New Threats Against Europe

[Annie]

posted by John One thing I don't understand - your a social sciences teacher and yet you're not a liberal! Not complaining, but you must be a one in a million!

Yeah. What's worse is not just history, but sociology and political science degrees too! How I came out of university like that? I over analyze, just made sense, also had good upbringing.

Probably most decisive factor? I'm contrary! :

 

[Annie]

Kathianne, anti-US books sell well here because the people buying them are assholes. Simple as that! There are plenty of liberal assholes in ol' Europe as I said.

A book bashing the French would be popular here, amongst certain segment, ahem! People are not as angry about Germany, they get that Schroeder did it to win an election, pretty sure it would backfire on him down the road, but we understood. French just seem nuts! Not making sense other than more corruption ala UN oil for food type deals?

 

[rjw8652]

Kathianne,

On a slightly lighter note, and to highlight la difference between us Anglos and les Francais, and also the collusion between the Iraqis and their putains*:

I recall coming out of a meeting with my French boss when I was working in Baghdad. We were making major claims against the Iraqis for breach of contract and had prepared a dossier of evidence. We had just come out of a very difficult meeting with them, as they had simply confiscated all the photographic evidence we had presented to them to back up our claims! Typical Iraqi/Arabic logic - photographs were illegal, ergo your claims are invalid!

Anyway, I thought we had reached the end of the road in negotiations and were headed for a legal suit. I turned to my French boss and asked him "so, where do we go now, M. Wagon?"

"To ze office" was his reply.

At that point (as God is my witness), I saw a large military plane flying overhead, on the way to land. It was low enough for me to see that it had French markings!

"Zere is our claim" he announced. "Ze weapons for zis army".


Cheers,
John
______________________
* whores in French

 

[Annie]

Well that is funny! Arrogant, but funny! Nothing subtle there...:

 

[rjw8652]

Nato Air, I'm sure Blair would welcome your gushing support. He "feels" - he's that kind of guy. However, it's an odd fact that, despite his reputation for supremely manipulative political skills, he made such a poor job of selling the case for war against Iraq.

Those who are anti-war may say it’s because he took the UK to war on a lie. But for those, like me, who believe he told the truth, it's a mystery that he didn't present the case more cogently.

Some weeks ago in his own constituency, he re-stated facts which have been all but obscured about why the UK went to war. It was not because of the "45 minute claim", which was actually barely mentioned. It was not because Iraq posed an "imminent threat" - he had said in terms it did not.

The real fear, as he said at the time, was that tyranny, terrorism and chemical, biological or nuclear weapons might become lethally combined. Saddam was a key player in this game. The point was that the free world faced a new type of threat from people who were demonstrably prepared to behave in ways previously deemed unthinkable. That became clear on 9/11, which simply altered forever the balance of risk; and in Iraq, Blair’s judgment call was that this risk could not be taken.

It was a brilliant, lucid and persuasive presentation. Yet it was downplayed in the British media because no-one wanted to hear it. People in the liberal establishment (media, universities, schools etc) decided long ago that Blair lied about the reason for war, and there are now no facts — apart from the discovery of WMD in Iraq —which will convince them otherwise.

In large part, this is due to a general and corrosive cynicism about Blair. The years of political spin mean many people now won’t believe a single thing he says, and assume he acts in bad faith.

But the more immediate reason was a fundamental error Blair made in the run up to war. The case for military action was legally, morally and strategically solid - but the public didn’t buy it. They didn’t trust President Bush, they didn’t like acting without UN approval, and they didn’t like the doctrine of pre-emptive strikes.

In the face of all this hostility, Blair panicked. He threw all his efforts into obtaining a further UN resolution which would give an unequivocal green light for war. This effort was to prove a disastrous mistake. The legal case — as set out in the UK Attorney General’s published opinion — was already soundly based on the combination of the three existing UN resolutions.

But there was so much uproar around the attempt to get the new resolution that, when this failed, people wrongly assumed that without it the war was illegal. The liberal media had done its job! But that doomed resolution was not legally necessary - it was rather a political manoeuvre. And when it foundered, the political fall-out was so catastrophic that the war itself became de-legitimised. CRAZY!

This was compounded by the failure to discover any WMD in Iraq. In a climate of rampant hostility and suspicion, this was held by the liberals and the populatin at large to prove no WMD had ever existed. This was clearly absurd. Even countries that opposed the war were certain Saddam was still in the business of producing WMD. Yet so greatly has history now been rewritten, it is said that Saddam posed no threat at all.

It is surely hard to exaggerate the role played in all this by the BBC, which has filtered every development through an anti-war prism. Whether by repeatedly asserting that no WMD ever existed, or giving the misleading impression that the Attorney General’s opinion was never published, or failing to report that the UK weapons inspector Dr David Kay had uncovered dozens of clandestine biological weapons programmes, the BBC has fuelled the impression that the war was a gigantic con-trick.

As a result of all this, the UK is suffering a profound suspension of reason and logic, in which falsehoods have been reinforced so often that actual facts are now viewed with disbelief.

Undeniably, the doctrine of pre-emption is controversial. This is because too few have even now grasped that we face a totally new type of threat requiring different structures, laws and conventions. As the US analysts David Frum and Richard Perle say, the UN charter recognising the right of self-defence against armed attack is useless in dealing with, say, Syria arming Hezbollah which has attacked America in the past, or Pakistan giving nuclear technology to North Korea which threatens America in the future.

As they rightly observe, we face an aggressive ideology of world domination from militant Islam. The stakes are too great to wait for it to strike first. If Clinton had not decided to wait when Osama bin Laden was expelled from Sudan in 1996, the thousands who died on 9/11 might have been spared.

But with cynicism rampant, the danger is that the West will indeed wait, until it is once again too late. Blair must take his blame in this tragedy that will engulf us all.


John

 

[Annie]

John, very well put. :clap1:

 

[kev8864]

rjw8652 spot on.

I don't for one moment believe that Europe is not aware of the threat of Islam.
If we take the case of Holland & Pym Fortune, there is a realisation that Islam is to be feared. He came from nowhere, founded a party & made sweeping gains.
We can also look at France; the left was smashed in the last presidential elections. The race was between Le Pen & Jacques Chirac. Le Pen was close to winning. The single issue that succours support is Islamic immigration.
You can also look at Austria Freedom party (FPO) & Jörg Haider.
He garners support on the same issue .
Belguim, Flemish Block (VB)
Key figure: Frank Vanhecke

Danish People's party (DPP)
Key figure: Pia Kjaersgaard (leader, DPP)
The ultra-right DPP swept into parliament as the country's third-largest party following the 2001 elections, taking 12% of the vote and 22 seats under Denmark's partial PR system. Now underpinning a centre-right government coalition, it has drafted tough new asylum policies and cut aid to the developing world.

Italy
Northern League, National Alliance
Key figures: Umberto Bossi (pictured: leader, Northern League),
Gianfranco Fini (leader, National Alliance)
Which entered into rightwing coalition with Silvio Berlusconi's governing party following general elections in 2001.

Norway.
Progress party
Key figure: Carl Hagen (leader, Progress party)
Norway's far right Progress party has propped up a rightwing coalition government since elections last October, in which the Labour government that had dominated Norwegian politics for almost a century was ousted.

Portugal.
Popular party
Key figure: Paulo Portas (leader, Popular party)
Portuguese parliamentary elections held this March saw the Popular party win 14 seats, after polling almost 9% of the vote. The fiercely anti-immigration party, led by crusading rightwing journalist Paulo Portas, is now part of a rightwing coalition.

Switzerland.
Swiss People's party (SVP)
Key figure: Christoph Blocher (Leader, SVP)
The party takes a strongly anti-immigrant line. After elections in 1999, the party became Switzerland's second-strongest political force, polling a joint top 22.5% and winning 44 seats.

Spain, would have retained a conservative party. I think what is generally misunderstood, is that the right lost the election, not because the Spanish were intimidated by Islamic terror, rather that the government lied about the real suspects. They sought to apportion blame on Basque separatists.
I can remember that happening & saying to wife, that is not ETA's MO. This will be the actions of Muslims. Of course on the eve of the election this came out.

Throughout Europe, even in the UK, with the rise of the BNP, this is an issue that the electorate are very aware of.