Free Republic

Floating Around Europe New & Old... Old Europe tends to tell the U.S. what to do (about taxation, welfarism, Islamofascist terror, and foreign policy). New Europe -- perhaps more appreciative of America's role in its own de-satellization -- tends to want to learn from us, to take our lead, or even (on, e.g., taxation) to show us the way... Floating around for two weeks in Europe old and new, it certainly seems so -- not least in a service level, a desire to please visitors and customers, rarely seen in the U.S. That hospitality, even with the dollar plunged to...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Let's get to what Republican policies have become. Let's listen to excerpts of Senator McCain's speech to the World Affairs Council in Los Angeles today. Here's number one. MCCAIN: We can't build an enduring peace based on freedom by ourselves, and we do not want to. We have to strengthen our global alliances as the core of a new global compact, a league of democracies that can harness the vast influence of the more than 100 Democratic nations around the world to advance our values and defend our shared interests. At the heart of this new compact...

Lithuania Hosts Proliferation Security Initiative Interdiction Exercise The United States congratulates Lithuania for successfully hosting a Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) exercise on April 26-27 in Vilnius and Siauliai, Lithuania. Twenty-two nations, including the United States, participated in the Lithuania-hosted PSI exercise, Smart Raven. Smart Raven, the first PSI exercise hosted by Lithuania and the 26th PSI exercise, addressed the challenge of interdicting proliferation shipments by air. The Lithuanian-hosted exercise advances the operational capabilities of PSI nations by allowing them to actively participate in or observe the air interdiction processes of Lithuania and its neighbors Estonia, Latvia, and Poland. Exercise Smart...

WARSAW - Poland's new Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski has called for a bigger role for European Union (EU) newcomers in the bloc's decision-making processes and insisted that Poland will defend its "moral identity" within the EU. "We are and we want to be in the EU, to participate in everything...But we want enlargement to mean real participation, not just formal participation (of new member states) in all decision-making mechanisms," Kaczynski, the twin brother of Polish President Lech Kaczynski, said in a policy speech to parliament. "We will strive toward this end on our own but also with the Weimar Triangle"...

VIENNA, Austria — Abu Ghraib. Guantanamo. Haditha. America's problems with Iraq are casting a long shadow over President Bush's meeting with European Union leaders this week. The gathering is restricted to U.S. officials and the European Union leadership, and the agenda focuses on Iran's nuclear ambitions, agricultural subsidies and the West's dependence on imported oil and gas. But the United States' precarious world standing will be the unspoken theme of Wednesday's session in Vienna. Ahead of the visit, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley said he doubted Bush would have much to say about the U.S. prison for terror suspects at...

A culture of common security From Warsaw Business Journal It was in May 2003, just after Poland obtained active observer status in the European institutions, that I first experienced EU policymaking from the inside at a meeting of political directors. Yet another human disaster in Africa was making headlines, and various colleagues had argued successfully for a peacekeeping operation in northeastern Congo. But others from both older members and accession countries were doubtful, seeing no direct link to either EU or national security. Navel gazers Three years later, despite the unquestionable success of what became known as Operation Artemis, history...

Today the EU-Commission will launch its improvement-report concerning the entry of both countries into the union. Both countries of the Balkan seem to have massive problems. Is the final decision about their join-in postponed to the January 2007??! Hamburg - Example Bulgaria: About 173 contracted murders happened since 1990. Last week the businessman Ivo Markov was shot in Sofia on the street. In February the supposable underworld chief Iwan Todrow was hit by deathly bullets. In the last 6 years more than 120 murders or murder attempts happened in Bulgaria and not a single one was cleared up. In mid...

Migrant workers 'boost UK growth' Migrant workers from Eastern Europe are providing a positive boost to Britain's economy, according to a report. New immigration has helped to keep inflation under control, boost output and raise tax revenue, research by Ernst & Young has suggested. Workers from Poland and Slovenia are among those "plugging gaps in a variety of industries", the report said. The UK is one of only three EU states to grant full labour rights to citizens from the 10 recent accession countries. The Ernst & Young Item Club Spring Forecast, which uses the Treasury's own forecasting model for...

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...

PRAGUE (Reuters) - Cuba has given a Czech diplomat in Havana 72 hours to leave, the Czech Foreign Ministry said on Thursday. It called the move retaliation for Czech criticism of Cuba's human-rights record. Cuban President Fidel Castro's communist government gave no reasons for refusing to extend the visa of the first secretary at the Czech embassy, Stanislav Kazecky. The Czech Foreign Ministry said it had summoned the Cuban charge d'affaires in Prague to protest and said the government would take reciprocal action. "The Czech Republic understands this as an act of expulsion," the ministry said in a statement. "Cuba...

Some new EU states cooling on the euro By Carter Dougherty International Herald Tribune WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2006 FRANKFURT In Poland, the conservative Law and Justice Party has campaigned against joining Europe's common currency, and four months after its upset victory in national elections, one thing has become clear: It will not go out on a limb for the euro. "We don't see any benefits in adopting the euro," the party's leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, said during the campaign. "Euro adoption would lead to lower exports, lower national income and higher unemployment." Governments in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic felt...

The spectacle of a hapless little boy staring through the heavy mesh of a cage launched mega-successful author of the Harry Potter books, J.K. Rowling, on a crusade to end the caging of Eastern European tots. Referring to a 2004 story in Britain’s Sunday Times about little Vasek Knotek imprisoned in a Prague hospital, Rowling wrote in today’s Times, "If you read the piece and it’s as bad as the picture, then you’ve got to do something about it.” The story hit her hard, she wrote, especially since she has a horror of what she sees as "one unendurable terror...

New iron curtain divides Europe MatthewLynn Friday, February 10, 2006 When eight countries from the old communist empire in the east joined the European Union in May 2004, the rhetoric was all about healing historic divisions. And now? The relationship between eastern and western Europe is increasingly fractious. The easterners are becoming truculent members of the EU, while the westerners are growing ever more suspicious of their new partners in trade. An iron curtain is descending across Europe once again. The old one was political, the new one is economic. "This is one of the big issues facing the EU,"...

EU states urged to open up to eastern labour The European Commission will urge 12 European states on Wednesday to finally open their borders to workers from the bloc's ex-communist newcomer states as a way of boosting their economies. . In the first of three reports on the transitional phase since the European Union's "big bang" enlargement of May 2004, the EU's executive arm says that fears of an invasion by cheap "Polish plumbers" were unfounded. . "In spite of fears expressed on the occasion of the successive enlargements, free movement of workers has not led to disruption of national...

MEPs demand EU clampdown on homophobia The European Parliament is calling for tough action against EU member states that fail to uphold the human rights of homosexuals. MEPs from all the main political groups have tabled resolutions condemning moves by several EU countries, including Poland, Latvia and Lithuania, which they believe stigmatise gays and lesbians. “We need to fight across Europe for similar equality but worryingly, many European countries are not nearly at this stage,” said Michael Cashman, the British Labour MEP. “Gay pride marches are still being banned, political and religious leaders are using the language of hate and...

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=15464 Something remarkable has been happening to me in the past nineteen days. Wherever I go, no-one launches abuse at me. When I open my mouth to speak, I am received with civility and the occasional ’ Have a good one.’ I am not attacked or intimidated to the point of abject fear and loathing. Where have I been visiting for the past two and a half weeks? And where do I live?

Slide Show >> They came from around the world, young men with handles like SnapDragon and Bladerunner attacking computing problems so complex that even experienced coders could only stare at the screen in bewilderment. Only one mastered the final algorithm problem: Eryk Kopczynski, a.k.a. Eryx, a reticent Warsaw University student who wears his long hair in a ponytail and says his life's ambition is to "discover some interesting notion." Kopczynski's triumph in this year's TopCoder Open, sponsored by Sun Microsystems, was no fluke. He was following in the footsteps of a slew of computing geniuses to emerge from the...

On Nov. 22, the German parliament elected Angela Merkel as the new chancellor. It could mark a seminal event. Ms. Merkel is the first female chancellor in Germany's history; the first leader who spent most of her life under Communist rule; and the first head of a coalition between the two major German parties since 1969. She takes over in a country that has been, in effect, without a government since May, when the outgoing chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, announced his intention to bring about new elections. Angela Merkel becomes chancellor at a moment of crisis for her country, poised between...

The man who sparked the flat tax revolution is former Estonian Prime Minister Mart Laar. He governed his country from 1992 to 1995 and from 1999 to 2002. When the historian became Prime Minister in 1992 at the age of 32 he knew nothing about economy. Laar’s area of expertise were Europe’s 19th-century national movements. “It is very fortunate that I was not an economist,� he says. “I had read only one book on economics – Milton Friedman’s “Free to Choose.� I was so ignorant at the time that I thought that what Friedman wrote about the benefits of privatisation,...

The Bush years have seen an economic boom take place among the world's developing nations, according to my analysis of the CIA world fact book, and www.indexmundi.com, an internet site which keeps historical record of past CIA world fact books. This article is merely describing a positive trend that appears to be benefiting billions of the world’s poor. I make no inference as to why it is happening, apart from the title tease; I do find it ironic, however, that it is occurring at this time: Among those who most vocally profess concern for the world’s poor, their most hated...

Despite a meeting last week with President Bush, Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski is stepping down after 10 years in office without something he and the Polish people wanted badly, and something that Bush could confer with relative ease - a visa waiver. A visa waiver allows residents of a favored country to visit the U.S. for up to 90 days on business or pleasure without going through the worsening hassle of obtaining a U.S. visa. There are 27 visa waiver nations: all of Western Europe, including Scandinavia; Iceland, Slovenia in the Balkans, and Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore and Brunei...

WARSAW -- In Mitteleuropa, the roles have reversed. The boring, steady Germans last Sunday opted for political chaos by failing to elect a government. A week later, the passionate but messy Poles expressed no ambivalence in picking a clean slate of leaders. Polish former communists were chucked out after a single term, keeping alive a losing streak for incumbents dating back to the birth of democratic Poland. The fresh Polish twist is found in the victor's camp. Two conservative parties built a majority around the very ideas that Angela Merkel and her center-right allies failed to sell Germans on. Law...

EU newcomers praise UK stance Lithuania is firmly in the "new Europe" camp The UK's vision of a competitive, reinvigorated European Union has been warmly received in the new EU member states in eastern Europe. Many press commentators look forward to the reforms expected under the UK's EU presidency, as outlined by Prime Minister Tony Blair in Brussels on Thursday. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The paradox of the situation lies in the fact that the Baltic states, which have many reasons to grumble at the Brits, have only one ally within the EU, and it is Britain. The new European split does not...

Europe Turned Upside Down by Wojciech Kosc 20 June 2005 The EU’s new member-states offer to forgo cash in a bid to save the EU’s budget talks. POZNAN, Poland | Poland and the other post-communist states of the EU were supposedly only interested in membership for the money. That frequently aired accusation may now have to be ditched as, in a last-gasp – and ultimately futile – bid to save the EU from a “deep crisis,” Poland’s Prime Minister Marek Belka and the leaders of the other nine newest members of the EU offered on 17 June to forgo some...

Here to stay? By Denise Winterman BBC News Magazine The UK's army of Polish workers have built up a reputation for reliability and fair prices. But while the nation has fallen in love with them, are they here to stay? A year on from Poland joining the European Union and much of the UK appears to be in a full-blown love affair with the nation. The country's army of Polish workers have built up a reputation for quality, reliability and fair prices since becoming officially eligible to work in the UK last May. While not everyone's happy with the idea...

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) - The city council will vote this month on a plan to erect a bust of former President Ronald Reagan in a park, officials said Monday. A small center-right party, the Hungarian Democratic Forum, proposed the idea for putting a bust of Reagan near an existing statue of George Washington in City Park, a popular recreation site in the capital. Council members are to vote June 30 on the plan, which was supported by the mayor and his administration. ``Although he never visited Hungary, Ronald Reagan was the American president who most contributed to the democratic changes...

In the game of Euro-Cluedo now unfolding, some unlikely names are being mentioned. A year or two back, any EU-watcher asked to name a culprit for the murder of the European constitution would probably have named Captain John Scarlett, in the conference room, with the lead pipe. Instead, Le Viscomte Lebleu and Dr Jan Orange are in the frame, for a joint killing on the streets, with the ballot-box. But while the crime is clear, the motives are murky. For the French, the treaty was the ghastly work of Anglo-Saxon liberals intent on prizing open long-closed markets and exposing them...

This is a Howard Beale moment in Europe. Remember the O'Reillyesque commentator in the 1976 movie "Network," who kept shouting, "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore"? It was never clear exactly what he felt was wrong, who was to blame, or what should be done about it. He just wanted to protest against "everything everywhere … going crazy." That pretty much sums up European sentiment. People are as mad as hell that their economies are stagnating while crime, immigration and welfare dependency — the three are intertwined in the average European's mind —...

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...

…and the scramble for a "yes" vote is nearing hysteria The question that most troubles French people about the 29th May referendum on the European constitution is whether it embodies the French vision of Europe. In the aftermath of the second world war, the French fifth republic and the new Europe were conceived simultaneously and along parallel lines. France, reconstructing its own political and administrative institutions, imagined and created with the same breath what became Europe's. France dominated the content as well as the form of European politics. "The major initiatives," as Larry Siedentop has written in Democracy in Europe...

George and Laura Bush arrived in the capital of Georgia, Tbilisi, on Monday night. (snipski) It is noteworthy that local authorities closed the air space of Georgia in the expectation of the US president. Georgian law-enforcement agencies and special services toughened security measures in the whole city. (snipski) After the hearty welcome at the airport, George W. Bush and his wife went to Tbilisi's historical center, on Maidan Square, where the American guests were offered to see the concert of Georgian folklore ensembles. There were no local residents seen in the area, where the music show was held: special services...

Old Europe challenged by new stars in the East By Anthony Browne One year on, former Soviet countries are booming AROUND Tallinn, the Estonian capital, smart houses are sprouting amid an unprecedented rise in construction. People drive expensive cars. This is a boom town, not a depressed former Soviet city. Foreign investment is pouring into a low-tax economy that grew at 6.2 per cent last year. But even that left Estonia the slowest of the three Baltic Tigers: Lithuania grew at 6.7 per cent and Latvia at 8.5 per cent — as much growth in one year as the EU...

Romania hits back at French 'lecturing'By George Parker in BucharestPublished: April 18 2005 21:38 | Last updated: April 18 2005 21:38 Romania's president has warned France to stop lecturing his country over its close links with London and Washington as he prepares to sign the treaty to join the European Union.  Traian Basescu (pictured) says he wants to form a "special relationship" with the US and Britain to improve security in the Black Sea region, and he also aligns himself with London's liberal economic policies.Mr Basescu's stance has infuriated France, Romania's biggest supporter in the EU, and could exacerbate...

A spectre is haunting Europe - and terrifying the President of France. Jacques Chirac last week pointed the finger: "Ultra-liberalism," he warned, "is the communism of our age." By "ultra-liberalism" Mr Chirac means the sort of market economics that has made America the world's strongest economy, rescued Britain from 40 years of decline and brought prosperity to countries ranging from New Zealand to Singapore. The fact that the leader of the French centre-Right can equate this with communism is a sad illustration of how France is stuck in the political dark ages.Mr Chirac is in a panic because the barbarians...

TIRANA, Feb. 25 (Xinhuanet) -- Albania will send 50 more soldiers to Iraq, totaling its number of troops in the Gulf country to 120,according to a government spokesman on Friday. The decision will take effect in April, when soldiers currentlyserving for a six-month period under US command return home. Albanian public opinion supports the country's contribution to the US-led force in Iraq, where two Albanian-born US Marines have been killed.

Am I the only Freeper in Bratislava this week?

East European nations keep Iraq role small By Bruce I. Konviser THE WASHINGTON TIMES PRAGUE -- Central and Eastern European political leaders, caught between growing domestic discontent over the war in Iraq and a desire to maintain good relations with Washington, have increasingly adopted a minimalist approach to the continuing conflict. "They try to do as little as possible for their own political reasons, which is: In a democracy, they want to have popular support," says Charles Gati, an East European scholar at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies. "On the other hand, they want to do something,...

BUDAPEST, 20 February 2005 — Saudi Arabia has ordered its ambassador in Budapest back to Riyadh for consultations to protest an off the cuff remark in which Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany referred to Saudi footballers as “Arab terrorists.” Gyurcsany’s comment was made earlier this month when he hailed Hungary’s football team for having “fought with death-defying courage” against “Arab terrorists” in a friendly match against Saudi Arabia on Feb. 2. “We received official notice this week that the Saudi Arabian ambassador in Budapest was called back by his government for consultations,” Hungarian Foreign Ministry spokesman Viktor Polgar told AFP....

A confrontation between the Baltic States and Eastern European countries, and Russia on how the significance of the end of the World War II should be interpreted intensified last week with harsh statements made by Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga. "On May 9, Russian people will place a Caspian roach on a newspaper, drink vodka, sing folk songs, and recall how they had heroically conquered the Baltic area," RIA-Novosti cited her saying Friday. The Russian Foreign Ministry made a quick and stinging response. "This public expression by the head of the Latvian state is deeply regretful," it said in a statement...

The wind moaned gently in the nearby forest of the Vosges mountain. A thick blanket of snow lay on the ground and on the thousands of white crosses that marked the graves of US servicemen who had fallen in France during the Second World War.With my wife and her aunt Nancy from Pittsburgh, we had come to the American military cemetery at Epinal in eastern France, where 5,200 US soldiers are buried. We were paying tribute to one of those brave men, Private Bill Anderson from Pennsylvania, Nancy's brother, who went through D-Day and then died at the age of...

Wimps Earlier this month, Josep Borrell found himself at the center of a storm in a teacup. In closed-door remarks reported by Warsaw's Gazeta Wyborcza daily, the president of the European Parliament spoke dismissively of Poland and Lithuania, who led the recent European efforts to mediate in Ukraine's political crisis. The outcome in Ukraine was a "great success for the EU in avoiding a crisis," Mr. Borrell reportedly said, "despite" the pesky new members who "acted under U.S. influence." SNIP But this little story deserves closer attention. No matter the exact wording, Mr. Borrell expressed an obsessive anti-Americanism common to...

SOFIA (AFP) Dec 03, 2004 Bulgaria is expecting Washington to decide early in 2005 to set up US military bases in the former communist country, Defence Minister Nikolay Svinarov said Friday. "We are expecting that at the end of January or the beginning of February the US State Department and Congress will decide about stationing American troops in Bulgaria and that it will be positive. We have to be ready to negotiate," Svinarov told the newspaper Trud. The government on Wednesday set up a working group for such negotiations. The Bulgarian army's chief commander General Nikola Kolev said the bases...

WARSAW, Poland, Nov. 3 (UPI) -- Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski said Wednesday victory for George W. Bush in the U.S. presidential elections was good news for Poland. Kwasniewski, a staunch ally of the Bush administration, said the two countries would continue to cooperate in the war on terror but called on Bush to improve his commitment to Poland in economic matters. Poland was one of only a handful of countries in the western world in which opinion polls showed more people favoring Bush over Democrat rival John Kerry. Kerry conceded the election earlier Wednesday. Poland has 2,400 troops in Iraq,...

George W. Bush's admin-istration has left a mark of its own on transatlantic relations. On that many US and European officials agree. The Iraq war, Donald Rumsfeld's provocative talk of "old" and "new" Europe and fights over US steel tariffs and subsidies for Europe's Airbus have all commanded headlines and strained the most successful alliance in history. But, no matter who wins next week's US presidential election, on many important issues basic differences are likely to remain. Many US priorities concern traditional power politics, while the European Union often seems to be groping after a more rule-governed world. US officials...

17 August 2004NATO Training Implementation Mission arrives in Iraq Statement by Joint Force Command (JFC) NaplesThe core of the NATO Training Implementation Mission in Iraq (NTIM-I) arrived in Iraq August 14, according to a statement by NATO's Joint Force Command (JFC) Naples.The training mission will identify the best methods for conducting the training of Iraqi security forces both inside and outside Iraq, as well as start the training of selected Iraqi headquarters personnel immediately.Following is the JFC statement as it appeared on the NATO Web site:(begin text)NATOAugust 17, 2004JFC NaplesPress ReleaseAugust 14, 2004 THE NATO TRAINING IMPLEMENTATION MISSION ARRIVES...

But the new EU commissioners will have to combat the army of regualtion freaksTHE KING lies there like a beached whale, but he is not yet dead, nor will he die for another ten dreary weeks. His ministers are still formally in office, lingering until November 1 like ghosts, in a machine that is barely ticking over. Yet not only has Romano Prodi’s successor as President of the European Commission been crowned; he is already shaping the character of his reign. Tomorrow, rudely interrupting the deep slumbers of Brussels in August, José Manuel Durão Barroso will hold an “informal” first...

... As Jose Manuel Barroso read the names of the Commissioners he had chosen for the key portfolios, it became clear that the center of gravity has shifted. France and Germany are no longer calling the shots. Almost none of the duo's central demands were met while all important economic positions went to avowed free-marketers. It all began when 10 new members, mostly from the former Communist East, joined the EU in May. In contrast to Paris and Berlin, the newcomers pursue largely free-market policies and support the U.S. war in Iraq. Heralding that tectonic shift in the balance of...

BERLIN - Germany's new president, Horst Koehler, begins his first official trip since taking office with a visit to Poland on Thursday - a break with post-war tradition which has mandated the head of state first travel to France. The move has delighted Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski. "This is a sign of how close our relations have become," said the Polish leader in an interview with Germany's Tagesspiegel newspaper. President Koehler - whose office is mainly ceremonial - was born in Poland in 1943 in the village of Skierbieszow. His family was forced to flee at the end of World...

THERE are few things more frustrating than being a British Eurosceptic in Brussels. Not, I hasten to add, because of the behaviour of my fellow Europeans. The frustration begins and ends this side of the Eurostar terminal at Waterloo. When I return home to London, I meet and talk with other Eurosceptics. Invariably the same thing happens: as they open their mouths, words come out that bear little relation to reality. As they speak, they talk about a caricature European Union, stuck with a timewarp impression that has not been updated in the past 20 years. The Europe they have...

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - French President Jacques Chirac told President Bush to mind his own business Monday after Bush called on the European Union to fix a date for Turkey to start EU entry talks. The strongly worded attack came at a NATO (news - web sites) summit in Istanbul that was intended to bury discord within the alliance over the U.S.-led war in Iraq (news - web sites), which France vehemently opposed. "If President Bush really said that the way I read it, well, not only did he go too far but he went into a domain which is not...