Remarkable.
I guess he figured the truth would come out anyway. I’m sure he would disapprove of my headline, but can’t see how else one could interpret his remarks. Or am I being shrill?
The news reports are unsatisfactory. It sounds as if he wasn’t very apologetic. How did he justify his behaviour?
I’m hoping Edward will give us a more informed take.
Our blogroll is meant to be a sort of mini-directory of good european blogs. I’m always looking for blogs to add, so I thought I’d ask for sugggestions. I?m especially interested in blogs with an European perspective and ones covering the politics of a European country or region, but any good blogs are of interest, even non-europeans.
“I was covering Nikitin’s trial in 1999, and after one session in court I asked the prosecutor to comment on the progress of the case.
‘If I were you I would be very careful,’ responded the prosecutor, Alexander Gutsan. ‘Particularly since you have a little boy.'”
Just saw this. A Swedish priest was sentenced to a month in jail for a sermon where he donounced homosexuality in fairly offensive terms, – said homosexuality had caused aids, but without calling for violence or anything like that.
This is so wrong. So very wrong. There’s little very little debate, little attention piaid to this.
I think the french anti-scarves/turbans/etc laws weren’t primarily about islamophobia, and that that issue is very much related to this one. Which brings us to another piece of depressing news:
Banning Muslim headscarves in state schools does not violate the freedom of religion and is a valid way to counter Islamic fundamentalism, the European Court of Human Rights says.
“In what could be a precedent-setting decision, the Strasbourg-based court rejected appeals by a Turkish student who was barred from attending Istanbul University medical school because her headscarf violated the official dress code.
The court decision, which takes precedence over national court rulings, could help the French government face court cases it expects to be filed in September against a headscarf ban it plans to impose in state high schools.”
As you may have heard by now, Portuguese prime minister Jos? Manuel Dur?o Barroso will be the new president of the European commission. He’s a compromise candidate, after Verhofstadt, Patten and like a dozen others were rejected. Some say that’s bad, diminishing his authority, but really the only of his predecessors that weren’t a compromise was Prodi, and that went real well didn’t it?
Another national high level politician, not a commissioner as some had speculated and/or wished for. Prodi’s initial problems had a lot to do with a lack of knowledge of how things worked in Brussels, but Delors and Juncker, also without Brussels experience. didn’t have that problem IIRC, and Prodi were both mediocre for all of his term (Juncker too.)
He’s quite rightwing, a departure from a a quarter century of center-leftists, which will probably make a difference. But the EC is a collective, and the president is under a lot of other constraints, so don’t know how significant. But a deemphasizing of some parts of the agenda in favor of others, certainly.
Atlanticist, was at the Azores with Bush, Blair and Aznar. Has attracted a lot of commentary, but the president has little influence there. I think if anything it illustrates that the transatlantic relationsship is not that important a issue for the EU, and doesn’t drive conflicts. Americans persist in viewing Euro politics in in terms of who’s ‘pro-US’, ‘anti-US’. Am still glad it wasn’t Verhostadt.
CW is that he’s made a good job as PM. Budget rot, avoided the usual Eurozone deficit rot. (Actually it’s only the big countries.)
“Gradual federalist.” Not as ardent as Verhofstadt thankfully. I do want someone who represents his institution forcefully, though maybe not as succesfully as Delors.
“Tenacity, not charisma” says FT. Seems fine for this job. “Unbending reputation” says AP, ie consistently budget hawk and pro-Iraq war in the face of much opposition. Good I guess?
Will Barroso do a better job? Will he even take back some of the authority the EC has lost ocver the last decade? From what little i know, cautious optimism may be justified. But really, no idea. Prodi’s personal qualities that served him well as PM turned out to be the wrong ones for this job. Barroso is much less known than Prodi was then, so how would I know?
Re the last question the weakening of the commission is due to larger forces than Prodi and Juncker’s various failings, and Delors success was really mostly Kohl and Mitterand’s success, so you can argue the’yve gotten a bum rap, but I think they were fairly unimpressive regardless of that, so here’s hoping Barroso will be an improveement.
One of the choicest paragraphs, from a choice review of Bill Clinton’s autobiography: “That somehow a long, dense book by the world’s premier policy wonk should be worth that much money is amusing, and brings us back to Clinton’s long coyote-and-roadrunner race with the press. The very press that wanted to discredit him and perhaps even run him out of town instead made him a celebrity, a far more expensive thing than a mere president. Clinton’s now up there with Madonna, in the highlands that are even above talent. In fact, he and Madonna may, just at the moment, be the only ones way up there, problems having arisen with so many lesser reputations.”
If the Times link has expired, try here.
The Washington Post doesn’t think much of Europe’s efforts to get Iran to cooperate with international inspection of its nuclear programs. “So far, only carrots have been offered — and they have produced no results.”
Elections to the European Parliament is tomorrow for some of you, the 13th for most of us. What party do you plan to vote for? (Will you vote?) Why?
[Accidentallly published a draft. Sorry.]
Johan “In defense of Global Capitalism” Norberg really doesn’t like Joseph Stiglitz, but he really, really likes Jagdish Bhagwati. I found that interesting because my impression – based on reading op-eds and reviews of their respective globo books – was that while Stiglitz has adopted the posture of a critic of “globalization” and Bhagwati the one of a defender, they don’t actually disagree much on any substansive issues. But maybe I’m wrong?
I also note with interest that he’s a fan of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.