A brave, nuanced, symbolic drop in the bucket

Their prescience demands a serious financial commitment:

The European Commission this week decided to allocate 9 Million € for the pursuit of actions against terrorist attacks, initiated under the "Pilot Project Fight against Terrorism". This includes actions in relation to critical infrastructure protection, terrorist financing, explosives and violent radicalisation.

Vice-President Franco Frattini, Commissioner responsible for Justice, Freedom and Security, stated that "the actions financed under this project will enhance the European Union’s capacity to effectively prevent and respond to terrorist attacks. It will assist in better protecting critical infrastructures, preventing terrorist financing, the use of explosives and violent radicalization and increase Bio-preparedness, by training intervention personnel and by identifying key objectives and proper measures to protect our citizens"

From the aptly named Europaworld. Thanks to a correspondent, I’ve come across this quote:

Hope is not a strategy

- General Tommy Franks

It’s because they’re smarter than you are.

In fact they can figure out election results a week in advance, in spite of being neo-Lisbonian Über-brains. They’ve never been wrong before, right?

Like, Duh.

Imagine a Place So Primitive That the Left Still Thinks “Property Is Theft”

They see the world in black and white.

« Everyone a homeowner. The big lie of the right! »

the fuse is lit!

Sorry, It’s Already Been Tried.

A Surplus of that Vision Thing

Once a Commie, always a Commie:

In Short:

In a speech, Ségolène Royal unveiled her vision of a pragmatic EU based on environmental policies, social protection and research to win the Socialist's support in view of the French Presidential elections next year.

Ironically, 3 things that market can provide more efficiently without having to shove it down peoples’ throats.

It’s pretty obvious what they get off on.

Europe: Patronizing and Sexist to the Core

Brought to you by Eurostar, if you can believe it...

EUtopia Will Fight Wars for Oil

With imaginary robot soldiers, little shame, even less pride, and some psychotropic compounds that can shorten their memories:

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS – EU defence ministries are going to have to contend with a shrinking recruitment pool for soldiers, a public that is more cautious about interventionist operations and 24/7 media scrutiny,

The 28-page study looks to a future where Europe will be externally dependent for 90 percent of its oil and 80 percent of gas by 2025 and where "strong migratory pressures" due to the fast-growing populations in Africa and the Middle East offset by stable and ageing European population are set to cause "direct or indirect challenges" to Europe's security interests.

Methinks someone is smoking some good kaka. Big markets like the U.S. and the E.U. are more dangerous than the sellers in the energy market since all you need to bankrupt the seller is to change sources and release strategic reserves.

Remember that most of the “No War for Oil!!!” mob failed Econ 101, and have no idea what a monpsony is anyway, even if they do see thing through the “Us ‘n Them” prism.

One major buyer (the west) and one seller (an imaginary OPEC where they actually act in unison) makes for a kind of balancing of power that would make the greenie notion of energy independence an act of war in itself that would impoverish the populations that export petrolium. After all, because we all implicity trust every leftist theory, we all know how unemployment causes terrorism, right? Imagine all the terrorist pouring out of Alberta for every PV panel you install on the roof of your house.

Have you no soul, man!?!

However, Europe's possible need to act in any of these regions or situations will be tempered by a more clued-up, risk-averse society.

Risk averse? More like narcoleptic.

Here’s one of the gems, though:

"Military action, not explicitly authorised by the UN, may become increasingly controversial," states the report, adding "military operations will be subject to ever-increasing scrutiny by elected officials, media and populations."

The sketchiness the public has about being a nation (or nations), or being worthy of pursuing a public interest is patently obvious. Circumspect to the point of indecision and such incredible fearfulness that they need the barbaric kmajority of the U.N. to tell them it’s okay to fight at all, even if it weren’t for oil, but about the stability of global society and even their own security. The question, like many in the Holy Land is entirely academic anyway since the potential manpower figures are dwindling, and assume pacifists and people with no particular affection for their “continent” will not find any personal irony in being conscripted.

As well as the social perceptions, defence ministries will also have to deal with the fact that less and less people are likely to become soldiers, with the armed forces recruitment pool (16-30 years) to fall by over 15 percent by 2025.

"As armed forces professionalise and the falling birth-rate increases competition in the labour market for young men and women, personnel costs will, in practice, pre-empt more and more of defence spending unless manpower is reduced," says the report.

With some 2 million people currently in uniform in Europe, "there is plenty of scope to do this," it highlighted.

One way of overcoming this problem would be to "outsource" and to resort to "increased automation, from warships to robots," the report suggested.

2 million largely worthless meatbags in uniform, whereas the estimates of combat ready forces hasn’t exceeded 100 000 in the past two decades. No-one fears the marching band, so bring out Roombas with rifles.

A Reader Reflecting on Society

I received an interesting note that is worth sharing. His patience has worn thin:

Yesterday I listened to a Christian Arab bent on evangelizing the banlieues in the Olivier Pichon libre journal on Radio-Courtoisie, and he told of what was said to him after his conferences in the 'hoods... for example, one 50-ish lady whose door was unsuccessfully kicked in by two violent Youths... the police come only after an hour or so, and don't dare to arrest the Youths, but calm them down, and tell the lady they can't do anything... they go away, the Youths threaten the lady with rape and death, and the lady is now hiding at her elderly mother's home, having fled her apartment... and when she asks the Powers-that-be for help, she is told she is not a priority, because she's French and already has a home.

I dunno... A few weeks ago, while buying bread, I had a conversation with an old lady, which moved me so. She was formerly privileged, (mother, married to an university teacher, etc, etc...), but now she is living alone without resources except a slight retirement in a shitty ‘hood in Lyon. She’s been mugged by Youths three time since the beginning of this year, all the businesses are being chased away by the lack of security... she was on vacation here, with her daughter who normally lives in Paris, and was not thrilled at the perspective of going back "home".

All this is to say that I have a feeling of living in the shadow of a terrible future, like being on the Titanic, listening to the idle, pointless chatter of the passengers, while knowing fully we’re going to sink eventually... Mitterrand the scumbag had his own vision of thing... saying once "après moi, le déluge", and in another occasion "nous sommes en train de faire la fête dans un avion qui va s'écraser"...

Further, he notes a sort of propensity for some social systems to be less able to evolve with will. The test will come at some point and as we see from everyday social issues as noted above, it will find itself in every place:

You might also wish to check this out.

That's funny, the idea of a "providential man (or woman, as with Joan of Arc)" is very, very French; as noted by a liberal French economist and historian, Jacques Marseilles, France is the country of civil wars; its society lacks the civil tools of the Anglo-Saxon societies, and reform itself only through convulsive spasm, with "providential men" emerging to lead us away from turmoil.

Since the revolution, it is a society marked by a quasi-permanent rift between the "left" and the "right", and a huge instability (let me see: 5 republics, 2 empires, one triumvirat, 1 occupation gvt, 2 monarchies, I think that's all).

That the centralization of all matters in life from Napoleon’s administration and curriculum to today’s aggressive socialism points very clearly to a kind of obsessive search for a means to either develop those tools, or to never need them. An effort which hopes to find a way out of the gambles taken on the leader (as a providential figure) and risking totalitarianism, or the creation of a model as a cult or fetish at the very least.

- Thank you, gentle reader.

Lucid, All knowing, All feeling...

...and all bullshit and rotten from the heart up. The Bundeswehr’s very own Abu Greib type lightening rod is sure to be explained away rather than bleated on and on about for years on end. Europeans, you see can do no wrong, and even if they do, there’s no reason to dwell on it or gin-up theories that talking heads could call ”decryptage”.

The press: fat, happy and stupid, and more bothered by having a “stance” on events than reporting events.

Rock on, Medienkritik

Beccy Cole: “Poster Girl”

After all, lefty’s heroes in the West Bank would do it...

A Repeat Performance, Confusion, and Plantu



Dig the comtrapasso-esque "crucifiction" stance, and the conciliatory candle cum bomb-belt strapped to his protagonist.

Stupéfiants Socialiste

Life, engineered:

In March 2005, the EU relaunched its Lisbon Strategy to become the world's most dynamic knowledge-based economy by 2010. More on growth and jobs and transfering more ownership of the strategy to national member states via national action plans were the two essential elements of the "Lisbon renewal".

Which is impossible under these circumstances:

PARIS (AFP) - Martine Aubry, national secretary of the PS [Socialist Party] for employment, commented on Thursday with the proposal of Thierry Breton to liberalize [the 35 hour per week] working hours regulations, saying that the government is engaging in “social regression”.

[ ... ]

“Bear in mind that the law is there to guarantee minimal protection for workers. Convention imposes it as well since we ratified [rules] of the International Labour Organization”, the author of the 35 hour workweek laws.

The mayor of Lille [Aubry] brings to bear the social dialogue that [Finance Minister] Thierry Breton is using in an “authoritative way” that the majority agrees with, which has just been reintroduced by legal amendment. The decree by the Home Office exempting hotel and restaurant workers’ from the 35 hour workweek law was to be phased out otherwise.

Leave it up to a Socialist: There goes your sovereignty, folks! ILO making immutable, unquestionable rules which one ideology among many can bully through as if it absolved them of their tyrannical desire to zombify the population by making every job, every life, every lifestyle identical. It’s so constricting that even union types hate this economy-killing bit of attempted populism.

The real question is: why is a law needed anyway? If people want to work more or less hours than is conventional for whatever reasons they have, why can’t they find a career or employer compatible with that? – either to have more personal time or higher earnings to retire early, support a hobby like collecting art or mountain climbing – or whatnot – why sort of society feels compelled to limit it and make everyone less free?

The Great Euro Thought Crime

Also known as speaking your mind:

Galician blogger Alejandro de Llano has told in his blog that he has been charged with the great crime of supporting Israel and being against the Palestinian people.

On October 13th, 2006, he has received a summons from a Criminal Judge announcing him that he is held responsible of the crime of supporting Israel and also of acting against Palestinian people. They did not give him a copy of the summons and they did not let him make any copies.

Barcepundit has more about this form of a knock on the door late at night. The primitive European view of free speech is staggering in its’ stupidity. They don’t even know what freedom is anymore.the fuse is lit!

What’s that about the impropriety of exporting democracy?

The hypocrites are at it again:

”[Parliament] calls on the European Commission and the EU member states to take a principled and consequent stand in the negotiations on a new Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA)...with a view to placing democracy, human rights and freedom of expression at the core of any future agreement and instituting a clear mechanism to monitor implementation," the formal resolution said.

But as usual, the higher principals, the dreams, the hopes, the better angels of their spirit snuff the tender budding flower of decency before it can poison the European view of itself as humanistic:

The Finnish EU presidency also took great pains not to offend the Russian leader at its Lahti dinner, while the European Commission continues to focus on getting access to Russian gas and oil for EU firms and building new pipelines to Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

So much for all that. Must be about another pipeline then, eh fat boy?the fuse is lit!

Like a kind of Jerusalem for bad ideas.

Nowhere else can one discover that everyone else on earth is so completely unoriginal. Both for good and bad, we discover the auspicious history of the town of town of Montargis:

The men and women met in the Durzy gardens behind the Town Hall, where a wall was used for their propaganda posters. It was here in July 1920 that Cai Hesen -- the leading theoretician -- set out a programme for the "salvation of China" which the next month he urged in a letter to Mao.

"It is known as the letter of August 13th, and it proposed the creation of a Chinese Communist Party. Mao signalled his approval and the following year the party was set up," says Wang.

Then I guess it should come as no surprise that the CCP killed 77 million of their own people.

- Thanks to Val

Helpful advice

How to avoid brutal assault or robbery during your stay in Paris.



Front and Back

- Brought to you as a public service by alert
reader Sebastian. Thanks, man.

Scenes from the Crowbar Hotel

Inmate mural from the now-defunct Washington DC prison at Lorton, Virginia, USAthe fuse is lit!

Some tourists develop paranoia, others lose their marbles altogether.

A sophisticated culture runs headlong into those charming traditions of another one:

PARIS (Reuters) - Around a dozen Japanese tourists a year need psychological treatment after visiting Paris as the reality of unfriendly locals and scruffy streets clashes with their expectations, a newspaper reported on Sunday.


The phenomenon, which the newspaper dubbed "Paris Syndrome", was first detailed in the psychiatric journal Nervure in 2004.

Bernard Delage of Jeunes Japon, an association that helps Japanese families settle in France, said: "In Japanese shops, the customer is king, whereas here assistants hardly look at them ... People using public transport all look stern, and handbag snatchers increase the ill feeling."

- Thanks to Ace of Spades and to ¡No Pasarán! reader Stavn

the fuse is lit!

Schroeder is all for believing in something, as long as it meets with his approval

As long as it doesn’t cause one to have any sort of conscience. Out of power, and dictating terms, he said:

"What worried me, despite a relaxed atmosphere to our talks, and to a certain degree what made me sceptical was how much it came through that this president saw himself as 'God-fearing' and saw that as the highest authority."

As long as it doesn’t inform your moral framework - ever. Of President Bush, who is not a fundamentalist, but a member of the diversity-obsessed Methodist Church:

"We criticise rightly that in most Islamic states the role of religion for society and the character of the rule of law are not clearly separated. But we fail to recognise that in the US, Christian fundamentalists and their interpretation of the Bible have similar tendencies."

Interpretation, ironically, that Mr. Bush is famously though to take, but doesn’t. As for extending that right that “he’ll permit” a Muslim nation to have that America shouldn’t (according to him), I can only wonder who this man (who seems to have the soul of a moth) thinks he’s in any position to impose his near-absent belief system on others.

It must be nice to be big-macher European leftoid. Facts never have to get in the way of masturbating your own ego.

A Permanent Lapse of Reason

” ...We have to contact our allies in the region...”
“ ...Who, Saddam Husseign?... “

That’s the “ally” the U.S. went to war with twice. Once with France.

On their planet, they call this comedy

The goofy, clueless left in the UK, for all their crackpot logic about diversity (celebrating something that simply exists whether they “celebrate” it or not), has no clue when it comes to respecting religion or other cultures for that matter.

I'm sure the actress in the veil will get death threats. The whole sketch makes fun of the whole 'my veil is my identity' thing.
The veiled woman counts off all the cosmetics she no longer needs to apply to her face - she just does up her eyes. She says she also enjoys the veil because she knows that every man who sees her is dieing to see what she looks like naked.

Fellow diner agrees and says he himself is indeed wondering. And says that if the government ever banned him from driving his Bentley (which he feels defines who he is), he would become a suicide bomber. The woman in the veil says 'Yes, there are limits.'

She gives in - got to have a drink. Later, she has taken off the veil and her husband (not in either pic) asks her to put it back on and yell at him that he's an infidel. The four people at the table applaud after she does it and the husband is clearly working up a woody.

Expect Channel 4's studios at Broadcast House to be burned down by certain members of a religion C4 keeps apologizing for otherwise.

- with thanks to alert reader Valerie.

the fuse is lit!

Egyptology

A recent random look at a French language Egyptian newspaper leaves one with little hope. The headlines:

3 stories about Mubarak which contained no news, at least not from this decade –

- “Mubarak: the liberation of the Sinai, a turning point in history”
(if memory serves, they lost.)

- “Mubarak: Egypt advances on the irreversible course of global reform”

- “Interview with Mubarak: Egypt refuses the classification of nations into moderade and radical.”

There are also a page of sports, some fashion, TV, weather, a few ads. The only other items of news other than a short article about Condoleeza Rice failng to leave Jerusalem with anything, don’t even com in the form of articles. Five 150 word-long blurbs fall under the headings: UNIFIL. Iraq, Darfour, Gaza (a hit-piece about Israel), and Israel (another hit-piece about Israel).

It also included this incredibly lame but revealing cartoon:

Immigrants send $45 bln from U.S. to Latin America

Thus says Reuters. But in the loony isolation of leftist vision, WaPo declares that they’re poor, regardless of the average of $900 per person that they send back so their goldbricking relatives can hang out in front of the bodega trading stories of which of their kin they’re leeching off of in Los Estados Unidos.

What kind of conclusion do you expect from the kind of people who buy off mothers of fallen soldiers in order to parade their grief around?

"It was John Kerry's political campaign, John Kerry personally, along with Michael Moore, went to Cindy Sheehan just days and a couple of weeks after the death of her son and asked her to make a commercial for him.And they did the same thing, political operatives, they asked the other families."

Meet the world view that wanted you to trust them running a global power.

City of Romance

Third rate bling, and bums mooching smokes after a mandated €0,50 rise in the price of cigs. Here's some advice: be like those German pikers and roll your own.

With Neither Irony or Self-Awareness

No plaque, no discussion of times past. No getting over things. No nothing.

Not only that, it’s a registered landmark. You would think that someone would have trashed the thing in the middle of the night some time over the past 40 years, but it hasn’t happened yet. Even the angry, militant students who live in the neighborhood are just too lazy to make a little catch-all laïcité if it requires some initiative of their own.

It’s really best not to ask why. I don’t.

From the womens’ section of your local Pharmacie: 3 day deodorant.
Maybe it’s for those weekends when they’re used up by a gang of filthy little moochers.

The Al-Dura Affair: Fabrication Nation

TelChaiNation on France2’s getting a child killed to provide drama for the camera:

At another point, a boy faked a leg injury, but instead of drawing big kids who could pick him up and rush him past the cameramen to an ambulance, he only attracted little kids. He shooed them away, looked around, and, seeing that no one was coming to evacuate him, straightened up and walked away without a limp. An Israeli cameraman working for France2 who was watching the film with me and Enderlin at the time, laughed at this point. When I asked him why, he said, “because it looks so fake.” “That’s my impression as well,” I responded. Enderlin responded, “Oh, they do that all the time. It’s their cultural style. They exaggerate.”

To the sensationalist, ideologically driven press, human life is cheap.



Eyes wide shut: meet the face of evil. An even shoddier news outfit playing on France2’s problems by saying their news is more “real.” Using a fad-in, fade-out montage of images, the video includes the implication that US soldiers in Iraq commonly kill innocent civilians.

Aujourd’hui hier

Is it just me, or do you smell something burning?

That pathetic air of superiority and entitlement

Gideon Rachman on what Greek politician and EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas believes he’s entitled to:

If I, an American living in Brooklyn New York, do not have the right to vote in any European country (and rightly so!) what makes a pompous cretin with a bloated sense of worth, like you, think that you have the right to vote in my country?

Ironically, as a politico he should know the value of every legitimate, solid, mandate giving vote he’s ever gotten, but obviously believes that it’s only of value to him, and to hell with yours’.
With no view of the future or even with a basis in logic or morality, he’s sure that some issue of his matters more than any in the future might have.

Like the welfare state that only survives one generation, he’s prepared to put sovereignty in the same dustbin as long as he gets his way. His sniffing and snorting will never get it back if he changed his mind.

Inasmuch as official Europe wants people to vote as little as possible, especially on whether or not they willingly want to join official Europe, one can hardly be surprised.

Plan B: Iran, I ran so far away.

Hiding in among the usual EUtopia-ese

The WEU Assembly and the European Interparliamentary Space Conference (EISC) are jointly holding a conference on space, defence and European security in Kourou, French Guiana from 19-22 September 2006, at the invitation of the European Space Agency (ESA), the French space agency (CNES) and Arianespace. Numerous members of the national parliaments of European countries, as well as representatives of the European Parliament and the EU Military Staff and Satellite Centre, will be attending, alongside leading figures from Europe’s space industry. The conference will address the various aspects of a European Space Policy having regard to security and defence, with a particular focus on the technological and industrial capacities needed to achieve such a policy.

It sounds like they’re seeing if they have the capacity to mount a missile defense program, or at the very least a serious remote-sensing capability.

If they can get a grip on the usual adolescent bickering over “how many jobs are doled out where”, they might manage something.

Pancho-noia will destroy ya.

Whinging about the basic data that airlines have anyway, which is the same data European airlines share with European governments anyway when you fly within the ”holy city of Schengen” through which all the 9/11 hijackers came.

...”You can’t fly to the United States unless you give me 34 pieces of information for the CIA.”

“but I don’t HAVE that much data!”...

Yes you do. Your über-euro-arline / patriotic champion of the culture already has it.

Caption/subtitle contest

Seen in a street market in the village of Nobsa, Columbia.



Ché, the mobile phone salesman. Long live the communications revolution!

Outsourcing foreign policy

Douste-Blazy’s statement on the NorKy-nuke “wisdom bomb” theatrical warmongering fell just short of saying that there would be any sort of consequence attached, at least not anything that they wouldn’t try to get someone else to take care of, (as usual):

French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy condemned the North Korean nuclear test Monday, saying the international community should take swift action against the Communist regime.

"France will turn towards her partners in the Security Council to quickly come up with a reaction," he said.

Well, now! THAT should stop that impish little perv! Douste-Blazy waits for the UNSC to react much in the way we wait for him to react – because it’s killer comedy! Where does he get this stuff, anyway?

Drawing lesson

*~@):~{>

Another steaming pile of Plantu

It’s good to keep plenty of booze and dope around for moments like these: a Pythonesque white man playing the race card over and over until his audience is numb to it. Plantu thinks borders and sovereignty are luxuries only available to 3rd world countries.the fuse is lit!

Serguei essai à transformer

If you imagine someone is poling the US in the eye, nukes are okay.
By the way, that’s not what a goalpost looks like.the fuse is lit!

Around here, we call it "Whack a Mole."

Hosted on Flurl Video Search - Watch More Videos

My Pet Jawa:

My way of pushing back is to proliferate the content they hate with a vengeance. You don't like that one there? You got it deleted? Fine. Deal with this one. And this one. And this one here, too. How do you like those? Having fun yet? We can keep this up all day long, assmunch. This is what I do for fun. Around here, we call it "Whack a Mole."

the fuse is lit!

Left-wing minstrel show

Le Monde Al-Jazeera sur Seine: blackface is okay, and condescension is otay.

P.S. – Hey, lefty - Martin Luther King was a Republican, and the schmucks wearing bedsheets were Democrats.

Have a nice day.

How to argue with a European leftist, if you must.

When polluting the minds of the locals, make sure to use the occasional religiously based allegory. It works especially well while discussing minor points of their stated pacifism with a leftist anarchist throwing a chair through a plate glass window.
Ex.: “wouldn’t it be better to teach a man to fish?,” and that sort of thing. Also ask them why there is no explosion of enthusiasm when there is a broadly publicized murder in the US, a nation of 300 million people, and no call to “understand the vast majority of peaceful Americans” when so many “social commentators” are prepared to claw each others’ eyes out to be the first to mention “the vast majority of peaceful muslims” when, say, a huge ugly mob marches after coordinated Friday sermons in Pakistani mosques or a nun gets shot?

DumbJohn, as usual, inspires:

Incidents like this allow the MSM to ram home another of the chattering classes favourite points, namely the evil of guns. Hell, the only way they could have worked themselves into more of a self-righteous snit would be if the killer had been driving round the school in a 4x4. The funny thing is that the same MSM which claims that the gun is at the very centre of US culture, act as though the Koran and the Hadiths are just a set of vague suggestions, completely unrelated to any current events, in fact hardly worth bothering with at all.

Sassy youthes singing: “give peace a chance” and
“I just wanted to say I love you in a song.”

Taking their leave of reason

Fly them to Bethesda tout de suite, I say. Most of all, save them from the NHS.

”Muslim accosts injured Para in hospital”

"You have been killing my Muslim brothers in Afghanistan," the man said during a tirade.

Because the soldier was badly injured and could not defend himself, he was very worried for his safety, sources told The Daily Telegraph.

A relative of the Para said the man had twice walked on to the ward where two other soldiers and four civilians were being treated without once being challenged by staff.

"It's not the best way to treat our returning men," he said. "They are nervous that these guys might attack them and, despite being paratroopers, they cannot defend themselves because of their injuries."

The question is “why should an injured soldier even have to defend himself, or even face the stupidity of someone’s misdirected anger? Much of Europe is still in an emotional adolescence – like the sandbox logic days of the anti-Vietnam War movement in the US in the 70’s: emotional fragile people so dependant on loony home truths and their emotional rage, that they unable to make a distinction between the illusions that they’ve constructed of war, and the soldiers unwilling to break the law to act out these idiots’ desires, be they self-cloistering poncy leftists with ever-changing political hobby horses, or the primitive anger of self-cloistering unintegrated immigrants.

Commies totally « 404 » on free speech

the fuse is lit!