BBC, Anti-americanism and the need to not step too far outside the circle

The audio grab linked below is of a BBC Radio 4 broadcast from Friday 20 January was brought to my attention by a comment on the excellent Biased BBC blog. The programme is called Feedback, and featured quite an exchange between BBC News Justin Webb, Stephen Sackur, and caller from northern Ireland whos cackles went straight up at the mere and singular mention by Webb that Americans may throw their hands up in the air at anti-Americanism.

It begins about 30 seconds in.

This need to apologise by Webb heard at the end is a simple example of why state broadcasting has built-in problems: he actually MUST be all things to all people if they pay their TV tax. State ownership means that there will always be millions of thumbs in the pie.

One writer's bipolar disorder

Le Monde’s André Fontaine is jonesing for a bipolar world with Europe as a pole, and possibly an axis. The error is a simple one made frequently: when corrupt little state A in Europe deals with corrupt little state B, they think this is a model of international relations because everyone must agree to play by their rules.

What should they do? Go take a nice little nap.

An amazing leap of putting words into someone’s mouth while trying to slip in some tongue – and at the same time inflating the actual influence and meaning of a ruminant Europe and a spittle-shooting France:

«In his new year’s message Chirac explained to us all that France could draw on it’s ability to deal with everyone. But he took care to not mention in his homilies that followed the victory of the bipolar world which came at the great cost to the monopolar world of the American president and his friend Tony Blair. Europe, firmly held in hand by the Franco-German alliance, was of course to be one of the principal poles for it.

Generally, George W Bush, strongly moderated his arrogance which had characterized his first term, and this explained the pause in the constant criticism that he gets from every direction, and especially from the North American Press

Time is changing things and the veracity of the old proverb should be further noted – that closeness breeds contempt. It’s not just Iraq or Afghanistan, there’s the cerebral hemorrhage of the Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, which dashed the hopes which those remarkable changes had caused.»

The delusions are startling.

Stick it in and break it off

"I wanted to burn the Louvre. I'd do the Elgin Marbles with a sledgehammer and wipe my ass with the Mona Lisa. This is my world, now. This is my world, my world, and those ancient people are dead." French artist, Kader Attia, reproduces Arabic calligraphy using riot police nightsticks abandoned in the streets during last year's riots.

Size matters

The land of the freeloader vs. the land of the freeloader



Compare and contrast.

Up shits creek ...

... without a paddle policy.

... and while your at it, shut your piehole with a buttplug

"To not like" does not equal "phobia". Faudrait le dire aux tarloose.

Hall of Plame

Most of them are America’s Most Wanted, but also Europe’s most coddled.

If a normally fluffy Sunday paper supplement can figure it out, why can’t the EUtopians and their cherished nit-wit paesans?

Stating the obvious ...

... is much like flogging a dead horse.

"In France . . . the very existence of America is a mystery and a scandal."

It's logical to deny that there is a Clash of Civilisations when your countries capital is surrounded by enemy forces just on the other side of the periph'.

It's not like he was sincere about it

Trouble among the chocolate makers fudgepackers ... and Old Europe is all aflutter.

Kaput!

Wikipedia Germany forced to close shop.

Cultural revision’s sloppy seconds

Debra Saunders:

« When social conservatives argue that legalizing same-sex marriage could lead to legalized polygamy, same-sex marriage advocates either laugh or sneer. It's a scare tactic, they say. It'll never happen.

Last year, however, as Canada legalized same-sex marriage, Prime Minister Paul Martin commissioned a $150,000 study to debunk the polygamy argument. Big mistake: The study confirmed the scare tactic by recommending that Canada repeal its anti-polygamy law.»

What then of the reverse, when polygamous marriages made outside of a country must be recognized by multiculturalism proponents who are ridden with guilt? The effect is simple – misused human rights laws will do something much worse: dissolve sovereignty of legal systems by imposing laws from foreign legal systems into domestic ones without legal argument. Phooey – if that’s the case why even HAVE legal deliberation? Why not just casually dispose of habeas corpus and common law in the interest of “progressivism” while you’re at it...

Crossposted on Marxist Byproducts

Can you imagine the scandal if cowboy Bush were to hold a speech like this?

As Joe has noted, Chirac held a speech about the possibility of France unilaterally starting hostilities (presumably without UN approval), and not any kind of hostilities either, but nuclear warfare…

Forget that wishy-washy Zeropean multiculturalism

The Danes have rediscovered their Viking roots, and are resisting ...

Serguie still fighting the war against law and order

Syrians still resorting to dial-a-mob tactics in Lebanon

It’s painfully obvious that the anti-American card is the last line of defense for the Syrian proxies in Lebanon. Hizballah calls for Egyptian and Saudi intervention to slow down, complicate, and stem the popular tide against the deal they made with Lebanon’s neighboring oppressor, (regardless of who they want you to think it is) and with a history of not just paying splodeydopes, but also paying flunkies to get a crowd of students out to back them.

While it’s always still accepted to continually flog anti-American without ever having to explain it, the opposite is also apparent, and the sources of their fear are plain to see: they know who’s really looking out for them. Hint: they aren’t trying to excite mobs with anger and emotionalism.

It’s also worth a look at who to the west doesn’t want to see anything change, and is dialing-up mobs elsewhere.

A shred of proof that he isn’t always drinking the bong water

«Jacques Chirac has hinted that he is prepared to use nuclear weapons against any state that carries out a terrorist attack against France.

The French president said France must be able to hit hard at a hostile state's "capacity to act".»

Granted, he said this while pandering to submariners for their affection or their votes, but when he’s beyond the reach of a society given to bi-polar bouts of self-contempt and occasions of hubris, he shows a clear, un-PC-ified understanding of detterence and to some extent conflict management. By no means would it allow the west to live with terror organizations or government-proxy terror groups having WMDs as the BBC seems to hope for, but it would give them something to think about.

They might gage his intestinal fortitude, and start laughing when they realize that he would probably never retaliate in that fashion, but it's a start - perhaps a steady return to a better and more realistic concept of their own national exceptionalism.

Just as the Israelis learned to make the cost of Jewish blood high, and the balance struck by Ike and Khrushchev, the deterrent and not the drumming circle is what makes the peace.

Is Scott Burgess the Roaming Gnome? We report, you decide.

For those of you familiar with the advertisements, the frequency of leisure lizard Scott Burgess’ vacations have me convinced that he’s the Travelocity Gnome. In fact I think that the very quotable sounding “G.” prefix to his name is a silent plea to give away his cover.

Heavens me, even their/his appearance awes one in his deceptive skills. What’s more is that I believe I actually saw Scott electrocuting himself with an electric razor creatively improvised from a vintage Ronco appliance in a Motel 6 in Saskatchewan. I shudder at how he would mutilate himself with a Pocket Fisherman.

Talk about a commenter that needs to get schtupped

To address a commenter’s cheap shot, we offer you this from blogshares.



We’re actually worth imaginary billions, just like the ‘gotcha’ style imagined wisdom of the comment.

Have a nice day. I think it’s time you got back to you little children’s crusade.

Chirac's Greatest Popular Success in 10 Years as Head of State

Among the 11,536 persons who, in an online poll, were asked the question, "what is Jacques Chirac's biggest success" in ten years as a head of State, 69% answered

the rebellion against the United States regarding Iraq.

Those more than two thirds of all respondents amount to over seven times the next largest result (none of the other possible answers went above 9%), but needless to say, this is all about the French showing friendship for "nos amis les Américains" (and offhand, none of the "oh-it's-only-about-Dubya" respondents seems to have made a big deal about the fact that wording has the "insurrection" not against George W Bush but against "the United States")…

Lou Minatti, International man of mysterious quotations

In the course of writing what appears to be yet another slam on blogs, some writer in Germany misquoted Lou (a friend of this blog). Like much of that sort of dinky prose, one always feels the need to add the missing punchline.

Merkel's Human Rights Principles Give Rise to Irritation in Paris

Unlike previous chancellors, who have usually spent the first year or so tackling domestic issues, Merkel wasted no time in setting her foreign policy agenda. In the space of just a few weeks, the Chancellery, not the Foreign Ministry, laid out goals in trans-Atlantic relations, European policy and relations with Russia, something Gerhard Schröder focused on only in 2002, at the end of his first term in office.

Andreas Maurer, an expert on German foreign policy at the International Institute for Security Policy in Berlin, said Merkel had been surprisingly quick to step into the foreign policy arena.

Thus speaketh the IHT's Judy Dempsey. This does not seem to have gone unnoticed by the French.

During her Moscow visit, Angela Merkel used a tone of voice that has broken with the habits taken by Messieurs Chirac and Schröder vis-à-vis Vladimir Putin, inaugurating a more active discourse on human rights,

write Henri de Bresson and Antoine Jacob in Le Monde, noting immediately afterwards that

this has given rise to irritation in Paris.

Indeed, in

the same vein, Mrs Merkel has opposed the lifting of the embargo on arms sales to China desired by Messieurs Chirac and Schröder.

France. The country that never ceases to remind others as well as itself that it is supposedly the cradle of human rights but which uses the human rights card only when it serves its interests, i.e., never against an authoritarian régime.

Meanwhile (ginkuyeh to Carine), Le Monde gives lessons to the Poles on (I kid you not)

certain basic democratic values.

Howls of convenience

This is the thing about leftists – they have no problem wanting a Police state instrument of domestic informing worthy of Erich Honecker when it comes to creating a kind of thought-crime Ministry of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, but make a sour face when the government wants to protect its’ citizens and friends worldwide.

«Former Vice President Al Gore called for an independent investigation into President Bush's domestic spying program, insisting that the president "repeatedly and insistently" broke the law by eavesdropping on Americans without court approval.

What Al Gore forgot to tell his audience was that he not only supported eavesdropping on Americans without court approval – he also chaired a project designed to execute just that in total secrecy. In short, Al Gore wanted to bug every phone, computer and fax in America.»

What’s plain to see is that Al “I’ve lost it” Gore’s notion was TRULY unconstitutional.

Others still think it’s about an even simpler and more typical lefty predeliction: Patrimony.

Crossposted on Marxist Byproducts

Seeking redemption for the sin of affluence

Baffling in it’s arrogance, irrational in its’ motives, Europe’s climate policy is all pain and no gain – especially to mother Gaia herself.

There’s never an animal-rights crackpot around when you need one

This year’s ‘annual livestock fair’ in Brussels takes quite a toll – 20.000 sheep slaughtered in that city alone for Eid, all without a screeching lefty of superior intentions and virtues to be found anywhere, or the raft-load of regulations whose enforcement is reserved for honky.

So is the joy they take in of scaring other people’s children somehow also only okay when in the back of your mind, you’re still rebelling against your parents at the age of 34 - they only get lecturesome with people who will be tolerant of them.

Pinochet: no, you may not get down...

...down to the ground,



With thanks to the suitable absurd
Harry “the hammer” Hutton

Vanneste avait raison

Danger pour l'humanité et tout ça.

The Low Morale of the Demoralized Troops

A veteran makes his voice heard on C-Span 2.

Ouch.

A Taste of the New Iraq

Outside Iraq, this great American experiment in pushing the Middle East in some new direction is debated only in terms of utter conviction. A hopeless debacle, the critics proclaim. A victory for freedom, supporters insist. Nuance is shunned; the cacophony rises.

Roger Cohen gives us a taste of the new Iraq. But the cacophony in itself ought to be significant, even to those who proclaim a hopeless debacle.

Noori al-Rawi … a Sunni from an influential tribe in restive Anbar Province, learned patience long ago. He never liked Saddam Hussein. For saying the wrong things he spent seven years in jail, including 18 months of solitary confinement in a lightless cell, fed only on dates. Saddam was an equal-opportunity torturer: he massacred the Shiites and Kurds but nursed vestigial venom for his own Sunni Arabs if they failed to fall into line.

The lights go out again. The minister drums his fingers on the desk. It's not warm in his office. Nothing, he says abruptly, is better than freedom. At 61, having lived through the monarchy, coups, the Baathist terror, several wars, the economic collapse of the 1990s and finally America's intrusion, he has a reasonable claim to know.

"Men Who Arrived in Guantanamo as Children"

Thanks to Eric Fottorino, we now know that the men who are being held at Guantanamo arrived there as "children"!

Of course, if Le Monde's root causes spiel is correct, his filler-length article is an argument for keeping the men — the former children — in their Cuban jail their entire lives.

Part of the scenery

In the course of my work, I had to drive through an American military base yesterday. I’ve see the new digital camouflage, but was completely unaware just how good it was until I nearly ran over two guys who were crossing the street.


File under ‘useless tidbits.’

Crossposted on Marxist Byproducts

They love him in the crowbar hotel

More prisoners prefer Paul Martin

«Inmate Jeff Power had a red “L” for “Liberal” painted on the side of his head. Power is serving a six-and-a-half-year sentence for drug trafficking and robbing two pharmacies.He says he would not vote for the Conservatives because they’ve talked about tightening up parole rules.»

Libs: keep up the good work.

Newer Orleans Split by "Racial Division"

You can count on Corine Lesnes to repeat the most Macchiavellian conspiracy theories possible, notably concerning racism in Katrina-stricken New(er) Orleans.

In that perspective, she mentions anger at the city's mayor — without mentioning the fact that Ray Nagin is black.

Among other things we learn, the "number of suicides has greatly increased (to seven in four months)." She accompanies the two-page article by a piece on how American youth is rediscovering racial inequalities.

Maurice Denuzière adds personal reminisces about this "ancient French soil", the French families, and "a little lady speaking faultless French". The author of the best-selling "Louisiane" saga manages to include the fact that the date of the first recorded authorities, in 1723, was on a September 11 and to express his… "indignation" at the authorities…

Wouldn't Be Surprised if the CIA Had a Hand in It Too…

Even Le Monde can't back away from this piece of political correctness, an apparent attempt to whitewash the "long slave tradition" of African and Muslim countries.

And ombudsman Robert Solé is forced to take on a sentence highlighting the previous week's article on the history of the slave trade.

For over a millenium, Western traders of black slaves deported 11 million Africans for colonisation in the Americas.

In other words, shipping millions of African slaves to the American colonies since several centuries before the Santa María, the Pinta, and the Niña set sail and Christopher Columbus sighted the New World…

More Doubts and Skepticism Scattered Over the Liberation of Bernard Planche

Having published, a week earlier, the group photo of Bernard Planche standing amongst the U.S. soldiers who freed the French hostage, and that on its cover, Le Monde backtracks and sets Claire Guillot to pen an article putting into doubt just about everything concerning the liberation and questioning the reasons for the photo's presence (and very existence) — i.e., the dark, treacherous, unconfessed reasons — and even managing, in a final gesture, to brig up Abu Ghraib. (Why would those Yankee "liberators" — the word is set in quotation marks in the article (twice!), lending it an air of cynicism — take a group photo of themselves for any other reason than to use it as propaganda among the French, n'est-ce pas?)

So successful at debunking any evidence with regards to Iraq that any new information supporting any facts will simply be rejected

The discovery of the information on jihadist training camps in Iraq would seem to have two major consequences: It exposes the flawed assumptions of the experts and U.S. intelligence officials who told us for years that a secularist like Saddam Hussein would never work with Islamic radicals, any more than such jihadists would work with an infidel like the Iraqi dictator. It also reminds us that valuable information remains buried in the mountain of documents recovered in Afghanistan and Iraq over the past four years.

But perhaps the most important lesson from the information in Stephen F. Hayes' article (merci à RV) is the hypocritical manner in which the enemies of the Bush White House and other anti-Americans — yes, that is what they are — operate (notably the mainstream press of Europe). As W. Thomas Smith, Jr. writes,

let’s forget for the moment any weapons of mass destruction (and the verdict is still out over whether or not WMDs were spirited across the borders). Forget the fact that Saddam was providing monetary support to the Palestinian families of suicide bombers. Forget the fact that he had violated umpteen U.N. resolutions since the end of Gulf War I. Forget the fact that his air-defense forces were regularly shooting at American and British pilots. Forget that he was a brutal dictatorial thug whose henchmen systematically raped, tortured, and murdered anyone who so much as hinted at any domestic political opposition. Forget all of the collaterally related geo-strategic reasons for gaining a foothold in the middle of the Islamist-fascist world during a global war against Middle-Eastern-based terrorism.

Instead, let’s consider the question that continues coming back to me:

Why is the White House not jumping all over the fact that terrorists were indeed training in pre-invasion Iraq as defensible proof of why we had no choice but to invade that country?

The answer is simple and unfortunate: Many in the mainstream media have been so successful at debunking any evidence, proof, or substantive facts as they relate to the Saddam-Al Qaeda connection, that any new information supporting any facts those of us in-the-know already know will simply be rejected. The new information will be seen as desperate backtracking on old ground.

La Shawn Barber has more on media myths while The Scotsman and Wendel Broere bring the type of story the media does not report or make a great deal of fuss about. In that perspective, AINA has more on the media's ways of operating (it's when you read stories like these that you start understanding Ann Coulter's choice of titles for her books)…

Since Day 1 in the Land of the Wild West Streets…

In response to our MLK birthday post and thanks to Valerie, we got the following reaction from a fellow Danish expatriate (living stateside), a gentle soul with the heart of gold, the gracious manners, and the courteous speech befitting a suave European:

[The post] reminds me of when I first set foot upon our nation’s soil. Like [a French friend's] student, I arrived here full of prejudices and EUroweenie disinformation. Like her student, I fell hopelessly in love with the country once I was actually here so quickly that it quite literally pulled the rug out from under me.

Like her I was awed by the size of everything, impressed by the efficiency and neatness and completely overwhelmed by the friendliness, helpfulness and openness I was met with.

Since day 1, I’ve never met a stranger here.

Since day 1, I’ve never once felt unsafe while walking the “wild west streets” of the U.S. of A. that I was taught to expect.

Since day 1, I’ve yet to see the abjectly poor people dying in the streets because of our “lack of social concern” that I was taught that I’d see everywhere.

Since day 1, I’ve yet to notice the “racial tension”, “racism” and derogatory attitudes towards non-whites that I was taught was rampant. Instead I’ve seen blacks, whites, yellows and browns living side by side never once suggesting that anybody was defined by the color of his or her skin. I’ll readily admit that I felt like a prejudice about to be confirmed when I noticed the number of black maids and handymen in households out in the country, but I was soon proven wrong as it became clear that they weren’t so much employees as members of the family who just happened to work there as well. I witnessed how the man who was to become my father-in-law gave his black handyman his car when the old one broke down and he couldn’t afford to repair it. He has that car still and was neither expected to, nor has he ever paid a dime for it. He was just a family member down on his luck and daddy just so happened to have a car he didn’t need anyway.

I was taught that in the U.S. it was “every man to himself.” Instead I learned that no man is an island and that my countrymen will give you their shirt off their back if they think you need one. Not because they’re told to or expected to, but because it’s the right thing to do and, besides, everybody else would do the same for you.

I’ve learned that there IS such an animal as “the right thing to do” and that all you need to find out what it is is to listen to your heart. I’ve also learned that the help you offer a stranger out of the kindness of your heart is worth a million government handouts paid for with money taken from you at gunpoint, and I’ve learned that human beings don’t NEED a government to tell them the right thing to do. It’s something we’re all born with. All we have to do is to listen, watch and learn.

And most of all I learned that G-d DOES exist. He’s all around us and nowhere on Earth is His presence stronger than here in the country that I’m honored, happy and blessed to call “home.”

Overseas, we used to snicker when we heard the U.S. referred to as “G-d’s own country.”

Now that I’m here, I don’t laugh anymore.

I’m just eternally grateful that I’m finally home.

The Danish Girl Who Knew What Kind of Nation the United States Is

When I first came to Paris, I lived in the Cité Universitaire's Fondation Danoise. When meeting new people (most of them Danish students), I would sometimes get odd reactions when I mentioned my dual nationality. For instance, one time two girls seemed shocked that I would admit that I was also American. They couldn't seem to understand that I wasn't ashamed of that and that I wouldn't try to hide it.

(Among other deep thoughts I heard there were how China had become a model country under Mao and how, if anyone wore a turban and rode a camel, it was a sure bet that Americans would be stupid enough to drop bombs on them.)

• Everyday Meetings with Common Europeans

One day, a slightly older woman passed by the Foundation. She was in her late 20s or early 30s, and she never smiled. When I mentioned the United States in the reading hall, it didn't take her a hundredth of a second for her to blurt out

Det er et racistisk land.

"It's a racist country." That was the judgment for 300 million individuals — no more, no less.

All of this was way before 9-11, of course, in my shy younger days, way before I had developed Americans Anonymous, so I wasn't that good at arguing, but I still attempted to throw in a few facts.

That's when her husband walked in.

He was American.

And he was black.

Jet black.

Neither of them ever smiled. It rapidly became obvious that there was no (or very little) love between the two.

It seemed readily apparent that she had married him for her convictions; she had not married an individual (of whatever color), and that for his inherent personality traits (I almost wrote for his strength of character). No, she had deliberately chosen a component of a community to prove (to the world, to herself) that she was part of the anti-racist élite, that she was superior to others.

Now, because the PC Gotcha Gang (with apologies to William Safire) is as quick to search for (and find) evidence of racism everywhere (as quick, indeed, as the Danish girl), it is necessary for me to make an amend here. I am all for people marrying whom they want. I harbor no doubts whatsoever that there are many (probably that most) relationships between people of different colours, races, creeds, and religions work.

But I also know this: No more than a white supremacist should deliberately restrict his pool of choices to a (wo)man of the same color should an anti-racist restrict his pool to a (wo)man of the opposite color.

Then again, I also know that love and friendship are too important for them to be reduced to posturing and peacocking for the outside world (and for one's own self), no matter how important the battle.

Finally, I know this: if racism and injustice are to be fought, to concentrate only, or even mainly, on the United States, is blinding yourself to a number of unsavory facets of countries throughout the planet (not least in Africa), racist or not, far worse than those that go reported in America.

Update: a Danish expatriate in America reacts…

The EUtopian motivation toward excellence.

It looks more or less like Freudian penis envy to the dispassionate observer. Like we’ve said here before: hey dude, whatever works.

«BRUSSELS — Austria will use its presidency of the EU to promote proposals to create a European rival to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in a bid to stop the continent's brightest minds moving across the Atlantic, the country's ambassador to the EU said Friday.

European believe talent is too thinly spread around the 25-nation EU, and cooperation between European countries is needed to create specialized centers where top students, teachers and researchers could concentrate.

French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin has proposed such an institution be created in Paris with a $360 million starting budget.

However Jorgo Chatzimarkakis, a German member of the European Parliament's research committee, said the EU should not just seek to create its own version of the elite school in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

"Everybody knows that it cannot be a copy of the MIT because the MIT needed 150 years in order to become successful, and we don't have that time," the Liberal lawmaker said in a telephone interview.

"There is a big, big reluctance among the European universities to accept a new competitor, Chatzimarkakis said.»

Such camaraderie. If their first instinct is to try to ban their competition out of existence, how do they think they can compete with the work done at MIT or CalTech?

Bring ‘em on.

Sarkozy seems ready to come out swinging for the 2007 elections, and this in the first generation of elected officials where sleaze and corruption are useful, but aren’t prerequisite for the job.

«The government’s number two man wants to continue to make his distinctions known. For example, with regard to the Prime Minister promoting tax relief after 2007, Sarkozy noted that de Villepin had the "right to his opinions", but said that "a tax relief strategy can’t happen without first having budget cuts." Further, as he was said with some satisfaction yesterday, "we’ll see how the public votes in 2007, and what the new president decides to do about it".»

It’s just a beginning, but it bodes well. Politicking without false promises is by no means over, but for now at least, not making good on them is becoming slightly more embarrassing.

As for Sarko, he even seem to be sounding like the eminent US political theoretician Jesse Ventura...

Imam Hook hates Pater Pan

But lefty loves him, nonetheless. Or at least finds him useful.

Crossposted on Marxist Byproducts

Airstrike targeting Zawahri kills innocent women, children, and puppies with big sad eyes.

Buried behind 3 paragraphs rejoicing that somewhere there is an angry street, Reuters reports:

«Pakistani intelligence officials said they were checking reports up to seven foreign militants had been killed and their bodies removed by local supporters. But they said there were no indications Osama bin Laden's deputy, Zawahri, was there.

"He was invited for the dinner, but we have no evidence he was present," a senior intelligence official told Reuters.

Al Arabiya television quoted a source it said had contact with al Qaeda saying Zawahri was alive.

The U.S. government has not commented, but U.S. sources familiar with the operation said it was too early to determine his fate and the remains of the dead would have to be examined.

The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the airstrike was based on "very good" intelligence indicating Zawahri was at the targeted location. »

Either that or they were double-gamed on the tip which was constructed well enough to pass the sniff test, and take a risk on a high value target.

Paul Martin on unfamiliar terrain

They weren’t ‘injured’, they were wounded, dumbshit.

«LAVAL, Quebec -- Prime Minister Paul Martin says one Canadian was killed and three other Canadians were injured in a tragic incident near Kandahar, Afghanistan today.

He says on behalf of all Canadians, he wants to express his condolences to the family of the individual who was killed.

Martin says our prayers and best wishes go out to the family of the deceased and to the families of the injured.»

Sure, best wishes to you too.

Regardless of the “if”s, he backed the allegation anyway

How typically small-minded – Dick Marty, a senator for Switzerland's centre-right Radical Party (a term only a leftist could use to dress up a puppy-in-the-blender FDP party that they would otherwise detest), publicized without scrutiny the charges that the US imprisoned 23 people on Romanian territory with the consent of the Romanian government, but not the EU (which does not retroactively shoves policy down the throats of member states.)

It’s part of a „goal”

«Sonntags Blick: Do you doubt the document's authenticity?

Dick Marty: "I don't have any basis on which to judge it. But a number of questions come up. Why did the Swiss intelligence service intercept correspondence between London and Cairo? Was the document intentionally directed to the Swiss service? Was it in someone's interest that the thing be made public in Switzerland?"

Sonntags Blick: What do you think of the document's content?

Dick Marty: "The allegation that 23 prisoners were interrogated on the base in Romania is new to me. This is the first time I have seen that number. The places where the alleged secret prisons are have been discussed for quite some time."

Sonntags Blick: How important must the intelligence service have considered this intercepted communication to be?

Dick Marty: "If it's authentic, it must have been considered very important. The report is dated November 10, 2005. Since the beginning of November the world's press has reported on the secret prisons. On November 7 the European Council initiated an investigation led by a Swiss. All of this must have led to the fact that the intelligence service informed the political level, that is to say the [Swiss] parliament." »

So he believes that somehow a EUro-public-affairs-statement (basically a geyser of invective that you can set your watch by) somehow caused events to happen, and that there is something wrong with the US picking up headchopping miscreants, while European governments pretty much have the right to detain anyone they want. In the case of France, it’s 3 years.

«Sonntags Blick: How far along is your own investigation on the CIA prisons in Europe?

Dick Marty: "There is still a long and complicated road to go, but I am confident that we'll get to our goal. There is movement in more and more countries, including in the U.S.A., as we can see from the public criticism of the Bush Administration's domestic spying activities. And it has been proven in Italy that the kidnapping of Abu Omar was a CIA operation. The Milan prosecutors have done outstanding work."
Sonntags Blick: "But Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi claims that there's nothing to the allegations.

Dick Marty: "That means nothing. Almost no governments are telling the truth about this affair."

Sonntags Blick: Have you received flight data about CIA jet aircraft that you requested from Eurocontrol and the satellite pictures of possible prison camps?

Dick Marty: "No, not yet. But if we don't get the data, that's an answer too."»

So while he speculates on the timing and the recipient, he doesn’t question the source one bit – a fax from the entrepot of wargasmic headchopping: an untraceable fax number in Cairo.

On the other hand, aren’t you glad that the man is at least GOAL ORIENTED?

Get smart

Probably too late for some Zeropeans, and to be quite frank, America doesn't need friends like that (who's next, the French?).

Wheres Waldo?

Seriously, oh peaceful ones. Wheres Waldo?

French riots were America's fault

Never underestimate the depths to which the French will sink.

Dieudonné, antiSemitic pro-Bin Laden French comic, has written a play 'Emeutes en Banlieue' that transforms the recent French suburban riots into a funky road movie.

The storyline: a young, blond, cynical American journalist (played by an actress using the stagename 'America') is told by her head news editor (a certain Birnenbaum) to bring back the worst possible slant on France's recent Muslim riots -- all the better to boost news ratings. She ventures off to France and meets up with a host of adorable suburban characters.