It’s not the size of the boat, but its' motionless irrelevance

Merci à Hervé

Biased journalism 101

When Israel Jews build a wall to protect themselves from violent Pali Death Cultists, it's a racially charged Apartheid Wall. When Leftists from a European country build one to keep out violent North Africans, it's a non-racially charged Berlin Wall.

No racism there, right?

It looks like Plantu really has been through "cultural sensitivity training". The plaque under the cage he drew Sarko in says: “no good traitorous hatchetman.”

France's new literary season starts out just like the previous ones

Don't take any chances and just keep churning out the same old shit. This is the kind of crap that is published, no questions asked, by the 68-[re]tards that run the publishing houses au Royaume de Saint-Germain.



L'Amérique peut-elle encore représenter ce modèle qui a fait rêver depuis deux siècles ? A l'heure de la mondialisation, elle continue de se penser comme une île en dehors d'un monde avec qui elle se croit en guerre. Elle refuse les règles internationales, persuadée que la mission civilisatrice et morale que se sont donnée ses pères fondateurs justifie toutes les dérives. Et si le rêve américain de liberté eu de démocratie n'était qu'un leurre ? Et si l'Amérique donnait raison à Tocqueville qui prédisait sa dérive vers une nouvelle forme de despotisme ? Dans American Parano, Jean-Philippe Immarigeon montre que l'Amérique paranoïaque de Bush, telle qu'elle se présente depuis les attentats du 11 septembre 2001, n'est ni un accident ni une parenthèse. Au contraire, elle plonge ses racines dans les fondements de sa propre histoire. Bâtie il y a quatre siècles sur la préservation d'une vieille pensée autoritaire et cloîtrée que l'Europe abandonnait, l'Amérique n'est pas le monde démocratique de demain mais l'Europe d'avant-hier. Nous ne vivons pas dans le morne temps historique. Les attentats de 2001 n'ont fait que révéler cet antagonisme de deux civilisations occidentales dressées l'une contre l'autre. Et tout fait penser que cette guerre, l'Amérique va la perdre.

Merci à Eric B.

Moe, Larry, or Curly ?

EU gives Iran 2 more weeks.

In this week's Economist:

For many Americans, Europe's current involvement in Lebanon continues the tradition of irrelevance. It has been rather like a "three-stooges" show in which Jacques Chirac grandiloquently announces that France will save the world, offers to send three men and a popgun, and is finally shamed by—of all nations—Italy into sending 2,000 troops, which still won't be enough. Given an opportunity to show leadership in the region, Europe fluffs it. Again.

So is the EU more like Moe, Larry, or Curly? I say Shemp. "Nyuk Nyuk Nyuk!"

Italy's foreign minister, Massimo D'Alema, argues that co-operation over Israel, Lebanon and Palestine could help to improve ties with America, by showing that the Europeans and Americans can work together in the Arab-Israeli conflict just as they have already done in their efforts to stop Iran's suspected development of nuclear weapons. It is worth noticing, however, that close transatlantic co-operation on Iran, backed up by a resolution from the Security Council, has not yet persuaded the Islamic Republic to stop uranium enrichment. As Europe is about to rediscover, they play rough in the Middle East.

"Soitenly!"

Dismal failure

A political midget that is dangerously enamored with multilateral jawboning.

L'Intox de SOS Racisme

Prison ferme pour le visage de SOS racisme

"Je ne conteste pas ce qu'il y a écrit sur la déposition. Je n'étais pas dans mon état normal. Je suis fragile psychologiquement, sur la défensive. Je me sens constamment agressé."

Pôv' chéri. Pas étonnant. Les obscures officines qui s'occupent du discours antiraciste dans cette douce Fwance ont été démasquées dans le livre France Intox de Frédéric Valandré.

Europe is toast

The future, if the West has one, belongs to America alone ...

Airbrushing Zeropean Hysteria History

The Belgian buffoons are doing it.

Shtatnaylek!

It's like recasting Barney in yellow and green, and making the children wear bleu-blanc-rouge t-shirts.

Hezbollah to France: "You are Most Welcome in Our Land"

A deranged press loses its' bloodlust

So deranged that they’re getting the whole affair in the wrong order. The narrative started with the incompetence of White House not knowing the relationship between Plame and Wilson, and now, somehow, lefty scribblers believe that they had it in for Wilson, Plame, Miller, etal for events yet to happen.

Armitage's role aside, the public record is without question: senior White House aides wanted to use Valerie Wilson's CIA employment against her husband. Rove leaked the information to Cooper, and Libby confirmed Rove's leak to Cooper. Libby also disclosed information on Wilson's wife to New York Times reporter Judith Miller.

The public record that this “media watchdog” outfit is talking about is the hall of mirrors the press contrived by repeating suppositions and whispers based on a phone call - over and over and over. True to the stellar work ethic of the press, finding out about Armitage was no harder than finding out about Plame’s relationship with Wilson - it was in a book.

So what was the year in between about? Was the press' case of “intrepid reporters’ facial expression” the result of intrepid reporting?

Hell no. It was an excuse to have a vendetta without looking like your holding the knife. It's a "stance" they have of events. It’s the only reason anyone in the Washington press learned to read anything longer than the label on a gin bottle.

Unwitting reenactments

First they have to find six brains

Headline: humorous or tragic?

Reports of cannibalism in Brussels are entirely exaggerated. Please to observe... the natives also seem obsessed with the word “mooted” for some reason.

Cruel leftist compassion

A London based publication, The Business touches on the failure of welfare “as we knew it” which continues to enrapture the modern European left’s notion of being human. Like most of their failed notions, they’re actually meant to inoculate themselves of feelings of guilt. In fact it has the effect of spreading misery. The article benchmarked what welfare reform in the U.S. has done:

Further proof of the programme's success can be seen in the reduction in the child poverty rate, which fell from 21% in 1995 to 17.8% in 2004, according to an analysis from the Heritage Foundation. There are 1.6m fewer children living in poverty today than when welfare reform was enacted. Black child poverty was higher in 1995 ( 41.5%) than in 1971 (40.4%), despite billions of dollars spent on anti-poverty programmes; since 1996 black child poverty has plummeted at an unprecedented rate, to 33% in 2004. The drop in child poverty for single-mother families has been just as striking dramatic: after stagnating for about 25 years, the child poverty rate among single mothers fell from 50% in 1995 to 42% in 2004.

The lack of political will to actually unburden people of poverty in the UK is the article’s point. They note that the idea of reducing poverty by giving people little checks remains pervasive. Nor is the political will there to change it.

In the run-up to their landslide victory in 1997, when they [Blair and Brown] were united by a common desire to modernise the Labour Party, both came back from America with notebooks full of ideas from the Clinton New Democrats.
...
But Mr Blair soon met the limitations of his party, which was never as "new" as the prefix implied. In December 1998 when he cut benefits for lone parents, dipping a pusillanimous toe in the waters into which Mr Clinton had plunged, he was met by his first Labour Party rebellion: it took just 47 Labour rebels to give welfare reform a bloody nose.
...
Why? Because the British Labour Party, however "new" it claims to be, is congenitally and ideologically incapable of delivering welfare reform. In America, even on the liberal-left, a family on welfare is seen as both wasteful and a tragedy; there is now a broad consensus that old-fashioned welfare spending merely sustained (indeed encouraged) poverty. But the British Left regards welfare as income redistribution in action – the more of it the better and to hell with the consequences. Family breakdown, welfare dependency as a lifestyle, sink estates patrolled by feral youths, generations blighted by an endless cycle of deprivation – none of it really matters as long as welfare benefits keep on rising to salve their conscience (surely poverty will fall if we increase welfare) and satisfy their ideological purity (welfare equals income redistribution so it must be good).

Part of that affection (requited generously by patronage) is the notion that central government can create employment too. In any self-regenerating or meaningful way, it really can’t. It can hire more flunkies itself, and only create jobs by burdening the sectors of society that would create more jobs than any government itself could anyway. Demanding more from the state to cover otherwise capable people simply drags them further down instead of letting the aid go to those who really need it.

By casting their net so wide, they effectively create a class of social parasites who logically see a handout from others as motivation to do less for themselves, all the while distracting from the needs of the truly needy, and blurring the notion of what people can expect from society.

For example, why is the NHS paying for this at all when they flunk out on health basics? All it is, is a transfer payment from the society at large to a untouchable political faction who isn’t at medical risk themselves at the cost of less unreasonable people. The goal? To bilk a personal benefit of some sort, just like welfare taught you.

The question remains: why do governments get into that business at all?

All-knowing German „reporter" throwing red meat to slobs living in caves

Ray or David’s Medienkritik goes after Spiegel and it’s America based propagandist and congenital liar Marc Pitzke. Why so bitter, Marc? Because the US is succeeding at European social goals without the dead wood of their corroded world view:

Pitzke tells us that under Bill Clinton (when America was still happy-land), the US poverty rate sank to 11.7% in 2000 and the world was in order. Under Bush, who Pitzke claims has ignored the problem and allowed the poor to languish, the poverty rate has supposedly skyrocketed out of control, with the poor getting poorer as the rich get richer. So let's look at the numbers: Pitzke writes that one out of eight Americans is living in poverty. That would represent 12.5% of the population, or less than 1% more than the 2000 level. This despite the massive economic burden of September 11, two wars and Hurricane Katrina. Add to that consistently strong economic growth over the past few years (compared with virtual stagnation in Germany) and the 4.6% unemployment rate (in Germany it is over 11%) and the Bush performance doesn't seem so shabby after all...

But wait a minute. Bush is incompetent and hates the poor. Germany must be far better off. After all, seven years of enlightened, Socialist rule must have left the nation in an ideal state when compared with the horrific misrule of Bush. Let's look at the numbers...GASP...Germany - that true shining paragon of social justice and economic equality - has a poverty rate of 13.9%, up from 12.7% in 2002 and 12.1% in 1998! According to recent reports, poverty among German children is "growing as in no other industrial state," with 37% of children living in Berlin below the poverty line.

Germans fleeing in record numbers also not reported.

So he isn’t just accusing others of cruelty, or of the crime of not thinking like a Euro, he’s overlooking the breeding ground of misery being created at home. Ignoring the failed social and economic theories behind it might just hurt a bit too much for our little Marc, but they explain his narcissistic hatred of the United States.

Communitarianism’s glory

If you can’t hide the object of your shame, then you must blame.


Title: Violence in schools.
A plastic tree, reinforced concrete, one window...

« ...The Architect was mugged several times. »

« ...Ah, so he returned to the scene of the crime! »

Being a delusional lefty means you can always project your anger at thuggish, immoral people on an inanimate object like a building and its’ Architect. Hell, free will was banned years ago, anyway!

It's All Poland's Fault

In a recent opinion piece, Hervé de Charette spoke of the mistakes of the Americans; the mistakes of the Israelis; and the intransigeance of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Iranians. Everyone was/is at fault, it seems, except for (drum roll) France and the EU.

"Il est donc urgent d'agir."

This brings us to Célia Chauffour's article on Poland's attempts to reintegrate itself with the EU.

The death penalty, an insulting cartoon, a Berlin exhibit on European expulsees, everything is Poland's fault. "Poland's relations with the Union have become more complicated since last spring's formation in Warsaw of a coalition between conservatives, populists, and the far right."

Notice that the mainstream media always uses the passive tense when it wants to avoid tackling the subject of whether leftist decisions (and opposition) might be based on partisan (and base) grounds. The reverse holds for whomever it opposes. Thus, we read that Jaroslaw Kaczynski's "government reproaches violently the construction of a German-Russian gasline which would bypass Poland through the Baltic Sea" (emphasis mine).

The "recent deterioration of Berlin-Warsaw relations." Not a word on the ethics of bypassing Poland (especially when it will cost far more than simply going through that country), mind you. Not a word on whether the Schröder's decision was right or based on ethics. No. The word "violently" is enough to know who is right and who is wrong in this case.

Manufacturing content

And manufacturing sincerity. Or is that ‘manufacturing consent?’

News story agencies use a range of microphone tents to convince audiences of local television stations that they have an intrepid reporter on the scene. In reality they’ll repeat the same report 20 times.

It’s painful to watch when the news-elves are having their two-way standups with Biff and the channel 12 news team back in Outer Yuckadoo. It reeks so badly of shallowness and insincerity that I get tempted to pick up a copy of the Outer Yuckadoo Gazette, get familiar with the local goings on, and start ask a news-elf, say, how they feel about the Outer Yuckadoo City Council’s recent decriminalization of sheep buggery.

Film at 11. Back to you, Biff and the whole verschluggene channel 12 news team.

The "law of historical memory”

Why European Socialism of any sort needs to be feared: Zapatero is exercising a chilling fascist revision of the past. The Spanish Socialist Worker's Party, Alvino-Mario Fantini reports, is even dispensing pensions to some who make a nice prop for their revision of the Spanish Civil War.

The law, one of Zapatero's many electoral promises, will honor the communists and socialists persecuted by Franco's regime during his 36-year dictatorship.

Specifically, the proposed law stipulates that the Spanish government will provide 60 million Euros--about $76,244,000--in "pensions, compensation and recognition schemes" to honor the estimated 285,000 (according to historian Hugh Thomas) Republican victims of the Civil War and the post-war dictatorship.

It says nothing, however, of the nearly 145,000 members of the Nationalist coalition who were killed in action by Republican forces and executed by their militias. In fact, the law will ban all images, symbols and references to Franco and his regime in all public places (though most statues around the country have already been removed).

Alternately, you can also look at it as a withholding of pensions from those they would like to say (and have said) “never existed”.

no doubt an innocent little oversight on the part of Spain's ruling socialists--the proposed law also manages to completely ignore the more than 4,000 diocesan priests, 2,500 religious and 13 bishops who were brutally murdered--sometimes after being raped or tortured--by Republican militias during the war. (Anti-Catholic bigotry among the Republicans also led to the complete or partial destruction of countless religious icons and more than 7,200 Catholic churches during the war, according to Spanish documents.)

Further, Zapatero is evolving into a fascist, blowing the lid off of the illusion that Socialism and Communism, through their impersonal, inhumane, and coercive outlook are no different than Franco, Mussolini, or Hitler.

Like Americans who joined the Lincoln Brigades, the British writer George Orwell fought against Spain's Nationalists, alongside the POUM (Worker's Party of Marxist Unification), as part of an anti-fascist contingent from Britain's Independent Labour Party.
When Orwell later wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four, inspired in part by his experiences, his aim was to provide a warning against totalitarian governments. Of course, the socialist Orwell presumably had Franco's dictatorship in mind.

It is ironic, then, to consider the agenda of Zapatero's socialist government, which involves the kind of censorship, historical revisionism and political repression warned about. In fact, Zapatero's Spain brings to mind a passage in Orwell's classic:

A kilometer away the Ministry of Truth . . . towered vast and white above the grimy landscape. …. [Winston] tried to squeeze out some childhood memory . . . . But it was no use, he could not remember: nothing remained of his childhood except a series of bright-lit tableaux occurring against no background and mostly unintelligible.

The similarities are there – Zapatero and the late Franco share a hatred of Catholicism, but more to the point they see people as little more than a lumpenproletariat to be steered if not forced. The very notion of laws imposing themselves on history and it’s memory is a reminder that even when a state carries an image of being pleasant, mid, and meek, that without principals of individual freedom, they are no better that the states of the Europe’s dark past.

N'en déplaise aux vieux pédés aigris

The Frenchman who stood up to the eco-terrorists at Greenpeace.

Et hop ! Les boucliers se lèvent chez les pédaloïdes de la blogosphère franchouille, tous scandalisés que de tels propos se tiennent encore de nos jours. Ces gens là constituent une véritable flicaille, toujours prêt à bâillonner les têtes qui dépassent.

Et puis, surtout, les haines sont interdites, les excès
sanctionnés et les gros mots réprimés. Un mot
en trop ou en moins sur les homos, les immigrés,
les casseurs, les brûleurs de voitures, les colonialistes,
les marchands d’esclaves des siècles passés,
les massacres atroces estampillés « génocides »,
et vous voilà montré du doigt quand ce n’est pas
traîné devant les tribunaux.

Une magnifique existence s’ouvre à nous, aseptisée
sans doute, mais surtout insipide, craintive,
ligotée.

-- extrait de la préface de France Intox

Translation of “N'en déplaise aux vieux pédés aigris”

From ¡No Pasarán!: N'en déplaise aux vieux pédés aigris:

And just like that! Up goes the force field of the freaks in the French blogsphere. They’re so scandalized that they actually shut up. They’re the mind police, always ready to muzzle anyone that stands out.

Hatred is especially prohibited, excesses are sanctioned, and grumbling at them repressed.
One word out of turn about homos, immigrants, thieves, car arsonists, colonialists, or the slave merchants of centuries past, is stamped an atrocious “genocide”. You get fingered if you aren’t dragged into court.

A splendid future opens up to us, sanitized undoubtedly, but especially insipid, fear-ridden and narrow.

- from the preface of France Intox

Redefining truth to mean anything fringe crackpots want it to

Bonus: Peace and Love covering for mass murder behind a pretense of public concern... As usual.

Un-freaking-vorstellbar!

How could zey even SINK about such a ting with zese polite pipple?!?

The very thought of taking such a social benefit away from the unemployed in Deutschland! What inhumanity. It’s... It’s like Guantanamo!!!

America’s Manpower Deficit in Iraq

A couple of weeks back, Christian Isely, the author of a series of dispatches from Baghdad, wrote this on the need to recruit more reconstruction personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Paris — August 14, 2006

America’s Manpower Deficit in Iraq

Until there are more U.S. citizens not just willing but eager to shoulder the ‘nation builder’s burden’, ventures like the occupation of Iraq will lack a vital ingredient.

— Niall Ferguson, Colossus: The Price of America’s Empire

I recently read Ferguson’s book about the challenges to America’s global pre-eminence while I was on assignment in Iraq. I was immediately struck by the above words. It is indeed true that America is suffering a terrible manpower deficit. There are currently not enough of the right people in Iraq working to put that country on a sound footing in order to ensure progress toward political stability and a thriving democracy.

This is especially tragic when one considers the wealth and population of the United States. With a population approaching 300 million and unrivalled national spending power, why is it that we cannot summon up the necessary talent to defend America’s interests in the world by strengthening democracy in troubled countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan?

At the time of the intervention in Afghanistan, it became clear to the administration that the government agencies that usually took on the responsibility of nation building (DOD, USAID, DOS), did not have enough personnel for the task of reconstruction. Especially in the State Department where the hiring of Foreign Service Officers is a lengthy and complex affair, the administration needed talent sooner than the system permitted. In response, Congress created the positions which came to be known as 3161s, direct hires for the government to work only on a temporary basis on a specific assignment. Since then, many 3161s have been hired for work in Iraq and Afghanistan. In my case, I was hired as a 3161 to work in the Office of Private Sector Development in the Iraq Reconstruction Management Office of the US Embassy in Baghdad.

Although I eagerly took a 3161 position with the Baghdad Embassy in 2005, I came to learn very early on that the State Department was incapable of recruiting the necessary talent for the reconstruction of Iraq. Ironically, there is no shortage of military personnel in administrative positions in the Green Zone. This is all the more tragic considering that there are not enough soldiers capable of conducting combat in Iraq. Indeed, although most of the military personnel who directly work on reconstruction are quite capable, the sad fact is that most are not experienced practitioners of nation building. Likewise, the Department of State simply does not have enough bodies to manage reconstruction. Tellingly, many of the Foreign Service Officer slots have long gone unfilled. As of this past spring, the economic section of the Baghdad Embassy had only half of the required upcoming slots filled. The Department of State which ideally should represent some of the best and brightest of America, especially those willing to venture overseas in the service of their country, simply cannot entice its own personnel to make the necessary sacrifices even for a minimal tour of service. For the first year of Iraqi sovereignty, when the US Mission in Iraq came under the leadership of the Department of State, the embassy needed to use the promise of the traditionally easier embassy assignments. That is, if one accepted a posting in Iraq, one was promised that the next assignment could largely be of one’s choice whether that be London, Paris, or some other convenient location. Even with this enticement, slots proved hard to fill. In the spring of this year, the State Department increased the hazard pay in Iraq to a 35% boost instead of 25% in an effort to increase incentives to come to Baghdad.

As for the Iraq Reconstruction Management Office made up of temporary direct hires like myself, it too has faced immense difficulties in recruiting needed talent. This has largely been a result of a tremendous bureaucratic disconnect between the offices in Baghdad and DOS recruiters in the US. The Department of State has not made an enough of an effort in advertising open positions. Given inherent government inefficiency, this is not surprising.

However, this manpower deficit is not just due to recruiting problems. It is largely due to a culture in America that shuns government work in general and overseas work in particular. Americans do see their country as being exceptional in the world for it is a place of immense opportunity, freedom, and wealth. It is not surprising that in a country where the most prestigious achievement is to be successful in business, government work and overseas service are not highly valued.

What is needed is a dramatic cultural shift capable of answering the dangers of the post 9/11 world. Service for the country overseas must not be simply the purview of the more adventurous and eccentric Americans. If the City on the Hill is to be protected, there must be those who are willing and eager to venture to the periphery. Why not seek one’s fortune and career success overseas? Granted, a cultural shift like this cannot happen overnight but it can start with the leadership in Washington. The President himself can make such a call to service along with prominent leaders from both parties.

President Kennedy once made a similar call for service. It is time for President Bush to do the same. He must articulate the stakes in Iraq and urge all those willing and able to take up nation building in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan. America must embrace a culture of overseas service. September 11th proved that we must not ignore the troubled places of this world and it will take many courageous skilled men and women to keep the present and future threats in check. Indeed, although Iraq and Afghanistan are the current hotspots, it is not unlikely that we will find ourselves engaged in nation building elsewhere. It is absolutely necessary that America develop such a culture. Without it, the days of America’s leadership role in the world are numbered.

Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch

The Many Faces of Belgian Fascism. Europe is such a quaint shithole.

Underwhelmed, grandstanding,

and soon to be overwhelmed. Up to their neck in it, actually.

Britain’s senior gadfly Michael Portillo is not a fan of France’s military adventure in Lebanon:

That gallic custom has been on display again over Lebanon. After the French had taken a vociferous lead in drafting the UN security council resolution that brought about the ceasefire, it was shocking to discover that France was offering just 200 soldiers towards a UN force of 15,000. Late last week, after wasting valuable time since hostilities ended nearly two weeks ago, President Chirac gave way. Having attracted the world’s scorn he raised his country’s offer to 2,000.

There is a cultural difference between the French and the British obvious in their diplomatic styles. The French believe that what they say is at least as important as what they do. They spin grandiloquent phrases and strike postures. Rhetoric is a way of life and if you point out it is divorced from all strategic reality that is thought to be nitpicking.
[...]
In reality he buckled because the Italians had offered to lead the deployment and the Americans had mischievously welcomed that bizarre idea. France could not bear the mortification of operating under the command of its southern neighbour — least of all in Lebanon, a country so strongly tied to the French by history and culture. Chirac’s sheer ineptness has brought him avoidable humiliation. Already held in contempt by America and disdained by the British, he has now advertised his unreliability to a wider global audience.
[...]
During recent days, as France has procrastinated, arms have been pouring in from Syria and Iran to re-equip the terror group. France’s failures of both diplomacy and nerve have made it less likely that the ceasefire will hold, and made the UN mission more dangerous.

He says with slightly more diplomacy what Nidra Poller deduced rather quickly about the predicament that the Élysée put their troops in.

The attempted co-sponsorship might have been an opportunity for France to assume a long-coveted honest broker role in the Middle East. France's privileged relations with Lebanon and the expectation that French troops would play a decisive role in the multinational intervention force weighed heavily in the equation. Interviewed on state-owned France 3 television earlier this week, Foreign Affairs Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy situated France's role in the conflict geometrically, at the pivotal midpoint between Lebanon and the Arab League, as well as Israel and the United States. Asked if French troops would participate in the multinational force, he replied, "pourquoi pas" [why not]?
[...]
Rising above these specific points, Siniora gives a panoramic vision of the conflict: Israeli occupation of Lebanese territories is the cause of this war; Israel is a pariah state that slaughters civilians and disrespects international law. Forcing Israel to withdraw will be a step toward a "final solution [sic] of the wider Arab-Israeli conflict, which has plagued our region for 60 years." No political solution is possible as long as Israel continues to occupy Arab land in Lebanon, Gaza, the West Bank and the Syrian Golan Heights, and wages war on the innocent in Lebanon and Palestine.
According to this logic, Hezbollah can't be disarmed until the international community imposes that final solution to the problem of Israel's presence in the Middle East.
This is why French diplomacy, from the start and to this day, is irreconcilable with the American position on the conflict. Hezbollah intends to destroy Israel, Israel is determined to destroy Hezbollah. What does it mean to stand at midpoint between these two ambitions? In his solemn unilateralist speech, Chirac said that anything short of immediate cease fire would be "immoral." Reduced to the absurd, this would mean that the moral position is to let Israel half destroy Hezbollah and Hezbollah half destroy Israel.

With a handful of Sappers and a couple of Logistics units, Chirac has managed to devise the most economical way to step into a quagmire.

50,000 Reasons Why Bush Was Right to Risk Being Accused of Hypocrisy, Stupidity, and Greed

50,000 reasons why Blair, Howard, Aznar, Berlusconi, Koizumi, Fogh Rasmussen et al were right to risk being accused of being Bush's poodles…

Rare silence from the left

Except when they find a preferred form of fundamentalism they’ll fight to the death. One they incessantly accuse of backwardness, social heartlessness, and everything else that bugs them about western civilization, but would have never kidnap people and force their ways on them like the Ottoman Sultans a thousand years ago. Finally released,:

American Steve Centanni and New Zealander Olaf Wiig of US organisation Fox News were dropped off at a Gaza City beach-front hotel.

Mr Centanni said they were forced at gunpoint to convert to Islam. They stated their conversion in a video released before they were set free.

The captors had called for the release of "Muslim prisoners" in the US.

The US had rejected the demands.

Said one abnormally honest and intelligent Fifth Column miscreant at the time of their abduction:

I hope Centanni and his cameraman make it out of Iraq alive.

Points to a certain fixation, no? Besides, without having to say it, they are undermining their own linkage/no-lankage game (Israel’s actions are a cause of the need for a war on terror, but Saddam’s weren’t, Palestinian violence not related to Jihad, Hizballah not related to Jihad, etc.): the press kidnapped in Gaza were kidnapped in the interest of fundamentalists, just as we see in the Arab world. The fact that they were in Gaza and not in Yemen or Iraq is irrelevant insofar as their war against the rest of humanity is concerned. Jihadist fascists are attacking all of civilization, even Arab civilization, even committing the Cardinal sin of attacking other Muslims.

This makes them no different than the Real IRA going after the IRA, the Red Brigades and the Bader-Meinhof Gang going after the most liberal society on earth, and so forth. They also had the silent support from detached young morons willing to march in the streets, just as a bin Laden pronouncement can telegraph the same way. The were funded in part by states (the KGB). They were transnational. They professed what they thought was a universaly theology.
The difference is that the public and the government went after them in ernest before they reached the scale they are at now. But in a touchy-feely and fearful age, the rump of Muslim society is afraid to stare down Jihadist. Had the radical leftist revolutionaries (who wanted to modify society as much as Islamic fundamentalists do now) not been stared down in that way, we would find ourselves fighting a Jihad of that type at home.

Leftist lying scum

A blubbering, blabbering Trotskyste puts on tear-jerker of a show for the pédaloïdes bobos who love to soak up that kind of nonsense. Tag it and bag it.

Return of the Jospinator

He’s back, and has been voted most likely to pull a Howard Dean. It should make the slightly less crazy branch of the left projectile vomit him back into the political wilderness. Behold the effect he could have – to return to office an incumbent who was polling in the single digits. Looking back just 8 years, he seems like a man lost in time.the fuse is lit!

Indiscriminate Pacifism Kills

The European instinct of trying to stop all nascent conflicts means the balance of power necessary for peace is never achieved.

"A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity"

-Sigmund Freud, General Introduction to Psychoanalysis

With that, we give you this.the fuse is lit!