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In what purports to be a big, back-slapping, wound-healing, Euro-unity love-in the heads of the current EU states and the ‘Vilnius 10’ are meeting in Athens.
The ostensible purpose of the conference is the execution of an Accession Treaty that will enlarge the Union from 15 states to 25. Unofficially it is also the first opportunity for pro and anti-war states to settle their differences and seek a common voice.
Fat chance!!
French President Jacques Chirac, who outraged east Europeans in February by slamming their support for the U.S.-led war on Iraq, warned the new EU members on Wednesday to do more to find common European stands.
By ‘common European stands’ what he actually means is that they must agree to having their foreign policy (and much else) decided for them in Paris. In effect, the other European states must become petit France.
“The European Union is about more than just a large market, common policies, a single currency and free movement,” he said pointedly. “It is more importantly about a collective ambition, shared disciplines, firm solidarity and naturally looking to the European family.”
The French cannot hide their ambition to mold the EU in their image and turn it into a power-bloc that will challenge the USA. They’ve got their work cut out for them.
President Aleksander Kwasniewski of Poland, which reacted strongly to Chirac’s tirade in February, obliquely referred to the spat in his speech by saying in passing: “We want Europe to be based on wise transatlantic ties.”
I hope that the paladins in Washington realise just what an opportunity they have here to screw the French royally. There are festering divisions here that are just begging to be exploited.
Nor has this gone unnoticed by the British press. Speaking on television last night I heard the Sky News correspondent describe the entire conference as ‘rubbish’. In a welcome departure from strict anodyne reportage, he decided to tell it like it is and admit that this alleged show on ‘unity’ was nothing more than a potemkin effort designed to kid everyone that a country called ‘Europe’ lies just over the horizon.
Whatever else it may or may not have achieved, the Iraq war has driven a coach and horses through the fond ambitions of the enarques. The only real question is how long they will be able to maintain the pretense that tomorrow belongs to them.
A legal fight is being waged by a gentleman to avoid having to pay the detestable British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) licence fee. I honestly do not fancy the chances of a successful outcome to this fight, but good luck to anyone, I say, in taking on the BBC.
The BBC, as has been pointed out on this blog many times before and elsewhere by the likes of Andrew Sullivan, is able to get away with its grotesque bias in reporting on current events, its gloom-ridden soap operas and ghastly “sitcoms” because it is able to shrug off the bracing winds of consumer choice and competition. The BBC does actually have good people working in it (trust me on this). But unless and until the licence fee is consigned to the ash heap of history, expect no serious improvement from that organisation.
I always thought it was one of Margaret Thatcher’s greatest missed opportunities that she did not privatize the BBC.
When it comes to the British International Development Secretary, Clare Short, any attempt to analyze her views are bedeviled by the fact she is such a mass of contradictions and illogic. Yesterday at a briefing in London she was asked by a journalist if she thought the death toll of Iraqi civilians was a price worth paying for the overthrow of Ba’athist Socialism, to which she replied:
I do not think that the death of any human being is a price worth paying
Let us ponder that remark… that the Ba’athist regime was mass murderous is beyond doubt and clearly something of which Clare Short would be cognisant. So what is she saying? She is not saying that what even the hilarious Iraqi Minister for Information admitted was a small number of Iraqi civilians killed was too high a price to end two and a half decades of tyranny.
No, she is saying that the loss of even a single life is not a price worth paying… paying for what? To prevent the murder of thousands of Iraqi people every year, that is what. The term ‘absurdity’ seems inadequate somehow.
Face it… Clare Short does not give a damn about the Iraqi people. She is more concerned about preserving the sanctity of her surreal world view. Why else would she say such an idiotic thing if not because trapped within her dogmatic meta-context, she is simply incapable of saying anything else regardless of florescent evidence suggesting better moral theories.
As I have written before, to oppose the war on the grounds that the domestic cost in Britain or the USA in blood, treasure and encroachment of the state is too high a price for the sake of the Iraqi people, is at least a coherent viable argument… but to oppose the war on ostensibly altruistic grounds that the price to the Iraqi people of overturning the Ba’athist Socialist status quo is too high is simply ridiculous, given that the scale of that Saddamite tyranny was hardly a secret.
To have taken such a position at before the war or in the early stages of the campaign was at least somewhat tenable, at least for a person with a poor understanding of the military and technological realities, on the grounds the cost in blood would indeed be mind bogglingly high.
But to still use that argument after we know that the ‘massive casualties’ scenario has not proved to be the case is bizzare. Pictures of tragic little Ali Ismail Abbas are truly heartrending for sure, but how does that change the cold hard facts about the butcher’s bill if Ba’athism had not been overthrown?
To argue on a ‘what is best for the Iraqi people cost/benefit analysis’ means the likes of Clare Short cannot have it both ways… unless all that matters is not that a ‘single life’ is lost to violence but only who did the deed. Although Clare Short’s logic is hard for me to fathom, perhaps she is saying that preventing thousands of Iraqi civilians dying every year in Saddam Hussain’s jails and torture chambers is not worth a single Iraqi death if a British taxpayer funded soldier was the one who ended the ‘single life’ in question. Or maybe she means nothing of the sort.
So who exactly does Clare Short care about? What does she mean when she opens her mouth and makes noises that sound like English? I cannot figure it out.
It has been a regular refrain from the anti-interventionists that there was no real connection between 9/11 and Saddam and that by overthrowing the Iraqi regime, we were diverting valuable resources from the war on terror.
Well, that theory has taken a lot of hits, judging by this story.
In fact, by deposing thuggish regimes such as the unlamented one in Iraq, it makes it easier, by far, for intelligence services of the West to unearth valuable information about terrorists and their whereabouts. Or course in their hearts the peaceniks knew this all along, but no doubt they are now vexed about Iraqis nabbing air-conditioning units from Ba’ath Party headquarters.
As a firm believer in judicial independence, I consider it to be a generally good thing when Courts refuse to be swayed by the capricious impulses of public sentiment. Having said that, I wonder if the Dutch judiciary are going to have cause to regret the perceived leniency they have shown towards the assassin of Pim Fortuyn:
Admirers of the assassinated Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn struggled to contain their fury yesterday when his self-confessed killer got off “lightly” with an 18-year prison term.
The killing and its overtly ideological nature had persuaded many that the only sentence the judges would dare pass was life.
Regardless of the ‘ideological nature’, I think a life sentence is wholly appropriate in cases of pre-meditated murder such as this.
Dutch convicts tend to serve only two-thirds of their sentence, and the three judges in Amsterdam made it clear that they believed he should be given a chance to reintegrate in society.
Which means that the perpetrator will actually serve about 10 or 11 years.
Comparing Fortuyn’s rise to that of Adolf Hitler, he said he had felt compelled to eliminate him as a favour to the Muslim minority and other vulnerable sections of society.
As with most ‘Hitler’ comparisons, this one is way over the top. The late Mr.Fortuyn may have had some rather strident views on immigration but nothing I have read about the man suggests that he was any kind of ‘blut und boden’ ethnic nationalist.
“This is unbelievable,” Henk Sonneveld, a member of one of Fortuyn’s political vehicles, Leefbaar Rotterdam, told the Guardian.
“We are angry and mad with this. Eighteen years is not enough. In nine or 10 years’ time this guy could be walking the streets. It should have been life. Fortuyn was killed for his ideas – think about that.”
Yes, I have thought about it and my conclusion is that the ghost of Pim Fortuyn is going to be rattling its chains around Holland for a long time to come.
Blogger David Holford has been threatened with legal action by Tower Hamlets Council unless he removes some comments from his site. He has no plans to comply.
For more from me about why Tower Hamlets Council are not, as they claim, preventing hate speech but rather are attempting to suppress ridicule of Tower Hamlets Council, click here, or here if the Blogspot archives are bust again.
E.G. Ross, the author of the website Objective American, recently passed away due to complications of an aneurysm.
He had a unique ability to combine reason and optimism in a world in which those virtues are too often lacking. He was very well versed and wrote articles on a wide range of subjects, including self-help, national defense, the drug war, terrorism, economics, government, and theology. His essay, “The Terrible Swift Sword”, can be found on the site and is an absolute classic.
Needless to say, I will miss his writing tremendously.
David R. Beatty
This may only be one man’s perspective but the picture it paints of France can only be described as melancholy:
France is almost finished. The nightmare is almost here. France has to know the horrors of the nightmare if you want her to have a chance to wake up. Sure, you may find some exceptions to the rule. France has some decent intellectuals: but they have about the same access to the mainstream media that dissenters had in the Soviet Union twenty years ago. France has bold politicians: one, maybe two if I want to be extremely generous. France still has genuine journalists: you could count them on the fingers of one hand. For the next years, come to France if you want, visit old monuments, but do not expect to be understood or appreciated by the locals. Behave as you would in a third world country; soon France will be a third world country. Perhaps it will wake up with a start, but who knows? Right now, if you read the polls, only 53% of the French hope the U.S. army will defeat Saddam: the rest hope the United States will be defeated and Saddam will win…
The author of the article is a Frenchman.
[My thanks to Boris Kuperschmidt for the link]
Classical conservatives publicly despair of progress, but in their hearts they secretly believe in it. The Left seemingly talks of nothing else but progress, but will go to nearly any lengths rather than believe in it.
– Joe Katzman at windsofchange.net today
In what I am sure will be a crashing disappointment to lots of people who go around calling themselves ‘human rights campaigners’, the British legal system has opted not to further persecute a victim:
A burglar has failed in his attempt to win damages from the jailed farmer, Tony Martin, who shot him.
Malcolm Starr, who has led the campaign for Martin’s freedom, said Martin’s lawyers had contacted him to say that a planned legal action by burglar Brendon Fearon had failed.
I cannot really bring myself to call this justice because if there was even a smidgeon of justice then Tony Martin would not have been incarcerated in the first place.
“Tony has probably had more letters about this issue of him being sued for damages than he did after the original shooting incident. He does want the law changed to stop this happening again.”
It is not just the law that needs changing.
Another two bite the dust.
This week gone past has seen both Hungary and Malta vote to become vassals of the Belgian Empire.
Not without significance, though, is the embarrassing lack of popular mandate apparent in both of these soon-to-be-smothered-in-regulations countries. A high turnout in Malta produced only a wafer-thin majority in favour. In Hungary, a very large majority in favour has to be read in the context of a pitifully low turnout. One can only imagine the extent of the bribes offered, favours invoked and threats implied in order to get the ‘right’ results. From North to South to East to West, the Empire continues its joyless advance with the all prosaic, depressing predictability of a tumour.
Where is it heading? Well, some of us have already guessed as much but British Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan provides a sobering confirmation:
A false and dangerous idea is taking hold in Britain, especially among Euro-sceptics. It goes something like this. The Iraq war has wrecked plans for closer European integration. It has set Old Europeans against New ones, driven Britain back on the Anglo-Saxon world, reminded everyone of how much they rely on the Americans, and made the idea of a European Army seem laughable….
The trouble is that Euro-fanatics are prone to the same impulse. For them, the war is the strongest demonstration to date of why Brussels needs a unified foreign policy. Never again, they say, should the EU be enfeebled by internal divisions. Never again should Europeans be forced to watch in frustration as the Americans give some tinpot dictator a good kicking. Never again should London be allowed to behave in so non-communautaire a fashion…
“But it won’t happen,” say British commentators. Really? Two weeks ago, almost unreported, the EU army was deployed for the first time in Macedonia. “But it can’t work,” object the critics. This, of course, is what we all said about the Soviet Union and, in the long term, we were right. But it wouldn’t have been much fun to have been born in Russia in, say, 1910, and lived through the process of it not working.
It may well be that the European Army, like European taxation, European criminal jurisdiction and European monetary union, “can’t work”. But that won’t stop it happening. Just watch.
Not really any great surprises here. Just further confirmation that the 21st Century will see a new Cold War. The phrenology may be a little different but the lines are already being drawn. I have no doubt whatsoever as to which side will emerge triumphant but what worries me deeply is that Britain is already more than half-way signed up to the wrong side.
Now that dust is beginning to settle on Baghdad, the enarques of Europe and their toadying federast stooges in the UK are going to be putting volcanic pressure on Tony Blair to sign away the last remaining vestiges of British independence and offer up this nation in tribute to the secular Cardinals of Brussels. I am not at all sure that he will be able to resist this pressure. Worse, I am not at all sure he even wants to.
[My thanks to Philip Chaston for the link to the Daniel Hannan article]
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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