Sarkozy's "embedded spokesman"

"Pendant des années, j'ai biberonné du Madelin. A droite, c'était le seul qui moulinait vraiment. Mais j'ai compris qu'il n'aurait jamais le pouvoir, et Sarkozy m'a guéri de mon libéralisme théocratique."

The person in charge of Nicolas Sarkozy's communication department (aka the president's spokesman), explains Philippe Ridet in a page-long portrait, is David Martinon, a former deputy spokesman to foreign minister Hubert Védrine as well as a person once close to Alain Madelin until he understood that the closest thing in France to a free-market ideology would never gain power…

BitchGate

Given current usage, "bitch" is not strong enough of a translation into American English. I'd go with "cunt".

Shamnesty International

The NGO that's got to go.

BBC: Beach Break Channel

Flotsam and jetsam.

All the Same Buzzwords

From Pétain to PS



“European framework,” “tied to the land,” “struggle of the worker” – none of the arguments seems to change.

The Lisbon Strategy is working splendidly

"For anyone whose dream is still some ideal of European unity, the mere fact that each competing camp won at this summit was, of itself, a defeat."

From Chicago to Bercy

"En une minute, j'ai compris que l'immense liberté dont j'avais bénéficié, comme patronne d'un groupe d'avocats autonome, était restée au bord du lac à Chicago."

Coming to France's finance ministry, writes Marion Van Renterghem, is Christine Lagarde, who was "chairman" of the Baker & McKenzie law firm in Illinois.

One thing to notice in the piece is that although she lived, and worked, for umpteen years in America, no American, coworker or other, is interviewed about Christine Lagarde; in typical Gallic journalistic fashion, only Frenchmen (and -women) are. (As usual, only those lucid beings can be counted on to say anything profound.)

The Generosity of Europe's Solidaristic Health Care Systems

In yet another example of ultra-successful health care program in a society whose legendary generosity, solidarity, avant-gardism that Michael Moore's Sicko was correct to praise over the rooftops (although French officials might simply be James Bond fans), we learn from Robert Solé that an invalid by the name of Jean-Claude Paris will be taken in charge for a daily amount of 700, no, 70 Euros (uh, wait a minute, lemme check that amount again)…

Typical French family gathering

Encore un qui voulait voter Hollande. Some unemployed loser who dressed up like a woman and prostituted himself wound up getting snuffed by his main squeeze. Vive la Fwance !

Qu'ils crèvent tous la gueule ouverte dans leur propre merde

57% of those animals that are called Palestinians have a favorable view of Bin Laden.

Wall Street Poet

Jules Crittenden asks "I wonder if al-Qaeda plans to put out any of Daniel Pearl’s haiku?" Terrorist detainees scratch rubbishy gibberish into styrofoam cups and find a US university press to gush over the stuff. Around the same time, an acknowledged American poet has to go to a French language publisher to be read.



More terrorist poetry here ...

Money in the Bank?

Who would put their money elsewhere than in Fwance?

Moral high ground

The Germans don't have it and wouldn't recognize it if it bit them in their EUtopic asses.

If They Want To Count Corpses, Why Not Count These Too?

Hint: not civilians.

EUtopia at its Best

A spate of purple helmet stories can’t be far off:

Leading NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) has urged the EU and NATO to make its future peacekeeping operations in Kosovo subject to law, after a string of failures by existing "accountability" structures to investigate allegations of criminal behaviour by international personnel.

By “law” they seem to mean something they’d have a hand in writing, of course. That no-one ever elected HRW doesn’t seem to register any more in this one of their imperious declarations as any other one they’ve issues.

The EU effort - the biggest of its kind in the union's history - is to see 1,600 policemen and 72 civilian officials deploy in January, if UN talks on Kosovo's status end quickly. An EU preparatory office in Pristina - the EUPT - began work in April with 40 staff but has now grown to over 200 personnel, reports indicate.

The EU policemen will be supported by 16,000 soldiers drawn from 35 countries, including the US, Turkey and Ukraine, as well as most EU states. The military force - currently called KFOR - is under NATO command and has already been working alongside UNMIK since the end of the civil war eight years ago.

And to think that if deploying 1600 cops in their own back-yard for their own security isn’t a giant sacrifice in the interest of people in, say, South Africa and Thailand, imagine that it needs an “international” coalitions of 16 000 soldiers to back it up. 10 to 1, even when we all know that violence never solved anything!

But a fresh HRW report out Thursday (14 June) suggests the system is breaking down. In February 2006 the Ombudsperson lost his mandate to oversee international bodies. The human rights panel has not yet started work. The oversight committee last met in 2004. The UNMIK commission has been invisible so far.

Yup. You read that right: the controlling authority is being deemed by an NGO to be illegitimate to oversee and apply the law to alphabet soup “International bodies” and NGOs.

A two-state solution: just give up and let the NGOs administer the EU. Barring that, I’m sure temporary administration of the EU’s back yard by the UN might calm EUvian nerves over the state of their own administrative capacity. I suppose the wet dream for them would be blue helmets keeping the peace in Brussels, with all of its’ attendant zen and good PR juju.

Une "catastrophe sanitaire" et une "Omerta" : "L'hôpital a eu du mal à avouer ses bêtises"

"L'erreur, on peut la comprendre, même la pardonner, mais ce qui est inadmissible, c'est que rien n'a été fait pour soigner mon père. L'hôpital savait mais ne lui a donné aucune chance pour s'en sortir"

"On m'a menti" : Sandrine Blanchard has an article about the type of ultra-successful health care program that French government authorities didn't brag to Michael Moore about and that "Sicko" didn't tell the members of Michael Moore's fan club about. "Vous comprenez, dit [Jean-Luc Genay], l'hôpital Jean-Monnet a caché trop de choses, ils ont menti, alors on ne fait plus confiance."

Une "catastrophe sanitaire", a reconnu, le 8 juin, Roselyne Bachelot, la nouvelle ministre de la santé, dans un entretien accordé au Parisien. Un radiophysicien qui modifie le protocole de radiothérapie et se trompe dans le paramétrage, des médecins radiothérapeutes qui minimisent les plaintes des malades en les attribuant à des "complications classiques", des autorités locales qui ne mesurent pas l'ampleur de la crise... cette affaire comporte une chaîne incroyable d'erreurs et de défaillances.

…"Tout ça, c'est à cause d'un manque de personnel pour faire fonctionner ce genre d'appareil, pense-t-il. Les machines, elles sont de plus en plus sophistiquées mais il faut des hommes pour les utiliser."

…"C'est un péché d'orgueil de la part des médecins", considère M. Colombel. Mal suivis, peu écoutés, les malades "sont restés livrés à eux-mêmes", souligne l'IGAS. Solange Didierlaurent le confirme avec rage : "On a été abandonnés." Son père, âgé de 84 ans, est mort il y a quelques semaines.

…cette affaire dramatique est "révélatrice d'un dysfonctionnement dans la prise en charge de la souffrance des patients et d'un manque de démarche qualité". De son côté, M^e Welzer parle d'un "dossier emblématique" qui illustre "la chape de plomb qui prévaut sur les erreurs médicales".

Le Monde Critic Eats Bad Mushrooms, Survives

Despite the fuss over prices. the critics have given Streisand, 65, a warm reception. Le Monde's review said that carping over ticket costs was an injustice where the New York diva was concerned. "Streisand is a work of art. She is Broadway, love, la fête, perfection. She has absolute mastery of the stage and the talent and professionalism that demonstrate the power of America and the feebleness of the rest of the world,” said le Monde

Where the Morally Repugnant Elite Meet to Bleat

The Telegraph bills a new play it reviewed this weekend as a “skewering of the liberal rich” but like so many things in Britain, the title is a polite mask to what is often itself concealing what the chatter-ati, the “provision wing of Radio 4” do in the open: live on a hateful envy of one thing or another.

Clay and Kelly live in a luxurious home with their cute young daughter and their new baby son. Kelly has a well-paid office job, so Clay has become a doting house-husband, and this apparently enviable couple have invited the rest of the family for Thanksgiving.

Everything goes gloriously wrong. It's clear that Clay can't abide his cynical plastic surgeon of a brother, Cash, and the golden couple also look down on Cash's glamour puss of an East European girlfriend who has alarmingly non-PC views on everything from gipsies (kill them) to smoking (best done in front of the kiddies).

But here’s the twist. This is why it’s okay to detest con Panto these “elite” libs:

The play is American, which will give English viewers a chance to say: "Well, of course, we are nothing like as bad as that."

Wanna bet? Whose behaviour do these “we are all Tibetan” types affect when they feel so damn earthier than though? That’s right: Europeans, particularly those of the English southeast sub-species – the one of their imagination.

I hope you already ate, because it gets worse. Our “man of the people” director is himself doing this for more than just publicity, it has an ugly tint of the same complex of sneering condescension and attention-seeking behaviour to those who would are just as boxed in and objectified to being looked down on as the stage characters: the audience.

When Dominic Cooke took over as artistic director of the Royal Court this year, he promised to reflect the theatre's predominantly middle-class audience back to itself. For a venue best known for gritty, in-your-face, kitchen-sink drama, this was a revolutionary manifesto.

Or is it an S & M thing, some sort of constitutional vestige of Elizabethan Equusian winky-winky for the very, very special, wisdom dispensing lefty pestilence that keeps scratching around for a new “fabulous” cause?

In fact it almost seems like the reason they want so much to be like you and me, is because they can’t really stand themselves.

Spitting Fury at Anybody Who Might Disagree With Them

We have a vested interest in creating panic

says a scientist (John Christie) in a documentary from Britain's TV Channel 4, The Great Global Warming Swindle (check out Part 4 for apocalyptic warnings from the 1970s about …global cooling — see 3:10 minutes from end).

[The movement] could be used [by "the global warming fraternity"] to legitimize a whole suite of myths that already existed: anti-cars, anti-growth, anti-development, and above all anti-that great Satan — the U.S.

See Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore's testimony in Part 5 about the two reasons for the shift to climate becoming a major focal point; Tim Ball's broken car analogy at 1:50 from the end in Part 6 ("the science is that bad"); and scientists' responses to charges of being in the pay of multinationals in Part 8.

The World War II Martyrs That France's Communists Keep Secret in Order to Hide the PCF's Positions During the Early 1940s

…on a vu ressurgir … les stéréotypes et clichés d'une "histoire" de la Résistance et du PCF qu'on croyait définitivement rangée au magasin des mythes et légendes.

…un petit arrangement avec l'histoire … consista à mettre en pleine lumière des militants arrêtés avant la rupture du pacte germano-soviétique et à rejeter dans l'ombre mémorielle ceux dont l'attitude soulignait trop crûment les aspects les moins avouables d'un passé que le PCF devenu patriote, républicain et résistant voulait faire oublier.

During World War II, France's communist party not only appropriated heroes (as well as non-heroes) for political purposes (while attempting to negotiate the continued publication of L'Humanité with the occupying Nazis, in other words doing anything but joining the resistance movement), write Jean-Marc Berlière and Sylvain Boulouque in Le Monde, the PCF even obscured the memory of true heroes, washing "one of the most troubled and ambiguous periods of its history" with "the blood of the hostages" while setting up "a moral obstacle towards any criticism of its attitude."

Accaparer cette tragédie à son seul profit et pour sa seule gloire, comme l'a fait le PCF depuis 1942, relève de la récupération politique. Les otages fusillés n'étaient pas tous communistes, Guy Môquet n'était pas le seul jeune... On chercherait en vain dans les discours prononcés à Châteaubriant, sur les plaques et dans les écrits dressés à la gloire de la résistance communiste, les noms de Christian Rizzo, Marcel Bourdarias, Fernand Zalkinov et leurs camarades, arrêtés, jugés, condamnés et exécutés au printemps 1942 pour avoir fait ce que Guy Môquet, en communiste discipliné, n'avait pas fait.

Ces jeunes militants commirent les premiers attentats sur ordre d'un parti qui mit des années à en assumer la paternité après avoir calomnié leurs auteurs ("ceux qui ont tué le Feldkommandant Hotz sont ceux qui ont incendié le Reichstag"), avant de les effacer purement et simplement de la mémoire. Si la dernière lettre de Guy Môquet est émouvante, les leurs ne le sont pas moins, mais personne ne rappelle leur mémoire...

Avec le sang des otages, le Parti communiste lavait une des périodes les plus troubles et ambiguës de son histoire en même temps qu'il dressait un obstacle moral à toute critique de son attitude.

Support Denmark!

True West and real balls ...



Tomorrow it's going to be Carlsberg and Danish salami all day.

Fears of self-censorship at French news outlets

Censorship? Why would anyone think that the French preSS is anything but unbridled and impartial.?

Those Bitter Old Men in their Flying Machines

If it weren’t for that nasty Eurofighter and those dastardly dastardly Americans making some kind of aircraft or other, this world-beating, sooper-dooper, super-plane wouldn’t be... well... doing badly!

As for the world-beating salesman... who says people need to shave!

Thanks to Michael who adds:

I suppose that when you lose every sales campaign to the F15/F16, it must eventually not be your own fault. How lucid, how French.

The New Paranoia About Outsiders...

...same as the old paranoia about outsiders.

Fake Solidarity is not Charity

While some are “philosophizing ‘til it hurts”, others are being generous with their time and earnings:

Gaudiani said Americans give twice as much as the next most charitable country, according to a November 2006 comparison done by the Charities Aid Foundation. In philanthropic giving as a percentage of gross domestic product, the U.S. ranked first at 1.7 percent. No. 2 Britain gave 0.73 percent, while France, with a 0.14 percent rate, trailed such countries as South Africa, Singapore, Turkey and Germany.

Bloated governments try to convince their taxpayers that their usury goes to something they imagine is some sort of “collectivized compassion”. The more the government sells people on this, the less people give of themselves, and beyond handwringing, to less actual empathy itself. If it isn't someone else’s problem, it's the state’s problem.

This passive form of “humanism courtesy the state” is a delusion and a sort of placebo to make up the difference between the ‘humanists’ they think they are and the emotionally needy people they really are.

- with thanks to Martin

Here Kid, Pull My Finger

The usual continental passive-aggressive crap? Petulant envy? A retired British ace fighter pilot opines on de Villepin’s tack prior to the removal of Saddam Hussein:

“Let’s face it, the French have always been opportunistic when it comes to weapons deals. Maybe their military industry is flat on its face.

“But we took enough French-built Exocets during the Falklands for me not to feel too sorry for them.”

The Daily Express has been told by a senior diplomatic source that the former French Prime Prime Minister, Dominique du Villepin – he famously attacked Britain and the US at the UN for proposed involvement in the second Gulf War – was heavily motivated in his outburst by the fact that the French could not field an operational aircraft carrier.

Lowered expectations

As a senior official puts it, "the impact of Sarkozy will come mainly from the fact that France has been absent for such a long time."

Smug and Smart, Smug and Smart

Are you a bien pensent twit trying to figure out the Holocaust? Are you looking for any explanation other than evil?

Then why not just find a way to blame a jew?

A brief encounter with a Jewish prostitute may have led to Hitler's genocidal Holocaust, claim psychiatrists.

It's 1938. Do You Know Where your Children Are?

With no historical memory. Must be nice not to have a conscience.

The Nazi rock concert was held in Croatia’s biggest stadium, Maksimir, and although this time Thompson himself did not make any pro-Ustasha references or Hitler-style salutes, the kids sure did.

The reason you don’t see this kind of stuff in Germany is that everyone knows what the Germans did, and the Germans know what the Germans did, because they were made to admit and apologize for what they did.

- via Julia Gorin

As far as I’m concerned, they’re not that different than these clowns:

“Fuck Reformen, Luxus til alle” “Fuck reforms. Luxury for everyone”
In other words: “if it ain’t bolted down, it’s yours’”

So common that it is now largely ignored by the French MSM

Riots broke out on Sunday night June 17 in Cergy after a rap festival. 200 French youths went at it in a gang battle with rocks, knives, molotov cocktails, and an ax before attacking local police. A police car was torched.

Crackberry Hill

As if...

Top French government officials are ignoring warnings to ditch their cherished BlackBerrys -- smartphones with e-mail capacity -- despite warnings their messages may be intercepted by US spy agencies, a report said Tuesday.

[ ... ]

"The risk of interception is real, it's an economic war," Alain Juilllet, a senior French economic intelligence official, told Le Monde.

A bunch of wonderpups at the French Foreign Ministry won’t give up their Blackberries in spite of the security risks.

After all, they should know.

Some of the specific cases are shocking. According to a recent New York Times article by Peter Schweizer, `between 1987 and 1989, French intelligence planted moles in several U.S. companies, including IBM. In the fall of 1991, a French intelligence team attempted to steal `stealth' technology from Lockheed.' Other accounts report that French intelligence units conduct 10 to 15 break-ins every day at large hotels in Paris to copy documents that belong to businessmen, journalists, and diplomats. According to other accounts, the French have been hiding listening devices on Air France flights in order to pick up useful economic information from business travelers

Given that the US Government nearly never goes to bat for US businesses in nearly the same way, and often get audited out of existence. I wonder where they’re getting this idea if no-place other than their own experience.

Imagine you own a private company experiencing success in France. You have an IPO. A state owned company, possibly through another company suddenly owns a piece of your future success. The state could even skillfully time its’ sale of assets to exploit your “means of production”.

Bingo. Motive and opportunity. Direct interest in (and history of ) using intelligence assets for domestic industries.

Remember, they’re more lucid, more humanistic, more everything than you are. They even fart daisies.

Academic Fantasies Exploited

“Interhotel” chic?

BERLIN - The four clocks behind the reception desk of Berlin's new budget hotel Ostel show the hour in Moscow, Berlin, Havana, and Beijing. Time, however, appears to have stopped here sometime before 1989, when communism was still entrenched in all four capitals.

The Ostel offers a renewed whiff of life in the former German Democratic Republic, welcoming travelers with portraits of communist leaders adorning the walls.

I wonder, does the package deal come with beatings by the Volkspolizei and the Grenzschutz, or is that only in the abuse spa package?

Socialist Unity Party functionaries such as party General Secretary Erich Honecker and Prime Minister Horst Sindermann peer down from portraits in most rooms, giving the impression that one is under constant surveillance.

The fun never stops.

Vigil-Auntie

At roughly 1315 UTC, at the same time the BBC was having an on-air "silent vigil" for the release of kidnapped BBC correspondent Alan Johnston, a clan member of the group holding him had his head blown off by masked men.

Munir Dughmush was shot while standing outside a building in Gaza City's Zaitoun neighborhood, sources in the Gaza Strip said. They said masked gunmen opened fire at him, killing him instantly.

Following the incident, foreign journalists were advised to stay away from the Gaza Strip for fear of reprisal.

They recently said they were willing to talk about releasing Johnson.

How then does a highly influential subculture of fantasists with moral uncertainty and journalism degrees defend its’ own against another highly influential subculture of fantasists with amoral tactics and small arms? It doesn’t.

I‘m sure those who participated in the big BBC-staffer group hug believed that their vigils, websites, sign-bearing, and pot-banging will somehow appeal to the compassion of those who hold Johnston and get him released. This would only be possible if there was a way in Gazan militant society to actually act with compassion (if one was capable of it), and even yet not get shot by someone else if you try.
All their “campaigning” has done is raise the man's stock. The more of a pointless a stink they make about Johnston’s captivity, the more he's worth as a captive.

Which brings us to the the accompanying photo. Journalists without borders who seem to want to conceal their identity to even show empathy for one of their kidnapped fellow journalists. Even if they are just kids imagining their hearts are with him - Indeed they’re displaying the fear that they themselves have sewn by the over-reporting and giving too much importance and credence to the causes of Johnston’s captors. If they had enough self-awareness to see how screwy their tack is generally, they could let themselves seek the aide of the Israelis for the sake of Johnston’s life, even if it would undermine their rather fake “neutrality” of having to temper their reporting because of their vulnerability to the violence they would be exposed to.

Go figure.

What Were the Third, Sixth, Ninth, and Fifteenth Questions?

Davids Medienkritik's Ray Drake is interviewed by CBN and the BBC on Anti-Americanism and Blogs, as is Nidra Poller.

Rearguard Hoplite Taxpayers Raise Their Fiscal Shields

Valiantly, a rearguard of La Baf taxpayers head towards a Paris tax office to turn in their tax returns.

Le bouclier fiscal
Uploaded by Labaf

And Can You Tell Us the Promises That We Were Supposed to Trust You Believed In?

Ségolène Royal, who is to meet with Nicolas Sarkozy this morning (will she shake the president's hand?), did not believe in all the electoral promises she was giving…

Meanwhile, at the local EU trailer park...

Sounds like a scale model European Union replica.

They will live and work in a series of interlocked modules ...

Once the hatches are closed, the crew's only contact with the outside world is a radio link to "Earth" with a realistic delay of many minutes.

If they're working on an EU simulator, they better make that "many years".



Space is the place.

So, Do You Think He’s Got A ‘Type?’

I doubt a Ségo blow up doll would have done the trick, but Flanby seems to have found frightening analog to his former political opponent and common law co-parent to their hatchlings.

While hints of Hollande as a Joey Butafuco type wearing a wifebeater are sure to not be far off, this thing is far from one sided.

She was the socialist in stilettos, the woman who injected femininity, glamour and sex appeal into the French elections.

And as she embarked on her ill-fated bid to become France's first woman president this spring, Segolene Royal, an alluring mother-of four, appeared as a wonderful breath of fresh air who dared to challenge the macho forces of French politics.

Let’s set aside the fact that anyone finding a mother of 4 alluring needs to have their head examined. The idea that the press tried to sell it this way without the objection of a campaign certainly says that as far as the subject goes – that all bets are off in the abuse department. Keep in mind that this public display of flaming, twisted wreckage will certainly be spun in the direction of man-as-abuser, in spite of Hollande never being able to fit that bill, and in spite of the fact that Royal was supposed to be squared away, consensus oriented, and in possession of leadership skills.

At one point prior to the Presidential election, word had it that a certain candidate was playing naughty little Sprout to the Jolly Green Giant. Hinting that a eco-vangelist was doing a Presidential candidate was subtly floated as a sign of someone with a ‘nuanced’ social bearing doing what she could to ‘take care of the earth.’ I won’t touch the fact that the man is a Veteranarian.

Phooey! Sputum!, I say. The politics aren’t affecting this adolescent love-drome here, the personal circumstances are being used in the politics. Otherwise this would resemble a collapsing relationship between actual adult mammals and be mostly private and at least somewhat painful. That is, if they’re parents and are actually capable of normal emotions in some way. Clearly they aren’t.

At least they’re too old to breed.

“Managed” Out of a Job

Not free to choose: regulated and managed out of existence, some French wine-growers have taken direct action.

Trimming the vines in the 17 hectares of vineyard which used to support his family, wine-grower Francois Thiebaud is in despair because of plummeting wine prices.

He says that he and many other wine-makers in this region are now fighting for survival: "We're working at a loss," he tells me.

"We've lost between 40 and 50% of our income because of falling prices and the big cut taken by the middle-men.

"I can only afford to carry on working in the vineyards because my wife has another job.

"And some wine-makers have to claim social security benefits, because they earn so little that they can't feed their families.

Were these artisans able to get out of the political trap of demanding help, and then accepting it, they wouldn’t be in the position they’re in. The uncontrollable Euro-desire to ‘control’ the value of French wines in a pretext to protect the farmer has accomplished the reverse altogether. With a sterling reputation, and a history of producing the best wines anywhere in the world, the regime has even rendered the value of even the un-exported product sold locally to a market making 1st world earnings and an appreciation and willingness for wines has been undervalued.

Worldwide, the concept of the subsidy (as opposed to a low-threshold ‘safety-net’ to protect against weather and other events) has failed. It’s even worse when the commodity also requires specific craftsmanship, topography, and soil. These farms couldn’t grow oats or maize.

The failure is in Europe’s omnipresent ‘systems’ and ‘regimes’ that haven’t permitted these growers, or any other ones, to sort out for themselves how they’re operate at a profit. Even the system of apellations dooms some and protects others, some of which don’t deserve it.
Beyond that, they are talked out of figuring out for themselves whether they even belong in the business – the fetishization of ‘the land’ means that a wine-grower can’t just abandon his vines for something else without changing the terms of his state ‘support’ that manipulates the supply, and does as much to suppress prices as it’s meant to prop it up.

If you don’t buy that idea, look at where the expanding producers and markets are: Australia, the US, Canada, New Zealand... all places where the market for making, selling, importing, and exporting wines isn’t manipulated in the European manner.

Ever feel like you've been cheated?

Zeropean EUtopia. Where the little countries are told how to vote.

Caption Contest

Snooping on the Shadetree Fascists

Working in the same building a couple of "progressive" political lobbying firms can be both depressing and amusing. This normally dyspeptic group, themselves a pantheon of token hires (after the currently fashionable genetic groups) often offer some true anthropological interest.

One day I overheard one barely tinted woman of terribly middle-class and suburban upbringing chiding a man of terribly middle-class and suburban upbringing about being white.

They might be shocked to discover how thoughtless, outdated, and conventional the gender dynamic of their exchange really is. They should be continually bombarded by messages chiding both of them to raises their awareness to this, even if it's all for not particular or real social justice reason itself, but to be made all the less comfortable in their skin. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

It's the false-consciousness, man. Badger them for years to them apologize, child-like, to themselves in the mirror.

Also Causes Jock Itch

When people start to reason that you can avert genocide by cooling the planet below the temperature nature wants it to, you’ve really lost your marbles. Add it to: “Stop coming to work and save the planet”, “Having large families ‘is an eco-crime’”, but more than anything try to square it with this enthusiastic bit of earth-loving genocide.

Ever feel like you've been cheated?

The French, when they are not too doped up on reimbursed Lexomil, are just starting to realize that the future of their little shithole of a country was for some time the play object of a couple of self-absorbed latté Leftists whose delusions of grandeur were fueled by the spectacular banality of their mid-life crises. Des histoires de fesses flasques. À l'image du pays, quoi.



Message to Hollande Flanby : be a man, kill yourself.

“Decrypting”: a Smug Way to Make Spinning Feel Smart

« He left the house, but they both kept the chamber »
[Ed.: She dumped the cheat, and they gained fewer seats than the petulant pollsters and press hoped for]

Bound up, but unrelated. A message distraction from those who pretend to own the truth. An odd cartoon from Plantu’s cartoonish view of humanity tries to make an interference attempt, and is linked to a story titled: « Deciphering: a message sent to Nicolas Sarkozy ».

It’s revealing. Decades after the personal became the political, the political is now entirely personal. Let’s dope it out: Plantu makes Hollande look like an embarrassed, lost commuter on the “blue” side, and Ségo only slightly pensive, but still smiling and heroic, managing to float in mid-air. At least this time she isn’t drawn walking on water with even Jesus wondering who this un-naturally toothy, grinning Godzilla really is.

Meanwhile, France seems to have managed to dodge a bullet. The Clintonesque nature of this pair might appeal as a subject of the dim-witted, omnipresent talk shows, but it doesn’t mean that people really want or can stand this kind of thing from the leaders of a nation that keeps telling itself what a mature society it is.

Royal said the reason for the parting was the infidelity of her partner , Socialist leader François Hollande.

Further details will be revealed in Royal's autobiography, which is to be published this week.

I guess she needed a stunt held at the point of maximum attention to sell her upcoming book – or otherwise fall permanently off of the public radar, or into ridicule, or into a pattern of ridiculous, party-wide attention-seeking behaviour.

But with Royal asserting her ambition to challenge for the party hot-seat, the two are likely to clash then, or even earlier if the Socialists decide to call an early congress.

Can you imagine this party leading a nation that has nukes?

"La direction de France 5 n’était pas joignable ce matin"

"C’est une formidable émission, mais elle est usée."

With nary a word of explanation, France 5 cancels Daniel Schneidermann's "Arrêt sur images" (hyperlinked several times on NP), the best program on French TV.

Mais l’important n’est pas dans cette grossièreté. L’important n’est pas que Carolis et ses hommes décident, sans l’ombre d’une explication, de tuer Arrêt sur images. L’argument de l’ancienneté n’est pas un argument, ni dans un sens ni dans l’autre.

L’important, c’est qu’ils ne sont pas effleurés par l’idée que cette émission remplissait une mission indispensable de service public.

L’important, c’est qu’ils renoncent impunément, sans un soupir, à cette mission : critiquer à la télévision, avec les armes de la télévision, le pouvoir des images.

…A vous tous, si nombreux, si sincères, mais si dispersés aussi. Je partage votre désarroi, à tous. Mais les graines que nous avons semées sont en vous, maintenant. En vous et en d’autres. Le monstre médiatique est vulnérable. Sa lâcheté d’aujourd’hui en est encore une preuve. Ce travail continuera. Pas nous ou par d’autres, ici ou ailleurs.

Meet the Dissemblers

It’s Llke a Train-wreck alternate ending to ’ Raising Arizona’

Propagandastaffel chooses to cover the personal problems of lefties and the break-up the world press doesn’t seem to care about over the French parliamentary election results - even as the PS’ seat count appears to be closer to 180 than the 210 that the pollsters are selling.

Ségo and François Announce Their Separation

"J'ai demandé à François Hollande de quitter le domicile, de vivre son histoire sentimentale de son côté, désormais étalée dans les livres et les journaux, et je lui ai souhaité d'être heureux."

Gérard Courtois answers questions about the election (check out numbers 1, 5, 7, & 9), while Ségolène and François announce their break-up.

Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of my Hair...

Sarko wins, the NYT spins, and Ségolène Royal “divorces” Flanby to the extent that one can under common law - she ditches the bum:

We’re on good terms. We talk. There’s mutual respect.

Call in an airstrike.

What a brilliant thing to do on election day.

Meanwhile back at stately “Pinch” manor:

Those projected results marked the first political stumble for the hard-driving and U.S.-friendly Sarkozy since his emphatic election win last month. But both votes still handed him a mandate to revive French spirits and economic prospects by loosening up labor laws and cutting income and inheritance taxes among other ambitious reforms.


The projected results showed a stunning rally for the fractured and flailing Socialists.

Call in an airstrike.

They aren’t Mexican. This Story will go Nowhere.

Slavery in Europe:

Hunger, heat, and 13 hours back-breaking work a day: all for €1 an hour. Customs officials raided a strawberry plantation in Bavaria on Thursday and found [ed.: 118] illegal Romanian workers living in slave-like conditions. What was worse: the owner of the farm is a [ed.: retired] policeman.

German custom authorities raided a strawberry plantation in the village of Oberndorf in southern Germany at midnight Thursday night and discovered up to 60 Romanian farm laborers living in miserable conditions. The owner of the farm had been keeping the workers as virtual slaves and only paying them around €1 ($1.33) an hour, for up to 13 hours of work a day in the fields.

The officials were alerted by people in the nearby village where the workers had been begging.

Poverty of German policemen (pffnthpt!!!) notwithstanding, this occurs despite a loving, caring “subsidy” for German farm workers:

The Christian Science Monitor reported on May 24, 2006 that some 280,000 Poles were working in German agriculture, many harvesting asparagus. The German Labor Department is insisting that 10 percent of farm workers in 2006 be German. German farm workers can receive subsidies that give them €13 to €20 an hour tax free, or $17 to $25.

The Right's Tsunami Fizzles as the Left Manages a Respectable Score

The blue tsunami announced has not occurred as the ruling UMP wins "only" about 328 seats to 206 for the left. Still, that is obviously more than enough to wield all the power in the government.

Election Watch

An absolute majority for the President's UMP Party despite much blather from the Socialist Party about its performance which has resulted in an absolute minority. Now that Sarkozy has his absolute majority, what will he do with it?

Still on Stage…

Jacques Chirac is not out of the limelight yet…

One of Them, Wearing a Hood, Grabbed Her by the Neck, Hit Her on the Ear, Threw Her to the Ground, and Tossed Meat in Her Face

If a rival candidate appears to be getting too close to upsetting the seat of a PS bigwig (Dominique Strauss-Kahn) in the second round of the elections, call her a racist and let your power base know that she is to be threatened and harassed…

It's OK, Even Wise, Indeed Welcome, to Insult America's Leader, Question Its Policies, and Disparage Its People

But heaven forbid you do the same to Europe's!

The West is the Best

You just get here, we'll do the rest. How appropriate.

Let’s Call it John Bolton Envy

EUvians may no longer be Impressed by their own skilled displays of good intentions, but, ya know, they’re trying. They’re almost getting to the point where they’re copping the United States’ agenda on this thing they never seem to actually get around to do anything about called human rights.

European Union countries have threatened to pull out of the United Nations Human Rights Council if its developing country majority succeeds in an attempt to prevent scrutiny of the worst abusers.

Too bad it’s only about 5 years too late for this particular effort to actually matter.

Fine words aside, they’re really still a lot more worried about what the neighbors will think (as if their neighbors actually thought like them.)

EU diplomats, requesting anonymity, said they still hoped to negotiate a compromise accord.

Wow. You can almost smell the bold “unilateralism” from downtown Pyongyang, can’t ya?

The End of History and the Last Man ?

Behold the results of this self referential hell of their own making: EUtopia disappointed that bad people aren’t reading their memos.

Until now, the EU thought it was enough to fire off a flurry of press releases, killing more trees then people have died in Darfur, to express its worry.
But being ignored for four years has so irritated the EU that its previous strategy of sending off a letter, then another letter and another letter, expressing “concern,” and then “deep concern” and then “grave concern,” will be replaced with a new system expressing faux grief.

Reading the news, it’s actually hard to tell this is a mocking parody. Never in the history of civilization has so much “concern” amounted to so little of anything meaningful.

From now on, the EU will step up its concern. First, a special team of analysts in air-conditioned rooms in Brussels will identify world “hot spots” to figure out where the most people are being killed and then brief EU leaders on what to say to avoid angering anyone over anything. New Europe has obtained a memo outlining the steps that will be taken:
“The EU will follow the following steps that must be followed to follow before we follow-up,” it said:
l We will “urge” governments to take action against injustice and stop killing people. That will be followed by a letter of “urgent urgency” and then, only as a last resort, “gotta go to the bathroom right now urgency”

Meanwhile, one man gets it right without quite realizing it:

A German pensioner has been arrested for spraying rude graffiti.
The 70-year-old was caught splaying the word 'puff', German for whorehouse, on houses in the Bavarian town of Hof.

The Poodle of Germany?

…as the signs of disdain for Chirac among the French public — and even certain parts of the French media — multiplied in the months [after the resounding "no" vote in the May 2005 French referendum on the EU "constitutional treaty"], the mainstream of the American media continued to treat him with the deference befitting a great and influential statesman

writes John Rosenthal in his insightful article on Jacques Chirac's role (or lack thereof) during the Iraq war.

There is little doubt about the source of the media's obvious faith in Chirac's statesmanlike "grandeur": namely, his high-profile role in opposing the Iraq War in early 2003. In France, Chirac's anti-war stance predictably led to a spike in his popularity, as the "anti-imperialist" left suddenly found itself expressing pride in the courageous and upstanding leadership of a man who only the year before was being persistently referred to in "leftist" media as "Super-liar" [Supermenteur]: a leaden allusion to "Superman" that is as unfunny in French as it is in English. …

For the American media and the American public, however, the highly publicized French agitation in the run-up to the war left behind the enduring impression that it was Chirac who was the driving force behind the Franco-German "Axis of Peace" that attempted to prevent the American-led intervention. The notion that Chirac led the opposition to the war is common on both the "left" and the "right" and it is shared by both Chirac's admirers and his detractors. But a simple look back at the chronology of events makes clear that this notion is a myth. Chirac did not lead. He followed.

National Lampoon’s 72 Virgins

After providing Sopranos endings to Scarface and The Godfather, The National Lampoon takes a look at the director's cuts of Mel Gibson's Apocalypto and Clint Eastwood's Letters From Iwo Jima. Coming this summer (unless it's a joke): National Lampoon’s 72 Virgins.

Same old, same old

Roger L. Simon interviews Mark Steyn. To kick off the interview, Steyn tells Americans to not get their hopes up about Sarkozy.

Strategic yogurt production

Strategic dairy product management turns sour in China where authorities accuse the French of behaving like a bunch of "hommes d'affaires voyous". Comme quoi, on est toujours le voyou de quelqu'un.

Which Country Is the Worst Human Rights Offender?

While PBS purports to examine anti-Americanism in a neutral, objective light, Stéphane checks out a (Reuters-inspired and Amnesty-created) map for use in publications around the world.

Guess which country (with six sins, versus at the most four for all other countries) is the worst human rights offender on the planet?

Notice to the dissidents of the world: do not try to emigrate to the United States, do not too hard to reform your own régimes; as long as governments like Iran's, Russia's, China's, and Cuba's are opposing Uncle Sam, they are doing good work…



As usual, Stéphane is not content to respond by simply showing outrage. Deliberately and methodically, he calmly analyzes the data.

Certains intitulés me laissent dubitatif. Discrimination et violences contre les femmes? Dans la société américaine où la bise sur la joue d'une collègue d'entreprise peut vous mener au tribunal, difficile à croire.

Exécutions et exécutions "extrajudiciaires"? Cela ne fait même pas référence à la peine de mort, couverte par un autre symbole (qui n'intègre pas la notion d'un procès équitable.) J'imagine que cette référence fait appel à la "violence intrinsèque de la société américaine" ou à d'autres concepts du même tonneau, le genre de lieux communs constamment déversés dès qu'on parle du pays de l'Oncle Sam. Le verdict est injuste, car un régime politique n'est pas forcément responsable du comportement des éléments criminels présents sur son sol. Comme si les crimes des FARC étaient à imputer au régime colombien qui les combat!

Enfin, pour la "torture" on pensera inévitablement à Guantanamo - alors que Cuba, constellé des 300 prisons du régime castriste, n'a même pas droit à un pareil honneur...

Mais essayer d'expliquer la palme ainsi décernée aux Etats-Unis revient à s'enfermer dans la logique des critiques d'Amnesty. Or, à y regarder de plus près, il n'y a aucune logique dans cette image — sauf la volonté délibérée de salir les Etats-Unis.

…Les émigrés avides de se trouver une vie meilleure sont donc priés d'abandonner cette quête ridicule d'une carte verte. Qu'ils contactent plutôt l'ambassade ouzbèke ou chinoise la plus proche...

Ces approximations tendancieuses, trop appuyées pour ne pas être parfaitement volontaires, se combinent pour amener une planisphère peut-être conforme à l'idée des activistes d'Amnesty ou des journalistes de Reuters sur le monde, mais malheureusement très éloignée des souffrances réelles infligées aux populations de la planète.

Il serait bon que certains militants perdent leurs oeillères et jugent comme il se doit les régimes communistes ou ceux appliquant la Charia, au lieu d'être constamment obnubilés par leur croisade névrosée contre les Etats-Unis d'Amérique. Mais le respect des Droits de l'Homme est-il vraiment leur premier souci?

Are the "Opinions" of 11-Year-Olds Evidence of Their Own (Freely-Arrived-At) Anti-Americanism or of That of French Adults Coupled with Indoctrination?

"Damn it, you're doing stupid things that could screw up my world!"

THE ANTI-AMERICANS (a hate/love relationship) examines the complicated mixture of envy, pride, admiration, and cultural misunderstanding that characterizes European views. It’s a situation that has led some commentators to say that “Americans are from Mars, Europeans are from Venus.”

This film examines the current status of European attitudes towards America in three very different places: France, the United Kingdom, and Poland. Freely mixing humor with provocative commentary, the program shows how Old World attitudes can be both nuanced and simplistic at the same time – sometimes contradictory, sometimes predictable, but always worthy of our interest.

It may be that people such as Pascal Bruckner, Boris Johnson, and Agnieszka Graff are included in the new documentary in which PBS purports to examine anti-Americanism in a neutral, objective light, but offhand, one is wont to ask if the directors and producers have not wondered about the negative (not to mention preposterous) "opinions" of French 11-year-olds regarding America(ns) and how these may have something to do with the adults in whose trust they are (in school as well as at home, where they live with parents who went through the same schooling system), coupled with no little amount of indoctrination…

Update: "La version anglophone de ce dessin animé est fréquemment utilisée comme outil pédagogique par les professeurs d’anglais dans les collèges et lycées français."

The EU: that thing that's been behind the curve for 50 years

The EU is pleading with Palestinian terrorists on both sides to do everything possible to "avoid a civil war". At least, that is, until the EU can dream up a way to blame it on the Jews.

Reciprocity of the Standard Diplomatic Sort

Serving fewer Francophones as there are Anglophones in Paris, RFI is broadcasting in numerous American cities while the CSA, France’s “owners” of the airwaves act out their fear of the mythical Anglo-Saxon, what with their blue jeans and decadent rock and roll that might corrupt the proletariat: with the same effect as Cuban jamming transmitters, English language radio is not permitted on the air in Paris. Even the unctuous BBC transmits from beyond the frontier. One expat-radio entrepreneur resorted to secreting an Internet Radio operation from the UK.

Diplomacy being what it is should compel the FCC to boot RFI out of the US, if they didn’t have something that the CSA doesn’t: an actual belief in basic individual rights.

Boot them off the air. Period.

Words have meanings

Quote Victims of Communism Unquote

My whole life won't be enough to yell how much I despise this commie s**thole where I happened to be born, and this is not a soft damnation

confides Hervé shyly.

Yesterday a memorial to the victims of communism was settled in Washington DC, Bush was invited and made a speech — an excellent speech by the way.

The speech seems to have been basically ignored in the mainstream media (Hervé's email was the first I'd heard of it!) — as was the fact that last week (in the words of Natan Sharansky),

President George W. Bush, who put the democracy agenda back on the world stage after 9/11, came to Prague to renew the commitment he made in his second inaugural address to work toward "ending tyranny in our world" and met with each and every dissident.

Notice that it took someone who has actually lived in an authoritarian state to write a sentence like Bush "put the democracy agenda back on the world stage after 9/11" without sarcasm, adding matter-of-factly that the president "came to Prague to renew the commitment he made in his second inaugural address to work toward 'ending tyranny in our world'" without hyperventilating about the expression "axis of evil". Notice also how the IHT's mother paper, the NYT, apparently thought unfit to print Sharansky's piece (probably, with all the Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd material, there simply was no room).

But back to the memorial to the victims of communism; Hervé decided to check the news about this:

• Google news US: 173 articles
• Google news Fwance: 7 articles, one duplicate, one from Switzerland.

And every title is the following: Etats-Unis: hommage solennel à Washington aux "victimes du communisme"

First They Came for Piglet...

The cartoon exploits of Astérix may be enjoyed by millions of children around the world, but the ancient Gaulish hero has just been declared unfit to be official ambassador for children's rights. He is too French, too violent, he perpetuates stereotypes and his outlook conflicts with the spirit of the European Union.

It’s so sad that it defies the bounds of anyone’s acceptance of the absurd as an emotional defense.

The DCI organisation says that Astérix conveys an "archaic...hierarchical" world at odds with the "revolutionary" values of the 1989 convention. This stresses the child's existence as a being with rights while children in Astérix are fragile objects that need to be protected, said Jean-Pierre Rosenczveig, a senior juvenile judge who heads the French DCI.

Astérix also projects "a Gaulish vision which ignores the intercultural reality of French society," they say. His constant resistance against the Romans and other foreign invaders sends altogether the wrong message in the peace-loving European Union.
[ ... ]
It congratulated Obélix for tackling the problem of obesity but faulted the cartoon for failing to deal with unsanitary housing. The child defenders are also upset that Astérix delivers "a eulogy to tribal, hierarchical, society with frequent references to a chief." The right to education is sadly depicted by a woman school-teacher telling pupils: "Get into rows in silence please," adds the DCI.

Like the ubiquitous presence of the rainbow for a flag, turning holloween into an olympiad of gay narcissism, and the turning of clowns into icons for suicidal anti-capitalism, the ones who lose are the children who have their joy and innocence stolen from them by politcos trying to find the quickest and cheapest shot they can.

Astérix entertained generations of kids and also showed them that they could have moxie and valor. Evidently this isn’t good enough. It’s not that they themselves didn’t select it for their own kids, it’s that they also seem to need to give it a bad name while they punch up their own narcissism to state, but not prove by example, a “spirit of the European Union” in “peace-loving European Union” that has something as transparently fake as an “Ambassador for children”. What they need to do is set their personalized selfishness aside, show some hope for the future of man and actually have some children.

French wishful thinking

Agence France Presse wrongly published a news bulletin on Saturday stating that the space shuttle Atlantis had exploded; explosion confirmed by NASA according to said news bulletin. Asked for an explanation about this very typical case of French wishful thinking, Agence France Presse declared that the catastrophic news bulletin had been written "just in case" and then had been sent out by error. We've seen stuff like this before. When Agence France Presse journalists are not on drunken rampages, they are working for the enemy.

The Conclusion From the Use of Superlatives

It's the civil war unleashed by Bush's invasion of Iraq that has resulted in a torrential bloodletting in Iraq.

There are currently 3,500 dead Americans in Iraq along with violence in 3 of Iraq's 18 provinces (the others being entirely peaceful). May I ask how Mo Rocca would describe the situation if there were twice as many deaths and twice as much violence (7,000 Americans down and violence in 6 provinces)? You can hardly use expressions like "torrential bloodletting", "the daily mass slaughter of innocents", "the unending nightmare in Iraq" (Keith Olbermann), and/or "the most disastrous military adventure since the founding of the republic" (IHT letter) because they are superlatives that you have already used.

As for "the Iraq invasion [being] the worst foreign policy error in our nation's history", World War II faced America with over 400,000 lives lost (not to mention the other nations' millions of deaths) in much less time and somehow I don't really remember (angry) expressions such as "torrential bloodletting", "the daily mass slaughter of innocents", "the unending nightmare", and/or "the most disastrous military adventure since the founding of the republic" being used there — even in news items and news reels from the early 1940s! It doesn't sound right, because it sounds too impassioned (although, again, for a war with more than 100 times more deaths in fewer years and months).

I submit to you that the only conclusion that can be arrived at here is the following: all those expressions have little to nothing to do with the objective descriptive reality, but have everything with presenting opposition to Dubya. Which is entirely fine, of course. Just one thing: don't pretend that your language is free of partisanship and that it is supposed to reflect objective descriptions and the unfailing truth.

How Can You Be So Retarded As Not to Be Concerned by Global Warming?!

…Everybody knows that all scientists agree that the danger — like like-minded theories — is nothing short of true fact!

Who Can Do Better?!

I got 67% (#s 1 and 4 wrong) in Mikhail Simkin's An artist or an ape quiz. (Grump, Hervé!)

And Don't Forget That We Have Bush's Bellicose Policies to Protest…

The Elysée's New "Diplomator"

Corine Lesnes has an article praising Jean-David Levitte, the Elysée's new « Diplomator » who seems to be "appreciated by the Americans".

There may be some truth to that. But it remains a puffy piece of praise through and through ("Les humanitaires étaient touchés qu'on ne les prenne pas de haut. A la fin de la séance, tout le monde applaudissait"; "Partisan d'un monde « multipolaire harmonieux », Jean-David Levitte est d'un optimisme perpétuel"; and, of course, a nuanced Frenchman teaching the clueless Americans lessons ["Jean-David Levitte s'est souvent servi de cet exemple pour essayer de faire comprendre aux Américains que la France était moins antisémite qu'ils ne le croyaient"]).

Indeed, the last part is entirely dedicated to a lucid Frenchman standing courageously up against treacherous "French-bashing".

…la grande vague de francophobie aux Etats-Unis, il a mené la contre-attaque. … Il fallait construire un rempart contre cette hostilité. Il l'a fait à sa façon, avec une grande tolérance pour ce qui lui était dit. » … Quand Bill O'Reilly, l'animateur de Fox News, a dépassé les bornes du « french bashing » (le dénigrement des Français), Jean-David Levitte a pris rendez-vous. Il lui a reproché d'attiser la haine. … Les conseillers ont fait la liste des insultes anti-françaises circulant dans les médias. L'ambassadeur l'avait toujours dans la poche. Quand il était invité quelque part, il la lisait à ses hôtes en remplaçant « Français » par « juifs ». Un jour il l'a lue à Colin Powell. « Permettez-moi maintenant de remplacer Français par Noirs », a-t-il suggéré sans se soucier de l'embarras de l'Américain. « Quand il revenait, il disait : «J'ai encore gâché l'ambiance !» », raconte un collaborateur. … Le 17 mai 2003, M. Levitte … dénonçait « la campagne de désinformation » contre la France orchestrée « par des responsables gouvernementaux anonymes ».

Unless Corine Lesnes (and Lavitte) have forgotten, there are quite a few differences between France's America-bashing, which is continual, harsh, and never-ceasing, and America's French-bashing, which came only at a time when America (or Washington, or Bush) — rightly or wrongly — took a very risky decision, and put America's troops in harm's way.

As I have written before,

there is a difference between a country that takes action and one that remains passive. In America's case, Bush (and Blair) — rightfully or wrongfully — took risks. George W Bush put his politics at risk, he put his popularity at risk, he put his presidency at risk, he put his party at risk, he put his country at risk, and most importantly, he took decisions that put the lives of his soldiers at risk. In France's case, it did nothing — nothing being lauded as courageous by one French citizen after another ("au moins Chirac a eu les couilles d'opposer Bush"). That was its policies (or lack thereof) — all the while bringing opprobrium on America and its foreign minister going out of his way to get the most autocratic countries to oppose Washington in this riskful undertaking. Trust me, America's anger was anything but hysterical.

In fact (speaking of "disinformation campaigns"), the biggest disinformation campaign of all is presenting America's anger as …"French-bashing", i.e, little more than an entirely unjust phobia of the gratuitous kind, low, dirty, and totally uncalled-for.

Moreover, if any Frenchman wants to replace a nationality with "Jew", all he has to do is turn on Canal +'s Les Guignols and he can see their version of Sylvester Stallone, the everyday American (treacherous, racist, barbaric, dollar-hungry, bloodthirsty, etc…) who is the 20th/21st century version of the old caricature of the Jews and who — unlike the temporary anger of the Americans — has been depicted thus since the very beginning of the TV show.

There are a couple of other things that Corine Lesnes left out. But La Bannière Étalée did not:

Souvenez-vous de la Commission des Droits de l’Homme de laquelle l’Oncle Sam fut expulsé en mai 2001 sans cérémonie (les Américains furent réintroduits l’année suivante). La France, elle, avait gardé sa place grâce à un nombre record de votes (52 sur 53), et à Jean-David Levitte, ambassadeur français aux Nations Unies, d’attribuer le succès de son pays, avec un soupçon de suffisance, à une politique étrangère “fondée sur le dialogue et le respect”. Le message sous-entendu : la rebuffade contre l’Oncle Sam était due à l’absence de “dialogue et de respect” de la part de Washington.

Il est intéressant de noter que la plupart des Américains aient vu la situation différemment. Dans un éditorial, le New York Times a noté que la réaction de Paris semblait faire écho à celle de Pékin qui disait que Washington avait “miné l’atmosphère pour le dialogue”. De quel dialogue parlent les Chinois, se demandait le quotidien. De celui concernant les églises rasées, les pratiquants de Falun Gong qui sont morts en prison, les moines tibétains emprisonnés, les activistes du Parti Démocratie dans les camps de travail ? « Voila, présumément, quelques-uns des sujets que la France pense devoir être approchés avec plus de “respect”. Le Soudan, la Libye, Cuba, et le Vietnam, autres membres de la commission, seraient sans doute d’accord.» (Le Times aurait aussi pu mentionner l’Autriche de Jörg Haider.) Pour le journaliste William Safire, le vote révèle un empressement, de la part d’une “bande d’hypocrites” de “nous poignarder dans le dos en échange d’une préférence commerciale chinoise ou pétrolière arabe ou un vote du conseil de sécurité.” Il se demande “pour quel avantage commercial ou politique ont-ils troqué leurs votes en trahissant les droits fondamentaux des êtres humains” “avec la connivence de diplomates français cherchant à gagner la faveur de dictateurs africains et arabes.”

Les Américains n’auraient donc pas retenu la leçon de diplomatie indirecte fournie par Paris. Comme la Suède, “La France, terre des libertés, patrie des droits de l’homme, donneuse de leçons universelle” serait en fait plus apte à donner des leçons à la démocratie américaine qu’aux dictatures syrienne, irakienne, et chinoise. (Quoi qu’il en soit, l’on comprendra que dans ce type de circonstances et avec ce type d’alliés, les Américains ne font peut-être pas tout à fait confiance à une cour pénale internationale de garantir un procès équitable.)

Can You Hear the Dueling Banjos?

Does anyone have any idea why these commie hellholes still exist anywhere in civilization?

Bonus: by way of the charming and talented Kate herself, we find this bit of unwitting proletarian irony:

"'I'm depressed - I voted for the Socialists purely because the right is going to win,' said Geraldine Gourbe, a 30-year-old philosophy professor, on her way out of a polling station in northern Paris. 'I voted for them to be effective, but I'd rather have voted for the Greens or the Communist Revolutionary League,' she said, concerned that those parties' candidates stood less of a chance of gaining seats."

A French philosophy instructor and university parasite is depressed. A pinhole in the balloon of a fantasy world views is burst by an organic mass called the anonymity of the voting booth. Even someone in the university racket can’t chock it up to “brainwashing” or any of the other usual Fig Newtons of the leftist imagination.

Just one question: teacher, may I laugh now?

Guess what: that’s Not Entertainment

Left and right may disagree, but I’m fairly sure we all want to break David Chase’s knees today:

Chase pulled the ultimate copout.

Nothing happened.

Actually, it was worse than nothing. In the last few minutes of the last episode of The Sopranos, the screen suddenly went blank and silent.

Big joke on the audience. Get it? A lot of us went crazy thinking our TVs had suddenly died, or the cable company went kerflooie.

That's not drama. That's sadism.

Time to poison his cannoli if you ask me.

Election non-watch

While monitoring enemy broadcasts a discussion of the Parliamentary elections in France came up. The BBC’s correspondent at large in France discussed the mechanics of what looks like a landslide, after which the presenter rapped with some writer from Libération who sounded to be all of 14 years old. She rattled on for a while about how voting doesn’t really matter and “their” democracy was on the streets.

This would only make sense if you believed that voting doesn’t matter, and that the will of a majority that votes matters less than the will of a minority willing to break windows and burn trash cans.

Otherwise the BBC sound like this:

blah, blah, blah, climate change, blah, blah, blah, George Bush, blah, blah, blah, climate change, blah, blah, blah, climate change, blah, blah, blah, climate change...

And so forth.

Sure, And a big fat Sieg Heil to you two too.

French election watch

TF1 is announcing the following results for the French parliamentary election:

UMP & Presidential majority (Right) : 405-455 seats
Mouvement pour la Démocratie (Eunuch Centrist) : 1-4 seats
Socialist Party and other Left : 120-160

Run-off elections continue next Sunday.

French election watch

Official results will be announced in minutes, but Swiss TV is forecasting a right wing majority for the UMP (Presidential) Party of between 440-470 seats out of 577 in France's National Assembly. If this turns out to be accurate the French Socialist Party has been well and truly laminated. If Sarkozy does not push through Reagan and Thatcher style reforms after this then it will never happen.

I Can Hear it Now

No linkage. Bush’s poodle. Created by America. Al-Qaida has nothing to do with Syria which has nothing to do with Al-Qaida... Rumsfeld's lawn jockey... I wonder how terror’s willing collaborators among the western left will explain this away?

Beirut - This is an update on last week's Ya Libnan report on the arrest by the Lebanese security agents of the Al-Qaida terrorist mastermind at a Beirut hotel . The arrest was called 'a major catch'.

According to LBC TV, Lebanon's "major catch" has revealed that he is the coordinating officer between the Syrian intelligence and Fatah al-Islam terrorists.

Those inclined to fall for terrorist causes for their ‘rebeliousness’ need to realize just how “bought and paid” by authoritarian regimes many terrorists are: Ahmed Mehri was an al-Qaida “officer” type, and a liason between Syrian intelligence and the gang that hid behind civilians in a Palestinian camp in northern Lebanon by firing on the Lebanese Army.

The whole affair looks like it was set up as retaliation and a diversion for the Lebanese effort to keep attention on the investigation of Rafiq Harriri’s murder which is getting closer and closer to showing Damascus’ complicity.

The source explained that al-Qaida is "no more a solid-structure network. Many of its ranking members have joined several intelligence agencies and are used to infiltrate, control and direct local Qaida-inspired fanatics to carry out attacks that serve the interests of these intelligence agencies."

Fatah al-Islam, the source added, "is one of such local groups. Its members are inspired by al-Qaida ideology, but its attacks are directed by Syrian intelligence officers."

It also looks like someone (no-one will say who) seems to be putting a lot of these guys out of a job.

I wonder... who could THAT be?

Winston Smith: Run and Hide!

From a rag that reads like a 1960’s report on Soviet tractor production we can observe the species in the wild: among the announcements is this bit of common evasion:

Journalist and Communist: Françoise Germain-Robin passes on the colors of the PCF [French Communist Party] to her replacement in the 19e district of Paris, Catherine Ballester. The candidate is a recognized writer to l’Humanité readers, where she’s been since 1975 after having been a journalist for France Culture. For l’Humanité she was a correspondent in Algeria until 1981, and then a reporter at large for the Middle East.
She’s also the author of several works in particular on Islam, Algeria, and Israel or Palestine.

This is undoubtedly the motivation which led people to take part in her committee of support, where dramatists, those organized on the questions of the Middle East, and historians are found. Beyond being a candidate who has lived in the 18e arrondissement since 1989, she intends to fight against the right and “for a strong left” in a district which she likes to say, is a “reflection of the world and is rich in true human and cultural diversity”.

So a neighborhood of rich lefties (and political monoculture) is now magically “diverse”, journalism’s purpose is entirely political, and it’s warm, touching and sincere to run for local office in a place you don’t live.

Now I see.