Victor Davis Hanson:

When I was growing up in the 1960s, we had a majestic Santa Rosa plum orchard on my family’s farm. The trees were 40 years old and had grown to over 20 feet high. My grandfather would proudly recall how its once-bumper crops of big, sweet plums had helped him survive the Depression and a postwar fall in agricultural prices.

But by the 1960s, the towering, verdant trees were more a park than a profitable orchard. The aged limbs had grown almost too high to pick, the fruit there too few and too small to pack profitably. Yet my grandfather simply could not bring himself to bulldoze the money-losing, unproductive old orchard.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is like that noble Santa Rosa orchard. We all remember how NATO once saved Western Europe from the onslaught of global communism. Its success led to the present European Union. The Soviets were kept at bay. The Americans were engaged, while the postwar German colossus remained peaceful. A resurgent Europe followed, secure enough to prosper while complacent enough to slash defense expenditures and expand entitlements.

After the victory of the Cold War, NATO’s raison d’etre became more problematic — even as its theoretical reach now went all the way to the old borders of the Soviet Union. Yet, without the Soviet menace that had prompted the alliance, what justified the continued need for transatlantic collective defense?

We saw NATO’s paralysis in the European inaction over Serbia’s ethnic cleansing in the 1990s. When NATO finally acted to remove Slobodan Milosevic in 1999, the much-criticized intervention proved little more than a de facto American air campaign.

Article 5 of NATO’s charter requires its members to come to the aid of any fellow nation that is attacked. But when it was evoked after Sept. 11 for the first time, NATO — other than a few European gestures such as sending surveillance planes to fly above America — didn’t risk much abroad to fight Islamic terrorists.

Australia, a non-NATO member, is doing far more to fight the Taliban than either Germany or Spain. Many Western European countries have national directives that prevent aggressive offensives against the Taliban and other Afghan insurgents, overriding NATO military doctrine.

Take away Canada, the United Kingdom and the U.S. from Afghanistan and the collective NATO force would collapse in hours.

The enemy in Afghanistan knows this. The savvy and sinister Taliban just targeted the French contingent. It figured the loss of 10 French soldiers might have a greater demoralizing effect on French public opinion than Verdun did in 1916, when France suffered nearly a half-million casualties in heroically stopping the German advance. But 90 years ago, France kept on fighting to win a war. Now, the French parliament may meet to discuss withdrawal altogether.

There is much talk that had Georgia been a NATO member, Russia might not have attacked it. The truth is far worse. Even if Georgia had belonged to NATO, no European armed forces would have been willing to die for Tbilisi. Remember the furor in 2003 when some NATO countries — angry at the United States — tried to block support to member Turkey should Saddam’s Iraq have retaliated against Ankara for the American invasion to remove him.

The well-intended but ossified alliance keeps offering promises to new members that are weaker, poorer and in more dangerous and distant places, but its old smug founding states are ever more unlikely to honor them.

Gabor Steingart in Der Spiegel: 

…It’s not possible yet to compare Barack Obama’s words with his deeds. His name is not connected with any legislative project or reform concept, not even a concert hall in his hometown of Chicago bears his name. Until now he has been more of a popular speaker than a politician.

What is true is that he can make a speech like no one else. On Thursday evening he delivered a masterpiece in the art of political magic. He promised to heal the wounds of the world, from Israel to the melting polar ice caps. He wants to reconcile the world’s religions, bring black and white people closer together, Europeans and Americans too. The genocide in Darfur should be brought to an end and he wants to end the problems of globalization with global trade that is not just free but also fair.

It’s possible to be impressed by all this — or to find it shameless.

Nevertheless he chose well when he picked Berlin for the announcement of his grand vision of the world. Berlin is the world capital of the bold speech. Since the end of World War II Berlin has been American politicians’ equivalent of Hyde Park’s Speakers Corner in London, where anyone can get up on a soapbox and speak. In Berlin it is the great and mighty who make speeches, and as well as, recently, those who have yet to prove their greatness.

The 200,000 onlookers who thronged to listen to Obama’s speech should not deceive us. Listening is not the same as agreeing. Obama divides people, and not along traditional party lines.

It is, anyway, a great mistake to divide the voters in Western nations into left and right, aggressive and peace-loving, market orientated and critical of capitalism. In reality there are just two types of voters: the romantic democrats and the common-sense democrats.

The first type — the romantics — love the big moments and the pretty words. They prefer the higher tone and look at a politician’s mouth first. They often have nothing but contempt for pragmatic politicians.

Then there are the common-sense democrats, who look at a politician’s hands first. They are interested in what the politician does, not in what he or she says. They look for records of success and concepts for change and are often allergic to political preaching. Has the government really worked flat out for the people or has everything just been made to look that way? Does the candidate have solid alternatives or is he just a dazzler?

So far, Obama has been the candidate for the romantics. His skill lies in enchanting his supporters with words. Whatever is held against him, his supporters turn into his favor. The man is an unknown quantity — no mud sticks to him! The man is measured — no, he is visionary! He wants to save the entire world — but it does desperately need to be saved, doesn’t it?

On pressing questions from common-sense democrats, he has so far offered no answers, partly because he is probably afraid of letting down the romantics.

It’s no surprise Europeans dote on Obama: he’s weak and has socialist leanings. From his event in Berlin: 

In this new world, such dangerous currents have swept along faster than our efforts to contain them. That is why we cannot afford to be divided. No one nation, no matter how large or powerful, can defeat such challenges alone. None of us can deny these threats, or escape responsibility in meeting them. Yet, in the absence of Soviet tanks and a terrible wall, it has become easy to forget this truth. And if we’re honest with each other, we know that sometimes, on both sides of the Atlantic, we have drifted apart, and forgotten our shared destiny.

Or, you might say that ingrate Europe has behaved like a bratty teenager, living off the blood and treasure of the United States while scorning her.

How many German troops are fighting in Afghanistan? None, because their soldiers are not allowed to fight. They just do peaceful duties.

In Europe, the view that America is part of what has gone wrong in our world, rather than a force to help make it right, has become all too common.

No kidding. But that’s all Bush’s fault for being such a cowboy.

In America, there are voices that deride and deny the importance of Europe’s role in our security and our future.

Yes, because Europeans are pussies. When Yugoslavia fell apart, who came to the rescue? The USA. The Dutch UN “peacekeepers” in Srebrenica who allowed the Serbs to massacre Muslims under their protection were later awarded medals for their service. 

That’s Europe today, buddy.

Both views miss the truth — that Europeans today are bearing new burdens and taking more responsibility in critical parts of the world; and that just as American bases built in the last century still help to defend the security of this continent, so does our country still sacrifice greatly for freedom around the globe.

Who violated the UN sanctions against Saddam, enbabling him to become a threat? The French and Russians.

That is why the greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another. The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.

What a load of meaningless piffle.

Brussels Journal: 

Spain is basking in football glory after winning the European Championship on June 29. But now that the euphoria is over, Spaniards are waking up to discover that their economy is in a free-fall without a parachute. Indeed, the country is being buried daily by an avalanche of depressing economic news, with jobless numbers spiraling upwards, and growth projections being revised downwards, faster than most Spaniards can say ¡Viva España!.
 
Spain has been reeling from the collapse of a housing bubble that for the last 15 years has enabled the notoriously uncompetitive economy to post some of the highest growth rates in the European Union. The Spanish Banking Association says that Spanish growth will probably be negative in 2008. By comparison, the Spanish economy grew by 3.8 percent in 2007.
 
Spaniards are suddenly realizing that Socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero has spent the better part of the last four years peddling economic snake oil. Economists both at home and abroad have warned for many years that Spanish prosperity was based on the shaky foundations of a highly speculative construction sector, and that Spain was especially exposed to global financial turbulence due to its high level of private sector debt, poor competitiveness and dependence on foreign financing. But Zapatero convinced a willingly gullible electorate that they could defy economic reality through the power of positive thinking.

Little by little, Mark Steyn’s dark predictions about western civilization surrendering to Islam are coming true.

The most senior judge in England yesterday gave his blessing to the use of sharia law to resolve disputes among Muslims.

Lord Chief Justice Lord Phillips said that Islamic legal principles could be employed to deal with family and marital arguments and to regulate finance.

He declared: ‘Those entering into a contractual agreement can agree that the agreement shall be governed by a law other than English law.’

In his speech at an East London mosque, Lord Phillips signalled approval of sharia principles as long as punishments - and divorce rulings - complied with the law of the land.

But his remarks, which back the informal sharia courts operated by numerous mosques, provoked a barrage of criticism.

Lawyers warned that family and marital disputes settled by sharia could disadvantage women or the vulnerable.

Low European birthrates combined with Islamic immigrants (required to pay for the unsustainable Ponzi-scheme social programs) with high birthrates portend a grim future unless immigrants assimilate in a meaningful way.  Helping them set up separate religious courts is no help.

Tuesday marked the 60th anniversary of the beginning of the Berlin Airlift. I first wrote the following post in 2006. My father is now 87, which means he was 27 years old at the time - younger than my oldest son today.

_______________________________ 

My liberal friends openly fret about anti-American attitudes in Europe. To them, this is George W. Bush’s fault for being so unilateralist and America’s fault for electing him. What I see in Germany is historical ignorance (theirs) and resentment common to spoiled adolescents who’ve been given much and asked for little.

At the end of WWII, the United States took the long view and instead of lording our victory over the vanquished Germans, we helped rebuild their country. First, billions of American dollars in the Marshall Plan went to get Europe back on its feet. When the Soviets got nasty, we launched the Berlin Airlift and kept West Berlin alive.

My dad was a pilot in that effort: an amazing 278,228 flights in 15 months brought vital supplies into the city that had been blockaded by the Soviets. The planes would touch down, unload, take off and do it again. And again. Day after day. On one day there were 13,000 sorties — one every minute.

What makes my father’s story more astonishing is how quickly the enemy had changed. Some four years earlier, he had been delivering P-39 fighters to the Soviet Union, flying them from California to Alaska to better arm our Soviet allies. Those P-39s were put to use fighting Germany.

Even then he sensed something suspicious about Soviet attitudes. For example, the American and Soviet pilots in Alaska were forbidden from mingling or socializing in any way. When the war ended, he had a hunch more trouble was ahead. Passing up a cushy airline job, he remained in the Air Force.

So there he was in 1948 flying cargo planes into Berlin to help the Germans. And our enemy was now the Soviet Union. To harass the airlift pilots, the Soviets set up a fighter firing range adjacent to the runway and fired across their approach. My father said he’d look at the Soviet P-39s firing away and wonder whether that was a plane he’d delivered.

The United States could make such a sudden switch because we didn’t make war on the German people, but on the Nazi government. Rather than punish our vanquished enemies, we helped rebuild their nations and establish sovereign governments. Our interests were both noble and selfish.

The German people then were quite grateful. But today? Let this German blogger tell it:

I watched a television documentary on Berlin earlier this summer that included a segment on the Berlin airlift. It showed clips of the Berlin Airlift but not once did it mention who flew the planes. There is no doubt that history is being re-written in Germany today.

Some family history: when my father returned from his long German deployment, my older brother, then three years old, did not remember him. In the middle of the night he crawled out of his bed, shook my mother awake and whispered, “Tell that man to go home.” My dad, now 85 years old and still going strong, has never forgotten that moment.

Eleven years later he was back in Germany, with the whole family in tow this time, to do his part in the Cold War. Without the US to defend it from Soviet aggression, the photo I took of East Berlin in 1961 would be a picture of Europe today: shabby, forlorn and impoverished.

And how does Germany remember our sacrifice for them?

At the base of the walkway that leads to the top there is a photographic exhibit on the history of the building, beginning with its construction as the Reichstag and ending with its reconstruction as the Bundestag. Naturally much of the exhibit is devoted to the post-war period, the division of Berlin, and reunification.

To my amazement, there was not one mention in either the photographs or the accompanying narrative of the United States and the role it played in bringing down the wall and reunifying the city. Without the United States the Bundestag would still be meeting in Bonn but here were busloads of German and international school children reading a history that would have made the East German Communist Party proud. The experience reminded me of those photos of the Politburo where the faces of party members who had fallen out of favor had been cropped out.

This is largely the doing of the German left wing, I believe. In this regard, they are soul mates of America’s Chomsky-ite lefties who see everything the United States does as part of some nasty imperialist scheme.

Granted, the USA has many blemishes in its history. There are no perfect nations. But at a critical moment in world history, we stepped up and did the heavy lifting. We did a lot of good for a lot of people. Ignoring that history, or worse, rewriting it, is wrong on principle.

As it happens, commercial television in Germany probably did more to keep the airlift history alive. Joerg Wolf brought to may attention a made-for-TV movie about the airlift. My German is rusty, but I could tell from the website for the show that it would probably reach more minds than any museum. I guess we can take comfort in knowing that Oliver Stone didn’t direct the show.

…even vacations from economic reality.

Getting the French to Work

Christine Lagarde, the country’s first female minister for finance and the economy, says it is time for French people to “roll up their sleeves” and stop thinking about holidays.

The former international lawyer, impressed by the work ethic during her time in the US, is intent on instilling the same spirit in her countrymen and women.

Her approach is calm and conciliatory, bearing little resemblance to the fire and brimstone of her boss, Nicolas Sarkozy.

Yet Christine Lagarde shares the president’s convictions when it comes to the French and the world of work.

Until three years ago she was chairman of the law firm Baker and McKenzie, whose main offices are in Chicago.

Her entry into French politics was sudden.

Called up by the former government of Dominique de Villepin, she left the US on a Tuesday afternoon and was at her desk as trade minister the following morning.

Rapid progress

She says she was struck on her return by an “ethical change” in the French.

“Instead of thinking about their work, people were thinking about their weekend… organising, planning and engineering time off,” she says.

Not that Christine Lagarde believes that life should be “work and nothing else”.

Looking out from her office window in the huge Soviet-style finance ministry, she points out the barges on the River Seine below - a reminder she says, of how slow things can be when other events are moving at high speed.

Making rapid progress recently has been the minister’s pet project, a bill to modernise the French economy.

Last week it passed its first reading in the National Assembly and will shortly go before the Senate.

“More enterprises and more competition” were the objectives, she told parliament earlier this month, in order to obtain three concrete results: “more growth, more jobs and more purchasing power”.

How ironic that as some in France are realizing the benefit of behaving like the US, we have a presidential candidate and party eager to emulate the Europeans.

I’m currently reading America Alone in which Mark Steyn makes the case that Europe’s future will be Islamic  — demographics do not lie.

How will this shift play out for the rest of the civilized world? It’s certainly bigoted to assume that all Muslims are primitives. And yet Steyn asks quite reasonably:

“What does it mean when the fastest-growing population on the planet is a group that, to put it at its mildest, has a somewhat fractious relationship with the characteristics of a free society?”

Denmark is a tolerant society except for those raving Muslims who rioted over cartoons in a Danish newspaper and threatened death. As a means of promoting goodwill, they held a “Miss Headscarf 2008″ competition. The winner is interviewed below.

The comments on the blog post are worth reading. Young Huda wears the scarf by choice and considers it a compliment to women in her culture/religion. Consider Paris Hilton rising to fame because of a homemade porn tape and you can see Huda’s point.

Yet how much tolerance is intolerable? Allowing genital mutiliation? Wife beating (even if the wives ”approve”)?  Such will be the discussions of the future.

Anne Applebaum: 

Pretty much for as long as I’ve been paying attention to these things, Europe has been “in crisis” or “in chaos” or “in despair” because one or another European country failed to ratify yet another European treaty. Invariably, something cataclysmically important was at stake, such as the creation of a European currency. Often the difficult country was a small one — Denmark, say, whose voters rejected the treaty that helped create the European currency in 1992. At that time, France and Germany bemoaned the fact that some tiny number of Danes were “holding up Europe.” The Danes were duly sat upon, negotiated with and granted “opt-outs” until they voted the right way a year later. Order was restored — until the French themselves voted against the European constitution in a referendum in 2005. Whoops!

This week’s villain is Ireland, possibly the country that has benefited most from its membership in the European Union. During the first two decades of its membership, Ireland received some $50 billion from other European taxpayers, a sum that helped transform Ireland from an ancient basket case, famed for its tragic poets, into a 21st-century economic success, famed for its software companies. Dublin went from backwater to boomtown, the Irish began importing immigrants and, in one memorable moment, Irish per capita income surpassed that of Britain — and then kept going. It remains, remarkably, among the highest in the world. The decisive Irish rejection of the Lisbon Treaty last week thus has a certain poignancy: The country that owes more to “Europe” than any other has now blocked, possibly forever, a set of reforms that, in lieu of that rejected constitution, were meant to give “Europe” a real foreign policy face: a proper president, for example, and a minister of foreign affairs.

Why did the Irish say no? Part of the answer lies in the protest letter that one “no” voter in County Clare attached to his ballot paper. Given the opportunity to support or reject a unified European foreign policy, he chose instead to protest the fact that Aer Lingus, the Irish national airline, is no longer flying from Shannon Airport to Heathrow. “Pity the poor Eurocrats” who have to deal with that sort of sentiment, wrote Fintan O’Toole, an Irish Times editor, who also reported that a woman in Galway City declared that she wouldn’t vote for the treaty because she feared her sons would be drafted into the new European army — an army that, of course, the treaty would not create.

How do you say, “don’t keep on truckin” in spanish? 

A national truck driver’s strike in Spain may be winding down, but it has brought the already-troubled Spanish economy to a standstill. It has also highlighted what happens when a welfare state goes wild.

Some 90,000 self-employed hauliers say they are protesting the soaring cost of diesel fuel, which has climbed to 1.30 euros/liter (about US$8 per gallon) from 0.95 euros one year ago. Skyrocketing fuel prices are, clearly, a big problem all over Europe. But what really irks Spanish truckers is their exposure to the reality of market economics.

They are angry that an economic downturn in Spain has reduced the demand for their services. There is now too much trucking supply for too little trucking demand, which according to the basic laws of economics implies lower transport prices.

So the truckers want the government to bail them out via artificial price supports. They are demanding that the government impose a market-distorting minimum transport tariff, a solution that would allow hauliers to continue with business as usual while passing the additional costs over to consumers.

The government has proposed setting aside 55 million euros to encourage early retirements from the over-saturated sector. But the striking truckers are not interested in compromise. Indeed, they are betting that the government will cave in to their demands. After all, the Spanish government always gives in to labor unrest.

And that’s just the beginning. Read on.

Irish voters scuttle (for now) the advance of the EU.

The European Union’s politicians and institutionalized bureaucracy were stunned and affronted at the audacity of the Irish people, who last week unexpectedly bucked their own political establishment by voting against the EU reform treaty.

The deal, which must be approved by all 27 EU members to take effect, was touted as a “streamlining” of the Euro Superstate, with its establishment of a full-scale EU presidency and a powerful foreign ministership. So far, the document has been approved by 18 member nations, including Britain. All of Ireland’s major political parties campaigned hard for a “yes” result in the referendum.

Opposing the measure was the IRA’s political wing, Sinn Fein, fearing the loss of Irish military neutrality. (The Irish Free State was neutral in World War II and Britain’s plans for Irish conscription during WW I led to a general strike.) Some Irish women may have rejected the deal out of fear they’d be drafted into a pan-Euro army.

Defense issues were only part of the reason for rejection, however. An impressive multimedia campaign opposing the pact was orchestrated by technology entrepreneur Declan Ganley. It emphasized the dictatorial powers the deal would give the Brussels bureaucracy, the threat to the low business taxation in Ireland that attracts investment, the supremacy of Euro law over Irish law, and a provision that lets changes be made without member-country approval.

Ganley also got personal with pro-treaty politicians, both within and without Ireland, as in his much-publicized purchase of one-way plane tickets to Brussels for the Irish prime minister and the leaders of the two main opposition parties.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiQ76E6ibbg

Daniel Pipes talks the odds. The chance that immigrant Muslims and indigenous Europeans find a way to live in harmony? Five percent, says Pipes. The chance that Europe becomes Eurabian, part of the Muslim world? Forty-seven-and-a-half percent. The chance that Europeans reassert control over the continent? Forty-seven-and-a-half percent, once more — and Pipes says it won’t be pretty.

That describes Chapter 5 of this interview.

To see the video from the beginning, start here.

…have no First Amendment. So authors face criminal charges for words.

Brigitte Bardot was convicted Tuesday of provoking discrimination and racial hatred for writing that Muslims are destroying France.

A Paris court also handed down a $23,325 fine against the former screen siren and animal rights campaigner. The court also ordered Bardot to pay $1,555 in damages to MRAP.

Bardot’s lawyer, Francois-Xavier Kelidjian, said he would talk to her about the possibility of an appeal.

A leading French anti-racism group known as MRAP filed a lawsuit last year over a letter she sent to then-Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy. The remarks were published in her foundation’s quarterly journal.

In the December 2006 letter to Sarkozy, now the president, Bardot said France is “tired of being led by the nose by this population that is destroying us, destroying our country by imposing its acts.”

Bardot, 73, was referring to the Muslim feast of Aid el-Kebir, celebrated by slaughtering sheep

A slightly strange piece in the UK Telegraph notes:

The United States played an important and positive global role in the 20th century, and continues to do so in this century.

Its willingness to dig into its pockets in the fight against terrorism, and to support liberal democracy in the Middle East, are important when too often other powers prefer to close their eyes.

America’s actions undoubtedly make the world a more peaceful and stable place. Its support for economic globalisation promotes global prosperity and encourages international co-operation.

Why, thank you…but wait!

And yet, as the results of a poll by Telegraph.co.uk show, its standing in Europe is low. In Britain, France, Germany and Russia, more people thought that the United States was a force for evil than for good.

So, what shall we do besides shoulder the burdens of freedom and help enrich the lives of people the world over?

…there will be a need to project a more positive light of the United States in Europe, but without ditching America’s vital global role.

Or maybe Europeans can get their heads out of their ass.

UPDATE: Ghost of a Flea writes:

I’m always slightly amused by these inane popularity polls. Anyone who knows just a bit of the history of this country knows that our forefathers thought very little of Europeans. Europeans were considered as corrupt and effeminate (little has changed in 232 years). America was by design the “anti-Europe.” The fact that Europeans hate us today means we are doing something right. John Adams must be smiling in heaven.

“We want nothing of a world in which the certainty of not dying from hunger comes in exchange for the risk of dying from boredom.” — a slogan from France’s 1968 riots

The year 1968 epitomized the Chinese curse: “May you live in interesting times.” Interesting they were, in the extreme.

In the United States, we had the murders of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy and race riots that set cities ablaze. We had hippies getting their skulls cracked outside the Democrat nominating convention, a campaign made interesting when LBJ opted not to run for reelection (he had health and Vietnam issues). We had a naval ship, the USS Pueblo, captured by North Korea.

In Czechoslovakia, citizens rose up against the Soviets in what’s now called the Prague Spring. After a brief period of optimism, the Evil Empire sent in tanks and crushed the movement.

But France in May 1968 was most extreme. Nearly two thirds of its citizens went out on a general strike. The military moved into cities and universities trying to restore order. Things got so tense, Charles DeGaulle decamped temporarily at an Air Force base in Germany.

The revolt failed, but had long term impacts. As the Wikipedia entry says:

In France, it is considered to be the watershed moment that saw the replacement of conservative morality (religion, patriotism, respect for authority) with the liberal morality (equality, sexual liberation, human rights) that dominates French society today. Although this replacement did not take place solely in this one month, the term mai 68 is used to refer to the shift in values, especially when referring to its most idealistic aspects.

Today, when I hear talking heads and political candidates whine about the supposedly tough times we’re living in, I have to laugh. Forty years ago revolution was in the air. Things were strange. Authority was being questioned. But for all that, it was nothing compared to my parents who endured the Great Depression and World War II.

While jihadis plot to exterminate us, the Swiss have more important fish to fry.

It is a world in which the goldfish are never lonely, the dogs are always obedient and the guinea-pigs are never tormented by children.

Under a new Swiss law enshrining rights for animals, dog owners will require a qualification, anglers will take lessons in compassion and horses will go only in twos.

From guinea-pigs to budgerigars, any animal classified as a “social species” will be a victim of abuse if it does not cohabit, or at least have contact, with others of its own kind.

The new regulation stipulates that aquariums for pet fish should not be transparent on all sides and that owners must make sure that the natural cycle of day and night is maintained in terms of light. Goldfish are considered social animals, or Gruppentiere in German.

The creator of this animal Utopia is the Swiss federal parliament, the Bundesrat, which adopted a law this week extending to four legs the kind of rights usually reserved for two. The law, which comes into force from September 1, is particularly strict over dogs: prospective owners will have to pay for and complete a two-part course — a theory section on the needs and wishes of the animal, and a practice section, where students will be instructed in how to walk their dog and react to various situations that might arise during the process.

The Swedish military has accused French soldiers of torturing civilians during the EU-led Operation Artemis in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2003, one of the bloc’s first joint missions.

Five years ago, the European Union sent some 1,500 soldiers to DR Congo as part of a UN mission to take action against the bandits marauding the north-eastern part of the country. The troops were there to protect the civilians.

 

Now the Swedish military is saying that French soldiers tortured Congolese civilians during the operation. The German government, which didn’t send troops on the mission but provided logistical assistance, couldn’t confirm the accusations.

But wait, there’s more!

The UN has covered up claims that its troops in Democratic Republic of Congo gave arms to militias and smuggled gold and ivory, the BBC has learned.

 

The allegations, based on confidential UN sources, involve Pakistani and Indian troops working as peacekeepers.

 

The UN investigated some of the claims in 2007, but said it could not substantiate claims of arms dealing.

 

UN insiders told the BBC’s Panorama they had been prevented from pursuing their inquiries for political reasons.

From David’s Medienkritik: 

1. Perceived American religiosity and/or prudishness.
2. Perceived American obsession with guns and violence.
3. The death penalty.
4. The perceived excess and superficiality of American capitalism and (non)culture (i.e. fat people, the super rich, SUVs, fast-food, M-TV/hip-hop culture, Hollywood, corporate scandals, buy-outs and “excessive” profits.)
5. Exaggeration of social inequality in the United States (i.e. amerikanische Verhaeltnisse, poor Americans are starving and freezing to death or at least struggling with 2-3 jobs and no health insurance while the rich live it up. Perception that America has no social safety net or a woefully inadequate social safety net.)
6. Racism in America
7. America as gluttonous world polluter.
8. Perceived American unilateralism/exceptionalism (i.e. Iraq, Kyoto, ICC, Guantanamo)
9. Perceived American “hurrah” patriotism or “hyper” patriotism (i.e. flag-waving).
10. Perceived American paranoia/overreaction about terror and obsession with security and the “war” on terror and the perceived willingness of Americans to sacrifice key civil liberties (the Patriot Act has become a favored target) and take extrajudicial actions involving torture, renditions, etc.

Keep reading, there’s five more.

Nope, it’s not a bug; it’s a self-protection device, and the Euro-elites are not happy.

Do “they” really hate America as much as Democrats claim? During Bush’s term the French, Germans and Italians (again) elected pro-American leaders.

Berlusconi is back.

…more than 80 percent of Italians eligible to vote did so on April 13, a record for a parliamentary election in any of the mature democracies. No sign of crisis there.

The election campaign itself was the most rigorously fought in Italy since its liberation from Fascist rule in 1944. Berlusconi, often portrayed by the media as something of a clown if not a conjurer of tricks, put the case for a market-based capitalist and democratic system in simple but powerful terms.

His rival, former Rome Mayor Walter Veltroni, leader of the new Democratic Party, succeeded in putting forward the case for a social-democratic system, with the state playing the central role as a distributor of wealth and welfare.

Berlusconi spoke of discipline, family values, hard work and individual generosity. Veltroni countered with his talk of solidarity, sharing and collective compassion.

On foreign policy, Berlusconi advocated a strategy of peace based on strength with a tough message against “all enemies of democracy across the globe.” Veltroni offered a policy of “dialogue and accommodation.”

Berlusconi’s message was unabashedly pro-American, promising to strengthen transatlantic relations, especially in the context of the global War on Terror.

Veltroni urged greater European solidarity and made most of the usual anti-American noises.

For the first time in decades, Italian voters had a clear choice - and they liked it.

An American in Paris, David Lebovitz, writes:

When you fly in to Charles de Gaulle airport, there’s a mad rush to get off the plane. Then you’re herded to a holding pen-like area, where you wait to go through passport control. It’s complete chaos: everyone surging forward, en masse, trying to get around everyone else, regardless of who got there first. That is, except for the Americans, who wait patiently for their turn, but quickly learn that if they don’t assert themselves, they’re going to spend their entire vacation in that stifling, airless space.

If you leave 4.5-inches of space in front or behind you in France, you may as well not even be there as people take that to mean you’re not waiting. I know that because they act very surprised when I tap them on the shoulder and point out that yes, I are indeed standing in that line with my luggage, just like they are, to check in to my flight. I’m not just hanging out at the airport with a suitcase because I had nothing better to do.

So you have to constantly be on your toes and you can’t let your guard down for a second. If you do, you’ll never get anywhere. It’s pretty exhausting.

When you arrive at Dulles Airport, in spite of its prison-like atmosphere, there’s a person guiding folks towards the correct lanes, which are clearly marked. Although the line can be ginormous, and everyone’s complaining about the wait, it’s pretty calm, since no one’s trying to skirt around you to slide ahead. You just stand there, red-eyed, inching forward. I don’t know why Americans are complaining about waiting in line: you just stand there and mind your own business until it’s your turn.

…lack a First Amendment, thus one can be prosecuted criminally for what you say or write. Brigit Bardot, onetime cinematic “sex kitten” (I never understood that metaphor, but whatever) is again on trial for her opinions.

Brigitte Bardot is back on trial in France, facing charges of fanning discrimination and racial hatred against Muslims.

In a Paris court hearing Tuesday, prosecutors said they are seeking a two-month suspended prison sentence and a $23,900 fine against the former screen siren and animal rights campaigner.

Bardot, 73, was not present for the hearing. A verdict is expected June 3.

A leading French anti-racism group known as MRAP filed suit last year over a letter that Bardot sent to then-Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, and which was published in her foundation’s quarterly journal.

In the letter to Sarkozy, now the president, Bardot accused France’s Muslim population of destroying France, and complained about the Muslim feast of Eid al-Adha.

French anti-racism laws prevent inciting hatred and discrimination on racial or religious or racial grounds. Bardot has been convicted four times for inciting racial hatred.

An unlikely row has erupted in France over suggestions that the semicolon’s days are numbered; worse, the growing influence of English is apparently to blame. Jon Henley reports on the uncertain fate of this most subtle and misused of punctuation marks. Aida Edemariam discovers which writers love it - and which would be glad to see it disappear.

It is a debate you could only really have in a country that accords its intellectuals the kind of status other nations - to name no names - tend to reserve for footballers, footballers’ wives or (if they’re lucky) rock stars; a place where structuralists and relativists and postmodernists, rather than skulk shamefacedly in the shadows, get invited on to primetime TV; a culture in which even today it is considered entirely acceptable, indeed laudable, to state one’s profession as “thinker”.

That country is France, which is currently preoccupied with the fate of its ailing semicolon.

Encouragingly, a Committee for the Defence of the Semicolon appeared on the web (only to disappear some days later, which cannot be a very good sign). Articles have been written in newspapers and magazines. The topic is being earnestly discussed on the radio. It was even the subject of an April Fool’s joke on a leading internet news site, which claimed, perfectly plausibly, that President Nicolas Sarkozy had just decreed that to preserve the poor point-virgule from an untimely end, it must henceforth be used at least three times a page in all official correspondence.

David’s Medienkritik, with tongue firmly in cheek:

Not that you should care…it’s really nothing of any importance…don’t even know whether it happened at all. AND IF SO, WHAT WOULD IT PROVE?

Anyway, since you’re asking, here’s the story (again, no big deal, really):

EU Soldiers Accused of Torturing Civilians in Congo
The Swedish military has accused French soldiers of torturing civilians during the EU-led Operation Artemis in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2003, one of the bloc’s first joint missions.

Five years ago, the European Union sent some 1,500 soldiers to DR Congo as part of a UN mission to take action against the bandits marauding the north-eastern part of the country. The troops were there to protect the civilians.

Now the Swedish military is saying that French soldiers tortured Congolese civilians during the operation. The German government, which didn’t send troops on the mission but provided logistical assistance, couldn’t confirm the accusations.

“The Foreign Ministry is not aware of the report,” a ministry spokeswoman told DW-WORLD.DE. “We will examine the issue.”

Now - that means a lot, I can tell you. Until the examination is finished (somewhere in the vicinities of the 22nd century), the German media’s coverage of the incident will be merciless till truth is found.

Or not.

After all, what’s all the fuss about torture? I mean, there was a war going on, and some folks got a bit agitated in the course of it… Perhaps these “civilians” weren’t so civil at all?

Don’t we have more important things to talk about? Such as this incredible, huge torture scandal in Abu Ghraib which for the upteenth time was presented in last week’s edition of German left wing weekly magazine stern

Children are expensive, and they require a sacrifice of time and interest by parents. But what is the root cause of Europe’s ongoing demographic suicide — which coincides, by the way, with an explosion of the Muslim demographic on the continent?Prof. Thornton says Europeans are not reproducing because “the dolce vita lifestyle does not include children.” A Europe that is drawn to instant pleasure has little interest in investing in either children or the future of the Europe.

VIDEO HERE

Here’s a warning to movie fans: avoid “Funny Games” with Tim Roth and Naomi Watts. This is a scene-be-scene remake, by the same Austrian filmmaker, of a nasty movie he directed in 1997.

My wife and I watched it on DVD a few years back. Aside from being unpleasant to watch — a family on vacation is taken hostage and is tortured — it was pretentious, nihilistic and preachy.

Crap with subtitles is still crap.

Professor Bruce Thornton of Cal State Fresno describes a European civilization that after twenty-five centuries is drawing to an end.

He lists the symptoms: Economies are less adaptable and competitive because of an enormous regulatory burden; social welfare entitlements are incredibly expensive; and, demographically, Europeans simply aren’t reproducing. At the source of this demise is a loss of the foundational belief system that created the West — that created Europe — in the first place.

VIDEO HERE.

A low-price furniture storm has been brewing on the other side the Öresund bridge over the past week with newspapers accusing Sweden’s Ikea of trying to walk all over the Danes.Popular daily Nyhedsavisen led the charge on Valentine’s Day with a front page headline accusing Ikea of “bullying” Denmark.

Why is it, the paper wondered, that Swedish and Norwegian place names are always associated with the shiniest, comfiest furnishings in the Ikea catalogue, while the names of Danish towns are reserved for doormats, rugs and carpets?

“It seems to be an example of cultural imperialism,” Klaus Kjøller, Assistant Professor in Political Communication and the Danish Language at the University of Copenhagen, told The Local.

“Ikea has chosen the objects with the lowest value and given them Danish names,” he added.

You can always find a professor to spout nonsense.

Sweden’s chief heraldists remain dissatisfied with a decision by the Nordic Battlegroup to remove a lion’s penis depicted on its coat of arms.

But staff at the National Archives are hopeful that the Nordic Battlegroup will reconsider its position and re-erect the lion’s member on its insignia.

“They stepped over the line when they made alterations to the badge without consulting us. It was a clear breach of copyright,” state heraldist Henrik Klackenberg told The Local.

Nice to know our Euro friends are battle-tested and ready to roll.

Our original post on this topic, with visuals, is here.

I don’t pretend to understand European politics, but the folks at Brussels Journal think France has just signed away its sovereignty.

Today, France’s deputies and senators meeting in Parliament in Versailles ratified by a vote of 560 to 181 the constitutional revision that precedes the ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon. The result of this voting opens the way for the final ratification, Thursday, first at the National Assembly, then the Senate. Out of 893 present, 741 voted.

France is the 5th country after Hungary, Slovenia, Romania and Malta to ratify the Lisbon Treaty, in which they sign their sovereignty away.

What does it all mean?

An analysis by Prof. Anthony Coughlan

Today the European Union leaders signed the Lisbon Treaty. This treaty gives the EU the constitutional form of a state. These are the ten most important things the Lisbon Treaty does:

1. It establishes a legally new European Union in the constitutional form of a supranational European State.
2. It empowers this new European Union to act as a State vis-a-vis other States and its own citizens.
3. It makes us all citizens of this new European Union.
4. To hide the enormity of the change, the same name – European Union – will be kept while the Lisbon Treaty changes fundamentally the legal and constitutional nature of the Union.
5. It creates a Union Parliament for the Union’s new citizens.
6. It creates a Cabinet Government of the new Union.
7. It creates a new Union political President.
8. It creates a civil rights code for the new Union’s citizens.
9. It makes national Parliaments subordinate to the new Union.
10. It gives the new Union self-empowerment powers.