Bloodthirsty Liberal

Not that there’s anything wrong with that!

France’s new Socialist government is already causing ripples throughout a Europe struggling to balance government budgets without making ordinary people’s lives miserable, but it has created a completely different problem in the Middle East.

The prime minister’s last name, it turns out, sounds like an Arabic slang word for penis.

His name is Jean-Marc Ayrault.

Pronounced properly in French, the last name is very much like a moderately rude Lebanese and Palestinian term that is widely understood in the Arabic world.

Secretary Richard Johnson is a real prick. But Ambassadors Wang and Schlong are growing in my esteem.

Okay, enough.

The French Foreign Ministry said it was aware of the issue but had no comment. The office of the French president, sounding amused, referred CNN questions to the prime minister’s office, which had no comment.

The story echoes reports that two years ago, Pakistan wanted to appoint an ambassador to Saudi Arabia whose name sounds like an even more offensive word for penis in Arabic.

Do we have someone named Butthole working in the State Department? I’d nominate him or her for Ambassador to Iran.

The history of the US’s involvement in the slave trade in the 18th and 19th centuries is well-documented and common knowledge.

Other countries, not so much [via Jungle Trader]:

The slave trade once made the people of Nantes rich, but the French city covered up its dark history for decades. It recently erected a memorial to the victims in a project believed to be the first of its kind in Europe. But the effort to shed light on the Continent’s role in the 18th century slave trade with Africa and the New World has not been popular with some residents.

In the 18th century, cruelty had poetic names, like Le Prudent (“The Prudent”), La Légère (“The Light”) or Les Trois Maries (“The Three Marys”). The ships, named in the hope of a good voyage or baptized with Christian first names, were part of a brutal business between Europe, Africa and America: the slave trade. During a period of approximately 400 years, at least 13 million people were transported under horrendous conditions from Africa to the colonies of the New World.

The northwestern French city of Nantes played a central role in what has been described as the largest forced migration in global history. Although the city’s merchants came late to the lucrative slave trade, long after the Portuguese, Spanish and British, over the course of the 18th century the city on the Loire River became a central hub of the Atlantic triangular slave trade — and with it the most important port city in France.

Over 40 percent of the French slave trade was carried out via the city, with around 450,000 men, women and children abducted from Africa to America. According to curator Marie-Hélène Jouzeau, who is responsible for the city’s historical heritage, it wasn’t just the major merchant families who specialized in the business. “The entire mercantile community was involved, and the whole region profited from it,” she told SPIEGEL ONLINE.

Late last month, and with little fanfare in the international press, Nantes officials opened the Memorial to the Abolition of Slavery, which the organizers claim is unique in Europe.

…

“A kind of memory work,” is how Nantes Mayor Jean-Marc Ayrault describes the monument, with which Nantes is openly confronting its past. “It’s an invitation to reflect on a dark chapter in the history of our city,” he says.

Nantes had long suppressed the brutal origins of its wealth. A collective silence covered up the fact that the prosperity of the city’s great families, like the Michels, Montaudouins and Sarrebourse d’Audevilles, not to mention the splendor of the city’s architecture, were built on the slave trade.

Awfully grande of you for acknowledging your role, France. Your self-congratulation is merited. Funny, though, that when I toured the Loire with my family last summer, they never mentioned the role of bondage in the obvious wealth of the region. Isn’t that just like the Europeans? Oops!

And next time Reverend Wright and his ilk want to run down the US of KKKA for its original sin of slavery, I hope he brushes up on his French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and a Babel of West African languages so that he can dish out the insults in all the tongues of all the nations that participated in African slavery.

Les poulets de France reviens de nicher. (Or some such.)

In a classic Woulda Shoulda Coulda move, Socialist Candidate, François Hollande, wonders why round-ups of Muslims didn’t happen sooner.

Police were reported on Wednesday to have detained 10 suspected Islamic militants in early-morning raids across France — the latest in a series of measures apparently designed to display a forceful response to the killings seven people in the southwest of the country last month.

The round-up, with police officers and domestic security agents raiding at least five locations as far apart as Marseille in the south and Roubaix in the north, came 18 days before the first round of French presidential elections in which law and order issues have assumed prominence since the March attacks in Toulouse and Montauban.

“If there are suspicions, if there are risks, then they must be acted upon,” the Socialist candidate, François Hollande, who is leading President Nicolas Sarkozy in opinion polls, said in a radio interview on Wednesday. “But what might be surprising is why do it after an act of terrorism which has, it is true, deeply affected our spirits?”

“I am not questioning what is being done. All I am saying, simply, is that we should have perhaps done more beforehand.”

To translate: Liberte, Fraternite, Egalite… not so much. Let’s arrest before the crime.

Not to be done, Nicholas Sarkozy, responds:

Mr. Sarkozy has said the recent series of raids have no connection with the Toulouse killings or presidential politics.

I’m sure not.

And what do we know about these hapless French Muslims?

News report quoted unidentified police sources as saying the 10 people arrested were suspected of either planning to travel to or returning from Afghanistan or Pakistan for training. The 10 were said to be individuals rather than an organized network and to have the same disaffected, loner’s profile as Mohammed Merah, 23, the Toulouse gunman who claimed to have ties to Al Qaeda.

The latest arrests came a day after a state prosecutor said judicial authorities will indict 13 Muslim radicals suspected of plotting terrorist acts in France, though he acknowledged that any plans of violence by them had remained at an “intellectual” stage, including a plot to kidnap a magistrate in Lyon.

Using the same metric on the French that they typically use on Israel, or on the United States when it was led by George W. Bush, I’d have to conclude that they are moving in a fascistic direction. On the other hand, I have deep sympathy for the problem: What to do with citizens who wish to kill other citizens for political gain? It is a problem for all societies that have the rule of law and some semblance of equality and due process. If, during the Bush years, we had had mass round-ups of Muslims on suspicions of thinking of possibly doing something dramatic, the pages of the NY Times would have been dripping with sarcasm, accusations about the loss of our constitution, our freedoms, etc. Ad nauseum. Without mass round-ups, we experienced that. It was just a fantasy on the part of the cultural elite, but we did experience it. Today we have examples of their great fears coming out of Europe, and it is reported as a straight news story, sans commentary.

What gives, liberals? Shouldn’t you organize sit-ins and marches outside the French consuls across the US with little French flags dripping in red paint? Pictures of the arrested, maybe even a few of young Merah thrown in for good measure? Are you guys getting lazy?

- Aggie

Sung to the tune of “Kumbayah”:

Show retraint, France,
Show restraint.
Mon dieu, show restraint.

France is expelling five “foreign Islamic radicals” in a new strategy to cope with the growing wave of Muslim terror. The United Nations, which frequently has condemned Israel for deporting Arab terrorists, has not commented.

The action by France follows the murders of seven people, including a rabbi and three young Jewish children in Toulouse, by Al Qaeda-linked terrorist Mohammed Merah, who was killed in a French police raid on his apartment two weeks ago.

The French Interior Ministry, headed by Claude Gueant, stated that two Muslims are being deported and that similar action will be taken against three others as part of “an acceleration of the deportation procedures of foreign Islamic radicals.”

The ministry added that the law “allows this type of decision with regards the ‘urgent need for state security or public safety’ or ‘conduct likely to harm the fundamental interests of the state.’”

…

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is in the midst of a re-election campaign, said that recent raids that rounded up 19 suspected Muslim terrorists were intended to “deny the entry of certain people to France” whose values contradict those of France.

He added, “It’s not just linked to Toulouse. It’s all over the country. It’s in connection with a form of radical Islam, and it’s in agreement with the law.”

So, it’s okay to deport Moslems if you’re in the middle of an election campaign. Good to know!

After mercilessly killing the poor terrorist who just needed some extra guidance, France is now rounding up Muslims. Sounds like an Apartheid State to me.

Nineteen people have been arrested in a series of police raids on suspected Islamists, French President Nicolas Sarkozy told French radio Friday morning.

The raids come a week after gunman Mohammed Merah, who killed seven people, was shot dead after a long siege in the southwestern city of Toulouse.

The arrests took place in Toulouse, Marseille, Nantes, Lyon and the Ile de France region, around Paris, the Interior Ministry said.

Authorities have not said that any of those arrested were directly linked to Merah.

Sarkozy told Europe 1 that the decision to act had been taken by the interior minister and foreign minister “to deny the entry of certain people to France” who did not share the country’s values.

“It’s not just linked to Toulouse. It’s all over the country. It’s in connection with a form of radical Islam, and it’s in agreement with the law,” he said.
French gunman buried in Toulouse
French politics and Toulouse suspect

“What you have to understand is that the traumatic events in Montauban and Toulouse were profound in our country. I don’t want to compare horrors but it’s a bit like the form of trauma visible in the United States and New York after 9/11. We have to be able to draw some conclusions.”

Interior Minister Claude Gueant said that several firearms, including five rifles, four automatic weapons and three Kalashnikovs, had been found in the searches, as well as a bulletproof vest.

Speaking to French media, he said the raids targeted people who have made the claim online that they are “mujahedeen,” or Islamist fighters, and support “an extremely radical ideology.”

The authorities’ decision to swoop was in part based on the suspects’ claims that they had received paramilitary training, Gueant said.

Sarkozy suggested that more raids will follow, saying, “There will be other operations that will continue and that will allow us to expel from our national territory a certain number of people who have no reason to be here.”

Can you say: ETHNIC CLEANSING?

Sarkozy said he was obliged to act to ensure the nation’s safety. “It’s our duty to guarantee the security of the French people. We have no choice. It’s absolutely indispensable.”

Why don’t they just sit down with some nice strong coffee and some croissants and have a heart-to-heart? Each side compromise a little bit and all will be well. Maybe they could give some of their country to the Islamists, just unilaterally withdraw? What is there to be afraid of? I’m sure that the French Muslims won’t use their new-found nation as a launching pad for rockets.

- Aggie

The Toulouse Jewish Day school needs this like it needs a hole in… never mind:

The Toulouse Jewish day school terrorized by a radical Islamic jihadist has received a wave of anti-Semitic phone calls and emails following the attack.

…

Police prosecutor Michel Valet told reporters Wednesday an investigation into the latest threats has been launched to track down the “origin of these calls and letters and the identities of those behind them.” CRIF, the Jewish umbrella organization in France, is monitoring the situation closely.

Those poor kids. Still, maybe one day, if they study hard, they’ll be able to attend a prestigious American law school—and go through the same crap:

There are a number of e-mail notifications being circulated at Columbia University Law School, as well as various departments and clinics within the school, announcing official upcoming anti-Israel events, according to IsraelMatzav.

American-Israeli “human rights” lawyer Emily Schaeffer and member of the Yesh Din NGO spoke at the prestigious law school on March 27, claiming that Israeli “human rights violations” include cases of “torture, targeted killings, [and] the use of white phosphorus.”

Israel is so racist, even its phosphorous is white!

In addition, an event titled, “Disruption of Normal Life in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” which is expected to accuse Israel of “home demolitions” and “illegal construction” is scheduled to take place March 29. The event’s flyer proclaims, “Palestinians maintain that the demolitions stem from a discriminatory planning and zoning regime that favors Israeli settlers.”

…

Similarly, Professor Katherine Franke, who recently returned from a trip to the region, where she was helping ‘Palestinian’ women establish a Women’s Committee within the Palestinian Bar Association, is scheduled to speak about the “pressing Gender Justice issues,” in the “West Bank” and what it means to be a feminist in the West Bank.”

How likely is it that Professor Franke will utter the words “honor killing” in her speech? I didn’t think so.

“The Ethics of Pinkwashing: LGBT Rights in Israel/Palestine,” scheduled to take place on April 4th, is meanwhile expected to accuse Israel of “pinkwashing” and committing crimes of discrimination against the homosexual population in Israel.

Accuse away, but name one crime of discrimination. We’ll wait…

In the meantime, in case you couldn’t figure it out:

Columbia University is widely known to be a hotspot for anti-Israel programming and activities, and has sponsored numerous events aimed at de-legitimizing the Jewish State. It facilitates academic, economic and cultural boycotts against the State of Israel. The university’s Edward Said was photographed throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers guarding the border with Lebanon. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was invited to speak at the university in 2007.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Columbia hasn’t already awarded Mohammed Merah an honorary degree.

Another day, another Jew-bashing in France:

Eight days after four Jews were murdered in the Otzar Hatorah school in Toulouse, hatred-based violence has hit France again, this time in Paris.

Channel 2 News reported on Tuesday that a student from the Otzar Hatorah campus in the French capital was lightly injured in an attack by anti-Semites.

The report, which cited local authorities in Paris, said the 12-year-old boy fell victim to violence by a group of unknown assailants who ambushed him outside the school and called out anti-Semitic slurs.

The attackers were able to carry out their plan in spite of the increased security around Jewish schools and synagogues in France, following last week’s attack.

The President of the Otzar Hatorah network of schools, Jean-Paul Amoyal, was quoted by Channel 2 as having told news agencies that the student was attacked only 100 meters from the entrance to the school, in an area that was not guarded.

It would appear that all the Jews of France have to do is stay within 100 meters of a school and they should be fine. Problem solved.

Meanwhile:

[Mohammed] Merah’s father said on Monday he planned to sue France over his son’s death, saying, “France is a big country that had the means to take my son alive. They could have knocked him out with gas and taken him in. They preferred to kill him.”

Can’t say I blame them, pop.

BTL quoted from this woman below, but she is worth listening to and understanding fully.

Notes on what she has to say:

1. There are 200,000 French Jews in Israel. Interesting, because the French media repeatedly offers the old numbers – that there are 600,000 Jews living in France. But 200,000 of them have emigrated to Israel, or 1/3rd. And France famously refuses to do a census by religion, and will acknowledge when prodded that they really don’t know. They have probably inflated their Jewish population. On the off chance that there are still 600,000 delusional Jews living in France, we can say that only 1/4 of them have abandoned that fabulous bastion of liberty. But I’m pretty sure that the truer percentage is 1/3rd.

2. She speaks of the Mohammed Dura tragedy. For our readers who do not know, French television falsely reported that the Israelis had shot and killed a boy, Mohammed Dura, in a gunfight with Palestinians back in 2000. German analysis of the film footage proved that the bullet could only have come from the Palestinians. Furthermore, there is serious doubt that it wasn’t a staged event. The French courts have finally weighed in on this (in 2011), stating that French TV was wrong, but only after some of the critics were hauled into court for “libel”. So France bears partial responsibility for the intensity and subsequent deaths of the Intifada (Palestinian Terrorist Guerrilla War) of 2000-2006. All those dead Jews and dead Palestinians. France was an enabler, a proponent of terrorism.

3. She blames the media. And she’s right, except for the fact that the media gives us the news that we want to hear. The public supports the media and the media feeds the public what the culture wants to eat. French media is French culture.

4. Her descriptions of Israeli culture, scientific advances and democracy are all true. The French media, along with the media in the rest of Europe and here in the US doesn’t report it. The truth is that Israel is one of the most pleasant places to be that I can imagine. Food, weather, cultural activities, landscape, history – all of it. And if you happen to get sick there (and I did once), some of the best docs in the world.

- Aggie

Note the lower case h.

Is it in Germany?

The German city of Frankfurt on Sunday elected its first Jewish mayor since the Holocaust. Peter Feldmann became the first Jewish mayor of any major city in the country, in fact, receiving 57 percent of the vote.

Feldmann, 53, a member of the Social Democratic Party, won the election against the incumbent mayor. He will take office on July 1.

The new Lord Mayor-elect has visited Israel in the past; from 1979 to 1980 he learned the science of gardening in the Jewish State. He then returned to Germany to complete a degree in political science at the University of Marburg, later becoming a lecturer at the institution.

…

He has described himself as a “liberal Jew.”

Frankfurt’s previous and only other Jewish mayor, Ludwig Landmann, was a member of the German Democratic Party and served as head of the city from 1924 to 1933. He, too, considered himself a “liberal.”

We’ll let that pass. But though I think Jews (and everyone else) are done a disservice by liberalism, it does not in and of itself presage a (lower case) holocaust.

How about Gaza?

A man who murdered a female relative in a Gaza hospital last Friday is claiming the murder was to preserve “family honor” to “escape judicial punishment.”

The Palestinian Authroty amended its laws to end leniency for so-called honor killings in Judea and Samaria in May 2011, but the law has not been changed in Hamas-run Gaza.

The Gaza-based Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights said reduced sentences – a maximum of 24 months in jail for severe crimes like murder – had made “honor” crimes “prevalent in the Palestinian society and has resulted in opening the door for undermining the principle of the rule of law.”

Ooh, that sounds pretty holocaust-esque, at least if you’re female. But this sort of thing has been going on for years. The only thing that’s changed is that the world has noticed, and some people are complaining.

How about France?

“Jews are being attacked all the time,” she said.

“Children, in the buses, in the Metro, going to school, coming from school, couples in the street – this is just an unbearable situation. And we are talking about France, we are not talking about some kind of jungle. This is one of the main countries of Europe.”

As Aggie and I have been telling you guys for six years now. But if France is so unbearable, you can always try Frankfurt, Germany!

We had a commenter take issue with our assertion that Muhammad, the Toulouse Terminator, did not act alone. Actually, it was not our assertion, but that of many, many people, including Jytte Klausen and Caroline Glick (whom we cited in separate posts). But no, Zooey insisted, French officials say Muhammad was a loup seul.

Sure about that?

Dozens of French Muslims are training with the Taliban in northwestern Pakistan, raising fears of future attacks following the shooting deaths of seven people in southern France by a man who spent time in the region, Pakistani intelligence officials said Saturday.

Authorities are investigating whether Muhammad Merah, the Frenchman of Algerian descent who shot to death three Jewish schoolchildren, a rabbi and three French paratroopers in Toulouse this month, was among the training group, the officials said.

…

Approximately 85 Frenchmen have been training with the Pakistani Taliban in the North Waziristan tribal area for the past three years, according to the intelligence officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media. Most of the men have dual nationality with France and North African countries.

The Frenchmen operate under the name Jihad-e-Islami and are being trained to use explosives and other weapons at camps near the town of Miran Shah and in the Datta Khel area, the officials said. They are led by a French commander who goes by the name Abu Tarek. Five of the men returned to France in January 2011 to find new recruits, according to the officials. It’s unclear whether Merah was among that group.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy promised a crackdown on French citizens found to have trained in terror camps abroad.

“Anyone who goes abroad to follow ideological courses that lead to terrorism will be criminally punished. The response will be prison,” he said in a campaign speech Saturday.

Abu Tarek: why, the very name conjures berets and baguettes, Gauloises and grenache.

But Zooey et al have their story down:

A senior French official close to the investigation into the shootings told The Associated Press on Friday that despite Merah’s claims of al Qaeda links, there was no sign he had “trained or been in contact with organized groups or jihadists.”

And how’s this for a coincidence? Two lone wolves being lone together!

Meanwhile on Saturday, Experts have used cellular tracking technology to determine that a laptop belonging to Abdelkader Merah, the brother of Muhammad Merah, was located near the Jewish school where the latter shot dead four people on Monday. The computer appeared to have been near the scene of the shooting on the day of the attack.

Mon Allah!

More about frère Abdelkader:

Police have found explosives in a car Abdelkader owned, according to the public prosecutor leading the case. He was already known to security services for having helped smuggle jihadist militants into Iraq in 2007.

A police source said on Saturday that at a closed hearing in Toulouse he had declared himself “proud” of his brother’s killings and had admitted helping Mohamed steal the scooter used in all seven murders. He had denied any knowledge of his brother’s murderous plans, however, the source added.

Quite the family, huh? Time for the disbelieving, distraught mother, I should think: a staple among terrorists.

[A] lawyer for Merah’s mother, 55-year-old Zoulhika Aziri, said she had been released without charge.

Jean-Yves Gougnaud told reporters in the southern French city of Toulouse that Aziri’s world had been “turned upside down.”

“She is devastated,” he told reporters after her release. “At no time could she have imagined that her son was the one who did it.”

Sons, plural. I believe it was Wilde who wrote: to have one son slaughter beautiful young children in cold blood may be regarded as misfortune; to have two looks like carelessness.

But back to that pesky lone wolf argument:

French weekly Le Journal du Dimanche reported on Sunday that during negotiations for his surrender with police, Merah admitted that he felt “endless pleasure” during the massacre at the Ozar Hatorah Jewish School last week.

…

As for his time in Afghanistan, Merah said that he underwent personal training rather than “collective training,” and added that his trainer wanted him to carry out attacks in Paris but he chose to start with Toulouse.

Why do you think he filmed it all? Just for personal enjoyment? At the very least, he wanted evidence for admission to paradise. They don’t hand out 72 virgins to just anybody claiming jihad. One’s damn hard to come by in this day and age, let alone 72.