What the world is reading

And you thought it was only the Arabs the Israelis quarrelled with. Spaniards,it seems,arent exactly friends with them either. A recent Barcelona City Hall-funded tribunal held to examine on what level the European Union and its member states are complicit in8230; violations on the part of Israel of the rights of the nation of Palestine,has the Israelis fuming. A virulently anti-Israel tribunal likened to a lynching by the Israeli Embassy in Madrid is the most recent in a spate of anti-Semitic incidents instigated by Spaniards, reads an editorial in Jerusalem Post. It adds: Spain has a long,infamous history of anti-Semitism that pre-dates the Inquisition. Now Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero is aligned with anti-globalisation activists whose agenda includes strong anti-Israel sentiments.

Pointing to the worsening situation of anti-Semitism in the country,the article says at the end of February,the embassy received dozens of postcards written by Spanish schoolchildren with messages like Jews kill for money and Leave the country to the Palestinians.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS

Empires on the Edge of Chaos

Niall Ferguson writes that the days of the US as the Big Brother are numbered. Saying that empires dont decline over centuries as is commonly held but have a precipitous and unexpected fall,like something falling off a cliff,Ferguson believes the financial crisis may have driven the US to the edge of the cliff. He writes: Most imperial falls are associated with fiscal crises. Alarm bells should therefore be ringing very loudly,indeed,as the US contemplates a deficit for 2009 of more than 1.4 trillionabout 11.2 per cent of GDP,the biggest deficit in 60 yearsand another for 2010 that will not be much smaller8230; These numbers are bad,but in the realm of political entities,the role of perception is just as crucial,if not more so. In imperial crises,it is not the material underpinnings of power that really matter but expectations about future power.

GUARDIAN

The Bankers Lied

Not very long ago,economists were singing paeans to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown for bailing out the banks. But Simon Jenkins is not impressed. Brown and his Treasury Secretary Alistair Darling,he writes,have led Britain into a mess. A trillion pounds has been devoted over the past 18 months to protect Britains financial system from alleged Armageddon,with not a murmur of value for money. This stupefying sum is more than has ever been spent on any project by any government in British history. We know where the money came from but we do not know if it was necessary,nor who now has it. We know only that,a year on,Britain is experiencing a worse recession than any comparable country, Jenkins writes. Darling should have spent that money on indebted homeowners or indebted manufacturers or indebted African states,he says.

SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

All the Presidents Women

What is it with French genes? The world may be waiting with bated breath to see how the fairy-tale Sarkozy-Bruni marriage is going to endthat is,if all the rumours flying around on the Internet have a shade of truth to thembut the French dont seem to fathom what the fuss is all about. The French think nothing of it, Cassandra Jardine quotes French writer Agnes Poirier. If you are married,you swear fidelity but it is not the end of the world if you have a few hiccups. Cultural context makes infidelity easier to bear in France because if you arent stigmatised for straying,it cant hurt as much, Jardine quotes Lucy Wadham,author of

The Secret Life of France.

And the French have the backing of therapists on this. Jardine writes: Esther Perel in her influential book Mating in Captivity advocates a more rationalindeed Frenchattitude to increase the chances of a happy marriage. Extramarital affairs,she says,are a way for individuals to explore themselves and to revitalise a stale sex life.