Free Republic

Perhaps nothing so clearly highlights the differences in perspective between Old Europe and the still first generation free Eastern Europeans like the current conflict in Israel. The Western Europeans who were given their freedom by hundreds of thousands of American soldiers are busy condemning Israel and ignoring hundreds of rockets fired by Hamas into Israel. The French, who hate everything good, lead the way...

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...

Europeans have been hyperventilating over their self-perceived “victories” vis-à-vis the United States at the recent NATO Summit in Romania from April 2-4. “France and Germany Thwart Bush’s Plans,” ran a triumphant headline in the Hamburg-based Der Spiegel. “Europe Waits Out the Bush Administration,” read another. “Only One Lame Duck Here” said the London-based Guardian in commentary that waxes giddy about Russia’s growing stranglehold over Europe. “NATO Should Disappear” said the Madrid-based El Pais. But behind the spin, the 26-member NATO Summit (arguably the most important such gathering since the end of the Cold War) exposed a security-dependent Europe that is...

The Air Force Tanker Deal By Thomas Lifson The next generation of Air Force in-flight filling stations is slated to ride on the wings of an airplane designed in France. A consortium of Northrop-Grumman and Airbus beat Boeing for the contract to supply the next generation of Air Force tankers. Critics decry a job loss from outsourcing, fret at dependence on foreign suppliers for the capacity to fuel our strategic global reach, and don't want their tax dollars heading toward Europe. But it is worth at least considering the view that the brass are planning a canny game of strategy, looking...

In the global economy, today's winners can become tomorrow's losers in a twinkling, and vice versa. Not so long ago, American pundits and economic analysts were snidely touting U.S. economic superiority to the "sick old man" of Europe. What a difference a few months can make. Today, with the stock market jittery over Iraq, the mortgage crisis, huge budget and trade deficits, and declining growth in productivity, investors are wringing their hands about the U.S. economy. Meanwhile, analysts point to the roaring economies of China and India as the only bright spots on the global horizon. But what about Europe?...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is on an overseas trip to embrace an audience and a topic for which President Bush has shown scant affection: "Old Europe" and global warming. Pelosi, D-Calif., and seven other House members left Saturday for meetings with scientists and politicians in Greenland, Germany and Belgium on ways to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. The trip comes shortly before a climate change summit next month involving the leading industrialized nations and during a time of increased debate over what should succeed the Kyoto Protocol, a 1997 international treaty that caps the amount of...

PARIS - Wars and weather have left few scars on Paris' Arc de Triomphe. Commissioned by Napoleon to celebrate his victories, the 15-story tower of bone-white stone stands as an eternal monument to French glory, a time when Europe trembled before this nation's might. The national mood now, as France enters the final week before Sunday's presidential election, is far less exultant. To Roland Perrossier, whose great-great grandfather fought for Napoleon, the arch has become a symbol of decline. "It's a feeling of lost glory," said Perrossier, sheltering under the arch from a spring squall. "The French have lost the...

If you ever wanted to see Paris or Rome before you die, but haven't had a chance to do so, you might want to hurry. Soon enough, most of what we now think of as Western Europe will be transformed into a branch of the Muslim world, which is sure to make it an even less welcoming place for Americans, Israelis and for Jews. That, at least, is the unpleasant, yet entirely unavoidable conclusion to be drawn from Europe's headlong demographic drive toward oblivion. Think I'm exaggerating? Consider a few cold hard facts. According to a recent report by the...

Hypocrisy, thy name is Europe. Criticizing the United States is perfectly acceptable — in fact, Americans have raised political self-criticism to the level of an institutional art form. For goodness sake, the dictator of Venezuela — which won its independence from a European colonial power — went before the United Nations to commend a book by an American academic condemning Yankee imperialist domination. If you're going to condemn the United States for all its failings, then, please, offer some meaningful alternative, some heightened vision, afforded by your long acquaintance with war, bigotry and its victims, along with your censure. The...

New Integration Minister Debates Islamic Veils Integration Minister Nyamko Sabuni Sweden’s outspoken new integration minister contributed to a growing debate in Europe about Islamic veils on Thursday, saying headscarves had the effect of ”isolating” Muslim schoolgirls. Nyamko Sabuni also told the news agency Reuters in an interview that she was closely watching the outcome of a dispute over a school that barred a nine-year-old from wearing a headscarf. Sabuni, who fled to Sweden from Burundi when she was 12, stated ”Where in the Muslim scripture does it say that children shall wear a headscarf? No where. The purpose of a...

BRUSSELS -- Radical Muslims in France's housing estates are waging an undeclared "intifada," or uprising, against the police, with violent clashes injuring about 14 officers each day. As the Interior Ministry announced that nearly 2,500 officers had been wounded this year, a police union declared that its members were "in a state of civil war" with Muslims in the most depressed "banlieue" estates. Banlieue, which means outskirts, is the commonly used euphemism for the low-income housing projects heavily populated by unemployed youths of North African origin. The police union said it had asked the government to provide police with armored...

The Supreme Court in Spain has ruled in favour of a worker who was demanding to be given his job back or to be paid compensation by a company who sacked him for downloading personal emails, visiting chat rooms and even watching pornographic videos on the Internet during working hours. The sentence noted that in Spanish law there is no specific prohibition of using the Internet for private ends. The company who sacked the worker T&D Innovación y Mantenimiento S.A. also claimed that the worker spent 50 minutes a day ‘eating sunflower seeds’. They installed spyware on his computer to...

But we Americans seem to have short memories. What else could explain the fact that we, generally speaking, so-often lambaste the French, calling them “cowards” for not allying themselves fully with us in every instance? We constantly throw in their faces the fact that we came to their rescue in World Wars I and II. And we’ve all heard the jokes: “Surplus French military rifles for sale. Never fired. Dropped once.”

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...

PARIS - Airlines around the world punished Airbus on Wednesday for delays in the delivery of its A380 superjumbo, demanding compensation, reconsidering orders — and in one case, striking a major deal with its rival Boeing Co. Shares in Airbus' parent company crashed and Boeing's soared as repercussions of the production problems with the world's biggest passenger plane resonated throughout the industry. They also raised questions about the European planemaker's management and strategy, and the future of the double-decker A380. Boeing is staking its bets on a smaller, more fuel-efficient model.

The worldwide furor unleashed by the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that I published last September in Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper where I work, was both a surprise and a tragedy, especially for those directly affected by it. Lives were lost, buildings were torched, and people were driven into hiding. And yet the unbalanced reactions to the not-so-provocative caricatures -- loud denunciations and even death threats toward us, but very little outrage toward the people who attacked two Danish Embassies -- unmasked unpleasant realities about Europe's failed experiment with multiculturalism. It's time for the Old Continent to face facts and...

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...

During the Iraq war, much was made about how different France and the United States had become. There is no better example than the recent political eruptions in the two nations.In France, they apparently are able to make law in the streets.Here in the United States, it's still done in the halls of Congress.That's the only conclusion available after the French political system caved to political pressure from massive demonstrations and shelved a plan to attack the nation's 20-plus percent youth unemployment rate.Meanwhile, as advocates for immigration changes here that would legalize and perhaps grant citizenship to illegal immigrants continue...

EuroSummit 2006: "Old Europe" Prefers Russia to Poland Simon Araloff, AIA European section One of the main themes of the EU summit which opened yesterday is the question of a common European strategy in the sphere of energy. In this connection Warsaw has put forward its own initiative on maintaining energy security of the European Union. However, its key members, particularly Germany and France, categorically reject the Polish offer. On the other hand, Norway and the Baltic countries actively support Warsaw. Defining their own position on this question, opponents of the Polish initiative are guided first of all by economic...