The view from Europe

Like it or not, the world still looks to America for at least some things. Its economy is largely pivotal to how economies "work" around the world. Whilst China is catching up to the US, and will pretty soon overtake it, for the moment America does influence such critical matters such as the war underway in Afghanistan and what is happening in Pakistan.

Roger Cohen, who writes for the IHT from Europe, in a piece "Europe and Benign Neglect" reflects on how Europe feels jilted by Obama:

"Obama remains popular with Europeans — even if giddy infatuation has gone the way of giddy infatuations — but European political leaders feel jilted. Obama was supposed to put together the European Humpty Dumpty that President Bush shattered by favoring alliances of the willing over old alliances. He hasn’t.

Central Command in Florida, running the Afghan war, rides roughshod over NATO. New Middle East peace initiatives are launched, new Afghan strategies decided, without even a nod to the Europeans who will pick up part of the tab and do part of the dying. Nowhere else has Obama’s remoteness and distaste for the two-minute protocol phone call been so keenly felt as a brush-off."

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Robert Fisk's predictions for the Middle East in 2013

There is no gain-saying that Robert Fisk, fiercely independent and feisty to boot, is the veteran journalist and author covering the Middle East. Who doesn't he know or hasn't he met over the years in reporting from Beirut - where he lives? In his latest op-ed piece for The Independent he lays out his predictions for the Middle East for 2013. Read the piece in full, here - well worthwhile - but an extract... "Never make predictions in the Middle East. My crystal ball broke long ago. But predicting the region has an honourable pedigree. “An Arab movement, newly-risen, is looming in the distance,” a French traveller to the Gulf and Baghdad wrote in 1883, “and a race hitherto downtrodden will presently claim its due place in the destinies of Islam.” A year earlier, a British diplomat in Jeddah confided that “it is within my knowledge... that the idea of freedom does at present agitate some minds even in Mecca...” So let’s say this for 2013: the “Arab Awakening” (the t

The NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) goes on hold.....because of one non-Treaty member (Israel)

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#1 Prize for a bizarre story.....and lying!

No comment called for in this piece from CommonDreams: Another young black man: The strange sad case of 21-year-old Chavis Carter. Police in Jonesboro, Arkansas stopped him and two friends, found some marijuana, searched put Carter, then put him handcuffed behind his back into their patrol car, where they say he shot himself in the head with a gun they failed to find. The FBI is investigating. Police Chief Michael Yates, who stands behind his officers' story, says in an interview that the death is "definitely bizarre and defies logic at first glance." You think?

Mahler's Prodigal Son

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