"Don't be fooled by the wraparound sunglasses and the excess hipness," the Los Angeles Times said. "Bono is deeply versed in the issues afflicting the least-developed nations of the world."The taxpayers of the developed world kick in dough to World Bank bureaucrats who make "loans" to 3rd world thugocracies who have no intention of repaying them. Then after much wailing, the loans are "forgiven." Might as well flush the greenbacks down the toilet. Gosh, I think Bono could handle that!
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Los Angeles Times editorial page Editor Andres Martinez said the suggestion of Bono to head the World Bank was entirely serious, although he said the newspaper was also making an effort to "take chances" and be "less predictable" on its opinion page in recent months.
Bono, the rock star and celebrity, Martinez said, might be able to shame the rich nations into meeting their devlopment [sic] aid goals, he told Reuters.Or he might finally convince the taxpayers to deepsix this loser.
Meanwhile on the EU front - U.S. can sit back and watch Europe implode
Lester Pearson, the late Canadian prime minister, used to say that diplomacy is the art of letting the other fellow have your way. All week long President Bush offered a hilariously parodic reductio of Pearson's bon mot, wandering from one European Union gabfest to another insisting how much he loves his good buddy Jacques and his good buddy Gerhard and how Europe and America share -- what's the standard formulation? -- ''common values.'' Care to pin down an actual specific value or two that we share? Well, you know, ''freedom,'' that sort of thing, abstract nouns mostly. Love to list a few more common values, but gotta run.Since it's Mark Steyn, I digress, but here's where I'm headed:
The president, in other words, understands that for Europe, unlike America, the war on terror is an internal affair, a matter of defusing large unassimilated radicalized Muslim immigrant populations before they provoke the inevitable resurgence of opportunist political movements feeding off old hatreds. Difficult trick to pull off, especially on a continent where the ruling elite feels it's in the people's best interest not to pay any attention to them.Of course, the clueless weenies at the State Department had other plans - How British and American conservatives united to stop Bush endorsing the EU constitution as favour to Blair
The new EU ''constitution,'' for example, would be unrecognizable as such to any American. I had the opportunity to talk with former French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing on a couple of occasions during his long labors as the self-declared and strictly single Founding Father. He called himself ''Europe's Jefferson,'' and I didn't like to quibble that, constitution-wise, Jefferson was Europe's Jefferson -- that's to say, at the time the U.S. Constitution was drawn up, Thomas Jefferson was living in France. Thus, for Giscard to be Europe's Jefferson, he'd have to be in Des Moines, where he'd be doing far less damage.
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Most of the so-called constitution isn't in the least bit constitutional. That's to say, it's not content, as the U.S. Constitution is, to define the distribution and limitation of powers. Instead, it reads like a U.S. defense spending bill that's got porked up with a ton of miscellaneous expenditures for the ''mohair subsidy'' and other notorious Congressional boondoggles. President Ronald Reagan liked to say, ''We are a nation that has a government -- not the other way around.'' If you want to know what it looks like the other way round, read Monsieur Giscard's constitution.
But the fact is it's going to be ratified, and Washington is hardly in a position to prevent it. Plus there's something to be said for the theory that, as the EU constitution is a disaster waiting to happen, you might as well cut down the waiting and let it happen. CIA analysts predict the collapse of the EU within 15 years. I'd say, as predictions of doom go, that's a little on the cautious side.
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Until the shape of the new Europe begins to emerge, there's no point picking fights with the terminally ill. The old Europe is dying, and Mr. Bush did the diplomatic equivalent of the Oscar night lifetime-achievement tribute at which the current stars salute a once glamorous old-timer whose fading aura is no threat to them. The 21st century is being built elsewhere.
Leading British Euro-sceptics were enlisted to help win a battle within the White House over how far Mr Bush should go in endorsing a more unified EU, after reports began to circulate in Washington that his planned speech would express backing for the constitution.But I'm a hopeful kinda guy. Maybe they'll come to their senses - Exit Strategy:
Members of the staff of Dick Cheney, the vice-president, are also said to have intervened with Mr Bush's speechwriters to ensure the removal of language which, conservatives say, would have given a powerful and explicit boost to campaigners for the EU constitution.
"The speech was being drawn up along State Department lines, with a view to backing the draft constitution," said one Washington official with close White House links.
"It was not until last weekend that we were given assurances at the highest level that this would not, after all, be happening."
The continent of Europe changed on 10 June 2004. On that day the frustration of ordinary people at autocratic rule from Brussels finally made itself felt. The surge in the Eurosceptic vote may have been fuelled by different priorities in different lands (the desire for outright independence in Britain, concern at the cost of modernisation in the Czech Republic, alarm at Germans buying farms in Poland, and hostility to unfettered immigration in Greece), but it was still a firm vote against integration.A possible blueprint by following the link.
Yet, while the man in the street may be very clear about what he does not want, he is not so certain when it comes to positive alternatives. Again and again while canvassing, the same response is met: the EU is no good, but we're stuck with it - we're in too deep now to get out. It is this fatalism that this paper seeks to address by exploring the real practical alternatives to the European Union and assessing the impact of withdrawal.
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Europhiles have repeatedly misrepresented the Eurorealist manifesto as xenophobic and nihilistic. In reality, Eurorealists are keen to maintain good trading relations with all neighbours, and have always qualified the demand for freedom from the European Union with the rider "and its replacement with a free trade area, which is what we thought we had voted for in the first place".
At the end of the day, then, the challenge of withdrawal boils down to just two fundamental questions: first, where do we go, and second, exactly how do we get out?
