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June 30, 2006, 8:16 a.m. As an American in Europe, I always find it comforting to buy a $27 (1.50 euro) thimble of espresso and unfold the International Herald Tribune — which is how you say “The New York Times” in French — and read whatever the Times has decided that day is a security secret not worth keeping. Although the Times has spilled the beans about spy programs so often it could be printed on garbanzos, I trust the decisions the editor makes. Why? Because not only did he go to the same high school as my friend Greg Gutfeld , he also edited the paper at Pomona College.
No wonder we’ve chosen him to make what he called one of those “agonizing decisions” on what should be a security secret and what doesn’t really matter. Here’s a tiny excerpt of the latest Keller revelation, from the IHT’s version of the Times piece: American officials, in urging The Times not to publish Friday's article, expressed concerns that Swift, which has its headquarters in Brussels, could be prompted to pull out of the program if its role were revealed - particularly in light of sharp anti-American sentiments in parts of Europe [1]. A free footnote, too. [1] By “parts of Europe” the U.S.-based writers of this piece mean an area stretching roughly from Iceland to the Urals and from northern Lapland to Turkey, excluding Albania. By now even Times editors should know that to mention “U.S.” and “spying” in the same sentence in “parts of Europe” is to invite a reaction as mind-numbingly predictable as an Al Gore movie about global warming, but louder! And far more exciting! American newspapers are the Dumpsters of American security, and my, how the Europeans love to dive in. Instead of this kind of counterproductive grandstanding, Mr. Marty, the Council of Europe and their friends at the European Parliament have the power to take a decisive step in the fight against against terrorism and jihadist ideology. They could support the abolition of banking secrecy in Switzerland and other European countries. Much of the funding of terror and its linked international criminality thrives on those numbered accounts, which neither Mr. Marty nor his fellow Swiss legislators ever campaign to abolish. Fighting for the human rights of those jihadis is apparently more important than fighting the jihadis themselves. You obviously haven’t been reading your Times, Mr. MacShane. What kind of a country would Switzerland be if it treated murderous jihadis like murderers? (Answer: Israel.) By mid-week, Libération, was telling its nervous readers not to worry: “Committee R” of the Belgian Senate would investigate what the paper called an “extension of [American] anti-terrorism laws to European territory with the passive complicity of local authorities…[which] violated European privacy laws.” As a service piece for Belgian Wahabists, Le Soir got into the spirit by publishing (.pdf alert) a “confidential” backgrounder on how Swift worked with the Americans, while Le Monde was quoting the director of the ACLU who was repeating what virtually every Euro-politician was saying: The whole thing was just “another example of the abuse of power by the Bush administration.” My explanation: You agree with me and my monk that life is generally simpler without secrets. So I say do what the other Times did and print ‘em all! First, why do we need to pay John Negroponte if we have Pinch paying you? And second, Bill: Briefs or boxers? (Don’t say commando, you dog! Nobody would fall for that!) Items Cosmic Joschka. It used to be that when synchronicity struck, I’d turn up the Fugs and go with the groove. Now I just click a lot: Reminded to do so by a piece in Captain’s Quarters, I was reading Davids Medienkritick’s cheesed-off take on former German foreign minister and champeen Yank-bashing ex-bourgeois “terrorist” Joschka Fisher when a note from a German reader, Nico Klaric, arrived to tell me about this Spiegel item, also mentioned by CQ, about Fischer’s low profile escape from Germany to Princeton just months after being given a prize for being a “leading European.” Fischer, you may recall, was one of the more odious Security Council America-haters. His position had nothing to do with the invasion of Iraq — where Germany had its own interests to protect. It had to do with the German electorate: As Schroeder’s Goebbels, Joschka helped the left score huge political wins by fanning the flames of anti-Americanism until polls showed that most Germans considered American citizens to be “bloodthirsty.” Joschka thus joins a yearly exodus of some 160,000 well-educated Germans, 159,999 of whom are much younger than he is. Maybe Peter Singer will take him out to dinner and eat him. — Denis Boyles is author of Vile France: Fear, Duplicity, Cowardice and Cheese. |
