On The Third Hand

Check the comments on this post.

Or is it just that I have a very odd sense of humor?

Pixy Misa takes a look at the proposed EU constitution, good and bad.

If you haven’t read enough to understand why some of us were cheering that “NON", this is a must-read. And it’s a good overview for those who haven’t waded through the thing (or read themselves to sleep with it).

Never thought I’d say that….

French Voters Reject EU Constitution

James Joyner is being a bit snarkier than I am about this. He says: “Even the French won’t surrender their sovereignty this easily.” Indeed.

France pulps copies of EU treaty

The French government has destroyed 162,000 copies of the EU constitution because the phrase “incoherent text” was printed on a page by mistake.

The copies had been intended for use in town halls and libraries across France.

But they were recalled after the mistake was spotted. It is not known who was responsible for inserting the offending comment.

French voters will decide on whether or not to back the EU constitution in a referendum next month.

Proofreaders failed to spot the footnote on a page containing Article 1/33 of the constitution - which relates to legislative acts.

They should have left it in. It might have been the one clear statement in the whole thing. Sorry I can’t comment further, I’m giggling too hard. Hat tip: InstaPundit.

What have the Americans ever done for us? Liberated 50 million people…

[Comparing the anti-American sorts to a Monty Python scene] “All right, all right. But apart from liberating 50 million people in Iraq and Afghanistan, undermining dictatorships throughout the Arab world, spreading freedom and self-determination in the broader Middle East and moving the Palestinians and the Israelis towards a real chance of ending their centuries-long war, what have the Americans ever done for us?”

It’s too early, in fairness, to claim complete victory in the American-led struggle to bring peace through democratic transformation of the region. Despite the temptation to crow, we must remember that this is not Berlin 1989. There will surely be challenging times ahead in Iraq, Iran, in the West Bank and elsewhere. The enemies of democratic revolution — all the terrorists and Baathists, the sheikhs, the mullahs and the monarchs — are not going to give up without a fight.

But something very important is happening now, something that will be very hard to stop. And, although not all of it can be directly attributed to the US strategy in the region, can anyone seriously argue that it would have happened without it? Neither is it true, as some have tried to argue, that all of this is merely some unintended consequence of an immoral and misconceived war in Iraq.

It was always the express goal of the Bush Administration to change the regime in Baghdad, precisely because of the opportunities for democracy it would open up in the rest of the Arab world. George Bush understands the simple but historically demonstrable thesis that freedom is not only the most basic of human rights, but also the best way to ensure that nations do not go to war with each other.

Quite so. Recommended reading.

The World Turned Upside Down by Wretchard.

Don’t that beat all. When the blog Dutch Report reported that two parliamentary representatives, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Geert Wilders, had been kept in prison cells to protect them against Islamic death threats, I refused at first to believe it. The Dutch Report is in English and since I could not read the source documents directly, the report seemed too unlikely to be true. But the more I read, even in translation, the less it seemed like a parody….

I think Hirsi Ali and Wilders should be accomodated by the Queen in her palace instead. Only then would the honor of Holland be somewhat restored.

A contender for snarky comment of the year: The last paragraph in this post.

A Growl From The Den……..

Via JFM of Dodgeblogium, MB is now reading on The Gray Monk about his discovering that Santa Claus is encountering all kinds of difficulties, running afoul of the multitudinous rules and regulations of the UK and the €U that are churned out by the ever-growing hordes of ‘bean-counters’ infesting all the ministries over there. It’s enough to make one cry. Do go read the several posts that have appeared so far, for it looks as though his problems have just started.

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR !!

Chirac’s off the tab

An investigation into French President Jacques Chirac’s 2.2 million euro ($3.7 million) food bill while he was was mayor of Paris has been dropped after the current mayor admitted he had exhausted all legal options in the case.

A Paris appeals court last week dismissed the case against Mr Chirac and his wife Bernadette over the tab they ran up between 1987 and 1995, saying time had run out under the statute of limitations.

Emphais mine.

AP EXCLUSIVE: Iraqis reveal in secret interviews how Saddam manipulated oil-for-food program

Interviews with dozens of former and current Iraqi officials by congressional investigators have produced new evidence that Saddam Hussein micro-managed business deals under the U.N. oil-for-food program to maximize political influence with important foreign governments like Russia and neighboring Arab states.

The Iraqi officials, who were flown outside of Iraq for their own safety during the interviews, provided a list of foreign companies favored by Saddam and his top lieutenants for import contracts under the U.N. program. They also revealed a parallel blacklist of companies that the then-Iraq leader disqualified from getting deals, investigators told The Associated Press.

The precaution of redoubled secrecy comes after an Iraqi official involved in the oil-for-food investigation of corruption died in a car bombing in late June after speaking with investigators from the House International Relations Committee. The official, Ehsan Karim, who headed the Iraqi Finance Ministry’s audit board, was interviewed in Amman, Jordan, on May 21.

The Iraqi officials also helped investigators identify Iraqi front companies, which operated abroad to solicit and process alleged bribes from foreign companies and to help facilitate imports for the Iraqi government, including dual-use military goods such as vehicles.

There’s some pretty damning stuff in this article. Seems it was more than just oil vouchers involved. This new list is in addition to the oil voucher list.

But the new lists obtained by AP of both companies favored and spurned by the Iraqi government are a more overt illustration of Saddam’s manipulation of the program.

One investigator described the exempt list as the equivalent of the list in Duelfer’s report of oil voucher recipients, but in this case for goods imported under the U.N. program.

Interesting stuff indeed. Link via Hell in a Handbasket.

Sheer propaganda.

Erik of ¡No Pasarán! links, and translates parts of, an article in Le Monde 2 (Le Monde’s weekly magazine) It is sheer and total propaganda. All about the poor soldiers fighting in Iraq. No attempt at any sort of balanced view. Erik, in fact, titled his post: “Hand-wringing reporting on the inhumane plight of the “young soldiers so badly prepared for war” without once interviewing… an American serviceman”.

How can we fight that kind of propaganda?

A sentence I found buried in this atrocity news: Babies found in Iraqi mass grave.

Mr Kehoe said that work to uncover graves around Iraq, where about 300,000 people are thought to have been killed during Saddam Hussein’s regime, was slow as experienced European investigators were not taking part.

The Europeans, he said, were staying away as the evidence might be used eventually to put Saddam Hussein to death.

Emphasis mine. The Europeans are refusing to help because the mass graves are evidence against a mass murderer in a country where the death penalty exists? Some things I just cannot wrap my mind around.