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With thanks to our faithful readers, ¡No Pasarán! Has inched along to 3 000 000 visits since 2004.

On this day in ’04, Jonathan discussed the un-quiche-like health benefits of the Big Mac and French government's response to Sheik Ahmed Yassin's assassination. Prolific chap, that Jonathan.

In ’05, I got cranked up somehow over nostalgia for sayings misattributed to 18th century aristocracy, Castro’s huge personal worth, and Truthers making up allegations of Genocide. Erik, as always was chasin’ the ladies, and Pete DuPont. Otherwise silence set in.

W said “Get Whitey” and told Hermann to get a yob. He also reminds us of the persistence of the purple helmets of peace.

2006 was a riot

2007 saw a sharp rise in Scimitars with U*2 reminding us of what cretins and liars AmeriKKKans really are. Son, can you smell the mendacity?

In ’08, we welcome the welcome the third day of spring with a refreshing romp through the glade

If Islam were not the way it is, the Danish cartoons would never have appeared in the first place

…if Islam were not the way it is, those cartoons would never have appeared

in the first place, Wafa Sultan is quoted as saying on the blog Danish Affairs.

They did not appear out of the blue, and the cartoonist did not dig them out of his imagination. Rather, they are a reflection of his knowledge. Westerners who read the words of the Prophet Muhammad ‘Allah has given me sustenance under the shadow of my sword’ cannot imagine Muhammad’s turban in the shape of a dove of peace rather than in the shape of a bomb.

…The reactions of the Muslims, which were characterized by savageness, barbarism, and backwardness, only increased the value of these cartoons, and gave them more importance than they merited, simply because they proved that these cartoons were true, and that the message they were conveying was true.

Let me Schpank you Again, Liebchen

The EU is working hard to build an uneven playing field as a precedent for their thousand year empire. I used to suspect that the courts were being abused by EUbatting average) against large foreign companies, but am now quite convinced that the competent courts in these cases are playing along, and taking it as an entertaining or academic exercise at the expense of the eventual consumer.

Intel Defends Itself in Europe: Executives and lawyers representing microprocessor giant Intel appeared before EU regulators this week in a last-ditch effort to fend off antitrust action against the company similar to that which has plagued Microsoft recently. The hearings will continue today with representatives from Intel rival AMD explaining why, in fact, Intel needs to be curbed. "We're trying to convince the [European Commission] that this is a competitive market and that it behaves as one would expect a competitive market to behave, to the benefit of consumers," an Intel spokesperson explained. That's so cute, and I'm sure the EC will see things exactly that way, given that Intel sells over 80 percent of the microprocessors sold each year.

EU Worried that Microsoft Actions Might Harm Investments: And speaking of the EU, it turns out some there have concerns that its aggressive pursuit of Microsoft will have a negative effect on corporate investments in Europe. In a speech this week, former EU president of the Court of First Instance Bo "Duke" Vesterdorf said that slowing investment in the EU could result in slowing innovation and consumer suffering, the exact opposite of the effect the EU was shooting for when it went after Microsoft. Amazingly, Versterdorf said he regretted that Microsoft never appealed his court's decision against the company, though such an appeal had little chance of success.

After all, he might lose his meal ticket. The court’s racket is no different that the EUvian view of favoritism for well-connected and often partially state owned domestic industries. It is nothing more than trade-protectionism by another name, and it’s goal is to take without giving back, with consumers paying the difference, just as they do with their own protected industrial monopolies. If they plan on being a relic, maybe everything they do deserves to be treated as a cultural exception.



Sudden Sainthood

Miscellaneous Europeans Willing to Fight to the Last Canadian

I guess they ran either ran out of skulls, or someone thinks that being tacitly pro-Talibanwill protect them.

Canada's forces in southern Afghanistan are getting a boost from the U.S. Marine Corps.

[snip]

The deployment is a stop-gap to bolster the Canadians, who have been battling insurgents and insisted on help as a condition of extending their deployment. After Germany, Spain, and several other NATO states refused (again) to send troops south, the U.S. offered a Marine unit. For the next seven months, the North Americans will be fighting shoulder to shoulder in the province. Hell, if the Mexicans chip in a brigade, Kandahar could join NAFTA.

I’m sure the Spanish and German “street” will rationalize something post cultural. In the mean time a German splodey-dope detonates his bad mono-cultural self.

We’re Dealing with Idiots

al-Qaeda threatens the EU again. Europeans cover their ears.

In a new audio message purportedly from Osama Bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader threatens the EU over the re-printing of a cartoon offensive to Muslims.

The voice on it says the cartoon, re-published recently in all major Danish newspapers, was part of a crusade involving Pope Benedict XVI.

Oh that warmongering pope!



In fact what's sadder is that in view of this purported threat which "premiered" on Al Jazeera and is purported to be from "Ben" Laden, a search of Le Monde's archives, that "independant" news paper of record, yields something even sadder: a goofy bit of artist-dabbling-in-politicking taking a kind of one-man-show vainglory.

More of that feel-good European snake oil

Feel the heat carbon neutralness. Not so much carbon neutral as carbon neutered.

Bande de sauvages

Claude Goasguen is a French politician who is not afarid to tell the truth.

Fun with Speculated “Facts”: Consider the Audience

At one point (April 2006) he said making Iraq dictator free was one trillion dollars, a clean, round number that even an old hippy can remember. Then a January 2006 of his statement was used to raised the alarmism to two trillion dollars

Now Stiglitz says it’s three trillion dollars.

I think I found out where he gets his routine, and why corrupting the figures is so useful. Of course, not to be out-done, Pravda raised it to six.

Strange, How Few Pundits and MSM Outlets Commemorated the Fifth Anniversary of the Iraq War

Five years after the start of the war in Iraq, it's become common wisdom — among mainstream media and Beltway pundits, anyway — that it's all been a failure

writes Investor's Business Daily, as it quotes George W Bush.

They couldn't be more wrong.

The U.S. war in Iraq — and by extension, President Bush — started coming under withering criticism not too long after it started in March 2003. Quickly forgotten were these salient quotes, made just the year before:

"We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction." — Sen. Ted Kennedy, on Sept. 27, 2002.

"It is clear . . . that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons." — Sen. Hillary Clinton, Oct. 10, 2002.

"We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country." — Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002.

We could go on and on. Others said similar things. Suffice to say, support at the time for "doing something" about Iraq was wide and deep. They even egged Bush on, urging him to get tough. Then, in the fall of 2002, Congress authorized Bush to go to war.

Only later, in late 2003 and 2004, as polls showed public support waning, did many of those same prominent politicians who once enthusiastically stumped for war and even voted for it in Congress suddenly do an about-face. It stands as one of the most shameful political turnabouts in U.S. history.

Opponents suddenly claimed the war was a sham, that they were fooled into supporting it by cooked intelligence, that we should have never removed Saddam, that Iraqis were better off with him in power than with us as occupiers.

The war in Iraq, in short, simply wasn't worth it. But they were wrong on all counts.

The data on the war weren't cooked; virtually every major foreign intelligence service, including those of France, Germany and the U.K., among others, believed Saddam Hussein was pursuing nuclear and biological weapons — weapons of mass destruction.

Moreover, Saddam's ties to al-Qaida, despite recent news reports to the contrary, were clear. He openly tolerated Ansar al-Islam, an al-Qaida affiliate, in northern Iraq. He welcomed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi with open arms before the war began.

His intelligence service met with al-Qaida cell leader and 9/11 terrorist Mohammed Atta months before he attacked the Twin Towers. Osama bin Laden even wrote a now-infamous letter to Saddam in the 1990s, asking for help.

As 9/11 Committee co-chairman and former New Jersey Gov. Tom Kean said, "There was no question in our minds that there was a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida."

We achieved many concrete benefits from taking Saddam out — none of them, by the way, related to "blood for oil," the libelous and patently false phrase used by the left to tarnish the U.S. war effort.

For instance, Libya's Muammar Qaddafi gave up his nuclear weapons just weeks after the U.S. deposed Saddam. Coincidence?

Syria pulled its troops out of Lebanon, a country it bullied for decades. Elections followed. Iraq and Afghanistan had free and fair elections, while Saudi Arabia, Egypt and even Syria recognized democratic movements. North Korea suddenly decided to talk.

Oh, but we didn't find WMDs?

On the contrary, U.S. troops found more than 500 weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. True, we didn't find an operational nuclear weapon, but U.N. inspectors found lots of equipment and plans clearly showing that Iraq had been working on one — and intended to do so again.

All of these are facts. And so are the following:

Iraq is today a growing economy again. From 2002 through 2006, the most recent year for which data are available, per capita GDP in dollars jumped 110%.

Before the war, there were some 833,000 people with telephones. Today, there's 9.8 million. Fewer than 5,000 people were on the Internet during Saddam's rein of terror; today, it's a quarter million.

There were no private TV stations under Saddam; today Iraq has more than 50. There are at least 260 independent newspapers and magazines in Iraq, vs. none under Saddam. Just 1.5 million cars were registered before the war; by 2005, that had hit 3.1 million.

In short, by almost any objective measure one might choose, Iraqis are today much better off than they were under Saddam. Those that deny this are, frankly, deluded.

Better still, Saddam's jackbooted minions no longer pull people screaming out of their homes for torture sessions and murder.

By some estimates, an average of 50,000 people died each year from Saddam's campaigns of genocide, ethnic cleansing and political murder. Last year, the peak of the surge, there were 18,000 civilian deaths — mostly by terrorists.

Today, Iraq's nascent democracy, though imperfect, seems solid. A recent look at the Index of Political Freedom shows Iraq ranking as the fourth-freest country in the Mideast, out of 20. Those who term the war a "failure" need to define that term.

Since the surge began a year ago, nearly every indicator of violence in the country is down, and down sharply: civilian fatalities, off 80% from the peak; enemy attacks, off 40%; bombings, off 81%.

Yes, U.S. fatalities are nearing 4,000. And every death of every brave soldier is a tragedy. But we lost more soldiers on D-Day.

In 2007 — widely reported by the media last summer as the "worst" yet during the war — 901 American troops lost their lives. By comparison, during the Clinton administration, an average of 938 American soldiers died each year in the military. The notion that we've suffered unconscionable troop losses is false and misleading. This is the most bloodless war in history.

So far, we've spent about $500 billion on the war — less than 1% of our GDP over the past five years. Yet with that money, we've perhaps recast the history of the Mideast, giving its people a chance to throw off the shackles of tyranny and to live in peaceful democracies. We've bashed al-Qaida severely, killing key leaders and demoralizing the terrorist group's followers.

We've not had a single major terrorist attack since 9/11 — no doubt, in part, because we showed our mettle when attacked. Just as important, we've helped make the threat of nuclear annihilation by rogue states a focus of international diplomacy — something that might end up saving the West.

Not bad for an unpopular war. Democrats may propose a total withdrawal of all our troops, as Barack Obama has done, but increasingly Americans look to be siding with President Bush. On Wednesday, he called for us to stay in Iraq until the war is completely won. We agree.

Kim Jong Il Has Met his Match

How about throwing in a James Earl Jones voiceover on that cat first?

The Dance of the Monkeys

Funny that. All they needed was a piece of ass. Instead we ended up with decades of hideous social policy and scores of miserable “liberated” human failures, and the inappropriate parade of self-absorption celebrating the personal becoming the political. Is that crowd waiting outside in the cold for the Methadone Clinic to open up something to really be that proud of?

Götz Aly:

If the ratio of men to women had been more balanced, things would have gone differently. It was like the dance of the monkeys. There were few women at the universities, and at the same time there was the Pill and the sexual revolution. Reimut Reiche has noted that Freud said protesting men have a very special sexual attraction – they are XXL men. With this in mind, there was a very clear purpose to sexual liberation. It was fun, but it had little to do with emancipation.

Q: Didn't you perceive 1968 as a liberation?

Of course. In 1967 German students still addressed one another formally, as Fräulein Schmidt or Herr Aly. They wore pleated skirts or ties and jackets, and had nervous breakdowns every time they had a meeting with a professor. But all the writing about emancipation from that era is unbearable junk. Not only the theoretical stuff, even publications about private kindergartens. They don't contain one reasonable sentence, nothing that one could profitably read today.

Oddly enough there was no sit-com called Joschka’s Heroes, but there really should have been – featuring fist-pumping Socialists who were rather willing to kill people, the Bader-Meinhoff Gang, the KGB funded Red Brigade, their instinct to passively accept totalitarianism, and every crappy idea they’ve latched onto since.

With the hard-drug addiction, suicide, and divorce rate being as high as it is, the attendant loneliness of huge numbers of people who then had to invent absurd analogs to the intimacy of family life... with all of that, can we actually call it a failure and move on, or do we have to keep pretending that these incredibly fragile, touchy people really did create that miracle of social revision they keep claiming the rest of us should thank them for?

Further About the Palestinian Boy Killed for the Exploitation of Political Radicals

An excerpt from the conclusions of an independent ballistics report concerning the death of Muhammad al Dura, a Palestinian boy who has, since 2000 become a lionized figure due to a report with footage showing his and his father’s death by France 2’s Charles Enderlin. A great deal of controversy has risen over that report. He was said to have been shot by Israeli troops, which made the child a poster image of the Palestinians and the western radical left. Technical analysis of their relative positions done shortly after the event, and reports those on the scene have demonstrated that the report was a fabrication using the local stringers working for the world press as a means of fabricating this event for political purposes. Since France 2 wanted to indulge its’ audience and sell the footage worldwide, it practiced as it often has a sort of transparent side-taking in reporting news that it thinks it can conceal, even when it contains fabrications.

From the ballistics report:

The protesters, mostly adolescents and children, threw stones at the Israeli checkpoint. The general atmosphere was good-natured, people walk quietly and vehicles drove along the road from Gaza. Some young and people and a man near a jeep appear injured, but they are simulations, with several subjects identified. Many shots were fired, but it is not possible to identify their source. Many journalists covered the event.

The one minute long report by France 2 was titled “the death of Mohamed AL DOURA” and was aired on September 30, 2000. We found a shot the wall above and Mohammed Jamal. A total of eight Impacts are present on this wall, after which the AL DOURA child is seen lying motionless, and not through an impact on the barrel (behind which they were shown taking cover). The sequence matching the moment when Mohamed was injured is unclear. Many factors are likely create doubt that the father and son were hit by projectiles.

According to the statements, Mohamed was injured in his right knee and his stomach, but no trace of impact or blood was visible on his clothes. Although France 2 photographer Talal Abu Rhama said that the child had bled for ten to fifteen minutes, no trace of blood was visible on the ground.
A doctor indicated that if the wound in the stomach was from a bullet that fully entered him, projections of blood and flesh would be visible on the wall (which they were up against), which does not appear on the Photographs of the BBC covering the ten seconds after the France 2 report.
It was said that Jamal was hit on the right arm, abdomen, and legs, while no trace of impact or blood was visible on his clothes. In addition, the location of these indicated injuries was hidden either by the barrel and by the body of his son, who were between him and the direction of the rounds.

Therefore he could not be in the condition described by France 2’s report. Talal Abu Rhama said that gunshots were directed at Jamal and Mohamed AL DOURA for at least forty minutes. Had that been the case, and assuming that a single shooter has concentrated his fire in their direction during the entire time, more that eight impacts that would have been shown to be on the wall above them, but a minimum of two thousand.

While many other cameramen were present at the scene, only France 2 filmed the episode of the "death" of the child. The Israeli police post is located 80 yards from where Jamal and Mohamed AL DOURA took cover. Depending on the plan which we have been provided, the angle of fire is about 36 degrees to the wall behind them. In this situation, the father and the child could not be fired on by the Israeli post for the following reasons:
Jamal Mohamed AL DOURA and were protected by the barrel they used for cover, and it shows no trace of shots through it. In this position, they certainly could not been hit in the lower limbs [as France 2 stated].

The test firing conducted with the weapons used at the time by the Israeli army showed that the impact characteristics of allegedly oblique gunfire have been substantially elongated and are almost horizontal. Those visible on the wall are generally circular, which corresponds to shots fired
Perpendicular to the plane of the wall [not at the oblique angle].
Talal Abu Rhama said that fire came from behind him, while the Israeli checkpoint was sharply to his right and slightly behind his camera location.
It is not likely that the cameraman from Reuters and another journalist would be located next to Mohamed AL DOURA before his death because they would have left them open to the direction of the Israeli fire [not covered as the al Duras were].

The boy was killed for the exploitation of political radicals with the aid of partisans in the press who are too dihonest to state their political motives, and are willing to fabricate news stories that advance causes that fit in with their own opinions.

At Le Monde, Colombia's drug traffickers and kidnappers are victims, while those who fight against them are to blame

According to one Le Monde reader, Marie Delcas' article on Alvaro Uribe ought to be "studied in journalism schools", so tendentious it is in its "soiling" of Colombia's president.

In the simplistic or dishonest universe of Mrs Delcas, drug traffickers and kidnappers are victims, while those who fight against them are to blame.

.

Meet the Feebles

Serial media buffoon Jackie Ashley finds the perfect platform to peddle her idiotic fantasies that everyone is like the Europeans she is willing to talk to. She advocates talking the headless hydra that is al Qaida. Of course, this is the Guardian we’re talking about, so in the unintentionally hilarious comments the usual theme that al Qaida doesn’t exist – and that even if it did, it was created by the CIA, and even if it was, the Israelis were behind it, just like they were behind the Northern Ireland “troubles”. Never mind that the genius behind the structure of al-Q is that it isn’t structured in a way that a leader can control or readilt comprimise a significant number of cells, and that it would fragment into hundred of “Real IRAs”, and that it is structured not to ever take a U-turn. These guys are a self-detonating self-guided weapon the moment you pay the rent on their crib.

Also orbiting planet Graun, the usual fevered minds are advocating perpetual autocracy in Cuba to a piece by Vaclav Havel, a man once imprisoned in similar “paradise”.

In fact the same readership who are apoplectic at Havel for wanting to open up a serious dialogue with Cuba about a pluralistic future free of oppression are eager to talk to murderous, illiberal fanatics.
I must however correct Ashley on one point: al Qaida has frequently offered “peace” with civilization, but our governments have to forcibly convert their populations to Islam first.

The garden variety Guardian reader’s willingness to accept the living death of having things forced on a population is nothing new. In fact I cant think of any group of people whose tirades and examples are as unchanging, consistent, and impervious to their own statements of concern for people as these. We’re also sure to see them shortly gleefully going after someone else tortured by communists. It’s just something they do.

Photos from a Brussels street courtesy of RV

Tedious Euro-narrative of American Prudery Temporarily Out of Service

Miss France tut-tutted off stage for a lack of that rotten patriotism eeeeevil nationalism that TV-show inhabiting parasites suggest is a malady that singles out the US as some sort of burden on their relativism. It’s also supposed to be the thing that taxes their benighted tolerance, because they actually have to tolerate other people.

Photos of a naked Bègue Valerie, Miss Reunion and recently selected Miss France for 2008, provoked the anger of Genevieve de Fontenay. Ces photos seraient contraires à l’image que défend Geneviève de Fontenay et le comité Miss France. These pictures are contrary to the image that Genevieve de Fontenay and the Miss France Committee promotes. Les miss doivent être glamours, défendre l’image de l’élégance de la France. Miss France must be glamorous, and defend the image of the elegance of France.

The US has creative destruction, France has slow death

Les bloggers franchouilles take it all for des conneries. The fact is, the French cannot face the facts. The pace of change in France? Going nowhere fast.

France: "No PROOF of DIRECT Ties Between Saddam and Al Qaeda" Becomes "Pentagon Discretely Admits That There Were NO Ties Between Saddam and Al Qaeda"

Le diable est, dit-on, dans les détails

écrit JC Durbant: en évoquant, entre autres, l'article Le Pentagone avoue discrètement qu’il n’y avait pas de lien entre Saddam Hussein et Al-Qaida paru dans Le Monde.

Démonstration, à la veille du 5e anniversaire de la libération de l’Irak, avec ce nouveau petit joyau de désinformation dans la dépêche AFP du jour du quotidien de révérence d’hier qui n’a bien sûr jamais entendu parler de Zarqaoui, formé dès les années 90 en Afghanistan par Al Qaeda même, ou de Mougnieh ou des camps d’Ansar Al islam soutenus par Saddam dans le nord de l’Irak dès décembre 2001, soit avant même l’invasion alliée.

Et qui, s’appuyant sur ABC dont il se contente de traduire un ou deux extraits bien choisis, commence par évacuer, sans parler du mot “preuve”, un petit mais crucial adjectif de son titre: le fameux “direct” (”il n’y avait pas de preuve de lien direct entre Saddam Hussein et Al-Qaida” devenant ainsi: “Le Pentagone avoue discrètement qu’il n’y avait pas de lien entre Saddam Hussein et Al-Qaida”).

(Plus prudent ou moins pressé, Le Figaro se limite, lui, à l’évacuation du “preuve”: “un rapport publié mercredi par le Pentagone établit avec certitude qu’il n’y avait aucun lien direct entre le régime de Saddam Hussein et le groupe terroriste al-Qaida.”)

Se retrouvent ainsi passé à l’as, les passages sur (en plus des primes et prises en charge des familles de ses recrues) l’activité non “privilégiée” mais notoire de formation, pour tout le Moyen-Orient et notamment Israël, de terroristes-suicide à la voiture piégée ou à la ceinture de dynamite.