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GEO: Europe Archives

Recently in GEO: Europe Category

December 4, 2009

Swiss Minaret Ban - A Contrary View

By Armed Liberal at 05:14

I commented below on Joe's piece on the Swiss minaret ban; my take was that the ban is a bad idea and fundamentally wrong. It is not about controlling something that Muslims do - some criminal behavior, or even one that's annoying (a call to prayer). It's a lashing out at them for who they are.

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  • Armed Liberal: toc, I think you missed the <sarcasm> tag... Marc read more
  • toc3: When Saudi Arabia permits the construction of churches and temples read more
  • Davod: This Jerusalem Post article (Apr 29, 2009 20:29 | Updated read more

December 3, 2009

Swiss Minaret Referendum

By Joe Katzman at 18:54

As Winds readers almost certainly know, the Swiss voted in a referendum to ban the construction of new minarets in Switzerland. At present, only 4 of Switzerland's 150 mosques have minarets, and none are used for the call to prayer because of strict noise-pollution rules. Those minarets would be allowed to stay.

Rise of the Fjordmen? A little, yeah. The Minarets aren't required parts of a mosque, are seen as big "eff you!" raised finger of Islamic supremacism, and people reasonably don't want even the potential of some idiot yelling a public call to prayer of any sort at whatever hour of morning or day. Local noise regulations can be repealed, after all, by a local majority vote. Referenda cannot. Auto-dialers and opt-in cell phones, please!

Imam Hargey of Oxford has some sensible suggestions...


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  • Macallan: Perhaps a rise of the Fjordmen, but all the same read more
  • PD Shaw: I think the Swiss are following some of their own read more
  • Marcus Vitruvius: So what if that catherdral steeples law did exist? The read more

September 28, 2009

Europe: Spain's Oncoming Depression, Ireland's Banks

By Joe Katzman at 03:46

We'll start with Spain. From The Telegraph:

"The Madrid research group RR de Acuña & Asociados said the collapse of Spain's building industry will cause the economy to contract for the next three years, with a peak to trough loss of over 11pc of GDP. The grim forecast is starkly at odds with claims by premier Jose Luis Zapatero.... RR de Acuña said the overhang of unsold properties on the market, or still being built, has reached 1,623,000. This dwarfs annual demand of 218,000, and will take six or seven years to clear. The group said Spain's unemployment will peak at around 25pc, comparable to the worst chapter of the Great Depression.... Separately, UBS said unemployment will reach 4.8m and may go as high as 5.4m if the job purge in the service sector gathers pace....Roberto Ruiz, the bank's Spain strategist.... said the construction sector will shrink from 18pc of GDP at the peak of the boom to around 5pc, making it unlikely that there will be any significant recovery before 2012. Even then growth will be "slow, weak, and fragile". The Spanish government can do little to cushion the downturn....


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  • Joe Katzman: Useful background, thanks. read more
  • J Aguilar: I disagree. The root cause of Spanish problems, not only read more

August 19, 2009

The Pipeline Wars: A Russian View

By Joe Katzman at 19:38

Read my 2002 post "Pipeline Politics: The Caspian Front" for an intro, and "NATO's German/Eastern Question" to understand the limits of American power and influence. Now, RIA Novosti RussiaProfile.org's July 24/09 "Russia Profile Weekly Experts Panel: A Battle of the Pipelines"...

"The last three weeks have been rich in developments in the unfolding "battle of the pipelines" to supply natural gas to Europe. Russia, the EU and the United States are locked in a tough struggle to secure domination over the natural gas supply lines to Europe from Russia and Central Asia. Why is there such heated competition for building alternative gas pipelines to Europe? What are Russia's objectives in the "battle of the pipelines"? What are the EU and American objectives? Why is the United States trying to play such an active role in decisions that will not in any way affect the energy supplies to the United States?"


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August 15, 2009

"Swedish lesbians suck sperm banks dry"

By Joe Katzman at 16:12

By any measure, that has to be the headline of the year. Article here.


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July 3, 2009

Nigaz in Africa

By Joe Katzman at 23:58

In the "you've just GOT to be kidding me" department. From the BBC:
"Russia's energy giant Gazprom has signed a $2.5bn (£1.53bn) deal with Nigeria's state operated NNPC, to invest in a new joint venture. The new firm, to be called Nigaz, is set to build refineries, pipelines and gas power stations in Nigeria."
Uh huh. "No, no, it's Frahnk-en-shteen..."

On a serious level, this all part of Russia's squeeze play on Europe, for whom Russia is the #1 source of natural gas, and Algeria is #2. Hence Russia's $7.5 billion weapons sale to Algeria in 2005, paid for via gas concessions to Gazprom. Nigeria is just one more piece of that puzzle, though the pipeline route to Europe is going to be a real problem.

But you'd think the Nigerians might have been a bit more awake at the switch when the joint venture was named. Must be an undocumented side effect of all those super-effective enlargement meds...
-

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When Money Dies: Peeking Into an Inflationary Abyss

By Joe Katzman at 01:01

With debt in the USA quickly headed for unsustainable levels, the signs I'm seeing point to Carter-era stagflation as our next economic stop. Now throw in this Bloomberg report:

"After already more than doubling its balance sheet to $2.1 trillion [from about $800 billion], the Fed has pledged to buy $1.25 trillion of mortgage-debt and $300 billion of Treasuries, and finance a $1 trillion consumer-loan program."

This is another bubble in the making, folks - a federal debt and obligations bubble. It was been building for some time thanks to off-balance sheet obligations, and some are now coming home to roost. Even as other items are being piled on. The rocket-powered boosts that bubble has received lately, ups the risk that significant creditors are going to start balking in various ways. The "global reserve currency" rumblings from China are tremor #1.

Ultimately, the choices start to line up between "impose punishing long-term obligations to pay and service this debt," or "inflate it away, and make everyone's dollars worth less." Including yours, of course. Now and Futures has a bunch of useful overall charts that illustrate our slightly bumpy but fairly certain path toward significant inflation. Along with a cogent argument that the rejiggered post-Boskin report CPI index significantly undercounts inflation over the past few years, in terms of most peoples' day-to-day experience and expenses.

How far can this go? My confidence in the sooper-geniuses who brought us to this point, and are now being depended on to get us out, is not wildly high. The good news is that systems tend to have some level of self-regulation, even if it isn't that obvious. But an online historical study has shaken some of my confidence in a couple of key assumptions. It's worth reading...


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  • Jeff: I think we are going to see a collapse of read more
  • Umbriel: While the Chinese can't just dump all their dollars and read more
  • Gbear: Not to worry, Timmy over at Treasury has responded to read more

April 5, 2009

Obama's European Trip

By Armed Liberal at 20:44

I'm still digesting the news reports; my first reaction is that it went about as well as could be realistically expected as far as engaging other countries is concerned - there wasn't any real possibility that he'd do better than he did. And I worry about people who think that our interests and the world's would be magically aligned because we suddenly say we'd like them to be. But he made some critical mistakes which are going to hurt him domestically.

Bowing to King Abdullah was stupid, and the damage to Obama as the video circulates remains to be seen. For the defenders who suggest that GWB holding his had as they walked was equally bad - no it wasn't. Peers in Arab societies may hold hands. Peers don't bow to each other.

I don't know who's handling Obama's protocol, but they need to be replaced, like today.

And I was - and still am, on consideration - a little fuddled by his over-nuanced take on American Exceptionalism. This is a profound issue for me, which I am going to spend some time worrying through.
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  • Mike: Marc, Unrelated, but it's been quite some time since I read more
  • Mike: Marc, While I tho't the presser Q&A was the main read more
  • BooPear: Mark, You are right, both about the inherent irony and read more

January 28, 2009

Credit Crunches, Surplus Countries, and the Need for Rebalancing

By Joe Katzman at 01:42

I've just had my attention drawn to a blog called the Smart Globalist. A current feature talks about the economic crisis underway, and some of its global aspects that aren't receiving a lot of discussion yet. From "Asia and Germany Need to Wake Up":

"The Anglos had a party by living beyond their means, and Asia began to get rich while Germany got even richer. But the Anglo consumers were borrowing heavily against their credit cards and the equity in their houses to pay for the party. There was bound to be a moment when they couldn't borrow any more.... It is because stimulus alone would simply perpetuate this unsustainable dynamic that rebalancing must be its companion.

....But the surplus countries need to boost their domestic demand as well. Indeed, because they have excess production capacity that can no longer be easily exported, they actually need more stimulus than the trade deficit countries. And this is where things are getting very difficult. So far, the surplus countries have been resisting.... Of course, friendly persuasion and enlightened self-interest are the preferred avenues. However, if China and other surplus countries insist on doubling down on their export-led growth strategies and resisting currency revaluation, the United States uniquely does hold and ace that can force their hands. It can export inflation...."


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  • Tim Oren: Testing... Seems to be working OK with TypePad ID now. read more
  • marc.danziger.myopenid.com: OpenID test comment read more
  • Marc Danziger: Test comment w/Typepad ID... read more

Crime in the UK

By Armed Liberal at 03:27

Appropo of my post on Prop 9 and crime, here's what I do not want California to become:

In Britain, there is a long and honorable tradition of local councils’ leasing small plots of land, called allotments, to people without gardens of their own who may grow fruit, vegetables, and flowers upon them. The tenants also receive small sheds on their plots for storing tools, fertilizers, garden furniture, and so forth. Unfortunately, another, less honorable, tradition has recently developed: stealing from allotments. Seventeen of the 50 allotments in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire have been robbed recently, for example, and the shed of one tenant, Bill Malcolm, has been broken into three times.

So Malcolm put a barbed-wire fence around his patch of land to discourage further depredations. The fence, however, did not meet with the approval of the local council, which worried about the risk of injury - to future burglars. Injured burglars might then sue the council. Another council, in Bristol, told allotment holders not to lock their sheds, in case burglars damaged them while breaking into them.

...from City Journal


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  • Ms. Know: Wow, they're concerned about the criminals. Ughh hello, they're breaking read more
  • raven: This kind of idiocy is rampant in England- I have read more
  • whiskey: California has already become what has been dubbed Anarcho-Terrorism. Real read more

Dissent on the future of Euro Social Democracy, American Conservatism

By Joe Katzman at 01:19

The Decent Left magazine Dissent has a pair of features in this issue. Robert Taylor asks "Does European Social Democracy have a Future?"

Based on demographics alone, the answer is clearly "no" within 30 years or less. In the near term, however, the answer is yes, despite or possibly because of the rising neo-fascist hard left. Taylor doesn't have a full answer to his question - at this point, nobody does. Nonetheless, his explanation of the key stress points is valuable, and so are the pointers to new thinking from people like Dutch Labour Party leader Wouter Bos. Given that soft socialism's failures have led to fascism in Europe before, that kind of adaptation and thinking is a service to all.

On the other side of the spectrum, Kevin Mattson asks "Has Conservatism Cracked Up?" Here, Dissent suffers from the lack of an inside perspective, but American conservatives are indeed going through a self-definition and reflection process. Sarah Palin's nomination has paused it - but not stopped it. Note that Europe's conservatives (including Britain's) have a very different identity, and would represent a separate subject.


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  • J Aguilar: I like that Moses' analogy. Democracy in Continental Europe exists read more
  • TOC: Much of the attitudes we now see in Europe were read more
  • J Aguilar: he he, a "fragmentation" of the Left's voters. IMHO Mr. read more

Georgia and the Former Soviet Union: Impacts & Options

By Joe Katzman at 05:20

Ukranian President Victor Yushchenko discusses recent events in Georgia, in "Georgia and The Stakes For Ukraine." Note especially this quote:

"The tragic events in Georgia also exposed the lack of effective preventive mechanisms by the United Nations, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and other international organizations."

They're only exposed if anyone was stupid enough to believe in them in the first place, against all available evidence. See also Poland's foreign minister, Radek Sikorski:

"Parchments and treaties are all very well, but we have a history in Poland of fighting alone and being left to our own devices by our allies."

Russia's actions have even prompted renewed debate in Sweden and Finland about joining NATO. Speaking of Finland, Max Boot makes a very different point. Eastern Europe, including the Ukraine, has the means to defend itself...


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  • Kierkegaard: Most Westerners suffer from several delusions about the Ukraine. Let read more
  • Godel: Small, friendly correction (or at least addition): It would be read more
  • davod: As stated above, the biggest problem in the Ukraine is read more
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