Gordon Brown rules out EU treaty referendum
Gordon Brown will rule out a referendum after signing up to a new European Union Treaty at a summit of Europe's leaders in Lisbon later this evening. The Prime Minister has written to Portuguese leader José Socrates, current holder of the EU's rotating presidency and summit host, conceding that for Britain the talking is over…Mr Brown's attempt to kill off Treaty debate was today set back by opinion polls showing that a large majority of Britons and other Europeans want a popular vote on an EU blueprint drawn up to replace the Euro Constitution rejected by French and Dutch referendum votes two years ago. Today's YouGov polling for The Daily Telegraph finds that seven out of ten, 69 per cent, of Britons back a referendum…

From The Telegraph (London) (dated October 18, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (BR/EU)

Problems remain ahead of EU treaty summit
EU foreign ministers at their final pre-summit talks in Luxembourg on Monday (15 October) left the contentious issues to the 27 heads of states and governments to work out a deal at the end of this week (18-19 October). Poland, Italy, Austria and Bulgaria are topping the list of trouble-makers, with Warsaw seeking to formalise its voting compromise in the new treaty; Rome pressing for more seats in the European Parliament; Vienna concerned by an influx of foreign students; and Sofia unhappy with the spelling of the word 'euro.' However, Portugal - currently chairing the EU - has indicated none of the pending issues is serious enough to block the union's overall agreement on a new set of institutional rules - known as the Reform Treaty…

From EUObserver.com (dated October 15, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (EU)

EU treaty 'same as Constitution'
The EU treaty is "substantially equivalent" to the EU Constitution thrown out by Dutch and French voters in 2005, MPs have said…

From BBC News (dated October 9, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (EU/BR)

Pope calls for Sunday's soul 'to be restored'
The Pope has urged Catholics to reclaim the Sabbath as a day of religious reflection during a sermon in Vienna. Pope Benedict XVI's words came on the final day of his three-day visit to Austria amid declining church attendance figures in the central European country…

Adfero (UK) story at Manchester.com (dated September 9, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (EU/RE)

Cracks appear in Belgium’s long marriage
King Albert II cut short his holiday to make a dramatic plea for national unity, but not even his intervention has stopped Belgians from thinking the unthinkable: would the two squabbling halves of their country be better off apart? Three months after national elections, a collapse of trust between politicians in the Dutch-speaking north and the French-speaking south has left them unable to form a coalition government, and no solution is in sight. Belgians have been shocked by a poll this week that gave 43 per cent support in the Flemish north for secession. Even in the French-speaking southern half of Wallonia, which would have the most to lose economically by partition, one in five people believes that a break-up would be favourable…

From The Times (London) (dated September 8, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (EU)

Calling Europe Back to Its Christian Roots: Pope Says Another Alternative Doesn't Exist
Benedict XVI stressed the Christian identity of Europe in an address to members of the government and the diplomatic corps in Austria. The Pope said today in an address in the reception hall of Vienna's Hofburg Palace, the seat of the Austrian presidency, that "Europe cannot and must not deny her Christian roots. These represent a dynamic component of our civilization as we move forward into the third millennium"…

From Zenit News Agency (Vatican) (dated September 7, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (EU/RE)

Putin praises strength of 'Warsaw Pact 2'
President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao…attend an unprecedented show of joint military force [Aug. 20] amid fears that the Russian leader is trying to turn an increasingly powerful central Asian alliance into a second Warsaw Pact…Founded in 2001, the SCO [Shanghai Cooperation Organization], which includes the four central Asian nations of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyztan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan as well as China and Russia, is rapidly gaining a reputation as an anti-Western organization…Yet the SCO has wider ambitions. Pakistan, India and Mongolia all want to join - as does Iran, whose president, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, attended the summit as guest of honour…

From The Telegraph (London) (dated August 20, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (EU/AP/ME/WT)

UK 'should give up UN seat'
The United Kingdom should lose its independent voice at the United Nations and hand over its seat on the Security Council to the EU, according to the new Foreign Office Minister, Lord Malloch-Brown [in previous comments]… William Hague, the Conservative foreign affairs spokesman, said it was "alarming" that [Prime Minister] Brown had chosen to put in charge of UN reform "the man who thinks we should give up our UN Security Council seat to the EU." Downing Street said there was "no question of Britain giving up its seat"…

From The Telegraph (London) (dated August 8, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (BR/EU/GI)

[British] PM 'advancing EU treaty on quiet'
Prime Minister Gordon Brown has been accused by the Tories of trying to push the EU Treaty through "on the quiet". Shadow foreign secretary William Hague renewed calls for a referendum to be held on the deal, insisting it meant a major transfer of sovereignty from the UK. Only 10 out of the 250 proposals had changed from the former constitutional treaty - which the Government had pledged to put to the vote before it was ditched, he added. Mr Hague was speaking as he launched a pamphlet claiming to explain the contents of the new treaty in "plain English". It says powerful positions are being created in the EU, with a President and a "high representative" who is effectively a foreign minister. The union will also be given the legal status to sign international treaties, while Britain is losing vetoes in some 60 policy areas. Mr Hague said that once Parliament returned from the summer recess it would only have nine working days to consider the treaty before it was passed. He also suggested that the document had been made deliberately "unreadable" in order to stifle concerns over the content…

From The Guardian (Manchester, England) (dated August 7, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (BR/EU)

New EU treaty 'cut and pasted' from old
The official English text of the new EU treaty shows that it is a "cut and paste job" from the former European constitution, it was claimed last night…The reference to a constitution is out. Also cut is "symbolic" legal status for the EU's 12-star flag, an official motto and the EU's anthem. Other changes to substance are minor. The title of the EU's "foreign minister" is changed to High Representative. Provisions drawn word for word from the old constitution will give him speaking rights from British and French seats at the UN Security Council. Unlike Europe's current foreign policy representative, Javier Solana, the new minister will also be vice-president of the European Commission, weakening direct control over the post by national governments. Also lifted almost word for word from the 2004 constitutional treaty is a new "ratchet clause" making it far easier for the EU to scrap national vetoes and sidestep referendums…

From The Telegraph (London) (dated August 2, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (EU/BR)

Russian youth: Stalin good, migrants must go: poll
Russia's youths admire Soviet dictator Josef Stalin -- who presided over the deaths of millions of people -- and want to kick immigrants out of Russia, according to a poll released on [July 25]…

From Reuters (dated July 25, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (EU)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

Heatwave claims 500 in Hungary
Hungary said Tuesday as many as 500 people may have died last week in a heatwave which was continuing to stifle much of southern and eastern Europe and spark deadly brush fires…

Agence France-Presse at TerraDaily (dated July 24, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (EU/ND)

Poland raises new objections as EU launches reform conference
Poland raised fresh objections Monday to a major European Union package of reforms meant to replace the bloc's failed constitution and end two years of political turmoil. At a meeting to launch a key conference on finalising the EU's new reform treaty, Polish Foreign Minister Anna Fotyga told her colleagues that Poland was considering opting out of the bloc's Charter of Fundamental Rights…

From EUbusiness (dated July 23, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (EU)

Asian Parasite Killing Western Bees - Scientist
A parasite common in Asian bees has spread to Europe and the Americas and is behind the mass disappearance of honeybees in many countries, says a Spanish scientist who has been studying the phenomenon for years.... Treatment for nosema ceranae is effective and cheap -- 1 euro (US$1.4) a hive twice a year -- but beekeepers first have to be convinced the parasite is the problem…

Reuters story at Planet Ark (dated July 19, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (US/EU/ND)

EU banks on 'unreadable' treaty
The revived EU constitution has deliberately been made "unreadable" to help fend off demands for a referendum, according to the former Italian prime minister, Giuliano Amato…

From The Telegraph (London) (dated July 18, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (EU)

Merkel Open to Missile Shield Due to Iran Threat
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Wednesday she does not oppose U.S. plans for an anti-missile shield to counter any future attack by Iran, a project that has strained ties between Russia and the West…

Reuters story at Javno (Croatia) (dated July 18, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (EU/WT)

China, Russia seek 'multi-polar world'
Russia and China on Friday stressed their common desire for a ''multi-polar world'' - one not dominated by the United States - and vowed to keep improving economic ties that President Vladimir Putin said are already improving fast…

Associated Press story at NDTV (India) (dated July 13, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (AP/EU)

Germany Skeptical of EU Foreign Ministers' Middle East Initiative
Germany has criticized a call by 10 European foreign ministers to redefine EU objectives in the Middle East, including deploying in the Palestinian territories an international troop force armed with a "robust mandate"…

From Deutsch Welle (Germany) (dated July 12, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (EU/ME/WT)

Pope: Other Christian Denominations Not True Churches
For the second time in a week, Pope Benedict XVI has corrected what he says are erroneous interpretations of the Second Vatican Council, reasserting the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church and saying other Christian communities were either defective or not true churches…[Also] Benedict revived the old Latin Mass, saying it was wrong for bishops to deny it to the faithful because it had never been abolished. Traditional Catholics cheered the move, but more liberal ones called it a step back from Vatican II….

Associated Press story at Fox News (dated July 10, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (EU/RE)

EU eyes its next big challenges
Europe's leaders agreed at the [June] summit the key elements of a new reform treaty, to replace the unloved constitution, but a detailed final deal has yet to be agreed, and could still cause problems…Others agree that the EU may now finally see the emergence of a core Europe, instead of struggling to agree at 27…Antonio Missiroli of the European Policy Centre, a Brussels think-tank, thinks a central group of countries is likely to emerge. "There will be a group of some 10 countries equally involved in the euro, Schengen and key common policies and a very varying set of countries more on the periphery," he says…

From BBC News (dated July 10, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (EU/BR)

Brown Says No Need for U.K. Referendum on EU Treaty
Prime Minister Gordon Brown said there would be no need for a U.K. referendum on the proposed European Union constitutional treaty, so long as five British ``red lines,'' agreed at negotiations in Brussels last month, were maintained in the detail of the document…The opposition Conservatives say Brown should call a referendum on the treaty, arguing that it is too close to the proposed EU constitution…

From Bloomberg (dated July 9, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (BR/EU)

'Don't tell British about the EU treaty'
The new European Union treaty will mean "transfers of sovereignty" from Britain and Gordon Brown is right to hide the fact from the public, an EU leader admitted yesterday. Jean-Claude Juncker, Luxembourg's premier and leader of the bloc of 13 single currency members…said he supported public debate on the treaty - except in Britain…"Britain is different. Of course there will be transfers of sovereignty. But would I be intelligent to draw the attention of public opinion to this fact?" Mr Juncker, a supporter of a United States of Europe, described the June 23 deal signed by Tony Blair as an "objective success" for friends of the EU constitution…

From The Telegraph (London) (dated July 3, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (BR/EU)

Poles smudge EU agreement before the ink has even dried
A deal on Europe’s future, stitched together at last week’s bad-tempered summit, began to unravel yesterday after the intervention of the EU’s most unpredictable leader. Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the Polish Prime Minister, who sent his brother Lech, the President, to the summit, stunned Brussels by declaring his determination to renegotiate the compromise…Jaroslaw, who demanded extra voting power for Poland, insisted yesterday that the deal had not taken full account of Poland’s demands. Now he wants a permanent mechanism that allows a minority of dissenting states to be able to delay EU decisions for up to two years. His latest outburst has alarmed EU leaders, who were hoping for a trouble-free passage to a final text in October and a signing ceremony in December…

From The Times (London) (dated June 30, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (EU)

[Israeli Minister] Lieberman wants NATO troops in Gaza
Minister for Strategic Affairs Avigdor Lieberman discussed deploying NATO forces in the Gaza Strip in a meeting with NATO Deputy Secretary General Alessandro Minuto Rizzo in Brussels…

From Ynet News (dated June 28, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (ME/EU/WT)

EU Leaders Give Themselves Six Months to Map Out Bloc's Future
The 27 countries of the European Union gave themselves six months to decide between consensus and the squabbling that almost sank a summit in Brussels. EU leaders agreed at the Brussels meeting to negotiate by the end of this year a new governing treaty to guide the 50-year- old bloc and any future members. The summit, though, ran into an unscheduled third day and came near to collapse until Poland yielded to pressure to scale back its call for a greater say in EU decisions…

From Bloomberg (dated June 25, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (EU)

EU leaders agree on reform treaty
European Union leaders have reached agreement in Brussels on an outline of new rules to govern the 27-member bloc. At dawn on Saturday they announced a compromise to delay until 2014 a new voting system that reduces Poland's influence - the main stumbling block. Other proposals envisage a long-term president and a foreign affairs head. The new treaty, expected to be finalised later this year, preserves much of the planned EU constitution, which was rejected by voters in 2005. The treaty will need to be ratified by each of the EU's member states, before entering into force in mid-2009…

From BBC News (dated June 23, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (EU/BR)

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)

'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)

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)

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)

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)

Pope pious?
Efforts to canonize Pope Pius XII as a saint of the Catholic Church are in high gear. The pope who reigned during the Holocaust, whose detractors have called him "Hitler's Pope" and defenders say used his moral and political influence to save thousands of Jews, is once again dominating conversations in the Vatican…Dozens of research projects, articles and books, written by Jews and non-Jews, were published on the heels of [a 1963] play. All the works - from Saul Friedlander's book, "Pius XII and the Third Reich" to John Cornwell's "Hitler's Pope" - ostensibly prove that the pope had supported the Nazis. Pius XII's decision to shelve an edict issued by his predecessor, Pius XI, which supposedly condemns Fascism and Nazism, is likewise proof of his attitude. But books and articles have also been published in defense of Pius XII, most of them written by Catholic clergymen, but some by rabbis and Jewish authors…One of the most lethal attacks on the silence of the pontiff during the Holocaust came from Susan Zuccotti, whose book "Under His Very Windows" was published in 2002. In her book, Zuccotti examines the pope's silence even as the Italians began arresting the Jews of Rome. The Vatican intervened only in cases where a Jewish man was married to a Christian woman and had himself converted to Christianity. Additional studies reveal that Pius XII also did not protest when the Nazis banished 1,000 Italian Jews to the extermination camps. However, he did take real steps before the start of World War II to help some 3,000 Jews who converted to Christianity from different parts of Europe obtain immigration visas to Brazil…The defense of Pius XII comes from members of the Catholic Church, but a few Jews have also chimed in, most notably Rabbi David Dalin, whose book "The Myth of Hitler's Pope" refutes the attacks on the pontiff. The defenders' main contention is that the pope carried out all his actions secretly because he feared that openly criticizing the Nazis would only worsen the situation of the Jews and Catholics in occupied Europe. Other historians confirm that the pontiff did act secretly, but that he did so only after 1942, when the Americans warned that those who had participated in the persecution of the Jews would face punishment, and when it became clear to the Vatican that the Allies would win the war…It is doubtful whether it is possible to decide one way or the other on this matter as long as the Vatican denies access to all the documents in its archives from the period of the war…

From Haaretz (Tel Aviv) (dated July 10, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (EU/RE)

[After threat] Putin offers radar site in Azerbaijan
Vladimir Putin, bitterly opposed to a U.S. missile shield in Europe, presented President Bush with a surprise counterproposal Thursday built around a Soviet-era radar system in Azerbaijan rather than new defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic. Bush said it was an interesting suggestion and promised to consider it. Putin's formula would force a major rethinking of U.S. plans for defending Europe against attack from hostile regimes such as Iran or North Korea. While outright acceptance of Putin's idea appeared doubtful, the White House seemed eager to avoid further inflaming tensions by giving it short shrift. The Russian president said he would abandon his threat to retarget missiles on Europe — if Bush accepted the Kremlin's missile-defense proposal…

Associated Press story at Yahoo News (dated June 7, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (EU/ME/WT)

Russian nuclear store 'a powder keg'
Scientists have identified a risk of an "uncontrolled chain reaction" at one of the world's largest radioactive waste stores in northern Russia. According to environmentalists, this could trigger a disaster worse than the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in 1986. But the probability of such a disaster is regarded as very small by regulatory authorities… Andreeva Bay, on the Kola Peninsula in northwest Russia, is home to 21,000 spent uranium fuel assemblies from nuclear submarines and ice-breakers…

From NewScientist.com news service (dated June 4, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (EU/ST)

High-level group writes new-look EU treaty
A small group of politicians from around the EU have published a repackaged treaty for the bloc, hoping to feed into the emerging consensus among member states that a "simplified treaty" has to be extracted from the ashes of the rejected EU constitution… The 16-strong group, containing several former prime ministers as well as two current European Commissioners, has stripped the rejected constitution of its constitutional elements - including the article on the EU's symbols and the controversial "God-less" preamble - reduced the charter of fundamental rights to one legally binding article and say they do not mind if the proposed EU foreign minister ends up with another name. Essentially, however, the main elements of the original constitution have been kept in…

From EUObserver.com (dated June 4, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (EU)

Britain 'isolated' over new treaty for Europe
At a pre-G8 meeting in Berlin, the German chancellor will warn Mr Blair that he will be under siege if he tries to defend Britain's sovereignty at a meeting on June 21 in Brussels - where details of a treaty will be thrashed out to replace the constitution that was rejected by French and Dutch voters two years ago…

From The Telegraph (London) (dated June 3, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (EU/BR)

Brussels warns Poland and UK on EU constitution
European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso has warned both Poland and the UK not to block attempts to agree a new treaty for the European Union…

From EUObserver.com (dated June 1, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (EU/BR)

Merkel still aims to keep bulk of EU constitution
German chancellor Angela Merkel said she still hopes to save the bulk of the EU constitution but said she realised compromises will have to be made…

From AFX News (London) (dated May 31, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (EU)

Spanish PM backs French plan for 'Mediterranean Union'
Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said Thursday that he backed a French proposal to set up a "Mediterranean Union" comprising nations from its northern and southern flank…

Agence France-Presse story at Expatica (dated May 31, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (EU/ME)

Vatican signals support for Turkey EU bid
The Vatican has indicated it supports Turkish EU accession and acknowledged Ankara's progress toward democracy at a time when clouds of doubt are gathering over Turkey enlargement inside the EU itself…

From EUObserver.com (dated May 31, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (EU/ME)

Russia wants control of downtown Jerusalem
Moscow is in negotiations to purchase a large section of downtown Jerusalem once controlled by the Russian government prior to Israel's rebirth in 1948…An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman stressed that Israel is not "selling" the land to Russia, but rather "returning" the area to its former owners - a very dangerous way of putting things considering the Arab claim to all of what is today the Jewish state…

From Israel Today (dated May 31, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (ME/EU)

'EU should have more say at Rafah'
Israel has asked the European Union observer force at the Rafah border crossing to take upon itself wider authority, and on a parallel track Israel has asked Egypt to step up efforts to prevent Palestinian terrorists from crossing into Gaza…

From The Jerusalem Post (dated May 30, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (ME/EU)

Merkel promises 'fair' solution on EU constitution
German chancellor Angela Merkel has said she is determined to find a way out of the EU's institutional impasse before Berlin gives up the bloc's presidency at the end of next month… With the June summit looming and the ambitious goal of getting the framework of a new treaty plus a timetable agreed, much of the discussion is now focussing on France's idea for a simplified treaty. According to president Nicolas Sarkozy, who is energetically lobbying the idea among national capitals, the new treaty should keep proposals such as the EU foreign minister and the permanent president of the bloc, give the EU a legal personality and extend qualified majority voting. Italian prime minister Romano Prodi, a strong proponent of the original more extensive constitution which Italy has ratified, gave his backing to these elements after meeting the French president on Monday – but shied away from using the expression simplified treaty. Last week, European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso said that there was a consensus emerging around Mr Sarkozy's proposals…

From EUObserver.com (dated May 29, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (EU)

Two-speed Europe would solve constitution deadlock, Prodi says
Mr Prodi – claiming to speak on behalf of 18 EU states which have largely ratified the original text – rejected "radical changes" to the foreseen institutional reforms. He listed the EU foreign minister, a lengthier presidency, the extension of qualified majority voting, the union's legal personality and the abolition of its three-pillar structure as elements which "must be preserved." "If the compromise does not convince us, we will not sign it," he warned, clearly stating that a multi-speed Europe could bring about the long-sought breakthrough on the controversial issue…

From EUObserver.com (dated May 22, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (EU)

£20m railway line under the cloud of Vesuvius and mafia war
There is a "one-in-two" chance of the volcano erupting in the next few years. A survey of the volcano last month warned that 300,000 people could die in an eruption…

From The Telegraph (London) (dated May 16, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (EU/ND)

Merkel gives up on God in EU treaty
German chancellor and Christian Democrat Angela Merkel has voiced regret there will be no reference to Christian roots in the revised EU treaty, amid controversial remarks about damage to churches in Turkish Cyprus at a meeting of religious VIPs in Brussels…

From EUObserver.com (dated May 15, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (EU/RE)

Voting and veto issues to dominate EU constitution discussions
The voting system and where member states should have a right to a veto are shaping up to be the two biggest issues at the treaty summit [in June] in Brussels with diplomats already gearing themselves up for a long meeting…

From EUObserver.com (dated May 10, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (EU)

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)

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)

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)

Bush OKs 'integration' with European Union: Congress never asked about new obligation
President Bush signed an agreement creating a "permanent body" that commits the U.S. to "deeper transatlantic economic integration," without ratification by the Senate as a treaty or passage by Congress as a law. The "Transatlantic Economic Integration" between the U.S. and the European Union was signed April 30 at the White House by Bush, German Chancellor Angela Merkel – the current president of the European Council – and European Commission President José Manuel Barroso. The document acknowledges "the transatlantic economy remains at the forefront of globalization," arguing that the U.S. and the European Union "seek to strengthen transatlantic economic integration." The agreement established a new Transatlantic Economic Council to be chaired on the U.S. side by a cabinet-level officer in the White House and on the EU side by a member of the European Commission…As WND has reported, Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez repeatedly has pushed for North American integration, much as the April 30 agreement proposes closer U.S.-EU integration. Mexico's ambassador to the U.N., Enrique Berruga, has called for a North American Union to be created in the next eight years…

From WorldNetDaily (dated May 8, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (US/EU/LA)

France wants to save major part of EU constitution, Sarkozy aide says
France's Nicolas Sarkozy will seek to maintain as much of the rejected EU constitution as possible in the upcoming talks on a new treaty for the bloc, a top aide to the president-elect has told EUobserver… His comments indicate that Mr Sarkozy is in favour of a re-packaged text containing essentially the same elements…

From EUObserver.com (dated May 8, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU)

Sarkozy takes French presidency
Conservative candidate Nicolas Sarkozy has won the hotly-contested French presidential election…[Marking a major change in policy] he said the US could count on France's friendship, but urged Washington to take a lead in the fight against climate change. He also said he believed deeply in European integration, but appealed to France's partners to understand the importance of social protection…

From BBC News (dated May 6, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU)

Prodi favours two-speed EU if mini-treaty adopted
Italian leader Romano Prodi has said his country will not "sign up just to any compromise" on the revised EU constitution, adding that a minimalist solution - emerging as the most likely deal ahead of EU talks in June - should prompt member states which favour deeper integration to go ahead on their own…

From EUObserver.com (dated May 3, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU)

Putin not able to track all nukes
Russian President Vladimir Putin told President Bush he could not account for all of Moscow's nuclear weapons at the same time al Qaeda was seeking to purchase three Russian nuclear devices on the black market, former CIA Director George J. Tenet said…

From The Washington Times (dated May 2, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/AP/ME/WT)

Germany Rediscovers the US as a Partner
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has reoriented Germany away from Russia and toward the United States. Expanded economic ties are just one area of renewed cooperation.... It is virtually unprecedented in German history for a chancellor to be so unreservedly aligned with the US…Merkel…wants to expand Germany's close ties with the United States and is on the verge of making a pact with America the cornerstone of her foreign policy…She, along with US President George W. Bush and President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso, will establish a "new trans-Atlantic economic partnership." The ultimate goal of this partnership is to fuse together what are still the world's two largest economic blocs into something Merkel calls "structures similar to a domestic market." Later, some sort of political structure may be added. Merkel is focused on "shaping globalization" -- not in opposition to, but together with the United States…

From Der Spiegel (Germany) (dated April 30, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/US)

Germany leads fresh moves to revive EU constitution
Moves to revive the failed EU constitution were gathering pace Wednesday with Germany mooting changes to reach consensus and EU Commission head Jose Manuel Barroso planning a summit on the issue…

From EUBusiness (dated April 25, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU)

Blair seeks EU constitution by the 'back door'
Tony Blair was accused yesterday of preparing to introduce a scaled-down European constitution by the "back door" before he quits as Prime Minister this summer. The Conservatives and the UK Independence Party reacted angrily after Downing Street confirmed Mr Blair did not believe a referendum would be needed on a new European treaty expected to be agreed during his final days in office…

From The Telegraph (London) (dated April 24, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/BR)

Catholic Church buries limbo after centuries
The Roman Catholic Church has effectively buried the concept of limbo, the place where centuries of tradition and teaching held that babies who die without baptism went. In a long-awaited document, the Church's International Theological Commission said limbo reflected an "unduly restrictive view of salvation"…

Reuters story at Yahoo News (dated April 20, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/RE)

Thousands of Britons leave country for Australia, Spain, France
Around 500 Britons a day are leaving the country, with Australia, Spain and France the most popular destinations, although far more new immigrants are arriving, official figures showed Friday…

Agence France-Presse story at Yahoo News (dated April 20, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (BR/EU)

German army in new racism row
A video showing a German army instructor telling one of his soldiers to envision African-Americans in the Bronx while firing his machine gun was broadcast Saturday on national television. The video, coming after scandals involving photos of German soldiers posing with skulls in Afghanistan and the abuse of recruits by instructors, seemed likely to raise more questions about training practices in Germany's conscript army…The instructor tells the soldier, "You are in the Bronx. A black van is stopping in front of you. Three African-Americans are getting out and they are insulting your mother in the worst ways ... Act." The soldier fires his machine gun several times and yells an obscenity several times in English. The instructor then tells the soldier to curse even louder…

Associated Press story at CNN (dated April 14, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/WT)

German backing for US anti-missile shield
Europe as whole could profit from US plans to place anti-missile bases in Poland and the Czech republic, while in the long run the EU is heading towards a common army, Germany's defence minister has said. Warsaw and Prague on Thursday (12 April) received political backing from the German EU presidency for their controversial plans to host a US defence system aimed at intercepting possible ballistic missiles fired from states such as Iran…

From EUObserver.com (dated April 13, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/US/WT)

Europe: Majority supports strike on Iran
Over half of Europeans would support a preemptive military strike to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, a poll released last week by a London think-tank reports…

From The Jerusalem Post (dated April 8, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/BR/ME/WT)

Big Three strengthen grip on EU
The power of Europe’s Big Three — Britain, France and Germany — has increased rather than diminished after the expansion of the European Union to 27 members, according to an academic analysis of decision-making at the highest level…

From The Times (London) (dated April 6, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/BR)

Europe’s best hope
Everyone in France and Europe realizes, however, that the economy had nothing to do with Sunday's historic verdict. Mr. Sarkozy won because of his tough rhetoric against the Islamist "thugs" (his word) who aim to rule the country, where over 10 percent of the population already adheres to the Muslim faith…

From Brussels Journal editor Paul Belien in The Washington Times (dated May 9, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/RE)

Sarkozy’s victory
Are we in for a new day in U.S.-European relations? Sunday's convincing victory by Nicolas Sarkozy in France's presidential election suggests as much. Mr. Sarkozy has been unabashedly pro-American in his campaign and his victory speech… Then he went on to call for American leadership -- in a cause that unfortunately has by now just about achieved the status of religion in Europe [global warming]… A word of caveat will be in order, however, about Mr. Sarkozy. As Atlanticist as he is, he must be seen as also very European in outlook. Mr. Sarkozy is dedicated to the expansion of the European Union, has proposed a treaty revision that will allow the union to expand beyond its current 27 members and has promised to restore France to its leadership position within Europe. He has proposed withholding EU subsidies from new EU members that practice tax competition with "old Europe." And he opposes membership for Turkey of the European Union…

From Helle Dale in The Washington Times (dated May 9, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/US)

French Voted for National Identity
Nicolas Sarkozy's core issues were not "free trade" and getting along with the U.S. or cutting taxes and ending welfare. Those things might be in his agenda somewhere, but they are not what got him elected…Sarkozy got elected because of his stand on immigration, national identity and patriotism — simple as that…

From Diane Alden at NewsMax (dated May 7, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU)

The Stealth Constitution
Eurocrats want to prevent the people from derailing their political integration project -- in part by marketing their constitutional plans as just a few technical changes. Go home, people, their motto might be, nothing to see here, nothing to vote about. Sound familiar? In 2004, we were told that the constitution was just a "tidying up" exercise. At the time, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said he had no qualms about "commending the constitution to the country as a success and as a major step forward in creating the kind of Europe the British people want." He changed his mind a few months later, after French and Dutch voters rejected it, admitting that the constitution "did not reflect the concerns of ordinary people." There is little indication that the revived constitution would reflect these concerns any better. Yet once again we are being told that without a "mini-constitution" or "constitution lite" or whatever Europe's leaders like to call it, the EU would stop functioning. This is familiar scare-mongering…[German Chancellor] Merkel wants to present a program for a new constitutional treaty at the June EU summit. To that aim she floated the idea of simply "using different terminology without changing the legal substance" of the constitution -- constitution by stealth, in other words. According to the one-page document leaked to the press, the idea is to give the EU a "single legal personality" and full competence in foreign, justice, home and immigration affairs. Clearly, lessons have been learned from the previous shambles. They're just not the right ones…The plan is for a new treaty to be finalized under the French EU presidency in December 2008. That would be just in time for the European Parliament elections in 2009 and, probably, British general elections in the same year. Prime Minister Blair and his successor, almost certainly Gordon Brown, might want to be careful about what they are going to do in the next few weeks. For years now, we have seen the gradual transfer of sovereign powers from accountable governments to a largely unaccountable Brussels bureaucracy. If there were proposals on the table to roll back some of these powers…then there might actually be some popular interest in a new EU treaty. But every past EU treaty has acted as a harsh solvent on our national sovereignty, the bedrock of our freedom and democracy. That is why Europe's citizens should be given the opportunity to express their views on the next EU treaty in referendums…

From Conservative Member of the European Parliament for the East of England Geoffrey Van Orden in The Wall Street Journal (dated May 7, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/BR)

Europe (finally!) gets the War on Terror
Two headline-grabbing signals came from Europe this week, one from Chancellor Angela Merkel in Germany, and the other from Nicolas Sarkozy, the presidential front-runner in France. Both show a new desire to heal the Atlantic alliance, which has been badly strained in the last several years…Europe can no longer deny the Islamist threat…Nicolas Sarkozy as French Minister of Interior has had to deal with two years of nightly riots by thousands of ethnic Muslim adolescents…Europeans are aware of the spread of nuclear technology from Pakistan and North Korea to Syria, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. Today Paris is only fifteen minutes away from an Iranian ICBM attack. That threat will not materialize until Iran obtains nukes, but that may be only a matter of time. So the Europeans might not say it out loud, but they finally "get" the War on Terror --- six contentious years after the Twin Towers fell. They still hope that a Democrat will be elected in 2008, because they are more comfortable with a European-style socialist in the White House. But given the common threat to civilized countries, they are prepared to work with the US either way. Hillary as president may declare the end of the words "War on Terror" --- for PR purposes --- but in truth, everybody knows that the anti-jihad struggle must be either won or lost, and the West cannot afford to lose. Angela Merkel was visibly shocked by Ahmadinejad's open threats of a nuclear Holocaust against Israel last year. She has signaled very clearly that Germany takes the Iranian threat very seriously…Bottom line: We are beginning to see a reconstruction of the Western alliance after a decade of unprecedented propaganda attacks from the European Left. That does not mean that Europe will be subservient to the US as it was in the 1950s and 60s. Europe will try to stay neutral in any nuclear standoff between the US and Iran, even though it also wants to be protected against Iranian blackmail. Ideally, Europe wishes to control America as its own foreign legion…

From James Lewis at American Thinker (dated May 3, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/WT)

Al-Qaida Sleeper Cells Await
Day in and day out, there are new revelations about terrorist sleeper cells in the United Kingdom and other European countries…The law of averages would indicate the near-certainty of terrorist sleeper cells in the United States…

By United Press International and Washington Times editor Arnaud de Borchgrave (dated May 3, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (US/BR/EU/RE/WT)

The Result of European Unification Will Be War
The EEC was put across as a free trade zone. I never voted for the creation of a supranational, unaccountable government that does not submit to the will of the people via an election. In fact, I did not vote at all. I have never had a say on whether I want my country — which no longer exists — to be a part of this. The EU has no mandate and never has. Now, Germany is a more apt comparison than you might realise. Bismarck conceived the unification of Germany as a means to prevent the German kingdoms from fighting each other. He began to implement it when those same kingdoms were on the verge of signing an unprecedented peace treaty; his manipulations caused a war that gave him the pretext to simply conquer those other kingdoms, or trick them in to treaties that irrevocably tied them to his Imperial Germany. He began with a customs union. The EU has not resorted to wars to implement itself, but it began in the same way, and with the same aims. The EU was conceived as a means to prevent another war like the Great War, but it was interrupted by the Second World War. By the close of that war the political landscape had so changed that the concept of the EU was obsolete before the first treaties were even signed. It is consequently an institution looking for a role, and it has since found that role by re-positioning itself as a counter to American ‘hegemony’, a second pole against the US’s presence in the world as a super-power. This is in itself a foolish proposition; historically it is more foolish still, because history demonstrates that it will cause more trouble than it is worth. Bismarck’s united Germany did become peaceful for a while, but that peace didn’t last long. The internal fractures of the new Imperial Germany soon started to cause strife and resentment amongst the people of that country. A solution was found in the redirection of the national angst toward external enemies. The eventual result was the great war. The result of that was World War 2. The ‘unification’ of the nations of Europe is the same thing on a much larger scale. It is perhaps no coincidence that incidents of anti-Americanism have risen sharply since the signing of Maastricht. The EU has placed itself in opposition to the United States. It has inveigled itself so deeply in to the lives of its ‘citizens’, so deeply embedded itself in to every aspect of life, that everything a person does is regulated in some way by the EU…None of this was done with the consent of Parliament. None was done with the consent of the people of this nation…Sooner or later the sheer volume of regulations will start to affect people culturally. Our culture is slowly being eroded and destroyed by this vile institution, our national identities removed, our freedoms erased, and the end result? Inevitably, it will be war, but before that will be a morass of dull, lifeless existence for millions of people shorn of everything that once made their nations great. What price the ability to spend the same coin in 20 countries?...

Quote from Englishman Archonix at Gates of Vienna reposted at The Brussels Journal (dated May 1, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/BR/WT)

Towards a Totalitarian Europe
Former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovksy has warned that the European Union is on its way to becoming another Soviet Union. When people who have worked on higher levels in the EU system note similarities as well, it is time people start taking this idea seriously. In 2002 Louis Michel, the then Belgian minister of foreign affairs and today a member of the European Commission, told the Belgian parliament that the EU will eventually encompass North Africa and the Middle East as well as Europe…The Constitution will move even more power into the hands of the already powerful and unaccountable elites. The EUrocrats are basically saying that since somebody may conceivably threaten our democratic system at some point in the future, we might as well dismantle it now, in an orderly fashion. Moreover, whereas constitutions have traditionally outlined the basic workings of the state, the proposed European Constitution, running into hundreds of pages, betrays an almost sharia-like desire to regulate all aspects of life. It is an instrument of control, a blueprint for an authoritarian state. Nazi Germany was a totalitarian state, but such societies can also be transnational, as was the Soviet Union, which the EU resembles more than just superficially: An artificial superstate run by an authoritarian bureaucracy that overrides the will of the people and imposes its ideology on the populace. Are we back in the E.U.S.S.R? Although the EU, due to its transnational nature, most closely resembles the Soviet Union, there are also similarities with Nazi Germany. The EU was created by perfecting the Big Lie technique that was championed by Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels: Serve people massive lies, so big that they cannot believe that anybody would lie about it, and they will believe them, at least for a while. It should also be mentioned that Adolf Hitler stated his admiration for the warlike nature of Islam. The admiration was mutual. Muhammad Amin al-Husayni, the Mufti of Jerusalem, was an Arab nationalist and passionate anti-Semite who cooperated closely with Nazi Germany during World War II. Later, leadership of Palestinian Arabs was transferred to Husayni’s nephew Yasser Arafat, a very dear friend of the EU, who in 2002 gave an interview in which he referred to "our hero al-Husayni." If the EU is supposed to protect us from the horrors of Nazi Germany, it is remarkable how many of its traits it is copying, such as flirting with Arab strongmen and admiration for Islam. The Muslim immigration the EU is promoting to Europe has triggered the largest wave of anti-Semitism since the rise of, well, Nazi Germany, and may yet force the remaining Jews to leave. That Europeans should support this organization to prevent a new totalitarian regime is a sick joke. The EU is a lot closer to totalitarian states than the supposedly evil nation states it is going to replace. Since there is no European demos, no pre-political loyalty or shared public community, and since legislate power has been transferred to the unelected EU Commission, there is no way the EU can function as a democracy in any meaningful sense of the term. The EU can only become one giant Yugoslavia, either ruled by an authoritarian oligarchy in the fashion of Tito, or fall apart into civil wars. The slow, but steady stifling of free speech through legislation and Muslim Jihad violence indicates an ominous trend: Europe is moving in a totalitarian direction…

From blogger Fjordman at The Brussels Journal (dated April 30, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/ME/RE/WT)

Merkel’s Letter Could Change the Course of the [EU Constitution Struggle]
I am clutching in my hot, trembling hands the most extraordinary document I have come across in eight years of Euro-politics. It is a letter from the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, to her fellow EU heads of government. In it, she proposes a scheme to bring back the constitution under a new name – or, as she artlessly puts it, “to use different terminology without changing the legal substance”. Now this, in itself, is not surprising. Many of us have suspected all along that the Eurocrats would try to bring back the constitution surreptitiously: I have written as much in these pages. What IS shocking is the brazenness. Mrs Merkel flagrantly admits that she wants to preserve intact the content of the European constitution, making only “the necessary presentational changes”… Let us be clear: the European Constitution amounts to a constitutional revolution, perhaps the most far-reaching since the civil and religious upheavals of the 17th century. This revolution is taking place, not as the result of popular insurrection or foreign occupation, but because the governing party is abusing its majority…

From Daniel Hannan at The Brussels Journal (dated April 27, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/BR)

The Coming Era of Russia’s Dark Rider
History really does run in cycles. Take Europe for example. European history is a chronicle of the rise and fall of its geographic center. As Germany rises, the powers on its periphery buckle under its strength and are forced to pool resources in order to beat back Berlin. As Germany falters, the power vacuum at the middle of the Continent allows the countries on Germany's borders to rise in strength and become major powers themselves. Since the formation of the first "Germany" in 800, this cycle has set the tempo and tenor of European affairs. A strong Germany means consolidation followed by a catastrophic war; a weak Germany creates a multilateral concert of powers and multi-state competition (often involving war, but not on nearly as large a scale). For Europe this cycle of German rise and fall has run its course three times-the Holy Roman Empire, Imperial Germany, Nazi Germany-and is only now entering its fourth iteration with the reunified Germany. Russia's cycle, however, is far less clinical than Europe's. It begins with a national catastrophe…The Russians search desperately for the second phase of the cycle-the arrival of a white rider--and invariably they find one. The white rider rarely encapsulates what Westerns conceive of as a savior--someone who will bring wealth and freedom. Russian concerns after such calamities are far more basic: they want stability… Putin is the current incarnation of Russia's white rider, which puts him in the same category as past leaders such as Vladimir Lenin and, of course, Russia's "Greats": Catherine and Peter…In the third phase of the Russian cycle, the white rider realizes that the challenges ahead are more formidable than he first believed and that his (relative) idealism is more a hindrance than an asset. At this point the white rider gives way to a dark one, someone not burdened by the white rider's goals and predilections, and willing to do what he feels must be done regardless of moral implications. The most famous Russian dark rider in modern times is Josef Stalin…In particularly gloomy periods in Russia's past (which is saying something) the white rider himself actually has shed his idealism and become the dark rider. For example, Ivan the IV began his rule by diligently regenerating Russia's fortunes, before degenerating into the psychotic madman better known to history as Ivan the Terrible. Under the rule of the dark rider, Russia descends into an extremely strict period of internal control and external aggression, which is largely dictated by Russia's geographic weaknesses…

Stratfor.com Intel Briefing reposted at BillOReilly.com (dated April 20, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/WT)

EU Constitution: Like it or not
British conservative Daniel Hannan writes that the superfatted EU "Constitution" is back, under a different name after the French and Dutch voters rejected it. The "Constitution" is of course an undemocratic juggernaut designed to empower the French-style upper class of Europe in a New Class autocracy. This is therefore crucial struggle between Europe's political elites and those who still believe in electoral democracy. The socialist ruling class wants total power, with elections as icing on the cake. The "Euroskeptics," like Hannan and a small number of others, still want elections to be meaningful choices by the voters. The Euroskeptics have been slowly losing ground for half a century, while the new ruling classes have been gaining. Europe is moving toward a soft version of the Soviet model…If the United States remains faithful to its heritage, there is likely to be a gradual ratcheting away from Europe. We may find more in common with Australia, India, and Japan. In any case, the United States should not become the foreign policy tool of Europe --- which is of course the goal of EU policy…

From James Lewis at American Thinker (dated April 18, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/US)

The Crux of the Matter: Is America the EU’s Enforcer?
A truly horrifying possibility is emerging from this discussion, and it is so awful I have been slow to take it in. As a preface, I have always been utterly aghast at the American elites’ support for the unification of Europe. Why did Americans support the elimination of historic states and nations in this unaccountable, post-national, post-human, air-conditioned nightmare of the EU? It seemed the ultimate betrayal. It was also horrible that there was never any debate in America about this. No major voices in U.S. politics have opposed European unification or even questioned American support for it. But now a worse possibility – though it is only a possibility - appears on the horizon. It is that America is not merely the friend and cheerleader of the EU project, but its enforcer. Our troops and missiles and tanks are in Europe to prevent any uprising by European patriots and nationalists against the EU tyranny…

From Lawrence Auster at The Brussels Journal (dated April 17, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/US/WT)

Hezbollah’s German Helpers
Holding currently both the E.U. and G-8 presidencies, Berlin would be in a strong position to head the fight against an organization dedicated to the destruction of Israel and the replacement of Lebanon's fragile democracy with a Tehran-backed Islamic state. So far, however, Germany has squandered this unique opportunity to push for a Hezbollah ban. Berlin's passivity is consistent with its tolerant approach toward the "Party of God" over the past two decades…Why does the German government tolerate [its] activities? First, the Hezbollah leadership in Beirut recognizes the value of a German safe haven. It demands that Hezbollah followers carefully obey German law, which Berlin claims they do "to a large extent." Experience from attacks in the U.S., Britain and elsewhere suggest, though, that terrorists follow the law up and until the point they decide to strike. Second, too many Germany policymakers uncritically accept the idea that there is supposedly a political Hezbollah -- an Islamist but legitimate movement independent of those Hezbollah terrorists who have murdered hundreds of people around the world. To believe that fairy tale, they even ignore Hezbollah's own words. As Mohammed Fannish, member of the "political bureau" of Hezbollah and former Lebanese energy minister put it in 2002: "I can state that there is no separating between Hezbollah's military and political arms"…

From European Foundation for Democracy senior fellow Alexander Ritzmann and Foundation for Defense of Democracies chief operating officer Mark Dubowitz in The Wall Street Journal (dated April 17, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/ME/WT)

Bin Laden's Eurofighters
242 jihadists, 31 attacks, 28 networks. After examining militant Islamism in Europe, researchers have found that self-recruitment is on the rise among terrorist leader Osama bin Laden's Eurofighters, and that there is no such thing as a standard terrorist…

From Der Spiegel (Germany) (dated April 11, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/RE/WT)

A Question of Peace or War in Europe
In spite of days of controversy, today's signing of the "Berlin Declaration" went ahead without amendment. The pivot and crux of the controversy is the announcement of an intended replacement for the failed EU constitution which will have the same content under a different title and is to be ratified as quickly as possible… German Chancellor…Merkel warned against refusing so-called integration. She said "The ideal of European unification is today again a matter of war and peace"… The members of the "Strategy Group" took into their consideration the merging of European national forces into a unified EU army… The German Federal Chancellor has now made this suggestion her own. "In the EU itself we must move closer to a common European army," demanded Angela Merkel in Berlin's tabloid press last week… To increase pressure on the smaller EU members, the German government is dropping bellicose hints and portraying their EU plans as a method of avoiding descent into a new catastrophe - war. The Federal Chancellor announced in tones pregnant with disaster, "We should not take peace and democracy for granted. The ideal of European unification is still today a question of war and peace." Similar threats previously enabled the Federal Government to force through the Eastern expansion of the EU against heavy resistance in the mid-Nineties. Then the present Minister of the Interior, Wolfgang Schaeuble, declared in a strategy paper that "Germany might be required or compelled by its own security considerations to achieve the stabilisation of Eastern Europe alone and in the traditional manner." That paper was published on 1st September 1994, the 45th anniversary of Germany's attack on Poland. The Federal Chancellor's warning is a spin on those threats of war in a scarcely concealed form. It makes clear the radical determination of German foreign policy to achieve a total reordering of Europe under the aegis of Berlin, enforced by all means - apparently not excluding the military…

From Ron Janssen at Global Politician (dated April 11, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/WT)

Merkel wants EU leaders to stick to 2009 treaty deadline
German Chancellor Angela Merkel…renewed her commitment to presenting a road map for reviving the EU Constitution at the Summit in June, but said that there will be no ready made solution…She urged EU leaders to stick to the timeline laid out in the Berlin Declaration, to have institutional reforms in place by 2009. Merkel encouraged the European Parliament to actively involve citizens in the discussions on the EU Constitution and proposed that the parliament organises "civil-society hearings" in order to bring the European public into the debate. She suggested that such citizen hearings could take place as soon as May, one month before the German Presidency presents its road map for the constitutional treaty to EU leaders. Commission President José Manuel Barroso echoed Merkel's call, saying that "by delivering results we create political momentum". He stressed Europe's need for a "treaty settlement" in order to face global challenges, such as climate change, energy security, migration and global competition. On the issue of the constitutional treaty, Socialist group leader Martin Schulz said: "We shall not have the treaty that we wanted – but this does not mean that we shall not have one at all"…

From EurActiv.com (dated March 29, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (EU)

Russia Eyes Stronger Partnership With China
Russia has renewed its pledge to build its strategic partnership with China, in a thinly veiled attempt to oppose what Moscow views as American unilateralism…

From Cybercast News Service (dated March 27, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (EU/AP)

Germany recalling its Christian roots
German Chancellor Merkel, currently also serving as president of the European Union, said that Europe should recognize in some way its Judeo-Christian heritage even if in a document separate from its Constitution…

Catholic News Agency story at Spero News (dated March 27, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (EU/RE)

Papal Address on 50th Anniversary of Treaty of Rome
These [Catholic Christian] values, which make up the soul of the continent, must remain in the Europe of the third millennium as "ferment" for civilization. If in fact these values should disappear, how could the "old" continent continue to function as "leaven" for the entire world? If, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, the governments of the Union wish to "be nearer" to their citizens, how can they exclude an element essential to European identity such as Christianity, when a vast majority continues to identify with it? Is it not surprising that today's Europe, while hoping to be seen as a community of values, more and more seems to contest that universal and absolute values exist? Does not this unique form of "apostasy" from itself, before even from God, lead to doubts about its identity?...

From Pope Benedict XVI at ZENIT News Agency (Vatican) (dated March 27, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (EU/RE)

EU weakens own identity by ignoring Christianity, warns Pope
Pope Benedict XVI has criticised EU leaders for ignoring Christianity in their reflections over the union's 50th birthday and warned about demographic trends that put Europe's future at risk…

From EUObserver (dated March 26, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (EU/RE)

EU leaders call for rapid reforms
EU leaders have adopted a declaration calling for some of the reforms proposed in the bloc's ill-fated constitution to be carried out by 2009…European leaders are divided about how closely any new treaty should resemble the constitution. Germany and Italy are keen to preserve it largely intact, while the UK and the Netherlands want a very different text…Some leaders also believe the project will come unstuck again if member states decide to ratify the treaty by referendum. But British EU commissioner Peter Mandelson told the Sunday AM programme on BBC 1 that big changes to the EU had been carried out in the past without a public vote. "I suspect that the changes that will be proposed and I hope they will be will be rather fewer with fewer constitutional implications then the single market that was created in the eighties and didn't have a referendum...[and] the Maastricht treaty that didn't have a referendum provided by the then Conservative government"...But a poll by a British Eurosceptic think tank, Open Europe, suggests that three-quarters of Europeans would like a referendum on any new treaty giving more power to the EU. According to the poll, carried out in all 27 EU countries, 41% of people in the EU would Yes in such a referendum and the same proportion, 41%, would vote against. However, a majority would vote No in 16 EU countries, including Germany…

From BBC News (dated March 25, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (EU)

Text of the Berlin Declaration
Declaration on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the signature of the Treaties of Rome…

From Europe’s leaders at BBC News (dated March 25, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (EU)

Merkel uses Berlin declaration to renew EU treaty push
European Parliament chief Poettering reminded leaders that MEPs want "the substance of the constitution - including our common values - adopted before the European Parliament elections in 2009." Italy's prime minister Romano Prodi, who spoke as the leader of the country where the Rome treaty was signed, gave the strongest pro-constitution speech. It was also in Rome where the disputed EU constitution was signed in 2004. "To continue building, we now need new rules, but not starting from zero," he said. "The treaty signed in Rome in October 2004 forms a very solid basis... a text signed by the 27 heads of state and ratified by 18 countries." But the pro-constitution speeches do not change the opposition to the text in Warsaw, Prague, The Hague and London…

From EUObserver (dated March 25, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (EU/BR)

Merkel vows to continue confidential EU constitution strategy
German leader Angela Merkel has said she will continue to apply her strategy of reviving the EU constitution by holding confidential talks with national officials, despite criticism that the strategy impedes democratic debate…

From EUObserver (dated March 25, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (EU)

Blair's Secret EU President Plan
Tony Blair is secretly backing plans to create a permanent President of Europe, in a move that could see him go head to head for the job with bitter rival Jacques Chirac…

From Daily Express (London) (dated March 25, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (EU/BR)

Virgin Mary in Bavaria Starts to Cry
The believers could hardly believe their eyes. The Madonna statue in a hostel for pilgrims in the Bavarian village of Heroldsbach suddenly started crying recently. But is it real? The local priest wants to have the tears sent to a lab for an authenticity test…Dozens of witnesses were on hand for the miracle…

From Der Spiegel Online (dated March 16, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (EU/RE)

Solana: EU supports Syrian initiative to regain Golan Heights
The European Union supports Syria's goal of regaining the Golan Heights from Israel, the EU foreign policy chief said after meeting President Bashar Assad on Wednesday…

From Haaretz (Tel Aviv) (dated March 14)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (EU/ME/WT)

The Mid-Life Crisis of the EU
The EU's champions claim its great achievement is to have kept the peace of Europe. "Sixty years of peace means that the image of the EU as a bastion against war is losing its resonance," said Jose Manuel Barroso, head of the European Commission, the executive arm that sits in Brussels. Intending no disrespect to Barroso, it was not the EU that kept Europe secure and at peace. America kept the Red Army from the Elbe and the Rhine. America saved Western Europe from the fate of the Hungarians in 1956, the Czechs in 1968 and the Poles in 1981. America pulled the British and French chestnuts out of the Balkan fires of the 1990s. German-French amity is a product of statesmanship, but also of the defeat of France in 1940 and the reduction of Germany to rubble by the American, British and Soviet armies in 1944-1945. The 50th anniversary of the EU brought to the fore as many questions as telegrams of congratulations. Quo vadis? Where is Europe going?...

From columnist Pat Buchanan at RealClearPolitics (dated March 30, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (EU/BR/US)

Evil Americans, Poor Mullahs
Forty-eight percent of Germans think the United States is more dangerous than Iran, a new survey shows, with only 31 percent believing the opposite. Germans' fundamental hypocrisy about the US suggests that it's high time for a new bout of re-education…

From Der Spiegel Online Berlin bureau chief Claus Christian Malzahn (dated March 29, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (EU/US/ME/WT)

Eurocrat empire building
The [EU] commissioners are not elected and are accountable to no one. This deliberate democratic deficit was built in as a structural feature of the EU. An unelected and unaccountable structure makes it easier to impose centrally driven change on a society… Paul-Henri Spaak, the Belgian foreign minister who authored the Rome treaty, dreamed of a European superstate. He hoped that such a state might one day become as powerful as the United States. [He said] "I think we have re-established the Roman Empire without a single shot being fired." Washington foolishly supported the European unification project. It failed to see that democratization and decentralization are far more likely to preserve peace than unification and centralization…Empires…are carnivorous monsters. They have to keep growing in order to avoid unraveling. Hence, they inevitably grow ever more totalitarian and expansionist. The EU is interfering more and more in the daily lives of its subjects. At the same time, its territory continues to expand, from the original six members to the present 27. By definition, there is no end to this process. The Leviathan has to be fed...Five years ago, Louis Michel, then the Belgian minister of foreign affairs and at present a member of the European Commission, told the Belgian parliament that eventually the EU will encompass the entire Mediterranean basin, including North Africa and the Middle East. Mr. Michel also posited that only by incorporating both Israel and Palestine into the EU will there be peace between them. The European-Mediterranean ("Euro-Med") partnership between the EU and the countries of the Maghreb (an Arab word meaning "the West" and denoting Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya -- the North African Muslim countries to the west of Egypt) was established specifically to promote the economic, cultural and political integration of the EU and the Maghreb countries…Theoretically the [EU] constitution should have been discarded after its rejection at the polls. The Europeanist politicians, however, refuse to accept the electorate's "no." "It has to be yes," they say, as they know that the empire will collapse if it cannot expand. They are now writing down a new and binding institutional framework, which, as German Chancellor Angela Merkel made clear, shall not be put before the electorate in a referendum. Empires cannot be democracies…

From Brussels Journal editor Paul Belien in The Washington Times (dated March 28, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (EU/ME)

The Way the World Doesn't Work
It seems to me the elite internationalists are doing their darnedest to remake the world in a way that clearly doesn't work. Take, for example, European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana's recent proclamation that his confederation of nations that brought us the two global wars of the 20th century will support Syria in efforts to regain the Golan Heights…There is a cacophony of international cries today for this land to be returned to Syria, from whom Israel captured it in the 1967 Six-Day War and again in 1973 after Syria briefly recaptured it and used the high ground for a massive armored assault on the Jewish state…But is it even accurate and proper to use the word "return" in this case? What is the history of the Golan? To whom does it rightfully belong? I'll bet it will surprise almost everyone reading this column today -- perhaps even many Israelis -- to learn that the Golan, which so many assume to be the undisputed territory of Syria, has been out of Damascus' control for far longer than it was within its control. It also might shock readers to learn how Syria gained control of the Golan Heights for the 19 years prior to 1967. Syria stole it -- at least part of it -- from Jews…

From WorldNetDaily editor and CEO Joseph Farah at Human Events Online (dated March 28, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (ME/EU/WT)

Gesture Politics: The EU reacts to rising discontent
Last week the Czech president dismissed the Berlin Declaration, which endorses the "social model" and its associated labor market inflexibility. But most European leaders want to push ahead to a politically integrated Europe and to stick to existing policies in doing so. They can ignore voter discontent about issues such as immigration because the EU has what is called a "democratic deficit." They seem to like it that way. Their response to the defeat of the Euro-Constitution in referendums two years ago was to introduce it piecemeal under rules that don't need voter approval…

From National Review editor at large John O’Sullivan (dated March 27, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (EU/BR)

Germany in limelight as EU turns 50
Chancellor Angela Merkel took center stage of European politics Sunday, putting Germany back in the lead of European integration on a day that two of the bloc's most controversial leaders probably attended their last EU summit meeting. Britain's Tony Blair, an Atlanticist, is expected to leave office in May, and President Jacques Chirac of France, a Gaullist, announced last week that he would not be running for re-election when French voters elect a new president in two rounds of voting in April and May. Their exit from EU politics leaves Merkel as one of the few European leaders who might be able to bridge the differences between London and Paris that have divided the entire bloc…European integrationists say that the common defense policy still has a long way to go. Merkel has now mapped out her goal for the EU, saying that the EU should have its own army. Her advisers have called this a logical consequence of the defense initiative that Blair and Chirac began…

From the International Herald Tribune (dated March 25, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (EU)

A Question of Peace or War in Europe
In spite of days of controversy, today's signing of the "Berlin Declaration" went ahead without amendment. The pivot and crux of the controversy is the announcement of an intended replacement for the failed EU constitution which will have the same content under a different title and is to be ratified as quickly as possible. This arrangement has occasioned great displeasure in several European capitals. The most influential German think tank, the Bertelsmann Foundation, maintains that European unification must be driven forward; the greatly contested EU constitution is to be merely the "point of departure". For the first time, the foundation recently presented a draft paper to top politicians from twenty European countries and the USA over the "strategic reorientation" of the EU in which it recommended, as a first step, that the national armed forces of all member states should be combined into a single EU army. The German Chancellor has taken up this suggestion. Frau Merkel warned against refusing so-called integration. She said "The ideal of European unification is today again a matter of war and peace"…

From German-Foreign-Policy.com (dated March 25, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (EU/WT)

50 years of surrender to the EU
One of the subtlest strategies employed by the EU, as it has gradually taken over more and more power from national governments, has been the way it has left each country's national institutions in place. Monarchies and presidencies, national parliaments, civil services and legal systems have all been left standing, looking outwardly as if not very much has changed. Yet over the decades they have all been gradually hollowed out from within. Today, over vast areas of each country's national life, the power to decide policies and make laws no longer lies in national capitals. It has been transferred to our new 'supranational' centre of government in Brussels. And the clever thing is how successfully most of this has been kept out of sight…

From the Daily Mail (London) (dated March 23, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (EU/BR)

Honey Bee Disappearances Continue: Could Pesticides Play A Role?
Bees are still disappearing in massive numbers…Over the past six months, massive disappearances of honey bees have been reported in at least 24 states; internationally in Poland and Spain; and it’s still unknown how many more honey bees will be gone as more northern hives are opened this spring in North America and Europe. Right now, dozens of scientists are trying to find out what is causing what they call “colony collapse disorder,” or CCD. I talked with Penn State entomologist Diana Cox-Foster, Ph.D., who has analyzed some bees found in deserted hives. Dr. Cox-Foster has seen as many as five different viruses and unidentified fungi in the bees. She says that is two times more pathogens than she’s ever seen before in honey bees. The implication is that something has seriously damaged their immune systems, leaving the honey bees more vulnerable to disease than before. But what could that be? So far, there are still no answers, but there is a long list of possibilities, which include pesticides and genetically modified crops, also known as GMOs or GMs. Scientists say there is no direct evidence that genetically modified crops are linked to honey bee die-offs. But I have been learning that not much is known about the accumulating impact of pesticides on insects, animals and even people when you consider in this modern world how many combinations of pesticides are used. One pesticide by itself might not destroy honey bees. But what happens when farmers spray herbicides, fungicides, insecticides and rodenticides on land that also has genetically modified crops with pesticides built-in?...

From Linda Moulton Howe at Earthfiles.com (dated March 16, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (US/EU/ND)

Russian democracy is dying
We do know that over the past half dozen years, Vladimir Putin's government has extinguished all of Russia's independent broadcast media and severely curbed most print media. We do know that Putin has ended elections for local government and centralized all power in the Kremlin. We do know that he has used administrative powers to seize some of Russia's largest corporations and transfer ownership to his supporters -- and to confiscate gas fields leased to foreign investors. And now we have a clearer idea of how Putin has been able to get away with these dangerous moves toward dictatorship: The Russian people support him. Last week, the EU-Russia Centre released the results of a major new survey of Russian public opinion. Only 16% of those surveyed identified the "Western model" of democracy as the ideal. More than twice as many, 35%, said they "prefer the Soviet system before the 1990s." Only 10% of Russians regarded their country as belonging to the West. 71% said that Russia was not part of Europe. Almost half of Russians, 45%, regard Europe as a threat...We have no shortage of things to worry about in our troubled world: Islamic extremism, Chinese aggression, European weakness, American isolation. Now add one more. A potentially great power, endowed with vast energy wealth and inheriting a vast nuclear arsenal, is deliberately and with the approval of the majority of its people turning its back on democracy and freedom. Instead of joining the West, Russia is finding its way to dangerous alliances with Iran, Syria, China, and who knows what other sinister forces. This grouping of anti-democratic states is extending its reach around the world -- even perhaps to the suburbs of Washington D.C....

From columnist David Frum in the National Post (Canada) (dated March 10, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (EU/AP)

Europe’s Stark Options
As the American columnist Dennis Prager sums them up, "It is difficult to imagine any other future scenario for Western Europe than its becoming Islamicized or having a civil war." Indeed, these two deeply unattractive alternative paths appear to define Europe's choices, with powerful forces pulling in the contrary directions of Muslims taking over or Muslims rejected, Europe an extension of North Africa or in a state of quasi-civil war…

From Mideast expert Daniel Pipes for National Interest (dated March-April 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (EU/ME/RE/WT)

Spain and Germany up pressure on EU constitution
Spain has reaffirmed its role of a vocal promotor of the EU constitution with renewed criticism of the UK, France and the Netherlands, while Germany is also upping the pressure saying it wants a new-style EU treaty before the end of the year…

From EUObserver.com (dated March 1, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends March 1, 2007 (EU)

Israelis Want To Be In EU
A full 75 percent of Israelis would like Israel to be part of the European Union, and 11 percent said they would leave Israel if they were granted EU citizenship, according to a new survey…

Ynet News story at TotallyJewish.com (dated February 22, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends March 1, 2007 (ME/EU)

French sovereignty passions clash with EU legal primacy
A passionate debate has emerged in France over the challenge posed by EU law to national sovereignty, focusing on the question of whether the ultimate legal authority lies with the French constitution or with the European Court of Justice…

From EUObserver.com (dated February 20, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends March 1, 2007 (EU)

Secret plan to reunite Catholics, Anglicans under Pope
Radical proposals to reunite Anglicans with the Roman Catholic Church under the leadership of the Pope are to be published this year, according to a statement leaked to the media today. The proposals have been agreed by senior bishops of both churches…

London Times story in The Australian (dated February 19, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends March 1, 2007 (EU/BR/RE)

Giants meet to counter US power
India, China and Russia account for 40 per cent of the world’s population, a fifth of its economy and more than half of its nuclear warheads. Now they appear to be forming a partnership to challenge the US-dominated world order that has prevailed since the end of the Cold War. Foreign ministers from the three emerging giants met in Delhi yesterday to discuss ways to build a more democratic “multipolar world”…

From The Times (London) (dated February 15, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends March 1, 2007 (EU/AP)

Diss a 'gay'? Go to jail!
Two Christians in Australia have been indicted for criticizing Islam, and another for criticizing Zionism. A filmmaker has been threatened with arrest for using the word "homosexual" rather than "gay." Now a German priest faces jail time for publicly criticizing abortionists, and in Holland, "fornicators" and "adulterers" are protected classes and cannot be criticized. All courtesy of the concept of federal "hate crimes" legislation, which unless defeated soon could be mandatory in the United States, warns a rising chorus of critics…

From WorldNetDaily (dated February 15, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends March 1, 2007 (BR/EU/US/RE/MO)

Putin attacks 'very dangerous' US
Russian President Vladimir Putin has criticised the United States for what he said was its "almost uncontained" use of force around the world. Washington's "very dangerous" approach to global relations was fuelling a nuclear arms race, he told a security summit in Munich. Correspondents say the strident speech may signal a more assertive Russia…

From BBC News (dated February 10, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends March 1, 2007 (EU/WT)

Criminal code raises fear over EU powers
For eurosceptics, the European Court of Justice ruling in September 2005 was like giving a child a loaded gun. It opened the way for the European Union to designate a new class of pan-European crimes, and how they should be punished. In Britain there was an outcry. In future decisions taken in Brussels could be applied to the British courts, denying parliament the right to determine what constituted a crime and levels of sentencing. Concerns grew when the European Commission interpreted the ruling as being far wider than the case at issue: environmental crime. It produced a list of offences it believed should also be covered by the new rules, including counterfeiting, money laundering and computer hacking. The Commission's decision this week to create common criminal rules for environmental crimes is seen by some as a sign that Brussels will take full advantage of the court ruling to stealthily advance EU powers…

From Financial Times (London) (dated February 7, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends March 1, 2007 (EU)

Israel to request upgrade in EU standing
Israel scheduled to request status equal to that of Switzerland and Norway…

From Ynet News (dated February 7, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends March 1, 2007 (ME/EU)

Moscow-Tehran Ties
“The lion and the bear are hunting the eagle.” That's how a refugee from Tehran's reigning ayatollahs put it when he called me this week about recent developments in his homeland. The lion to which my friend referred was on the coat of arms of nearly every Persian king for more than a thousand years. The bear, of course, is imperial Russia. And we're the bird. It's an apt metaphor. Vladimir Putin, Moscow's current czar, is behaving like a bear awakened from hibernation — hungry and territorial. His recent words condemning U.S. foreign policy are mirrored by actions — both overt and covert — aimed at undermining U.S. national security. While eschewing animal symbols on their green, white and red flag, the Islamic radicals running Iran's theocracy act like lions on the prowl — dangerous to any prey. And while the simile is unlikely in nature — the lions and bears in my friend's parable have certainly teamed up to hunt the eagle. The only trouble with the allegory is that the United States is acting more like an ostrich than an eagle…

From Fox News commentator Lt. Col. Oliver North (dated February 22, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends March 1, 2007 (EU/ME/WT)

It Is Time to Face Russia’s Real Agenda
Secretary of State Rice seems baffled by Vladimir Putin’s recent speech denouncing the United States in some of the harshest terms possible…But the time for treating Russia like a trustworthy ally in fighting global terror, or having common interests with the United States in Latin America, Africa or Europe has long passed. Only the administration, perhaps still tied by Bush’s peering into Putin’s soul, seems oblivious to what Russia really wants-to reestablish itself as a world power whose interests will often collide directly with the interests of the United States and its allies…

From author Douglas Farah (dated February 20, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends March 1, 2007 (EU/WT)

Russia steps back on the world stage
Vladimir Putin -- Russia's president, although the more accurate title would be godfather -- made headlines last week with a speech in Munich that set a new standard in anti-Americanism…Less amusing [than his hypocrisy in this] is the greater meaning of Putin's Munich speech. It marks Russia's coming out. Flush with oil and gas revenues, the consolidation of dictatorial authority at home and the capitulation of both domestic and Western companies to his seizure of their assets, Putin issued his boldest declaration yet that post-Soviet Russia is preparing to reassert itself on the world stage. Perhaps the most important line in his speech was the least noted because it seemed so innocuous. ``I very often hear appeals by our partners, including our European partners, to the effect that Russia should play an increasingly active role in world affairs,'' he said. ``It is hardly necessary to incite us to do so'…

From Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer at Townhall.com (dated February 16, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends March 1, 2007 (EU/WT)

Germany’s EU Plan: The Constitution Is Dead, Long Live the ‘Basic Law’
The speaker [in the European Parliament Feb. 13] was the President of the Parliament Hans-Gert Poettering putting forward what he would like to achieve in his period of office which runs until 2009 and the European elections….What got me is when through the simultaneous translation he said “Treaties are to be obeyed”…Today I got the [pre-prepared] English transcript of the text from the Parliament interpreters… “We intend to help to ensure that under the German Council Presidency a road map and a mandate are agreed at the summit in Brussels on 21 and 22 June, as the outcome of which full implementation of the substantive core of the European Constitution will be in place by the next European Parliament in 2009. I would like to remind you that the Constitutional Treaty was signed by all 27 governments. Of course we have to respect the results of the referenda.” This is where things get really serious. Please note the comment about the 2004 signing of the Constitution in Rome. Essentially when a head of government signs up, really that is all there is there. As far as I can gather – and yes I do have this on good authority – the plan is as this: Over the last few weeks German diplomats have been subtle arm twisting to get a text together for the Berlin March 25, 50th anniversary signing of a solemn declaration by the 27 heads of government. This solemn declaration is 95% written and is a great waft of well meaning guff about the continents liberal tolerant history and how all governments in the 27 are terribly nice, and how we all love fluffy bunny wunnys and kiddiewinks and motherhood and apple pie and so forth. Then on the evening of the Brussels Council Meeting and International Woman's Day (8th March) at a dinner in Brussels the final phrases will be included. This phrase will commit the signatories to the ratification of a ‘basic Law’ which will replace the Constitution. It will be short, much less that 50 pages unlike the Constitution that weighed in at well over 300. The word Constitution will be expunged. It will, as Mr Poettering points out, contain the substantive aspects of the Constitution including the Foreign Minister, the Defence Minister, the end of vetoes in 47 separate areas of policy, and so on…Poettering went on, “But regardless of that {the referenda results}: If a change of government in a country of the European Union calls into question what has been agreed, not only is society split in that nation, but our continent, which is quite complicated enough, is increasingly incapacitated. We must commit to our European legal principles: pacta sunt servenda – treaties are to be honoured.” {not obeyed, but maybe the interpreter was more accurate than the prewritten text, I don’t know} Eh, run that past me again. If a country votes for a government that opposes the Constitution – and yes he does mean the UK here, wake up at the back – then he is suggesting that the government, you know, the democratically elected one, has no right to recind a previous government’s position…

From Elaib Harvey at The Brussels Journal (dated February 14, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends March 1, 2007 (EU/BR)

McCreevy backs plans for single EU-US market
Charlie McCreevy has backed a suggestion by German chancellor Angela Merkel that the EU and US should create a giant single market. “I think it is a good idea to extend the internal market to other countries such as the US,” the Irish internal market commissioner said on Thursday…

From TheParliament.com (dated February 1, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (US/EU)

EU divisions on constitution grow
Despite Germany's efforts to conduct negotiations on the EU constitution discreetly, the rifts between member states are spilling out into the open. The UK Times reported on Thursday that London will refuse to sign up to any institutional changes if it does not secure a pledge that there will be no revival of the EU constitution. According to the newspaper, prime minister Tony Blair only wants a mini-treaty that would include changes to the voting system and introducing a more permanent president of the bloc instead of the current rotating system…

From EUObserver.com (dated February 1, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (EU/BR)

Rifts emerge over EU's 50th birthday declaration
Political divisions are emerging over the EU's 50th birthday declaration, with the European Commission set to propose an explicit reference to the need for a constitutional solution and with Germany pushing a social agenda…Poland is meanwhile set to reignite the debate on a reference to the union's Christian heritage in the EU constitution - now proposing to include "God" in the anniversary declaration…

From EUObserver.com (dated February 1, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (EU/BR)

Study: Anti-Semitic attacks hit record level in Britain in 2006
Anti-Semitic attacks reached record levels in Britain last year and peaked during the conflict in Lebanon, a study showed Thursday. Race hate incidents - ranging from death threats to physical assault - rose by more than 30 percent to almost 600. "These are the worst figures we have had in the 23 years since we have been monitoring it," said Mark Gardner of the Community Security Trust …British Jewish leaders say attacks have risen steadily since 2000, with British Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks warning that "a tsunami of anti-Semitism" was sweeping across Europe…

Reuters story in Haaretz (Tel Aviv) (dated February (dated January 1, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (BR/EU/RE)

Lieberman pushes Israel to join EU
Stumbling blocks to European Union membership such as the possibility that Israel might have to drop its Law of Return or the fact that Israel is physically located on the Asian continent have not deterred Israel Beiteinu head and Minister for Strategic Affairs Avigdor Lieberman from pushing to make what many would call a "pipe dream" into reality within the next five years. While the Israeli has not formally asked for membership in the 27 member body of European states and the EU does not view it as a possibility at this time, Lieberman has still put it high on his agenda for security, economic and cultural reasons…

From The Jerusalem Post (dated January 31, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (ME/EU/WT)

Iran prepared to provide security in Caucasus, C. Asia with Russia
Iran's foreign minister said Sunday the Islamic Republic is prepared together with Russia to provide security in the Caucasus and Central Asia. Secretary of Russia's Security Council Igor Ivanov is holding talks in Iran with the country's top officials. Manouchehr Mottaki said Iran and Russia could play an effective role in providing security in the region, especially in the Caucasus and Central Asia…

From Russian News and Information Agency Novosti (dated January 28, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (ME/EU/AP/WT)

Report shows anti-Semitism on the rise
Press conference by Jewish Agency reveals startling rise in anti-Semitic incidents across the world in 2006, including two murders. Austria sees 66 percent rise in incidents, Germany sees 60 percent rise, Russian incidents up by 20 percent…

From Ynet News (dated January (dated January 28, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (EU/RE/WT)

'Never on Sunday,' Scientologists told: Group considered business, not a church, in Germany – sales banned on worship day
A controversial new Scientology center that opened two weeks ago in one of Berlin's upscale neighborhoods won't be open on Sundays like Christian churches in the German capital – the government considers the group a business rather than a church and, as such, it falls under the country's rigid Sunday closing laws…

From WorldNetDaily (dated January 27, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (EU/RE)

Germany spearheads EU cross-border police plan
Moves are under way to impose Europe-wide rules that could mean the sharing of personal information such as DNA, national police operating across borders and even air marshals boarding foreign planes. The initial push for stronger security legislation, aimed at tracking down serious crime suspects and terror groups, comes from Germany, currently presiding over the 27-nation block…

From EUObserver.com (dated January 26, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (EU)

New call to save EU constitution
The 18 EU countries that have approved the bloc's draft constitution have urged the nine other members to help revive the entire beleaguered document…

From BBC News (dated January 26, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (EU)

Olmert's party proposes handing West Bank to Europe
A member of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's Kadima party yesterday proposed transferring control of the West Bank to a European task force until the establishment of a Palestinian state, at which time the strategic territory would be handed to security forces associated with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. The proposal comes after WND broke the story earlier this week that, according to top European and Egyptian diplomatic sources, Israel has been conducting behind-the-scene negotiations to hand over most of the West Bank to Abbas' security forces. The sources said the transfer of security control to Abbas would be coordinated by the European Union and Jordan…

From WorldNetDaily (dated January 25, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (ME/EU/WT)

NSC seeks to place Israel in NATO
In an effort to establish more effective deterrence in the face of Iran's race to obtain nuclear weapons, [Israeli] government ministries are, for the first time, working on drafting a position paper that will include guidelines and a strategy for turning Israel into a full-fledged member of NATO, The Jerusalem Post has learned. The paper is being drafted by an interministerial committee made up of representatives from the Defense Ministry and the Foreign Ministry and headed by the National Security Council. The committee plans to complete the paper by the end of February and present it to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert for approval…

From The Jerusalem Post (dated January 23, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (ME/EU/WT)

Zeus devotees worship in Athens
Worshippers who believe in the 12 gods of ancient Greece have held a ceremony at the Temple of Zeus in Athens. This is a landmark event to celebrate official recognition of their religion by a court last year…

From BBC News (dated January 21, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (EU/RE)

Britain will never join an EU army
There is now no doubt that the German presidency intends to resurrect the corpse of the European Constitution. Part of the debate that will be reawakened will be about the EU's defence pretensions and the long-held desire of some Europeans to diminish the influence of America on the continent…Britain can never allow its troops to be sent into action by any supra-national body, still less one with no democratic accountability. This must remain the exclusive political territory of a sovereign British government. It cannot and must not be a role for the EU. But notwithstanding these problems, the Euro-defence train rolls on and we must make our position clear. Too often we have been involved in the early stages of clearly integrationist projects, in the vain hope that they will change direction later. A prime example is the European Defence Agency (Eda). While the Eda is officially about rationalising defence research and development across Europe, there are many who see it as an essential first step towards a single EU defence procurement programme, itself a precursor of an integrated EU defence force. There is nothing wrong with trying to avoid uneconomic research duplication, but the exclusion of Norway and Turkey from the process suggests that it is about EU rather than European defence…The EU may have a role in acting as a delivery mechanism for Nato in some circumstances: it must not be allowed to replace Nato. That would not be in Britain's national interest and it is that national interest that will shape the defence policy of the next Conservative government…

From British Shadow Defence Secretary Liam Fox (dated February 2, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (BR/EU/WT)

Nuclear trafficking: A radioactive subject
Clamping down on the trade in illicit nuclear materials sometimes offends Russia…The release last week of new tidbits about a Georgian sting operation which reportedly netted just short of 80 grams of highly-enriched weapons-useable uranium, a Russian citizen from Vladikavkaz in North Ossetia (a part of Russia) and several Georgian accomplices—was a “provocation”, thundered Russia's foreign minister…The Georgian case is alarming. The uranium being hawked was enriched to about 90%, and intended for weapons use (fuel for nuclear-power reactors is typically enriched to 5% or less; most research reactors run on more highly-enriched stuff, meaning 20% or more). Georgian officials say their prisoner revealed that his bagful came from an as yet undiscovered stash of 2-3kg; not enough for a weapon—that takes up to 25kg—but still a threat…And reported cases may hardly be the half of it...

From The Economist (dated February 1, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (EU/WT)

Germany Seeks to Revive EU Constitution
While the issue of the constitution isn't expected to be resolved until 2009, the steps being taken by the German presidency will be vital to its immediate future. As Europe's most powerful economy and one of the EU's founding members, Germany seems almost destined to resurrect the EU ailing constitution…

From OhmyNews (South Korea) (dated January 29, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (EU)

Merkel warns of 'historic mistake' over EU constitution
German Chancellor Angela Merkel put the spotlight firmly back on the EU constitution on Wednesday, warning it would be a "historic mistake" if a bloc-wide treaty were not agreed by early 2009…

From EUBusiness (dated January 17, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 18, 2007 (EU)

New parliament chair drops call for God in EU constitution
The new president of the European Parliament Hans-Gert Poettering has promised to act as a "fair and objective" president of the whole assembly, indicating that despite his personal convictions, he would no longer press for a reference to God in any revised EU constitution…

From EUObserver.com (dated January 16, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 18, 2007 (EU/RE)

EU in the hands of the centre-right
The election of a conservative politician to be head of the European Parliament means that the three main institutions of the EU are now in the hands of the centre-right. Parliament president Hans-Gert Poettering joins conservative European Commission president Jose-Manuel Barroso and fellow German Christian Democrat Chancellor Angela Merkel, in charge of the member states' council until the end of June…The big issues where technically all three institutions could have a say is the government push to revive talks on the EU constitution and the 50th Anniversary declaration of the bloc…Another point of interest in the coming months will be the so-called "German axis" with the president of the parliament, the head of the socialists and the EU presidency, all being German. Some MEPs have already expressed concern about the issue…

From EUObserver.com (dated January 16, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 18, 2007 (EU)

Far-right group formed in European parliament
A new extreme-right group, including veteran French firebrand Jean-Marie Le Pen and Mussolini's granddaughter, was formally created in the European parliament…[It’s called] the "Identity, Tradition, Sovereignty," group…

Agence France-Presse story at Yahoo News (dated January 15, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 18, 2007 (EU)

EU threatening parliamentary democracy, says ex-German president
Germany's state of parliamentary democracy is under threat from the European Union which is slowly taking away all the national parliament's powers, the country's ex-president has said…Roman Herzog pointed out that between 1999 and 2004, 84 percent of the legal acts in Germany stemmed from Brussels…

From EUObserver.com (dated January 15, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 18, 2007 (EU)

France 'no longer a Catholic country'
Barely half the French population describe themselves as Catholic, according to a poll released yesterday, sparking a leading religious publication to declare France "no longer a Catholic country". A poll published in Le Monde des Religions yesterday showed the number of self-declared French Catholics had dropped from 80 per cent in the early 1990s and 67 per cent in 2000 and to 51 per cent today. The number of atheists has risen sharply to 31 per cent from 23 per cent in 1994…

From The Telegraph (London) (dated January 10, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 18, 2007 (EU/RE)

Young women opt for abortion
More than half of ethnic Norwegian women under age 25 choose abortion if they get pregnant, according to a new study…

From Aftenpost (Norway) (dated January 09, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 18, 2007 (EU/MO)

The Strange Death of the Royal Navy: Brits Will Now Rely On Europeans For Their Defense
A 400-year epoch of world history is about to draw to a close. If Britain's current Labor government has its way, Britain's Royal Navy will mothball at least 13, and perhaps as many as 19, of its remaining 44 ships, or nearly half its effective fleet. With one bureaucratic stroke, the Ministry of Defense will end a naval tradition reaching back to Sir Francis Drake - reducing the Royal Navy, which 40 years ago was still the second-largest fleet in the world, to the size of navies of countries like Indonesia and Turkey. This decision, of course, has to be set against the background of Britain's decades-long decline as a world power. But it also reflects a struggle for the soul of Great Britain that has been going since World War II: Is Britain part of an English-speaking, Atlantic-based strategic alliance that includes the United States and Canada? Or is it part of Europe as envisioned by technocrats in Paris, Brussels and Berlin? Next month's final decision on whether to scrap the Royal Navy may supply us with the answer. Because the Blair government's drastic plans include more than taking existing ships out of commission. The service's entire future as a blue-water navy (that is, a navy capable of operations outside Britain's own waters) may be forfeit…

From author Arthur Herman in the New York Post (dated January 14, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 18, 2007 (BR/EU/WT)

Why Europe Abandoned Israel
To argue as the title of this article does, that Europe has abandoned Israel, is to suggest that it was once in its corner. And in fact, this is true…Today 40 years later, that residue of sympathy for the plucky underdog nation of Israel has disappeared…So why are the Europeans so hostile to Israel, and so sympathetic to the Palestinians? There are a number of factors that explain European behavior towards Israel. I have identified seven of them: 1) Europe's dependence on Middle East oil; 2) Europe's rivalry with the US; 3) The growing number of Muslims and their militancy; 4) The small number of Jews, and their passivity; 5) The role of elites in Europe's politics; 6) Europe's long term disease of anti-Semitism; and 7) The decline of Christianity in Europe…

From American Thinker chief political correspondent Richard Baehr (dated January 13, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 18, 2007 (EU/ME)

Far-right group formed in European Parliament
Far-right MEPs have managed to club together in the European Parliament, getting enough members to form a political group entitling them to EU funds…

From EUObserver.com (dated January, 9, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 10, 2007 (EU)

Three new languages added to the official EU list
Having just rung in the new year, the European Union has not only become bigger but it has also become three languages richer, bringing the Cyrillic alphabet, another Latin language and the first Celtic one as an EU official language, into the 27-nation bloc. Bulgarian, Irish and Romanian on Monday (1 January) became the three new official languages of the EU - raising the number to 23…

From EUObserver.com (dated January 1, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 10, 2007 (EU)

Fireworks fly as Romania and Bulgaria limp into EU
Two more ex-communist states make the historic step of joining the EU, but many of the perks of EU membership are to stay on hold for years… The event – seen as the completion of the fifth EU enlargement which began in 2004 – will see the EU's population swell from 463 million people to 493 million, its economy grow from 10.8 trillion to 10.9 trillion euros (the biggest single market in the world) and create new EU borders with Moldova and the Black Sea…

From EUObserver.com (dated December 31, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 10, 2007 (EU)

Slovenia joins the euro—with fanfare
Slovenia will on Jan. 1 become the first former communist state to adopt the euro, in what Prime Minister Janez Jansa has called the "biggest national achievement" since the country joined the European Union in 2004…

From MarketWatch (dated December 29, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 10, 2007 (EU)

German EU Presidency Faces Tough Challenges
Chancellor Angela Merkel plans to use Germany's European Union presidency in the first half of 2007 for a last-ditch effort to save the bloc's failed constitution while pushing forward on other key issues such as energy security… Events during the German presidency include a ceremony in Berlin on March 25 marking the 50th anniversary of the 1957 Treaty of Rome, which founded the EU's forerunner common market…

Deutsche Presse-Agentur story at Playfuls.com (dated December 27, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 10, 2007 (EU)

Report: Rise in European 'Islamophobia'
Muslims across Europe are confronting a rise in "Islamophobia" ranging from violent attacks to discrimination in the job and housing markets, a wide-ranging European Union report said Monday…

Associated Press story in The Jerusalem Post (dated December 18, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 10, 2007 (EU/RE)

Russia churches protest govt demand for faithfuls’ details
Church leaders in Russia have protested to the government over a law that has revived memories of Soviet persecution by requiring them to supply the names of their worshippers and the contents of weekly sermons…

Reuters story in The Peninsula (Qatar) (dated December 16, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 10, 2007 (EU/RE)

What if Britain HADN’T joined the EU?
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome, which launched what was eventually to become the European Union…Perhaps it may be timely therefore to mark this anniversary in our own way, by asking what Britain would be like today if, all those decades ago, our then-political leaders, such as Harold Macmillan and Edward Heath, had never taken us into it in the first place. If we had never entered the 'Common Market' back in 1973, would we now, as the Europhiles like to tell us, be just an impoverished little island standing sadly alone on the edge of Europe, gazing in envy at the success of the great project we were so foolish not to join? Or is it possible that we might in 2007 be living in a Britain significantly richer, happier, freer, more democratic, more selfrespecting and more at ease with itself than it is today?...

From Christopher Booker in the Daily Mail (dated January 6, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 10, 2007 (BR/EU)

EU ‘Trying to Brainwash Children in Classroom’
Row erupts over propaganda masquerading as fact…

From Yorkshire Post political editor Simon McGee (dated January 3, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 10, 2007 (BR/EU)

We need to be part of EU and NATO
I have recently suggested that it is in Israel's national interest to join the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)…My goal for Israel is to complete this global re-positioning within the coming five years…

From Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Avigdor Lieberman (dated January 3, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 10, 2007 (ME/EU)

Holland's Post-Secular Future Christianity is dead. Long live Christianity!
The idea that secularization is the irreversible wave of the future is still the conventional wisdom in intellectual circles here. They would be bemused, to say the least, at a Dutch relapse into religiosity. But as the authors of a recently published study called De Toekomst van God (The Future of God) point out, organized prayer in the workplace is just one among several pieces of evidence suggesting that Holland is on the threshold of a new era--one we might call the age of "post-secularization." In their book, Adjiedj Bakas, a professional trend-watcher, and Minne Buwalda, a journalist, argue that Holland is experiencing a fundamental shift in religious orientation: "Throughout Western Europe, and also in Holland, liberal Protestantism is in its death throes. It will be replaced by a new orthodoxy." According to Bakas and Buwalda, God is back in Europe's most notoriously liberal country. Or rather: The Dutch are moving back to God. It seems an implausible hypothesis. After all, Europe was supposed to have entered the realm of post-Christianity, to use C.S. Lewis's term--a state of eternal unbelief from which there is no return. And yet, Bakas and Buwalda claim, the Dutch are turning back. Take the almost unnoticed reintroduction of crucifixes and other religious artifacts into the classrooms of Catholic schools throughout the country. Years of gradual but seemingly unstoppable secularization have given way to a reaffirmation of old religious identities. The change is also starting to affect the attitudes of pupils at these schools. In a recent newspaper interview, a head teacher at a Catholic secondary school in Rotterdam observed, "For years, pupils were embarrassed about attending Mass. Now, they volunteer to read poems or prayers, and the auditorium is packed"…

From Dutch columnist Joshua Livestro in The Weekly Standard (dated January 1, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 10, 2007 (EU/RE)

Happy Birthday to EU: [2007] marks the EU's 50th anniversary
In 2007 the European Union marks the 50th anniversary of another treaty—the Treaty of Rome, its founding charter. Government leaders have already agreed to celebrate it ceremoniously, restating their commitment to “ever closer union” and the basic ideals of European unity. By itself, and in normal circumstances, the EU’s 50th-birthday greeting to itself would be fairly meaningless, a routine expression of European good fellowship. But it does not take a Machiavelli to spot that once governments have signed the declaration (and it seems unlikely anyone would be so uncollegiate as to veto it) they will already be halfway towards committing themselves to a new treaty. All that will be necessary will be to incorporate the 50th-anniversary declaration into a new treaty containing a number of institutional and other reforms extracted from the failed attempt at constitution-building and—hey presto—a new quasi-constitution will be ready…

From The Economist (dated December 27, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 10, 2007 (EU)

Motherless Russia
Previous would-be conquerors of Russia such as Napoleon and Hitler failed due to her harsh winters and inexhaustible supply of men. Contemporary conquerors, and there are two eyeing Russia hungrily, apparently will have only the winters with which to contend. Some think that France will be the first European country in modern times to be taken over by Muslims due to her very large, violent immigrant population and effeminate native populace. Others point to the Netherlands, from which native Dutch people are beginning to flee in the face of hostile Islamism among the immigrants in that densely-populated nation. But Russia--a huge nation with vast natural resources, thousands of nuclear warheads, and until recently a global superpower—-may be the first to go under. This seems possible even though Russia suffers little from the suicidal tolerance and multiculturalism that afflicts Western Europeans. All the would-be conquerors, tyrannical tsars, and sinister Communists could not destroy Russia. Yet there is a force more powerful than all these, a force which can overcome comparatively minor factors such as wealth, size, and military power, and that is demographics. And it is demographics that will deliver Russia into the hands of chaos, Islam, China, or most likely a combination of all three…

From Population Research Institute vice president Joseph D’Agostino at Right Bias (dated December 22, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 10, 2007 (EU/AP/ME)

Is the E.U. America's Friend or Foe?
The reality is quite different. As this hugely ambitious but flawed project has taken shape, pol­icy differences between Europe and the U.S. have both multiplied and deepened… The one state­ment that I predict you will not hear from a spokesman for the E.U. Commission in Brussels is: "We applaud American leadership, and we will back the U.S. all of the way." Indeed, we have now reached the point where E.U. policy gives every impression of having been defined in opposition to U.S. policy and where it is abundantly clear that the European aspiration is to be a rival, not a partner… The other horror is that, as EU competence increases, so the ability of member states to propose their own laws for their own people shrinks until it is extinguished. That is the ultimate goal of the ever-closer union: but it entails a stark and anti-democratic removal of sovereignty from this area which impacts directly on our most basic freedoms and liberties. Now all of this might strike you as being purely Europe's affair. But let me remind you that the prin­ciple that U.S. interests are most likely to be served by the extension of democracy wherever possible has been one of the foundations of U.S. foreign policy…But U.S. policymakers have been remarkably slow to grasp that the supranational institutions of the new top-down Europe (to which the once inde­pendent European states have ceded sovereignty) are remarkably undemocratic. In the judgment of a former E.U. commissioner, it is clear that if the E.U. applied to itself the criteria that it recently applied to all new members, it could not be admitted to the E.U. because it is insufficiently democratic!…The attempt to create an independent and inte­grated European defense capability—or what the French refer to as Defense Europe—has some extremely serious implications for the United States. Indeed, as matters stand now I doubt whether Britain will be an effective ally in 10 years time even if the British people want this…

From John Blundell, director general of the Institute of Economic Affairs, London, at The Heritage Foundation (dated December 22, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 10, 2007 (US/EU/WT)

Pope speaks of Europe's Christian roots in holiday appearance
Pope Benedict XVI urged Europeans on Friday to turn to their "ancient Christian roots" to build the present and future of their continent. Making a traditional visit to the Spanish Steps on a holiday dedicated to Mary, the pope prayed [to Mary]…"Show yourself mother and vigilant guardian for Italy and for Europe so that from the ancient Christian roots peoples will know to draw new sap to build their present and their future"…

Associated Press story in the International Herald Tribune (dated December 8, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends December 12, 2006 (EU/RE)

Finland ratifies EU constitution
Finland ratified the EU constitution on Tuesday adding one more country to the list of member states having given the nod of approval to a document whose fate is still undetermined…

From EUobserver.com (dated December 5, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends December 12, 2006 (EU)

Everyone must love the EU... says Tony Blair
A multi-million pound propaganda war to force the British people to love the European Union and Brussels bureaucrats is to be launched by Tony Blair as part of his legacy as Prime Minister, it has been revealed. The operation to overcome strong opposition to the EU in Britain and soften them up in the event of fresh moves to forge closer links with Brussels was secretly agreed by Mr Blair and his Ministers at last week's Cabinet meeting. Details of the plan, obtained by The Mail on Sunday, show how the Prime Minister is so frustrated at his failure to persuade voters that the EU is a good thing, he is to spend a fortune from public funds in a final attempt to brainwash them before he resigns next year…

From the Daily Mail (dated December 2, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends December 12, 2006 (BR/EU)

Pope hailed for praying toward Mecca like Muslims
Pope Benedict wound up a fence-mending visit to Turkey on Friday amid praise from the local press for visiting Istanbul's Blue Mosque and praying toward Mecca "like Muslims"…

From Reuters (dated December 1, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends December 12, 2006 (EU/RE)

Pope says the goal of Ecumenical dialogue remains unchanged: one single visible Church
Speaking to the participants at the plenary session of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Pope Benedict recalled that the primary goal of ecumenical dialogue remains the same: to reach one, single, visible Church…

From Catholic News Agency (dated November 17, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends December 12, 2006 (EU/RE)

Germany’s Rising Anti-Semitism?
Right-wing adolescents and young Muslims are displaying levels of anti-Semitism that were long considered unthinkable in Germany. At many German schools, the word "Jew" is becoming an insult again. German politicians don't seem to know how to respond…

From FrontPage Magazine (dated December 12, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends December 12, 2006 (EU/RE/MO)

The Damned of Darfur
A half-million dead in Darfur; 2.5 million refugees - not counting the corpses lost in the sands or terrified survivors in hiding. Surely, the world will act? No. The world talks. While the militias kill - and years pass. The United Nations looks away - its signature gesture when human rights are violated. Welcome to the triumph of global hypocrisy. Europe wrings its hands - as Europe always does - but declines an invitation to the dance. After all, "responsible" governments can't play fast and loose with another state's sovereignty. No dictator or president-for-life would be able to get a decent night's sleep. So Sudan's Islamo-fascists continue to kill with impunity…

From columnist Ralph Peters in the New York Post, reposted at FrontPage Magazine (dated December 12, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends December 12, 2006 (GI/AF/EU/WT)

The Frankish Empire Strikes Back
The European Union would have you believe it's the latest sign of progressive humanity, a peaceful and prosperous socialist union where previously only war and discord used to reign. Skeptics might point out that the EU is basically a revived Frankish Empire (5th-10th century CE), an attempt to unify Germany and France in an effort to control all of Europe. With the return of the dark side of the European psyche after fifty years, the biggest rationale for the EU is fear of its own people, who are thought to be closet Nazis by the leftist elites...

From James Lewis at the American Thinker (dated December 3, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends December 12, 2006 (EU)

The Reality of Eurabia
Another response to Ralph Peters column against the notion of Eurabia…

From Aaron Hanscom in FrontPage Magazine (dated December 1, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends December 12, 2006 (EU/RE)

They Report, You Decide (with Update From Mark Steyn)
Mark Steyn responds to Ralph Peters column against the notion of Eurabia…

From Power Line (dated November 26, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends December 12, 2006 (EU/RE)

The ‘Eurabia’ Myth
Muslims take over Europe? Sorry, there’s no chance… The historical patterns are clear: When Europeans feel sufficiently threatened - even when the threat's concocted nonsense - they don't just react, they over-react with stunning ferocity. One of their more-humane (and frequently employed) techniques has been ethnic cleansing…

From columnist Ralph Peters in the New York Post (dated November 26, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends December 12, 2006 (EU/RE)

Taking charge: Germany and Japan strive to regain their military might
More than 60 years after their defeat in the second world war, Japan and Germany appear finally to be shedding an abiding legacy of the conflict. Public signals from leaders in Tokyo and Berlin in the past few weeks suggest both are moving towards developing military forces that reflect their global economic clout…

Financial Times story at World Security Network (dated November 17, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends December 12, 2006 (EU/AP/WT)

Pope blocks move to allow Catholic priests to marry
The pope said yesterday that there would be no change to the rule of celibacy for Roman Catholic priests, after summoning advisers to the Vatican to consider the actions of a rebel excommunicated archbishop…

From The Times (London) (dated November 17, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 17, 2006 (EU/RE)

Most Germans Oppose Turkish Membership of EU, Survey Shows
Three in every five Germans oppose Turkish membership of the European Union, a twice-weekly survey by polling company FG Wahlen showed…

From Bloomberg (dated November 10, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 17, 2006 (EU/ME)

Charges Sought Against Rumsfeld Over Prison Abuse
lawsuit in Germany will seek a criminal prosecution of the outgoing Defense Secretary and other U.S. officials for their alleged role in abuses at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo…Germany was chosen for the court filing because German law provides "universal jurisdiction" allowing for the prosecution of war crimes and related offenses that take place anywhere in the world…

From Time magazine (dated November 10, 2006)Posted to Current World News & Trends November 17, 2006 (GI/EU/US/WT)

Preparing for the Wrath of Vesuvius
Vesuvius has been quiet for the last 62 years -- and that's cause for concern. Italian authorities are preparing for the next eruption of the most dangerous volcano in the world…

From Der Spiegel (Germany) (dated November 6, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 17, 2006 (EU/ND)

Sound the alarm – Nato is failing
Nato's job, according to a classic cold war dictum, was to "keep the Americans in, the Germans down, and the Russians out". As the Atlantic Alliance prepares to gather in Riga for the most miserable summit meeting in its history, it is losing on all three fronts…

Economist story in The Telegraph (London) (dated November 17, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 17, 2006 (US/EU/WT)

No speedy Balkan enlargement as EU urges reforms
The European Commission has remmended holding off on Western Balkan enlargement until the "medium to long-term" in a keynote report today, urging all the six states in the region to do more on political and economic reform before the accession process can move forward…The text says "the question of Kosovo's future status, relations with Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina's assumption of the greater ownership of its governance" will top EU priorities in 2006-2007, while stressing differences in the degree of compliance with EU criteria in six the Western Balkan states that eye future membership of the union…

From EUObserver.com (dated November 8, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 8, 2006 (EU)

German court deals blow to Berlin's EU constitution plans
Germany's plans to put the EU constitution back on track early next year have been dealt a blow by the country's constitutional court in Karlsruhe. The court on Tuesday (31 October) said it would not rule on whether the EU charter was compatible with the German constitution until after a final decision had been taken on the overall fate of the document, which has been on political ice since it was rejected by French and Dutch voters last year…

From EUObserver.com (dated November 2, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 8, 2006 (EU)

Ongoing 'intifada' in France has injured 2,500 police in 2006
This might have dropped below the radar, but Al Qaida and its allies are literally battling the Crusaders every day in Europe. And so far, Europe isn't doing so well. "We are in a state of civil war, orchestrated by radical Islamists," said Michel Thoomis, secretary general of the Action Police trade union. "This is not a question of urban violence any more. It is an intifada, with stones and firebombs." The French Interior Ministry has acknowledged the Muslim uprising. The ministry said more than 2,500 police officers have been injured in 2006. This amounts to at least 14 officers each day…

From World Tribune.com (dated October 27, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 8, 2006 (EU/RE/WT)

Leaders Meet in Berlin to Bolster EU Defense Force
EU industry and government leaders are meeting in Berlin to discuss a host of defense topics, including making sure that European mobile battle groups are ready to report for duty early next year…The EU's ultimate aim, according to the 1999 Helsinki agreement and the 2004 Headline Goal is to create by 2010 a European military force of 50 to 60 thousand soldiers who can be deployed within 60 days and sustained in the field for at least one year…

From Deutsch-Welle (Germany) (dated October 23, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 8, 2006 (EU)

Barroso warning on EU treaty
Attempts to revive the European Union draft constitution will only work if the name of the treaty is changed, because the word "constitution" is too alarming for those who want national governments to remain in charge, the European Commission president, José Manuel Barroso, said last night…Officially, the "Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe" is on hold, as governments engage in a "pause for reflection" on the No votes in the French and Dutch referendums on the text last year. The German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, has promised to place efforts to revive the constitution at the heart of her country's turn at the rotating presidency of the EU, which starts in January. Mrs Merkel, who hopes an expanded version of the constitution can be in place by the end of 2009, has also said she would be happy to call it something less provocative…

From The Telegraph (London) (dated October 17, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 8, 2006 (EU)

Germany wants EU constitution in place by 2009
Germany has thrown its political weight behind reviving the EU constitution, indicating it would like to see the shelved charter in place before the 2009 European Parliament elections. Chancellor Angela Merkel said Berlin would start the process of reviving the document - currently sitting in political limbo since it was rejected in two referendums last year - during its six-month presidency of the EU, starting in January…

From EUObserver.com (dated October 11, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 8, 2006 (EU)

Bulgaria, Romania to Join European Union on Jan 1
Bulgaria and Romania received the go-ahead to join the European Union on Jan. 1, winning billions of euros in subsidies and expanding the world's largest trading bloc to 27 countries…

From Bloomberg (dated September 26, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 8, 2006 (EU)

Europe Cheers: Europeans are thrilled: The Canadians of American politics are finally back
Today, Europeans are sighing in relief. Americans, they believe, have finally come to their senses and are beginning to put the Democrats back in charge…

From Ulf Gartzke in The Weekly Standard (dated November 8, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 8, 2006 (US/EU)

Turkey’s EU bid
The long-term future of Turkey, an important American ally in a tough neighborhood, as a secular, Western-oriented Islamic democracy could be substantially undermined by the rejection of its bid for membership in the European Union. The outcome of that process, however, is looking considerably bleaker than it did when accession talks began in October 2005. In a report to be released today, the European Commission criticizes Turkey on civil-rights reforms, including preserving the freedom of speech and curtailing torture, and meeting EU stipulations with regards to the divided island of Cyprus. The critical report will certainly be used to build a diplomatic case against Turkish membership, which could take a serious turn for the worse with a suspension of accession talks at the EU summit in December. Popular support for the process on both sides has dwindled…

From The Washington Times (dated November 8, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 8, 2006 (EU/ME)

Out in the open
In the face of consistent denials, we have been "banging on" from virtually the moment we started this blog, warning about the steady progress towards the formation of the European Army. Now we have company. Nato Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer is warning against "rivalry between the US-dominated alliance and the European Union on security issues", cautioning against engaging in a "beauty contest". According to Reuters, de Hoop Scheffer said they were increasingly competing with each other to win pledges of troops and equipment from stretched national armies…

From EU Referendum (dated November 7, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 8, 2006 (EU)

German Reich the Model for Europe Says German Minister
The medieval, Europe-wide German Reich is a valid model for the union of European countries today. So says the Berlin State Minister for Culture, Bernd Neumann. According to him, the memory of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation reveals “an inner historical consistency” with the founding and steady expansion of the European Union. These remarks are a preparation for the festivities in Berlin for the fiftieth anniversary of the European Economic Community (EEC)., to which the Federal Chancellor, Angela Merkel, has invited the German Pope, Joseph Ratzinger. Ratzinger is a committed supporter of the “Imperial Ideal” (Reichsidee) and is to speak on the “spiritual foundations” of Europe in the German capital. This government offensive to revitalise the Imperial Ideal will underline the German leadership of the EU and confirm fears in France, Great Britain and almost all the states of eastern Europe. Sections of the German elites are warning against an all-too-public assertion of German hegemony…

Translated from German-Foreign-Policy.com at Freenations (dated August 29, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 8, 2006 (EU)

Turkey will not join EU by 2020, most Europeans predict
A minority of around one third of Europeans believes Turkey and Ukraine will be members of the EU by 2020, a new German study has revealed. But EU citizens believe that by that time, the bloc will have a new treaty…

From EUObserver (dated September 21, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 22, 2006 (EU/ME)

Berlin and Dublin prepare for EU justice veto fight
Germany and Ireland are gearing up for a collision with the European Commission and the Finnish EU presidency over plans to abolish the national veto on justice and policing at a justice ministers meeting on Friday…

From EUObserver (dated September 20, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 22, 2006 (EU)

German Parliament Approves UN Naval Force for Lebanon
Germany's lower house of parliament approved deployment of a naval force to patrol Lebanon's coastline as part of the United Nations-led mission to police a cease-fire between Israel and the Shiite Muslim Hezbollah militia. The naval mission, the first German deployment to the Middle East since the end of World War II, was backed by 442 lawmakers, with 152 against and five abstentions. As many as 2,400 German personnel will now be deployed to the region, backed by a one- year mandate expiring Aug. 31, 2007. The mission brings the number of German soldiers serving overseas to above 10,000 for the first time in postwar history…

From Bloomberg (dated September 20, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 22, 2006 (EU/ME/WT)

Muslims demand pope convert to Islam
'Religion of peace' threatens destruction otherwise…Christian churches in the Middle East are vandalized, a Catholic nun in Africa is killed and Muslims have demanded that the pope convert to Islam – all because he read a quote from a medieval text that described Islam as "evil and inhuman." The pope has issued an apology for even referencing the historic text, emphasized that those views are not his, but still many in the Islamic world are demanding blood…

From WorldNetDaily (dated September 19, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 22, 2006 (EU/ME/RE/WT)

Violent Muslim Reaction Justifies Pope's Stated Concerns, Cardinal Says
As the Vatican continues trying to placate Muslims angered by Pope Benedict XVI's recent remarks, a senior Catholic leader has said the violent response justified the concern the pope had been expressing in the first place. Citing threats of violence against the pope in Somalia and Iraq, Archbishop of Sydney Cardinal George Pell said "the violent reactions ... showed the link for many Islamists between religion and violence, their refusal to respond to criticism with rational arguments, but only with demonstrations, threats and actual violence"…

From Cybercast News Service (dated September 19, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 22, 2006 (EU/ME/RE/WT)

German neo-Nazis gain a platform by taking seats in regional assembly
Germany’s new-Nazis swept into a regional parliament in the north-east state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern last night, comfortably winning seats in the state’s assembly for the first time…The result appears to confirm fears that the NDP [National Democratic Party] is now an insidious and established part of Germany’s political landscape, especially in the country’s depressed former communist east….

From The Guardian (Manchester, England) (dated September 18, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 22, 2006 (EU)

Al-Qaeda 'issues France threat'
Al-Qaeda's deputy leader has claimed that a radical Algerian Islamist group has joined al-Qaeda and is being urged to punish France, it has emerged…

From BBC News (dated September 14, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 22, 2006 (EU/WT)

Prodi proposes to chop down EU constitution
Italy's prime minister Romano Prodi has called for a slimmed-down version of the EU constitution…Mr Prodi said the lengthy text of the EU constitution which was rejected by French and Dutch voters last year should be trimmed down in order for it to have a second chance…

From EUObserver (dated September 14, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 22, 2006 (EU)

New map of Britain that makes Kent part of France...and it's a German idea
For centuries the people of Kent have called their county the Garden of England. So they might find it quite a surprise that - according to the European Union at least - they are actually part of France. Along with next-door Sussex, Kent has been rolled in with the Calais area on a map drawn up for Brussels. The counties now belong to the "Trans-Manche region". Under the plans from German cartographers, the East of England has also been shoehorned into a new region, which includes Scandinavia. The Western side of Britain has been lumped together with Ireland and the Atlantic coasts of France, Spain and Portugal. The Tories accused the EU of plotting to undermine nation states and even "wipe Britain off the map". They warned that the German government wants to make the downgrading of national borders a key plank of its presidency of the EU next year - despite the rejection of the European Constitution by voters…

From The Daily Mail (London) (dated September 4, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 22, 2006 (EU/BR)

Britons could all too soon become slaves of Europe
We have been lulled into a dangerous sense of complacency towards the evils capable of being inflicted upon us, our country and our way of life by the EU. Our proposed membership of the euro is, it seems, a dead letter. The French and the Dutch buried the EU constitution more than a year ago. However, something that could prove even more poisonous to our liberties than either of those anti-democratic impositions could be about to be foisted on us. This Friday, in Tampere in Finland, there will be a meeting of EU interior and justice ministers. Up for debate is the matter of introducing qualified majority voting (QMV) on criminal justice matters: or, to put it more plainly, surrendering our veto on these. The potential for damage to our freedoms if this happens is awesome: the end of habeas corpus, a threat to trial by jury and the capability of the EU to interfere in hitherto sovereign matters such as sentencing policy are but three of the consequences should our veto go…With the loss of habeas corpus…there would be no guarantee of our historic right to trial by jury. The way would be open for a Europe-wide police force answerable to no nation and subject to no parliamentary scrutiny. Indeed, this exists in embryo, since France, Portugal, Italy, Spain and Belgium already supply officers to something called the Euro Gendarmerie Force. This is a military police outfit and answers to the European Commission for its ultimate authority. It is, in this respect, the way of the future – an entirely undemocratic and largely unaccountable future at that…

From Simon Heffer in The Telegraph (London) (dated September 20, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 22, 2006 (EU/BR)

Translating the Pope
Extremist Muslims have found another excuse to bloody the streets, this time over a quotation from a lecture Pope Benedict XVI delivered last week at the University of Regensburg in Germany. My guess is that not many of the outraged Muslims have actually read the lecture -- it's not the sort of thing one lightly skims between effigy-burnings…Contrary to what fanatics have insisted, the pope was as critical of the West as of Islam, if not more so. While Islam suffers faith without reason, he said that Western culture suffers from reason without faith. His point was that the two cultures cannot enter into a productive dialogue unless they both recognize that faith and reason are inextricably bound. Islam has to drop its sword and the West has to make room for the divine…How interesting that the emperor and the Persian could debate these issues several centuries ago, but 21st-century man is driven mad by ideas that challenge him…

From columnist Kathleen Parker at Real Clear Politics (dated September 20, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 22, 2006 (EU/RE/ME/WT)

The Pope's Big Mistake: Invoking Past Conflict
Yes, the embattled Pope deserves impassioned support from all people of decency and good will and, yes, the pathetically predictable Islamic over-reaction to his recent words demonstrates once again the primitive, tribal, insecure essence of the so-called "Religion of Peace." Muslim crazies, always searching for some new basis to encourage fanatical hostility toward the West, distorted the Pontiff's substantive, thoughtful address at the University of Regensburg by ripping a single quotation wholly out of context and imputing to Benedict himself some incidental sentiments communicated by his Medieval source. Nevertheless, by choosing to cite that source in the first place, Pope Benedict made one crucial mistake: by discussing the conflict between Islam and Christianity in a fourteenth century context he provided the nostalgic perspective that the Islamists relish, and that all "infidels" (Christians, Jews and others) should scrupulously avoid…

From radio host and columnist Michael Medved at Townhall.com (dated September 20, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 22, 2006 (EU/RE/ME/WT)

Jihad Enablers: The pope, the protesters & White Guilt
Why Pope Benedict quoted Manuel is hotly debated. But one explicit reason was to enunciate the Church’s opposition to using faith to justify violence or intolerance. And this is where the hilarity comes in. A Pakistani foreign-ministry spokeswoman responded: “Anyone who describes Islam as a religion as intolerant encourages violence”…And just this week, clerics in Gaza reportedly suggested that the pope convert to Islam to save his own life. But let us not dare suggest that even a whiff of intolerance can be detected in the Islamic world. If you say otherwise, I will cut off your head. It may be amusing to note how so many Muslims are eager to confirm a stereotype in the process of denouncing that very stereotype, but it’s not so funny when they put their jihad where the mouth is. Churches were attacked in the West Bank and a nun in Somalia was murdered, allegedly in reaction to the pope’s comments. Al Qaeda’s franchise in Iraq announced “We shall break the cross and spill the wine. ... God will (help) Muslims to conquer Rome. ... (May) God enable us to slit their throats.” But this isn’t primarily about al Qaeda or even the war on terror. Note that the parliaments and governments of Islamic nations — our allies in the war on terror — have been at the forefront of the anti-pope backlash…

From National Review Online editor Jonah Goldberg (dated September 20, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 22, 2006 (EU/RE/ME/WT)

The rage of Islam
To bank the firestorm ignited by his address in Regensburg, Germany, Pope Benedict XVI declared himself "deeply sorry" for the effect his remarks have had on the Muslim world. The words of the Byzantine emperor he quoted, Benedict explained, were "from a Medieval text which do not in any way express my personal thoughts." The pope's subject was the "profound harmony" of biblical truth and Greek thought. No conflict exists, he argued, between true faith and right reason. Contending violence is the antithesis of reason, he cited the "erudite Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus," during a siege of Constantinople, between A.D. 1394 and 1402. Benedict's words merit being put into context…

From columnist Pat Buchanan at WorldNetDaily (dated September 19, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 22, 2006 (EU/RE/ME/WT)

Oh No, There Is the Constitution Again
After French and Dutch voters rejected the EU Constitution in 2005, most nation’s expected the majority ‘No’ vote to mark the end of a shared EU constitution. This appears not to be case. A slimmed down version of the treaty is being created by national parliaments across Europe – by old and new members – in a recovery attempt to initiate a brief and condensed version of the rejected constitution. Potential future prime ministers and presidents are so confident of the new repackaged “mini treaty” that they have begun to sell it to electorates, often without any signs of research or prior interest in EU accession or enlargement

From James McConalogue at The Brussels Journal (dated September 18, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 22, 2006 (EU)

Mapping the New Europe
When Germans start to use the idea of “the European Area Development Concept” which includes chunks of the United Kingdom, one has to get really jumpy. This could also be translated as “European Spatial Development Concept” which, if anything would be worse. So when it was reported in The Telegraph this week that “New EU map makes Kent part of the same nation as France”, I thought it was worthwhile going back to some of the sources. My Austrian wife was rather concerned about the fate of her own country – even if she has been resident in the UK for decades and shares my concern about the fate of mine. After all Germany ate the country whole in 1938…

From Chris Gillibrand at The Brussels Journal (dated September 7, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 22, 2006 (EU/BR)

Turkey EU talks could be heading for breakdown, says report
EU negotiations with Turkey are heading for a major crisis this autumn, predicts a new report, with only the political will of the main players able to keep relations on track. The 52-page report by the Brussels-based Friends of Europe think tank suggests that there are four possible scenarios awaiting Turkey – that talks will get fully back on track; that there is only a partial derailment of talks; that there is a significant slowing down in talks or that talks stop altogether. Of the four, the author indicates that the last two scenarios are the most likely as Turkey, facing elections next year, has backed itself into a corner on the Cyprus issue and the EU has four member states prepared to play brinkmanship with the state of negotiations…

From EUObserver.com (dated September 4, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 6, 2006 (EU/ME)

Germany wants to bind Russia to EU
Germany is considering a revamp of the bloc's policy towards the east with Berlin looking at how Russia can be "irreversibly" bound to the EU. It wants to push the new policy when it takes over the presidency of the EU in January - the six-month stint at the helm of the bloc allows the country to promote particular themes…

From EUObserver.com (dated September 1, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 6, 2006 (EU)

EU and Russia to cement relations in new northern treaty
The new trend of closer EU-Russia relations is set to see a northern thrust with a permanent treaty setting out EU, Russia, Norway and Iceland's joint strategic goals for the Barents and Baltic seas…

From EUObserver.com (dated September 1, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 6, 2006 (EU)

Catholic Politicians in Europe Unite: Will Promote Church Teachings in Parliament
Catholics aren't ready to be pushed out of the public square, according to a new association of European politicians. In a meeting held Aug. 23 in San Marino entitled "Faith Becomes Culture in the Political Realm," the Association of the Europe Foundation was presented as a means to counteract anti-Catholic sentiment in European political environments… The association will be accredited to European institutions and take part in public sessions, presenting its own position, in full accord with the social doctrine of the Church, and will cooperate with those European deputies who share these values. The association will promote mention of the Christian heritage in the Preamble of the European Constitutional Treaty, which for the time being is at a standstill…

From ZENIT News Agency (Vatican) (dated September 1, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 6, 2006 (EU/RE)

EU Warns Against Quickly Imposing Sanctions on Iran
European leaders have expressed regret about Iran's refusal to suspend uranium enrichment work, but they say it is too early to decide on possible sanctions. France's Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin Friday called for more dialogue after Iran rejected a U.N. Security Council deadline Thursday to suspend enrichment activities…President Bush said there must be consequences for what he called Iran's defiance. He stressed that Iran cannot be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon…

From VOA News (dated September 1, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 6, 2006 (EU/ME/WT)

German Chancellor Wants More Christian EU Constitution
The new EU constitution should include more references to Europe's Christian values, the German chancellor has said after a meeting with the pope Monday…Her remarks are likely to rekindle the debate on religion in the EU and will give some welcome clout to the pope’s campaign to see Europe’s Christian heritage acknowledged. Mrs Merkel – the daughter of a Protestant pastor and leader of the Catholic CDU party – has already expressed her intent to reopen the debate on the inclusion of religious references in the constitution when Germany takes over the EU’s rotating presidency next January. Her efforts are likely to be met with strong opposition from secular France and increasingly secular Britain…

From Christianity Today (dated August 31, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 6, 2006 (EU/RE)

[EU] Lost in translation
Millions of pounds of taxpayers' money are being wasted every year on EU interpreters who turn up for meetings only to find they are not needed [because of Members of the European Parliament missing meetings]...The vast interpretation machinery for the EU's main institutions - the parliament, commission, the council, the economic and social committee and the committee of the regions - swallows up 1% of the EU's budget...Costs have soared since the "big bang" enlargement of 2004, when the number of member states grew from 15 to 25 and the number of working languages almost doubled from 11 to 20...The interpretation service is dwarfed by the translation service, which employs 2,000 people who translate EU documents into every working language...The EU's translation and interpretation operation, which costs around £450m a year, is the world's largest. It outstrips the UN, which has a mere six languages...Eurosceptics have seized on the report. Jeffrey Titford, of the UK Independence party, said: "This report shows the EU parliament and other institutions are likely to remain an expensive cacophony of tongues for the foreseeable future. The vast amount of money paid for interpretation is symbolic of how the whole European project ... is an impossible dream"...

From The Guardian (Manchester) (dated August 31, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 6, 2006 (EU)

EU to commit biggest force in its history to keep the peace
The European Union is to mount the biggest military operation in its history after agreeing yesterday to commit more than 7,000 ground troops for a United Nations mission policing the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire. The EU, at a meeting of its foreign ministers in Brussels, also agreed to send a further 2,000 specialist forces, mainly providing naval and air support…Its willingness to commit troops demonstrates that the EU is capable of military deployments independent of the US…

From The Guardian (Manchester, England) (dated August 26, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 6, 2006 (EU/ME/WT)

“Lebanese Security” Is the Pretext for the Naval Babel around Lebanon’s Shores
The extraordinary buildup of European naval and military strength in and around Lebanon’s shores is way out of proportion for the task the European contingents of expanded UNIFIL have undertaken: to create a buffer between Israel and Hizballah. Close investigation by DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources discloses that “Lebanese security” and peacemaking is not the object of the exercise. It is linked to the general anticipation of a military clash between the United States and Israel, on one side, and Iran and possibly Syria on the other, some time from now until November. This expectation has brought together the greatest sea and air armada Europe has ever assembled at any point on earth since World War II: two carriers with 75 fighter-bombers, spy planes and helicopters on their decks; 15 warships of various types – 7 French, 5 Italian, 2-3 Green, 3-5 German, and five American; thousands of Marines – French, Italian and German, as well as 1,800 US Marines. It is improbably billed as support for a mere 7,000 European soldiers who are deployed in Lebanon to prevent the dwindling Israeli force of 4-5,000 soldiers and some 15-16,000 Hizballah militiamen from coming to blows as well as for humanitarian odd jobs. A Western military expert remarked to DEBKAfile that the European naval forces cruising off Lebanese shores are roughly ten times as much as the UNIFIL contingents require as cover, especially when UNIFIL’s duties are strictly non-combat. After all, none of the UN contingents will be engaged in disarming Hizballah or blocking the flow of weapons incoming from Syria and Iran. So, if not for Lebanon, what is this fine array of naval power really there for? First, according to our military sources, the European participants feel the need of a strong naval presence in the eastern Mediterranean to prevent a possible Iranian-US-Israeli war igniting an Iranian long-range Shahab missile attack on Europe; second, as a deterrent to dissuade Syria and Hizballah from opening a second front against Americans and Israel from their eastern Mediterranean coasts. Numbers alone do not do justice to the immense operational capabilities and firepower amassed opposite Lebanon…

From DEBKAfile (dated September 4, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 6, 2006 (EU/ME/WT)

Arrested thinking
The EU is quick to turn any international crisis into an argument for deeper integration. So it is no surprise to see the interior ministers using the recent security scare to justify a further harmonisation of power in the fields of policing and aviation. The extension of EU authority into the fields of justice and home affairs - or, as it is known in the Eurocrats' Orwellian jargon, "the creation of an Area of Freedom, Security and Justice" - is the main item on the federalists' agenda. What is being done amounts to nothing less than the creation of a unified EU criminal jurisdiction. Thus, we have a pan-European prosecuting magistracy ("Eurojust"), an EU police force ("Europol"), a European Arrest Warrant, common rules on immigration and asylum, harmonised penal sentencing. We are even seeing the creation of a new category of crimes that would be tried, not under any national law, but under the direct authority of the Union - rather as, in the US, there are state and federal offences…

From The Telegraph (London) (dated August 27, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 6, 2006 (EU)

Shedding Light on Europe's Long-Lost Empire
The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation fell apart 200 years ago. While German museums mark the occasion, an Austrian expert says that Europeans would do well to look back and learn for the future…It's almost as if the EU picks up where things left off in 1806…

From Deutsch Welle (Germany) (dated August 28, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 6, 2006 (EU)