Putin’s hostile course
At virtually every turn, Mr. Putin and the Russian leadership appear to be doing their best in ways large and small to marginalize and embarrass the United States and undercut U.S. foreign policy interests…

From The Washington Times (dated October 18, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (EU/AP/ME/WT)

Rethinking the core issues
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is shuttling between Jerusalem and Ramallah to help Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams craft a joint declaration for the upcoming Annapolis summit that addresses the "core issues," particularly, - refugees - known as the Palestinian "right of return" - final borders, and Jerusalem… Israel is…mistaken to waste most of its diplomatic energy "killing" the Palestinian "right of return," when there is no danger that Israel will be forced to absorb millions of Arab refugees. Diplomatically, Israel has already won that battle. But on two other "core issues," borders and Jerusalem, that are no less critical to Israel's future as a Jewish and democratic state, and are today in great peril, Israel has a bloody diplomatic fight ahead…

From Institute for Contemporary Affairs director Dan Diker in The Jerusalem Post (dated October 15, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (ME/WT/RE)

George W. Bush, Globalist
President Bush is about to take his country by the hand and make a great leap forward into world government. He has signed on to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, or the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST), which transfers jurisdiction over the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian and Arctic oceans and all the oil and mineral resources they contain, to an International Seabed Authority. This second United Nations would be ceded eternal hegemony over two-thirds of the Earth. It is the greatest U.N. power grab in history and, thanks to George Bush, is about to succeed…The sea treaty grants us no rights we do not already have in international law and tradition -- it only codifies them. It siphons off national rights, national sovereignty and national wealth, however, and empowers global bureaucrats and Third World kleptocrats whose common trait is jealousy of and hostility toward the United States. Under LOST, if the United States wishes to mine the ocean or scoop up minerals from its floor, we would have to pay a fee and get permission from the Authority, then provide a subsidiary of the Authority called the Enterprise with a comparable site for its own exploitation with our technology. Eventually, the Authority would collect 7 percent of the revenue from the U.S. mining site, giving this institution of world government what the United Nations has hungered for for decades: the power to tax nations… U.S. warships today inspect vessels suspected of carrying nuclear contraband. In the Cold War, U.S. submarines entered harbors to tap into communications cables to protect our national security. Our subs routinely transit straits submerged. To do this, post-LOST, the Navy would have to get permission from an Authority composed of states most of which have an almost unbroken record of voting against us in the United Nations…

From columnist Patrick Buchanan at RealClearPolitics (dated October 12, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (US/GI)

Selling out Israel on the installment plan
Name one concession Israel has made in recent years that has been reciprocated by its sworn enemies. This is not a trick question. There are none. That's why next month's announced "Middle East Summit" in Annapolis, Md., should be viewed as one more installment payment in the sellout of Israel and of American interests in the Middle East. While the United States continues to struggle to shore up democracy in Iraq, the Bush administration — like administrations before it — proceeds in undermining the likelihood that the region's first democracy will endure. At every negotiating session, Israel is pressured into making concessions for "peace" and receives more war in response. Mostly this is because of the wishful thinking in the West that has replaced sound policy. Why should the Palestinians make concessions when they are drawing closer to their objective of eradicating Israel by throwing stones and bombs and stonewalling negotiations?...

From columnist Cal Thomas at Jewish World Review (dated October 11, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (ME/WT)

Belgium: Europe’s Canary in a Coal Mine
Belgium is coming apart at the seams. For four months, its 11 political parties have been unable to form a national government because the Dutch-speaking regions want greater autonomy, or even outright independence. Primarily split between Dutch-speaking Flemings and French-speaking Walloons, Belgium was formed as a constitutional monarchy where the non-French speakers were mostly treated as second-class citizens….Although the Flemish majority is somewhat more prosperous, the Walloons have a perceived stranglehold on Belgian politics. One is tempted to joke that it's an Iraq with better weather and waffles. But it isn't a mini-Iraq, and not just because they're not killing one another. It's more like a mini-European Union. In fact, that's the one thing everyone can agree on. No country is more invested in the EU experiment than Belgium, whose capital, Brussels, is also the capital of the EU. If Belgium falls to sectarianism, what does that say about prospects for making Europe into a super-Belgium?...Here's the hilarious irony of all this: The European Union is in effect subsidizing nationalism in Belgium and across the Continent. As the EU assumes more of the responsibilities of states - regulations, the economy, currency, possibly even defense - the cost of independence becomes lower… By scaling back the job description of a nation-state to a few ceremonial duties, ethnic minorities see fewer risks and a lot more rewards in breaking away. Countries such as Slovakia get to trade on their votes in the EU and the U.N. They get their own anthems and sports teams and get to teach their own language and culture. It's like a McDonald's franchise. You man the register and keep the bathrooms clean, but the folks at corporate HQ do the heavy lifting. That's why the Basques, Scots and Flemings are looking to open their own franchises. The question is whether the nationalist hunger of such McNations can be satisfied by just the symbolism of autonomy…

From National Review Online editor Jonah Goldberg at Townhall.com (dated October 10, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (EU/BR)

Barroso and Bilderberg to the Rescue of Belgium. Will the UK Be Ousted from the EU?
Today, day 119 since the general elections of June 10th, Belgium still has no government. Belgium’s politicians, however, expect the country to have a new government soon. Yves Leterme, the leader of the Flemish Christian-Democrats, who last week was reappointed as “formateur” (Prime Minister Designate) by Belgium’s King Albert II, knows that he has no choice but to succeed in forming a government. If he does not, his political career is over. Mr Leterme, who won last June’s elections on a pro-Flemish platform, will have to withdraw all the Flemish demands because the Walloon politicians have vetoed them all… In Brussels, whether at the Belgian or the European level, the word “democracy” has a different meaning than in London or Washington. For the Eurocrats “democracy” implies that whenever the peoples of Europe reject their schemes (such as the so-called “European Constitution”), the political elites just go ahead because they know better than the people what is good for the people…Viscount Etienne Davignon, a former European Commissioner who is the chairman of the secretive Bilderberg Group and a member of King Albert II’s Crown Council,…asked whether countries such as Britain, “which consistently hamper European integration,” should not be ousted from the EU…What will happen next? Mr Leterme will become Prime Minister and will govern until 2011. His Christian-Democrats are likely to lose the 2009 regional elections. However, by then the Belgian establishment might have neutralized the Flemish secessionist Vlaams Belang (VB) [party] by taking away its finances. The Council of State, a Belgian administrative court, is soon to rule whether or not to defund the VB. This is an attempt to kill the party by depriving it of its finances…Perhaps the British, if they are lucky, will have been ousted from the EU by 2011. While continental Europe becomes ever more totalitarian, England might just manage to escape. Flanders, unfortunately, will not…

From Brussels Journal editor Paul Belien (dated October 7, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (EU/BR)

U.S. LOST at sea?
It is inconceivable to this naval officer why the Senate would willingly want to forfeit its responsibility for America"s freedom of the seas to the unelected and unaccountable international agency that would be created by ratification of LOST [Law of the Sea Treaty]. The power of the U.S. Navy, not some anonymous bureaucracy, has been this nation's guarantee of our access to and freedom of the seas. I can site many maritime operations — from our blockade of Cuba in 1962, to the reflagging of ships in the Persian Gulf, to our submarine intelligence-gathering programs — that have been critical to maintaining our freedom of the seas and protecting our waters from encroachment. All those examples would likely have to be submitted to an international tribunal for approval if we become a signatory to this treaty. In a word, this is incomprehensible…The Treaty will impose a "globe-tax" to finance a pseudo "second United Nations," complete with its own committees and councils. LOST creates a bureaucracy that enforces a mandatory arbitration process that will by its nature be adverse to U.S. corporations and infringe on private property rights. LOST provides a forum for China and Russia to pursue threatening territorial claims. China has already manipulated LOST to claim sovereignty over the entire South China Sea, while Russia is pursuing its claim to the North Pole seabed by presenting its data to the LOST Continental Shelf Commission…

From U.S. Navy retired admiral James Lyons in The Washington Times (dated October 5, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (US/GI)

The British anomaly: The attempt to abolish England
In 1999, Tony Blair’s government installed a Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh. Similar parliaments have since been installed in Wales and Northern Ireland. This has led to the anomaly…that, while English members of the Parliament at Westminster have no say about Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish domestic affairs, parliamentarians from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have the power to vote on issues that affect just England. Several proposals have been made to solve this anomaly. One of them is to abolish the Scottish Parliament, the National Assembly for Wales and the Northern Ireland Assembly. Another is to give England its own parliament, which would imply that the United Kingdom become a federation of four states – England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The solution proposed by the Labor government in Westminster, currently led by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown (a Scot) and previously by Tony Blair (also a Scot), is to dissolve England by splitting it up into nine regions, each with their own parliamentary assembly. In a 2004 regional referendum, however, the voters in the Labor-dominated North East of England overwhelmingly rejected the plan to install an elected North East Assembly. Consequently, the British government shelved its plans for the other assemblies, but this means the… dilemma has still not been solved. The whole issue has led to a rise of English nationalism. Though many English do not demand an English Parliament, since they consider the British parliament at Westminster to be their English parliament, the attempt to split up England has made them aware that Britain is being threatened and that the very survival of England is in jeopardy. The Scottish National Party, the largest party in the Scottish Parliament, favors downright independence from the UK and wants Scotland to become a member of the European Union. Many Scottish Nationalists regard the EU as an enemy of the UK, hence their ally. The English, however, see the EU as a threat to the sovereignty of their, British, parliament at Westminster…If Scotland does not want to leave the EU while England does, some English, in order to save the UK, would subjugate Westminster to the EU. Others, however, are prepared to give up the UK in order to save democracy in England…

From Brussels Journal editor Paul Belien in The Washington Times, reposted at The Brussels Journal (dated September 26, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (BR/EU)

Brussels rules OK: How the European Union is becoming the world’s chief regulator
Brussels is becoming the world's regulatory capital. The European Union's drive to set standards has many causes—and a protectionist impulse within some governments (eg, France's) may be one. But though the EU is a big market, with almost half a billion consumers, neither size, nor zeal, nor sneaky protectionism explains why it is usurping America's role as a source of global standards. A better answer lies in transatlantic philosophical differences. The American model turns on cost-benefit analysis, with regulators weighing the effects of new rules on jobs and growth, as well as testing the significance of any risks. Companies enjoy a presumption of innocence for their products: should this prove mistaken, punishment is provided by the market (and a barrage of lawsuits). The European model rests more on the “precautionary principle”, which underpins most environmental and health directives. This calls for pre-emptive action if scientists spot a credible hazard, even before the level of risk can be measured…Some Eurocrats suggest that the philosophical gap reflects the American constitutional tradition that everything is allowed unless it is forbidden, against the Napoleonic tradition codifying what the state allows and banning everything else…

From Economist columnist Charlemagne (dated September 20, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (EU)

Analyst: China building world’s largest navy as U.S. sea power is in 'absolute decline'
Did you know that China could become the world’s leading naval power by 2020? That’s the verdict of military analyst Tony Corn. This may help explain why the U.S. Navy thinks a piece of paper called the U.N. Law of the Sea Treaty provides some sort of protection for American forces on the high seas. It offers no such protection, of course, but it creates the impression that Navy leaders are doing something about our increasing weakness and vulnerability. However, like so many other U.N. treaties, including the 19 anti-terrorism treaties in effect on 9/11, this one offers a false sense of security. It will mask a dramatic decline in our military power…

From Accuracy in Media editor Cliff Kincaid (dated September 19, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (AP/WT)

The Big 'Terminological Inexactitude'
In recent weeks British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has repeatedly uttered an untruth…The cause of Mr. Brown's deceit is that European Union "Reform Treaty," barely distinguishable in its contents from the previously proposed "Constitution," which French and Dutch voters chucked out two years ago. No other EU leader tries to hide the fact that the two documents are, as Luxembourg's Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker put it, "99% the same." The British prime minister implausibly claims the opposite for the simple reason that he and his party were elected to power in 2005 on the promise that the U.K. would not ratify the constitution until it had been put to a referendum… To appreciate just why it has been so important for EU leaders to get their constitution regardless of their peoples' wishes, one must grasp the fundamental principle on which those behind the "European project" have worked toward their ultimate goal. The process favored by the visionaries who first dreamed of a "United States of Europe" as far back as the 1920s was the very reverse of how the U.S. was launched. When the Founding Fathers gathered in Philadelphia in 1787, their idea of building a nation was to start with its constitution and let the new union grow from there. The Europeans chose the opposite strategy. They knew it was always going to be a much longer haul to place long-established nation states under the rule of a new form of supranational government. That is why, as long ago as 1941, one of those visionaries, Italian ex-Communist Altiero Spinelli, proposed in his Ventotene Manifesto that the shapers of the new Europe should stealthily build up the structures of their new government over a long period without consulting the people. Only when the process was all but complete would they summon a "constituent assembly" to draft the constitution, which, Spinelli argued, the people would then acclaim by referendum as their "crowning dream." A similar strategy was conceived after World War II by the Frenchman Jean Monnet who was to become known as the "Father of Europe"…

From London Telegraph columnist Christopher Booker in The Wall Street Journal (dated September 17, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (EU/BR)

Abolish Belgium?
In the early 1990s, following the fall of Communism, the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia fell apart. Today, the federal Kingdom of Belgium, the last of Europe's multinational states, is beginning to unravel. In 1830-31, the international powers put Belgium together as a political compromise and an experiment in building one state out of two nationalities. The country is home to 6 million Dutch-speakers in Flanders, its northern half bordering the Netherlands, 3 million French-speakers in Wallonia, its southern half bordering France, and 1 million people in its capital Brussels, an enclave within Flanders, which is also the capital of the European Union (EU)… On June 10, the Flemish Christian Democrat leader Yves Leterme, the son of a Walloon father and a Flemish mother, won the Belgian general elections. The Walloon parties refused to accept Mr. Leterme as prime minister, thus making it impossible to put together a Belgian government. According to the Walloons, Mr. Leterme is a closet Flemish nationalist. King Albert II is not too fond of Mr. Leterme either. Last year, the latter reproached the monarch openly for not speaking Dutch, the language of the majority of his compatriots, well enough. Today, three months after the elections, Flemish politicians are openly suggesting that one should fill the vacuum left by the absence of a federal government by having the Flemish regional parliament unilaterally declare Flemish sovereignty. Last week, even the Economist wrote that it is "time to abolish Belgium." The unraveling of Belgium does not bode well for the EU's attempts to transform itself into a multinational state. Belgium is not only the EU's host country but also its model…

From Brussels Journal editor Paul Belien (dated September 13, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (EU)

Goodbye, Belgium?
Who needs Belgium? Not, apparently, the Belgians, who have had no government since elections on June 10, in which voters split on ethno-linguistic lines between French-speaking Walloons and Dutch-speaking Flemings. The Belgians do not seem to care that their state is falling apart before their eyes…Last week the Economist magazine opined that "Belgium has served its purpose." It was a purpose defined by the grand diplomacy of 19th-century Europe, not by the wishes of the disparate peoples who inhabited the once-prosperous region… Today, Belgium is a microcosm of the E.U.: bureaucratic, undemocratic, corporatist. As the author Paul Belien argued in his book "A Throne in Brussels," the "Belgianisation of Europe" is already far advanced. If the European Union is to be given back to its constituent peoples, Belgium might be a good place to start…

From The New York Sun (dated September 11, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (EU)

Mexico is here
"Mexico does not end at its borders. ... Where there is a Mexican, there is Mexico." That astonishing claim by Mexican President Felipe Calderon, in his state of the nation address at the National Palace Sunday, brought his audience wildly cheering to its feet. Were the United States a serious nation, Calderon's claim that Mexico extends into the United States would have produced an instant demand from the U.S. ambassador for clarification. Failing to receive it, he would have packed his bags, and the United States would be on the verge of severing diplomatic relations. In an earlier time, U.S. troops would be rolling to the border. For this is not the first time an arrogant Mexican ruler has made a claim to extra-territorial rights inside the United States and, indeed, to U.S. territory. Mexico's presidents have gotten into a habit of suborning treason against the United States…

From columnist Patrick Buchanan at WorldNetDaily (dated September 6, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (US/LA)

European mayhem as Treaty triggers UK's exit
British withdrawal from the EU is coming into sharper focus, with all the grave consequences that will ensue for the Atlantic order and the cause of market liberalism…

From London Telegraph columnist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard (dated September 4, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (EU/BR)

Will the Belgian Crisis Lead to a Sharia State in the Heart of Europe?
The break up of Belgium. [...] The obvious is the annexing of the two largest regions, Flanders into Holland and Wallonia into France, which would in all essence leave Brussels as a region with no home. [...] The [Eurocrats] would see this as an opportunity. They would have within their power the ability to create a capital state, in the same way that Washington sits within the District of Columbia (DC) and the Australian capital Canberra sits within the Australian Capital Territory (ACT). Brussels would therefore become a state in its own right. A true capital of a new super state. [...] Over half the inhabitants of the Brussels region are of foreign origin, and growing at an alarming rate, many of them from Morocco. [...] How long would it take before Brussels was declared an Islamic state. - EURABIA. How would the 27 member states react being tied by treaty to the supremacy of Brussels if it was an Islamic state…

From Ian Parker, excerpted at The Brussels Journal (dated September 4, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (EU/RE)

Vanishing England
Perhaps there will not always be an England. An exodus unprecedented in modern times, coupled with a record influx of foreigners, is threatening to erode the character of the land…The figures, making headlines in London newspapers, tell only part of the story. Between June 2005 and June 2006 nearly 200,000 British citizens chose to leave the country for a new life elsewhere. During the same period, at least 574,000 immigrants came to Britain…Britons give many reasons for leaving, but their stories share one commonality: life in Britain has become unbearable for them. They fear lawlessness and the threat of more terrorism from a growing Muslim population and the loss of a sense of Britishness, exacerbated by the growing refusal of public schools to teach the history and culture of the nation to the next generation…

From columnist Cal Thomas at Townhall.com (dated August 28, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (BR)

Belgium, the EU’s Destiny. The End of Nothingness
Even though, or perhaps exactly because it stands for nothing, Belgium needs a tangible symbol. Without the civic glue that binds countries with a genuine national identity, Belgium, as we have seen, could not have survived for already six generations if it had not been for two basic elements: its corporatist social welfare system that has corrupted a substantial section of the electorate, and its royal family that has given it an element of mystique and a semblance of unity. ‘The monarchy is the only way to keep an artificial country such as Belgium together. In a homogeneous country, I would be a republican, but not in Belgium,’ the Socialist Party leader Louis Tobback said in December 2001…According to the Walloon Socialist Claude Eerdekens ‘the King is the last bulwark against the continuing advance of Flemish imperialism’…Perhaps Europe, in order to become a viable Federal European State, needs an institution no Europhile has yet considered: a common dynasty. This may even be more fundamental than a common social policy, a common currency, a constitution, a flag and an army…

From Brussels Journal editor Paul Belien (dated August 25, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (EU)

Russia’s Undeniable War Preparations
In the 1990s Russia forged an alliance with China that involved a growing series of joint military exercises. Why would the Russians do this? Why would they seek to develop a joint military capability that would link Russian missile power with Chinese manpower? For over a decade the Russians have been providing the Chinese with technology and weapons. This is not merely a commercial transaction, as some would insist. These transactions are carefully considered strategic steps. Since the mid-1990s, Russia and China have initiated joint-armaments programs that further solidified their military partnership. It is obsolete thinking to suppose Russia and China are enemies. It must be understood, as a practical matter, that Russia and China are underdog powers locked in a struggle for primacy with the United States. The only sensible strategy, if Russia and China expect to emerge on top, is to unite against the Americans. And that is what the two countries have been doing for the past decade…

From J.R. Nyquist at Financial Sense Online (dated August 24, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (EU/AP)

Latent Nazis -Conversations with Young German Intellectuals
In his controversial tome, "Hitler's Willing Executioners", the author, Daniel Goldhagen, posits that the Germans underwent a miraculous transformation in the wake of their devastating defeat in World war II. En masse, they have abandoned their centuries-old rabid, virulent, and ultimately lethal brand of anti-Semitism and anti-Slavism and became docile, altruistic citizens of the New World Order. This unlikely scenario sounds too good to be true because it is far from the truth…

From Sam Vaknin at Global Politician (dated August 20, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (EU/RE)

Christianity finds a fulcrum in Asia
Ten thousand Chinese become Christians each day, according to a stunning report by the National Catholic Reporter's veteran correspondent John Allen, and 200 million Chinese may comprise the world's largest concentration of Christians by mid-century, and the largest missionary force in history…

From Asia Times columnist Spengler (dated August 7, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (AP/RE)

The EU and the Globalist Alliance
By dismantling national borders, the EU has facilitated the largest migration waves in European history. When Poland became a member, many Poles moved to Britain, Germany etc. This left Poland with a labor shortage. They are now considering importing workers from the Ukraine and Russia to compensate for the Poles that left. At the same time, native Brits are fleeing to Spain because they don’t feel at home in Britain anymore. By such moves, you unleash a chain migration that will eventually smash nation states that have existed for ages. Yet this intra-European migration pales in comparison to the immigration from developing nations. The end result will — supposedly — be an entire continent of people without any national loyalties who will be divided, disoriented and thus presumably easier to control. Stalin did the same thing, moving large population groups around to unsettle the state and keep it disunited. The EU has learned a lot from Stalin…

From Fjordman at The Brussels Journal (dated August 5, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (EU/BR)

Why the European Union Must Go
The European Union is basically an attempt – a rather successful one so far – by the elites in European nation states to cooperate on usurping power, bypassing and eventually abolishing the democratic system, a slow-motion coup d'état. Ideas such as "promoting peace" are used as a pretext for this, a bone to fool the gullible masses and veil what is essentially a naked power grab. It works because the national parliaments still appear to be functioning as before. This is perhaps the most dangerous aspect of the EU: It is increasingly dictatorial, but it is a stealth dictatorship, whose most dangerous elements are largely invisible in everyday life…EU Commissioner Margot Wallstrom in 2005 argued that politicians who resisted pooling national sovereignty risked a return to Nazi horrors of the 1930s and 1940s. Her fellow Commissioners also issued a joint declaration, stating that EU citizens should pay tribute to the dead of the Second World War by voting Yes to the EU Constitution. They gave the EU sole credit for ending the Cold War, making no mention of the role of NATO or the United States. This is preposterous. The European Union in fact has a lot more in common with totalitarian regimes such as Nazi Germany - and the Soviet Union - than the supposedly evil nation states it seeks to replace, especially its tendency to suppress freedom of speech, indoctrinate school children with blatantly false information and impose decisions upon its subjects without their consent…

From Fjordman at The Brussels Journal (dated July 25, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (EU/BR)

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)