My favorite blogger, Kevin “Calpundit” Drum, has gone professional. He now blogs at the Washington Monthly.
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Newly released polls from Spain show that the PSOE may have been in the lead before last Thursday. More discussion of this at Harry’s Place
Digitally Scared.
No doubt about it – revolutions are truly scary. Whether you think of the French one, the ones that freed Eastern Europe, or the digital revolution that is currently changing much of the transactional structure of our economies, and in particular the music industry. But contrary to most people, I do pity major label executives who never even stood a chance of understanding just what happened to them. After all, this is an industry where the average person?s desk had not seen a computer in 1996, as some insider once said.
Spanish Troops With A UN/NATO Mandate?
I haven’t much to say about this that I haven’t already said, but the idea of Spain forming part of a NATO contingent which is under a UN mandate would seem to me to represent real progress.
“Yes there is some doubt about the Spanish contingent but otherwise the Iraq force is there,” said one. “It will just be a question of changing their badges and flags to ‘NATO’.”
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How Spain voted
Both Chris Brooke and Matthew Turner have raised the suggestion that the Socialist victory in Spain may not have been caused by an actual swing in the electorate from the Popular Party (PP) to the Socialists (PSOE) after Thursday, but rather by the attacks in Madrid inspiring more people to go out and vote. With the majority of these new voters trending towards the left and the PSOE, the argument goes, this meant that they can attribute their victory to these new voters, rather than voters who switched from the PP to the PSOE.
Curious about whether or not this is true, I took a look at the actual election results and there is evidence there to support this view. However, any conclusions from this evidence are necessarily tentative and speculative, as the evidence could be interpreted many ways.
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Six Moroccans Identified in Madrid Bombing
Well, little by little the details are getting clearer. According to the Spanish daily El Pais the police now know the identity of six Moroccans who are thought to have participated in Thursday’s bombing.
According to the newspaper one of those responsible is Jamal Zougan from Tangiers who has been identified from photographs by two passengers from one of the bombed trains. These passengers have also identified two more people who accompanied Zougan that day. These latter two are thought by police to have been combatants in Chechenia and Bosnia. Zougan also shared a flat at one time with Abdelaziz Benyaich who is under preventive detention in Spain for his presumed association with the bombing of a Spanish cultural centre in Casablanca last year.
Oh, what a tangled web they weave!
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After Madrid, there’ll be a series of emergency EU meetings to discuss greater co-operation over terror
Fair and Balanced?
Two versions of the Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero story, Fox and Bloomberg, choose for yourselves.
BTW: anyone out there help me: what is the Blair/Labour Government official position right now on the UN and troop withdrawal? Just to put this in some sort of perspective.
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More on the Spanish elections
If you’re looking for an eminently sensible warning againt misinterpreting the PSOE’s electoral upset of the PP, see Edward’s post below. This here is just my own ?0.02 cast in about the margins.
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How Not To Pick The IMF’s Chief
Trying to get away from the emotionally traumatising, this article caught my eye. Clearly it relates to my earlier post, and does have a Spanish connection, if only a rather tangential one.
I thoroughly endorse what the Financial Times has to say. We need multilateralism now more than ever. We should not simply think ‘Europe First’, and:
The IMF needs considerable reform: its voting structure is out of date; its resources are too small; and its ability to lead the global debate on macroeconomic adjustment and exchange rates is too weak.
Here, here. Especially the point about leading the debate on macroeconomic adjustment and exchange rates. If you want to fight terrorism more effectively, perhaps here might be a good place to start.
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