Saturday, June 17, 2006

Hey Plantu, Americans don't care, dude.



Al Jazeera sur Seine:
The image of Airbus in the United States has been tarnished in the past few weeks, while that of Boeing is gilded anew. The two manufacturers have devoted themselves to a merciless commercial war using the active economic diplomacy of their governments. But their conflict is also exposed in the media. Boeing underwent quite a bit of criticisms in the press because several chairmen were unable to keep up sales. Today, the tide has turned and it’s Airbus which becomes the target of critics.

The A380 is the subject of attacks over its fuel consumption, its weight, and its excessive size.
It can only be about ‘image’ when you’re trying to convince yourself that it isn’t about making good planes that sell well. Chirac arranges state visits just to sell planes. Bush doesn’t seem to have time for that kind of thing. As for Boeing being ‘gilded’, one wonders if this writer has ever been to the United States. Americans aren’t nationalistic about companies, and we don’t rely on corporate sales figures to provide then with their self esteem.

The fuse is lit!

A people that deserve everything they get

I sympathize with Domenic de Villepin, morally at-sea as he is, I really pity the guy who has to deal with people like this:

POISSY, France, June 8 (Reuters) - French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, under fire after a stalled effort to cut youth unemployment, took more flak on Thursday from angry auto workers who lambasted his plans to keep older people in work.

"You don't learn anything!" one of a group of demonstrators from the CGT union called out as Villepin visited automaker Peugeot's plant in Poissy near Paris to promote his initiative to cut joblessness among older workers.

"There are 500 young people who've just been laid off while the older ones have been broken down by their working conditions and ask only to be allowed to leave in dignity!" one protester said.
They should simply change protocol and start officially referring to the Prime Minister and the President as “Mommy” and “Daddy” from now on.
Last time I checked, a government can’t create private sector jobs. They can, at best, smother it with taxes and regulation and “make employment history”, but can a government force a plant magically create work for these clowns if they shoot down any initiative to bring them into the 21st century by incrementally getting them out of the 19th century?



Protesting the existence of entry-level
employment wherever it can be found

Why has no action been taken on Darfur?

Lou Minatti says: follow the money. It leads to the usual suspects who supported Saddam.

The times, they are a changing

15 June 2006 -

As an overall picture, time has been an element in affecting negatively the forces of the occupying countries, due to the losses they sustain economically in human lives, which are increasing with time. However, here in Iraq, time is now beginning to be of service to the American forces and harmful to the resistance
- From a document found in Abu Musa al Zarkawi’s cache after his defeat. It was release by the Iraqi government.

25 December 2004 -
On Christmas Day former Senator and former presidential candidate George McGovern wrote a letter to the editor of the Los Angeles Times (and probably many other papers) calling for an American surrender in Iraq.
- David Horowitz on former U.S. Senator George McGovern’s call for the U.S. to “surrender” in Iraq.

Again, I ask, surrender to whom?

McGovern carelessly called for an American retreat from Iraq before a government could even be established. It was such a bad assertion, that even then that the left had to turn on its’ famous noise machine to get some credibility back, and still keep up its’ ‘fight’.

Also doing the service of emboldening the argument of the U.S.’ opponents in the war on terror, one year before Zarkawi’s admission Jude Wanniski writing his monthly article in al Jazeera, tried to whitewash McGovern’s taciturn demand that the United States should make a show of weakness and insincerity:
Former Senator George McGovern, who ran unsuccessfully for president in 1972 as the Democratic nominee in opposition to the Vietnam war, last week proposed a solution tied to the president's position that the US would only stay as long as it took to train Iraqis to maintain order by themselves.

[ ... ]

They
[the critics of the Bush Administration] argue that a fixed timetable for a complete withdrawal would change the behavior of the insurgents and lead to a more favorable outcome.
Sure pal, sure.the fuse is lit!

Friday, June 16, 2006

Heroes

A Nation honors valor in the war on terror (thanks to Robert Tracinski)

“American” a Euro codeword for overbearing

Wholely unnecessary, but what the hell - anything to prop up a tender ego, I guess. Note too that Telegraph Alex cartoonist’s notion of NOT USING the Airphone in the headrest in front of you seems just too difficult for a mere mortal to resist. Better to do the non-overbearing European thing, and ban it, eh?



I’m touched that he didn’t try to childishly call him “Billy-Bob” or some other pathetic caricature, but tell me, fellow cretinous American overlords of workplace terror – how many “Cyruses” do you know?


Oh – I forgot, you can’t say that. They’re supposed to be more personally assured, more skillful, lucid, and whatever else than we pre-cambrian Americans, the great idiots and evil geniuses of the world.

Remind me to never mention a British client I’ve had who couldn’t stay focused on the non-personal or the job for more than eight minutes, and who was one of the only near-illiterates whom (as he said) was highly regarded by his peers. Oh yeah, and then there was the stereotypical state of his oral hygiene, and his glowing ‘personality’ which couldn’t even be parodied. His only saving grace was that his education and credentials were falsely assumed to speak for themselves.

I could go on, but I won’t.

The fuse is lit!

Flight to quality, not!

Noel Forgeard get named EuroWanker of the Day.

Thank you

for a job well done

Of Course They Haven't; Who, After All, Would Be Interested in Polls on the Iraqi Crisis from Iraq?!

Thank you for sending your article to the IHT. Unfortunately the editors have not been able to find a place for it.
In response to an International Herald Tribune front-page article concerning a poll showing that the global image of the United States has (again) fallen, I submitted the following Op-Ed article. As the information contained therein was obviously not of much interest to the general public, the piece was turned down. (Incidentally, here is more on polls that fail to rouse the interest of the MSM.)

How about the polls from Iraq?

Erik Svane

I understand fully well why so many people hold a dim view of the U.S. (or its leaders) and feel the war in Iraq has made the world a more dangerous place (Image of U.S. falls again, June 14). After all, we keep hearing and reading about polls showing how vast majorities in Europe distrust Bush and the reason for the Iraq war, how vast majorities in the Arab world distrust Bush and the reason for the Iraq war, and how America is divided over Bush and the Iraq war.

Now, if Brian Knowlton thought it necessary to mention that Spain was "deeply affected" by the March 2004 bombings in Madrid, one might think that he might point out that the very least that an organization could have done while gathering material for a global opinion poll centered on the war in Iraq would be to attempt to include a number of Iraqi nationals in said poll — who, if I am not mistaken, happen to be the population most affected by the current situation in Mesopotamia. Rather than interview people nonchalantly sharing their facile opinions that "the world has become more dangerous since Saddam Hussein's removal from power in 2003" and that, from the safety of their armchair in their comfortable living room (most of them living in Western democracies), the Pew Research Center might have questioned people who had to fend for themselves in what can only be called a barbaric police state.

Indeed, one reason that "the global image of America has slipped," that "pessimism about the future of Iraq was widespread," and that "Iraq is sapping good will to the United States" may be that they see so few polls from Iraq. As it happens, polls from Iraq — both Western and Iraqi — do exist. To mention only four (that are quoted in my book on anti-Americanism in France and Europe, La Bannière Étalée): in March 2004, a BBC poll found that 56% of Iraqis said life was better than before the war (only 17% thought it was worse) while 71% said life would improve and only 15% wanted foreign troops to leave the country. A January 2005 poll by the Iraqi daily Sabah found that 88% of respondents supported military action against the so-called "insurgents," while only 13% in a poll by the Al Midhar newspaper wished for the immediate departure of foreign troops. In polls conducted by Iraqi universities in the Fall of 2005, two thirds of respondents said life was better than under Saddam while no less than 82% expected their personal lives to be even better one year in the future. (Oh, and in case anyone is interested, a BBC poll from Afghanistan in October 2005 reported that 87% of respondents thought that Bush's overthrow of the Taliban was a good thing and that 83% of Afghans had a favorable opinion of the United States.)

Of course, were Western citizens slightly more aware of such viewpoints (rather than the hand-wringing, the tch-tching, and the apocalyptic scare-mongering of their own élites), their opinions of America, Bush, and/or the war might be neither so definite nor so negative. Then again, if Iraqis' (and Afgans') views had mirrored those of the members of the ever-so-lucid European élite more, you can bet that European editors would be all over themselves printing and reprinting them all over their front pages. (Pew might even have sent one of its research teams to Iraq.)

As France heads the list of nations thinking that the Iraq war has made the world a more dangerous place, it is instructive to mention how the war has (not) been reported there. When the French daily of reference asked its Baghdad correspondant to question common Iraqis about their opinions of the war on the first anniversary of the invasion, it apparently expected to get confirmation of its (self-serving) view of the situation which it systematically describes with expressions such as "chaos," "violence," "massacres," and the "reign of insecurity." Not only did Rémy Ourdan report in Le Monde that the vast majority of Iraqis thought the invasion was the best thing to happen to Iraq in the past 30 years, he also reported that if Iraqis questioned any country's policies and second-guessed anybody's reasons for their decisions with regards to the crisis, it was not those of the allegedly oil-hungry Americans but those of the allegedly principled members of the so-called "Peace Camp" who, directly or indirectly, ended up defending Saddam Hussein (oil-for-food and UN corruption ring a bell?).

The Baghdad correspondant was soon "promoted" to a desk job in Paris and Iraqis' views have rarely been seen in the French media since. With partial (and partisan) reporting like that (the October 2004 discovery of a mass grave in Hatra, with nine trenches near the northern Kurdistan village including the skeletons of toddlers, pregnant women, and unborn babies, went totally unreported in the French press), no wonder people the world over have a dim view of the United States and/or its president and his policies.

Once, when Churchill was treated to yet another harangue about the evils, the failures, the mistakes, and the inequalities of democracy, the old statesman acquiesced with his idealistic interlocutor: "Democracy is the worst form of government," the Old Lion agreed, pausing before adding, "except for all the others." That expresses exactly how I feel when I hear the umpteenth litany enumerating the so-called sins of America, its awful leaders, its lying politicians, its cowering press, its unjust foreign policy, and/or its clueless citizens.

A Danish-American journalist living in Paris, Erik Svane is the author of La Bannière Étalée, a book on anti-Americanism in France and Europe. His latest book is Général Leonardo.

There is no admitting mistakes, so moonbats can only go from bad to worse

Le Monde is running an article on the lack of popularity of the mall-punk style organization of political fringe loonies called Attac. The irony is that they are losing favor with « altermondialistes » in all likelihood because they now seem too “establishment”.
There entire dealio is getting worked up over the existence of people who have some money (unless their name is Castro or Chavez.)

However their Trotskite vision of endless protest and revolution has it’s weakness, apart from the fact that it destroys any society it infects.
It’s easy for people to step away from their cannibalistic vision of society when they see their own career efforts providing them with a decent living. In other word, their ideas are a sort of recessive gene in a successful society, and the only way to keep their meal ticket is to continue pushing the envelope of extreme measures and proposals. But with the battiest of moonbats battered by a lack of success of their world-view, that isn’t enough.

Like all lefty hypocrites, one of their hundreds of efforts was that they advocated taxing all financial transactions in order to chip away at capitalism by ending the buying and selling of stocks and other instruments. As advocates of high taxation socialist redistribution, they know full well that if you want to kill anything vibrant, all you have to do is tax it to death. It’s precisely what they advocate for the society at large as well.

Nonetheless they are all largely raving capitalists who froth at the mouth:

«Whereas altermondialism produces bestselling books, sells documentaries, and is continually putting out press conferences in France, Attac plays less of a part in this. “it’s obvious that Attac has less influence”, says Cédric Durand, joint author of the book Altermondialists, chronicles of a changing revolution.

[ ... ]

[They had a] small presence during the anti-CPE protests, and didn’t succeed in entering the debate on immigration… They don’t seem to know how to rebound, even if the local committees are still very active.
Criticism came even from the most puzzling of places:
They debates with the knife in a conflict without end under the inspiration of its’ president Jacques Nikonoff, but has worn out a lot of its’ goodwill. They have been losing manpower for two years. After a losing touch with the young: “Attac is perceived to be a traditional organization and lost of its influence in the young people”, notes Nicolas Haeringer of the Brigade Activist Clowns, a civil disobedience group.
Does this just shows the strength of the powerful Clown lobby, or are we talking real trouble here for Attac? Tune in next week, since Bozo and friends are sure to be with us for quite a while.

They’re wiz-kids, I tell ya...

Le Monde uses as it’s cover story a news item from September of last year for this weekend’s magazine cover story.



I guess recycling really does work, and I also suppose they are catching up – they have yet to report that Castro has been running political prisons since 1959.

The fuse is lit!

I have faith in the power of Lisbon Statement Europe to create a dynamic, competitive information-based utopia

Europe waits for France to come to terms with free-market economics: "We cannot come to terms on Europe until France comes to terms with free and open markets ... France is in denial." In the meantime, France is mucking up the works. It's a quagmire.

Thanks to Atlas ...

For getting this clear, concise message through to UN bureaucrappers.

Caniches

When Blair does it, he's a poodle following his master. When Chiraq does it, he's following his friend ("In Afghanistan, Paris follows its friend" -- Oh, brother!). With friends like that... Never forgive, never forget.

Che Guevara, Revolutionary and Icon

Jean-Pierre Langellier recounts the story of the famous Che Guevara photo in relation to the Revolutionary and Icon exhibit at London's Victoria and Albert Museum

Serge July Ousted From Libération

As he is ousted from Libération after a third of a century (33 years), Serge July is lionized by Marion Van Renterghem

Thursday, June 15, 2006

I refuse to believe that such a thing could happen in Lisbon Statement Europe

You know, the Europe that's gonna be the most dynamic and competitive information based economy by 2010. Noel Forgeard, who has apologised to investors over EADS crash in value, dumped some of his shares in early March, along with family members and other top managers -- 3 months before the just annoucned warning about significanty delays with the Airbus A380.

We will now be taking bets on whether or not he will end up like Ken Lay. Me thinks not. Zeropa still has much to learn about American-style accountability.

Value for money

Compare and contrast:
Lefty crank Margo Kingston’s Webdiary and ¡No Pasarán!











Brand X¡No Pasarán!
Paid staff:Yeshenh?
Income:AUS$ 1667nix
Outlays:AUS$ 3125bupkus, the occasional 6 pack
A9 Ranking:1 263 856th241 546th
Sites linked in:3242
Bankruptcy threats:frequent, naggingnever
JujuBad - BoringGood - Not Boring
ConclusionBilious, misanthropic losersThe amiable blogging Elves of Internet-land

Says Tim Blair of the desiccated Webdiary:

As a devoted Webdiary reader, here’s my view. Project Syndicate’s articles may be linked to by any website for free. You are paying $US750 each month for the pointless indulgence of republishing every word of those pieces.
Ogram N'otsgnik needs to develop a little perspective – you’r going into debt over a blog. Lighten up, cowpoke!

Europe Leaves America in the Dust

You know how America is; unlike the wise and avant-garde Europeans, the Yanks are lied to and deceived by their stupid leaders, their evil CEOS and élites, and their clueless media…

Brussels = Kremlin

Any doubts ?

Will he be ‘frog marched’?

The anti-success, anti-business left’s favorite billionaire (the second or third that they would line up on the wall to be shot) has been busted:

PARIS - The highest court in France on Wednesday rejected a bid by George Soros, the billionaire investor, to overturn a conviction for insider trading in a case dating back nearly 20 years, leaving the first blemish on his five-decade investing career
Good riddance, malaka.

The fuse is lit!

Gee, I wish I had thought of that

EuroWanker of the Day award.

After Zeropa decides to remove itself from History ...

... France gets ready to leave reality behind. Violent anarchist, terrorist supporter, and crypto-Communist, José Bové, is running for President.

With French dressing

French newspapers love to write about the polls that are regularly churned out by the Pew Institute which point to an ever diminishing positive image for the US. They skipped this year's results which show that France's image, especially in Muslim countries, is in the crapper. Message to Chiraq: Playing the skin flute didn't get you anywhere, did it? Switch to salad tossing.

Marianne est souffrante

Le ChatBorgne, blog littéraire, organise un jeu concours pour la sortie de France Intox.

Ils n'ont qu'à faire voter une loi déclarant Libé patrimoine culturel machin truc

Nous rappelons qu'à «Libération» il n'est pas du ressort d'un actionnaire quel qu'il soit de décider du contenu éditorial et de ses contributeurs.

On dirait que les pubards pédérastes qui se font passer pour des journalistes chez Libé PropagandaStaffel vont bientôt suivre des cours intensifs en capitalisme et les droits des actionnaires. C'est incroyable, le nombre de pédés consensuels à Paris qui se prennent pour des impertinents et des révolutionnaires.

Those silly Zeropeans

Crash landing. At about the same time that the EU made the madcap comic Lisbon statement, it was trumpeted that Airbus was the way to go and that the European company Soviet-style highly subsidized bureaucracy would drive Boeing from the skies. Little Europeans must learn that you should never fly higher than you are willing to fall. Look for Galileo (knock-off European GPS) and Quaero (knock-off European search engine meant to compete with Google's promotion of American cultural supremacy) to suffer a similar fate.

Thtop teasing, ya big brute!

The Diplomad (not featuring Mr. Mad himself) may be back.
Hey – I can dream, can’t I?

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Collective Guilt

When a French inventor (he had invented, among other things, a retractable spiral staircase for small two-floor apartments) explained on TV how some of his earlier inventions had been pilfered in America, the program's host asked rhetorically, "les Américains l'ont volé?!"
"The Americans stole it?!" Thus I opened an article meant to illustrate Old Europe's penchant for creating (and entertaining) collective guilt (or, when it concerns their own selves, collective wisdom, collective tolerance, collective heroics, etc, etc, etc). Think only of "They deserved 9-11!"

A Clarisse Fabre article about a manuscript stolen from the Bibliothèque Nationale de France abounds with twists and turns, but if the headline isn't an indictment (The BNF requests that the United States return its stolen manuscript), it comes pretty close to one.

A French-German textbook in which the US and the USSR are presented as broadly equivalent in moral terms

Among the Atlantic Review's must reads is a French-German textbook that contains "unashamedly pro-European ideology" and an underlying distrust of the United States, notably preseting the US and the USSR as broadly equivalent in moral terms…

Giving credit where credit is due

Following a (business class) flight on Air France, Mark needs
to give credit where credit is due – after passing through Charles de Gaulle airport for the second time last week, I was treated to a very pleasant experience, which seldom occurs when I travel. I was about to miss a connection in Paris (because of some Scottish problems in Scotland), but some good guys with Air France and the airport managed to figure this out before I landed, and were there to hustle me off the plane in a van as soon as I arrived. I was aided by a nice kid who helped me jump ahead in the security line, passport controls, and all of the other fun stops at the airport. So, I was able to make the connection.

To the casual observer, I must have seemed very important, like a surgeon who needed to make a flight on his way to save a head of state. If the people who were pushed aside for me knew the truly trivial nature of my existence, there would have been a riot, but fortunately for me, they barely had time to complain before I disappeared. Anyway, without the foresight of the French Connection-People, I would have had to hang around Paris offending Parisians with my Americaness.

The littlest victim

Was made the victim of a very crass press.

to broadcast a video of a little girl in spastic shock over her freshly killed father's body is inconceivably disrespectful. I don't care if it furthers your cause or not, it is an abhorrent thing to do
Adloyada surveys blog reactions on the Gaza Beach shelling fallout. She reminds us of what many news makers and news “consumers” have gown immune and ignorate of – propriety.
Huda screamed when asked by journalists on her feeling during the first night she spent without her family, prompting her uncle to calm her down and ask the journalist to consider his niece's psychological shock, adding that all relatives of the family were in a state of shock.

Its the Danes' Fault!

The cartoon controversy over Mohammed is the Danish government's fault, says a report (whose authors happen to be linked to the opposition): the Muslim ambassadors were all nice and kind and harmless people, as were the all the imams involved, both abroad and in Denmark.

No wonder the story deserves top billing in France!

Bloated and Insatiable American Unions, Euro Mobocracy... Same Thing

Courtesy of El Gato (the hamster is thrown in for free):

At a recent UAW meeting, UAW chief Ron Gettelfinger spoke about the need for the union to deal with the auto makers. He talked about the dreadful state of Ford and GM and how they are both losing jobs. UAW jobs.
"But it's going to take more than what we can do at the bargaining table. There are failed [political] strategies that have failed to protect our jobs."
Making it more difficult to get rid of workers makes it less likely the workers will be hired in the first place. There's a whole country that's tried this. It's called France.

The fuse is lit!

CAIR, BBC, etal incapable of identifying irony

Tell me if you think the promotion of this story (which is 3 months old) isn’t nicely timed, and that this Marine’s song to entertain his friends doesn’t have anything to do with trying to cope with the predilections of the press when they’re trying to do their jobs.



The video of the song in question
Posted on the YouTube website, the video shows a man in uniform strumming a guitar while singing about killing Iraqis, as others laugh and cheer.
What the BBC left out is the part of the Marine’s joke about the men of the family showing off their AK-47s, which is probably closer to the truth than a Marine killing civilians.

They are simply incapable of understanding why troops would joke because the newsies live insulated lives like that Orwell found repugnant in the Gadflies of his time:
We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.


Besides, anyone want to grade this for tastefulness? Nothing offensive there worth mentioning!



One makes a joke, the other raps about “takin’ over” and slaughtering people waving a scimitar around instead of an Ibanez with a fuzzy pickup. Morally equivalent, surely.

Tuesday, June 13, 2006

“Shocked Rerporters,” not what they’re covering, are now news. Alert the media!



The news item here, is about news people being shocked at themselves. Have you ever head of such rabid speciesism?

Missing evidence and missing pieces of time.

Friday 9 June – A shell, or something explodes on the beach in Gaza.

The Arabs removed all evidence of shrapnel that could prove whose shell was to blame:

Seven Arab Muslim Palestinians were killed. One dramatic picture on the cover of the NYT, page 3 of the Chicago Trib, etc. showed a beautiful young girl screaming in agony over the death of her father lying next to her. This is the lasting image and the entire story to be told. By Monday the NYT headline is: "Errant Shell Turns Girl Into Palestinian Icon".

One commentator wondered how the camera got there so fast or was the scene re-enacted?
I don’t wonder how. I don’t even wonder why. I wonder why so few are so skeptical of it.

The Arabs removed all the wounded and dead with the shrapnel in them also removed to eliminate any evidence. They refused to have the bodies examined for forensic evidence of what actually killed the seven. Two are being treated in Israeli hospitals.

Saturday 10 June - Regardless of what the Israeli Defense Forces had to say, the “world” Press would have none of it. Radar? Timestamped data? Ten minutes between the end of the shelling and the explosion? No matter. They pile it on because they think it SHOULD be true. Fake, but accurate?
The third observation casting doubt on the possibility that IDF shelling was the cause of the Palestinian deaths was that the IDF had accounted for five of the six shells that it fired in the area before the explosion and the shell that was unaccounted for was fired more than 10 minutes before the blast that killed the Palestinians.
Knowing that a mercenary investigator from Human Rights Watch can only report on what he can honestly see, the scene of the explosion on the beach in Gaza was cleaned up before his arrival. They show him a hole in the ground, and he has to dance with the one who brung ‘im.

Monday 12 June – The report in favor of Hamas’ interpretation of events is released by HRW Flunky enters the area. The analyst, Marc Garalsco, is the senior military analyst for Janes’ Defence fierce competator, Mother Jones Magazine.
No one is publishing when Garalsco entered the area of the investigation, but the brevity of his comment is that it most occurred late in the day on the 10th or on the 11th. The Fact that Friday and Saturday are the weekend there limits the removal of shrapnel to anytime between the event itself and Friday afternoon, since onlookers are more likely to be out and about after sunset on Friday.


Regardless, this will never penetrate the thickest of heads. Le Monde today referred to them thus:
« la mort de sept Palestiniens, vendredi 9 juin, sur une plage du nord de la bande de Gaza est due non pas à un bombardement israélien mais à l'explosion d'une mine posée par des activists, a affirmé un haut responsable militaire qui a requis l'anonymat. »
They aren’t activists, they’re bombers trying to make news for themselves by killing people.
They are activists in the same way Carlos the Jackal was.

13 June – “World” Press starts publishing the fact that there is some skepticism. Too late – the feeding frenzy is over.

Speaking truth to power the powerless



Guantanamo bay [prison] must be closed!...

...Especially during the war on terror.

Presidential Elections in France

Hugo Taupin a créé un site sur les présidentielles 2007

With three tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, the jailed men were preparing something other than a huge garden, spelling out I Love Canada in tulips

Here's a country where 17 Muslims at home in Canada's relentlessly projected image as the Nicer New World — a Unicef Seasons Greetings card tableau of smiley-faced sarong, sombrero and tarboosh-wearers — lurched out of the picture of multicultural harmony and plotted to invade Parliament and cut off the prime minister's head
writes John Vinocur in his International Herald Tribune article on a new multicultural definition of Canada as the Non-America, including maple leaf patches on backpacks signaling don't-worry-I-only-sound-American.
Here's also a country, locked into the same self-portrait, that blinks in we're-good-guys bewilderment to think that savaging gentle, tolerant Canada was the idea driving these Islamic extremists from Toronto's immigrant community.

In a very politically correct place, the implications of what prosecutors have said are awful.

Like the notion that the enshrined status of multiculturalism in Canada may not provide some of its "visible minorities" (That's Canadian "correctspeak") with a new identity strong enough to drown out jihadist calls that their greatest loyalties and even murderous obligations are elsewhere.

This implication — that for all of immigrants' enrichment of Canada, something essential has gone wrong in an approach to integration that offers total accommodation but demands only limited compatibility — is resisted by a multicultural establishment.

But the issue may have started to tear at the nation's heart.

Here's the skirmish line: establishment forces against renegades drawing the conclusion that when it comes to Muslim extremism and homegrown groups of Muslims engaged in anti-Western violence, Canada's self-definition as Not The United States (or France or the Netherlands — hey, the Canadians would never force assimilation on an immigrant!) is a conceit that shields this country neither from hatred or reality.

The establishment's all-is-well reflexes can be extraordinary. After arresting 17 alleged Islamic extremists, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police insisted they "represented a broad strata of our community. It's hard to find a common denominator." Toronto's police chief, Bill Blair, even said, "I would remind you that there was not one single reference made by law enforcement to Muslims." …

Principled French Reporters Sniff Their Noses at Pentagon's "Macabre" and "Shocking" Presentations

You can count on Le Monde to present a negative version of Zarqawi's death, using it to castigate the American military.

Regarding the photos of the dead Al-Qaeda leader, Patrice Claude speaks of the "strange, even shocking" scene and the "degrading and macabre exercise". He proceeds to evoke the "fable" of the weapons of mass destruction, "invented by Washington in 2002 and 2003 to justify the invasion of the former Mesopotamia"; the "filmed parade of Saddam Hussein as a hobo" ("it was clearly to humiliate him", rails Claude); the Pentagon's being found out "with a smoking gun" (when it paid Iraqi journalists to write un-MSM, i.e., more realistic, articles); and oh-so-principled journalists remembering "with disgust" the spectacle of the dictator's dead sons.

Needless to say, Claude presents as undisputed fact that a squad of Marines "assassinated 24 civilians, women and children included". Le Monde colleague Eric Fottorino goes on to rail against America because of three Guantanamo prisoners who committed suicide. Just about the only thing missing now is an article relativizing 9-11, and Fabienne Darge is nice enough to provide that to Le Monde's readers.

Monday, June 12, 2006

Meanwhile, the "war on terror" raged on outside our conference hall.

I’m quite certain that the Grauniad maintains blogs for the amusement of the people who wouldn’t take them seriously anyway. Get a load of this:

Meanwhile, the "war on terror" raged on outside our conference hall. A British solider dies in Afghanistan protecting a regime "accused of orchestrating massacres, torture, mass rape and other war crimes". A triple suicide by Muslims who have been detained for four years at Guantanamo Bay outside any legal process whatsoever leads to accusations by the US head of "public diplomacy" that the dead were cunningly conducting "asymmetric warfare"
So sputtered the lucid and all-knowing oracle, Andrew Murray a former employee of the Soviet Novosti reactionary messaging agency and leading light in the British Communist party who can always be depended on to have a clear, evenhanded opinion when it comes to the United States.

The conference where the “war” on “terror” was "continuing" to rage on outside of is in “Britain.”

Apart from teaching geography, he can reliably keep cranking away at the house organ and encouraging lighthearted freedom and openness as we see from his “softly, softly” management style:
Despite the best efforts of chair Andrew Murray to impose a drab Stalinist uniformity over the proceedings, the cracks and divisions were all too evident..
The shame is that even Jihadists have always found Communism repellent, but will take any sucker they can find.

The fuse is lit!

Backlash

Discussing an opinion published in Le Figaro which this blog has recently translated a message board and two blogs are running into some difficulties peddling the usual line.

Quite naturally, it’s about Gitmo, and the opportunity for francophone bloggers have to parade their moral vanity.

America, what kind of monster have you become?
Using any and every report or ginned-up event that they can, such as “combating terror only creates more terror”, and any other convenience, Americans, no matter who they are, are the indiscriminate target of their pointless verbal hectoring.

The arguments like that of Mr. Roucaute are deeply intellectual dishonest, consisting in changing the debate to avoid the real problem (Guantanamo) by pointing to another odious situations. To claim that all those which criticize the illegal prison run by the USA close their eyes to the violation of human rights in Cuba, it is absurd and insulting.
Except that HRW and Amnesty were not the subject he was addressing as much as a public which is more than willing to close their eyes. The length people will go to - to ignore the severe opression of the Cubans in order to lecture their imagined America was precisely Roucaute's point. Ones the bloggers were willing to ignore, but the commenters understood.

But even in their comments there are more rumblings against the assertion than for it. People seem to get it:

Let’s be clear, Guantanamo bothers me, but it’s low on the list of things I hate.

Three suicides with Gitmo, and is it an outrage, “America, what kid of monster have you become!”In France, a prisoner commits suicide on average every three days. 2006 seem to be a mild year (world cup effect), with 23 suicides or suspicious deaths. 23. Since [the prison camp at] Gitmo opened in 2002, there were 41 attempts by 23 prisoners, out of which the three succeeded.

Three suicides in four years, and most of America shouts scandal. 23 suicides in 6 months in France, and everyone looks dimly at each other. No, the United States did not become a monster. The monster, is us, here, now.

Quite simply what the guys countering the active opposition to terrorism don’t understand is that the current Jihad has been around for decades, and they have chose to attack Europe and the US more directly. The suicides are not the issue. They don't even make much of a stick to beat the coalition with, but some flea will crawl out and try anyway. Say anything, do anything...

Ignoring Jihad will not make it go away, but causing the targeted populations to incrementally accommodate that concept until it’s ubiquitous. If it comes to that point, the public can permanently kiss their personal freedoms goodbye. What is most evident is the lack of perspective of the consequences of the 'peace' camp's detachment from this.
Rumsfeld said today about Iraq "This is a sovereign country, and they are making impressive progress". Yep, their use of the AK47, hand grenades and road mines improve every day.
With verisimilitudinous attention to detail like that, you can depend on these guys to do a great job interpreting the Geneva Convention, the laws of war, and such.

Jacques Attali, former "special advisor" (hear "sherpa") to french president Mitterrand tells this story about George Bush (the father) inviting Mitterrand and his team in his family house in New England ; Attali spent the night in George Walker Bush's personal bedroom, and he was told him nothing was removed or even moved because of his presence. So he took a look at George W. Bush's books, and was amazed to see only a few comics and detective stories, nothing else...

Hum. How surprising.

So they reach the point of invention. Say anything, do anything. Here's a little test:



Can they judge this for right and wrong? If they can’t, our lefty blogging paesanos should be obliged to join in, right? It is about peace. How can they objectively choose to walk away from THAT important goal?
Hm. I thought so.

In other words, there are shades of grey. It is often necessary to take up the lesser evil. And there are things people will and won’t do. Some things can’t change without lives being put at risk, but judging by the evident risk to pluralistic societies, global Jihad evil is clearly the greater evil.

No amount of stamping their feet and shaking their little fists can convince anyone reasonable otherwise which their commentators have shown. Backslash backlash.

George Gets a Bike Lesson From Anders

(Tak til Jaana og Tom)

More news from Denamark…

Sunday, June 11, 2006

Mexico 3 -Iran 1 World Cup conspiracy engineered by zionists and their flunkies

Infidel dogs, sons of apes and pigs, we are not scared of your round balls made of evil pentagons put there by those who play volleyball and backgammon with Zionists.

Do you think we are children who can be given sweets and almonds in exchange for our human right for victory?

The fuse is lit!

The last bearded hero?

al Queda will have even further difficulty creating a hero for their potential supporters to look up to now that Zarkawi is dead. The fact that the illiterate, murdering brute was the best they could do at the time is telling as well.

The very real benefit of putting that thug out of commission also has a symbolic power not just in Iraq where he was trying to turn opposition between Shiites and Sunnis into a civil war, but doesn’t do much for Jihad’s appeal anywhere else. What took place is the real and unemotional removal of a symbol.

Contrast that with western leftist shaking their little fists and stamping their feet in an attempt to construct negative symbols of anyone trying to oppose terror out of thin air, and has encountered difficulties in using that to make anything significant happen as a result.

As is the norm with the unaccountable agitators of the left, they tried and will continue to try to play at the public’s fears and emotions just as a terrorist would, and preyed on the youngest and dimmest like cowards always have, taking their verbal fight to those they think won’t retaliate. Talking in circles doesn’t require much of a physical or intellectual investment. True to that, the mendicants have benefited very little from it, and found a public exhausted by them. In large part, Michael Moore bin-forgotten.

Move over Ché, your days of t-shirt fame are over

In the spirit of el asesino


the fuse is lit!