Dissecting the Chickenhawk Charge: The accusation is less an argument than an insult; it's also a form of bullying and it rejects the Constitution

Almost a year ago, I performed what I think was a pretty decent attempt at pouring some sunlight on the hidden (and unsavory) aspects of the Chickenhawk "argument", which I likened to the "Shape Up, Shut Up, or Ship Out" spiel.

Here are three others:

Jonah Goldberg:

Anybody who's been on the receiving end of the "chickenhawk" epithet knows what I'm getting at. Various definitions of chickenhawk are out there, but the gist — as if you didn't know — is "coward" or "unpatriotic hypocrite." The accusation is less an argument than an insult.

It's also a form of bullying. The intent is to say, "You have no right to support the war since you haven't served or signed up." It's a way to get supporters of the war in Iraq, the war on terror, or the president simply to shut up.

But, there's a benefit of a doubt to be given. There are many people — I know because I've argued with lots of them — who don't believe the "chickenhawk" thing is intellectually unserious.

Obsessed with "authenticity" and the evil of hypocrisy — as they see it — they think the message and the messenger are inextricably linked. Two-plus-two is four only if the right person says so. We hear this logic most often from adherents of identity politics, who give more weight to the statements of women, blacks, Jews, and others for the sole reason that they were uttered by people born female, black, Jewish or whatever. People who grew up poor are supposed to have a more "authentic" perspective on economic policy than people who didn't, and so on.

Don't get me wrong — experience is important and useful, including the experiences that come from being black or gay or otherwise a member of the Coalition of the Oppressed. But valuable experience confers knowledge, it doesn't beatify. And identity isn't an iron cage. It is not insurmountable. And, at the end of the day, arguments must stand on their own merits, regardless of who delivers them.

Indeed, the notion that there is a single, authentic black perspective strikes me as fundamentally racist in its essentialism. And the idea that women adhere to a female logic unique to them strikes me as definitionally sexist. But the left doesn't care, because this perspective is indispensable for attacking "inauthentic" blacks or other supposed traitors. What was it that Harry Belafonte said the other week? That blacks who work for the Bush administration are, in effect, "house slaves," akin to the high-ranking Jews in the Hitler regime (never mind that no such Jews existed).

The chickenhawk charge is the misapplication of the same faulty logic. There are war heroes who oppose the war, and there are war heroes who supported it. John Keegan is the greatest living military historian, and he never saw a day of battle. George McGovern flew 35 combat missions in World War II. I'll take Keegan's guidance on military matters over McGovern's any day.

Jeff Jacoby:

"Chicken hawk" isn't an argument. It is a slur — a dishonest and incoherent slur. It is dishonest because those who invoke it don't really mean what they imply — that only those with combat experience have the moral authority or the necessary understanding to advocate military force. After all, US foreign policy would be more hawkish, not less, if decisions about war and peace were left up to members of the armed forces. Soldiers tend to be politically conservative, hard-nosed about national security, and confident that American arms make the world safer and freer. On the question of Iraq — stay-the-course or bring-the-troops-home? — I would be willing to trust their judgment. Would Cindy Sheehan and Howard Dean?

The cry of "chicken hawk" is dishonest for another reason: It is never aimed at those who oppose military action. But there is no difference, in terms of the background and judgment required, between deciding to go to war and deciding not to. If only those who served in uniform during wartime have the moral standing and experience to back a war, then only they have the moral standing and experience to oppose a war. Those who mock the views of ``chicken hawks" ought to be just as dismissive of "chicken doves."

In any case, the whole premise of the "chicken hawk" attack — that military experience is a prerequisite for making sound pronouncements on foreign policy — is illogical and ahistorical. …

Ben Shapiro:

Who is qualified to speak on matters of national security? According to the American left, only pacifists, military members who have served in combat and direct relatives of those slain in combat or in acts of terrorism. The rest of us — about 80 percent of voters — must simply sit by silently. Our opinions do not matter. You want disenfranchisement? Talk to the political left, which seeks to exclude the vast majority of the American populace from the national debate about foreign policy.

The bulk of the left in this country refuses to argue about foreign policy rationally, without resorting to ad hominem attack. The favored ad hominem attack of the left these days is "chickenhawk"; The argument goes something like this: If you believe in any of the wars America is currently fighting, you must join the military. If you do not, you must shut up. If, on the other hand, you believe that America should disengage from all foreign wars, you may feel free not to serve in the military.

This is the argument made by hate-America radicals like Michael Moore… The "chickenhawk" argument was the implicit centerpiece of John Kerry's presidential campaign — Kerry hyped his military service and denigrated George W. Bush's military service, all the while focusing on the fact that he, unlike President Bush, was anti-war. …

The "chickenhawk" argument is dishonest. It is dishonest because the principle of republicanism is based on freedom of choice about behavior (as long as that behavior is legal) as well as freedom of speech about political issues. We constantly vote on activities with which we may or may not be intimately involved. We vote on police policy, though few of us are policemen; we vote on welfare policy, though few of us either work in the welfare bureaucracy or have been on welfare; we vote on tax policy, even if some of us don't pay taxes. The list goes on and on. Representative democracy necessarily means that millions of us vote on issues with which we have had little practical experience. The "chickenhawk" argument — which states that if you haven't served in the military, you can't have an opinion on foreign policy — explicitly rejects basic principles of representative democracy.

The "chickenhawk" argument also explicitly rejects the Constitution itself. The Constitution provides that civilians control the military. The president of the United States is commander-in-chief, whether or not he has served in the military. Congress controls the purse strings and declares war, no matter whether any of its members have served in the military or not. For foreign policy doves to high-handedly declare that military service is a prerequisite to a hawkish foreign policy mindset is not only dangerous, but directly conflicts with the Constitution itself.

The "chickenhawk" argument proves only one point: The left is incapable of discussing foreign policy in a rational manner. They must resort to purely emotional, base personal attacks in order to forward their agenda. And so, unable or unwilling to counter the arguments of those like Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney and President Bush, they label them all "chickenhawks." By the leftist logic, here are some other "chickenhawks": John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Hancock, James Madison, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson and Bill Clinton.

American soldiers fight for the right of all Americans, regardless of race, class or past service, to speak out on foreign policy issues. If they fight for the right of pacifist anti-military fifth columnists like Michael Moore to denigrate their honor, they certainly fight for the right of civilian hawks to speak up in favor of the highest level of moral and material support for their heroism.

It's like a jungle sometimes ...

... it makes me wonder how I keep from goin' under. Stalking Al-Qaeda in the French suburbs.

Écran de fumée

Au sommet, le PS se déchire. Dans les backrooms, l'intelligentsia et autres commissaires chargés de la propagande officielle tirent à boulets rouges contre l'Angleterre insoumise tout en appuyant la porcine collaboration de l'Espagne et ils ne manquent pas de nous rappeler qu'il ne faut surtout pas oublier les infortunés adeptes du Culte Psychotique de la Mort palestinien (comme si c'était possible d'oublier une populace de zombies-tueurs-en-série qui habite à côté de chez toi). Mais sur le terrain, loin des régies de contrôle, les plus lucides quittent le navire.

War protesters say they want debate and dissent, but only if it's their debate and dissent

War protesters say they want debate and dissent, but only if it's their debate and dissent

writes TSU sophomore Carl Morgan in the Dallas Morning News after he and his fellow Protest Warriors went to Crawford to "protest the protestors".

… I asked a supporter of Cindy Sheehan whether I could talk to him. He refused – unless I could show him a press pass.

…In fact, no Sheehan supporter would give his or her name, let alone talk.

…Ms. Sheehan and her supporters are asking the media and the country to probe Mr. Bush with challenging and adversarial questions. But how can they expect Mr. Bush to answer, when they will not?

Because Canadian Mentality Is Closer to That in Europe, They Are More Generous and More Security-Conscious than Dollar-Hungry American Capitalists Are

The crash landing of an Air France wide-body jet at Toronto nine days ago brought to the fore some widespread differences between U.S. and Canadian airport safety practices, ranging from methods of runway construction to Canada's decision years ago not to install even rudimentary detectors to spot sudden dangerous wind shifts

explains Don Phillips in the International Herald Tribune.

…weeks of calculation lie ahead to determine how it might have affected Air France Flight 358, which ran off the end of a runway into a ravine and caught fire. There are no records easily available for review, partly because Canadian airports do not have doppler radar installations that are common now at U.S. airports, and even at most television stations. That also means air traffic controllers had no way to warn the crew of the threat of a severe wind shift, even at Toronto, which is the largest airport in Canada and which sits on a normal path of summer thunderstorms.

 … While the Transportation Safety Board of Canada will take months to determine a probable cause, the debate in Canada - and between it and its neighbor to the south - has picked up momentum. Slowly, there has been an increase in open criticism of Canadian standards by various groups, including the U.S. controllers' union, the Canadian pilots' union and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration.

John Carr, head of the National Air Traffic Control Association in Washington, said he was "kind of surprised" that Canada did not have wind shear protection equipment that is "not even considered cutting-edge any more."

… "They just didn't do anything about it," said [an] engineer, who asked not to be named because he may work in Canada again. "I guess the political will was not there."

… The crash also highlighted a difference of opinion between the United States and Canada over whether thousands of small grooves should be dug across runways to improve braking power. The policy in Canada is not to cut grooves because they provide no extra braking power in winter, and they require snow plows to use Teflon blades to avoid tearing up the grooved runways. That makes snow removal expensive and slow. The United States, however, has been pressing world government bodies to require grooving because it makes braking power much better in summer rainstorms. The issue is before the International Civil Aviation Organization in Montreal.

Rick Marinell, manager of the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration's Office of Airports, said that U.S. airports in northern snowy climates such as Buffalo were grooved, "and we have no problems."

"We'd obviously like ICAO to adopt our greater standard," Marinell said.

That includes runway overrun standards - the area and length of the ground at the end of a runway that can support an aircraft that does not stop in time. Although not all U.S. airports yet meet the standard, the United States requires a greater flat overrun area than most other countries, including Canada.

This is also a big issue with the Canadian pilots' union. Robert Perkins of Welland, Ontario, the Canadian board president for the Air Line Pilots Association, said he had been attempting for almost 30 years to persuade Canada to extend runway run-over areas.

In the United States, many airports are going beyond overrun areas to install a system called EMAS, for Engineered Material Arresting System, at the ends of runways. This material, which effectively stops an airplane as if it had run into deep sand, has already prevented passenger injuries and aircraft damage, according to Joe Del Balzo, a former Federal Aviation official now president of JDA Aviation Technologies. …

Troops, speaking, grousing, and being human.

While the anti-anything left crank on and on, and imagining what they will about others (especially soldiers), others face things straight. Even in the military where morale is a huge and often sensitive issue what do they do? Talk openly about it, even down to the squad and individual levels out in the field. Just like the spec4 on the right who just can't let his girlfriend forget him.

The military’s own newspaper, Stars and Stripes has been following the story closely because other than soldier’s conditions, and military policy itself, it’s hard to imagine a bigger issue to their readers. Soldiers grouse, that’s always been. They’re also very honest about what they see around them – good, bad, or indifferent.

You can also let them know they aren't alone by supporting the USO.

"Lance or spear practice was a regular women's exercise to practice for the anticipated U.S. landing": A Japanese American on Hiroshima

If it were not for the Hiroshima and, yes, the Nagasaki bombing, my Japanese grandmother would have had to fight the American forces, an event for which she and the other women in her neighborhood were preparing

writes a Morehead City (North Carolina) reader to the Federalist Patriot.

Lance or spear practice was a regular women's exercise to practice for the anticipated U.S. landing. My uncle, who was disabled, had been sent to a mandatory training camp to practice with wooden bullets and makeshift weapons to do his civilian share in greeting American forces. Then the bomb was dropped and it was over. Those who recently protested the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings don't have a grip on the grim reality of invasion that both Americans AND Japanese were facing. When I first visited the Hiroshima museum, I, too, had been overwhelmed with pity, sorrow, and anger. This was before my family explained to me what the consequences would have been if those bombs had not been dropped.

Iraqi WMD Have Been Discovered, Buried …on Page 18 (or 32)

It turns out (thanks to RV) that

U.S. troops raiding a warehouse in the northern city of Mosul uncovered a suspected chemical weapons factory containing 1,500 gallons of chemicals believed destined for attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces and civilians.

And where does the Washington Post choose to place Ellen Knickmeyer's article? That's right, deep inside the paper, on page 18.

As I noted back in April 2004, when Le Monde had information from experts casting doubt on the charge that WMD was nothing but a pretext for masking Bush's lies or the neocons' delusions, it managed to bury the article devoted to that piece of news on page 32.

In the WP article, Knickmeyer reminds her readers of the well-known (and uncontroversial) fact that

Iraqi forces under Hussein used chemical agents both on enemy forces in the 1980s war with Iran and on Iraqi Kurdish villagers in 1988

which, of course, was the reason that Europeans and Democrats fully supported policies to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction.

As Captain's Quarters points out,

The size of this find makes it a significant development, both for the insurgency as it stands now and the sourcing of these chemical components. We may have some radical rethinking to do about the nature of not just the terrorists in Iraq, but also the war narrative that said Saddam had no WMD available for his use.

"Thanks to the negotiations with Europe, we gained another year"

Memri, which translates Middle East broadcasts from their native languages, recently captured Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, Hosein Musavian, on Iranian TV

reports the Wall Street Journal as it points out that dialogue can iron out all difficulties, solve all problems, and heal all enmities:

"Thanks to the negotiations with Europe, we gained another year, in which we completed" Isfahan. Iran suspended enrichment "in Isfahan in October 2004, although we were required to do so in October 2003. . . . Today we are in a position of power. We have a stockpile of products, and during this period we have managed to convert 36 tons of yellowcake into gas and store it."

… The Iranians themselves are now admitting that all of this is no happenstance but is a calculated effort to exploit what the mullahs perceive to be American weakness and Europe's lack of will. An internal Iranian government document recently obtained by an opposition group says that "The talks process ended the suffocating economic pressures that our country was being subjected to in the months prior to the October 2003 agreement. . . . With the Americans deeply stuck in a quagmire in Iraq, the Europeans know that they will have to ultimately accommodate our just demands."

And why shouldn't the mullahs believe this, given Europe's reaction to President Bush's routine recent comments that "all options are on the table" regarding Iran's nuclear ambitions? German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, facing an uphill election campaign, seized on the remark as an opportunity to repudiate even the possibility of using force. "We have seen it doesn't work," he declared, in a reference to Iraq. (Saddam Hussein might argue from his holding cell that it does.)

Iran will get the Bomb (oh please, oh please, oh please let Iran get the bomb)

French pinhead zintello shoots his load in a page one wet dream for Le Monde Al-Jazeera on the Seine detailing his absolute certainty that Iran will obtain the atomic bomb. À moins que ses fantasmes de déviant psychopathe du Vème arrondissement ne soient torpillés par une Saint Action menée par le Royaume d'Israël et l'Empire des Etats-unis d'Amérique.

Alain Madelin for head of the OECD

Mark Steyn on the very stupid Maureen Dowd

«They're not children in Iraq; they're grown-ups who made their own decision to join the military. That seems to be difficult for the left to grasp. Ever since America's all-adult, all-volunteer army went into Iraq, the anti-war crowd have made a sustained effort to characterize them as "children." If a 13-year-old wants to have an abortion, that's her decision and her parents shouldn't get a look-in. If a 21-year-old wants to drop to the broadloom in Bill Clinton's Oval Office, she's a grown woman and free to do what she wants. But, if a 22- or 25- or 37-year-old is serving his country overseas, he's a wee "child" who isn't really old enough to know what he's doing.

I get many e-mails from soldiers in Iraq, and they sound a lot more grown-up than most Ivy League professors and certainly than Maureen Dowd, who writes like she's auditioning for a minor supporting role in ''Sex And The City.''
...
Casey Sheehan was a 21-year old man when he enlisted in 2000. He re-enlisted for a second tour, and he died after volunteering for a rescue mission in Sadr City. Mrs. Sheehan says she wishes she'd driven him to Canada, though that's not what he would have wished, and it was his decision.»

Ah, ces Ricains!

No Wonder the UN Opposed War with Saddam Hussein

How do we know about the UN's oil-for-food scandal? asks Mark Steyn (thanks to RV).

We only know because the US invaded Iraq and the Baathists skedaddled out of town leaving copious amounts of paperwork relating to the Baghdad end of Oil-for-Fraud, since when Claudia Rosett and a few other dogged journalists have been systematically unstitching the intricate web of family and business relationships around the UN's operations.

…The other day I sat behind a car from Massachusetts bearing the bumper-sticker "War is Never the Answer". Well, it depends on the question. In this case, without the war, we wouldn't even be asking the questions. Without the paper trail in Baghdad, who would have mustered the will to look into Oil-for-Food and see it through to the point where it's brought down a clutch of career UN bigwigs? They're no great loss to humanity: Mr Strong's "legacy", the Kyoto treaty, is already seen as a joke that's likely to crash the economies of those few countries who've made the mistake of taking it seriously (New Zealand), and, as for his North Korean outreach, we should be grateful it ended before a full-fledged Kim Jong-Il Nukes-for-Food programme was up and running.

But this is how the transnational jet set works, and those sensitive flowers who don't have the stomach to look under the rock could at least do us the favour of ceasing to bleat about, in Clare Short's marvellously loopy phrase, the UN's "moral authority". In The Times the other day, Matthew Parris demanded to know whether I could now admit the Iraq war had been a mistake. No. I'm still in favour of it 100 per cent — and these rare shafts of light on the sewers of transnationalism are merely one more benefit.

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)

Alfred E. Chirak

Great Britain is coming to grips with the 5th column in its midsts. La Fwance sticks with its 'What, me worry?' attitude.

Come out with your hands up, you're surrounded!

La Fwance : never working hard and always hardly working

This from a country obsessed with a 35 hour work loafing-off week that can't even provide jobs for it's young. Et les chères têtes blondes qui s'expatrient, cela provoque des aigreurs chez les vieux pédés nantis.

Why don't the Iraqis go on vacation like everyone else?

'Concern' is cause enough for lawsuit threats

Islam Online, reports on a fit of class-warfare-like oversensitivity. Have no fear, folks, the accuser is muttle headed and easily cowed:

" 'A right-wing newspaper, for instance, launched a ferocious campaign against Pakistanis in France and placed them in one basket, calling them a 'cause for concern.' "

The whole bit of kabuki theater is exactly what hasn't happened in the U.S. as much as the Bezerkley-oid dimwits would like to see.

And use.

Unhinged

Talking like the French.

See how useful their advice was?

The only way to preserve peace is to be a pacifist and not provoke aggression by doing anything about terror at all. What the terror prone need is to be loved and understood, and for everyone to pretend that even though they kidnap and murder that they wouldn’t hurt a fly. That way maybe they won't.

please, just one more head tilt... please?

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Moonbat Central reports that Tom Hayden wants to reward a small number of terrorists in Iraq with disproportionate influence. Note how numb one can be to the language he uses, how the vocabulary is part of the stale stock of those trying to look reasonable, how the consequences don’t seem evident. That “Peace Envoy” would be a liason to terrorists. Presumably actions by the US government would have to be negotiated/ cleared with them for fear of a “lack of peace” in Iraq at first and then as their access becomes obvious, everywhere else. Sort of creates an Ambassador for Global Jihad and Terror position to deal with this “Peace Envoy”, as if the lawyers who were sent to aid the delegates to Iraq’s constitutional convention weren’t.

You know what they say... One postcard represents 25 voters, one phone call 40, one letter 60, and one terror attack represents every college aged radical and their balding wannabes. Who are becoming more maudlin by the minute.

Who would die for vaporware?

Because that's what the EU is. "... And people die for Europe, and have died.", Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer of Germany. Correction Herr Chocolate Maker Fudgepacker, people have died because of Europe. Not exactly the same thing.

29 mai, Paris, Fwance: Le 'Soft Power zéropéen' (© Emmanuel Todd), renvoyé illico presto dans les choux de Bruxelles par les Pieds Nickelés (Attac, Le Monde Diplo, et José Bové). La gôche caviar du VIII arrondissement n'a que ses yeux pour pleurer, mais les groupies fudgepackers de Monsieur Todd qui se dandinent un peu partout au Greenwich Village peuvent s'envoyer les livres d'Emmanuel Todd à des prix cassés.

Bewildering European Tourists since 2001

If they can even travel at all.

- Thankya-vur-much to Courbu for the link.

Derby Does Paris

Does the attitude sound familiar?

From an NRO blog entry by John Derbyshire

«[E-mail received] Dear Madam or Sir---You stay in our hotel last week in the room 34 and you did not live the key when you live. You pay your bill and just left whitout leving the key at the front desk. I will just ask you to be very kind and send back the key because since you live the room is close, we dont have any other key to open that door I am waiting to hear about you and I hope you will send back the key to the hotel. ---HOTEL COMFORT SAINT PIERRE, 10 RUE DE CLIGNANCOURT, 75018 PARIS

[Derb] Dear Sir---I have no idea what happened to the key. I do not have it. I checked all my luggage. I asked my family -- they do not know where your key is. We just do not know. Is it not usual for hotels to keep a master key for all their rooms?

[E-mail received] Dear sir---I am the one who was there when you check out and i am sure that you did not live the key, your wife and children was near the door only you was in the front desk to paid your bild yoou did not live the key. You close the door whitoout living the key it true and I dont have any reason to lie and now it is a very big deal for me and the manager. Please try to have a look one more time sorry to border you but it verry important to me to find back that key. Sincerly yours

[Derb] (1) We don't have your key. We have all checked. (2) In 40 years of traveling around the world, I have never experienced so much fuss about a room key. Hotels keep master keys or duplicates. That is basic hotel management. Hotel guests never think about keys. If I lose a key, the hotel gives me a replacement. That is how it is, all over the world. (3) If keys are so very important to you, then you should take great care that guests hand them in before leaving. (4) Are there no locksmiths in Montmartre? (5) If you and your manager are being criticized and persecuted by your superiors, I shall do what I can to help. It is not right for employees to suffer because of bad company policies. Please refer your superiors to me, and I shall try to pacify them. However, the fundamental problem here is not my carelessness, or yours. The fundamental problem is bad hotel management.»

- Merci buckets to Val.

Squeal like a pig!

Typical French family gathering.

Non, je ne regrette rien!


Le retour de Piètre Croupion

Hard Power

Un destin manifeste, ça se forge.

Europe taking its' football and going home

Most of the world thinks the Kyoto Protocols are useless and its' proponents are hypocrites:

«One would expect those sincerely concerned about the anthropogenic greenhouse effect to welcome the news of the new Partnership, at the very least because it provides a framework to work together with the biggest emitters who are not included or have not ratified the Kyoto Protocol. Unfortunately the reaction was cold.»

Tant mieux, spanky. They can do less harm that way.

'Peace' efforts coming home to roost

UPDATE - a comment exchange:

[Mikey] Why is the only person making a scene in the upper picture a caucasian? And did she(?) get those straight pearly white teeth from a nice Jewish Othodontist?

[Braithwaite Prendergast] Mikey: You are very perceptive for one who has lived only one lifetime. The picture is from a series showing Ms. Heather Goodenough's second-grade class in al-Dasrah. The children are enjoying her dramatization of "The Wolf and the Seven Kids." They especially love this part when Mother Goat comes home to find her children missing. The fact that Heather's braces were prescribed by Dr. Milton Rich, of Taskerville, Long Island, is not pertinent.

A call to action for America: roast the damned bird once and for all

Would you want the government owning a newspaper to carry its’ views?

Peace, Paradise Flourishing in Gaza

Now that the great cause of evil in the universe is pulling out of Gaza, the charming native peace-lovers are dancing around the maypole and dreaming of peace with all of the best wishes of their great friends around the world.

We’re talkin’ free love! Vavoom!

Incest almost rising to the level of the Canadian Liberal Party...

Mark Steyn is at it again:

«You'll recall that Kofi Annan's son Kojo - who had a $30,000-a-year job but managed to find a spare quarter-million dollars sitting around to invest in a Swiss football club -
...
The actual head of the Oil-for-Food racket, Kofi sidekick Benon Sevan, has resigned, having hitherto insisted that a mysterious six-figure sum in his bank account was a gift from his elderly aunt, a lady of modest means who lived in a two-room flat back in Cyprus.
...
Despite the current investigations into his brother, his son, his son's best friend, his former chief of staff, his procurement officer and the executive director of the UN's biggest ever programme, the Secretary-General insists he remains committed to staying on and tackling the important work of "reforming" the UN.
...
But not to worry. To demonstrate his ongoing commitment to "reform", Kofi Annan has now put his Deputy- Secretary-General, Louise Frechette, another Canadian, in charge of the "reform agenda". In a February report by Mr Volcker's committee, Mme Frechette is said to have helped Mr Sevan block efforts to bring details of the Oil-for-Food boondoggle before the Security Council.»

They used to resist scrutiny, then they resisted the mere use of the word 'reform', then they tried to put a happy face on it, not they are in denial.

What will it take to make it an honest institution? The only reason people in large parts of the world like it is because as ridiculous as it is, it "functions" only slightly more transparently then their own Colonels and Dear Leaders.

Don't leave 'em dick

Harry Gives 'em Hell

The Guardian is quickly becoming Al-Queda’s unwitting house organ. David of the Harry’s Place blog noted on a cursory look at an article by “a leading exiled Saudi dissident” by the name of Sa’ad al-Faqih, that all was not well.

Al-faqih’s organization has provided material support to Al-Queda, and the Guardian only acts on matters of that gravity which someone draws the curtains to let some light in.

«Al-Faqih has maintained associations with the al Qaida network since the mid-1990s, including with Khaled al Fawwaz, who acted as UBL's de facto representative in the United Kingdom and was associated with the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings. At the U.S. trial of the East African embassy bombers, prosecutors provided evidence that MIRA and al-Faqih paid for a satellite phone that al Fawwaz passed on to UBL, who allegedly used it to help carry out the attacks.»

Al-Faqih is a bundle of contradictions. In evasive responses given in an interview, he has made himself out to be a liberal reformer while supporting those who attack it, spinning even a Wikipedia writer. He lives in a society that accepts dissent, but advocates for the creation of a social system that would behead any non-conformer as an apostate. Make a note of the date. The Guardian should know better than to give him a platform to advance his cause, and not letting on to their readers of the man’s ties.

Well done, David. Well done indeed. Nothing else will keep a paper honest.

However the phone doesn't stop there:

«Tarik Hamdi, 43, a naturalized U.S. citizen who had been living in Herndon, is believed to be out of the country and has not been arrested, said Dean Boyd, a spokesman with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement division of the Homeland Security Department.

Hamdi delivered a satellite phone battery to a Bin Laden aide while he was in Afghanistan in May 1998 helping to set up an interview for ABC News, according to an affidavit by David Kane, an agent with the immigration division. Bin Laden used that phone in connection with the deadly bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that year, according to the affidavit, which was in support of a 2002 search warrant and was unsealed last week.

ABC News did not respond to a request for more information about its relationship with Hamdi.»

Thanks, sparky. The only other method of near untracable communcation involves having a large uplink dish, and riding one's own telephone traffic on a marginal, unmonitored frequency on a satellite without the operator's concent, a method south american drug barons were fond of, but could still be caught out at.

Even if it only seems like a damn phone, and a damn battery, it's enablement.

Ces gens-là, auront toujours une excuse pour recourir au terrorisme

Les madrasas électroniques, bombes furtives téléguidées par des ondes haineuses, qui arrosent les banlieues zéropéennes.

Deafening silence from Urine-Peein' talking heads	Silence assourdissant de la part des claquemerdes dans l'Urinoir zéropéen
Something you will NEVER see the French do in Africa.	Vous ne verrez JAMAIS ça de la part de la Fwance en Afrique.

"Moderate" muslims?

When pigs will fly.

The French laugh about what they have forgotten

I'm assuming that Plantu intended for the lady at the lower right represent Cindy Sheehan. What the French have forgotten, somewhere in the morass of their pacifist humanist illusionary soft power society, is that for something to be sacred you have to have sacrifice.

When being a poodle most of the time just isn’t enough...

The Muslim Council of Britain, the default face of moderation in the UK has wagged it’s finger at the producers of BBC’s Panorama program. The installment is said to ask the question whether or not Islamic organization and mosque councils in the UK can address the growth of extremism in their own membership. Of course the first word was ‘bias’.
It wasn’t even 6 days later that leftists howled about non-existent cencorship at the Beeb, which contrary to the World Socialist’s claim, uniformly censors or mitigates mainstream views.

«In a letter to Director General Mark Thompson, Sir Iqbal states: "The Panorama team is more interested in furthering a pro-Israeli agenda than assessing the work of Muslim organisations in the UK."

It goes on to suggest that the BBC is being manipulated by "highly placed supporters of Israel".»

He said this as if there aren’t any highly placed opponents to Israel at the BBC. The other foolish thing about it is that there is no hint that Israel is discussed in the program at all. The MCB mentions it, in all likelihood, because they have been conditioned by years of propaganda into dwelling on this pet peeve of theirs.

In response, a few people at the BBC have located a spine somewhere in the attic at Broadcast House:

«However, Ware told the BBC's staff magazine Ariel such a claim was "ludicrous". He added: "They haven't seen it; we haven't finished editing it.»

Next thing you know, someone will get worked up about the name of their newsletter, and not because it resembles the name of a laundry detergent that smells slightly of quick-lime and lye.

Nick Cohen to the left: Smell You Later!

Smart people are leaving that leftist collection of fetishes and its’ attendant terminal anger for the sake of pacifism behind.
Via Tim Bleeyah – Guardian columnist Nick Cohen leaves the hive mind of the left behind, for good, and with his dignity intact:

«As in the 1930s, there's little doubt that few apart from George Galloway and others in the gruesome leadership of the anti-war movement were keen on saluting Saddam Hussein. The reason why one million people marched through London without one mounting a platform to express solidarity with the victims of fascism was that it never occurred to them that there were people in Iraq who shared their values.
…
On the other hand when confronted with a movement of contemporary imperialism - Islamism wants an empire from the Philippines to Gibraltar - and which is tyrannical, homophobic, misogynist, racist and homicidal to boot, they feel it is valid because it is against Western culture. It expresses its feelings in a regrettably brutal manner perhaps, but that can't hide its authenticity.

The result of this inversion of principles has been that liberals can't form alliances with the victims of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan or Iraq any more than the Auden generation could form alliances with the victims of Stalinism.

If the Archbishop of Canterbury were to suggest [that those who renounce Islam should be executed…] the same treatment for renegade Christians all hell would break loose. But as the bigotry comes from 'the other' there is silence.
…
the London bombs have added a practical reason for breaking with the consensus: now they're trying to kill us. Even if people think that the Iraq war has made Britain a bigger target, they are still confronted with a fascistic cult of murder and self-murder which allows no compromise.

The thing to watch for with fellow travellers is what shocks them into pulling the emergency cord and jumping off the train. I know some will stay on to the terminus, and when the man with the rucksack explodes his bomb their dying words will be: 'It's not your fault. I blame Tony Blair.'»