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2. juni 2005
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Congratulations to Claudia Rosett!
She should have a Pulitzer and maybe even a Nobel on her desk, but today Claudia Rosett has a true truth-teller's prize in her possession — the Eric Annual Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Journalism.
The $10,000 prize, given by Rupert Murdoch's Newscorp in honor of former New York Post columnist and editor Eric Breindel, is awarded to "the columnist, editorialist or reporter whose work best reflects the spirit of the writings by Eric Breindel: Love of country and its democratic institutions as well as the act of bearing witness to the evils of totalitarianism." This year the award was presented at a Manhattan ceremony at the New York Historical Society on Wednesday night, with Rupert Murdoch playing host and N.Y. mayor Michael Bloomberg in attendance, among others, including Fox News's Roger Ailes, Presidential Medal of Freedom honoree Norman Podhoretz, and news vet Robert Novak.
Her relentless work on the oil-for-food aka UNSCAM scandal probably prevented this important story from being buried by the "see no UN evil" MSM.
It's just so pathetic that the big mainstream prizes are reserved for scoops with a leftist bias. But so are the ways of the media world.
9:18:36 PM 
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Bob Woodward can finally tell the story I'm sure he's been aching to write for decades: how he came to know Mark Felt, the man who would become 'deep throat.'
Maybe, but for a chance encounter in the White House (!) in 1970, Nixon would have served out his term.
PS: Howard Kurtz answers the question to how come the Washington Post got scooped on its own story.
The answer is that Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein and Ben Bradlee felt they were in a box -- the promise of confidentiality made to W. Mark Felt during the Nixon administration -- and were not convinced that the 91-year-old former FBI agent was lucid enough to release them from that pledge.
Family members "have said he just doesn't have any memory now," Woodward said yesterday, referring to e-mails he received from Felt's relatives. The dilemma, said Woodward, was whether "someone in his condition and age" was "competent" to make the decision to go public.
Apparently, his family in a way took the decision for Felt, for rather material reasons. Not that there is anything wrong with that.
The WaPo may have been scooped, but now Woodward and the paper can finally publish all that extra material that had to be hidden to protect the source. Woodward's book was already ready...
9:09:55 PM
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Swiss scientists have found that a dash of a hormone called oxytocin into your nostrils can make you more trusting of other people.
Ernst Fehr of the University of Zurich and colleagues tested 194 healthy male students in a series of sophisticated games of risk and trust: the players were given notional currency and could choose to place all of it, some of it or nothing in the hands of trustees who would then decide how much to hand back after the stake had been tripled.
Some players were given a whiff of oxytocin, some inhaled a vial of air. None of the players knew what they were sniffing and none knew whether the trustees were trustworthy or not: they had to make a decision. Those who sniffed oxytocin showed a greater propensity to trust someone than those who simply inhaled air.
But when the trustee was replaced with a computer, both sets of investors showed much the same judgment. So the oxytocin did not make the investors generally more gullible or profligate: the effect was only visible when they had to deal with another human being.
If only Jacques Chirac had known this a few days ago!
2:36:45 PM
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The elctoral process is not the end of violence in Lebanon:
A car bomb exploded in Achrafieh on Thursday in a heavily populated commercial center, close to the ABC shopping mall and the Zahrat Al-Ihsan school. The obvious target of the bombing was Samir Kassir, 45, a journalist for Al-Nahar and a long outspoken critic of Syria and pro-Syrian government officials. The bloody chaos started at 10:45am Beirut time, when a bomb exploded in Kassir's Alfa Romeo.
This is nor likely to deter opponents of the pro-Syrian government. The Hariri killing is still not solved, even though it has Syria written all over it, and it's likely people's anger will be directed at some of the same quarters.
12:54:42 PM
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Cicero of Winds of Change has some comments on the developments in Europe that echo some of my own thoughts:
Just beneath Europe's egalitarian, socialist surface lies the bedrock of fascism, I believe. The caricature of the white-boy-Nazi-American-cowboy pales in comparison to Europe's practical experience with real fascism, which swept across the continent unabated until those cowboys showed up. Fascism flourished in Europe with the aid of a lot of accomplices, not just victims.
Europeans know this better than anyone. That's why their culture has become so tortured: obsessed with high-minded fairness, guilt and donning the mask of multicultural deference, Europeans do not strike me as secure with their self-image. They're covering their painful history as best as they can with EU paper. Quite understandable. Even their attempt at egalitarianism takes on the trappings of a utopian scheme, flirting with fascism. I really have no idea if Transnational Socialism and National Socialism are essentially the same kind of fascism, in different clothing. For all our sake, I hope not.
Europeans' close proximity to their sordid past of grand social experiments have naturally made them a bit touchy about their own identity. And maddenly preachy, to be sure. But for all their overwrought complexity, impotence and attitude, I remind myself that if their current egalitarian incarnation fails them, they can always revert to their time-tested fascistic roots -- which is never very far to go.
It caused some well-deserved condemnation, and a clear voter's backlash, when europhile politicians argued that the alternative to the EU constitution was a return to the days of world war and holocaust. But the precursor to the EU, the EEC and before that the iron and coal union, was motivated in part at least on a desire to put the war-torn past behind and integrate former enemies economically. That, I think, is a strong argument that the EU, in a more healthy version, should live on. Ethnic tension, the rise of anti-semitism, record unemployment and widespread alienation from the political and social elites certainly recalls ghosts from the past. As alien as it may seem to modern Europeans, a deep crisis can surprisingly quickly detoriate towards more serious conflicts.
The EU experiment may be a victim of utopian overreach. It needn't have been: The EU could have concentrated on economic ties within the continent, and considered a loose confederation between sovereign states. It could've emphasized a transatlantic military alliance. The 'European Man' was the religious part. That's when the sunbeams supposedly cut through the clouds from Un-Heaven and illuminate Europeans as the Most Sublime Rational Ones.
This might be the period of history where overreaching meets backlash.
In one month the UK and Tony Blair takes over the EU presidency. He is so far the only leader who has urged a rethink, even though he earlier committed some of the same sins as his continental colleagues. If Blair wants to create himself a European legacy, starting the process of making the union less ambitious and more pragmatic is the only way to go.
8:30:18 AM
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Nobody is surprised by the Dutch voters turning down the EU constitution, but the nee was overwhelming, decisive and very hard to ignore:
An exit poll projection broadcast by state-financed NOS television said the referendum failed by a vote of 63 percent to 37 percent. The turnout was 62 percent, exceeding all expectations, the broadcaster said.
Although the referendum was consultative, the high turnout and the decisive margin left no room for the Dutch parliament to turn its back on the people's verdict. The parliament meets Thursday to discuss the results.
The constitution was designed to further unify the 25-nation bloc and give it more clout on the world stage. But the draft document needs approval from all the nations to take effect in late 2006, and the "no" vote in both France and the Netherlands — founding members of the bloc — was a clear message European integration has gone awry.
The provisional result is close to the one projected by the exit poll:
Provisional final results indicated that 61.6% of voters said "No" to the charter and 38.4% approved it.
It's a landslide no, and a result that cannot, I think, be ignored.
Right-wing politician Geert Wilders, one of the leaders in the no camp, certainly has a point, and it applies well beyond the Netherlands:
"If you realise that two-thirds of parliament supported the constitution and two out of three people in the land are against, it means a lot is wrong in the country."
What precisely is wrong, however, no-voters may disagree on:
The BBC's Geraldine Coughlan in The Hague says many voters feel that Brussels has too much power and that their national politicians are not protecting them enough.
"No" supporters are also afraid of Brussels interfering in their liberal policies on soft drugs and gay marriage, they are disillusioned with the single currency, the Euro, and some disagree on rapid EU enlargement, our correspondent adds.
Like in France, many no doubt projected their own dissatisfaction and fears into the impenetrable and ridiculously verbose EU tract, but there seem to be some consensus that the EU is sticking its big bureaucratic nose into too much better left to the countries to decide themselves. There may not be a "plan B" but there is certainly a course of action that goes some way towards satisfying these concerns. Whether Europe's politicians dare follow through is another matter entirely.
Most likely, if given the chance to vote, the people in quite a few other EU countries would vote against it, too. Of the nine countries that have ratified the constitution, only one (Spain) put the vote to the people. Two out of three that did ask, turned it down. In Britain, it appears the referendum is being cancelled, being a moot point at best.
PS: The Euro fell dramatically, not only over the double-no (which most expected anyway) but over some rather surprising rumours:
The fresh selling was prompted by a report claiming that Hans Eichel, the German finance minister, and Axel Weber, the president of the Bundesbank, were present at a meeting at which the possible break-up of European Monetary Union was discussed.
The German Bundestag is also said to have commissioned a report on the legal repercussions of a country wishing to leave the EMU.
Germany’s finance ministry labelled the talk “absurd”, while Mr Eichel and Mr Weber issued a statement saying the euro was a “unique success story”. But the damage had been done.
If anything illustrates the depth of the crisis, the markets actually considering the break-up of the Euro/EMU must be it. The Euro may not have had been such an excellent idea, but abandoning it now would be an unmitigated disaster, as I see it.
8:05:46 AM
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© Copyright 2005 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 01.07.2005; 11:17:38.
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