Why would historian Alexandre Adler, who is often characterized as France’s foremost neo-con and who greatly admires John McCain, want to see Barack Obama elected president of the United States?

After discussing the many things that Obama is wrong on - and it’s quite a list - Adler writes in part:

“If I was an American voter, I would campaign enthusiastically for the election of Ms. Rice to enter the White House. The nature of things means that unfortunately it won’t be her, but Illinois Senator Barack Obama, who is likely to become the first Black president of the United States. … Read the rest of this entry »

Everyone agrees that the Georgia-Russia crisis requires European mediation. But the question is, who’ll settle the dispute among Europeans about what to do?

As WORLDMEETS.US and The Moderate Voice readers have seen from around the continent over the past two weeks - Eastern and Central Europeans are completely split over what to do about the resurgent Russian bear.

This editorial from Germany’s Financial Times Deutschland puts it this way:

“Europe wants to mediate, but it is so divided itself, that it too, requires mediation. … For Moscow, which is acting from a position of strength since its campaign, it will be easy to use this division for its own purposes. The Kremlin wants to expand its influence and to keep neighboring countries which that aspire to the West in a state of permanent instability. The E.U. has no interest in allowing this - but given the disharmony, they have little to oppose the Russians with. This war sends a very clear signal that together with the united States, it’s high time to restrict Russia’s sphere of influence. However, not all want to hear that signal.”

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Having labored under the yoke of Soviet domination in the very recent past, the countries of Eastern Europe and the Caucasus have a visceral feel for the politics of the now blossoming conflict between Russia and its former territory Georgia.

As far as this situation ending well for Georgia, the editorial board of Romania’s Cotidianul newspaper has little of comfort to offer.

Writing of President Bush, the editorial says in part:

“In no case will he jump to defend the territorial integrity of Georgia with weapon in hand, even though there are still 100 American soldiers there training Georgian troops. The times when Russia was a weak state and that the U.S. could build a bridge to Georgia are over.”

In regard to the timing of Georgian membership in NATO, the editorial goes on:

“The Moscow Bear cannot be challenged through the bars of its own cage: Georgia is within Russia’s sphere of influence, which is why Tbilisi has no reason to hope for NATO entry anytime soon.”

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In this first Romanian translation from WORLDMEETS.US about Barack Obama, Adrian Deoanca of Romania’s Cotidianul newspaper gives his reckoning of why Europeans are so taken by the young senator.

Deoanca writes in part:

“Barack Obama was greeted like a superstar in Berlin. He wasn’t acclaimed for his indisputable talent at oratory, but because he’s the antithesis of the much-derided current president. The senator is much like a European, while Bush is perceived as the embodiment of the lack of high culture and barbarism which is often - and too often wrongly - attributed to America and Americans. Unlike Bush, Obama seems to oppose a patriotism that verges on nationalism, which frightens a Europe that wants to be post-national; and he appears to advocate a middle path between a pragmatic liberalism and an attenuated form of socialism that is closest to the European spirit.”

Deoanca goes on to explain how bad it has gotten under President Bush, and he outlines an ineffable truth about Europe and the United States that many Americans may be unaware of:

“Anti-Americanism has always been a topic of discussion in Western Europe, even a common one, especially among the intelligentsia. But the reign of George W. Bush gave a patina of legitimacy to European prejudices and brought into line the attitudes of intellectuals, politicians and the masses against the United States, and made ridiculing Bush a habit in cafes and eateries. In the Bush era, the American century plumbed its lowest depths and anti-Americanism became the new global religion.”

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Than Shwe, the dictator of Burma, caused it to be announced today that a constitutional referendum “was overwhelmingly approved”– when in fact a huge portion of the Burmese are dead or lying injured and homeless from the cyclone and tsunami which hit the Irrawaddy delta rice growing region almost 13 days ago…and were unable to drink clean water, let alone vote.

Than Shwe’s referendum casts in concrete in perpetuity, more of the brutality and egotistical offal that Burma has suffered in the nearly four decades of military rule under and from Than Shwe.

Than Shwe claims his referendum document was voted in by 92.4 percent of the 22 million eligible voters last Saturday.

His henchman, named Aung Toe, head of the Referendum Holding Committee, touted such on state radio, saying the voter turnout was more than 99 percent.

Please forgive me, but this all reminds me of the grotesqueries of Elena Ceausescu, the headscarf and overcoat and thick heeled shoe wearing wife of the dictator of Romania, Nikolai Ceausescu. While her dictator husband appointed himself, literally, Geniul din Carpai, ‘Genius of the Carpathians’, she appointed herself Commissioner Head of Sciences. She also appointed herself the equivalent of ‘Highest Director of National Arts.’ Elena Ceausescu held daily three-hour long television shows of herself expounding to the vastly intelligent Romanian people, her stunted and ignorant ‘knowledge’ of the arts and ’scientific matters’. No one with even a baby pea-brain believed a word she said. But her abject dimness of heart and hubris made her believe others were somehow stupid and would never see through her.

But people did see through her, rejected her utterly, overthrew her and her husband. For his and her crimes against the people, which were evil and Mengeles-like, such as controlling and punishing reproduction or the lack of it, and for withholding medicines from those dying of AIDS, and causing a preventable epidemic as a result… and for doing as Than Shwe does presently… grabbing and stashing all the nation’s valuables and bullion to himself alone… for all these, the Romanians fought and won a coup, and imposed the death sentence on Elena Ceausescu and her husband. And they were no more.

And people do see through Than Shwe. Voices from all over the world, human rights groups, the UN, and others have utterly condemned Burma’s Than Shwe for gerry-rigging the vote, and outrageously lying that it was ‘a move toward democracy.’

The world communities of conscience condemn Than Shwe most of all, for abjectly leaving the cyclone victims to die and rot and starve, while he tends to his portly, well fed ego. It is believed well over 100,000 have perished in Burma from the cyclone and many thousands more from neglect by the government which has stonewalled, delayed, disorganized and also prevented well equiped and expert rescue teams from outside Burma to come to the aid of the poor suffering Burmese.

If you’d like to read a take on the effects of and containment of evil, regarding the social justice situation in Burma from a spiritual and political perspective, I’ve written an article entitled, “Facing Evil: Qui tacet consentit - Who Keeps Silent, Consents” at The National Catholic Reporter.

Meanwhile, the AP reports:

Following the balloting, local journalists said they saw cases of intimidation of voters at various polling stations around the country.
The fear of the military, which has ruled since 1962, was so great that

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