Three Commando-Style Islamists Have Been Identified, Hunt for Cartoonist Killers Continues

French police have identified the three Islamist gunmen who mounted Wednesday's terrorist attack at a Paris satirical magazine's office 

reports Fox News, killing four controversial cartoonists along with eight other people.

Two officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, named the suspects to

the Associated Press as Frenchmen Said Kouachi and Cherif Kouachi, in their early 30s, as well as 18-year-old Hamyd Mourad, whose nationality wasn't immediately clear.

One of the officials said they were linked to a Yemeni terrorist network.

All three remain at large.

 … The gunmen moved with the skill and precision of highly-trained commandos, military experts told FoxNews.com.

Decimation of Charlie Hebdo Artists: "Not Afraid"

Following the bloody attack on Charlie Hebdo's editorial office, tens of thousands of demonstrators gathered in cities all over France in the evening.

France Gathers to Mourn Charlie Hebdo's Satirical Artists

See No Pasarán's archives on Charlie Hebdo, the martyred magazine which was firebombed already in 2011.

• "Go to the Devil, Charlie Hebdo!" "You Will Reap the Consequences" 

“We’ve avenged the honor of the prophet!” the killers shouted after they machine-gunned the Paris office of a satirical publication, killing at least 12

Three black-clad gunmen shouting "Allahu Akbar!" stormed the Paris offices of a satirical publication known for lampooning Islam Wednesday, 

reports Fox News,

killing 12, including its editor, three political cartoonists and a police officer whose cold-blooded murder at close range was captured on a disturbing video.

The masked, Kalashnikov-toting shooters moved with military precision, and then escaped following the 11:30 a.m. attack at Charlie Hebdo, the publication known for challenging Muslim terrorists with a 2011 caricature of Prophet Muhammed on its cover and which recently tweeted a cartoon of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and were being sought.

“We’ve avenged the honor of the prophet!” the killers shouted, according to witnesses who spoke to Sky News. Other witnesses said the men shouted "Allahu Akbar," Arabic for "God is great." The gunmen spoke French without any accent, according to Le Monde.

Les dessinateurs (de gauche à droite) Cabu, Charb, Tignous, et Wolinski,
tous décédés dans la fusillade de "Charlie Hebdo" © DR

That evening, tens of thousands of Frenchmen will gather in streets across France to mourn the deaths of the Charlie Hebdo artists and to declare that they are not afraid…

The French consumer really ought to feel grateful to the French service sector for actually serving them

… today is the first day of the winter soldes – the sales

exclaims Stephen Clarke.

 … any shop daring to start its soldes before 8am, even online, could have been hit with a hefty fine. The sales are defined in article D 310-15-2 of France’s code du commerce, and various government websites publish timetables giving the exact dates when they’re permitted to start and finish.

Strange, you might think, to be so strict. Surely the French government should be rebooting the economy, letting businesses do what they want to make money? We’ve recently been told that two major links in the French retail chain are about to break. Surcouf, a computer shop, and the Virgin Megastores are putting their electronic keys under their mousepads. You’d think that France would have encouraged them to slash prices and tempt in the customers before things got too bad. Mais non. You will begin your winter sales on (and I quote) “8 o’clock on the morning of the second Wednesday in January, except if it falls after the 12th, in which case the sales will begin on the first Wednesday of January.” It’s the same for the summer sales, except they’re on the last Wednesday of June. And they can only last for five weeks.

To us free-market Anglos, it sounds crazy. If I as a shopkeeper want to cut my profits and clear my shelves or racks before, say, going ski-ing or heading off on a stockbuying trip, why shouldn’t I?

The simple answer is: because you’re in France. But to get some more subtle detail on the subject, I turned to an expert, Pascale Hebel, head of the consumer department of the Crédoc, the Centre de Recherche pour l’Étude et l’Observations des Conditions de Vie.

“It’s all about protecting small businesses,” she told me. “The law stops big chain stores cutting prices whenever they want, and it also makes it illegal to sell anything at a loss, even during sales periods. That way, small businesses, who can’t afford to sell too cheaply, have a fair chance.”

This is similar to the French law that protects small bookshops – even the on-line giants can’t take more than 5% off the recommended retail price of a book, which explains why there are still so many independents (and, incidentally, why French books are so incredibly expensive – the French large paperback edition of my 1000 Years of Annoying the French costs 21 euros, compared to about £9 full price in the UK.)

 … In short, in sounds like business as usual – the French consumer really ought to feel grateful to the French service sector for actually serving them.

You're in the Army Now: “While these insurgents are chopping people’s heads off and raping women, the idea they can take us to court because somebody shouted at them is ridiculous”

The latest military guidelines on interrogating terrorists and other prisoners are so stringent that it makes interrogation pointless, write Robert Mendick and Tim Ross in the Daily Telegraph (“Don’t yell at terrorist suspects, soldiers told”).

British soldiers have “lost their capability” to interrogate terrorist insurgents because of strict new rules on questioning that even ban shouting in captives’ ears, military chiefs have warned.

The rules — detailed in court papers obtained by The Telegraph — also prevent military intelligence officers from banging their fists on tables or walls, or using “insulting words” when interrogating a suspect.

 … “The effect of the ambulance-chasing lawyers and the play-it-safe judges is that we have got to the point where we have lost our operational capability to do tactical questioning. That in itself brings risks to the lives of the people we deploy.

“These insurgents are not nice people. These are criminals. They behead people; they keep sex slaves. They are not normal people.”

Lord West, the former First Sea Lord and national security adviser, said: “We have gone too far in letting people take us to court.

“While these insurgents are chopping people’s heads off and raping women, the idea they can take us to court because somebody shouted at them is ridiculous.”

In an interview with The Telegraph, Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary, voices his concern about the legal scrutiny on British troops. He says he is gravely concerned about the rising cost of legal cases “that turn out to be completely spurious”. He added: “What’s important for us is to understand the legal scrutiny that we are under all the time now, the cases that are being brought sometimes spuriously by law firms representing people who claim they were wrongly detained.

Today, MLK Jr Would Be Unemployable in America, Given That He Would Be Anathema to Most Americans… of the Left (!)

For some reason, Benny Huang ain't that impressed about Martin Luther King, Jr. He must be a racist or something. (Oh, wait; he is either Asian himself or married to one—I forget which—so that theory doesn't hold a lot of water…) Having said that, Benny Huang has shown in the past how much admiration he has for Dr. King's I Have a Dream speech, so let's hear what he has to say…

Left, right, and center, everybody thinks MLK was pretty cool.

The consensus, I believe, arises from the fact that most people admire Martin Luther King for the man they wish he had been rather than the man he really was. King has become the embodiment of justice, an intangible element that is difficult to define because it means different things to different people. Consequently, we create our own images of who he was, some of which are divorced from reality.

That the real flesh and blood Martin Luther King does not conform to the immaculate image that we have created for him should come as no surprise. He was a mortal man.

What’s not to like about Dr. King? He wasn’t a real doctor, for starters. His alma mater, Boston University, admitted in 1991 that his PhD was secured through academic fraud. But there are more reasons why conservatives and liberals alike should dispense with the hero worship.

 … Martin Luther King was sexist. There were actually fewer women in King’s inner circle (zero) than former members of the Communist Party (three that I have counted). Bernard Lee, a personal assistant to King, spoke candidly on the subject: “Martin…was absolutely a male chauvinist. He believed that the wife should stay home and take care of the babies while he’d be out there in the streets.”

Perhaps he believed that Coretta should stay home with the babies because he didn’t want her to discover his philandering? Sure, the fact that King was an adulterer is old news. Liberals don’t care about that stuff because they aren’t prudes like the rest of us; but would they be bothered to know that he was physically abusive to women he was cheating with? Rev. Ralph Abernathy, King’s second-in-command wrote in his autobiography “And the Walls Came Tumbling Down” that King got into a physical altercation with a girlfriend just hours before his assassination. After losing his temper with her, “he knocked her across the bed… She leapt up to fight back, and for a moment they were engaged in a full-blown fight, with [King] clearly winning.”

Of course he was winning. He was a man beating up a woman. When he talked about nonviolence what he really meant was that he avoided fights with policemen. Fisticuffs with an unarmed woman was another matter entirely.

King was also “homophobic,” which should come as no surprise to anyone. [The charismatic black preacher who led the struggle against Jim Crow] spent his life studying a holy text, the Bible, that is unequivocal in its condemnation of homosexuality. These days there are some clergymen who preach the very unbiblical message that however your wiggle your worm is okay with The Man Upstairs, which is supposed to prove that there is a legitimate debate within Christianity concerning sexual morality. There isn’t. “Anything goes” clergymen merely demonstrate that some churches have given up preaching Christianity.

MLK, however, was not a twenty-first century, college town, rainbow-flag waiving, post-Christian kind of pastor. He made his beliefs clear in an advice column he wrote for Ebony magazine in 1958. A boy asked for advice on how to deal with same-sex attraction. King responded: “Your problem is not at all an uncommon one.” Problem? What problem? He continued, sounding much like the Michele Bachmann of his time: “…The type of feeling that you have toward boys is probably not an innate tendency, but something that has been culturally acquired… Therefore, it is necessary to deal with this problem by getting back to some of the experiences and circumstances that lead to the habit.” What he’s saying is that the boy could change his sexuality if he tried hard enough. Barbaric!

 … To sum up King’s philosophy on homosexuality, he believed that it was a “problem” that needed to be “solved,” as well as a “habit” that could be ditched with the benefit of a little psychotherapy. He essentially held the traditional view that all Christians held for the first two millennia Anno Domini, that we should hate the sin and love the sinner.

Will the revelation that King held such “unenlightened” views on homosexuality change liberals’ attitude toward his marital infidelities? Perhaps. If we learned anything from the Monica Lewinsky thing, (and the Anthony Weiner thing, and the Gavin Newsome thing, and the John Edwards thing) it’s that liberals are pretty blasé about adultery. It’s hypocrisy they don’t like. Cheat on your wife if you’d like, just don’t oppose the homosexual agenda. …

Related: • Is It Possible?! What If All Southern Whites Weren't the Equals of Nazis and What If the South Had Not Been a Total Racialist Nightmare?! •

Germany's Atlantic Wall Was Built by the Occupied Local Populations; T'Was the Greatest Feat of Military Engineering Since the Great Wall of China

Pour bâtir en un temps record cet ouvrage destiné à empêcher un débarquement, les Allemands recoururent à des entreprises hexagonales. Qui, faute de travail, ne se firent pas prier.

The European geographic magazine Geo reminds us that in order to build the Atlantic Wall, the Germans used French builders.

Qui se souvient que 1500 entreprises françaises du BTP contribuèrent à édifier ces blockhaus du front de mer, parties intégrantes de l'«Atlantikwall» destiné à défendre le flanc ouest de l'empire nazi contre les assauts anglo-saxons?

Pour Jérôme Prieur, auteur d'un livre sur le mur de l'Atlantique (aux éditions Denoël), «ce monument de la collaboration a été la plus grosse entreprise née en France, au service de l'Allemagne, durant la guerre». Et le plus gros employeur de ces années noires: jusqu'à 300000 ouvriers français participèrent à son édification. «On a voulu effacer cette mémoire, continue Jérôme Prieur. A la Libération, les entreprises ont fait le ménage dans les archives. Mais les rapports des préfectures dévoilent l'ampleur du chantier et son incidence sur le territoire. On dispose aussi des comptes des petites sociétés et artisans qui ont été employés: plombiers, menuisiers, boulangers, et même blanchisseuses...»

La création du Mur, la plus formidable entreprise de génie militaire depuis la Muraille de Chine, fut décidée par Hitler quand échoua son offensive éclair contre l'URSS. Ce que le Führer craignait plus que tout, l'enlisement du conflit, était en effet arrivé. Bientôt, ce serait Stalingrad. A partir du printemps 1942, le Reich, citadelle assiégée, décida donc de s'abriter derrière un formidable ouvrage défensif. Le «Wall» comprenait, de la hollande aux Pyrénées, 8000 casemates, une batterie d'artillerie tous les deux kilomètres, une ligne ininterrompue de chevaux de frise sur chaque plage, des radars et des postes de commande tous les 20 kilomètres, des bases pour trente sous-marins U-Boots à Brest, Lorient, Saint-Nazaire, La Pallice et Le Havre. Cet ensemble de fortifications discontinues comprenait aussi 700 modèles de blockhaus différents conçus de façon à ne laisser aucun angle mort.

 … Fritz Todt … rêvait d'étendre le réseau autoroutier de la Norvège à Bagdad et de Bordeaux à Bakou. Mais il mourut en février 1942 dans un mystérieux accident d'avion. Albert Speer, jeune architecte de 30 ans et favori d'Hitler, se vit alors confier l'édification du Mur. L'Organisation Todt, sous sa direction, fit d'abord appel à 200 grandes firmes allemandes, comme siemens. Mais, très vite, l'occupant découvrit qu'il était incapable d'effectuer seul, et dans les délais serrés réclamés par Hitler, les travaux de mise en défense du rivage.

Tokens of Feminist Mythology & Endless Rape Hyperbole: Lying for a good cause doesn’t mean that you care; It means you’re a liar

Jonah Goldberg should have known he would be painted as a rape apologist

sighs Benny Huang,

when he refuted the oft-repeated “one in five” campus rape statistic. The National Review Online editor was locked in a Twitter debate with Matthew Dowd of ABC News, who posited, “[O]ne out of five college women are either raped or victims of attempted rape. thats [sic] a fact.”

Well, no. It isn’t a fact. That statistic has been proven, again and again, to be nothing more than a token of feminist mythology, similar to the claim that wife-beating spikes on Super Bowl Sunday. The Department of Justice’s most recent comprehensive study of rape on college campuses concludes that the number is actually .03-in-five, making Dowd’s claim roughly a thirty-three fold exaggeration.

The emotionalism that envelopes the topic of rape makes truth a commodity much less valued than concern for the victims, some of whom are genuine, and some of whom are false accusers. Ron Fournier of National Journal demonstrated this tendency to undervalue truth when he joined in the chiding of Goldberg, tweeting: “Jonah, you’re splitting statistical hairs to undermine an argument against …. rape. Let’s call it a day.”

Fournier begins by referring to the exaggeration of the problem by a factor of thirty-three as merely “splitting statistical hairs,” then makes clear that he thinks Goldberg a real heel for “undermining” an argument against rape. As if Goldberg has taken the pro-rape side of the argument! Could Goldberg be a rapist himself? Keep an eye on that fellow.

What we’ve learned from the UVA rape hoax is that a person’s opposition to sexual violence can be measured by the degree to which that person inflates rape statistics. Why then should anyone stop with the thoroughly discredited “one in five” stat? How about one in three? Four in five? One in one? If Fournier and Dowd can trot out a grossly exaggerated rape statistic then I can trot out an even more overblown one, thus rendering theirs a low-ball estimate. Who would minimize rape stats unless he was in fact a rapist sympathizer? Dowd and Fournier have some ‘splaining to do.

Some people don’t see any harm in a little hyperbole; or a lot, for that matter. They’re only telling noble lies, you see, intended to “raise awareness” about some issue that’s really, really important. How noble their lies are is very questionable, but they fact that they’re fibbing is not.

The end result of this kind of endless hyperbole is utter hysteria. Lives are ruined, freedom curtailed, and demagogues empowered when truth-challenged activists try to one-up each other with their alarmist claims. I, for one, am fed up with it. Lying for a good cause doesn’t mean that you care. It means you’re a liar.

Homeless advocates, for example, peddle some pretty suspicious facts. Mitch Snyder, the now deceased homeless advocate who made a name for himself in the 1980s with his rather overheated anti-Reagan rhetoric, liked to claim that there were three million homeless people in the United States. … The same Mitch Snyder later claimed that forty-five homeless people died every second, which would mean 1.4 billion dying every year.…

So Mitch Snyder’s numbers were a little off but his heart was in the right place. If you dispute his ridiculous statistics, yours isn’t. That’s how this game is played.

Environmentalists have their own catalogue of hair-on fire scare statistics and doomsday predictions. I recall my third grade teacher telling the class that the Amazon rainforest would be completely cleared in just twenty years and I believed her. Twenty-five years have gone by and that pesky Amazon still exists. I don’t blame my teacher. I’m sure someone passed that little factoid to her and she passed it along to us, believing it to be the truth.

 … AIDS activists are just as alarmist in their rhetoric as environmentalists or homeless advocates. During the early days of the AIDS “crisis”—which was only really a crisis if you indulged an appetite for intravenous drug use of anal sex with men—the movement’s tactic seemed to be to scare the bejeesus out of white, suburban, heterosexual America. …

 … In 1987, Oprah Winfrey had her own bogus “one in five” warning for America: “Research studies now project that one in five—listen to me, hard to believe—one in five heterosexuals could be dead from AIDS at the end of the next three years. That’s by 1990. One in five. It is no longer a gay disease, believe me.”

Yes, it was hard to believe, as she put it. Because it wasn’t true.

Whether it’s projections of the number of “climate refugees” there will be in a few years or the number of young black men gunned down by racist cops, there’s always someone who will hype a problem with undue hysterics. The alarmists don’t seem to think they’re doing anything wrong. Perhaps it’s because their theatrics are usually rewarded with press accolades if not more tangible items. Consequently, we end up making bad policy based on unfounded fears and indefensible prejudices.

Most Parisian cyclists are very philosophical about their chances of ending up on the tarmac or of being deprived of the chance to do so by someone stealing their bike

Paris is home to existentialism, the complex philosophical doctrine about the ultimate meaningless of the universe that is in fact just a long-winded way of making France’s favourite gesture 

writes Stephen Clarke:

the shrug.

The most extreme existentialist hero of them all was Meursault, the hero of Albert Camus’ novel L’Étranger, who kills someone for no reason then goes to the guillotine feeling little more than boredom. Head about to be chopped off? Bof.

Most Parisian cyclists I know are pretty much like Meursault, if you take out the bits about killing someone and going to the guillotine. They are very philosophical about their chances of ending up on the tarmac or of being deprived of the chance to do so by someone stealing their bike.

A story in today’s newspapers illustrated this. A Parisian man who’d had his bike stolen went online to buy a new one, and discovered his own bike for sale there. He called the police, who tracked down the sellers and found that two men had stolen and offered for sale 360 bikes in the past two months – that’s six a day. In other words, the chances of holding on to a bike in Paris are almost zero. Like Meursault, you can’t form any emotional attachments at all.

The main problem is that very few people have room in their building to park their bike. Buildings with courtyards or large entrance halls often ban bikes because they clutter up the place. My own building did this last year after people realised that half the bikes in the entrance hall were never used. Some of them belonged to tenants who had moved out months ago. It was a bike cemetery.

Dennis Prager on Commandments 6 to 10

Following a general introduction, Dennis Prager posts a series of 10 short videos on each of the 10 Commandments:

Humanity has everything it needs to create a good world. We've had it for 3,000 years. It's the Ten Commandments; ten basic, yet profound instructions for how to lead a moral life. If everyone followed the Ten Commandments, we would not need armies or police; marriages and families would be stronger; truth would be a paramount value. Dennis Prager explains how the Ten Commandments led to the creation of Western Civilization and why they remain relevant to your life today. This video course introduces a ten-part series.

The Ten Commandments, in 6 Minutes Or Less (Commandments 1-5)

Following a general introduction, Dennis Prager posts a series of 10 short videos on each of the 10 Commandments:

Humanity has everything it needs to create a good world. We've had it for 3,000 years. It's the Ten Commandments; ten basic, yet profound instructions for how to lead a moral life. If everyone followed the Ten Commandments, we would not need armies or police; marriages and families would be stronger; truth would be a paramount value. Dennis Prager explains how the Ten Commandments led to the creation of Western Civilization and why they remain relevant to your life today. This video course introduces a ten-part series.

Several unusual Christmas customs to become familiar with while living Danishly

From the surreal to the health and safety nightmare, Danes do Christmas differently.

Thus does expat Helen Russell, author of the forthcoming The Year of Living Danishly, introduce the Ten ways to have a Danish Christmas. with the "several … unusual customs I’ve become familiar with during my time of living Danishly."

9. Dance
Remember the tree decorated with naked flames? Well, Danes love living on the edge so much that it’s customary to dance around the candle-lit Christmas tree after you’ve eaten and drunk your fill. Accidents are surprisingly rare and the exercise does wonders for kick-starting the metabolism after all those caramelised potatoes.

Danish Xmas: Soon, every other bite was greeted with more schnapps; “To help the herring swim better!” my host beamed

When new expat Helen Russell (author of the forthcoming The Year of Living Danishly) offered to host a traditional Danish Christmas for her neighbours, she entered a strange world of sugared potatoes, marzipan pigs – and lots of pickled herring.

Julefrokost (Christmas lunch) was my first introduction to traditional Danish festivities. When our new neighbours invited us to “come round for lunch” shortly before Christmas, I was presented with an artfully arranged stack of rye bread and jars of pickled herring, flavoured with everything from curry sauce to cinnamon.

The meal started with a Carlsberg (Danish since 1847) and we constructed our own sandwiches, before drinking to the party’s good health with a shot of schnapps. The children, to my surprise, drank beer. “But it’s Juleol – a Christmas beer. Sweet; very low alcohol,” my host explained. So far, so Danish.

I was just taking mouthful number two of my sandwich (avoiding the cinnamon herring) when my glass was refilled for another toast: “Skål!” Soon, every other bite was greeted with more schnapps. “To help the herring swim better!” my host beamed. By shot number five, I was pretty sure that my herring was Duncan Goodhew.
 
There was some singing, as there is at the slightest excuse in Denmark, and the next thing I knew, I was holding hands with my new pals and dancing around their Christmas tree. The vast, bushy fir was lit not by fairy lights, but by real candles that flickered precariously close to children’s heads/the curtains/my hostess’s flammable-looking skirt.

 … “Christmas dinner in Denmark is duck and pork,” [the only shop assistant in our local supermarket who could speak some English] told me.

“Duck or pork?”

“Duck and pork,” she corrected me. “Together. With potatoes.”

“Roast potatoes?”

“Boiled. Then rolled in butter. And sugar.”

“What?” I tried to hide my surprise. A potato with melted frosting?

…  God Jul!

Paris’s airports suffer from existential problems

France is a country that believes you should only know what the powers that be want you to know 

wrote Stephen Clarke after landing in a snow storm at a Paris airport a couple of years ago,

and containing this situation obviously depended on people sitting around in ignorance until they decided individually to come and ask what the hell was going on. Too much information would have caused a stampede for luggage forms and a sense of outraged solidarity in the crowd that would have required even more riot police.

Here Comes Wonder Woman Like a Speeding — Wait a Minute!

A Richard Foubert painting on La Croisette in Cannes

Here Comes Superman, Like a Speeding — Wait a Minute!

A Richard Foubert painting on La Croisette in Cannes

Festive winter fun in times gone by

From the Daily Telegraph, we are treated to Festive winter fun in times gone by

The 1930s Persecution of the Jews in Europe? It's the Fault of the Nazi Party (Not Germany); The Segregation of Blacks in the South? It's the Fault of the South, or America Writ Large (Not the Democrat Party)

See if you can figure out what is wrong with Johnny Clark's AP story on the anniversary of the premiere of the film based on Margaret Mitchell's best-seller:

Seventy-five years after the premiere of the movie "Gone with the Wind," research is shedding light on the racial tensions that existed at the time between the producer and city of Atlanta officials.

 … "Producer David O. Selznick was upset that Hattie McDaniel would not be invited to the Atlanta premiere," said [Emory University film studies professor Matthew Bernstein]. "He argued over and over that she should be allowed."

 … Selznick was guided by the office of Atlanta's then-mayor William B. Hartsfield. It was Hartsfield that originally reached out to Selznick to bring the premiere to the city.

But due to the racial segregation laws in the Jim Crow south, none of the movie's black stars were allowed to attend the premiere or even be included in the movie's promotional program. McDaniel did attend the Los Angeles premiere and was featured in the program.

"Selznick, because he was Jewish, was very mindful of the persecution of the Jews in Europe in the late-1930s under Nazism," Bernstein remarks. "And he saw an analogy between that persecution and the life of African-Americans under Jim Crow, especially in the South."

Can you figure out what is wrong with the story? It's in the last paragraph, in the Emory University film studies professor's remarks, and it may refer to a significant detail that Selznick himself may not have been aware of.

Have you re-read the para? Can you find it?

Okay; there are actually several problems.

First, sorry to sound like an apologist for slavery or Jim Crow, but it happens to be a fact that segregation of the blacks in the South was in no way akin, or even close to akin, to persecution of the Jews in Germany. (I hasten to add — I have no choice, or I risk being pilloried as someone who has nostalgia for the old South (which I don't) — that I am not someone who has nostalgia for the old South.)

Persecution is "we go after you", segregation is "keep your place." Persecution is "we are coming after you — after all of you"; "segregation is "we don't expect to react to you, or even notice you, unless one of you gets our of line — then we'll go after the one that gets out of line." No, I am not defending segregation — in any way. Yes, I know it is anti-American, and anti-Democratic, and against the values of the Republic.

I am just pointing out that one distasteful policy is (far) less distasteful than another distasteful policy. Note that the Emory University film studies professor Matthew Bernstein manages to avoid mentioning the word "segregation" for a more general term — "the life of African-Americans" — to compare the persecution of the Jews to, in order to make it easier to put America (or the South) on the same level, or close to the same level, as Nazi Germany.

You still object? You still think I am defending something that is indefensible?

Okay. Let me go ahead and accept that. But you ought to watch out; because here is where we go to the bigger problem:

Prosecution of the Jews is not laid at the feet of the Germans (Germany isn't even mentioned, Europe is). Persecution of the Jews is laid (far from inappropriately, by the way) at the feet of the Nazis.

By contrast, segregation of the blacks is not laid at the feet of the Democratic Party; nor is Jim Crow. They are laid at the feet of the South, or America in general.

The name of the party that defended slavery, that tore apart the Union in the defense of slavery, that instituted Jim Crow laws, and that ruled over the South as long as the anti-democratic laws were in place — the word Democrat (party) — cannot even be found in the article. Not once.

As Jonah Goldberg writes in Liberal Fascism,

In the liberal telling of America's story, there are only two perpetrators of official misdeeds: conservatives and "America" writ large. Progressives, or modern liberals, are never bigots or tyrants, but conservatives often are. For example, one will virtually never hear that the Palmer Raids, Prohibition, or American eugenics were thoroughly progressive phenomena. These are sins America itself must atone for.

 … Liberals are never responsible for their historic misdeeds, because they feel no compulsion to defend the inherent goodness of America. Conservatives, meanwhile, not only take the blame for events not of their own making that they often worked the most assiduously against, but find themselves defending liberal misdeeds in order to defend America herself.

Unseen On-Set Photos of Original Star Wars Movie on Display in London

Rare behind-the-scenes pictures on the set of the original Star Wars film are currently on display at the British Film Institute, announces Popular Mechanics.

Good news for Star Wars fans in London: now you can relive the making of Episode IV, the original film, with just a short trip to the Southbank location of the British Film Institute, where these incredible behind-the-scenes photos are on display.

The collection belonged to Ann Skinner, who served as continuity supervisor for Star Wars (1977). It features shots of the original script, candids of the cast members on set in Tunisia, an unmasked Darth Vader, and much more.

The exhibit will run through January 4th, and is part of BFI’s ‘Sci-Fi: Days of Fear and Wonder,’ a celebration of “film and TV’s original blockbuster genre.”