrot?

"I ask you this from the bottom of my heart", Mr President

Watch the extent to which members of the audience rise in defence of the mainstream media on this ABC News program when President Bush is asked about the negative media coverage in Iraq (Danke zu Davids Medienkritik).

"With Berlusconi in the Government, the Situation Is Worse Than It Has Ever Been Here", Says a Mafia Opponent in Sicily

Typical. Only days before Italy heads towards electons, France's MSM chooses to dredge out a story on the Sicilian mafia in which Marie-Claude Decamps incriminates Berlusconi, the man who, we are told, "has isolated his country in Europe" (é vero; because of Iraq, Italy is isolated from such countries as Britain, Poland, Denmark, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, etc, etc, etc), whereas Prodi's Italy "would follow a more nuanced line".

Coming to a Bookstore Near You…

Due out on May 12:

BBC nose-candy advertised as straight dope

The BBC’s very own “Mr. Breathless” is at it again, this time with (surprise, surprise) what blogress Adloyada calls sympathy for the terrorists.

I though they hit bottom last night when they kept on gushing all over Valerie Plame – hype, patrimony, political setup, and treason notwithstanding, and unmentioned since the facts of story don't fit the world view they have.

They really need to cut it out with their usual “concerned-lefty” political schtick when it comes to wondering why the rest of the world doesn’t think like them. At least Justin Webb has a grasp of it – Biased-BBC profiles a comment he had on America’s favorite crypto-commie news elf which strikes me to just as funny as it is telling about the American left's ongoing campaign to appear somewhat normal.

Why la Pensée Unique Dominates in France and Europe

The Wall Street Journal was writing about the Supreme Court and America, but we are sure the average reader of this blog will be able to figure out how this translates into la pensée unique in France:

The writer graciously allowed that Justice Kennedy's "views are evolving" (translation: becoming more liberal), and that there is something "refreshing about a justice who genuinely seems to have an open mind" (translation: someone who doesn't vote with Antonin Scalia). Overall point: Keep it up, sir, and we'll soon be elevating you to the pantheon with Brandeis, Black and Brennan.

Federal appeals-court judge Laurence Silberman once shrewdly described this media practice as the "Greenhouse effect." He was referring to the fact that a Justice who voted in politically correct fashion would receive laudatory coverage by New York Times reporter Linda Greenhouse, the alpha liberal of the Supreme Court press pack. If the Justice typically joined with conservatives, however, he'd soon find himself characterized as somebody else's clone, or not very bright, or a traitor to his race, or some other derogation.

Where Are the Mickey Mouse Ears?…

Nearly four decades after his death, the legend of Che Guevara has grown worldwide. In this new book, Alvaro Vargas Llosa separates the myth from the reality of Che's legacy, and shows that Che's ideals were a re-hash of notions about centralized power that have long been the major source of suffering and misery in the underdeveloped world. With testimonies from witnesses of Che's actions, Alvaro Vargas Llosa's detailed account of the "real Che" sets the record straight by exposing the delusion at the heart of the Che phenomenon. Vargas Llosa shows that Che's legacy—making the law subservient to the most powerful, crushing any and all dissent, and concentrating wealth under the guise of "social equality"—is not the solution to poverty and injustice but is the core of the problem.

Alvaro Vargas Llosa is the director of the Center on Global Prosperity at The Independent Institute, the coauthor of The Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot, and the author of Liberty for Latin America (gracias para Arthur Wneir — post updated with suggested links from our readers).

Book browsing

I tried to find a copy of the Livre Noir du Communisme today. The FNAC aux Halles didn't have it so I went over to the FNAC Ternes. They had the Livre Noir de la Condition Féminine prominently placed, but still no Black Book of Communism. Here are some of the books that were positioned center stage:

Culture du nouveau capitalisme : "New Capitalism" written by an NYU nutcase.
Made in America, le déclin de la marque USA : the decline of America as a 'brand'

Prisonnier 325 Camp Delta : De Vénissieux à Guantanamo : Prisoner 325 Delta Camp : from Vénissieux (French shithole suburb outside of Lyon) to Gitmo (... and back, we hope)
La filière terroriste du FBI contre Cuba : The FBI's accusations of terrorist against Cuba
La Chute de la CIA (l'histoire vraie qui a inspiré le film Syriana) : The Fall of the CIA (with a bright red banner wrapped around bragging that this is the true story that inspired the film 'Syriana').