Could It Be that J Edgar Hoover Wasn't as Paranoid — or as Despotic — as the Former FBI Director Is Commonly Depicted?

Among the many, and totally unpardonable, sins we hear of American history in leftist history books is that of the harassment the harmless leftists and communists in America suffered unfairly from, mainly perhaps from the 1940s and 1950s. Due to "collective paranoia," we are told, McCarthyism tore apart the nation, destroying democracy in the process, with vicious witch hunts "sicced" on poor, innocent, and indeed noble victims.

Of course, t'is true that we silly paranoid Americans and Westerners had nothing, absolutely nothing, to fear from the harmless communists. Nothing other, of course, than the fact that the party members living in the West were fully supportive of their comrades in the Soviet Union, that the head of the USSR was a man named Stalin, that his Red Army was occupying half of Europe, and that the apparatus that Lenin and Stalin created was killing millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions of people, Soviet and other. But apart from that, what have the communists ever done to harm us?!

But certainly, we are told, the leftists in America were (apart from that pesky little detail of supporting Stalin) different — harmless beings harassed by witch hunts for no other reason than being leftist, or different, and having different ideas and different plans. What, besides paranoia (collective or other), could possibly explain people like J Edgar Hoover (along with Joe McCarthy et al) not wanting leftists in government? (Head shakes, sighs, eye rolls…)

Well, let's take a moment to ask a few questions: what is it we have had since the 2008 election if not government by those "harmless" leftists?

Who is it who in effect are tearing apart the nation (and dare we say so?) destroying, or at least harming (viciously?), democracy in the process?


"Half the country feels — and is — beset by government," to hear Peggy Noonan say it (thanks to Instapundit).

We are suffering in great part from the politicization of everything and the spread of government not in a useful way but a destructive one. Everyone wants to help the poor, the old and the sick; the safety net exists because we want it. But voters and taxpayers feel bullied, burdened and jerked around, which again is not new but feels more intense every day. Common sense and native wit tell them America is losing the most vital part of itself in the continuing shift of power from private to public. Rules, regulations, many of them stupid, from all the agencies—local, state, federal—on the building of a house, or the starting of a business.

It's all part of the malaise, the sclerosis. So is the eroding end of the idea that religious scruples and beliefs have a high place that must culturally and politically be respected. The political-media complex is bravely coming down on florists with unfashionable views.

"The political-media complex is bravely coming down on florists with unfashionable views."

That's bad enough. Isn't it?

But isn't it far worse than that?

Unfashionable views being the mainstream, we have the government wielding its power against the average (i.e., the honest and law-abiding) citizen.

We have the government by those "harmless" leftists — I should say government by, of, and for those "harmless" leftists — which consists in the authorities going after people who have committed no crime or misdemeanor — none, that is, besides being skeptical of the very "harmless" leftists in government and/or of their policies. We have tax authorities tracking down and intimidating common citizens and we have the justice department tracking down and shaking down citizens for alleged crimes, or should we call, the worst of all possible sins.

What we have, indeed, is the leftists' government spending (wasting) colossal sums of money, on things that not only bring nothing to the average law-abiding American (whatever the color of his or her skin) but is on the contrary inimical to his or her interests as they are supposed to do little else but convince him that he or she is the product of a nightmarish society of intolerance (while showing that the leftists, and their policies, are necessary to save us from ourselves and bring about some sort of paradise on Earth).

Check out Elizabeth Price Foley's column on Peggy Noonan race-card playin' Eric "Holder’s latest foray into the intellectual tar pit of disparate impact, [the latest] the cause du jour of the political left, which isn’t interested in achieving racial harmony but racial balancing" (thanks to Glenn Reynolds).

Spending millions to collect data about racial disparities in police encounters will further various leftist political goals, including challenges to police stop-and-frisk practices. Indeed, data showing differences between whites and blacks — in virtually any situation — can provide valuable ammunition for intimidation. Under Holder’s tenure, DOJ now spends an inordinate amount of time and effort attempting to identify practices for which racial statistical differences can be obtained. DOJ then alleges racial discrimination, using the statistics as a cudgel to beat private parties and states into behaving the way the Obama administration wants. It’s Chicago Way extortion, applied nationwide.

Holder’s DOJ has used disparate impact in a mind-boggling array of situations. It has filed lawsuits — and garnered settlements — against virtually every major bank in the nation, alleging that because banks lend money to a higher percentage of white than minority applicants, they are engaging in racial discrimination. It has sued private employers for using credit and background checks, claiming that because a higher percentage of blacks than whites have poor credit or criminal records, the checks are racially discriminatory.

It has challenged competency tests for workers such as firefighters and police officers, claiming that because more whites than blacks pass, the tests are discriminatory. It has sued states that provide private school vouchers, perversely asserting that because more black children use the vouchers to escape failing public schools, the state must be trying to make public schools “more white.” It has suggested that because laws limiting felons’ voting rights impact more blacks than whites, they are racially discriminatory. It has issued threatening “guidance” to public schools, asserting that because more black than white students are disciplined by school administrators, “racial discrimination in school discipline is a real problem.”

"It’s Chicago Way extortion, applied nationwide."

J Edgar Hoover was supposed to go after mobsters and gangsters, we are told, not "harmless" political operatives who were doing nothing but sharing, entirely legally, their personal opinions.

Wouldn't plans to lead to nationwide-applied "Chicago Way extortion" be a reason for Hoover to treat leftist critics of America with a measure of circumspection?

In that sense, Olavo de Carvalho's thoughts are revealing. The difference between corruption in rightist governments and leftist governments, said the Brazilian philosopher, is that when rightists know they are doing wrong, they try to hide it (and are perhaps even sometimes ashamed), leftists are proud of their doings and try to write it into law.

When reading the following, remember that the comments apply to a foreign (a Brazilian) worker's party, Lula's Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT). And yet, ask yourself if they are not — chillingly — familiar.

It is one thing, I said, remembering an old Arab saying, to steal in the weight of the flour, selling 750 grams for the price of one kilo. Another thing is to modify the scale so that never more it accuses the difference between 750 grams and one kilo.

The old corrupt politicians [of Brazil] limited themselves to stealing. The PT transformed the robbery into a system, the system in political militancy, the militancy in a substitute of the laws and institutions, lowered to the condition of temporary impediments to the construction of the great utopia.

The old politicians stole for their own good, individually or in small groups, moderating the audacity of the blows from the fear of the denunciation. PT steals with a moral authority of someone, who arrogating itself the nobleness of a hypothetical future, is already forgiven a priori from all the faults of the present; with tranquillity and fearlessness from he who uses licitly all possible means, they steal since they are the absolute master of all.

Any political party that turns against "the society", promising to rebuild it from scratch — if not to reform the human nature itself — places itself , instantly, above the effective moral criteria in this society, and it cannot submit to them unless in appearance, laughing to themselves, at the naïveté of those who take them as a regular and loyal adversary. It is not possible to destroy the system and to obey its rules at the same time, but it's possible to use these rules just as a temporary camouflage until the destruction is completed. However, the system, as everything that is human, holds equally its dose of injustices, errors, scandals, and its parcel of morality, order, loyalty. All system consists of a precarious balance between disorder and order. No sane intelligence ignores that only it is possible to restrain or to control the former by fortifying the latter. All attempts to change the system integrally, either through the abrupt revolutionary subversion, either through the slow and gradual erosion of the institutional bases, starts for destroying the balance and therefore the order, under the vain promise of a future without disequilibrium nor disorder. The modesty of the objectives, the limitation of the political program to precise points that do not affect the beddings of the system, here is the mark of the honest parties — and this is not, definitively, the make of [a party like the] PT. The dishonesty of this party is measured by the megalomaniac amplitude of its promises.

Sexual Revolution

The "harmless" leftists also brought us such cultural wonders as the sexual revolution, which is supposed to be a giant leap forward against a society of old-fashioned taboos.

Is that all that the revolution has brought us? Is it only all that is good?

We now live in a society where kids asked for directions run screaming from a stranger's car because the driver was a man; where later London mayor Boris Johnson was once asked to change his seat in an airplane (in an airliner!) because the flight attendants did not want to seat a lone-traveling boy next to a singly-traveling man; where kids in French parks are forbidden to speak with any adult (certainly with any adult male) although they are their in classes of dozens running around on the grass and supervised by a number of teachers; where over 600 mall visitors walked by two lost- and "utterly forlorn"-looking girls in a Daily Mail experiment, ignoring them because they were afraid of being labeled a pedophile; and where males are no longer trusted to be in the teaching profession. Says Good Morning America's Susan Donaldson James:

"It's very hard to change the suspicion of men who are going to elementary education when there are so few of them," [said Massachusetts psychologist Michael Thompson, co-author of the groundbreaking 2000 book "Raising Cain," which argues that society shortchanges boys]. "Schools ask me to talk to men on their faculty and when I sit with them behind closed doors, they say the moms look at them like potential pedophiles. 

"If they are too nurturing or a mother comes in and sees a teacher reading in a chair and the child is leaning against the teacher or cuddling him, they freak out," he said. "Men tell me they only have to look in the mom's face to know what they are thinking." 

The professor adds that

as I’ve noted before, is that if you watch old movies, or even cartoons, it’s regularly assumed that adult males have nurturing instincts. Only in our supposedly progressive era are men reduced to cardboard cutouts dominated by lust and Mammon.

This is the mighty good that the sexual revolution and its good riddance to taboos have brought us: where no one trusts anyone, where every neighbor is a predator, a pedophile, or suspected of being one, if "only" potentially. Or, almost just as bad, a wife-beater or a father with no love for his children, who deserves to have his wife divorce him, his family broken up, and himself left as destitute as possible. (You will notice that the "culprits" most often are men, who are part of the gender most associated with — dare we speak the truth without hysterics breaking out? — a spirit of independence, not giving in, and resistance to the authorities.)

(Question: But, but… who is one supposed to turn to, then, in all those cases? Answer: but to the government, of course — to the government led by avant-garde progressives, or to a member of their ever-growing army of beneficent we-are-here-to-help-you bureaucrats; to the government forced by our own ineptitude and/or our own criminal degenerateness to take over the totality of our lives, for our own good.)

Glenn Reynolds links a Kevin Williamson post on Instapundit, leading to another description of the "harmless" leftists (or one of their subgroups), and the suspicion that the idea of putting spoiled brats (even be they grown-ups) to lord over our fate is hardly the smartest thing to do:  It has become simply “I Want!” in the mouths of a minority of women, but the right kind of women.

Feminism is not an idea or a collection of ideas but a collection of appetites wriggling queasily together like a bag of snakes. Feminism has nothing to do with the proposition that women should be considered whole and complete members of the body politic, though it has enjoyed great success marketing itself that way. . . .

A useful definition is this: “Feminism is the words ‘I Want!’ in the mouths of three or more women, provided they’re the right kind of women.” Feminism must therefore accommodate wildly incompatible propositions — e.g., (1) Women unquestionably belong alongside men in Marine units fighting pitched battles in Tora Bora but (2) really should not be expected to be able to perform three chin-ups. Or: (1) Women at Columbia are empowered by pornography but (2) women at Wellesley are victimized by a statue of a man sleepwalking in his Shenanigans. And then there is Fluke’s Law: (1) Women are responsible moral agents with full sexual and economic autonomy who (2) must be given an allowance, like children, when it comes to contraceptives.

More generally, the leftist society is where everyone is suspected of intolerance, of partisanship, and of (supposed) racism — his own and that of his wicked ancestors — along with innumerable other ghastly sins. In France, a decades-old effort to get drivers to slow down, by installing radars all over the country (which incidentally collects millions of Euros in revenue), refers to drivers — i.e, to common citizens — as "potential assassins" (des assassins en herbe).

No wonder Obama — and, by default, the media — cheated to win the 2012 elections: how could these avant-garde visionaries even think (perish the thought) of leaving such ghastly people as we-basically-trust-the-public Republicans to take over, dropping the utopia supposed to make their lot, the lot of all of us, better?!

Perhaps what is worst in all this, the most insidious of all, is that all of this is occurring, and most of the nation is not being informed of it. Au contraire, they are being told that the Obama White House is at worst a normal administration like any other and at best one that represents a huge step forward in all manners of ways…

This is the "dream" of the left: a place where every citizen is suspected of being a doofus and/or a criminal. And therefore where he must, for his own good, be led by a group of his betters, and by their ever-growing army of bureaucrats.

That's what the vast majority of countries and societies on the rest of the planet looks like. This is what leftists — what statists — American and foreign, dream of for the United States — and indeed have dreamed of for over two centuries. (Witness the Nobel  Peace Prize for Barack Obama by the giddy Norwegians the giddy Europeans only two weeks after the apologizer-in-chief entered the White House.)

Guess what: I don't know much about J Edgar Hoover, but might it not be that in the end, he was little more was one of those average Americans who had the silly temerity to believe that the average human being, that the average citizen, is good and caring besides being trustworthy?

And might it not be that the FBI chief wasn't so far off (or paranoid) when he, like millions of people, opined that allowing progressives into government would ruin the country, while tearing apart society and harming democracy? When he opined that, in the words of Olavo de Carvalho, the Left would place itself "above the effective moral criteria in this society," pretending to be "a regular and loyal adversary" in order "to use these rules just as a temporary camouflage until the destruction is completed"?

Update: Obrigado per o link, Sarah

Just as I was never told as a child that Lee Harvey Oswald was a communist stooge who defected to the USSR, the next generation won’t know that the 9/11 hijackers were hot for Jihad unless someone tells them

New York is set to unveil its September 11th Memorial Museum next month and already it’s ruffling feathers at the Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). The self-styled “civil rights group” has taken issue with a seven-minute film clip entitled “The Rise of al-Qaeda.” The film describes the terrorist group as “Islamist,” and rightly identifies its modus operandi as Jihad. In other words, it tells the truth. 

Thus starts Benny Huang's latest opus.

The museum has thus far decided not to placate CAIR by diluting facts that make Muslims feel bad. Thankfully, someone with a smidgen of intestinal fortitude is refusing to be intimidated by the perpetually offended imams at CAIR.

Yet we shouldn’t be lulled into a false sense of security. The battle over “The Rise of al-Qaeda” is but one in a larger campaign to place the hijackers’ identities and motivations onto the list of Things We Can’t Talk About.

What an incredibly long list it is. Despite the fact that isn’t written down anywhere, the list of Things We Can’t Talk About is very real indeed. It is maintained mostly, but not exclusively, by liberals. They define the boundaries of acceptable discourse and they reserve the right to yank those boundaries incrementally tighter according to their whim. We can’t talk about communism, black violent crime statistics, Barack Obama’s Marxist upbringing, race and IQ, welfare abuse, or the health risks of male homosexuality.

And pretty soon we won’t be able to talk about the attacks of September 11th either, not unless we feign amnesia about who did it and why. It will be one of those things that only old screwballs talk about.

 … Never did I imagine that it would be controversial to say that Muslims attacked us on 9/11. How did we arrive here?

What appears to be happening now is a concerted effort to make the world forget what took place that September morning or, failing that, to erase from our collective memory the identity of the perpetrators. Years ago I would have thought it impossible to achieve such a task but that’s because I was twenty-one years old when those towers crumbled and the attacks have remained the formative event of my generation.

 I can see now that knowledge must be transmitted from each generation to the next. To my yet unborn children 9/11 will be ancient history, something like the Kennedy Assassination is to me. Just as I was never told as a child that Lee Harvey Oswald was a communist stooge who defected to the USSR, the next generation won’t know that the 9/11 hijackers were hot for Jihad unless someone tells them.

Read the whole thing…

The horrific state of our family courts: Husband Commits Suicide, (Ex-)Wife Asks Court for Copyfight of Suicide Note

Update: DIVORCED MEN 9.7 times more likely to commit suicide than divorced women (thanks to Instapundit).

Does a wife who may have driven a husband to suicide with the assistance of our corrupt family court system, then have a legal right to claim copyright

asks A Voice for Men's Paul Elam (merci à Hervé)

— of his suicide note?

According to attorney Rachelle E. Hill, of Bean, Kinney and Korman, and a judge, that is precisely the claim. Their lawyer has written the offices of A Voice for Men to demand that we remove a post from the forums containing the note.

It is not going to happen.

 … My identity was taken from me, as result of this process. When it began, I was a commercial real estate broker with CB Richard Ellis. I lived by the Golden rule and made a living by bringing parties together and finding the common ground. My reputation as a broker was built on my honesty and integrity. When it ended, I was broke, homeless, unemployed and had no visitation with my own children.

I had no confidence and was paralyzed with fear that I would be going to jail whenever my ex-wife wanted. Nothing I could say or do would stop it. This is what being to death or ‘targeted’ by a psychopath looks like. This is the outcome. I didn’t somehow change into a ‘high-conflict’ person or lose my ability to steer clear of the law. I’ve had never been arrested, depressed, homeless or suicidal before this process. The stress and pressure applied to me was deliberate and nothing I could do or say would get me any relief. Nothing I or my attorneys said to my ex-wife’s attorney or to the Court made any difference. Truth, facts, evidence or even the best interest of my children had no affect on the outcome.

The family court system is broken, but from my experience, it is not the laws, its the lawyers. They feed off of the conflict. They are not hired to reduce conflict or protect the best interest of children, which is why third parties need to be involved. It should be mandatory for children to have a guardian ad litem, with extensive training in abuse and aggression.

It is absolutely shameful that the Fairfax County Court did nothing to intervene or understand the ongoing conflict. Judge Randy Bellows also used the Children as punishment, by withholding access for failing to fax a receipt. The entire conflict centered around the denial of access to the children, it was inconceivable to me that he would use children like this. This is exactly what my ex-wife was doing and now Judge Bellows was doing it for her.

To all my family, friends and the people that supported me through this process, I am so sorry. I know my reactions and behavior throughout this process did not always make sense. None of this made sense to me either. I had no help and the only suggestion I got from my attorneys was to remain silent.

At first, I did what I was told, remained silent and listened to my attorneys. Then after I had given my ex-wife full custody to try and appease her, I learned about Psychopathy and emailed Dr. Samenow about my concerns and asked him for help. Of course, I was ignored. As the conflict continued, I was forced to defend myself. When that didn’t work, I thought I could get the help I needed by speaking out. There is no right or wrong way to defend yourself from abuse. Naively, I thought that abuse was abuse and it would be recognized and something would be done. I thought speaking out would end the abuse or at least get them to back off. It didn’t. When no one did anything they were emboldened.

I took my own life because I had come to the conclusion that there was nothing I could do or say to end the abuse. Every time I got up off my knees, I would get knocked back down. They were not going to let me be the father I wanted to be to my children. People may think I am a coward for giving up on my children, but I didn’t see how I was going to heal from this. I have no money for an attorney, therapy or medication. I have lost four jobs because of this process. I was going to be at their mercy for the rest of my life and they had shown me none.

Being alienated, legally abused, emotionally abused, isolated and financially ruined are all a recipe for suicide. I wish I were stronger to keep going, but the emotional pain and fear of going to court and jail [because of exorbitant child support] became overwhelming. I became paralyzed with fear. I couldn’t flee and I could not fight. I was never going to be allowed to heal or recover. I wish I were better at articulating the psychological and emotional trauma I experienced.

I could fill a book with all the lies and mysterious rulings of the Court. Never have I experienced this kind of pain. I asked for help, but good men did nothing and evil prevailed. All I wanted was a Guardian Ad Litem for my children. Any third party would have been easily been able to confirm or refute all of my allegations, which is why none was ever appointed to protect the children or reduce the conflict.

Abuse is about power and control. Stand up for the abused and speak out. If someone speaks out about abuse, believe them.

Please teach my children empathy and about emotional invalidation and ‘gas-lighting’ or they may end up like me.

God have mercy on my soul.

Chris Mackney

This link will give you a copy of demand letter, which like the suicide note, has the children’s names redacted.

Letter.
Within that document we note that an Arlington County, Virginia judge has ruled that Dina Mackney, the widow of this suicide victim, is authorized to seek reasonable legal remedies to force a large number of websites, where this information has already been made available, to remove the information in question.

We reject the notion that our publication is in violation of copyright laws, and that the suicide note is not covered by fair use statutes.

We also believe, given the horrific state of our family courts, it is in the compelling public interest that his final words be published and disseminated as robustly as possible.

The chief responsibility of A Voice for Men is advocacy for men who have been trampled in precisely the ways outlined in this tragic note, and to do whatever is within our means to address the disproportionate suicide rate in men, especially as it relates to high conflict divorces.

If what Mr. Mackney said in his final note is true, and we have no reason to believe that what amounts to his dying words are less than that, then what this threatened legal action represents is an attempt by his former wife to chase him down – even into the grave – to issue the final and complete edict for his silence in the face of horrendous abuse.

It is an act which will also probably eliminate any chance those children ever have to know how their father felt and what he was thinking before taking his own life.

I will gladly take residence in my own grave before I comply with that kind of agenda.

• Addendum – the suicide note provided here is not complete. The complete version of the letter is available here:

http://www.brainsyntax.com/Portal/Material/1/Lasttestamentofalovingfatherabusedbythefamilycourtsystem.pdf

Do not forget to read Stephen Baskerville's take on the divorce industry…

A business deals that threatened to break up a government

There are groundbreaking business deals. And then there are ones that threaten to break up governments.

Thus spake Danny Hakim in the New York Times a few months ago.

When Denmark gave the global financial giant Goldman Sachs the go-ahead on Thursday to buy a stake in its state utility, the move was not exactly followed by a celebratory signing ceremony.

So divided was the Socialist People’s Party that it withdrew its ministers from the country’s governing coalition. Some party members said the deal ceded too much power to Goldman. Annette Vilhelmsen, the party’s leader [pictured below], who supported the deal, stepped down from her leadership role since she could not reach agreement within her party.

The party’s withdrawal from the coalition left the government of Helle Thorning-Schmidt [she of the Cameron/Obama selfie at the Nelson Mandela funeral, pictured above], the prime minister, with a tenuous grip on power.

That so many Danes have been aghast at the idea of giving Goldman Sachs a prominent role in the country’s energy future reflects how far the damage to the investment bank’s reputation has spread since the financial crisis.

However much the financial world might envy Goldman’s trading prowess, many Danes see Goldman as an emblem of an industry that helped cause the crisis and then profited handsomely even as much of the Continent still struggles to recover.

… The deal was approved … by a parliamentary committee. The departure of the Socialists left the two remaining parties in a precarious position.

 … But Prime Minister Thorning-Schmidt, who is best known internationally for her recent “selfie” with President Obama at the funeral of Nelson Mandela, said she would form a new government. 

 … Under the terms of the deal, Goldman would invest about $1.45 billion for an 18 percent stake in Dong Energy, the state utility, which has become a green energy exemplar in its push for electricity from wind turbines. Though the deal buys far from a controlling share, the minority stake would come with special privileges.

THE LEFT WING INTERNET ARGUING CHECKLIST

Left wingers who can actually produce a solid argument are to be treasured and debated fully

writes Larry Correia (via Instapundit) in the science fiction author's first WARNING

(that’s sort of the point of debate). Unlike many of my liberal contemporaries, I don’t “manage” my blog comments until I have an echo chamber and my self-esteem isn’t predicated on how many sycophants pat my tender head while telling me how brilliant I am for standing up for some straw man cause de jour. I’ve got a bunch of regular left wing readers who can bring their A Game. I love them. Arguing with them, and honing my points against them makes my arguments stronger for the future.

Sadly, for every intelligent, articulate Eric Flint out there, most arguments against liberal group think results in a legion of poo flinging monkeys showing up.

This checklist is intended only for the willfully ignorant, banally stupid, sound byte spewers incapable of thinking through anything more complicated than a Facebook meme. The lowest form of debater is the pathetic crap sacks that can only follow this checklist.

WARNING 2!

If you are on my side, but this is how you debate, shut up. You’re making us look bad. Good arguing should consist of compelling rhetoric which is backed up with facts and logic. If your tactics are to shut down debate, you are an idiot. It should never be to shut down or scare off, but to WIN.

THE LEFT WING INTERNET ARGUING CHECKLIST

1. Skim until Offended
2. Disqualify that Opinion
3. Attack, Attack, Attack
4. Disregard Inconvenient facts
5. Make Shit Up
6. Resort to Moral Equivalency
7. Concern Trolling
8. When all else fails, Racism!

Read the whole thing to see Larry break it down

so you know what to look for, and you can have a good laugh as people who have zero substance, critical thinking skills, or facts make fools of themselves!

Conservative Writer and Iraq War Veteran's Book: A Biting Satire on Liberal Causes

Benjamin Duffy, a reader of No Pasaréan from its earliest days as well as an Iraq veteran whose post writings have been frequently linked on this blog, is now an author in his own right. He was already the author of a novella, his first book is out, and its title sounds heroic enough: We Are Fat and We Are Legion!

When fat civil rights activist Gabby Medeiros's supersized boyfriend decides to lose weight, he unwittingly forms a fissure in their relationship. Can their relationship survive? As a fat acceptance warrior, Gabby necessarily rejects dieting as unhealthy and counterproductive. A telephone bill collector by day, she spends two evenings a week doing what she really loves: pontificating from her position at the local radio station about the evils of the diet industry and a society that shames those who don't fill out the proper dimensions. Though people sometimes snicker at the cause she holds so dear, fat acceptance is very serious business for Gabby. When her live-in beau Denny Emory tells her that he is going to lose weight in order to control his diabetes, Gabby advises against it. Slowly, his diet changes the very dynamic of their relationship, to the point that Gabby questions whether it will survive.

FYI, I can confirm that Ben seems to have changed little, physically speaking, since the first time I met him, he has not gained weight, and he is still a slender, well-built guy. As for his new title, the first person to write a book review on Amazon sounds enthusiastic:

Loved the story and I was amazed at the amount of medical research done by Ben. I almost thought it was really OK to be fat. 

What Makes England Great?

What makes England great, asks The Daily Telegraph. Among the things up for a(n inter)national vote are several foods (believe it or not), Robin Hood, the Magna Carta, and

World renowned yet elusive graffiti artist Banksy [who] is from Bristol and many o[whose] original murals can still be seen on walls around the city and beyond. This example, which popped up recently in Cheltenham near GCHQ, depicting spies listening in on a phone box, is thought to be his work (Picture: Matt Cardy / Getty Images).

See the short list of things that sums up England's contribution to the world more than anything else

The top thing that sums up England's contribution to the world more than anything else will be revealed next Wednesday, April 23 – St George's Day. See the shortlist of 60 at englandshalloffame.com/shortlist or visit the exhibition at the Southbank Observation Point, London, from April 23 to 30.

The taxpayer will be robbed blind and anyone who doesn’t like it is a bad Christian, anti-American, and of course racist

Among the list of whoppers the public was told in order to sell the Affordable Care Act we can now include assurances that illegal aliens would not be able to claim benefits 

writes Benny Huang.

 … The “no illegals” pledge was a calculated lie that the president and his supporters discarded as soon as it was no longer needed. President Obama was counting on the people’s short memories not to recall the promises he made in order to ram through his pet piece of legislation, and on the sycophant press’s loyalty not to remind the public of what he said.

Anyone with a memory longer than a goldfish will remember the uproar that Representative Joe Wilson (R-South Carolina) caused at the 2009 State of the Union Address when he shouted “You lie!” during the new president’s remarks. Fewer people will remember what Obama was lying about.

“There are also those who claim that our reform effort will insure illegal immigrants,” said Obama. “This, too, is false – the reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.”

 At that point Wilson rudely interrupted President Obama’s absurd lie, for which he later apologized. The president however, has not yet apologized for deluding us all. He still thinks he’s the wronged party because someone with no respect for decorum sounded the baloney alarm while he had the floor.

 … All liberals had to do was lie to get the enormous new entitlement established. Having achieved that, they can now shame anyone who was actually dumb enough to believe them by accusing them of depriving poor people of badly needed medical care, no doubt because of racist motives. “Of course Obamacare won’t cover illegals” is slowly being replaced with “What’s wrong with Obamacare helping the undocumented?”

 … To think that the new healthcare entitlement will be any different from previous entitlements is the pinnacle of foolishness. We’ve been down this road a thousand times before. The program is supposedly only for citizens or legal resident aliens, but in reality no one’s checking. It will all run on the honor system, at the insistence of the dishonorable. The taxpayer will be robbed blind and anyone who doesn’t like it is a bad Christian, anti-American, and of course racist.

So that's why they want unisex restrooms!

So that's why the leftists want unisex restrooms!

Jessica Sidman (thanks to Instapundit):

Alan Popovsky, who owns Lincoln Restaurant and Teddy & The Bully Bar [in Washington DC] … has found that unisex single-occupancy restrooms—and handicap-accessible ones in particular—tend to be the most popular hookup spots. “If you go into a restroom and you can actually lock the door behind you, that’s just an open invitation,” he says.

90 Days of Madness: Dealing with a Haunting Tragedy from China's Cultural Revolution 40 Years Later

Brice Pedroletti has a story in Le Monde called the Repenters of Maoism. We learn that, 40 years after China's Cultural Revolution, former students — one of whom appeared in a famous picture with Chairman Mao (she is in the center of the modern picture, below) — have publicly repented the fact that, "during 90 days" of madness in 1966, they let their Beijing high school director be punched and kicked to death.

Nowhere is it mentioned, of course, that one solution for avoiding such tragedies is the equivalent of America's Second Amendment.

Cela fait dix ans que Liu Jin, Song Binbin, Luo Zhi et plusieurs de leurs camarades du lycée de filles de l’Université normale de Pékin s’efforcent de faire la lumière sur les quatre-vingts jours de 1966 où elles furent les protagonistes d’une tragédie qui allait engloutir la Chine tout entière. Ces sexagénaires, qui ont derrière elles des carrières et des vies de famille bien remplies, se sont engagées sur une voie encore très peu explorée en Chine, et à demi taboue : celle de la repentance pour les atrocités commises par les gardes rouges durant la Révolution culturelle (1966-1976).

Le 12 janvier, elles ont franchi le Rubicon en présentant publiquement leurs excuses à ceux de leurs professeurs de l’époque qui ont survécu, lors d’une réunion du lycée. « La plupart nous ont dit qu’ils attendaient ce geste et qu’on aurait dû le faire il y a longtemps ! », raconte ainsi Liu Jin, 67 ans. Cheveux gris coupés court, jean et pull-over bleu marine, cette éditrice retraitée avait été désignée chef officielle des élèves du lycée dans les premières semaines de la Révolution culturelle, en juin 1966.

MILLIONS DE MORTS

Ce nouveau mouvement lancé par Mao, d’abord encadré par des « groupes de travail » du parti formés de cadres adultes, semblait alors inoffensif. En réalité, Mao, écarté des affaires courantes, allait jouer de son statut de dieu vivant auprès de la jeunesse pour renverser la direction du parti à tous les échelons, dans une bataille insensée qui fera des millions de morts.

Pour comprendre, il faut remonter à une journée bien particulière, celle du 5 août 1966. Ce jour-là, c’est une scène digne d’un film d’horreur qui a lieu dans un lycée pékinois réservé à l’élite rouge. Les « groupes de travail » du parti viennent d’être dissous par Mao, furieux de les voir « éteindre le feu de la révolution ». Dans ce lycée, Liu Jin et son adjointe, Song Binbin, restent les seules représentantes d’une autorité au statut ambigu. Depuis la mi-juin, les professeurs et les cadres dirigeants débusqués comme « ennemis de classe » ont été soumis à des « séances de critiques ». Sur les conseils de Deng Xiaoping, à l’époque vice-premier ministre, à qui elles avaient rendu compte des avancées de la Révolution culturelle dans leur lycée, Liu Jin et Song Binbin ont renvoyé des professeurs aux antécédents « problématiques ». La chef du parti du lycée (l’échelon suprême de direction dans toute administration chinoise), une femme de 50 ans, Bian Zhongyun, elle, reste sous bonne garde car son dossier est accablant.

« SÉANCE DE CRITIQUES »

Ses crimes ? Elle n’a pas répondu à la question d’un élève voulant savoir, lors d’un exercice organisé au lycée, s’il fallait décrocher le portrait de Mao en cas de séisme. Puis elle a refusé de « repêcher » la fille du président chinois Liu Shaoqi, recalée de peu à l’examen d’entrée. Enfin, une femme a clamé, en juin 1966, lors d’une « séance de critiques », que son mari, professeur au lycée, la trompait avec M^me Bian (une accusation qui se révéla fausse). La femme réclamait en fait que la chef du lycée lui verse le salaire de son époux dont elle était divorcée, ce que M^me Bian a refusé. Tout cela finit de convaincre que M^me Bian est un « mauvais élément ».

Ce 5 août, les élèves la forcent à crier à tue-tête, en frappant une poubelle en fer comme si c’était un gong : « Je suis une tenante de la voie capitaliste ! Je suis une révisionniste contre-révolutionnaire ! Je mérite d’être battue ! » Ce sont les filles de première année, soucieuses de montrer leur ferveur révolutionnaire, qui ont organisé cette punition. Les coups pleuvent : fusils en bois, barreaux de chaise sur lesquels des clous dépassent. Coups de pied, aussi, car certaines lycéennes en treillis portent des bottes de l’armée.

A trois reprises, Liu Jin et Song Binbin interviennent. « La première fois, raconte Liu Jin, la foule se dispersa. » Mais dès que les jeunes cheftaines remontent dans leur bureau, d’autres recommencent à s’acharner contre M^me Bian. « Je craignais d’être critiquée en empêchant les violences. C’est vrai que c’est pour cela que je n’ai pas fait de mon mieux », a reconnu Song Binbin dans le discours qu’elle a prononcé le 12 janvier. « La vie humaine ne valait pas grand-chose. Mao était un dieu. Ses paroles étaient saintes. Tout le monde était prêt à se sacrifier », déplore Gao Ning, une autre ancienne élève du lycée, déjà à l’université à l’époque.

There is only one comment, far fewer than if the article had been on a subject involving that nightmarish society that is America's, such as (horrors!) Abu Ghraib or (imagine!) the lack of gun control. But it is worth reading. JP. Tournebroche writes:

On attend avec intérêt les réactions des anciens adorateurs de Mao et thuriféraires de la Grande Révolution Culturelle, notamment celles de M. Sollers et de ses anciens camarades de Tel Quel. On se souvient des flamboyants articles dans lesquels ce grand penseur nous instruisait de la différence entre "la pensée Mao Tsé Toung" et "la pensée de Mao Tsé Toung". On se rappelle aussi de quelle façon ces maolâtres furent descendus en flammes par Simon Leys lors d'un "Apostrophes" mémorable....

"You don't want to go there, buddy"; Many, many thanks to Eric Holder

Doesn't Eric Holder deserve our deepest gratitude?

As reported by Fox News, the attorney general told a congressman,

You don't want to go there, buddy.

Let's look at this first, briefly, in the specific venue it was said, and second, in a more general way.

1) "You don't want to go there." Can this be constructed as anything but either scorn or a veiled threat or both? Let's read the sentences that follow.

Holder went on to say that [Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas)] "should not assume that that [the 2012 House vote finding Holder in contempt of Congress] is not a big deal to me."

"I think that it was inappropriate and it was unjust, but never think that was not a big deal to me. Don't ever think that," Holder said, pointing his finger.

Get this right, people; get this right, congressmen: How dare you — how dare anybody — ask any member of the Obama White House for justification (documents, emails, etc) for their decisions?!

Eric Holder is part of the team of brilliant reformers sent to radically transform America by telling ordinary men and women (as Ricardo Fernandez calls the latter, "the great unwashed [who] merely swill beer, drive pickup trucks and believe in superstitious nonsense like good and evil, right and wrong, God and the devil" — thanks to Instapundit) to stop thinking they know how to manage their own lives and telling them what to do (mainly, what to do with their money, as in hand it over to the government of reformers and to their ever-growing bureaucracies).

So, for one of those unwashed people — for what else are Republicans anyway, and besides, what business do those clods have being in DC in the first place?! (stupid constitution and thank God the IRS intervened to keep the Tea Partiers in their place, and us reformers in Washington) — to question their decisions and bring up such (non-)scandals as the Mexican gun-walking affair, the failure to go after (Democratic) voting fraud, and the IRS's Tea Party hunt, all of which is highly unfair not to mention highly insulting.

2) More generally, we should all thank Eric Holder for articulating the attitude that has come from the White House (and prior to that, from the Obama campaign) for the past five or six years — as well as from its brilliant reformers (as stated above), from the mainstream media (remember the Journolist?), and all the supporters of the left in the population:

You don't want to go there, buddy.

The Benghazi massacre? The Syria red line? The reset with Russia?

You don't want to go there, buddy.

The Obamacare vote? The (repeated) "misspeaking" of Obama's promises?

You don't want to go there, buddy.

Obama's past? The Reverend Wright's Church? Obama's rise through Chicago's machine politics? Obama's winning one election after another through at least partially dubious means, from the invalidating of the petitions of Democratic party opponents (1996) and the unsealing of divorce papers (2004) to the siccing of the IRS on the Tea Party (2012).

You don't want to go there, buddy. (CNN is a Wright-free zone; ABC, CBS, and NBC haven't mentioned the IRS scandal (scandal?! what scandal?!) in months.)

Even something so innocuous as the content of Obama's Harvard papers and his grades?

You don't want to go there, buddy. (Racism, racism, racism.)

And having the gall, generally, to question people such as Barack Obama and Eric Holder?

You don't want to go there, buddy. (Racism, racism, racism.)

But why should this surprise us?

What this attitude is, basically, is symbolic of the entire Alinsky stance and everything in his radicals book:

You don't want to go there, buddy.

BBC to Commemorate the 70th Anniversary of D-Day

The 70th anniversary of the 1944 D-Day landings is to be marked by a series of programmes on BBC TV and radio, announces the British broadcaster.

The June 6 attack saw more than 156,000 Allied troops storm the beaches of France and marked the beginning of the end of World War II.

 … "We all owe so much to the brave servicemen and women who took part in the D-Day campaign," said Danny Cohen, director of BBC Television.

"It is a privilege to commemorate and mark this incredibly important anniversary with a range of programming across BBC TV, radio and online."

The story of D-Day.

Starting in the late 60s, child support and alimony went from necessary evil to an open bribe available to any woman who was willing to betray her husband and children

 … starting in the late sixties we reorganized our legal and social structure with the (unquestioned) assumption that replacing marriage wasn’t a necessary evil, but a moral imperative

writes Dalrock (echoing Stephen Baskerville).

We replaced a patchwork of bastardy laws with a declaration that legitimacy doesn’t matter.  Around the same time, we ushered in no fault divorce with very strong bias towards mother custody, while leaving in place the punitive practices of child support and alimony.  Suddenly child support and alimony went from necessary evil to an open bribe available to any woman who was willing to betray her husband and children.

Now we not only promise a woman cash and prizes if she will agree to betray her family, but we have created a presumption of guilt on the part of the very husband she sells out. As Lydia McGrew explains here it is misogyny to not assume that our pandemic of wife initiated divorce is proof that the men must have had it coming.

This assumption that the sin of divorce must be justified is combining with the lure of the financial reward to sin and snaring very large numbers of women.  Where Christians should be defending marriage and discouraging sin, most are enthusiastic supporters of child support and stand forever ready to offer justifications for women to divorce their husbands, however flimsy.   However, remaining silent about the evil of child support and alimony and encouraging frivolous divorce is not kind to women and children;  it is cruelty.

In our current rush to find some fault, any fault, by the husband to justify the divorcing wife we aren’t being honest that the standing offer of a cash reward for ending her marriage can’t help but cloud her judgment.

Update: Instapundit links another Dalrock post:
The Great Douchebag Mystery, or, How Douchebags Are Created

Leading From Behind: Obama Wants to Give an Important Role to Hollande

Delucq describes an American puppeteer leading from behind — from behind a constable-looking Hollande puppet in his hand:

• Barack Obama: Tremble, Syria! Shake in your boots, Central Africa! The world's policeman is about to get mad!

Restored WWII plane to return to Normandy for D-Day anniversary

At the invitation of the French government, [a] restored Douglas C-47 will fly in for 70th-anniversary festivities and again release paratroopers over the original jump zone at Sainte-Mere-Eglise

writes the Associated Press.

"There are very few of these planes still flying, and this plane was very significant on D-Day," said Erin Vitale, chairwoman of the Return to Normandy Project. "It dropped people that were some of the first into Sainte-Mere-Eglise and liberated that town."

 … Leslie Palmer Cruise Jr. … still remembers being squashed between other paratroopers seated on pan seats as the plane left England's Cottesmore Airdrome. He was weighed down with probably 100 pounds of gear, including an M-1 rifle that was carried in three pieces, 30-caliber rifle ammo, a first-aid pack, grenade, K-rations and his New Testament in his left pocket, over his heart.

"We could hear the louder roar as each plane following the leader accelerated down the runway and lifted into the air," he wrote in an account of the mission. "Our turn came and the quivering craft gathered momentum along the path right behind the plane in front."

The airplane's engines were so loud he had to shout even to talk with the paratrooper next to him, he said, and the scenery through its square windows looked like shadows in the dark. Over the English Channel, a colonel pointed downward.

"In the partial darkness below we could make out silhouetted shapes of ships and there must have been thousands of them all sizes and kinds," Cruise wrote. "If we had any doubts before about the certainty of the invasion, they were dispelled now."

Let’s dispense with the myth that liberals are really against voter fraud; Voter fraud is actually an essential part of their election strategy

When the Reverend Al Sharpton embraced felonious vote fraudster Melowese Richardson he embraced her crime

writes Benny Huang.

Harlem’s own race-hustling clergyman appeared at a political rally in Cincinnati in support of the “Ohio Voters’ Bill of Rights,” that would make it illegal to ask voters for ID at the polls, when Ms. Richardson, freshly sprung from a prison she should not have left, was called up to the stage for a heartfelt “welcome home,” complete with thunderous applause and big hug from Reverend Al.

Ms. Richardson, a county poll worker, pleaded no contest in 2013 to four counts of voter fraud. The previous year she voted five times for President Obama—once for herself, and four times illegally. She has also admitted to voting illegally in 2009 and 2011, though those charges were excluded as part of her plea deal. She was then sentenced to five years in prison, though she served only eight months before the same judge that sentenced her in the first place re-sentenced her to parole.

“In the interest of justice, it is time for her to go home,” said Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters, a Republican. He offered no objection to Ms. Richardson’s resentencing.

Apparently eight months in prison was punishment enough for depriving (at least) four other citizens of their franchise. That’s what voter fraud is—disenfranchising voters. Each illegitimate ballot cast nullifies a legitimate one. Her fraud was no different than reaching into the ballot box and removing four ballots, or physically blocking four people from the polling place.

 … Any talk of voter fraud elicits swift backlash from the Left. A series of billboards reading “Voter Fraud is a Crime” created quite a stir In the Buckeye State in 2012 and were quickly condemned by the “civil rights establishment” who demanded to know who they were “targeted at.”

Answer: vote fraudsters, of course. Who else?

But misnamed “voting rights” groups didn’t see it that way. They asserted that the billboards were intended to intimidate minorities and felons, who are permitted to vote in Ohio. How someone might have interpreted “Don’t vote illegally” to mean “Don’t vote,” is beyond me. It would be like claiming that advertisements against drunk driving dissuade people from driving sober.

But I wasn’t born yesterday so I can see through their transparent objections. Liberals weren’t concerned that the billboards would send the wrong message. They were concerned that it would send the right message, thus stymying their efforts to cheat. No one honestly believes that the billboards were designed to intimidate legitimate voters from voting only once. They were aimed at the Melowese Richardsons of this world who think nothing of voting five times in a single election.

Leave Melowese alone!

 … So let’s dispense with the myth that liberals are really against voter fraud. If they were, they wouldn’t object to billboards that warn against it and they wouldn’t make a martyr out of Melowese Richardson, who served only eight months in prison when she could have spent decades.

Voter fraud is actually an essential part of their election strategy. They know what the law says but the law is, in their eyes, unfair. So they flaunt it. They recruit noncitizens to vote, some of whom aren’t even in the country legally. They get felons to polls, even though felons are ineligible to vote in some states. They comb the voter rolls for people who have recently died, and they never allow anyone to clean up voter rolls, even if they contain more registered voters than a precinct has eligible citizens.

This isn’t an argument between two groups of people who both care about the integrity of our elections but disagree about how best to ensure it. It’s an argument between people who think that elections should be clean and well-ordered, with sensible safeguards to ensure that only eligible voters vote and only one time each, and those who think that cheating is okay so long as it is done in the service of a just cause. And really, there is no cause more just than electing saintly liberals and defeating evil conservatives.

In the Wake of Crimea, What Lands Does the Kremlin Have Its Heart Set On?

After Crimea — whose historical ties to Russia are discussed by the BBC's Ruth Maclennan — will other territories be coveted by Moscow, ask Le Monde's Jules Grandin, Flavie Holzinger, Benoît Vitkin, and Mathilde Gérard.

Historic Defeat for Hollande's Ruling Socialists in France's Municipal Elections

On Sunday, François Hollande's ruling socialists suffered a defeat without precedent in France's 2014 municipal elections (spoken about in all of Europe), leading to the opposition UMP becoming the nº1 party (on a town-hall level, at least, with the emergence of a new generation of right-leaning mayors, some under 40 years of age) and to the capture of several town halls by Marine Le Pen's Front National.

Marine Le Pen Proves Yet Again that America's Conservatives Are No Equivalent of Her Front National

While François Hollande's ruling socialists suffer a defeat without precedent in France's 2014 municipal elections (spoken about in all of Europe) — leading to the opposition UMP becoming the nº1 party along with the capture of several town halls by the Front National — Marine Le Pen proves, yet again, that America's conservatives, Tea Partiers, and Republicans are no equivalent of her movement.

The FN leader, who once said that “Obama is way to the right of us”, does not refute the idea of being the incarnation of a sort of "Peronism à la française" (in an interview by Abel Mestre and Caroline Monnot), all the while speaking of starting over at the year 0 (evoking Robespierre, Pot Pol, et al) and rejecting the "ultra" free market.

M^me Le Pen appelle de ses vœux à la naissance d'un « grand mouvement patriote, ni droite ni gauche », s'opposant à un autre bloc politique qui serait composé de l'UMP et du PS. Une sorte de « péronisme à la française », définition que l'eurodéputée ne rejette pas.

Votre positionnement « ni droite ni gauche » n'est-il pas une impasse qui vous empêche de passer des alliances ?

Pas du tout. C'est ce qu'attendent les Français. Dans notre électorat, il y a des déçus de l'UMP et des déçus du PS. Nous sommes à l'année zéro d'un grand mouvement patriote, ni de droite ni de gauche, qui fonde son opposition avec la classe politique actuelle sur la défense de la nation, le rejet de l'ultralibéralisme, de l'européisme, capable de transcender les vieux clivages pour poser les vraies questions : est-on dans une vision nationale ou postnationale ? J'espère que cela apparaîtra de manière claire lors des élections européennes.

 … Votre positionnement « ni droite ni gauche » n'est-il pas une impasse qui vous empêche de passer des alliances ?

Pas du tout. C'est ce qu'attendent les Français. Dans notre électorat, il y a des déçus de l'UMP et des déçus du PS. Nous sommes à l'année zéro d'un grand mouvement patriote, ni de droite ni de gauche, qui fonde son opposition avec la classe politique actuelle sur la défense de la nation, le rejet de l'ultralibéralisme, de l'européisme, capable de transcender les vieux clivages pour poser les vraies questions : est-on dans une vision nationale ou postnationale ? J'espère que cela apparaîtra de manière claire lors des élections européennes.

Le Front national ne fait pas partie du bloc de droite ?

Non, pas du tout. Le bloc droite-gauche ne correspond plus à la réalité. On ne peut plus classer les électeurs dans deux camps droite et gauche, la réalité est bien plus complexe que cela.

The World’s 10 Most Beautiful National Parks

From Womanitely, the World’s 10 Most Beautiful National Parks

Le Figaro Director Shot by Finance Minister's Wife and Killed

M. Gaston Calmette, director of the ‘‘Figaro,’’ was yesterday shot and killed by Mme. Caillaux, wife of the Minister of Finance, in his bureau in the offices of that newspaper

writes the New York Herald in a special section.

Mme. Caillaux called at the ‘‘Figaro’’ offices about five o’clock in the afternoon and asked to see M. Calmette. After waiting a while, she was shown into M. Calmette’s office and immediately drew from her muff an automatic pistol and shot him three times. The shooting was the sequel to the campaign recently waged against M. Caillaux by M. Calmette in the columns of the ‘‘Figaro.’’ At the police-station, Mme. Caillaux declared that she did not intend to kill M. Calmette, but wanted to ‘‘teach him a good lesson.’’ She explained to the police commissary that the affair arose out of a letter which M. Caillaux wrote in 1901 to a woman, a photographic reproduction of which appeared in the ‘‘Figaro’’ last Friday. Mme. Caillaux said that she was very shocked by the publication of such a letter, and declared that she wanted to prevent any more letters of the kind being published. An eye-witness of the tragedy declared later that M. Calmette, as he was being carried downstairs, preparatory to being removed to hospital, said, in a fainting voice: ‘‘I have never done anyone any harm, but I have merely done my duty.’’

In Our Pages, 100 Years Ago (1914)

Check out Herbert Mitgang's book review of
Edward Berenson's The Trial of Mme. Caillaux

Racism on French Campuses on the Rise

 … [French] campuses are more and more the targets of bullying actions from extreme right groups; racist, homophobic, and nationalist graffiti; and even sometimes blows

While America and the world bemoan the dark racism that allegedly exists throughout America, Isabelle Rey-Lefebvre writes in Le Monde that French university campuses are permeated with racist acts

 … les campus sont de plus en plus souvent la cible d'actions d'intimidation de groupuscules d'extrême droite, tags racistes, homophobes, nationalistes et parfois même coups de poings. …

« UN ACTE ANTIRÉPUBLICAIN »

Les étudiants de l'université de Dijon ont découvert, mardi 4 mars, sur le mur extérieur de l'établissement, deux tags d'une même main : « Vive la France » et « A mort LGBT » (pour lesbien, gay, bi et trans). Le président de l'université de Bourgogne, Alain Bonnin, a dénoncé sur son compte Twitter un « acte antirépublicain ».

L'incident n'est pas isolé : en novembre 2013, une statue du campus était vandalisée avec le slogan « Hollande démission » signé « ONLR » pour « On ne lâche rien », mot d'ordre des partisans de la Manif pour tous. « Les manifs anti-mariage pour tous ont donné des ailes à ces extrémistes », juge Jean-Baptiste Bourdillon, de l'UNEF Dijon. …

INCIDENTS À ANGERS, POITIERS, BORDEAUX, RENNES

A Strasbourg, le 9 février, on pouvait lire, sur les murs de la bibliothèque de l'université « Alsace nationaliste » et « La France aux Français », assorties d'une fleur de lys stylisée, symbole du Renouveau français, mouvement se disant « pour la renaissance nationale ». « Ce n'est qu'un incident d'une longue série, et ils vont crescendo », témoigne Flavie Linard, présidente de l'UNEF Strasbourg, qui se souvient des tags « A mort les socialistes », des autocollants et affiches siglés GUD ou encore des distributions de journaux Action universitaire française. « On ne voit jamais les fauteurs de troubles, ce qui me conduit à penser qu'il s'agit d'éléments extérieurs », confirme l'étudiante, à l'origine, avec d'autres associations, d'un comité de vigilance.


 … les militants UNEF et RUSF se sentent toujours menacés, puisque, début février, les murs de la faculté de lettres ont été graffités de slogans « Europe jeunesse génération » et « Pasaran quand même », référence au régime franquiste.

No word, yet, on whether, like their American counterparts, many if not most of these "racist" incidents turn out to be hoaxes.

Huffington Post's AOL Uses Airliner Tragedy Story to Make a Sarah Palin Joke

Credit a leftist organization like Huffington Post and/or AOL to use the main, "front-page" article currently on the site (1st out of 35), the one written by ADAM GELLER and KRISTEN GELINEAU on a pretty serious subject — the disappearance of the Malaysian airliner, Flight MH370 — to… make (or to relay, rather) a Sarah Palin joke.

 … when a fake news story showed up online supposedly quoting Sarah Palin as saying she believed the plane had flown directly to heaven, its plausibility hinged not on the former Alaska governor, but on the fact that just about anybody could and seemingly did have an opinion on the flight's fate.

Sending a Strong Signal to Russia

Master of the Universe
by Alex in
La Liberté
(Switzerland)

Xavier Gorce

 • Okay, let's take a vote: Who's in favor of the embargo?

• Perfect, that will send a strong signal: a full halt to chewing gum exports towards Russia

Smart Diplomacy: what is happening in Eastern Europe now is as much Obama’s fault as it is Putin’s

Now we know just how little Vladimir Putin and the government behind him cares about what the world thinks 

writes Onan Coca regarding the latest entry in the annals of the Apologizer-in-Chief's smart diplomacy

– and particularly what America thinks … it seems that every step the Obama administration has taken over the last 5+ years has led us to this point. Whether it was Hillary Clinton’s “Reset” button, Obama’s pledge of flexibility once the 2012 election was over, Obama’s recalcitrance on Syria, or Obama’s impotence on Iran… every foreign policy misstep has brought us down this road. In fact, I think it’s fair to say that what is happening in Eastern Europe now is as much President Obama’s fault as it is Vladimir Putin’s.

Meanwhile, James Rosen points out how,

among ethnic Russians, and in the heart of the former Soviet Union, a palpable anti-American sentiment is discernible -- and it is, to some extent, the product of determined efforts by Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin apparatus he controls. 

No Pasarán wrote about this in October 2012 after the third debate when a New York Times piece, of all places, provided fodder for the post Moscow's current tone is "reminiscent of Soviet days"; If anyone is stuck in the Cold War mentality, it is the Russians. James Rosen, again:

"Friends of mine who have been in Moscow for the past, say, two years tell me you cannot understand the amount of propaganda, anti-U.S. propaganda, that is being fed to the Russian people on Russian television -- nothing like it, unprecedented," said Daniel Henninger, deputy editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal, in an appearance on Fox News' "Happening Now." "They didn't even do this sort of thing back during the Cold War."

Fox Butterfield, Est-ce Vous? "Coincidentally, perils in Ukraine are on the rise at a time when the U.S. is announcing a reduction in military personnel"

"Coincidentally" are the first words of Corine Lesnes's article, as the Le Monde writer seems to be channeling Fox Butterfield (Renard Champdebeurre in French?) when she says that by coincidence perils are on the rise at a time when America is disarming, disarming to a level prior to World War II.

Coincidentally, the increasing perils in Ukraine come at a time when the United States is announcing a reduction in military personnel. In the 2015 budget presented on March 4, Barack Obama included a realignment of the armed forces that reflects its major strategic choices: an end to deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, adapting to new types of missions, a pivot towards Asia. According to the proposals presented to Congress by the Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, the army should decrease from 522,000 men to 440,000 or 450,000 before 2017, the lowest level since 1940.

"Coincidentally"!

Corine Lesnes:

Par coïncidence, la montée des périls en Ukraine intervient à un moment où les Etats-Unis annoncent une réduction de leurs effectifs militaires. Dans le budget 2015 qu'il présente le 4 mars, Barack Obama a inclus une réorientation des forces armées qui traduit ses grands choix stratégiques : fin des déploiements en Irak et en Afghanistan, adaptation aux nouvelles missions, pivot vers l'Asie.
Selon les propositions présentées au Congrès par le secrétaire à la défense, Chuck Hagel, l'armée de terre devrait passer de 522 000 hommes à 440 000 ou 450 000 avant 2017, soit le niveau le plus bas depuis 1940.

Tenth Anniversary of My First Post for No Pasarán

A few weeks after the founding of No Pasarán, 10 years ago, I was invited to join as the blog's fourth blogger (after Douglas, Jonathan, and Liminal aka U*2, and prior to N Joe). Today is the anniversary of my first contribution:

Wednesday, March 24, 2004

Growling for Colombani

Any of you who have seen me over the past 10 days knows how furious I get anytime I read or hear the French media trying to stuff down our throats their self-serving lying charges (those against Aznar, Bush, and Blair, i.e., anybody whom they don't feel any sympathy with).

So when I read that the Mémorial de Caen was organizing a conference with Jean-Marie Colombani, among others ("QUELLE LIBERTÉ POUR L'INFORMATION DANS UN MONDE INQUIÉTANT ?", organized in tandem with Les Amis de l'hebdomadaire La Vie and Reporters sans Frontières), I knew I had to attend. I wanted to give Le Monde's director a piece of my mind (in a diplomatic manner, natch). Three hours before it started at 7 pm on March 23, 2004, I jumped into my trusty jalopy, and drove the 260 km to Caen, arriving just in the nick of time.

And sure enough, the first thing any of the five intervenants did (with a constant wry smile on his face) was to attack the lies of politicians, ridicule the partisanship of the media, and bemoan the jingoism of the population (meaning those of the US, the UK, and Aznar's Spain exclusively, bien sûr). It was Jean-Marie Charon, "Sociologue des médias" (whatever that means), who opened the débat — the others being (left to right on the admittedly unclear photo) Colombani, Walter Wells, Directeur de l'International Herald Tribune (beard), Jean-Jacques Lerosier, Grand reporter à Ouest-France, and Jacqueline Papet, Rédactrice-en-chef de RFI, with the moderators answering to the names of Daniel Junqua, Journaliste et Vice-président de RSF, and Jean-Claude Escaffit, Journaliste à La Vie et Directeur des Amis de La Vie.

Before I left Paris, I'd reviewed and written down (in telegraph-style) a handful of arguments: these ranged from the Iraqis quoted in Reason, on Iraq the Model, and in Le Monde itself, to Doug's post on Le Monde's partisan mistranslation of Michael Ignatieff's piece in the New York Times.

The only problem was a rather big one, I learned as a I headed for my seat: questions would not be permitted, except in written form on small pieces of paper handed over to one of the animators. So I knew I had to pay close attention if I wanted to find an appropriate moment when to jump in. And I would obviously not have time to develop any of the arguments (especially since Eskaffit seemed to be a control freak).

It happened towards the end. There was a brief lull as Wells was about to make his last extensive remarks. Suddenly everybody turned to me as I let out : "Je pense que nous devons tous remercier les médias français pour leur admirable abilité à détecter les mensonges. Mais je ne comprends pas pourquoi ces spécialistes en la matière ignorent des sujets qui ont été traités dans le Herald Tribune, par exemple." (This was punctuated by Eskaffit's protests on his mike, you realize.) "Nous avons pu y lire des articles détaillant ce qu'on pourrait taxer de mensonges dans le camp de la paix, comme le fait que les Allemands, les Russes, et les Français avaient pas mal d'affaires avec les autorités baasistes, et que Total devait avoir un contrat exclusif avec Saddam Hussein. Pourquoi les médias français n'en font-ils pas autant état que de ce qui concerne les Ricains, les Rosbifs, et les Espagnols?"

Eskaffit was growing increasingly more vocal in asking/telling me to keep quiet (shades of Chirac?) — he claimed that "de toutes façons", nobody could hear me — so seeing the end approaching (and having a hard time competing against a microphone), I pulled out my final ace — the final ace being a book, which I held above my head. (Yes, there did seem to be a somewhat theatrical element to this scene; why do you ask?) "Et en matière de mensonges, il y a ce livre d'un rédacteur de La Croix, qui a été licencié pour l'avoir publié, qui s'appelle Comment la presse nous a désinformés sur l'Irak. Et qui raconte les partis pris des Français pour diaboliser Bush, pour sanctifier Chirac, et pour communier avec les partis de la 'paix'."

Even a few audience members had by now started to tell me to keep quiet, but that seemed an appropriate place to end anyway, so with that I sat down.

As for Eskaffit, he went on talking to the intervenants… ignoring completely what I had said. (While a couple of people behind me asked to see the book.) Well, I felt I had done my blogger's duty, so to speak, so I sat back, pretty content with myself.

Then, as Junqua made his last remarks, I understood that some people had heard me; the RSF moderator surprised me by pulling out his own copy of Alain Hertoghe's book (which he had in his briefcase), and explained that it provided a negative view of the French media during the Iraq war. But then he added that there was another book, detailing the French press's doings during the first Gulf war, with a positive slant, and that one could not read the first book without comparing it to the second. He tried to conclude that Hertoghe's book was a partisan "brûlot" that was not very friendly to his colleagues. (This from a colloque which had just declared that, happily, the old tradition in the press of refusing to criticize one's colleagues had now become "caduc"!)

I wasn't going to let him get away with that as the final word, so I let out another comment: "Les médias ont complètement censuré ce livre!" (But Eskaffit immediately started interrupting again.)

Afterwards, I went up to speak to some of the intervenants. Wells asked to see Hertoghe's book, which he wanted to check out. As for Junqua, he admitted it was news to him that the La Croix editor had been fired as a result of the book's publication.

So, all in all, a satisfying 10 minutes. (But hardly worth doing again, not at that distance. At least not without a couple of chums to have a drink with, afterwards.)

P.S. This is my first post for ¡No Pasarán! Muchas gracias, amigos, for inviting me to participar.

Posted by Erik at 20:03