Here and There, Mar. 25

ROTFL (I) France determined to play big role in rebuilding Iraq

Gilles Munier, an executive board member of the French-Iraq Association for Economic Cooperation, said business leaders and government representatives were studying how to gain a foothold in postwar Iraq...Some French are concerned that a U.S.-led administration in Iraq will favor companies from the United States and other pro-war countries while penalizing companies from France and other war opponents.

Go figure. And not that it should take any special talent to predict such a thing, but Shark Blog predicted several weeks ago that France would be knocking on our car door about now, dressed in a short skirt and not wearing any panties.

ROTFL (II) Saudis make peace proposal to United States, Iraq

ROTFL (III) Der Spiegel has a laughably biased article called "Warblogging: Completely Different War News". Curiously, Der Spiegel understands warblogging to be blogging against the war and exposing pro-war bias in U.S. media. The article skeptically mentions exactly two pro-war blogs (the fine Oxblog and L.T. Smash) and wonders whether and to what extent they are "fed with information" by the Defense Department. Seriously. The sidebar contains a list of links to war-related blogs. In addition to the two pro-war blogs previously mentioned, the list includes several anti-war blogs. Among them, alternet.org (lead story today: Robert Fisk on Washington’s ‘Quagmire’ in Iraq) and "Veiled for Allah", the official voice of all those burka-wearing European American converts to Islam that are filling our streets these days. Somehow, Der Spiegel didn't notice the more widely read and influential blogs that cover the war, such as Andrew Sullivan, Instapundit, Little Green Footballs, The Command Post... Stop me now before I run out of room.

Palestinian Corruption Watch: Haaretz reports that international donors have frozen funding of leading Palestinian "human rights" group "The Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment" after an independent audit raised suspicion of mismanagement of millions of dollars in grants, the European Union said Tuesday. From September 1997 through August 2002, the organization received about $10 million from donors (including the European Union). However, about $4 million of this sum was embezzled, used for other purposes, or cannot be accounted for, according to the audit. It would be interesting to find out how many people were killed with the money used for "other purposes". But let's hope this is a sign that the Europeaser Union is finally starting to take responsibility for their "humanitarian assistance" to the world's kleptocrats and terrorists.

Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at March 25, 2003 05:40 PM