I guess it just goes to show that fas­cists don’t always trust each other, do they? Nice post, Dave. :)

[...] Another Pic­ture worth a Thou­sand Words This entry was posted in Non classé. Book­mark the perma­link. ← Nico­las Far­gues: La Charia, preuve d’une plus grande tolérance… [...]

I’ve stopped hunt­ing for the good guys here. Racist ele­ments in Turkey prob­a­bly see EU mem­ber­ship as an obsta­cle in the pur­suit of a Tur­kic speak­ing empire. They are not up to the patient eth­nic pars­ing and finan­cial takeovers that Ger­many prefers. Nato airstrikes are quicker. Turkophiles have their eyes on north­ern Syria and north­ern Iran and points east. An emerg­ing but prob­a­bly unim­por­tant enemy-of-my-enemy alliance is that of Greece and Iran. Mean­while, the peo­ple of the region get to choose between left and right ver­sions of fas­cism. Assad, like Nixon, has to go — he’s a fas­cist but still not hard right enough. He spends too much on bread sub­si­dies that could be bet­ter spent else­where on gold bath­room fixtures.

@Dwight: I don’t see any good guys, either. In fact, if you want my opin­ion, all 3 of these of these coun­tries have gov­ern­ments who are really just sides on the same rot­ten dice.

Allow me Dave, please, to pon­tif­i­cate a lit­tle bit. It is true that a pic­ture is worth a thou­sand words. While surf­ing on the web, I stum­bled upon some pic­tures from the Saint­sa­tions, the New Orleans Saints Cheerleaders.

In a nut­shell, one has to remem­ber that the French pres­ence in Louisiana is due to the depor­ta­tion of French colonists liv­ing in what is called today Nova Scot­tia, Canada, when the French Crown aban­doned North Amer­ica to the British.

What is absolutely strik­ing about the­ses cheer­lead­ers is that they wear...a golden lily on their chest! Sym­bol­i­cally, it’s incred­i­ble. The fleur-de-lis is not new on the Saints’ jer­sey appar­ently but to see it like that, on these beau­ti­ful women, hit me like a train. God that it would make me a great army! It is for these women that we have to con­tinue the fight to pro­tect and defend our civ­i­liza­tion. Only free­dom allow women to become so beau­ti­ful, not reli­gion, total­i­tar­i­an­ism or authoritarianism.

My blog is never men­tioned any­where nor is my name but I have the impres­sion some­times that I have an impact. It made my day any­way and I hope you will enjoy it too.

http://saintsations.net/main/meet_the_team.php?page=meet_the_team

The spigot is about to open:

Saudi, Qatari plans to arm Syr­ian rebels risk over­tak­ing cau­tious approach favored by U.S.
By Karen DeY­oung, Pub­lished: March 1
WaPo

Arab plans to arm Syria’s oppo­si­tion fight­ers are threat­en­ing to over­take the cau­tious approach advo­cated by the United States and other coun­tries, which fear that send­ing weapons to the region could fuel a civil war and lead to a regional conflagration.

Saudi Ara­bia and Qatar indi­cated this week that they are pre­pared to help Syr­ian oppo­si­tion mil­i­tary forces. Kuwait’s par­lia­ment passed a non­bind­ing res­o­lu­tion Thurs­day call­ing for the gov­ern­ment to pro­vide weapons to the rebels and break ties with Damascus.

The Syr­ian National Coun­cil, the oppo­si­tion group pre­vi­ously com­mit­ted to non­vi­o­lence, announced the for­ma­tion of a “defense min­istry” that it said would unify rebel forces under a cen­tral polit­i­cal com­mand and direct strat­egy. “The rev­o­lu­tion started peace­fully and kept up its peace­ful nature for months,” SNC Pres­i­dent Burhan Ghalioun told reporters in Paris, “but the real­ity today is different.”

The Obama admin­is­tra­tion has con­tin­ued to insist pub­licly that eco­nomic and diplo­matic pres­sure is the best way to push Syr­ian Pres­i­dent Bashar al-Assad to capitulate.

“It’s not clear to us that arm­ing peo­ple right now will either save lives or lead to the demise of Assad’s regime,” Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of State Jef­frey D. Felt­man said at a Sen­ate hear­ing on the cri­sis Thursday.

But a senior Arab diplo­mat said, “Peo­ple are more and more frus­trated, and are com­ing to the con­clu­sion that diplo­matic efforts are not enough in light of con­tin­u­ing abuse by the regime.” The Saudis and Qataris, said the diplo­mat speak­ing on the con­di­tion of anonymity to dis­cuss national decision-making, are pre­pared to move “as soon as they phys­i­cally can,” within days, or weeks at the most. “The delays,” he said, “are logis­ti­cal, not political.”

Beyond sym­pa­thy for the Syr­ian peo­ple, the Saudis see Assad’s early down­fall as a major blow against Iran, his only remain­ing sup­porter in the region. Qatar, which played a lead­ing role in arm­ing the Libyan oppo­si­tion to Moam­mar Gaddafi, is seek­ing to fur­ther expand its role as a major foreign-policy player.

Despite U.S. demur­ral on the ques­tion of arms, regional diplo­mats said they think the Obama admin­is­tra­tion will not oppose deci­sions by indi­vid­ual nations to pro­vide weapons to the rebel fighters.

“I don’t think any­one will stand up and scream” in oppo­si­tion to weapons ship­ments, the Arab diplo­mat said. Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Rod­ham Clin­ton, who has led the admin­is­tra­tion effort to coor­di­nate a uni­fied inter­na­tional effort, “is not going to stop the Saudis,” he said.

Felt­man acknowl­edged that “the longer this goes on, the deeper the sec­tar­ian divi­sions, the higher the risks of long-term sec­tar­ian con­flict, the higher the risk of extrem­ist” involve­ment. But the well-equipped Syr­ian army has used tanks and artillery against the oppo­si­tion, he said, “and I don’t think [those propos­ing aid] are talk­ing about some­how giv­ing tanks to the opposition.”

Daniel Byman, pro­fes­sor of secu­rity stud­ies at George­town Uni­ver­sity, noted the “fun­da­men­tal dis­par­ity between oppo­si­tion forces and the Syr­ian gov­ern­ment” and said “it’s very hard to level that play­ing field.” Sup­port to the oppo­si­tion would prob­a­bly involve “small arms, auto­matic weapons, rocket-propelled grenades, per­haps mor­tars — things that in the end won’t stand up to a tank.”

The admin­is­tra­tion is con­sid­er­ing pro­vid­ing the oppo­si­tion with non­lethal train­ing and assis­tance, includ­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions equip­ment, sim­i­lar to what it gave the Libyan oppo­si­tion ground forces.

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