Europe is not at war against terrorists, the EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana has said, warning against a hysterical reaction to the threat of attacks in the wake of the Madrid bombings.

You don’t say….

“We have to energetically oppose terrorism, but we mustn’t change the way we live,” Solana has told the German weekly Bild am Sonntag in an interview to appear on Sunday, adding “Europe is not at war.”

Of course they’re not. He considers this whole unfortunate Madrid business an accident. Someone grabbed the wrong map, that’s all.
No, really.
The EU has been funding terrorism. Why would terrorists bite the hands that feed them? Ilka Schroeder – 25-year-old member of the European Parliament and former member of the German Green Party;

“The Europeans,” Ilka Schroeder said at Ben-Gurion University, “supported the Palestinian Authority with the aim of becoming its main sponsor, and through this, challenge the U.S. and present themselves as the future global power. Therefore, the Al-Aksa Intifada should be understood as a proxy war between Europe and the United States.”
In an earlier address in New York, she said it is “an open secret within the European Parliament that EU aid to the Palestinian Authority has not been spent correctly. The European Parliament does not intend to verify whether European taxpayers’ money could have been used to finance anti-Semitic murderous attacks.”

P. David Hornik makes these points in the Jan 12, 2004 article;

As for her notion of the Al-Aksa Intifada as a proxy war between Europe and the United States, it’s both compelling and questionable- more compelling in regard to countries like France and Germany, less so in regard to countries like Britain and Spain. It’s easy to adduce other reasons for the EU’s overall willingness to fund anti-Israeli terror, from traditional anti-Semitism (which Schroeder acknowledges as a factor), to the desire to deflect terror from Europe itself and keep it safely to the south, to the desire to appease local European Muslim voting blocs, to the desire to stay in the good graces of oil-rich Arab regimes. What’s clear is that, one way or another, Europe is addicted to Jew-killing; if today, amid its high-flown human rights rhetoric, it no longer engages in it directly, it’s able to do so by proxy, and it’s not about to stop.

No surprise that the EU response to the Spain bombing would be a beaurocratic one. Spain’s “learned her lesson”. No need to worry, now that that’s taken care of.

The measures include appointing a new “coordinator” to oversee the fields involved in the anti- terrorism fight — including police and judicial work, intelligence-sharing and cracking down on extremists’ financing.

Meaning, Solana plans to cut some allowances until these people remember who they’re being paid to bomb.

Thought mad cow was yesterday’s news?

Yesterday, Hunking tried to buy a frame for the $1.57 cheque he received from the Ontario Stockyards for the two cows that weighed about 400 kilograms each when they were sold Feb. 20 at auction for an average price of about 10 cents per kilogram.
…
Levinoff Meat Products Ltd. of Montreal paid $83.05 for Hunking’s two cows, but by the time the $45 trucking cost, $29 commission fee, $2.20 insurance, $5.18 GST and other incidentals were deducted, Hunking’s net from the sale was $1.57.

Certainly, these were cull cows, not fat steers from which steaks and choice cuts are made. But the food products they were turned into will sell for about the same price as they did before BSE. Someone is making some money.

New York Post

While much has been made about intelligence failures in the West, it seems that Saddam’s own senior officials, diplomats and spies offered him such a warped vision of the outside world that warnings went unheeded and the power of France and Russia to prevent the conflict took on mythical proportions.
…
On instructions from Saddam, Lt. Gen. Abed Hamid Hamoud, the head of the presidential office, ordered Naji Sabri, the foreign minister, to contact the French and Russian governments and tell them that Iraq would accept only an “unconditional withdrawal” of U.S. forces.
“Tell them that Iraq is now winning and that the U.S. has sunk in the mud of defeat,” said the letter, written on March 30 – 10 days into the war and less than two weeks before U.S. tanks entered the capital.
The letter was in response to a message the day before from Sabri, who had met the Russian ambassador to Baghdad and reported that Moscow believed “U.S. aggression has no future.”
“The conflict could continue for months, a year or two years,” the Russian envoy is quoted as saying.
…
Some of the intelligence fed back to Baghdad may explain why its analysis was so off the mark. One clumsy drawing from an intelligence officer at the Iraqi Embassy in Syria sent on March 22, two days after the start of the war, showed the location of 20,000 Israeli troops equipped with Patriot surface-to-air missiles allegedly camped in the western desert of Iraq.

Via Kathy Kinsley

Via Andrew Coyne
Federal Liberal appointee among those charged.

The RCMP accused Yves Bourbonnais, formerly of the Immigration and Refugee Board, and 10 others Thursday of forming a “very well structured criminal organization.” “The offences committed in the matter strike at the heart of the administration of justice,” said Staff Sgt. Sergio Pasin, lead investigator during a three-year probe of the activities.
…
The Mounties said the investigation revealed that between 50 and 60 people facing hearings were offered positive judgments from the board in exchange for cash bribes of $8,000 to $15,000 per person.
The people allegedly approached for bribes were from the Asian, Indian, Middle Eastern and Italian communities in Montreal and Ottawa, said RCMP Sgt. Jocelyn Mimeault, a force spokesman.
“Obviously what we’re talking about is corruption.”
He declined to say whether any rigged hearings actually took place.

More background info here

so are the Days Of Their Lies…

In his opening statement to the Commons committee investigating the mess, the defiant former public works minister painted himself as the victim and said that the public accusations and innuendo has all but ended his long political career.
“I feel that I am the one who has paid the greatest price for this scandal so far,” he said. “I have lived up to my part of the bargain. In return, I now learn that I should be considered responsible for a fiasco that was not of my doing.”

[cue violins]

Gagliano was in charge of the department when it funneled millions of dollars to Quebec advertising agencies for little or no work.
As minister, Gagliano said he did everything in his power to fulfill his cabinet obligations. Management was not his responsibility, though. As such, holding him accountable for every department employee is unfair.
“I never had the control or power over my department that would have given me the ability to answer for all that went open with them.”

“I am just a patsy!”

Gagliano acknowledged he met with Guite three or four times per year and had signed off on some seven-figure spending increases without reviewing any documentation.
“I assumed all the paperwork … was in the file,” he said. “I didn’t see it, I didn’t ask for it.”

While his life trickled away waiting for a bone marrow transplant from his long lost brother, his ex-wife secretly plotted to steal the family firm…

In his questions for the former minister, Conservative Party MP Peter MacKay communicated his disbelief.
“You’re telling us today that you were just essentially a finger puppet of your own department, that you had no control over the sponsorship program?” he asked.

Hard to believe, but true. And the story doesn’t end there…. lost and presumed dead for these past two years, in reality, Gagliano was being held captive in a fortress in Denmark.
to be continued…
Andrew Coyne has the Hogan’s Heroes version.