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| Europe |
| Soiled Rotten |
| 2004-12-04 |
| I should have been an interior decorator because I just adore patterns. Check out these sweet accents: In France, a French court let stand their conviction of Alain Juppé, Jacques Chirac's loyal sideman, for fraud. But, according to Libération, his sentence was cut in half because the court thought it was unfair for Juppé, a member first-class of the French ruling élite, to have to wait more than a year before returning to the public trough. According to an earlier report in the Guardian, 12 more Chirac cronies may soon be charged with vote-rigging. Juppé resigned as mayor of Bordeaux — but according to the BBC, Nicholas Sarkozy moved one step closer to Chirac's instep by taking over as head of his party. In the eastern Congo, scene of an operation that began as an EU military display under French leadership and is now one of the U.N.'s biggest peacekeeping missions ever, the blue helmets have apparently been routinely sexually abusing pre-pubescent refugee girls, creating a camp full of 13-year-old mothers. Months ago, the U.N. promised to issue a report on the situation. It was finally released two weeks ago, according to the BBC. The outcome: Kofi Annan released a statement saying "it is vital that the investigations be speeded up." Meanwhile, according to Le Nouvel Observateur, an effort to investigate the atrocious killing of at least 20 civilians in Ivory Coast by French soldiers operating under a U.N. mandate is being opposed by a member of Chirac's party. Bruno Jose Lebeau's blog draws the instructive parallel between what the French army did in Abidjan and what went on in Abu Ghraib. In New York, Kofi himself is the star of the U.N.'s Oil-for-Food scandal, of course. The world's biggest humanitarian heist is playing to amused readers in Paris. Le Monde reports that every European's favorite bureaucrat (along with the sacred bureaucracy for which he works) was under fire from the likes of Sen. Norm Coleman, National Review, and a roster of conservative allies. Since the French role in the scandal has been largely unreported, Le Monde's story has a taint of the witch-hunt about it. Besides, according to an AFP report on expatica.com, Chirac and Schroeder are behind Annan 100 percent. (Annan is frantically looking for his wallet.) In Brussels, fraud is, as always, on the rise in the EU, according to the EU Observer. The report glosses over the EU's detention of Stern investigative reporter Hans-Martin Tillack and the seizure of his files. Tillack's reporting focuses on EU corruption. Two weeks ago, I noted here news reports that showed that almost none of the EU's spending could be warranted to be fraud-free. In Germany, the International Herald Tribune is reporting that the abuse of German army conscripts is part of a widening scandal. "The accusations involve stories of instructors dressed in Arab costumes beating recruits, giving them electric shocks and dousing them with cold water," the paper reports, even though none of the recruits are Iraqis. The report comes after scandals surfaced in German defense spending. Meanwhile, Spiegel reports that a couple of U.S. leftists have been welcomed into German courts to file a suit against Donald Rumsfeld for "war crimes" committed by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib. I haven't even gotten to the EU-Palestinian money scam and all the rest, but I just can't go on — mostly because I'm not paid by the word. The point is you could be forgiven for thinking that opposition to U.S. policies in Iraq and elsewhere is a consequence of ideological or strategic disagreements. But there is no ideology any more. There's only anti-Americanism, scandal, and corruption. And of course stupidity: According to a survey of 4,000 Britons under the age of 35 reported in the Independent, 60 percent of them have never heard of Auschwitz, and of those who thought the name was familiar, three quarters really didn't know much about what had gone on there. At least they'll never forget. |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #4 Excellent analysis. Some good stuff has been coming out of NRO lately. |
| Posted by: Ptah 2004-12-04 2:34:05 PM |
| #3 I stand corrected Bd. Hee hee. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2004-12-04 1:47:54 PM |
| #2 Shipman - I think that makes Mike the evil twin... |
| Posted by: Bulldog 2004-12-04 1:33:59 PM |
| #1 Tipper is Mikes evil, yet honest, twin. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2004-12-04 11:14:49 AM |