Canada's wake-up call

Wake up calls. Too bad people have a nasty habit of going right back to sleep afterwards.

Socialist revisionism

Preying on those unaware of history, a UK Socialist house organ which seeks donations because they aren’t supported by fat cats and millionaires” [billionaires] - is trying to add embellishments to the muck dredged out of the past.

There were three positions within the labour movement in the 1930s. These were firstly pacifism, secondly support for the League of Nations and “collective security”, which came to dominate Labour Party policy, and thirdly anti-imperialism.

Implying a link between fascism and anyone they’d like to tar, they point out that their grandparents’ opposition to British Fascist Sir Oswald Mosley was based in a desire to support pacifism.

Nonsense. Oswald Mosley, a man enamored with a united Europe, wasn’t just a supporter of the fascism of the Nazis (who were socialists,) he WAS A PACIFIST and an isolationist who opposed the defense of the permitting people to exercise their free will, just as the modern far-left do in the Arab world, and with anyone prepared to dismember the society predicated on the inviolability of their own right to speech.

They both fetishize dictators and public violence. As with Nazism, they favored the primacy of the state in all facets of life, favor the establishment of a pervasive welfare state, and dilution of the family’s position as the basis of social organization.

To understand the cognitive dissonance and confusion they have with the world, just observe the great contortions they go through to convince people that there is still a battle with imperialism out there when there are no empires left. The only one that they can identify holds elections every two years for legislators who can scupper the government and every four years for a president.

The difference is that Socialists try to hide their penchance for violence and admiration for a commanding and tyrannical government model under a veneer of “demanding peace” under the banner of a clenched fist – one they seem only to swing at their fellow citizens knowing that there are no socialistic consequences in doing so. It’s a leftist preoccupation that continues today without realizing that they feel perfectly comfortable making the opposite point when it comes to past history:

Britain’s hypocritical non-intervention policy starved the Spanish republic of weapons as Hitler and Mussolini armed Franco.

An action they would exempt Saddaam Hussein, Basher Assad, the PFLP, and Hamas from in a New York minute.the fuse is lit!

Only Later Do We Learn that John Bolton Is Not Alone

John Bolton, it turns out, is not alone. You probably didn't know about it — because the MSM didn't make a big deal about it (pointing it out might have made the president's adversaries look not only like partisans but like partisans going overboard) — but Bolton was not the only ambassador to have his nomination held up for months in the Foreign Relations Committee, giving Bush little choice but to use his presidential power to install his nominee through a "recess appointment".

Indeed, we learn in Dan Bilefsky and Brian Knowlton's article on "Bush's unlikely bridge-builder to the EU" that C. Boyden Gray, America's lanky new ambassador to the European Union,

has been a leader of the Committee for Justice, a conservative lobbying group that has fought to clear the way for the judicial appointments of the President George W. Bush.

In that role, Gray raised millions of dollars and helped engineer ads attacking Democrats' attempts to block socially conservative judges, including Roman Catholics. One ad superimposed a sign on a courthouse that read, "Catholics Need Not Apply."

That lobbying so angered Democratic senators that they held up [Eeyore's] nomination as ambassador for months in the Foreign Relations Committee. Finally, Bush used his power to install Gray through a "recess appointment," while the Senate was out of town.

What are the consequences of showing disrespect for Islam and depicting Muhammad as the bloodthirsty founder of a violent religion?

First, we are told that

Al Liby … says the cartoons, which depicted Muhammad as the bloodthirsty founder of a violent religion that preaches hatred and jihad against infidels, were "offensive" to Muslims.

Then, we are informed of the consequences of depicting "Muhammad as the bloodthirsty founder of a violent religion that preaches hatred and jihad against infidels". What are the consequences of this, you ask? Well, the soil of offending countries

must be reduced to "an ocean of blood." [And] it's now time to apply those Islamic values and burn the country to the ground.

And no, it may feel like it, but you're not watching a Monty Python sketch.

While we're at it, remember how we keep getting told how the Americans deserve any comeuppance of theirs and all tragedies headed their way, while the French and other wise, sentient members of the peace camp who profess understanding for the Arab world and Muslim sensitivities and who wield wise, humane policies? Well, it just so happens that, according to the Hal Lindsey piece, the main target of Anas al Liby is… France!

A 40-minute videotape released last week by an al-Qaida leader living in France exhorted French Muslims to rise up and punish France for what Anas al Liby calls France's disrespect for Islam.

… French soil, he declared, must be reduced to "an ocean of blood." This event will signal "the beginning of the end of Western Civilization."

Al Liby concluded that France's disrespect for Islam was another example of Western contempt for Islamic values, so it's now time to apply those Islamic values and burn the country to the ground.

Garçon, can we have some more of that dish of wise and tolerant policies?…

Foie gras

Et les cuisses de grenouilles ? French streets will flow with the livers of non-believers.

"I consider freedom of speech the most precious civic right we have. We cannot compromise on basic principles. We have to be firm on that."

Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen … in office since 2001, gave a spirited, unapologetic defense in the interview of his actions during the cartoon affair, insisting that "a lot of misinformation" characterized the controversy from the very start

writes David R. Sands in a report on one of the Bush administration's best friends in Europe, in which we learn that Mr. Rasmussen announced plans last month to extend the country's deployment in southern Iraq by at least a year.

"At the end of the day, this so-called 'crisis' was not about 12 cartoons. It was about the hidden agendas in the Muslim world, about fundamentalists and Islamists who wanted to take advantage of this to pursue their own agendas," he said.

Mr. Rasmussen said there were always limits on free speech, but that those limits could be defined only by the courts, not by an elected government.

"The Danish government could not interfere with a free and independent newspaper, whatever we may think or feel about the content," he said. "My strong belief is that 12 cartoons cannot justify violence, the burning down of our embassies or threats against Danish citizens."

Religion, he added, "cannot be exempted from the critical debate."

Just as the controversy was dying down, however, Mr. Rasmussen sparked a fresh domestic debate with criticism of those in Denmark who, he said, had been too willing to seek a compromise with intolerant extremists.

"Now we see who are the sheep and who are the goats," he told a Danish newspaper, the biblical imagery of his comments almost as startling as the content in this thoroughly secular society.

Mr. Rasmussen said he made the remark because "there were certain voices in Denmark that tended to advocate restrictions on freedom of speech."

He added: "I consider freedom of speech the most precious civic right we have. We cannot compromise on basic principles. We have to be firm on that."

Famous in Finland? pffft!

Profiling would be just wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong!

Arrested and charged with offences under the Criminal Code of Canada are:

Fahim Ahmad, 21, Toronto, Ontario
Zakaria Amara, 20, Mississauga, Ontario
Asad Ansari, 21, Mississauga, Ontario
Shareef Abdelhaleen, 30, Mississauga, Ontario
Qayyum Abdul Jamal, 43, Mississauga, Ontario
Mohammed Dirie, 22, Kingston, Ontario
Yasim Abdi Mohamed, 24, Kingston, Ontario
Jahmaal James, 23, Toronto, Ontario
Amin Mohamed Durrani, 19, Toronto, Ontario
Steven Vikash Chand alias Abdul Shakur, 25, Toronto, Ontario
Ahmad Mustafa Ghany, 21, Mississauga, Ontario
Saad Khalid, 19, Mississauga, Ontario

The fuse is lit!

Robert Fisk - Still concussed?

SO hoping for human misery that he’s practically pissing his pants with vainglory - (paid link to the Independent newspaper omitted):

Could Haditha be just the tip of the mass grave? The corpses we have glimpsed, the grainy footage of the cadavers and the dead children; could these be just a few of many? Does the handiwork of America's army of the slums go further?

It’s sad for me to see that this man living in my native Beirut hasn’t noted the inherent cruelty of world view which the United States is fighting. It’s the very same world view death cult that he and his bafoonish fellow travelers are trying to fan the flames of.

Where it not that he had a chance to call it an “Army of the slums” he would excoriate the U.S. military for not policing it, or being easy on the miscreants who kill Iraqi civilians. Oops – SORRY. He doesn’t seem to mention just WHO it is who has killed so many Iraqis, does he?

The fuse is lit!

We get all sorts here.

Some of our readers leave comments. Occasionally we get a real winner who seems to be getting his news from another source - one so true, so ineffably pure, that blood-drinking Jewish financiers in top hats have been trying to buy them out and shut them down, just like the magical Tesla death-ray, and those pyramids the cunning devils “sold” the Pharoahs.

Just as the poor will always be with us, those who buy into conspiracy theories will too. The common thread?

Conspiracy theories insult the intelligence of the reasoning mind, and flatters that of idiots.

When someone imagines a class of people forming a "cabal", they start to think that people are after them, and then the addiction to victimhood sinks in. There is a kind of solace and comfort in being able to explain away ones’ personal failings, lost loves, inability to digest the way of the world, etc. Just as some look for clues in their daily horoscope, others nurse a tumor of irrational hatred of something they see as powerful, undaunting, and after them – as if they mattered enough that mega-state or mega-corp would care.

It really is rather cute, except that some never grow out of it.

The fuse is lit!

Can they bear the good news?

CBC, The Globe and Mail, and the BBC did not mention names or orgins of the 17 people arrested Friday. Only on Saturday mid-morning did the CBC mention that some of the detainees may have not been Canadian citizens.
The pattern of reporting, (or of not reporting) reeks of the pedantic instinct for PC.

The fact that they were assembling ammonium nitrate IEDs seemed to give the
CBC license to repeat Timothy McVeigh's name several times. Repeat it
though they may, you can't spin a story by concealing any possible motives. As much as they would regret talk of their precious 'militants' and not corn-fed patriarchal brownshirts that
they'd prefer to see.

The Toronto Sun looking at past history and the same set of information
quite comfortably calls it a possible al Qaida attack.

BBC gave the same early reporting treatment on the air, but not in print to a chemical weapons bust in the UK as the Globe and Mail until it was unavoidable: they eventually mentioned that the 2 suspected arrested in
connection with the affair were "inspired" by al Qaida.

Next step: buy the French post office and fire Besancenot

Money talks, and bullshit walks.

Investigation clears GIs

... but for radical pacifist Leftists, the GIs are damned if they do, and damned if they don't.

Ist das nicht zum kotzen?

« Enfin, l’extrême-gauche tire son épingle du jeu : Olivier Besancenot gagne un point à 24%, Arlette Laguillier deux, avec 23% d’opinions favorables. »

The very fact that 23 percent of the population thinks favorable of these two nutty Trots is enough to split ones’ sides with laughter at the lunacy of communism that they entertain.

Poverty for all! Let’s not forget that these are folks who are happiest when they dream of fulfilling their violent revenge against the vulgar existence of a human success story.

The fuse is lit!

L'ennui profond d'une Europe sans rêves

Or l'Europe n'a ni mythes ni rites fédérateurs capables de la constituer en corps politique homogène. C'est pourtant maintenant qu'elle en aurait besoin. Où donc voit-on le pouvoir européen ? Nulle part. Qui sort du lot pour l'incarner avec charisme (osons le mot), et s'élever au niveau de l'Histoire, par-delà le très abstrait «Conseil» et les bureaucratiques commissions ? Personne. Quelle célébration sanctuarise l'Europe à l'échelle du continent ? Aucune. Quel acte fondateur constitue pour tous le «soc de Romulus» de notre maison commune ? Joker.

Zéropa, donc.

Stay the course

So what are the radical pacifists complaining about anyway? Isn't this exactly what they've wanted for so long?

BATTLE HYMN OF LT. CALLEY
Terry Nelson & C Company

Once upon a time there was a little boy who wanted to grow up
And be a soldier and serve his country in whatever way he could
He would parade around the house with a sauce pan on his head
For a helmet, a wooden sword in one hand and the American flag in the other
As he grew up, he put away the things of a child but he never let go of the flag

My name is William Calley, I'm a soldier of this land
I've tried to do my duty and to gain the upper hand
But they've made me out a villain they have stamped me with a brand
As we go marching on

I'm just another soldier from the shores of U.S.A.
Forgotten on a battle field then thousand miles away
While life goes on as usual from New York to Santa Fe
As we go marching on

I've seen my buddies ambushed on the left and on the right
And their youthful bodies riddled by the bullets of the night
Where all the rules are broken and the only law is might
As we go marching on

While we're fighting in the jungles they were marching in the street
While we're dying in the rice fields they were helping our defeat
While we're facing V.C. bullets they were sounding a retreat
As we go marching on

With our sweat we took the bunkers, with our tears we took the plain
With our blood we took the mountains and they gave it back again
Still all of us are soldiers, we're too busy to complain
As we go marching on

When I reach my final campground in that land beyond the sun
And the great commander asks me, "Did you fight or did you run?"
I'll stand both straight and tall stripped of medals, rank and gun
And this is what I'll say:

Sir, I followed all my orders and I did the best I could
It's hard to judge the enemy and hard to tell the good
Yet there's not a man among us would not have understood

We took the jungle village exactly like they said
We responded to their rifle fire with everything we had
And when the smoke had cleared away a hundred souls lay dead

Sir, the soldier that's alive is the only once can fight
There's no other way to wage a war when the only one in sight
That you're sure is not a VC is your buddy on your right

When all the wars are over and the battle's finally won
Count me only as a soldier who never left his gun
With the right to serve my country as the only prize I've won
As we go marching on
Glory, glory hallelujah glory, glory hallelujah

Lefty ideology creates a hostile work environment

As well as a hostile living environment, according to Michael Phillips – oracle of The Gods of Commerce.

The Lefties have banned chain stores in North Beach and much of the city. There is no logic behind it, their arguments fail after one sentence replies, but they don’t think or learn. (Lefty two-digit-IQ ideology: ‘Starbucks kills local coffee shops’…obvious rebuttal: ’Since Starbucks came to San Francisco the number of coffee shops has increased five fold.’)

But you can’t say that because it doesn’t fit the extremely narrow frame of reference that this generation about which Phillips says:

I often describe San Francisco as a 92 year old once beautiful woman who spends two hours a day putting on her make-up. When she was young she was a commie and has never paid any attention to the world. She hates children and learns everything she knows from her hair dresser and manicurist.

The fuse is lit!

Dysfunctional Zeropa

America's debate on immigration may be painful, but Europe's is dysfunctional.

Europe is a hopeless mess. You can't even talk openly about everyday problems. ... and these European scumbags like to give us lessons about McCarthy.

Sick, racist Europe: "The result is that in America political debate centres on illegal immigration, and there is no sense that legal immigrants impose burdens on others. In Europe things are different. There, even legal immigrants are often seen as spongeing on others through welfare receipts; and the fact that some have taken jobs which would not otherwise be done so cheaply is forgotten. In Europe, says Danny Sriskandarajah of Britain's Institute for Public Policy Research, it is harder to talk about immigration as an economic issue. Instead, all migrants are caught in a web of suspicion."

Ultra-libéralisme et capitalisme triomphants

I'm lovin' it © ™ ®.

Séance de dédicaces

The authors of General Leonardo will be signing their graphic novel near Bastille on Saturday afernoon.

Erik Svane et Dan Greenberg dédicaceront leur nouvel album à la librarie BDNet (26 rue de Charonne, 75011 Paris) samedi 3 juin à partir de 15 h.


Lire le résumé et voir un extrait de l'album…