Entre Nous / Musings of a former Belgian

UN ambulances transporting terrorists

See AccessMiddleEast.org (click in link in right-hand sidebar) for a video of UN ambulances picking up and transporting armed Palestinian terrorists.
(attempt at direct link, your mileage may vary.)

Needless to say, this is a war crime, specifically a textbook case of "perfidy". Perfidy is legally defined in article 37 of the Protocol Additional to the 1949 Geneva Convention, whcih I am quoting in full:

1. It is prohibited to kill, injure or capture an adversary by resort to perfidy. Acts inviting the confidence of an adversary to lead him to believe that he is entitled to, or is obliged to accord, protection under the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, with intent to betray that confidence, shall constitute perfidy. The following acts are examples of perfidy:

(a) the feigning of an intent to negotiate under a flag of truce or of a surrender;

(b) the feigning of an incapacitation by wounds or sickness;

(c) the feigning of civilian, non-combatant status; and

(d) the feigning of protected status by the use of signs, emblems or uniforms of the United Nations or of neutral or other States not Parties to the conflict.

2. Ruses of war are not prohibited. Such ruses are acts which are intended to mislead an adversary or to induce him to act recklessly but which infringe no rule of international law applicable in armed conflict and which are not perfidious because they do not invite the confidence of an adversary with respect to protection under that law. The following are examples of such ruses: the use of camouflage, decoys, mock operations and misinformation.

Michel: Belgian foreign policy will change course

(Hat tip: Ralph B.) According to the weekend edition of the Belgian Dutch-language daily De Standaard, Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel, on his latest visit to Washington, promised a reversal of the country's anti-American foreign policy, aligning it more with the views of Mia Doornaert [the newspaper's diplomatic editor, a longtime fierce critic of kneejerk anti-Americanism and Israel-bashing, as well as what she terms Belgian "delusions of grandeur": I have quoted her here repeatedly in the past]. Here follows my English translation of the whole article:

"Doornaert-minded"
De Standaard
May 29, 2004

Diplomacy is still a matter of people. Thus far, at least, it is not
the nameless daredevils of posh consultancy bureaus that supply
expensive ideas, but [political] individuals. They talk and read a lot,
think hard, and come up with something original. There is no grand idea
in international politics or it is attached to a [personal] name: the
Monroe doctrine, the Marshall plan,...

[Belgian] Foreign Minister [Louis] Michel gets his political philosophy
from the newspaper. It is available every day for a single measly euro,
a pittance compared to what Ernst and Young would charge. For early this
week, the minister declared that Belgian foreign policy would be more
"Doornaert-minded" in the future. The fact that he made this pronouncement
in Washington underscores the importance of this change of course.

Faithful readers of this newspaper will understand Louis Michel. He pays
homage to Mia Doornaert, editor for diplomacy of De Standaard. What the
description means is equally clear: a less obstinate "Yankee go home",
and that Europe would better realized it is better at quacking than at
doing, and that, oh golly, Belgium ought not to put itself forward as
the moral yardstick of the world unless it wants to make a fool of itself.

Our colleague Doornaert has been hammering this into Michel for years, adding
that only his resignation would be an honorable way to rehabilitate Belgium
diplomatically. His colleague for Defense Andre Flahaut may call himself lucky
if he only calls him a "kakelzwans" [untranslatable Belgian-Dutch slang
roughly meaning "schmuck that cackles like a chicken"].

After nearly five years of trench warfare Louis Michel capitulates. Not
yet unconditionally, because he is not yet referring to the new "Mia doctrine",
only to being more "Doornaert minded". But we are on the right track:
canonizations also start with beatifications.

Although the "-minded" suffix remains intriguing. It literally means that
Louis Michel has our colleague Doornaert "on his mind" [English in original].
Thus, he not only will have to justify our country's diplomatic change of
course in parliament, but will also have to explain at home why he is walking
around with other women on his mind.

Man in street saner than leadership?

Haaretz (hat tip: OxBlog) published preliminary results of a survey by the One Voice initiative, claiming that 76% of both Israeli and "Palestinian" populations favor a two-state solution. The sample sizes are impressive (17,000 and 23,000, respectively) but I'd like to see the raw data.

Iced Earth frontman ices Chimpsky groupie

Hilarious. Some Chomsky groupie music journalist interviews Jon Schaffer (frontman of the heavy metal band Iced Earth) and gets his head handed to him on a platter. A must-read, even if you're not into heavy rock music.

Iraq war: the American front

This headline of Best of the Web says it all.

Strange (?) bedfellows

Madrid terrorists financed by trade in hashish. Also:

MADRID — The odd crew of longtime extremists and radicalized gangsters accused of carrying out the March train bombings here nourished their holy war with holy water.

And hashish.

The water came from Mecca, the Muslim holy city in Saudi Arabia. The conspirators drank it during purification rituals at a barbershop that was an after-hours prayer hall for adherents of Takfir wal Hijra, a secretive Islamic sect allegedly active in the criminal underworld of Europe and North Africa.
[FB: this particular group is described here as "an extremist sect whose members are exempted from following the ordinary strictures of Islam... The exemption is meant to aid them in infiltrating Western society. They can drink alcohol, take drugs, skip prayers, engage in extramarital sex... Al Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri is Takfiri, and World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef closely fits the profile"]

The hashish came from Morocco, European investigators believe. The ideologues of the terrorist cell justified selling drugs as a weapon of jihad. The Moroccan dealer who financed the plot traded a load of hashish for the dynamite that slaughtered 191 people aboard commuter trains on March 11. The drug trafficker led the cell along with a Tunisian economics student, a duo whose disparity reflects the evolving nature of Islamic terrorism. Both blew themselves up after a standoff with Spanish police last month.

As investigators analyze the Madrid bombings and try to prevent new attacks, they are intrigued by the importance of the drug connection. The predominantly Moroccan cell came together with remarkable speed, teaming a drug gang with students and shopkeepers and raising the specter of “narco-terrorism,” a phenomenon more commonly associated with such nations as Colombia. It also offers a textbook example of the potentially explosive combination of Islamic extremism and organized criminal networks.

“It worries us very much,” a Spanish police commander said. “Until now, Islamic terrorism and drugs were two separate areas. Now you are not sure where to look. You are not sure whom you are dealing with. I don’t know of any previous cases like this in the West.”

Madrid’s hidden jihad reflects a wider effort by Islamic networks in Europe and North Africa to tap the violent energy of criminal networks of diverse ethnicities and specialties, anti-terrorism officials say.

In Italy, a member of the Camorra, the Neapolitan Mafia, converted to Islam and recently set up an exchange of arms for drugs between the Camorra and Islamic terrorists, an Italian prosecutor said.

In the prisons of Belgium and neighboring countries, recruitment by Islamic groups has accelerated during the worldwide terrorism offensive stoked by the war in Iraq, said Belgian police anti-terrorism commander Alain Grignard.

“The intermingling of terrorist networks with the criminal milieu is becoming more and more important,” said Grignard, an expert on Islam. “It’s in prisons where political operatives recruit specialists whom they need to run their networks — specialists in fraudulent documents, arms trafficking, etc. They use concepts that justify crime, that transform it into redemption.... The prisons of today are producing the terrorists of tomorrow.”

UN stinks, part 1247

United Nebbich "peacekeeping" forces involved in "sex for food" scandals in Congo, Eritrea, Sierra Leone, and Kosovo. (Hat tip: LGF)

[sarcasm] Stay tuned for avalanche of media coverage and worldwide cries of condemnations. [/sarcasm]

Humorous political test

This is good for some laughs.

Strength

Bill Whittle's latest, Strength (part 1) and Strength (part 2) is up.

Eurabian Times

Longtime LGF poster "Colt" has a weblog now: The Eurabian Times. A couple of goodies:

The Scotsman [newspaper] reports that a Palestinian human rights group led by Bassam Eid saw its EU funding slashed after... it published a report criticizing human rights abuses by the Arafat thugocracy. (The group refers to the situation as "The Intrafada".)

And this speech by Amir Taheri about whether [a certain version of] Islam and democracy can be compatible. (He's extremely pessimistic.)