Senior Italian diplomat Francesco Paolo Fulci is arguing in support of German FM Westerwelle’s Jihad to get the EU “a seat on the security council”, in spite of the two they already have in the form of the UK and France. Even at the proposed expanded size, this would still represent 1/3 of the UNSC when the EU members are barely capable of playing a role in European security, let alone that of any other region of the world.

It’s a curious thing, this endless jockeying for more leverage... what on earth do they think they’re going to do with it, even if the rest of humanity were convinced that they DO deserve it?

In the short-term, why not ask the EU member that is elected to the Security Council for two years – which at the moment is Austria – to include a senior civil servant from the country that is currently in charge of the EU Presidency — Spain will take over on 1st January— in its delegation? This would enable a Spanish diplomat to be present in the Council's "holy of holies" right behind the Austrian ambassador. The presence of a representative of the EU Presidency would enable Europe to follow developments on issues presented to the council; and if there is a common European position on a particular issue, the Spanish representative – with the consent of the Austrian ambassador – could express the EU point of view, and enable Europe to take the floor when major decisions concerning war and peace in the world are being decided.

Mongolia has a population of 3 million. There seems to be one Euro-über-lider-maximo for each of them:

The treaty came into force in December and is supposed to cure Europe's malaise by streamlining decision-taking, simplifying procedures, boosting common foreign policy, and supplying strong and coherent leadership.

It is early days, but the new regime has started not with a bang but with a whimper. Where there was to be coherence, there is confusion. Where there was to be clear leadership, there are turf wars and rival presidents.

Obama announced last week he was too busy for a slated summit with the Europeans in Madrid in May. When Mongolia's leader, Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj, visited Brussels last week he was nonplussed by the plethora of "European presidents" whom protocol prescribed he must meet (there are currently four).

The US state department made plain that one reason for Obama's absence is that, under Lisbon, it was not clear with whom the Americans should be dealing.

The first EU summit under Van Rompuy's stewardship sees Europe slumped in a mood of unusually persistent gloom. Van Rompuy, Gordon Brown, Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel and the rest are in charge of a Europe engulfed by a sense of defeatism and decline and exhausted by nine long years of trying to construct a new European regime. The reasons for the ennui are clear. According to senior officials, analysts, and diplomats in Brussels, Paris, London and Berlin, Europe suddenly seems to matter a lot less in the world. Additionally, its leaders appear unsure of how to tackle their single currency's biggest ever crisis, and are engaged in petty power struggles and point-scoring over how to use the EU's new rulebook – the Lisbon treaty.

The belief that we can recover from the economic crisis without compromising our "European Way of Life" is quite simply a pipe dream argues, Polish columnist Marek Magierowski.

For nearly six months, Florence Aubenas became: "Madame Aubenas," age 48, no specific qualifications — an unemployed woman among others, dozens of others, none of whom recognized her. Day after day, she immersed herself in the formless mass of job seekers, who drift from one underpaid temporary job to another — the legions of the non-skilled unemployed who have no hope of finding real jobs, just odd hours here and there — that is if they are lucky.

To tell the story of people going under

A similar situation prevails in the other countries of Western Europe, especially those worst hit by the crisis like Greece, Portugal and the United Kingdom. Remedies employed by governments are systematically similar too — more state involvement in the economy, higher taxes, and the relentless iteration of a mantra to designate the "real" instigators of the crisis: greedy bankers and speculators. And be warned, any state that dares to question the entitlements of this or that social group can expect to assume the consequences of a mini-civil war, with pitched battles between stone throwing strikers and water canon wielding police.

« ... I’m going to get a airliner ... »
« ... I’m going to get a cartoonist ... »

The answer, it seems, is NO. Nor can they manage that situation without turning the work into state funded ideological Punch and Judy shows.

Among other entrants, Rodek had Polanski’s The Ghost Writer in mind. As he mentions, the film was largely shot at the fabled Babelsberg studios, outside Berlin, and at other German locations. What he does not mention is the more than €3.5 million in financing that the German Film Fund (DFFF) contributed to the making of the film. The exact figure is €3,540,944. The DFFF is directly attached to the German government’s Department of Culture and Media.

The Ghost Writer also received another €500,000 in financing from the Film Board (FFA), Germany’s other federal source of public support for cinema. The FFA is funded by a “fee” leveled on the ticket sales of German cinemas.

And that is not all. The Ghost Writer also received yet another €500,000 in public support from the joint “Media-Board” of the German states of Berlin and Brandenburg (source: Studio Babelsberg). Plus €200,000 from the Film Fund of Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein. Plus another €200,000 from the modest Film Fund of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the poorest of Germany’s sixteen states. That makes for nearly €5 million in German public support in all — or nearly $7 million at current exchange rates. Plus, in January of this year the Media-Board Berlin-Brandenburg kicked in another €80,000 in subsidies to aid in the distribution of the film

Like most of Polanski's recent work, this is both a genre film and a literary adaptation, but it's infused with his distinctively bleak vision of social and sexual relationships. Furthermore, I can't resist noting that "The Ghost Writer" is partly about a man forced into foreign exile by his legal problems, a man who just happens to be a famous and charismatic international playboy with a buried secret in his 1970s past.

Instead, Polanski crafts something like a devious four-hand chamber play, set largely inside the forbidding, modernist beach house -- the movie was mainly shot on a Berlin soundstage, using green screens for exterior backdrops -- and featuring McGregor as the dewy-eyed outsider who wanders unawares into a nest of vipers. Besides the vague but affable Lang, the denizens include his long-suffering wife, Ruth (Olivia Williams), who becomes the ghostwriter's confidante while nursing her own secrets, and Lang's coolly efficient assistant (Kim Cattrall), who may also be his lover.

Even while bad data and mythical over-dramatizations of Global Warming are being debunked, EU committees dueling with EU committees are engaging in Machiavellian negotiations over who can take the point and the next globetrotter junket.

The meeting of foreign ministers, gathered in Monday in the guise of the EU's ‘General Affairs Council' (referred to in Brussels circles as the ‘Gac'), supported a Spanish EU presidency proposal that the Gac take on the role of a sort of ‘executive committee' of the EU's climate strategy, co-ordinating the climate change actions of each of the various other Council of Ministers formations.

A work plan of actions to be executed by the different councils was agreed. The next council of environment ministers would perform three tasks: implement the Copenhagen Accord - the climate document crafted in Denmark but outside the UN process and the subject of much suspicion in the developing world; investigate ways to boost the negotiating process; and identify ways to achieve leverage against countries whose opinions differed to those of the EU.

Mr Moratinos told reporters after the Gac meeting: "What was missing [at Copenhagen] was a strategy of alliances to advance the goals of the EU."

In the wake of the Copenhagen debacle, European commentators, officials and politicians widely agreed that the bloc should speak with one voice on climate issues in the future. But whether this one voice is that of the European Commission or the European Council has yet to be settled.

A discussion forum at the Granf Mosque of Lyons, one of those things that Casper loves so much, had as the basis of discussion the future Muslim led Shoah. Following is a partial translation of a report by French blog Bivouac-id.

Disturbing. It was under a banner proclaiming the "Peace and love between peoples", as peaceful Muslims of Lyons discussed on the website forum of the Grand Mosque of Lyon how the Jews will be exterminated by Muslims.

Abdel Hamid is the assumed name of "Global Moderator" of the forum that initiated a discussion entitled "The Jews know. He suspects "the Jews" to be planting avocado trees in an attempt to escape their fateful destiny of being slaughtered to the last Jew by Muslims.

In fact he learned that "when Muslims and Jews go to war, there will be no weapons, but rather everything is again as it was before in the time of the prophet, with swords, and the like.
He adds that the prophet said in a hadith: when this war is waged, stones and trees will say to Muslims: There is a Jew behind me, come and kill him! ".
Abdel Hamid believes that this tree should be the avocado, which explains that the Jews are planting millions he said.

Um talha, an "active member" replied saying that all of this is true, that the Jews know, but the tree that denounces Jews to Muslims is not avocado, but the "al-Gharqad "and gives the reference: a hadith related by Imam Ahmad that he certifiesto be "authentic ".

At that point a non-registered guest chimes in to this nut house, saying that he looks forward to the end of the world and the disappearance of all the technology invented by infidels. He prefers the time as the time of the prophet, "you had nothing but your camel". He then imagines that a computer failure will paralyze the world, and will end the reign of technology. Or perhaps the end of oil .... Then he wisely concluded that if Muslim engange in the genocide of Jews for religious reasons, that we must not hate them.

On this internet forum hosted by the Great Mosque of Lyon there are 1870 related messages since the thread started, which is relatively small and given the low attendance it looks completely controllable. [ed.: writing sarcastically] This discussion dates to July and August 2008, and is still online. Since the leaders of the mosque do not seem shocked by it, I turn therefore to the leaders of this country: Is this acceptable, given the tone of their sacred texts inciting believers to kill not just Jews, but also Christians, polytheists, and atheists as well? Is it wise to continue to permit the immigration of Muslims into the country?