They're at it again

Looking at the NY Times today, one of the cartoons made me snort with derision at the attitude of the cartoonist (not the first time I've thought that Glenn McCoy is an arse).

One day, certain Americans might finally get some humility and realise that it is no longer acceptable to refer to their President as "Leader of the Free World".

Bush barely got a majority of the ballots that were counted from the Americans who bothered to vote in only one of his two elections. If the "Free World" got to have a say who their leader would be, it certainly wouldn't have been Bush. If you believe in democracy, then you have to stop claiming to be the leader of the free world until such a vote exists.

Juan Carlos vs Hugo Chávez

Hugo Chávez is one of those left wingers who a sane left-winger should actually dislike. He's like Galloway - just because you're attacking a dictatorial half-wit who is bent on taking the country they've managed to get themselves elected to lead in some deranged direction, it doesn't mean that you're not also a deranged half-wit etc. etc.

So it's not a surprise to see that plenty of the centre-left have been delighted with the response of Juan Carlos I of Spain, who became so fed up of Chávez interrupting he told him - in very blunt terms - to shut up.

Chávez, who likes to bang on about how he was democratically elected, was interrupting the democratically elected José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero - leader of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party - who was defending his predecessor and political opponent José María Aznar from Chávez's rants that he was a socialist. Juan Carlos, who one would imagine knows what a fascist is, having previously managed to trick a bunch of them into enabling him to turn Spain from a fascist state to a parliamentary democracy, was having none of this.

Chavez is boasting how he has been democratically elected with 63% support to justify his being rude. But both Zapatero and Aznar were democratically elected, and in November 2005, Juan Carlos received a 77.5% approval rating in a newspaper poll. So he's basically shown himself up as the sort of arrogant tit that right wingers must love to be able to point at and say "See? That's what lefties are like!".

Better than Belgium

In one of those wittering things that think tanks like to come up with, and which contain so many metrics that it's really all a matter of opinion, the UK has come 17th in the list of the world's most prosperous countries, only slightly ahead of Belgium.

This study claims to measure more factors than simply wealth, including climate, which we can't do a lot about (and my opinions on a nice climate probably differ slightly from theirs). Mind you, they put Norway first, so I'd agree with that.

This would take a lot of carbon offsetting

Airbus have just sold one of their gigantic A380s.

Things haven't got quite so bad that that is news in itself - what makes this remarkable is that it has been bought as a private jet.

The BBC story quotes Airbus:

Airbus said the individual, "not from Europe or the US", would use the plane for "personal use for him and his entourage",

Which is a longwinded way of saying "we sold it to a Middle Eastern prince"

Prince Bandar's private plane will be ten years old next year. Coincidence?

Aussies won't tour Zimbabwe

The ICC has accepted the Australians refusal to tour Zimbabwe. This is because, unlike the cowardly position the UK government took in 2004, voicing oppostion but not banning them from going, this is viewed as a government policy and therefore not the problem of the cricketers.

My point of view - given that some of the best Zimbabwean cricketers of the last few years aren't able to play for the team, politics has already clearly interfered. The anti-democratic policies of Mugabe mean that it is acceptable to refuse to give the regime any credibility by visiting. But governments must say this, not the cricket authorities.

I am no fan whatsoever of Australia's John Howard, but at least he took the responsibility for making a political decision. Which, after all, is what politicians are there for.

The Cyberattack on Estonia

Edward Lucas has an article on the cyber attack on Estonia - quite scary stuff really. They've basically forced the Estonians to cut off access to their websites from overseas. Some of this is from angry Russians, but a lot is from botnets, the collections of easily-hacked computers from across the world run by shadowy figures.

This is like the cold war again, except in cyberspace - sending guerrilas to disrupt your enemy without actually sparking a war.

Hat-tip - Cicero's Songs