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President Barack Obama on Thursday tapped four big Democratic Party donors for plum ambassadorships in Europe and Latin America while naming six career diplomats to posts in Africa, the Mideast and the Pacific. Washington lawyer Howard Gutman, who raised more than $500,000 for Obama's campaign and personally contributed the maximum $4,600 to it, was nominated to be the next U.S. envoy to Belgium, the White House said in a statement. Gutman also contributed $2,300 to now Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks money in politics. Obama...

Last Catholic Monarchy Euthanized Grand Duke Henri of Luxembourg Silenced! Brian McCall REMNANT COLUMNIST, Oklahoma   (Posted 03/20/09 www.RemnantNewspaper.com) The last act of the French Revolution came to a close on March 12, 2009, but hardly anyone was watching.  The demonic forces unleashed over two hundred years ago took on the aim of destroying all monarchial authority in Europe.  The rulers of the once Christian nations of Europe, or at least their governing authority, had all been executed, except for the tine nation of Luxembourg.  On March 12, without much fanfare, the parliament of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg...

LUXEMBOURG, March 18, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Luxembourg has enacted legislation to legalise euthanasia, thereby becoming the third European country, after the Netherlands and Belgium, to permit the intentional killing of dying or otherwise vulnerable people.The Palliative Care/Euthanasia bill was published in the Official Journal on Tuesday and provides that doctors who carry out euthanasia and assisted suicides will not face "penal sanctions" or civil lawsuits."This bill is not a permit to kill," said Socialist lawmaker Lydie Err, who helped draft it. "It's not a law for the parents or the doctors but for the patient and the patient alone to...

ROME, December 19, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Pope Benedict XVI yesterday expressed his "deepest concern" as Luxembourg draws near to adopting assisted suicide into law, which the Pope roundly condemned as contrary to true compassion.“Political leaders, whose duty is to serve the good of man, as well as doctors and families should remember that 'the deliberate decision to deprive an innocent human being of his life is always evil from the moral point of view and can never be lawful,'" said the Pope, quoting the encyclical Evangelium Vitae.  Benedict issued his remarks as he received the new ambassador to the Holy...

Thursday December 11, 2008 Pro-Life World Coming to the Defence of Luxembourg Monarch’s Stand against Euthanasia By Hilary WhiteROME, December 11, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The US-based Alliance Defence Fund (ADF) has announced they will be launching a legal challenge to a new law in Luxembourg legalizing euthanasia. Last week, the world was shocked when the parliament of the tiny but venerable European state of Luxembourg proposed to strip its head of state, the Grand Duke Henri, of his veto powers when the latter announced he would refuse to give royal assent to the law. The ADF, a network of...

Following previous archaelogical discoveries at the Dalheim dig, another artefact has been discovered. The site of the former Gallo-Roman baths has now produced what is described as an "exceptional archaeological discovery". The National Museum of History and Art (MNHA), led by the young German archaeologist Heike Posch and overseen by the curator John Krier, has uncovered fragments of a large 1.3m high limestone altar. The discovery dates from the 3rd century AD and has a Latin inscription showing that the altar was dedicated to the goddess Fortuna. The text over 10 lines mentions not only the people of Ricciacum vicus,...

Luxembourg, Feb 24, 2008 / 01:12 am (CNA).- The Luxembourg parliament has narrowly approved a bill that would legalize euthanasia and allow doctors to help patients commit suicide, Agence France-Presse reports. Thirty of the fifty-nine lawmakers voted in favor of the bill, with nearly all the members of Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker’s Social Christian Party voting in opposition to the bill. The bill must be approved at a second reading before it can take effect. "This bill is not a permit to kill," said Socialist lawmaker Lydie Err, who helped draft the legislation. "It's not a law for the parents...

Well, are the inhabitants of the EU prosperous or not? Yes and no. Many Europeans (and Americans as well) would say the US is part poor, part affluent, arguing that wealth is distributed in a very uneven way in that country. However, regarding regional GDP/capita, there probably are even greater differences between the EU citizens than between US Americans (regardless of the reasons to this situation)! For instance, according to the study, Inner London is more than 36 times richer than North Eastern Romania! The article: "Regional GDP per inhabitant in the EU27 GDP per inhabitant in 2004 ranged from...

Muslims "seem to be about to take over Europe,” which has "given up” efforts to maintain its culture, said world-renowned Middle Eastern and Islamic scholar Bernard Lewis. Lewis, a professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton, told the Jerusalem Post that soon the only important question regarding Europe’s future would be, "Will it be an Islamized Europe or Europeanized Islam?" Lewis, whose many books include the recent "What Went Wrong?: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East,” said the Islamic takeover of Europe would be assisted by "immigration and democracy." Instead of fighting the threat, he added,...

If our cultural past isn't worth defending, why should our future be? ---------------------- Five years after the (a) all too predictable blowback to U.S. foreign policy born of decades of poverty and desperation or (b) controlled explosion by Bush-Cheney-Halliburton-Zionist agents (delete according to taste), I get a lot of mail on the lines of: C'mon, man, cut to the chase--are we gonna win or lose? Well, let me come at that in an evasive non-chase-cutting manner and circle around to it very gradually. I gave a speech in Sydney last month and among the audience was a lady called Pauline...

"Eight countries - Germany, Austria, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Lithuania Luxembourg and Malta - are blocking the idea that the EU should pay for projects using embryonic stem cells for genetic research. They insist the common EU budget should not be used for activities banned in some member states, despite the argument that such research could be crucial in finding cures for chronic diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's." "Germany has stepped up its resistance. Its research minister Annette Schavan sent a letter on Thursday (20 July) to the presidency condemning the idea of EU cash being used for stem cell...

ASSOCIATED PRESS ROME -- Italy's new research minister has touched off a political storm in this Roman Catholic country by saying he was open to embryonic stem cell research. The fuss began when University and Research Minister Fabio Mussi - a left-wing lawmaker from a former Communist Party - said during a visit to Brussels this week that he had removed Italy's signature from a "declaration of ethics" objecting to using European Union funds for embryonic stem cell research. The declaration had allowed its seven signatories to block any EU plans for funding such research in countries that allow it....

Is it just me," wondered Linda McQuaig in The Toronto Star, "or does anyone else find it ominous that Harper says 'God bless Canada'?" You don't have to do the full Jaws orchestral accompaniment to concede that Linda has a point: Whether or not it's "ominous," it is a little weird in contemporary public discourse to hear Stephen Harper say "God bless Canada." The question then arises: Why should it be so weird?

At the height of the morning commute on March 11, 2004, ten bombs exploded in and around four train stations in Madrid. Almost 200 Spaniards were killed, and some 2,000 wounded. The next day, Spain seemed to be standing firm against terror, with demonstrators around the country wielding signs denouncing the “murderers” and “assassins.” Yet things did not hold. Seventy-two hours after the bombs had strewn arms, legs, heads, and other body parts over three train stations and a marshaling yard, the Spanish government of José María Aznar, a staunch ally of the United States and Great Britain in Iraq,...

EUROPE DAY Did you know there was a "Europe Day"? A day to celebrate the EU? Me neither. But May 9th is it. Here's some thoughts of mine on the poor doomed European Union: Question: What do you get when you take two world wars, add the two most malign ideologies of the century, throw in genocide, the collapse of religious institutions, radical secularism, a political elite sealed off from opinions it finds distasteful, spiraling social costs, deathbed demographics and growing numbers of an unassimilated immigrant population? Answer: You get Europe in the new millennium - mired in aggressive pacifism,...

The idea Canadians have replaced doxology with doughnuts is less Timmy than tinny ------------------------------ The other week, the Toronto Star assigned Kenneth Kidd to do a big story on Tim Hortons as an icon of Canadian identity. This was a couple of days before that odd incident with the fellow going into the men's room and blowing himself into a big bunch of Timbits, so nothing tricky was required, just the usual maple boosterism. And naturally the first thing Kidd did was call up the Canadian media's Mister Rent-A-Quote, Michael Adams, the author of Fire And Ice and American Backlash,...

Two days before Christmas, I was in a store in Vermont buying a last-minute gift when the owner’s twentysomething daughter walked in. “Thanks for the sweater, mom,” she said. “Kevin really liked his present, too.” “But it’s only the 23rd,” said the bewildered lady. “Mom,” sighed the kid, wearily. “How many times do I have to tell you? We always open our presents on the solstice.” A couple of weeks later, a neighbor of mine in New Hampshire got married. He’s a biker and a tattooist, and he’s deeply spiritual. So he and his bride were married in the middle...

Article Tools RSS Printer Friendly E-Mail This Page Discussions SOFIA: A US push to give special NATO partnerships to Australia and other Pacific-rim allies ran into trouble at a top-level meeting due to end Friday after European members voiced scepticism, diplomats said. The proposal would see Australia, New Zealand and possibly Japan and South Korea extended privileged status with NATO that would reflect their active role in some Alliance missions while stopping short of offering membership. Foreign ministers from the 26-nation Alliance discussed the issue, among other topics, at a conference in the Bulgarian capital Sofia that began Thursday. But...

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Morten Messerschmidt, a member of the Council of Europe and of Denmark's Parliament for the Danish People's Party. He is involved in the debate about the effects of Muslim immigration to Europe, Islam and terrorism. FP: Morten Messerschmidt, welcome to Frontpage Interview. Messerschmidt: Thanks. FP: Tell us the impact that Muslim immigration is having on Europe. Messerschmidt: We are seeing over the entire continent how the extreme groups of Islam are trying to impose their fundamentalist ideology, which has created awful results in the Middle East, to our part of the world. We see it...

The US is powerful and religious; the EU is weak and secular. Mark Steyn wonders whether it is any coincidence. ------------------------------------------------------ The other day, the guy on my local radio station mentioned that The Passion of The Christ was the Number One movie in America. ‘So congrats to Mel Gibson,’ he said. ‘And it’ll probably hold on to the Number One slot until the new Starsky & Hutch opens.’

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...

Demographics may bring about what the Moors and Ottoman Empire couldn't: a Muslim Europe Anyone know where we can find some Etruscans? You know, members of the Etruscan civilization that existed in ancient Italy, predating even Rome? Well, there aren't any. The Etruscans were absorbed by the Roman civilization and ceased to exist as a distinct people. Ominously, if a growing number of experts and cultural observers are right, it's entirely possible that the same question may be asked 100 years from now -- only about Italians or Spaniards or Russians. As writer Mark Steyn glumly put it in The...

(AgapePress) -- Anyone know where we can find some Etruscans? You know, members of the Etruscan civilization that existed in ancient Italy, predating even Rome? Well, there aren't any. The Etruscans were absorbed by the Roman civilization and ceased to exist as a distinct people. Ominously, if a growing number of experts and cultural observers are right, it's entirely possible that the same question may be asked 100 years from now -- only about Italians or Spaniards or Russians. As writer Mark Steyn glumly put it in The New Criterion, "Much of what we loosely call the Western world will...

've had a recurring experience in the last few months. I'll be reading some geopolitical tract like Sands Of Empire: Missionary Zeal, American Foreign Policy, and the Hazards Of Global Ambition by Robert W. Merry, and two-thirds of the way in I'll stumble across: "With the onset of the Iraq War and European opposition, many Americans embraced a severe anti-European attitude. 'To the list of polities destined to slip down the Eurinal of history,' wrote Mark Steyn in the Jewish World Review, 'we must add the European Union and France's Fifth Republic.' "

It is easy to damn the 1930s appeasers of Hitler — such as Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain in England and Edouard Daladier in France — given what the Nazis ultimately did when unleashed. But history demands not merely recognizing the truth post facto, but also trying to reconstruct the rationale of something that now in hindsight seems inexplicable. Appeasement in the 1930s was popular with the European public for a variety of reasons. All of them are instructive in our hesitation about stopping a nuclear Iran, or about defending the right of Western newspapers to print what they wish...

LUXEMBOURG, February 01: Luxembourg's prime minister vowed on Tuesday to use "all necessary means" to fend off a hostile $23 billion bid by steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal for Arcelor, one of Europe's biggest companies. Speaking to the Grand Duchy's parliament after meeting with the Indian-born billionaire, Jean-Claude Juncker criticised him for not consulting him ahead of time, adding that he did not think a deal was in the best interest of Europe. "I am determined -- as is the government -- to do everything to preserve everything that we have worked for and that we believe in ... by using...

Not so long ago, American conservatives seemed to be converting the world to their ideas. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, country after country abandoned socialism for free markets, embracing such Reaganite themes as incentives, individualism, and responsibility. It looked as though the sun would never set on the friends of American conservatism. Yet today, American conservatives have never felt so alone. This is not a matter of how many people around the world like American conservatives, but of how many are like them. To be sure, many political movements don't have counterparts in other countries. But Europe and...

NIGERGATE: A FRENCH 007 ACCUSES THE CIA AND SISMI Il Giornale’s Marco Chiocci takes a look at the accusations made by the disgraced ex DGSE agent, Alain Chouet, in yesterdays Repubblica. The ex Spy master from Paris got his facts, faces and dates completely wrong. It’s interesting to see how a French socialist jumps at the opportunity to accuse the USA of deception. Unfortunately for Chouet the following article explains and exposes his and the Repubblica’s lies one by one. ARTICLE BEGINS -- A FRENCH 007 ACCUSES THE CIA AND SISMI WITHOUT ANY PROOF By GIAN MARCO CHIOCCI AND MARIO...

Three years ago -December 2002 - I was asked to take part in a symposium on Europe and began with the observation: "I find it easier to be optimistic about the futures of Iraq and Pakistan than, say, Holland or Denmark." At the time, this was taken as confirmation of my descent into insanity. I can't see why. Compare, for example, the Iraqi and the European constitutions: which would you say reflected a shrewder grasp of the realities on the ground? Or take last week's attacks in Jordan by a quartet of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's finest suicide bombers. The day...

NEW YORK — The scandal engulfing the United Nations Procurement Department () now appears to be bottomless. It also shows signs of growing more sinister, especially where it involves a mysterious private company called IHC Services (), which did big business with the procurement department until it was removed from U.N. rosters in June. New details of how dark the scandal could prove to be have emerged from the private sale of IHC on June 3, 2005, just as the procurement scandal was about to break. It now appears that while doing business with the U.N., IHC had links both to Saddam...

The European Right? Rimbauds, Not Rambos By Mark Steyn Most of us are familiar with the subtle differences between even relatively compatible cultures. One notes, for example, that what’s known to Americans as “The Hokey-Pokey” is called in Britain “The Hokey-Cokey.” Just when you think you’ve figured out what it’s all about, it turns out you haven’t quite grasped all the nuances. Accustomed as I am to these linguistic variations, I was nevertheless brought up short browsing the Guardian the other day and reading that Angela Merkel’s election victory would make Germany “the 20th of the 25 EU nations with...

After the 2000 elections, George W. Bush became president without a majority vote. Many Europeans snickered at the sorry spectacle of the world's oldest continuous democracy devolving into Third-World election chaos. Few critics cared to hear about the nature of America's two-century-old Electoral College.

BRUSSELS, Sept 7 (Reuters) - Microsoft said on Wednesday it sued the European Commission in an EU court to gain quick resolution of a question surrounding sanctions imposed by the Commission on the company. The Commission has required Microsoft to share communications protocols -- or software rules of the road -- with rival makers of computer servers, ruling that it abused its dominance of the Windows operating system. Microsoft does not want to share that information with "open source" publishers who might make public what it says is confidential information. "This filing is the result of the agreement reached...

Qatar pledged $100 million in humanitarian assistance Saturday to help Americans recover from Hurricane Katrina, heading a list of more than a dozen countries joining an outpouring of support. They added to the more than 50 countries who had made pledges by the end of the day Friday. ``In these difficult circumstances, the people and the government of the state of Qatar would like to assure the people of the United States of its support and desire to assist the people in the affected area along the United States Gulf Coast,'' said a statement from the oil-rich Persian Gulf state's...

BRUSSELS, Belgium - The United States has asked the European Union and NATO for emergency assistance, requesting blankets, first aid kits, water trucks and food for the victims of Hurricane Katrina, the two organizations said Sunday. ADVERTISEMENT EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said the 25-nation bloc was "ready to contribute to the U.S. efforts aimed at alleviating the humanitarian crisis" in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama — the states hardest hit by Katrina. The 26-nation NATO alliance said it too had received a request for aid from Washington. The United States has asked for NATO relief support in the form of...

In an accelerating drive, more than 50 countries have pledged money or other assistance to help Americans recover from Hurricane Katrina. Cuba and Venezuela have offered to help despite differences with Washington. Oil giant Saudi Arabia and small countries like Sri Lanka and Dominica are among the nations making pledges. "I hope that will remind Americans that we are all part of the same community," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday as offers kept pouring in. None has been turned down, Rice said at a news conference, disputing a report from Moscow that a Russian offer had been rejected....

The new chasm between Europe and the United States seems to widen still — even as transatlantic diplomats assure us that it has narrowed — despite a common heritage and a supposedly shared goal of global democracy, free markets, and defeating terrorists. Europeans sell arms to autocratic China that will threaten democratic Taiwan. They legitimize the terrorists of Hamas and Hezbollah, and mostly caricature the American efforts at democratizing the Middle East. All this follows the past appeasement of Yasser Arafat, strife over the Kyoto protocols and the International Criminal Court, and the use of the United Nations to hamstring...

Responding to Islamist terrorism in Britain and elsewhere, Germany is considering introducing a Muslim public holiday. As Mathias Dopfner, chief executive of Axel Springer, put it: "A substantial fraction of Germany's government - and, if polls are to be believed, the German people - believe that creating an official state Muslim holiday will somehow spare us from the wrath of fanatical Islamists." Great. At least the 1930s' appeasers did it on their own time. But, in recasting appeasement as yet another paid day off, the new proposal cunningly manages to combine the worst instincts of the old Europe and the...

With all the talk in the media about what's wrong with America, I'd note we're still the world's second richest country under the widely used GDP per capita/purchasing power criterion. This measures the economic output of the average citizen of a nation, with adjustments made for purchasing power. http://www.geographyiq.com/ranking/ranking_GDP_purchasing_power_parity_top25.htm 1. Luxembourg 55,100 $ 2. Norway 37,800 $ United States 37,800 $ 4. Bermuda 36,000 $ 5. Cayman Islands 35,000 $ 6. San Marino 34,600 $ 7. Switzerland 32,700 $ 8. Denmark 31,100 $ 9. Iceland 30,900 $ 10. Austria 30,000 $ 11. Canada 29,800 $ 12. Ireland 29,600 $ 13....

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...

Jean-Claude Juncker, the Luxembourg prime minister, has said he will resign if the Grand Duchy votes against the constitution.The current holder of the European Union rotating presidency made the threat after polls showed support for the Yes vote dropping among the 200,000 voters ahead of the July 10 referendum. Mr Juncker has also warned that failure to agree on a new long-term EU budget this month would turn a political problem into a full-blown crisis. Mr Juncker said the single currency shared by 12 EU countries had been weakened by the French and Dutch No votes but was still overvalued...

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...

If a French rejection of Europe's constitutional treaty seemed unlikely earlier this year, a No vote by passionately pro-Europe Luxembourg would have been inconceivable. But after the political shockwaves created by the overwhelming French No vote and the expectation that the Dutch will reject the constitution today, even Luxembourg's endorsement is no longer certain. While the Luxembourg Yes camp remains in the lead, opponents are gaining ground ahead of the referendum on July 10 in the tiny Grand Duchy, which houses many of the European Union's big institutions. The Yes camp's share narrowed from 59 per cent last month to...

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...

WESTERN EUROPE It is likely Western Europe will slowly be Islamicized over the next two centuries, even in time the remoter areas like Norway, Ireland, and Portugal, as Muslim populations, through high birthrates and immigration, surpass the numbers of native Europeans. Only if the Muslims become more secular, in the manner of many Turkish Muslims, by several generations in Western Europe will that region avoid becoming Austro-stan, Belgo-stan, Holland-stan, etc. What might eventuate will be some sort of hybrid Euro-Middle Eastern culture, such as Albania and Bosnia have today. Both those nations, formerly purely European racially and at least nominally...

President Bush traveled to Ohio today to talk about taxes and Social Security. Before he left for Ohio he met with Luxembourg's Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker and the President of Rwanda Paul Kagame. The President and first lady are now at Camp David for the weekend

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...

The other day, the guy on my local radio station mentioned that The Passion of The Christ was the Number One movie in America. ‘So congrats to Mel Gibson,’ he said. ‘And it’ll probably hold on to the Number One slot until the new Starsky & Hutch opens.’ It’s always useful to keep things in proportion. But, in fact, Starsky & Hutch opened and The Passion cleaned its clock. Last weekend, it took in $51.4 million, as against S&H’s $29.05 million. By then, The Passion’s total gross was up around $212 million. Pace my radio guy, mid-Seventies nostalgia is no...

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...