Free Republic

Most Americans have little to no understanding of the European Union. Founded under tripartite coal and steel trade negotiations, many viewed the EU as a free trade agreement that promotes liberty. Others see it as the European version of the United States. This fundamental misunderstanding has led American Presidents from George HW Bush to his son, to all of the current major candidates for president to support the EU, and in the case of President George W Bush to push for its expansion into Turkey. Whatever the EU began as, it most certainly is not a free market anything. The...

US President George W. Bush recently gave a speech in which he stated that the US would attempt to cap all Greenhouse Gas Emissions by the year 2025. A cynic observing recent US emissions trends may be tempted to opine. “That’s easy for him to say.” EPA data on US Greenhouse Gas emissions follows below.In 2006, total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions were 7,054.2 teragrams of carbon dioxide equivalents (Tg CO2 Eq.).1 Overall, total U.S. emissions have risen by 14.7 percent from 1990 to 2006, while the U.S. gross domestic product has increased by 59 percent over the same period (BEA...

Few substances on Earth are stranger. It shines like a mirror, conducts electricity and is as much of a metal as copper or iron. ~~~snip~~~ And now Brussels is banning it. Of course, not even the European Commission has the power to ban a chemical element, but what they have done is forbidden its use in traditionally made scientific instruments on health and safety and environmental grounds. Britain's traditional barometer makers now face closure, effectively bringing to an end more than 350 years of a unique craft. Mercury thermometers - every mother's godsend - are similarly under threat. ~~~snip~~~

Two weeks ago, European Commissioner of Competition Neelie Kroes arrived in the United States on a mission of economic cooperation. Increasingly, however, that cooperation is hard to find, especially for American firms doing business in Europe. More often than not, the European vision of cooperation is capitulation, with American companies forced to accept onerous conditions or else abandon the European marketplace altogether. Recent history provides a clear view of Europe's "not so competitive" competition policy. Apple recently ran into a buzzsaw in France over iTunes, and other European nations smell blood in the water. The European Union has blocked the...

Asia Rising Donald Rumsfeld infamously made a distinction between Old Europe and New Europe. He has been scored ever since for his sweeping and impolitic language, but he wasn't sweeping enough: In geopolitical terms, all of Europe is old, the world's most tourist-friendly museum piece. For the future of high-stakes U.S. diplomacy and of great-power politics, look no further than Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit to the U.S. It is Asia that should occupy an outsized place in our strategic thinking, and it is Europe that should be the relative afterthought, not the other way around. The media and foreign-policy...

1. Report: China Selling Prisoners' Body Parts Chinese doctors are "harvesting" kidneys, corneas and other organs from live concentration camp inmates and selling them for up to $100,000 apiece. That's the shocking report from a former employee at Liaoning Provincial Thrombosis Hospital of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine, where the organ removal has allegedly been taking place. In an interview with The Epoch Times, the ex-employee said the Sujiatun Concentration Camp in Shenyang City is part of the hospital and since 2001 has secretly detained approximately 6,000 Falun Gong practitioners - none of whom has left the camp alive. "The...

Still reeling from the collapse of its constitution, the EU's most senior Eurocrats yesterday promised to tour member states, including Britain, to ask citizens for their vision of its future.Aides pledged that the 25-nation tour would not be complete without the commissioners involved meeting their fiercest critics face to face, including British Euro-sceptics. The European tour will be led by Jose Manuel Barroso The progress through national capitals will begin this autumn, and will be led by Jose Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, and Margot Wallstrom, the vice-president for communications. They will be accompanied by a shifting...

My favourite headline last week was in the International Herald Tribune: "EU leaders and voters see paths diverge." Traditionally in free societies, when the paths of the leaders and the voters "diverge", it's the leaders who depart the scene. But apparently in the EU this is too vulgar and "Anglo-Saxon", and so the great permanent Eurocracy decided instead to offer up Euro-variations on Bertolt Brecht's jest about the need to elect a new people. Whatever the rejection of the European constitution means, it certainly doesn't mean the rejection of the European constitution. "I really believe the French and Dutch did...

A greater number of voters believe a referendum on the EU constitution should go ahead in the Republic despite its rejection by the French and Dutch people, but more would vote to reject than ratify it, according to the latest Irish Times/TNS mrbi opinion poll, writes Mark Brennock, Chief Political Correspondent. Some 45 per cent believe the referendum should go ahead, 34 per cent that it should not and 21 per cent don't know or have no opinion. Should the referendum proceed, 35 per cent would vote to reject the constitution, 30 per cent to accept it, while 35 per...

The recent votes in France and the Netherlands against the proposed constitution of the European Union are not merely political phenomena. They represent significant actions in the development of Fourth Generation war. Why? Because the root cause of Fourth Generation war is a crisis of legitimacy of the state, and the two referenda saw the French and Dutch people rebel against their elites’ efforts to empty the state of its content. Understanding what happened in these two votes requires a counterintuitive mindset. Normally, we would think of elites as representing the state and the common people rebelling against the state....

A couple of days before Sunday’s referendum on the European constitution, Jean-Claude Juncker, the “president” of the European Union, let French and Dutch voters know how much he values their opinion: “If at the end of the ratification process, we do not manage to solve the problems, the countries that would have said ‘No,’ would have to ask themselves the question again,” “President” Juncker told the Belgian newspaper Le Soir. Got that? You have the right to vote, but only if you give the answer your rulers want you to give. But don’t worry, if you don’t, we’ll treat you...

The Eurofetishists can't seem to agree their line on this referendum business. On the one hand, the Guardian's headline writer was packing up and heading for the hills — "Europe is plunged into crisis" — and EU leaders warned that "Europe" might cease to function. Oh, come on. We won't get that lucky. On balance, Jean-Claude Juncker, the "president" of "Europe", seems closer to the mark in his now famous dismissal of the will of the people: "If it's a Yes, we will say 'on we go', and if it's a No we will say 'we continue'." And if it's...

If I were Pope - and no, don't worry, I'm not planning a mid-life career change - but, if I were, I'd be a little irked at the secular media's inability to discuss religion except through the prism of their moral relativism. That's why last weekend's grand old man - James Callaghan - got a more sympathetic send-off than this weekend's. The Guardian's headline writer billed Sunny Jim as a man "whose consensus politics were washed away in the late 1970s". Is it possible to have any meaningful "consensus" between, on the one hand, closed-shop council manual workers demanding a...

If I were Pope — and no, don't worry, I'm not planning a mid-life career change — but, if I were, I'd be a little irked at the secular media's inability to discuss religion except through the prism of their moral relativism. That's why last weekend's grand old man — James Callaghan — got a more sympathetic send-off than this weekend's. The Guardian's headline writer billed Sunny Jim as a man "whose consensus politics were washed away in the late 1970s". Is it possible to have any meaningful "consensus" between, on the one hand, closed-shop council manual workers demanding a...

I am, as Tony Blair might say, deeply passionately personally deeply personally opposed to abortion. But, unlike him, I think it ought to be an election issue.Not because of my personal beliefs: I happen to believe a lot of what we call "late-term abortion" is in reality early-term infanticide, but, if you don't accept that that's a human life that's being destroyed, my deeply personal passionate beliefs aren't likely to sway you one way or another. That's where so-called progressive politicians such as Blair and John Kerry have it all backwards: the point about abortion is not that it's a...

President Bush supposedly charmed the Europeans, and now they purportedly don't hate us any more. But from the recent trip, it is clear that Americans can still expect two things from the European public and its leadership: deep-seeded anti-Americanism and embarrassing contradictions. In that context, let us examine all the recent Eurobabble.

Austin Bay goads me into losing my blogospheric virginity. It was over in minutes, but the audience made me nervous. -snip- 8. Well, since you asked, Austin… First, it’s true that the Central and Eastern European nations are markedly more America-friendly than the western ones. However, their long-term prognosis is not significantly different: they face the same deathbed demographics — right now, the only European country breeding at replacement rate is Muslim Albania. Declining population isn’t necessarily a problem — my own New Hampshire town, for example, survived a 130-year population decline from 1820 to 1950, caused by the opening...

The adage goes that the European Union counts on a more sophisticated and nuanced "soft power." In reality, that translates to using transnational organizations and its own economic clout to soothe or buy off potential adversaries, while a formidable cultural engine dresses it all up in high sounding platitudes of internationalism and multilateralism. Everything from idly watching Milosevic and the Hutus butcher unchecked to unilateral intervention in the Ivory Coast or no action in Darfur usually finds either the proper humanitarian exegesis or the culpable American bogeyman. Yet contrary to the mythologies of Michael Moore and the high talk of...

U.S. can sit back and watch Europe implode February 27, 2005 BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST Advertisement A week ago, the conventional wisdom was that George W. Bush had seen the error of his unilateral cowboy ways and was setting off to Europe to mend fences with America's ''allies.'' I think not. Lester Pearson, the late Canadian prime minister, used to say that diplomacy is the art of letting the other fellow have your way. All week long President Bush offered a hilariously parodic reductio of Pearson's bon mot, wandering from one European Union gabfest to another insisting how much...

A week ago, the conventional wisdom was that George W. Bush had seen the error of his unilateral cowboy ways and was setting off to Europe to mend fences with America's ''allies.'' I think not. Lester Pearson, the late Canadian prime minister, used to say that diplomacy is the art of letting the other fellow have your way. All week long President Bush offered a hilariously parodic reductio of Pearson's bon mot, wandering from one European Union gabfest to another insisting how much he loves his good buddy Jacques and his good buddy Gerhard and how Europe and America share...

Recent books have raved that the European Union is the way of the future. In contrast, a supposedly exhausted, broke and post-imperial United States chases the terrorist chimera, running up debts and deficits as it tilts at the autocratic windmills of the Arab World. That caricature frames the visit of the President to Europe as transatlantic pundits demand a softer George Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Donald Rumsfeld. Stop the childish bickering and the tiresome neocon preening, we are lectured ad nauseam by Euro and American elites. Don’t divide Europe, we hear endlessly. Even though the European press, EU leaders, and...

Recent books have raved that the European Union is the way of the future. In contrast, a supposedly exhausted, broke and post-imperial United States chases the terrorist chimera, running up debts and deficits as it tilts at the autocratic windmills of the Arab World.

Two years ago, I wrote that America and Europe were now engaged in a new Cold War. And just like the old Cold War it's not only about Jacques Chirac issuing Krushchevian boasts to Washington that "we will bury you"; it's also got room for the occasional détente phase. So this month in Washington is Be Nice To Europe month. For weeks now, the Administration's hardline Zionist Christian fundamentalist neocon unilateralist warmongers have been coming into the office to find smiley-face reminders from the White House pinned to the desk: "Have you hugged a European foreign minister today?" And they've...

How to Euro-Speak A phrasebook for the presidential tourist. Europeans hate the way Americans talk. They think we’re loud and uncouth and they don’t like our jokes, except for Michael Moore’s. Plus, they resent the fact that they’ve had to learn our language because if they didn’t we wouldn’t buy their stupid metric widgets or visit their overpriced ruins. So when the president goes to Europe to give his speech to all the EU-niks in Brussels on Tuesday, it’s important that he speak clearly — or at least clearfully. Because there are a few things he needs to say, and...

Over lunch at a Washington think-tank some time ago, a high-ranking German official told the room about his country's determination to win a seat on the United Nations Security Council. The reaction? From the Americans present, indifference verging on boredom. For the Europeans, though, it was as if the official had dropped a concrete block on their toes. It was a fascinating moment of culture clash that demonstrates some ominous truths about American-European relations. The first truth is the traditionalism of American policy elites. Even when the evidence is thrust into American faces, it is hard for them to accept...

Voters would reject the European constitution by a margin of two to one, according to the first poll to use the question the Government has chosen to put to the country. A survey conducted since the wording was published on Wednesday suggests that 45 per cent of the public would vote against the constitution, with only 24 per cent in favour. Tony Blair has staked his reputation on winning the referendum, which is expected next spring if Labour wins the general election. The results of The Telegraph's YouGov poll show that he faces an enormous challenge in trying to turn...

Gott im Himmel, what was Harry thinking? If you are a public figure, the great grandson of the last emperor of India no less, and you live in censorious — and camera-phone-saturated — times, attending a "Native and Colonial" party is almost certainly unwise. To do so in Nazi uniform is absolute madness. And after days of high drama, low farce, and massed denunciations, we all know the result. The "Clown Prince" and the Circus To take just a brief selection of the criticism, Harry is now the "Hitler Youth" (the Sun, a newspaper that dilutes its moments of moral...

In the wake of British Prince Harry's display of a swastika at a party last week, German politicians are calling for a ban on display of the Nazi symbol across the entire continent of Europe. Germany has already prohibited the insignia within its own borders, along with the notorious "Heil Hitler" salute. It's also against the law to distribute Hitler's book "Mein Kampf," which can be read in most countries, including Israel. "The whole of Europe once suffered under Nazi crimes, therefore it makes sense to ban Nazi symbols across Europe," Silvana Koch-Merin of Germany's Liberal Party told Scotland on...

It's a good rule of thumb that, no matter how big an idiot someone is, he can never compete with the political class's response to his idiocy. Thus, whatever feelings of unease I might have had about Prince Hitler were swept away the moment the rent-a-quote humbugs started lining up to denounce him. I say to Harry: you go, girlfriend, you Reichstone Cowboy you. It's uniforms night at my pad every Thursday and you're more than welcome, Your Royal Heilness. First off was Doug Henderson, former armed forces minister, who suggested that the Nazi dress sense should disqualify the young...

We banned a berry – and it took Brussels to stop us being so silly By Boris Johnson (Filed: 23/12/2004) And while we are on the subject of demented British regulation, and this Government's lust to interfere in every aspect of our daily lives, let us not forget the breakfast habits of Mr Ron Jones, of Chinnor, in the beautiful county of Oxfordshire, and the insane, costly and ultimately abortive attempts to stop him eating a particular type of berry. You may not have heard of a saskatoon, and nor, frankly, had I. But Mr Jones is widely travelled, and...

American bounty hunter Duane Lee "Dog" Chapman found himself behind bars in a Mexican prison in Puerto Vallarta in late June. Though widely hailed at home as a hero for running to ground the convicted serial rapist Andrew Luster, a Max Factor heir, Chapman quickly was arrested by Mexican officials for committing what is considered kidnapping under Mexican law when he captured the fugitive. If convicted, the bounty hunter could have spent as many as eight years in prison. Fortunately for Chapman he was released on bail by Judge Jose de Jesus Pineda, escaped to the United States and then...