Pamela’s sage advice

You would have thought we were at a large football game the way the locals and Iraqi soldiers were clapping and yelling…

…You would have thought we were at a large football game the way the locals and Iraqi soldiers were clapping and yelling after we [bombed the hell out of the idiot Muj]

writes a Marine in a post (Shookhran to Rhomp) that lends little credence to either the Iraqi population or members of the military (the people most concerned by Bush's decision to invade Saddam's Iraq, after all) feeling any kind of sympathy for Western Bush-bashing peace activists and war protesters (the type of which you find in the MSM).

Yes I said locals because the vast majority of civilians know we are here to help and they know the MUJ that come from different cities or even countries are here to disrupt their lives. Of course you would not know this as the MSM refuses to leave the Green Zone to report on more then just deaths.

Merci à Guillaume et à sa bande de potes no kpotes

Whoda thunk it? Prises de risque chez les pédés ? L'homosexualité est un comportement à risque.

I’m mad.

Harrukmpf. Piffle.

Mad, mad, mad. I’m Fuming.

«Un "petit" Guantanamo au Kosovo ?»
«A “small” Gitmo in Kosovo?»

It’s freaking EMPTY! FILL it, dangnabbit! And it wasn’t even secret! TF1 goes on to find a story where there frankly isn't one:

«"There is no secret prison at the Bondsteel Camp. It’s publicly known that KFOR has a prison here", said the spokesman of the American troops in Kosovo, commander Michael Wunn on Saturday. "the prison is managed by soldiers of the American military police force. Currently nobody is held there ", underlined Wunn. "the prison at Bondsteel is under the command of General John Harrel, who’s brigade is attached to KFOR.»

TF1 referred to Wunn as a Commander, which is amusing since he is a civilian working as a spokesman under the Iowa Army National Guard, where the rank of “Commander” doesn’t exist anyway. It’s also unlikely that a Public Affairs Officer would be running a detention camp.

But hey, who am I to quibble about facts. Their other horror had to do with the fact that there were once some bearded men imprisoned there, some of whom would read the Koran.

Will they find their little shop of horrors? Will reporting on this thing for the next 5 years turn into a nice little meal ticket? Tune in next week...

“I saw a sign that said ‘Drink Canada Dry’ so I did.”

Biased BBC notes that wall to wall coverage for George Best (who is still dead) has pre-empted weather reports. How charming.

More to the point why does the BBC think that somewhere, out there, on a perfectly regular 24 hour pattern, that there is only one “big story” that they can flog? Or they just plain lazy?

Yesterday, “World (ooh la la) ‘ave Your Say” interviewed a guy from Al-Jazeera about the mythical memo that the mirror cocked up reported (what they called) were it’s ”supposed contents”. Also interviewed was some British blogger who insisted that the memo must really exist, because the White House dismissed the story, and because no. 10 was enraged enough by the fabrication that they want to bring on legal proceedings. And while we’re talking around the matter and pretending that the 4th estate is legitimate ruling entity, by the way, have you stopped beating you wife?

BBC’s “World (that word is just SO global) Have Your Say” refused to venture into this territory: what if the whole stinking thing was ginned-up? Hasn’t anyone seen this memo? If the Mirror (a rather trashy tabloid) has a source, why are they anonymous and why wont they explain or elaborate of the affair?

Since reality is too much to bear and reporting an uncorroborated rumor is more appealing, why not then, like an alcoholic who can’t control themselves, skip the more pedestrian reports of backchecked facts in favor of just what it is you WANT to do? It’s called emotional adolescence. It’s characterized by an inability or a struggle with self-restrain. The very same thing that did in Best. Freud would have a field day with the beeb.

M-cRAP

When Brixton was rocked by riots in the early 1980s, the French preSS screamed "race riot". When Los Angeles was rocked by riots in the early 1990s, the French preSS screamed "race riot". When young French Muslims rock the entire country during 3 weeks of rioting, the French preSS strictly forbids the slightest reference to the ethnic-religious nature of the events. Alain Finkielkraut is hung out to dry by the French preSS because he called a cat a cat. A rat is a rat as well, and in this case the rat is the MRAP. Si un blanc respire, le MRAP juge aussitôt qu'il s'agit d'un acte raciste. But Finky fights back.

MRAP's anti-racist hate speech : Terminate ... with extreme discretion

Passport? Wait, it's in my bomb belt.

Communism must always be stopped at all costs

Now we learn how the ex-Soviet Union planned to sacrifice Poland.

Encore un qui est persécuté pour avoir déboulonner ces saints de pacotille, misérables charognards encore et toujours vénérés par les zayatollahs zumanistes laïques.

What Kind of Decisions Might Be the Best to Make?

The editor of the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics is out with another book.

David R Henderson's The Joy of Freedom explained economics so succinctly and in such eye-opening terms that in 2003, I called it my major read of the year.

Needless to say, I immediately shopping-carted his and Charles L Hooper's Making Great Decisions in Business and Life.

The Zeropean gift that keeps on giving

One ism that continues to thrive. Zeropeans portraying American businessmen as gold toothed, hook nosed, bloodsuckers. Remind you of anything?

Le topo sera donnée ici dès le 10 décembre.

Ce sont toujours des banlieues rouges ... à sang pour sang

Avant de partir sur la planète MaBoule avec son nouveau pote Dieudonné, Alain Soral avait fourni cette analyse sur la dérive des banlieues dans son livre 'Abécédaire de la bêtise ambiante' (Éditions Blanche, 2002).

Des banlieues rouges aux banlieues beurs

Je me souviens de la banlieue populaire des années 60 ; issus de l’exode rural et de l’immigration, les travailleurs y vivaient en bonne intelligence, et dans le plein emploi aux usines Renault de Billancourt tout près.

Aucun racisme contre les anciens immigrés ; dans cette cité-dortoir sans passé, tous étaient fiers d’être originaires d’un ailleurs historique : breton, savoyard, italien, espagnol, polonais... Petite nuance pour les Noirs africains qu’on trouvait rigolos (comme dans Tintin au Congo) ; les Antillais un peu cons qui ne rêvaient que d’astiquer leur BM d’occase le dimanche sur le parking. Les seuls qui posaient problème, déjà, c’étaient les Algériens qui se tenaient à l’écart dans la solitude, la peur, l’islam et la Sonacotra, et dont les jeunes, peu nombreux encore, foutaient déjà la merde : agressions de postiers, glaviots, insultes, bagarres...

Mais ce mélange tenait, fraternel, grâce à l’idéologie du travailleur collectif ; le respect de celui qu’on côtoie tous les jours sur le lieu de travail ; le travail partagé au quotidien qui rapproche les gens et abolit les préjugés. Cette solidarité ouvrière, internationaliste, inculquée par le Parti, qui s’opposait à l’ethnisme de droite aujourd’hui en vigueur chez tous les gauchistes. Un petit peuple des banlieues structurellement moins raciste que les petits-bourgeois et les commerçants ; quant aux grands bourgeois qui vivaient ailleurs, pour eux comme toujours la banlieue c’était du cinéma, voire de la science-fiction.

Alors que s’est-il passé ?

Crise du pétrole de 1973 et raréfaction de l’emploi, clament les gauchistes, marxistes quand ça les arrange.

Pourquoi la raréfaction de l’emploi aurait-elle dissous la morale ouvrière, quand la morale ouvrière, faite de conscience et de solidarité de classe, venait justement de sa lutte contre la misère ?

En général c’est plutôt l’embourgeoisement qui dissout la morale et les solidarités (les li-li-bo-bos en savent quelque chose). Or, le moins qu’on puisse dire c’est qu’en banlieue, depuis 1973, il n’y a pas eu embourgeoisement !

Le vrai changement vint du « regroupement familial », décrété par Giscard en 1974.

Alors qu’avec le « premier choc pétrolier », l’emploi devenait rare et l’immigration beaucoup moins nécessaire à l’économie nationale ; alors que la continuation de la politique gaullienne eût été de renvoyer chez eux ces travailleurs exploités, avec pécule et savoir-faire, le gouvernement de droite de l’époque, contre toute logique, décréta l’aberrant « regroupement familial ». Dorénavant ces travailleurs solitaires, maintenus jusque-là isolés de la population française, auraient le droit de faire venir leurs femmes, et tous les fils qui naîtraient de ces esclaves humiliés et de leurs épouses brutalement déportées deviendraient français !

Bombe à retardement, quand on songe que tout ces z’y va qui pourrissent aujourd’hui l’ambiance seraient encore dans les couilles de leur père !

Décision étrange, prétendument humaniste, qui a changé pour toujours le visage de la France et qui est peut-être en train de la foutre en l’air.

Bêtise ou... stratégie ?

Une fois de plus la bourgeoisie française, qui vit depuis toujours dans la terreur de son peuple de gauche (1793, 1848, 1871, Pétain...), choisit la politique du pire pour ne pas avoir à rogner sa rente et partager les richesses...

Le regroupement familial ne fut pas une naïveté humaniste de grand bourgeois qui plane, mais un projet pervers, dégueulasse : transformer les banlieues rouges à très forte conscience et solidarité de classe (avec un PCF à 30 %) en banlieues beurs.

Car on ne dira jamais assez à quel point la maghrébisation, l’africanisation, la tiers-mon-disation de la France ont fait baisser vertigineusement le niveau de civisme et de civilité de la population française. À quel point ce recul du niveau de conscience démocratique fut voulu par le patronat et le pouvoir : des voyous et des abrutis plutôt que des ouvriers conscients de leurs droits... et de leurs devoirs. Il y eut un procès Pétain, on peut rêver d’un procès Giscard.

Of course, and this goes without saying but is said in all seriousness, aliens from outer space should fully benefit from the Geneva Convention

Canadian ex-Defense Minister says that the future American moon base will be used to attack aliens and that the warmongering George Bush is going to get the planet involved in an intergalactic war.

Secret US prison in Kosovo "ressemblait à une reconstitution de Guantanamo en plus petit"

... mais pourquoi en plus petit ?

Racaille

One more misunderstood suburban violent animal that should be made the subject of preferential treatment put out of his misery.

What the Left Hates

If you want to understand the Left, most of what you need to know can be summarized thus: The Left hates inequality, not evil

writes Dennis Prager.

The press in Iraq: "That's not my job"

Liberals seem always to believe that America will lose its wars, and when it doesn't, that it should

writes Mona Charen as she also describes, perhaps unwittingly, the views of the MSE (mainstream Europeans).

…one does not sense that members of the military share the belief so widespread in the press and Congress that the Iraq war is going very badly and that the original decision to fight was a mistake.

One Marine, Sgt. Todd Bowers, who did two tours in Iraq, described the attitude of many press types. "They didn't want to talk to us." Why? I asked. "Because we were gung-ho for the mission." Bowers, who was saved from grievous injury when a bullet lodged in the sight of his rifle (a sight his father had purchased for him), is chary about the press.

In his first tour, he noticed that members of the press were reluctant to photograph Iraqis laughing, giving the thumbs up sign, or cheering. Yet Bowers saw plenty that would have made fine snapshots. In Baghdad, Al Kut and Al-Nasiriyah, Bowers reported no signs of anti-American feeling at all among Iraqis.

Fallujah, of course, was different, as the city was a hotbed of terrorism, and the battle of Fallujah was one of the fiercest engagements of the war. During the battle, Bowers found himself sharing a ride with an embedded reporter for the AP. He was asked what he thought of the destruction. Bowers responded that it was "Incredible, overwhelming. But it definitely had to be done." He also stressed that because the enemy had fought so dirty, tough calls had to be made. Later, he saw himself quoted in newspapers around the country to the effect that the destruction was "overwhelming" as if he could not cope. He had also made some anodyne remarks about rebuilding the damaged areas of the city, and responded "Where to begin?" when asked about the plans. He was speaking of the water treatment plants, medical facilities, and schools American forces were about to help build, but his comments were offered as evidence of the futility of the situation -- the very opposite of this eager Marine's intent.

It's a one way street

Another rock in the left's multicultural crack-pipe.

New Kid on the Blog

There is a new kid on the blog, we are informed by Alexandre Leupin. Its name is Extreme Center, and although the first (brilliant) post is in French, the blog is bilingual...

The subhead is a wink to Asterix albums:

The entire planet has been invaded by totalitarianism. Entire? No! A cyber-village of extreme-center militants is still resisting the invaders. And life ain't always easy for the garrisons of Trotskyists, Islamists, anti-globalists, anti-Americans, and anti-Semites in the entrenched fortresses of Le Monde and Libération, from the Quai d'Orsay to Madrid.

Est-ce vraiment la culture de la rue?

Stupid commie rapper (who raps like it’s 1989) “takes on” Sarkozy. SELLING CDs. Hmph! How dare he, doesn’t he know that property is THEFT?

Oddly enough the story listed right next to it is about the French media spinning the riots, featuring none other than Arrêt sur l'image composite of CNN, Bill O’Reilly, and other lefty American media bullshit artists who deserve it anyway.

Le Pourriel International

Can you smell that, son? Can you smell the mendacity?:

George W. Bush’s second term

«Could one call the contestable election similar to 2000, elected by a larger margin in November 2004 against the democrat John Kerry, which kept George W Bush in office be called dransfoming or dividing? Voted in by plebiscite by a puritanical America, he promises to put in place the moral values was met with broad recognition by the voters of the "Bible Belt", the center and the south of the country where Christian fundamentalism thrives. In a political-chocolate éclair of a crusade, he is openly opposed to homosexuals, abortion, and gun control. As well the lowering of taxes and the removal of certain social help, the country pays increasing attention to very rich people, but also stripped much more from others.

The United States is always at war: in Iraq, of course, but also against terrorism, including on their own ground. During the election campaign, George Bush was committed to renewing the "Patriot Act", the legislation which reinforces the safety and the monitoring of the territory, and makes it harder to become an American citizen. Today’s United States which is isolationist, succeeded in ignoring the public opinions of the whole world, not only because of the war in Iraq, but also by refusing, for example, to sign the Kyoto protocol.»

How deeply, deeply irrational. When was the last time you actually heard Bush talk about abortion? Or actually TOOK something AWAY from the poor? The mindset comes from a place where in state of total dependency on the state, poverty is a permanent banishment, not a phase of ones’ life. In short, there is nothing in Courrier International’s dossier on Bush which is factual. Even their citations and “facts” are founded on a virulent hatred which makes them ignorant of detail and human depth.

I’m reminded of a Briton telling us about her experiences with anti-Americanism in London. It’s patently obvious where it comes from, and it’s caring, humane, concerned origins:

«Exactly one month ago today, I was traveling on a London bus when a well-dressed woman boarded with her equally-respectable son in his school uniform. Ahead of her was an elderly American woman, who said, ‘I beg your pardon, I didn’t mean to bang into you.’ This prompted a tirade from the Englishwoman -- let’s call her Lady E -- that resembled a verbal assault by a brownshirt against a hapless Jewish pedestrian in 1933. The American -- call her Mrs. A -- sat down and cowered as the tirade continued: ‘I rejoice every time I hear of another American soldier dying! You people all deserve to die in another 9/11. You are destroying the world.’ Mrs A fought back: ‘I personally am NOT destroying the world.’ This only provoked Lady E more, and as the bus driver and passengers laughed, she screamed into the American’s face ‘I wish every one of you would leave this country and not set foot in it ever again,’ and Mrs A began to wince, crying. ‘Thank you for ruining my day and my trip.’ At this point Lady E lunged at the American and began to shake her. I jumped up and shouted at the top of my voice for the driver to stop and for her to leave the woman alone, prompting Lady E to come over to me and grab me. ‘Another bloody American accent! You come here and think you can strut about, well, you are scum.’ Thankfully, the woman next to me pushed her away. I left the bus as the American woman sat sobbing.

[. . .]

Getting back, however, to the ’Independent’ and ’Guardian’ reading classes, my hunch is that the daily dose of relentless America-bashing in the European media, combined with the abundance of criticism of Israel has created an atmosphere of anger and hostility that for the first time in my lifetime makes me fearful for my safety in my beloved adopted country, Great Britain. The anger of the video manager went beyond a whining session. He was physically smoldering every time he said ‘Jewish,’ Israel’ or ‘Holocaust’ ( this is now the tool used by more than one person I have encountered in polite circles to accuse Jews of ‘manufacturing an excuse’ for a state). The fury of the otherwise elegant woman on the bus fell just short of serious assault.»

But not among the Guardian and Indy reading set. No, shouting in the face of a little old lady, projecting your irrational hatred on the first available place to deposit the darkest part of your spirit, this is “brave”, and “rebellious”.

No Mention of China, Cuba, and North Korea

Just when I think Le Monde cannot surprize me any more, the newspaper of reference manages to do so again.

In a long, in-depth (sic) page 2 analysis of the internet debate going on in Tunis, Stéphane Foucart manages to castigate America's dominance of the internet, pointing out its isolation vis-à-vis "the crushing majority of the 176 countries present".

Not once does he mention the fact that dicatatorial governments are dead set against a system that rather enhances freedom of speech than undermines it, let alone that France is, willingly or not, aligned with such régimes...

Thank God for some readers' reactions…

Worth a second look

Maurice G. Dantec’s appearance on Thierry Ardisson’s goofy program is worth a second look now that Les Cités are in their "no fly zone" state of armistice. It dates to 3 September 2005, and has that usual multi-culti pedantry as a background which Dantec kicks down in short order. Ardisson does his best to chit-chat by talking down to Quebecers because of their accents, now that Dantec has moved to Quebec. He then ends up dragging in the wrong counterpoint-point-man (Malek Chebel) to make the argument Ardisson’s… An indignity to Chebal and Dantec likewise, it ended up where it always does: a cherry-picked set-up that leads to a TV-land history scholar rattling on about the 16th century as if it was just yesterday.

Dress it up and call it anthropology, even "peace studies" if you must - it makes no difference. It's driven by tokenism replacing the concept of a thesis. That’s the generic and intellectually lazy Ardisson formula: when one point is made, set-up a counterpoint that really doesn’t have anything to do with it, but is loosely related due to a few shared adjectives, and maybe the occasional noun.

The viewing audience that’s had its’ brain softened by years of this tripe ends up thinking that they witnessed some kind of greatness. Sometimes this stuff can be as torturous to watch as Katie Couric doing yet another interview with yet another victim of yet another overlooked malady.

Do Not Laugh at Them, Do Not Weep at Them, Do Not Hate Them…

Today is the birthday of Baruch Spinoza, one of whose maxims should be heeded by European hand-wringers more often:

Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand.

(Of course, the Euros have quite a lot of practice with this, where bloody dictators and autocrats are concerned; it is where Americans come in that they invariably laugh, weep, and/or hate.) The Dutch philosopher (1632-1677) also said that

I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.

The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak.

Happiness is a virtue, not its reward.

Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.

If men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil.

Le Monde Calls America's Servicemen "Turkeys"

Taking advantage of the presidential custom of pardoning a turkey on Thanksgiving in his daily "Billet", Le Monde's Éric Fottorino calls America's servicemen in Iraq "turkeys" (or more precisely, Bush's "fall guys").

Needless to say, leftists of his ilk will protest that their anger against George W Bush's alleged cynicism (as the president's being surrounded by children is meant to imply) amount to support for the poor servicemen in question, but given that Dubya enjoys some 80% of support in the armed forces, it is clear that (unless they express support for Bush's opponents) they are turkeys in any case (Thanks to Carine, TV, and Emmanuel for the hyperlinks).

Thank a Soldier Week

Could we really let this day go by without it?

Among the many things Im thankful for today are my family, friends, especially my fellow bloggers, and humor. Today especially I think of the humor of the satirist Art Buchwald, and his explanation of the American and Canadian holiday of Thanksgiving.

Why We Blog — It Is Not Fundamentalism, It Is Not Blind Allegiance to the White House; It Is Common Sense

About a month ago, I got the following email.

I have been meaning to answer it ever since, but have been too busy to do so in an in-depth fashion, not least because I have been preparing the release of my book in the coming days.

Anyway, here is the email.

Hi, how are you? …

There is something about you that embarrasses me.

By one side, the articles in your page are well documented, with lot
of hyper-links, it's cool because you work on the contents and try to
make it clear and easy to understand with the links. It seems to be
written by an intelligent person, and a better work than lot of
so-called journalist do.

But for example when you try to avoid discussions like the one I tried
to start in the comments post when talking about the british or
american soldiers caughted with bomb cars in Iraq, you seem like a
fundamentalist than only believes in what your governement says, and
you don't want to discuss some extrange things that they do (things
that all the governements do in this so corrupt world, we are only
pawns for all them, at least this is my idea).

Maybe it's because you don't want to discuss it in your page, or
because you don't accept that informations or perhaps because you work
for your governement?

In the last case, I should understand your indulgence with them, as a
journalist I will have to match my written oppinions with the
'willing' of the media that will pay me, and I have not to see it as
'inmoral', it's only journalism. Maybe this is the reason that makes
me choose that conflicts and reporting journalism as my choice, to be
far away of the local politics and all that manipulations by all them,
in their 'sacred battle for votes'.

Do you have any specific reason to avoid all this stuff or only you
don't want to speak about such things and that is all?

BTW I just realized that you were an actor and all that. Wow, sure you
had an interesting life, dude.

Feel free to answer, If you don't want to, I will not ask for it in
the comments or nothing similar.

I do feel free to answer. So I will.

And for that matter, I will try avoiding hyperlinks as much as possible.

We, the webmasters of this blog, are supposed to say what we think of — what was it? — American and British soldiers shooting up innocent Iraqi civilians because they thought they were terrorists carrying explosives?

I once wrote a post saying, basically, that George W Bush was the worst leader in the world, and the worst liar, and the head of the most despicable government on the planet.

With the exception…

Of all the rest.

(If you haven't read the Churchill-inspired post before, go read it now. Please.)

Having said that, we are supposed to condemn — who? — Washington, the U.S. Army, the soldier(s) in question, his immediate superiors, his commanding officers?

We do not. Why? Is this because we work for the American government (overtly or covertly)?

I do not. The others (as far as I know) do not.

Are we fundamentalists who believe everything our government says?

No. I think not.

As far as I am concerned, I can see the difference, and I think any reasonable person can see the difference between, on the one hand, a man who in a tight situation causes the death of innocent people because he mistook them for armed thugs he knows are out to kill him and, on the other, a man who sets bombs to deliberately kill both the man just mentioned and innocent, unarmed civilians (i.e., average unarmed Iraqis) around him. Offhand, we can assume that the first man will feel remorse and anger because of what he has done and what has happened, as will his superiors (if only because it will create unpleasant repercussions for them, but that is a powerful incentive indeed), while the second will feel joyful and/or triumphant at what he has done, as will his superiors.

One may not like either situation, I think that a reasonable man (or woman) can see the difference between the two men.

Now, picture your father, or your sister, or your child, if you have one, and imagine he or she is harmed, or even killed, in, say, a car accident. Would you say there is no difference between, on the one hand, a driver and his passengers who are crestfallen or at least rendered numb by the incident, and against whom you can react in some way and, on the other, a driver and a passenger who scoff at the event and may even by laughing heartily about it? Indeed, the latter may have even caused the accident deliberately, because they knew that they had nothing to fear from you, no lawsuits, no nothing, and no punishment to fear from the authorities that they form a part of.

That, my friend, was life under Saddam Hussein.

Think about yourself. Think about your parents, your children, your immediate friends, the people in your neighborhood, your acquaintances.

In what society would you rather live?

In a society where members of the secret police can come, and do come, to your homes and with total impunity, enter your house and take away a parent to be tortured (the sort of torture where they cut out your tongue or amputate your arm at the shoulder), a mother or sister to be raped, a child to be shot in the neck and his body dumped in an unmarked grave?

Or would you rather live in a society where members of a foreign army, a foreign culture, a foreign religion, a foreign race are present, heavily armed, with weapons of war, but they are doing their best to avoid unnecessary casualties and putting all their efforts into targeting armed rebels intent not only on their deaths but on yours. (And no wonder: the latter are the same thugs who, with total impunity, used to sow terror, death, and grief in your community, as described above.)

It's a no-brainer, kid.

Common sense dictates that, no, war is not always the worst of solutions.

This brings us to your question.

Common sense — not blind allegiance to Karl Rove's White House, not fundamentalist patriotism, not zombie-like acceptance of everything Dubya tells us — dictates that a man (a serviceman or other, an American or other) machine-gunning a car because he thinks (and because he has reason to think) that it is a deadly threat to him and his comrades is not as bad as someone deliberately trying to harm (and, thus, to intimidate) innocent, unarmed civilians — whether as members of a terrorist band that needs to do its work stealthily or as members of the aforementioned police force carrying it out under the protection of the régime.

This takes us to a whole new level.

This brings us to the raison d'être of this blog.

Here's the clincher. Common sense would dictate that any third parties, anyone not directly related to the above state of affairs, who cannot, or who will not, see the difference between the two is not someone you can trust to be a honest interlocutor. Common sense would also dictate that something has gone profoundly wrong when whole governments, and basically whole societies, are made to hold just that one (self-serving) opinion.

This blog is reacting to the common "opinions" in Western societies that would have it almost as bad, just as bad, or worse to cause a death by accident than it would through willfull (and state-sanctioned) murder. Or to cause anguish rather than to cause death.

Once, after a speech, one given by Guy Millière, I tried distributing the photos of the remains of two or three victims of Saddam Hussein, and when they arrived before one woman, she spoke up. She refused to look at such pictures, she huffed with more than a touch of pride. Without missing a beat, she then proceeded to tell us she was a human rights worker (!) and, adressing Guy Millière with indignation, asked how could a writer like he countenance a war in which atrocities like those at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo had taken place?

She refused to look at the bones unearthed from Saddam's mass graves. Obviously, she would have been more than happy to gaze at the snapshots taken by Lynndie England's boyfriend. She would have enjoyed validating her righteous anger in that way.

A human rights worker. A European feeling solidarity with the down-trodden. A person grilling a Bush-supporter on why he didn't respond to one example of gross injustice.

A human rights worker willing, and eager, to defend the rights of the men ordered to remove their clothes and walk around on a leash, while ignoring — with pride — the men, women, and children gunned down in Iraq's deserts and mountains. Indeed, the men abused by some Americans against orders were (for the most part, at least) not the same as the innocent, unarmed citizens who were gunned down or otherwise despatched by the Iraqis, they were the very Iraqis firing the weapons, on the orders of their commanders and, indeed, following to the policy of the entire régime.

And she asks Guy, and you ask us, to acknowledge — to bemoan, to castigate, to denounce — America's mistakes or, you warn us (in so amny words), you will think that we are fundamentalists or the dupes or the lackeys of the American government?!

I have a question for you, mi amigo:

¿¡Usted esta loco?!

It is obvious — common sense dictates — that the least one can say is that that European lady doesn't exactly have her priorities straight and that she is applying double standards.

If only these ugly partisan toughts reflected only on her, or on a minority of people. But it is a pattern we have found to be typical and widespread in Europe, permeating the culture and the atmosphere.

A lot of Americans think life in America (because of Bush or in spite of Bush) is relatively better than life in Russia under Putin, life in China under Hu, life in Zimbabwe under Mugabe, or life in Iraq under Saddam.

Of course, you will say. Of course, almost everybody will say.

Sentences like your own ("things that all the governements do in this so corrupt world, we are only pawns for all them"), we hear them all the time.

"Yes, we know Saddam was no choirboy…"

"Yes, of course, Stalin was a terrible monster…"

"Yes all countries lie and use devious tactics…"

"Yes, of course, it would be better to live in America than in Angola…"

"Yes, of course, everybody was out for Saddam's oil…"

But notice that this is said with no way the emotion, the outrage, the contempt, or the mockery reserved for Uncle Sam. Notice how these matter-of-fact platitudes are always followed by a "But" that says that nevertheless, this is not a reason to let Uncle Sam off the hook (or that we should show understanding for his adversaries and for their noble goals)…

So the way European countries speak is not how European countries act. That is not how they speak when, forsaking platitudes, they need to enact policies with meat in them.

Zapatero is hailed for pulling Spanish troops out of Iraq, while… cosying up to Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez.

The same people who rasp with delight because "at least" the French leadership has had les couilles to stand up to Bush think nothing when the same leadership says French policy towards Moscow is to "manage Russian sensibilities" or when it lights the Eiffel Tower in red for the visit of China's president.

If everybody is equally corrupt, and if everybody was after Saddam's oil, why the &#%$#^@*@ did they spend so much time demonstrating against Uncle Sam in the streets and lauding their leadership for having the balls to oppose George W Bush?!

Now, French commentators regularly show up here to ask in a sneering voice, do you believe everything Dubya tells you? Or, do you think everything America does is always good or always right?

The answer is No.

But we know the difference between the American leadership and the Chinese leadership. We can see the differences between the American president and the (former) Iraqi president.

Most of all — and this is where our blog comes in — we can discern the speeches and the acts of some of the third parties (say, the Europeans), whose decision is to prefer America's adversary or to pretend that there are few, if any, differences between them. Or huffing that America's sins, real or not, big or small, are always cause for righteous indignation, while purring that the real ones of its adversaries should be given the benefit of the doubt. All the while peacocking that they (the third parties) have the solution, or that their nuances and relativizing and pleading for dialogue (with the type of leader whose police forces carried out the type of terror mentioned above) is the path towards the solution.

And in those societies, hardly anybody puts this relativizing into question. Hardly anybody puts the equalling of America's democracy with the most terrible regimes into question.

While mentioning Saddam's atrocities above, probably there were many cynics who, with a snort, puffed "And you think it was for that that the Americans entered Iraq?!"

Again, if everybody is equally corrupt, and if everybody was after Saddam's oil, why is it only Uncle Sam that you snort cynically about?!

And you want us — and all you (ever) ask us — is (again) to castigate some part of American policy?

You want us to condemn soldiers, or their officers, or their civilian commander-in-chief for innocent Iraqi deaths (or for the abuse suffered while in custody)?

We cannot do it.

Common sense dictates that we don't.

First of all, the acts are not — far from it — as worthy of condemnation as the interlocutors would have it.

And second (and speaking of the interlocutors), we are faced with partisan interlocutors whose only motive is ever and always to castigate Uncle Sam; and who are unwilling to see that the alternative could be, and often would have been, worse.

Une autre réponse aux courriers des lecteurs…

Beyond the lofty statements, much of the CAP money — hundreds of thousands of euros a year — goes to agribusinesss and royals…

The IHT's Richard Bernstein:

"We have to ensure 1.2 billion meals every 24 hours in Europe," [Cees Veerman, the current Dutch minister of agriculture,] said in an interview in his office here, appreciating the connection between food and the sweep of history. "We don't want to be dependent on other regions of the world for food the way we are for oil."

The historical point is well taken. Before the war, Britain depended on its colonies and the Commonwealth to provide it with a good deal of its food. After the war, devastated Europe as a whole had to import 40 percent of its foodstuffs from the United States. The CAP was created to change that situation forever, ensuring initially that the original six Common Market countries could feed themselves.

But now that Europe has experienced agricultural self-sufficiency for decades and indeed exports a great deal of its produce to other countries at highly subsidized prices, more and more voices are being raised to the effect that the CAP, which consumes 40 percent of the European Union's budget, does more harm than good.

The lavish EU subsidies are of course at the center of a trans-Atlantic trade dispute, raging in preparation for the World Trade Organization meeting in Hong Kong in about six weeks. Peter Mandelson, the EU's top trade negotiator, has proposed substantial cuts in export subsidies and import tariffs as part of a global trade deal. But even if Mandelson's proposal gets past fierce French and other opposition, it would not eliminate the centerpiece of the CAP, which is direct payments to farmers in accordance, mainly, with the amount of land they own.

And so the debate has been intensifying over the past several months. In the spring, after a Freedom of Information Act request produced a compact disc full of previously secret data, the British press gleefully demonstrated that much of the CAP money - hundreds of thousands of pounds a year - goes to agribusinesss and royals, people like Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Westminster. Veerman himself came under scrutiny in the Netherlands not long ago when it was disclosed that he receives 170,000, or $204,000, a year in EU subsidies for farms he owns in the Netherlands and France.

Indeed. It's beginning to sound like every time a member of the European élite makes a principled statement, it's meant to hide the fact that he just happens to profit handsomely from the issue in question.

"A lot of Europeans think that the CAP is something that supports small farmers, but most of the money goes to the richest people in the system," said Jack Thurston, a former adviser on agriculture to the British government, now a fellow at the German Marshall Fund.

The accusations continue. Poor countries, especially in Africa, complain that the EU subsidies - and American ones, as well - have had the effect of crippling their own farmers because their food exports can't compete with Europe's subsidized ones.

Sieben und Siebzig Luftballons...

The 40 countries at the UN which collectively pay the organization $400 000 in fees were all signatories to the Group of 77 letter which insists on slowing reform and discouraging transparency at the “world body,” effectively stupefying any possible changes to a halt.

Schade, said Newt Gingrich, since the poorest countries have the most to gain from transparency, and the most to lose by having a Human Rights Commission which is a complete joke. Get a laugh out of the pretext used back on 2001 for ousting the US from that commission which was otherwise populated by human rights violators. The former speaker of teh legislature says that though it seems ‘cost free’ to these 40 states to sign on to the devolutionary declaration, they have the most to lose by it.

While many on the left feel that “serving the poor” of the world means room service for UN representatives, the US task force on the UN thinks otherwise.

The video of a US UN-task force’s recent panel discussions of how the poor are so badly underserved by the UN is linked here via C-Span.

If it doesn’t move, tax it – also if it moves too

From our bulging “new tax of the day” file:

Note: the photo is of a fine American product.
A thing of chilling coolness, if you will.

There are a great many people in Europe who live in caravans, either as a matter of lifestyle choice, or as we have seen elsewhere, because of the grimly high cost of living in an apartment which is not much larger than a caravan. There is also the matter of (more or less) being able to choose your neighbors. Today’s new tax is on those people. Before you go off on me about how gypsies use public services and squat on people’s property, bear in mind that if it weren’t for squatter having rights, this wouldn’t happen.

Farmers also wouldn’t have to dig ditches around their properties either. (Call it a Zioni$tNaziApartheidBerlinWall, if you will.) They could do the sound-minded thing and scare people off of their property with a shotgun as they always have.

What’s worse is that charging such a tax and paying it will give travelers an sense of entitlement over other people’s property, regardless of whether or not they’re compensated for NaziZioni$tNeoconOccupation of the ButterflyWarmPuppyPeacefulSovereignHomeland.

The ignorant “Internationale”

In the wonderful world of leftist racism, I wonder if they can understand why the “natives” don’t want to play along with their idea of revolution:

« The anarchists of the extreme-left obviously succeeded in irritating the Arab inhabitants of Hebron which they had come to “help". The majority of the Palestinian residents of this city are practicing Muslim very practise and shocked by the depraved conduct of these militants.

The local population blame these anarchists, the majority of which originating in Europe, to hooking their children on drugs. An inhabitant of Hebron, interviewed by the left-wing Jerusalem daily newspaper "Kol Ha' ir" [a twice-weekly magazine, actually], bitterly criticized the attitude of European activists: "In the beginning, we greeted them with open arms because they support our cause. Unfortunately we realized that these people destroyed the education of our children in a matter of minutes".»

What a way to make friends – by forcing bad, destructive ideas on them. And to think these are the people who repeat the notion that the Arab world can’t accept democracy.

No respect, no tolerance, no cultural empathy, no ‘understanding’ of cultures other than their own – what else is it that they accuse everyone to their right of having?

Wrong weasels, wrong woodpile

As we noted previously, November 9th and 10th were a strange couple of days. Certain internet sites seem to have been blocked, presumably by French authorities. Les 4 Vérités has published an explanation, which although can’t be proven, seems believable. Though it was written by Emmanuel Ratier who dabbles in nutty conspiracy theories such as the US government having been behind the 9-11 attacks, he has written books on the functioning of politics that are taken seriously. He knows the political landscape and the functioning of government well enough to be somewhat plausible:

«Late on the afternoon of November 9th, within the measures taken by de Villepin (but obviously not made public), the Emeraude plan was deployed: it makes it possible to divert the whole of French internet traffic through military servers equipped with filters which block certain sites. Several methods were used: blocking IP addresses at the point of the routers. At Wanadoo, only domain name servers (DNS numbers) were filtered. At Cegetel, HTTP addresses HTTP were blocked, and so forth.

The majority of blocked sites and blogs weren’t the great many Muslim attack sites or the Islamists sites that were quite active (such as Oumma, Majlis, and the like) but the most active nationalist sites like Occidentalis, SOSfrance, Coranix and France-Echos.

The number of people hostile to the rioters rose greatly on internet bulletin boards and forums to the point that a number of the newspaper and media run discussion boards were shut down by their editors. France 5 said: "In view of the particularly violent content of the majority of the messages of the forum devoted to this show’s topic, we have decided to remove it. We will also remove discussion of this topic in our other forums." 2000 messages were erased.

Along the same lines, TF1 indicated: "Taking into account the number of messages posted it became impossible to publish them with all the seriousness and objectivity that befits a high quality forum. We are thus constrained to temporarily suspend the publication of the opinions on this highly significant subject."»

Here’s an example from a search engine looking for the discussion on a server that goes through that possible choke point:

Re: sosfrance + coranix -
coranix ne marche pas depuis wanadoo ni free (meme machine que fr-echo et occidentalis). Répondre à ce message • Informations techniques sur le filtrage ...
forum.subversiv.com/100261.html

And the link it leads to:

Message non trouvé...
Le message que vous cherchez n'a pas pu être trouvé. (100261)

Worms don't need spines

About History repeating itself, and all that. ... France has, in effect, surrendered sovereignty over a significant portion of its cities to Jew-hating totalitarian thugs.

Ça sent le brûlé

La retranscription de l'interview avec Maurice G. Dantec, diffusée à la télévision canadienne, qui portait sur les émeutes en France.

Letter of the Month

…the democrats were either duped by someone all the leftist elite say is a subhuman mouth breathing knuckle dragging dolt, which don't say much for their intellect, or they are craven spineless windsocks out whoring for votes

writes 2BrixShy in a comment that could (and does) apply equally to the members of the international community's so-called "peace camp".

One question I can never seem to get answered sufficiently..... if Chimpy McDumbassOilSuckerBabyCrusher (aka Bush) was clever enough to dupe all the supergeniuses of the left [and all the wise visionaries of the international community] and LIE us into war, why didn't he complete the big Lie and plant some bogus WMDs in Baghdad somewhere? Why go to the trouble of only carrying out half the scam?

Of course, when I get the "because Bush is a big dumbass, that's why" answer, that brings us back to how could such a dumbass trick such deep thinkers, unless of course they aren't as clever as they think they are.....

The Problem With UN Control of the Internet Is Not the Digital Divide; It Is the Dictatorial Divide

Pete du Pont:

Old Europe and the despotic nations want exactly that--international Internet content control. And they have convinced the EU establishment that U.N. control of the Internet would be just and appropriate. The last United Nations World Summit on the Internet--held in 2003--concluded that "governments should intervene . . . to maximize economic and social benefits and serve national priorities." The report of the U.N. Working Group on Internet Governance says it would have "respect for cultural and linguistic diversity, " explaining that meant "multilingual, diverse, and culturally appropriate content" on the Internet.

And what is "culturally appropriate" content? If your nation is a free society--America, Ireland, Australia--a free and unregulated-content Internet is a good thing. For dictatorships and state controlled societies--the former USSR, China or Cuba--it is a catastrophe, for allowing citizens free access to information puts your government at risk. And if you are in between--a socialist government like France or Germany--U.N. control is a good thing because government control is always better than unregulated markets.

Claudia Rosett:

…the corruption and incompetence at U.N. headquarters, however disturbing, are the least of the problems linked to the U.N.'s bid to control interconnectivity. The deeper trouble is that the U.N. has embraced the same tyrants who in the name of helping the downtrodden are now seeking via Internet control to tread them down some more.

That is hardly the kind of information, however, that U.N. organizers of this Tunis turf grab are about to share. The U.N. Web site for this event goes heavy on high-tech doo-dads, and very light on the highly relevant big picture. For instance, the site includes two scroll bars. One shows select news coverage of the summit. The other shows funding contributions from various quarters, including the governments of Syria, Libya and Saudi Arabia, all distinguished as perennial members of Freedom House's list of the world most repressive regimes. Except the U.N. site doesn't make mention of the censorship and brutal internal repression of these regimes--only of their participation, and their money.

As usual, the U.N. for reasons sadly unrelated to actual performance, is styling itself as the champion of the poorest people, in the poorest countries. (This is the same U.N. that still hasn't repaid or even apologized to the people of Iraq for the billions worth of their national assets that were grafted, stolen and wasted under U.N. supervision in the Oil for Food program). In the face of mounting public concern over the Tunis summit, Secretary-General Kofi Annan betook himself recently to the pages of the Washington Post to argue … "I urge all stakeholders to come to Tunis ready to bridge the digital divide," etc., etc.

What Mr. Annan evidently does not care to understand, and after his zillion-year career at the U.N. probably never will, is that for purposes of helping the poor, the problem is not a digital divide. It is not the bytes, gigs, blogs and digital wing-dings that define that terrible line between the haves and the have-nots. These are symptoms of the real difference, which we would do better to call the dictatorial divide.

In free societies, all sorts of good things flourish, including technology and highly productive uses of the Internet. In despotic systems, human potential withers and dies, strangled by censorship, starved by central controls, and rotted by the corruption that inevitably accompanies such arrangements. That poisonous mix is what prevents the spread of prosperity in Africa, and blocks peace in the Middle East, and access to computers, or for that matter, food, in North Korea (which is of course sending a delegate to Tunis).

But never mind the realities, as long as Mr. Annan and his entourage see an opportunity for more U.N. turf, job patronage, global clout and funding (including the prospect of a "ka-ching" for the U.N. cash register every time someone logs on). Leading the charge, with policy documents posted on the U.N. information summit site, are such terrorist-breeding blogger-jailing regimes as those of Iran and Saudi Arabia, and such millennial pioneers of backward motion on free speech as Belarus and Russia. …

Moonbat roundup: throwing more biofuel on the fire

Euro-lefties are funny. Just yesterday, environmentalists dashed the hopes of the only alternative they allowed themselves to freezing to death. Since dams are bad for fish, and windmills are bad for birds, why aren’t leftist thought to be bad for humanity?

After all, the only consistent characteristic they have is being against everything productive. That is, when they aren’t for things that seem logical to them, but are actually Rube Goldberg solutions in a search for “another way”, and avoid confrontation. That is, when they aren’t in a constant state of confrontation with a straw man that they’ve made for themselves.

The left has used a caricature that they themselves drew of the US as a counterpoint. This can be dangerous when it comes home to roost. It requires an embarrassing pregnant pause while someone in the commune of single-issue movements comes up with another “big lie” theory to pitch.

Take as an example Kososvo. Kosovars see the EU as Bu$hChimpyHitlerburton running-dog lackeys. Even after wrapping themselves in the Kryptonite lamé flag of the UN, Kosovars see them as an Evil Occupation Force™©® If the euro-ganda press repeated this daily for a few years, the Bruxellian illuminati might understand the American experience. Better still, Kosovars could travel worldwide and criticize every passing European they meet, as if it's their doing. They also might find a group of people more byzantine than their own scribblers who would gin-up this fabrication.

Empathetic and caring as they are, no-one should ever call the EU stingy.
Indeed, no. Johnny on the spot would never sit by and wait too long to intervene in a natural disaster, never let anyone suffer, and certainly always make good on a pledge.

Maybe they can take those funds and with-hold them from another devastating natural event.

All well timed for the scatterbrained Indy attack on Tony “the poodle” Blair, and fuel to keep the embers of the clear-thinking nuanced pathological hatred of George Bush warm comes this flippant charge. If you actually believe Bush would make a passing comment about bombing Al-Jezeera to Blair in a teleconference, you might also believe that Downing Street would transcribe it. You might also believe that every event in the world, from a leaf falling off of a tree to an earthquake supports your view of the world. Enter the loopy new theosofists. Angry leftists who act like someone stole the lollipop out of their mouths when someone questions their assertions need to remember just who it is who started with the over-the-top accusations and blame.

Over what exactly?

Thom, a gun-toting greenie has threatened to take Tex (of Whacking Day infamy) to court for bruised feelings, or something.

The patient Tex is doing his best to help, in spite of this "friend of the earth" lollygagging around:

«Still no legal action from dickbrain. The man who promised to take my house, get me arrested for stalking, close down my website and shut down my e-mail accounts suddenly seems rather unenthusiastic about taking any action.

I offered to make it easy for him:

Thom, ss you are very stupid, I'll make it easy for you: your lawyer doesn't
need to contact me, I'll contact HIM.»

Pssht! I think what we have here isn’t just an amusing one sided pissing contest, but a legal suit over sour grapes.

So Long As We Are Hunting for Liars in the Iraq Controversy…

Noting in Why We Went to War that it has "come to pass that an opposition's measure of a president's foreign policy was all or nothing, success or 'failure'", Daniel Henninger writes that

there is a larger danger in the Democratic strategy of attempting to make George Bush into the Wizard of Oz, a man whose every statement about threats to American security is fantasy and falsity. Pounding through the media that the prewar intelligence was a conscious lie may incline the American people to believe the whole Iraq enterprise is false, and worse, that the very notion of weapons of mass destruction is also doubtful. The psychology of the big lie can sometimes run out of control.

The way the Evans-Novak Political Report covers this is by saying that "Democrats continue to overdo it by adopting a posture of constant crisis. For four years, they have described almost every move and every policy of President Bush as a catastrophic life-ending act that is the worst thing ever to have been done by a President." You will have noticed that in both of the above cases, the domestic word Democrat(ic) and its grammatical derivatives could easily be replaced by the words Europe(an), France (French), German(y), etc. As for Norman Podhoretz, he takes this a step further, digging deep and asking flat out, Who Is Lying About Iraq? (I myself have written about the "lies" controversy in the past…)

Among the many distortions, misrepresentations and outright falsifications that have emerged from the debate over Iraq, one in particular stands out above all others. This is the charge that George W. Bush misled us into an immoral or unnecessary war in Iraq by telling a series of lies that have now been definitively exposed.

What makes this charge so special is the amazing success it has enjoyed in getting itself established as a self-evident truth even though it has been refuted and discredited over and over again by evidence and argument alike. … I want to take one more shot at exposing it for the lie that it itself really is. Although doing so will require going over ground that I and many others have covered before, I hope that revisiting this well-trodden terrain may also serve to refresh memories that have grown dim, to clarify thoughts that have grown confused, and to revive outrage that has grown commensurately dulled.

The main "lie" that George W. Bush is accused of telling us is that Saddam Hussein possessed an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, or WMD as they have invariably come to be called. From this followed the subsidiary "lie" that Iraq under Saddam's regime posed a two-edged mortal threat. On the one hand, we were informed, there was a distinct (or even "imminent") possibility that Saddam himself would use these weapons against us or our allies; and on the other hand, there was the still more dangerous possibility that he would supply them to terrorists like those who had already attacked us on 9/11 and to whom he was linked.

…even stipulating--which I do only for the sake of argument--that no weapons of mass destruction existed in Iraq in the period leading up to the invasion, it defies all reason to think that Mr. Bush was lying when he asserted that they did. To lie means to say something one knows to be false. But it is as close to certainty as we can get that Mr. Bush believed in the truth of what he was saying about WMD in Iraq.

How indeed could it have been otherwise? George Tenet, his own CIA director, assured him that the case was "a slam dunk." This phrase would later become notorious, but in using it, Mr. Tenet had the backing of all 15 agencies involved in gathering intelligence for the United States. In the National Intelligence Estimate of 2002, where their collective views were summarized, one of the conclusions offered with "high confidence" was that "Iraq is continuing, and in some areas expanding its chemical, biological, nuclear, and missile programs contrary to UN resolutions."

The intelligence agencies of Britain, Germany, Russia, China, Israel and — yes — France all agreed with this judgment. And even Hans Blix — who headed the U.N. team of inspectors trying to determine whether Saddam had complied with the demands of the Security Council that he get rid of the weapons of mass destruction he was known to have had in the past--lent further credibility to the case in a report he issued only a few months before the invasion …

So, once again, did the British, the French and the Germans, all of whom signed on in advance to Secretary of State Colin Powell's reading of the satellite photos he presented to the U.N. in the period leading up to the invasion. Mr. Powell himself and his chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson, now feel that this speech was the low point of his tenure as secretary of state. But Mr. Wilkerson (in the process of a vicious attack on the president, the vice president, and the secretary of defense for getting us into Iraq) is forced to acknowledge that the Bush administration did not lack for company in interpreting the available evidence as it did:

I can't tell you why the French, the Germans, the Brits and us thought that most of the material, if not all of it, that we presented at the U.N. on 5 February 2003 was the truth. …

But the consensus on which Mr. Bush relied was not born in his own administration. In fact, it was first fully formed in the Clinton administration. Here is Bill Clinton himself, speaking in 1998:

If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons-of-mass-destruction program.

Here is his Secretary of State Madeline Albright, also speaking in 1998:

Iraq is a long way from [the USA], but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risk that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face.

Here is Sandy Berger, Clinton's National Security Adviser, who chimed in at the same time with this flat-out assertion about Saddam:

He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983.

Nor did leading Democrats in Congress entertain any doubts on this score. …

This Democratic drumbeat continued and even intensified when Mr. Bush succeeded Mr. Clinton in 2001, and it featured many who would later pretend to have been deceived by the Bush White House. …

Liberal politicians like these were seconded by the mainstream media, in whose columns a very different tune would later be sung. For example, throughout the last two years of the Clinton administration, editorials in the New York Times repeatedly insisted that "without further outside intervention, Iraq should be able to rebuild weapons and missile plants within a year [and] future military attacks may be required to diminish the arsenal again."

The Times was also skeptical of negotiations, pointing out that it was "hard to negotiate with a tyrant who has no intention of honoring his commitments and who sees nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons as his country's salvation." …

All this should surely suffice to prove far beyond any even unreasonable doubt that Mr. Bush was telling what he believed to be the truth about Saddam's stockpile of WMD. It also disposes of the fallback charge that Mr. Bush lied by exaggerating or hyping the intelligence presented to him. Why on earth would he have done so when the intelligence itself was so compelling that it convinced everyone who had direct access to it, and when hardly anyone in the world believed that Saddam had, as he claimed, complied with the 16 resolutions of the Security Council demanding that he get rid of his weapons of mass destruction?

Another fallback charge is that Mr. Bush, operating mainly through Mr. Cheney, somehow forced the CIA into telling him what he wanted to hear. … The March 2005 report of the … bipartisan Robb-Silberman commission, which investigated intelligence failures on Iraq, reached the same conclusion, finding "no evidence of political pressure to influence the intelligence community's pre-war assessments of Iraq's weapons programs. . . . Analysts universally asserted that in no instance did political pressure cause them to skew or alter any of their analytical judgments."

Still, even many who believed that Saddam did possess WMD, and was ruthless enough to use them, accused Mr. Bush of telling a different sort of lie by characterizing the risk as "imminent." But this, too, is false: Mr. Bush consistently rejected imminence as a justification for war. Thus, in the State of the Union address he delivered only three months after 9/11, Mr. Bush declared that he would "not wait on events while dangers gather" and that he would "not stand by, as peril draws closer and closer." Then, in a speech at West Point six months later, he reiterated the same point: "If we wait for threats to materialize, we will have waited too long." And as if that were not clear enough, he went out of his way in his State of the Union address in 2003 (that is, three months before the invasion), to bring up the word "imminent" itself precisely in order to repudiate it:

Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option.

In the following sentence, I (webmaster Erik speaking again) would add follow "the Democrats" with "and the Europeans", but I guess the latter fall under what Podhoretz calls "all those who in their desperation to delegitimize the larger policy being tested in Iraq … have consistently used distortion, misrepresentation and selective perception to vilify as immoral a bold and noble enterprise":

… so long as we are hunting for liars in this area, let me suggest that we begin with the Democrats now proclaiming that they were duped, and that we then broaden out to all those who in their desperation to delegitimize the larger policy being tested in Iraq--the policy of making the Middle East safe for America by making it safe for democracy--have consistently used distortion, misrepresentation and selective perception to vilify as immoral a bold and noble enterprise and to brand as an ignominious defeat what is proving itself more and more every day to be a victory of American arms and a vindication of American ideals.

Are they looking out for you, or what?

Paul Belein introduces us to one Jurgen Van Acker, 27, and severely handicapped. He’s also perfectly willing to tell us more than we need to know about Jurgen.

Recently he became a television celebrity in Belgium when he asked that the welfare office pay his prostitutes.
“We reimburse masturbation equipment but we are not in a legal position to subsidise the use of prostitutes."

A prosthetic hand sounds like it’s covered, but wouldn’t toys and such fall into the category of ‘elective’ items? I mean if the family can’t afford them, and no-one is willing to improvise, couldn’t the hat be passed around the neighborhood? Maybe a porcelain figurine placed at the end of the bar? Hey, why not?!? The RSPCA does it!

"Sometimes nurses help patients"

I truly don't want to know this, but I believe that might also be called statutory rape.

In the U.S., we believe that the wonders of the agora are more efficient at providing those services. State intervention would only manipulate the market price, and spawn a dreaded class of middlemen.

“Her island, it’s me who will destroy it.”

Mitterand on the couch wasn’t just discussing his anxiety, but was trying desperately to make posthumous history by telling his shrink to tell all:

«“Excuse me,” Mitterrand begins, apologising for his late arrival. “I had a difference of opinion to settle with the Iron Lady. What an impossible woman, that Thatcher! “With her four nuclear submarines on mission in the southern Atlantic, she threatens to launch the atomic weapon against Argentina — unless I supply her with the secret codes that render deaf and blind the missiles we have sold to the Argentinians. Margaret has given me very precise instructions on the telephone.”

Magoudi never fathoms Mitterrand out enough to draw up a psychological profile. But in notes taken after their meetings, he writes of his patient’s near-mystical enjoyment of power, his paranoid tendencies, his “massive anxiety” and the way morbid images frequently crop up in his speech.

“In war, when there is one death, it is already a lot,” the president said as their therapy session got under way three days later. “But, after all, these soldiers were professionals. If they were serving on this destroyer, it’s because they were volunteers. When you do this kind of job, you don’t invoke the gods every time there is a small hitch.”

“I will have the last word,” Mitterrand replied. “Her island, it’s me who will destroy it. Her island, I swear that soon it will no longer be one. I will take my revenge. I will tie England to Europe, despite its natural tendency for isolation. How? I will build a tunnel under the Channel. Yes. I will succeed where Napoleon III failed.”»

With thanks to Stavn

Die Fee-Geschichte und der Alptraum

”Pacifists” (if you can really call them that) and “merchants of death”, “markets” over “morals”, the disconnect in Schröder’s Germany is quite obvious, and shows no sign of realignment to a consistent position under a paralyzed Grand Coalition.

When protesters demand an American troop withdrawal is spite of their role in building a pluralistic civil society in Iraq, would they ever say the same thing about Kosovo and the former Yugoslavia where they’ve been for more than a decade?

I doubt it. In the mean time the dawdling avoidance of reality goes on: art clique types (I hate to actually call them artists,) continue to play the current events circuit to raise their grim profile by doing what to others is little more that another issue in a “lifestyle thing”.

So while accusations of arrogance, imperialism, and being a big-fat-earth-warming-meanie fly westward across the Atlantic, they all fit a specific profile: they are the oldest trick in the book

"new specifications for a new reality."

Mireille Silcoff writing in Canada’s National Post (via Pamela):

«Mr. Barthel walks me through the school, which was built three years ago to what he calls "new specifications for a new reality."

"All of our windows are made with glass both bomb- and bullet-proof; there are security cameras in all the common rooms," he says. "You will also notice there is no sign outside of the school that could single it out as a Jewish place."

In the past few years, Jews in Canada may have become familiar with some security measures in synagogues, notably around the high holidays, but nothing approaching this level of stringency.

Mr. Barthel explains the buddy system instituted at the Benvenuti school for children both arriving and leaving the premises. The students must travel in a pack and are not allowed to wear visible skullcaps or Stars of David anywhere but inside the school. They are also discouraged from dressing in a manner that Mr. Barthel calls "Shalala," meaning that they asked to refrain from dressing in a style which in North American parlance might be termed "Jappy."»

How anyone can delude themselves that there is such a thing as laïcité among those people who’s barbarism would force a school to have to do this is laughable. Secular rights does not mean one can abuse schoolkids, or reserve those rights for atheists, functional or otherwise. Michael Phillips, a man I find precient, points out:

«I’ve seen it happen to one of my old friends, Fran Peavey, who became increasingly anti-Semitic as her lefty pacifism became more anti-Israel. The rest of her work became confused and ineffective in parallel.

Of course, some anti-Semitism is to be expected with a pacifist. The Holocaust is the towering granite mountain of evidence that pacifism is nonsense. The Jews surviving in Israel, in the middle of 100 million hate filled Arabs, by building a great military, is a second Himalayan mountain of evidence against pacifism. The Jews are living and dead proof that pacifism is fantasy. Ipso: pacificists readily become anti-Semities.»

“It’s become a matter of life and death.”

Thanks to Corbusier, we get insight from an individual's idea of proper thoughts which has been tempered over the years by the press (to use the term generally) and by a slow to adapt culture. On the other hand, there is a breadth to the press worldwide that many aren't aware of. It's probably why the term "MSM" is used to form a distinction.

This week, in the U.S. news-roundup magazine “The Week” the matter of social division in France emerges. The center-left magazine usually makes a silent circle to avoid sharp criticism of leftist ideas and attitudes, but I couldn’t help but notice this one:

Can France Learn From the U.S.?

Highlights:

The French are in denial, said Greg Sheridan in Sydney’s Sunday Telegraph.

Rónán Mullen in Dublin’s Irish Examiner: During the 1992 Rodney King riots in Los Angeles, the French indulged in plenty of smug self-congratulation.

The Americans do more than just police, said Prague’s Lidove Noviny in an editorial. After the civil-rights protests of the 1960s, the “American solution” was thorough social reform.

This one really caught my eye:

American policies would be neither feasible nor desirable for France, said Pierre-Yves Dugua in Paris’ Le Figaro . It’s true that the U.S.’s purely capitalistic economy has created more jobs for immigrants, and that the big cities have some racial integration. But at what cost? Because the American system “places such a high value on protecting private property,” U.S. cities have a shockingly large and visible police presence, with minority neighborhoods looking like an occupied nation. In France, where civil liberties are seen as more valuable than mere property, the sight of uniformed police patrolling the streets would be likely to provoke, rather than prevent, violence. Worse, the Americans incarcerate hundreds of thousands of blacks. Even people who commit crimes as minors, and “could be rehabilitated,” are locked away for many years or decades.

I hate doing it to Le Figaro, but shall we parse?

A lack of Policing has made the suburban slums require more than a Police presence, wanting something more like a military presence. If you see a neighborhood that looks like that, it’s due to the pleas of the decent people who have to live among these, how shall we put it, “socially revolutionary” gang-bangers anyway.

This very protection of people IS a issue of Civil Liberty, namely that of keeping a little bit of ones’ PERSONAL liberty – namely the right to go unmolested by hoodlums.

Once again, this “nuanced” view from l’hexagon displays a despairing ignorance about the human condition, seeing only race, and talking in ellipses to avoid the simple matter of right and wrong. 30 year olds are not “youths”, even when they riot, and rehabilitation starts with an awareness of the lowest common denominator of ethis and morality: the law. In particular, abiding by the laws which permit one to be protected from hoodlums who by their injurious and vandalous behavior try to assert that might wins for no reason other than itself.
At least when Les Poulets have to use force, they have an actual purpose.

So while Dugua (who might be the world’s most improbable business writer,) thinks that being black makes one less of a criminal to palliate his congenital hatred, I wonder if he would rethink his magical race-based morality if he was mugged by a white dude.

Capitalism, isn’t the cause, it would be the cure to this kind of social ill. There wouldn’t be a need to demand a photograph with a CV if your garden variety José, Souheil, and GéeGée didn’t think that there was enough work to go around for “his own type”. In short, there would be no NEED to be defensive for WHATEVER reason over property, income, or rights, because you can afford to "have your own" - in effect live on your own terms, and not feel any need to be a left-wing strike-line zombie who tows a political line to pad his pocket at the expense of people who are worse off.

Fighting over ripple

Them "yutes" are at it again:

Friday's violence broke out after between 2,000 and 3,000 people, mostly students, left bars where they had been celebrating the arrival of the popular French wine [this year's Beaujolais Nouveau], which traditionally goes on sale on the third Thursday of November.

Youths attacked firemen called out to attend an injured person and began to throw missiles at police who arrived to back up the firemen. Wine bottles were thrown from apartment windows.