Links of Interest

Kamerad! It was all too predictable: France has surrendered to the mobs in the streets. The good news is the decline of Chirac and De Villepin; the bad news is that France’s own economic decline is now increasingly assured.

Mary Robinson Wouldn’t Approve. I have three words to say about Zacharias Moussaoui’s date with Hell: Pay-Per-View. Bring beer; Cheetos are on me.

The Skirt Defense. This is without question both the strangest and most contemptable rape defense I’ve ever seen:

Taking the stand for the first time this week in the rape trial, [South African political bigwig Jacob] Zuma cast himself as the embodiment of a traditional Zulu male, with all the privileges that patriarchal Zulu traditions bestow on men. Mr. Zuma, who turns 64 this week, said his accuser, a 31-year-old anti-AIDS advocate, had signaled a desire to have sex with him by wearing a knee-length skirt to his house and sitting with legs crossed, revealing her thigh.

Indeed, he said, he was actually obligated to have sex. His accuser was aroused, he said, and “in the Zulu culture, you cannot just leave a woman if she is ready.” To deny her sex, he said, would have been tantamount to rape.

During my three-month stay in South Africa, I tried to learn as much as I could of African customs and language, but this one is new to me. Zuma’s arrogance extends to the biological; he never put a condom on despite knowing that the victim was HIV-positive. Read on, and you can see that there might well have been real questions as to Zuma’s guilt had he not opened his mouth. Which makes it good, in one way, that he did.

Italian Elections. Next to Jacob Zuma, Silvio Berlusconi might have been the world’s most clumsily arrogant elected leader. I like Berlusconi’s Iraq policy and have little use for the anemic Eurocrat Prodi, but Berlusconi never mastered the ability to shut his mouth. I’m surprised he didn’t lose convincingly, and may not have lost at all. Giant douche, meet turd sandwich.