Liberal Media Elite

Actually, this one is for Matthew:

The European commission is preparing itself for a membership bid, depending on the outcome of a snap general election expected in May. An application would be viewed very favourably in Brussels and the negotiations, which normally take many years, would be fast-forwarded to make Iceland the EU’s 29th member in record time, probably in 2011.

Olli Rehn, the European commissioner in charge of enlargement, said: “The EU prefers two countries joining at the same time rather than individually. If Iceland applies shortly and the negotiations are rapid, Croatia and Iceland could join the EU in parallel. On Iceland, I hope I will be busier. It is one of the oldest democracies in the world and its strategic and economic positions would be an asset to the EU.”

Its strategic and economic positions….interesting.

The French government seems to be worried that there is a new generation of radical lefties emerging:

The French government fears a wave of extreme left-wing terrorism this year with the possible sabotage of key infrastructure, kidnappings of major business figures or even bomb attacks.

Secret French government reports, seen by the Observer, describe an “elevated threat” from an “international European network … with a strong presence in France” after the radicalisation of “a new generation of activists” in recent years. Senior analysts and experts linked to the government have drawn parallels with the Action Directe group, which carried out 50 or more attacks in the early 1980s. Others cite the example of the Baader-Meinhof gang.

Some, however, think that the activities of those groups are exaggerated for political reasons. Reasons voiced in the article by the father of one of the arrested:

“They are turning my son into a scapegoat for a generation who have started to think for themselves about capitalism and its wrongs and to demonstrate against the government,” said Gérard Coupat, father of the alleged ringleader of the Tarnac group [village in central France where eight members of a commune had been arrested for sabotaging high-speed TGV railway lines and "associating with wrongdoers with terrorist aims." - Ed.].

“The government is keeping my son in prison because a man of the left with the courage to demonstrate is the last thing they want now, with the economic situation getting worse and worse. Nothing like this has happened in France since the war. It is very serious.”

Author and researcher Christophe Bourseiller told the Observer the threat was being exaggerated. “Yes, there is a certain renewed level of agitation, but there is a huge difference between deliberately slowing down a few trains without injuring anyone and something like the Madrid bomb blasts,” he said. “The Ministry of the Interior has made it look like the Tarnac arrests halted a serious campaign of violence with a huge, huge media operation.”

The United States has tried the neoconservative’s wacky foreign policy ideas in the Bush administration for eight years. Polls show that it’s the main reason Bush is unpopular.

Despite this, neocons like Fox News  cheerleader William Kristol, attempt to find ways to expand the neocon foreign policy. Neocons also need an “in” in the next four years, a new Dick Cheney.

But with the Iraq war and democracy building at gunpoint turning out to be unpopular with the democracy that  allowed it to happen, neocons need new blood to sell their worldview of invading other countries. Who will the neocons point to as their star on the horizon?

“Sources in the McCain camp, the Republican Party and Washington think tanks say Mrs Palin was identified as a potential future leader of the neoconservative cause in June 2007. That was when the annual summer cruise organized by the right-of-centre Weekly Standard magazine docked in Juneau, the Alaskan state capital, and the pundits on board took tea with Governor Palin.

Her case as John McCain’s running mate was later advanced vociferously by William Kristol, the magazine’s editor, who is widely seen as one of the founding fathers of American neoconservative thought - including the robust approach to foreign policy which spurred American intervention in Iraq.” Sept 13, 2008 Telegraph UK

Is this how they came up with Palin as McCain’s third choice for VP? A spot of tea with William Kristol and ‘poof’ you’re a contender for the number two job in the country.  It appears that Kristol and Charlie Gibson from ABC have interviewed Palin more than McCain did before he selected her.

It is telling that after becoming pals with Kristol that she still looked like a caribou in the headlights when Gibson asked her about the Bush doctrine. Or maybe she was stiffling the answer that Kristol told her: the Bush doctrine didn’t go far enough.

DO WE NEED FOUR MORE YEARS OF THIS?

I think about the global significance of the upcoming presidential election a lot. For personal reasons, obviously, but also because I believe that if we botch it this time, we gamble away the remains of our reputation with the rest of the word by just not giving a damn what everybody else thinks, and will loose what’s left of that oh-so-cherished claim that we are the beacon of democracy and progress while we are at it.

This is not the most popular thing to point out and Obama, just like Kerry four years ago, got enough flak for being “too European” and “too cosmopolitan” already anyway. So why bother, I sometimes think to myself, when I am really tired of this childish nonsense?

Jonathan Freedland from The Guardian has some hints:

But what of the rest of the world? This is the reaction I fear most. For Obama has stirred an excitement around the globe unmatched by any American politician in living memory. Polling in Germany, France, Britain and Russia shows that Obama would win by whopping majorities, with the pattern repeated in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. If November 4 were a global ballot, Obama would win it handsomely. If the free world could choose its leader, it would be Barack Obama.

[...]

If Americans choose McCain, they will be turning their back on the rest of the world, choosing to show us four more years of the Bush-Cheney finger. And I predict a deeply unpleasant shift.

[...]

For America to make a decision as grave as this one - while the planet boils and with the US fighting two wars - on the trivial basis that a hockey mom is likable and seems down to earth, would be to convey a lack of seriousness, a fleeing from reality, that does indeed suggest a nation in, to quote Weisberg, “historical decline”. Let’s not forget, McCain’s campaign manager boasts that this election is “not about the issues.”

Of course I know that even to mention Obama’s support around the world is to hurt him. Incredibly, that large Berlin crowd damaged Obama at home, branding him the “candidate of Europe” and making him seem less of a patriotic American. But what does that say about today’s America, that the world’s esteem is now unwanted? If Americans reject Obama, they will be sending the clearest possible message to the rest of us - and, make no mistake, we shall hear it.

This new RNC video is comparing Barack Obama to David Hasselhoff because of the senators huge success last week in Berlin, where Obama gave a speech in front of 200,000 happy Europeans and Americans. And it has all the good stuff: Gotcha questions, Eurotrash innuendos and Marxists!

That’s some primo smearing of one of our biggest trading partners and a coalition partner in our war effort in Afghanistan.

That aside, I really have a problem with the continuity of this strategy. First Hitler, THEN Hasselhoff? What’s next!?

From my very own home state of Saarland/Germany: Gimme Hope Obama by Sly’n Boyle.

Ei jo!

(Hat tip: my dear friend Melanie)

I am getting more worried about this man by the day. And not just because he apparently calls his wife names and has that slightly disturbing anger problem.

Fareed Zakaria on the speech McCain gave on Foreign Policy last week:

On March 26, McCain gave a speech on foreign policy in Los Angeles that was billed as his most comprehensive statement on the subject. It contained within it the most radical idea put forward by a major candidate for the presidency in 25 years. Yet almost no one noticed.

In his speech McCain proposed that the United States expel Russia from the G8, the group of advanced industrial countries. Moscow was included in this body in the 1990s to recognize and reward it for peacefully ending the cold war on Western terms, dismantling the Soviet empire and withdrawing from large chunks of the old Russian Empire as well. McCain also proposed that the United States should expand the G8 by taking in India and Brazil—but pointedly excluded China from the councils of power.

Holy buckets.

I just hope he doesn’t kick the wrong country out accidentally:

Unfortunately, this does not involve The Tragically Hip releasing another album. More to the point, it’s a potential scandal involving Stephen Harper. (For those of you without Maple Leaf DNA, Stephen Harper is the current conservative Prime Minister of Canada). Here’s all the dirt.

Cliff Notes Version: Allegedly, the Conservative caucus met with independent, although recently wayward from the conservative party MP Chuck Cadman, now deceased, while on his death bed, offering him a $1M (presumably Canadian) life insurance policy for a vote in favor of their pet bill of the day. The Liberals are calling on the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police-aka The Mounties) to conduct an investigation. See the link above for the full story.

I just like any political scandal that involves Mounties.

I’ll blog more when I have time but for now let me just mention that it is extremely interesting to be in Southeast Florida on the day that Fidel Castro announces his retirement. Extremely.

You know it’s bad when European news magazines give their readers detailed information on how to make the most of their Christmas shopping spree in New York:

UPDATE:
I have been scolded for not translating the above post for our readers…The article talks about how New York is a paradise for shoppers from Europe these days because the Euro is climbing steadily against the Dollar, making consumer goods much cheaper than in Europe. Right now you save about a third of the price for a product if you have Euros in your wallet. And being good service providers, the magazine also features a nice little overview of potential customs issues and individual duties and taxes.
As an example: Let’s say you buy an iPod touch (the big one with 16 Gig) in the US for $399, that’s €269. You add €36 in taxes and end up with €305 for a device that costs €399 in Europe. This means that in the end you save €94 or $139.

Now, don’t think that the high gas/kerosene prices will keep the merry shoppers away: many airlines, like for example the German Lufthansa, protected themselves by what is called “hedging“. This means they bought the option to exchange Dollars for Euros at a set price way back when $ and € were almost worth the same. According to Spiegel Online, Lufthansa just announced that they have a 50 coverage rate, which means that they can trade in every other earned Dollar at rate that is independent from today’s high exchange rate. Nifty.

A really cute, and, at least on the German side, mostly accurate synopsis.

Ahem. Except for the punctuality one.

The amount of money Saddam Hussein supposedly requested in order for him to step down and go into exile before the war even started: $1 billion.

Total cost of war in Iraq to date: $455 billion.

Being able to say “screw you” to your allies and to force other countries into compliance by blackmailing them while indulging in absolute self-delusion: Priceless.

I took this picture on September 2, 2007. It’s a store front on Via Cavour in Rome which led me directly to the centre of the old empire, the Forum Romanum.

Hey, it was 7am on a Sunday. In Rome. There was meaning in everything.

(PHIL is visiting the AUSTRALIAN HOUSE OF PARLIAMENT with his nine-year-old Aussie nephew CALEB. They enter the GREAT HALL. It is an impressive sight. The two of them pause for a few moments to take it in.)

CALEB: Oy! I wish I had a basketball right now!
PHIL: (nodding sagely) Spoken like a true American, Caleb.

—

There’s a famous quote by the late Dr. Kinsey in which he wonders what America would have been like if it had been settled by criminals and hedonists, rather than religious fanatics, the implication being that a much more liberated society would have formed. He needed look no further than Australia, to see his thesis proved both right and wrong. They’re a lot like Americans, only without that wonky puritanical streak.

—

Visited the Aussie House of Parliament, and got separated from the others no less than twice, because I had to spend just a little more time with their copy of the Magna Carta — dating from 1299, when Edward I signed and distributed several copies, only four of which are still in existence.

Its easy to romanticize the document, regarding it as a triumph of the people over their monarch, when in reality it had a lot more to do with one small gang of thugs stealing power from the king for themselves. But still, it articulated a set of ideas and started a dialogue that was later picked up by figures like Richard Overton and Oliver Cromwell, Adam Smith and John Locke, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, and that’s still going on today. It’s hard to stand in the presence of that and not be sort of startled by it.

And, y’know, I never thought the day would come when I was waxing nostalgic for the right of Habeas Corpus. So there’s that.

—

Travelling with my father means listening to lots of arguments championing the cause of socialism, and that means necessary recourse to copious amounts of alcohol. This has led me to three observations:

1) Hard as it may be to believe that an advertising campaign has lied to me, Foster’s is something of a joke here.

2) Observed several signs indicating “WARNING: THE SERVING OF ALCOHOL TO SOMEONE WHO IS INTOXICATED IS A FEDERAL OFFENSE.” Where the hell is the fun in that? This is one of those laws that I assume isn’t really enforced. I can’t imagine what watering hole *could* enforce it and still stay in business.

3) Guinness is me brand, and it’s so hard to find here it’s ridiculous. Finally hit up a bar towards the end of the trip that had it on tap, and, mmmmm, there it is, that dark, creamy liquid flowing down my throat, black as the devil and cold as hell — how could anyone have ever made this shit illegal? If heaven doesn’t have a keg, I ain’t interested.

The Consulate General of Canada Minneapolis / Consulat général du Canada à Minneapolis has a very handy list of Canadian artists performing in the Minneapolis region (by “Minneapolis region,” they mean anywhere in Minnesota, Nebraska, Iowa or the Dakotas).

Because it runs the gamut from k.d. lang to the Tragically Hip (good, good) to Nickelback and Rush (barf, ick, deport! deport! deport!), it’s best not to get ridiculously excited, no matter how severe a case of Maple Leaf Fever you have—and mine’s pretty bad. Still, it’s nice to know that our neighbors actually give a damn about their arts. It’s hard to imagine the Bush administration plugging one of my shows on an American consulate Web page. And I’m not sayin’ I don’t still think Harper’s a dick.

I understand that you and your friends have a somewhat problematic relationship with the so-called fourth branch of government, unless you have it at your feet with a gag in its mouth or properly potty trained. Heck, you and your buddies have nothing but contempt for two of the other three branches, so what’s the big deal with a little media bashing, you might think:

Wolfowitz, who has announced he will step down June 30, denied suggestions that his decision to leave was influenced by an apparent lack of support from the bank’s employees.

“I think it tells us more about the media than about the bank and I’ll leave it at that,” he told the British Broadcasting Corp. “People were reacting to a whole string of inaccurate statements and by the time we got to anything approximating accuracy the passions were around the bend.”

Maybe I am just expecting too much finesse from the Prince of Darkness’ wingman, but doesn’t this make you look like you are, I don’t know, high? Wolfie, listen, you are beating the media horse that died by your clique’s hands years ago. Aldous Huxley was right, it’s not good for you if you smoke the hashish that you give out to others.

What got you in trouble was that you as the president of the World Bank, the supposed defender of tight budgets, accountability and the fight against corruption, were caught red-handed providing an unusually and unethically high pay raise for your sweetheart. And that greedy stupidity, bred from hubris, gave the World Bank’s employees and directors from other countries the long awaited chance to rid themselves of what they thought was an intolerable staff decision by the Bush administration from the get-go.

Other countries, there you have your cue! An international conspiracy, something, something, against US interests and Famiglia values. You have to come up with the details, I know you are good at it. But “it’s all the media’s fault”, that’s just lame.

Sorry for the buzz-kill, but I expect more from one of my favorite neo-cons. At least go down fighting like you promised.

“A” for effort on the “by the time we were done making shit up” “by the time we reached anything approximating accuracy”, though.

Currently in Australia, where my sister is in training to become a midwife. Got into a discussion with her about some of the political and legal ramifications of midwifery, and asked her if she’d contribute a few thoughts. I won’t post the full response here, since I don’t want to load down a snarky humor site with such a long essay, but I’ve posted it to my other site at Libertarian Rage. Highly recommended.

The third rally in a month in Turkey. And it’s the girls who are kicking butt:

Women were the organizers and made up the majority of the participants in a recent secularist street demonstration in Istanbul. It was attended by nearly a million protesters, who chanted slogans like “Turkey is secular and it will remain secular” and “no mullahs in the presidential palace.”

Why we should care? Turkey is has been called a role model for other Arabic countries such as Iraq and Syria. Turkey is the Muslim country where the question of separation of church and state has been answered the secular way up until recently. The country is the cultural and political bridge between the Middle East and Europe.
There is probably not much the US can do at this point to support the moderate forces in Turkey. Too much of our reputation in the region has gone down the drain because that Commander guy and his Sous-Commanders screwed up big time. Even if the moderates wanted the help of the US, they couldn’t take it without loosing credibility and support in their own country.
So, where is the one Western political entity, that could make a difference here? Hiding in the bushes, as usual. The European Union has to get its act together and stop making empty promises regarding Turkey’s EU membership. For over twenty years now, the Europeans have been waving the carrot in front of Turkey’s head, feigning concern over humans rights issues in Turkey as being the main obstacle for a EU membership. That is not to say that the torture exercised by the Turkish police and military and the occasional coup, the Cyprus problem, and the treatment of the Kurds are negligible factors. They are definitely not, and the abolishment of torture and resolving other human rights issues should be the most important conditions for joining the Union.
But the main reason for Europe’s hesitation is the fear of a “Muslimization” of their to date Christian club. They’d rather deal with crazy Catholics in Poland, than reaching out to Turkey, and by doing so offending the Turkish favorable of a EU membership and pushing them back into the arms of groups much less friendly to Western values. In a 2004 survey an overwhelming 77% of the population favored a EU membership. That number went down to 30% in 2007. Speaking of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

And for today’s compelling topic…Chinese property law!

So on March 16th, the National People’s Congress finally passed a law clearly defining three existing property types, state, collective, and private. The very concept of legally protected private property is a revolutionary one, and it’s a big step in the right direction. But in a lot of respects, it’s nothing more than symbolic.

Y’see, regardless of the fancy legal language that it’s dressed up in, Chinese property is still defined in terms of usufruct — meaning, the government owns all property. What you actually “own” is a land-use right, not, y’know, property itself.

Sounds pretty kooky, right? I direct your attention to Exhibit A:

“No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

That’s the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, and it’s pretty good stuff, no? In fact, it contains the one line in the Bill of Rights that I don’t agree with:

“…nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

Er, what exactly qualifies as “just compensation” for the forceful deprivation of property? This is a concept known as eminent domain, and the practical upshot of it is that the government can come and take away the house that you worked and sweat for if they decide it would be a nice place for a parking ramp. This isn’t one of those antiquated laws just sitting around on the books that nobody pays attention to anymore, either: it happens all the goddamn time.

It’s kinda like if you’re a teenager, and you have to borrow your dad’s car all the time, and you realize that all the girls think that you’re kind of lame, so you decide to work and save up and buy your own car, but your dad still has the right to take it away from you whenever he wants, so in a sense you never have to grow up but remain a teenager for the rest of your life, and the next thing you know you’re in your forties and you’re still fucking teenage girls, because they’re the only ones naive enough to believe that a guy who actually has his own room and gets to stay up late is still pretty cool. It’s kinda like that.

There’s a reason that we regard property rights as sacred — because your property is the product of your life and liberty, and robbing you of the former robs the latter of its meaning. And concepts such as usufruct — and eminent domain — turn the very concept of private property into a joke.