ANTIWAR PROTESTS = “KANGAROO JACK” — Ken Layne’s cold equations.

PARIS CORRESPONDENT NELSON ASCHER EMAILS:

Even the leftist Libération’s editorial is criticizing Chirac today. Here’s the link and my translation of the first paragraph.

Link

Who has just missed an opportunity to shut up? Answer: Jacques Chirac, who rebuked Monday evening the governments of the countries about to adhere to the European Union because of their instinctive backing of George W Bush’s warmongering . Scolding publicly their standpoint, Chirac repeated the American leaders’s mistake when they picked at “old Europe” and asked their partners to be either “with or against them ” when attacking Iraq. Arrogance is never a good policy. The worst is that this does not seem to be a slip of the tongue, since Michele Alliot-Marie, turning herself into a Jeanne d’ Arc, threatened to expel the pro-Americans from the sacred lands of the EU through the non-ratification of the Adherence Treaties , while Villepin opened fire talking about “bad manners”.

It’s a coordinated effort at self-destruction. And it’s working!

TWO NEW BLOGS: WebKafe and The Lofty. Check ’em out.

EVEN ED ASNER COULDN’T PERSUADE THEM:

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 18 (UPI) — A resolution opposing an attack on Iraq failed to pass in the Los Angeles City Council Tuesday after spirited public testimony that included statements from celebrities and the ejection of an elderly woman from the council chambers. . . .

Asner railed against the “failed” Bush administration and ventured that the Iraq crisis and the war against terrorism were “aimed at keeping the (American) people intimidated.”

The testimony was largely orderly, although two police officers escorted a white-haired woman in a “Green Power” T-shirt out of the packed council chambers after she was declared out of order.

It’s always bothered me to hear the dumb political stuff that Ed Asner says. Lou Grant is Asner’s only claim to fame. I liked Lou Grant. And Lou Grant would never have said any of the dumb stuff that Ed Asner says.

I guess that proves that Asner can act, anyway.

WE’VE HAD FLOODS here in Knoxville, but apparently things have been a lot worse in Newfoundland. Damian Penny emails this link to a Canadian Red Cross site where you can donate if you like.

I HADN’T VISITED BJORN STAERK’S BLOG in a while, so I just dropped by. It’s still good.

JAMES LILEKS: Marital Aid. Well, sort of.

HERE ARE SOME PICTURES and a report from yesterday’s demonstration in Denver.

EVEN THE ARAB NEWS is unhappy with Jacques Chirac’s diplomatic gaffes:

President Jacques Chirac’s outburst at central and eastern European governments such as Poland and the Czech Republic for daring to take the US point of view is astounding. To threaten doing so might endanger their applications to join the EU could undermine the very policy that Chirac champions.

To ridicule them publicly, saying that they have not behaved properly and have missed an historic opportunity to keep quiet, is hardly the way to make friends and influence people. This is the same blustering, steamroller approach that the White House has used to such damaging effect on the world stage. President Bush’s “either you’re with us or against us” statement, his arrogant assumption that Washington knows best and that everyone else has to fall into line behind it have done more to alienate international public opinion than the evident bellicosity of his Iraqi policy; other governments are not going to be told what to do by Washington. It is incredible then that Chirac should try to do the same on a European stage. All Chirac has done is to exacerbate anti-French feeling in Europe. The result will not be European governments falling into line behind France on Iraq, but the opposite. Indeed, from the furor it has created in Eastern Europe, that is already happening.

Heh. Comparing Chirac to Bush is really rubbing salt in the wound. “Me, compared to that cowboy? Incroyable!”

SALAM PAX REPORTS that the Guardian is wrong. He says that the story (reported here) saying that Saddam had placed his Defense Minister under house arrest isn’t true — or at least that an awful lot of the facts in it are wrong.

FACT-CHECKERS FACT-CHECKED: Claims that Jeff Jacoby lied about John Kerry turn out to be, well, totally wrong. Plus, free tips on how to use NEXIS!

HERE’S A CZECH OPED arguing that France and Germany are positioning themselves to head a new Warsaw Pact, waging a new Cold War against the United States — and using the same “peace movement” in the same way the Soviets did.

I guess it’s not surprising that the New Europe doesn’t like that idea all that much.

UPDATE: And check out this editorial from a Romanian paper making a similar point.

Communism wrung our neck while the honourable democracies issued communiqués. And now they are surprised that all the countries in the former communist bloc do not give a damn about obsolete stratagems of France and Germany.

You can’t get much plainer than that.

NICK DENTON DISCOVERS that women like porn.

He also has advice for “Bloogle,” as he’s calling the new Blogger/Google hybrid.

I wonder if that name will stick? It’s certainly better than “Glogger.”

MARK STEYN:

How far are the “peace” crowd prepared to go? Well, they’ve stopped talking about their little pet cause of the Nineties, East Timor, ever since the guys who blew up that Bali nightclub and whoever’s putting together those “Osama” audio tapes started listing support for East Timor’s independence as one of the Islamist grievances against the West. But why be surprised? In fall 2001, being pro-gay and pro-feminist didn’t stop the left defending an Afghan regime that disenfranchised women and executed homosexuals. Yet these are the same fellows who insist that a secular regime like Iraq’s would never make common cause with Islamic fundamentalists, apparently requiring a higher degree of intellectual coherence of Saddam than of themselves.

Read it all.

UPDATE: A couple of people have emailed me to point out that the left opposed the Taliban in the 1990s. But — as I think the paragraph above makes clear — that’s not Steyn’s point. His point is that the left largely stopped being exercised about the Taliban once it looked as if the United States was going to war against them.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Todd Morman sends this link as evidence that Steyn is wrong. But I don’t think it supports his thesis. The title, “Feminists agonize over war in Afghanistan,” kind of makes my point. Yes, Eleanor Smeal is quoted as saying the Taliban deserve what they get. But the thesis of the article is that “many women are unwilling to translate their opposition to the Taliban into support for war.” And that’s Steyn’s point. Kvetching and condemning from the sidelines is one thing — but supporting the United States in a war is just too much. For everyone? No. But for most of the self-described “progressive left?” Oh, yeah. Way too much. (And note the split between the “progressives” and actual Afghan women.)

ANOTHER UPDATE: SKBubba emails:

I don’t think the assertion that “the left largely stopped being exercised about the Taliban once it looked as if the United States was going to war against them” is entirely accurate.

I was 100% on board. My flag flew over my mailbox every day of the operations (like that helped, but enlistment probably isn’t an option for an old fart like me, especially given the shape I’m in).

My only complaints were that we waited as long as we did and that we didn’t drop some tactial nukes on a couple of their caveman hideouts. That would have sent a very large message without causing too much damage to civilized people. Not to mention that we might have gotten OBL.

If SKBubba represented the Left, I’d be a lot happier with the Left. But his suggestion that there are “civilized people” on the one hand, and people who deserve to be nuked on the other, pretty clearly puts him beyond that particular Pale. Which is the problem.

I THINK THAT BRIAN MICKLETHWAIT has this about right. Bush and Blair can’t come right out and say this, for a variety of political and diplomatic reasons. But Brian can.

THE IHT EXPLORES CRACKS IN EUROPEAN UNITY:

President Jacques Chirac’s warning to the new Europeans of EU and NATO enlargement that they cannot side too much with America and fit his definition of membership in the family of Europe has exposed, with an outburst of pure rage, a profound, long-term contradiction that could tear the EU apart. . . .

The violence of the remarks acknowledged openly for the first time one of the basic reasons that Iraq has become such an existential issue for France, and in its manner, Germany.

Confronting the United States, and marking out a line where European-Atlantic coalescence must stop, involves an attempt to re-establish their leadership in a Europe whose institutional future points toward the French and Germans being submerged by a new wave of entrants refusing to define Europe’s raison d’être in a foreign and security policy automatically opposed to the United States. . . .

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder referred, a trace obliquely, last week to the conflict, saying that the Iraq question really meant protecting “European sovereignty,” and that the actions taken now would determine the development of Europe over the next 10 to 15 years. But with its shared borders and history of savaging Eastern Europe, the Germans are in no position to use the menacing and near-condescending language that came from the French president.

Basically, Chirac told the candidates: You must think as France and Germany do. With near total support for his positions in France, Chirac, thought-police style, set up as an obligation for the emerging half of the continent the unanimity at home that Liberation, the left-wing newspaper said over the weekend, “has something suffocating about it.”

Indeed. Open up that thing and let in some air.

UPDATE: Now Chirac is offering “The Freedom to be Silent.”

HORRIFIC TERROR ATTACK IN SOUTH KOREA:

134 bodies have been found in a subway train in South Korea following an arson attack today, a television station reported, quoting police. . . .

Another 135 people were injured in the attack which took place at a subway stop in the centre of Daegu, and attempts to rescue passengers trapped underground were hampered by thick smoke and toxic fumes.

Police said a man who appeared to be deranged sprayed flammable liquid in a subway carriage then used a cigarette lighter to ignite a blaze that spread swiftly.

Many of the victims died from smoke inhalation, said medical authorities in Daegu, the country’s fourth largest city some 200km south-east of Seoul.

A 57-year-old man, who was suspected of setting the fire, was taken into custody for questioning, a police officer at Jungbu police station in central Daegu told AFP.

Daegu Police station chief Suh Hyon-Soo said that the suspect was believed to be mentally ill.

Okay, so maybe it’s small-t terror rather than large-T Terror, though one wonders if someone put him up to it. On the other hand there’s this guy who was caught boarding an airplane with gasoline and matches. Probably just a coincidence, as it doesn’t sound very terroristic.

UPDATE: Hmm. When you read this account of the Miami arrest you find this, which makes terrorism seem a bit more likely:

Authorities became more suspicious after examining Ishiguro’s passport which included stamps from Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe and Pakistan.

Double hmm. (Via Clay Hackney).

ERIC MULLER NOTES that tomorrow is the 61st anniversary of FDR’s Executive Order 9066, which led to the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War Two. You can read the order here — note that it doesn’t actually make clear that’s what it’s about.

Charles Black observed that one of the bad things about this action that gets little attention is that no one actually took responsibility. Congress passed vague legislation, FDR issued a vague Executive Order, and then the military officials who actually locked people up claimed that they were just following orders. When nobody takes responsibility, it usually means that nobody wants the blame — which is a pretty fair guide in determining whether something is blameworthy it seems to me.

CHIRAC’S BLUSTER — and what we should do to take advantage of it — is the subject of today’s GlennReynolds.com item.

FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF UNFORTUNATE HEADLINES: “Body Cavity Search Reveals Crack”

REPORT FROM THE PARIS BUREAU: InstaPundit Paris Correspondent Nelson Ascher emails:

I think we’re all basically misreading Chirac’s recent anti-New Europe declarations in a way that, though not wrong, is not particularly relevant. What is really, really relevant is how angry he still is weeks after all those pro-American letters. His anger is blinding him to his own “gaffes” and that’s as serious as it gets here, right? You can forgive perfidy or backstabbing, but “gaffes” are quite another thing: they’re unforgivable. What does this mean?That the other countries’ revolt against FRANCO-german dirigisme was, for Chirac, his government and our Quai d’Orsay friends, a huge setback, huger than I thought. His anger is its clearest admission. Now is the time to say: hey, Jacques, calm down, here’s some Valium, don’t be angry, don’t lose your class, we still love you.

I think this is right, and I’ll have more on it up over at GlennReynolds.com shortly. As I say in that item, though, I don’t think that it’s time to calm Jacques down quite yet. For him, this has always been as much about the future state of Europe as it is about Iraq. I think he’s just waking up to the fact that at some level the “simplistic” Bush Administration may be playing the same game, and that he’s lost.

Meanwhile, InstaPundit’s other Paris Correspondent, Claire Berlinski, emails:

When Judith and I spoke on the phone last night, we were both trying to put find the right way to describe a particularly unnerving aspect of the anti-American protests: There appears to be something quasi-religious and messianic, even orgiastic, about this latest spasm of anti-modernism and anti-Semitism. . . . I’d like to try to document this aspect of the anti-American movement: Has anyone read interviews with anti-American activists who describe themselves or their cause in a way that suggests that they conceive of their program as an essentially mystical or spiritual one? Would you please forward them my way?

If you’ve got anything especially good, send it to me and I’ll forward it on along.

UPDATE: Hmm. This doesn’t exactly answer Claire’s question, but it’s revealing nonetheless.

JACK BALKIN WONDERS what game Bush is playing. Of course, for it to be successful, it has to be impossible for anyone to tell.

Here are some thoughts from Matt Welch.

THIS LATEST FROM NORTH KOREA goes beyond “saber-rattling.” Fred Pruitt thinks Japan may go nuclear itself in response.

That’s assuming it hasn’t already, of course.

THE UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE BLSA CHAPTER HAS WON AN AWARD:

Last weekend at the Southern Regional BLSA Conference, UT’s chapter received the Southern Region Chapter of the Year Award. UT’s chapter received the award based on its campus and community activism, its high school programs (mock trial and Jr. Barristers), its social events and its sponsorship of voter and blood drives. The UT BLSA Chapter is now in contention for the National Chapter of the Year Award which will be determined at the National Convention in about a month.

I was their faculty adviser some years ago, and I’m still proud of them.

IT’S GOING FROM BAD TO WORSE FOR CHIRAC:

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – French President Jacques Chirac sparked outrage on Tuesday after a tirade against east European candidates who took a pro-American stance on Iraq marred an EU summit which united to send a final warning to Baghdad. . . .

Many were seething at Chirac’s charges at a closing news conference on Monday night that their joint statements siding with Washington were “childish and irresponsible” and could damage their prospects of joining the bloc. . . .

Liberal Democrat leader Graham Watson called it “gratuitous and condescending.” Hans-Georg Poettering, leader of the center-right European People’s Party, the largest grouping, warned against pitting eastern against western Europe, or the EU against the United States.

“Were we to define our relationship in such a way that European integration is seen as something running counter to our relations with the United States, then we would be jeopardizing the future of the European Union,” he said.

“We would be forcing the candidate countries to side always with the United States. Because of their historical experiences, they always feel that they can get more support and succor from the American side in an emergency,” Poettering added.

Yes, no one wants to have to rely on France in a crisis. Perhaps Chirac should think about why that’s so. And he should know that you don’t pull the “it’s me or him!” trick unless you’re absolutely sure the answer won’t be “him.”

I thought the French were supposed to be sophisticated about these things.

UPDATE: And Sylvain Galineau has polling data suggesting things aren’t as good for Chirac, or as bad for Blair, as some seem to think.

And here’s a proposal to replace France with Japan on the Security Council.