Category: Internet

Following up on the Iraq War column we mentioned previously, Tom Friedman has a fresh virus alert:

Unfortunately, when it comes to enlisting allies, the Bush team is its own worst enemy. It has sneered at many issues the world cares about: the Kyoto accords, the World Court, arms control treaties. The Bush team had legitimate arguments on some of these issues, but the gratuitous way it dismissed them has fueled anti-Americanism. No, I have no illusions that if the Bush team had only embraced Kyoto the French wouldn’t still be trying to obstruct America in Iraq. The French are the French. But unfortunately, now the Germans are the French, the Koreans are the French, and many Brits are becoming French.

I knew Gaulishness was a problem, but I never knew it was contagious. It must be carried by the cheese.

Michael J. Totten reports:

PARIS, Jan. 24 – French President Jacques Chirac issued an unconditional surrender to Baghdad today, and declared he was upholding the great tradition of French foreign policy. “Saddam Hussein, like Hitler before him and unlike the current American president, was elected by his people. We admire Iraq for standing against the unilateralist arrogance of the American cowboy regime, and we hereby swear eternal allegiance. Iraq’s interests are our interests and, besides, we need the oil.”

The dude runs an excellent blog.

— Mrs. Bennett urges you to cast your attention in the general direction of Natalie Solent:

The Arabs are at the present time the world’s premier admirers of those who “martyr” themselves while killing children and other civilians. However we must not neglect the Western, nominally-Christian world’s own substantial contribution to this field of human endeavour. On October 23rd 1993 the IRA exploded a bomb in a fish shop in the Shankill Road. They used a bomb with a fuse set for eleven seconds: so you can safely assume that the bombers intended to give themselves time to get away but to kill the customers and staff in the shop without warning. And kill them it did, nine of them, including Michelle Baird aged seven and Leanne Murphy aged thirteen.

Gerry Adams was a pallbearer at the funeral of one of the Shankill bombers, and Oakland, CA (home of Barbara Lee) just named a street after him. We seem to have a bit of a consistency problem here.

— The most important piece of news from the Middle East in a long time is discussed on Rantburg:

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s Cabinet on Sunday approved a U.S. proposal aimed at ending the month-old siege outside Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s compound in Ramallah. The U.S. plan calls for U.S. and British personnel to guard six Palestinians wanted by Israel, and in turn Arafat would be allowed to leave his compound and move freely in the Palestinian areas of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

It looks to me like a step toward de-escalation of the conflict, but Fred’s got a different take.

— The Times of London has more evidence of IRA involvement with Colombian drug lords:

Three suspected IRA men, Martin McCauley, James Monaghan and Niall Connolly, were arrested last August in Colombia for allegedly helping guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) develop expertise in mortars, bombs, missiles and intelligence. McCauley and Monaghan have firearm and explosives convictions. Connolly was identified as Sinn Fein’s representative in Cuba.

The Super Bowl commercials about drugs and terrorism weren’t as far off the mark as was previously believed.

— PE.com | Local News

RIVERSIDE – Forget an apple a day. If you want to stay out of the cardiologist’s office, drink five glasses of water a day.

Drink up. And drink up again.

— Irish terrorist Gerry Adams refused to answer questions about the IRA and Sinn Fein’s role in training terrorists in Columbia and Cuba at a Congressional hearing Tuesday (FT.com):

The Irish Republican Army has formed part of a global terror network based in Colombia, training Marxist guerrillas alongside Iranian and Cuban officials as well as Basque terrorists, according to a nine-month congressional investigation…

On Tuesday Gerry Adams, the Sinn F?in leader, declined a request by the committee to explain the IRA’s involvement in Colombian terrorism at a hearing scheduled for Wednesday. But he predicted the party’s US support would be unaffected by his refusal to explain the arrest of three leading republicans in Colombia. He said the party was just back from one its most extensive fundraising tours in the US.

A spokesman for the Republican-controlled committee said its invitation to Sinn F?in “was an opportunity for Mr Adams to offer some explanation about why two IRA explosives experts and the Sinn F?in political officer stationed in Cuba were arrested in August following a visit to a safe haven controlled by the Farc, a designated foreign terrorist organisation.

“Terrorism imperils Colombian democracy, and the alleged IRA role in helping groups like the Farc perpetuate the violence poses a direct threat to US national interests.”

I really don’t see how we can make headway in the war on terror as long as people like Gerry Adams are allowed to freely raise money in the United States to support his heinous activities. Not only is he allowed to raise money for terror, they named a street after him in Oakland. The double standard has to go – this man has bombed and murdered school children and other innocent people in the UK, and still he walks around free as a bird.

Update: here’s another link on the IRA/Columbia connection, gleaned from Instapundit during a rare moment of Blogspot uptime. I won’t link Insty since Blogspot will probably be down if you try and go there.

— Doc Searls wants an end to ideological labels, and toward that end he quotes this unfortunate statement of Photo Dude’s:

And on the other side of the coin, there are indeed people who may not have been First Wavers like Jason but were veteran bloggers long before 9-11, who consider themselves generally left of center, yet fully support the war on terrorism.

And don’t care if they are published in a book or not.

So build me my own cubbyhole. No label, please.

Labels like “First-Waver” are good, even when applied to late adopters, but labels like “fuzzy-headed pacifist” or “warblogger” are bad. I see now, sorry I missed the memo.

— Sgt. Stryker addresses the bumper-sticker slogan of Searls’ idol in this brilliant essay:

Let’s take the phrase “Killing does not justify killing”. What does it mean? More importantly, what are the consequences of this belief and is it morally acceptable?

Dr. Frank was impressed by this as well.

— “Most people are reasonable, most of the time; for the rest, you need Master Bomb.” — me.