I ran across this great quote from the Cold War generation:
“An infallible method of conciliating a tiger is to allow oneself to be devoured.” – Konrad Adenauer
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February 28th, 2003 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
 There was an interesting piece earlier this week in the UK’s Independent newspaper by one of its main economics correspondents, Hamish McCrae. He argues – and this won’t be a surprise to you, gentle readers – that the economic weakness of Continental Europe, especially the highly-taxed, highly-regulated bits such as France and Germany, poses a long term problem not just for the citizens of those nations but for the wider world. A good, thoughtful article. Read. The piece is all the more telling for being written by someone who hardly qualifies as a rabid free-marketeer. Parts of the liberal-left are beginning to understand that the supine foreign policy stance of the French and German political class is in many ways a reflection of those countries’ relative economic decline versus the Anglosphere nations, especially the US and Britain. Oh, and while I am in the mood to plug interesting places of economic wisdom, take a look at this site, The Capital Spectator, which is a broadly free market blog focussing on economics and official policy. It has a particularly sharp piece on the Bush tax cut and the reputation of US Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. I have even got my work colleagues to bookmark it. (Ideological subversion in the office. Heh). February 21st, 2003 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
I’m certain all have been following the Orange Alert in the US. If, as If the headlines on one day are “France blocks NATO protection of Turkey” and the next day it is “10,000 feared dead in DC Attack” then France can expect to recieve a level of anti-frenchism verging on pure hatred. The damage would last until the American youngsters of this generation are dead and gone. And worst of all for the dirigiste… they will have to defend their own the next time, something they have proven summarily incapable of in the past. Maybe the Germans will help them. February 12th, 2003 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
Drop what you are doing and follow Instapundit’s link to the Washington Post article on German Minister Joschka Fischer’s past. To be fair, many, many people at the time would have been involved to some level or have known some of these people. I imagine more than one amongst us cringe at the memory of things they did as kids. Why, I knew a person who knew Bernadette Dohrn (later of the Weather Underground) when she was a teenager. This was a status conferring thing. We’d sit around the Student Union and say “Wow, man, like you really, like knew her? That’s like, really far out! Pass that over would you?” There was a certain cachet about those who “did something”. None of us would have dreamed of doing anything really destructive. We even had a team clean up the administration building (Warner Hall) before we handed it back in the morning [we took it over the night after the Kent State murders]… all tidied up and us on our way just in time for the staff arrival at 8am. Wouldn’t have been nice leaving all our coffee cups and candy wrappers laying about from the overnight demonstration, now would it? Such was CMU. I particularly remember the Coke machine on the second floor (first floor in the UK). If you gave it a sharp punch in just the right place, a cup dropped into the dispenser, a relay clicked and you got a Coke. Free. By the end of the night almost everyone had mastered this student survival art. I’m afraid the youthful Joschka and his violent friends would have laughed at us for our bourgeoise values. It was another time and place and has little connection with today’s world. For many of us they are fond memories of a time past. It was fun. Sadly, there are those who are forever sitting in the Student Union of their minds. They have not moved on. They do not live in the world that is. I’m not saying Joschka is quite that stuck, but the Washington Post story does tell us “where he is coming from”. MORE:Glenn posteda link to an even worse bit of Joschka’s past straight from the mouth of General Ion Mihai Pacepa, a former Nicolae Ceausescu intelligence chief. Fischer is connected via a number of insider sources to a Libyan terror operation run by Carlos “the Jackal”. February 12th, 2003 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
Yesterday France, Germany and Belgium announced that they are invoking an unprecedented NATO procedure to prevent the United States lending support to Turkey to defend its border with Iraq. Washington was disconcerted and dismayed by last week’s move. Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, described the Franco-German action as a “breathtaking event” that would “reverberate throughout the alliance”. Turkey has invoked Article 4, that requires members to consult together when, in the opinion of any of them, their territorial integrity, political independence or security is threatened. It is the first time this has been done in the history of the alliance, thus ensuring an urgent and high level debate over the Franco-German action. The impact of that action is questionable for a number of reasons. John Keegan has an insightful analysis of the reasons for the rift and the potential fall-out.
There is nothing new about the French being obstinate towards the United States in general and NATO in particular. France withdrew from NATO’s military structure in 1966 to pursue an independent foreign and defence policy. Later it attempted to revive the military role of the Western European Union, NATO’s long sidelined precursor, and then tried to invest the European Commission with defence responsibilities. As long as the United States perceived the drive for European unity to be economic in thrust, the French efforts to create a parallel military structure within the western European NATO area were tolerated. It was the disputes over authority in Bosnia and Kosovo that eventually caused Washington to see the purpose of French policy as intended to weaken NATO. American acquiescence was eroded and led to hostility. I whole-heartedly subscribe to Keegan’s view that the United States created NATO and has fostered its development and welfare devotedly over 50 years and that the alliance is, without question, the most important, successful and creative foreign policy initiative of the United States since the Second World War.
I just hope the United States does not budge and ensures that the French and German leaders get exactly what they deserve for their unprincipled and self-interested behaviour. To me that would be France and Germany finally occupying positions on the international scene that are commensurate with their true significance rather than based on some historically misplaced delusions of grandeur. February 11th, 2003 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
I don’t care how hungover you are. Get thee hence to the newsagents and buy, yes buy, a paper copy of the Mail On Sunday today. They have a story about some TV chick the German Chancellor is shagging. You care not about the paramours of foreign potentates? Buy it anyway. The point is that it’s a test case about whether British courts are supreme or whether the EU can over-rule them. Apparently Lover-boy Gerhart has got an injunction to suppress the story in Germany and is claiming that under EU law that means he can suppress it here too. January 19th, 2003 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
Germany’s hapless Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has dished out insults at the musician who penned a chart-topping song that Adriana wrote about last week, taking a crack at Germany’s onerous taxes. Well, tough luck, Gerhard. It seems the Chancellor doesn’t like the fact that the crippling confiscation of German citizen’s money is provoking satire as well as anger. When a politician starts bashing the comics and music makers, it is a clear sign he or she is in trouble – big trouble. This bespeaks a political elite on the Continent of Europe that is increasingly aloof and out of touch with ordinary citizens. On one level, this is encouraging, because such arrogance usually comes before a fall from grace. However, it also suggests that if the situation is not tackled soon, the anger boiling up in Germany and elsewhere could turn ugly. 
Sure, Gerhard. As logical as December 5th, 2002 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
There is a brilliant story at wired news about a tax protest with a difference. It started as a wacky idea in an Internet chat-room but now thousands of Germans have sent Chancellor Schroeder their shirts. Schroeder has donated the thousands of shirts his office has received to charity. Shame he does not show some charity towards taxpayers…  The political campaign is being promoted with this rather fetching picture of Katja Kassin in the process of losing her shirt! Who says the Germans do not have a sense of humour? Paul Staines December 5th, 2002 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
The German Chancellor is clearly feeling just a wee bit insecure these days. Why else would would he actually go to Court to sue a news agency because they claimed that he used dye in his hair:
Would that be his image as an incompetent, plundering, unreconstructed tax-and-spend socialist who is wrecking his country’s economy? Oh right, that image. Anyway, in order to avoid any legal complications here at Samizdata, I hereby categorically refute any suggestions that the German Chancellor has ever dyed his hair. After all, why would he need to? It is a wig. November 27th, 2002 | Comments are closed
Germans are fighting back with humour! The country’s number one hit is called Der Steuersong (The Tax Song), and has found fertile ground in the hearts of a nation fed up with broken election promises and increasing taxes.  The song that shot to the top of Germany’s pop charts with more than 350,000 copies sold within a week is a spoof sung by Schroeder’s impersonator, Elmar Brandt, who has captured the mood of the country in the lyrics:
Schroeder’s government of Social Democrat-Greens has slumped dramatically in voter surveys since the September 22 polls after breaking election promises not to raise taxes. On Monday Schroeder announced another new tax on equities and property sales – which the conservative opposition called the 49th new tax since he was first elected in 1998.
I am not sure it sounds better in German (here is the full English translation) but the spirit of the song is sound. Ordinary Germans say that “it sums up what we’re all thinking.” Fed up with taxes? Well, what are you going to do about it? November 20th, 2002 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
The tide of mendacious pro-EU propoganda that has flooded this country for the last 20 years or so, has been so relentless and has become so institutionalised that us beleaguered ‘antis’ were, until recently at any rate, quite despondent about the prospects of getting our message across concerning the reality of this misconceived ‘Reich’. No lie has been too outrageous and, on occasion, the lies have even been contradictory without anybody seeming to notice. We have been told that Europe is more prosperous, Europe is fairer, Europe is more open-minded, Europe is more dynamic, Europe has less crime, Europe is more modern, Europe is more generous, Europe is more caring, the cost of living is cheaper, everyone in Europe has a better standard of living and (drum roll, please) Europeans are more sophisticated!! My father told me that he remembers exactly the same things being said about the Soviet Union in the 1930’s. So it gives me an incalculable thrill to see an article about Europe’s coming collapse in a British newspaper:
The article may be right or it may be wrong but, for my purposes, that almost doesn’t matter; its very publication is the rub. It would certainly not have appeared even a year ago and the fact that it has surfaced now, and in a mainstream publication to boot, is an indication that the tide is turning.  October 31st, 2002 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
We all know what caused the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, right. We all know because we have been told (ad nauseum) by this lot among others that the root causes lie with America’s wrong-headed foreign policy, its empire-building and its constant meddling in other people’s business. If one accepts that argument then the solution presents itself: America should mind its own business, stop arming foreigners, bring troops home and quietly get on with the business of building a peaceful, free, non-interventionist country. Then the worlds bad guys and bullies will simply leave America alone and go off to look for someone else to haunt. In other words, America should be more like Switzerland. After all, nobody ever attacks Switzerland. Why should they? There’s no reason to. Switzerland is neutral and peaceful and prosperous and…under attack:
Nothing to do with Swiss foreign policy then. Nothing to do with Swiss meddling in other people’s conflicts. No, it’s everything to do with the exceedingly domestic policy of banking secrecy which means that Switzerland is a living, breathing bolt-hole for those desperate Euro-serfs who want to hang on to whatever precious capital they have left and shield it from the endless predations of Brussels. → Continue reading: Root causes revisited October 23rd, 2002 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
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