A Typical French Viewpoint: In the Russian-Georgian Conflict, Tbilisi Was the Hunter, While the Kremlin Was the Rabbit!

Le véritable moyen de juger de la légitimité des actions menées par la Russie n'est pas de se demander si le gouvernement démocratiquement élu de la Géorgie est venu à la rescousse de son peuple, sur son propre territoire, mais plutôt de répondre aux questions suivantes. Est-ce la Géorgie ou est-ce la Russie qui a : recherché une annexion de facto du territoire souverain d'un état voisin; délivré illégalement des passeports aux résidents d'une démocratie voisine afin de créer un prétexte à l'invasion; envoyé des centaines de chars et des milliers de soldats au-delà des frontières internationalement reconnues d'une démocratie voisine; été l'instigatrice d'une série de provocations mortelles et d'attaques ouvertes pendant de nombreux mois ayant entraîné la mort de nombreux civils ?

Georgian President Mikheïl Saakachvili answers his detractors (on the same page appears a sort of reply by Frank-Walter Steinmeier), stating that Moscow's campaign to convince the world that Tbilisi acted in an irresponsible manner during Russia's August invasion has manifestly borne fruit.

A en juger par la couverture médiatique récente, cette campagne a été un succès.

This is proven by the vast majority of Le Monde readers, who show that the French still like to listen to the Kremlin as the readers tell Le Monde to stop letting people like Mikheïl Saakachvili have a tribune (regulating speech they do not like, i.e., that does not square with la pensée unique).

The readers fume with scorn, calling the Georgian president an "irresponsible person", a "fantoche", an "agent of the CIA", somebody "filled with contradictions and imprecision", with "a degree zero in idiocy", a "hunter" who accuses the "rabbit" (Russia!!) of having started the conflict, and "un branquignol mégalomane et incontrôlable qui trouvera toujours normal de visiter une usine de fusées avec des briquets plein les poches". "J'allucine de voir des articles comme celui-ci dans le Monde" adds another reader, while another likens Le Monde to the ordinary Russian propagandist using the same Putin methods so often decried. "Le 'Monde' s'honorerait en ne lui [Mikheïl Saakachvili] servant pas de relai !"

To remember one definition of the danger of a one-party state: "contrary voices are regulated, barred, banned when possible, mocked and marginalized when not." There is only one truth: "Mais les faits sont têtus et ils s'imposent. L'agresseur fut la Géorgie! Pourquoi Le Monde insiste encore?" So keep quiet, nom de Dieu! And in case you don't understand that, get this: "La Géorgie, qui a été libérée de l'empire Ottoman par les Russes fait partie de l'ensemble russe !" So, enough already!

Thank goodness for people like Georges GIEN who says:

Les propagandistes zélés de l'ambassade russe sont en service commandé. Il est amusant d'ailleurs de constater, que les critiques portent uniquement sur l'homme, (comme à l'époque soviétique) que l'on présente comme un malade ou un fou...

Georges GIEN also answers Frank-Walter Steinmeier's column on the same page of Le Monde:

Et bla, bla, bli et bla, bla, bla. C'est creux et sans intérêt. Car pour espérer être crédible il ne faut pas accepter que la Russie envahisse et occupe un pays, membre de l'Onu, dont les frontières sont internationalement reconnues. reprendre les discussions avec la Russie, sans poser au préalable l'arrêt de l'occupation en Géorgie est inadmissible. Voulez-vous aussi, comme Schroeder devenir administrateur chez gazprom ?

Tsk, tsk

What will they say at the next drum circle:

This year is set to be the coolest since 2000, according to a preliminary estimate of global average temperature that is due to be released next week by the Met Office. The global average for 2008 should come in close to 14.3C, which is 0.14C below the average temperature for 2001-07.

Lest you think that more cooling means less warming (even writ small):

The relatively chilly temperatures compared with recent years are not evidence that global warming is slowing however, say climate scientists at the Met Office. "Absolutely not," said Dr Peter Stott, the manager of understanding and attributing climate change at the Met Office's Hadley Centre. "If we are going to understand climate change we need to look at long-term trends."

Of course the (publicly-funded) scientific community now is into the nuance game (eg. the facts are not fitting the models afterall). When it was time to pin the blame for Hurricane Katrina, natch ......... immediate pronouncement that it was AGW. It must be true, there is even a powerpoint.

One wonders with the scientific community, which is more important: long-term trends related to scientific facts -or- long-term trends related to funding.

Hmmmmmmm

Hold on to you Grundgesetz, People

German courts have found a way to extend the great warm-fuzzy of compassion to aggressive men incarcerated together.

The Federal Constitutional Court said the plaintiff was right in challenging a prison policy which allowed only female inmates to spend 25 euros (£21) of their own money on cosmetic and skin care products each month.

"Although the interest in cosmetics may be more widespread or frequently stronger among women than among men, it is not a biologically determined interest among women," the court ruled.

"Members of one sex cannot be denied their wellness choices simply because they are more typically found among the opposite sex."

It's just what they need in the crowbar hotel. Better smelling trany prison bitches.

In Memoriam

China Considers France a Female Country Which Acts Like a Vassal and Is Europe's Weak Link

Les diplomates français ont de tout temps été fascinés par la Chine et en ont une vision totalement déconnectée de la réalité

says a China specialist, Jean-Vincent Brisset, directeur de recherche à l'Institut de relations internationales et stratégiques, to Soren Seelow (Nee hau to José).

Nous sommes persuadés qu'il faut être gentils avec les Chinois pour que les Chinois soient gentils en échange. Parmi les pays ayant joué un grand rôle au niveau mondial, le nôtre est celui qui s'est montré le plus faible vis-à-vis de la Chine. Nous sommes ainsi considérés comme un pays femelle, faible et qui change tout le temps d'avis. Or la Chine ne respecte que la force.

…Pour [les Chinois], c'est extrêmement clair : la France est un pays vassal. … Nous n'y avons gagné que du mépris. … Il y a heureusement beaucoup de gens en Europe qui commencent à comprendre que la Chine n'est pas un pays ami. C'est un pays égoïste qui a des rapports rugueux avec le reste du monde, avec lequel il faut prendre un peu de distance.

… Si l'Europe faiblit, la Chine pourra piétiner tous les pays européens l'un après l'autre, sauf la Grande-Bretagne, qui ne se laissera jamais faire.

A Venezuelan Whose First Name Is Hitler? A Frenchman is Shocked; A Venezuelan Whose First Name Is Stalin? The Frenchman Is Amused

In Le Monde, Jean-Pierre Langellier has an article about the strange and funny first names that Venezuelans give their children.

There is Jefferson, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, Elvis, John Wayne, Usnavi, and, in the oil-producing region of Maracaibo, there are even kids (since grown up) named General Electric, Max Donald, and Made in USA. Along with Danger as well as Yesaidu and Juan Jondre, local adaptations of "Yes, I do" and "One hundred".

So far, so good. But here is where the French particularity comes out. Jean-Pierre Langellier points out there are some names of dubious taste, such as Iroshima Jennifer Bravo Queredo and Hitler Eufemio Sanchez Mayora, Jr, son of Hitler Eufemio Sanchez Mayora, Sr, and one of 60 people in the country with the first name Hitler.

The problem is whom the Frenchman did not include in the dubious name category. Indeed, see how the entire article started:

Lenin Danieri travaille comme reporter pour une chaîne de télévision vénézuélienne. Stalin Gonzalez, ex-leader étudiant, vient d'être battu aux élections municipales. Hochiminh Jesus Delgado Sierra dirige une entreprise à Barquisimento, une capitale provinciale. Mao Pinto est publicitaire.

Having Hitler for a first name is dubious (as we can all agree), but, obviously, for a Frenchman like Jean-Pierre Langellier, having Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Hochiminh, or Chegueva as a first name is not, and is obviously nothing less than as cute as Jefferson or Kennedy. In the country where, we are told, it is not at all true that people regret the Soviet era, note that (at the time of this writing) no reader has come forward to protest (or even offer a comment).

(True, Jean-Pierre Langellier goes on to bemoan the "sad" example of Carlos the Jackel, but that seems to be because the terrorist born Ilich Ramirez Sanchez (his brothers were named Lenin and Vladimir) brings disfavor to Lenin's (original first) name, not because Lenin's name brings disrepute to the terrorist.)

Election Monitors, Training Program in Civic Fairness Needed

What? Someone finally noticed? How can this be twisted to mean "George Bush shredded the constitution?

Belgium 'placed on democracy watch list'

The global champions of cultural fascism have turned to sneering on themselves: Belgium has banned three elected mayors from office for speaking French.

The COE has demanded that the mayors be immediately appointed and called for a review of Belgium's linguistic laws that have been used by Flemish nationalists to ban the use of the French language in municipalities around Brussels, home to the EU.

Good luck with all that.

"I cannot walk 200 meters in the streets" of Saint Petersburg, says the African native, "without getting fingers pointed at me"

Hamidou Bakayoko … est malien et vit depuis vingt-six ans à Saint-Pétersbourg. Agé de 46 ans, il est marié à une Russe, ils ont un enfant. Il est mordu de foot, mais ne mettra jamais les pieds au stade. Plombier dans le quartier de Petrogradskaya, il grille cigarette sur cigarette dans son atelier vétuste en méditant sur son sort : "La Russie, c'est pas un pays pour les Noirs. Le racisme, c'est la maladie principale ici. Je ne peux pas faire 200 mètres dans la rue sans me faire pointer du doigt."

Il met son manteau, allume une énième cigarette, et c'est parti pour une promenade. Deux cents mètres plus loin, une femme, la quarantaine, sourire moqueur, montre du doigt Hamidou à ses deux amis. "Comme un animal, souffle-t-il. Et encore, on ne m'a pas demandé si je me suis lavé aujourd'hui."

While all eyes are eternally on America on outlook for instances of racism, intolerance, greed, treachery, stupidity, and other "crimes" against humanity, other societies, such as Russia, with far worse "sins", only get passing interest in the media.

Pour accueillir les joueurs de l'OM, surtout les Noirs, des "ultras" se sont recouverts le visage de la fameuse cagoule blanche du Ku Klux Klan, ont imité des cris de singe, lancé des bananes. Dans une tribune, un singe en peluche portant le maillot marseillais a été pendu au bout d'une corde. "C'était amusant, lance Dmitri, 22 ans, un fan du Zénith qui dit appartenir à un groupe de supporteurs, les Members, proche des mouvements néonazis. C'est important de montrer aux nègres qu'ils sont des nègres. Nous sommes des patriotes de la ville, la place des Noirs n'est pas chez nous, mais dans les arbres en Afrique."

Needless to say, a number of Le Monde readers look back at Soviet times with nostalgia.

"Pull Down Your Underwear, Turn Around, and Cough Three Times"

"On se demande dans quel pays on vit", dit [Vittorio de Filippis, journaliste à Libération, membre de la direction du journal].

The French press is up in arms because a member of Libération has been allegedly mistreated by French police. Arrested at his home in the early hours of dawn for defamation (for "allowing" a website vistor's comment on a controversial businessman to remain on the website), Vittorio de Filippis was brought to the police station and told to get undressed. Then he was directed to lower his underpants… «Baissez votre slip, tournez-vous et toussez trois fois!»

The editor of Le Monde calls the police methods unacceptable but the police say that the Filippis version of events is exaggerrated.

Underwhelming

The European Union has launched its mission to strengthen the rule of law in Kosovo, after months of delay.  
 
Nearly 2,000 officials are taking over police, justice and customs duties from United Nations staff.  
 
Serbia rejected Kosovo's declaration of independence in February and still regards Kosovo as one of its provinces, but it has accepted the new EU mission.  
The UN will leave Kosovo after more than a decade in charge, retaining only a small political role.

After making a big point some time ago about the EU in Kosovo, the EU is making a big deal about ‘taking over the operation’ from the UN.  It has to be said that the same people who are effectively the government of Kosovo will be changing hats for this new effort to ‘take over the operation’again in a bid to do something slightly less parasitic looking than the year before.  From the BBC:

Eulex is the EU's biggest-ever mission and will operate across all of Kosovo. The 1,900 international officials will be supported by about 1,100 local staff.

Yup.  That’s it. Their ‘biggest ever mission’ is IN Europe and is composed of only 3000 people, more than a third of which are local hires, all to somehow make good on decades of cultural babble on what Casper should be doing for the world.  Oh, what a grand day as they continue to not ever find a way out of that quagmire they’ve been in, albeit looking like they’re passing around by re-re-redeclaring it an mission of some other alphabet soup operation: OECD, EU, UN, NATO, CoE, or who knows what next. 
 
A simpler point needs to be made: while the UN have been there since 1999, and realistically outside organizations have been there longer given the interventions in the region, they really have no way out.  All the while the region has been rotting in the EU’s back yard, and the EU decided to try to take as least visible a role as it could for more than a decade.  These are the people who we’re told are lighting the way to sunshine, lollipops, and peace for the world.  
 
 On the other hand, Iraq has been administered by Iraqis for some time.  I can’t help wondering if the real goal of those that idealize ‘internationalism’ is anything more than self-flattery. 
 
To begin with UNMIK after celebrating an 18 month anniversary of being a “renerwed commitment’ amounted to:

UNMIK budget for the fiscal year 2007/08 US$210,676,800.00 (Budget for the fiscal year 
2006/2007 amounts to US$217,962,000. The budget for the fiscal year 2005/06 (until 30 June 
2006): US$239,889,800.) 
UN Staff: (Police not included): International 462, National 1892, UNV’s 125. (as of Jan. ‘08) 
OSCE: A total of 999 staff. 283 International and 716 Local staff (as of 2007)

4194 personnel, 2608 of which are local hires.  How this is a “Kosavarizing” of the activity or with apparently fewer people a “renewed commitment” is, I suppose, a matter of being able to imagine a better world.

Man bites dog

Lawyers seek the creation of a new organisation which helps ensure lawyers are employed.

Film at 11

Your Fungible Freedoms

Another way of saying "share the goods, comrade" is all they're capable of coming up with.

It is time to think about how to prepare democratic society for the significant stress that adjusting to climate change will cause, and how to guarantee political participation in a difficult period. In Germany, citizens are already beginning to doubt that they live in the best of all political worlds. According to a study conducted by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, almost one in three people hold the view that democracy is functioning badly; astoundingly, 60 per cent of eastern Germans were of this opinion. There is a growing impression that the political system is not equipped to deal with the "big issues" such as climate change, global justice, and demographic development. In other words, democracy is no longer "delivering" and is lacking an essential pillar of its credibility: output legitimacy.

The fear of vague ecological something-or-other is in the view of the great European minds, just another necessary wedge issue/crobar to carve away at democracy by banal rulemaking and use dirigism and subsidies to place the role of work and industry under state control.

Unremarkable to see that these unremarkable minds also believe that measure to control the runaway march to an absolute welfare state, and any number of class-warfare based complaints are some sort of justification for the dismantling of individual freedoms too.

The lack of importance the individual has to the people who spout these theories, and the casualness with which they discuss investing in central governments something closer to absolute power might seem to make a cliche out of these folks, but it's largely true when you read what they write. It's not wooly-headed to plainly say just how much people like this seem to resign themselves to concepts of governance consistence with dictatorship, and sad to see that they show no scepticism of absolutism and to the end of political pluralism at all. I suppose that like the East German regime they will willing to accept the nominal existence of more than one political party for a few years, so longs as they're all the same.

From communication management to democratic skill

It is not hard to understand that those affected by such situations feel themselves abandoned by the state, and often from democracy as well. One of the main reasons is precisely that the state has not ceased to profess willingness to provide care that in reality it can no longer afford. Thus, for example, the increasingly loud demands that low and middle income groups receive compensation for dramatically rising energy costs are likely to be disappointed. No democracy in the world that can vouch for this if resources become scarcer and therefore more expensive; moreover, if democracies wish to retain trust, paradoxically they must admit that they cannot do so. It is possible to imagine what will happen if rising energy costs result in a decline in living standards even for middle income groups, with low earners no longer able to heat their homes

But to find the true ignorance evident in their view, they cant help but forsee disorder in the public communication of relief measures to salve the people where strict controls are trying to do what free-markets can accomplish without manipulation. In wondering just how it is that central governments will be able to tell those "classes" who will demand relief from the rising cost of energy which will be for their own good, they see a "communication management problem". To translate that into plain language: they see the need to propagandize.

In the search for actors that possess or could acquire democratic skills, the gaze falls less and less upon professional politics. Some see the chance for the revival of social participation in active consumer responsibility; consumer rights lends itself well to learning democratic skills through apparently trivial questions such as: "What can I do so that our school is supplied by the local organic dairy?" According to this approach, analogous issues of climate and environmental protection open up new opportunities for political engagement that connect local and regional agendas with global ones.

That's interesting: they don't sem to want democracy, a social form that permits multiple views, debate, and an environment that permits independant study and opinion. They want people with "visible democratic skills" to all make the same kind of decisions and push for the same kinds of initiatives.

The seeming smallness of their motives is as stunningly ignorant as the unthinking ease with which they will concider such a huge and sweeping disposal of the idea that overbearing and invasive state regulation of society is somehow harmless and inherently good.

You simply could not get any more naive about history or myopic in identifying the scale of the problem that they're telling people that they want to solve. Rampling around for yet more, the credit crisis (naturally "caused by greed",) is mined for yet more proof that what the world needs is a veneer of participatory government, so that the real business of an elite within NGOs making themselves a meal-ticket out of the emotional anxiety of the polulation and a few flawed threds of science can trump all else - private of public.

We've already seen the regurgitation of the notion of "making the new socialist man" by way of the use of guilt over social, political, and environmental matters - benignly in the promotion of "new attitudes and lifestyle" which combine a trained non-resistence to anything that looks like a public stunt for "social-justice", or "saving the earth". I only wonder what other revisions of the discredited authoritarian manifestos have been left out.

Dreams walking in broad daylight

There is a certain animal walking the streets of Chelsea, Manhattan, and of course the beautiful narroways of Saint-Germain who truly believe that all it takes is sitting down with a fellow of good cheer in the hopes of reaching la prétention de latte.

A misguided belief that all peoples hold all truths to be self-evident. As our brothers and sisters in Mumbai will attest, first-hand, some people want to kill you because you are you. Of course, you may think that you being you is wonderful under the reassuring and undulating strobes of the discothèque du jour chasing tablets of ecstasy with the ubiquitous kir royale. A wonderful life if you can get it.

However, the peace-love-and-understanding cord fail to realize one very important fact, the other guys simply do not care how caring, how nuanced, how sophisticated you may think you are. Their only interest is racking up another one for the nightly body-count. …

Gobble, Gobble

Thanksgiving Day and American readers of NP are no doubt decidely not huddled around the television and/or the internet waiting for the latest breaking news filling the world. So, when nobody is watching, what better day to drop a turkey:

There is both growing public reluctance to make personal sacrifices and a distinct lack of enthusiasm for the major international efforts now underway to battle climate change, according to findings of a poll of 12,000 citizens in 11 countries, including Canada.

No doubt as well that this ends the year on a sour note for all involved (the poll is listed as commissioned by the Earthwatch Institute). Six to eight months ago there was undoubtedly great hope. Ideas were pitched, proposals were written, funding obtained, meetings held, powerpoints prepared, urgent emails exchanged, questions worked, polling firms contacted, contracts signed, PR strategy created, and joy all around.

Then those bloody proles got involved and ruined everything with their so-called "answers". No screaming headlines in the Guardian, no prominent mention in a Monbiot piece, no banner headlines, no doom and even less gloom. Just a tattered unread press release left on the sidewalk.

Shudder, what will the donors think....

An entire American culture, the West itself, its ideas and experiences, have simply vanished on the altar of therapy

…increasingly to meet a young American male about 25 is to hear a particular nasal stress, a much higher tone than one heard 40 years ago, and, to be frank, to listen to a precious voice often nearly indistinguishable from the female.

Victor Davis Hanson offers up Ten Random, Politically Incorrect Thoughts…

The Crisis that Officially Isn't

Brussels Journal reports on an issue that has lit up the French "réacosphere": the idea that a nation with factional, race and ethnicity centered conflict is officially color-blind when society clearly isn't.

The cartoon at the left reads:

So, as I was saying, in France we are all racists. (Except for singers and television).
- I wonder if in foreign countries they are as racist as we are...
- No, I don't think so, seeing as how they're not French.

The cartoon at the right reads:

Unfortunately for us 60 million racists, we are a bit harassed by television.

- I propose a TV series where a girl from Cameroon goes to live in a village and finds she's the target of the villagers' racism, but at the end they see she is OK.

- Yeah, super great idea. They're often racists in the villages. Not like us in the cities.

The big 2 refers to French TV Channel 2

So, as I was saying, in France we are all racists. (Except for singers and television).

- I wonder if in foreign countries they are as racist as we are...
- No, I don't think so, seeing as how they're not French.

The cartoon at the right reads:

Unfortunately for us 60 million racists, we are a bit harassed by television.

- I propose a TV series where a girl from Cameroon goes to live in a village and finds she's the target of the villagers' racism, but at the end they see she is OK.
- Yeah, super great idea. They're often racists in the villages. Not like us in the cities.

The big 2 refers to French TV Channel 2.

High noon at the intersection of Realityplatz and Moralitystraße

Guess who blinks first:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel faced calls from fellow conservatives Sunday to fight to water down a European Union climate pact until the recession-wracked economy is moving again.

Bavarian premier Horst Seehofer said in an interview with the Bild am Sonntag newspaper that he had written to Merkel calling on her to back away from EU climate protection goals to be approved next month for a time.

Added bonus:

German Economy Minister Michael Glos, also of the Christian Social Union, the Bavarian sister party of Merkel's Christian Democratic Union, agreed that Germany could ill-afford to make a priority of climate protection with the economy hobbled by the global financial crisis.

"It is not the time to burden the economy with excessive environmental targets," he said.

Washing down two pizzas with a Diet Coke does not count as "trying" to lose weight

If you frequently find yourself at 30,000 feet, good information to have in terms of who not to fly:

Canada's two largest airlines must give disabled and morbidly obese passengers an extra free seat on domestic flights, beginning in January, after the Supreme Court refused yesterday to consider the carriers' appeal of a federal order.

The truly disabled are a different matter entirely. However, the "morbidly obese":

The ruling is expected to benefit would-be travellers like Linda McKay-Panos, a Calgarian who has secured a declaration from the Federal Court of Appeal that she is obese enough to be considered disabled.

Ms. McKay-Panos, executive director of the Alberta Civil Liberties Research Centre, said yesterday that she has not travelled on Air Canada since 1997, when she endured a "humiliating" flight in which the airline refused her an extra seat even though "my hips were flowing over the arm rest, my hips were basically on the lap of the person who sat beside me."

How do you think the person sitting next to you felt? If anything it is they who should be protected from flabby fliers oozing over and under the demarcation line known as the arm-rest.

Gosh, really?

Those experts, they divine in such a noble fashion:

Banks are anathema to stock-market investors now, but Peter Sorrentino of Huntington Asset Advisors sees that changing, probably around the middle of next year.

Really, what should the collective we buy:

So who does Sorrentino like while they're still cheap?

He's leery of Citigroup.

"I don't know what you're buying with Citi," he said. "I'd rather go with somebody where there's less uncertainty. I like Wells Fargo, I like US Bancorp, I think those are much stronger balance sheets."

Ok:

He's bullish on JPMorgan Chase "That's almost becoming an asset play in and of itself," he noted.

Any surprises in the deck:

Sorrentino owns shares of Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase.

You don't say.... I am guessing US Bancorp is the spread in this baloney sandwich.

Strange headline

French Socialists in disarray after vote

Wouldn't "perpetually" be a more à propos description?