Coulter continues her comedy of errors

By Calvin Palmer

Ann Coulter is devoting her energies to demonizing the healthcare reforms of President Barack Obama, but true to form her fulminations result in a comedy of errors.

Her column, as usual, is aimed at the uneducated and uniformed. Anyone with half a brain quickly realizes that Coulter suffers from verbal diarrhea and her column contains few cogent or constructive thoughts but merely serves as a testament to her own hysteria.

One of her running gags, and let’s admit it her columns are comedy material, is that the health care reforms will pay for the sex-change operations of liberals. Read into that what you will but Coulter clearly has an anti-gay agenda. She strenuously denies such a charge but her outpourings would seem to suggest otherwise.

Rather than have you, dear reader, falling off your seats with laughter at all of her preposterous psychotic assertions, I will restrict myself to the following short extract from her recent syndicated column:

Tiny little France and Germany have more competition among health insurers than the United States does right now. Amazingly, both of these socialist countries have less state regulation of health insurance than we do, and you can buy health insurance across regional lines — unlike in the U.S., where a federal law allows states to ban interstate commerce in health insurance.

U.S. health insurance companies are often imperious, unresponsive consumer hellholes because they’re a partial monopoly, protected from competition by government regulation. In some states, one big insurer will control 80 percent of the market. (Guess which party these big insurance companies favor? Big companies love big government.)

Liberals think they can improve the problem of a partial monopoly by turning it into a total monopoly.

Let’s pause for a few moments to regain our composure.

Okay.  Now you are sure you will not dissolve into laughter again?

In the bizarre world that Coulter constructs, which incidentally bears little resemblance to the one we live in, France and Germany are both described as “socialist” countries.

France’s president, Nicolas Sarkozy, was formerly the leader of the Union for a Popular Movement, the French conservative party. Germany’s Chancellor is Angela Merkel, leader of the Christian Democrat Union, Germany’s equivalent of the Republican Party. Coulter’s description is as absurd as describing the United States under George W. Bush as a “socialist” country.

 Now can you see why Palin and Coulter get along so well.  Their grasp of the real world and its political players is tenuous to say the least.

I doubt an eight-year-old would use “tiny little” to describe anything, although an exception could be made for Coulter’s brain since tautology seems to be her forté.

Moving on, I was drawn to Coulter’s description of U.S. health insurance companies being a partial monopoly.

Excuse me but there is no such thing as a “partial monopoly”.  If a monopoly is only partial it cannot, by definition, be a monopoly, can it, Coulter?

Go and stand in the corner with your back to the rest of the class. The dunce’s hat is clearly optional in your case because everyone know you are one.

“Big companies love big government” and the party of big companies is, of course, the Republican Party.

But in Coulter’s parallel universe the Republican Party speaks for the man on the street or she tries to convince those stupid enough to take her seriously that it does.

It must be to the eternal regret of Coulter’s parents that they wasted all that money sending her to Cornell University. Of course, it also does not speak highly of the quality of education she received at that institution.

Sometimes I wish I could write the rabid nonsense that Coulter spouts. I certainly welcome the money she earns. But if I stop and think about it, I would much prefer to earn a living based on truth, honesty and integrity.

Coulter will no doubt go to her grave without ever having learned the meaning of those values. What a sad indictment.

Leaders pay tribute to D-Day veterans

By Calvin Palmer

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and President Barack Obama today paid tribute to the sacrifices made by allied troops during the D-Day landings in Normandy, France, 65 years ago today.

In a ceremony at the U.S. cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, the Prime Minister said that he saluted the veterans who took part the landings and said that “as long as freedom lives their deeds would never die”.

He said he had come to Normandy to remember those who had “advanced grain of sand by grain of sand utterly determined amid the bullets and the bloodshed that freedom would not be pushed back into the sea but would rise from the beaches below to liberate a continent and to save a generation.”

President Obama said that D-Day had become an annual pilgrimage for many because of the “sheer improbability of the victory” which had taken place.

He added: “D-Day was a time and a place where the bravery and selflessness of a few was able to change the course of an entire century. In the hour of maximum danger and in the bleakest of circumstances men who thought themselves ordinary found within themselves the ability to do something extraordinary.”

President Nicolas Sarkozy of France thanked all nations which took part in the operation and added: “France will never forget.”

The speeches were heard by an audience of more than 10,000, which included 300 veterans who took part in the operation. President Sarkozy’s wife Carla Bruni, Michelle Obama, Prince Charles and the actor Tom Hanks were also present.

Prince Charles and the Prime Minister had earlier attended a memorial service at Bayeux Cathedral to commemorate the events of the June 6th 1944 when 130,000 allied troops landed in Normandy – an offensive which helped to bring about the end of the Second World War.

Both men laid wreaths inside the cathedral in remembrance of the British soldiers who died on the beaches and during the bloody battles which raged throughout Normandy for six weeks after the landings.

After the service, Prince Charles, Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup and Bob Ainsworth, the newly appointed defense secretary, attended a ceremony at the town’s Commonwealth War Graves Committee cemetery, where 4,000 British servicemen are buried.

Hundreds of Normandy veterans paraded into Bayeux cemetery to the memorials which remember the bravery and sacrifice of the troops who landed in northern France.

A carpet of 12,000 Union Flags covered part of Gold Beach in Normandy today, each one a message to the men of D-Day.

D-Day veteran Ron Leagas surveys the carpet of Union Flags on Gold Beach, Normandy, as part of the 65th anniversary. Picture courtesy of The Daily Telegraph.

Sent out to households across Britain by the Royal British Legion, the paper flags were returned with expressions of gratitude written on them, and donations totaling £1.8 million ($2.8 million). Children from three schools spent Friday planting them in the sand near the village of Asnelles, 180 square yards of red, white and blue.

“In remembrance of the families who lost loved ones on this beach,” read one. “Thank-you for the freedom we so often take for granted,” was another.

“It makes you happy,” said Ron Leagas, who 65 years ago landed on this bloody stretch of sand, “that people take the trouble.”

His ordeal began a few hours later in the early afternoon of June 6, 1944, when he landed with a Bren Gun Carrier detachment of the Queen’s Royal (West Surrey) Regiment. He was 18, having lied his way into the Army in 1941 at the age of 16.

The beach was still under fire as his battalion disembarked and his reaction to the scene that greeted him was “fright, plain and simple”.

His Bren carrier was third in a column heading inland when the lead vehicle was hit by an 88mm anti-tank shell.

“It simply disappeared,” he remembered. “There were heads – bits of men – covering the road.”

It was his first time in action and he described the carnage as “numbing”.

Leagas has visited Normandy four times.

“It is a right, and a duty, to come,” he said. “I can’t say how it feels. Emotion, emotion is only thing I can say.”

He remembers his friend, who fired the Bren gun. He was 17, having lied about his age, and had killed seven or eight Germans with a burst of fire.

“We were resting and suddenly he lost it and dived under a tank. It was 35 tons and sinking slowly in the soft ground and he was face up about to be crushed. We dragged him out by tying a rope to his foot. He was taken away and I never saw him again.”

Canada’s D-Day veterans were honored at ceremony at Queen’s Park in Toronto, attended by Premier Dalton McGuinty.

The Battle of Normandy is one of Canada’s most significant military engagements. On D-Day 340 Canadians died and 574 others were wounded.

[Based on reports by The Daily Telegraph and The Canadian Press.]

Oscar-winning composer Maurice Jarre dies at 84

By Calvin Palmer

Oscar-winning composer Maurice Jarre died yesterday in Los Angeles at the age of 84 after suffering from cancer.

During his career, French-born Jarre had written more than 150 film scores and worked with famous directors such as Alfred Hitchcock, David Lean, John Huston and Luchino Visconti.

He won his first Oscar for Lawrence of Arabia in 1962 and three years later was awarded a second statuette for Doctor Zhivago, famous for the tearful balalaika of Lara’s Theme. Both films were directed by David Lean.

A third Oscar came in 1984 for best original music score for A Passage to India, another collaboration with Lean.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy paid tribute to a “great composer,” praising his “majestic and full-bodied works, popular and classical music”.

“By working with some of the greatest filmmakers in the world, he showed that music can be just as important as pictures to make a beautiful and successful film,” said Sarkozy.

Jarre also wrote the score for Witness directed by Peter Weir in 1985 and joined Weir again in 1989 to compose the music to Dead Poets Society.

Other music scores include Ghost in 1990 and I Dreamed of Africa in 2000.

Jarre ‘s film scores also won Golden Globes and BAFTA British film awards. He also wrote music for theatre and ballet.

Born in Lyon in 1924, Jarre was studying engineering when he switched to music. He recounted being inspired by the works of conductor Leopold Stokowski.

He studied percussion and joined French composer Pierre Boulez who was working for a Paris theatre.

In 1952 Jarre wrote his first score, for the short Hotel des Invalides, at the request of director Georges Franju.

“In filmmaking, the composer is always the last link,” Jarre said in a newspaper interview few years ago.

“Often you find yourself working with a producer who can’t wait to release his film. So you have to work quickly. For Lawrence of Arabia, I was given six weeks to write two hours of music.”

Jarre moved to the United States in the mid-1960s and briefly settled in Switzerland before returning to Los Angeles.

During his last public appearance in Europe, he was awarded a Golden Bear at the Berlin film festival in recognition of his life’s work.

His son Jean-Michel Jarre rose to prominence as a composer in his own right with the worldwide electronic music sensation Oxygene in 1976. He also has a daughter Stephanie and second son Kevin.

Jarre is due to be cremated on Thursday at a ceremony in Los Angeles.

[Based on a report by AFP news agency.]

Hungary warns of new “Iron Curtain” dividing Europe

By Calvin Palmer

A new “Iron Curtain” could descend on Europe, not one imposed by Soviet might but a divide brought about by financial and economic plight.

This stark warning was delivered today by Hungarian prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsany before the EU summit in Brussels.

He spoke as nine Central and Eastern European countries – Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Bulgaria and Romania – held an unprecedented breakaway summit before the meeting of all 27 EU member states in Brussels.

He said: “We should not allow a new ‘Iron Curtain’ to be set up and divide Europe in two parts. This is the biggest challenge for Europe in 20 years. At the beginning of the 90s we reunified Europe. Now it is another challenge – whether we can unify Europe in terms of financing and its economy.”

Gyurcsany led the call for a €190 billion ($240 billion, £170 billion) bail-out of Eastern Europe to prevent a major crisis that would reverberate across the Continent.

The plea by the East European countries was rejected at a bad tempered meeting, which was dominated by fears that Western EU countries would rather prop up their own large industries and jobs at the expense of the East.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel dismissed the call for an Eastern Europe aid fund, saying: “I see a very different situation among eastern countries, I do not advise going into the debate with massive figures.”

Mirek Topolanek, the Czech Prime Minister and current holder of the EU’s rotating presidency, warned against taking “beggar thy neighbour” protectionist measures as recession bites.

“This is the greatest crisis in the history of European integration,” he said. “We do not want any new dividing lines. We do not want a Europe divided along a North-South or an East-West line; pursuing a beggar-thy-neighbour policy is unacceptable.”

French President Nicolas Sarkozy insisted that accusations of French protectionism were “totally nonsensical things that do not reflect reality”.

He claimed that the Czechs, and other countries, should be grateful for jobs in factories owned by French automobile makers.

“If we don’t save the parent company then the subsidiaries will come down as well,” he said. “You might well be surprised that we did not ask these countries whose friends we are, where these plants are in, not to help us in bailing out our automotive industry.”

The French president insisted that the United States, rather than Europe, was the source of protectionist threats.

He said the situation in Europe meant no-one could accuse any country of being protectionist when the Americans had put up $30 billion (£21 billion) to support their automotive industry. “There, there is a risk of protectionism,” he said.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown renewed his call for a huge injection of funds into the International Monetary Fund, which has already doled out large sums to Hungary and Latvia and is soon to receive a begging letter from Romania. 

Brown refused, however, to say where the fresh money for the IMF would come from.

As he prepared to fly off for talks with President Obama tomorrow, Brown left behind an EU increasingly split between its old and new economies and lacking the unity that he hoped to present in Washington and at the G20 summit in London next month.

Donald Tusk, the Polish prime minister, who hosted the Brussels meeting, said: “All participants agree that in the time of crisis, maintaining solidarity in Europe is of paramount importance. We would like Europe to do everything to avoid the temptation of protectionism and egoism.”

I echo those noble sentiments but why is it that I feel when push comes to shove, it will be every country for itself and recriminations will fly thick and fast?

[Based on reports by The Daily Telegraph and The Times.]

Unrest on Guadeloupe claims its first victim

By Calvin Palmer

A union official was shot dead overnight in Guadeloupe when he drove up to  a roadblock in the island’s main city Pointe-a-Pitre.

Jacques Bino’s death is the first in a month-long strike and growing unrest over the rising cost of living in the Caribbean island.

After holding an emergency meeting on the deteriorating situation on the island, Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie announced that four squadrons of police reinforcements, 280 men, would fly to the island immediately.

“Acts of pillaging, atrocities and violence against other people … will not be tolerated,” she said.

A few days ago, 150 riot police were sent to the island.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy is due to meet with elected officials from Guadeloupe tomorrow to “address the anxiety, worries and also a certain form of despair from our compatriots.”

Bino’s car was hit three times by 12-gauge shotgun rounds. Two rounds hit the rear of the vehicle and the third was fired through a side passenger window and fatally wounded the activist in the chest.

“These were not stray rounds,” prosecutor Jean-Michel Pretre said, adding that he was looking into the possibility that, given their age, Bino and a passenger had been mistaken for plain-clothes police officers. Bino was in his 50s.

Rioters fired at police and emergency workers, preventing them from reaching the wounded Bino for several hours.  By the time they reached him he was dead.

Six members of the security forces were slightly injured during clashes with armed youths, police said.

The protests in Guadeloupe and neighboring Martinique are hurting scores of businesses, including restaurants, hotels and car rental agencies during the islands’ peak winter tourist season, Martinique Tourism Authority chairwoman Madeleine de Grandmaison said today.

“Tourism is fragile,” she said. “People are not only canceling this week, but also for all the months of February, March and April. We have a huge deficit of tourists ahead of us.”

At least 10,000 tourists have canceled vacations in Martinique and Guadeloupe, according to the National Travel Agencies organization.
Guadeloupe’s strike has persisted for almost a month. Martinique’s is in its third week.

A Paris-based association of tour operators that works with France’s government tourism department has designated Guadeloupe a “red zone,” meaning it is not endorsing it as a destination. The association began redirecting tourists to Martinique — until the strike arrived there.

Guadeloupe’s Tourism Committee said today the main airport reopened after closing briefly because of a lack of workers. But American Airlines canceled a night flight. Much of the violence on the island has occurred after dark.

[Based on results by the AFP news agency and the Associated Press.]

Time magazine names Obama “Person of the Year” 2008

By Calvin Palmer

Time magazine has named President-Elect Barack Obama as “Person of the Year” for 2008.
 
Who else could it have been?  Well, the runner-up was Henry Paulson, the U.S. Treasury Secretary, followed by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and Zhang Yimou, the director of the opening and closing ceremonies at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.
 
In an interview with Time’s top three editors, Obama said that he didn’t have a crystal ball to predict the length and depth of the recession but forecast a tough 12 months ahead.
 
“I think we should anticipate that 2009 is going to be a tough year,” Obama said.  “And if we make some good, choices, I’m confident that we can limit some of the damage in 2009 and that in 2010 we can start seeing an upward trajectory on the economy.”
 
On foreign policy, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran will be the main areas of focus, along with the trans-Atlantic alliance, Russia, and relations with China and the Pacific Rim but he would like to shift some of the emphasis to Latin America.
 
Obama said: “We have neglected our neighbors in our own hemisphere and there is an enormous potential for us to work with other countries – Brazil, for example, which is in some ways ahead of us on energy strategies.  That, I think, would be very important.”
 
I know some Stoke City fans will be gutted that manager Tony Pulis failed to make the shortlist after guiding his team to promotion to the Premier League.  Better luck next year, Tony.
 
Time magazine’s editor: “Tony who?”

Financial crisis tests unity of EU

By Calvin Palmer

The horse-trading and political posturing that will no doubt take place before the U.S. House of Representatives votes again on the $700 billion rescue package for the financial sector will hardly be as entertaining as the bickering going on between member states of the European Union regarding a similar rescue package.
 
The French proposed a 300 billion euro ($415 billion) bailout fund to rescue crippled banks across Europe ahead of a summit on Saturday, called at the behest of French President Nicolas Sarkozy in his capacity as the current European Union President.
 
The leaders of Britain, Germany and Italy will meet in Paris, along with European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet and Euro-Group Chairman Jean-Claude Juncker, to discuss the global financial crisis.
 
The French proposal was greeted with skepticism by the British but brought an angry response from Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel.
 
“Germany could not and would not issue a blank check for all banks, regardless of whether they behave in a responsible manner or not,” she said.
 
France backed down denying, at first, it had ever proposed such a scheme and then when it conceded it had done so denied that it would cost 300 billion euros.  The French claimed the figure came from the Dutch Government.  Officials in The Hague said they had no idea what the French were talking about.
 
Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende opposes an EU-wide rescue fund but said national governments could set aside money to help any troubled banks in their own countries.
 
“The Dutch plan is for every member to put aside money to make a capital injection for their own banks if necessary,” he said.  “The idea is that it will be some three percent of gross domestic product.”
 
This week, the governments of Britain, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg have come to the rescue by either pumping in state money to take full or partial control of ailing banks such as Bradford & Bingley and Fortis.
 
European officials insist Europe does not need a rescue plan similar to the American one and was not prepared for one institutionally.
 
“We do not have a federal budget, so the idea that we could do the same as what is done on the other side of the Atlantic doesn’t fit with the political structure of Europe,” said the ECB president Jean-Claude Trichet.
 
It seems that when the going gets tough, the French get everyone else going.  Could the global financial crisis spell the end of the euro and the euro-zone, especially when national interests and institutions are at risk?
 
Quite what emerges from Saturday’s summit remains to be seen.  Ireland’s unilateral action to raise bank deposit guarantees, which has angered some other EU member states, is likely to be discussed.
 
Italian Economy Minister Giulio Tremonti has global accounting rules at the top of his list.  A requirement that companies regularly restate the value of assets on their balance sheet to reflect changed market prices has been widely blamed for exacerbating the financial crisis.
 
Discussion of mandatory regulation of credit ratings agencies after they were accused of having conflicts of interest and failing to spot risks in sub-prime mortgage-based securities is also likely.
 
Of course, the agenda could be dominated by the failure of the U.S. House of Representatives to pass the ‘sweetened’ $700 billion bailout package.

The groundswell of public opinion in the United States appears to be firmly opposed to the bailout of Wall Street and all members of the House are up for re-election.  In tomorrow’s expected vote, it could be that representatives put their political future ahead of the nation’s economy.  Stranger things have happened and, don’t forget, they are politicians.

[Based on reports by The Times and The Guardian.]

LHC out of action until spring 2009

By Calvin Palmer

The car goes into the shop for supposedly some minor repair and the mechanic tells you it will be ready in three hours.  They always say they will give you a call when it is ready but never do and you end up ringing them.
 
Then comes the awful news.  “We’ve hit a snag,” says the voice at the other end of the line.  A complicated explanation involving valve seats, piston rings, timing chains or some such mechanical component ensues.  It is then followed by, “It’s going to take a couple of days” and the caveat, “if we can get the parts straight away.”
 
A similar kind of scenario has emerged from CERN concerning the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) near Geneva, Switzerland.

Earlier last week, the $9 billion atom smasher suffered a problem with a power transformer that controlled the refrigeration.

The collider ring has to be cooled to a temperature of minus 271.3 Celsius so the protons can travel round the accelerator at more than 99.99 per cent of the speed of light.

That was fixed.  On Friday, as the machine was started up again, one of the magnets overheated sending out a cloud of helium and the project was once again delayed.

The CERN spokesman, James Gillies, the equivalent of the mechanic in the repair shop, initially said that the repair would take two weeks.  The following day, when the full extent of the damage had been assessed, Gillies stated that the LHC was going to be out of action for two months.

According to CERN, the initial investigations suggest a faulty electrical connection, isn’t it always the electrics, between two of the accelerator’s magnets.  But, and here we go, the engineers need time to diagnose the problem fully and they say it cannot be done before their laboratory is closed down for winter maintenance.  It is expected that the collider will now be reactivated again in the spring.

That’s all very well for the engineers to say but where does that leave all the particle physics guys.  It’s not like you can rent another LHC from Hertz or Enterprise to keep the project on the road, so to speak.

Robert Aymar, the director general of CERN, described the news as a “psychological blow” to the project.

He said, “Nevertheless, the success of the LHC’s first operation with beam is testimony to years of painstaking preparation and the skill of the teams involved in building and running CERN’s accelerator complex.

“I have no doubt that we will overcome this setback with the same degree of rigor and application.”

With a quote like, you can tell instantly he is the director general.  It’s the kind of well done chaps if we all pull together we can soon be back up and running pep-talk they come out with.  The only problem is, like any good director general, his contribution to the “pulling” will be proton size.

So the world must wait for the LHC to recreate the conditions just seconds after the Big Bang and answer some of the imponderables of particle physics.

At least the theoretical Higgs boson, commonly referred to as the “God particle” can enjoy a few more months of remaining theoretical, maybe even longer.

Worse than that the inauguration ceremony scheduled for October 21, which French President Nicolas Sarkozy was due to attend, will now be postponed.  It gives him a little longer to read up on the subject so that he can ask a meaningful question or two, as if.

[Based on reports in The Daily Telegraph and AFP news agency.]

Comic says sorry for 9/11 comments

By Calvin Palmer

Freedom fries look likely to remain on the menu in the United States for some time to come following recent remarks by a French comedian about the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
 
Jean-Marie Bigard, who is a member of French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s circle of show business friends, said on radio that it was “absolutely sure and certain” the U.S. government had stage-managed the 9/11 attacks in 2001.
 
“The two planes which crashed in a forest and on the Pentagon never existed,” Bigard said.  “There never were any planes.  It’s an absolutely enormous lie.  It was an American missile which hit the Pentagon.  That has now been proved.  It was a programmed demolition.”
 
When the presenter of the Europe 1 radio show asked Bigard where he found his information, the comedian replied: “On the Internet.”
 
Clearly pressure has been brought to bear on Bigard and probably from Americophile President Sarkozy who, after the anti-American stance of his predecessor, Jacques Chirac, is keen to court America’s friendship. 
 
On the eve of the seventh anniversary of the terrorist atrocity that claimed 2,896 lives, Bigard issued an apology through AFP, the French press agency.  He said that he wanted to “apologize to everyone.”
 
“I will never speak again about the events of 11 September,” he said.  “I will never express any more doubts.”
 
However, Bigard stopped short of saying that he accepted that his comments were untrue.
 
His initial comments echoed those of French actress Marion Cotillard.  In March, a month after winning an Oscar for her performance in La Vie En Rose, a French magzine Web site published comments from a chat show, broadcast a year earlier, in which Cotillard said that the U.S. regularly lied about major events and included the terrorist attacks on New York.  She said: “I think we’re lied to about a number of things.”
 
Referring to the Twin Towers, she said: “We see other towers of the same kind being hit by planes.  Are they burned?  There was a tower in Spain that burnt for 24 hours.  It never collapsed.  None of these towers collapsed.  And in New York, within a few minutes, the whole thing collapsed.”
 
Cotillard advanced the theory that it was cheap way of demolishing the towers, which had become outdated.  She said that it would be “a lot more expensive” to refurbish them, “which is why they were destroyed.”
 
She, like Bigard, was forced to climb down.  Her lawyer said that she “never intended to contest or question the attacks of September 11, 2001,” and that her remarks were taken out of context.  That sounds like a lawyer to me.  Why didn’t he just come out and say that she is a fruitloop.  Cotillard also doesn’t believe that the Americans landed a man on the Moon in 1969.
 
The French belief in a conspiracy, surrounding the 9/11 attacks, is based on a French bestseller, The Big Lie, written in 2002 by Thierry Meyssan. 
 
A Canadian film, Loose Change, the work of three American film makers, also explores the conspiracy theory, presenting highly selective evidence.  The third revised version has received 100,000 viewings in recent weeks on the French Internet video site Dailymotion and is believed to have been the basis of the remarks by Bigard.
 
The sad part to it all is that countless people do in fact believe this conspiracy theory and they are not all French.  As much-hated as the Bush administration might be, do they honestly think the American government would perpetrate an atrocity of this scale and nature?  Apparently they do and they are probably similar to those people who reckoned the world would end today when the Large Hadron Collider was powered up for the first time.

[Based on reports in The Independent, The Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail.]