It was recorded on Black Friday anyway…Please enjoy this new installment of your favorite podcast, Common Tongue. W00t!

A Black Friday Podcast

Featuring these songs:

After All (Part 2) by Alexander Blu

Conakry ft flash2nite, Jose Konda, equinox by Amakonda

slova by Artur Filiminov

Heart Error by Sabastian Boaz

Alte Kameraden by Freibuter AG

tocToc by Jean Toba

The Colors by Redmind

Valhalla for Reward by Weirdland

Laberintos by Mary & Juan

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A stand in defence of many thousands of migratory birds was made before the European Parliament by Tosh Todorov, who lives and works on the Costa del Sol.

Todorov, Duty Manager at Club La Costa Resorts & Hotels, had been invited by the Green Party (Los Verdes) in southern Spain to present his case against European Investment Bank funding of a motorway that would detrimentally affect the birds’ migratory routes.

It was an attempt, as a member of the ‘Colectivo Ornitologico Ciguena Negra’ (Black Stork Ornithological Collective), to block what signifies for some ‘progress’ but for others a backward step in their decades-long work to protect the environment.

The planned motorway, running between Algeciras and Cadiz, would directly affect protected areas, not least of which are Natural Parks such as ‘Los Alcornocales’ and ‘El Estrecho’ whose value is exceptional and which have been declared part of the UNESCO Biosphere Reserve.

The environmental impact on the area has been an issue for years. A project was introduced in 2000 to improve the existing N-340, instead of duplicating it, a decision which should make current plans null and void by default. Environmental groups agree that this is the best solution for motorways.

Present for this and other presentations on the project were: Monica Frassoni, leader of the Green Party for Europe, representatives from the European Investment Bank and the EU’s Ministry of the Environment, David Lowe, co-ordinator and secretary general of the Petitions Committee for the European Commission, Octavio Infante of SEO/Bird Life and representatives from WWF/Adena, Friends of the Earth and Ecologists in Action as well as Euro MPs from Finland, Denmark, Germany, Italy and Spain. The Director General for Transport apparently was not able to attend due to illness.

Spain already leads the list of European countries with the most km per inhabitant. According to Todorov, “The COCN has no intention to stand in the way of “progress”, but we do ask that the powers that be take care to protect and care for the environment, biodiversity and climate change.” In his opinion, the projected motorway “is a clear example of environmental and cultural destruction of the last corner of Spain that remains rural, natural and free-spirited, all because it’s free of construction.”

In addition to forward-thinking and conscientious staff members who, like Todorov, champion environmental protection, Resort Management at Club La Costa believes in programmes to help do the same – recycling of all waste and water, support for locally grown and reared foods, measures for energy reduction and more. All of Club La Costa’s 22 fully owned and operated resorts throughout Europe incorporate some or all of these programmes and plans are under way to include more.

The following paper was written on October 9, 2004. It’s republished here for the readers of this blog hoping they will find it to be of some interest. 

By Con George-Kotzabasis 

A deadly Trojan horse has been placed in the midst of the metropolises of Western civilization and, like Troy, is threatening its destruction. Throughout Europe, North America, and Australia, the belly of this deadly Horse is already bursting open delivering and unleashing a horde of fanatic barbarians on the cities of the civilized world, whose holy agenda decrees the wiping -out of Western institutions and their open, tolerant and free societies, and the genocide of their peoples by the fire of Allah’s hell. This is the nightmare scenario that countries of the economically developed and free world are facing as a result of their humanitarian and generous, but replete with folly, immigration policies that allowed such vast numbers of mostly unassimilable Muslim immigrants with ‘exponential’ birth rates, to become permanent residents and citizens of their countries. (In the Netherlands almost one third of children under the age of thirteen are Muslim. No wonder that the great Islamic scholar Bernard Lewis argues, that “Europe will be Islamic by the end of the century”.) As inexorably, not an insubstantial number of these Muslims of the diaspora will become terrorist – fodder for the likes of bin Laden, as Mohammed Atta, the Western educated ringleader, as well as so many other terrorists who have been also been educated in Western universities, of the murderous group of 9/11 has shown, whose terrorist cell was hatched in Hamburg Germany. This is especially so for many young unemployed Muslims in the West, who have been brought up within the strict confines of their rigid religion and who are therefore psychologically more susceptible to the calls of their fundamentalist imams for a Jihad against the infidels, making them therefore prone to become martyrs in this holy war against them. Hence the terrorist barbarians are not at the gates of civilization but inside its gates.

September 11 was a wake up call to all governments of the democratic world to the mortal threat that Muslim fundamentalists posed to their peoples. However, despite the exploding sound of this call, only a few governments are willing to recognize this great danger -whose gathering dark clouds teeming with lightning bolts are hovering over the cities of the world threatening their peoples with total annihilation -and stand-up against it. Apparently, only a handful of them have the intellectual capacity, imagination, and historical insight to perceive this great danger, and the resolve and moral mettle to take the necessary relentless measures and actions to prevent this catastrophe of biblical proportions from happening. America, Britain, Australia, Italy, Poland and the thirty other countries who have deployed their armed forces to fight global terror in Iraq under their politically and morally strong and historically savvy leaderships, will be acknowledged and renowned by history as the countries that saved Western civilization from this lethal attack by this horde of fanatically necrophilous barbarians. The no quarter given, relentless retaliation of these governments to this existential challenge of global terrorism to the civilized peoples of the world, will be totally justified by future historians, as has been the stand of those nations who fought against Nazi and Communist totalitarianism and who made the necessary and stupendous sacrifices to save the world from these two regimes of evil in the Twentieth century.

DESPITE US ERRORS AN WITHDRAWAL IS UNTENABLE

Even if one concedes that serious mistakes have been made by the Americans post March 2003 after the defeat of Saddam, which was part and parcel of the war against global terror, such as indiscriminately disbanding all Iraqi military units, and not dealing with the incipient insurgency of urban terrorists last April by using overwhelming force against it and nipping it in the bud, instead of ceasing their military offensive, as they did in Fallujah, and passing the control of that city to a former Iraqi general, who proved to be completely inept in disarming the insurgents. The strategic goal of the military planners against the insurgency, should have been the prompt and devastating defeat of the insurgents in this city, either by their mass capture or mass annihilation, which would serve as a deadly example to all other insurgents in other hot-bed provinces in Iraq, with the high probability that this would have led to their complete demoralization and surrender, as I had suggested in a previous paper of mine last April, which was sent to the U.S. Embassy in Canberra. (It seems now that the Pentagon is using exactly this strategy, as the capture of Samarra by American and Iraqi forces and the elimination of the insurgents, has shown.) As the outcome of this erratic implementation of the Pentagon’s military plan, by starting an offensive against the insurgents and then stopping it halfway before achieving its goals, Iraq has now become “the crucible of global terror”, to quote Tony Blair. This is the glaring fact that all governments who have committed themselves to fight global terror are presently confronting.

To turn tail and run now from Iraq would not be merely foolish, it would be the greatest military error against the war on terror, as it would deliver a tremendous victory to the terrorists on a global scale. It would reinforce in the minds of the terrorists, as the withdrawal of US forces from Beirut and Mogadishu had done, as a result of the casualties Americans had suffered in these two cities, by presidents Reagan and Clinton respectively, that America and other Western nations lack the resolve to stand-up to them and fight, and will induce them to be even more lethally aggressive against the ‘cowardly’ West. Hence the critics and opponents of the war, who blame the Bush administration for exacerbating terrorism in Iraq and call for the US withdrawal from Iraq, are purblind and cannot see that such action would be the greatest error that one could commit against the war on global terror. It would surpass by a great order of magnitude all the mistakes that the Pentagon committed in Iraq. If indeed the opponents of the war are right, that the US incursion of the country and the overthrow of Saddam has strengthened and intensified terror in Iraq, then the reasonable course for nations who believe that there is no other alternative but to fight and defeat this global menace, would be for these nations to deploy their armed forces in Iraq and inflict a deadly blow on global terrorism, by defeating the insurgents decisively. Or if they are unwilling to spill the blood of their own soldiers, they should at the least support morally and politically the soldiers of the nations, i.e., the American – led coalition, who are brave enough to sacrifice their own lives in the cause of global security and freedom.

This would be the wise course to follow, to correct the mistakes of the Americans, instead of aggravating and compounding these mistakes, by running away from Iraq, and in spite of these errors (in all wars errors are made ), to unflinchingly support America in this historic and deadly confrontation with these medieval barbarians, whom only America’s military might can defeat comprehensively, among all other nations in the world.

THE ENEMY WITHIN

But the war against global terror and Muslim fanaticism will not be won, unless the governments who have pledged themselves to fight global terror also deal with and tackle the cunning and deceitful enemy that lies within their borders. To carry out this far from easy task, these governments have to realize that they can no longer be tolerant, on the basis of laws of non-discrimination on religious grounds, to the breeding grounds of terrorism that entangle, ivy-like, the edifices of Western cities, i.e., the mosques and Islamic schools, of whom a minority of, but highly influential, imams and teachers, preach hate against the mores of Western civilization and of their peoples, inciting young Muslims to enlist in a holy war against the Great Satan, America, and on all other nations that embody the cosmopolitan values of Judeo-Greco-Roman civilization.

The cardinal question therefore is, how to sterilize and make barren the breeding grounds of terrorism that are ensconced in the cities of the West whose deadly offspring are the enemy within. Since the idea of repatriation and resettlement by means of a monetary incentive for millions of Muslims, who have now made their home in Western countries, is no longer feasible – fathered by that prophet of British politics Enoch Powell, who in his Birmingham “Rivers of Blood” speech on April 20 1968, clearly and ominously predicted the deadly conflicts that would arise between Britons and British citizens of colonial background who had settled in England, and who with prescience had opposed the so called humanitarian immigration policies of both Labor and Conservative governments – one has to consider other lines of action. One of them would be the immediate cessation of funding these mosques and schools by governments, unless the former adopt in their curricula a primary undiluted course of ‘no leaks’ assimilation for their students to the mainstream culture of the nation that they have chosen freely to live in, and put an end to all ‘traffickers’ of the disastrous policy of multiculturalism, which with mathematical precision divides a nation. Another one would be the swift passing of special, indeed emergency, legislation that would make it easier for the police and for the relevant government officials to jail or deport, radical imams and teachers who propagate, either openly or cunningly and insidiously, a holy war against the West. Furthermore, to attenuate and diminish the high birth rate of Muslim families, governments should introduce a policy of negative incentives, which could stop this high birth rate such as paying to all families of the nation, children’s allowances up to the number of four children. Any children born beyond that number would not be entitled to any allowances. Nor would any allowances be paid to children born from a second marriage, whose fathers or mothers already have four children from their previous marriages. This measure would bring the birth rate as close as it is possible to the common standard of Western societies and to the ethos and aspirations of motivated modern nuclear families. It would also stop the ‘racketeering’ of phony separations and single motherhoods, whose deliberate purpose is to abuse and defraud the system of family payments, and whose side – effect is, the perennial continuation of voluntary unemployment among this group of men and women.  

Undoubtedly, these harsh measures will raise a hurricane of protests from Muslim organizations of the diaspora and from Muslim states. This will be followed by a chorus of international lawyers and of the liberal intelligentzia from the well-heeled countries of the West, who will denounce these measures as brutal and heartless to poor families, viciously racist, and chauvinistic, striking a terrible blow to democracy and opening the way to an authoritarian state and even worse. But this soft potpourri of legal and intelligence gnomes are unwilling to recognize, and it might be beyond their depth, that the grossly mistaken immigration policies of the nations of the West are now coming to haunt them with their destruction. And the only way to prevent this destruction is for the governments of these nations to take tragically severe measures to correct this gross mistake of past governments that now threatens their peoples with extinction, either by weapons of mass destruction or by the upshot of demographics.

DEFEAT OF TERROR LIES IN ITS LACK OF SUCCESS

One must recognize that the terrorists are technically educated barbarians, with PC’s in one hand and with the distorted fragments of the Koran in the other – who consider it to be the only fountain of knowledge – lacking the open- mind of a universal education; unread in the great writings and literature of all peoples and of all ages; mentally untouched by their rich Arab culture, literature and philosophy; unread in the great philosophical writings of Al-Farabi, who placed rationality above the revealed truth of the Sharia nor in the equally brilliant writings of Ibn-Sina (Avicenna ) and of Ibn-Rushid (Averroes ), who both placed human reason above religion, and of Omar Khayyam, who never believed in Providence or in any other World but this one, valuing the sensual pleasures of this world as the fill to the brim of life. Being ignorant of the existence of this great Arab intellectual treasure, that was an essential element of the cornerstone of Western civilization and of the Italian Renaissance, their minds locked in the fanaticism of fundamentalist Islam and its death-cult, they have no respect for any other peoples’ religions except their own. Instead they zealously believe that the followers of all other religions are destined to go to hell and only Muslims will enter the gates of infinite paradise, especially if they are anointed by martyrdom. It is of such stuff that these implacable enemies of Western civilization are made.

Confronting such suicidal fanatics, who fervently believe that the West and its Great Satan, America, are responsible and culpable for all the ills that have befallen upon Muslim countries; determined to destroy this source of evil by chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, as soon as they are in their possession, the political leaders of the West, and especially of America, are deprived of any soft options and are forced to take on the hard option of the “unsheathed sword”.

The art of diplomacy, the laudable deliberations of the United Nations for peace making, which could be effective when one deals with a rational foe, are totally ineffective when one confronts an irrational enemy, whose only ‘rational’ communication, in his hearing, is with God. That is why the academics who teach their students the ‘management’ of terrorism by a diplomatic demarche as the only rational way to counter and thwart it, rather than war, which is so costly in human and economic terms and without making certain its defeat, are not only starry-eyed, but also debar themselves from the disciplines of politics and of war strategy. Management presupposes and involves rational processes, which to the terrorists is terra incognita, and therefore with algorithmic precision is bound to fail.

But wherein lies the answer to this conundrum of how to defeat global terror and its state sponsors? History’s edict provides the clear and indefeasible answer to this intricate issue. When a nation fights a swarm of religious fanatics, depriving these fanatics of the ability to launch successful operations against their enemies is the most effective way to defeat them, as the terrorists, being no longer successful in their attacks against the West and in their attacks against the American-led coalition in Iraq, will find the “mouse of doubt” implanted in their hearts (a doubt whose epiphany will reveal to them, that after all they might not be in God’s favor) gnawing, slowly but surely, at their belief that they are the instruments of Allah. This, in itself, will compel them to abandon their cause.

This is why the successful outcome of the war in Iraq for the U.S. – led coalition and the introduction of democracy to its ravaged people, is of such vital importance. The decisive defeat of the terrorist insurgents will unfold a dawn of a bright future for the people of Iraq, and also commence the beginning of the quick end of global terror.

What is your opinion…

On their European tour, I’ve had the possibility to make photos of this great and fast rising group from ‘Nuevo York’ USA… La Excelencia. With their ‘Salsa Dura’ and incredible rhythms they put the whole crowd on fire! The location this time was the ‘Harmonie’ at Bonn, Germany. On their tour they also played in Berlin, Stockholm and Rome! For more info you can always look at their website!

Thanks guys… and enjoy the pictures!

Also a special thanks to Jean and Christopher to make all this possible!

A meeting of some 70 representatives of churches from across Europe and participants from  other world regions today in Budapest launches the focus year of “European Churches responding to Migration” – a joint initiative of the Conference of European Churches and the  Churches Commission for Migrants in Europe. Tonight s official launch is hosted by the Reformed Church in Hungary and “marks the  beginning of activities by which churches in Europe seek to make visible the churches’ commitment to strangers, responding to the message of the Bible, which insists on the dignity of every human being throughout the year 2010”, the General Secretary of the Conference of  European Churches, the Ven. Colin Williams, stated. “Churches shall be encouraged to  strengthen and enhance their work with and for migrants, refugees and ethnic minority people.”  At the same time, the activities aim at improving the situation of migrants in Europe very  concretely – through joint advocacy for migrants’ and refugees’ right to a long-term residence  status after five years of legal stay, irrespective of the grounds of stay.  The launch is part of a three-day-conference, in which participants exchange how their churches are addressing migration – as an issue related to the unity of the church, the socio-diaconal  calling of the church and the political involvement of the church. Speakers from across Europe will give testimonies of their work. Participants from the World Council of Churches Global Ecumenical Network on Migration will offer their observation on the work in Europe from an external perspective.  Tonight s launch will feature the presentation of a calendar for the year 2010. The calendar highlights specific area of churches work on migration and encourages churches to further  develop and give more visibility to these activities. Suggestions range from organising bible studies between congregations with different ethnic background and joint worship of congregations worshipping in different languages to the setting up psychological support for  refugees and advocacy for irregular migrants. “Migration has become a reality in almost all European countries, be they more immigration,  emigration or transit migration countries,” CCME General Secretary Doris Peschke stated. “It is important to recognise this reality and overcome fears in our societies. Migration is a blessing and not a curse,” she added, as churches have a rich biblical basis to understand migration in a more positive way

Geneva, 20 November 2009. Particle beams are once again circulating in the worlds most powerful particle accelerator, CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC). This news comes after the machine was handed over for operation on Wednesday morning. A clockwise circulating beam was established at ten o’clock this evening. This is an important milestone on the road towards first physics at the LHC, expected in 2010.

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CAMBRIDGE – The economic recovery that the euro zone anticipates in 2010 could bring with it new tensions. Indeed, in the extreme, some countries could find themselves considering whether to leave the single currency altogether.

Although the euro simplifies trade, it creates significant problems for monetary policy. Even before it was born, some economists (such as myself) asked whether a single currency would be desirable for such a heterogeneous group of countries. A single currency means a single monetary policy and a single interest rate, even if economic conditions – particularly cyclical conditions – differ substantially among the member countries of the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU).

A single currency also means a common exchange rate relative to other currencies, which, for any country within the euro zone, precludes a natural market response to a chronic trade deficit. If that country had its own currency, the exchange rate would decline, benefiting exports and impeding imports. Without its own currency, the only cure for a chronic trade deficit is real wage reductions or relative productivity increases.

The European Central Bank is now pursuing a very easy monetary policy. But, as the overall economy of the euro zone improves, the ECB will start to reduce liquidity and raise the short-term interest rate, which will be more appropriate for some countries than for others. Those countries whose economies remain relatively weak oppose tighter monetary policy.

The contrast between conditions in Germany and Spain illustrates the problem. The unemployment rate is now about 8% in Germany, but more than twice that – around 19% – in Spain. And Germany recorded a trade surplus of $175 billion in the 12 months through August, whereas Spain has run a trade deficit of $84 billion in the past 12 months.

If Spain and Germany still had the peseta and the D-mark as their respective currencies, the differences in trade balances would cause the mark to appreciate and the peseta to decline. The weaker peseta would stimulate demand for Spanish exports and reduce Spain’s imports, which would boost domestic demand and reduce unemployment.

Since the interest rate set by the ECB is now less than 1%, there is little difference between its current monetary policy and what the Bank of Spain would do if it could set its own interest rate.  But when the euro zone starts to recover, the ECB might choose to raise the interest rate before a higher rate would be appropriate for Spain, which could exacerbate Spanish unemployment. Spain and other high-unemployment euro-zone countries might oppose this policy but face monetary tightening nonetheless, because the ECB deems the overall state of the euro zone to warrant higher interest rates.

Spain is not the only country that would have an incentive to leave the EMU. Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and even Italy are often cited as countries that might benefit from being able to pursue an independent monetary policy and allow their currencies to adjust to more competitive levels.

The widening spreads between the interest rate on German eurobonds and some of the other countries’ euro bonds show that global bond markets take this risk seriously. For example, while the current yield on 10-year German government eurobonds is 3.33%, the corresponding yield on Greek eurobonds is 4.7% and 4.77% for Ireland’s eurobonds. These divergent yields reflect the market’s perception of the risk of default or of effective devaluation associated with leaving the euro.

Leaving the EMU would, of course, involve both technical and political issues. A government that wants to replace the euro with, say, the “new franc” (which is not to suggest that France or Belgium would be likely to abandon the euro) would have to reverse the process by which its currency was originally swapped for euros. But, having learned to do that once would make it easier to do it again in the opposite direction.

How would the exchange rate be set for the new currency? The obvious choice would be to start by exchanging one “new franc” for one euro and then leave it to the global currency markets to re-price the new currency. A country with a large initial trade deficit would expect to see its currency decline relative to the euro, say, to 1.2 “new francs” per euro, which would make its products 20% cheaper than products in other euro countries and would make imports more expensive. If that causes a rise in the departing country’s price level, the nominal exchange rate would have to decline further to achieve the same real adjustment.

Because individuals from the departing country could continue to hold euros, leaving the EMU would not cause a loss of existing wealth. But such a country would have to worry about more substantial economic consequences. Global capital markets would recognize that a country with high unemployment might choose to pursue an inflationary policy or a policy or exchange-rate depreciation. That could lead international investors to withhold funds from a departing country and raise substantially the interest rate on its national debt.

There would also be political problems. Would a country that leaves the EMU be given a diminished role in EcoFin, the European Economic and Financial Affairs Council? Would its voice be diminished in European discussions about foreign and defense policy? In the extreme, would it be forced out of the European Union altogether, thereby losing its trade advantages?

These economic and political risks may be enough to deter current EMU members from deciding to leave. But remaining in the euro zone could impose significant costs on some of them. At some point, the inability to deal with domestic economic problems within the EMU framework may lead one or more countries to conclude that those costs are simply too high to bear.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2009.
www.project-syndicate.org
For a podcast of this commentary in English, please use this link: http://media.blubrry.com/ps/media.libsyn.com/media/ps/Feldstein16.mp3

i chose 3 fun cookie recipes to bake today for the hosts of the 2 thanksgiving parties i am attending. of course i had to change them up a bit because i had some nice little goodies on hand.

-scharffen berger fine artisan dark chocolate
-candied lemons
-candied oranges
-caramel apple preserves
-dried cranberries

i started early with my usual rugelach recipe. the filling can be anything you want, so i made it out of the caramel apple preserves & dried cranberries, half of them with walnuts. this recipe takes awhile to make because of the dough & the chilling & building process.

then i turned my attention to orange shortbread cookies with chocolate chips. i have never made shortbread before. instead of the chips, i melted the chocolate i had & dipped one candied orange peel in it for each cookie & chilled it to firm the chocolate on top. they look really pretty.

the last one, lemon thins
was a chilled log type. it’s rolled into a tube with parchment & foil a couple hours, sliced thin & baked. i topped these off with candied lemons dipped in chocolate, dusted in powdered sugar & chilled.

i can see a theme here. fruit & chocolate with butter & sugar is good.

Great Wall Motors has become the first independent Chinese vehicle manufacturer to earn European Whole of Vehicle Type Approval (WVTA) from the UK-based Vehicle Certification Agency (VCA).

Four Great Wall designs received approval including two variants currently on sale in Australia: the V240 ute and the X240 SUV.

WVTA testing encompasses 48 tests, including 13 on active safety, 13 on passive safety and eight on emissions and environmental protection.

Two recently introduced and stringent regulations involve pedestrian safety and end of vehicle life requirements such as re-use, recycling and recovery.

The VCA is an executive agency of the United Kingdom Department for Transport, responsible for operating the system of automotive type approval in the UK.

Managing Director of Great Wall’s Australian distributor Ateco Automotive, Ric Hull, said the European WVTA simply reinforced his confidence in the Great Wall Motor Company.

“I am certain that Great Wall will go on to bigger and better things both here in Australia and in other markets.

“Great Wall vehicles are selling very well across Australia through our steadily expanding dealer network.

“The European approval is yet another indication that the Chinese automotive industry will be a global force to be reckoned with in the near future,” Mr Hull said.

The news follows yesterday’s revelation that the company will start production of off-road vehicles in Lovech, Bulgaria by the end of next year.

The agreement with Litex Motors is believed to be worth 80 million Euro (AUD$130 million), but Great Wall is yet to announce any production figures for the European venture.

by Tim Beissmann

People are very friendly in Southern France. They don’t like to be in a hurry. It is normal for them a lunch or a dinner to take more than 2 hours but in such a place does it matter?

Southern France city of Villefranche

The atmosphere in Villefrance is peaceful, ideal if you want to be left alone with your thoughts.

All the houses in Villefranche have wine cellars – something very typical for Southern France but not that usual for the rest of Europe. The old houses with their medieval appearance, inner yards and thick wooden tables able to host 20 guests, made me feel just as if I was teenager again reading “The three mousquetaires”.

When I was visiting my French friends for a dinner one evening, they put on the table 5 identical bottles of wine without labels. French people are excellent hosts – their food is excellent, their wine is excellent and their friendship, in case you have won it, is special. So it appeared that all the bottles were Beaujolais dating from different years.

They told me it was cheaper to buy them from the producers without labels. Our host opened the first bottle, poured in each glass some wine and we tasted it. Then he told us to throw away the rest. He opened the second bottle and we did the same ritual again. Thus we tried all the 5 bottles. No need to say the wine was very good.

In French supermarkets there is an inscription at wine departments “vins divins” literary meaning “divine wines.” I think this is the confession of people who know how to live.

It looks as though we’re trolling the Europeans for help on our Afghan problem. You know, the one that presents an “existential threat” to the United States and all? But I don’t think they’re biting this time.

From the Times:

NATO members and other foreign allies have expressed reluctance to send more soldiers because of the Afghan war’s growing unpopularity in their countries and increasing concerns over corruption in President Hamid Karzai’s government.

Silly NATO! When will they realize that such trivial matters as “public opinion” and “corruption” have no place when discussing vital defense strategy? Why can’t they take the United States’ example on this? The US, after all, doesn’t let a little thing like a widespread electoral fraud or massive heroin production by the winners of said fraud affect their decision. We must stay the course, after all!

Later they say that:

It remains unclear whether several thousand NATO and other foreign troops are really the equal of a similarly sized American force in terms of military capacity. Some countries may continue to restrict how their forces may be employed. In addition, a force that is cobbled together from too many nations — a few hundred here and a thousand there — might not have the unit cohesion of an American force, military analysts said.

Yeah, who needs ‘em! The “military analysts” are right – nobody has the “unit cohesion” of a good ol’ red-blooded American soldier! It looks like no one at the Times has ever heard of a thing called “sour grapes”.