Talk politics.

Yes, they're at it again. And yes, it's been outrageous and it has sparked an outrage and everyone is angry and all that stuff:

Charlie Hebdo cartoon on Turkey earthquake sparks outrage

Freedom of speech aside, it'd inevitably make you wonder: why are these guys really doing this? What are they all about? What sort of human being mocks innocent people suffering from a natural disaster? Well, here's the context about Charlie Hebdo.

Basically, they are a 70's paper with deep anti-clerical and socialo-anarchist roots. Their motto is that absolutely nothing is sacred or taboo and that you should be able to talk about and make fun of everything.

They spent 5 decades shitting on the French army, the French right wing parties and politicians, the French patronat, laissez-faire capitalism and pretty much every religion you can think of. Whenever there is a crisis or natural disaster somewhere, they have always made provocative or nonsensical covers about them.

But ever since the terrorist attack, two crowds have been constantly bitching about CH: the religious nutjobs from the Middle East and their "Americanized" leftist useful idiots who get offended as soon as someone dares to make fun of innocent BIPOCs and their wondrous exotic beliefs (yet you never hear them cry wolf when CH mocks acceptable targets such as Jews, magatards or French Catholic tradies...)

In a nutshell, as far as I can tell, they're shitposters of so-so quality who got world famous after some religious fanatic nutjob went postal in their office.

So there is not much to understand really about Charlie Hebdo. Most of what they do make me go "Ok" and move on. They can be funny or thought-provoking on rare occasions which I recognize but mostly they are about shitposts and constantly testing freedom of speech.

They still have a great use similar to the canaries in coal mines: as long as they are still publishing we know we still have pretty decent freedom of speech. And that's about it.

Of course, all that said, there are all sorts of folks and parties with an agenda all over the world who'd be willing to utilize their existence to their own purposes.

Aux armes, citoyens,
Formez vos bataillons,
Marchons, marchons!
Qu'un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons!

- From La Marseillaise

And the impure blood is about to spill...

French soldiers warn of civil war in new letter
A new open letter has been published in France warning of the threat of civil war and claiming to have more than 130,000 signatures from the public. The message, published in a right-wing magazine, accuses the French government of granting "concessions" to Islamism.

Well, it's Valeurs Actuelles, ie a bit like Fox News - Tucker Carlson, so you have to read it with a certain distance, a certain critical spirit.

On the other hand, I don't think that this can be read as a warning of a coming revolution but rather of the possibility of the advent of a political list made up of military personnel and that we shouldn't be surprised if a certain General de Villiers (who is multiplying books with a political tendency) were to run and win the next presidential elections. That same Villiers who was sacked by Macron. Because he literally said he didn't care about his orders. They can talk about respecting the "value" but what they're doing is pushing the far right agenda, plain and simple.

I see this as trouble both for Macron and Le Pen, frankly.

( Oh, and just for some context )

French president Macron put a lot of effort and invested a huge amount of political resources to prevent the G7 meeting in Biarritz from becoming a full failure. He invited all sorts of guests, he included topics in the agenda that were meant to break the stagnant framework of this sort of summits. But most importantly, he wanted to make sure he'd perform well as a host - which he eventually did, albeit with some caveats and obstacles.

Macron indeed managed to outplay, outclass and outsmart his US counterpart on the Iran issue. And that's quite something, given the fact that Trump again proved to be a mean-spirited guest, who had only come to promote himself and his own personal interests, and just have fun by creating chaos and confusion among both journalists and political observers - like on the issue of trade. Even the fact that he was at a huge international forum didn't stop him from using his air time to berate and bemoan the media who were sowing discord on the meeting. I guess it's no use to even get me started on all the bluffs, lies, threats, spin and overall irresponsible and childish manipulation that came from him. It's just his default mode after all (his Brazilian colleague Bolsonaro, by the way, came somewhat close to emulating his level of asshollery).

( Read more... )

Shock: Naked Restaurant Closes Due to ‘Lack of Customers’



The owners of Paris’s first nudist restaurant have learned the naked truth: dining in the nude doesn’t sell enough food. O’naturel will close on February 16, only 15 months after it showed up on the city’s restaurant scene, baring it all. It was certainly a unique idea to offer an upscale, three-course menu for $57.50, but it wasn’t meant to be.