«In short [to Meyssan], September 11th was a US conspiracy. If he’s right, the weight of the US government should have fallen on him before he even got the pile of merde to his publisher. Since the French government and cops were absolutely cooperative during the post-9/11 investigation, they obviously would not have stopped it or even got in the way.»
From Castro’s propaganda mouthpiece “Granma”:«Jean-Guy Allard, a journalist with Granma International, wrote a book about RSF's leader (El expediente Robert Ménard: Por qué Reporteros sin Fronteras se ensaña con Cuba, Quebec: Lanctôt, 2005) which lays out the pieces of the puzzle regarding Menard's activities, associations and sources of funding in an attempt to explain what he calls Menard's "obsession" with Cuba.»
Hey Meyssan, what about BURMA or the NorKs – they don’t care for the US – do you plan on repeating THEIR press releases?
He is referring to RSF (Repoters without borders) and accusing them of “counter revolutionary activity,” which includes not just smothering dissent, but censoring and silencing journalists in “El Hefe’s” Cuba.«On April 27 this year the pieces began to come together: Thierry Meyssan, president of the Paris daily, Red Voltaire, published an article in which he claimed Menard had negotiated a contract with Otto Reich and the Center for a Free Cuba (CFC) in 2001. Reich was a trustee of the center, which receives the bulk of its funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development. The contract, according to Meyssan, was signed in 2002 around the time Reich was appointed Special Envoy to the Western Hemisphere for the Secretary of State. The initial payment for RSF's services was approximately 24,970 euros in 2002 ($25,000), which went up to 59,201 euros in 2003 ($50,000).»
He is aiding in the snuffing out of any criticism and honest discussion for a regime which has capped 10.000 political opponents between the eyes. Not very wise of Meyssan. The stars in his eyes are obvious, and obviously misguided. It’s a VERY old story, and you’re still on the wrong side of humanity. Even a book reviewer in the freebie rag “Citypaper” ten years ago was aware enough the old leftist fiction about the “gentleness of Communism:«My mentor in college was a devoted Cuban apologist. She conceded that the Castro government had problems, but she knew where her loyalties lay. When I told her I had met Guillermo Cabrera Infante at the Telluride Film Festival, she seemed almost agitated, reminding me that rumors abounded that he had once worked for the CIA. He seemed nice enough to me, I said, shrugging this off. When I mentioned him to another fellow leftish film person, she too recognized the name. "He's a gusano ," she said. This, apparently, is the Spanish word for worm, which is what pro-Castro types dubbed those who fled the island in the revolution's wake.
Talk show-boy needs to look carefully at who he's propping up, and who his friends are after.
The fact is that Infante makes left-wing types really nervous. He started out as a journalist in the Batista days, and after his writing was banned he turned to publishing under the name "G. Cain." When Castro seized power he was named editor of Lunes , the literary supplement to the newspaper Revolucion, the voice of Cuban revolution. But when the film P.M., a "Havana by night" documentary, was denied an exhibition license by the government-sponsored film institute Infante had helped to form, Lunes led a movement to protest. The end result was that the seized film print was returned, but both P.M. and Lunes were banned. Infante, after accepting a post as cultural attache to the Cuban embassy in Belgium, eventually fell completely from favor in the Castro regime and fled to London, where he resides today.»
One year after the 9-11 attacks one blogger writes of Meyssan, pointing out the obvious problem with tinfoil-hat conspiracy theories and asks the obvious questions:
Now I’m mostly curious. Why is this guy still alive?
Behind the Façades in France: What expats and the mainstream media (French and American alike) fail to notice (or fail to tell you) about French attitudes, principles, values, and official positions…
Monday, July 04, 2005
Mr. Euro-intellect Defending the Failed and Inhumane Regime
Independence Day
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
An escapee of terrors grip on the mind explains the murderers programme
Brave and unapologetic, Walid Shoebat shows us the heart of darkness that is the culture of terrorism. Those who repeat over and over that the US should have stopped in Afghanistan need to be put on notice: jihad is old, widespread, and was planned from the start to kill its own young to kill others. All the while playing at their victims compassion.
Sunday, July 03, 2005
Saturday, July 02, 2005
It about poverty erm, something...
Saint Bob and Saint Bono swooped in to be in the photo. The world’s governments, after all wouldn’t be playing these games with inflated-ego celebrities if they hadn’t already decided to dissolve debts of highly indebted nations, or already decided to treble TREBLE aid taken from your taxes.«According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the U.S. government sent $16.2 billion abroad in 2003. That's 35 percent of the total amount given that year by all industrialized nations combined.»
-Andy Brehm writing in the Star-Tribune (Minneapolis-St. Paul)
What is it then that these agitators attending “Live 8”(and also against)WANT? Why don’t they just open up their wallets and give of themselves? What they want is to simply tax YOU for the charity THEY want to give in THEIR name, and somehow absolve them of guilt.
Justice? “Social” justice? I thought this was about poverty? Not high-school socialism.
No – they want to feel good about what they think they’re doing. They want to celebrate the fact that by repeating what being discussed inside the G8 meeting, that they think that the can TAKE CREDIT for it!
Think about the anonymity and mindlessness of state aid anyway – how can anyone feel good about not giving of oneself, but giving away other people’s money? The whole thing has the same silly detachment from reality as the pop-culture that it crawled out of.
Friday, July 01, 2005
Reliance on the best available intelligence, though it turned out to be wrong, doesn't make Bush a liar or prove that he made a mistake in attacking
contend that our failure to find Saddam's WMD stockpiles after we deposed him proves that President Bush lied about their existence in the first place. President Bush's reliance on the best available intelligence, though it may have turned out to be wrong, doesn't make him a liar or prove that he made a mistake in attacking. He would have made a mistake had he failed to act on the information he had, especially considering Saddam's self-incriminating behavior.
As I've written before, Democrats are the ones who are lying when they say they weren't relying on the very same intelligence in supporting the Iraq war resolution. And they are lying when they falsely accuse President Bush of lying about the intelligence.
… From the very beginning, President Bush's rationale for attacking Iraq was that under Saddam, she was our enemy in the global war on terror and a threat -- indirect and direct -- to our national security. The three reasons Kerry cites are not incompatible, but of a piece. President Bush believed Saddam was amassing WMD and acting in concert with Islamic terrorists. And, he's always had a vision that the spread of freedom and democracy in the Middle East would be a natural antidote to the proliferation of terrorism. That's not why we attacked Iraq, because we are not in the business of gratuitous nation building, but it's a potentially glorious byproduct that we shouldn't underestimate and is certainly consistent with our war aims.
No matter how incapable Kerry's Democrats are of comprehending this, 9-11 confirmed that Islamic radicals throughout the world are at war with the United States. The terrorist threat is not localized to Osama and the Taliban in Afghanistan. The Democrats' quixotic refrain that we concentrate our resources only on capturing Saddam reveals how radically they misapprehend the global scope of this war.
Saddam was begging to be removed, and President Bush neither lied nor made a mistake in removing him.
If Western elites cannot find perfection in history, they see no good at all; most never learned the narrative of WW II, only what was wrong about it
The truth is that the supposedly biased West discusses the contribution of others far more than our former enemies — or Russian and Chinese allies — credit the British or Americans. There is a pattern here.writes Victor Davis Hanson as we approach the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing.
There is a pattern here. Western elites — the beneficiaries of 60 years of peace and prosperity achieved by the sacrifices to defeat fascism and Communism — are unhappy in their late middle age, and show little gratitude for, or any idea about, what gave them such latitude. If they cannot find perfection in history, they see no good at all. So leisured American academics tell us that Iwo Jima was unnecessary, if not a racist campaign, that Hiroshima had little military value but instead was a strategic ploy to impress Stalin, and that the GI was racist, undisciplined, and reliant only on money and material largess.
There are two disturbing things about the current revisionism that transcend the human need to question orthodoxy. The first is the sheer hypocrisy of it all. Whatever mistakes and lapses committed by the Allies, they pale in comparison to the savagery of the Axis or the Communists. Post-facto critics never tell us what they would have done instead — lay off the German cities and send more ground troops into a pristine Third Reich; don’t bomb, but invade, an untouched Japan in 1946; keep out of WWII entirely; or in its aftermath invade the Soviet Union?
Lost also is any sense of small gratitude. … Such revisionists never ask whether they could have written so freely in the Third Reich, Tojo’s Japan, Mussolini’s Italy, Soviet Russia, Communist Eastern Europe — or today in such egalitarian utopias as China, Cuba, or Venezuela.
Second, revisionism requires knowledge of orthodoxy. One cannot dismiss Iwo Jima as an unnecessary sideshow or allege that Dresden was simple blood rage until one understands the tactical and strategic dilemmas of the age — the hope that wounded and lost B-29s might be saved by emergency fields on Iwo, or that the Russians wanted immediate help from the Allied air command to take the pressure off the eastern front in February 1945.
But again, most Americans never learned the standard narrative of [World] War II — only what was wrong about it. Whereas it is salutary that an American 17-year-old knows something of the Japanese relocation ordered by liberals such as Earl Warren and FDR, or of the creation and the dropping of the atomic bomb by successive Democratic administrations, they might wish to examine what went on in Nanking, Baatan, Wake Island, Guadalcanal, Manila, or Manchuria — atrocities that their sensitive teachers are probably clueless about as well.
… How odd that Swedes and Spaniards who were either neutrals or pro-Nazi during World War II now so often lecture the United States not just about present morality but about the World War II past as well.
Do some good this weekend
Send those old paperbacks on the shelf to soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen on deployment. Most of the ones Ive ever known like to pass their time reading. Swapping books and giving them out when service personnel PCS (get orders to relocate) helps, but you can too.
Theyre grateful for your generosity, and like to know that theyre being though of.
Sand on Charity and Faith
Charity degrades those who receive it and hardens those who dispense it.
Faith is an excitement and an enthusiasm: it is a condition of intellectual magnificence to which we must cling as to a treasure, and not squander on our way through life in the small coin of empty words, or in exact and priggish argument.
Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow. Don't walk behind me, I may not lead. There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved.
He who draws noble delights from sentiments of poetry is a true poet, though he has never written a line in all his life.
I regard as a mortal sin not only the lying of the senses in matters of love, but also the illusion which the senses seek to create where love is only partial. I say, I believe, that one must love with all of one's being, or else live, come what may, a life of complete chastity.
I see upon their noble brows the seal of the Lord, for they were born kings of the earth far more truly than those who possess it only from having bought it.
Life in common among people who love each other is the ideal of happiness.
No one makes a revolution by himself; and there are some revolutions which humanity accomplishes without quite knowing how, because it is everybody who takes them in hand.
Thursday, June 30, 2005
Ignoring the vast majority of people who have suffered, and continue to suffer, in Iraq
One would hope that the reader's description of CIVIC as "dedicated to helping innocent Iraqi civilian victims of American military action" is wrong, because if not, the organization would have been ignoring the vast majority of people who have suffered, and continue to suffer, in Iraq.
Indeed, what with the partial and biased coverage in the mainstream media these days, apparently it needs to be reminded that the populations that the so-called "insurgents" have deliberately targeted have been, and continue to be, Iraq's unarmed citizens.
And why wouldn't they deliberately seek to make the most victims among those innocents? Before the war, before the presence of the "occupation" soldiers, these "insurgents" were the very people in power in Baghdad — or their thuggish henchmen — who submitted civilians to torture of a far different kind than that bewailed at Abu Ghraib: amputations, tongue-cuttings, and acid-eaten faces, not to speak of the untold tens of thousands who ended up in Saddam Hussein's mass graves.
There is one word for such people, whether they commit their atrocities while in power in time of "peace" (sic) or while in hiding with a foreign army in the country: their policy is to produce terror, among prisoners and victims as well as their families and the rest of the population, i.e., they are terrorists — pure and simple.
Too many people forget, or minimize, the fact (if they ever knew it) that the Ba'ath party, created in 1944, was consciously modelled on the ruling party in Germany at the time — Hitler's Nazi apparatus. And the leaders of Iraq's Ba'ath party were the people that, in 2003, today's pacifists would have had the international community deal with, hold discussions with "as civilized grown-ups", and come to tactful understandings with.
Indeed, with all the emphasis on how Bush and Blair supposedly lied and misled their publics about Iraq, it would be nice if you devoted more space about how the members of the "peace camp" misled theirs as to the possibilities of coming to an understanding with a psychopathic mass murderer — one with whom those "honest and fair brokers" enjoyed quite a number of unsavory business dealings, and that on the backs of the Iraq's suffering population.
Bring in the UN! Stop the looting!!!
The Independent (UK): Curator is charged as 30,000 books are 'lost' by French national library«More than 30,000 books, including 1,000 rare and priceless items, are believed to have been stolen from the French national library in Paris.
A former senior curator of the library will appear before an investigating magistrate today accused of stealing at least 100 rare old books and manuscripts. Michel Garel, an internationally known expert on Hebrew texts, initially admitted stealing a 13th-century French copy of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament).
M. Garel said he had warned his bosses over many years that rare items were going missing. The basement of the library's old building, in the first arrondissement in central Paris, was connected by a labyrinth of underground passageways to nearby antiquarian bookshops, he said.
"Personally, I have located four places you could get into the library without any problem, before pilfering at will," he said.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the Garel case, an audit of the library's stocks, the first for many years, suggests that at least 30,000 books or manuscripts are missing.
More disturbingly, 1,183 priceless books or documents from the library's "precious core" cannot be traced. More than 200 of these are medieval manuscripts or books from the dawn of the age of printing.
The curator said yesterday: "I have proclaimed my innocence from the first day they put handcuffs on me. I am the perfect scapegoat because of the poor relations I have had with my superiors for years. I have never accepted a centime for anything belonging to the BNF or any other public collection." »
Oh, the loss of history! The theft of treasures!
Gegen das Vergessen - Don't let us forget.
Having passed through Checkpoint Charlie as many as 500 times, and having heard the gunshots at night of the brave souls trying to escape the Grenzepolizei who shoot to kill, I wonder how any German could demolish a monument to hundred of persons killed in their flight to freedom.
If there was a way to describe to you the internal sense of freedom and elation felt on leaving the East, and into a world of color, away from the grim faces of those who know that they had to survive to retirement to see their relatives again and breath the free air of west Berlin, and see faces of people who seemed to have hope…
There is no way. Memories must be short for some, or perhaps some new hatred has taken its’ place. Otherwise I can’t see how any German could do such a foolish and forgetful thing. Threy must have never had to leave a friend behind a wall thinking that they may never be able to come to you, that you may never see them again.
For heaven’s sake, it’s only just a piece of land – and just money – to save a history and a memorial. This is no different than if in the US someone razed a memorial to the civil rights era deaths merely because they were Americans killing Americans, and that no-one else, and no future generation needed to know about it. It is a supression of memory, meaning, and emotion that is driving this, not a mortgage.
For goodness sake, it’s only pocket change, and the souls of your countrymen...
You Don't Say!
writes the Times' Gerard Baker, as he prepares for an interview in which Dubya shows how clueless he is on all issues.In person Mr Bush is so far removed from the caricature of the dim, war-mongering Texas cowboy of global popular repute that it shakes one’s faith in the reliability of the modern media
Calling for a Turtle Bay Tea Party
This is a moment at which there is much to be learned about the U.N., though less from Mr. Annan's epistles than from the realities that have engendered themwrites Claudia Rosett.
We'll skip lightly past the footnote that Mr. Annan's articles lauding his own plans and importance are actually written by members of his ample public relations staff, whose tax-free salaries are covered in substantial part by U.S. taxpayers. We'll pause only for a moment to note that Mr. Annan, having denounced the U.S.-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein as "illegal," managed in a Washington Post piece last week to credit himself for progress in Iraq with nary a nod to the U.S.--though the vital act allowing for all that Iraqi forward motion was the toppling of Saddam Hussein.In a similar vein, readers of No Pasarán will remember that when asked whether Iraq's historic January 30 elections represented a victory for the Bush administration, French government spokesman François Copé replied that they were "a great success for the international community."
And we'll give Mr. Annan the benefit of the doubt. Surely it was just another of his memory lapses, similar to those encountered by investigators of the Oil for Food scandal, that led him to omit any mention of the sacrifices of the Americans, British and other non-U.N. coalition members who for more than two years have been clearing and securing the way for the Iraqi progress about which he is now preening. …
[Kofi Annan's latest proclamation of such stuff as a fresh start and much progress and grand plans for reforming the U.N. -- he is particularly practiced at, having done it twice already, in 1997 and 2002 -- ] is unnervingly similar to the U.N. arrangement via Oil for Food in which Saddam paid 2.2% of his oil revenues to the U.N. to supervise the program. As long at the deal continued, the flow of funds to the U.N. was automatic. And because the money belonged by rights to the people of Iraq, but Mr. Annan did his U.N. deals not with them, but with Baghdad's tyrant, the effect was taxation without representation. The predictable result was a carnival of graft in which both Saddam and his biggest business partner, the U.N., hoodwinked the general world public and short-changed most of the 26 million Iraqis who were neither family members of U.N. top officials, nor cronies of Saddam.
"airline tax against poverty?" Snxpfff!@!?!
Hurricane Lou hits the nail on the head of something even BBC4 managed to expose "both sides" of: the revival of transnational taxation, or, what Kofi Annan called an "alternate revenue" source:«Thierry Breton is clueless. Rich people don't fly Ryanair and other low-cost airlines. Rich people fly British Airways and Lufthansa and Air France. The poor and budget-conscious middle-class fly Ryanair. They are the ones who will be most impacted by this tax.»
The Lou has spoken. Be nice to the Lou.
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
For the want of misery
Lifted from the Wall Street Journal’s Best Of The Web:
The 'Pro-Americans':«Recently the Pew Global Attitudes Project released another of its international polls finding that, ho-hum, a lot of foreigners don't like America. But columnist Anne Applebaum has an interesting take on it. Noting that a significant minority in many countries--"some 43 percent of the French, 41 percent of Germans, 42 percent of Chinese and 42 percent of Lebanese"--are pro-American, she looks at the demographics of this group:»
These numbers are competitive with many of wins in three party elections held in some of these state. So why would the inverse – the percentage of ‘positives’ divided by 100 – matter so much as the BBC has been flogging for nearly a week now?«Advertising executives understand very well the phenomenon of ordinary women who read magazines filled with photographs of clothes they could never afford: They call such women "aspirational." Looking around the world, it is clear there are classes of people who might also be called aspirational. They are upwardly mobile, or would like to be. They tend to be pro-American, too.
So losers resent, and those working hard and hoping to succeed are positive about a nation about which they've only had bad news brow-beaten into them over. Shall we guess what side of the divide the Independent’s cartoonist falls on? In that light, he aspires to very little.
In Britain, for example, 57.6 percent of those whose income are low believe that the United States has a mainly positive influence in the world, while only 37.1 percent of those whose income are high believe the same. Breaking down the answers by education, a similar pattern emerges. In South Korea, 69.2 percent of those with low education think the United States is a positive influence, while only [?] 45.8 percent of those with a high education agree. That trend repeats itself not only across Europe but in many other developed countries. Those on their way up are pro-American. Those who have arrived, and perhaps feel threatened by those eager to do the same, are much less so.
In developing countries, by contrast, the pattern is sometimes reversed. It turns out, for example, that Indians are much more likely to be pro-American if they are not only younger but also wealthier and better educated, and no wonder. . . . Some 69 percent of Indians with high incomes think the United States is a mainly positive influence in the world, and only 29 percent of those with low incomes agree. This same phenomenon may also account for the persistence of a surprising degree of popular pro-Americanism in such places as Vietnam, Indonesia, Brazil and the Philippines. They're getting wealthier--like Americans--but aren't yet so rich as to feel directly competitive.
There may be domestic parallels here. The most anti-American Americans seem to come from the ranks of the superrich and the overeducated. And "working class" support for the relatively free-market Republicans, which so mystifies liberal Democrats, is at least in part aspirational.»
On to the point of the construct of a negative image, we also find in today’s WSJ a citation to a failed attempt at agitprop:
« A Muslim cleric formerly held at Guantanamo Bay prison said Tuesday that U.S. guards there regularly desecrated the Quran by putting it into a toilet," the Associated Press reports. But Airat Vakhitov acknowledges that "he never witnessed it himself":Further this morning the cat dragged in this bit of puzzlement:
"A Palestinian named Mahir, who was in a neighboring cell, had seen it and told me about that," Vakhitov told the AP. "Many other people in Guantanamo also told me about that."
Sure thing there, Airat. Just one problem: As blogger Danny Troy points out, "Vakhitov was singing a different tune not too long ago." Troy quotes from an August 2003 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty report:
“Hasanova [Vakhitov's mother] said she learned of his fate after receiving a letter from him last November. She said her son is feeling well and is satisfied with the conditions of his detention at Guantanamo.
"He writes that he is treated kindly and with respect, that he has good food, cleanliness, and as he says in his letter, he feels better than if he was at the best Russian sanatoriums," Hasanova said.
Vakhitov's mother said he also writes that his fellow detainees are friendly toward him, and that they often lend each other copies of the Koran and pray together.”»
«The special rapporteur on torture, Manfred Nowak, said the claims were rumours at this stage, but urged the US to co-operate with an investigation.»The answer should be "nope, find out what those capo-lile cops of yours' are up to, sparky". Even if they’re only rumored to be bustin' heads and abusing prisoners. Childish agit-prop, but the BBC’s audience has already been conditioned to drink the kool-aid, no matter what it looks like.
Broadway Gerhardt is at again
«Other observers were also unimpressed, pointing out that Mr Schröder had only just lowered taxes for top-earners, at the beginning of the year, as part of his attempt to revive Germany's sluggish economy.»
Since the Socialism + Corporatism model seems to be working so well now, why bother encouraging small business creation? After all, who needs ingenuity and innovation anyway, eh?
Green acres is the place to be...
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
Gerhard’s magic bus
It seems so.
In any event, your humble correspondent had the chance to “speak truth to the soon to be powerless” by airing views at the civil servants, hangers on, trade sheisters, and flunkies who came with the visiting Chancellor Schroeder with Ray of David’s Medienkritik. It gave us a chance to speak and hear back from German media, governmental commerce types, and foreign ministry types visiting DC with hat in hand.
Oddly enough they knew exactly what sort of anti-americanism we were talking about. We heard stories of editors tch-tching balanced news stories submitted by staff writers, among other things which gave us all the more reason to pity the poor idealistic shlubs who want to do balanced journalism, free of the perplexing hang-ups of the ’68 generation.
When German government representatives nod, (and not in that “un-hunh, take it easy on the bong, dude” way,) but in a way that actually speaks to their own frustration with the electoral gambit which seems to have failed the SPD at home, but has done them no favors within Europe or beyond their borders.
Among other fine folks who joined us was none other than townhall.com’s Mary Katherine Ham. In addition to having enough of a sense of humor to show up is an editor and opinion writer for townhall.com, edits townhall’s c-log. She also rocks. Her positive way and her wit gave the event the pique of a color-man calling a boxing match. Noting on one of DC’s local gentry who paid us a visit:
«I got there a little late, but Joe said they didn't encounter a lot of anger from passers-by, unlike David’s Medienkritik's protest during Bush's visit to Mainz, during which Ray was surrounded by "200 angry Communists who want to whip you."
We were only surrounded by one spacy-looking, plaid-skirted girl with a Starbucks cup, standing next to us shrilling about "the dolphins! They killed the dolphins and then those same politicians cut down the Redwoods and there are no more trees. World health not war!"
She went on and on and on, even when the group had dispersed and we were just four people standing around talking about German media bias and blogs. It was odd. It was just as if she had been walking by and decided by the looks of us that we needed her dolphins and Redwoods lecture, which was addressed to no one in particular, but managed to make several of my conversations challenging.»
In fact our new fan was so amusing that we tried to record some of that wisdom and remix it for sale outside the Democrats’ next convention. All in needed was a hated drum machine set on “bassonova” and a goober with a Casio. Da-da-da, peeps! We could pepper it up with a host of soundbites with their predictions about "eroding America's gravitas" abroad, and breaking Europe's "chain of trust".The floor-show notwithstanding what had we accomplished? We communicated directly to German government officials, press, and let them know that one could just as well say that they shouldn’t continue burning up American patience and good-will to make symbolic and distracting publicity points at home. That feeding the tiny embers of German anti-Americanism into a volcano wasn’t just imprudent, but dishonest and cheap.
We found them to be as frustrated with the beast of their creation as much as many Americans have been, and that it certainly didn't look it came in very handy right now.
If you hate honesty, send them your hard earned money
«I am for socialism, disarmament, and, ultimately, for abolishing the state itself… I seek the social ownership of property, the abolition of the propertied class, and the sole control of those who produce wealth. Communism is the goal.»
- Roger Baldwin (1884-1981). Founder, The American Civil Liberties Union
(post lifted from John Ray)
Monday, June 27, 2005
70%
Well, for some reason — perhaps because French media outlets rarely (if ever) dwell upon such matters — the afore-mentioned cynics make much less noise about this LGF statistic (merci à Grégoire et Steve).
Incidentally, Steve notes the plethora of "said-with-irony quotemarks" around words such as "extremist groups", "Salafi", "emergency", and "Islamic" extremism. As for a French jail, it is called a
Concentration camp …! No irony quotemarks there! Thanks, Islam Online! We Americans now have an easy retort for snooty French remarks about Guantanamo Bay.
Letters to the Editor
(Feel like answering Momo, Frank and Hervé — among others?)
China's communist leaders view the United States as their main enemy and are working in Asia and around the world to undermine U.S. alliances
China's communist leaders view the United States as their main enemy and are working in Asia and around the world to undermine U.S. alliancesBill Gertz quotes a former Chinese diplomat as saying. (Read also Gertz's Chinese Dragon Awakens, in two parts.)
Chen Yonglin, until recently a senior political officer at the Chinese Consulate in Sydney, Australia, said in an interview that China also is engaged in large-scale intelligence-gathering activities in the United States that, in the past, netted large amounts of confidential U.S. government documents from agents.echoing what I wrote four years ago.
…Mr. Chen said the danger of a war over Taiwan is growing
"That is possible as Chinese society is getting more unstable," he said. "Once any serious civil disobedience occurs, the government may call for a war across the Taiwan Strait to gather [political] strength from people."
It is fashionable in some circles to invoke the UN as the touchstone of moral authority, but realists know better
"A reader living in Moscow," writes National Review's Jay Nordlinger, "sent me a photo from a rally in Azerbaijan, which showed a youth holding up a poster of President Bush with the words, 'We Want Freedom.' The reader commented, 'It's good to remember whom people turn to when they're desperate — and it ain't Kofi Annan."'
Indeed. It is fashionable in some circles to invoke the United Nations as the touchstone of moral authority, but realists know better. They look to the United States, not the UN, as the great moral engine in world affairs. Like the Lebanese who waved a US flag during the demonstrations in Beirut earlier this year, like the "Goddess of Liberty" in Tiananmen Square in 1989, the young Azerbaijani with his poster is a reminder that America and its message of freedom and individual dignity have an almost limitless capacity to inspire those who are denied them.
Tell me lies
In a compendium of lefty journalistic over-reach, the newly released book "Tell me lies" presents an amusing display of essays that the moonbat crowd will use their unquestioning and predictable mental filter to draw its' own message from. Keith Windshuttle in the New Criterion does a thorough fisking of Robert Fisk himself - who Windshuttle says is madly in love with leftism is enamoured an anachronism: the aristocratic trappings of the arabism of centuries ago, and displays a penchant for looking at people as wogs in need of Euro-guidance. Shown too for what he is, is the unctuous John Pilger as are several others.
The starkest though is the illusion Fisk has that he's merely reporting. Its belied by a profession that places by-lines at the top, not the bottom, and will uncritically trumpet any anti-western thought provided that it supports his self-promotion and hefty speakers fees for years to come.
Note Fisks adoration of bin Laden, which takes the form of a sort of T.E. Lawrence treatment:«Osama Bin Laden sat in his gold fringed robe, guarded by loyal Arab mujahedin With his high cheekbones, narrow eyes and long brown robe, Mr Bin Laden looks every inch the mountain warrior of mujahedin legend. Chadored children danced in front of him, preachers acknowledged his wisdom. »
or the promotion of his own "mind penetrating radar" which leapt to these conclusion mere hours after the Trade Center and Pentagon attacks:«Still, Fisks contacts with the Arab militants have allowed him to be sometimes perceptive. While on a transatlantic flight to the United States on the morning of September 11, 2001, he heard the news of the terrorist attacks on New York and immediately guessed correctly who was behind them.»
Helen Keller on Life and (True) Happiness
Related post: Annie SullivanLife is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure.
Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.
We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world.
Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.
Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.
College isn't the place to go for ideas.
A child must feel the flush of victory and the heart-sinking of disappointment before he takes with a will to the tasks distasteful to him and resolves to dance his way through a dull routine of textbooks.
All the world is full of suffering. It is also full of overcoming.
As selfishness and complaint pervert the mind, so love with its joy clears and sharpens the vision.
As the eagle was killed by the arrow winged with his own feather, so the hand of the world is wounded by its own skill.
Be not dumb, obedient slaves in an army of destruction! Be heroes in an army of construction!
Death is no more than passing from one room into another. But there's a difference for me, you know. Because in that other room I shall be able to see.
The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched — they must be felt with the heart.
When one door of happiness closes, another one opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.
Sunday, June 26, 2005
7 Things You Can't Say in Canada
From Reader's Digest (of all places): 7 Things You Can't Say in Canada
At least they aren't promoting some kind of EUsperanto yet...
The terribly misnamed piece called Promoting Germany's Language Melting Pot reveals a sort of novelty and discomfort to the whole excercise. At least the lazy meme of "multi-culturalism" has some competition on the Agora of ideas now.
They seem to finally have realized that people don't exactly dispose of their identities when they integrate, not do they lose their dignity. So even though the language "melting pot" is no didfferent than the night before, in a novelty sensetive society, the case has to be made disingenuously that learning German is a "melting pot thing" in itself.
I can't help wondering why they didn't pose the lead-off image with the word "integration" in english, and not german. DW is meant as a sort of propaganda to promote German culture, ideas, and economy. Perhaps they recognize that "tribal relations" in German aren't living up as planned, and seem so from abroad.
Saturday, June 25, 2005
Haven't we seen this before? And found it repugnant?
Has the history of difficulty comedians had in the Soviet Union been forgotten? The positive and lovable but not always funny Yakov Smirnov learned this lesson from his struggle with the illiberal culture of Soviet minding, squealing, and censorship, and he ran away.
To add to that Rowan Atkinson spoke for a large group of comedians, artists, writers, and performers - warning that there are (possibly unintended) stifling consequences to Britain's proposed anti-religious-hatred incitement legislation. Even the nanny state proponent Polly Toynbee found in repugnant, calling it a platform for accusation by social factions and not offended individuals. Atkinson's point was clear and apolitical: it is a violation of the basic free speech which allows for the creative spirit, and that anyone free to incite can be just as freely rebutted.
I doubt that performers will begin to flee, but one could always hope that the un-PC Ali G. might set up shop on Broadway.
Success = Chicanery, Failure = Victimization
The new lefty puritanism, as described in Evan Sayet's blog, Sayet Right:
«The multiculturalist further hates America because, when all people, culture and forms of government are equally good and equally right, the only possible explanation for success is chicanery. Similarly the only explanation for failure is victimization.»Evan pulls no punches - his blog is well worth a read.
Friday, June 24, 2005
Biden His Time
In the crucial area of security, Sen. Biden exhorted the administration to pursue "legitimate foreign offers to train Iraqi forces outside of Iraq" so that "Iraqi forces could focus on actually learning something." He cited two examples: "The French have offered . . . to train 1,500 gendarmes, 1,500 real live paramilitary police, train them in France to send them back to Iraq." I'll second this if Sen. Biden promises not to complain when the Iraqi cops start using French detention and deportation practices that make Guantanamo look like the Garden of Eden.
| When | |
| Watch for when French youth come home and play with their new toys. A bit of that new Sarkozy zero tolerance will be in order. | Ça va péter quand les chères têtes blondes franchouilles rentreront chez eux et déballeront leurs nouveaux jouets. Un peu de nettoyage façon Sarkoboyz sera de rigueur. |
Thursday, June 23, 2005
The Eugenics Argument should be Right Around the Corner
Is it the selective "gay gene" argument, or the übermensch argument that they're going to make of this? I give Kos and Atrios 48 hours.
Why would it only apply to one sort of ideology? Do they only study "their own", and identifying others' beliefs as a defect?
The New York Times reports on a sketchy study of political attitudes. This is not the beginning of a "three guys are sitting at a bar" joke:
«Three political scientists . . . combed survey data from two large continuing studies including more than 8,000 sets of twins.
From an extensive battery of surveys on personality traits, religious beliefs and other psychological factors, the researchers selected 28 questions most relevant to political behavior. The questions asked people "to please indicate whether or not you agree with each topic," or are uncertain on issues like property taxes, capitalism, unions and X-rated movies. Most of the twins had a mixture of conservative and progressive views. But over all, they leaned slightly one way or the other.»
Though shalt....
James Woudhuysen writing in the Architectural web-mag "Audacity" has taken up the collision of do-gooding "commandments" of the nanny state, and the way they beat on professions to come through for them.«Thou shalt not install lifts and escalators - even in tomorrow's new Bullrings. Of course, thou shalt marvel at the 1995 Disability Discrimination Act coming into force. But since thou shalt also show no obesity, even older workers must take some exercise by climbing stairs.»
So while they're trying to draw you to the attention to the heart on their sleeve, some of the strictures don't look that far from the actions of an authoritarian regime:
Governments tend to suffer from planning (and micromanagement) fever - that is when they aren't correcting a past failed bout with the Marburg virus of "planning":«Thou shalt never conduct an office move again. Moves burn fossil fuels and increase carbon emissions. They are also deeply stressful, and likely to fall foul of the Health and Safety Executive, which in the year 2003 to 2004 '... achieved 122% of the target for inspector time allocated to stress' (4) Pretty stressful for the inspectors, at least!
Thou shalt install videocameras. They're needed to smite down workplace smoking, workplace bullying and shopping centre smacking, too.»
«Thou shalt expect to communicate more during the Full Inquisition that will surround every planning process. Will that new facility verily generate quantifiable benefits for the local community? Will it regenerate Britain's regions, once they heroically adopt their frightfully democratic Regional Assemblies? Thou shalt have the arguments and the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and the lawyers to hand.»How about "Though shall leave property owners to use at least SOME of their own good judgment, leave them with some rights over what they own, and not try to browbeat them through their Architect"? It'll never happen. They have too may laws to enact.
Even sperm think Tofu is evil
Avoiding soya 'may aid fertility' I though it was the kind of woman who orders no-foam-wet-extra-hot-soy-latte-moocachino-such and suches that make your sperm want to burn out. Or maybe talks for half an hour about her no-foam-wet-extra-hot-soy-latte-moocachino-such and such.
We are unsure, but amused. Donut and an espresse that will wake the dead, anyone?
Let's shout it to prisoners everywhere: If you're not harmed by an American, your suffering doesn't count
The demands to shut down our Guantanamo lock-up for terrorists have nothing to do with human rightsstates Ralph Peters (thanks to Gregory), who is appalled by the lack of sympathy the left feels toward the victims of any regime other than the Bush administration.
They're about punishing America for our power and success. From our ailing domestic left to overseas America haters, no one really cares about the fate of Mustapha the Murderer or Ahmed the Assassin. The lies told about Gitmo are meant to undercut U.S. foreign policy and embarrass America. The … one thing the protests aren't about is human rights. …
The truth is that the terrorists and their defenders have something in common. … It's that neither can be appeased. … You can't negotiate with terrorists. And you cannot reason with ideologues — whether they're Islamist fanatics or pathetic old lefties fishing for a cause to give meaning to squandered lives. Terrorists, French and German neo-Stalinists, and our own democracy-hating intelligentsia aren't interested in facts. …
What should enrage every decent citizen is that the real torturers — from Zimbabwe to China, from Syria to North Korea — get a pass from the political left. If terrorists behead defenseless captives on videotape, it's simply an expression of their culture. But if a handful of U.S. troops play an ugly round of Candid Camera, that's a new gulag. …
Is that a bomb in your pants or are you just happy to see me?
«Al-Bas explained to reporters why she carried out the act:
«Attempted suicide bomber
Wafa al-Bas Yesterday (June 20), a Palestinian woman took advantage of a humanitarian medical clearance to attempt a suicide bombing of an Israeli hospital. Israeli security caught Wafa al-Bas at a Gaza checkpoint and safely detonated the explosives that had been tied to her undergarments. »
Wafa, don't be a hero.
...I believe in death... Since I was a little girl I wanted to carry out an attack.
Though media outlets often rationalize Palestinian suicide terror as a 'desperate' response to Israeli wrongdoing, al-Bas' statement is the latest indication that the main motivation for the heinous crime is a twisted, lifelong aspiration to achieve 'greatness' via mass murder. »«A primary source of this problem is incitement in Palestinian media and culture. On Sunday (June 19) PA President Mahmoud Abbas told Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and western reporters that official Palestinian media 'no longer incites against Israel'. »
Aw... The poor little oppressed attempted murderer. She was just trying to please the folks and get an audition for Hamas-Idol.
So what if closing Gitmo lets hundreds of jihadists out of their prison cages and into their terror cells?
…so what if closing Gitmo lets hundreds of jihadists out of their prison cages and into their terror cells?asks Diana West rhetorically.
"Sure, a few may come back to haunt us," writes [the New York Times' Thomas] Friedman. But being haunted — which presumably requires some additional number of American dead to do the haunting — is apparently a risk worth taking in order to win the war.
I'm not talking about the so-called "war on terror." It seem there's been a change in focus. Islamic jihad is out. The war on "image" is in. And, according to the anti-Gitmo-nists, we're getting creamed. Go figure: "They" kill people over a soggy Quran, and "we" lose the image war -- and all over the world…
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
Intolerance and America’s west coast
Blogatrix Cathy Seipp writing in the National Review, relates the tender mild ways of the left. Even as it relates to a man expelling his feelings about Los Angeles based cartoonist Michael Martinez’ boss, editor Michael Kinsley:
«“Why do you keep him on?” one guy wailed, in tones that suggested he was wearing a monocle while peering at a cockroach.To put the state of California into a context, here is one ¡No Pasaràn! reader’s take on what this state of social affairs holds for our future:
Kinsley patiently explained that the Times hasn't run [George] Will's syndicated column in years (presumably some readers still suffer post-traumatic stress syndrome from the horror of the memory) and that a left-leaning editorial board needs to be balanced by some right-leaning signed columns. Regarding Michael Ramirez, he added: "This is the question I get more than any other: Michael Ramirez, how can I kill him?"»
«I spent 6 months in 2000 in San Jose (SF, Oakland, and SJ form the 'Bay Area'). The whole of San Francisco has been termed the "world's largest outdoor lunatic asylum" by [KSFO radio personality] Lee Rodgers. The entire city is a socialist looney-land -- just what the Democrats would love to remake America into.So there you have it – To be sure electing Arnold Schwarzenegger is a temporary seeming palliative by those outside of California’s cities, and the handful within who hope for the reintroduction of some common sense. In full view are the rewards of leftism it seems is anger, poverty, and a declining quality of life, not to mention a degraded view of living. It is impossible to look past all of this when those on one side of the Atlantic wish for an America that looks more like Europe. It should be no surprise that the notion is received with considerable resistance.
I went through there in 1997 on a tourist pilgrimage to drive the California coast from SF to LA by convertible, starting at the Golden Gate Bridge. To get there, I had to drive through San Francisco from south to north. When I did that, I saw people living in their cars with laundry strung from wires attached to cars at one end and to telephone poles at the other.
I was later informed that the route I took wasn't even through the seediest portions of the city, where I was assured that Amsterdam has already been surpassed. You can guess how all of these people vote.
The rest of the Bay Area isn't much better. A few days before my departure from the place -- which was just before the election -- some colleagues took me out to lunch. The conversation turned to the election, and every one of them planned to vote for Gore. Many of them couldn't articulate a reason why.»
Treating foreign terrorists like American shoplifters is a surefire recipe for another 9/11
Treating foreign terrorists like American shoplifters [or harmless traffic offenders] — with full access to civilian lawyers, classified intelligence, and all the attendant rights of a normal jury trial — is a surefire recipe for another 9/11states Michelle Malkin.
That is why the Bush administration fought so hard to erect an alternative tribunal system — long established in wartime — in the first place.
[Are] John McCain and the anti-Gitmo gang … too clueless to realize the implications of their gulag-Pol Pot-Nazi-Eichmann-hellhole harangues?
Do we really want a Europe that sees itself as a counterweight to America, chiefly by virtue of its willingness to do business w/ unpleasant regimes?
...all of a sudden we can say what we want to saywrites committed Europhile David Aaronvitch (as quoted by Eursoc, with thanks to Gregory) who evokes "the essentially tragic figure of Jacques Chirac — now fulfilling his blind historic destiny as assassin of all his own hopes".
If peasant agriculture is la vraie France why should we subsidise it at ruinous cost when our own industries such as coal-mining, surely la vraie Bretagne, all had to go to the wall? And doesn’t the EU in its language and practices ape those of the patrician political classes of France and Benelux, rather than the more demotic approach of Britain and the new accession states? Do we really want a Europe that sees itself as a “political counterweight” to America, chiefly by virtue of its willingness to do business with unpleasant regimes?
TCS: A cautionary tale on the leftist doping effect
«The strong work ethic that we had brought from our home countries simpered away and we became used to the idea that social security was responsible for our lives.»
The only way to maintain ones dignity is by entertaining delusions, it seems:«We never resorted to crime in the camps, but we became accustomed to the idea that there was no reason for us to work. A myth among the Iranian refugees was that the money that we each month received was what the previous Iranian Shah had lent to the Swedish government, or that it came from the UN. In any case, there was no reason to be grateful to the system for receiving it.»
| "I don't leave my hotel"?!? She's a call-girl or a journalist? | "je ne quitte pas mon hôtel." ?!? Elle est call-girl ou journaliste? |
| French journalism in all it's glory. Anne-Sophie Le Mauff, French 'journalist' ordered to leave Iraq, responds: "I don't understand this decision. I do my job, I'm careful, I don't leave my hotel." | Le journalisme fwançais dans toute sa splendeur. Réponse d'Anne-Sophie Le Mauff, 'journaliste' franchouille qui a été sommée de quitter l'Irak: "Je ne comprends pas cette décision. Je fais mon boulot, je suis prudente, je ne quitte pas mon hôtel." |
| Other people's money | Avec le pognon des autres |
| "Why should the British taxpayer subsidise an ersatz French heritage park about as authentic as Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame? Pierre's given up the church and the family, what's the big deal about giving up the farm?" | "Pourquoi le contribuable britannique devrait-il subventionner un ersatz de Parc National du Patrimoine Français tout aussi authentique qu'un Quasimodo de chez Disney? Pierre a déjà laissé tomber l'église et la famille, de là à laisser tomber la ferme, pourquoi pas ?" |
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
The Europe of totalitarianism, in which communism, fascism and Nazism competed to impose regulations on every aspect of human existence
What is notoriously evident among the EU elite is not just a lack of intellectual power but an obstinacy and blindness bordering on imbecilitywrites Paul Johnson.
Jacques Chirac reacted by appointing as prime minister Domin[i]que de Villepin, a frivolous playboy who has never been elected to anything and is best known for his view that Napoleon should have won the Battle of Waterloo and continued to rule Europe.
… The fundamental weaknesses of the EU that must be remedied if it is to survive are threefold. First, it has tried to do too much, too quickly and in too much detail. Jean Monnet, architect of the Coal-Steel Pool, the original blueprint for the EU, always said: "Avoid bureaucracy. Guide, do not dictate. Minimal rules." He had been brought up in, and learned to loathe, the Europe of totalitarianism, in which communism, fascism and Nazism competed to impose regulations on every aspect of human existence. He recognized that the totalitarian instinct lies deep in European philosophy and mentality--in Rousseau and Hegel as well as Marx and Nietzsche--and must be fought against with all the strength of liberalism, which he felt was rooted in Anglo-Saxon individualism.
In fact, for an entire generation, the EU has gone in the opposite direction and created a totalitarian monster of its own, spewing out regulations literally by the million and invading every corner of economic and social life. The results have been dire: An immense bureaucracy in Brussels, each department of which is cloned in all the member capitals. A huge budget, masking unprecedented corruption, so that it has never yet been passed by auditors, and which is now a source of venom among taxpayers from the countries which pay more than they receive. Above all, règlementation of national economies on a totalitarian scale.
The EU's economic philosophy, insofar as it has one, is epitomized by one word: "convergence." The aim is to make all national economies identical with the perfect model. This, as it turns out, is actually the perfect formula for stagnation. What makes the capitalist system work, what keeps economies dynamic, is precisely nonconformity, the new, the unusual, the eccentric, the egregious, the innovative, springing from the inexhaustible inventiveness of human nature. Capitalism thrives on the absence of rules or the ability to circumvent them.
… It is natural that high and chronic unemployment generates a depressive anger which finds many expressions. One, in Europe today, is anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism. Another is exceptionally low birthrates, lower in Europe than anywhere else in the world except Japan. If present trends continue, the population of Europe (excluding the British Isles) will be less than the United States by midcentury--under 400 million, with the over-65s constituting one-third of that.
The rise of anti-Americanism, a form of irrationalism deliberately whipped up by Messrs. Schröder and Chirac, who believe it wins votes, is particularly tragic, for the early stages of the EU had their roots in admiration of the American way of doing things and gratitude for the manner in which the U.S. had saved Europe first from Nazism, then (under President Harry Truman) from the Soviet Empire--by the Marshall Plan in 1947 and the creation of NATO in 1949.
Europe's founding fathers--Monnet himself, Robert Schumann in France, Alcide de Gasperi in Italy and Konrad Adenauer in Germany--were all fervently pro-American and anxious to make it possible for European populations to enjoy U.S.-style living standards. Adenauer in particular, assisted by his brilliant economics minister Ludwig Erhardt, rebuilt Germany's industry and services, following the freest possible model. This was the origin of the German "economic miracle," in which U.S. ideas played a determining part. The German people flourished as never before in their history, and unemployment was at record low levels. The decline of German growth and the present stagnation date from the point at which her leaders turned away from America and followed the French "social market" model.
Jacques Chirac as Marcel Marceau
The AFP reports that
Italian newspapers Friday laid into France's President Jacques Chirac, labelling him an obstacle to the course of the European Union and calling on Italy to swing over to Britain's vision of the future of the bloc.
"Everyone knows that President Roosevelt has ties to 'big beer'"
Contacted at his Manhattan condo, a member of the French government-in-exile who abandoned Paris when Hitler invaded, said the invasion was based solely on American financial interestssaid Dr. Bill Wattenburg as he quoted MSM reports on D-Day from the 1940s (danke zu Frank).
"Everyone knows that President Roosevelt has ties to 'big beer'," said Pierre LeWimp. "Once the German beer industry is conquered, Roosevelt's beer cronies will control the world market and make a fortune."Eyewitness account (thanks to RV): Live from Normandy…
Administration supporters said America's aggressive actions were based in part on the assertions of controversial scientist Albert Einstein, who sent a letter to Roosevelt speculating that the Germans were developing a secret weapon -- a so-called "atomic bomb". Such a weapon could produce casualties on a scale never seen before, and cause environmental damage that could last for thousands of years. Hitler has denied having such a weapon and international inspectors were unable to locate such weapons even after spending two long weekends in Germany.
Shortly after the invasion began, reports surfaced that German prisoners had been abused by American soldiers. Mistreatment of Jews by Germans at their so-called "concentration camps" has been rumored, but so far this remains unproven.
Reassurance From French Minister That Nothing But His Country's Principles Were at Work
"On July 5 I shall go to Washington", [French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said on Sunday]. "I shall go first to say that for me Americans are friends, that we shall never forget what they have done, what we owe them.A sound statement of principles, as it were, but only insofar as it is practiced with something looking somewhat like a fair, objective, and impartial manner, and not a product of self-serving double standards.
"Sometimes we disagree. I am thinking above all of the Kyoto process (on climate change), or two years ago, our position on Iraq," he said.
"When you have a friend and you disagree you have to tell him."
As it happens, France never bothers to tell Russia when it disagrees with its policies (in fact, it hardly disagrees with Moscow at all).
France never bothers to tell China when it disagrees with its policies (in fact, it hardly disagrees with Beijing at all).
France never bothers to tell Zimbabwe, Ivory Coast, and Rwanda when it disagrees with their policies (in fact, it hardly disagrees with those African countries at all).
France never bothers to tell Iran when it disagrees with its policies (in fact, it hardly disagrees with Tehran at all).
France never bothers to tell the United Nations when it disagrees with its decisions (in fact, it hardly disagrees with any international bodies at all).
And, of course, France never bothered to tell Saddam Hussein when it disagreed with his policies (in fact, it hardly disagreed with Baghdad at all).
Unless, of course, the countries in question, or their governments, chose to pursue policies which Paris did not deem to be in line with its (economic) interests, never mind its self-proclaimed position as guardian of the planet's human rights…
With friends like this, Uncle Sam…
Much of the criticism of American efforts, both international and domestic, is factually wrong and driven by a partisan hostility to President Bush
It’s important what the rest of the world thinks of the United Statesadmits Senator Jon Kyl.
"We'll keep trying to separate Guantánamo facts from fiction": Read also Kevin Edward Moley's point-by-pont response accompanied by specific references to the Geneva convention…But it’s more important that we defend ourselves against terrorists who seek our annihilation. Much of the criticism of our efforts, both international and domestic, is factually wrong and appears to be driven by a partisan hostility to President Bush.
Last week the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on Guantanamo Bay, the U.S. military base where a $150 million facility has been built to house detainees in the war on terrorism, individuals who might better be described as “people who will kill Americans if given half a chance.”
At the hearing, Democrats criticized the Bush Administration, alleging that the 520 prisoners are in “legal limbo,” that “there is no plan exactly how they're going to be handled,” that their “rights under the Geneva Conventions have been violated,” and that they deserve some sort of a “trial” or they should be released. A big problem if true, but none of it is.
The detainees at Guantanamo are not in a legal limbo any more than any other prisoners in any other war were in limbo when they were captured. International law allows any nation the right to detain enemy combatants for the duration of a conflict. The primary reason is to prevent them from killing more Americans, and, secondarily, to gather useful intelligence.
… Those who remain in detention — a tiny fraction of the 10,000 enemy combatants we have picked up over the past few years — are terrorist trainers, bomb makers, extremist recruiters and financers, bodyguards of Osama bin Laden, would-be suicide bombers, and so forth. Because they indiscriminately target civilians and are not fighting for another particular country, among other reasons, these individuals do not qualify for the protections of the Geneva Conventions. Nonetheless, official U.S. policy is to apply Geneva standards, including access to lawyers, Red Cross visits, and so forth. Every single detainee receives a new review every year to determine whether he still poses a risk. That would seem to be a reasonable standard for a country at war, and surely a credible “plan” for “handling” their cases.
The recent flurry of partisan and international criticism of the handling of Islamic sensibilities at Guantanamo, sparked by a discredited Newsweek report that a copy of the Koran was flushed down a toilet, must have Osama bin Laden rolling with laughter. None of the critics had previously displayed much concern over the abuse of Muslims by other Muslims, as occurs every day in Iraq. The reality is that virtually all prisoners are better fed and cared for at Guantanamo than they have ever been in their lives. They are certainly treated well in comparison to those Westerners taken captive by terrorists in Iraq, who are typically beheaded.
An update from North Korea (thanks to Hervé)
Monday, June 20, 2005
Last Weekend Was Anniversary of Only Civil War Battle in Europe
Sunday, June 19, 2005
Please to Deconstruct...
Is it posing to promote
It reminds me very much of this item which somehow got through the BBC’s Political Correctness early-warning-system:
«The author said "mourning sickness" was a substitute for religion.
In his report, Conspicuous Compassion, author Patrick West said people were trying to feel better about themselves by taking part in "manufactured emotion".
Describing extravagant public displays of grief for strangers as 'grief-lite' Mr West said these activities were, "undertaken as an enjoyable event, much like going to a football match or the last night of the proms".
"But these new bonds are phoney, ephemeral and cynical," he said.»
...naked or otherwise, something even more important is still being hidden.