It’s interesting, sometimes, to look into foreign media to see what the rest of the world is thinking.  I read German pretty fluently (and get around in Dutch modestly well), so that’s where I gravitate.

And it can be kinda scary at times.

Via Davids Medienkritik, this piece from Handelsblatt, a sort of left-leaning German Wall Street Journal, is kind of enlightening:

The USA is putting firms under massive pressure worldwide to stop doing business with Iran. With that economic isolation they want to force the country to stop its controversial atomic program. Especially German firms are hard hit by that, indeed they traditionally do good business in the region. The latest case comes from the banking world.

BERLIN. After massive pressure from the USA, Commerzbank has now announced that it will end its processing of dollar-business for Iran at the end of January. Commerzbank boss Klaus-Peter Mueller has already publicly complained about the pressure from the Americans in his position as President of the Federal Union of German Banks.”

David – as solid a critic of the German media as there is – notes:

The article almost makes it sound as if the United States is to blame for Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. There is absolutely no hint that it might be wrong or unethical to trade with (and financially prop-up) Iran or other violent dictatorships/state-sponsors of terrorism. This despite the fact that Iranian President Ahmadinejad has repeatedly stated that Israel should be wiped off the map and that the Holocaust is a myth. There is also no mention of Iran’s support of Hezbollah nor does Handelsblatt mention the country’s bleak human rights record. Instead, America is made out to be the bad guy while Ahmadinejad gets a free pass. One honestly has to ask, where are the German concepts of fair trade and economic and social justice in all of this? Where are the traditional objections to profiteering and capitalist excess?

Read the whole thing.

…the Strib’s letter of the day‘s IQ is above the outdoor temperature for a change:

On Sept. 19, 2006, a letter writer argued that President Bush influenced the price of gasoline, and that, after the elections in November, gas prices would rise above $3 per gallon.

I would like to quote from an article in the Jan. 10 Star Tribune: “The price of a gallon of gas has fallen to $1.98 at many Twin Cities stations for the first time since mid-February 2006.”

I have a question for the letter writer from September: Why is Bush moving the gas prices lower now?

Probably because I’m now busing to work.

But I digress.  It’d be almost fun to hear Mike Malloy explain this on the air.  Not that he could.

Most of the family lost in Oregon nine days ago have been found, alive:

authorities report that Kati Kim and daughters Penelope and Sabine have been found alive and well after been stranded nine days in the wilderness in southwest Oregon. CNET editor James Kim is still missing, but searchers are keeping up their air and ground efforts.

Kati Kim and daughter Penelope, 4 years, and Sabine, 7 months, were in remarkably good condition, surviving on what authorities describe as “minor provisions” in their car for nine days. The family used the car’s heater to stay warm, and began burning tires when the car ran out of gas.

The news isn’t all good…: 

James Kim set off on his own for help two days ago; rescuers are following his still-visible trail.

Prayers, wishes or whatever other karmic invocations you prefer are probably in order. 

Yet again – as with the aftermath of every earthquake – never believe “the authorities” when they say they’ve given up hope. 

Scots want to split from the UK:

In an ICM poll published this month by the Scotsman newspaper, 51 percent of Scots said they favored independence and 39 percent said they preferred keeping things as they are. Ten percent were undecided.

A poll conducted for the Sunday Times newspaper by YouGov found that 44 percent of Scots favored independence and 42 percent were against. The number favoring independence has nearly doubled since 2000, when YouGov asked the same question.

Rumor has it that parliamentarian Angus MacMcCain is pitching the Brit parliament on the notion of “Independence Campaign Finance Reform” to cure that.

Scotland has enjoyed a kind of quasi-independent status since 1999 after it was granted a parliament of its own and control over most of its internal affairs under a process called devolution. Many analysts thought devolution would put an end to calls for full independence. Instead, a taste of self-governance seems to have left the Scots hungry for more.

The Brits are paying the price for cutting and running in 1783; bit by bit, an ideology hostile to the one on which their government was built at the time has gobbled up most of their land and people; the US, Australia, Canada, India…

My mom called last night to tell me a bunch of her foreign friends were upbeat about the election results.

I thought about that as I read this bit about overseas reactions

And I thought – how typical is this?

The French want to whinge about “unilateral foreign policy?” The French have always run their foreign policy for the pure, simple benefit of France – which was why they provided nuclear technology to Hussein in the first place; They propped up the technology, defenses and trade of the the genocidal Hussein (going as far as building the nuclear reactor that the Israelis finally had to destroy 25 years ago) to buy themselves an ally in the region. The French have never bought into multilateral foreign policy – except to leverage their own self-serving interests; Whenever some gabbling Frog refers to “cowboy diplomacy”, I have to chuckle – the surrender monkeys invented the concept of diplomacie des enfants du vache.

Germans yakking about human rights? It was within the lifetime of your current leadership that we Americans taught you that gassing people by the trainload was a serious social gaffe. Kuess mei’ Sitzfleisch, Linker, and thank the US for not treating you the way the Soviets did – the way you deserved to be treated after what your nation did to the world (conservatives – find a liberal friend and tell ’em what the Germans and Soviets did to each other; all any of them remembers about history is the Indians, Slavery and the Civil Rights movement). To the extent that your nation has any moral capital to spend on yammering about human rights, you borrowed it from the souls of hundreds of thousands of Americans, Brits and Canadians who died teaching you the lesson.

Turks yipping about Guantanamo?; Go rent Midnight Express.
Sorry, whole wide world. When any of you are qualified to lecture the US about diplomacy, human rights or morality at large, we’ll let you know.

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