by JAMES TARANTO
Tuesday, June 17, 2003 3:32 P.M. EDT

Frenchmen for Genocide
Dominique de Villepin, France's outlandishly coiffed foreign minister, "called for the removal of all stereotypes etched into the minds of non-Muslims about Islam, stressing that Islam, like all other religions, calls for social peace, tolerance and freedom of criticism," reports IslamOnline.com. This is a message we've heard from President Bush too, and while we aren't qualified to weigh in on matters of Muslim theology, we would hope that the peaceful interpretation of Islam wins out.

But while Bush talks of Islam as a "religion of peace" in order to marginalize Islamist terrorists, de Villepin--the same man who a few months ago had the temerity (when defending Saddam Hussein) to lecture America on morality in foreign policy--actually supports terrorists, at least in some cases.

Believe it or not, the European Union doesn't regard the "political wing" of Hamas, the fundamentalist terror group that last week murdered 17 people in a Jerusalem bus bombing, to be a terror organization. The EU is belatedly considering such a designation, but de Villepin will have none of it. The Jerusalem Post reports that de Villepin, "making a distinction between 'mass movements' and 'terrorists,' argued that Hamas remained a necessary player in the peace process."

The Hamas charter would seem to contradict this. "There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad," it states. "Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors." It also says: "Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it."

If you're feeling a sense of déjà vu, it's understandable. After all, this isn't the first time France has collaborated with a genocidal "mass movement."

Reuters Spares the Scare Quotes
Check out this Reuters dispatch from Paris:

French police launched a major swoop on Tuesday on a left-wing Iranian exile group based in the Paris region, rounding up 167 sympathizers for questioning over possible links to terrorism and seizing $1.3 million in funds.

The Interior Ministry said around 1,300 police and national security officers descended on homes and office of the People's Mujahideen from 6 a.m. in a raid ordered by leading anti-terrorist investigating judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere.

A French antiterror raid, and no scare quotes from Reuters? What's going on? The group is opposed to Iran's theocracy, that's what.

Malodorous in Marseille
"City cleaners are spraying streets in the French port of Marseille with lemon grass perfume to get rid of the stench from piles of rubbish that have been festering under a hot sun for two weeks," Reuters reports. Marseille trash men went on strike for two weeks, objecting to a government pension-reform plan. Now they're "battling to clear up an estimated 8,000 tonnes of garbage whose stench has attracted rats in droves."

Internal Struggle
Ha'aretz reports that Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian prime minister, has broken off "cease-fire" talks with Hamas. "Palestinian sources said the Abbas-Hamas meeting was canceled because the prime minister wants to reach an understanding on a cease-fire with his own Fatah faction before trying to do the same with Hamas leaders. He met with Fatah leaders in Gaza for two hours last night for this purpose, but did not achieve any concrete results."

Can this guy really pacify his population if he can't even reach a ceasefire with himself?

The World's Smallest Violin
It's playing a medley today. The New York Times has a front-page story titled "Inmates Released from Guantánamo Tell Tales of Despair." The crybaby combatants complain that things were so bad, some inmates tried to kill themselves. "In the 18 months since the detention camp opened, there have been 28 suicide attempts by 18 individuals," the Times reports. Somehow it's hard for us to work up much sympathy. We're just happy they didn't kill themselves by flying planes into skyscrapers.

Al Bawaba quotes from a London Sunday Times interview with Saddam Hussein's daughter Raghad. About Iraq today, she says: "I don't like the situation, the American troops everywhere, seeing the statues of my father broken, his pictures torn down. You can imagine how I feel." Boo hoo. She doesn't seem very upset about her own husband's death at the hands of her father, who ordered him killed after he defected then returned.

And remember all the Illinois death-row inmates whose sentences lame-duck governor George Ryan commuted? The Chicago Tribune reports that they aren't happy:

Now, [Andre] Jones and the other inmates face the new reality of life in the general prison population.

It is a far different world from a condemned unit and the certainty of a date with execution: a place where increased freedom of movement brings greater danger; where the camaraderie among the condemned is shattered; where creature comforts such as almost-daily showers and easy access to telephones are gone.

Samuel Nersesian and Debra Brown don't enjoy many creature comforts these days either. Jones murdered them in 1979.

Bush Approval Plummets!
Not all public-opinion surveys show President Bush with high approval ratings. "Nearly two-thirds of respondents to an international poll for the BBC say they have an unfavourable opinion of George W Bush," reports the Beeb:

The survey of 11 countries--for the television programme What The World Thinks of America, to be aired this week in the UK--revealed that 57% of the sample had a very unfavourable, or fairly unfavourable attitude towards the American President.

The figure rose to 60% when discounting the views of the American respondents.

If only the Democrats can figure out a way of allowing all the people in those other countries to vote in next year's election, they might have a chance of winning it.

Great Orators of the Democratic Party

• "One man with courage makes a majority."--Andrew Jackson
  
  
• "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."--Franklin Roosevelt
  
  
• "The buck stops here."--Harry Truman
  
  
• "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."--John Kennedy
  
  
• "If not now, when? If not me, who?"--Carol Moseley Braun

Wow, Is There Anything He Hasn't Done?
"Kerry had battled the Viet Cong, the Nixon White House, and the extremes of the antiwar movement. Now all he had to do was persuade mostly working-class voters north of Boston to vote for him."--closing sentence, part 3 of a Boston Globe profile of the haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat, who by the way served in Vietnam, June 17

Cartoon Politics
Some will be offended by yesterday's drawing by St. Louis Post-Dispatch political cartoonist John Sherffius. We're merely fascinated by it. The caption "DeLay dreams" appears under a depiction of the House majority leader lying in bed, a cartoon bubble showing his putative somnolent fantasy, in which he strolls along with a can of insecticide on his back, exterminating tiny people who are fleeing. One of the escapees has the word POOR on his chest.

Isn't it interesting what this tells us about the liberal mindset? Presumably this cartoon is meant as a commentary on tax policy; DeLay opposes extending income-tax credits for people who don't pay taxes in the first place (the technical term is lucky duckies). Maybe there's an argument on the other side, but imputing murderous impulses to DeLay seems over the top. And while Sherffius poses as a champion of the poor, he seems unconscious of his own elitism in making fun of DeLay for his pre-Congress profession as an exterminator.

Meanwhile, the Democratic National Committee has a Flash animation on its Web site called "Bushenstein,"which is actually quite hilarious. It features a (bad) impersonation of the president declaring: "I'm creatin' the perfect Supreme Court justice, a right-wing extremist the likes of which have never been seen before." After assembling a monster from such parts as "the teeth of Priscilla Owen," "the arms of Clarence Thomas" and "the brain of Antonin Scalia," he sends the product off to the court to wreak destruction.

As the monster knocks down the building's pillars, he mutters: "Civil liberties bad! Worker protections, choice, environmental protections, public education bad!" Then a drawing of the building's ruins with a voice-over that bizarrely declares: "Don't let George Bush reconstruct the Supreme Court."

Do the Democrats realize that they have veered into self-parody?

Storytime With Belle at Fairytale Garden
National Review Online reports on a bizarre exchange between Sen. Russ Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat, and appeals court nominee Bill Pryor at the latter's Judiciary Committee hearing:

Feingold: News accounts also report that you even went so far as to reschedule a family vacation at Disney World in order to avoid Gay Day. In light of this record, can you understand why a gay plaintiff or defendant would feel uncomfortable coming before you as a judge? . . .

Pryor: . . . As far as my family vacation is concerned, my wife and I had two daughters who at the time of that vacation were six and four, and we made a value judgment. And that was our personal decision. . . .

Feingold: Well, I certainly respect going to Disney World with two daughters. I've done the same thing. But are you saying that you actually made that decision on purpose to be away at the time of that--

Pryor: We made a value judgment and changed our plan and went another weekend.

Feingold: Well, I--I appreciate your candor on that.

So now the Senate is interrogating people on their family vacation plans? That's some right to privacy we've got.

It Isn't Exactly Brain Surgery
"Brain Experts Now Follow the Money"--headline, New York Times, June 17

Because They Refused to Start?
"Football Players Charged With Battery"--headline, Independent (University of) Florida Alligator, June 12

Don't Know Much About History
The New York Times profiles Valery Giscard D'Estaing, the French former president who is leading the effort to draft a constitution for the European Union:

Mr. Giscard d'Estaing, the 77-year-old former French president, has already confessed his fascination with American constitutional history. So the temptation to analogize is irresistible.

He is Thomas Jefferson.

"I tried to play a little bit the role that Jefferson played, which was to instill leading ideas into the system," he said of his 16-month adventure in producing the first draft of a constitution for Europe. "Jefferson was a man who wrote and produced elements that consolidated the Constitution."

Actually, it is James Madison who is generally credited with being the "father of the Constitution." Although Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, he was not present at the Constitutional Convention a decade later, for he was overseas as an ambassador--to France, of all places.

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