Multiculturalism is a doctrine of avoidance, placing emphasis on heritage rather than openness, and tolerating pretty much everything

Surely, you could think, the Oslo mass murders might well bring some moderation to Europe’s far-right populist parties in their unyielding denigration of Islam and their Armageddon-is-nigh vision of a future shared with Muslim immigrants

writes John Vinocur in the International Herald Tribune.

At the same time, since Norway’s massacre led to statements by populist leaders rejecting violence, you might also suppose that the European left could ease up on its resistance to the idea that multiculturalism has brought parallel societies, disrespect for national laws and traditions, and a threatened sense of identity to countries with hundreds of years of democratic history.

Neither assumption is hopeless. But each enters the area of very wishful, perhaps naïve surmise.

… Now the Dutch are dealing with the fact (and its potential political impact and manipulation) that Anders Behring Breivik, the confessed Oslo killer, spoke in his 1,518-page manifesto of his admiration for Geert Wilders.

Of course, alongside his stated hatred of multiculturalism and Muslim immigrants, Mr. Breivik also said confusedly that the Europeans he most wanted to meet were Pope Benedict and Vladimir V. Putin (whose vision of “democracy” appealed to him), that he read Homer, Kafka, John Stuart Mill and Winston Churchill, and liked Lacoste shirts and Chanel Platinum Egoiste cologne.

In any case, the reaction here, at its most shrill, was at screech level.

At one extreme, talking of Mr. Wilders in a radio interview, Gerard Spong, a lawyer, accused him of having “Norwegian blood on his lips.”

“Wilders has full responsibility for this,” Mr. Spong said of the murders. “He contributed to the development and the acts” of the killer. (An attempt supported by Mr. Spong and Islamic officials to bring defamation charges against Mr. Wilders for anti-Islam statements ended in his acquittal this year.)

Now the Dutch are dealing with the fact (and its potential political impact and manipulation) that Anders Behring Breivik, the confessed Oslo killer, spoke in his 1,518-page manifesto of his admiration for Geert Wilders.

Of course, alongside his stated hatred of multiculturalism and Muslim immigrants, Mr. Breivik also said confusedly that the Europeans he most wanted to meet were Pope Benedict and Vladimir V. Putin (whose vision of “democracy” appealed to him), that he read Homer, Kafka, John Stuart Mill and Winston Churchill, and liked Lacoste shirts and Chanel Platinum Egoiste cologne.

In any case, the reaction here, at its most shrill, was at screech level.

At one extreme, talking of Mr. Wilders in a radio interview, Gerard Spong, a lawyer, accused him of having “Norwegian blood on his lips.”

“Wilders has full responsibility for this,” Mr. Spong said of the murders. “He contributed to the development and the acts” of the killer. (An attempt supported by Mr. Spong and Islamic officials to bring defamation charges against Mr. Wilders for anti-Islam statements ended in his acquittal this year.)

“Wilders has full responsibility for this,” Mr. Spong said of the murders. “He contributed to the development and the acts” of the killer. (An attempt supported by Mr. Spong and Islamic officials to bring defamation charges against Mr. Wilders for anti-Islam statements ended in his acquittal this year.)

… In a new book, “Immigrant Nations,” Paul Scheffer, a Dutch political scientist, has restated his opposition to multiculturalism in nonconfrontational terms that may have appeal to the left. He says that the reality of multiculturalism is that it is a doctrine of “avoidance,” sustaining immigrant groups’ focus “on what they’ve left behind,” placing more emphasis “on heritage rather than openness” and tolerating pretty much everything “as long as cultures are spared all criticism.”

9/11 ten years on: Bush and Blair were right

In the last ten years, it has become increasingly fashionable to knock both George W Bush and Tony Blair for their response to the attacks of 9/11

writes Peter Cannon, the Governance, Strategy and Terrorism Section Director at the Henry Jackson Society. Read also Jim Lacey's "Saddam: What We Now Know" (the first sentence of which states "Saddam Hussein was a WMD threat and a terror threat to the United States and its allies.")

But ten years on, I would argue that — while mistakes have certainly been made — Bush and Blair basically got it right. (

It is difficult to argue that the war to oust the Taliban from power in Afghanistan was not the right response. Here was a clear-cut case of a just war — the US was responding to an attack on its soil, by a terrorist group based in Afghanistan and hosted by the Islamist regime there. Any lesser response would have looked pathetically weak and left Afghanistan as a base for Al-Qaeda.

But what about Iraq? The lesson the US administration and British government took from 9/11 was that threats should not be left alone until they struck first. Saddam Hussein had been an ongoing problem for years, repeatedly obstructing UN weapons inspectors, while the sanctions regime against him was crumbling due to a lack of support from other countries. Here was a dictator who was in breach of seventeen UN Security Council Resolutions, had used chemical weapons against his own people and who had a record of harbouring and collaborating with Islamist terrorists.

Many people became legal experts overnight and declared the war ‘illegal’, despite the Attorney General’s advice that it was lawful, despite the seventeen UN Security Council Resolutions and despite a vote of Parliament.

Many more condemned the US and the UK for the number of civilian casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq. Yet they ignore the plain fact that the vast majority of civilian casualties have been caused not by US or allied forces, but by the Islamist insurgents fighting against us — who have received notably less condemnation.

Yet many in the West find it much easier to condemn the US and Britain rather than accept that we are genuinely facing a vicious enemy and have the right to defend ourselves. We were even blamed for ‘creating’ the forces that we were battling, with it still being wrongly claimed that the CIA funded Osama Bin Laden during the 1980s. In the case of Iraq, it was often said that it was the US that had armed Saddam Hussein in the first place, during his war with Iran. In fact, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the US and UK combined provided Saddam Hussein with less than one per cent of his purchased weapons — against fifty-seven per cent from the USSR, thirteen per cent from France and twelve per cent from China.

Similarly, it was claimed that the War on Terror, and particularly the Iraq War, radicalised many Muslims. It should hardly need pointing out that it was Al-Qaeda that started the war, not us. And arguing that we should not do anything which might radicalise would-be terrorists would be to hand Islamist terrorists a veto over our foreign policy.

It has often been argued that the War on Terror alienated Muslim opinion worldwide, and was perceived as a ‘war against Islam’. Yet George W Bush and Tony Blair repeatedly went out of their way to emphasise that this was not a war with Islam and that Islam was neither the enemy nor the problem.

It has also been said that the US should have done more to ‘reach out’ to the Muslim world. In fact, in the early days after 9/11, there were many attempts at reaching out, particularly by Tony Blair, but beyond expressions of sympathy for the victims of the 9/11, there was little reaching back.

Incredibly, after 9/11, some still persisted in claiming that the terrorist threat was ‘exaggerated’ or even ‘manufactured’ by governments. But the reason there have not been even more terrorist attacks is not because Al-Qaeda and its affiliates have not had the intention of launching them but due to concerted military action and the constant vigilance and undercover work of our security services.

Many have criticised the terminology of the ‘War on Terror’, pointing out that you cannot fight a war against something which is a tactic rather than a group or an ideology. They may have a point, but such quibbles over terminology are hardly helpful. Given the scale of the 9/11 attacks and the threat of further atrocities, conceptualising the response as a ‘war’ was surely the right thing to do. Bush and Blair were absolutely right to recognise that these were not just isolated terrorist attacks against specific targets, but that they were indeed an assault on our values and way of life.

Thankfully, Osama Bin Laden is now dead, his organisation weakened, and his ideology dwindling in popularity. These things did not happen by accident, but as a result of the War on Terror and the efforts led by George W Bush and Tony Blair.

The ‘Arab Spring’ demonstrates another thing which Bush and Blair got right: that democracy could be spread to the Middle East, that freedom was not an exclusively Western value that was incompatible with Muslim or Arab societies. It is impossible to tell whether or not the Arab Spring would have happened if Saddam Hussein was still in power in Iraq. If it had, then he would almost certainly be doing his best to crush it with a bloody campaign of repression to rival what has been done in Syria and Libya. Instead, we had a democratically elected Iraqi government calling for action against the regime of Colonel Gaddafi.

While we have had numerous successes in the War on Terror, the fight goes on, most notably in Afghanistan. The last decade has been tough, not least for the US. Tough but — given the enormity of 9/11 — necessary.

At the end of the decade, it needs to be said: Bush and Blair did the right thing, and we are in a better position now than we would otherwise have been.

Decent onto Medievalism Assured

British progressives go from merely promoting their ideas through coercion to banning unapproved thoughts.

Football fans who make offensive chants about wind turbines could face stiff jail sentences under plans by the government and the Football Association to 'get tough' with climate change deniers.

Get tough? By not letting them have opinions? The cowardice and intolerance of progressives is blinding.

Notice from the Management

As you may have noticed from the look of the blog,
there seems to have been a foul-up somewhere,
and we are working at getting No Pasarán working as usual,
although this may have to wait until next week.

In the meantime, the content seems to be working as usual…

Merci for your patience…

Salvadore Allende, Martyr of the International Left, was a Totalitarian Assmonkey

The man hits all of the usual "how many millions must die to make a perfect world" talking points in crazy-leftist land:

Allende, who killed himself in 1973 during a coup which saw General Augusto Pinochet depose him, is accused of having "stifled the media".
The book adds that he started "a project of socialist doctrination in schools and almost installed a law of sterilisation, inspired by a Nazi law" aimed at reducing genetic illnesses.

All of this coming from a book by Brazilian journalists Leandro Narloch and Duda Teixeira, who wrote it with the impulse of trying to get more people to look at parts of history that have been turfed over for the sake of political ideology.

It claims that Simon Bolivar, the hero of Latin America's independence wars, was scared that blacks and indigenous Indians would seize power and that Salvador Allende, the Marxist Chilean president of the 1970s, considered a Nazi-inspired policy of sterilisation.

True to form for the humanist "heroes of the working man", Eva Peron is reported as well to have lasciviously coveted items taken by Nazis from Jews, as if it were some prize wrested from an enemy.

Here We Go Again!

The "Anglo-Saxons" are — again — accused of (sigh) plotting against Europe — and its Euro, writes Claire Gatinois in Le Monde.

From alarmist statements to petty remarks, the media, economists, and financiers on Wall Street or in the City are regularly suspected of participating in an attack in good standing on the euro. … In Paris, an operator said he too is "tired" of seeing traders panic when reading the latest Euro-sceptic article in the British newspaper Financial Times. "The Bible" of markets, he explains

Real or imagined, this conspiracy theory is driven by the idea that people in the U.S. or the UK could benefit from the ills of the monetary Union. No one can ignore that some would thus pocket heaps of money.

Reactions from Le Monde readers pour oil on the fire, varying from international finance without morals to a desire to neutralize Europe via the Americans' evil wish to scuttle Europe's admirable pro-Palestinian policy.

You Can Lead Them to the Enlightenment, But You Can't Make Them Think

With thanks to the razzzzberry we discover what a bunch of hopeless dopey vapidity the UN encourages. Ban Ki Moon, speaking in the Solomon Islands:

Your very existence is threatened. Therefore the UN shares your concerns very much. Climate change is the greatest threat to the livelihood, security and wellbeing of the people of Solomon Islands and the pacific region.

With this, he panders to the Brahmins elsewhere as he lectures these people who have just emerged from a civil war, that their highest priority is a fake transnational racket to turn them into dependent ghetto-dweller types.

...you are on the front line of climate change. I am here to sound aloud to the international community your concerns...

which would be interesting if it actually WERE their primary concern at the moment.

But in the absence of having to deal with anything real, the bottom feeders of the international woe-and-pity racket prefer a fake crisis that was custom made to be more useful to them.

The Star-Spangled Banner Under the Moon of Paris

During the concert at the end of the tenth anniversary commemoration of the 9-11 attacks in Trocadéro square in Paris across from the Eiffel Tower (the second largest 911 commemoration in the world next to those in Manhattan itself, according to the organizers in The French Will Never Forget association), Grace Weber and Blaine Krauss sing National Anthem under Jean-Pierre Heim's recreation of the World Trade Center's Twin Towers and under a full moon.

See also:
• The America-Bashers' Use of Symbolism on September 11

• Personal Memories of September 11, 2001, in Paris

• The Legend of the Squandered Sympathy

• Looking Over TV Shows Inspired by 9-11, Le Monde Discovers (Surprise!) "a Culture of Fear"

• Still Looking for "Another" September 11th?

• André Glucksmann: Bin Laden Is Gone, Not The Strategy of Radical Hatred Without Quarter

• Le Monde's 911 Commemorations

America the Beautiful Rings Out Over Paris

During the tenth anniversary commemoration of the 9-11 attacks in Trocadéro square in Paris across from the Eiffel Tower (the second largest 911 commemoration in the world next to those in Manhattan itself, according to the organizers in The French Will Never Forget association), Grace Weber and Blaine Krauss sing "America the Beautiful" under Jean-Pierre Heim's recreation of the World Trade Center's Twin Towers before doves are released into the skies.

See also:
• The America-Bashers' Use of Symbolism on September 11

• Personal Memories of September 11, 2001, in Paris

• The Legend of the Squandered Sympathy

• Looking Over TV Shows Inspired by 9-11, Le Monde Discovers (Surprise!) "a Culture of Fear"

• Still Looking for "Another" September 11th?

• André Glucksmann: Bin Laden Is Gone, Not The Strategy of Radical Hatred Without Quarter

• Le Monde's 911 Commemorations

The Invisible Hand Falls for the Joy Buzzer Again

Market Soars Following Latest "China Bails Out Europe" Rumor: Expected Rumor Half Life - 15 Minutes

Sez Zero Hedge:

Ok seriously, enough with this bullshit, please.

How many times can the idiotic market keep falling for the same old rumor over and over and over again?

You'd be surprised how often, and how desperate a financial industry locked in a trap with amateurish small governments will fall for it, hoping above hope.

That said, this is at least the 4th time that China has "bailed out" Europe in 2011.

BREAKING: Massive Attack on NATO's Kabul HQ By Waves of Taliban Suicide Bombers

According to Danish news reports (the secretary general of NATO, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, is Danish), including Berlingske Tidende, NATO's headquarters in Kabul are under a major attack, with the Taliban issuing a statement that suicide bombers are involved in a "mass suicide action."

NATO headquarters in Kabul is under attack, and there is strong shooting at a central square in the city.

"ISAF headquarters is currently under attack," says a military source.

But a spokesman for ISAF would not confirm that information. The International Security Assistance Force is the NATO-led force in Afghanistan.

Previously, the Afghan capital was rocked by at least six powerful explosions, and a Taliban spokesman stated that its rebels are engaged in a "massive suicide attack", which targets government offices as well as the Afghan and foreign intelligence services.

An eyewitness told Reuters that the attackers have penetrated a tall building under construction and that shots are being fired against soldiers who are returning the fire.

The fighting is taking place next to a barracks and the Marriott hotel.

The first explosion was heard in the embassy area and the roads there were closed shortly after.

Soon thereafter followed more explosions.

"There are a number of fighters by Abdul Haq Square," the head of Kabul's criminal police, Mohammad Zahir, told Reuters.

Several Taliban insurgents have taken up positions with rocket launchers, AK-47-rifles, and bulletproof vests near the embassy district, said a spokesman for the Islamic insurgency movement.

Maybe the explosion was not that big.

This could indicate that the explosion was not as great as first reported. Indeed, the Danish Refugee Council's representative in Kabul, Stefano Cordella, reported that neither felt nor heard the explosion.

"Our office is located two kilometers from the embassy area, but we didn't hear the explosion. Right now we are following the developments on television."

/ritzau/AFP

This Tea Party Here, Who Are Its Members Anyway?

Obama's 911 Comment Published in Le Figaro With Pride

TRIBUNE - Le président des États-Unis Barack Obama a choisi Le Figaro pour commenter l'après-11 Septembre. Dix ans après les attentats suicides contre la première puissance mondiale, il renouvelle son soutien aux nations et aux peuples en quête d'un avenir de paix et de prospérité.

Le Figaro takes pride in the fact that Barack Obama allegedly chose its pages to publish an op-ed.

Killed by Government Love

I blame Global Warming:

Meltdown for the country's estimated 5,000 ice cream vans started with the rise of the domestic freezer in the Fifties but has been compounded more recently by new EU rules introducing lower emission limits. These mean that many older ice cream vans face costly conversions or face being taken off the road.

In London, meanwhile, tighter emissions standards will come into force from January next year. Some ice cream vans will be able to fit a filter, but the charge for those that don't will be £100 a day.

So rather logically, taxing things will "save the world", "heal the earth" and part the seas, dontcha know. So what if you have to take happiness away from kids - you're already traumatizing them anyway!

The Skies Shed Tears During Paris Commemoration of 911 Attacks

During the tenth anniversary commemoration of the 9-11 attacks in Trocadéro square in Paris across from the Eiffel Tower (the second largest 911 commemoration in the world next to those in Manhattan itself, according to the organizers in The French Will Never Forget association), Grace Weber and Blaine Krauss sing America the Beautiful under Jean-Pierre Heim's recreation of the World Trade Center's Twin Towers before doves are released into the skies.







The hero of the day was Tony Benetatos, the FDNY firefighter featured in the Naudet brothers' "9/11" documentary, who was given several medals, including one by U.S. Ambassador to France Charles Rivkin.



Eventually, the rains stopped, the sky got lighter, and the sun came out and that night, a concert took place under a full moon…



















See also:
• The America-Bashers' Use of Symbolism on September 11

• Personal Memories of September 11, 2001, in Paris

• The Legend of the Squandered Sympathy

• Looking Over TV Shows Inspired by 9-11, Le Monde Discovers (Surprise!) "a Culture of Fear"

• Still Looking for "Another" September 11th?

• André Glucksmann: Bin Laden Is Gone, Not The Strategy of Radical Hatred Without Quarter

• Le Monde's 911 Commemorations

Still Looking for "Another" September 11th?

Obfuscaters have selective memories. Always looking for something to compete with the obvious yearning of the aggrieved or abused, come the "lamentations" of the disinvolved and confused thought-mafia. Just as it was with the left after 9-11, the tut-tutting has a predictable familiarity:

Ordinary Berliners on both sides of the now-derelict Wall were certainly excited over the prospect of unity, but the city's opinion-makers were often blase or even hostile toward the project. It became fashionable among the leftist intelligentsia of West Berlin to condemn the easterners' longing for unification as a lamentable submission to the lure of Western materialism.

Today marks beginning of another war: the "peace movement," looking for Islamophobia wherever it could be inferred, the mothers of fallen troops, and in every other way preferred the failure of their own society, preferring it to negotiate from a position of weakness with a barbaric, illiberal violent movement seeking the violence that they craved in their "revolutions" to "make the world better."

Add to that the banal, the banalization, and the misuse. Such as it is, one Euro-policy blogger is looking for other ways to "celebrate 9-11", and tries to use it to point attention to two aged and pointless press statements by Eurocrats.

Personal Memories of September 11, 2001, in Paris

Since commemorations of 9-11 are taking place all over the world, I thought we should search the archives of No Pasarán for the personal memories of two of the blog's bloggers. Erik and Bill's posts will help explain why they started to blog:

September 11, 2001, in France

(September 09, 2005)

For no particular reason (except that the anniversary is this weekend), I thought I should recount my experience of 911 and the numerous instances of French solidarity I encountered in the following days.

• Everyday Meetings with Common Europeans

On the afternoon of September 11, 2001, I was having a drink in the TGV's dining car (yes, I know, I take the train a lot), heading north to Paris.
Cel phone communication is hard to come by on trains, but at one point I heard I had a message on the answering machine. I called the number to hear the message. It was my (New York-born) mother, and all the message said was to please call back: "There has been a series of catastrophes in the States".
Befuddled, I headed out into the corridor and called my parents, and after answering, my mom said I should talk to my dad. I listened incredulously as my father explained that planes had been deliberately flown into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and that both Twin Towers had collapsed.
Needless to say, I headed back to the dining car in another state of mind, totally closed off and unable to communicate with anyone.
At one point, three or four members of some state-owned company (they may have been EDF) entered the dining car. . Although they discussing the day's events, they were obviously heading to Paris to demonstrate against the government, and during their conversation, I overheard one of them making a joke (sic). With a snicker, he said "Ils l'ont fait exprès pour saboter notre manifestation" (They [obviously meaning the Americans] did it on purpose, in order to sabotage our demonstration). Alhough the others barely laughed at what was obviously an instance of sophisticated humor à la française (smiles were in order, though), the comment should give a better idea of the real state of friendship harbored towards America then the presumed one extant in the myth of the squandered sympathy.
I was too emotionally drained to react to this comment, and anyway without a radio and a TV set to get a better idea of the situation, the extent of the terrorist attacks was hard to believe. I had listened to learn more, and had certainly not expected anything but empathy for Americans.
(Meanwhile, fellow webmaster Bill was taking a drink in a Paris café — listen to his experience with French proclamations of ever-lasting friendship [or read it below].)
Anyway, another two hours went by without news, without images of any kind, and when I arrived at Gare de Lyon, I rushed home faster than I ever have before, arriving drenched with sweat just in time for the 8 o'clock news. That night I hardly slept, as I stayed up in front of the TV all night long, wishing, wishing drastically that the news wasn't true.
For the next couple of weeks I wore a bandanna with the Stars and Stripes everywhere I went.
At my office the following day, there was certainly nobody among my fellow journalists who had anything sympathetic to say about 911 (or what they had to say they certainly weren't sharing with the guy wearing Old Glory on his head).
The previous August, I had joined a group of a dozen hikers (all of them French) in crossing the Himalayas at a point in northern India, and we had decided to meet again at one of our apartments on the Saturday three weeks after our return from the trek. This turned out to be September 15.
A couple of people brought their companions along. Eventually discussion turned to the events of the previous Tuesday. I never expected anything but sympathy to be shown (like I had on the train), but one female hiker's boyfriend obviously had none. I don't remember if he actually said he was happy about 911 or in so many words that Americans deserved it, but he certainly had not the smallest empathy for them, saying he hated their guts.
That is where I lost my cool.
"So that is the famous French solidarity, huh?!" I interrupted from my chair.
He tried to say something, but he wasn't about to get the chance.
"So that is the famous French generosity, huh?!" I bellowed.
He again replying, but…
"So that is the famous French tolerance, huh?"
I got up.
The others were begging me to drop the matter, to shut up.
"So that is the famous love of fellow human beings, huh? I am so-o-o-o impressed!"
His girlfriend was begging me, begging both of us, to let the matter drop, but I piled on with acerbic irony.
"Do you have any other examples of France's famed lucidité, we would love to listen to them!"
The other people were alarmed, they seemed to think we were going to come to blows, and, truthfully, both then and later, I felt like I was battering him, except by the use of words instead of fists.
"Oh, I am so impressed by your avant-garde feelings of solidarity towards the entire world — please, please, can you give us some lessons!"
Suddenly, the guy got up, crossed the room towards the front door of the fifth-floor apartment, and — walked out. Leaving his girlfriend behind, he started running down the stairway. In my fury, I still managed to register surprise, because that was the last thing I expected.
I sat down again, fury still registered on my face, and the topic quickly changed to something totally unrelated to international news.
The point is that, as John Rosenthal (among others) has pointed out, the story of the squandered sympathy is nothing but a myth: Over the following months, or years (weeks?), we are told, America's president (i.e., Bush) and his government squandered the sympathy that the world generously bestowed upon America in the immediate aftermath.
As it happens, the comment I heard in the apartment occurred four days after the terrorist attacks, and the comments that I heard in the train and that W heard in the Paris café occurred within hours (if not dozens of minutes) after learning of the terrorist attacks.
Those give quite a different context to the expressions of friendship such as those seen by clicking on the photo above. As many of our French commentators make clear, what is said in public (and nobody denies Europeans' mastery in handling the délicatesse of diplomacy) and what is said behind one's back can be quite a different matter; in any case, the friendship is tinged (soaked, rather) with (self-serving) paternalism.
Close friendship with America: it is all a lie, folks, it is all a lie. (Or if you want to be charitable, at best it is self-deception.)

Let's set the record straight for all the politically correct, terrorist appeasing, revisionists out there

(March 18, 2003)

9-11 in Paris

11-9-2001 à Paris

Quite a few falsehoods are being spread about America 'squandering' French sympathy in the aftermath of 9-11. So let's set the record straight for all the politically correct, terrorist appeasing, revisionists out there. There was no French sympathy, period. The first images I saw of the attacks were on the TV in a Paris café shortly after leaving the office. As images of people jumping from the Towers were shown a French guy at the bar made a back handed wave at the TV screen and said, 'to hell with them'. All the customers' discussions in the café were along the lines of 'its a terrible thing BUT ...' quickly followed by vague justifications why it was not such a terrible thing after all. Kids were running down the street yelling 'the States are fucked'. In the days following the attacks, graffiti praising Osama bin Laden appeared daily on the ATMs throughout the neighborhood. Dope using French judo champ Djamel Bouras, appearing on the first edition of 'Tout le Monde en Parle' following the attacks, stated 'Why do the French newspapers declare that we are all Americans? Why a minute of silence for the dead Americans? What about a minute of silence for the dead Palestinians?' Answer to Bouras: because the Palestinians are bloodthirsty murdering terrorist scum, that's why. Now go use your smack. French celebration of 9-11 continued thereafter. Dubya said it best, 'Never forgive, never forget'.

Enormément de mensonges circulent au sujet de la sympathie française qui a été 'gaspillée' par l'Amérique suite aux attaques du 11-9-2001. Remettons les pendules à l'heure pour tous les révisionnistes politiquement corrects qui font des accomodements vis-à-vis du terrorisme. Il n'y a jamais eu de sympathie française, point barre. Les permières images des attaques que j'ai vues étaient à la télévision dans un café parisien peu de temps après avoir quitté le bureau. Au moment où les images étaient transmises de gens qui sautaient des Tours un mec français au comptoir a fait un geste de la main vers le téléviseur en disant, 'qu'ils aillent au diable'. Toutes les discussions parmi les clients consistaient à dire 'c'est une chose affreuse MAIS ...' vite suivies de justifications pour dire qu'il ne s'agissait pas de quelque chose de si affreux en fin de compte. Des mômes courraient dans la rue en criant, 'on a niqué les USA'. Dans les jours qui ont suivi les attaques, les guichets automatiques du quartier étaient recouverts de graffiti faisant l'éloge d'Oussama ben Laden. Djamel Bouras, champion français de judo et consommateur de produits dopants, lors de son passage à la première émission de 'Tout le Monde en Parle' après les attaques, a déclaré 'Pourquoi les journaux français disent qu'on est tous des américains? Pourquoi il faut faire une minute de silence pour les américains morts? Pourquoi pas une minute de silence pour les palestiniens morts?' Réponse à Bouras: car les palestiniens sont des fumiers de terroristes meurtriers et sanguinaires. Alors, occupe-toi de ta came. Par la suite, le culte français autour du 11-9-2001 a pris de l'ampleur. Bush l'a bien dit, 'Ne jamais pardonner, ne jamais oublier'.

See also:
• The Legend of the Squandered Sympathy

• The America-Bashers' Use of Symbolism on September 11

• 911 Commemorated in Paris's Luxembourg Garden

• The Skies Shed Tears During Paris Commemoration of 911 Attacks

• Looking Over TV Shows Inspired by 9-11, Le Monde Discovers (Surprise!) "a Culture of Fear"

• Still Looking for "Another" September 11th?

• André Glucksmann: Bin Laden Is Gone, Not The Strategy of Radical Hatred Without Quarter

• Le Monde's 911 Commemorations

911 Commemorated in Paris's Luxembourg Garden

On September 11, 2011 — the tenth anniversary of the attacks of 911 — a commemoration was held in the Jardin du Luxembourg with grievers (in the top photo the French Heritage Society's Marie-Sol de la Tour d'Auvergne) laying wreaths at the foot of Bartholdi's model for the Statue of Liberty, including one in the form of the World Trade Center's Twin Towers.

This was followed by speeches and concerts as a drizzle started to fall, all the while an artist was doing a live art rendition of September 19, 2001, changing his canvas as first one building, then the second came down…




See also:
The Skies Shed Tears During Paris Commemoration of 911 Attacks

• The America-Bashers' Use of Symbolism on September 11

• Personal Memories of September 11, 2001, in Paris

• The Legend of the Squandered Sympathy

• Looking Over TV Shows Inspired by 9-11, Le Monde Discovers (Surprise!) "a Culture of Fear"

• Still Looking for "Another" September 11th?

• André Glucksmann: Bin Laden Is Gone, Not The Strategy of Radical Hatred Without Quarter

• The French Will Never Forget

• Le Monde's 911 Commemorations

The America-Bashers' Use of Symbolism on September 11

As Le Monde Commemorates 911, Plantu is back in his usual style, with a full page inside Le Monde Magazine bringing back 10 years of cartoons that belittle the human toll; or that suggest that Uncle Sam deserved whatever it had coming; or that compare the 2011 attacks of September 11, 2001, to Pinochet's coup d'état in Chile on September 11, 1973.

(This causes him to make —intentionally? — a colossal whopper, saying that 3,000 people died on September 11, 2001, just as 3,000 people died on September 11, 1973; in reality, 3,000 lives were lost during Pinochet's 17 years in power (not one day but close to 6,000 days) — nothing to be proud of, for sure, but facts need to be gotten right and in addition, whatever the toll is, it needs to be compared to those of neighboring régimes, like the 20,000 dead in Fidel Castro's Cuba.)



So No Pasarán is looking back at 10 years' worth of posts (six or seven, really) as well and checking out what it has been saying on the subjects so dear to the hearts of leftists everywhere.

1) Let's first take a look at the "legend", according to which,

in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 the US enjoyed the heartfelt sympathy of the world, only to see this capital of goodwill frittered away by the successive faux pas of an inept and arrogant Bush administration and then definitively exhausted by the launching of an illegitimate war on Iraq in defiance of “world public opinion.”

The Legend of the Squandered Sympathy

(October 10, 2004)
John Rosenthal's Transatlantic Intelligencer article ought to be mandatory reading for anybody studying September 11 and anti-Americanism. In The Legend of the Squandered Sympathy, John Rosenthal notably mentions the cartoon that Plantu saw fit to reproduce on the weekend of the 10th anniversary.

Such was the tenor of Le Monde’s coverage, in effect, just one week after the attacks. The monotonous drone of denunciations continued as the prospect of a military strike against Afghanistan materialized in the weeks ahead, with distraught “New York Jews,” Pashtun warlords and the estranged son of the “O’Dea,” the archetypal all-American family, all chiming in to register their protest and all sounding surprisingly like “third-worldist” Parisian intellectuals – or even indeed like the publisher of Le Monde. (Among other things, the legend of the squandered sympathy occludes the fact that even while a substantial majority of Europeans polled, including in France and Germany, showed spontaneous understanding for American military actions in Afghanistan, large swaths of Europe’s socialist and social-democratic intelligentsia opposed any American military response to the 9/11 attacks whatsoever.) The “boomerang” image went on to become the favored heuristic device of Le Monde and its affiliated publications in their treatment of 9/11. Thus the first issue of the monthly Monde Diplomatique to appear following the events bore the thematic headline “Boomerang Effect” [it also has an article by Maureen Dowd]. In a pictorial variation on the same theme, a special insert in Le Monde itself featured a cartoon depicting a little wind-up Taliban doll, “Made in USA” emblazoned across its back, carrying red, white and blue explosives and circling back toward Uncle Sam.

2) Now let's take a look at the state of democracy and human rights in Chile in 1973 by looking at the (very real) similarities between the overthrow of Manuel Zelaya and that of Salvador Allende

Notice the Similarities with That Other "Coup", the One That Overthrew Leftist Saint© and Martyr™ Salvador Allende?

(July 07, 2009)

In Latin America, José Piñera, armed with evidence including "the momentous Agreement of 23 August 1973 … widely unknown outside Chile", opines that because

President Allende became a tyrant when he broke his solemn oath to respect the Constitution and the Chilean laws [and because] his government [had] fomented the creation of armed militias … the origin of the Pinochet government is that of any revolutionary one, in which only the use of force was left in order to remove a tyrant [and to] "put immediate end" to these constitutional violations . It must be agreed that this was, in fact, an unequivocal call to remove by force the President who had initiated the use of force with the purpose of imposing a communist dictatorship.
…the truth demands recognition that former President Pinochet led a legitimate rebellion against tyranny and that the origin of Chile's civil war --and its victims-- lies with former President Allende and his marxist Socialist party. … The Economist said it clearly at the time: "The temporary death of democracy in Chile will be regrettable, but the blame lies clearly with Dr. Allende and those of his followers who persistently overrode the Constitution" (September 15, 1973).

Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God

Read also about Allende's purported suicide…

And check out Romanticists Overlook Allende's Many Faults: Senator Ricardo Núñez Muñoz added in a NYT interview (emphasis mine) that

It’s wrong to say that the CIA, the armed forces, and the bourgeoisie alone brought down the Allende government. It’s obvious we need to admit we made critical economical and political errors that were as decisive if not more decisive

No less a figure than the president of the Partido Socialista, Núñez went on to conclude that

we know another Allende-like experiment would only be a collossal failure.

(Then again, that NYT report was back in 2001…)

3) Finally, we have this for Plantu:

The America-Bashers' Use of Symbolism on September 11

(September 12, 2005)
When confronted with the tragedy that occurred on September 11, 2001, it has become a tradition for some to recall another event that occurred on another September 11.
On that date, in 1973, General Pinochet overthrew Chile's President Allende.
This is supposed to make us think. Hard.
The problem with this, of course, is that there have occurred 500 September 11s in the past 500 years (to take the first round number that came to my mind), with varying occurrences on various continents, in various countries, in various regions, in various cities, in various neighborhoods, and in various personal homes around the world, and just about any one of those occurrences could have been picked to make a comparison with (and provide matter for reflection on, and some kind of metaphysical lesson for) September 11, 2001 (or September 11, 1973, for that matter).
As I have written elsewhere,

If looking down their noses, [America-bashers] ask "Do you know what other event occurred on September 11?", answer "Yes, a terrible tragedy." Pause while they nod approvingly, then add "George Washington lost the battle of Brandywine" (in 1777) or even "Brian De Palma was born on that date" (so was Ferdinand Marcos, by the way), although I'm not sure to what extent that counts as a tragedy. If they object that they are referring to something more recent and more tragic than that, agree and say "you must be talking of Hitler ordering reinforcements to Romania" (1940) or "FDR ordering any Axis ships in U.S. waters shot on sight" (1941) or even "wasn't it the first TV broadcast of a Miss America beauty contest?" (1954). How about, "that was the date (in 1962) that the Beatles recorded their first single at EMI Studios (you know, 'Love Love Me Do')".

This symbolism makes as much sense as noting with alarm that our 40th president sported three names with six letters each, supposedly marking the alleged number of the beast.
(If any association with September 11 should be made — with regards to the 2001 attacks, that is, not the 1973 coup — as several readers have pointed out to me, it would perhaps make more sense to call up the 1669 defeat of the Muslim armies besieging Vienna, bringing an end to the Ottoman advance into Europe.)
But what it all boils down to this: for symbolism to have any kind of meaning, it needs to stay close to its subject and, in my opinion, reflect on the better angels of our nature. What it should especially avoid is collective guilt, not least because that collective guilt is necessarily one-sided, i.e., used exclusively against Americans and their allies (or, historically, by any group against any group's alleged enemies).
For instance, it would probably not be too difficult to search through Chilean history and find some kind of tragedy (nation-wide or otherwise) on a September 11 that proved that the 1973 coup d'état was the Chileans' punishment for the earlier disaster (notwithstanding the fact that many believe that Pinochet's coup averted a far worse catastrophe for the country). In another example, which is actually far more coherent than simply noting a similarity of dates, many state that every setback by Bush or by a Bush ally amounts to (well-deserved) punishment for sending troops to Iraq, but because members of the Coalition of the Willing keep winning elections, this symbolism is discretely ignored. (I call this the wait, wait, wait syndrome.)
The use of symbolism says far more about those who wield it than about those the symbolism is meant to describe (and judge).
So, anyway: we know the date that Pinochet grabbed power in 1973.
Bien.
But what was the date that he relinquished power?
What was the date in 1990 that Pinochet handed power back to a civilian government?
The answer is: March 11.
Now, we all remember what happened in Madrid on March 11, 2004, don't we?
So what is that supposed to mean? What is that supposed to symbolize?
Somehow, we are led to believe, the wholescale murder of 3,000 people in New York and Washington would not, or might not, have occurred had a strongman with no link to (and probably wholly unknown to) the perpetrators not grabbed power on that same date 28 years earlier.
What is the wholescale murder of 191 people in Madrid supposed to mean? That it would not have occurred had that same strongman not handed power back and had he remained in power 14 years earlier?
Your guess is as good as mine…

FURTHER READING:

• Le Monde's 911 Commemorations

• Looking Over TV Shows Inspired by 9-11, Le Monde Discovers (Surprise!) "a Culture of Fear"

• Hubert Védrine: Castigating Bush and the Neo-Cons, Former French Foreign Minister Says that the War on Terror Should Have Been Carried Out "With Discretion"

• André Glucksmann: Bin Laden Is Gone, Not The Strategy of Radical Hatred Without Quarter

• The French Will Never Forget

• The Legend of the Squandered Sympathy

Wes Riddle's "9-11 We Remember"

Wesley Riddle has created a musical tribute to commemorate the attacks of 9-11 (merci à Carine).

This 9-11 video montage is a tribute of those who sacrificed and continue to sacrifice today for our freedom and a remembrance of the tragic events and heroic deeds that took place on September 11, 2001