Not heard weeping. Not tonight.
Behind the Façades in France: What expats and the mainstream media (French and American alike) fail to notice (or fail to tell you) about French attitudes, principles, values, and official positions…
Saturday, April 02, 2005
Why We Blog
FYI, the statement of purpose that was published on David's Medienkritik last summer has been reprinted on Deepblog. (You can write in your own motives for blogging…)
In (un)related news:
Live from Beijing, Ian A Holton… brings us the China Experience… and will be doing so for the coming 12 months…
| Profits first | Les bénéfices d'abord |
| CEOs are the true 'citizens of the world'. Illiterate, violent suburban trash can wait. | Les patrons des entreprises sont les vrais 'citoyens du monde' (et non les consensuels pédaloïdes-bobos aisés et globophobes). La caillera voyou et analphabète peut attendre. |
How long has it been?
EU "close to" a response to Iran (on nukes)How long has it been?
A few week, they now say. How long should it take to say -no-?
Listen to the Pravda-esque weaseling:
Listening to Richard and Ronald
…"now, more than ever, Beijing needs to feel outside pressure if we are to ensure that talks continue"Invoking Tibet, Richard Gere intervenes in the scandal of the Europeans wishing to sell arms to China, while Peter Robinson communes with Ronald Reagan about Iraq, Ukraine, President Bush, and more…
Eco-babble from Broadcast House to the Lower East Side
Biased BBC points out the goofiness of the claim of a "panel" on the BBC claiming that we have "used up 2/3 of the world's resources" (how? By mass of the earth's volume?) and Jonah Goldberg keeping it real when it comes to the U.N.'s "Millenium Ecosystem Assessment Report" claims that amount to the world, basically ending...
«Seriously, forests are breaking out all over America. New England has more forests since the Civil War. In 1880, New York State was only 25 percent forested. Today it is more than 66 percent. In 1850, Vermont was only 35 percent forested. Now it's 76 percent forested and rising. In the South, more land is covered by forest than at any time in the last century. In 1936 a study found that 80 percent of piedmont Georgia was without trees. Today nearly 70 percent of the state is forested. In the last decade alone, America has added more than 10 million acres of forestland.»
«Across the country, the coyote has rebounded (obviously, this is a mixed blessing, especially for roadrunners). The bald eagle is thriving.... ...And, of course, there's the mountain lion. There are probably now more of them in the continental United States than at any time since European settlement. This is bad news for deer, which are also at historic highs, because the kitties think "they're grrrreat!" In Iowa the big cat was officially wiped out in 1867, but today the state is hysterical about cougar sightings.
To be sure, the environment is not pristine neither in the G8 states or elsewhere, but sanctions and measures seem to dwell on peaceful, developed societies that are in the best environmental state because, well, they're peaceful and developed. Environmental activists from the left are disparaging the wrong social instruments – unless their goal is to “vanquish” developed states for some other political goal.
...Anyway, there's more good news, of course. According to Gregg Easterbrook, air pollution is lower than it has been in a generation, drinking water is safer, and our waterways are cleaner.
The richer you get, the healthier your environment gets. This is because rich societies can afford to indulge their environmental interests and movements. Poor countries cannot. Unsurprisingly, rich countries tend to have a better grasp of economics and the role of markets, private stewardship and property rights, reasonable regulations, and so forth.
With the exception of some oil-rich states, they're also almost always democratic and hence have systems that can successfully assign blame to, and demand restitution from, polluters. In socialized economies, a "tragedy of the commons" almost always arises. As Harvard president Lawrence Summers says, nobody's ever washed a rented car. So let's get back to the bad news...»
Which brings us to the biggest single fallacy of the Kyoto Accord which has more to do with the transfer of wealth between growing societies and shrinking ones - particularly the US having to pay off the EU.
The treaty does not allow for carbon absorption. Were that the case, the payment flow would be going the other way, and nations with successful environmental policies would be rewarded and not punished.
To be sure - were that the case there would be no Kyoto treaty as we know it, and the US and Canada in particular would be accused of imposing anti-development strictures on the rest of the world and "poor" Europe which would squeal about being bankrupted.
Where Is Another Abu Ghraib-Type Story Dissing Americans When We Need It?
Here is yet one more story that the MSM, at home and abroad, will not be making too much about… (Thanks to Gregory)
Agnes Repplier on the Difference Between Humor and Irony
Today is the birthday of Hans Christian Andersen , the Danish poet and novelist (1805-1875) who said: Every man's life is a fairy-tale written by God's fingers.In view of the fact that immense numbers of Europeans like to sneer at Americans, mock Bush (Michael Moore-style), and completely distort the image of America, it is not a bad thing to remember that yesterday was the birthday of Agnes Repplier, the American writer (1858-1950) who put humor and mockery into perspective:
Enjoy life. There's plenty of time to be dead.
Life is like a beautiful melody, only the lyrics are messed up.
One is tempted to apply the following quote to Americans and the quote following that to Europeans:Humor brings insight and tolerance. Irony brings a deeper and less friendly understanding.
Humor distorts nothing, and only false gods are laughed off their earthly pedestals.
The clear-sighted do not rule the world, but they sustain and console it.Maybe this helps explain why so many expats like to join in with European mockery of America:
The pessimist is seldom an agitating individual. His creed breeds indifference to others, and he does not trouble himself to thrust his views upon the unconvinced.
People who cannot recognize a palpable absurdity are very much in the way of civilization.
It has been wisely said that we cannot really love anybody at whom we never laugh.
It is not what we learn in conversation that enriches us. It is the elation that comes of swift contact with tingling currents of thought.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/images/lineart/lineart_taste.jpgIt is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere.
There is always a secret irritation about a laugh into which we cannot join.
Still Clueless After All These Years
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament is, quite naturally, coming to the defense of Iran which is trying to buy enough time to roll out nukes, and want the E.U. (suckers) to give them a few lightwater reactors too.
Yes thats the Campaign for Nuclear DISARMAMENT.
Get a load of the well dressed Socialist Workers, the sign that says No United States of Israel and the one that says Victory to the Iraqi resistance!
Note to the tasteful and respectful criticism of
| Fear of American popular culture | La peur de la culture populaire américaine |
| The French paranoia with regards to American popular culture (bottom-up and grassroots) continues with their allergic reaction to Google's digital library project. What the French call culture is only kept alive through overpaid bureaucrappers (top-down) and usurious tax rates. Get ready for an avalanche of taxpayer funded page scans of the complete works of Voltaire and a bunch of Edith Piaf MP3s. | La paranoïa franchouille à l'égard de la culture populaire américaine continue avec la réaction épidermique de la Fwance vis-à-vis de l'annonce de la future bibliothèque numérique de Google. Ce qui passe pour 'culture' en Fwance vivote grâce à des bureaucrottes surpayés et des taux d'imposition usuriers. Attendez-nous à voir une inondation des pages scannées de la Pléade de Voltaire ainsi qu'une floppée de MP3 d'Edith Piaf aux frais des |
Friday, April 01, 2005
Assad might be getting the message
AFP/Beirut Daily Star:
«DAMASCUS: President Bashar Assad has quashed jail sentences imposed by the state security court on two students who walked free Thursday, one day after the Syrian leader pardoned 300 detained Kurds, a human rights lawyer said. "President Bashar Assad refused to approve the verdict issued by the state security court against students Mohammed Bashir Arab and Muhannad Debes, who were released today," Anwar Bunni said.»
«The lawyer praised the releases but called for the "cancellation of all verdicts issued by the state security court which is an emergency tribunal, as well as the release of all political prisoners," including six opposition members still held after being arrested in September 2001. »
«Human rights groups estimate that between 1,500 and 2,000 political detainees are held in jails in Syria.»
In other words – to keep his head off the block.«The sit-in protested an official decree ending the automatic right of engineering graduates to a job in the public sector.»
«On Wednesday, Assad granted a presidential pardon and ordered all 312 Kurds arrested during deadly clashes at Qamichli in March 2004 to be freed, said the official news agency Sana.»
«Those clashes pitted Kurdish protesters against Syrian security forces and Arab tribes in Qamichli and Aleppo, in which the Kurds said 40 people died and the Syrian authorities gave a death toll of 25.»
Green Day: “American Idiot”
Awwww... I "heart" grenades... How sweet. No war for ooooooil by the way...
They’re quite wrong. Fake “youth counter cultures” often imagine that they’re the only people with brains. It’s a defense mechanism against trying to understanding ideas you don’t like or can’t wrap your brain around. It’s to avoid the obvious conclusion that you’ve fallen into a herd-mentality state of thinking.
These things get a lot funnier when you read the lyrics:Don't wanna be an American idiot.
Talk about mixed up – the leftist are the paranoid ones who are spreading propaganda (just take a look at counterpunch and what really happened or this delusional hideout if you don’t believe me), but they’re somehow also rednecks and faggots? Two in the same, surely! As for being "anti-war" the spite doesn't seem to jive. So they're either not thinking clearly or simply exploiting a dominant trend in their market demographic.
Don't want a nation under the new media.
And can you hear the sound of hysteria?
The subliminal mindfuck America.
Welcome to a new kind of tension.
All across the alien nation.
Everything isn't meant to be okay.
Television dreams of tomorrow.
We're not the ones who're meant to follow.
Well that's enough to argue.
Well maybe I'm the faggot America.
I'm not a part of a redneck agenda.
Now everybody do the propaganda.
And sing along in the age of paranoia.
Don't wanna be an American idiot.
One nation controlled by the media.
Information nation of hysteria.
It's going out to idiot America.
Let's face it: the listener channels his feelings through the song. You have to imagine the listener, the devoted, possible robotic Green Day fan actually saying “We're not the ones who're meant to follow.”
Besides – avid absorbers of one genre of music are the very ones passively inviting on themselves a “subliminal mindfuck”. Good job taking charge of your own intellect there…
Un-Hunh… Now fork over €15,76 and be a “free thinker” who calls people faggots and xenophobically calls the U.S. (an?) “alien nation”.
A vintage barb at feminist communes mental ghettos.
To the small-minded and selfish, has nothing changed in 30 years?
He’s a t’ravelling man…
One of our wonderful referrers, one heck of a guy, and a curious soul, weighs in on the U.N.’s inglorious human rights record. If the current media storm starts looking like a vulture’s feast, don’t forget what they did to deserve it.
Pay a visit to The Wandering Jew.
A Realm, But Not A State
The E.U. is trying to become one super-state, but not one economy. The two concepts can't be divorced form one another. The left in France has been using caustic cultural characterizations to shoot down the liberalization of labour markets, the German left has been using a fear of the East. Belgium is doing the same.
In Europe the hatred of the other is more politely referred to as "suspicion" now, but nothing has changed in a millennium. Ironically using the term "Anglo-Saxon Economy" as an insult, the left in France is colluding with the left in Germany to sink policies on work. The policy would permit the free migration of services across the former frontiers. The free movement of goods and working people is stilted and artificial without the component of services. A better quality of life for the greatest number was the goal of erasing those borders from the map, not maintaining it for a select group of special interests such as farmers, and particular unionized sectors with extrordinary power. Their members are a sort of "super-citizen" that makes a mockery of the concept of citizenship itself.
Writing in Tech Central Station, Silvain Charat gives us an outline of the causes:
«Strengthening individual rights and promoting free trade are not public policy priorities in France. State rights and intervention are high up on the political agenda whether it be from the Right or the Left. All political and economic measures have a common point: market control.»What sort of nation is the E.U.? Didn't they already reject the idea of a set of city-states or loose confederation of states are unviable? The first blow to the economic future was the snuffing of tax competition. It was their only hope in half a century to readjust and adapt to a more equitable and efficient economic model and treatment of working people. It may be that last one that they have if they want to do it without heart paddles, and quite frankly was the last chance to peacefully tame the aristocratic caste which "manages" a great many aspects of society which free will does a nice job of everywhere else in the world.
«In the mind of the believer in liberty, if one is not trustworthy, their time will come soon enough when the rest of society punishes them. In other words, a free society is its own cure for mutual distrust.»The missing element is a trust in human decency, accepting that self-interest is not a synonym of harmful bad impulses, and that people are interested in a having a stake in a civilized society, and are curious enough to advance knoledge without restraint. This trust in people is akin to parenting - which itself might be the next "lost concept".
As the American historian Victor David Hanson has said repeatedly: if the E.U. want to be one nation, it must hve one set of policies, one military, and one seat on the U.N. Security Council. He's right. It's an implausible construct to have both ways.
Evidently they the term "In for a penny, in for a pound" doesn't have an exchange rate into Euros.
| Gee, France will no longer have a scapegoat | La vache! La Fwance n'aura plus de bouc émissaire |
| France will have to invent a new foreign policy. The USA will cease to exist in 2007. | La Fwance sera obligée d'inventer une politique étrangère. Les Etats-unis n'existeront plus en 2007. |
Thursday, March 31, 2005
Civilization, if you can keep it
«The essence of civilization is that the strong have a duty to protect the
weak.»
weak.»
Grounds to Euthanize?
Imperfection found, reason enough to end it all and spare us all and her loved ones the difficulty? Imagine the outpouring of compassion while she goes off to her “happy place”.
Ooooh. ALERT the media.
After all, we already have another crop of empty headed replacements for the “fake compassion, public affection, and cheap publicity” circuit for pop-culture has beens.
Red Skies at Night
Damian Penny cites an article in the Wall Street Journal by Bridget Johnson dispairing very simply: where are the movies showing the horrors of life under Communism?
Commenters at Damianation! Have been
Assembling the ultimate non-moonbat movie list.
Death: A public display
Mrs. Schiavo has died.
Concider for a moment the mentality of all of those people who base their view on the matter with the phrase: “I wouldn’t want to live that way”.
It reveals quite a bit. It’s not about you or me living that way, it’s about her.
The government was already involved – they awarded custody to a man who under common law would be her ex-husband, and refused to hold the evidentiary hearing that the U.S. Congress compelled them to do. That was the ONLY intervention, by the way, that the Congress engaged in.
They’ve started the annual baby-seal cull in Canada. Wait for the hypocrisy.
Next time a death-row appeal is turned down, just wait for the hypocrisy about always erring on the side of caution, life, and a rehabilitated future.
She will indeed be going to a better place – one where a court of law doesn’t treat people with little more regard than broken furniture. A judge compelled a hospice to take an active measure to terminate a life without concidering the validity of her guardianship.
Did anyone ask the Judge if she could be brought into this world?
Concider for a moment the mentality of all of those people who base their view on the matter with the phrase: “I wouldn’t want to live that way”.
It reveals quite a bit. It’s not about you or me living that way, it’s about her.
The government was already involved – they awarded custody to a man who under common law would be her ex-husband, and refused to hold the evidentiary hearing that the U.S. Congress compelled them to do. That was the ONLY intervention, by the way, that the Congress engaged in.
They’ve started the annual baby-seal cull in Canada. Wait for the hypocrisy.
Next time a death-row appeal is turned down, just wait for the hypocrisy about always erring on the side of caution, life, and a rehabilitated future.
She will indeed be going to a better place – one where a court of law doesn’t treat people with little more regard than broken furniture. A judge compelled a hospice to take an active measure to terminate a life without concidering the validity of her guardianship.
Did anyone ask the Judge if she could be brought into this world?
EU-Construction and the politics of nany-nany-boo-boo!
First the very groovy E-Nough! and now the FrontPageMag “superfriends” blog Moonbat Central report on a Euro kerfuffle featuring Arnaud Montebourg and a cast of dozens which is beginning to remind me of this bit of lower order animal behaviour. Note the confusion of ideologies and the use of the word “neo-con” as a sort of scarlet letter.
Note too the absence of the term neo-com (for neo-communist), which reveals a predilection of some to squash dissent as they have in Cuba, North Korea, and in the minds of Western Europe’s shallow-thinking utopians.
Bigmouth Strikes Again
Prince Charles gives it back to an unctuous and unaccountable BBC “royal correspondent” Nick Witchell who appears to be incrementally taunting the Prince of Wales because his wife is dead.
You go dawg!
To Be Treated With a Modicum of Scepticism
The latest study of which countries Australians feel positive about poses more questions than it answersIn view of the uncountable times where we have been told all the significance we should attach to the numerous polls that inform us that Uncle Sam is unpopular just in such-and-such country, in so-and-so nation, and in various groups of countries and/or continents, and how much this should make us think deeply and profoundly about (i.e., put into doubt) Washington's policies and decisions, it is refreshing that Australia's The Age should add some common-sense remarks on polls in general and their (true) significance:
Australians have been fearful of foreigners and invasion virtually since the beginning of white settlement in 1788. First it was the French, then the Russians. A century ago Australians were divided about who they feared most - China or Japan. Within a decade it was Germany that posed the immediate threat and the Japanese had become a strategic ally. A quarter of a century later a seemingly unstoppable Japan was sweeping southward towards the Australian continent. By the 1980s most Australians saw the Soviet Union as the biggest threat to global security, according to an AgePoll. Fast forward to 1994 and the Japanese had disappeared from view, while China was again seen as a threat. More recently Indonesia has been deemed unfriendly. Such attitudes are often rooted in xenophobia or driven by a range of other equally irrational influences. Almost invariably such perceptions have also been closely linked to the prevailing global power balances.
The latest summation of popular opinion, provided by the Lowy Institute for International Policy, continues in this view. A survey of 1000 Australians has found that while an overwhelming majority feel positive about Britain, Europe, Singapore and Japan, they are less enthusiastic about the United States and ambivalent about Indonesia. Only 58 per cent of Australians have "positive feelings" towards the US - less than for Malaysia (62 per cent) and a lot less than for China (69 per cent). Yet, according to the institute, an independent think tank based in Sydney chaired by shopping centre developer Frank Lowy, Australians want to have it both ways. While one-third are "very worried" about US foreign policy and Australian dependence, there remains solid support for the continuation of the ANZUS alliance.
The lies, damned lies and statistics of which Disraeli complained are probably no more apparent than in surveys about foreign relations. The outcomes, of course, depend in large part on the questions asked. Little wonder Foreign Minister Alexander Downer was moved to comment that "you can't run a foreign policy on the back of opinion polls". And any survey that produces a positive outcome ranking China - where political repression and human rights abuses still abound despite economic reforms - ahead of France and the US must be treated with a modicum of scepticism.
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
Taking stock.
«Anonymous callers threatened him by phone. Strangers insulted him on the street. Friends and colleagues told Bruckner, a prominent French novelist and intellectual, that he had taken a gutsy but mistaken stance against the mighty antiwar tide in France. Two years later, 56-year-old Bruckner is hearing very different reactions." People are saying that even if Americans are making a lot of mistakes, they are changing things," said Bruckner, who supported ousting Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein but is sharply critical of the Bush administration and its handling of the conflict, "while Europe -- and especially France -- remains terribly conservative. We're the world champions of the status quo."»
Described as both a deep thinker and still a radical, his own words indicate quite boldly that the wet blanket of middle-mind types won't muzzle him. In Dissent Magazine he wrote:
«For the last half century, Europe has been haunted by the demons of repentance. Ruminating over its past crimes-slavery, imperialism, fascism, communism-it has seen its history as nothing but a long litany of murder and rapine culminating in two world wars. The typical European man or woman is a sensitive creature always prepared to feel pity for the sufferings of the world and to assume responsibility for them, always asking what the North can do for the South rather than what the South can do for itself. By the evening of September 11, a majority of our citizens, despite their obvious sympathy for the victims, were telling themselves that the Americans had it coming.»
«Make no mistake: the same argument would have been made if the terrorists had destroyed the Eiffel Tower or Notre Dame. Sensitive souls on both right and left would have urged us to flagellate ourselves: we've been attacked, so we're guilty. Our attackers are really poor people protesting against our insolent wealth and our western lifestyle. We Europeans spontaneously agree with our enemies in the way we judge ourselves, and we take shelter from the furies of the age by focusing on everyday economic and social problems.»
To think those who disagreed with him would actually threaten him. When facts challenge their precious little weltanschauung, they suddenly feel psychologically threatened and try to project that hatred on a free-spirit... Amazing.
Another uneducated “feelie”
An editorial from George Washington University's campus newspaper "The Hatchet" seems reasonable on the surface - but only until you get to teh core of the issue and ask yourself the most basic question:Will suspending the importation of oil actually end terror?
Hey! Stop snickering back there... You know that young people with virtually no life experience who live in a peaceful prosperous state are the only ones who know geopolitical trend and terror when they see them.
«These very funds subsequently finance the very people and organizations the "war" is supposedly waged against. By paying so little attention to demand and treatment among the populace the government perpetuates the very ills it claims to be attacking. This is exemplified by the documented increased use of even lower priced drugs since the "war" started.This fellow is actually naive enough to believe that the whole of Arab society is monolithic and hates the US (as much as he'd like them to in the drama of his mind), and supports terror.
The war on terrorism follows the same broken logic. The oft-quoted Thomas Friedman of the New York Times puts it best, "By doing nothing to lower U.S. oil consumption, we are financing both sides in the war on terrorism and strengthening the worst governments in the world. That is, we are financing the U.S. military with our tax dollars and we are financing the jihadists - and the Saudi, Sudanese and Iranian mosques and charities that support them - through our gasoline purchases.»
Not only that, he’s also assuming that all the states and populations that support jihad are in oil rich states, and have no other component to their economies, nor would terror organizations trade in contraband and specifically war zone diamonds and narcotics to finance their habit. What about the OTHER stale lefty argument about poverty and economic desolation being the cause of terror?
Oh yeah, never mind that – the attitude of these types is that they’re so smart and emotionally squared away that he’s almost sure that all of the evils in the world can only come from his countrymen who won’t turn on them or call their bluff – of whom I’m sure they find themselves quite superior in intellect and experience.
Just remember that GRE (Graduate Record Examination) scores have been falling steadily since 1966 - the years that the preoccupation with protesting and "causes" took over higher education...
| Dickhead the Brave | Tête de noeud le Valeureux |
| Fabien Barthez, goalkeeper for the French national soccer team, who plays home games in one of the worst suburbs of France, who is escorted by busloads of riot police before and after every home match, states that he shouldn't have to play in a place like Israel because of security concerns. | Fabien Barthez, goal des Bleus, qui joue ses matchs dans une des pires banlieues de France, qui se fait escorter par des cars de CRS avant et après chaque match au Stade de France, déclare qu'il ne devrait pas être obligé de jouer en Israël à cause des considerations sécuritaires. |
 | |
| UPDATE: The French national anthem was just generously booed in Tel Aviv just before the match. TF1 TV annoncer states that this is inadmissable. | DERNIERES INFOS: La Marseillaise vient d'être copieusement sifflée à Tel Aviv juste avant le début du match. Le présentateur de TF1 déclare que ceci est parfaitement inadmissible. |
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
Banning their way to Utopia?
«CALIFORNIA REGULATORS WANT TO CONTROL THE AIR INSIDE YOUR HOME»
«Candles and stoves are in their sights. Burning ANYTHING inside your home may soon be a No-No»
«The California agency famous for putting the squeeze on automotive tailpipe emissions is poised to tackle dirty indoor air. In a hefty report to the Legislature completed this month, the California Air Resources Board asserts that indoor air can be as polluted and dangerous to breathe as outdoor air, costing the state at least $45 billion a year in lost worker productivity, medical expenses and premature deaths...»
Now, when was the last time you ever heard of a ban on anything that netted a $45 billion dollar landfall? That bit of logic is tossed around so frequently that even the casual reader doesn’t buy it. If you took all the “productivity lost” and “costs companies” numbers spewed by these people in a given year, they would be greater than the Earth’s GDP…
Bush Should Have Known This…
…before making any arrogant decisions about intervening in Iraq (even if Saddam himself (!) was unaware of the state of things in the country he lorded over).
(And, needless to say, the UN inspectors would have learned about that without fail, had they only been given the chance — No doubts about it!)
Speaking of the UN, here is more informative news from the organization into which the trust of all nations should be placed…
To return to the troops in Iraq, the cycle of violence and the blood-letting can only increase because of the war, and don't all rationally-minded people understand that?! Don't they see that the presence of foreign troops on their soil only leads to an increase in resentment and patriotic sentiment?
(And, needless to say, the UN inspectors would have learned about that without fail, had they only been given the chance — No doubts about it!)
Speaking of the UN, here is more informative news from the organization into which the trust of all nations should be placed…
To return to the troops in Iraq, the cycle of violence and the blood-letting can only increase because of the war, and don't all rationally-minded people understand that?! Don't they see that the presence of foreign troops on their soil only leads to an increase in resentment and patriotic sentiment?
A military source in Iraq declined to give raw number of attacks, but said, "There has been a decided downward trend in the number and lethality of attacks since the January 30 elections."Rowan Scarborough goes on to quote statistics we rarely hear about in the MSM:
A Pentagon official said the more that intelligence agencies analyze the insurgency, the clearer it becomes that a large part is criminal, not nationalistic.
Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein released tens of thousands of hardened criminals, including murderers, before the March 2003 invasion, meaning that as the ex-convicts are recaptured, insurgent leaders might have an increasingly smaller pool from which to recruit attackers.
"We have always realized there was a criminal element in the insurgency that wasn't driven by devotion to Saddam. The numbers may be higher than we first estimated," the official said.
An analysis by Reuters shows that U.S. combat deaths in March so far have averaged barely one per day, the lowest figure since February 2004. All told, 1,520 U.S. personnel have died in Iraq, including 1,164 killed in action.Finally, there is this piece of good news, concerning evidence of "a counter-Jihad":
The condemnation of Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda by the Islamic Commission of Spain on the first anniversary of the train bombings in Madrid that took 200 lives is making waves throughout the Muslim world.
The Spanish commission's fatwa, or condemnation, follows other signs of the kind of public theological debate rarely seen in the Muslim world, openly challenging the dominance of Saudi Arabia's wealthy Wahhabi fanatics.
| When in | Une assimilation réussie d'avance |
| It's required reading before they emigrate to Germany. Thanks to Gregory. | C'est une lecture obligatoire avant d'émigrer en Allemagne. Merci à Gregory. |
An uphill battle against recreational compassion
Unable to digest that there could possibly be any view of the world other than their own, some of the comments are priceless:
«You obviously have a distorted understanding of what it is to be a Canadian. The biggest party of the Canadian identity is that we are a multi-cultural society. A society that prides itself on embracing diversity, and individuality of its citizens. You dropped the word "morality" several times in your statement…» -- Dave
«This is a joke, right?» -- Stefan
This one though…
«Just when you think there is no hope for the Truth, and when you start to give into the fact that everyone believes leftists have the monopoly on opinion - WHAM!» -- Francis from London, ON
From a hard past comes compassion
«We Albanians are a nation of freedom fighters who know something about living under oppression.»
Don't forget your Soap on a Rope
For several years in the early 1990s, construction companies are said to have paid 90 million euros in bakhsheesh to well placed political figures in France.
To put this into context, that's 6 times as much as the French government's annual AIDS Institute research budget.
Monday, March 28, 2005
Green Eggs and Scam
National Post: Harper could force election over Kyoto«They accuse the Liberals of trying to sneak Kyoto-related legislation through the back door by attaching it to a routine budget implementation bill. "I'm not very keen on Liberal hidden agendas," said Conservative Leader Stephen Harper.»
In other words, Canadians will adopt Kyoto without the public’s consent. Here’s the best part:
«It's pretty tough for even a Liberal to argue that (carbon dioxide) is a toxic substance.»
Special Victim’s Unit
«The DA (played by Fred Thompson) calls Serena into his office, sans ADA Jack McCoy (which was unusual since Jack and Serena never seem to sneeze without each other in the same room), and informs her that she isn't a good fit for the DA office. Something about her investigating the murder case for "all the wrong reasons." Serena's eyes well up at the news... and then she blurts out -- "Is it because I'm a lesbian?"»
Socialism kills
That notwithstanding we find deadly regression in Deutchland: «Many Germans Want Berlin Wall Back, Study Finds»
What would we do without studies?
What would we do without studies?
Irrelevance leads to boredom
It leads to putting great meaning in obscure pursuits and bad ideas,
only because they're "different".
