From FoxNews: Canadian Government Falls; Elections in January.
Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin dissolved the House of Commons Tuesday and elections were set following Parliament's vote of no confidence in the government.Martin went to the official residence of Governor-General Michaelle Jean, representative of head of state Queen Elizabeth, and announced that she had granted his request to dissolve Parliament and that the election would be on Jan. 23.
The election will be held for all 308 seats in the lower House of Commons. The seats in the upper Senate are appointed.
On Monday, the Conservative Party teamed up with the New Democratic and Bloc Quebecois parties to bring down the government, claiming Martin's ruling Liberal Party had lost its moral authority. Recent polls have given the Liberals a slight lead over the Conservatives, with the New Democrats in third place.
From DesertNews.com in Utah: Thousands turn out for Carter signing.
Thousands gathered Tuesday to catch a glimpse of former President Jimmy Carter, who visited the Sugar House Barnes & Noble to sign copies of his latest book.TFormer President Jimmy Carter shakes hands with a fan during a book signing for "Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis" at Barnes & Noble Tuesday in Salt Lake City.
Carter was greeted with applause from crowds of people standing along the balcony, the escalator and between rows of books on the ground floor.
From The Los Angeles Times: This isn't the real America by Jimmy Carter.
Some of our past cartoons about Carter:
USS Ironic
Duplomacy
To see more Newsmaker Caricatures by John Cox, click here.
From FoxNews: Iranian President: Bush Should Be Tried for War Crimes.
Iran has been under intense international pressure to curb its nuclear program, which the United States claims is part of an effort to produce nuclear weapons. Iran denies such claims and says its program is aimed at generating electricity.Iran insists that it has the right to fully develop the program, including enrichment of nuclear fuel -- a process that can produce fuel for nuclear reactors or atomic bombs.
On Thursday, the European Union accused Iran of having documents that show how to make nuclear warheads and joined the United States in warning Tehran it could be referred to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions.
Iran has temporarily stopped its enrichment program, but negotiations with Britain, France and Germany broke off in August after Tehran restarted another part of its program: the conversion of raw uranium into the gas that is used as the feeder stock in enrichment.
Iran also has rejected European calls to halt work at its uranium conversion facility near the central city of Isfahan.
Ahmadinejad dismissed Western concerns over his country's nuclear program.
"They say Iran has to stop its peaceful nuclear activity since there is a probability of diversion while we are sure that they are developing and testing (nuclear weapons) every day," Ahmadinejad said. ...
Meanwhile in the Islamic Republic of Iran:
Ansar Hezbollah: 'We must do battle with America in Iraq'
'Israel must be wiped off the map' is an appropriate motto and promotes Imam's tenets
Iranian Animated Film for Children Promotes Suicide Attacks
UPDATE I -- Nov. 28: From American Chronicle: Military Action on Iran Likely to Come by Joseph McHugh (via Martin Lindeskog).
I was recently talking to an acquaintance of mine, an acquaintance from Saudi Arabia, who is connected with their government. When the subject of Iran came up, a look of gravity came over the man’s face. "Something must be done," he intoned. "We are all afraid." Now this man is no friend of President George Bush or Israel, but he expressed the desire to see Israel do something. What an irony: The enemies of Israel looking for Israel to save the world. It is a perfect illustration of Ayn Rand’s point that the world depends on its producers, while simultaneously loathing them. Doubtless, the kingdom of Saudi Arabia would condemn any attack on Iran by Israel in the strongest of terms, while secretly breathing a sigh of relief.
UPDATE II: Tim Sumner reminded me of a relevant article from last week (see below) and pointed me to an excellent Michael Ledeen editorial: Engage!.
Like it or not, we are in a regional war, and it cannot be effectively prosecuted within a narrow national boundary. There will never be decent security in Iraq so long as the tyrants in Tehran and Damascus remain in power. They know that the spread of freedom is a terrible threat to them, and that if there were a successful democratic Iraq, their power and authority would be at risk. That is why they are waging an existential war against us in Iraq. ...Alas, we have no policy to support regime change in Tehran or Damascus. Indeed, there is no policy at all, four long years after 9/11. A State Department official recently assured me that there were regular meetings on Iran, although there is still no consensus on what to do. Whether this is paralysis or appeasement is hard to say, but it is certainly no way to wage a war on terror. ...
If we do not engage, we will soon find ourselves facing a nuclear Iran that will surely be emboldened to increase its sponsorship of al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Jamaah Islamiah, and Hamas, and will redouble its efforts to shatter Iraq's fragile democratic experiment. Which is the more prudent policy? Cautiously defending Iraq alone, or supporting the revolutionaries against the terror masters? Active support of the democratic forces in the Middle East would be the right policy, even if there were no terror war, and even if Iran were not a shallow breath away from atomic weapons.
The Washington Times last week published a letter from an anonymous Marine: A Marine reports from Iraq. It's a detailed critique of weapons and equipment used in Iraq, but it also mentions Iran and Syrian:
Who are the bad guys? Most of the carnage is caused by the Zarqawi al Qaeda group. They operate mostly in Anbar province -- Fallujah and Ramadi. These are mostly "foreigners," that is, non-Iraqi Sunni Arab jihadists from all over the Muslim world and Europe. Most enter Iraq through Syria -- with, of course, the knowledge and complicity of the Syrian government -- and then travel down the "rat line" which is the trail of towns along the Euphrates River that we've been hitting hard for the last few months. Some are virtually untrained young jihadists who end up as suicide bombers or are used in "sacrifice squads."Most, however, are hard-core terrorists from all the usual suspects -- al Qaeda, Hezbollah and Hamas. These are the guys running around murdering civilians en masse and cutting heads off. The Chechens, many of whom are Caucasian, are supposedly the most ruthless and the best fighters. In the Baghdad area and south, most of the insurgents are Iranian inspired and led Iraqi Shi'ites. The Iranian Shia have been very adept at infiltrating the Iraqi local government, police and army. Since the early 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war, they have had a massive spy and agitator network there. Most of the Saddam loyalists were killed, captured or gave up long ago.
This cartoon is from September 2004 and is in our book Black & White World II.
From FoxNews: Bomber Kills 30 in Iraq.
A homicide bomber blew up his car outside a hospital south of Baghdad on Thursday while U.S. troops handed out candy and food to children, killing 30 people and wounding about 40, including four Americans.As U.S. troops spent another Thanksgiving at war, two soldiers died in another bombing near the capital, and the U.S. command said four American deaths occurred Wednesday.
Elsewhere, 11 Iraqis were killed and 17 injured Thursday when a car bomb exploded near a crowded soft drink stand in Hillah, a mostly Shiite Muslim city 60 miles south of Baghdad. More than 200 people — mostly Shiites — have died from suicide attacks and car bombs since Friday.
From FoxNews: China: Bird Flu 'Epidemic'.
China called bird flu a "serious epidemic" and pledged to step up measures to fight the deadly virus Tuesday as officials announced three new outbreaks of the disease in poultry in the country.The outbreaks were detected last week in western and southern China, resulting in the killing of nearly 175,000 birds, the official Xinhua News Agency said. The latest outbreaks bring the total for China in recent weeks to 20.
The massive nation — where billions of poultry are being vaccinated — has reported one human fatality and one suspected death.
With apologies to the great Norman Rockwell.
UPDATE I -- Nov. 23: From FoxNews: Second Person Dies of Bird Flu in China.
China on Wednesday reported its second confirmed death from a strain of bird flu that has claimed more than 60 lives in Asia.State media, meanwhile, reported that a bird flu vaccine being developed in China would be tested on 100 people. It's already been tried on minks, chickens and rats.
The 35-year-old farmer identified only by her surname, Xu, died Tuesday after developing a fever and pneumonia-like symptoms following contact with sick and dead poultry, the Health Ministry said.
Tests concluded the woman was positive for the H5N1 strain of the virus, the official Xinhua News Agency said, citing the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
UPDATE II -- Nov. 28: From Ayn Rand Institute: Thanksgiving: An American Celebration of the Creation of Wealth.
Thanksgiving is a uniquely American holiday, because this country was the first to create and to value material abundance. It is America that has been the beacon for anyone wanting to escape from poverty and misery. It is America that generated the unprecedented flood of goods that washed away centuries of privation. It is America, by establishing the precondition of production -- political freedom -- that was able to unleash the dynamic, productive energy of its citizens.
From FoxNews: Post: Woodward Committed 'Serious Sin'.
Bob Woodward, while a hero to many journalists for breaking the Watergate story, nevertheless committed a "deeply serious sin" by not telling his editor at The Washington Post that a top Bush administration official had told him the name of a CIA officer, the newspaper's ombudsman said.
To see more Newsmaker Caricatures by John Cox, click here.
UPDATE -- Nov. 22: From CNN: Woodward: 'I was trying to avoid being subpoenaed'.
Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward said Monday he kept his conversation with a Bush administration official about the identity of a CIA operative secret for two years because "I was trying to avoid being subpoenaed."Woodward said on CNN's "Larry King Live" he also didn't tell his boss, executive editor Leonard Downie Jr., about the source, a decision he called a mistake.
"And I should have -- as I have many, many times -- taken him into my confidence," he said. "And I did not."
From Mark Steyn: Senate adopts 'exit strategy' from reality (via Little Green Footballs).
One expects nothing from the Democrats. Their leaders are men like Jay Rockefeller, Democrat of West Virginia, who in 2002 voted for the war and denounced Saddam Hussein as an "imminent threat" and claimed that Iraq could have nuclear weapons by 2007 if not earlier. Now he says it's Bush who "lied" his way into war with a lot of scary mumbo-jumbo about WMD.What does Rockefeller believe, really? I know what Bush believes: He thought Saddam should go in 2002 and today he's glad he's gone, as am I. I know what, say, Michael Moore believes: He wanted to leave Saddam in power in 2002, and today he thinks the "insurgents" are the Iraqi version of America's Minutemen. But what do Rockefeller and Reid and Kerry believe deep down? That voting for the war seemed the politically expedient thing to do in 2002 but that they've since done the math and figured that pandering to the moveon.org crowd is where the big bucks are? If Bush is the new Hitler, these small hollow men are the equivalent of those grubby little Nazis whose whining defense was, "I was only obeying orders. I didn't really mean all that strutting tough-guy stuff." And, before they huff, "How dare you question my patriotism?", well, yes, I am questioning your patriotism -- because you're failing to meet the challenge of the times. Thanks to you, Iraq is a quagmire -- not in the Sunni Triangle, where U.S. armed forces are confident and effective, but on the home front, where soft-spined national legislators have turned the war into one almighty Linguini Triangle.
From FoxNews: Debate Continues Over Pullout.
From FoxNews: Bush to China: Emulate Taiwan.
Piquing China just days before meetings with its leaders, President Bush on Wednesday held up the self-governing island of Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its own, as a model of freedom "at all levels" that the communist giant should emulate. ...In remarks sure to irritate his Chinese hosts, Bush prodded the communist nation to grant basic freedoms to its 1.3 billion people and further open its economy.
"We encourage China to continue down the road of reform and openness," Bush told an audience that stayed silent until its polite applause at the end. "By meeting the legitimate demands of its citizens for freedom and openness, China's leaders can help their country grow into a modern, prosperous, and confident nation."
His challenge to Beijing immediately followed lavish praise of Taiwan.
"By embracing freedom at all levels, Taiwan has delivered prosperity to its people and created a free and democratic Chinese society," Bush said.
Pointing to Taiwan -- as well as South Korea -- Bush said political freedoms are the inevitable product of the kind of economic liberalization China has begun pursuing.
"Men and women who are allowed to control their own wealth will eventually insist on controlling their own lives and their own future," he said. "As China reforms its economy, its leaders are finding that once the door to freedom is opened even a crack, it cannot be closed." [Emphasis added]
Robert Tracinski commented in yesterday's TIA Daily:
One of the most powerful good ideas that President Bush has articulated and unleashed on the international stage is the connection between freedom and prosperity -- that oppression dooms a nation to backwardness, stagnation, and poverty. Note that in this speech he adds another important corollary: the connection between economic freedom and political freedom.
From CNN: Rice: Israelis, Palestinians reach deal on Gaza.
Israel and the Palestinian Authority agreed Tuesday on a detailed arrangement for opening the borders of Gaza and to allow freer movement for Palestinians elsewhere.It took all-night negotiations and a strong diplomatic shove from U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to get a deal whose basic elements had been in the works for weeks.
"I have to say as a football fan, sometimes the last yard is the hardest, and I think we experienced that today," Rice told a news conference where she announced the agreement.
She praised the deal at a news conference as a "big step forward" in Israeli-Palestinian relations, bruised by nearly five years of bloody fighting.
"This agreement is intended to give Palestinian people the freedom to move, to trade, to live ordinary lives," Rice said. [Emphasis added]
UPDATE -- Nov. 17 Aaron has some additional angles on the border deal, including instant replay and bullets.
From CNN: King: Jordanians 'get mad, get even'.
Jordan's King Abdullah II has vowed that the perpetrators of Wednesday's suicide bombings will be brought to justice."There is tremendous outrage by the Jordanian public that these people have targeted just innocent people," he told CNN on Friday. "And I can tell you that we Jordanians, we get mad and we get even, and these people will be brought to justice."
The attacks by suicide bombers in and near three downtown Amman hotels killed 57 people, mostly Jordanians. A Web posting on Friday claimed the bombers were Iraqis. ...
"Jordan is now part of many countries that have suffered from the senseless violence of suicide bombers, whether it's in European countries or in Arab and Muslim countries," the Jordanian king told CNN's Brent Sadler.
To see more Newsmaker Caricatures by John Cox, click here.
From FoxNews: Bush Fires Back Against Iraq War Critics.
President Bush on Friday shot back at critics claiming his administration misconstrued or lied about pre-war intelligence showing that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, saying "it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began.""The stakes in the global War on Terror are too high and the national interest is too important for the politicians to throw out false charges," Bush said. "These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America's will."
Bush also reiterated the need to defeat extremists seeking to destroy America and other modern governments, saying the "murderous ideology of Islamic radicals" is the great threat of the 21st century.
On the day America is commemorating Veterans Day, Bush said just like heroes of yesterday fought bravely against the threats of communism and Nazism, today's heroes are fighting the War on Terror against groups led by "evil men" he likened to Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, who "consumed whole nations in war or genocide."
InstaPundit has a good roundup of commentary. From Glenn Reynolds:
The White House needs to go on the offensive here in a big way -- and Bush needs to be very plain that this is all about Democratic politicans pandering to the antiwar base, that it's deeply dishonest, and that it hurts our troops abroad.
UPDATE I -- Nov. 14: I forgot to link to this must-read Commentary article by Norman Podhoretz: Who Is Lying About Iraq? (thanks to Howard Tayler -- Schlock Mercenary creator -- for the reminder).
Among the many distortions, misrepresentations, and outright falsifications that have emerged from the debate over Iraq, one in particular stands out above all others. This is the charge that George W. Bush misled us into an immoral and/or unnecessary war in Iraq by telling a series of lies that have now been definitively exposed.What makes this charge so special is the amazing success it has enjoyed in getting itself established as a self-evident truth even though it has been refuted and discredited over and over again by evidence and argument alike. In this it resembles nothing so much as those animated cartoon characters who, after being flattened, blown up, or pushed over a cliff, always spring back to life with their bodies perfectly intact. Perhaps, like those cartoon characters, this allegation simply cannot be killed off, no matter what.
Read the whole thing.
And Captain's Quaters has more (hat tip Earl).
UPDATE II -- Nov. 15: Last Friday, Investor's Business Daily republished a must-read list of quotes from Democratic leaders regarding the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. The list is not available online, so I've been given permission to post an image file, viewable here: IBD: Ominous Warnings Redux.
Our congratulations and gratitude go to SparkS, who made the winning $650 bid/donation for the original art of our Project Valour-IT cartoon. SparkS also won a Chris Muir "Day By Day" comic strip in an auction hosted by Overtaken By Events. For the latest in the soon-to-end Project Valour-IT fund raising drive, see the blog. Our thanks goes to all the bidders and donators.
And on this Veterans Day, we extend our deepest appreication to all our veterans -- thank you for your service.
Veterans Day in the news:
Time overtaking World War I vets
America Honors Its Heroes on Veterans Day
Miss. Children Pen Moving Letters to GIs
Group of Navy Veterans Want Ship Named After Their Captain
And to see what military bloggers have to say today, see Milblogging.com.
UPDATE -- Nov. 12: A belated thanks to Holly Aho for her Web expertise with the auction.
NOTE: Be sure to check out our original art auction for Project Valour-IT, which ends tomorrow, on Veteran's Day
From CNN: House suspends Alaska drilling push.
A solid phalanx of Republican moderates drove House GOP leaders to drop a hotly contested plan to open an Alaskan wilderness area to oil drilling as a sweeping budget bill headed toward a vote Thursday.A plan to allow states to lift a moratorium on oil drilling off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts was also axed. ...
The Senate has included ANWR drilling in its budget bill and GOP leaders are likely to push hard for the final House-Senate version of the bill to include it. ...
The decision on the Arctic refuge was a big setback for those who have tried for years to open a coastal strip of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR, to oil development. It was a victory for environmentalists, who have lobbied hard against drilling. President Bush has made drilling in the Alaska refuge one of his top energy priorities.
UPDATE: Michelle Malkin is posting letters critical of the GOP compromise here.
This cartoon is based on a suggestion from Justin Stoicovy. (NOTE: Be sure to check out our original art auction for Project Valour-IT.)
From FoxNews: State of Emergency Declared in France.
President Jacques Chirac declared a state of emergency Tuesday, paving the way for curfews to be imposed on riot-hit cities and towns in an extraordinary measure to halt France's worst civil unrest in decades after 12 nights of violence.
There have been a number of good editorials about the French riots. Here are a few:
The Kristallnacht of the Altruist Nazis; Multiculturalism and the Self-Liquidation of Europe by Robert Tracinski.
The Multiculturalists accept the vicious Nazi assumption that an individual's ideas and values are determined by his race -- but, they say, the cardinal sin is to be too racially self-assertive, that is, the worst thing you can do is to assert the uuniversal truth or superiority of your own group's culture at the expense of the ideas and values of others. "All cultures are equal" is the Multiculturalist theory. In practice, this means that we must be ready to subordinate our own culture -- the culture of Western civilization -- in order to show our "respect" for the cultures of every other group on earth, from the Eskimos and Patagonians to the culture of, say, the North African Arabs.The meaning of Multiculturalism becomes clearest when it confronts the religion of Islam.
The Muslims also denigrate reason, not in favor of personal emotion but in favor of an equally subjective faith; in Islam, two and two make five if Allah wills it. As for the relationship of Islam to other cultures, the Koran is very clear. People of other cultures are to be forcibly converted to Islam -- under threat of death -- except for a few whose existence may be tolerated so long as they accept the status of "dhimmi," secoond-class citizens who dutifully accept a whole series of restrictions lest they offend the sensibilities of Muslims.
Multiculturalism is a program for self-imposed dhimmitude. I have already pointed this out in stories I have posted about the absurd lengths to which Western Multiculturalists are willing to go to expunge our own culture out of an obsequious respect for Muslim "sensibilities." The examples range from the trivial (removing a public sculpture of a pig in rural England, because Muslims consider the pig an "unclean" animal) to the ominous, such as Britain's proposed law making it a crime to criticize someone else's religion--essentially banning dissent against Islam.
But nowhere are the results more ominous than in France. The riots there are described as the product of France's failure to "assimilate" Muslim immigrants from North Africa, and various reasons are cited for this failure. But the most fundamental reason is that Europe has long ago lost any real interest in assimilating its immigrants. Indeed, it has rejected the very idea of assimilation. To induct others into European culture--why, that kind of cultural self-assertion would be just like the Nazis. Instead, Europe has gone out of its way to "accommoddate" other cultures -- by encouraging immigrants to live for decades sealed off in their own enclaves.
Why Paris is burning by Amir Taheri.
In some areas, it is possible for an immigrant or his descendants to spend a whole life without ever encountering the need to speak French, let alone familiarize himself with any aspect of the famous French culture.The result is often alienation. And that, in turn, gives radical Islamists an opportunity to propagate their message of religious and cultural apartheid.
Some are even calling for the areas where Muslims form a majority of the population to be reorganized on the basis of the "millet" system of the Ottoman Empire: Each religious community (millet) would enjoy the right to organize its social, cultural and educational life in accordance with its religious beliefs.
In parts of France, a de facto millet system is already in place. In these areas, all women are obliged to wear the standardized Islamist "hijab" while most men grow their beards to the length prescribed by the sheiks.
The radicals have managed to chase away French shopkeepers selling alcohol and pork products, forced "places of sin," such as dancing halls, cinemas and theaters, to close down, and seized control of much of the local administration.
A reporter who spent last weekend in Clichy and its neighboring towns of Bondy, Aulnay-sous-Bois and Bobigny heard a single overarching message: The French authorities should keep out. ...
It is now clear that a good portion of France's Muslims not only refuse to assimilate into "the superior French culture," but firmly believe that Islam offers the highest forms of life to which all mankind should aspire.
Wake up, Europe, you've a war on your hands by Mark Steyn.
"French youths," huh? You mean Pierre and Jacques and Marcel and Alphonse? Granted that most of the "youths" are technically citizens of the French Republic, it doesn't take much time in les banlieus of Paris to discover that the rioters do not think of their primary identity as "French": They're young men from North Africa growing ever more estranged from the broader community with each passing year and wedded ever more intensely to an assertive Muslim identity more implacable than anything you're likely to find in the Middle East. After four somnolent years, it turns out finally that there really is an explosive "Arab street," but it's in Clichy-sous-Bois. ...President Chirac seems to have come down on the side of those who feel the scum's grievances need to be addressed. He called for "a spirit of dialogue and respect." As is the way with the political class, they seem to see the riots as an excellent opportunity to scuttle [interior minister Nicolas] Sarkozy's presidential ambitions rather than as a call to save the Republic.
UPDATE: More from Mark Steyn: Early skirmish in the Eurabian civil war (via Little Green Footballs).
As to the "French" "youth", a reader in Antibes cautions me against characterising the disaffected as "Islamist". "Look at the pictures of the youths," he advises. "They look like LA gangsters, not beturbaned prophet-monkeys."Leaving aside what I'm told are more than a few cries of "Allahu Akhbar!" on the streets, my correspondent is correct. But that's the point. The first country formally to embrace "multiculturalism" - to the extent of giving it a cabinet post -- was Canada, where it was sold as a form of benign cultural cross-pollination: the best of all worlds. But just as often it gives us the worst of all worlds. More than three years ago, I wrote about the "tournante" or "take your turn" -- the gang rape that's become an adolescent rite of passage in the Muslim quarters of French cities - and similar phenomena throughout the West: "Multiculturalism means that the worst attributes of Muslim culture - the subjugation of women -- combine with the worst attributes of Western culture -- licence and self-gratification. Tattooed, pierced Pakistani skinhead gangs swaggering down the streets of northern England areas are as much a product of multiculturalism as the turban-wearing Sikh Mountie in the vice-regal escort." Islamofascism itself is what it says: a fusion of Islamic identity with old-school European totalitarianism. But, whether in turbans or gangsta threads, just as Communism was in its day, so Islam is today's ideology of choice for the world's disaffected.
UPDATE -- Nov. 14: From FoxNews: Chirac: France Riots Reflect 'Profound Malaise'.
President Jacques Chirac said Monday that more than two weeks of violence in the poor suburbs of France is the sign of a "profound malaise" and he ordered new measures to reach out to troubled youths and fight the discrimination believed to be at the root of it. ...He said he has decided to set up a corps of volunteers to offer training for 50,000 youths by 2007. He also said the French media, which is not very ethnically diverse, need to "better reflect the reality of France today."
He told companies and unions they must encourage diversity and support employment for youths from tough neighborhoods, saying it was important to fight "this poison for society which is discrimination."
To help raise funds for Project Valour-IT, we are auctioning the original art for the cartoon below. The highest bid/donation for the cartoon wins. Auction ends this Friday, November 11th, at 12:35pm EST (just after noon). No minimum bid.
The inked cartoon is on an 11" x 7" bristol board; the image is approximately 9" x 6.5". John and I will sign and date the front of the cartoon in pencil. Shipping is included.
NOTE: Some differences between the image seen here and the original artwork: there is no gray shading, no C&F logo, and no Web site address.
From AP: Prince Charles, Camilla wrap up US tour.
Britain's Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, began wrapping up their official visit to the United States with a visit to a school near here after a giddy social weekend. ...After touring the school and chatting with students, Charles and Camilla will be ushered to the San Francisco Ferry Building where the prince will give a speech on the environment.
From Mark Steyn: Confrontation is a good thing.
According to The Sunday Telegraph, on this week's whirlwind tour of the Great Satan, the Prince of Wales "will try to persuade George W Bush and Americans of the merits of Islam…because he thinks the United States has been too intolerant of the religion since September 11". His Royal Highness apparently finds the Bush approach to Islam "too confrontational". ...It's true that Mr Bush does not have the Prince's bulging Rolodex of bin Laden siblings and doesn't seem to get the same kick out of climbing into the old Lawrence-of-Arabia get-up for dinner with them: for His Highness, the excitement is in tents. But Bush has liberated 50 million Muslims from tyrannous regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq and, if he was in the mood to be really confrontational, he'd tell Charles to stick it up his djellaba.
To see more Newsmaker Caricatures by John Cox, click here.
From The Miami Herald: Leftists protest Bush policies.
Latin America's radical left took to the streets Friday as populist figures such as Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez ...In a speech lasting more than two hours, Chávez unsparingly criticized President Bush and his policies in the region and said Latin America was uniting against the "imperialism of the north."
"We are creating a great political body in the south, and not only geographically," said the Venezuelan leader, whom U.S. officials have accused of subverting democracy in his country and his neighbors. 'This is the great task of our region, to create a consensus of 'the South' that will bring better lives to all our people.''
Chávez repeated charges that the United States was planning to invade his oil-rich country and promised to defend it in a "war of 100 years." U.S. officials have denied any such plans. ...
A giant banner of Ernesto "Che" Guevara, the Cuban revolutionary and Argentine native, hung from the roof.
Chávez said he'd talked to Castro shortly before speaking and received emotional words of encouragement from the 79-year-old leader.
ORIGINAL ART AUCTION UPDATE: The original art for this cartoon is now up for auction to raise funds for Project Valour-IT. Auction ends this Friday, November 11th, at 12:35pm EST (just after noon).
A worthy cause: Project Valour-IT.
Project Valour-IT, in memory of SFC William V. Ziegenfuss, provides voice-controlled software and laptop computers to wounded Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines recovering from hand and arm injuries or amputations at major military medical centers. Operating laptops by speaking into a microphone, our wounded heroes are able to send and receive messages from friends and loved ones, surf the 'Net, and communicate with buddies still in the field without having to press a key or move a mouse.
This cartoon is based on suggestions from John of Argghhh! and Bill Faith.
From FoxNews Seventh Night of Riots in France.
France's government faced mounting pressure Thursday as suburban unrest spread, with youths setting fire to a car dealership and public buses in battles with riot police, who reportedly came under gunfire.Youths rampaged for a seventh straight night, undeterred by the presence of armed riot police. Acts ranging from clashing with police to torching vehicles were reported in at least 10 Paris (search)-region towns.
The riots have highlighted the division between France's big cities and their poor suburbs and frustrations simmering in housing projects to the north and northeast of Paris, heavily populated by North African and Muslim immigrants and their French-born children who struggle with high unemployment, crime and poverty.
From Jihad Watch: French Muslims riot for seventh night running.
The difference between the Reuters headline and mine epitomizes the difficulty the French have in facing the real dimensions of this problem. For it is ultimately not a problem of disaffected youth who just need jobs and money, but of youth who consider the French government a foreign power, and one that ultimately must be replaced by a very different kind of government. Bat Ye'or in Eurabia has demonstrated that the French for over 30 years now have allowed for massive immigration without making any move to assimilate the immigrants. Up until the hijab ban their Islamic identity was not only unchallenged but encouraged -- partly out of ignorance of how the Sharia impulse conflicts with the Western societal model of pluralism. Now they are reaping the fruit.
See No Pasaran for more.
UPDATE I -- Nov. 4: From FoxNews Paris Riots Spread to 20 Suburbs.
A week of riots in poor neighborhoods outside Paris gained dangerous new momentum Thursday, with youths shooting at police and firefighters and attacking trains and symbols of the French state. ...The unrest cast a cloud over the end of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month. In Clichy-sous-Bois — heart of the rioting — men filled the Bilal mosque for evening prayers, but streets were subdued with shops shutting early.
UPDATE II: From FoxNews French Riots Spread Beyond Paris.
The chaotic riots that have gripped the suburban slums north of Paris for more than a week spread to more suburbs and other towns across France Thursday night.North of Paris, Muslim youths from northern and sub-Saharan Africa torched over 400 cars and several large stores. Jean-Francois Cordet, a regional official, said a group of 30 to 40 teenagers harassed police near a synagogue and that a school classroom had been partially burned.
UPDATE III -- Nov. 5: From FoxNews Paris Rioters Burn Ambulance and Stone Medics.
Widespread riots across impoverished areas of France took a malevolent turn in a ninth night of violence, as youths torched an ambulance and stoned medical workers coming to the aid of a sick person. Authorities arrested more than 200 people, an unprecedented sweep since the beginning of the unrest.Other bands of predominantly Muslim youths also burned a nursery school, warehouses and more than 750 cars overnight as the violence that spread from the restive Paris suburbs to towns around France. ...
An attack this week on a woman bus passenger highlighted the savage nature of some of the violence. The woman, in her 50s and on crutches, was doused with an inflammable liquid and set afire after passengers were forced to leave the bus, blocked by burning objects on the road, judicial officials said.
Late Friday in Meaux, east of Paris, youths prevented firefighters from evacuating a sick person from an apartment in a housing project, pelting them with stones and torching the awaiting ambulance, an Interior Ministry officer said. The officer, not authorized to speak publicly, asked not to be named.
From FoxNews: Alito Nomination May Bring Long-Anticipated Judiciary Fight.
The conservative rebellion against Bush after Miers was nominated exposed fissures among the president and the party, but Alito's nomination seemed quickly to have brought establishment Republicans back together. And any gains Democrats made from the fractiousness no longer appeared meaningful or lasting.