Bookworm Room

Tweet Bookworm recently asked, “is Europe trying to save itself?” To that question, I can only offer anecdotal evidence from family and business visits made to France and Belgium this summer, shortly after the Greece-precipitated financial crisis. Europe (witness the EU) is an uber-bureacracy. For centuries, Europe’s forms of governance have devolved into top-down, centralized [...]

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Tweet Edith Piaf sang often about Paris.  I don’t think she envisioned this.

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Tweet This is supposed to be a “news” story about the Obama family trip to Paris.  It strikes me as coming much closer to a bad bodice ripper, with scary Messianic overtones: People gawked and cameras clicked as the Obamas cut a wide figure through the French capital even while confined to a presidential motorcade. [...]

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Tweet The French Foreign Ministry has taken umbrage at the notion that Israel claims sole proprietorship over its capital city, Jerusalem.  Never mind that those who wish to share Jerusalem with the Israelis (a) deny that Israel even exists and (b) would like to see all of Israel’s Jewish citizens dead. You know, if we’re [...]

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Tweet The other day, I asked “can it happen here?“  The Radio Patriot reminded me that it is already happening there, in France.  Mark Steyn talked about the demographic destruction of Europe in his book America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It.  But he didn’t include maps.  The most striking thing [...]

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Tweet People have always recognized Napoleon’s over-weening ego.  Heck, we have a whole phrase for it, especially when applied to men of shorter stature:  “Napoleon complex.”  Still, Napoleon is generally admired for breaking down the last medieval walls on the European continent, both figuratively and literally.  Also, people with a bone to pick against British [...]

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Tweet Terry Sater writes about the fact that, coddled by loving euphemisms, Americans are marching headlong into the same dreadful socialist experiment that failed all over Europe — a failure that took place within the lifetime of every single American voter.  This is not a case of a few centuries or even decades having dimmed [...]

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Tweet Britain’s Telegraph has three interesting articles, and the London Times one: Read about the vast difference between Britain’s and France’s socialized medicine. I’d certainly like to know what accounts for the difference before I start making changes to the American system. Color me skeptical, but I bet Obama, who shows himself to be remarkably [...]

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Tweet . . . but this is sad: Brigitte Bardot was convicted Tuesday of provoking discrimination and racial hatred for writing that Muslims are destroying France. A Paris court also handed down a $23,325 fine against the former screen siren and animal rights campaigner. The court also ordered Bardot to pay $1,555 in damages to [...]

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Tweet You’ve heard of Muhammad Al-Durah:  this is the boy whom Israeli soldiers purportedly killed in a gun battle.  The image of this alleged death was caught on video, broadcast on French TV, and sparked the Second Intifatah, with its thousands of lives lost. The only problem is that the video was almost certainly faked.  [...]

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Tweet I kid you not — the language I put in quotations in this post caption is the precise language the BBC uses to describe those who are engaged in a little bit of urban unrest In France. You know, the kind of innocuous urban rioting that results in more than 80 policeman being injured [...]

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Tweet As you probably know, both the Second Intifadah and a sudden and dramatic nosedive in Israel’s already low standing around the world got their impetus from a horrific video shown on French TV: the death of 12 year old Palestinian boy as collateral damage in a shoot out between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers. Muhammad [...]

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Tweet In a lengthy article about increasingly aggressive rioting in the Paris suburbs, the AP manages only reference to “Muslim” and that with an oblique reference to France’s failure to give Muslim’s economic opportunities. The article carefully refrains from identifying by religion the current crop of gun-wielding, bus-burning “youths.”  If you can read code, though, [...]

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Tweet France has always been at the vanguard of the move to accommodate radical Islam. Whether it’s refusing to enforce UN sanctions against Iraq, refusing to join the coalition in Iraq, undermining Israel, or fawning over Arafat, you can count on the French for groveling, self-interested appeasement. It’s appropriate, therefore, that the French should be [...]

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Tweet As you know, there is a big debate going on in England right now about the veil. Those who support the veil are framing this support in terms of religious freedom. However, veils are not an integral part of the Muslim religion. Instead, they are a product of Arab culture. (Indeed, you only need [...]

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Tweet From American Thinker: The French will flex military their “military muscle” to shoot down Israeli observation jets. After years of ignoring Hezbollah preparations to terrorize Israel, after hiding a video that could have helped Israel find out what happened to soldiers murdered by Hezbollah in 2001 (the kidnappers used trucks with UNIFIL identification, trucks [...]

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Tweet You can’t say that the French lack style. When they pander, they do so with panache. Take their homage, as Reuters reports it, to one of the world’s major terrorist states: French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy says Tehran is a significant, respected player in the Middle East – ‘a great country, a great people [...]

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Tweet Nidra Poller writes about an aggressive anti-Semitic group on the rise in France.  The whole article is depressing, but I'd like to take special note of the article's conclusion: Outside the ORT school, where the minister met with residents, a dapper gray-haired shop owner said, with dignified regret, “It’s over for Jews in France.” [...]

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Tweet I know some perfectly delightful French people — charming, kind, and intelligent. Indeed, I know many. But there is something about collecting French people in one place that seems to bring out a darker side in them. Many years ago, at a local park used by a French elementary school, several of the children [...]

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Tweet Mike Adams wrote a great column today declaring his independence to act precisely as his students do:  rude, careless, and irresponsible, just because it feels good.  The reductio ad absurdum of this selfishness, of course, is what’s going on in France, where the students are perfectly happy to see the economy crater rather than [...]

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Tweet I just read a fascinating article about the anti-War march in San Francisco — fascinating, not for what it says, but for what it doesn’t say. The lede is “Anti-war protests in S.F., other cities draw thousands.” The first paragraphs again exude awe about the sheer numbers: On the third anniversary of the U.S. [...]

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