Unemployment falls and salaries increase in Tony Blair's Britain. The jobless rate is at 4.8%, the lowest since recording started in 1984. This compares extremely favourably to other EU states.
The UK has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the world at 4.8% compared with 11.2% in Spain, 9.4% in France, 9.3% in Germany, 9.2% in Greece and 8.5% in Italy.
Not exactly an opinion poll, but Omar at Iraq the Model (via InstaPundit) has a very interesting observation:
I've been visiting the BBC Arabic site in the last few days and I found a forum where people from many Arab countries –including Iraq- post their opinions about some hot topics, the main of those is Iraq and terrorism of course. I wasn't surprised to see that most Arabs (especially from Egypt, Palestine, Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Syria) are forming one side of the debates while Iraqis and people from the rest of the gulf countries are taking the other side. But I was surprised when I found that the almost all the Iraqis who took part in the debates are on our side, maybe 95% of Iraqis expressed their rejection to the violent behavior of some Iraqis and condemned the terrorists attacks on both Iraqis and the coalition saying that the Arab world must stop supporting the terrorists and the thugs from inside Iraq. It's also surprising that many of those Iraqis live in areas that are recognized to have a public anti American attitude in general like A'adhamiya, Diyala and Najaf. I feel that those people are still afraid to voice their points of view in public in such hostile atmospheres but the internet is providing them freedom and safety to say whatever they believe in.
The current situation gives a voice to the extremists that enjoy little support. Unfortunately, as the situation escalates, the extremists may gain further support, simply because many in the silent majority lose faith, Therefor it is essential that power is transferred to a legitimate Iraqi body as soon as absolutely possible, even if the security situation is less than ideal.
And, Sistiani is right: if at all possible, there should be elections soon. When good people (or even somewhat dubious people) are elected to power, those who elected them are likely to stand by them and protect them from radicals.
Back in November, I thought the power transfer in June this year was too fast. As the situation is now, I have to reconsider. But I still think this would have been a good idea
I would hope for local elections in Iraq before the national ones, to let people get used to democracy, to get political parties and alliances working and also to get the election apparatus working.
I think there has been a lost opportunity by not having local elections shortly after the major combat operations ended. Oh well.
Leftists like Daily Kos and Michael Moore have picked up the Iraqi Information Minister's favourite invective and calls private security guards and bodyguards in Iraq "mercenaries."
(a) is specially recruited locally or abroad in order to fight in an armed conflict;
(b) does, in fact, take a direct part in the hostilities;
(c) is motivated to take part in the hostilities essentially by the desire for private gain and, in fact, is promised, by or on behalf of a Party to the conflict, material compensation substantially in excess of that promised or paid to combatants of similar ranks and functions in the armed forces of that Party;
(d) is neither a national of a Party to the conflict nor a resident of territory controlled by a Party to the conflict;
(e) is not a member of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict; and
(f) has not been sent by a State which is not a Party to the conflict on official duty as a member of its armed forces.
Note that all these conditions must be met for someone to be a mercenary.
Kos did explicitly, and Moore implicitly, refer to the four US contractors killed in Fallujah as "mercenaries." Obviously, it is lost on them that it is not possible to be a mercenary in a conflict where your own country is a party. Americans cannot be mercenaries in Iraq, because the US is a party to the conflict, per (d). The same would apply to Britons, naturally Iraqis, or nationals and residents of any other country that has troops in Iraq or has directly supported either side in the conflict.
Point (c), "essentially by the desire for private gain" is more murky and is of course down to individuals. But as the term is often defined, it means that if the opposing party in the conflict offered 10% higher salaries, they would be likely to switch side. I sincerely doubt that applies to many, if any, of the contractors presently in Iraq.
That is a rather moot point in this case, however, since (c) excludes private contractors from the accusation of being a mercenary by specifying they had to be paid to fight "by or on behalf of a Party to the conflict", which is very different from being paid to protect an oil pipeline or being bodgyguards for employees that maintain water plants or the electricity grid. It is worth noting that even if a private company does work on behalf of a party (say, a company transports gasoline based on a contract with the US government or army), that doesn't mean that its bodyguards are paid to take part in the conflict "on behalf of" the party. The difference is that the contractual obligation is to e.g. transport gasoline, not to provide a certain number of fighters for the conflict. The company's decision to employ guards is based on its own evaluation of the security situation, not because it is contractually obliged to a party to do so.
PS: This page offers long explanations to the definitions and terms in the Geneva convention.
There are few words which suffer greater misuse these days than the term mercenary. Whenever an armed opposition movement arises against a particular cause, the adversary is immediately defined as a mercenary.
The radical left is mindlessly copying the invectives of the Baathists and Jihadists. And those weren't very original themselves.
Not surprisingly, this offer was soundly rebuffed all over Europe. Even incoming Spanish prime minister Jose Luis Zapatero.rejected the truce offer decisvely:
"There is no sense to terrorism. There is no policy in terrorism. There is just terror, death, blackmail"
Naturally. Europe may be soft, but having its weakness rubbed in its face in this way may help to wake up sleeping Europeans in a way that 3/11 failed to do. Europeans may appease its enemies, but will never do so openly or admit even to themselves that this is what they do. Rather, they will rationalise the decision to e.g. withdraw from Iraq using some other grounds and justifications.
In fact, on its face this truce offer looks like a total miscalculation by Bin Laden, so stupid that Bjørn Stærk jokes that this tape may have been the work of the CIA to bolster European support for the war on terror.
So what on earth was Bin Laden thinking? After giving this some thought, it is my conclusion that crafty as the truce offer may be, us Europeans aren't its real target audience.
The tape is really sending a message to fence-sitting conservative Muslims around the world who sympathise with Bin Laden and the Al-Qaeda but think they are too extreme. He is playing for a greater support (if nothing else: moral, economic and logistical) from conservative muslims and hopes to sway them to his case by trying to portray himself as more moderate than previously believed.
Second, he is addressing the radical Muslim population in Europe who may nevertheless have scruples about attacking their own host country. When Europe refuses to accept Bin Laden's honest and generous offer of a truce, it may harden them in their resolve to aid the jihad against us infidels.
If he should actually succeed in also swaying some Europeans, impressed by rhetoric that sounds suspiciously like typical European pro-Palestinian leftist speak, that would simply be an added bonus.
Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin has unwittingly rewritten World War II history, by repeatedly recalling the 1944 allied invasion of Norway during a speech in New Brunswick:
"Sixty years ago, Canadians were working alongside their British and American allies planning for the invasion of Norway and the liberation of Europe," Martin said without batting an eye.
In fact, the slip-up seemed to cause little stir throughout the room, even though it is a famous fact of history that Normandy, not Norway, was the scene of the famous landings.
Wrong country, more than 1,000 kilometers apart... it can be hard to keep up. But it's actually true that Normandy is named after the Norsemen.
PS: This is supposedly the text of the speech, and that one is correct. Either Martin had a different version, or he misspoke.
PS 2: I bet this would be a huge story if Bush had made the same mistake!
The Italian security guard Fabrizio Quattrocchi (picture), who along with three others have been held hostage by unknown Iraqi militants, has been brutally murdered.
The Arab news channel Al-Jazeera says it received video footage from the execution, but refused to air it because it was "too gruesome."
Wait a minute!
Al Jazeera and its competitors Abu Dhabi TV and Al-Arabiya have been competing since the start of the war to show the most amount of blood and gore from Iraq ("political porno"), doing anything to inflame public opinion against the coalition. What in the world would make them suddenly think twice about a westerner being shot on camera?
That one is not so hard to answer, when we learn how Mr Quattrocchi died.
As the gunman's pistol was pointing at him the hostage "tried to take off his hood and shouted: 'now I'll show you how an Italian dies,'" he said.
As Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said, "he died a hero."
Of course, Al-Jazeera would never show the true face of the Iraqi "resistance": a bunch of cowardly armed thugs, shooting a helpless, bound and hooded man, and hearing him say the above words in defiance.
It would be too obvious for its Arab audience who were the villains and who were the heroes.
The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) is no doubt a dubious source, but their recent claims about Iranian infiltation at least fits the facts we know from elsewhere:
The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), listed by the United States as a terrorist group, said Iranian agents had infiltrated the Iraqi police force and Iranian Shi'ite clerics were present in towns and villages throughout Iraq.
Tehran "has sent thousands of troops into Iraq and thousands of arms so as to be able to intervene there better," Mohammad Mohaddessin, head of the NCRI's foreign affairs commission, told reporters in Paris, where it has an office.
I guess the NCRI has every interest in coming on the US' good side.
On the other hand, hasn't the US a bargaining chip versus Iran here? If the US should release its fighters, remove the "terrorist" label from the group, and accept that it operated from Iraqi territory, I suspect the Iranian mullahs would not be too happy.
The Italian security guard 
