Neither the Spanish government nor the ETA terrorists were there, but a conference in the northern Spanish city of San Sebastian last weekend will probably lead to the end of ETA’s long and violent campaign for Basque independence. “We believe it is time to end, and it is possible to end, the last armed confrontation in Europe,” said former Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern after the conference.
When I was in school I used to wonder who Gloria Mundi was and how she had died, but it turned out to be my defective Latin. Sic Transit Gloria Mundi means “Thus passes the glory of this world.” But still, it kind of fits, doesn’t it? Sic Transit Moammar Gadhafi.
Mustafa Abdul Jalil, chairman of Libya’s National Transitional Council (NTC) and the country’s de facto leader, promised on Oct. 25 that shariah law would be the basis of all new legislation, and that this would involve getting rid of certain existing laws – like the ban on polygamy. On the same day Tunisia announced that Ennahda, an Islamic party, had won the most votes in that country’s first free election. Here come the Muslim fanatics.
According to the United Nations, the world’s population will pass the 7 billion mark at the end of this month, and there will be much tutting and shaking of heads over its prediction that we will be 10 billion by the end of the century. But almost no one will have the temerity to point out that this is almost entirely an African problem.
“We will not build two [nuclear] bombs in the face of [America’s] 20,000,” said Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in response to an International Atomic Energy Agency report this week that accuses Iran of doing just that. He called Yukiya Amano, the head of the IAEA, a US puppet, saying: “This person does not publish a report about America and its allies’ nuclear arsenals.”
For most of its 66-year history, the Arab League was a powerless organization, dominated by autocratic regimes that made sure it never criticized their lies and crimes. But suddenly, this year, it woke up and changed sides.
In December 1893, the Greek prime minister of the day stood up in parliament and announced: “Regretfully, we are bankrupt.” Nobody was greatly surprised, because the country had already defaulted on its foreign debt three previous times during the 19th century.
The Palestinians have finally come up with a strategy that may produce some results. But only by accident, so to speak.
