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Mark Steyn - Welcome to Anglo-Saxon reality
National Post ^ | Thursday, April 10, 2003 | Mark Steyn

Posted on 04/10/2003 11:15:37 AM PDT by NorthernRight

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To: NorthernRight
A great Mark Steyn column, with a nice twist of the knife at the end.
21 posted on 04/10/2003 11:49:04 AM PDT by LibertarianLiz
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To: NorthernRight
Bump! Great dirt digging.
22 posted on 04/10/2003 11:49:28 AM PDT by dead
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To: Allan
Bump
23 posted on 04/10/2003 11:50:22 AM PDT by Allan
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To: headsonpikes
I just emailed it to O'Reilly with a plea to do a show on it.
24 posted on 04/10/2003 11:51:48 AM PDT by Orbiting_Rosie's_Head
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To: TopQuark; NorthernRight; Canadian Outrage; Clive
<< Let's see if I've got this straight: TotalFinaElf's largest shareholder is a subsidiary of Montreal's Power Corp, whose co-chief executive is Jean Chrétien's son-in-law, Andre Desmarais. Mr. Desmarais' brother, Paul Desmarais Jr., sits on the Total board.

These people accused us of war for oil.

As you can see, it is they who were waging the appeasement-for-oil campaign. >>

Post-Trudeau-the-Traitor Canada is an unfriendly and squalidly-socialist EURO-peon-Neo-Soviet satellite state. And is a cynically-willing base for Our Nation's enemies.
25 posted on 04/10/2003 11:53:32 AM PDT by Brian Allen (I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny ....)
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To: NorthernRight
All three men seem imprisoned by their pasts -- Chirac the seedy fixer, Schroeder the Sixties peacenik, Putin the KGB hardman.

This sentence is the jewel in the crown! What a perfect summing up.

26 posted on 04/10/2003 11:53:32 AM PDT by alnitak
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To: NorthernRight
It's nice to have the choices put so plainly: on the one hand, the Coalition of the Willing; on the other, the Coalition of the Willing To Go On Selling Saddam Nuclear Reactors In Exchange For Oil Concessions For Another Decade Or Three No Matter How Many People He Kills.

LOL. A classic!!

27 posted on 04/10/2003 11:55:27 AM PDT by wayoverontheright
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To: NorthernRight
Mark Steyn: a weapon of mass destruction of liberal fallacies.

Where to start?

"Oh dear. I'm afraid I'd caught in a quagmire of gloating."

Yep. Me too. Let's stay there.


"Meanwhile, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, . . . I knew he was doomed when he started talking like a Liberal backbencher."

When Saddam's supporters sound less risible than liberal opponents, you know you're doing something good.

"It's surely only a matter of time before he's hired as Chrétien's press officer. "These are all lies that the Americans are annoyed with Canada! The whole world knows Washington is terrified of our great leader and quakes before his heroic display of principles and sovereignty! America is our best friend and neighbour and if they dare say otherwise we will crush them like the Zionist tools they are! The 49th parallel is littered with the burnt-out shells of their tanks, those bastards!"

I can easily picture this.

"My favourite vignette from yesterday? The sack of the UN HQ in Baghdad. Hey, Jacques, with all those missing filing cabinets, we're gonna have to give inspections even longer to work."

Here he errs. The REAL inspectors ARE at work.


"So tomorrow's meeting of the Coalition of the Irrelevant will be of interest only for students of the terminal stages of M. Chirac's Gallic hauteur. "

Another smart bomb detonates. No collateral damage, target destroyed.


"And Canada? We voted French, finally and decisively, and in defiance of our own history. Indeed, at times M. Chrétien was plus Chirac que Chirac. With exquisite timing, the Prime Minister waited till after the Americans had won before announcing he wanted the Americans to win."

When the funniest lines are mere descriptions of reality, you know you have found a true humorist.
Well, this whole quagmire seems to be getting worse, eh? I see the Yanks have now been reduced to staging fake scenes of supposed jubilation on the alleged streets of what the Pentagon assures us is Baghdad. If you pause the video, you'll see the guy on the right jumping up and down thwacking his shoe on the head of Saddam's toppled statue is actually Richard Perle disguised as an Iraqi cab driver and the woman standing next to him ululating "Blessings be upon you, o great Bush" is David Frum in a chador.
28 posted on 04/10/2003 11:57:03 AM PDT by Forgiven_Sinner (Praying for the Kingdom of God)
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To: BUSHdude2000
"The Western oil company with the closest ties to the late Saddam is France's TotalFinaElf. That's not the curious fact, that's just business as usual in the Fifth Republic. This is the curious fact: As Diane wrote in February and again last week, "Total's biggest shareholder is Montreal's Paul Desmarais, whose youngest son is married to Prime Minister Jean Chrétien's daughter."


Let's see if I've got this straight: TotalFinaElf's largest shareholder is a subsidiary of Montreal's Power Corp, whose co-chief executive is Jean Chrétien's son-in-law, Andre Desmarais. Mr. Desmarais' brother, Paul Desmarais Jr., sits on the Total board.

29 posted on 04/10/2003 11:57:52 AM PDT by Shermy
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To: Aric2000
You beat Pokey, man, what a concept!!

By contractual deal, Steyn publishes his pieces on his web site first, before it appears on the web anywhere else. This appeared today in print, in the National Post, but will only show up tomorrow, on the 'Post's site. So, to get a scoop on Steyn's Stuff, just visit his site as soon as you see his articles in print. Or, just check out his site religiously every day.


On Chretien: we knew he was a scum-sucking slime-ball years ago, but couldn't quite put a finger on the bad smell. Steyn put it all into a neat package.
Here's some more dirt on the Cretoon:



The Calgary Sun | April 6, 2003
________________________________________________________________________
The plot thickens

Web of connections cast Chretien's strange Iraq stance in new light

By PAUL JACKSON -- Calgary Sun

"Obviously, I would have been happier if Canada had not been conquered in the past by the English, if this part of North America had remained French, but you can't rewrite history."           -- Jean Chretien Le Monde, Dec. 1, 1994

Well, doesn't that give us some insight into the mind and machinations of one Prime Minister Jean Chretien.

But, as we look at how Chretien has snubbed our American neighbours at a time when they need our support most, maybe Chretien is trying to rewrite history.

Perhaps he's pretending he really is a man of some consequence in the world, and part of his gameplan to show that is to stick Americans in the eyes.

For, in another part of that incredible interview he gave to the prestigious Paris newspaper Le Monde, Chretien talked about how French-Canadians had been "humiliated" by the English and how today they see themselves as "martyrs."

Then he boasted about how he was getting his own back on the supposed English establishment and power base.

"For example, I have just appointed an Acadian to the office of governor general. So the governor general is a francophone. The same thing is true, among others, of the prime minister, the Speaker of the House of Commons, the Speaker of the Senate, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and the Minister of Finance."

Do you sense in all this talk about humiliation and martyrdom both how the shoe is now on the other foot and also signs of an inferiority complex and of an appetite for revenge?

Chretien is something of a little man but, by God, the Americans aren't going to tell him what to do. He's running this country and he's going to do exactly what he wants to do.

That's even if, by undermining our largest trading partner and they decide to retaliate, he has to take this country with him.

He's standing with his partner in perfidy, one Jacques Chirac, president of France, who just may turn out to be a bigger villain than most of us already think he is.

Now, I first wrote about Chretien's interview with Le Monde in "Our PM's secret regrets" (May 11, 1997), but had forgotten all about it until a reader dug it up in French on the much fabled-Google search engine. In this day and age of the Internet, nothing disappears forever!

Anyway, the reader suggested that, as well as showing an astonishing antipathy for English-Canadians in his Le Monde interview -- quite something for a prime minister who is supposed to represent all the men and women in his nation -- Chretien opened up the inner workings of his mind.

His people have been humiliated, they are really martyrs for their cause -- and now they are going to throw their weight around. The big boy on the block, no matter how decent and kind he may have been, isn't going to be spared, either.

In the column "Off-balance,"(March 23.), I wrote that the reckless actions of Chretien suggested he had become unhinged -- mentally and emotionally unstable. That, in jeopardizing the goodwill of the nation that takes some 83% of our exports and on which 50% of our jobs depend either directly or indirectly, and in allowing his staff and MPs to hurl insults at President George W. Bush and the American people, Chretien was no longer acting in a rational manner.

Looking at the Le Monde chatter in retrospect, we get an inkling not only of Chretien's inferiority complex, but of illusions of grandeur. This is surely getting to be quite dangerous.

There may be yet another aspect to Chretien's strange behaviour. National Post columnist Diane Francis, who, in another era was one of the Calgary Sun 's most popular columnists, recently wrote Chretien had become a "dupe" of Jacques Chirac, and that Chirac was in the pocket of Saddam Hussein because France's largest corporation, TotalFinaElf has huge interests in Iraq's oilfields. Interests that will be blown apart if Saddam is toppled, and U.S. and British oil companies given concessions by a grateful people.

Now for more intrigue: Francis says Total's biggest single shareholder is Montreal's Paul Desmarais, whose youngest son is married to Chretien's daughter. Desmarais Sr., is also a director of Total, along with other ranking members of France's establishment. It's hard to believe the Desmarais/Chretien families haven't discussed their nvestments in Total, and Total's investments in Saddam's Iraq.

All above board, of course.

Yet to suspicious minds, the plot thickens -- and gets scarier by the day.
___________________________________________________________
Jackson, associate editor of the Sun, can be reached at paul.jackson@calgarysun.com.



More commentary and views on this article at: http://www.freedominion.ca/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=10458
30 posted on 04/10/2003 11:58:01 AM PDT by NorthernRight (Regime change in Canada - Now!)
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To: NorthernRight
Oh, gotta bump.
31 posted on 04/10/2003 12:01:18 PM PDT by LiberationIT
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To: Registered
See the graphic in post #4
32 posted on 04/10/2003 12:01:28 PM PDT by sourcery (The Oracle on Mount Doom)
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To: Loyalist; NorthernRight; Porterville; headsonpikes; PoisedWoman
So the question is: Is there hope for Canada (politically speaking)?
33 posted on 04/10/2003 12:02:10 PM PDT by ricpic
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To: TopQuark
Actually, they were telling the truth when they said that the war was all about oil. The French knew that they would lose their contracts if Saddam was deposed and they figured that the US companies (an oxymoron actually, there are no more truly US oil companies) would be the beneficiaries of those contracts. So for the French, the war was all about oil.
34 posted on 04/10/2003 12:04:48 PM PDT by Eva
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To: Grampa Dave; mafree; gubamyster
As mafree says, "follow da oil"

I guess i gotta emend my grumblings that Chretien is a pure anti-american without economic motive...

35 posted on 04/10/2003 12:05:14 PM PDT by Shermy
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To: *Energy_List; TheEngineer; Jeremy_Bentham; Cincinatus' Wife; Spar; mafree; Don Joe; ...
Oil ping.
36 posted on 04/10/2003 12:06:31 PM PDT by Shermy
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To: ricpic
"Is there hope..."

There is more hope than there is a solid prospect for the future.

Does that answer your question?
37 posted on 04/10/2003 12:17:10 PM PDT by headsonpikes
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To: headsonpikes
I'm going to email this to Stephen Harper of the Canadian Alliance RIGHT NOW!! Actually if you wanna start digging, Chretien is "into" a lot of things. He's a very corrupt, scheming, lying, $hithead!!
38 posted on 04/10/2003 12:17:49 PM PDT by Canadian Outrage (All us Western Canuks belong South)
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To: NorthernRight
Steyn exposes the dirty laundry, disguised as the "latest fashion" by the Left!
39 posted on 04/10/2003 12:18:04 PM PDT by Gritty
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To: ricpic
The political health of Canada may very well depend on the success of the Quebec secessionist movement.

How much longer can we continue to appease Quebec at the expense of the rest of the country?

Can Canada keep one foot in the Anglosphere and one foot in the emerging Franco-German-Russian axis without losing its balance?
40 posted on 04/10/2003 12:19:07 PM PDT by Loyalist
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