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Jacques Chirac, the French president, yesterday threatened to reopen transatlantic rifts between the EU and the US over the war in Iraq by ignoring Tony Blair's plea for Europeans to "face up to the reality" of George Bush's resounding re-election as American president. Mr Chirac compounded his opposition to appeals for closer cooperation between the US and Europe in Mr Bush's second term by snubbing an EU summit lunch for Ayad Allawi, Iraq's interim prime minister, and urging Europe to act as a counterweight to American hegemony "in a world that's more multi-polar than ever".

It Will Be the Death of Liberalism Written by Raymond Kraft Sunday, October 10, 2004 It Will Be the Death of Liberalism Sixty-three years ago, Nazi Germany had overrun almost all of Europe and hammered England to the verge of bankruptcy and defeat, and had sunk more than four hundred British ships in their convoys between England and America for food and war materials. Bushido Japan had overrun most of Asia, beginning in 1928, killing millions of civilians throughout China, and impressing millions more as slave labor. The United States was in an isolationist and pacifist mood, and most Americans...

Britons secretly kept in postwar French camps After the liberation De Gaulle's government held on to internees from many countries in officially closed centres to hide collaboration Jon Henley in Paris Monday October 4, 2004The Guardian The government of Charles de Gaulle held hundreds of foreigners, including at least three Britons, in an internment camp near Toulouse for up to four years after the second world war, according to secret documents. The papers, part of a cache of 12,000 photocopied illegally by an Austrian-born Jew, reveal the extent to which French officials collaborated with their fleeing Nazi occupiers even...

Use and abuse of Asian history Published: August 23 2004 05:00 | Last updated: August 23 2004 05:00 To examine the past and learn from it is an excellent idea in principle. Roh Moo-hyun, South Korea's president, doubtless wants his plan for an official review of the country's turbulent modern history to be seen in this light. Unfortunately, Mr Roh and his advisers seem to be motivated more by narrow political interests than by a desire for national catharsis. The proposal announced last week therefore falls short of the kind of non-partisan "truth and reconciliation" process that could genuinely benefit...

The New York Times Merchants are fighting a plan to renovate the Rue des Rosiers. PARIS, April 4 — A pedestrian mall in the old Jewish quarter of Paris? For the city, the plan to renovate the historic Rue des Rosiers and close it to traffic every Sunday afternoon is nothing more than a small but necessary step in a grand vision to modernize the French capital. But for many of the area's longtime merchants, it is the beginning of a conspiracy to rob the neighborhood of its heritage and its soul, to make it a "Jewish Disneyland." So...

Unfair, unbalanced, and afraid. Oxford, EnglandEVERY YEAR, every household in Britain with a color television set has to pay a licensing fee of approximately $187. The resulting $4.3 billion constitutes 90 percent of the annual $4.8 billion domestic broadcasting budget of the British Broadcasting Corporation. Inspectors from the TV Licensing Agency patrol neighborhoods using wireless detectors to attempt to pick up the "local oscillator" signal from a television in use. Anyone caught using a TV without a license is subject to a fine of up to $1,600. It doesn't matter if you watch TV once a month; it doesn't matter...

SARASOTA, Fla. - A retired schoolteacher who went to Iraq (news - web sites) to serve as a "human shield" against the U.S. invasion is facing thousands of dollars in U.S. government fines, which she is refusing to pay. The U.S. Department of the Treasury said in a March letter to Faith Fippinger that she broke the law by crossing the Iraqi border before the war. Her travel to Iraq violated U.S. sanctions that prohibited American citizens from engaging in "virtually all direct or indirect commercial, financial or trade transactions with Iraq." She and others from 30 countries spread out...

Thatcher's back and gunning for the French By David Charter, Chief Political Correspondent BARONESS Thatcher returned to politics last night with an attack on the French, whom she accused of collaborating with “enemies of the West” for short-term gain. In a one-off comeback speech in New York, which broke a medical ban on speaking in public, the former Conservative Prime Minister attacked those who use environmentalism, feminism and human rights campaigns to fight capitalism and the nation state. She praised Tony Blair, but above all President Bush, for overriding the “rot” that “paralysed” the United Nations. Baroness Thatcher was speaking...

Reprinted from NewsMax.com None So BlindDiane AldenWednesday, March 26, 2003 The left insists the war against Saddam Hussein is about oil. The record shows that is not the case. Currently the U.S. buys $15 million worth of oil from Iraq each year. The cost of the war is estimated at $100 billion. Even if the U.S. took all Iraqi oil and pocketed a net of $30 per barrel and produced oil at maximum capacity that would add up to $40 billion per year. That means it would take over two years to make up the costs of the war. (1)...

By Adam Sparks Chronwatch.com The San Francisco Chronicle checked in with 3 intriguing stories commemorating 9/11. The problem is that many readers, including Chronwatch.com the online S.F. Chronicle critic, felt that the paper was going overboard pandering to its very liberal, progressive readership. Any one of which of at least 3 stories filed in the Chron could win a journalistic award for "Unsure of the Concept". The first story was a sympathetic portrayal of an Arab who was imprisoned for being a collaborator. The Chronicle regretted his unfair and lengthy incarceration, in spite of the fact that this gentlemen: a)...

UPDATE 1 - Palestinians in Hebron kill suspected collaborators   (Adds quotes from gunman, witnesses, background) By Mazen Dana HEBRON, West Bank, April 23 (Reuters) - Hooded gunmen shot dead three fellow-Palestinians for collaborating with Israel on Tuesday, taking swift vengeance on them for an Israeli missile strike that killed two Palestinian militants. About 20 gunmen dragged the victims out of a prison in the West Bank town of Hebron, meeting no resistance from the handful of police on duty there. Then they took them to the wreck of the car hit overnight by an Israeli helicopter gunship, and shot them there as a crowd screamed "Revenge,...

Palestinian gunmen wound three "collaborators"   RAMALLAH, West Bank, April 22 (Reuters) - Masked Palestinian gunmen on Monday shot and wounded three Palestinians suspected of collaborating with Israel, witnesses said. The men were shot in the legs when their car was ambushed in Ramallah, a day after Israeli forces left most of the city but continued to besiege Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's headquarters, where wanted militants are holed up. Witnesses said the gunmen tried to stop a Palestinian ambulance from taking the men to hospital, telling rescue workers they were collaborators who deserved to bleed to death. But the ambulance crew picked them...

WASHINGTON, March 30 (IslamOnline) - American Muslim rights groups in Washington D.C. slammed Friday the recent attacks on Palestinian civilians and journalists in Jerusalem and at the Al-Aqsa compound, as well as the direct assault on Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat's headquarters. Raeed Tayeh, director of the national office of American Muslims for Global Peace and Justice (AMGPJ) told IslamOnline that, “When a sixteen year old girl feels that it is her responsibility to attack the Israeli occupation then something is seriously wrong and either those nations that have power are too blinded by their support for Israel to recognize...

March 21, 2002: Well, there they go again. Seeped in the moral relativism that's made them clueless to the real meaning of 9/11, Dan Rather and CBS News have once again demonstrated their absolute lack of judgement regarding the appropriate role of responsible American journalists. According to a news report in a London daily (we didn't actually see the objectionable TV event we're about to describe), CBS News provided air time for an exclusive CBS interview with a murderous bunch of al-Qaeda and Taliban survivors of Operation Anaconda, hiding in a cave nearby. According to the London report, this exclusive...