And now when we hear that Iran and Iraq plan to cooperate more closely and that a fundamentalist is coming to power in Tehran - a man about whom we cannot be sure that he is absolutely averse to terrorism - it is very worrisome.
We feel very honored to have been offered the responsibility to host this great event, Berlin is a wonderful city that is developing at a tremendous rate, and this decision means that we can now prepare to welcome the world's best athletes to a fascinating place.
It is now conventional wisdom that Americans do not care why we went to war in Iraq, that it is enough that the world is better off without Saddam Hussein.
Some argue that recognition of the genocide has become even more problematic now, when the world is at war with terrorism and the United States cannot afford to offend the sensibility of our Turkish ally.
For sure, the American people have access to more information now than any other people who have ever lived on earth. And I think we do a pretty good job of sorting out what's important.
We now assume that when people turn on the evening news, they basically already know what the news is. They've heard it on the radio. They've seen it on the Internet. They've seen it on one of the cable companies. So that makes our job a bit different.
And we've also had now the speaker of the Parliament in Iraq using blatantly anti-Semitic remarks, saying the Jews and sons of Jews are the problem of all the violence that's in Iraq.
The objective of the demonstrators is to win the affection of the armed agents of the government. Most of the Kiev police have now pledged their support for the people.
The Western media tends to place a lot of emphasis on official institutions in Ukraine such as its supreme court, the central election commission, and the parliament. In reality, the people of Ukraine now control their destiny.
And having suffered for part of the war when I was a child. I was too young to really understand what was going on but one of my favorite pieces of animation now is that Goodbye Blue Sky in The Wall because that deals directly with that period in time.
I just recently did a film with Disney, and they put the drawings straight on the computer. And it's all painted on the computer now and not by hand anymore.
In many ways, when you're young and sexy, it's very annoying to be whistled at and to have someone always trying to attract your attention, but now when it happens I find myself registering the fact almost warmly.
I always feel that there are no final victories and no final defeats. But it's true that America is in a hole right now. There are a lot of dead fish in the water.
