The Continent finally is waking up to the universal and very real threat that terror poses

[Tony] Blair is once again playing a leading role in the war on terror and, unlike in the Iraq war, most of Europe appears ready to follow this time

writes the Wall Street Journal.

From Spain, which suffered the March 11, 2004, train bombings in Madrid, to less likely targets such as Sweden, the Continent finally is waking up to the universal and very real threat that terror poses. France, for all its objections to the Iraq war, already has some of Europe's toughest anti-terror laws.

Worries of an imminent attack are particularly acute in Italy. … Italians who think their vulnerability is the result of their participation in the Iraq war should look no further than Germany, which opposed the war yet feels compelled to step up its security. Interior Minister Otto Schily has been outspoken about his belief that Islamic terrorists are at war not just with the U.S. and its allies in Iraq but with Western society in general. Mr. Schily has called for increased search and detention powers in cases involving terror suspects who are known to be a threat but who haven't yet committed a crime.

Throughout Europe, there has been good cooperation between national intelligence and law enforcement agencies, and the European Union has pledged to seek ways of strengthening this cooperation. … Of course, the old-time religion of appeasement hasn't completely disappeared. Mr. Schily's proposals have been compared to Nazi-era tactics by leading members of the Green Party, a minority partner in Gerhard Schröder's coalition government. Some German officials have--in all seriousness--floated the idea of a new Muslim public holiday as a way of mitigating the terror threat.

Even in Britain, controversy envelops the efforts to deal with further threats. … Absolutist interpretation of free-speech rights, with no injunction against "shouting fire in a crowded theater," has protected extremists such as [Abu] Qatada and Omar Bakri Mohammed, who recently fled Britain after two decades of preaching hatred and violence. Allowing Muslims to practice their religion freely is the act of a free society. But looking the other way while radical clerics praise suicide bombers in Israel and America and encourage their acolytes to attack their neighbors is an abdication of governmental responsibility.

…European nations would do well to review whether their laws could be tweaked to close loopholes that terrorists have learned to exploit. That these measures are finally being discussed is a sign that Europe is finally giving serious thought to the balance between freedom and security.

The €uro is as queer as a three dollar bill

The €uro Zero is shunned as Middle East oil revenues are being plowed back into the US economy. "Aux yeux de nos clients, les problèmes politiques au sein de l'Union européenne, l'absence de réforme du marché des capitaux et la mauvaise santé des économies française et allemande pénalisent l'euro comme placement alternatif au billet vert". In the meantime, the €uro Zero's value will be decided by Fed policy. Un destin manifeste, ça se forge, mais surtout, ça se decide.

An Elegant Remembrance

Atelier Moshé Safdie.




The hall of names


Artifacts of a genocide


Click image above for a virtual tour.



From above and in plan

Color me up some news if you please, Ms. AP Ringer

Resigned to the culture’s race to give up as fast as possible, one hack with a stable data connection can’t wrap her brain around the concept that the fool popping mortars at a ship might have consciously decided to wake up that morning and say “hey, why don’t we try and kill some people today?”
The attack was caused by the presence of a victim.

U.S. Ships Make Jordan Resort a Target
By SHAFIKA MATTAR, Associated Press Writer

…and the woman was ASKING to be raped… What a crackhead.
Headline above, versus the more normatively reasoned:

One dead in al-Qaeda rocket attack on ships
BY RANA SABBAGH-GARGOUR, Times of London

«A group linked to al-Qaeda, the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, claimed responsibility in an internet statement, which has not yet been verified.

It has claimed responsibility for other attacks including the recent bombings in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.»

A funny thing happens when the reporting looks like it’s intended to create a spin and not report events. The writers don’t seem to know that they’re doing it. Even someone who's last name means "airport" in arabic. You would think that she would stick to high-jacking items

Y’see, Sometimes it’s al-Qaeda, sometimes it isn’t. sometimes it’s a link to al-Qaeda… but when it’s NOT al-Qaeda, it’s the US’s fault for going after anyone OTHER than al-Qaeda.

The obvious answer is to never do anything to defend one’s society, I guess, if it'll make a handful of writers and editors happy.

The main cause of Arab indifference was that Saddam's crimes threatened to imply the Arabs' inability to responsibly manage their own emancipation

It is politically,

notes the Daily Star's Michael Young (as he writes about those of the Iraq war's critics who, legitimately, bemoaned Washington's coddling of Arab dictators (but then refused to endorse the exception to the rule in Iraq)"),

that Arab societies, specifically liberals, failed to see the advantages in the removal of Saddam, regardless of their antipathy to the Bush administration. Here was an opportunity to cheer on the emergence of an Arab democracy, with deep implications for democracy at home, and it was missed. More disturbing was that this need never have contradicted Iraqi sovereignty. Washington could have been repeatedly reminded by Arab democrats keen to see the Iraq project succeed for their own good, that true democracy meant, after a period of stabilization, allowing Iraq to be free of foreign interference. Yet other than from the Iraqis themselves, the argument was rarely heard in the Arab world; advantageous pragmatism was supplanted by stubborn attachment to principle--"principle" that, in yearning for American failure, ignored how Iraqis suffered from the ensuing carnage.

Saddam's fall was welcomed by shamefully few Arabs (I recall how, on the day of his capture, a liberal Arab intellectual living in the U.S. mainly regretted that this would bolster George W. Bush's popularity ratings): The "humiliation" of seeing an Arab leader toppled by Western armies far outweighed that of seeing one of the most talented of Arab societies, the Middle East's Germany, subjected to a ferocious despotism responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths. Nor was there much interest regionally in the discovery of the Baath's mass graves. One reason was the secondary concern that many Arab societies have for Saddam's foremost victims--the Shiites and Kurds; but the main cause of indifference was that Saddam's crimes, if acknowledged, threatened to imply the Arabs' inability to responsibly manage their own emancipation.

In other words, applauding his ouster meant admitting that the Arab world could produce no better, and deserved no better than Western armies in its midst. This rationale was nonsense, but spawned a cliché that Arab intellectuals routinely peddle: that Arab reform must come "from within"--though the notion would have been laughable in Baathist Iraq. Arab societies must indeed open up from inside, but absent an echo, sometimes a determining one, from outside--including the option of foreign military action--little will change.

… For all these reasons, American achievement in Iraq could have been looked on with greater self-interested approval and imagination by the Arab publics. It never was.

How the U.S. adventure in Iraq ends is anybody's guess. However, its repercussions will be felt, first, by the Arabs themselves. By refusing to profit from the prospective democratic upheaval that Saddam's removal ushered in; by never looking beyond the American messenger in Iraq to the message itself; by lamenting external hegemony while doing nothing to render it pointless, Arabs merely affirmed their impotence. The self-pitying Arab reaction to the Iraq war showed the terrible sway of the status quo in the Middle East. An inability to marshal change for one's benefit is the stuff of captive minds.

Nuanced communication by nuanced jerkoffs to nuanced jerkoffs

People who need people are the luckiest people in the world, as Babs said.

Iranian protesters burn French flag

«"England, France, two Satans, two Lucifers," chanted the demonstrators, as security agents tried in vain to stop the flag burning.

"Death to France, death to England, death to Germany," they cried.

The three European countries have been negotiating with Iran on behalf of the EU to keep its uranium-enrichment activities suspended in return for a package of incentives.»

Sounds like they’re either completely unfamiliar with the savoire-faire of taking a bribe, or know well enough that calling for their death won’t make that check bounce, since they'll build their nukes anyway.

There’s also an object lesson here regarding just not caring what an ugly mob on the street is saying anyway, and just doing what’s right – when and if you’re doing the right thing, that is.

Economics in Jinna

Owen Muir:

«If the afterlife has infinite duration, then no matter how long you wait to deflower your 72nd virgin, you’ll still be looking at an infinitely long virgin-less future thereafter. (More abstractly, the question is how to allocate your consumption of a finite non-durable good over an infinite period of time.) To begin with, assume the existence of a discount rate.»

Boys meet world, and it wants a piece of their action.

Limousine leftists throw in the towel

"La France fait partie des pays européens ayant le record de la précarité au travail ...", Arnaud Montebourg, SubCommandante of the 5th arrondissement column insurgents NPS (Nouveau Parti Socialiste) who wants to be the kingmaker at the upcoming Socialist Party Bloodfest in November. Hey, as long as they are busy ripping themselves to shreds there really isn't any reason to stop them.

N'en déplaise aux vieux pédés aigris du 8ème arrondissement, les thèses sur l'épuisement de la Fwance et l'exode de ses chères têtes blondes circulent de plus en plus à gôche.

Camille Paglia on the state of western man

From an interview of Camille Paglia by Robert Birnbaum:

RB: Hold on a second. Your point that a significant social security, as the consensus has produced in Europe and Scandinavia, leads to stagnation

CP: Forty percent of a paycheck over there is taken by the government. The government does everything. People rely on the government to do everything. And I do believe there is a slow decline in creativity that is observable in Europe over the last 40 years.

Read it all here.

No. 19 on Amazon and No. 17 on New York Times bestsellers lists

La FranSSe

Enjoy. (Windows Media 6MB: NOT work safe, unless you are working in my office in which case you can break out the Jameson and turn 'dat shit up)

Alfred E. Chirak

Great Britain is coming to grips with the 5th column in its midsts. La Fwance sticks with its 'What, me worry?' attitude.

Come out with your hands up, you're surrounded!

La Fwance : never working hard and always hardly working

This from a country obsessed with a 35 hour work loafing-off week that can't even provide jobs for it's young. Et les chères têtes blondes qui s'expatrient, cela provoque des aigreurs chez les vieux pédés nantis.

Why don't the Iraqis go on vacation like everyone else?

'Concern' is cause enough for lawsuit threats

Islam Online, reports on a fit of class-warfare-like oversensitivity. Have no fear, folks, the accuser is muttle headed and easily cowed:

" 'A right-wing newspaper, for instance, launched a ferocious campaign against Pakistanis in France and placed them in one basket, calling them a 'cause for concern.' "

The whole bit of kabuki theater is exactly what hasn't happened in the U.S. as much as the Bezerkley-oid dimwits would like to see.

And use.

Unhinged

Talking like the French.

See how useful their advice was?

The only way to preserve peace is to be a pacifist and not provoke aggression by doing anything about terror at all. What the terror prone need is to be loved and understood, and for everyone to pretend that even though they kidnap and murder that they wouldn’t hurt a fly. That way maybe they won't.

please, just one more head tilt... please?

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Moonbat Central reports that Tom Hayden wants to reward a small number of terrorists in Iraq with disproportionate influence. Note how numb one can be to the language he uses, how the vocabulary is part of the stale stock of those trying to look reasonable, how the consequences don’t seem evident. That “Peace Envoy” would be a liason to terrorists. Presumably actions by the US government would have to be negotiated/ cleared with them for fear of a “lack of peace” in Iraq at first and then as their access becomes obvious, everywhere else. Sort of creates an Ambassador for Global Jihad and Terror position to deal with this “Peace Envoy”, as if the lawyers who were sent to aid the delegates to Iraq’s constitutional convention weren’t.

You know what they say... One postcard represents 25 voters, one phone call 40, one letter 60, and one terror attack represents every college aged radical and their balding wannabes. Who are becoming more maudlin by the minute.

Who would die for vaporware?

Because that's what the EU is. "... And people die for Europe, and have died.", Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer of Germany. Correction Herr Chocolate Maker Fudgepacker, people have died because of Europe. Not exactly the same thing.

29 mai, Paris, Fwance: Le 'Soft Power zéropéen' (© Emmanuel Todd), renvoyé illico presto dans les choux de Bruxelles par les Pieds Nickelés (Attac, Le Monde Diplo, et José Bové). La gôche caviar du VIII arrondissement n'a que ses yeux pour pleurer, mais les groupies fudgepackers de Monsieur Todd qui se dandinent un peu partout au Greenwich Village peuvent s'envoyer les livres d'Emmanuel Todd à des prix cassés.

Bewildering European Tourists since 2001

If they can even travel at all.

- Thankya-vur-much to Courbu for the link.

Derby Does Paris

Does the attitude sound familiar?

From an NRO blog entry by John Derbyshire

«[E-mail received] Dear Madam or Sir---You stay in our hotel last week in the room 34 and you did not live the key when you live. You pay your bill and just left whitout leving the key at the front desk. I will just ask you to be very kind and send back the key because since you live the room is close, we dont have any other key to open that door I am waiting to hear about you and I hope you will send back the key to the hotel. ---HOTEL COMFORT SAINT PIERRE, 10 RUE DE CLIGNANCOURT, 75018 PARIS

[Derb] Dear Sir---I have no idea what happened to the key. I do not have it. I checked all my luggage. I asked my family -- they do not know where your key is. We just do not know. Is it not usual for hotels to keep a master key for all their rooms?

[E-mail received] Dear sir---I am the one who was there when you check out and i am sure that you did not live the key, your wife and children was near the door only you was in the front desk to paid your bild yoou did not live the key. You close the door whitoout living the key it true and I dont have any reason to lie and now it is a very big deal for me and the manager. Please try to have a look one more time sorry to border you but it verry important to me to find back that key. Sincerly yours

[Derb] (1) We don't have your key. We have all checked. (2) In 40 years of traveling around the world, I have never experienced so much fuss about a room key. Hotels keep master keys or duplicates. That is basic hotel management. Hotel guests never think about keys. If I lose a key, the hotel gives me a replacement. That is how it is, all over the world. (3) If keys are so very important to you, then you should take great care that guests hand them in before leaving. (4) Are there no locksmiths in Montmartre? (5) If you and your manager are being criticized and persecuted by your superiors, I shall do what I can to help. It is not right for employees to suffer because of bad company policies. Please refer your superiors to me, and I shall try to pacify them. However, the fundamental problem here is not my carelessness, or yours. The fundamental problem is bad hotel management.»

- Merci buckets to Val.

Squeal like a pig!

Typical French family gathering.

Non, je ne regrette rien!


Le retour de Piètre Croupion

Hard Power

Un destin manifeste, ça se forge.

Europe taking its' football and going home

Most of the world thinks the Kyoto Protocols are useless and its' proponents are hypocrites:

«One would expect those sincerely concerned about the anthropogenic greenhouse effect to welcome the news of the new Partnership, at the very least because it provides a framework to work together with the biggest emitters who are not included or have not ratified the Kyoto Protocol. Unfortunately the reaction was cold.»

Tant mieux, spanky. They can do less harm that way.

'Peace' efforts coming home to roost

UPDATE - a comment exchange:

[Mikey] Why is the only person making a scene in the upper picture a caucasian? And did she(?) get those straight pearly white teeth from a nice Jewish Othodontist?

[Braithwaite Prendergast] Mikey: You are very perceptive for one who has lived only one lifetime. The picture is from a series showing Ms. Heather Goodenough's second-grade class in al-Dasrah. The children are enjoying her dramatization of "The Wolf and the Seven Kids." They especially love this part when Mother Goat comes home to find her children missing. The fact that Heather's braces were prescribed by Dr. Milton Rich, of Taskerville, Long Island, is not pertinent.

A call to action for America: roast the damned bird once and for all

Would you want the government owning a newspaper to carry its’ views?

Peace, Paradise Flourishing in Gaza

Now that the great cause of evil in the universe is pulling out of Gaza, the charming native peace-lovers are dancing around the maypole and dreaming of peace with all of the best wishes of their great friends around the world.

We’re talkin’ free love! Vavoom!

Incest almost rising to the level of the Canadian Liberal Party...

Mark Steyn is at it again:

«You'll recall that Kofi Annan's son Kojo - who had a $30,000-a-year job but managed to find a spare quarter-million dollars sitting around to invest in a Swiss football club -
...
The actual head of the Oil-for-Food racket, Kofi sidekick Benon Sevan, has resigned, having hitherto insisted that a mysterious six-figure sum in his bank account was a gift from his elderly aunt, a lady of modest means who lived in a two-room flat back in Cyprus.
...
Despite the current investigations into his brother, his son, his son's best friend, his former chief of staff, his procurement officer and the executive director of the UN's biggest ever programme, the Secretary-General insists he remains committed to staying on and tackling the important work of "reforming" the UN.
...
But not to worry. To demonstrate his ongoing commitment to "reform", Kofi Annan has now put his Deputy- Secretary-General, Louise Frechette, another Canadian, in charge of the "reform agenda". In a February report by Mr Volcker's committee, Mme Frechette is said to have helped Mr Sevan block efforts to bring details of the Oil-for-Food boondoggle before the Security Council.»

They used to resist scrutiny, then they resisted the mere use of the word 'reform', then they tried to put a happy face on it, not they are in denial.

What will it take to make it an honest institution? The only reason people in large parts of the world like it is because as ridiculous as it is, it "functions" only slightly more transparently then their own Colonels and Dear Leaders.

Don't leave 'em dick

Harry Gives 'em Hell

The Guardian is quickly becoming Al-Queda’s unwitting house organ. David of the Harry’s Place blog noted on a cursory look at an article by “a leading exiled Saudi dissident” by the name of Sa’ad al-Faqih, that all was not well.

Al-faqih’s organization has provided material support to Al-Queda, and the Guardian only acts on matters of that gravity which someone draws the curtains to let some light in.

«Al-Faqih has maintained associations with the al Qaida network since the mid-1990s, including with Khaled al Fawwaz, who acted as UBL's de facto representative in the United Kingdom and was associated with the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings. At the U.S. trial of the East African embassy bombers, prosecutors provided evidence that MIRA and al-Faqih paid for a satellite phone that al Fawwaz passed on to UBL, who allegedly used it to help carry out the attacks.»

Al-Faqih is a bundle of contradictions. In evasive responses given in an interview, he has made himself out to be a liberal reformer while supporting those who attack it, spinning even a Wikipedia writer. He lives in a society that accepts dissent, but advocates for the creation of a social system that would behead any non-conformer as an apostate. Make a note of the date. The Guardian should know better than to give him a platform to advance his cause, and not letting on to their readers of the man’s ties.

Well done, David. Well done indeed. Nothing else will keep a paper honest.

However the phone doesn't stop there:

«Tarik Hamdi, 43, a naturalized U.S. citizen who had been living in Herndon, is believed to be out of the country and has not been arrested, said Dean Boyd, a spokesman with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement division of the Homeland Security Department.

Hamdi delivered a satellite phone battery to a Bin Laden aide while he was in Afghanistan in May 1998 helping to set up an interview for ABC News, according to an affidavit by David Kane, an agent with the immigration division. Bin Laden used that phone in connection with the deadly bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that year, according to the affidavit, which was in support of a 2002 search warrant and was unsealed last week.

ABC News did not respond to a request for more information about its relationship with Hamdi.»

Thanks, sparky. The only other method of near untracable communcation involves having a large uplink dish, and riding one's own telephone traffic on a marginal, unmonitored frequency on a satellite without the operator's concent, a method south american drug barons were fond of, but could still be caught out at.

Even if it only seems like a damn phone, and a damn battery, it's enablement.

Ces gens-là, auront toujours une excuse pour recourir au terrorisme

Les madrasas électroniques, bombes furtives téléguidées par des ondes haineuses, qui arrosent les banlieues zéropéennes.

Deafening silence from Urine-Peein' talking heads	Silence assourdissant de la part des claquemerdes dans l'Urinoir zéropéen
Something you will NEVER see the French do in Africa.	Vous ne verrez JAMAIS ça de la part de la Fwance en Afrique.

"Moderate" muslims?

When pigs will fly.

The French laugh about what they have forgotten

I'm assuming that Plantu intended for the lady at the lower right represent Cindy Sheehan. What the French have forgotten, somewhere in the morass of their pacifist humanist illusionary soft power society, is that for something to be sacred you have to have sacrifice.

When being a poodle most of the time just isn’t enough...

The Muslim Council of Britain, the default face of moderation in the UK has wagged it’s finger at the producers of BBC’s Panorama program. The installment is said to ask the question whether or not Islamic organization and mosque councils in the UK can address the growth of extremism in their own membership. Of course the first word was ‘bias’.
It wasn’t even 6 days later that leftists howled about non-existent cencorship at the Beeb, which contrary to the World Socialist’s claim, uniformly censors or mitigates mainstream views.

«In a letter to Director General Mark Thompson, Sir Iqbal states: "The Panorama team is more interested in furthering a pro-Israeli agenda than assessing the work of Muslim organisations in the UK."

It goes on to suggest that the BBC is being manipulated by "highly placed supporters of Israel".»

He said this as if there aren’t any highly placed opponents to Israel at the BBC. The other foolish thing about it is that there is no hint that Israel is discussed in the program at all. The MCB mentions it, in all likelihood, because they have been conditioned by years of propaganda into dwelling on this pet peeve of theirs.

In response, a few people at the BBC have located a spine somewhere in the attic at Broadcast House:

«However, Ware told the BBC's staff magazine Ariel such a claim was "ludicrous". He added: "They haven't seen it; we haven't finished editing it.»

Next thing you know, someone will get worked up about the name of their newsletter, and not because it resembles the name of a laundry detergent that smells slightly of quick-lime and lye.

Nick Cohen to the left: Smell You Later!

Smart people are leaving that leftist collection of fetishes and its’ attendant terminal anger for the sake of pacifism behind.
Via Tim Bleeyah – Guardian columnist Nick Cohen leaves the hive mind of the left behind, for good, and with his dignity intact:

«As in the 1930s, there's little doubt that few apart from George Galloway and others in the gruesome leadership of the anti-war movement were keen on saluting Saddam Hussein. The reason why one million people marched through London without one mounting a platform to express solidarity with the victims of fascism was that it never occurred to them that there were people in Iraq who shared their values.
…
On the other hand when confronted with a movement of contemporary imperialism - Islamism wants an empire from the Philippines to Gibraltar - and which is tyrannical, homophobic, misogynist, racist and homicidal to boot, they feel it is valid because it is against Western culture. It expresses its feelings in a regrettably brutal manner perhaps, but that can't hide its authenticity.

The result of this inversion of principles has been that liberals can't form alliances with the victims of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan or Iraq any more than the Auden generation could form alliances with the victims of Stalinism.

If the Archbishop of Canterbury were to suggest [that those who renounce Islam should be executed…] the same treatment for renegade Christians all hell would break loose. But as the bigotry comes from 'the other' there is silence.
…
the London bombs have added a practical reason for breaking with the consensus: now they're trying to kill us. Even if people think that the Iraq war has made Britain a bigger target, they are still confronted with a fascistic cult of murder and self-murder which allows no compromise.

The thing to watch for with fellow travellers is what shocks them into pulling the emergency cord and jumping off the train. I know some will stay on to the terminus, and when the man with the rucksack explodes his bomb their dying words will be: 'It's not your fault. I blame Tony Blair.'»

What? Nu? Again?!?

The leading candidate of the Linke Partei™©, Gregor Gysi recently appeared in an amusing interview on German TV to make Gerhard Schröder (who at present is expected to lose the upcoming election) an offer he can't refuse: adopt the platform of the generically named Links Partei, get its' 10 expected percentage points in the upcoming election, and remain Chancellor. Having called Schröder a "liberal" in the neo-con evil baby eating sense (yeah right), the platform basically involves taxing large businesses out of existence to fund the social welfare state which created so the unemployment because it also involves taxing the job creation base out of existence.

It's political blackmail to indulge Schröder's hunger for power, just as it had once with the Greens. The results were policy pandemonium worthy of Emperor Nero's ill-timed violin recital. I'm sure ol' Gerhard is thinking "win this one and deal with these whackos later", but if he cared for his country he should either try to win a majority for his party without the ball-and-chain of the left's poverty-creating view of the world. It failed for 30 years in the GDR, why would the former PDS types who are not Linkster want to try it again? Then again, maybe a non-functioning state could do less harm, but it's doubtful.

They still seem to be fighting the old fights. To illustrate Gysi's party’s lack of depth, he doesn't want to tax much more the small businesses because they're already hurting, and made up of people. Questions: what are big businesses made up from? Robots? Their economy is geared toward big business as a fundamental base of job creation - why try and kill it with this small-minded niedkultur (or culture of envy)?

Besides, how many people do you know who work for a poor person?
His theory displays a simplistic and shallow view of how to be humane (never teaching a man to fish to cover the cost of giving away another fish), and a kind of economics based on his own emotions, or a desire to be though compassionate at the expense of a generation's future. In one interview I saw, he simply refused to discuss economics, citing that he didn't want Germany to become Britain, the US, France, or Sweden.

France and Sweden are neo-liberals?

The other thing he wants to tax (even further, considering the "progressive" taxation structure) is to stick their thumb in the pie of investments, stocks, instruments, and market transactions. The sunniest part of this job-killing scenario is that what investors there are will be motivated to "do a Granny." They'll invest in small check dividend paying instruments instead of market stocks that give businesses the capital they need to by the plant and equipment that creates jobs. It's downright brilliant if you want to sabotage the future of a nation of 80 million people. And that's the sunnier part. The cloudier part results in shrinking Europe's GDP at bad time. Building a über-mega-superstate needs either a population that's thoroughly employed and feels stable, or brown shirts, Molotov cocktails, and broken windows. Economic expansion means more people are working and fewer people in need of a Government's "love". Let's hope they don't find themselves only having option 2.

Clinton's success in the US, as well as the Clark's success in New Zealand depended entirely on implementing right wing policies. The PDS rhetoric amounts to red meat for a population frustrated with malaise. It's a shame that it will bring them even more of it than before.

Sandbox Brinksmanship in Europa

Where geopolitics occasionally rises to the importance of extreme knitting, Bundesliga, and Formula 1.

An Expatica Opinion on the state of relations between the U.S. and France closed their loose roundup by pointing out what Le Figaro printed in introducing Washington’s new Ambassador to Paris:

«On August 3, Le Figaro ran an op-ed piece from M Stapleton, mostly the expected buttering-up operation, but including this paragraph towards the end:
"Public opinion polls show that the French public tends to hold negative perceptions of US foreign policy, and some misperceptions about basic American values and society. It is important for Americans to understand those criticisms..."»

Um, no – not really. U.S. policy cares about what happens in the world, as well as what American think. The French public does not get a greater vote in America than America does.
Why, I wonder, are French misperceptions of the U.S. anything that the U.S. needs to do anything about anyway?

«But at the very least, you know darn well the oh-so-suave Dominique de Villepin is making fun of Bolton's moustache. When de Villepin was fighting with Colin Powell, at least he could have nothing to say about Powell's grooming.»

So what?

There’s always SOMETHING to say. For effective people it's more a matter of what that actually is. Do you think he would actually waste the thought on a matter of appearance? He seemed to have no problems with Arafat who seemed to resemble a woodland creature, and Robert Mugabe who isn’t just evil, but ugly enough to make children cry.

Repeating the hobgoblins of the whiny socialist’s mind, our “Expatican” writer is clearly tuned in to the media spin-and-buzz in France to a greater degree than to the U.S. as well. His repetition of the negative view held by John Bolton isn’t just held by the French, it’s held by partisan leftist trying to anything the White House does. They are also the source of information they have of John Bolton in France.

«What's more, the United States has also expressed "enormous scepticism" of Europe's recent handling of Iran and its nuclear programme, according to a French diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity just this week to the French press about ongoing negotiations between Iran and a British/French/German delegation.»

Just remember that Gerhard Shroeder is running for office. Shorty will not be speaking with his own mind for a while.

What’s more is that the subject of Iran’s weapons program actually does matter. If anyone thinks that the U.S. government can be shooshed and bullied into not saying anything for fear of spoiling anyones’ fun, they clearly need to put the bong down and realize that the Iranians are buying enough time to roll out warhead number one. Clinton tried precisely what the fab-EU3 are doing with Iran, and it was a failure except in a Clinton White House press release.

Albright and Clinton basically gave Japan the opportunity to break another record, and become the only nation to be nuked more than twice.

Were the U.S. press really like the French and German press, they would only report stories like this one:
«Lille - A dozen firemen were required to lift a 200kg man out of his home»

And then sit around and grumble:

Hmph...

Typical...