Hero von Esens

No More Guttenberg

2011-03-02T11:44:00.008-01:00

No more Guttenberg is probably premature as he's likely to be back before long.After two weeks' kerfuffle about his copy 'n pasting his doctrorate, KT zu Guttenberg wasn't left a lot of options, although Chancellor Merkel seemed happy for him to stay.But when Professors at your old university start calling you a Betrüger (fraud, impostor), when political enemies in your own party are saying how

Too Young To Burn

2010-08-31T07:59:00.002-01:00

Too Young To Burn by Sonny and the Sunsets

White Fright

2010-08-31T07:35:00.004-01:00

Christopher Hitchens, writing on Slate, says white America is waking up to the fact it may soon be a minority, but contrasts the pious Glenn Beck crowd to its more sinister counterparts in Europe.http://www.slate.com/id/2265515/pagenum/all/#p2

12 Step Sustainability Plan

2010-08-31T06:47:00.004-01:00

Preetum Shenoy, writing on Sustainability.com, describes people living in western consumer societies as addicts who have yet to admit they have a problem:http://www.sustainability.com/blog/a-twelve-step-program-for-unsustainable-consumption

Geert Wilders

2010-01-21T16:23:00.003-01:00

The trial of Geert Wilders in Holland is curious, an attack on freedom of speech in a country where freedom of speech was pioneered.The most striking aspect of the case is that it is explicitly not about truth. The Dutch ministry has written:“It is irrelevant whether Wilder’s witnesses might prove Wilders’ observations to be correct, what’s relevant is that his observations are illegal...”The

Utopia: Rules with Wiggle-Room

2009-09-17T08:47:00.003-01:00

The utopia most people want is a rules-based life, with wiggle room, writes Daniel Henninger in the Wall Street Journal.Henninger contrasts the primal world of sports, governed by clearly-defined rules, with real life, in which no one knows the rules anymore.The problem being that in real life we lack a final arbiter, so that wiggle-room has the tendency to expand, exponentially, each time a rule

Muslim Creationism

2009-09-17T08:35:00.005-01:00

Just to show Creationism isn't the exclusive preserve of Christian fundamentalists, here's an article (from this month's New Humanist) exploring Muslim Creationism.http://newhumanist.org.uk/2131

NATO Spy For Russia Unmasked

2008-11-20T06:14:00.005-01:00

Link to my article on CNSNews.com today:Dusseldorf, Germany (CNSNews.com) – A senior Estonian government official is under arrest and being investigated for allegedly passing NATO and European Union secrets to Russia.A spokesman for Estonia’s Defense Ministry confirmed to CNSNews.com on Wednesday that the man had been “caught for having revealed classified information” and said Estonia had given

German Government Likely To Bail Out GM-Subsidiary Opel

2008-11-18T12:56:00.004-01:00

Link to my article on CNS News today: Dusseldorf, Germany (CNSNews.com) – As the global financial crisis lashes the auto industry, Germany’s federal and state governments look set to bail out Opel, a subsidiary of General Motors Corp., with a reported two billion euro ($2.6 billion) rescue package. Opel’s

Germany To Obama: No More Troops For Afghanistan

2008-11-13T10:58:00.004-01:00

Link to my article which appears on CNS News today:Dusseldorf, Germany (CNSNews.com) – Germany has been effusively supportive of Barack Obama – opinion polls showed he had the backing of 85 percent of the population – but early signs of strain are showing with Chancellor Angela Merkel. She has warned the president-elect that she will turn down any request for more German troops in

Europe Pressures Obama Ahead of G20 Summit

2008-11-12T11:18:00.009-01:00

Link to my article which appears on CNS News today:Dusseldorf, Germany (CNSNews.com) – As European leaders prepare to attend the G20 meeting in Washington later this week, they are stepping up pressure on President-elect Obama to support their plans on both international finance and climate change. The meeting is the first of a series of summits proposed by President Bush, French President

European Leaders Cheer Obama Victory

2008-11-05T09:05:00.004-01:00

Link to my article which appeared on CNS News on November 5th:Dusseldorf, Germany (CNSNews.com) – The election of a new American president always prompts diplomatic congratulations from European leaders, but Barack Obama’s victory prompted effusive reactions on Wednesday.His victory was an outcome few here doubted and most wished for.Many of the messages were little more than bland bromides – the

Murdoch Mocked By Wolff's Toadying

2008-09-25T07:20:00.005-01:00

Extraordinary example of how servile flattery often does more to make its subject look bad in this fawning Vanity Fair article about Rupert Murdoch by Michael Wolff.

Manhattan Declaration: "Global Warming Not A Global Crisis"

2008-03-10T07:33:00.006-01:00

The Manhattan Declaration, issued by scientists sceptical about manmade global warming, warns that:"attempts by governments to legislate costly regulations on industry and individual citizens to encourage CO2 emission reduction will slow development while having no appreciable impact on the future trajectory of global climate change. Such policies will markedly diminish future prosperity and so

Oral and Literate

2008-01-10T08:13:00.002-01:00

Caleb Crain writes in the New Yorker on the decline of reading.Reviewing a new book by Maryanne Wolf (Proust and the Squid), he speculates that soon, after a few brief millennia of being literate, we shall become a society of "secondary orality" - in which the bulk of our information will come in oral/visual form via TV and the internet, as opposed to newspapers and books.This reversion to the

The Ills of Capitalism

2008-01-10T07:21:00.000-01:00

There's been a flurry of anti-capitalist rhetoric in Germany of late.The socialist SPD party in the governing coalition has been burnishing its lacklustre profile - seeking to distance itself from its centrist CDU partner on the one hand, and the ex-communist PDS party on the other.This may seem a strange abandonment of the political centre. But in Germany the centre is very much to the left of

Black Thursday - The Curse of Von Esens

2007-12-13T13:11:00.000-01:00

The leaders of the EU countries have signed something called the Lisbon Treaty. It's an unreadable document, rejigged from the draft constitution so humiliatingly rejected by French and Dutch voters two years ago. Containing the same key elements as the rejected constitution, it creates the EU as a sovereign state, and claims for the EU Commission (the nominated body which rules the EU) a scary

Words of Wisdom (6): Nigel Lawson

2007-11-23T11:12:00.000-01:00

"The more one examines the current global warming orthodoxy, the more it resembles a Da Vinci code of environmentalism. It is a great story and a phenomenal bestseller. It contains a grain of truth and a mountain of nonsense. And that nonsense could be very damaging indeed."Nigel Lawson (Chancellor of the Exchequer in the UK under during Margaret Thatcher's premiership) addressing the New Zealand

Words of Wisdom (5): Richard North

2007-11-23T08:30:00.000-01:00

"People need to wake up to the fact that government – any government – is their enemy."It should be tolerated only because the alternative of not having one is worse. Furthermore, the one we have should be kept tightly restrained, lest it slip its leash and take over our lives."Richard North of EU Referendum.EU Referendum: The authors of our own misfortunes

Words of Wisdom (V) Vaclav Havel on Climate Change

2007-11-16T08:56:00.000-01:00

"What is at risk is not the climate but freedom…"I see the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity now in ambitious environmentalism, not in communism. This ideology wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning."Vaclav Havel

Bearded Red Flails Helmut Kohl

2007-11-16T07:27:00.000-01:00

Wolfgang Thierse is the ex-DDR Communist functionary who is now Vice President of Germany's Bundestag. His trademark is his bushy red beard, hallmark of the revolutionary firebrand, even if, as his government colleague Glos once observed, Ein roter Bart macht noch keinen Barbarossa (A red beard alone doesn't make you Barbarossa).In his Vice President of the Bundestag role he's meant to be

Neanderthal Feminists

2007-11-15T16:03:00.000-01:00

Maybe it's down to the long bloodlines, but the blog's always had a soft spot for the Neanderthals.An article in the Boston Globe gives a glimpse into why our closest cousins may have died out.It suggests that the equality-minded Neanderthal habit of allowing women to hunt alongside men may have led to lots of deaths among child-bearers - and thus caused the demise of the Neanderthals in about

Müntefering Resigns From German Government

2007-11-14T07:21:00.000-01:00

Franz Müntefering, the socialist Employment minister and Vice Chancellor in Angela Merkel's coalition, has resigned to look after his wife who has cancer.Müntefering has long been a bugbear of this blog's, mainly because of his posturing in Chancellor Schroeder's terrible government. Fulminating against the locusts of international capitalism (as was that government's wont), "Münte" blamed Jewish

The End Of Freedom of Expression in Holland: Ayaan Hirsi Ali

2007-10-12T07:19:00.001-01:00

In a deeply shaming decision, the Dutch Parliament yesterday voted 139-11 to discontinue protection for Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-born Dutch anti-Islamist ex-politician, when she is out of the country.Ali, who co-produced the anti-Islamist film Submission with director Theo van Gogh (he was murdered for making it), has been repeatedly threatened by murderous Islamist bigots simply for

The End Of Democracy In Europe

2007-09-14T07:45:00.000-01:00

Perry Anderson, of UCLA, in a rather long piece about Europe, describes how the EU has drained democracy from European politics.Democracy, he writes, has been replaced not with the politics of diplomacy, but a kind of unpolitical consensus:The deadly conformism of EU summits, smugly celebrated by theorists of ‘consociational democracy’, as if this were anything other than a cartel of

RIP: Gottfried von Bismarck

2007-07-06T07:08:00.000-01:00

Gottfried von Bismarck was found dead in his flat in Draycott Place last Monday afternoon. He was 44. A coroner is looking into the cause which is likely to involve drugs. Those of a sensationalist bent will prefer to blame the family curse. We knew Bismarck, slightly, at Oxford, and even challenged him to a duel for "looking like a howling cad". The duel was slated to be fought at dawn on Christ

More Günter Grass, Alas

2007-05-30T07:34:00.000-01:00

Günter Grass writing in the New Yorker to justify his Nazi past, puts part of the blame on his father for having audible sex with young Günter's mother:The hatred of a mother’s boy for his father, the subliminal battleground that determined the course of Greek tragedies and has been so eloquently updated by Dr. Freud and his disciples, was thus, if not the primary cause, then at least one of the

King Edward of Estonia: A Missed Opportunity

2007-05-30T06:48:00.000-01:00

The most important news today is revealed in the Daily Telegraph where it is tucked away in a feature on historian Simon Sebag Montefiore.It appears that when he was in Grozny just before the Russian invasion, royalists asked him to offer Prince Edward the Estonian throne."It was treated as a jokey news story," says Sebag Montefiore ("a cross between Woody Allen and Biggles"), "but I think it was

RIP: No More Immendorff

2007-05-29T06:50:00.000-01:00

News trickles through to Esens of the timely death of Professor Jörg Immendorff, left-wing polemicist, Professor and sometime painter, scourge of the bourgeoisie and so forth. He died yesterday, a few weeks before his 62nd birthday.This can only be seen as the action of a merciful God. Immendorff had been suffering an incurable disease for some years now, the effects of which were distressing in

Dutch PM Wants Less EU

2007-05-24T06:55:00.000-01:00

Prime Minister Balkenende of Holland (which last year decisively rejected the EU's proposed constitution) wants to limit the role and expansion of the EU saying the supranational body has moved too fast for a lot of voters.In advocating a stronger role for national governments (allowing them to veto EU Commission proposals) aiming to curb the "growth by stealth" of the EU's unelected bodies,

Why Modern Novels Are Boring and Worthy

2007-05-21T07:19:00.000-01:00

Julian Gough, writing in this month's Prospect, argues that the modern literary novel is boring and worthy partly because it's been professionalised, partly because these days the tragic is valued more than the comic. He says modern novelists should look to the "new" media and to TV cartoons like the Simpsons for their inspiration.Link to Gough's article:Essays: 'Divine comedy' by Julian Gough |

Words of Wisdom (4): Jenny McCartney

2007-05-13T06:39:00.001-01:00

Jenny McCartney on the apotheosis of Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness as, respectively, First Minister and Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland:"... Although I am certainly grateful that Mr Mc Guinness is no longer an active murderer and Mr Paisley no longer an active sectarian bigot, I cannot pretend that my heart soars to see them as joint leaders of the new Northern Ireland. They have

NATO vs Taliban in Afghanistan - One-Sided War

2007-05-08T06:40:00.000-01:00

Mark Steyn, writing in the Western Standard, revisits the difference between NATO countries willing to do "peacekeeping duties" and those who are willing to fight.The latter group, he notes, is a lot smaller than the first, and in Afghanistan is composed of the English-speaking countries plus Holland.Fighting against the Taliban is being done by soldiers from US, UK, Oz, Canada and the

Globalisation Hurts USA, Says Ex-IBM Man

2007-04-19T06:59:00.000-01:00

The Nation discusses Ralph Gomory's take on globalisation. "What countries want and what companies want are different" is the ex-IBM staffer's starting point.US Companies who move jobs and production offshore are benefitting themselves and the host countries, but not the USA. The conventional globalisers' idea of "win-win" is naive, he reckons. There will most certainly be "losers".Gomory

Ijtihad vs Jihad

2007-04-03T06:58:00.000-01:00

Johann Hari, writing in Dissent, argues that the focal point of current Islamic conflict is not one between jihad and western values, but between jihad and moderate Islam.Hari points to the spread of Islamic liberalism and Islamic feminism amongst immigrants in Europe. He sees this as an opportunity to help reintroduce ijtihad (the use of reason to reinterpret the Koran which was abandoned in the

Words of Wisdom (3): Spark on Woolf

2007-03-30T11:26:00.000-01:00

Muriel Spark on Virginia Woolf: "A spoilt brat. All right, she committed suicide, but she didn't have to take the dog with her."

Words of Wisdom (2): Albert Einstein

2007-03-27T08:00:00.000-01:00

"The scientist is possessed by the sense of universal causation.…His religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection. This feeling is the guiding principle of his life and work, in so far as

Words of Wisdom (1): John Prescott

2007-03-23T16:27:00.000-01:00

"If you set up a school and it becomes a good school, the great danger is that everyone wants to go there."John Prescott, British Deputy Prime Minister.

Dalrymple OnThe Delusions Of Neuropsychiatric Triumphalism

2007-03-08T15:35:00.000-01:00

Theodore Dalrymple has been to an inspiring neuropsychiatry convention where he learned about the latest dramatic advances in the fields of neuroimaging, neurochemistry, neurogenetics and so forth.But he was bothered by the triumphalism he detected among some speakers. They implied that neuropsychiatry might soon be able to give a scientific explanation for all human actions and

Do the Living Outnumber the Dead?

2007-03-08T15:15:00.000-01:00

No, we don't. The claim you sometimes hear - that the number of people living today exceeds the number of people who ever lived - is a myth, according to the linked article in Scientific American.Apparently some 100 billion people have lived since mankind first emerged around 50,000 BC. Today's global population of 6.5 billion is thus about 6.5% of people who ever lived.Fact or Fiction?: Living

Profitable Gossip

2007-02-20T08:08:00.000-01:00

A PR report (by social studies group SIRC) finds that mobile phones serve a key therapeutic role in our fragmented society, enabling us to gossip with each other. Gossip is, apparently, an endorphin-building "grooming" activity essential to our mental and physical health. Good to have that spelled out.The report was sponsored by a company which will be especially delighted with the findings - BT

Murder in Putin's Russia

2007-01-24T08:21:00.000-01:00

Anna Politkovskaya, "Russia's dead Cassandra" was murdered in Moscow last October, four weeks before another dissident, Alexander Litvinenko, was murdered in London."We are nobody," she'd said, "while he whom chance has enabled to clamber to the top of the pile is today Tsar and God."Michael Specter, in the New Yorker, shows how Russia's pockets of stability and prosperity have come at a price

Merkin On Tom Stoppard

2006-11-27T11:04:00.000-01:00

Delightfully named Daphne Merkin tries and fails to psychoanalyse the elusive Tom Stoppard in a wordy, worthy NYT interview. It seems Merkin is famous primarily for boasting about her delight in spanking. Perhaps this is what makes Stoppard a bit wary of her.

Alexis de Tocqueville and Despotism

2006-11-24T09:25:00.000-01:00

The Economist reviews Hugh Brogan's new biography of Alexis de Tocqueville.Tocqueville's view of the importance of the citizen in government is topical, it chimes in with much well-meant rhetoric today.He saw that "good citizens matter more to free societies than good institutions." He also saw that democracy can breed despotism as easily as other forms of government, an insight confirmed during

Marie Antoinette And Powerlessness

2006-09-20T16:31:00.000-01:00

Camille Paglia, writing in The Chronicle Review, remarks that Marie Antoinette's reputation is recovering somewhat from the "let them eat cake" travesty which defined her for so long, nothwithstanding Edmund Burke's spirited contemporaneous defence of her.Ms Paglia herself concludes, with fitting, if infuriatingly vague, grandiloquence:"The return of Marie Antoinette suggests that there are

Neo-Nazis Do Quite Well In German Elections

2006-09-18T07:11:00.000-01:00

The NPD, Germany's leading neo-Nazi party, got just over 7% of yesterday's vote in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and in Berlin. This makes the party stronger than the Greens and the Left Party.The NPD is often described as "anti-democratic" but this is a misnomer. The NPD is democratic if (and it's a big if) one identifies the German demos as being exlusively (racially) German. It is also democratic in

"Rivers of Blood" versus the "Noble Lie"

2006-09-14T07:43:00.000-01:00

Roger Scruton, writing in the New Criterion on Enoch Powell's (in)famous "Rivers of Blood speech, lays into liberalism and its "noble lie", by which, he argues, the dangers of large-scale immigration were masked. Powell's extravagant quotation from Virgil, he believes, made it easy for liberals to dismiss Powell's stance as "racist" and so avoid the need to debate his arguments. But the arguments

"Global Alliance Against Nuclear Terrorism"

2006-09-14T07:39:00.000-01:00

Graham Allison, writing in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, reckons a terrorist nuclear attack on America is probably "inevitable", although "preventable". He says that the pusillanimity of western governments in this matter is caused by the same failure of imagination that failed to foresee the possibility of 9/11 and calls for a Global Alliance Against Nuclear Terrorism.Link to Allison's

NATO In The "Cradle Of 9/11" - Call For More Manpower

2006-09-13T07:39:00.000-01:00

America, Britain, Canada and Holland are the only NATO members currently engaged in resisting the Taliban in southern Afghanistan, despite NATO's Jaap de Hoop Scheffer's urgent call for reinforcements.The absence of large European countries like France and Germany is significant, if hardly surprising. Their governments appear wilfully blind to the price of failure in "the cradle of 9/11. In part,

Scandal Over Multiple Iraqi Idenitity-Papers In Germany

2006-09-12T06:26:00.000-01:00

An Iraqi immigrant to Germany, who arrived illegally, was given three different identity passes by German authorities (in Schwelm). His papers featured different names and ages, but the same photographs and physical descriptions.This is somewhat embarrassing given that the German Home Office is currently reviewing its security aparatus. If German civil servant happily allow illegal Muslim

Parallels Between Iraq and 1936 Spain

2006-09-11T18:25:00.000-01:00

Stephen Schwartz draws some parallels between the war in Iraq today and the Spanish Civil War.The main one being that European pusillanimity, in refusing to support the Spanish Republicans against Franco, paved the way for WWII.Schwartz posits that a similar pusillanimity regarding the war against Islamic fascism may have similarly disastrous consequences.PREVIEW: 1936 and All That

Foucault's Second Thoughts (II)

2006-08-29T15:26:00.000-01:00

Foucault is still a hero to many leftists, who see him as an early champion of "identity politics" and the political correctness with which it is associated. In fact, Foucault's thinking moved on and eventually rejected it, says an article by Richard Wolin in next month's Chronicle (link below). It isn't the first instance of Foucault's thinking discomfiting his original, left-wing audience. As

Former Waffen-SS Man Has Book To Sell

2006-08-16T06:42:00.000-01:00

Günter Grass, the walrus-moustachioe'd leftist bore, has been forced to come clean about his membership of the Waffen-SS, 60 years after the event. Grass used the intervening time to good effect, posing as a morally-superior, politically-correct scourge of capitalists and Christians, whom he flayed with deadly hauteur and patronising put-downs. Grass even received the Nobel Prize for Literature,

RIP: Syd Barrett

2006-07-12T06:25:00.000-01:00

Syd Barrett, who died last Friday in Cambridge, founded Pink Floyd in 1965 and led them to their initial success - with very English songs like Arnold Layne and See Emily Play - before dropping out of the band as a result of taking too much acid and coming to gigs in a "catatonic" state, unable to play more than a note, if at all.He wrote a fifth of the songs on the Pink Floyd retrospective

RIP: Philip Rieff, 83

2006-07-06T14:51:00.000-01:00

Philip Rieff, who died last Saturday, was a conservative sociologist who published "Life Among the Deathworks" earlier this year after a silence of 26 years."Deathworks" were "an all-out assault on something vital to the culture". Famous deathworks included Joyce's Finnegan's Wake, Robert Mapplethorpe's photographs, and the whole range of Sigmund Freud's theories, which Rieff saw as an "extended

Diving Portuguese Show-Ponies Booted Out of World Cup

2006-07-06T11:30:00.000-01:00

The current Portuguese football team have made themselves notorious with their play-acting and diving during this World Cup, and they were roundly booed last night. The preening Cristiano Ronaldo and ageing Figo were the most glaring offenders. Both of them spoil their undoubted skill with histrionics and below-the-belt tactics.The game in which they "beat" Holland to reach the quarter finals was

The Curse of Von Esens - Joschka Fischer Quits

2006-06-29T15:30:00.000-01:00

Joschka Fischer, the policeman-beating ex-Maoist Green who became Germany's Foreign Secretary in the late, disgraceful Schroeder administration, has finally upped sticks and is leaving Europe to go teach "international crisis management" in Princeton.This blog had nothing but contempt for Fischer whilst he was in office, as he grandstanded his way through insults to the USA, a major visa scandal,

Chairman Mao Was "The Greatest Drug-Addiction Therapist In History"

2006-05-26T09:02:00.000-01:00

Theodore Dalrymple says that a criminal tendency is likelier to lead to drug addiction than drug addiction leads to crime, and that "whatever caused them (drug addicts) to commit crimes in all probability caused them also to take heroin: perhaps an adversarial stance to the world caused by the emotional, spiritual, cultural and intellectual vacuity of their lives.

Misunderestimating German Humour

2006-05-23T07:50:00.000-01:00

Preposterous article by Stewart Lee in today's Guardian asserts that German humour is limited by, amongst other things, the stricter structure of its language. Lee sounds halfway convincing - until he gives an example of a "joke" he believes isn't translatable into German because it relies on an unexpected "pull back and reveal" at the end:"I was sitting there, minding my own business, naked,

Neo-Nazis and the World Cup

2006-05-23T05:45:00.000-01:00

Germany is understandably worried that its neo-Nazis will stage some high-profile outrage during the World Cup.Over the past year, Nazi and other left-wing extremist violence has been on the increase: in 2005, there were 958 acts of Nazi violence (up from 776 in 2004), whilst leftists committed 896 (up 72% from 2004). In the east, support for the neo-Nazis is about 10% amongst young men.

Scruton on J.S. Mill

2006-05-22T09:40:00.000-01:00

Roger Scruton argues that J.S. Mill, the Utilitarian, foreshadowed statist leftism, valuing a collectivist approach to society and happiness above individualism, and that Mill didn't understand that wisdom is rarer than rationality. It was Mill, we read, who first described the Conservative Party as "the stupider party".Scruton (who has himself metamorphosed into a latter-day country squire)

Ayaan Hirsi Ali Stripped Of Dutch Citizenship

2006-05-16T16:38:00.000-01:00

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, conservative Dutch MP and champion of Islamic women's rights, is to be stripped of her Dutch citizenship for lying about her name when she first applied for asylum. She has resigned as an MP and says she will be leaving Holland.In her statement, she says she used an assumed name because she feared her Somalian clan would track her down if her real name was publicised. She sought

Yahoo Accused of Shopping Chinese Journalist

2006-04-28T11:06:00.000-01:00

Reporters Without Borders claims Yahoo supplied information which got a Chinese journalist, Shi Tao, convicted.Shi Tao has been sentenced to 10 years for forwarding a message to western websites, a message in which the Chinese authorities had warned his newspaper (Dandai Shang Bao) of possible destabilisation by dissidents returning for the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre.If this is

Anti-Smoking Terror Continues

2006-04-13T15:47:00.000-01:00

Markos Kyprianou, the EU Commissioner for Goats, is threatening to take Germany to court for allowing tobacco to be advertised and, indeed, smoked in public places. Apparently this is now illegal in the EU.Ever since Kyprianou personally went round Europe testing 200,000 of our goats last year, he has been casting himself as some kind of expert in matters of heath, and looking around for

"Islamic Terrorism" Banned From EU "Lexicon"

2006-04-13T08:09:00.000-01:00

The idea behind banning the phrase Islamic terrorism from the EU's official documents, as announced today, is to avoid "unnecessary offence". The EU thinks further "radicalisation" may be sparked off by such wording. This may seem a foolish fear, and a somewhat pious wish, on the part of the EU's lexicon-makers. It is sure to spark off "political correctness gone mad" type reactions.But it's

Berlusconi's Cherries

2006-04-12T16:14:00.000-01:00

Jeff Israel, commenting on Berlusconi's election defeat, reveals how the media mogul once moved a sofa all by himself, and how he once ate some cherries from a porcelain bowl ("his left arm was practically wrapped around it," Israel discloses). Israel reckons Berlusconi's defeat may leave him, leader of the largest single party, the most powerful politician in Italy. Interesting, if somewhat

Zany

2006-04-11T16:10:00.000-01:00

A zany article by Alan Wolfe attacks President Bush for hating ideas so much that he acted on neoconservative ones. Now the original sponsors of those ideas (the equally zany Fukuyama foremost amongst them) - who supported the actions inspired by their ideas (invading Iraq) - say they were actually terrible ideas which only a moron could have acted on.Bush, these idea-mongers say, should shift to

Nuking Iran

2006-04-10T11:48:00.000-01:00

Seymour Hersh writes a very long piece in the New Yorker, with quotes saying that President Bush has a "messianic" urge to nuke Iran's bomb-building capability. Hersh's sources say Bush thinks regime change will be the sure-fire result of such a holocaust. Bush is urged to sit down and talk to the Iranians instead. Or try a "charm offensive" aimed at weaning young Iranians from the unpopular

V.S.Naipaul Flays Dickens, Austen and James

2006-03-29T12:40:00.000-01:00

V.S. Naipaul, a knight and holder of the Nobel Prize for Literature, has attacked English writers like Charles Dickens and Jane Austen for being too parochial, concerned only with English themes."English writing is very much of England, and is not meant to travel too far," he said.Naipaul, himself notably cosmopolitan - of Indian descent, brought up in Trinidad, educated in England, and

"Community Rights" Crush Individual Rights

2006-03-28T07:43:00.000-01:00

Francis Fukuyama writes (in Slate) that Europe's demographic/Islamist crisis is caused by its failure fully to integrate moderate immigrants into society.Europe, unlike the USA, was more concerned to "tolerate" incoming communites as a whole, even if this meant overriding European values. Oppression of individuals within those communities (especially women and homosexuals) could thus continue,

Science and Religion's "Parochial" Links

2006-03-21T15:14:00.000-01:00

John D Barrow is professor of mathematics at Cambridge and he has just won a few hundred thousand pounds with the Templeton Prize. He writes nicely in today's Telegraph - how parochial, he laments, are "our attempts to find or deny the links between scientific and religious approaches to the nature of the Universe."Telegraph | Opinion | Astronomy illuminates the glory of God

Western Baby Dearth Will Lead To A Conservative Patriarchy, Says Conservative Patriarch

2006-03-15T09:00:00.000-01:00

Phillip Longman argues that the failure of western societies to reproduce at replacement levels means that they will soon be run by the kids of people who are reproducing at relatively higher rates.These people tend to be patriarchal conservatives, traditional Europeans who love their country, have nothing against armies, and take a dim view of bastardy. Hence, Longman concludes, Europe is set

Poland, Holland Oppose Moves For European Foreign Minister

2006-03-08T12:12:00.000-01:00

Jacques Chirac, beleaguered President of France, has been pushing for the early adoption of some elements of the draft EU constitution (which was rejected by voters in France and Holland). One such is a stronger role for Javier Solana, currently the EU's foreign policy spokesman/co-ordinator. Chirac wants Solana to assume quasi Foreign Ministerial powers.This would certainly be in the interests

Man To Watch: Lech Kaczynski, President of Poland

2006-03-07T09:34:00.000-01:00

Some thoughts from Polish President Lech Kaczynski, prior to his visit to Germany this week (his first ever). Some folk describe him as a right wing nationalist, but he comes across rather well: statesmanlike, and - in contrast to most European politicians' disconnectivity to European voters - able to talk about things that concern ordinary people:- the most important event in his life was the

Troop Withdrawal From Iraq By 2008

2006-03-07T09:32:00.000-01:00

The most senior British general in Iraq, Lt-General Nick Houghton, is saying that there are plans for all British - and, one assumes, US - troops to be out of Iraq in two years' time.If this is true, it marks an abandonment of the position - previously promulgated by President Bush and Tony Blair - that coalition troops would remain until Iraq was stable and democratic. It is also a strange

European Protectionism Undermines Single Market

2006-02-28T08:14:00.000-01:00

In the past week, protectionism by national governments has stopped a bid for the Suez energy company in France (the government is merging Suez with the state-owned Gaz de France), and the bid by E.On for Spain's Endesa power company.Italy's Silvio Berlusconi is now calling for retaliation against the French. The EU Commission is gearing itself up to take action.Protectionism should be challenged

The EU's "Shoe War"

2006-02-21T12:05:00.000-01:00

Citing "serious state intervention in the leather footwear sector" in China and Vietnam, EU Commission spokesman Peter Power is heralding tariffs on shoe imports as of April. This will put about one euro on the cost of a pair of shoes from those countries.We can only hope that this new piece of protectionist actionism doesn't lead to the disasters incurred by Peter Mandelson's "Bra Wars" of last

Fukuyama's "End Of NeoConservatism"

2006-02-20T11:01:00.000-01:00

Francis Fukuyama's somewhat tendentious piece in the New York Times flays President Bush and his neo-conservatives for perceived inadequacies in the conception and planning of the Iraq war and its aftermath.Fukuyama makes some bizarre comparisons, contrasting the supposedly "Marxist" thesis of his book, The End of History with the "Leninist" ideas of Bush and his neo-cons. Bush et al are "

Valley of the Wolves - Turkish Rambo Flays Evil Americans

2006-02-20T08:15:00.000-01:00

A Turkish Rambo-type film, Valley of the Wolves, glamorises a struggle against evil Americans - amongst whom a Jewish doctor who takes out the organs of living Turks. Some politicians (like Edmund Stoiber, Prime Minister of Bavaria) are calling for the film to be banned.But it hardly makes sense to relinquish the right to free speech over a film of this sort. Aside from setting a woeful precedent

Berlusconi: "I Am The Jesus Christ Of Politics"

2006-02-13T08:50:00.000-01:00

The Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, described himself as "the Jesus Christ" of politics last Saturday, setting off a predictable storm.Berlusconi has given much entertainment over the years, being slightly more outspoken than most European politicians, even in Italy. He compared a German socialist to a Nazi concentration camp guard and has said that western

Indonesia And The Unfunny Danish Cartoons

2006-02-08T09:20:00.000-01:00

Mainstream Muslims continue to call on their co-religionists to temper their outrage over the unfunny Danish cartoons. Din Syamsuddin, of Muhammadiyah, Indonesia's second largest Muslim group, who is also a member of Indonesia's highest Islam authority (MUI), says that the over-the-top protests will paint "an image of Indonesia's Islam as an intolerant, rigid and anarchic society."The cartoons

Abu Hamza Jailed and Shamed

2006-02-08T09:02:00.000-01:00

Under the catchy headline "Hook and a Hooker", the inimitable Sun today reveals how "hook-handed cleric Abu Hamza cheated on his first wife with a hooker" and that this contributed to his becoming Al Qaeda's recruiting sergeant in Britain, with an especial animus against brothels.Full story: The Sun Online - News: Hook and a hooker

Controversy Caused By Unfunny Cartoons Whipped Up By Extremists Of All Stripes

2006-02-07T09:02:00.000-01:00

Christopher Hitchens, in a somewhat confused contribution to Slate, mocks faiths of all sorts:Cartoon Debate - The case for mocking religion. By Christopher Hitchens:"It is revolting to me," Hitchens writes, "to breathe the same air as wafts from the exhalations of the madrasahs, or the reeking fumes of the suicide-murderers, or the sermons of Billy Graham and Joseph Ratzinger."In mixing up what

"Garden of Eden" in Papua Yields New Species

2006-02-07T08:26:00.000-01:00

New species, including a honey-eater bird, twenty new kinds of frog, butterflies believed lost, and five new palms, have been discovered in an isolated region of Papua, Indonesia.Species thought to have been hunted to near-extinction, such as the Golden-Mantled Tree Kangaroo, and other rare species such as Barlepsch's Six-Wired Bird of Paradise, and the Long-Beaked Echidnas, have been

The Doom Of Europe

2006-02-06T08:25:00.000-01:00

Theodore Dalrymple writes about Europe's decline in today's Cato Unbound. He says Europe's decline is relative, and that widespread predictions of doom (by writers like Mark Steyn, for example) are predicated on the notion that historical hindsight, and current trends, can be used to forecast the future. This, Dalrymple says, may be quite unfounded: the future overturns most settled

Bishop Marx: Bombshells Among The Bromides

2006-01-30T08:04:00.000-01:00

Bishop Marx of Trier, a man as leftie as his name, gives an interview to the Rheinische Post today, full of bromides about the need for Germany to retain its "sozialen Marktwirtschaft" (socially-driven economy) in the face of "radikaleren Kapitalismus" (more radical capitalism). This is German code for tedious leftist doctrine. It isn't even especially controversial to hear it spilling from the

On Alexandra of Denmark - by Claude de Bigny

2006-01-30T07:45:00.000-01:00

Princesses Dagmar and Alexandra of Denmark, originally uploaded by Claude de Bigny.Princess Alexandra of Denmark, who married Edward Prince of Wales and became Queen of England upon the death of Queen Victoria, has had a mixed press, writes Claude de Bigny, the blog's historical correspondent.Her beauty may have had something to do with that - as it appears to have obsessed not merely the men who

Satellite Road-Toll Plans: The "Spying State"

2006-01-27T17:06:00.000-01:00

Disturbing details from EU Referendum about how plans for road-tolls are well underway and that several European countries - the UK and Holland among them - are participating. The plan hasn't had a lot of attention, but it will surely compromise citizens' freedom of movement and right to anonymity - as well as their wallets. It smacks of the "Spying State" - overarching, intrusive official powers

Demographics May Destroy Euro, Bolkestein Reckons

2006-01-27T06:39:00.000-01:00

Another demographic horror story: Frits Bolkestein, ex-EU Commissioner, warns that the ageing population will place "ruthless" pressure on the euro in 10 years' time. Pensioners will then outnumber the working population, thus forcing governments to increase borrowing and increase their deficits, undermining the euro.In truth, this undermining of the euro is already in full swing. The laughably

RIP: Michael Wharton

2006-01-26T17:50:00.000-01:00

Michael Wharton died earlier this week. He was by far the funniest writer ever to have written for the Daily Telegraph, whose pages he adorned for 49 years, writing for the Way of the World column as Peter Simple.Telegraph News Comic fantasy of Michael Wharton comes to a close

Assisted Suicide

2006-01-26T08:35:00.000-01:00

Boris Johnson, writing in today's Telegraph, comes out in favour of assisted suicide, partly to end the ridiculousness of British people having to go to Switzerland to kill themselves legally. Johnson rather oddly writes that his main fear about assisted suicide is that he "might change his mind" - that, at the moment of truth, he would back away from his own death, thus embarrassing himself in

God Is Love

2006-01-25T08:16:00.000-01:00

Here's Pope Benedict XVI's first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est - God is love.He writes about the many different kinds of love and, without dismissing Eros, points out that a false conception of sexual love diminshes people and turns them into mere "commodities." He makes many links to the Old Testament and to the role of Israel. He writes about the afflictions of Job and quotes St Augustine's

"Human Rights Watch" Flays EU and USA

2006-01-19T12:38:00.000-01:00

Hunan Rights Watch's new annual report lays into US abuses in the matter of alleged torture, "disappearing terror suspects" and Guantanamo Bay - as one would expect - but also rips apart any pretensions the EU might ever have had to represent even a modicum of decency in this area.The EU's stance on Russia, China and African abuses is highlighted. The EU "made the US defence of human rights seem

"Society's To Blame": Time To Get Rid Of Society?

2006-01-19T10:36:00.000-01:00

"Society's to blame" used to be the left's lazy shorthand for the causes of all crime, poverty, and social unrest. These days, it has become the lazy mantra of the right. What with all this unanimity, it's clearly time to do away with society for good.Here is the societal mantra of today's right: "State-sponsored single parenthood and idleness, easy contraception and divorce, the effective

Uses Of Paranoid Polemics: Al Jazeera's Ghannoushi vs Steyn

2006-01-10T14:28:00.000-01:00

Soumaya Ghannoushi, writing in today's Al Jazeera, expresses the oppression she feels in today's Britain with its "racist agenda at home and an expansionist policy abroad."There is paranoia in what she writes - and inaccuracy too, such as her assertion that there was no link between Saddam's Iraq and Al Qaeda - and in this paranoia she is the mirror-image of Mark Steyn, whose piece we linked to

Murdercide

2006-01-09T08:59:00.000-01:00

Michael Shermer, in a short piece in Scientific American, coins the word "murdercide" for the actions of suicide bombers. He points out that suicide bombers aren't suicidal by the accepted definition of the word.He also underscores the fact that "murderciders" (and it isn't a very compelling or elegant coinage, is it?) are usually well-educated, seemingly well-integrated members of society, a

Mark Steyn Flays Cameron Diaz And Predicts Islamic European Union By 2050

2006-01-06T13:28:00.000-01:00

Mark Steyn kicks off the new year in familiar guise, in the New Criterion, with his trusty demographic diagnosis concerning the future of Europe, which, to him, looks distinctly Islamic.Persuasive, up to a point. Steyn says Europe will see a Muslim majority by the middle of the century. "Native" Europeans are no longer having enough babies, whilst Muslims represent the biggest growing segment of

Russia Threatens To Cut Off Ukraine's Gas

2005-12-30T09:28:00.000-01:00

As if to underscore the deep dodginess of Europe's energy supply - which is increasingly controlled by Russia - Gazprom, the state-controlled Russian energy company, has been threatening to cut off supplies to the Ukraine if it doesn't agree to an immediate fourfold increase in price.Gazprom recently appointed ex-Chancellor Schroeder of Germany to a senior job, a reward for the way in which the

Galileo Will Undermine EU-USA Relationship

2005-12-29T10:26:00.000-01:00

The Galileo satellite positioning system looks to be on track, following the successful launch of its first satellite, by 2008.The Galileo project is an expression of the EU's wish to distance itself from the USA. Everyone is saying that Galileo will be more accurate thanthe US's GPS system, and how Galileo will be run by a commercial consortium, as opposed to the military. This is specious;

Released German Hostage: 'My Kidnappers Were Not Criminals'

2005-12-27T11:52:00.000-01:00

Susanne Osthoff, who was held for 24 days by kidnappers before being released on December 18th has defended her abductors. "I was so happy to know I had not fallen into the hands of criminals", she told Al-Jazeera yesterday. Frau Osthoff says her captors were seeking humanitarian aid from Germany for Iraq's Sunnis. In Germany, nobody knows what to make of Frau Osthoff, who hasn't been in touvh