Translating clearly

Drinking from Home finds the next European who will likely be marked for death by displaying Islamo-fascist wankers for who they are:

«The footage in I, Muslim shows a reporter pretending to be someone interested in converting to Islam.

One Muslim in the documentary compares Islamic terrorists to Jan Palach, the Czech student who committed suicide by setting himself on fire in protest of the 1968 Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia.

Another says Islamic law should be implemented in the Czech Republic, including the death penalty for adultery, Ovecka says.»

Focusing on the Responsibility and the Ironclad Principles of the Media

There are scoops you must refrain from showing

states Arlette Chabot unequivocally, describing the ironclad principles of France 2 (as spoken to Le Monde's Daniel Psenny) with regards to such affairs as the Bagneux gang and the harm that irresponsible journalism can cause;

the words of [Youssouf] Fofona were provocative and could have harmed the family and the loved ones of Ilan Halami.

The persistent asceticism of the left

Blair makes one short reference to “examining ones’ conscience” in a television interview, and the British press (in their innnnn-finite “tolerance”) howls about religion, at the mere possibility of the use of the word.

Referring to the influence of a “muscular”, “born-again” style America, they miss the point. US affairs aren’t influenced inordinately by religious institutions or figures, it just doesn’t have a bias against and hatred for them.

Pat Robertson, and the “Reverend” Jesse Jackson each only have one vote, and so do I. The existence of either of them puts no-one at a disadvantage.

The BBC made much of material I didn’t happen to hear in the teaser they’ve been flogging:

«So it must come as no surprise to Tony Blair that his remarks - made on ITV1's Parkinson programme - about being judged by God for his actions in Iraq have sparked a storm of protest.

It raises the prospect of inflaming Arab opinion which often links Christian western leaders with suggestions of a "crusade" - a charge already leveled at President Bush.

Others have asked how a Christian can defend war and “sending soldiers and civilians to their death.»

Never mind the fact that it’s ITV’s scoop. Were the same zeal offered to the “freeing of Tibet”, which truly seeks theocracy, then thoughts of heresy, religiosity, and the like barely figure into the conversation at all.
But if a critic is predisposed to try to make an argument that an elected leader is part of some religious illuminati, their mere mention of “consulting ones’ conscience” is a reason to display ones’ fear.

Perhaps they want a PM, or anyone else for that matter to NOT consult their conscience, and to do little more than stick their finger in the political wind. No?
I think they’d prefer a sort of false meritocracy of civil service experts who pass a governance test that is selected, not elected.

Meanwhile Radio 4 returns to it’s regularly scheduled programming of “All Gitmo, all the time”, and peppers it with round table discussions of why privatizing Royal Mail is bad for social justice™ as if it was the business of a state broadcaster to promote a nebulous, inaccessible cult intent on disempowering the people™ with delusions and failed class theory.

Just what you’d expect

Sheep. Goats. Goats and roosters.

Meanwhile, back to exploiting the stupid and helpless, at the movies the love that dare not speak his name has both become “the love that just won’t shut up.”

Double Standards in the Quest for European Unity

While French readers pour scorn on Italy (and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi) for not standing tall with its fellow Europeans and for not having the backbone to follow the quest for "long-term European stability" and for not standing up proudly to that terrible enemy represented by… Uncle Sam, the attitude of the French moralizers during the circus surrounding the Gaz de France affair with Suez comes across as a combination of chauvinism, protectionism, retrogradism, foul play, bullying, deliberate betrayal, and a return to the nation-state so often decried by Frenchmen (politicians, moonbats, or otherwise). And that, not only in Italy but also in Brussels and in Spain. (Incidentally, even France's champion in Italy, Romano Prodi, is ticked off.) The Trib:

It is often the case in international commerce that when a foreign country blocks you from buying their company, it's "protectionism," but when a foreigner comes shopping in your country, it's a potential threat to your "strategic interests." That seems especially true in Europe, where attempts to create a level playing field across the European Union keep running up against chauvinism, unions or simply ignorance.

The latest tussle is over utilities: After an Italian company took aim at the French utility Suez, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin suddenly sensed a great threat to French security and started pushing Suez to merge with Gaz de France. Italy's Industry Minister, Claudio Scajola, rightly countered that the real threat was to the political and economic destiny of the European Union. …releasing free market forces across the entire continent is the whole point of the European Union, and neither France nor Spain has been shy about sending their salesmen on continental shopping sprees.

In a Le Monde article that remained long unlinked, Jean-Michel Bezat, Jean-Jacques Bezonnet, and Jean-Pierre Stroobants report that Belgium's Le Soir is ironizing that "from now on, Belgium's energy ministry will be located in Paris" and that La Stampa's Barbara Spinelli has said that "France is a sick man who is contaminating all of Europe."

Glucksmann on the Islamists' Double Standards Charge: Why Is It OK to Joke About Mohammed and Not About the Holocaust?

While Michel Bôle-Richard takes on the winds of change in Saudi Arabia and Françoise Hirot describes a visit to Petra, André Glucksmann takes on the double standards charge in the cartoon controversy.

Dear Leader says: „Pimp my ride”

The best parody should leave you in some doubt.

In one particularly chilling passage of the tape recordings, the dictator discusses the threat of WMD terrorism to the United States

Saddam Hussein had a habit of tape-recording meetings with top aides

writes the Wall Street Journal.

The former U.N. weapons inspector and experienced Arabic translator recently went public with 12 hours (out of a reported total of 3,000) of recordings in which we hear Saddam discuss with the likes of Tariq Aziz the process of deceiving U.N. weapons inspectors and his view that Iraq's conflict with the U.S. didn't end with the first Gulf War.

In one particularly chilling passage, the dictator discusses the threat of WMD terrorism to the United States and the difficulty anyone would have tracing it back to a state. With the 2001 anthrax attacks still unsolved, that strikes us as bigger news than the DNI or most editors apparently considered it.

In another disclosure, The Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes was told by about a dozen officials that Harmony documents describe in detail how Saddam trained thousands of Islamic radicals in the waning years of his regime. So much for the judgments of many in the intelligence community--including Paul Pillar, the latest ex-spook to go public with his antiwar message--that the secular Saddam would never consort with such religious types.

Their idea of Grace.

Agora reports and translates reports of this great act of the falsely “faithful”:

«A group of Moslem males have tried to get at the daughter of one of the 12 cartoonists who drew the cartoons of Muhammed at her school. The political spokesman of the Liberals, Jens Rohde, revealed this during an interview with TV-Avisen while explaining his and the Prime Minister’s attack on the business community in Denmark, charging that they have put profits over Freedom of Speech.

Not at school

Rohde says that the 12 cartoonists have had their lives overturned and are now living in hiding, after receiving several death threats.

"And a daughter of one of cartoonist was sought out by 12 Moslem males - they were looking to get to her. Fortunately she wasn’t at school," Jens Rohde said.»

Is that the love these thugs have for their faith? Trying to abuse and molest those that offend them, and failing that, their blameless children?

This is how they honor the Waqf (awakening)? They are barbarians. Enough said.

Service notice: Agora has posted two updates incorporating translations of statements by the Police intelligence service and an interview with one of the parents.

We'll take the head, we'll take the ass, we'll take the whole damn thing

Terrorist Mama pissing and moaning that they want her son's head.

“You can believe in stones, as long as you don’t throw them at me”

This is inspiring and revealing. Memri TV captured an interesting exchange. An exchange between Arab-American psychologist Wafa Sultan and a religious supremacist on Al-Jazeera.

When in doubt, offend everyone.

...but only if they have it coming to them.



[Source]

With thanks (I think) to Geert and Molly in Flanders. (No. Not Moll
Flanders. Sheesh.)

"We cannot have two Wests. Europe needs America and America needs Europe"

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, addressing a joint meeting of Congress here Wednesday, warned sharply against what he said was a "politically dangerous" tendency in Europe to stand apart from the United States

writes Brian Knowlton.

"A conception of European unity founded on a fanciful wish for self-sufficiency would be morally suspect and politically dangerous," he said, according to an English-language version of a speech delivered mostly in Italian.

His comments appeared to be a scarcely disguised slap at the ideas of President Jacques Chirac of France, who has supported the notion of a "bipolar world" in which the European Union and the United States serve as counterbalances.

Italy and France are locked in a bitter dispute over Paris's decision to block a possible Italian takeover of a French energy company.

"The West is, and shall remain, one," Berlusconi said. "We cannot have two Wests. Europe needs America and America needs Europe."

The line brought a standing ovation.…

He ringingly endorsed some themes closely associated with President George W. Bush, who had met with Berlusconi before leaving Tuesday for South Asia: the importance of expanding democracy, human rights and free markets through the world.…

Berlusconi said that only through the common efforts of every democracy "will we be able to free the world form the threat of international terrorism, from the fear of aggression by the forces of evil."

The reference to "forces of evil" echoed language often used by Bush.

The prime minister, whose support for the war in Iraq has strained Italian relations with some European countries, said that he had worked to ensure that "the European Union did not weaken its ties to the United States in reaction to events in Iraq."

"For the same reason," he added, "we cannot ignore the danger that a united Europe might seek to define its identity in contrast to America."

Berlusconi called for a fundamental reinvigoration of the Atlantic alliance, a strengthening of NATO, which, he said, "must remain the fundamental instrument to guarantee our security."

Traduction: «gauchiste»

You mean those two pasty old tarts are still alive?

Good on Nick Cohen for calling Gilbert and George and the BritArt boor-erati onto the mat for what it is: inconsequential.

"It's so cowardly to attack the church when we won't offend Islam":

«Burbling critics agreed. Gilbert and George still get a 'frisson of excitement' by including 'f-words, turds, semen, their own pallid bodies and other affronts to bourgeois sensibilities' in their work, wrote a journalist with the impeccably bourgeois name of Cassandra Jardine in the Daily Telegraph. 'Is it the perfect Christmas card to send George Bush at Easter? Yeah, yeah,' added groovy Waldemar Januszczak of the Sunday Times.»

It’s the UK we’re talking about here – there’s never a shortage of artists talking in circles realizing uninventive results. Having sought a apparent cachets of decadence, sincerity, and default free-speech advocats, they've become interchangeable with any number of other artists with nothing to say about the world. Nick Cohen, again:

«The fear of being murdered is a perfectly rational one, but it is eating away at the cultural elite's myths. In the name of breaking taboos, the Britart movement has giggled at paedophilia (Jake and Dinos Chapman) and rubbed salt in the wounds of the parents of the Moors murderers' victims (Marcus Harvey). It can't go on as if nothing has happened because the contradictions between breaking some taboos but not others are becoming too glaring.»

Do the denizens of that echo-chamber really think the public care to see them chasing the mice in their heads and see artists talking about themselves anyway? Sorry, guys – Van Halen weren’t thinking of you when they wrote “Hot for Teacher.” Now that they have little to say to the public, one has to wonder just who is it they’re talking to?

Aouai! Du da! Lern mal ‘ne bissel Englisch!

Who's in your little wheel now, Mr. Critic?

Arent you thankful that a waste of ink can keep taking cheap shots at the western world without having his hand chopped off?
Prager:

«If you wish to test the thesis that the Left blames those blown up for being blown up by Muslim terrorists, have your son or daughter at college ask some liberal arts professors who is to blame for 9-11 or Muslim suicide bombers in Israel, etc.

In fact, one way to describe the moral divide between conservatives and liberals is whom they blame for acts of evil committed against innocent people, especially when committed by non-whites and non-Westerners. Conservatives blame the perpetrators, and liberals blame either the victims' group or the circumstances.

We Americans are used to this. For decades, liberals have blamed violent crime in America on racism and poverty, i.e., on American society far more than on the murderers, rapists, arsonists and muggers themselves. Conservatives blame the criminals. »

Let's See; What Photo Shall We Choose to Illustrate the Cover of Today's Le Monde?

While we're at it, let's take a(nother) potshot at the CIA…

If this doesn’t make you want to drink on the job, I don’t know what will.

Melanie Phillips speaks to the too-often seen intersection between Islamist, the far left, and fascists. The thing is that it’s often not just a case of sympathy and misguided concern for non-whiteness as a determinant in one’s position in the class of victim superiority, but a case of common cause. Quoting Michel Gurfinkiel on the sorry state of the common French understanding on the human condition:

«The attraction of the French far left, which accounts for another 20% of the national vote, toward Islam, rabid anti-Americanism, and even anti-Semitism, a phenomenon underscored by the emergence of Dieudonne, a former liberal music-hall humorist who has turned into an enormously popular French equivalent of Louis Farrakhan. Dieudonne, the son of a black Camerounese father and a white French mother, claims that Jews were the main European slave traders in the 17th and 18th centuries. He refers to civic and educational programs about the Holocaust as ‘memory pornography.’ He has welcomed the electoral victory of Hamas in Palestine. According to the philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy, he is in moral terms ‘Le Pen's son.’»

Still haven't reached for that bottle of gin under the seat of the forklift? There's this, perhaps.

«Recently, Le Pen’s strategic adviser Jean-Claude Martinez has said that the National Front...

[Gurfinkiel] must adjust to globalization, forget about some of its founding myths, like ‘Joan of Arc fighting an alien invasion,’ and welcome immigrant blacks and Arabs into the national fold.

This is because, Gurfinkiel suggests, the far right in France is not monolithic but is in the process of fracturing into neo-fascists like le Pen and more traditional Christian right-wingers:

[Gurfinkiel] Neofascists think Jews and Americans are the chief enemy, rather than Arabs and Muslims. In a way, they even tend to celebrate Arabs and Muslims as fellow fascists. As for Christian right-wingers, they see Arabs and Muslims as the chief enemy. For years, Mr. Le Pen has been pretending he is a Christian right-winger rather than a neofascist and that resistance to Muslim immigration is his major concern. Now he has emerged on the side of the neofascist branch and is ready to drop the anti-Muslim issue.»

In other words, they've drunk the left's Kool-aid, and love it, love it, love it becuase it's just as undemanding of reason as the supremasist drivel. Oddly enough, all roads point to Heeb-killing becoming the European public’s spectator sport again, except for those willing to fracture the faction that they normally vote with. It's a sort of "regime change", if you will.

As such, I agree that just as the angry left constantly bleats, we need to under-staaaand the enemy better. I would imagine that a through autopsy would be sufficient.

For France and U.S., a Frisson of Good Will

Although Roger Cohen lists 10 developments that have led to improved ties between America and France, he never dwells upon the fact that such friends of Paris (and such paragons of virtue) as Russia, China, and Zimbabwe never had any frayed relations to need mending in the first place.

Felicitations and oink oink.

Have a pleasant and fruitful National Pig Day

Many thanks to Tom P.’s tremendous silliness

and of course for his Photoshopping.

File under: freedom

With thanks to Agora

Jyllands-Posten reports the release of a grand manifesto by a group of writers and a call to print it in the free presses of the world.

Excerpts:

«We, writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular values for all.

[...]

To counter this, we must assure universal rights to oppressed or discriminated people.

[...]

We reject «cultural relativism», which consists in accepting that men and women of Muslim culture should be deprived of the right to equality, freedom and secular values in the name of respect for cultures and traditions.

[...]

We refuse to renounce our critical spirit out of fear of being accused of "Islamophobia", an unfortunate concept which confuses criticism of Islam as a religion with stigmatisation of its believers.»

Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Chahla Chafiq
Caroline Fourest
Bernard-Henri Lévy
Irshad Manji
Mehdi Mozaffari
Maryam Namazie
Taslima Nasreen
Salman Rushdie
Antoine Sfeir
Philippe Val
Ibn Warraq

Charlie Hebdo has urged other papers to print it in solidarity.

Artists who have suffered opression and fascism and fought for freedom.

"There was a policeman in the mind of every Iraqi"

"Oppression is our past. This is about democracy, I must continue."

Muayed Naima, 1951 - 2005 - Iraqi Cartoonist.

With thanks to Diane.

How about a pitcher of Yuengling and a Hawaiian pizza?

Heyna, or no? Founders of 60s era BBQ and Pizza shop should have been more sensitive. They should have had mind penetrating radar. They should have, well, been pushovers...

Denmark Relishes the Support From Its Nordic Brothers

As Finland cracks down on its cartoonists — entering the cartoon controversy by showing as much fortitude as it did in Soviet days — and as Swedes (don't) mark the anniversary of the assassination of Olof Palme, Ivar Ekman reports that

Despite the strong historical and cultural links the countries share - and their centuries of close cooperation, known here as "Nordism" - Sweden and Norway have carefully chosen to distance themselves from the conflict engulfing Denmark.

This, some politicians now say, means that even the pretense of a special relationship between the Nordic countries should be given up.

"Nordism is bankrupt," Carl Hamilton, a member of Parliament for the Swedish Liberal Party, said in a telephone interview. Hamilton said he was "ashamed" of how the Swedish government had handled the crisis, adding: "As soon as it faces a real conflict, poof! - the solidarity is gone."

…Aftonbladet, the biggest Swedish newspaper, recently published an editorial describing Denmark as "the most prejudiced, bigoted and narrow- minded country in Western Europe." [France's largest national daily has been just as courageous.]

In Denmark, none of this has gone unnoticed, and commentators say that it has fueled resentment.

"This has made an already tense relationship, especially with Sweden, even sharper," said Erik Meier Carlsen, an editorial writer with the Danish newspaper BT. Carlsen said that many Danes felt Swedish criticism over Danish immigration policy had become unreasonable and aggressive, and that Persson's statements were generally viewed as "very arrogant."

"There have always been differences of opinion between Sweden and Denmark," he said in an interview, "but before it was generally good-humored. Now it is getting much more nasty, and that's something new."

Danish and Swedish critics of the Swedish government approach are drawing parallels to another perceived betrayal - when Sweden failed to support Denmark during a war with Prussia and Austria in 1864. Even convinced "Nordists" are beginning to show despair.

In my book, I write that Sweden has been prompt to wag its finger at the American democracy; during World War II, it was less eager to lecture to Nazi Germany.

"I think we could see a renaissance for Palme," said Gustav Fridolin, a 22- year-old political wunderkind who represents the Green Party in the Swedish Parliament. "I think young people today have a great engagement in international politics, in global justice, and in that Sweden again should have a active role in this struggle."

We sure attract some real winners here.

«Il n´y a jamais eu d´exécutions en masse en Irak sous Saddam.»

Said one anonymous commenter on this post.

He drools further:

«Saddam était un dictateur qui de temps à autre éliminait un, deux ou une dizaine d´adversaires (plus quelques kurdes) certes, MAIS Bush en 32 mois d´invasion irakienne a tué proportionnellement bien plus d´irakiens que Saddam en 24 ans de pouvoir.

Mais peu importent les raisons de cette guerre : l´essentiel est que les GIs s´amusent en Irak. Comptons les points.»

Okay, sparky, PROVE IT.

Les 'GI' are just being entertained. Do you think that throughout the past 20 years, all 'zee GIs' have been ze same soldiers? And as long as you’re trying to engage in comparative non-Euro-ness, and looking things up in unfamiliar things, like, books ‘n stuff, who are THESE PEOPLE, punk?

Greenies and the world of tomorrow

There’s really nothing new about the same old scare tactics being recycled for the past 40 years,

but there is a high cost. Keep up the delusion that policies driven by popular myths are good for society and successful, and you’ll start to hear announcements calling things “yet another successful 5 year plan” just to keep up with an population made increasingly loopy by further promotion of the same nonsense back to them.

Have a nice fear-ridden day.

War is never the answer

No, wait, the war is now about, about, um...

First it was “about oil”, then it was about “avenging an old enemy for daddy”, then it was about WMDs, then it was about imposing faith, then it was about...

If you listen to the sort of people who try to explain away everything they disagree with, you’re likely to hear amusing but unreliable tales of woe, notions that everything supporting their view of the world being linked together, and evidence of mass-murder, unilateral warfare against Kuwait and Iran, funding Hizballah, Hamas, and Jihadist miscreants having no linkage.

You will hear the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament having advocated for Saddaam who wanted nukes, and for Iran that wants nukes.

You’ll never hear this, though:

«There's more. Indeed, as late as 2000, Saddam can be heard in his office talking with Iraqi scientists about his ongoing plans to build a nuclear device. At one point, he discusses Iraq's plasma uranium program — something that was missed entirely by U.N. weapons inspectors combing Iraq for WMD.

This is particularly troubling, since it indicates an active, ongoing attempt by Saddam to build an Iraqi nuclear bomb.

"What was most disturbing," said John Tierney, the ex- FBI agent who translated the tapes, "was the fact that the individuals briefing Saddam were totally unknown to the U.N. Special Commission (or UNSCOM, the group set up to look into Iraq's WMD programs)."

Perhaps most chillingly, the tapes record Iraq Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz talking about how easy it would be to set off a WMD in Washington. The comments come shortly after Saddam muses about using "proxies" in a terror attack.

9-11, anyone?

In short, let us repeat: President Bush was right. We had to invade to disarm Saddam — otherwise, he would have completely reconstituted his chemical, nuclear and bio-weapons programs when inspectors left.

Saddam probably knew better than to use them himself against the U.S. But it's likely he wouldn't have hesitated giving one or more to terror groups with which he had routine contact.»

You see, the war was about anything but a mass-murderer who opaque to the world sought to dominate his people, neighboring states, and use terrorist to do the dirtiest of his dirty work.

It could only be about the theories western academic leftist could imagine, because suddenly if it weren’t, they would be wrong for once – and they aren’t capable of dealing with that. So it HAD to be about something else. It just HAD to.

Tense atmosphere in Paris this evening

Of course, when successive French governments abandon entire portions of the population to the savagery of appeased brutes who live and breath anti-Semitism, then France gets what it deserves.

France's very real problem ...

... with Institutional anti-Semitism is covered by an excellent post at Adloyada.

Answer: only those stupid enough to believe in France

The grassroots French, who are too tired and cowardly to do the work themselves, long ago sub-contracted out their anti-Semitic dirty deeds to up-and-coming French citizens that breed on the other side of the Paris ring road. Mark Steyn asks the question, "In five years' time, how many Jews will be living in France?".

My closing response was "nik yemek"...

This evening on French State TV, France5, during the weekly news debate show called 'Ripostes', representatives of France's intellectual elite did their best to beat back the obvious: that France has a real, and probably irreversable, problem with anti-Semitism. Suburban French kids are rudderless? It's because they are humiliated by unemployment. Suburban French kids are alienated? It's because they have no visible role models in the French media. Suburban French kids are violent? It's because they are reacting to US actions at Abu Graib. Suburban French kids are anti-Semitic? It's because they are anti-Sionist and acting in solidarity with their poor Palestinian brothers. "La haine du juif est une métaphore du mal-vivre", perle lachée par Esther Benbassa. The final word was spoken by a French rapper with the group 'New African Poets': "Inch Allah".

Police blotter

12 February : 2 twenty somethings are arrested for kidnapping the mother and brother of French rapper 'Booba' [Ed. - somewhere in a shithole suburb of Paris].
13 February : A 49 year old man in Montrouge [Ed. - suburb of Paris] is discovered dead on his bed. His hands and feet are bound and his mouth id stuffed full of neckties.
15 February : A 30 year old Asian women, gagged and blindfolded with masking tape, is thrown from the 3rd floor of an apartment in La Courneuve [Ed. - a true shithole suburb of Paris].
16 February : Doctors, dentists, and nurses demonstrate in Vénissieux [Ed. - suburb of Lyon known for Islamic extremism; at least one of its residents wound up at Gitmo] against repeated muggings and robberies (3 since December).
16 February : A man is shot and killed in his car when he stops at a red light in the suburbs of Montpellier.
17 February : A black BMW stops in front of a jewelry store in central Marseille. The driver gets out and uses a traffic barrier to bash through the storefront. An accomplice, wearing a ski mask, uses a rifle to kill the store owner by shooting him in the head. The attackers flee without robbing any jewelry. Marseille police state that this is the third attack of this kind in the last month.
18 February : 2 people are arrested in Lagny [Ed. - need I repeat, shithole suburb of Paris] for kidnapping a 22 year old man 3 days earlier. The victim is beaten and robbed of several hundred Euros. Police put it down to violence between Zaire gangs.
18 February : A man wearing a ski mask bursts into a supermarket in Yerres. He fires several pistol shots in the air, hits 2 employees and douses them with gasoline and threatens to set them on fire if they do not open the safe. He gets away with 26000 Euros.

Source : Marianne magazine no. 462, 25 February

Just a typical French day-at-the-office

Anne Barth, a French social worker in Schiltigheim (suburb of Strasbourg), was victim of an anti-Semitic attack on Friday morning. At 10AM, two men entered the medical center where she works and asked her if she was called Anne Barth. She was then hit and had her head slammed against a table. The attackers then wrote the word "Mohamed" on her stomach and scrawled "dirty Jew" on the wall before they fled. The victim is not, in fact, Jewish. Police indicate that the attackers were "d'origine maghrébine" (just an other way for the French authorities to say French without actually using the word -- [désolé, bande de pédés, ces animaux sont 100% fwançais pur porc, faudrait l'assumer.]).

Anything to do with the fact that they watch Al-Jazeera and Al-Manar 24/7?

Uncanny. There is no way you are going to keep those sophisticated French in the dark. No sir. A just released newspaper poll reveals that 69% of French feel an increase in racism in their country (only 57% feel that anti-Semitism has increased).

France 2006

French Jews are disguising themselves to not be recognized as such. The scariest thing is that this sick, animalistic society that is France has not yet touched bottom.

Comme diraient Eric et Ramzy, "nous ne voyons pas d'autre explication"

The French suburban populations that spawn this violence are justifiably seen as animalistic. The much read Powerline spreads the word côté States.

Jénine-sur-Seine

Trop contents de se faire un juif, on voit à quel point, les résidents de certaines banlieues parisiennes, pas peu fiers d'habiter des zones de non-droits, font preuve d'une animalité rarement vue en dehors de la Palestine.

They who suffer no fools.

Stifla, Emile!

The moral rationale of cultural relativism is a plea for tolerance and respect of other cultures — with one exception

Something is obviously going terribly wrong here. The logic of relativism is taking Western academics into dark waters. They are now prepared to countenance practices that are obviously cruel, unnatural and life-denying, that is, practices that offend against all they claim to stand for.

…The moral rationale of cultural relativism is a plea for tolerance and respect of other cultures, no matter how uncomfortable we might be with their beliefs and practices. However, there is one culture conspicuous by its absence from all this. The plea for acceptance and open-mindedness does not extend to Western culture itself, whose history is regarded as little more than a crime against the rest of humanity. The West cannot judge other cultures but must condemn its own.

Since the 1960s, academic historians on the left have worked to generate a widespread cynicism about the nature of Western democracies, with the aim of questioning their legitimacy and undermining their ability to command loyalty

writes Keith Windschuttle (thanks to Sock Pocket of Doom), who concludes that

The truth is that the riots, the arson, the death threats were not spontaneous outbursts from passionate religious believers but were carefully stage-managed by Muslim leaders. The imams of the Danish Muslim community consciously ignited the response some four months after the cartoons were published. They travelled to the Middle East where they generated support for a campaign quite deliberately targeted at Western culture's principle of freedom of expression.

Their real aim is not religious respect but cultural change in the West. They want to prevent criticism of its Muslim minority and accord that group special privilege not available to the faithful of other religions. Instead of them changing to integrate into our way of life, they want to force us to change to accept their way of life.

Muslim rage over the cartoons is not an isolated issue that would have been confined to Denmark and would have gone away if nobody had republished them. It is simply one more step in a campaign that has already included assassination, death threats and the curtailment of criticism. And our response, yet again, has been one more white flag in the surrender of Western cultural values that we have been making since Khomeini's fatwa against Rushdie in 1989.

The Western concept of freedom of speech is not an absolute. The limits that should be imposed by good taste, social responsibility and respect for others will always be a matter for debate. But this is a debate that needs to be conducted within Western culture, not imposed on it from outside by threats of death and violence by those who want to put an end to all free debate.

The concepts of free enquiry and free expression and the right to criticise entrenched beliefs are things we take so much for granted they are almost part of the air we breathe. We need to recognise them as distinctly Western phenomena. They were never produced by Confucian or Hindu culture. Under Islam, the idea of objective inquiry had a brief life in the fourteenth century but was never heard of again. In the twentieth century, the first thing that every single communist government in the world did was suppress it.

But without this concept, the world would not be as it is today. There would have been no Copernicus, Galileo, Newton or Darwin. All of these thinkers profoundly offended the conventional wisdom of their day, and at great personal risk, in some cases to their lives but in all cases to their reputations and careers. But because they inherited a culture that valued free inquiry and free expression, it gave them the strength to continue.

Today, we live in an age of barbarism and decadence. There are barbarians outside the walls who want to destroy us and there is a decadent culture within. We are only getting what we deserve. The relentless critique of the West which has engaged our academic left and cultural elite since the 1960s has emboldened our adversaries and at the same time sapped our will to resist.

The consequences of this adversary culture are all around us. The way to oppose it, however, is less clear. The survival of the Western principles of free inquiry and free expression now depend entirely on whether we have the intelligence to understand their true value and the will to face down their enemies.

The moral rationale of cultural relativism is a plea for tolerance and respect of other cultures — with one exception

Something is obviously going terribly wrong here. The logic of relativism is taking Western academics into dark waters. They are now prepared to countenance practices that are obviously cruel, unnatural and life-denying, that is, practices that offend against all they claim to stand for.

…The moral rationale of cultural relativism is a plea for tolerance and respect of other cultures, no matter how uncomfortable we might be with their beliefs and practices. However, there is one culture conspicuous by its absence from all this. The plea for acceptance and open-mindedness does not extend to Western culture itself, whose history is regarded as little more than a crime against the rest of humanity. The West cannot judge other cultures but must condemn its own.

Since the 1960s, academic historians on the left have worked to generate a widespread cynicism about the nature of Western democracies, with the aim of questioning their legitimacy and undermining their ability to command loyalty

writes Keith Windschuttle (thanks to Sock Pocket of Doom), who concludes that

The truth is that the riots, the arson, the death threats were not spontaneous outbursts from passionate religious believers but were carefully stage-managed by Muslim leaders. The imams of the Danish Muslim community consciously ignited the response some four months after the cartoons were published. They travelled to the Middle East where they generated support for a campaign quite deliberately targeted at Western culture's principle of freedom of expression.

Their real aim is not religious respect but cultural change in the West. They want to prevent criticism of its Muslim minority and accord that group special privilege not available to the faithful of other religions. Instead of them changing to integrate into our way of life, they want to force us to change to accept their way of life.

Muslim rage over the cartoons is not an isolated issue that would have been confined to Denmark and would have gone away if nobody had republished them. It is simply one more step in a campaign that has already included assassination, death threats and the curtailment of criticism. And our response, yet again, has been one more white flag in the surrender of Western cultural values that we have been making since Khomeini's fatwa against Rushdie in 1989.

The Western concept of freedom of speech is not an absolute. The limits that should be imposed by good taste, social responsibility and respect for others will always be a matter for debate. But this is a debate that needs to be conducted within Western culture, not imposed on it from outside by threats of death and violence by those who want to put an end to all free debate.

The concepts of free enquiry and free expression and the right to criticise entrenched beliefs are things we take so much for granted they are almost part of the air we breathe. We need to recognise them as distinctly Western phenomena. They were never produced by Confucian or Hindu culture. Under Islam, the idea of objective inquiry had a brief life in the fourteenth century but was never heard of again. In the twentieth century, the first thing that every single communist government in the world did was suppress it.

But without this concept, the world would not be as it is today. There would have been no Copernicus, Galileo, Newton or Darwin. All of these thinkers profoundly offended the conventional wisdom of their day, and at great personal risk, in some cases to their lives but in all cases to their reputations and careers. But because they inherited a culture that valued free inquiry and free expression, it gave them the strength to continue.

Today, we live in an age of barbarism and decadence. There are barbarians outside the walls who want to destroy us and there is a decadent culture within. We are only getting what we deserve. The relentless critique of the West which has engaged our academic left and cultural elite since the 1960s has emboldened our adversaries and at the same time sapped our will to resist.

The consequences of this adversary culture are all around us. The way to oppose it, however, is less clear. The survival of the Western principles of free inquiry and free expression now depend entirely on whether we have the intelligence to understand their true value and the will to face down their enemies.

Any "apology" would be too contemptible to accept.

«The cartoons have nothing to do with Freedom of Speech.»

says the Turkish government. So reports the Danish blog Agora.

The reception of these arguments is yet another sign that most Europeans lives in a self-referential hell that they’ve made for themselves. Imagine anyone taking seriously this announcement from the Turkish foreign ministry:

«The Danish government must distance itself from the Muhammad cartoons published in Jyllands-Posten and make an apology.

Otherwise, no bridge-building with the Islamic world is possible, says the official spokesman of the Turkish Foreign Ministry following the European Unions’ request for Turkey to act as a mediator.»

This, in spite of the fact that others still aver as loudly as possible that no apology, however misplaced would not be adequate.

Still we find this non-abeyance to logic: the Danish Government could only speak for Jyllands-Posten if they had editorial control over private newspapers. Though this seems okay in the ham-fisted vision of the supremacists of the Umma, it is silly beyond belief to anyone with a mind.

The question really is what it has been for the part 30 years: how will these pan-islamist sypms who tacitly support religious hegemony find a way to live with the rest of the world?


Spurious artwork by Ken. Free speech by the enlightenment.

"A Wonderful Führer"

"Führer" is nothing but the German word for "leader", but since Adolf's time, needless to say, the term is never used for German leaders — or for the leaders of other countries, for that matter.

For Germany's mainstream media, however, as Davids Medienkritik explains, there is one exception…

Speaking of Germany, don't forget to visit the Carnival of German-American Relations…

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Iranian cleric blames west for mosque attacks in Iraq

Oooh, lookie, it’s the Newthh! (and check out the tricky "bust a move" camera moves too.)

Lost in all of this is the fact that pitting Shi’ites and Sunnis to create chaos was a Fedayeine strategy.

Cyberjihad

Direct from Paris.

As predicted

Even before the savage is brought back to Fwance the French touchy-feely sympathy media machine has gone into full swing. Libération PropagandaStaffel bleats that the suburban population is unjustly stigmatised and French cable TV news repeats 24/7 that the suspect, who admits to the kidnapping, torture, and murder, denies any anti-Semitic intent.

UPDATE: Just 10 minutes ago on French cable TV i-Tele some jackass from an umpteenth French Human Rights group was moaning that this guy cannot be extradited from the Ivory Coast without violating his human rights. The French media machine is in overdrive in what is shaping up to be a succesful bait-and-switch on who the real victim is here as they quelch all media echos of anti-Semitism in this affair.

What, me anti-Semitic?

Seven Hours' Flight, Seven Hours' Waiting for the Train, 15 Hours By Rail, a 20 Minute Car Ride: "Hard to Find a Place Further Removed"

While the world is wailing at Abu Ghraib, Marie Jégo tells us that Mikhail Khodorkovsky's life goes on with little help from his lawyers…

In other news, Ariane Chemin explains that to the French, the head of France's Muslims is a Muslim and to the Muslims, he is a Frenchman: in other words, Dalil Boubakeur is the perfect Muslim.

A battle of the wits with the unarmed

EURSOC also discusses a slideshow of hateful imagery at Transatlantic Intelligencer. John Rosenthal asks why Serguei and Plantu's work resembles that of the Nazis more than that of a handful of cartoons from Denmark.

Got Ice?

Faith, Madness, and Spontaneous Human Combustion

Via Biased-BBC: “Drinking from Home” explains why sucks not appear to be from a designated social class to the mainstream media.

It really takes effort for the media to show that much stupidity.

This is the enemy they find so vile?

Even a handful of decent souls on the message board of Indymedia who are sympathetic to Ilan Halimi’s death get shouted down by a crank who thinks he sees fascism everywhere, even in the death of an innocent man at the hands of scumbags.

Then again, maybe he doesn’t see it everywhere – only under every Star of David, American flag, and box of Wheaties.

In effect, they’re all the same. Like the schoolyard-Marxists of the far-left, fascists have no faith in people. Not caring for a civilization that they can’t rule with impunity anyway, they resort to wheedling details and use scare-quotes to protect their chronically dysfuntional world-views from collapse.


>

French Documentary (Yet Another One) to be Shown by Al-Jazeera

That stunningly objective documentary on the Saddam Hussein trial that Arte broadcast last Fall has caught the attention of that stunningly objective network called Al-Jazeera. Back in September, No Pasarán brought you the full details on the film that poured scorn on the "American occupiers" while turning Saddam Hussein into a stoic character of resistance.

As it happens, French TV fare seems to be of great interest to Arab television stations, notably cartoons and… documentaries. Emmanuelle Erbsman, head of Arte's rights department, confirms that her clients

appreciate the distinct tone in French programming.

(You can almost see her raise her nose and sniff in self-contentment.) Al Jazeera and MBC's 03 company were so intent on snatching up the Jean-Pierre Krief documentary that the rivals drove up the prices, with the $10,000 that eventually settled the deal being double the usual price.

With anti-American fare like that we are used to seeing on French TV, no wonder that Al Jazeera has bought over 20 French documentaries since 1999.

George Clooney Movie Again Makes the Cover of a Leading French Daily

What is the most important event on the past 24 hours, one that warrants an over-sized photo on the cover of Le Monde, i.e., a supposedly serious and objective newspaper dealing with vital international affairs?

Well, if there is a Hollywood movie castigating America's reigning neoconservatives coming out, then that would be it. And so we have an oversized picture from the Participant Productions movie Syriana with an accompanying article on the "cinema of responsibility". (Notice that the translator has mistranslated a phrase in the final paragraph of Thomas Sotinel's interview of George Clooney: the actor must have said "We [liberals] were against the witch trials" in the McCarthy era, but this has been translated as "We… were against the trials of witchcraft.")

The only other photo on the cover is an ad for the Terrence Malick movie The New World; the only other image, a Plantu cartoon.

This, of course, is only the second Hollywood-movie-that-happens-to-demonize-Uncle-Sam's-policies to happen to make the cover of a French daily in seven weeks.

Post riot payoff pittance promptly plinked

Not fantasist enough, it seems:

«Unions and students in France plan to take to the streets today in nationwide protest over Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin's proposal to loosen the country's labor market.

Fifty-two percent of the French are against the bill, which introduces a new set of work contracts for those younger than 25, a survey of 1,056 people by polling company LH2 in French newspaper Liberation showed. Among those between 15 and 29 years old, 56 percent are against the new contract, according to the poll.»

First of all, why would one need work contracts in the law at all? When you’ve still got malaise, listening to “students” and unions is societal suicide.

We are defined in their eyes by one simple word: "infidels."

Brigitte Gabriel:

«The most important element of intelligence has to be understanding the mindset and intention of the enemy. The West has been wallowing in a state of ignorance and denial for thirty years as Muslim extremist perpetrated evil against innocent victims in the name of Allah.

I was ten years old when my home exploded around me, burying me under the rubble and leaving me to drink my blood to survive, as the perpetrators shouted “Allah Akbar!” My only crime was that I was a Christian living in a Christian town. At 10 years old, I learned the meaning of the word "infidel."

I had a crash course in survival. Not in the Girl Scouts, but in a bomb shelter where I lived for seven years in pitch darkness, freezing cold, drinking stale water and eating grass to live. At the age of 13 I dressed in my burial clothes going to bed at night, waiting to be slaughtered. By the age of 20, I had buried most of my friends--killed by Muslims. We were not Americans living in New York, or Britons in London. We were Arab Christians living in Lebanon.»

Failing that, someday the world will one day say thanks for nothing. It won’t be coming from the unremediably angry extreme left, but from the population at large whom we would have failed by letting the vanity which we confuse for nuance and sophistication get in our way.

«Tolerating evil is a crime. Appeasing murderers doesn't buy protection. It earns one disrespect and loathing in the enemy's eyes. Yet apathy is the weapon by which the West is committing suicide. Political correctness forms the shackles around our ankles, by which Islamists are leading us to our demise.»

Brigitte Gabriel, by the way, is from Marjayoun, a christian town leftist wankers kept referring to as a town as being held prisoner by the Israelis. The propaganda bleated to the ignorant outsiders was so successful, that they even had "rights" organizatons convinced that the natives of the area who were trying to defend themselves from being attacked solely for their religion needed to be hunted down in Europe and sent back to a certain death.

“Racist” Food

Only among the fevered mind of leftists would a charitable act never be good enough – not at least if you can’t hate your own society:

« The temperature on the street had dropped to minus three and the homeless stood in knots of two or three, blowing on their hands to relieve the bitter cold, as plastic bowls of steaming soupe au cochon were prepared.

"Hot wine?" asked the elegant blonde woman behind the table. But before anything could be served, the police arrived flourishing an order from the local authorities in Strasbourg to shut down the mobile soup kitchen.

The scene has been repeated all over France in recent weeks after complaints that extreme Right-wing groups have been serving "racist" food.»

As if religion and race were interchangeable. Too bad smoothe old Sammy isn’t around to tell ‘em to get over themselves. Meanwhile the law is forced to enforce PC stupidity, eliminating local identity for the sake of the new European order:

«You may have heard about the Identity Soups. These traditional pork soups are distributed in several towns in France and Belgium by Identity associations that are wishing to help their compatriots living in poverty.»

Local fayva!

Prefer as one might less some controversial proteins, say, from polyurethane, hating your own society without a real cause has always had a certain psychological role to hater himself – it makes him or her believe themselves distinct, separate, and better than everyone around them, their elders, their friends. It’s emotional cover for their own personal failures. It’s a form of malignant narcissism which never wants to see itself healed for fear of being heard and loved by strangers. The lack of disquiet means that others don't have to worry about you, and as a result don't pay attention to the fact that you've done nothing to deserve their attention.

The problem is when these same personal agitators leave the sandbox of their own peevishness and try to get the rest of us killed.

They let him get away

One of the suspects in custody declared, "I attacked him because he was a Jew, and the Jews are rich". French authorities have no other choice than to pull their heads out of the sand their asses and confront the anti-Semitic nature of the crime. The ringleader is believed to have fled to the Ivory Coast. The MRAP (France's local version of the NAACP) claims that suburban kids, as a population, are being given a bad rap.

Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs

Yanks!

Courtesy of Kathy K.

“Publish and be damned”

From an EU Observer commentary:

«Amid all the furore prompted by the publication of the now infamous caricatures in a Danish newspaper one sound has been singularly lacking: it is the sound of European leaders extolling the virtues of free speech.

Instead we have had a whole series of admirably balanced statements such as that from Franco Frattini, the European Commissioner responsible for Justice, Freedom and Security.

[ ... ]

Thus while embassies have burned, European leaders have largely been silent about the role the press plays daily in ensuring that our freedoms are maintained and enhanced.

Instead we have heard the sound of appeasement, of regretful hand wringing, almost as if the phenomenon of a free press, untrammelled by government dictat or religious scruple, was a species of European idiosyncrasy.»

Idiosyncrasies. AKA The Brussels Wank when one is helpless in trying to deal with a primitive world view that's immune to their principles. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the usual lot that never seem to get it still don’t get it.

Other Jews have been kidnapped because for those French kids: Jew = Money

Paris police flubbed the whole kidnapping affair in the early stages when they advised the family, during the first 5 days, not respond to the kidnappers' attempts to contact them. Police also brushed away any talk of anti-Semitism as the motive. French authorities are in full appeasement and do-everything-to-keep-things-calm mode following the November riots and the ongoing cartoon jihad.

Prediction: when this guy gets caught, the French touchy-feely sympathy media machine will go into full swing

Aller Simple

èvreH Hervé متشکرم

It's not because he was Jewish

It's because he was rich. French investigators, while continuing to affirm that anti-Semitism is not a motive, claim that for French suburban kids "Jew equals money". So you see, it's not because he was Jewish. It's because they thought he had money (because he was Jewish). Thanks for clearing that up, guys.

To him "Jew" means "Mo' Money"

Public Enemy

He's shy and became all screwed up following a spell in prison (after falling in with a bad crowd). The French press continues to hush up the truth about the most sought after fugitive in France and the home grown suburban Paris Jew hatred behind the grisly murder.

Fear of a Jewish Planet

Le Malade Imaginaire

Encore plus marrant que Smaïn en train de jouer Molière, notre nouveau rebeu Malade Imaginaire s'appelle Mourad (non, pas le connard à casquette qui passe à la radio).

Mourad Benchellali, (Libération PropagandaStaffel calls him a "Lyonnais d'origine algérienne", which means "French" when double-talking French media types don't want to admit as much), spent 2 months in an Afghan training camp and was present during a visit from Ossama Bin Laden before 9-11. He's now crying a river of tears about his recent internment at Gitmo and is talking up the usual Manchester Manual rubbish to anyone who will listen. Among other recurring fantasies are the episodes of torture and the dunking of Corans in any available toilet facilities.

Don't provoke them by telling the truth

In Fwance, only the far-right bogey-men can be guilty of killing Jews. Muslims never think about doing that kind of stuff.

He was provoked.

Why not? France feels closer to Hamas and Hezbollah anyway

They could replace the French.

Per Nyholm sees thorough the madness

The Danish blog Agora has translated articles from Jyllands-Posten which definitely of interest to those of us who slept through Danish class in school.

Addressed to the Indonesian President, Per Nyholm (who authored the “We are being pissed upon” article) takes Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono up on his word. The BBC fawns over Yudhoyono, probably because he talks the right talk when prompted to stroke their lefty sensibilities when it comes to “tolerance” and “diversity”, but does a U-turn with any other audience.

«You complain, Mr. President - with no small justification - about the Islamophobia of The West. In connection with that, some have complained of a drawing of Muhammad with a bomb-like turban as being the most offensive. Very well, what do you think hurts Islam the most? The cartoon or this: that millions of viewers watch crazed and savage madmen decapitate their victims with knives or slaughter thousands of innocents, Moslems included, from New York to Iraq and Bali?»

Read it all. Also take a look at the Nyholm’s view of what he sees when he looks into the mind of those in that culture of complaint, and finds something familiar to Danish history:

«Both Munch and Scavenius preferred not to hear about concentration camps or the mass murder of Jews and Hitler’s political adversaries. They would much rather hear about amazing German triumphs, of the German economic miracle and of new autobahns.

[ … ]

That is a road of tears which in no small part is due to Islam remaining the core of a society which increasingly came under pressure, ending in a state of fossilization and single-minded regard for The Beyond; a contrast to The West which is increasingly focused on the here-and-now. These people shall now, by the hands of manipulating religious leaders, suffer a new, unnecessary defeat.

[ … ]

Another perceived injustice will burrow into the Arab mind, a harsh diet for people not motivated by democracy and freedom but divine justice.»

Le Monde finally runs an American cartoonist

Surprised at the subject? LM runs Ann Telnaes the pseudo-sophisticate who always has an attitude but rarely has a narrative or a point.

She's in good company.

Not lost in translation

Sounding more childish than bitter, André Fontaine presents an ‘anaylsis’ in Le Monde Al-Jazeera sur Seine which is about as unchallenging as a group of ‘the oppressed’ all nodding at each other, trying as best they can not to look happy with the world:

«Against the temptation to do as they would in old Europe [George Washington], wrote to his/her friend Lafayette: "We threw a seed of freedom and union which will germinate little by little in all the land. One day, on the model of the United States of America, therewill one day be a 'United States of Europe'. It will one day be the legislative mechanism of all nationalities."

[Pierre Hassner] wanted to say that, where his distant predecessor dreamed of a peaceful democratization of planet, George W Bush thought it perfectly legitimate to resort to force to advance (these/his) ideas.

Some successes were certainly had: in Morocco, where life has humanized; in Kuwait, Jordan, and in Libya, where Kadhafi become docile, in Lebanon, where the Syrian supervision is more and more openly defied. Certain Saudis finally started coming clean and showing some transparency.»

I really doubt that George Washington ever hinted at transnationalism, or 'one world government' to anyone, or that what you could call what the Syrian were doing in Lebanon 'supervision'. But in any event... it’s time for Fontaine to take another hack, and make another improbable comparison. Failing that and he has to make the US' mention of participatory government both flawed and inadequate.

«But the difference is in ancient Rome, which conquered without scruples, and whose gods were not necessarily paragons of virtue, American Rome is of foundation a Messianic nation. "religion merges there, wrote Tocqueville, (...) with all the feelings that the fatherland gives birth to; that gives him a particular force."

A particular [implying an annointed] force, certainly, but not sufficient to impose its law on nations that don’t want it. If they quickly passed from the worship of the proletariat to that of golden calf, the White House did not find the means of bringing political freedom to Russia and China.

Already engaged in Afghanistan and Iraq, not to speak of the five year war with Al-Qaida, the United States are eager to intervene in Iran or North Korea. It explains the peace that the new Persian president feels, which draws down on the oil and gas reserves that rich countries cannot buy, openly challenges Israel and the West, and pushes ahead with its’ nuclear program.

However there is not just him [Ahmedinajad] and Hamas to play the spoilers. The installation of a Fidel is underway in Venezuela, which also has oil to sell him, and Bolivia is returned to its former Indian Masters.

George W. Bush can no longer believe that he’s the only Master of the world, and recently announced military appropriations won’t change that... Wilsonianism becomes much more difficult to practice when it is been discredited.»

It's curious who he manages to make responsible for any political event in the world, both because the US intervenes at all, even if it's just by representing the concept of participatory government, and is also wrong for not doing enough. Does he really believe that the Maya, a society so obsessed with human sacrifice that it self-destructed, were in fact good little socialist who loved their people? One would think he would rather try to whitewash socialism of that rather apt comparison.

Fontaine's analysis certainly is a useful one - of his own emotional projections.