Is life easy in the Land of the Free?

How easy is life in the Land of the Free, asks the Telegraph, especially from the British expat's perspective…

Dieudonné and His Inverted Nazi Salute, the Quenelle

Update: French comic Dieudonne 'must pay racism fines'
says French interior minister Manuel Valls.

France is, as we all know, a very polite nation … and … there are plenty of French ways to be polite to people and express your hope that they will enjoy a happy new year to come 

quips Stephen Clarke as he gives several examples in the Telegraph.

Strange, then, that a French footballer should ignore them all and express his joy at scoring a yuletide goal with an altogether different greeting. After Nicolas Anelka scored for his team West Brom, he made the sign known in France as the “quenelle”. For the non-gastronomic amongst you, a “quenelle” is a sort of sausage usually made from fish and breadcrumbs. The gesture itself is also a mixture – it’s half what the French call a “bras d’honneur” (an “arm of honour” – the “up yours” gesture made by thrusting one fist forward while clutching your inner elbow with the other), and half a downward Nazi salute. Anelka [performed] a very formal-looking “quenelle”, putting one hand at the top of his arm while extending that arm stiffly downwards. As anyone who has read about the story will know, the gesture was invented by a comedian called Dieudonné (ironically, “god-given”) who has recently made himself infamous thanks to his outrageously anti-Semitic comments (I wouldn’t call them jokes), including one about a journalist who dared to criticize him and who, in Dieudonné’s opinion, ought to have gone to the gas chamber. (Now you see why i don’t call them jokes).

Everyone in France knows about Dieudonné, and he has a cult following amongst the tiny minority who enjoy race-hate comments. There are doubtless a few youngsters who make his “quenelle” gesture out of ignorance, thinking that it’s purely anti-establishment, in the same way as the punks in the 1970s wore swastikas just to annoy their parents’ generations – they weren’t (usually) Nazis. The same presumably went for Prince Harry when he made his Nazi uniform party outfit gaffe. But an experienced international footballer who knows full well that the few seconds after a goal has been scored are the most filmed and photographed moments of a match? And who has been photographed with the originator of the gesture, joyfully performing a “quenelle” duet?

Say what you like about the average IQ of a Premier League footballer, if there’s one thing they understand it’s the media. They are all experts at promotion. Many of them make as much money being photographed as they do on the pitch. And Anelka’s gesture didn’t look as though it was being made in the grip of wild elation. He looked calm and collected. It looked to my, perhaps over-cynical, eyes that the gesture was a deliberate sign, aimed perhaps at certain sections of impressionable French youth, that it’s OK to say the kind of things that Dieudonné’s fans go along to hear.

It seems a shame, when the French put so much care into expressing the hope that everyone will enjoy each small segment of the day and night, as well as the different sections of the end of the year, that someone thinks it’s OK to send out a mass-media message that is exactly the opposite.

• Nasri and Sakho make “Quenelle” gesture (0:45 from end)

• How 'Quenelle' Salute Creator Dieudonne Built Bridge to Anti-Semitic Far Fight by Robert Zaretsky:

… the quenelle is the odd gesture — an extended right arm slanted towards the floor, the left arm stretched across the chest — for which Dieudonné claims paternity. The salute has blossomed both on-line and on soccer fields: a succession of French athletes from Tony Parker to Nicolas Anelka have performed the quenelle in order to signal their… well, their what?

This is where things get fuzzy.

Dieudonné insists the gesture is simply a French raspberry, aimed at “the system.” Obviously, this claim begs the question of its deeper significance for Dieudonné if the Jews, as he suggests, own and manipulate “the system.” It also ignores the context of the gesture — which many critics insist is an inverted Nazi salute — used by Dieudonné to punctuate his racist jibes and anti-Semitic innuendos. A number of athletes who replicated the gesture, ignorant of its import, seem sincerely angry to have been caught with their shorts down.

"The Lesson That Mandiba Gave History": Le Monde's Nelson Mandela Tributes

Needless to say, Le Monde has been overflowing with Nelson Mandela tributes, from Plantu (with his black Madiba/white Madiba harmonious pairing) to readers such as Bruno Spagnulo on "the lesson he gave History"

 … de retour à mon domicile, j'apprends la triste nouvelle : Mandela n'est plus. Autour de ce symbole d'universel, d'unité et de pardon qui rassembla au-delà des couleurs de peau et des strates sociales, chacun évoquera sa mémoire, sa grandeur, son parcours. Cette leçon qu'il donna à l'Histoire, la marquant de son corps, de son esprit, en l'écrivant de ses actes.

Meanwhile, Guy Abeille writes

Aux Blancs de l'apartheid, et à tous les racistes, Mandela a dit : " Moi, dont vous êtes convaincus que je vous suis inférieur par nature, je vais vous montrer simplement, par mes actes, mes paroles, mon être, que je suis plus grand que vous, plus haut. " Ce qui fut fait. Il a dissous les imbéciles. La noblesse de cet homme a ennobli les hommes.

Xavier Gorce:

• Have you heard?
Nelson Mandela has died.

• Again?!

The light bulb ban provides a useful window into the mindset of liberals: the debate has nothing to do with which bulb is better, but rather who gets to decide

The bulb debate has become a flash point between conservatives and their progressive opponents

writes Benny Huang of the new law making it illegal to sell or import household bulbs that use more than forty watts and the incandescent light bulb accordingly dying an ignominious death after serving humanity well for fourteen decades. See also Tim Carney's Industry, not environmentalists, killed traditional bulbs (thanks to Instapundit; plus, thanks for the the link): "consumer choice is no good either for nanny-staters or companies seeking high profit margins."

Regardless of party affiliations, true conservatives have made the old fashioned light bulb—an unassuming household item—into a symbol for something much larger. But what, exactly? At the risk of sounding melodramatic, it has become symbolic of the fight between liberty and tyranny.

Liberals will of course scoff at the laughable notion of “light bulb tyranny” and accuse me of hyperventilating overreaction. That’s just liberals doing what they do best—pooh-poohing their opponents’ concerns as triflingly insignificant. Yet I suspect that even they understand that there’s a larger principle at stake here. Heaven knows that they have done everything in their power to thwart any attempt to derail the coming ban on incandescent bulbs. If the whole light bulb issue were insignificant they’d let conservatives win this battle and get on with the rest of their agenda: killing jobs and dumbing down education.

 The new bulbs are fine by me. … Given the choice, I would probably select the energy-saving model over the incandescent.

But I won’t have a choice starting on the first of the year, and that’s really the rub. There’s something very wrong with America when the federal government selects light bulbs for its citizens. The fight over illumination is about so much more than just light bulbs; it’s about governmental overreach.

The light bulb ban provides a useful window into the mindset of liberals. Here’s how they see the issue: energy-saving bulbs are better, therefore the others should be illegal. The pattern repeats itself in nearly every other realm: they determine the best policy, then impose it in a top down manner with no regard for states, localities, or individuals. Arguing with them about choice is futile because they cannot fathom the idea that the debate has nothing to do with which bulb is better, but rather who gets to decide.

 … I am willing to buy a light bulb that costs fifteen times more if it will last ten times longer and reduce my electricity bill. I just don’t like the government making that decision for everyone. It should leave well enough alone, allow both bulbs to peacefully coexist on shelves across America, and let consumers decide for themselves which one is best for them.

Why can’t the government do that? The answer is simple: because Americans might choose the wrong one!

Liberals’ famous reverence for choice arose only because they couldn’t bring themselves to utter the word ”abortion” in a debate that is clearly about that very thing. Consequently, the word “choice” has been used so frequently in reference to the gruesome procedure that it is now universally understood to mean abortion. When a reporter asks a politician where he stands on the issue of “choice” people understand without any further context what the reporter means. (Hint: not light bulbs.)

I’m pro-choice too; pro-light bulb choice, that is. Speaking for the pro-light bulb choice crowd, I would like to say that we don’t hate curly-Q’s. We simply want the federal government to circumscribe the scope of its legislation to its rightful enumerated powers spelled out in the Constitution. The light bulb ban clearly exceeds the federal government’s authority to regulate interstate trade, going so far as to regulate intrastate as well. We also want the government to stop forcing their preference on the rest of us. It’s not as if we’re asking them to legalize an act of horrific violence against a child, we just want to pick the bulb we like best. Is that too much to ask?

Yes, it is, because all of this choosing and self-determination might become contagious. People might start asking the government, particularly the federal government, to stop sticking its nose into all sorts of other issues that are none of their business. Excluding the government from such decisions would necessarily reduce its power. Those top-down solutions they fancy so much might become a rarity. They won’t stand for it.

Simplified Blogging

(merci à Carine)

In the Wake of the NYT's Benghazi Report: What, At This Point, the Newspaper of Record Must Be Hoping Will Not Happen

Stilton Jarlsberg's Hope'n'Change blog takes on the New York Crimes (thanks to Duncan):

After an in-depth 15 month investigation, the NY Times has issued a groundbreaking exclusive report that says the brutal terror attacks in Benghazi had nothing to do with Al Qaeda, nothing to do with the anniversary of 9/11, and were in fact caused by a spontaneous outpouring of anger over an anti-Islamic video which had been on Youtube for months without anyone paying attention to it.

In other words, the NY Times is printing complete and utter bullshit (more so than usual, even) for the sole purpose of jumpstarting the rehabilitation of Hillary "What does it matter?" Clinton just in time for the kickoff of her presidential run.

 … Despite their alleged 15 month investigation, the NY Times still hasn't been able to answer one of the most pressing questions about the horrific night: where was Obama and what (or who) was he doing instead of giving a rat's ass about a US Ambassador being sodomized and murdered?!

To which Duncan adds a Calvin & Hobbes cartoon by Watterson:
Don't forget to check out John Rosenthal's The Jihadist Plot
(The Untold Story of Al-Qaeda and the Libyan Rebellion)

Leftists clearly don’t mean what they say when they sing the praises of nondiscrimination statutes

[The A&E] network is clearly petrified of the tolerance bullies 

laments Benny Huang.

The homosexual left claimed another scalp … with the indefinite suspension of America’s favorite bearded backwoods hunter, Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty.

 … The curious case of the Duck Dynasty star is not about the first amendment as some have contended. The US Constitution does not bind private employers. Sometimes speech comes with consequences and sometimes those consequences mean losing your job. Ask Martin Bashir about that. I happen to think that the perpetually offended homosexuals at GLAAD should cease and desist with their childish temper tantrum and start modelling that tolerance thing they’re always talking about, but that doesn’t mean that Robertson’s rights have been violated.

 While free speech may not be an issue here, religious discrimination is. Robertson was suspended for vocalizing his religious beliefs. It would be no different than asking a Hindu if he thinks eating beef is wrong then suspending him for saying yes. Cattle eaters of the world, of which I am one, have neither the persecution complex nor the well-funded, well-organized political machine that homosexuals have.

My contention that Robertson is the victim of illegal employment discrimination will not sit well with so-called liberals, who interpret religious discrimination so narrowly as to include almost nothing. These same people interpret discrimination based on sexual orientation so broadly that it means everything up to and including sexual conduct. Conduct is not orientation but applied law treats it that way for all practical purposes. A liberal might say that he wasn’t punished for his religion but for making “bigoted” comments.

That’s like saying that we didn’t fire you for being gay but for saying that you’re gay. A liberal might also argue that it’s not discrimination because A&E doesn’t have a blanket policy barring Christians. As long as they don’t suspend all Christians in one sweep there’s no discrimination. Another smokescreen. If A&E suspended one black employee for his skin color but continued to employ another, that would still be discrimination.

 … Leftists clearly don’t mean what they say when they sing the praises of nondiscrimination statutes. There is always a disconnect between their words and their actions when the victim of discrimination is a Christian. Take, for example, this quote taken from the US Department of Justice’s website: “People should be hired or not hired because of their skills and merit, not because of their faith. And people should not be forced to choose between their faiths and their jobs.”

Except Phil Robertson.

 … Liberals support anti-discrimination laws because it allows them to feel magnanimous. They like to think of themselves as the anti-bigots yet they can’t bring themselves to enforce the laws they pass when religion is the sticking point, particularly if that religion happens to be Christianity.

  … all private sector nondiscrimination laws are stupid. They insert the government into the employment relationship, forcing one party to engage in a transaction against his will. In the absence of a contract, either party should be free to dissolve the relationship at any given time.

I am completely consistent about this. Some types of discrimination are indeed ugly and immoral but it isn’t the government’s business to force citizens to associate with people they don’t want to.

The Map of France, as Seen by a Parisian

La carte de France vue par les Parisiens

(Four similar maps available in the right margin — obrigado para OT)

Smart Diplomacy: Boeing's Super Hornet Banned From Brazil's Fighter Sales Because of Fury Over NSA Scandal

From the annals of Smart Diplomacy: In Le Monde articles by Nicolas Bourcier and Dominique Gallois, whose main point is that France's Rafale fighter (pictured) lost the fight for Brazil's air force to Sweden's Gripen (with 0 sales of France's latest warplane so far, what country can be expected to purchase it?), we learn as an aside that Boeing's Super Hornet — once the favorite of the Brazilian military's wishes — was ousted when Brazil learned of the NSA spying scandal and after Dilma Rousseff complained of Barack Obama's "grave violation of human rights" and "disrespect to national sovereignty".

« LE TRANSFERT DE TECHNOLOGIE, UN DES ÉLÉMENTS LES PLUS IMPORTANTS »

En choisissant, mercredi, le Gripen NG du suédois Saab aux dépens du groupe français et du F/A-18 Super Hornet de l'américain Boeing, la présidente Dilma Rousseff a opté pour l'avion considéré par les experts comme le moins cher. Selon la presse locale, il avait également la préférence des militaires brésiliens depuis plusieurs années.

Ce choix permet en outre de ménager – un an avant l'élection présidentielle au Brésil – la gauche du Parti des travailleurs (PT, au pouvoir) qui aurait vu d'un très mauvais oeil la signature d'un contrat avec l'avionneur américain quelques mois à peine après les révélations sur l'espionnage de la présidence brésilienne par l'Agence nationale de sécurité (NSA).

Vive la Raison d'État: French Readers Send Broadsides Against Capitalists Like Mikhail Khodorkovsky

In reaction to Piotr Smolar's Le Monde story on Vladimir Putin's liberation of Mikhail Khodorkovsky (along with 20,000 other prisoners), readers lash into the Yukos founder's personality, motives, and modus operandi. In other words, praise for Russian (formerly, for Soviet) leaders for defending the holy motherland against greedy capitalist pigs, the pillagers who deserve nothing but to be sent to, or to remain in, Siberian gulags. Vive la raison d'État!

Racist! Le Monde's Mandela Cartoon

 Xavier Gorce

• Hey, d'ja wanna buy a Mandela mug?
• Nope

• How 'bout a Mandela towel?
A Mandela tablecloth?

• Hold on, I got Mandela key chains, mousepads, USB keys, snow globes…

• I don't want any Mandela products

• Racist!

D-Day and the Bridge of Hope

The first place on French soil liberated by the Allies on D-Day was the Gondrée café by Pegasus Bridge. Five months after the British glider troops took the bridge (after midnight on June 6, 1944), the café couple's daughter was born, and in the intervening 70 years, she has remained true to her roots, remaining in the café, which now doubles as a Pegasus Bridge museum, and greeting  all types of veterans and tourists on their visits to Normandy.

Now Françoise H. Gondrée has written a memoir of her life, Pegasus Bridge Le pont de l'espoir. Let's hope it is due to be translated so that an English-language version is available.

The Etiquette Manual for the Modern Métro Traveller

… there’s a fun new French e-book just out 

writes Stephen Clarke,

and it is specifically designed to be read on public transport.

It has a long title – too long, perhaps for smaller e-reading tablets: “Manuel du savoir-vivre à l’usage du voyageur moderne”. This translates as something like “Etiquette Manual for the Modern Traveller”. It’s a deliberately old-fashioned-sounding title chosen to signal that the contents are going to be fun. It is, though, a serious book, a genuine attempt to improve public behaviour on Paris’s crowded transport network. And it is quite witty. Two of its suggestions are: “being helpful means carrying an old lady’s bag to the top of the stairs … and then giving it back to her” and “being courteous means understanding that the enormous crossed-out cigarette on the walls of the Métro isn’t just a work of art”.

These rules have been suggested by users, and they highlight some real everyday problems. Among the most relevant is the plea “not to challenge the knight who accidentally steps on your foot to a duel”. You see this happening all the time. Given that the genuine rule one of Métro usage, especially at rush hour, is: “when the train pulls into the station, passengers waiting on the platform must form a dense crowd around the opening doors, thereby preventing anyone standing near the doors getting off, and then push their way on to the train while those who were sitting down are still trying to shove their way towards the exit doors”, you naturally see a lot of people losing their temper. Someone getting off will “accidentally” elbow someone getting on too early, and before you know it, a full-throated shouting match is in progress, with both people indulging in an in-depth analysis of their adversary’s race, physical appearance and supposed possession of testicles. It rarely goes beyond an exchange of words, but it holds the train up even more and creates a bad atmosphere in an already stressful situation.

And here lies the problem with these witty guidebook-style appeals for courtesy. The people who read them are usually not the ones offending. The jokes in the book were thought up by the victims of the bad behaviour, and they’re being too polite about it. Admittedly, the light, bantering humour is necessary because if you tell Parisians “do this”, they’ll be tempted to ignore you or do the opposite. If, on the other hand, you use humour, you’re suggesting that you don’t really care whether they do it or not, and that it might actually be cool to do it, so you’re in with a chance that they’ll actually do it. Sadly, though, even if the new manual does get a bit of media attention and raise awareness, its jokiness won’t solve many problems.

 … It’s easy to compare London to Paris. The Tube’s corridors are almost all clean and homeless-person free. London employs people to beg travellers on the platform to let people on the train get off. At the barriers there are people preventing fraud and giving advice. Escalators abound, whereas you’d be very hard pushed to find any Paris stations without long staircases. It all makes travelling around London feel much smoother. There is, though, one other key difference – the Paris system is incredibly cheap.

 … In Paris, you get what you pay for, and that includes sharing your trains and buses with a tiny but attention-seeking minority who are incorrigibly impolite. The person smoking on the platform or listening to loud music on a train isn’t just being impolite, anyway – he or she is being provocative, looking for an argument. There are people like that in every city and in Paris they often hang out in the Métro. The next time one of them is growling “connard, fils de pute, enculé” (literally “male version of the vagina, son of a whore, recipient of anal penetration”) at me for exiting a Métro rather brusquely, it’s not going to help if I tell him wittily that I am a knight who doesn’t want to be challenged to a duel. The reply would probably be a crushingly effective allegation that I am the “knight of his rectum”. That’s the kind of everyday wit you get on the Métro.

Stephen Clarke’s insider guide to his home city, Paris Revealed, includes a line-by-line portrait of the Métro network, and his own user manual for surviving on public transport.

Too many kids aren’t motivated to learn and too many teachers aren’t motivated to teach; It’s a baby-sitting service

American students are slipping further behind their peers from overseas, according to a study from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)

complains Benny Huang.

Out of sixty-four countries surveyed, the US earned a grade of “average” in reading and science, and “below average” in math.

…/… The boondoggle of public education is an American shame. There’s something very wrong with our schools that seems to defy all of our most well-intentioned remedies. Without a clear diagnosis as to what ails our education system, we’ve stumbled around, searching in vain for the right medicine.

 …/… My layman’s diagnosis is pretty simple—our schools fail because ours society fails. Every societal ill eventually finds its way into schools, from unwed motherhood to drugs. Too many kids aren’t motivated to learn and too many teachers aren’t motivated to teach. It’s a baby-sitting service.

Here’s what I remember about being a student in a public school—kids with bangs in their eyes and bad attitudes, waiting for the bell to ring so they could steal away and smoke pot. I remember teachers trying to fill the day with time-consuming fluff, which is so much easier than teaching. I remember educators who chose the profession for ulterior motives, which were almost always political and left-liberal in nature. They taught their students that gay is good, America is bad, and there’s a racist hiding under every bed. Regardless of what subject they were hired to teach, certain teachers invariably blazed their own paths, incorporating white guilt into English class and environmentalist junk science into geography lessons.

Mandela and the ANC: A Look Back

The Diplomad has a good piece on Nelson Mandela and his African National Congress: Certain

informal "off the record" meetings with ANC reps while in Geneva and Vienna [in the 1980s] proved inconsequential, but showed the intense hostility of the ANC towards the USA, capitalism, and Western democracy. Some of the ANC had a very hard pro-Soviet, pro-Castro line, and there was no reasoning with them. These meetings, frankly, shaped my view of Mandela, making me suspicious of him and what he would bring to South Africa were he freed and in power at the head of the ANC.

As it turns out, I was right and wrong. The ANC was a lost cause; they did not believe in democracy, and had a large element of thuggery in their ranks. Many were terrorists who had received training in Libya, and were out for revenge and blood.

Mandela, however, was more complicated than I had thought. He had had his violent phase, but only after trying peaceful opposition to apartheid. Both in and after coming out of prison, he proved an extremely intelligent negotiator and compromiser, reaching understandings with Botha and De Klerk, and turning down the volume of the anti-white message of the ANC. He seemed to have an understanding that whites and other non-blacks were essential for a peaceful and prosperous South Africa. He also, surprise, did not go full Mugabe. He won election--although the vote counting was suspicious--served his term, trying to unite blacks, whites, Asians, and others into accepting the new post-apartheid South Africa. He did not try to drive the whites out, and did not go around confiscating farms and businesses. He did not encourage revenge against whites and sought a reconciliation of the races. A practical politician, he turned a blind eye to the rampant corruption among the ANC, finding it better to let the party members expend their revolutionary fervor making money. At the end of his term, he stepped down. Yes, he stepped down. That is an amazing thing in Africa; he stepped down on completing his term of office. It does not happen much on that continent. He, however, never got over his deep mistrust of the USA, and despite his credentials as a victim of human rights abuse, refused to criticize Qaddafy, never gave up his fervent admiration for Castro--who, ironically, runs a racist regime in Cuba--and remained very anti-Israel.

Related:  Fans of Mandela Like to Forget That One of the ANC's Biggest Supporters Was Muammar Gaddafi

The Americans in Paris tend to fall into three categories

I’m aware that there are worse things to be than an American in Paris

writes Pamela Druckerman "who took the ultimate expatriate plunge" ("I started doing psychotherapy in French").

You could be, for example, a Congolese in the Democratic Republic of Congo. But as I spend my 10th Thanksgiving here, permit me a moment of reflection. Because Thanksgiving prompts the question that expatriates everywhere face: Shouldn’t I be going home?

The Americans in Paris tend to fall into three categories. There are the fantasists — people nourished by Hemingway and Sartre, who are enthralled with the idea of living here. The moneyed version of this person lives as close as possible to the Eiffel Tower. The Bohemian version teaches English or tends bar, to finance his true vocation: being in France. 

Then there are the denialists — often here for a spouse’s job — who cope with living in Paris by pretending they’re not in Paris. They tap into a parallel universe of Anglophone schools, babysitters and house painters, and get their French news from CNN. 

Finally there are people like me, who study France and then describe it to the folks back home. We’re determined to have an “authentic” French experience. And yet, by mining every encounter for its anthropological significance, we keep our distance, too.

No matter how familiar Paris becomes, something always reminds me that I don’t belong. 

 … The question of whether to stay is especially resonant for Americans in Paris, because many feel that they live here by accident. Not many foreigners move to Paris for their dream job. Many do it on a romantic whim. Expatriates often say that they came for six months, but ended up staying for 15 years. And no one is quite sure where the time went. It’s as if Paris is a vortex that lulls you with its hot croissants and grand boulevards. One morning, you wake up middle-aged — still speaking mediocre French.

 … The biggest lesson I’ve learned in 10 years is that I’m American to the core.

Europe's Superior Society? Over 1 Million Frenchman Have Trouble Getting Food on Their Dinner Tables

 This is what America's Democrats do not tell you when vaunting Europe's more generous, more humane, and more generally superior society. According to Le Monde's Catherine Rollot, over 12% of French adults have trouble getting enough good food on their tables, and one million Frenchman will be given food by the association Les Restos du Cœur (The Restaurants of the Heart). Nicole Darmon goes further, saying that 22% of people below the poverty rate are "in a situation of food insecurity."

C'est la France des frigos vides. Celle des produits discount et des petits paniers, celle aussi qui peine à frapper aux portes des associations caritatives pour se faire aider. Alors que s'ouvre lundi 25 novembre la 29^e campagne des Restos du cœur, qui risque cette année d'atteindre le chiffre record de 1 million de personnes accueillies, de plus en plus de familles vivent en « insécurité alimentaire ».

De ces ménages qui doivent faire des restrictions telles qu'ils n'ont plus accès en quantité mais surtout en qualité aux aliments pour satisfaire leurs besoins nutritionnels et leurs préférences alimentaires, on sait peu de chose. En France, contrairement aux Etats-Unis, la notion est encore mal connue et souvent confondue avec l'absence ou l'insuffisance de sécurité des aliments. La tentation est aussi facile de restreindre cette population à celle des 3, 5 millions de bénéficiaires de l'aide alimentaire.

Pourtant, de l'avis de Nicole Darmon, directrice de recherche à l'Institut national de la recherche agronomique (INRA), qui a étudié les comportements alimentaires des personnes défavorisées, 12,2 % des adultes appartiendraient à un foyer en « situation d'insécurité alimentaire pour raisons financières », soit plus de 6 millions de personnes, un chiffre bien supérieur à la population qui a recours à l'aide alimentaire.

LES FEMMES OU LES PERSONNES SEULES SOUVENT VISÉES


« Ce phénomène, même s'il est trois fois plus fréquent parmi les ménages défavorisés, ne se résume pas à la pauvreté monétaire, explique M^me Darmon. On estime ainsi que 22 % des personnes qui vivent en dessous du seuil de pauvreté sont en situation d'insécurité alimentaire. Bien que plus faible, cette proportion atteint près de 8 % parmi les personnes vivant au-dessus de ce seuil. »

Le Terroir: is the holistic combination of soil, geology, climate and local grape-growing practices real or mysticism?

"American wine growers have long expressed varying degrees of skepticism about [the] ineffable concept" of terroir, asks Nicholas Wade in a New York Times article (one replete with French phrases), "some dismissing it as unfathomable mysticism and others regarding it as a shrewd marketing ploy to protect the cachet of French wines."

 Terroir is a concept at the heart of French winemaking, but one so mysterious that the word has no English counterpart. It denotes the holistic combination of soil, geology, climate and local grape-growing practices that make each region’s wine unique.

 … Now American researchers may have penetrated the veil that hides the landscape of terroir from clear view, at least in part. They have seized on a plausible aspect of terroir that can be scientifically measured — the fungi and bacteria that grow on the surface of the wine grape. 

 …The discovery of stable but differing patterns of microbial communities from one region’s vineyards to another means that microbes could explain, at least in part, why one region’s zinfandel, say, tastes different from another’s. The links between microbes and wine-growing regions “provide compelling support for the role of grape-surface microbial communities in regional wine characteristics,” the researchers conclude.

 … While [David A. Mills] said that “I make fun of terroir all the time,” he believes that regional distinctions between vineyards do exist and that microbes have a role in creating them. If the specific links between microbes and the sensory properties of wine can be identified, growers will be able to take a savoir-faire attitude to terroir instead of a je ne sais quoi shrug. 

On the other hand, he added, pinning the qualities of wine on bacteria and fungi may spoil that frisson of enchantment for some connoisseurs. “Many people don’t want this figured out,” he said, “because it demystifies the wonderful mystery of wine.”

Color Photographs of World War II

Check out Jalopnik's World War II color photos (thanks to Instapundit).

More from the Library of Congress on Flicker…

No other place on earth where you can get such a tear jerking and ass kicking mix of solemnity, emotion, respect for vets, and flat out amazement at what this old man can still do

I just watched this video and it really made my day 

writes a French expat in Texas about a Youtube video with a World War II veteran called Impossible Shots with Ted Gundy and Gibbs 1903A4 sniper rifle.

It may seem more like a Veteran's Day thing than Thanks Giving, but bear with me.

I wish you could see this through my foreigners eyes. This is stuff like this that happens only in America that makes this country great. I can't think of any other place on earth where you can get such a tear jerking and ass kicking mix of solemnity, emotion, respect for vets, and flat out amazement at what this old man can still do; involving guns, of course ;-) All of that like it's the most natural thing... Well I guess it is over here, but it certainly ain't for me.

So yeah, tis the day where you say out loud what you're greatful for. … I have to repeat that I'm really glad [my French wife] and I made it to this great country, and we'll stand by it when push comes to shove. [She's] got the pen, I got the sword, let's roll! ...