In Mexico and Tunisia, the Results of French Diplomacy's Faux Pas Continue to Reverberate

While Harry Bellet, Stéphane Davet, Michel Guerrin, Emmanuelle Lequeux, Renaud Machart, Marie Pâris et Thomas Sotinel report on the Mexican fiasco continuing — leading to a Mexican boycott of France's Année du Mexique, and the cancellation of one cultural event through France after the other (along with the attendant loss of investments, Mexican as well as French) — the newly-named ambassador to Tunisia is no more popular now than when he called for understanding, and for forgiving, Muammar Kaddhafi.

Boris Boillon promises to be polite in the future, writes Béatrice Gurrey in Le Monde, after being criticized in Tunisia, both in government circles and among common citizens, for having dissed Tunisian journalists (and walked out on them) and for having appeared in a Mexican boycott of France's Année du Mexique, and a swim-suit photo, all of which led one veteran diplomat, Charles Crettien, to pen a column in Le Monde calling the nomination of Boillon (and of anyone of his like) "shocking".

On the positive side, Boris Boillon — an Arab-speaking 41-year-old who served as ambassador in Baghdad — voiced support for George W Bush during the Iraq War! That, of course, makes his sins all the more unforgivable — among the Arabs as among the French…

Crowd of Arab Rulers Seeking Refuge in Saudi Arabia Seems to Be Growing

The Ben Ali Family in Saudi Arabia (by Plantu)
• You will have to scoot over, we're expecting Qaddafi!

Dude! I’m Sooooo Baked

From the vast archives of ¡No Pasarán! (sie werden nicht durchkommen!!!):


Camel milk, camel steak, camel headcheese, camel florentine...



I dream of camels, all day and night. I think they’re, like, after me or something.

What About Those Greek Riots Which American Demonstrators Are Supposed to Emulate?

Regarding the clamoring, from the likes of Frances Fox Piven, for American demonstrators to take example on Greece's riots, along with a Democratic representative's wish for union supporters to "get out on the streets and get a little bloody", we have more exemplary behavior from the Greek protesters, which was a "mostly peaceful gathering", the New York Times thankfully informs us, except, of course, for such events as the Molotov cocktail which set one person (a motorcycle policeman) ablaze, burning his face…

Violent clashes between protesters and the police broke out

in Athens on Wednesday writes Niki Kitsantonis, a New York Times correspondent who naturally had to make sure he referred to the riot to the demonstration (unlike, say, a turnout of Tea Partiers in any American town) as a "mostly peaceful gathering",

as the two main labor unions staged the first general strike of the year against the government’s austerity drive, paralyzing public services and disrupting transportation.

… the mostly peaceful gathering was shaken when groups of youths broke off from the main body and fought with the police outside Parliament and Athens University. Dozens of youths threw stones and firebombs at the police, who responded with tear gas.

Zougla, a news Web site, said two demonstrators were hurt and one police officer was burned when self-styled anarchists threw a firebomb at him, setting him alight.

A police spokesman said 25 people had been detained for questioning, including a man carrying a rucksack containing a bow and arrows, an ax and leaflets with anti-establishment slogans. The spokesman said three police officers had been wounded, including the one whose face was burned when he was hit by the firebomb. The number of injured demonstrators was unclear, the spokesman said.

Despite the skirmishes, the demonstration got “a good turnout,” said Vassilis Xenakis, a senior official at the civil servants’ union. “People are not scared to come out onto the streets, despite the risk of violence.”

Mr. Xenakis said he had seen police officers on motorcycles shouting at demonstrators to go home. “This is a message that people won’t go home,” he said. “They’re exasperated with the cuts to their income, and they can’t take it anymore.”

Huh? No mention of the fear of the demonstrators, the hatred inhabiting their souls, their inability to think in new ways, and their irresponsible linking on to the dangerous downhill path of of populism? And how about, say, racism, or reactionary backwardness, thrown in for good measure? Oh, that's right, we forgot: They are not Americans, they are not Tea Partiers, and they are not people on the right (of whatever country)… They are leftists… So naturally they get a pass!

Dude! We're Sooooo Baked

Or... How’d they learn to shoot so well?

"Europe is powerless, Africa escapes us, the Mediterranean won’t talk to us, China has kept us down, and Washington is ignoring us!”

Already covered earlier this week on No Pasarán, the sorry state of France's diplomacy in the Arab world — appropriately called gauche and maladroit — makes it to the New York Times and to the front page of the International Herald Tribune.

After weeks of diplomatic wavering on the tumult in the Arab world, President Nicolas Sarkozy is scrambling to signal to the world that France is back on track, defending core human values and treading with a sure foot in the changed Middle East

writes Katrinn Bennhold.

To be sure, Mr. Sarkozy is not alone among Western leaders to appear to falter in the fast-moving revolts convulsing the Arab world. But France, which has long claimed a special standing in that region and won respect there for opposing the war in Iraq in 2003, has seemed especially unnerved.

All this has come against a background of simmering discontent among France’s professional diplomats — traditionally known for discretion and aplomb. On Tuesday, an anonymous complaint signed by several diplomats appeared in Le Monde, criticizing Mr. Sarkozy’s foreign policy as more show than substance.

…France, home to some five million Muslim inhabitants mostly of North African descent, prides itself on a special relationship with and understanding of the Arab world and its former colonial backyard in general.

Yet recent missteps have eroded much of that good will at home and abroad, diplomats and analysts warn. A first major sign came last summer, when Le Monde published a complaint by a former French ambassador to Africa about the Elysée Palace’s hijacking French diplomacy in Africa and cozy links between French elites and leaders in former colonies.

…The diplomats’ statement in Le Monde on Tuesday lamented France’s — and Europe’s — lack of influence the world over. “Contrary to the announcements trumpeted for the past three years, Europe is powerless, Africa escapes us, the Mediterranean won’t talk to us, China has kept us down and Washington is ignoring us!” the diplomats wrote.

Henri Guaino, one of Mr. Sarkozy’s most senior advisers, dismissed the laments as “cheap-shot judgments” ahead of the 2012 presidential elections.

…Embarrassed in Tunisia and to a lesser degree in Egypt, Mr. Sarkozy also took his time in condemning the violence in Libya. On Monday, six days into the uprising, when Human Rights Watch put the number of confirmed deaths at 233 — it has climbed since — Mr. Sarkozy made his first public statement, calling for an “immediate halt to the violence.”

Only after Colonel Qaddafi gave a televised address, vowing to fight the rebellion until his “last drop of blood,” did Mr. Sarkozy and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany call for sanctions.

It was not quite swift enough to avoid extensive reminders in the French media of the red carpet treatment Colonel Qaddafi received in 2007, after Tripoli released six foreign medics convicted of infecting Libyan children with the HIV virus in a deal Paris helped to broker.

During the Paris visit, several billion euros worth of industrial contracts were signed and Mr. Sarkozy justified his hospitality saying that he was “sending a signal to the Arab street.”

The Europeans and Their Ineffectual Diplomacy

(The EU's) Catherine Ashton to the Libyans
• OK, OK, kids, let's calm down!
(A larger image of the Plantu cartoon
can be seen by clicking on the picture)

What the Democrats are telling us is that they would rather have no legislature than allow legislation that breaks the power of the unions

Why are Democrats ready to give everything in a last stand for public employees' unions? Because government employment is the socialist ideal in miniature.

Robert Tracinski provides answers to the question, What does the Democratic Party stand for?

What does the Democratic Party stand for? You can find out by asking what they will take a stand for. In the recent protests against limitations on the power of government employees' unions, the Democrats have taken the strongest stand possible, short of outright insurrection. In Wisconsin, in Indiana, and potentially in Ohio, Democratic legislators have actually fled the state in order to deprive their state legislatures of the quorum necessary to vote.

This has led some commentators to describe this as a conflict between the Tea Party and the "Flee Party," but the issue is a little more serious than that. What the Democrats are telling us is that they would rather have no legislature than allow legislation that breaks the power of the unions.

Jack Wakeland has described the current attitude of the left as the rage of the liberal plantation owners, comparing it to the closed-minded irrationality of Southern politicians in the years leading up to the Civil War. Jim Geraghty captures something of the same idea when he describes these legislative walk-outs as "small-scale, temporary secessions."

They are not likely to win. Democratic legislators in Texas fled the state a few years back to prevent an unfavorable congressional redistricting—but they eventually returned and the legislation passed a few months later. Some have also pointed out that the Wisconsin Senate requires a smaller quorum for non-spending measures, so they could still pass the core of their union-busting legislation in the Democrats' absence.

That implies that this is not so much a rational calculation of political advantage on the part of the Democrats as it is an outpouring if existential rage. Curtailing the power of government employees' unions strikes to the very core of their existence, prompting them to give everything in a last stand. Why?

The threat to the Democratic Party is partly practical and partly ideological.

On the practical level, as Michael Barone explains below, the government employees' unions are a mechanism for siphoning taxpayer dollars into the campaigns of Democratic politicians. That's why Democratic legislators are going to bat for the unions. They are protecting their biggest campaign contributors. But that corrupt motive is not the only thing driving them.

On an ideological level, public sector employment represents the left's ideal: public employment is not oriented toward making a profit, there is no competition, generous health-care and retirement benefits are provided by the government, comfortable pay is mandated by legislative fiat, and the work rules are militantly egalitarian: pay, promotion, and job security are almost totally independent of actual job performance.

This is, of course, how the left thinks everyone should live and work. It is a socialist economy in miniature.

But of course, this prosperous set-up is possible only because the majority does not work like this. It survives only on the tax money looted from a much larger, productive private economy. Even then, the money is starting to run out. The socialist utopia of public employment is crossing the Thatcher Line—the point at which, as the Iron Lady used to say, you run out of other people's money.

This is why the left is pouring into the streets and temporarily seceding from state legislatures. For them, this is like a second fall of the Berlin Wall: the very viability of their ideal society is being threatened.

"Public Unions Force Taxpayers to Fund Democrats," Michael Barone, Washington Examiner, February 22

Everyone has priorities. During the past week Barack Obama has found no time to condemn the attacks that Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi has launched on the Libyan people.

But he did find time to be interviewed by a Wisconsin television station and weigh in on the dispute between Republican Gov. Scott Walker and the state's public employee unions. Walker was staging "an assault on unions," he said, and added that "public employee unions make enormous contributions to our states and our citizens."

Enormous contributions, yes—to the Democratic Party and the Obama campaign. Unions, most of whose members are public employees, gave Democrats some $400 million in the 2008 election cycle. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the biggest public employee union, gave Democrats $90 million in the 2010 cycle.

Follow the money, Washington reporters like to say. The money in this case comes from taxpayers, present and future, who are the source of every penny of dues paid to public employee unions, who in turn spend much of that money on politics, almost all of it for Democrats. In effect, public employee unions are a mechanism by which every taxpayer is forced to fund the Democratic Party.

.

One Reaction to Plantu's Cartoon on the Arab World's Decrepit Dictators Opines that Le Monde's Aging Apparatchik Ought to Include Himself Among Them

Among the Le Monde readers critical of Plantu is one (Maxime Malecki) writing that maybe the aging Le Monde "apparatchik" ought to add himself among those ancient, decrepit insiders in his cartoon related to the aging dictators of the Middle East…

Pour une fois, le Plantu n'est pas mauvais... En même temps, depuis que je lis Le Monde - + de 20 ans - je l'ai toujours vu et très souvent en Une. Peut-être ferait-il bien de se caricaturer aussi dans ce tableau, non ?

Comparing him to Kaddhafi, Maxime Malecki suggests it would be better if, like Libya's perennial strongman, Plantu simply upped and left…

Improvised Egyptian Riot Wear v.2.0

Well protected against Nerf balls and salad tongs, no doubt.

In Wake of the Popular Revolts in the Arab World, France's Diplomacy Comes Under Fire for Timid Reactions

La France joue une partie serrée face aux soulèvements populaires arabes. Comment reformuler un message en direction du Maghreb et du Moyen-Orient, après avoir "raté" la révolution tunisienne, point de départ de l'onde de choc, survenue dans un univers que l'on était censé connaître de bout en bout ? Comment rebâtir une image après des années de complaisance à l'égard des pouvoirs en place ? Après la fuite de Ben Ali, Nicolas Sarkozy a théorisé un devoir de "réserve" auquel l'ancienne puissance coloniale serait astreinte. Les Etats-Unis ont paru occuper un créneau déserté par Paris. La place Tahrir au Caire a ensuite semblé vibrer aux messages envoyés par la Maison Blanche, interlocuteur sans égal, en relais et en moyens.

A front-page article by Natalie Nougayrède in Le Monde tells of the failures of French diplomacy during the popular revolts in the Arab world and the Middle East, some of them former French colonies. Needless to say, comparisons and contrasts with America's policies abound, Barack Obama or no Barack Obama, with Washington scoring high points for its (allegedly principled) "stand" on Egypt and the Middle East…

While Virginie Malingre points out that London's Foreign Office was far quicker to react, the French foul-up has led a group of diplomats, active as well as retired, operating under the collective pseudonym of Marly, to charge that The Voice of France in the World Has Vanished. The Élysée immediately struck back, with Henri Guaino calling Marly's communiqué nothing more than "a political tract".

Map of the Popular Revolts in the Middle East and the Arab World

Le Monde has a map of the popular revolts in the Middle East and the ongoing status thereof…

And a Side of Hallal Angels of Horseback too...

Those sensitive, culturally aware Europeans have so much to teach us dull and dimwitted Americans.

Will this trigger a Kosher "day of rage"? That's a fine question but rather doubtful, my dear Faulein Ulla.

Using Christian Imagery to Defend Despot Kaddhafi: "In this life, we all have made mistakes and we all have the right to redemption"

Kadhafi a été un terroriste, il ne l’est plus, il a fait son autocritique. (…) Dans sa vie on fait tous des erreurs et on a tous droit au rachat.

"In the past", admitted Boris Boillon (as recently as November 2010 on Canal +'s Grand Journal), "Kaddhafi has been a terrorist." Having said that, the French diplomat — who has since been named France's ambassador to Tunisia (!) — comes with his caveat: but "he no longer is so, he has made his self-criticism", adding Christian forgiveness terms for good measure: "who can pretend to be a paragon of virtue and democracy?" Boillon ends his soliloquy with the following lesson in forgiveness: "In this life, we all have made mistakes and we all have the right to redemption." (Needless to say, such politically correct terms in the mouths of the left and of the all-knowing, wiser-than-thou élite are unheard of for non-PC leaders — despots or others — such as the terminally detestable Augusto Pinochet, George W Bush, etc…)

Boillon défend Kadhafi (C+)
envoyé par LePostfr. - Regardez les dernières vidéos d'actu.

I would Plausit a "No"

Is Google Street View photojournalism?, asks the British Journal of Photography

"I found it a fascinating medium." indicated German artist and photographer Michael Wolf, who received an honorable mention in this year's World Press Photo juried competition for this work "A Series of Unfortunate Events", based on Google Street View.

What is the Arab equivalent of the phrase “peace in our time”?

The people flooding into the streets of Iran to seek regime change find no support from the U.S. government

opines The Washington Times in its editorial, Obama’s Double standard for Iran.

President Obama, who hectored Egypt‘s President Hosni Mubarak to transfer power “right now,” suddenly doesn’t want to get involved when it comes to the dictators running the Islamic republic.

The administration argues that taking a firm stand on regime change would hand Tehran a pretext for cracking down on pro-democracy protesters. It took the same approach during the 2009 protests, and the result was that Tehran’s thugs ruthlessly suppressed demonstrators and blamed the United States for instigating them. Iran‘s leaders will do the same again no matter what Mr. Obama says. The president has nothing to lose by standing up for freedom, especially because the Iranian regime really needs changing.

The Apologizer-in-Chief has nothing to lose, except for one thing: the left's raison d'être, i.e., its fairy tale view of the world that there are no enemies on this planet, that all is based on misunderstandings which can be remedied with dialogue, and that if only the world would agree to come together, it would see that, indeed, there are no enemies — except, of course, for those cynical and mistrustful beings that are America's clueless combative conservatives.

On Wednesday, Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper testified before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to revise his comment that the Muslim Brotherhood was “largely secular.” … Mr. Clapper … also maintains that the group is riven with factions and includes “a younger, more liberal wing who is more inclined to work through the secular political process.” This is in the great tradition of the hunt for the “moderate extremists,” which was a common liberal pastime during the Cold War that led to bad policy decisions every time.

Speedy Sarkozy Bullied by the Mexicans

Speedy Gonzales Bullied by the Mexicans
• F--k off, damn Gringo!
• Caramba!

Plantu comments on France's Year of Mexico festivities being boycotted by… Mexico itself due to Sarko's (Nicolas Sarkozy's) proclaiming the event being dedicated to a Frenchwoman sentenced, rightfully or otherwise, to 60 years in a Mexican jail.

After Tunisia, Egypt… Mexico
• Down with Ben Ali!
• Down with Mubarak!
• Down with Sarko!

Improvised Egyptian Riot Wear

N-ice!

Smug Social Theories Not Sufficiently Supported by Reality

It only took a decade, and we had to put up with a lot of verbal abuse, but a few Europeans are finally getting at a tiny piece of George Bush’s reasoning:

The revolutionary spirit sweeping the Middle East has provoked as much fear as joy in the West. Der Standard questions why is it that we doubt that Arabs have the will or the ability to be the masters of their own destiny.

The only flaw in it, is that the author uses it to hector specific people about generic assumptions about those empty headed ”national attitudes” that all too many Europeans think make every individual tick, in highly bigoted fashion.

Perhaps the Internet and social media are having a much more dramatic impact on the general consciousness than we have assumed till now. The so-called experts really know nothing, because there has been too much flux in the past one or two years, and learned expertise often falls back on a long history – which may have been dramatically overtaken by recent social modernisation processes without the "experts" having even noticed.

If you can wade through all of that, what really means anything in all of that muck is that these “experts” that those in a newspaper induced lethargy are in are nothing more than people with opinions that they borrowed from one another in a sad bid to seem relevant, but with a pinch of memorable controversy. In reality they’re sheep: not only would the idea of will for individuals not square with their bloodlust for revolutions LED by people with attitudes that they like, but they suddenly seem surprised that all of their talking about Twitter and Facebook is more about wanting to predict the methods others use, rather that understanding that they don’t especially need them.

It must be painful when an impoverished, oppressed population doesn’t follow your script – when all you really need to do is understand natural human will, and defend individual freedoms.

By presenting the West as repugnant and the other civilizations as our prey, we encourage such social pathologies as jihadism

Now the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has joined the chorus

writes R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.

The other day he said, "My answer is clearly yes, it is a failure." The "it" was multiculturalism, and he was on French national television. In pronouncing multiculturalism defunct, the French president joins German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Australia's ex-prime minister John Howard, Spain's ex-premier Jose Maria Aznar, and, most recently, British Prime Minister David Cameron in heaving a failed policy into history's dustbin. The question is, what will replace it? Or actually another question: how did multiculturalism ever become a policy of these European countries anyway?

…Now the European leaders are giving this sort of tolerance of intolerance a second look.…

…So how did the Europeans end up with multiculturalism, a multiculturalism that seems to favor Islam over other cultures? … I think it started with the way they teach their history. Militarism, colonialism, and racism are all prominent ingredients of European history books, particularly British history. For that matter, American history stresses these ingredients also. I have been reading American college history texts and they present an alarmingly ugly view of the Western past.

Best Rendition Ever of The Star-Spangled Banner Is By… a… 7-Year-Old Girl?!

+ de videos buzz sur buzzmoica.fr
You better believe it!
(Merci à SLG…)

+ de videos buzz sur buzzmoica.fr

What to Feel Tall? Hang out with Short People!

Want to feel smart? Randomly generate postmodernist trash. Reload for even more high-achieving academic brilliance obfuscation.

He is an evil genius, Thank him, sofort, tous de suite, and chop chop

- Tip ‘o hat to Legionnaire of the Banned

Admit it - don’t you Think there Something Highly Erotic About this?

Why not show your lurrrrve with a slightly marbled center cut?

The Near Distant Ago, Remembered

Those among us interested in radio will enjoy this one: one of those new fangled weblog thingies focusing on Radio Berlin International, the voice of the erstwhile German leftist dictatorship. For a collection of their QSL cards, as well as postcards from said erstwhile German leftist dictatorship, hier clicken, bitte.

France's Year of Mexico to Be Boycotted by… Mexico

Every year in France, the government plays host to a foreign nation (calling the commemoration and the festivities — along with the heightened business deals — the Year of Brazil, the Year of Russia, etc), but this year's bash stands out in that a diplomatic crisis looms between the host country and its guest and that, consequently, France's Année du Mexique will likely be boycotted by… Mexico.

The problem, explains Le Monde, is that Nicolas Sarkozy declared that the year-long event would be dedicated to a Frenchwoman who has sat in a Mexican jail for the past five years. Sentenced to 60 years behind bars for having allegedly joined a drug gang and participated in kidnappings, Florence Cassez is widely seen in France as being an innocent bystander falsely accused or at least as a romantic who fell in love with an outlaw and who received an unfair trial and/or too harsh a verdict…

Stamping your Feet and shaking your Little Fists in the Air Again, are we?

There’s trouble in paradise for the Alain Soral, a man who looks for Jews hiding under his bed every night.

Alain Soral was assaulted on Saturday at a book signing near the Bastille of his latest work "Understanding the Empire."

Four or five individuals surrounded Soral, asking him to apologize for some comment he was accused of making that offended Houria Bouteldja. The scuffle started when a person accused Alain Soral of having said that blacks are cannibals.

The syphilitic F. Desouche blog spends little time wondering about color, and asks the question “was he beaten up by muslims?” Such is life in the land of “intellectualism and debate.” The reason this all sounds bizarre to Americans is because it is. While the likes of Soral and even those who find him as dippy as he really is indulge in accusing the United States of “being at war with Islam,” and do a great job of parroting the Jihadists’ propaganda, French popular and even “intellectual” culture really ARE at war (in a chickenshit verbal way) with what seems like all of humanity - including Muslims.

This is how the big drama queen routine works for guys like Soral: they think that the sun shines out of their ass when they accuse and inflame people in print, and then think that the world is after them because they really think that they matter in some way to the world.

Strangely enough, the world outside of his bubble only knows these irrelevant attention seekers because of us pointing out their stale, 18th century (if not medieval) conspiratorial ravings.

"Not allowed to say anything bad about minorities": Provocateur routinely accused of racism, sexism, homophobia, fear-mongering, and narcissism

HE is perhaps France’s best-known professional provocateur,

writes Scott Sayare,

as much adored by the xenophobes of the far-right as he is reviled by immigrants, women and gays. But Éric Zemmour might also be misunderstood by his allies and enemies alike, a sort of hopeless intellectual whose nuance is lost in the sensationalist jumble of the media world he inhabits.

A slight man with a quick tongue and a fearsome intellect, Mr. Zemmour, 52, has made a career of speaking on the edge in a culture where the ideal of social harmony often takes precedence over freedom of speech. He can be heard daily on French radio, read weekly in the news media and seen all over television; he is routinely accused of racism, sexism, homophobia, fear-mongering and narcissism, or some combination thereof.

“I’m reviving the ‘French polemic’ in a world that’s on the one hand Americanized, and on the other, that people want to see sterilized by antiracism, by political correctness,” Mr. Zemmour said over coffee at the back of a dark Paris cafe. “That it is to say, where you’re not allowed to say anything bad about minorities.”

In comments that his critics have parsed and denounced and parsed again, he has spoken of a “white race” and a “black race,” decried what he sees as the feminization of society and called homosexuality a social disorder. Last month, though, his pronouncements for the first time brought him before a court, on charges of defamation and “provocation to racial discrimination.”In a televised debate last March he argued that blacks and Arabs were the targets of illegal racial profiling by the French police “because the majority of traffickers are black and Arab; that’s how it is, it’s a fact.” The same day, on another channel, he suggested that French employers “have the right” to deny employment to blacks or Arabs.

The intense reaction to Mr. Zemmour’s case — and more broadly, to Mr. Zemmour himself — seems a measure of the tensions in France around race, Islam and integration. And it speaks to the difficulty of discussing those issues in a nation that is committed constitutionally to treat every person simply as a “citizen,” with no acknowledgment of ethnicity, color or religion.

…“We believe that we have the best way of life in the world, the best culture, and that one must thus make an effort to acquire this culture,” he said. By contrast, he said, the notion of a country made great by the diversity of its people and values “is an American logic.”

Asked why he believes in the superiority of the French model, he said only that “there is a singular art of living” in France.

“For me, France is civilization with a capital ‘C,’ ” he added.

The groups that have taken him to court have been urging an American social vision, he said. Yet, he added, they are not also willing to endorse American standards of free speech, and they oppose the taking of American-style ethnic statistics.

“I’m taking — because they forced it on me — the American model, and I’m throwing the American model back in their face,” Mr. Zemmour said. “But in the name of French tradition.”

It is a delicate distinction, one even his friends worry might well be lost on most people.

…Mr. Zemmour shrugged off [the stance] of the plaintiffs in his case, as an absurd logical contortion. “They want the American model without the drawbacks of the American model, and that’s not possible,” he said.

“Maybe I’ll be convicted,” Mr. Zemmour said, with some satisfaction. “But they’ll never untangle themselves from their contradictions.”

Plantu is a Bigot

At least we know which way his taste for blow-up dolls run: these are the same figures he normally used as innocents, children, etc.

A Real Life Ashton Hero

What is it about her that brings to mind Dr. Gumby, Brain Specialist

An Overheated Cultural Wasteland

Completely unsure about everything? Flummoxed? Afraid of any answers you might get? Sound thoughtful: just keep asking questions! The more vast and broad the more smug you can be.

Caption contest, anyone?




Elsewhere: the “true European Spirit” correctly and proudly defined as greedy socially parasitic rioters. Go on... eat the rich, they won’t be coming back, and the poor aren’t hiring. A confusedcultural obfuscator who has tried to redefine human rights to mean the European regard of itself as “cosmopolitan” notes on the Guardian’s Comment Macht Frei that:

In London and Athens, protesters are rekindling the true European spirit

The idea of Europe must go back to a democracy that resists fake economic orthodoxy and false monoculturalism.

So long as you ignore the fact that money does not grow in trees, and that most of Europe’s “true historical nature” when it comes to rioting normally involves one class, nation, and religious monoculture trying to eradicate another one.

Here’s a sample sure to rally those huddled masses yearning to be free:

The most persistent and pronounced feature of Douzinas ’ analysis relates to his effort to underscore the structural ambivalence of human rights. Vibrant sources of critical dynamism and reified crystallizations of socio-historically conditioned forces, rights are, he argues, suppressive and subversive at one and the same time, just as capable of functioning as instruments of imperialism as they are amenable to operating as agents of resistance. This is by no means surprising, for, as Douzinas notes, natural and human rights have long been understood to be comprised of two, closely related but conceptually distinguishable, dimensions. On the one hand, they have been regarded as means of opposing
oppression, be this at the hands of the state and its constituent apparatuses or the diffuse, multivectored networks of transnational governance revered by some as the harbingers of a properly ‘ post-national ’ future. On the other hand, they have been viewed as devices that serve the interests of dominant classes, entrenching and naturalizing those politico-economic structures which are most likely to consolidate their privilege and cultivate their prosperity.

Okay. Once more now. With Feeling...

Getting towards the end, it gets even worse. The “humanitarian” caste is assumed to dictatorial powers, and the purpose of all relief work is to subvert a roundabout description of “the American Empire”. It’s tripe and hate speech given an academic platform to legitimate itself, but that isn’t that much different than everything else in their overheated cultural wasteland where an “eat the rich” fantasy can take the place of thought, and still be taken seriously.

And I’ll Bet you Think He’s Joking...

Hermann, observed in his native habitat:

Germans sort of shocked that Egyptians would actually use the weapons they sell them.

Fables from the Healthcare Paradise Human Warehouse that is Europe’s Well to do North

They’re dying to get out, and functionaries are all too willing to help.

For some, lurking behind this trend is a desire "to ease the finances of the health system."

That this quest for “death with dignity” seems to be the only decent option someone has because all of the others are so poor or are denied to people.

In the Netherlands, the instrumentalisation of death can now be symbolised by a single digit: 4. This is the average number of minutes required by physicians to make the decision to hasten death, while nearly a quarter of the killings were performed without the consent of the patient. The Guardian, which has looked into the 114 cases of British parties who went to Switzerland to commit suicide, found clear evidence that many of them had a chance to cure their illnesses and live in dignity.

When the Vatican talks about “a culture of life” it isn’t limited to some procedure or another, it speaks to a view of living a good and full life itself: whether you can bungie-jump or have gymnastic sex or not. The next time you hear someone say “live a little”, imagine that this also means having an inner life of the soul too.

When the state is involved, expect there to be a greater emphasis on what will seem like “financial Eugenics” as the average age of the population rises, and fewer older people have children to defend their interests.

There Goes Another Failed Five-Year Plan

Remember kids: nothing in reality ever happens without a targeted government objective and planning.

Europe risks missing the train of scientific progress. The EU is advancing too slowly in the sciences to narrow the gap with leaders U.S. and Japan, while China rapidly makes up for its ancestral backwardness. The targets of the failed Lisbon process have been postponed for no less than a decade, from 2010 to 2020. Naturally, concern is growing that budget cuts will only put brakes on a research sector still heavily dependent on state investment.

So let’s try and understand the natural conclusion a reader of the paragraph above would come to. Is it that one should stamp your feet like a 6 year old and demand government funding and direction? Or would it be to find a way despite the government, to do research in the natural way in civil society, the way those who are succeeding at it are doing?

I guess the “future looking,” Cosmopolitan, wise thing to do is as the reflex of the average European would do. To wait for the handout instead of crowding out industry’s opportunity to do the innovating.

Just Another Eye Candy Coffee-table Book to the French

Buffoon, paranoid anti-semite, attention whore and all-around fuckwit Alain Soral has a new book out. It’s called “Understanding the Empire”. I’ll summarize it for you: Jew-baiting, Zionist Occupation Government, 9-11 was a (Jewish cabal led) inside job, and his horrible victimization by Jews because of that Holocaust thing, and whatever other delusions of personal intelligence that get him through the night. In other words, a no-brainer as far as sales in France go: because the world, and particular, Jews, are out to get them, you see. Why they matter enough for anybody to waste their time doing that is beyond me.

When you hover over a photo of the yet to be attacked World Trade Center, the dynamic caption shows two stacks of his book, meant to be as forboding as the book of revelation. It reads: Global governance or a revolt of nations? In 2012, it will all play out between the two towers”

Stanley Kurtz Discusses His "Radical-in-Chief" Book

Uncommon Knowledge's Peter Robinson interviews Stanley Kurtz of Radical-in-Chief fame (Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism)…

Everything you need to Know About the French Exception

NOT culture:



Ah, culture!

Who Died and Made You Don Cheadle Anyway?

In OTHER news from “Febraury 6. 2011 Juch 100” [sic]:

A joint seminar on the theme of "Immortal Exploits of Comrade Kim Jong Il, Illustrious Commander of Songun" took place in Mexico on January 28 on the occasion of his birthday.

Present there were personages of the Mexican National Coordinating Committee for the Study of the Juche Idea, the Committee for the Study of Kimilsungism and its affiliated organizations and the Institute for the Study of the Juche Idea and adherents of the Juche idea in Mexico.

I know that you wanted to know that. Because it sounded so familiar. From 29-May-2009, we all waited with bated breath for the headline:

Kim Jong Il's Feats Lauded

France's Public Works Indebting the Country's Local Governments

Corrèze is the most indebted of all of France’s 100 departments

writes Steven Erlanger,

and former President Jacques Chirac appears to be the prime reason.

…As president from 1995 to 2007, Mr. Chirac directed many expensive public works projects to the area, including roadways, an airport and a strange sort of museum devoted to displaying nearly all the varied gifts he received as president.

Built on farmland 19 miles from the departmental capital of Tulle, the museum was opened in December 2000 and then expanded in 2006. It cost a total of 16.7 million euros, or about $23 million, shared by various levels of government, but with the largest part borne by Corrèze.

It is beautifully designed and holds a fascinating collection of lavish kitsch given to Mr. Chirac from the world’s variety of democracies and despots.

The financial problems of Corrèze reflect a larger national difficulty with budget deficits. As France struggles to cut its deficit, which is putting a strain on its bond ratings, the perilous finances of its departments is getting more attention.

… through various “decentralizations,” the national government has been dumping responsibility downward onto the departments, including the costs for most roads and maintenance, school construction and caring for the elderly, the handicapped and the long-term unemployed. … About a third of France’s departments are deeply in debt.

… “The museum is only a small part of the problem,” [said François Hollande, the president of the Conseil Général and a member of the National Assembly from Corrèze], but it is a good symbol of it.

Plantu is a Racist

How to Balance the Budget

I've already cut more than six times more than President Obama proposed in his State of the Union address

trumpets John Stossel as he tries his hand at balancing the budget…

End subsidies for public broadcasting, like NPR. Cancel the Small Business Administration. …

Oops. That doesn't dent the deficit. We have to do much more.

So eliminate the U.S. Education Department. We'd save $94 billion. Federal involvement doesn't improve education. It gets in the way.

Agriculture subsidies cost us $30 billion a year. Let's get rid of them. They distort the economy. We should also eliminate Housing and Urban Development. That's $53 billion more.

Who needs the Energy Department and its $20 billion sinkhole? The free market should determine energy investments.

And let's end the war on drugs. In effect, it's a $47 billion subsidy for thugs in the black market.

He Sure is that "Man of the World" they Concocted his Image to be, isn't he?

My God, the man can't even do myopic and expedient Realpolitik right, much less grasp the notion of affirming a Freedom Agenda!




Actually, he is very much a man of the feeble, miserably failied notions of the world... If you can't understand the reasons for American "exceptionalism" and isolationist tendencies, it has little to do with Americans as much as it is the general ineptitude of "our international betters".