Terror? No ♠ Terreur ? Non

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Madrid. Ca ne semblait pas cohérent. C'est tout simplement trop, comparé à leur mode opératoire habituel.

Je ne suis pas un expert de l'ETA, mais en tant que français, je vis depuis des années avec les nouvelles rapportant les attentats et les meurtres de ce qui n'est jamais qu'une autre de ces haïssables bandes de gauchistes, cette gangrène qui empuantit l'Europe depuis des décennies. ETA en Espagne, IRA en Irlande, Fraction Armée Rouge en Allemagne, Action Directe en France, Brigades Rouges en Italie... Bien sur, certains d'entre eux sont désactivés ou dormant. Mais leur héritage est bien vivant et les totalitaires d'extrême gauche n'ont jamais été aussi actifs ici bas qu'ils ne le sont aujourd'hui.

En tant que français, je dois aussi vivre avec le fait que mon (mes) gouvernement(s) leur ont offert amnistie et asile, soit officiellement avec le Grand Pardon du voyou Socialiste Mitterrand en 1981 et officieusement, en faisant de la partie française de la région basque rien moins qu'une base sécurisée à partir de laquelle l'ETA a pu lancer ses attaques en Espagne. Juste une autre brique dans le mur de honte qu'est la France post soixante-huitarde.

Pourtant aujourd'hui je n'ai pas pu me faire à l'idée de la piste basque, dès lors que l'ampleur des attaques contre Madrid a été annoncée. Cela ne cadrait pas dans le tableau.

Et puis je suis tombé sur cela.

Al-Qaeda ? Peut-être. De leur point de vue, il est cohérent de viser l'Espagne, l'un des pays qui fut suffisamment courageux pour s'opposer à eux, suffisamment résolu pour les traquer et ce faisant, suffisamment digne pour tenir son rang d'exemple pour l'Occident.

L'enquête devrait en dire plus. Ce n'est pas très important pour l'instant. Pour l'instant, je suis avec mon pote Juan Pablo. Un peu plus âgé que moi, fils d'un immigré espagnol et père de deux merveilleux gosses, Juan Pablo est rééducateur pour grands traumatisés crâniens. Ce n'est pas seulement un ami solide, c'est aussi un type intègre, un type bien.

La France est son pays (A tel point que comme moi, et contrairement à beaucoup d'autres, y compris des français de souche, il n'a pas essayé d'esquiver la conscription. Il a fait son temps dans les paras. Pas exactement du gâteau, quoi que l'on puisse dire de l'armée française.) mais l'Espagne est le pays de ses ancêtres, et ça n'est pas dénué d'importance.

Je lui ai donc passé un coup de fil un peu plus tôt aujourd'hui. Les pertes étaient estimées à 190 morts et 1000 blessés à ce moment là. J'ai demandé à Juan Pablo:

- Alors qu'est ce que tu éprouve mec? Tristesse ?
- C'est pas exactement ça.
- Horreur?
- Non, pas vraiment...
- ... Peur?
- P*, non!

Je ne lui ai rien demandé de plus. J'ai simplement dit : amène toi par ici Juan, je vais te préparer un ou deux trucs à boire mon pote.

Je sais ce qu'il éprouve, car aujourd'hui j'éprouve la même chose. Je connais ce sentiment. Je le reconnais. Je l'éprouve depuis ce certain après-midi de septembre.

Après-midi, oui. Décalage horaire avec New York.

Cela n'a rien à voir avec la tristesse, l'horreur ou la simple peur. Rien du tout.

C'est une combinaison déterminée de rage brûlante et de fureur froide.

Mes premières pensées pour l'Espagne, au terme de cette journée sanglante sont strictement identiques à celles que j'ai eu pour les USA au soir du 11 Septembre.

Au moins 190 morts maintenant.
Inhumez les et pleurez les.

Au moins 1240 blessés maintenant.
Pansez leurs blessures.

Et puis pourchassez l'ennemi, qui et où qu'il soit. Pourchassez les sans relâche. N'abandonnez jamais. Ni maintenant, ni dans dix ans, jamais. Pourchassez les et exterminez les. Tous.

Vous ne pouvez pas renoncer, et vous avez au moins 1430 bonnes raisons pour ça maintenant.

MISE À JOUR :

HispaLibertas ne renonce pas :

A tous mes compatriotes : c'est un moment crucial pour notre nation. Non, je ne parle pas des élections qui auront lieu demain. Quelque soit le gagnant et le nouveau Président demain, c'est le moment de faire preuve de courage et de nous battre. En ces temps incertains d'un étrange siècle, nous devons donner le meilleur de nous même. Nous devons gagner cet affrontement entre civilisation et barbarie, car c'est là la véritable alternative que nous devons choisir. Ce n'est pas le moment d'être faible ou de gaspiller nos efforts dans les divisions. Nous ne capitulerons pas, nous ferons face à cette épreuve et nous combattrons nos ennemis. Nous n'avons pas initié cette guerre. Mais nous devons la terminer. Et nous vaincrons.

(Lien via Tim Blair)

1277 - the dissident frogman

the dissident frogman France
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>>Pardon je pour écrire seulement en anglais. No need to apologize, I have absolutely no problem with that, on the contrary. After all, French is mostly used for abusive (and quickly deleted) comments down here. I noticed you dismissed the poet and introduced the engineer, and thank you for a very informative comment. However, I'm afraid I stand by my point as far as your initial equation is concerned: I found nothing in your argument to back up your demonstration - that I would summarize roughly as "no oil = end of Islamist terrorism" (I don't suggest your equation is so blunt. It could be of course, any kind of variation: "no oil", or "less oil" or "from a different source" or even "bankrupt the Saudi" equals "decisive blow to Islamism" or "victory is near") I'm not an engineer myself, so I may enter a mine field here, but still, I'll have a go on the topic. The V8 bit was mostly an image, yet I understand it might not have been a proper one, since you seem to take it literally. My point was (is) that scaling down our activity is not the good thing to do, particularly in the current context. I would be the first to see particular interest in high capacity batteries. Really. Not particularly for cars (because there is something with the gasoline engine that cannot be purported by other alternatives: any driving nut such as myself can tell you that there is a lot more to it than just the efficiency factor "“ but I digress.) That our current car engines still have room for improvement, as you noted, is actually nothing new or surprising. Last time I looked, this is precisely what is happening since the beginning of this blessed invention (which was itself already an improvement over the previous means of transport and sources of energy). Improvement. Better engines, etc. That was indeed the reason why I wrote "Our current state of technology doesn't allow us to give up on "their" oil yet." And emphasized on "yet". I learned quite interesting facts thank to your comment, but you apparently failed to provide the viable alternatives I was err, "demanding" "“ Instead, you're still talking about a prospective future. How close it can be is actually of little importance: I never argued that it won't happen or that we shouldn't pursue these goals. We are, and we will reach them (Unless you involuntarily made my point, I guess we're in fact right on the same track, judging by your paragraph on the successive stages of lightning fuel). You have reason to believe that these viable energy sources are right under our noses? I'd say we're already using some of them (let's not forget about our nuclear reactors, which already helped us a lot to become more independent "“ and far less polluting - from Middle East thugs such as the Saudi) and I guess the other are actually a bit farther than our nose. Maybe say, right after the next turn. In short, we're going there and the day we could say "FY" to the Princes of the Desert (as well as "behave, or else…") is coming closer. My point is: it's too early yet, and since we need to keep on going at fast pace, we shall not starve our V8s. Guess what? I have reasons to believe that the Saudi KNOW we don't have any alternative ready right here, right know. Check this if you please: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=3410 (actually a very important read for every American voter, if I may) Back to what made me feel uncomfortable with your equation. I believe you misunderstood the reason why I mentioned Pakistan. You seem to hold a grudge against the Madrassas (and God knows I won't blame you for that), but at the end of the day, there are two reasons why I don't believe they're so much of a concern: first, these are only indoctrination centers, not weapon factories or military bases. We have to keep an eye on them, but there's nothing here out of the reach of any decent police forces and secret services. (And death squads too, if they start wearing explosive jackets and heading towards the next bus stop or train station.) Next, the "students" are eventually nothing more than a ragtag good enough for Djihad. They can claim success against a dying Soviet army, but that's just about everything they can do. They're cannon fodder, no matter how expensive "“ or not "“ their training was for the Saudi princes. At worse, they will reach our cities, like they did in New York (I don't think they could try the planes again) in Bali or in Madrid (that's more of a concern, but again, I imagine that with some serious work and international cooperation, they could be traced and eliminated fairly easily) So yes, the Saud are funding Madrassas in Pakistan (again, not really big news for this frogman), but that was not the reason why I mentioned Pakistan. Nuke plans, remember? We're talking about state terrorism (I have a hard time believing that Musharraf "didn't know"). Pakistan has little concern about the quantity of gas Americans are pouring in their SUVs. We could add North Korea "“ same story, with a record of state terrorism abroad. And we could notice that Pakistan's expertise in nuclear came from China. Also, it seems that Iran is quite in the news with nuclear handiwork lately. We won't stop these people simply by cutting down our oil orders to the Saud. If you allow me this little irony: No it's really not about Oil! At least, it's not that simple.

1278 - IXLNXS

IXLNXS
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Aren't most of the Spanish protestors carrying signs asking for "Peace", and accusing their leaders of "Lying"? We seem to have alot in commen.

1279 - Peter

Peter
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Thanks Frogman. Spot on. We really need to get rid of Socialism, Political Correctness at home, otherwise we will be inviting disaster after disaster. There is no substitute for understanding reality; wishful thinking leads straight to hell. The hard decisions will be: Is it enoug to fix immigration or do we need a mass expulsion of of Arabs and Muslims? To what extent? How will it practically be performed? I would like to point out that Multiculturalism (or plain stupidity) is a much better candidate for "root cause" (if there is one) for terrorism than any sins of the West. Terrorism would not be a problem here if we had not invited them.

1280 - the dissident frogman

the dissident frogman France
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Peter, While I fully agree with you that Socialism is the fifth column of this war (as it was during the Cold War), I certainly hope I won't live to see "mass expulsion" of any given ethnic or religious group. For instance, what about Arabs who flew the Muslim world because they refuse to submit to Islam? (I use the verb submit on purpose, considering the meaning of the word "Islam") Are you going to send them back? What's disturbing in your statement, is that you happen to make the same mistake as the multiculturalists, albeit from the opposite perspective. They claim: "every Arabs and Muslims are angels", you claim "All of them are evil". I would say Islam has a serious problem. It's oppressive, it's retarded, it plays on the frustration and the fears of a quarter of the world's population in order to progress and therefore it is dangerous for the rest of us. It has to change, starting right now, or disappear if it can't manage the change. I'd say, as Dinesh D'Souza astutely put it by catching on a statement of Tony Blair: sure, the great majority of the Muslims are not terrorists, nonetheless, the great majority of the terrorists are Muslims - and they are widely supported in the world (including of course by the aforementioned Socialists) There are thinkers, scholars, journalists, laics - and even clerics - in the Muslim world and in the West who are aware of this and who fight for the change. In the Muslim world, they have to keep silent, as pointing at the fact that today's Islam is nothing but an oppressive abomination would be signing their own death sentence. But what about those who flew and came to the West, in order to make their voice heard? What about Ibn Warraq for instance? Should we help them (and if possible, those who stayed in the Muslim world) or should we just round up everybody and move them somewhere else, in the hope that the problem will go away as well? If we look back on the previous fight against the last threat to Civilization, Communism, I'm afraid the West already has a record of failures to help the dissidents who were speaking the truth and struggling in the right direction. I hope we'll do better in our fight against militant Islam. First because they are on our side, and then because at the end of the day, it's not about class (here goes the Socialists) and it's not about race (Here goes today's Multiculturalists, just like yesterday's Nazis did. Here you go? I hope not…) It's about individuals and the objective value of the rules, ideas and beliefs they abide by (Yep, here I go)

1281 - julie de maupin

julie de maupin
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Jeez, DF, I love your blog :) Excellent posts here as well! Thanks to everyone!! You're right: it's not about oil, it's not about class or race. But what will spell doom for the Sand Sheiks is the death of Wahhabism. And that, and that alone, these bastards will fight to the last. Wahhabism provides their support: a pliable populace, submissive and emotional, who are more than willing to commit any atrocity. They **are** cannon fodder, no more and no less. And why? Because the rise of wahhabism represented the death of logic for these people. And with the death of logic comes the inevitable: cults of personality. The islamic world has failed to grow since the 14th century. It stopped in its tracks hundreds of years ago and what we're seeing now is nothing more and nothing less than a replay of the Last Crusades. The disconnect between the Arab world and the west was a conscious one by the Arab leaders of the time who preached an insular message to their people, encouraging cutoff. Arab secular logic, never completely removed from the mullahs' review, was not so much displaced as morphed into a sick, self-aggrandizing mess of fallacies. The ultimate upshot is that the Arab world never had a reformation as the West did, and as a result their capacity for self-examination has been squelched by a pervasive culture of victimization. Want to stop the terrorists? Eliminate wahhabism. How do we do that? It's long process. Keep encouraging those "free-thinkers" in the Arab world who see something wrong with the conventional wisdom of their rulers. Support those who itch for positive change, for freedom. Give those who would force the muslims to examine their own actions in light of reality an outlet to distribute their message. It will take a few generations -- hell, look at how long it took Luther to get his message across -- but the end result will be worth the effort. For now, for us, the immediate solution is to silence those muslim "leaders" who are the proponents of the violence and the victimization. Remove them. Permanently. (Dead men have trouble spending money.) And allow the reformation to begin.

1282 - Engineer-Poet

Engineer-Poet
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Dissident Frogman wrote: >The V8 bit was mostly an image, yet I understand it might not have been >a proper one, since you seem to take it literally. The V8 is actually an icon of the USA, both inside and outside the USA. The joke going around these days shows an M1 Abrams tank pointing its turret gun at some ragged person, who is smiling back at it and asking "Does that thing have a hemi?" (Note for non-Americans: the Chrysler 426 Hemi, named for its hemispherical combustion chambers, is one of the classic muscle-car engines of all time.) As you are a dissident frogman, I am an iconclastic American. I believe that this icon no longer serves any useful purpose, and it should be allowed to retire to the museums and classic car shows. Our roads, and the roads of the rest of the world, should belong to technology that's both better for us and worse for our declared enemies. >My point was (is) that scaling down our activity is not the good thing >to do, particularly in the current context. I did not mean to imply that anything should be scaled down, save perhaps the height of some of the enormous vehicles coming out of Detroit. (Did I mention that I, personally, develop products for Detroit?) What we (the USA first, perhaps you too?) need to do is start making different trade-offs. Economy and safety should start being higher priorities than speed and power (though with hybrid technology you have the paradox of bigger batteries giving you MORE power at the same time you have GREATER economy), and we should recognize that economy is also a contributor to safety in the form of security for Western civilization. >That was indeed the reason why I wrote "Our current state of technology >doesn't allow us to give up on "their" oil yet." >And emphasized on "yet". >I learned quite interesting facts thank to your comment, but you apparently >failed to provide the viable alternatives I was err, "demanding" ... You may find this in my latest Blog entry "Is the tide turning?": http://ergosphere.blogspot.com/ (I truncated the long URL, so if you are reading this long after March 2004, look for the March 2004 archives). If you do not find what you are looking for, use the mail link provided on my page. >You have reason to believe that these viable energy sources are right under >our noses? I'd say we're already using some of them (let's not forget about >our nuclear reactors, which already helped us a lot to become more >independent "“ and far less polluting - from Middle East thugs such as the >Saudi) and I guess the other are actually a bit farther than our nose. That is not a bad point, but nuclear power is mostly used to generate electricity; nuclear power tends to replace coal, not oil. Most forms of transport (cars, trucks/lorries, buses) cannot use electricity; they can use exactly one type of liquid fuel, and almost all of it comes from crude oil. This is actually an easy thing to change, but we have to demand change. >So yes, the Saud are funding Madrassas in Pakistan (again, not really big >news for this frogman), but that was not the reason why I mentioned Pakistan. >Nuke plans, remember? After I wrote my first response above, I learned that Gal Luft and Anne Korin (of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, [url=http://www.iags.org]http://www.iags.org[/url]) claim that Saudi money had a lot to do with Pakistan's nukes. They make the claim here: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article.asp?aid=11703028_1. Read the whole thing. >We won't stop these people simply by cutting down our oil orders to the Saud. I never said we would. Reducing the demand for oil (by any means, whether greater efficiency or displacement by other sources of energy) is another front in the war, not the only front. Are you familiar with the war against Japan in 1941-45? The battles that got the press were fought by soldiers carrying guns, but the war was won by submarines which sank the Japanese freighters carrying raw materials to the homeland. Long before the war ended, the Japanese had no fuel for their trainer airplanes, and they could not train new fighter pilots. They could not make war materiel and get it to the front, so the Allied soldiers were coming against an enemy with poor arms and little food. If we want to be successful in this war, we have to stop feeding the enemy.

1283 - the dissident frogman

the dissident frogman France
- Link

Engineer-Poet, "I believe that this icon no longer serves any useful purpose, and it should be allowed to retire to the museums and classic car shows." Don't take it too personally, but I'm always weary of people who claim that the solution for the better (and, for that matter, the "common good") goes through the suppression of "useless relics of the past". First, it usually ends in a ghastly way, and next, this is not how progress works. My view of progress is, I guess, understandable by anybody looking at the history of our specie, and particularly that of the West (In terms of civilization. That means including Australia and, yes, Japan for instance) since we devised Capitalism, the most fruitful period in history, as far as progress is concerned: anybody can dream up, conceive and create a workable and better alternative. If it really is workable and better, then it will naturally impose itself (and the former solution will fall into disuse and retire to museum quietly), because that's what Capitalism is about: aiming at the better. If the preliminary requisite is to suppress coercively the former solution (the Communist way of "progress"), then it means the alternative is not good enough (even if it's just "not yet"). A friendly advice dear Engineer-Poet: engineering is good. Engineering society is not. Having said that, I dare to repeat that we're mostly arguing on details but fully agree on the essence (no pun intended, although "essence" also means "gasoline" in French). There are indeed different fronts, and regime change in Saudi Arabia should be (is, I hope) at the top of the agenda "“ as far as we manage intelligently another crucial aspect of strategy: attrition. That was my point. As for the Saudi money paying for Pakis nukes, I wouldn't be surprised indeed. But what with North Korea, and a double-faced Communist China? What with Iran? What with the grim perspective coming from Russia, and a Putin who starts to show a very unpleasant face?

1284 - Yamaneko

Yamaneko
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Last I checked, Iran and Russia are major oil exporters. Petrodollars buy nukes. Take the Americans out of the market, and it gets harder to buy nukes.

1285 - Engineer-Poet

Engineer-Poet
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>I'm always weary of people who claim that the solution for the better (and, for that >matter, the "common good") goes through the suppression of "useless relics of the > past". First, it usually ends in a ghastly way, and next, this is not how progress works. Sometimes the suppression comes as a consequence of other forces that we all agree to be for the better. For instance: 1.) Steam-engine train locomotives are museum pieces and historical curiosities. They are too slow, not powerful enough, require too many fuel/water stops and pollute too much to be acceptable for modern rail transport. They were everywhere a mere 60 years ago, but today they have been completely replaced by diesel, diesel-electric or even all-electric traction. This replacement happened despite the greater cost of diesel fuel versus coal and the cost required for electrifying rail routes. 2.) Vacuum-tube electronics have been almost entirely replaced by transistors, the exceptions being some high-end audiophile gear (curiosities) and certain categories which 50 years ago did not exist as consumer items (microwave ovens). 3.) Flat-head, side-valve automobile engines are relics, not produced for many years. They lost too much energy as heat and did not breathe well enough to produce the power/weight desired by consumers. An overhead-valve engine is bulkier, has more parts and costs more, but today they have the entire automotive market. 4.) Pollution regulations have eliminated the sale of new 2-stroke motorcycles (and their emissions of unburned fuel and oil) from the USA. Some of these changes happened over a very short time, yet few people really cared all that much. The catalytic converter caused another gas pump marked "Unleaded" to appear for a while, but now that's all there is; the air is a lot cleaner as a consequence, and cars are still cars. We have other changes coming, due in part to government incentives to purchase hybrid cars. Toyota Prius buyers sit on a waiting list measured in months, and Ford just licensed Toyota's technology. >engineering is good. Engineering society is not. The USA currently spends about USD 50 billion (that is 5e10 dollars in scientific notation) per year to protect the Middle East oil-trade routes alone. Total spending on defense needs related to oil or Arab military threats was a much larger part of our defense budget, roughly half of USD 360 billion - and that was before the USD 87 billion requested for the first year of the Iraq affair. The USA uses about 110 billion gallons of motor gasoline per year, plus about half that much "distillate fuel oil" which fuels diesels. If the defense costs related to oil were charged directly to motor fuel, the pump price of fuel in the USA would roughly double. Speaking as an American who knows Americans, if motor gasoline cost $3.00 to $3.50 per gallon there would not be many people wanting to buy Hemi-powered trucks for driving to work. Had this change occurred ten years ago there would be many more people already driving cars like the Prius and there would already be many different models using such technology. You would not need government diktat to achieve this end. All you would have to do is charge the costs to the goods which produce those costs, and let people choose freely between the alternatives. (I have been saying this for ten years. Just because nobody wants to listen does not mean it is not true. ;-) Let me reverse that argument: we have been indulging in social engineering for many years, using subsidy of petroleum consumption with our tax and defense policies. These subsidies have resulted in great problems, including despotic regimes which sponsor terrorism. It is time to change these policies, remove the subsidies and force the necessary adjustments to begin.

1286 - the dissident frogman

the dissident frogman France
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1277 - the dissident frogman

the dissident frogman France

1278 - IXLNXS

IXLNXS

1279 - Peter

Peter

1280 - the dissident frogman

the dissident frogman France

1281 - julie de maupin

julie de maupin

1282 - Engineer-Poet

Engineer-Poet

1283 - the dissident frogman

the dissident frogman France

1284 - Yamaneko

Yamaneko

1285 - Engineer-Poet

Engineer-Poet

1286 - the dissident frogman

the dissident frogman France