In today's (Sunday) city comment the Torygraph shows that its journalists really don't understand the Telecom sector at all. Mind you I don't see this as limited to the Torygraph - the fatc that the entire City of London from pissed hacks to would-be financial wizards talked about TMT as a stock category (TMT = Technology, Media, Telecoms) should be enough of a hint.
The Torygraph seems to think that BT's decision not to chose Marconi to be an equipment provider for its 21CN network is something that can be generalized to BT thinks "all UK telecom manufacturers are crap" and thence to "the entire world thinks all UK telecom manufacturers are crap". As someone who works in that industry I'll let you into a little secret - Marconi is crap. It may have a couple of decent products but in the main it is a grab bag of products assembled from various (mostly expensive stock based) acquisitions that don't share much in common and aren't anythign specila in terms of their capabilities. Other UK telecom equipment providers may or may not be crap but whether or not they are has nothing to do with Marconi and vice versa. Of course the Torygraph rather lacks any clue about UK technology firms anyway - for example ARM, a UK success in anyone's book, appears to be unmentioned during the last month despite it releasing some pretty good interim results - so this should not be too surprising.
The Torygraph also seems to labour under the quaint idea that If I were building a network today I too would not buy equipment from multiple vendors but chose one or two. The reason for this is "interoperability" - or the fact that most vendor's kit only works well with other kit from the same vendor or from a large incumbent player (such as Cisco, Nortel). Awarding a network 30% to company A, 20% to company B etc. is to set yourself up for a nightmare in technical support issues. The only reason why you would let a minor player like Marconi in is if they had a product with a compelling advantage that would help counter the interoperabiltiy challenge. Since Marconi's products are nothing special it is no surprise that BT would decide that it doesn't need to maintain its links with Marconi when BT is trying to build a new network that is cheaper to operate than its current ones. Permalink
If anyone needed an example of why "Old Europe" is in economic difficulties then the various rallies, marches and speeches yesterday would demonstrate it nicely. Yesterday I criticised the Torygraph for failing to understand the basics of the telecom business but compared to moonbats and woolly head brigade members out on the streets of Europe yesterday their minor flirtation with statism is nothing. According to the may day morons profits are evil and everyone should have a job for life at a guaranteed minimum wage (and no doubt a nice pension afterwards). Apparently the idea that businesses should make any profit beyond that needed to make further investment is anathema and all bankers are blood sucking vampires because they dare to charge interest on loans they make.
The EU Referendum blog has a list of quotes from various German trades unionists which do make you wonder whether these people grasp the reason why businessmen stay in business and make me wonder why businessmen stay in Germany. This is backed up by the comments of the SPD's chairman as reported in the FT today(via EU Rota).
Mr Münterfering, who a fortnight ago said private equity investors were like "swarms of locusts" descending on Germany intent on sacking workers and making quick profits, suggested in a document leaked to the local media on Saturday that these "anti-social radicals" were preparing to destroy corporate Germany wholesale.
Of course the reason why the SPD is blaming evil foreign capitalists is that there isn't anyone else to blame and the SPD really desperately wants to win the upcoming election. Hence the SPD attempts to do the slopey shoulders trick.
With less than three weeks to go until the North-Rhine Westphalia election, Mr Münterfering's tactics do not appear to be working. Sunday newspapers reported that three-quarters of the electorate agreed with his anti-capitalist rhetoric. But cynicism about his motives for stimulating the debate meant the SPD had made no ground in the polls. The conservative-led opposition still looks like unseating the SPD in its heartland seat.
The main butt of Mr Münterfering's leaked document was KKR, estimated to have pumped €8.5bn ($11bn, £5.7bn) of capital into German companies during the past decade, making it the country's biggest private-equity investor. In particular, the document attacked the way it and Goldman Sachs made €225m from buying out and floating Wincor Nixdorf, the cash machine maker.
But people close to that deal yesterday stressed 3,300 jobs had been created and the company's listed shares had risen 50 per cent since flotation a year ago.
Or in other words its a more blatent set of lies than anything attributed to Bush or Blair and the electorate isn't so stupid that it can't see through a politician's spin.
Meanwhile on this side of the Rhine the May Day "manifestations" were confused by the whole EU constitution thing with both "oui" and "non" marches doing their thing. The proles are also upset at losing the Whitmonday bank holiday in order to pay for healthcare for the elderly, this being the government's response to the way that France embarassingly killed off large numbers of grandmothers during the "canicule" or heatwave of 2003 (I don't personally see how working on the bank holiday gives the government masses more tax money anyway but that is by the by). Needless to say the way that l'Escroc's sock puppet is trying to spin the bank holiday thing has French voters' BS detectors going off in precisely the same way that Herr Münterfering's comments do to German voters.
"The day of solidarity is a call to brotherhood among all French people. It's an act of generosity by French society for itself, for its future."
I doubt I am the only cynic to notice that Jean Pierre Sock Puppet is basically ordering the French to "voluntarily" be generous to the needy. Given that the majority of Frenchmen from l'Escroc down appear to put themselves first and last in their list of priorities being forced to be generous and show some fraternité is clearly not a popular message.
Meanwhile in other French news, various polls indicate that just possibly the "Oui" will scrape a victory on May 29 but it is going to be close. Certainly in terms of publicity the "Non" campaigners are winning. Here in the Alpes Maritimes it seems like almost every available spot has its "Non" poster attached and as noted elsewhere the "Non" camapigners are a significant presence on the internet. Today's FT also has an interesting article about what worries the French in "the provinces" when it comes to Europe and the EU:
After three weeks travelling by bus to 20 towns in north-east France, answering questions and handing out leaflets and CDs on Europe's new constitution, Mr Gaumé and his three co-workers have built up a unique view of how the French see Europe.
What he found will not make comfortable reading for President Jacques Chirac, less than a month before the country's referendum on the constitution on May 29.
"People feel European, but they do not recognise themselves in this constitution," says Mr Gaumé. "The more arguments there are, the more it just adds to their confusion."
He expects this mood of disenchantment to be confirmed by staff from two other double-decker buses returning from similar tours in the north-west and south of France.
His experiences on the bus, organised by a citizens' information group and funded by the European Commission and French government, exposed a gulf between the issues being debated by the Parisian intelligentsia and the worries of those in the provinces.
Before he left Paris, government officials briefed him on what to expect. They listed Turkey and laïcité, or the separation of church and state, as two likely questions. They could not have been more wrong. "No-one has talked about Turkey," he says. "Laïcité has hardly been mentioned."
Instead, people want to know how the treaty will affect their own lives: unemployment, social protection, and business moving abroad are the subjects he says people most frequently ask about.
Of course, as we evil Anglo-saxons have noticed, one of the ironies about French doubts on the constitution is that they think it is too capitalistic and free market whereas opponants in other countries think the constitution is going to impose a French-style socialist/statist model on Europe. The FT reports an absolute corker of a quote from Dijon:
"Full employment is not possible in the liberal system," says François Courant, an unemployed agricultural technician who plans to vote No. "You can't be in favour of the constitution when you are part of the France d'en bas [common people]."
Apparently M Courant is unaware that the "liberal" economies of the Anglo-saxon world have roughly half the unemployment rate of non-liberal France and Germany. On the other hand this comment is something that I think every Eurosceptic would agree with:
"The constitution is a blank cheque for our politicians," says Françoise William, a teacher and regional head of SOS Racisme, the anti-racism group. "We are fed up to the back teeth with the government."
Roger L Simon links to a fascinating NY Times article on cricket and why it seems to have caught on almost everywhere in the former British empire except North America - where apparently it did catch on but was supplanted by roundersbaseball. Curiously the article suggests that the reason why boils down to marketing:
Cricket lost ground in North America because of the egalitarian ethos of its societies. Rich Americans and Canadians had constant anxiety about their elite status, which prompted them to seek ways to differentiate themselves from the masses. One of those ways was cricket, which was cordoned off as an elites-only pastime, a sport only for those wealthy enough to belong to expensive cricket clubs committed to Victorian ideals of sportsmanship. In late 19th-century Canada, according to one historian, "the game became associated more and more with an older and more old-fashioned Anglo-Saxon elite."
This elite appropriation played into the hands of baseball entrepreneurs who actively worked to diminish cricket's popularity. A. G. Spalding, described in the Baseball Hall of Fame as the "organizational genius of baseball's pioneer days," was typical. "I have declared cricket is a genteel game," he mocked in "America's National Game," his 1911 best seller. "It is. Our British cricketer, having finished his day's labor at noon, may don his negligee shirt, his white trousers, his gorgeous hosiery and his canvas shoes, and sally forth to the field of sport, with his sweetheart on one arm and his cricket bat under the other, knowing that he may engage in his national pastime without soiling his linen or neglecting his lady."
Baseball, in contrast, was sold as a rugged, fast-paced, masculine game, befitting a rugged, fast-paced economic power. Americans of all classes swallowed the chauvinistic line. It was also great business for Spalding. By inventing elaborate baseball gear and paraphernalia, he created a market for his new sporting-goods company.
On the other hand outside of N America cricket was marketed to the natives as a good idea - soothing the savage breast etc. - by the British ruling classes. Hence the difference. It is interesting to see that Baseball has been a reasonably successful export by America to nations that were in its sphere of interest such as Korea, Japan and Cuba.
On a similar note one might wonder why Association Football has conquered the world while Rugby remains a minor sport and its relative American Football has generally failed to spread beyond North America. It does occur to me that N American sports do seem to need more equipment than other ones and that might explain why they don't catch on as well. American football seems to require helmets and armour, not to mention, along with rugby some fairly complicated goal posts whereas soccer just needs a ball. Any suitable pair of sticks, garage door or pile of discarded clothing works for the goal. Cricket is not much more complicated as any number of summer beaches in England demonstrate, one cricket bat is just about all the special equipment required. A proper wicket is a nice idea but I recall playing with a wicket made of driftwood and using a tennis ball instead of a cricket ball.
To go back to the article, which points out that cricket could be a great way for the natives to get their own back on the British, it does occur to me that until the recent semi-success of soccer very few N American sportsmen have had a chance to play their sport for an overseas team or to compete in a real world championship against teams from other countries. I do wonder whether the Americans haven't lost something by not having a game that they share a passion for with the rest of the world and particularly not having one that they can lose at. Could the prevalent anti-Americanism seen around the world be partly due to the way that America doesn't play or get worked up about the sports that the rest of us do? [and yes this is a broad generalization and ignores the fact that some US sports are indeed played internationally but (for example) neither Basketball nor Ice-hockey are major sports on a global scale the way that cricket and football are].
There is a magnificent (but extremely lengthy) article by David Pryce-Jones in this months "Commentary" magazine that documents French foreign policy over the last century and a half or so with respect to Zionism and the state of Israel. I recall that Stephen Pollard had a poll last year about an award for the most reliably wrong columnist in which one columnist was not really a person at all but was "French Foreign Policy". FFP didn't win but did come in second behind Yasmin Alibi-brownshirt and I have to agree with Stephen's comment about it:
Personally I am disappointed, since much as the Yazzmonster is a deserving winner, she has - yes, this is true - been known to be right (albeit rarely). As opposed to French Foreign Policy which, while not strictly eligible for the award, has nonetheless never been known to be right.
If evidence for this statement were desired then David Pryce-Jones' artcicle provides it in spades (and hearts diamonds and clubs as well).
He begins with 19th century French policy which could best be described as trying to keep up with the British (and generally failing). On the way a certain amorality and lack of principle can be determined as well as apparently a strong vein of anti-semitism. The institutional anti-semitism of the Quai d'Orsay - the French Foreign Ministry - was well demonstrated during the Dreyfus Affair, where numerous influential people in the Quai d'Orsay refused to believe that Dreyfus was innocent, and in its sheltering Haj Amin al-Husseini, the notorious mufti of Jerusalem, immediately after the second world war. At the same time (more or less) France's behaviour in the nascent UN with regards to the artition of Palestine and the establishment of the state of Israel sounds remarkably like Chirac's behaviour in the UN circa 2002/2003
Although France finally voted in favor of partition, beforehand it took whatever diplomatic measures were available to it both in the United Nations and elsewhere to avert or delay the vote. Alexandre Parodi, its delegate to the UN, would later explain that his country had been motivated by the desire to maintain good relations with the Arab world. If so, its final vote in favor of partition was a travesty, or so an anonymous official at the Quai d’Orsay pointed out to the foreign minister, writing that France was now a “banana republic,” unable to hold its own against Britain (which had abstained in the voting).
From then on France's apparent belief that it should support pretty much every Arab tyrant or terrorist that came along has apparently only been modified by fear of Nasser during the Suez crisis. In this context Chirac's toadying up to Saddam Hussein and Yasir Arafat makes perfect sense. Of course this support of Arab desires has not been in any way an altruistic endeavour: France has flogged all sorts of technology to one Arab state after another and has attempted to negotiate sweetheart oil deals for its oil companies.
However while France's desire, since the 19th century, to be a "puissance musulmane" has been, in my opinion, an abject failure, it is merely symptomatic of the underlying disease in French foreign policy.
Anglo-Saxon Envy
The real problem is that the French feel that as heirs to Napoleon, the French revolution and numerous important cultural and scientifc geniuses they should be a major power in world affairs. Unfortunately the world seems to make do just fine without French input, indeed in many cases French input just seems to make things worse - a classic case in point being the "triple intervention" of 110 years ago. This results in what looks to me like a national case of envy that has been going on for a good 200 years. The French envy "les Anglo-saxons" and jealous how first the British Empire and the United States of America have been both the leading world superpower and demosntrably richer and more successful at the same time.
To me it seems that the French leadership persists in aping the outward forms of British or American power without really understanding the philosophical underpinings of them and as a result its copies are pale imitations. Consider the 19th century empires: the French colonies in Indchina and North Africa were generally less profitable than India was for the English and while England certainly did over-reach in Eastern Africa the British conquest of South Africa was clearly as mercantilist as its previous conquest of India and influence in China and (for that matter) its enormous trade with Latin America in the late nineteenth century. France however seems to have been influence by that famous Napoleonic description that 'L'Angleterre est une nation de boutiquiers', and not looked at why a nation should seek to build empires and colonies. Interestingly though an earlier version of this comment appears to be Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations which explains it rather well:
To found a great empire for the sole purpose of raising up a people of customers, may at first sight appear a project altogether unfit for a nation of shopkeepers; but extremely fit for a nation that is governed by shopkeepers
The result is that the British colonies and empire provided comodities and markets for the increasing industrialization of the home nation whereas the French colonies were neither great sources of raw materials nor great consumers of the products of French industrial production (such as it was).
The same error applies to French attempts to run the EU and to its attempts at being a world player in opposition to the USA. Effectively the French seem to have noticed that inflence is obtained by being in charge of international institutions but they miss the fact that the influence is achieved by having the international institution actually DO something and not hold endless conferences. It also helps if the country providing the leader(s) of the international body actually comply for the most part with the motions and agreements of the international body. France, as a nation seems to be believe that it posesses a permenant right to ignore any irksome details of any treaty it has signed while not expecting such behaviour from others. Compare the US and France on any number of international bodies - take for example the IPCC and the Kyoto treaty: the US flat out said it wouldn't sign it whereas the French have signed it but seem highly unlikely to implement the required cuts except by accident.
The Gallic Cargo Cult
The way to look at the French government's behaviour I think is to see it as a sort of cargo cult. They see the benefits that other countries gain by doing certain things and implement the symptoms without really implementing the underlying cause. One of the best examples of this is near where I live - Sophia Antipolis. Sophia is supposed to be the French answer to Silicon Valley and it does superficially resemble it - and the weather may actually be better. But unlike the Valley there is none of the underlying networking to support the imposed infrastructure. Sophia has some universities, lots of office space, some nice restaurants and a number of high tech firms but it has almost no native start-ups because it has no venture capitalists living there.
The VCs don't live there because they don't wish to pay the French taxes and because, weather excepted, the south of France does not make an appealing place to start a business. Indeed once the notional start-ups have got past the various government grants and the like they can't make a business case to remain here so they either remain in a mode where they milk one government grant after another or the leave - what they don't do, on the whole, is grow the way that Silicon Valley ones do. Unless you are addressing a market where it makes sense to be based on the Riviera, very few startups will start here because the second or third person you need to hire is the guy who works the red tape. For companies that are looking for sales in a global market that person is an overhead that makes you uncompetitive with your competitors in Taiwan, the USA or even the UK or Ireland.
So if it is all cargo-cult and missing the point why is France still near the top table as a nation? Firstly France, as a country, is blessed geographicaly speaking and culturally by the enormous number of beautiful old buildings, art galleries etc. in it - tourism is a huge industry in France and it brings in the loot from foreigners in huge amounts. Secondly France benefits from people like me who live here but get our money (eventually) from the duller climes of Northern Europe (and has done for a good century - my great grand-father lived here for a while on his British Army pesnion) and thanks to how France wrote the rules for the EU it gains enormously from everyone else in the EU in the same sort of way. Thirdly France started off from a very good position a couple of centuries ago and it has managed to mostly keep track with the economic growth of its European neighbours - and while WWI did knock the stuffing out of France, it escaped relatively unscathed from WWII. WWI killed all the other European imperial powers except for the British and the French and it wounded both of them. WWII killed both those empires but the British suffered far more in the WWII and their empire was both considerably bigger and historically far more of a marke, thus its loss affected the UK far more than the loss of the French colonies affected France. Fourthly while the world has obnoxious tyrants a country willing to sell said tyrants stuff they want with the kickbacks they require will make a good deal of money simply because more ethical nations don't let their businesses make such deals.
However we have, I think, reached the point where smoke and mirrors can no longer mask the long term trends. Albeit slowly the world is, I believe, steadily moving towards a more free-market democratic mode and the French aren't equipped to compete in this world. You may expect to see France gradually move down the league tables as countries from Brazil to India start to flex the economic muscles they are gaining. Whether France will drag the rest of Europe down with it or whether the fringe nations will escape remains to be seen but - as even a French lady I was talking to on Sunday admitted - unless France can find its Margaret Thatcher it is doomed. Sarko, I regret to say, does not appear to be Margaret Thatcher so expect France's decline to last at least until 2012
Hat Tip: Powerline PS in following up a mention of Lawrence of Arabia in Pryce-Jones' article I came across this excellent online text of his "Seven Pillars of Wisdom" - the Allenby encounter described by Pryce-Jones is the start of chapter 82 PPS EU-Rota makes some good relvant points as he discusses the same FT article I talked about earlier today Permalink
Those of us of a certain age and school background in England will recall being taught French in part by "Mam'selle" - the young French lady imported to teach us all French with a proper accent etc. etc. Now I cannot of course speak for other people's experiences but the Mam'selle who taught me at the tender age of 8 or so was just a tad on the bossy side. Just a trifle dogmatic too and never ever admitting to an error about her knowledge of France, its inhabitants or its language. In his TV appearance last night l'Escroc reminded me strongly of Mam'selle. The same dogmatic self assurance and bossiness and the same treatment of the audience - especially the socialists who want to vote NON - as a bunch of naughty children who are selfishly ruining things that everyone has worked on really hard for a long time.
Unfortunately the content was not quite as bad as the presentation. I regret to say that his dire warnings (as the Wapping Liar reports) are likely to resonate strongly with the left-wing "non" camp.
He repeatedly insisted that the constitution would protect the “French social model” and act as a barrier against Anglo-Saxon liberalism. “This is a decisive step towards a better social situation,” he said. “We fought for recognition of public services — and at one time we were alone — and we have won.”
M Chirac said a victory for the “no” camp would “interrupt 50 years of European construction, and mean returning to existing treaties, which everyone says are insufficient”.
Turning his opponents’ arguments on their head, he added that a French rejection of the constitution would “leave the road clear for those who want Europe to be a free-trade zone and not a social organisation”.
In a clear message to wavering Socialists, he said: “I respect people who are against Europe for personal beliefs, but you can’t vote ‘no’ and say you are in favour of Europe.”A “no” vote would be a failure for France, would leave the country isolated and weaken its voice, not only in Europe but internationally, he said.
It seems to me that this is precisely the correct approach for him to take. I also have absolutely no doubt that the "Castro"-style propaganda campagin for "oui" will succeed by obfuscating the constitution as a document and playing on the fears of French voters that they will lose far more if they vote "non". Arguably the cynical French voter will also reckon that the threat of a "non" vote has extorted all the bribesconcessions that could reasonably be expected from the government so there is no point in actually continuing the charade any more. The most likely result will be I suspect a resounding victory for the "apathy" choice - rather as in Spain - but that the "oui" vote will win by a comfortable margin. The problem is that, just as in the presidential election where the choice was between l'Escroc and le Facho, the established left will decide that supporting l'Escroc and his constitution is better than not and sufficient of them will, as a result vote "oui" while metephocially holding their noses.
However all this presupposes that nothing truly horrible about Chirac or the EU shows up in the next three weeks. It is fairly clear to me that the EU has gone into vacation mode a bit early this year to avoid making any pronouncement about anything that could possibly upset anyone so a "non" vote needs something really egregious by l'Escroc and his cronies. A connection with some paedophiles would be about right or documentary proof of Chirac hiding some bombshell about some hotbed of socialist endeavour such as SNCF or EDF being for the chop until after the election.
Today's picture is a May day photo of our garden, the flowers and one of the olive trees. As always click on the image to see it enlarged and go here for last week's one Permalink
Margot Wallstrom, a Swede and the commissioner who must sell the draft constitution to voters, argued that politicians who resisted pooling national sovereignty risked a return to Nazi horrors of the 1930s and 1940s. [...] She blamed the Second World War on "nationalistic pride and greed, and … international rivalry for wealth and power". The EU had replaced such rivalry with an historic agreement to share national sovereignty.
Her fellow commissioners also issued a joint declaration, stating that EU citizens should pay tribute to the dead of the Second World War by voting Yes to the draft constitution for Europe.
The EU executive apparently lives in a parellel universe, as Tim points out:
"Sweden was Nazi Germany's largest trading partner during the war and almost the sole source of high-grade iron ore and precision ball bearings for the German war machine. Imports of the latter from Sweden were especially important following the destruction of the VKF ball bearing plant (itself Swedish-owned) at Schweinfurt by the US Eighth Air Force in August and October 1943..."
So we have a woman from a country that was "neutral" in World War 2 effectively putting the blame for the holocaust etc. on nationalistic pride and greed and international rivalry. Now if she had made this point about WW1 or about the Asian part of WW2 I think this would be a fair point since WW1 was indeed a story about nationalistic pride and the clash of empires and Japan was still in the same nationalistic mode in the 1940s. WW2 in Europe was not about international rivalry though it was about ideology.
Mind you she is not alone in attempting to hijack WW2 and its aftermath to the cause of the EU constitution, the Dutch PM did the same thing. But it is noteworthy that l'Escroc did not do this, possibly because the French "Oui" claims the the EU is just a bit of greater France these days and anyway French nationalism is not dead yet, despite the French having lost every war they fought on their own for the last 200 years (this is not to denigrate the contributions the French made to WW1 and WW2 - in both cases the French population gave a great deal despite their leaders).
On the other hand Tim and the Torygraph's Booker column both note that the EU has managed to shaft one of the ways that we can recall WW2 by classing the last airworthy B17 as Boeing 727 for insurance purposes. As a result the insurance premium that must be paid to let the plane fly has increased to £1000 per hour of flying time.
The message to take home from this is that the EU would rather we lived its universe where Nazi Germany was defeated by the united efforts of Europeans (including some "good" Germans), rather than in our universe where it was defeated mainly by the British in alliance with the USA and the USSR. And the EU will do everything in its power to make sure that there are no inconvenient reminders of the alternative view of history. No wonder I say "Ceterum Censeo Unionem Europeaem Esse Delenda" Permalink
I was very pleased to see that the MP for my parent's constituency returned to the Tories at the election. A month ago I remarked on the way that the Tory candidate had done his best to take the UKIP slogans about Europe for himself even though the official Tory policy was rather less direct. Unfortunately though while the Tory chap won, despite facing a respectable challenge from UKIP, the real news it seems to me was the swing to the Lib Dems who, as a result, let the conserative candidate win as even the combined Tory+UKIP vote was less than 50%.
In other constituencies the UKIP effect was bigger - Corby being perhaps the most dramatic - but even so the Tory plus UKIP vote is not big enough (yet) to claim a clear majority of the population of England, let alone the rest of the UK. MY back of the envelope sum indicates that there are 528 seats in England and the conservatives won just under 200 of them. Even if you add in the ones where UKIP took Tory votes you are still looking at only about 225 seats where the combination UKIP + Tory would lead to a majority which is not enough to claim a mandate YET.
If Europe is to be an real electoral issue next time we need to spend the next four years getting the message across. Undoubtedly the EUnuchs and EUrocrats will help but we need a way to make the EU something that people care enough about that they actually make it clear in focus groups and polls that Europe is a problem. The constitutional referendum will help but we need a solid four year plan not just something put together in six months. Permalink
So l'Escroc was unable to contain his fears about the EU referendum after all. On Sunday there was a dignified ceremony in Paris and all seemed calm and proper. But I spoke too soon yesterday when I said that unlike other EU leaders Chirac appeared to be above tying the EU and VE day since he then pops up in Moscow and echoes the Fragrant M by tying the EU constitution to future European peace and harmony. Fortunately he didn't explicitly link the cause of WW2 to "nationalism" à la Margo but there seems to me to have been a good deal of desperate stretching to make a speech marking the end of WW2 into a discussion of the EU constitution.
Needless to say, in the grand traditions of French Foreign Policy l'Escroc found time to suck up to the autocratic President Putin rather than side with his democratically elected fellow EU leaders from the Baltics. Also unsurprisingly he forgot to mention the other event of 8 May 1945 - the massacre of Algerian independence protestors.
ALGIERS, May 8 (Reuters) - President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has called on France to admit its part in the massacres of 45,000 Algerians who took to the streets to demand independence as Europe celebrated victory over Nazi Germany on May 8, 1945. Algeria is marking the 60th anniversary of the repression of pro-independence demonstrators under French colonial rule as Europeans celebrate the end of World War Two in Europe. "The paradox of the massacres of May 8, 1945, is that when the heroic Algerian combatants returned from the fronts in Europe, Africa and elsewhere where they defended France's honour and interests ... the French administration fired on peaceful demonstrators," Bouteflika said in a speech published by state media on Sunday. Colonial forces launched an air and ground offensive against several eastern cities, particularly Setif and Guelma, in response to anti-French riots, which killed more than 100 Europeans. The crackdown lasted several days and according to the Algerian state left 45,000 people dead. European historians put the figure at between 15,000 and 20,000.
I would have to do some research but my recollection is that no street protest against the British Empire anywhere resulted in 10,000 deaths. The worst single event I can think of - the 1919 Amritsar Massacre - killed about 400 and the entire Malayan Emergency (over some 12 years from 1948 - 1960) resulted in about 7000 rebel deaths, as well as the deaths of 3000 civillians and 2000 British and Malay government forces.
Just in case it was unclear - l'Escroc is a Gaullist - that is to say an heir of Gen de Gaulle the hero of WW2 France and head of the government of France at the time. As we see with the outburst of Margot the EU constitution is being pushed by the heirs of some of the less savoury traditions of 20th century European politics. Appeasement, collaboration, oppressing colonials are these what l'Escroc was talking about when ...
He called, instead, on the people of Russia and eastern Europe to pursue reconciliation on the basis of the "humanist values" of Europe.
"A Europe reconciled with itself: a Europe whose people, proud of the diversity of their pasts, overcoming for all time the vicissitudes of history and its dramas, build together their common destiny."
If it wasn't so serious this hypocrisy would be funny
In the "I really hate you" category of st00pid webdesign there is this company. A frameset of fixed size which is so small that most of the webpages don't fit without a scroll bar and ooh even better a fraemset in the content frame of the main window. Some whitespace is fine but do you think you couldn't just use a DIV tag or two with a margin?
I mean if you look at the HTML source they understand CSS and javascript and stuff like that so why do this BS? Do you deliberately want your customers to not realise that you have in fact got 5 products not just one? Permalink
Kansas City, MO (Roiters): Shouting "Death to Faggot-loving Hippies!" more than 1,000 demonstrators rioted and threw stones at a tourbus of mainly San Francisco area homosexuals Wednesday, as protests spread to four Mid-western states over a report that professors desecrated Christianity's holy book at a conference at the UC Berkeley campus in California.
Police fired on the protesters, many of them students, trying to stifle the biggest display of anti-liberal anger since the ouster of the ruling Clinton regime 4 1/2 years ago. There were no reports of liberal casualties, but the violence left four dead and 71 injured in Kansas City, a city on the border of two states Kansas and Misouri.
Mobs smashed car and shop windows and attacked government offices, the Mexican consulate and the offices of the Democratic party. Smoke billowed from the consulate and the party HQ. More than 50 democratic party workers were reportedly evacuated.
The protests may expand into neighboring Indiana, where a coalition of hard-line Christian parties said it would hold statewide demonstrations Friday over the alleged desecration of the Bible....
In other news:
The brief, tragic life of a young Texan girl was brought to a close yesterday with the execution of Alice Twoomey despite pleas for clemency from international bodies, NGOs and feminist organizations. A brief chronology of her life follows:
In 1984, Alice Twoomey was born.
In 1995 she was married off. Age eleven.
In 1996, when she reached her menarche, she was impregnated. Age 12.
In 1998, (January), her husband was killed. She was pregnant with her second child. Age 14.
In 1999, following a confession arrived at under torture, she was found guilty of the murder of her husband. She was sentenced to death. Age 16.
In the next few years, she went through a series of appeals but at each juncture the sentence was upheld. While girls her age in California were trying to decide which prom dress to wear, she was contemplating her death.
In 2002, she was raped by a prison guard and impregnated. Her third pregnancy. Age eighteen.
In May, 2003, her son was born.Texan law, compassionate in every detail, commuted her sentence until he reached the age of two — old enough to be weaned.
On May 10 2005, her child was handed over to a foster family and she was executed by lethal injection.
OK actually both of those stories are made up. The former is based on this news item, and the latter is based on this blog entry. If it were really true that these things were happening in America the condemnation and outrage spread across CNN, the New York Times etc. would be astounding. Since they are the result not of Christian fundamentalists but those of the "religion of peace" the latter recives 8 hits at news.google.com and the former has coverage that indicates that the fault lies with those who allegedly desecratred the Quran. Anyone who thinks that a collection of sheets of paper with markings on them is worth more than a human life is suffering from a major problem in perspective. The fact that similar issues caused the death of Theo van Gogh, the persecution of Salman Rushdie and so on indicates that this is not an isolated problem. When Hollywood produces a movie such as The Last Temptation of Christ its stars and production team are not forced into government protection or murdered in the streets, when someone dares to criticise Islam they are. Despite all the brouhaha about Terri Schiavo, her husband has not in fact been attacked on his way to work and when fanatical anti-abortionists kill doctors or bomb clinics they are tried for murder without the court or the media showing sympathy to a claim that abortion is against their beliefs.
Yet somehow the NY Times et al. seem to think that the USA is under threat from an Evangelical Christian Jihad. One of my blogroll and a person who shares certain interests in common with me is the JunkYardBlogger. Where we part company though is on the question of religious faith since he is a devout Christian, in fact, I believe, he is a member of some sort of Evangelical church, whereas I am somone who thinks that pace Heinlein that "Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help". Yet despite my view of religion I would vastly prefer to spend time with people such as the JYBer (or any of the other devout Christian ladies and gentlemen on my blogroll - La Shawn Barber, Baldilocks, Michelle Malkin ...) than most of their "liberal" critics. Indeed, except on a couple of fronts I arrive at the same position as they do on most issues, despite coming at it from a different direction. The point here is that while I am not a Christian, I think that Christianity is nothing to be ashamed of and that Christianity is generally speaking a force for good. I am far less concerned about being stoned to death for visiting a gay bar in Utah than one in Pakistan despite the fact that Mormonism is pretty homophobic and forbids alcohol. Yet if you read the press, as this WaPo article points out, the mainstream media aren't exactly friends of devout Christians (and in this case I count Mormons as Christian though I admit it isn't quite the same).
The problem, it seems to me, is that the MSM and the liberal elites mostly throw out the baby with the bathwater when they reject religion - they reject, as I do, some of the more pointless strictures that religions impose on their believers and as a result dismiss the whole system without looking to see whether the rest of it is any good. The result is that, rather than seeking a rational human society, they have effectively established their morally nonjudgemental multiculti liberal atheism as a religion itself with its own dogmas and holy mysteries and the same penalties meted out to perceived unbelievers and heretics as the religions they complain about. Heinlein wrote:
It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics.
When you look at the overwhelmingly "liberal" bias of universities and of journalists today, Heinlein's statement surely rings true. But the religious are fighting back, in America at least, and this is a good thing. Of course the incumbent religion is feeling threatened, especially since it is intolerant to its foes and fears that it may face similar treatment in revenge. Hence the smearing of devout Christians with labels like "fundamentalist" and, as far as I can tell, the massive publicity given to the more, ahhh, wacko faces of Christianity at the expense of those who are less controversial. Curiously it is only the Christian "wackos" who get the publicity, when Sheik al-somebody or Environmentalist High Priest Dr someone goes raving about how the world would be better if women were chastised daily or that all humans over the age of 60 should be euthanised (examples made up) then these messages tend to not get reported. On the other hand when someone, not unreasonably, says that he thinks that age 6 is a bit young to explain human sexuality he is immediately compared to some kind of dark age priest ridden savage.
It is not racist or intolerant to complain about women being stoned to death for adultery. It is not blasphemous to state that Mohammed was a paedophile because he married a girl aged less than ten. Raping and slaughtering other ethnic or religious groups is not in fact acceptable. Reacting to perceived insults to your religion by killing people or threatening to do so is in fact a sign of immaturiy and intolerance not a sign of your devout beliefs. It doesn't matter what the religion is - Hindus can be equally intolerant at times, so sometimes are Orthodox Christians (think Serbia), and no doubt others also - if you act in these ways you are in fact violating the UN Charter of Human Rights and other similar internationally accepted behavioral norms and do not deserve sympathy. Yet while Western Christians and Jews are held to these behavioral standards, if not higher one, somehow Sudanese, Arabs, Pakistanis and the like are given one free pass after another by the media who swallow whole and the regurgitate uncritically their excuses.
If the Evangelical Christians start burning witches or banning the teaching of evolution I will protest the Evangelical Jihad. Right now there are far worse threats to my atheistic lifestyle and most of them emanate from Mecca (some via Brussels). Update:New Sisyphus has another excellent example Permalink
EU Rota notes that the Wapping Liar has further coverage on the French Referendum today where it points out that the "Oui" campaigners are receiving - quelle surprise - rather more official coverage:
The media are firmly in the “yes” camp. Opponents are given space to air views, but the editorial slant is nearly always in line with M Chirac’s assertion that “you cannot be a European and vote ‘no’ ”.
The television networks and Radio France were reprimanded last week by the broadcasting authority for failing to give equal time to the “no” camp. Jean-Paul Cluzel, the chief of the state broadcaster, replied that “explaining the constitution is not propaganda”.
Last week Bernard Guetta, the network’s main morning commentator, told listeners that “France is on the verge of committing a terrible mistake” if it were to vote “non”.
Of course this is one of those battles where I think both camps are wrong. The "Oui" campaign is trying to push for European economic stagnation along the Franco-German model wheras the "Non" campaigners are trying to push for a more complete Soviet style economic collapse.
I want the constitution to be rejected because I want the EU to retreat from its ridiculous insistence on creating a "worst of all worlds" level playing field and because I think is suffers from a complete lack of accountability, hence I am keen for the French to reject the treaty. But actually asking me to support what the French "NON" people want is a whole different kettle of fish.
The “no” campaigners are furious about the Government’s tax-funded advertising and the gushing brochure that accompanies the copies of the turgidly worded constitution that are being sent to all households. Equally irksome is the sudden willingness by Brussels to yield to long-held French demands, such as a move last week to cut VAT on restaurant bills.
However, as I have noted before, around the Alpes Maritimes, the lack of official media outlets for the NON campaign has not stopped them getting the message out. There are posters EVERYWHERE and in the letterbox yesterday was a wonderful brochure from the local "NON" campaigners which I shall publish.and translate with fisking, to show just how misguided some of their desires are. Mind you I find myself agreeing, somewhat ironically, with some of what they say - as in I agree but not Front/Outside (click to enlarge) Back/Inside (click to enlarge) Translation (of the inside) No to an Ultra-Free Market Europe The Constitutional Treaty will:
Favour offshoring
Increase our unemployment rate - already one of the highest
Threaten how many future directives like the "Bolkenstein" one
Another Europe, a socialist Europe, is possible My Comment: Yes it will indeed favour offshoring and increase the unemployment rate. But that you economic illiterate is because certain countries beginning with F (and ending ANCE) reject totally the concept of competition. Hence any one with any sense will set up his new operations somewhere else. Rejection of the Bolkestein directive is why the costs of doing business in France are too high to attract any inward investment. No to a Europe of Turkey With the Constitutional Treaty there will be :
A semi-automatic entry of Turkey to the EU as it has already signed up to the constitution
Threats to employment in France
Insecure boders and an increase in terrorism
100 million Turks will be the prime beneficiaries and, with the Germans, the prime decision makers
Another Europe, a Europe with secure frontiers and controlled immigration is possible My Comment: See above about the threats to French employment. As for the rest - this is where we start seeing France's fear of no longer being top dog. Oh and just tiny little hints of racism make themselves present too.... No to an extravagent Europe The Constitutional Treaty ordains
A Europe that costs more and more for France
The cost of enlargement per inhabitant will rise from €15 in 2004 to €100 in 2007
The drift of the bureaucrats of Brussels is alarming
Another Europe, a Europe well managed and close to its citizens is possible My Comment: Not sure about the enlargement cost but I actually agree with most of the sentiment here. I'm against an axtravegnt Europe and EUrocrats too. Of course I suspect that my idea of "well managed" and the NON campaign's one differ radically No to a Europe where France is marginalised The Constitutional Treaty will:
Impose its laws on all countries even those who refuse them
Weaken still more the decision-making power of Franc: just one commissioner out of 25
Comdemn France to keep its paltry growth, one of the lowest of the industrialised world
Another Europe, a Europe that respects the states is possible My Comment: Oh look with constitution France will actually have to obey the laws that it makes everyone else obey. Quel Catastrophe!!! The Constitution will indeed comdemn France to its paltry growth, that would be because it will in fact put to an end the possibility of "Ultra-liberal" reforms, but I don't think you mean that. Permalink
The Olive Tree is great because it is useful in so many different ways. For example its wood, when dry can be used to make many beautiful objects and also makes logs that have a wonderful aroma when burned. As always click on the image to enlarge and look at last week's one if you missed it Permalink
Roy Greenslade in the Grauniad (Hat Tip Harry) has a column defendng Gorgeous George which seems to be swallowing the Galloway completely uncritically, something which seems to be rather generous. In fact so generous that I think it is worth a fisking since it is chock full of errors:
I come not to praise George Galloway but - unlike almost the entire media - not to bury him either. There will be many who snort contemptuously when I say that Galloway is now more sinned against than sinning because he has become so unpopular with both the media and political elites that they regard him as outside the normal rules of the game.
Indeed, to defend him places the defender beyond the pale too. But the victim of what has all the hallmarks of a media feeding frenzy deserves a fair hearing, not only for his personal benefit, but for those he now represents - and in order to confront journalists with their own misguided agendas.
As usual I like to start a fisking with a point of agreement. I agree here, Jeremy Paxman is a buffoon, and there is plenty of misguided agenda going on. Likewise I think a fair hearing would be a good thing. The problem is that a fair hearing does not mean uncritically accepting the excuses of the accused it means subjecting them to some scrutiny.
In quick succession since his election victory last week in Bethnal Green and Bow, Galloway has been subjected to a television mauling by Jeremy Paxman, a radio sandbagging by the MP he defeated and a raft of newspaper headlines about a set of reheated allegations which he has not only strenuously denied but which ended with him winning a major libel action.
In spite of Galloway's court victory and the accumulated evidence in his favour, the BBC saw fit to lead its news bulletins yesterday with the story of supposedly "new" accusations that he received money from Saddam Hussein's Iraq through its oil-for-food programme. Yet the only difference between the claims made against Galloway by the Daily Telegraph in April 2003 and a US Senate subcommittee this week was that they were based on (already published) documents allegedly retrieved from Iraq's oil ministry rather than its foreign ministry - and not, as wrongly claimed, that they covered different periods.
What part of "this is based on different sources" is unclear to you Roy?
The staff report by the Senate Permanent Sub-Committee of Investigations emphasised that its findings were based on documents that had no relation to the “seemingly forged documents” used in the Daily Telegraph piece, noting that the panel was relying on Iraqi Oil Ministry documents from 2001.
To continue
In all other essentials, the allegations made by the Senate committee are the same as those originally outlined in the Telegraph articles that resulted in Galloway being awarded £150,000 in libel damages and £1.2m in costs, though an appeal against the high court ruling in his favour is still outstanding.
During the case Galloway successfully rebutted every point in the Telegraph story that led its journalists to conclude that he had profited from Saddam's government. So it's hardly any wonder that Galloway has found himself repeating his former denials.
Well successfully rebutted is not how I read the reports on the libel judgement, nor, apparently how the Torygraph's lawyers read the whole thing since they seem keen to appeal. What seems clear is that the Torygraph report was based solely on a couple of documents that were of uncertain provenance and that some other documents were proven to be fakes. The senate report however is explicit in detailing the trail because it has both witness statements and additional documents that were not the ones the Telegraph based its original piece on. The Torygraph today explains this in detail:
The investigation also detailed how the scheme worked. It quotes one Iraqi official as explaining that Mr Galloway's alleged oil allocations were funnelled through a Jordanian businessman, Fawaz Zureikat.
The report says contracts were conducted through two companies, Aredio Petroleum-France and Middle East Advanced Semiconductor Inc.
Each oil voucher was made out in the name of a company, but contained the name of the intended beneficiary within brackets. Among the beneficiaries were Mr Zureikat, Mr Galloway and "Mariam's Appeal".
One document, created by Iraqi oil ministry officials after the fall of Saddam, lists every oil contract in Phase IX of the oil-for-food programme during Saddam's rule.
The report states: "The entry for Contract M/9/23 indicates that the contract was executed with 'Mr Fawaz Zuraiqat/George Galloway/Aredio Petroleum - French.' This SOMO [State Oil Marketing Organization] document shows that the allocation for Contract M/9/23 was not just for Mariam's Appeal, but also for George Galloway.''
Earlier reports from the US Senate and elsewhere have shown that recipients of Saddam's oil allocations were able to turn the contracts into cash without seeing a barrel of oil.
The allegation that Galloway benefitted from UNSCAM is the same, the evidence used to bolster the claim is different. It does however indicate that the original Torygraph documents may not be quite as fake as claimed. Back to Roy:
In so doing he has argued that the Senate committee is a creature of President Bush and therefore part of a US Republican conspiracy, implying that they may wish to help their Iraq war ally, Tony Blair. When you are under as much public pressure as Galloway is just now, it's easy to imagine you are the victim of a plot, but there is certainly no media conspiracy against him. In a sense it's worse than that. He has become so much of a pariah that a plot is unnecessary.
No point in letting the facts get in the way here is there? The Senate committee is bi-partisan, that means it has a boatload of Democrats (you know the other party) on it including its cochair Senator Carl Levin - this is basic stuff, Roy, even the BBC manages to get this right.
Galloway has achieved the dubious honour of being the media's new leftwing whipping boy, following in a line that includes Arthur Scargill, Tony Benn and Ken Livingstone. Like them, he has dared to confront not only the old establishment but also its Labour alternative (or, in his eyes, the new establishment), having been expelled from the party on the basis of what might be charitably described as rather dubious reasoning.
Well you see here is the problem, just as with Messrs Scargill, Benn and Livingstone, Galloway appears to be deliberately courting controversy and public exposure. The point is that once you enter the realm of public exposure like this you open yourself up to additional investigation, this is not a leftwing exlcusive it happens to any public figure for example see Posh & Becks, Prince Charles and other royals etc.
Along the way he has also outraged the media by refusing to accept its attacks on him, having survived any number of scrapes with newspapers anxious to find him guilty of wrongdoing. He has regularly sued for libel and, worse still in the eyes of journalists, has always won, sometimes handsomely. I must declare an interest here: I have also lost to him in a libel action; but, unlike many who have suffered similarly, I bear him no grudge.
Well, its good that you declare this interest otherwise the uncharitable might suggest that this defense of Galloway is in some way a quid pro quo for something in that libel case (IIRC todo with the Vannunu story).
Galloway raises the hackles both of the collective media and of individual journalists. How else can one explain the extraordinary way in which Jeremy Paxman greeted Galloway's election victory for his Respect party over Labour's sitting MP, Oona King, in east London? "Mr Galloway," demanded Paxman, "are you proud of having got rid of one of the very few black women in parliament?" Galloway rightly replied, "What a preposterous question," and soon walked out of the interview.
Firstly I don't see why this question is so bad. It is, of course, just reeking of BBC smarm but it is in fact quite a good question for someone who spends a lot of time worrying about the downtrodden. Of course Roy doesn't quite get around to detailing the rest of that interview.
Earlier that week he had also cut short an ITV interview after accusing the presenters of being liars for claiming he was a supporter of Saddam. Another pre-election interview, with the Sky News political editor Adam Boulton, was going well until Galloway was suddenly asked about the suggestion that he and his wife were planning to divorce. This time Galloway held on to his temper by countering that it was a strange question for Boulton to ask, given his own previous marital difficulties. It was a typically robust reply from Galloway - and certainly not unjustified in the circumstances - but it was also a reminder of why journalists bridle at dealing with him. Unlike so many politicians, who only affect to clash with interviewers in public, Galloway refuses to knuckle down and play the game. He takes no prisoners.
Or to put it another way he refuses to answer certain questions and huffs and puffs and diverts the subject any way he can when they are asked. Witness all his evasion about UNSCAM where he very clearly states "that he has never seen a barrel of oil" and "is not a millionaire" but fails to actually answer the actual underlying question which is whether he was bribed by Hussen via the UNSCAM process.
The divorce story, a tabloid-style kiss-and-tell interview with Galloway's wife, was published by the Sunday Times four days before the election. It was seen by Galloway as an example of collusion between the paper and his New Labour opponents, a conclusion reinforced when the article was reproduced in English and Bengali and flyposted around the East End. "It has clearly been raised by the Sunday Times," he said, "to damage me in the election," a move he believed showed Labour's desperation at the possibility of King losing her seat.
See previous comment about Posh'n'Becks. In earlier years Galloway made a lot noise about being married to a Palestinian
Naturally, when she did lose, King was devastated, as were many other unseated MPs. But, unlike them, she was given a lengthy slot on BBC Radio 4's Today programme this week to air her grievances in what was a strikingly tame interview - no balancing material was offered - allowing her to vent her spleen about the nature of a "dirty" campaign and insinuating that Galloway's Respect party had been responsible for her suffering anti-semitic slurs.
I didn't listen to the interview - tricky seeing as I live in France - but there is in fact considerable evidence that Respect (or its fellow travellers) did indeed make anti-semitic slurs and did indeed harass voters in ways that are indeed hallmarks of a "dirty" campaign.
A Respect spokesman described the claims as ludicrous and a smear. But I saw it differently. The nature of the King interview, in which she was not challenged with anything like that programme's normal robustness, was further evidence of the way Galloway is now regarded within the media. He is simply not being given a fair crack of the whip.
Rather a weak ending I think. It sounds a bit like the young child screwing up his face and crying "its not fair..." Given that, as the Torygraph, notes Galloway plays rather lose with the truth on occasion when he does get interviewed, it only seems fair to sometimes fail to ask him to comment:
The committee rejected Mr Galloway's accusation that his attempts to contact it before publication of the report had been rebuffed, despite him writing "repeatedly".
A spokesman said he did not attempt to make contact by any method "including but not limited to telephone, fax, e-mail, letter, Morse code or carrier pigeon".
Mr Galloway later retracted his claims, telling Sky News: "Well, let's accept that I did not ask them to appear in front of them."
A couple of weeks ago I pointed out that Germany was missing the point of capitalism. Well things have regressed further with Finanzplatz Deutschland apparently in danger of being totally owned by Anglo-saxon hedge funds, who scored quite a coup by ousting the bosses of Deutsche Börse, the company that runs the stock-exchange. The SPD is rather upset and is now desperate to try and limit the influence of hot money and hedge funds on Germany. As a Reuters/Welt Am Sonntag report explains:
BERLIN, May 14 (Reuters) - Germany is investigating how it can limit speculators' ownership rights after Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder pledged to monitor hedge fund activity more closely, according to a report in the Welt am Sonntag newspaper.
The report was made available on Saturday and, citing government sources, said one proposal under discussion was whether shareholders had to have held stock for a particular length of time before they could exercise company voting rights.
Such a move would counter hedge funds which typically look to acquire underperforming businesses and swiftly sell them on after restructuring, a process that can bring heavy job losses but which is sometimes the only means left to save struggling firms.
Can you think of a better way to discourage investment? other that is from the existing rules about not being able to fire people without giving a large payoff etc etc. No? well never fear Germany's elite politicians have come up with an alternative - stealth regulation. As the report continues:
According to the report, Eichel wanted all European hedge funds to be controlled by one supervisory body.
"The German government is working towards a Europe-wide harmonisation of hedge funds, which should equally protect shareholders, ensure financial market stability and support the development of a dynamic hedge-fund market," the newspaper quoted from an internal Finance Ministry report.
So hedge funds have done something we don't want and can't control because they are in London. We must control them to stop them. But you have to love the mixture of chutzpah and cluenessness of the excuses. "Protect shareholders" - how exactly are shareholders protected by having rules that make hedge funds unwilling to buy shares? and "development of a dynamic hedge-fund market" - it is of course well known that German and European regulators are far more dynamic that their Anglo-saxon counterparts but the markets they regulate seem to exhibit the dynamism of a three day old cat. Fortunately, at least one of the elite politicians and advisors has got a basic understanding of the concept of cause and effect:
However, Welt am Sonntag said there were critics among Eichel's advisors who said treating hedge funds differently in Germany from any other shareholders would simply send investors elsewhere.
This anonymous advisor seems to be more clued into reality than the Chanceller as reported in yesterday's FT:
Mr Schröder said there might be an argument “in favour of closer scrutiny” of hedge funds to check whether their philosophy was “compatible” with German society, adding: “This is the issue that needs to be considered.”
...
Mr Schröder [...] said his criticism was not a general attack on foreign investors or private equity funds. “We need foreign money coming into the country.”
The comments were made at the opening of a new BMW factory in Leipzig which will employ about 5000 pople directly and another 5000 indirectly. What the FT failed to mention (along with most of the rest of the media) is what David's Medienkritik points out, namely that the BMW factory was only located there because of some large state incentives:
BMW's total investment of 1.3 billion Euro was helped by 350 million Euro taxpayer money. And that definitely doesn't even include support from the state run worker's unemployment insurance system for the creation of new jobs that typically is part of any large investment in east Germany.
Assuming the additional support rounds up the state investment to €500m (and it could well be more) that works out at about €100,000 for every job directly created. Even with the usual 50% tax rates on salaries that will take a few years to recoup.
Regretfully the Chancellor's electoral slopey shoulders strategy of blaming everything on Americans did get him reelected last time around in the national elections. However even the German electorate seems to have figured out that they made a mistake and hence his attempts to repeat the trick aren't working. The SPD has either lost control of or seen its majority cut to the minimum in every regional election since where it held power and that trend is probably going to continue in the election next week in North Rhine-Westphalia. (FT article via EU Rota) Permalink
Although the English speaking news and blogosphere seemed to be concentrating on Mr Galloway, he was not the only slimy pol to be named by the Senate as accepting payoffs from Hussein. As others (the FT and the Italian Il Solo 24 Oro) have claimed before Charles Pasqua was also involved. Last month I noted the French UNSCAM connection(s) and effectively the Senate report has confirmed/repeated those allegations. In the French press Pasqua has had a fairly easy time of it since people are more interested in the referendum (and the fact that they are supposed to work next Monday) and he did manage to state that he would refute "point by point" the Senate's accusations. The interesting thing is that unlike Galloway, one of Pasqua's underlings is under investigation by the French judiciary (see my previous post) and it seems probable that the only reason that Pasqua is not also under investigation is that he has immunity from prosecution as a member of the French Senate.
The BBC also reports that Pasqua claims that the Senate report is part of an anti-French/anti-Chirac "obsession" by the Americans.
Former French minister Charles Pasqua says he has been falsely named in the Iraq oil scandal as part of a US bid to discredit President Jacques Chirac.
Mr Pasqua told French TV that US senators who accused him of receiving oil rights from Saddam Hussein were gripped by an anti-French obsession.
He said the US was convinced that France had opposed the war in Iraq out of economic self-interest. [...]
"Perhaps also those who are targeting Jacques Chirac through me ignore that the nature of our relationship has changed, at least politically, and they are mistaken if they think that I am in a position to influence French policy," he said.
He said there was "a real obsession" in the US - "an obsession which consists of saying that if France took a hostile stance against American intervention in Iraq, it was because of economic interests or privileged relations it might have had with Saddam Hussein."
Interestingly the Americans seem to far from alone in thinking that the French could be induced to support Hussein with a few oily contributions. The Torygraph reports today that the Hussein regime tried to give money to a number of the movers and shakers including l'Escroc himself.
A paper dated Feb 5, 2002, headed "Iraqi-French relations" and written by the assistant director of the Mukhabarat, suggested that Iraq should offer inducements to whoever seemed best placed to win the presidential race, which Mr Chirac ultimately won three months later.
Iraq should "study the possibility to support one of the candidates in the French political elections, after it becomes clear who is going to win the elections, through the offer of oil contracts . . ." the paper says.
[...]The planned campaign included a long list of potential targets that read like a who's who of the country's senior statesmen.
It included former President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, former interior minister Charles Pasqua, former defence and interior minister Jean-Pierre Chevenement, former defence and interior minister Pierre Joxe and former European Commission president Jacques Delors.
Apparently l'Escroc rejected the offer, possibly a unique moment in the history of the French Presidency if true, and the other people on the list have similarly denied being stupid enough to take money from the Iraqi Secret Service or indeed that they ever talked to an Iraqi.
What I do find interesting about the Pasqua denial is that he seems to be saying that he had no power to influence French politics/l'Escroc and therefore there was no sense in Iraq bribing him. This is possibly the first time any politician anywhere has been modest and claimed to be less influential than others say and, rather in the way that Sherlock Holmes found a lack of barking dog suspicious, this lack of normal political braggadocio seems somewhat peculiar. Permalink
One of the (few) success stories of the EU has been its deregulation of the airways. These days people think nothing of hopping on a plane on a Friday and returning on a Sunday or Monday. People even take day trips to foreign countries just to go shopping or to attend a party. And they do it because of the Low Cost Carriers - EasyJet, RyanAir etc. - who now account for over 10% of all flights that use European air traffic control. Although it is true that some European flag carriers are a little upset hardly anyone else is. However, the EU seems to have it in for the airline sector and seems determined to find ways to make this success become as great a failure as practically everything else the EU has got itself involved in. First they tried a scheme for invoking mandatory and high levels of compensation for flight cancellation etc. which seems designed to make things harder for low cost carriers since they may have to pay out massively more in compensation than the flyer paid for his ticket.
However that doesn't seem to have been enough so yesterday l'Escroc and his dachshund, Schröder, decided to make flying more expensive for everyone by requiring a "voluntary" tax on flights to be used to provide development aid to third world countries. The Torygraph notes that this is not exactly a popular measure with the airlines and I certainly agree, as does Tim Worstall. However the best refutation of the whole practice seems to be this essay by a Portuguese gentleman who wrote about the possibility of a tax on carrots. I think I shall be joining the Rabbit Association and push for a carrot tax.
As the world and his dog knows an American gossip magazine caused the death of some 15 Afghans, much property damage and provided a propaganda coup to Islamic extremists around the world last week. Various people have asked what can be done. Well, here is a suggestion. Boycott the so-called news magazine.
If you subscribed to it, cancel your subscription.
Request that newsagents stop carrying it.
Request advertisers to pull their advertising dollars.
If you see a free one somewhere (e.g. airport lounges) ask the provider to choose other magazines instead.
The boycott should end when the gossip magazine does some actual reporting on the ground in Afghanistan, identifies the 15 or so dead people and provides serious compensation to their families for their death. It wouldn't hurt if the magazine wrote a feature on the lives of each of the 15 because those 15 biogrphies might possibly make clear just how different life was in Afghanistan before the fall of the Taliban thanks to intervention from "Bushmacchimpy and his theocrat thugs fighting for the right for Haliburton to make money" (sorry just channelling a Fableweak journalist)
Oh and may I suggest a googlebomb - renaming it in all references and links as something else such as Fableweak.
BTW this does not excuse the over-reaction by Islamic extremists - as I noted a few days back we would be shocked if it were Christian fundamentalists who were doing these things. Permalink
The French Republic claims to be founded on the principles of Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité. Perhaps it was but it certainly isn't today.
Liberté has alwys been a little iffy given the habit of successive French governments in poking their nose into private businesses. Private individuals do have considerable de facto liberty, I admit, mainly because the French state doesn't attempt to enforce most of its laws, but businesses, despite being owned by and the employers of individuals don't have it so easy, what with laws like the thrity-five hour week or Sarkozy's "suggestion" last year that supermarkets cut their prices.
Egalité is also a long term sufferer. When it comes to crimes it is well known that it helps to either be a politician or know one (whether in a biblical sense or not). Elected politicans, you see, are mostly immune from prosecution. Something that both l'Escroc and his "no current connection" former colleague Pasqua know all about. But they are by no means alone in this with all sorts of other politicians of one faction or another doing the same thing. And of course to be come a politician it helps enormously to have gone to one of the "grandes écoles" - the afore-mentioned Nicolas Sarkozy being the only leading politician who is not an énarque - and it seems that, for example, N African immigrants don't seem to get those grande école places for some reason.
Today however we see graphic evidence that Fraternité isn't all its cracked up to be either. Theoretically workers across France are working today instead of taking the traditional Whitmonday holiday in order to show solidarity with the old and infirm. Possibly because the government decreed this Fraternité without any sign of Liberté or Egalité when it came to consultation many French workers are in fact staying a way from work. Indeed many workers in the state sector are going on strike and having mass protests instead.
I said a couple of days ago that the difference between the OUI and the NON in the referendum was a matter of degree:
Of course this is one of those battles where I think both camps are wrong. The "Oui" campaign is trying to push for European economic stagnation along the Franco-German model wheras the "Non" campaigners are trying to push for a more complete Soviet style economic collapse.
The reaction to the withdrawal of this holiday illustrates exactly the same dynamic. Those in favour of the government view want statist control over what we do and for the government to force us take responsibility for things whether we want to or not. Those protesting want the government to pay for things, without us needing to contribute or take any personal responsibility. The former are unpleasantly illiberal, the latter are apparently unable to grasp basic concepts of arithmetic and economics.
In an article about the "solidarity" day we are all supposedly observing in France today (see also previous post) we discover that the reporter makes a couple of utterly bizzare statements:
But the end to a coveted day off — which would normally fall on Monday — has not gone down well among the leisure-loving French, and now a spectrum of workers across the country was preparing to stay off the job to protest the decision. [...]
Unlike other holidays, the traditional day off on the Monday after the Christian festival of Pentecost falls on the same week of the year, making it easier for groups and families to plan getaways or activities each year.
The first statement is just plain weird - a day that is called le lundi de Pentecôte or "Whitmonday" in English - is by definition on a Monday - otherwise it wouldn't have "monday" in the name. Kind of the way that Ash Wednesday always falls on a Wednesday and Good Friday always occurs on a Friday.
But then it gets worse because a few lines down we have the "...traditional day off on the Monday..." statment which contradicts the "normally" in the first bit. OK so you might just think that this implies the first statement was some kind of brainfart it that was all. But then it says "falls on the same week of the year" which is complete bunk and makes me wonder whether the journalist and his "fact checking editors" actually have a clue about the christian Calendar. Pentecost/Whitsunday is precisely 49 days after Easter (WhitMonday is therefore by basic sums 50 days after Easter) and Easter is the archtypical "movable feast" that is the source of 52000 google hits on the phrase not to mention a Hemingway story and countless quotes in countless boks, magazines and newspapers (and webpages).
Since Easter is a movable feast and one that can vary in a range of about 5 weeks in March/April the "falls on the same week of the year" is about as inaccurate a statement as it is possible to make. The fact that the next sentence points out that this year the French are feeling hard done by because May Day and VE Day were on Sundays this year makes this error even harder to fathom. Surely the point is that Whitmonday is always on a Monday and hence French (and other Europeans) can assume that the week it is in will always be a 4 day week at most? This sort of mistake would be unthinkable to a Christian hence the title to this post. If AP had any Christian in any position that checked this story they would be bound to have picked up on this howler.
In a somewhat related way the Weekly Standard has a great article this week about the influence of the Bible on Western thought and the likely consequences for the fact that US (and UK) schools tend to eschew it - even as a work of literature, which it most certainly is, whether or not you agree with the content. It is a clear sign of just how much the educational establishment has failed to teach the author and his editors about the religion that is the bedrock of European culture that they are unable to grasp the basic structure of the Christian calendar. RA Heinlein wrote once
"A generation which ignores history has no past and no future."
I'm seeing a generation that has lost its past and that does not bode well for the future. Permalink
The US Gossip magazine, in addition to its discussion of Gitmo toilets, has an article on l'Escroc and his legacy (and the French referendum). Austin Bay comments on the article and, I think, hits the main points, but I have some other problems with it.
The first problem I have is that this article is classic Fableweak in that it tries to be terribly cute. The cuteness revolves around l'Escroc's personal porky egotrip museum in his hometown of Sarran and the way the article ties items in the museum to characteristics of Chirac. Ok so possibly the staight facts would bore the readership, although given that the article is a mere 1750 words long (including headline) we clearly aren't looking at an in-depth essay, but do we have to wrap the serious stuff in Sarran as a jokey "alternative" angle? I guess on the positive side it meant that a fableweak hack (Tracy McNicoll) was forced to visit Sarran in a, no doubt, a nice expenses paid way and it is certainly better than the usual practice of drawing sweeping conclusions from the airport, capital city or the taxi-driver who took the hack from the former to her hotel in the latter. In a similar manner the article goes for aimless alliteration and allied word.play such as:
Between the tedious stagnation of Chirac's France and the tendentious transcendence of his global vision comes Europe.
Hands up anyone who can figure out why stagnation is tedious and what the <%expletive> tendentious transcendence means (other than "I'm a pretentions pseudo-intellectual who can use big multi-syllable words"). This is the sort of thing that explains why I prefer the Economist to any of these lightweight dumbed down American rags.
Ok so now I've got the stylistic bits out of the way what of the content? Well what is there is fine and it makes a fair point about how Chirac is visibly out of touch with his country, not to mention his political opportunism and his misteps in the EU constitution case but it merely hints at the biggest problem of Chirac, the stench of corruption that dogs him and makes him unfit to run amything more than a prison cell. There is no mention of the fact that he was elected last time around to the slogan of "Vote for the crook not the fascist" and no hint that, were it not for his presidential immunity, he would be at best in court if not in jail. The wheels have been coming off the Chirac-mobile for a while now and it might have been nice for Fableweak to let its readers know about the seamier side of France. Actually though a search through the abstracts on the archive site shows that one of the authors - Christopher Dickey seems to have the hots for Chirac. During the French presidential election campaign one article starts:
Some scandals are just too delicious, and those linked to French President Jacques Chirac are, well, especially juicy. As one of his rivals once said, "Chirac can have his mouth full of jam, his fingers covered with it, the pot can be standing open in front of him, and when you ask if he's a jam eater he'll say: 'Me, eat jam?' "
In other countries or cultures, that might not be acceptable behavior. But in France, there's a certain charm in cheating, ...
I'm not prepared to hand over the wonga for the remaining 700 words but if this doesn't paint l'Escroc as some kind of lovable rogue then I'm a Dutchman as they say and given that another Fableweak article from November 2001 starts
It's not easy being married to a man "who has an incredible success with girls," admits Bernadette Chirac, wife of French President Jacques Chirac, in her new book, "Conversation." With that, Madame Chirac shatters most preconceptions of her. Long lampooned as a hard-as-nails spouse clutching her purse like an armored shield, Madame Chirac produced "Conversation" as part of a concerted effort to warm her image, just in time to kick off her husband's bid...
I'd say I'm on pretty firm ground here. For Fableweak l'Escroc is a charming politician. OK he has little foibles and weaknesses but they just make him human, not like that evil born again Christian BushMcChimpy and his Neocon theocrats.
Then we get onto the EU constitution. Rejection of this would "be a disaster for the vision of a unified Europe" and somehow I can just tell the Fableweak thinks the EU constitution is the most wonderful document to emerge in history. Its those little hints about how the EU referendum didn't need to be, that France is going to vote on l'Escroc not on the treaty, and so on that show that Fableweak and its journalists are in love with the idea of Europe. Pesky details about how terrible it is that when l'Escroc opens his mouth to
defend the constitution as an —extension of French values, French social policy, French glory. [...] "People in Hungary, Poland and Slovenia are listening to this, too!"
Or in other words in the opinion of Fableweak l'Escroc is now a liability and should go for the greater good of social-humanist European integration.
Still there is the concluding line. I agree with its thrust and just possibly it rescues the rest of the article, although the comparison of l'Escroc to a yokozuna is an insult to every yokuzuna that has ever fought in the doryo and it brings us right back to the stylistic cuteness problem to leave a nasty taste in the mouth:
Perhaps he should remember the lesson of the greatest sumo heroes, the yokozuna. They can never be demoted, but they are expected to honor themselves by choosing to retire when they can no longer perform up to grand-champion standards, or carry all the weight that they've put on.
Summary verdict: Tie A more detailed report: After a summary of the evidence against him, George Galloway was given a few minutes to make a statement before being cross questioned by Sens Coleman and Levin.
Galloway came out fighting with statements like "I have not now been an old trader and never have been nor has anyone done so on my behalf." and "you have found me guilty before giving me a chance to respond." He stated he had met Saddam Hussein twice only - as many times as Donald Rumsfeld, who was selling him arms and spy satellite data - and that the second meeting was an attempt to let Hans Blix into the Iraq. He stated that he had always opposed the Hussein regime and provided a dossier to back that up with documents from 15 March 1990 to the present. Curiously he stated he had opposed it earlier too "from when you (Americans or at least Sen Coleman) were protesting the Vietnam war" though he provided no evidence.
He stated that there was no document tying him to anything in Iraq other than a few lists that had showed up after Hussein was overthrown. Some of the lists originated from that conman Ahmed Chalabi. He wondered why, of the 270 names on the list he was one of those picked. He stated that he was in the same comapny as the Vatican and the ANC who also appeared on the list and that also in common with them he had opposed sanctions against Iraq and the OFP. He stated that he had never met Taha Yassin Ramadan, speculated that Ramadan had been tortured in Abu Ghraib and stated that if Ramadan actually stated the mere 13 words used to implicate him (Galloway) then he (Ramadan) was wrong. He denied all knowledge of Aredio Petroleum, denied that it had ever made a contribution to Galloway's Miriam Appeal and denied that he knew anyone assocated with the company. One thing that occured to me was that he stated things very carefully and no doubt intended them to be interpreted in sweeping ways whereas he actually stated very specific things and I may have misheard a couple of them.
He was very clear however that the Senate documents refered to the same period as the documents he had challenged the Telegraph on and won his libel case. He stated that the docs refering to 1992/93 were ones used by the Christian Science Monitor which later admitted their falsity and he attempted to muddy the water by claiming that numerous other "right wing" newspapers had been offered fake documents inplicating him. This again was, I believe a cunning attempt at misdirection since the Senate stated that the documents were different to the Telegraph ones in other ways than just that the Telegraph documents were from 1992/93. The key passage from the PSI report is:
On December 2, 2004, Galloway won a libel suit against a British newspaper, the Daily Telegraph, relating to an article on Galloway’s involvement in the Oil for Food Program.102 The article that instigated the lawsuit apparently included forged documents concerning Mr. Galloway that were purported to be found in the Iraqi Foreign Ministry after the fall of the Hussein regime. The documents in that article included correspondence from 1992 and 1993. The British court ruled that the documents were “seriously defamatory,” that the newspaper was obligated to provide Galloway with an opportunity to respond to the allegations in the documents, and that its failure to do so entitled Galloway to damages.
The documents presented in this Report have no relation to those discussed in the Daily Telegraph piece. First, the Daily Telegraph article cited documents from 1992 and 1993, whereas the earliest document examined here dates from 2001. In addition, the seemingly forged documents in the article were connected to the Iraqi Foreign Ministry, while the documents examined by the Subcommittee were prepared by the Iraqi Ministry of Oil and its subdivision SOMO. Finally, the Daily Telegraph documents reportedly included allegations that Galloway was on the payroll of the Hussein regime, receiving a salary or direct payments. In contrast, the evidence examined by the Subcommittee indicates that Galloway was granted oil allocations that would have to be monetized through complex oil transactions.
It does seem to be true that the Senate did partially confuse the Telegraph dates with the CSM ones, as the CSM's retaction indicates that the Telegraph documents originated from approx 2000 whereas the ones it had supposedly dated from 1992/93 however it is also clear that the Telegraph documents are claimed to have originated from the foreign ministry whereas the Senate ones did not. In other words in typical Galloway style he picks up on one error and misidrects attention from other places which could be more truthful. For example, as far as I can tell, no one has yet proven that the Telegraph documents are actually fake - the libel was fought on "neutral reportage" and "public interest" grounds and the only analysis of them that I am aware of, made with respect to and in comparison with the bogus CSM documents (link above), indicated that the Telegraph ones were credible in terms of style.
To return to the Senate hearing, Galloway concluded with a statement that the sanctions against Iraq killed 1 million Iraqis (mostly children) and that Galloway wanted to stop the killing. He also stated that he had protested the war, that it was all based on lies and that everything he and others, such as Chirac or Annan, had predicted about how the war not be simple had been bourne out. Furthermore he questioned why the US was investigating the UN OFP when it should have been investigating the profiteering etc. of the 14 months of the US adminstration - i.e. another attempt to play to his supporters and divert attention.
Senator Coleman ignored the grandstanding and based his cross examination with questions on Galloway's relationship with Fawaz Zureikat. Under questioning Gallowy confirmed that Galloway attended Zureikat's wedding (or vice versa), that Fawaz Zureikat had become the chairman of the Mariam Appeal that Galloway founded, that Zureikat was the 2nd biggest donor (the first and third, according to Galloway were the Sheik of one the UAE and a Saudi Prince) and Zureikat was the designated representative of the appeal in Iraq. It is clearly established that Zureikat and Galloway are buddies and that Zureikat is instrumental in the Mariam Appeal despite the various attempts as diversion by Galloway.
It is also interesting to note that the Telegraph documents alleged that Galloway received £375,000 a year from Hussein and that under Coleman's cross questioning Galloway stated that Fawaz Zureikat's donation to the Miriam Appeal was £375,000. Given that £375,000 seems to be a remarkably precise sum I wonder whether this helps validate the Telegraph documents?
Galloway repeated his utter denial of any link beween Aredio Petroleum and the Appeal and stated that if the document was correctly translated then it was wrong.
The questioning then moved on to Middle East ASI, a company owned by Fawaz Zureikat, whether Zureikat ever discussed trading oil with Galloway. Galloway spent a long time trying to avoid answering the question directly. He stated that everyone knew that Zureikat was trading with Iraq, that the Miriam Appeal announced that fact and used it to as its pitch for journalists visiting Iraq. Coleman doesn't let him get away with this non-answer and keeps on coming back to did Galloway know Zureikat was trading oil from Iraq. Galloway comes up with a curious waffle of it was none of my business, I never asked what he was trading in Iraq. Galloway denies receiving any money and claims that the Mariam Appeal was investigated by the UK's charity comission (+ gratuitous slur on Goldsmith) and every penny in and out was accounted for. This doesn't answer the question and does lead me to additional questions such as where did Zureikat's money that he donated come from and did he perhaps pay the kickback before the money entered the Appeal? Also it is worth noting that the idea that the Charities Commision actually cleared the Appeal is flat out false as Harry reminds us.
This is again unacceptable and the question is asked again. Answer is that Zureikat never gave Galloway a penny. Finally after being told to stop the BS and answer the question yes or no he states that he did not talk about oil to Zureikat until after the Daily Telegraph exclusive.
Senator Levin takes over and asks him whether he is claiming that the documents are forgeries. Galloway prevaricates but eventually admits that he is not stating that and would be willing to be more precise after he has made a closer examination.
Levin then asks him to assume that the document is correct and if so is he troubled that his freind Zureikat paid kickbacks to Saddam. Galloway initially tries the "everyone else was doing it why are you worried about Zureikat and not the American oil company. Levin states that the activities of Bay Oil trouble him(Levin) a lot and asks Galloway again about Zureikat. Galloway goes into a rant about what troubled him was the horrible sanctions killing 1 milllion Iraqis ans the OFP only providing 30c/Iraqi/day. He quotes some former US senator that the sanctions were "Infanticide masquerading as politics" and repeats that the sanctions troubled him "Not becasue of kickbacks. Not because people got rich. But because it killed Iraqis".
Again the question is asked and Galloway states he is troubled because his friend is in trouble. Levin asks if the fact that money for the Mariam Appeal may have come from someone paying kickbacks to Hussein troubles him. Galloway goes on about how Senators get their money from dodgy groups like AIPAC. Levin points out that US politicians almost always pay the money back when they discover that it is tainted in this way and since Galloway clearly isn't going to answer the initial question sticks it into the record that Galloway had no compunctions about accepting money from any source for the Mariam Appeal.
Finally there is a brief couple of questions about Tariq Aziz. It is established that Galloway did not discuss oil with Tariq Aziz. Coleman takes over and asks how many times Galloway met with Aziz. Many times and more than 10 times are the final answers.
Coleman leaves it there but it is rather a good ending for people with a memory because it rather shoots a hole in Galloway's "no freinds of Hussein" argument. It is clear that while Galloway may have met Saddam Hussein only twice he did indeed meet leaders of the Hussein regime "many times" contrary to his initial bluster.
I class the meeting as a draw because I don't think Galloway covered himself in glory but neither was he irretrievably wounded. He came across as a dodgy witness unwilling to answer a question but the questions were not exactly the sort that make for good headlines. To some extent Galloway is correct in that the documents do not show that he personally benefitted from the OFP or that he personally paid or knew about the bribes. Galloway basically claimed that he and Zureikat had a "Don't ask don't tell" policy and no compelling evidence is presented that clearly disproves that. To put it simply those who went in to this (as I do) thinking that he was guilty as sin heard nothing that would make us change our mind but likewise those who went in thinking him an innocent victime also heard nothing that would force them to chanee their mind either.
Fableweak should take note of the follwing example of how an author and journalist admits to an error. The entire corespondence is docuemnted. All relevant commentary is noted and corrected. The publisher (of the book) is asked to remove the incorrect statement. The error is clearly admitted with a clear explanation of how the error arose and why it was wrong. Compare with the semi-retraction, super-retraction etc. etc. of Fableweak or for that matter of CBS.
Update: Various commenters are stating that because Michelle took 9 months to respond to that particular retraction it is not really comparable. I disagree. If you have looked at Michelle's Erratum page over the year or so that the book has been out it has had corrections added as and when noted and that the page is clearly identified as the place to go. Had this particular error attracted more attention than it did I have no doubt that the process to correction would have been faster. Permalink
You may recall a few years ago the EU "helped" to ensure that certain southern African countries in the grip of famine rejected GM grains that would have been donated as food aid. The logic being that if the Africans distributed the GM food then the EU would be unwilling to accept any imports of food from those countries. As the linked article wrote:
Southern African leaders have concerns beyond the safety of GMfoods. Roughly half the region's agricultural exports are sold to the European Union, where there is loud opposition to GMfoods, and where they must be labelled as such. African farmers fear that if they are no longer able to certify that their foods are GM-free, they will lose their share in the European market.
Well not content with interfering in attempts to stop Africans starving to death, the EU is now attempting to get them to die of Malaria. As Kendra Okonski of the Commons Blog writes in the WSJ Europe today:
A few months ago, though, EU representatives casually suggested to Ugandan ministers that if Uganda chooses to use DDT for malaria control, exporters will have to procure expensive equipment to ensure that their products do not contain any amount of residual DDT; otherwise they will face sanctions against their agricultural products. This negotiating technique is also known as blackmail.
Given the chemical's success at reducing the incidence of malaria in southern African nations, it is only natural that Uganda and other African countries are also considering using the chemical to battle one of their biggest human and economic scourges. "DDT has been proven, over and over again, to be the most effective and least expensive method of fighting malaria," said Ugandan health minister Jim Muhwezi. "Europe and America became malaria-free because of using DDT, and now we too intend to get rid of malaria by using it."
But thanks to the EU's not-so-subtle threats, many Ugandans have now second thoughts whether they can afford to save their people from dying. The country's $32 billion in annual agricultural exports to the EU are at risk.
The point here is that the entire debate reeks of hypocrisy. As the article notes those southern African nations that were starving due to EU interference are not punished for also spreading DDT around - possibly because spraying a miniscule amount of DDT around human homes does not cause any pollution of crops grown in fields. Even Greenpeace is willing ot accept that DDT should be used in a controlled fashion to eradicate malaria
"If there's nothing else and it's going to save lives, we're all for it. Nobody's dogmatic about it," Greenpeace spokesperson Rick Hind said a few weeks ago, ahead of a meeting in Uruguay to negotiate the POPs treaty.
However EUrocrats are made of firmer stuff
Both to protect European farmers and satisfy activist demands, the EU has threatened the use of trade sanctions to uphold its stringent environmental rules. This means that while the EU may import food from Uganda, it would simultaneously seek to export its overly precautionary regulations -- e.g., requiring a zero residual level of DDT in agricultural goods -- to the country.
An article in the EU's newsletter about Uganda shows how EUrocrats can use data that is misleading if not inaccurate to claim a potential toxicity effect and then stretch that to claim that EU consumers would be scared - something that is potentially true only if someone stirs up a load of scientifically dubious drivel.
DDT is toxic, persistent and bioaccumulative in the tissues of living organisms, including man. Studies indicate that 50% of DDT can remain in the soil for as long as 10-15 years after application. It has been detected in human breast milk, is acutely toxic to birds and highly toxic to fish. There is therefore no doubt that DDT contaminates the food chain.
Because of these effects, the use of DDT is covered by the Stockholm Convention on ‘Persistent Organic Pollutants’ (POP), [...] DDT is banned for agricultural use in the EU. The EU has established Maximum Residue Levels (MRL’s) for DDT for both domestic and imported food and feedstuffs.
If Uganda is to use DDT for malaria control, it is advisable to do so under strictly controlled circumstances. The country would also have to set up a parallel system to monitor foodstuffs for the presence of DDT. This would ensure that any contamination of foodstuffs is detected and corrective measures taken. However, these measures may not be sufficient to allay the fears of individual consumers of Uganda’s food products in the EU.
To take the "scientific" statements at the top and analyse them is to see a classic example of suggestio falsi and suppressi veri. Firstly the 10-15 years persistency is precisely why Uganda wishes to spray it. However the plan is not to spray it indiscriminately but to target it on houses. Hence the chance of a measurable amount ending up in famer's fields is miniscule. Secondly DDT may well be toxic to birds and fish but its toxicity in humans is highly questionable - there is a professor who at a pinch of it once a year for 40 years with no obvious ill effects. Indeed a BBC article on the subject of African DDT spraying last year is quite clear that DDT is not toxic to humans except possibly in large doses.
Because of the way that olive trees are ruthlessly pruned through their life they frequently end up in odd shapes and with beautiful (to me) expanses of dead or nearly dead wood that is then weathered to add extra character. Here are two examples from trees near Mouans Sartoux station. My guess is that these trees are about 100 years old (give or take 20 years) and despite now being surrounded by litter, grafitti and tarmac somehow they still evoke the timelessness of the traditional life in the country.
The EU constitution is (duh) a compromise or a fudge between a number of incompatible goals. Indeed one might say the entire EU project is such a fudge. Thanks to the mainly left wing inspired French "non" campaigners though the backroom deals are becoming rather clearer to the general public within the EU. At the same time, the economic unsustainability of the core EU member's social policies is also becoming clear as EU Rota points out with reference to a recent S&P report.
One problem is that the EU fundamentally faces a dichotomy between those who wish for a single European market in goods and services - as I do - and those who want to project some sort of power. There are of course other clashes, such as in political traditions and so on but the big one is between the core EU nations - France Germany Belgium Italy ... - and the periphery in terms of their welfare policies and the resulting impact on their financial situation. It is due to the dire finances of the core that the fudge is coming unstuck. All this talk about "Bolkestein" and the like is code for "our economies are uncompetitive and we can't fix them without us leaders being swept from power and all the perks that go with it".
In an attempt to buy off or try to buy off the French socialists l'Escroc, his dachshund and his EU cronies are promising all sorts of things and apparently expecting that "les Anglo-saxons" will pay for it. Meanwhile the poor English are being told that there is no way they can have a better treaty than the one that is currently up for approval. The problem the elites have is that the Dutch are going to the vote a couple of days after the French and the Dutch population, if not their leaders, are now much more on the Anglo-saxon side of things rather than siding with the rest of the Eurozone.
If there is no convincing fudge - or of the fudge is seen to be at the expense of the UK then I would expect the UK's voters to come out strongly against the constitution. I also expect that the Eastern European populace will feel equally distrustful of the EU's core which seems to be on the point of requiring them to repeal all the laws that have made their economies competitive again. It will also not surprise me if the next Dutch election is fought on the EU and immigration policy with much ammunition being spent on the cocked-up Eurozone and the way that France and Germany blithely ignored all the "stability" rules when they felt like it. My guess is that the fudge is going to be replaced with a two speed Europe - aka a doughnut with an economic blackhole in the middle. The question is whether countries like the Netherlands can escape the gravitational pull of the black hole. Permalink
Former(?) marxist Martin Jacques has managed to finagle a "visiting professor[ship] at the International Centre for Chinese Studies at Aichi University in Japan" and on the strength of that is now able to produce a stream of duck-billed platitudes about Japan for his Grauniad readers. I suppose it is due to the requirement to write 1200 words in order to be paid that he manages to spout so much verbiage with so little content but I believe one could précis the majority of his article in the following three bullets and roughly 50 words:
Japan is different to other "western"/developed nations
The Japanese are more cooperative and have less ego and individualism
China and other Asian powers will be just as different to traditional western nations as Japan though possibly not in the same way
This is classic cliché territory and were that all I would be tempted to leave it there - there is not much point in trying to argue with such accepted wisdom, especially when it contains a kernel of truth - but Jacques manages to buttress his clichés with a collection of innaccuracies that shows that he is in fact not the expert on Japanese society that he would like to claim. Tim Worstall notes a couple of errors but there are plenty of others that deserve mention. So let us begin.
During Japan's crisis, western - mainly American - witch doctors advised that the only solution was to abandon Japanese customs like lifetime employment and adopt more Anglo-Saxon practices such as shareholder value.[...]In the event, Japan largely ignored the advice and has emerged from its long, post-bubble recession looking remarkably like it did before the crisis.
In the decade and a half since the height of the Japanese bubble, Japan's government debt has mushroomed to 140% of GDP from under 50% and its economy has suffered from persistent deflation and low growth and which, contrary to Jacques assertion, is not clearly over yet. The stock market, although it has recovered from is 2003 lows, is still at the level of the mid 1980s and unemployment is still over 5% compared to the pre-1990 levels of 2% or so. If this is success then failure begins to look attractive.
Even a casual observer who cannot understand Japanese will almost immediately notice the differences: the absence of antisocial behaviour, the courtesy displayed by the Japanese towards each other, the extraordinary efficiency and orderliness that characterise the stuff of everyday life, from public transport to shopping. For those of a more statistical persuasion, it is reflected in what are, by western standards, extremely low crime rates.
Gotta love those clichés. God forbid that one point out that Japan is not alone in these characteristics - Switzerland springs to mind, as does (or did - I haven't been there for a while) Norway. It is worth pointing out that Japan has a miniscule number of immigrants, unlike any other major developed economy - though I note that Switzerland doesn't have very many, and I can't help but wonder whether that has anything to do with the lack of "anti-social behaviour" etc. It is true that there aren't any gangs of unemployed druggie petty criminals, but just possibly that has to do with the 5% unemployment rate and the lack of much government social security.
Not least, it finds expression in the success of Japanese companies. This has wrongly been attributed to an organisational system, namely just-in-time production, which, it was believed, could be imitated and applied with equal effect elsewhere. But the roots of the success of a company such as Toyota lie much deeper: in the social relations that typify Japanese society and that allow a very different kind of participation by the workforce in comparison with the west. As a result, non-Japanese companies have found it extremely difficult to copy these ideas with anything like the same degree of success.
It's such a pity that Mr Jacques is still trawling around in cliché-land. A more sensitive economic observer would note that there are essentially two Japanese economies - the successful, market driven product companies and the bankrupt and hideously innefficient service companies. Mr Jacques might be interested to note that even though Toyota is a world leader not all Japanese manufacturers are so wonderful - Mitsubishi Motors to pick an example not completely at random. At Mitsubishi Motors the workforce was able to participate in coverup after coverup and the social cohesion he raves about meant that whistle-blowers were strongly discouraged.
Following the recent train crash in which 106 people died, the president of the operating company, JR West, was forced to resign: this is the normal and expected response of a company boss when things go seriously wrong. Income differentials within large corporations are much less than in their Anglo-Saxon equivalents, because it is group cohesion rather than individual ego that is most valued.
Resignation does not always mean what Mr Jacques thinks it does. Frequently the gentleman who resigns just takes up another position in the company. And the reason for the lack of income differential is that the Japanese tax system which punished severely large salaries. However the chaps at the top get numerous perks which don't seem to flow down to those lower down - a company provided car and driver or very nice expensive restaurant meals for example.
Even the preferred choice of car reflects the differing ethos: whereas in the US and Britain, the fashionable car of choice is a 4x4 - the very embodiment of a "bugger you and the environment" individualism - the equivalent in Japan is the tiny micro-car, much smaller than a Ford Ka - a genre that is neither made nor marketed in the UK.
This one is one of the ones that Tim noted. Just as with the income differential the micro-car is a product of a tax differential. It is also something to do with the street widths in many Japanese cities. However notwithstanding that there are plenty of big cars, 4x4s etc. on the streets and even more when you go outside the cities to the countryside. "Bugger you and the environment" is alive and well in Japan from its spread of concrete everywhere to pervasive loud speakers and other noise pollution to the water quality of many rivers. I would far rather swim in any river in the UK than one passing through a major city in Japan. Permalink
Sorry for the lack of updates. A trip to the UK and a requirement to do some work coinciding with a major kitchen refit has caused me to lack a certain amount of free time. Anyway I'm back now. I believe I have said before that it is almost impossible to kill an olive tree. Today's picture is an example of this. I saw this tree as I walked to the village yesterday to buy bread. Someone really cocked up the pruning and as a result all the leafy twiglets that were left behind to keep it going are dead. However the stumps are happily producing new shoots of green anyway so the tree as a whole is still going strong.
By my count the US constitution has 7 Articles and contains around 4600 words in total (including words such as Article AA, Section SS Clause CC but excluding title and the names of the signers) fitting on roughly 10 pages when nicely laid out. Admittedly the various ratified amendments add a bit to this but even adding them it is hard to do more than double the total size.
The proposed EU constitution has a Preamble, Four Parts and a Final Act but just its table of contents alone contains nearly 2000 words and occupies roughly half the amout of space as the entire US constitution. The entire constitution is 485 pages which contains just under 160,000 words.
Is it any wonder that people say they haven't read it? Permalink
Once upon a time, best beloved, there was a newspaper that originated in an industrial wasteland in the North of England that was known far and wide for its inability to splel corerctly. That newspaper was therefore renamed by Private Eye to an anagram of its name - Grauniad. An update to today's Dlaiy Abultion today illustrates why that name remains despite the possibly unreasonable expectation that modern technology would help.
...In correcting a misspelling of Elie Wiesel's first name yesterday, we incorrectly, and embarrassingly, spelled his second name as Weisel (page 27). Apologies.
The headline on yesterday's report of the House of Commons invasion trial, Minister's shock at anti-hunt protest (page 6), was completely wrong. It was a pro-hunt protest.
Violinist Joshua Bell is misnamed as Julian in today's pre-printed Friday Review, in the feature headlined Ludwig or bust, page 4.
#&183; It is the policy of the Guardian to correct significant errors as soon as possible....
Not only does the Grauniad manage to make errors in its corrections, confuse pro- and anti- and manage to completely cock up names, its corrections department seems unable to handle basic HTML with #&183; instead of · leading to something odd rather than just a · If I were Elie Wiesel I think I'd be relieved that I wasn't referred to as Elly Weasel at some point in the proceedings...
A few weeks ago I stated that I didn't think much of either the French Non or Oui campaigns:
The "Oui" campaign is trying to push for European economic stagnation along the Franco-German model wheras the "Non" campaigners are trying to push for a more complete Soviet style economic collapse.
The campaigning in the days since then have only strengthened that impression. I am, as the regular reader of the blog is aware, staunchly against the proposed constitution but, while I disagree with the constitution, most of the rhetoric on the "non" side is utter tosh.
Exhibit 1 in the "utter tosh" category is the poster illustrated on the left (appropriately). The protectionist claims at the top - "no to off-shoring and lower salaries" - are a sign that the communists don't grasp history or how capitalism functions, which should be no surprise. Protectionism is a seemingly logical response to problems that has never worked ever, not even in those Asian "Tiger" economies and there is a good argument that protectionism helped cause/prolong the 1930s depression - see also post WW2 India, Brazil etc. The plea for "harmonization" of social security at the highest level shows not just a lack of knowledge of capitalism but a more fundamental failure to understand basic sums - to put it bluntly "Who pays?"
Of course you have to feel a little sorry for them because the French answer to "who pays" is always "the government" and the question of how the government should balance its books is of sublime disinterest to everyone except the unfortunates who end up drawing the short straw and paying the taxes.
France has just twigged that the European Community has been dedicated to open competition since the start, and that the constitution appears to consolidate doctrines alien to France’s tradition of strong state regulation.
“We know these are old ideas, but now we realise that we cannot abrogate them or change anything. I don’t have hard feelings towards the British because they suffered from a social shredding machine called Margaret Thatcher. So the British are less shocked than us by the harshness of the treaty. We have a high level of social protection and I do not want that (British) future for my children.”
and so on.
Of course they are right about some things; as I noted earlier today, the 400+ pages of the EU constitution is a bloated joke compared to a real constitution and the scare mongering by the "oui" campaign is also total bollocks. Indeed the "oui" campaign and the rest of the Euro elites are showing more and more their total contempt for democracy and the idea that the European dream should be derailed by the actions of mere voters. Today's Torygraph has some great quotes from students at "Sciences Po," one of the elite academies in Paris:
"Here at Sciences Po we have additional information to work with, compared to the population at large," he said. "We study European law."
To Mr Hatton, many French No voters had largely missed the point of the referendum, and were voting in protest against the government of President Jacques Chirac. "That's the risk of asking the people," he observed.
Alexandre Causse, 18, said it was only fair to put the constitution to a referendum but he admitted to reservations.
"Entrusting the people with the task of understanding such a complex text, well that's very ambitious," he said.
Luc Vernhet, 20, said: "The principle of a referendum is good."
But he added: "If we had asked deputies in the National Assembly, they would have ratified the treaty by a 90 per cent margin."
Mathieu Leblanc was less charitable. "It was really stupid, idiotic to hold a referendum," he complained, to a chorus of shushing from his friends.
"The French people haven't a clue about Europe. It's not logical to ask them to understand a text 115 pages long."
And it isn't just the brash students who hold the plebs in contempt, professors do too and the politicians themselves are now saying that if the voters vote no then either their votes will be ignored or they will be told to vote again until they vote yes.
Solidly rejected too with a high turn out at about 55% voting against. L'escroc est dans la merde!!! and it couldn't happen to a more deserving case Permalink
One striking thing about the EU constitution vote, is that in their attempt to bribeconvince the French electorate, l'Escroc and his ministers overturned just about every economic reform they had already implemented and managed to put the brakes on other reformist European legislation. l'Escroc's dachshund has been just as wishy washy on the other side of the Rhine too and Signor Face Lift in Rome has been no better.
The FT has an editorial about this touchy subject today where it makes the excellent point that national politicians have tended to blame Brussels for unpopular reforms and how this has now backfired. It also makes the excellent point that
Third, and perhaps most important, has been the failure by governments to explain reforms. Governments have portrayed economic reform primarily as a belt-tightening exercise to improve competitiveness against Asia and Eastern Europe, rather than as a long-term strategy to improve economic growth.
This has been a huge tactical error. With wage costs in eastern Europe about a tenth of those in the west, it is no surprise that electorates are sceptical about the benefits of competitiveness-based reforms. At the same time, they are far more certain about the prospect of their own personal impoverishment, as the high savings rates in France, Germany and Italy show.
The reforms these countries need are those tailored to increase long-term growth. They include changes to their education systems and liberalisation of markets, including but not only labour markets. What deters high technology investment in continental Europe is not wage levels but the lack of qualified labour, restrictive hiring-and-firing laws and excessive regulation.
The last sentence is neatly illustrated by George at EU-Rota with a look at the Rigidity of Emplyment index and the unemployment rate.
Essentially the politicians of Europe have been unwilling to put a strategic necessity ahead of a tactical one. The mostly left-wing press in Europe doesn't help, but it is the lack of any attempt to make the case properly that has doomed economic reforms in Europe. I do not know precisely how this will continue but I predict that protectionism will rear its ugly head - indeed it already has to some degree. If this continues then the EU will follow the Russian and the Ottoman Empires into decline and eventual collapse. Unfortunately for Europe though no one else will notice because the new Asian giants, India and China, will provide all the products previously made by Europe without any problem.
Fortunately I do not believe that all EU nations will necessarily band together to commit group suicide in this fashion. Indeed I wrote a ten days ago that I thought the EU could split between the rigid, protectionist "core" and the more free-market edge and if we don't see any serious attempts at reform in the core I believe this will eventually prove to be the case. Eastern European politicians and voters seems less than enthralled with parts of the EU so the opportunity for the UK to lead a large breakaway group is present. The big question is what happens to those unfortunate nations who signed up to the Euro but may now be looking for an exit - Ireland and the Netherlands spring to mind here.
Thanks to The Welfare State We're In blog I can bring you this Grauniad story about how EVIL EUROPEAN INSPIRED REGULATIONS are potentially causing the death of thousands.
European red tape is impeding research into new hygiene measures to combat hospital superbugs, including MRSA, it was claimed today.
Researchers at the University of Manchester said European Union regulations were holding up clinical trials to test the effectiveness of three essential oils, usually used in aromatherapy, in tackling superbugs.
The team tested 40 essential oils on 10 of the most dangerous bacteria and fungi including MRSA (methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus) and E coli. Two of the oils killed the bugs almost immediately, and a third was found to have a beneficial effect over a longer period of time.
Researchers now want to carry out trials on healthy volunteers who are carrying MRSA but are not infected by it. It is estimated that between 20% and 40% of people in the UK carry MRSA, mostly in their noses or on their skin, without any ill effects.
But nurse and aromatherapist Jacqui Stringer, clinical head of complementary therapies at the Christie hospital in Manchester, said the European clinical trials directive was slowing their progress. The directive was applied in the UK a year ago by the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency (MHRA).
What next? do bears still defecate in arborial surroundings? has the Pope converted to the Chruch of Jesus Christ and the Latter Day Saints? will Dominque De Villepin launch a radical program of tax-cuts, privatization and social security reform with the enthusiastic support of the overwhelming majority of Frenchmen? Permalink I despise l'Escroc and Vile
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