Euroracism
The facet of modern European culture that really bothers me is their intense comfort with Jim Crow and naked, institutional discrimination. Turkey is part of Europe when the European Court of Human Rights deigns to condemn the Turkish judiciary. Turkey has been denied membership in the European Union time and tiem again, thus denying the Turkish people the economic benefits of being European.

Turkey's war against Kurdish separatist terrorism is reason enough to disqualify Turkey from joining the European Union, or at least that is the oft cited excuse. Yet the two seats of the European Parliament are Brussels, Belgium and Strausburg, France. Apparently, the evils Belgium wrought in the Congo and those France wrought in Algeria were not enough to keep them out of the EU; so, why is Turkey subjected to such a vastly different standard? Because Jim Crow holds sway in Europe and the Turks are brown, not lily white like the Germans and Swedes and French.

Repeat a Lie Often Enough...
This evening on the BBC, the topic was John Bolton's nomination to be ambassador to the United Nations and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's decision to forward the nomination to the full Senate without an endorsement. Oddly, this was repeatedly described as a setback for President Bush. How do you figure? A setback would have been a Republican defection, resulting in a 9-9 deadlock on the committee and the rejection of the nomination. Yet Senators Voinovich (R, Ohio) and Chafee (R, Rhode Island) fell in line and voted to send Bolton to the Senate, where the 55-44 Republican majority should assure confirmation, lack of recommendation be damned. How is that a setback for President Bush?

Also, for the story they spoke only to Seantor Biden (D, Delaware), the ranking Democrat. Not the Foreign Relations Committee chairman Senator Luger (R, Indiana), not of the the two Republicans previously considered likely to rejection the nomination. Imagine if the American press covered British politcs by interviewing only Tory MPs. Wouldn't that obviously give them a skewed and inaccurate picture of the events of the day? The same holds true for speaking only to the minority Democrats. For Bog's sake, the Dems lost seats in the Senate in the last election. If Joe Biden's views represented the American people, he would be Secretary of State right now serving under President Kerry.

Good Bad News
Every cloud has a silver lining. The only good news coming out of Iraq lately would have to be the large number of suicide bombings. Wait, how is that good? Because Ba'athists do not conduct suicide bombings; "martyrdom operations" are the hallmark of al Qaeda and affiliated jihadists. Al Qaeda is a Sunni organization and the Sunnis of Iraq are largely secular; almost all suicide bombers are foreign born. A terrorist campaign conducted by non-Iraqis can be defeated by Iraqis. The real danger has always been Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence, a possible precursor to civil war. Suicide bombings are horrific, but the one ray of hope is that they are not homegrown.

*shudder* I just felt a shiver thinking about how frighteningly close we got to a President Kerry. Gives me the chills.