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The mood in Europe: Perplexity and foreboding
Giles Merrit, director of Forum Europe and secretary-general of Friends of Europe, has another article today in the Herald Tribune. He believes Europe can salvage something from the fallout over Iraq, being able to forge a new a strong United Europe with its new Constitution. But he also see problems ahead.
In the meantime, a strange mood of perplexity and foreboding has settled on Europe. Perplexity, because the Iraq war's aftermath is a tangle of new crises whose consequences are still unclear. Foreboding, because few doubt that Europe will sooner or later pay a high price for a war that was not of its making.
The atmosphere in Brussels is particularly troubled and unfamiliar. The EU's policy vacuum on Iraq-related issues looks almost total. No one has advanced a realistic plan for repairing either the trans-Atlantic rift or the divisions between EU governments themselves. The wider concern is the prospect of an endemic Christian-Muslim conflict, for Europeans increasingly fear the "clash of civilizations," even if Americans don't.
4:42:10 PM 
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Thomas L. Friedman: Why the rest of the world hates America
Thomas Friedman wonders why America is hated by the rest of the world. He also calls on people to email him and help him find a stable way to manage the United States' relationship with the world.
"Where we are now," says Nayan Chanda, publications director at the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization (whose Web site yaleglobal.yale.edu is full of valuable nuggets), "is that you have this sullen anger out in the world at America. Because people realize they are not going to get a vote over American power, they cannot do anything about it, but they will be affected by it."
Finding a stable way to manage this situation will be critical to managing America's relations with the rest of the globe. Any ideas?
4:32:12 PM
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FCC's Powell must be held to his word
Dan Gillmor vents some anger at Colin Powells son and the FCC for changing the rules on media ownership.
Monday, barring an 11th-hour change of bureaucratic heart, the Federal Communications Commission will give a gaggle of powerful corporations a gift of enormous value. The three Republican commissioners will outvote two Democrats in easing long-standing rules designed to prevent a few companies from controlling too much of the media we read, hear and view.
4:24:30 PM
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