HANS BLIX, ON THE JOB.

RICHARD PERLE SAYS THAT FOR THE FRENCH, IT’S ALL ABOUT OIL:

Richard Perle, a former US Assistant Defence Secretary, said the French anti-war stance was driven by economic interests. French oil giant TotalFinaElf has exclusive exploration contracts worth €60bn – €75bn to develop the massive Majnoon and Bin Umar oilfields in southern Iraq, he said.

“What’s distinctive about the Total contract is that it’s not favourable to Iraq, it’s favourable to Total,” Mr Perle, the chairman of the Pentagon’s Defence Policy Board, said during an address in New York.

“One can suspect that there’s some arbitrage there, that in between the real value of that contract and the cash value of that contract there’s a certain amount of political support.

“It’s entirely possible that Saddam negotiated that deal because that along with the revenues, he could get something else.”

He said oil experts who had analysed the deal described it as “extraordinarily lopsided” in favour of the French company.

Gee, imagine that.

UPDATE: And Juan Gato thinks he’s found the explanation for French Mugabe-coddling.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Here’s more on the French oil connection.

INTERESTING REPORT ON ISLAMISM in the Netherlands. Unsettling, too.

A ROMANTIC BLOGGER VALENTINE, by Kieran Healy.

THE FRENCH EMBASSY PROTEST IN WASHINGTON YESTERDAY went well, according to this firsthand report from a Georgetown University student. And he’s got quite a few pictures on his blog, too. There were no takers for the free white flags they were passing out, though.

He also has pictures of the pro-French counterdemonstrators. Don’t miss the whole thing. (And here’s a story on the protest from the Daily Hoya.)

OH, PLEASE, NOT THIS AGAIN:

“Something has gone terribly wrong in America,” said Jacqueline Rose, a feminist scholar in Britain. “America established a certain tradition of public dissent, with the civil rights and feminist and anti-Vietnam movements. But post-Sept. 11 there is a feeling that the American left has largely gone silent.”

I haven’t noticed that, though I’ve noticed that they have less and less to say beyond “Bush is Hitler,” and “it’s all about ooiiiill!” But maybe part of the difference between Europe and America is explained by this passage from the same article:

Some of the antiwar sentiment goes hand in hand with an outright hatred of all things American, a view that many believe belongs in the category of “stupid anti-Americanism,” as the author Peter Schneider, a German, put it in an interview. But stupid or not, such an attitude is on the rise.

What’s surprising to many European intellectuals, I think, is that this time Americans, even American intellectuals, are not following their lead.

And the commitment to “dissent” in America on the part of these European intellectuals is — not to put too fine a point on it — a huge lie. If twenty million Americans had marched to oppose Bill Clinton’s proposed national health insurance, these same intellectuals wouldn’t have been cheering them on as “dissenters” — they’d have been denouncing them as “cowboy individualists.” It’s only admirable “dissent,” you see, when it’s in conformity with the views of European intellectuals.

I suspect, for example, that this doesn’t count as dissent. But this presumably does. Yet, in fact, the latter is far more typical than the former.

KNOXVILLE BAND JAG STAR will be touring through the ‘stans to entertain U.S. troops. Here’s the latest, from BlogCritics. Excerpt:

The exact time and place of performances is being kept under wraps for security purposes, but the band will live in “tents and dorms” and visit with military personnel along the way. Knoxville radio station WOKI-FM will correspond regularly with the band by satellite for their morning show, and CNN is scheduled to film at least one of their live performances for a special television broadcast.

Go Jag Star!

IT’S EDWARD BOYD’S ONE-YEAR BLOGIVERSARY. Drop by and say hello!

SWEDISH BLOGGER MARTIN LINDESKOG will be covering the antiwar protests in Gothenburg tomorrow. He also offers a helpful illustration on how to recognize an “anti-war” protester.

TARIQ AZIZ refused to answer a question because the journalist who asked was Israeli.

Typical.

On the upside: when he’s not answering, he’s not lying!

I STAND FOURSQUARE FOR VICTORY!

ANOTHER BLOGGER TAKES THE BOEING: More or less literally in this case. Gary Leff’s frequent-flier weblog has gone corporate.

AN INTERESTING ARTICLE ON NANOTECHNOLOGY on the BBC website. Best bit:

I don’t want the science to slow down. I want the ethics to catch up.

Absolutely.

FRANCE “MAY HAVE DESTROYED THE U.N. as a serious institution.”

THE NEW REPUBLIC is unimpressed with Blix, and Villepin.

MARK KLEIMAN IS PRAISING ME today.

Yesterday, he was calling me an Iraqi agent.

I guess that means I’m batting .500, huh? And here I thought I was a politically correct tool of International Jewry. The things you learn about yourself when you blog.

UPDATE: Okay, so now I’m a politically-correct, McCarthyite Iraqi agent of the international Jewish conspiracy.

What bothers me is that somewhere out there, a guy is nodding and saying “well, yeah!”

But at least Kleiman likes me. . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: Actually, it turns out I’m a leftist! No, really, experts agree!

PROTEST AT THE FRENCH EMBASSY: But in a stunning display of political ineptitude, “antiwar” marchers showed up to counterdemonstrate:

Midway through the rally, nearly 15 members of Georgetown Peace Action and College Democrats arrived for a counter-protest, supporting France’s current dissention with a possible U.S.-led coalition to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

The peace movement may survive being called objectively pro-Saddam. But subjectively pro-French? Political suicide.

UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE EVENTS: Monday, I’ll be moderating a debate between Tim Lynch of the Cato Institute and Paul Rosenzweig of Heritage regarding the Patriot Act and civil liberties (personally, I’m against the Act and for the liberties, but I’ll try to be neutral). It’s at the U.T. Law School at 12:15. Then, on Friday the 21st, it’ll be the Marbury v. Madison symposium, featuring William Van Alstyne (Duke), Mark Tushnet (Georgetown), and William S. Nelson (NYU). It’s the 200th anniversary of Marbury, which is generally regarded as establishing the Supreme Court’s power to strike down unconstitutional laws.

AN IRAQI GUARDIAN READER WRITES:

I write this to protest against all those people who oppose the war against Saddam Hussein, or as they call it, the “war against Iraq”. I am an Iraqi doctor, I worked in the Iraqi army for six years during Iraq-Iran war and four months during Gulf war. All my family still live in Iraq. I am an Arab Sunni, not Kurdish or Shia. I am an ordinary Iraqi not involved with the Iraqi opposition outside Iraq.

I am so frustrated by the appalling views of most of the British people, media and politicians. I want to say to all these people who are against the possible war, that if you think by doing so you are serving the interests of Iraqi people or saving them, you are not. You are effectively saving Saddam. You are depriving the Iraqi people of probably their last real chance get rid of him and to get out of this dark era in their history. . . .

Where were you while Saddam has been killing thousands of Iraqis since the early 70s? And where are you are now, given that every week he executes people through the “court of revolution”, a summary secret court run by the secret security office. Most of its sentences are executions which Saddam himself signs.

I could argue one by one against your reasons for opposing this war. But just ask yourselves why, out of about 500,000 Iraqis in Britain, you will not find even 1,000 of them participating tomorrow? Your anti-war campaign has become mass hysteria and you are no longer able to see things properly.

Poor guy. He actually thinks the antiwar movement cares about Iraqis, when, really, it’s just an excuse to oppose George Bush and America.

SKBUBBA THINKS HE’S FOUND A MESSAGE that the Democrats can sell.

Yeah, but they’ll never pick up on this.

MORE UNSAVORY BACKGROUND ON JOSCHKA FISCHER: What’s sad is, Fischer is actually more cooperative than his boss.

HOWARD KURTZ WRITES that the press keeps telling Americans how “terrified” we are:

And yet, most people are going about their daily business. They have lived through so many stretches of media shrillness – abducted women, missing children, killer sharks – that it has become background noise. Repeated warnings about terrorism, and all the false alarms, have diluted their effectiveness. An orange alert becomes like a snow alert, just another fact of life.

Yes. Every time I see some anchor talk about how “frightened” and “jittery” we are, it just reminds me how out of touch Big Media people are.

We’re not “jittery.” Americans are determined, and angry. Spoiled media bigshots, used to living in a cocoon of bodyguards and obsequious staffers, are the ones who are “jittery.” We saw this in the overwrought reaction to the anthrax attacks last year, and we’re seeing it again.

The good news is that their shrillness, as Kurtz notes, actually works against the terrorists. They’ve managed to make terrorism boring.

As James Lileks writes:

The words TERROR ALERT: HIGH on the TV crawl annoy me, because I’m not terrorized. I’m wary and pissed off, but I’m not terrorized.

Indeed. Read the whole thing.

IF GARY HART’S REMARKS were regarded by some as crypto-anti-semitism, then what about this comment reported in the Washington Post that the “Likudniks” in the Administration are running American foreign policy?

ABU HAMZA’S SON WAS ARRESTED trying to sneak back into the Finsbury Park mosque, where weapons and chemical-warfare suits were found recently. Zach Barbera wonders what he was sneaking back in for.

GENOCIDE AND THE STATE DEPARTMENT: Some thoughts, with links to the latest scholarship.