21 December 2007

Una Immunda Propositum

If indeed the French and many others fell so offended by the incorporation of “anglo-saxon” (as if there’s such a thing) words into their language, and think it dangerous to learn the “lingua franca” of global exchange, diplomacy, and ideas, then they need to find something that all EUvians can agree on as a middle ground, and offer up something the rest of the world will embrace as a satisfying challenge. Something historically appropriate to the blessed continent of eternal peace… something of their own invention.

I propose Latin. If you want to walk the walk, you gotta talk the talk (as it were).

Imagine the novelty! The entire sickly cartel, nearly-continent in size, run by priests, nuns, and a handful of squirrelly, verbally combative, and indecisive middle age scholars in corduroy and other peculiar garments. In fact it will be just like the old days when there were plagues and mercenaries.

What a world-beating notion - especially when Putin stares them down to shake the change out of their pockets.

No Duh

There’s an insult German drivers have that either involves tapping your finger on your forehead (to tell someone that they’re an airhead,) or waving your hand in front of your eyes to tell someone that they’re like a horse with blinders on (and is an idiot).

The lefty poodles at Rue89.com deserve both. They’ve run a piece on how the East Germans were extorting cash out of the West Germans to give citizens their freedom, and that the money wasn’t trickling down to comrade ditchdigger.

Even in the DDR this was common knowledge in the early 80’s. Thankfully Rue89.com has permitted this bit of enlightenment to finally see some air 18 years after the wall came down, and only about 35 years after the commies’ racket started, including getting the hard-working taxpayers of the BRD to pay for the construction of the Autobahns that went to West Berlin, and comprised more than half of the DDR’s expressways. What might be more telling was how they built them: with cobblestone on and off ramps, just as it was under Hitler’s specs, but depending even more heavily on manual labor.

The question really is when will the Rue89 dopes charge past the Grenztruppen of their minds and finally see the sign Sie verlassen jetzt den DDR”?

18 December 2007

Welcome to the Mid 20th Century, People!

Just like the heady days of Sputnik! In France, they’re finally thinking of the consumer in the land where any and all business is stitched up to serve the population as poorly as possible:

France is moving a step closer to allowing shopping on Sundays, with Parliament within the week expected to take up a measure that would permit all furniture stores to stay open on the country's traditional day of rest.

- with thanks to erstwhile
blogging maven EUdada

More Sense Than Their Would-Be Dictator



Ché shirt wearing Cuban idiots booed in Venezuela.

- A double ration of peoples’ gruel
To ¡No Pasarán! reader Jabba the Tutt

Great Moments in Schadenfreude

From degree programs in Social Engineering to degrading into a sort of haven for socially awkward but violent outré lefty Animal Farm types, Antioch College is finally giving up the ghost.

Of the eight student organizations currently listed on Antioch's website, only one, the Antioch Environmental Group, is not focused on identity politics of one sort or other. The others are By Any Means Necessary for students of African descent, Unidad for Latinos, the Third World Alliance, Kehilla (formerly the Jew Crew) for Jews, two separate groups for gays and lesbians (the Queer Center and Queers of Color), and the Womyn's Center. (The spelling looks like another Saturday Night Live parody, but it is in fact the center's official orthography, although "wombmen" is also in current use on campus.) The only Antioch College students who do not have a campus organization listed in their name are white, heterosexual, non-Jewish males. Traditional college clubs centered around student interests--say, French or music or film or chess or debate--seem to be entirely lacking. Even the events featured for this fall's "Community Day" on October 16--an Antioch tradition in which classes are suspended to accommodate student hayrides and other social events--seemed obsessively focused on identity. The evening events, for example, consisted of a queer lecture followed by a queer movie followed by a dance to the music of a queer band--leaving one wondering what Antioch's non-queers were supposed to do with themselves.
Enjoy. Watch it smolder. After the dominant student culture resembled militant intolerance, and thus looking an awful lot like dominaition, what else could one hope for other than for the entire thing to “go out in style”?
Although political views at Antioch might have tilted leftward even back then, the students of the 1950s and early-to-mid 1960s prided themselves on their willingness to hear out their more conservative classmates in lively all-night dorm discussions on politics and philosophy, inspired by professors who encouraged them to test all their assumptions against the evidence. "We were completely respectful of every point of view," recalled Rick Daily, a Denver lawyer who graduated from Antioch in 1968 and is treasurer of the alumni committee that is struggling to save the college from closure. "We even had a Goldwater Republican in our graduating class," Daily said in a telephone interview.

That was Antioch then. Antioch now might be fairly represented by a September 21 article in the student newspaper, the Record, consisting of a gloating account of the invasion by 40 gay and lesbian Antioch students (a full fifth of the current student body) of an evangelical Christian book-signing event at a Barnes & Noble store located in a mall in nearby Beavercreek, Ohio. Record reporter Marysia Walcerz described the hours-long "Gay Takeover," whose participants wore rainbow-tinted bandannas, ostentatiously held hands and kissed, and did their best to shock both authors and customers in this socially conservative sector of Ohio, as a "success .  .  . for direct action executed in style."
Regardless of their presceient trendsetting in 2000 that would inspire Paris’ City Hall years later in asking murderer Mumia Abu Jamal (née Wesley Cook) to address their graduating class (calling him a “political prisoner” for reasons that only the most inventive and mendacious could gin up), their prospects do map out the future of the “radical” left: dumbed further and further down as the reality of events in the world are kept further at bay, and dumbed further and further down as they try to engage with the reality of events in the world. Toast some marshmallows while you’re at it.

Just in Time for “Winterval”



A little something for that tender little revolutionary in your life. Give Snoogums two perfectly matched boxed CD sets sure to provide more of the endless repetition EUvians have been babbling to themselves since 1917.

Something for Sneering Know-it-alls to Think About

Before the “U.S. smogging civilization out” meme is repeated for the n-th time by the bien pensent who think that nature (which just is) is really either a philosophy, an new reason to believe in rationing and redistribution, in or a tree in the sidewalk - should read this before they go jump in a lake:

The Kyoto treaty was agreed upon in late 1997 and countries started signing and ratifying it in 1998.  A list of countries and their carbon dioxide emissions due to consumption of fossil fuels is available from the U.S. government.  If we look at that data and compare 2004 (latest year for which data is available) to 1997 (last year before the Kyoto treaty was signed), we find the following.

· Emissions worldwide increased 18.0%.
· Emissions from countries that signed the treaty increased 21.1%.
· Emissions from non-signers increased 10.0%.
· Emissions from the U.S. increased 6.6%.

In fact, emissions from the U.S. grew slower than those of over 75% of the countries that signed Kyoto.  Below are the growth rates of carbon dioxide emissions, from 1997 to 2004, for a few selected countries, all Kyoto signers.  (Remember, the comparative number for the U.S. is 6.6%.)

· Maldives, 252%.
· Sudan, 142%.
· China, 55%.
· Luxembourg, 43%
· Iran, 39%.
· Iceland, 29%.
· Norway, 24%.
· Russia, 16%.
· Italy, 16%.
· Finland, 15%.
· Mexico, 11%.
· Japan, 11%.
· Canada, 8.8%.
That’s right – that industrial cipher, Luxembourg where their ridiculous wealth is a result of being a parasitic bank and tax haven investing other people’s hard earned money, and basically being a member of as many morally vane alphabet-soup international organizations as is possible.

While greenies always seem to be looking forward glowingly to the misery and failures of an earlier age, they cant wait to get a swipe in at anything seeming marginally conventional which a large part of society shares.

In fact all it’s about is hearing the sound of your own voice, and the social coercion:
Last week, two newspaper columnists called for a return to the kind of social coercion only ever seen before in wartime. It's all for the sake of "the environment", but as we'll see - it's a very peculiar and selective version of environmentalism.

Singer Thom Yorke told The Observer: "Unless you have laws in place, nothing's going to happen," he said.

"Nothing of this is going to be voluntary. [sic] It's a bizarre form of rationing that we're all going to have to accept, just like people did in the Second World War."

It's the War On CO2, of course, and Radiohead will be doing "their bit".
As for applying any of these “warm and fuzzy” strictures to the anyone other than those that are symbolic of the “developed world” in the limited intellects of the campaigning activist in need of an emotional outlet, Christmas, unlike the Berlin Love Parade, the Glastonbury Festival, or anything else celebrated by one of the flavor of the week coddled social factions becomes fair game.
It is claimed the UK's love of the traditional turkey dinner will generate 51,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide.

Academics calculated the production, processing and transportation costs of the festive ingredients.

The Manchester researchers estimate a dinner for eight generates 20kg (44lbs) of carbon dioxide emissions.

They arrived at the total emissions figure by assuming one third of the UK population eats a typical Christmas meal.
The slaughtering of sheep in Brussels or any other colonized city need not apply because of the lunacy of people being little more than symbols to designated “social thinkers” of the day who have a monopoly on what ideas are permitted to be promoted out there. Seem like you’re from the developing world, even if you’ve grown up in Minneapolis? That’s okay. The smart money says that that little feature of the genetic lottery matters more than what people say or think in the world view of the cultural left – the same one whose emissions growth are 3 times higher that the “Kyoto deniers” they like to berate.

We’ll just leave them to those confused do-gooders to their nocturnal emissions while we take the real challenges in the world seriously.

15 December 2007

Peace is “No-one Taking You Seriously”

This couple answers the questions lefties ask about the Jihad: “why do they hate us”

The couple, known just as 'Johan' and 'Jenny', say they registered their marriage in a ceremony in the 'BjornSocialist Republic'. This, they say, is an independent Marxist state, located "on a stone that looks like a tractor", in front of the Bos Islands in Lake Immeln in Skåne, southern Sweden.

The republic, they say, is the smallest in the world, with a land area of 6-8 square metres, a national anthem, a president and ministers, including a minister for 'Enlightenment and Insight.'

The couple applied in August for the Swedish tax authority to recognize the marriage. The application was turned down on the grounds that the republic was not recognized by Swedish law.
The question should really by, why shouldn’t we hate them. They were refused on a point of law, not that they lied to the court by trying to declare a fictitious nation. Who knows – maybe it’s a joke about Marxism, but given that Marxist love taxes but want to evade them anyway, I’d think that they show that same incapacity for irony that bedevils the average revolutionary who has a summer home.

They live in a culture that doesn’t seem to know what to make of people who either a) want to be liberated, or b) kill people who want to be liberated.

Assyrian Professor Stabbed in Sweden
Assyrian professor Fuat Deniz, of the University of Örebro, was stabbed in the back of the neck at 3.30 AM on Tuesday and has been declared brain-dead. Swedish police have collected a description of the suspect, who remains at large, from witnesses and have a picture of him from a surveillance camera from a local store.
I gess it comes wioth all of that public-order inducing peaciness and social engineering and stuff in places that actually have “environmental courts”.
The 45-metre (148-foot) elk, or moose in north America, is the brainchild of Thorbjörn Holmlund, who recently received permission from Arvidsjaur and Skellefteå councils to begin construction of the wooden animal.

[ ... ]

The area would be better served by investment in eco-tourism, they argue, rather than the construction of roads leading to an enormous elk on the top of a mountain.
As we all know, eco-tourists don’t travel, stay in hotels, use camp sites, eat, or defecate.

11 December 2007

Swedes Should Probably Stop Singing “Take a Chance on Me”

Immigrants vote with their feet.

float: right

A Welcoming European street scene
Toward the end of last year – following the riots in France's immigrant-populated suburbs - something happened: discussions about Europe's "social model" grew quiet, very quiet.

Just a few months earlier, when Hurricane Katrina had struck New Orleans, European media and politicians were wallowing in schadenfreude (taking pleasure in the misfortune of others). The U.S. was called a "developing country," unable to protect its own citizens, and thus a world away from a Europe of solidarity and compassion.

But then the fires began in Paris, Lyon and Marseille. And an embarrassed silence settled in.

The American societal model, with its wide disparities and gaping safety net, is something that few in Europe wish to emulate. There is, however, quite a bit to learn from it. One example is the assimilation of immigrants into the labor market.
The case in point? Comparing the success and level of happiness of Somalis who immigrated abroad after that nation’s descent into lawlessness and civil war.

Compared to the odds of things working out for an immigrant in the US, Europe stinks.
When Somalia collapsed at the beginning of the 1990s, hundreds of thousands of Somalis fled the country. Those who reached Sweden had almost no chance of finding work: In 1997 only 10 percent were employed. Currently, the number has risen to some 30 percent, which is long way off the national level of 77 percent.
This isn’t a matter of pulling out the Euro-pavlovian rationalization-response number 1,547 about the better disposed and more ambitious immigrants bypassing Europe in favor of the US, Canada, Australia, Brazil, and so forth. The study compared apples to apples, and demonstrates something that anyone familiar with immigrant communities on both sides of the pond can readily see – the socialist-cum-dogooder rhetoric found in Europe is most frequently a failure, and at times an outright lie aimed at using social self-flattery to compensate for a failed social model.

So How’s That “Weapons Free Zone” Thing Going

Bad Boys, Bad Boys, Whatcha Gonna Do?

There’s naïve, and then there’s this:

...last year, the 24-year-old German reached out to a convicted killer on Texas' death row. Her motives were altruistic, she said, not romantic. In time, after more than 50 letters posted back and forth across the Atlantic, Ms. Deeken said, mutual feelings grew.

"I have a connection with him," she explained recently, shaking slightly, tears running down her cheek. "Everyone in life has a vision, has dreams, has fears, is searching for something. He is the person I can talk deeply with about these things."
It seems that in the absence of a more grounded existence to help put things into context, let’s say, one where they try to legislate the trials and tribulations of human life out of existence, it should come as no surprise that loneliness and a need for irredeemable empathy would bubble up to the surface as a preoccupation. Perhaps it’s thought of as a sort of “giving back” or charity, but of a sort selected to give one ultimately the greatest degree of personal anguish in the end. Where some who have no family or close relationships fall into bad habits, others genuinely give of themselves. Some, it seems want to appear to be generous, but choose as vessel for those emotions something that could only result in ones’ own helplessness:
Each month, dozens of travel-weary, love-struck European women arrive in Livingston for visits with condemned inmates, a pair of four-hour chats through Plexiglas. There is no touching.
There are people out there who see something out there in the world that gives them pain. Some try to understand the phenomenon, while others foolishly believe that they can go make that painful thing go away, in spite of the reasons they have for exiting to begin with.

In other words, they are sick people who have been living in comfort so long that they are no longer able to interpret the value of their emotions, the hurt feelings of the convict, and the actions of the convict. It’s all equally incomprehensible it it’s purpose or reasons for being. It all seems intended when they all stem from the consequences of the actions of the convict. To the simpleton, retribution and justice are the same, they are riddled with things that are hurtful to think about, therefore the circumstances must be done away with.
In 1995, Mr. Martinez was convicted of stabbing to death a 68-year-old woman and her 4-year-old granddaughter. He sexually assaulted the older woman, defiled the corpse of the child, and reportedly threatened the victims' family as he was led from the courtroom, saying, "It's not over yet."
The reasons usually speak for themselves when you consider the alternatives are to let them walk, leave them to inflict yet more non-therapeutic violence on the prison population, or even creating a society where ones’ harmful actions don’t result in consequences of any sort.

- Vielen Dank, Corbusier

10 December 2007

Have a Richard Dawkins Christmas

Looking for psychotic murderers? Look no further than products of that leftist hobby horse, the social welfare system!

08 December 2007

Medic!

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Solstice

Trapped in Beeb-istan: the Provisional Wing of the PC left has finally found a way to get into the Christmas spirit.

Former Brookside babe Jennifer Ellison is to star in a new BBC adaptation of the Nativity story.
The new show will be broadcast live on BBC Three on December 16th and will see Ellison playing the part of a pregnant Mary who is fighting to stop her asylum-seeker boyfriend Joseph from being deported.
Further, the Ho Ho Hosebag will be sexing-up the dumbing-down of the greatest story ever told:
Jennifer Ellison will don a silver catsuit to play an angel in the BBC's new adaptation of the Nativity story.
I suppose the point they’re making really is that there is no reason to become a citizen since the only notion they now have of what a citizenship is feeling perpetually guilty about your very being. That’s sure to bring the brain-trust knocking on their doors, and that forgiveness and salvation are available with a Scheisster and paperwork sent to the Home Office.

This is the same BBC that refers to any other nations newcomers as immigrants, but otherwise as “migrants” only when referring to a foreigner in the UK, legally there or not, seeking citizenship or not.

07 December 2007

Giving in to their Homoerotic Love of Dictators

French broadcaster TF1, majority owned by construction, energy, and cellular magnate Martin Bouygues produced a program which reasons of favoring a business to a state long known to be brutal and corrupt. The documentary was so far out, it had to stay in the can.

The big network TF1 has kept in the closet a program that it will never run. It is a plateau television she has done for the sake of a dictator. Bakchich-TV published the best excerpts from the video, and discusses how TF1 took liberties with their own ethics.
 
The story begins in 1996, at the offices of the giant BTP and owner of TF1, Martin Bouygues. The group Bouygues then concocted a fairy tale about a small republic in Central Asia that’s rich in natural gas: Turkmenistan. Its president, Saparmurad Niyazov, then offers the French company a 200 million concrete contract for a mosque in the desert, a palace, and a parliament building. To be specific, let's get clear the fact that it’s a ghost parliament, as Niyazov was classified by Amnesty International among the worst dictators of our time. Before his death in 2006, the man has had time to be elected by parliament as president for life, to imprison incommunicado and tortured his opponents, to give months of the year the names of members of his family, to prohibit freedom of the press, and the expressive arts, as they were deemed “contrary to the spirit of the people"
Niazov is not a democrat, but signed contracts with France’s BTP. So when he landed on an official visit to Paris in September 1996, his closest French friend, Martin Bouygues, began right away to flatter his cult of personality.

The builder is mobilizing its selling point, it is the only one to have: TF1, Europe’s leading television channel. Bouygues promised Niazov a prestigious program devoted entirely to the splendor of Turkmenbashi, "the father of the Turkmen" (as he renamed himself). The studios TF1 are mobilized to turn out an exceptional effort. Martin Bouygues himself, and TF1 and Gaz de France CEO Patrick Le Lay are sitting facing the President Niyazov, which to be interviewed by the deputy news director of TF1, Jean Narcy. The title of this special edition to run in primetime: "Turkmenistan and its economic future! Wow.

The show begins with images as generic as one can get since the founding of the ORTF, in 1964: a picture of Paris, peaceful, with the Seine, the Eiffel Tower, and on top of that the sound of a loud fanfare that sent the gladiators in the arena of an Italian peplum. It's stale and has everything that would put TF1 viewers to sleep punctuated with fast-flowing images to flatter Niazov!

Then comes a 45 minute long disturbing interview. Jean Narcy, forgetting that 50% of the Turkmen population is unemployed, continues to ask the dictator about his country’s wealth. Probably quite shocked, Niazov returns the flattery by describing TF1 as the "most powerful force in television in the world, and the largest carrier of culture." What the CEO of TF1, Patrick Le Lay, reply with is doubly impertinent: speaking of Turkmenistan as a "country at the crossroads of the world's great movements," the television quoted Turkmen as "the memory of a people and a civilization ", and suggested that the Father of the Turkmen should help, (don’t laugh,) "to produce programming devoted to his country and its culture." Unsaid is that we know that the President Niyazov, culture is restricted to folk music and readings officially imposed on schools and universities, a book of thoughts which Niyazov himself authored, and whose quotations adorn buses.

Poor Niazov! Narcy keeps the viewer from dozing off with a long speech without rhythm or relief. Narcy droned on but earned his salary: he goes on to give the floor to the boss of Gaz de France, invited and jumped in himself to discuss… gas, and then the construction contract by Bouygues: a Conference Center open to the Turkmen population. He even goes into the importance of culture and welfare of the population not just once, on the occasion of this historic interview, he’s even asked the Turkmen president to give his position on the opponents and journalists he had jailed.

What was so funny about it? That Niazov took the interview very seriously, although it is being run by his friend French. The stage and the actors are real, but they know very well that there would be "special edition" on Turkmenistan running on French television. Once Niyazov was gone, the TF1 recording of the broadcast was carefully locked away.
No pipeline, no problem!

So where is the false outrage of the likes of Michael Moore for this kind of “national champion” business with a red “hey, let’s get into cahoots” line to a national government? No-where. It doesn’t flatter their ideology or prop up their illusions about a “Bu$hChimpyHitlerburton” straw-man hiding under the bed, lest you hand them your brain. After all, you know that only Americans les Ricons do that!

05 December 2007

Unconfirmed

The source is unknown. This report still needs some Habeas Corpus It could well be just some rah-rah trash talk to embolden the disillusioned and enflame violence.

DANISH AUTHORITIES WHITHHOLD SECRET INFORMATION
A prophet cartoonist has been burned alive


An unprecedented global crisis that laid bare the "clash of civilizations" was in play as a result of the publication of these drawings, reprinted dozens of times worldwide. According to a reliable source we learn that one of the authors of the famous twelve caricatures of the Prophet Mohamed (Salvation Be Upon Him) was burnt alive by persons unknown. Although lacking details about this case and knowing that the Danish authorities are trying to stifle this matter so as not to unleash a new wave of threats and outbursts around the world, the victim was reported to have been attacked in her home before being tied up, having gasoline poured on her and burned alive.
In the absence of reliable information about this event it could just as well be a simple accident, which would mean, in the eyes of the Muslim world, that divine retribution was exacted on her, and confirmed by the simultaneously embarrassed silence of the Danish government and the conservative newspaper that had published the cartoons.
The event took place on Wednesday night. We contacted the Danish Embassy in Algeria would neither confirm or deny the report.
This, it must be feared, could trigger a new crisis between Muslims and Christians. The suspicion, indeed, quite naturally draw attention to Muslims living in Europe even though the crisis appears not necessarily benefit them.

To recall what this is all about, Jyllands Posten, a Danish newspaper, had decided to publish a series of twelve caricatures impacting the image of our Prophet (QSSL) and of Islam in September of 2005. This initiative was taken after Danish author Kare Bluitgen had complained that he had not found anyone willing to illustrate a book about the Prophet Mohamed (QSSL).
An unprecedented circumvention then followed. The Western newspapers had hastened to "republish" the incriminating documents, highlighting a stir the Muslim world, and triggering massive demonstrations around the world.

Meanwhile, small groups of madmen or pranksters had threatened the newspaper and the perpetrators of these drawings. Danish Prime Minister Rasmussen hid behind freedom of speech in order not to see his government fall, but still had to bend over backwards to deal with the financial and economic countermeasures. The decision (almost spontaneously) to boycott all Danish products weighed heavily on them. The kingdom ran straight into bankruptcy. The crisis then faded gradually, having lasted nearly six months. But now that this new event is likely to bring it back.

In what way is the question.

****
LES AUTORITÉS DANOISES MAINTIENNENT SECRÈTE L’INFORMATION
Un auteur des caricatures sur le prophète (QSSSL) brûlé vif

Une crise mondiale sans précédent, mettant à nu le " choc des civilisations " avait pris naissance à la suite de la publication de ces dessins, et des dizaines de reprises qui s’en étaient suivies à travers le monde. Selon des informations recoupées et dignes de foi, nous apprenons que l’un des auteurs des fameuses douze caricatures sur le prophète Mohamed (Que le Salut Soit Sur Lui) a été brûlé vif par des personnes inconnues. Même si les détails manquent à propos de cette affaire, sachant que les autorités danoises tentent d’étouffer cette affaire afin de ne pas déchaîner une nouvelle vague de menaces et de contremenaces à travers le monde, la victime aurait été attaquée chez elle, avant d’être ligotée, arrosée d’essence et brûlée vive. En l’absence d’informations fiables relatives à cet évènement, il pourrait tout aussi bien s’agir d’un simple accident, ce qui signifierait, aux yeux du monde musulman, que la vengeance divine a bel et bien frappé, et justifierait dans le même temps les silences gênés du gouvernement danois et du journal conservateur qui avait publié ces dessins. Toujours est-il que l’évènement remonte à la nuit de mercredi à jeudi. Contacté par nous, aucun responsable au niveau de l’ambassade du royaume du Danemark en Algérie n’était en mesure de nous renseigner, confirmer ou infirmant cette informer. Celle-ci, il faut le craindre, risque de déclencher une nouvelle crise entre les mondes musulman et chrétien. Les soupçons, en effet, vont tout naturellement vers les musulmans résidant en Europe, cela même si la crise ne semble pas leur profiter forcément. Pour rappel, un journal danois, " Jyllands Posten ", avait décidé de publier, au mois de septembre de l’année 2005, une série de douze caricatures portant atteinte aux images de notre prophète (QSSL) et de la religion musulmane. Cette initiative était intervenue après qu’un auteur danois, Kare Bluitgen, se soit plaint de n’avoir trouvé personne pour lui illustrer un ouvrage à propos du prophète Mohamed (QSSL). Une surenchère sans précédent s’en était suivie. Les journaux occidentaux s’étaient empressés de " republier " les documents incriminés, mettant en émoi le monde musulman, et déclenchant des manifestations gigantesques partout dans le monde. Parallèlement, des groupuscules d’illuminés ou de plaisantins, avaient commencé à lancer des menaces contre ce journal ainsi que les auteurs de ces dessins. Le Danemark, dont le Premier ministre Rasmussen se drapait derrière la liberté d’expression pour ne pas reculer, a quand même dû courber l’échine devant les arguments financiers et économiques. La décision prise (quasi spontanément) de boycotter tous les produits de ce pays, a pesé très lourd dans la balance. Ce royaume courait tout droit vers sa faillite. La crise, par la suite, s’est estompée petit à petit, non sans avoir duré près de six mois. Mais voilà que ce nouvel évènement risque de la faire rebondir. Dans quel sens ? Là est la question…

- with thanks to a fine blogger

2003

What a year. Iran is suspected to have dismantled (or changed) some of its nuclear weapons research, and the US made good on their threats to Saddam Hussein.

Let’s say you’re a bonehead, and can’t connect the dots, and can’t imagine a crackpot like Ahmedinejad noticing the soft power value of hard power when the US deposes the dictator next door.

Okay. Let’s not say you’re a bonehead, just for the sake of your own embarrassment. Let’s say you’re a lazy journalist who tries to jam the same argument into every visible global event.

04 December 2007

Where it’s Always 1978



What you get for taking a passive attitude to it : with between 58000 and 127000 drug dealers, even « le shit » has proved itself to outdo whole sectors of industry wether national champions or not, and is becoming the mother’s milk for thugs who import assault weapons from the Balkans.

« Soft » drugs indeed. Never mind that... there are dead idols to worship and propaganda to eat up.

Ambitions have not been matched by resources”

Other contributing countries include Poland, the Netherlands, Austria.

But some, notably the UK, have "offered to give political support, and where appropriate any technical advice", but stopped short of "any promises to offer any money or forces", UK European minister Jim Murphy said earlier this month
Of course, when in doubt, form a committee. Draft a white paper. Blow off another six months. It’s the typically European quietly inhumane thing to do while you’re promoting your own virtues.
The planned force still lacks ten helicopters, a third medical facility and other support assets, French General Henri Bentegeat, head of the EU's Military Committee, said earlier this month according to Reuters.
blog.libero.it/putans nopasaran.blog-libre.net nopasaran.samizdat.net www.nopasaran.es/

Hey, I think I can Smell the Exit Over Here!



Didn’t low-brow roadside attractions pass their prime in the late 60’s?

03 December 2007

sKul DaZe

mark Steyn snarking away with a vengeance this week. He gives a spanking to Australian Santa policy under the new Rudd Junta, The ACLU’s selective outrage, and points out why Arabs who are more like the Sudanese than they are like the smart ones that leave aren’t quite ready for prime-time when it comes to things like tolerance, stoning rape victims, restraining oneself from threats to decapitate middle aged school-teachers, etal:

"Santas Warned 'Ho Ho Ho' Offensive To Women."
Really. As the story continued: "Sydney's Santa Clauses have instead been instructed to say 'ha ha ha' instead, the Daily Telegraph reported. One disgruntled Santa told the newspaper a recruitment firm warned him not to use 'ho ho ho' because it could frighten children and was too close to 'ho', a U.S. slang term for prostitute."
If I were a female resident of Sydney, I think I'd be more offended by the assumption that Australian women and U.S. prostitutes are that easily confused. As the old gangsta-rap vaudeville routine used to go: "Who was that ho I saw you with last night?" "That was no ho, that was my bitch."
Which depends on the kind of girls you know in Aus, I suppose. The ones I’ve known have not generally pulled the “perpetually offended Mamasita” racket, but may have to from now on under the Imperialist warmongerers of a Labour government.
For example, when I said the right not to be offended is now the most "sacred" right in the world, I certainly didn't mean to offend persons of a nontheistic persuasion. In Hanover, N.H., home to Dartmouth College, an atheist and an agnostic known only as "Jan and Pat Doe" (which is which is hard to say) are suing because their three schoolchildren are forced to say the Pledge of Allegiance.

Well, OK, they're not forced to say it. The pledge is voluntary. You're allowed to sit down, or, more discreetly, stand silently, which is what the taciturn Yankee menfolk who think it's uncool to sing do during the hymns at my local church. But that's not enough for "the Does." Because the pledge mentions God, their children are forced, as it were, not to say it. And, as "Mr. and Mrs. Doe" put it in their complaint, having to opt out of participation in a voluntary act exposes their children to potential "peer pressure" from the other students.
Which I find puzzling, since I only though that kind of jingoistic indoctrination only happened in perpetually well-intended Canada. Back in my own Grammar school days in Ontario under the oppressive Trudeau Regime, I remember one day when in assembly we had to sing Oh Canada!, I found myself wondering if I should have to do this every week if I’m not Canadian.

I happened to be standing next to my teacher. She asked me why I stopped singing. I asked if it was wrong to sing it if I wasn’t actually Canadian.

She hit me on the back of the head, right above the neck. As I am a male of the species, I though nothing of it other than that I probably had it coming to me. My only other thought that afternoon was that my head hurt, and wondered why they didn’t stop smacking kids around like they had in the US. Whatever.
Let us now cross from the New Hampshire school system to the Sudanese school system. Or as The Associated Press headline put it:

"Thousands In Sudan Call For British Teddy Bear Teacher's Execution."

Last week, Gillian Gibbons, a British schoolteacher working in Khartoum, one of the crumbiest basket-case dumps on the planet – whoops, I mean one of the most lively and vibrant strands in the rich tapestry of our multicultural world – anyway, Mrs. Gibbons was sentenced last week to 15 days in jail because she was guilty of, er, allowing a teddy bear to be named "Mohammed." She wasn't so foolish as to name the teddy Mohammed herself. But, in an ill-advised Sudanese foray into democracy, she'd let her grade-school students vote on what name they wanted to give the classroom teddy, and being good Muslims they voted for their favorite name: Mohammed.
Actually, the little snot-nosed kid who got to name the was behaving in the generous manner typical to the native males by naming the toy after himself. Since only a thoughtful western adult, (any thoughtful western adult,) can be wrong for this “outrage”, I suggest that Jan and Pat Doe be required to either foster-parent this child, or undergo mandatory instruction from him.

...It’s just a thought...

Someone Needs to Get an New Aphorism.

Just how many times can you keep recycling the stale phrase « Pyromane Pompier » without looking stupid?

Artus: Yes. Greenspan was an arsonist and a fireman combined. He derived all his glory from his reaction to the savings-and- loans crisis, to the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management LP, and to Sept. 11, 2001. But LTCM and the savings-and-loans crisis were his doing. He absolutely failed to see where the malfunctions in the U.S. economy were.
Greenspan came up with a phrase, ``irrational exuberance,'' in 1997, but he didn't do anything about it.
He was seeking glory? That’s news to anyone in the real economy. Besides, what do you think the Fed should de with markets? Control their every detail? I’ll bet!
Artus: The most modern central banks are the Bank of England and the Bank of Sweden.

The Bank of England is the only central bank that has factored real-estate prices into its policy making, and that also looks at exchange rates. It has a global vision of the economy, and that's what we like. They completely slipped up when it came to the banks, but that was the Financial Services Authority, it wasn't them.

``Les incendiaires'' is published by Perrin.
There are people who would debate that the former Exchequer’s butchery of the Bank of England was very modern, given the recent run on the banks that they’ve had. Nor would anyone really believe that an economy like Sweden’s is some sort of powerhouse so depended on by others that it can’t make a display of its experiments.

On the other hand, the United States has a population which is actually growing, which is why it needs growth. We have had 11 straight years of it preceded by 6 years in upward trend. Our unemployment rate has at the same time been nominally half that of the “big-dogs” of the Euro zone. In that whole period of world-wide expansion, Euro-land has yet to hit anything even close to that pitch while the acceleration of their economies took nearly a decade longer to start. – Even the one this great sage Patrick Artus had a hand in influencing through his punditry.
Yet the entire finance and currency conversation is about the US “stagnating” as it sheds bad loans that the whole world, sage and dismissive, couldn’t resist as an investment.

What did they want US banks to do? Keep redlining?

Someone Needs to Get an New Aphorism.

Just how many times can you keep recycling the stale phrase « Pyromane Pompier » without looking stupid?

Artus: Yes. Greenspan was an arsonist and a fireman combined. He derived all his glory from his reaction to the savings-and- loans crisis, to the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management LP, and to Sept. 11, 2001. But LTCM and the savings-and-loans crisis were his doing. He absolutely failed to see where the malfunctions in the U.S. economy were.
Greenspan came up with a phrase, ``irrational exuberance,'' in 1997, but he didn't do anything about it.
He was seeking glory? That’s news to anyone in the real economy. Besides, what do you think the Fed should de with markets? Control their every detail? I’ll bet!
Artus: The most modern central banks are the Bank of England and the Bank of Sweden.

The Bank of England is the only central bank that has factored real-estate prices into its policy making, and that also looks at exchange rates. It has a global vision of the economy, and that's what we like. They completely slipped up when it came to the banks, but that was the Financial Services Authority, it wasn't them.

``Les incendiaires'' is published by Perrin.
There are people who would debate that the former Exchequer’s butchery of the Bank of England was very modern, given the recent run on the banks that they’ve had. Nor would anyone really believe that an economy like Sweden’s is some sort of powerhouse so depended on by others that it can’t make a display of its experiments.

On the other hand, the United States has a population which is actually growing, which is why it needs growth. We have had 11 straight years of it preceded by 6 years in upward trend. Our unemployment rate has at the same time been nominally half that of the “big-dogs” of the Euro zone. In that whole period of world-wide expansion, Euro-land has yet to hit anything even close to that pitch while the acceleration of their economies took nearly a decade longer to start. – Even the one this great sage Patrick Artus had a hand in influencing through his punditry.
Yet the entire finance and currency conversation is about the US “stagnating” as it sheds bad loans that the whole world, sage and dismissive, couldn’t resist as an investment.

What did they want US banks to do? Keep redlining?

Lining up for the Donkey Show

One reader spotted this curiosity in a Philippino newspaper:

"French people are always busy, living a very stressful life. They want to unwind. We know Philippines has many boutique hotels that offer spa treatments with good services.”

- with thanks to Greg

blog.libero.it/putans nopasaran.blog-libre.net nopasaran.samizdat.net www.nopasaran.es/

01 December 2007

The Reason You Don’t Get the Continental Humor is Because it isn’t Funny



Eeyore, the taciturn wallflower of the Winnie the Pooh stories whose always in need of a little confidence. The character isn’t just cute, but a tender personality that lets a child understand their own feelings in moments when they lack self-confidence.


On Thursday night TF1 showed a skit which presumed to be funny, blowing up a stuffed Eeyore at 7:30 in the evening.





One feature that jumps right out in the “lucid” culture of EUtopia is that there isn’t much of (or such) at thing called self deprecating humor. It tends to have a lot more to do with deprecating others, and it gets big laughs.

The same selfishness about expunging family life from the culture – the signifying of kids quite frequently as either a victim or a burden is a sign of the horrible cynicism that people see when they look at mainstream European culture, and here it is wrapped up in a bow – channeling itself by stuffing a firecracker in the ass of a beloved children’s character on state-owned TV early in the evening.

With so few people having real and complete families the notion of nurturing innocence is surely more frequently thought of having little importance, or is actually a conscious attack on a subconscious demon for people with empty little souls, and generic little lives. Talk in circles about philosophy, take all the trips to Thailand, and go to vapid art-installations all you like: this doesn’t do anything for the emptiness of being rationalized every day in the gleaming new train stations and polished glass follies.

Ah, but you see... everyone else is a pitiful and tacky prude!

When it’s Negative, they Anglicise It

No Life is Safe from the Collateral Damage in the Left’s Culture War

Fred Chichin (his real name, by the way), half of the pair known as the Rita Mitsouko died of cancer on 28 November. The ever-repugnant Marianne gives them “the treatment” in spite of a number of readers who are reasonable in their comments:

The Rita Mitsouko [Mysterious Rita] are no more, at least as it was known. They were loved and the duo, and long the most creative of French rock since their formation in 1979. An aggressive cancer overtook Frédéric Chichin, called Fred - guitarist, sometime dandy, and always excellent musician. His cancer had already been present for a few months and probably has not helped to alleviate the health problems of Catherine Ringer, the exuberant singer, and at first glance the more communicative of the pair. So, despite the welcome criticism of their latest effort “Variety”, Les Rita were not doing well. For some until recently in columns of Marianne, they were even very badly worn down politically. It seems, the "counterculture" no longer adored the two fifty-something formerly revered icons who became fair game in a progressive vulgate wrapped up in the a moment in the here-and-now.

Conversations (which in varying degrees met with the happiness of some) were deemed heretical by many others for two "rockers" eternally condemned to bear the burden of a shocked left. We therefore considered it tasteless to look askance at their concern with Nicolas Sarkozy or their friendship with the writer Maurice Dantec, the "sick man" of French Letters who is obsessed with the decline [of France] and assumes that there is an irreversible Islamization of Old Europe.
Les Rita admitted their lack of esteem for the French rap scene. That was enough, it seems, to disqualify the few judged worth in their artistic and moral judgment.
Supposedly out of fear, the polemic that harmed their recent tour had Fred and Catherine refusing to explain to the press their recent and highly controversial beliefs. The nearness of death is assurance that there was still time to use this way for those who convicted in advance.
As if they need to forced to explain anything. Dead only two days, and they have to work him over for no reason other than his personal views not jibing with Marianne’s politics, at it’s least vulgar it’s being done in a seemingly apologetic way. In other words – you can never be dead enough to draw the hateful accusatory tone of the most ideologically obsessed on the left.

Marianne editorialists should have enough of a clue to not say this. More stylized than “countercultural” to begin with, the beating they got for countercultural opinions is what put them out of favor with the vulgar bobos attempting to “manage” a cultural milieu to begin with.

You would think that the style of presence he greatly shared with musical partner Catherine Ringer vibrant presence to the media (her having done some porn in the 70s and 80s) would have given him that “cultural exception” that they dole out for their cultural compatriots, but it hasn’t. It just isn’t enough. Libération, on the other hand did not share their taste for Mao style re-education - the one so arrogant as to believe that it has to even imprint itself on the passing thoughts of the deceased when the normal modality in that media bubble is to display and induce as much fake public weeping as possible when any figure in “the culture” dies. Instead they give the guy an obituary send-off that so underhanded, that their fingertip should be bleeding.



François-Xavier Ajavon has more on some of Marianne’s “cultural” criticism of a man’s death which looks like yet another lame attempt to imprint a critic’s world view on anything it the criti’s path:
Nevertheless, Mme Marteau [tr. Ms. Hammer], Marianne, to investigate an authentic inquisitorial trial. We would like to meet with her in this beautiful little real bride ideal Bernardo Gui. We would like to hear him sing something on stage ... She repeats throughout the article that Rita Mitsouko have the "hatred" to spit (inevitable reference to their tube years 90, Y 'to the hate!), They are racist, intolerant, aggressive, fake, crazy, dangerous, and so on. Part-time sociologist for hire that she is, Mme Marteau believes that the path people take is strictly with their political commitments. She believes that we are all determined by the environment in which we grew up and by parents who have done: "In the eyes of all, group emblematic of the Mitterrand years which could have only identified them on the left.”
So a reputation must be trashed, and a life is disposed of in for the sake of “the cause” – whatever it is today probably doesn’t matter. The ideological witch hunt must go on for the likes of these people who prove daily their inability to really live intellectually in a pluralistic society.

Shame on them.

Rhetorically Speaking, the Designer Might Actually Exists

The designer himself describes the filter as "a vegetal brain enclosed in an aluminium and Pyrex cranial box." That "brain" then cleans the air in your house for you.
And I refer to that as overblown nonsense that on a construction site might even result in a brick being therapeutically and anonymously thrown at you to induce some humility.

Elsewhere one of my favorite bloggers out there notes something he heard at a lecture. An Architect with a nutsack addresses the unstoppable gob of that whole “I talk therefore I am” phenomenon that so many people attempt to lunch on:
To rephrase Garcia-Abril's response to the audience member's question on whether his architecture posed a moral dilemma: "Some architects are excellent theorists and writers but often produce terrible buildings, while others never write a sentence yet produce sublime works of art. I choose to believe that it is better to let the architecture speak for itself, independent of any theoretical or philosophical justification. In the end there is just a building, and whatever verbal rhetoric that accompanied it will eventually be forgotten." I'm sure the Spaniard would somewhat object to my interpretation of what he was trying to say in a foreign tongue that evening, but what I do recall still deeply affects my view of the matter. To be honest, I admire the fact that he refused to directly engage the question by arguing that his designs are sustainable and green depending on the criteria used. And he refused to publicly claim that he was fully committed to sustainability (though he might be), since his work showed quite a few contradictions such a statement (unlike numerous hyprocrite designers who do exactly that). Rather, Garcia-Abril's retort transcended such mundane eco-talk by essentially saying - "Here are my buildings, here is what the design process is like for me, make what you will of it, since in the end its about the building itself and it is independent of any contemporary value system".