Searching for Villain; Surprise! Up Comes Uncle Sam

When Google challenges Europe. Overnight, the headline in the daily Le Monde turned the popular search engine into a new villain

writes Pierre Buhler in the International Herald Tribune under the title No Google, please, we're French. (More nonsense and wasted tax-payer funds here.) The common-sense sciences-po associate professor counters that

[Google's] motives are undoubtedly commercial, but how does this translate into a "challenge to Europe?"…

To reach its target, Google must … tap heavily into works not originally written in English. The selection criteria have not been spelled out, but both logic and Google's corporate culture point toward a preference for titles that would attract the greatest number of Internet users.

Meanwhile, Elisabeth Rosenthal generalizes anti-Americanism to all Italy with the title, Italy furious as report is said to clear GIs on agent.

Tensions between the United States and Italy surged on Tuesday as Italian opposition politicians and citizens reacted furiously to leaked reports in the Italian media that a joint investigation into the shooting death of an Italian agent in Baghdad would absolve U.S. soldiers of guilt in the incident.

What this means is that the villain is already designated here — Uncle Sam. When Uncle Sam is involved, judgment and condemnation have been passed already, and nothing less than total oppobrium is deserved. The idea that the absolution might have been entirely appropriate, at least in this particular case, is an option that simply cannot be true. Needless to say, if any other country's nationals had been involved, it is unlikely that (unless perhaps they were allies of America) there would have been such an outbreak of "fury".

Oh, and before we forget: the Europeans holding these views are the same who would have Washington join their "fair and objective" International Criminal Court.