As a member of Cobra, the UK national crisis management committee, I was involved in British efforts to rescue our citizens kidnapped by Islamist terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan. No modern-day military action is so fraught: the odds are stacked against the captives, the whip hand is with the captors, it is a race against time, and it becomes extremely personal.

So the admirable Colonel Richard Kemp, former  Commander of British Forces in Afghanistan, writes at Gatestone.

The world has undergone gut-churning revulsion this week at the videos of rows of kneeling young Iraqi men callously gunned down by Al Qaida terrorists in Mosul. But time and again, in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, Hamas has shown itself to be just as capable of such brutal cold-blooded killing. That knowledge has galvanized Israel’s desperate hunt for those who abducted teenagers Naftali Frenkel, Gilad Shaar and Eyal Yifrach as they hitchhiked home from their school in Gush Etzion a week ago. …

Nothing – nothing – stands in the way of our efforts to bring them back. Although we hope for the best, we prepare for the worst.

From the outside, it is difficult to read the realities of a kidnapping. Those with the responsibility of saving lives are forced into a cat and mouse game in which they must both reassure the public and sow seeds of disinformation among the captors. So far, for Naftali, Gilad and Eyal, the signs are not encouraging. As far as we know a week later, there is no proof of life, no demands, no negotiations.

Yesterday, June 19, the Palestinian Ma’an News Agency apparently reported that Hamas leader Salah Bardawil said that the “Palestinian resistance” (Hamas — the acronym for the “Islamic Resistance Movement”) had carried out the kidnapping.

The first priority is always to establish the identity and the motive of the captors. Early on, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asserted that Hamas was guilty. [Even] US Secretary of State Kerry agreed, and this seems to be the view throughout Gaza and the West Bank.

Hamas leader Mohammad Nazzal, for his part, described the kidnapping of three teenage civilians as “a heroic capture”, and “a milestone” for the Palestinian people. He said that every passing day in which the Israelis failed to find the teenagers was “a tremendous achievement”. 

The sheer sadism of the Palestinian Arab leadership, though bloodily demonstrated over and over again for nearly 100 years now –  and so is fully expected –  still shocks and revolts, and shows no sign of abating.

Nazzal’s comments reflect long-standing views on the abduction and butchering of Israelis by the leadership of Hamas, the internationally proscribed terrorist group responsible for firing thousands of lethal rockets indiscriminately against the civilian population of Israel from the Gaza Strip, the latest salvoes only this week.

It is the same terrorist group that the United Nations, the United States and the European Union – in a display of moral bankruptcy and betrayal – have all endorsed as a legitimate partner in a unity government for the Palestinian Authority (PA).

Just the day before the three boys were kidnapped, the EU’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, welcomed Hamas into the PA government while lambasting Israel for detaining terrorists and taking action to prevent Hamas terrorist attacks from Gaza and the West Bank.

Ashton, though never slow to condemn Israel, took five days to denounce this kidnapping. Both her words and actions have legitimized and encouraged Hamas. Her inaction in the face of repeated terrorist assaults has bolstered Hamas’s convictions.

The kidnapping will find favor with Ashton’s new best friends in Iran. Also desperate to appease the ayatollahs, British Foreign Secretary William Hague this week announced the re-opening in Tehran of a British embassy, closed in 2011 after being ransacked on the orders of the Iranian government. There are even reports of US military intelligence-sharing with Iran over the crisis in Iraq – where only a few short years ago, large numbers of American and British soldiers were being slaughtered — using Iranian-supplied munitions by terrorists trained, directed and equipped by Tehran and its terrorist proxy, Lebanese Hizballah.

As Ashton and the West cozy up to the ayatollahs, the ayatollahs are again cozying up to Hamas. A few weeks ago, Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hizballah, met with Hamas leaders to resolve the differences between Iran and Hamas that arose over the Syrian conflict. Hamas – isolated from Egypt following the demise of the Muslim Brotherhood regime – seems desperate to restore full relations with the Iranian tyrant. Iran is equally enthusiastic to bring Hamas back into the fold: Hamas remains an important instrument of the ayatollahs’ overriding, stated goal of destroying the State of Israel.

In these circumstances it is certainly not beyond probability that the three boys’ kidnapping was a goodwill gesture from Hamas to the ayatollahs.

It is hard to not be chilled to the bone by the thought of three teenage boys – who might easily be our own sons or brothers – spending night after night in the hands of ruthless terrorists… or worse. The anguish of the boys’ parents must be unimaginable.

Yet among the Palestinian Arab population of the West Bank and Gaza, including children, a new symbol has emerged – the three-fingered salute, signifying joy at the kidnapping …

Such celebration, including the handing out of sweets in the street, has been widespread. …

Both the US and the EU have paid the salaries of Palestinian terrorists by means of grants to the PA; they also fund this propaganda and incitement, no doubt including some of the imagery applauding the boys’ kidnapping.

The Israeli security operation has so far focused on finding the three boys. Over 330 Hamas suspects have been arrested, and illicit weapons and ammunition seized. Echoing the code-name of the rescue operation, “Brother’s Keeper,” the IDF Chief of Staff, Benny Gantz, has encouraged his troops to apply the same vigour to their task as if they were searching for their own brothers or members of their own platoon. He has also reminded them that most people in the areas they are searching are not connected to the kidnapping, and to treat them with care and humanity.

Concurrently, the IDF is taking steps to weaken and dismantle Hamas in the West Bank. In some quarters these have been criticized as an unnecessary and opportunistic widening of the operation. It is nothing of the sort. With this latest kidnapping, Hamas has confirmed its continued intent to abduct, attack and murder Israeli civilians in the West Bank. Like every government, Israel has an absolute duty to protect its citizens, and undermining this terrorist threat is an essential part of that responsibility.

All military operations are unpredictable; it is possible that Operation Brother’s Keeper could lead to an escalation of violence. Incidents have already occurred. It is unlikely that Israel will expand the current operation into Gaza, unless there is a serious upsurge in violence from there or a connection between Gaza terrorists and the kidnapping comes to light.

Whichever way this operation develops, the international community should avoid the same response to the current defensive actions that they have so often displayed whenever Israel has sought to defend itself from missile attacks from Gaza. The international community usually ignores repeated volleys of rockets fired at Israeli civilians, and then condemns Israel for taking defensive action to prevent further attacks. It is these responses from the international community that have encouraged Hamas, and amounted to nothing less than support for terrorism. And it is these responses, along with the endorsement of Hamas’s inclusion in a Palestinian unity government, that have led to the kidnapping of the boys in the West Bank.

We could not put it better ourselves.

The EU is a much prettier version of tyranny than rough Russia.

One might say it is the feminine version. It dresses nicely. It has its hair styled. It paints its nails. It smiles. It thinks it is alluring. It spends more than it has.

It is easy to understand why half the Ukrainians want to live with it. With her. Rather than with unshaven, violent, shabby, ill-mannered Daddy Russia.

Her corruption is prettily packaged.  Her despotism has a gentle touch. It really is more pleasant to live with her than with him.

But it would be better for the Ukrainians if they just took off on their own.

Bruce Bawer offers that very advice. He writes at Front Page:

It’s in Europe, and it’s huge – after Russia and the top five EU members, it has Europe’s largest population, and twice as many inhabitants as all the Scandiavian countries put together – but Ukraine isn’t a nation we often think of in the West, except when, as in recent days, it’s in the midst of a crisis. It has spent most of its history being conquered and brutalized by its more powerful neighbors, and in the last century underwent one savage chapter after another: 1.5 million people died in the civil war that ended with its absorption into the USSR; millions more died in Stalin’s deliberately engineered famine in 1932-33; during World War II, Hitler slaughtered an additional three million in what was intended to be the first stage of a program of exterminating two-thirds of the country’s population and enslaving the rest.

And, it should be added, its own historical record of brutal persecution and oppression is fully equal to any of its neighbors’. (See here and here and here.)

Today, unsurprisingly, Ukraine is a basket case of a country, riddled with corruption and living in the shadows of its historic horrors. It’s also a linguistically and philosophically divided land, torn between a western chunk whose people speak Ukrainian and identify with Europe and an eastern chunk whose people speak Russian and still feel an attachment to their massive neighbor to the east.

Viktor Yahukovych, the corrupt, autocratic president who disappeared last weekend in the face of mounting public unrest, is a Russiophile whose fatal error was his decision to strengthen bonds with Moscow (which coveted Ukraine as a key ally in a new Eurasian Union) and to turn down a free-trade agreement with the EU; most of the rioters who sent him packing are Europe-oriented types, the majority of whom are eager to see Ukraine become a Western-style democracy free of Putin’s influence, but some of whom, it should be noted, are neo-Nazis who look westward to Germany for the least attractive of reasons.

Most of the Ukrainians who favor European ties also want to see their country join the EU – which, in their eyes, as one Swedish newspaper put it the other day, is “above all…a symbol of a society free of corruption”.  Yulia Tymoshenko, the former prime minister who was sprung from prison on Saturday after Yahukovych took it on the lam – and whose own years in office (ending in 2010) were far from corruption-free – told the Kiev crowds shortly after her release that she’s “sure that Ukraine will be a member of the European Union in the near future and this will change everything”.

Change everything! What is it that makes presumably liberty-loving Eastern European politicians talk about the EU as if it were a magic freedom elixir, a miracle cure for former victims of tyranny?

I suppose part of the explanation is that these politicians travel to the great cities of Western Europe and take in the relative freedom, the relative prosperity, and the relative lack of corruption and thuggery, and assume that all this has something to do with the EU. And part of it, naturally, is the ceaseless stream of pro-EU propaganda poured out by the Western European media and, not least, by the Western European politicians whom the likes of Tymoshenko consort with when they visit the West.

Yet how odd that the superstate’s economic woes haven’t put a dent in the magic for people like Tymoshenko. How odd that even the merest glimpse of the way things work in Brussels – where corruption is, needless to say, very much alive and well, even though it doubtless falls far short of Ukrainian levels – doesn’t give them pause. And how odd that when they witness the arrogance that’s characteristic of virtually all Brussels bigwigs – their habit of responding to any reasonable criticism of the EU not with cogent arguments but with vicious ad hominem attacks – they don’t immediately recognize that they’re observing tyrants in the making, the sort of folks that you’d think they’d had more than enough of over the centuries, thank you very much.

Take European Council president Herman van Rompuy, that colorless, Politburo-style mediocrity, who in a 2011 speech blithely ignored the essentially undemocratic nature of the EU, describing it – outrageously – as “the fatherland, or the motherland of democracy”.

Or take European Commission president José Manuel Durrão Barroso, who started his political career as a Maoist, and who in 2012 argued that the EU’s democracy deficit isn’t a bug but a feature: “Governments are not always right. If governments were always right we would not have the situation that we have today. Decisions taken by the most democratic institutions in the world are very often wrong.”

What he says is not untrue (even democratically-elected governments are almost always wrong), but he is making an argument for despotism.

Or take halfwit EU Foreign Affairs honcho Catherine Ashton, whose 2011 Guardian article lecturing Hosni Mubarak on the need for democracy in Egypt was widely (and rightly) ridiculed as the work of someone who, as Brendan O’Neill neatly put it in the Telegraph,

… has never once bothered the ballot box, never once ventured into the rowdy arena of public opinion to win the masses’ backing, and who was elevated to her current position as the European Union’s high representative for foreign affairs through backroom wheeling and dealing.

Noting Ashton’s enthusiasm, in her Guardian piece, for what she called “deep democracy”,  O’Neill explained that “she doesn’t mean deep as in profound – she means bureaucracy, the grey and unaccountable sphere that she haunts, the removed realm of experts and unelected high representatives” – a phenomenon Ashton contrasted (favorably, of course) with mere “surface democracy”, the undesirable, old-fashioned sort of system in which elected officials actually seek (horrors!) to honor their constituents’ wishes.

Even a cursory look at the careers and pronouncements of these unelected demigods, these self-regarding technocratic hacks, is to recognize them as people who itch to rule an empire and who are, quite simply, outraged at anyone who dares to stand in their way for a moment. Given the transparency of their lust for monolithic power – a power, moreover, utterly liberated from any notion whatsoever of responsibility to an electorate – it’s baffling that so many observers can actually take the EU seriously as a formula for European peace rather than for European autocracy.

What Europe has in Barroso, Ashton, & co., after all, is a pack of men and women who have done their level best to impoverish real political debate, to blunt its impact, and to make it seem obsolescent, counterproductive, and in every way undesirable.

Former Czech president and staunch EU critic Václav Klaus asked in his 2011 book Europe: The Shattering of Illusions:

Do we have real politics in Europe today – the political conflict of opinions – or have real politics been in fact eliminated by reducing the weight and importance of the nation states and by the self-confessed apolitical ways of Brussels?

Which is another way of saying that Brussels isn’t a city of politicians who have different political philosophies and who come together to debate ideas and hammer out compromises; it’s a city of technocrats who share an ideology and who work together as a team to translate that ideology into policy – never mind what the rabble think. (Or, as Klaus put it even more bluntly: “the European Union is no longer the symbol of democracy it pretends to be.”)

Klaus has coined the term “Europeism”. It’s a useful word, because it places the unreflecting, reality-defying enthusiasm for Europe in the category it belongs to, along with other, earlier European-isms. Among much else, Europeism views the free market as uncivilized and anarchic, places collective rights above individual rights, and strives, as Klaus excellently puts it, “for a homogenized, ‘decaffeinated’ world (with no flavour, aroma, and smell)”.

Europeists, he writes,

… do not believe in spontaneous, unregulated and uncontrolled human activity. They trust the chosen ones (not the elected ones), they trust themselves or those who are chosen by themselves. They believe in a vertically structured and hierarchized human society  …  They want to mastermind, plan, regulate, administer the others, because some (they themselves) do know and others do not. They do not want to rely on spontaneity of human behavior and on the outcomes resulting from this spontaneity because they think that rationalistic human design is always better than an unplanned result of interactions between free citizens, constructed and commanded by nobody. Even though we thought that after the collapse of communism all this was a matter of the past, it is not so. It is around us again. Europeism is a new utopism and, I add, it is an extremely naive and romantic utopism.

Above all, writes Klaus, Europeism “is based on the idea that states, more precisely the nation states, represent the Evil – because they were once the cause of wars among other things – while the supranational, continental and global entities represent the Good, because they – according to eurocrats – eliminate all forms of nationalist bickering once and for all”. This understanding of things, he adds, “is obviously childish, yet it is generally accepted in Europe”. Yes, it’s accepted because millions of today’s Europeans have been brainwashed into thinking that national feeling – patriotism – was the root of all of the worst things that happened to the continent in the twentieth century. No, ideology was the root – ideology in the form of Nazism, fascism, and Communism. And Europeism – which, by the way, has multiculturalism and fanatical environmentalism built into it – is the twenty-first-century heir of those wretched systems of thought.

Which brings us back to the latest developments in Ukraine. Tymoshenko’s speech on Saturday night was followed on Sunday by the news that the EU – notwithstanding its own massive financial difficulties – is now ready to hand over bushels of cash to the newly Europe-friendly government in Kiev. …

Note to Ukrainians: accepting the EU’s money is one thing. Go for it. But why this longing, on the part of Tymoshenko or anyone else in your country, to board the Superstate Express? Set aside, if you wish, the economic downside of the whole project, the looming disaster that is the eurozone, and just ask yourselves this: after spending most of your history taking orders from far-off imperial capitals, most of the twentieth century living under the nightmare of Communism, and most of the greater part of the generation that followed under the gravitational pull of post-Soviet Kremlin despotism, why be so desperate to subordinate yourselves to yet another set of haughty, high-handed foreign rulers? Why slip away from being under one thumb only to voluntarily place yourself under another?

Ukraine, here’s one simple piece of unsolicited advice: vote for sovereignty. Vote for freedom. Take the money and run.

Stay out of the EU.

George Will, at the Washington Post, sees the civil conflict in the Ukraine as the last battle – or “final episode” –  of the Cold War.

How pathetic is the plight of the Ukrainians. Their choice is between membership of the corrupt, socialist, failing EU (which is what the people want), or  – worse, far worse – domination by Russia (which is what the government wants). Under the Russian boot they would not be much better off than they were when Russia was called the USSR.

So the EU is a haven for them. Rather like sheltering from a volcanic eruption in a cave full of vipers.

The bodies of Ukrainian protestors laid out on the street – sleeping or dead?

Picture from PowerLine, where you can find more.

With a little bit of luck, the undemocratic European Union will soon fall apart. One Euro-zone member state after another is collapsing for the simple reason that socialist economics – the sort Obama wants to force on the US – do not work.

Here is Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independent Party (UKIP) which has been doing grand work trying to undo the EU for years, makes a short speech saying bluntly what needs to be said about the whole rotten enterprise of European economic and political unity:

It’s past time for a realistic solution to the Palestinians’ predicament to be found and implemented.

Dr Martin Sherman has a proposal well worth hearing.

He writes at Front Page Magazine:

The Palestinian refugee problem is, to a large degree, an artificial construct. The UN body under whose auspices all the refugees on the face of the globe fall — except for the Palestinians — is the UN Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). A separate institution exists for the Palestinians — the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. UNHCR and UNRWA have widely different definitions for the term “refugee” and widely divergent mandates for dealing with them.

According to the High Commission’s definition, the number of refuges decreases over time, while according to the UNRWA definition, the number increases. This “definition disparity” brings about an astonishing situation: If the High Commission criterion was applied to the Palestinians, the number of refugees would shrink dramatically to around 200,000 – i.e., less than 5 percent of the current number of almost 5 million according to the UNRWA definition.

Moreover, while the mandate of the UNHCR permits the body to seek permanent solutions for refugees under its auspices, UNRWA is permitted only to provide ongoing humanitarian aid for the ever-increasing population of Palestinians. Accordingly, while UNHCR operates to dissipate the problems of the refugees under its auspices, UNRWA activities serve only to prolong their refugee status and thus, their predicament. Indeed, rather than reduce the dimensions of the refugee problem, UNRWA has actually functioned to perpetuate the refugee status of the Palestinians from one generation to the next. It has create an enduring and expanding culture of dependency, while cultivating an unrealistic fantasy of returning to a home that no longer exists.

As long as the Palestinian refugee problem continues to be treated in what former Congressman Tom Lantos called “this privileged and prolonged manner” it will never be resolved. Accordingly, the first step toward the resolution of the Palestinian refugee problem must be the abolition of UNRWA …

Of course the Arab leaders would oppose this move. Far from wanting to alleviate the suffering of Palestinians in their countries, Arab leaders insist on maintaining and even exacerbating it, in order to display it to the world – as a beggar will display his bleeding sores to elicit alms – and blame it on “the Jews”. The idea is to exploit the conscience of the West, thus proving that they themselves have no conscience whatsoever.

Throughout the Arab world, the Palestinians are subject to blatant discrimination with regard to employment opportunities, property ownership, freedom of movement, and acquisition of citizenship. For example, Saudi Arabia in 2004 announced it was introducing measures to ease the attainment of Saudi citizenship for all foreigners who were residing in the country except Palestinians, half a million of whom live in the kingdom.

Similar policies of discrimination are prevalent in other Arab states. A 2004 Los Angeles Times report painted a grim picture of the life Palestinians are forced to endure among the Arab “brethren.” According to the report, Palestinians in Egypt suffer restrictions on employment, education, and owning property, and when Egypt announced in 2003 that it would grant nationality to children of Egyptian mothers married to foreigners, Palestinians were excluded. In Lebanon, meanwhile, nearly 400,000 Palestinians live in 12 “refugee camps,” where crime is rife and clashes between rival Palestinian factions are common. Palestinians cannot own property or get state health care. According to Tayseer Nasrallah, head of the Palestinian Refugee Rights Committee in the West Bank, Lebanon bans refugees from 72 areas of employment, including medicine and engineering. Syria, with a population of 18 million, is a strong verbal supporter of the Palestinian cause, but refuses citizenship to its 410,000 Palestinian refugees. Even in Jordan, where Palestinians comprise nearly 70% of the population, Palestinians complain that they are discriminated against in terms of employment.

When approached on this issue of discrimination against the Palestinian residents in Arab countries, Hisham Youssef, spokesman for the 22-nation Arab League, openly acknowledged that Palestinians live “in very bad conditions,” but claimed the policy is meant “to preserve their Palestinian identity.” He went on to explain with perhaps unintended candor: “If every Palestinian who sought refuge in a certain country was integrated and accommodated into that country, there won’t be any reason for them to return to Palestine.”

As blatant an admission, Hisham Youssef’s, as any we have heard (and we have heard a few) that the Arab bloc uses the Palestinians as political tools.

But according to a survey conducted by the well-known Palestinian pollster, Dr. Khalil Shikaki, most Palestinians were less interested in being nationalist standard-bearers than in living fuller lives. This view resonates strongly with opinion samples gathered by the leading Arab television stations Al-Arabiya and Al Jazeera of Palestinians living in the various Arab states, the vast majority of whom very much want to become citizens in their respective countries of residence.

No surprise there.

This clearly seems to indicate that Palestinian national identity is something more jealously guarded by non-Palestinian Arabs rather than the Palestinians themselves.

It is only the United Nations Relief and Works Agency that allows the Arab countries to continue to keep the Palestinians within their borders in their situation of suspended stateless animation. For while its mandate prevents finding a permanent solution for the Palestinian residents in these countries, it is the ongoing humanitarian aid that it provides for an ever-increasing client population that permits the host governments to sustain their discriminatory policy toward their Palestinian “guests,” to perpetuate their inferior status, and to allow their situation to languish and fester. …

Dr Sherman then comes to the nub of his solution. He suggests that every Palestinian family should be given “a sum of money equivalent to the life earning of an average citizen in countries that could serve as an appropriate alternative place of residence – probably, but dominantly Arab or Muslim countries in the Middle East and North Africa, or countries with significant Arab/Moslem communities in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia.” This, he hopes, would be an inducement to such countries to accept them as citizens.

The money should be given to the individuals, not channeled through their so-called leaders, none of whom has done them any good, and all of whom would certainly reject the scheme on the grounds that the cruel tactic of displaying their suffering must be continued.

After decades of disastrous failure, it should be clear that there is little chance of resolving the Palestinian issue if we continue to consider Palestinians as a cohesive entity with which contacts are conducted via some sort of “leadership.” Efforts should therefore be devoted exclusively towards individual Palestinians and towards allowing them, as individuals, free choice as to how to chart their future. …

How much should be offered?

The scale of the offer would be on the order of the average lifetime earnings in some relevant host country for each family head — i.e. the GDP per capita of such a country multiplied by at least say 40-50 years. (As a comparative yardstick, this would be equivalent to an immigrant bread-winner arriving in the US with 2-2.5 million dollars.)

How likely would they be to accept it?

A November 2004 survey [was] commissioned by the Jerusalem Summit and conducted by a reputable Palestinian polling center in conjunction with a well-know Israeli institute to gauge Palestinians’ willingness to emigrate permanently in exchange for material compensation. Significantly, the poll showed that only 15% of those polled would absolutely refuse to accept any such inducements, while over 70% stated that they would be willing to take the bargain.

Would they then find countries willing to take them in?

For the prospective host countries the proposal has considerable potential economic benefits. The Palestinians arriving at their gates will not be impoverished refugees, but relatively prosperous individuals with the equivalent of decades of local per capita GDP in their pockets. Indeed, for every hundred Palestinian families received, the host country could count on around fifteen to twenty million dollars going directly into the private sector. Absorbing 2,500 new Palestinian family units could mean the injection of up to half a billion into local economies often in dire need of such funds.

With that inducement it’s reasonable to suppose that some countries may be willing to take them in, but there’s no certainty.

How much should each family be offered?

If each family head were offered a relocation grant of between $150,000 to $200,000, this would be the equivalent of several decades, and in some cases centuries, of GNP per capita earnings in any one of a wide range of prospective host destinations (see table). Indeed, even in terms of the average overall world per capita GDP (about $7000 U.S.) – such grants would be the equivalent of up to a quarter of a century GNP per capita. (As mentioned previously, in comparative terms, this would be equivalent to a bread winner arriving in the US with 2-2.5 million dollars.)

How much would this amount to?

The aggregate cost of the proposal would be between $45 – 80 billion (depending on whether the relocation grant was $100,000 or $200,000). Extending the relocation to the entire Palestinian population [not just those on the West Bank and Gaza, but also those in the Arab states] would effectively entail doubling the required outlay to $90 –160 billion.

Where would the money come from?

If international donors such as the USA, the EU or OECD countries matched Israel’s input dollar-for-dollar (which would involve contributing only a miniscule portion of these countries’ GNP), the implementation could be sped up considerably, possible within 5 years, without undue burden on the world economy.

Israel to pay the most then? Here we have a disagreement with Dr Sherman, though we like his idea on the whole. Certainly there is reason for Israel to be a donor, but such a disproportionate contribution would make the offer seem like reparation, endorsing the false version of history  – which most of the world has swallowed whole – that the Israelis forced the Palestinians into refugeeship and consequently owe them compensation.

He points out that “the overall cost of [a] ‘two-state-solution’ would, in all likelihood, be far greater.” (And will not be accepted by the Arabs anyway. If ever they accept a “state of Palestine”, they will be accepting borders with Israel, which means they will be recognizing the state of Israel, and that they will not do. All the talk, or talk of talks, on the Arab side is purely to seem compliant with the nonsensical prescriptions of the UN, the EU, and Obama.)

If the world powers would consider Dr Sherman’s idea seriously, that would be a step forward. If they tried it and it worked, it would be a great accomplishment.

However, skeptics that we are, we suspect that the UN, the EU, and in particular Obama prefer, like the Arab leaders, to keep pursuing the fantasy of “the two-state solution” because behind it lurks the hope that if a state of Palestine comes into existence at all, eventually it will enlarge to become the only state between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean. Israel, alone among all the states in the world, has been incipiently de-legitimized, through the persistent work of Islam and the international Left.

Dr. Sherman’s scheme would mean the dispersal of the Palestinians and so their disappearance as a nation. A Palestinian nation would have no more existence than it did before 1948. Many individual Palestinians subjected to apartheid in the lands of their fellow Arabs might not mind too much if the sacrifice of distinctive nationality bought them a better life. But will their choice, their desires, their desperate needs suddenly matter to the champions of their Cause? We doubt it.

Ashley Mote, Member of the European Parliament 2004-2009, writes that the European Union turned a blind eye to illegal sales of uranium to Iran (and even possibly paid for them), and so surreptitiously helped the Iranian regime to arm itself with nuclear weapons. The uranium, he says, was shipped from the former Belgian Congo, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where Joseph Conrad set his famous story of savagery and cannibalism, Heart of Darkness.

Note: Neither the Democratic Republic of the Congo nor the European Union is a democracy.

Two news items in the media over the last day or so oblige me to break silence on Iran’s acquisition of weapons-grade uranium. They have had it for several years.

Today the Daily Express reports that Iran has “two tons of uranium” which “would be enough for two nuclear warheads”. Yesterday the Philadelphia Inquirer ran a report headlined “Iran on the brink of a nuclear bomb.”

Comments on the web this morning are suggesting both stories are exaggerations at least, and fabrications at worst.

I profoundly disagree.

While I was in Brussels between 2004 and 2009 I and others established beyond doubt, with the assistance of retired diplomats from the former Belgian Congo, that weapons-grade uranium was being shipped from the former Belgian Congo direct to Iran, despite a world-wide ban on such traffic.

The Belgian EU Commissioner Louis Michel, supposedly responsible for the EU’s humanitarian aid to the third world from 2003 to 2009, was – at the time – directly related to one of the directors of the company in the Congo making the shipments.

He refused to answer any questions on his links, or to account for the EU funds being sent to the Congo.

Worse, despite the considerable evidence I and others presented to OLAF (the EU’s supposedly ‘independent’ fraud investigation organisation) they refused to look into the matter. The director-general, a former German judge called Bruner, told me in committee that “we do not snoop on our friends”. …

Personally I have not the slightest doubt Iran is determined to have its own atomic bomb and will stop at nothing to get it. What the former diplomats told and showed me let me in no doubt whatsoever. I saw, and still have copies of, bills of lading and other export documents. I am also of the firm opinion that the EU has (perhaps unwittingly, but I doubt it) helped finance Iran’s acquisition of weapons-grade uranium over several years.

If you ask me why key people inside the EU’s secretive supreme soviet might countenance such dangerously de-stabilising mischief, I need only point you towards the almost pathological hatred of the USA to be found amongst almost all its members.

Germany and France drove the creation of the European Union (EU). Both wanted to be part of a vaster, more powerful political entity: Germany in order, forlornly, to dissolve its national guilt in it; and France, pathetically, to rival the power of the United States with it. Neither hope has been fulfilled. The EU is a failure.

What is the EU? It’s a conglomerate of disparate nations, run by unelected bureaucrats. It has a parliament with no power worth having.

How could it have been expected to succeed? It doesn’t even have a common language. Every document “of major public importance or interest” has to be translated into every one of its 23 official languages.

Imagine the cost of that alone. Bill Bryson wrote (in his book Mother Tongue) that way back in 1987, when the inchoate union was called the European Economic Community (EEC) –

An internal survey found that it was costing $25 a word, $500 dollars a page, to translate all its documents. One in every three employees of the European Community is engaged in translating papers and speeches. A third of all administrative costs – $700 million in 1987 – was taken up with paying for translators and interpreters. Every time a member is added [to the original 6], as most recently with Greece, Spain, and Portugal, the translation problems multiply exponentially.

There are now 27 member states, prices have risen steeply, and in any case no one knows how much the EU pays for anything. Its costs are never accurately calculated.

Because it is irredeemably corrupt, its accounts cannot be cleared. Despairing auditors who turned whistle-blower have been sacked and abused. Officials riding the  gravy-train grow rich on fraud.

Now its nemesis has caught up with it. The 16 member states that adopted the euro as their currency  are not at ease with one another. Their socialist policies are bankrupting them as they were bound to do. Greece has been temporarily saved from economic death by the rest of the EU (and also by the IMF, to which American tax-payers contribute the most). But the peoples, especially the Germans who’ve been made to fork out the bulk of the EU contribution, resent having to do it. (Recent elections in Germany’s most populous state of North Rhine-Westphalia indicate that voters are angry with the federal government’s decision to help Greece and “defend the Euro”.)

The dream of a United States of Europe was always an impossible one. The attempt to realize it is a nightmare.

George Will writes:

The EU has a flag no one salutes, an anthem no one sings, a president no one can name, a parliament (in Strasbourg) no one other than its members wants to have power (which must subtract from the powers of national legislatures), a capital (Brussels) of coagulated bureaucracy no one admires or controls, a currency that presupposes what neither does nor should nor soon will exist (a European central government), and rules of fiscal behavior that no member has been penalized for ignoring. The euro currency both presupposes and promotes a fiction — that “Europe” has somehow become, against the wishes of most Europeans, a political rather than a merely geographic expression.

The designs of the paper euros, introduced in 2002, proclaim a utopian aspiration… The bills depict nonexistent windows, gateways and bridges. They are from … nowhere, which is what “utopia” means… [The euro] is an attempt to erase nationalities and subsume politics in economics in order to escape from European history.

The euro pleases dispirited people for whom European history is not Chartres and Shakespeare but the Holocaust and the Somme. The euro expresses cultural despair.

It also presupposes something else nonexistent. The word “democracy” incorporates the Greek demos — people. As the recent rampages of Greece’s demos, and the reciprocated disdain of Germany’s demos, demonstrate, Europe remains a continent of distinct and unaffectionate peoples. There is no “European people” united by common mores.

Even the Financial Times – which is pink in color politically as well as literally – warned on May 14 that “displays of anger” in the member states may “become more widespread”,  and that “a Europe hounded [sic] by market forces has acted too late” with sudden desperate programs of austerity to save itself from economic catastrophe.

The Euro will fall further. The EU itself may fall apart. That at least, to our mind, is an eventuality devoutly to be wished.

Most west European governments have known for the last thirty years at least that it is impossible to maintain the welfare state. None has had the courage to start dismantling it. No matter what party was in power, whether outrightly socialist or nominally conservative, each successive government tried only to postpone the day of reckoning.

It seems that day has now arrived.

Vasko Kohlmayer writes at Front Page about the eurozone’s ‘skyrocketing debt’ and its likely consequences:

The European Monetary Union lays down strict regulations … The so-called Stability and Growth Pact requires each country’s to hold down its annual budget deficit below 3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). The Pact also stipulates that any member’s public debt is not to exceed 60 percent of GDP.

This year only one eurozone country is expected to have a budget deficit that falls within the three percent limit. The rest will go over, most by a large margin. Germany, which was the country that lobbied most rigorously for the strict fiscal requirements, was among the first to break them. Greece is currently the leading offender with a deficit that equals 12.7 percent of its GDP. But the figures are generally abysmal throughout the monetary union. Ireland’s deficit, for example, is 11.5 percent, Spain’s 11.4 percent, Portugal’s 9.3 percent.

As far as public debt is concerned the average European ratio is 88% of GDP, nearly 50 percent above the “allowable” limit. The worst offender is Italy whose public debt stands at an astounding 127 percent GDP. Greece’s debt is 113 percent, Belgium’s 105 percent, Germany’s nearly 80 percent. High as these figures are, the reality is probably worse as EU countries routinely use an assortment of accounting tricks to understate their deficits and obligations.

It is becoming increasingly obvious that if the euro is to continue as a viable currency, eurozone states must take decisive measures bring their finances under control. This, however, appears to be a nearly impossible task. Greece shows us why. Shortly after the government announced a package of budget cuts and tax increases the country’s civil servants took part in a nation-wide strike. Plans are afoot for another one next month. At the same time, Greece’s umbrella private sector union is planning an extensive walk-out for the last week of February. The Associated Press observed that the Greek government “may find that unions and voters push back against cutbacks that will take years to show results. With a potential public backlash, their chance to win approval for such measures remains unclear.”

Memories are still fresh of the protests that took place early last year. Angry at cuts in their subsidies, Greek farmers blocked major roads and paralyzed the country. Parts of the nation were thrown into chaos as lines of vehicles stretched for 12 miles or more. Unable to restore order, the prime minister was forced to beg the farmers to remove the roadblocks. “There is an urgent need to free up the roads. A whole society cannot be held hostage,” he pleaded.

This time around far more substantial steps must be taken in order to put Greece’s fiscal house in order. This is certainly not going to sit well with the Greek public and there is fear that things could deteriorate in dramatic fashion. …

The Eurozone … faces a seemingly unsolvable conundrum. Even though it is steeped deeply in debt, almost every serious effort to curtail spending meets with popular rage. The problem is that they cannot have it both ways. It is impossible to have a large welfare state and a sound fiscal house at the same time. It is either one or the other.

Until recently the euro was considered a possible alternative to the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. It was thought that the Monetary Union’s strict guidelines would safeguard its debasement. But it turns out that the Union’s respect for its founding documents is only paper deep. It is now becoming apparent that the disregard will have dire consequences. It may even bring about the break up of the eurozone and the demise of what once seemed like a solid currency.

Given that the United States is taking the same path of unrestrained spending, we would do well to take heed and learn from Europe’s painful lessons.

*NOTE: The eurozone is not the same as the European Union (EU). The European Union has twenty seven members as of this year. The eurozone is made up of those countries within the European Union that use the euro as their sole currency. The eurozone currently has sixteen member states.

The crisis may cause the break-up of the eurozone. Undesirable as this may be for economic reasons, one highly desirable political consequence could be the end of the welfare state as such, with the proof of its unsustainability so incontrovertible that no one – not even Barack Obama – would attempt to resurrect it.

The welfare state pays people not to work, not to produce, not to innovate, not to marry, not to have children – or if they do, not to take care of them themselves.

It may be that the peoples of Europe are dwindling away (which they are) because they have no incentive to beget children and strive to raise them. Or to put it another way, they may be dying out because they have nothing to go on living for.

It looks very much as if the Conservative Party (the Tories) will be returned to power in this year’s general election under the leadership of David Cameron.

It will not be a big change. Such differences as there are between Cameron’s Conservatives and Brown’s (or Blair’s) New Labour socialists are small and few. The Conservative Party of today bears little resemblance to that of Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher.

Our British editor, Sam Westrop, has posted two articles in which he expresses his disappointment with the character and behavior of several people who may well be future leaders of the Conservative Party, not this year but in a few years from now.

While this is chiefly of interest to our British readers, it does give Americans a glimpse into what is happening in the political arena over there.

The only Party which could make a difference if it came to power is the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), which wants above all to detach Britain from the undemocratic, politically-correct, incorrigibly collectivist European Union (EU), governed by ukase from Brussels. But although UKIP might win some seats in Parliament, it cannot hope to become  a governing majority.

The greatest threat to the nation is Islamization, but no political party is willing to tackle it, or even talk about it above a low murmur, except the British National Party (BNP), which is neo-Nazi (and not so very neo). The refusal of both the major parties, the Conservatives and New Labour, to formulate policies that might deal effectively with it, is driving many voters into the arms of the BNP.

The result is highly likely to be civil strife, violent and bloody.

The law is the house of our safety. We live in it with confidence. But is it being surreptitiously undermined?

Aspects of Islamic law are  being enforced in Britain and other European countries as a parallel system with the law of the land, although its is fundamentally incompatible with the ethical principles on which both British and European systems of law have been developed. This is happening at the same time as the undemocratic EU is imposing its ever more tyrannical will over the continent.

Serious and persistent attempts are being made by Muslim groups to establish sharia law similarly in America.

And it seems sharia is not the only ‘other’ system of law that may gain a foothold in the US.

This article by Barry Napier warns that an attempt is being made to remove the protection of federal and state law from individuals who enter American-Indian tribal territory. We don’t know if he’s right about the intentions behind these moves, but we think what he has to say is worth hearing.

Idaho pro-Obama bosses are trying to muscle-through ‘Custer Legislation’ … The idea is to give Indians total legal control over any non-Indian who even passes through their territory. They would be tried under separate tribal laws, and even if the accused comes from outside the reservation, they cannot call in outside help or legal counsel! And only Indians would be allowed to sit on the jury. …

The bright-sparks who are trying to bring this in are Idaho Attorney General Wasden and US Attorney Thomas Moss. They have been working out the details for the past six months… and everyone in the USA should ask “Why?” What is the point of making parts of the USA free from state and national laws?

The EU, that monolith no-one voted for and which has now taken control over every aspect of life in all member states without the authority of the people, has drawn up a new map of Europe. Literally. In it, the country of England simply does not exist. [This is true – JB.] Other smaller countries have also disappeared. It is a future map of what the EU wants Europe to be like in the very near future. At the same time, the EU encourages each member country to devolve power to smaller regional Assemblies, each making its own laws… but at least each law must be consistent with whatever the EU demands.

At first each country picked and chose which laws to implement even though they opposed national laws (just like the Idaho situation). Then, they were all harmonized, again without consent of the people. …

Why do it? That’s simple. By devolving power to smaller regional units, the EU can get rid of ‘countries’ and get on with creating a massive European state consisting only of regions, each answerable to their own ‘countries’, but each country, if it still exists, will be a rubber-stamper of whatever the EU wants. In other words, smaller units without country affiliations are controlled directly by the EU, and are much easier to bring into line than whole countries. It also means that when the EU is fully operational, regions have no power. …

Why should a state create a law-region within itself, unlinked to the greater laws? Is this the start of an EU-style take-over of power? At one end we have Obama’s promise to hand over the USA to the UN, and the UN’s decision to work in harmony with Interpol, who has immunity (for no good reason) from US laws. At the other end, we have this seemingly small ‘concession’ to create laws within laws.

Now join the dots! In between will come more states offering more similar powers to their own reservations and then even to conglomerates and others. There will then be pockets of laws-within-laws within states, each incompatible and fracturing the legal system wide open. What is the result of this? Confusion and uproar! …

Look closely at the idea of creating pockets of law within states, that are not controlled by that state. It is chaotic. And that’s what Marxists love, because making chaos is necessary for them to impose their draconian requirements on the people. Can you now see the dots joining? It is a breaking-up of power, just as in Europe. Without this notion of breaking-up state power, there is no reason at all to bring in such a foolish piece of devolution!

The Idaho Sheriff’s Association does not want this kind of devolution. But, how many laws has Obama ridden rough-shod over to get his own way? How many laws does he ignore in his mindless rush to make the USA Red?

County Sheriff Doug Giddings said he invited a lobbyist to speak to him about the idea. Then, he presented it to the Sheriff’s Association in December. They “voted unanimously to NOT back the legislation”. And, as Giddings adds, “We’ve discussed it every way but Sunday, and it doesn’t do any of us any good. The Feds and the tribe are the only ones to gain power and authority over non-tribal on the reservation…. I vote ‘No’.”

Exactly – there is no sense in it, because it makes things worse, not better! The only sense is that it is part of a far greater plan from outside. I have already outlined what that plan is. I believe my response is an ‘educated guess’, because it is based on knowledge of how Marxists work out their strategies, and by knowing the history of communism and Obama. …

Benewah County Prosecuting Attorney, Douglas Paul Payne …  implies a deeper agenda in his own email to fellow Attorneys: “This issue may seem unimportant to counties that are not concurrent with a reservation, but it involves issues beyond county/tribal relations.” …

The tribe wants the legislation (of course they do!) but the Sheriffs oppose it, for real practical and ethical reasons.

The proposed bill is the State and Indian Tribal Cooperative Law Enforcement Act. One tribe has framed and pushed this proposed law, but another two have not. That a smaller unit within a state can be free of state laws is amazing, because there is no accountability … If passed, the law would “violate Art IV sec. 20 of the Idaho Constitution…”

There are numerous other violations. So, to create a separate legal entity within the state, one has to violate any laws pertaining to it. The idea also violates the national Constitution…

It would mean that any non-tribal person should be warned never to enter the tribal lands for any reason, because they could be liable to arbitrary arrest and sentencing by those not appointed by the state!

Payne goes on to say: “It is important to all Idahoans not to establish a precedent of delegating state law enforcement power to anyone not answerable to the people subjected to that power.”

He says “Counties have been enforcing state law on reservations for 120 years and there appears no immediate emergency. Curiously, this bill is being rushed to the floor.” Just like many other Obama moves! There is no reason to implement the bill… so there has to be an external prompt with an hidden national agenda. …

If the bill passes through it will create another precedent, one so huge as to threaten national security and society. …

The Central Idaho Post is bravely opposing the proposed bill and is asking for all state citizens to write in opposition to the AG of the state. I believe the issue is far bigger, as Attorney Payne tells us, and should involve everyone in the USA. …