Chapter 4 of the New PARIS Travelogue, "Two Tales of a City" is on the Secret Decoder Ring page. Let me say that if you've NEVER read a Travelogue, you should read this one.
Can the world be any more cranky?
The Kingston Trio used to sing a darkly amusing song which started:
They're rioting in Africa
They're starving in Spain
There's hurricanes in Florida
And Texas needs rain
The whole world is festering with unhappy souls
The French hate the Germans, the Germans hate the Poles
Italians hate Yugoslavs, South Africans hate the Dutch
And I don't like anybody very much.
There IS rioting in Africa in C�te d'Ivoire (my client, in the spirit of full disclosure) as the result of the French government negotiation a peace agreement which included making the head of the rebels - who started the fighting with a failed coup last September - in charge of the Defense Ministry which would be the approximate equivalent of hiring me to be the press secretary for Nancy Pelosi.
Never mind that I applied for that job and, apparently, didn't get it.
The French don't hate the Germans - yet. But Gerhard Schroeder's government is about 10 seconds from collapse, the German economy being in total shambles (largely due to having absorbed East Germany which is likely to go down as the worst merger in history if you don't count AOL and Time- Warner). The German daily "Die Welt" used the phrase "Voodoo-�konomie" in a headline over the weekend.
Everyone who thinks Schroeder won't turn on the French to save his own skin, raise hands. Anyone? I didn't think so.
Just about a year ago you couldn't find a reporter on the planet who had anything good to write or say about any corporate leader. They were all pampered, overpaid, flying-around-in-private-jets, wasting-the-stockholders'-money, corporate thugs.
Then came their opposition to President Bush's position on Iraq while wasting the stockholders' money, having flown into the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on their private jets and you can't turn on the TV set here without listening to some pampered, overpaid corporate thug telling an adoring reporter what he (or in VERY rare cases, she) thinks is wrong with the Administration's foreign policy.
Speaking of corporate thugs, the Security and Exchange Commission has issued a new rule regarding what lawyers who uncover thuggery must do. According to Jonathan D. Glater's NY Times piece,
A lawyer must report to management "credible evidence based upon which it would be unreasonable, under the circumstances, for a prudent and competent attorney not to conclude that it is reasonably likely that a material violation has occurred, is ongoing or is about to occur."
It doesn't matter how many times you read that, it still won't make any sense.
generally (and the French and Germans in particular), telling the Swiss Forum, according to the London Times, "the inspection in Iraq had run its course and he had lost faith in the process."
If Secretary Powell has lost faith how do you supposed Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld feel about it?
While you were watching the Super Bowl, I was being treated to Euro-Sport's continuing coverage of the Women's Biathlon which is a series of cross country ski races featuring blonde women in skin-tight outfits who stop every so often and fire rifles at targets.
Wait! Women in tight clothes ... Rifles. Sex AND violence?
Why isn't this the most popular sport on the planet?
On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: The cover of that Kingston Trio album, a GREAT chapter of the Paris Travelogue and the usual things.
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