But speaking here in my capacity as a polished, sophisticated European as well, it seems to me the laugh here is on the polished, sophisticated Europeans. They think Americans are fat, vulgar, greedy, stupid, ambitious and ignorant and so on. And they‘ve taken as their own, as their representative American someone who actually embodies all of those qualities.
The ATM on the above picture is right down the street from where I live. In the background you can see the main police station in Bergen. Criminals had been attaching sensors and a camera to the ATM to defraud customers by copying their cards and reading the code. A customer discovered the extra equipment and ran in to the police station with it. Nobody has been arrested, yet.
The good news is that I haven't used that ATM in months. There is another one closer to me.
No surprise here: US journalists are far more leftist (I hate the misnomer 'liberal') than the average American, according to the Pew Research Center.
While most of the journalists, like many Americans, describe themselves as "moderate," a far higher number are "liberal" than in the general population.
At national organizations (which includes print, TV and radio), the numbers break down like this: 34% liberal, 7% conservative. At local outlets: 23% liberal, 12% conservative. At Web sites: 27% call themselves liberals, 13% conservatives.
This contrasts with the self-assessment of the general public: 20% liberal, 33% conservative.
Obviously, on the local level, where people personally experience the impact of policies, journalists have a limited influence of what voters will think and do. For international issues, however, people base their views to a large degree on the media. Which is why the press has a much larger influence on what people think about Iraq than the economy at home.
If you think this is problematic, Norwegian journalists are far worse. Remember that the Norwegian political landscape is effectively social-democrat and socialist only. For one, there is no party with parliamentary representation that is opposed to our welfare state system. Yet, even here journalists overwhelmingly vote socialist. From Norwegian journalists Socialist Left (SV) and Labour (Ap) received fully 70 % of the vote! These parties are currently in the opposition, and together received no more than 37% of the general vote in the last election (Ap 24.3%, SV 12.5%; a historically disastrous result for Labour, but a very good result for the Socialist Left).
Small wonder only 8 % of the Norwegian public have great confidence in our media.
One serious accusation is that Chalabi and other INC members were spying for Iran, and that they passed on classified information from US intelligence to Tehran. That begs the question on whether (and why) Chalabi had access to US secrets. Obviously, as a member of the provisional Iraqi authorities he had access to lots of secrets about Iraq, but "highly classified material" on troop movements and "top-secret communications"?
Another accusation, which at least fits everything we know about the INC, is that Chalabi channeled Iraqi defectors to a number of countries, so the CIA's estimates about Saddam's WMD capabilities were corraborated by allied intelligence services, creating an impression of facts supported by multiple sources when in fact there was only one: the INC.
Because even friendly spy services rarely share the identities of their informants or let outsiders meet or debrief their sources, it has only in recent months become clear that Chalabi's group sent defectors with inaccurate or misleading information to Denmark, England, Italy, France, Germany, Spain and Sweden, as well as to the United States, the officials said.
As a result, the officials said, U.S. intelligence analysts in some cases used information from now-discredited "foreign intelligence sources" to corroborate their own assessments of Hussein's suspected chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs. Few of the CIA's prewar judgments have been proved accurate so far.
And these defectors all proved to be frauds who gave wildly inaccurate information.
I have no problem seeing Chalabi having a motive to do this very thing. The INC's primary objective in life was to free Iraq from Saddam Hussein's tyranny. If the case to do so by force appeared weak, there would surely have been temptation to improve on reality. That is what appears to have happened.
Where I have problems following this line of thought is when Chalabi's critics now claim that the INC tricked the US into attacking Saddam on the behest of the Iranians.
W. Patrick Lang, a former chief of Middle East intelligence for the DIA, said Chalabi and his American-backed organization were a clear target for Iranian intelligence.
"He had complete access to senior people in the Pentagon, and then in the CPA," Lang said. "He was a participant in high-level discussions. He was head of de-Baathification, which put him in place to bar from future office any Sunni Arab he wants. If you're the Iranians, what more could you want?"
Lang said an alleged Iranian spy in Chalabi's high command had "perfect access as an agent in place. You couldn't ask for a better operation from the Iranian point of view."
Hussein's Sunni Muslim-dominated regime invaded Iran's Shiite-led theocracy in 1980, and as many as 1 million people were killed in combat and chemical weapons attacks by the time the war ended in 1988. The two regimes remained bitter enemies.
I have no problems believing that everybody in Iran's government would like to see Saddam Hussein fall. But I simply don't buy that the Iranian Mullahs would want to see 130,000 American troops on their doorstep, and a thriving Middle East democracy growing in Shiite heartland. In fact, this is a total nightmare from their point of view. They no doubt have a certain amount of glee at the coalition's troubles, and there is good evidence that the Iranians are pulling a lot of strings to make the job difficult. Yet, I don't believe that Iran really wanted the US to take out Saddam Hussein if it meant occupying Iraq.
However, it has been noted in the past, Iran is a country where many fractions are fighting for power. The Mullah hardliners hold the ultimate power, but the intelligence services are (mostly) in the hands of the so-called reformers. It is not unfeasible that some Iranian reformists see US troops in Iraq as their best weapon for bringing change to Iran.
The Wiesenthal Center's report on the international hunt for World War II war criminals is placing Norway in the bottom group, receiving a score of F for total failure. Mostly it is the 25 years statute of limitations that has helped war criminals escape justice.
Professor of criminology at Oslo University, Per Ole Johansen, has researched Norway's post-war efforts to prosecute those who committed crimes against Jews.
"The great majority of those involved in the Norwegian persecution of Jews went free," Johansen said. He argues that post-war prosecutions were random and many of the worst offenders went free.
Quite convenient for a lot of people, I will imagine.
In that respect, we seek to highlight both the positive results achieved by countries like the United States, and to a lesser extent Germany, as well as the abject failures of countries like Austria, which has so many potential suspects but has not taken the necessary measures to bring them to justice, as well as Sweden and Norway which in principle refuse to investigate, let alone prosecute (due to a statue of limitations), and others who have either chosen to ignore the issue (Syria and Columbia) or which have consistently failed to deal with it effectively primarily due to a lack of the requisite political will (Australia, Estonia, and many others).”
Norway is now working to change its statutes of limitations rules for war crimes, which internationally never expire. As it should be.
Nader's candidacy is causing headaches for the Dems. Should the GOP be worried about the Libertarian party, energized by conservative opposition to Bush's budget-busting spending and the war conduct in Iraq?
PS: Is it the Greens or the Libertarians who are the "third" party?
The U.S. military said Saturday it has found "no evidence of a wedding" at the site of an airstrike last week near the Syrian border, and said evidence so far suggested the target was a desert base for foreign terrorists sneaking into Iraq.
Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, coalition deputy chief of staff for operations, showed slides of military binoculars, guns and battery packs that could be used to trigger roadside bombs found by U.S. troops at the site.
He said "terrorist manuals," telephone numbers for Afghanistan and foreign passports, including one Sudanese, were also recovered there.
It is impossible to know what is true from the outside. If this story is indeed false, it is hard to believe the press can be in good faith. If (big if) this story turns out to be false, there has to be journalists and editors in leading press organisations (AP?) that have deliberately lied to serve anti-American propaganda. But we may never know for sure.
Update: The Belmont Club tries to make sense of it all.
Michael Moore is definately the flavour of the month in Cannes, and the media is mostly sympathetic, as you'd expect. There are exceptions, though.
The Observer's Andrew Anthony writes a long article about a short interview with the man, downplaying Moore's tendency to be economical with the truth (how is that for an understatement?) to argue that he is an absolute asshole as a person.
Fred Barnes is writing a totally different article about Michael Moore, choosing the same title except by adding the filmmakers last name (note to editors and journalists: that title is now definately used up!). He demonstrates that Moore is an unashamed liar.
It says something very bad about the cult of European anti-Americanism that even the chosen high priest is an American.
