To Arms! Brothers Dear! Gird on the Trenchant Brand! Strike Home! Strike Home! No Craven Fear! For Home and Native Land!

A short article of mine was published in CHAB News, the quarterly newsletter of the Confederate Historical Association of Belgium.

"La Louisianaise" (CHAB News, Volume XXXV # 1, mars 2007, p 11-12) speaks of the place of music in the Civil War era while showing the influence of immigrants' homelands on soldiers of the 1860s.

While Germans from Baltimore adapted Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum, turning the Christmas tree song into a patriotic tune (Maryland, My Maryland), Louisiana soldiers took La Marseillaise and adapted the words (in English) to the situation in the 1860s.

Al Gore Carbon-Neutral Speech Thingy

Nobody seems to believe the Draft Gore poster is real. T'is indeed! Thank goodness, it allows for so many parodies (cheers to Mamapajamas with inspiration by K T Cat)…

A "big ball of humanity, rolling around, limbs and heads sticking out of it": More science fiction from Christopher Cook…

Damn Those Catholic Priests and… When You Think About It… Religion in General!

No; much better to entrust our children to our schools (preferably secular) and to our teachers…

Better dead than Red

... too bad Sarkozy wants him to be read.

« Parmi ceux qui sont en prison
Se trouvent nos 3 camarades
Berselli, Planquette et Simon
Qui vont passer des jours maussades

Vous êtes tous trois enfermés
Mais patience, prenez courage
Vous serez bientôt libérés
Par tous vos frères d’esclavage

Les traîtres de notre pays
Ces agents du capitalisme
Nous les chasserons hors d’ici
Pour instaurer le socialisme

Main dans la main Révolution
Pour que vainque le communisme
Pour vous sortir de la prison
Pour tuer le capitalisme

Ils se sont sacrifiés pour nous
Par leur action libératrice.»

Al-Assad feels the lurve

Deep penetration.

Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week

Le Che reçoit une balle entre les deux yeux

Nice shot. Getcha a case of Polar beer for that one!



.. and there are more where that came from. Thanks to The Elohim.

Did you ever feel like you'd been cheated?

EU leaders to French and Dutch voters suckers: we don't need your stinking NO votes!

Can you smell what the French are cooking ?

In Madrid They're Mens' Bikes

In among the worn out middle-aged whores are scads of bike rental stands. Inasmuch as they've seen some more use than usual, they didn't sell (rent) like hotcakes. In fact, todays transit strike was a write-off, and a victory for the forces encouraging the dismemberment of individual responsibility.

One paper recommended along with the suggestion that people sleep at their jobs, ollerbading or skatebordingr at ones' peril on the “charming” cobblestone pavement. Good luck with all that.

The Sarkozy's split up and the French preSS still puts an American slant on it

Noël Mamère, France's other bushy mustached American hating globophobe (who spends his time arranging illegal marriages for criminals), declares that "It's time to close the book on the Americanisation of French public life".

"I have sworn before a picture of the old and mourned comrade Stalin that I won't rest until I see these capitalist octopuses annihilated"

Did [Che Guevara] keep a picture of Josef Stalin at home?

asks Benjamin Duffy.

Che's idolatry is bad enough, but it's even worse that Stalin was its object. Che once signed a letter to his aunt as "Stalin II," and even placed flowers on Stalin's tomb when visiting the USSR in 1960. If Che wanted to follow in the footsteps of his hero, he succeeded brilliantly.

…The future T-shirt icon … proclaimed to the press that his ideal societal model was Kim Il-Sung's North Korea. North Korea has been arguably the most unlivable spot on earth since the end of World War II. Guevara traveled there in 1965, saw the brutality and poverty with his own eyes, and then made it his goal to import that system to Latin America. As a champion of the poor, Che aspired to emulate a society that truly benefits its poorest inhabitants -anyone not named Kim Jong-il or Kim Il-Sung.

Most of the whining about Che's death seems to revolve around the fact that he was executed without trial, and that it was carried out by another one of those "U.S.-backed dictatorships" that they talk so much about. Well, that's true. Che was executed without a trial, and our country's relationship with Bolivia was one of many deals with the devil consecrated during the Cold War. Leftists always have a problem with U.S.-backed dictatorships, but never with Stalinist and Maoist stooges like — well, like Che Guevara.

…Actually, Che was a big fan of execution without a fair trial. As he once remarked, "To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary...These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution! And a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate."

…So Che executed hundreds of people, and he's the hero. Felix Rodriguez executed Che, and he's the villain. Whose face belongs on a T-shirt?

Deep in the Gallic soul

Deep in the Gallic soul resides the notion that work is exploitation, a ruse concocted by American robber barons, best regulated and minimized and offset by hours of idleness. The demise of the Soviet Union left France leading the counter-capitalist school.

Thus speaks Roger Cohen in his article of Christine Lagarde, France's finance minister aka "the anti-Descartes by declaring the French should think less to work more."

In an interview, Lagarde says that more than two decades at a U.S. corporation taught her: "The more hours you worked, the more hours you billed, the more profit you could generate for yourself and your firm. That was the mantra."

The equivalent mantra in the French bureaucracy might be: The fewer hours you work, the more vacation you take, the more time you have to grumble about the state of the universe, and the smarter you feel, especially compared to workaholic dingbats across the Atlantic with no time for boules.

Socialist Striking to get More than Others

To have similar work condition as the general public is not acceptable to transit workers, who are, as it is, already civil servants, are accorded with benefits employees and businesses have to struggle to create under legal mandates and a desire to do well by people. The public is NOT amused.



After the first wave of people clearing out of the city early on, all stations look abandoned as the 8 p.m. shutdown rolled around.

Don't forget that this is the country where college students protested in order to get their first job guaranteed for life. But from whom?

In effect, everything and its opposite is prima facie evidence of a U.S. government conspiracy

While Le Monde and Plantu chose their special ways to commemorate 9-11 and while French TV (both cable and public) chose that day to broadcast all sorts of interesting "documentaries" on American history, past and present, John Rosenthal comments on Medienkritik's report of Germany's public television ZDF TV "honoring" that sixth anniversary by the prime-time broadcast of a "documentary" in the Michael Moore mold, replete with conspiracy theorists and blame for America.

When the ZDF "investigators" manage finally to cast doubt upon one or another of even the most ludicrous arguments of the "theorists," moreover, it is only ever after a seemingly immense intellectual effort -- when simple common sense ought to have sufficed.

…in the earlier segment [of September 11, 2001: What Really Happened], the fact that U.S. authorities did not shoot down [the first three] passenger jets is supposed to provide prima facie evidence of a U.S. government conspiracy; in the Shanksville segment, however, alleged evidence that U.S. authorities did in fact shoot down UA93 [the fourth jet] is supposed likewise to provide prima facie evidence of a U.S. government conspiracy. This is to say, in effect, that for the filmmakers — as indeed for the "theorists" — everything and its opposite is prima facie evidence of a U.S. government conspiracy.

The final abiding message of the ZDF documentary is that America is, in any case, somehow to blame: if not perhaps for the attacks themselves, then at least for the fact that the "skeptics" believe that America was responsible for the attacks.

…Never once in the ZDF documentary, however, is serious attention drawn to the responsibility of the 19 hijackers who carried out the attacks and their al-Qaida enablers and co-conspirators. The results of a ZDF online poll that appears on the promotional page for the documentary are thus hardly surprising. Asked to identify "who pulled the strings" in the 9/11 attacks, fully 66 percent of respondents, as of this writing, have chosen either "George W. Bush" (26 percent) or "U.S. Authorities" (25 percent) or the "Armaments Lobby" (15 percent). The fourth and remaining choice, "Osama Bin Laden," is given the nod by only 26 percent of respondents.

Masterful Self-Censorship with Élan

France's freedom of the press rating ranks below Ghana's, “missed an opportunity to shut up” Lithuania's, and Costa Rica's at 31st.

Only HE Can Tame the Raging Sun!

At first sight, nobody seems to believe the Al Gore poster is real, thinking it can only be a satire. In any case, the altogether serious Draft Gore website poster keeps getting improved.

After Ché Gorevara, it's (thanks to Dave Runyan) the turn of Al God-ore…

Mais on est tellement mieux avec Bertrand Cantat et Matthieu Chedid

Chuck Berry, supposedly appearing on French TV circa 1965.

The Usual Pedantry

A minority of transit workers plan on paralyzing France, punishing the rest of the population with their demands on Thursday 18 October.

Liberté Chérie says simply:

NON AUX BLOCAGES!
NON AUX PRIVILEGES!

In other words: “eat me”, and urges them to get a life.

Cultural Exception

Too often the French can't think (and speak) straight … English provides freedom of thought and scope of expression, things that French doesn't offer

The pretentiousness and fuzziness are unbearable. Often when I doubt the soundness of a French statement, I translate it into English, and if it still sounds absurd in English, I know it's absurd.

A Frenchman who went to live in the United States before returning to France has been accused of having an "abhorrence of French". Bookaroo replies:

Of course no, I have no "abhorrence of French" as they superficially put it. I belong to the last generation of French kids who had to learn Latin (I had 8 years of it) and to master the inflexible rules of good classical French. In NY I was known as the only French-American in my crowd who made a systematic effort to maintain his practice of the language.

With the few special students I am occasionally willing to instruct in French, I use only plays, especially Georges Feydeau's, or J.P. Sartre's for contemporary French. Both show an exquisite use of French. But in real life in GP, there's nothing that we hear in ordinary conversation or read in ordinary newspapers that can be compared to those playwrights.

What I can't stand is the mangling of the language by all ordinary modern French who've never learnt how to use it, and thus just write or say whatever they feel is understandable. My joke is that the French language is too difficult for the (modern) French. I would estimate that 80-90 % of modern French people don't know the language any more. Only professionals, who have to use French as their main tool — politicians, diplomats, lawyers, professors, bankers, writers — who need to be precise and have mastered good French through disciplined and relentless practice. And their kids, lucky they, directly learn from these proficient speakers. What a rarity and what pleasure to meet a 20-year old who can speak French beautifully and fluently. But all the other kids learn their French from parents who had only limited or bastardized knowledge of it (country people, immigrants, farm and industry workers, etc...) French is a rigid language (another joke: God invented French to torture people's minds), with much less flexibility than English, and much more difficult to use than English. English provides freedom of thought and scope of expression, things that French doesn't offer.

In addition I can no longer stand the pretentious French that is used to sound "serious", "profound", "malin", with flights of mysticism, pseudo-poetry, or often obscure verbosity. The big abstractions in French are unbearably vapid and cloudy (l'amour, la tendresse, la violence, la liberté, la fraternité, l'égalité, la connerie, etc...) all that mawkish sentimentality that has no real connection with people who are only interested in money, sex and food, in that order.

Too often the French can't think (and speak) straight. They don't know how to come to the point and love to go circles around the bush and leave you guessing. They've never been taught to be efficient, to focus and stay with the subject. Digressions, divagations, tangents, etc...the art of obfuscation. I read the Figaro every morning, and often I have to puke at the writing. The pretentiousness and fuzziness are unbearable. Often when I doubt the soundness of a French statement, I translate it into English, and if it still sounds absurd in English, I know it's absurd. That's my limus test. I have 500 books on art and art history, including French art, but I avoid those written by French art historians because of their temptations to sound profound and (to me) totally off their rocker. Not surprisingly the major art books on French art are written by British or American writers (occasionally Australian, as in the case of Robert Hughes).

I do follow the English-language theater in GP, but I avoid its attempts at performing in French. The English-language actors in GP find it exciting to test their ability to perform in French. For them it has great personal value. For me, their exercise holds no interest at all. Better to go to an authentic French play.

This is not abhorrence of French, but abhorrence of the mangling of the language by those who don't know it, and the misuse by those who know it but want to impress their audience by sounding "profond," "serieux," "malin", etc...always trying to make an effect even if they have to torture the language. Swim in ambiguity and fuzziness, sound high-falutin like an angel floating down from the heavens, never say what you mean, and never mean what you say seems to be their implicit principle. The French either don't know how to communicate, and waste an enormous amount of time and energy in conveying their meaning or trying to decipher others' meaning. With huge accidents of miscomprehension along the way. I fled to the US to escape from all this.

This was not the case in the 17th, 18th and even 19th century. The present state of French communication and writing is the consequence of the universal teaching adopted after the French Revolution, and of having to find new teachers for the millions of kids who suddenly had to go to school, teachers who themselves had little grounding in good living French. Those millions of kids are now those shaping up modern French. Where is it going? Who knows?

Meanwhile people who want to communicate clearly, rapidly and efficiently on the modern international scene resort to English. And rightly so.

هُدْنَة

Guy Millière, dans un article publié par la Metula News Agency, pose la question : Vers un cycle de logique suicidaire ?, et annonce la sortie de son nouveau livre, "Houdna".

Lefty Sucks

Need more proof?

Now Suriname wants a U.S. military base, just like its neighbors, Colombia and Peru. Over in Brazil, the military is reasserting itself. With Venezuela on the prowl, these are signs of an anxious region.

Lefty predators threatening violence "for the people." Now isn't that a cute little anachronism...

Last Call for Alcohol, Last Call for Human Rights...

It's all about who you aren't:

These men and women put their own lives and livelihoods at risk by working to rid the world of violence and oppression. Let us hope they survive the coming year so that the Nobel Prize Committee might consider them for the 2008 award.

Yet another European institution disposes of its' sense of proportion and common sense.

In Olso Friday, the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize was not awarded to the Burmese monks whose defiance against, and brutalization at the hands of, the country's military junta in recent weeks captured the attention of the Free World.

He's out

Rock n' roll.

Che Goreva

Plenty of people seem to think the Gore poster can't be anything but satire. It isn't. It's the real thing on the Draft Gore website. But people such as the Lumberjacks have been getting ideas…

Star Gores

May the Gorce be with you!

As Al Gore wins a Nobel Prize, his fans seem to think he is a Jedi Knight come to save the planet…

Update: All that's missing is the moustache, says Spiny Norman (thanks to Ringo the Gringo), while the Lumberjacks, seeing Soviet-era poster "art", add Ché Guevara to the equation and while McGehee and Dave Runyan compare Al Gore to Xenu and even to God himself; in the meantime, Mamapajamas emits her own version…

Pourquoi pas, le ridicule ne tue pas

French citizen posts an online petition calling for a referendum before any French involvement in military actions against Iran. Although the text is meant to deal with French foreign policy, it is loaded with the usual anti-American agit-prop.

Is Bernard-Henri Lévy a Pretentious Fool?

…asks John Rosenthal, noting that the sometime darling of America's conservative circles is not that far to the right nor that pro-American after all…

…it is not unlikely that they would want to agree with [Henri] Guaino's assessment of "BHL" [as a petit con prétentieux] if they knew more about him…

Dude

Liberals are sewing the seeds of their own long-term defeat

This political affiliation will probably end up on the endangered species list within two or three generations

writes Ben Duffy.

Perhaps my great-grandchildren will inherit a world without liberals. What a glorious day that would be.

Hey you dirty bum, stop drooling on my granola

Intolerance in Frisco.

A la Cabaña, lorsque les familles rendaient visite à leurs proches, Che exigea qu'on les fasse passer devant le mur d'exécution maculé de sang frais

Oubliées, les purges, oubliées, les exécutions sommaires, le plaisir sadique des tortures: Che Guevara est un mythe, et un mythe ne peut être que parfait. En réalité, même si la légende à commencé à se fendiller, enfin, à l'occasion du quarantième anniversaire de sa mort ("Che Gevara n'était pas toujours héroïque", ai-je entendu à la radio...) le travail de vérité — sans parler de mémoire — ne fait que commencer.

Ainsi écrit Stéphane.

…Fidel Castro sut exploiter les pulsions sacrificielles de son ancien compagnon en l'envoyant exporter la guérilla dans le vaste monde — et surtout, coupé de tout lien officiel avec le régime. Che Guevara finirait bien par mourir sur un champ de bataille ou un autre; resterait de lui son image inspirée et intemporelle, contrastant avec une dictature cubaine qui n'en finit pas de pourrir encore aujourd'hui. L'homme devint légende grâce à d'innombrables intellectuels de gauche cherchant à éviter l'erreur du soutien passé à Staline: mieux vaut rendre un culte à la personnalité d'un révolutionnaire mort qu'à celle d'un dictateur vivant. Son histoire fut soigneusement épurée et revue, les moments de gloire mis en avant et les périodes sombres gommées ou effacées.

Oasis tell the French, who only expend energy to think about their retirement schemes, "I hope I die before I get old"

“the first refugee from Western Europe since the Holocaust”

The Land of the Moral High Ground.

Commemorating the Death of Che Guevara the Baf Way

While the mainstream media commemorates the 40th anniversary of the death of Che Guevara, members of La Baf, who are fed up with seeing his face all over the place, celebrates El Barbudo's death with a speech, an ode to Felix Rodriguez, a song, and (last but not least) a reconstitution thereof in a Paris park.

Felix Rodriguez meilleur que le Che
Uploaded by Labaf

Filthy Peasants

Typical 'sophistication' in the land of the great, thoughtful, educated, wizzened, oh-so superior masses mob...

Those Damn Fans Will Never Leave You Alone!

In spite of his shades, one of your webmasters is recognized in the Rue de Rivoli, and a pesky fan of No Pasarán asks to have his picture snapped with him.

There is more optimism about success among the battlefield soldiers than present with analysts in Baghdad

Victor Davis Hanson gives us "a real view of the war" (turban tip: Christopher Cook's" The left cares about NOTHING but its own perpetuation post).

"A Militant, a Communist, and a Revolutionary, She Claims to Speak in the Name … 'of All Cubans, Because That Is What They Deserve'"

Nicolas Bourcier treats Le Monde's readers to a typically hagiographic piece on Aleida Guevara, the daughter of Che Guevara.

Bon, Mais C'est Charmant !

Happy Ramadan, man !!!

Straight talk

Kouchner to French preSS correspondants: with regards to Iran, if the word "war" scares you, I won't use it anymore. That doesn't mean that bombs won't be involved somehow.

What's Behind the Straight Talk

The new French "firmness" begins with a terminological overhaul

writes André Glucksman.

It rejects euphemisms and linguistic taboos. If there is a risk of war, it should not be euphemized. Rather, it should be clearly stated and talked about, precisely to stop any escalation, before reaching the "catastrophic alternative."

… Essentially, Kouchner has invited the Europeans to go beyond Moscow's stalling maneuvers at the UN, if necessary. It is said that when the wise man points to the moon, imbeciles only see his finger. When Kouchner talks about "war," many Europeans feel that it is a dirty word fired like a handgun into the subdued atmosphere of respectful negotiations.

Speaking of "the implacable strategy of the scorched population", Glucksman goes on to point out that

We think we know what we are talking about when we speak of "insurgents" and "Iraqization," but we err.

The Spanish guerrilla war against Napoleon, the resistance against Hitler and the anti-colonial insurgencies were first and foremost directed against a foreign army, secondly against "collaborators" and lastly and only sporadically against the people in order to mobilize them by intimidation.

In Iraq, the order of the targets is inversed. American troops are no longer the priority targets. The Americans lost 3,700 of their own in four years. During each of the "hot months" though, over 3,000 Iraqis lost their lives, mainly women and children, blown to pieces not by Americans but by the so-called insurgents. The Americans' frustration is due to the fact that they are facing an adversary who can kill as many of their own as they like, indefinitely, true to the motto "the more of our own we kill, the more you loose."

…Today, homicidal and suicidal bombers are creating the implacable strategy of the scorched population. This is neither a resistance against an invader nor even a civil war, but, more diabolically, a war against the civilian population.

None of this moves the Iranian mullahs, who, through the "moderate" former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, have declared themselves willing to sacrifice 15 million of their own for the theological glory of eradicating the Zionist entity, the necessary sine qua non for the universal hunting down of all crusaders and infidels.

The sacrifice of one's own and oneself, the systematic self destruction of a whole people, are not a new and unknown pathology in history. However, none of these butchers, in their fury, had our modern nuclear toys at their disposal.

To recognize this reality is to recognize why Kouchner was right to talk of war.

Bof, on est tellement mieux avec la variétoche franchouille de merde style Voulzy

Led Zeppelin, live in Paris, June 1969 ...

The Aborigines are Behaving as Badly as ever

I demand a two-state solution:

Geneva - Racism in France is "alive, pernicious and most of its victims are French citizens from visible minorities, not immigrants," the UN's independent expert on minority issues said on Monday.
"Because of the colour of their skin, their religion, their surname or their address, these young people in France see no chance of social mobility" said Gay J McDougall, after a ten-day visit to the country.

Why One Marine Supports the War

Marco Martinez explains the five reasons why he supports the war in Iraq. (They are good enough for me…)

Liberals often like to say that "violence is senseless."

That’s wrong.

Violence isn't senseless. Senseless violence is senseless.

Pegasus Prepares for Project 65

The Normandy bridges linking Ranville to Bénouville were the objective of the British 6th Airborne glider infantry, six of whose gliders landed noiselessly shortly after midnight on D-Day, i.e., six to seven hours before the actual seaborne landings started on June 6, 1944.

Two years to go, and already the Brits are planning to celebrate the 65th anniversary of Pegasus Bridge with Project 65.

Blackwater to the rescue

When the going gets tough, the private sector gets going.

Music to the ears of the left and their preconceived notions about poverty, crime, and military service in America

Jesse MacBeth's answer was music to the ears of the left and their preconceived notions about poverty, crime and military service in America, writes Benjamin Duffy.

Avant garde

Pride and joy and showcase for the late, great EU Lisbon Declaration, Galileo is now so hobbled that it will probably be obsolete before it ever reaches critical mass, if it gets launched at all. Kinda like the EU itself.

Croisade vers la Terre Sainte

Un nouvel extrait de Général Leonardo, Tome II :

Après avoir "embrigadé" un Leonardo réticent et réquisitionné ses inventions militaires pour une nouvelle Croisade, les forces du Vatican, commandées par le général Scharano, mettent les voiles vers Rhodes, bastion chrétien du Proche Orient assiégé par la redoutable armée ottomane. Mais les soldats du Saint-Siège ne sont pas aussi invincibles que ça, et… il y a comme des airs de trahisons…

Publié aux Éditions Paquet, Croisade vers la Terre Sainte (Général Leonardo, Tome II) est mise en dessins par with le talent exceptionnel de Dan Greenberg, secondé par les couleurs magiques de Fred Vigneau (See the cover in real size and order the book from Amazon)…

(PS: in the process of reading the book, don't be too surprized if you chance upon a couple of semi-hidden references to Leonardo the painter's portraits, paintings (famous and less famous), and other works…)

Un autre extrait se trouve en bas de cette page…

État actionnaire et voyou

It's like a French Enron, except that when the French PreSS talks about it, they never use the words "Enron", "capitalism", "greed", or any of the other vocabulary they routinely roll out for their anti-American screeds. ...and remember, when business is booming EADS is a French company, when it's in the crapper it's a European consortium.

Goddamn Leftists, it's as if all they ever thought about was money

Commie slush fund.

Limp dick nation

Someone get the viagra. Message to the French: get used to it, it's structural.

France, Whose Credibility (and Opposition to Uncle Sam) Is Indispensable to World Peace

Au fond, seul le rapprochement avec Washington donne à la diplomatie de Nicolas Sarkozy un semblant de cohérence. A l'heure où l'Amérique remet en cause ses choix de politique étrangère, à l'heure où le rapport Baker prône une nouvelle approche fondée sur le dialogue plutôt que sur le rapport de force militaire, à l'heure où même nos amis britanniques marquent leurs distances, Nicolas Sarkozy fait le choix de l'atlantisme. C'est une décision lourde de conséquence et pourtant, là encore, nulle explication, aucun débat au Parlement.

Ségolène Royal publishes an op-ed article in Le Monde.

Le président de la République serait bien avisé de se ressaisir et de s'inspirer de cette sage recommandation du rapport Védrine : amis, alliés mais pas alignés. C'est en ne cédant pas à la tentation des surenchères et de la politique spectacle que la France, dont la crédibilité est indispensable à la paix du monde, disposera d'une diplomatie forte et écoutée, avant qu'il ne soit trop tard.

When the News Seems to Reflect Negativaly on a Part of Former France, "Louisiana" Becomes "The South"

Remember Hurricane Katrina?

Then, in the French press, it was all about Louisiana, all about the former French state, all about the poor helpless victims.

Now that the news concerns alleged racism and racial discrimination (within Louisiana as opposed to from without, i.e., by Bush's federal government) — relating to the Jena 6 — suddenly Annick Cojean reverts to "the South" and to "Southern justice" in the process of spending an entire page assuring us that nothing less than "America's" racism is at work here while using less than half a sentence to write about the arrest (emphasis mine) "of six black high school kids, accused of beating up a white male".

Sleaze-o-nomics

With nary a peep on the sacred continent itself, and never to be heard over the bleating about Wal-Mart, the same old secretive practice of hiding the weenie:

Just when Airbus looked to be finally flying high with a new management structure and a new order from British Airways, dark clouds began to gather Wednesday with the opening stages of a major insider trading investigation.

Et encore avec le winky-winky, there are sure to be mentions of it having "shades of Enron", but definately not the fact that even before there was an Enron and for time immemorial, European business executives would steal anything that wasn't bolted down, no matter what harm it did to the economy, and the very society they lived in.

the investigation will focus on 21 executives across the three companies involved, who apparently sold EADS shares with insider knowledge that mounting delays and manufacturing problems in 2005 were becoming insurmountable. When the damage became public in mid-June 2006, after the executives had allegedly completed their stock sales, it caused EADS' share price to fall 26% in one day.

The irony is that the people who are screwed by this are mainly small investors and retirees in Europe, and that more than half the reporting on this item comes from outside the "magical kingdom of Shengen."

Peur de Rien

In fact for one lone bookseller far from the beaten
path, the comparisons get even better.

More Subtlety than you can Shake a Stick at

The next time you hear some Euro-oration about how different they are that the Americans, accept the fact that it’s true:

Retired general Romeo Dallaire slammed France today during testimony at a landmark war crimes trial, saying the country helped those responsible for Rwanda's genocide escape to freedom.

Everybody now, sing it! We are the world! We are the children!

Testifying at the trial of Desire Munyaneza, a failed refugee claimant on trial for participating in the genocide, Dallaire said the French "push-back" force ended up helping the killers escape into neighbouring Congo.

Meanwhile, back in charming Quebec, a Frenchman meets the welcome wagon which also has yet to do with anything in the US, but then again France Duh, and France Cinq have yet to report air it as the daily feel-good story at the end of the news.

Gestures, Selfish Acts, Refraining from Thinking Pragmatically, and Feeling Better About Oneself: When Conservatives Act With a Liberal Mindset

Every time someone allows the perfect to be the enemy of the good, they do the cause they espouse damage,

writes Christopher Cook.

It has been credibly estimated that when the Bush drunk-driving story broke on the weekend before the 2000 election, some four to eight million evangelicals stayed home. Rather than stopping to think clearly about what a Gore presidency would mean in its totality, they just picked up their marbles and went home over that one issue. They were thinking more about their personal status vis-a-vis sin than they were the good of the country. They were thinking, I can't support someone who would sin in that way. I judge his actions to be sinful. My vote would be an endorsement of such behavior. How would that look for me before God? I, me, my. Me me me.

Like Surfpunks for Chocolate

- with thanks to RKV

Found While Looking for the Image of Karl Marx in a Tortilla

Next great, whacky, and over-the-top European theory about the US soon to be formed.

Fauxtography

French State TV staged the Al Dura footage.

Enh! Pfft! Ayeii! Mais C'est Charmant !

You’re Right, They Aren’t. Even Though You’d Like Them To Be.

From Sight and Sound:

Frankfurter Rundschau 21.09.2007

Arno Widmann reflects on the 116 newly discovered photos showing Auschwitz SS guards at rest on display at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in New York: "These aren't Abu Ghraib photos. The Auschwitz staff didn't photograph each other lashing out at the inmates, or while they were being murdered. Perhaps such photos will yet appear. But these images are even more horrible. Here we come close to the perpetrators. And with them, their deeds. The Abu Ghraib photos show us what people are capable of. The Auschwitz photos show nothing, they give us a sense of what we are capable of. In front of them we start to think about the circumstances that make murderers of neighbours."

Let’s set aside the disingenuousness of the statement and test the comparison’s trying to be made here: 1.6 million people were killed at Auschwitz, while no-one was killed at Abu Greib since the days of Saddam Hussein.

Ant the people in the pictures Arno “Winkler” Widmann is talking about appear to be enjoying themselves in a manner beneath the humanity of anyone who would be aware of what’s going in. With great Euro-élan, they once again make it look effortless. While being entirely unaware of how little change has been seen in the temperament and excitability of the garden variety European, the matter of the 150 million dead resulting from the European concepts of Marxism, Fascism, and other evolved forms of dictatorship and Fin De Ciècle public madness is blotted out of the mind, having never passed the unaware and unhealed soul.

So indeed, those fetishising the 3 weeks and 20-odd criminals abused at Abu-Greib very much need to put on a happy face while the comparisons flow, if they need that to diminish their confusion. To reiterate: we KNOW ABOUT THIS because the Army BUSTED THEY PEOPLE THAT DID IT. On the other hand, the German government and a large part of the society willfully constructed the concentration camps and protected their knowledge of them for as long as possible.

Even to this day there are people engaging in verbal contortions to convince others that Auschwitz was A-O-TAY.

Want a really apt comparison? Compare the European denial and willful ignorance of the abuse that minorities face in the radical, socialist-arab-nationalist, and areas where religious law dominates people – with the contented look on the faces of the photographed cited in Frankfurter Rundschau.

Really want to know what horrors people are capable of? No need to cite 3 weeks in an Iraqi Prison. One merely need look at European history within living memory, and in their desperate and paranoiac need to accuse others of something when it took them millennia to open up their borders even to one another across a patchwork of miniscule fortresses of “culture” on their own patch.

Even "4" is too high

When invited to an LCI cable news talk show the author, when asked to rank France's world influence on a 10-scale, gave France a "4". The anchor, fully expecting something much closer to a "10" almost fell out of her chair.

"La diplomatie française est en crise. Parce qu'elle n'a pas saisi l'importance des deux grands changements qui se sont produits ces vingt-cinq dernières années - la chute du mur de Berlin, le 9 novembre 1989, et les attentats contre le World Trade Center à New York le 11 septembre 2001 -, la France n'a pas adapté sa politique étrangère au monde moderne. Toujours prise dans les glaces de la guerre froide, notre pays a de plus en plus de mal à s'imposer sur l'échiquier international. Compromissions africaines, erreurs d'appréciation à l'Est, relations particulières avec les autocrates du Proche et du Moyen-Orient, antiaméricanisme : nos choix diplomatiques, dont l'efficacité n'est pas toujours au rendez-vous, heurtent de front les valeurs de la France, la patrie des droits de l'homme. Depuis l'élection de Nicolas Sarkozy, qui a promis une rupture de la politique étrangère française, les lignes diplomatiques ont enfin commencé à bouger. Ce mouvement sera-t-il suffisant pour permettre à la France de retrouver les voies de l'influence ?"

Crusade Towards the Holy Land

The second album of the adventures of Leonardo da Vinci (in bookstores on October 2) has the reluctant inventor of war-machines (gliders, tanks, scorpion vessels, etc…) forced to ship aboard the armada sailing for the Holy Land.

The first mission of General Scharano's Crusaders (after their departure from the Italian peninsula, prior to their final goal of Jerusalem, and with the help of Leonardo's advanced weapons) is to bring relief to the besieged Knights of Rhodes (later the Knights of Malta) by launching a surprise attack on the Sultan's crack troops surrounding their outpost on this, the outskirts of the Ottoman Empire.

A battle of massive proportions looms. But the Baronessa Terranova is acting oddly and treachery is lurking…

A graphic novel published by the Éditions Paquet, Croisade vers la Terre Sainte (Général Leonardo, Tome II) is drawn by Dan Greenberg with his usual mastery and brought to you in stupendous colors by Fred Vigneau (See the cover in real size and order the book from Amazon)…

(PS: in the process of reading the book, don't be too surprized if you chance upon a couple of semi-hidden references to Leonardo the painter's portraits, paintings (famous and less famous), and other works…)

The Dems had their war veteran---the American people were supposed to shut up and accept this as a sign of their strength on national security matters

After three decades, the Democrats had finally found a way to burnish their image on military matters

writes Christopher Cook from Hollywood:

Pick a veteran who agrees with them on the substance of a military issue, and then play up the fact of his service as cover for that position.

…after three decades … the post-Clinton Democrats finally came up with a solution: Continue to oppose military spending, military deployments, and the development of military equipment, but tell everyone how much you love and support the troops.

…The Hollywood left (which, having lived and worked in Hollywood, I can tell you is mostly left) is pumping out more and more brazen examples of the standard military-slurring films. In the last few years, however, they've also begun departing from their regular fare of "supporting" the troops by portraying them as dysfunctional, broken, war-addled victims to making films that directly portray them as war criminals.

…For many months now, I have been pointing these things out, and each time, I have said, don't believe their "we support the troops but not their mission" drivel---it's just a smokescreen, and it won't last. And sure enough, that is coming to pass.

We support the troops, showing them as the dysfunctional, murdering, red-state crypto-rapists in need of psychoanalysis we all know they really are

What the hell is wrong with this country?

asks David Kahane (thanks to Christopher Cook), aping the thoughts of Hollywood bigwigs after their films ("movies, lots of ‘em, each with a stronger antigun, antiwar, anti-Rethuglican message than the next") bomb at the box office.

We support the troops, showing them as the dysfunctional, murdering, drug-addicted, red-state crypto-rapists in need of psychoanalysis we all know they really are. Hey — even the Marine officer in Alan Ball’s award-winning American Beauty a few years back was humanized by making him a sadist and a closet queen. And this is the thanks we get?

Bad Taste Department:La Revanche de Marie Trintignant

La revanche de Marie Trintignant
Uploaded by Labaf

Guy Millière - Houdna

Travailler ? Very Shocking !

A french expatriate to South Africa returns home, only to see his fellow countrymen in the clear light of day. His advice? Get a damn job!

[For all the difficulty of finding a job] you might tell me – that there is such a thing as temping. Of course I pursued that line of thought conscious of my handicaps after several years away from France. The whole thing turned into a joke. Thus, while presenting to me, I told the recruiter that I seek all types of work, even if they don’t have much to do with my qualifications because I’m in a pinch. In general, your interlocutor either raises their eyebrows, does not quite understand what you’re saying, given your CV, or you looks at you like you’re an idiot, as if you were '' disturbed '' (no, really!). At the end of the day, you come away with the despairing feeling that you’ve been talking to a tree.

Another thing we spoke about was working abroad using my English speaking skills. His advice and posture repeated any one of the many assets listed in my CV, just to get through it quickly. Because in reality, if you did not follow the traditional path, the recruiter will get flummoxed and loses his frame of reference. You just dropped off of his radar. No good! Come again later after you’ve '' reintegrated".
Gee, thanks...

Must be tough running the best, most flexible, most you name it economy in the world.

Dans le même temps, me direz-vous, il y a l'intérim. Bien sûr que j'ai regardé de ce côté conscient de mes handicaps après plusieurs années hors de l'Hexagone. Le parcours tourne parfois à la farce. Ainsi, en me présentant, j'explique que je recherche tous types de mission, même sans rapport avec mes qualifications car je suis dans l'urgence. En général, votre interlocuteur soit fronce les sourcils car ne comprend pas votre requête au regard de votre CV soit vous regarde en oeil de pigeon, comme si vous étiez ''dérangé'' (certainement !). Au bout du compte, il en ressort un dialogue de sourd plutôt désespérant.

Autre élément dont ont nous parle : l'ouverture sur l'international, des expériences à l'étranger et la maîtrise de l'anglais. Autant d'atouts dans son CV. Des mots, des discours et des postures. Pour faire vite du flanc. Car, dans la réalité, si vous n'avez pas suivi les rails classiques, le recruteur est déstabilisé, perd ses repères. Vous n'entrez plus dans sa grille de lecture. Pas bon ! Repassez plus tard quand vous vous serez ''réintégrez". Merci.

Lefty Should Feel Nice and Warm Inside

From feel-good intentions to revealing the green menace:

Soaring food prices, driven in part by demand for ethanol made from corn, have helped slash the amount of food aid the government buys to its lowest level in a decade, possibly resulting in more hungry people around the world this year.

The United States, the world’s dominant donor, has purchased less than half the amount of food aid this year that it did in 2000, according to new data from the Department of Agriculture.

See? There’s that blessed cautionary principle at work again! Hopefully the lefties feel just as good about themselves in their guilt-free green existence which only has good consequences.

Beneath the Bluster: Europeans Want America to Stay in Iraq

Beyond the eternal confidence in it’s own superior wisdom and humanism, the European public will march, whine, berate any passer-by, and buy anything that says “America out of Iraq”... or “America out of ___”... for that matter.

The reality of the “love of stability” lies elsewhere. It’s provided to you courtesy of none other than Georges Boosh. A Berlin based think-tank found European analysts who think that unlike America’s angry left, and Europe’s adolescent-level thinking mush middle, that the US must stay in Iraq. For Europe’s sake.

Against Troop Withdrawal

While the American public and policy debate revolves largely around exit strategies and “redeployment,” there is apparent consensus among European policy analysts that American troops should remain in Iraq for the foreseeable future. In contrast to both European media opinion and the prevailing views of American liberals, our respondents supported sustained troop levels. Many consider the announcement of a timetable for withdrawal to be counter-productive and even outright dangerous, saying that lack of American involvement would drive Iraq into further chaos.

They are, however, no less distracted by the press’ blame and dwell approach to affairs in Iraq:

Dr. Reidar Visser, a research fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs who also runs the Iraq website Historiae, observed that the “main problem [with the current strategy] is the heavy emphasis on security instead of creative political initiatives to encourage national reconciliation.”

As if that wasn’t really happening. Besides, the stock international functionalry-types’ thinking might not think of the approach being taken in Iraq: letting the Iraqis call as much of the tune of political control as possible. “Creative” solutions from abroad would be just that, and of all Saddam’s problems, the biggest one was that he was a dictator. It gave him the means to suppress, kill, declare random wars, meddle in the affairs of numerous Arab states, and so on.

Someone Please Ask the Promoters of the Guy Moquet Cult

Why is it the same kind of people who always oppose wars that are meant to end dictatorial rule and mass murder?

The new RSL became the British affiliate of the newly formed Fourth International. They maintained the Militant Labour League as an united front for those members who were involved in Labor Party entryism and published The Militant.
The position of the WIL was swiftly vindicated when the Revolutionary Socialist Party left, most of the leadership joining the Independent Labour Party while younger members joined the Workers International League (WIL).
The group adopted a defeatist policy during World War II, which they modelled on Lenins Revolutionary defeatist tactics of the 1914-18 war but which was seen by their rivals in the WIL as being pacifist, and had some initial successes when the Shop Assistants' Union (later USDAW) adopted their position in 1940. This led the Labour Party to ban the Militant Labour League. In addition, the group became increasingly inactive as many younger members were conscripted into the British Army.
More importantly the group's position opposing the war became a major cause of factional strife both within the group and between it and the WIL. Three major positions developed which help to explicate the ensuing factional divisions outlined below. Firstly a Left Fraction formed which opposed the war on a basis all other factions described as pacifist. Secondly the leadership faction around D D Harber held a position that opposed the Proletarian Military Policy (PMP) of the WIL and was described by its opponents as semi-pacifist. Finally the WIL and tendencies leaving the RSL at different times adhered to the aforementioned PMP.

How is it that it reads like the minutes of a British Trade Union Congress meeting from the 70s, or any event in the present day where Code Pink is involved. Some things never change.

In the Mean time, I’m still waiting for Europeans to treat home-grown Jihadist that way they treat their home-grown neo-Nazis.

Letting the French in on the fun

Panic attack.

"Let's face it: scaring the terror masters in Tehran out of their wits is fun. It's so much fun, in fact, that an attack destroying Iran's nuclear facilities and the Revolutionary Guard command/control centers has been delayed, so that France (under new management) can get in on the fun too. On Sunday (9/16), Sarkozy's foreign minister Bernard Kouchner announced that 'France should prepare for the possibility of war over Iran's nuclear program.' All of this has caused Tehran to respond with maniacal threats."

Except for the racism, xenophobia, and lack of economic mobility, they might just be right.

I know that Finland is a nice place, but it’s a bit of a stretch to call it some sort of heaven on earth.

Yes, being born in Finland is like wining the lottery! Although I wonder if things privacy, purchasing power, conscription, immigration, xenophobia and racism are factors in this survey?

Then again it’s based on a U.N. Human Development and Sustainability index. By that measure, lacking development and rapidly losing most of the features of a modern, functioning society, Zimbabwe would top the chart. The irony is that young people obsessed with aid donation of one kind or another will assume that societies like this are “given” or something you’re born with, and not built.

- via Phil

As Robert Frost once quipped, "A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel"

Why is it that employers are scared of the Board of Health, and afraid to violate child labor laws, but hire illegal aliens without fear of legal consequences?

asks Ben Duffy in his column on illegal immigration.

It's because legal consequences are so seldom brought to bear on them. This problem is not difficult to solve, and we certainly don't need to grant amnesty to every illegal alien to do it. We simply need to enforce the laws we have now. Without that, we will never have true immigration "reform."

He adds that

American liberals are far too quick to throw up their hands and declare the problem so daunting that we shouldn't even bother enforcing the law. … As Robert Frost once quipped, "A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel."

Oh yeah?!? You and what Army?!?

This is exactly what the French resistance was like... until the Allies showed up.



Bringing new meaning to the expression "Get on the stick".

Coming Next Week to a Bookstore Near You

Général Leonardo Tome II :
Croisade vers la Terre Sainte
(Éditions Paquet, Genève 2007)
Scénario Erik Svane, dessins Dan Greenberg

(Order the book on Amazon)

When the left ceaselessly repeats the mantra "Bush lied," it may simply be projecting onto George W. Bush what comes quite naturally to the left

Few liberal activist groups tell the truth. Not because their members are liars -- in private life they may well be as honest as anyone else -- but because whatever the left advocates it deems more important than truth.

Dennis Prager concludes:

when the left ceaselessly repeats the mantra "Bush lied," it may simply be projecting onto George W. Bush what comes quite naturally to the left — when it offers false Iraqi death statistics, false homeless data, false rape statistics, false secondhand smoke statistics, false claims about the percentage of gays in the population, and false claims of just about everything else the left cares about.

In NATO, "we are too often those who quibble and vacillate"

In his Sept. 11 speech to France's summer "Defense University," attended by many of the key decision-makers involved in formulating French defense policy, writes John Rosenthal, French Defense Minister Hervé Morin criticized French behavior in NATO in remarkably vivid language, observing that "we are too often those [in NATO] who quibble and vacillate."

Isolationist France

Can the world no longer afford it? Or is the world better off without France trying to live its’ old international ways?

Dominique Moïsi noted in a recent essay:

France is not Italy—namely a country in which a government can fall because of its foreign policy. In fact, in France it is more likely that foreign policy does not even play a role in election campaigns. In the case of the recent elections, this fact sheds light on a paradoxic continuity. Our country is traditionally proud of its international status. Does France’s national identity not at least partially depend on its international identity? Was not the slogan “I am involved, therefore I am” for decades an expression of France’s relationship to international issues?

France’s citizens, however, have been emboldened through a campaign that more than ever has stressed individual demands (“What will France do for me?”) over collective ambitions (“What could we do for France?”). The international challenges of the day are increasingly brushed aside.

Some would rather say: Vive la Trance.

Tales From New Havana

By all means, Fidel. Send Chavez more doctores:

CARACAS (Reuters) - A Venezuelan man who had been declared dead woke up in the morgue in excruciating pain after medical examiners began their autopsy.

Meanwhile, back on the moldy sofa at “we want failed Marxism in America HQ”, this, or anything Wal-Mart does better than any other large employer of common-skilled labor does, just won’t do:

Wal-Mart said it would give each employee or family that signs up for coverage a grant of $100 to $500 to defray health expenses while charging premiums as low as $5 a month. It will eliminate expensive hospital deductibles and make 2,400 generic drugs available to employees for $4 a prescription — about 1,000 more than it sells to customers at that price.
Wal-Mart Watch, a group long critical of the company, said yesterday that “these plans are still unaffordable due to low wages or inaccessible due to waiting periods.”

In other words, they monthly cost is less than a patient’s co-pay would be in blessed EUtopia. Of course that isn’t enough though. Gee kids, lookit... capitalism works.

- H/T to Georges

The Truth is Out There ... Even for the French

At last, a French author takes on Michael Moore. Guy Millière talks about his book, to be published in January, which will provide the French public with a revealing look at Moore's dishonest and deceitful tactics.

The NYT presents a view of Putin that reflects the public image Putin strives to project, but is not an accurate portrayal of the Russian presidency

Serge Schmemann's article A visit with Putin (Views, Sept. 17) presents a view of Vladimir Putin that reflects the public image Putin strives to project, but it is not an accurate portrayal of the Russian presidency.

As an IHT reader indirectly points out, the mainstream media is as enamored of foreign strongmen and as willing to fall for their self-serving propaganda as ever.

According to Schmemann, the "enormously popular" Putin has led Russia "from bankruptcy and despair to enormous wealth and power." Russians, he tells us, "are suddenly living better than they ever have."

To be sure, the Russian president enjoys a popularity rating that any Western leader would envy. But polls reflect the constant barrage of pro-Putin propaganda in the Kremlin-controlled media and the traditional Russian craving for a strong state that assures stability, rather than an improvement in the lives of ordinary Russians. With the average hourly wage in Russia at around $3 an hour, only a tiny minority of Russians (many of whom are corrupt oligarchs favored by Putin) enjoy the fruits of Russia's oil-based prosperity. Social welfare benefits, including health care, have been steadily eroding since Putin came to power, and the crime rate has been rising, with violent crime more than doubling between 1998 and 2006.

Although Schmemann acknowledges that Russians will not be able choose their political leader when (and if) Putin steps down, he seems to dismiss this as insignificant in view of the fact that "stores are overflowing" and that Russians enjoy unprecedented "personal freedoms."

But what does personal freedom really mean, when people are denied the right to have democratic elections?

Surprisingly, given that Schmemann is himself a journalist, he ignores the tragedy that has befallen his profession in Russia, where the independent media are under constant siege by the Kremlin. Instead, he lauds Putin for bringing stability to Russia, despite the fact that more than 20 journalists have been murdered there since Putin came to power.

Meanwhile, another reader states that

Michael Schwirtz's article on the Sovetsky Islands in Russia's White Sea (An uneasy mix: Religion, tourism and history, Sept. 19) missed out on the horrors of the White Sea itself, as recounted by Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

During the Soviet-induced famine in Ukraine in the 1930s when at least 14.5 million people died, according to the historian Robert Conquest, many millions of Ukrainians were marched by foot to the White Sea, where they were loaded on to barges to be towed out to sea. Soviet gunboats then blasted them out of the water. No one knows how many millions perished. They too deserve mention and our memories.

Putin's poodle

Chiraq.

More Like “Giving It TO The People”

A Swedish doctor who was fired from his job in Norway for using a controversial 'anal massage' technique to cure various kinds of pain has resurfaced in Denmark where he has been working at a psychiatric ward in a Copenhagen hospital.

Funny, isn’t it, that the more you see any nation or society socializing things out of the public realm and into the hands of the government, the more it’s rationed? The other thing you see is people turning to “alternative” and non-scientific solutions, and hiring on marginal services and loony practitioners due to that very same overvaluing of the thing they’ve just “given to the people”?

"Problematic doctors have been given free rein in Europe. We are currently working hard to change this situation," she added.

In April last year a council in the Nord-Tröndelag area of Norway dismissed the doctor after only two weeks, when they realized that he was the same man who hit the headlines a year earlier when another local authority fired him.

The man described his dismissal in Norway as part of a witch-hunt against him,

Alas, pity him, you brutes! He’s got poop chutes to violate in the interest of mental hygiene.

The Norwegian counterpart to HSAN also had cause to warn the man after he told Swedish jokes to a group of Norwegians who were mourning a death.

The man said at the time that he considered himself misunderstood.

"I have a personality disorder, or rather a syndrome, a form of Aspergers. Just like Bill Gates or Einstein, for example," he told Aftonbladet.

Oppressed, in need of sympathy, and, according to himself:brilliant!

"I have made it impossible for myself within the healthcare sector because I behave childishly sometimes. I am different, but cleverer."

I’ll wish you all one simple thing: be well.

The Never Ending Spin Cycle

The real “pistelero” is the one you can’t fire.




Le Monde lays out 14 days in poop-stain Hugo Chavez’ life (as a budding greater dictator than he already is,) and fails to mention that the independent press is being pushed out in Venezuela. Funny thing for the “independent paper” to do without so much as a hint of perfunctory ‘solidarlty’ for their brothers in ink. The start with a description of his ongoing activity of fully occupying the media space, and then indulge it even more.

I Prefer Constructionism

Lit Twits can keep their Constructivism. They’re only in love with it because they so completely useless that they can’t swing a hammer. Instead they try to philosophize it into motion.

Here’s how it works: to seem like they’re both doing something, and doing something new, academics often rob phrases and concepts from people who really do something, and appropriate everything but their meaning.

Forget about writing about what you know until you know something. In the mean time, stop talking in circles and get a job.

Would the world be a safer place if we had walked away from Korea, as the Dems want us to do in Iraq, saying "defend yourselves" and "good luck"?

So which model will it be? Korea or Vietnam? Commitment or abandonment?

Investor's Business Daily agrees with Christopher Cook: in Korea, "We did not cut and run."

Communism's initial thrust had been blunted, but the threat wasn't over. Today, a half-century later, U.S. troops remain in South Korea, and our commitment to the democracy we saved at great cost remains firm. We did not cut and run.

South Korea is now a strong ally, a vibrant democracy and an economic dynamo. If we hadn't stuck around, it might have sunk into the North Korean abyss long ago. Would the world be a safer place today if we had walked away, as the Democrats want us to do in Iraq, saying "defend yourselves" and "good luck"?

Benjamin Franklin once said that if we didn't all hang together, we'd hang separately. That was the rationale behind the formation of NATO. After we liberated Europe from the Nazis, we didn't just throw it under the bus, saying we did our part and now Europeans had to defend themselves against the Soviet Union on their own.

Bush [aka the alleged nincompoop] understands these lessons of history.

…In a recent speech at the National Press Club, Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., said: "Many have threatened that there will be chaos, a bloodbath, when the United States redeploys from Iraq, and this in fact may be the case." But, he added, "if they continue to choose to spill blood, it will not be on the conscience of the United States."

At least it won't be on the conscience of the surrender caucus of a Democratic Party that time and again has demonstrated a distinct lack of conscience. The model of today's Democrats is not Korea, but Vietnam in 1975, when they cut off aid and barred any U.S. support, making the killing fields possible and inevitable.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has also mentioned Korea, saying that the way we handled that situation, by maintaining a presence, was a lot wiser than how we handled Vietnam, "where we just left lock, stock and barrel."

So which model will it be? Korea or Vietnam? Commitment or abandonment? Bush has made his choice and, we think, the right one.

Using Norman Podhoretz's "World War IV" as material, Mona Charen has more…