The Crisis in Ukraine and Its History Explained in a 6-Minute Video

Le Monde's Donald Walther, Francesca Fattori, Flavie Holzinger, Mathilde Gérard, Jérôme Gautheret, Jules Grandin, and Véronique Malécot have a 6-minute video to understand the situation in Ukraine over the past centuries.

France's Law to "Protect" Prostitutes Is a Case Study of How a Government's "Good" Resolutions Simply Displace Problems Elsewhere

French prostitutes should be happy due to a new law acting in their protection and, just like in Sweden, criminalizing clients, shouldn't they?

As Matteo Maillard writes in Le Monde (not in terms as sarcastic as mine), it has simply displaced the problem, with French filles de joie moving to Switzerland en masse.

MASSIVE ARRIVAL OF FRENCH GIRLS

In recent months, [the message box of the largest brothel in Geneva, the Venusia] has been overflowing with casting applications from young French women hit by the crisis, or who fear the increasingly repressive legal framework towards them, after the National Assembly's December vote of the law that penalizes the clients of prostitutes.

"I no longer accept any girls but blondes between 18 and 25 years" [says Madame Lisa]. These past two weeks, twenty new French girls made ​​their début at the Venusia and the pace continues to accelerate. "This is a massive arrival. Four years ago, I had fewer than five French girls. Two years ago, we went to one girl in three. Since the beginning of winter, 70% of my girls are French. The penalization law makes them flee. They find refuge at my place."

Through a random search on the Internet, [a Parisian named Anastasia] falls on Geneva escort lounge websites. After several unsuccessful attempts, she is allowed to join the Venusia.

"IT IS BETTER JOIN A BROTHEL IN SWITZERLAND"

"The French girls are a phenomenon that we have observed since 2003, following the passage of the Sarkozy law criminalizing passive soliciting", argues Michel Felix de Vidas, the communications officer at the Aspasia, Geneva's prostitute rights association. "In recent months, escort agencies and parlors confirm a significant increase in the number of French girls. The phenomenon will regulate itself because the market is not expandable and the places of work are counted. "

 … One night in July 2013, when she had been hooking [at the Bois de Boulogne ] for a month, [Julie] was already considered a competitor to dislodge. "Another girl came up to me with a knife. Fortunately, a frightened customer opened the door of his car and we sped away." She never more prostituted herself in France, preferring a "Switzerland where we do not have to go into hiding and risk our lives," she says.

"Neither the prostitutes nor their customers should be blamed, but the networks that dirty our reputation. The law should fight for girls coerced into the profession. I 'm not a coerced girl. It is a choice. And this choice does not make me a disgusting person or a sex object. This law does not even recognize in us the status of being human."

En Français:

« ARRIVÉE MASSIVE DE FRANÇAISES »

Depuis quelques mois, [la boîte électronique de la plus grande maison close de Genève, le Venusia] déborde de demandes de casting émanant de jeunes Françaises éreintées par la crise, ou qui craignent un cadre légal de plus en plus répressif à leur égard, après le vote en décembre par l'Assemblée nationale de la loi qui pénalise les clients de prostituées.

« Je ne prends plus que des blondes entre 18 et 25 ans ». Ces deux dernières semaines, vingt nouvelles Françaises ont fait leurs débuts au Venusia et le rythme ne cesse de s'accélérer. « C'est une arrivée massive. Il y a quatre ans, chez moi, moins d'une fille sur cinq était française. Il y a deux ans, on est passé à une fille sur trois. Depuis le début de l'hiver, nous sommes à 70 %. La loi pour la pénalisation des clients les fait fuir. Elles se réfugient chez moi. »

… Au hasard d'une recherche sur Internet, [Anastasia, une Parisienne] tombe sur les sites de salons d'escort genevois. Quelques essais infructueux plus tard, le Venusia lui ouvre ses portes.

« IL VAUT MIEUX REJOINDRE UN BORDEL EN SUISSE »

« Les Françaises, c'est un phénomène que nous avons observé dès 2003, après le passage de la loi Sarkozy pénalisant le racolage passif, soutient Michel Felix de Vidas, chargé de communication à l'Aspasie, association genevoise de défense des droits des prostituées. Depuis quelques mois, les agences d'escort et les salons nous confirment une forte augmentation du nombre de Françaises. Le phénomène va s'autoréguler, car le marché n'est pas extensible et les places de travail sont comptées. »

 … Un soir de juillet 2013, alors qu'elle n'exerce [au bois de Boulogne] que depuis un mois, [Julie] est déjà considérée comme une concurrente à déloger. « Une fille s'est approchée de moi avec un couteau. Heureusement, un client effaré m'a ouvert la portière de sa voiture et on a démarré en trombe. »

Elle ne s'est jamais plus prostituée en France, préférant une Suisse « où l'on n'est pas obligé d'entrer en clandestinité et de risquer sa vie, lance-t-elle. Ce ne sont pas les prostituées ni leurs clients qu'il faut accuser, mais les réseaux qui nous salissent. La loi devrait se battre pour les filles forcées. Je ne suis pas une fille forcée. C'est un choix. Et ce choix ne fait pas de moi une personne dégueulasse ni un objet sexuel. Cette loi ne nous reconnaît même pas le statut d'être humain. »

We're From the Government and We're Here to Give You Anything You Like

Check out Tim Hawkins song, The Government Can, at the Uncle Sam Theater…

I'm here to give you anything you like — free college, energy, mortgages, whatever you like

We "will commentate on current events with all the psychotic calm and serenity of a Palestinian father who explains that he can't wait for his 2 surviving sons to become martyrs": No Pasarán Celebrates 10th Anniversary Today!

Ten years ago, after enduring months of unceasing tirades of criticism and venom from Europe (and especially France) linked to George W Bush's 2003 invasion of Saddam Hussein's Iraq, a handful of independent bloggers (Douglas, Jonathan, and Liminal aka U*2) made good on their vow to unite their efforts and create a single, common weblog, one by the name of No Pasarán! (I would join five weeks later, and N Joe a year or two later.)

Below are the first two days of No Pasarán!

Friday, February 20, 2004

Let's cool off	Il faut décompresser
Being a tad worried about my reputation [over at the blog Merde in France] I have decided to not write any controversial posts on this blog. Therefore, I will commentate on France's current events with all the psychotic calm and serenity of a Palestinian father who explains that he can't wait for his two surviving sons to become martyrs. How's that?	Etant un tant soit peu soucieux de ma réputation, je tâcherai de me limiter à des postes qui ne provoquent point de polémiques sur ce blog. Donc, je vous relaterai la situation en Fwance avec tout le calme et toute la sérenité psychotiques normalement employés par un père palestinien qui vous explique qu'il a hâte de voir ses deux fils survivants se transformer en martyres. Ça vous va?

United States

Le Monde's website is advertising a "lexicon for better understanding the United States" on the right-hand side of its front page. Although you have to pay in order to access the dictionary that contains over 400 "words of America," the advertisement is telling. If you click on the ad, a slide show opens with the following definitions:

(1) Sex: Sodomy remains illegal in a number of American states, and Bush promotes abstinence.
(2) Botox: 7.4 million Americans spent 7.7 billion euros on plastic surgery in 2000.
(3) Televangelists: The successors of nineteenth century traveling preachers, televangelists are television stars.

It's comforting to know that Le Monde is doing its part to break down misunderstandings and stereotypes between French and Americans. Now we just need Conan O'Brien to come up with a dictionary for Americans to understand France.

International Law:

Last month, the ship, Bugaled Breizh, sunk off of southern England. Five Frenchmen died. The culprit was allegedly a Philippine-registered vessel called the Seattle Trader, which may have collided with the Bugaled Breizh. Although the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea indicates that vessels are under the jurisdiction of the country in which they are registered and therefore any action with respect to the Seattle Trader should be authorized by the Philippine government, France is bringing justice to the alleged culprits and is hunting them down. Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has denounced France's actions as "gun-boat diplomacy."

International Law:

Three years after the Convention was created, France has ratified the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, which restricts production of certain pesticides, industrial chemicals and unintended byproducts of combustion such as DDT, PCBs and dioxin. France was the fiftieth country to ratify the Convention, and "fifty" was the number required for the Convention to enter into force.

The United States is a signatory to the treaty, and President Bush submitted the Convention for ratification to the Senate back in 2002.

Posted by Jonathan at 14:37

And here is the second day of the blog: 

Saturday, February 21, 2004

We have no bananas to-day!

Let's check in on our friend Dieudonné. Where do we find his career?



The stunt he pulled seems to be costing him dearly, according to Le Monde. The paper writes that the show he was supposed to have yesterday at L'Olympia was canceled. The venue's directors issued a press release stating that, after receiving anonymous threats, they were canceling the show due to the "climate of extreme tension we have observed over several days." They say that Olympia would "not have the means to guarantee the security of its audience and employees." Indeed, Olympia claim that on Tuesday they received a letter from police headquarters that "reminded [the director] of his responsibilities" and pointed out "that the staff in private establishments are responsible for safety and security on their premises." Contacted by the AFP, Dieudo's agent said the "funny man" didn't want to "react in anger."

So much for that. Dieudonné decided to hold his show in the street outside the theater.

They came by the hundred to chant the slogan "freedom of speech" and to support Dieudonné, who decided to have his show on a platform erected on the sidewalk opposite Olympia, the venue where he was supposed to have performed on Friday and which canceled this.

The humorist raised his arms, greeted his fans, the "descendants of slaves," the "Arabs," the "blacks" and also the whites of all ages who had massed on the boulevard des Capucines in Paris, surrounded by anti-riot police. "We love you," shouted young girls, waving their cameras.

Libération is writing derisively that now Diedonné "takes himself for a defender of the black cause" and reports that the "comedian" said "400 years of slavery and we don't have the right to speak!"

Alain Finkielkraut is criticizing those who leveled threats against l'Olympia (causing the venue to fear for its safety), as he thinks they are "transforming [Dieudonné] into a martyr for human rights and freedom of speech."

Dieudonné is now claiming that he's been banned from French public television. "I've been banned from the TV... just like Coluche and Bedos once were." This was categorically denied however by France 2. Do you imagine they have any interest in seeing him ever again? Do you think many other venues will want to book him now? Can we now ask, as W. once did, "Dis donc Dieudo, les recettes de ton dernier spectacle, ça achète beaucoup de bananes?"

reconnaissance

Le Monde is also offering a slide show of reconnaissance photos (note that in French reconnaissance means "gratitude") from World War II. Some are from the Imperial War Museum, some from the Aerial Reconnaissance Achives and some from the Public Record Office. They include that now famous photo of Auschwitz-Birkenau ("at its criminal apex") and of Omaha Beach (on D-day).

On décompresse...

Ça se fait comme ça... con nosotros

Posted by Douglas at 20:32

What communism would look like if implemented in a school cafeteria

The media hardly seemed to bat an eye at Sochi’s communist nostalgia 

writes Benny Huang regarding the "Unmistakable communist imagery in the form of enormous foam hands carrying a hammer and a sickle and the playing of an old Soviet hymn [which was] met with great applause."

Indifference was the primary reaction but some members of the press seemed to go as far as sharing the sentiment. Wasn’t communism grand?

No, actually it wasn’t. As an economic system communism fails, which causes shortages, which causes resentment against the government, which causes reciprocal governmental oppression. Communism stymies ingenuity and punishes productivity. It attempts to abolish God because it cannot tolerate any higher authority than the state.

 … As much as conservatives find the idea of communism distasteful, it’s important to recognize that to some people communism sounds great, at least theoretically. These are the utopian idealists, and though most of them can see that communism’s grand designs did not bear fruit, they nonetheless have no regrets for daring to dream.

It’s hard to overestimate the enthusiasm with which the global elite greeted the October Revolution. For years to come the Soviet Union would serve as an inspiration to all those who trusted in the promise of humanism and inevitable progress.

 … A remark made by our sitting president sheds some light on just what modern liberals think communism is. During a presidential debate in 2008, Senator McCain pressed Senator Obama on his reply to Joe the Plumber that “I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.” That statement sums up the socialist position as well as any I’ve ever heard but of course Obama denied it. “By the end of the week,” Obama replied, “[McCain]’ll be accusing me of being a secret communist because I shared my toys in kindergarten. I shared my—I shared my peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”

Huh? Did Obama really mean to imply that sharing is what defines a communist? Yes, and I think he was expressing a commonly held belief among members of his party.

Communists most certainly do not share. Sharing involves giving of yourself voluntarily. Communism means taking from other people by force. Giving and taking are opposites. How can anyone confuse the two?

Here’s what communism would look like if implemented in a school cafeteria. Rather than give a piece of his own PB&J to the less fortunate, the cafeteria Bolshevik punches another kid in the face and takes the sandwich his mother packed for him. Then, if he’s feeling charitable, he’ll give the PB&J to someone who has nothing to eat. Or he might just eat it himself. The cafeteria Bolshevik continues doing this to different kids every day until most of them realize that packing lunch is foolish because they will only be violently deprived of it. Kids learn to wait for the cafeteria Bolshevik to give them a piece of someone else’s sandwich. In time, the total number of PB&J’s plummets and so the kids stand in line for hours waiting for the cafeteria Bolshevik to give them one of the declining few. The cafeteria Bolshevik now wields complete power because no one eats without his say-so.

How can anyone confuse this kind of tyrannical bullying with something as meretricious as sharing? The two concepts couldn’t possibly be more estranged, and yet, for the better part of one and a half centuries, communism has had its defenders precisely because so many people confuse forcibly seizing other people’s property with sharing.

It sounds as if Barack Obama is one of those people. It’s sad that a man with degrees from Columbia and Harvard believes that communism means giving a little of your own stuff to a guy who has less, but I suppose that that’s exactly what students learn in Ivy League schools.

The Académie Française may be prickly about the advance of English; but there is no real alternative as a global business language

Lenovo is one of a growing number of multinationals from the non-Anglophone world that have made English their official language

 comments The Economist's Schumpeter section.

The fashion began in places with small populations but global ambitions such as Singapore (which retained English as its lingua franca when it left the British empire in 1963), the Nordic countries and Switzerland. Goran Lindahl, a former boss of ABB, a Swiss-Swedish engineering giant, once described its official language as “poor English”. The practice spread to the big European countries: numerous German and French multinationals now use English in board meetings and official documents.

 … The Académie française may be prickly about the advance of English. But there is no real alternative as a global business language. The most plausible contender, Mandarin Chinese, is one of the world’s most difficult to master, and least computer-friendly. It is not even universal in China: more than 400m people there do not speak it.

 … English can provide a neutral language in a merger: when Germany’s Hoechst and France’s Rhône-Poulenc combined in 1999 to create Aventis, they decided it would be run in English, in part to avoid choosing between their respective languages.

All Quiet on the Western Front…

In case you think that No Pasarán has been unusually quiet these past couple of weeks, you are correct, and it is entirely due to the hassle linked to the entire renovation of one of the main bloggers' apartments — which hopefully (oh dear God yes!) will soon be finished…

French Conservatives Revolt Over School Books Such As "Daddy Wears a Dress"

The latest scandal in France concerns the ubiquitousness in schools of "children's" books with titles such as Tous à poil ! (Everybody Drop Your Clothes), Papa porte une robe (Daddy Wears a Dress), Tango a deux papas (Tango Has Two Dads), and Jean a deux mamans (Johnny Has Two Mommies) — a subject which leftist Le Monde  dismisses as "not very subversive" and which allows for a cartoon by an outraged cartoonist (Xavier Gorce), while Plantu uses the subject to bring in the current criticisms of the tax authorities. 

Gaël Pasquier is interviewed by Mattea Battaglia concerning a thesis on teaching kindergarten kids about "the equality of sexes and sexualities" (« Les pratiques enseignantes en faveur de l'égalité des sexes et des sexualités à l'école primaire : vers un nouvel élément du curriculum »).

Plantu on François Hollande's Visit to Washington DC

On The Perfect Love in Washington, DC, between the USA and France, Plantu shows his ubiquitous rodent with Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse:
• NSA Spy 1: Will that mark the return of growth?
• NSA Spy 2: I would love to be a little mouse [to be able to listen in on Barack Obama and François Hollande]!

Swiss to Vote on Sunday on Whether to Restrict (Legal) Immigration

In Switzerland, too, there is growing dissatisfaction with unfettered immigration — in this case the entirely legal kid — as Alain Salles reports in Le Monde on an initiative to hold a nation-wide referendum on Sunday, February 9, whether to install quotas on immigration.

Among the problems are 80,000 more immigrants each year (instead of the promised 8,000), a rise in crime, overflowing trains, traffic jams, problems with finding a parking space, trouble finding a home, and the rise of rent prices.

Referring to William Tell's most famous feat, the pro-restriction forces' poster features an apple tree that has grown so much that its roots are strangling the country, while the opposition accuses the former of cutting down the apple tree of Swiss prosperity (see photo).

Switzerland's immigrant problem is different from America's and has to do with neighboring countries' nationals, no paupers they or most of them (French, Germans, Italians, etc), crossing the border to work and/or live there. Nevertheless, it's eye-opening (at least, it should be to leftists, of whatever nationality) that the 2002 agreement with the European Union did not bring a "(re)solution" but seems to have, in the eyes of many, made the problem (a problem) worse or created problems of its own.

In other words, and from an American perspective, the leftists' promise that amnesty — or any other high-falutin' plan of theirs — will  "repair" or solve a problem in need of "reform" and make things better is to be taken, to say the least, with a grain of salt.

L'initiative de l'UDC propose d'instaurer des quotas à l'immigration et de renégocier l'accord conclu avec l'Union européenne sur la libre circulation des biens et des personnes, appliqué depuis 2002. L'atmosphère s'est tendue en Suisse à l'approche du scrutin qui apparaît incertain. Tous les protagonistes annoncent un résultat serré. …

« NOUS NE VOULONS PAS FERMER NOS FRONTIÈRES, MAIS LES CONTRÔLER »

Une victoire du « oui » devient donc possible. Les autres partis, de droite et de gauche, se sont mobilisés, tout comme les milieux économiques, pour dénoncer l'argumentaire de l'UDC, mais le parti de Christoph Blocher est au centre du débat. Ce chef d'entreprise et homme politique controversé est le symbole de tous les combats contre l'Europe en Suisse. Il redoute toujours une « adhésion à l'UE à pattes de velours ».

« Nous ne voulons pas fermer nos frontières, mais nous voulons les contrôler », affirme Claude-Alain Voiblet, vice-président de l'UDC. « Lorsque nous avons signé les accords de libre circulation, on nous avait prédit une immigration de 8 000 personnes par an. Nous sommes à 80 000 par an. Dans le même temps, le nombre de frontaliers qui travaillent en Suisse a presque triplé en dix ans, avec près de 280 000 personnes, sans compter 250 000 sans-papiers et 700 000 étrangers naturalisés. On ne peut pas continuer comme ça », assure cet élu de Lausanne.

… Richard Jacquet, un retraité de 70 ans à la double nationalité française et suisse, n'a pas d'état d'âme. Le 9 février, il votera en faveur de l'initiative : « On est beaucoup trop nombreux. Il n'y a plus de qualité de vie. On ne peut plus rouler en voiture à cause des embouteillages, on ne peut plus stationner, on ne peut plus se loger », poursuit cet ancien policier …

Ils sont nombreux à se plaindre des trains bondés, des embouteillages au milieu des villages situés sur la route entre la France et Lausanne. L'arrivée de ces travailleurs, dans un pays qui répugne à construire des tours, a entraîné des hausses de loyers dans la plupart des villes.

Megabytes: What Do the Letters NSA Stand For, Barack Obama?

Serguei on Megabyte:
• Little Girl: What does NSA mean?
• Barack Obama: We Are Friends [Nous Sommes Amis] !
• Uncle Sam: If grown-ups will believe that, why wouldn't kids do so as well?!

France Unveils French-American Documents from 1976 to 1981

The French foreign ministry's national archive section has made available documents between France and the United States from 1976 to 1981, spanning the Jimmy Carter era to the beginning of the Ronald Regan White House (obrigado para OT).

None Other Than MLK Welcomed Judgment, So Why the #$#%$@# Should We NOT Judge Wendy Davis?!

Wendy Davis should get used to being judged

 quips Benny Huang.

Judging is what voters do every time they step into the voting booth. It’s part of being an elected official and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Here’s how I would judge Wendy Davis. She’s a flaming liberal whose main claim to fame is that she filibustered a common sense abortion bill that would have restricted abortion after the twentieth week, required abortionists to have admitting privileges at a local hospital, and required abortions to be performed in surgical facilities. The bill she objected to so fervently was a reaction to the Kermit Gosnell scandal, in which a licensed “doctor” who specialized in late term abortions, murdered children born alive and maintained a filth-ridden and dangerous facility. Also, her biography as single mom who worked her way through Harvard is a horrendous lie. She found a wealthy husband to pay her way and take care of the kids for part of her college career, then divorced him when her student debt was paid.

In other words, she’s wrong on the issues and her whole life is a sham. Why the heck shouldn’t I judge her on exactly those criteria?

None other than Martin Luther King, Jr. welcomed judgment, so long as it wasn’t racial. Recall the most often repeated line from his “I Have a Dream” speech: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

Judging people by the content of their character is fine and should be encouraged. The content of Wendy Davis’s character leaves something to be desired, particularly her bloodthirsty passion for gruesome late term abortions. And that is why we aren’t allowed to judge her.

It isn’t as if liberals don’t judge. Liberals pass (negative) judgments on home-schoolers, FOX News viewers, smokers, global warming “deniers”, and evangelical Christians. They pass judgment on a diverse cast of “bigots,” real or imagined, and publicly shame them in hopes of reforming them. Liberals even judge people for being judgmental! 

So it isn’t judging that perturbs them so much; it’s other people judging according to criteria that liberals don’t like. Generally speaking they don’t like people to judge sexual habits, which somehow includes abortion as well. Abortion is violence but in their minds it’s a “bedroom issue.” Also, they don’t like others to judge them for drug use. Everything else, as far as I can tell, is fair game.

Liberals have become quite adept at twisting the words of Jesus to condemn those who judge. They like to forget that Jesus commanded, “Stop judging by appearance, but judge justly” (John 7:24). One story they prefer is the story of Jesus saving the adulteress from stoning. Jesus wasn’t of course condoning adultery, but raising his voice in opposition to a barbaric execution. Liberals always forget Jesus’s parting words for the adulteress: “Go and from now on sin no more” (John 8:11). You’ll never hear a liberal tell you that Jesus instructed his followers to rebuke sinners (Luke 17:3). And no, it isn’t true that Jesus had prostitutes and tax collectors among his inner circle; he had ex-prostitutes and ex-tax collectors.

Another Bible verse liberals keep in their back pocket is Jesus’s saying on removing the log from one’s own eye. Again, they leave off the final clause: “[T]hen you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye” (Matthew 7:5). Jesus wasn’t admonishing us not to rebuke our brother when he has done wrong. He was reminding us not to rebuke hypocritically for something of which we are also guilty. Once we have removed the log from our own eye we can and should to judge our brother with clear vision.

But liberals aren’t fooling anyone when they quote hypocritically from that Jesus guy. They have no use for him. To liberals he’s nothing more than a fairy tale wise man, something like Merlin or Ben Kenobi, whose words can be quote-mined for the purpose of using against his followers.

Judgment alone is no sin and no crime. It would be foolish to judge Wendy Davis, or anyone else for that matter, by some superficial standard. But it would be even more foolish not to judge her at all. She’s a politician, for crying out loud, and we’re voters. If we aren’t allowed to pass judgment on our elected officials, whom may we judge? We reserve the right to judge her ‘til the cows come home. If she fails the test of the voters’ judgment this coming November, as she probably will, she’ll have no one but herself to blame.

Bloomberg, De Blasio, et al: Rich people’s scolding is really a form of snobbery masquerading as concern for poor people’s well-being

New York Mayor Bill de … Blasio’s undeniable truism—that Gotham is really two cities—goes a long way toward explaining the nanny-state policies that de Blasio will likely continue 

writes Benny Huang.

As a city councilman, de Blasio had a mixed voting record toward then-Mayor Bloomberg’s restrictions on salt, trans fats, smoking, baby formula, and whatever else he felt like regulating. Nonetheless, de Blasio has made no indication that he will repeal Bloomberg’s legacy and even thanked the outgoing mayor for his accomplishments in the field of “public health.”

In order to understand Bloomberg’s (and likely de Blasio’s) impulse to regulate other people’s bad habits, it’s necessary to understand that powerful people in New York City are mostly rich and feel entitled to make the rules for everyone else. Michael Bloomberg’s personal worth is estimated at about $31 billion, making him the tenth richest person in America. De Blasio is a mere multi-millionaire.

Rich, politically-influential New Yorkers have both the means and the motive to force reform upon their fellow citizens in skid row neighborhoods like East New York and the South Bronx. The affluent really believe that they like poor people despite the fact they are physically repulsed by their presence and thus never associate with them. In their own minds, however, they are staunch supporters of the less fortunate because they use tax dollars to secure indigent citizens’ political allegiance, something we used to call vote-buying in a more candid age.

It’s not poor people who make them cringe. It’s smokers and the obese.

But smoking is undoubtedly the [pastime] of the lower class. A 2010 study from the Center for Disease Control found that 28.9 percent of adults below the poverty line were smokers. The stigma attached to smoking increases the closer one gets to high society.

Bloomberg’s fanatical antismoking crusade has driven up the price of cigarettes and made it illegal to smoke nearly everywhere. Twenty Marlboros will cost you about $12.50 in New York today. Discount brands like Pyramid cost $10.50 per pack, the city-imposed minimum price.

It’s for your own good, the nanny-staters would say. But it isn’t the government’s business to make us stop smoking, or eat our vegetables, or go outside and play. In any case, while the added tax burden has driven some poor smokers to quit, it has also driven others (deeper) into the poor house. Smokers in New York who earn less than $30,000 per year are watching about a quarter of their income go up in smoke. Tobacco taxes are regressive taxes.

Bloomberg’s controversial Big Gulp ban is another example of rich people dictating lifestyle choices to poor people. No one in Bloomberg’s social circle would be caught dead with an oversized plastic cup of fizzy water and corn syrup. It’s just tacky. They prefer Perrier, or a fine Scotch before bed.

Rich New Yorkers recognized (correctly) that the city’s underclass suffers from a bit of a weight problem and resolved to fix it for them. What they really wanted to do was ban gluttony, which is the true scourge, though impossible to eliminate via legislation. So they began by banning sugary drinks larger than sixteen ounces.

Mayor Bloomberg knows exactly which demographic group needs to shed some pounds. As he explained on Face the Nation in March 2013, “It — being overweight is the first time it’s gone from a rich person’s disease to a poor person’s disease. We’ve just got to do something.”

 By “do[ing] something” he means banning Big Gulps. When that doesn’t solve the obesity crisis, and it won’t, the city will move on to banning buffet restaurants, free drink refills, twinkies, ho-hos and whatever else the benevolent government thinks its citizens should not consume.

Take note, however, of which economic class Mayor Bloomberg thinks he is saving from themselves. In his mind he’s doing poor folks a favor when he assumes the role of portion police, but in reality he’s merely showing his prejudice that poor people are disgustingly fat and too stupid to understand why. He must believe that they need the government to ban their bad habits, one after another, until they’re eating organic arugula from Whole Foods.

New York’s failed expedition into governmental nannying is symptomatic of its class structure. Rich people’s scolding is really a form of snobbery masquerading as concern for poor people’s well-being. Rather than admit that the underclass repulses them, wealthy New Yorkers try to strip away their repulsive behavior by force of law. Expect the trend to continue through the de Blasio years.

Worse Than Albania: "It's quicker to get a Swedish colleague back to work if you have an operation in two weeks' time rather than having to wait for a year"

Oh Lord, thank you thank thank you! Thank you for bringing Barack Obama to America, so that Americans — so that those poor American wretches, those clueless clods — will finally have the same kind of outstanding health care as in Europe, notably in that avant-garde region which is Scandinavia, with its Nordic Model, where people are treated with the utmost digni—

Wait a minute.

According to Sweden's The Local (tack till Valerie), the Swedish health care system's rank is worse than Albania's:

One in ten Swedes now has private health insurance, often through their employers, with some recipients stating it makes business sense to be seen quickly rather than languish in national health care queues.

More than half a million Swedes now have private health insurance, showed a new review from industry organization Swedish Insurance (Svensk Försäkring). In eight out of ten cases, the person's employer had offered them the private insurance deal.

"It's quicker to get a colleague back to work if you have an operation in two weeks' time rather than having to wait for a year," privately insured Anna Norlander told Sveriges Radio on Friday. "It's terrible that I, as a young person, don't feel I can trust the health care system to take care of me."

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The insurance plan guarantees that she can see a specialist within four working days, and get a time for surgery, if needed, within 15.

In December, the queues in the Swedish health care system pushed the country down a European ranking of healthcare.

 … Health system wait times in Sweden were deemed so lengthy that they pulled Sweden down the European ranking despite the country having technically advanced healthcare at its disposal.

"The Swedish score for technically excellent healthcare services is, as ever, dragged down by the seemingly never-ending story of access/waiting time problems," the reported noted, underlining that the national efforts to guarantee patient care had not helped to cut the delays significantly.

In its year-ahead report, industry organization Swedish Insurance said many people now felt they did not know what they could expect from their health care providers.

"There is a lack of certainty about what the individual can expect from public welfare and which needs have to be taken care of in another manner," the report authors noted.

Anzio! Rare Photos From World War II

Fox News links a story from Life Magazine's archives of the 1940s:

On January 22, 1944, six months after the Allied invasion of Sicily, American and British troops swarmed ashore at Anzio, roughly 30 miles south of Rome. The brainchild of Winston Churchill and dubbed Operation Shingle, the attack caught German troops stationed along the Italian coast largely by surprise; but after the initial onslaught, the Germans dug in. The next four months saw some of the fiercest, most prolonged fighting in World War II’s European Theater 

Also: World War II in color

Hostility towards mass immigration arises not just from fears of economic “progress”, but from various instructive experiences

The best response to The Economist's “Europe’s Tea Parties” comes from David Ashton:

Hostility towards mass immigration arises not just from fears of economic “progress”, but from instructive experiences of cultural incompatibility, social disadvantage, imported crime and terrorism and an uninvited threat to national identity. To brush aside such considerations as trivial, intolerant, nostalgic, racist, nasty and even Nazi exposes a faulty and counter-productive analysis, itself blinkered by global-growth criteria.

An economy is not a country. Although bankers may not appreciate this, voters understand it all too well.

Related:
• "Undocumented Worker" — The Left's Preferred Expression for "Illegal Alien" Is False and Misleading 
• No, Liberals, there Is Not a Single "Undocumented Worker" in the United States (or on This Planet)
• Illegal immigration is to immigration what shoplifting is to shopping
• No one talks about legal immigrants who are hard working men and women, who wait for the frustratingly slow process that seems to discriminate against those who want to do it by the book
• If the U.S. were to treat Mexican nationals in the same way that Mexico treats Central American nationals, there would be humanitarian outrage

Europe's Tea Parties? Not So Fast

European versions of the Tea Party are sprouting among, and due to, the continent's troubled economies warns (sic) The Economist. "Warns", because that is mainly a bad thing, according  to the London newspaper.

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.”

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…