STRANGE EVENTS IN VENEZUELA, with rumors flying that Hugo Chavez is dead. There’s more on this subject here. All I can say is that if it’s true, he won’t be missed.

MILITARY BLOGGERS ON MSNBC: Ian Schwartz has the video.

MEMORIAL DAY PHOTOBLOGGING, here and here. Also here.

IN THE MAIL: Thomas Sowell’s Black Rednecks and White Liberals, which purports to explain black failure as a consequence of absorbing poor cultural values from “white trash,” in the form of Scots-Irish rednecks. As Sowell writes in this distillation of the book’s thesis:

The culture of the people who were called “rednecks” and “crackers” before they ever got on the boats to cross the Atlantic was a culture that produced far lower levels of intellectual and economic achievement, as well as far higher levels of violence and sexual promiscuity. That culture had its own way of talking, not only in the pronunciation of particular words but also in a loud, dramatic style of oratory with vivid imagery, repetitive phrases and repetitive cadences.

Actually, as someone who keeps noticing interesting overlaps between the culture of my Nigerian relatives and my white southern ancestors, I think the cross-fertilization went both ways. And I’d be interested to hear what James Webb thinks about Sowell’s thesis.

UPDATE: Reader John Richardson emails:

I read Webb’s Born Fightin, as I am from East Tennessee Scots Irish stock (Bulls Gap). Isn’t is more than a little bigoted to call the Scots Irish ‘White Trash’? Such epithets are forbidden about other ethnic groups. And while I will admit Scots Irish setelers may have had their prejudices, few were slave holders. I read Sowells summary of the book at opinionjournal, but did not see his point. Today’s Scots Irish descendents do not have the overwhelming social problems Sowell so eloquently writes about in his columns.

I believe that Scots-Irish weren’t very well-represented among slaveholders, either, who were mostly wealthier. On the other hand, reader Russ McSwain emails:

As I read Dr. Sowell’s book my reaction was the same as your initial observation. There’s no doubt that Sowell’s right, but the cultural cross-fertilization cuts both ways. I can’t find again it but somewhere in his writings VS Naipaul, when asked about his impressions of the American South, responded with: “It has the same smells as a typical West African village.” Can you say Barbeque?

Mmm. Barbeque.

INTERESTING POLL RESULTS:

A recent “Opinion Survey of the Arab Street 2005” by Al Arabiya news network provides some interesting answers. The survey sought to see what Arabs thought about the relative lack of economic progress in the Arab world. In answer to the question, “What is stalling development in the Arab world?,” 81 percent chose “Governments are unwilling to implement change and reform”, 8 percent citing “The ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict,” 7 percent “Civil society is failing to convince governments”, and 4 percent chose “Terrorism”.

Another question, “What is the fastest way to achieve development in the Arab world?”, had 67 percent choosing “Ensuring the rule of law through justice and law enforcement”, 23 percent chose “Enhancing freedom of speech”, and 10 percent chose “Resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict”.

Islamic terrorists represent a small minority of Arab thinking, and interests. But most Arab media and governments, for obvious reasons, avoid the “bad government” issues and instead concentrate on the Arab-Israeli conflict as the cause of all that is bad in the Arab world. While few Arab governments support all Islamic terrorists, many support some (like the Palestinian terrorists, or Hizbollah in Lebanon).

Read the whole thing.

DON’T MISS THE MEMORIAL DAY ROUNDUP at Winds of Change, featuring links to other Memorial Day posts, ways to help the troops, etc.

MICHEL HOUELLEBECQ on the French vote. Though Matt Welch offers his own explanation, involving a midget with pasties, for the outcome.

UPDATE: Read this column from David Ignatius, too, who stresses the fear of change I noted earlier. The overlong and overcomplicatd EU Constitution, of course, encouraged a “no” vote from skeptical voters.

MORE: Steven Den Beste comments on the fallout:

What I like is the way the pro-EU advocates are starting to show their true anti-democratic colors during this process. It’s making blatantly obvious what I concluded long ago: the constitution of the EU is intended to set up a benevolent dictatorship by the progressive (read “socialist”) elite of Europe.

It is, I think, an effort to restore the sort of transnational aristocracy that ran Europe before World War I, though with a somewhat different flavor.

UPDATE: Reader Kjell Hagen emails:

I have a great deal of respect for Steven den Beste´s analyses. However, I think this is over the top. The EU will be ruled by some mix of elected national governments compromising (as now), or by an elected, European assembly, with still a great deal of power in the hands of the national governments. Not totally unlike the US, actually, only with more power to the national governments than currently with the US states. I don´t really see how this is going to be a dictatorship. And as for the socialists, they are the minority
in the EU parliament.

(Also in the US, there are tendencies of centralization of power, as you have pointed out, and under a Republican president, no less.)

I agree that the constitution is bureaucratic, unnecessary and mostly a product of French elitist ambitions. However, even if they succeeded in making the EU into a superstate, it would be a similar structure as the US, hardly a dictatorship.

Another matter is that they won´t succeed. Even their own nation rejects this. Even most socialists reject this. The possible strategy of having referendums again and again until people vote for the constitution, won´t work. People vote independently, as we have seen now. It is much more likely to backfire on the political leaders trying it. And when it does, they will stop trying, in the interest
of not losing personal power.

Well, that certainly trumps. I think, however, that Hagen means something different than Den Beste when he talks about socialists. By American standards, pretty much all European politicians are socialists.

MORE: More on the French election map here, from Patrick Ruffini, and here, from Michael Barone.

ARLEN SPECTER AND SAM BROWNBACK on Stem Cell research — Crooks&Liars has video from This Week.

Meanwhile, Trey Jackson has video of Jim Pinkerton talking about Linda Foley as part of a media vs. the military segment on Fox News Watch.

UPDATE: Joe Gandelman watched the Brownback/Specter video and wonders if the stem cell issue isn’t the point of no return for the GOP. “What strikes us is how Brownback tries to change the subject away from the living, away from stem cell research’s potential to save lives. And all of this being done a[long]side a ghostly Arlen Specter — failing before our very eyes.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Justin Katz disagrees.

LEBANON UPDATE:

Lebanon’s anti-Syrian alliance has swept the board in the first round of general elections, officials say. Amidst a low turnout, the coalition headed by the son of murdered former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri took all 19 seats in the capital Beirut.

Pro-Syrian Shia groups are tipped to fare better in next Sunday’s second round of voting in the south. But the country-wide result is expected to see a big parliamentary majority for Syria’s opponents.

(Via Newsbeat 1).

UPDATE: Here’s video of Saab Harriri talking about the election results.

TODAY IS A HOLIDAY, but that hasn’t stopped the Carnival of the Capitalists.

RED-STATE/BLUE-STATE FRANCE: An interesting map.

HERE’S A POST ON TORTURE AND PRISONER ABUSE that, unlike some, is both non-hysterical and well-documented. I highly recommend that you read it.

RICHARD POSNER has thoughts on the difference between blogs and big media. I agree. (Via Ashish Hanwadikar).

“NON!”

French voters were said tonight to have resoundingly rejected the EU Constitution, sending a defiant message to France’s political establishment and dealing a blow to plans for further European integration.
As polls closed around the country, the three major French polling organisations all reported a “no” vote of around 55-56 per cent, in line with opinion polls before today’s vote.

The rejection of the treaty, drafted by a panel headed by Valery Giscard d’Estaing, the former French president, leaves the Constitution effectively dead in the water and the 25-nation European Union in crisis. It also means that Tony Blair may no longer need to argue the case for a Constitution in a UK referendum that had been due next year.

“It’s a massive ‘no’, a heavy rejection of the Constitution and a huge humiliation for President Chirac,” said Charles Bremner, Times correspondent in Paris. “It’s also a huge repudiation of the political establishment – all the major parties were in favour of this document.”

It’s possible that this is a mere bump in the road, although it’s a big one. On the other hand, it’s possible that this is the beginning of a significant political shift in Europe, which I suspect will be a good thing if it happens.

Certainly some folks are battening down the hatches.

UPDATE: Perhaps this response: “Your votes say no no no, but your better classes say yes, yes, yes!”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Jonathan Smith emails: “I have yet to see an american blogger that has recognized that a lot of people that voted Non want France to be a MORE socialist state. It’s a fear that the EU will be more capitalist.”

Well, that’s been a theme of a lot of the coverage I’ve linked to, and it certainly seems to be true. In fact, though I can’t find a working link to the story now, I seem to recall that French free-market activist Sabine Herold supported the EU because she thought that only an external institution could break the power of the French unions.

As for the defeat on two grounds, it seems an obvious consequence of the EU’s general strategy of obfuscation — this works well in a bureaucratic environment, but in the context of referenda, where people tend to vote their fears more than their hopes, it’s been self-defeating. Transparency tends to work better under such circumstances, and transparency has not been the Eurocrats’ forte.

And some people are paying the price:

PARIS – French voters rejected the European Union’s first constitution Sunday, President Jacques Chirac said — a stinging repudiation of his leadership and the ambitious, decades-long effort to further unite the continent.

Ouch. Meanwhile, Daniel Drezner has thoughts — presciently ahead of the vote — on the consequences of a French no.

MORE: Over at ChicagoBoyz, these comments:

This is almost as good as the purple fingers in Iraq. It is a step in the right direction. . . .

The fact that anti-Americanism drove much of the vote doesn’t bother me at all. I don’t want people to like us nearly as much as I want them to be able to govern themselves the way they see fit, have real elections with real consequences, and get the benefits and bear the consequences of those decisions. If the French don’t want capitalisme sauvage or anglo-saxonisme or hyper-liberalisme, OK by me. They are free to have as much socialism as they can get away with.

Indeed. Greg Djerejian has more thoughts, including these:

And it’s certainly not a great day for Jacques Chirac, is it? One might say that he’s now completely damaged goods. Pity. Meantime, let’s now keep an even closer eye on Sarkozy as ’07 looms. Truth be told, it’s silly and sophomoric to emptily cheer-lead this historical repudiation of the EU constitution solely because it’s such tremendously poor news for Jacques. . . .

There will doubtless be yet another referendum a few years hence on the issue. Giscard d’Estaing, for instance, is already on the record stating there will have to be a re-vote going forward. But this is a tremendous setback indeed to the entire process of European integration, of course, and it also showcases a massive failure of leadership by the Chirac Administration. They simply were not able to convince their country on the merits of their vision of Europe’s future. And carping on about “multipolarity” and the big, bad Anglo-Saxon meanies didn’t do the trick, it seems.

Interesting times ahead for French politics. Read this post by Djerejian, too, for some additional background.

STILL MORE: TM Lutas wonders how the French Muslims voted. And the Eclectic Econoclast doesn’t expect the pro-EU forces to take no for an answer, in spite of their prior statements.

MORE STILL: Mark Steyn joins the list of skeptics who doubt that the Euro-establishment will give up:

So, a couple of days before the first referendum, Jean-Claude Juncker, the “president” of the European Union, let French and Dutch voters know how much he values their opinion:

“If at the end of the ratification process, we do not manage to solve the problems, the countries that would have said No, would have to ask themselves the question again,” “President” Juncker told the Belgian newspaper Le Soir.

Got that? You have the right to vote, but only if you give the answer your rulers want you to give. But don’t worry, if you don’t, we’ll treat you like a particularly backward nursery school and keep asking the question until you get the answer right.

A pretty safe bet. On the other hand, The New York Times calls this a “crushing defeat” for the E.U. Constitution. We’ll see. I suspect that a lot depends on whether the politicians who pushed it have a political future, or get hammered. In the meantime, I note that both Chirac and Schroeder have tried to prop up their political fortunes by playing the anti-Americanism card, and both have found that gambit insufficient to the task.

David Carr, meanwhile, is offering heartfelt thanks to the responsible parties. And Jeff Jarvis observes: “It’s about trying to turn Europe in to a faux nation. It’s about protectionism. It’s about Europe thinking it is a world player when it is no longer. And it’s about a bad constitution that made up for in bureaucracy what it lacked in vision.”

AND EVEN MORE: Austin Bay observes:

It’s clear that a disgruntled and discombobulated French electorate expressed various types of outrage and enrage (an odd construction but given France’s constant straddling act, strikes me as appropirate). However, if the Communist Redshirts and Le Pen’s fascist Brownshirts are politically determinative in France –and that’s an argument one can make based on this plebiscite– then let’s recognize France as the politically sick society it truly is. If “sick” is a push word and too therapeutic for the pragmatic set, then call it the “lost” society. In some ways the news that the Cold War really is over has finally reached Paris.

He has some thoughts on what ought to come next, too:

So let’s offer NAFTA membership to Holland and the United Kingdom. If you’re Dutch or British, why be stuck in the floundering lost cause of a Franco-centric Greater Europe? We’ll call it the North Atlantic Free Trade Association. Heck, we don’t even have to change the acronym.

Read the whole thing. And read this column by George Will, too.

FINALLY, I think that this comment is really the last word:

The French people decided to look out for their own individual financial interests and also to demonstrate their independence of other countries. How can Chirac be suprised when this is exactly what led him to oppose the U.S. attempt to enforce UN resolutions on Iraq? People criticize Chirac’s leadership on the issue of the referendum but actually the French are following his lead precisely.

Heh. Indeed.

RICK LEE has posted some very cool photos.

THE FRENCH ARE VOTING ON THE E.U. TODAY, but we won’t know the results until all the polls have closed. Right now the No vote seems to be ahead:

On Thursday (26 May) the No was still ahead (55 per cent), according to an Ipsos poll, with 66 per cent of the people saying their choice is definitive.

Only 23 per cent predicted a Yes victory, compared to 49 per cent saying they thought the No would win.

And on Friday, an Ifop poll put the No camp at 56 per cent, whereas a TNS Sofres poll put it at 51 per cent.

There are a lot of undecideds, though.

UPDATE: More background, here.

SYRIA IS CRACKING DOWN ON DISSIDENTS: Gateway Pundit has a roundup.

“AMERICAN TWATS:” Another stellar episode for the BBC.

WATCH OUT, GEARBOX: It’s another episode of The Carnival of Cars.

PUBLIUS HAS MORE on the elections in Lebanon.

BEATINGS AT GUANTANAMO: An eyewitness report.

PAJAMAS MEDIA QUESTION NUMBER TWO: How can we be an online Joe Friday?

HERE’S AUSTIN BAY’S MEMORIAL DAY SPEECH, and here’s video of President Bush’s commencement speech at the Naval Academy.

ELECTIONS IN LEBANON: Publius has a roundup. “Undoubtedly, Lebanon will never be the same after March’s Cedar Revolution, but that won’t stop the country’s professional politicians from pulling as many strings as possible to stay in power.”

FRED THOMPSON: Dark horse candidate for 2008? I had him down as Chief Justice, but you never know. . . .

UPDATE: Several readers email to say that a Thompson/Rice, or a Rice/Thompson, ticket would suit them just fine for 2008. The GOP could do worse. And probably will!