As a student, Jacques Chirac spent time in the U.S. where he worked in a restaurant. Here’s a previously unpublished photo.
Sequential Art
Some comics-related blogs: scottmccloud.com, Egon and Journalista!, the Comics Journal’s blog. All worth a look if you are into that kind of thing.
Pollack Weighs In, Again
More antidote to Mearsheimer and Walt – Kenneth Pollack’s recent editorial “A Last Chance to Stop Iraq”. Pollack demonstrates once again that Saddam has consistently surprised the world with how far along his weapons programs are, and that he is not deterrable. As Pollack puts it, Saddam may not be suicidal, but has on several occasions been “inadvertently suicidal”. Time to take him up on it once and for all.
Ho Hum
Croatia has just officially applied for membership in the EU. When it finally joins up it will be he second former Yugoslavian republic to do so after Slovenia. It won’t be soon, though, the country doesn’t yet meet all criteria for membership.
A Dog As Priest?
This is from the “No comment” sections of the EuroNews website. Their description of the section: “Images speak for themselves: the most striking pictures from around the world, unedited, with original sound: draw your own conclusion”. Even so I’d like to know what is really going on in this Real Video Stream (doesn’t work directly, please see the update below). It looks as if a dog is dressed as a Shinto priest and then participates in a religious ceremony; his handler is turning the pages of the prayer-book for him. I googled around but could find no reference of dogs joining the Shinto clergy, so my interpretation is probably wrong. Here is the No comment section and this is the English language main page of EuroNews, in case somebody’s interested. They have a pro-EU bias, but some of the footage at their website is quite interesting. Update: The direct link to the stream doesn’t work, so I took it down. Just go to the No comment section and click on the video stream from Tsuru, Japan.