The Palin Charade

The Currency Manipulation Charade

The Europeans gladly went along with this charade because they now fear dollar depreciation more than global imbalance. So far, Europe s fragile economic recovery has been based largely on exports.

We share the view that, while high levels of aid do not guarantee success, the absence or inadequacy of aid would make post conflict peacebuilding efforts a time wasting charade.

Meanwhile, Iran s unstoppable rush to develop nuclear weapons could prove to be a monument to the international community s failure to stem the atomic tide in the region. The Israeli Palestinian conflict continues to be the diplomatic charade that it has been for many years now.

There is nothing devastating in this, of course, but Poland s political malaise may one day prove dangerous, and so should be scrutinized in other democracies, old and new. For the problems of anomie, apathy, and political charade are not Polish problems, but maladies that increasingly afflict democracies everywhere, and that urgently call for a restoring of faith in parties and politics.

Paradoxically, the discerning Palestinian observer may find comfort in America s failure to stop Israel from expanding its settlements (and thus effectively annexing a growing share of Palestinian land), for it ends the charade on which the peace process has been based. The most likely outcome now is the establishment of a single unified country within the borders of the 1922 British Mandate for Palestine, including all of present day Israel and the occupied territories.