Steyn on Baghdad on the Seine

Excerpt (hah):

So Europe's present biculturalism makes disaster a certainty. One way to avoid it would be to go genuinely multicultural, to broaden the Continent's sources of immigration beyond the Muslim world. But a talented ambitious Chinese or Indian or Chilean has zero reason to emigrate to France, unless he is consumed by a perverse fantasy of living in a segregated society that artificially constrains his economic opportunities yet imposes confiscatory taxation on him in order to support an ancien regime of indolent geriatrics.

Christians, Jews & Immigration

A long but great article on the issue of Jewish views on immigration and the threat facing Jews everywhere.

Excerpt:

Reality is dawning on many American Jews that something is amiss, although it seems lost on some of the country’s most venerable Jewish organizations. There’s a sad, if comic irony associated with the fact that employees at organizations like ADL, the American Jewish Committee, and the Presidents’ Conference must pass through a gauntlet of concrete barriers, armed guards, metal detectors, and double bulletproof anterooms as they come to work each morning to protect them from radical Islamic terrorists, in order to spend their days studying and disseminating reports on the "threat" posed by Evangelical Christians. Meanwhile, the legislative affairs staffs of these organizations are directed to lobby against immigration reforms that could minimize the danger.

They Blow Up So Fast

From Ace of Spades:

Two Palestinian men are showing pictures of their children to each other.
The first says: "This is my oldest, Muhammed. He was a martyr.... this is my second oldest, Muhammed. He was a martyr too.... This is my baby boy, Muhammed. One day I hope he will be a martyr too."
The other replies: "They blow up so fast, don't they?"

Plame Learned Covert status from Woodward

From Scrappleface:

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who secured grand jury indictments against a top Bush administration official last month, today announced he may be close to discovering who told Valerie Plame that she was an undercover CIA agent.
Mr. Fitzgerald refused to release any names, but sources close to the probe said evidence indicates that the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward may have revealed Ms. Plame’s covert status to her.


Read the whole thing.

WILL A JOURNALIST AT THE POST HAVE BE INDICTED?

Update on the Plame/Libby story:

Michelle Malkin has a great analysis of Bob Woodward's revelation that he was told of Joe Wilson's wife working at the CIA years ago. click on the link for the story.

Woodward testified that he told Walter Pincus, a reporter for the Washinton Post about the Plame/Wilson connection. Pincus denies this. So:

So, if Woodward and Pincus both testify to different memories of their conversations, how is that different from Libby and Russert both testifying to different memories of their conversations? If we can believe that the great Bob Woodward is misremembering when he told someone something, isn't it possible that Tim Russert could misremember something, too? Or that Scooter Libby could? Why does is one discrepancy worthy of indictment and the other one chalked up to "confusion about the timing"?

Captain Ed chimes in.

THE ACADEMY IS OPEN TO NEW IDEAS? OH YEAH!

Publishing an article that argues for Intelligent Design can get you fired!

Got to love those Liberals and their open mindedness.

Oh, those WMDs!

The US has revealed that it removed more than 1.7 metric tons of radioactive material from Iraq in a secret operation last month.
"This operation was a major achievement," said US Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham in a statement.

He said it would keep "potentially dangerous nuclear materials out of the hands of terrorists".

Along with 1.77 tons of enriched uranium, about 1,000 "highly radioactive sources" were also removed.

Read the whole thing.

INVESTIGATIVE REPORTERS

Why do we accept some stupid comments and nod our heads when they are written in a newspaper? Example:

Jack Shafer in Slate:
Last night on Larry King Live, [Judy] Miller once again blamed "faulty intelligence" for her "handful" of flawed stories, neglecting to explain that real investigative reporters aren't passive conduits for intelligence but skeptical analysts of it. [Emphasis added]

This is patent nonsense. If this were in fact the case, we'd lose every investigative reporter who took Joe Wilson's word about what he "found" (but, alas, didn't find) in Africa. Skeptical analysts? Journalists such as The Nation's David Corn, in spite of a mountain of evidence to the contrary, still covers the Wilson/Plame affair as if its protagonist has not been roundly discredited, and as if his wife was still some kind of top-secret foreign operative, rather than a CIA bureaucrat who did in fact recommend her husband for the Niger assignment.

The Comic Book Guy Interviews Mary Mapes

Now for a humor break, I direct your attention to WuzzaDem and see the Comic Book guy from the Simpsons interivew Mary Mapes.

Mary Mapes, it is an honor to have the opportunity to speak with you.





Why, thank you very much.





I see you are unfamiliar with the concept of sarcasm.





What???



Click on the link and read the whole thing.

SADDAM'S TRIAL AS IT WILL BE REPORTED BY THE MSM

FROM BITTER SANITY:

I've been thinking that it's only a matter of time before mainstream thought in this country begins the process of lionizing Saddam Hussein. With his trial beginning, the tone of media coverage is starting to bear out my worst fears. (You wouldn't think it would be possible to admire someone who has done what Saddam has uncontestably done, but in a country where people wear Guevera t-shirts without hiding their faces, I suppose just about anything is possible.)I predict:

• The words "defiant", "strong", "canny", and "independent" will become de rigeur in all stories concerning Saddam's trial.
• The meme that the trial is "illegal" (because not blessed by "international-law experts") will spread. Shortly, it will be routine to refer to the "illegal trial" in editorials, and to "the trial, whose legality is disputed" in news coverage.
• If and when he is executed, the television news coverage will feature somber voices.
• On the day, no Iraqis who were victims themselves or who lost family will be quoted. Only Baathist voices will be heard, mourning "the great lion", and so on.
• Editorials will announce that since obviously the Iraqi people mourn Saddam Hussein, his execution will only increase the "Iraqi" "insurgency".
• Within two months, Saddam's daughter Raghad will be the subject of a sympathetic television interview, perhaps by Barbara Walters. The interviewer will not ask her what kind of a tree she would be, but will ask how she felt "the day you lost your father".
• Raghad will do a lecture tour of the US, and will be invited to speak at several prominent universities.
• None of the victims of Saddam Hussein will be invited to speak in any of these venues, then or in the future.

Unsuccessful Suicide Bomber of Jordanian Hotels Captured - Speaks Out

This Powerline post links to a USA Today website.

A quote:

Al Qaeda of Iraq issued a statement claiming responsibility for the mass murders carried out last week in Amman, Jordan. In passing, they mentioned that the bombings featured the first-ever husband and wife team. Maybe they didn't realize that the female half of the team was still alive and had escaped, or maybe they just didn't care--after all, she was supposed to be dead anyway.

...
It's a remarkable fact that Zaraqwi has not yet been captured, given how many of his close aides have been killed or captured (Mrs. al-Rishawi's brother, described as Zarqawi's right-hand man, was killed in Fallujah.) But I have to think that his days are numbered, given the pretty much universal outrage his psychopathic crimes have generated in Iraq and around the Middle East. Reportedly, even other elements of the Sunni "insurgency" would like for him to be caught, because he has generated so much bad publicity.

Of course, the American MSM and the Left have yet to condemn the bombings.

Bush Thumps Kennedy

Gateway Pundit links to the White House website that exposes Teddy Kennedy for the pompous fraud that he is ...

Sen. Kennedy Said Saddam Hussein Was Developing WMDs:

Sen. Kennedy: "Saddam Hussein Is A Dangerous Figure. He's Got Dangerous Weapons."

Sen. Kennedy Now Says The President Manipulated Facts About Iraq's WMDs

Kennedy Opposed Removing Saddam Hussein From Kuwait

Sen. Kennedy Opposed Removing Saddam Hussein From Power

Bottom line: if Senator Kennedy had his way Saddam would still be putting his opponents through shredders, getting his WMD plans in gear, gassing more Kurds and occupying Kuwait.

And Teddy would still be a fat, obnoxious, lying drunk.

Les Risiblés

The incredible Iowahawk does it again. Read excerpts from his upcoming musical on the French riots.

ACT I

Split stage. On the right, a group of immigrant street toughs mill outside a bleak suburban banlieu. On the right: President Jacques Chirac’s office in Elysee Palace, where Chirac is toasting another French diplomatic victory with Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin (who is a man).

CHIRAC It’s great to be part of the UN… the EU’s a marvelous thing…

VILLEPIN In our little cloister the world is our oyster…

TOGETHER ‘cuz – we – get – to – pull – all - the - striiiiings!

CHIRAC We are FRANCE!

VILLEPIN We are France!

TOGETHER If you think you can beat us, bon chance!

CHIRAC We’re on a first name basis with the Chinese.

VILLEPIN Not to mention Kofi Annan on speed dial.

TOGETHER With speeches so emphatique and manuevers diplomatique, we’ll twist the rusty knife in while we smiiiile!

TOGETHER We are France, we are France!

CHIRACWe’ve got the Saudi contacts…

VILLEPINto get us oil contracts…

TOGETHERand stuff away the profits in our pants!

Music makes dramatic minor key shift, stage rotates to the immigrant boys.

KHALIDMy parents immigrated from Morocco.

TARIQMy dad arrived in Paris from Algiers.

HASSANNow all that we can do is hang out by the banlieu…

TOGETHERMom and Dad ain't found a job in 30 years!

KHALID (angrily)We are France!

HASSANWe are France!

TOGETHERWhere a guy can’t get the break he wants!

TARIQA hundred Euros weekly for our welfare.

KHALIDThey think that it will keep us satisfied.

TOGETHERThey invented mimes, and we’re accused of crimes? It's time for these two worlds to collide!

TOUGHS (angrily)We are France!

CHIRAC/VILLEPINWe are France!

TOUGHS We are France!

CHIRAC/VILLEPINWe are France!

The stage rotates as the two groups continue singing. Finally they bump into each other and begin catlike finger snapping.

CHIRAC/VILLEPINWhen you’re a Frog you’re a Frog all the way, from your first cigarette to your last beaujolais!

TOUGHSMohhhhh- OH! – rocco! Where the wind comes sweeping down the dunes! Where the sand can fly straight in your eye, but they don’t have these French buffoons!
Pantomime sissy knife fight

Read the whole thing.

Virginian Pilot Embraces Irrelevance

Today, Pilot’s editors illustrated in no uncertain way that they are determined to fade into irrelevance as a newspaper.

The headline story in the Sunday edition was a three page account of a fifty year-old murder. The writer obviously meant to dredge up doubts about the case even though there was a trial, the killer was convicted and even testified that he killed his victim.

The rest of the front page is devoted to the following stories:

1. “Stymied by Medicare? You’re not the only one”
2. “With Kaine Victory, Warner Basking in the Spotlight”
3. And the final front page story: “Churches try to get more to step up to the offering plate.”
   
   

With these moves, the Virginian Pilot now aspires to become the paid version of the free weeklies.

Meanwhile the Internet has these stories from overnight:


More Cars Torched in France Overnight (502)

Tear gas, unrest spread to Lyon

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said on Saturday that it may be possible to reach an agreement by the end of 2006 on the withdrawal of foreign troops from his country.

Al-Qaeda on defensive as bombs begin to backfire

Twenty slain as soldiers, Muslim extremists battle in Philippines

Feds accuse Southern Illinois University of bias against whites

Al-Qaeda calls Queen an ‘enemy of Islam’

But back to the Virginian Pilot.

On page A17 we are treated to a story about the riots in France. It contains this delicious quote: “Burning cars is rather typically French.” Strange. The last time I was in France, this national past-time was not pointed out to me.

One pages A18-19 we get more coverage with cut-and-past stories from the AP.

What does this mean:

As readership declines, the dead tree media are being advised to focus on local stories, realizing that that national and international news is going to be old news by the time organs like the Virginian Pilot print it. This is true now and, as more people are unable to get news from local newspapers, this trend will accelerate. In effect, the Virginian Pilot is ceding the important global news events to alternative media.

However, by virtue of the limited interest that people have in strictly local events, the need to subscribe to papers like the Virginian Pilot will decrease. The Virginian Pilot has already downsized its staff and has set itself on a course of steadily diminishing readership, influence and size.

At a point in the not too distant future, the Virginian Pilot may become a tabloid, given away free in newspaper boxes and supported by strictly by advertising.

But why would advertisers continue to buy space in media that attracts the attention of fewer and fewer readers. The trend to Internet advertising has already begun and is bound to continue. And since there is a finite amount of money available for advertising, the gains for alternative media will be at the expense of newspapers.

There is little that buggy whip manufacturers could do in once autos became popular, except go into the auto business. None did. Of course, newspapers have created web sites, but there is really very little reason to visit them. After all what can you learn from the Virginia Pilot web site that is not covered more comprehensively by Drudge and five or six national web sites that cover all the important events of the day – including hyperlinks so that readers can go to original sources.

If the people who edit newspapers were not such insufferable jerks, it would be possible to feel some sympathy for them. But having sat astride the pipeline of information, and abusing that responsibility of trust for so many years, I’m not a bit sorry.

Sayonara Virginian Pilot.

I Once Wrote Something About Veteran's Day

From Winds of Change:

I love this country, my country, my people. And those who attack her...from guerilla cells, boardrooms, or their comfy chairs in expensive restaurants... better watch out.

I don't get a clear sense that my fellow liberals feel the same way. And if so, why should ‘the folks’ follow them? Why are we worthy of the support of a nation that we don't support? So let me suggest an axiom for the New Model Democrats:

America is a great goddamn country, and we're going to both defend it from those who attack it and fight to make it better.

And for everyone who is going to comment and remind me that ‘all liberals already do that’…no they don't. Not when the chancellor has to intervene at U.C. Berkeley to get ‘permission’ for American flags to be flown and red-white-and-blue ribbons to be worn. Not when the strongest voices in liberalism give only lip service to responding to an attack on our own soil.

Loving this country isn't the same thing as jingoism; it isn't the same thing as imperialism; it isn't the same thing as blind support of the worst traits of our government or our people.

It starts with recognizing the best traits, and there are a hell of a lot of them. They were worth defending in my father's time, and they are worth defending today.

So thanks, veterans. Thanks soldiers and sailors and marines and airmen. Thanks for doing your jobs and I hope you all come home hale and whole, every one of you.

Then, from Ace of Spades:

Half of the problem is that lefties are intellectually insecure and have been taught that patriotism is for stupid people. Determined to prove themselves non-stupid through an easy course (not everyone can split atoms, you know), they buy into the various signifiers of a high intellect promoted by their lefty heroes.

If it became Liberally Correct to wave flags and wear flag pins tomorrow -- if suddenly that denoted education, erudition, and progressive virtue -- you'd have seas of red, white, and blue in San Francisco.

Anti-patriots denigrate patriotism as empty-headed jingoism. But most of their antipatriotism is itself empty-headed, a trivial tribal signifier, a vapid fashion accessory informing the world that they are members of the smart set of Sneeches whose bellies defintely do not have stars upon thars.

Liberals Are Unpatriotic

From Froggy Ruminations Read the whole thing, it gets much better):

Oh yeah, you read that correctly. All you liberals out there that would rather score political points against the President and Vice President than win this war hate your country. Willfully LYING about how the US came to be in Iraq is not dissent; it is sabotage of our national security. Dissenting IN GOOD FAITH is patriotic. All Americans are duty bound to speak up against the actions of our countrymen when we feel they are acting in error. But repeating lies every day to get back at the President that beat you doesn't make them true; it makes you a traitor to this country and disloyal to the troops who are on this day protecting you.

BDS: Bush Derangement Syndrome

Dr. Sanity explains:

What makes Bush Hatred completely insane however, is the almost delusional degree of unremitting certitude of Bush's evil; while simultaneously believing that the TRUE representatives of evil in the world are somehow good and decent human beings with the world's intersts at heart.This psychological defense mechanism is referred to as "displacement".

One way you can usually tell that an individual is using displacement is that the emotion being displaced (e.g., anger) is all out of proportion to the reality of the situation. The purpose of displacement is to avoid having to cope with the actual reality. Instead, by using displacement, an individual is able to still experience his or her anger, but it is directed at a less threatening target than the real cause. In this way, the individual does not have to be responsible for the consequences of his/her anger and feels more safe--even thought that is not the case.

This explains the remarkable and sometimes lunatic appeasement of Islamofascists by so many governments and around the world. It explains why there is more emphasis on protecting the "rights" of terrorists, rather than holding them accountable for their actions (which, by the way are also Bush's fault--not theirs). Our soldiers in Iraq are being killed because of Bush--not because of terrorist activity. Terrorist activity itself is blamed on Bush no matter where it occurs.

It isn't even a stretch of the imagination for some to blame 9/11 on Bush.

This is the insane "logic" of most psychological defense mechanisms. They temporarily spare you from the painful reality around you and give you the illusion that you are still in control.This is exactly illusion/delusion circulating in the minds of many of the Bush Haters. They want desperately to forget that there is a tidal wave of terror reverberating around the world and to pretend that everything is America and Bush's fault. If that is true, then they will still be in control of events.

So what do they do? They lionize terrorists like Zarqawi ("freedom-fighters"). They explain away the horror and brutality by refering to them as "insurgents" and "militants". They support Palestinian suicide bombings as justified and see the Palestinians--not as independent agents acting of choice, but as victims of America and Israel.

They sincerely believe that Osama is a reasonable person and seek dialog with him; but that Bush is not. They threaten violence toward Bush and hold demonstrations; and placate and enable those who would implement Sharia Law in their country without a qualm.

Hundreds of their fellow countrymen are murdered by terrorists, but they demand that troops be pulled out of Iraq (thinking that if they hadn't cooperated with the evil BushHitler, their countrymen would have been spared).Rather than blame the terrorists; rather than admiting they have to take action against them; their fear is transformed to anger and displaced onto President Bush.

If everything is his fault, then the reality of what happened does not have to be faced (this also explains the intense psychological denial that these same individuals tend to have about 9/11).

Bush becomes the "criminal mastermind", so devious, so evil, that everything he says is a "lie", everything he does is part of a vast global consipiracy. His family has intimate ties to Bin Laden and the Saudis; He is trying to enrich his oil business friends; He is trying to avenge the insult to his father by getting rid of Saddam; He plans world domination etc. etc. I could go on an on, but you get the point.

Where Are the Pentagon Papers?

The Weekly Standard has become required reading for people who want to understnad the REAL story.

Steve Hayes has tried to get accesss to unclassified papers that we recovered from Saddm's regime after his fall. he has been stonewalled ... so far.

For two years, I have been working to obtain copies of unclassified documents discovered in postwar Iraq. My reasoning is simple: If we understand what the Iraqi regime was doing in the months and years before the war, we will be better able to assess the nature of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein and, perhaps, to better understand the insurgency. It's not a light subject, to be sure.

But the quest for the documents, while frustrating, has also been highly amusing. It is a story of bureaucratic incompetence and
strategic incoherence. It is also a story--this one not funny at all--about the failure to explain the Iraq war. Two years after I started my pursuit, I'm not much closer to my goal.

Read the whole thing.

Liberals Bloody Hands

You have to understand that today’s Liberals really don’t care about other people. They are solely motivated to gain access to the levers of American government.

Notice that after The US abandoned South Viet Nam and cut off it military supplies, there was no regret for the millions killed in the killing field of Cambodia? The association between the US government’s betrayal of the people of Southeast Asia and their deaths was never made. Likewise for the hundreds of thousands of “Boat People” who died on the high seas trying to escape the Communists and the hundreds of thousand who suffered in “Re-education Camps.” The Liberals who marched and held “Winter Soldier” shows never acknowledged their complicity in these horrors.

One – I believe it was Anthony Lewis – even had the gall to write a column as Pol Pot was emptying cities and beginning his genocide that we should not make adverse judgments about what was going on, it was part of their culture.

It’s as if we had pulled out of World War 2 and Hitler had been able to fully implement his “Final Solution.”

When by your action millions are slaughtered you have blood on your hands, even if you did not pull the trigger. There is so much blood on the hands of the Left over the last 50 years that it will take a generation to wash it off.

Yet here they sit, cherry picking phrases, waving lawyerly briefs and sniping from the sidelines and giving hope to mass murderers. That what they do best.

Oh, and don’t you dare QUESTION THEIR PATRIOTISM.

Mona Charen gave a speech at Grove City College in 2003 entitle “Useful Idiots: Then and Now.”. Here is a little of what she said:

By contrast, today’s liberals have paid no price in prestige for their disgraceful toleration of tyrants and despots who were, in every relevant respect, Hitler’s equals. In fact, they continue to look back on their so-called youthful activism with pride. They continue to offer their wisdom on foreign policy as if the USSR, Nicaragua, China, Ethiopia, Cambodia, Cuba had never happened. Talleyrand is supposed to have said of the Bourbon restorationists that they had learned nothing and forgotten nothing. Liberals have learned nothing and want us to forget everything….

I’m frequently asked, “Who was the biggest useful idiot?” I think the answer would have to be that it is not one person but an institution: the New York Times. Walter Duranty was the New York Times correspondent in Moscow in the 1920s and 30s. Here’s what he said about Stalin: “Stalin is giving the Russian people, the Russian masses – not Westernized landlords, industrialists, bankers, and intellectuals – but Russia’s 150 million peasants and workers, what they really want, mainly joint effort, communal effort.” Later when Stalin was starving millions to death, Duranty filed dispatches denying that anything was amiss. It was later learned that the Soviet secret police were blackmailing Duranty….

Ten years later the scene was again different. This time it was Southeast Asia, but the New York Times was again telling the world it had more to fear from anti-communists than from Communists. Having succeeded in getting the United States to withdraw all of its forces from Southeast Asia, liberals were scornful of the notion that a Communist victory might lead to a bloodbath. The Washington Post editorialized: “The threatened bloodbath is less ominous than a continuation of the current bloodletting.” The LA Times urged a cutoff of all aid to the Cambodian government, “for the good of the suffering Cambodian people.” Anthony Lewis, who was a columnist at the New York Times for 40 years, wrote: “Some will find the whole bloodbath debate unreal. What future possibility could be more terrible than the reality of what is happening in Cambodia now?” Lewis had an impoverished imagination. But even in the midst of the horror that followed – mass starvation and executions – many liberals could not see the reality in front of their eyes.

I disagree with Charen. They do see the reality in front of their eyes. They just don’t care as long as it does not happen to them. They are the ultimate racists.

As long at it happens to others … tough. They’ve got theirs.

OK, You’re Unpatriotic

In fact, you’re anti American.

You want the American war effort to fail. You believe that America – on balance – does more harm than good.

You objectively support people who cut off the heads of bound captives, commit mass murder as a policy, target civilians because of cowardice, subjugate women because they doubt their masculinity and deny freedom of worship to everyone.

You believe that people who walk into hotels or restaurants and commit mass murder are “freedom fighters.”

You believe that people who put women’s panties on prisoners’ heads are the moral equivalent of people who rape women in front of their families and feed their remains into shredders.

You believe that Saddam should be in charge or Iraq, and maybe Kuwait.

You go to soldiers’ funerals and call them war criminals.

But you believe that you are patriots because – by your definition - patriots disagree with their country.

You are a piece of scum, you are a collaborator, you stand with holocaust deniers, you make moral eunuchs your superior and simple traitors your betters. You are the pus on the wound of civilization.