Posted on the off-chance that France still matters.
The French farce that is currently passing as the presidential election campaign across the Channel continues to throw off laughable gaffes, extraordinary revelations and some of the best examples of "double-think" in contemporary politics. And if the French electorate is enjoying this spectacle, they are mad. The laughs are all on them.
In many ways, it is hard to see France's decline. But lovers of la vie française (such as myself) need to stand back. In 1979, the British were 20 per cent poorer than the French, as measured by GDP per head. We are now 5 per cent richer, and the outlook is for that gap to widen further. The general economic background is a major part of this - the French economy has crawled along at a growth rate that has averaged half that of the UK's in recent years. Unemployment is stubbornly high, and even after a recent recovery, remains nearly twice the UK's.
All this despite the extraordinary act of generational theft that is being committed daily by the French pension system, which is funding current consumption by inadequately providing for the future. Not to mention incredibly high government spending - 43 per cent of GDP, while national debt is now equivalent to 70 per cent.
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Posted by: Steve White ||
02/25/2007 00:00 ||
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#1
incredible. Just the fact that French are moving to Britain to avoid high taxes? LOL!
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/25/2007 9:30 Comments ||
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#5
Posted on the off-chance that France still matters.
France has nukes and also could give to China planes who are much better than what Chines have. So yes it mattes that pro-American Sarkozy replaces piece of shit Chirac.
#8
A Pinochet would set France back at least 50 years. The French still don't have the personal responsibility, representative democracy thing down. I doubt a Pinochet (De Gaulle) would help them. One of the greatest contributions Washington made to the development of the United States politically was doing so little so that many learned the lessons. The French system is too stuck on men on horses. But what can we expect from a nation without shopkeepers.
#10
The French system is too stuck on men on horses.
Probably true.
But what can we expect from a nation without shopkeepers.
WTF ???
Cliché.
Remember there are about 17 millions active french workers supporting 43 millions unactive people. Despite the sclerozed structures of french economy, labor productivity is good (I suck at economy and all, but IIRC, it's better than Germany's, for example) and free-market is not an unknown to us, despite the socialist nature of France since 30 years+, and the 200+ statist love affair of our successive gvts (true french disease is jacobinism, the matrix of all totalitarianisms ever since).
Does anyone remember that "entrepreneur" is afrench word, that there's a long tradition of independent small workers, shopkeepers, skilled laborers... and that one Great Old One of the free-market theory is none other than Frédéric Bastiat.
But in some way, this "shopkeepers" cliché is rather funy, because one major staple of french Enlightened Elites' anti-americanism is that the "USA are a Nation of shopkeepers", without that characteristic french élan and spirit.
#12
Do the French elite really think that being a shopkeeper is something bad? If so, that might explain the current French economic trend.
Posted by: Mike N. ||
02/25/2007 17:12 Comments ||
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#13
It was a Scotsman, Adam Smith who first called the English a nation of shopkeepers, though Napoleon usually gets credit for the phrase.
The reference to shopkeepers reflects my impression that while entrepreneur may be a French word, the French have never been satisfied to be bourgeois politically. And it is being happily bourgeois that is part of what is necessary for a civil society to sustain representative government. It is also why the cultured French can look down their noses at mere shopkeepers like the English and Americans.
"If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?"from The Law
Posted by: Bobby ||
02/25/2007 17:22 Comments ||
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The other day Ken Livingstone, the mayor of my hometown of London, organized a conference on Islam and the West. It was a carefully rigged affair in which handpicked speaker after handpicked speaker stood up and announced that the democracies were to blame for the tidal wave of murder sweeping the world. To provide a spurious air of balance, the organizers invited a few people who dissented from the line of the Muslim Brotherhood and its British allies. Agnès Poirier, a French feminist, was one of them, but she pulled out because although there were no special facilities for Christians, Hindus and Jews, Mr. Livingstone had provided separate prayer rooms for Muslim men and Muslim women.
She wanted to know: Does Ken Livingstone's idea of multiculturalism acknowledge and condone segregation? It clearly does, but what made this vignette of ethnic politics in a European city worth noting is that commentators for the BBC and nearly every newspaper here describe Mr. Livingstone as one of the most left-wing politicians in British public life. Hardly any of them notice the weirdness of an apparent socialist pandering to a reactionary strain of Islam, pushing its arguments and accepting its dictates.
Mr. Livingstone's not alone. . . .
Read the whole thing.
Posted by: Mike ||
02/25/2007 08:14 ||
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#1
One of the author's points is that the fall of communism actually empowered the left because they didn't need to defend anything.
#2
It is perfectly logio: who allied with Hitler? Right wingers Chrchile and (by eueropens standards) Roosevelt? No; It wss Stalin and european communists had no qualms in sabotaging the armies of their conuntries in order to help Stalin's ally.
Far left and far right are not 180 degrees apart but 360 degrees apart.
#3
Until Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, British and French communists were engaged in active sabotage of the French and British war efforts. Only after the start of the German Eastern Front effort and Stalin's call for a united war effort, did the communists stop wrecking equipment and sabotaging vehicles used for transport. Hitler and Stalin had their pact, and the communists were busy aiding the fascists everywhere until the two dictators had their falling out.
February 6 marked Ronald Reagan's 96th birthday -- coincidentally, it's the same birth month as two of America's greatest Presidents, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, and also the same month that the nation celebrates Presidents' Day.
When we think of Ronald Reagans relationship with Presidents or presidential families, we might think of the Bushes, or perhaps even the Fords, but we do not think of the Kennedys. Yet, throughout his political life, Ronald Reagan had some fascinating and sometimes even moving run-ins with the Kennedys. These instances have fallen through the cracks of history, which is unfortunate, since each offers a telling tale of sharp political differences -- of ups and downs.
Reagan began his political life as a liberal Democrat, the type that a staunchly anti-Communist Democrat named John F. Kennedy judged naïve about the Communist threat. An ironic example of the early Reagans being too liberal for the Kennedys took place when Jack, Bobby and their father crossed party lines and loyalties to support Republican Richard Nixon in his 1950 Senate bid against the Pink Lady, Democrat Helen Gahagan Douglas -- for whom an actor named Ronald Reagan had been campaigning.
Continued on Page 49
It is five years since the brutal massacre of a group of Hindu pilgrims by some members of the Muslim community in the Godhra railway station in Gujarat and the violent Hindu-Muslim riots that followed. There has so far been no objective account of the incidents of 2002 in Gujarat. An unfortunate attempt has been made by the so-called secular elite of the country to create doubts in the minds of the people about the facts relating to the carnage at Godhra. The use of force by the Administration to bring the resulting law and order situation under control has also come in for criticism from this elite. Among the criticisms made by them are that the force used was excessive and disproportionate; that it was mainly directed against the Muslim community; that there were many atrocities committed against the Muslims; that it was politically orchestrated etc.
Such a campaign to play down the culpability of minority communities and to direct the attack against the administration, particularly the police, and the majority community is nothing new in our history since 1947. This has always happened after every communal riot. Whenever some Muslims take the law into their own hands, it is always the police which is criticised for acting against them. The secular elite rarely criticises the Muslims, who violated the law in the first place, and rarely calls for action against them. The voice of the secular elite will carry greater credibility if it modifies its present position that "the Muslims can do no wrong" and that it is always the Hindus and the Administration who are responsible for anything going wrong, which affects the interests of the Muslims.
If there are signs of an emerging divide between some sections of the Hindus and Muslims, the so-called secular elite cannot escape a major share of responsibility for this. Its compulsive habit of justifying every cause and complaint of the Muslimswhatever be the meritsand its repeated failure to articulate the feelings and sense of anger of the Hindus are creating an impression in the minds of growing sections of the Hindus, who constitute 80 per cent of the population of the country, that for the secular elite only the rights of the Muslims count and not the rights of the Hindus. One finds this particularly in the case of the youth.
Posted by Tim McGirk
Brace yourself. James Cameron, the man who brought you 'The Titanic' is back with another blockbuster. This time, the ship he's sinking is Christianity.
In a new documentary, Producer Cameron and his director, Simcha Jacobovici, make the starting claim that Jesus wasn't resurrected --the cornerstone of Christian faith-- and that his burial cave was discovered near Jerusalem. And, get this, Jesus sired a son with Mary Magdelene.
No, it's not a re-make of "The Da Vinci Codes'. It's supposed to be true.
Let's go back 27 years, when Israeli construction workers were gouging out the foundations for a new building in the industrial park in the Talpiyot, a Jerusalem suburb. of Jerusalem. The earth gave way, revealing a 2,000 year old cave with 10 stone caskets. Archologists were summoned, and the stone caskets carted away for examination. It took 20 years for experts to decipher the names on the ten tombs. They were: Jesua, son of Joseph, Mary, Mary, Mathew, Jofa and Judah, son of Jesua.
Israel's prominent archeologist Professor Amos Kloner didn't associate the crypt with the New Testament Jesus. His father, after all, was a humble carpenter who couldn't afford a luxury crypt for his family. And all were common Jewish names.
There was also this little inconvenience that a few miles away, in the old city of Jerusalem, Christians for centuries had been worshipping the empty tomb of Christ at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Christ's resurrection, after all, is the main foundation of the faith, proof that a boy born to a carpenter's wife in a manger is the Son of God.
But film-makers Cameron and Jacobovici claim to have amassed evidence through DNA tests, archeological evidence and Biblical studies, that the 10 coffins belong to Jesus and his family.
Ever the showman, (Why does this remind me of the impresario in another movie,"King Kong", whose hubris blinds him to the dangers of an angry and very large ape?) Cameron is holding a New York press conference on Monday at which he will reveal three coffins, supposedly those of Jesus of Nazareth, his mother Mary and Mary Magdalene. News about the film, which will be shown soon on Discovery Channel, Britain's Channel 4, Canada's Vision, and Israel's Channel 8, has been a hot blog topic in the Middle East (check out a personal favorite: Israelity Bites) Here in the Holy Land, Biblical Archeology is a dangerous profession. This 90-minute documentary is bound to outrage Christians and stir up a titanic debate between believers and skeptics. Stay tuned.
--Tim McGirk/Jerusalem
#7
Frank G - good one! Exactly how would one go about making DNA tests on the Son of God anyway? The Bible is pretty clear on this aspect - that Jesus was the embodiment of the Holy Spirit and the Father, and Mary was simply the vessel for that embodiment.
There was no exchange of DNA between God and Mary.
Also, Cameron obviously does not understand that Christian faith relies on exactly that - faith. Without faith, a belief in things unseen and unprovable, Christianity would be a myth.
This is simply dressed up Gnosticism revisiting the 21st Century only a few years after Dan Brown's novel did the same thing.
Think you may be referring to the 'James, Brother of Jesus' ossuary of a few years ago. My ex subscribed faithfully to Biblical Archaeology Magazine, which covered the whole thing in fascinating detail - and from the very beginning warned that the very fact that something so specific suddenly popped up was a warning.
The end of the James affair would have been funny if so many people hadn't staked their professional lives on it: the ossuary was mysteriously 'broken' during transport, and in such a way that made the inscription beyond further examination.
Betcha we get a rerun of that...
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
02/25/2007 10:52 Comments ||
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#9
Hum, how about sinking Islam instead? Ah yes, that is danegerouzs. Our intrepid Holywood in action.
#10
My thoughts exactly, JFM. How about a documentary describing Moohamed as a child-rapist, psycho-killer and cultist as celebrated in various Orcish holy scrolls.
#11
Right, Frank. The only thing DNA could prove was that they were related.
But it does make for good hype, no?
Posted by: Bobby ||
02/25/2007 12:59 Comments ||
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#12
This'll mean that James Cameron gets to sit with Jimmy Carter and Michael Moore as a guest of honor at the '08 Democratic National Convention. Anyone willing to bet against me?
Posted by: Mike ||
02/25/2007 14:33 Comments ||
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#13
completing the transformation of the liberals into Puritan-like blind faith fanatics. They will make their pilgrimage to the movie, pay it homage and bow down to the mighty James Cameron. Soon they will all travel many miles to see for themselves the broken stones, complete with it's little brown blood stain - just like those true-believers who travel miles into the Amazon to see the face of the Virgin Mary burnt into a cheese sandwich.
#15
A woman is a mans mother either if she carried him in her womb or if she was the woman contributing half of his genetic matter or both. Mary was the mother of Jesus in both of these senses; because she not only carried Jesus in her womb but also supplied all of the genetic matter for his human body, since it was through hernot Josephthat Jesus "was descended from David according to the flesh" (Rom. 1:3).
Posted by: John J. Simmins ||
02/25/2007 18:32 Comments ||
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#16
she not only carried Jesus in her womb but also supplied all of the genetic matter for his human body, since it was through hernot Josephthat Jesus "was descended from David according to the flesh" (Rom. 1:3).
um, no. Then Jesus would have been Mary's clone and a woman. She was visited by an Angel. Both in vitro fertilization or artificial insemination would have been unfathomable 30 years ago. Just because you don't understand doesn't mean it is not possible.
#17
my point was that the bodies could all be related by blood. Who would you compare the DNA to to assert this was really Jesus? Cameron has never really been a moonbat, I hope that's not his new MO
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/25/2007 20:00 Comments ||
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#18
Sorry, John.
The Bible makes it abundantly clear that the child Mary carried was not hers nor Josephs' by any nature except adopted parentage. God placed the child within Mary. It carried no genetic material from any parent. That Mary's body was used as the vessel and supplied the child's nutritional requirements for 9 months means nothing in the genetic sense. While there may have been some genetic transfer via blood and material it does not mean that the original genetic material provided by God was contaminated (I'm sorry, there is no other viable word for genetic cross-transfer via blood or other materials) by a human source.
I also tend to believe that divine genetic material might be a tad "resistant" to human contamination via cross-transfer.
In addition, modern genetic sequencing could determine whether or not the original genetic material had been contaminated with any other genetic material via blood or other means known to man.
Simply put, Mary was the vessel, not the mother of God (or Jesus) in anything except a figurative sense.
I know that means that, according to the Catholics, I am an apostate, but that is the clear and true reading of scripture so far as I can determine (and I do have a PhD in Religion though it's worth less than a cup of coffee at Starbucks these days).
If you know better, or something I do not, I'm willing to listen.
#20
I don't think Cameron and his partner Jacobovici are moonbats. They are both intelligent people. However, they are using a 'documentary' technique that is fine for movies but not fine for science. The technique is that you find out some facts and if the facts do not rule out a really 'cool' solution, then that solution is presented in the documentary with so much drama that the viewers infer the solution must be true.
So they have some inscriptions, they show that some people are related to others and some aren't. The facts would lead to a multiple of solutions but only one solution (the Jesus had a kid solution) is cool (at least to Cameron and Jacobovici).
#21
Oh, and the whole "lineage of David" thing, well, why d you think God chose Mary in the first place?
She was clearly descended from David and that lineage would have been clear to those who tracked such things amongst the Jewish hierarchy. That would give the child a legitimate descendancy that the scholars could not erase or ignore.
That the child did not have actual genetic material descended from the line of David is an argument that cannot be made given the child's divine inheritance and inception.
We have no idea how God accomplished Jesus' virgin birth via Mary, but to claim that Jesus has a genetic lineage that is clear and traceable is tantamount to claiming that we can now decode God's DNA!
You could if Jesus were partly human, I suppose, but it would leave huge gaps in our understanding of just what we're looking at in the resultant code sequence.
"Um, doctor, we get one and a half billion sequences which are clearly human, but we also get one and a half billion sequences which we simply cannot define. It's definitely not human though, but we can't even see what proteins it's made of. They don;t exist in any chemical reference we know of."
#23
"We have no idea how God accomplished Jesus' virgin birth via Mary, but to claim that Jesus has a genetic lineage that is clear and traceable is tantamount to claiming that we can now decode God's DNA!"
I'm sorry my Son, but yes we do, and no, you don't. Your faith is misguided and you will burn in hell. Bend over for UFIA.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
The French farce that is currently passing as the presidential election campaign across the Channel continues to throw off laughable gaffes, extraordinary revelations and some of the best examples of "double-think" in contemporary politics. And if the French electorate is enjoying this spectacle, they are mad. The laughs are all on them.
February 6 marked Ronald Reagan's 96th birthday -- coincidentally, it's the same birth month as two of America's greatest Presidents, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, and also the same month that the nation celebrates Presidents' Day.
