Neo-Liberals Can Write Too...

Swedish leftists are appalled that this year's Nobel Prize for Literature went to Peruvian writer Mario Llosa Vargas. Spiked-Online has a nice article about it here. To leftists Vargas just doesn't fit the mold of what a writer should be, which is, first and foremost, a socialist:

People who never voiced any concerns about the politics of other Nobel Prize winners like Wisyawa Szymborska, who wrote poetic celebrations of Lenin and Stalin; Günter Grass, who praised Cuba's dictatorship; Harold Pinter, who supported Slobodan Milosevic; José Saramago, who purged anti-Stalinists from the revolutionary newspaper he edited thought that the Swedish Academy had finally crossed a line. Mario Vargas Llosa's politics apparently should have disqualified him from any prize considerations. He is after all a classical liberal in the tradition of John Locke and Adam Smith.

For those leftists who are keen on diversity such parochialism is hypocritical. And that only leftists write literature worth reading is snobbery, pure and simple. Vargas proves that non-socialists like him can write literature that not only win prestigious prizes like Nobels, but are works of high artistic merits, which is reason enough to read them. These leftists forget that Vargas won the Nobel for his literary contributions, not his politics.

But this is not the only thing that bothers these leftists: for one thing, Vargas was once one of them.

He was a convinced Communist who supported the Cuban revolution. He moved on not because he was no longer able to sympathise with the poor and oppressed, but because he still did when others began to identify more with the revolutionaries than with the people in whose name they made the revolution. He saw that Castro persecuted homosexuals and imprisoned dissenters. While other socialists kept quiet and thought that the dream justified the means, Vargas Llosa began to ask himself the difficult questions about why his ideals looked more like prison camps than socialist utopias when realized.

Like a religious fanatic who cannot fathom someone leaving a faith as perfect as his, leftists wonder why Vargas became such an apostate, supporting rubbish like free markets and free trade.

[via arts & letters daily]

France Needs Economic Liberty

Frontline has a good article highlighting France's pension crisis. Not that I agree with the article's leftist slant, but it does clearly illustrate the bankruptcy that's the socialist welfare state, and should be a signal to the United States to get its own welfare system in order.

France, like the rest of Europe, is facing a demographic crisis that threatens to imperil its pension system.

The hole in the public pension system has come about because France has an ageing population where there are more pensioners than active workers who pay into the pension fund. If not tackled in time, the present system is expected to ratchet up losses to the tune of 50 billion Euros by 2020. In 1945, when the system was introduced, there were roughly four workers for each retiree in France; today the ratio has shrunk to 1.5 workers per retiree.

Assuming demographic trends remain unchanged, the French government wants to raise the retirement from 60 to 62 for the short-term, eventually raising it to 67 by 2018. This will put France on par with the rest of Europe. Of course, France can add more workers in the short-term by increasing immigration; or increase the birth-rate in the long-term. But given the anti-immigrant sentiment in France, the short-term solution is not an option.

Two factors have upset this balance: the fact that longevity has increased – the life expectancy for men is 85 and for women is 87 now – while the birth rate has dropped. The age pyramid in the developed world has been inverted, with old people far outnumbering the young. At the same time, technological advance has meant that in many industries men have been replaced by machines, leading to persistently high rates of unemployment and placing an additional burden on state-funded unemployment benefit schemes.

The writer blames high unemployment not on France's anti-business policies but on capitalism's obsession with replacing human beings with technology for the sake of more profit. This is typical leftist dogma Frontline is known for.

Naturally, France's trade unions are opposed to any reforms. They agree changes are needed to keep the system solvent, but the sacrifices need to be made, not by them, but elsewhere.

"We are opposed to Sarkozy's specific proposals because they are unjust. We understand that because of changing demographics the system has to be changed, adapted and we accept that. What we reject is this particular reform. The government is adamant about raising the retirement age. But other solutions can be found. Sarkozy has consistently given tax breaks to his rich friends and business supporters. We can look at other means of financing. This proposal is unjust because it penalises two categories of workers who find themselves on the lowest rung of the ladder – manual workers and women,” said Francois Chereque, the leader of the CFDT, one of France's eight major trade unions.

Raising taxes in a country where taxes are extremely high seems suicidal. Soaking the rich is always a populist theme, but punishing those with capital to invest in jobs is hardly productive. Capital will go where there is money to be made, not taxed.

“"I am a 52-year-old divorced mother of four. My husband had a modest job and it was a struggle to make ends meet. I abandoned my job to stay home, to cook and clean and bring up our children. Six years ago I returned to work. My age meant that it took a long time to find a job, and as an office cleaner I make barely 900 euros a month. I am tired, used-up, paid less than my male counterparts. In this situation to ask me to carry on until 67 is an ignominy."

I feel for this woman, but its France's statist economic policies that are to blame. Its anti-business environment make creating jobs difficult in a country with a history of chronic high unemployment. Not only are the unemployed not working, thus not contributing to the pension system, but are themselves receiving generous welfare benefits. It's a doubly-whammy that is clearly unsustainable.

What France needs is a free-market economic regime with less regulation and taxation and more pro-growth policies. What France needs is more freedom.

Review: Inglourious Basterds

Who hasn’t dreamed about killing fascists at least once in their life? I know I have. I want to massacre the bastards by the truckloads, moral and legal constraints be damned. But thanks to Quentin Tarantino’s new revenge fantasy flick, Inglourious Basterds, I can vicariously live the experience without getting my hands dirty or suffer moral qualms.

The movie is about a fictitious squad of Jewish-American servicemen whose sole purpose is to slip behind enemy lines in occupied France in order to kill (and sometimes torture) as many Nazis as possible. Body count is important here. Led by a Tennessee hillbilly named Lt. Aldo Raines, played by Brad Pitt, they rampage through the French countryside, ambushing German soldiers, scalping them like Apaches. No prisoners are ever taken, but a token survivor is always left behind as a living monument, with a swastika carved into their forehead, to scare the shit out of the Germans. And believe me, the Germans are scared shitless, including the Fuhrer himself.

Quentin Tarantino being Quentin Tarantino, naturally, this movie does not work as a conventional narrative, but in the patented Tarantino style of going forwards and backwards. His movies often read like novels, and Inglourious Basterds is no exception.

But in addition to the novel-like elements, Tarantino has added another storyline that complements, but does not compete, with the first. The movie opens up on a French farm, with a farmer cutting wood. He is met a by a charming German SS officer named Col. Hans Larda, who is called the “Jew Hunter” for his single-mindedness to rid France of all Jews. Col. Larda is played with such evil joy by Christoph Waltz; he alone is worth the price of admission. You want to like him but are reminded that his is a Nazi, and a ruthless one at that. Col. Larda suspects the farmer of hiding Jews. With wit and the interrogation skills of an experienced detective, Col. Larda manages to squeezes the truth out of the farmer. No violence is used in the process, but the Jews, on the other hand, their fates were sealed by a hail of bullets.

There was a lone survivor of the massacre, a young girl named Shosanna Dreyfuss, played by French actress Melani Laurent, who manages to escape to Paris, where she ends up running a movie theatre playing nothing but Nazi films. All the while, Shosanna nurses a grudge that eventually develops into full-blown homicidal rage: the targets of which, of course, are Nazis, a theatre full of them, in fact.

The film is derivative like many of Tarantino’s films and include his trademarks: long dialogue scenes about philosophical issues and meditations about German films of the 1920s, unconventional camera angles, and his trademark penchant for violence. It should be said, however, that Tarantino-style violence is not the cartoonish violence that are is found in bonehead Steven Seagal and Chuck Norris films. On the contrary, it is never gratuitous. One of the more interesting aspects of the film is that more than half the movie is in both French and German. For moments, I thought I was watching a foreign film. Surprisingly, it did not detract from the enjoyment of the film at all.

But why did Quentin Tarantino decide to make a film about a Jewish revenge fantasy in the first place? It this article published in Atlantic magazine, he explains why:

“Holocaust movies always have Jews as victims,” he said, plainly exasperated by Hollywood’s lack of imagination. “We’ve seen that story before. I want to see something different. Let’s see Germans that are scared of Jews. Let’s not have everything build up to a big misery, let’s actually take the fun of action-movie cinema and apply it to this situation.”

It is true that most—some might even say all—films about the Holocaust focus on the persecution of Jews. The Holocaust was very bad for Jews; this is an immovable fact of history. But Tarantino isn’t wrong to suggest that the cinematic depiction of anti-Semitic persecution can become wearying over time, particularly for Semites.

I feel the same way any book I read or any movie I see on the Holocaust, Jews are always depicted as defenseless victims. They never fight back, accepting their fate because it is God’s will, for punishment of sins, real or perceived. It is so maddening. This is one of the reasons why I admire Israel, at least it fights back whenever it is attacked.

The problem, I suppose, is both a philosophical and religious one, so I will leave it there.. Nevertheless, Inglourious Basterds is a welcome addition to both World War II and Holocaust genres, if only for its cathartic effects. The thirst for revenge must be slaked once in awhile, in my opinion, even if it is only on the silver screen.

Doha Round Collapses: Everybody Loses

The Doha Round of trade talks have officially collapsed. These negotiations, which have been going on for what feels like forever, would have reduced or eliminated odious agriculture subsidies and tariffs and make trading of agricultural products simpler and cheaper. Who to blame for this failure? Depends on whom you ask. Here's an editorial from the The Daily Star, a Bangladeshi newspaper, who is blaming the developed world, specifically the United States and the European Union:

The final impasse was the demand from the G-33 which wanted special safeguard mechanisms to protect farmers in the developing world against temporary surges in cut-price imports of cotton and rice. When one considers that these safeguards would be the only thing standing between hundreds of millions of subsistence farmers and penury, to say nothing of the stability of billions throughout the developing world, it is hard to fathom the opposition.

What is really outrageous about opposition to this from the West is that it insist not only on its own tariffs but also on massive agricultural subsidies that protect its handful of farmers and massively distort the international price of goods, causing further hardship to farmers in the developing world.

But the developed world, in turn, and led by the West, is blaming the developing world for trying to have its cake and eat it too; all at the expense of their farmers. The Washington Post is leading the charge on this score:

Still, as last-ditch talks moved into last weekend, the United States and European Union had made some concessions on farm supports, and WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy had submitted a compromise plan that seemed to draw at least tentative approval from most participants. It was at that point that India and China essentially torpedoed the talks, asserting a broad right to raise tariffs to protect their poor farmers from "import surges," price drops and other vicissitudes of the world market. China, which had been relatively quiet throughout most of the talks, was particularly vituperative, blasting U.S. arguments as "absurd," even though Brazil and several other developing countries agreed with Washington.

China's role in the demise of the Doha Round is particularly dismaying, considering China has reaped huge benefits from global trade in the seven years since it joined the organization -- with strong U.S. support. Chinese exports have quadrupled from $300 billion in 2002 to $1.2 trillion in 2007, thanks in large part to free access to the U.S. market. U.S. supporters of Chinese inclusion in the WTO argued that drawing China into a system of multilateral give-and-take would mute its nationalistic tendencies. Evidently, the Chinese see the matter differently. They, and the world, will be poorer because of it.

It's safe to say that obstinacy on both sides led to the demise of the Doha Round. The developed world insists on paying subsidies to farmers, which in this era of high food prices is absurd. The developed world then demands open access to the developing world markets for their "cheap" food, giving local farmers an economic disadvantage. I believe the developing world has the right to protect its farmers as the developed world protect theirs.

At the same time, the developing world, led by China and India, insist on keeping mechanisms protecting its farmers against the onslaught on "cheap" food, even if the developed world ends its subsidies and tariffs. This will give developed world an advantage while penalizing western farmers for being more efficient and productive. This is a non-starter as well.

But ultimate loser in this fiasco are the consumers in both the developing and developed world, who will continue to pay high prices for agricultural products. It is also a defeat for free-trade, and a disturbing win for protectionism, which will only punish the entire world.

The Irish Say NO!

Theodore Dalrymple is one of my favorite writers, and is a contributor to City Journal, a publication from the Manhattan Institute, where Dalrymple is also a fellow. In this article, Dalrymple talks about Europe’s political elites repeated – and rather forceful – attempts to create a new European super state, often over the wishes of its constituents. Recently, the Irish had rejected a referendum on the Treaty of Lisbon, which were inimical to Irish interests. Why? Dalrymple writes

Another explanation for the Irish “no” vote was that Irish citizens had been frightened by the proposal of the French finance minister to equalize tax rates throughout Europe, thus destroying unfair competition (all competition is unfair, unless the French win). No prizes for guessing whether the high tax rates of France or the low rates of Ireland would become the new standard. Ireland’s golden goose would find itself well and truly slaughtered in the process.

The Irish know that both France and Germany, by the virtue of their size, would dominate the European Union both economically and politically; and smaller (and richer) states like Ireland would be at their mercy. To make it more equitable, in my view, the European Union, instead of having a unitary system like a single parliament, should adopt a system used by the United States to check the power of its most populous states – bicameralism.

But such a balanced approach is an anathema to Europe’s political elite, who don’t take criticism too well. Bred to rule, they think they are doing God’s work - secularly speaking, of course. Much of the European media parrot what their political leaders say, rarely questioning the wisdom of their decisions or, for that matter, what the common people think.

V.S. Naipaul: A Literary Monster Part 2

More evidence of V.S. Naipaul's unalloyed monstrosity on display:

Naturally, as Naipaul grew older, the bad behaviour grew to crescendos. But there is often a lordliness about it which some, such as I, may find redeems it. Two examples, one minor and one major: the minor – when he was first introduced to Auberon Waugh and was asked, “May I call you Vidia?”. His reply, worthy of Evelyn Waugh himself was: “No, as we’ve just met, I would rather you called me Mr Naipaul”; the second, which would win a prize for bad behaviour, but is also hugely comic, was his inability to inform Margaret, his mistress of long standing, that he had decided to remarry when Pat died of cancer. He sent his tall, mysterious literary agent, “Gillon Aitken to sort out the mess, taking the concept of agency to new lengths”.

I wrote about V.S. Naipaul here. The article condones Naipaul because a writer's life is a hard one. May be so, but this does not mean he has the right to treat people cruelly as he has. I will continue to read him even though I despise him as a human being.

England Turning Right? The Hindu Doesn't Like It

The Hindu offers its comments on Labor's recent troubles in local elections in England and, naturally, they're dismayed by the results. Nothing depressed them more then the loss of Ken "The Red" Livingstone, socialist member of Labor, who was defeated in London's mayoral election to whom The Hindu dubs as a "joke". I don't know who this "joke" is, but he still managed to beat Kenny boy. So you can say "joke" is on Ken, who will, no doubt, end up in some cushy E.U. job like other Labor leaders.

The prospects of Conservatives returning to power is giving The Hindu ulcers, in which they quip:

The Labour defeat is, however, not an automatic pointer to the next general election, which must be held by June 2010. Tory voters might well turn out in greater numbers from now on, but other voters will remember what 18 years of Tory government (1979-1997) were like.

From what I remember, those years were golden compared to the severe economic malaise, brought on by dubious socialist policies, when Labour was in charge from 1974-1979. The worse thing to happen in England during Conservative rule, in my opinion, was the foolish dumping of Margaret Thatcher for John Majors. The Conservatives have been wandering in the wilderness ever since.

Why Cadbury Rocks

I love Cadbury chocolate. To me its the finest chocolate in the world, far better than any expensive European brand. And not just any Cadbury will do. Cadbury available in the United States is simply not as good as the ones sold in the UK. For one thing, the texture is different. I think the UK variety contains more milk as it tastes smoother and is far more creamier than its American counterpart.

I figured out that there is a proper way to enjoy a Cadbury. Don't chew it like you would with other chocolates, otherwise you'll miss out on the flavor. Savor it. Consume it like you would hard candy: English toffees, for example. It's one hell of an experience. And one piece will last you a long time.

V.S. Naipaul: A Literary Monster

V.S. Naipaul is no doubt a great writer, who also has a reputation for being an arrogant prick with a gigantic ego. Like Paul Theroux, who once called Naipaul a mentor and a friend, I knew very little of the man. Some choice quotes:

Now French’s biography amply demonstrates everything I said and more. It is not a pretty story; it will probably destroy Naipaul’s reputation for ever, this chronicle of his pretensions, his whoremongering, his treatment of a sad, sick wife and disposable mistress, his evasions, his meanness, his cruelty amounting to sadism, his race baiting. Then there is the “gruesome sex”, the blame shifting, the paranoia, the disloyalty, the nasty cracks and the whining, the ingratitude, the mood swings, the unloving and destructive personality.

...Normally an author’s biography offers a reading list of influences and favourite books or writers. What do we have here? Naipaul’s father Seepersad is his favourite writer, some of Conrad passes muster, Flaubert is a one-book wonder; and all the rest he dismisses or disparages – James Joyce, Dickens, E M Forster, Maugham, Keynes, Jane Austen, Anthony Powell, Derek Walcott and many others, including me. I am “a rather common fellow”, who writes “tourist books for the lower classes”. I am also a bore and as a pedagogue “in Africa, teaching the negroes”, I clearly did the unpardonable.

Read the whole article. The level of cruelty Naipaul delights in will simply make you vomit. What a horrible, horrible man. Nevertheless, I'll still continue to read him.

Random Quote #2

"Perpetual peace is a dream, and not even a beautiful dream, and war is an integral part of God's ordering of the universe...Without war, the world would become swamped in materialism."

--General Helmuth von Moltke

Europe: In Defense Of Free Speech

In defense of free speech, Danish newspapers will republish controversial cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed, which sparked a maelstrom of protest, some violent, from the Islamic world.

Three of Denmark's largest newspapers said they would reprint the cartoon on Wednesday to show they would not be intimidated by fanatics. It was one of 12 Muhammad cartoons published in 2005 and then again in 2006 that led to protests in Muslim countries.

Good for them. At least someone in Europe realizes that these protests by Islamic fanatics, and threats of boycotts by Islamic countries, are nothing more than intimidation tactics to silence any negative criticism of Islam, a religion that deserves to be put under a microscope like any other religion.

Islamic nations adopt a double standard regarding the criticism of religion, many of which have a long history of not only condoning but also spreading disparaging comments against Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, and every other religion, large or small. Protests by Western nations often fall on deaf years.

Europe is not Islamic (or Christian, for that matter) so it has no obligation to protect it. Truth be told, the secular foundations of European society mock Christianity with more frequency and more viciousness than it does Islam. In many left-wing circles, Islam has an exalted status, where it’s treated as culture, not religion.

Rogue Trader Damages French Bank

A French Nick Leeson?

French bank Societe Generale said Thursday it has uncovered a $7.14 billion fraud — one of history's biggest — by a single futures trader whose scheme of fictitious transactions was discovered as stock markets began to stumble in recent days.

CEO Daniel Bouton said the trader's motivations were "irrational," netting the trader no personal financial gains.

A person familiar with the case named the trader as Jerome Kerviel. Bank officials said earlier the trader was a Frenchman in his 30s who probably acted alone. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case.

Internal control and compliance systems are usually integrated into most trading platforms these days, imposing limits on aggressive (or simply stupid) traders like Jerome Kerviel, just to avoid such multi-billion dollar “mistakes.” Obviously the controls that were in place at Societe Generale were wholly inadequate.

All I can say is: c’est la vie.

Why Sudan Sucks

The whole teddy bear fiasco, for me, puts into focus why Sudan should be a charter member of the ‘Axis of Evil’. This country, and the Islamic regime that rules it, is a blot on humanity, decency, and just plain common sense.

Its crimes are numerous: slavery, war against Christians in the South, the pillaging and rape of Darfur and the resulting refugee crisis, and, finally—the cherry on top, so to speak—the arrest and jailing of a poor British schoolteacher, whose only crime is letting her elementary school-aged children to call a class teddy bear ‘Muhammad.’

These charges of blasphemy are used in the most capricious ways. In Pakistan, for example, blasphemy laws are often applied to settle scores, or appropriate property from non-Muslims. In the case of Sudan, it’s used to make an example out of a non-Muslim (and a Westerner), as a warning that Islamic law applies to them too—that all non-Muslims are, in essence, dhimmis.

The Real Reason For Rebuking Chavez

More details have emerged about the rebuke Chavez received from Spanish King Juan Carlos at the Ibero-American Summit in Santiago, Chile: it’s about the lackluster economies of Latin American countries. According to Spain, which invests heavily in Latin America, the region needs more foreign investment. This set Chavez off:

But behind the royal reprimand, much of the international media missed what may have set Chávez off in the first place. Chávez became visibly irritated at the summit when Spain's current Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero — a socialist and Chávez ally — insisted that Latin America needs to attract more foreign capital if it's going to make a dent in its chronic, deepening poverty. Chávez blames "savage capitalism" for Latin America's gaping inequality and insists "only socialism" can fix it — hence his tirade against Aznar and other free-market "fascists." At that point Zapatero chided Chávez, reminding him that Aznar himself "was democratically elected by the Spanish people." Chávez kept trying to interrupt — summit organizers even turned off his microphone — at which point the King said what was on most summiteers' minds, if the general applause he got was any indication.

Chavez can afford to indulge in his socialist fantasies. After all, he has oil, and plenty of it.

And it pointed up a fact about Chávez's revolution that chavistas are too reluctant to acknowledge. Venezuela, with its vast oil wealth, can afford to indulge socialism and eschew foreign investment; but most other Latin American nations can't. Their economic growth still depends on the kind of capital that global competitors like China and India are raking in, but which Latin America seems unable or unwilling to garner. The chavistas rightly argue that the distribution of capitalism's fruits has been grossly unequal in Latin America — which is a large reason why leftists like Chávez have been swept into power in recent years. But the region needs that investment nonetheless — and even leftists like Zapatero sound impatient with the region's mediocre performance.

This is Chavez’s megalomania on display. His goal is not to spread socialism, but his brand of socialism, financed by him and led by him. He has branded himself as a toxic mix of Che, Simon Bolivar and Fidel Castro, all in one neat package. No wonder other Latin American leaders, including many fellow leftists, are weary of him and his burning ambition to be numero uno in Latin America. Countries like Brazil are increasing their defense budgets to counter Venezuela’s growing appetite for arms, fearing Chavez might spread his revolution by force, if not coercion.

Book Review: While Europe Slept

Europe as we know it is slowly disappearing as radical Islam steadily spreads across the land, helped by multicultural do-gooders and socialist statists? This seems to be the premise of Bruce Bawer’s While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within, a polemic about the growing menace of radical Islam and how it is slowly destroying Europe and it’s liberal, freedom-loving ideals.

The way Bawer tells it, it is an apocalypse in the making. That unless radical Islam is stopped in its tracks, Europe will become Islamized and Europe, as we know, will cease to exist. Reality or just plain hysterics? I think it’s a little of both.

Bawer is not some conservative nut job, but a noted writer and critic who lives in Norway and sees first-hand what effect radical Islam is having. Radical Islamists demand Sharia be imposed, that gays be murdered (Bawer is gay, so imagine his reaction), and that democracy be dismantled. All for recreating some mythical caliphate that existed in the seventh century.

It’s not clear whom to blame: Muslims, who fail to assimilate; or Europeans, who coddle them. Bawer tends to blame the latter. Made up mostly of politicians, journalists and other elites, they are Europe’s ruling class; and they have a blind spot to the coming danger.

These elites—mostly socialists, multiculturalists, and other assorted leftists—tend to treat Muslim as some exotic ethnic group to be protected, not as an ideology. With lax immigration policies, Muslims arrive in Europe by the planeloads, where they are not integrated or assimilated in anyway, but are separated, forced to live in ghettos, encouraged to keep their culture, keep to themselves, and are discouraged from learning the language, culture, values of their adopted land. It is the kind of patronizing racism that is practiced throughout Europe.

This explains radical Islam appeal among Muslim immigrants and their offspring. Alienated by the country they live in, they are susceptible to entreaties by radical Islamists, who control many of the mosques (and funded by the government), and fed a steady diet of anti-Western rhetoric, and conditioned to hate the country they live in. It explains why crimes by Muslim youths are on the rise throughout Europe, something Bawer continually harps on. Remember the Paris riots of 2006? It was by Muslim youths. Of course, the European press tends to whitewash these stories, blaming capitalism, globalization, or some other bogeyman of the week.

But is Europe going to hell, or is it so far along that there is no going back? Bruce Bawer doesn’t say much on the subject except that Europe must get its act together less it becomes some Islamic backwater, bereft of liberty, happiness, and democracy.

Personally, I think Europe is made of sturdier stuff and will survive with its ideals intact. Opposition to radical Islam has been slow, but growing steadier by year. A new crop of politicians, which Bawer mentions, are on the rise who plan to do something about the problems at hand; helped by Muslims, who are equally repulsed by the repugnancy of some of their fellow co-religionist’s stridently anti-Western views, who want to share in Europe’s prosperity, and its idels, while practicing their faith. Bawer gives these Muslims little shrift, in my opinion.

Essentially, the central theme of this book is about multiculturalism gone arye. Bawer often compares Europe to the United States, and how the latter has done a great job of assimilating its Muslims, while the former utterly failed in assimilating theirs.

Belarus: Where The Soviet Union Still Lives

For those nostalgic for the Soviet Union, a visit to the town of Ranina, in Belarus, should be quite sobering. Belarus is a reminder what the Soviet Union once was: a poster child for socialism, and why it collapsed so spectacularly. It’s leader, Aleksandr Lukashenko, is your garden-variety tinpot dictator with a tendency for megalomania. Naturally, Lukashenko does not inspire confidence from the citizenry.

The civic-mindedness required to, say, pool money to buy some carp to take care of the pond's grass, has not exactly taken root in this environment. The owners spend every spare minute of the summer working on their dachas, but have no enthusiasm for doing anything for the greater good. "It's not that people can't afford it," says a homeowner who gives her name only as Tanya, "it is that people do not believe that if they hand over some money, no matter how small, and no matter how positive the cause, that something will actually come of it." After seven decades of Soviet life and 13 years of Lukashenko, mistrust runs deep.

As we can clearly see, socialism breeds apathy and cynicism. Tax revenue, what little there is, goes straight into the central government's coffers, with none of it coming back to the town. So there's no benefit for the residents of Ranina to do anything but take care of their own needs. It’s a town, in my opinion, in desperate need of incentives.

Salman Rushdie and Incompetent Terrorists

It would be interesting if these terrorist attacks in Britain had anything to do with the Queen knighting Salman Rushdie a few weeks ago. This is just speculation on my part, of course, but many local jihadists were quite vocal in their disapproval, some even advocating violence. Fortunately, the attack on Glasgow airport this morning failed spectacularly. And if the perpetrators, who were all caught (and denied martyrdom, in the process), were members of Al-Qaeda or just freelancers, they proved themselves to be quite incompetent.

Nice Knowing Ya, Jacques!

Columnist Anne Applebaum has written the definitive column highlighting the career—mostly a series of bonehead moves—of outgoing French President Jacques Chirac, who has made it his mission to be smarmy and arrogant, whenever and wherever possible. He is a detestable character and I, for one, am glad to see him go.

British Sailors and Marines Finally Speak

Fifteen British sailors and marines released from Iranian captivity, and safely on British soil, have said what we all thought they would say—that Iran, not Britain, acted illegally: by intentionally violating Iraqi territorial waters for the express purpose of kidnapping 15 British sailors and marines and using them in a grotesque propaganda excercise.

The sailors and marines admitted they were coerced into making false confessions, or risk receiving harsh punishments:

British sailors and marines held for nearly two weeks in Iran were blindfolded, bound and threatened with prison if they did not say they had strayed into Iranian waters, a Royal Navy lieutenant who was among the capitives said Friday.

Lt. Felix Carman, safely home with his 14 colleagues, said the crew faced harsh interrogation by their Iranian captors and slept in stone cells on piles of blankets. Unable to see and kept isolated, they heard weapons cocking.

"We were blindfolded, our hands were bound and we were forced up against a wall. Throughout our ordeal we faced constant psychological pressure," Carman said. "All of us were kept in isolation. We were interrogated most nights and presented with two options. If we admitted that we'd strayed, we'd be on a plane to (Britain) pretty soon. If we didn't, we faced up to seven years in prison."

Doesn't sound like they were treated humanely as some pro-Iranian critics contend, but it does sound like the Iran most people—including countless pro-democracy activists and other dissidents rotting in Iranian gulags—know all too well.

As for what really happened off the coast of Iraq, the British sailors and marines saw it much differently then what they were forced to confess on Iranian television. Lt. Carman, says:

"Let me make this clear — irrespective of what was said in the past — when we were detained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard we were inside internationally recognized Iraqi territorial waters," he said. "At no time did we actually say were sorry for straying into Iranian waters."

A non-apology apology? This will drive the wingnuts crazy, of course. They treat every military confrontation like some Greek tragedy: better the sailors and marines fought the Iranians to the death, no matter how dim the prospects of success, than be humiliated in front of television cameras. But the sailors and marines are safe, and at what cost? Some pride? And releasing an Iranian diplomat who is no longer useful? Let’s move on.