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Deepthroat outed?

“I’m The Guy They Called Deep Throat”, or so says the headline in Vanity Fair. It seems to be the answer to the question many have posed over the last 30 or so years, the Washington Post have apparently confirmed it:

The Washington Post today confirmed that W. Mark Felt, a former number-two official at the FBI, was “Deep Throat,” the secretive source who provided information that helped unravel the Watergate scandal in the early 1970s and contributed to the resignation of president Richard M. Nixon.

EU just won't take 'no' for an answer

Mark Steyn, I am somehow inclined to agree, at least in part, with him on this occasion.

Following Sunday’s vote in France, on Wednesday Dutch voters get to express their opinion on the proposed ”European Constitution.” Heartening to see democracy in action, notwithstanding the European elite’s hysterical warnings that, without the constitution, the continent will be set back on the path to Auschwitz. I haven’t seen the official ballot, but the choice seems to be: “Check Box A to support the new constitution; check Box B for genocide and conflagration.”

Alas, this tactic doesn’t seem to have worked. So, a couple of days before the first referendum, Jean-Claude Juncker, the “president” of the European Union, let French and Dutch voters know how much he values their opinion:

“If at the end of the ratification process, we do not manage to solve the problems, the countries that would have said No, would have to ask themselves the question again,” “President” Juncker told the Belgian newspaper Le Soir.

Got that? You have the right to vote, but only if you give the answer your rulers want you to give. But don’t worry, if you don’t, we’ll treat you like a particularly backward nursery school and keep asking the question until you get the answer right. Even America’s bossiest nanny-state Democrats don’t usually express their contempt for the will of the people quite so crudely.

Where business meets geopolitics

So it was finally finished this week, though it will take 6 months for the oil to go from one end to the other. At full capacity the pipeline will provide 1% of the world’s oil needs. The Economist notes the significance:

The BTC pipeline, though the most expensive option for exporting Caspian oil, was backed by America because it avoided Russia, thereby reducing the dependence of the Caucasus and Central Asia on Russian pipelines. The pipeline also provided an opportunity to bolster regional economies that the West is courting, especially those of Georgia, Azerbaijan and Turkey, a NATO ally, and build support for America in the region. Georgia’s location gives it a “strategic importance far beyond its sizeâ€?, according to America’s State Department.

Upgrading an alternative route through Georgia to Supsa on the Black Sea would have made for a far shorter (and cheaper) pipeline. But Turkey complained that it would lead to an unsustainable level of shipping passing through the Bosporus Strait that bisects Istanbul. At Washington’s urging, the BTC pipeline wended its complex way through Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey. However, some critics of the pipeline point out that the oil revenues provided to Azerbaijan will help to prop up the country’s autocratic and corrupt regime. And environmentalists have complained that the pipe slices through a national park in Georgia.

Big news indeed

Just in case you thought our galaxy was pretty big, it turns out that our neighbour Andromeda is huge

The Andromeda galaxy, the most familiar of all the starry pinwheels in the sky and the Milky Way’s virtual twin, is three times the size astronomers had thought….the disc of the galaxy is actually three times larger than had been thought – 220,000 light years across, instead of previous estimates of 70,000 to 80,000.

Printer-friendly version Online forums, bloggers become vital media outlets in Bahrain

Mark Glaser writes in the Online Journalism Review on how blogging is a growing phenomenon in the tiny Gulf state of Bahrain. A quick look by myself also reveals a growth of blogging in my regular haunt of Dubai and the UAE as a whole.

What now for the Constitution?

The IAI website appears to be down, but there was a very interesting document located there, that I have managed to find elsewhere (PDF) .

It all boils down to Declaration no. 30 in the annexes which states:

Declaration no. 30 annexed to the CT reads: “The Conference notes that if, two years after the signature of the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe, four fifths of the Member States have ratified it and one or more Member States have encountered difficulties in proceeding with ratification, the matter will be referred to the European Council.â€? This statement is important for various reasons.

The first concerns the convening of the European Council: if at least four fifths of the member states (that is twenty) have ratified the Treaty within two years of signature, the European Council is obliged to meet to examine the situation. Of course, the European Council can meet even if this quota is not reached, however the meeting must take place if it is. Therefore, twenty ratifications of the CT are an important threshold. Reaching it does not mean that the Treaty enters into force, as some would have liked. It does however oblige member states to meet and work together loyally and in good faith towards a positive outcome.

Second, the Declaration does not make a distinction between which states ratify the CT and which do not. It simply refers to the four-fifths threshold. Therefore, each member state has the same weight, regardless of its size or seniority in the European Union. These factors will undoubtedly come into play when trying to find a way out of a ratification crisis, but in terms of the procedures provided for in Declaration no. 30, all member states have
equal standing.

The third consideration concerns the two-year deadline. A twofold
obligation for the member states stems from the Declaration. First of all, member states must plan internal ratification procedures so that they are completed within two years of the signing of the CT. Secondly, and this is the point that interests us most, no member state may decide to stop the ratification process because, for example, another state has chosen not to ratify. The Declaration requires that the process go ahead.

In fact, this is the only way to see whether or not the threshold of 20 ratifying states has been reached within two years. The only exception would be if more than five states had already rejected ratification. In that event, since the twenty state threshold could no longer be reached, a state would be entitled to suspend the ratification procedure. In all other cases, the obligation
outlined above remains valid.

Read the whole document, its short and worth a read.

Measuring the Impact of Blogs

Carl Bialik writing in the Wall Street Journal discusses the number of visitors weblogs in the US are getting. He points out that:

The total number of active blogs — those with a post in the past 30 days — was 3.5 million on May 1, according to BlogPulse. That was up just 30% from last September, even as the site found that the total number of blogs increased nearly 200% over that time. That suggests there’s a lot of dead air out there.

He is probably right, and my blog hasn’t been especially active of late.

The case for Europe

Javier Solana, the EU High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy, wrote a piece in the IHT the other day. He gives two reasons why we should accept the Constitution.

First, the constitution offers a massive improvement in our ability to tackle old and new security threats. Think of the solidarity clause which will cover both terrorist and natural or man-made disasters. Then add enhanced cooperation on civil protection and structured cooperation on defense.

Second, in terms of effectiveness, the constitution inaugurates a new way of taking decisions. The EU will have a foreign minister to serve as central interlocutor for our partners.

And who wants to be that Foreign Minister, Mr Solana? That unelected Foreign affairs representative? I wonder.

He went on:

Let us be clear. Neither Europe nor the world could afford the self-inflicted wound of a rejection of the constitution.

Seven countries have already ratified the constitution with two more countries well on track.

I fully count on the voters in France and the Netherlands to play their part in Europe’s renewal.

As one might say, stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Mr. Solana.

French voters reject EU charter

So the French have said Non. It reminds of the day the news came out that Ireland voted No – I remember at the time some French commentators slating us for our ‘anti-European’ stance. Looks like we weren’t the only ones to have reservations about the deepending of powers in the EU.

Chirac’s comments are interesting:

France has democratically expressed itself. You have rejected the European constitution by a majority. It is your sovereign decision and I take note of it. Nevertheless, our ambitions and interests are profoundly linked to Europe.

He ends his speech with:

In the coming days I will announce my decisions on the government and its priorities.

It is interesting that immediately after noting the democratic decision of France, he talks about how the situation can be resolved. In Ireland the reaction was, very quickly, that another unchanged referendum would be held, with enough time to scare the Irish people into not rejecting it again.


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