"Where are they taking us?"

Strong leaders with intellectual missions and great understanding of the future?
Thanks, M.U. for mailing me this link!



Look at the West's leaders - and be afraid

By Charles Moore, the Telegraph.

I don't lose sleep over nuclear or environmental Armageddon. It takes something much smaller to frighten me. This week, it was a photograph of the G8 leaders at their summit in Hokkaido.

IStori: But I do. I lose sleep over thinking about the big RBMK type Leningrad reactors in Sosnvyi Bor, Russia. I tend to stay awake thinking if Miss Funnybunny will ever be able to visit Amsterdam or whether it will be under water when she has reached adulthood.

Back to the Telegraph.

Charles Moore: It was not a physical thing. True, the attempt to make Silvio Berlusconi look younger has had the strange side-effect of making him look dead. True, Nicolas Sarkozy, perhaps distracted by his love for Carla Bruni, seemed quite alarming.

IStori: I tried to take a look at this family photo in the web but the quality was not good enough and the world leaders were the sice of flies. What's wrong with Berlusconi's appearance? The same surgeon Janice Dickinson and Lara Flynn Boyle are using?

Charles Moore: It was simply the thought that these people are in charge of our civilisation. Twenty years ago, the line-up included Reagan, Kohl, Mitterrand and Mrs Thatcher. Today, we have in George W. Bush a president who has literally and metaphorically used up his country's credit in the world. Angela Merkel runs Germany with decency but impotence. Mr Sarkozy is a walking dictionary definition of the word "mountebank". And then there is Mr Brown.

IStori: Why is Mrs Thatcher so respected nowadays? George W. has been just a joke for years.

Charles Moore: What do these leaders want? What do they believe? Where are they taking us? Do they understand what is happening?

IStori: Power. Having powerful friends is everything. The destruction, cultural poverty and future with even bigger problems. No.

Charles Moore: One of the essential gifts of leadership is to explain the state of the world truthfully, and then to say something about how it might be improved. In the 1980s, such leadership was provided.

IStori: Hah! See my previous post. And read the rest of this article in the Telegraph site.