3 April 1991 (Resolution 687)
Iraq shall submit to the Security Council, within fifteen days of the adoption of this Resolution, a declaration on the location, amounts and types of all items specified in paragraph 8 and agree to urgent, on-site inspection …
Zrich is apparently the best place to live, with Vienna and Vancouver tied for second, and then another Swiss city, Geneva, coming next. As if that weren’t enough, a third Swiss city, Berne, is just after that. And if that weren’t enough, they won the America’s Cup–the first Europeans to do so.
A very good Austrian friend of mine sent me the following via e-mail last week:
My opinion of the Americans: I like them a lot… They are funny, they speak a nice colorful english … and [something positive about art and culture which I didn't quite understand in German.] Couldn’t they be satisfied with that and leave the rest of the world as it is? But all in all I like them and can accept their shortcomings. [my emphasis]
Many of those noble souls known as “human shields” (menschliche Schilde) are apparently not in it for the long haul. It will be interesting to see how many leftists are left in Baghdad when the bombs begin to drop. Seems as though they were a bit surprised to discover that the Iraqi government took them at their word: that they truly wanted to use them as … you guessed it … human shields!
Last Thursday I met a good friend of mine, a Russian, at a cafe in Vienna for a farewell drink or two; he’d been in Vienna all of February attending a language class. He also invited two people (a Hungarian and an Italian) from the class and one other guy he’d met in Vienna (a Greek). Small talk ruled for a bit, but eventually one of them, the Greek, got around to asking my opinion about the current President of the United States. (I find the choice of topic interesting: war is about to break out in Iraq, yet I’m first asked my opinion of the personage in the White House rather than the event itself. This is just another example of how absolutely obsessed many Europeans are with George W. Bush the person.)