Archive for category Europe

Gordon Brown Out: Cameron is New UK PM

PM Cameron

PM Cameron

Gordon Brown’s slow-dying Labour administration has finally kicked the bucket.

It is official – Tory David Cameron is the new Prime Minister of the UK, in coalition with the Liberal Democrats.

This finally brings 13 years of destructive policies to an end. We shall now see how bad (ie, Tony Blairish) David Cameron truly turns out to be.

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Why Kosovo Should be Independent

Once you commit racially-motivated genocide as the Serbians did with almost every minority group in Yugoslavia, you can’t expect any of those groups to remain in a state under Serbian domination. More and more details are slowly coming out about the secret warfare waged against Kosovar civilians by the Serbians in the late ’90s. In the latest, another mass grave of Kosovar Albanians has been discovered in the Serbian town of Raska, close to the border with Kosovo.

More than 250 innocent civilians were brutally massacred during the 1998-99 conflict and then buried:

…beneath a building whose foundations had been deliberately constructed to hide the site…

Of course the perpetrators will probably never be found and, even if they are, they are more likely to die of natural causes than from capital punishment. A good example is the linchpin Slobodan Milosevic.

Kosovo declared independence in February 2008 and has been recognized by 68 states – it is time for it to gain complete international recognition.

Photos courtesy BBC News.

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NHS Spends 10,000 Pounds on Establishing Hilter’s Mass Appeal

NHS: Burning Money

NHS: Burning Money

The British health bureaucracy, that is being emulated here in the U.S. under Obamacare, just spend 10,000 freaking  pounds on asking its employees if they thought Hitler was cool. On top of that, the employees were:

…then asked to rate Hitler in comparison with their own chief executive

Isn’t that 10k better spent on providing health care to women like the case here?

Do we still want Obamacare in the States?

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Obamacare Will Create 560lbs Monsters

The NHS Caused This

The NHS Caused This

Britain’s NHS which controls almost every aspect of a patient’s health-care regime only does something when…

We will always review a person’s care needs following a spell in hospital.

Quite often, a person’s circumstances have changed so we routinely carry out a review to ensure an appropriate care plan is in place.

So, the government bureaucrats need you to be hospitalized before they will review your health situation. You might have become a 560lbs monster in the meantime but they don’t care.

The woman in this case had been struck by several debilitating illnesses over a short period of time and had to be extracted from her house by a team of firemen when she needed to visit the hospital. All this while she was under NHS monitoring and care.

Why do we want to emulate this crappy program in the U.S.? Repeal Obamacare!

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Labour Finally Out of Power in the UK

It has been a long 12 years since Tony Blair embarked on his mission to destroy British tradition, economy and culture with his disastrous far left social policies and unilateral foreign policy.

Labour’s rule in Westminster is finally coming to an end. The Tories have won 306 seats and will most likely form a government with the Liberal Democrats.

Hopefully, Cameron will prove to be a bit conservative, unlike Blair/Brown who were hell bent on disbanding any bit of British monarchical tradition still left.

UK Elections 2010

UK Elections 2010

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The Immoral Power of Credit Rating Agencies

Waiting To Be Pawned Off?

Waiting To Be Pawned Off?

Where were Standard & Poor’s, Moodys, Fitch and the other smaller credit rating agencies in 2006-2008 when Goldman Sachs, WaMu, Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns and so many other investment and retail banks were peddling junk grade mortgage backed securities?

Why wasn’t the credit rating system being used effectively back then to highlight the exceptionally risky CDOs and MBSs before they almost brought down the global financial system? These credit rating agencies could have prevent some of the collapse, by downgrading AIG’s bond ratings, for instance, before the massive collapse.

They were responsible for the Great Recession just as much as the banks. Far from being dependable, their ratings are a mere re-statement of what the companies are saying themselves:

The rating agencies don’t do any factual verification, they just assume the accuracy of the information given them by the issuer, which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy

Heck, they…

…even gave Lehman Brother’s an investment grade A rating one month before its collapse.

Yet, when it comes to destroying the debt ratings of entire countries and non-financial sector companies, the rating agencies are more than eager to play the hand of God.

Just today, S&P lowered Greece’s bond rating to BB+, which equates to junk or non-investment status. This is only going to make it even more difficult for Greece to borrow at a time when it desperately needs to borrow. The EU is going to bail-out Greece, and even Germany is on board, which makes it highly unlikely that it will default on its loans or fail to raise the necessary funds.

This is why the power of these credit rating agencies is immoral and wrong, and needs to diminished – they help their friends on Wall Street, while flipping off Main Street in broad daylight.

Where is Obama’s regulation-friendliness when you need it, eh?

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UK’s Prime Ministerial Debate: Devil Trifecta

Economist20100410issuecovUS400

Past issue of TE

The UK is scheduled to witness its very first debate among the 3 candidates vying to lead the country out of the mess created by the Labour government.

If we are to believe the Economist, it won’t be more than a Clash of the Devils™.

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Serbia Apologizes for Srebrenica

Could this have been prevented?

Could this have been prevented?

Unlike the Mounties’ apology for the taser death of a sick man, the Serbian parliament’s acknowledgment of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre and how it could have done more to prevent it is a step in the right direction.

The Serbians have long denied the massacre of Bosnian Muslims in 1995, with some MPs going so far as to claim that the if the murders did take place, the Bosnians were responsible for it. The current resolution reads:

The parliament of Serbia strongly condemns the crime committed against the Bosnian Muslim population of Srebrenica in July 1995 … condolences and an apology to the families of the victims because not everything was done to prevent the tragedy

The pro-Western government pushed this through parliament to appease the EU, and hopefully jump-start its membership process. The motivations, therefore, weren’t very noble, but its a start nonetheless.

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Second Chechen War Redux?

Putin: Fishing for a Fight

Putin: Fishing for a Fight

One of the justifications Putin used to invade Chechnya in 1999 was the attacks on Russian soil prior to that war. There were,  of course, the so-called invasion of Dagestan by Chechen rebels and later the Beslan hostage crisis which were used as excuses to launch the offensive and then ramp it up.

Putin had been determined to establish his national security and nationalist credentials and Chechnya was the perfect opportunity. The loss of Russian territory as a result of the 1996 peace treaty negotiated by Yeltsin and his incompetent cronies had added insult to injury after the break-up of the Soviet Union.

Always the KGB man, Putin vowed to re-annex Chechnya in 1999 as somewhat of a Presidential campaign promise to bring back the glory of the Soviet Union.

Russia, under Putin and Medvedev, is trying to re-claim the Soviet super-power throne and, once again, we have somewhat of a crisis brewing in the North Caucasus (see this, this and this). And, not surprisingly, Chechen terrorists have allegedly struck again on sacred Russian soil killing civilians in the heart of Moscow.

We have already seen the Russian military flexing its muscles in weak Georgia in 2008. Another military intervention in the North Caucasus would be seen as a follow up to establish absolute Russian supremacy in the region.

Here’s to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Part II, and the Chechen War Redux.

UPDATE: Chechen rebel leader Doku Umarov has taken credit for the attacks. Video included below:

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Berlusconi Wins Knee + Toes In Elections

In a surprisingly good election for the center-right in Italy, Berlusconi and his allies have finally captured almost the entire knee, the toes and a good portion of the shins. The heel and ankle, however, still remain elusive.

Spreading Blue

Spreading Blue

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Sheehan: Gays Brought Down the Dutch Army and Allowed Srebrenica

The Dutch Could Have Prevented This

The Dutch Could Have Prevented This

The Dutch are all getting out of shape over American General John Sheehan’s comments about openly-gay soldiers in the Dutch army posted in Bosnia during the civil war there in the early ’90s. He testified before a Senate committee:

[the] socialisation process … included open homosexuality … led to … a focus on peacekeeping operations because they did not believe the Germans were going to attack again or the Soviets were coming back.

Soldiers from the Netherlands had just surrendered to the Serbians at Srebrenica right before thousands of Bosnian civilians were massacre and tens of thousands of refugees were “cleansed.” These Dutch soldiers posted as part of the UNPROFOR mission failed to protect civilians and just stood by as the Serbs murdered and raped to their heart’s content. The Srebrenica massacre is considered the worst mass murder of civilians since WW II.

Riding the high horse, Democrats and the Dutch were equally critically of Sheehan:

It is astonishing that a man of his stature can utter such complete nonsense…

[he was] totally off-target

The Prime Minister of the Netherlands has also waded into the fray, calling Sheehan’s comments “disgraceful.”

Sheehan could have been telling us the truth. Dutch gay soldiers were probably too busy smoking legal weed and having fun with each other to protect Bosnians. Their morale and fighting courage was probably entirely non-existent.

The truth is always hard to swallow.

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Dutch Nurses: No More Sex

Yeah, they changed their slogan

Yeah, they changed their slogan

So, Dutch nurses are no longer interested in providing (free) sex for their clients, according to their union. Legal drugs, lawful prostitution and nurse sex …  Holland is quite the heaven for the morally depraved.

Speaking of depravity, consecutive teacher-student sex scandals have struck the same school in England twice. Both teachers are reasonably good looking. So, it must be the rush of engaging in something that’s not even acceptable in Holland that appealed to them.

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Greece: Help Us and Say How Dammit

Greek government financial mismanagement is almost legendary. Even in good times, Greek public debt sits at around 100% of GDP which puts it among the top 10 in the world, putting it behind it such luminaries in the field as Zimbabwe, Italy and Lebanon.

Now that the current government has caused even bigger problems for the nation, bringing it close to defaulting on its debt, it not only wants the EU to bail it out but also to explain how, you know, just in case the Greeks want to approve it before hand.

I suppose here’s another country ready to elect a center-right government.

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Georgia + Gephardt: A Winning Combination

The former Soviet republic of Georgia has hired Dick Gephardt’s government relations lobbying firm to represent it in Washington.

I suppose it makes sense for a losing Presidential candidate to represent the loser of a recent war.

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France’s Attack on Religion

While I wholeheartedly agree that the full face veil is detrimental to progress and entirely unnecessary, besides not being required in Islam, the government of any country does not have the right to determine or restrict the religious practices of any one group, within reason. The French Parliament is trying to do just that.

According to the French interior ministry:

… just 1,900 women in France wear the full veils.

And does the French Parliament find it necessary to pass an entire law just to restrict the religious activities of merely 1,900 women in all of France? Out of 5 million Muslims, merely 1,900 wear the full face veil. That’s 0.038% of the entire Muslim population in France. Out of a total French population of 62 million, that amounts to merely 0.003%.

Any law that applies to such a tiny percentage of the population is ridiculous. Any law that restricts religious practices is even worse. I could imagine a ban on human sacrifices by natives as something that could be acceptable, but restricting clothing choices is beyond reasonableness.

France already has a ban on “conspicuous religious symbols in schools,” which includes the headscarf, the yarmulke, the Sikh turban. It is using secularism as the excuse for restricting religious practices, just as Stalin used communism in the early 20th century.

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Sly Saves Eurostar

Sly!

Sly!

Sylvester Stallone, star of the 1996 Hollywood blockbuster Daylight, was called upon to reprise his role to save the 2,000 passengers aboard the Eurostar trains trapped in the Channel Tunnel.

“Sly has previously saved the lives of hundreds of trapped motorists when the Holland Tunnel collapsed in 1996,” said Commissioner Hal Turnchuck of the Chunnel Authority. “We had to call on him because the lives of our passengers were in mortal danger.”

Mr. Stallone, however, was disappointed his job this time wasn’t quite as heroic as in his ‘96 movie and nobody seemed to care he was even there. He escorted many of the passengers out of the tunnel, ensuring their safety and well-being, but he didn’t even receive as much as a thank you. “Kit Latura was there to save their lives in case the tunnel collapsed and they don’t even care. I even flew here on the red-eye. Ungrateful [expletive].”

Our correspondent asked several of the travelers about Mr. Stallone’s presence and the commonest reply was “Who?”

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England Doesn’t Want College Graduates

Nanny state likes uneducated citizens

[A recent UK education report] calls for the dropping of the ambition for 50% of young people to go to university.

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The Perfect Way To Promote Tourism – Free Sex!

That’s the Danish angle. Come to Denmark – have free, guiltless sex with beautiful young women!

Apparently, the video is about:

a nice and sweet story about a grown-up woman who lives in a free society and accepts the consequences of her actions

But, how does that promote tourism?

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Terrorist, Libyan Hero or Both?

Hero's Welcome

Hero's Welcome

You couldn’t tell, just by looking at the photograph above, that the man on the right is a terrorist responsible for the deaths of 270 innocent civilians.

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Attaboy Mueller

FBI Director Robert Mueller has shot off a scathing letter to the Scottish “Justice” Minister regarding the recent release of the Lockerbie bomber, saying among other things:

Your action gives comfort to terrorists around the world who now believe that regardless of the quality of the investigation, the conviction by jury after the defendant is given all due process, and sentence appropriate to the crime, the terrorist will be freed by one man’s exercise of “compassion.”

The full letter is available here.

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Russia Finds Missing Freighter, Atlantis

Atlantis: Found

Atlantis: Found

Russia announced today that it has found its missing cargo vessel near the Cape Verde islands, off the west coast of Africa, and has retrieved all crew members.

In a stunning revelation, the Russian spokesman also announced that their search and rescue team was able to locate and identify the long lost continent of Atlantis. Read on »

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Blind Sportsmen Denied Entry into UK

Another example of over-zealous border enforcement… the Pakistan blind cricket team, the reigning world champions, was to visit the UK to defend their title against their English counterparts.

They had all the necessary paperwork, including credentials from both the Pakistani and British Cricket authorities. They had even visited Britain twice before, in 2002 and 2006.

But, thanks to the UKBA, they won’t be able to defend their title.

Of course, blind sportsmen pose a mortal danger to any nation. God knows what kind of dangerous explosives and bombs they got hidden in their eye sockets.

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Ingushetia: The Next Chechnya?

Chechnya’s western neighbor, Ingushetia, is now descending into a vicious cycle of violence. The latest is a bombing in the capital Nazran that killed 7.

Putin needs to change his approach to the region, lest we have another civil war on our hands. His current approach of autocracy and oppression only incites more violence.

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Poland and Mass Graves

BBC is reporting that another mass grave has been discovered in Poland, this time on the western front:

The remains of more than 2,000 people discovered in Poland’s largest mass grave from World War II have been reburied in a military cemetery … in north-west Poland, near the border between the countries.

The victims are believed to be German civilians who died in the last months of the conflict, in early 1945.

The mass grave was discovered in the Polish city of Malbork last October.

Because no-one was prepared to pay for expensive DNA testing, the historians’ best guess is that the victims were German civilians caught up in the Red Army’s assault on the city.

At the time Malbork was Marienberg, a German city.

Incidentally, I watched the Polish movie Katyn last night. It’s about the Katyn Forest Massacre of Polish officers by the Red Army.

The bodies were buried in mass graves in the forest and the affair was blamed on the Nazis. The Soviets finally admitted responsibility in 1990.

While there is some amount of exaggeration in any film adaption, director Andrzej Wajda has done a wonderful job exposing the hypocrisy of the Soviets, and the pain and agony of the masacred Polish officers’ families. The last few scenes showing the actual massacre are both horrifying and touching. You can connect with the Poles in the movie.

The one complaint I have about the movie is that all Russians are shown to be heartless and almost inhuman. I can understand the Polish perspective, but I am sure at least some of the Soviet officers were sympathetic. Wajda doesn’t show the Russian side at all.

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Abkhazia Likes The Oppressor of Chechnya and Ingushetia

This headline  would be perfect for the Kavkaz Center, a pro-Chechen independence news website. They might even have used it at some point.

The point of the headline, however, is still valid. Abkhazia is seemingly very happy under Russian control at this time. As is South Ossetia. Both are apparently glad to have effectively seceded from Georgia.

The question is how much better, or rather, beneficial, will the Russians prove when compared to the Georgians. Russia hasn’t taken dissent in the Caucasus lightly before. For almost 200 years, the Russians fought to subdue the Chechens and the Daghestanis. For most of the ’90s, the Russian military wrecked havoc in the North Caucasus just to prevent the secession of tiny little states that provided little benefit to the Russian Federation. The only benefit was to send the message to whoever was listening that Russia would not give up an inch of its territory.

Georgia did the same with Abkhazia and South Ossetia. In fact, Georgia might even have been more brutal than the Russians because fewer outsiders cared about the human rights violations in an inconsequential little republic in the hind quarters of Europe. The Chechen wars invited thousands of journalists and observers from across the world. Abkhazia and South Ossetia – not quite as many.

Abhazia and South Ossetia have both suffered in Georgia just as Chechnya, Daghestan and Ingushetia suffered in Russia. Astonishingly, both of them have now taken refuge with Russia. It just doesn’t make any sense.

Both states have shown a very independent streak. With Georgia, they had Russia as a backer. What if the same story repeats itself? Who will now protect them from the Russians? The Iranians?

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Compassion for a Terrorist?

Is He Even Repentant?

Is He Even Repentant?

Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, the man who was convicted for the Lockerbie bombing that killed more than 270 innocent civilians in 1988, is now being released on compassionate grounds. His release deadline is being set so he can celebrate Ramadan back home in Libya.

If this man could not show compassion for 270 of his victims, why are we extending him the courtesy? He should have been hanged for 270+ counts of murder. He should have been hanged 270 times if that were possible.

But, no, in Europe, they send him back home.

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Seal Imports Banned By EU

Under pressure from animal rights nutcases, the EU has decided to ban the importation of all seal products, except:

Products from traditional hunts by indigenous peoples in Canada and Greenland will be exempt from the ban.

Most affected by this ban will be Canada, where hunters take down almost 300,000 seals every year.

Apparently, the reasoning behind the ban is that it is:

in response to concerns about the animal welfare aspects of seal hunting practices

Read on »

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US Firm + French Surrender to Militant Workers in France

Workers at a US-owned construction equipment firm in France threatened to explode gas canisters at their workplace if better terms weren’t implemented for the laid off workers.

What did the firm do? Surrender, of course! When in Rome…

Staff at JLG Industries in Tonneins, south-western France, made the threat in order to get better redundancy terms for 53 workers.

It is the third such incident in which workers have threatened violence against employers.

Elsewhere, French workers have taken managers hostage in “boss-nappings”.

Militant French workers need to be put down now! Before they start surrendering.

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Hijab Wearing Pregnant Woman Stabbed to Death in Court; Husband Shot by Guards While Trying to Save Her

Couldn't the Guards Save Them?

Couldn't the Guards Save Them?

A hijab-wearing PREGNANT woman was stabbed 18 times inside a court-room in Germany by the man who was on trial for insulting her. She died on the spot. The guards stood around doing nothing.

Her husband was then shot by the guards when he tried to save her, apparently because he was mistaken for the perpetrator. He’s in hospital in critical condition.

Their 3-year old son looked on in horror, while his parents were shot or stabbed to death and his future sibling was murdered in cold blood. Read on »

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The End of Saab Cometh

GM has agreed to sell the iconic Swedish car brand Saab to Koenigsegg as part of its recovery plan. Now, the new owner definitely possesses the wherewithal and experience to run a large car company…

Saab ... no more.

Saab ... no more.

[it] produces 18 cars a year and employs 45 people

And, Saab?

[it] sold 93,000 cars in 2008 … [and] employs about 3,400 people

18 -> 93,000: that’s a 516,666% jump. 45 -> 3,400: a 7,555% increase.

If anything is ripe for success, such massive growth, literally overnight, quite positively makes the list. Saab is a mass market auto manufacturer. Koenigsegg is a niche racing car company. The perfect couple.

GM might as well have followed one of two other options:

1. Shutting Saab down – A tagline for the parent … SAAB: Planes, Intel, but Couldn’t Make Cars.

2. Making the brand an “engineering contractor” for other companies – I like that. A new tagline could have been – SAAB: Swedish Engineering at Your Service Now at an Hourly Rate!

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Would you pay for a license to watch TV?

The people of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland pay £142.50, approximately $232 US, annually to their socialist government to be able to watch TV inside their living rooms, TVs that they bought and paid for with their own money, hopefully, even if they only watch cable TV, for which they are paying the usual subscription charges. Amazing!

So, the BBC is my bible, as you can tell from the frequency that it is quoted on this site. And, I was reading an editorial blog post about changes to the BBC website, which removes the old system of selecting your version of the BBC site. You used to be able to select between the international and UK versions, much like what CNN still allows. The news was the same but the order of importance given to the different topics varied in the two versions. Read on »

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Just like any other of the 190…

Gordon Brown, Prime Minister of Great Britain, was treated like any reliable ally of the United States ought to be : just like any of the 190 other nations in the world, with a DVD box set of popular Hollywood movies, with Region 1 encoding, unplayable anywhere outside the US. No private dinners, no Camp David, just a quick meeting and out you go. Brown could have been a minor African ruler, says the National Review.

This despite the fact Mr. Brown is unlike any of the other 190. His country is the 6th largest economy in the world by GDP. Britain is also the staunchest ally of the United States, having supported its endeavours in Afghanistan and Iraq from the beginning. The UK is the only country that has actually provided a significant number of troops for both wars and continues to spend billions of dollars each year to pay for two of America’s wars.

This reminds me of the way Rajiv Gandhi, a former PM of India, treated the King of Nepal during an official visit to Delhi in the 1980s. The King was made to wait outside Gandhi’s office for several hours while Gandhi conducted other business, including playing golf and having lunch. Albeit the comparison is not perfect, but allies and friends don’t treat each other this way. Nepal has had a long relationship with India, just as Britain has had with the US. UK has proved over and over again that it is the only reliable ally for the United States in Europe.

It is understandable that Obama wants to break away from GWB’s policies. It is also understandable that he is too “busy” dealing with the economic crisis to pay any attention to minor details of protocol. Obama just doesn’t have time for dealing with foreign affairs at this time. There are, however, simply no excuses for the way Brown was treated.

The blame lies squarely with the official charged with handling Brown’s visit. Given the high level of specialization these days, this official is most likely only responsible for visits by foreign dignitaries. Is he also too busy with the economy to buy a more appropriate gift to mark Brown’s first official visit to meet the new President?

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