The Reason that the French Are Entitled to Give Americans Lessons on Race Relations

I can't tell how many times I have been forced to listen to a litany of castigation, mockery, and scorn by self-assured Frenchmen, in their eager determination to prove that America was inhabited by treacherous hypocrites, greedy monsters, and/or retarded simpletons.

As I have written before, knowing your (world) history well often serves to prove that insofar sins and wicked deeds are concerned, America comes out about every time as (by far) the least guilty perpetrator. And slavery proves a typical example thereof, as The Winds of Change demonstrates (merci à Rhomp):

In the history of the Atlantic slave trade, the French turned four times as many Africans into slaves as the Americans did, they used them far more brutally, and French slavers not only got a head-start on Americans, they continued the slave trade -- legally -- until 1830, long after the rest of Europe had given it up. And they kept at it clandestinely until after the U.S. Civil War. France officially abolished slavery in its colonies only 14 years before Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, and then only under pressure from slave uprisings.

The French New World settlers outstripped the Americans in their greed for slave labor. When the U.S. acquired Louisiana from France, the first governor sent out from Washington reported back that, "No subject seems to be so interesting to the minds of the inhabitants of all parts of the country which I have visited as that of the importation of brute negroes from Africa. This permission would go further with them, and better reconcile them to the government of the United States, than any other privilege that could be extended to this country. ... White labourers, they say, cannot be had in this unhealthy climate."

… The 1794 declaration of universal emancipation did not actually outlaw the slave trade. Yet even this proved unenforcable; the colonies required slaves, and under Napoleon, slavery was reintroduced.

The French never recovered Haiti, though they coveted it for a generation, and France's slave trade had been temporarily shut down by the Napoleonic Wars. But after the restoration of the Bourbons the French retained Martinique, Guadeloupe, and French Guiana on the South American continent, all major sugar-producing colonies.

If it had not been for British pressure, the slave trade might still be tolerated in France. But the British had taken a strong anti-slavery position. The French press railed at the British for using morality as a cloak for their supposed desire to rule the world. And the French desire to keep the British at bay, and to compete with them in the seas, seems to have had a lot to do with the French decision to turn officially against the slave trade.

… In 1820, a British cruiser chased a French slaver, La Jeune Estele, whose captain, once he saw himself being overtaken, started throwing barrels overboard. In each was a pair of slave girls, age 12 to 14. Public opinion in Britain was shocked, but in France the people blamed the British.

Ben ouais! C'est la faute aux Anglo-Saxons, pardi!

In an unrelated article, John McCaslin quotes a New York Democrat (Charles B Rangel) as saying that "the destruction of the black family" today can be traced to a single man from England who purposely paid a visit to Virginia during the early 18th century.

"If only we could hand out fines like the Americans do, lots of problems would disappear"

Si nous pouvions mettre des amendes comme les Américains, beaucoup d'infractions disparaîtraient.

Strange, that there would be a department — such as aviation — in which the greedy American capitalists would seem to be more safety-concerned than the lucidity-prone French…

Another miserable failure of America

How to really end poverty

Simple: Get a job.

Don't You See? If Only You Are Tolerant and Understanding and If You Will Create a Bond with Them, Then…

Grizzly People founder Timothy Treadwell had Disney-fied the object of his affection. So, as [Werner] Herzog chronicles, the 46-year-old bear activist and his 37-year-old girlfriend were mauled and eaten by an Alaskan grizzly in October 2003

writes Debra Saunders.

While some think Treadwell had a death wish, he claimed that he would not be hurt, because he had a special understanding of grizzlies and he respected them. His fate illustrates the dark side of the modern romanticization of the wild.

Fact is, Treadwell didn't understand grizzlies and he didn't respect them. As an Alaskan pilot told Herzog, Treadwell seemed to view grizzlies as if they were "people wearing bear costumes."

…Treadwell liked to style himself as an animal lover, but I think he was more smitten with himself than with the bears.

Why is it that while reading this article, I kept thinking of Europe's humanists and pacifists (of today and yesterday), walking through the capitals of their countries, lauding the Iraqi "resistance", the anti-globalization movement's "answer" to capitalism, the Soviet Union, and other "legendary" opponents of the American superpower? Not to mention the same actions and policies being taken by governments who would be members of the so-called peace camp, of today as well as yesterday… All of the above overflowing with expressions such as tolerance and understanding and lucidité and avant-garde and "prise de conscience" and "can't we all work together?"…

London Economics Professor Warns that Britain's Prosperity Will End Within 50 Years

Are we really suffering from a shortage of electricity or other energy? Should we be rationed? The moral answer is yes if we are suffering an energy shortage and no if we are only imagining one

muses Rabbi Lapin.

This would not be the first time that we have imagined an energy shortage. Until the early 18th century, colonial homes were heated mostly by burning wood. Forests were vanishing and the rapidly growing colonies were running out of fire wood. Eliminate immigration and ration firewood, was the call of the day, until they found and began burning coal. As with anything new and untried, coal brought dangers. But these were soon overcome and by 1840 America was deriving energy from a million tons of coal a year.

William Jevons, an economics professor at University College, London, became famous on account of a paper he published in 1865. It was entitled The Coal Question: An Inquiry Concerning the Progress of the Nation, and the Probable Exhaustion of our Coal Mines. He predicted that British prosperity would end within fifty years when the nation ran out of coal and recommended an industrial slowdown in order to conserve what coal was left. We are just about finished with the year 2005 and Britain is still mining and burning coal.

America used to depend on whale oil for lighting. During the early 19th century, pundits warned that since whales were being harvested at an ever increasing rate, America would soon go dark. They recommended turning out all lights no later than ten o’clock in order to conserve what whale oil was left. They were right about running out of whale oil, but they were wrong about America going dark. In 1859 a railroad conductor called Edwin Drake had struck oil in Titusville, Pennsylvania. Lanterns started burning paraffin instead of whale oil until Edison’s electricity lit American cities.

Since the 1970s we have heard much about exhausting the world’s petroleum reserves. Just how soon has been debated, but nobody doubts that the amount of oil is ultimately limited, just as whale oil was. Should we therefore advise petroleum conservation as they once did with firewood, whale oil, and coal?

Extra extra, read all about it!

A new German-language blog has hit the stands, thanks to Olaf Petersen…

In so many ways, Iraq doesn't look like Vietnam at all

According to The Patriot's well-placed military and intelligence sources, one closely guarded objective in securing a free Iraq is to establish a forward-deployed presence in the Middle East — a presence that would certainly include personnel but whose primary component would be massive military-equipment depots that could be tapped for future rapid-deployment military operations in the region

writes Mark Alexander.

This forward-base objective is critical, given that it will ensure our military presence in the heart of Jihadistan, and an ability to project force in the region quickly without having to ramp up via sea and airlift. This alone will pay rich dividends by way of maintaining peace through preparedness.

Meanwhile, Michael Fumento reports from Fallujah ("Good news from Iraq rarely gets a single story compared to the many thousands on a war protestor’s stake-out in Texas") and Robert L Pollock discusses the Chalabi comeback, while Jeff Jacoby sighs audibly as he recounts how

in so many ways, Iraq doesn't look like Vietnam at all. Vietnam was never the central battleground of the Cold War, while Iraq has become the focal point of the war on terrorism. Americans had no reason to feel that their own security was at risk in Vietnam, whereas 9/11 made it clear that the enemy we face today in the Middle East poses a lethal threat here at home as well. The jihadis in Iraq don't have the backing of superpowers; North Vietnam and the Viet Cong were armed to the teeth by China and the Soviet Union. In South Vietnam, the United States was allied to an unpopular and incompetent regime; in Iraq, the United States toppled a brutal tyranny and is trying to nurture a democracy in its place.

But of all the ways in which the Iraq war is not like Vietnam, perhaps the most telling is the attitude of the troops.

Pat Robertson said it once, Chavez says it annually

Frontpagemag.com ran an article some time back that helps up but into context what a complete crackhead Hugo Chavez really is:

«-- In 2002, in an effort to mitigate the effects of a Strike, BBC reported Chavez’s claim that American malefactors were looking to eliminate him as he flew back from a goodwill tour of Europe. Does this ring a bell? “They were hunting us, waiting for us,” Chavez said at the time.

-- In September 2003, Chavez warned the world that he was under threat of elimination yet again. According to Reuters, Chavez claimed that “Venezuelan terrorists” were being trained on American soil before wrapping himself in the US flag by invoking the Terror War in his own defense: “"Over there, in U.S. territory, people are conspiring against Venezuela, terrorists are being trained. If they are really fighting terrorism as they say, they should act against these terrorists who are threatening Venezuela," Chavez said.

-- 2004 apparently was a bull market for assassination attempts also. In May of that year, Chavez again decried attempts by the US to end his reign by stopping his heartbeat.»

No “secret armies” no assassination attempts, no malefactors since 2002 have shown themselves. Ah, but they’re SECRET! Don't you SEE!

When they talk about keeping a population dumbed down with lies, I think we have finally found some proof that it’s possible. It’s a horrible strategy.

It prompts a question. Where do children get these things?

Get a smaller limousine and hold off on the latté

Luxury leftist Lafontaine caught by the German press with the caviar flowing from his mouth.

It’s only an outrage when the US forces are involved

According to most of the press, the Reuters soundman Waleed Khaled killed in Baghdad by an American sniper is called a journalist, when he was a media assistant. Reports from the most recent Algerian civil war were that 57 journalist and 20 media assistants died.

The conclusions of a biased media?:

- Iraq deadlier for journalists than the Vietnam War was! RSF:

«Khaled is the 66th journalist or media assistant to be killed in Iraq since the start of the war in March 2003. A total of 63 journalists were killed in the Viet-nam war, which lasted from 1955 to 1975. »

No mention of the Elephant in the room. Very few were killed by US forces. Tabulations, not done, are not and hand because the passive activists of the press are not interested in finding a cause of their colleagues' deaths, not when the story is about the evils of America.

- The implication was that all 66 journalists and media assistants killed in Iraq were killed by the US military. Not so. Read carefully and you’ll see that the only attributions made when US forces are involved. Buried in the details, and not in the headlines are the journalists killed by the murderous opponents of a free Iraq. Entirely lost is the fact that journalists CAN’T get out and get a good picture of Iraq when an insurgency is after them.

One Journalist opposed to the war puts some of this incontext by discussing his experience in Iraq:

«Every one of the people involved in the resistance that we spoke to held us individually responsible for their security. If something happened to them -- never mind that they were legitimate targets for the U.S. military -- they would blame us. And kill us. We soon learned that they had the U.S. bases so well watched that we had to abandon our idea of working on the U.S. side of the story -- that is, discovering what the soldiers really thought about who might be attacking them. There were so many journalists working with the American soldiers that we believed that that story would be well told. More practically, if we were seen by the Iraqis going in and out of the American bases, we would be tagged immediately as spies, informants and most likely be killed. »

He goes on to give his readers the Chimpy W. Hitlerburton routine, but while he raises questions of what US forces COULD do, he was quite certain of what the terrorists WOULD do to him.

The Plastic Exploding Inevitable

Israel makes a concrete move towards peace. Pali Psycho Death Cult©®™ suicide bomber strikes. Palestinian Prez'nit terror front man Abbas makes believe that he condemns terrorism.

Laboratoire de catastrophe générale

Dantec est de retour. Après avoir claqué la porte aux nez des tiédasses qui bossent chez Gallimard, il revient avec un nouveau roman chez Albin Michel avant de sortir 'American Black Box', le troisième tôme de ses journaux, au premier trimestre de 2006. Et comme il est d'une grande générosité, il est partant pour donner un coup de main à un éditeur qui démarre.

Pandering to our readers with dog pictures

Why? Because I feel like it. Theyre also better behaved than any of us, and definately have more fun.

“Solidarity” is only a common feeling, not an action for the common good

There are many causes for the buildings to enter a state as dangerous as the one that led to the recent death of 17 people living in crowded conditions recently in Paris. That buildings like that exist is nothing more than a failure of government managed social solidarity’s capacity to solve such problems, as it is a sign of the general meagerness that its’ theories perpetuate.
The technical solutions are straightforward – make the buildings better. How to do that is a matter of which side of the great debate of the century in the western world you fall on:

«Recent legislation. Housing is now considered to be a national responsibility - it is not just a matter for the state. Several legal texts bear this out: for example, an Act of 6 July 1989 recognized the right to housing as a "basic right" and one of 31 May 1990 expressly stipulated that "guaranteeing the right to housing is a duty for the whole nation in the name of solidarity".»

This is not good. The market forces which do this for people are better suited to the very atomized and industrial task of building and renovating. The various government bodies in the Netherlands were at one point the de facto builders of all housing, but the quality and suitability couldn’t work in a market where the public sought both a variety of structures and didn’t have identical buying power. They let the market function more autonomously and found that it the public preferred it.

Long in the lore of the Bauhaus philosophy was the drive to house the battered population of postwar Europe. What was destroyed by big government could only be rebuilt by one. The socialist governing philosophy was served by this notion, but what thereafter? The system grew into a sclerosis, and while some governments disposed of it others didn’t to an adequate degree. The idea that bureaucrats could force what someone imagines is a better life on people is older yet.
Even Peter Blake, an early participant in the modern movement, and the man who coined the name of The International Style told me unceremoniously that the great drive was to put a roof over the heads of the postwar population of Europe, and that the rest of the great drive to build tower blocks was social philosophy and government policy which was then unimaginable, and had little to do with most of the built work itself. He knew what he was talking about – a Prussian who fled Hitler’s repressive governance, he made it from the invasion of Normandy to end up as the first American soldier to enter Berlin after it fell to the Soviet having run past what was left of the Nazi lines.

Aide à la pierre remained in kind if not in literal form. The extent of that intervention may have been too far gone. In the 1960s and 70s the government attempt at withdrawal from direct financing and involvement in homebuilding caused a grave slowdown since the incentives were as absent then as they were in the 1930s. Without the incentives in place, or at least a lack of obstruction through propping up of trades which were not permitted to be free themselves, the housing stock could only get worse.

The great object lesson for this same problem in the US were the rent control laws imposed during the Second World War, and then in the case of New York City, left in place. The decent of the South Bronx into a slum was directly caused by the simple fact that building owners had no financial incentive to improve, maintain, or repair their property. The City’s experiment with socialism failed. In one way or another all socialist housing experiments eventually fail the people who live in them.

Not letting the market function requires controls of that sort precisely because of the burdens put on it, not just the making of borrowing difficult, but through the frustration of work through delays of seeking aesthetic approval and excessive environmental regulation.
Then the supply fails, raising the cost to people, even if the attempts to suppress the price succeeds for a little while.
That lack of supply will raise the price in other ways, in this case the grim state of the buildings which remain the only option for people with small to medium incomes in a controlled market.

It is no surprise that the cities in the United States that have the most expensive housing are the very same ones that have both the most onerous development controls and the added problem of a leftist view of how to house people. In that sense the blue state cities of San Francisco, New York, which are held up as examples of wealth are often compared to Europe in their policies, but in truth, holding up their wealth as a sign of success is flawed. That wealth has little purchasing power, few options, and finds itself living in a walk-in closet no different that those that the victims of last Thursday’s fire in Paris did.

There is a great, beneficial intersection of the needs of both the poor and everyone else. Free the market, and they poor will still end up with “the leftovers”, but they will be dignified leftovers more likely to be big enough and safe enough for people who in such an economic environment shortly will become homeowners with a little bit of hard work.

The press which seems perplexed by these events don’t see the causes or the simplicity of the solution. The failure isn’t inadequate “social housing”, it’s the existence of “social housing” at all.

The leftist "revolutionalry spirit" coming home to roost

In Canada, after years of “revolutionary feeling” and leftist stridency, it’s become politically acceptable to consort with a terrorist group, and then weasel out of it afterwards.

In a letter to a radio host in Winnipeg, Bruce Vallance tells a chilling tale of the FLQ bombing attack on Military Headquarters in Ottawa. “Kill those big, bad soldiers” the sentiment always is, because of what they seem to represent to bomb placing agitators who can’t seem to differentiate between an innocent bystander and an innocent target.

«During the FLQ crisis I was stationed at Canadian Forces HQ in Ottawa. The bomb they placed outside of my office window was meant to kill those in the room and I suppose make a statement.

They succeeded only too well. The lady they killed was not only a co-worker, but also a friend.

After I picked myself up off the floor some thirty feet from where I was standing I saw my friend laying on the floor. I remember kneeling in a pool of her blood trying desperately to staunch the flow. Her eyes seemed to be pleading for me to help her.

This tiny middle aged French Canadian single mother of two who had been so happy. She had been talking for several days about her up coming vacation. The first in twenty years. Now she lay struggling to breath through her torn throat. Desperately I tried to staunch the flow of blood. I watched as the light in her eyes slowly dimmed and then disappeared. Here was a grown man and soldier kneeling in the welter of her blood crying like a baby as I cradled her in my arms.»

That’s right, the new Governor General stuck up for a secretive organization which is trying break a nation up, and now is trying to slink out of the real indicator of her trustworthiness and judgment. A brief look at the past few Governor General illustrates quite clearly what the job requirements are: the right PC image.

"We have more planes ..."

Keep them grounded. Pali Psycho Death Cult©®™ pleading for aircraft. Imagine the impact.

Hostile takeover of the French language

Hostile takeover of the French language? How much could that be worth? I bid a nickel.

Michael Totten's got Juan Cole's number

Cole, President of the Middle East Studies Association, doesn’t think we are really at war:

«I take it this is because they have finally realized that if they are fighting a war on terror, the enemy is four guys in a gymn (sic) in Leeds. It isn't going to take very long for people to realize that a) you don't actually need to pay the Pentagon $400 billion a year if that is the problem and b) whoever is in charge of such a war isn't actually doing a very good job at stopping the bombs from going off.»

Michael Totten:

«I don’t know what to say. So I won’t say anything. I’ll just post some photos instead.»

Jamais de réponse à mes demandes de renseignements et impossibilité d'obtenir les documents nécessaires à mon inscription…

Read about the aid provided by the French university system for a foreign student (an American, by the way, and a Texan, no less) trying to integrate a university in Paris (en français)…

The howls can be heard from Turtle Bay to Foggy Bottom

Read Frank J Gaffney's explanation on why John Bolton is the wrong man for the United Nations and Dennis Prager's explanation why you ought to listen to the UN (and the rest of the Left) to bring America forward..

Proving that There Is Just as Much Freedom in France as in America

Keep those museums and opera houses clean or you'll lose your tourist industry next

The world economy in 2020: The USA on top, China a strong second, India third, with a divided Europe floundering somewhere in the Guava Leagues.

Orwellian manipulation

The typical French view of 'Libéralisme' (which the French use as a synonym for capitalism).

No comment

In 25 years we will still be in Iraq.
They don't like Americans here.
Let's ask for Iraqi citizenship.

Even if the west stopped, others would still be at war with her

The Guardian reports that a three page fax in Arabic sent to the Vatican appears to be attributed to al-Queda. It threatens the usual hellfire, but includes an olive branch to the duped and comfortable left:

«The three-page document, written in Arabic, accuses the Vatican of supporting "the capitalist countries" who joined the war in Iraq and justifies terror attacks in Britain and Spain as "self defence against terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan".»

The Guardian, however, starts spinning it in the very next paragraph:

«The threats are bound to increase nerves in Italy, which has long feared it could be the next European country to be targeted by Islamists because of the government's support of the Iraq war.»

The editors refuse to believe that there isn’t a disconnect here. Radical Islam is engaged with a holy war against an opponent who isn’t, and the screwy left is accusing the leaders of the west of being the zealots conducting a religious war. It’s astounding. Victor David Hanson:

«In the age of utopianism we demand impossible standards of perfection. Then when they cannot be met, we conclude that we are not good at all, but the equivalent of a Pol Pot, Hitler, or Saddam himself — an elected American president who is a worse terrorist than Osama bin Laden.
[…]
Second, we don't believe that we are in a war anymore. Jimmy Carter thinks that something we do in Guantanamo galvanizes terrorists, as if the camp had been in existence since 1979, when under his watch this present quarter-century cycle of killing and terrorizing Americans with impunity in the Middle East began in earnest. Thus instead of joining in the effort to defeat Islamic fascists, the opposition and our pundits nitpick and moan, hoping for media attention and political points, convinced that none of their triangulation aids the enemy — since we aren't really in a war at all.
[…]
Yet the United States itself has not changed its character under Republican hands. Its government and people are as they were, thus ensuring the more the Left lashes out about losing the republic, the more their charges seem strident and extremist — bringing them shame as the additional wage to their irresponsibility.»

It also reminds me of what so called “moderates” are rattling on about. VDH again points out what sort of speech coming the western press will not report on.

«This last May — and out of the hateful mouth of a prominent Palestinian cleric, Sheik Ibrahim Mudeiris. He was broadcast on a Palestinian Authority station.

The televised Sheik finished with an even more frightening thought: “The day will come when everything will be relieved of the Jews — even the stones and trees which were harmed by them…The stones and trees will want the Muslims to finish off every Jew.”

Nothing could be clearer than that promise of another holocaust — and promised explicitly on state-run Palestinian television, a public megaphone of the Palestinian Authority, itself the beneficiary of past and apparently promised future American financial aid.

Still, don’t hold your breath that the passive/aggressive sheik is about to lead a pan-Islamic army a few miles across the border to “finish off every Jew,” since he might then end up like Sheik Ahmed Yassin, whose threats of death earned him instead an early paradise.»

He goes further in examining the Islamist’s gripe, but I think you know where it goes. If the calls to behead and drink blood weren’t a conscious construct, it would sound like the delusions of a madman cornered by his own past and his manhood. One thing is certain, it isn’t an act on behalf of the poor or oppressed.

Zyklon B meets LSD

Neo-Nazis support Cindy Sheehan in her quest for her own personal international affairs policy.

Let The World Know That White Patriots We're First & Loudest To Protest This War For Israel

We don't want leftist Johnny-come-latelys who are misleadingly protesting this war as if the war is about oil (not true), or as if it's right-wing patriots who launched this war (not true) to hijack the issue from us.

We want to challenge these leftists with the fact that their leftist leaders, like Hillary Clinton, are on the same War for Israel team as the cowardly Republicans who have been bought and paid for in the Senate, House, White House, and Media by the Jewish Neocon political machine.

Now wouldnt it be grand fun to watch one group of hate spewing authoritarians meeting another one? Confronting each other in common cause? Hilarious.

P.J. O'Rourke on leftists' pedantic epithets

I have often been called a Nazi, and although it is unfair, I don't let it bother me. I don't let it bother me for one simple reason. No one has ever had a sexual fantasy about being tied to a bed and sexually ravished by someone dressed as a liberal.

Give War a Chance

…oddly, the war doesn’t look so bad to those closest to it

muses Rich Tucker (while Rusty Humphries brings home snapshots of prisoner cells from his visit to Guantánamo).

“Those of us who actually have a chance to go out and go on patrols and meet the Iraqi army and Iraqi police and go on patrols with them, we are very satisfied with the way things are going here,” Capt. Sherman Powell told the Today show recently. “We are confident that if we’re allowed to finish the job we started, we’ll be very proud of it, and our country will be proud of us for doing it.” Finishing the job is the key.

A popular bumper sticker claims, “War is not the Answer.” But that depends on the question. If the question is: “How can we eliminate Saddam Hussein, a man who killed 300,000 people, and replace him with a democratic government that we may be able to deal with?” then war was the only answer because, without the invasion, nothing would have changed in Iraq.

More dissecting of the left's implicit assumption that any soldier who sees live fire immediately transforms into Mahatma Gandhi

Despite the left's implicit assumption that any soldier who sees live fire immediately transforms into Mahatma Gandhi, military members, by and large, are hawks

Ben Shapiro points out.

In truth, the left would regard military control of foreign policy as an unmitigated disaster. In the view of those like Michael Moore, the only good American soldiers are those who are unemployed or dead. Soldiers are only good if they aren't fighting, since America's wars are always wrong and America's soldiers are war criminals. (An added side benefit: If those soldiers never see combat, they, too, can never be foreign policy hawks -- service in non-active combat roles doesn't count in the leftist view.) Dead American soldiers are good since they can be used as pawns by foreign policy doves: body bag pictures and grieving mothers -- all of it undermines American morale and support for strong foreign policy. Dead soldiers can be cast as "victims," and their corpses cynically used as clubs against America's foreign policy. In holding itself up as the great defender of victimized military members, the left denigrates the courageous choices made by military members every day. Deciding to enter the armed services isn't a choice the left understands, but it is a choice -- an honorable, brave, praiseworthy choice. The leftist claim that soldiers are victims means that they are boobs and ignoramuses, incapable of choosing a lifestyle that risks death in defense of American freedoms.

Implicitly, then, the "chickenhawk" argument rejects all options aside from civilian pacifist control of American foreign policy. If all soldiers are victims, too stupid or ignorant to make up their own minds about joining the military, how can we trust them with foreign policy? And according to the "chickenhawk" argument, civilian hawks cannot control foreign policy. The only ones left are complete pacifist loons like Michael Moore and Arianna Huffington. How convenient!

And convenience is what the "chickenhawk" argument is really about. Pacifists don't want to discuss real foreign policy issues -- they want to call names. If you can't win over the populace at large, the only solution left is to stifle the argument. That's what "chickenhawk" is about. At the end of the day, "chickenhawk" is morally and intellectually chicken.

Italian Red Cross: boxed in by lefty warzone stunts and cruel insurgants

Fox News: “Italian Red Cross Hid Iraqi Insurgents in Exchange for Kidnapped Workers”

«Italy's Red Cross treated four Iraqi insurgents with the knowledge of the Italian government last year and hid them from U.S. forces in exchange for the freedom of two kidnapped aid workers, a top Italian Red Cross official said in an interview published Thursday.

Maurizio Scelli, the outgoing chief of the Italian Red Cross, told the Turin newspaper La Stampa that he kept the deal secret from U.S. officials, complying with "a nonnegotiable condition" imposed by Iraqi mediators who helped him secure the release of Italians Simona Pari and Simona Torretta. They were abducted in Baghdad Sept. 7 and freed Sept. 28.»

Clearly they were motivated by the fear of being targeted by terrorists, and confused as to how to practice the Hippocratic Oath. On their mind surely must have been the memory of an Italian agitator and emotional blackmailer in the guise of a journalist, compromised, and perhaps even in collusion with the enemy… That bit of political kabuki theater became a sign that as far as the terrorists are concerned, that Italians could be made manipulated by them. What’s lost is the respectful distant necessary to practice medicine in conflict could be undermined.

They seem to also have been acting out of fear of reprisal by those same insurgents for having contact with Iraqi authorities and the Coalition:

«"Keeping quiet with the Americans about our efforts to free the hostages was an irrevocable condition to guarantee the safety of the hostages and ourselves," he told La Stampa. He said Letta agreed.»

In other words, the kidnapping worked. The hostage-takers succeeded in scaring them into concealing the affair from authorities, and got their way with people who are only there to help the people these terrorists pretend to represent.

- Thanks muchly to Nicole.

Doesn’t it hurt? Don’t they get headaches?

Campaigns and expressions of habitual revision tend to verge on the ironic, like much of the angry left has. Take for example the graphic below. On one level it makes a nice t-shirt graphic for the expression of gayness (as if that by itself was some sort of virtue), but where I have seen it mostly is in the context of anti-corporate movement silliness. As if the plank for your home hade music CDs could be made by a beekeeper…

Selling hoagies bad. Being treated like a Hoagie or any other inanimate object good… Being a homophobic far leftist - bad if not worse - any way you shake it.

Empowered Victimhood – if that makes any sense to you please let know how.

Alas it gets better – even the Prison Fellowship is chiming in on another area of leftist headbanging: how is it that prostitution (sorry, that’s “sex work” now) can be ‘empowering’, but still cause misery, human trafficking, and other things that turn the core of a being into little more than a commodity. On every level it’s worse than someone selling their organs.

«In an article titled “Prostitution Gives Me Power,” the fashion magazine Marie Claire praised the lives of three “sex workers” in Holland for “using their bodies to foster trust, compassion, and happiness in the world.” One woman said that working for a brothel or escort business allowed for a connection because “you’re there for a couple of hours” and “talk much more.” Of course, any sort of “connection” she may think she’s making is a false one. The transaction is commercial; she is a commodity to be purchased. And no matter how she packages that, it’s dehumanizing.

As Ambassador John Miller, head of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons at the State Department, wrote in a letter to Marie Claire, “[W]here prostitution is legal or illegal but tolerated, there is a greater demand for human trafficking victims,” because local women don’t view prostitution as “legitimate or desirable,” and so “crime networks fill the void.”

Moreover, says Miller, recent academic research in nine countries “found that 57 percent of women in prostitution were raped, 73 percent were physically assaulted, and 68 percent [qualified] for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.” Eighty-nine percent of those women said they wanted to “escape” their situation.

“The U.S. Government has come to oppose legalized prostitution,” Miller wrote, “not only because it is inherently harmful and dehumanizing, but also because it creates a thriving marketplace for victims of human trafficking. This connection cannot be disregarded if we are to be serious about ending modern-day slavery.” And that’s why it’s so important that you and I continue to urge implementation of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000. It is up for reauthorization this year. There are still problems we need to address more strongly.

The number of persons trafficked across borders is between 600,000 and 900,000. And estimates of the number trafficked into the United Stated ranges from about 15,000 by government records up to 50,000 according to anti-slavery activists.

Now, don’t think that legitimizing prostitution as a “good” to be sold is simply the argument of magazines like Marie Claire. When Bill Bennett and I first approached the Clinton administration in the mid-nineties to get them to stop sex trafficking, we ran into a stone wall. The feminist position was, believe it or not, being accepted, that this was empowering women. Slavery—empowerment? That’s a dangerous newspeak, but it’s exactly what we’re up against in this culture. And it’s the reason that Christians today have to fight against modern-day slavery. This is a human-rights abuse that must be ended.»

It seems painfully obvious that a large part of the whole feminist political movement is trapped in a rhetorical train-wreck by the “empowerment/slavery” paradox which resembles a complex of the psyche. To maintain the fiction of their causes they have to pass it on to their college recruits. It’s an irresponsible meme to pass on to a group of people who are increasingly able to hook up, but increasingly incapable of being trusted or loved, and are bing modeled into this to advance an obsolete .

Next comes the habit, the unending, repetitious desire to regulate for what the shallowest of thinkers determine to be a ‘greater good’. From Spiked-Online via John Ray’s excellent PC-Watch blog:

«…there is a new strain of moral opprobrium spreading through the body social. We all have an ever-swelling inventory of things we feel we ought not to do - both because lobbies or pressure groups suggest they damage the common good and because our friends might like us less if they knew we did them. Green campaigners tell us to question whether we really ought to take long-haul flights. Health campaigners invite us not to give sweets to one another. Safety campaigners insist we drive at much lower speeds. There is a censor at every corner.

This universe of one-issue agit-prop has one abiding, perhaps under-noticed feature. And that is what we might call insatiable incrementalism. As restraints on behaviour are ever more formalised in the name of the common good, so lobbies have a habit of not disappearing. Indeed, even though the world, by their lights, may have been measurably improved by the success of a particular campaign, their politically monotone clamour can remain as loud as ever.»

With internal contradictions that great is it any wonder that psychiatry is still a great business?

Do I see hair plugs?

Photo courtesy of those wild and wacky drink-soaked former Trotskyist popinjays for WAR

Trouver Dieu et perdre la boule

De quelle religion vous sentez-vous le plus proche ? Plus de 50% des participants disent être plus proches de la religion du meurtre institutionnalisé. Bon, on prend l'imam et on recommence.

Welcome to my world, Lance

Slimy, but nothing new.

The French are vermin ...

... and not to be trusted.

Yet another Peter Paul and Mary Party of Canada.

No, not Greens. These children-injured-within are a new Canadian Political party has been formed, and might last longer than 4-5 weeks before phobic strangeness sets in. The “Cosmopolitans” are busy promoting fuzzy spirituality and greenie Luddism, and are a sort of ‘Links Partei’ for the cold, perpetually angry north. I’m not surprised. This should give the left of center liberal party which is otherwise still rather loony a bit of relief by siphoning off the most embarrassing of the lot. I’m sure they were hoping that the Green Party will do the trick, but they were too single-issue to include everything that will magically come in the Age of Aquarius.

I have NEVER heard of a political party promoting religion in North America before, even if it is an undistinguishable blob, let alone something resembling a cult based on the handout at an Interfaith meeting in a Unitarian Church basement.

Basically it amounts to nothing. People who wouldn’t hurt a fly from one leftist cultural faction convince another one that everyone who looks like them has good intentions (unless they’re white), largely because on their stated confession, or the religion of their childhood.

Either way they think they can second guess what someone will think, do, and feel based on their religion, skin color, and nation of origin. This makes them slightly bigoted morons. And of course, this is haram.

After all, never mind the man behind the curtain who fits their notion of what “the oppressed” are supposed to look like.

With a big ol’ “call to action” for the Aquarians, you can be sure that if they represent anything, it’s a political faction easily manipulated from the outside in the form of nondescript International pity. Let’s show them, say, some smiling Taliban faces, explain to them their poverty, and get them their very own proponents on Parliament Hill.

Now, if you'll excuse me, this whole story makes me want to release the Chi from my lower intestine.

How to get them to read you in EUtopia

Why don't protestors abide by the Geneva Convention?

They are after all, "at war" against something all the time...

From Opinion Journal’s “Best of the Web” we find out that war protesters have learned nothing from the most foolish form of Vietnam war protests, and also prove themselves to be hypocrites. Don’t believe these folks for a second for a second when they say that they “support the troops but oppose the war.”

CNS reports on the left’s form of opposing political ideas by spitting on soldiers in a new way. In an objectiveless acting out of their own emotions, they are camping out in front of military hospitals where injured soldiers are recuperating. Projecting their feelings in the wrong place, they surely realize that soldiers don’t declare wars, they fight them, and have a Geneva convention to abide to. They can’t, after all, taunt their injured enemies after they’ve been pacified.

«The Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., the current home of hundreds of wounded veterans from the war in Iraq, has been the target of weekly anti-war demonstrations since March. The protesters hold signs that read "Maimed for Lies" and "Enlist here and die for Halliburton."…

Code Pink Women for Peace, one of the groups backing anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan's vigil outside President Bush's ranch in Crawford Texas, organizes the protests at Walter Reed as well…

Kevin Pannell, who was recently treated at Walter Reed and had both legs amputated after an ambush grenade attack near Baghdad in 2004, considers the presence of the anti-war protesters in front of the hospital "distasteful."

When he was a patient at the hospital, Pannell said he initially tried to ignore the anti-war activists camped out in front of Walter Reed, until witnessing something that enraged him.

"We went by there one day and I drove by and [the anti-war protesters] had a bunch of flag-draped coffins laid out on the sidewalk. That, I thought, was probably the most distasteful thing I had ever seen. Ever," Pannell, a member of the Army's First Cavalry Division, told Cybercast News Service.

"You know that 95 percent of the guys in the hospital bed lost guys whenever they got hurt and survivors' guilt is the worst thing you can deal with," Pannell said, adding that other veterans recovering from wounds at Walter Reed share his resentment for the anti-war protesters.blockquote>The Code Pinkies don’t seem to actually oppose the war, they simply oppose anyone who represents anything they don’t agree with. Regardless of how they feel about a nation’s policy, soldiers don’t get to make the same choices and have the same judgment as the Code Pinkos until their reenlistment date comes up.

But none of this matters to leftist offended not so much by policies and actions, but by what they imagine represents it, in the exact same way the Symbionese Liberation " a Army?<>had no actual tenets except for some vague and shortsighted factional racist concepts, but wanted to murder cops.

Already a bestseller in Sarcelles

French university press (PUF Presses Universitaires de France) publishes a 400+ page book compiling the writings of Al-Qaida top brass (Adballah Azzam, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Oussama Bin Laden et Abu Mussab al-Zarkawi.). Le Monde Al-Jazeera on the Seine rushes to provide a FULL PAGE of reviews in their weekly book supplement. The publisher says, "It's not about condemning, it's about understanding."

46... Number 46... Anyone hear from number 46?

Continental Europe is normally heard obsessively with telling itself what a great investment it's made in education, but alas.... They are even often heard jibing the British too for charging a "top up" fee.

Obviously the socialistic approach doesn't work, and doesn't do a thing for the advanced areas of study that could change the human future.

Note too how Canada is made distinct from "The Americas" which seems to only include the United States, and what a damned fine job the British have done.

As the stale old joke goes: I can't say that I've attended number 11, but I have picked their locks.

La Fine Équipe

Lorenzo takes up the defense of Lance Armstrong.

"To all the cynics, I'm sorry for you," Armstrong said after his final Tour triumph in July. "I'm sorry you can't believe in miracles. This is a great sporting event and hard work wins it." Hard work, money, and winning. Three things that drive the French into frenzies of hysterical jealousy.

Nous avons sonné le glas de l’influence française

France has put an end to its own influence.

Same kind of fake, useless, badass

"The West European governments were concerned with the stability", not peace nor justice

As a young reporter covering Communist Eastern Europe during the late 1970s, I had the extraordinary experience of witnessing the birth of the Polish Solidarity trade union movement, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this month

writes Judy Dempsey in the International Herald Tribune.

The French left declined all support because it itself was too close to the former Soviet Communist Party. The French right did not want to foster instability anywhere in Europe. As for German leaders, they feared that a political explosion in Poland would undermine their efforts at détente with the Kremlin, which they believed was crucial for establishing closer ties with Communist East Germany.

"The West European governments were concerned with the stability. They did not want Poland to rock the boat," says [Gienek Smolar], who when living in exile in London had helped garner international support for Solidarity.

Makes you wonder why this guy (rather than the lucid West European peace lovers) is a hero in Eastern Europe and why the Eastern Europeans would join Bush's coalition in Iraq by such large numbers. That cowboy sure was never named for a Nobel peace prize, unlike bona fide pacifists such as Mikhail and the current chancellor of Germany.

Strangely enough, the Easterners have not espoused their Western cousins' view that the great danger to them, indeed to all of humanity, comes from that treacherous Uncle Sam. Graham Bowley points out that

Estonia possesses a new self-confidence as an independent country in the protective embrace of the European Union. This has allowed it and the other new-accession states, led by Poland, to resist Moscow more firmly, and has also encouraged the EU to take a tougher line versus Russia, for example over last year's disputed elections in Ukraine.

Talk is cheap when it comes out of Juan Cole's mouth

Juan Cole, acting like a horses ass treats the death of Steven Vincent like nothing more than a piece of furniture to set his pointless opinions on.
Lisa Ramaci-Vincent, Steven Vincents widow does not take it sitting down:

«I would like to refute this shameful post against a dead man who can no longer defend himself against your scurrilous accusations, a dead man who also happened to be my husband. Steven Vincent and I were together for 23 years, married for 13 of them, and I think I know him a wee bit better than you do.

For starters, Steven and Nour were not "romantically involved". If you knew anything at all about the Middle East, as you seem to think you do, then you would know that there is no physical way that he and she could have ever been alone together.»

Good idea professor beat up on a dead man. Very big of you, spanky. Now go chace Mary Ann.

An excellent storage medium..

...For largely useless college punks who will spend 4 years shilling for WAGS and the Links Partei. The Indy (UK) reports on German student "homelessness" (lack of housing) and a great place to store leftovers from 1968 and their padantic young duplicates. Not to mention, these would make a wonderful time capsule for the amusement of future generations.

Thanks to Minerva the Mad. Minerva - that was me. I was your lovechild.

What’s that funk?

Raffarin pushes for the disposal of Cesare Battisti, a former leftist fantasy terrorist who Mitterand as an ideological cousin gave refuge to from Italy in the hopes that he would behave himself, write books and peacefully forment La Revolución Volient. Looks like he learned to run for the border from the best of them. He's beamed up. When they catch up with him, it'll be:

Boo-bye.

Trouw that.

The Dutch paper "Trouw" conciders homosexuals, asylum seekers, and immigrants to have a "plight" - which is correct. They are the people who are the most pandered to by costly and pointless nanny-state programs. In other words, if you need the government to provide you with familial bonds, then you are one seriously lost soul and a sick puppy.

BORROW A BROTHER

«The Protestant daily Trouw reports on a new service offered by the public library of Almelo, a town in the east of the Netherlands. The library will not only lend you books, newspapers and CDs, but also people. It is acquiring a collection of volunteers who are prepared to meet with clients who are in the same plight and with whom they can share common concerns and experiences over a cup of coffee at the library, Trouw reports.

So far, the collection includes a homosexual, a couple who are the parents of a homosexual, an asylum-seeker, an immigrant, a disabled person, a heroin addict and a German.»

All of a kind? Certainly not, but writer doesn’t seem to realize that the PC fever has gotten the best him (or her, or perhaps even it.)

The Sins of Lance Armstrong

When an American sportsman is involved in an expanding drug scandal, what title should a self-respecting French newspaper use? "The (An) Expanding Drug Scandal"? "Controversy in the Cycling World"? "Lies"? "A Lie"? No: The Lie (emphasis mine).

This in spite of the fact that in its body, the editorial states that "the daily L'Équipe … claims that the man with obiquitous yellow jacket has lied."

Regardless of what turns up in Lance Armstrong's antics or lack thereof, this has all to do with equating Americans with liars, cheats, greedy devils, duplicitous scoundrels, and treacherous hypocrites. (You know, like, say, that fella in the White House — for whom the religion-rejecting avant-gardistes dusted off the expression "original lie".)

Indeed, within the second sentence of this editorial about cycling, sports, and doping, Le Monde had managed to place the name of …George W Bush.

What, not surprisingly, can one read in the comments section of the editorial? "Isn't there something rather typical of the Bushian environment … : cheat and terrorise those who denounce cheating?" Belgium's Michel C adds that the Bushian environment "is not to be confused with the American one". But, as this website has made clear again and again, when and where have there been as many denuncations of the Putinian environment, of the (of China's) Huan environment, of the Mugaben environment, of the Saddamian environment? (Didn't the former president of Iraq have, if memory serves me right, a slight tendency to stretch the truth, once in a while? Wasn't he in the habit of intimidating his opponents somewhat?)

Gratefully, a Tikaf points out the anti-Americanism inherent in the article: "whether Lance is chums with GW Bush is nobody's business but his own." Equilateral adds that the title ought to have been "the sin", the sin being first to have been American and second to have as friend "a certain George W. Bush": "Quickly, the execution pole." Patrick V wonders how the article would have read had the cyclist champion accused been French, while Chaps shakes his head at the "hypocrisy of the journalists who are trying to gain notoriety and shoot down an American" — ce ne sera "pas la première fois et pas [la] dernière"…

Pointing out the "deep-rooted anti-Americanism" and the "undescribable jealousy" in this affair, Stroemer points out that "in your editorial you introduce no presumption of innocence whatsoever. Your accusation and your judgment are categorical and definite: Armstrong is guilty."

A Singular Triumph of Immobility and a Strange Political Status Quo: Running France is above all a conjuring trick

In no major European country have politics remained as frozen since the Cold War's end as in France, where the old guard has proved largely impervious to the remaking of the world

writes Roger Cohen.

Britain got New Labour and Tony Blair with their slick market-oriented makeover of a tired socialism. In Spain, Felipe González's elegant refashioning of the left helped lay the basis for post-Franco democracy.

Italian politics could never be the same after the Berlin Wall fell because the system had revolved around keeping the Communists from power: the vehicle designed to that end, the Christian Democrats, disappeared. As for Germany, it incorporated a collapsed state, East Germany, and seems about to elect a woman raised there.

While all this happened - not to mention the complete reinvention of central Europe - France managed to pass power from a man who first served in government in 1944 to another who first did so in 1967. Even for a country attached to its traditions, this amounts to a singular triumph of immobility.

The passage of the presidency from François Mitterrand to Jacques Chirac was presented as one from left to right, but as Chirac has in general governed as a social democrat the distinction has proved less than startling.

…The result is a paradox: a country more attached to ideological debate than any other in Europe, yet operating in an environment where "left" and "right" are often almost meaningless labels and where governance tends to consist of saying one thing — the state is a force for good — while trying to do another — privatize. Running France is above all a conjuring trick.

It is perhaps because the art of the illusionist has lain at the center of French politics since 1945 — beginning with the depiction of wartime events and the Vichy regime — that it has been easier to maintain the various illusions that have preserved this country's strange political status quo.

But, as the political season begins again in France after the summer break, there are signs of increasing strain. To the left and right, pressures are growing for clearer political positions that would offer the French at least the semblance of a real choice between distinct ideas.

…Michel Rocard, a former Socialist prime minister, put the situation bluntly in a recent interview with Le Nouvel Observateur, saying it was time to "cast Marxist dialect into the trash can" and calling a growing leftist force in the country, the antiglobalization movement known as Attac, "a monument to economic and political stupidity."

His comments had a ring to them. But the fact is … the French are dreamers when it comes to politics, and the success of Attac's ideas, which include dismantling NATO, suggest that the appeal of the quasi-utopian is not about to die on the French left.

As a result, the embattled Socialist leader François Hollande and other moderates like former Finance Minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn will not find it easy to unite the party around a clear message.

After all, the moderates offer only the real world — the European Union, the trans-Atlantic alliance, the market tempered as best it can be to ensure that freedom is balanced with essential support for those who need it. Which French heart will beat faster to such a message?

…But my sense is that the French electorate is tired of such conjuring and wants politicians with the courage to make their views clear. Certainly, the success of Nicolas Sarkozy on the right of the political spectrum suggests the French are finding new merit in clear, declarative sentences of almost Anglo-Saxon ring.

Sarkozy, the interior minister, is trying to do something Chirac has always avoided: spell out what the right wants. He is moving carefully, for tactical reasons, but his influence suggests a time of political candor is coming.

If that happens, to left and right, France will move out of its political torpor. Other countries should then watch out: if France can achieve what it has through decades of conjured immobility, imagine what it could do once unbound.

Freud called it penis envy

Lance went to France, and not to dance. And nobody hates a winner more than a culture of perennial whiners who just cant shut up.

The Lance then lanced:

«"Yet again, a European newspaper has reported that I have tested positive for performance enhancing drugs. Tomorrows LEquipe, a French sports daily, is reporting that my 1999 samples were positive. Unfortunately, the witch hunt continues and tomorrows article is nothing short of tabloid journalism.

The paper even admits in its own article that the science in question here is faulty and that I have no way to defend myself. They state: There will therefore be no counter-exam nor regulatory prosecutions, in a strict sense, since defendants rights cannot be respected.»

L'equipe deserves a spanking, but their editors might enjoy it too much.
Also worth a note, friends, is where TdF buried the actual winner on their website.

Paging Dr. Freud Paging Dr. Fein, Dr. Howard, Dr. Fein

La Fwance under Attac

Used to be that Attac was the talk of the town. It was toasted by limousine leftists and all of Paris' chattering classes and rich neighborhood revolutionaries (ô, les vieux pédés aigris du VIIIème arrondissement) who adored the group's staunch anti-Americanism, unflinching anti-Semitism, and 24/7 globophobic posturing --- until Attac campaigned for the NO vote during the EU Constitutional referendum and was instrumental in literally bringing down the house of the Urine Peein' elite. Now the French Left is trying to figure out what to do with this nihilistic band of Luddites who are preparing to have José Bové©®™ run for Prez'nit of Fwance. Pass the roquefort cheese and that cheap red table wine. I'm gonna kick back and have me a chuckle.

So long screwy, see 'ya in Saint Louey

Certainly not in Lisbon. Oh, the vanity of the now infamous Lisbon declaration: 'to make Europe the world's most competitive and dynamic economy, characterised by sustainable growth, more and better jobs and greater social cohesion, by 2010'. Based on what, exactly?

Global warning

Roger Cohen writing in the IHT brings up about constancy in French politics – the same unchangeabillty that has made economic changed something one can only whisper about. One that holds a nation back. He notes:

«Britain got New Labour and Tony Blair with their slick market-oriented makeover of a tired socialism. In Spain, Felipe González's elegant refashioning of the left helped lay the basis for post-Franco democracy.
[…]
While all this happened - not to mention the complete reinvention of central Europe - France managed to pass power from a man who first served in government in 1944 to another who first did so in 1967.
[…]
The result is a paradox: a country more attached to ideological debate than any other in Europe, yet operating in an environment where "left" and "right" are often almost meaningless labels and where governance tends to consist of saying one thing - the state is a force for good - while trying to do another - privatize. Running France is above all a conjuring trick.
[…]
It is perhaps because the art of the illusionist has lain at the center of French politics since 1945 - beginning with the depiction of wartime events and the Vichy regime - that it has been easier to maintain the various illusions that have preserved this country's strange political status quo.»

Nothing new there, and a perfectly French thing to endlessly discuss in concentric circles, but never do anything about.

«"Our politics are archaic," said Jean-Marie Bockel, the Socialist mayor of Mulhouse and an admirer of Blair. "The Socialist Party is still asking itself if it's social democratic or more radical than that. Marxist ideology continued to be debated. Elsewhere the left has moved on."
[…]
Michel Rocard, a former Socialist prime minister, put the situation bluntly in a recent interview with Le Nouvel Observateur, saying it was time to "cast Marxist dialect into the trash can" and calling a growing leftist force in the country, the antiglobalization movement known as Attac, "a monument to economic and political stupidity."

His comments had a ring to them. But the fact is Attac has attracted 30,000 members in its seven years of existence. Its message that American-driven capitalism, known here as neo-liberalism, is making the world more unequal and more unjust has proved compelling.»

Be afraid, and hide the sheep. You never know what other old habits the old fashioned politicians have.

History as it would have been if we had the left’s view prevailed

Crying leaders who feel your pain, perceived comeuppance, and passive Americans becoming martyrs for other peoples' fanaticism… Alan Dowd writes in the American Enterprise Institute Magazine on what would have been if we had a President that the prigs on the left could love.

«September 20, 2001

In an historic address to a special joint session of Congress, President George W. Bush honored the eight House members, three Senators and 187 staffers, civil servants, and tourists killed on September 11 when United Airlines Flight 93 plowed into the western face of the U.S. Capitol.

Bush refused to characterize the coordinated assaults as acts of war, and took pains to distance himself from comments made by Pentagon officials, who argued that the U.S. should use 9/11 as a rationale for “ending states that sponsor terrorism.” Instead, Bush said that “America’s enemies are the criminals who carried out these attacks—not the states where they hide.”

December 13-16, 2001

Car bombs exploded outside the U.S. embassies in Kuwait City and Ankara, killing 204 people, including 73 Americans. The Taliban government, “acting only as a messenger,” delivered a statement from bin Laden claiming responsibility and issuing another warning: “The battle will go on until the infidel leaves our land. The crusaders know not where we will strike, but we do. We will fight them on our terms and at a time of our choosing.”

Bush announced plans for an international summit on terrorism “to bring an end to this scourge.” The conference will be held in Nevada at Nellis Air Force Base under tight security.

September 11, 2002

In a stirring speech at Ground Zero, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani warned that: “Bin Laden is tearing our civilization apart—people are no longer traveling; colleges look like prisons; our government is in hiding; our allies are turning away; our enemies are mocking us…. I had hoped that September 11 would serve as a wake-up call—and as the high-water mark for terrorism. But rather than spurring us into action, it has trapped us in a cocoon of fear.”

December 19, 2003

Libya tested a missile that brings nearly every country bordering the Mediterranean in range. “Thanks to our North Korean and Pakistani friends, we have matched special weapons with our new rockets,” Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi gushed.

December 24, 2003

Appearing for the first time on live television, bin Laden declared “victory over the infidel.” He mocked Bush for failing to defend the American homeland. “Look at me. I do not hide, but you do. You are the coward, you and your decadent society,” railed bin Laden. “To end this carnage, use your power to remove every last Zionist from Jerusalem.”

April 13-29, 2004

The so-called “Christmas Truce” ended as terrorists detonated a dirty bomb in downtown Chicago.
…
The van was traced to Jose Padilla, an American citizen with links to al-Qaeda. Padilla, a Muslim convert who traveled to Pakistan, arrived in Chicago sometime in 2002. However, federal agents lost him soon after his arrival. “As he came in, CIA should have handed him off to FBI, but bound by civil-liberties safeguards, the agencies were not allowed to communicate with each other,” conceded one Justice Department official.

September 11, 2005

The Washington Post published excerpts of Rumsfeld’s memoir Defeat Without War. According to Rumsfeld, “The enemy is not only bin Laden. The enemy is the regimes that spawned and nurtured him…. When the masters of terror came together to wage a global guerilla war against us, we ignored history’s lessons on appeasement and failed to take the fight to the enemy. Our cities then became battlefields, by which time we had already lost this war.”

Peace activists protested the release of the book at the Manhattan offices of the book’s publisher. According to their spokesman, “Rumsfeld’s martial language presents an obstacle to the only viable solution to this tragedy: apologies and aid transfers to disrespected Islamic nations.” They underscored their commitment by daring to move their protest outdoors—where they exposed themselves for more than an hour to the potential dangers of New York City’s now mostly-empty streets.»

Peace, love, and driving them into the sea

Peace will only come when a Palestinian bus driver says to another Palestinian: “you ain’t gittin’ on my bus!”

In the mean time the looting begins,

«Thousands of Palestinian police and troops are maintaining their positions outside the empty settlements in a bid to stop the looting of property left behind and to enable Israel to fulfill its pledge to raze vacated homes. »

So don’t come a knocking when the house is rocking. They are the high point of civilization, aren't they?

You mean, he only called for that now?

He's been procrastinating if you ask me. Hell, I called for that as soon as he got into power.

Palestinian Authority (vaporware) honors female terrorists, past and future

Palestinian Authority (vaporware) Ministry of Culture (Ministry of Culture? Must be subsidizing the production of zombie movies) glorifies murderer of 29. Just like Plantu who enjoys glorifying the occasional bent cunt.

Who cares if the critics can’t stand it

It’s worth noting who people world wide and even in the Near East look to when they think of human freedom. The three words photoshopped into the banner for proponents of a free press and free speech are no coincidence.



On the other hand there are those who still kill because they know nothing else.

Why are they hated?

Must be something to do with the way they stink up the place.