THE THINGIST

ALL THE NEWS

The world has gone crackers. Spain, the country that gave us the Inquisition--along with France, Portugal and Italy--is threatening to prosecute officials from the Bush administration for the allegedly authorising torture at Guantanamo. While I do condone the use of torture under any circumstances, it seems to me that Spain should tend to its own paella. We are dealing with Pinochet here. We talking about people who were appointed by a democratically elected body--so we were led to believe, anyway. This is in-house work and it needs to be dealt with in house. I vote to ask the Spaniards' help whenever they solve their problems with the Basques. Until then, stick to flamenco dancing, guys.

European self-righteousness is not the only indication that the world has gone crackers--I mean, what can one do but laugh when the British threaten to seize Israelis who allegedly took part in war crimes? They will do that as soon as they abolish racism and anti-Semitism in their own little island, give back the Falklands, find an Indian replacement for Queen Elizabeth and a Guianese replacement for Prince Phillip. look, I don't care much for netspeak, but, muwahahah is the only appropriate response to this sudden--or is it?--Euro passion to neaten up other folks' houses. What is troubling about it is that there is no question bad things are happening all ver, though not much seems to be done about the janjaweed in Darfur of the Chinese killers of Tibetan monks. There are houses that need to be neatened up and ours is one of them. But the day I would agree that European Union should be in charge of solving our domestic problems is when hell freezes over.

While seething about the silliness of puffed up European officials it is good to find something positive to do. Making crackers from scratch is my choice. mark Bittman, of The New York Times provides a very easy recipe for utterly delicious Cheese crackers. He recommends grated Parmesan cheese. I think an herbed cheese would work as well. I intend to experiment with cream cheese and Israeli olive oil instead of butter for the dough and rosemary for the topping. The photo above shows Bittman's crackers topped with za'atar. If only global politics were that simple and good.