EU – ‘The pessimists are wrong’

Those words come from the top as European Commission President José Manuel Barroso made a his first visit to New Zealand to attend the Pacific Islands Forum.

Speaking to a “hyped Up” Auckland business audience (mayor Len Brown’s words), caught up in Rugby World Cup fever, President Barrosa had only positive words for the future of the euro and the EU.

Both are sources of instability in world financial markets. But you wouldn’t know that from President Barroso, a former prime minister of Portugal who is now an enthusiast for market liberalism and economic integration – a long stretch from his days as a leftist activist against the Salazar dictatorship.

He says the future of Europe lies in how fast and how far it goes toward the single market, one that is already the third most populous (500 million) after China and India as well as the world’s richest.

He compared Europe’s achievement with the putative TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership) that aims to integrate the Asia-Pacific Rim economies, a project that is years away and potentially involves bringing together countries as diverse as Japan and the US, Peru and Vietnam.

President Barroso warmed to his theme only after a couple questions about Greece and the euro.

“There are only requests to join, not leave,” he said, referring to the imminent next member (Croatia) that is waiting to join the other 27. “What I see is a drive for more integration and liberalisation.”

On the euro crisis he said: “We had no tools to handle a sovereign debt crisis with a single monetary union.” But recent decisions have created more flexibility and mechanisms to deal with this.

10 years on from 9/11
You probably won’t read much in the next few days that is positive about the 10th anniversary of the attacks on World Trade Center and the Pentagon (plus the foiled one on the US Capitol) in the name of Islam.

But then you don’t hear much these days about Al Qeada and the Taliban either, because they have effectively been neutralised (despite continuous defeatist urgings by the Left to give up altogether).

The Spectator has put the period in perspective in this leader:

According to the CIA, 600 militants have been killed in Pakistan since May, bringing the total to 2000. The Arab revolutions for which [Osama] bin Laden longed took place this year, but with al-Qa’eda nowhere to be seen. Its chief rival, the Islamist factions standing for parliament, are now in the ascendant from Baghdad to Tripoli.

To an extent barely recognised outside the intelligence communities, the past decade has been not just a learning curve but a success story. Yet just as this war was not declared in the traditional way, by a traditional enemy, so victory will not come in a traditional way. This was not a war on terror: one cannot declare war on a concept. It was a terrorists’ war on us: and it is a war they are losing.

This is worth remembering when the conspiracists and others try to paint a picture of western failure and the futility of military endeavour.

Strangely, the latest to join the conspiracy ranks is a former Social Democratic minister in Germany, Andreas von Bülow, whose latest book, Die CIA und der 11. September, according to Spiegel Online

includes an extensive afterword which casts doubt on the claim that Osama bin Laden was in fact shot in Pakistan by US Special Forces. The new edition fails, however, to mention that a number of the book's original claims have long since been refuted. One rather significant detail was the claim that seven of the 19 attackers were still "very much alive," a theory Spiegel disproved in 2003.

What the flotilla report really said
Sir Geoffrey Palmer fulfilled my prediction of delivering a fair and balanced report on the Mavi Marmama affair, which got discursive media coverage here due to the story being broken by the New York Times rather than an official release. Read the full report.

Hence Associated Press mainly highlighted the aspects critical of Israel for using disproportional force. But a closer reading offers a point-by-point rebuttal to some of the most preposterous accusations leveled against Israel. These have been summarised in a Wall Street Journal editorial:

One ... accusation from the Turks is that Israel's naval blockade of Gaza is illegal because blockades can only be legally imposed on another state, and Israel has never recognised Palestine as a state. The Palmer report dismisses that legal legerdemain, noting that "Hamas is the de facto political and administrative authority in Gaza," that "it is Hamas that is firing projectiles into Israel or permitting others to do so," that "law does not operate in a political vacuum" and thus "Israel was entitled to take reasonable steps to prevent the influx of weapons into Gaza."

The report also states the Mavi Marmara barely contained any humanitarian goods beyond "foodstuffs and toys carried in passengers' personal baggage." That, of course, hasn’t stopped more such flotilla being planned.

It is instructive that Greece foiled plans for a similar flotilla sailing from Athens while Turkey’s response of disengaging with Israel recalls the parallel of Palestine and Cyprus, where Turkey has consistently opposed moves to integrate the portion it occupies under a single administration.

South Seas in Venice
It is not widely known the Cannes Film Festival was a post-World War II move to upstage Mussolini’s Venice Film Festival, which was first held in 1932.

This year has turned out to be one of the best with a raft of films that look much better than those shown earlier this year at Cannes.

Among the Venice premieres is The Orator, the first feature done in the Samoan-language and one that I can highly recommend as putting “art” back in the art film.

Director Tusi Tamasese cites a number of influences, among them the languorous Japanese films of Akiro Kurosawa and the Russian Andrei Tarkovsky of the last century.

The Orator is primarily a cultural experience and one I urge all New Zealanders get to appreciate. I am not surprised it has wowed critics in Europe, where such unpretentious films have become rare. (It is due for release on October 6.)

At the other end of the spectrum, Venice has also launched George Clooney’s campaign thriller The Ides of March, a new Roman Polanski (Carnage) and David Cronenberg’s telling of the tussle between Freud and Jung, A Dangerous Method.

Also on show are a version of John Le Carré’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Madonna’s W.E., which goes into The King’s Speech territory with a new take on the Wallis Simpson-Prince of Wales romance, and Fred Wiseman’s behind-the-scene documentary Crazy Horse on the eponymous Parisian nightclub .