It Was 25 Years Ago

Fresh Piffle Served Daily

Think the artist-general of the great continental suicide pact just has it in for Bush’s policies, and not America? Three decades of Plantu don’t hide a great deal.

• The 70’s: Jimmuh Carter rips his (naïve and overly) friendly mask off, as if he did.
• The 80’s: Reagan is beneath contempt, but characterizing Queen Elizabeth II with incredible indignity is fair game.
• The 90’s: the culture that tch-tchs the prudish view that their president shouldn’t be getting blowjobs from subordinates was tch-tching the president getting blowjobs from subordinates.
• The 00’s: all and anything to degrade W, all the time.
  

Crossposted on ¡No Pasaràn!

Apartheid? Sure, why not? Call it Apartheid. What's the Harm in That?

A 33 year old employed Frenchmen is called a “alienated youth” for lack of any other reason given to avoid noticing the ugliness around them. His incitement to riot should be understood. Plantu reinterprets political Dada, and from the mouths of reds, we find willful and fake charges of class-warfare 7 sur 7...

« Ségolène Royal, the Socialist candidate, said the riot was a legacy of Mr Sarkozy's time at the interior ministry - including the November 2005 riots - which had worsened animosity between police and young people from ethnic minorities.

"Naturally passengers should pay for their ticket. But for a simple stop-check to degenerate into such violent confrontation proves that something is not right any more," she said »

...and a legacy of any other undefinable mist in the air that sounds nice too.

Soft-Powernap

Continental divide:

Disputing the oft-asserted claim that Europeans work less than Americans because they have perfected the art of living, Messrs. Alesina and Giavazzi contend that European idleness is the predictable result of stultifying labor market regulations, high taxation, and the excessive power of Europe's labor unions. In France, Germany, and Italy especially, shortened work hours are now coupled with diminished productivity and lack of technological innovation. In 1970, the authors note, Italy's gross domestic product per capita was 68% of America's; by 1990, it had reached 80%. Today it is back down to 64%. At current rates of relative decline, Italian GDP per capita will in 25 years time be one third that of America.

And why is this a problem? After all, a country with one-third the GDP per capita of America is still a rich country. It is a problem because relative decline tends to become absolute decline.

I’m So Disillusioned

I though they would be different. I thought they farted daisies.

It must be America’s fault.

So Much for that “Accidental Tourist” Argument

Australian David Hicks is seen holding a bazooka in this undated photo taken in Kosovo. Hicks, a 26-year-old from Adelaide, southern Australia, has been captured by northern alliance fighters in Afghanistan. The Australian government says he has trained with the al-Qaida terror network.

In spite of it being an RPG, justice delayed remains justice denied, even if he was a foot soldier who doesn’t deserve any, so with Hicks’ defense using stalling tactics, one can obviously only blame George Bush for the detention of this “Man of Peace”, of course.

Newsflash to Australians wondering “whose victory” a Hicks hearing is: no-one in the United States, save for the usual desperate defenders of their own world-view from reality cares who David Hicks is.

Quite predictably for the Borg hive-mind of the Daily Kos, they have managed to objectify opposition to terror as support for the right while they support someone also known as Abu Muslim al Australia which makes no sense at all in Arabic, aka Abu Muslim Philippine, and aka Muhammad Dawood, which at least has the name “David” in it.

Their love seems to know no bounds.

Art Imitates Art

Ah, another day in paradise...

The youths responded by throwing trash cans and other objects at the officers. A group of youths smashed the windows of a sporting goods store and looted boxes of shoes. Others attacked automatic drink dispensers and set fire to an information booth.

While “yoofs” riot over the police arresting a crate-jumper, we discover EUtopia reaching another pitched peak of civilization:

Inspired by the success of up-market wine centres in California and Australia, a French wine merchant from Bordeaux this month opened a new 20 million-euro (26-million-dollar) complex, the first of its kind in France.

For-shame. On one hand they start modeling the wineries wine-snobs and enthusiast can visit after those found in California and Australia, not to mention the composition of their wines, but can also take solace that their massive sums of “humanitarian aid” have been well spent in Gaza.

A huge sewage reservoir in the northern Gaza Strip collapsed Tuesday, killing five people in a frothing cascade of waste and mud that swamped a village and highlighted the desperate need to upgrade Gaza's overloaded, outdated infrastructure.

Similarities can be readily found with the Gare du Nord, a massive, sprawling complex of creepy old access tunnels and modern concourses punctuated with evidence of 70’s élan that I like to call the Bronze-anodized aluminum Age, and only slightly more evolved than the Stone Age. But I digress...

They get to join others who are also full of shit. Pitched luddism should find this just: Imagining whirled Peas, Greenpeace occupies a nuclear power plan in what may be a misguided attempt to repeat the great Gaza surfing challenge:

We want to denounce the dangers of nuclear power in general and the EPR in particular," said a Greenpeace spokeswoman Adelaide Colin. France derives more than three-quarters of its electricity from nuclear power, the highest ratio of any country in the world,

It’s a great moment for reality.

Free 50% Off Tibet

He got the Douste!

Il rayonne, Douste. Mais vachement!

- Val, who is still cracking up at this

Today on Arrêt sur Images, the foreign minister known far and wide for his sympathetic head-tilt told a Chinese journalist that France loved China because they are a great civilization and because China has never waged war on anyone outside of their own borders except the South Koreans, Russians, and Vietnamese.

I suppose threatening Taiwan is okay, though too... right?

Begging for Billions

Someday, they might have “a declaration” celebrating another successful 20 year plan:

Barrot warned that if steps were not taken, the project could nose-dive. “The US’ future [version of] GPS would take the place of Galileo,” he said.
“In any case, profitability would be limited. The applications on which many expectations have been pinned would be delayed.
“But I can’t believe that scenario because it would represent a great European defeat. Industrial instincts will kick in very quickly. And, member states have their pride.”

Galileo, and all the purported economic value that goes with it was due to be betamaxed before it was even initiated.

A university in the US has cracked the secret codes of the European satellite system Galileo's first satellite in orbit, making it doubtful that the €3.4 billion project will pay for itself through commercial fees as promised by Brussels.

"That means free access for consumers who use navigation devices," said the scientist who broke the code, Mark Psiaki, in a statement

Nonetheless we hear the sounds of whistling past the graveyard, The shell company that is supposed to run Galileo is trying to sell something that’s already available for free. Go figure. Good luck, spacedog.

The Rancor

The last of three telling extracts from Andrei S. Markovits’ Uncouth Nation:

This rancor against Europe in American mass public opinion is of a completely different magnitude from anti—Americanism in Europe. In American politics and society; Europe is—if anything—a sporadic and insignificant element of the public discourse. For most Americans, Europe as such is a lovely vacation spot, something fine, quite tasteful, old, safely remote, and—basically—a matter of indifference. Surely this very indifference provides additional grounds flir Europeans’ anti—Americanism, since it intensifies the European notion of Americans’ narrow—mindedness. But, above all, this American disinterest offends European pride. It is, as everybody knows, worse when one is not hated but simply ignored.

Even linguistically there is no American counterpart to the European concept of “anti-Americanism” The word “anti—Europeanism” certainly exists as a concept, but except for the Europhile readers of the New York Review of Books, this is an almost unknown, and above all unused, concept for most Americans.49 Until the very current debate conducted on both sides of the Atlantic about anti— Americanism, the term “anti-Europeanism” did not really exist. Chat these two terms—and by implication their social reality as well - do not have at all the same weight in their respective historical anti-societal contexts is demonstrated by the following bit of Internet research: if one enters “anti—Europeanism” into Proquest, a search engine for scholarly journals and papers of record in Great Britain and the United States, 669 entries appear. For “anti—Americanism” the tally comes to 14,170. Google yields 2,420 entries fir “anti-Europeanism” hut 1 [6,000 for “anti—Americanism,” which in the world of search engines is the equivalent of “no longer countable.” Gerard Baker performed a similar experiment with Yahoo. Entering “anti—Europeanism in America,” begot 358 items. But “anti-Americanism in Europe” gave him 21,400, whereby the round number, as Baker properly notes, is simply Yahoo’s way of reporting “we haven’t got a clue how many are out there hut here’s the first hatch.”
This is confirmed by Herbert j. Spiro’s research. In a historically oriented essay about anti-Americanism in Western Europe, Spiro writes that expressions like “anti-Europism” or “anti-Europeanism” do not occur in either American linguistic usage or ways of thinking.’ This does not mean that even the slightest anti-Europeanism in the United States should be tolerated or justified. But to equate it with the phenomenon of European anti-Americanism would simply be wrong, both analytically and politically. The former is the temporary, marginal affair of conservative Bush fans who make themselves look laughable before the American public with things like “freedom fries,” while the latter is a resentment occurring on the entire European continent whose potential for politics and society is becoming clearer with each passing day. Gerard Baker wrote the following perceptive passage about this issue:

I will wager that, rough as the diplomatic road may get with the Europeans, no American will throw a brick through the gaslit windows of bijou brasserie chains in the Midwest, or carve rude messages about German labor-market rigidity into the back of a Porsche 944,
For even’ Euro-hater in the conservative establishment there arc. at least half a dozen Americans ready to laud Europe. The cultural elite still likes to decry US TV and it longs for the virtues of British television, blissfully unaware that almost every piece of trash on American TV screens -from American Idol to I’m a Celebrity, Get lie Out of Here - has a British provenance Many will chatter fondly about French cinema—though I doubt any of them has actually seen a French film since Belle de Jour. You can still reduce Americans to whispering awe by telling them that you attended Oxford or the Sorbonne, even though the average State University of Wherever knocks the best European academic institutions into a cocked hat. And they might scoff at the nonsense of medieval pageantry but they will roil over like a royal corgi at the prospect of an honorary gong. And it is not just the National Public Radio—listening, Chablis—swilling, cosmopolitan elite of Washington and New York I am talking about, either. out in the great heartland, you will find attitudes to Europe that are far from hostile.

The phenomenon is well captured by die words of Paul Lee, chief operating officer of BBC America: “There is no door you can’t open [in America] with a British accent.”

Some Definitions

The second of three curious extracts from Andrei S. Markovits’ Uncouth Nation:

Lest there he any misunderstandings or conceptual uncertainties as to what exactly I mean by anti—Americanism, here is the definition offered by Paul Hollander:

Anti—Americanism is a predisposition to hostility toward the United States and American society, a relentless critical impulse toward American social, economic, and political institutions, traditions, and values; it entails an aversion to American culture in particular and its influence abroad, often also contempt for the American national character (or what is presumed to he such a character) and dislike of American people, manners, behavior; dress, and so on; rejection of American foreign policy and a firm belief in the malignity of American influence and presence anywhere in the world.

Alvin Rubinstein and Donald Smith second Hollander’s definition of anti-Americanism with their own in which they see anti—Americanism“ as any hostile action or expression that becomes part and parcel of an undifferentiated attack on the foreign policy, society; culture and values of the United States.” And ‘Todd Gitlin offered the following trenchant view on this topic: “Anti-Americanism is an emotion masquerading as an analysis, a morality, an ideal, even an idea about what to do. When hatred of foreign policies ignites into hatred of an entire people and their civilization, then thinking is dead and demonology lives. When complexity of thought devolves into caricature, intellect is close to reconciling itself to mass murder.”15 Agreeing with all three of these definitions, I see anti-Americanism as a generalized and comprehensive normative dislike of America and things American that often lacks distinct reasons or concrete causes. Ant-Americanism has all the tropes of a classic prejudice. Beyond that, anti-Americanism also constitutes a well-identified and well— established “ism”—thus bespeaking its entrenched institutionalization and common usage as a modern ideology Indeed, with many of the major “isms” of the twentieth century; such as “communism,” “socialism,” “Leninism,” “fascism,” and “Nazism,” either moribund or certainly past their prime as ideas and, above all, as movements with international appeal, a definite global charisma, and the panache of antinomy and a direct challenge to the existing order; “anti-Americanism” might indeed have assumed at least partly such a function in the world, By being “anti-American,” one ipso facto seems to stick it to “the Man,” even if West Europeans, in notable contrast to people of the developing world, objectively constitute the very same “man.”

Anti-Americanism: Comparisons to Anti –Europeanism

The first of three extracts from Andrei S. Markovits’ Uncouth Nation:

Just as an imagined America has served all kinds of purposes for Europeans, so too have the different notions of Europe that Americans created in the course of their history served to sketch out a sense of “being different” for Americans, The phenomenon of America as Europe’s counterimage and vice—versa has best been characterized by Bernd Ostendorf, certainly one of Germany’s most profound America experts, a compulsive folie à deux for over three centuries with a remarkably stable set of choreographies, but with a rather uneven, historically specific set of performances.”
I detect, however, an important difference in the respective agencies of folie à deux on the two continents: Whereas, in the United States, the carriers of prejudice and antipathy toward Europe have been located predominantly (if at all) among the lower social strata, American elites (especially cultural elites) have consistently extolled Europe, and they continue do so.
This love for and emulation of European tastes, mores, fashions, and habits remained a staple of American elite culture even during the country’s most nativist and isolationist periods. Practically all sophisticated culture in America is European. One need on]v look at the humanities departments of any’ leading American university to observe this continuing cultural hegemony, which, even in the persistent attempt to negate its own Eurocentrism, resorts to ideas and methods that are completely European. American elites continue to he completely fixated on Europe, in spite of the repeated fear voiced in Europe that America might be drifting toward Asia. That dr ft exists—although only partially—in the economy, hut by no means in the realm of culture A European vacation after final exams remains more or less obligatory for every graduate of an elite university in the United States. Every aspect of the consumer profile of American elites—from classical music to cuisine, from ears to vacation spots, from interior decoration to preferences in clothing—shows a clear predisposition for Europe and things European.
In massive contrast to the negate and pejorative—at best ambivalent—notions that the word “American” conjures up in Europe, “European” invariably invokes positive tropes among Americans (elites and mass alike), such as “quality,” “class,” “taste,” and “elegance,” be it in food, comfort, tradition, romance, or eroticism (as in European massage, European cleccr, European looks ... and the list can go on and on). Every Madison Avenue ad agency knows full well that the best way to sell quality and rare curiosities to American elites is to conjure lip European associations.

Parallels

The European past meets the European present: the home truths invented out of comfort and conformity haven’t changed one bit:

In the 1960s I was still a young kid living in the USSR. The available literature led me to believe that in the United States it was an era of romantic class struggle, moral battles, and massive heroic protests against American imperialism. In the USSR we also had massive rallies against American imperialism. They were meticulously organized by the Party apparatchiks. Attendance was mandatory because nobody in the right mind would join them voluntarily.

The new dead-enders are in fact little more than people seeking affirmation from one another that their uncertainties about their own views can be ameliorated by ignoring history.

- with thanks to Walt

Great Moments in Optimism

Perchance to feel:

More than 600 BBC journalists led by the director general, Mark Thompson, joined vigils for kidnapped Gaza correspondent Alan Johnston across London this afternoon.

Some 500 staff left their desks at Television Centre while 100 World Service members demonstrated their support at Bush House.

Seeming to resort to the supernatural, the very idea has the air of a séance. When one starts to believe that having empathy and good intentions will cause barbarians to change their ways, then you are indeed proving that you’re out of options, and that the concept stinks – that is, if you can admit that the world isn’t always what you hope it is and have a Plan B.

Fearing for their lives, European Union monitors stationed at the Rafah Crossing that connects the Gaza Strip and Egypt have asked the defense establishment for help in drawing up escape routes from Gaza...

...The third proposal, which was accepted by the EU monitors, was to make a dash for the Gaza security fence that separates Israel from Gaza, where they would be rescued by the IDF.

"They want to know that we will help them escape if the need arises," the defense official said. "Their concerns are understandable if you take into account the large number of threats they face."

Then again, with such great aspirations of peace and love among the innocent and downtrodden that the same mass of humanity holding vigil is willing to promote through their reporting, such a thing hardly seems necessary.

A Glimpse into the Coocoo’s Nest

Treating it like what it is, people living under communism have always been either prisoners, or prisoners of the madness of the state. Romanian writer and playwright Matéi Visniec puts it in context for us is a novel published this past summer called The History of Communism as Told by Mental Patients

From the editor’s foreword:

It was Moscow in 1953, a few weeks before Stalin died, the director of the Hospital psychiatric ward invites a writer to remain among the “patients” and asks them to rewrite, at their level of understanding, both average and severe, the history of Communism and the October Revolution. He was convinced that this “therapy” could cure some of his patients. Matéi Visniec plunges us in the fuzzy universe of these psychiatric hospitals where real patients and jailed opponents of the state display their nature in their own ways. It shows us once more that whatever the circumstances, man cannot live without concepts of utopia... at the risk of sinking into horror when he tries to put the ideas into practice.

Visniec, born in Romania in 1956, is a historian and philosopher cum dramatist and journalist in the tradition of the broad-ranged intellectual. He first published poetry in 1972, and went on to write for the theater but was cencored by the communists. In 1987 he fled Romania for France seeking political asylum, and became a French citizen in 1993. He lives in Paris and works for Radio France International.

Roxanne Puts on the Red Light

In fact the red light has always been on. neo-luddism for thee, but not for me:

Trudie Styler, wife of Sting and self-styled eco-warrior, recently took a helicopter to travel 80 miles from Wiltshire to Devon, a journey that would have taken less than two hours by train.

I guess that’s the way of the “eco-warrior” making the sacrifice of leading by example.

It later emerged Sting had twice used the airfield in question from which to roar off in his private jet.
Styler's personal assistant declined to comment on her boss's travel arrangements when I called.

On a Trafficked Human

The father of Alan Johnston, the BBC Gaza(n) journalist who has been missing for a week made an appeal for his saying: “that’s no way to treat a friend of the Palestinian people,” using any appeal possible, but forgetting that a journalist is not supposed to befriend the subject of their reporting. The BBC announced that they suspect that it’s just an armed gang looking for some money, and finally admitting that these kidnappings are frequently undertaken by factions as a means of harming one another, which hardly sounds like a simple ransom scenario.

Around the web, other scattered points are made of this matter, but not too loudly. As unsurprised as near-east watchers are, they certainly wouldn’t want to see any harm come to Johnston, even if he did report for the same World Service that spent an hour referring to Valerie Plame simply as “Valerie,” and reported he claim that her very being was a secret, and that she was some sort of highly placed operative who simply didn’t know that it was wrong to recommend a biased spouse to a position where he could do a political hatchet job against their countrymen.

As for Johnston, the BBCeye blog takes up the BBC on their ‘cause’ quoting former PA Information Minister:

"We are opposed to the kidnapping of foreign journalists who serve the Palestinian cause."

While a fine fellow from Sweden noted in straightforward manner quoted him, saying:

"We are opposed to the kidnapping of foreign journalists who serve the Palestinian cause," he added.

Or if you allow me to paraphrase: Don't touch our journalists who support us.

Is it journalism or is it advocacy? Is it because Johnston was only biased 90% of the time, or was it because on rare occasion he would hint that there is an internecine tribalistic feeding frenzy going on among the Palestinians at the very moment they have a chance at their own state?

The only thing that’s certain is that you can’t call the BBC’s reporting journalism, not because of its’ editorial political stance, but because they frequently suppress basic reporting that doesn’t support the world view of their reporters.

Alert the Külbel!

Israel's refusal to enter into a deal with Monsieur Chiraq was probably the best Israeli decision of the whole war.

I’m sure you’re shocked, but not in the way the French leftists’ image of themselves will: France urged Israel to hit Syria. Doublegame, against their own bitch no less.

French President Jacques Chirac told Israel at the start of the war in Lebanon that France would support an Israeli assault on Syria, it was reported on Sunday.

Army Radio reported that in the message, which was delivered by Chirac to Israel via a secret channel, the French president suggested that Israel invade Damascus and topple the regime of Bashar Assad. In exchange, Chirac assured Israel full French support for the war.

According to the message delivered from Paris, Syria was responsible for the flare up in the North and encouraged Hizbullah to attack.

While they were telling the thin-skinned, yet terror-symp French public that religiously driven murderers were O-tay! with them.

Image of self, including banal leftist “truthy fairy-ness” and international marketing tactics : gone.

Have a nice day.

Sunday TV

To the Casual Visitor the Glumness is Baffling

We Definitely Have a Winner

Violent America vs.

Peaceful, Wonderful France, of course:

On February 13, 2007, French anchor Patrick Poivre d'Arvor - kind of the French Dan Rather - introduced the news of the shootings in Philadelphia, PA and Salt Lake City, UT,

The argument is even easier to make when you magically triple a bad statistic.

The conclusion: 4 dead. 4 victims among the 33 000 people who die every year in the United States, killed by a firearm.

The actual figure is 12 700. The firearm death, and not the murder rate was approaching 33 000, which included suicides and manslaughters had its’ peak under the “Clinton Junta.”

- If you don’t already read
Carine’s blog daily, you should consider it.

Warmth, Returned

On the anniversary of the Madrid bombings, a jihadist cell found it germane to celebrate by threatening Germany and Austria, (yes, Austria,) with retribution for thinking unapproved thoughts, and not pulling a Zapatero: letting terrorists dictate their terms.

A message to the governments of Germany and Austria

In the name of Allah the humble by heredity and merciful, Joy to those who follow in the path of righteousness. The Caliphate channel correctly brings to you a message to the governments of Germany and Austria, the following people threaten you safety, but not by their own actions: the noble among you must remain vigilant and respect the will of the people before it acts, or acts on behalf of their allies, we ask a question: what does Germany gain from sending 2275 troops to support NATO to defend Bush’ lies? What does Germany gain from Bush’s promises? The German government lied to her people when they told them that participating with NATO troops is intended for reconstruction!

Their big lie was just a statement to get their soldiers to go to Afghanistan, and to prevent terrorist attacks in Germany!
Their first lie to get soldiers sent to Afghanistan was that they were just their for reconstruction was a lie that the whole world could see through. The German media reported more about the ways in which the soldiers were actually there more for security. The whole world saw pictures of them with skeletons and skulls.

The second lie to get your soldiers to go to Afghanistan was to say that it would prevent terrorism at home.

To that, Ayman Al-Zawahiri said: “Security is a double edged sword! If we’re safe, you’re safe. Only then is it possible for you to be safe. And when we will live in peace, it will then be possible for you to live in peace. When we’re attacked and killed, it will be definite that with Allah’s permission we will attack and kill. That is just retaliation, otherwise find understanding when you finally can understand.”

The participation of Germany in the war of the Loser States of America... [ed.: this is an un-funny play on words between Verlierer (loser) and Vereinigte (United, as in ‘United States’)] ...against Islam and Muslims will all be for nothing other than risk threats at home in Germany. Then the allies will have to set it straight after they experience the same thing their allies did, then the German troops in Badakhshan and Kunduz, in northern Afghanistan will not be safe from the Mujehedeins of Al-Queda and the Taliban.

For some time Mullah Dadu Allah has been warning that Taliban operations were underway in northern Afghanistan.
Oh, German government! Germany has a strong economy, and was until not long ago a wonderful land! Why would you want Bush and his cronies take that away? Isn’t it obvious that your economic interest worldwide is at risk? Isn’t it obvious that our Mujehedeins will conduct operations in your country? By helping America, those they call terrorists will be motivated to attack you, thus you risk you own safety.
What we propose is that you remove your soldiers from all muslim lands, and withdraw your support for Bush and his people, and then your interests will be safe.

And to Austria we say: your soldiers in Afghanistan are not much of a threat to us as you display your support for Bush and his cronies. The truth that the Austrian government has withheld from you is that these soldier were attached to NATO, even though it is a neutral country, and not part of that alliance! How can you be a neutral country, a military power, and go along with their alliance? How can one be a neutral country and support America against the muslims?

Austria was and still is one of the safest places in the world. Your people face no struggles, and their future is bright. The country relies mainly on summer and winter tourism, which brings in pleny of revenue. When world gets out that there are security threats, and Austria goes on the Mujehedein’s list of enemy states, this business will end. We blame this on the new Social Democrat government that spoke of fairness and public safety for not pulling their soldiers out of Afghanistan, and for listening to Bush in his war against all muslims. Thereby Austria has risked...

He drones on for about another two minutes in exactly the same way that “a deal” could be made available to the Germans.

This is the display of public justification offered in the fever swamps of Islamism, giving acts of terror a legitimacy “because they warned us,” when in reality it’s a cheerleading call to make the most backward and backward people on earth think themselves relevant, powerful, and engaged in the world, when in reality they are living nasty, brutal, and short lives due to their lack of social trust, corruption, paranoia, and incompetence. ‘m sure some of them genuinely believe that they are on the cutting edge of social advancement, well-being, power, and anything else they find in the way of imagined vainglory when you’re just an abject failure.

- With thanks to Liberal in Austria
for the tip-off, where you can also readily see that the
first comment to the post was “yeah, so what?”

Remedial Education for Recovering Socialist Morons

Remedial Education for Recovering Socialist Morons

America’s thankless job

This simply means that, the US is not exactly a nightmarish country with devilish imperialist policies as Hugo Chavez, the demagogue president of Venezuela and others are portraying her to be. For if the US was reduced to only the negative things that sadly even some Americans and in chief, the Democrats are always claiming, people the world over will not be thronging to her, as it is currently the case. Even the hordes of Latin Americans who are now demonstrating on the George W. Bush tour of the region and are shamelessly and stupidly comparing him to Adolf Hitler, are in their numbers wanting to go the US.

writes Elie B. Smith at the AfricaPath journal, who finds little depth and a great deal of transparency in the venom directed at the notion of the United States, calling her an “indispensable World helper,” not deserving of the treatment it’s given.

When the US went to Afghanistan to flush out the medieval government of the Taliban there were some who cried, but now America wants to reduce her troops and have asked others to take up larger share of the responsibility, but there is an out cry. More France is even withdrawing her troops in Afghanistan. The lead vocalists against America are those so-called Peace activists who are in reality merchants of illusions who privately appreciate America but publicly decry and tarnishes her noble job around the world.

Tell a Shiite or Kurdish Iraqi or even a southern Sudanese to accept those audacious and odious statements peddle around against America, he/she will have the one uttering such statements for supper, for they know and appreciates the true loving America, that is ignored and ridiculed by some Liberals (US Democrats included) and Islamists today. America is a great country and it must be made known without any fear or shame.

Read on. He cites some excellent examples of how elites have constructed and exploited that anger while benefiting from the largess of American private and governmental generosity. It should come as no surprise that after decades of apparent invective, that many Americans find such aid which comes at the expense of helping far needier people who don’t have the same emotional difficulties with the US rather naïve.

Why Chain the Poor to their Roots?

...and environmentalists would do this for their moral vanity and their own pocketbooks. Where for they got off sailing through life on the backs of the genuinely productive.

Brough to you by the Moving Picture Institute that has some very entertaining projects on the way.
Along those lines, Scott Burgess asks: Do you have a flair for telling other people how to live? Visit the Daily Ablution daily, and tell ‘em ¡No Pasarán! sent you.

‘Lullabies from the Axis of Evil’

Call it a killer sales gimmick:

The story was repeated in dozens of Scandinavian newspapers: Bush bans CD featuring Swede Eva Dahlgren.

[ ... ]

The only problem with this story: it was entirely false.

Her fans, (both of you know who you are...) are sure to be disillusioned.

Hey, You

Yeah, you in the panda costume dressing your kids up like butterflies... There’s no fine-tuning knob on the sun.

Crossposted on ¡No Pasaràn!

Good News Buried

White Euro-sclerosis has unemployment at twice that figure, the NYT buries the news. If the left were in charge, and if they’re smart enough not to impose any of their “economic theories” on it to destroy it, the New York Times would call it the end of another successful 5 year plan.

- thanks to some guy in Baghdad.

The « Sandalista’s » Dillema

The love of their old squinting and mumbling hero of their violent youthful fantasies has brought the arthritic left a conundrum: Daniel Ortega made abortion illegal, and the EU has threatened to cut off aid to the leftists’ erstwhile holy land of Nicaragua in retaliation.

Can someone say sovereignty? Or perhaps call it ham-fisted “social justice” action?

It’s odd, really. During the Iraq war, Euro-sophists kept telling us that it was not for the US to impose its values on the world and that it was up to Iraqis to decide their own future. Fair enough. So why is it that, when it comes to hectoring Africans about the death penalty, or ordering South Americans to form a supra-national bloc in mimicry of the EU, or insisting that abortion be made easier, Brussels suddenly comes over all colonialist?

If abortion is a fundamental human right, why isn’t parliamentary democracy? If the EU can demand the former in Nicaragua, why can’t the US demand the latter in Cuba?

Perhaps the answer is that Brussels has never been all that keen on democracy.

Perhaps?

- Kudos to a good friend
of this blog, Stavn

Hilarious

Behold a “blog” that does a poor job as a news aggregator, and writes not one phrase of its’ own lists these as a set of principals:

To encourage a world, where globalization is not only about homogeneity and standardization, but also about diversity and cooperation.

To cover local events that are ignored or poorly covered by the corporate media.

To provide edited print stories, audio and video of the above on the Internet for independent media contacts, thought leaders, and the general public

To favor a strict separation between state and religion.

To oppose all radical religious movements and violence associated with these movements.

To support democratically elected governments

To oppose war as a solution for solving conflicts

To facilitate the networking and coordination of like minded individuals for the coverage of local events as well as the gathering of information about events to be covered

To provide links to a broad spectrum of news resources, including the alternative media, activist, and research groups

To seek out and provide coverage on the global reason's for social, economic, and environmental problems, as seen from the perspective of those that are most affected by these problems

To encourage, facilitate, and support the creation of a global system of independent newsgathering organizations

It’s said that in blogging that there are linkers and thinkers. Most people fall somewhere in between. Not only are they not in the category of thinkers, their blog does absolutely nothing they sat out to do. All of their stuff comes off of the wires, and they don’t even write titles or introductory lead-ins to state their favoring “a strict separation between state and religion”, “cover local events” (which is pointless task for a continental-minded outfit to even attempt,) or “encourage a world, where globalization is not only about homogeneity and standardization, but also about diversity and cooperation.”

If a transnational socialistic superstate is about anything, it is about creating homogeneity in law, society, and everything else. That a blog about it is as disengaged and has the air of never having been touched by a human hand should come as no surprise.

All the news that’s fit to link? When it comes to “truthiness”, it’s hard to beat:

The only problem is that France doesn't have a "happy-slapping" issue.

It’s become a daily event

While getting intensely worked up about transatlantic passenger data, Europeans persist in monitoring ISPs, telephone calls, and emails for no clear reason. When they impose even more sever measures with less oversight, there is a refusal to admit to the outrage they reserved for American authorities monitoring the communications of people with hostile intent to Europeans and Americans alike.

It makes no difference – the goal is to find an authority figure to hate. Since Europeans feel foolish doing this with other Europeans, the US comes in quite handy. It’s petty and hateful, and causes many to persistently raise the meaningless to the level of “news”:

(Reuters) - Mayan leaders will spiritually "cleanse" ancient ruins in Guatemala after a visit by U.S. President George W. Bush, unpopular here because of foreign policies going back to Central America's civil wars.

The leaders said they would hold a spiritual ceremony to restore "peace and harmony" at the Mayan ruins of Iximche after Bush tours the site on Monday.

"No, Mr. Bush, you cannot trample and degrade the memory of our ancestors," said indigenous leader Rodolfo Pocop during a press conference. "This is not your ranch in Texas."

How his memories of his ancestors is degraded is unclear. Despite the fact that they were decimated by Spaniards, some flunky panders to the ideologically predictable world press, and the press can’t but wait to dish it up to an eager European public to eat it up.

Reuters also seems to forget how the word “new” figures into the word “news”:

Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, Washington's principal antagonist in Latin America, has called Bush "the devil" and at a United Nations debate last year said the U.S. leader left a smell of sulfur lingering in the room behind him.

But it doesn’t matter. It’s reporting without purpose, but does a nice job of tacitly describing the real story: people whining about America need to get over themselves, stop dwelling on an imaginary enemy they’ve created, and get out of the tight little shells they built around themselves.

The Emotional War Against a Contrived Enemy

To quote one of our more unselfconscious trolls:

Our latest nuclear submarines can dispatch 90 million Americans million from the East coast off to paradise.

I offer this example based on the question Michel Druker of French TV posed to the [French] chief of subsurface naval warfare “so that the missiles reach the USA?” It was not China, Iran, or Russia, but clearly the USA.

In other words a nation suspected of possibly going to war over resources to keep its’ massive population occupied, a economically defunct theocracy that supports terrorist sleeper cells in Europe’s cities, and a nation ritually making thinly veiled threats to Europe’s energy supplies in winter. No. Drucker’s fantasies are of nuking the nation that acts as their bodyguard guaranteeing their safety, precluding them from the need to engage in the ugliest tasks of geopolitics, making the sea-lanes safe, and the financial environment stable enough for them to peddle their overpriced rubbish all over the third world, and have the luxury of imagining themselves dueling with windmills.

Drucker is among those uniquely European media phenomena – one of those variety/talk show hosts who is equally unqualified to do a serious interview as they are to have a conversation not founded on cringing flattery with a third rate bubble-gum pop band or B actor.

Partying Like It’s 1939

This is what socialism gets you: October 2005

I hope you can get past the use of an excellent Freddy Mercury song.

- found by Hervé who is one
seriously shrewd bastard.

“Only?!?”

Only 45% of the French want to work more to earn more.

As if that’s all bad. But for some bad is never bad enough. Le Monde publishes the result of a survey not so much on an attitude towards work, by on philosophizing about the concept of thinking about work... or something:

A majority of the French (53%) want to have “their current working hours guaranteed by law” rather than “to be able to work more to earn more” (45%), as proposed by UMP presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy, according to a LH2 survey for [the magazine] 20 minutes and [talk radio operation] RMC published on Friday March 2nd.

Asked about their definition of work, 78% of the people surveyed saw it as “a way to earn a living”, ahead of being “an important value to pass on to your children” (63%), “a source of wealth” (42%), “the way to being useful to your employer” (28%), “a source of pride” (21%).

[work is] “A PLACE OF INJUSTICE” to 5% of those surveyed.

Only a minority of the French regards work as “a source of inequality” (9%), “serious constraint” (5%) and “a place of injustice” (5%). The total of the percentages is higher than 100 because multiple responses were possible with question about work.

I’ll leave the heavy editorializing to your imaginations, dear reader, but consider the spin: 45% is still a lot of people, particularly in a society that has talked itself in circles and has had two generations of Socialist bunkum sold to them as an essential morality to the exclusion of all others.

Imagine a place for a moment where the society tells you what to do with a basic matter of personal choice like whether or not you want to work hard of your own free will.

Peace, Love, and Hating Pluralism: He's All About That

Funny how we come across some people: this one seems mad at Medienkritik’s Ray, and oddly enough mad at the US, Israel, and even mad at most of Lebanon too. He’s even nearly expressing genuine emotions in his desperate comparison of the US’ dealings with the eastern Mediterranean as a “puppet play”, and implying that the Siniora government is a puppet of the US. The poodle meme dragged out one more painfully boring time.

Forget free will, anyone who chooses anything other that his favorite repressive ideologues is “a puppet” – as if he isn’t. He can’t seem to recognize that the majority of Lebanese detest the Hizballah, but are too scared by them to speak out. The fact that Hizballah, once a puppet, is now a barely controllable possessed puppet of Iran and Syria registers no-where in his “journalist tour de force.” Truly, Jürgen Cain Külbel is the laziest hack around who wont even make an effort to give his work the faint haze of real journalisms’ due dilligence.

Maybe this guy is grabbing his ankles for money, ideology, readership among fevered single-issue pinheads in Germany, or simply access to senior figures in Damascus. He seems to be making quite an effort on their behalf, and one can only wonder why.

Maybe he’s foolish enough to buy into the archaic concept that journalism can save the world by reporting marginal items, half the story, and taking sides. Evidently, if you have a mind of your own or disagree with him, you’re accused of “working for the CIA.” I don’t think he even realizes how stale and tired that phrase is, even in the Arab world.

First look at his incredibly ignorant choice of images:

Puppets in blackface.

What a racist.

How did we find this guy? He’s got his panties in a bunch over the fact that David’s Medienkritik organized a public demonstration in Mainz last year in support of President Bush and the war on transnational terror – something the Syrians have done more for through direct arming and tacitly allowing advanced terrorist training and technique development in the Be’kaa Vally of Lebanon for more than a decade.

Evidently a handful of people practicing their right to free speech is a problem for this guy. He can’t wrap his brain around where the pluralism that permits him to trash others comes from or how to preserve it. It isn’t a matter of him disagreeing with anyone else’s VIEWS, he’s apoplectic that they were allowed to be there at all.

Apart from he seeming obsession with anti-capitalism (Syria is still a command economy), and manipulating the timeline and causes of Siniora’s appointment, and so on. Here’s a sample of his rubbish:

Siniora obviously sill believes in the US-American neoconservative idiocy of „nation building“ and to the spreading of western style democracy in the entire elbow from Morocco to Indonesia. And it obviously recognizes from Bush and cohorts would only install „democratic“ revolutions so long as only valid ones were established...

„L’état c’est moi”, is what Siniora thinks, because he’s following on a November 2006 opinion poll that didn’t take place in Lebanon, but mainly among the exiled Lebanese living prosperously in California, Ohio, and elsewhere under the star-spangled banner along with a few Parisians, the Israeli Prime Minister, and the former East German girl-scout leader who are behind him.

He goes on to question the motives of the protesters who wanted Syria-supporting President Emile Lahoud, and also calls the Lebanese Prime Minister a “Guerrilla fighter for US democracy” and the first “Democratic Dictator” in Beirut.

There is absolutely no evidence that Siniora thinks any of this, or theorizes anything whatsoever about democratizing “ze elbow from Morocco to Indonesia.” It is far more likely that he has managed to see the same thing any humanist would: in democracies, ethnic and religious minorities aren’t singled out and slaughtered by unelected thugs. That this would have some appeal to the many religions and political views that very notion of The Lebanon was founded to protect should not shock this little man. But apparently it does.

And yes, Siniora does seem to believe in nation-building, just as Hariri did, he believed in the need to build back into existence from the dark days of Syrian “protection” that seemed to get a lot of people killed, a nation. His own nation. What WAS the Taïf accord if not just that?

As for taking pot-shots at Merkel, I can’t help but laugh at how much of a political slut this man is. Does he really believe that German foreign policy could have “made” anyone, much less made a difference to anyone in the near east when they aren’t just disengaged from it, but aren’t even among the parties who have been historically entrenched in it? In Lebanon, German engagement is less than that of Canada, and is limited almost entirely to selling them costly German goods inflated even more by an overvalued Euro. That lack of magnitude notwithstanding, he’s as blinkered as Michael Moore on 9/12 who stupidly believed that jihadists cared enough about the same issues he did to be shocked that they would attack states that voted for the Democrats.

This guy is the logical outcome of a society so completely lacking in intellectual bravery or any capacity to judge right from wrong that it falls for the sort of personal relativism that gives ciphers and idiots way to think themselves intelligent and “fair”. It isn’t. It leads one from a lack of intellectual depth to making an entirely repugnant choice when they do finally think they know what they believe in. It also finds itself leading ultimately to supporting an unelected dictatorship that keeps political prisoners out of sight for decades in a callous bid to preserve its’ inner circle.