Free Republic

Why do Europeans adore America’s president-elect, Barack Obama? Stupid question, you might say. He is young, handsome, smart, inspiring, educated, cosmopolitan, and above all, he promises a radical change from the most unpopular American administration in history. Compare that to his rival John McCain, who talked about change, but to most Europeans represented the opposite.And yet, there is something odd about the European mania for a black American politician, even as we all know that a black president or prime minister (let alone one whose middle name is Hussein) is still unthinkable in Europe. Or perhaps that is precisely the...

Ryanair on Friday claimed Sweden's Trade Ethical Council against Sexism in Advertising (ERK) was out of touch with the "Britney Spears generation" after the agency accused the discount airline of running a sexist ad campaign. In defending the advertisement, Ryanair questioned whether the ERK accurately reflected the views of most Swedes. “We are sure that the anti-funsters at the ERK do not speak for the majority of the famously liberal and easy going Swedes,” the company said in a statement. “The ad simply reflects the way a lot of young girls like to dress. We hope the old farts at...

The global financial crisis is sparking a new wave of anti-Americanism in Europe, where the intensity of America-bashing in some countries is reaching levels not seen since the United States invaded Iraq in 2003. The turmoil on Wall Street has been greeted with a smug chorus of ridicule emanating from nearly every European country, whether big or small, rich or poor. The overwhelming sentiment among many political and media elites in Europe has been one of unabashed Schadenfreude over what they hope will bring a final, ignominious end to the much-hated “Anglo-Saxon economic model.” While much of the initial reaction...

It's a rare day when finance officials, leftist intellectuals and ordinary salespeople can agree on something. But the economic meltdown that wrought its wrath from Rome to Madrid to Berlin this week brought Europeans together in a harsh chorus of condemnation of the excess and disarray on Wall Street.

More than 50 percent of Britons believe that polygamy is legal in the United States; in fact, it is illegal in all 50 states. Almost one-third of Britons believe that Americans who have not paid their hospital fees or insurance premiums are not entitled to emergency medical care; in fact, such treatment must be provided by law. Seventy percent of Britons think the United States has done a worse job than the European Union in reducing carbon emissions since 2000; in fact, America’s rate of growth of carbon emissions has decreased by almost ten percent since 2000, while that of...

Tim Russert was an American. I'm not using the term in its patriotic sense, although he certainly was not just a patriot but an unabashed one at that. No, Tim Russert was an American in that very particular fashion that makes Americans the most distinctive breed of humans on the planet. He was an American in precisely the cultural sense that causes European elites -- and all too frequently our own -- to grind their teeth and look down their noses with such haughty disdain at the one population on earth composed of the entire world's rejects, refugees and descendants...

ANYBODY who dabbles in transatlantic affairs has come across one giant stereotype: Americans admire risk-takers, whereas Europeans (at least in the rich, stable parts of the continent) are instinctively risk-averse, expecting the state to shield them from all sorts of dangers, including their own folly. Move a bit farther east to the ex-communist world, especially Russia, and you enter a place where things seem to have gone from one extreme to another: from an all-demanding, all-protective state to a free-for-all where life is full of deadly dangers, about which even the prudent can't do very much. Like most windy generalisations,...

Gene Expression Differences Between Europeans And Africans Affect Response To Drugs, Infections ScienceDaily (Feb. 29, 2008) — Differences in gene expression levels between people of European versus African ancestry can affect how each group responds to certain drugs or fights off specific infections, report researchers from the University of Chicago Medical Center and the Expression Research Laboratory at Affymetrix Inc. of Santa Clara, CA. Researchers used Affymetrix exon arrays to show that expression levels for nearly five percent of the 9,156 human genes they studied varied significantly between individuals of European and African ancestry. The research team took an unbiased...

At the time of the World Cup the summer before last, there was a nice cartoon in the papers by Oliphant, with two panels. One showed "Soccer as seen by Americans," a group of dainty chaps prancing lightly across the grass with purses dangling from their limp wrists, and the other, "American football as seen by Europeans," a heap of brutally moronic humanoids using severed limbs to batter each others' brains out. Yes, that sums up this reciprocal perception rather well - and it might have hinted at a contrast going beyond sports. The delicate midfield artists of Barcelona and...

That Nicolas Sarkozy is France's most pro-American president in generations - in fact, come to think of it, ever - there is no reason to argue over. It is the one point on which both he and his enemies would agree. A man who declared his intention on going to Washington of "reconquering the heart of America" - and who in his speech to Congress cited Elvis Presley, Charlton Heston and Neil Armstrong as his heroes - is clearly not lukewarm about "les Etats-Unis".

MARIAZELL, Austria (AFP) — Pope Benedict XVI blasted Europeans for being selfish and not having enough children, in a sermon on Saturday at the 850-year-old pilgrimage site of Mariazell in Austria. "Europe has become child-poor. We want everything for ourselves and place little trust in the future," the pope told a crowd of faithful from his canopied area at an open-air mass that took place under heavy rain. But Benedict held out hope, saying: "The earth will be deprived of a future only when the forces of the human heart and of reason illuminated by the heart are extinguished ....

August 16, 2007: Is the F-35 overhyped? That is one question that is being asked in light of both American refusal to release the source code for software, as well as the climbing price (up to $63 million per plane). The real answer depends on what competing aircraft have to offer. How does the F-35 compare in the air-to-air mission against likely competitors like the French Rafale, the Swedish Gripen, and the multi-national Eurofighter? All of European planes boast some of the best electronics suites that have ever provided for a combat aircraft. All are capable of high speed (over...

Europe's first early human colonizers were from Asia, not Africa, a new analysis of more than 5,000 ancient teeth suggests. Researchers had traditionally assumed that Europe was settled in waves starting around two million years ago, as our ancient ancestors—collectively known as hominids—came over from Africa. But the shapes of teeth from a number of hominid species suggest that arrivals from Asia played a greater role in colonizing Europe than hominids direct from Africa. These Asian hominids may have originally come from Africa, the scientists note, but had evolved independently for some time. (Related: "Did Early Humans First Arise in...

Pope Benedict XVI said the debate raging in some countries — particularly the United States and his native Germany — between creationism and evolution was an “absurdity,” saying that evolution can coexist with faith. The pontiff, speaking as he was concluding his holiday in northern Italy, also said that while there is much scientific proof to support evolution, the theory could not exclude a role by God. “They are presented as alternatives that exclude each other,” the pope said. “This clash is an absurdity because on one hand there is much scientific proof in favor of evolution, which appears as...

* Believes that North America was unjustly "stolen" from its rightful owners by white Europeans * Rejects the legitimacy of any North or Central American nation named or established by Europeans * Advocates open borders * Calls for the expulsion of all whites from North America

As the Senate is mulling the details of a compromise immigration bill hammered together by the odd couple of Sens. Edward Kennedy and Jon Kyl, and as members of Congress hear from their constituents over the Memorial Day recess, it may be worthwhile to put the issue in historical context. For most of our history, the United States had no restrictions on immigration at all. I am told that my Canadian-born grandfather was a "nickel immigrant": He took the five-cent ferry from Windsor, Ontario, north to Detroit roundabout 1896. This situation resulted from America's strong demand for labor, coupled with...

Human remains found in a 1,400-year-old Chinese tomb belonged to a man of European origin, DNA evidence shows. Chinese scientists who analyzed the DNA of the remains say the man, named Yu Hong, belonged to one of the oldest genetic groups from western Eurasia. The tomb, in Taiyuan in central China, marks the easternmost spot where the ancient European lineage has been found (see China map). "The [genetic group] to which Yu Hong belongs is the first west Eurasian special lineage that has been found in the central part of ancient China," said Zhou Hui, head of the DNA laboratory...

Europe still has not learned a lesson since WWII.

How Europeans Got to Europe45,000-year-old carvings found in Russia by Nicholas Bakalar Carved bone and ivory tools, excavated in Russia, made by early humans more than 40,000 years ago. (Courtesy of A.A. Sinitsyn) It has been widely assumed that modern humans—Homo sapiens—first traveled out of Africa and settled in central and Western Europe before heading to Eastern Europe. That may not be the case. Recent finds from a site in Russia about 250 miles south of Moscow suggest that the first humans in Europe were Eastern European.The discoveries include bone and carved ivory artifacts. Researchers calculated the date they were...

Early Europeans unable to stomach milk 22:00 26 February 2007 NewScientist.com news service Roxanne Khamsi Researchers analysing the DNA in Neolithic human remains claim to have uncovered the first direct evidence that modern humans have evolved changes in response to natural selection. Just 7000 years ago, Europeans were unable to digest milk, according to a new analysis of fossilised bone samples – nowadays more than 90% of this population can. Europeans must have incurred a rapid change in their genetic make-up because it held an evolutionary advantage for them to be able to digest milk, says Mark Thomas at University...

Special trains and buses brought in protesters from across Italy Thousands of people have been arriving in the north-eastern Italian city of Vicenza for a march against a planned extension of the US army base there.Organisers say the majority of local people are opposed to US plans. They say Prime Minister Romano Prodi has ignored strong local objections. Thousands of extra police are on duty in Vicenza for what is planned as a peaceful march. There are fears that extremist fringe groups will try to cause violence. Vicenza's mayor fears the march will be infiltrated by left-wing extremists from...

Arab Racism, Arabism, Arabization, Islamism - Islamofascism, Genocide, Ethnic Cleansing, etc. Arab Racism, Arabization, Islamism - Islamofascism, Genocide, Ethnic Cleansing, etc. On Blacks, Africans * Kurds * Berbers * Israelis * Jews * Afghanis * Iranians, Farsi * Pakistanis * English * Asians * Europeans * Marsh Arabs * Nubians * Al Akhdam * Iraqi Arabs vs Ahwazi Arabs * by "palestinians" (on others) General Arabism Equals Racismhttp://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=24912 FrontPageMagazine.com October 13, 2006 ThereÂ’s an expression, "The pot calling the kettle black." It refers to someone claiming a sin in others that is at least as prevalent - if not...

In a recent interview, Prof. Bernard Lewis, famed historian and leading expert on Islam, warned that "Muslims seem to be about to take over Europe." Was the fall of Europe inevitable? No, according to Prof. Lewis, who says it's coming about because "Europeans have surrendered on every issue regarding Islamic demands, due to political correctness and multi-culturalism." Europe has become woefully secular and its tepid attachment to a forgotten and dismissed Christianity is no match for the zeal of Muslims who remain fervent in their faith. Having been force fed that all cultures are equally valid, Europeans consider it unenlightened...

Europeans fear US attack on Iran as nuclear row intensifies · Transatlantic rift emerges over how to handle crisis · America builds up its naval forces in the Gulf Ian Traynor in Brussels and Jonathan Steele Wednesday January 31, 2007 The Guardian (UK) Senior European policy-makers are increasingly worried that the US administration will resort to air strikes against Iran to try to destroy its suspect nuclear programme. As transatlantic friction over how to deal with the Iranian impasse intensifies, there are fears in European capitals that the nuclear crisis could come to a head this year because of US...

Holocaust: Sweden's complex legacy On 27th January 1945, the Soviet Army liberated Auschwitz, an event commemorated around the world on Holocaust Memorial Day. David Stavrou looks at the complex legacy of the Holocaust in Sweden, where the battle to promote tolerance still rages. Chavka Folman-Raban is a Jewish survivor of Auschwitz who arrived in Sweden a few days before the end of the Second World War. Like many other survivors, she was liberated by the Red Cross and found refuge in Sweden. "I'm not sure I can describe with absolute certainty the transition from being a prisoner in a concentration...

I read a letter to the moderator of an Italian newspaper forum. It is just mind-boggling. I'll translate. The original is posted below in the comments section. Here goes, word for word: Dear Beppe e dear Italians, In general, I don't like to see violent and tragic scenes, but today, I decided differently. He was a monster, no? And so, it's necessary to see how one dies who has decided the deaths of thousands of people. I watched him, sad and chained, mounting the gallows, darkness all around, the images not clear because of my connection. I watched him for...

Actress-turned-activist Bo Derek is spearheading a campaign to stop the export of horsemeat to Europe and Japan. Three European-owned factories in the U.S. send some 26 million pounds of horsemeat overseas each year. Now Derek, who first came to national attention in the 1979 movie "10,” has joined other celebrities and horse lovers in an attempt to shut down the plants — two in Texas and one in Illinois. In September, the House of Representatives passed the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act, which bans the transportation and sale of horses for human consumption. But it’s unclear whether the Senate will...

Cuban colonists traded bootlaces for gold Maev Kennedy Monday October 9, 2006 Guardian Unlimited (UK) El Chorro de Maita cemetery; and an artist's impression of the jewellery made by the Cubans from the Europeans' shoelaces. Images: Courtesy Institute of Archaeology The people of El Chorro de Maita, a fishing and farming village on the east coast of Cuba, were buried with their greatest treasures: jewellery made of stone, coral, pearl, gold and silver alloy, and odd little tube shaped metal beads. Meanwhile the first Europeans to make contact with the island were sailing home, well pleased with their barter: they'd...

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

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...

According to ABC News, 2008 presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., may have recently called his moderate-right credentials into question. "McCain has tapped a controversial academic to be a member of his virtual 'kitchen cabinet,'" ABCNews.com noted. That academic – Niall Ferguson of Harvard University – is, according to David Weigel of Reason magazine, a "foaming-at-the-mouth 'national greatness conservative.'" This academic has presented, according to Priyamvada Gopal of Cambridge University in Britain, an "aggressive rewriting of history, driven by the messianic fantasies of the American right." Who is this dastardly intellectual twisting the liberal media's beloved "Maverick" McCain into a...

Prologue My father, William Schramm, was not a mechanic or an engineer, but in post-war 1946 Hungary he somehow managed to build a car out of scrap parts. It was nothing more, really, than an engine with four wheels and a flat-bed in the back. Apart from military vehicles and Dad’s creation, cars on Hungarian streets were an extreme rarity. They just weren’t available and, even if they had been, there were no jobs and hence no money with which to purchase one. A young man in those days, my dad already had quite a few responsibilities and mouths to...

Changhe Aircraft Industries Group (CAIG) and China Helicopter Research and Development Institute (CHRDI), both based at Jingdezhen, Jiangxi Province, are currently developing an attack helicopter for the PLA. The helicopter, which is often referred to as Wuzhuang Zhisheng-10 (WZ-10), is said to be a third-generation two-seat design comparable in size and performance to the European Tiger and South African Rooivalk. The WZ-10 helicopter is believed to have been under development since the late 1990s under tight security. Very little information about the project is available. Chenghe’s parent company, AVIC II, is currently working with European partners on the common helicopter...

But for most, a missile was too distant, too unlikely a threat to interrupt their daily lives. ``A better question is when's the next earthquake,'' Ernie De Matteis said as he flipped through a newspaper in San Francisco.

The United States and the European Union are united in agreement on the subject of Iran and its nuclear policy. A conditional offer of compromise and incentives was offered to Tehran on June 6th by the permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany. On Monday the US President once again invoked the possibility of sanctions if Iran did not end its programme of uranium enrichment. But Iran said yesterday that as yet, no decision on the dossier of incentives has been made But the issue of the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba is another matter....

Berlin police say they have foiled a German woman's plans to travel abroad to become a suicide bomber. She is one of three women who media reports say are being investigated after announcing plans on the internet to carry out missions in Iraq. Berlin police said the woman may have been planning to take along her child, who has since been taken into care....

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,...

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...

'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...

More European papers defy Muslim protests Gwladys Fouché Thursday February 2, 2006 More newspapers across Europe today reprinted the 12 cartoons of the prophet Muhammad that have sparked protests across the Middle East - although most refrained from publishing them on their websites. Earlier this week hackers attacked the website of Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, which first published the controversial pictures last September, and the site became unavailable for a time. When the website reappeared it published a statement in Danish, Arabic and English stating that the cartoons "were not intended to be offensive, nor were they at variance with Danish...

Saturday, January 14, 2006 On Iran: President Bush Gets It Right Yesterday, after a meeting with new German Chancellor Angela Merkel, President Bush made some comments on Iran that clearly demonstrates that on this one issue he clearly understands what the stakes are: Iran armed with a nuclear weapon poses a grave threat to the security of the world [...] The current president of Iran has announced that the destruction of Israel is an important part of their agenda, and that's unacceptable, and the development of a nuclear weapon, it seems to me, would make him a step closer to...

The Bible is full of praise for Persia (today's much-maligned Iran) and for its rulers. In the Book of Ezra, God speaks through the proclamations of Cyrus, the king of Persia, who declares, "The Lord God of Heaven hath given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house in Jerusalem." Cyrus acceded to this divine command, and thus was the Second Temple in Jerusalem built. In other parts of the Old Testament, there is ringing praise of Cyrus as God's "anointed" and the "chosen" ruler, who freed Jews from their Babylonian...

A study of DNA from ancient farmers in Europe shows sharp differences from that of modern Europeans — results that are likely to add fuel to the debate over European origins. Researchers led by Wolfgang Haak of Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, argue that their finding supports the belief that modern residents of central Europe descended from Stone Age hunter-gatherers who were present 40,000 years ago, and not the early farmers who arrived thousands of years later. But other anthropologists questioned that conclusion, arguing that the available information isn't sufficient to support it. Haak's team used DNA from 24...

TEHRAN - In a meeting with President Mahmud Ahmadinejad in Tehran on Tuesday, French Ambassador Bernard Poletti said his country is ready to cooperate with Iran in the production of nuclear electricity. France is aware of Iran's concerns and its demand to access to nuclear technology for the production of nuclear electricity and is prepared to cooperate in this regard, he added. The French ambassador to Tehran also presented a letter from Jacques Chirac to the Iranian president and expressed hope that he would be able to play a constructive role in the promotion of ties between the two countries...

Chairman of the Shell companies in Iran, Yves Merer, said here Sunday the Anglo-Dutch oil giant would make an investment worth billions of dollars in the Islamic Republic's industry. Merer, who talked to Fars News Agency, added the demand for energy, including oil, would soar in the future but oil prices would keep fluctuating. He reiterated, The Shell will inject billions of dollars into Iran's industry if the country pays more heed to investment. The Shell Companies Group has allotted some 15 billion dollars for development of complicated oilfields across the world. The task is faced with two main problems...

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.