From Normal or Overweight to Fit 'n' Ripped in Only One Hour

It's all smoke and mirrors 

writes Andrew Dixon about the fitness industry. Many of us knew, or suspected, that, of course, but who knew that a before photo and an after photo that look like an interval of "months of hard work and dieting" could be produced in only one hour?!

There is no doubt that we live in a world of manipulation, false promises and exaggerated claims. This is especially true in the fitness industry.

 … The reasons these programs become so popular is because they are presented and marketed very well. These marketing campaigns use testimonials and before-and-after transformation photos. Before I claim it's all bullshit, I want to make it clear that there are definitely some very impressive, genuine physical transformations out there. What I do take issue with are the transformations that are manipulated with Photoshop, professional lighting, postures to degrade or enhance their look, pro tans, sucking in or pushing out a bloated belly or flexing muscles vs. not flexing to obtain an optimal look.
 
I decided to take my own transformation photos to see what was possible with just a few easy tweaks. About six months ago I was around 185 pounds and about 16 percent body fat. I was feeling particularly bloated on the day, so I asked my girlfriend to take a before shot. I then shaved my head, face and chest and prepared for the after shot, which was about an hour after I took the before shot. I did a few push ups and chin ups, tweaked my bedroom lighting, sucked in, tightened my abs and BOOM! We got our after shot.

As you can see [two photos above], I'm no bodybuilder, but I had enough muscle on me to catch some shadows from the all-important overhead lighting.

Just a few weeks ago I took another series of photos in an attempt to be a little more deceptive. I wanted to show a series of progressions that look like a few months of hard work and dieting. I'm about 200 pounds and 19 percent body fat in this photo series. This took under an hour to produce.

Sexual Activity: most people mainly want to prove that they are sexually functioning, and that’s all

FOR a period of my life, from my 27th to my 39th years, I slept alone

writes Sophie Fontanel, the author of the forthcoming book “The Art of Sleeping Alone”:

I had no sex. I wasn’t unhappy. Or frustrated. In fact, I found no sex preferable to disappointing sex.

 … [Back then,] I asked myself, “Sophie, is your sexual life so very stimulating, actually?” And my answer was, “No.” I realized that even when I took pleasure, I was not ecstatic with my sexual life. In fact, I seemed to be going through the motions of lovemaking because, I thought, that’s what everybody did. I decided to take a break, to recover a true desire.

And what a break! Twelve years! 

It was so easy to stop.

At the beginning, I kept the fact that I had given up sex a secret, and nobody around me could guess how untouched I was. I knew perfectly well that people accept all kinds of sexual behaviors, just so long as you are doing something with your body. 

Are you single, married, engaged, “it’s complicated”? Are you straight, gay, a lesbian? All of these categories suggest sexual activity, which somehow reassures us. You are doing something. 

  But I don’t think that’s our true life and rhythm. We are not machines. Nothing is so tidy about our sex lives. We are very alone in how we dream. We are not making love as easily as we boast we are. And when we are making love, it is not always enjoyable. 

We are liars, poor liars trying to mystify one another. Perhaps French people are especially big liars. At the very least, we are full of contradictions. If you visit Paris, you will notice that we are very thin, even if we are the country of bread and cheese. We are also very sexy, but maybe it’s only a show to save our reputation. 

By giving up sex, I abandoned all this pretense. During the 12 years I didn’t have sex, I learned so much. About my body, the role of art in eroticism, the power of dreams, the softness of clothes, the refuge and the importance of elegance.

 … I’ve learned that most people mainly want to prove that they are sexually functioning, and that’s all. Strangely, people are ashamed to admit that they are alone in their beds, which I discovered is a huge pleasure.

Those Who Aren't With Us Are Against Us, Said the President of the USA — 50 Years Ago

Those who aren't with us are against us, said the president of the United States — 50 years ago.

1963 De Gaulle Warned on Allies

FRANKFURT — President Kennedy, in a blunt rebuttal to French President Charles de Gaulle’s concept of an independent Europe, said … that those who would split allies “give aid and comfort” to enemies of the West. “The United States,” Mr. Kennedy promised, “will risk its cities to defend yours because we need your freedom to protect ours. ... Those who would doubt our pledge or deny this indivisibility — those who would separate Europe from America or split one ally from another — would only give aid and comfort to the men who make themselves our adversaries and welcome any Western disarray.” Mr. Kennedy tackled the “De Gaulle problem” in a major foreign policy address in Frankfurt’s historic Paulskirche — St. Paul’s Church.

Did 2 French Aviators Reach North America by Plane in 1927, a Few Days Before Lindbergh Landed in Paris?

Two French aviators had done it, it seemed

writes Scott Sayare in the New York Times

— accomplished the first, near-unthinkable flight between Paris and New York, and on May 10, 1927, newspapers across France proclaimed “the triumph of French wings” and a “golden age of French aviation.”

“Nungesser and Coli have succeeded,” declared La Presse, going so far as to detail their sea landing in New York Harbor and the “cheers that rose up from the ships that surrounded them.”

Those heady first reports proved false. Charles Nungesser, a daredevil aristocrat and top French flying ace, and François Coli, a one-eyed mariner and former infantryman, had not arrived in New York. Their hulking single-engine biplane, L’Oiseau Blanc, or The White Bird, was never recovered. 

They had vanished “like midnight ghosts,” wrote Charles Lindbergh, the American who only days later reached Paris from New York. The Frenchmen were thought to have gone down in the English Channel, or perhaps over the Atlantic, or somewhere between Newfoundland and Maine.

Their disappearance, considered one of aviation’s great mysteries, has inspired decades of hypothesizing. 

A growing body of evidence, however, suggests that the aviators crashed off the tiny St.-Pierre, a craggy outcrop of lichenous rock and boxy, brightly colored houses about 10 miles from Newfoundland. It is a theory championed by Bernard Decré, an obsessive and excitable French septuagenarian who has committed the past five years to a full-time search for L’Oiseau Blanc.

The Return of Françafrique: Without much notice from the French, Hollande is bringing France back into Africa

On Bastille Day this year, African troops from Mali, Chad and other nations proudly marched down the Champs-Élysées as part of the traditional French national-day military parade

writes Pierre Haski in the New York Times.

It has been a long time since Africa was honored so prominently in France. That reflects a significant shift in France’s interest in Africa, created in part by the decline of France’s global influence in a changing world. 

Relations with Africa, and particularly with France’s former colonies, have long been sufficiently important for Paris to merit a French advisory unit in the president’s office known as the cellule africaine (African cell). 

When France gave most of its African colonies independence in 1960, it retained considerable control. French advisers pulled the strings in ministries from Abidjan to Libreville and reported directly to Jacques Foccart, Charles de Gaulle’s powerful chief advisor on African affairs, a man who could decide to overthrow a president or send French paratroopers to rescue one. 

These arrangements, dubbed “Françafrique,” remained almost untouched for nearly three decades, no matter who ruled in the Élysée Palace.

 … In Mali, [President Hollande] tried for months to promote an “African solution” to the jihadist takeover of a territory in the Sahel region as big as France. 

But when the rebel columns began advancing on Bamako last January, Hollande moved in decisively with troops and jets, seeking at the same time to mobilize regional forces to take over from the French as soon as possible. 

Then in May, the French president traveled to Addis Ababa for the 50th anniversary of the African Union, the only Western head of government to do so. And he surprised his audience by inviting all 54 African states to Paris next December for a “summit on peace and security on the continent” to discuss Africa’s failure to deal with its own security issues in the past half century. 

This is the biggest diplomatic initiative taken by France on the African continent in many years. And even if some African leaders felt “summoned” rather than “invited,” they recognized the validity of the issue. 

Without much notice from French public opinion, which is focused more on gloomy economic statistics, Hollande is bringing France back into Africa. President Barack Obama’s recent trip to Africa shows that the United States may likewise be showing a greater interest in the continent.

If the U.S. were to treat Mexican nationals in the same way that Mexico treats Central American nationals, there would be humanitarian outrage

There are many strange elements in the current debate over illegal immigration

writes Victor Davis Hanson (gracias por instapundit),

but none stranger than the mostly ignored role of Mexico.

  … Is elemental hunger forcing millions of Mexicans to flee north, as it may have in the past?

Not necessarily. According to a recent United Nations study, an estimated 70 percent of Mexico's citizens are overweight and suffer from the same problems of diet, health concerns and lack of exercise shared by other more affluent Western societies.

Mexico is a severe critic of U.S. immigration policy, often damning Americans as ruthlessly insensitive for trying to close our border. It has gone so far as to join lawsuits against individual American states to force relaxation of our border enforcement. Former Mexican President Felipe Calderon sharply criticized the United States for trying to "criminalize migration."

Is Mexico, then, a model of immigration tolerance?

Far from it.

Until 2011, when it passed reforms, Mexico had among the most draconian immigration laws in the world. Guatemala has criticized Mexico for initiating construction of a fence along its southern border.

Mexico has zero tolerance for illegal immigrants who seek to work inside Mexico, happen to break Mexican law or go on public assistance -- or any citizens who aid them.

In Mexico, legal immigration is aimed at privileging lawful arrivals with skill sets that aid the Mexican economy and, according to the country's immigration law, who have the "necessary funds for their sustenance" -- while denying entry to those who are not healthy or would upset the "equilibrium of the national demographics." Translated, that idea of demographic equilibrium apparently means that Mexico tries to withhold citizen status from those who do not look like Mexicans or have little skills to make money.

If the United States were to treat Mexican nationals in the same way that Mexico treats Central American nationals, there would be humanitarian outrage.

 … In truth, many thousands of Mexicans flee northward not necessarily because there are no jobs, or because they are starving at home. America offers them far more upward mobility and social justice than does their own homeland. And for all the immigration rhetoric about race and class, millions of Mexicans vote with their feet to enjoy the far greater cultural tolerance found in the U.S.

Indigenous people make up a large part of the most recent wave of Mexican arrivals. Those who leave provinces like Oaxaca or Chiapas apparently find the English-speaking, multiracial U.S. a fairer place than the hierarchical and often racially stratified society of Mexico.

People should be a nation's greatest resource. Fairly or not, Mexico has long been seen to view its own citizens in rather cynical terms as a valuable export commodity, akin to oil or food. When they are young and healthy, Mexican expatriates are expected to scrimp, save and support their poorer relatives back in Mexico. When these Mexican expats are ill and aged, then the U.S should pick up the tab for their care.

Related: "Undocumented Worker" — The Left's Preferred Expression for "Illegal Alien" Is False and Misleading 

No, Senator Rubio (and No, Liberals): There Is Not a Single "Undocumented Worker" in the United States (or On This Planet)

If 2nd Amendment Only Applies to Muskets, Does 1st Amendment Only Apply To Quill Pens?

I'm not going to sit here and let Michael Moore tell everyone on national television what he thinks we should be doing on the Second Amendment

says Former U.S. Navy SEAL Dom Raso.

As if he has any credibility on this issue because he is a celebrity …

In his words, the Second Amendment only applied to muskets where you put the little ball thing in …

If the Second Amendment only applies to muskets, I guess the First one only applies to quill pens and parchment…

There's no logic in following the constitution when you feel like it; and mocking it when you don't.

A Short Film to Sell France to Foreign Investors

80% of the French are happy to wake up and go to work in the morning?!

asks Carine incredulously of a Publicis short selling France to investors.

Yeah right.

Le film de Publicis pour attirer les... par Challenges

France's New Marianne Stamp Inspired by Topless Feminist Who Hacked Down a Christian Cross with a Chainsaw

A postage stamp depicting France's cultural symbol Marianne has touched off a flurry of controversy 

writes Reuters (merci à Duncan),

after one of its creators revealed it was inspired by a topless feminist activist who hacked down a Christian cross in Kiev last year with a chainsaw.

The new stamp depicts a youthful Marianne, a symbol of the French republic,   wearing a Phrygian conical cap but does not show her topless. It was unveiled by President Francois Hollande on Sunday as part of Bastille Day celebrations. 

Photographer and designer Olivier Ciappa said on his Twitter account that he was inspired by a number of women but most of all by Inna Shevchenko, a veteran member of the Femen group of feminist activists, which often stages bare-breasted protests.

"Feminism is an integral part of the values (of the French Republic). And Marianne, at the time of the revolution, was bare-breasted, so why not pay homage to this fabulous Femen," he said in an op-ed piece on the Huffington Post website.

Later, France 24 made an update to its story, reporting namely that

Inna Shevchenko, the leader of topless feminist group Femen and one of the inspirations for the new stamp depicting Marianne, the feminine symbol of France, has created a mini-storm with a tweet slamming Ramadan and Islam in general.

Who knew that American college students are required to surrender the Bill of Rights at the campus gates?

Until a month ago, I would have expressed unqualified support for Title IX and for the Violence Against Women Act

 writes Judith E Grossman, a feminist who has "marched at the barricades, subscribed to Ms. magazine, and knocked on many a door in support of progressive candidates committed to women's rights."

But that was before my son, a senior at a small liberal-arts college in New England, was charged—by an ex-girlfriend—with alleged acts of "nonconsensual sex" that supposedly occurred during the course of their relationship a few years earlier.

What followed was a nightmare—a fall through Alice's looking-glass into a world that I could not possibly have believed existed, least of all behind the ivy-covered walls thought to protect an ostensible dedication to enlightenment and intellectual betterment.

 … like the proverbial 800-pound gorilla, the tribunal
does pretty much whatever it wants, showing scant regard for fundamental fairness, due process of law, and the well-established rules and procedures that have evolved under the Constitution for citizens' protection. Who knew that American college students are required to surrender the Bill of Rights at the campus gates?

My son was given written notice of the charges against him, in the form of a letter from the campus Title IX officer. But instead of affording him the right to be fully informed, the separately listed allegations were a barrage of vague statements, rendering any defense virtually impossible. The letter lacked even the most basic information about the acts alleged to have happened years before. Nor were the allegations supported by any evidence other than the word of the ex-girlfriend.

 … While my son was instructed by the committee not to "discuss this matter" with any potential witnesses, these witnesses against him were not identified to him, nor was he allowed to confront or question either them or his accuser.

 …  Across the country and with increasing frequency, innocent victims of impossible-to-substantiate charges are afforded scant rights to fundamental fairness and find themselves entrapped in a widening web of this latest surge in political correctness. Few have a lawyer for a mother, and many may not know about the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which assisted me in my research.

A Young Charismatic Leader Rose Up, Talking of Hope and Change…

Rafael Cruz, the father of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, invigorated the crowd during [the] FreedomWorks Free the People event. Describing his own personal journey escaping Cuba and working hard to build a life for himself in the U.S., the elder Cruz noted comparisons that he believes exist between Fidel Castro’s governance and President Barack Obama’s executive actions. Upon rising to power, he said that Castro, like Obama, spoke about hope and change. While the message sounded good at the time, it didn’t take long for socialism to take root in his home country. And he paid the price.

The unspoken commandment when it comes to sex in America: thou shalt never blame the woman

… men have become second-class citizens

writes Suzanne Venker (thanks to Instapundit).

The most obvious proof is male bashing in the media. It is rampant and irrefutable. From sit-coms and commercials that portray dad as an idiot to biased news reports about the state of American men, males are pounced on left and right. And that’s just the beginning.

The war on men actually begins in grade school, where boys are at a distinct disadvantage. Not only are curriculums centered on girls’, rather than boys,’ interests, the emphasis in these grades is on sitting still at a desk.

Plus, many schools have eliminated recess. Such an environment is unhealthy for boys, for they are active by nature and need to run around. And when they can’t sit still teachers and administrators often wrongly attribute their restlessness to ADD or ADHD. The message is clear: boys are just unruly girls.

Things are no better in college. There, young men face the perils of Title IX, the 1972 law designed to ban sex discrimination in all educational programs.

  … What was once viewed equal opportunity for women has become something else altogether: a demand for equal outcomes. Those are not the same thing at all.

 … men are in an impossible situation, for there’s an unspoken commandment when it comes to sex in America: thou shalt never blame the woman. If you’re a man who’s sexually involved with a woman and something goes wrong, it’s your fault. Simple as that.

Judith E. Grossman shed light on this phenomenon in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed. A former feminist, Grossman concedes that in the past she would have expressed “unqualified support” for policies such as Title IX. But that was before her son was charged with “nonconsensual sex” by a former girlfriend.

… When men become husbands and fathers, things get really bad. In family courts throughout America, men are routinely stripped of their rights and due process. The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) is easily used against them since its definition of violence is so broad that virtually any conflict between partners can be considered abuse. 

“If a woman gets angry for any reason, she can simply accuse a man and men are just assumed guilty in our society,” notes Dr. Helen Smith, author of the new book, "Men on Strike." This is particularly heinous since, as Smith adds, violence in domestic relations “is almost 50% from men and 50% from women.”

Shocked? If so, that’s in part because the media don’t believe men can be victims of domestic violence—so they don’t report it. They would rather feed off stories that paint women as victims. And in so doing, they’ve convinced America there’s a war on women.

Yet it is males who suffer in our society. From boyhood through adulthood, the White American Male must fight his way through a litany of taunts, assumptions and grievances about his very existence. His oppression is unlike anything American women have faced.

The more the divorced mother prevents the father's contact with their kids, the more child support she receives

Child support formulas are based on the ridiculous notion that a father would make those same sacrifices for an ex-wife who is living with her new husband or boyfriend and for children he never or seldom sees

writes Phyllis Schlafly.

Many fathers would happily do more to support their children if they got to see their kids more and were more engaged in their lives. But current child support laws have reverse incentives: the more the mother prevents such contact, the more child support she receives.

Child support is not even really child support because the mother has no obligation to spend the money on the kids, and faithful payment of child support does not buy the father time with his kids. The purpose of child support is to allow the mother to maintain a household and standard of living comparable to the father’s.

Because of perverse incentives, a so-called “no fault divorce” is often followed by a bitter child custody dispute with bogus allegations of domestic violence or child abuse, and the winner can get a huge child support windfall. Usually the family court judge cannot tell who is telling the truth.

Reform should eliminate these bad incentives. No parent should collect money for denying kids the opportunity to see the other parent, and payments should not exceed reasonable documented child expenses. If both parents are willing and able to manage joint child custody, there should be no necessity for child support payments. 

As annoying as the IRS is, it follows accounting rules and taxes only actual income. But a family court judge can ignore current income (or lack thereof) and instead calculate child support on past income or on imputed future income.

  … We can no longer ignore how taxpayers’ money is incentivizing divorce and creating children who never or seldom “engage” (Obama’s word) with their fathers. We can no longer ignore the government’s complicity in the predictable social costs that result from more than 17 million children growing up without their fathers. Fatherless boys and girls are much more likely to run away, abuse drugs, get pregnant, drop out of school, commit suicide, or end up in jail.

The root of the family court evil is the redefinition of a legal doctrine called the Best Interests of the Child. This phrase originally meant the presumption that courts should generally stay out of family decisions because, as the Supreme Court wrote in 1979, “natural bonds of affection lead parents to act in the best interests of their children.”

Some states say “best interests” and some say “best interest,” but it means the same thing. That’s just a buzzword to conceal the transfer of parental rights to judges.

This phrase is now used as an affirmative grant of power to family court judges to overrule parents on all child-related issues. Three things are wrong with the current interpretation of Best Interests of the Child.

First, it is contrary to the rule of law by giving judges extraordinary discretion to enforce their own prejudices and to micro-manage lives. They punish parents for things that were never written down as crimes or offenses.

Second, the “best interests” standard undermines parental rights. Instead of saying that parents are the final authorities, as the family unit was understood for centuries, it allows judges to make routine child-rearing decisions.

Third, courts have no competence to determine a child’s best interests, so they rely on poorly trained evaluators who make unscientific recommendations about custody and visitation. There is rarely any evidence that a court-defined schedule is better than joint child custody.
 
Reform should get family courts out of the practice of pitting parents against each other, entertaining criminal accusations without evidence, assessing onerous support payments, sending dads to debtors’ prison, and appointing so-called “experts” to make parenting decisions. Instead, the courts should protect the rights of both parents.

Happy Bastille Day from Carine and Cats Chasing Chipmunks

Happy Bastille Day, shouts Carine of Books, Cupcakes, and Cats Chasing Chipmunks, a French expat of E-Nough fame having moved to New York with her equally French husband and their three French cats (but like many New Yorkers, they dream of Texas).

Tocqueville warned against the government becoming "an immense tutelary power … with a network of small, complicated, painstaking, uniform rules"

In "Democracy in America," published in 1833, Alexis de Tocqueville marveled at the way Americans preferred voluntary association to government regulation

writes Niall Ferguson (thanks to Instapundit).

"The inhabitant of the United States," he wrote, "has only a defiant and restive regard for social authority and he appeals to it . . . only when he cannot do without it."

Unlike Frenchmen, he continued, who instinctively looked to the state to provide economic and social order, Americans relied on their own efforts. "In the United States, they associate for the goals of public security, of commerce and industry, of morality and religion. There is nothing the human will despairs of attaining by the free action of the collective power of individuals."

What especially amazed Tocqueville was the sheer range of nongovernmental organizations Americans formed: "Not only do they have commercial and industrial associations . . . but they also have a thousand other kinds: religious, moral, grave, futile, very general and very particular, immense and very small; Americans use associations to give fetes, to found seminaries, to build inns, to raise churches, to distribute books, to send missionaries to the antipodes; in this manner they create hospitals, prisons, schools."

Tocqueville would not recognize America today. Indeed, so completely has associational life collapsed, and so enormously has the state grown, that he would be forced to conclude that, at some point between 1833 and 2013, France must have conquered the United States.

 … Instead of joining together to get things done, Americans have increasingly become dependent on Washington. On foreign policy, it may still be true that Americans are from Mars and Europeans from Venus. But when it comes to domestic policy, we all now come from the same place: Planet Government.

As the Competitive Enterprise Institute's Clyde Wayne Crews shows in his invaluable annual survey of the federal regulatory state, we have become the regulation nation almost imperceptibly. Excluding blank pages, the 2012 Federal Register—the official directory of regulation—today runs to 78,961 pages. Back in 1986 it was 44,812 pages. In 1936 it was just 2,620.

True, our economy today is much larger than it was in 1936—around 12 times larger, allowing for inflation. But the Federal Register has grown by a factor of 30 in the same period.

 … The cost of all this, Mr. Crews estimates, is $1.8 trillion annually—that's on top of the federal government's $3.5 trillion in outlays, so it is equivalent to an invisible 65% surcharge on your federal taxes, or nearly 12% of GDP. Especially invidious is the fact that the costs of regulation for small businesses (those with fewer than 20 employees) are 36% higher per employee than they are for bigger firms.

… Obama occasionally pays lip service to the idea of tax reform. But nothing actually gets done and the Internal Revenue Service code (plus associated regulations) just keeps growing—it passed the nine-million-word mark back in 2005, according to the Tax Foundation, meaning nearly 19% more verbiage than 10 years before. While some taxes may have been cut in the intervening years, the tax code just kept growing.

I wonder if all this could have anything to do with the fact that we still have nearly 12 million people out of work, plus eight million working part-time jobs, five long years after the financial crisis began.

Genius that he was, Tocqueville saw this transformation of America coming. Toward the end of "Democracy in America" he warned against the government becoming "an immense tutelary power . . . absolute, detailed, regular . . . cover[ing] [society's] surface with a network of small, complicated, painstaking, uniform rules through which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot clear a way."

Tocqueville also foresaw exactly how this regulatory state would suffocate the spirit of free enterprise: "It rarely forces one to act, but it constantly opposes itself to one's acting; it does not destroy, it prevents things from being born; it does not tyrannize, it hinders, compromises, enervates, extinguishes, dazes, and finally reduces [the] nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals of which the government is the shepherd."

Google USA and Google France on Their Respective National Holiday Commemorations — Spot the Difference

In France, at least, this is what Google's doodle looks like on Bastille Day.

Compare with Google USA's Fourth of July doodle — praised at the link for being so avant-garde as to be (wait for it) "uncontroversial."

Moreover, Google's dogs on a trip theme leads Chris Matyszczyk to mock Mitt Romney's dog-on-the-roof story (regarding a politician no longer in the national news) — all the while ignoring Barack Obama's dog-for-supper story (regarding a politician still very much in the national news).

A Moderate Islamist

A Moderate Islamist
by Le Monde's Selçuk

Iraq's difficulties of today, the pains of today, and the disappointments of today pale in comparison to what we Iraqis had to endure under Saddam Hussein

"Iraq, today, 10 years on from the war, from the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, is not what the Iraqi people hoped for and expected. We hoped for an inclusive democracy, an Iraq that is at peace with itself and at peace with its neighbors," Salih said. "To be blunt, we are far from that."

Thus reports The Atlantic's J J Gould. from Jeffrey Goldberg;s conversation with Barham Salih, the former prime minister of Iraqi Kurdistan's regional government and a former deputy prime minister of Iraq's federal government.

"But," he added, "it's important to understand where we started from. ... Literally hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were sent to mass graves. Ten years on from the demise of Saddam Hussein, we're still discovering mass graves across Iraq. And Iraqis are better off without Saddam Hussein -- the overwhelming majority of Iraqis are better off without Saddam Hussein."

Salih acknowledged that the contemporary reality is grim: "This is a new experiment in the Middle East. I don't want to whitewash the many missteps and the terrible things that happened in the country to date. ... I'm not telling you that it is a utopia and all is fine and wonderful." And yet:

... for those of us who lived under the tyranny of Saddam Hussein and understand what tyranny means, ... the difficulties of today, the pains of today, and the disappointments of today -- and they are very profound, because Iraqis deserve better -- these pale in comparison to what we had to endure. ... Then, people had the certainty of the knock on the door late at night, and could possibly end up in a mass grave. Two weeks ago, in Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, a new mass grave in which there were some five-six people who were shot. Their families never heard from them since 1988. They were found and they could only be identified by the pajamas they were wearing as they were taken from home. These are the type of stories that my people, my community, had to endure.

It's important not to be cynical or dismissive when someone speaks about the impact genocide has had on his view of the world.

Still, it's important to recognize that, in this case, his answer doesn't vindicate the Iraq War in the terms in which its critics have come to impugn it -- which are, really, the same terms in which the Bush Administration justified the war in the first place: It was the right course of action not just because it would succeed in removing a murderous dictator from power, or even because it would lead to circumstances that would be in some significant respects better than the status quo, but because it would clear the way for democracy, peace, and prosperity in Iraq.

You might even find the implications of Salih's thinking kind of scary -- which are arguably these: If the United States chooses to destroy a political regime, the U.S. is both in the right and absolved from responsibility for what comes next -- as long as it puts an end to atrocities on the scale of those Saddam perpetrated.

Salih doesn't seem to accept that logic, though. He acknowledges that the U.S. coalition made serious mistakes. But: "In my view -- and I say this without equivocation; I say this in Kurdish; I say this in Arabic when I'm in Baghdad -- this has been fundamentally a failure of leadership by the Iraqi elite that assumed power after the demise of Saddam Hussein."

So the Iraq war was, despite all that went wrong, a good thing; the "overwhelming majority" of Iraqis are (and presumably feel) better off because of it; and the fault for all that has gone wrong is ultimately with Iraqis themselves: It's a remarkable point of view to encounter in June 2013.

Thomas Jefferson’s Tea Party Speech

From Robert Tracinski (be sure to check his Tracinski Letter out regularly), we get the following:

At the Jefferson Area Tea Party’s Independence Day celebration in Charlottesville, Virginia, we were favored by a surprise visit from our most famous local celebrity, the Sage of Monticello, Thomas Jefferson. Mr. Jefferson came to read the Declaration of Independence to our audience, but after he was done, our emcee, radio talk show host Joe Thomas, asked the third president if he could favor us with his views on today’s Tea Party movement. Here is what Mr. Jefferson said. — RWT

A little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.¹ What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?²

Our grievances we have [set forth] with that freedom of language and sentiment which becomes a free people, claiming their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate. Let those flatter, who fear: it is not an American art.³

Lay down true principles and adhere to them inflexibly. Do not be frightened into their surrender by the alarms of the timid.⁴

Our legislators are not sufficiently apprised of the rightful limits of their power; that their true office is to declare and enforce only our natural rights and duties, and to take none of them from us. No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another; and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him. The idea is quite unfounded, that on entering into society we give up any natural right.⁵

If we are made in some degree for others, yet in a greater [degree] are we made for ourselves. It were contrary to feeling and indeed ridiculous to suppose a man has less right in himself than one of his neighbors or all of them put together. This would be slavery and not that liberty which the Bill of Rights has made inviolable and for the preservation of which our government has been changed.⁶

I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground: That “all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people.” To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition. Certainly no such universal power was meant to be given them. It was intended to lace them up straitly within the enumerated powers.⁷

It would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men of our choice, [our representatives], to silence our fears for the safety of our rights: that confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism—free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence. In questions of powers, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.⁸

I think, myself, that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.⁹

When we consider that this government is charged with the external and mutual relations only of these states, we may well doubt whether our organization is not too complicated, too expensive; whether offices or officers have not been multiplied unnecessarily. Considering the general tendency to multiply offices and dependencies, and to increase expense to the ultimate term of burden which the citizen can bear, it behooves us to avail ourselves of every occasion which presents itself for taking off the surcharge; that it may never be seen here that, after leaving to labor the smallest portion of its earnings on which it can subsist, government shall itself consume the residue of what it was instituted to guard.¹⁰

[In short,] we [must] prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretense of taking care of them.¹¹

The earth belongs to each generation during its course, fully and in its own right. The second generation receives it clear of the debts and encumbrances of the first, the third of the second, and so on. For if the first could charge it with a debt, then the earth would belong to the dead and not to the living generation. [Thus], no generation can contract debts greater than may be paid during the course of its own existence.¹²

We are overdone with banking institutions which have banished the precious metals and substituted a more fluctuating and unsafe medium.¹³ Paper is poverty. It is only the ghost of money, and not money itself.¹⁴

I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government to the genuine principles of its Constitution; I mean an additional article, taking from the federal government the power of borrowing.¹⁵

A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned—this is the sum of good government.¹⁶

A little patience, and we shall see the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles.¹⁷ Here will be preserved a model of government, securing to man his rights and the fruits of his labor, by an organization constantly subject to his own will.¹⁸

The kind invitation to be present at [your] celebration of the anniversary of American Independence is most flattering. In the bold and doubtful election we [made] between submission or the sword, [it is] a consolatory fact, that our fellow citizens continue to approve the choice we made. May it be to the world, what I believe it will be—to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all—the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that that mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.¹⁹

The flames kindled on the fourth of July, 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume these engines and all who work them.²⁰

For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.²¹

1. Letter to James Madison, 1787,  
2. Letter to William Stephens Smith, 1787,  
3. A Summary View of the Rights of British America, 1774,  
4. Letter to Samuel Kercheval, 1816,  
5. Letter to Francis W. Gilmer, 1816, 
6. Letter to James Monroe, 1782,  
7. Opinion on Creating a National Bank, 1791,  
8. Kentucky Resolution, 1798,  
9. Letter to William Ludlow, 1824,  
10. First Annual Message to Congress, 1801,  
11. Letter to Thomas Cooper, 1802,  
12. Letter to James Madison, 1789,  
13. Letter to Abbe Salimankis, 1810,  
14. Letter to Edward Carrington, 1788, 
15. Letter to John Taylor, 1798,  
16. First Inaugural Address, 1801, 
17. Letter to John Taylor, 1798, 
18. Letter to William Plumer, 1815,  
19. Letter to Roger C. Weightman, 1826, 
20. Letter to John Adams, 1821,  
21. Letter to Roger C. Weightman, 1826.

Lance Armstrong: Impossible to Win the Tour de France Without Doping

While new rumors holds that Yankee capitalists entered a pristine Europe and threw money at the Tour de France, thereby destroying it (and while the current Tour de France comes under new doubts), Lance Armstrong gives an exclusive front-page interview to Le Monde's Stéphane Mandard (excerpts in English), in which the former champion says that, because of the necessity for oxygen in what is essentially an endurance trial, it is impossible to win the French bicycle race without doping.

Related: In the Tour de France's doping race, Lance Armstrong was far behind "King Miguel"

Vous continuez à faire du vélo malgré tous les ennuis que vous a apporté la pratique de ce sport ?

Absolument, je continue à faire du vélo et à m'entraîner. Faire du vélo a toujours été une thérapie pour moi. Et ce qui était vrai lorsque je m'entraînais pour le Tour l'est toujours aujourd'hui. Une bonne grosse sortie de trois ou quatre heures vous vide la tête comme rien d'autre.

 … Vous considérez-vous toujours comme le recordman de victoires ?

Absolument.

Avez-vous gardé vos sept maillots jaunes ou les avez-vous brûlés ?

Ah, ah ! Hors de question. J'ai travaillé dur pour ces maillots. Je les aime pour ce qu'ils sont et tous les souvenirs qu'ils représentent.

Comprenez-vous que l'Union cycliste internationale (UCI) et les organisateurs du Tour vous aient rayé du palmarès ?

Oui et non. C'est bien d'effacer mon nom, mais le Tour a bien eu lieu entre 1999 et 2005, n'est-ce pas ? Il doit donc y avoir un vainqueur. Qui est-il donc ? Je laisse le soin aux autres de débattre à l'infini qui était le vrai vainqueur de ces Tours. Mais personne ne s'est manifesté pour réclamer mes maillots.

Dans son rapport, l'Usada vous accuse d'avoir bénéficié du « programme de dopage le plus perfectionné, le plus professionnel et le plus efficace de l'histoire du sport »...

Tout ça, ce ne sont que des conneries. On a vu que l'affaire « Puerto » [le vaste réseau de dopage sanguin organisé par le médecin espagnol Eufemiano Fuentes] était cent fois plus sophistiquée. Notre système était très simple, très conservateur, et pas maléfique comme je l'ai entendu dans la bouche des représentants de l'Agence mondiale antidopage, entre autres. Il y a beaucoup de preuves de ce que je dis et l'histoire montrera que tout cela n'était qu'une simple posture de l'Usada dans le but de faire du buzz. Par ailleurs, sur combien d'autres équipes l'Usada a-t-elle enquêté ? Si la réponse est aucune, alors comment peut-elle clamer que notre système était si sophistiqué ? C'est totalement irrationnel.

 …  Pourquoi êtes-vous prêt à parler devant une commission de ce type ? Que voulez-vous dire ?

Toute l'histoire n'a pas encore été racontée. La « décision motivée » de l'Usada n'a pas dressé le portrait fidèle du cyclisme de la fin des années 1980 à nos jours. Elle a parfaitement réussi à détruire la vie d'un homme, mais n'a pas du tout bénéficié au cyclisme. Qu'est-ce que je dirais devant la commission ? Je comparaîtrais, je m'assoirais, j'écouterais et je répondrais honnêtement aux questions.

Une des questions pourrait être : quand vous couriez, était-il possible de réaliser des performances sans se doper ?

Cela dépend des courses que tu voulais gagner. Le Tour de France ? Non.
Impossible de gagner sans dopage. Car le Tour est une épreuve d'endurance où l'oxygène est déterminant. Pour ne prendre qu'un exemple, l'EPO ne va pas aider un sprinteur à remporter un 100 m, mais elle sera déterminante pour un coureur de 10 000 m. C'est évident.

 … Comment en finir avec la culture du dopage dans le vélo ?

A bien des égards, ça ne finira jamais. Je n'ai pas inventé le dopage. Désolé Travis [Tygart, le directeur de l'Usada] ! Et il ne s'est pas non plus arrêté avec moi. J'ai simplement participé à ce système. Je suis un être humain. Le dopage existe depuis l'Antiquité et existera sans doute toujours. Je sais que ce n'est pas une réponse très populaire, mais c'est malheureusement la réalité.

Devant la commission d'enquête sénatoriale sur le dopage, votre ancien rival, Laurent Jalabert, dont les urines prélevées lors du Tour 1998 contenaient de l'EPO, a déclaré : « Armstrong était un tortionnaire. » Il a aussi juré qu'il ne s'était jamais volontairement dopé, et que son médecin, dans l'équipe ONCE, était surnommé le « Docteur Citroën », par opposition au vôtre, Michele Ferrari...

Ah, « Jaja », avec tout le respect que je lui dois, il est en train de mentir. Il aurait mieux fait d'éviter de parler de Ferrari et de Citroën, car il sait très bien que Michele était le médecin de la ONCE au milieu des années 1990.

Comprenez-vous la déception, voire la colère, de ceux qui ont cru en votre histoire ?

Je comprends parfaitement, et j'en suis profondément désolé. A bien des égards, je ne parviendrai jamais à réparer cela, mais je passerai ma vie à essayer.

 … Que vous inspire le dénouement de l'affaire « Puerto », où la juge a ordonné la destruction des poches de sang qui auraient pu permettre d'identifier les autres clients non cyclistes du docteur Fuentes ?

Je suis sûr que certains grands clubs de football ont eu de l'influence sur ce jugement. En tout cas, c'est encore le cyclisme qui a été tenu pour seul responsable.

Vous avez le sentiment que le cyclisme est le bouc émissaire du sport professionnel ?

Absolument.

Et vous avez l'impression de payer pour tout le monde ?

Je laisserai les autres décider.

 … Sarkozy semble vouloir revenir pour la présidentielle de 2017. Pourquoi avez-vous fait un come-back en 2009 ?

C'est une bonne question. Cette décision a été la plus grosse erreur de ma vie. Je ferais n'importe quoi pour l'effacer, mais ce qui est fait est fait. J'aurais dû écouter Jean-Marie Leblanc [l'ancien directeur du Tour] lorsqu'il m'écrivit une lettre ouverte à l'automne 2008 pour me conseiller de ne pas revenir. Il avait raison.