Why so many reporters are willing to believe the absolute worst about America's current government and its motives

There is an unspoken but real impulse in today's media to see themselves as "independent" of America, even above America, not so much because they are superior to America but because America is so egregiously flawed

writes L. Brent Bozell, III (thanks to Gregory and J Wierzbicki for a number of links).

It is their role to shed light on America's failings. They're not keen at being seen as Americans. They choke at the idea of wearing flag pins. ABC boss David Westin tried so hard to be above America that he wanted to stay neutral on the question of whether our Pentagon is a legitimate target for terrorists.

It explains why so many reporters are willing to believe the absolute worst about our current government and its motives. So disdainful have they become that they are silent when fellow journalists claim — without a shred of evidence — that American soldiers are engaging in targeting and assassinating journalists hostile to America's foreign policy aims.

…Orville Schell, dean of the graduate school of journalism at Berkeley, … expressed the dominant media ethos well: "What we need is a news service that doesn't belong to any country." They want a People's Republic of Medialand, a stateless organization of anti-war activists — the journalistic equivalent of the United Nations, Amnesty International, and a World Court of Public Opinion rolled into one.

I have heard from many soldiers who have seen the way the American media have ignored their medal-winning heroes while they made household names of the sliver of sickos at Abu Ghraib; who have seen the media spend weeks laboring over the minutest "mistreatment" of the Koran; who have seen their rebuilding deeds and anti-insurgent victories ignored while media outlets tout the efficiency and well-organized nature of insurgent violence.

I suspect that if you were to ask them about the proposed People's Republic of Medialand, they would respond: Yes, please leave and form your own country. And who would you find to defend you when some insurgents decided to overtake you by force? Probably us.

Adds David Limbaugh,

[The Left's] knee-jerk response to the Gitmo reports was to presume American culpability

while Larry Elder says

For those still in denial about leftist bias in mainstream news, these must be tough times. … The Newsweek affair and the AP story serve as a window into how many in mainstream media view our country. They celebrate the welfare state, consider health care a right, while downplaying the worldwide threat posed by extremist Islam.

Responding to Democratic fears about the terrible (and growing) menace of conservative viewpoints in the media, Jeff Jacoby writes

"Those results jibe with previous surveys over the past two decades showing that journalists tend to be Democrats," [a New York Times] story acknowledged. "Some surveys have found that more than 80 percent of the Beltway press corps votes Democratic."

What [John] Kerry and the others object to is not that there are only conservative voices to be heard in media circles these days, but that there are any such voices. The right-of-center Fox News cannot hold a candle to the combined left-of-center output of ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, and PBS. Scaife, Bradley, and Olin money helps leverage Republican messages, but its impact is dwarfed by the Ford, Rockefeller, Pew, Heinz, Turner, MacArthur, Carnegie, and Soros fortunes. The Washington Times is conservative? Yes, but The Washington Post is liberal — and its circulation is eight times as large.

The blind spot that is endemic to journalists

Perhaps the most perplexing mystery in Bernstein and Woodward’s book is why they fail to understand the role of the institutions and investigators who were supplying them and other reporters with leaks

wrote Edward Jay Epstein as he concluded an essay 31 years ago (thanks to Ashbrook's Peter W. Schramm).

This blind spot, endemic to journalists, proceeds from an unwillingness to see the complexity of bureaucratic in-fighting and of politics within the government itself. If the government is considered monolithic, journalists can report its activities, in simply comprehended and coherent terms, as an adversary out of touch with popular sentiments. On the other hand, if governmental activity is viewed as the product of diverse and competing agencies, all with different bases of power and interests, journalism becomes a much more difficult affair.

In any event, the fact remains that it was not the press, which exposed Watergate; it was agencies of government itself. So long as journalists maintain their blind spot toward the inner conflicts and workings of the institution, of government, they will no doubt continue to speak of Watergate in terms of the David and Goliath myth, with Bernstein and Woodward as David and the government as Goliath.

French Fighter Jets Invade Atlantic City

What? The Charles De Gaulle actually made it to the middle Atlantic training range?

«Jun 3, 2005 3:25 pm US/Eastern(1010 WINS) (POMONA, N.J.)
Nine French fighter jets and a radar plane stayed overnight at Atlantic City International Airport after bad weather prevented them from returning to their aircraft carrier off the Virginia coast, authorities said Friday.

The planes, low on fuel, initially asked for permission to land Thursday at a United States military installation but lacked the clearance number, said Noel Clay, a spokesman for the U.S. State Department.

The planes, which had been conducting military exercises, then sought and received permission for emergency landings at the airport here around 3:45 p.m.

They were parked overnight on a Federal Aviation Administration ramp at the airport. Officials said they had clearance to take off at noon to return to the French aircraft carrier de Gaulle, off the coast of Virginia.

By 5 p.m., though plans had changed. The planes were to fly to a military base near Halifax, but it was unclear when they would take off.

There was a further complication, according to a broadcast report. One of the pilots tried to buy fuel Thursday and couldn't because he didn't have the available funds on his credit card, according to Philadelphia television station WPVI-TV.

Holly Baker, an FAA spokeswoman, said two of the pilots, accompanied by FAA security, stayed with the planes overnight. She could not confirm the report about the failed gasoline purchase.

Baker said initial FAA reports that a mechanical problem with one jet had caused them all to land were incorrect. There was no mechanical problem, she said.»

- Thanks to the one and only Valerie, a legend in Blogville.

Let the group-therapy fit the crime

Leftist critics of anything that moves expect any sort of western representation of authority to have some kind of 'mind-penetrating radar' - at least when it comes to personal offence (namely theirs'). Judging by the choices they make, the causes they support, and the group they align themselves worldwide, they display the empathetic capacity of a sufferer from autism.

Charles Krauthammer on their Gitmo Koran indignation, which began as a generalized hatred of others' faith anyway, before they had a chance to hate Gitmo:

«Does the Koran deserve special respect? Of course it does. As do the Bibles destroyed by the religious police in Saudi Arabia and the Torahs blown up in various synagogues from Tunisia to Turkey.

The most inflammatory allegations have been not about people but about mishandling the Koran. What do we know here? The Pentagon reports (Brig. Gen. Jay Hood, May 26) -- all these breathless "scoops" come from the U.S. government's own investigations of itself -- that of 13 allegations of Koran abuse, five were substantiated, of which two were most likely accidental.

Moreover, what were the Korans doing there in the first place? The very possibility of mishandling Korans arose because we gave them to each prisoner. What kind of crazy tolerance is this? Is there any other country that would give a prisoner precisely the religious text that that prisoner and those affiliated with him invoke to justify the slaughter of innocents? If the prisoners had to have reading material, I would have given them the book "Portraits 9/11/01" -- vignettes of the lives of those massacred on Sept. 11.»

They also want it shut down in their usual fixation with THINGS and not people. Remember criminal (and their immoral choices) don't murder people, guns do. Do they think that if there IS NO Gitmo, that terror susects won't be picked up at all?

By that logic, if there were no jails would there be no crime, right?

All the while:

«Recently, there has been a crackdown on symbols of Christianity in Saudi Arabia. On April 21st Saudi authorities raided a make-shift church in Riyadh and arrested 40 Christians. Many Christian religious symbols, such as crucifixes and bibles were later destroyed by Saudi security forces.

Another way in which religious and cultural issues are becoming more divisive is the Saudi treatment of Americans who are living in their country. As of today there around 30,000 Americans living and working in various parts of Saudi Arabia, who are not allowed to visibly celebrate their religious and even secular holidays if they are not of the Wahhabi faith. This includes holidays such as Christmas and Easter but also such secular holidays as Thanksgiving. »

Christians are by no means alone:

«Riyadh (AsiaNews/Agencies) – Saudi religious police last Tuesday destroyed a clandestine makeshift Hindu temple in an old district of Riyadh and deported three worshippers found there, Arabic daily al-Hayat reported. Agents from the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, better known as the Muttawah, stumbled across a room converted into a temple while raiding a number of flats suspected of being used to manufacture alcohol and distribute pornographic videos.
A caretaker who was found in the worshipping area ignored the religious police orders to stop performing his religious rituals and was deported along with two other men who arrived on the scene to worship. Their nationality was unknown

Saudi Arabia is host to 8.8 million foreigners, mostly workers, out of a population of 23 million. The largest communities are from Bangladesh, India and Pakistan (1 to 1.5 million).»

So the present explosion of anger and accusations of intolerance are coming from 2 sources: Islamists and their leftist flunkies in the west, who are the very people who would go to any length to remove any form of religious expression by private citizens in public places anyway.

«A very old man dies, at the age of 83. Most of the TV, radio, and newspapers of the entire world go into mourning overdrive, most of it simulated and synthetic.

It is a great event. A great media event. There has been nothing like it since Princess Diana died in 1997. The hysteria built up by a media feeding on itself is very like what happened in the days after Diana died. »

Witness the disdain. A brief look at their website indicates deep sympathy for a religion, one faith, not their own, and not of their parents or most of their fellow citizens or even their fellow Marxists. It seems that to them John Paul II is only useful for his anti-war stance, otherwise he's just an old man who by virtue of his own beliefs is somehow responsible for killing people without a condom in his pocket. Just more of the same from the font of hatred. One without memory of what fascism and intolerance really are.

The fuel for the left's indignation is a result of the U.S.' honesty. Every one of the 'great scandals' and 'great crimes' come from the U.S. government NOT covering up bad news. Do they even give it a footnote when they hypocritically charge people with intolerance or fascism?

Don't look to the United States Navy if you're looking for the abuse of religion or redefining terror.

Better than fall in the Gatineau...

Support Canadas Finest

Hey! Lets play Wheres Waldo? with what's left of your liberties!

The goal of the authors of the EU Constitution is clearly intended to cut off what would become a century of interpretation, and given the member states predilection to nip at basic rights, it seems like a sound approach. On the down side this indicates a huge amount of distrust of any future motive to amend it.

«Article II-14: Right to education
1. Everyone has the right to education and to have access to vocational and continuing training. »

(Why is it even necessary to ascribe this right?)

«2. This right includes the possibility to receive free compulsory education. »

(Ah!! THATS why!)

«Article II-17: Right to property

1. Everyone has the right to own, use, dispose of and bequeath his or her lawfully acquired possessions. No one may be deprived of his or her possessions, except in the public interest and in the cases and under the conditions provided for by law, subject to fair compensation being paid in good time for their loss. The use of property may be regulated by law insofar as is necessary for the general interest.

Article II-20: Equality before the law
Everyone is equal before the law. »

(except when they need to be treated unfairly in the interest of fairness)

«Article II-23: Equality between men and women
Equality between men and women must be ensured in all areas, including employment, work and pay.»

(If individuals have rights whay is this even here? WAIT for it.)

«The principle of equality shall not prevent the maintenance or adoption of measures providing for specific advantages in favour of the under-represented sex. »

(Men, representing 49% of the population and the overwhelming majority of workplace deaths should get a hand up, then. No?)

«TITLE IV - SOLIDARITY»

(That word itself is bad enough. Its a creator of factionalism, and the noble art of vague killing off the future with group oriented Marxism)

«Article II-29: Right of access to placement services
Everyone has the right of access to a free placement service.»

(How about room service? Why not give them room service too? Dont they need a little comfort in their helplessness?)

I could go on, but youre looking sleepy. Why dont we just wait for some Howard Zinn type to write an Alternate History

Old Europe can croak	La Vieille Europe peut crever
New Europe will be Blairist.	La nouvelle Europe sera Blairiste.

Monopoly money ...	Monnaie de singe ...
... and other Euro pesos dinars. Sacred cows are being brought down left and right.	... et divers Euro pesos dinars. Les vaches sacrées sont déboulonnées les unes après les autres. Glou-glou-glou.

When the focus of liberalism or governments is on groups rather than individuals, it is easier to ignore or run roughshod over the individuals

…why do you think liberalism contributed to Bill Clinton's treatment of these women?

Human Events asked the author of Their Lives: The Women Targeted by the Clinton Machine.

Candice Jackson: It's a counterintuitive case to make because the initial reaction is, what does politics have to do with it? In fact, his politics call for gender equality and being helpful to women politically. And I actually see in the reverse, where there are actually aspects of liberalism where the focus is on groups rather than individuals, which I think made it easier for him to mistreat women. He believed himself to be in power and helping women as a group, and it just didn't seem to matter all that much if he had to use and abuse a few individual women along the way.

Human Events: Does this mean, as a result, we should distrust all liberals when they speak of moral values?

Candice Jackson: : The disclaimer is that not all liberals are misogynists like Bill Clinton. However, I do believe there is a danger in liberal ideology that can lead to this abuse — abuse of women, in particular. At the heart of it, I really see the problem with liberalism being that no matter how good their goals are — whether it's racial or gender equality or protecting the environment— it's the methods they choose to use to enforce that goal, which really comes down using force and threats of force to get things done. Anything they declare to be a good goal, they are willing to use force — laws and regulations — to get it done. It's not enough to persuade people to do the right thing. You have to force them to do it.

Chinese Outrage: Humiliations' Hidden Agenda

I fully understand China's outrage over the 2001 spy plane incident just as I fully understand why Tang Jiaxuan, the Chinese foreign minister, said that his government and his people "shall never forget" the embassy blast in Belgrade in May 1999. Remembering a pilot downed by his own stupidity and the three countrymen killed by a foreign missile (through a mistake or otherwise), after all, allows the Chinese people to forget the tens of millions of countrymen who were killed by the Chinese government through the 1960s…

In honor of the anniversary of the tragic crackdown on Tien An Men,
I am reprinting an article I wrote three months before 911…

"Wan quan bu iyang!" Read also Howard W French's Letter from Asia (Taiwan and China: Struggle over identity)…

The Green/Red Jihad supporting left - Madly in love with hate.

The Leftist Fixation on Nixon mirrors the Jihad lover's fixation with Jews.

On Thursday, OpinionJournal’s James Taranto presented us with yet more evidence of the whipped up hatred and lunacy irculated on the airwaves in the Arab world.

Watergate and the Jews

Last month the Middle East Media Research Institute translated a "news story" from Iranian television called "The Untold Story of the Watergate Affair":
«Today, it has become clear that Nixon's dispute with Israel and the Zionist lobby was among the main causes for his downfall. In fact, the reporters who exposed the Watergate affair and blew it out of proportion were Zionists, recruited to the ranks of the Zionist lobby. By using the media as its tool, Zionism tried to get one of its main opponents out of the way.

Nixon wrote in his memoirs: "One of the main problems I had to face was the narrow mindedness and the pro-Israeli views."

Nixon wrote: "In the 25 years since the end of World War II, these views spread and grew stronger to the point that many people consider refraining from supporting Israel to be anti-Semitism. I tried to make them understand that this is not true, but did not succeed."

Indeed, Nixon did not succeed. Along with Kennedy, he is considered a
victim of a major political coup carried out by the Zionist lobby.»

See? It always works the same way. Jewish conspiracy here, Jewish conspiracy there... Drinking blood of Palestinian children, blah, blah, blah. A self generating “fact” in the angry mind by virtue of endless repetition. Further, Taranto points out:

«Just one problem with the Zionist-conspiracy theory: As John O'Connor reports in Vanity Fair, "Felt, of Irish descent, is not Jewish and claims no religious affiliation." »

Welcome to لاك يلكرب AKA Cal Berkeley, where I’m sure the use of the roman alphabet will soon be banned.

Karl Marx was also a poor Economist

Former New York Times "public editor" Daniel Okrent confirms that Paul Krugman is smoking bananas.

EU Referendum, US reactions

What little reaction there is, that is...

It’s not so much “nyah-nyah,” it’s more like “good for them.” Having a low view of people’s abilities they maintain a giant welfare state to support middle and upper income citizens too. They decry the fact that they shouldn’t even have HAD a referendum, a la “let them eat cake”!
It’s the condescending view of people, their “cattleness”, if you will – their endless source of invented crices like “aid for Africa” and “fair trade” when they are being starved by unquestioned appalling trade restrictions.

Michael Phillips:

«It is greater satisfaction to me that the founders of modern democracy, the Dutch, voted against the EU. The immediate beneficiaries are the vintners in Champagne. Their bubbly wine is being lavishly enjoyed in Washington D.C., London, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.»

The lesson to take away from this? Rewrite the damn thing! The difference between a “Yes” supporter and “No” supporter is that the “No” folks were more likely to have read it on their way to that conclusion.

[Jonah Goldberg]:

«That is simply great news. In recent years the entire EU project - at least in Western Europe - has taken on an anti-American flavor. Gerhard Schroeder and Jacques Chirac - the lame duck and electorally doomed leaders of Germany and France, respectively - have kept their political engines running on the fumes of anti-Americanism in recent years. The EU project has been sold as a means of counterbalancing the American "hyperpower," as the French call it. If a project with that kind of billing stumbles - and stumbles badly - and if anti-American nags like Schroeder and Chirac take it in the pants in the process, there can be no more appropriate response from the intelligent American than to dance a jig, do a shot, and wave the giant foam "We're #1" finger in the air.»

The problem with the “foreign policy” is that since the end of the cold war, that France and particularly Germany don’t have an identifiable international affairs policy. They have tactics, mainly spoiling and triangulation tactics, they have an image that they want to sell at home which the HOPE will work abroad, but no real policy.

«Indeed, once we get that out of our system, there's a great deal we should be cautious about. The EU Constitution didn't fail because of widespread pro-American sentiment. It failed because French and Dutch voters saw their national - and personal - interests at odds with the constitution. The last thing we should do is distract European voters' attention away from the economy, immigration and the like by making them angry at us. Gloating would only invite precisely the sort of anti-American pique Chirac and Schroeder have exploited since before the Iraq war.

While it's true that the proposed constitution reads like a Xerox machine repair manual, the voters aren't that confused. France's bourgeois welfare state would have to be unraveled under the new regime, while comparatively free-market Britain would find its economy pulled toward greater statism.

Add the fact that the document itself is impenetrable and you can hardly blame voters for erring on the side of caution. You don't roll the dice when you might potentially be voting away your sovereignty and lifestyle. For the record, though, the constitution is no free-market tract - if Adam Smith were alive, he'd spontaneously burst into flames if he read it.»

Get to work, Euro-peeps!

Did it ever?	Car elle faisait rêver avant ça?
"Europe no longer inspires people to dream."	"Il faut constater que l'Europe ne fait plus rêver"

It's a goddamn good story

What [Mark] Felt helped produce was a weakened president who was a serious president at a serious time

writes Peggy Noonan.

Nixon's ruin led to a cascade of catastrophic events--the crude and humiliating abandonment of Vietnam and the Vietnamese, the rise of a monster named Pol Pot, and millions--millions--killed in his genocide. America lost confidence; the Soviet Union gained brazenness. What a terrible time. Is it terrible when an American president lies and surrounds himself by dirty tricksters? Yes, it is. How about the butchering of children in the South China Sea. Is that worse? Yes. Infinitely, unforgettably and forever.

… Is the Deep Throat story over? Yes, in the sense that it will no longer be treated as a mystery. In spite of the million questions we'll be hearing--and there are and will be many serious questions--the MSM will stick with the heroic narrative. Mr. Felt was Deep Throat. Deep Throat was a great man who helped a great newspaper put the stop to the lies and abuses of an out-of-control White House. End of story. Why? Because in celebrating this story in a certain way journalists of a certain age celebrate themselves. Because to bring unwelcome and unwanted skepticism to the narrative would be to deny 20th-century journalism--and 21st-century journalists--their great claim to glory. Because the MSM is still liberal, and the great Satan of all liberals, still, is Richard Nixon. And because, as Ben Bradlee might say, It's a goddamn good story.

Or as they put it in yet another John Ford masterpiece, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, "When the legend becomes the fact, print the legend."

At times, the expat feels an overwhelming urge to be in America

…at times, I feel an overwhelming urge to be in America — in the vast, open center of America

writes Megan Riley McGilchrist, an expat who has lived in England for the past 28 years, in the International Herald Tribune.

It is a place where I feel safe.

In London, the edges are ragged. I worry about bombs in the Underground. People speak with dread about what is going on in the world. Dinner parties always devolve into politics. Everyone fears that America is dragging us all down to an unspeakable fate.

It is a matter of faith in my circles that the monster of globalized capitalism is responsible for 5-year-olds sifting through garbage in Bolivia, for adolescent carpet-makers in India going blind, for child prostitution in Thailand. And America is the world's biggest economy, its worst polluter, its most aggressive military power.

… I don't really believe, as some European philosophers so archly do, that America is some odd simulacrum of reality. It is, though, I know, a different reality, one that out of those endless spaces is powerful enough to affect the rest of us so profoundly.

A few years ago, McGilchrist (who is completing a doctorate in 20th-century American literature at the University of Derby) took a car trip across America with her three children.

"Can't we move here?" they whine. …

A few days later we are in Mitchell, South Dakota, watching a rodeo. My English 10-year-old, in jeans, straw hat and denim jacket, is indistinguishable from the local boys. In the stands, the space below our feet fills with Budweiser cups and corncobs. Riders roll in the mud, wrestling animals to the ground in split seconds. As a finale, tiny children ride sheep, and a 4-year-old lopes out of the ring in perfect imitation of his elders, the winner, despite a kick in the stomach from an angry ewe.

"Can't we live here?" my children moo.

… Miles from Europe's political consciousness, far from my uncomfortable thoughts at home, the longing overcomes me like a wave, and I want to be back there, unknown and unknowing.

"Can't I live here?" I wonder, feeling the space wash through me.

Why Did They Die?

Especially among many of the U.S. policy and media elite, the unspoken implication [of ABC News's decision to broadcast an honor roll of the American troops who died this past year serving in Iraq and Afghanistan] is that it was their own government that killed them, sending them off to deal with quarrels far removed from the comfortable living rooms where on Memorial Day we sit down in front of our television sets to watch the ceremonies

writes Claudia Rosett.

… It seems fitting to add some further context. These troops did not die in the purely abstract cause of freedom. They were killed going up against enemies who also have names and faces. Here, I am not talking about the roll call of the individuals who fired the guns or threw the grenades at our troops, but about those who created the climates in which liberation is answered with terrorism and murder. In our civilized living rooms, we rarely speak of "enemies"--but that is the unspoken context here. Who killed these troops?

In Iraq, first and foremost, that would be Saddam Hussein, who for close to two generations took Iraq down the path of fascism, terror and war. His reign created the conditions in which liberation of the many would be answered by carnage spread by a deadly few; in which Iraqis going to vote would be targeted enroute to the polls, in which police recruits would be slaughtered; in which innocent civilians would be bombed while trying simply to get on with their lives.

Much energy has been spent on the debate over whether Saddam actually backed al Qaeda, or merely spent some of his billions purloined out of the United Nations Oil for Food relief program in supporting such folks as Palestinian suicide bombers and buying the kinds of conventional weapons used to kill the troops whose faces we just saw on "Nightline." The larger point is that nations export to our globalizing world whatever it is they specialize in. Saddam specialized in terror. His legacy includes a roster of Iraqi dead so vast that it would take weeks if not months to read the full list of names, if anybody even knew the list. That is the kind of rule, or grotesque misrule, he brought to the international table--corrosive to all, and dangerous even to the great American superpower. Which is why, after 17 failed U.N. resolutions, our troops had to go to Iraq.

Second on the list of who killed our troops would be those who abetted Saddam's regime and continue to help his successors today. Topping that list would be the Baathist regime of Syria's dictator, Bashar Assad, and the totalitarian ayatollahs of Iran--backing what is too often called an "insurgency" and would better be termed a fight for the resumption of tyranny.

Also on the list would be the corrupt and craven crew at the U.N., who hid the rebuilding of Saddam's resources, who preferred to give Saddam an 18th chance. It is important to understand that while the U.N.-approved investigation into Oil for Food, led by Paul Volcker, has focused narrowly on questions of whether anyone administering the program violated U.N. procedure, the deeper horror was the assurance of the U.N. that all was well--while Saddam skimmed billions and used some of that to buy weapons and restock the war chest that certainly helped fund his military in 2003, and is very likely funding terror in Iraq today. Federal prosecutors have mentioned two unnamed high-ranking UN officials alleged to have taken bribes from Saddam; this is a matter not only of venal and corrupt behavior among those entrusted with serving the public good, but of U.N. officials with blood on their hands.

In Afghanistan, the killing tracks back to the days of the Soviet Union. It was the Soviet invasion that triggered the war that fed Osama bin Laden's grotesque ambitions, and led to the Taliban, which made the country al Qaeda's training ground and base of operations--and that necessitated the fight in which our troops are still dying.

What these killers have all had in common is that they were--or are--tyrants, ruling with terror. This is what our troops have been giving their lives to defy, and to end. President Bush put it neatly on Monday: "Because of the sacrifices of our men and women in uniform, two terror regimes are gone forever, freedom is on the march, and America is more secure."

In thinking about the context for the past year's honor roll, however, I found there was another American president who also came to mind: Abraham Lincoln, who, as America struggled to shed its own evil of slavery, commemorated the dead at Gettysburg with a statement that holds true today. These Americans died "that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

Blame America

It's America's fault. It's always America's fault

writes Craig Anderson from Jakarta in a letter to the editor of the International Herald Tribune.

Thanks to the insights of Anne Wu ("Only the U.S. can stop the nuclear march," Views, May 28 [no link, unfortunately]) we learn that North Korea's nuclear weapons program "would not have taken place without the perceived threat of the United States" and that it is "Washington's inflexibility and relentless rhetoric" that is "preventing a solution on the North Korean peninsula." Hold off, Ms. Wu, it is not the North Korean peninsula, yet!

Of course it's America's fault. Welcome to the "blame America first" club - don't worry, you have lots of company. And you certainly have the rhetoric down.

Google Print beta online
Europe trembles, Google acts.	Europe tremble de peur, Google fonce.

Early estimates from Télévision Suisse Romande	Des estimations brutes en provenance de Télévision Suisse Romande
Télévision Suisse Romande announces an early estimate giving the Dutch 'No' 63%.	Télévision Suisse Romande annonce des estimations qui donnent le 'Non' gagnant à 63% aux Pays-bas.
UPDATE: The thing is dead. 63% for the 'No', 62% voter participation.	DERNIERES INFO: Le machin est raid mort. 63% pour le 'Non' avec une participation à 62%.
Sing loud while drinking Irish Whisky: You killed your European son You spit on those under twenty-one But now your blue car's gone You better say so long Hey hey, bye bye bye You made your wallpapers green You want to make love to the scene Your European son is gone You'd better say so long Your clown's bid you goodbye Velvet Underground (Reed, Cale, Morrison, Tucker)

The French vote is a victory of democracy against an opaque and elite process that few people really understood

The European Union's constitutional treaty began life three-and-a-half years ago as an attempt to bring the EU "closer to its citizens"

writes the Wall Street Journal.

After Sunday's resounding defeat in France, of all places, the treaty may be said to have achieved a kind of ironic vindication.

The French vote is a victory of democracy against an opaque and elite process that few people really understood. It is also a defeat for those leaders, notably French President Jacques Chirac, who have been unable to deliver on what they promised from a united Europe. The defeat shouldn't be seen as a renunciation of "Europe" writ large, so much as for a particular narrow vision of the Continent.

The document itself is a monstrosity running to 485 pages. As a flavor of its character, consider that one of the treaty's "annexes and protocols" concerns the right of the Sami people to husband reindeer.

… the French may well have done the right thing for the wrong reason. The opposition included much of the political left, which derided the constitution as an ultra-liberal (in the classical sense of liberal), Anglo-Saxon thing, destined to strip Europe of its social-welfare model. At the same time, Mr. Chirac asserted that the constitution was France's only bulwark against the encroachment of Anglo-Saxon-style capitalism.

Meanwhile, Mr. Chirac's main political opponent in his own ruling party, Nicolas Sarkozy, argued for the constitution on the same grounds that the no camp argued against it--that it would help France by forcing it to reform its bloated welfare state, create more jobs and increase economic growth. We think Mr. Chirac's view of the actual document is the closest to the truth--that it would have enhanced the leverage of French socialism on the Continent--which is why it's just as well that it was defeated.

Probably the underlying sentiment among "no" voters was their rejection of the paternalism with which this constitution, along with so many other EU initiatives, was sold to the public. Europeans are increasingly tired of being told to take their medicine and not ask too many questions. An AP story got to the heart of the matter in quoting one Emmanuel Zelez, a film editor, who said, "I voted 'no' because the text is very difficult to understand. Also, I'm afraid for democracy. The way the EU functions is very opaque. Many people there are not directly elected."

… Once this document dies the death it deserves, the europhiles may conclude that the next time they draft a constitution they'll have to listen more closely to the people it purports to represent.

Caption Contest

Why the nervous smile, I wonder?

Makes a good a doorstop	À utiliser comme cale-porte
Dream on. Zeropean Constitution v1.0 is stillborn. All the rage among Old Guard French bloggers the hot air crowd just a few months ago, Rifkin's book is now deeply discounted on Amazon (37% off). Of course, when you write about vaporware, you have to take what's coming to you.	Rêve toujours. La Constitution zéropéenne v1.0 est mort-né. Très à la mode chez les bloggeurs franchouilles de la vieille garde véhiculeurs du néant, juste il y a quelques mois, le livre de Rifkin est désormais soldé chez Amazon (-37%). Si vous écrivez au sujet du vaporware, faut accepter vos responsabilités.

"Nero": The Sophisticated Side of France's PM Poet

"Those losers, we screwed them with gravel" (Ceux-là, on les a baisés avec du gravier !) was the sophisticated and nuanced reaction of France's most powerful poet after a victory over Chirac's adversaries…

The admirer of Napoleon whose France-embodying seagull is a spiritual and graceful creature, at home in the heavens, blending and merging with the air, also called elected members of parliament "assholes" (connards), adding "Thank goodness they have no power whatsoever!" (Ils ont un organe plus développé que les autres, c'est le trouillomètre. Heureusement qu'ils n'ont aucun pouvoir !)

Read Le Monde's positive (!) portrait of Prime Minister Dominique Galouzeau de Villepin and watch "Nero's" portfolio…

Muslim Protestors Burn Cross in London

No absence of resemblance at all.



UNITED KINGDOM - 27 May 2005
Muslim Protestors Burn Cross on Streets of London

«More than 300 Muslim protestors set fire to a wooden cross outside the American Embassy in London last Friday 20th May.

The crowd, led by Omar Bakri Muhammad and Yassar al-Siri, were protesting against the alleged desecration of a Qur’an by American military interrogators at Guantanamo Bay. This followed claims by Newsweek magazine that a copy of the Qur’an had been put down a toilet. American and British flags were also burnt, and the protestors chanted calls for violence against the US and UK. Amongst the protestors were about 50 women, some of whom had brought their children.

At the time this protest took place, Newsweek had retracted their story about the alleged incident in Guantanamo Bay. Yet the cross-burning still took place, and has caused little interest in the British media.

Riots in Afghanistan about the same issue had already caused the deaths of 16 people.»

Isn't it telling that there haven't been westerners engaging in Newsweek riots yet?
Where's the BBC on this one? Not a peep. Nix. Nada. Bupkus. A goose egg.

It's all about Oiiillllllll!!!

No pipeline here

If seems that Michael Moore was right about the entire war on terror being about running pipelines through Asia Minor, but it turns out to be a European scheme, just like the phrase any US activity of any sort being "a war" which is "all about oil!!!!!!" Guardian: Pipeline opens new oil route to west

Note that every European press outlet is diminishing the fact that it's a "pan-European-like" BP-Shell project, is intended to feed the energy hungry European market, and emphasising the US State Department "endorsement", which amounted to a "Hey, congatulations!" after the fact.

No pipeline here either

Man Who Called America (and America Alone) a Shark Is Named Prime Minister

Jacques Chirac names Dominique de Villepin prime minister of France.

More on the never-elected America-scorner and his view of French foreign policy…

The Elites' Big Fib

In the end, democracy came and mocked the European mystique, its notions of ever-greater union, a European Us, its self-portrayal as the Righteous Power, its exalted but hollow pretensions to project to the world a will and a strength that is not yet and may never be its own

writes John Vinocur in the International Herald Tribune.

If anything, the massive rejection by France of the European Union's constitution in a national referendum, says stop.

… with the stakes perfectly clear — a French no would kill the European Constitution — French voters signaled that even at absolutely no real cost to them, when it came to matters of the heart, Europe doesn't matter enough to say yes to.

Bam! Pow! After all, think of the context: a united, integrated Europe, acting largely as one, had been a near spiritual conviction for the generation that grew up after the tragedy of World War II.

Now go and find that belief and sense of European mission today. France has laughed at it. Angry with Europe's refusal to adopt its questionable social model, and unwilling to meld French identity into a greater European whole, France said to hell with the noble undertaking stuff. Adding the rationale that it was all the elites' Big Fib anyway.

…The administration and the rest of the world will not fail to notice that Europe's "peace front" of 2002, which turned resistance to the U.S. war in Iraq into a Genesis myth for a Europe defined in opposition to the United States, is in the process of self-delegitimization.

Meanwhile, the BBC lays out the VIPs' (sic) quotes (gindobreh to Gregory) while Thomas Fuller reports on the Polish reaction to the Non .

The relationship between France and Eastern Europe has sometimes been compared unflatteringly to a professor and his

Poles are quick to remember the infamous incident during the run-up to the American-led invasion of Iraq when Jacques Chirac, the French president, advised U.S. allies in the region to keep quiet. More recently, Michel Barnier, now the French foreign minister, lectured east European governments for lacking a "European reflex." …

Not long ago the tables were turned: If any country was going to sink the constitution it was Poland or Britain, but certainly not France. …

"I don't want to be rude but I think that France still has nostalgia for its empire," [Lukasz Mlost] said as he sat on a park bench in Warsaw. The French do not want to concede that English has become the primary international language, he said, and they are sore that they are no longer at the center of Europe.

"They are saying, 'You must take what we say into consideration,"' Mlost said.

'Scapegoat' Polish plumbers ain't happy with abuse from the champion holiday-takers, reports the AFP (gindobreh to Gregory).

"The French are just looking for excuses for why their country is going to the dogs. Apparently it is because people like us are coming to take their work. It is not just the right — the left is saying exactly the same. Personally I find it hurtful and shocking," says Jozef Babiarz…

Both men say they know why the French have suddenly got it in for them. It is not because they are cheaper, but because they are better.

"They are jealous. We are good workers and they are not. We don't stop for a smoke. We don't stop for coffee five times a day. If we get a call — we're there, even on a Sunday or a holiday. If you ask me, the French have forgotten what it is like to work," says [Antoni] Gaszczyk.

… "France thinks it is indispensable. They have the idea that nothing in Europe can happen without them. I suspect that are about to be proved wrong," says Babiarz.

"I wouldn't say they are racist — but there is definitely a certain arrogance," says Gaszczyk with a laugh. "Everyone is analysed to see if they have 'integrated' or not. In Poland we would never do that. We see people just as people. When I retire I am definitely going back home."

Differentiating Between Fear Societies and Free Societies

"I have very serious criticisms of Amnesty. There is no moral clarity. It doesn't differentiate between what I call fear societies and free societies," [Natan] Sharansky said

reports Audrey Hudson.

"In the democratic world, there are violations of human rights, but they are revealed and dealt with. In a fear society, there are no violations of human rights because human rights just don't exist," said Mr. Sharansky, who now lives in Israel and has served in its parliament and Cabinet. "Amnesty International says it doesn't support or oppose any political system, so it ends up with reports that show a moral equivalence" among regimes.

To my knowledge, and unless I am mistaken, Amnesty never referred to this place as the (or as a) modern-day equivalent of the gulag…

Imperialists etats-uniens war criminals pillaging the holy nation of Iraq

More awful War crimes by imperialists US big-running-dogs in Iraq.



Hoowah! to my fa-vo-rite BD artist Avery.

Memorial Day

We make war that we may live in peace.

Aristotle (325 B.C.)

Good people sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.

George Orwell

It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.

Gen. George S. Patton

Don't forget to read (and sign) the
Open Letter in Support of America's Armed Forces

Read a short summary of American history (written before Bush's election),
and how a particular stereotype has endured through the ages…

French Descendants Fighting in Iraq

Serving in Iraq with a Lousiana outfit of ragin' Cajuns, Sgt Poche has more horrific photos from Iraq.

Notice how American officers are so culturally insensitive to the "humiliated" Iraqis that they have their namebands (is that the word?) translated into Arabic…

Meanwhile, Wadi has Thomas Uwer and Thomas von der Osten-Sacken's list of Iraqi bloggers at the end of "trustworthy informants" as one alternative to Europe's mainstream media (non-German speakers should scroll to bottom — danke zu F R Hoffmann)

Frogs make history	Les grenouilles font un coup historique
No, not the French.	Non, pas les fwançais.
Image : merci à GeorgeS.

Racial violence in Perpignan	Violences raciales à Perpignan
France is burning.	La Fwance brûle.

Lightweights	Petites natures
France scarred. Chiraq weakened. Socialist Party fractured, perhaps irreparably. Extreme Left exposed as rabidly xenophobic.	La Fwance balafrée. Chirak affaibli. PS fracturé, peut-être irréparablement. Extrême gôche exposée comme étant hystériquement xénophobe.
21 April 2002 : the French send Jean Marie Le Pen to the 2nd round of the Presidential election.

... and now definitely minus a Constitution	... et maintenant moins une Constitution, définitivement
'Zéropa-Land and its zero, it's America minus the Declaration of Independance, minus the Constitution, minus the conquest of the West, minus the Oval office, minus the Pentagon, minus Hollywood, minus World War II, minus Vietnam, minus the Cybercoast which now stretches well beyond the Silicon Valley of its beginnings, minus Apollo and minus the Gulf War. In other words... Zeropa-Land, precisely.' Laboratoire de catastrophe générale : Journal métaphysique et polémique 2000-2001, Maurice G. Dantec	'Zéropa-Land et son zéro, c'est l'Amérique moins la Déclaration d'Indépendance, moins la Constitution, moins la conquête de l'Ouest, moins le bureau oval, moins le Pentagone, moins Hollywoord, moins la Seconde Guerre mondiale, moins le Viêt Nam, moins le Cybercoast qui s'étend maintenant bien au-delà de la Silicon Valley des origines, moins Apollo et moins de la guerre du Golfe. Autant dire... Zéropa-Land, précisément.' Laboratoire de catastrophe générale : Journal métaphysique et polémique 2000-2001, Maurice G. Dantec

Oh, merde alors!

Bitch slap

Grosse baffe

No means No, and don't ask again	C'est 'Non', sans façon
It's a No at 54.5%.	C'est Non à 54,5%.

Early estimates from Télévision Suisse Romande	Des estimations brutes en provenance de Télévision Suisse Romande
Télévision Suisse Romande announces an early estimate giving the 'No' 56%. Use with caution. French media to announce official results in 25 minutes.	Télévision Suisse Romande annonce des estimations qui donnent le 'Non' gagnant à 56%. À manier avec précaution. Les résultats officiels seront annoncés par les média français dans 25 minutes.
UPDATE: Same source (TSR) : French Socialists for the 'No' have announced their victory.	DERNIERES INFOS: Même source (TSR) : Les Socialistes français pour le 'Non' ont annoncé leur victoire.
UPDATE: Montebourg announces the No has won.	DERNIERES INFOS: Montebourg annonce que le 'Non' a gagné.

They feel sorry about Saddam's humiliation, not about all the Iraqi people who never reached his age thanks to his actions

Its a company except their expertise is not in banking, engineering, medicine or any other positives that they could all unite to achieve to help the Iraqi people they claim to be rescuing

writes Sami as the Iraqi expatriate discusses Al Qaeda (as well as Arab public opinion).

No their type of business specialises in killing, kidnapping, terrorising, brainwashing, and many other sectors that are 'VITAL' to keeping humanity safe from the evil corruption of capitalism. Yes I hope the sarcasm is understood for those that read this.

The end result is that the end of one man will not end the problem, its a mentality, its a type of thinking that is supported by many people in the part of the world who easily believe in any type of BS they watch on the tv or radio. When people from all various forms of life become political analysts then you create a society entrinched with rumours, innuendo and straight up bull shit.

Examples are easily available, the sadness felt in so many Arab people's hearts at the humilation of Saddam caught in a photo washing his own clothes. :( And another picture with his boxers on. That is what they feel sorry about, not about all the Iraqi people who never reached his age thanks to his actions.

(Julien, are you reading this?)

I want justice and punishment for the people in charge and the people carrying out these operations. I also want justice to be brought to those that defend and support these operations and look at them at defending Arab pride. If Arabic pride is judged by the colour and shape of Saddam's panties than I really feel sorry for the Arabic world. Instead of trying to promote the virtues of life, and the happiness of all respectin one another we see the opposite.

To me the capture of Zarqawi is irrelevant, as in the end we will get another name of a person in charge of the operations and the few Iraqis supportive of them will be put all over the Arabic media and it will continue to show all Iraqis as against the new government and process

Meanwhile (shookhran to Gregory), Fouad Ajami writes

"George W. Bush has unleashed a tsunami on this region," a shrewd Kuwaiti merchant who knows the way of his world said to me. The man had no patience with the standard refrain that Arab reform had to come from within, that a foreign power cannot alter the age-old ways of the Arabs. "Everything here--the borders of these states, the oil explorations that remade the life of this world, the political outcomes that favored the elites now in the saddle--came from the outside. This moment of possibility for the Arabs is no exception." A Jordanian of deep political experience at the highest reaches of Arab political life had no doubt as to why history suddenly broke in Lebanon, and could conceivably change in Syria itself before long. "The people in the streets of Beirut knew that no second Hama is possible; they knew that the rulers were under the gaze of American power, and knew that Bush would not permit a massive crackdown by the men in Damascus."

…To venture into the Arab world, as I did recently over four weeks in Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan and Iraq, is to travel into Bush Country. I was to encounter people from practically all Arab lands, to listen in on a great debate about the possibility of freedom and liberty. … Unmistakably, there is in the air of the Arab world a new contest about the possibility and the meaning of freedom. …The doors have been thrown wide open, and the truth of that world laid bare. Grant Mr. Bush his due: The revolutionary message he brought forth was the simple belief that there was no Arab and Muslim "exceptionalism" to the appeal of liberty. For a people mired in historical pessimism, the message of this outsider was a powerful antidote to the culture of tyranny.

Yet another battle of the death cults

More anarchy in the UK. Via MOONBAT CENTRAL Pro-Terror Gays Targeted by Pro-Terror British Demonstrators.

The left is unsure who to hate more or hate worse, they just know that the demon (whoever it is this week) must die a horrible death for the sake of the great circle of loving, caring, and sharing.

«A homosexual activist group calling itself "Outrage!" has become the target of violence and venom by the anti-Israel pogromchiks of the UK. The Reason? While favoring "Palestinian" statehood and Israeli withdrawal from the "occupied territories," Outrage! has been severely critical of the treatment of homosexuals by the PLO and the "Palestinian Authority", and has documented torture of homosexuals by Saudi Arabia. Outrage! activists have been beaten and abused at pro-terror pro-Palestinian demonstrations in the UK, whose mantra is "Death to Gays and Jews."»

Lovely bunch, no?

Batten down the hatches	Fermez les écoutilles
Several Paris subway stations are being closed for fear of spontaneous demonstrations when the referendum results are announced at 22H00 CET. The Trotskyst Party plans to have a demonstration at the Bastille as soon as the results are given.	Les accès des stations Champs-Elysées Clémenceau, Franklin D.Roosevelt et George-V sont fermés par crainte de manifestations spontanées suite à l'annonce des résultats à 22H00. LCR donne rendez-vous à la Bastille au même moment.

The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them

How fitting is it that the French vote on the opaque EU constitution is taking place on Patrick Henry's birthday (1736-1799)?

For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst and provide for it.

The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them.

Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined.

Perfect freedom is as necessary to the health and vigor of commerce as it is to the health and vigor of citizenship.

I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided; and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging the future but by the past.

And this little-known quote is for the multitudes clamoring for peace and dialog at every turn of the road:

Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!

Beware whom you hang around, as well as what you watch, read and listen to. You don’t want greatness anywhere around…

…remember: ruining your life is easy. Get it out of your mind that this is difficult stuff. Success is what is difficult. You have chosen that which is easy

writes Doug Giles in his list of the 10 Habits of Decidedly Defective People©, namely…

1. Be a slacker.
2. Blame others.
3. Embrace hopelessness.
4. Follow others mindlessly.
5. Be a wet blanket.
6. Hang out with morons.
7. Be a self obsessed me-monkey.
8. Stand for nothing.
9. Have an “it’s not my job” mentality.
10. Quit when the going gets tough.

Now, answer me this: Why is it that I feel a lot of people in Europe, the Blue states, the MSM, the Middle East, and other regions of the world would do well to read Doug's columns?…

The European Union, which has a flag no one salutes and an anthem no one knows, now seeks ratification of a constitution few have read

writes George Will.

Surely only its authors have read its turgid earnestness without laughing, which is one reason why the European project is foundering. On Sunday in France, and Wednesday in Holland, Europe's elites -- political, commercial and media -- may learn the limits of their ability to impose their political fetishes on restive and rarely consulted publics.

     The European project is the transformation of "Europe" from a geographic into a political denotation. This requires the steady drainage of sovereignty from national parliaments, and the "harmonization" of most economic and social policies.

…why are these two nations being balky? Partly because, unusually, they are allowed to be. The European project has come this far largely by bypassing democracy. 

…Some French factions, their normal obstreperousness leavened by paranoia, think the constitution is a conspiracy to use "ultraliberalism" -- free markets -- to destroy their "social model." That is the suffocating web of labor laws and other statism that gives France double-digit unemployment -- a staggering 22 percent of those under age 25.

… The proposed constitution has 448 articles -- 441 more than the U.S. Constitution. It is a jumble of pieties, giving canonical status to sentiments such as  "the physical and moral integrity of sportsmen and sportswomen'' should be protected. It establishes, among many other rights, a right to "social and housing assistance'' sufficient for a "decent existence.'' Presumably, supranational courts and bureaucracies will define and enforce those rights, as well as the right of children to "express their views fully.'' And it stipulates that "preventive action should be taken'' to protect the environment.

Bob Geldof on Europes treatment of Africa

He sees its problems being made worse because of Europes Emotional baggage.

«In the 1990s, European leaders focused disgracefully on passing the Maastricht Treaty while the Balkans burned. Europeans put their internal economic and bureaucratic cohesion above their responsibilities to their neighbours. As hundreds of thousands of Bosnians came to our borders, we turned, as ever , to Washington and prayed for help. A few years later, in Kosovo, European governments were belatedly part of the solution as well as the problem. And finally, in Macedonia, they acted before a crisis turned into a tragedy. »

«For Europe to work, we need to understand why there is no solidarity. We need to build on the Western idea of the individual, which only functions when it acts in concert with the common good, to find things to bind us together in the absence of a Soviet threat. The truth is, we dont have the same common feeling for people in Bulgaria that people in the United States, under the cult of the flag or the fetish of the constitution, feel for someone from Minneapolis or Texas. And we wont get it by taking refuge in our Christian past, or seeing ourselves ridiculously as a counterweight to American power, at a time when China and Indias success is the big story of our time. The solution cannot be to retreat behind our protectionist fences, our very large, well-tended hedge. Europe cannot exist by or unto itself. It must engage with the world. »

«Europe is failing Africa our immediate neighbour. Our common history goes back millennia through the black popes and saints, the Islamic period, the crusades, the slave trade and colonialism and post- independence. But it is our future together that is most at stake.»

«The Pope enjoined Europe to be open to the other continents. Africa makes a mockery of that ideal. Each of the principles that lie behind the European project equality, mutuality and solidarity has been perverted into its opposite: dependence, double standards and duplicity. We drop meagre scraps from our tables of prosperity with one hand, then scoop them up with the other. We talk about partnership but we have enslaved a continent with loans, forcing the poorest countries in the world to spend more every year on interest payments than on healthcare and education.»

«We lecture them on free trade, but close our markets to their agricultural produce and swamp them with subsidised imports of European products. Each European cow gets subsidies worth 157 times what the EU gives to each African. Our double standards are almost designed to keep Africans in poverty while impoverishing Europe morally. We force them to sell us commodities but prevent them from adding value to them. An African who wants to sell pineapples in the EU faces a tariff of 9% for fresh fruit, 32% for tinned pineapples and 42% for pineapple juice. This goes back to the original perversion of Adam Smith by European colonialists who decided Africas comparative advantage would be its poverty.»

«Forget the invisible hand of the market, this is the malignant cheating hand of the protection racket that much EU trade regulation is. Europeans boast about our aid programmes, but over half the money is spent in middle-income countries, mostly in Europes immediate neighbourhood.»

What can an individual do? Anything he sets his mind to, and Geldof seem to get that very well. In a continent where aid is used mainly as an phrase used to conceal domestic cronyism, he looks like more that an honest man who speaks clearly he looks nearly Jeffersonian in his view of man, the individual, his capacity to do good, and his inherent humanism.
To him it depends on individuals being responsible for themselves, true to themselves, and good. You need concepts like right and wrong to get there.

There is no place for moral relativism in what he does. Hes lives its antithesis nicely.

Arrogant Brussels	Bruxelles arrogant
Noises are being made about having the French re-vote if the 'wrong' answer is given today. In that case, why not have the Spanish re-vote as well. With 60% of voters abstaining in Spain the first time around, this would be justified.	La rumeur court que les franchouilles auront à re-voter si la 'mauvaise' réponse sort aujourd'hui. Dans ce cas, pourquoi les espagnols ne seraient-ils pas demandés à re-voter aussi. Avec une abstention à 60% lors du scrution espagnol, ce serait une demande parfaitement justifiée.

Strong voter turnout by noon.

Forte participation à midi.

Autonomic murderous veggie choppers

A tale from Nanny's playpen

From the "What NEXT?!?" department, this item from BBC News: Doctors call for ban on kitchen knives

«They argued many assaults are committed impulsively, prompted by alcohol and drugs, and a kitchen knife often makes an all too available weapon.»

Do you think they'll manage a ban on alcohol? In the UK!?!

Okay, I'll say it... knives don't kill people. People kill people.

«In contrast, a pointed long blade pierces the body like "cutting into a ripe melon".»

BAN MELONS! And quite naturally:

Government response [Ed.: surprised?]

«..."Offensive weapons are defined as any weapon designed or adapted to cause injury, or intended by the person possessing them to do so.

"An individual has to demonstrate that he had good reason to possess a knife, for example for fishing, other sporting purposes or as part of his profession (e.g. a chef) in a public place.

"The manufacture, sale and importation of 17 bladed, pointed and other offensive weapons have been banned, in addition to flick knives and gravity knives." »

Nanny's sharp wit can't qualify, surely. Besides, it only hurts when you laugh.