Events of the Year

• Au Revoir Constitution: Predicted by the Economist cover of the year:
  
  
  (source: The Economist)
  


• Texas 2, Old Europe 0: McLaughlin Group panelist Pat Buchanan's candidates for the year's biggest losers:

  Chirac and Schroeder of the European Union. The constitution goes down; riots in Paris. Schroeder is out. Chirac's at about 20 percent. Lesson: Don't mess with Texas.

• Pat's an optimist: While Dems crow about Bush's popularity, Bush haters do worse. According to AFP, "a mere one percent of French voters wished to see [Chirac] seek a third mandate." (via Gateway Pundit)



• Familien-VerbrechencSyndikat Schröder:

  Last September, during his final weeks in office, Herr Schröder signed an agreement with Russia to build a pipeline on the Baltic seabed. The pipeline, which is to be finished by 2010, will provide Germany with gas directly from Russia, bypassing transit through the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Immediately after his resignation as Chancellor, Schröder was given a lucrative position as an advisor of the Russian state-owned gas company Gazprom. The gas deal is generally perceived as being a private pension scheme which Schröder – a Socialist – has provided for himself.

  According to Ray at Medienkritik,

  the German media has absolutely no interest in investigating the ex-Chancellor's obvious (and massive) conflict-of-interest in taking the Gazprom post just weeks after leaving office. Why would they? They know that, ideologically, Gerd-baby is one of theirs...a member of the German leftist-elite.
  
  This much is clear: If George W. Bush or Tony Blair ever pulled a similar stunt and took a job at Halliburton just weeks after leaving office, they'd be in hot water with the German media for years and the talk of scandal would have no end.

• Citroens roasting on an open fire: According to AFP, French arsonists destroyed over 10,000 cars and 200 businesses in 2005. To celebrate 2006, 425 cars were torched on New Years Eve and day (177 in Paris alone). This was called "typical" and "unremarkable":

  "In the context of the period we had between Oct 27 and Nov 21, we could have feared that urban violence would start up again," National police chief Michel Gaudin said at a press conference on Sunday. "It was nothing."

• Stockholm, France:

  The Arabic-language TV network Al-Arabiya aired video Wednesday of a French engineer held captive in Iraq and said his captors threatened to kill him unless France ends its "illegitimate presence" in the country.
  
  The hostage, seated and flanked by two armed men, said: "My name is Bernard. I am 52 years old. I am from France, from Lyon. I work in the humanitarian field as an engineer for water projects for two years now. . .
  
  The French Foreign Ministry said Planche was working for AACCESS, a non-governmental organization. France has no troops in Iraq, and it opposed the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

  Says Best of the Web's James Taranto: "Well, if the French can't figure out a way to surrender without engaging in the first place, no one can!"



• Stockholm, Deutschland:
  
  November 29, 2005:

  A prominent German archaeologist and aid worker who had lived and worked in Iraq for years has been kidnapped [on November 25th], the German government confirmed today as images of her surrounded by masked, armed men were broadcast on international television. The kidnappers threatened to kill the archaeologist, Susanne Osthoff, unless Berlin stopped cooperating with the Iraqi government, according to a videotape delivered to the German state broadcaster ARD. A still image from the tape showed two blindfolded people flanked by three men, their faces concealed by kaffiyehs. One of the men held a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.
  
  
  (source: Davids Medienkritik)
  

  Released after possible German government appeasement, she spoke to Al Jazeera on December 26, 2005:

  My kidnappers were not criminals
  
  A former German hostage who spent 24 days in the hands of unknown captors in Iraq has said that her kidnappers were not criminals and had demanded humanitarian aid for Sunni Arab regions.
  
  Speaking to the Al-Jazeera satellite channel, Susanne Osthoff said her captors told her not to be afraid as her kidnapping was "politically motivated".
  
  "Do not be afraid. We do not harm women or children and you are a Muslim," she quoted them as saying. "I was so happy to know that I had not fallen into the hands of criminals." . . .
  
  She described her captors as "poor people" and said that she "cannot blame them for kidnapping her, as they cannot enter [Baghdad's heavily fortified] Green Zone to kidnap Americans."

• Stockholm, England:

  A young British aid worker held hostage for two days with her parents by Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip plans to continue her work there, she said in a statement.
  
  Kate Burton, 24, who was freed with her visiting parents late on Friday night, "remains committed and passionate about working alongside the Palestinians", said the statement issued via the Foreign Office in London. . .
  
  They had been abducted at gunpoint close to the Rafah border crossing into Egypt from the southern Gaza Strip on Wednesday, with a previously unknown group calling itself the Mujahadeen Bayt Al-Maqdes (Jerusalem) Brigades later claiming responsibility.
  
  "We are in good health and have been treated extremely well through the ordeal," the statement from Burton and her parents said Saturday. . .
  
  It added: "Kate Burton plans to stay in the region and continue working with the Palestinian people," saying she wanted to help "alleviate the difficult conditions being suffered by the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip."

• Visit Iraq; See Vietnam:

  And in the shadow of the bleak and often horrific news emerging from Iraq nearly every day, . . . there may still be a slight opening, as narrow as the eye of a needle, for the United States to slip through and leave Iraq in the near future in a way that will not be remembered as a national embarrassment.

  NY Times reporter James Glanz, in the November 27th Week in Review section.



• Don't Visit Iraq; See Vietnam:

  [The] idea that we're going to win the war in Iraq is an idea which is just plain wrong.

  Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean interviewed by WOAI Radio in San Antonio, December 6th.



• Don't leave home; See nothing: John Hawkins at Right Wing News collects the 10 ugliest quotes from the inmates at Democratic Underground, including this from Lerkfish:

  you see the dots, you're just not connecting them. If Zarqawi's actions benefits Bush, who do you think is directing him? if there even is a Zarqawi

• Bantu-stan on First Street: The Dems proved themselves unprincipled and discourteous on my hot-button issue--The Supreme Court. Hint: it's not a popularity contest.



• North Park: Tired of blame from Matt and Trey, Canada says it's our fault:

  Canadian officials, seeking to make sense of another fatal shooting in what has been a record year for gun-related deaths, said Tuesday that along with a host of social ills, part of the problem stemmed from what they said was the United States exporting its violence.
  
  Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin and Toronto Mayor David Miller warned that Canada could become like the United States after gunfire erupted Monday on a busy street filled with holiday shoppers, killing a 15-year-old girl and wounding six bystanders -- the latest victims in a record surge in gun violence in Toronto.
  
  The shooting stemmed from a dispute among a group of 10 to 15 youth, and the victim was a teenager out with a parent near a popular shopping mall, police said Tuesday.
  
  "I think it's a day that Toronto has finally lost its innocence," Det. Sgt. Savas Kyriacou said. "It was a tragic loss and tragic day."
  
  While many Canadians take pride in Canadian cities being less violent than their American counterparts, Toronto has seen 78 murders this year, including a record 52 gun-related deaths -- almost twice as many as last year.
  
  "What happened yesterday was appalling. You just don't expect it in a Canadian city," the mayor said.
  
  "It's a sign that the lack of gun laws in the U.S. is allowing guns to flood across the border that are literally being used to kill people in the streets of Toronto," Miller said.
  
  Miller said Toronto, a city of nearly three million, is still very safe compared to most American cities, but the illegal flow of weapons from the United States is causing the noticeable rise in gun violence.
  
  "The U.S. is exporting its problem of violence to the streets of Toronto," he said.

  Alternative headline:

  Toronto's Mayor: Gun Control A Failure

  (via Dust My Broom)



• Shhh--It's a secret!: If you only read the MSM (especially those soloing with the NY Times), you may not know "how great the economy has done over the past year." Look it up.



• And then there were three: As previously noted, and the subject of a cover story in the year-end Weekly Standard:

  On September 23, 2005, the 46-year-old Victor de Bruijn and his 31-year-old wife of eight years, Bianca, presented themselves to a notary public in the small Dutch border town of Roosendaal. And they brought a friend. Dressed in wedding clothes, Victor and Bianca de Bruijn were formally united with a bridally bedecked Mirjam Geven, a recently divorced 35-year-old whom they'd met several years previously through an Internet chatroom. As the notary validated a samenlevingscontract, or "cohabitation contract," the three exchanged rings, held a wedding feast, and departed for their honeymoon.
  
  When Mirjam Geven first met Victor and Bianca de Bruijn, she was married. Yet after several meetings between Mirjam, her then-husband, and the De Bruijns, Mirjam left her spouse and moved in with Victor and Bianca. The threesome bought a bigger bed, while Mirjam and her husband divorced. Although neither Mirjam nor Bianca had had a prior relationship with a woman, each had believed for years that she was bisexual. Victor, who describes himself as "100 percent heterosexual," attributes the trio's success to his wives' bisexuality, which he says has the effect of preventing jealousy.
  
  
  

  Which, many insist, has nothing to do with gay or any other marriage.



• Lord love a . . . dolphin: In Israel last week, a Jewish millionaire from London named Sharon Tendler married Cindy:

  And so on Wednesday afternoon, the thrilled bride, wearing a white dress, walked down the dock before hundreds of astounded visitors and kneeled down before her groom, who was waiting in the water.
  
  Cindy, escorted by his fellow best-men dolphins, swam over to Tendler and she hugged him, whispered sweet nothings in his ear, and kissed him in front of the cheering crowd.
  
  After the ceremony was sealed with some mackerels, Tendler was tossed into the water by her friends so that she could swim with her new husband.
  
  "I'm the happiest girl on earth," the bride said as she chocked back tears of emotion. "I made a dream come true, and I am not a pervert," she stressed.

  UPDATE (1/5)--Wedding Photo:
  
  
  (source: YNet News)
  
  As Van Helsing at Moonbattery said, "Like the word "marriage," the word "pervert" seems to be losing its meaning."



• The vote: Liberals weren't; Democrats yawned. 'nuff said.