Media Moron Describes Recent Gang Violence in Paris as « A L’Américaine »

Which is secret code for not wanting to admit how normal and traditional it is.



« Les loups sont entrés dans Paris » / “The wolves have entered Paris” but not on the TGV as they’re trying to imply.

-Danke Schön zu Hervé

“But Officer, I Need To Hack My Way Home Through The Tall Grasses!!!”

Nouvel Observateur reports that:

Thirty people were arrested Monday night in the 18th arrondissement of Paris after brawls and armed violence between rival gangs, reported the police on Tuesday August 28th.
Six individuals, mainly from Hauts-de-Seine, were taken into police custody at the urban police task force (PUP) station which sees in this outburst a link with incidents on Sunday at Gare du Nord.

“Armed with machetes and kitchen knives”

Two people had been slightly wounded, probably with blunt instruments in the gang fight early in the evening inside the Gare du Nord station on Sunday. Three of the suspects were stopped shortly thereafter and placed in police custody.

You just wait. Before you know it, these punks will be learning to use stone, and then maybe even bronze tools.

Got Döner?

Eat your heart out, and don’t forger the hot ajvar.

- It’s always an after-party
at Observing Hermann

Isn’t Being Deified By Atheists Sort of Useless?

...” Is it an apparition? ” ...
... “ No, after the collapse it's the ascension. “...

First she was made to look bigger that Jesus Christ and walking on water. Now she’s sort of levitating in a non-specific, east-ish, new agey kind of way. Inasmuch as the Saints are now thought to be the state again and given the role of distributing Welfare checks and school vacations, in the absence of any sort of belief system in anything larger than themselves (and possibly government,) I wouldn’t expect much from this new lefty neo-medieval piety.

Doomed By Their Own World View

US based John O’Sullivan returns to the UK and sees little hope in its’ present social state.

My returning American friends sugar-coat their vacations to me. They enthuse over the historic monuments, the superb theatre, the cathedral cities, the improvement in British cuisine, the precision of the Royal Horse Guards, Fortnum & Mason, and the kindness of almost everyone they met.

Almost everyone? Yes, after a while, they admit sadly to the odd disappointment: the snide anti-American remarks directed at them, the warnings against crime near their hotel, the vomiting young people dominating the centres of every town at night.

"Going to a West End play today is like going to Broadway in the 1970s," said one. "You thread your way past the same sleazy porn shops, over the same junkies, and past the same drunks, except that the swearing doesn't stop when the play starts."

It didn't happen overnight. Breaking down a strong culture of civic self-control takes time and several social acids.

The first such acid was the cultural liberalism generally associated with the 1960s: the attempt to free people from irksome traditional moral customs and the laws that reflected them.

For all the “revolution’s” intent of fostering freedom, all they have made for themselves is precisely the opposite: a nanny state with neither the social ease of a safe street, or the confidence that one can freely air your views.

The result is a fractured, distrustful and disorderly society. And because a diverse society lacks agreed values and standards, governments regulate the behaviour of all, including the law-abiding, to maintain social peace.

Thus, we have far more officials supervising us than in the 1950s, but they are anti-smoking social workers and ethnic diversity officers rather than park wardens.

The police have become little more than the paramilitary wing of The Guardian, sniffing out "racist" or "Islamophobic" attitudes rather than investigating serious crimes that have some "cultural" excuse. Society gradually becomes more governed and less self-governing.

While some call their boorishness “art” others imagine that this is their freedom. In the end what that have to show for it is neither intellectually provocative and enriching nor do they the room to think freely.

Unapproved Thoughts Made Illegal

Europa, Europa:Brussels Mayor Warns: 9/11 Demonstrators Are Criminals

I decided to forbid the September 11 demonstration “against the islamicisation of Europe.” […] Since 2001 I have allowed over 3,500 demonstrations. This is only the sixth one which I forbid. […] The right to demonstrate exists only inasmuch as it does not cause a disturbance of the public peace and order. […] First and foremost the organizers have chosen the symbolic date of 9/11. The intention is obviously to confound the terrorist activities of Muslim extremists on the one hand and Islam as a religion and all Muslims on the other hand. […] Such incitement to discrimination and hatred, which we usually call racism and xenophobia, is forbidden by a considerable number of international treaties...

Also sprach Freddy.

Never mind anyone else provoking a disturbance of the peace, or what’s left of it, this guy thinks that international treaties, even if they really DO ban opinions, would even supersede the laws critical to a open pluralistic democracy which were put in place by a population on itself.

Merry Eco-Barbarian Luddites in Portugal

Last Friday (17 August) in Algarve in the south of Portugal, a Portuguese farmer who had planted a GMO crop legal even by tight EU standards, saw his lands invaded and the corn crop destroyed by activists of a fringe ecologist organization with complete impunity. Portuguese police did not act to prevent or stop the wanton destruction.

The vandals' actions were praised by the extreme-left party Bloco de Esquerda, which has supported the activist organization in the past. Miguel Portas, an MEP for the Bloco de Esqueda supported this action as a "precautionary measure", an act of "civil disobedience" and "non-violent conflict". Even tough he acknowledged the destruction of property, Miguel Portas wrote that there was a "wider social benefit" by raising the public awareness of GMO's.

Meanwhile, the Minister responsible for internal security said the police did everything they could to stop the crop destruction (although it was indeed destroyed...) and that those involved were to be prosecuted. In response, the spokesman for the eco-barbarians deemed this a "waste of public money" that would be better employed in a public campaign against GMO's. Their goal is to "re-establish ecological, moral and democratic order" even at the expense of others, so it seems.

- Via O Insurgente

Could They Hack it?

Hurricane Dean (2007-08-21-1545 UTC) superimposed to scale on the heart of Europe. It would envelope all of Germany, Switzerland, Austria, the Benelux, and most of the Czech Republic. Greater London would fit in its eye.

So where are the Katrina-esque tirades? Bring ‘em on! Here’s the coverage from the commie anachronisms who so sure that they’re concerned with “all of Humanity” as the name might imply, this lot only seems to have seen fit to cover the fate of one small island in the Caribbean without so much as even a link to a wire story about the Yucatan peninsula getting whacked. This, regardless of who their “real heroes” are.



More no-event non-news and poodle-like
idol worship from their weekly magazine.

Feeling Oppressed by Paper

American lefty editorial cartoonist Jeff Danziger takes a refuge for the detestation of his countrymen regularly in Pouriel International. Like many of his ilk, going over the top with his arguments is never quite enough. This month, he feels his liberties are dwindling away because of... the watermarks in his passport:

On the third page, opposite my picture and personal information appears an enormous head of a bald eagle, a ear of corn, a flag, and the preamble to the Constitution. The eagle has a curiously empty expression. For some unknown reason the federal government, which uses it everywhere and even affixes it post office trucks and medical warnings, is not able to decide to give to the bird a furious expression, slightly irritated, or a paternal look. This eagle, which glances at my photograph where I have little expression has a more tolerant air than usual.

I don’t think the paper mean it personally, Jeff.

But this part takes the cake:

The final result is that any feeling of affection which one could have for the country or its’ history is transformed into a joke. These oft used symbols, these common scenes, these paste board versions of our heroes and these there whirring quotations are presented as the real America. We have, of course, a lesson to be learnt owing to the fact that this setting in scene was conceived under a government which is without question the worst in recent history. But I do not dare to imagine which.

He probably wants to be the one – the single one – or maybe among the very few with whom he shares a common view, a minority to be sure, to tell us all what that “true America” is, but he can’t.

Nor should he if he is so much more misanthropic than the population itself, and yet has so little meaningful to say about his country that the rest of us are supposed to identify with when considering images of its’ identity. I doubt he would put his choice of symbols to a popular vote. He thinks Bison, Totem Poles, and the Rockies are kitsch. Of course it would seem that way if you can’t identify with anyone who doesn’t live in the intellectual gulag of east-coast urban leftism which has failed miserably in the agora of ideas for 4 decades. He has probably failed to notice that a pluralistic society is more than that.

All-Loving, All-Caring, EUtopia

Which is superior in every way to America was deeply concerned about this man’s dignity:

A paedophile repeat offender, Francis Evrard, was sentanced Friday for the kidnap and rape of Enis in Roubaix (North). He had Viagra when he was arrested and says that it was prescribed to him before he was last released from prison, one confirmed source said on Saturday.

The 61 year old paedophile was arrested Wednesday evening in Roubaix with Viagra in his possession, according to one source close to the case.

Police officers indicated after his arrest that an investigation is underway to determine if this drug to treat male impotence was prescribed to him by a doctor in the Caen prison system where he was held.

Arent you glad the Doctor went out of his way to enable him to get some of his youthful manhood back?

Gratuitous Loony USA Reference № 2794

So Just Who is the Mad Cow?

Floaties: “ BCE “

Wifebeater shirt “ Love of risk “

Soviet Sanitarium Redux

In today’s Le Figaro, Thibaut Danancher covers the story of one woman’s treatment by Paris’ city hall when she complained about vandalism and crime in her neighborhood in the 18th arrondissement: they referred her for Psychiatrist treatment:

By opening her mail last Saturday, Sylvia Bourdon discovered that it was invited to go to consult a psychiatrist at the Maison-Blanche hospital in Paris. An appointment planned for August 20 at 2 p.m. Subject of the consultaion: emails sent to the ministry for the Interior “to complain about what occurred in my neighborhood”.

Sylvia Bourdon then decides to take the things in hand. It creates several blogs to denounce “this chaotic ghetto, this broken up surface more the criminogene of the capital”. Jointly, it spends on June 14 with the window of its two-piece to take photographs of what it qualifies “recurring disorders”.

Tracked down by ten young men, her apartment was broken into a few days later. She had it. So much so that she sent angry emails to senior people at the Ministry for the Interior just to ask them to ensure her safety.

On one blog Sylvia Bourdon, a former porn and horror/ B-movie actress is shown to have been given the ultimate Scarlet Letter and being outed as some sort of xenophobe and racist, presumably for wanting to be able to walk safely down the street in a City in a Nation that won’t shut up about the wonders of its’ social model. In Paris, even when an argument to support someone’s views hints at any of this, the characterization becomes the kiss of death.

Last Saturday she received a letter which made it all clear to her: “Due to the various emails which you addressed to the Ministry of the Interior, the proper authorities required of us to contact you. If you wish, we can set up an appointment [with a Psychitarist] for you. I propose Monday August 20, 2007 at 2 p.m”, wrote someone from the hospital.

This last email was acted on at the request of the office of Mental Health Action of the Paris Police Prefecture, in particular the office responsible for involuntary admissions.

[ ... ]

Angered, Sylvia Bourdon has decided to leave Paris and France altogether. She announced that she will be migrating permanently to Greece in the fist half of 2008.

There goes the neighborhood. After all if you can’t cart off the citizens who speak up, what’s left?

- Hat-tip to Carine

Plantu is a Bigot

By that standard, would he caricature Rutger Hauer by putting him in wooden shoes?

I dare him to find even ONE Japanese woman who sees herself this way:

Seven Japanese automakers accept a settlement in a lawsuit to compensate people for the harm done by pollution.

After all, people don’t kill people, guns kill people. So by extension, cars pollute because people don’t have any free will of their own. Not in the well managed asylum Europeans like this strive for.

It’s Becoming the Anus of Civilization

Pretend provocation, pretend sensitivity: This cartoon was published the day after the Feast of the Assumption, not that it really means much to your average Le Monde reader numb to the genuine beliefs of others. That very fake form of concern by way of telling oneself how fair one is, is the first step to not realizing how offensive this (and they) really are.

Virgin Mary matronly EU apparition: "What? The French only have 9 weeks of summer vacation and Bulgarians get 16? I foresee strikes at back-to-school time!"
Vacationers (who look like Plantu’s derisive characterization of Americans:"No-one will belive us."

The EU angle? There isn’t one. I suppose he’s trying to imply something about either traditional France or the EU commenting on the horrible “Anglo-Saxon-like” mechanization of their lives through the mere realization that there are schoolkids in Europe who get more vacation than they do.

News-people thinking that their own work is news. The public is predictably expected to bang their spoons on their high-chairs yelling “Me Me Me!” But this all comes out of a news item Le Monde brought out itself by reporting a survey of some of nationally mandated school schedules in Europe. More than one EUvian? Then think of it somehow connected with the EU and therefore paint it as a criticism... somehow.
In fact none of it is the case. As with many things the root cause of this great social horror is that someone actually reported it.

Big whoop. It IS in fact an indicator. If you look at the poorest and least intellectually developed or successful parts of Europe and the Middle East, they all have very short school seasons. This is due to a combination of weather and poverty. In fact in Germany, the summer school break used to be limited by law to 45 days or so. Their point of pride at the time were that Gerd and Uta were not dimwits. Meanwhile let’s teach François and Ingrid to demand more of something from the anonymous, objectifiable, all-powerful “other”

So, like all fake issues and fake buzz, how far can these detached Parisian take this? Invent a fake social problem, nay, a plague dogging their very lives! Serguei:

Girl on phone: "I’m in school in Denmark, François."
Surfer (too old to be a schoolkid anyway): "Maybe next year then, Ingrid."
Cupid: "That’s not the way to construct a single Europe."

Conclusion: the government and the rest of society should be responsible for your love lives, and that Anschluß unification means that Bulgarians and Danes should be forced to do as you.

Hence the title.

Staging the News: Magic Bullet Theories

AFP at it’s worst. I’ll leave finding the hook in this one to you.

"An elderly Iraqi woman shows two bullets which she says hit her house following an early coalition forces raid in the predominantly Shiite Baghdad suburb of Sadr City."

BAD coalition! BAD! NO-ONE else is BAD. (Hint: note condition of bullets, and the bogus nature of the way the photo and the story was staged.)

It’s, like, all About the Environment, Dude

Which of course it isn’t. Not when you live in an apartment in a former industrial district, use a “macbook” (if you can even figure that out) and think that your over promoted, totally exploited thing is actually about “smashing PR” or “casseurs de pub”



And making America into a green Cyclopse, of course.

Today, they’re out on a marching protest to promote the act of walking! I’ll bet you didn’t know that big oil is trying to buy up peoples’ feet, did ya?!? You can smell the mendacity from here.

Press Distances Self From the Press

Some in the press have joined the rest of civilization in finding most of the press repugnant. What’s makes them register an 11 on hypocrisy index is all right there in the cartoon: a big chunk of the press hate Sarko, and fault him for somehow slavishly having in his thrall the very people who hate him.



Really. It’s time you had a nice little nap.

Confusion Over Which Petty Demand to Get Worked Up About

Ahead of a very flat piece about the American treatment of the poor little Iranian National Guard (“Les Gardiens” – they support the troops, you see...) comes a confused story about France lagging behind in the number of days kids are in school per year. Since it’s about “les congés d'été” and not these kids growing to be as smart as your average speedbump, their deference must be toward the class-struggle angle of these brats only getting however much of this thing they like to think of as a grand national tradition, only to find out that a bunch of other European countries, all less developed, get more.

Décroisse it on up, baby!

Dar el Harb

Preferring Jihadi total war, hacking “Cyber Protestors” post Anti-American invective on a UN website, of all places.

A page usually used to display statements from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon was yesterday showing remarks accusing the US and Israel of killing children.

The message on the site read: “Hey Ysrail and Usa don’t kill children and other people Peace for ever No war.”

Security experts believe a group of hackers known as Cyber Protest was behind the attack. The malicious users called themselves “Gsy”, “kerem125” and “M0sted”.

It’s a good thing that they’re idiots too:

the group, one of whom is from Turkey, has allegedly hacked into other sites, including those of the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, the University of California and the Japanese car manufacturer Toyota.

Ooh, Sass-ay!

Zapatero’s Defense of Cuban Regime Explained

Socialists seeking youthful “solidarity”:

by all accounts, the country is a major destination for sex tourism, including child sex tourism. Cuba's thriving sex trade caters to thousands of European, Canadian, and Latin American tourists every year, and involves large numbers of Cuban girls and boys, some as young as 12. State-run hotel workers, travel employees, cab drivers, hospitality staff, and police steer tourists to prostituted women and children and facilitate the commercial sexual exploitation of these women and children.

Thousands of these lucid and thoughtful types are licking their chops over the revolution and class struggle no doubt.

You Are Officially Free to Conform

... ”New idea: it fights against the large bad one, to only less historically heavy and become the Harry Potter of the 1940s.” ...

... “Brilliant Mr. Cruise!” ...

Many Germans have been fearful of Tom Cruise, citing their own puzzling obsession with Scientology. If it wasn’t a religion, I’m sure many EUvians would surely ignore it with the same passivity they have for subcultures that actually cause harm.

There’s Always Hope in his Imaginary Universe

Georges Bouche: ... “Sometimes we think of you as Superman” ...
Sarko: ... “Thanks. That’s kind of you” ...
Georges Boosh: ... “Except – I’m Superman” ...

Imagine the number of delusions you need to harbor to nod dumbly at the sight of today’s scribble by Pancho

Everyone’s a Critic

Everyone’s a comedian

Opinions are like...

Um:

DES DIZAINES d'impacts de balles sur les murs, sur des voitures et sur la vitrine d'une banque voisine... Voilà ce qu'il restait de « la plus impressionnante fusillade de ces dernières années à Paris » - dixit un policier -, hier devant la boîte de nuit Plaza Madeleine, dans les beaux quartiers de la capitale.

or, as it were:

TENS of rounds hit the walls, cars, and the window of a bank...

Here are what remains of “the most impressive shootout of these last few years in Paris” a police officer said -, yesterday in front of the Plaza Madeleine night club, in the beautiful part of the capital.

Look, I’m impressed too, but I don’t think it’s the right time to dwell on their style or get too hung up on the stats.

Cultural Awareness Day

For those of you who might have forgotten just how McDo-like the imposition of European culture really is, let us all sing, then kumbaya.

This Week on “This Old Box”

Les Caniches de Chavez Le Monde Diplomatique isworked up about « Liberalisme » that barely exists at all in the public discourse in France:

His first act, the “tax shield” offers special protection to very large fortunes from get hit [by taxes], however measured of the tax department. The cost to the Treasury of the delicacies which the right-wing parliamentary majority has just offered to future heirs: approximately 13 billion euros. As has just been pointed out it the daily newspaper Les Echoes, it is almost exactly the same sum that François Mitterrand spent in his 1981-1982 economic renewal plan. The left devoted a good part of this money to the creation of 240 000 public jobs.

At the time the pitch, according to them, was that this would inconsiderately add to the burden of the national debt.

The writer says that, of course, as if 240 000 more piglets suckling at the public teat for the next 35 years is a good thing. Absent is the realization that any cent that passes through the digestive tract of government comes out very slowly and half the size. By that measure, Mitterand was acting with the same sophistication of crack smoking Washington DC mayor Marion Barry who made people fully aware that expanding government and handing out jobs can be made to look like an economic band-aid on a sucking flesh wound, but was actually nothing more than a way of buying votes.

If the government of Mr. Sarkozy is quite as generous (or as much of a spendthrift), it’s not towards the same recipients. What it loses in revenues from taxes, it saves it in use of civil servants: 22 700 jobs will be eliminated next year. As for the debt, whereas last October the government of Mr. Dominique de Villepin, for whom Mr. Sarkozy was a minister of State had committed to European authorities to bringing France’s public debt into balance by 2010. Mr. Francois Fillon is pleading now for an additional 2 year grace period.

Good heavens! They might even exist, and they might even have an agenda! How dare they trim away part of the “to hell with the future” left’s fifth column in any way!

And they actually think that that’s economic Liberalism. They, and this really is shared by the mainstream left, genuinely believe that taxing the rich more will make them not leave the country, and that the progressive nationalization of the greatest number of jobs will improve the economy. They seem to have missed what 6 decades of commie-nomics did to ravage Eastern Europe and are completely and utterly hopeless.

Because it involves a stupefiante, they might understand this oft-emailed old saw:

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

1. The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
2. The fifth would pay $1.
3. The sixth would pay $3.
4. The seventh would pay $7.
5. The eighth would pay $12.
6. The ninth would pay $18.
7. The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, thats what they decided to do.

The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until on day, the owner threw them a curve. Since you are all such good customers, he said, Im going to reduce the cost of your
daily beer by $20. Drinks for the ten now cost just $80. The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men - the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his fair share?

They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33, but if they subtracted that from everybodys share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each mans bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.

And so:
1. The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
2. The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).
3. The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).
4. The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
5. The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
6. The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before and the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings. I only got a dollar out of the $20, declared the
sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man, but he got $10! Yeah, that’s right, exclaimed the fifth man. I only saved a dollar, too. Its unfair that he got TEN times more than I! Thats true!! shouted the seventh man.
Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!

Wait a minute, yelled the first four men in unison. We didn’t get anything at all. The system exploits the poor! The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up. The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him.

But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn”t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

That, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being
wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore.

In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

For those who understand, no explanation is needed.

For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible.

And that is precisely the sort of journalist we’re talking about.

You would think even faded impressions from the 1970’s of their own preoccupation with rebellion would ward off trends toward collectivization, central authority, and a remaking of the economy in the image of mid-century Army life would leave their mark. They haven’t. I don’t think that the people who entertain notions of a huge civil service as a form of idealized worker society are even intelligent enough to question it because they carry on as if the last century and its’ horrible treatment of the individual never happened – and yet they never seem to make the connection between this statist fetish of the left and the totalitarianism it inevitably brings down on people.

It’s as if finding them a few basic needs can make them fall for anything. Good God, it’s sad how cheaply their will can be bought for.

All the News That’s Fit to Ignore for 16 Months

August 2007: frothing cartoonist Pancho finally gets all worked up about the Hamas-Fatah split.



Pancho finally noticing the Palestinian Civil War that started brewing in March 2006

Lucidity TV

Yesterday on one of the ubiquitous “debats” talk shows that are barely worthy of Jerry Springer, we find the usual fixation with the U.S.

Titled « Deadly crossing, » the show started off by mentioning hurricane Katrina in the same breathe as a « discussion » of the Minnesota bridge collapse. Not only did they seem to take incredible delight in the whole thing, one can’t imagine them even mentioning anyone else’s bad news along with the sadness it’s brought to individuals, let alone their own.

The only purpose there was for them to cover this subject at all is because of the popularity and joy so many in mainstream France take in detesting America. Nothing more.

Behold the baseline: France 2 in 2007 rehashing mendacious abuse of George Bush during 9-11 after 6 years. No new news, no nothing – just abuse.

[Program] Summary: On September 11, 2001, while terrorists hijacked airliners to take down the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, George W. Bush attended the class of a primary school of Sarasota, Florida. The images of the American President learning the news from one of his advisors and remaining inexplicably passive with a stupefied air, drew the notice of the world. But what really happened that day? Did Bush deliberately choose not to react “live”? How did he manage the crisis after that? The team of “One day/one destiny” asks witnesses closest to the President, key facts, and reconstituted the event.

OPINION: It’s a detailed log exemplary in its rigor and in the precision of its revelations but which, curiously, remains a little vain. With the image of a Bush obviously overwhelmed by the task...

Nothing but hatred.

Appointing the Fox to the Henhouse

French president Nicolas Sarkozy recently appointed pinko Jacques Attali to a special economic advisory commission. The problem of his predilections is inherent problem number one. Number two is that he’s already done a number on the economy under Mitterand, and is an unreconstructed fantasy-communist skeptic of even the concept or growth. The free market advocacy group Liberté Chérie lays the problem out:

Whereas Philippe Séguin was first nominated to chair a commission on growth, it’s finally been entrusted to Jacques Attali. A quick look as the past gives us fear of what this commission will come up with:

- Jacques Attali advised Mitterrand in 1981 on economic questions, which has unanimously been recognized as a disaster.

- Jacques Attali’s economic projections have always proved wrong. In 1990 he wrote that “to pass the economic reforms before political reforms, China will experience slower development. One can even expect to see a long period of crisis and recession”. Reality bore out quite differently: in the 1990s the Chinese economic growth record was unbeatable reaching 9% to 11% annually. This is only one example of many.

- Jacques Attali was always skeptical of the virtues of the economic growth itself. In a work republished in 1990, he put forward that “economic growth of rich countries creates the conditions of increasing dependence in poor countries”.

- His short term as the head of the European Bank for the Reconstruction and Development (BERD) was a catastrophe: remembered only for especially extravagant expenditures and innumerable wastes of money which forced him to resign.

If Jacques Attali is put to the task of removing barriers to economic growth, it is only because his own ideas are major barriers to economic growth. Nicolas Sarkozy and Francois Fillon are making a serious mistake.

And therein lies the problem: it’s cultural. The desire to impress, surprise, and try to make oneself look particularly bright by inverting the obvious is just a sort of attention-seeking pathology held by people who think anyone can be impressed, surprised, and made to seem bright this way.

High Correlation Between Socialism and Penis Envy

VDH reads the Pew leaves:

Contrast all that dislike with those nations who appreciate the United States, which tells us something much different about America’s role in the world. The Kenyans and Ghanaians, for example, reveal more admiration for the United States (87 and 80 percent, respectively) than do we Americans ourselves.

In fact, all of sub-Saharan Africa — poor and with a past of exploitation — has an unbelievably high regard for the U.S. Perhaps black Africans appreciate our support for democracy, realize that we were not colonialists, see that blacks are succeeding in the U.S. in a way unthinkable elsewhere, know that we spearhead the global effort to bring AIDS relief and stop the genocide in Darfur, and sympathize with their own long struggle against radical Islam.

Much of Eastern Europe is similarly well-inclined. Poland, for example (61 percent approval rating), does not trust Russia — and does not trust Europe to offer any help in a future hour of crisis.

Likewise, many countries of Latin America — Mexico, Chile, Peru — poll staunchly pro-American. We have tried to support these shaky Latin American democracies, welcomed their immigrants, and allowed billions of dollars to be sent back as worker remittances. And unlike a Spain, France, Germany, the Muslim Middle East, Russia, or China, such confident emerging nations also are not hung up on perceived past grandeur, blame-gaming the new superpower for their own subordinate roles.

Indeed, how strange that these poor countries in Africa, Eastern Europe, and South America are more favorable to America than are oil-rich sheikdoms, rich European socialist republics, and Middle East recipients of massive U.S. aid.

There’s no point even wondering what reasons the European subspecies of the anti-American even has on any given day. Over the decades, the only things that have changed have been the reasons they give themselves for their irrational venomous ire. Either way, it’s the pattern and persistence of that bile that indicates a pathology in them rather than us.

“In France, To Earn A Lot Of Money Is To Be Seen As A Little Bit Criminal”

However, the smart ones are voting with their feet:

Angry at paying more than 72 percent of his income in taxes, he moved to the ski resort of Gstaad last December in a storm of publicity. After Sarkozy's May election, Hallyday hinted he might come back. His press attache Catherine Battner says he has yet to make up his mind.

Fleeing the Tax

Households fleeing the fortune tax climbed to a record 649 in 2005 from 370 in 1997, according to a study by French Senator Philippe Marini.

Another study by the Economic Analysis Council, which advises the government, says about 10,000 business directors fled in the last 15 years, taking 70 billion to 100 billion euros ($137 billion) in capital to invest elsewhere.

Marini said the average age of the emigrants is 53, compared with 66 for the 394,000 people still in France who pay the tax. A third of those who left had started paying it only two years earlier, suggesting they represented new and growing wealth, he said.

Bend over Marianne. This is what you said you wanted.

“The Right to Laziness,” a 19th century book by Paul Lafargue, Karl Marx’s son-in-law, advised against working more than three hours a day. And French author Honore de Balzac famously said, “Behind every great fortune lies a crime.” This prejudice drove French citizens to Switzerland, Belgium, the U.K. and the
U.S., where at least 500,000 of them reside, either to make more or keep more of what they have. London and the U.S. are preferred refuges for younger people. Switzerland, with about 200,000 French residents, attracts the retired and stars like Hallyday.

Wealth? Obviously stolen by “the bosses”!

Kidnapping Germans for Fun and Profit

John Rosenthal sums up rump Europe’s concept of free trade.

Ever since the disappearance of Susanne Osthoff in November 2005, the constant refrain of Foreign Minister Steinmeier and German Chancellor Angela Merkel after each new hostage-taking has been: "Germany does not allow itself to be extorted" ["Deustchland lässt sich nicht erpressen"]. This pretense, however, quickly began to crumble when, shortly after Osthoff's release, reports emerged that part of the ransom money had been found on the person of none other than Susanne Osthoff herself.

In their haste to deflect the obvious inference that the kidnapping had been staged and that Osthoff has been complicit in the operation, German officials appeared to forget their pro forma denials that Germany had ever paid ransom in the first place. Shortly after the May 2006 release of Bräulich and Nitzschke -- who had been in Iraq all of two days when they went missing -- German public television ARD reported that the German government had paid $10 million to obtain their release: thus seemingly confirming a stable value of Germans on the Iraqi hostage market of $5 million per.

They should know. The East Germans extorted an average of 55,000 DM from Bonn for every retiree that let emigrate and free them of their “Socialist obligation” to care for them in old age.

Get a Job, Ya Bum

So say Pejman Yousefzadeh discussed Sarko’s free market bait and switch:

At best, all Nicolas Sarkozy will do is to lull the French and Europeans into a state of complacency, making them believe that he and his policies can save them from the kind of free economic competition of which they are so deathly afraid. But eventually, a day of reckoning will have to come when France and Europe realize that either they must undertake radical reforms, or be left in the economic dust by Britain and America. Nicolas Sarkozy and people who share his views regularly present themselves as friends of Europe. But no enemy of the Continent, no matter how dedicated, could so effectively plan for Europe’s long term decline as well as Sarkozy and his allies are doing now.

Nonetheless that seems to be the exception for reality that the people of the cultural exception want. They’ll never be able to say that he didn’t listen to them.

- Tip ‘o the hat to alert reader Frank

Miserable Failure

While collectively smug greenies in Europe make five-year-plans that sound like Soviet rutabaga production figures, and repeatedly cast the United States as a mustache-twirling eco-satan, they forget that they laughed at the environmental movement which started in America while their obsession remained in highly polluting state industries.

Fast forward to today where the US advances the cleanliness of the environment technologically, quietly, and without turning it into anything like the state established and imposed and religion that it’s become in Europe.

Nonetheless, for all the bluster we’ve gotten so used to, they still manage their practice of enfeebling anything they attempt.

For the second year running, more wind power was installed in the US in 2006 than in any other country: about 2,500MW. The American Wind Energy Association forecasts that a further 20,000MW will be installed before 2010, an investment of about $30bn, putting it well ahead of Germany and Spain which currently head the installed capacity league table. Much of this has been driven by a subsidy of 1.9 cents per kilowatt-hour for the first 10 years of any wind farm's operation and, although there has been some doubt as to whether this production tax credit will be extended beyond 2008, most of the presidential hopefuls (in both parties) have been making warm noises about the importance of renewables.

Twenty-three states now have ambitious "renewable portfolio targets", but it is California that has really seized hold of the challenge. Arnold Schwarz¬enegger, the governor, is taking the credit (with the state well on track to generate at least 17 per cent of electricity from renewables by the end of the year), but much of California's success goes back to the multi-billion-dollar research programmes introduced during President George W. Bush's first term as compensation for pulling out of the Kyoto process. California has become the centre for hund¬reds of start-up "clean tech" companies..

By comparison, the European renewables sector often appears stodgy, although it is fair to say that the new target adopted at the European Union summit in March (to achieve 20 per cent of all energy generation – not just electricity – by 2020) has sent shock waves through both the policy community and Europe's energy companies. The idea of generating 12 per cent of transport fuels, 18 per cent of heat and 34 per cent of electricity from renew¬ables will require every member country radically to rethink its policy mix.

Add to it the ignorance: several months ago I met a German engineer who was either engineering or peddling something relative to some kind of greenie blackmail. He was very proud that his native Germany had households which on average use less power as those in Minnesota. I asked him if he know just how much colder Minnesota is than any part of his precious Heimat. He averted his gaze and mumbled that he did.

Weekend Stroll in Ohio

Globalize yourself, cha-cha: Europeans trying to be as dystopic as possible in the US, subtitled in Japanese. They must have been visionaries. After all, how else could a European get too tired to get overraught.