What’s Europe’s perception of President Bush, now that he’s appearing at his last NATO Summit? From Le Figaro, France’s largest and most pro-American newspaper, comes this editorial. Written by Pierre Rousselin, the judgment of Bush’s legacy is a harsh one. Rousselin writes, “If the American president would take a sincere accounting of his actions, he would observe that he leaves a weakened Atlantic Alliance in military difficulty in Afghanistan, politically divided in the face of a more aggressive Russia, and ever-hesitant about its missions, its scope of activity and its raison d’être in the 21st century.”

Rousselin goes on to say, “Beyond the press releases glorifying painstaking compromise, the summit, which is to be followed on Friday by an unprecedented dialog with Vladimir Putin, highlights the lack of American “leadership” in the world at the end of a period marked by the Iraq War and the transatlantic crisis that it has unleashed. It is a sad result for a presidency that at its inception placed itself under the rubric of putting the use of force at the service of a conquering ideology.”

Editorial By Pierre Rousselin

Translated By Sandrine Ageorges

April 3, 2008

France - Le Figaro - Original Article (France)

The NATO summit in Bucharest is the final farewell of the allies to George W. Bush. If the American president would take a sincere accounting of his actions, he would observe that he leaves a weakened Atlantic Alliance in military difficulty in Afghanistan, politically divided in the face of a more aggressive Russia, and ever-hesitant about its missions, its scope of activity and its raison d’être in the 21st century.
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Wonder how the NATO Summit in Bucharest is being covered in the Russian press? Russian concerns about the meeting, infighting over why President Putin isn’t being given a platform to speak at the summit, and the details of Thursday’s events are all covered in somewhat excruciating detail in this analysis from Russia’s Kommersant. Apparently, the Kremlin is upset that President Putin won’t be able to address the public at the conference, suspicious that the Alliance is trying to prevent a repeat of his Munich Speech of last year, in which Putin criticized the United States.

According to Dmitry Rogozin, Russian Ambassador to NATO, “The leadership of the Alliance is committed to curtailing most of the debate. The Russian President will be unable speak publicly on the most important questions of world politics. This is an ugly spectacle, and attempts to blame it on the rules are inappropriate.

By Mikhail Zygar and Vladimir Solovyev

Translated By Igor Medvidev

April 2, 2009

Kommersant - Russia - Original Article (Russian)

The NATO summit opens today in Bucharest, and it may be the most scandalous summit in the history of the organization. Ukraine and Georgia will attempt to obtain entry into the Alliance’s Membership Action Plan, while Russia and its key economic partners try to prevent this. The format of the Russia-NATO meetings won’t give Putin a chance to make another Munich speech. But the presidents of Georgia and Ukraine and former Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov will be given a chance to speak.

[Editor’s Note: In his speech to the Munich Conference on Security Policy last year, President Putin said, among other things, “One state and, of course, first and foremost the United States has overstepped its national borders in every way. This is visible in the economic, political, cultural and educational policies it imposes on other nations. Well, who likes this? Who is happy about this? And of course this is extremely dangerous. The result of this is that no one feels safe. I want to emphasize this no one feels safe! Because no one feels that international law is like a stone wall that will protect them!”
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With Russia angry about America’s proposed missile shield and NATO in need of the Kremlin’s help in Afghanistan, will the NATO Alliance agree to admit the Ukraine and Georgia at the annual NATO Summit this week? According to Poland’s Gazeta Wyborcza, NATO membership for these former Russian satellites depends on how hard President Bush wants to push the reluctant nations of old Europe, who question the wisdom of angering President Putin at this moment of global high-tension.

Jacek Pawlicki writes for Gazeta, “Diplomatic sources told Gazeta yesterday that U.S. pressure had been so strong that Germany had begun to hesitate. It’s possible Berlin will make its final position conditional on France’s stance. If Paris doesn’t say no, neither will Berlin.”

By Jacek Pawlicki

Translated By Marcin Wawrzy?czak

April 1, 2008

Poland - Gazeta Wyborcza - Original Article (Polish)

The chance that NATO will open its door to Ukraine and Georgia remains, although the door is unlikely to be opened as wide as Poland would like. At least not just yet.

What NATO offers Ukraine and Georgia at its Bucharest summit, which begins tomorrow, will be decided by the Alliance’s leaders at the last moment. As Gazeta has learned, in the communiqué now being prepared, the section concerning NATO’s future relationship with Kiev and Tbilisi has been left blank. Read the rest of this entry »

There are precious treasures from Alabama buried far away in Belgian soil.

Here is only one of the stories of the two-hundred-sixty thousand souls, by Norman S. Lichtenfeld M.D. from materials submitted by Steve B. (3rd Armored Div.), both ©2001 All Rights Reserved: Dr. N.S. Lichtenfeld, and Steve B.

“… Black G.I.’s in World War II… were not forgotten to history; they were never acknowledged. They include eleven young artillerymen 333rd Field Artillery Battalion who were murdered by the SS, after surrendering, during the Battle of the Bulge.

“On December 16, German artillery began shelling Schonberg area. With reports of rapid German infantry and armored progress, the 333rd FAB was ordered to displace further west but to leave ‘C’ Battery and Service Battery in position to support 14th Cavalry and 106th Division.

“By morning December 17, these two positions were rapidly overrun by advancing German troops and armor. While many personnel tried to escape through Schonberg, eleven men of the Service Battery went overland …in hopes of reaching American lines. At about 3 p.m. they approached the first house in the nine-house hamlet of Wereth, Belgium.

“The men were cold, hungry, and exhausted after walking cross-country through deep snow. They had two rifles between them. The [Mathius Lange] family welcomed them and gave them food. But this small part of Belgium did not necessarily welcome Americans as “Liberators.” This area had been part of Germany before the First World War …the people spoke German but had been forced to become Belgian citizens when their land was given to Belgium as part of WWI repatriations. Unlike the rest of Belgium, many people in this area welcomed the Nazis in 1940 and again in 1944 because of their strong ties to Germany.

“Mathius Langer was not one of these. At the time he took the Black Americans in, he was hiding two Belgian deserters from the German Army and had sent a draft age son into hiding so the Nazis would not conscript him. A family friend was also at the house. Unknown to the Langers, she was a Nazi sympathizer.

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But will voters in Belgium?

There’s good news and the bad news for the Democratic-controlled Congress.

The good news: a new poll shows most Americans back the Congress in its efforts to pass an Iraq war funding bill with some kind of withdrawal timetable — the kind of timetable the Bush administration doesn’t like.

The bad news: the Congress’ approval rating is about as illustrious as President George Bush’s. And polling indicates polarization will be with us for a while…

From CNN:

In the new CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll released Tuesday, 57 percent want Congress to pass another bill with funding and timetables.

The poll surveyed 1,028 American adults between Friday and Sunday. It has a sampling error of 3 percentage points.

Another proposal is to replace timetables with benchmarks that the Iraqi government must meet to show progress toward a political resolution. Read the rest of this entry »

In a time of war, of such loss of life of the young, or no end in sight, to see dignitaries bowing and laughing and joking, surely a long, serious table grace is called for.

SEED CORN SHALL NOT BE GROUND
Seed corn: The best qualities of each green living thing, kept for seed so the next generation on earth will flower.

I first worked at the VA as an aide
and I saw them come back from hell…
Hell! Hell was still smoking inside them:
Front line men, artillery, tank and tail,
helicopter, hand to hand,
med evac, nurses, chaplains, photographers.

But too often, civvies, media, politicians wanted ”war stories,“ from them,
to somehow share a suck at what they thought of as the heroic tit.
They wanted battle-frayed soldiers to say they were okay,
that the war enchantment cast over them by others
had magically worn off just because someone said ‘war’s over, go home,’
that the soldiers had magically returned to their pre-war selves:
just a boy, just a girl, magically looking forward
to settling down with a nice girl or boy somewhere near trees and water.
But the soldiers’ eyes said,
Still at Inchon,
Still at the Ardennes
Still at the Tet
Still in Cambodia.
Forever.

Governments tried to erase all images and words about the wars,
but, the real eye-witness reports ran every night on the dream newsreels.
There, in their own beds, the men and women dreamt Honor and Horror
were dressed as innocent children,
who played time and again with the unspent money
of shells and mines so deadly pretty.
And outside the VA, the sexual lustre of war
continued to swell the hearts
of so many who never saw war up close.

At the VA, the soldiers walked the halls
wearing crowns of thorns made of missiles
and unspeakable memories on fire.
And anyone who saw them, helped them,
soothed them,
anyone who had a heart
left hanging by even one hinge
wondered,
Isn’t there such a thing as patriotic anger?
Is it not true that there is such a thing as patriotic sadness and sorrow?
What about patriotic resistance? Can there be patriotic regret?
And, oh by the way, when did patriotic reluctance to kill
change from a holy thing to a hated one?
And what does war shatter besides bone?
And how can secret regret deserve so much public praise?

How can the maiming of human life, life that all say is so precious,
be given so much remembrance, as though to be harmed and die
is hard sought treasure
instead of so unbearably tragic?
How can anything be more valued, more memorialized, than those who still stand
with earned valour shining,
with eyes that say:
Still walking from Bataan
Still in Saigon
Still in Seoul
Still deployed into cold waters
under hundred pound packs
and struggling toward shore.
Forever.

Seed Corn shall not be ground,
else the next generation of miracles, dies.
The visionary demands:
Seed corn shall not be ground!

Amen
————————————-

excerpt from ”Seed Corn Shall Not Be Ground,“ ©1968, 1978, 1989, 2003, 2007, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved. The entirety of this poem is printed here at TMV under Creative Commons License by which author grants permission to copy, distribute and transmit this particular work under the conditions that the use be non-commercial, that the work be used in its entirety and not altered, added to, or subtracted from, and that it be attributed with author’s name and this full copyright notice. For other uses, contact copyright holder.

Reuters has an interesting article up about a Belgian auto parts supplier who has forbidden his employees to speak another language than Dutch while at work. If they ignore the rule, they can be fired.

“We have people from Italy, India, Poland, Algeria here. It’s to avoid cliques forming here and there,” said Geert Vermote, human resources manager of HP Pelzer in the town of Genk in Belgium’s Dutch-speaking Flanders region.

Two staff at HP Pelzer have so far received written warnings, out of a workforce of 125 employees, some 70 percent of whom are of foreign origin. Three warnings would lead to a worker being fired.

The employees who are most upset with this rule are from Turkish origin: they believe that the new rule is aimed against them and they have asked a union to intervene.

Geert Vermote added: “”It’s really nothing other than other rules we have, such as a ban on smoking.”

Now, I am quite sure that Vermote will be criticized by quite some people, but - as I see it - it is his right to demand of his employees to speak Dutch while at their work. His argument, that cliques are formed based on nation of origin and, thus, language is bad for the company and thus bad for business is believable.

I do not know much about Belgian law, but, if it is not legal, it should be legal for an employer to do this. If employees do not like it, they can always quit and find another job.

It is called capitalism.

On the other hand, having 35% of one’s employees being angry, is not exactly good for business either. So, although it should be legal, one can wonder whether enforcing this rule is wise.

There is a problem in Europe these days. The continent suffered two big wars in the last century - so many different countries, with different cultures, with different interests always causes tensions to arrise. We are used to Germany starting and causing our wars, but… today it seems that a new, devastating war, could be caused by… Belgium.

Belgium’s Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt is angry that the Dutch city of Maastricht has decided to move its ‘coffeeshops’ to the border with Belgium. He sent Dutch PM Jan Peter Balkenende an angry letter, telling him that what Maastricht wants to do is in breach with European law and that he wants Balkenende to prevent this from happening. Or else.

Good Lord, I hope that Balkenende will understand that he’s playing with french fries fire.

Lets also hope the patattekes don’t decide that the only way to resolve this issue is by the use of force.

Just like Americans like to make jokes about Canadians, about them being stupid, etc., the Dutch enjoy making fun of Belgians. We have a wide variety of Belgium jokes, ridiculing the intelligence of our southern neighbors.

Why is that, one might ask? Why do we laugh at Belgians?

Well, I hope that the following explains it:

The government of Belgium’s French-speaking region of Wallonia, which has a population of about 4 million, has approved a tax on barbequing, local media reported.

Experts said that between 50 and 100 grams of CO2, a so-called greenhouse gas, is emitted during barbequing. Beginning June 2007, residents of Wallonia will have to pay 20 euros for a grilling session.

‘How will they check whether people adhere to this law?’ I thought to myself while reading the article linked to above.

That’s easy:

The local authorities plan to monitor compliance with the new tax legislation from helicopters, whose thermal sensors will detect burning grills.

Which reminds me of a Dutch joke about the Belgians: what’s the latest invention of Belgium?

An airport with a roof on top.

Anyway, I’m still hoping that the article is some kind of delayed april fool’s joke.