10 Years Ago, Rotherham's Denis MacShane Was Among the Good Guys

Not that multiculti double standards should be defended in any way, and not that Denis MacShane does not deserve what's coming to him, but just a word to point out that 10 years ago, during the Iraq war, the MP for Rotherham was among the good guys. He was not only a supporter of Tony Blair's alliance with George W Bush, he was vocal in his support.

"That's Why We're Fighting the Bastards, Isn't It?"

"It hurts that war, it hurts me," [A. A. Khaliq of Rotherham said in May 2004]. "Blair made a mistake in backing Bush. I support the British troops, but not the United States. We should never have let the U.S. draw us in. We're in with a regime that doesn't listen to anybody. We should pull out."

 … Rotherham's member of Parliament during the same period, MacShane said of Khaliq, "A ways back, this is a guy who was shouting that the Brits and the Americans were wimping out and demanding the 7th Fleet bombard Milosevic when the Serbs were mistreating the Muslims."

"That's Why We're Fighting the Bastards, Isn't It?"

"Going door to door," said MacShane after two days of talking [prior to the June 2004 elections], "I don't get the impression that Iraq is what's on people's minds. It's how things are working out for them. One guy said, 'Iraq's a problem, isn't it Denis?' Then he talked about the young fellow beheaded on television, and he said, 'that's why we're fighting the bastards, isn't it Denis?' "

Then again, Tony Blair's Labour Party was always close to outstanding on the international scene, and (much) less so on the domestic scene.
Click for more vintage MacShane posts on No Pasarán

The wise, disinterested experts of the regulatory state will deliver progress for our own good, whether we understand it or not

Government requires trust. Government by progressives, however, demands such inordinate amounts of trust that the demand itself should provoke distrust. Progressivism can be distilled into two words: “Trust us.”

Thus writes George Will (thanks to Instapundit and Ed Driscoll).

The antecedent of the pronoun is: The wise, disinterested experts through whom the vast powers of the regulatory state’s executive branch will deliver progress for our own good, as the executive branch understands this, whether we understand it or not. Lois Lerner is the scowling face of this state, which has earned Americans’ distrust. 

From now on France can forget recovery, forget unemployment, it’s all about politicians’ egos

Monday, Stephen Clarke heard that Arnaud Montebourg, the economy minister, has resigned;

it turns out that he has been saying a bit too loudly that he doesn’t agree with the government’s economic policies (a bit rich from the man who accepted the job of conceiving and implementing them, one might think) and that he has been “resigned”. In fact the PM Manuel Valls has decided that he’s had enough of sniping ministers and has announced to President Hollande that his government has resigned, which simply means that he is going to have a massive ministerial reshuffle.

Montebourg wasn’t the first by any means to start openly criticizing Francois Hollande. The knives are out. A former ecology minister Cecile Duflot has just ripped into him in a book. Other left-wing figures having been queuing up to distance themselves from Hollande.

It’s no coincidence, of course. The politicians are well aware that ex-President Nicolas Sarkozy is preparing his comeback, and that the Socialists need someone strong, and new, to stand against him. They’re all thinking “pourquoi pas moi?” This naturally involves forgetting that the elections are three years away and that France needs to be governed in the meantime.

Three years till presidential elections, and the campaign is under way. From now on the country can forget recovery, forget unemployment, it’s all about politicians’ egos. As if it was ever any different.

From now on, I predict non-stop rumours about who wants to run for President, a glut of new parties, and endless speeches about how moi and only moi can save the country – despite the fact that all I’ve done for the past three years is sit back and criticise.

Oh joy …

The BBC reports that a

central aim of his latest reshuffle is to replace those left-wing critics [Arnaud Montebourg (L), Benoit Hamon (C) and Aurelie Filippetti (R)] with more sympathetic minds, and give President Hollande's economic drive a boost.

Key among the new appointments announced on Tuesday is a fresh face in government. Emmanuel Macron is a former banker and economic adviser to the president who now takes up the job of economy minister.

His key selling point is that he shares the president's pro-business, centre-right vision - unlike his predecessor.

White Americans avoid speaking the truth aloud for reasons of racial guilt and black Americans avoid saying it for reasons of racial solidarity, but no one is really fooled

The tragic death of Michael Brown, an eighteen year old black man, at the hands of the police, has sparked days of rioting and looting in Ferguson, Missouri. His community rallied around him from the start, telling reporters that Mike Brown was a great kid who was shot down “like an animal” because of his race.

Thus writes Benny Huang.

Unfortunately, the portrait they painted of the gentle giant wasn’t entirely accurate.

 … The version of the story that portrays Brown as a hapless victim of racism and police brutality is quickly unraveling. He was not shot in the back as Brown’s friend Dorian Johnson, a witness to the killing (and accomplice to the robbery), claims. Nor was he shot for jaywalking as ludicrous early reports indicated. Brown robbed a store then attempted to take a police officer’s gun, presumably to shoot him with it.

Either Brown’s die-hard supporters are truly mistaken about what happened on August 9^th or else they know that the story is a concoction and they just don’t care.

The Michael Brown case is starting to look a lot like a warmed over version of the Duke lacrosse case, the Trayvon Martin case, and the Tawana Brawley case. In other words, a rush to judgment has resulted in a lynch mob mentality.

Yet I suspect that most black Americans know, in their heart of hearts, that the fictional narrative being foisted upon the nation is a sham. The black citizens of Ferguson are doing what blacks tend to do whenever a racial controversy erupts—presenting a united front to the outside world. It’s a form of tribalism that would rightly be called racism if white people did it, which they occasionally do.

No one knows better than black Americans that there’s something amiss in black America. They know that black-on-black crime is a far greater threat than the supposedly racist cops who patrol their streets and that their values and priorities are out of whack, yet they prefer to discuss these matters when only black ears are listening.

 … A code of silence dictates that black criticisms of black behavior be kept in-house. If outsiders were to overhear them admitting that blacks need to straighten up and fly right they might take it as confirmation that “the system” is not broken; black culture is. “Racists” might exploit that.

Comedian Bill Cosby was chided in 2004 for his remarks at an NAACP function marking the fiftieth anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education. The thrust of his remarks was that black Americans should forgo any celebration about how far they’ve come since the fifties and sixties because blacks themselves have largely squandered the gains they struggled for. The black community needs to do some soul-searching about what really ails them—white racism or black attitudes and habits? 

While most black leaders found Bill Cosby’s remarks abrasive, some admitted that they sometimes say the same things to black audiences. Cosby’s transgression was to air the black community’s “dirty laundry” for the whole world to see. In fairness to Cosby, he didn’t know his comments would leak to the media. He believed he was speaking entre nous.

Cosby has responded on several occasions to accusations of airing dirty laundry.   “When you go looking for the dirty laundry, I would appreciate it if you would direct your attention to a school where there is, for sure, a fifty per cent dropout rate among black males. And don’t forget the guards, the ones that have to check for the guns and the knives. Shhhh.This will be our personal little black secret.”  What Cosby meant is that black delinquency and underachievement is the worst kept secret in the world. Hiding the problems isn’t working because anyone with eyes can see them. White Americans avoid speaking the truth aloud for reasons of racial guilt and black Americans avoid saying it for reasons of racial solidarity, but no one is really fooled.

French-Speaking History Professor: Say No to Pro-Russian Propaganda and Do Not Engage in Moral Relativism

Depuis le début de la crise ukrainienne, un discours structuré de défense systématique des actions de la Russie est très dynamique sur les réseaux sociaux, dans des médias officiels russes publiés en français et leurs relais d’opinion en France. Il relève d’une propagande qui joue habilement sur un aspect commun à plusieurs cultures politiques françaises, l’anti-impérialisme, lui permettant de trouver un écho dans des milieux politiques variés. 

In the face of what he calls all the pro-Russian propaganda present in France, Olivier Schmitt has decided to protest in Le Monde:

UN ETAT AUTORITAIRE

 … le relativisme moral est mal placé. D’un côté, une démocratie dont les dirigeants sont régulièrement renouvelés, les soldats sanctionnés lorsqu’ils violent le droit international humanitaire, qui dispose d’une presse libre et reconnaît les droits des minorités.

De l’autre, un Etat autoritaire, dont la brutalité des troupes s’exerce en Tchétchénie, en Géorgie et en Ukraine, où les homosexuels sont pourchassés et la liberté d’expression un concept oublié. Personne ne dit que les Etats-Unis sont parfaits, mais créer une équivalence morale entre les deux pays relève de la cécité ou de la complicité.

Vladimir Poutine veut être entouré d’Etats vassalisés – auxquels il dénie donc la souveraineté qu’il prétend défendre par ailleurs – et, obnubilé par son maintien au pouvoir, ne peut pas concevoir qu’une révolution telle que le soulèvement de Maïdan à Kiev ne soit pas forcément un complot américain.

L’exploitation habile par la propagande russe de divers aspects de l’anti-impérialisme commun à plusieurs courants politiques français fausse ainsi la perception d’une politique russe particulièrement inquiétante pour la sécurité de l’Europe et de la France.

Almost impossible for anyone to set up their own business in France because the administrative costs are so high

The French economy is not in a great place right now

writes Mark Johnson,

but my heart still sinks when I see that yet another local business has closed down in the nearby towns round my part of rural France.
 
Recently, I noticed that the local kitchen and bathroom business in the enclave of Savigné had shut its doors for good. To be honest, I wasn’t surprised, they’d once quoted me €28,500 for two bathroom renovations.

An English expat friend, who owns a beautiful seven bedroom chateau in the Limousin, collapsed in fits of laughter at that quote, saying he’d managed to install five luxury bathrooms for less than €12,000.

But, while President Hollande dithers over how to get the nation back on its economic feet, business owners, employees and their suppliers are counting the cost in real terms of a country that refuses to modernise and create opportunities for the next generation of local entrepreneurs.

This is nothing new of course. Years ago, when I lived in the thriving Arabian emirate of Dubai, I met loads of young French folk who had forsaken their homeland for a nation that would encourage entrepreneurialism and reward their hard work.

One French friend said that it was almost impossible for anyone to set up their own business in France because the administrative costs are so high that you need to already have a fortune in order to get going. Even today, there’s a pile of government regulations and a raft of taxes to pay before you even serve your first customer. “That’s why so many people in France work for the government,” she said.

What irritates Stephen Clarke is that so little happens in Paris in August

I know lots of people who say that they love to be in Paris in August, when all the Parisians are away

But Stephen Clarke does not agree:

what irritates me is that so little happens in Paris in August.

Of course everyone needs their holiday, but it gets tough setting up meetings, for example. Lots of Parisian meetings happen in cafés, and … many of these are closed in summer

 … It’s the same buying bread. There are very strict rules about when a boulangerie can close for its annual holidays. The baker has to belong to one of two groups, according to when he or she (almost always he) wants to close: either 1-31 July or 1-31 August. When a shop closes, it has to give the addresses of the two nearest boulangeries that are still open.

 … So it’s all well organized, and fresh bread is always available by law, but if your local boulangerie closes and you’re used to strolling lazily across the road in the mornings to buy fresh bread, and now you have to go all of 200 metres further to a boulangerie that you don’t particularly like because their pain aux raisins are too doughy (it can happen), it feels to the average Parisian as if you’ve been told to crawl to Lourdes on your hands and knees as penance for a sin – maybe the sin of staying in Paris when you ought to be on holiday.

So yes, we Parisians are a spoilt bunch, but when you’re used to having a café and a boulangerie within yards of your front door, it’s hard to adapt. I’m sure the same is true for polar explorers: give them easy access to shops and restaurants and they’ll go insane with claustrophobia.

Another problem with Paris in August is that the weekly events guides slim down to supermodel thinness.

 … Paris, I think, needs a summer festival.

 … I fear, though, that theatres, music venues and café back rooms will all be subject to city rules about annual closure; that sound engineers, stage managers and actors will all want their annual holiday; and that everyone would go on strike anyway, as they threatened to do this year at Avignon.

So maybe Paris is doomed to be bereft of culture every summer. Except of course for the art museums, where you can still see some of the greatest collections in the world. But then again, art shows aren’t hindered by annual holidays, because all the artists concerned are on an eternal vacation in the afterlife. Though I bet that if they want to change from heaven to hell one summer, they have to ask for permission.

Wait a Minute! The WMD Spiel Was All a Lie by Dubya, So Stop Bringing Unpalatable Facts Into the Equation

Obama is currently meeting privately with his cabinet to discuss the news from Iraq that ISIS has discovered scores of Weapons of Mass Destruction that Saddam Hussein had hidden before the start of the US Invasion in 2003

claims Political Ears.

Buried in various spider holes and underground bunkers, the WMD stores were found in areas east, west, south and north around Tikrit and Baghdad. The existence of the WMD stores, unknown since 2003, have now become known. Now, known unknowns include ISIS’ specific plans for the WMDs and the expediency with which they will rain death on what they consider western infidel regimes.

 …  Proving that the past was not predictable at the time of the US Operation Iraqi Freedom invasion, the events of the past few months have definitively raised the level of unpredictability for the future. Jihadists now control nuclear, chemical, and biological WMD, creating a global crisis of the highest order.

 … With the success of un-American foreign policy enacted by the Obama Administration to remove support for the troops, elements of the American far left are unable to explain why their efforts to undermine the cause of freedom in Iraq was an intelligent decision.

Update: one reader says that NationalReport.net is "a satire website" while another replies that it

makes no difference if "we found them or not" THE FACTS ARE HE HAD THEM AND HE USED THEM ON THE IRANANS AND ON HIS OWN PEOPLE.

President Obama complained last week in an interview with the New York Times’ Thomas Friedman that American politics is increasingly dysfunctional for a number of reasons including the “Balkanization of the media.”

Thus writes Benny Huang.

The Balkanization of the country as a whole is just fine, as evidenced by his lawless illegal immigration policy, but the media have to be united. It’s clear that he does not value a diversity of viewpoints. According to the president, “people just watch what reinforces their deepest biases” and that’s a real problem.

Liberals have always been able to watch what reinforces their deepest biases. It’s called the network news. They can have their deepest biases confirmed in print as well, in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and nearly every other newspaper.

 … I’m glad that President Obama opposes the so-called fairness doctrine in radio and television which would mandate “equal time” to differing points of view on controversial subjects. There is, however, some evidence that his position is a sham like his previous opposition to same-sex marriage. His FCC even proposed a pilot program to monitor newsrooms for “balance.” They backed away from that one after considerable outrage. In any case, the traditional leftist position on the issue is supportive of the doctrine. Liberals just want to hear “both sides” and all that stuff.

Have you ever met a liberal who really wanted to hear both sides of an issue? I haven’t. There’s a reason they insist on campus speech codes, criminalize policy differences, fire conservatives from their jobs, and shout down opposing speakers. Surely it isn’t because they’re worried that the other guy won’t be allowed to speak his piece. They even complain that there’s too much balance on stories about, for example, global warming. Since November of 2013, the Los Angeles Times has even had a policy that prohibits all letters to the editor that dispute the theory of anthropogenic global warming. You can’t make this stuff up!

What President Obama is really complaining about with his “Balkanization” remark is that people are allowed to hear differing viewpoints, though not in equal proportions, of course. FOX News may be the behemoth of the cable news market, but its influence is a not an equal counterweight to the combined forces of MSNBC, CNN, the networks, and print media. What he really wants is total domination of the narrative factory that influences so of much public opinion. The fact that someone else gets to speak every once in a while, on one cable channel, is intolerable.

 … Their journalistic good old days peaked in 1974 when the legendary Woodward and Bernstein duo took down a president named Richard Nixon. I don’t blame the two Washington Post reporters because they uncovered true malfeasance which precipitated a coverup, which in turn precipitated abuses of presidential power. They did their job in keeping politicians honest.

Yet it should not be ignored that previous presidents—FDR, JFK, and LBJ—pulled similar shenanigans. Why couldn’t the Washington Post be bothered to investigate those presidents? Because they were liberal Democrats, of course. They got a pass. The fact that Carl Bernstein was the son of card-carrying communist parents, and that he sought to weaken a president who was trying to salvage a war that Bernstein didn’t want America to win explains a lot too.

Forty years later there’s at least one network that will cover similar abuses by a leftist president. I’m speaking of FOX News, of course.

 … The media in this country aren’t “Balkanized” enough. They’re still absurdly biased to the Left, making no pretenses of covering issues such as same-sex marriage, illegal immigration, abortion, or global warming with any degree of even-handedness. 

Conservatives have managed to find a very modest toehold in the journalistic world, but we shouldn’t be deluded into thinking that any kind of sea change has occurred. We’re still losing the media wars. Yet the fact that we’re even allowed any voice at all—a cable network, a few talk shows, half a newspaper—is an existential threat to this president, his administration, and the movement he represents.

Police Officers Love To Say That They Are at War, But There Is No Excuse For Abusing Language That Way

Re the petition to stop the “national militarization” of police departments (thanks to Instapundit):

Police officers like to say that they are in a war, a war on drugs, etc…

There is no excuse for abusing language like this (not even being a fan of over-the-top Hollywood movies): in a war (a real war), a soldier has reason to fear and reason to fight, as well as a reason to be heavily protected, as he is opposed to a (large, armed, and well-trained) force whose main objective is to win by shooting at you and bringing about your death.

The police officer fits in no category like that one, as the main object of (the rare, few, and usually disorganized) criminals is to get rich by breaking the law and, insofar as possible, avoiding any contact with the law (i.e., with any member of the police force whatsoever) and certainly avoiding a policeman's harm or death (which they all know can do nothing but make their main objective much harder).

In the civilian world, we are innocent until proven guilty, and the police officer, who is supposed to come from our "ranks", is supposed to reflect that by treating us as an equal.

The police are the public and the public are the police (1829)

What it all amounts to is that police officers who like to say that they are in a war are play-acting, a little more seriously certainly than Civil War reenactors, but play-acting (as tough gung-ho macho men) nonetheless as there is almost no way that a Hollywood film scenario will occur in real life.

Indeed, when things have truly gone bad, what has usually happened is that a police officer was shot by an entirely honest and law-abiding citizen awoken in the dark of night who — with good reason — thought that the over-the-top police action could only be the doing of criminals, say a home invasion by gang members, and reached for a weapon of defense. But more often, police-related deaths have been that of a basically harmless, run-of-the-mill civilian killed by one or more overeager cops.


Update: Andrew Klavan quotes Kurt Schlichter (thanks to Instapundit) as making the excellent point that

the military wins by increasing violence while the police win by decreasing violence.

With a misconceived sense of benevolence, progressive socialists make the populace believe they truly care, when in all actuality this is about the subjugation and destruction of the individual will

 … this is how liberal government works

explains Allen West:

A program is begun with good intentions, then politicians realize they can leverage the benefit for votes. It is the ultimate bribery scheme. Subsequently, fear and coercion is used against opposition – as we saw Republican Senator Thad Cochran do to his opposition in Mississippi — to scare blacks into believing these benefits will be taken away by those “mean ol’ Conservatives.”

The safety net has truly become a hammock, all at the expense of hardworking American middle-income families who are watching their wages dwindle and small business owners who were told, “you didn’t build that.”

To paraphrase Lady Margaret Thatcher, “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” With a misconceived sense of benevolence, progressive socialists make the populace believe they truly care, when in all actuality this is about the subjugation and destruction of the individual will. Why work? After all, as the singer says, “all you gotta do is ooh-ooh and nine months later, you got the big bucks.”

This is one of the fundamental differences between progressive socialists and constitutional conservatives: economic enslavement vs economic empowerment.

Europe's Disunity in the Face of Putin's Russia: “Old Europe” is not threatened, and so it can focus on its own economic interests, while “New Europe” is reminded of the nightmares of its past

Eastern Europe, which beginning with Poland is celebrating its 25th anniversary of freedom from Communism, has suddenly awakened from a beautiful dream about the end of history

writes Slawomir Sierakowski.

No less an authority than Adam Michnik, the legendary Polish anti-Communist dissident, recently announced that 2014 marks the end of the best period in Poland’s history in three centuries.

 … Now, faced with the powerlessness of the West before Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia, the countries of Eastern Europe are suddenly confronted with the need to reflect on their foreign policies — and no country more so than Poland.

The primary problem for Eastern Europe is not so much Mr. Putin’s aggression, but rather the disunity in the region’s response.

 … Nor can Eastern Europe depend on its Western allies. European weapons manufacturers, foremost among them German and French companies, are arming the Russian military, while Russia pays Europe with the money it earns from supplying gas, making Europe energy-dependent on Russia. Meanwhile European firms are signing multibillion-dollar energy contracts with the Russian energy companies Gazprom and Rosneft. 

As a result, Europe, the largest economy in the world, finds itself helpless in a confrontation with a country that, in economic terms and excluding the energy sector, belongs in the global third division.

The swirl of opinions, analyses and interests can be bewildering, especially in contrast to an essentially simple calculation by Russia. Unlike the West, it values geopolitical expansion, not economic conditions. Otherwise, Russia would invest the money it earns from oil and gas in economic development, and not in its military, which according to projected spending will account for well over a quarter of the national budget by 2015. 

This situation casts a dark shadow on the place where the Iron Curtain used to be. “Old Europe” is not threatened, and so it can focus on its own economic interests, while “New Europe” is reminded of the nightmares of its past. The fact that Ukrainians were willing to die in order to open the door to the European Union, which is now unwilling to bear the economic costs of a confrontation with Russia in order to protect them, is hardly comforting.

False Friends in English-French Discourse

 … some of the Google translations previously used by the owners were somewhat off the mark. For example, their starters included crudités (raw vegetables) translated as “crudeness”, and salade aux deux magrets as the mind-boggling “two breast salad” instead of “roast and smoked duck breast salad”. We also found mignons de porc (pork fillet) became “cute pig”, but the final straw had to be crottin de chèvre chaud (warm goat’s cheese) which was unappetisingly described as “warm goat dung”. 

From Neuville de Poitou, a small market town in western France, the Daily Telegraph's Duncan Webster broaches 'the thorny subject of “false friends”.'

What is a false friend? Well, in recent years, many Anglicisms have been adopted into the French language but they are not always used in ways we would expect. For example, a French town may have several parkings (not car parks), people erect tents on a camping (not a campsite) and may communicate by talkie-walkie.

Other uses of English words are less obvious. A French person having a makeover is going for a "relooking". They wear baskets (not trainers) on their feet, and use Scotch (tape) to seal a parcel. In English, too, we have misappropriated French words. For example, the French sit on canapés (their word for sofas), but would not sit on a commode, because that means a chest of drawers. It is, of course, necessary to explain these strange uses of our two languages and the resulting discussions are often a source of great amusement. 

Britain’s Family Doctors Call for End to Free Treatment

Britain’s family doctors have decided to press for an end to free treatment for patients under the socialized health service

reports the Herald Tribune.

The decision, announced by the British Medical Association, is intended to reduce overcrowding in consulting rooms and ease the burden of the country’s doctors. The BMA council’s chairman, J.R. Nicholson-Lailey, said that the BMA did not want these payments collected by the doctor. Mr. Nicholson-Lailey’s statement indicated that the payments might be used to keep persons with frivolous complaints from monopolizing the doctor’s time.  

— New York Herald Tribune, European Edition, July 22, 1964

Mingling With the Crowds

Serguei's take on the Assad bathtub in Syria — replete with sarin, mustard, and chlorine…

“Everything — everything — stems from Algeria”: France's unavowed forgetting of the Algerian war

Benjamin Stora arrived in Paris in the summer of 1962, a boy exile swaddled in as many layers of clothing as his parents could fit on his little body

writes Scott Sayare in the New York Times.

He came amid a flood of refugees, one million French colonists, Arabs and Jews fleeing the murderous tumult of revolutionary Algeria.

His family, suddenly destitute, brought with them as much of their homeland as they could. But Mr. Stora learned quickly not to speak of Algeria, he said. To do so would make him a reminder of France’s national disgrace, he feared, an emblem of the brutal, failed war to keep Algeria under the yoke of the receding French empire.

He trundled off to school and, with a sense of isolation and resentment that he was then too young to understand, set about forgetting.

France did the same. The forgetting of the Algerian war, a campaign begun in 1954 that left at least 400,000 Algerians and 35,000 French dead, in fact began well before the fighting ended in 1962. The conflict was inglorious in both aim and execution — the French made routine use of torture, for instance — and censors hid much of it from the populace, seizing newspapers, books and films deemed dangerous to national morale.

Only in 1999 did France officially recognize the fighting as a war at all, and only since then has the conflict entered school textbooks here. Though more than two million French soldiers were sent to fight, memorials are scant.

Mr. Stora, 63, has made a life of remembering, at first despite himself, later by conviction. A prolific historian, he is perhaps France’s foremost chronicler of the Algerian war, of its unavowed forgetting, and of the ways in which it continues to shape modern France: in the country’s discomfort over immigration and Islam, in its nostalgia for a more triumphal past, in its confusion over national identity. If France has begun a more honest reckoning with its colonial era, it is due in no small part to Mr. Stora, to his three dozen books and films and to his dogged belief that Algeria remains a toxic force here.

 … Mr. Stora studied Algeria well before such work was considered desirable; at the time, in the 1970s, open discussion of collaboration during the Nazi occupation was only just beginning. Now a pleasantly rumpled man with a round belly and a grave brow, he has helped train a generation of researchers. His best-known work, “Gangrene and Forgetting,” published in 1991, was among the first books to address the unspoken memory of the war. “Denial” was “eating away like a cancer” at France, he wrote.

 … The “pieds noirs,” the French inhabitants of colonial Algeria, were met with disdain in mainland France. Many were poor to start, and had fled Algeria with even less. Their resentment toward Algerians, but also toward the French government, which they felt had betrayed them, is deep even now.

SO, too, is that of the Harkis, Algerians who fought for the French. Perhaps 80,000 Harkis and family members fled to France in 1962, by Mr. Stora’s estimation, only to be held for years in internment camps. Many more were left behind; thousands, if not tens of thousands, were slaughtered as “traitors.”

Meanwhile, the French government excused itself and its soldiers of any possible wrongdoing, with a succession of amnesties.

“The French had to forget in order to live,” Mr. Stora said.

It is certainly easier to criticize Americans for conflicts involving America, like the Iraq war, when you know (or when you sense) that the wars that your own nation was involved in will not be a subject for discussion until 40-50 years down the road…

(This also applies to the wars your own nation was not involved in, like Sweden, the "neutral" country which lashed out at the American "fascists" during the Vietnam War era, and whose more or less passive collaboration with Hitler during the 1940s — the export of iron ore to the Nazis, allowing German troops through Sweden to the Finnish and Russian front — was not revealed, or talked about, until much later…)

Robin Williams: Good-Bye, Friend

Art by Dan Greenberg

The Day During the Iraq Crisis in 2003 When Le Monde Came Under Fire and Became Its Own Main Subject

 … une mauvaise nouvelle : « L'Express a avancé sa parution de vingt-quatre heures et publie demain les bonnes feuilles du livre de Pierre Péan et Philippe Cohen sur Le Monde. » Il est donc prêt, ce livre que la rumeur annonce déjà comme un brûlot !

France's daily of reference came under fire in February 2003, writes Raphaëlle Bacqué in (and about) Le Monde, when a book on "the hidden side of Le Monde" was published, La Face cachée du “Monde”.

Jean-Marie Colombani … a prévenu : « Il faudra choisir son camp. On sera pour ou contre. Je n'admettrai pas qu'on soit neutre. » 

Being either for us or against us, of course, was what all Frenchmen deplored as gravely as possible when such words were uttered by clueless Americans like George W Bush (whose attack on Iraq was to start only weeks later).

As it happens, the publication of the book will lead to a poisonous atmosphere at the newspaper, to charges of treason, to censorship, and to the ombudsman's admission that at the editorial offices, La Face cachée du “Monde” has become a more compelling subject than the Iraq crisis…

 … Biographe d'Hubert Beuve-Méry, Laurent Greilsamer n'ignore pas que Le Monde a déjà été violemment attaqué. Son indépendance, ses prises de position politiques, « son arrogance ! », disent ses détracteurs, ont presque toujours dérangé. Une longue suite de libelles jalonne son histoire. En 1951, L'Humanité l'accusait d'être « le journal de la grande bourgeoisie capitaliste ». L'année suivante, l'historien antistalinien d'origine russe Boris Souvarine voyait en Beuve-Méry « un agent du communisme ». Des quotidiens concurrents ont été lancés pour réduire son influence. On a tenté de le racheter ou de peser sur ses créanciers. En 1976, invité par Bernard Pivot sur le plateau d'« Apostrophes », un ancien de la rédaction, Michel Legris, vient raconter “Le Monde” tel qu'il est (Plon). Face au rédacteur en chef André Fontaine, outré, Legris pourfend un journal « inquisiteur », « jésuitique », « de mauvaise foi », lui reprochant sa « tartufferie » et dénonçant notamment sa complaisance pour les Khmers rouges en 1975.

Il y a des traîtres parmi nous »

 … Dans les bureaux du Monde, rue Claude-Bernard, le poison du soupçon a atteint, bien au-delà de ses trois cibles, l'ensemble de la rédaction. Partout on cherche des coupables. Certains parlent de complot, d'autres – souvent opposés au duo Colombani-Plenel – jugent qu'on a bien le droit de critiquer un journal lorsqu'il commet des erreurs. « Il y a des traîtres parmi nous puisque des journalistes ont pu prendre connaissance du livre avant qu'il sorte », dénonce sur LCI le chef adjoint du service politique Hervé Gattegno, en apprenant que deux membres de la Société des rédacteurs ont été conviés à lire le manuscrit, quarante-huit heures auparavant, dans les locaux de Mille et Une Nuits, la filiale de Fayard éditrice de l'ouvrage. Une assemblée générale, réunie en urgence, cinq heures durant, sous la lumière verdâtre des sous-sols de l'immeuble sans âme qui abrite Le Monde, menace de virer au règlement de comptes. Le chef des grands reporters, Eric Fottorino, longuement cité dans le livre, se voit contraint à une justification de ses liens avec Pierre Péan qui prend les allures d'une autocritique.  …

Une joie mauvaise

Le Monde ne s'aime plus. Le Monde n'est plus aimé. « Le plaisir de le voir à terre a été général, constate l'éditorialiste Gérard Courtois. Des décennies d'agacement silencieux et de haines multiples, d'acrimonie et de jalousie ont soudain dégorgé. » On en rit dans les dîners du Tout-Paris. Au bureau national du PS, les éléphants du parti, dont beaucoup n'ont digéré ni les attaques contre François Mitterrand ni la révélation du passé trotskiste de Lionel Jospin à la veille de la présidentielle de 2002, ricanent sur les mésaventures du quotidien.

A l'Elysée, Jacques Chirac, maintes fois exaspéré par les révélations sur le financement du RPR, a placé le livre bien en évidence sur son bureau, afin que ses visiteurs le remarquent. Les « Guignols de l'info », experts en dérision des pouvoirs établis, agitent chaque soir sur Canal+ une marionnette moustachue d'Edwy Plenel aux manières de commissaire politique. Pierre Péan et Philippe Cohen sont conviés partout, sans jamais trouver en face d'eux la contradiction : le trio des dirigeants mis en cause refuse de répondre sur les plateaux télévisés.

 

 … Dans son petit bureau de médiateur, au septième étage de la rue Claude-Bernard, Robert Solé croule depuis huit jours sous une avalanche de courriers et de mails de lecteurs compatissants, ironiques ou inquiets. A quelques jours de l'engagement de la coalition menée par les Etats-Unis dans la troisième guerre du Golfe, « La Face cachée du “Monde”, note le médiateur, a pris le pas sur l'Irak, c'est tout dire. » Diplomate subtil, cet ancien élève des jésuites au Caire a fait toute sa carrière au Monde. Ce journaliste modéré et courtois en connaît les arcanes, les traditions et les susceptibilités. Solé constate, lui aussi, que « jamais dans son histoire, Le Monde n'a été mis en cause de manière aussi globale ».

Comme il le fait chaque fois qu'il prend la plume, le médiateur a envoyé directement sa chronique au secrétariat de rédaction, parce qu'il est d'usage que cette conscience morale ne soit jamais amendée, même par la rédaction en chef. Elle se termine ainsi : « Le journal ne peut, me semble-t-il, s'en tenir à une réponse générale, une réfutation en bloc de La Face cachée du “Monde”. Il faut faire la lumière sur quelques accusations graves, qui risquent d'affecter durablement sa réputation et de resurgir à la moindre occasion. Car cette machine infernale est aussi une bombe à retardement. Une recension des “erreurs, mensonges, diffamations et calomnies” contenues dans le livre a commencé à la rédaction en chef. Elle devrait se traduire, tôt ou tard, par une publication. Le plus vite serait le mieux. Mais les éclaircissements que Le Monde doit à ses lecteurs ne sauraient se limiter à l'édition d'un catalogue d'erreurs. »

J'ai coupé le dernier paragraphe de ta chronique… »

Faut-il que les esprits soient chavirés pour rompre avec les règles sacrées du journal ! Une heure après le bouclage, Edwy Plenel prévient Robert Solé par téléphone : « J'ai coupé le dernier paragraphe de ta chronique… » Coupé ! La censure, inédite dans le journal de Beuve-Méry, met le « sage » Solé hors de lui : « Jamais, en huit ans de médiation, cela ne m'était arrivé ! » Une semaine plus tard, Le Monde doit publier le paragraphe caviardé et Plenel faire amende honorable. Mais, désormais, sa marionnette, aux « Guignols de l'info », est affublée d'une grande paire de ciseaux…

  … La Face cachée du “Monde” reste une obsession. Elle n'a pourtant pas encore montré tous ses effets dévastateurs.

Elle va bientôt faire une série de victimes. En octobre 2003, Daniel Schneidermann est licencié, après avoir contesté, dans un essai intitulé Le Cauchemar médiatique (Denoël), l'attitude de la direction du Monde. Un an plus tard, dans une des tours du Palais de justice qui abrite le bureau du premier président de la Cour de cassation Guy Canivet, une médiation met fin au procès en diffamation du Monde contre Pierre Péan et Philippe Cohen. Claude Durand renonce à tout tirage supplémentaire du livre, déjà vendu cependant à 204 416 exemplaires. L'effet de souffle de ce qu'Edwy Plenel appellera « un attentat éditorial » entraîne pourtant à son tour, en 2005, le départ de ce dernier, un an après qu'il eut réclamé en vain à Jean-Marie Colombani la direction du journal. La même année, Josyane Savigneau, dont la direction du « Monde des livres » avait eu droit à un chapitre entier du brûlot, doit céder la place. Le 22 mai 2007, Jean-Marie Colombani, qui sollicitait un troisième mandat à la tête du directoire du groupe, n'est pas reconduit par la Société des rédacteurs. Moins d'un an plus tard, Alain Minc devra à son tour se retirer. Comme un château de cartes, le trio s'est effondré devant une bombe en papier.

Jewish Commando Boldly Infiltrates Bradford's Israeli Free Zone

After George Galloway declared Bradford an Israel Free Zone (where no Israeli services, goods, scholars or tourists are welcome), an Isreali commando (Mossad?!) infiltrated the MP's home town.

British MP Galloway Declares His City an "Israel-Free Zone"

Remember George Galloway?

The QMI Agency (merci à Carine) reports that the

pro-Palestinian British MP has declared a northern city in England an "Israel-free zone."

During a talk in Leeds, George Galloway said Israeli tourists are not welcome in Bradford. Both cities are about 325 km north of London. 

"We have declared Bradford an Israel-free zone. We don't want any Israeli goods, we don't want any Israeli services, we don't want any Israeli academics coming to the university or the college, we don't even want any Israeli tourists to come to Bradford even if any of them had thought of doing so," Galloway told the group.

Update: Israelis react

The Le Monde Editor During the Iraq War Is a Former Stalinist and Trotskyist

Judith Perrignon has an article in Le Magazine du Monde on a former editor of the newspaper of reference.

[Adolescent à Alger, Edwy Plenel] rejoint la France, la JCR, jeunesse antistalinienne de la Ligue communiste révolutionnaire, néglige les études qui s'annoncent brillantes, lâche Sciences Po, se lance à corps perdu en politique. C'est à un congrès de la LCR à Rouen, qu'il rencontre sa femme, Nicole Lapierre, elle a pour pseudo "Emmanuelle", elle lui fait grand effet lorsqu'elle discourt à la tribune. Elle est aujourd'hui sociologue et anthropologue, directrice de recherche au CNRS et un personnage pilier de son existence. Ils ont une fille. Elle se souvient avoir, dès leur rencontre, mesuré l'empreinte laissée par l'histoire paternelle. "Son père n'avait pas encore été totalement réhabilité, il travaillait pour l'Unesco en Inde. S'il était ailleurs, c'est qu'il n'avait ni statut ni travail en France." L'avocat Jean-Pierre Mignard le rencontre à peu près au même moment, dans les cercles étudiants, il se rappelle "quelqu'un de brûlant, inquiet, curieux, anxieux, méticuleux et obsessionnel". Brûlant, inquiet, curieux, anxieux, méticuleux et obsessionnel. Autant de mots qui reviendront au fil de sa vie dans la bouche de ceux qui l'aiment comme dans celle de ceux qu'il insupporte.

"TROTSKISME CULTUREL"

 "Trotskiste un jour, trotskiste toujours", disent certains à son sujet, pour résumer la suite de son parcours, comme une bonne vieille entreprise d'entrisme chère à l'extrême gauche. Il y a appris la dialectique, rencontré la femme de sa vie, des amis qu'il a gardés, la figure de Daniel Bensaïd qui lui a donné à lire et découvrir, et il revendique encore un "trotskisme culturel". Mais le trotskisme n'était finalement que l'instrument d'une enfance revancharde et l'expression d'une jeunesse de son temps. "Ce n'était pas un tribun, un homme de meeting, mais un meneur discret et déjà une plume acerbe et astucieuse, qui restait proche des Antilles et traitait à Rouge l'éducation. Quand il nous a quittés, ce n'était pas comme une rupture", se souvient Alain Krivine.

C'était en 1979. "J'avais trouvé en chemin un métier qui était le journalisme. En 1970, je vendais Rouge dans la rue. Je criais : "Demandez ! Lisez le seul journal qui annonce la couleur !" Un journal, c'est chercher le lecteur", affirme Plenel. Il était le crieur qui tient aujourd'hui lieu d'emblème à Mediapart. Il avait trouvé sa voie, son arme. Sa cible : "Le cerveau reptilien de l'Etat." Il emploie souvent l'expression, c'est un homme à formules. On dirait un long fleuve poisseux au bord duquel il aurait grandi.

Tout commence vraiment à l'été 1982 : il n'y a pas grand monde à la rédaction du Monde où il travaille depuis deux ans, il se retrouve à couvrir en catastrophe l'attentat antisémite de la rue des Rosiers. Ce fils de vice-recteur avait jusqu'alors traité l'éducation, le voilà qui côtoie la police, l'enquête. "Je suis passé de gommes et crayons à casques et matraques." Il n'en sortira plus. La police a ses passages souterrains vers le cerveau de l'Etat. Le voilà qui met à nu la guerre police-gendarmerie, surveille la cellule antiterroriste de l'Elysée, et révèle que les trois militants irlandais arrêtés à Vincennes n'ont rien à voir avec les dangereux terroristes que l'Elysée a donnés en pâture aux journaux. "Il faudra tout de même qu'on sache qui est vraiment ce M. Plenel", aurait alors dit Mitterrand.

JOUEUR DE POKER

En ces années-là, au Monde, on peut encore croiser le fondateur, Hubert Beuve-Méry, dans l'ascenseur, Plenel a 30 ans, des chemises noires déjà, sa moustache déjà, il fume le cigare, il a l'air d'un Sud-Américain, reconnaissable entre tous, physiquement pas le genre de la maison. Il n'est pas un séducteur de femmes, il ne s'adresse bien souvent qu'aux hommes, mais il a l'aura de la conviction, du secret, et la virilité de ceux qui cherchent les coups. Il rend ses papiers à la dernière minute, ce qui évite que son chef de service ne lui demande trop d'explications et de retouches.

Il est comme le joueur de poker, et c'est sur la foi d'une seule source qu'il offre au Monde, avec Bertrand Le Gendre, l'un de ses plus beaux scoops en 1985 : le Rainbow Warrior, bateau de Greenpeace coulé par une troisième équipe de la DGSE, dont la "une" est encore affichée dans le hall du journal. Et il bluffe quand on le freine.

Unlucky people miss chance opportunities because they are too focused on looking for something else

Wanting to examine "the impact on people's lives of chance opportunities, lucky breaks, and being in the right place at the right time", a decade ago, The Daily Telegraph's Richard Wiseman set out to investigate luck.

After many experiments, I believe that I now understand why some people are luckier than others and that it is possible to become luckier.

Take the case of chance opportunities. Lucky people consistently encounter such opportunities, whereas unlucky people do not. I carried out a simple experiment to discover whether this was due to differences in their ability to spot such opportunities.

I gave both lucky and unlucky people a newspaper, and asked them to look through it and tell me how many photographs were inside. On average, the unlucky people took about two minutes to count the photographs, whereas the lucky people took just seconds. Why? Because the second page of the newspaper contained the message: "Stop counting. There are 43 photographs in this newspaper." This message took up half of the page and was written in type that was more than 2in high. It was staring everyone straight in the face, but the unlucky people tended to miss it and the lucky people tended to spot it.


For fun, I placed a second large message halfway through the newspaper: "Stop counting. Tell the experimenter you have seen this and win £250." Again, the unlucky people missed the opportunity because they were still too busy looking for photographs.

Personality tests revealed that unlucky people are generally much more tense than lucky people, and research has shown that anxiety disrupts people's ability to notice the unexpected. In one experiment, people were asked to watch a moving dot in the centre of a computer screen. Without warning, large dots would occasionally be flashed at the edges of the screen. Nearly all participants noticed these large dots.

 … The harder [the anxious people] looked, the less they saw.

And so it is with luck - unlucky people miss chance opportunities because they are too focused on looking for something else. They go to parties intent on finding their perfect partner and so miss opportunities to make good friends. They look through newspapers determined to find certain types of job advertisements and as a result miss other types of jobs. Lucky people are more relaxed and open, and therefore see what is there rather than just what they are looking for.

My research revealed that lucky people generate good fortune via four basic principles. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good.

 … In the wake of these studies, I think there are three easy techniques that can help to maximise good fortune:

• Unlucky people often fail to follow their intuition when making a choice, whereas lucky people tend to respect hunches. Lucky people are interested in how they both think and feel about the various options, rather than simply looking at the rational side of the situation. I think this helps them because gut feelings act as an alarm bell - a reason to consider a decision carefully.

• Unlucky people tend to be creatures of routine. They tend to take the same route to and from work and talk to the same types of people at parties. In contrast, many lucky people try to introduce variety into their lives. For example, one person described how he thought of a colour before arriving at a party and then introduced himself to people wearing that colour. This kind of behaviour boosts the likelihood of chance opportunities by introducing variety.

• Lucky people tend to see the positive side of their ill fortune. They imagine how things could have been worse. In one interview, a lucky volunteer arrived with his leg in a plaster cast and described how he had fallen down a flight of stairs. I asked him whether he still felt lucky and he cheerfully explained that he felt luckier than before. As he pointed out, he could have broken his neck.

Why are some people so much luckier than others?

Why are some people so much luckier than others? 

asks Nathan Kotny (thanks to Instapundit).

In one experiment, Wiseman asked people to self identify themselves as lucky or unlucky. Then he gave his test subjects a newspaper. “Count the number of photographs inside”, he told them.

There were 43 photographs.

On average, the unlucky people took 2 minutes to count them all. The lucky people? Seconds.

The lucky people noticed the giant message that took up half the second page of the newspaper. It said, “Stop counting – There are 43 photographs in this newspaper.”

The unlucky people missed it. They also missed the equally giant message half way through the newspaper, “Stop counting, tell the experimenter you have seen this and win $250.”

The “lucky” people weren’t lucky. They were just more observant.

Punishing Men for Prostitution: One more peg in the machine against democracy and against the republic

Instapundit quotes Charlotte Alter's Time story that

Law enforcement agencies across the country collaborated in a recent series of sex stings that netted the arrests of almost 500 men seeking to buy sex and 14 pimps and traffickers, officials will announce Wednesday.

The police crackdown, part of an annual “National Day of Johns Arrests,” led to more arrests than any previous sex sting of its kind, officials said. Law enforcement agencies in 14 different states collaborated on the sting, which is part of an ongoing national pivot toward fighting the sex trade by punishing johns instead of prostitutes.
 
 … The National Day of Johns is part of a national trend toward punishing men who buy sex instead of prostitutes who are sometimes forced to sell it. New York has already announced some measures to punish pimps more than trafficking victims, and to rehabilitate women who have been in the sex trade rather than imprison them. The shift has also gained traction internationally, with Sweden’s ban on purchasing sex instead of on selling it has becoming a model across Europe.

Ed 2 comments:

Women are free to make their own choices about their own bodies. Unless they choose prostitution; then it's the patriarchy's fault.

tjking scratches his head:

Let me see if I can remember back in time... like maybe last month when the Hobby Lobby decision spawned a gaggle of dingbats saying, "What kind of a world do we live in where the outdated religious beliefs of the person who signs your paycheck can dictate what a woman does in her bedroom and with her own body".

I don't even know here to start with that one... 

Let me add that

This is one more peg in the machine against democracy and against the republic, by making one hysterical announcement after another, year after year after year, that the common (male) citizen is a pervert and/or an abuser and/or an ignoramus and/or a hater and/or a racist, etc etc etc — in other words, not to be trusted with his vote, indeed not to be trusted at all…

Dont'cha see?! They don't know how to act on their own, these voters who need some type of reeducation, what they need indeed is leaders along with an army of bureaucrats to guide them in, and through, their lives…

This fits right in, actually, with the Hobby Lobby "What kind of a world do we live in where the outdated religious beliefs of the person who signs your paycheck can dictate what a woman does in her bedroom and with her own body", as it is always the independent-minded males — i.e., the responsible citizens (I hate to say) using their brains rather than the females using their hearts (Yin/Yang, anyone?) — who must be browbeaten, beaten into submission…

Men must become robots, who never protest against the machine, who never drive above the speed limit (or complain about the speed limit), who never would look down at a woman, any women whatsoever (for acting sluttish, for instance), and who never have sexual feelings or engage in sexual acts when it is deemed inappropriate by our overlords, male or female.

All the boogeymen who haunt progressives’ nightmares were conveniently implicated in JFK’s murder

Heather Digby Parton doesn’t care much for Texans who exercise their constitutional rights

notes Benny Huang.

The Salon columnist sounded like a true authoritarian this week when she penned a piece called “Texas Gun Nuts’ Scary Ritual: How Hatred of a President Turned Profane” decrying the fact that a number of gun rights activists rallied for open carry laws at Dallas’s Dealey Plaza.

Parton seems blithely unware that Dealey Plaza, while being the site of the 1963 Kennedy assassination, is also the center of metropolitan Dallas. Any connection to the events that transpired there fifty years ago is purely coincidental.

To Parton, the gun rights rally seemed eerily reminiscent of a time long ago when right-wing Texans gave President Kennedy a chilly “welcome.” Their crime, apparently, was voicing their opposition to the president’s administration and its policies. They took out a mean newspaper ad, carried mean signs, and demanded to “address their grievances [sic].” They even swore fealty to the Constitution, which has reduced Ms. Parton to a pants-wetting ball of nerves.

In other words, the dangerous right-wingers of early 1960s Dallas did nothing more than exercise the rights guaranteed in our Constitution to every American. Apparently it isn’t just the second amendment Parton hates but the first as well.

Ms. Parton isn’t very subtle with the inferences she draws. “The right-wing hatred for John F. Kennedy was in some ways as extreme as the hatred for Barack Obama and nowhere was it more energized than Dallas in 1963,” she writes.

Yeah. And Kennedy was murdered. Surely Obama is next, and we know who the culpable parties will be—conservatives like me. We’re already guilty of future crimes that exist only in Parton’s mind.

As if her smear weren’t clear enough, Parton continues, after spouting a laundry list of questions that right-wing meanies asked Kennedy: “You get the drift. And you probably recognize the tone. The subject may have changed somewhat but the arrogant attitude combined with the aggrieved victimization is a hallmark of right-wing politics even today. As we all know, later that day the president was gunned down in Dealey Plaza.”

Notice the use of the passive voice which avoids making an accusation against any particular person. Nowhere in the piece is Lee Harvey Oswald, or anyone else for that matter, identified as the assassin. Why not? Because it doesn’t matter. Oswald didn’t kill President Kennedy; Dallas did, with its love of firearms and its hideous reactionary vitriol. Kennedy was a beautiful man who fell victim to a lynching of sorts in the capital of Dixieland bigotry.

The problem with Parton’s analysis is that neither attitudes nor cities kill people. Human beings do. Further complicating her narrative is the fact that Oswald was a communist every bit as red as Kennedy’s blood. He was so enthralled with the Soviet system that he defected to Moscow hoping to trade military secrets for life in a worker’s paradise.

 … all the boogeymen who haunt progressives’ nightmares were conveniently implicated in Kennedy’s murder. If that sounds like they’re projecting their own prejudices upon their analysis, that’s because they are.

They wish it had happened that way. They want an orderly world of good guys and bad guys, in which dashing liberal presidents with movie star good looks are murdered by people they can readily despise—rednecks, corporatists, militarists. Anyone but a communist!

Heather Digby Parton exploits the tragic murder of John F. Kennedy in order to stifle policy differences. Her insinuation that dissent is akin to murder is clear. We’re all guilty of Kennedy’s murder, and probably the hypothetical murder of Barack Obama too, if only because we entertain bad thoughts. The only way to exculpate ourselves is never to utter a disparaging word about the president, provided that he’s a liberal Democrat of course.

What they’re teaching in California is not history, but rather homosexual folklore, replete with cartoonish villains, blameless victims, and courageous heroes

Three years ago California became the first state in the Union to mandate the teaching of homosexual history in public schools

writes Benny Huang.

As a history buff myself I have no objection to schools teaching LGBTQXYZ history. What they’re teaching in California however is not history by any conceivable definition, but rather homosexual folklore, replete with cartoonish villains, blameless victims, and courageous heroes.

No one fears teaching history, true history that is, more than the homosexual movement. They’ve been toiling for the better part of twenty years to erase the truth about the movement’s early days.

The movement moved above ground in the 1970s when it suddenly became socially acceptable, in a few urban enclaves such as New York and San Francisco, to declare boldly a desire to engage in intercourse with members of the same sex.

By no means did the movement limit itself to consenting adults. Its goal was to “liberate” society from its antiquated hang-ups about sex, including pedophilia and pederasty. They made no secret of it. Yes, it was controversial to campaign for pedophile rights, but not significantly more controversial than campaigning for “gay” rights. All of the same “bigots” opposed them with all of the same arguments.

 … How about a few more LGBTQXYZ history lessons you won’t read in California’s censored schoolbooks? San Francisco’s own Harvey Milk, the first openly “gay” elected official in California, was a teacher who seduced his underage male students. None dare call it recruiting. Also, he wasn’t shot for “being gay,” as the legend goes. Milk’s assassin, Dan White, was a frustrated city supervisor who resigned his seat, had a change of heart, and then asked Mayor George Muscone to reinstate him. Milk advised Muscone to deny the request, which drove White into a fit of rage that ended the lives of both Milk and the heterosexual Muscone. White was a hothead, but not a “homophobe;” his voting record indicates that he was on the same side as Milk on all of the big “gay” issues.

 … Schools should teach history without fear or favoritism. They shouldn’t be afraid to tackle topics such as “gay” terrorism, public toilet sex, Jim Jones, AIDS misinformation campaigns, Alfred Kinsey, and the on-going campaign to sexualize children.

400 Russian Sailors in French Port to Train on Ultra-Tech Mistral Warships

Saint-Nazaire, a shipbuilding city on the Atlantic coast southwest of Paris, is used to seeing sailors from around the world. But few have been the subject of as much interest and debate as those who arrived here last month to begin training on the first of two warships built for the Russian Navy by France.

Thus writes Maïa de la Baume in the New York Times, regarding France's sale of untra-tech Mistral vessels to Russia.

Even before the downing of a Malaysia Airlines passenger jet over Ukraine put new pressure on Europe to impose stiffer sanctions on Russia, France’s decision to proceed with the sale of the warships to Moscow and to train the Russian Navy in how to operate them had prompted opposition and concern from the United States and other nations.

Now, with much of Europe showing signs of taking a harder line with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, Saint-Nazaire has become a symbol of the difficult trade-off between diplomatic and national concerns on the one hand and jobs and an economic future on the other.

The challenge facing France is one that many European nations are grappling with: Is Britain willing to risk the huge sums of Russian money that flow through London’s financial district? Is Germany willing to endanger the supply of natural gas from Russia?

But in few places is the trade-off quite as stark or direct as it is here. Like many shipbuilding centers, Saint-Nazaire has fallen on hard times. The unemployment rate is around 14 percent. In 2009, the main shipbuilder, STX France, put half the shipyard’s 2,500 employees on reduced hours, forcing them to take partial unemployment benefits.

In that kind of climate, the $1.6 billion deal signed in 2011 by President Nicolas Sarkozy to build two Mistral-class amphibious assault ships for Russia, and to train the Russians in operating them, was viewed here as a triumph. The Russian sailors are now in Saint-Nazaire to train on the first of the ships, the Vladivostok, which is scheduled for delivery in November. The second, the Sevastopol, is scheduled for delivery next year.

 … Christophe Morel, a union delegate at the STX France shipyard … downplayed political concerns about the French contract with Russia, calling the Vladivostok a “big ferry” with minor advanced technology and “few weapons” onboard. (It is designed to carry up to 30 helicopters, 60 armored vehicles, 13 tanks and 700 soldiers.)

 … Emmanuel Gaudez, a spokesman for DCNS, the naval shipbuilder that supervised the deal, declined to offer any details on what the Russians were doing. “We have decided to take a low profile,” he said. “It is a highly political case,” he said.

Reminder: Eastern Europe Leaders Protest Paris's Sale of High-Tech Mistral Warships to Russia

National Front's Le Pens Call Putin a "Patriot", Worthy of "Admiration", Whom the World Is "Lucky to Have"

As No Pasarán has written before, anybody likening American conservatives or the Tea Party to France's far-right Front National is, deliberately or otherwise, ignoring the Le Pen Family Members' anti-American, pro-Russian statements in the press (not to mention their anti-free market demagoguery).

Now even Le Monde can no longer ignore the "Putin-fan National Front", as its weekly magazine publishes a full-page article enumerating
1) the admiration of Marine Le Pen — who was welcomed with open arms in the Duma — for Vladimir Putin, coupled with a desire for France to turn away from the United States
2) the doffing of hats to Russia's president
3) the assurance that homosexuals are not persecuted in Russia (unlike places like Saudi Arabia and Qatar)
4) Marion Maréchal-Le Pen calling Putin "a patriot", whose defense of his country's interests "functions rather well"
5) Jean-Marie Le Pen calling the world lucky to have a leader (Putin) with sang-froid.

En visite à Moscou, Marine Le Pen regrette la... by lemondefr

Austria Declares War Upon Serbia

All Austrian reservists living in Germany have been summoned to join the colors

reports the New York Herald,

and all leave of German officers and soldiers has been stopped. According to a despatch from Vienna, one of the highest personages in Germany — whom, I learn, is none other than the Emperor — is said to have written personally to Herr von Tschirschky und Bogendorff, the German Ambassador in Vienna, telling him to stiffen the back of Count Berchtold, who at that time was all for conciliation with Servia.  The result was that the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister entirely changed his attitude and prepared the drastic ultimatum to Belgrade.

Although Austria-Hungary sent the ultimatum before it had consulted the German Foreign Office, Germany is backing her ally right or wrong. All eyes here are turned upon Russia as holding the issue in her hands. Consequently, a St. Petersburg despatch crediting the Tsar with having said: ‘‘Austria-Hungary has thrown down the gauntlet, I shall pick it up,’’ causes consternation. Army circles say that Germany is prepared for war at a moment’s notice. The Emperor arrived in Potsdam this afternoon, and was greeted by an effusive popular demonstration.

— The New York Herald, European Edition, July 28, 1914

From the front page of the Herald the following day:

The Austro-Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday [July 28] issued the following statement: “The Servian Government not having replied in a satisfactory manner to the Note which was handed to it on July 23, 1914, by the Austro-Hungarian Minister, the Imperial and Royal Government finds itself obliged to take steps to safeguard its rights and interests. It considers itself from the present moment in a state of war with Servia.” 

BERLIN — Despatches from Vienna announce that fighting has already taken place on the Austro-Servian frontier. Servian volunteers have crossed the frontier at several points. The Austrian troops returned the fire. 

BRUSSELS — Although the outlook is not yet critical, all Belgian officers and soldiers on leave have been recalled to the colors, and the German and French frontiers are being watched closely by Belgian mounted police and military scouts. 

BUDAPEST — A stirring scene occurred in the Lower House of the Hungarian Parliament when Count Tisza, the Prime Minister, made a striking reference to the present crisis. He said that what was wanted now were deeds of arms, not words. Full of pride, he pointed to the enthusiasm of the people without distinction of nationality. 

— The New York Herald, European Edition, July 29, 1914

It’s now Paris Plages time, when the city pours sand all over stretches of the riverside and canal banks, sets out beach furniture and parasols, and pretends it is Saint Tropez for a month

  … this addiction to water is shared by most of my fellow Parisians

writes the Telegraph's Stephen Clarke,

even though we are at least two hours from the nearest sea (unless you own a helicopter or a Ferrari fitted with an invisibilty [sic] cloak). It’s now Paris Plages time, when the city pours sand all over stretches of the riverside and canal banks, sets out beach furniture and parasols, and pretends it is Saint Tropez for a month. People flock to the “beaches”, and in my area, near the Bassin de la Villette, locals colonise the loungers, deckchairs and picnic tables from dawn. Even the Germans don’t get a look in.

Over the past few days, the smell of suncream has been pungent. Parisians skin is renowned for its rhino-like thickness, but the sun has been doing its best to turn everyone the colour of steak tartare.

The only sad thing about all this is that despite the large expanses of water just steps away from the sand and deckchairs, it is off limits. The Seine is polluted, has a dangerous current and is frequented by barges and bateaux mouches that would turn a swimmer into the above-mentioned steak tartare. The canal basin is less populated by boats, but the water is a grey soup of urban run-off, rat urine and general stagnation.