A Nobel Prize goes to a Chinese: Peking’s revealing reaction. Charging Geert Wilders. The schnitzel tax. A tale about ecological Socialism and dirty capitalism.
 
1. The Nobel committee gave the prize to a Chinese dissenter. One is reminded of the choice of the Soviet dissident Solzhenitsyn. In this case, however, the Committee faced more than it did in the 70s. Already during the assessment stage, China aggressively warned against giving the award to its trouble maker-in-residence.
 

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It is more than four months now since the elections, and the formation of a Belgian government seems further away than ever. Walloon and Flemish politicians are diametrically opposed on a new Finance Act. The degree of regional fiscal autonomy is the discordant issue.

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Although the trial of Dutch MP and critic of Islam, Geert Wilders, and its serious implications for free speech in Europe, is once again creating a furor in the press, another high-profile trial of a critic of Islam -- Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, in Austria -- is being overlooked.

Ms. Sabaditsch-Wolff now faces up to a three-year prison sentence if convicted of "inciting hatred against a religious group" and "defamation of religion" in a lecture in 2009 on the "Islamization of Europe."

As allegedly criminal statements fill the indictments of "hate speech" prosecutions, as in the case with Mr. Wilders, the Dutch MP says that he has spoken the truth, and the truth cannot be illegal.

If the authorities in the states of the EU have taken note of this axiom, the Viennese state attorney has not. He has taken an even more sinister approach to prosecuting Mrs. Sabaditsch-Wolff: No statements are listed in the indictment. Instead, her entire three-part seminar has been designated as incriminating.

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Present performance and the degrading inferiority of the Soviet system. A crime, committed by one, remains an offense even if it is said to be to the action of many. Good terrorists? More Marx or more money.

1. Examine the record of Eastern Europe and of Russia since the collapse of Communism as a ruling system. In doing so, one is hardly able to suppress some disappointment. The performance registered is below par for the potential we discover. Often, only the voluntary and outright restoration of the totalitarianism of the USSR and its empire would underbid the accomplishments.

If you do not think that the striving for freedom is the instinctive course pursued by mankind, then you are interested in how freedom came to work in successful societies. You will also want to investigate the cases in which risk-laden freedom has been abandoned for safe servitude.

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In 1858, the Virgin Mary appeared to young Bernadette Soubirous in Lourdes, France. Before long, Lourdes became the most important pilgrimage site for Roman Catholics and other Mary worshippers. France prided itself on being a secular state, in some phases (esp. 1905-40) even aggressively secular, yet it acknowledged and protected Lourdes as a place of pilgrimage. Not many French officials actually believe in the apparition, but that is not the point. The believers are human beings, fellow citizens, and out of respect for them does the state respect and protect their pilgrimage.

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At least the world as defined by the left in the USA. Their confidence in 2008 to have won a permanent super majority in Congress, lays in shatters. Thank you, Obama.  Never before succeeded a President in driving his own party into ruin in such a short time. His arrogance in forcing his socialist worldview upon the American people, against their will, comes home to roost. America is still a majority center-right country where Republicans, Independents and a fair number of Democrats favor maximum economic freedom in a democratic capitalist system.
 

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1. Ahmadinedjad had an opportunity to perform during the yearly circus operated by the UN’s GA. He used the occasion to insult the USA. This is part of a ritual – so yawn. Iran insults and the US are not provoked to act. That makes Iran’s posturing into a safe act of heroism. Akin to jumping out a ground floor window. One wonders why some European delegations have not walked out when most did. Only the Swiss had a reason to stay. Being neutral since 1648 or 1814 –depending how you like to count- Bern represents Iran and the US as these powers do not have direct diplomatic relations.  Iran’s claim that alleges that America organized the 9/11 attack on herself can also be seen as a compliment. The Leader’s repeated provocations reveal that Iran trusts the self-chosen foe. Depending on the point of view, the restraint of America’s institutions and her executive, or the paralysis rooted in delusions, is trusted sufficiently to make the survival of Iran dependent on the “hegemon’s” continued self-control. The theory is correct. At least till the next election or so.
 

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In recent weeks Iceland has been having a dispute with the European Union over the fishing of mackerel within the Icelandic exclusive economic zone. Icelandic representatives have not been allowed at the negotiating table on mackerel by Norway and the EU despite the fact that the species has increasingly been found within the Icelandic EEZ mainly due to warming of the sea. As a result Iceland has not been bound by any agreements on mackerel and therefore the Icelandic government has issued unilateral quotas for mackerel in Icelandic waters.

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Scholarship places the composition of the two Vinland Sagas in the Twelfth century, in the case of The Greenlanders’ Saga, and in the Fourteenth Century in the case of Eirik’s Saga. But like most of the saga-literature the two narratives reflect a non-mythic oral tradition, linked with the settlement and early chronology of Iceland and Greenland, the general (if not the minutely detailed) trustworthiness of which much research both literary and archeological over the last century has attested. Quite apart from scholarly and technical arguments, even the ordinary reader must take the wealth of circumstantial detail and the laconic matter-of-factness of the storytelling as signs of an essential veracity. The two Vinland Sagas reflect the Nordic people at a particular epoch: The transformational moment, namely, at the end of the Ninth Century, when the old warrior-ethos began yielding to the new Gospel ethos and when success in the market began replacing notches on a sword haft as the paramount sign of masculine status. Both The Greenlanders’ Saga and Eirik’s Saga represent this change in the generational differences that distinguish Eirik the Red (above left) on the one hand from his male children, especially his son Leif (above right), on the other. (The two portraits, from the Sixteenth Century and the Nineteenth Century respectively, are obviously conjectural.)

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For some time now, an issue creates waves in Europe. It is caused by the expulsion of some Gypsies from France.  The case, but especially what is meant while left unspoken, is telling.

EU rules allow for the free movement of the citizens of member countries and of the Union’s associated states. This means that anyone can go anywhere and stay for three months. The analogy of older times is an automatic tourist visa. Those able to find a job prior to their move or during their legal stay can settle.

Their presence is tolerated as long as they remain employed or have earned the right to unemployment benefits. This arrangement is a practical one. A similar deal –free migration- has worked before World War One when anyone could stay on wherever he pleased. The scheme’s working out  hinges on whether an assumption behind the rule holds up.

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What is the most corrupting institution in society? Quite simply, it is government, because it controls and distributes more money to more people and institutions than any other single entity and it has the power to coerce and punish or reward that dwarfs what any private party might be capable of doing.

Now that we are in the midst of the political season, we are constantly being warned by the establishment media about the dangers of businesses donating to political candidates either directly or indirectly. In recent weeks, there have been at least two major hits in the New Yorker and New York Magazine on businessmen Charles and David Koch and their roles in supporting candidates who oppose the policies of President Obama and the Democrats, as well as for supporting free-market think tanks and grass-roots organizations.

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Progressive secularism and moderate Islam. Extortion called bail. Human nature, equality and those in charge of leveling.
 
1. Its phrasing did not quite reveal why Turkey’s vote, on September 12, had a significance that transcended the affairs of that often ignored country. Even if it is not quite PC to talk about it, the vote has implications. On top of the list stands the European Union which, under the pressure of the indigenous Left and the USA, is being nudged to accept Turkey as a member. Of greater significance is what the results tell about the prospects and stability of states intending to be secular democracies that happen to have a Muslim population. Beyond that, crucial scenarios regarding the future of the Caucasus-Black Sea and Caspian regions are affected by the decision.

On the surface, the Turks had to decide the fate of a new constitution. Officially, the case put forward had democratic plating. The new basic law was to replace the one that the soldiers, which ran the country in the 1980s, had imposed. According to the draft, the military’s privileged position in politics is to be reduced. Furthermore, the judicial system’s personnel become dependent of parliament. That body is to determine the appointment of judges and it is the legislature that will make the appointments to the enlarged constitutional court of the country.

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On Friday evening, a tall, bespectacled 30-ish Englishman, Matthew Elliott, escorted Lady Margaret Thatcher into a reception at London's 800-year-old Guild Hall. Despite the fact that England is going through its worst economic crisis since Mrs. Thatcher became prime minister more than three decades ago, she was of good cheer as she conversed with those of us who had come to pay our respects. Perhaps a reason for her upbeat manner was that the ideas she (and Ronald Reagan in the United States) championed are once again gaining currency.

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Back in 2005, Danish prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen set the gold standard on defending free speech when, on being approached by perpetually aggrieved Islamic ambassadors hoping for official redress against Jyllands Posten (Cartoon Rage was just kicking in), he refused to hear their plaints, explaining to them and the world that it was not his place, as prime minister, to interfere with free speech in Denmark.

“This is a matter of principle. I will not meet with them [the ambassadors] because it is so crystal clear what principles Danish democracy is built upon that there is no reason to do so...As prime minister, I have no power whatsoever to limit the press – nor do I want such power.”

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Once again Belgium is in shock. Yesterday Professor Adriaenssens, the man who headed the committee that was established to collect and investigate instances of sexual abuse and pedophilia in the Catholic Church in Belgium, presented his report [pdf] and conclusions. The extent and degree of abuse that turns out to have been widespread, is horrifying. The Belgian Cardinal Danneels’s response to the report is entirely in character. This man will never change. His spokesman said that Cardinal Danneels “once again expresses sincere sympathy with the victims and their families for the suffering that they experienced…” and adds some platitudes about structures and institutions. Yet for decades he was responsible for the fact that complaints by the victims and their families were ignored. He made himself scarce whenever churchgoers who encountered abuses appealed to him.

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