I am on the MAX Red Line light rail car going from downtown Portland to the Airport. Some things socialists do better. Among them are public transportation, recycling, French poetry readings, yoga, coffee, artisan food and arthouse cinema. Would it that the counterscale were not so much more loaded.

Two hefty women in Birkenstocks and Nordic sweaters sit on the bench in front of me. They are either academics or lesbians or both. Portland is a babe magnet for this kind of babes.

Western failures behind apparent success. The wisdom of the advocates of surrender. Switzerland‘s reputation and the ambitions of a show-horse Foreign Minister. When the mediator is a party to the dispute. The past we used to have and the new past we are getting. Is Peking talking to Tibet or is it just emitting noise to confuse? George Handlery on the week that was.
 
1. The freeing of Ingrid Betancourt by Columbian commandoes is good news. The bad news is the implications that keep emerging regarding the will and the ability to defend civilization against its enemies. Much of this edition of “Duly Noted” will be dedicated to the Columbian and Tibet aspects of this problem.

Nigel Farage, UKIP leader in action yesterday holding the French President, Sarkozy to account.

“What is a nation?” Ernest Renan famously asked in 1882 and concluded that it was a group of people who had decided to live together. The definition has stuck because it encapsulates the most cherished belief of all liberals, which is that human life is essentially about individual choice. The belief has remained popular for over a century and is today seen in concepts such as the German idea of Verfassungspatriotismus (patriotism towards the constitution of one’s country) and, more importantly, in the very widespread notion of multiculturalism.

Spain is basking in football glory after winning the European Championship on June 29. But now that the euphoria is over, Spaniards are waking up to discover that their economy is in a free-fall without a parachute. Indeed, the country is being buried daily by an avalanche of depressing economic news, with jobless numbers spiraling upwards, and growth projections being revised downwards, faster than most Spaniards can say ¡Viva España!.

George Handlery on the week that was. More second thoughts about the Lisbon Treaty. Whom to thank for success against narcomarxist terrorists? Dictatorial solidarity is stronger than race. Is poverty moral? Must a liberal agree with every position he encounters? The virtue of theft.

H/T Chesterton Report

A quote from Bruno Waterfield at his Telegraph blog, 2 July 2008
 
Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France, held a strictly off-the-record lunch briefing for international Brussels-based correspondents on Tuesday at the Elysée. The Daily Telegraph was not invited, in fact deliberately excluded. […] But despite the best efforts of the Quai d'Orsay's diplomats, I am able to reveal on-the-record, as a blog exclusive, Mr Sarkozy's more relevant comments.

Following the June 12 referendum in which Ireland rejected the Lisbon Treaty, the presidents of Poland and the Czech Republic have announced that they are not going to sign the ratification of the treaty by their own parliaments. The president of Germany has also postponed signing the ratification bill until the German Constitutional Court has decided whether or not the Treaty violates the German Constitution. In Belgium, the heartland of the EU, the Treaty cannot be ratified unless it is approved by the federal parliament as well as the state parliaments in Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels. It is doubtful whether Flanders, and hence Belgium, will ratify the Treaty before the end of the Summer.