Good-Bye, Friend — Georges Lautner, Director of “Les Tontons Flingueurs"

A "prolific French director who specialized in comedy and crime — often in the same movie —" died several weeks ago on the outskirts of Paris, writes the NYT's Bruce Weber. Georges Lautner was 87.

In paying tribute to Mr. Lautner, President François Hollande acknowledged his cultural stature, saying he made “great popular comedies that became cult films of our cinematic heritage.”

From the late 1950s through the 1980s, Mr. Lautner churned out an average of more than a film a year. He made more than 40 over all, often also serving as co-writer; his frequent collaborator was Michel Audiard. 

His movies, generally fast-paced and cleverly plotted, often starred one or more of France’s celebrity actors, including Jean-Paul Belmondo, Alain Delon, Bernard Blier, Miou-Miou and Mireille Darc. And though Mr. Lautner’s films were not as well appreciated critically or internationally as those of the high-minded auteurs who were his contemporaries and countrymen, he made reliably appealing and profitable movies that reached a wide audience in France, many of which remain in frequent circulation on French television. 

Among Mr. Lautner’s best-known films are “Les Tontons Flingueurs” (1963), a sendup of organized crime, known to English-speaking audiences as “Crooks in Clover” or “Monsieur Gangster,” with Mr. Blier and Lino Ventura; “Mort d’un Pourri” (“Death of a Corrupt Man”), a 1977 thriller starring Mr. Delon, Ms. Darc and Stéphane Audran, about the murder of a blackmailer; “Le Professionnel,” a 1981 suspense thriller about the corrupt machinations behind a political assassination, starring Mr. Belmondo in a jaunty, James Bond-like turn as a rogue secret agent; a 1983 comedy about a woman (Miou-Miou, in “a lovely, confident performance,” Vincent Canby wrote in The New York Times) maintaining two separate families, known in English as “My Other ‘Husband’ ”; and “La Cage aux Folles 3: The Wedding” (1985), the final installment of the series about the comically tortuous relationship problems of a gay couple.

Separation and Divorce? Initiated by the Wife? It's Always the Husband's Fault

Xavier Gorce's penguins

 • My wife wants to leave me!

• I am so angry at her!


• You're right: That way, you can avoid being angry against yourself…

François Hollande's effort to recast and revive France’s influence in Africa

The imagery is likely to be the same as it has been for decades 

writes, perhaps somewhat wearily, Alan Cowell in the New York Times

— foreign troops in battle fatigues lugging backpacks and assault rifles, confronting mayhem.

But when French soldiers reinforce their small existing garrison in the Central African Republic in coming weeks, their presence will probably be depicted as a departure from a long tradition of military muscle as the prime instrument of postcolonial power. 

The Central African Republic — its territory larger than metropolitan France, with only a small fraction of its population — has occupied an anomalous place since independence from Paris in 1960, ruled by a procession of despots and even an emperor — Bokassa I — who was accused not just of profligacy but of cannibalism, too. 

But in more recent weeks, it has become the newest focus of an effort by President François Hollande to recast and revive his nation’s influence on a continent where its erstwhile clout has been challenged by the growing ascendancy of China and others eyeing Africa’s natural resources from oil to diamonds.

 … “The challenge of this intervention,” wrote Pierre Haski, a co-founder of the Rue89 news website, “lies in the ‘return’ of France to the dark continent after decades of interference followed by a period of relative indifference or misstatements.” 

“If France succeeds in its Central African mission, it will have recovered a good part of its influence,” he said, “positioning itself as an indispensable partner in those places where it risked becoming a vague memory.”

 … The Mali campaign at the beginning of the year drew France into a struggle against Al Qaeda and its affiliates, as well-financed and ideologically committed Islamist insurgents from the north pressed on the capital, Bamako, meeting no challenge from ineffective government forces. 

In the Central African Republic, by contrast, the overthrow in March of the previous government by rebel militias, many composed of Muslim fighters from Chad and Sudan, has precipitated growing lawlessness among rival warlords, raising the prospect of sectarian war spilling beyond its borders.

It is, of course, easier to deploy than to withdraw, as France discovered in Mali, where it still has 3,000 troops.

"No One Is!" Leftists and Their Calculated Lies Intended to Pacify the Bitter Clingers

The quickest way to find out what liberals have next on their to-do list is usually to pay close attention to what they tell you that they most certainly don’t want to do, and to what they assure you no one is actually proposing

quips Benny Huang.

Normally, you don’t have to look very far to find someone who is proposing, or has proposed, what liberals tell you cannot and never will happen. MSNBC’s Alex Wagner, for example, has assured the public that the second amendment is safe. “No one, anywhere, is talking about doing away with the second amendment, and no one, anywhere, is advocating stripping away gun ownership.”

So quit being hysterical, conservatives. Commentators generally don’t openly advocate for the repeal of the second amendment because that makes it sound as if they oppose fundamental rights spelled out explicitly in the Constitution. What they advocate is violating those rights while pretending that they are not. Rather than repealing the amendment, they just ignore the spirit and the letter thereof.

 Yet I can think of one person who has actually declared her support for repealing the second amendment. It’s the very same Alex Wagner. When Bill Maher asked her what changes she would make to the Constitution, she replied: “I think get rid of the second amendment, the right to bear arms.”

So her assurances that “no one, anywhere” wants to take our guns was a calculated lie intended to pacify the bitter clingers. Why must liberals always employ this form of subterfuge? The answer is that whenever they tell us where this train is heading, people invariably demand to get off. So it’s in their best interest to keep mum and to name-call anyone who has enough prescience to see further down the tracks.

They call us paranoid, they call us wingnuts, they call us racists.

But we’re right.

Read the whole thing, especially the second illustration, in which Benny Huang discusses Sharia law and how we are all to "Rest assured though, [that] no one—and I mean no one—actually wants to bring Sharia to America."

These are but two examples. They told you, of course, that Obamacare would not cover abortions because it was not specifically provided for in the bill, and yet they adamantly refused to include a provision that would have explicitly forbade it. “No one” was suggesting that government fund abortion and yet that is exactly what happened. “No one” was suggesting that anti-bullying laws be used to censor speech that homosexuals find offensive, and yet it’s happening. “No one” is suggesting giving illegal aliens welfare and yet they keep getting it.

My advice to conservatives is to keep up your guard. You’re going to be called a nut for sounding the alarm bells. But you’re not a nut. You just have enough foresight to see the endgame that they so desperately want to keep hidden.

Read also Jed Babbin's So Many Intolerable Lies (Even the U.S. Marines have been corrupted):

Among the lies we’ve become inured to is that women can perform every job a man can, including those of combat infantryman and special operators. We’ve also been told the lie that the injection of women into combat arms has no effect on the warrior culture. The liberals insist that the culture isn’t of any value to combat effectiveness regardless of what the warriors themselves say.

And we have relied on the promises made by all of the military leaders, including the Marines, that they’d never diminish the physical standards that any prospective warrior had to meet simply to allow women into combat arms.

That virtually all women can’t meet the standards to do these jobs is so well-established a fact that only the liberal idiots who control Obama’s Pentagon could deny it. Twelve

 … There are so many lies coming out of the White House that we have become numb to them. But to concede that is to concede the debate. That is what is happening now across our political spectrum.

 … There are many certainties, many facts that have to be defended. And there used to be American institutions that could be relied on to defend those truths at all costs. How far has America fallen that the Marine Corps is breaking promises and implementing lies?

Too far.  No nation can long survive if it bases its continuation on lies.

The French President's Alleged Lover, Julie Gayet, and the Ethics Issues That Have Risen (Oui, Even in France) Over François Hollande's 'Mafia Flat' Trysts

Ever since the magazine Closer revealed that President François Hollande has a mistress (allegations which sent Valérie Trierweiler to a Paris hospital) — thus proving that in the internet age France can no longer hide their leaders' piccadilloes — a number of ethics issues have surfaced, write Le Monde's Gérard Davet and Fabrice Lhomme: Notably reports of a 'tryst in a mafia flat'.

A lot of readers are defending François Hollande with regards to his relationship with the actress Julie Gayet, and I wouldn't be surprised if his (poor) polls go up over the affair (pun intended) — although Closer's own (non-scientific) online poll seems to say quite the opposite. (One Le Monde reader, David_Paris, even sounds downright — quelle horreur — American:  «La séparation "vie privée"-"vie publique" est stupide. S'il trompe la "femme de sa vie", pourquoi ne pourrait-il pas tromper son électorat?») Meanwhile, IBT's Samantha Payne tries to answer the question, Who Is Julie Gayet, Alleged Lover of French President Francois Hollande? (photos).

Everyone in the Élysée is concerned with how much time questions on the matter will take during le président's press conference Tuesday.

L'affaire de la liaison supposée de François Hollande avec l'actrice Julie Gayet soulève de nombreuses questions. Le Monde a enquêté sur les dysfonctionnements à l'Elysée liés à cette affaire.

• A qui appartient l'appartement parisien de la rue du Cirque, dans le 8^e arrondissement ?

… La comédienne Julie Gayet, amie d'Emmanuelle Hauck, travaillait régulièrement dans cet appartement, depuis que ses bureaux de la rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré faisaient l'objet de travaux. François Hollande s'est rendu une dizaine de fois dans cet appartement depuis l'automne 2013, d'après des éléments recueillis à l'Elysée par Le Monde. Le président, amateur de deux-roues, a utilisé, comme passager, un scooter appartenant à la flotte de l'Elysée, conduit par un membre de sa sécurité. Un second équipage assurait en outre la protection de M. Hollande.

Lire : Gayet-Hollande : interrogations autour de l'appartement

• Quel est le lien éventuel avec le banditisme corse ?

Il est indirect et fortuit. Il se trouve qu'Emmanuelle Hauck, née à Bastia, a vécu avec l'acteur Michel Ferracci, apparu notamment dans la série « Mafiosa », diffusée depuis 2006 sur Canal+. Or M. Ferracci a été condamné, au mois de novembre 2013, à dix-huit mois de prison avec sursis pour abus de confiance dans l'affaire du cercle Wagram. Il fut directeur des jeux de cet établissement, théâtre de détournements de fonds au profit de membres du gang corse de la Brise de mer.

  … après sa rupture avec Michel Ferracci, Emmanuelle Hauck était devenue la compagne de François Masini, au profil éminemment sulfureux. François Masini a été tué par balle, sur une route de Haute-Corse, le 31 mai 2013. …

• Le service de sécurité du président a-t-il été défaillant ?

François Hollande est constamment protégé. Il a notamment à ses côtés deux hommes, des policiers de confiance qu'il a personnellement choisis.   Ceux-ci l'escortent dans tous ses déplacements privés. C'était le cas lors de ses visites rue du Cirque. Mais ces policiers n'ont pas enquêté sur le passé de la locataire de l'appartement, ni sur ses liens avec des individus au profil sulfureux. Ils n'ont pas su, non plus, repérer les paparazzi qui traquent François Hollande. Ceux-ci auraient loué un appartement à proximité pour les besoins de leur reportage.

Cela faisait de longs mois, déjà, que la rumeur parisienne propageait l'existence supposée d'une liaison entre M. Hollande et M^me Gayet. …

• Que savaient exactement François Hollande et Manuel Valls ?

François Hollande, d'après l'Elysée, n'a jamais eu connaissance des liens entre la locataire de l'appartement, Emmanuelle Hauck, et certaines personnes réputées proches du banditisme corse. Ainsi, fait observer l'entourage de M. Hollande, le nom de Ferraci n'apparaît pas sur l'interphone de l'appartement. Le président n'avait connaissance que de l'identité de la locataire du logement, M^me Hauck, amie de longue date de M^me Gayet.

Lire l'analyse : Scénario catastrophe pour le président avant sa conférence de presse …

• Le magazine Closer a-t-il pu être instrumentalisé par des rivaux de M. Hollande ?

C'est une interrogation majeure, à l'Elysée, où l'on se penche sur le processus mis en œuvre à l'occasion du reportage de l'hebdomadaire people. A Paris, ces derniers mois, les rumeurs sur la liaison supposée du président ont été relatées par plusieurs relais sarkozystes de premier plan.
Or François Hollande a toujours considéré Nicolas Sarkozy comme son principal rival, en vue d'une future réelection, en 2017. Il lui a toujours prêté aussi un fort pouvoir de nuisance, lié à son passé Place Beauvau et à ses amitiés avec des responsables policiers de premier plan. En effet, l'ancien locataire de l'Elysée a conservé de puissants soutiens au sein de la police, dont une partie des effectifs resteraient acquis à M. Sarkozy.

Your Rights With Police In One Infographic

Course, these would not apply in Europe.
From Conservative Byte (via Instapundit)

Contrary to what peaceniks claimed, battles still rage in Iraq, and that in the absence of an "occupation" by foreign troops

It‘s been two years since Americans troops departed Iraq 

writes Benny Huang who served a tour in Iraq

and the nation is still burning. The yearly death toll has been calculated and it’s nothing short of horrifying. In total, 7,818 civilians and 1,050 members of the security forces lost their lives in 2013, making it the most violent in five years.

The nearly nine year war our military fought in Iraq is now fading away in our national rear-view mirror. Our boys and girls are no longer in that oily third world hell hole and we’re glad for it. Most of us, I suspect, would rather not ponder too long a war that so deeply divided this nation. So we just don’t talk about it.

Though Americans have shifted their attention away from Iraq, the country is still roiling with car bombs and drive-by shootings. Our news media no longer covers it in horrific detail but it’s still happening.

At the risk of sounding insensitive or smug, there’s something I have to get off of my chest: I told you so.

Removing American soldiers from the equation did nothing to reduce violence. To the contrary, the infusion of troops during the surge was what brought violence down to manageable levels. Since leaving, those numbers have crept up again. 

The conventional wisdom concerning the insurgency in Iraq was that it would dry up as soon as our troops left. The insurgents were, after all, merely fighting to evict foreign occupiers from their homeland.

There are a number of problems with this analysis. The first is that the Iraqi insurgency wasn’t entirely Iraqi by nationality. Although it was impossible to determine the exact proportion of foreign fighters, there were indicators. Nearly all of al-Qaeda’s top leadership in Iraq was non-Iraqi, including the Egyptian kingpin Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Ninety percent of suicide bombers were non-Iraqi. This was not an entirely homegrown movement designed to get foreign invaders out of “their” country.

 … Apparently our presence was not the only reason they were fighting. If that were the case there would be no more bloodshed in Iraq two years after final American withdrawal.

The facile thinking of eight years ago predicted peace in Iraq as soon as coalition forces departed. The party line was that America brought war to Iraq and war would continue until America decided to end it. The faster we came home the faster the bleeding would stop.

William Pfaff, writing at the Korea Herald, summed up that school of thought particularly well. “The insurgents are fighting because of the occupation, and the occupation forces are fighting because there is resistance.” … Fred Kaplan, liberal puke at Slate Magazine, the preferred internet news source of liberal pukes everywhere, sounded a similar sentiment. …

The occupation is gone. What are they “insurging” against now? Could it be that achieving the first step in their plan—expelling the coalition—only emboldened them to push on toward their ultimate goals?

No single concept animated the anti-Iraq War movement more than the assumption that our presence is what made Iraq a hostile place. This assumption framed the entire debate. Those who wanted to beat a hasty retreat counted themselves as peaceniks while portraying their opponents as war-mongers. They seemed incapable of understanding that we all wanted peace. Simply leaving however, was no guarantee that peace would automatically bloom across Iraq.

Time has demonstrated that the insurgency did not merely exist to battle us. Our fighting men and women have gone home and there is still no peace to be found between the Tigris and the Euphrates. I could have predicted that eight years ago. I did predict it eight years ago, in fact. I knew that all things come to an end, even occupations. One day the coalition would leave and the people they were trying to counter would just keep on fighting. Nothing would change in Iraq unless we defeated those forces, which we obviously failed to do.

In that regard, I was prescient. But in another way, I was naïve in my expectations. I mistakenly believed that once people saw the folly of the anti-Iraq War’s central premise—that the insurgency only existed because our troops were there—that they would entertain earnest second thoughts. People might begin to understand that their friends and neighbors who argued in favor of the Iraq War were not doing so because they hated peace or anything as juvenile as that. Who hates peace? They argued in favor of the Iraq War because defeating the bad guys was the best way to achieve peace.

 In the end, we handed the baton to the Iraqis, of which I am glad. It’s their fight now. Let’s not forget, however, that a fight still exists even in the absence of a foreign occupation.

Almost 90 percent of police officers believe casualties would be decreased if armed citizens were present during shooting incidents

If more citizens were armed, criminals would think twice about attacking them

 reports The Detroit News's George Hunter the city's Police Chief as saying (thanks to Clash Daily).

Urban police chiefs are typically in favor of gun control or reluctant to discuss the issue, but [James Craig] on Thursday was candid about how he’s changed his mind.

“When we look at the good community members who have concealed weapons permits, the likelihood they’ll shoot is based on a lack of confidence in this Police Department,” Craig said at a press conference at police headquarters, adding that he thinks more Detroit citizens feel safer, thanks in part to a 7 percent drop in violent crime in 2013.

 Craig said he started believing that legal gun owners can deter crime when he became police chief in Portland, Maine, in 2009.

 “Coming from California (Craig was on the Los Angeles police force for 28 years), where it takes an act of Congress to get a concealed weapon permit, I got to Maine, where they give out lots of CCWs (carrying concealed weapon permits), and I had a stack of CCW permits I was denying; that was my orientation.

 “I changed my orientation real quick. Maine is one of the safest places in America. Clearly, suspects knew that good Americans were armed.”

 … According to a March 2013 anonymous poll of 15,000 officers by the law enforcement website policeone.com., almost 90 percent of the respondents believed casualties would be decreased if armed citizens were present during shooting incidents, while more than 80 percent supported arming teachers who were trained with firearms.

Even Newsweek: "There is a grayness in France that the heavy hand of socialism casts"

It’s a stretch, but what is happening today in France is being compared to the revocation of 1685

quips Janine di Giovanni in Newsweek (merci à Damian, who bewails the fact that "The tone of the article is shock and sadness, 'Oh how sad that socialism has ruined France' ").

In that year, Louis XIV, the Sun King who built the Palace of Versailles, revoked the Edict of Nantes, which had protected French Protestants – the Huguenots. Trying to unite his kingdom by a common religion, the king closed churches and persecuted the Huguenots. As a result, nearly 700,000 of them fled France, seeking asylum in England, Sweden, Switzerland, South Africa and other countries.

The Huguenots, nearly a million strong before 1685, were thought of as the worker bees of France. They left without money, but took with them their many and various skills. They left France with a noticeable brain drain. 

Since the arrival of Socialist President François Hollande in 2012, income tax and social security contributions in France have skyrocketed. The top tax rate is 75 percent, and a great many pay in excess of 70 percent.

As a result, there has been a frantic bolt for the border by the very people who create economic growth – business leaders, innovators, creative thinkers, and top executives. They are all leaving France to develop their talents elsewhere.

And it’s a tragedy for such a historically rich country. As they say, the problem with the French is they have no word for entrepreneur. Where is the Richard Branson of France? Where is the Bill Gates?

At this point Hervé jumps in to make a point:

I haven't read the whole piece yet, but this made me barf:

As they say, the problem with the French is they have no word for entrepreneur.

I thought only GW Bush would be stupid enought to come up with that... But hey, she's a journalist.

I will read the rest though. But as you say, what's Newsweek's point? As I recall, they were in a state of trans when the Afromarxist was elected. Somehow it wouldn't work in France but it would in the US? I guess English speaking journalists don't have a word for bullshit.

Back to Newsweek:

 Pierre Moscovici, the much-loathed minister of finance … was looking very happy with himself. Does he realize Rome is burning? 

Granted, there is much to be grateful for in France. An economy that boasts successful infrastructure such as its high-speed rail service, the TGV, and Airbus, as well as international businesses like the luxury goods conglomerate LMVH, all of which define French excellence. It has the best agricultural industry in Europe. Its tourism industry is one of the best in the world.

But the past two years have seen a steady, noticeable decline in France. There is a grayness that the heavy hand of socialism casts. It is increasingly difficult to start a small business when you cannot fire useless employees and hire fresh new talent. Like the Huguenots, young graduates see no future and plan their escape to London.

  … Part of this is the fault of the suffocating nanny state. … With the end of the reign of Gaullist (conservative) Nicolas Sarkozy (the French hated his flashy bling-bling approach) the French ushered in the rotund, staid Hollande.

Almost immediately, taxes began to rise. 

I did not mind, initially, paying higher taxes than in Britain in exchange for excellent health care, and for masterful state-subsidized schools like the one my son attends (L’Ecole Alsacienne – founded by some of the few remaining Huguenots at the end of the 19th century). 

 

As a new mother, I was surprised at the many state benefits to be had if you filled out all the forms: Diapers were free; nannies were tax-deductible; free nurseries existed in every neighborhood. State social workers arrived at my door to help me “organize my nursery.” My son’s school lunch consists of three courses, plus a cheese plate.

 …  When I began to look around, I saw people taking wild advantage of the system. I had friends who belonged to trade unions, which allowed them to take entire summers off and collect 55 percent unemployment pay.

 … But all this handing out of money left the state bankrupt. 

Also, France, being a nation of navel-gazers à la Jean-Paul Sartre, refuses to look outward, toward the global village. Who cares about the BRICS – the emerging markets of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa – when we have Paris? It is a tunnel-vision philosophy that will kill France

 … From a chief legal counsel at a major French company: “France is dying a slow death. Socialism is killing it. It’s like a rich old family being unable to give up the servants. Think Downton Abbey.”

 … To wake up, France has to rid itself of the old guard, and reinvent itself. 

François Hollande made his first trip to China only when he became head of state in 2012 – and he’s 58 years old. The government is so inward looking and the state fonctionnaires who run it are so divorced from reality that it has become a country in denial.

  … politicians like Hollande have to let the people breathe. Creativity and prosperity can only come about when citizens can build, create, and thrive

Finally, Damian returns to answer Hervé's comment and make another point or two about the ("We Are All Socialists Now") Newsweek article:

I guess English speaking journalists don't have a word for bullshit.

Actually most news services do have such a word. They call it "the news". …

Notice that the writer doesn't linger on hard facts or statistical evidence of decline. No it's all talk with her "friends". So. If only her "friends" had better attitudes or weren't cheats -- or if she had a better set of "friends" altogether -- French socialism might work fine!  I mean, FREE DIAPERS!

Europe with European versions of the Tea Party
the continent's troubled economies warns (sic) The Economist.

In May voters across the 28-member European Union will elect 751 deputies to the European Parliament. Polls suggest that the FN could win a plurality of the votes in France. The United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) has similarly high hopes, as does the Freedom Party (PVV) in the Netherlands. Anti-EU populists of the left and right could take between 16% and 25% of the parliament’s seats, up from 12% today. Many of those votes will go to established parties of the Eurosceptic left. But those of the right and far right might take about 9%. And it is they, not the parties of the left, who are scaring the mainstream.

There are numerous problems with this simplistic put-'em-all-in-th'-same-barrel view.

For instance, France's National Front should in no way be assimilated to the Tea Party. As No Pasarán and Le Monde Watch have reported numerous times,  

the Front National's Marine Le Pen criticizes privatization and "extreme" free market policies, holding that France needs "a strong state", while one of her top aides speaks of taking advantage of the fears engendered by globalization and surfing on insecurity and on social suffering. 

When told "that in the U.S. she would sound like a left-wing politician", she went as far as telling the New York Times's Russell Shorto that Barack "Obama is way to the right of us”!

Meanwhile, Adam Shaw is perhaps more on the money when the Fox News reporter says that "the often stale British political system is being rocked by its very own Tea Party."

The UK Independence Party (UKIP), formed in 1993 opposing Britain’s entry into the European Union, failed to make an electoral dent for a long time. However UKIP has built up steam in recent years and is spearheading a seismic shift in the British political spectrum.

In this year’s local elections – the British version of midterms -- UKIP took a stunning 23 percent of the vote, up from the 3.1 percent they won in the 2010 national election. Their leader, Nigel Farage, is buoyed by their recent success.

“We want to take back our country, we want to take back our government, and we want to take back our birthright,” Farage told FoxNews.com in forthright language rarely seen in British politics.

 … It is here where UKIP spied an opportunity, adopting an anti-establishment, populist platform that argues for lower taxation, privatization, smaller government and getting Britain out of the European Union.

 … “The sense of frustration the Tea Party feels about the remoteness about the bureaucratic class of the Washington beltway is similar to our frustration with being dealt with by Brussels,” said Farage.

Many experts agree. Andrew Russell, Head of Politics at the University of Manchester, told FoxNews.com that the comparison between the Tea Party and UKIP is an accurate one, and that he believes that UKIP could take the 2014 elections by storm,

“UKIP will do well in the 2014 European elections. They may even win them in terms of the popular vote. This will increase the pressure on the Conservatives.”

Yet instead of reaching out and finding middle ground, the Tories have snubbed UKIP. In 2006 David Cameron dismissed the newcomers as full of “fruitcakes and loonies and closet racists,” and top Tory Kenneth Clark recently branded them as “a collection of clowns.”

 … As a right-wing libertarian, populist movement, there are many comparisons to be drawn with the Tea Party, yet Farage argues that there are differences too, particularly that UKIP wants to take votes away from the Tories, not to reform them.

It is here that could make them bigger in Britain than the Tea Party in America – UKIP is making inroads as a party, not just through individual candidates.

What remains to be seen is how UKIP will capitalize on their situation, and in that the next year will be vital.

“Like the Tea Party UKIP might have a profound effect on their closest neighbors politically,” Russell told FoxNews.com. “But like the Tea Party they might repel the crucial section of support needed for that party to win.”

French Leader Proposes an International Coalition to Stand Up to Totalitarian States

PARIS — A coalition between the United States, Great Britain, France and Soviet Russia was advocated by Former Premier Léon Blum [on Dec. 26, 1938] in a speech before the French Socialist Congress

reports the International Herald Tribune in its 75 Years Ago section,

as the sole means of preventing the totalitarian states — Germany and Italy — from obtaining domination of the world. France, declared the Socialist leader, should act as the link to bring together the democratic Anglo-Saxon powers in a common bloc with the Soviet Union, he said.

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).