Number crunching

Sometimes it's the small things that give you away.

Charles Johnson says "Things were pretty calm in Paris over New Year’s Eve—only 372 cars torched."

A few lines down, in the article he quotes, the French Interior Ministry is cited as saying that 144 cars were burned that night in the Paris region. Is Charles Johnson wilfully lying, or is he just too stupid to read properly?

LGF: Foreign policy by numbers

It's great that Charles Johnson is keeping close track of anti-car violence in the French banlieues (1), but one has to wonder how his assessment of the situation in France based on these reports (MSM reports no less!) squares with his otherwise total dismissal of, say, the death toll in Iraq, the cost of the War on Terror, or Bush's approval ratings. For if Charles were an honest kind of guy (which he isn't), he would recognize that while numbers can tell you a lot about what is going on on the other side of the world, sometimes it takes a little more local insight to truly appreciate the situation on the ground.

To give an example, traveling through Paris less than 24 hours after Sarko's victory, there were no riots at Gare du Nord. Neither were there gangs of delinquent youths (which tellingly translates as 'Muslims' in LGFistan) marauding the streets. Nor was there a total breakdown of French society caused by leftist cabbies, train drivers and council workers going on strike. In fact, Paris, and the rest of France, went about its daily routine today just like any other Monday, with the exception of some good-natured discussion of the election results and what might happen during the next five years.

Of course, that kind of insight wouldn't play well on LGF, where the election of Sarkozy represents a defining moment in the Clash of Civilizations/War on Terror, perhaps even the start of an all out Intifada for the soul of Europe.

Sorry to disappoint the lizards, but France just experienced a peaceful, democratic, and extremely sane election campaign with a deserved winner based on the will of more than 85 percent of eligible voters. No Florida Recount, no Supreme Court appeals, no bombing of polling stations.

Sarko may not be to many voters tastes (and the youths in the banlieues have good reason to distrust him), but even 'leftists' admit he has a fighting spirit that could come in handy during the political and economic reform process ahead. People can respect that. And now that the election campaign is over, it is hoped Sarko will also respect those who fear what his policies may bring - hey, he might even try to make them work by listening to people first, something he has asked his international allies to do to France.

We'll see what happens. If, like Charles Johnson, you delight in murder and mayhem, there are sure to be incidents that draw your applause in the months to come. A riot, an anti-Semitic crime, strikes, they're all grist to the mill for the pea-brained lizards that frequent LGF. The rest of us are going to take a broader view. And we'll see who's right in the end.

Ségo et Sarko

To the surprise of absolutely no one, center-right French Presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy has won a plurality of votes in today's first-round voting. As of this writing, the numbers look like this: Sarkozy 29%, Royal 26%, Bayrou 19%, Le Pen 11%.

Of course, such political observers as Senior European Political Affairs Analyst Charles Johnson will interpret these results in the context of the Grand Post-9/11 Historical Narrative, in which the Evil Multicultural Transnational Left Is Being Smashed Worldwide and Conservative Capitalism Is Assuming Its Rightful Place As The Only Hope For Mankind.

(Well, except for that slight unpleasantness in the U.S. in November 2006.)

Further, they will declare that Sarkozy has "won" the French election, even though there is another round of voting in two weeks' time. And finally, they will spend the next two weeks engaged in frantic harangues concerning the Collapse Of Civilization As We Know It if Ségolène Royal should happen to win the second round. As if the French should care what foreign racaille think!

Eyes on France

Compare the jingoistic drivel of Charles Johnson and Co in the run-up to the French presidential elections with this piece by a professional journalist and ask yourself which is the more useful for understanding what is going on in the banlieues - or for that matter anywhere in La Grande Nation.