Wither Europe?

While I can't exactly verify the veracity of this post from Free Republic, it does ring true. In it, a fellow named Matthias Dapfner, Chief Executive of the huge German publisher Axel Springer AG. The fulcrum:

And now we are faced with a particularly grotesque form of appeasement... How is Germany reacting to the escalating violence by Islamic fundamentalists in Holland and elsewhere? By suggesting that we really should have a "Muslim Holiday" in Germany.

He goes on to hammer the culture of appeasement that has permiated Europe for decades and actually applauds George W. Bush for doing the right thing while Europe did nothing.

I think the tide may be turning in Europe against the Islamic Fascists.

On a brighter note

It seems the Palestians and the Israelis are slowly coming to grips with the fact that neither are going anywhere and that, in order to survive and prosper, they'd better learn to get along. I had always regarded Yassir Arafat as a gangster masquerading as a "freedom fighter" and now that he's dead, well things might be looking up. This week, Ariel Sharon and Abu Mazen declared (but did not sign) a "cease fire". While I'm certain that Hamas and Hizbolleh will not comply, it's still a good sign. Let's hope that everyone can see the folly the armed conflict is in this situation and simply sit down and drawn a decent border. Both could sets of folks -- the Zionist and the Palestinians -- could prosper if they realize that they have to share.

Here's to a real peace in the Middle East.

Three months have past? Egads!

Welll, it's true. The Missus and I have finally sold the house and are finally moving to Raleigh sometime in March We have a cool house all picked out and if everything works our correctly, we'll move in on or about 14th Mar 05.

Yahoo.

That stated, there really is no good excuse for not blogging. I can very easily stomp out 500 words of relatively erudition in less than a half an hour and can do a good think piece in something like a morning. So why didn't I?

The usual cavalcade of excuses, I suppose. The Ho9lidays, growing the business, Izzy under the weather, selling the house and angst that goes with it -- whatever. But it's a new year and it's time to change for the better.

Iraq

A happy thing occured just the other day -- the Iraqis had a multi-party
election. They were brave in the face or terrorists that threatened death if
they ventured out to vote. But they did it anyway and that's a good thing. It
appears that George W. Bush's notion that liberty is contagious
and will do an enormous amount of damage to the autocratic / theocratic Middle
East appaers to be correct. And how did Bush's detractors respond? Well maybe Mark Steyn put it best:

I was very moved by the story of Mr Richard Kral, a Slovak gentleman found staggering drunk down a snowy trail a few days back. He'd been motoring through the Tatra Mountains in his Audi when he got buried by an avalanche. Opening the window and frantically clawing at the snow, he grasped that he couldn't dig his way out faster than the white stuff would come into the car and bury him. So he looked around and his eye fell on the 60 half-litre bottles of beer he happened to have with him. He had a drink and midway through realised that he could urinate on the snow to melt it.

And he did: "Man Peed Way out of Avalanche," as one headline put it. "It was hard," the plucky Slovak told the local press, "and now my kidneys and liver hurt." I read that item on January 29. The next day Iraq voted and, scanning the coverage from Toronto to Sydney via Dublin, London, Paris and Berlin, I had an eerie sense of déjà vu. The Western media appear to have decided that any good news out of Iraq is one almighty neocon snow job and the only thing to do is emulate Mr Kral and urinate all over it.

Probably as good an analysys as I've seen. No matter what happens, the Democrats and their fellow travellers can't say good word about ole' Dubya. And it will end up burning them in the long run.