What actually happened was this: on October 24th, Mr Chirac succeeded in browbeating the German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, into shelving any real reform of the common agricultural policy until 2006 and allowing spending to increase by 1% a year until 2013.
Russia's president has had a busy few months in the spotlight: from browbeating over Syria's chemical weapons to bullying Ukraine over trade deals.
That may well be an underestimate, as more funds, in search of the latest fad, try their hand at browbeating listed firms.Activists' ideas are increasingly winning the backing of shareholders with deeper pockets.
As a result, they have resorted to browbeating, dragging bankers into the finance ministry and ordering them to cut rates and lend more.
On his visits to Rome he so pleaded for a family policy, browbeating the future Pope John Paul II even as they waited in the rain for a car, that John Paul in 1990 asked him to run that pontifical office for him, not knowing it would soon become a war room.Redefining liberationIt was not the only one.
Thabo Mbeki, a former South African president mandated as mediator by SADC, reacted with a scathing letter, browbeating Mr Tsvangirai's lot for rejecting the ministry-sharing idea and accusing it of being a Western stooge.
The ethos formerly underpinning Virgin Atlantic standing alone with nothing but a hefty marketing budget and a penchant for browbeating rivals—seems shallow by comparison.
On this analysis, they may adopt even more ambitious energy-efficiency targets, if not emissions limits.Mr Zha urges America to refrain from browbeating China into accepting distant targets for future reductions.
Browbeating the mainstream media for favourable coverage, in short, is an important part of any protest movement, and while Mr Keller is right that formulating demands for things the political system can deliver is a crucial step towards effectiveness, he should also recognise that the drubbing he's just received is also a step towards effectiveness.
Conversely, any spanner Russia could toss into western works protecting Iraq despite its flagrant disregard of UN disarmament resolutions, selling weapons to China for use in regional rows or for browbeating Taiwan, or helping Iran with its longer-range missiles disguised Russia's great decline.
But, for all its shortcomings, the LDP is, as its success in browbeating Mr Kato's supporters showed, a hard party for his supporters to leave: it still offers a stable, if shrinking, political base and ready access to finance for political campaigns.Mr Kato and his supporters, however, are right that the party may be heading for disaster.
