Look who's holding hostages again
How do you feel about the American hostages in Iran? No, not the guys back in the Seventies, the ones being held right now. What? You haven't heard about them? Odd that, isn't it? But they're there…
From columnist Mark Steyn at Jewish World Review (dated July 23, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (US/ME/WT)
Europe, the Killer Continent
The notion that Europe, the continent that's exported more death and destruction than any other, is going to just shuffle wimpily to its doom is crazy. The Europeans have been playing pacifist dress-up while [America] protected them, but, sufficiently threatened, they'll revert to their historical pattern – which is to over-react. Europe's Muslims may prove to be the real endangered species; after all, Europe's history of dealing with rejected minorities veers between genocide and, for the lucky, ethnic cleansing. For me, the question isn't whether Muslims will take over Europe, but whether Europe will simply expel them or kill any number of them first. Sound far-fetched? How would the Holocaust have sounded to an educated German (or Brit, or American) in 1932? Europe is a killer continent. When the chips are down, it will kill again…
From an interview with Ralph Peters in FrontPage Magazine, posted at The Brussels Journal (dated July 21, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (EU)
How Empires End
Longtime critics of the [Iraq] war like Gen. William Odom say it is already lost, and fighting on will only further bleed the country and make the ultimate price even higher. The general may be right in saying it is time to cut our losses. But we should take a hard look at what those losses may be…
From columnist Patrick Buchanan at Human Events (dated July 20, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (US/ME/WT)
The Persistence of Islamic Slavery
Besides being practiced more or less openly today in Sudan and Mauritania, there is evidence that slavery still continues beneath the surface in some majority-Muslim countries as well -- notably Saudi Arabia, which only abolished slavery in 1962, Yemen and Oman, both of which ended legal slavery in 1970, and Niger, which didn’t abolish slavery until 2004. In Niger, the ban is widely ignored, and according to a Nigerian study, as many as one million people remain in bondage there. Slaves are bred, often raped, and generally treated like animals…
From Robert Spencer at FrontPage Magazine (dated July 20, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (ME/AF/RE/MO)
'For the Sake of One Man': Getting the facts straight about the old-new Russia
Fact No. 1: The Bush administration is not provoking a new Cold War with Russia…Fact No. 2. Russia is acting with increasingly unrestrained rhetorical, diplomatic, economic and political hostility to whoever stands in the way of Mr. Putin's ambitions…
From Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens (dated July 17, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (EU)
Ruthless Russia
It was but all a dream to ever believe Russia would be benign and peaceful under Putin. Deplorably, numerous people in strategic posts misjudged Russia…Putin has created a very sophisticated youth movement made up of over 100,000 volunteers called "Nashi", much like a clone of the Nazi youth movement. It is a well-equipped, fanatical, nationalistic private army that is hostile to foreigners and to any political group opposing the Kremlin leadership. Their aggressive behavior is not only tolerated by the authorities but also even encouraged. They help re-enforce local police; wearing black attire, they aggressively beat anyone they consider hooligans or insurrectionist. They have been taught to believe that the United States is actively preparing a pro-western revolution in their country and that they will thwart it…
From Peter Martin at American Thinker (dated July 16, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (EU)
Secret New Plan for EU Superstate
Tony Blair wants to hand the European Union radical new powers in his last act as Prime Minister, it emerged today…
From the Daily Express (dated July 15, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (EU/BR)
Temple Mount travesty
A bulldozer was seen last week ripping up earth on the Temple Mount, at the Dome of the Rock platform. It slashed a long gash, purportedly to lay new electric cables. With crude, damaging handling, it exposed a largely gray deposit, which according to archeologists is a sure-fire indication of "archeologically significant" matter. Incomprehensibly, despite TV air-time and print space, these revelations by the Archeologists Committee for the Prevention of the Destruction of Antiquities on the Temple Mount (CPDATM) failed to cause much stir. The public has perhaps grown numb due to official abdication of control on the Mount. But the expedient turning of official blind eyes amounts to abetting the Wakf's ongoing construction at Judaism's most sacred site…This travesty was perpetrated with Israeli policemen stationed nearby. Archeological supervision was nowhere to be detected…The officers on hand, moreover, according to testimony by archeologist Prof. Yisrael Caspi, CPDATM head, forbade him from picking any remains out of the rubble. Caspi and other archeologists were warned that they had better not even try to bend down, lest they stretch out an arm to touch anything. A policeman was finally dispatched to maintain particular vigilance against Prof. Eilat Mazar, most suspected of a proclivity to lay a hand on a pottery shard. Speaking for the CPDATM, Mazar expressed "the deepest distress at the continued official disregard and disrespect for the incalculable archeological importance of the Temple Mount"…
From The Jerusalem Post (dated July 14, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (ME/RE)
The EU Constitution Arrives by Stealth
Nearly everybody watching the process agrees that the new European Constitution is being locked in by stealth and deception…The new EU "Un-Constitution" will centralize foreign policy making in Brussels -- along with military, police and executive control -- without any voter input…So if you're a European and know you're being massively lied to about the most important political choice in your lifetime, would you just turn over on your couch and go back to sleep? Because half a billion Europeans are doing exactly that. It's stupefying…Why the passive surrender by half a billion people? We can imagine a lot of answers. Many Europeans don't think of constitutions as permanent. That's a distinctively American concept. Constitutions change all the time. This is just another one. Ho, hum. But is that true? Not if you listen to the EU itself, which sounds like a long term Napoleonic enterprise. The EU has never backed down on any up-ratchet in its quest for power, even if the voters were dead set against it. And it is so corrupt that it has never even passed its own annual audits. Well, maybe Europe's citizens have been punched in the nose so often that they just don't fight Brussels anymore. They've given up. Or maybe half a billion people have been suckered by EU Christmas card propaganda, which claims absurd credit for keeping Europe at peace for six decades. Or maybe they've been taught to hate America so much that the EU is the only choice left in their minds. Or maybe they've just been bought off by rent support, child-care money, unemployment payments, employment payments, college tuition, health and euthanasia care, and all the rest. Or maybe they have conveniently forgotten who defended them for the past sixty years. (Hint: It's not the EU)…
From James Lewis at American Thinker (dated July 12, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (EU)
Is Pope Benedict turning back Catholic clock?
Critics say Pope Benedict, in several recent controversial moves, is turning the Roman Catholic Church's clock back by half a century and alienating Muslims, Jews and Protestants in the process. Supporters say that by allowing a wider use of the Latin Mass and reasserting Catholic primacy over other religions, he is trying to revitalise his 1.1 billion-member church and prepare it for an uncertain future…Some see a leaner, meaner Catholic Church in the future…
From Reuters (dated July 12, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (EU/RE)
EU President calls it a "European Empire"
Well, the truth will out eventually. The European Union has just been labeled "an empire" -- something its critics have been ridiculed for saying for a long, long time…[President Manuel Barroso said] "Sometimes I like to compare it, to compare the EU as a creation, to the organisation of empires. We have the dimension of Empire but there is a great difference. Empires were usually made with force with a centre imposing diktat, a will on the others. Now what we have is the first non-Imperial empire. We have 27 countries that fully decided to work together and to pool their sovereignty. I believe it is a great construction and we should be proud of it. At least, we in the Commission are proud of it." Ah, yes, the "non-Imperial empire," from the President of the Politburo himself. (I mean, the European Commission.) A non-Imperial Empire with a non-taxing tax policy, a non-foreign-policy-making foreign ministry, a non-propaganda propaganda apparatus, and all the bells and whistles of a real, honest-to-…Empire, including police powers over all citizens, sovereignty in matters of war and peace, and enough goose-stepping snootiness to satisfy Napoleon Bonaparte. Or as the former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky said the other day, the EU is a new USSR, the EU-SSR…
From James Lewis at American Thinker (dated July 11, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (EU)
What We Pre-Empted
Given the problems and U.S. casualties in Iraq, polls show a large majority of the American people believe the invasion of Iraq was a mistake. Yet if we imagine what the world would look like today if Saddam Hussein had not been deposed, it seems clear that almost no outcome in Iraq would be as adverse to the interests of the United States as today's world with Saddam still in power…
From American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Peter Wallison in The Wall Street Journal (dated July 11, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (US/ME/WT)
The mighty German machine moves up a gear
The advent of the euro was probably a net negative for Germany. Now Germany has regained all the competitiveness lost at the time of euro entry, by keeping costs under tight control and raising productivity…Will the German revival be enough to spark strong growth across the eurozone? It has already helped to bring a boost. Although Germany has been the most striking example, economic growth has proved to be surprisingly strong over the last year in the eurozone as a whole. That said, given that Germany has improved its competitiveness against them, and that the other countries have not undertaken the reforms which Germany has, I suspect Germany will outgrow the euro-zone as a whole, and Italy and France in particular, for many years to come…
From Capital Economics managing director Roger Bootle in The Telegraph (London) (dated July 9, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (EU)
The Threat of Bioweapons
Biological weapons are among the most dangerous in the world today and can be engineered and disseminated to achieve a more deadly result than a nuclear attack. Whereas the explosion of a nuclear bomb would cause massive death in a specific location, a biological attack with smallpox could infect multitudes of people across the globe. With incubation periods of up to 17 days, human disseminators could unwittingly cause widespread exposure before diagnosable symptoms indicate an infection and appropriate quarantine procedures are in place. Unlike any other type of weapon, bioweapons such as smallpox can replicate and infect a chain of people over an indeterminate amount of time from a single undetectable point of release. According to science writer and author of The Hot Zone, Richard Preston, "If you took a gram of smallpox, which is highly contagious and lethal, and for which there's no vaccine available globally now, and released it in the air and created about a hundred cases, the chances are excellent that the virus would go global in six weeks as people moved from city to city......the death toll could easily hit the hundreds of millions.....in scale, that's like a nuclear war"…
From Janet Ellen Levy at American Thinker (dated July 8, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (GI/WT/ND)
Iran’s Proxy War
Tehran is on the offensive against us throughout the Middle East. Will Congress respond?...
From U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) in The Wall Street Journal (dated July 6, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (ME/WT)
Ceding the Fall of Pakistan
Beyond Musharraf lie only question marks and uncertainties at best, which is a dire Western predicament for a nuclear power cohabitating with popular and powerful al-Qaeda and Taliban movements on its soil. And increasingly, the question regarding Musharraf's rule as the leader of Pakistan is most often discussed in terms of how long he can survive, not whether or not he can retain reliable control of both Pakistan's government and its military. The Center for Security Policy's Salim Mansur raised the uncomfortable issue of a potential nuclear alliance between Iran and Pakistan. Few in the public governmental forum care to delve into the possible scenario of a fallen Pakistan suddenly a nuclear and military ally of the Islamic Republic of Iran. But such a scenario is very real, and one which few care to delve into for long. It’s not a pleasant exercise…
From Steve Schippert at FrontPage Magazine (dated July 5, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (AP/WT)
Europe’s Existential Mourning
Unfortunately, today's European efforts toward unity owe almost nothing to the American founders, and far more to Marx, Hegel, and Lenin….A central EU government is now emerging, made up of centrally appointed commissions just like the "soviets" (councils) of the old USSR. The whole contraption evades normal democratic checks and balances, on the historically dangerous assumption that the elites can be trusted with centralized power without the consent of the governed. Deception and engrenage -- steady ratcheting up of centralized control -- are the essence of the new Europe of Soviet Socialist Republics. As former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky pointed out the other day, we are not seeing a United States of Europe arising today, but rather an EU-SSR…Military and foreign policy control is now scheduled to switch to Brussels. The EU is no longer just absurd overregulation of tomatoes and bananas. The European Union is emerging as a classic imperial enterprise. The ghosts of Charlemagne, Napoleon, Hitler and Stalin are giving a standing O somewhere in the underworld. If you are a British citizen, you know that tomorrow your country will only be a minor province of the European Empire. You don't even get a vote in the matter, because the elected parties have all sold out to the EU, and furthermore, you don't even care. Survey after survey shows that European voters are supinely watching their freedoms being sucked away, and are simply too bored or lazy to care…Yes, today the EU swears it's all about peace on earth. That was also the slogan of the peace-loving Soviet Union, the last European fantasy that goose-stepped on the world stage. No doubt the EU-enthusiasts sincerely believe their fantasies about peace and love forever; but look at the track record. It's not inspiring, and the worst imperialists are always the ones who think they are spreading sweetness and light. Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, Britain, Italy, Russia, the Netherlands, Belgium, even Sweden and Denmark, the whole gang has a long and bloody imperial history. When they are all united, Europe's imperial grandiosity will certainly assert itself again. EU rhetoric is already edging in that direction. Europeans share a sense of indomitable superiority over the rest of mankind. That kind of grandiosity is what really drives imperial ideologies, not economics or even practical politics. And the European Union is already falling back on its old message of superiority in its rage against American intervention in Iraq. A Europe of individual nations is actually going to be a lot more peaceful than a centralized Europe that requires Bismarckian propaganda to keep it from breaking apart. Germany only became dangerous when it achieved imperial unity under Otto von Bismarck. Russia became an international threat when Josef Stalin conquered half of Europe after defeating Hitler in the East; and the USSR only ceased to be a threat when the Soviet Empire broke into pieces. Nothing in the EU project today suggests that the old sense of superiority has been left behind. On the contrary. When people lose their national identity the result is always a search for a new identity, which usually turns out to be more unstable and therefore more in need of imperial self-assertion. That is why Bismarck needed to whip up hatred against France, and why the French needed to hate the Germans. Franco-German hatred led to massive wars from Napoleon to World War Two. It is that insecure sense of national identity that Europe kept stumbling into in all its desperate searching for new forms in past centuries. It is what will happen again, if history is any guide. Europe's existential crisis today will therefore inevitably shape America's future, and the world's…
From James Lewis at American Thinker (dated July 3, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (EU)
An Air of Celebration in Brussels: Politicians Defeat the People
One of the truisms of war, politics and other contested areas of life, is that it always serves you well to look at what the other side are saying or doing. This is particularly apposite when they the other side are replete with confidence. To that end I bring you a collection of quotes from yesterday’s European parliamentary Constitutional Affairs Committee: “All the Constitution is there! Nothing is missing!” - Jean-Louis Bourlanges (Liberal, France); “We kept the substance of the Constitution” - Jo Leinen MEP, Committee President (Socialist, Germany); “We have the same thing but we regressed for transparency and clearness” Enrico Baron Crespo MEP (Socialist, Spain) – “It's incredible to see all what they slipped under the carpet!” - Gérard Onesta MEP (Green, France); “Formally, it's not a constitution but it's a big step to the constitution” - Carlos Carnero MEP (Socialist, Spain); “Our political union finally has a Constitution” - Johannes Voggenhuber MEP (Green, Austria). Can we have a referendum please?
From Elaib Harvey at The Brussels Journal (dated June 27, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (EU)
Back in the EUSSR
In the late 1980s the USSR, Ronald Reagan's "evil empire," imploded. America might soon be confronted with another evil empire…[with the] constitutional treaty…for transforming the European Union (EU) into a superstate…Exactly two years ago, this constitution was rejected in referendums in the Netherlands and France…Soon after the referendums it became apparent that the European politicians intended to ignore the people's verdict and proceed with their plans for constructing the superstate…The British, and in particular the English, are the most euroskeptic of all European peoples. If forced to choose, they seem prepared to opt for British sovereignty over the European Union. Some regard this as almost a criminal attitude. Last week, the president of Italy, Giorgio Napolitano, said that "those who are anti EU are terrorists," while his colleague Horst Kohler, the president of Germany, described the tactics of the "euroskeptics" as "populist, demagogic campaigning." It sounded almost as if Italy and Germany were blaming Britain for not having drawn lessons from the second World War, conveniently forgetting that it was England's love of freedom that saved Europe from dictators like Messrs. Napolitano's and Kohler's predecessors, Mussolini and Hitler. The latter, too, nursed dreams of European political unification. Liberty and democracy require limited governments, while supranationalism by definition tends toward unlimitedness. The former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky refers to the EU as the "EUSSR." He does so, he explains, because the former USSR and the EU share the same goal: the obliteration of nations. "The European Union, like the Soviet Union, cannot be democratized," he says. If the EU becomes a genuine state it is bound to be an evil empire, because there is no European nation. "National loyalty is a form of neighborliness: It is loyalty to a shared home and to the people who have built it," says the conservative English philosopher Roger Scruton. Without this loyalty there is no freedom, because "national loyalties enable people to respect the sovereignty and the rights of the individual." By seeking to extinguish national loyalty, the EU also destroys freedom, accountability and democracy. The eurocracy aims to extinguish the old national loyalties of the European peoples, and put a cosmopolitan indifference in their place…
From Brussels Journal publisher Paul Belien in The Washington Times, reposted at The Brussels Journal (dated June 21, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (EU/BR)
The European Opportunity
[New French President Sarkozy and German Chancellor Merkel’s] pro-American and pro-Israel views have cleared the atmosphere in transatlantic relations. The balance of power in Europe is swinging back towards the Atlanticists. Does this mean that the European Union's summit, which starts in Brussels today, will finally vindicate Mr. Rumsfeld? Well, not overnight for sure. Old Europe may have changed the corporate management, but it hasn't changed the project. That remains what it always was: the creation of a European superpower. Though superficially modeled on the United States, the European Union owes more to Napoleon than to Madison, and the way things are going at least a part of the debt will be claimed by Karl Marx…
From the New York Sun (dated June 21, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (EU)
Monday view: The treaty beast is back to haunt us. And this time it's personal
If Europe's political leaders succeed in ramming through a barely disguised remake of the same European constitution rejected by the French and Dutch people, I for one will come off the fence after years of hesitation and join the fight for total British withdrawal from the Union…One would have thought that the French and Dutch had driven a stake through the heart of this animal. Commission chief José Manuel Barroso said as much. But no, Berlin has unwisely brought it back from the dead to haunt Europe. Unwise even for Germany, the great winner under the proposed voting structure. Mrs Merkel's démarche has already opened a feud with Poland, but it will not end there. Her letter suggested sneaking the Charter of Fundamental Rights into the text "by a short cross-reference having the same legal value". Why does this matter? Because the Charter gives the European Court (ECJ) jurisdiction over a raft of social and economic rights that are alien to our Common Law. It empowers Euro-judges to chip away at Britain's economic model, imposing Rheinland corporatism by the back door. We might as well turn the lights off in the City if the ECJ ever gets its claws into that. Beware of Europe's court, the unseen engine of EU federalism. For now it is confined to "community" matters: the single market, competition rules, and so on. It has no say on the wider fields of foreign affairs, defence, justice, and criminal matters, and little say on economic management. The text smashes the old structure. Everything becomes fair game, unless specifically exempted. Euro-judges would, for example, decide the meaning of Article 1.15 forbidding states from foreign policy and defence actions deemed "contrary to the Union's interest". The Falklands? Iraq? Forget it. Rulings would be final, beyond appeal. As a supreme court, the ECJ could strike down national laws much as America's Warren Court struck down US state laws in the heyday of judicial activism. The revived text endows the EU with the machinery of a quasi-sovereign power: a full-time president and foreign minister; a justice department; and a "legal personality" allowing it to negotiate treaties in its own name. The national veto is whittled down. Euro-MPs gain powers of the purse. Brussels extends its legislative primacy over security and justice, agriculture, fisheries, transport, energy, social policy, economic cohesion, and the environment. For an excellent guide, try The New Treaty published by Open Europe. Mrs Merkel's plan to slip this through as a mini-treaty is a return to the EU's "Monet method" of advance by stealth - except that this time the French and Dutch have already voted "No". It is far from clear that such a cynical coup can be pulled off, even if EU leaders agree to a relaunch this week. The details will have to be thrashed out over coming months, opening up a hornets' nest…
From Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in The Telegraph (London) (dated June 19, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (EU/BR)
Tap-dancing toward a Euro constitution
Within days of the French and Dutch referendums, EU leaders had worked out a plan to bring back the constitution. I wrote an article here two years ago predicting how they would do it. First, they would shear off the paragraphs that restated the existing treaties: since these would remain in force, anyway, there was no need to rub voters' noses in them by including them in the new draft. Then, they would clip away the clauses that had been activated de facto in anticipation of the constitution's entry into force. Finally, they would change a few names - including, most significantly, that of the constitution itself. Sure enough, this is what they have done…
From British Conservative Member of the European Parliament Daniel Hannan in The Telegraph (London) (dated June 7, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (EU/BR)
America's Insidious Descent Towards the Third World
America's future can be seen in the formerly tidy and wholesome town of Lexington, Nebraska, situated as it is in the prime of the Heartland. Over the years, it metamorphosed to a horrendous degree…In 1986, New Holland [tractor factory] outsourced, and the plant was subsequently sold and converted to a meat packing facility, whereupon the local workers were systematically supplanted by a massive importation of illegals. Initial changes to the character of the town were subtle…As the influx increased however, the degree to which the former charm of Lexington was eventually eradicated was astounding. Its fate should send shudders through the spine of any throughout the rest of the nation, who hope for a country to bequeath to their children. Much of the town now reflects the squalor not previously seen this side of the Mexican border…It is all but impossible for American youths to gain employment at the local fast food franchises, since virtually all business behind the counters is conducted in Spanish, making it difficult to avoid the disturbing notion that businesses might eventually post signs saying: "Americanos need not apply." The town has inarguably become Balkanized. Yet Lexington is hardly an isolated example. Nor is it among the most severe that has ravaged traditional America. Rather, it is striking only in that it so starkly represents the plight of much of America's southern border, while being vastly separated from that region. If this can happen in Nebraska, no part of the country remains immune to the ravages of such an incursion. A similar disaster looms over America's food supply, and may be much more far reaching since it is not confined to any geographical location…
From Christopher Adamo at Cybercast News Service (dated June 7, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (US/LA/MO)
Israel is doomed (again)
By any rational analysis of all the factors in play, Israel is doomed. Which is why the 40th anniversary of the Six Day War in 1967 has come at a propitious time. If Israel's position is precarious now, it seemed hopeless in the days leading up to that war…
From Arkansas Democrat-Gazette editorial page editor Paul Greenberg at Jewish World Review (dated June 6, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (ME/RE/WT)
Alleged plot: A potential threat seen in America's backyard
Officials think members of an extremist network in the Caribbean were part of the alleged plot… "That is what is most significant about this case. It demonstrates the evolving nature of the threat and how we need to be looking at areas of the world that have not been viewed by the general public as a terror threat," the official said. "It shows that the threat can come from anywhere. It is not just limited to the Middle East or South Asia"…
From the Los Angeles Times (dated June 3, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (US/LA/RE/WT)
Case of TB traveler reveals holes in global disease control
The U.S. health authorities failed to notify their Italian counterparts that an American tourist with an extremely dangerous form of tuberculosis was staying in a Rome hotel this month until he was leaving the country, Italian officials said Thursday. That time lapse allowed him to leave Rome and fly to Prague and Montreal, potentially exposing dozens of people to an often lethal germ…The episode revealed holes in international cooperation systems for detecting and isolating people with infectious diseases, experts said. Such deficiencies could be disastrous if the victim were more contagious, as would be likely in an influenza pandemic…
From the International Herald Tribune (dated May 31, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (GI/US/ND)
300,000 Supporters of Suicide Attacks in America
Some of the results of the Pew Research Center poll of Muslims in America were startling: twenty-six percent of Muslims between the ages of eighteen and twenty-nine affirmed that there could be justification in some (unspecified) circumstances for suicide bombing, and five percent of all the Muslims surveyed said that they had a favorable view of Al-Qaeda. Given the Pew Center’s estimate of 2.35 million Muslims in America, and the total of thirteen percent that avowed a belief that suicide bombings could ever be justified, that’s over 300,000 supporters of suicide attacks. And 117,500 supporters of Al-Qaeda…
From Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer at FrontPage magazine (dated May 30, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (US/RE/WT)
The Age of the Dragon: China’s Conquest of Africa
China is conquering Africa as it becomes the preferred trading partner of the continent's dictators. Beijing is buying up Africa's abundant natural resources and providing it with needed cash and cheaply produced consumer goods in return…
From Der Spiegel (Germany) (dated May 30, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (AP/AF)
Reviving the evil empire
Seven years ago, the economist Brigitte Granville and I published an article in the Journal of Economic History titled "Weimar on the Volga," in which we argued that the experience of 1990s Russia bore many resemblances to the experience of 1920s Germany... Having more or less stifled internal dissent, Russia is now ready to play a more aggressive role on the international stage. Remember, it was Putin who restored the old Soviet national anthem. And it was he who described the collapse of the Soviet Union as a "national tragedy on an enormous scale." It would be a bigger tragedy if he or his successor tried to restore that evil empire. Unfortunately, that is precisely what the Weimar analogy predicts will happen…
From Harvard professor Niall Ferguson in the Los Angeles Times (dated May 28, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (EU/WT)
Fort Dix Fix: Immigration policy in wartime
Mercifully, today we are not commemorating 100 soldiers killed at Fort Dix this month by a group of immigrant jihadis…Unfortunately, the Senate’s grotesque immigration bill ignores the lessons about the intersection of immigration and terrorism that we should have learned from the Fort Dix plotters and from dozens and dozens of their predecessors. That lesson is that normal, sustained immigration enforcement, conducted across the board and without apology, is an indispensable tool in preventing and disrupting terrorist plots against our people…The Senate bill…actually undermines security by ensuring, in Section 136(d), that “Nothing in this section may be construed to provide additional authority to any State or local entity to enforce Federal immigration laws.” This is especially pertinent regarding the Fort Dix plot. The three Duka brothers — illegal aliens all — were stopped by police on various New Jersey jurisdictions 75 times without any inquiry into their lack of immigration status…
From Center for Immigration Studies executive director Mark Krikorian at National Review Online (dated May 28, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (US/LA/WT)
America must not ignore a dangerous percentage
26 percent looms large when it describes the number of American Muslims, ages 18-29, who support suicide bombings "in defense of Islam" — one of the sensational, if sensationally underreported, findings of a recent Pew poll. According to Pew, the total Muslim population in America is 2.35 million, 30 percent of whom are between 18 and 29. By my figuring, the suicide-bomb-approving cohort works out to 183,000 people…
From columnist Diana West at Jewish World Review (dated May 25, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (US/RE/WT)
Towards a White Minority
It is quite possible that Americans alive today will live to see the nation become majority Hispanic. Did anyone ever think this would happen, prior to a few short years ago?... If there is any large general historical lesson to be taken from all this, it is that a population as prosperous, secure, well-employed, and well-entertained as the white Anglos of late 20th-century America, and as confident of its own cultural superiority, cannot be made to care much about matters of ethnic identity, and may altogether lose the habit of thinking in such terms. Whether this ethnic insouciance [i.e. nonchalance] will survive the coming great demographic changes, I don’t know. Things have gone so far now that there is very little we can do but wait and see…
From National Review columnist John Derbyshire (dated May 25, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (US/LA/MO)
Water As The Source Of Life And Strife
The next major Middle East war could well be fought not over land, oil or religion -- the traditional causes of conflict to date -- but over water, a precious commodity becoming rarer by the day. Addressing top leaders in industry, business, banking and the media in his speech at the opening session of the World Economic Forum held on the shores of the Dead Sea last week, King Abdullah II of Jordan raised the alarm over the scarcity of water in the region and warned of the dire consequences for not only the developing nations, but the havoc water scarcity would have on the developed world as a whole…
United Press International story at TerraDaily (dated May 21, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (ME/ND/WT)
Was Osama Right?
Islamists always believed the U.S. was weak. Recent political trends won't change their view…
From author Bernard Lewis in The Wall Street Journal (dated May 16, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (US/ME/RE/WT)
Continental Drift
Don’t say you weren’t warned. It was all there in Tony Blair’s very first speech as Labour leader. ‘Under my leadership,’ he told his Blackpool delegates in 1994, ‘I will never allow this country to be isolated or left behind in Europe.’ Ponder those words for a moment. There is no hint of conditionality in them. Blair was not arguing that participation in EU initiatives would benefit Britain; rather he saw it as an end in itself: a demonstration that Britain was a modern, outward-looking country…Now, as he prepares to leave the scene, he feels that his country has let him down…
From British Conservative Member of the European Parliament Daniel Hannan in a Spectator special supplement (dated May 12, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (BR/EU)
Europe’s best hope
Everyone in France and Europe realizes, however, that the economy had nothing to do with Sunday's historic verdict. Mr. Sarkozy won because of his tough rhetoric against the Islamist "thugs" (his word) who aim to rule the country, where over 10 percent of the population already adheres to the Muslim faith…
From Brussels Journal editor Paul Belien in The Washington Times (dated May 9, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/RE)
Sarkozy’s victory
Are we in for a new day in U.S.-European relations? Sunday's convincing victory by Nicolas Sarkozy in France's presidential election suggests as much. Mr. Sarkozy has been unabashedly pro-American in his campaign and his victory speech… Then he went on to call for American leadership -- in a cause that unfortunately has by now just about achieved the status of religion in Europe [global warming]… A word of caveat will be in order, however, about Mr. Sarkozy. As Atlanticist as he is, he must be seen as also very European in outlook. Mr. Sarkozy is dedicated to the expansion of the European Union, has proposed a treaty revision that will allow the union to expand beyond its current 27 members and has promised to restore France to its leadership position within Europe. He has proposed withholding EU subsidies from new EU members that practice tax competition with "old Europe." And he opposes membership for Turkey of the European Union…
From Helle Dale in The Washington Times (dated May 9, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/US)
French Voted for National Identity
Nicolas Sarkozy's core issues were not "free trade" and getting along with the U.S. or cutting taxes and ending welfare. Those things might be in his agenda somewhere, but they are not what got him elected…Sarkozy got elected because of his stand on immigration, national identity and patriotism — simple as that…
From Diane Alden at NewsMax (dated May 7, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU)
The Stealth Constitution
Eurocrats want to prevent the people from derailing their political integration project -- in part by marketing their constitutional plans as just a few technical changes. Go home, people, their motto might be, nothing to see here, nothing to vote about. Sound familiar? In 2004, we were told that the constitution was just a "tidying up" exercise. At the time, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said he had no qualms about "commending the constitution to the country as a success and as a major step forward in creating the kind of Europe the British people want." He changed his mind a few months later, after French and Dutch voters rejected it, admitting that the constitution "did not reflect the concerns of ordinary people." There is little indication that the revived constitution would reflect these concerns any better. Yet once again we are being told that without a "mini-constitution" or "constitution lite" or whatever Europe's leaders like to call it, the EU would stop functioning. This is familiar scare-mongering…[German Chancellor] Merkel wants to present a program for a new constitutional treaty at the June EU summit. To that aim she floated the idea of simply "using different terminology without changing the legal substance" of the constitution -- constitution by stealth, in other words. According to the one-page document leaked to the press, the idea is to give the EU a "single legal personality" and full competence in foreign, justice, home and immigration affairs. Clearly, lessons have been learned from the previous shambles. They're just not the right ones…The plan is for a new treaty to be finalized under the French EU presidency in December 2008. That would be just in time for the European Parliament elections in 2009 and, probably, British general elections in the same year. Prime Minister Blair and his successor, almost certainly Gordon Brown, might want to be careful about what they are going to do in the next few weeks. For years now, we have seen the gradual transfer of sovereign powers from accountable governments to a largely unaccountable Brussels bureaucracy. If there were proposals on the table to roll back some of these powers…then there might actually be some popular interest in a new EU treaty. But every past EU treaty has acted as a harsh solvent on our national sovereignty, the bedrock of our freedom and democracy. That is why Europe's citizens should be given the opportunity to express their views on the next EU treaty in referendums…
From Conservative Member of the European Parliament for the East of England Geoffrey Van Orden in The Wall Street Journal (dated May 7, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/BR)
Europe (finally!) gets the War on Terror
Two headline-grabbing signals came from Europe this week, one from Chancellor Angela Merkel in Germany, and the other from Nicolas Sarkozy, the presidential front-runner in France. Both show a new desire to heal the Atlantic alliance, which has been badly strained in the last several years…Europe can no longer deny the Islamist threat…Nicolas Sarkozy as French Minister of Interior has had to deal with two years of nightly riots by thousands of ethnic Muslim adolescents…Europeans are aware of the spread of nuclear technology from Pakistan and North Korea to Syria, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. Today Paris is only fifteen minutes away from an Iranian ICBM attack. That threat will not materialize until Iran obtains nukes, but that may be only a matter of time. So the Europeans might not say it out loud, but they finally "get" the War on Terror --- six contentious years after the Twin Towers fell. They still hope that a Democrat will be elected in 2008, because they are more comfortable with a European-style socialist in the White House. But given the common threat to civilized countries, they are prepared to work with the US either way. Hillary as president may declare the end of the words "War on Terror" --- for PR purposes --- but in truth, everybody knows that the anti-jihad struggle must be either won or lost, and the West cannot afford to lose. Angela Merkel was visibly shocked by Ahmadinejad's open threats of a nuclear Holocaust against Israel last year. She has signaled very clearly that Germany takes the Iranian threat very seriously…Bottom line: We are beginning to see a reconstruction of the Western alliance after a decade of unprecedented propaganda attacks from the European Left. That does not mean that Europe will be subservient to the US as it was in the 1950s and 60s. Europe will try to stay neutral in any nuclear standoff between the US and Iran, even though it also wants to be protected against Iranian blackmail. Ideally, Europe wishes to control America as its own foreign legion…
From James Lewis at American Thinker (dated May 3, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/WT)
Al-Qaida Sleeper Cells Await
Day in and day out, there are new revelations about terrorist sleeper cells in the United Kingdom and other European countries…The law of averages would indicate the near-certainty of terrorist sleeper cells in the United States…
By United Press International and Washington Times editor Arnaud de Borchgrave (dated May 3, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (US/BR/EU/RE/WT)
The Result of European Unification Will Be War
The EEC was put across as a free trade zone. I never voted for the creation of a supranational, unaccountable government that does not submit to the will of the people via an election. In fact, I did not vote at all. I have never had a say on whether I want my country — which no longer exists — to be a part of this. The EU has no mandate and never has. Now, Germany is a more apt comparison than you might realise. Bismarck conceived the unification of Germany as a means to prevent the German kingdoms from fighting each other. He began to implement it when those same kingdoms were on the verge of signing an unprecedented peace treaty; his manipulations caused a war that gave him the pretext to simply conquer those other kingdoms, or trick them in to treaties that irrevocably tied them to his Imperial Germany. He began with a customs union. The EU has not resorted to wars to implement itself, but it began in the same way, and with the same aims. The EU was conceived as a means to prevent another war like the Great War, but it was interrupted by the Second World War. By the close of that war the political landscape had so changed that the concept of the EU was obsolete before the first treaties were even signed. It is consequently an institution looking for a role, and it has since found that role by re-positioning itself as a counter to American ‘hegemony’, a second pole against the US’s presence in the world as a super-power. This is in itself a foolish proposition; historically it is more foolish still, because history demonstrates that it will cause more trouble than it is worth. Bismarck’s united Germany did become peaceful for a while, but that peace didn’t last long. The internal fractures of the new Imperial Germany soon started to cause strife and resentment amongst the people of that country. A solution was found in the redirection of the national angst toward external enemies. The eventual result was the great war. The result of that was World War 2. The ‘unification’ of the nations of Europe is the same thing on a much larger scale. It is perhaps no coincidence that incidents of anti-Americanism have risen sharply since the signing of Maastricht. The EU has placed itself in opposition to the United States. It has inveigled itself so deeply in to the lives of its ‘citizens’, so deeply embedded itself in to every aspect of life, that everything a person does is regulated in some way by the EU…None of this was done with the consent of Parliament. None was done with the consent of the people of this nation…Sooner or later the sheer volume of regulations will start to affect people culturally. Our culture is slowly being eroded and destroyed by this vile institution, our national identities removed, our freedoms erased, and the end result? Inevitably, it will be war, but before that will be a morass of dull, lifeless existence for millions of people shorn of everything that once made their nations great. What price the ability to spend the same coin in 20 countries?...
Quote from Englishman Archonix at Gates of Vienna reposted at The Brussels Journal (dated May 1, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/BR/WT)
Towards a Totalitarian Europe
Former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovksy has warned that the European Union is on its way to becoming another Soviet Union. When people who have worked on higher levels in the EU system note similarities as well, it is time people start taking this idea seriously. In 2002 Louis Michel, the then Belgian minister of foreign affairs and today a member of the European Commission, told the Belgian parliament that the EU will eventually encompass North Africa and the Middle East as well as Europe…The Constitution will move even more power into the hands of the already powerful and unaccountable elites. The EUrocrats are basically saying that since somebody may conceivably threaten our democratic system at some point in the future, we might as well dismantle it now, in an orderly fashion. Moreover, whereas constitutions have traditionally outlined the basic workings of the state, the proposed European Constitution, running into hundreds of pages, betrays an almost sharia-like desire to regulate all aspects of life. It is an instrument of control, a blueprint for an authoritarian state. Nazi Germany was a totalitarian state, but such societies can also be transnational, as was the Soviet Union, which the EU resembles more than just superficially: An artificial superstate run by an authoritarian bureaucracy that overrides the will of the people and imposes its ideology on the populace. Are we back in the E.U.S.S.R? Although the EU, due to its transnational nature, most closely resembles the Soviet Union, there are also similarities with Nazi Germany. The EU was created by perfecting the Big Lie technique that was championed by Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels: Serve people massive lies, so big that they cannot believe that anybody would lie about it, and they will believe them, at least for a while. It should also be mentioned that Adolf Hitler stated his admiration for the warlike nature of Islam. The admiration was mutual. Muhammad Amin al-Husayni, the Mufti of Jerusalem, was an Arab nationalist and passionate anti-Semite who cooperated closely with Nazi Germany during World War II. Later, leadership of Palestinian Arabs was transferred to Husayni’s nephew Yasser Arafat, a very dear friend of the EU, who in 2002 gave an interview in which he referred to "our hero al-Husayni." If the EU is supposed to protect us from the horrors of Nazi Germany, it is remarkable how many of its traits it is copying, such as flirting with Arab strongmen and admiration for Islam. The Muslim immigration the EU is promoting to Europe has triggered the largest wave of anti-Semitism since the rise of, well, Nazi Germany, and may yet force the remaining Jews to leave. That Europeans should support this organization to prevent a new totalitarian regime is a sick joke. The EU is a lot closer to totalitarian states than the supposedly evil nation states it is going to replace. Since there is no European demos, no pre-political loyalty or shared public community, and since legislate power has been transferred to the unelected EU Commission, there is no way the EU can function as a democracy in any meaningful sense of the term. The EU can only become one giant Yugoslavia, either ruled by an authoritarian oligarchy in the fashion of Tito, or fall apart into civil wars. The slow, but steady stifling of free speech through legislation and Muslim Jihad violence indicates an ominous trend: Europe is moving in a totalitarian direction…
From blogger Fjordman at The Brussels Journal (dated April 30, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/ME/RE/WT)
Merkel’s Letter Could Change the Course of the [EU Constitution Struggle]
I am clutching in my hot, trembling hands the most extraordinary document I have come across in eight years of Euro-politics. It is a letter from the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, to her fellow EU heads of government. In it, she proposes a scheme to bring back the constitution under a new name – or, as she artlessly puts it, “to use different terminology without changing the legal substance”. Now this, in itself, is not surprising. Many of us have suspected all along that the Eurocrats would try to bring back the constitution surreptitiously: I have written as much in these pages. What IS shocking is the brazenness. Mrs Merkel flagrantly admits that she wants to preserve intact the content of the European constitution, making only “the necessary presentational changes”… Let us be clear: the European Constitution amounts to a constitutional revolution, perhaps the most far-reaching since the civil and religious upheavals of the 17th century. This revolution is taking place, not as the result of popular insurrection or foreign occupation, but because the governing party is abusing its majority…
From Daniel Hannan at The Brussels Journal (dated April 27, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/BR)
Failure to See Jihad for What It Is
Someday, when the war in Iraq has become a historical episode, we will tally up the lessons learned--if, that is, we ever learn any. Here are two worth mastering because failing to do so probably means we will no longer exist. Lesson 1. Nation-building in a war zone is nuts. Nation-building in an Islamic war zone is suicide…I hate to be the one to break it to Gen. Petraeus, not to mention President Bush, but the fact is, in an Islamic war zone, an "infidel" army just isn't going to win Islamic allegiance. There are many religious and cultural reasons I could offer in explanation, but instead I'll turn to the underreported story of the week: two findings contained within an extensive new poll of Muslim opinion conducted in four major Islamic countries, Egypt, Indonesia, Morocco and Pakistan. Accordingto WorldPublicOpinion.org, more than half of those polled in Indonesia, and three-quarters of those polled in Egypt, Morocco and Pakistan believe in the strict application of Shariah, or Islamic law. Nearly two-thirds of all respondents expressed their desire to see the Islamic world united in a caliphate. Which brings me to: Lesson 2. With numbers like these, portraying jihadist war goals (Shariah, caliphate) as belonging to a "tiny band of extremists" is nuts. Persisting in this PC fantasy as part of the narrative and strategy of the "war on terror" is suicidal. But such PC fantasy fuels hearts-and-minds efforts that go beyond "allegiance"-winning outposts in Iraq as the United States now weirdly cheers on world Islamization to curry Islamic favor…
By columnist Diana West in The Washington Times (dated April 27, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (ME/AP/RE/WT)
The Coming Era of Russia’s Dark Rider
History really does run in cycles. Take Europe for example. European history is a chronicle of the rise and fall of its geographic center. As Germany rises, the powers on its periphery buckle under its strength and are forced to pool resources in order to beat back Berlin. As Germany falters, the power vacuum at the middle of the Continent allows the countries on Germany's borders to rise in strength and become major powers themselves. Since the formation of the first "Germany" in 800, this cycle has set the tempo and tenor of European affairs. A strong Germany means consolidation followed by a catastrophic war; a weak Germany creates a multilateral concert of powers and multi-state competition (often involving war, but not on nearly as large a scale). For Europe this cycle of German rise and fall has run its course three times-the Holy Roman Empire, Imperial Germany, Nazi Germany-and is only now entering its fourth iteration with the reunified Germany. Russia's cycle, however, is far less clinical than Europe's. It begins with a national catastrophe…The Russians search desperately for the second phase of the cycle-the arrival of a white rider--and invariably they find one. The white rider rarely encapsulates what Westerns conceive of as a savior--someone who will bring wealth and freedom. Russian concerns after such calamities are far more basic: they want stability… Putin is the current incarnation of Russia's white rider, which puts him in the same category as past leaders such as Vladimir Lenin and, of course, Russia's "Greats": Catherine and Peter…In the third phase of the Russian cycle, the white rider realizes that the challenges ahead are more formidable than he first believed and that his (relative) idealism is more a hindrance than an asset. At this point the white rider gives way to a dark one, someone not burdened by the white rider's goals and predilections, and willing to do what he feels must be done regardless of moral implications. The most famous Russian dark rider in modern times is Josef Stalin…In particularly gloomy periods in Russia's past (which is saying something) the white rider himself actually has shed his idealism and become the dark rider. For example, Ivan the IV began his rule by diligently regenerating Russia's fortunes, before degenerating into the psychotic madman better known to history as Ivan the Terrible. Under the rule of the dark rider, Russia descends into an extremely strict period of internal control and external aggression, which is largely dictated by Russia's geographic weaknesses…
Stratfor.com Intel Briefing reposted at BillOReilly.com (dated April 20, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/WT)
EU Constitution: Like it or not
British conservative Daniel Hannan writes that the superfatted EU "Constitution" is back, under a different name after the French and Dutch voters rejected it. The "Constitution" is of course an undemocratic juggernaut designed to empower the French-style upper class of Europe in a New Class autocracy. This is therefore crucial struggle between Europe's political elites and those who still believe in electoral democracy. The socialist ruling class wants total power, with elections as icing on the cake. The "Euroskeptics," like Hannan and a small number of others, still want elections to be meaningful choices by the voters. The Euroskeptics have been slowly losing ground for half a century, while the new ruling classes have been gaining. Europe is moving toward a soft version of the Soviet model…If the United States remains faithful to its heritage, there is likely to be a gradual ratcheting away from Europe. We may find more in common with Australia, India, and Japan. In any case, the United States should not become the foreign policy tool of Europe --- which is of course the goal of EU policy…
From James Lewis at American Thinker (dated April 18, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/US)
The Crux of the Matter: Is America the EU’s Enforcer?
A truly horrifying possibility is emerging from this discussion, and it is so awful I have been slow to take it in. As a preface, I have always been utterly aghast at the American elites’ support for the unification of Europe. Why did Americans support the elimination of historic states and nations in this unaccountable, post-national, post-human, air-conditioned nightmare of the EU? It seemed the ultimate betrayal. It was also horrible that there was never any debate in America about this. No major voices in U.S. politics have opposed European unification or even questioned American support for it. But now a worse possibility – though it is only a possibility - appears on the horizon. It is that America is not merely the friend and cheerleader of the EU project, but its enforcer. Our troops and missiles and tanks are in Europe to prevent any uprising by European patriots and nationalists against the EU tyranny…
From Lawrence Auster at The Brussels Journal (dated April 17, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/US/WT)
Hezbollah’s German Helpers
Holding currently both the E.U. and G-8 presidencies, Berlin would be in a strong position to head the fight against an organization dedicated to the destruction of Israel and the replacement of Lebanon's fragile democracy with a Tehran-backed Islamic state. So far, however, Germany has squandered this unique opportunity to push for a Hezbollah ban. Berlin's passivity is consistent with its tolerant approach toward the "Party of God" over the past two decades…Why does the German government tolerate [its] activities? First, the Hezbollah leadership in Beirut recognizes the value of a German safe haven. It demands that Hezbollah followers carefully obey German law, which Berlin claims they do "to a large extent." Experience from attacks in the U.S., Britain and elsewhere suggest, though, that terrorists follow the law up and until the point they decide to strike. Second, too many Germany policymakers uncritically accept the idea that there is supposedly a political Hezbollah -- an Islamist but legitimate movement independent of those Hezbollah terrorists who have murdered hundreds of people around the world. To believe that fairy tale, they even ignore Hezbollah's own words. As Mohammed Fannish, member of the "political bureau" of Hezbollah and former Lebanese energy minister put it in 2002: "I can state that there is no separating between Hezbollah's military and political arms"…
From European Foundation for Democracy senior fellow Alexander Ritzmann and Foundation for Defense of Democracies chief operating officer Mark Dubowitz in The Wall Street Journal (dated April 17, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/ME/WT)
The Long Road to Victory
The US's difficulties with confronting Iran have little to do with the decision to invade Iraq. Rather, America's feckless diplomacy toward Iran to date is the result of the administration's early misunderstanding of Iraq and of Iranian and Arab interests. In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the Bush administration identified certain basic guiding realities and missed others. First there was the issue of Arab tyranny…Yet recognizing this basic reality did not lead the administration to adopt appropriate policies…By pushing fast elections, the US entrapped itself. It inadvertently empowered its enemies and so was unable to embrace the duly elected governments. In opposing the forces it expended so much energy getting elected, the US was perceived as weak, foolish and hypocritical…As for the Arab world, the administration believes that since the Arabs oppose Iran's quest to become a regional nuclear power, they will help the US both in stabilizing Iraq and in preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Here too, the administration confuses common interests with common agendas. The fact that the Arabs share common interests with the US does not make them allies. As a young Saudi imam put it this week to The Wall Street Journal, "We are waiting for the time to attack [the US]. Youth feel happy when the Taliban takes a town or when a helicopter comes down, killing Americans in Iraq. It is a very dangerous situation for the US in the whole Muslim world"…
From Jerusalem Post deputy managing editor Caroline Glick at Real Clear Politics (dated April 14, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (US/ME/RE/WT)
Bin Laden's Eurofighters
242 jihadists, 31 attacks, 28 networks. After examining militant Islamism in Europe, researchers have found that self-recruitment is on the rise among terrorist leader Osama bin Laden's Eurofighters, and that there is no such thing as a standard terrorist…
From Der Spiegel (Germany) (dated April 11, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/RE/WT)
A Question of Peace or War in Europe
In spite of days of controversy, today's signing of the "Berlin Declaration" went ahead without amendment. The pivot and crux of the controversy is the announcement of an intended replacement for the failed EU constitution which will have the same content under a different title and is to be ratified as quickly as possible… German Chancellor…Merkel warned against refusing so-called integration. She said "The ideal of European unification is today again a matter of war and peace"… The members of the "Strategy Group" took into their consideration the merging of European national forces into a unified EU army… The German Federal Chancellor has now made this suggestion her own. "In the EU itself we must move closer to a common European army," demanded Angela Merkel in Berlin's tabloid press last week… To increase pressure on the smaller EU members, the German government is dropping bellicose hints and portraying their EU plans as a method of avoiding descent into a new catastrophe - war. The Federal Chancellor announced in tones pregnant with disaster, "We should not take peace and democracy for granted. The ideal of European unification is still today a question of war and peace." Similar threats previously enabled the Federal Government to force through the Eastern expansion of the EU against heavy resistance in the mid-Nineties. Then the present Minister of the Interior, Wolfgang Schaeuble, declared in a strategy paper that "Germany might be required or compelled by its own security considerations to achieve the stabilisation of Eastern Europe alone and in the traditional manner." That paper was published on 1st September 1994, the 45th anniversary of Germany's attack on Poland. The Federal Chancellor's warning is a spin on those threats of war in a scarcely concealed form. It makes clear the radical determination of German foreign policy to achieve a total reordering of Europe under the aegis of Berlin, enforced by all means - apparently not excluding the military…
From Ron Janssen at Global Politician (dated April 11, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/WT)
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