The return of the prodigal son

Its been a long loney lonely lonely lone ly time. Yes it has.

Baffled that the White House no longer makes the case that Mr. Hussein had WMDs

The television commercials are attention-grabbing

write Yochi J. Dreazen and John D. McKinnon in their WSJ aticle about Move America Forward:

Newly found Iraqi documents show that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, including anthrax and mustard gas, and had "extensive ties" to al Qaeda. The discoveries are being covered up by those "willing to undermine support for the war on terrorism to selfishly advance their shameless political ambitions."

The hard-hitting spots are part of a recent public-relations barrage aimed at reversing a decline in public support for President Bush's handling of Iraq. But these advertisements aren't paid for by the Republican National Committee or other established White House allies. Instead, they are sponsored by Move America Forward, a media-savvy outside advocacy group that has become one of the loudest -- and most controversial -- voices in the Iraq debate.

…Melanie Morgan, a conservative San Francisco radio host … says she is baffled that the White House no longer makes the case that Mr. Hussein had WMDs. The White House dropped the claims after a variety of investigators found no evidence to substantiate them. But Ms. Morgan says her ads are justified, based on documents given to her in Iraq by an Iraqi general she identified as Abdul Qader Jassim, and on information from U.S. officials involved in the hunt for weapons there. She believes Mr. Hussein possessed WMDs, and that those weapons remain in Iraq today.

Yeah, running back to the hotel bar

Those good-for-nothing cowardly EUrine Peein monitors run for cover when their Pali Death Cult buddies fire a few shots.

Will they be able to use it to locate their heads stuck firmly up their asses?

Du toc, du toc, et toujours du toc. The Zeropeans try to get it on the global positioning market. Of course, and as always, this whole thing will turn out to be a good deal more expensive than advertised, and hapless European taxpayers will foot the bill. Oh, and don't expect it to be delivered on time either.

N'en déplaise aux vieux pédés aigris du 8ème

Ils en ont ces danois ! Pas du tout comme les commentateurs franchouilles. Lâches, veules, et toujours un peu pédé sur les bords, qui s'attaquent volontiers aux cibles faciles comme les cathos et les juifs (c'est à dire, les cibles qui ne risquent point de leur exploser à la gueule). Si tu entends quelque part des propos faciles, sans risque, et surtout consensuels, ils ont été proférés par un franchouille qui se targue d'être provoc.

On peut voir quelques-unes des images incriminées ici.

Getting to the Root Causes: The Injustice of the World…

(Shookhran to RV)

So desperate to promote themselves as better than Americans that they kowtow to thugs

It apparently takes a European-born American to see what the Euro-elites are -- so desperate to promote themselves as better than Americans that they kowtow to thugs

writes Debra Saunders.

…the European press had canonized Williams -- regurgitating the Tookie propaganda about his "redemption." Agence France Presse called Williams a "repentant gang leader." London's The Independent gushed about "the widely expressed sense that if Mr. Williams were not regarded as an embodiment of rehabilitation and redemption, then the terms had no meaning in the U.S. criminal justice system." You'd never know that Williams never apologized for killing four innocent people.

American newspapers dutifully reported on Europeans' revulsion at the death penalty -- they see it as "a medieval atrocity," as The New York Times put it. You'd never guess that somehow Graz kept Schwarzenegger's name on its stadium after he failed to stop the January execution of triple-murderer Donald Beardslee. Or that many Europeans aren't thrilled that the European Union forced abolition of capital punishment on member countries. …

The Graz incident shows a side of Europe that leaves many of us American rubes cold. Left-wing Austrians -- and Americans -- were quick to condemn the California death penalty and Schwarzenegger as barbaric, even as they embraced a man who killed four innocent people. To condemn an execution while canonizing a killer -- that's just too civilized.

Leftist statesmanship in a nutshell

Rosenburgs outed and outsmarted by a five-year-old.

Is it, like, still 1971? When comedians begged to be taken seriously?

Frighteningly the god given man of ze hardhat is running for president as a stunt.

By way of France-Echos: Dieudonné hates that vaunted republicain communitarianism because French society can’t give preferential treatment to political factions based on usefulness as a guilt-tripping tool:

FR.:«"C'est une candidature anticommunautariste qui veut croire dans les valeurs de la République et qui va interroger la République dans ses incohérences" a déclaré à l'AFP l'humoriste peu avant une représentation à Lille de son spectacle intitulé "1905" et dédié à la laïcité.

Candidat depuis le 22 décembre, il a dénoncé les "conditions particulièrement difficiles d'intégration d'une certaine catégorie de Français" et le "poids de certains esprits communautaristes" en France et a indiqué qu'il était prêt à "passer par une discrimination positive pour pouvoir décommunautariser" bien que ce soit "un constat d'échec de l'intelligence".»

EN: «"This is a anticommunitarian candidature which wants to believe in the values of the Republic and which will question the Republic’s inconsistencies" the humorist told AFP just before a presentation in Lille of his play entitled "1905" which is dedicated to secularity.

A candidate since December 22, he denounced the "particularly difficult task of integrating certain categories of the French" and the "burden of the communitarian view" in France and indicated that he was ready "to advance affirmative action as a de-communitarian instrument" even if it is "an acknowledgement of failure of reason".»

In other words, he’d rather have a kind of supremacy based on victimhood, and in spite the inconsistency of demanding an unequal form of social secularism. This terribly tribal view of the world thinks there’s actually some remedial value in the emotional desire instead to not just stick it to the man, but now to stick it to an even statistically smaller group – ‘casper’.

Animal nation

Beasts.

Geo-fools

Occasionally, I check our site meter. I happened to notice a novelty. It was a reader from Vietnam no less.



People doing word searches occasionally come our way using seemingly random strings of text. What was this chap looking for on the net when he tripped over us?



It seems to me that the sickening obsession which has diseased the left has become one of its’ great exports. They have “globalized” themselves in the worst sense – after all, I can’t imagine that there were ever many Jews to fixate on and hate in Vietnam.

Either that or a western moonbat peddling his wares or part of that loving, warm, helpful network of NGOs.

Feel free to comment. Have at it, peeps.

Milk poverty hysterically.

"Make Poverty History" campaign pledges not being delivered

«Charities have accused celebrities of "hijacking" the Make Poverty History campaign and said pledges to cut the gap between rich and poor nations has had little impact.

"There are celebrities who really didn't seem to know what they were talking about and (musician and campaigner) Bob Geldof's comments after G8 were very unhelpful because they made people think everything had been achieved."

Geldof described the summit as "mission accomplished, frankly" giving "10 out of 10" for pledges on increasing aid by 50 billion dollars each year and "eight of 10" on writing off unpayable debts.

But Timms said that while "some progress" had been made on debt relief "we have yet to see any of those pledges translated into a penny for the poorer countries and there was no progress on trade".»

It gets worse. Tories have been dragged onto the Kultursmog-mobile, and Saint Sir Geldof the Magnificent is to advise Tories on global poverty relief. And because we’re talking about conservatives, he was asked questions that they would never pose otherwise, forcing him to answer with stuff like:

«Anti-poverty campaigner Bob Geldof insisted that he was "in no-one's pocket" after agreeing to advise a Conservative party policy group tasked with creating a strategy to defeat global poverty.»

State Party Line

Après avoir accepté de publier hier, et du bout des doigts, un article écrit par Pierre-André Taguieff au sujet du maniement de l'étiquette de néo-réac par les gôchos-bobos-nonos-alters-pédés, Libé se rattrape aujourd'hui avec une descente en règle de Alain Finkielkraut. Histoire de remettre les pendules à l'heure et de rappeler à l'intelligentsia parisienne les diktats et autre oukase qui sont en vigueur.

Woof

"Jacky, do you swear that you’ll continue to fight for our special social advantages?"

"Social rights! social rights!"

Nostalgia for the Time Before America Brought Insecurity, Chaos, and Massacres to Iraq

…workers in the Shi'ite holy city of Karbala uncovered remains that are thought to be part of a mass grave dating to a 1991 uprising against dictator Saddam Hussein

writes Qassim Abdul-Zahra as the Washington Times reporter discusses a time before America brought "insecurity", "chaos", and "massacres" to Iraq.

The remains -- discovered Monday -- were sent for testing yesterday in an effort to identify the bodies, said Rahman Mashawy, a Karbala police spokesman. He did not say how many bodies were found, but some reports put the number at 31.

Les bien-pensants jouent à se faire peur

L'épouvantail Le Pen ne fonctionnant plus du tout, il fallait trouver autre chose. Les gôchos-bobos-nonos-alters-pédés ont donc inventé le néo-réac.

Let's just rename it ‘Thank a Leftist’ week

Thanks to endless revisionism, self-doubt, self-hatred, and unbalanced criticism of Judeo-Christian morality, people are turning elsewhere to find answers to life’s questions. You know, the questions that mush-headed elitist have tried to tell you are unknowable, at times telling us that any mainstream view of the world is evil, and even employing the law to do it in support of their own malignant narcissism:

«Ms. Fallot, who converted to Islam three years ago after asking herself spiritual questions to which she found no answers in her childhood Catholicism, says she finds the suspicion her new religion attracts "wounding." "For me," she adds, "Islam is a message of love, of tolerance and peace."
It is a message that appeals to more and more Europeans as curiosity about Islam has grown since 9/11»

Elsewhere western dhimmi support of the ‘conquista’ continues.

«This year, perhaps taking their cue from the New York Times, the story was recycled in a thousand other news venues. Political leaders around the world took up the lie as their own. And, of course, Arab and Muslim leaders were only too happy to begin championing the cause of these poor, misplaced, mistreated Christians.

There's just one problem. It's a total, bald-faced lie – another one of those revisionist history lessons being written even while the history is still taking place.

Because, for the life of this New York Times reporter and his editors back home, they can't think of a single legitimate way to blame Israel for the Christian exodus.

Here is the truth. Bethlehem, once a 90 percent Christian town, now only claims only about 20,000 of the 60,000 Arab residents – about 35 percent.

...Muslim terrorists have intentionally placed Christians in the crossfire between them and Israel. They did that when they seized the Church of the Nativity, nearly destroying it, defecating in the hallways, smashing statues and stealing precious objects.»

A puzzling thing for the religion of love, of tolerance and peace…

What’s more the handful of people who are over the edge have turned into something more than a ‘cabal’:

«French Holocaust Denier Roger Garaudy on Iranian TV: “Gas Chambers Were Not Used to Kill Jews”

Roger Garoudy: None of the well-known people who defeated Hitler and exposed his barbaric deeds said even a single word about gas chambers.
In Churchill's Memoirs of the Second World War, in Eisenhower's Crusade in Europe, and in General de Gaulle's memoirs there is no mention of this killing device.»

Thank a leftist. It is after all “holiday week” – if only they understood the definition of an epiphany.

Les Désespérés

Suite au mythe du Bac + 5 qui habite en banlieue, nous avons le nouveau mythe fabriqué de toute pièce et propagé par Le Monde Al-Jazira sur Seine, à savoir la racaille qui a l'intention de voter (dès que les bulletins de vote seront déguisés en Corans). Le Parti Socialiste recherche électeurs désespérément tout comme Le Monde Al-Jazira sur Seine recherche lecteurs désespérément.

Guess. It’s between Argentina and Lebanon.

Unconcerned by and unaware of the future, a fossilized, oil dependant economy tumbles into poverty-creating mediocrity as it’s surpassed by broad based competitors. No, friends – it isn’t Argentina.

Linky-love to Biased BBC

Bad blood

Les sidaïques d'Act-Up baissent les bras au moment où Aounit chope le sida mental.

They're smelly too

Self-righteous blowhard lesson-giving lying pricks.

Time is on their side

Sleeping rage in the Paris suburbs.

Democracy, European-Style: Who Cares What the Public Thinks, If Their Élites Know Better?

A poll by the local newspaper found that over 70 percent of the public opposed removing Mr. Schwarzenegger's name from the stadium.

That is one of the things we learn in Richard Bernstein's article on the Graz authorities' decision to change the name of the city's Stadion Graz-Liebenau. Another thing we learn is that one of the ideas in circulation

was to name the stadium after the Crips, the gang that Mr. Williams founded.

The idea never seems to have gotten off the ground, but on a continent where a convicted murderer is name honorary citizen of Paris, why doesn't the idea itself surprize me? Why doesn't it surprize me at all?

"Permanent daily lynching has become the national sport; our society demonizes"

…Burn, baby, burn was a cry of grief or vengeance from America's years of black rage, but it was also the incontrovertible truth of the riots that Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin recently insisted to CNN were really a blander, less shameful variety of social disturbance

writes John Vinocur.

Death and serious injury were avoided here for the most part. Still, toting up the score, the Interior Ministry indicates something far different than this cleansed version:
 
Ten thousand cars destroyed and more than 200 public buildings set afire. Damages estimated by insurers at between E80 million and E150 million. More than 3,200 arrests. More than 400 rioters sentenced to prison.
 
And now, after a period of quiet, here's an unsettling realization for 2006. It's that entirely apart from the official New Year's precautions, the weeks since the riots have not brought the sense of a nation coming together on some kind of common ground.
 
Rather the opposite. It is a time of new accusations and new verbal excess. It is one of rioters playing victim, or being manipulated by ideologues into the status of history's aggrieved, without responsibilities or obligations to France.
 
Most obviously, it is a time when the real, linked villains behind the riots - unemployment, and a reflexive insistence by most of the political caste that a quota system for advancement won't help - get pushed out of the discussion in favor of easier polemics. Bringing affirmative action to society here or profoundly changing the stagnant French economic system have the look of ideas that threaten the entrenched left/right status quo too much to make serious headway as the essence of the debate.
 
Instead of what has to be remade for France to function in confidence again, the headline issues, discussed with special viciousness, have run to the historical effects of French colonialism in North Africa, black Africa and the Caribbean and whether France owes its heirs systematic repentance.
 
Or to the position of a few writers, now accused as "neoreactionaries," who have dared ask about the role in the country's unrest of resistance to integration among some Muslim immigrants. Or further, to a characterization, vocal on the left and among a group of showbiz and sports celebrities with distant roots in housing project misery - and murmured insistently on the anti-modernist right - that makes Nicolas Sarkozy, the interior minister and 2007 presidential candidate, the one-size-fits-all guilty party for the troubles.
 
"Permanent daily lynching has become the national sport," Franz Oliver Giesbert, editor of the center-right newsweekly Le Point, wrote in its current issue. "Our society demonizes."
 
Almost everyone, Giesbert suggested, prefers picking on more familiar enemies than "our weakness and cowardice" that have led to an overwhelming national debt and the 35-hour workweek's becoming "our official ideology."
 
As counterintuitive as it may seem to many Americans at least, the French left won't touch affirmative action because it is considered anti-egalitarian and potentially threatens, in an obviously less articulated way, the white power structure in the left's leadership.
 
For the traditional French right, running from President Jacques Chirac to just short of Jean-Marie Le Pen's bigotry, the affirmative action notion challenges the myths of the Republic and their legitimacy: That everyone signing on to Frenchness is an equal recipient of the country's glory, that a unique, admirable social and not-quite-capitalist economic model exists in France, and that this structure must not be dismantled in favor of ideas coming from a dark world beyond the seas.
 
Between the two poles, Sarkozy - a man with populist instincts which can jostle his convictions - is at the center of the manufactured scorn keeping the riots' sense of unresolved grievance alive. (And the prefects saying the police must judge, case by case, if someone claiming to be out of gas truly wants to start a stuck car or fuel a riot.)
 
The chief cop and presidential candidate must live during the coming months with the fact of having used the supposedly incendiary, and certainly not politically correct word, racaille, or rabble, to designate the troublemakers who instigated the riots.
 
But the orthodox left and the right have to deal with the fact that Sarkozy emerged from them with polls showing he took the right approach in putting down the unrest and as the favorite to succeed Chirac a year and a half from now.
 
All this while he continues to advocate affirmative action, the vote for noncitizens in some local elections, government subsidies to bring Islamic preachers out of the projects' cellars, and a complete break with the economic and social services systems that have brought France massive unemployment and indebtedness.

What do you mean by " I didn't order the triple-delight?"

Stanley Kurtz, Paul Belein, and the world of the future. Youd better like it. You wont have a choice, even though we were all warned that, say, perhaps, constructing catagories that permit one to marry a herd of sheep might not make good law or a good society.

The Tsunamis of Aid Dollars from America

Get ready to see Europeans make fun of, and shake their heads concerning, news about Americans' beliefs.

On the other hand, expect them to ignore, or to minimise, news about Americans' extraordinary generosity. Indeed, that is hardly anything that boosts the Euros' litany of self-serving self-congratulation.

Americans are "stingy." This was the accusation hurled at the U.S. almost exactly one year ago today by Jan Egeland, United Nations Undersecretary for Humanitarian Affairs, immediately after the Asian tsunami disaster.

Even by U.N. standards, it was a particularly absurd anti-American slur--although it no doubt expresses the view of many foreign elites, who have come to believe that government is the only true source of goodness and charity. In the weeks and months that followed the tsunami, American citizens dug deep into their wallets, donating some $1.78 billion to the relief effort in Asia--dwarfing the contributions of other developed nations. Since October Americans have also contributed $78 million to assist the casualties of the Pakistan earthquake.

And lest there be any doubt that the Good Samaritan ethic is alive and well in America, consider the latest totals of charitable giving to help the New Orleans victims of Hurricane Katrina. The Center for Philanthropy at Indiana University announced last week that the total value of private donations in response to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita has reached $3.12 billion, thus "setting what is believed to be a record for a single disaster and recovery effort." This tsunami of aid dollars was donated in just three and a half months.

More astounding still is that this Gulf Coast aid is only a little more than 1/100th of what Americans donate to charities and churches every year. The quarter trillion dollars a year that Americans provide to sustain the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, Catholic Charities, the American Cancer Society, their local churches, universities and such is greater than the entire GDP of most countries. Bill and Melinda Gates have given more dollars to fight AIDS and malaria in Africa than have many nations. And all of this comes on top of the $1 trillion in taxes that Americans pay each year to support government income-transfer and benefit programs.

This generosity in money and volunteerism has been a hallmark of American society since its earliest days. Some 150 years ago Alexis de Tocqueville lauded the impulse of Americans (in contrast to Europeans) to set up churches, schools, orphanages, hospitals, homeless shelters and other civic aid organizations throughout the land.

What impels Americans to engage in such kindness to strangers? We suspect that Americans give to private charities because they recognize that these initiatives work best. Bobby Jindal, a Congressman from New Orleans whose own home was badly damaged by flood waters, tells us that "by far the most effective relief efforts have come from private charitable aid organizations. FEMA and other state/local government agencies set up bureaucracies and red tape, while private businesses and charities moved in swiftly to alleviate the human suffering on the ground."

Mr. Jindal tells the story of an elderly woman who dropped off a white envelope at a county sheriff's office in Louisiana filled with eight single dollar bills and a note of apology saying that this was all she could afford to give. Another woman wrote a quarter-million-dollar relief check with only one stipulation: that her generous act remain anonymous.

There is a mythology in the philanthropic world that Americans are motivated to give by the somewhat selfish pursuit of a tax deduction. But a surprisingly large percentage of charitable gifts aren't even itemized on tax forms. Moreover, the Tax Foundation has provided compelling evidence that over the past 50 years--as tax rates on the highest earners have fluctuated from a high of 90% to a low of 28%--American giving has hardly deviated from 2% of personal income. In the 1980s, as tax-rate reductions reduced the value of the charitable tax deduction by about half, the level of charitable giving nearly doubled. This suggests that charitable giving would continue to flourish under a flat-rate tax system with no deduction.

Which brings us back to the charge that Americans are Scrooges in providing international aid. The World Bank recently lectured the U.S. government to double its level of foreign aid. Never mind that the U.S. is now spending tens of billions of dollars in what is nothing if not a massive humanitarian mission to restore civil society and democracy to Iraq and Afghanistan. And never mind the humanitarian aid provided by the U.S. military in Pakistan and after the tsunami.

But yes, it's true, that when it comes to funding self-serving bureaucracies that don't produce results--such as much of the U.N. and most other multi-government foreign-aid schemes--Americans are skeptics. For good reason. Study after study has documented that there is no correlation between the amount of foreign assistance a nation receives and its subsequent rate of economic development. Think Africa, which has received hundreds of billions of dollars in aid to little positive effect. This suggests that the optimal amount of U.S. government development aid may be zero.

But at the same time, when it comes to private Good Samaritan undertakings that do alleviate poverty and despair, Americans are second to none, giving three to four times the amount of "official" foreign aid, according to Ian Vasquez of the Cato Institute's Global Liberty Project. That's not stingy. It's smart.

Warning: experimental blogging

Not unlike interpretive dance or somesuch, its actually more like a retreat. We here at the ¡No Pasaràn! central committee call it silent blogging.

Merry Christmas. Be thankful for those you love, and the freedoms you have.

Merry Christmas

When one person wishes another person Happy Holidays, and the other acknowledges, both knowing that they both mean Merry Christmas, you know that the sadistic lie of the intolerant nitwits is only succeeding in having the majority of people working around them. Its like nodding so that the crazy people might wander away.

Merry Christmas.

Blast from the Past

The riots that rocked La Defense business district in 2001.

France's immigration problem

Fact. Immigrants to France spawn too many criminals.

À croire que Le Monde Al-Jazira sur Seine est rédigé par une bande de pédés

Le Monde Al-Jazeera on the Seine equates peaceful Christian evangelists, fast growing despite France's secular ayatollahs, with dangerous cults and sounds the alarm in a full page article.

Mais Le Monde Al-Jazira sur Seine, toujours aussi lâche, ne pipe pas mot au sujet des vrais dangers posés par la deuxième religion de la Fwance.

Go for the jugular

Sarkozy explodes the myth of the hypothetical far-right bogeyman regularly brandished by the France's dying establishment press (Libération and Le Monde are both surviving thanks to a drip-feed) and states clearly that the danger of political extremism lies squarely to the left of the French political spectrum.

N'en déplaise aux vieux pédés aigris du 8ème arr., les sidaïques violents d'Act-Up sont renvoyés dans les cordes par un Sarko combatif qui cloue le bec à un Libé PropagandaStaffel qui perd son latin.

The Latest Conspiracy Theory: the Oil-for-Food Investigation Is a Yankee Plot

…nearly two months after the $35 million U.N.-backed probe that collected all those documents exposed just how troubled the program was, there has been no rush by the authorities in question to study it

writes the AP's Nick Wadhams (merci à Robert Tracinski). Nor do any of the European media outlets seem to have made much about it. (And why should they? It is not a scandal that involves the continent's favorite bogeyman. It's true that it's a subject far less interesting than tales of American torture.)

Some experts suspect there are governments that don't want to investigate their own complicity, or that treat bribery as the price of doing business abroad, or simply have judicial machinery that grinds slowly.

Of course, we are told that besides the United States, some "of the most active prosecutors are in … France".

But guess what? The scandal has not, and will not, be used to bash France through and through (that's reserved for les Américains), but to show, au contraire, how it proves how efficient and open and honest and forward-looking the country is.

Double standards.

Now.

Always.

Forever.

…the most prominent Jordanian mentioned in the report, Fawaz Zureikat, … who has denied any wrongdoing, offers a widely held claim that the oil-for-food investigation is a largely U.S.-led campaign to discredit the United Nations.

What did we say?

The skin ripped from their bodies: "I cannot express all that suffering and pain that we suffered in the 70 days inside"

Mr Haidari recalled the 1982 massacre at Dujail, where Saddam is accused of orchestrating the mass reprisals in retaliation for an alleged attempt on his life

writes the Daily Telegraph's Adrian Blomfield (shookhran to Robert Tracinski) in news which, unless I am mistaken, French media has not made a whole hell of a lot about. (It's true that it's a subject far less interesting than tales of American torture.)

Mr Haidari, who was only 14 at the time, told how he and all 43 members of his family were rounded up and taken to the Ba'ath party headquarters in Dujail.

"I saw my brother being tortured in front of my eyes," he said, looking straight at Saddam. "I was terrified. They would take one of us away and he would return in a sheet, dripping in blood."

Seven of his brothers were executed, he testified. Like so many Iraqis, he has no idea, he said, where they were buried.

The killings at Dujail were by no means the worst of the atrocities that Saddam and his henchmen are alleged to have orchestrated.

In comparison to the massacre of thousands at a time in the Kurdish north or the Shia south, only 147 people were killed. But prosecutors say the evidence in Dujail was easier to compile and have promised that there will be more charges brought against the former president.

Mr Haidari told the court that he was taken to a prison in Baghdad where children even younger than he, some only nine years old, were held in terrible conditions.

Beatings and electric shocks were regularly administered. Some of his fellow prisoners had the skin ripped from their bodies. "I cannot express all that suffering and pain that we suffered in the 70 days inside.''

…The more Saddam seemed to shrink, the bolder the witness became. "I hold Saddam responsible for detaining me and my family and ruining my future," he said.

"But Not Too Soon"

"What do you want for Christmas?" the young Marine asked.

Oliver North takes on local perspectives as he discusses many Americans' (and most Europeans') conviction that to have service members leave Iraq asap is the best thing the Bush administration can do — for everyone involved.

It was the middle of the night, and we were standing atop a heavily sandbagged "strongpoint" known as "Outpost Horea" in downtown Ramadi, Iraq -- long the bloodiest city in this very bloody country. In the dark, the Iraqi soldier standing watch beside the American looked toward us as a cold breeze rustled through the camouflage netting over our heads.

"What do I want for Christmas?" I repeated, somewhat surprised by the question. "I want you to get home safely."

The 21-year old Tennessean, girded in 65 lbs. of armored flak jacket, a night-vision equipped helmet, grenades and several hundred rounds of ammunition reflected on that for a moment and replied, "so do I."

Then, quietly, from the young Iraqi soldier beside us, words in broken English that stunned me: "As do I -- but not too soon."

Institutionalized

"I HATED IT" — Suzy Wetflower, BSU Business Review

"It's the worst piece of junk to come onto the market in 50 years"
— Bobby Sludgeworm, New York Mail

"The writers should be taken out and shot to put us all out of our misery"
— Bradley Sleeswart, Fibbes

From a renegade team of international corporate surveillance experts comes a behind-the-scenes, riveting tale of one of America's biggest corporations struggling to bring best practice to life in a cruelly competitive businessworld.

Features business story from a team of international corporate espionage experts, detailing the actions of the board and senior managers in one of America's biggest corporations, as they struggle to bring best practice to life.

Warning label above greatly appreciated

Près de la rue Lénine.

Merci buckets (as Erik would say) to Hervé

Howls of convenience about “unconstitutional” international wiretapping

Newsbusters.org points out an article published in the New York Times on Nov. 7, 1982:

«A Federal appeals court has ruled that the National Security Agency may lawfully intercept messages between United States citizens and people overseas, even if there is no cause to believe the Americans are foreign agents, and then provide summaries of these messages to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. »

Best of the Web points out the irony of Democrats going after the White house on this since they insisted a year ago that the war on terror should be fought by aggressively using intelligence assets instead of the military:

«This is looking increasingly like another effort by hostile journalists to gin up a fake scandal and discredit the administration. And once again, Democrats are falling for it. From the Associated Press:

Domestic spying authorized by the White House "doesn't uphold our Constitution" and President Bush offered a "lame" defense in recent public appearances, Sen. John Kerry said Tuesday.

This is proof, as if any were needed, that Kerry is not serious. Remember that in January 2004, Kerry described the war against terror as "primarily an intelligence and law-enforcement operation" rather than a military one. If he is to be believed--admittedly, a big "if"--a President Kerry would have been more concerned with terrorists' "rights" than with gathering intelligence to prevent terror attacks.»

Or not prevent them, as the case may be.

And now for the ‘command economy’ leftists who meet in a back alley...

What’s always been true to a degree, it regardless of the delusions the artistic have about how a society can be run, they hate to be “collectivized” themselves.

EU Rota: Elites Howlin’ Wolf.

«A French government crackdown on digital piracy backfired Thursday as lawmakers rebelled by endorsing amendments to legalize the online sharing of music and movies instead of punishing it.»

On hearing of the announcement that property rights would not be enforced, the musicians’ union, whose members are normally what we think of as the core of the morally repugnant elite in that it’s wealthy members idolize socialism were rightly disturbed. Rightly disturbed in a right-wing kind of way:

«The proposed royalties duty amounts to a "Sovietization" of the arts, said Bernard Miyet, president of the French music composers' and publishers' organization SACEM.

"You're talking about an administered price, set by a commission without regard to the music and film economy," Miyet said.»

Yes, they are. And so was the membership, generally, dreaming of this when it came to everyone else.

Miyet has long fought this one with the GATT as a “roving ambassador for privacy issues” to the U.N., and is rather sincere. His statement points out several things though – that the GATT (and by extension, the UN,) permitted the value of an artists work to decay by not paying much attention to copyright issues when it came to anyone, and that an international body can’t accomplish something that national laws and private organizations can do better on their own.

All the fits of badly thought out “good intentions” in the EU, and some of its’ member governments risks turning them into miniature UNs, only more dangerous. They can enforce their lunacy with the instruments of government and not just an imaginary body of undocumented and undemocratic international law.

The "Free-Market Leftist"

Alain Frachon has an article about Pascal Lamy, the French "free-market leftist" heading the WTO.

France's Policies Towards the Islamists Are Starting to Bear Fruit

Everybody remembers that the reasons for France's opposition to Washington in the Iraq crisis (besides for America's own good) was that showing understanding for the Muslim world (and the root causes) would lead to a far more fruitful relationship than the aggressive policy that the Americans were pursuing.

Strange, then, that Piotr Smolar (and Jean-Pierre Langellier) should now be reporting that

two months ago. Abdelmalek Droukdal [the new emir of the Groupe Salafiste pour la Prédication et le Combat] pointed at France as being Islam's "enemy nr 1" … the most troubling part of the Uclat report [Unité de coordination de la lutte antiterroriste] concerns "the Islamists' perception of France's foreign and domestic policy." "Our country is one of the most criticized by the Islamist movement on the planet".

Meanwhile, Richard Schittly and Michel Bôle-Richard reports on Bernard Planche, a French hostage in Baghdad. As for Catherine Bédarida, she notes that during a speech by Saddam Hussein at his trial, the sound was cut off. The France 3 journalist's comment?

The rest of his declaration was censored by the United States

Since the dictator had been talking about being beaten and tortured (by the Americans), the logical conclusion that the viewer must make is self-evident: America's policies — once again — are wrong, hypocritical, treacherous, criminal, and self-defeating. If only the Yanks would listen to the French, things would go much better for them…

Out of office, he continues to give people gas

«Apart from Adolf Hitler, Gerhard Schröder is Germany’s most repulsive chancellor ever.»

says Paul Belein

«During his seven years in office – which ended last month – the Socialist politician forged Berlin into an alliance with France, where his friend, the French crook Jack Chirac, is in charge, and with Russia, through his friendship with former KGB chief Vladimir Putin. A compulsive America-basher, Schröder did tremendous harm to the Atlantic Alliance. We now know why. Barely three weeks after his resignation on November 22 it turns out that Herr Schröder’s private pension scheme is a lucrative job on the Kremlin’s payroll. Last Friday the former German chancellor was appointed foreign policy advisor of Gazprom, the Russian state-owned oil and gas company, and chairman of the board of commissioners of NEGP, the Russian-controlled consortium that is building a gas pipeline from Siberia to Germany.»

There is further brilliance from the constellation Belein. Read up. Word. Moustache man knows.

Hart Attack

In response to the haughtiness in the following email, guest columnist Frank P Hart set a couple of things straight.

Salut Frank,

Yesterday, on TV, I saw your president admitting he went to invade Iraq based on wrong information. I thought, we are lucky that we are no more during the cold war. Otherwise, he would have blown up the planet.

He is still acting to destroy the planet by not doing anything to preserve the planet in favor of business.

Hope soon you will find a more responsible man at the top of the most powerful country!

That's for politic, as my good friend, I wish you a merry Christmas!

Salut [Jean Hémar]

If I were you, I'd spend less of my time worrying about the President of the U.S. and more time worrying about the President of France. For a guy who claims to spend no time keeping up with the news, you certainly seem to have little problem parroting the lines of the op-ed pages of Le Monde and Le Figaro.

Fact is, it isn't the Cold War era anymore, but that does not mean that people like Hussein, Ahmadinejad, and Kim Jong Il are no less dangerous; in fact they are more so, since the Cold War discipline on international protocols controlling the proliferation of nuclear materials is unravelling. Accurate intelligence or not, the President of the U.S. acted to defend the country and its Constitution according to the oath of office he swore to uphold (and last time I checked, that oath did not take into consideration the views of Europeans). That is not the action of an irrational or stupid man. It is the action the man found necessary based upon information furnished to him. And he is now taking steps to reform the shortcomings of the intelligence services. The reality, however, is that the CIA has been in decline since the 1970s due to policies put in place by a Democratic Congress and Democratic President (Carter), and the CIA's ineptitude will not be reversed overnight. But it will be reversed.

You (and other Europeans, especially the op-ed pages of the European press) can bitch all you want about Bush, but the reality is that *any* responsible human being that had been elected President would have done exactly the same thing he did. Or perhaps you're annoyed because we didn't elect an environmentalist dolt like Al Gore, who would have continued to leave the country exposed -- even after September 11 -- much the way that Bill Clinton did, thus permitting organizations like Al Qaeda to plan continuing attacks unfettered by any interference from intelligence-gathering or law-enforcement agencies.

I should also remind you that, even though the United States has not signed the Kyoto Protocol -- and never will, its percentage of emissions increase over 1990 levels is one of the lowest on the globe. Most western European countries, including France, are well above 1990 emissions levels and are above the increase of the United States, so what do you realistically have to bitch about without being complete hypocrites? Go ahead and bitch about the U.S. if it makes you feel better. I will be happy to read your screeds, but you should also be prepared for a critical response.

Now that we're done bitching back and forth at each other, have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Please pass along those sentiments to [your family].

Regards,

Frank

Serguei notices the possibility of mortality

With the usual blazing originality too, despite the contradictions.

How else then, to explain the policemen with Fred Flintstone-esque Buffalo style Archaeopteryx drumsticks for personal protection?



His scribble yesterday accompanies an article made up of generalized whining about terror legislation. After all, guns will only hurt people, right?

This time it’s spun around the new law specifying Police powers as it relates to terror, which based on the nature of the complaints in the press, probably isn’t much different from the old body of law.

It’s hardly worth the effort to lament the possibility of there being a loss of life that might be found by anyone trying to hinder a poor little terrorist on his way to, say, Les Halles, one of the Airports, or some similarly crowded place to ‘express himself’ as a sort of performance artist. Which is precisly the right time and the right context to say "After all, guns will only hurt people, right?"

Like the international phone wiretapping flap, the press coverage of these things has become little more than a platform for grandstanding and outrage of some sort or another. And since the PCF announced that they didn’t like the measure, those emotions are now approved and blandly acceptable in a dim-witted sort of way. After all, guns will only hurt people, right?

It seems to me that the opposite is more likely to be true. Luvvies fight terror by opposing anyone who mentions it. That way it will all go away from the world of words - which is the only environment where they feel like they have any control.

The joy of socialism

France 3:

«Early on Wednesday December 13 at Hargnies, close to Maubeuge in a camp of itinerant ‘travelers’ [in the British use of the term], Police discovered six men held in a van and an RV. In a state of hypothermia, they were led to the hospital of Maubeuge. The victims, all men of roughly forty years in age, left the hospital of Maubeuge in the afternoon before being questioned by Police. According to sources close to the investigation, the victims were sequestered for several months to divert their social security benefits. Eight people suspected of holding the victims against their will to take their benefits money were placed in police custody at Avesnes-sur-Helpe.»

Yet another reason to be 'compassionate' in that lefty kind of way.

Stop the madness, break the cycle of poverty, blah, blah, blah...

«A hurricane exposes the poverty of America's inner cities, and the champions of big government make political hay out of it. Riots lay bare the underclass in Paris's suburbs, and the French are astounded that such a thing could exist in their country.»

Patrick Chisholm writes in the Christian Science Monitor.

«Bill Clinton, John Kerry, John Edwards, and others seized on the New Orleans issue to blame the Bush administration for causing or exacerbating that city's poverty. This took an amazing amount of chutzpah, considering that New Orleans and Louisiana are longtime strongholds of their own political party.

In fact, Democrats have long controlled almost all of America's inner cities. The Brookings Institution recently ranked the 50 largest cities in the United States according to their concentrations of poverty. A quick check reveals that the 10 cities with the highest concentrations of poverty have Democratic mayors, with the exception of New York City (whose Republican mayor is something of an anomaly in a Democratic-dominated city). By contrast, the few Republican big-city mayors hail mainly from cities with the least concentration of poverty.

So why is there so much unemployment in America's inner cities and in France's suburbs? It is largely because onerous government regulations dissuade employers from offering jobs to low-skilled people.

Probably the biggest barrier to job creation for the low-skilled is the minimum wage. This problem is most pronounced in France, where the national minimum wage is about $9 per hour. It is a no-brainer why unemployment among rioting Muslim youths is so high: French employers do not consider their skills valuable enough to justify paying them $9 per hour. Not helping the situation are the country's rigid labor laws, which make businesses even more reluctant to hire.

So the solutions advocated by the champions of big government produce a pull/push effect: the poor get pulled into certain areas, and employers get pushed out. Poverty deepens.

Unless that cycle is broken, expect a continuation of poverty in America's inner cities, and additional manifestations of discontent among France's underclass.»

Regardless of anything else going on, it’s hard to say that the economic argument isn’t also valid in any event. Only ideologues who can’t cool it from time to time find a ‘single bullet’ theory to explain the world to themselves.

The typical recruit in the all-volunteer force is wealthier, more educated and more rural than the average 18- to 24-year-old citizen is

They all volunteered

write USA Today's Tim Kane and James Jay Carafano (thanks to Jack Wakeland).

The U.S. soldiers pitching in with hurricane relief along the Gulf Coast and those fighting and dying in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere decided, on their own, to serve their nation.

Or was the decision made so freely? Could it be that unscrupulous Pentagon recruiters duped them, taking advantage of their poverty, their lack of education and the bleak futures they share as members of the USA's urban underclass?

That's the view of some critics, such as New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, who writes that “very few” of the soldiers fighting in Iraq “are coming from the privileged economic classes,” and that there would likely be no war if rich kids had to fight. According to Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., social equality demands reinstatement of the draft, which he justifies by asserting that “the most privileged Americans are underrepresented or absent.” Herbert concludes that there is “something very, very wrong with this picture.”

What's “very, very wrong” with the Rangel-Herbert picture is that it has no factual basis.

According to a comprehensive study of all enlistees for the years 1998-99 and 2003 that The Heritage Foundation just released, the typical recruit in the all-volunteer force is wealthier, more educated and more rural than the average 18- to 24-year-old citizen is. Indeed, for every two recruits coming from the poorest neighborhoods, there are three recruits coming from the richest neighborhoods.

… In fact, since the 9/11 attacks, more volunteers have emerged from the middle and upper classes and fewer from the lowest-income groups. In 1999, both the highest fifth of the nation in income and the lowest fifth were slightly underrepresented among military volunteers. Since 2001, enlistments have increased in the top two-fifths of income levels but have decreased among the lowest fifth.

Allegations that recruiters are disproportionately targeting blacks also don't hold water. First, whites make up 77.4% of the nation's population and 75.8% of its military volunteers, according to our analysis of Department of Defense data.

…Maintaining the strength and size of our all-volunteer military isn't always easy. But Americans step up when their country needs them. To suggest the system is failing or exploiting citizens is wrong. And to make claims about the nature of U.S. troops to discredit their mission ought to be politically out of bounds.

Lou’s new friend

Lou, the hearty Texan with a strong stomache, and pity for the woefully underendowed:

«James from the UK and I have been e-mailing each other the past week since he discovered my happy little home on the Internet.

I didn't prompt James for this information. He just brought it up. Why he collects statistics about circumcision rates is his business. It does seem to be an odd obsession with many of those who hate America.»

He manages to somehow construct a condescending vision of America out of something as unrelated as circumcision.

Unctuous twit:

«I know a lot of very clever americans, but very few, probably 2, who speak without using catch phrases or are consistently upbeat no matter how stupid they look or how wrong the things they say are.»

Actually, I generally find that unavoidable listening to Britons with meaningless suger-water phrases such as “back at ground zero” when people attempting communication would say “back at square one”. Even his royal whatzit, Prince Charles was heard in a recent television interview using “at the end of the day” 4 times in one sitting.

Thank goodness it’s Lou who had that cat follow him home, and not me. The three of us have enough of them.

Lou shouldn’t be deconstructing him, he should be disemboweling him.

A new Mao suit for the post-historical man

They aren’t kidding. I swear they’ve drunk the kool-aid. Somehow they were convinced by an NGO that the uniform clothing items that they import are purchased from countries that aren’t PC enough:

«Les chemins de fer français ont décidé de rhabiller leur personnel en vêtements issus du commerce équitable, pour ancrer davantage l'entreprise publique dans le développement durable dont elle a fait un des axes de son projet industriel.

A l'occasion d'un marché de Noël - artisanat et produits issus du commerce équitable du monde - installé pour deux jours au siège de l'entreprise publique, à Paris, la SNCF a signé, en présence de son président Louis Gallois, avec l'ONG Yamana, le programme "fibre citoyenne", une démarche progressive de développement durable pour les entreprises textiles.

Actuellement, les casquettes des agents de la SNCF sont fabriquées en France, les gilets jaunes et blancs en Tunisie, les chemises en Chine, l'uniforme de sécurité en Bulgarie, les ceintures à Taïwan...

La SNCF se donne de 12 à 18 mois pour rhabiller ses personnels en vêtements équitables sachant qu'elle a 300 établissements qui passent commande. Elle entend également sensibiliser ses agents à travers les comités d'entreprise qui seront encouragés à organiser des marchés de Noël ou autres ventes de produits équitables.»

- ( ) -

«The French railroad network decided to equip their personnel in fair trade clothing, to commit the state owned company in sustainable development as one of the company’s guiding principals.

In time for Christmas they set up a “fair trade” crafts and products Christmas market for two days on company premises in Paris. SNCF signed the deal in the presence of its president Welsh Louis with the Yamana (an NGO). The program is called "citizen’s fibers" and is considered by them to be a progressive step in sustainable development the textile companies.

Currently, the caps of the SNCF employees are manufactured in France, the yellow waistcoats and white in Tunisia, their shirts in China, the safely uniforms, and their belts in Taiwan.

The SNCF is given from 12 to 18 months to rekit its’ personnel in “fair trade” clothing knowing that it has 300 purchasing entities within the network. It also intends to sensitize its agents through the worker’s councils to organize “fair trade” Christmas markets for sales of other goods.»

This moronic conceit will cost the rail network which is a state monopoly (and thus the taxpayer) 20 million euros a year.

Mark Steyn - a quarter turn off...

...but that's why I like him.

He’s right. The biggest losers in the Iraqi elections were the democrats

«Heigh-ho. The Iraq election's over, the media did their best to ignore it, and, judging from the rippling torsos I saw every time I switched on the TV, the press seem to reckon that that gay cowboy movie was the big geopolitical event of the last week, if not of all time. Yes, yes, I know: They're not, technically, cowboys, they're gay shepherds, but even Hollywood isn't crazy enough to think it can sell gay shepherds to the world. And the point is, even if I was in the mood for a story about two rugged insecure men who find themselves strangely attracted to each other in a dark transgressive relationship that breaks all the rules, who needs Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger when you've got Howard Dean and Abu Musad al-Zarqawi? Yee-haw! And, if that sounds unfair, pick almost any recent statement by a big-time Dem cowboy and tell me how exactly it would differ from the pep talks Zarqawi gives his dwindling band of head-hackers -- Dean arguing that America can't win in Iraq, Barbara Boxer demanding the troops begin withdrawing on Dec. 15, John Kerry accusing American soldiers of terrorizing Iraqi women and children, Jack Murtha declaring that the U.S. Army is utterly broken. Pepper 'em with a handful of "Praise be to Allahs" and any one of those statements could have been uttered by Zarqawi.

The Democratic Party have contrived to get themselves into a situation where bad news from Iraq is good for them and good news from Iraq is bad for them. And as there's a lot more good news than bad these days, that puts them, politically, in a tough spot -- even with a fawning media that, faced with Kerry and Murtha talking what in any objective sense is drivel, decline to call for the men with white coats but instead nod solemnly and wonder whether Bush is living "in a bubble." »

Bush lied, people dyed (their fingers while a-votin').

The religious left remind me of an old joke

It’s the one about what you get when you cross a Klansman and a Unitarian – someone who will burn a question mark on a Catholic’s lawn.

Similarly, we find much inaccurate bloviation about the role of religion in the schools, public space, anywhere really, except when it comes to faiths that aren’t Christian or has anything to do with Judaism, but never when it comes to Jihad, Hamas, Hizballah, and the like. For example, the invocation of a higher power when lefties are after earthly treasures, such as the ability to bludgeon their opponents without criticism and use civil social institutions for their political objectives without being called hypocrites.

To crib one of their stale habits dating back to 1963, may mother Gaia (the non-denominational and ungendered) smite them on their way to the angry protest-against-some-random-aspect-of-the-society-they-live-in.

In this season of giving I wish them tolerance, diversity, and multi-culturalism.

“Bohemians” or “Trailer Trash?”

It depends on whether or not you’re French.

Finally! Proof! Tim Blair is not a dancing bear!

In fact an actual person, and not a dachshund puppy with big eyes.



Interview on Shire News Network

Also a special appearance by Scott Burgess.

In 5 Years, "Nothing Has Been Achieved": Why Couldn't the Clueless Bush Have Let the UN and the International Community Sort Out the Iraq Crisis?

…officials in the country said nothing had been achieved since an agreement was signed in December 2000 to resolve tensions over the Eritirean-Ethiopian border

writes Ed Harris from Asmara (Merci à RV). Not to worry, though:

"Meanwhile, peacekeepers are enjoying fat salaries and lavish lifestyles."

People are to be conscripted into one large cohort, everyone equal in their status as wards of a self-aggrandizing government

For some people, environmentalism is collectivism in drag

writes George Will.

Such people use environmental causes and rhetoric not to change the political climate for the purpose of environmental improvement. Rather, for them, changing the society's politics is the end, and environmental policies are mere means to that end.

The unending argument in political philosophy concerns constantly adjusting society's balance between freedom and equality. The primary goal of collectivism -- of socialism in Europe and contemporary liberalism in America -- is to enlarge governmental supervision of individuals' lives. This is done in the name of equality.

People are to be conscripted into one large cohort, everyone equal (although not equal in status or power to the governing class) in their status as wards of a self-aggrandizing government. Government says the constant enlargement of its supervising power is necessary for the equitable or efficient allocation of scarce resources.

Therefore, one of the collectivists' tactics is to produce scarcities, particularly of what makes modern society modern -- the energy requisite for social dynamism and individual autonomy. Hence collectivists use environmentalism to advance a collectivizing energy policy. Focusing on one energy source at a time, they stress the environmental hazards of finding, developing, transporting, manufacturing or using oil, natural gas, coal or nuclear power.

A quarter of a century of this tactic applied to ANWR is about 24 years too many. If geologists were to decide that there were only three thimbles of oil beneath area 1002, there would still be something to be said for going down to get them, just to prove that this nation cannot be forever paralyzed by people wielding environmentalism as a cover for collectivism.

Plantu acting as if the French don’t spy

«The broader cooperation between the United States and France plays to the strengths of each side, according to current and former French and U.S. officials. The CIA brings money from its classified and ever-growing "foreign liaison" account -- it has paid to transport some of France's suspects from abroad into Paris for legal imprisonment -- and its global eavesdropping capabilities and worldwide intelligence service ties. France brings its harsh laws, surveillance of radical Muslim groups and their networks in Arab states, and its intelligence links to its former colonies.»

Knowing whom to oppose: the silence of the world in the face of what was going on before is just stunning

While TI takes on Euro hero Pascal Lamy (and his blog), Paul A Gigot brings us a portrait of Euro-villain Paul Wolfowitz:

I watched him focus on Iraq over the decade after Saddam Hussein was allowed to retain the helicopters that slaughtered the Shiites and kept him in power. Mr. Wolfowitz was in the Pentagon at the time and has believed ever since that, if we didn't take out Saddam Hussein, the dictator would someday take his revenge on us. In his new job representing the world, Mr. Wolfowitz has taken a vow of near-silence on Iraq. But suffice it to say he still believes toppling Saddam was the right thing to do.

"I just heard today from Ann Clwyd," a British Labour politician recently in Iraq, [Paul Wolfowitz] says, and she "was telling me about the work of the Free Prisoners Association, which documents the death certificates of people executed . . . and she said it's over 300,000. I mean, if you think it's bad now — the silence of the world in the face of what was going on before is just stunning."

But All the Euro-Pundits, and All the European Citizens, Whose Butts Never Leave the Safety of their Armchairs, Know Far Better, Of Course…

Saddam Hussein moved his chemical weapons to Syria six weeks before the war started, Israel's top general during Operation Iraqi Freedom says.

Thus writes Ira Stoll (merci à RV) as smug, know-it-all Europeans continue to demonize Dubya, mock his supporters, and sputter about lies galore.

The Israeli officer, Lieutenant General Moshe Yaalon, asserted that Saddam spirited his chemical weapons out of the country on the eve of the war. "He transferred the chemical agents from Iraq to Syria," General Yaalon told The New York Sun over dinner in New York on Tuesday night. "No one went to Syria to find it." …

Syria shares a 376-mile border with Iraq. The Syrian ruling party and Saddam Hussein had in common the ideology of Baathism, a mixture of Nazism and Marxism.

And When You Write, You Write…

When You're Right, You're Right is the name of a new entity in the blogosphere. Wags will try to make the author seem like nothing but a college student, but that would be overlooking the fact that BD has a long log of righting credits (well, I thought it was funny) to his name, including his initial post, My Country, Always Wrong, and his latest one, France: Stuck on Stupid.

Be the very first to add a comment to his blog!

Meanwhile, a Frenchman explains how partisan Le Monde's editorial on the Iraqi elections was (merci à Alex).

By all means, please walk right into the propeller

For those of you living where the media has BDS, Pamela captures George Bush’s statement about the NYT leak of information about the NSA. (Video segments here) Basically he tears them a new one.

In simple terms the reason the 9-11 attacks were so successful was because the communications from outside the US to the US were hard to monitor by law, which is what the whole “US is spying on it’s citizens” meme is based on. It is a story the New York Times held back for a year, its’ source was clearly someone leaking intelligence for either love or money, at the timing looks almost perfectly stage-managed by the New York Times to come after the White house relented on one item, and to follow possible good news on an administration policy.

Critics of this policy want another 9-11. I guess they think it will cure us of non-european ‘false consciousness.’

«You can’t fool me, there ain’t no sanity clause!»

-renowned legal scholar Chico Marx

How to make a Pali splodeydope - just add stupid.

Or more precisely a whole generation of them.

Start em young. Keep them stupid and angry. And convince them that some non-violent eggplant tossing will simply scare them away.

Tripping Point

The Slingblade types at BBC public affairs radio programming have had an exceptionally absurd weekend – first they have crypto-moonbat Mary Robinson on “The Interview” where she insisted that she ‘depoliticized’ the approach to human rights when it came to Russia and China, but INSISTED that human rights are being eroded because of the behaviour of ‘Amerikur,’ and was rather proud of taking Secretary of State Rice off guard when she came to Europe with a specific, and entirely different, set of issues to discuss. Proud, indeed to have jacked her... ‘depoliticizing’ human rights... blah, blah, blah.

She said, you see, at the beginning of the millennium she was very proud of ‘what so much of the world signed up to’, and went on to characterize the US as a kind of Birkenau builder.

Then there’s the Talking Point programme where they gave extensive airtime to a guest who said he was a Sargent (SFC?, SSGT?, hm?) in the Massachusetts National Guard. He was attempting subtlety, until it all slipped away quickly. All he could say about knowing about what’s going on in Iraq was ‘from the intelligence reports of one battalion,’ and couldn’t tell us what KIND of sergeant he is, whether or not he was actually deployed in Iraq, and the like. Where it really fell apart is when he said “I don’t think the Commander in Chief set foot ONCE in Iraq, except for when he came with a PLASTIC TURKEY.

Naturally they ate it up, and left him on the air for a solid tem minutes, permitted the guests to talk to his points, and vise versa.

Another American calls with a reasoned view of why a exit timetable is a crappy idea, and he was given the ‘thank you very much, have a nice day’ treatment in about 60 seconds. AKA: the bum’s rush.

Erik’s argument about the vulgarity of symbolic coverage of the view held by the ‘enemy ideology’ of a news outfit being used as proof that they aren’t biased has never been more true.

With no evidence of her ever having bullied a despot at all, the lead in referred to Robinson this way:

«As the United Nations Human Rights commissioner, Mary Robinson was once described as "a scourge of despots and bullies around the world".»

Similarly, Scott Burgess dismantles another keeper of delusion, Germaine Greer, who is more that willing to turn her passing emotions into attempts at news.

Katrina Death Rate disproportionately high

Among non-blacks when you take the demographics of New Orleans into account. Nor does a death toll of 466 merit the transoceanic outrage, which, as a volcano, should have itself been called an environmental disaster, and managed to expose little more than the blood vessels in the eyes of Euro-lefties.

If it ain’t bolted down...

An ‘dey wanted der own Olympic Team, too. It’s a sort of “but I support our troops” style of Canadian Patriotism where they’re all for unity in Canada as long as you pay them off. At the end of the day, do they want to be Canadian or don’t they? Stephen Harper took the right attitude last week – he refused to court the crypto-separatists for votes - period.
Quebec’s ‘separatist lite’ types have been forcing themselves into government overrepresentation through language law, constantly threatening the collapse of the state for more money, and then managing the federal government with the kind of nihilism that only a leftist can summon up. Look out, world, here come their loony ideas now!

In fact if this little episode doest have the look and feel of Gorbachev’s hiding out in his dacha during a putsch, I don’t know what does.

The French tractor fetish persists, explained by the usual crap

Next week” has come and gone, and nothing has changed.

«Today, direct CAP subsidies make up, on average, 90% of a farmer's pre-tax income. That suggests that the average farmer would barely scrape a living without such aid. But the figure masks wide variations. For market gardeners, the share is below 10%; for quality wine-growers, it is 8%. Over a quarter of payments go to just 5% of farmers, according to the Groupe d'Economie Mondiale (GEM) at Paris's Institut d'Etudes Politiques. It calculates that the biggest 30 farmers—among them, Prince Albert of Monaco—get an average of over €390,000 each a year. That is 217 times the average received by the 180,000 or so smallest farms, which make up 40% of the country's total.»

Meanwhile a “free range” activist with colorful friends is still chasing sheep.

Hey, Lefty - afraid of where that purple finger has been?

NYT:

«Iraq's Election Day was a glorious success. Now on to the hard part.»

To the left, the absence of spontaneous post bombing perfection, hot and cold running Mecca Cola, and room service no longer seem to be the first thing on their minds anymore, but the near-silence is deafening on the left side of the turf now that they're at this point of development. Probably because there isn’t enough bad news about their ideological opponents to get them out of bed.

“On to the hard part,” indeed – start eating your hat.

The whole thing has been hard. The only difference is that the likes of those who scribble for the NYT didn’t really seem to want to notice it before. There is one thing we can excpect: we'll know they're on board when they try to take the credit for it.

Update: Tammy Bruce points out who the real loser of the Iraqi election.

All in the name of self esteem, I’m sure

Caution: narcissism at work. Via MND we hear of a 40 year old guilt trip queen in the Real Estate business “empowering her sales team” in an unusual way.

«SOUTHLAKE -- Kimberly Dobbs and Alicia Fruin had been close friends for at least two years. So Dobbs was eager to help through her charity for needy babies when Fruin said she had ovarian cancer and could not pay her medical bills.

But instead of cancer treatment, Fruin used the money to augment her breasts two bra cup sizes, bilking the Little Angels charity out of nearly $15,000.

Fruin told the couple that she had three months to live because her cancer was terminal and that it had spread to her breasts, Barbara Kilgore said.

At the time, she had no idea their friendship was cloaked in deception, said Dobbs, whose Southlake charity, Little Angels, was founded in 1998 to assist babies in need at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas.

We were very upset [that] she would do something like this," Dobbs said. "How could she claim to have cancer and play on people's sympathy? She stole from innocent babies."»

Marketing tactic or just plain evil? We report, you decide. From her pitch as a ”seminar coach”:

«Self Description
My committment to communication and life-long learning allows me to support those around me, especially my clients, in their endeavors. I am not as committed to my bottom-line, as I am committed to yours!

Goals
Building a global coaching and training company where all businesses, large or small, have the opportunity to succeed.

Interests
• A strong personal belief in life-long learning.
• Language/communication skills. Almost any problem in business and in life, is a communication issue.
• A strong drive to help others grow professionally

Qualities & Strengths
Ability to identify whether you need to plan or get into action and provide the structure and focus needed to help you succeed.»

How unique, how very innovative. One barely ever reads about someone’s ‘committment to communication and life-long learning’, let alone twice in the same blurb. A ‘strong drive to help others grow professionally’ seems to also go well with the indelicate reference to “sweater meat.”

Maybe she should have used the same tagline as the next person listed on her nitwit index who posed for her photo with two small dogs and wants you to “uncover your radiance”

Al-Beeb imagines itself informative, lavishes eggcups on itself

Nick Cohen being his usual bright, witty, kick-ass self points out some of the things that makes the BBC public affairs programming little more than a over-grown version of the Gerry Springer Show except for the fact that it’s completely unaware of itself. From his column in the Evening Standard:

«I turned on the Today programme yesterday morning and thought I’d got a feeble comedy show instead of the news.

A sub-Michael Moore clown was doing a turn the gist of which was that George W. Bush was the stooge of the Haliburton Corporation. John Humphrys was the next act. He shouted at Lord Falconer for so long and with such assurance in the righteousness of his beliefs, the Lord Chancellor was barely able to get three words out in reply.

I may be surprised, but I don’t expect tomorrow’s programme will feature a comedian mocking Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein. Nor do I expect to hear its presenters tearing into Charles Kennedy about the Liberal Democrats shameful failure to support the beleaguered liberals and democrats of Iraq.

If they do, it will be a first. I haven’t heard one opponent of the war given a hard time on Today in three years. Not even George Galloway.

The BBC’s managers must recognise that if they recruit arts graduates and put them in West London, they will inevitably have to deal with a middle-class liberal bias.»

hm. Haliburton. Stooge. Bush. Novel and innovative programming indeed. Someone please send Nich Cohen a box of steaks. Even if he’s a vegetarian.

On giving

It’s long been suspected that the more socialized a society is, the more loathing and generalized envy there is among its’ citizens. However all previous comparisons have had too many other cultural factors involved to indicate anything reliable – until now. No nation is more similar to Canada as the United States is, and Canada’s Fraser Institute has just published a comparative study of charitable giving in Canada and the United States.

«The average donation in the US ($3,731) is over three times more than the average donation in Canada ($1,165) even before accounting for differences in the value of currencies. In Alberta, Canada’s top-ranked province, the average donation ($1,468) is only 18.6 percent of the value of the average donation for tax filers in Wyoming ($7,888), America’s top-ranked state. Even in Rhode Island, the lowest ranked US state, average donations are close to $1,000 more than in Alberta. These differences become even more pronounced when currency differences are taken into account.»

Looking under every US flag, Menorah, and set of golf clubs for the most callous people trapped by the false conscienceness of capitalism, we have found them. The argument that people doing their part WITH THEIR TAXES is a abject ruse. The taxpayer isn’t doing the giving, the lawmaker is being charitable with the taxpayer’s money.

It also provides just enough of an emotional shield for the taxpayer to assign the needy off of the plane of reality and into an realm of abstraction – one where they can also be romanticized and politically exploited. They need not be faced by a person, and certainly not by you. “The State” will deal with them. So like a bad parent resigned to let the school system teach children values, we add one more detachment between the human and himself.

It also helps to actually make enough to be ABLE to be generous.