I am posting Martin Hutchinson’s latest Bear’s Lair piece, which addresses what, currently, is the hottest European potato: the conflict between the grand ambition of EU enlargement and the practical difficulties it poses.  It is dated today, 2nd October, and is published on the Prudent Bear website.

GW

The EU Tuesday finally agreed to admit Bulgaria and Romania on January 1, 2007, but expressed deep concern about the level of corruption in both countries. Is this a problem that affects only the countries concerned, or might it affect the EU economy as a whole, bringing it new diseconomies from EU enlargement?

The political arguments for and against EU expansion are clear.  On the one hand, the EU wants to take in its poorer neighbors, to include them in a greater European federation that can pull its weight in world affairs and produce prosperity for its people.  On the other hand, as the EU goes further East and South, it comes to countries which are either exceedingly poor (hence possibly a burden on EU social funds and other programs) or culturally sufficiently different from the European majority (for example, primarily Moslem) that their assimilation might prove difficult.  There is no hard dividing line – Bosnia is a Moslem country that is historically well within the European heartland, while Armenia is a Christian country whose history has little connection with Western Europe. Nevertheless it’s clear that politically, while the absorption of culturally close entities such as East Germany and Hungary was supported by the great majority of EU citizens, expansion beyond the European heartland poses progressively more difficult problems.

READ MORE...

The following letter was addressed to the head of MediaNews, the corporation that owns the San Jose Mercury News, the monopoly paper for the 10th largest city in the USA.

Bo

Dear Mr. Singleton,

We emailed preliminary objections to you on 9/27/06 about the use of an undocumented and unsubstantiated “bloody bits” anecdote passed off as true in a Richard Cohen column that veered sharply from being opinion into being an assertion of fact, and printed in the San Jose Mercury News on 9/26/06. We have now had an opportunity to read all the reviews, related literature, and the entire 512-page book that contains the single-sourced bloody bits anecdote, The Lost, published in AD 2006.

READ MORE...

It’s worth repeating here the metanews of Newsweek’s most recent cover as it appears around the world:

This one should get the BNP website guys scribbling.

Driving test fraud has surged to ‘terrifying’ levels, putting millions of innocent lives at risk, a Daily Mail investigation reveals

Fraudsters are ‘systematically targeting’ test centres in their thousands to obtain the driving licences, which allow them on the country’s roads unskilled and highly dangerous.

The highly-prized documents also unlock the door to thousands of pounds of Government benefits, credit cards and bank accounts.

Illegal immigrants and other criminals use easily-forged ID to book a test, then pay a lookalike up to £1,500 to pass for them. Experts say the driving licence they receive allows them to ‘wreak havoc’.

Home Office Minister Baroness Scotland [Editor’s tip: she’s not Scottish] said it was clear the public was being put at ‘substantial risk’.

The terrifying scam, which puts other motorists at enormous risk of injury or death, had been thought to be limited to a handful of cases.

But the Daily Mail has discovered that the shock case of a Somali bus driver this week convicted of helping 200 of his countryment to illegal driving licences is disturbingly common.

In the last year alone - an astonishing 4,830 practical tests had to be halted over doubts about the driver’s identity. A similar number of theory tests are also understood to have been halted - pushing the total towards 10,000.

Experts say even this is just the ‘tip of the iceberg’, with many more bogus drivers likely to have slipped through the net.

READ MORE...

David Cameron, the kinder, more caring, more middle-of-the-road and yet, crucially, more chic Blair, a Blair for all seasons and all men, and everything you can possibly think of if you are not actually a Tory ... yes, that David Cameron, the unknowable one, has just gone even higher in the red-hot political-hip stakes.  That’s hipper than he was on his green, green bicyle.  Or when he signed up St Bob.  Superhip Dave has started two exciting video blogs.  If you can call watching him do the washing-up exciting.

But it is cool, isn’t it?  And, you know, warm at the same time.

So it is that the lead blog is an all about cool political me page.  Then there’s an other dudes I think are cool page for guesties.

John McCain is first up as a guestie - a shrewd move Washington-wise, as one expects from the manipulative, mysterious and vaguely unEnglish Steve Hilton.

Now, never let it be said that Big Dave and Little Steve aren’t willing to go where the bullets are flying.  Oh gosh, no.  They take comments - though you will have to register, and there’s a strong probability that certain questions will be adjudged much, much too uncool to get published.

The reburial yesterday of Tsaritsa Maria Feodorovna, mother of the last Tsar, in the royal crypt of St Petersburg’s Peter and Paul Fortress was a fine and hopeful event.  The Russian people do not deserve to have escaped the horrors of the 20th century only to find that because the murderers and revolutionaries cut the cord of the past the bastards had a victory after all.  A future of economism (in which only the big cities prosper) and a losing battle against the awfulness of American cultural imperialism will not feed that famous Russian soul.

But it may be that, unlike in the West, there is no shortage of politicians in the country who have the right instincts.

After the service, the funeral cortege made a final journey around the former royal capital where the Empress had lived for more than 50 years, then received a full military escort when it arrived at the fortress.  Russia’s Culture Minister, Alexander Sokolov, said: “Today we have fulfilled the innermost will of the Empress.  It means the time has come to fill the gaps in our history and culture.”

Or, as one ordinary Russian woman said:-

We have waited such a long time for this day.  I thank God that He has brought Empress Maria Feodorovna back.

It would be my dream to see the Romanov dynasty come back.  Until there is a Tsar in Russia again, Russia will never be at ease.

Why am I heartened by this?  Because our situation today is not better than that of Russians during the days of Soviet empire.  We are prosperous but we are dying.  Where is the value in that?

I hope with all my being that someday we, too, will be able to talk about filling in the gaps in our culture and history, and from time to time I shall watch Russia to see, perhaps, how it is done.

My series on Ocean Frontier Fertility has previously discussed the strategic role of open ocean Bluefin tuna cultivation in opening the ocean as a frontier for population—itself strategic due to Euroman’s historic high fertility rates while opening frontiers for cultivation.  Among the early drivers is a potential I did not mention, now reported by the New York Times:

In 2004, these fully farmed bluefin tuna were sold to an expectant nation.

“I’ve never met anyone who told me it tastes bad, though I know it’s hard to say that to my face,” said Mr. Kumai, who said he had never eaten wild bluefin.

Some sushi chefs here in Kushimoto sniff at the ranched bluefin, saying it yields a fatty meat that does not taste as good as the wild variety. Wild bluefin, migrating across oceans, tend to be lean. But Mr. Kumai’s couch potatoes are 10 percent lean and 90 percent fatty.

Because of decreasing stocks, Mr. Kumai’s bluefin is now sold only once a month at a Mitsukoshi department store in Tokyo — for a third less than the wild kind. That fact annoyed Mr. Kumai.

A 30% price differential is quite adequate to drive the capitalization of very large “raceway” cages that allow the Bluefin to maintain migratory speeds.  Such raceways would be most naturally open ocean structures thereby driving frontier development to the ocean deserts more rapidly.

In case you were wondering why our elites hate us, Charles Krauthammer’s explanation is in today’s Washington Post op ed titled “Everyone’s Jewish”:

Krauthammer’s Law: Everyone is Jewish until proven otherwise… if “everyone” means anyone that you’ve heard of in public life, the law works for two reasons. Ever since the Jews were allowed out of the ghetto and into European society at the dawning of the Enlightenment, they have peopled the arts and sciences, politics, and history in astonishing disproportion to their numbers… But it is not just Jewish excellence at work here. There is a dark side to these past centuries of Jewish emancipation and achievement—an unrelenting history of persecution. The result is the other more somber and poignant reason for the Jewishness of public figures being discovered late and with surprise: concealment.