La falta de creixement en al món arab

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Den Beste and the Europeans:don't antagonise friends

Den Beste's latest article on France and Russia towards the Iraq affair confirms Charles Tupper's conclusion (post #328) that the former's perspective is shallow and myopic with respect to the Europeans.

How possibly would sanctioning France's economy to the point of ruin advance America's interests? Especially America's preference for free trade under the rule of law, fighting against the islamojishadists, demonstrating the robustness of open societies with democratic polities and freemarket oriented economies?

Don't unnecessarily antagonize allies and turn them into enemies should be the Administration's policy. After all, the Europeans could really harm American interests by reducing even more their defense budgets and burden the American economy with even higher military spending that eventually saps its robustness. Alternatively, the Europeans could put aside their significant differences and embrace the revolution in military affairs and challenge American military preeminence.

The Administration really should consider delegating European defense to the Europeans. The rancor that exists between France and other European countries is a perception that even pursuing their own national interest is somehow challenging American power. Further, there's an element of pride: the Europeans sense that even if they increased their defense budgets proportionally, the American military would still assign its European counterparts to be water carriers and road builder.

Does Den Beste even consider that the Americans and French might be collaborating much more closely behind the scenes, particularly in intelligence sharing? As with Russia, just how oblivous is he to the hostage situation in Moscow? There's no way that the American administration will harm the Russian economy in any signficant way The current Administration is rather cognizant that Russia's Moslem extremist problem is merely a foretaste of what will happen to America. Delibitating a shaky economy to satisfy some misplaced, contingent moralism is frankly counterproductive.

Perhaps both countries wil lose their economic ties and contracts but international relations has a funny way of maintaining 'unnatural' status quos. After all, the Americans ratified under Yalta the Nazi-Soviet pact with respect to Eastern Europe.

El secuestro en Rusia y la invasión de Irak

Sobre els accusats detinguts com a presumpte franctiradors

Response to John and Antonio's post on la Francophonie

John and Antonio respectfully disagree with many of my points. First off I want to dispense with point 3. Yes I do know how very insulting the opening sentence is in English. I made it clear that I was undergoing a very rare intemperate outburst. Let me be very clear that I never directed my outburst at commentators like John and Antonio, J Lichty, Meryl Yourish, mommydoc and other thoughtful commentators in the blogosphere. I apologize to them if they concluded that I directed my venom towards them.

I directed my outburst towards some commentators who ranted about la Francophonie and exposed their abysmal ignorance.
Second, I view Andorra as a country's that's a bridge between the Franchophonie and the Iberian world and don't see the necessity of pigeonholing Andorra exclusively one or the other.

Third, with respect to the Quebecois and the 2 World wars, there's some background that needs explanation. In the First World war many of the Francophones enthusiatically supported the declaraion of war and eagerly flocked to the colours. Sam Hughes, the Defense minister, was an Orangeman and a very intense anti-Catholic bigot who squandered an immense opportunity to meld both linguistic groups to a common cause. He refused to let the Catholics units celebrate military masses and broke up French Canadian units breaching an explicit understanding they would serve together. Further, the conscription crisis of 1917 was provoked by a broken promise. It was understood that Canadians would be volunteers and would never be any complusion to serve. The conscription crisis was also brought about by outright lies as to just how disasterous the various campaigns went from 1914-16. The Allies, to put it bluntly, were bleeding white due to the imbelicilities of the their High command. Had the populace had a true understanding, it would've demanded.

Fourth, anyone's who's read my blog post on France knows quite well that I'm a vehement anti-centralist and I'm quite supportive of Chirac's efforts to decentralize France in the face of great skepticism by others. Further, I'd deeply bemused by John and Antonio's criticism of the French exterminating the Provençal language in light of the fact that they're supporters of a political party that's very hostile to the peripheral nationalities. While the party has never harboured any interest to wipe out the regional languages; its leadership has had no compunction in slandering the president of one regional governments during the most recent elections or fruitlessless undermining the language's unity of another lingustic minority. In fact, I'm quite hostile towards the French in the matter of its treatment of its linguistic minorities.
Fifth, the other reasons, issue, that John and Antonio advance as to why the Francophonie has nothing to offer aren't rude at all; just frankly beside the point. The British didn't invite the various Indian states to play a game of futbol to resolve the Munity; nor undertake a rugby tour in Africa to conquer the southern portion of the continent from the Zulus, Xhosa and Boers. None of the colonial powers particularly distinguished themselves there and the evidence is that many of the ex-colonies are basket cases.

I won't defend French actions in the postwar but some background history is important. A book titled Allies at War provides some eye opening information notably that de Gaulle and French soldiery that decided to continue the war in exile were shunted aside by Roosevelt. His Administration had no difficulty in maintaining relations with Vichy France; in fact, Roosevelt favoured Darlan and did everthing to convince him to pass to the Allied's cause. Darlan played for time, and in my own view suckered the American president. Darlan's assassination made de Gaulle the defacto leader.

Roosevelt towards of his life had developed an animus towards de Gaulle that escalted into a personal vendetta.

The Americans played a small role in the French defeat in Indochina. The Americans prohibited the French from transferring any American military equipment that the latter recieved from the former. It was clear that the French would lose the war but the denial of critical military equipment played a factor in the French's abject defeat. So much so that the Americans had to fill the vaccum in Vietnam shortly afterwards. James Bennett brought to my attention that during the Algerian conflict, the Americans prohibited the French from transferring its NATO troops to fight in Algeria. I'm very curious to find out if the American behaved in the same manner towards the British during the Malaysian war of 1946-61.

My goal was to throw back the same attitude that some of the more idiotarian commentators made. Whether the jingoistic bloggers and commentators like it or not, the democratic Francophone countries are as much a target as the Anglosphere. To those islamojishadists, they're just obverse sides of the same 'immoral' civilization which must be obliterated. I'm disappointed by the official policies and statements advanced by the Francophone governmental official but insulting each other doesn't advance the war aims of destroying the islamojishadists.

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En défense de Charles Johnson

On the Francophone summit and American commentary: enough's enough!

I read Charles Johnson's post on the Francophonie summit inBeriut I'm as appalled as many of the commentators are of both Chirac and Chrétien who squander a once in a lifetime opportunity to give the Arab and African states a blunt no shitter about their present plight and that the only way to get out of their abject circumstances is to embrace the values of the open society, tolerance, elections, free market economic system, etc etc.
However, reading through the comments, I became so inscensed at the facile sleers, cheapshot and sneering at the democratic countries of the Francophonie that it's time for an intemperate outburst and slap you commentators with a cosh.

Yeah you heard me right.

I'm fed up with the nasty, meanspirited jingoism that currently pervades the American psyche. You accord yourselves the font of brilliance, the most innovate, the smartest, the most beautiful. In sum the belly button of the world. You aren't the only one's to know what's at stake in the present war with the islamojihadists.
I've tried to reconciliate the America and the rest of the west through some of my articles but enough's enough. I'm frankly wasting my time preventing the fatal divisions that'll make this war a long and agonising one to win because ignoramuses like you don't want help- particularly from the democratic Franchophone countries lest they 'wussify' the Americans around the school playground world

Moreover, when some of you comment about Quebec, France or the other democratic Francophone countries- shut the fuck up! Most of you don't know these countries and some of you make it a gleeful point of being blissfully ignorant of your geographical neighbour to the north. So does us a favour shut the fuck up, sit down and learn!