For when threatened with ,meutes, and your heart is in your boots, there is nothing brings it round like the trumpet's martial sound, Tarantara!

Reading the latest about the British hostage compromise (the UK will send a Royal Navy captain or commodore to promise that "the Royal Navy will never knowingly enter Iranian waters without permission") made me think that this is all starting to sound like something out of The Pirates of Penzance! Maybe a little more Tarantara can make these British ministers seeking a compromise grow some tough skin?

On the other hand, only 7% of Britons favor preparing for military action at this stage. Mark Steyn is right: "Countries that don’t mean it shouldn’t be in war zones. Only seven per cent of Britons mean it. Iran understands that."

When the foeman bares his steel,

Tarantara! tarantara!

We uncomfortable feel,

Tarantara!

And we find the wisest thing,

Tarantara! tarantara!

Is to slap our chests and sing,

Tarantara!

For when threatened with ‚meutes,

Tarantara! tarantara!

And your heart is in your boots,

Tarantara!

There is nothing brings it round

Like the trumpet's martial sound,

Like the trumpet's martial sound

Tarantara! tarantara!

[Britain] [hostages] [Iran]

Petty cruelties and radical Islam.

I found this description of a dialog between Richard Miniter and a Turkish lady entrepreneur an eye-opener:

Turkey’s current AKP prime minister routes almost all of the government construction contracts to firms where he holds a financial stake. Typical developing world behavior, I think. Then comes the surprise. She says that if you look at all of the buildings built by the state since the AKP came to power, you will see it.

See what?

“There are no balconies,” she says.

Nearly every building built before the AKP boasts expansive balconies, which function as second living rooms for many Turkish families.

“Only windows. So the traditional women kept inside cannot be seen by the world.”

Or enjoy a moment in the sun, seven stories up.

It is by such petty cruelties that the face of radical Islam makes itself seen.

Read it all here.


[Islam] [Turkey] [AKP]

Charleston Daily Mail

A decent man helps an elderly foe.

Iranian hooliganism?

The AP reported that "about 200 angry Iranian youths chanting "Death to Britain" and "Death to America" threw rocks and firecrackers at the British Embassy and tried to rush the compound but were held back by police."

Interestingly, so far there are no reports of British or other European football fans threatening any Iranian Embassy in Europe.

[Iran] [Britain] [hostages] [siege] [embassy]

Where is the Britannia that ruled the waves?

Gone with the wind -or with a whimper- it seems. Niall Ferguson's article is very depressing as he poignantly points out that Iran targeted the UK because it is the weakest link in the UN's Security Council... He concludes:

Nemo me impune lacessit was the ancient motto of the Scottish crown and remains the motto of the Scots Guards: "Wha daur meddle wi me?" in old Scots or, if you prefer modern English: "No one messes with me and gets away with it." In effect, that became the motto of the entire Victorian Empire.

I suppose a remnant of that spirit survived into the 1980s. There was certainly something distinctly Victorian about the Falklands expedition: the scale of the venture, the distance covered and the relatively small number of Britons to be rescued. Yet today, 25 years on, we live in a different world. We could not re-fight the Falklands War if Argentina invaded the islands tomorrow. Nor can we send a raiding party to punish the Iranian government today. If military action is going to be taken against Iran this year, it will not be initiated by Britain, but by the United States. And, to judge by Faye Turney's conspicuous absence from the front pages of the American papers, a British hostage crisis won't be the casus belli.

Which means that we fall back on the tried and tested options of the pre-Victorian Empire. Our captives can either be left to languish, or their freedom can be bought. But what might be the price of saving Seaman Turney? A free pass for the Iranian nuclear programme? Or maybe just an Iranian-controlled Basra?

As he approaches the 10th anniversary of becoming Prime Minister, Mr Blair consciously invites comparisons with Lady Thatcher, the only other premier since Lord Liverpool to endure for so long. Yet this new crisis of captivity, like Mr Blair's needless kow-towing over slavery, exposes the profound differences between him and her. When it comes to the crunch, Mr Blair's greatest defect is that he is, despite his undoubted transgressions, fundamentally a nice guy. Margaret Thatcher was neither. Nor, come to think of it, was Queen Victoria. Nor Britannia.

If only you could come back, you iron ladies. Even though you never said sorry - or precisely because you didn't - all would be forgiven.

[Britain] [Britannia] [Iran] [hostages] [Blair] [Thatcher] [Victoria]

European hostages taken by Iran, and its implications...

I guess it does not mean much to the European Union. After all, the British hostages are referred to by all as British, and not European. Mark Steyn brilliantly sums it up, and it's not uplifting:

The U.N. will do nothing for men seized on a U.N.-sanctioned mission. The European Union will do nothing for its "European citizens." But if liberal transnationalism is a post-modern joke, it's not the only school of transnationalism out there. Iran's Islamic Revolution has been explicitly extraterritorial since the beginning: It has created and funded murderous proxies in Hezbollah, Hamas and both Shia and Sunni factions of the Iraq "insurgency." It has spent a fortune in the stans of Central Asia radicalizing previously somnolent Muslim populations. When Ayatollah Khomeini announced the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, it was not Iranians but British, Indian, Turkish, European, Asian and American Muslims who called for his death, firebombed bookstores, shot his publisher, fatally stabbed his translator and murdered anybody who got in their way.

So we live today in a world of one-way sovereignty: American, British and Iraqi forces in Iraq respect the Syrian and Iranian borders; the Syrians and Iranians do not respect the Iraqi border. Patrolling the Shatt al-Arab at a time of war, the Royal Navy operates under rules of engagement designed by distant fainthearts with an eye to the polite fictions of "international law": If you're in a ''warship,'' you can't wage war. If you're in a ''destroyer,'' don't destroy anything. If you're in a "frigate," you're frigging done for.

On Sept. 11, a New York skyscraper was brought down by the Egyptian leader of a German cell of an Afghan terror group led by a Saudi. Islamism is only the first of many globalized ideological viruses that will seep undetected across national frontiers in the years ahead. Meanwhile, we put our faith in meetings of foreign ministers.

"It is better to be making the news than taking it," wrote Winston Churchill in 1898. But his successors have gotten used to taking it, and the men who make the news well understand that.

[Iran] [Britain] [European Union] [hostages] [United Nations]

"Hire a Hero".

There is some good news regarding the unemployment rate of US veterans between the ages of 20-24. According to the US Department of Labor, “the unemployment rate for veterans ages 20-24 fell to 10.4 percent in 2006 from 15.6 percent in the previous year, according to data released last week by the of the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics. The drop in the young veterans' unemployment rate is the largest decline in more than a decade. The unemployment rate for all veterans remained lower than that of non-veterans.”

“Hire A Hero” is a free program for both the job searching candidates and employers to use. Veterans, Guard members, Reservists and their families are provided with job assistance services.

The program is set up under the auspices of The Armed Forces Support Foundation (AFSF), a non-profit entity established in 1998. Although AFSF was officially noticed in Senate Bill S3833, it relies on public support.

Supporting “Hire A Hero” is one small way that we can all make a difference and give thanks to those men and women and their families who are protecting us minute by minute.

Let’s add our two-cents to help inform service men and women about “Hire a Hero”.

Thank you!
Pachyderm & Loxodonta

[Hire a Hero] [armed forces] [veterans] [employment] [jobs] [vets]

Anti-Americanism and the Germans: Der Spiegel's Berlin Bureau Chief says it is time to re-educate the Germans!

I always believed it was easy to be anti-Yankee around the world because it carries no heavy-handed consequences... There's nothing comparable to what the Swiss national is facing (up to 10 years in jail) for having insulted the King of Thailand.

Mr. Malzahn has some very insightful thoughts about the way Germans think and the current bout of anti-American feelings running high in his country.

Excerpts:

Bush-bashing is something of a national sport in Germany.

The Germans have believed in many things in the course of their recent history. They've believed in colonies in Africa and in the Kaiser. They even believed in the Kaiser when he told them that there would be no more political parties, only soldiers on the front.

Not too long afterwards, they believed that Jews should be placed into ghettos and concentration camps because they were the enemies of the people. Then they believed in the autobahn and that the Third Reich would ultimately be victorious. A few years later, they believed in the Deutsche mark. They believed that the Berlin Wall would be there forever and that their pensions were safe. They believed in recycling as well as in cheap jet travel. They even believed in a German victory at the soccer World Cup.

Now they believe that the United States is a greater threat to world peace than Iran.
...
The 19th-century German author Karl May taught us about the American Wild West, and Karl Marx warned us about unbridled capitalism. Besides, we've all been there at least once -- on vacation, of course. Be it in California or Florida (that's where you get the best deals on rental cars, you know), we can see right through the Americans.

For us Germans, the Americans are either too fat or too obsessed with exercise, too prudish or too pornographic, too religious or too nihilistic.
...
Worst of all, the Americans won the war in 1945. (Well, with German help, of course -- from Einstein and his ilk.) There are some Germans who will never forgive the Americans for VE Day, when they defeated Hitler. After all, Nazism was just an accident, whereas Americans are inherently evil. Just look at President Bush, the man who, as some of SPIEGEL ONLINE's readers steadfastly believe, "is worse than Hitler." Now that gives us a chance to kill two birds
with one stone. If Bush is the new Hitler, then we Germans have finally unloaded the Führer on to someone else. In fact, we won't even have to posthumously revoke his German citizenship, as politicians in Lower Saxony recently proposed. No one can hold a candle to our talent for symbolism!

Anti-Americanism is the wonder drug of German politics. If no one believes what you're saying, take a swing at the Yanks and you'll be shooting your way back up to the top of the opinion polls in no time.

Anti-Americanism is hypocrisy at its finest. You can spend your evening catching the latest episode of "24" and then complain about Guantanamo the next morning. You can claim that the Americans have themselves to blame for terrorism, while at the same time calling for tougher restrictions on Muslim immigration to Germany. You can call the American president a mass murderer and book a flight to New York the next day. You can lament the average American's supposed lack of culture and savvy and meanwhile send off for the documents for the Green Card lottery.

Not a day passes in Germany when someone isn't making the wildest claims, hurling the vilest insults or spreading the most outlandish conspiracy theories about the United States. But there's no risk involved and it all serves mainly to boost the German feeling of self-righteousness.
...

Iran is a different story. The last time someone made a joke on German TV about an Iranian leader, the outcome was not pleasant.
Exactly 20 years ago, Dutch entertainer Rudi Carell produced a short TV sketch portraying Ayatollah Khomeini dressed in women's underwear. Carell received death threats. The piece, which lasted all of a few seconds, led to flights being cancelled and German diplomats being expelled from Tehran. Carell apologized. Jokes about fat Americans are just safer.

...
The Americans are more dangerous than the ayatollahs? Perhaps the Americans should take the Germans at their word for a change. It's high time for a new round of re-education. The last one obviously didn't do the job.

[anti-Americanism] [Germany] [Bush] [Iran] [mullahs]

Beware of Croatia's gentlemen's clubs.

This just caught my eye after writing about Drubovnik below! A State Department warning on Croatia:

_"Be aware of drink prices" in Croatia's gentlemen's clubs, where tourists can "unknowingly run up exorbitant bar bills, sometimes in the thousands of dollars."

Vices can be costly. Read it here.

[Croatia] [State Department] [travel] [danger] [tourism]

Dubrovnik: A place that was worth defending.

THE BELLS OF DUBROVNIK ring every hour and half hour, although they are silent throughout the night, when the local cats begin their hellish meows. From where I sat in the evening two summers ago, overlooking the city’s mosaic of pale-peach and red tiled roofs, I could admire a large sliver of Adriatic blue, sometimes speckled by imposing cruisers or elegant yachts that came and went.

Croatia is a special place… Its coast is magnificent. I kept comparing: gorgeous Italy vis-à-vis this incredibly beautiful, but more pristine version of a Mediterranean coast…

Isle of Lokrum ruin, circa 1995

One of the saddest things to see were the gaping holes, some large, some small, sometimes many, sometimes few, on the façades of regular-looking buildings along the way… These are the scars of war left by the many bullets and shells on apartment complexes, houses overlooking the Adriatic, clusters of village dwellings… These wounds, unfortunately, are so recent, it’s almost embarrassing to remember! I mentioned to my sons that all of their contemporaries in Croatia were exposed to the horrors of war in the heart of Europe, while they were playing soccer with their classmates in Rome, having a wonderful and peaceful childhood, so very near by. Hard to believe - except for the physical scars on buildings - that Croatia experienced such savagery just a few years ago!

We visited the island of Lokrum, where the Benedictine monks settled many centuries ago, and where a few mortar shells landed a few years ago… Does the world remember?

A beautiful island 15 minutes away from Dubrovnik, Lokrum’s water at the time was very refreshing, crystalline as can be, and snorkeling in it was unbelievable. Something out of National Geographic: the waters were magnificent in what they delivered: underground gorges, multi-colored fish, and schools of gray and black fish…

On a cursory trip to Cartvat, an old city about 16 kms from Dubrovnik, we didn’t find the right beach (it was too crowded for my taste) and we went back to the little one we discovered a few days earlier, which once held a big hotel and apartment complexes, and which are now boarded up because of the gunfire they withstood…modern monuments to modern disasters… I liked the guy who had the concession stand and sold us ice cream (50% cheaper than in Dubrovnik)…

The days we spent in Dubrovnik and its surroundings were beautiful and I know, for certain, that I shall remember this place forever: it is a gem. The white marble of the city’s buildings, staircases, and streets absorbed the heat, so that in the evening one could feel the warmth irradiating from the marble streets and the building walls.

To anyone who ever wants to begin to understand how we could have had such a savage war in the heart of Europe, I recommend reading The Bridge over the Drina. It is a beautiful story written by a Nobel Laureate, a former Yugoslav diplomat, Ivo Andric. With poignant melancholy, it recounts the traumas and tragedies, joys and woes, loves and hatreds of a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-religious multitude in a town in Bosnia, from the Middle Ages until the outbreak of World War I. It is a formidable epic, and the perfect book to read in Croatia!

I discovered Vinko Coce, in one of our trips to the island of Lokrum… He is a crooner, a balladeer. Croatian melodies are sad, gypsy-like and harmonious. We listened to Vinko as we drove out of the walled-city, a fitting way to end our stay. It was hard to depart… Maybe soon I will see that beautiful and melancholic Dubrovnik again.

The peach tiles of Dubrovnik…
68% of the rooftops were destroyed during the 1990’s war,
and the dark tiles are the new replacements…

[Croatia] [Dubrovnik] [Lokrum] [Vinko Coce] [Drina] [Andric]

Political Theater: Act I: The eyelash victories...in which the Lilliputians try to tie down an exhausted Gulliver.

Watching CNN International last night I wondered whether my government back in Washington, DC really understands how the “image” it portrays is perceived abroad. We look as if we were involved in a perpetually petty fight that hangs ominously over all of us…some of us worry, others wait in gleeful anticipation of disaster.

Far away from the US, this image seems surreal, and hard to understand. What comes to mind is that famous saying… “a house divided against itself cannot stand”. But maybe, maybe this may be more a case of much ado about nothing. Who knows.

Well, reading this morning the editorial from Opinion Journal, it all made sense. Thanks to this editorial it is easier for me to explain to others what’s going on back home.

I hope my foreign friends will take note that in the deadline for withdrawal from Iraq, what is called the "Iraq Accountability Act,"

… the key word in that construction is the last one. This is all an act. This week the Senate joined the House in passing a "deadline" for Iraq withdrawal that Members know has no chance of becoming law. President Bush has promised a veto, and the eyelash victories in both houses show that his veto will be sustained with ease.
…
Mr. Bush has been warning about his veto for weeks, but Democrats have moved ahead anyway because the vote is really about political theater. Democrats need to appease their antiwar base… None of this is real "accountability," however, because Democrats lack the nerve to truly stop the war by defunding it. Having criticized the bill at first, MoveOn.org and the antiwar caucus turned around and endorsed this theatrical fallback once they realized they lacked the votes to stop the war.

This vote allows Democrats to claim they opposed General David Petraeus's plan to stabilize Baghdad, even as they let him fight.
…
The spectacle qualifies as a textbook example of why Congress can't be trusted to micromanage, much less lead, a war. It's a committee of Lilliputians whose main contribution is to tie down the President so that his policy fails. ...Congress [ought to] fulfill the one war power it does have, which is to appropriate enough money so [the] troops can accomplish their mission.

[Congress] [President Bush] [Iraq] [war] [Iraq Accountability Act]

"Death to America..."

Watch this explicit video, courtesy of MEMRI. The masses can easily be whipped into a frenzy... All of us ought to be paying close attention to the sheer number of the chanters.

[Iran] [Khameini] [America] [jihad] [Muslim] [Islam]

Missile defense shield.

The European Left does not want a missile defense shield (MDS) in Polish and Czech soil, or at least, according to Reuters, Europe's left-leaning parties want the US to have more consultations with its allies about it.

Background consultations have ensued, and official ones will soon begin. Many well-read Poles (and other Europeans) are under the mistaken belief that the MDS will only protect the US. This is incorrect. MDS is meant to cover most of Europe.

The European Union is not necessarily against MDS. In fact NATO supports the idea.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, Russia has neither been ignored nor side-stepped, and the US has engaged the leadership even to the extent as to propose to Russia to become involved in the MDS, which could protect Russia's European portion, including St. Petersburg and Moscow, against an attack from Iran or North Korea.

More information on MDS can be found here and here (in Polish).

[missile] [defense] [shield] [Poland] [Czech Republic] [Russia] [NATO] [European Union]

Where indiscriminateness (or fear?) lead...to dhimmitude.

Just this week, Il Giornale reports that the president of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, Fausto Bertinotti (a communist), removed the painting that shows a scene from the Battle of Lepanto (1571) from the Knights' Hall in Montecitorio, the Italian Parliament. This was done -apparently- so as not to offend Muslims.

The Battle of Lepanto (1571) resulted in a triumph for Christianity over the Ottoman Turks. It is in this battle that Don Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, of Don Quijote fame, becomes "el manco de Lepanto", having lost a hand during the battle.

What's next? How about changing the name of the Lepanto underground station in Rome?

Go here for G.K. Chesterton's poem on Lepanto.

[Italy] [Lepanto] [Bertinotti] [Montecitorio] [Muslims] [Islam] [dhimmitude]

Thank you, Power Line, for bringing to your readers the story of Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, and welcome Power Line readers!

Wladyslaw Bartoszewski: member of the "decent" race.

There are few of us who can truly be categorized as heroically unique, an inspiration to others, a person to emulate, an example that righteous actions, in the long run, triumph over evil ones.

Last night, the US Embassy in Warsaw honored Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, a disarmingly charming Polish octogenarian, whose story once would have been brought to the silver screen and written in boys' and girls' magazines.

By the time he was 17 years old, Mr. Bartoszewski had survived being imprisoned in Auschwitz-Birkenau for 8 months. He was a co-founder of the Zegota movement, that saved thousands of Jews, was a member of the Underground Army (resistance movement), acted as a courier, and fought in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944.

If this were not enough, after the war was over, he was twice imprisoned by the Communist regimes in Poland, one time such imprisonment lasting more than 6 years. He worked for Radio Free Europe for 18 years, became Foreign Minister of Poland twice, was made an honorary citizen of Israel and is a member of the Righteous Among the Nations of the World. He writes books and tells stories.

His life stories can't help some of us wonder, what would we have done under similar circumstances? What made a teen-ager rise up to the cause and fight so hard to preserve sanity in a world gone insane? What made the young man keep on fighting despite the demoralizing post-World War II events that catapulted Poland into 50 years of Communism?

He was once asked whether he regards his life as a success. Wladyslaw Bartoszewski answered, “I have been very fully rewarded, and that is no illusion. Beyond anything I deserve. Heroism? I did indeed take part in aiding the Jews, but I was also damned frightened. Terribly frightened. No one knows that, because I would have been ashamed to admit it. Other people did equally splendid things. They ran with grenades and shot at Gestapo colonels. They too, surely, were afraid. I was afraid in a different way. However, the fact that I was able to help someone to some degree, minimal in regard to my willingness, turned out in the end to make sense.”

If only more of us would learn about the heroic deeds of people like Mr. Bartoszewski, our world would be a better place.

Update: Power Line was kind enough to share this great story!

Bartoszewski Poland Israel United States Warsaw Uprising Yad Vashem Communism Jews World War II Auschwitz

Mindless indiscriminateness of thought leads to rejection of rational thought as a hate crime.

Thanks to Power Line, Evan Sayet give us an easy way to understand what's going on in the Western world. Would that high school and college kids could listen to Mr. Sayet's no-nonsense talk.




[Evan Sayet] [liberalism] [progressive] [republican] [democrat] [Heritage Foundation] [Western Europe] [anti-american]

Sometimes, the truth is very painful to hear...

[UN] [human rights] [commission] [UN Watch] [Israel] [Palestine] [Darfur]

On Zionists and hating Israel.

There are interesting excerpts of an interview of Victor Davis Hanson on the Middle East.

I can relate to a couple of Hanson's comments

...for Europeans and Arabs, hating "Zionists" and "Israel" has become an acceptable way to hate Jews without the stigma of anti-Semitism.

Israel serves today as the ethical barometer in the western collective mind. Support for it brings no oil, no ingratiation with terrorists, no psychological lift of the usual easy bullying of a small democracy, but it does reveal respect for democracy, confidence in the history of the West, and respect for a humane culture and an accomplished people under terrible assault. So, I confess, as I age I sort of judge Westerners I meet now by their degree of fairness toward Israel. I've gotten to the point when I hear
a rabid Leftist or a creepy Right-wing nut rant on Israel, I just pack it up and walk away. Life is too short for such nonsense.

[Victor Davis Hanson] [Israel] [Iran] [Middle East][Iraq]

An act of war: Iran and the taking of British hostages.

Some sobering thoughts at OpinionJournal:

...the world should keep in mind that Iran has undertaken this latest military aggression while it is still a conventional military power. That means that Britain and the U.S. can still respond today with the confidence that they maintain military superiority. That confidence will vanish the minute Iran achieves its goal of becoming a nuclear power. Who knows what the revolutionaries in Tehran will then be capable of.

[Iran] [hostages] [Britain] [UK]

The European Union: a peculiar form of apostasy.

Pope Benedict XVI had very strong warnings against a continent that consistently seems to be discarding its Christian roots and denying any moral absolutes.

His speech to the bishops this past week-end was in Italian, and beautifully expressive. For example, the following paragraph, where he posits that the Christian identity of the contintent is historical, cultural and moral, and that it cannot be hidden from the people. Rather, Christian values make up the Continent's soul and must remain in the third millenium as the ferment of civiliation.

Da tutto ciò emerge chiaramente che non si può pensare di edificare un’autentica “casa comune” europea trascurando l’identità propria dei popoli di questo nostro Continente. Si tratta infatti di un’identità storica, culturale e morale, prima ancora che geografica, economica o politica; un’identità costituita da un insieme di valori universali, che il Cristianesimo ha contribuito a forgiare, acquisendo così un ruolo non soltanto storico, ma fondativo nei confronti dell’Europa. Tali valori, che costituiscono l’anima del Continente, devono restare nell’Europa del terzo millennio come “fermento” di civiltà.

You can read the whole speech here.

[apostasy][European Union] [EU] [Pope] [Benedict XVI] [Christianity]

Iran and the Jews.

A Must-See video of an Iranian scholar lecturing students on the Jewish conspiracy behind the cartoon Tom & Jerry. Check it out here, at MEMRI.

[Iran] [Jews] [anti-Semitism]

Carnal relations between Argentina and USA????

Mariano Grondona explains Argentina's anti-yankee position... The US has always known where Argentina "stood"... on the wrong side of history. While Brazil and Mexico may not love the northern colossus, they have always "been there" when the time was right. What's Argentina's option now? An excerpt:

Hoy, el presidente Kirchner parece seguir un juego de "gambetas" con Venezuela y los Estados Unidos. En las barricadas, sigue a Chávez. Cuando el desafío chavista a Bush se vuelve inquietante, como en las relaciones con Irán y con el pueblo judío, Kirchner, discretamente, retrocede. La pregunta entonces es ésta: la "gambeta" de Kirchner, corresponde a "la inteligencia de nuestros intereses"?

Algunos dirán que sí, porque de Chávez estamos recibiendo concesiones económicas que no nos ofrecen los Estados Unidos. Pero la Argentina que se obstinó tanto tiempo en una política de neutralidad, ¿tiene ahora la misma gravitación que antes? Maquiavelo analizó si la neutralidad les conviene a las naciones menores. No, dijo, porque el neutral, para evitar el castigo de los perdedores, se queda sin el premio de los ganadores. La Argentina pudo estar de pleno derecho, por ejemplo, en el gran convenio brasileño-norteamericano de los biocombustibles. No lo estuvo porque Kirchner cedió una y otra vez a la tentación de la retórica antinorteamericana. La Argentina no era pro norteamericana porque se consideraba europea. La Argentina que sobrelleva, a la inversa de Brasil, siete décadas de pérdidas de posiciones, ¿puede resignarse ahora a no ser pro norteamericana porque se considera venezolana?

[Argentina] [Kirchner] [Brasil] [Brazil] [Lula] [Mexico] [Mejico] [Bush] [Ferro][Latin America]

Journalists, kidnappings, beheadings.

Thanks to the Timesonline:

An Italian journalist who was held hostage by the Taleban for two weeks described how he was forced to watch as his captors beheaded his Afghan driver.

Daniele Mastrogiacomo, who was released yesterday, told how he feared that he would also be killed after seeing the brutal execution.

“I can still see it now," he wrote in La Repubblica. “The [Taleban] commander issued his death sentence in the name of Islam. He said we were all spies and we had to die. [The translator] is crying. I don’t understand. I ask him what they said and he, in tears, says ’they are going to kill us’.

“I get off my knees. Four young men grab the driver and shove his face into the sand. They cut his throat and continue until they have cut his whole head.

“He is not able to make a gasp. They clean the knife on his tunic. They tie his severed head to his body. They bring it [the body and head] to the river and let it go,” he wrote.

[Daniele] [Mastrogiacomo] [Afghanistan] [Taleban] [kidnap][behead]
[journalist] [Daniel Pearl]

The moral case for stopping Iran.

...Europe's vast superstructure of collective atonement for the Holocaust has been hollowed out from within. The calumny that Israel--the most liberal and egalitarian country in the Middle East--is an "apartheid state" has hardened into a conviction. The mud has stuck.

Yet if Israel is attacked and--God forbid--destroyed by Iranian nuclear bombs, then European civilization will have perished, too. The destruction of Israel would signal the demise of the Judeo-Christian morality that ennobled Greco-Roman culture to create the only Europe that was ever worth preserving. I for one could not live in a society that could even contemplate such a second Shoah. I would turn my back on such a Europe, shake the dust from my feet, never to return.

Read the rest of it here.
[Israel] [Holocaust] [Jews] [Europe] [Iran][apartheid] [Middle East] [Judeo-Christian][Greco-Roman]