Oh those French! They are so very sophisticated, capable of seeing nuance, and making fine distinctions that we crude Yankees could never appreciate. For example, in the realm of hate speech, calling someone a “dirty Jew” is not really hate speech. Because the expression has become so common in France these days, it is really just comparable to calling someone a “jerk,” as Olivier Guitta reported in these pages just three days ago.
But a French court has just ruled that Brigette Bardot’s lament over the "Islamization of France" and the "underground and dangerous infiltration of Islam" make her guilty of “inciting racial hatred,” with an accompanying fine of US$ 6,000.
Yes, the French can see many things invisible to the rest of us. Things such as “the glory of France” and French moral standing.
Germany’s archaic laws controlling the hours stores may be open have been upheld by the German Constitutional Court. While we applaud the general principle of judicial restraint, Germany’s long-suffering shoppers are still stuck with very limited temporal options. Stores must close by 8 PM on weekdays and Saturdays, and are allowed to open on Sundays and holidays for only three hours.
These limited hours are actually significant extensions of the previous limits. Until 1996, German shoppers had to get their buying done by 6:30 PM on weekdays, and Sunday shopping was verboten.
Of course, there are loopholes, and they are being exploited to the max. Gasoline stations can operate 24 hours a day, and are allowed to sell food “in limited quantities.” Accordingly, virtual supermarkets are opening, disguised as gasoline stations. Similarly, stores inside airports and railway stations, serving tourists and other travelers, are exempt, and may often be patronized by people going to the hauptbanhof with no intention of riding a train. This can only help maintain the financial viability of Deutsche Bahn, which is otherwise hemorraghing Deutschmarks.
For those of us accustomed to the joys of the 24 hour supermarket, finding ourselves in need of dental floss at 3 AM, or a six pack at 11 PM, for instance, Germany’s regulations would be stifling. They seem to be symptomatic of a nanny state, intent on telling its people how to live their lives. Given the extremely low levels of actual participation in religious life in Germany, the Sunday restrictions are particularly ironic.
It is time for the German people to use the political mechanisms available to them and get their Bundestag to pass new legislation allowing stores and customers to agree on shopping hours without state intervention.
Here’s an amusing little exercise, at the expense of New York Times columnist Tom Friedman. Take the following paragraphs from Friedman’s latest offering, and perform a simple process of substitution: wherever you see “Baathist” or “Islamist” or “al Qaeda,” substitute “Democrat” “Kerry” or “liberal.” Wherever Freidman writes “Iraq” substitute “America.”
We are up against some really evil, cynical forces: die-hard Baathists, Qaeda-inspired Islamists and criminals. They continue to kill large numbers of innocent Iraqis without ever spelling out a political demand. That's because their only interest is that America fail. They have no coherent vision for Iraq. Their only vision is that America must fail. Because if the U.S. succeeds in tilting Iraq onto a more progressive track, Baathism and Islamism will be diminished everywhere.
There is nothing more difficult to fight than an enemy whose only interest is that you fail and who has no interest in building a positive alternative. That kind of enemy can only be overwhelmed and crushed
I love factory tours, don’t mind going out of my way to take advantage of the opportunity to see how familiar products are mass-produced, and so have visited factories on five continents. But one of the most memorable tours of all is the Jelly Belly factory tour, in Fairfield, California, just a short distance from Interstate 80, and conveniently marked for tourists exiting the freeway after seeing the Jelly Belly billboard offering free tours.
After you walk around the factory on catwalks, viewing each step of the manufacturing process, you come to the packaging area, in which hang many pictures composed of individual Jelly Bellies used as dots. A number are based on patriotic themes. There is a giant American flag and a portrait of President Ronald Reagan, who loved Jelly Belly, and who passed little packets out as gifts to visitors.
As I recall, the tour guide mentions that President Regan’s love of Jelly Bellies led the company to spectacular sales growth, and that the company remains grateful to him for his support. Then, they pass out the free samples, and the amounts are not tiny, either.
You can see the Jelly Belly portrait of President Reagan, and read a tribute to him by the company, by clicking here.
Hugh Hewitt makes a very smart point this morning, concerning the political fallout from President Reagan’s death. Inevitably, as Reagan’s political and spiritual heir, the celebrations of the Gipper’s virtues remind voters of Bush’s embrace of those same virtures.
Focus on President Reagan inevitably reminds people of why Reagan was a great president: character, principles, good humor, optimism and a deep, deep love of America. Then they look at the current president and see the very same qualities. Of course the celebration of Reagan's life and leadership will buoy George W. Bush's campaign, and for very good and legitimate reasons. W is the Gipper's political heir.
Hugh takes this insight a step further, though, and really cuts to the essence of the situation. Kerry is in many ways Jimmy Carter’s spiritual heir.
…Kerry, who is in compelling ways the heir to Jimmy Carter's mantle far more than he is to Bill Clinton's. In fact, the 1980 and the 2004 campaigns are starkly similar, and they share with 1972 the undeniable and unavoidable choice between a candidate pledged to victory in war and one pledged to retreat and a self-deluding multilateral ism which is really appeasement.
While Carter was not a decorated war hero, remember that he made much of his Naval service under Admiral Hyman Rickover, the father of the nuclear-powered submarine fleet. Carter ran as both a technocrat and as a military man who had braved and survived a notoriously demanding boss. The military gloss was a bit less shiny than Kerry’s [at least until the circumstances of Kerry’s medal awards receive more scrutiny], but it served a similar purpose: allowing American voters to trust a Democrat with the national security function of the Commander-in-Chief.
Ronald Reagan has died. Everyone will have his own memories of the man, and reaction to his passing. I am deeply saddened, but feel a powerful urge to celebrate the man and his magnificent achievements.
Like many other people, Ronald Reagan took office with me a Democrat, but had me a Republican by the time he left office. He set out, forty years before the fact was accomplished, to bring down Communism. You can argue about who defeated the Nazis. Maybe it was Churchill, maybe FDR, maybe Stalin. But Ronald Reagan ended the evil empire.
I think it very likely that his reputation will continue to rise. In fact, it is quite possible that his death will alter the political climate in the United States just a bit for the better. Reflection on the man and his accomplishments may well steel the resolve of the American people to press on in the War on Terror, just as we did in the Cold War.
The civilized tradition that we follow in the West is to speak well of the dead, at their passing. I wonder if the frenzied Bush-haters will follow the tradition? After all, it was Reagan who unleashed the conservative tide which has swept America, and driven many Democrats from office, making “liberal” a term which is shunned even by liberals. In so many instances, they have not been able to help themselves from spewing crude and hateful rhetoric. Perhaps they will even further disgrace themselves, on the occasion of the passing of one of the greatest Presidents of all time.
Hysterical critics of President Bush’s decision to go to war with Iraq have claimed as a matter of faith that there was “no connection” between Saddam Hussein and the War on Terror. Nevermind the meeting in Prague which the Czechs insist took place between Saddam’s agents and an al Qaeda representative. The Gospel of the Bush-haters insists that the war with Iraq was a diversion from the War on Terror.
So far, the American press is doing its best to ignore a story by Con Coughlin, famous staffer at the UK Telegraph. Coughlin writes:
Iraq's coalition government claims that it has uncovered documentary proof that Mohammed Atta, the al-Qaeda mastermind of the September 11 attacks against the US, was trained in Baghdad by Abu Nidal, the notorious Palestinian terrorist.
Details of Atta's visit to the Iraqi capital in the summer of 2001, just weeks before he launched the most devastating terrorist attack in US history, are contained in a top secret memo written to Saddam Hussein, the then Iraqi president, by Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, the former head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service.
The handwritten memo, a copy of which has been obtained exclusively by the Telegraph, is dated July 1, 2001 and provides a short resume of a three-day "work programme" Atta had undertaken at Abu Nidal's base in Baghdad.
This strikes us as rather more important that a 28th straight story on Abu Ghraib, or the latest details of Scott Peterson’s trial. It sounds like a proverbial “smoking gun” indicating that President Bush was correct in his judgement, and that his critics have played naïve fools, in denying the close involvement of Saddam Hussein in supporting terrorism, by paying the families of death cult bombers whom kill Israelis, by training terrorists at Salma Pak, and by using Abu Nidal as an adult education class teacher in the “How to Kill Infidels” course at Baghdad Community College.
Even more embarrassing for the critics, the memo legitimizes President Bush’s oft-derided comments in his 2002 State of the Union Address, concerning uranium in Niger:
The second part of the memo, which is headed "Niger Shipment", contains a report about an unspecified shipment - believed to be uranium - that it says has been transported to Iraq via Libya and Syria.
The 2004 election year offers an extraordinary opportunity for the American left to discredit itself, by heaping scorn, lobbing accusations of lying, and otherwise telling Americans that their country is evil and their President is a fool at best. I have warned them for months that they are dealing with a poker player who understands how to get his opponent to bet big on a losing hand.
Timing is everything, so don’t expect to see rapid action on this story. It is a Telly exclusive for the moment, and forensic investigation may be needed to prove the legitimacy of the documents in question. One more thing: we still haven’t heard what Saddam has been telling his interrogators, have we? I imagine that President Bush is well-briefed on the subject. But I suspect that Al Gore and other critics remain pretty much in the dark.
Andrew Sullivan eviscerates Howell Raines's column in the Guardian. Close analysis of Raines’s message reveals his underlying beliefs, held up to the light by Sullivan. It is devastating. Even better, as a former member of the club, Sullivan’s words carry weight within the Old Gray Lady, and the left wing media establishment, even if he is a defector.
John Leo caught the significance of an interesting detail in the Pew survey of journalists' politics:
In response to the survey, some argue that personal social and political views make no difference if a reporter plays the story straight. Well, yes. But nearly half of those polled told Pew that journalists too often let their ideological views color their work. This is a devastating admission, something like an umpire's union reporting that half its membership likes to favor the home team.
The War on Terror is very much a war among factions for dominance of Islam’s ummah, the global community of believers which has been given tangibility by the telecommunications and transportation innovations of the infidels. Prime Minister Goh of Singapore explained it verywell, and now the New York Post’s Amir Taheri applies the lesson to understanding the conflict within Shia Islam, the smaller of the two major divisions in Islam. Read it if you want to understand what is happening right now in Iraq.
America is playing a very complex game in Iraq, full of religious, ethnic, and tribal divisions. It is a multidimensional chess game where people die when pawns are moved across the squares.
Iran is a major factor in the current situation within Iraq. Those who second-guess and berate the Administration for being less than omniscient and flawless should realize who is playing on the opposition team.
Hans Blix apparently believes we should change the Constitution and let the world choose our president. This is obviously too important a decision to be left to Americans.
Conversely, the security of America is too important to be left to Blix and the UN.
A Kerry backer Hans Blix, the former Swedish diplomat and U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq, has endorsed John Kerry in the U.S. presidential election.
"I place my trust in the multilateralism of Democratic candidate John Kerry," Mr. Blix told the Italian newspaper La Stampa. "And in any event, I think that the whole world should vote on 2 November because so much depends on the outcome of that vote."
The Wall Street Journal, which in an editorial yesterday noted both Mr. Blix's statement and his earlier propensity to give Saddam Hussein "the benefit of every doubt," commented:
"Mr. Kerry remarked in March that foreign leaders were privately supporting his candidacy. Mr. Blix has now revealed the kind of foreigners he was referring to."
Oh those French! They are so very sophisticated, capable of seeing nuance, and making fine distinctions that we crude Yankees could never appreciate. For example, in the realm of hate speech, calling someone a “dirty Jew” is not really hate speech. Because the expression has become so common in France these days, it is really just comparable to calling someone a “jerk,” as Olivier Guitta reported in these pages just three days ago.
But a French court has just ruled that Brigette Bardot’s lament over the "Islamization of France" and the "underground and dangerous infiltration of Islam" make her guilty of “inciting racial hatred,” with an accompanying fine of US$ 6,000.
Yes, the French can see many things invisible to the rest of us. Things such as “the glory of France” and French moral standing.
Hat tip to Max
Posted by Thomas 06 10 04