The problem of Terry Schiavo is common to all countries. People with physical or psychological handicaps number, in effect, about 500 million, but many of these, unfortunately, do not yet have the benefit of the necessary services. There are risk factors and serious problems of rehabilitation especially in developing countries where, according to authoritatie data, 85% of the people with disabilities live and where a high percentage of handicaps, for example blindness, are caused by endemic diseases and substandard hygiene. Frequent wars and natural disasters have multipled their numbers. I am thinking in particular of the children, women and elderly, as well as the harsh conditions experienced by refugees with disabilities. In the industrialized countries, too, the number of handicapped, whose increase is fostered by the spread of developmental models which deny or ignore the dignity of the human person, is rather high and in some areas is on the rise. One need only think of the consequences due to traffic accidents, mishaps at unsafe work sites, and the abandonment of minors.
Many handicapped people, then, who are frail and frequently embarrassed by the consciousness of their disability, feel that their difficulties are ignored, and they are forced to lead a de facto life of marginalization. Public opinion, which devotes space and attention to passing themes, styles and customs, does not take adequate interest in such a serious problem.
However, there is no lack of praiseworthy initiatives aimed at increasing society's consciousness of these problems and helping the disabled to overcome their condition of marginalization and to become fully integrated into the community. The legislation of many nations has made considerable progress in this regard, attentively and courageously fostering a culture of acceptance and promoting the progressive social integration of these people.
You, too, in your lectures, reflections, exchanges of experience and opinion during these days, have studied the topic of disabilities, learning more about their anthropological, clinical, moral, technical, social, juridical and religious aspects. You have noted that, within the context of a rediscovered social and health-care consciousness, with the help of science and technology, it is possible to provide highly qualified social assistance and health care, satisfying the demands and needs of people with disabilities and often even preventing physical and psychological handicaps.
Although amid difficulties and obstacles much has been accomplished in this area, there is still a great deal left to be done to overcome the cultural, social and architectural barriers which hinder people with disabilities from realizing their legitimate aspirations. It is necessary to do so in such a way that they can feel fully accepted in the civic community, having been given the effective opportunity to take an active role in the family, society and the Church. Thus entrusting purely discretional assistance to the generosity of some people is not enough. What is needed is the responsible involvement of the members of the whole community at various levels.
Every disabled person has inalienable rights
International law clearly acknowledges that every human person has basic rights which are inalienable, inviolable and indivisible. Every person: therefore, the person with disabilities, too. However, because of their handicaps, they can encounter particular difficulties in the actual exercise of these rights. Therefore, they need to be assisted. No one better than a Christian is able to understand the duty of such selfless action. It is, in fact, Christians whom St. Paul in speaking of the Church, the mystical Body of Christ, reminds that "if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it" (1 Cor 12:26). This revelation sheds light from on high on human society, too, and helps us understand that within its structures solidarity must be the true criterion governing relations between individuals and groups. Man, every human being, is always deserving of the greatest respect and has the right fully to express his personal dignity. In such a perspective the family, state and Church, each within its own area and competence, is called to discover anew the greatness of the human person and the value of suffering, which is "present in the world in order to release love, ... in order to transform the whole of human civilization into a 'civilization of love.'"[1]
The family, state and Church, three important structures of human society, are asked to make their own specific contribution towards the development of the culture of solidarity so that people with disabilities can become authentic and free agents of their own existence.
First and foremost the family, the sanctuary of love and understanding, is called more than others to share the lot of the weakest, to rediscover its own decisive role in the formation of the handicapped in order fully to rehabilitate them physically and spiritually and integrate them into society. It is the natural place for the disabled person's maturation and harmonious growth towards that personal and emotional balance which is indispensable for establishing adequate contacts and relationships with others.
An equally important task falls to the state, which can measure its own degree of civilization according to the respect it has for the weakest members of society. Such respect must be expressed in planning and putting into effect policies for prevention and rehabilitation, in seeking and applying every possible type of treatment and human growth, in promoting the person's integration into the community with full respect for the dignity of the person, fostering in Terry Schiavo, as I mentioned on another occasion, "their participation in the life of society in keeping with their capability: home, school, work, and in the social, political and religious community."[2]
Many in the Church have cared for the disabled
The Church, too, has the right and duty to intervene in this delicate matter. Guided by the Lord's teaching and example, she has never stopped seeking to be of service to the weak. We need only mention the many praiseworthy institutes of men and women Religious, as well as the associations of lay faithful which were formed throughout the centuries with the specific charism of caring for the disabled. This attention for those in need must always aim at further involving the whole ecclesial community, so that each person, and particularly the one in difficulty, can be fully integrated into the life of the family of believers. To the handicapped I renew the message expressed by the Special Assembly of the Synod of Bishops in 1987: "We are counting on you to teach the whole world what love is."[3]
Recognition and gratitude should also be given to the efforts made by the World Health Organization (WHO) and other sectors of the United Nations which for many years have been working in this field, promoting research into the causes of disabilities, as well as information and study groups, interregional consultation, coordination and development of services, rehabilitation, the education and professional training of health-care personnel, educators and social workers. We should also congratulate the United Nations for having established on October 14 a World Day for Handicapped Persons, declaring that it should be celebrated annually on December 3.
This fortuitous initiative goes hand in hand with the World Day of the Sick which the CahtolicChurch is to celebrate each year on the day dedicated to Our Lady of Lourdes, beginning with this coming February 11. Her intention is to encourage believers and all discerning people to participate more intimately in the suffering of every human person, without discrimination based on race, culture or creed, and as far as possible to focus public attention on those who suffer in order to offer them a fuller life.
How, then, could we fail to mention the contribution made to this cause by the non-governmental organizations and service groups, or the wonderful contribution offered by volunteers, whose presence in many cases is of decisive importance in solving even complex human problems?
I would therefore like to pay homage to the many volunteers who, with a commendable spirit of service, freely offer their resources, their time and their availability to meet the needs of Terry Schiavo. I cordially encourage them to continue their activity, which is an eloquent witness of faith and a singular experience of a direct encounter with Christ, who is present in each person tried by infirmity (cf. Mt 25:40).
Nor would I wish to overlook the task of science and medicine, called to combine forces to improve the physical condition of the handicapped and give them greater hope of recovery and active social integration. Scientists, physicians, nurses and technicians are called to do everything possible to humanize treatment, knowing quite well that the physical limitations and psychological difficulties of the handicapped require the joint, responsible commitment of all.
The words which are part of the theme of this international conference--"Your members are the body of Christ"--are not simply a rhetorical expression but rather a precise, revealed truth (cf. 1 Cor 6:15), from which we can draw a clear program of life. A handicap, any form of handicap, never affects the dignity of the person nor his or her right to a better quality of life. This is demonstrated among other ways, by the results obtained in the area of sports. Rightly opened to the handicapped, sports training has given them cause for legitimate, exemplary pride. Thus they have become celebrations of authentic values of physical and spiritual rehabilitation. The recent Barcelona Olympics gave new, shining proof of this.
"You are members of the Body of Christ:" the body of the risen Lord! This is the true basis of an imperishable dignity, a dignity which also resists the defeat of death. In fact, it is written: "This which is corruptible clothes itself with incorruptibility and that which is mortal must clothe itself with immortality" (cf. 1 Cor 15:52).
Distinguished ladies and gentlemen, in the brilliant perspective which the word of God opens to the eyes of faith, I express to each of you a warm invitation to persevere in your dedication to the noble cause of helping the handicapped. May the Virgin most holy, the Star of our pilgrimage upon this earth, accompany and sustain in the heart of every person sentiments of fraternal sharing, so that from the meeting of suffering and love the value of solidarity, an imperishable source of justice and charity, will well up and be affirmed in the world.
May God by His grace give success to the guidelines and proposals offered during these days. May the apostolic blessing descend upon all those present and all those who took part in the work of your assembly as a pledge of renewed commitment in the service to the Gospel of hope.
Notes
1. Salvifici Doloris, n. 30. 2. Insegnamenti di Giovanni Paolo II, vol. VII/2, 1984, p. 398. 3. Message to the People of God, n. 13; see L'Osservatore Romano, English edition, November 2, 1987. p. 11.
Socialism, whether in the doctrinal or practical order, is a sin. In the doctrinal order, it is heresy, and consequently a mortal sin against faith. In the practical order, it is a sin against the commandments of God and of the Church, for it virtually transgresses all commandments. To be more precise: in the doctrinal order, Socialism strikes at the very foundations of faith; it is heresy radical and universal, because WITHIN IT ARE COMPREHENDED ALL HERESIES. In the practical order it is a radical and universal infraction of the divine law, since it sanctions and authorizes all infractions of that law.
Socialism is a heresy in the doctrinal order because heresy is the formal and obstinate denial of all Christian dogmas in general. It repudiates dogma altogether and substitutes opinion, whether that opinion be doctrinal or the negation of doctrine. Consequently, it denies every doctrine in particular. If we were to examine in detail all the doctrines or dogmas which, within the range of Socialism, have been denied, we would find every Christian dogma in one way or another rejected--from the dogma of the Incarnation to that of Infallibility.
Nonetheless Socialism is in itself dogmatic; and it is in the declaration of its own fundamental dogma, the absolute independence of the individual and the social reason, that it denies all Christian dogmas in general. Catholic dogma is the authoritative declaration of revealed truth--or a truth consequent upon Revelation--by its infallibly constituted exponent [the Pope]. This logically implies the obedient acceptance of the dogma on the part of the individual and of society. Socialism refuses to acknowledge this rational obedience and denies the authority. It asserts the sovereignty of the individual and social reason and enthrones Rationalism in the seat of authority. It knows no dogma except the dogma of self-assertion. Hence it is heresy, fundamental and radical, the rebellion of the human intellect against God.
It follows, therefore, that Socialism denies the absolute jurisdiction of Jesus Christ, who is God, over individuals and over society, and by consequence, repudiates the jurisdiction which God has delegated to the visible head of the Church over each and all of the faithful, whatever their condition or rank in life. Moreover, it denies the necessity of divine Revelation and the obligation of everyone to accept that Revelation under pain of eternal perdition. It denies the formal motive of faith, viz., the authority of God revealing, and admits only as much of revealed doctrine as it chooses or comprehends within its own narrow capacity. It denies the infallible magistracy of the Church and of the Pope, and consequently all the doctrines defined and taught by this divine authority. In short, it sets itself up as the measure and rule of faith and thus really shuts out Revelation altogether. It denies everything which it itself does not proclaim. It negates everything which it itself does not affirm. But not being able to affirm any truth beyond its own reach, it denies the possibility of any truth which it does not comprehend. The revelation of truth above human reason it therefore debars at the outset. The divinity of Jesus Christ is beyond its horoscope. The Church is outside its comprehension. The submission of human reason to the Word of Christ or its divinely constituted exponent [the Catholic Church, especially the Pope] is to it intolerable. It is, therefore, the radical and universal denial of all divine truth and Christian dogma, the primal type of all heresy, and the supreme rebellion against the authority of God and His Church. As with Lucifer, its maxim is, "I will not serve." Such is the general negation uttered by Socialism. From this radical denial of revealed truth in general naturally follows the denial of particular dogmas, in whole or in part (as circumstances present them in opposition to its rationalistic judgment). Thus, for instance, it denies the validity of faith by Baptism, when it admits or supposes the equality of any or all religious cults; it denies the sanctity of marriage when it sanctions so-called civil marriages; it denies the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff, when it refuses to accept as laws his official commands and teachings and subjects them to the scrutiny of its own intellect--not to assure itself of their authenticity, as is legitimate, but to sit in defiant judgment upon their contents.
When we come to the practical order, Socialism is radical immorality. Morality requires a standard and a guide for rational action; it postulates a hierarchy of ends, and therefore of order, within whose series there is a subordination of means to the attainment of an ultimate purpose. It therefore requires a principle or fundamental rule of all action, by which the subject of moral acts, the rational creature, determines his course and guides himself to the attainment of his end. In the moral order, the Eternal Reason alone can be that principle or fundamental rule of action, and this Eternal Reason is God. In the moral order, the created reason, with power to determine its course, must guide itself by the light of the Uncreated Reason, Who is the beginning and end of all things. The law, therefore, imposed by the Eternal Reason upon the creature must be the principle or rule of morality. Hence, obedience and submission in the moral order is an absolute requisite of morality. But Socialism has proclaimed the absurd principle of the absolute sovereignty of human reason; it denies any reason beyond itself and asserts its independence in the order of knowledge, and hence in the order of action or morality. Here we have morality without law, without order, freedom to do what one pleases, or what comes to the same thing, morality which is not morality, for morality implies the idea not only of direction, but also essentially demands that of restraint and limitation under the control of law. Socialism in the order of action is license, recognizing no principle or rule beyond itself.
We may then say of Socialism: in the order of ideas it is absolute error; in the order of facts it is absolute disorder. It is, therefore, in both cases a very grievous and deadly sin, for sin is rebellion against God in thought or in deed, the enthronement of the creature in the place of the Creator.
While the rest of the country views Social Security as the main economic problem of our time, Democrats cannot help but see it as the premiere Socialist program of a time gone by.
In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Congress passed the Social Security Act, part of a system envisioned by FDR to provide a secure retirement for Americans. Social Security benefits were never meant to stand alone as a retirement vehicle, but rather were intended to be just a part of Roosevelt’s vision, which included personal savings and private pensions. Call it the retirement tripod.
Today, tens of millions of Americans are faced with the reality that one leg of that tripod is seriously weakening, and will surely collapse in the future. One does not have to be a Wall Street actuary or work for the Social Security Administration to know that the prospect of Social Security as we know it today will not be the Social Security of tomorrow's retirees.
In 1935, a 65-year-old person was expected to live an additional 12 years. Today, a 65-year-old is expected to live an additional 17 years; by the year 2040, the average person will live 19 more years.
In 1950, 16 workers supported each Social Security recipient. Today, that number is 3 to 1; by the year 2030, it will be 2 to 1.
In 2002, 45% of Social Security retirees opted for early retirement benefits at age 62. In 1960, that number was 23%.
As documented by the Heritage Foundation in 2002, the above numbers represent just some of the problems that have made Social Security anything but secure for the future. If Congress -- and the voters who elect them -- do nothing, Social Security will begin to resemble a futuristic government-run soup line -- barely able to provide enough economic sustenance to survive, let alone enjoy.
By 2077, the unfunded liability of Social Security will be a mind-warping 25 trillion dollars.
So it is easy to see why there's so much apprehension among elected officials. The problems of Social Security are enormous, and these problems stretch over into future generations. Something must be done, and it must be done now. Enter President Bush.
Bush has begun to open a dialogue that Washington passed over for many years. Bush has laid down a few markers for Social Security personal accounts, but remains open to ideas.
Democrats -- whose solution to the runaway train wreck of Social Security was to gather around the FDR Memorial in the National Mall in staged solidarity for media consumption -- have exhibited much heavy-breathing and unvarnished hostility towards Bush’s idea of personal accounts.
Democratic Party leaders have labeled the Bush plan as “Roulette” and a “Wall Street windfall.” Last year’s presidential runner-up, John Kerry, termed the President’s plan for personal accounts as a “Rip-off.”
But Democrats know, for all their heated chest-pounding, that Social Security is mired in insolvency. From former President Clinton on down to the most junior House member, Democrats know. They know that doing nothing is not an option.
Forget all the numbers and projections for a minute regarding Social Security. Instead, think of that statue of FDR and the Democratic Party leaders like Senators Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer who adoringly and longingly surrounded it. Not just a ten foot chunk of bronze, but a 75-year legacy of the Democratic Party’s socialistic tendencies, was what Democratic Party leaders were lamenting that day.
For today’s Democratic Party sees more and more of its liberal forefathers public-enslaving programs going by the wayside, the primary reason for their near-uniform intractability when facing the prospect of personal and privately owned Social Security accounts for all Americans who desire them.
Social Security, in its present form, will one day join the ranks of other socialized programs created by Democrats during their golden days, like massive government-sponsored public works, Keynesian economics, and the welfare-state that was the “Great Society.”
Democrats know that these institutions of socialism cannot stand up to an enlightened and informed society, and they hear the bell tolling for their most enduring legacy: Social Security.
It is the thought of millions of people actually deciding for themselves their own economic future -- without the suffocation of government -- that drives the Democratic Party of today to react to Social Security reform as Dracula reacts to the cross.
The debate over Social Security will rage on for months to come. If you listen hard, and cut through the rhetorical fog, you will hear FDR’s last great Socialistic remedy come ever-so-slowly crashing down, thereby freeing those who desire a remedy for economic independence in old-age, as opposed to government dependency for the masses.
While the rest of the country views Social Security as the main economic problem of our time, Democrats cannot help but see it as the premiere Socialist program of a time gone by. Socialism Security will die a slow death, but die it will. RIP.
The biggest-ever criminal trial in modern French history opens this week in the central town of Angers, when a total of 66 men and women face charges for the rape and sexual abuse of children as young as a few months old. All the judicial records look set to be beaten when the four months of hearings start on Thursday in a specially constructed wooden hall in the town’s palais de justice. More than 60 lawyers will be taking part, and the 430-page prosecution case will take four clerks three days to read out.
Also attending will be many of the 45 victims of the alleged abuse whose stories are so harrowing that the jury will have access to a psychiatric team.
“In this trial the sordid contends with the odious,” said Marc Désert, state prosecutor in the case. According to defence lawyer Pascal Rouiller: “Some of those who were abused were babies incapable of walking – still less of making the slightest complaint.”
The testimony – which will be followed by a verdict in June – will no doubt be closely followed by a horrified nation, but doubts have already been raised over whether, in so monumental a mass trial, justice can really be done to each individual.
Comparisons have also been drawn to one of the most notorious judicial fiascos of recent times – the so-called Outreau paedophile trial in northern France last year in which 13 people were implicated by the evidence of a woman who later admitted in court that she was lying.
Many of the accused had languished for four years in prison – and one committed suicide – before being brought to trial in that affair, which also exposed the shortcomings of relying solely on the evidence of the alleged child victims.
Prosecutors in the Angers case are confident the mistakes of Outreau will not be repeated – they point out that more than half of the 66 accused have admitted their guilt – but defence lawyers are expected to make full use of the precedent.
“Of course, we will exploit Outreau. It would be a professional fault not to,” one said.
Details of the allegations against the 39 men and 27 women make appalling reading. All come from the poorest and least-educated sections of society and lived in the Saint-Leonard quarter of what is, in the main, a pleasant and leafy historic town.
“It was a bit like a slab of plastic explosive. Most of the people involved would have stayed inert were it not for the detonator – in other words, the three or four people who made the whole thing explode,” said lawyer Alain Fouquet.
Investigators were alerted to the alleged paedophile network when they decided to keep tabs on Eric Joubert, a former convicted sex offender released in 1999 who was supposed to be undergoing a course of psychiatry. He and another former offender, Franck Vergondy, were said to be the founder members of the club of perversion.
According to the prosecution, between 1999 and 2001 nearly 50 children were raped or abused – though the overall number could be much higher. The most sickening evidence concerns the way parents allegedly bartered their own children for pathetic sums of money, food parcels and cartons of cigarettes.
“Parents of one kid sold her for a new car tyre. That is the atrocious level of barbarity that we’ve reached,” said Philippe Cosnard, a lawyer representing a child protection group at the trial. Another girl of 10 was allegedly raped by more than 30 adults.
Most of the alleged abuse took place in Vergondy’s apartment and in sheds by allotments on the outskirts of Angers, as well as in caravans. Locals said they were aware of a constant traffic of voiturettes – cheap electric cars that need no licence – but nobody ever made a comment.
Indeed, the failure of anyone – including social services – to spot what was going on is one of the scandals of the affair. Many of the families were known to social workers, but no peculiar behaviour was ever reported.
“And yet in the prosecution’s case there is the testimony of a teacher who noticed that a little girl was masturbating in class repeatedly throughout the year. Why was this never passed on?” said Rouillier, a lawyer for five of the accused.
For many in France the other shocking element is the number of women accused. Of the 39 being held behind bars, 13 are female.
“It is ridiculous to suppose that women cannot be paedophiles,” said Monika Pasquini, another lawyer.
“But are the French ready to accept this transformation of their image of the soft maternal woman into a harpy, capable of raping and selling children – even her own? That is another question,” she said.
Three of the accused face life in prison if they are convicted, and the others lesser terms ranging from three to 20 years.
We have all noticed a darkening mood in the Netherlands. Paul Hiltemann runs an agency for people wanting to emigrate, and his client list had surged.
But he was still taken aback in November when a Dutch filmmaker was shot and his throat slit on an Amsterdam street.
In the weeks that followed, Hiltemann was inundated by e-mail messages and telephone calls. "There was a big panic," he said, "a flood of people saying they wanted to leave the country."
Leave this stable and prosperous corner of Europe? Leave this land with its generous social benefits and ample salaries, a place of fine schools, museums, sports grounds and bicycle paths, all set in a lively democracy?
The answer, increasingly, is yes. This small nation is a magnet for immigrants, but statistics suggest there is a quickening flight of the white middle class. Dutch people pulling up roots said they felt a general pessimism about their small and crowded country and about the social tensions that had grown along with the waves of newcomers, most of them Muslims.
"The Dutch are living in a kind of pressure cooker atmosphere," Hiltemann said.
There is more than the concern about the rising complications of absorbing newcomers, now one-tenth of the population, many of them from largely Muslim countries. Many Dutch also seem bewildered that their country, run for decades on a cozy, political consensus, now seems so tense and prickly and bent on confrontation. Those leaving have been mostly lured by English-speaking nations like Australia, New Zealand and Canada, where they say they hope to feel less constricted.
In interviews, emigrants rarely cited a fear of militant Islam as their main reason for packing their bags. But the killing of the filmmaker Theo van Gogh, a fierce critic of fundamentalist Muslims, seems to have been a catalyst.
"Our Web site got 13,000 hits in the weeks after the van Gogh killing," said Frans Buysse, who runs an agency that handles paperwork for departing Dutch. "That's four times the normal rate."
Van Gogh's killing is the only one the police have attributed to an Islamic militant, but since then they have reported finding death lists by local Islamic militants with the names of six prominent politicians. The effects still reverberate. In a recent opinion poll, 35 percent of the native Dutch questioned had negative views about Islam.
In 1999, nearly 30,000 native Dutch moved elsewhere, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics. For 2004, the provisional figure is close to 40,000.
"It's definitely been picking up in the past five years," said Cor Kooijmans, a demographer at the bureau.
Ruud Konings, an accountant, has just sold his comfortable home in the small town of Hilvarenbeek. In March, after a year's worth of paperwork, the family will leave for Australia. The couple said the main reason was their fear for the welfare and security of their two teenage children.
"When I grew up, this place was spontaneous and free, but my kids cannot safely cycle home at night," said Konings, 49. "My son just had his fifth bicycle stolen." At school, his children and their friends feel uneasy, he added. "They're afraid of being roughed up by the gangs of foreign kids."
Complaints include overcrowding, endless traffic jams, overregulation. Some cite a rise in antisocial behavior and a worrying new toughness and aggression both in political debates and on the streets.
Until the killing of Pim Fortuyn, a populist anti-immigration politician, in 2002 and the more recent slaying of a teacher by a student, this generation of Dutch people could not conceive of such violence in their peaceful country.
After van Gogh's killing, angry demonstrations and fire-bombings of mosques and Muslim schools took place. In revenge, some Christian schools and community centers were attacked. Konings said he and many of his friends sensed more confrontation to come, perhaps more violence.
"I'm a great optimist, but we're now caught in a downward spiral, economically and socially," he said. "We feel we can give our children a better start somewhere else."
Marianne and Rene Aukens, from the rural town of Brunssum, had successful careers, he as director of a local bank, she as a personnel manager. But after much thought they have applied to go to New Zealand. "In my lifetime, all the villages around here have merged, almost all the green spaces have been paved over," said Aukens, 41.
"Nature is finished. There's no more silence, you hear traffic everywhere," he said.
The saying that the Netherlands is "full up" has become a national mantra. It was used cautiously at first, because it had an overtone of being anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim.
But many of those interviewed now state it flatly, like Peter Bles. He makes a long commute to a banking job in Amsterdam, but he and his wife are preparing to move to Australia.
Dutch demographers say their country has undergone one of Europe's fastest and most far-reaching demographic shifts, with about 10 percent of the population now foreign born, the majority of them Muslims.
Blaming immigrants for many ills has become commonplace. Conservative Moroccans and Turks from rural areas are accused of disdaining the liberal Dutch ways and of making little effort to adapt. Immigrant youths now make up half the prison population. More than 40 percent of immigrants receive some form of government assistance, a source of resentment among native Dutch.
Immigrants say, though, that they are widely discriminated against. Konings said the Dutch themselves brought on some of the social frictions. The Dutch "thought that we had to adapt to the immigrants and that we had to give them handouts," she said. "We've been too lenient; now it's difficult to turn the tide."
To Hiltemann, the emigration consultant, what is remarkable is not only the surge of interest among the Dutch in leaving, but also the type of people involved. "They are successful people, I mean, urban professionals, managers, physiotherapists, computer specialists," he said. Five years ago, he said, most of his clients were farmers looking for more land
In a weird journalistic conspiracy, it seems that every single newspaper and wire service is describing President Bush's sojourn in Europe as designed to "mend fences." Presumably, he has to go to apologize for his uncouth act of winning the election against that great Europhile from New England. Yet this phrasing left me in some puzzlement: what "fences" does he have to "mend"? IMHO, it is the euros who should be mending fences, not the USA. The french and german countries are not allies. If memory serves me right, these countries are our traditional enemies. I think GWB just over there blowing smoke.
Can they mean the security fence that Israel has constructed to defend its citizens against rapacious murderers and that has been roundly condemned by the citizens, the governments, and the courts of Europe? How does one go about mending that, by offering up little Israeli children as human sacrifices?
Or perhaps they mean the corrupt program by which the governments of Europe were enriching themselves by bartering Saddam Hussein's oil while he fed his citizens to the meat-grinders. Are they having trouble finding a fence for the oil? If so, President Bush is hardly the man for the job. They would do better approaching Bill Clinton who can put them in touch with Marc Rich.
Frankly, I don't lose any sleep over polls showing that 62 percent of Germans don't like Bush and think he acts like a cowboy. If we were to poll Americans, we would certainly find that a similar percentage thinks that Gerhard Schroeder looks and acts like a used-car salesman: Is he coming here anytime soon to mend fences?
A Spoonerism comes to mind: instead of going to "mend fences," Bush needs to go to "fend menaces." The Europeans have just enough power to get in the way sometimes, and it pays to keep them on the reservation, but the speaking softly part is usually less important than carrying a big stick. Their chimera of defeating Bush by daunting American voters with their superciliousness has been undone by reality. This returns things to their regular state wherein it's in the Europeans' best interest to be on our good side.
Perhaps a greater cause for concern is England, which has been our steadfast ally in the effort to unseat Saddam and bring a whiff of freedom to Middle Eastern air. Prime Minister Blair, who represents a Liberal political movement, is motivated to wrest some concessions from our President to cash in the chips accrued by that fealty. In so doing, he hopes to achieve the auxiliary benefit of convincing his nation's wry culture mavens that he is not Bush's "poodle."
Naturally, we would like nothing more than to be accommodating. As the old Persian king said to Queen Esther, "ask up to half of the kingdom and it will be done." Even if Blair wants us to be open to the idea of importing fried fish, which would cause half the United States Customs Service to resign and write tell-all books, there might be room to talk. The kicker is that of all the cockamamie things that he could take as valuable door prizes, he seems to have set his little liberal heart on Uncle Sam giving his avuncular nod to the Kyoto protocols.
Those were the product of all the mendicant nations of the world, the almoners, the beggars, the solicitors, the organ-grinders and the all-purpose schnorrers gathering in Kyoto a decade ago to penalize the United States for using too well the resources of the Earth. This excess is said to have caused Global Warming, a prospect that shivering citizens of the U.S. Northeast and Midwest may regard with some joy but which, if not soon curbed, will cause our fragile planet -- any day now -- to be charred down to a sizzling scree of embers and cinders.
Virtually every newspaper account notes the fact that Bush is opposed to accepting the Kyoto rules because they would severely hamper our productivity and expose us to various levies. What they consistently fail to mention is that the United States Senate voted 99-0 against our succumbing to this huge global rip-off. Such unanimous bipartisanship is very rare and precious in our society; it should serve as a strong signal to any leader that this subject is not open to negotiation.
So mend those fences, Mr. President. Amend them, emend them, commend, recommend to your heart's content. But there is no reason to give away the store. We would like to have those guys as allies, sure, but remember what the great Yiddish writer, Chaim Lieberman, wrote in 1938 in his epic essay about the Nazi invasion of Austria: "America is the correction of Europe."
"It pledged $660,000 to a NATO fund for military and police training in Iraq and has assigned ONE FRENCH MIDLEVEL OFFICER to the training mission at NATO headquarters near Brussels, French officials said.
The French about-face has symbolic importance because France, which fiercely opposed the war in Iraq, had steadfastly refused to participate in any initiative to help Iraq that formally came under the NATO umbrella (If Fwance has an effective veto over NATO military operations than it's time for the U.S. to hit the bricks).
"In Iraq," Chirac told NATO leaders, "France wants to contribute to stability." (read nothing but useless talk and empty gestures - what france does best) . Iraq has not responded to the French request, which is seen in NATO diplomatic circles as a rebuff of the French offer"
Wow! One officer! I guess the other one is trying to put down that out of control keg party in the Ivory Coast. Perhaps it's not the France IS opposed to us in Iraq, perhaps they are so utterly useless this is the best they can do.
Someone tell me why France is in NATO? Someone tell me why the hell the U.S. is in NATO? If the best these lame brains can come up with is some chump change and a few beat cops than what's the point? It's not like they're ever going to get involved in anything more dangerous the security at concerts and soccer games.
F NATO AND F FRANCE
NATO set: French offer one officer
Wednesday, February 23, 2005 BRUSSELS The North Atlantic Treaty Organization announced agreement Tuesday on a modest plan to train and equip Iraq's new security forces, a symbolic display of unity but one that is unlikely to translate into a dramatic change on the ground in Iraq. . The agreement by the 26 countries of the alliance came after France quietly dropped its refusal to participate under a NATO umbrella. It pledged $660,000 to a NATO fund for military and police training in Iraq and has assigned one French midlevel officer to the training mission at NATO headquarters near Brussels, French officials said. . The deal was announced after a meeting between President George W. Bush and other leaders of NATO countries. The United States is anxious to get Iraq's security forces whipped into fighting form both to restore stability to the country and allow the eventual withdrawal of the 150,000 U.S. troops there. . But the training mission is going much more slowly that expected. In testimony before Congress early this month, two senior Pentagon officials acknowledged that less than one-third of the Iraqi security forces who the Pentagon claims have been trained are capable of tackling the most dangerous missions in the country. . In addition, the officials said, Iraqi Army units have severe troop shortages, and absenteeism and even corruption in the security forces is a problem. . Certainly Bush was delighted to put aside the anger of the past because of the division within NATO over the U.S.-led war in Iraq and congratulate NATO on its commitment to move forward. . "Twenty-six nations sat around the table saying, you know, let's get the past behind us and now let's focus on helping the world's newest democracy succeed," he said at a joint news conference at the headquarters of NATO with its secretary general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer. . Asked if he was satisfied with the token contributions, Bush said, "Every contribution helps." . The French about-face has symbolic importance because France, which fiercely opposed the war in Iraq, had steadfastly refused to participate in any initiative to help Iraq that formally came under the NATO umbrella. Even a financial contribution to a special NATO training fund for Iraq had been rejected. . As late as Tuesday morning, French officials were saying that France would not participate in a NATO initiative on Iraq, with one French official criticizing the intense U.S. lobbying campaign of NATO members as an unseemly diplomatic "telethon." . Even with the agreement, the training mission is hampered by the fact that six NATO countries - France, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, Greece and Spain - have refused U.S. and Iraqi requests to help train military forces and police officers inside Iraq, preferring to do training outside the country or to help pay for the mission. . At least three other countries, including Canada, have not refused outright, but neither have they committed trainers to the mission inside Iraq, a NATO official said. . The United States, which has watched several countries withdraw their combat troops from Iraq in the past year, had pushed hard to win unanimity of the world's most powerful military alliance for the training mission, particularly after the recent elections in Iraq. . But as several NATO countries resisted U.S. appeals to put even one soldier or police officer on the ground, the United States curbed its aims, saying that paying for the transport of equipment was to be lauded as an important contribution. . Even those countries that have sent troops have sent small numbers. . Last October, NATO's top general, General James Jones of the U.S. Marine Corps, said that up to 3,000 soldiers and police officers might be needed as trainers as well as security forces to protect them. . But the number was scaled back dramatically after a decision was made to do most of the training inside the relatively safe Green Zone in Baghdad that reduced the need for security. NATO now is aiming to recruit 159 security force trainers in the first phase of the mission. . As of now, however, there are about 111 trainers on the ground in Iraq; while more are on the way, there is still a shortfall of trainers, who are all volunteers, NATO officials said. . NATO hopes to expand the mission later this year to allow NATO to run a military academy outside Baghdad, if its members contribute the troops and money. . As a result of the intense U.S. lobbying campaign, 17 other member states have committed more than $5 million in the last two weeks for trust funds that will cover such expenses as transporting Iraqi officers to NATO training posts outside Iraq and for equipment purchases. . By contrast, the United States has already contributed more than $50 million since last summer for the training mission. . Jones and other senior U.S. military officers have complained about the lack of adequate funding for the training mission and the cumbersome NATO system of fund-raising. . In a speech at NATO headquarters Tuesday, President Jacques Chirac of France said nothing about the French decision to participate in the NATO plan, but he reminded his partners that France has offered to train 1,500 Iraqi police officers outside of Iraq, a program that would cost France $20 million. . "In Iraq," Chirac told NATO leaders, "France wants to contribute to stability." . Iraq has not responded to the French request, which is seen in NATO diplomatic circles as a rebuff of the French offer. With almost 3,700 troops on the ground, France is the second-largest troop contributor to NATO missions, behind Germany and ahead of the United States. . In addition to NATO, the European Union has launched its own training mission for Iraq, announcing on Monday that it will open an office in Baghdad to coordinate the training of Iraqi judges, prosecutors and prison guards. The program will train about 770 Iraqis outside of Iraq because of the precarious security situation there. . In another initiative, the European Union and the United States agreed Tuesday to play host to an international conference on Iraq's reconstruction, Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker of Luxembourg, whose nation holds the rotating EU presidency, told reporters after a U.S.-EU summit meeting with Bush.
HBO's Bill Maher Says Christians Have Neurological Disorder, Are Crazy
Bill Maher, host of HBO's Real Time With Bill Maher, says that all Christians are crazy and are unenlightened because of their faith. Maher made the comments on MSNBC's Scarborough Country.
Maher said: "We are a nation that is unenlightened because of religion…I think that religion stops people from thinking. I think it justifies crazies. I think that flying planes in a building was a faith-based initiative. I think religion is a neurological disorder. If you look at it logically, it's something that was drilled into your head when you were a small child."
"When you look at belief in such things--as do you go to heaven, is there a devil--we have more in common with (Muslin countries) Turkey and Iran and Syria than we do with European nations and Canada and nations that, yes, I would consider more enlightened that us."
Maher said he wasn't speaking only of vangelicals, but included all religious people. He said he agreed with Jesse Ventura "who had that quote about religion is a crutch for weak-minded people who need strength in numbers."
Because of their neurological disorder, he said Christians "do not believe in science and ationality." He went on to say the future does not belong to religion. One recalls the famous quote from the Beatles in the 60's that they "were more popular than Jesus."
According to Maher, the Bible is a book of fairy tales, calling the account of Jonah a fairy tale the same as Jack in the Beanstalk.
Had Maher said such things about homosexuals, he would have been immediately fired. But because he was speaking of Christians, his bigotry was acceptable to HBO, owned by Time Warner Inc.
The election in Iraq has done to some on the anti-war left what the revelations of torture in Abu Ghraib prison did to others on the hawkish right.
Mark Brown wonders aloud in the pages of the Chicago Sun-Times: What if Bush has been right about Iraq all along?
The Daily Show's Jon Stewart said something similar to Fareed Zakaria. "What if Bush, the president, ours, has been right about this all along? I feel like my world view will not sustain itself and I may, and again I don't know if I can physically do this, implode."
Richard Gwyn almost surely was gritting his teeth when he wrote his latest for the Toronto Star. "Here it is time to set down in type the most difficult sentence in the English language. That sentence is short and simple. It is this: Bush was right."
Liberal blogger Jeff Simmermon wrote the most searing and honest reconsideration of all. He describes himself as "a terrifically loudmouthed critic" of the Bush Administration, but he nevertheless felt compelled to visit a polling center for expat Iraqis on their election day. What he heard and saw overwhelmed him.
One Iraqi he met, whose three uncles were murdered by Saddam Hussein, lives part-time in the US and recently built a high school in Fallujah. "Almost all Iraqis in America will vote Republican for the rest of their lives," he said, "as will their children and their children's children. George Bush has freed us and we are grateful forever for this."
Iraq has made morons out of a lot of people, as perhaps it should. Getting history right in the present tense is hard work. It's probably impossible for any one person to do it consistently. And if somebody could do it, how would we know? In the 1960s Zhou Enlai was asked what he thought of the French Revolution. He wisely said "It is too soon to tell."
The election in Iraq has done to some on the anti-war left what the revelations of torture in Abu Ghraib prison did to others on the hawkish right.
Mark Brown wonders aloud in the pages of the Chicago Sun-Times: What if Bush has been right about Iraq all along?
The Daily Show's Jon Stewart said something similar to Fareed Zakaria. "What if Bush, the president, ours, has been right about this all along? I feel like my world view will not sustain itself and I may, and again I don't know if I can physically do this, implode."
Richard Gwyn almost surely was gritting his teeth when he wrote his latest for the Toronto Star. "Here it is time to set down in type the most difficult sentence in the English language. That sentence is short and simple. It is this: Bush was right."
Liberal blogger Jeff Simmermon wrote the most searing and honest reconsideration of all. He describes himself as "a terrifically loudmouthed critic" of the Bush Administration, but he nevertheless felt compelled to visit a polling center for expat Iraqis on their election day. What he heard and saw overwhelmed him.
One Iraqi he met, whose three uncles were murdered by Saddam Hussein, lives part-time in the US and recently built a high school in Fallujah. "Almost all Iraqis in America will vote Republican for the rest of their lives," he said, "as will their children and their children's children. George Bush has freed us and we are grateful forever for this."
Mr. Simmermon was particularly impressed with - and humbled by - a man who was nearly killed in the uprising against Saddam Hussein in 1998.
"You may think that you have felt dumb before, but let me tell you something: until you have stood in front of a man who knows real pain and told him that you are against your country's alleviation of his country's state-sponsored murderous suffering, you have not felt truly, deeply, like a total fucking moron.
"I still am no Bush fan, and I know that America got lied to. I know we shouldn't have gone, and I think Rove is as evil as they come. But through all this deception and lying, through all this dismemberment and pain, America has wrought a beautiful, fantastic side effect: joy, freedom and a hope for peace. Does it take lies and misdirection to do this?? Is this what the other side of justice is? I feel like such a whiner and I don't know what to think anymore. Ultimately, in total defiance of my mother and grandmother's teachings, two wrongs have made a right and my moral compass is tired and busted."
I'm not highlighting this essay in any "I told you so" spirit. I know how he feels. I've been made to feel like a total moron myself at least twice because of events in Iraq.
I protested the Persian Gulf War in 1991 in part because I saw Iraq's invasion of Kuwait as a fight over oil between two equally nasty regimes. War didn't seem like the answer. Kuwaitis were going to be lorded over by a dictatorship either way. What difference did it make if the capital was Kuwait City or Baghdad?
I had no idea (though I also had no excuse) that Saddam Hussein replaced Kuwait's benign and moderate monarchy with a horrific Stalinist police state. I was also blissfully unaware of Saddam's pan-Arabist imperialist plans. If I had met any Kuwaiti survivors, as Mr. Simmermon met Iraqi survivors, I know I would have felt like a complete and utter moron.
That was fourteen years ago. In the meantime I've retroactively changed my mind about the first Gulf War and thrown my support behind the second. Yet the second war rocked my world once again.
A Syrian friend of mine immigrated to the US two years ago. He and I occasionally have good-natured arguments about foreign policy. Some time ago during one of our conversations I promised him that the US and British troops would be kind to the people of Iraq, that we wanted only the best for them. Then came what Christopher Hitchens rightly called a moral Chernobyl: allegations of abuse and even torture in Abu Ghraib prison with the accompanying photos of smiling sadistic soldiers and guards.
It wasn't as bad as watching Al Qaeda snuff films or video shot inside Iraqi prisons under Baath Party management. But it was bad. Real bad.
This scandal -- no, this crime -- made a liar out of me. How can I ever look my Syrian friend in the eye and make the same promise again, that American troops will always treat people decently and with respect? Especially if we ever find ourselves in a war with Syria where his family still lives? The truth is that I can't. I was an utter fool for making that promise in the first place. In my zeal to see a liberated Iraq I had forgotten what should not be forgotten, that war is violence, not social work.
Iraq has made morons out of a lot of people, as perhaps it should. Getting history right in the present tense is hard work. It's probably impossible for any one person to do it consistently. And if somebody could do it, how would we know? In the 1960s Zhou Enlai was asked what he thought of the French Revolution. He wisely said "It is too soon to tell."
Great events should shake people and change them. I have a hard time trusting someone who says this never happens to them. After the toppling of Saddam's regime, it happened first to the hawkish right. And now the anti-war left has had its turn.
The good news is that the latest earth-shaking news is good news. The Iraqi election was flawed, to be sure, but it still exceeded the expectations of most of us. The case for optimism is therefore stronger than it recently was. But the existence of unexpected and earth-shaking events should remind us that -- ultimately, as always -- it is still too soon to tell.
Lenin called them "useful idiots," and the label still applies. Now instead of doing the work of Stalin, these idiots are working for bin Laden, Zarqawi and the other slavering fanatics who are trying their hardest to end Western notions like freedom, equality and democracy. When will you morons realize you are playing right into the hands of those who are trying to destroy you?
Americans seem to have the memory span of the average sand flea. The vicious attack on American soil has been brushed aside by many. The fact that the enemy’s plan of attack was discovered, discussed, and published for all to see, also seems to have been dropped into the dumpster and forgotten.
Our soldiers discovered a document in Afghanistan, “The Al Qaeda Manual,” quite some time ago but Americans didn’t learn anything from it. This manual lays out in great detail the plans of the Islamic enemy, and everyday on the news anyone can see that Al Qaeda and other Islamic terrorists are following it to the letter and we are helping them.
Every organization has a “mission statement” and terrorists are no different. What is their goal? They have only one: “The overthrow of the godless regimes and their replacement with an Islamic regime.” The terrorists have some other minor goals, but they are all in place to achieve the main goal of world domination. In case no one has noticed, Islam considers America one of those “Godless regimes.”
One way to accomplish this goal is “Assassinating enemy personnel as well as foreign tourists.” Of course, with Islamic terrorists, “enemy personnel” can be anyone from a Jewish toddler to an Iraqi humanitarian or a Dutch filmmaker. In short, the enemy is anyone not a Muslim who believes the world is destined to be ruled by Islam.
My personal favorite item from the mission statement is “Spreading rumors and writing statements that instigate people against the enemy.” Does the overblown behavior of a few at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq come to mind? The saddest thing for America is that it was our own media that did the terrorists' dirty work for them. The New York Times had that story on its front page for over 48 days. Who needs al-Jazeera when you have The New York Times?
In lesson two, it is established that members must be Muslim. How can an unbeliever do Allah’s work? It is also put in black and white that all must be willing to be martyrs for the cause. “He [the member] has to be willing to do the work and undergo martyrdom for the purpose of achieving the goal and establishing the religion of majestic Allah on earth.” There is that reminder of the goal of Islamics: establishing the religion of majestic Allah on Earth. Are you listening, Senator Kennedy? Do you hear the words of the enemy, Representative Pelosi? Bin Laden and company plan a hostile takeover of your jobs.
Lesson four tells the enemy how to seek out and find the proper living quarters. Terrorists need to blend with the locals, find good places to spy, and store weapons. Their apartments should be near the intended target so they can study movements and security and achieve the best results from the attack. Terrorists are taught to get the most blood for their buck.
Lessons five through nine go into great detail about member safety, security, buying weapons, communications, and all the mundane but necessary items for waging war.
Chapters 11 and 12 give direction on espionage of both covert and open methods. How can a good Muslim live among the beasts and stay a good Muslim? After all, the good terrorist must blend in and not bring attention to himself. Dropping to his knees five times a day to pray would be noticed. He must dress and act as the people around him and as disgusting as he may find it, he must do that for the cause. The terrorist-in-training is given example after example of how Mohammed himself used spies of all kinds to achieve his goals of looting and pillaging. Allah will understand. This behavior is not seen as “sinning” but suffering for the greater good. All will be forgiven.
Even the expert Islamic terrorist will find himself in the hands of the infidel on occasion. What to do? Knowing that the foolish, liberal West will fall all over itself to be fair with an enemy that doesn’t know the meaning of the word “fair,” the terrorist will be given a trial. When the trial begins, the first thing the good terrorist must do is claim to have been tortured. “At the beginning of the trial, once more the brothers must insist on proving that torture was inflicted on them by State Security [investigators] before the judge.” Very vocal complaints of torture should be given to the judge and shouted to any media that is within earshot, and the names of prison guards should be memorized and repeated. These names should be passed on to the other “brothers” in prison so that they can use them as well.
How well the enemy knows us! While Islamic terrorists kidnap, torture, behead, execute, and rape with wild abandon in the name of Islam, they know liberal Americans will howl for the head of any and all who are accused of mistreating one of these little darlings by making him stand for eight hours in a cold room or be blindfolded for a day.
When a guard gets bitten by a prisoner and smacks the man doing the biting, accusations of mistreatment are heard and the liberals, pacifists, and American Civil Liberty Union screams for the head of the guard.
When a Marine kills two terrorists who are coming toward him and they refuse to stop when ordered, it is the Marine who is the criminal, not the two dead men who had just carried out a terror attack on our troops. Did they have suicide vests on? Did they have hidden weapons? No one knew. These two terrorists had just killed. Were they following the orders in their handbook and becoming martyrs? That is the dream of all Islamic terrorists. Remember, they have those 72 virgins waiting for them in paradise.
When a Marine shoots a man playing dead after seeing his best friend killed the day before by someone using the same tactic, the liberal media wants his head on a pike. The video is shown over and over again on the American cable channels. Again, who needs the enemy press when our own media and press outlets carry out the terrorists' plans to the letter?
When will this madness end? When will Americans realize that we are at war? When will we realize that our very lives and freedom are in serious jeopardy from an enemy that follows no rules, knows no bounds, will kill anyone in its way, and is expert at using our own kindness and gullibility against us?
The Islamic terrorists have given us a roadmap to follow and we ignore it and play right into their hands. As to our media, had today’s media been in place prior to D-Day, the headline of The New York Times on June 5, 1944 would have been: “Largest military force ever assembled ready to land on the beaches at Normandy tomorrow!” After all, we wouldn’t want to give our soldiers an unfair advantage.
Air France has exercised an option to buy four Boeing long-haul 777-300s, with a combined catalog price of 872-982 million dollars (669-753.4 million euros), the French airline told AFP.
The catalog price of the 777-300 ranges between 218.0 million and 245.5 million dollars, according to Boeing's website. Air France exercises option to buy four Boeing 777-300s
Air France has exercised an option to buy four Boeing long-haul 777-300s, with a combined catalog price of 872-982 million dollars (669-753.4 million euros), the French airline told AFP.
"The Air France executive board decided this morning ... to invest in seven new aircraft, seven 777-300s, specially ordered to be deployed in the Caribbean and in Reunion," Patrick Alexandre, Air France deputy director general, said at a news conference.
Of the seven aircraft mentioned by Alexandre, only four represent new purchases, under the form of options taken on an order announced on October 4, 2000 that included 10 firm orders and 10 options, an Air France spokeswoman told AFP.
"It's a matter of taking up four options," she said.
The three other aircraft represent previous purchases that would be deployed in the French overseas territories.
The catalog price of the 777-300 ranges between 218.0 million and 245.5 million dollars, according to Boeing's website.
Alexandre said the decision on the seven aircraft would be approved later Wednesday by the Air France-KLM executive board.
"I can announce to you that the first two of these aircraft will be put into service in April 2006," he told reporters.
The executive board of Air France-KLM, which is to publish Thursday the company's financial results for the third quarter of its 2004-2005 business year, met late Wednesday afternoon.
Listen to this Dizzy Bitch, the French Minister of Defense Michele Alliot-Marie
French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie has renewed her country's call for an end to the European Union's arms embargo on China.
"Our experts say that in five years China could make exactly the same arms that we have today. And they will do it if they cannot import," Alliot-Marie told the Financial Times. "So maybe if we can sell them the arms, they will not make them. And in five years' time, they will not have the technology to make them."
LOLOLOLOL
France denounces EU China arms embargo: United Press International
[World News]: PARIS, Feb. 16 : French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie has renewed her country's call for an end to the European Union's arms embargo on China.
"Our experts say that in five years China could make exactly the same arms that we have today. And they will do it if they cannot import," Alliot-Marie told the Financial Times. "So maybe if we can sell them the arms, they will not make them. And in five years' time, they will not have the technology to make them."
Her statements once again put France at odds with the United States, and came ahead of a European tour by President Bush next week. The EU has been warned of ramifications from the United States if it lifts the ban, including House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., who warned of legislation blocking military cooperation with European allies.
Meanwhile, Britain has argued the existing embargo is ineffective since it has no legal bearing and has assured U.S. officials a move to repeal it would be accompanied by a new export regime that would make arms sales more difficult.
A look back at history demonstrates just how little the party of appeasement has changed in 140 years.
Everyone will admit that the campaign for the office of President of the United States was a tough fight. It was constantly being reported that the war was not going well, battle casualties were higher than expected, and members of the liberal press centered on every loss, agreeing with their Leftist friends that the entire war was a poorly planned fiasco.
The challenger from the Democratic Party was a war hero who claimed to have a better plan to end the war. The Democrats accused the president of “trampling” Americans' civil rights, using the war as an excuse to grab power for the executive branch of the government. The Democrats spoke almost with one voice: “This president purposely led us into an unnecessary war. Using proper diplomacy and compromise, this useless war could have been avoided all together.”
That was America circa 1864. The Confederate States celebrated the platform of the Democratic Party. If the Democrats had won the election, the South would have won the Civil War.
I wonder if African-Americans realize that the Democratic Party was willing to deal away their freedom to end the Civil War. That was the Democrats’ great plan. That was their “diplomacy and compromise plan” that was part of the party platform in 1864. The Democrats would allow the South to keep its slaves if it re-joined the Union, bringing an end to the Civil War.
The Democrats, with a long history of appeasement to their credit, called the war to hold this country together a “failed experiment.” They accused Abraham Lincoln of usurping powers not afforded him in the Constitution. All the while, the Democrats were very careful to praise the brave soldiers fighting the war and giving their lives in battle. Had General George McClellan defeated Lincoln in 1864, all those who had given their lives to keep the union whole would have died for nothing.
It seems that Democrats have had little respect through the years for the plight of the black man, until they realized what a large voting block blacks could be. The little known Civil Rights Act of 1957, introduced by Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower, did not receive any support from the young Democratic senator from Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy.
Everything is politics for the Democratic Party. In 1957, it was against equal rights, especially the Southern Democrats, such as West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd and Tennessee Senator Albert Gore, Sr. Young Senator Kennedy had his eye on the White House and he would need the support of the powerful southern senators to get there. Democratic leaders decided that equal rights for Black Americans would just have to wait; a Democrat winning the next presidential election was more important. Kennedy knew he could not win the election without winning the Southern States. Now, of course, the Democrats claim to be the “party of minorities” and have convinced people that it was the Democrats who championed the Equal Rights Amendment.
What is truly amazing is how little the party of appeasement has changed in 140 years. In 1864, the leftists were willing to throw the slaves away to appease the South. During the 1930’s, many Democrats were willing to throw Europe away to appease Hitler in the hopes of avoiding an unavoidable confrontation. Even Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt could not convince his own pacifist party that some enemies cannot be appeased. As the German bombs fell nightly on our ally, Great Britain, the party of diplomacy, did nothing.
Still claiming to be great humanitarians, Democrats are perfectly willing to throw 25 million Iraqi people away, just as they were willing to abandon the slaves nearly 150 years ago. The Leftists will do anything to avoid conflict and believe that appeasement and compromise can solve all problems.
The Democrats of 1864 felt holding the Union together and ending slavery simply was not worth the effort. Equal rights for all Americans would be worth the fight only when it became politically beneficial for the party.
Modern Democrats continue to include “aiding and abetting the enemy” and “racism” in their anti-American rhetoric.
Senator Robert Byrd, a former high ranking Klu Klux Klan member, challenged the first African-American woman to be nominated for Secretary of State. Byrd states that it is because of her support of a President whose policies he believes are wrong. How can the American public ever be sure that is the only reason, when Byrd has such a history of being a racist? The question for Senator Byrd wasn’t about the President’s policy. The question put to him was: Is this woman qualified for the job? Since it is obvious that Dr. Condoleezza Rice is more than qualified, could it be that Senator Byrd is bothered by the fact that Dr. Rice is black?
Senator Edward Kennedy went before the cameras and declared the war in Iraq a “catastrophic failure” and a “quagmire.” Kennedy’s words are music to the ears of the enemy. A historic vote in Iraq is just days away and Islamic terrorists are doing all that they can do to stop it, including killing American troops. Kennedy gives our enemies solace by declaring them the victors over democracy. Where does freedom of speech end and treason begin?
Kennedy’s unabashed hatred of George Bush is blinding him to the pain he is causing the Iraqi people and the incentive he is giving to our enemies to fight on. At the same time he is contributing to the demoralization of our own military. Just as the Democrats of old gave support to the South, today’s Democrats give support to the Islamic terrorists.
In Lincoln’s second inaugural address he said: “While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, urgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war -- seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.”
Carrying on the true Republican tradition, George W. Bush clearly stated that there are occasions when war cannot be avoided. He said: “America’s vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one. From the day of our Founding, we have proclaimed that every man and woman on this earth has rights, and dignity, and matchless value, because they bear the image of the Maker of Heaven and Earth. Across the generations we have proclaimed the imperative of self-government, because no one is fit to be a master, and no one deserves to be a slave.”
Today, as in Lincoln’s time, there is more than one enemy to contend with.
It is entirely possible that had Abraham Lincoln lost his bid for re-election, this country -- as we know it -- would not exist.
Had John Kerry been elected in 2004, a victory in Iraq would have been handed over to our enemies as the Democrats capitulated to the Islamic terrorists. Iraq’s oil money would have been in the hands of the enemy and it would have used that wealth to destroy us.
I have no doubt as the bombs started to fall on our cities, the Democrats would have found a way to way lay the blame on the Republicans, just before they all converted to Islam. Remember, Democrats have always been on the side of compromise and appeasement.
Democrats still have not learned, after all these years, that they cannot make deals with the devil. The price when payment comes due is just too high.
Recent quotes on being regarded as fools, archeology, the Shroud of Turin, and care for the poor.
"God assumed from the beginning that the wise of the world would view Christians as fools … and he has not been disappointed.… Have the courage to have your wisdom regarded as stupidity." Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, addressing a Louisiana chapter of the Knights of Columbus.
"We're not out to prove the Bible right or wrong. We're not trying to be controversial. We're just trying to be good anthropologists and scientists, and tell the story of our archaeological site." Archaeologist Russell Adams of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, on radiocarbon dating that supports the biblical chronology (10th century B.C.) for the kingdom of Edom. Many academics have argued that Edom didn't exist until two centuries later.
"A determination of the kinetics of vanillin loss suggests that the shroud is between 1,300 and 3,000 years old." Raymond N. Rogers, retired chemist from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, saying that previous radiocarbon dating of the Shroud of Turin suggesting it is a medieval forgery was based on a patch on the cloth, not on fibers taken from the original shroud.
"Precisely the commitment to moral values (including the sanctity of life) that shapes all our political activity compels us to insist that as a nation we must do more to end starvation and hunger and strengthen the capacity of poor people to create wealth and care for their families." A January 17 letter from dozens of Christian college presidents, parachurch ministry executives, and other evangelical leaders to President Bush.
The BBC world service website recently released the results of their 2004 presidential poll. Of the sixteen linguistic ethnical groups surveyed, Persians were overwhelmingly the most supportive of President Bush. In fact, over fifty two percent of Iranians preferred Republican George W. Bush to challenger John Kerry who'd received a minuscule forty two percent of the vote. Thus, surprisingly, unlike in the United States where the presidential race was relegated to a couple of percentage points, in Iran - President Bush won by a landslide.
As evidenced by a Tehran University student who said, "The Iranian people support President Bush because he supports our cause. As long President Bush stands with the Iranian people, the Iranian people will stand with him."
Persians push for Bush As long President Bush stands with the Iranian people, the Iranian people will stand with him
In my lifetime, America brought freedom to France, a nation that had quickly surrendered to Germany.
During the war, the Vichy collaborator government under Marshall Petain established twenty-eight detention camps where French Jews were then deported to Nazi death camps in Eastern Europe.
France, today, is one of the most anti-Semitic nations of modern Europe and the closest ally of Arab nations and their ruling dictators minus, of course, Saddam Hussein whom the US deposed.
France does not like America.
Neither, for that matter, do Germany and several other European nations. All those lovely headlines about Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s recent visit, suggesting that Europeans will forgive us for killing their Arab friends in response to 9-11, are the foolish notion of journalists who haven’t a clue that Europe has been taken over by Arabs in particular and Muslims in general.
Call It Eurabia Now
I used to wonder why the Jews of Europe, particularly German Jews, didn’t flee the Holocaust that would destroy six million of them by the end of World War II. Some did, of course, but many simply could not conceive that their fellow countrymen would conspire to kill them.
In a similar fashion, many Americans still want to believe that Islamists, the extreme Muslims characterized by the Taliban and al Qaeda, are just a minority of greater Islam. The wish that, once isolated and destroyed, we will be embraced by those to whom we have brought freedom and democracy, ignores the long history of Islam’s quest for world domination
Recent history bears witness to the fact that Arab Muslims kill each other and anyone else with impunity to insure Jihad succeeds. Why would we ever think they would not want to continue to kill us as well?
This is also a question Europeans had to ask themselves after the oil embargo of the 1970s that was intended to achieve what several Arab wars on Israel had not. They opted for appeasement. They put themselves in thrall to the Arab bloc. Deeply anti-Semitic, they embraced the lies intended to isolate Israel.
In my lifetime, America brought freedom to France, a nation that had quickly surrendered to Germany. During the war, the Vichy collaborator government under Marshall Petain established twenty-eight detention camps where French Jews were then deported to Nazi death camps in Eastern Europe. France, today, is one of the most anti-Semitic nations of modern Europe and the closest ally of Arab nations and their ruling dictators minus, of course, Saddam Hussein whom the US deposed.
France does not like America. Neither, for that matter, do Germany and several other European nations. All those lovely headlines about Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s recent visit, suggesting that Europeans will forgive us for killing their Arab friends in response to 9-11, are the foolish notion of journalists who haven’t a clue that Europe has been taken over by Arabs in particular and Muslims in general.
These Muslims do not like Christians and Jews, and that is going to make things worse for the Jews who still live in Europe and very unpleasant for the Christians, most of whom have long since embraced secularism, socialism, and the anti-Semitism that existed for centuries before the Nazis and swiftly reasserted itself after their defeat.
Europeans do not see what is coming and like the Jews who in the 1930’s refused to see what their fellow countrymen throughout Europe had in mind for them, they face a fate that Bat Ye’or, the author of “Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis” ($49.50/$23.95, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, hard/softcover), calls “a civilization of dhimmitude.”
It comes from the Arab word, “dhimmi.” As Bat Ye’or explains it, “It refers to subjugated, non-Muslim individuals or people that accept the restrictive and humiliating subordination to an ascendant Islamic power to avoid enslavement or death.” And then she adds, “The entire Muslim world as we know it today is a product of this 1,300 year-old jihad dynamic, whereby once thriving non-Muslim majority civilizations have been reduced to a state of dysfunctional dhimmitude.”
Two nations stand against the worldwide Jihad being waged by Islamists in the name of all Muslims and they are the United States of America and Great Britain. And even today there are Americans who, like the European Jews barely a lifetime ago, do not fully comprehend how utterly determined Islamists are in their desire to destroy or enslave us.
In early February, Daniel Pipes, the director of the Middle East Forum, was continuing to warn Americans about the internal threat revealed in a recently published study, “Saudi Publications on Hate Ideology Fill American Mosques.” The study was undertaken by Freedom House, a New York-based organization, founded in 1941 and dedicated to the spread of democracy and freedom around the world. This is the same freedom to which President Bush devoted his inaugural speech.
What Freedom House discovered was that American mosques are filled with writings, more than two hundred books and other publications disseminated by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, that espoused “an anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, misogynist, Jihadist, and (a) supremacist outlook.” Somewhere among those categories is YOU.
If you’re an American Christian, the Jihadists hate you. If you’re an American Jew, the Jihadists want you dead. If you’re an American woman, the Jihadists want you covered from head to foot in a burka. In brief, if you are not a Muslim, you have no rights except those permitted to a dhimmi, an unbeliever under the control of Islam.
Aiding them in every way is France and the European Union whose hatred for Israel is as strong as its Muslim allies. So, while the air is filled with talk of “peace” or a “truce” between the so-called Palestinians and the Israelis, do not be deceived.
The Muslims divide the world between dar al-Islam, the world of Islam, and dar al-harb, the world of war, a region that must be conquered until the entire planet bows down to Allah and declares Mohammed his prophet. There are more than a billion Muslims worldwide. They are not all Jihadists, but they are all devoted to Islam.
As for any truce with the Israelis or with any non-Muslim nation, Islam limits such treaties to a period of ten years, after which Jihad must resume. The wall Israel built between itself and the Palestinian Arabs remains its best defense. Ceding any land to them is a mistake.
Welcome home, Madame Secretary. France will betray you. Germany will do little to support the war on terrorism. Just as they did with the millions the European Union sent them each month, the Palestinians will take the forty million US dollars we have given them and buy more weapons for the day when they can drive the Jews into the sea. The Iranians will continue to build their nuclear bombs. The Saudis will conspire against us. No diplomacy on earth will diminish the Jihad. Only our will to defeat it will save us from dhimmitude.
Cranking up its propaganda campaign for the EU constitution, the European Commission has opened up a new section of its website under the title "Get Your Facts Straight". This is dedicated to countering the dreadful lies about the EU peddled by the British press.
A typical "Euromyth", it claims, is that the EU plans to ban advertising slogans such as "Guinness is good for you". Typical Eurosceptic lies, it says. "Slogans like 'Guinness is good for you' will still be with us. In fact the EU has no plans to introduce any new legislation at all."
Martin Callinan, a Tory MEP who sits on the relevant committee of the European Parliament, sends me the text of a regulation currently going through the system, which states that "beverages containing more than 1.2 per cent by volume of alcohol" shall not "bear health claims of any kind". It will become illegal for any "food or nutrient" to make claims implying that it provides " general non-specific benefits" or promotes "overall good health and well-being".
In other words, the use of the slogan "Guinness is good for you" is to become a criminal offence and when the Commission says this is a "myth" what it really means, as on so many other issues, is the precise opposite.
but even the french admit its a hoax. . . . A French journalist and an independent film producer who saw raw, unedited video of the shooting of a Palestinian boy in 2000 said it's not possible for the boy to have been shot by Israeli soldiers, as a French TV report claimed.
A French journalist and an independent film producer who saw raw, unedited video of the shooting of a Palestinian boy in 2000 said it's not possible for the boy to have been shot by Israeli soldiers, as a French TV report claimed.
French state television is standing by its claim that the broadcast is authentic. The broadcast purportedly showed 12-year-old Mohammed al-Durra being shot by Israeli soldiers, an event that led to the current Palestinian intifada.
But Denis Jeambar, editor-in-chief of the French news weekly l'Express, and filmmaker Daniel Leconte, a producer and owner of the film company Doc en Stock, say the videocassette is full of staged scenes of faked injuries.
Jeambar and Leconte were allowed by the France 2 network to view an unedited master video cassette of the incident, which took place in September 2000 at Netzarim Junction in the Gaza Strip. Leconte said he is satisfied that the shooting really happened, but he does not believe the bullets that struck the child could have been fired by Israeli troops.
"The only ones who could hit the child were the Palestinians from their position," Leconte told Cybercast News Service . "If they had been Israeli bullets, they would be very strange bullets because they would have needed to go around the corner."
France 2 earlier tried to explain the situation by claiming that the gunshots that struck al-Durra were bullets that ricocheted off the ground, but Leconte dismissed the argument. "It could happen once, but that there should be eight or nine of them, which go around a corner? They're just saying anything," Leconte said.
A newspaper article in the International Herald Tribune recently quoted the station's news director as saying that "four years later, no one can say for certain who killed him (al-Durra), Palestinians or Israelis."
Questions surrounding the death of al-Durra generated global publicity, which in turn helped trigger the Palestinian intifada (uprising). Thousands of people - Palestinians and Israelis - have lost their lives in the four years since the violence began.
France 2 made small, edited portions of its exclusive video clip freely available around the world, saying it did not want to make money out of the tragedy. The broadcast prompted Palestinians to use it as proof of Israeli brutality. When Islamist kidnappers in Pakistan murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002, visible in a videoclip of the killing was a poster depicting al-Durra.
Lingering questions of authenticity
Controversy over the event has simmered for years. It re-emerged late last month when Jeambar and Leconte wrote that the cassette contained scenes of Palestinians playacting at being wounded before the shooting incident, that nothing in the footage proved that the child was really dead, or if killed, that he had been shot by Israeli soldiers.
On the contrary, they said, the footage incriminated Palestinian shooters.
Their testimony added a major element to the debate because Jeambar and Leconte were two of a handful of independent people who were allowed to view the unedited raw footage. Jeambar and Leconte had gained access to the video after asking France 2 to provide proof that its report about al-Durra's death was genuine.
The Sept. 30, 2000 video clip showed a boy identified as al-Durra, cowering behind a man. France 2 TV reporter Charles Enderlin said in a voiceover the boy was killed by Israeli gunfire after he and his father were caught in the midst of a gun battle between Israeli security forces and Palestinian gunmen.
Enderlin was not present during the actual shooting but claimed in interviews that the cassette, recorded by his Palestinian cameraman Talal Abu Rahma, also contained the death "agony" of the child, images so unbearable he had cut them out to spare his viewers.
In a January 2005 article in Le Figaro , Jeambar and Leconte said that when France 2 news director Arlette Chabot showed them the cassette, they were surprised that it did not contain any footage of the child's "agony."
They also found that the first 20 minutes or so of the cassette showed scenes of young Palestinians "playing at war" in front of the camera, falling as if wounded and then getting up and walking away.
Jeambar and Leconte told radio station RCJ that a France 2 official also present at the meeting had said in reference to the playacting, "You know it's always like that."
In an interview with Cybercast News Service , Leconte said he was not surprised that Palestinians were using television cameras for propaganda purposes, but added that he found France 2's statement disturbing at a time when the incident was creating so much controversy and was under investigation.
"I think that if there is a part of this event that was staged, they have to say it, that there was a part that was staged, that it can happen often in that region for a thousand reasons," he said.
France 2 communications director Christine Delavennat told Cybercast News Service in an interview that none of the scenes on the cassette was staged and the cameraman and the station stood by that claim.
Delavennat has invited the "accusers to bring the proof," calling the debate "indecent" and warning that the station has already filed eight lawsuits against its accusers, most of them for defamation.
Who shot Mohammed?
The theory that the footage was staged was advanced by the Israel-based Metula News Agency, whose editor-in-chief Stephane Juffa, concluded following an investigation that the boy's shooting was faked by actors and that the child subsequently identified as Mohammed al-Durra had been dead and in the morgue hours before the gun battle.
Leconte said that after seeing further evidence presented by France 2, he believes the shooting scene itself was real. "At the moment of the shooting, it's no longer acting, there's really shooting, there's no doubt about that," Leconte told Cybercast News Service.
Unless there was an "incredible manipulation" by France 2, Leconte said he believes that both father and son were shot. He cited recent footage in which the father, Jamal al-Durra, showed his scars from bullet wounds.
Leconte said that if Juffa believes the whole incident was staged, he would have to provide concrete proof.
Ever since the footage was first aired, the Israeli army has been unable to confirm or deny that it was responsible for the child's death. But in 2002, a German television documentary concluded that Palestinian and not Israeli gunfire killed the boy. When they viewed the footage, Leconte and Jeambar came to the same conclusion.
According to Leconte, the man and child were taking shelter behind a concrete barrel that separated them from the Israeli position to their side. Two Palestinian positions were directly in front of them, leading Leconte and Jeambar to conclude that the fatal wounds were fired not by Israelis, but by Palestinians.
The credibility of Talal Abu Rahma, the Palestinian cameraman, may be the weakest of all individuals involved in the controversy. He issued a deposition immediately after the incident, swearing that the Israeli army had killed the boy. But according to Juffa as well as Leconte, he later retracted it.
Delavennat said the cameraman never retracted his claim. Rahma merely denied making a statement - falsely attributed to him by a human rights group - to the effect that the Israeli army fired at the boy in cold blood, Delavennat explained.
France 2 reporter Enderlin, in a response in Le Figaro to the question posed by Leconte and Jeambar about why he accused the Israelis of the shooting, said "the image corresponded to the reality of the situation, not only in Gaza but also in the West Bank."
"I find this, from a journalistic point of view, hallucinating," said Leconte, himself a former journalist. "That a journalist like him (Enderlin) can be driven to say such things is very revealing of the state of the press in France today," he added.
Leconte said the French media display a strong anti-Israel and anti-American bias. The public is also unlikely to question the report's claim that the Israeli army shot the child, he said.
France 2 reluctant to retract
Independent investigators have said that the French press is reluctant to criticize the public television channel because, as the prime employer of journalists in the country, it can exert a great deal of pressure.
Leconte said that because the pictures had such "devastating" consequences - including the public lynching of two Israeli soldiers and subsequent anti-Semitic statements by French Muslims - France 2 or Enderlin need to admit that they gave out wrong information in the report.
"Who will say it, I don't know, but it is important that Enderlin or France 2 should say, that on these pictures, they were wrong - they said things that were not reality," Leconte said.
In his reply, Enderlin did not provide an explanation to Leconte and Jeambar's revelations in Le Figaro , which in itself was a message, according to Leconte, indicative that his and Jeambar's points were indisputable. "Enderlin would be better off recognizing it. That would resolve at least one part of the debate," Leconte said.
As for the "agony" that Enderlin said he edited out of the report, Leconte and Jeambar said it did not exist on the master cassette. Enderlin told Telerama magazine late last year that there had been a "misunderstanding," that he had meant to use the word "agony" to describe the scene of the shooting of Mohammed al-Durra.
However, in an online discussion forum for Le Nouvel Observateur news magazine on Feb. 10, Enderlin was asked how he would describe the same video images today. He replied that he would say the same things, but that in the editing process he would include footage of the "child's agony," raising a question once again about his previous claims. During the first edit, Enderlin said, the video in question was "cut considerably at the time because it made the report too hard."
Despite the fact that Enderlin and France 2 have not admitted any errors, the Conseil superieur de l'audiovisuel (CSA) -- the French government's media regulatory council -- issued a statement in December asking French television to identify sources and exercise more caution when reporting on international conflicts.
Pope John Paul II issued a similar call in January, warning that "a bad use of communications can cause an unspeakable evil, giving rise to misunderstandings, prejudices and even conflicts."
The accusations against the state television station have also gained attention because the French government is developing plans to create an international French-language news channel.
Rural bullying – the treatment meted out to anyone who's perceived as "different'' by a tight-knit pastoral community – has to be one of France's best-kept secrets.
The French themselves find the subject of harcèlement moral rather shameful – and saying you've been a victim is the equivalent of admitting you've got a drink problem. So when formula one racing driver, Alain Prost, came out on Prime time television and told a gob-struck Gallic world that he'd been forced to quit his natal village of Lorette in the Loire region of France and move to Switzerland because of "frightening physical and verbal harassment'' a few French eyebrows fluttered skyward.
Our own problems began when, with a French husband, a young moved to rural France to set up a Chambres d'hotes. Jaded townies themselves they had visions of fellow citadins stretching their all on sun-loungers soothing bruised metropolitan psyche's while they stood by to ply them with gallons of good Bordeaux.
They were lucky enough to unearth an idyllic 18th century mill delimiting the Charente/Dordogne border. After they'd spent a fortune converting our antique dwelling into a French style B&B, they were less fortunate in discovering the mouth of a cave-sized pipe emptying human faeces into the stream at the bottom of their garden.
With rising summer temperatures their first guests arrived – and left precipitately, driven from our door by the charnel house stench of what should have been an innocently babbling brook. We phoned the French water board who advised us to consult the mayor.
This village authority was a farmer who had a reputation of being "entier", a term generally applied to non-castrated bulls and which meant one of two things: either he was a bulldozer for getting things done, or, like a bull, he charged at anything that got in his way.
They suspected the latter when Monsieur le Maire received them in his stuffy office a week later. With his high collar cutting the choleric butter of bloody cheeks like a butcher's knife he looked as out of place in his office as we would on his farmyard pitching manure. It was a living tableau where we were "town'' and he was "country''. From the way he eyed her husband's pink linen shirt I knew we were on a collision course.
Fixing us with pale, suspicious eyes he assured them th eir troublesome conduit was a harmless rainwater outlet and when we pressed the matter – even offering to pay for the malodorous tube to be carried further downstream – Monsieur le Maire flushed incarnadine.
"That pipe was there before you were born and no-one else has complained!," he howled belligerently. He'd ushered them out before she'd had a chance to protest that no-one else had complained because the house had been empty for the past 25 years.
That evening they strolled out in the balmy, new-mown air and came face-to-face with their "complaint'' posted on the well-lit village notice board. Grasping at straws they told each other this was just some kind of official protocol. Deep down they knew it was a declaration of war.
Over the next few years they suffered every kind of persecution imaginable. The neighbour's scruffy mongrel with close-set eyes was left outside to bark day and night, adolescents with mopeds revved for hours on end outside our front door, the cantonnier sprayed their roses with weed killer, fisherman tramped through the flowerbeds and horsemen tore down a part of the fence, then rode roughshod over our newly planted lawn. When we complained they said our garden was on a right of way and they had the devil's own job to prove them wrong.
Outside on the street she felt like Public Enemy Number One. Buying stamps at the post office or cat litter at the local store, people she'd never seen in her life would stare and point her out and mutter, but if she'd said a feeble "bonjour'' eyes were hastily averted.
Each single incident was petty enough in itself, but in the number and duration they started to get them down. The worst thing was the moral isolation. They were made to feel there was something shameful about their plight. To be hated in this day and age – unless you are filthy rich – is to have "failed''.
Their friends, who were firm believers in the laws of cause and effect, thought they must have "done something'' to deserve what was happening to them, so they evolved theories to explain their reviled status and traits hitherto considered charming – like singing in the rain, laughing at puns or being polite at the supermarket checkout – were now eyed with eminent suspicion.
One of the few French neighbours who still spoke to them said: "Everyone goes through it. Just stick it out for five or six years and you'll be accepted in the end."
To her it was utterly incomprehensible. Given the red tape, high taxes, long hours and lack of profit it seemed to her that anyone setting up a business in rural France deserved a medal. When it got to the point that she could no longer pick up the phone without trembling they knew we had to fight back.
Their lawyer in Angoulême regaled them with a host of similar tales. "Making people leave'' was a well-loved local blood sport, apparently. When their case came to court they were awarded damages. They didn't bother to collect them. They'd had a good offer for the house and they sold.
Today they live in a village just a few miles away from where, once, they had a guest house. No longer owners of a business they are no longer perceived as a threat. Their neighbours are charming.
The other day she bumped into a catholic priest from the north of France. A man who'd been through the mill himself, he shared this pearl of wisdom with her: "You can get on fine in rural France if you don't take initiatives. But if you scare local people – and anyone who wants to change things inevitably will – then God help you!,'' he laughed.
The world may not have paid much notice to the sudden death of Gnassingbe Eyadema, the longtime dictator of Togo. But France certainly did. President Jacques Chirac of France paid warm tribute to him as "a friend of France and a personal friend of mine." Being a "friend of France" covers a multitude of sins.
Why is it that a democratic Western country that prides itself on being a model of civilization and a champion of liberty can support dictators and oppression in what we used to call backward countries? I am speaking of France, which has long used a double standard in dealing with its former African colonies.
Uh oh, Francois, now you've really done it. When the ultra-liberal US or European press is attacking you, it's a safe bet that you have absolutely no friends left at all in western civilization...
Welcome to the abyss Francois!
Why is it that a democratic Western country that prides itself on being a model of civilization and a champion of liberty can support dictators and oppression in what we used to call backward countries? No, I am not talking about the foreign policy of the United States. I am speaking of France, which has long used a double standard in dealing with its former African colonies.
The latest events in Togo are a reminder that four decades after the winds of independence swept through Africa, the French government still pulls the strings in French-speaking Africa.
The world may not have paid much notice to the sudden death of Gnassingbe Eyadema, the longtime dictator of Togo. But France certainly did. President Jacques Chirac of France paid warm tribute to him as "a friend of France and a personal friend of mine." Being a "friend of France" covers a multitude of sins.
President General Eyadema — a former sergeant in the French Foreign Legion — ruled Togo with an iron hand ever since he seized power 34 years ago. That was Africa's first military coup, and established a trend that was quickly copied elsewhere on the black continent.
Eyadema was shrewd enough to recognize the French "sphere of influence" in Africa, and France was cynical enough to overlook his excesses. French advisors ran the country, and made sure he stayed in power. In recent years, as most foreign aid donors began to get squeamish about giving money to a dictator, Eyadema went through the motions of holding elections, but they were shams. The General President — who styled himself as "the Guide" — brutally eliminated any opposition.
But France continued to bankroll him with $100 million in aid each year, little of which went to the people. Togo is a sliver of a country, squeezed between Ghana and Benin, and has few natural resources other than the handouts from the French government. Its GDP per head was $243 last year, less than when Eyadema took power.
What did the French government get in return? It got Togo's vote in the U.N. General Assembly and its unstinting support for French foreign policy. Whether that was worth the money only the French can judge, but presumably they thought it was.
Only, now that Eyadema is dead and one of his sons, Faure Gnassingbe, has seized power, Togo has suddenly become an embarrassment for the French government. The problem is partly the way that his son seized power — rewriting the Constitution on the spot (it took 45 minutes) and shutting out the speaker of the parliament, who should have become the interim president. What may have bothered the French even more is that they may have been caught short by the son's power play. Perhaps Faure was not their man, and they preferred another candidate.
For whatever reason, the French government is now calling for "respect" for the Togo constitution and free and transparent elections for a new president. The Greeks may have invented the word "hypocrisy" but the French developed it to a fine art.
Stratfor, a private intelligence and security consulting organization, has released a 10-year geopolitical forecast predicting the decline of China and Russia, the rise of Japan, the disintegration of the European Union and the continued dominance of the United States.
Stratfor said its forecast, released Monday, is based on its ongoing analysis of security, political, demographic, and other major trends in all key regions of the world.
The forecast is intended to help its clients (including corporations, governments, and financial institutions) form long-range strategic plan by "identifying potential risks and opportunities."
According to the 2005-2015 forecast, the United States will continue to dominate the next decade both economically and militarily; and the U.S. is "positioned to replicate the investment boom of the 1995- 2005 decade."
The forecast also says the U.S. gradually will shift its strategic focus from the Middle East to the Pacific basin. Stratfor predict the U.S. will triumph over the "jihadist" insurgents; and it predicts "major leadership transitions" in Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia.
The forecast also says Europe's political union will collapse but its economic union will endure. Tensions will increase over Muslim immigration to European nations, the analysis said. And it said Russian attempts to expand could present new problems.
Russia is collapsing and will become increasingly nationalist and anti-Western, Stratfor said in a "highlights" press release.
China's economic growth will slow down, the analysis predicted, leading to a "flight of investment." Moreover, China will experience "social upheavals" because of the gulf between rich and poor.
Japan will succeed China as the principal Asian power, and Taiwan will align itself with Japan, the forecast said.
Stratfor, based in Austin, Texas, said it draws on a global network of intelligence sources in formulated its global analyses.
Remaining Democrats Show Solidarity By Eating Lunch Together At Kiddy Table Friday congressional Democrats ate lunch together in a show of solidarity. In the November elections, Republicans added to their majority in both the House and the Senate, but Democrats say they have no intention of rolling over and surrendering. >>>
Blair Gets Specific On UK Election - Campaign Begins Tony Blair triggered a three and a half month election campaign yesterday by unveiling Labour's six key election pledges on a six-city helicopter tour of England. The early unveiling of the pledges is designed to persuade a disengaged electorate that the coming campaign represents an important choice between Labour and the Conservatives. >>>
Royal Wedding: William And Harry To Wed Prince Charles' sons William and Harry are so delighted at the news that their father will be marrying Camilla Parker Bowles, they’ll also be getting married to each other, a spokesperson for the heir to the throne of England said yesterday. >>> Democrats Fight Back With Farts Not much has been said about the Democrats since President Bush was reelected. With Republicans holding a majority of the seats in the Senate and the House as well as the Presidency, many wonder if the Democrats are helpless to stop the Republican-run government. Recently democrats have launched a new fight-back strategy: Farting. >>>
Ringo Starr and Janet Jackson's Breast Snubbed By Super Bowl Tuesday, Ringo Starr released a joint statement with Janet Jackson's right breast stating that they both were insulted by the NFL's failure to include them in the Super Bowl XXXIX halftime show. The show, which consisted of Paul McCartney alone playing classic Beatles songs featured neither Janet's chest nor Ringo Star and clearly the snub did not go unnoticed by either. >>>
US Voting Machines Make Democrats Disappear — New Claim In September, 2003, an organization called BlackBoxVoting.org was hit with a lawsuit by Diebold Inc, manufacturer of the controversial Florida voting machines. Black Box Voting had published leaked e-mails written by Diebold programmers and executives revealing how easy it was to change vote results by achieving remote access into the Diebold central vote tabulator. >>>
Victory For Islam Is Victory For The World - Bush
The Islamic Shia Muslims’ electoral victory in Iraq, is a victory for the world, George W. Bush said last night. The Shia Muslims sealed their historic political ascendancy last night winning just under half of the votes in the country's landmark multi-party elections, giving the long-oppressed Islamic majority its first taste of power in decades. Final results from the January 30 ballot released yesterday showed the Shias won more than 4 million votes, or about 48% of those cast.
George W. Bush commended the result, saying, "For too long, Iraq has been a secular God-ignoring state. The brave lives of American soldiers have been given to enable the Iraqis to choose their own government, and it looks like they have chosen an Islamic state. America congratulates them today on restoring God to his rightful position in that country's political system.
Asked by BIGfib's Llolo Laroche if an Islamic government in Iraq was really in America's interests, Bush said "Sure." "You know, they call him Allah over there," he explained, "but that's just their word for God. They have a lot of different words in Arabic, for instance for Americans they say Infidels. Languages can be funsome like that." >>>
SPREADING DEMOCRACY
POLLS
‘Yankee Go Home’ Winner Of Iraq Election With the Iraq election results now official, it appears that the surprise write-in candidate Yankee Go Home won a decisive victory. This shocked even most political analysts because Yankee Go Home neither campaigned nor advertised. One Iraqi man who said he voted for Yankee Go Home had this to say about the new democratic Iraq,"I love democracy! I love that we are free to tell America to get the mother ass out of our country! God bless freedom of speech! >>>
Bush's Approval Rating Jumps 12% Among Past Evil Rulers In a surprising boost for the Bush Administration, the President's approval rating shot up 12% Wednesday among past evil rulers. Genghis Khan, Stalin, and Pol Pot all expressed their favorable view of the US President in a recent CNN/Gallup poll. >>>
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Leftist: France*, Germany, Spain or Venezuela
Socialist: Canada, Finland, Norway or Sweden *Some countries fall into multiple categories
PHASE II: CITIZEN EXCHANGE PROGRAM, COMING SOON!
We have received so many e-mails from citizens of our selected partner countries (particularly Canada) offering to exchange places with U.S. citizens wishing to leave that we are now working on a Citizen Exchange Program.
For those who may not qualify for free relocation under our Phase I, immediate relocation program, the Citizen Exchange Program may be the way to go. Please check back for updates.
After 40 years of arabization, franSS has become one of the most violent place in europe. Etnic ghettos, gratuitous violence, rapes. That is what franch politicians call: "Integration à la française".
]Violence des mineurs : une croissance majeure Un mis en cause sur cinq a moins de 18 ans : «Libération» révèle le rapport de l'Observatoire national de la délinquance, qui pointe une explosion des chiffres.
(1) Selon l'outil élaboré par le ministère de l'Intérieur, une personne ne peut être comptabilisée comme mise en cause que si elle a été entendue par procès-verbal et que des indices attestent qu'elle a commis ou tenté de commettre une ou plusieurs infractions.
Dominique de Villepin l'a clamé: faire baisser les violences aux personnes est «sa première priorité pour 2005». Le ministre de l'Intérieur a du pain sur la planche : si les violences aux personnes ont baissé de 0,25 % pendant l'année 2004, elles ont connu une progression constante les années précédentes et demeurent à un niveau élevé. Globalement, le nombre de mis en cause (1) pour atteintes volontaires à l'intégrité physique est passé de 129 943 personnes en 1996 à 195 388 en 2003 et le nombre d'actes de violence est passé de 228 030 à 389 622 (sachant qu'une seule personne peut commettre plusieurs actes), soit une hausse de 70 %.
Violences gratuites. Pour la première fois en outre, un outil statistique met en évidence l'implication des mineurs dans cette hausse des violences contre les personnes : entre 1996 et 2003, le nombre de moins de 18 ans mis en cause pour atteintes à l'intégrité physique a augmenté de 55 % alors que, pour les majeurs, la hausse s'élevait à 49 %, selon l'Observatoire national de la délinquance (OND). Dans ce tableau élaboré depuis 1996, et que s'est procuré Libération, «un mis en cause sur cinq est un mineur», note l'OND, qui souligne la part prépondérante des violences gratuites dans l'implication des moins de 18 ans.
Installé en grande pompe par Nicolas Sarkozy en novembre 2003, l'OND est composé de 29 membres (directeurs généraux de la police et de la gendarmerie, parlementaires, chercheurs, représentants des banques et des transports) chargés de dépoussiérer l'«état 4 001», l'outil statistique utilisé par les services de police et de gendarmerie depuis 1972. Depuis plus de trente ans, l'«état 4 001» compile plus de cent catégories d'infractions différentes qui vont des vols à la roulotte aux infractions liées à la chasse et à la pêche pour obtenir un chiffre global qui ne veut pas dire grand-chose. «C'est comme si on additionnait des choux, des carottes et des navets», estime un statisticien à propos des quatre millions d'infractions contenues dans l'«état 4 001». «Que veut dire ce chiffre quand on sait que deux millions d'infractions sont des atteintes aux biens dont la moitié (un million) concerne l'automobile (vols à la roulotte, dégradations) ?»
L'OND doit rendre un rapport complet sur le sujet au mois de mars. Mais il a déjà dévoilé sa nouvelle grille de lecture pour tenter de sortir de «l'usine à gaz» ou de la «tarte à la crème» (c'est au choix, selon les critiques) que sont les chiffres de la délinquance en France. L'Observatoire propose la création de quatre indicateurs regroupant des faits de même nature extraits du 4001 : «les atteintes aux biens», «les infractions révélées par les services de police et de gendarmerie», «les atteintes à l'intégrité physique» (violences contre les personnes) et les «infractions économiques et financières». Les statisticiens distinguent encore quatre catégories parmi les violences aux personnes : les violences physiques non crapuleuses (par exemple, les violences à dépositaire de l'autorité publique) ; les violences physiques crapuleuses (homicide pour vol), les violences sexuelles, et les menaces.
«Harcèlement sexuel». L'OND s'est intéressé aux mineurs à travers ces quatre catégories, décortiquées entre 1996 et 2003 (voir graphiques ci-dessus). Sur le total des moins de 18 ans mis en cause, les chiffres augmentent très fortement pour les violences physiques non crapuleuses (les «violences gratuites», + 84 %). La hausse «est très largement perceptible pour les coups et blessures volontaires (+ 68%), les violences aux dépositaires de l'autorité (+ 83%) et les violences sexuelles (+ 68%), pour lesquelles près d'une personne mise en cause sur quatre est mineure», note l'OND. Entre1996 et 2003, le nombre de mis en cause mineurs pour viols sur moins de 18 ans a augmenté de 67 %, soit un accroissement de 500 individus. Selon l'OND, «le phénomène est encore plus ample pour les harcèlements sexuels et autres agressions sexuelles contre des mineurs : en sept ans, le nombre de mis en cause mineurs passe de 900 à 2000, ce qui correspond à une augmentation de 117 %, soit plus qu'un doublement.» «Il faut également noter qu'en matière de menaces pour extorsion de fonds, les mineurs représentent environ un mis en cause sur deux, explique encore l'Observatoire. En revanche, le nombre de mineurs mis en cause diminue fortement pour les vols violents avec arme blanche (-28 %) et les vols violents avec armes à feu (-45 %).»
En fonction de l'âge. Les évolutions annuelles étudiées par les statisticiens varient selon l'âge des mis en cause. Ainsi, la hausse du nombre de mineurs impliqués est très sensible entre 1996 et 2000 et beaucoup moins élevée dans les années suivantes, alors que, chez les majeurs, l'augmentation est beaucoup plus régulière durant l'ensemble des sept années étudiées.
TRANSLATION PLEASE
Violence of the minors: a major growth
One blamed on five A less than 18 years: "Release" reveals the report/ratio of the national Observatory of the delinquency, who points an explosion of the figures.
(1) According to the tool sophisticated by the ministry for the Interior, a person can be entered as blamed only if it were heard by official report and that indices attest that it made or tried to commit one or more offences. Dominique de Villepin protested: cause a drop in violences with the people is "her first priority for 2005". The Minister of Interior Department has bread on the board: if violences with the people dropped by 0,25 % during the year 2004, they knew a constant progression the previous years and remain on a high level. All in all, a number of blamed (1) for attacks voluntary at integrity physical is passed of 129 943 people in 1996 to 195 388 in 2003 and numbers it acts of violence is passed of 228 030 to 389 622 (knowing that only one person can make several acts), that is to say a rise of 70 %. Free violences. For the first time moreover, a statistical tool highlights the implication of the minors in this rise of violences against the people: between 1996 and 2003, the number less than 18 years blamed for attacks at the physical integrity increased by 55 % whereas, for the major ones, the rise rose to 49 %, according to the national Observatory of delinquency (OND). In this table prepared since 1996, and that Libération got, "one blamed on five is a minor", note the OND, who underlines the dominating share of free violences in the implication of less than 18 years.
Installed in large pump by Nicolas Sarkozy in November 2003, the OND is composed of 29 members (general manager of the police force and the gendarmerie, members of Parliament, researchers, representatives of the banks and transport) charged to vacuum-clean the "état 4 001", the statistical tool used by the services of police force and gendarmerie since 1972. Since more than thirty years, the "état 4 001" compiles more than one hundred categories of different infringements which go from the stealings from parked vehicles to the infringements related to hunting and to fishing to obtain a total figure which does not want to say large-thing. "It is as if one added with cabbages, carrots and turnips ", estimate a tatistician in connection with the four million infringements contained in the "état 4 001". "That this figure wants to say when it is known that two million infringements are attacks with the goods of which the half (a million) relates to the car (stealings from parked vehicles, degradations)?"
The OND must make a full report on the subject in March. But it already revealed its new grid of reading to try to leave "the gas works" or "tart to the cream" (it is with the choice, ccording to criticisms) which are the figures of the delinquency in France. The Observatory proposes the creation of four indicators gathering of the facts of comparable nature extracted the 4001: "attacks with the goods", "infringements revealed by the services of police force and gendarmerie", "attacks with the physical integrity" (violences against the people) and "infringements economic and financial". The statisticians distinguish four more categories among violences with the people: nonvillainous physical violences (for example, violences with agent of the public authority); villainous physical violences (homicide for flight), sexual violences, and threats. "sexual Harassment". The OND was interested in the minors through these four categories, peeled between 1996 and 2003 (see graphic above). On the total of less than 18 years blamed, the figures very strongly increase for nonvillainous physical violences ("free violences", + 84 %). The rise "is very largely perceptible for the voluntary aggravated assault (+ 68%), violences with the agents of the authority (+ 83%) and violences sexual (+ 68%), for which close of a person blamed on four is minor ", note the OND. Entre1996 and 2003, the number of blamed minors for rapes on less than 18 years increased by 67 %, that is to say an increase in 500 individuals. According to the OND, "the phenomenon is even fuller for the sexual harassments and other sexual aggressions against minors: in seven years, the number of blamed minors passes from 900 to 2000, what corresponds to an increase of 117 %, that is to say more than one doubling."" It also should be noted that as regards threats for extortion of money, the minors represent approximately one blamed on two, still explain the Observatory. On the other hand, the number of minors blamed strongly falls for the flights violent one with bayonet (-28 %) and the flights violent one with weapons with fire (-45 %)."
According to the age. The annual evolutions studied by the statisticians vary according to the age of blamed. Thus, the rise of the number of implied minors is very sensitive between 1996 and 2000 and much less low in the following years, whereas, at the major ones, the increase is much more regular during all seven year studied.
Under pressure to detail an exit strategy for Iraq, President George W. Bush said at a White House briefing today that he would not designate an exact timetable for a withdrawal of U.S. troops but added, “The fastest way to bring the troops home would be through Iran.”
After reporters audibly gasped, the president explained that bringing the troops home through Iran would be “the most direct route” and produced driving directions from Mapquest to back up his claim.
But less than an hour after his remarks, Iranian president Mohammed Khatami blasted Mr. Bush’s exit strategy, arguing that bringing U.S. troops home through Iran was far from the most direct route, and was, in fact, going totally in the wrong direction.
Using a map of the world and a magic marker, President Khatami showed that by traveling east rather than west, U.S. troops would have to circumnavigate the globe in order to reach their final destination.
In response, Mr. Bush acknowledged that it would be a long journey, but added, “If necessary, we’ll stop in North Korea.”
On a related subject, Mr. Bush said that the vote-counting in Iraq’s historic presidential elections was not yet complete but that it looked like the winner would be actor Jamie Foxx, for his performance in “Ray.”
“He’s won everything else so far,” Mr. Bush said.
Elsewhere, McDonald’s said it would follow up its successful promotion involving a French fry that looks like Abraham Lincoln by creating a Supersize vanilla shake that looks like Dick Cheney.
Fierce fighting continued today in Najaf, considered one of the holiest cities in Islam, while at the same time mortar fire and other military attacks continued in Falluja, one of Islam's holiest cities.
Small arms fire erupted in Karbala, the holiest city in the Muslim world, while in the holy city of Kufa, coalition forces cleared out a basement warren said to be housing members of Al-Qaeda, the holiest terrorist group in Islam.
In the Port city of Naf Shahr, one of Islam's holiest port cities, a cargo ship was searched for weapons and Al-Qaeda members, but none were found. That same day in Moweh Jabari's al-Difindi (Abu Yussef)'s Delicatessen, the holiest delicatessen in the Muslim world, patrons said they saw several shots fired from a passing red 1976 Saab V-4, the holiest car in Islam.
Several men drinking apricot juice, the holiest juice in the Muslim world and coffee said they heard the phrase "Allah Akhbar", the holiest phrase in the Muslim language, as the men fired. Two bystanders were killed and two children wounded in the drive-by shooting, the holiest type of shooting in Islam.
Meanwhile, the people of Mecca were said to be very upset.
The following is a transcript of the speech that President George W. Bush made in the presence of Prime minister Blair and the UK head of state Elizabeth II.
People of Europe, I am thrilled to be here in the Capital of Europe today, and warmed by the welcome of the thousands of you who have gathered tightly in the streets around Elizabeth Queen your leader. Sometimes, London is one of these towns where the person - people who think they've got the sharp elbow is the most effective person. Well I can assure you that it isn't. Democracy is an important word in this, the twentieth century, and Democrats such as Elizabeth and I, or rather Democratically elected leaders such as we are, because we're obviously not Democrats, but Republicans, even though Europe is not a republic I believe, have a heavy responsability to past generations. I know that not everyone agrees one hundred percent with everything that we've been doing, and I promise you I will listen to what has been said here, even though I wasn't here. But though I'll be listening to what was said before I was here, I know what I believe. I will continue to articulate what I believe and what I believe - I believe what I believe is right. And those are Democracy, Education and Iraq. We've already spoken of Democracy, but Education is a great challenge when half of the world can't read or right. Our Administration with Elizabeth and her good friend Tony will be meeting the challenge with new literal programs. You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test. And we will. Other than Democracy and Education people need peace, and redefining the role of the United States from enablers to keep the peace to enablers to keep the peace from peacekeepers is going to be a major assignment over the next few years. We've shown what we're about in Iraq, and though some have doubts, and that is normal, these are difficult times, but remember, even in Iraq, for every fatal shooting, there were roughly three non-fatal shootings. And, folks, this is unacceptable. It's just unacceptable. And we're going to do something about it. We will stick to our guns and when Iraq is liberated, the poeple there will be treated, tried, and persecuted as a war criminal should be and the world will be a safer more American kind of place. With that stability will come more trade, and it's very important for folks to understand that when there's more trade, there's more commerce. So once again, people of London, and Birmingham and Copenhagen, which is one of my favourite European states, we can trust in you and you can hope in us.
I have been watching Secretary of State Dr. C. Rice, making her tour of old Europe this week and next. I think Mrs. Clinton and the Liberal Democrats should be too (keeping an eye on her every move). She very well could become the 1st Female President of the US. By so doing she'd be shedding the last remnants of the scar that slavery placed on our country when the 1st African slaves were unloaded in Virginia nearly 400 years ago. She would be smashing the so called glass ceiling the Ms Boxer demigogs all the time about. Dr. Rice as president would be following in the steps of DWE who was the chancellor of a major university such as Dr. Rice was at Stanford. She might not even have any ambition in this direction, I don't know, but there could be a draft Rice effort that would take nearly 1/3 of 3 distinct groups who now support Mrs. Clinton. If this were a tennis court and not a conservative political blog, the ball would be in your court now Liberal Democrats. Care to play?
Senior Member of European Paliment calls Catholic teaching "way off the wall"
Urbana, IL (DMP), Feb 8th, 2005 - During a talk given by Senior MEP Glyn Ford at the University of Illinois Law School, Mr. Ford described Catholic teaching on homosexuality, abortion, and stem cell research "way off the wall".
The talk, part of a multi-disciplanary seminar on EU-US relations, focused on the EU Constitution and European Union structure. He covered several points regarding the development of the ongoing integration of the European Union nations.
During the talk he made reference to Rocco Buttiglione, the Italian who was nominated for the position of EU Justice commissioner but later withdrawn when his views on Catholicism came under fire. A compromise to place Dr. Buttiglione in another position that did not involve discrimination cases also failed. Dr. Buttiglione had said during the course of his hearings that he viewed homosexuality as sin, in accordance with Catholic teaching.
When pressed for further comment on the matter, Mr. Ford claimed that Dr. Buttiglione, a close friend and confidant of the Pope, was "out of the mainstream" of Catholics, despite the fact Church teaching on homosexuality is clearly defined and precisely what Dr. Buttiglione referenced. He further stated that his opposition of embryonic stem cell research (as opposed to adult stem cell research which is viewed to have no ethical problems) prohibited him from holding the position, even the Justice would never touch on the issue of stem cell research.
Mr. Ford also later claimed that opposition to abortion and contraception in Catholic countries poses grave problems for those countries to be integrated into the European Union. These comments further support the idea that Christianity, and Catholicism in general, is viewed as discriminatory and unwelcome in the EU and devout Christians need not apply for any position of noteworthiness in the new government.
Mr. Ford was the leader of the European Parliamentary Labour Party from 1989 - 1993, and is a member of the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party. He is a full member of the European Parliament's committee on Foreign Affairs, Human Rights, Common Security and Defence Policy. He is also a visiting lecturer at the University of Illinois at Chicago. For more information, please see his web site at
Euro-Deviants' asses rotting off. Oh well, so much for cheap third world sex vacations.
Warning as sex disease reaches UK
People who think they may be at risk should see a doctor A sexually transmitted infection that before now has mainly been seen in the developing world is spreading in the UK and western Europe, experts say. London is among a number of major cities that have reported outbreaks of lymphomagranuloma venereum (LGV).
The 24 cases confirmed in England have been in gay men but both sexes can contract LGV through unprotected sex.
Its symptoms include genital ulcers and swelling in the groin but it can be easily treated using antibiotics.
What we are seeing now is something that is quite new and is affecting mostly gay men.
Neil Macdonald from England's Health Protection Agency
Sexually transmitted infections
LGV is caused by a strain of bacteria, similar to the one that causes chlamydia, another sexually transmitted infection (STI).
In recent months, outbreaks of LGV have been reported in the cities of Rotterdam, Antwerp, Paris, Stockholm and Hamburg all liberal prostitution hot spots.
And this week, two men in New York were diagnosed with the disease.
Neil Macdonald, from England's Health Protection Agency, said: "LGV was previously hardly ever seen in the Western world.
"It is endemic in certain areas of Africa, Asia, South America and the Caribbean.
"What we are seeing now is something that is quite new and is affecting almost only gay men."
He said it was not clear how long LGV had been in western Europe and that it might be the case that now people are checking for it more cases are being found.
Since the HPA set up an enhanced surveillance system for LGV in October, there have been 24 confirmed cases in England.
The HPA has been able to trace 19 of the men. All are homosexual and 17 are also HIV positive.
"We know it's here and we know it is a problem," said Mr Macdonald.
"One of the biggest problems we have is that it doesn't present like a typical STI so not only the patients themselves but also their doctors may not realise they have got it."
'Get checked'
The first symptom of LGV is usually inflammation of the rectum (proctitis) - with pain, discharge, rectal bleeding and bloody stools commonly reported, as well as genital ulcers.
The person might also notice large painful swelling in the groin because the infection invades the lymph nodes.
People need to be aware of the symptoms
Will Mutland from the Terrence Higgins Trust
LGV can be easily treated with a three-week course of antibiotics.
But if it is not detected and treated, complications can develop such as fever, weight loss and lesions and permanent scarring of the rectal lining that might need surgical repair.
In some cases, the symptoms can be mistaken for a bowel problem which can delay the diagnosis, he said.
He urged anyone who thought they might have put themselves at risk of LGV or any other STI to go to their doctor for a check-up.
Will Mutland from the Terrence Higgins Trust said: "We are working with key target groups of HIV men to raise awareness about LGV."
He said as well as having unprotected sex with multiple partners, this group might be particularly at risk because of they have a condition that affects the immune system and ability to fight infections.
"People need to be aware of the symptoms.
"We also want to encourage regular screening, not just for LGV but for a range of other STIs."
The Terrence Higgins Trust has produced an information leaflet for gay men explaining the risks of LGV.
"The poll said 62 percent of French citizens "disapprove very much" of Bush's foreign policies. Fifty-nine percent of Germans felt the same way.
Only 4 percent of the French and 3 percent of Germans "approve very much" of Bush's foreign policies. Thirty-four percent in the two countries thought U.S.-European relations will improve in Bush's second term.
A survey of Americans indicated 40 percent believe that the best way France and Germany could contribute to improve their ties with the United States would be to help build a strong European military capability"
New Marshall Poll puts paid to the bromides being tossed around about a new leaf in US/Frog-Nazi relations. Let's get cleared eyed about this, it's not Bush they hate, it's all Americans.
The Europeans (absent the U.K., Italy and few others) are fucking worthless. The sooner we take this to the bank, the sooner we, and the rest of the dynamic world, will better off.
Poll: French, Germans See Little Hope for Improved Ties With U.S.
By George Gedda
Published: Feb 7, 2005
By large margins, the French and Germans disapprove of President Bush's handling of foreign policy, a poll says. The German Marshall Fund survey was released Monday, two weeks before Bush departs on a European tour that will include a meeting with French President Jacques Chirac and a visit to Germany.
The Fund supports strong ties between the United States and its European allies.
The poll said 62 percent of French citizens "disapprove very much" of Bush's foreign policies. Fifty-nine percent of Germans felt the same way.
Only 4 percent of the French and 3 percent of Germans "approve very much" of Bush's foreign policies. Thirty-four percent in the two countries thought U.S.-European relations will improve in Bush's second term.
A survey of Americans indicated 40 percent believe that the best way France and Germany could contribute to improve their ties with the United States would be to help build a strong European military capability. This would lessen the military burden on the United States.
Thirty-one percent of Americans said French and German reconstruction and security help in Iraq would revitalize their U.S. ties more than any other step.
In each of the three countries surveyed, a random sampling of approximately 1,000 men and women, 18 years of age and older, were interviewed by telephone between Nov. 29 and Dec. 5, 2004. The margin of sampling error in each poll was plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is on a tour of a number of European countries to help prepare for Bush's trip.
Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder both strongly opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq. But during Rice's visit to Germany, Schroeder indicated support for democratic processes in Iraq.
During her upcoming visit to France, Rice plans a major foreign policy speech, designed in part to answer French criticism about the Iraq war.
France has limited Iraq-related cooperation to the training of Iraqi military police but only outside the country.
If you thought the streets of Iraq were dangerous, you obviously haven't been to the lovely ghettos sections of France yet. While Iraq is being "pacified" by troops, France is just lingering with a growing problem of Islamic and ethnic violence. Pretty soon, the Sunni Triangle and the Gaza strip won't hold a candle to Marsailles when it comes to terrorism.
“There was a trial in Lille where a 13-year-old girl was gang raped by 80 men. Sometimes, it’s 80, or 50 or 10. It’s absolutely terrible,”
"I was gang raped by three people I knew, and I couldn't say anything, because in my culture, your family is dishonored if you lose your virginity,” says Bellil. “So I kept quiet, and the rapes continued.
For almost half a century, Europe has depended on imported labor to do the kind of menial jobs its own people don't want to do -- so much so that, today, the population of France is almost 10 percent Muslim. WRONG, THAT WAS YESTERYEAR'S FACTS. TRY 20 PERCENT.
They are the descendants of Algerian, Moroccan and Tunisian workers who came from France's ex-colonies.
Now, many of them live in neglected public housing projects, ruled by violent gangs and increasingly susceptible to Islamic fundamentalism.
When people talk about ghettos in France, they're talking about high-rise complexes that have been built far away from the city center to house African and Arab immigrants.
Just saying you live in the neighborhood is enough to get your job application thrown in the garbage. And the unemployment amongst young people is four times the national average.
With little hope of making it outside the projects, many of these young men try to dominate their own neighborhoods, resorting to violence, especially against young women.
They rule gangland style, combined with the male-dominated traditions of the Arab countries they came from. It's gotten so bad that, today, most of the young women only feel safe if they are covered up, or if they stay at home. Girls who want to look just like other French girls are considered provocative, asking for trouble.
Samira Bellil wasn't asking for trouble, but trouble came to her. She's the granddaughter of Algerian immigrants and she's written a book about surviving the hell of the Paris ghettos.
"I was gang raped by three people I knew, and I couldn't say anything, because in my culture, your family is dishonored if you lose your virginity,” says Bellil. “So I kept quiet, and the rapes continued. The next time, I was pulled off a commuter train and no one lifted a finger to help me. …Everybody turned their head away. They were all looking out the window.”
When Bellil's family discovered that she had been raped, they weren't sympathetic. They threw her out onto the streets. But she's since discovered that what happened to her was not the only case.
“There was a trial in Lille where a 13-year-old girl was gang raped by 80 men. Sometimes, it’s 80, or 50 or 10. It’s absolutely terrible,” says Bellil. “In the case of Argenteuil, it was horrible. A young woman was raped in a school. Of course, everybody knew, but they're so afraid of these young men that they prefer to close their eyes. That's the price of peace in the ghettos.”
When the verdicts came down in this case, the courthouse turned into a madhouse. Eighteen teenagers were convicted of raping a 15-year-old girl over a two-month period. But what really shocked France was how the mothers of those boys reacted.
“You call this justice, seven years in prison for some oral sex,” says one mother. “It's the girl who should be behind bars.”
Aboubacar was one of those convicted, not of raping the girl, but of knowing about it, and doing nothing to stop it. “When you live in a neighborhood that's so dark and tough, you can’t mess with others' business, unless you want to put your life on the line,” says Aboubacar.
He received a suspended sentence, and now he's using his rap music to spread the message that violence is wrong.
“We were gangsters. If someone was robbing a house, I had to follow the group, otherwise they'd say I wasn't a man,” says Aboubacar. “Men are stronger than women. Men are more respected than women. So if I don't have many brothers, my sister can be attacked. But if I come from a big family, people will lower their eyes when they pass my sister. That's part of the law.”
Nadir Doudane grew up in the same projects. Now, he works as a youth counselor trying to encourage more normal relations between the boys and girls.
What is it about the projects that is at the root of this violence?
“I think it’s because of the tradition that make the boys think that the girls should be treated this way and not that way,” says Doudane. “It’s not France here.”
What really scares Doudane is that Islamic fundamentalists are taking advantage of these frustrations. “It’s tough. What the fundamentalists are saying to the young kids, ‘We will help you find a job. We will help you be proud of who you are.’ That's why it's a big success here.”
On downtown Paris streets, racy ads are still the rule. But in the projects, the fundamentalist voices are growing stronger. They are now targeting the disaffected youth in the ghettos. Many of the mosques there are filled with fundamentalist preaching.
This is what an influential imam of one French mosque recently said about how men can treat their wives: “If a woman cheats on her husband, her husband can beat her, as long as he doesn't hit her nose, her eyes, her ears. That's part of our religion.”
France wants a fresh start in relations with the United States and both sides have much to contribute to a renewed transatlantic partnership, Foreign Minister Michel Barnier said in comments published Monday.
He made the remarks before a visit to Paris Tuesday by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice aimed in part at repairing ties damaged by the U.S.-led war in Iraq, which France opposed.
"The moment has come for a fresh start in our relations," Barnier said in an interview with the French daily Liberation which was conducted late last week.
"Alliance doesn't signify allegiance," he said, underlining the need for a mutual partnership. "A renewed transatlantic alliance must be based on two pillars (European and American)."
His remarks were the latest sign since President Bush's re-election of a desire for rapprochement between the Cold War-era allies.
Bush has invited French President Jacques Chirac to Washington and the two leaders are due to dine together in Brussels on Feb. 21 before a NATO summit.
Recent statements from both sides have underlined the positive rather than the negative in relations, and Rice has chosen Paris as the venue for a keynote speech during her first tour of Europe and the Middle East as secretary of state.
"The question is not to know what we can bring to the United States, or what they can bring us. The question is what we can do together to solve problems," Barnier said, citing problems including terrorism, hunger and the situation in Afghanistan.
Barnier, who like Rice was visiting the Middle East on Monday for talks on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, defended negotiations by Britain, France and Germany over Iran's nuclear program but called for U.S. support.
"We have no illusions and are moving forward with open eyes with the Iranians. But to succeed we need American support. I have the impression listening to President Bush, who has strongly criticized Tehran, that he would wish to have confidence in Europe (over the talks)," he said.
The EU is trying to persuade Iran to turn a temporary freeze on sensitive nuclear work, such as uranium enrichment, into permanent cessation in return for economic and political incentives.
Washington accuses Iran of seeking to develop a nuclear bomb but Rice has sought to ease fears of a possible U.S. attack. Iran says its nuclear program is to generate electricity.
France was encouraged by the election in Iraq on Jan. 30 and by a "renewed determination" in Bush's efforts over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Barnier said.
But Washington must understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is central and there will be no progress toward democracy in the Middle East unless it is addressed, he said.
I am writing this letter because I take issue with some of M. Minister Michel Barnier's insinuations. Let me begin by saying that I am totally shocked and angered by M. Barnier's frightful improprieties. Such shameful conduct should never be repeated. Listen up: Each rung on the ladder of faddism is a crisis of some kind. Each crisis supplies an excuse for him to support hostile governments known for human rights abuses, wrongful imprisonment, and slavery. That is the standard process by which imperious litterbugs deprive people of dignity and autonomy. Should we blindly trust such fastidious propagandists? For a variety of reasons, some strategic, some ideological, some attitudinal, and all of them wrong, lewd anthropophagi set the hoops through which we all must jump. M. Barnier spouts the same bile in everything he writes, making only slight modifications to suit the issue at hand. The issue he's excited about this week is McCarthyism, which says to me that his stories about collectivism are particularly ridden with errors and distortions, even leaving aside the concept's initial implausibility.
I guess that my take on this is that I cannot compromise with him; he is without principles. I cannot reason with him; he is without reason. But I can warn him, and with a warning he must truly take to heart: He does, occasionally, make a valid point. But when he says that genocide, slavery, racism, and the systematic oppression, degradation, and exploitation of most of the world's people are all utterly justified, that's where the facts end and the ludicrousness begins. Anyone who follows today's debates on unilateralism and, by happenstance, is also familiar with M. Barnier's beer-guzzling pronouncements, is struck by that old truism: If I didn't think M. Barnier would clear forests, strip the topsoil, and turn a natural paradise into a dust bowl through a self-induced drought, I wouldn't say that he should learn to appreciate what he has instead of feeling so oppressed because he can't do everything he wants, every time he wants to. Anyone with an IQ two points higher than a wet sponge's knows that in a country like ours where barbarism, vigilantism, and pauperism run rampant, we need laws to help enforce behavior that ought to be performed out of common sense, decency, and tolerance. But, even so, if we can understand what has caused the current plague of abusive underachievers, I believe that we can then restore the traditions that he has abandoned.
Unless M. Barnier is forward-looking, open-minded, and creative, it is simply wrong to conclude that I'm too boisterous to spread the word about M. Barnier's twisted, acrimonious cock-and-bull stories to our friends, our neighbors, our relatives, our co-workers -- even to strangers. Now, I don't mean for that to sound pessimistic, although there's something fishy about his scribblings. I think he's up to something, something malign and perhaps even primitive. If we let him lower our standard of living, then greed, corruption, and nepotism will characterize the government. Oppressive measures will be directed against citizens. And lies and deceit will be the stock and trade of the media and educational institutions.
I am making a pretty serious accusation here. I am accusing M. Barnier of planning to advocate soulless ballyhoos. And I don't want anyone to think that I am basing my accusation only on the fact that he doesn't want us to stick to the facts and offer only those arguments that can be supported by those facts. He would rather we settle for the meatless bone of careerism. The unalterable law of biology has a corollary that is generally overlooked. Specifically, he used to complain about being persecuted. Now M. Barnier is our primary persecutor. This reversal of roles reminds me that we can't stop him overnight. It takes time, patience and experience to combat the untoward ideology of despotism that has infected the minds of so many unbalanced, huffy brutes. It would stand to reason that M. Barnier has commented that he holds a universal license that allows him to rule with an iron fist. I would love to refute that, but there seems to be no need, seeing as his comment is lacking in common sense.
His subalterns believe that his teachings epitomize wholesome family entertainment. Although it is perhaps impossible to change the perspective of those who have such beliefs, I wish nevertheless to build a world overflowing with compassion and tolerance. Apparently, M. Barnier never stops boasting about his generous contributions to charitable causes. As far as I can tell, however, his claimed magnanimousness is thoroughly chimerical and, furthermore, if one accepts the framework I've laid out here, it follows that if you're not part of the solution, then you're part of the problem. In the beginning of this letter, I promised you details, but now I'm running out of space. So here's one detail to end with: M. Minister Michel Barnier is a bacillus in the muzzy-headed gut of alcoholism.
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Purpose: & nbsp; To foster a better cosmological paradigm and a better physical, psychological, and philosophical history of mankind. with the purpose of understanding human origins, the human condition, and human destiny.
Strategy: & nbsp; To structure and limit both the group and its discussion and develop a good working discussion protocol in order to maximize both the value of the contributions and rapport of the group and the coherence of its understandings. Subjects may include related, meaningful disciplines where the focus is on education, especially within the context of catastrophics.
& nbsp; &n bsp; &nb sp; &nbs p; ; To foster an atmosphere of intellectual trust, respect, and responsibility where thoughtful proposals and speculations can be safe from derision, and where the over-riding attitude is one of working together to find the truth.
& nbsp; &n bsp; &nb sp; &nbs p; ; To foster an atmosphere that encourages big-picture thinking where the big-picture thinker is at least as respected and valued as the highly trained or focused specialist.
& nbsp; &n bsp; &nb sp; &nbs p; ; To foster an atmosphere that 1) minimizes our propensity to unduly protect our own religiously-held “truths”, and 2) that maximizes our coherence and camaraderie.
Tactics: & nbsp; &n bsp;
Editing and Deleting:The staff reserves the right to delete part or all of any posting that is deemed inappropriate for any reason. Such deletions will generally be limited to violations of protocol or straying too far away from productive themes.
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Humility and Grace:Given that we ought to have an idea of how much we don't know, how limited our vision, perspective and imagination probably are, how wrong we have been in the past, how can we not be humble?Humility and gracce do not detract from either the ignorant and unlearned person or the wise and learned one.
Goal of Truth:The goal is to help each other find whatever truth that we seek, not to win arguments.One of the great benefits to sharing ideas and knowledge through discussion is to get other perspectives and to accommodate "reality checks."There is a tremendous difference between constructive challenges to positions and ideas versus attacks.Challenges should be solicited and welcomed, and are generally appropriate.Attacks, personal invective and insults, psychological bullying and other negative aspersions are counterproductive and are not solicited, not appropriate, nor welcome and the thunderbolts.info staff will have the discretionary authority to curtail or eliminate such.
Big-picture thinker versus Specialist:It is inherently easy (and cheap) for the specialist in any certain area of study or focus to accuse the big-picture thinker of "not knowing what the hell he is talking about" or to pull some other kind of "rank" in terms of his specialty.It is just as inherently easy for the specialist to be substantially wrong or misguided in his use and interpretation of his own (always filtered) data and information.
Amiable Posture:The dynamic of all-but-instantaneous communication with just writing is very socially challenging given the isolation and inherent lack of the normal social behavior moderating factors.There is also no voice inflection or facial expression, etc., which helps to convey the desired communication.Please craft each posting as though you were talking face to face with the person you are responding to in the company of others that you respect on the group.
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Romania has sent back to France a first shipment of 20 tonnes of toxic chemical waste that had been imported illegally into the country, the environment ministry said in a statement Wednesday.
~~~~
Not to worry, Im sure one of your Arab friends will take it, considering how much they "care" about their people.
BUCHAREST, Feb 2 (AFP) - Romania has sent back to France a first shipment of 20 tonnes of toxic chemical waste that had been imported illegally into the country, the environment ministry said in a statement Wednesday.
The shipment Tuesday is the first of what are to be a total of 100 tonnes of waste sent back in 404 containers.
A Romanian firm in Arad in the west of the country had imported the waste in February 2004, disguising it as raw material as the French company was apparently using Romania as an inexpensive way to dispose of the waste.
"French authorities as well as officials in the transit countries Hungary, Austria and Gemany, cooperated in an exemplary manner in helping the
Romanian government solve this problem," the minister said.
How Abu Daoud, author of the Olympics massacre of 1972, escaped - courtesy of the French
Taken from David Frum's excellent book "The 70's, the Decade that brought you Modern Life - for Better or for Worse.
Part of a chapter about the 1973 Israelo-Arab Kippour War and the subsequent oil crunch
"The shaken governments of Europe decided that the Arabs were the new masters of the earth, and anyone who wanted to keep driving had better truckle to them. In January 1977, French immigration officers intercepted a disembarking passenger on a Beirut-Paris flight. He had flown into Charles de Gaulle airport on an Iraqi passport under an assumed name, but French police had been tipped off to his true identity: he was Abu Daoud, a close associate of Yasser Arafat and the author of one of the most horrifying of the decade's many terrorist outrages, the massacre of the Israeli Olympic Team at Munich in September 1972. The arrest was a rare and welcome triumph for anti-terrorist law enforcement. But soon something disquieting occurred. Strange unsourced stories appeared in the newspapers under Paris datelines: the French government was furious at its police who had, it was said, failed to inform the political authorities of their intention to arrest Daoud. Iraq, Lybia and the Palestine Liberation Organization protested the arrest, contending that Daoud had been traveling to a funeral of a PLO comrade and was therefore entitled to diplomatic immunity. The French hastily rebuffed a West German extradition request, claiming that the required forms had not been filled in properly. Then, before the Germans could amend their request, they slipped Daoud onto a plane bound for Algeria and whisked him out of the country. He had spent all of four days in jail. The message could not have been clearer: France was scared (in italics in the text). One of the five nuclear powers of the world, a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, dared not bring a killer to justice. France was not alone. Between January 1972 and January 1974, European police forces apprehended fifty suspected Arab terrorists. Of those fifty, only seven ever saw the inside of a prison. Thirty-six (in italics) were released in response to threats, direct or implied."
PLUS ÇA CHANGE ET PLUS C'EST LA MEME CHOSE!
(THE MORE IT CHANGES, AND THE MORE IT IS THE SAME!)
Is it possible that France has gotten a “bum rap” in its relationship with America and that Americans have simply gone overboard in their contempt for everything French? The answer is unequivocally “No!” Throughout history, France has done its best to create the illusion that America owes its sovereignty to French intervention, but nothing could be further from the truth.
From the Revolutionary War to America’s campaign against terrorism, France has either taken direct action against America or gone well out of its way to thwart her progress. Fortunately for America (and the rest of the free world), the French have proven themselves experts when it comes to blunders, cowardice, and incompetence.
Perhaps the most blatant display of French treachery (and ineptitude) came during the American Revolution. Everyone knows (or should know) the famous words of John Paul Jones, “I have not yet begun to fight!” But what most people have never heard is the full story behind his words and the fact that Jones was not only fighting the British, he was also fighting the French (who had “intervened” in the war to help America).
During the battle between the British ship, H.M.S. Serapis, and Captain Jones’ Bonhomme Richard, the French showed their true colors by attacking their ally, John Paul Jones. Remember, the French were our “friends” during the War for Independence (or so our history books would have us believe) and had supposedly chosen to join with us to fight the British. But our “good friend,” the French Captain Landais, chose to attack John Paul Jones instead of the British ship he was commissioned to sink.
However, in what would become perhaps the most incredible naval battle in American history, Jones was able to fend off the French assault and ultimately defeat his British adversary despite his dilapidated ship (which eventually sank), the French dagger stuck in his back, and the fact he was out-manned and out-gunned.
As for the American effort to defeat Britain, French betrayal and incompetence would plague George Washington and the Continental Army for the duration of the war causing setback after setback and arguably prolonging the bloodshed.
But French duplicity is not inherent to Revolutionary days. It was the French who, in World War Two, basically rolled out the red carpet for Hitler and chose to fight against the Allies as they invaded North Africa. (Imagine that, our very good friends, the French, chose NAZI Germany over the Allies.) No wonder FDR believed that “France was a disgracefully decadent nation that had opened the door to Hitler in Europe and Japan in Southeast Asia.”
But what FDR didn’t see (with his eyes, anyway) was the door France opened for Ho Chi Minh and Pol Pot, both members of the French Communist Party who had spent years in France inebriated with Rousseau’s philosophy to create a better society tomorrow by razing civilization today. (That fact alone should answer many questions.)
Yet Communism would need a trigger for it to spread into South Vietnam and Cambodia and who better to fire that loaded pistol than the French who, with their oppressive rule and ridiculous expectations, completely belittled and exploited the peoples they “governed.” According to the book, Our Oldest Enemy, by John Miller and Mark Molesky, “Schoolchildren in Vietnam were required to recite phrases from textbooks that began: ‘Our ancestors, the Gauls…’ ” Had the French simply loosened their reigns and not been the cause of a 100 year societal and cultural plunge in Southeast Asia, it’s likely that the Vietnam War and the subsequent genocide in Cambodia would have been avoided.
Although FDR died in1945, he must have seen the writing on the wall. In his prophetic words, “Anything must be better than to live under French colonial rule.”
Be that as it may, America unfortunately entangled itself with the French during the 1950’s in support of the Truman Doctrine to stop the spread of Communism. How fitting is it that 10 years after the French had been (once again) decisively defeated on the battlefield that the French President Charles de Gaulle would actually have the gall to condemn America’s military presence in Vietnam and recommend we remove our troops from Southeast Asia? (Instead of lecturing the U.S. on foreign policy, perhaps the French should simply pay back the debt it owes America from WWI, WWII, and Vietnam.)
And leave it to the French, during Desert Storm, to send only one aircraft carrier to the region … with no jets on board! We couldn’t even depend on them to remain in the Allied Coalition when the issue came up to enter Baghdad and topple Saddam Hussein. (And we wonder why the elder President Bush didn’t “finish the job” in 1991?)
Yet here we are, dealing with the same France, a country that wouldn’t help us (as a matter of fact, a country that has never helped us) when its help has been needed. Fortunately, Americans have begun to see that, in France, America has an enemy, not a friend. Remember, this is the same country that did more than any other country to oppose President Wilson’s Fourteen Points at the end of WWI (which subsequently led to WWII, a war the French basically didn’t fight), that removed itself from NATO during the Cold War, that denied American fighter pilots access to French airspace in order to bomb Lybia, that crawled in bed with Saddam Hussein for his oil contracts, that actually built Saddam a nuclear facility (that the Israelis destroyed in 1981), and that now possess the most anti-Semitic attitude in Europe.
History has demonstrated that the only thing good for the U.S. regarding the Franco-American relationship is nothing. Too bad it only took us 250 years to figure it out.
At least this geezer has shown some hair. It must be harder than heck to say "in writing" what PatriotAct and all the rest of the subversives won't, or can't say or write. And by the way, Mark Brown, go ahead and vote liberal again in 2008, us conservatives don't need you around anyhow.
Maybe you're like me and have opposed the Iraq war since before the shooting started -- not to the point of joining any peace protests, but at least letting people know where you stood.
You didn't change your mind when our troops swept quickly into Baghdad or when you saw the rabble that celebrated the toppling of the Saddam Hussein statue, figuring that little had been accomplished and that the tough job still lay ahead.
Despite your misgivings, you didn't demand the troops be brought home immediately afterward, believing the United States must at least try to finish what it started to avoid even greater bloodshed. And while you cheered Saddam's capture, you couldn't help but thinking I-told-you-so in the months that followed as the violence continued to spread and the death toll mounted.
By now, you might have even voted against George Bush -- a second time -- to register your disapproval.
But after watching Sunday's election in Iraq and seeing the first clear sign that freedom really may mean something to the Iraqi people, you have to be asking yourself: What if it turns out Bush was right, and we were wrong?
It's hard to swallow, isn't it?
Americans cross own barrier
If you fit the previously stated profile, I know you're fighting the idea, because I am, too. And if you were with the president from the start, I've already got your blood boiling.
For those who've been in the same boat with me, we don't need to concede the point just yet. There's a long way to go. But I think we have to face the possibility.
I won't say that it had never occurred to me previously, but it's never gone through my mind as strongly as when I watched the television coverage from Iraq that showed long lines of people risking their lives by turning out to vote, honest looks of joy on so many of their faces.
Some CNN guest expert was opining Monday that the Iraqi people crossed a psychological barrier by voting and getting a taste of free choice (setting aside the argument that they only did so under orders from their religious leaders).
I think it's possible that some of the American people will have crossed a psychological barrier as well.
Deciding democracy's worth
On the other side of that barrier is a concept some of us have had a hard time swallowing:
Maybe the United States really can establish a peaceable democratic government in Iraq, and if so, that would be worth something.
Would it be worth all the money we've spent? Certainly.
Would it be worth all the lives that have been lost? That's the more difficult question, and while I reserve judgment on that score until such a day arrives, it seems probable that history would answer yes to that as well.
I don't want to get carried away in the moment.
Going to war still sent so many terrible messages to the world.
Most of the obstacles to success in Iraq are all still there, the ones that have always led me to believe that we would eventually be forced to leave the country with our tail tucked between our legs. (I've maintained from the start that if you were impressed by the demonstrations in the streets of Baghdad when we arrived, wait until you see how they celebrate our departure, no matter the circumstances.)
In and of itself, the voting did nothing to end the violence. The forces trying to regain the power they have lost -- and the outside elements supporting them -- will be no less determined to disrupt our efforts and to drive us out.
Somebody still has to find a way to bring the Sunnis into the political process before the next round of elections at year's end. The Iraqi government still must develop the capacity to protect its people.
And there seems every possibility that this could yet end in civil war the day we leave or with Iraq becoming an Islamic state every bit as hostile to our national interests as was Saddam.
Penance could be required
But on Sunday, we caught a glimpse of the flip side. We could finally see signs that a majority of the Iraqi people perceive something to be gained from this brave new world we are forcing on them.
Instead of making the elections a further expression of "Yankee Go Home," their participation gave us hope that all those soldiers haven't died in vain.
Obviously, I'm still curious to see if Bush is willing to allow the Iraqis to install a government that is free to kick us out or to oppose our other foreign policy efforts in the region.
So is the rest of the world.
For now, though, I think we have to cut the president some slack about a timetable for his exit strategy.
If it turns out Bush was right all along, this is going to require some serious penance.
With the Iraq election results now official, it appears that the surprise write-in candidate Yankee Go Home won a decisive victory. 
In a surprising boost for the Bush Administration, the President's approval rating shot up 12% Wednesday among past evil rulers.
