Free Republic

There will be no winner of the Irish referendum – not at the level that matters most. But there will be a loser: the European Union. What matters most for the future of the EU is that it create popular support for integration. It is failing to do so. The most striking thing about opinion across Europe today is the decline of idealism about integration and the resurgence of a kind of nationalism. Calling a second Irish referendum to achieve the “correct” decision has strengthened perceptions of the EU as managerial, even undemocratic. If the Irish vote Yes, there will...

Climate: As alternate-energy champ Spain's green economy slides into recession, a German professor says if American "climate illiterates" don't follow, the Copenhagen climate conference will fail. And the bad news is? King Canute, the Viking king of England, Norway and Denmark, was the legendary king whose sycophantic followers praised his power and wisdom. As the story goes, he once stood on the shore and commanded the waves to halt. Rather than exercising his ego, he in fact was giving his followers a lesson in reality — the power of man over nature is finite and inconsequential. In December, the world's...

You need a strong stomach to endure the messages disseminated by the mainstream news media, especially by its premier outlets, such as the New York Times. Of course, at this late date, nobody expects anything like political nonpartisanship or sound economic analysis from the Times, yet one continues to hope that the writers will not flaunt their leftish sensibilities in an utterly buffoonish manner. If you happened upon a September 28 article “Europe’s Socialists Suffering Even in Downturn,” by Steven Erlanger, your hopes in this regard must have been violently shattered. Much might be said about the article’s main content,...

Websites using the .yu domain extension will cease to be available online from 30 September. The extension - assigned to the former Republic of Yugoslavia - has been replaced by .rs (for Serbia) and .me (for Montenegro)

And so it begins. Angela Merkel and her conservative coalition scored a huge win in the German parliamentary elections today, handing the the lefties (the German version of the Obots) their worst defeat in years. It must have killed the New York Times to report this story.

Portugal's Socialist Prime Minister Jose Socrates won a second term in a general election on Sunday but his centre-Left party lost its absolute majority in parliament. Jose Socrates was elected in a landslide in 2005 Mr Socrates, who won about 37 per cent of the vote, has pledged to continue plans to spend his way out of the recession, promising big budget public works projects to stimulate growth as Portugal struggles with the highest unemployment rate in decades. "The people voted and they spoke very clearly, the Socialist Party was chosen again to govern Portugal," Mr Socrates said, adding it...

BERLIN -- Chancellor Angela Merkel claimed victory in national elections Sunday, with projections by public television stations putting her conservative party on a path to form a new center-right government and achieve Mrs. Merkel’s goal of ending the country’s “grand coalition” with Social Democrats. If the slim lead for her conservative Christian Democrats and the pro-business Free Democrats holds after all the ballots are tallied, Mrs. Merkel will finally have the chance to enact the kind of liberalizing economic reforms she proposed when she first ran for chancellor four years ago. The celebration will be muted by the knowledge that...

At the G20 summit in Pittsburgh, and at the UN Security Council meeting before that, Barack Obama continued his administration's new policy toward Great Britain: declare that the "special relationship" between the U.S. and the U.K. is as strong as ever, and then act as if there is no such relationship at all. The British papers were filled with the news that the president would not grant Prime Minister Gordon Brown a one-on-one meeting. "Mr. Obama had refused five separate requests from the prime minister for a private meeting during his U.S. trip for the UN summit in New York,"...

" chemist who led to the invention of the birth control pill says he regrets the demographic catastrophe that has resulted from people using the contraceptive device to separate reproduction from sexuality, reports Baptist Press. Carl Djerassi, the 85-year-old Austrian chemist who was one of three whose formulation of synthetic hormones paved the way for the pill, wrote an opinion piece in the Austrian newspaper Der Standard lamenting the way the pill has been used. Austria's population now includes more people over age 65 than under 15, and Djerassi said the country soon will face an "impossible situation" as the...

Merkel 'Heads For' New Coalition Angela Merkel said she wanted to be a chancellor "for all Germans" Chancellor Angela Merkel has been returned to power in Germany, exit polls suggest, after her conservative bloc won more than 33% of the vote. Mrs Merkel told supporters they had achieved "something magnificent", but said she wanted to be a chancellor of all Germans at a moment of crisis. Mrs Merkel's bloc now looks set to form a centre-right alliance with her preferred partner, the pro-reform FDP. She says the alliance will get Germany out of its worst crisis in 60 years. Her...

WASHINGTON -- President Obama said yesterday he still favors dialogue with Iran -- even after it was revealed the country has been caught building a second top-secret nuclear plant inside a mountain. At a press conference in Pittsburgh, where the G-20 summit was taking place, Obama, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy disclosed the existence of the uranium enrichment plant near the holy city of Qom. The White House has been aware of the heavily protected, clandestine facility, Iran's second outside of Natanz, for a couple of years, US officials said.

Barack Obama’s chances of re-election in three and a half years’ time may be evaporating at unprecedented speed, but his presidential ambitions could still be realised in another direction. He would be a shoo-in to win the next Russian presidential election, so high is his popularity now running in the land of the bear and the knout. Obama has done more to restore Russia’s hegemonial potential in Eastern and Central Europe than even Vladimir Putin. His latest achievement has been to restore the former satellite states to dependency on Moscow, by wimping out of the missile defence shield plan. This...

Sept 24, 2009 — The evolutionary story of human origins is often told like a cultural myth that is intuitively obvious. Humans emerged in Africa after their ancestors came down from the trees and walked upright. They began to hunt with stone tools and used fire. They migrated north out of Africa and populated Europe, overtaking the Neanderthals who lacked the brain power and culture of their more evolved cousins. How much of this story is based on actual evidence? How much is interpolation of what “must” have happened based on an evolutionary view of natural history? As part of...

Brett Baier interviews the Polish PM

Several U.S. senators have blasted President Barack Obama's decision to change U.S. missile defense policy in Europe, accusing the president of "abandoning" U.S. allies there. Senior Pentagon officials and some other senators defended the new strategy at an Armed Services Committee hearing Thursday, saying the new plan is the best way to deal directly with the nuclear threat from Iran. President Obama surprised the world last Thursday when he announced plans to cancel a missile defense system in Europe proposed by the Bush administration. The Bush-era program would have placed ground-based interceptors in Poland and a radar station in the...

Russia and Islam are not Separate: Why Russia backs Al-Qaeda By Konstantin Preobrazhensky Konstantin Preobrazhensky, a former Lt. Colonel in the KGB who defected to the United States in 1993, is an intelligence expert and specialist on Japan, about which he has written six books. His newest book Russian-American, A New KGB Asset will be published in late 2007. This article was first published by Gerard Group International, Intel Analyses, 31 August 2007.Americans generally believe that Russia is afraid of Islamic terrorism as much as the U.S.A. They are reminded of the war in Chechnya, the hostage crisis at the...

Czechs are used to betrayal by their Western allies. It was at Munich in 1938 that British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain sealed their doom in exchange for a piece of paper promising "peace in our time." The fact that this further gutting of missile defense came on the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland on Sept. 17, 1939, is an eerie coincidence. "Just after midnight I was informed in a telephone call by President Barack Obama that (his) administration had decided to pull out from the planned missile defense shield installations" in the Czech Republic and Poland, the...

For the Czech prime minister Jan Fischer, the news came in a call hastily placed by President Barack Obama, shortly after midnight on Thursday in Prague. In Warsaw, his Polish counterpart Donald Tusk initially declined to answer the phone from the White House - as he guessed the purpose, from the unusual timing, and wanted to prepare a response. Mr Obama last week unveiled the most dramatic national security reversal of his presidency by scrapping his predecessor George W Bush's planned anti-ballistic missile shield in eastern Europe. With this volte face, the Obama administration has brought the curtain firmly down...

Protest in Vienna: Pro-Lifers Demonstrate at City Hall Written by Bruno Schroeder    Thursday, September 17, 2009 A national controversy erupted in Austria when Vienna’s Mayor Michael Häupl allowed a jubilee-party honoring thirty years of “good work” by Austria’s first abortion clinic with the misnomer Pro-Woman. The September 3 celebration was held at City Hall and provoked a storm of protest including nearly 500 people demonstrating outside during the celebration. Pro-lifers sent hundreds of protest letters to the mayor asking him in vain not to honor the celebration of the killing of unborn babies. They then organized a demonstration...

When the historical dust clears, Gordon Brown may find that his greatest achievement was to keep Britain out of the euro and preserve the fire-fighting powers of the Bank of England. Had we joined monetary union in 1999, interest rates set by the European Central Bank would have been near 2 per cent during the mid-years of this decade. This would have been like pouring petrol on the housing fire. The credit bubble would have been even worse. Once the bubble burst, the UK authorities would have been left with few instruments to cushion the downturn and manage the highest...

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - French President Nicolas Sarkozy has warned the Czech Republic that it will have to face "consequences" if it continues to delay final ratification of the Lisbon Treaty following a Yes vote in a referendum in Ireland next month. Speaking after a meeting of EU leaders in Brussels on Thursday (17 September), Mr Sarkozy was careful to praise Czech Prime Minister Jan Fischer as a "man of great quality" before taking a clear sideswipe at the country's president, Vaclav Klaus, who has indicated he will postpone as long as possible putting his signature under the treaty -...

Nine police agents were injured in riots Thursday evening in the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek. One agent was seriously injured. The violence began during the arrest of a 14 year old who had badgered and taunted the police over the previous days. Two minors were meanwhile arrested. The two minors threw various projectiles at the police yesterday evening and resisted their arrest. They are now being brought to the magistrate. The prosecution wants to arrest them. The minor for whom the riots began needs to show up by a youth court. For several days the 14 year old had badgered...

President Obama's decision to abandon a Bush-era plan for a missile defense system in Europe and establish a partly ship-based shield against Iranian rockets could tighten U.S. pressure on the Islamic republic and ease a simmering rift with Russia. White House officials said the new missile defense system is designed principally to confront Iran's emerging military might more directly...Obama...said a shield based on the Navy's Aegis system will be geographically closer to Iran, will be deployed sooner and will be more cost-effective than the land-based system put forward by the Bush administration. The abrupt reversal of U.S. defense policy immediately...

Strategic Defense: With Iran on the verge of a deliverable nuke, the administration tells our allies in the dead of night that we will scuttle missile defense plans in Eastern Europe to please the Russians.Czechs are used to betrayal by their Western allies. It was at Munich in 1938 that British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain sealed their doom in exchange for a piece of paper promising "peace in our time." The fact that this further gutting of missile defense came on the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland on Sept. 17, 1939, is an eerie coincidence. "Just after...

This is a follow-up to the "Obama Backs Away From Missile Shield in Europe" article. While some people are calling Obama stupid, I don't think that of him at all. He is clearly trying to drive a wedge between us and our allies. All in his effort to weaken America.

President Obama was accused of caving in to pressure from Russia tonight after announcing he was abandoning plans for a US missile shield in Eastern Europe. The president’s decision to scrap George Bush’s controversial (pounds) 2.5 billion shield system in Poland and the Czech Republic was immediately welcomed in Moscow. But it left countries in the former Soviet sphere concerned that Mr Obama was less willing to stand up to Russia than his predecessors in the White House. Coming on the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland at the beginning of World War Two, the timing of the...

(AP) – 18 minutes ago VIENNA — Experts at the world's top atomic watchdog are in agreement that Tehran has the ability to make a nuclear bomb and is on the way to developing a missile system able to carry an atomic warhead, according to a secret report seen by The Associated Press.

VIENNA (AP) - Experts at the world's top atomic watchdog are in agreement that Tehran has the ability to make a nuclear bomb and is on the way to developing a missile system able to carry an atomic warhead, according to a secret report seen by The Associated Press. The document drafted by senior officials at the International Atomic Energy Agency is the clearest indication yet that the agency's leaders share Washington's views on Iran's weapon-making capabilities. It appears to be the so-called "secret annex" on Iran's nuclear program that Washington says is being withheld by the IAEA's chief. The...

...Some European cities already can be reached by Iran’s medium- and intermediate-range Shahab-class missiles. Many more will be in the cross-hairs once Iran acquires long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) — estimates put that about six years out.... To defend Europe — and American troops stationed there — against the possibility of a missile attack from Iran would require a “Third Site.” The U.S. currently maintains one ground-based missile site in Fort Greely, Alaska, and a second at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. The Third Site would be in Poland (ten missile interceptors) and the Czech Republic (a radar installation). This...

Too harsh a description of Obama foreign policy? With today's news of the abandonment of missile defense in Europe, it hardly seems so. Here's the former Czech prime minister, Mirek Topolanek: "This is not good news for the Czech state, for Czech freedom and independence. It puts us in a position wherein we are not firmly anchored in terms of partnership, security and alliance, and that's a certain threat." Okay, even if we were to grant that the missile shield in Europe was negotiable — what has the Obama administration gotten in return from Putin/Medvedev? Where is the announcement from...

The announcement that President Obama has caved in to Soviet demands to scrap the missile defense plans in Europe serves not just to appease the Russians but also clears the way for the Iranians to have a clear shot at European cities once they have their own nukes. This is the convenience of seeing everything having to do with defense as an expense and waste of money that could be better suited to other purposes such as spending money on programs that actually can buy and bribe the voters.....

Reports that US President Barack Obama is to scrap plans to deploy a missile defence shield in Poland and the Czech Republic have provoked anger in Europe. The Wall Street Journal reported that the US is to shelve the plan, which was first mooted by the Bush administration and has been a source of friction with Russia ever since. The move would be a cause of celebration in Moscow but of real concern to Eastern European countries which have looked to Washington for support against their former imperial master Russia. The US has said the shield is to guard against...

European Union leaders said they're considering a visa ban for leaders of the June military coup in Honduras. The EU countries are considering the legality of barring officials of Honduras's de facto government from traveling to the European Union following the ouster of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, the EUObserver reported Wednesday. Spain already already barred Honduran officials from entering its territories. "Until a peaceful settlement is found, the EU will stand ready to take further restrictive measures including targeting those members of the de facto government who are seen to be blocking progress on a negotiated solution," ministers said in...

U.S. wealth, measured in assets under management, has fallen farther than its transatlantic cousin's. LONDON -- As market participants reflect on the anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, so emerges the sobering consequence of the market crash that followed: North America's wealth has now fallen the most out of any other region in the world, allowing Europe to step up to the plate as the world's richest continent. North America, defined as the United States and Canada, had $29.3 trillion in assets under management in 2008, while Europe had $32.7 trillion, according to a survey by the Boston Consulting...

Czechs feel betrayed, Poles irked, Romanians slighted. Ask them who's to blame, and the answer may come as a surprise: Obama. George W. Bush fawned over Eastern Europe, and its leaders rushed to join his post-9/11 "coalition of the willing." Now many—officials and ordinary citizens alike—are grumbling over what they perceive as the Obama administration's neglect. It's a startling shift in a region long accustomed to cozy ties with the United States.

The man responsible for the Europe-wide ban on traditional light bulbs can be revealed as a former Soviet Communist party member from Latvia. Andris Piebalgs, 51, the European Commissioner for Energy, leads the team which drafted the controversial regulations that will see all incandescent bulbs phased out by 2012. Far from being a faceless bureaucrat, Mr Piebalgs has waged a public war against opponents of the ban, mocking their stance and accusing them of being “resistant to change”. Five UK MEPs – including representatives of Sinn Fein, Plaid Cymru, Labour and the Liberal Democrats – endorsed the policy in a...

The National Center for Public Policy (nationalcenter.org) has assembled a compendium of horror stories of the "shattered lives" of 100 victims of government healthcare from all over the western world. This book serves as a warning to every advocate of the "free" healthcare that Obama is trying to sell like snake-oil from a traveling case. If government gets control of our healthcare, our entire system will be worse off for it. In "Shattered Lives: One Hundred Victims of Government Health Care," author Amy Ridenour presents us with 100 heartwrenching stories of healthcare victims from Canada, Great Britain, Australia, Japan and...

If you have a look at the world of today from an economic point of view, you'll quickly find out that the Nordic countries (Scandinavia + Finland) is the richest part of the Globe (mesured by nominal GDP per Capita). This is not a matter of coincidence and neither is it a matter of oil, at least not to a large extent. For instance, the Danes earn the highest salaries on Earth and very few of them work for oil companies. The Nordic countries are immensely wealthy because we focus on things in life like R&D, economic growth, education, infrastructure,...

Now, it can't deny there is a problem. France Telecom, the once proud and efficient French public company, is in trouble, big trouble. Twenty-two of the company's employees have killed themselves in the last 20 months and all have left letters or testimonies incriminating their work conditions. This week, another employee tried but failed to take his own life. Some have even committed the desperate act in their own office. For months, France Telecom denied these "accidents" had anything to do with the company's work ethics. Now, the problem is staring it in the face. For the first time this...

The EU will investigate the billions of euros of state aid offered by the German Government to the Russian-Canadian rescuers of GM Europe. Within hours of the deal being sealed between General Motors, Magna and Russia’s Sberbank, the European Commission said it would examine the financial support offered by the German government, totalling €4.5 billion. The German bailout, funded by its taxpayers, also came under fire in Belgium where a big Opel factory will be closed. Joelle Milquet, Belgium’s vice-premier, criticised the deal that safeguards the future of four Opel plants in Germany while a plant in Antwerp, employing 2,700...

More than two dozen Ukrainian intellectuals are appealing to U.S. President Barack Obama and other Western leaders, warning of a greater Kremlin threat. Specifically, the group of influential Ukrainians is calling for stronger security guarantees to protect Ukraine from Russia, whose leaders they accuse of meddling in Ukrainian affairs.....In an open letter made public on Sept. 10, the authors expressed fears that Russia could use military force against Ukraine. They called on Western leaders to hold an international conference to provide guarantees for Ukraine’s security.

Energy Savings: Europe's ban on the incandescent light bulb began phasing in this month, and the U.S. will soon follow. Is Thomas Edison to blame for global warming? And why are we exporting green jobs?When the warm-mongers assemble in Copenhagen this December to hammer out a successor to the failed Kyoto Protocol, no doubt their work to save the earth from the carbon dioxide that gives it life will take place under the eerie light thrown off by compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) mandated by the European Union to fight climate change. The bulbs are more expensive, costing up to...

BRUSSELS — The European Union’s commissioner for the environment sought Thursday to tamp down expectations that wealthy nations would immediately hand over vast sums of money demanded by developing countries to manage global warming. Such funds “cannot be a blank check,” the commissioner, Stavros Dimas, said at a news conference. José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, the E.U.’s executive body, said fast-emerging economies should be expected to do more to finance efforts to combat climate change... Under the plan, E.U. member nations would pay €2 billion to €15 billion, or $22 million, annually by 2020 from their national...

A brave Muslim woman has come out in support of France moving forward and banning the burqa. May she stay safe. Muslim woman presses French panel for burqa ban By SYLVIE CORBET PARIS – Her voice trembling with emotion, the leader of an advocacy group for Muslim women and girls urged a French parliamentary panel on Wednesday to press for laws that would ban the wearing of Islamic body- and face-covering veils.

WASHINGTON – European support for the U.S. president's handling of foreign policy has soared since President Barack Obama took over from former President George W. Bush, but Europeans continue to view major issues including Afghanistan, Iran and global warming differently than Americans view them, a poll released Wednesday found. Among those polled in the European Union and Turkey, about three-fourths, on average, said they supported Obama's handling of foreign policy compared with about a fifth who said the same for Bush last year, according to the survey. It was conducted by the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a...

Dutch prosecutors said Wednesday they would charge an Arab-oriented cultural group under hate speech laws for publishing a cartoon that suggests that the death of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust is a fabrication. The public prosecutor's office in Utrecht in the Netherlands said the cartoon insults Jews as a group and is therefore an illegal form of discrimination. T Advertisement he chairman of the Dutch arm of the Arab European League says it published the cartoon on its website to highlight a double standard in freedom of speech rules in which anti-Muslim cartoons are permitted but anti-Jewish cartoons are...

THERE were angry clashes in a city centre today as right-wing protesters fought with anti-fascist campaigners in a busy shopping street. A planned demonstration by The English Defence League in central Birmingham descended into violence as the group charged along New Street, close to the city's main train station. One onlooker said: "There were about 250 people in total, fighting and throwing bottles at each other." The disorder spilled onto the adjoining Bennetts Hill, a street lined with a number of pubs, popular with shoppers. Dozens of riot police worked to contain the disturbance and a police helicopter hovered overhead....

There were angry clashes in a city centre today as right-wing protesters fought with anti-fascist campaigners in a busy shopping street. A planned demonstration by The English Defence League in central Birmingham descended into violence as the group charged along New Street, close to the city's main train station. More than twenty men have been arrested. 'There were about 250 people in total, fighting and Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1211414/Anti-fascists-clash-right-wing-protesters-Birmingham.html#ixzz0QFxinqVM

World War II began 70 years ago when Germany invaded Poland on Sept. 1, 1939. It would last six years and claim millions of lives. But the Allies missed several opportunities to stop Hitler in the run-up to the war. It is Aug. 25, 1939, and Adolf Hitler's official apartment in Berlin's Old Reich Chancellery is decorated with the usual floral arrangements, including magnificent bouquets at the entrance to the garden room. But on this Friday Hitler, normally an admirer of summer blossoms, has no interest in flowers. The dictator, wearing a brown jacket and black trousers, seems worn out....

Why not? All it takes is a couple of drinks and some friendly words of encouragement. I'm European and I love the US for many good reasons. Where to begin? Well, I guess decent food always matters. There are some truly magnificent places to eat, inspired by the American steakhouse tradition, where I live (Gothenburg, Sweden). I know one thing: Sweden isn't far from Texas; http://www.texassmokehouse.se/web/v2/Default.aspx My friends and family love the US for this chain of restaurants, which is nice, but I keep on urging them to try and discover the SPIRIT that is America, not only the facade...