In France, there are always enough polling stations. Schools and town halls are polling stations. More people whose ballots to count? That's automatically more people to run polling stations and count the votes. The very notion that some areas may be disenfranchised by lack of polling stations is inconceivable.

In France, people must show ID to ( Read more... )

Back in the Soviet Union, a group of men, chained together in a vehicle that takes them to a remote gulag facility, discuss what befell to each of them.

Says the first: "my story is as unjust as it is sad ( Read more... )

When the Soviet invaded Czechoslovakia for attempting to give a human face to socialism, W. H. Auden wrote this poem, titled "August 1968":

The Ogre does what ogres can,
Deeds quite impossible for Man,
But one prize is beyond his reach:
The Ogre cannot master Speech.

About a subjugated plain,
Among ( Read more... )

What always fascinates me when I meet a group of very intelligent people ( Read more... )

My uncle Hùng recently passed away ( Read more... )

In imitation of many French socialists, my 9/11 commemoration is that of the events of September 11th, 1973, in Chile. However contra socialists, I greet the General Pinochet as a tyrannicide, the savior of Chile, and loathe Allende as its tyrant and destroyer. At the same time, we must remember that Allende was not killed by Pinochet, but by a ( Read more... )

Pris et capturés car coupable
d'un crime impardonnable:
oser publier - et sans parure -
des paroles impies, impropres à être prononcées, proclamées impures
par les représentants du peuple et autres prophètes supposés,
impensable péché!
repousser la pensée aux confins du possible,
en se sachant passible
pourtant d'une punition
dépassant la prison,
( Read more... )

Many libertarians, after Rothbard, start from the (correct) assumption ( Read more... )

Two radically opposed comic books: on the one hand, "City of Glass" (1994) by Paul Auster, masterfully adapted into a graphical novel by Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli. On the other hand, "Siberia" (2006), by Nikolai Maslov, an amateur artist (originally published in French in 2004 as "Une Jeunesse Soviétique").

The first author is a ( Read more... )

The Singing Revolutionis a refreshing movie ( Read more... )