What’s A Few Mines Between Friends?

Hey, you whacky anti-landmine celebs, what’s mine is yours’!:

ALGIERS (Reuters) - France, anxious to improve its relations with Algeria, handed over to Algerian authorities the location charts of mines places at the time of the war of independence (1954-1962).

The French army dispersed landmines on the eastern and western borders of Algeria during the war of liberation to prevent FLN fighters from attacking French forces from their bases in Tunisia and Morocco.

These plans of mines between 1956 and 1959 were handed over by the French Interservice Chief of Staff, General Louis Georgelin on visit to Algeria, said the French embassy.

"This decision, which was expected by Algeria, reflects a determination of French authorities to remove obstacles inherited from the past, and their desire to build trust with Algeria," said the diplomatic mission said in a statement to the press.

According to Algiers, which has called for this gesture for a long time, the French military placed about three million landmines in Algeria.

"With the delivery of these plans, Nicolas Sarkozy (...) is trying to remove obstacles that hinder French-Algerian relations", the mission wrote for the influential El Watan daily. The newspaper commentary responds with an editorial cartoon where a victim of a mine says "See, it only took 45 years to say that."

The French Head of IS due in December on an official visit to Algeria. His Algerian counterpart, Abdelaziz Bouteflika has repeatedly called on France to repent for "the crimes committed during the colonial period."

In other words, the victorious Algerians wouldn’t demine their own country after 45 years, and still demand “repentance.” In other words, that emotional subservience that can turn Europe’s bien pensent who are otherwise petulant into jelly at the push of an emotional button – whether there is right, wrong, generations gone, or statesmanship and diplomacy involved at all.

- Shukran, ya Viktor!

This from the Nation of Peace, Love, and “the Rest of You Are Always Wrong”

No Blood for oil!

For 40 years, the French government has been fighting a secret war in Africa, hidden not only from its people, but from the world. It has led the French to slaughter democrats, install dictator after dictator – and to fund and fuel the most vicious genocide since the Nazis. Today, this war is so violent that thousands are fleeing across the border from the Central African Republic into Darfur – seeking sanctuary in the world's most notorious killing fields

So while they have large public weep-fests for “Darfour” as a pretext to listen to washed up bands and writers try to restart their careers, you would think that they would pay some attention to the “root causes” of their today’s glance and someone else’s misery. While they flatter themselves about the fact that they wring their hands at the same, they can’t assemble the same moral fiber of the average Total victim, and not fight wars at the behest of their domestic corporate interests.

James Oddo Makes Me Feel Proud to be an American

NYC James Oddo Councilman gives it back to a Euro TV-prankster. Oddly enough, it’s hand to find a distinction between most the of the TV press and these rather unimaginative comedic skit.

WWCD?

The wise one asks: What Would Ché Do? I have a fairly good idea what... the thought that comes to my mind is “have fun with your new little friends.”

Some In Western Europe are beginning to Get It

Communism kills.

At the request of Eduardo Mackenzie I am now party to correspondence he devoted to the political situation in his country marked by the crimes of the FARC, the Communist Revolutionary Armed Forces, while democratic bodies in Europe remain silent.

Chavez funds the FARC, and Cuba has become little more than an economic dependency to him, not to mention numerous other efforts he’s engaged in such as making his nation a gateway for Hizballah, al Qaida, and running the economy into the ground in spite of record oil prices. Now his proxies are trying to take power by taking assassinating opposition candidates in towns and cities in Columbia. That’s right: local mayors and legislative representatives...

In less than a week of regional elections in Colombia there have already been 26 candidates killed, most by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a terrorist organization that intends to interfere this barbaric way in the October 28, 2007 caucuses where 18,332 Colombians will elect people for the posts of governors of departments, mayors, city councilors and county deputies. The 86,449 registered candidates belong to 235 different political groups.

But to commie throwbacks from the last century, ”THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!!!” I guess the left are for the people, so long as they shut up or die.

- with thanks to Kevin (or is that ”Kevain”...)

The Segway Diaries

Neer do’ well/ man about town Clarsonimus, that veritable denizen of the moist and intrigue ridden alleyways of Berlin interviews some shady booze-hound. Enjoy. If the voices don’t get to you.

Greenies Still Orbiting Uranus

Remember that scourge to humanity, however many humanity destroying scourges before called the Hole in the Ozone Layer™®©? The n-th thing that was supposed to prove to the the poor misguided children with running water and flush toilets that everyone in humanity was wrong about the way they live, and that environmentalist who live no differently weren’t? Well ¡No Pasarán! Reader and commentator Papertiger writes:

Do you remember way back when you wrote up this about the ozone hole?

As it turns out, you were right. Chemists poke holes in ozone theory.
The Montreal Protocol, agreed in 1987 and ratified two years later, stopped the production and consumption of most ozone-destroying chemicals. But many will linger on in the atmosphere for decades to come. How and on what timescales they will break down depend on the molecules' ultraviolet absorption spectrum (the wavelength of light a molecule can absorb), as the energy for the process comes from sunlight.

So Markus Rex, an atmosphere scientist at the Alfred Wegener Institute of Polar and Marine Research in Potsdam, Germany, did a double-take when he saw new data for the break-down rate of a crucial molecule, dichlorine peroxide (Cl2O2). The rate of photolysis (light-activated splitting) of this molecule reported by chemists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California1, was extremely low in the wavelengths available in the stratosphere - almost an order of magnitude lower than the currently accepted rate.
The rapid photolysis of Cl2O2 is a key reaction in the chemical model of ozone destruction developed 20 years ago.
If the rate is substantially lower than previously thought, then it would not be possible to create enough aggressive chlorine radicals to explain the observed ozone losses at high latitudes, says Rex. The extent of the discrepancy became apparent only when he incorporated the new photolysis rate into a chemical model of ozone depletion. The result was a shock: at least 60% of ozone destruction at the poles seems to be due to an unknown mechanism, Rex told a meeting of stratosphere researchers in Bremen, Germany, last week.

In the course of investigating global warming, I have discovered that the other planets you would expect, the ones with atmospheres, also have their analogs of "ozone holes". It seems that they are a feature of planetary rotation rather then a defect.

Here are some pictures: Uranus, Saturn, Jupiter, Venus, and Mars, and finally Earth.

Note: The Martian ozone hole is barely visible due to the thin atmosphere. The only reason it is viewable at all is because of a planet wide dust storm in 2002.

Good on ya, PT – and thank you. The one thing that’s obvious about the things that greenies always seem to find so pressing, urgent, risk-laden, around the corner, and so forth, have far more to do with a need to be liked while they act on their urge to dismantle any available pillar of a civilization they had no part in building.

After all, who really wants to go back to the days where we were all worse off: less healthy, lived shorter and uncomfortable lives because the economy and society as a whole depended heavily on human and animal manual labor, and didn’t have the advantage of energy and material resources that are affordable enough for everyone in society (and not just an elite,) could benefit from – which ultimately where the “green” movement is leading us away from, whether they know it or not.

Imagine that: a slow dissolution of individual rights over how they conduct themselves and what they do with their property for the sake of an abstraction which is supposed to be for our own good, regardless of the fact that a majority wouldn’t agree... sounds mighty familiar.

As if a bunch of lit majors could even tell you what ozone even is. All they know is that someone told them that you aren’t allowed to disagree with them.

Socialist Striking to get More than Others

To have similar work condition as the general public is not acceptable to transit workers, who are, as it is, already civil servants, are accorded with benefits employees and businesses have to struggle to create under legal mandates and a desire to do well by people. The public is NOT amused.



After the first wave of people clearing out of the city early on, all stations look abandoned as the 8 p.m. shutdown rolled around.

Don't forget that this is the country where college students protested in order to get their first job guaranteed for life. But from whom?

Masterful Self-Censorship with Élan

France's freedom of the press rating ranks below Ghana's, “missed an opportunity to shut up” Lithuania's, and Costa Rica's at 31st.

The Usual Pedantry

A minority of transit workers plan on paralyzing France, punishing the rest of the population with their demands on Thursday 18 October.

Liberté Chérie says simply:

NON AUX BLOCAGES!
NON AUX PRIVILEGES!

In other words: “eat me”, and urges them to get a life.

Cultural Exception

The Aborigines are Behaving as Badly as ever

I demand a two-state solution:

Geneva - Racism in France is "alive, pernicious and most of its victims are French citizens from visible minorities, not immigrants," the UN's independent expert on minority issues said on Monday.
"Because of the colour of their skin, their religion, their surname or their address, these young people in France see no chance of social mobility" said Gay J McDougall, after a ten-day visit to the country.

More Subtlety than you can Shake a Stick at.

The next time you hear some Euro-oration about how different they are that the Americans, accept the fact that it’s true:

Retired general Romeo Dallaire slammed France today during testimony at a landmark war crimes trial, saying the country helped those responsible for Rwanda's genocide escape to freedom.

Everybody now, sing it! We are the world! We are the children!

Testifying at the trial of Desire Munyaneza, a failed refugee claimant on trial for participating in the genocide, Dallaire said the French "push-back" force ended up helping the killers escape into neighbouring Congo.

Meanwhile, back in charming Quebec, a Frenchman meets the welcome wagon which also has yet to do with anything in the US, but then again France Duh, and France Cinq have yet to report air it as the daily feel-good story at the end of the news.

It’s Like They’re Looking for the Image of Karl Marx in a Tortilla

Next great, whacky, and over-the-top European theory about the US soon to be formed.

Enh! Pfft! Ayeii! Mais C'est Charmant !

Bon, Mais C'est Charmant !