How Dare you Question Europe’s New Living Saint

Blackfive posted a quick email received from an Air Force officer who had to endure Obama “supporting the troops”.

As you know I am not a very political person. I just wanted to pass along that Senator Obama came to Bagram Afghanistan for about an hour on his visit to ' The War Zone ' . I wanted to share with you what happened.

He got off the plane and got into a bullet proof vehicle, got to the area to meet with the Major General (2 Star) who is the commander here at Bagram.

As the Soldiers where lined up to shake his hand, he blew them off and didn't say a word as he went into the conference room to meet the General. As he finished, the vehicles took him to the ClamShell (pretty much a big top tent that military personnel can play basketball or work out in with weights) so he could take his publicity pictures playing basketball. He again shunned the opportunity to talk to Soldiers to thank them for their service.

No doubt Germans will be treating him like the flawless, superhuman deity undisambiguated earthling that they have no actual clue about that he is – probably because traditionally they’re used to being treated like a number when it comes to any sort of interaction with government. I guess fearless leader is worthy of Europe’s historically frightening uniformity of thought and deficit of rational critical capacity which usually doesn’t clear up until it’s too late.

That he’s so popular in Europe, though is rather telling. Since they want to cobble US policy any way thay can, are generally a predatory economic competator willing to use the full force of government to create “champions” and cramping the competitiveness that the rest of the world thrives on to pimp their overpriced rubbish, then Americans will realize just who to vote for, and specifically who to vote against to see that US interests. Sweeping everything ideological aside, it's safe to say that what they want isn't good for us, so why then, would we accept “their” and their fellow travellers' candidate?

If it hasn’t registered yet, it isn’t the guy eager to serve a non-voting foreign “constituency” who want most to see us poor and weak. Now that we know what Europeans are looking for, as if there was any question about it in the past based on the comments of Joe and Jane euro-sixpack, it's really is the dawn of a new age of transatlantic understanding. We hear you loud and clear, and we trust the meddling naïfs even less than ever.

"Every day we have democracy is a victory for the Iraqi people"

I asked Iraqi Ambassador to the United Nations Hamid Al Bayati what would constitute victory for the Iraqi people

remembers Austin Bay.

He responded viscerally, "Every day we have democracy is a victory for the Iraqi people."

Obama's Magical Media Tour: The NYT wanted McCain to write his editorial on Obama's terms

The refusal of the New York Times to print McCain's op-ed on Obama after an Obama piece was published has nothing to do with editorial judgment and everything to do with protecting the media's heartthrob

writes Investor's Business Daily (no, no, the fact that Times op-ed editor David Shipley served in the Clinton administration has nothing to do with it) while Bobby Eberle adds that "It has been shown time and time again that the mainstream media are dominated by liberals and left-leaning reporters."

The "newspaper of record" doesn't want John McCain's views on Iraq to go on the record, at least not while Barack Obama is on his magical media tour. The truth about Obama is unfit to print?

…Shipley wanted McCain to define what he meant by victory and submit a timetable for achieving both victory and total withdrawal. He wanted McCain to write his editorial on Obama's terms.

Investor's Business Daily suspects

that the Times was trying to protect Obama, at least during his trip, from reminders that he opposed the surge and the war and was wrong on both counts.

Among the things the Arizona Senator said that the NYT didn't want you to read was:

The success of the surge has not changed Senator Obama's determination to pull out all of our combat troops. All that has changed is his rationale. In a New York Times op-ed and a speech this week, he offered his "plan for Iraq" in advance of his first "fact finding" trip to that country in more than three years. It consisted of the same old proposal to pull all of our troops out within 16 months. In 2007 he wanted to withdraw because he thought the war was lost. If we had taken his advice, it would have been.

…I have said that I expect to welcome home most of our troops from Iraq by the end of my first term in office, in 2013.

But I have also said that any draw-downs must be based on a realistic assessment of conditions on the ground, not on an artificial timetable crafted for domestic political reasons. This is the crux of my disagreement with Senator Obama.

Senator Obama has said that he would consult our commanders on the ground and Iraqi leaders, but he did no such thing before releasing his "plan for Iraq." Perhaps that's because he doesn't want to hear what they have to say.

…Senator Obama seems to have learned nothing from recent history. I find it ironic that he is emulating the worst mistake of the Bush administration by waving the "Mission Accomplished" banner prematurely.

I am also dismayed that he never talks about winning the war — only of ending it. But if we don't win the war, our enemies will. A triumph for the terrorists would be a disaster for us. That is something I will not allow to happen as president.

Hint: The Sierra Club won't like it.

After all, they and their ilk like the idea of killing apostates much more. But while the touchy-feelies talk themselves into rationalizing the end of humanity over nothing, we got the juice:

What is small enough to be hauled on a truck, has the power to provide electricity to 45,000 homes, can help the U.S. cut its dependence on foreign oil and has no emissions?

[snip]

An Energy Department official told New Scientist magazine four years ago that such reactors wouldn't require maintenance or need to be refueled. After their useful life of about 30 years they could be returned to the factory.

Duh

EU lagging behind on education, illiteracy on rise

In case you had any doubts, they aren’t just self-aggrandizing, they’re also dumshits.

However, countries have failed to bring down the share of low performing readers. Instead of the targeted 20% decrease, illiteracy has actually increased by more than 10% since 2000.
According to the Commission, all countries have their own relative strengths and weaknesses across the benchmark areas and "there are significant divergences between member states and fields". For example, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Poland and Slovenia "exceed the five benchmarks on average and are still progressing" while France, the Netherlands and Belgium show only "average performance below the benchmarks and have stopped progressing in this respect".

The Lingering Red Parasites

Defending the indefensible and believing the absurd is still a common pastime for many battle hardened British Stalinists, albeit these days the struggle continues with aging ranks and greatly depleted numbers (depleting one assumes due to the deaths of members from the aging ranks). The late Andrew Rothstein’s CPB remains the largest grouping of tanky Brits. Don’t let that fact overwhelm you though. Figures from the party’s 2007 congress reported that membership had at the last count fallen to just 941. One can only wonder just how small the smaller factions actually are when this is considered the behemoth of British Stalinism. It does appear to be that the smaller your faction the crazier you tend to be - and the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) is both very small and very crazy.

So reports the Johnny Guitar, but have no doubts, others of this ilk do indeed have options. While most have gravitated toward the comfortable, protected, humanity-hating false populism of Greenie mendacity, others would do well to move to France with the home-buying sort of Britons they detest.

They are sure to find a friend in the boy wonder of agitational fantasy Marxism, Olivier Besancenot. A recent revelation that he has links to a Red Brigade era terrorist of Action Directe proves that he’s got the “cred” that the hopeless, lonely, and stupid are looking for.

Ultradirigisme on one side, and ultralaxisme on the other... In immigration, his constituents and others know that they Besancenot and his party are demanding the immediate amnesty of anyone not in the country lawfully, granting each a 10 year residence permit which they suggest could be automatically renewable. Do they know that the LCR claims the right to voter eligibility for all foreigners (including non-EU noational) in all elections, perhaps even for president? To break the "criminalization of youth and the poor," the Trotskyist party advocates nothing less than the repeal of public safely laws, and even the doing away of keeping police files! Nonetheless they want "controls" over the social sphere.


"Unrealistic and dangerous": is what Minister Jean-Marie Bockel, called the LCR’s program in an interview. "If revenues were applied [as the LCR wished], he adds, the economy would collapse in a few weeks, and, fairly quickly, our freedoms would be questioned." Including in his party one Jean-Marc Rouillan, the former Action Directe terrorist, the party is not as limited to worker issues as Besancenot has suggested. She recalled the "historic links" between the extreme left and violence, and these tinks never completely broken. Interviewed by Le Monde, Pierre-Francois Grond, leader of the LCR and one close to Besancenot described as mere "twenty years ago bullshit" the double murder of Georges Besse and General Audran!

Moreover he’s a complete fake, as 5 Years Later recently notes.

We often wondered if the factor Aggravant still working? To this question, the candidate Besancenot spoke of his monthly salary of less than €1200 as a Postal worker. Blessed are the believers, because the reality is somewhat different. He’s paid mainly by the party. For example, he very regularly got compensation as a European parliamentary assistant when Alain Krivine was an MEP, in amount considerably above the monthly €5000.

What is his provenance? To this question, Olivier Besancenot speaks with modesty of a small studio in the 18th arrondissement. The journalist would have had much to see - a really good size apartment in the neighborhood of Sacre Coeur in Montmartre - the most expensive part of the 18th, one of the most sought after by Parisian Bobos. Of course, he owns it... something impossible on a postal worker’s salary, but who’s saying...

What strikes me about these people is their ignorance, for which I have absolutely no desire to lend any tolerance to. I lived behind the iron curtain as a fireigner, and had the good fortune to be able to leave. The population didn’t, and none of these latter-day zealots who continue to have wet dreams of collective, homogeneous being where so many of life’s choices are taken away, but are rather assigned to you, have never had to live that kind of life. Rather than make any effort to understand the dynamics of making a good life in a free society, they’re more than happy to seem to appeal to others while being very much in love with assigning you your life options based on opinions they alone have without respect to others’ freedom to have some control over hteir own lives.

Even if their exaggerations about the life in the easterm block being so good, and ours being so violent and unjust were true (which they aren’t,) removing people’s will over their simplistic materialism is an abomination. Were they to actually think about it, would they themselves actually take free child daycare over the ability to leave the country, or to travel, or to invent a new vocation of their own? Would they genuinely be able to salve their suspicions that everything is “the peoples’ property” versus “the corporations” when they are slaves to a state which itself is the boldest example of corporate abuse and holds an absolute monopoly over the satisfaction of simple, easily served human needs which they struggled with? Unless they’re stupid enough, I doubt it.

A lIfe in the Merde

Trying to pare down gub’mint? Trying to pad it for votes and to creep toward an entirely centralized economy? Makes no difference in the land where you end up with Socialism no matter who you elect.

During the presidential campaign, Nicolas Sarkozy had said would only replace one in two government employees as their positions are made vacant at retirement. Half of the savings generated would go to deficit reduction, and the rest to increase civil servant salaries. Once in office, he decided to pursue the decline in the public service started under Chirac. In the 2008 budget, 23 000 public service positions will be eliminated.
But, incredible as it may seem, the State does not know exactly how many people it employs.

I suppose this includes the long-since communized parts of the economy itself, which is to say the state enterprises that have as their workforce “state employees” such as EdF, GdF (which now owns formerly-nearly non-state Suez), the passenger trains, the post office, etal. While HItlerian state-run corporatism rules that day in some parts of Europe, these “champions” invariably buy-up other Europeans’ privatized entities.

Free-markets? Just you try it! We’ll fix your wagon!

The True Purveyors of Lies: Hear about the 550 metric tons of yellowcake uranium found in Iraq, enough to make 142 nuclear weapons?

Hear about the 550 metric tons of yellowcake uranium found in Iraq?

asks Investor's Business Daily.

No? Why should you? It doesn't fit the media's neat story line that Saddam Hussein's Iraq posed no nuclear threat when we invaded in 2003.

It's a little known fact that, after invading Iraq in 2003, the U.S. found massive amounts of uranium yellowcake, the stuff that can be refined into nuclear weapons or nuclear fuel, at a facility in Tuwaitha outside of Baghdad.

In recent weeks, the U.S. secretly has helped the Iraqi government ship it all to Canada, where it was bought by a Canadian company for further processing into nuclear fuel — thus keeping it from potential use by terrorists or unsavory regimes in the region.

This has been virtually ignored by the mainstream media. Yet, as the AP reported, this marks a "significant step toward closing the books on Saddam's nuclear legacy."

Seems to us this should be big news.

After all, much of the early opposition to the war in Iraq involved claims that President Bush "lied" about weapons of mass destruction and that Saddam posed little if any nuclear threat to the U.S.

This more or less proves Saddam in 2003 had a program on hold for building WMD and that he planned to boot it up again soon.

…That means Saddam held onto it for more than a decade. Why? He hoped to wait out U.N. sanctions on Iraq and start his WMD program anew. This would seem to vindicate Bush's decision to invade.

The American Thinker Web site reported four years ago on the scary math behind Saddam's uranium hoard: 500 tons of yellowcake, once refined, could make 142 nuclear weapons.

But yellowcake wasn't all they found at Tuwaitha. According to the AP, the military also discovered "four devices for controlled radiation exposure . . . that could potentially be used in a weapon."

By the way, this should put to rest the canard peddled by the American left and by former Ambassador Joseph Wilson that "Bush lied" about Iraq seeking yellowcake from the African country of Niger.

Given what we know, including comments by officials in Niger's government, Iraq did make overtures to buy uranium. And it's quite possible all or part of the 550 tons came from there.

What's more, if Bush hadn't acted, we might today see a nuclear Iraq, an Iran on the way to having a weapon, Libya with an expanded nuclear program, and Syria — with its close ties to Saddam — on the way to having a nuke.

Of equal concern is why the media ignored this good news coming from Iraq. It seems to be of a piece with how they've treated other recent positive developments in Iraq.

We ask again — why aren't you seeing and hearing more about this? The reason is simple: The mainstream media find it inconveniently contradicts the story they have been telling you for years.

Christopher Merola adds:

We have been hearing from the far-left for more than five years how, “Bush lied.” Somehow, that slogan loses its credibility now that 550 metric tons of Saddam’s yellowcake, used for nuclear weapon enrichment, has been discovered and shipped to Canada for its new use as nuclear energy.

It appears that American troops found the 550 metric tons of uranium in 2003 after invading Iraq. They had to sit on this information and the uranium itself, for fear of terrorists attempting to steal it. It was guarded and kept safe by our military in a 23,000-acre site with large sand beams surrounding the site.

This is vindication for the Bush administration, having been attacked mercilessly by the liberal media and the far-left pundits on the blogosphere. Now that it is proven that President Bush did not lie about Saddam’s nuclear ambitions, one would think the mainstream media would report the story? Once the AP released the story, the mainstream media should have picked it up and broadcast it worldwide.

This never happened, due in large part I believe, to the fact that the mainstream media would have to admit they were wrong about Bush’s war motives all along.

…The truth is, due to their opposition to the war, Joe Wilson, Valerie Plame, the mainstream media and their left-wing friends on the blogosphere engaged in a propaganda campaign to undermine the Bush administration.

No. It was not just a propaganda campaign. The truth is that this is the true point where the word lie should enter the debate: the adversaries of the Bush White House lied. They lied knowingly and they lied deliberately.

If anyone suggested that Tiger Woods should try to be more like other golfers, people would question the sanity of whoever made that suggestion

Yet there are those who think that the United States should follow policies more like those in Europe,

writes Thomas Sowell,

often with no stronger reason than the fact that Europeans follow such policies. For some Americans, it is considered chic to be like Europeans.

…Those Americans who are pushing us toward the kinds of policies that Europeans impose on pharmaceutical companies show not the slightest interest in what the consequences of such laws have been.

One consequence is that even European pharmaceutical companies do much of their research and development of new medications in the U.S., in order to take advantage of American patent protections and freedom from price controls.

These are the very policies that the European imitators want us to change.

It is not a coincidence that such a high proportion of the major pharmaceutical drugs are developed in the U.S. If we kill the goose that lays the golden egg, as the Europeans have done, both we and the Europeans — as well as the rest of the world — will be worse off, because there are few other places for such medications to be developed. …

A Not-So-Sophisticated Record

Some of the people who are most adamant against outsourcing economic activity from the U.S. to other countries often seem to think we should outsource our foreign policy to "world opinion" or act only in conjunction "with our NATO allies."

Like so many things that are said when it comes to public policy, there is very little attention paid to the actual track record of "world opinion" or of "our NATO allies."

Often there is a blanket assumption that European countries are just so much more sophisticated than American "cowboys." But there is incredibly little interest in the track record of those European sophisticates whom we are supposed to consult about our own national interests — including, in an age when terrorists may acquire nuclear weapons, our national survival.

In the course of the 20th century, supposedly sophisticated Europeans managed to create some of the most monstrous forms of government on earth — communism, fascism, Nazism — in peacetime, and to start the two World Wars, the bloodiest in all human history. In each of these wars, both the winners and the losers ended up far worse off than they were before these wars were started.

Mad like a Sandmonkey

F’ing brilliant:

Unarguably , Obama's number one foreign policy objective is to get things right with the arab and muslim world. And that's when you are going to watch the best circus in the world, because no a single leader, in the arab or the muslim world, really wants to get right with the US. Hell, our rulers have justified their entire existence in power by positioning themselves as opposed to America . They continue , in their state-sponsored media, to point fingers at the US and go " See, those bloodthirsty Americans. They will kill you all, rape all of your women and drink the blood of your babies, if we are not here to protect you. So eat shit and shut up!", and If you think I am exaggerating please check Egypt, Syria, Iran, Yemen, etc.. etc.. Those people have built their entire rule on that whole notion, you think they are going to give that up because the silly Americans voted for a 40-something inexperienced Black dude? Get real!

He also raises this excellent point of perceptions. The nodding, bien pensent repugnant elite might think Obama some sort of healer to those people who are “victimized by our existence”, when the inverse is rather more obvious.

Oh, and I am sure that once he gets elected that the Islamists will warm up to him immediately. You know, because there is nothing that Islamists like more than a former born- muslim who chose, by his own accord, to become a Christian and an active one at that. Yeah, I am sure they will be very impressed, and quit fighting the US immediately. After all, he said that he intends to deliver a speech from a muslim nation in his first 100 days of office. Yeah, that kind of pandering really calms islamists down, especially coming from apostates. And they will surely respect him if he withdraws partially from Iraq, and not mistake it as a sign of weakness or that they are winning or anything. And since we are on the topic, can you imagine what will happen if a terrorist attack took place during the Obama Presidency, after he does all of this? Can you imagine how America will feel, when they realize that even after they voted for the Blackman with Arab middle name and Muslim background who gave a speech during his first 100 days in a muslim nation, that the world still hates them and that Islamists still want to kill them?

But it would never dawn on the Birkenstock-wearing buffoons with PhDs at your local fair-trade anti-capitalist co-op grocery store to understand the obvious. It really is too much to ask of the “brilliant progressives” of this world.

Unfortunately, karma does not easily cross the Atlantic

Upon her liberation, Betancourt offered profuse thanks to God and the Virgin Mary, to her supporters and the media, to France and Colombia and just about everybody else

writes Charles Krauthammer as he discusses a "Europe luxuriat[ing] in soft power", a "Europe specializ[ing] in providing haven for those fleeing the evil that Europe does nothing about", and the "Solemn condemnations [that] have been issued from every forum of soft-power fecklessness — the EU, the U.N., the G-8 foreign ministers". Returning to Ingrid Betancourt's "profuse thanks to … just about everybody else", he adds:

As of this writing, none to the United States.

Cue the Accordions

Pépé Le Pen Godfather to Dieudonné’s Newborn Daughter
Horse head in the bed to follow

Humorist Dieudonné has had his fourth child baptized last Friday in Bordeaux by a traditionalist bishop in the presence of Jean-Marie Le Pen, according to a website close to the Front National and Liberation.

The site "Nation Presse hebdo" [Nation Press Weekly] said that the president of the National Front is the godfather of the youngest of four children of Dieudonné.

"It could have been a fairly ordinary baptism if the godfather of the girl had been anyone other than the President of the National Front, Jean-Marie le Pen," he wrote.

Reached by telephone on Wednesday, an FN official refused to comment, stressing that it is "a private matter." Abbé Philippe Laguérie, a traditionalist known for its links with the extreme right, presided. According to "Nation Presse hebdo", information has been confirmed by the abbot."

The rapprochement of Dieudonné with the FN had started on November 11, 2006, when he participated in the Bleu, Blanc, Rouge festival at Le Bourget, near Paris.

The comedian had clarified a few days later he did not vote FN, but he did not "not to vote FN." A month later, leaders of the far-right party had attended a show by the comedian.

Think about it, it’s a win-win PR stunt for both of these psychos, and it only comes at the expense of a child’s dignity for the rest of her life. The press, giddy with excitement, did leave out a minor detail, of course.

Can you confirm being the godfather of Dieudonné’s 4th child, as reported by Libération on Wednesday morning?

"Yes, I confirm. But contrary to what was reported by Libération, I'm the godfather of the third child of Dieudonne, not the fourth. The rest is true: it went well at a ceremony in the Bordeaux last week. It went well in the traditionalist parish of Saint-Eloi. The baptism was celebrated by Father Philippe Laguérie."

"I didn’t have any interest in talking about it publicly. It is a fact of privacy. I'm not like Sarkozy: I do not feel obliged to stage my privacy."

What is the nature of your relationship with Dieudonné?
"It was Dieudonné who asked me to become the godfather of one of his children because he thinks that this is not incompatible with the meaning of life and honor."

"I have esteem for Dieudonné. We are closer because we have things in common. We all belong both to the 'community of outcasts’. In addition, we’re both from Brittany: he’s 50% Breton, and I’m 100%. This is what created the link between us."

Have you asked Dieudonné to join the FN?
"No, he can join is he wishes, though."

The only question is: who’s legitimizing who?

Want to Know What Torture Is Really Like, New York Times?

It's in your own pages…

[The Iranian's] alienation began at age 9, when he witnessed a deadly stoning. Though forbidden by his mother, he slipped out of the house to see the commotion near his school. He saw a man, accused of adultery, buried to the waist, his head covered with a sack that turned red as Revolutionary Guards hurled chunks of concrete. … Years later, he would witness public hangings and dismemberments.

…At the University of Tehran in the mid-1990s, [Ahmed Batebi] joined in student protests, getting arrested three times. … Mr. Batebi described 17 months in solitary confinement … His jailers thrashed him with a metal cable, beating his testicles and kicked in his teet, he said. They held his face down in a pool of excrement. They tied his arms behind his back and hung him from the ceiling. At other times, strapping him to a chair, they kept him awake night after night, cutting him and rubbing salt into the wounds. … They tied his arms behind his back and hung him from the ceiling. At other times, strapping him to a chair, they kept him awake night after night, cutting him and rubbing salt into the wounds.

"Well, let them go f*ck themselves! The Lithuanians!? Do you know any Lithuanians?! I never met one of them in my life!"

Arnaud Leparmentier et Marion Van Renterghem reveal what the French really think of their fellow members in the European brotherhood, certainly when those Eastern Europeans have the gall not to agree with the French (remember Chirac's "They have missed an opportunity to shut up"?)…

Alle Menschen Werden Brüder

In their usual gentle and culturally superior manner, Europeans know how to party and contemplatively celebrate their patriotism.

The July 14 festivities were glazed many incidents, including in Ile-de-France. On Monday night, 295 cars were set ablaze in the country bringing to nearly 600 the number of vehicles damaged in two days.

As with the previous night, the night of the 14th gave rise to numerous incidents and many skirmishes between youths and police. 295 vehicles were burned in France, including 150 in Ile-de-France and 145 elsewhere in the country. The figures for the previous night showed 297 cars were torched.

In two days, nearly 600 vehicles were burned and a total of 219 people were arrested.

The national secretary of the PS [Socialist Party], Bruno Leroux, has accused the Interior Ministry yesterday of trying to obscure the figures on the violence committed on Saturday night, especially in Seine-Saint-Denis. That was a false charge against the Interior Ministry, which confirmed these figures and also recorded a 20% drop in car torching incidents for the first six months of the year compared to 2007. In addition, the ministry announced its intention to tighten legislation on the sale of fireworks after a police commissioner was very seriously injured in the eye by one in clashes between youths and Police in Asnières (Hauts-de-Seine).

Primitives that we are, Americans have yet to develop a taste for carbeque on their national day.

Suckahs

The FARC's Swiss Dupe gets even weirder, now that we get to see the paper trail:

Switzerland’s Colombia policy is suffering one blow after another. A few days after the liberation of Ingrid Betancourt, the Colombian President Uribe officially withdrew Switzerland’s mandate to conduct negotiations. On Tuesday, things escalated still further: Bogotá announced that it was opening a criminal investigation into the activities of Swiss envoy Jean-Pierre Gontard. The crime: "concierto para delinquir" - membership in a criminal association. According to the Colombian district attorney, there is evidence that Gontard led a conspiracy or participated in one.

It's damning stuff, and the “sophisticated” Swiss were such bozos that they couldn't figure out what the FARC's “Foreign Minister” was doing right under their noses, and with their money.

According to Minister of Defense Juan Manuel Santos, e-mails found on the computer of the killed FARC commander Raúl Reyes suggest that Gontard delivered some $500,000 to the Marxist guerilla in 2001. In so doing, the Swiss envoy would have overstepped his function as "mediator."

As is so often the case when she is confronted by serious criticism, the head of the Swiss Department of Foreign Affairs (EDA), Michéline Calmy-Rey, has maintained an eloquent silence ever since the crisis with Colombia began. But she has dispatched her underlings before the press, in order roundly to deny all the accusations. M. Gontard "never delivered ransom payments," the EDA announced.

Why talk to them at all? Why dispatch funds? Why deny that you pay ransom?

Colombian authorities suspect that the half a million dollars was part of the ransom money with which the pharmaceutical firm Novartis purchased the freedom of two of its employees who had been taken hostage. They accuse Gontard of having personally delivered the cash.

The King of French comedy

Dieudonné has a new show. After trying it out on Montreal audiences, who were rolling in the aisles with the standard anti-Semitic and anti-American fare, he's bringing the show to Paris. After posing as a Nazi during a wave of Jew bashing in Paris streets (yes, Jews were being bashed, literally), he's now taken to wearing terrorist garb to promote his latest show.

Note that Dieudonné's production company has purchased the theatre where his Paris shows are held and he plays to standing-room-only audiences. French youth cannot give up enough of their hard earned cash drug money to see this guy.

Then	Now

Midnight Blue over the Land of 10,000 Lakes

Skye will be at the Republican National Convention in the North Star State this summer as an official accredited blog…

Revolution through Administrative Inaction

Think anyone noticed?

A seemingly innocuous judicial ruling introduced the right to polygamy in Belgian law. On 26 June, the Constitutional Court amended the law of 15 December 1980, and thus prohibited discrimination against children from polygamous families.

A circular noting the change sent to embassies and consulates in Belgium said that children "are not responsible for the marital status of their parents." But an oversight of the Court gives a completely different flavor to the text. "On the last page, the Court deletes text from Article 10 regarding the exclusion of spouses in a polygamous marriage," said Freddy Roosemont, Director-General of the Foreign Residents Office.

The new law stipulates that "the spouse of a foreigner whose polygamous relationship with another spouse already residing in Belgium can not be unrecognized. It permits polygamy.

And the sheep will soon tremble.

Might Europeans Perhaps Go So Far as to Wring Their Hands?

Doubtful. By the time they’re done navel gazing, there wont even be a régime be bananes left.