Just Politics

French Whines

France may have been known for its wines. Now, it is becoming increasingly known for its whines. Reuters has a story on how France is complaining that they lost the 2012 Olympic bid unfairly:

"I am incredulous because the French bid was without doubt better," said Bernard Ansalem, head of the French athletics federation.

Trying to explain Paris's third failed Olympic bid in 20 years, many blamed France's inferior lobbying skills and declining political influence in the IOC and the wider world.

France lost out because of a strong U.S., British and Spanish alliance built around the group of nations who backed the U.S.-led war in Iraq, some suggested.

The dynamism of Prime Minister Tony Blair and London bid leader Sebastian Coe was also compared with the older-looking Paris team and unpopular President Jacques Chirac.

London bombings

Scotland Yard issued the following statement regarding the terrorist bombings in London:

There are four confirmed sites where police are dealing with reported explosions this morning. These are:

1) Russell Square and Kings Cross underground

2) Moorgate, Aldgate, and Liverpool Street underground

3) Edgware Road underground

4) Tavistock Square, where there has been a confirmed explosion on a bus.

The emergency services are working together in a co-ordinated response and liaising with hospitals to rescue those injured.

The London Underground system has been suspended however the Network Rail system is still in operation. We would urge anyone who doesn’t need to come into London today not to do so. If you are already in London wherever possible please limit travelling around the capital.

The Met continues to respond to 999 emergency calls but non-emergency calls will have a seriously delayed response.

We cannot at this stage confirm the number of those injured, though casualties are multiple. There are believed fatalities but again numbers are not confirmed. We are also asking members of the public not to contact police at this stage unless it is a genuine emergency.

There is likely to be some disruption to children’s journeys home from schools. Schools will be liaising with local education authorities to ensure that children are kept safe until arrangements can be made with their parents to collect them.

We will be issuing a telephone number shortly for Casualty Bureau.

Africa & Iraq connection

The United States has determined that North Africa comprises a major source of funding and manpower for the Sunni insurgency in Iraq.

U.S. officials said a study by the military's European Command has traced the flow of money and recruits from such countries as Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia to Iraq. They said the operatives often travel through Iran and cross into the largely unpoliced border of Iraq.

"The Islamic cells in North Africa have become the No. 2 supplier of funds and foreign fighters for the insurgency in Iraq," an official said. "The ties between these cells and Al Qaida in Iraq are very tight."

The study said nearly 30 percent of all suicide bombers in Iraq come from North Africa. Algeria alone contributes up to 20 percent of suicide car bombers and another five percent come from Morocco and Tunisia.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi

"Some say that the resistance is divided into two groups--an honorable resistance that fights the nonbeliever-occupier and a dishonorable resistance that fights Iraqis," a spokesman for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi said on an Internet posting. "We announce that the Iraqi army is an army of apostates and mercenaries that has allied itself with the Crusaders and came to destroy Islam and fight Muslims. We will fight it."

This is a radical Islam against the rest of the world that we are fighting.

Terrorist appeasement

The following is an editorial that ran in the Washington Post that demonstrates Democrats’ strategy for handling terrorist states like N. Korea and Iran:

By Carl Levin and Hillary Clinton

Tuesday, July 5, 2005

It's been a year since the United States and its negotiating partners sat down with North Korea to discuss the elimination of North Korea's nuclear weapons program. In the meantime Porter Goss, the director of central intelligence, has reported to the Senate Armed Services Committee (on March 17) that the number of nuclear weapons North Korea possesses has increased and that there is now "a range" of estimates above the one or two weapons that may have been produced in the early 1990s. His testimony implies that the intelligence community believes North Korea reprocessed the 8,000 fuel rods that had been kept under strict surveillance from 1994 to 2003 in accordance with the Agreed Framework between North Korea and the United States. If so, this could mean that North Korea has many times the number of nuclear weapons it did before the Bush administration took office.

Thus, while the administration wrangled internally about whether to negotiate seriously with North Korea, Pyongyang was using the time to break out as a nuclear power. Indeed, in February the North Koreans declared that they have a "nuclear weapons arsenal."

This is something we should be in a hurry to reverse. Why is it that a war to address a nuclear weapons program that we now know had been dismantled can be pursued with great urgency by this administration while diplomacy to eliminate a growing arsenal in North Korea is carried on in an almost lackadaisical fashion, captive to pride and preconditions?

Why don't we hear the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff say something like, "Today it is necessary to do everything possible in order not to allow North Korea to conduct tests," a declaration that was in fact uttered by the chief of the general staff of Russia's armed forces. Yes, even the Russians -- the ones who first helped Pyongyang acquire nuclear technology -- are worried that North Korea will conduct a nuclear test. After that there will be no doubt it has become a nuclear power, and the regional nuclear arms race will be on.

North Korea has apparently used the past five years to become a nuclear weapons state. Meanwhile, its people remain impoverished, and there is no reason to believe that the regime would not sell nuclear material, technology and even weapons to any government, group or individual with hard cash, just as it does in selling ballistic missiles, drugs and other contraband.

This is about more than the stability of the Korean Peninsula and the fate of South Korea and U.S. troops stationed there, important as those things are. What is at stake is the stability of Northeast Asia and, arguably, the global economic and political order. The administration must get serious. It doesn't matter who is at the table as long as we and the North Koreans are there, and as long as both sides negotiate with seriousness and urgency. The administration must inject both into the process.

Seriousness is demonstrated by spelling out a package to the North Koreans that addresses their fundamental need for economic assistance. (emphasis added) It is demonstrated by rhetorical restraint. Name-calling aimed at our opponent has only hampered diplomacy. Seriousness means sending a senior U.S. official to meet with Kim Jong Il. And the way to know whether we have been trying hard enough is to determine whether our Asian negotiating partners also think diplomacy has been exhausted.

Urgency is well demonstrated by putting forth a timetable. The administration should take a page from its aborted diplomacy toward Iraq. Just as we did with Iraq, we should negotiate with the Europeans, Asians and others to set international -- read United Nations -- deadlines for solving the crisis. The North Koreans have said they regard a U.N. sanctions resolution as tantamount to war, and Security Council members such as China are not likely to support sanctions unless there is a failure of diplomacy that the international community views as entirely North Korea's fault. Just as we worked with our allies to set deadlines for U.N. inspections in Iraq, we should seek a deadline for the next meeting with North Korea and another one for a final diplomatic agreement.

There is a precedent for this. According to former defense secretary William J. Perry (in a 1999 book) it was the threat of U.N. sanctions that led to negotiations concluding in the Agreed Framework, which froze the North Korean plutonium-based nuclear program for nine years.

Time is running out. Either the North Koreans will conduct a test (and transfer nuclear material, technology or weapons to our enemies) or the administration will finally act, using carrot and stick, to stop the clock and bring this crisis to a peaceful end before it's too late.

CBS storytelling

The LA Times reports on CBS’s struggling to remake their news division:

"We're experimenting this summer with new, interesting ideas for how to tell stories in a more interesting and compelling way," said Marcy McGinnis, senior vice president for news gathering, who declined to give further details about the meetings.

Shepherd Thompson

The Washington Post has a story on Fred Thompson’s choice to help the Supreme Court Nominee through Senate confirmation:

Anything that would either directly, or implied, indicate how a person would decide a particular case or a particular kind of case would be out of bounds," Thompson said on CNN. He said it is not appropriate to give legal views "that are outside the bounds of, maybe, what somebody's already written in a judicial opinion."