French socialist Francois Hollande has won a clear victory in the country’s presidential election.

Mr Hollande – who polled just under 52% of votes in Sunday’s run-off – spoke of his pride at becoming president.

Admitting defeat, centre-right incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy wished “good luck” to Mr Hollande.

Analysts say the vote has wide implications for the whole eurozone. Mr Hollande has vowed to rework a deal on government debt in member countries.

Shortly after polls closed at 20:00 (18:00 GMT), French media published projections based on partial results giving Mr Hollande a lead of almost four points. Turnout was about 80%.

CONTINUED at BBC News.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy called for tougher borders and a stronger national identity on Sunday and accused the left of petty slander as he struggled to catch up with his Socialist rival a week before a presidential runoff.

Sarkozy, who lags his centre-left challenger Francois Hollande by 10 points in opinion polls for the May 6 vote, hammered home a message aimed at the nearly one-in-five far-right voters whose support he needs to win a second term.

In a speech in the southern city of Toulouse, which was shaken in March when an Islamic gunman went on a shooting rampage, the conservative Sarkozy used the word “border” dozens of times as he stressed that love of one’s country should not be confused with “dangerous nationalist ideology”.

“Without borders there is no nation, there is no Republic, there is no civilization,” Sarkozy told some 10,000 supporters. “We are not superior to others but we are different,” he said.

CONTINUED at Reuters.

Voters look set to turn their backs on conservative Nicolas Sarkozy in Sunday’s first round of an election that could give France its first left-wing president in 17 years just as fears resurface over Europe’s sovereign debt crisis.

A sickly economy and a deep dislike of Sarkozy’s flashy style have dominated the campaign, but the outside world’s doubts about France’s commitment to balance its public finances are also at stake as feeble growth threatens deficit-cutting targets in Europe’s No. 2 economy.

The centre-right president, an impulsive showman, and his bland Socialist challenger, Francois Hollande, are neck-and-neck in opinion polls for the first round on about 27-28 percent. But Hollande has a wide lead in voting intentions for a May 6 runoff between the top two candidates.

Far-right anti-immigration crusader Marine Le Pen, who wants France to abandon the euro, looks set to come third, with hard left firebrand Jean-Luc Melenchon fourth and centrist Francois Bayrou fifth, polls show.

Sarkozy has been a striking figure on the international stage for five years, leading the European response to the global financial crisis, spearheading Western military action in Libya and working in close partnership with powerful German Chancellor Angela Merkel to manage the euro zonecrisis.

But at home, he is unpopular because of a leadership style criticized as vulgar and for being too close to the rich, as well as feeling the brunt of anger over rife unemployment and economic gloom.

CONTINUED at Reuters.

The Al Qaeda fanatic who murdered seven people in south west France died in a vicious gunfire battle after police stormed his apartment following a 32-hour siege.

The Toulouse terrorist burst out of his flat’s bathroom ‘shooting insanely’ at officers, before leaping to his death from a window.

In scenes reminiscent of a Hollywood film, Mohammad Merah, 23, unleashed round after round from automatic weapons after gas cannisters were thrown into his apartment and police stormed in.

Two officers were injured, including one who is still in a serious condition.

CONTINUED at The Daily Mail.

Mohammed Merah, the suspect in the killing of seven people outside a Jewish school in Toulouse, France, fits the pattern of an al-Qaeda intelligence asset. According to the BBC, he was on the radar of French authorities because of visits he made to Afghanistan and the “militant stronghold” of Waziristan in Pakistan.

More specifically, Merah was handled by France’s DCRI intelligence service “for years,” according to Claude Guéant, the interior minister.

Merah, a French citizen of Algerian origin, was arrested on December 19, 2007, and was sentenced to three years in jail for planting bombs in the southern province of Kandahar in Afghanistan.

In April of 2011, the United States admitted it has operated secret military prisons in Afghanistan where suspected terrorists are held and interrogated without charges.

The notorious Bagram airbase detention center is operated by the Joint Special Operations Command and the DIA’s Defense Counterintelligence and Human Intelligence Center (DCHC).

CONTINUED at Infowars. Written by Kurt Nimmo. Videos at link.

*Written by M. Hines.

Rob has been after me for some time to write something reasonable to post on The Swash.  I’ve never really had anything to say, but prompted by the primary in my home state today and recent conversations with good friends, I thought I would share a couple short thoughts. (Not necessarily reasonable, and in no particular order.)

Part A.

It’s hard to decide where to start when the premise of a later subject may be defining what it means to be pro-life by illustrating the severity of our military action in order to set the stage for redefining what it means to be pro-life.

But what the hell, here we go.

“Why are we fighting terrorism? What are the motives here? Who struck first?”

Lately, in the back room, this very argument has been growing. It is growing amongst those who do not know the history of the Middle East region and are not being taught the inconvenient facts by our leadership.

It is understandable as to why this subject wouldn’t be discussed. A brief glance through the pages of history reveal mass involvement from the West in the establishment of what we know of the Middle East today. For example, most are not aware that the modern state of Israel is less then a century old. Even less known is that the roots of the country lie in a backhanded treaty made between the British and French to provision a space for the Jewish people in their process of “re-arranging” the Middle East colonies. This act set the stage for the later violent overthrow of the Arab population living in the area and the creation of what we now know as Israel and Palestine both in border and conflict.

In 1977, the first Islamic Terrorist attack against the US occurred in what was called the Hanafi Siege, a curious event that ironically seemed to consist of Islamic Extremists targeting ultimately other Islamic Extremists. The interesting element here is that popular cause for the Siege is attributed to the their leaders secondary request, which was to have a film titled Mohammad, Messenger of God destroyed as they perceived it to be sacrilegious.

One of the next most notable attacks occurred in 1993 when a small group managed to detonate a truck bomb at the base of the World Trade Center. This attack, which was largely unsuccessful, was planned by Ramzi Yousef. The following can be read in the Wikipedia article regarding Yousef’s motivations:

According to the journalist Steve Coll, Yousef mailed letters to various New York newspapers just before the attack, in which he claimed he belonged to ‘Liberation Army, Fifth Battalion’.[8] These letters made three demands: an end to all US aid to Israel, an end to US diplomatic relations with Israel, and a demand for a pledge by the United States to end interference “with any of the Middle East countries’ interior affairs.” He stated that the attack on the World Trade Center would be merely the first of such attacks if his demands were not met. In his letters Yousef admitted that the World Trade Center bombing was an act of terrorism, but this was justified because “the terrorism that Israel practices (which America supports) must be faced with a similar one.”

Interesting. So, perhaps there is a shred of logical motivation that extremist groups would have for attacking Western Groups. So, what is our motivation?

“They hit us first.” Did they?

Who has been putting their hands in the Middle East and stirring the pot for decades now? Is it possible that the western action of creating and promoting the state of Israel could be likened to China invading Alaska, giving it to the Canadians sending our people to Idaho and saying, “Hey, us and our friends got your back… Forever”. Is it really that unreasonable to say that an action like that might be cause to promote irritation with our way of doing business? Is this not what we’ve been doing for the last sixty years?

I’m not trying to make any definitive statements here, just some things to think about.

It is estimated that our war in Iraq has caused the deaths of some 150,000 Iraqi Civilians since it started…

It is estimated the Nazi’s killed between 160,000 and 180,000 German Jews during the Holocaust.

Part B.

Pro-Life – the term that has become defined-as and synonymous with “advocating full legal protection of embryos and fetuses (especially opposing the legalization of induced abortions).”

I once heard a pastor respond when asked if a politicians stance on abortion was reason enough to vote for them, his response was this, “being pro-life does not simply mean that we protect the unborn, it must also must mean that we protect the living”.

Choosing who should live and who should die on any grounds passes a judgment that only a higher being has the right to make, and effectively assigns a value to a person’s life no different than if they were slaves.

I hope that when put this simply to others; it is as profound as it was to me.

Currently there is a majority percentage of the GOP field that is running on both pro-life and pro-war agendas.

I do not see a way for these to co-exist.

References

Almost everything here is referenced from Wikipedia. If you have a problem, comment with the conflicting facts, and we’ll chat about it. If you don’t have conflicting facts, Fuck Off.

In the clearest indication yet, a high French government official confirmed last week that an FTT — Financial Transaction Tax — will be implemented by the European Union by the end of 2012, a year earlier than planned. Jean Leonetti (left), France’s Minister for European Affairs, said on television that “This is on the program for the next European summit [on January 30]. [French President] Nicolas Sarkozy and [German Chancellor] Angela Merkel have decided on this and it will be put in place before the end of 2012.”

The tax would be levied, initially at least, on every financial transaction taking place by any entity with a connection to the eurozone, at the rate of 0.1 percent on shares of stock and bonds, and 0.01 percent on all derivatives transactions. It is estimated that the FTT would cover about 85 percent of all transactions between financial institutions such as banks, investment firms, insurance companies, pension funds, and hedge funds. It is expected to raise, in the beginning, about $70 billion annually to help fund the EU.

It’s being touted as punishment for the banks which were allegedly instrumental in causing the economic meltdown, but would have no impact on ordinary citizens or small businesses. According to the European Commission, the FTT “would help to reduce competitive distortions in the single market, discourage risky trading activities [such as high frequency trading and highly leveraged derivatives contracts] and complement regulatory measures aimed at avoiding future crises.”

Because of Great Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron’s resistance and because under the current treaty such imposition requires a unanimous vote, “exceptions” are being made so that the FTT can be applied just to those in the 17-member eurozone instead of to all 27 member states.

Cameron’s resistance to the imposition of the FTT was initially thought by this writer to reflect his overriding loyalty to the City of London, inside London but outside of his jurisdiction. Since the European Union is a creation of the Anglo-American establishment with its heavy concentration of financial interests located in the City of London, it was threatened with being subjected to penalties by its own creation. The Telegraph seemed to agree, writing on January 8 that the reason for Cameron’s resistance was for fear that “it will damage the City of London, a global financial centre where much of the tax would be raised.” But a careful reading of Cameron’s statement indicates he would favor such imposition if it were “imposed globally.” [Emphasis added.]

That makes much more sense to Anthony Wile, writing about the coming FTT at The Daily Bell. He said that the FTT would have numerous advantages in the march to the New World Order, including the ability to monitor and police every financial transaction in the world, and then declaring and enforcing rules yet to be written against those who work opposing its interests. Such record keeping would

open up a bonanza of new crimes and criminals, in our view. First of all…trade data could be matched…to detect patterns of “insider trading.” But sooner or later other crimes would be discovered as well…

There could be “volume crimes” in which trades overwhelm the market…

Or how about exotic “front-running” crimes…by manipulative trades…

To counteract these newly discovered crimes, an international agency to fight market manipulation and insider trading would have to be set up. It would be a huge, global agency that would be funded by an ever steepening transaction tax.

Another threat envisioned by Wile would be the creation of “black lists” of entities not in compliance, and “white lists” of “good guys” who behave themselves according to the rules and who, as a result, are allowed to handle profitable governmental and banking business controlled by the insiders. Wile’s conclusion:

We believe that the City of London and its intergenerational, great central-banking families WANT a transaction tax. Why wouldn’t they? Taxes are a way to develop information about people and business trends. Taxes are a way to ensure that one comes under pressure to conform and to do business in a way that benefits the larger system the powers-that-be have put into place.

In the make-believe world of public opinion polling, Europeans are buying into the story that’s it all about punishing the banks for their misdoings. A recent Eurobarometer poll of more than 27,000 people showed them favoring the imposition of a FTT by more than two-to-one. Another poll by YouGov puts the FTT favorability at closer to four-to-one.

With little informed resistance to the real purposes of the Financial Transaction Tax, it appears to be afait accompli.

Source: New American.

This is a screenshot from French clothing retailer La Redoute’s website advertising kid’s t-shirts. Aaaaaaaaaand they used a product shot with a dude’s wiener in it. I even found a closeup HERE because I know you’re a pervert!

The image, which appeared for several hours on its website today, showed a group of four children running on the sand.
But, in the background, a naked man can clearly be seen wading behind them up the sea-shore.

Web users spotted the ‘faux pas’, which has since been taken down, and immediately took to Twitter to poke fun at the clothing company.

Admittedly, I don’t really think it’s that big a deal. I mean, Europeans are WAY COOLER with nakedness than we are here in the United States of Embarrassment. Especially France. I just assumed naked wieners were a fact of life over there. “You’re going to vacation there, aren’t you?” I dunno, what’s my ticket say? “One-way.” *wink*

Source: Geekologie.

*Written by Rob Rimes.

Lately, talk show hosts, politicians and know-it-all politificionados have been in an uproar over the political rhetoric that is used against one another. These pimps of political correctness and sensitivity are boo-hoo-hooing over the fact that anything that can somehow be related to combat, guns or war simply has no place in political rhetoric. What these tear-soaked turd munchers fail to realize is that we’re a pretty toned down society compared to where we once were. That doesn’t matter to them though because they don’t really study history, they just blow unjustified and inaccurate claims out of their tired lame rosy asses. They are calling for an “era of civility” just like in the days of yesteryear. It’s time to man up and face reality kiddies!

Introduction:

The Giffords shooting brought all of this out into the forefront. Every libtard maroon from the Beltway to Dagobah was in a bitch and rant session about how evil Sarah Palin was for having crosshairs on her website, even though liberal campaign king Bob Beckel admitted to inventing the crosshairs imagery for “targeting” districts back in the 1990′s. Of course the liberal websites that used that symbolism are not under fire because it is the conservative side of the line that is evil. Never mind that the fucking kid was a psycho shitbag that didn’t even have a real political ideology that made a lick of sense. But the conservatives are to blame because liberals are perfect. I’m a libertarian by the way, but libsnots lump us in with the conservatives because they don’t pay attention to anything other than making unicorns with their own poop.

Anyway, my rhetoric here is salty, I hope I’m not “shooting” myself in the foot already. I wouldn’t want to prematurely go to “war” with anyone who may have me in their “sights” before I can fully “hit” my point with the accuracy of a “sharpshooter”. I don’t want to get involved in a “crossfire” debate or anything over my rhetoric. I’m trying to tone it down here without “taking shots” at anyone specific, as I don’t want that to be interpreted into my calling for violence against a specific “target”. I think I’m failing at this already. Maybe I should “reload” and start over. Shit, I can’t get away from it!

Point is, this talk of how people should talk is fucking retarded. I’m not talking Leo DiCaprio in ‘Gilbert Grape’ retarded, I’m talking all out completely redonkulous people that listen to Black Eyed Peas retarded! Get the fuck over it homies and move on! Stop pointing the finger at everyone other than the dude that did the evil deed. Jared Loughner is responsible for the shooting not Sarah fucking Palin and Glenn assclown Beck! Muthafuckas is always looking for someone to blame besides the one who is to blame.

Now apart from my four paragraph rant, I want to show these libsicles why we are much more civilized than previous eras in this country. We aren’t on a path towards destruction in regards to our language, symbolism and expression. If anything, we’ve come a hell of a long fucking way than where we were in the days of our Founding Fathers. You think those cats were civil? Well then you must be smoking angeldust and rubbing heroin on your gums. Let me tell you about a crazy muthafucka named Aaron Burr, who was one of our many Founding Fathers.

CONTINUED at Original Post.

This is a video of Jean-Yves Blondeau, aka Rollerman (previously featured in 2007!) showing just what his 31-wheeled rollerblade suit is capable of. Which, SPOILER: going downhill really f***ing fast.

Hit the jump for Captain Deathwish in HD action.

-Rollerman returns to his motorcycle beating ways in HD [dvice]

Thanks to Erin, who’s convinced Rollerblading is gonna make a comeback. Please, not after I saw that guy fall on a rail and had his nuts unravel out of his shorts!