First I want to make it clear: Qaddafi does not like me and I don’t like him. He refused me a visa to report there more than once.
But I have to voice my opinion against this war on Libya because it is wrong and risks creating a disaster and turmoil which will last for years.
In his 2004 book, Colossus, Niall Ferguson argues the United States is an empire and should assume its rightful place as the inheritor of Britain’s 19th century ‘White Man’s Burden’. He decries the American schizophrenia of being an empire in denial, sending troops abroad without the intention of staying and being squeamish when GIs die. Ferguson says we should go, stay and impose our will for world order and to prevent chaos.
This may seem easy to say for a man comfortable in the Ivory Towers of Oxford and Harvard who never did military service, much less saw the harsh realities of war but he does have a point. Americans need to back their wars or not fight them and that is why I say we need to bring back the draft.
The idea of a universal, government run, health care system seems from this side of the Atlantic a ‘no-brainer’. At 17% of GDP, or more than $7,500 per American per year, you are paying double what any of the other industrialized nations pay where everybody is insured, while in the US 46 million go without health coverage.
Paris – July 10, 2008: Our intrepid leaders just wrapped up the mother of all summits. They condemned Human Rights abuses in Zimbabwe and in the same breath Bush and Sarkozy announced they will attend the opening of the Olympic Games in China and while prisoners in Guantanamo are still denied US Constitutional rights to a fair trial and Habeas Corpus.
Letter to the Poughkeepsie Journal I want to thank tax payers for the $300 Economic Stimulus Payment check […]
Paris, France — The banker looked at me with a puzzled expression when I told her a recent poll shows 47% of the French fear they could one day be homeless.
“I’m surprised only 47% realize it,” she said.
Djibouti, North Eastern Africa — The atmosphere was electric Thursday morning. Friday is their day off and Thursday is Khat day, the day everybody indulges heavily in the chewing of the narcotic plant. I had seen them buying Khat from women on the street feverishly every afternoon but Thursday was the mother of all euphoria.
Today French President Nicolas Sarkozy told us in a speech for the 89th anniversary of Armistice Day that ‘war is Hell‘. This man, who did no military service, dared to speak of the horror and the suffering of a generation sent to the slaughter by politicians like him, in the interests of wealthy friends like his.
Paris – France : In 1997, a very stubborn French Doctor in a State run hospital did not give up looking. When endoscopies and ultra-sounds turned up no explanation for the severe pancreatitis I suffered from, he sent me to a ‘private’ clinic specialized in invasive procedures. There they found the tumor in my pancreas and four days later the doctor in the public hospital conducted the queen of all operations: a whipple. It did not cost me a penny to save my life!
KazoDaily 