I’m serious, you’d better have the paramedics ready; I’ll likely need them after reading this:

Libya conflict: France eyes new UN resolution

The French defence minister has suggested a new UN Security Council resolution may be needed for Nato allies to achieve their goals in Libya.

Gerard Longuet was speaking after a joint letter by the US, UK and French leaders said there could be no peace while Col Muammar Gaddafi was in power.

The current UN resolution makes no mention of regime change.

(…)

Speaking on French radio, Mr Longuet conceded that ousting Col Gaddafi would be “certainly” beyond the scope of the existing UN Security Council Resolution 1973 on Libya, and could require a new council vote.

“Beyond resolution 1973, certainly it didn’t mention the future of Gaddafi but I think that three major countries saying the same thing is important to the United Nations and perhaps one day the Security Council will adopt a resolution.”

Oh, isn’t that just special? France is considering asking for a resolution authorizing regime change in an Arab state!

Now, where have we heard that idea before? Let me think… Oh, yeah, now I remember! It was in the last year or so leading up to the US-UK lead invasion and liberation of Iraq, when we pushed for UN sanction for regime change in Iraq, something for which there was far more immediate humanitarian and geopolitical logic, even with the errors regarding WMDs. And what did France do back then? Stand with their longtime ally who twice saved their croissants from the Germans and kept Soviet tanks from rolling into Paris? Support their friend whose military shield allowed them to gorge themselves on domestic entitlements to the point of a national coronary, all while letting them pretend they still were a world power?

Don’t be naive.

Lead by their corrupt president, Jacques Chirac, and their slimy, sanctimonious, Napoleon-worshiping foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, they repeatedly stabbed us and the Iraqi people in the back. Here’s just one example. We were double-crossed again and again, and an American Secretary of State was humiliated before the world. And lest anyone think France was acting out of noble principles (France?), think again.

And now France wants the UN Security Council, where they fought us tooth and nail, to approve doing the very thing in Libya we did in Iraq. Oh, and any new resolution requires at least our non-opposition.

Sweet.

Mind you, I don’t disagree with the idea in principle; having started a war in Libya, we have to see it through to the end, which means getting rid of Qaddafi.  As Emerson said:

“When you strike at a king, you must kill him.”

The worst outcome would be some sort of a stalemate in which Daffy Qaddafi survives in power, even over a rump state. I guarantee you he will have the money, means, and motive to take revenge. More Lockerbies, anyone? And Europe is dependent on Libyan oil, far more so than we, and yet they’ve launched a war against one of their key suppliers. Economic and strategic self-interest now dictates that France must wage …wait for it… a war for oil!

Never mind. I think I’ll have another heaping helping of irony, thanks. It’s delicious!

via Hot Air

(Crossposted at Public Secrets)

From Daily News and Analysis:

Security services believe President Nicolas Sarkozy’s wife is now “high up” on al-Qaeda’s hitlist of potential VIP victims in France, it was revealed.

Fears for Bruni’s safety come after Osama bin Laden issued a chilling personal threat to kill French citizens in revenge for France backing the war in Afghanistan and their new law banning the burqa.

The al-Qaeda terror chief released an audio tape last week warning, “It is a simple equation, if you kill, you will be killed.”

(…)

“Security has always been high around the First couple, but we have learned that it has now been heavily increased around Ms Bruni herself,” the Daily Mail quoted the website as saying.

“There is no question of her ever going out without an armed escort and details of all her movements are being kept secret until the very last moment.

It’s still a war, folks, and they’re still trying to kill us.

LINKS: My earlier posts on Islamic misogyny. And here’s a good book on the topic.

Via The Jawa Report.

(Crossposted at Public Secrets)

As President Nicolas Sarkozy prepares to use a historic London summit to announce the use of RAF jets off the Charles de Gaulle, his naval chiefs have told him she is no longer seaworthy.

“She’s meant to be heading to Afghanistan to support the war there but is instead in home port with a faulty propulsion system,” said a French Navy source.

“This is a carrier which is meant to be defending not only France but also Britain over the next decade. As far as the London summit is concerned, her breaking down could not come at a worse time.”

Following Britain’s strategic defence review last week, it looks certain that the UK and France will each have just one operational aircraft carrier each towards the end of the decade.

But Britain will have to rely solely on the Charles de Gaulle until at least 2020 while the Queen Elizabeth, a new carrier, is being built.

This follows the announcement of the scrapping of the carrier Ark Royal and its Harrier Jump Jets.

I earlier covered the sad state of the Royal Navy, which is being reduced to it’s smallest size since the 16th century. And now this: reliant on Britain’s most ancient enemy for naval security, yet that enemy is… incompetent.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the future of the US military under the social democracy the Democrats so dearly desire. Europe, when it went down this path, could rely on us to bail them out. Well…

Just whom do we rely on?

And, Anglophile that I am, I have to say it again: Nelson weeps.

(Crossposted at Public Secrets)

PARIS (Reuters) – A Paris man who registered 55 children by 55 different mothers faces up to 10 years in jail and fines for suspected paternity fraud and for helping to obtain residency under false pretences, police said on Friday.

The 54 year-old of African origin, who authorities did not identify, was arrested in his two-room flat in Paris during a police raid which yielded documents showing more than 50 people were registered as living at that address.

Police suspect the man was involved in a social benefits scam which could have been costing the state over 1 million euros ($1.27 million) annually in claims by the mothers.

“At the moment 42 women have been identified and each claim that the man is the biological father of their child,” Paris police said in a statement.

Authorities said the man claimed he met the women at bars, night spots and occasionally during visits to their home countries, including Senegal, Cameroon and Mali.

He should have come to America to do this if he wanted to get away with it. Here, the government doesn’t call it “fraud.” They call it “welfare.”

French strikers disrupted trains and planes, hospitals and mail delivery Tuesday amid massive street protests over plans to raise the retirement age. Across the English Channel, London subway workers unhappy with staff cuts walked off the job.

The protests look like the prelude to a season of strikes in Europe, from Spain to the Czech Republic, as heavily indebted governments cut costs and chip away at some cherished but costly benefits that underpin the European good life — a scaling-back process that has gained urgency with Greece’s euro110 billion ($140 billion) bailout.

In France, where people poured into the streets in 220 cities, setting off flares and beating drums, a banner in the southern port city of Marseille called for Europe-wide solidarity: “Let’s Refuse Austerity Plans!” The Interior Ministry said more than 1.1 million people demonstrated throughout France, while the CFDT union put the number at 2.5 million.

(…)

French protesters are angry about the government’s plan to do away with the near-sacred promise of retirement at 60, forcing people to work until 62 because they are living longer. The goal is to bring the money-draining pension system back into the black by 2018.

As debate on the subject opened in parliament, Labor Minister Eric Woerth said the plan was one “of courage and reason” and that it is the “duty of the state” to save the pension system. He has said the government won’t back down, no matter how big the protests.

Prime Minister Francois Fillon reminded the French that it could be worse: In nearly all European countries, the current debate is over raising the retirement age to 67 or 68, he said. Germany has decided to bump the retirement age from 65 to 67, for example, and the U.S. Social Security system is gradually raising the retirement age to 67.

That sense of perspective was missing from many of the French protests, where some slogans bordered on the hysterical. One sign in Paris showed a raised middle finger with the message: “Greetings from people who will die on the job.”

Nothing like Gallic hysterics, eh?

Of course, we shouldn’t be surprised at this: statist societies like France and much of the EU use ever-expanding government-provided benefits as bribes to buy social peace, making dependents out their citizens and, in effect, infantilizing them. It’s no wonder, then, that the public then throws a tantrum when the state is forced to cut back.

But before anyone indulges in some schadenfreude at French expense, bear in mind that President Obama and his progressive allies want to take us down this same statist, dependent, and infantilized social-democratic road. (And, to a lesser extent, big-government Republicans have been willing to accommodate them.) We’re already seeing that with the growth of public sector unions in the US and their outlandish benefits*.

While Europe seems to be in for a season of unrest, the problem isn’t yet so bad in the US and, importantly, many people agree that it is a problem in the first place. Hopefully we can make the necessary reforms before we have our own mass tantrums.

*(For the record, I’m a member of a quasi-public union, and apparently it’s one of the dumber ones; we’ve never received the over-the-top wages and benefits the other unions do. I tell ya, it ain’t fair…)

(Crossposted at Public Secrets)

PARIS — It was apparently just a little summertime spinning with the aid of a grocery chain, but Luc Chatel, the education minister and government spokesman, found himself in some hot water over a supposedly staged visit to a quiet supermarket on Monday.

Journalists accompanying Mr. Chatel and Hervé Novelli, the secretary of state for commerce, on a trip to an Intermarché supermarket in Villeneuve-le-Roi, southeast of Paris, became suspicious when the aisles were suddenly filled with well-dressed, articulate women eager to praise a government freeze on the price of some school supplies before the new school year began.

One of the women was Virginie Meyniel, a local politician allied with the governing center-right party, who said she just happened to be in the store and also happens to help oversee schools for her town, Vulaines-sur-Seine, 30 miles away.

The radio station France Inter raised questions, and the newspaper Libération had a detailed article on Wednesday headlined, “Supercherie au Supermarché,” or “Hoax at the Supermarket.” It described how some of the women left the store together in a car after the minister left, without buying anything and leaving their school supplies in shopping baskets.

Sound like anyone else you know? Of course, the difference is that the French media hates Sarko and will go out of their way to point out the embarassing aspects of his administration accordingly, unlike our own MSM, who believe the President of the United States walks on water.

And the beat goes on.

DRESDEN, Germany — After mending fences with the Muslim world in Cairo on Thursday, President Obama might want to keep his diplomatic tools handy for his stopover here, to repair his increasingly strained relationship with Chancellor Angela Merkel.

A rift has quietly opened up between Germany and the United States, marked by official statements of harmony and private grumbling. It is not an outright crisis in relations, but there are underlying tensions and disagreements on matters ranging from the global economic crisis to the future of inmates held at Guantánamo Bay.

On a more basic level, there is a sense that the Obama administration is ignoring the needs and counsel of longtime allies. Divided Germany was once at the center not only of the cold war, but of American foreign policy as well, which is no longer the case. Yet the United States can ill afford to alienate Europe’s largest economy and its most important intermediary in the strained relationship with Russia. “They’re not angry, they’re not anti-Obama or anti-American,” said John C. Kornblum, a former United States ambassador to Germany and now a business adviser in Berlin. “But they’re confused by the wave of criticism which has been sent at them by the administration and people close to the administration.

“It’s not that they don’t like him,” he said. “They just feel like things aren’t working, like the levers of government are not being engaged to make issues run smoothly.”

[...]

In the early stages of the Obama presidency, officials in the Merkel government were dismayed by the scarcity of staff in midlevel positions at the Treasury Department. And Germans remain surprised that an ambassador to their country has not been named more than four months after Mr. Obama’s inauguration. There is a sense that, with his focus split between domestic concerns and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the new president is taking his staunchest European allies for granted.

“There is definitely this disappointment in Europe, complaining that there’s nobody home,” said Stephen Flanagan, senior vice president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

Hey Euros – welcome to our world.

In all seriousness, can you imagine the level of outrage this “rift” would receive if it was Bush and a European leader? Well, we don’t have to imagine – we all remember well how often Bush was criticized for allegedly “destroying” longstanding relationships with European allies due to his and his administration’s “lack of diplomatic finesse.”

Not only do we have “rifts” we’re trying to heal with Germany, but there’s another one emerging between our celebrity President and France’s celebrity president:

The Obamas turn up in Paris this evening, but have declined a dinner invitation from the couple next door: the Sarkozys.

President Obama’s reluctance to spend more than minimum time with the French leader on his visit for the D-Day anniversary has come as an embarrassment to the Elysée Palace.

America’s First Family will not be dining with President Sarkozy and his wife, Carla Bruni, even though they are staying at the residence of the US Ambassador, yards from the Elysée apartments where the Sarkozys spend their weekends.

Mr Sarkozy’s staff were trying yesterday to arrange another private moment between the couples. Mr Obama is due to fly back to Washington tomorrow night or on Sunday.

Mr Sarkozy has been pilloried in France for his failure to invite the Queen to the events. “The palace is fearing a snub,” Le Parisien newspaper said yesterday after the news emerged of the Obamas’ plans to keep themselves to themselves.

[...]

The French were also piqued after the White House said that it was working on an invitation to Normandy for the Royal Family. Face was saved when the Prince of Wales agreed to attend with Gordon Brown. “Sarkozy has pulled off a double hit: insulting Queen Elizabeth and exasperating Obama,” the weekly Canard Enchaîné said on Wednesday.

[...]

Mr Obama’s irritation with his French counterpart began when Mr Sarkozy tried to grab the limelight at the G20 summit in London in April and talked condescendingly of the US President in private. Mr Sarkozy told colleagues that he found Mr Obama to be inexperienced and unbriefed, especially on climate change. Mr Obama hit back last month, telling a visiting French minister: “Please tell Nicolas that I shall do my homework, and in two months I’ll know all about climate change.”

The leaders will have lunch in Caen tomorrow while their wives meet near by. They will then all attend the ceremony at the US cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer, above Omaha Beach.

Look, Sarko’s proven himself to be nothing more than an attention hog, and has not been the great ally I and many other conservatives had hoped he’d be after his election a couple of years ago. He’s been a jerk to President Obama, from what it sounds like, and as a result Obama’s sending subtle indirect jabs at Sarko – communicating without saying a word. So I really don’t blame the Obamas for the dinner snub. But at the same time, I also remember what a jerk Chirac was regarding Bush and how at the time the left here in this country resented the fact that our relations with France were, at best, “on ice.” Bush was ridiculed and vilified for his desire to ignore and overlook the pompous Jacques Chirac on the world stage. Yet Obama snubs Sarko, and in turn he’s praised in the French press and not criticized here at all from the same left who went out of their way to critique every word and every gesture from Bush and his administration when it came to dealing with our allies.

In any event, our relationships with Germany and France are not all wine and roses and perfect harmony as so many implied/predicted they’d be once Obama took the oath of office. If anything, at least with Germany, he and his administration have damaged one of the few good relationships Bush had with a European leader (Merkel) and is on shaky ground with another. All in a matter of just a few short months after his inauguration.

Nice work, Mr. President. Too bad that reset button is out for repairs, eh? Or, hey – maybe you can blame all this on Bush?

Flashback on the foreign policy “experts”:

• 9/22/08 – Joe Biden’s Tuzla moment
• 8/12/08 – Who needs 300+ foreign policy advisors when you’ve got George Clooney?
• 4/8/08 – Obama asserts that his VP selection would be “somebody who knows about a bunch of stuff that I’m not as expert on”
• 3/24/08 – Clinton campaign continues to dig deeper hole on alleged Tuzla sniperfire incident
• 11/21/07 – Senator Obama: Foreign relations “experience” based on 4 years spent overseas when he was a child

Barack Obama rejects Normandy trip to avoid offending Germany

…was a hearty “WTF?” The President of the United States passed up touring one of our most sacred battlefields with the President of a close ally? What the frack was he thinking? “Here we go again,” I thought. “Another liberal-lefty with contempt for our military and our history.” I was all set to write a post clubbing PBO for yet again dissing the country he leads in order to placate others.

Then I read the rest of the article. The text makes it clear that France was trying to use the American president as part of a “prestige contest” with Britain and Germany. Sarkozy’s ego and French pride were the problems here, not Obama. Not this time:

“During this trip, we wanted to maintain a balance between the British, German and France”. A White House spokesman in London declined to comment. Last month, White House officials briefed that a Normandy visit had been considered but it had not been logistically possible.

Mr Obama will arrive in Strasbourg on Friday for the Nato summit. He will hold a meeting with Mr Sarkozy and a brief press appearance in Strasbourg and then fly to Baden-Baden to do exactly the same with Chancellor Merkel of Germany. He will then fly to Prague on Saturday.

Mr Sarkozy is said by French officials to be piqued that Gordon Brown became the first European leader to meet Mr Obama and was then lavished with praise by him at a 50-minute joint press conference in London on Wednesday.

The French president tried unsuccessfully to meet Mr Obama before he was sworn in after the G20 summit in Washington last November, even stationing a French military plane on 24-hour standby nearby to whisk him to Chicago should the then US president-elect change his mind.

He had also hoped Mr Obama would agree to a meeting before attending the G20 summit in London on April 3. The French had suggested that Mr Obama fly from London to Normandy on Friday morning for a stop before the Nato summit. Instead, he is going directly to Strasbourg.

The president’s objective for the summit on this trip was to gain support for his economic agenda (whether I like it or not), and getting into the middle of a junior-high clique-fight among jealous heads of government wouldn’t support that goal, nor would it be fitting the office of the President. There’s a much better time for Obama to visit Normandy and commemorate our sacrifices there, as the article itself points out: the 65th anniversary of the landings this upcoming June.

In the end, I think the Telegraph’s headline is gratuitous, meant to inflame Obama opponents, not enlighten. It doesn’t help the Right’s cause to work itself into a lather that will only make it look irrational to middle-of-the-road voters. Do I wish PBO and his staff had found some way to avoid getting mixed up in intra-EU games while making a quiet, dignified visit to Normandy? Yes, it would have been better. But I just don’t see this as the craven appeasement of the Germans that the Telegraph paints it to be.

I’ve said before that, while I’m quite willing and ready to criticize Obama and the Democrats when they merit it (which is often), I will not descend to the level the Democrats and the far Left hit with their incessant, irrational, and Copperheaded attacks on President Bush. Obama doesn’t deserve it, the nation doesn’t need it, and it does no one any good. We can and must be better than that. The Telegraph’s headline writer should have been.

LINKS: Jim Hoff and Dan Collins muster the outrage for me.

(Cross-posted at Public Secrets, my home on the Web)

Russian president Vladimir Putin on
a recent trip to the Siberian mountains.

France’s president Nicolas Sarkozy, on his visit to
New Hampshire from a couple of weeks ago.(That photo,
by the way, was airbrushed by the French magazine L’Express.)

I don’t really cotton to seeing shirtless pix of world leaders because that’s not the way I really want to look at them – unless they looked like Hugh Jackman or Matthew McConaughey, which in either case would mean I’d be forced to make an exception to my rule.

That said, the shirtless pix above in no way compare with one of the most unintentionally sexy moments for a world leader ever caught on camera – not shirtless, but in a flight suit instead:

Now, normally I would never put the words “President Bush” and “sexy” in the same sentence, but in this case …

Update: In semi-sorta related news, Jules Crittenden blogged today about a new campaign in Australia designed to “stop young studs from speeding” – by suggesting that guys who speed do so because they’re making up for, uh, deficiencies elsewhere

(AP) Barbra Streisand performed her first-ever concert in France this week – and was rewarded with a medal of the Legion of Honor.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy awarded the medal to Streisand in a ceremony Thursday, the first time he has bestowed the honor since taking over from Jacques Chirac last month.

“You are the America that we love,” said Sarkozy, who is seen as more U.S.-friendly than Chirac. “Women like you … do a lot to bring our two peoples together.”

She might do that there in France, but she sure as hell doesn’t do that here in her own country! LOL. And I hope that you love more about America than Babs Streisand-types, Mr. French President.

Photo courtesy: AP/Philippe Wojazer, Pool

Since French men are such notorious charmers of women (and the new French prez even tried that route with his combative Socialist opponent Segolene Royal in the run-up to the elections there), I’ll forgive Sarko for his lapse in good judgement – this time, anyway

The second – and most important round – will be the final round, which takes place on June 17.

If the conservative wave continues and is successful next week, it will make it all the more easier for Sarko to implement the sweeping reforms he wants to, most regarding the French economy.

Speaking of Sarko, the Politque blog has video of what looks like a slightly tipsy new French president … doing some early celebrating, perhaps?

Prior:

• From “Freedom Fries” to “Friendship Fries”: What a difference an election makes!
• What Republicans can learn from Sarko’s victory
• The countdown to Sarko versus Sego
• Going down to the wire in France
• Anti-Sarkozy forces in France paint him as a Nazi
• French elections: Conservative Sarkozy versus Socialist Segolene Royal
• French rioters engaging in “civil disobedience”
• France is burning …

(Hat tip: ST reader Lorica)

Update: Here’s my lame attempt at altering the House cafeteria menu:

He’s promised to be an ally of the US, which is welcome news to just about everyone but the left. What’s especially noteworthy is not just his promise to be a friend to the US, but the reactions of his supporters to that part of his victory speech, via John Rosenthal:

But what was revealing was the spontaneous applause and cheering that broke out among the crowd when he uttered the words “to say to them that they can count on our friendship”: “pour leur dire qu’ils peuvent compter sur notre amitié.” You can hear and see it here. The passage on Franco-American relations is just over half way through the tape and a cursor control at the bottom of the media player allows you to skip forward. Even supposing such a pledge of friendship to the United States might — with all the “appropriate” qualifications — be found, for instance, in a speech by Jacques Chirac, it would certainly not receive such an enthusiastic response from his partisans — to say nothing of the partisans of Mme. Royal. This already represents an important difference between the old regime and the incoming new one.

Wow – so like the French actually like us (well a majority, anyway)? Who’da thought?

Anyway, I read a piece this morning which should inspire Republicans who are feeling like next year’s presidential elections have already been decided, who think that because Republicans lost so badly last year, that it’s certain that we’ll have a Democrat elected to the WH in 2008. Newt Gingrich, one of the smartest men in politics, tells Republicans that there is a lot they can learn from Sarko’s victory (bold emphasis mine):

Incumbent French President Jacques Chirac had been twice elected, has served a total of 12 years in office, and is very unpopular. Coming into this election, people were very tired of the Chirac government and there was a sense that there had to be change.

But the opposition on the left, the Socialist Party, failed completely to capitalize on this desire for change. They nominated a candidate of great achievement, Ségolène Royal, but she proved herself to be the candidate of the status quo, not the candidate of change. She was actually committed to keeping all the bureaucracies that were failing and all the policies that were creating unemployment. She was committed to avoiding the changes necessary for a French future of prosperity, opportunity and safety.

Normally, with the incumbent conservative government so unpopular, the left would have been expected to win the election, probably by a significant margin. But the conservative candidate, Nicolas Sarkozy, won decisively because he is an aggressive, different kind of French political leader. He is a member of the Chirac government — the Minister of the Interior. But not only is he a man who is willing to stand up and fight for what he believes in, but Sarkozy is also a man who hasn’t followed the normal French path to success by going to an elite university, becoming part of the ruling elite and fitting in.

[...]

As for the opposition in the French election, much like the American Democratic Party, it is trapped by its commitment to big labor, big bureaucracy, high taxes and social values people don’t believe in. Every time French voters seriously looked at Ségolène Royal and the kind of politics she represents, she lost ground. She simply couldn’t make the case that left-wing Socialist policies would work.

The result was a surprising and powerful upset by Sarkozy — a victory by a center-right reformer, a member of the unpopular ruling party, who came to personify change.

And here’s where American Republicans really need to pay attention: In France, voting for change meant voting for the party in office, but not the personality in office. And voting to keep the old order meant voting for the opposition, not for the incumbent party.

If Republicans hope to win the presidency next year, they better find a candidate who is prepared to stand for very bold, very dramatic and very systematic change in Washington. Not only that, but they had better make the case that the left-wing Democrat likely to be nominated represents the failed status quo: the bureaucracies that are failing, the social policies that are failing, the high tax policies that are failing, and the weakness around the world that has failed so badly in protecting America.

Only if we have that kind of campaign do we have a reasonable chance to expect the American people will vote for effective change for a better, safer and more prosperous future — and that they will see that effective change as being Republican.

Who will be that candidate?

And speaking of the French election and comparisons of it to the upcoming election here, the Hillary campaign is downplaying comparisons between the Senator and Royal. Rest assured had Ms. Royal won on Sunday, becoming France’s first female president, the Clinton camp would welcomed the comparisons and played them up to their advantage.

Related: Jules Crittenden has some words of advice for Sarko.

Prior:

• The countdown to Sarko versus Sego
• Going down to the wire in France
• Anti-Sarkozy forces in France paint him as a Nazi
• French elections: Conservative Sarkozy versus Socialist Segolene Royal
• French rioters engaging in “civil disobedience”
• France is burning …