#2
One down with a Cluebat to the head. So, when will the Cluebat hit us? Hard to say. But until then we are going to keep financing and arming the Orcs of Saud. We are responsible for this. Without our help these rats would scurry about the desert under cover of darkness. As it stand we are paying for their invasion of our countries, the sack of our traditions and the rape of our daughters.
Election Fever is Busting Out All Over
Reporting the French elections : Sunday Noon
by Nidra Poller
Ive never seen anything like it since I came to live in Paris in 1972. Election excitement is busting out all over. Every snippet of conversation that wafts my way as I walk around on this glorious hot-as-summer day in April is about the election.
Today is the last day of a two-week spring holiday for schoolchildren. Families usually stay on vacation until the very last minute. Well, in the neighborhood I am covering, they all came home to vote. And, this being France, when friends get together to watch the election night programs, they have a feast. Long lines in all the shops, people buying food for the party.
The level of voter participation was estimated at 35% at noon. There is every expectation of an exceptionally strong turnout. For the first time French citizens in the Americas were able to vote with the same level of suspense as their compatriots here in France, because they cast their ballots yesterday instead of tonight French time, when the results are already announced. Their results will of course be held secret until this evening. Voter turnout in the Americas was exceptionally high.
Todays noon interview: Waiting in line at the charcuterie I hear the person next to me speaking on his cell phone. to watch Ségolène Royal lose. I ask him if there is a special menu for the occasion. And we embark on a most enlightening conversation. When I tell him that I am covering the elections for Pajamas Media, he switches to English. Very fluent English (youll see later why I mention this).
His predictions are just about the same as mine: Sarkozy will win by about 5 points over Royal. Bayrou will stagnate at around 18 or 19%. Politically Le Pens finished old hat; hell probably level out at 12% or 13%. Very acurate! I must confess I thought it was gonna be Sarko-bayrou.
My informer says that Ségolène Royal did not understand what it means to be president. President, etymologically, means to be seated in front of in other words, to lead. She went through her phony exercise of participatory democracy, listening to peoples gripes, and churning them into a so-called political program. She didnt understand that many people in her own party are fed up. The French are fed up. Out in the banlieue, people on welfare are earning more than hard-working salaried people. That doesnt mean that Sarkozy is perfect. But you vote against the disastrous candidate, and take the best you can get. The old guard of the Socialist party is going to make her pay for this defeat! The hard left wing, led by [former PM] Fabius, will take over. Of course there will be a violent reaction to Sarkozys victory. It will begin tonight.
The gentleman is a 44 year-old professor of law at the Assas branch of the Sorbonne. And he learned English five months ago under hypnosis.
Radio J [a Jewish station] reported early this afternoon on a serious fight between Maghrebis and Jews in Belleville today. Further details in a few minutes.
Yesterday I had one of those touchstone conversations with a French friend. Aghast at the Virginia Tech massacre, she gave me the same lesson I had been hearing day in and day out in the French media: gun control! Why dont you Americans impose gun control? Cant you understand? The reference of choice here is Michael Moore. And everyone believes its easier to buy a gun in the US than to buy a baguette on Sunday morning in Paris. My friend said they should have metal detectors at the entrance to the campus. I explained that there is no wall around an American campus. I explained that our Constitution was made to last, we dont revise it every other year like the French. I explained why I cant listen to these automatic pop-up French lessons that cover everything from a marital spat to car bombs in Iraq. Its always the same lesson: do like us, dont do anything, dont move and dont shoot.
These conversations can only go so far. Either the friendship ends, or the friend backs out. We left it at that and then went together to the Paris City Hall to visit an exhibition organized by the Filles et Fils des Juifs Déportés (Sons and daughters of deported Jews)dedicated to the 11,400 French Jewish children deported to the Nazi death camps. The dark flashing eyes of those children, the exuberant life that blossoms in their beings, the intelligence, tenderness, charm and youthful awkwardness captured in photos haunts us forever. The babies! The mothers plucked out of the hospital with their babes in arms. The children separated from their parents in the French concentration camps, deported separately, thrown into the ovens by the hundreds. Familiar faces and names our families, our distant cousins, our landsmen.
On the way home I passed a local school. Official posters of all twelve candidates are displayed on zigzag row of panels on the sidewalk. No sooner are they put up than some are defaced. Posters of Left and far Left candidates are almost always untouched. The others are slashed, tagged, covered with insults. The vandals unwittingly reflect on their chosen candidates!
On this panel, Nicolas Sarkozy was reworked as Hitlerthe thick lock of hair across the forehead, the little moustache. The authors of the profanation signed their work with a big printed sticker. They call themselves ARTRESISTANCE.
My blood boiled. What punks! What slime! So they think thats the Résistancea thick black magic marker and a pinhead brain? They think thats a Nazi? Nicolas Sarkozy? And what do they think about the faces of the children whose lives were slashed, broken, and burned?
My friend went on to another rendez-vous and I continued the conversation alone in my white hot mind.
My friend, I was in the United States when our cousins were exterminated. And we had the same Constitution then as now, the same right to bear arms. Well, my friend, no one shot up the schools in those days. But here, in this country, tens thousands of Jews were taken to slaughter. Try to understand why we defend the right to bear arms. Most of us dont exercise it. But its an eloquent statement. Dont mess with me. And French people should not be aiming easy lessons at us today. They should be asking what they are going to do about the violence looming on the horizon here and now.
Report on the incident at Belleville, as described by the Uncle of the Jewish boys. Saturday evening two religious Jewish girls came out of the synagogue after the end of Sabbath service. A group of Maghrebis accosted them. A young Jewish man, Didier, intervened to protect them. The Maghrebis turned and attacked him.
Today Didier went back with his brother, found the assailants, attempted to settle their differences peacefully. The Maghrebis immediately started beating the Jewish boys. Their uncle called the police repeatedly. It took them 10 minutes to come. The uncle regrets: Im 66, I couldnt intervene. The aggressors ran away. The police took the Jewish boys into custody. They didnt try to find the Maghrebis, says the uncle, because they dont want to set foot in that part of the neighborhood. A little later, a new wave of assailants, at least 50, appeared.
At the moment there is a standoff. The uncle says he is afraid of what will happen this evening.
1) There are some Roman-era ruins spread around the country.
2) It houses the Bayeux Tapestry.
3) Most of all, it's the resting place of a hell of a lot of Americans who gave their lives to deliver the French the freedom they couldn't hold onto.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
04/22/2007 19:17 Comments ||
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#2: "it's the resting place of a hell of a lot of Americans who gave their lives to deliver the French the freedom they couldn'twouldn't hold onto"
There - fixed that for ya', Rob.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
04/22/2007 19:19 Comments ||
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Did the Americans die to secure the French freedoms or to defeat the Nazi's and the French happened to benefit from that action? It sounds like nit-picking but I bet the average Frenchman's answer these days would be different than their answer in 1945 and different from the answer of an American.
#5
Does the uncle have a gun, does he have friends he can call, if so CALL THEM NOW, NOT THE POLICE the police are obviously too afraid to help, you're on your own.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
04/22/2007 20:21 Comments ||
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#6
Hey, the Eiffel Tower is there! Don't forget that!
#7
FOX/CNN > AL GORE is reportedly contacting his Year 2000 campaign team, telling them to seriously evaluate and advise on viability to run for POTUS again in 2008, or not. As for the current FRENCH ELEX, methinks its safe to say that how the US DemoLeft work, organize, or compete agz each other, etc. for 2008 will essens happen for the French Left as well. HILLARY prefers or desires a Bill-style MSM resume, i.e. eight yarns of MSM-verified US-specific relative geopol "quiet" + national prosperity, vv anti-Repub Repub = Repub anti-Repub economy. ergo SEGOLENE DESIRES A SIMILAR "QUIET" = "PROSPERITY" THINGY FOR FRENCH/EURO-SOCIALISM, OR AT LEAST NO 9-11's as did in America???
I've been wandering around the Rantburg archives, and I happened across this item from September 16, 2001-- five days after the 9/11 atrocities. Fred quotes a New York Times editorial, in which the following passage jumped out at me:
Americans now live a state of war against an irrational, vengeful and elusive enemy. And if we are to win, we will have to become used to the idea that we are in this for the long haul. Coming to terms with that new reality, winning this war, will require discipline, stamina and sacrifice.
Ironic. And sad, given the NYT's behavior since...
Posted by: Dave D. ||
04/22/2007 10:02 ||
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I guess the long-haul means a few weeks or years at the most. Harry Reid and the rest of the dhemmicrats also have a short view of the long haul.
The happenings at the Lal Masjid in Islamabad have begun to reverberate. Clerics in Peshawar are threatening to attack and close down brothels in the city while vigilantes of Islami Jamiat Talaba at the University of the Punjab have been emboldened into taking action against what they term a policy to turn the PU into a den of obscenity. So far the IJT shock troops have beaten up some students, taken out a noisy rally, attacked and vandalised a concert at a department and are threatening to do even more unless the varsity administration relents and, as one observer quips, hands the university back to the IJT.
The Lal Masjid cleric Abdul Rashid Ghazi (see interview) says while he is firm on getting the government to reconstruct the demolished mosques, he is not prepared to take the law into his hands. He calls the various news reports against his seminaries sheer propaganda. He also denies that students from his seminaries have been threatening women drivers and shopkeepers in Islamabad. According to him these are the doings of criminal gangs and they could have been put up at it by the agencies.
The situation in Peshawar is most ironical. There, in the presence of an MMA government high on Islam, clerics of Mutahidda Shariat Mahaz (MSM), led by Maulana Yousaf Qureshi, are insisting that the government is not doing enough to cleanse the city and the province of immorality. This has got the chief minister, Akram Khan Durrani, up and very peeved. He views this Islamisation drive as an attempt to de-legitimise and bring down my government. (See related story)
Down south, in Karachi, the MQM took out a rally April 15 and denounced the vigilantism of the rightwing. The party hit out at Lal Masjid and said that any further allowance to that crowd would only result in other groups coming on line and making such demands. But while the MQM can be dismissed by the religious elements as a secular entity and therefore inevitably against them, it is the response of the MMA government in the NWFP which is instructive.
The NWFP government knows well that it cannot allow small, self-styled groups of religious leaders to undermine the governments writ. Qazi Hussain Ahmed of Jamaat-e Islami has already gone and sided with Lal Masjid. It shows that he finds affinity in the Lal Masjids radicalism with his own. But the bigger component party in the MMA grouping is not amused and its chief minister feels that what is happening in Islamabad and Peshawar only serves to defame the madrassas.
It is in this backdrop that The Friday Times has sought to investigate the issue and interview relevant people to ascertain and analyse what is going on and how it might unfold.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/22/2007 00:00 ||
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[Islamo-Tard]
Either "fraud" does not exists as an ID or your password is invalid.
Oh Allah (PITUI) This is a outrage, the Link calls me a Fraud!
Farrukh Saleem The real indoctrinators of the doctrine of jihad have now convinced themselves that they are on a divine mission and can thus intrude into the state's monopoly on violence
First vertex: Our political maulanas use Islam as a tool to achieve political objectives. Second vertex: Our uniformed decision-makers use Islam to achieve strategic objectives across the borders and political objectives within Pakistan. Third vertex: Apolitical maulanas are the real indoctrinators of the doctrine of jihad at the grassroots level.
Its the three vertices that complete and define the basic operating model in operation for the past three decades. The inverted triangle in effect donates the instable nature of the whole operating model (and the relationships within the model). In essence, there have been three interlocked Principal-Agent relationships; one between our uniformed decision-makers and political maulanas, the second between political maulanas and apolitical maulanas and the third between uniformed decision-makers and apolitical maulanas.
The Principal has been managing the relationships rather well whereby the Principal motivated the Agent to act on behalf of the Principal, the Agent undertook acts that were beneficial to the Principal, the Agent was compensated by the Principal and the Principal maintained the interests of the Principal well-aligned with the interests of the Agent. The Principal determined the nature and scope of work, set performance standards, incurred transaction costs and the Agent undertook acts as per the wishes of the Principal (it was thus in the interest of the Principal to strengthen both political as well as apolitical maulanas). The model had built-in rationality and a socio-cultural context; it worked well and produced results.
Victor Frankensteins triangular model was meant to produce a low-cost companion-creature to fight low-intensity battles across the borders and to act as political proxies within. Then came September 11, and that added a whole lot of noise into the Principal-Agent relationship. The noise has been getting noisier ever since and some of the Agents have been undertaking acts not specifically authorised or motivated by the Principal. Consequently, some of these acts have been against the interests of the Principal.
The Agency, which the Principal-Agent relationship represents, is falling apart. Some of the Agents have developed incentives to shirk; some have developed goal incongruity with the Principal while still other Agents feel capable enough to undertake acts on their own. The Principal is faced with a control issue; controlling the Agent both before and after the fact. The Principal is in a state of dilemma.
Political maulanas have a rational strategy to achieve political objectives and always incorporate pay and effort into their operating ideology. Political maulanas, while acting as Agents, also take into account the fear of firing as well as incentives and sanctions to act as per the wishes of the Principal. Apolitical maulanas, on the other hand, are irrational and do not incorporate pay and effort into their operating ideology. Neither do they have any fear of firing or pay much heed to incentives and sanctions. The real indoctrinators of the doctrine of jihad have now convinced themselves that they are on a divine mission and can thus intrude into the states monopoly on violence. Negotiations with them involving incentives and sanctions will never bear fruit.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/22/2007 00:00 ||
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Najam Sethi's E d i t o r i a l Has a deal been clinched between Benazir Bhutto and Pervez Musharraf? What are their compulsions to do a deal at this juncture? What sort of deal might this be? Why do both sides insist that no deal is in the offing? Is this pre-election deal a confidence-building precursor to a more enduring post-election deal? Can Ms Bhutto and Mr Musharraf live and let live, given their strong personalities and a legacy of mutual distrust?
Both Mr Musharraf and Ms Bhutto need each other. For many reasons the rising cost of living, anti-Americanism, incumbency, a string of broken promises, political retreats and gross mishandling of the CJP and Jamia Hafsa case Mr Musharraf has lost considerable popularity in the last two years. Unfortunately, this has happened precisely when his liberal reform agenda needs to be buttressed by a greater national consensus than the one he currently enjoys. On top of that, the forthcoming elections pose a serious challenge for him. If they are free and fair, he could lose them with disastrous consequences. If they are rigged, he could win them at the cost of a combined opposition boycott and onslaught against him. Therefore he needs to manage the elections so that they give him legitimacy. The only way to do that is to get Ms Bhuttos PPP on board for the whole exercise unequivocally because she is a natural same broad agenda and current set of values political partner in every other way. This means conceding a say to her in determining a neutral interim administration as well as allowing her to lead her party at the polls without the hassle of defending the corruption cases against her.
Ms Bhutto needs Mr Musharraf too in her bid to rehabilitate herself in the power establishment. She has been out in the cold for eleven years, most of them in self-imposed exile. Her ill-fortune in 1996 had to do with her hand-picked civilian president, Farooq Leghari, rather than any principled or strategic tiff with the army establishment. Indeed, she welcomed the ouster of Nawaz Sharif, her nemesis, in the belief that Mr Musharraf would offer her a raft back to shore. But he didnt do that. In fact, in his new found anti-politician reformist zeal, he pressed the cases drummed up by Mr Sharif against her and her husband. Her thinking is that if she misses this opportunity to get cosy with the military establishment, she would be reinforcing the trust deficit built into the army-PPP equation which has hurt her cause badly in the past. Indeed, her fear is that if Mr Musharraf were to be ousted from power by any means before she has wormed her way back into the fold of the establishment, the chances are that the military would retreat to the barracks, revert to form and start rebuilding a secret coalition with a unified Muslim League led by Mr Nawaz Sharif as it did from 1981 to 1999. That would condemn her to another long exile from power. This means that she will clutch at any reasonable deal with Mr Musharraf if it enables her to get a toehold in Islamabad.
The pegs of this rationally unavoidable deal look like this. First, for Mr Musharraf, it will not be at the expense of the PMLQ. Indeed, he will try and strengthen his current PMLQ-led grand national alliance by all means so that Ms Bhutto doesnt sweep the elections and turn the tables on him. Second, the cases against her will neither be pressed nor withdrawn. They would be shelved as an insurance policy lest Ms Bhutto try and get ahead of herself. Third, Ms Bhutto will not derail the elections by joining with the opposition on the issue of the re-election of Mr Musharraf as president by the current assemblies prior to the general elections or in the event of the final sacking of the Chief Justice of Pakistan by the Supreme Judicial Council in the next two months or so. If she cant vote for Mr Musharraf as president before the elections, she wont aggressively stand in his way or destablise him either. Fourth, once the general election results are in, she and Mr Musharraf will sit down to hammer out a working power-sharing arrangement much like Mr Musharrf and Maulana Fazlur Rehman did in 2002. So the issue of his uniform and the issue of her prime ministership will be tackled on the basis of the trust and confidence built in the next six months or so between them as in the case of the MMA in 2003.
Meanwhile, both sides will stoutly deny that any deal has been clinched. Such a confession would hurt Mr Musharraf because many good pro-establishment potential PMLQ electoral candidates might perceive a sudden surge in the chances of the PPP coming to power and be tempted to switch sides in the Punjab. Equally, such talk would undermine the popular image of the PPP as an anti-establishment party and persuade many voters to rush into the Nawaz Sharif-Jamaat i Islami camp in the Punjab and Sindh. The deal has been done. It is a precursor to another deal after the elections that will determine Pakistans fate in the next five years.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/22/2007 00:00 ||
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the rising cost of living, anti-Americanism, incumbency, a string of broken promises, political retreats and gross mishandling of the CJP and Jamia Hafsa case
I want to know more about the Jamia Hafsa case, they gonna trash an Indian horse farm?
I wish I hadn't found this - at Arab News, but offer it as an insight into the Arab mind.
The Americans are reported to be puzzled as to why Sunnis in their highly exposed enclave of Adhamiyah in Shiite-dominated east Baghdad should be protesting so angrily about US troops building a five-mile concrete protective wall around their community. The Americans confusion and their evident determination to press ahead with the project despite local opposition is yet more depressing evidence of how little they understand the country that George Bush invaded four years ago.
The US military believes that the heavily guarded enclave will not only protect the inhabitants of Adhamiyah from Shiite militia death squads but will also stop Sunni insurgents from using the district as a staging post for bomb attacks against Shiite targets. In Washington there are already suggestions that Sunni opposition to the wall is motivated by concern at the loss of a haven for terror attacks. There is also mystification why the people of Adhamiyah are not grateful for the 12-foot high concrete wall that is being thrown up around them. What's the death rate in the Green Zone, by the way?
Both assumptions ignore the fundamental fact that the people of Adhamiyah regard themselves first and foremost as Baghdadis, not as Sunnis. For emotional as well as commercial reasons they feel outraged that without the slightest consultation they are being cut off from their fellow citizens. Their part of town is effectively being turned into a ghetto in and out of which their own movements, and those of their friends and relatives from other parts of town, will be controlled by heavily fortified security posts. Creating such a concrete enclave is, in addition, the antithesis of everything the Bush administration claims to be trying to achieve in Iraq. This very week, Washington was pressing the Maliki government to speed up the process of national reconciliation. How then does the US military imagine Sunni residents of Adhamiyah will have any sort of relationship with their Shiite neighbors even a block away on the other side of the wall? How will Sunnis and Shiites now mix in the cafes, barber shops and stores that until now they have shared as fellow Baghdadis and Iraqis ? Maybe democracy has allowed them to think of themselves a Shia and Sunni for the first time, and now they want to be separated? Did Arab News do a poll?
The writer assumes the two groups want to live together. I think the writer also assumes that the Sunnis are part of the Master Race.
If the good folk of Adhamiyah, really believed that this wall was going to make their lives safer and therefore better, why would they oppose it so vigorously? Could it be that they have already figured out something the Americans evidently have not that the Shiite militias still have the no less destructive option of mortaring the Adhamiyah ghetto? And how long will it be before truck bombs start to tear the wall apart? Truck bomb the wall or truck bomb the markets? Sounds like the wall was a decoy.
There is a further distasteful element to this latest US ineptness. The five-mile-long concrete wall is remarkably similar to the 430-mile concrete and wire structure being built by the Israelis to keep the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. At 12 feet, they are both the same height. There's the rub!
The Baghdad wall is a desperate move by an arrogantly ignorant occupying power which cannot even see that the main significance of the wall will be as a stark reminder of its own multiple failures.
Posted by: Bobby ||
04/22/2007 17:35 ||
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The five-mile-long concrete wall is remarkably similar to the 430-mile concrete and wire structure being built by the Israelis to keep the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. At 12 feet, they are both the same height.
I was wondering when somone would finally make the dreaded Zionist connection. Just like Israel's security barrier, the wall would also provide choke points so that traffic in both directions could be screened. Something that neither side wants, both for the same reason.
Our military needs to tell them to piss off while we do whatever is needed to improve security for our troops and stabilize the situation in Baghdad. The wall can always be torn down later.
#2
Iff I understood JUAN WILLIAMS correctly this AM, Juan told his FOX panel openly that he is iin favor [now?] of a US "PULLOUT" from Iraq which I interpreted to mean a TOTAL US PULLOUT, espec given the new car bombings + IED incidents over this past weekend. I interprete Juan's comments to be contrary to his previous on-TV support to end active US-led ground = combat operations in Iraq, as did Colmes. THE DEMS MAY LIKE TO TALK ABOUT PULLOUT + WITHDRAWAL, BUT THEY = MANY OF THEM MUST REALIZE THAT DUBYA IS ENTRENCHING US-DEMOCAPITALIST INFLUENCE ALL AROUND RADICAL IRAN + MUSLIM WORLD - using "PULLOUT", etc as a talking point for 2008 is gonna hurt them.
#3
WHile JUan was calling for pullout, KRISTOL > triewd to make the point that iff HARRY REID trule believed "THE WAR IS LOST" in Iraq, then WHY DID REID SUPPORT THE NEW US DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION BILL WHICH EXTENDS FUNDING FOR US EFFORTS IN IRAQ FOR ANOTHER 15 MONTHS?, as opposed to 3-6 months. KRISTOL > US soldiers will notice, and may argue why US pols like Reid still want them = US Milfors to be in Iraq for 15 more months iff the war is lost now.
Within hours of the Virginia Tech massacre, the New York Times had identified the problem: ''What is needed, urgently, is stronger controls over the lethal weapons that cause such wasteful carnage and such unbearable loss.''
According to the Canadian blogger Kate MacMillan, a caller to her local radio station went further and said she was teaching her children to ''fear guns.''
Overseas, meanwhile, the German network NTV was first to identify the perpetrator: To accompany their report on the shootings, they flashed up a picture of Charlton Heston touting his rifle at an NRA confab.
And at Yale, the dean of student affairs, Betty Trachtenberg, reacted to the Virginia Tech murders by taking decisive action: She banned all stage weapons from plays performed on campus. After protests from the drama department, she modified her decisive action to "permit the use of obviously fake weapons" such as plastic swords.
But it's not just the danger of overly realistic plastic swords in college plays that we face today. In yet another of his not-ready-for-prime-time speeches, Barack Obama started out deploring the violence of Virginia Tech as yet another example of the pervasive violence of our society: the violence of Iraq, the violence of Darfur, the violence of . . . er, hang on, give him a minute. Ah, yes, outsourcing: ''the violence of men and women who . . . suddenly have the rug pulled out from under them because their job has moved to another country." And let's not forget the violence of radio hosts: ''There's also another kind of violence, though, that we're going to have to think about. It's not necessarily physical violence, but violence that we perpetrate on each other in other ways. Last week the big news, obviously, had to do with Imus and the verbal violence that was directed at young women who were role models for all of us, role models for my daughters.''
I've had some mail in recent days from people who claimed I'd insulted the dead of Virginia Tech. Obviously, I regret I didn't show the exquisite taste and sensitivity of Sen. Obama and compare getting shot in the head to an Imus one-liner. Does he mean it? I doubt whether even he knows. When something savage and unexpected happens, it's easiest to retreat to our tropes and bugbears or, in the senator's case, a speech on the previous week's "big news." Perhaps I'm guilty of the same. But then Yale University, one of the most prestigious institutes of learning on the planet, announces that it's no longer safe to expose twentysomething men and women to ''Henry V'' unless you cry God for Harry, England and St. George while brandishing a bright pink and purple plastic sword from the local kindergarten. Except, of course, that the local kindergarten long since banned plastic swords under its own "zero tolerance" policy.
I think we have a problem in our culture not with "realistic weapons" but with being realistic about reality. After all, we already "fear guns," at least in the hands of NRA members. Otherwise, why would we ban them from so many areas of life? Virginia Tech, remember, was a "gun-free zone," formally and proudly designated as such by the college administration. Yet the killer kept his guns and ammo on the campus. It was a "gun-free zone" except for those belonging to the guy who wanted to kill everybody. Had the Second Amendment not been in effect repealed by VT, someone might have been able to do as two students did five years ago at the Appalachian Law School: When a would-be mass murderer showed up, they rushed for their vehicles, grabbed their guns and pinned him down until the cops arrived.
But you can't do that at Virginia Tech. Instead, the administration has created a "Gun-Free School Zone." Or, to be more accurate, they've created a sign that says "Gun-Free School Zone." And, like a loopy medieval sultan, they thought that simply declaring it to be so would make it so. The "gun-free zone" turned out to be a fraud -- not just because there were at least two guns on the campus last Monday, but in the more important sense that the college was promoting to its students a profoundly deluded view of the world.
I live in northern New England, which has a very low crime rate, in part because it has a high rate of gun ownership. We do have the occasional murder, however. A few years back, a couple of alienated loser teens from a small Vermont town decided they were going to kill somebody, steal his ATM cards, and go to Australia. So they went to a remote house in the woods a couple of towns away, knocked on the door, and said their car had broken down. The guy thought their story smelled funny so he picked up his Glock and told 'em to get lost. So they concocted a better story, and pretended to be students doing an environmental survey. Unfortunately, the next old coot in the woods was sick of environmentalists and chased 'em away. Eventually they figured they could spend months knocking on doors in rural Vermont and New Hampshire and seeing nothing for their pains but cranky guys in plaid leveling both barrels through the screen door.
So even these idiots worked it out: Where's the nearest place around here where you're most likely to encounter gullible defenseless types who have foresworn all means of resistance? Answer: Dartmouth College. So they drove over the Connecticut River, rang the doorbell, and brutally murdered a couple of well-meaning liberal professors. Two depraved misfits of crushing stupidity (to judge from their diaries) had nevertheless identified precisely the easiest murder victims in the twin-state area. To promote vulnerability as a moral virtue is not merely foolish. Like the new Yale props department policy, it signals to everyone that you're not in the real world.
The "gun-free zone" fraud isn't just about banning firearms or even a symptom of academia's distaste for an entire sensibility of which the Second Amendment is part and parcel but part of a deeper reluctance of critical segments of our culture to engage with reality. Michelle Malkin wrote a column a few days ago connecting the prohibition against physical self-defense with "the erosion of intellectual self-defense," and the retreat of college campuses into a smothering security blanket of speech codes and "safe spaces" that's the very opposite of the principles of honest enquiry and vigorous debate on which university life was founded. And so we "fear guns," and "verbal violence," and excessively realistic swashbuckling in the varsity production of ''The Three Musketeers.'' What kind of functioning society can emerge from such a cocoon?
Posted by: Bobby ||
04/22/2007 07:38 ||
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Michelle Malkin wrote a column a few days ago connecting the prohibition against physical self-defense with "the erosion of intellectual self-defense," and the retreat of college campuses into a smothering security blanket of speech codes and "safe spaces" that's the very opposite of the principles of honest enquiry and vigorous debate on which university life was founded. And so we "fear guns," and "verbal violence," and excessively realistic swashbuckling in the varsity production of ''The Three Musketeers.'' What kind of functioning society can emerge from such a cocoon?
Exactly the kind of society the liberal establishment wants to create: a society of perpetual infants needing constant supervision by the big Mommy in Washington.
And no, it won't "function".
Posted by: Dave D. ||
04/22/2007 8:43 Comments ||
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#2
I assume some of the mail Steyn had to fend off was from those Rantburgians convinced this sort of talk is "blaming the victims". Steyn's comments on the murdered Dartmouth College profs is exactly to the point. They were victims and they made themselves victims. There is evil dolts in this world - many of them thinly masking their psychopathology as faith - and to fail to be prepared for them is no different than ignoring the risk of fire or earthquake or lightning strike. The difference, of course, is an academic and media caste that works to prevent fire-extinguisher ownership and bans private citizens from stock-piling sandbags.
#4
So why don't the liberals who are so cavalier with everyone's safety and well-being just put their heads down on the block and let thugs and terrorists behead them. They might try reasoning and conflict resolution after they ban meaningless symbols but good luck.
#5
So why don't the liberals who are so cavalier with everyone's safety and well-being just put their heads down on the block and let thugs and terrorists behead them
#7
I don't advocate "universal sufferage" when it comes to the Second Ammendmant but I do believe those people who wish to carry a concealed weapon should be allowed to do so providing they go through a safety course and a course on marksmanship. The responsibility of carrying a concealed weapon is not inconsequencial.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
04/22/2007 15:17 Comments ||
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#8
The "gun-free zone" turned out to be a fraud -- not just because there were at least two guns on the campus last Monday, but in the more important sense that the college was promoting to its students a profoundly deluded view of the world.
Academia's betrayal of America becomes more profound with each passing day. Parents of those killed at VT need to understand that their children died due to the school's delusional policies. Yes, they died at the hands of Cho, but each of his victims may as well have already had their hands tied by VT's administraitors.
Not just America, Zen, but the West generally speaking.
The older I get, the more I believe that because our society gives more money to a guy who manages a shoe store than to professors, they have a hair across their butts about our whole system (how could a truly good and fair system reward a businessman more than the obviously superior perfesser?).
Thing is, how can a bunch of people who are supposed to be so much smarter than the rest of us not realise the simple solution, which is to become a businessman and make the money?
Is it any suprise that such people believe that calling a campus a "gun free zone" will guarantee that everyone will be proof against gun violence? There's a "rest of the world" out there. How can that possibly be difficult to figure out, if you're so much smarter than average??
Posted by: no mo uro ||
04/22/2007 18:47 Comments ||
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#10
How can that possibly be difficult to figure out, if you're so much smarter than average??
While the view is splendid, any of its benefits are negated by the isolation that comes from dwelling in an ivory tower. Old saying:
Those who can, do. Those who cannot, teach.
Academia is proving this in spades. The VT massacre is a perfect example of starry-eyed theory being trumped by vicious reality.
#11
FYI, HESTON's famous comment is also depicted in RED DAWN. * Red Dawn movie > NATO dissolves, Commies etal. face starvation = economic travails; "Former" NATO = now EU nations except for BRITAIN refuses to assist Amer agz USSR-led invasion of CONUS-NORAM, + CHINA [in movie loses 400Milyuhn out of 1.0Bilyuhn population] -"Britain" in movie not expected to last long. Commie invasion in US South in movie = IMMIGRATION? includ disguise by Radical Terror. Boulder??? COLORADO surrounded and besieged by Commie forces ala VICKSBURG. COMMIES AL WEAR LEGAL UNIFORMS AND CARRY LEGAL GUNS - SWAYZE, SHEEN, EMILIO, etal ARE THE AMERS WHOM ARE ALSO THE DIRTY GUERILLAS-INSURGENTS AGZ COMMIE RULE.
Lest we fergit, "WWWWWWOOOOOOLLLLVVVVEEEE
EEEEERRRRIIIINESSS...".
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
The happenings at the Lal Masjid in Islamabad have begun to reverberate. Clerics in Peshawar are threatening to attack and close down brothels in the city while vigilantes of Islami Jamiat Talaba at the University of the Punjab have been emboldened into taking action against what they term a policy to turn the PU into a den of obscenity. So far the IJT shock troops have beaten up some students, taken out a noisy rally, attacked and vandalised a concert at a department and are threatening to do even more unless the varsity administration relents and, as one observer quips, hands the university back to the IJT.
Victor Frankensteins triangular model was meant to produce a low-cost companion-creature to fight low-intensity battles across the borders and to act as political proxies within. Then came September 11, and that added a whole lot of noise into the Principal-Agent relationship. The noise has been getting noisier ever since and some of the Agents have been undertaking acts not specifically authorised or motivated by the Principal. Consequently, some of these acts have been against the interests of the Principal.
Has a deal been clinched between Benazir Bhutto and Pervez Musharraf? What are their compulsions to do a deal at this juncture? What sort of deal might this be? Why do both sides insist that no deal is in the offing? Is this pre-election deal a confidence-building precursor to a more enduring post-election deal? Can Ms Bhutto and Mr Musharraf live and let live, given their strong personalities and a legacy of mutual distrust? 
