Michael Yon: When Concealed Carry Counts — The big difference is that one gunman can kill 20 unarmed people, but if they are armed and trained, he might get only 2 or 3

Michael Yon:

When Concealed Carry Counts: Massacre

Many people have said or strongly hinted that firearms related massacres only (or usually) happen in gun free zones. The statement that they openly make is that the attacks would not occur if the people were armed. This is completely false. We just had another Green on Blue in Afghanistan this week. Blue on Blue and Green on Blue often happen against heavily armed people.

The big difference is that one gunman will have a very hard time killing twenty armed people. He can kill twenty unarmed people, but if they are armed and trained, he might get two or three, or even ten if he is truly "good", but he will quickly be put down, chased off, or holed up in a defensive position. At minimum, he will be slowed, giving people a chance to escape.

But over in Norway, a single madman killed 77 unarmed people who did not fight back. If just one of those people had a pistol, the death toll might have been 10. We never will know.

Now in Nairobi, reports have it that 10-15 heavily armed terrorists have killed at least 68 so far. The terrorists have been pushed into defense. The final battle appears to be unfolding. My guess is that the Kenyans are taking back the mall piece by piece. It is a big mall so that takes time due to the complication of the hostages.

Images from the early stages of the attack show people with handguns. Clearly some people were fighting back early into the attack. But imagine a terrorist attack like this in a US state where guns are all but outlawed. 10-15 terrorists could kill hundreds.

See also: Another Mass Killing, Another Nutcase with Plenty of Warning Signs
and my extensive and dispassionate in-depth post on gun control:
What Is to Blame for the Connecticut Shooting?
Does the Blame Lie with the Right to Bear Arms Or Can It Be Found Elsewhere?

Robin Williams: Divorce is "ripping your heart out through your wallet"

As Robin Williams tells it, this is what feminist-imposed government intrusion into private life has wrought: as if separation weren't painful enough, lawyers intrude and ensure that

Divorce is expensive. I used to joke they were going to call it "all the money", but they changed it to 'alimony'. It's ripping your heart out through your wallet.

Don't forget to check out Stephen Baskerville's Taken Into Custody (The War Against Fathers, Marriage, and the Family)

The Venezuelan State's Occupy "Movement": The Victory of Socialism!

A Venezuelan state agency on Friday ordered the temporary takeover of a factory that produces toilet paper 

writes Reuters (gracias para Hervé),

in what it called an effort to ensure consistent supplies after embarrassing shortages earlier this year.

Critics of President Nicolas Maduro say the nagging shortages of products ranging from bathroom tissue to milk are a sign his socialist government's rigid price and currency controls are failing. They have also used the situation to poke fun at his administration on social media networks.

 A national agency called Sundecop, which enforces price controls, said in a statement it would occupy one of the factories belonging to paper producer Manpa for 15 days, adding that National Guard troops would "safeguard" the facility.

Frenchman Hervé writes

Having grown in a staunch Socialist country, I was always told Socialism is the Glorious Path to a Bright and Enlightened Future, where great intellectuals will be describing the greatness of Socialism while sipping delicious cocktails, sitting on chairs at tables overlooking the happy proletariat running naked in the fields, laughing and chanting with butterfields and pink rabbits.

Well, they gotta start some place: no running naked after pink rabbits and butterflies if you don't wipe your ass, comrade.

From the archives: Note to the Apologizer-in-Chief (Barack Obama):
No, a Republic Is Not Equal to a Dictatorship

Reminder: Six months ago, Maria Thunholm took pictures of
a mural in Paris saying "Rest in PEACE Hugo Chávez"…

French Books in America? The Strategy of Infiltration

Are French authors read in the United States? 

asks Florence Bouchy.

Thanks to courageous editors, they are finding their readers. And a handful of titles, in spite of numerous obstacles, even become best-sellers.

 … Les Etats-Unis constituent, pour la littérature en traduction, ce que la sociologue Gisèle Sapiro nomme "un environnement hostile". Le chapitre qu'elle lui consacre, dans Traduire la littérature et les sciences humaines. Conditions et obstacles (DEPS, 2012), détaille les barrières culturelles et structurelles qui en font une citadelle apparemment imprenable. "Les traductions, écrit-elle, ont connu une marginalisation croissante sur ce marché depuis les années 1970." Elles ne représentent en effet que 2 % à 4 % de la production annuelle, et 1 % seulement de la fiction ! Sur ce segment très étroit, le français reste néanmoins la première langue traduite, juste devant l'allemand.

 … Quelques succès remarquables, publiés par le secteur indépendant, viennent pourtant battre en brèche l'idée reçue : les ventes de L'Elégance du hérisson (Gallimard, 2006), de Muriel Barbery, devenu The Elegance of the Hedgehog, en 2008, sous la bannière de la maison indépendante Europa Editions, ont aujourd'hui dépassé le million d'exemplaires ! Trois femmes puissantes, de Marie NDiaye (Gallimard, 2009, prix Goncourt), ou HHhH, de Laurent Binet (Grasset, 2010), figurent tous deux dans la liste des meilleures ventes de livres 2012 établie par le New York Times. Mais rien n'y fait : le présupposé est tenace, et il n'est pas rare que les éditeurs s'étant risqués à acquérir les droits d'un roman étranger cachent à leurs lecteurs qu'il s'agit d'une traduction. Ils omettent le nom du traducteur, ou le relèguent en tout petits caractères dans les pages de garde, nous confient plusieurs responsables de cessions de droits, "pour faire croire aux lecteurs que c'est un auteur américain, même si son nom, à l'évidence, ne l'est pas", précise l'une d'entre eux.

Massacre in the Navy

In "Massacre in the Navy", Plantu has one of two kids believe that the tragic news from America may refer to a new video game.

• Choose Your Weapons
5 Points/45 Points/1000 Points
• 13 Dead in Washington
• What kinda game is that?
• It ain't no game!

More Smart Diplomacy: Brazil Cancels State Visit to Washington

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has called off a state visit to Washington next month over allegations of US espionage

reports the BBC, as we are witnesses to more repercussions of the Obama administration's unique smart diplomacy. But what with his uncommon powers of persuasion, won't a telephone call from the Apologizer-in-Chief win over Brazil's head of state?

The US National Security Agency (NSA) has been accused of intercepting emails and messages from Ms Rousseff, her aides and state oil company, Petrobras.

The allegations were based on documents leaked by fugitive former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden.

President Barack Obama had promised to investigate the incident.

He made a phone call to Ms Rousseff on Monday, reportedly asking her to go ahead with the visit, the Brazilian president's office said.

This was to be the first state visit by a Brazilian president to the US since 1995. It was due to begin on 23 October. 

I guess that the O's telephone call was not convincing…

Second Amendment Re-Written; Now Let's Take On the First!

Bryan Preston tells us the tale of how a schoolbook has rewritten the Second Amendment (thanks to Instapundit).

On page 102 of Newman’s [textbook, United States History: Preparing for the Advanced Placement Examination] (page 134 of the PDF version), the author cuts the Second Amendment in half and leaves out several key words.

I propose, therefore, that we rewrite the First Amendment as well:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, unless the teachings of said religion interfere with the progressives' agenda for the betterment of society and all its members; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press unless said speeches and articles aim to oppose the liberals' plans for the nation; or the right of leftist activists to assemble, preferably peaceably, and to petition a rightist Government for redress of anything that can be reasonably or otherwise construed as grievances.

Another Mass Killing, Another Nutcase with Plenty of Warning Signs

Navy veteran Aaron Alexis, who killed 12 people at a Navy building in Washington Monday morning, had been suffering a host of serious mental issues, including paranoia and a sleep disorder, law enforcement officials told the Associated Press.

Alexis had been hearing voices in his head and had been treated since August by the Veterans Administration for his mental problems, the officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the criminal investigation in the case was continuing.

Oh, and then Aaron Alexis was aware of that cancer in American life (thanks, mainstream media), I am naturally speaking of (dramatic pause…) racism!

… While some neighbors and acquaintances described him as "nice," his father once told detectives in Seattle that his son had anger management problems related to post-traumatic stress brought on by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. He also complained about the Navy and being a victim of discrimination.

To no one's surprise, the fact that the DC gunman was suffering host of mental issues prior to shooting squares with what I wrote back in December, in an extensive and dispassionate in-depth post, that the blame for mass shootings does not originate with the right to bear arms (nor has anything to do with racism) but with something quite distinct:

 …back to the massacres of the past half century:

Unless I am mistaken, there was not a single occasion of a shootist over the past 50 years, whether underage kids or grown-up adults, who did not previously show warning signs — if only the fact that they were described as "remote" — warning signs that were deliberately and repeatedly ignored, by family and friends as well as by professionals and people in authority; and that, for fear of the left's PC police.

(This is true even in the military; think only of the warning signs concerning Major Nidal Hassan, universally and persistently ignored, prior to the Islamist's 2009 Fort Hood massacre.)

Indeed, writes Dr Keith Ablow, in Adam Lanza's case, there is every probability that he expressed very concerning thoughts or feelings to more than one person before Friday.

After a shooting spree, as William S. Burroughs once said, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn’t do it and who, (not at all) incidentally, would never do anything remotely like it.

Of course, contrary to what the iTélé guest said or implied, the presence of guns alone does not ensure that massacres such as that in Sandy Hook will become more and more common or simply commonplace.

Indeed, had an armed American — had the average armed American — been present at the school or at the university, he (or she) would have used his (or her) weapon to start firing back at Adam Lanza, and either hit the gunman or forced him to take cover, preventing him from continuing his deadly spree. (Could an armed teacher or an armed firefighter from the fire station next door not have intervened much earlier?) Besides writing (in The Atlantic) that "We must find a way to make it more difficult for the non-adjudicated mentally ill to come into possession of weapons,"Jeffrey Goldberg points out that

Mass shootings take many lives in part because no one is firing back at the shooters. The shooters in recent massacres have had many minutes to complete their evil work, while their victims cower under desks or in closets. One response to the tragic reality that we are a gun-saturated country is to understand that law-abiding, well-trained, non-criminal, wholly sane citizens who are screened by the government have a role to play in their own self-defense, and in the defense of others … it seems fairly obvious that there was no one at or near the school who could have tried to fight back.

Update: thanks to Instapundit for the link…

Oh, and do not forget this unwelcome fact:

It is easy — for a foreigner as well as for an American (of the liberal bent) — to tout the success of the gun control laws in the rest of the Western world when you ignore the 1996 massacre of 16 children at a Scottish primary school; the 2000 killing of eight kids in Japan; the 2002 deaths of eight people in Nanterre, France; the 2002 killing of 16 kids in Erfurt, Germany; the 2007 shootings to death of eight people in Tuusula, Finland; the killing of 10 people at a Finnish university less than a year later; the 2009 killing of 15 people in Winnenden, Germany; and, needless to say, Anders Breivik's 2011 mass murder of 77 Norwegians, most of them teenagers.

It is easier — much easier — to condemn gun violence in America when you ignore, or downplay, gun violence in a foreign country, including not giving a second thought to things such as, say, the widespread presence of Kalashnikovs among France's thugs and criminals.

Update: Crazier than liberals

 … here’s the problem:

Coddling the mentally ill isn’t even helping the mentally ill. Ask the sisters of crazy homeless woman “Billie Boggs” how grateful they were to the ACLU for keeping Boggs living on the streets of New York City. Ask the parents of Aaron Alexis, James Holmes (Aurora, Colo., movie theater shooter), Jared Loughner (Tucson, Ariz., mall shooter) or Seung-Hui Cho (Virginia Tech shooter) how happy they are that their sons weren’t institutionalized.

 … Something seems to have gone horribly wrong right around 1970. What could it be? Was it the introduction of bell-bottoms?

That date happens to correlate precisely with when the country began throwing the mentally ill out of institutions in 1969. Your memory of there not being as many mass murders a few decades ago is correct. Your memory of there not being as many homeless people a few decades ago is also correct.

But liberals won’t allow the dangerous mentally ill to be committed to institutions against their will. (The threat of commitment is very persuasive in getting disturbed individuals to take their medicine.) Something in liberals’ genetic makeup compels them to attack civilization, for example, by defending the right of dangerous psychotics to refuse treatment and then representing them in court after they commit murder.

 … The disastrous consequences of the deinstitutionalization movement is described in E. Fuller Torrey’s book, The Insanity Offense: How America’s Failure to Treat the Seriously Mentally Ill Endangers Its Citizens. Torrey’s book reads like a compendium of America’s most heinous murders since the early ’70s — all of which could have been stopped with involuntary commitment laws, and none of which could have been stopped even with a complete gun ban.

 … Liberals will pretend to have missed the news that the Washington Navy Yard shooter was a paranoid schizophrenic. They refuse to acknowledge that the mass murder problem — as well as the homeless problem — only began after crazy people were thrown out of institutions in the 1970s. …

Only after a mass murder committed by a psychotic with a firearm do liberals spring to life and suggest a solution: Take away everyone’s guns.

Taking guns away from the mentally stable only makes us less safe: Even psychotics know enough to keep choosing “Gun-Free Zones” for their mass murders.

Solitude — in America, in France, and in Syria

Solitudes — From Le Monde's Serguei:

In Washington:  Waiting for Congress
• A despondent Obama:  I am alone…
In Paris:  No phone calls from Barack
• A despondent Hollande:  I am alone…
In Damascus:  Napalm, phosphorus, chemical weapons
• A jubilant Assad:  I am alone!!!

World War II Photos of Normandy in the Summer of 1944, After the D-Day Landings

John Morris was Life Magazine's London editor in the summer of 1944, apparently the man who managed to save a dozen of Robert Capa's Omaha Beach photos in the London office while the rest of the legendary photographer's D-Day landings shots were lost due to a blunder. Now 96, his own photos from wartime Normandy — including one of German prisoners (aka members of the Aryan race) in a truck driven by a black American — can be seen at Perpignan's Visa Pour l'Image photo festival, exhibited for the first time ever.

Claire Guillot has an article in Le Monde about John Morris, whom she quotes (re-translated back from French translation):

"In 1944, I was based in London, but I wanted to see [the war] with my own eyes. I managed to invent myself a job in France, that of 'coordinator of press photographers.' It was pretty ridiculous but that's how I landed on Utah Beach on July 16."

The beaches are safe, but there is fighting in the surrounding areas. For four weeks, John Morris assists photographers in Normandy and Brittany all the while taking amateur shots with his Rolleiflex for his own sake. "Photographers covered the front. As for me, I photographed the daily lives of the people I saw, I was interested in how the Normans were surviving the war." In these images, we sometimes see Capa at work from the back.

These in-sides of the war, away from the bloody battles, give another vision of the months of confusion that followed the landings. In the rear lines, soldiers, resistance fighters, prisoners, refugees and media cross each other's pathes. John Morris shows the confrontation between the victors and the vanquished, photographing German prisoners embarked in a Jeep driven by a black soldier.

"En 1944, j'étais basé à Londres, mais je voulais voir ça de mes propres yeux. Je me suis débrouillé pour m'inventer un poste en France, celui de "coordinateur des photographes de presse". C'était assez ridicule, mais c'est comme ça que je suis arrivé le 16 juillet à Utah Beach."

Les plages sont sécurisées, mais il y a des combats aux alentours. Pendant quatre semaines, John Morris assiste les photographes en Normandie et en Bretagne tout en faisant des images pour lui, en amateur, avec son Rolleiflex. "Les photographes couvraient le front. Moi, je photographiais la vie des gens que je voyais, je m'intéressais à la façon dont les Normands survivaient à la guerre." Dans ces images, on aperçoit parfois Capa, de dos, au travail.

Ces à-côtés de la guerre, loin des combats sanglants, donnent une autre vision des mois de confusion qui ont suivi le Débarquement. A l'arrière des lignes, des militaires, des résistants, des prisonniers, des réfugiés et des journalistes se croisent. John Morris montre la confrontation entre les vainqueurs et les vaincus en photographiant des prisonniers allemands embarqués dans une Jeep conduite par un soldat noir.

Troublesome: The Assad Family's Many Properties in Paris

Anne Michel brings us a Le Monde article on The Assad Family's Troublesome Properties in Paris.

Indeed,

emotions are running high at the Paris town hall. According to unofficial information … Rifaat Al-Assad, the uncle of Syrian leader Bashar Al-Assad, in exile in Great Britain, in France, and in Spain since the mid-1980s, is rumored to be considering the sale of a great part of his Paris properties during the coming months.

Two anticorruption associations, Transparence International France (TIF) and Sherpa, filed suit … against Rifaat Al-Assad and unspecified persons for embezzlement of public funds, bribery, and aggravated money laundering by organized gangs.

By the associations among his properties, according to the associations, are a French mansion and "several dozen apartments" in Paris's luxurious 16th arrondissement, along with an estate of 45 hectares near the French capital. "It is likely that all or part of the assets are the product of corruption or related offenses (embezzlement, misappropriation of assets, etc)", they explain in their lawsuit.

 … Certainly, in the current regulatory framework, Rifaat al-Assad, forced into exile in 1984 after attempting to seize power from his brother Hafez Al-Assad (the father of Bashar al-Assad, who ruled Syria from 1970 to 2000), and since then, an outspoken opponent of the Syrian régime, may freely dispose of his assets. Having distanced himself from the regime, and owner of an ostensibly anti-Bashar Al-Assad news channel in London (ANN), the uncle of the strong man of Damascus (76) is not the subject of any international sanctions.

He does not appear in the list drawn up by the UN and the European Union of the 179 members or supporters of the Syrian regime whose assets are considered "ill-gotten gains" (financed from funds stolen from the people, through misappropriation, theft, or illicit transfer of public money, etc) and must be frozen (before a possible seizure by court order followed by its return to the country looted).

But for many politicians, who agree with the anticorruption NGOs' analysis, the assets of the former head of the Defense Brigades of Damascus, which has long been one of the cornerstones of the regime, the question of money's origin remains.

Besides, in the eyes of international opinion, Rifaat al-Assad is a major player in the Hama massacre in February 1982, when the Muslim Brotherhood rebellion was crushed in blood (10.- to 40,000 people, according to estimates, including a great number of civilians). Rifaat al-Assad also kept his title of vice-president of Syria until 1998. As many reasons for these elected to stay on the alert, following, or even anticipating, financial transactions by the uncle of Syria's dictator on French soil. And to question France on where its responsibilities lie.

"The Total State": The 3 Philosophers Who Paved the Road for Adolf Hitler

Pour le philosophe et écrivain Jean-Pierre Faye, soixante-dix ans après, il faut enfin admettre que ce sont trois grands esprits philosophiques – Heidegger, Jünger et Schmitt – qui ont fait le lit d'Hitler.

 … existe-t-il des écrits vraiment nazis de Heidegger, le philosophe auquel allait notre respect en raison de ses essais "existentiels" des années 1920 ? L'honnêteté de la lecture découvre en effet chez lui des écrits politiques marqués plus gravement encore que ceux de son ami l'écrivain et essayiste Ernst Jünger (1895-1998), l'auteur, dès 1930, de La Mobilisation totale (Die totale Mobilmachung), traduite en français et publiée chez Gallimard en 1990.

"L'ETAT TOTAL"

Ceux-ci se prolongent chez l'ami Carl Schmitt, l'idéologue de "l'Etat total", à qui Hitler devra, pour une très grande part, d'avoir reçu le pouvoir en 1933 – par l'effet même de la conférence sur le totale Staat que Schmitt donne, le 23 novembre 1932, devant les représentants de la grande industrie. Une amitié intensément politique lie alors Heidegger à Jünger et, par lui, à Carl Schmitt. C'est le triptyque des noms qui dessine un temple d'acceptation pour l'idéologie propagée par la furie hitlérienne.

Il faut lire les écrits politiques d'Heidegger en 1933-1934 pour saisir ces enjeux. Dès son "Appel aux étudiants" du 3 novembre 1933, il prononce : "Le Führer lui-même et lui seul est la réalité allemande d'aujourd'hui et de demain..." Et sa "Profession de foi en Adolf Hitler", la Bekenntnis zu Adolf Hitler en décembre 1933, décrit le Führer comme l'instant de "retourner à l'essence de l'Etre". Le Führer devient une ontologie...

Bien pire, son "Appel pour le service du travail", le 23 janvier 1934, souligne "l'empreinte préfigurée dans le Parti national-socialiste ouvrier allemand". Ce parti dont le nom est raccourci par Goebbels en Parti nazi-sozi, ou en version courte : Nazi. Il s'agira en effet des camps de travail, salués par Heidegger comme "le bienfait qui émerge du mystère vivifiant qu'est l'avenir nouveau de notre peuple"... Le délire nazi atteint son apogée.

Car au même moment surviennent d'autres camps de travail, dits "camps de concentration", qui couvrent le territoire national. Durant la seconde guerre mondiale, apparaissent en Pologne ceux qui sont nommés secrètement les camps d'extermination, les Vernichtungslager.

 Or le 1er mai 1933, Heidegger et Carl Schmitt adhèrent au Parti nazi. Il faut souligner le fait que l'adhésion au parti unique est difficile dans le Reich hitlérien. Contrairement à l'Italie mussolinienne, où tout le monde prend sa carte, comme la "carte du pain". Il y aura 24 millions d'adhérents au Parti fasciste, 8 millions seulement au parti hitlérien. Le geste de l'adhésion est donc grave et contrôlé. Heidegger, dans son cours de décembre 1933 sur Héraclite..., énonce la nécessité de "l'attaque", dans le but "d'effectuer l'extermination totale".

LES CAMPS D'EXTERMINATION

Ce terme terrible va marquer les Vernichtungslager, les camps d'extermination hitlériens de 1942-1945. Surgis dans la Pologne anéantie : à Chelmno, à Belzec, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Maïdanek, Sobibor, Treblinka... Ce terme s'inscrit dans la plus terrible réalité de l'Histoire. Heidegger aura-t-il connaissance de ce qui a lieu dans les camps de Pologne ? Jünger note dans son journal ce qu'il entrevoit en 1943 à Lodz, en deçà du front de l'Est...

Mobilisation totale, Etat total, extermination totale : ces trois formules dessinent l'Europe en état de guerre. Jünger, Carl Schmitt, Heidegger prononcent en ces termes le réel le plus dangereux et la même terreur politique croissante.

 … Carl Schmitt ? Ce juriste est un ami de longue date pour Jünger, ce dont témoigne son journal posthume, comme Jünger devient l'ami intense d'Heidegger. Carl Schmitt a donc en décembre 1932 donné sa conférence décisive devant ce qui se nomme "l'Union au Long Nom", réunissant les plus grands de la grande industrie. La conférence de Schmitt devant un tel auditoire culmine dans l'exigence de fonder "l'Etat total" – Etat qui doit s'affirmer "total au sens de la qualité et de l'énergie"... Un Etat qui s'attribue "les moyens de la puissance"...

Ainsi l'Etat total est-il défini par Schmitt en opposition à l'Etat "quantitativ total", celui qui se retrouverait gonflé d'entreprises nationalisées... Au contraire, "l'Etat total en ce sens est un Etat fort... Il est total au sens de la qualité et de l'énergie, comme l'Etat fasciste se nomme "Stato totalitario"", précise Carl Schmitt, reprenant les termes du fascisme italien. Mais qui sait aujourd'hui que le mot "totalitaire" est une improvisation mussolinienne ?

Voici surgir la doctrine de Schmitt sur les "nouveaux moyens de puissance". Nous sommes le 23 novembre 1932. Dans un mois et une semaine, l'ex-chancelier von Papen, dont Schmitt est l'avocat, et dont le chancelier Schleicher a pris la place, aura préparé la "combinaison" du 30 janvier 1933. Donnant le pouvoir au caporal Hitler, méprisé et haï par le président Hindenburg, qui pourtant le nomme chancelier du Reich. …

"LES MOYENS DE LA PUISSANCE"

La formule de Schmitt souligne les enjeux : "L'Etat total" est l'Etat des "moyens de puissance", et non des socialisations, il se gonfle de police, et non d'entreprises socialisées. Le totale Staat hitlérien vient prendre la relève du Stato totalitario fasciste. Car le mot "totalitär" n'est pas un terme hitlérien : il est refusé comme "trop libéral" par le juriste nazi Wilhelm Stuckart, celui dont Eichmann sera le subordonné.

 … Par Carl Schmitt, juriste spécialisé dans le droit d'Etat, est donc apparue cette proposition grave, dans sa conférence de novembre 1932 : c'est la figure de "l'Etat total" – cette formule dangereuse d'où va survenir le mot "totalitarisme", aujourd'hui courant, exploré plus tard par Hannah Arendt, qui va pourtant méconnaître son origine mussolinienne.

On peut sous-estimer la magie toxique de ces creuses formules. Et négliger le lien étroit entre Carl Schmitt, Heidegger et Jünger, le porteur de la mobilisation totale. Car ce triumvirat va demeurer en marge du IIIe Reich qui survient. Mais Jünger l'a annoncé, par sa formule explosive. Carl Schmitt l'énonce violemment en termes de "droit" – ou de "contre-droit"...

 … Ainsi les trois amis, Schmitt, Jünger, Heidegger – l'étrange trio des penseurs – contribuent au langage de ce Reich qui dévaste l'Europe de la seconde guerre mondiale. Tous trois se retrouvent donc en 1955 pour fêter l'anniversaire de l'un d'eux, Jünger. A l'occasion de cette fête, Heidegger décrira ce qu'il nomme l'Abbau, que le philosophe français Gérard Granel (1930-2000) traduira par la "déconstruction".

Cette inflation des langages débouche dans ce qu'Heidegger revendique à son compte comme "la Terreur". Cette terreur aura suscité de surcroît pour notre avenir l'arme de la destruction absolue.

When You Have Lost Le Monde and Plantu… (2)

So, France; so, Europe, you got the US commander-in-chief you asked for!

Even Le Monde's editorial page is filled with skepticism… As for Plantu, his cartoon has the United Nations examining Syria's chemical weapons stockpile.

• Barack Obama: So… Have we found anything?…

When You've Lost Plantu and Le Monde… (1)

So, France; so, Europe, you got the US commander-in-chief you asked for!

As for Plantu, his cartoon depicts Barack Obama as a black butler to a white master (Vladimir Putin), which liberals might be (sorely) tempted to instantly decry as racism, except that it evokes a film currently playing in cinemas, Lee Daniels' The Butler — although of course the cartoonist seems to be unable to refrain from taking a potshot at the Republicans in Congress as well.

• Barack Obama: We put a lid on it and say no more about the subject!

(See also one weekly's cartoon of BHO's Egyptian policy…)

Even Le Monde's editorial page is filled with skepticism…

Diplomacy, unfortunately, does not only take place between honest people of good will. The Russian proposal on the Syrian chemical weapons, brought forward Monday September 9 with extreme skill by foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, has all the ambiguities and pitfalls that one can fear when dealing with a regime such as that of Bashar al-Assad or cunning strategists such as MM. Putin and Lavrov.

 … Western leaders [have] every reason to be skeptical about the motivations of Moscow and the provisions of Damascus to comply with a bona fide control of its chemical arsenal. Besides the obvious physical challenges presented to an assignment of inspectors in monitoring military sites in a country at war, the terrain of the negotiations itself is replete with mines.

... Meanwhile, Bashar al-Assad continues to destroy his country and kill its people. The Russians are great chess players. That is something it would be a mistake to forget.

One wishes that Le Monde might have tried to use the same tone and terms during the Iraq conflict.

La diplomatie, malheureusement, ne se conduit pas qu'entre gens honnêtes et de bonne volonté. La proposition russe sur les armes chimiques syriennes, très habilement avancée, lundi 9 septembre, par le ministre des affaires étrangères, Sergueï Lavrov, comporte toutes les ambiguïtés et les pièges que l'on peut redouter lorsque l'on a affaire à un régime comme celui de Bachar Al-Assad ou à des stratèges aussi rusés que MM. Poutine et Lavrov.

 … Les dirigeants occidentaux [ont] toutes les raisons d'être sceptiques sur les motivations de Moscou et sur les dispositions de Damas à se plier à un véritable contrôle de son arsenal chimique. Outre les évidentes difficultés physiques que présenterait une mission d'inspecteurs chargés de contrôler des sites militaires dans un pays en pleine guerre, le terrain de la négociation est lui-même miné.

 … En attendant, Bachar Al-Assad continue à détruire son pays et à massacrer sa population. Les Russes excellent aux échecs. On aurait tort de l'oublier.

Russian mastery at chess certainly is something that few people in the Apologizer-in-Chief's administration ever remembered, busy as they were in demonizing, in breaking, and in trying to reeducate the true enemy of America, and indeed the true enemy of the world — all things American, all things Western, all things conservative, and all things Republican.

Paradise for Muslims, According to Charlie Hebdo

Islamist paradise cartoons from Charlie Hebdo (with a wink to the recent death of Jacques Vergès):

Where were you on Sept. 11, 2001, when America changed forever?

Since Fox News features an article titled Where were you on Sept. 11, 2001, when America changed forever? — feel free, cher lecteur, to add your own memories to the comments section, both this blog's one and the Fox News section — I took an excerpt from an article written in 2005 and augmented on 2011's tenth anniversary, and posted it on the Fox News website. (There's a Like button at the bottom of each Fox comment, incidentally, should you appreciate what I wrote in my comment…)

On September 11, 2001, I was in France, having an afternoon drink (remember, Western Europe is six hours ahead of the East Coast) in the TGV's dining car, on a train heading north to Paris.

Cel phone communication is hard to come by on trains, but at one point I heard I had a message on the answering machine. I called the number to hear the message. It was my (New York-born) mother, and all the message said was to please call back: "There has been a series of catastrophes in the States".

Befuddled, I headed out into the corridor and called my parents, and after answering, my mom said I should talk to my dad. I listened incredulously as my father explained that planes had been deliberately flown into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and that both Twin Towers had collapsed.

Needless to say, I headed back to the dining car in another state of mind, totally closed off and unable to communicate with anyone.

(At one point, three or four members of some state-owned company (they may have been EDF) entered the dining car.  Although they discussing the day's events, they were obviously heading to Paris to demonstrate against the French government, and during their conversation, I overheard one of them making a joke (sic). With a snicker, he said "Ils l'ont fait exprès pour saboter notre manifestation" (They [obviously meaning the Americans] did it on purpose, in order to sabotage our demonstration). Alhough the others barely laughed at what was obviously an instance of sophisticated humor (smiles were in order, though), the comment should give a better idea of the real state of friendship harbored in Europe towards America then the presumed one extant in the myth of the squandered sympathy.)

I was too emotionally drained to react to this comment, and anyway without a radio and a TV set to get a better idea of the situation, the extent of the terrorist attacks was hard to believe. I had listened to learn more, and had certainly not expected anything but empathy for Americans.

Anyway, another two hours went by without news, without images of any kind, and when I arrived at Gare de Lyon, I rushed home faster than I ever have before, arriving drenched with sweat just in time for the 8 o'clock news. That night I hardly slept, as I stayed up in front of the TV all night long, wishing, wishing drastically that the news wasn't true.

For the next couple of weeks I wore a bandanna with the Stars and Stripes everywhere I went.

http://no-pasaran.blogspot.com/2011/09/personal-memories-of-september-11-2001.html
(This comes from a No Pasarán post [posted] on the tenth anniversary of the attacks…) 

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/09/11/where-were-on-sept-11-2001-when-america-changed-forever/?hubRefSrc=permalink#comments#ixzz2eabYuZ5n

Speaking of Fox News: see the video montage of Obama administration statements on Syria (thanks to Instapundit, who calls it nothing less than "absolutely devastating")

Former French Ambassador Arrested with 350,000 Euros in Cash, Links Money to Iraq

Boris Boillon was arrested on July 31 at Paris’s Gare du Nord station

writes France 24 (merci à Hervé), as the former French ambassador

attempted to board a train to Brussels carrying more than 350,000 Euros in cash, it emerged on Friday.

It seems like a spectacular fall from grace for a man who enjoyed such an illustrious political career. Fluent in Arabic, he served as his country’s ambassador in both Iraq and Tunisia. Former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi referred to him as “my son,” and ex-French president Nicolas Sarkozy, for whom he worked as an advisor, affectionately called him “my little Arab”.

Boillon was stopped by customs as part of a routine check, according to the French investigative website Mediapart, which broke the story. When asked if he had any currency on him, the ex-diplomat said nothing about the hundreds of thousands of Euros in his bag. A major faux-pas considering that French law requires all people entering or leaving the country to declare any sum of money equal to or exceeding the amount of 10,000 Euros.

Boillon’s bag was subsequently searched, and lo and behold, it was stuffed with envelopes of cash.

A simple explanation?

The 43-year-old said that the cash was payment for past consulting work, which he claims nets him around 500,000 Euros per year. 

 

“It’s money that I made this year in Iraq from the services I provide to Iraqi companies,” Boillon said, according to an excerpt of his testimony obtained by Mediapart. “Because Iraq lacks a developed banking system,www.ekurd.net these companies wired me the cash to Paris.”

See also: the French consulate chauffeur in Jerusalem caught with 150 kilos of gold bars

Smart Diplomacy Through the Eyes of Charlie Hebdo

Pre-Syrian crisis cartoon from Charlie Hebdo:

America Condemns the Repression in Egypt

• Obama: It would have been cleaner with drones.

Trans-Atlantic Love Splits

What with the marriage split between "Hollywood legend Michael Douglas and Swansea-bred actress Catherine Zeta-Jones" — not to mention the split between Britain and the United States in Barack Obama's new "Smart Diplomacy" America — The Telegraph presents some other familiar Trans-Atlantic love splits.

Bloggers Sued by Suer Extraordinaire Brett Kimberlin

The Other McCain and four other bloggers (hat tip to Instapundit) are being sued by "Convicted felon Brett Kimberlin".

Read the whole thing and keep 'em in your spirits.

Related: Brett Kimberlin's Modus Operandi Was Described in Jonah Goldberg's "Liberal Fascism"

I Never Knew How Cool Wars Could Be Until Someone Like Obama Started Them!

Ace of Spades, one photo destroy anti-war Left hypocrisy 

says Twitchy (thanks to Instapundit).

In a more competitive world economy, the question is not whether the French social model is a good one, but whether the French can continue to afford it

 For decades, Europeans have agonized over the power and role of Germany — the so-called German question — given its importance to European stability and prosperity

writes the New York Times's Steven Erlanger (merci à LF).

Today, however, Europe is talking about “the French question”: can the Socialist government of President François Hollande pull France out of its slow decline and prevent it from slipping permanently into Europe’s second tier? 

At stake is whether a social democratic system that for decades prided itself on being the model for providing a stable and high standard of living for its citizens can survive the combination of globalization, an aging population and the acute fiscal shocks of recent years. 

Those close to Mr. Hollande say that he is largely aware of what must be done to cut government spending and reduce regulations weighing down the economy, and is carefully gauging the political winds. But what appears to be missing is the will; France’s friends, Germany in particular, fear that Mr. Hollande may simply lack the political courage to confront his allies and make the necessary decisions.

 
Changing any country is difficult. But the challenge in France seems especially hard, in part because of the nation’s amour-propre and self-image as a European leader and global power, and in part because French life is so comfortable for many and the day of reckoning still seems far enough away, especially to the country’s small but powerful unions.

The turning of the business cycle could actually be a further impediment in that sense, because as the European economy slowly mends, the French temptation will be to hope that modest economic growth will again mask, like a tranquilizer, the underlying problems. 

The French are justifiably proud of their social model. Health care and pensions are good, many French retire at 60 or younger, five or six weeks of vacation every summer is the norm, and workers with full-time jobs have a 35-hour week and significant protections against layoffs and firings.

But in a more competitive world economy, the question is not whether the French social model is a good one, but whether the French can continue to afford it. Based on current trends, the answer is clearly no, not without significant structural changes — in pensions, in taxes, in social benefits, in work rules and in expectations.

…  Sometimes, talking to French politicians and workers, one has the feeling that they all consider themselves communards and revolutionaries, fighters on the left — but at the same time, like the far right, they wish to lock into place the comfort of the known.

In May 1968, students at the University of Paris in Nanterre began what they thought was a revolution. French students in neckties and bobby socks threw cobblestones at the police and demanded that the sclerotic postwar system must change.

Today, at Nanterre, students worried about finding jobs and losing state benefits are demanding that nothing change at all. For Raphaël Glucksmann, who led his own first strike in high school in 1995, members of his generation have nostalgia for their rebellious fathers but no stomach for a fight in hard economic times.

“The young people march now to reject all reforms,” he said. “We see no alternatives. We’re a generation without bearings.”

The Socialists have become a conservative party, desperately trying to preserve the victories of the last century. Many in the party, like the anti-globalization campaigner Arnaud Montebourg, now the minister in charge of industrial renewal — let alone those further to the left — seem to believe that France would be fine if only the rest of the world would just disappear, or at least work a little less hard.

Smart Diplomacy — French Army General: "Obama's About-Face Shows Deep-Rooted Sense of Contempt for France"

This must be more of the smart diplomacy that Instapundit is always talking about (his tongue firmly in cheek): While interviewed by Le Monde's Nathalie Guibert (merci à Damian Bennett), General Vincent Desportes complained that Barack Obama's about-face shows a deep-rooted sense of contempt for France."

The French general was mentioned on No Pasarán three years ago when, like his American counterpart Stanley McChrystal, the "professeur de stratégie à Sciences Po et ancien directeur de l'Ecole de guerre" was summoned by the authorities (in his case the French authorities, natch), because he had had the gall to criticize Obama's strategy in Afghanistan.

Nathalie Guibert: What with the French and American armies being ready to hit the Syrian chemical sites in the present days, were you surprised by the decision of the U.S. President to suspend the operation?

Vincent Desportes: I was very surprised. The volte-face of President Obama shows a complete disrespect of the United States for France. The day before, President Hollande expressed in Le Monde with great seriousness, he explains why France was assuming its responsibilities. The following day, his great ally puts him in an impasse.

Related:  Oh, America We Have Nothing Against; T'Is Only Bush Whom We Oppose

En français :

Les armées françaises et américaines se tenaient prêtes à frapper les sites chimiques syriens ces jours-ci, avez-vous été surpris par la décision prise par le président américain de surseoir à l'opération ?

Vincent Desportes : Je suis très surpris. La volte-face du président Obama témoigne d'un grand mépris des Etats-Unis pour la France. La veille, le président Hollande s'exprime dans Le Monde avec grandeur, il explique pourquoi la France prend ses responsabilités. Le lendemain, son grand allié le place dans une impasse.

L'armée américaine aurait-elle échoué à convaincre ?

Les militaires ne sont pas les premiers va-t-en-guerre. Rappelons que l'armée américaine n'était pas favorable à l'opération en Irak. Elle ne s'est mise au garde-à-vous qu'au dernier moment, en septembre 2002, quand l'opération est devenue inévitable. Elle est, aussi, "fatiguée" de la guerre après une décennie d'opérations et ne veut pas se remettre dans un échec, comme en Irak ou en Afghanistan.
 
Les grandes puissances ont-elles perdu en crédibilité ?

Si on n'y va pas, c'est évidemment l'Iran qui ne sera plus du tout dissuadé de poursuivre son programme nucléaire.

Qu'on le veuille ou non, les grandes puissances occidentales sont garantes de l'équilibre international. Il est plus gênant pour l'ordre international de ne pas intervenir en Syrie que de le faire sans feu vert du Conseil de sécurité de l'ONU. Or, il existe aujourd'hui une dégradation forte de l'image de l'Occident dans la tête de nos adversaires. Nos démocraties apparaissent comme faibles. Et ce qui compte en stratégie, c'est la compréhension de l'état d'esprit de l'autre. Nos démocraties apparaissent comme à la fin des années trente.

On peut dépenser des milliards pour avoir une belle armée, si l'on est pusillanime, c'est incohérent. Le chef de la plus grande puissance mondiale est apparu pusillanime. Quant à la décision du parlement britannique, elle peut faire jurisprudence. La Grande-Bretagne ne peut plus être considérée comme une puissance militaire crédible puisque la politique politicienne l'emporte sur la raison d'Etat. Cela veut dire aussi qu'elle n'a plus de dissuasion, car celle-ci repose sur la crédibilité de l'emploi de la force conventionnelle. Il est important que François Hollande ne cède pas à ce type de pression interne.

Oh, America We Have Nothing Against; T'Is Only Bush Whom We Oppose

So: how's that smart diplomacy workin' out for ya?!

Oh, America we have nothing against; It is only the evil cowboy Bush whom we despise and only his evil/stupid/clueless/reactionary policies which we oppose  

That was a common refrain during the George W Bush years. And around 2007 or 2008 came the solution — in the person of Barack Obama, a man, no a being, of intelligence and vision who would bring back love and respect for the United States.

It is a (self-seving) viewpoint which is hardly seconded by the photo illustrating Walter Russell Mead's Wall Street Journal article.

If I had a Son, He'd Look Like This 'Un, But Not Like Those Other 'Uns