'Realism' and Darfur

Washington Post thinking about how to deliver aid to Sudan includes this:

Sovereignty is therefore a less useful principle than it once was, and Kofi Annan, the U.N. secretary general, has commissioned a study on ways of updating it.

If you can spot the small problem with that kind of thinking, you are not a Leftist.

The problem with the left is that the solution is to embrace others on the left. In this case, the utterly useless, demonstrably corrupt United Nations. Having Kofi Annan, fresh from the Food for Oil scandal in Iraq, exploring ways of "updating sovereignty" makes as much sense as the Menendez brothers overseeing adoption reform.

UPDATE: After reading this story in the Economist, it looks like the source story that WashPo got all wrong.

Alas for Kerry

Having heard Niall Ferguson on C-SPAN, I am not a fan. His Third Way thinking annoys me, even when he worries about Kerry's potential problems with the not-so allied transatlantic alliance in the rambling article that parallels his fuzzy thinking.

In other words, a Kerry administration would set about mending fences with allies who are not currently on America's side - which means most of continental Europe - in order to reduce and ultimately wind up America's commitments in Iraq.

Most of continental Europe has never been on America's side and the so-called Transatlantic Alliance has never been a fixed American asset. During most of the Cold War Europe was involved in battles with their own totalitarian tendencies, 60s radical chic terrorism, anti-nuclear protests, evolving economies they promptly strangled with regulation, and wholly preoccupied in building the socialist dream they think they've found it in the EU.

Ferguson seems to think the alliance shared a common enemy: communism. But communism is just a variant version of socialism, one practiced by the not-bright-for-primetime Russians and their satellites, and not a very successfully offshoot either. In that battle, the United States carried the water while European governments ran through the gambit of politics, finally setting on coalition governance as a way of incorporating the lately communist Greens without the bother of having citizens actually voting to validate radical environmentalism.

The fact is, Europeans are so pathologically self-centered that they are incapable of friendship even with one other, which is why when they periodically struggle for a centralized political ideal, totalitarianism once again raises its head and then they slaughter each other in the millions. About that time, we are friends again. Once we have defeated them.

Forty years after WW II, Europeans couldn't even resolve the crisis in Kosovo without American military intervention. They had neither the resources, the money, or, more importantly, the will. The Europeans dont' have an aversion to war, they have bureaucratic paralysis, near-pathological self-absorption, and lack of guts. Nothing new in that. During the Cold War Russia would have overrun the continent without the U.S. determination that it be otherwise. The weakness of Europe is that they won't, or can't, acknowledge their own deficiencies. Yet they want us to follow their lead. No fucking thanks.

Kerry won't command any European respect. He will just lower us to their level.

Good question

Seemingly puzzled, Canadian media is wondering outloud exactly what Chretien is mediating.

While neither Chretien, the Kremlin nor Yukos have explained exactly what role he is playing in the dispute, Group Menatep, which owns about 45 per cent of Yukos, said yesterday that it welcomed Chretien's efforts to 'help resolve the tax and other legal issues' confronting the oil company and its executives.

Either they are not good at connecting the dots or else their Wall St. Journal subscription ran out. If they can't see the obvious connection to the Iraq Oil-for-food UN scam, billions of dollars in oil, the dozens of Russian oil companies, French banks, French Elf oil and Chretien, then they don't deserve to be called journalists.

Blog reports: here here here

Soft power indeed

The article is entitled "We must be prepared to invade Sudan."

Unfortunately, Canada is in no position to deliver on this responsibility in Darfur.

And neither is the EU or the UN. Which says what?

All the news that's fit to blog

Finally, something nice about blogs at the convention.

a good blog is almost like a strong piece of research with footnotes. And in some ways it's more legitimate than a newspaper because it explains where its information is coming from.'"

Skip all the sites listed. Most are awful, as was the Canadian blogger. Frankly, few bloggers covered the convention any better than old media, but that says more about old media than bloggers. The truth about conventions.

This kind of newbie curiosity is especially important given the stage-managed political ritual that political conventions have become, events that boast all the spontaneity of a Japanese tea ceremony.

There might be a bigger lesson here. Conventions have been like this for years without the media acknowledging that staleness. When the elite media covered the events they did so to focus the voter toward one of the world's most expensive infomercials to be immediately followed by -- some of the, ahem, world's most expensive advertising - t.v. campaign ads. What is noticeably missing every year are the issues. Howard Rosenberg, LA Times media critic: "The media doesn't tell you what to think, but what to think about." This year as in most, it was what they didn't want you to think about.

With cable networks following the event and a less-than-wonderful candidate and with bloggers to register reaction and empty reality, the convention was inconvenient for the elite media to cover. There has been no suspense at conventions for years, no issues either, and, suddenly, Dan Rather was bored and hoping his audience would take the cue. Nothing here, folks. There wasn't. Bloggers confirmed it. Score one for a reality check.

Time for Americans to reclaim the conventions and insist on some meaningful debate to substitute for the party rally that isn't even fun for the party faithful anymore.

Libyan Assassination Plot

Abdurahman Alamoudi pleads guilty to taking part in an assassination plot.

A prominent American Muslim leader who has told authorities that he took part in an alleged Libyan plot to assassinate Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince pleaded guilty yesterday to illegal business dealings with Libya.

You might remember him. He had some interesting connections conveniently forgotten in this BBC version.

Be careful of what you wish for

Canadians are overwhelming in favor of Kerry. The writer asks do they know who and what they are wishing for?

Read closely, then, Mr. Kerry's words to Democratic Party delegates on Thursday night: "We need a president who has the credibility to bring allies to our side and share the burden, reduce the cost to American taxpayers, and reduce the risk to American soldiers. In other words, Mr. Kerry is saying: We will listen and consult, but we will expect you (read other countries) to contribute more in money and personnel."

What would be the response? Would a new administration, as Democrats believe, encourage other countries to assume greater burdens? Or would allies, seeing the continuing violence in Iraq, not belly up to the bar, just as NATO countries and others failed to do in Afghanistan? It has paradoxically been easier for some countries to contribute less because the Bush administration did not ask, but how will they react if a Kerry administration asks them to do more? What if the Bush doctrine of “coalitions of the willing,” with the option to opt in or out, is replaced by “coalitions of the expected”?

Hmmm

So petty an axis

Thoughts from a Canadian journalist about our American election.

It is not the war in Iraq, nor the campaign against terrorism that is the issue. Or the economy. Or the stewardship of the world's only empire. It's the infinitely petty question of a scarcely rational emotion: How do you feel about George Bush?

In my view, the ugliness in American politics is all on the left side of our political spectrum. Republicans quite properly felt disdain for Bill Clinton, but never exhibited the viciousness the left has used as a conscious tactic beginning with the Clarence Thomas hearings. Hate and resentment are great motivators in absence of solutions or ideas. Ultimately, the left doesn't want to solve problems; they want to be empowered by them. It's really that simple.

Quote of the Day

Belmont Club:

Even Bill Clinton was prepared to retaliate against Osama Bin Laden for the USS Cole attack by firing hundreds of cruise missiles at his training camps. But George Bush tried to defeat him and for this stood condemned. It is this precise striving for victory, not any single act of retaliation that has made George Bush so illegitimate in the liberal mind. For liberals retaliation is soley used to 'send a message'; it always an invitation to negotiation, like the ones Johnson sent Ho Chi Minh without reply; it is never part of the solution itself.

In this curious mental universe, force is immoral unless it is also pointless. John Kerry's self-chosen identification with the Vietnam War is a strangely ambiguous image, which escapes being tragic only for so long as you allow only questions for which there can be no answers.

It is part of the Swedenization of the American Left.

Something similar is at work in the European attitude to the US. Look at Europe, many Europeans say, we have eradicated wars, dangerous nationalism, and dictatorships. We created a peaceful European Union. We do not wage war; we negotiate. We do not exhaust our resources on weapons. The rest of the planet should learn from us how to live together without terrorizing each other.

As a Swede, I have heard such pacific boasting all my life: that neutral Sweden is a moral superpower. Now this bragging has become the EU's ideology. We are the moral continent. Call this the "Swedenization" of Europe.

Equating pacifism with morality works well when you don't have religious convictions and are lucky enough to have no real enemies.

July Surpise? or Idiocy?

It's the timing, not the reality. That's how far the Left has sunk. Everything is a stunt to them, designed to drive politics and the election.

July Surprise? by John B. Judis, Spencer Ackerman & Massoud Ansari is a good example.

Pushing Musharraf to go after Al Qaeda in the tribal areas may be a good idea despite the risks. But, if that is the case, it was a good idea in 2002 and 2003. Why the switch now? Top Pakistanis think they know: This year, the president's reelection is at stake.

How about the logistics of the campaign? How about the time needed to turn Pakistan from tolerating, if not supporting, terrorists to a partner in eliminating them? How about the fact that much of the Pakistani population is sympathetic to the terrorists? No. It's a plot.

An Editor note from the top of the article, added Jul 30th:

"Earlier this month, John B. Judis, Spencer Ackerman, and Massoud Ansari broke the story of how the Bush administration was pressuring Pakistani officials to apprehend high-value targets (HVTs) in time for the November elections--and in particular, to coincide with the Democratic National Convention. Although the capture took place in central Pakistan "a few days back," the announcement [of the capture of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani] came just hours before John Kerry will give his acceptance speech in Boston.]

Timed for the Democrat Convention. The importance of the capture of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani is immaterial, peripheral to their fantasies. Reuters on Ghailani.

* Ghailani is probably the most senior al Qaeda operative caught in Pakistan since the arrest in March 2003 of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.

* Ghailani was indicted in New York in December 1998 for the synchronised blasts that blew up the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Tanzania, killing 224 people. Prosecutors in the embassy bombings said he bought the Nissan Atlas truck used in the attack on the embassy in Dar es Salaam.

* A year-long European investigation into al Qaeda financing found Ghailani and Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, also indicted for the 1998 embassy bombings, went to Liberia and Sierra Leone in 1999 as part of a $20-million al Qaeda diamond-buying spree, U.S. newspapers reported.

Ghailani was captured after a 14 hour gun battle, a blow to Al Qaeda. You wouldn't know any of that from the New Republic.

SANDY BERGER
Then there was the announcement of Sandy Berger's illegal removal of and admitted destruction of Top Secret documents from the National Archives, the timing of which the Left insists was designed to detract from the release of the 9/11 report that, oddly, was not remotely unfavorable to the Bush administration.

No one seemed to know who leaked the story, at least the Elite Media claimed not to know. How they could they not when the story was broken by an Associated Press reporter?

Is it really people divorced from reality or people who no longer can even tell the truth? Whatever it is, it is why people don't want to be called liberal anymore.

The storm in which we fly

Roger Simon linked to this article in Esquire by Tom Junod. "The Case for George W. Bush, i.e., what if he's right?"

The text of the speech Jonud refers to is here.

EXCERPTS from the June speech:

This is the great challenge of our time, the storm in which we fly.

And,

And we have confidence that people share this vision of dignity and freedom in every culture because liberty is not the invention of Western culture, liberty is the deepest need and hope of all humanity.

And,

And here the vision of freedom has great advantages. Terrorists incite young men and women to strap bombs on their bodies and dedicate their deaths to the death of others. Free societies inspire young men and women to work, and achieve, and dedicate their lives to the life of their country. And in the long run, I have great faith that the appeal of freedom and life is stronger than the lure of hatred and death.

And,

As we fight the war on terror in Iraq and on other fronts, we must keep in mind the nature of the enemy. No act of America explains terrorist violence, and no concession of America could appease it. The terrorists who attacked our country on September the 11th, 2001 were not protesting our policies. They were protesting our existence. Some say that by fighting the terrorists abroad since September the 11th, we only stir up a hornet's nest. But the terrorists who struck that day were stirred up already. (Applause.) If America were not fighting terrorists in Iraq, and Afghanistan, and elsewhere, what would these thousands of killers do, suddenly begin leading productive lives of service and charity? (Laughter.) Would the terrorists who beheaded an American on camera just be quiet, peaceful citizens if America had not liberated Iraq? We are dealing here with killers who have made the death of Americans the calling of their lives. And America has made a decision about these terrorists: Instead of waiting for them to strike again in our midst, we will take this fight to the enemy.

And,

Our enemy can only succeed if we lose our will and faith in our own values.

Read it all. It's more relevant than anything the New York Times published in a year.

Reaction to Kerry speech

He's everything they wanted - a northeast Liberal from the Ted Kennedy school. Yet a number of liberal papers and writers you expected to be pleased were not.

The Washington Post was blunt. It was a "Missed Opportunity" and the speech a disappointment in many respects. They chide that Mr. Kerry missed an opportunity for straight talk. THIS, from a man who has talked and voted out of both sides of his mouth for months? What did they expect an overnight conversion? They criticize his promise to stop outsourcing and dependence on foreign oil as "are not grounded in reality," but they praise his health plan barely sketched by the candidate as a thoughtful approach. In their view, his plan to trim the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans to pay for health insurance and education was responsible. Who is really not grounded in reality?

Thomas Oliphant, writing in the Boston Globe, thought the speech "Rushed speech, lost opportunity" The problem, Oliphant, thinks was the length of the speech, not the incoherence NY Times' David Brooks found. The delivery was rushed, constrained by the meanness of the media allotment of 60 minutes as Tom Shales found the problem, which forced the audience to respond loudest to points about civil rights and civil liberties. Oliphant gushed over surely one of the weirdest phrases from a we-are-religious-too Kerry moment "In parts it was beautifully written (trees as "the cathedrals of nature")."
In Oliphant's view, Kerry was giving a "thematic overview," not a practice State of the Union speech. Maybe that's exactly how Americans should view the speech - a foretaste of the rush Kerry might make to judgements without benefit of the leadership that could bring his audience along with him. Kerry couldn't even bring along Oliphant.

Ken Fireman of Newsday had a lot to say, most favorable. Except where it matters. "Kerry's night, but it was the audience that mattered" Fireman worried that Kerry missed his opportunity with the audience.

Kerry's speech was not a short one -- 45 minutes from start to finish. But he spent relatively little time outlining his own plans and programs, something that may not sit well with swing voters who frequently tell pollsters and reporters they are looking for specifics.

Most liberal newspapers followed the lead of the New York Times.

Bringing back Amy Carter

Atlanticblog noticed a telling moment at the Convention other bloggers missed that aggravated me to no end.

The 2000 election brought back adults into the White House, and it struck me as likely that a Kerry victory would bring back the children. I did not realize just how literal that would be.

With her high-pitched delivery and breathy enthusiasm, the seventh-grader from Oakland, Calif., wowed the crowd Tuesday night. And when she chided Cheney for using a four-word expletive in an exchange with Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy, she brought delegates roaring to their feet.

'When our vice president had a disagreement with a Democratic senator, he used a really bad word,' Ilana said. 'If I said that word, I would be put in a timeout. I think he should be put in a timeout.'

Just about the same age as Amy Carter when her father turned to her for advice on nuclear weapons.

I had forgotten about Jimmy's reliance on Amy. Don't miss his great riff on Sociology. His whole site is great.

Toronto Star on Kerry

This can't be good. The Toronto Star is worried. When they describe Kerry's opponent as "folksy, plain-talking President George W. Bush" you know they have some deep fears about Kerry. And a lot of reservations.

Sullivan on Kerry's speech

Andrew Sullivan on why he cannot support Bush for another term. Referring to Kerry's view of religion, Sullivan wrote:

Beautiful. And important. The damage that president Bush has done to the delicate but vital boundary between religion and politics is one reason I cannot support him for another term. He is simply playing with a terrible fire with good intentions but fateful consequences.

There is no "delicate or vital boundary" between religion and politics, not in the history of this country with the exception of the Clinton years and look what that meant.

The separation of Church and State is a division the Left would like to see to avoid any higher authority than the State. In his heart Sullivan knows this, he just can't reconcile any principled morality he considers opposed to his desired lifestyle. Maybe Sullivan didn't notice, but the most spontaneous reaction of that crowd tonight was to the religious bits Sullivan considers irrelevant in public discourse. They were hungry for it. They were starved for it.

There was not a single other thing Sullivan liked in the speech, especially not the grown up parts of the job of president like having a foreign policy or having a clear, unambiguous, realistic health plan. Kerry's real appeal to Sullivan was for the call for unity and diversity Sullivan craves.

He liked the non-grownup parts. Sullivan is disappointing.

Homeland security Given Data on Arab-Americans

More nitpicking from the New York Times.

If only the Times displayed the same degree of indignation for the real, not imagined, mishandling of private information by the Clinton administration. Read my lips: We are at war, you idiots.

But then, if the Times had been as indignant at the murder of millions under Stalin as they have been critical of Homeland Security, Duranty would not have a Pulitzer.

Blog Commentary

  Some of the best comments found at Instapundit.

Funniest part to me: a man with a trial lawyer as a running mate complaining about the cost of health insurance.
Posted by Josh at July 29, 2004 11:05 PM
-------------------
The Dems can play "It's A Beautiful Day" and be pretend-positive all they want but that doesn't change their lunatic hatred of the President and their complete lack of solutions. Hell, nevermind solutions, they don't even understand what the challenges are.
Like most on the left, Kerry lives 100% in the past.
Posted by NR at July 29, 2004 11:05 PM
-------------------
John Kerry called Bush a liar, a thief, a needless killer of young Americans, and an abuser of the U.S. Constitution, and then asks whether we can't elevate the level of discourse and stop the attacks.

Instead of stronger at home and respected abroad, how about stronger abroad and respected at home?

Posted by charles austin at July 29, 2004 11:14 PM
-------------------
Posted by John at July 29, 2004 10:24 PM
Punish those who outsource but its ok to outsource for prescription drugs?
-------------------
Posted by ElvenPhoenix at July 29, 2004 10:28 PM
OMG, did he just say he served in Vietnam? Who knew??

John Kerry - I served in Vietnam, you know

There's no nice way to say it:  John Kerry is a political klutz.  It comes from having a long-time safe district in one of the most liberal states in the union where he never had to subject himself to public scrutiny.  Once in the spotlight, he seemed to forget that it wasn't about him, his life, his heroism, his service, his boat, his medals, his band of brothers, his time in Vietnam.

Starting off with his life of privilege wasn't the best way to win a blue collar audience.  Finishing off his speech with yet another reference to his Vietnam days on that boat in an attempt to make himself into a JFK PT-109 hero fell flat.  Incredibly, at one point he cut off his audience's chant of "USA USA USA USA" when the party is desperate to relaim patriotism.  In between, he hit every focus group shopping list at least once and pandered to every Democrat special interest group at least twice.  It was a speech written by a committee with the personal bits written by Kerry, delivered by a man with clumsy political instincts.

I suspect the Dems are cringing.

Familiar story

It's a familiar story in Africa.  If you think any of this might be propaganda, the U.N. Human Rights Commission Report from May 2004 says the same thing.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Not once does the Independent think it important to acknowledge that the janjaweed are Arabs. For that reason, I am making the substitution so you get the idea.

Women and children are being chained together and burnt alive by Sudanese militias Arabs rampaging in Darfur. The groups, known as the janjaweed, Arab militia arrived in villages on horseback, rounded up men, women and children, and set them alight in the market-place.

One man, sitting in the devastated village of Dugu in south Darfur, said: 'The janjaweed Arabs came, they grabbed these people; men, women, everyone and they burnt them. They even killed my son. He was only eight. There was at least one other child there too.'

Witnesses say they found between 10 and 15 bodies smouldering. Observers from the African Union found similar burnings in Sulei and Ehda in western Darfur, where 'the entire village had been burnt and deserted, except for a few men'. The AU observers added: 'This was an unwarranted and unprovoked attack on the civilian population by the janjaweed. Arab militia.'"

An equally familiar story at the U.N.

But at the United Nations, an explicit threat of sanctions against the Sudanese government if it fails to disarm the Arab militias could be dropped from a draft resolution today because of opposition from several countries, including Pakistan, Russia and China.

Sources believe although Britain and the United States have strongly favoured retaining the sanctions threat in the text, they were preparing to back down as the only way to attain broad support on the Sudan resolution in the Security Council. A vote on the draft resolution is likely to be taken today or tomorrow. It is likely to include a slightly less specific warning of "further measures" that would be considered to punish Khartoum if it has not restrained the Arab militias within 30 days. Five countries, led by Pakistan, say the Muslim Sudanese government should be given more time.

Sudan is a member of the United Nations Human Rights Commission. This is the full list of members. And this is the U.N. Human Rights Commission report in PDF format on the Sudan, based on investigation in April, written in May 2004.

Because we say so

At the end of a piece on Whining Doctors Without Borders was this curious quote.

The United Nations last month issued guidelines for military participation in humanitarian activities. One crucial recommendation was that, 'humanitarian work should be performed by humanitarian organisations'.

You know, the ones who work hand and hand with the U.N.

South African passports and terrorists

A South African Police Commissioner is quoted in this story about terrorists and S. Africa passports ": . . .the British police found boxes and boxes of South African passports in the home of one of these people, or an associate of these people . . ."

All legitimately bought, by the way. Not stolen. (or so the South Africans claim.)

AL-Jazeera sign removed at DNC convention

Curiously, this story was not found on the CBC, Toronto Star, Globe and Mail sites.

Americans tuning into television coverage of this week's Democratic convention will see signs for media outlets like CNN, ABC, NBC and CBS, but not Al Jazeera after the Arab satellite channel was asked to remove its banner near the podium.

How did the $30,000 banner get up there in the first place?

French pretensions

From a paper entitled "Fortress Europa: European Defense and the Future of the North Atlantic Alliance" by Robert Wilkie, a paper at the U.S. War College Quarterly site.

Next to Britain, France is the only other European nation with the potential and the inclination to project its armed forces abroad.  This potential is coupled with a historic vision of France as a great power, plus a defense industry that is among the world's most prolific and advanced.  Every French government since Charles de Gaulle established the Fifth Republic in 1958 --- and subsequently took his country out of NATO's integrated military command --- has attempted to maintain a semblance of France's former status by goading the United States and publicly questioning Washington's leadership of the Western world.

France has always been the strongest proponent of European integration as a counterweight to American political and economic strength.   The remarkable rapprochement between de Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer after World War II was in part the result of the French leader's desire to create a Franco- German alliance that would serve as the European answer to the coalition of les anglo saxons in Washington and London.

In spite of their pretensions, the French never denied the importance of the transatlantic partnership to Western security.   During major crises ranging from Berlin, Cuba, and the Euromissile debate of the 1980s, France stood with the United States.   Rhetorically, President Jacques Chirac promoted the European defense capability as a chance to preserve the Atlantic Alliance and ensure that Washington remained tied to the future of the continent.   But there should also be no mistake: France views the creation of an independent European security force as the capstone on its drive to see the EU, with France at its heart, as a world power to be given the same deference afforded the United States.  

France's strategic perspective is a reflection of the rabid anti-Americanism among Europe’s chattering classes.   Ironically, as the European Union continues to expand, the sheer number of members may well dilute France’s influence on the continent as more centers of power emerge.   Should France hold the prospect of EU membership over the heads of NATO’s newest partners in exchange for acquiescing in Paris’s drive for a diminished American role in Europe, the self-indulgent transparency of such a play would be difficult for even for the French to sustain.

Hence, I suppose the French-authored EU constitution the French are urging on member EU countries.

My favorite quote:
“France cannot accept a politically unipolar world or the unilateralism of a single hyperpower.” -- Hubert Vedrine, French Minister of Foreign Affairs, 1998

EU's Solana Chides Washington over Unilateralism

The EU constitution hasn't been ratified and legally they don't have a foreign policy chief, but that wouldn't stop Javier Solana

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana in Hungary this week said the United States and the European Union needed to work together to make the world safer. But he admitted Washington often preferred to act unilaterally.

He had a lot to say.

“We disagree about the death penalty," he said. "We disagree about the International Tribunal. We disagree about all these things linked to multilateralism in which we believe and (in which) they believe less. And to a certain extent the big military power may probably think that it is not necessary (to have) the rule based societies. But for us we believe that the rule based societies are fundamental.

But Solano's history is anything but based on rules.

His election [in 1995 to head NATO] was a surprise to many, including 52 USA congressmen who telegraphically protested his appointment because of his alleged Marxism and open Castro sympathies. He had once been on the USA's own subversive list.

He isn't above unilateralism and pre-emption either. Here Nor does he object to military force, per se, if you read his 1999 speech to the Council on Foreign Relations.

. . . diplomacy can often only succeed when it is backed up with the credible threat of military force.

The force he means is the U.S. military and the resources -- U.S. At HIS disposal.

In 1999 David Horowitz noted

In fact, most of the principal leaders of the present NATO alliance—Clinton, Solana, Blair, Schroeder and D'Alema—have long been members of the political left. During the Cold War, they were either supporters of the Soviet side (D'Alema was a Communist), or active anti-war protesters or backers of the nuclear-freeze movement which opposed the efforts of the NATO leaders at the time and the Reagan Administration to preserve nuclear parity (and thus military parity) with the Warsaw Pact. That they are the architects of a "progressive" war of aggression in the Balkans, and a newly conceived NATO is hardly reassuring. Indeed, if the present war has demonstrated anything at all, it is that the NATO alliance in its newly conceived form has already become a serious liability for the United States. At the 50th Anniversary Summit, NATO Secretary General Javier Solana explained NATO’s re-conception in the following way: "We are moving into a system of international relations in which human rights, rights to minorities every day, are much more important, and more important even than sovereignty."  [bolding mine]

He's talking about our sovereignty. Our ability to make choices independent from the international organizations Solana represents.

When the World Socialists call Solana a radical, should we be worried or amused?

UPDATE

Updating this story on chess master Bobby Fischer's woes. Japan turned down his appeal. The story, however, has this wonderfully revealing passage. [bolding mine]

The decision was made Tuesday at the end of a two-day hearing, according to John Bosnitch, a Canadian journalist who acted as an adviser to Mr. Fischer during the proceedings. Mr. Fischer, who considers his detention “a kidnapping,” can appeal again, Mr. Bosnitch said.

Bosnitch is a colorful person. Here, here and here.

Trolling for voters in foreign places

Kerry has reason to believe that foreign leaders support him.   It might be that foreign voters will be a big factor too.   Count his sister in that category.
Expats are being encouraged to vote by Kerry's sister, co-chair of OverseasVote2004.com  

Doctors Without Balls bails

Reported   The French relief agency Médecins Sans Frontières said it is pulling out of Afghanistan, discouraged by a fruitless investigation into the slayings of five of its workers and fearful of new attacks.

All understandable. But, then there is this:

...three main reasons: the dangers on the ground, disappointment that the investigation into the June killings has gone nowhere and what it called the U.S. military's use of humanitarian aid for political and military motives.

U.S. and NATO troops run several so-called Provincial Reconstruction Teams across the country, under which soldiers provide health care, dig wells and perform other work normally carried out by civilians.

Aid groups have long feared that the practice blurs the lines between relief work and soldiers' efforts to persuade local communities to provide intelligence

Uh huh.  So are the purely humanitarian-motivated Doctors are abandoning their patients because of "poor security" fears an AP reporter manages to inject into his story, competition, or other pragmatic reasons?

Dig out the kevlar

When the diehard leftwing Canadian Globe and Mail asks, "Would the Palestinian people be better off if Yasser Arafat resigned?
in their daily poll it isn't Arafat who should be worried. His usual practice is to shoot his opponents.

Conventional convention

We watched very little of the Democrat convention.   But, then, that's a family tradition.  There hasn't been anything remotely interesting in conventions of either party since the 70s when the smoke-filled backrooms were eliminated and the choice of candidate became a foregone conclusion.

Still, last night we caught Howard Dean's speech.   Bizarre as the man.   You have to wonder how low the Democrats wanna go to find a base.   Still, he is as strange as Teresa Kerry.   Strangest of all were the disjointed images from the floor where delegates waved their hands in time to the music.   It was weirdly like the party itself.   No more than two people appeared to share the rhythm.   It's like they all heard a different tune, barely making eye contact with each other, each in their own worlds, much like their party.   Organized it wasn't.

I keep hoping the Republicans will come up with something different.  Like banning red suits for women, a holdover from the power-for-women 1980s look that was always unflattering.   How many women do you know who wear red suits, for God's sake, let alone look good in the color?   It would be refreshing to see Dick Cheney in bluejeans, sans the lumberjack shirt look of Lamar Alexander that looked more calcuated than homespun.   Too, I would like to see the speakers focus less on the camera than Dick Gephardt last night.  With a zit to the left of his nose, he looked more than ever like Howdy Doody and his sometimes fixed stare at the camera was disconcerting.   It was for the benefit of the big screen television but it looked oddly like he was transfixed, mesmerized by some unseen offscreen human prompter, probably some guy from the Teamsters Union with the cue cards.

Conventions ought to have some suspense, but that went out in the 70s.   Conventions should have, too.   It isn't as if the voter is remotely interested in watching their candidate disappoint them.

All about Teresa

No single quote from the American Thinker's piece on Teresa Kerry would do it justice. You just have to read it all.

The tie that binds

Hugh Hewett mentioned Peter Yarrow singing "Puff the Magic Dragon" at the convention. Page Six remembered back in January that Yarrow was a close friend of Kerry's who has been "warming up crowds in Massachsetts" for his buddy. (Yarrow is godfather to Kerry's daughter.) He also remembers Yarrow was jailed for having sex with a 14-year old back in 1970.

Yarrow served three months of a one- to three-year prison sentence and was pardoned by Jimmy Carter in 1981.

Small world.

ABC will never touch this one

The French have been accused of having no humor before but this is ridiculous. State-owned Electricité de France has scheduled a disciplinary hearing for a part-time economist who wrote a book poking fun at French office life.

In chapters bearing titles such as "The Cretins Who Sit Next To You", "The Dice Are Loaded Against You", "Business Culture: My Arse!" and "Why You Lose Nothing By Resigning", Ms Maier rages at the hypocrisy of big French companies.

She describes how middle managers who have no strings to pull fail to win promotion to senior positions that she sees as monopolised by well-connected alumni of the elite grandes écoles.

Sounds like someone ought to get a sense of humor.
Is being insuffienctly respectful a crime for French citizens now? Or does that only apply to the U.S.?

ABC cheers as homosexual marriage advances

Trust me.  It's in the bag.  French Court Annuls France Homosexual Marriage   The couple will, of course, appeal the ruling to the European Court of Human Rights who will promptly overrule the decision.   Gay marriage will be legal in France, French politicans will avoid fallout from the decision by subordinating French sovereignty to an unrepresentative European Court.   The bonus is that gays will be grateful enough to contribute to Chirac's party.   Voila!   the done deal.

This is how representative democracy is no longer representative.  Nor democratic.

N.Y. Times Unaware Abortion Article Centered on Abortion-Rights Activist

Yeah. Like we believe the New York Times did not know.

Editors at the New York Times Magazine say they are going to publish a note to readers saying they were unaware that a woman featured in a firsthand account of her decision to abort two of her triplet fetuses was a prominent crusader for abortion rights.

The New York Sun had no problem finding out about Ms. Richards.

A Google search on Amy Richards pulls up several short biographies of her. One on Feminist.com, for which she writes an advice column, describes how Ms. Richards in 1992 founded the Third Wave, a feminist organization that is geared toward younger women and funds abortions, and has co-authored two books on feminism, one of them titled “Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future.”

A 1992 graduate of Barnard College, Ms. Richards also is a paid consultant to Gloria Steinem and serves on Planned Parenthood of New York’s Council of Advocates.

What a disgusting human being. Next, I expect we will find out that she wasn't even pregnant. What is it with the Left that makes them lie so much? Probably because before the internet, no one ever called em on it. Certainly not the New York Times.

Muslim charity indicted

Another Hamas support group seems destined for the courts. Muslim charity Holy Land Foundation indicted in Dallas, accused of dealing with terrorists:

A Muslim charity shut down by the U.S. government in the aftermath of Sept. 11 was charged along with seven men Tuesday with supporting terrorists by funneling money to Hamas, the extremist group responsible for suicide bombings in Israel.

How come all these groups have a New Jersey director?

The (snicker) transatlantic alliance

Matt Welch at the Reason convention blog interviews usless writer on how to repair the transatlantic alliance.

Voila!   Ze solution!  We have to acknowledge European superiority!   We haf to respect zem!   We have to ... crown them??!

Multiculturalists and countries like Canada, have been able to "punch above their weight" for too long.  No mega-media would reveal how utterly stupid multiculturalists really are, but the Clowns in the Closet are making a beeline for the microphones.

Oceans apart

Wretched sums up the difference between conservative and liberal attitudes in "Boston and New York."

The Democratic convention in Boston underscores how deeply September 11 has changed the political landscape for diametrically opposite reasons. For many conservatives the attack represented the first shot in a war waged against America. In contrast many liberals felt it was the response to the attack that opened hostilities against America; that there was no war except that which we subsequently called down on our feckless heads. John Kerry's slogan to 'restore respect for America abroad' and to 'make it safer' are an explicit accusation that we have created, or at least amplified the danger which faces us now.

In my view, Conservatives and liberals are, literally, oceans apart in their response to the 9/11 attack.   The Atlantic ocean, to be specific.

There is nothing new about the liberals and their faith in multiculturalism and multinationalism and their belief that anyone, any country, is preferable to the U.S.   They might even kid themselves that there is some redeeming value to international organizations like the U.N., but those beliefs are strictly European, not American.   It is not the American way to wait around for the Internationalists to get around to defending us.   Europeans can't even defend themselves, let alone the rest of the world.

Europeans would not, or could not, intervene in Bosnia without the U.S. forces at the forefront.   And the international community was particularly negligent in Rwanda.   Come to think of it, they had the same problem in Cambodia,   in Uganda,   in the Congo,  Zimbabwe,   South Africa,   East Timor,   the Phillipines,   containing Marxist guerillas in Columbia or halting terrorism in Northern Ireland.   Nor have they been effective in countering continuing slavery in Africa,   illegal drugs,  moneylaundering,  or investigating their own malfeasance.

The problem is that the international community has no more interest in defending the United States than they have in defending Israel, anymore than they had in confronting the Soviet Union.   All for the same reason - they did not want to put themselves in danger.   It is a combination of cowardice, incredible self-absorption and pathological self-interest.  What they really despise is the fact that the U.S. is demanding they grow up.

Briefly noted

More French obstructionism.   What a surprise.   See related story on France and the Sudan. MORE French obstructionism.

German reality check.   Short version -- We're going broke.   Continuing story:   Still, no vote in Germany on the EU constitution because it might lose.   Then there is the you-knew-it-was-coming category:   Religious symbols to be banned  in Germany for public employees.   That's what?   40% of the employment force?

Beheading Battle
Relatives of Jordanians held by terrorists (not militants) in Iraq have threated to behead the director and employees of the Jordanian company that employed the hostages unless the company withdraws from Jordan.   It must be a Middle East thing.

This side of the Atlantic
Another sign of cultural barbarianism. Jerry Springer in the limelight   This time, at the Democrat convention in Boston.

At the drop of a hat, TV talk show host and Ohio delegate Jerry Springer will count off the litany of national TV appearances he has been doing while in Boston.

Without a doubt, he's the most sought-after delegate from Ohio and among the best known in the entire convention delegation.

Worse,

He was handed a spot in Boston as a voting delegate for John Edwards because of the huge amounts of money he has brought into the Ohio Democratic Party, either directly through his own contributions or by making fund-raiser appearances.

It's Ohio.  What else can we say?

A Matter of Honor

Another publishing fake.

The simple fact is, frauds are great for publishing,' says Patrick Gallagher, Allen &Unwin's managing and publishing director. Gallagher admires the attitude of Parisian booksellers who have refused to withdraw Norma Khouri's disputed book from sale. Instead, they're using its new-found notoriety as a pitch to push sales.

The book in question is Forbidden Love, a fabricated story about honor killing in Jordan penned by a woman that turned out to be an outright fiction, much like 1992 Nobel Peace prize for woman writer Rigoberta Menchu's   "bogus, multi-cultural agitprop" book

I would ask if the Left has no shame, but I already know the answer.

Hypocrisy

Janet Albrechtsen in The Australian nails it.

The UN system works to legitimate rather than obliterate terrorism. The Nobel peace prize committee got one thing right. Tragically, the UN is "an organisation that can hardly become more than its members permit". On the terrorism front so far, that has meant UN-fomented terrorism and a UN-inspired definition of self-defence that prevents a country from defending itself against terrorists. At that rate, let's hope the UN digs its own grave before it digs one for the rest of us.

Read it all.

Drugs Seen as Root of Instability in West Africa

Talk about a Lost Continent. When do you remember Africa having any stability?   If you guessed under Colonialization, you are probably right.   Dictators,  Marxism,   Cuban troops,  diamond wars,  drought, famine,   disease.   Fly-blinded natives and children with distended bellies.   Pity-picture-seeking rock stars and aid agencies posing for their publicists.   Africans have endured it all.   Now drugs.

Interpol says regional drug trafficking has been on the rise in the last decade. Analysts say South American drugs destined for Europe are increasingly coming via West Africa because of a crackdown in the United States.

Symptomatic of the problem, though, is the final paragraph that sums up priorities.

Progress in the fight against the drug trade is also being used to reduce other cross-border criminal activity, such as illegal logging, child trafficking, and prostitution.

I know that illegal logging is high on my list. /sarcasm off

NATO, UN Accused of Failing in Kosovo

This is news?   "NATO, UN Accused of Failing in Kosovo Human Rights Watch accuses NATO and the UN and,

specifically accused French peacekeepers serving with KFOR of not helping besieged Serbs in the northern village of Svinjare 'even though their main base was just a few hundred meters (yards) away.'

Yeah.   We need closer relations with foreign governments and international organizations like the U.N.   I know * I * want to be protected by a bloated bureacracy.

The Aid Game

Mo money, mo money.

"..the Netherlands has promised EUR 100 million for the reconstruction of the violence-torn region Darfur."

Just what starving blacks need - roads, telephones, airports and palaces for the political class.

In addition, the EU is gonna stop the violence.   Sometime.   Eventually.   Maybe.   In a few months.

Van Ardenne was speaking after the EU met on Monday in Brussels and issued a warning to Sudan, threatening it will call for the UN to take further action if the situation in Darfur has not improved within three months.

Note to Sudanese:   I know it's a lot to ask you to do without food for three months while armed Arabs try to kill you, but there's the French investment in Sudanese oil to consider.

It's a game folks. The aid money is essentially laundered through international organizations like the UN and the NGOs who administer it, every one of them, including the donor country and the dictator getting their take. It's more lucrative than drug dealing. And no sniffer dogs (or mega media, for that matter.)

Reality therapy

I wish someone had hacked this news site to make up this story.

A second round of therapy has been offered to the members of the jury that tried Belgian child-killer Marc Dutroux, it was reported on Tuesday.

It took seven years for the trial, resulted in a 1,000,000 march against the government, implicated govenment and police officials in the case, brought down one government, and Belgians aren't remotely bothered. The reality of the details of the case, however, traumatize them.

Poor babies.

New Poll

Canadian poll.

John Kerry may still be in a tight contest with President George W. Bush in opinion polls of U.S. voters, but if they ran north of the border, there is no doubt that the Massachusetts senator would win handily.

French Canadians are very positive.

It shows that a majority of Canadians (60 per cent) would vote for Mr. Kerry over Mr. Bush (22 per cent).

Republicans who snicker at Mr. Kerry for looking a bit too "French" wouldn't be surprised by the poll's regional breakdowns. Among Canadians, Quebeckers tend to harbour the most positive judgments about their New England neighbour. Respondents from la belle province were most likely to say they would vote for Mr. Kerry (69 per cent).

But they admire American citizens (73%) except for Quebec (66%).   On a less positive note, extapolating a bit, some 27% to 34% hate our guts.  

Mostly, though, the Canadia mega-media would like to run our foreign policy.

In general, a majority of respondents believed Mr. Kerry would do a better job than Mr. Bush in building relationships with other world leaders (62 per cent), in being a friend to Canada (56 per cent) and in dealing with Prime Minister Paul Martin and his government (54 per cent).

It's useless, of course, to ask with what world leaders Bush should build friendships.   What they really mean is that president Bush should, like Bill Clinton, defer to international organizations like the U.N. or pretend the EU is really a democratic organization not rife with corrupt bureaucrats elected by 24% of the voting populations in their countries.   Or maybe it's just that president Bush, unlike Bill Clinton, won't bow to the mega-media as though THEY, not he, are in charge.

To the rescue!

After 15 months of violence, 30,000 dead, a million refugees and 2.2 million "in urgent need of food or medical attention." the U.N. has decided to intervene in Sudan.

The United Nations plans to send a peacekeeping mission by the end of 2004 to Darfur, a region the size of Iraq with a population of 6.7 million.

As Mark Steyn noted, by the time these folks act everyone is dead.

By their timetable, they should start being indignant about American deaths on 9/11 about... next year.

A display of Power

As a display of power, Teresa Kerry's confrontation with Pittsburg reporter Colin McNickle was impressive. In a speech, Mrs. Kerry referred to the "creeping, un-Pennyslvanian, and sometimes un-American traits" in our politics. Asked by reporter Colin McNickle what she meant by "Un-American." she said. "I did not say that." and she continued to say "I did not say that. I did not say that." Then: "Why are you putting words in my mouth?" She then walked away and then almost a minute later, came back to the same reporter and started all over again, ending in the famous "Shove it!"

The fact is, she did say it. She lied. But, then, so did the mega-media when they focused on her "feisty" response rather than the facts. It is the power of our mega-media that they can obscure the truth, deflect criticism, or, project it at will, protect the favored and hound the opposition and obliterate the truth whenever it is inconvenient. (Toronto Star report includes text and her denial.) It is a surreal Big Brother world. It isn't new.

UPDATE: Nor am I unique in noticing it. Blogger JustOneMinute noticed.

It reminds me of what was most dispicable about the Clinton Administration. The President's perjury caught on tape, a weasely denial of the truth, under oath, to a court of law. The travel office employees fired to make way for Hollywood friends, the 500 FBI files handed over to a bartender, personnel records from the Pentagon released in violation of law. The final finger at his opponents, Clinton's pardons quickly forgotten, the issue never revived and the spector of Clinton addressing the 2004 Convention as if he was not a discredited and dishonored, impeached president. And there is Jimmy Carter soundly applauded, a president even diehard Democrats acknowledge was one of the worst in history.

So, too, there are distant images of Madeline Albright at that one-time only confrontation with the public where she looked like a deer in the headlights. She never again appeared before a less than friendly media audience. For sheer power, there is the death of 60 Americans in Waco. Kent State is a symbol of evil military power to the Democrats, but two people were killed and none of them were women, children and small babies. All conveniently forgotten by our mega-media as are the images of the Miami raid, complete with black, window-darkened SUV's and men in heavy armor and military weapons, knocking down witnesses, storming a small house to retrieve a small boy and confront him and his uncle in a closet. Erased. Gone. Forgotten. Does not compute in mega-media memory.

Blogs are not diaries. They are the means to inject truth and reality in the public arena. In a world where the publisher of the New York Times carries around a stuffed moose to represent truthtellin, it is necessary that someone do it.

Video clip.

It's officially a fraud

It's safe. We can now refer to the Hoy circulation scandal as a circulation fraud scandal except in the title of the article as in this Editor and Publisher item: 'Hoy' to Readers: We'll Get to Bottom of Scandal

In an open letter to readers published Friday, Hoy's interim publisher, Digby Solomon Diez, promised that the circulation fraud scandal at the Tribune Co. Spanish-language daily 'will never happen again under any circumstances.'

We're so happy. On another note, E&P has concluded that the press is not liberal.

Trust em.

USA Today

It's not censorship. Really.

Pressed as to why Coulter's column was rebuffed, [USA Today editor] Gallagher said that it was not an attempt to silence or "censor" the columnist, but was simply due to a "difference of opinion over editing -- words, voice, that sort of thing." He also stated that severing the new relationship between the paper and Coulter was a "mutual decision -- in the end.

Human Events presents the column and USA Today editor remarks here.

Judge for yourself.

Andrew Sullivan

At least we know that Andrew Sullivan is not one of those much-hated Neo-Cons. They have convictions. Clearly, Sullivan has a mission, but he overestimates his value to conservatives if he thinks to dissuade a single one from their beliefs. It's a monumental conceit to think that withholding his endorsement could persuade social conservatives to act against their religion and blithely toss their Bibles aside to accomodate his wishes on gay marriage. It's something he has been toying with for months. It's petty of him to endorse Kerry for spite when they don't.

Simply put, Sullivan has gone around the bend. Timothy Noah reviewing David Brock's Blinded by the Right found Brock to be "whiny, histrionic, and so factually unreliable that Chatterbox practically gave himself a migraine trying to figure out which parts of Brock's lurid story were true, and which parts were false." So, too, we will always wonder about Sullivan's writings. We've been reading his histronics on gay marriage for months. It got so it was hard to find anything else to read on his site.

It's sad, but as Noah subtitled his review, "A lifelong habit proves hard to break." For Brock, it was being a liar. For Sullivan, the habit is being gay above all else.

Sullivan lives with his HIV daily, but that was HIS choice and the consequence of HIS decisions in life. I am opposed to gay marriage but not gay unions. Liberals have destroyed so many institutions in the last thirty years. From schools to churches, classrooms to the family unit. They denigrate concepts of integrity and decency, honesty and faith. And above all, truth. Make no mistake: gay activists will not stop until all churches are compelled to perform gay marriage services despite deeply-held religious beliefs, and when the few defy orders that demand they do so, the activists will insist that no religious marriage will be acceptable. And the courts they have carefully selected will back them.

Just as gay activists circumvented parents to teach fisting to children in Massachusetts, they are determined to undermine this legal definition of a family. Andrew Sullivan can't see it. He only sees his own victimization.

Quote of the Day

Doug Bandow on "selective reduction

Yet abortion really is not about choice. It is about consequence. The consequences of choices freely made.

Consider Richards. She chose to have sex with someone. She chose to go off the pill. Choices appropriately left to her, unregulated by government.

But having enjoyed the freedom to make those choices, she wanted to avoid responsibility for the results: becoming pregnant with triplets.

If you want the right to choose to have sex with whomever you want whenever you want, you can't act surprised when a child (or children) shows up. Especially if you knowingly dropped birth control.

...But accountability is fundamental, especially for a society that claims to be both free and good."

Ann Coulter column spiked by USA Today

This Ann Coulter column was spiked by USA Today. Of course, it is not censorship. That's when you disagree with liberals and boo at a Linda Ronstadt concert. Or vote against reading Doonesbury. It's even censorship when you disagree with the Dixie Chicks.

Of course, Ann Coulter does not have a right to free speech. That's reserved for people who own a press and leftwing liars like Michael Moore who couldn't lie enough to be disqualified by USA Today.

Thank goodness we have the internet.

Archivist's Resignation

The Washington Post loves quoting impartial sources. Archivists's Resignation Questioned.

Archivist of the United States John W. Carlin was pushed by the White House in December to submit his resignation without being given any reason, Senate Democrats disclosed last week at a hearing to consider President Bush's nomination of his successor.

After being asked to resign in December, National Archivist John Carlin wrote to Sen Carl Levin (D-Mich) to whine that "he would like to remain in his post for four more months" ostensibly to complete a project. (And hope that Kerry would win the election.)

Impartial themselves, the Washington Post fails to mention that Carlin was a highly partisan Democrat governor who ran Clinton's campaign in Kansas. They seem to have forgotten, too, that Carlin isn't without his detractors among them the even more highly partisan John Dean of Watergate fame.

Dean wrote:

The law also says that the President must appoint the Archivist "without regard to political affiliations and solely on the basis of the professional qualifications required to perform the duties and responsibilities of the office of Archivist."

Clinton didn't follow this provision: Carlin was a former Democratic governor of Kansas with no archival experience. Neither has Bush. Allen Weinstein is hardly a political neutral. Although he is a registered Democrat, he has close ties with conservative Republicans, and has become something of a champion of their
Cold War views.

Both Presidents ought to be faulted for politicizing our nation's archival records and our history. And Clinton's wrong does not create a precedent for Bush to follow.

Joseph Farah of WorldnetDaily wrote in 1999.

Most people have no idea who the national archivist is.

His name is John W. Carlin, the former governor of Kansas, who got the very political appointment in 1995 over the objections of some historians and researchers who believed the job should go to a professional with some qualifications in the area. In fact, 16 organizations, including the National Coordinating Committee for the Promotion of History, opposed Carlin's nomination -- something of a surprise. I don't remember hearing a word about this tempest in a teapot. His nomination was approved without debate or roll call in the Senate as part of a consent motion that included seven other presidential nominees.

Now, it turns out, Carlin and Sandy Berger will hold in their hands the ability, on behalf of the president, to get federal files -- even classified documents -- on just about anybody for any reason.

As a Lucianne poster pointed out. "Is this the guy that contacted Bruce Lindsay instead of the FBI when he witnessed Berger stealing archives? "

Post-moral confusion

If you read nothing else today, go to Melanie Phillips' blog. She takes Andrew Sullivan and the Tories to task in "Our post-moral confusion".

Sullivan is all over the place on the war: a faint-heart who, while ostensibly still supporting it, has nevertheless succumbed to the absurd and irrational propaganda of the anti-war mob that says because no WMD have been found they never existed, and that Abu Ghraib destroyed America’s claim to moral superiority over terrorist rogue states. But the significance of his remarks extends beyond the immediate issue of the war. They reveal a moral equivalence that is fundamentally illiberal and unconservative. This is hardly surprising, given Sullivan’s well-known views as a passionate crusader for gay rights, and for the liberalisation of soft drugs on the basis that they do no harm to anyone (someone should show him the psychiatric wards full of people suffering from marijuana psychosis and other mental ailments that directly harm not only the drug users themselves but those who come into contact with them and indeed the wider society).

But the key point is that Sullivan defines himself as a conservative. And there are many within the British Conservative party who hold very similar views on both domestic and foreign issues. But these British Tories are not conservatives. Nor are they authentic liberals (not the same as the statist left, although in the US the terms are even more confusingly conflated). They are libertines, people who have gone with the contemporary cultural flow of destroying moral rules and boundaries. And it is these pseudo-conservatives who tend to be on that wing of the party that is having a fit of the vapours about nation-building and preventive action in the Middle East, and love instead the EU and the UN and John Kerry. They prefer the stability of tyranny and its world export, genocidal terrorism. They are, in short, appeasers and sometimes even fellow-travellers of wrong-doing, both at home and abroad.

Such people often think of themselves as liberals. But authentic liberalism is very different. For it was at its core a moral project, based on the desire to suppress the bad and promote the good in the belief that a better society could and should be built. What has happened in recent decades is that this moral core which upholds social norms and discriminates against values that threaten them has been replaced by a post-modern creed of the left, which has tried to destroy all external authority and moral norms and the institutions that uphold them, and replace them by an individualist, moral free-for-all the creed which has led to the moral relativism and denial of truth that lie at the core of the anti-war movement.

And,

Where Sullivan is absolutely right is to call Bush a liberal. For in repudiating the corrupted values of both the post-moral left and the reactionary appeasers of the right, Bush has indeed exhibited the classic liberal desire to build a better society, along with the characteristic liberal optimism that such a project can and must succeed.

And this is surely why Bush is so hated by the left. For this hatred wildly exceeds the normal dislike of a political opponent. It is as visceral and obsessive as it is irrational. At root, this is surely because Bush has got under the skin of the post-moral left in a way no true conservative ever would. And this is because he has stolen their own clothes and revealed them to be morally naked. He has exposed the falseness of their own claim to be liberal. He has revealed them instead to be reactionaries, who want both to preserve the despotic and terrorist status quo abroad and to go with the flow of social and moral collapse at home, instead of fighting all these deformities and building a better society.

Read it all.

Blog coverage of convention

This is one site I will be visiting a lot - blogger coverage of the Democrat convention from Matt Welch and Tim Blair in Boston here.

Hedging on Iraq

Victor David Hanson's "Hedging on Iraq" wondering how Americans will eventually decide on the merits of the war, had this:

A dying generation of aging dissidents is desperately trying to find some final redemption to their life-long suspicion of the United States military. For these Vietnam-era retirees, the televised mayhem from Iraq, not the other 25.9 million Iraqis living in relative calm, will always be the second coming of rice paddies and Rolling Thunder.

Many of those who detest the war, I suspect, are committed to an Internationalist movement that cannot succeed if challenged on a single issue. This makes them less than an ideological movement than a power-for-power's sake cabal. There is no defining, pervasive ideology to bind the Internationalists, no band of brotherhood carved in philosophy or a long-term ideological plan. The Internationalists are not even united on economic models. They use their opposition to the U.S. to motivate their members, a scheme based on envy and fueled by resentment and European anti-semitism. They long ago abandoned Christianity, and Secularism is not so much a choice as a opposing position. They do not want freedom from religion; they want the end of religion.

Having committed themselves to be the Opposition, having defined themselves as resisters, they have no choice but oppose every action they have not themselves introduced. This is why so many of their actions are perceived as irrational. They vote for the war, but not the funds. They stand with the U.S. only when they think their country will fail so that they can be the Opposition. The rewards are great for their resistance. The New York Times loves em, the rest of the media falling in behind in slavish support. Old Europe, the French Club of the corrupt, beams happily. The world leaders Kerry says support him over George Bush are the same people who stood passively at the sidelines in Rwanda, in Iraq, in the Congo, Uganda, Kenya and the Sudan. It's a role they have practiced as uncommitted spectators of Pol Pot's madness, Robert Mugabe's insanity in Zimbabwe, for necklacing in South Africa. These are the world leaders who propped up Saddam Hussein, found no alarm in Al-Quida, express outrage in East Timor but are curiously silent about Chinese Marxists in Tibet or the Chinese threat to Taiwan.

As for voters, that large number of uncommitted are simply unconcerned with anything but their own well being. This has always been so in politics. It's what the MTv "Get out the vote" campaign is designed to do - encourage the uniformed to go to the polls. Mass man, mass vote. This election will determine whether the majority of Americans want to define themselves that way.

Communism failed, not only because it was irrational, but because it was empty of meaning and substance. Communism was confrontation. Just like Internationalism is today.

Dutch State 'paying for Iraq's mustard gas'

The Dutch government bailed out a Dutch chemical country that supplied Saddam Hussein with mustard gas chemicals. Link

In 1985, Melchemie exported base chemicals for the production of mustard gas to Iraq for EUR 1 million. The Arnhem-based company was never paid by Iraq, but was later relieved of the debt by the Dutch government via export credit insurance. The government then took over the Iraqi account. . .

Melchemie was found guilty in 1987 of supplying four base mustard gas chemicals to Iraq. In March 1988, more than 4,000 Kurdish people were killed by a deadly gas in the Iraq city Halabja, but a direct link between the Melchemie-exported materials and the gas used has never been proven.

No wonder the EU resents the U.S. invading Iraq.

Al Jazeera

Canada recently added Al Jazeera to their television because the station is anti-American. No doubt it will please Canadians to listen to American captives forced to plead for their lives. Iraq, by comparison, seems more civilized, doesn't it? Story.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari accused regional satellite channels of inciting violence and hinted Iraq might stop Al Jazeera operating in the country.

Even the Iraqis get it.

French uranium

One of those little tidbits that make you wonder. This from a story at the Independent:

Norman Dombey, retired professor of theoretical physics at Sussex University, said yesterday that the Butler report wrongly described Iraq's stocks of uranium as unprocessed. But Professor Dombey, credited with pointing out numerous flaws in the story of an Iraqi defector whose nuclear claims were widely circulated in the US during the 1990s, was more critical of the committee's intelligence findings on the Niger issue. 'The Butler report says the claim was credible because an Iraqi diplomat visited Niger in 1999, and almost three-quarters of Niger's exports were uranium. But this is irrelevant, since France controls Niger's uranium mines,' he said"

Bolding mine. Fascinating.

UN resolution punishing Sudan off until next week

While Rome burns, the international crowd, once again, fiddles with indecision and bickering.   A U.S.-sponsored UN resolution was delayed until next week.

In the 15-nation U.N. Security Council, Russia, China, Philippines, Pakistan, Algeria and Brazil are waiting to see what Khartoum will do. The two sub-Saharan African members, Angola and Benin, have not made their positions clear.

Chile and Europeans Britain, France, Spain, Germany and Romania either support the U.S. resolution or want the tougher measures, council sources said.

The Bush administration, will not, unlike the Clinton administration, defer to these dithering idiots.

Colin Powell visited the Sudan on Tuesday, "the first visit there by a senior U.S. official in two decades," according to China Daily.   And reportedly, the U.S. has issued deadlines of their own.   Naturally, the French object.

In Darfur, it would be better to help the Sudanese get over the crisis so their country is pacified rather than sanctions which would push them back to their misdeeds of old," junior Foreign Minister Renaud Muselier told French radio.

Mr Muselier also dismissed claims of "ethnic cleansing" or genocide in Darfur.  Cynically, the BBC chooses not to criticise the French, although there is this:

France led opposition to US moves at the UN over Iraq.   As was the case in Iraq, France also has significant oil interests in Sudan.

Really.

Denial

What crisis? asks the New York Times's favorite romantic revolutionary.

Governing class accountability

Linked by Instapundit, Colbert King wonders if Sandy Berger is a test case for governing class accountability.

I don't see it that way. I am inclined to believe that the government would be better off holding out the possibility of prosecution in order to gain some information from Sandy Berger. The only way we will know they have failed is if they indict him. Mr. Berger seems like a man who has a lot to hide. It would explain his reckless actions in destroying classified documents, something he has already admitted to doing. I want to know why and also what else Mr. Berger has done that could bear some close scrutiny.

In face of the sudden, inexplicable, unpredicted upsurge in countries who are developing or have recently developed nuclear weapons and the problems at Livermore and other facilities and the transfer of missile technology while Mr. Berger was effectively in charge of national security, as well as wondering about Mr. Berger's lobbying efforts on behalf of the Chinese, I am holding off seeing the Manchurian Candidate. This story is infinitely more fraught with danger.

UPDATE: There is something lacking in the WashPo reporter story. The more I think of it, it's because it's a classic lawyer "charge em or shut up" defense.

Let em eat cake

They can't provide jobs or a way to make a living, but the French government will provide a place to fritter away the unemployment time.

A second Louvre museum is to be built in northern France in order to display some of the gallery's vast collection of unseen treasures and to improve access to the nation's cultural heritage in one of its most run-down regions.

It sounds purely frivilous, but this "Let em eat cake" attitude is shared by liberals and socialists worldwide.

Whether building sports stadiums in the slum cities of the U.S. where unemployment is chronic or erecting grandiose art projects half a block from rat-infested inner city housing and even grander government buildings, or funding multi-billion dollar Olympic facilities that are never used again in countries where lack of jobs is the norm, it's far easier to provide distractions than work and far easier than luring businesses where they might provide jobs and security for a permanent underclass.

This liberal/socialist (libsoc for short) policy looks, at face, to be a way to divert taxpayer money. When you think of it, though, it's really just a clever way to keep a permanent underclass unemployed and resentful, payoff campaign donors or potential donors, endear politicians to unions, especially construction unions, and relocate sizable elite libsoc voters to the urban core where their votes are needed. Hence, rock and roll museums in Cleveland, Ohio and Liverpool, England, and multiple multi-million dollar sports facilities in cities where there is a ten-year waiting list for pothole repair (Los Angeles.)

There are probably dozens and dozens of more examples but don't expect the Los Angeles Times to investigate anytime soon.

Death to the U.S.

From the Globe and Mail "Death to the U.S. They are the worst liars and bastards" - quotes from Bobby Fischer made on Phillippine radio after 9/11 attacks.

I was happy. I could not really believe what has happened. I just can't be crying about the U.S., you know. All the crimes the U.S. is committing all over the world. This just shows, what goes around comes around, even to the United States . . . I applaud the act. Look, nobody gets that the U.S. and Israel have been slaughtering the Palestinians for years . . . I wanna see the U.S. wiped out.

Brillant but crazy. (And we aren't sure about the brilliant.) His sentiments, however, are widely shared. He just isn't sane enough to hide his hatred in carefully contrived news stories and relentless criticism.

You get the feeling the Globe and Mail enjoyed repeating Fischer's remarks. It's really not hate speech when it's a news story according to Canadian free speech regulators. (See Al-Jazeera stories.)

The French Club

In a recent posting, blogger Melanie Phillips, was spot on in her article about the United Nations. It is a corrupt terror club. Professor Raphael Israeli proposals are moral, rational and doable. Read it all.

If you needed more proof of the need to replace the United Nations entirely, there is this from the Globe and Mail

Russia, China, Pakistan and Algeria yesterday opposed a threat of sanctions against Sudan in a U.S.-drafted UN resolution aimed at keeping the pressure on Khartoum until atrocities in the western region of Darfur stop, diplomats said. Although there was no outright opposition to the draft resolution before the Security Council, and strong support from Europeans, diplomats said the four countries objected to using the word 'sanctions,' against Khartoum, preferring only a threat of 'further action.'

At initial negotiations on a revised draft, envoys said there was no agreement on a provision demanding that Sudan face unspecified UN sanctions within 30 days if it did not arrest and prosecute Arab militia leaders, called janjaweed, accused of abusing civilians. The 15-month conflict has killed at least 30,000 people, forced villagers into concentration-camp type compounds and left two million people without enough food and medicine.

Once again, the U.N. will be voluntary spectators at another mass murder, crippled by their own entangling alliances. That presupposes that the U.N. actually has good intentions, something that is entirely doubtful.

The totally corrupted U.N. and the myriad so-called humanitarian and development aid agencies they direct and fund and the NGOs who act in concert with the U.N. and the media who shield them and promote them ought to be called the French Club. Few countries display such dispicable self-interest and sheer destructiveness for destructiveness sake than does France. China might act out of ideology. North Korea certainly does. You can even understand the virulence of Islamofascists to a certain extent. All are more rational than France, a scoundrel nation that delights in sowing the seeds of corruption in every corner of the globe, driven by a hatred born of deep anger at lack of recognition of her own perceived greatness, the slighted mistress nation of history.

The 567-Page Story of a Humbled America

The title says it all - exactly what our repugnant media think of the U.S.    Our military is a failure.    Our intelligence agencies are failures.    Our institutions are failures.     Everyone involved was a failure.     No word on our lofty, repugnant media in the whole article, presumably because they have decided their role is one of critic - of everyone else.

I got news for you, you repugnant bastards.     The only humbled person in all this should be the multiculturalists who stooped to the level of the terrorists in order to understand them.     Bending their knees so they could look Islamofascists in the eye and smile approvingly.     That's you, in case you miss the one-finger salute.

The 9/11 Commission was all about spreading blame in a political game with our Peter Pan press playing gladiator contest spectators.     The report is a red herring, detracting from what should be our focus - on defeating those who would kill us.     Right now we are defusing our enemy's weapons - those countries in the Middle East who have expendable populations who are willing to pull a kamakazi for their EU friends.     Because, make no mistake about it, this is a war against terrorism.     Not against terrorists alone, but those who give them sanctuary (most of old Europe and Canada), allow the use of their banking facilities (France) , provide weaponry (France and Germany) and encouragement (France, Belgium and Germany) and legal cover (Belgium, France, Germany and the EU institutions.)

It is a war against the old Europe EU and internationalist organizations like the United Nations who would, for the purpose of waging a proxy war against the United States, inflict intolerable terrorists like Arafat on helpless Palestinians, prolonging their misery for thirty years or more in order to breed virulent anti-semites who will share their European facilitators' racism.     These are the organizations and countries who would inflict Aristide on Haiti, Marxism and Mugabe on Zimbabwe, find fault with every action of the United States but still not manage after thirty years to bring a single Pol Pot to justice for the murder of millions.     These are the bureacrats who would sell you into slavery in the Sudan or stand idly by while you were exterminated in Rwanda.

These are the people and nations that WE - the United States - are humbling.     They, and our repugnant media who can find no fault, no one to blame except the U.S.     It's well to know your enemies.

Police escort O'Leary from plane

You knew this would come one day. Clinton administration Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary was physically escorted off a plane by police and questioned by the FBI. Calling her loud and abusive, the crew had to physically restrain her from entering the cockpit, eventually calling airport police to take her off the plane where she was questioned by the FBI. Link

You remember the globe-trotting O'Leary. Here, here and here.

Howard Stern watch out

Recently the CRTC (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission) approved Al-Jazerra for broadcast in Canada. Their decision did not sit well with some, apparently, not because, as you might think, that the anti-Western, Islamofascist network is biased, racist and warmongering. Nope. The Globe & Mail have other concerns. It's because, uh, they turned down an Italian television channel. Yeah, that's it.

The CRTC's recent decision to refuse the licensing of Italian television channel RAI International is escalating into a political controversy that could force Paul Martin's new government to look at reforming the regulatory commission.

It's a thin excuse to overhaul the agency that controls what Canadians will or will not see. Or hear.

On the same day, the CRTC decided not to renew the license of a popular Montreal station because of a long pattern of offensive comments by its morning-show hosts.

It was the first time since its creation that the CRTC has not renewed a commercial licence solely because of verbal content.

They had an amazing 92 complaints since 2002. The CBC story elaborates on the complaints.

In its decision, the CRTC cited several of Fillion's on-air remarks, including his postulating about the relationship between the breast size and intelligence of a local TV personality, his opinion that psychiatric patients should be euthanized and his view that African students at Laval University are the children of brutal dictators.

In a related story, a chain of pet stores decided to discontinue their mailman-shaped biscuits because - well - it was offensive to postal carriers across the country. They were helped to make this decision after receiving a letter from the Crown corporation's legal department.

If you wonder what has happened to Canada to make them such passive bystanders to such idiocy, an online poll at the Globe and Mail asked "Have you used marijuana in the last five years?" Some 10756 said yes. 10593 said no. It's the only poll that generated much interest in the last year.

EU Constitution - By the People, For the people??

Germans are going to get the EU constitution whether or not they want it. They aren't going to have a say in it either. The new constitution would be ratified by the German parliament, Schroeder said. Not should. Would. Unlike Chirac and Blair who have had to concede to referendums, Shroeder isn't giving Germans the opportunity to voice their opinions.

And you wonder why people emigrated to the U.S. by the millions. /sarcasm off
Come to think of it, the Russians didn't get to vote on theirs either.

Romantic Revolutionary

A New York Times editorial, "The Arafat Problem," is pretty much it. Arafat is gone. His chief sponsor has said so. It's time for him to quit.

It's been the misfortune of the Palestinian people to be stuck with Yasir Arafat as their founding father, a leader who has failed to make the transition from romantic revolutionary to statesman. All he seems capable of offering Palestinians now is a communal form of the martyrdom he seems to covet. Mr. Arafat should accept his limitations and retire as president of the Palestinian Authority.

[Bolding mine]

If you replaced the name Yasir Arafat with Fidel Castro, it would be an equally valid observation, although only the New York Times with their love of despots could describe Arafat as a romantic revolutionary. They must have a thing for rough men with beards. Come to think of it, given their political consistency and social advocacy, we probably should refer to them as the Pink Lady rather than Grey Lady of more refined tastes.

The Times makes the case that Arafat ought to voluntarily retire. Immediately. This, they insist, "would allow the creation of a more credible Palestinian government that could garner international support and claim the moral high ground in the confrontation with Mr. Arafat's equally stubborn nemesis, Ariel Sharon."

You mean Arafat doesn't have international support or the moral high ground?!! What are those billions the EU gave him? The support of friends like Bill and the Pink Lady?

A novelist like Roger Simon could probably do something with this story. A coded message for an assassination perhaps? An internal coup, the Pink Lady warns, would probably backfire. ("But, then, maybe not.") However, it's unlikely he will be booted by the electorate. The romantic revolutionary isn't going to allow elections anytime soon. ("So, there's only one choice, as excited as we are about rough, bearded men.)" Even the title suggests a rubout. "The Arafat problem." ("Will no one rid of us of this man?")

No wonder newspapers like the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Sun have been stepping back for the last few days. They're trying to avoid the ricocheting bullets.