Bill O'Reilly Free Zone

Welcome to all the readers from the National Review! It's developments like these that send me diving for Hitchens' words on having "friends like these..."

Vergès Update

Sulfurous French lawyer Jacques Vergès has been looking ready to defend Saddam for some time. (See here for more info.) The BBC says it's now official.

French lawyer 'to defend Saddam'

A French lawyer who made his reputation defending some of the world's most notorious figures says he will take on Saddam Hussein as his latest client.

In his long career, Jacques Verges defended Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie, Carlos the Jackal and former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic.

Mr Verges says the request came in a letter from Saddam Hussein's nephew, Ali Barzan al-Takriti.

He says he will also defend former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz.

He will be supported by a dozen other French lawyers to mount a defence case.

Mr Tikriti sent the following message to Mr Verges: "In my capacity as nephew of President Saddam Hussein, I commission you officially via this letter to assure the defence of my uncle".

sundry

Sorry for the lack of posts recently. I've been flat out. To make up for it, here's a few briefs on things I've been meaning to mention.

A:	Our friend Rémy Ourdan participated in an on-line chat with lemonde.fr readers on Wednesday. Sarah: Since you're on the scene, can you clearly tell us what the feelings of the population are about the military operations and other attacks organized against the occupation forces? How does the Iraqi in the street see these operations: acts of resistance or terrorism? Remy Ourdan: For the Iraqis, these are both at once. Many publicly applaud the attacks on the American army because this army is seen as brutal and arrogant. But the same people describe all attacks that target Iraqis as terrorism. Moreover, let's reiterate that the occupation army is very unpopular but that many Iraqis privately admit that they don't want its immediate departure, out of fear, even now, of civil war. Later, he had this exchange: Richard 75: It seems that Iraqis (even when they are anti-American) have a virulent anti-French feeling because they think that France tried to save Saddam. Can you confirm or deny this? Remy Ourdan: This feeling is very strong in Iraq. Almost all the Shia, almost all the Kurds and many Sunnis think that France defended Saddam Hussein to protect an old friendship and so-called economic and petrol interests. Also, many Iraqis are angry with France because of its attitude after the war. Pragmatic, they feel that once the conflict was over and Saddam gone, France and the other countries of Europe should have come to their aid for humanitarian reasons and, again, not to leave them alone to face the Americans.
ß	A mere two years after the BBC, that cutting edge culture journal, did it, lemonde.fr helped its readers stay hip on Tuesday by informing them of the Google Bomb phenomenon. They point to the WMD and miserable failure pranks but they forget — or are too clueless to be aware — that they are themselves the victims of such a prank.
Γ	Having found a distributor, Mel Gibson's Passion of the Qrap opens on more than 520 screens in France next Wednesday where, though it contains perhaps a little bit of violence, it will only be forbidden to children under 12. The AFP is reporting that three Jewish brothers, the Benlolos, who have not seen the film, went to court to-day, seeking to have the movie banned. Patrick Benlolo called the film an "incitation to racial hatred because it is the result of an erroneous presentation of the bible, portraying Jews as deicides, which is the cause of the Jews' persecutions." Olivier Laude, the lawyer representing distributor Quinta Communications claims the Benlolos' complaint should be dismissed because it seeks redress for potential violence, which only criminal authorities can prosecute, though it seems that the movie has already provoked its fair share of violence elsewhere. [3/28: In the comments below, a reader points out that in fact the film prompted the murderer to confess, not to kill — which I'd have noticed if I'd bothered to read the articled linked here. ¡No Pasarán! regrets the error.] Meanwhile, Marin Karmitz, head of the MK2 movieplex chain, has refused to screen the film, calling it "fascist." His interview with Télérama provoked a flurry of hate mail but also approbation. In particular, he said: It's a film that turns barbarism and violence into a spectacle. For two hours, we see a man being tortured, nothing more. Second fascistic element: revisionism, the way in which History is charicatured, reduced to aphasia for the sole benefit of noises, blows and cries. To deny Christianity its words it to deny its greatness. At last, given the depiction of the Jews, anti-Semitism is the third element of this fascist ideology. But, in America, the Jewish lobbies have led themselves astray by putting the debate in this framework only: they have unwittingly fed the far right attack of which this film is evidence. Paris Archbishop, Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, who was born Jewish but converted, has decried the film's "sadism." He told the Catholic TV station KTO that "the Gospels are neither the Gallic Wars nor Napoleon's memoirs." The love of God "is not measured in liters of hemoglobin and spilled blood," he said. "For us, Christ's blood is in the chalice during the liturgy." (The film meeting with great success in Lebanon: "the fact that the film is being shown in the current context of the Middle East conflict, opposing Israel and Arabs, is not unrelated to the success of the film," said one spectator.) Lustiger, you'll remembe, is the one who criticized Abbé Pierre for endorsing the Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy
Δ	Spanish writer Juan Goytisolo has an essay in Thursday's Le Monde entitled "Return to Reason." While the war in Afghanistan, decided on both in the framework of international law and out of the pressing need to end the obscurantist Taliban regime that acted as a refuge for bin Laden and his organization, partially attained its goals (partially, because the number one terrorist and one of his closest followers still move about freely), the Invasion of Iraq to put an end to the alleged threat of Saddam Hussein has been (with the not negligible exception of the latter's arrest and the dismantling of his regime) a total absurdity. [...] The phraseology of the current occupant of the White House regarding "international terrorism" has nevertheless had an immediate effect, both in the East and the West, in the European Union and in Russia. Sharon has seized on it to crush the Palestinians and pen them in ghettos encircled by a wall even more bloody than the one erected in Berlin a half century ago. Had enough? You may remember that, like Russell Banks and Oliver Stone, Goytisolo is a member of the International Parliament of Writers who visited Yasser Arafat in 2002. While there, one member, Nobelist José Saramago, told reporters that "What is happening in Palestine is a crime which we can put on the same plane as what happened at Auschwitz, at Buchenwald," adding that "There are no gas chambers yet. But that does not mean there will never be gas chambers . . . one can kill without having gas chambers." Following these remarks, Saramago was denounced by other IPW members. However, philosopher Alain Finkielkraut also reported the IPW subsequently "appealed to the director of France Culture to rescind the invitation extended to [then Israeli ambassador to France] Elie Barnavi, the representative of a “terrorist, neo-fascist and nazi” government, to a radio program which they were also to attend. Laure Adler didn’t give in so Juan Goytisolo refused to sit at the same table as the ambassador."
Ε	Le Nouvel Observateur has posted its cover story from March 25, 1974: "Can we do without the Americans?" ...of the thirteen divisions that the American army currently comprises, four (a third!) are in Europe. Of the 2,250,000 men in the the US Armed forces, all services combined, including the Marines, 313,000 are supposed to defend us. There are 228,000 of them in West Germany, 3,000 in Greece, 2,000 in Holland, 3,000 in Iceland, 10,000 in Italy, 1,000 in Morocco, 2,000 in Portugal, 7,000 in Turkey, 23,000 in the Sixth Fleet and 2,000 roving. [...] If one considers, in addition to this spearhead, the deployment of the 8,000 nuclear warheads located somewhere in Germany, one can form a rather precise impression of the great atomic umbrella that the United States — for the modest sum of $7 million a year — graciously extend over European heads that are grateful or that should be...

Reprieve?

French Police Arrest 3 for 'AZF' Terrorist Threats, RTL Says

March 26 (Bloomberg) -- Paris police have detained three suspects in the course of their investigation into threats by the previously unknown "AZF'' group to bomb French railroads, RTL radio reported, without saying where it obtained the information.

Yesterday, repeating a demand for about $6 million, AZF said it was ending its bomb threats in France temporarily, according to a letter released by the French Interior Ministry. The group said the suspension would allow it to address "technological, logistic and other shortcomings.''

French embassies in Djibouti, Mali receive threat letters

DJIBOUTI (AFP) - The French embassies in Djibouti and Mali have received letters threatening French interests in the two African countries, the embassy in Djibouti and sources in Mali said Wednesday.

Several letters have been received in recent days by French embassies in "seven or eight predominantly Muslim countries," a judicial source in Paris said Wednesday.

"The threats against French interests in Djibouti were contained in a letter" sent from France, a French diplomat in Djibouti said.

He said the letter had been signed by "Mosvar Barayev, commando."

Commander Abu Sayaf: 'No brigade of Movsar Barayev is in existence'

[from Kavkaz Center]

In a brief interview to Kavkaz Center news and information agency Chechen Commander, Amir of the Islamic Regiment of CRI Armed Forces, Abu-Sayaf (Said-Emin) strongly denied the media report that Chechen fighters (Mujahideen) allegedly have anything to do with the letter containing threats to carry out terrorist acts on the French soil, which French authorities mentioned not too long ago:

"There is no 'Brigade of Movsar Barayev' in existence. This is a lie. There is the Islamic Regiment of CRI Armed Forces, which is a part of the Southwestern Front of CRI Armed Forces and which Movsar used to be in command of earlier. And today I am the Commander of this Regiment. All of our military targets are located in Chechnya or in Russia. We are not waging a war against France. France did not attack us. We are waging a war against the Russian empire and we are conducting strikes on our military adversary. This is why I am calling on the French Government to stop its anti-Chechen hysteria, to stop the filthy political fuss around Chechens and to stop echoing Moscow."

Growling for Colombani

Any of you who have seen me over the past 10 days knows how furious I get anytime I read or hear the French media trying to stuff down our throats their self-serving lying charges (those against Aznar, Bush, and Blair, i.e., anybody whom they don't feel any sympathy with).

So when I read that the Mémorial de Caen was organizing a conference with Jean-Marie Colombani, among others ("QUELLE LIBERTÉ POUR L'INFORMATION DANS UN MONDE INQUIÉTANT ?", organized in tandem with Les Amis de l'hebdomadaire La Vie and Reporters sans Frontières), I knew I had to attend. I wanted to give Le Monde's director a piece of my mind (in a diplomatic manner, natch). Three hours before it started at 7 pm on March 23, 2004, I jumped into my trusty jalopy, and drove the 260 km to Caen, arriving just in the nick of time.

And sure enough, the first thing any of the five intervenants did (with a constant wry smile on his face) was to attack the lies of politicians, ridicule the partisanship of the media, and bemoan the jingoism of the population (meaning those of the US, the UK, and Aznar's Spain exclusively, bien sûr). It was Jean-Marie Charon, "Sociologue des médias" (whatever that means), who opened the débat — the others being (left to right on the admittedly unclear photo) Colombani, Walter Wells, Directeur de l'International Herald Tribune (beard), Jean-Jacques Lerosier, Grand reporter à Ouest-France, and Jacqueline Papet, Rédactrice-en-chef de RFI, with the moderators answering to the names of Daniel Junqua, Journaliste et Vice-président de RSF, and Jean-Claude Escaffit, Journaliste à La Vie et Directeur des Amis de La Vie.

Before I left Paris, I'd reviewed and written down (in telegraph-style) a handful of arguments: these ranged from the Iraqis quoted in Reason, on Iraq the Model, and in Le Monde itself, to Doug's post on Le Monde's partisan mistranslation of Michael Ignatieff's piece in the New York Times.

The only problem was a rather big one, I learned as a I headed for my seat: questions would not be permitted, except in written form on small pieces of paper handed over to one of the animators. So I knew I had to pay close attention if I wanted to find an appropriate moment when to jump in. And I would obviously not have time to develop any of the arguments (especially since Eskaffit seemed to be a control freak).

It happened towards the end. There was a brief lull as Wells was about to make his last extensive remarks. Suddenly everybody turned to me as I let out : "Je pense que nous devons tous remercier les médias français pour leur admirable abilité à détecter les mensonges. Mais je ne comprends pas pourquoi ces spécialistes en la matière ignorent des sujets qui ont été traités dans le Herald Tribune, par exemple." (This was punctuated by Eskaffit's protests on his mike, you realize.) "Nous avons pu y lire des articles détaillant ce qu'on pourrait taxer de mensonges dans le camp de la paix, comme le fait que les Allemands, les Russes, et les Français avaient pas mal d'affaires avec les autorités baasistes, et que Total devait avoir un contrat exclusif avec Saddam Hussein. Pourquoi les médias français n'en font-ils pas autant état que de ce qui concerne les Ricains, les Rosbifs, et les Espagnols?"

Eskaffit was growing increasingly more vocal in asking/telling me to keep quiet (shades of Chirac?) — he claimed that "de toutes façons", nobody could hear me — so seeing the end approaching (and having a hard time competing against a microphone), I pulled out my final ace — the final ace being a book, which I held above my head. (Yes, there did seem to be a somewhat theatrical element to this scene; why do you ask?) "Et en matière de mensonges, il y a ce livre d'un rédacteur de La Croix, qui a été licencié pour l'avoir publié, qui s'appelle Comment la presse nous a désinformés sur l'Irak. Et qui raconte les partis pris des Français pour diaboliser Bush, pour sanctifier Chirac, et pour communier avec les partis de la 'paix'."

Even a few audience members had by now started to tell me to keep quiet, but that seemed an appropriate place to end anyway, so with that I sat down.

As for Eskaffit, he went on talking to the intervenants… ignoring completely what I had said. (While a couple of people behind me asked to see the book.) Well, I felt I had done my blogger's duty, so to speak, so I sat back, pretty content with myself.

Then, as Junqua made his last remarks, I understood that some people had heard me; the RSF moderator surprised me by pulling out his own copy of Alain Hertoghe's book (which he had in his briefcase), and explained that it provided a negative view of the French media during the Iraq war. But then he added that there was another book, detailing the French press's doings during the first Gulf war, with a positive slant, and that one could not read the first book without comparing it to the second. He tried to conclude that Hertoghe's book was a partisan "brûlot" that was not very friendly to his colleagues. (This from a colloque which had just declared that, happily, the old tradition in the press of refusing to criticize one's colleagues had now become "caduc"!)

I wasn't going to let him get away with that as the final word, so I let out another comment: "Les médias ont complètement censuré ce livre!" (But Eskaffit immediately started interrupting again.)

Afterwards, I went up to speak to some of the intervenants. Wells asked to see Hertoghe's book, which he wanted to check out. As for Junqua, he admitted it was news to him that the La Croix editor had been fired as a result of the book's publication.

So, all in all, a satisfying 10 minutes. (But hardly worth doing again, not at that distance. At least not without a couple of chums to have a drink with, afterwards.)

P.S. This is my first post for ¡No Pasarán! Muchas gracias, amigos, for inviting me to participar.

Ha!

"Germany is no threat to terrorism!" writes David Kaspar.

We got that attitude...

sorry folks: we had to smoke a commenter who couldn't mind his manners. That was simply not tolerable. The revolution is aware that the forces of reaction are in our midst and it will act accordingly to stamp them out. Don't make us send H.R. here after you (see left). Therefore, let it be known that we reserve the right to ban discourteous posters immediately and without appeal (especially anyone caught using this juvenile term). This blog represents an unreasonably large portion of our spare time so it ain't here for you to piss on (or.. in better syntax: On for you to piss, it is not here.)

El Justiciero

Time has come for decisions. Either Europe unifies to resist the engineers of the apocalypse, following Tony Blair. Or it poses as an opponent of the United States, following the pseudo-"camp of peace" led by Jacques Chirac, Vladimir Putin and the hesitating Gerhard Schroeder. The "viva la muerte" chanted by the Islamist legions vindicates Tony Blair. But the terror they spread, petrifying European citizens, threatens to lead to resignation after resignation. — My personal hero André Glucksmann in the Wall Street Journal. (Hat tip: Franco Alemán of Hispa Libertas — sitting in for Tim Blair — Alemán also blogs on recent revelations about what the Aznar government knew and when it revealed it).

Glucksmann also gave an interview to Le Figaro yesterday. "Sleeping soundly is the slogan of every cowardice," he hissed. Here is more:

[...]Are Europeans blind to this threat?
Opposite such a ferocious desire for annihilation, by what perversion of intelligence is one able to chastise not its henchmen or its agents but those who, in churchillian fashion, have from the very first day decried, identified and fought the destructive rage driving the international terrorist organizations? What visual dysfunction must one have to substitute the slogan "Aznar, Basta Ya! for "ETA y al-Qaeda, Basta ya!" and to exorcise a planetary threat by brandishing quaint signs adorned with the word "Paz" ?

Precisely. In your book, West Against West, you talk of Islamism as if of a machine for "total war" against civilians...
The fantasy of a great planetary revolution, anti-Liberal, anti-Western and anti-capitalist has by turns fed the fanaticism of the nazis, the communists and the Islamists. It is their secret nihilist convergence that explains their common taste for redemptive violence. The obsessive fear common to these movements is not of capitalism but of the "spirit of capitalism" (Max Weber) and human rights which are inseparable.

In other words, as you say in your book Dostoevsky in Manhattan, Islamism is one of the many contemporary variants of nihilism. Can you explain this point?
Some commentators would have you believe that Islamism is not nihilistic because those who are mad for Allah "believe" in an absolute. Indeed: their absolute is terror. Islamism, like communism and nazism, is in fact the crowning achievement of a desire for annihilation: better to want nothingness itself than not to want anything at all. Dostoevsky and Nietzsche called that nihilism and Heidegger would call it "desire of desire." The nihilists want to rule by chaos and tyranny. They show themselves to be all the more bloody for thinking, deep down, that evil, like the devil, that other stale idea from the superstitious era, no longer exists. "May the sun burn out!" : that was how Leon Trotsky invoked the "eternal darkness." In Baghdad, Istanbul, Atocha or Jerusalem, the terrorist sacrifices to the same logic. Islamism is the local dialect of a globalized, destructive state of mind. The nihilist, be he Islamist, Bolshevik, fascist, racist or chauvinist, breaks every taboo and shrinks before nothing, like the child soldier of Monrovia who, when asked whether he might slaughter his own parent, answers, "Why not?"

[...]

You call on intellectuals to have more lucidity and courage in the face of international jihadism. What do you mean?
Comes the moment for decisions. Either Europe unites in resistance to the engineers of the apocalypse, as Blair has chosen; or it poses as an opponent of the United States, the path of the pseudo-"peace camp," behind Chirac, Putin and the hesitant Shroeder. The "viva la muerte" chanted by the Islamist legions vindicates Blair. But terror they inspire and that freezes the European citizen risks, on the contrary, compounding retreat upon retreat. For the Old Continent, nothing would be more juvenile and more fruitless than hoping to cement its unity in opposition to the United States.

In other words?
Europe's genuine cement must be the struggle against terror and the absolute rejection of the massacre of civilian populations. Let's judge a political doctrine by its effects. The dainty pleasure of putting sticks between the Americans' spokes leads to European impotence, to the paralysis of the Security Council, to the dramatic weakening of Nato. Let's stop jumping around like baby goats, shouting, "anybody but Bush!" After all, that "cretin" George W. Bush isn't all wrong: a minimum of democracy and a zest of tolerance in the slums of the world, sometimes introduced from outside and manu militari will foment security for Madrid, Paris, London and New York.

See some of my other Glucksmann translations here, here, here and here.

Liars!

Last week, the New York Times Magazine ran Michael Ignatieff's thoughtful essay on the year that has passed since the war first began. Not surprisingly, NYTM's copy editors entitled it, "The Year of Living Dangerously" (after the 1982 Peter Weir movie).

This week it appears in translation in Le Monde. The title? "How I changed my mind on Iraq."

Oh, really? Igantieff changed his mind? Where do they get that? To me at least, it looked as though he explicitly denied this in the third fucking paragraph:

A year later, Iraq is no longer a pretext or an abstraction. It is a place where Americans are dying and Iraqis, too, in ever greater numbers. What makes these deaths especially haunting is that no one can honestly say -- at least not yet -- whether they will be redeemed by the emergence of a free Iraq or squandered by a descent into civil war.

Oh... wait a minute. I see. Ignatieff talks about having "second thoughts." Their translator Florence Lévy-Paoloni did not render this as doutes but as "changing my mind." Rather presumptuous of her, no? For the example sentence "I'm having second thoughts (about it)," my own dictionary gives "Je commence à avoir des doutes (là-dessus)," (I'm starting to have doubts (about it)).

Who is Florence-Lévy-Paoloni? A highly active English-to-French translator it seems. She's also been available for the publications of other illustrious commentators such as Robert Fisk, Scott Ritter (twice!), Robin Cook, Gore Vidal (despite the spelling error, it's her), Engels and Amos Oz (at least when he spoke out against the war).

What an interesting collection of people! I wonder if she shares their views on the Iraq war? Might she have been tempted to translate Ignatieff's words tendentiously because of this?

Man, they are getting a letter from me!

smackdown

My translation of a painful report in Le Monde is up over at Watch:

"While the American leadership is compounding error upon error in Iraq, the Europeans and the French in particular are even stupider because they determine their stance only in reaction to Washington. They do not take Iraq and its inhabitants into account at all," says Fakhri Kareem, editor-in-chief of the newspaper al-Mada, trying to sum up popular sentiment. "Iraqis think France doubly betrayed them, first with Saddam, then with the American occupation. France cares only about its anti-American position. It is forgetting the Iraqis. Chirac and de Villepin must understand that no Iraqi finds their position courageous... What did France do to help Iraq free itself from the dictator and then to help Iraq regain its sovereignty? Nothing!"

As Mårten notes in his presentation, I found this originally through an essay by the intrepid Erik Svane, who points out that appears opposite an interview with the FM, "Dominique 'Who is a Man' Villepin™," as he's called these days. Writes Svane, "what's extraordinary is that the article by Rémy Ourdan completely contradicts (though one can feel that the reporter wrote this article grudgingly) the cartoon by Plantu and also the editorial line of the paper of record and of the French media, and that of the French government."

Two other noteworthy things: Mårten also points out that I wrote to him in an email that "even though it appeared in today's print edition, they've already taken the link to the story off their Web site and I can't find a direct link through the usual means." Svane doesn't link to the story either so I'm assuming he couldn't find it either but found it in the print edition. The only link I can find is to the archived version meaning that, on the date of its publication, it couldn't be found on Le Monde's Web site. If it weren't for Svane, I never would have seen it. How many other politically inconvenient articles have I missed this way? Le Monde does this on occasion: an internet chat with filmmaker Sa'ad Salman (which derided France and Europe's position on Iraq in violent terms) was quickly pulled after it first appeared and replaced with another, more ideologically acceptable one. Salman laughed about this when I interviewed him last summer. (See him talking on French TV: dialup/broadband).

Secondly, Svane observes that Ourdan was one of the French reporters fingered by whistle-blower Alain Hertoghe in his book for having written on more than one occasion that the taking of Baghdad would be a "21st Century Stalingrad." Hertoghe writes that some French journalists seemed ready "to fight to the last Baghdadi."

ALSO: See this little article over at LOTF.

journalism... ?

"'A lot of French journalists are shit,' Wady, the sculptor, observed one afternoon as we shared a narghile filled with apple-flavored tobacco. 'They come here and talk against the U.S. in a stupid way. They don’t care about the crimes of Saddam Hussein.' And it’s not only the French, noted Esam Pasha, a painter and translator for the U.S. military: 'European and Arab journalists talk to us, but they don’t care about our happiness in being liberated. They only want us to make anti-American comments.' Even a cabbie who took me to the Shabander one afternoon weighed in. 'Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabia TV, no good,' he said. 'They only show pictures of bombings and killings of Americans -- always how things are bad in Iraq, never how they are getting better.'

"Worse, I heard many stories at the Shabander about foreign correspondents staging news events to discredit the U.S. One young man introduced me to a Spanish photographer who, he later reported, had just finished posing an Iraqi woman in a nearby pile of rubble looking plaintively toward heaven, as if seeking deliverance from U.S. bombs. Rasim, the painter, claimed he witnessed Arab TV journalists pay idle Iraqis to light a car on fire and throw rocks to create an 'anti-American' demonstration. 'These journalists come here with their minds already made up,' he groused. 'They’re not interested in anything that contradicts their anti-American viewpoint.'"
— Steven Vincent in this month's Reason. (Hat tip: the Web-majestic Erik Svane.)

The Letter

Regarding the letter below, Mosvar Barayev is apprently this guy. However, the authors misspelled his first name, which is supposed to be Movsar. He was the leader of the Chechen group that took a Moscow theater audience hostage in 2002.

The letter was also received by Le Monde and Le Parisien. Authorities are now stating that the letter doesn't fit normal patterns and the police are openly skeptical, saying they've never heard of the group (feh!) and that Islamist terrorists don't usually announce the steps they intend to take. Le Monde's Piotr Smolar also says that the reference to Charles Martel is more reminiscent of far-right ideology.

Whatever the doubts of the police, the public is very much on the qui vive, as can be seen from the behavior of the delirious motorist Jonathan blogged below. To-night, the 8 o'clock nightly news on France 2 showed the Paris bomb squad blowing shit up all over town and dynamiting the tailgates of abandoned trucks. The Prime Minister's office is stepping up it's a security plan known as vigipirate (the name of which is a combination of vigilance and pirate, or "high-jacker" or "terrorist." Not obvious what an English equivalent would be... "operation vigirist"? There's a reason this sort of thing is rarely immitated.)

UPDATE: The Beeb reports that "a suspicious object on a railway line north of Paris hit rail services, including the Eurostar, but it turned out to be an oxygen canister. ¶ The bomb disposal experts who examined the object marked 'AZF, do not touch' dismissed the threat as a bad joke."

FURTHER UPDATE: [deleted: it was boring]

Red alert

In 2003, public debt reached €16,000 per French citizen: The state's finances have seriously deteriorated and the shortfall in Social Security is growing. The accrued deficit is now as high as €63.4 billion. Faltering growth will not bring things back into the black. Fees withheld have risen for the first time since 1999. [...] Since December 31, 2003, France has effectively no longer met the two Maastricht criteria that established a ceiling for public deficit at 3% of GDP and debt at 60%: the former has reached 4.1% and the latter, 63%. [...] Nevertheless, the deterioration of public finances is unprecedented. Since the 1974 oil shock, France has never been able to end a fiscal year with a budget surplus; it always spent more than it took from taxpayers. In 2003, it spent €273.8 billion for €239.8 billion in revenues, generating a record deficit of €56 billion. One fifth of spending is not covered.

2004 will not be the year of reversal: the forecasted deficit is €55.5 billion, which means that come the end of September, the administrations will be living on credit. The deficit is not due to investment, capitalizing on low interest rates. Only 10% of state expenditures are invested. [...]

The state isn't the only one in the red. In 2003, public corporations — health and unemployment insurance — watched their deficits explode, reaching €9.4 billion. Social security now has a discovery authorization of more than €30 million with the deposit insurance corporation [did I get that right? — D] In all, 43.9% of the wealth produced by the economy that is received in the form taxes and withholdings is not enough to cover the cost of services.

Bombs 'to split Spain from allies'

A document published months before national elections reveals al Qaeda planned to separate Spain from its allies by carrying out terror attacks. (Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan)

Slante!

Are they any safer?

TF1 news reports that "a letter signed 'Mosvar Barayev commando,' addressed to the prime minister, threatens France with attacks if the law on secularism which specifically forbids wearing the Islamic veil in public schools is not withdrawn. Here are the main elements."

'In the name of Allah, forgiving and merciful on behalf of the the servants of Allah, the Mighty and Wise to the servants of the French Republic (...), this message is addressed to the leader of the government, Mr. Raffarin:

'On 10 February 2004, a new height was reached in the war being waged against Islam by the Coalition with the passage of a law barring the hijab from grammar and high schools and public places by the Assembée nationale. (...) We had excluded you from a certain category among your infidel brethren because of your opposition to the unjust aggression of the Crusaders in Iraq but you yourselves have taken the decision to put your names on the list of the most dogged enemies of Islam. (...)

'We take France for an avowed enemy of Islam along with the rest of the Coalition and the Maghreban and Arab governments that collaborate with you and we intend to retaliate. With this hateful, discriminatory and anti-Muslim law, you have shown the whole world and all Muslims that you were well and truly on the side of the devil and we shall treat you as such until the Final Day unless you reverse your decision and comply with the will of Allah who is also your God.

'Know that we have succeeded in penetrating, and establishing ourselves on your soil, the same land in which Charles Martel and his troops defied us, land of pride and arrogance, people of wine and pork, of licentiousness and nudity (...)

'Our organization, though wounded, has been able to right itself, thanks be to Allah and even to become larger and master new technologies and secure massive recruitment of volunteers specifically for jihad, and Europe is a new land of jihad.

'France will be safe neither on its soil nor in its interests abroad (...).

'Present in France for some time but also very mobile, we were waiting for three sings before making ourselves known:

• The passage of the 10 February law constituted a first sign to us

• The signal clearly and explicitly given by Sheikh Ayman al-Zawahiri (Osama bin Laden's second in Command. A February 24 audio recording attributed to him explicitly denounced France for having forbidden the wearing of the veil in public school, — Ed.)

'It has been forbidden to us to reveal the third sign but this is the one that will determine for us the moment when we shall act.

'Mr. Raffarin, know that what is promised to you is certain (...). We ask that you immediately withdraw your law on secularism (...). If you do not withdraw it immediately, we shall respond severely and with an intensity not seen before in your country since the acts of 1995. We ask Muslim men and women to avoid crowded places and to cling to Allah's moorings.'"

RWANDA

This is an old skeleton in France's closet yet it appears the MFA has no prepared response. It came up when the final subject was discussed during to-day's press conference. The matter elicited a pregnant reply:

President Kagamé has leveled extremely serious accusations against France, which he accuses of having participated in the Rwandan genocide. What is your initial reaction to these statements?

Spokesman: I have no reaction.

In your face, Zapatero!

The BBC reports on the results of a study (PDF, 249k/27 pp) — one the Beeb commissioned itself and which it calls "authoritative" — of Iraqi public opinion on the occupation and the future of Iraq:

An opinion poll carried out in Iraq will make good reading for US President George W Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

The poll suggests that Iraqis are happier than they were before the invasion, optimistic about the future and opposed to violence.

[...]

It suggests that the reporting of the daily attacks on the occupying forces in Iraq could be obscuring another picture.

Seventy percent said that things were going well or quite well in their lives, while only 29% felt things were going bad.

And 56% said that things were better now than they were before the war.

Can you imagine?!!

French forces nearly captured Bin Laden — perhaps several times

AP Paris Osama bin Laden narrowly escaped capture by French troops working with American forces in Afghanistan, perhaps several times, the head of France’s armed forces said Monday.
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French soldiers are determined to capture the fugitive head of the al-Qaida network by the end of the year, Gen. Henri Bentegeat said Monday.
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‘‘Our men were not very far,’’ Bentegeat told France’s Europe-1 radio station. ‘‘On several occasions, I even think that he slipped out of a net that was well closed.’’

...as I was saying

"'¡No pasarán!' was the message of those defending ballot-box democracy during the Spanish civil war. As the full horror of the Madrid atrocity unfolds, surely the time has come to unite against terrorism — the new fascism of the 21st century, wherever it takes place." — Rotherham MP Denis McShane in Thursday's Guardian, in case you missed it.