Courtesy of the Google Zeitgeist, here is a look at the most popular web and news queries on Googles in countries around the world.

A few thoughts.

Paris Hilton, it turns out, translates. So do Jessica Simpson, Angelina Jolie and the rest of the often scantly clad gang.

Hey Canada, what’s with the Ashton Kutcher thing? We may be giving our neighbors to the North too much credit, eh?

Are you irritated by Pokemon, Hello Kitty or Harry Potter? Too bad. There is nowhere in the world for you to hide.

In China, nine of the first ten queries are all in Chinese characters. The first one that’s not? NBA.

Question: What was the third most popular search in France?
Answer: The word France.

At least Britney Spears was tenth in France, so there’s some hope. The French also did their share of searching for Paris Hilton, but let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they were searching for the Hilton in Paris.

Shrek appears to be huge in the Netherlands. They also seem to be a little too enthusiastic about the movie Garfield.

What we call soccer seems to be sort of popular around the world.

Norway has a pretty eclectic musical vibe going. Their top five music searches are: Shakira, Metallica, Eminem, Madonna, Iron Maiden.

Maria Sharapova is more popular in Korea than she is in Russia.

The ninth most popular search in Russia is plastic windows. The transition to Democracy really can be rough.

This dude is friggin huge in Japan.

Orlando Bloom was the most popular overall query in Norway. If you were Orlando Bloom, how fast would you be on a plane to Norway right now?

There is an old Woody Allen stand-up routine during which he recounts a negotiation between the FBI and the the kidnappers who took him hostage when he was a kid. It goes like this:

The FBI surround the house. “Throw the kid out.”, they say. “Give us your guns, and come out with your hands up.”

The kidnappers say, “We’ll throw the kid out, but let us keep our guns, and get to our car.”

The FBI says, “Throw the kid out, we’ll let you get to your car, but give us your guns.”

The kidnappers say, “We’ll throw the kid out, but let us keep our guns – we don’t have to get to our car.”

The FBI says: “Keep the kid…”

Those companies competing for your business in the online DVD rental market may start to sound a lot like those FBI agents when it comes to negotiating a price. The latest salvo in the DVD rental price wars has been fired by Blockbuster. In addition to getting rid of all late fees for in-store rentals (which is the equivalent of a movie theater throwing in popcorn and drinks with the purchase of a ticket), Blockbuster has now lowered their monthly rent by mail fee to $14.99. That’s three bucks lower than Netflix.

This price war has been fast and furious. Are we really that far off from one of the competitors announcing that we can just go ahead and keep the movies and fees?

Several years ago, a few months after Netflix had launched, I had lunch with one of the founders. Even at the early stage, he knew he had a hit. He explained to me that the one question he needed answered was whether or not people would be willing to rent movies by mail. Once he knew that they would, he was confident that the company could grow.

He was right, of course. But the irony is that now there are several major competitors all trying to attract customers to a model that will ultimately disappear. I can already TiVo movies in HD off of my Satellite. The quality is better and I don’t even have to make the (what now seems long) trip to my mailbox. How long is it really going to be before downloadable movies make DVD mail rentals look like a brief preview before the main feature begins?

So the relatively short term price wars make perfect sense. The idea to get as many customers as possible over the next few years so that they’ll look to you when it comes time to start downloading.

The only problem is that there a lot bigger companies with a lot deeper pockets who already have the customers and who are just waiting for the technology to roll out so they can crush the DVD model.

Today’s competitors may absorb a lot of losses over the next few years only to find that they are left in the dust.

Something tells me we won’t be hearing Comcast or Murdoch yell out: “Keep the customer…”

Kevin Drum offers this take about a recent Washington Post poll that suggests we are increasingly negative on that whole war in Iraq. The Post writer wonders why we have less faith in W now than we did a few months ago when things were equally dismal. Drum answers:

The longer the war goes on inconclusively, the less support it has. This shouldn’t be much of a surprise either. The eggheads in the blogosphere might have dozens of explanations for why they think the war was a good idea, but the average joe supported it because he wanted to kick someone’s ass after 9/11, and Saddam’s ass seemed like a pretty good one to kick. So now that Saddam is gone, why are we still there and why are those ungrateful Iraqis still giving us trouble?

What’s more, there are no WMDs, no al-Qaeda camps, and no democracy. But there is a continuing insurgency, frequent terror attacks, the same old Islamic infighting, American soldiers getting killed and wounded by the thousands, and no real hope that it’s going to get any better — even though the administration keeps suggesting that the next operation will settle things down for sure. At this point, though, the only operation left is the January election, and when the attacks keep coming even after the elections are over — as they surely will — American disgust with the whole war effort will undoubtedly jump up again.

That’s part of the story. But I think there is something more to this trend and it has to do with elections.

Americans are so focused on game of politics and the associated strategies, that elections themselves offer serve as a break from, rather than a period to focus on, the real issues.

Let me explain.

When elections are in full effect, voters remind themselves to take everything with a grain of salt. So all of those negative stories out of Iraq were partly viewed as efforts by Kerry or left leaning columnists to turn the public away from the incumbent.

But now the election is over. There is no perception of a hidden motivation to only share bad news about the war. And yet, it turns out the news is just as negative if not more so. The news out of Iraq is not bad because John Kerry says it’s bad. It’s just bad.

The irony here is that many Americans will only now – as we head into a second term – realize that the administration’s Iraq policy has been an outrageous failure.

When the Abu Ghraib scandal first broke there was an almost immediate effort to position the abuses there as the wanton behavior of a few rogue soldiers. Even back then that argument never made sense. Those involved in the abuse clearly had the training and the equipment to carry out their acts.

So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that the more information we get, the more we find out that the detainee abuse was systemic and widespread, stretching from holding cells and prisons in Afghanistan and Iraq to the base at Guantanamo.

There is no way to explain a pattern of behavior that stretches across that kind of time and space without coming to the conclusion that the green light came from a centralized place way up the chain of command.

Now that the nonsensical argument that Abu Ghraib was a random exception has been outed, the administration is moving towards a new response: They didn’t know about any of this behavior until now. They are learning about it along with us.

Here is White House spokesman Scott McClellan on the abuse: “In terms of specifics, this information is becoming public, so we’re becoming aware of more information as it becomes public, as you are.”

Is this adminstration so secretive that they managed to keep information from themselves? Come on.

It’s tough to make a living placing bets. Things never seem to go exactly how you think they will. But there are some sure things. One of those sure things is that Martha Stewart will come storming back in 2005.

It’s still almost impossible to imagine her in prison. But somehow she has emerged not just as a cell block cookie baker, but as a voice for the disenfranchised in prison. Is Martha getting ready to take on The Man?

Here is her latest missive from the joint.

I beseech you all to think about these women—to encourage the American people to ask for reforms, both in sentencing guidelines, in length of incarceration for nonviolent first-time offenders, and for those involved in drug-taking. They would be much better served in a true rehabilitation center than in prison where there is no real help, no real programs to rehabilitate, no programs to educate, no way to be prepared for life “out there” where each person will ultimately find herself, many with no skills and no preparation for living.

I am fine, really. I look forward to being home, to getting back to my valuable work, to creating, cooking, and making television. I have had time to think, time to write, time to exercise, time to not eat the bad food, and time to walk and contemplate the future. I’ve had my work here too. Cleaning has been my job – washing, scrubbing, sweeping, vacuuming, raking leaves, and much more. But like everyone else here, I would rather be doing all of this in my own home, and not here—away from family and friends.

With less crowded malls and lower sales than expected, some retailers are asking themselves where the holiday rush is this year.

Well, we may have found it at FedEx shipping hubs. With their 600 planes and 70,000 trucks, FedEx delivered a cool 8.1 million packages yesterday. And the rush is still coming.

According to one FedExec: “The peak used to be the week of Thanksgiving. But now that we’ve gotten into e-commerce, people are waiting longer.”

Are we having an economic slump that is leading to a worse than expected holiday season at the nation’s cash registers or is it more simple than that? Maybe we just haven’t gotten around to shopping yet.