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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...