Here is the story from Le Monde. Here is the story in English from CNN.

“The two interrogators tried to hold him back by the legs, but the determination of this fanatic, whose body was already mostly outside, meant all this effort was in vain.”

<accent type=”french”>Malhereeusement, eet waz all in fain. ‘Ee zhust jomped out ze weendow. ‘At ‘appens all ze tahm, we ‘ave prizonairres wiz access to ze unlocked, unbarred weendows.</accent>

Yeah, right.

The Canadians usually have a better sense of perspective than we do, but this story from Ottawa makes it looks like they’re working on closing the Idiocy Gap:

An Ottawa police dog’s interest in a 15-year-old boy’s ski jacket during an impromptu drug search at an Orléans high school yesterday moved school officials to immediately suspend the student — even though he had no drugs on him.

While even the school’s principal admitted she could not smell any marijuana on Chris Laurin’s coat, the dog’s word proved final.

Mark Steyn comments on “peace processes” and such, and appears to reach the same conclusion as Steven Den Beste.

Forget the “cycle of violence” and the “peace process.” History teaches us that the most lasting peace is achieved when one side — preferably the worst side — is decisively defeated and the regime’s diseased organs are comprehensively cleansed. That’s why National Socialism, Fascism and Japanese militarism have not troubled us of late. One can imagine how World War Two would have ended had, say, Mary Robinson, the UN Human Rights poseur, been sitting in Downing Street instead of Winston Churchill. Her crowd should not be running World War Four.

Though I’d say that it’s in fact difficult to imagine how World War Two would ever have actually ended had Mary Robinson et al. been in charge.

From an AP story:

Salt Lake City (AP) — The FBI says an American Airlines plane headed to St. Louis was diverted to Salt Lake City today after a suspicious note was found on board.

The plane was traveling from Portland to St. Louis when a child found a note in the armrest. The note said there was a bomb on the plane. The note appeared to be in a child’s handwriting. The word “bomb” was misspelled as “boom.”

They’ll probably find the child in question and zero-tolerance him into prison, of course.

A teen bully whose victim committed suicide has been convicted of “uttering threats” and “criminal harassment”.

During the trial, one of the accused testified that she had beaten up Dawn-Marie Wesley. The other accused teen admitted calling the victim and saying, “You’re dead.”

That undoubtedly constitutes a threat, and criminal harassment, and kids certainly deserve the same protection of the law that adults do. This case probably belonged in the criminal-justice system. Probably belonged there while the victim was still alive, but here we are.

My concern, though, is that the trend of dealing with bullying in court will grow and grow until there’s a belief that any social friction between children is a criminal matter. That won’t help anyone, because schoolyard harassment is an important part of the process of socialization.

Jockeying for dominance — we call this “bullying” when it’s done in certain ways — is part of human nature. It’s not going to go away, ever. Schoolyard bullying is beneficial in that bullies can learn (hopefully) that bullying doesn’t lead to success, and that bully-ees can learn that there are people in the world who will give you a hard time for, say, wearing the wrong clothes.

Hopefully this doesn’t lead to suicide on the part of the bully-ee. The old belief that nobody likes a tattle-tale is insane; children need to deal with their own conflicts while having some protection from one another. But I’d be willing to suggest that the consequences of eliminating schoolyard bullying entirely would in fact be far worse in the long run than the occasional suicide.

This is the best analysis I’ve yet seen of the realities of the current situation, i.e. the War on Evil.

Ultimately it seems we’re faced with completely destroying Islamic culture, much as Japan’s culture had to be destroyed in order to bring WWII to an end.

I fear that before this war ends we shall have to make changes as radical to the majority of Islamic nations, especially the Arab ones. I fear that, because I don’t see how this war can end if we don’t, unless we are defeated. We can’t merely defeat them militarily; I think we have to break their spirit.

My new wireless gadget has arrived. You can now send AOL instant messages to my pocket using the screen name mobiletino. Send mail to beep-tino@tinotopia.com and they should also reach me.

The best predicate for stupid people, I’ve found, is stupid parents. Now, there are always exceptions, but in general, stupid people tend to have stupid parents. That’s how you get stupid; you grow up in a house with the TV always on, and where you’re never taught to have any curiosity about anything.

Anyway. Fortunately, stupid parents are doing us all a favor by giving their kids — who will likely grow up to be stupid adults — idiotic names.

Out of the 165,000 “.name” web addresses that have been registered so far, several hundred are registered to people with names like Gouda, Almond, Cappuccino, Veal, Corn and Cheddar.

There are exceptions to this, of course. Condoleezza Rice is not stupid (nor were her parents) despite having a silly name, for example. But then Condoleezza is just a very odd and unusual name, not a made-up or repurposed-from-the-grocery-store one.

When these kids start sending resumes around with names like “Cheddar Wilson” and “Cappuccino Goldberg” (though what’s the chances any of these kids are Jewish?), they’ll probably be thrown in the trash more often than not. Names like that are less a marker of individuality (which is what I believe the parents intend) as they are an indication of an idiotic upbringing.

I hope these kids are at least getting normal middle names.

The high school student thrown out of school in Texas recently for the heinous crime of having a bread knife in the back of his pickup truck while on school grounds (see below), has been re-admitted to school.

Rather than just admitting that they overreacted, though, the school has just reduced his punishment to “expulsion” for five days — still insane. Since he’s already been out of school for five days, though, he gets to return tomorrow morning.

Contrast this with the treatment a teacher in Florida is getting after having shown up for work apparently high on cocaine:

An independent arbitrator ruled this month that a penalty less severe than termination was warranted and wants [the teacher] rehired with full pay and benefits. [...] That came as little comfort to Superintendent Jim Paul, who today is expected to recommend that the county School Board appeal the arbitrator’s decision and fight for termination. “We are expelling kids for taking aspirin or No-Doz. Now we are talking about someone taking cocaine, and that’s OK,” Paul said.

CNN story:

Further talks between Israeli and Palestinian security officials were suspended Thursday after a terror attack in the heart of Jerusalem killed at least two Israelis and wounded more than 50, five critically.

What’s the possible point of Israel doing anything to make peace? Assuming they satisfy most of their enemies, there would still be armed groups left whose success condition is nothing less than the total destruction of Israel and the annihilation of the Jews. Every time peace ‘talks’ begin in earnest, someone will see to it that they are derailed. And should the talkers determine not to be derailed, they’ll find themselves still in a state of war at the end of their peace talks.

And does anyone really believe that the U.S.’ war on terrorism will be any different? Unless radical-Islamist philosophy undergoes a serious shift, we’re probably facing a necessarily genocidal war.