Later today, Iain Duncan Smith, the leader of Britain’s Conservative Party, will face a vote of confidence in his leadership that he’s widely expected not to survive. (For those of you looking for blogged coverage during the day, I recommend British Politics, Anthony Wells, Iain Murray and our own Matthew Turner. We’re yet to have a blogging Conservative MP, but there’s some interesting perspectives from inside Westminster from the MPs Tom Watson and Richard Allan.)
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Col Lounsbury
I’ve added a new blog to the blogroll that has quickly become one of my favorites.
Col Lounsbury is a financier currently in Jordan, involved in Iraqi reconstruction. He’s a scathing critic of the administration’s efforts.
He’s quite bright, extremely knowledgable about Middle Easter culture and society. He’s also a delight to read, with a very distinctive style, and also a very distinctive, larger than life personality.
Sheiken, Not Stirred
The Washington Post reports on:
Spreading Saudi Fundamentalism in U.S.
Network of Wahhabi Mosques, Schools, Web Sites Probed by FBI
“On Aug. 20, 2001, Saleh Ibn Abdul Rahman Hussayen, a man who would soon be named a minister of the Saudi government and put in charge of its two holy mosques, arrived in the United States to meet with some of this country’s most influential fundamentalist Sunni Muslim leaders.
“His journey here was to include meetings and contacts with officials of several Saudi-sponsored charities that have since been accused of links to terrorist groups, including the Illinois-based Global Relief Foundation, which was shut down by U.S. authorities last year.
“He met with the creators of Islamic Web sites that U.S. authorities contend promote the views of radical Saudi clerics tied to Osama bin Laden.” …
“Backed by money from Saudi Arabia, Wahhabis have built or taken over hundreds of mosques in North America and opened branches of Saudi universities here for the training of imams as part of the effort to spread their beliefs, which are intolerant of Christianity, Judaism and even other strains of Islam.” …
“The Saudi government, through its embassy here, declined to discuss any aspect of the probe. Embassy officials agreed in August to forward a request for an interview to Hussayen, but provided no response.” …
“The most intriguing aspect of Hussayen’s journey may be entirely coincidental: his brief proximity in a hotel near Dulles International Airport to three of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers the night before they crashed Flight 77 into the Pentagon. On the night of Sept. 10, Hani Hanjour, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi checked into the same hotel, a Marriott Residence Inn.
“The FBI has examined hotel videotapes and interviewed employees, but has found no indication that Hussayen and the hijackers interacted, law enforcement sources said. After the attack, an FBI agent interviewed hotel guests, including Hussayen and his wife, but did not get very far.
“According to court testimony from FBI agent Gneckow earlier this year, the interview was cut short when Hussayen ‘feigned a seizure, prompting the agents to take him to a hospital, where the attending physicians found nothing wrong with him.’
“The agent recommended that Hussayen “should not be allowed to leave until a follow-up interview could occur,” Gneckow told the court. But ‘her recommendation, for whatever reason, was not complied with,’ he said.
“On Sept. 19, the day air travel resumed, Hussayen and his wife took off for Saudi Arabia.”
Is anyone in the European press doing this kind of investigative reporting on the Islamist networks that are still active in Europe? I haven’t seen anything in the Frankfurter Allgemeine, but there’s obviously lots of the German press that I don’t get to. France? UK? Nordics?
Odd, But Interesting
Gregg Easterbrook of the New Republic writes:
MOSCOW LOST THE COLD WAR, BUT DREAMS OF WINNING THE GLOBAL WARMING WAR: Why won’t Russia ratify the Kyoto Treaty? It would seem very much in Moscow’s interest to do so.
The United States has dropped out of Kyoto negotiations, but most other Western nations remain in. Russia now holds the swing vote on whether Kyoto goes into effect for most Western nations except the United States. If Kyoto actually did take effect, requiring most Western nations to make dramatic reductions in greenhouse gases, Europe would inevitably end up involved in “carbon trading” with Moscow. The European Union would invest in modernization of Russian industry, in order to reduce Russian greenhouse-gas emissions; then Europe would buy the reduction credits so created. The European Union also would reduce its use of greenhouse-offender coal, substituting lower-carbon natural gas from Russia. Thus it seems Moscow and its industries would come out a winner under a Kyoto regime. Yet the Duma has been resisting ratification of Kyoto for two years, and yesterday, Vladimir Putin said he is also opposed.
Possible reason for Russian resistance–Moscow wants global warming! Much of the world might suffer, but the freezing former Soviet states might be better off. The agricultural region of Russia might expand significantly, while Siberia became reasonably habitable. If Siberia and other ice regions became reasonably habitable, global warming would effectively be expanding Russian territory by climate change, not war. And what government doesn’t want more territory?
Sidelight: Why does Germany favor the Kyoto Treaty? Not so much for greenhouse reasons but so that Berlin can shut down the country’s subsidized, politically powerful coal-mining industry. German leaders have wanted for decades to cut subsidies for coal production–even the presumably pro-labor current government wants this–because coal mined in Germany costs more than twice the world price, mainly owing to featherbedded work rules. Every move to reign in the German coal industry has been greeted by public howls. But if Berlin could blame a coal shut-down on an international obligation, and polls show the Kyoto accord is very popular among Germans, the equation would change.
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The sidelight is even odder and even more interesting. Hmm.
Quiz time
Bored? Think you’re an expert on EU matters? Then try the BBC’s Brussels Brainbuster quiz. OK, it’s just 10 multiple choice questions, not really a true brainbuster, but it should fill a minute or two of your time. You can even share your results with everyone else in the comments section – especially if you beat my rather pathetic 7/10 and want to gloat.
Tobias is back
Tobias was apparently too modest to announce it here so I’ll do it for him: Almost A Diary is back online after a month of hosting troubles.
The new address is http://almostadiary.baldingwithgrace.de
I’ll never look at the Euro the same way again
And before anyone suggest it, this Russian advert is not going to be the new Fistful of Euros logo.
Any Russian speakers who can say what the text in the advert means?
Around the Internet
Polls indicate Estonians will vote yes to EU accession tomorrow.
In Sweden, “polls give widely differing indications as to the likely outcome of the referendum.”
The Economist has a pretty decent primer on our referendum. (Via Crooked Timber)
International Herald Tribune reported yesterday enlargement seems to be bad news for African farmers::
For France the prospect of support from Poland and Hungary is a welcome development.
For years French politicians have feared that the enlargement of the European Union would mean a dilution of French power and influence in Europe. But on the question of farm policy, enlargement could provide much-needed moral and political support.
It is a different story for groups that support a radical overhaul of the E43 billion, or $48 billion, program, for whom enlargement is a worrying prospect.
“The opportunity for reform was this summer,” said Sam Barratt of Oxfam, an aid organization that has been very critical of Europe’s farm policies. “And given the obstinacy that the French had then, when the Hungarians and the Poles join it’s going to make any reform even harder.” The number of farmers in the Union will increase by 50 percent with the admission of 10 new countries into the Union in May.
Blogs:
The indispenable Cosmocrat finds increasingly strong signs that the EU Constitution will be fundamentally re-examined by the Inter-Governmental Conference.
Stefan Geens blogs about The Wall Street Journal’s comments on Anna Lindh. He was pleasantly surprised, then quite unpleasantly surprised.
Juan Cole on Al-Qaeda’s new geostrategic masterplan
Around the Blogs: CAP etc
I finally got around to looking at the Guardian’s new campaign blog, KickAAS, which is dedicated to abolishing agricultural subsidies, certainly a laudable goal., and while I don’t know if it’ll be a regular read, it’s surprisingly non-boring. It’s also interesting as a phenomenon, especially for those buying into the hype on poli blogs.
Via their comments section I discovered ideosyncratic conservative Back40′s blog, where was delighted to find a coherent and reasoned defense of CAP*, probably the first time I’ve seen such a thing. The blog’s full of original takes on original choices of topics. (except when talking about ‘the liberal media’.)
Who knew agricultural subsidies could be fun?
Less fun is the news that Matthew Yglesias will do all his political blogging on The American Prospect’s staff blog – unaccredited. I join his commenters in wondering why they didn’t give him his own blog, which would presumably get them more of his considerable readership, and thus get TAP more revenue and exposure. Especially since he on his own has posted more frequebtly than all TAPPED contributors combined.
This is sad since Yglesias was one of my favorite’s bloggers and this will obviously not be the same thing.
Update: Henry Farrell gives us a nod (thank you!) and responds to Iain’s post. In comments, ‘Doug’ made this brilliant observation, that I gotta reproduce here:
“There?s an interesting article to be done on what fantasies European integration evokes from local paleocons. In Britain, it?s apparently Guy Fawkes. In Poland, it?s godlessness, Communism and abortion. In Hungary, it?s Jews and maybe Germans. In Germany, it?s waves of invaders from the East. There?s probably a specific set for almost any EU or soon-to-be EU country that would tell outsiders a lot about the neuroses in national history. And these, in turn, tend to draw on political tropes that are so old fashioned you wonder what steamer trunk someone lifted them out of.”
In Sweden, of course, it’s an evil neoliberal plot to destroy the welfare state.
*The EU’s Common Agricultural Policy.