Dans le pays de la misère…

In the following report by Medienkritik's Ray, note that you can easily replace German and Germans by French and Frenchmen or European and Europeans.

It is a land "increasingly plagued by self-doubts" and in the midst of a downward spiral. It is a land drowning in guns, brutal crime and social injustice. It is a land that has become "as scary as Osama bin Laden" embroiled in a hopeless civil war overseas. It is a land that lied to the world for oil and unbridled greed.

This land is an imaginary construct of German media and left-wing politicians. It is the United States seen through the distorted lens of publications such as SPIEGEL and STERN. It is a land in which very little positive ever happens and where the great majority of news are negative horror stories.

The land that many Germans believe they know to be mired in misery, crime and hopelessness, is, in fact, totally foreign to them. The United States that they think they know could never be a land of people more optimistic and content with their lives and more economically prosperous. But that is precisely what it is...

Just yesterday, a superb German blog called Die Achse des Guten cited a Harris Poll, which yielded the following results … :

"With a few exceptions, Americans are generally happier with their lives and more optimistic about their future than are Europeans, according to a new Harris Poll"

Read more comparisons between
the country mired in misery and
the continent beaming with lucidity…

Buy low, sell high; I made a bundle in the European carbon markets

The environmentalists eco-terrorists would put their money where their mouths are, if they had any money.

The Irish Whisky and the T-Bones are on me!

95.2 FM; Fine whine, all the time

Hilarious listening last night on French talk radio 'Ici et Maintenant' ('Here and Now') where listeners were calling in, non-stop, with details on their desires and plans to leave the country.

N'en déplaise aux vieux pédés aigris du 8ème arrondissement, les thèses sur l'épuisement de la Fwance et l'exode de ses chères têtes blondes circulent de plus en plus à gôche.

Beyond the FEBA of Canadian left's hostility to progress is a great nation.

Hey! Forget about that CBC strike. No-one with their head screwed on straight is missing them anyway. In the meantime pay Avary a visit.

À paraître au 31 août: "Broute-moi la bande de Gaza"

"Il faut être bref quand le sujet a peu d'intérêt. Si j'écrivais un livre contre le bouddhisme, il me faudrait plusieurs centaines de pages, parce que c'est une religion intéressante et compliquée. L'islam est une religion simple et bête, on peut donc l'expédier en une phrase.", Michel Houellebecq, Les Inrockuptibles, 5/2005.

The €uro is as queer as a three dollar bill

US budget deficit projection

... and during that time the Dollar's value will rise against the Euro. The €uro Zero: Europe's currency with a value fixed in Washington. Un destin manifeste, ça se forge, mais surtout, ça se decide.

The ugly, angry left exploiting the grieving

Even talk-radio host Alan Nathan, a man given to building a platform for the broad spectrum of views on the radio has had his fill of Cindy Sheehan – but more to the point it’s the hangers on in her camp and the network supporting their movement with, among other things, taxpayers’ funds intended for universities.

« Current war-protesters have all the intellectual prowess of a bird flying north for the winter and their moronic fumbling illustrates how they just don’t make anti-war activists like they used to.

Lesson one when choosing a figurehead for any cause is first to ensure that she’s not currently engaged in a separate and easily defined act of perfidy against a professed loved one – in this case, her killed son on whose behalf she supposedly speaks. In short, she’s using her son’s death to advance the very cause against which he stood. Casey Sheehan re-enlisted five months into the Iraqi War and eventually chose to participate in the very battle that would take his irreplaceable life because he believed in the effort. It would have been equally disrespectful for her to use him as a prop to support the war had he died on the battlefield not believing in the effort. It’s not so much a question of “pro-war vs. anti-war” as it is a question of whether or not anyone has the moral right to defile a son’s legacy by using his name in opposition to that legacy – whatever it might be.»

A transcript to the conservative talk-show hosted by Rush Limbaugh seemed to be the right place for a shocked press photographer at this so-called “peace camp” to vent his frustrations:

«RUSH: Whoa, whoa, whoa. You spoke with who?

CALLER: With Cindy Sheehan.

RUSH: You spoke with Cindy Sheehan? Did she cuss you out?

CALLER: No, but I gotta tell you: if they find out out there, they're not the nice people that CNN is showing. I saw them go over and just about attack a young girl who was very distraught because her brother had died in Iraq, and they had all those crosses up, and his name was on the cross. So the mother and the sister came out to remove that. They didn't want him to be a part of that, and so they encircled her, tried to stop her from being able to get the cross, she finally did. They were just about at the point of attacking her, told her that her brother was a murderer, that he had killed innocent people, and that he died for nothing.

RUSH: (Laughing.) Oh, God.

CALLER: You know, and as a photographer I understand, you know --

RUSH: Well, now, I gotta stop you there on that, Michael, because they're parroting what Cindy Sheehan is saying when they tell you that.»

That group, and that whole very much shut in subculture- reminds me of something that the late Abba Eban, a statesmen-like man in every way once said:

« A consensus means that everyone agrees to say collectively what no one believes individually.»

A Few Brief Remarks About Cindy Sheehan and Her Message

Trevor Bethwell has

stayed out of the Cindy Sheehan fray for the most part, partly because I respect any American's right to petition her government and partly because there aren't many ways you can criticize a mother who's lost a son without appearing to be a heartless bastard.

But enough's enough. La Shawn Barber had a point when she criticized some conservative bloggers for demonizing a woman grieving over the loss of a child, but when one woman gets more attention and accolade from the press for protesting a war than our troops get for fighting it, this is an issue.

Tony Snow:

…she never talks in detail about her son -- other than to mention that he is dead.

This is not how grieving moms express their "eternal character." It's what happens when people get utterly carried away with politics, transforming themselves from concerned citizens into boorish zealots.

Ann Coulter:

We're sorry about Ms. Sheehan's son, but the entire nation was attacked on 9/11. This isn't about her personal loss. America has been under relentless attack from Islamic terrorists for 20 years, culminating in a devastating attack on U.S. soil on 9/11. It's not going to stop unless we fight back, annihilate Muslim fanatics, destroy their bases, eliminate their sponsors and end all their hope. A lot more mothers will be grieving if our military policy is: No one gets hurt!

Fortunately, the Constitution vests authority to make foreign policy with the President of the United States, not with this week's sad story. But liberals think that since they have been able to produce a grieving mother, the commander in chief should step aside and let Cindy Sheehan make foreign policy for the nation. As Maureen Dowd said, it's "inhumane" for Bush not "to understand that the moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute."

…now liberals demand that we listen to the same old arguments all over again, not because Sheehan has any new insights, but because she has the ability to repel dissent by citing her grief.

On the bright side, Sheehan shows us what Democrats would say if they thought they were immunized from disagreement. Sheehan has called President Bush "that filth-spewer and warmonger." She says: "America has been killing people on this continent since it was started" and "the killing has gone on unabated for over 200 years." She calls the U.S. government a "morally repugnant system" and says, "This country is not worth dying for." I have a feeling every time this gal opens her trap, Michael Moore gets a residuals check.

Linda Chavez:

Interestingly, of the journalists who have canonized Sheehan, none has seen fit to report her earlier remarks or her advocacy on behalf of [attorney Lynne Stewart, who represented the mastermind of the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 and was convicted earlier this year of providing material support for terrorism when she acted as a conduit for terrorist instructions from her client Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman].

Kathleen Parker:

Every movement has its backlash, and now Cindy Sheehan is getting her turn. Her sudden departure from Crawford to tend to her ailing mother in California changes only the characters in place, not the nature of confrontation.

On Aug. 27, a caravan of military families who support the war in Iraq is scheduled to arrive in Crawford. The backlash battalion, which is calling itself the "You Don't Speak For Me, Cindy" tour, is starting in San Francisco Monday and is composed of parents whose sons and daughters are in Iraq and Afghanistan.

…No human being has absolute moral authority on this or any other issue, though I think I know what Dowd meant. That parents who bury their children have a right to complain and to have their voices heard. That's the theory, anyway.

In practice, of course, it means that people lost in their emotions get a pass from the usual standards of debate and fair play, as Sheehan has. That's about to change. As others arrive in Crawford who share Sheehan's grief and her moral authority — but not her politics — her free pass expires.

Fittingly, Ronald A Griffin adds:

I lost a son in Iraq and Cindy Sheehan does not speak for me.

I grieve with Mrs. Sheehan, for all too well I know the full measure of the agony she is forever going to endure. I honor her son for his service and sacrifice. However, I abhor all that she represents and those who would cast her as the symbol for parents of our fallen soldiers.

Listen to Ann and Dale Hampton… Listen to Stacey Sammis… Speak to Joan Curtin… Speak to Karen Long… Listen to Griffin's wife, Robin:

"I don't care what she says or does. She is no more important than any other mother."

Edmund Morris evokes two days that he spent in the company of Ronald Reagan:

…the individual cry for attention at the heart of it — "Mr. President, feel my pain!" — is misguided. Ms. Sheehan cannot expect a commander in chief to emote on demand.

…Some presidents are better than others at handling this relentless demand for a show of personal involvement.

…Maybe one day some such document will reveal what President Bush really feels about his own "honored dead." For the meantime, he is our elected president, with the business of a nation to run. Ms. Sheehan has gotten more time with him than most grieving mothers, and if she felt, during those unsatisfactory minutes, that there was a glass wall around him, it unfortunately comes with the job. A president has to protect himself from emotional predators, or he'd be sucked dry within a week of taking office.

Christopher Hitchens chimes in by pointing out that

The president has compromised by sending his national-security adviser, Stephen Hadley, down that Crawford road to meet the PR-knackish Cindy. Not good enough, exclaims Dowd. Hadley was pro-war and has even been described as a neocon! Clearly, then, the Sheehan demand is liable to expand the more it is met. President Bush must either find a senior staff member who opposes the war and then send him or her down the track to see if that will do. Or else he must, like the Emperor Henry of old, stage his own Canossa and attend on her himself, abject apologies at the ready. After all, we mustn't forget that we are dealing—as was that emperor in his dispute with Pope Gregory—with "an absolute moral authority."

What dreary sentimental nonsense this all is, and how much space has been wasted on it. Most irritating is the snide idea that the president is "on vacation" and thus idly ignoring his suffering subjects, when the truth is that the members of the media—not known for their immunity to the charm of Martha's Vineyard or Cape Cod in the month of August—are themselves lazing away the season with a soft-centered nonstory that practically, as we like to say in the trade, "writes itself." Anyway, Sheehan now says that if need be she will "follow" the president "to Washington," so I don't think the holiday sneer has much life left in it.

There are, in fact, some principles involved here. Any citizen has the right to petition the president for redress of grievance, or for that matter to insult him to his face. But the potential number of such people is very large, and you don't have the right to cut in line by having so much free time that you can set up camp near his drive. Then there is the question of civilian control over the military, which is an authority that one could indeed say should be absolute. The military and its relatives have no extra claim on the chief executive's ear. Indeed, it might be said that they have less claim than the rest of us, since they have voluntarily sworn an oath to obey and carry out orders. Most presidents in time of war have made an exception in the case of the bereaved—Lincoln's letter to the mother of two dead Union soldiers (at the time, it was thought that she had lost five sons) is a famous instance—but the job there is one of comfort and reassurance, and this has already been discharged in the Sheehan case. If that stricken mother had been given an audience and had risen up to say that Lincoln had broken his past election pledges and sought a wider and more violent war with the Confederacy, his aides would have been quite right to show her the door and to tell her that she was out of order.

Finally, I think one must deny to anyone the right to ventriloquize the dead. Casey Sheehan joined up as a responsible adult volunteer. Are we so sure that he would have wanted to see his mother acquiring "a knack for P.R." and announcing that he was killed in a war for a Jewish cabal? (a claim that has brought David Duke flying to Ms. Sheehan's side.)

Lisa De Pasquale:

Ms. Sheehan's anti-American rhetoric should not tarnish her son and the thousands of other soldiers' dedication to freedom at home and abroad. How long would have Saddam or the Taliban allowed a hysterical mother to protest outside their private homes? How many TV cameras would have been allowed to capture the spectacle? Ms. Sheehan is able to criticize the military and essentially stalk the President because of the sacrifices made by her son and military members and families, past and present. By usurping her son's name, she is dishonoring the efforts of the thousands who continue to fight for freedom …

Here is what LDP wrote in March 2003 as the intervention to topple Saddam began:

Despite obvious human rights violations and limits on freedom, feminists, led by the National Organization for Women, ignore Saddam Hussein’s reprehensible treatment of women. Instead feminists talk about America’s “tyrants” and the threat of “tyranny in our homes, our workplaces and our schools.”

…Once again radical feminists are witness to a legitimate case of tyranny and violence against women, but they would rather remain steadfastly against any policies or actions taken by America and the Bush Administration. NOW President Kim Gandy stated, “The real terrorism is the Bush administration's disregard for international law and destruction of civil liberties at home. This has become an issue of one dictator versus another."

Feminists are more comfortable with allowing Iraqi women to endure torture than supporting the Bush Administration. For example, a report by Amnesty International documented the beheading of 50 young women in Baghdad. The report also said, “The heads of these women were hung on the doors of their houses for a few days.” Saddam’s son Uday led the group of men who beheaded the women and terrorized their families.

The US State Department reports that human rights organizations receive continuous testimony on the psychological trauma women have suffered after being tortured and raped by Iraqi military personnel.

Despite this overwhelming evidence, feminists in the US praise Iraq and cite a suspicious United Nations report that says Iraq “scored highest in women’s empowerment.” NOW stated in a recent press release that Iraqi women “currently enjoy more rights and freedoms than women in other Gulf nations, such as Saudi Arabia.”

At an International Alliance for Justice press conference, Safia al-Souhail, an Iraqi woman whose father was murdered for opposing Saddam, said, “We are here begging the support of the free world to liberate us from the nightmare we have been living in for the past three decades.”

A Kurdish woman from Iraq said, “Disarmament alone will not end our suffering. This regime should be indicted for its crimes against humanity.”

NOW and their cohorts are deaf to these women’s pleas. Feminist Majority leader Eleanor Smeal, also a supporter of the Code Pink rally, odiously said that the Bush Administration “needs to construct a foreign policy as if women mattered.”

These radical feminists’ stance on military action in Iraq and the global war on terrorism illustrate how they have consistently fallen short on their purported mission to “eliminate sexism and eliminate all oppression.” It is clear that their motives are political and not based on advancing the rights of women around the world. When faced with a war that would liberate the Iraqi people, a majority of whom is women, feminists would much rather turn a blind eye to the horrors of Saddam than support of America and the Bush Administration.

Cal Thomas has a message for Bush: "Go and meet again with Cindy Sheehan, Mr. President, but this time not in private and not alone".

Here's the reason he should meet with her, but not alone. Other relatives of dead and wounded soldiers and some of the soldiers, themselves, should be included. He might also invite a few Iraqis who support the effort to free a people long held in bondage by Saddam Hussein and who face new bondage under the totalitarian dictatorship of Islamofacism if this effort fails.

The president should hold the meeting in a public place. Let the criticism flow, but let Iraqi women tell their stories about rape and torture at the hands of Saddam's now-dead sons. Allow Iraqi men to tell about life under Saddam and how grateful they are that he is gone. Wounded soldiers and families of the dead would speak in support of the war effort. Members of Sheehan's own family could come. They posted a letter on the Drudge Web site in support of the president.

Here is a good point to end this piece, with commentary from Iraq (merci à RV):

…today I was looking at your picture and I saw in your eyes a persistence, a great pain and a torturing question; why?

I know how you feel Cindy, I lived among the same pains for 35 years but worse than that was the fear from losing our loved ones at any moment. Even while I'm writing these words to you there are feelings of fear, stress, and sadness that interrupt our lives all the time but in spite of all that I'm sticking hard to hope which if I didn't have I would have died years ago.

Ma'am, we asked for your nation's help and we asked you to stand with us in our war and your nation's act was (and still is) an act of ultimate courage and unmatched sense of humanity.

Our request is justified, death was our daily bread and a million Iraqi mothers were expecting death to knock on their doors at any second to claim someone from their families.

Your face doesn't look strange to me at all; I see it everyday on endless numbers of Iraqi women who were struck by losses like yours.

Our fellow country men and women were buried alive, cut to pieces and thrown in acid pools and some were fed to the wild dogs while those who were lucky enough ran away to live like strangers and the Iraqi mother was left to grieve one son buried in an unfound grave and another one living far away who she might not get to see again.

We did nothing to deserve all that suffering, well except for a dream we had; a dream of living like normal people do.

We cried out of joy the day your son and his comrades freed us from the hands of the devil and we went to the streets not believing that the nightmare is over.

We practiced our freedom first by kicking and burning the statues and portraits of the hateful idol who stole 35 years from the life of a nation.

For the first time air smelled that beautiful, that was the smell of freedom.

The mothers went to break the bars of cells looking for the ones they lost 5, 12 or 20 years ago and other women went to dig the land with their bare hand searching for a few bones they can hold in their arms after they couldn't hold them when they belonged to a living person.

I recall seeing a woman on TV two years ago, she was digging through the dirt with her hands. There was no definite grave in there as the whole place was one large grave but she seemed willing to dig the whole place looking for her two brothers who disappeared from earth 24 years ago when they were dragged from their colleges to a chamber of hell.

Her tears mixed with the dirt of the grave and there were journalists asking her about what her brothers did wrong and she was screaming "I don't know, I don't know. They were only college students. They didn't murder anyone, they didn't steal, and they didn't hurt anyone in their lives. All I want to know is the place of their grave".

Why was this woman chosen to lose her dear ones? Why you? Why did a million women have to go through the same pain?

We did not choose war for the sake of war itself and we didn't sacrifice a million lives for fun! We could've accepted our jailor and kept living in our chains for the rest of our lives but it's freedom ma'am.

Freedom is not an American thing and it's not an Iraqi thing, it's what unites us as human beings. We refuse all kinds of restrictions and that's why we fought and still fighting everyday in spite of the swords in the hands of the cavemen who want us dead or slaves for their evil masters.

You are free to go and leave us alone but what am I going to tell your million sisters in Iraq? Should I ask them to leave Iraq too? Should I leave too? And what about the eight millions who walked through bombs to practice their freedom and vote? Should they leave this land too?

Is it a cursed land that no one should live in? Why is it that we were chosen to live in all this pain, why me, why my people, why you?

But I am not leaving this land because the bad guys are not going to leave us or you to live in peace. They are the same ones who flew the planes to kill your people in New York.

I ask you in the name of God or whatever you believe in; do not waste your son's blood.

We here have decided to avenge humanity, you and all the women who lost their loved ones.

Take a look at our enemy Cindy, look closely at the hooded man holding the sword and if you think he's right then I will back off and support your call.

We live in pain and grief everyday, every hour, every minute; all the horrors of the powers of darkness have been directed at us and I don't know exactly when am I going to feel safe again, maybe in a year, maybe two or even ten; I frankly don't know but I don't want to lose hope and faith.

We are in need for every hand that can offer some help. Please pray for us, I know that God listens to mothers' prayers and I call all the women on earth to pray with you for peace in this world.

Your son sacrificed his life for a very noble cause…No, he sacrificed himself for the most precious value in this existence; that is freedom.

His blood didn't go in vain; your son and our brethren are drawing a great example of selflessness.

God bless his free soul and God bless the souls of his comrades who are fighting evil.

God bless the souls of Iraqis who suffered and died for the sake of freedom.

God bless all the freedom lovers on earth.

The Continent finally is waking up to the universal and very real threat that terror poses

[Tony] Blair is once again playing a leading role in the war on terror and, unlike in the Iraq war, most of Europe appears ready to follow this time

writes the Wall Street Journal.

From Spain, which suffered the March 11, 2004, train bombings in Madrid, to less likely targets such as Sweden, the Continent finally is waking up to the universal and very real threat that terror poses. France, for all its objections to the Iraq war, already has some of Europe's toughest anti-terror laws.

Worries of an imminent attack are particularly acute in Italy. … Italians who think their vulnerability is the result of their participation in the Iraq war should look no further than Germany, which opposed the war yet feels compelled to step up its security. Interior Minister Otto Schily has been outspoken about his belief that Islamic terrorists are at war not just with the U.S. and its allies in Iraq but with Western society in general. Mr. Schily has called for increased search and detention powers in cases involving terror suspects who are known to be a threat but who haven't yet committed a crime.

Throughout Europe, there has been good cooperation between national intelligence and law enforcement agencies, and the European Union has pledged to seek ways of strengthening this cooperation. … Of course, the old-time religion of appeasement hasn't completely disappeared. Mr. Schily's proposals have been compared to Nazi-era tactics by leading members of the Green Party, a minority partner in Gerhard Schröder's coalition government. Some German officials have--in all seriousness--floated the idea of a new Muslim public holiday as a way of mitigating the terror threat.

Even in Britain, controversy envelops the efforts to deal with further threats. … Absolutist interpretation of free-speech rights, with no injunction against "shouting fire in a crowded theater," has protected extremists such as [Abu] Qatada and Omar Bakri Mohammed, who recently fled Britain after two decades of preaching hatred and violence. Allowing Muslims to practice their religion freely is the act of a free society. But looking the other way while radical clerics praise suicide bombers in Israel and America and encourage their acolytes to attack their neighbors is an abdication of governmental responsibility.

…European nations would do well to review whether their laws could be tweaked to close loopholes that terrorists have learned to exploit. That these measures are finally being discussed is a sign that Europe is finally giving serious thought to the balance between freedom and security.

The €uro is as queer as a three dollar bill

The €uro Zero is shunned as Middle East oil revenues are being plowed back into the US economy. "Aux yeux de nos clients, les problèmes politiques au sein de l'Union européenne, l'absence de réforme du marché des capitaux et la mauvaise santé des économies française et allemande pénalisent l'euro comme placement alternatif au billet vert". In the meantime, the €uro Zero's value will be decided by Fed policy. Un destin manifeste, ça se forge, mais surtout, ça se decide.

An Elegant Remembrance

Atelier Moshé Safdie.




The hall of names


Artifacts of a genocide


Click image above for a virtual tour.



From above and in plan

Color me up some news if you please, Ms. AP Ringer

Resigned to the culture’s race to give up as fast as possible, one hack with a stable data connection can’t wrap her brain around the concept that the fool popping mortars at a ship might have consciously decided to wake up that morning and say “hey, why don’t we try and kill some people today?”
The attack was caused by the presence of a victim.

U.S. Ships Make Jordan Resort a Target
By SHAFIKA MATTAR, Associated Press Writer

…and the woman was ASKING to be raped… What a crackhead.
Headline above, versus the more normatively reasoned:

One dead in al-Qaeda rocket attack on ships
BY RANA SABBAGH-GARGOUR, Times of London

«A group linked to al-Qaeda, the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, claimed responsibility in an internet statement, which has not yet been verified.

It has claimed responsibility for other attacks including the recent bombings in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.»

A funny thing happens when the reporting looks like it’s intended to create a spin and not report events. The writers don’t seem to know that they’re doing it. Even someone who's last name means "airport" in arabic. You would think that she would stick to high-jacking items

Y’see, Sometimes it’s al-Qaeda, sometimes it isn’t. sometimes it’s a link to al-Qaeda… but when it’s NOT al-Qaeda, it’s the US’s fault for going after anyone OTHER than al-Qaeda.

The obvious answer is to never do anything to defend one’s society, I guess, if it'll make a handful of writers and editors happy.

The main cause of Arab indifference was that Saddam's crimes threatened to imply the Arabs' inability to responsibly manage their own emancipation

It is politically,

notes the Daily Star's Michael Young (as he writes about those of the Iraq war's critics who, legitimately, bemoaned Washington's coddling of Arab dictators (but then refused to endorse the exception to the rule in Iraq)"),

that Arab societies, specifically liberals, failed to see the advantages in the removal of Saddam, regardless of their antipathy to the Bush administration. Here was an opportunity to cheer on the emergence of an Arab democracy, with deep implications for democracy at home, and it was missed. More disturbing was that this need never have contradicted Iraqi sovereignty. Washington could have been repeatedly reminded by Arab democrats keen to see the Iraq project succeed for their own good, that true democracy meant, after a period of stabilization, allowing Iraq to be free of foreign interference. Yet other than from the Iraqis themselves, the argument was rarely heard in the Arab world; advantageous pragmatism was supplanted by stubborn attachment to principle--"principle" that, in yearning for American failure, ignored how Iraqis suffered from the ensuing carnage.

Saddam's fall was welcomed by shamefully few Arabs (I recall how, on the day of his capture, a liberal Arab intellectual living in the U.S. mainly regretted that this would bolster George W. Bush's popularity ratings): The "humiliation" of seeing an Arab leader toppled by Western armies far outweighed that of seeing one of the most talented of Arab societies, the Middle East's Germany, subjected to a ferocious despotism responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths. Nor was there much interest regionally in the discovery of the Baath's mass graves. One reason was the secondary concern that many Arab societies have for Saddam's foremost victims--the Shiites and Kurds; but the main cause of indifference was that Saddam's crimes, if acknowledged, threatened to imply the Arabs' inability to responsibly manage their own emancipation.

In other words, applauding his ouster meant admitting that the Arab world could produce no better, and deserved no better than Western armies in its midst. This rationale was nonsense, but spawned a cliché that Arab intellectuals routinely peddle: that Arab reform must come "from within"--though the notion would have been laughable in Baathist Iraq. Arab societies must indeed open up from inside, but absent an echo, sometimes a determining one, from outside--including the option of foreign military action--little will change.

… For all these reasons, American achievement in Iraq could have been looked on with greater self-interested approval and imagination by the Arab publics. It never was.

How the U.S. adventure in Iraq ends is anybody's guess. However, its repercussions will be felt, first, by the Arabs themselves. By refusing to profit from the prospective democratic upheaval that Saddam's removal ushered in; by never looking beyond the American messenger in Iraq to the message itself; by lamenting external hegemony while doing nothing to render it pointless, Arabs merely affirmed their impotence. The self-pitying Arab reaction to the Iraq war showed the terrible sway of the status quo in the Middle East. An inability to marshal change for one's benefit is the stuff of captive minds.

Nuanced communication by nuanced jerkoffs to nuanced jerkoffs

People who need people are the luckiest people in the world, as Babs said.

Iranian protesters burn French flag

«"England, France, two Satans, two Lucifers," chanted the demonstrators, as security agents tried in vain to stop the flag burning.

"Death to France, death to England, death to Germany," they cried.

The three European countries have been negotiating with Iran on behalf of the EU to keep its uranium-enrichment activities suspended in return for a package of incentives.»

Sounds like they’re either completely unfamiliar with the savoire-faire of taking a bribe, or know well enough that calling for their death won’t make that check bounce, since they'll build their nukes anyway.

There’s also an object lesson here regarding just not caring what an ugly mob on the street is saying anyway, and just doing what’s right – when and if you’re doing the right thing, that is.

Economics in Jinna

Owen Muir:

«If the afterlife has infinite duration, then no matter how long you wait to deflower your 72nd virgin, you’ll still be looking at an infinitely long virgin-less future thereafter. (More abstractly, the question is how to allocate your consumption of a finite non-durable good over an infinite period of time.) To begin with, assume the existence of a discount rate.»

Boys meet world, and it wants a piece of their action.

Limousine leftists throw in the towel

"La France fait partie des pays européens ayant le record de la précarité au travail ...", Arnaud Montebourg, SubCommandante of the 5th arrondissement column insurgents NPS (Nouveau Parti Socialiste) who wants to be the kingmaker at the upcoming Socialist Party Bloodfest in November. Hey, as long as they are busy ripping themselves to shreds there really isn't any reason to stop them.

N'en déplaise aux vieux pédés aigris du 8ème arrondissement, les thèses sur l'épuisement de la Fwance et l'exode de ses chères têtes blondes circulent de plus en plus à gôche.

Camille Paglia on the state of western man

From an interview of Camille Paglia by Robert Birnbaum:

RB: Hold on a second. Your point that a significant social security, as the consensus has produced in Europe and Scandinavia, leads to stagnation

CP: Forty percent of a paycheck over there is taken by the government. The government does everything. People rely on the government to do everything. And I do believe there is a slow decline in creativity that is observable in Europe over the last 40 years.

Read it all here.

No. 19 on Amazon and No. 17 on New York Times bestsellers lists

La FranSSe

Enjoy. (Windows Media 6MB: NOT work safe, unless you are working in my office in which case you can break out the Jameson and turn 'dat shit up)