Another way of saying "share the goods, comrade" is all they're capable of coming up with.

It is time to think about how to prepare democratic society for the significant stress that adjusting to climate change will cause, and how to guarantee political participation in a difficult period. In Germany, citizens are already beginning to doubt that they live in the best of all political worlds. According to a study conducted by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, almost one in three people hold the view that democracy is functioning badly; astoundingly, 60 per cent of eastern Germans were of this opinion. There is a growing impression that the political system is not equipped to deal with the "big issues" such as climate change, global justice, and demographic development. In other words, democracy is no longer "delivering" and is lacking an essential pillar of its credibility: output legitimacy.

From communication management to democratic skill

It is not hard to understand that those affected by such situations feel themselves abandoned by the state, and often from democracy as well. One of the main reasons is precisely that the state has not ceased to profess willingness to provide care that in reality it can no longer afford. Thus, for example, the increasingly loud demands that low and middle income groups receive compensation for dramatically rising energy costs are likely to be disappointed. No democracy in the world that can vouch for this if resources become scarcer and therefore more expensive; moreover, if democracies wish to retain trust, paradoxically they must admit that they cannot do so. It is possible to imagine what will happen if rising energy costs result in a decline in living standards even for middle income groups, with low earners no longer able to heat their homes

In the search for actors that possess or could acquire democratic skills, the gaze falls less and less upon professional politics. Some see the chance for the revival of social participation in active consumer responsibility; consumer rights lends itself well to learning democratic skills through apparently trivial questions such as: "What can I do so that our school is supplied by the local organic dairy?" According to this approach, analogous issues of climate and environmental protection open up new opportunities for political engagement that connect local and regional agendas with global ones.

Brussels Journal reports on an issue that has lit up the French "réacosphere": the idea that a nation with factional, race and ethnicity centered conflict is officially color-blind when society clearly isn't.

The cartoon at the left reads:

So, as I was saying, in France we are all racists. (Except for singers and television).
- I wonder if in foreign countries they are as racist as we are...
- No, I don't think so, seeing as how they're not French.

The cartoon at the right reads:

Unfortunately for us 60 million racists, we are a bit harassed by television.

- I propose a TV series where a girl from Cameroon goes to live in a village and finds she's the target of the villagers' racism, but at the end they see she is OK.

- Yeah, super great idea. They're often racists in the villages. Not like us in the cities.

The big 2 refers to French TV Channel 2

So, as I was saying, in France we are all racists. (Except for singers and television).

- I wonder if in foreign countries they are as racist as we are...
- No, I don't think so, seeing as how they're not French.

The cartoon at the right reads:

Unfortunately for us 60 million racists, we are a bit harassed by television.

- I propose a TV series where a girl from Cameroon goes to live in a village and finds she's the target of the villagers' racism, but at the end they see she is OK.
- Yeah, super great idea. They're often racists in the villages. Not like us in the cities.

The big 2 refers to French TV Channel 2.

Sarko the selfish and greedy want the US and Russia to agree to security terms over the subject of… wait for it… Europe. Isn’t it about time Europe guaranteed its’ own damn security for once? Are someones' delusions about the UN not working at the moment?

"As acting EU council president I propose that mid-2009 we gather for instance within the OSCE [Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe] to lay the basis of what might be a future EU security arrangement ...which would of course involve the Russians and the Americans," Mr Sarkozy said, backing an idea originally proposed by his Russian counterpart.

He also expressed his "preoccupation" with Mr Medvedev's threat to deploy short-range missiles in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, on the shores of the Baltic Sea, bordering Poland and Lithuania.

Prague and Warsaw have poured cold water on French calls for a moratorium on a planned US missile shield in Europe, with both capitals saying that president Nicolas Sarkozy overstepped his mandate.

"I don't think that third countries, even such good friends as France, can have a particular right to express themselves on this issue," Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Saturday (15 November).

The Polish leader described Mr Sarkozy's comments as his "own point of view, [with] no impact of the future of the project," according to AFP, adding that "The question of the anti-missile shield is governed by an agreement between Poland and the United States."

A similar message came from the Czech republic, with the country's deputy prime minister Alexandr Vondra saying he was taken by surprise.

"France did not discuss its viewpoint with us ... As far as I know, the French presidency mandate for the EU-Russia summit did not contain a position on the US missile defence system," he said.

Reisen in das Land der Neid und Müdigkeit

As noted previously, a great many Germans, always fond of anti-capitalistic "it's the man's fault" explanations for nearly anything and have managed to let their post O-gasm glow of being freshly ravished last exactly a week. The mags and rags pander to it of course, but amid the sad and outdated cliches we've seen before with cowboys, truckers, cowboys, men in busieness suits (I guess they just don't think they have any of those,) cowboys, locusts, and cowboys... we see that now someone is indulging lefty anarchist-cum-welfare-addict assasination fantasies. Medienkritik:

With Obama, Spiegel and others will no longer be focusing attacks on the American executive (at least in the short-term) as was standard practice under Bush. Instead, as we have previously speculated, they will likely turn to attacking broader aspects of American society (the economic downturn is the current dominant theme) for all that is wrong in the United States and the world. Think World Scapegoat USA. Think pet peeves. Having to respect Obama just makes accomplishing what readers require a bit more demanding.

How, uh, shocking or something. But, then again, the most shocking thing about the latest study concerning the German nation’s outlook on life in general and democracy in particular isn’t the fact that it is so negative and down and fatalistic and just plain pitiful (their outlook is always that way, otherwise they wouldn’t call themselves Germans - although this time it’s the most negative it’s been for about twenty years or so), no, the most shocking thing about this latest study is that anyone could possibly think to classify it as being news at all.

Aw. Idn’t dat cute... Clearstream. Again.

Former prime minister faces trial in France

Villepin is accused of engineering the dissemination of a fake list of secret accounts at Clearstream that appeared to link several French politicians, including Sarkozy, to kickbacks from the sale of navy frigates to Taiwan in 1991.

People continue to ask: “who are the citizens of Europe?” Well, to begin with, it’s people from non-member states that are trying the hardest to get in, while the actual citizens are trying very hard to avoid history altogether and be a non-nation. Non-confederacy extended to anything that actually IS the role of the state (foreign policy, legal justice, defence,) while the EU itself is preoccupied by standards that can be set by industries themselves, and trying to look like they’re filling the potholes and building roads – the precise opposite of any sane definition of governance.

Then again, what do you expect? The European world-view seeks global (outsourced) governance in nearly anything that matters – so long as it’s own ideas can be injected in it and imposed on others. Such is what we find with the misperseption with the idea that the American view of free markets asn the European notion of “social markets” (whatever that is this week,) both have an impact on reversing the global economic downturn. They don’t. Arguing that point will not recapitalize banks, all it could do is change the practices in the future.

They just make one think that governance is doing something tangible, and appear to be responding to the call for someone to do “something… anything.” The confusion is permanent. From the EU Observer we discover just how fevered their minds really are when they refer to internal matters under the heading of “Global Governance”:

"The World Trade Organisation should be taken as a positive example of global governance," the 20 chambers said in a statement.

Meanwhile, the Socialist grouping in the European Parliament on Thursday issued a five-point plan from Manchester where their MEPs had been having a strategising pow-wow, for a rebuilding of the world financial system and how to boost the economy.

Their "Manchester Declaration", is a largely Keynesian document, calling for a European green investment package to put money in people's pockets and make the shift to a low-carbon economy, targetting in particular vulnerable households and small businesses.

The left-of-centre MEPs call for much greater levels of intergovernmental co-ordination and public spending.

"The European Union has a key role to play in raising and channelling funds. There should be no taboo," said French Socialist MEP Pervenche Berès, chair of the European Parliament's economic and monetary affairs committee. "The member states should discuss the possibility of the EU issuing Eurobonds to invest in European projects."

"Let's call time on global greed," they continued. "The same systems that create poverty here – unfair trade rules and tax systems, debt burdens, privatisation and attacks on welfare spending – also create poverty in the developing world."

I really can't wait for this Hamas "Scientist" to start treating people for AIDS based on his own assertions.

Ahmad Al-Muzain: "The Prophet Muhammad said: 'If a fly falls into your drink, you should dip it in the drink, and then dispose of the fly, because one of its wings bears a disease, and the other wing bears the cure.' This hadith was included in the Al-Bukhari collection. This hadith makes it absolutely clear that the Prophet Muhammad confirmed a clear scientific fact: If a fly falls into a vessel - before a person drinks from this vessel, he should dip the fly in his drink, before disposing of it. Then he should drink the beverage, because it won't do him any harm. Why? Because one of the fly's wings bears the disease, and the other one bears the cure.

"Bayer... Derived Great Benefit from [This Study]... To Treat AIDS"

"When Bayer, one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies, learned about this study, it derived great benefit from it. It established biological breeding farms, where they raised flies and extracted antibiotics from their wings - the strongest antibiotics in the whole world. This antibiotic was made into a course of five pills, which is given to the patients, and it is used - believe it or not, my brothers - to treat AIDS patients. It strengthens their immune system, and destroys all types of microbes with which they are afflicted. This is all thanks to the power of this antibiotic. Obviously, this antibiotic is very expensive, and one course costs more than $500, but it is very strong and effective. How did they discover it? From this hadith." [...]