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In Defense of Geert Wilders

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 12:00:00 EDT

When discussing—and, in this case, defending—radical Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders, it is de rigueur to begin with emphatic caveats and disclaimers. Mr. Wilders, a fulminating critic of Islam and advocate of closing Holland's borders to further immigration, is something of an extremist, a man with whom most will find difficulty attaining common ideological ground. The Koran, he says, is a Hitlerian text ("Ban that wretched book like Mein Kampf is banned!"). To those who contend that radical Islam is the problem and moderate Islam is the solution, Wilders scoffs: "Moderate Islam does not exist." Mohammad, he says, was a "terrorist" and "war-criminal." And so on.

Now Wilders, whose Freedom Party holds just five seats in the Dutch Parliament, has boiled his hatred of Islam down into a ten minute film called Fitna—variously translated in the media as the Arabic word for "strife," "challenge," or "chaos." The film, which has not been released, will doubtless be a retread of Wilders' reductive reading of the Koran. Regardless of the substance of the film, and however much one disagrees with his interpretation, Wilders should be defended, without reservation, by free speech advocates both in Holland and abroad; a position made even more necessary considering the lukewarm defense proffered by Western governments and intellectuals.

In response to the controversy surrounding Fitna, Wilders' website was knocked offline by his American host, Network Solutions; he has been repeatedly denounced by the government of Jan Peter Balkenende as a liability to Dutch "interests"; the country's shriveled monarch, Queen Beatrix, admonished that free speech doesn't allow one the right to offend; and last week 1000 "anti-racism" activists protested Fitna in Amsterdam's city center. As one demonstrator told Reuters, "There should be restrictions on what Wilders can say... it is a very bad example to people to let him say whatever he wants." Similar demonstrations on behalf of free speech and the freedom to mock, insult, and defame religion have yet to materialize.

Rather than assigning blame to the knuckle-dragging troglodytes who have threatened Wilders and Dutch commercial and diplomatic interests abroad, many have warned of an inevitable "blowback" from indignant Muslim masses. Addressing the European parliament, the Grand Mufti of Syria told his audience that "If there is unrest, bloodshed and violence after the broadcast of the Koran film, Wilders will be responsible." Prime Minister Balkenende sighed that in Holland such statements were indeed legal, "but there is the possibility, once the film is released, that there will be a court case." Dutch state radio produced a YouTube video chronicling the journey of a concerned Muslim who wonders why Wilders wasn't simply arrested and prosecuted. The Netherlands Islamic Federation has petitioned a court in The Hague to set up a censor board that could adjudicate on whether the film should be banned.

That Wilders possesses extremist views, that his interpretation of Islam is both reductive and puerile, is of no particular relevance in this case, unless one subscribes to the view that there exists an arbitrary boundary between right to free speech and freedom from offense. Once Fitna is broadcast—either via non-state television or the Internet—it is incumbent upon on those who value a society where freedom of expression is respected, and a society free of intimidation against those who question the probity of prophets, to engage the film on its intellectual merits.

But two great, and often unspoken, fears are governing the reaction to Wilders, ones that were similarly made plain during the so-called Danish cartoon crisis. First, it is important for members of both Europe's mainstream and radical left not to be seen as endorsing the views of a hard right politician, even if they make clear that they are merely defending the right to free expression. Second, despite Europe's deeply held secularism, Muslim immigrants are often, in both media and parliamentary debate, seperated from their religion, reclassified in a purely racial (or "other") context. In Sweden, when the controversial "Ecce Homo" photography exhibit premiered in 1998, which depicted Jesus as suffering from AIDS and featured leather-clad priests having sex inside a church, it came under sustained fire from Christian leaders. The country's editorial pages circled the wagons in defense of the artist's right to offend. Those very same pages, though, denounced Jyllands-Posten's Mohammad cartoons as gratuitous, distasteful, and offensive. None reprinted the drawings.

In Holland, the situation is similar. The reaction of the pathetic and spineless Balkenende government is typified by Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen. In an interview with Dutch state television, Verhagen bellowed that it would be "irresponsible to broadcast this film. That's because Dutch companies, Dutch soldiers and Dutch residents could and will be in danger." This is, as the Danish example suggests, doubtless true, though to do so is to blithely submit to the blackmail and gangsterism of Islamic militancy.

In focusing on Wilders' very real extremism, Western critics risk missing the larger point of the recent religious crises in Europe; from the scribbling of the Danish cartoonists to the alleged blasphemy of novelist Salman Rushdie. To suggest that it is simply Wilders' particular vision of Islam, the harshness of his language, with which his enemies disagree is foolish. To think that, for instance, a documentary version of Christopher Hitchens' best-selling and thoughtful anti-religion book God is Not Great, focusing only on the sections critical of Islam and broadcast on European state television, would not produce a similar backlash—or threatened backlash—is wishful thinking. Again, one only need think back to the vile fatwa that hamstrung the life of Mr. Rushdie to understand that it takes very little—a largely unread novel—to drive the ultra-pious into a murderous rage.

But it is also important that we not allow the chest-thumping histrionics of America's talk show circuit to reduce the Wilders affair to one of moderate critic versus those opposed to freedom of speech. On his Headline News television program, conservative radio host Glenn Beck, after first mischaracterizing Wilders (whom he referred to as "Gilt Whatshisface") as merely "critical of extremist Islam," sputtered about the "censorship" of Fitna's American web host, Network Solutions. It bears repeating that Network Solutions is a private company and is thus securely within its rights to suspend the accounts of any client with whom it isn't interested in doing business. Threats to free speech come not from private companies acting in their own self-interest, but from both governments and those who desire to silence heterodox—and yes, extreme—voices with implicit or explicit threats of violence.

Islamic extremists have been depressingly successful in frightening the Netherlands into assuming that a short film of little consequence will precipitate hideous amounts of "retaliatory" violence. And herein lies an important lesson for other religious crackpots, Muslim, Christian, Jewish or Wiccan. Full protection of "prophets" and deities can be attained by repeated, credible threats of violence. And to not support Wilders, alas, is to acquiesce to such bullying.

Michael Moynihan is an associate editor of reason.

Rough Trade in Foreign Sausage

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 09:40:00 EDT

The European Union, friend of free trade:

Swiss pork-and-beef cervelat sausages have traditionally used Brazilian cow-intestine skins, but the European Union has banned imports of the skins, fearing they may contain traces of mad cow disease, or BSE.

Picnickers flock to parks at weekends to barbecue the large, bland sausages which look like giant hot dogs. But skin stocks will run out by the end of the year, forcing butchers to use alternatives which purists say split easily and lack flavour....

The [economics] minister said there would be enough sausages for spectators at the European soccer championship the Swiss and Austrians are hosting later this year, and promised to push for a review of the EU ban.

If that fails, Swiss fans may just have to put up with inferior skins, even if they do not curl the sausage when cooked, she said. "I believe Swiss consumers will have the courage to accept a slightly straighter cervelat."

Oh, well, at least there's unfettered trade in sausages within Europe. Hold on -- what's that?

The generally good relations between Czechs and Slovaks cooled dramatically last year when Slovakia applied to the EU for trademark protection for its 'spekácky' sausage. This speciality has also been produced from time immemorial by Czech manufacturers. A trademark for the Slovak sausage would mean that the Czechs would have to produce their sausage according to the Slovak recipe. The prospect triggered outraged protest in the Czech Republic. The Czech daily reports that the agricultural ministers of the two states have now reached an agreement at a trade fair in Brno. "Czechs and Slovaks are now working together again on the 'spekácky' project. Both countries will jointly apply to the EU for the registration of this regional speciality. ... If the EU grants protection, there will be a 'sausage declaration' that stipulates the recipes to be used, but allows each country to use its own."

They've always provoked passion, those sausages:

Why are People Having Fewer Kids?

rbailey@reason.com (Ronald Bailey) — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 12:00:00 EST

The "demographic winter" is coming. So warns a new documentary of the same name. What is the demographic winter? The phrase, according to the film's promotional materials, "denotes the worldwide decline in birthrates, also referred to as the 'birth dearth,' and what that portends." The first half of Demographic Winter was previewed at the conservative Heritage Foundation a couple of weeks ago. According the film, the demographic winter augurs little good, e.g., economic collapse and social deterioration. If current trends continue world population should begin a steep decline sometime around the middle of the 21st century. Why?

Because total fertility rates (TFRs) are plummeting around the world. Population stability is achieved when each woman bears an average of 2.1 kids over the course of her lifetime—one for her, one for her male partner, and a little overage to make up to childhood deaths. Today, there are sixty countries in which TFRs are below 2.1. For example, the European Union's TFR is 1.5 and no EU member state has a TFR at replacement or above. Even high population developing countries have seen steep declines in fertility. Since 1970, China's TFR fell from 5.8 to 1.6; India's from 5.8 to 2.9; Indonesia from 5.6 to 2.4; Japan's from 2.0 to 1.3; Mexico's from 6.8 to 2.4; Brazil's from 5.4 to 2.3; and South Africa's from 5.9 to 2.7. The U.S. TFR dropped from 2.55 in 1970 to around 2.1 today, largely because of the influx of higher fertility immigrants. However, the fertility of second generation Americans drops to the level of longer established Americans.

I doubt that the "demographic winter" portends economic collapse or social deterioration, but let us set that aside for this column, and instead ask why people are choosing to have fewer children? After all, voluntary childlessness seems to violate the Darwinian premise that our genes dispose us, like all other creatures, to try to reproduce.

However, demographic data are undercutting the notion that there is some kind of sociobiological nurturing imperative, economist and demographer Nicholas Eberstadt noted during the question period following the documentary. As evidence, he pointed to Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, where 30 percent of women are childless and that Hong Kong's TFR has been below 1 birth per woman for at least a decade.

Demographic Winter asserts that "every aspect of modernity works against family life and in favor of singleness and small families or voluntary childlessness." And surely they are right. Modern societies offer people many other satisfactions and choices outside of the family. In particular women find that their time becomes more highly valued in occupations outside the home. There are no iron laws of demography, but one that comes pretty close is that the more educated women are, the fewer children they tend to have. Eberstadt also noted the best predictor of fertility levels is the desired family size as reported by women. And finally, the most profound event of the 20th century may have been the sexual revolution's drive toward gender equality, enabled by modern contraception. Unlike other creatures, people can have the fun of sex without the side effect of parenthood.

So, modernity essentially transforms children from capital goods that produce family income into consumption items to be enjoyed for their own sakes, more akin to sculptures, paintings, or theatre. But that's just the problem—according to happiness researchers, people don't really enjoy rearing children.

"Economists have modeled the impact of many variables on people's overall happiness and have consistently found that children have only a small impact. A small negative impact," reports Harvard psychologist and happiness researcher Daniel Gilbert. In addition, the more children a person has the less happy they are. According to Gilbert, researchers have found that people derive more satisfaction from eating, exercising, shopping, napping, or watching television than taking care of their kids. "Indeed, looking after the kids appears to be only slightly more pleasant than doing housework," asserts Gilbert in his bestselling, Stumbling on Happiness (2006).

Of course, that's not what most parents say when asked. For instance, in a 2007 Pew Research Center survey people insisted that their relationships with their little darlings are of the greatest importance to their personal happiness and fulfillment. However, the same survey also found "by a margin of nearly three-to-one, Americans say that the main purpose of marriage is the 'mutual happiness and fulfillment' of adults rather than the 'bearing and raising of children.'"

Gilbert suggests that people claim their kids are their chief source of happiness largely because it's what they are expected to say. In addition, Gilbert observes that the more people pay for an item, the more highly they tend to value it and children are expensive, even if you don't throw in piano lessons, soccer camps, orthodonture, and college tuitions. Gilbert further notes that the more children people have, the less happy they tend to be. Since that is the case, it is not surprising that people are choosing to have fewer children. And if people with fewer children are happier, then people with no children must be happiest, right? Not exactly, but the data do suggest that voluntarily childless women and men are not less happy than parents. And they sure do have more money to squander as they try to pursue what happiness they can and strive to somehow fill up their allegedly empty lives.

Disclosure: My wife and I try not to flaunt our voluntarily childless lifestyle too much.

Ronald Bailey is reason's science correspondent. His most recent book, Liberation Biology: The Scientific and Moral Case for the Biotech Revolution, is available from Prometheus Books.

Protesters Burn U.S. Embassy in Belgrade

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 13:49:00 EST

Massive protests in Belgrade against Kosovo's declaration of independence from Serbia have turned violent. According to CNN, in the last hour protestors massed in front of the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade entered the building and set it alight. The Embassy attack followed a day of protests and speeches, attended by an estimated 150,000, denouncing the countries (US, UK, German, and Italy) who recognized Kosovo's independence. The BBC has the details, focusing on the fiery rhetoric of Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica:

Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica addressed the crowds from a large stage, draped in two huge Serbian flags and with a banner reading "Kosovo is Serbia" at the back.
"As long as we live, Kosovo is Serbia," he said to cheers and applause. "Kosovo belongs to the Serbian people."
"We'll never give up Kosovo, never!" the crowd responded.
"Is there any other nation on Earth from whom [the great powers] are demanding that they give up their identity, to give up our brothers in Kosovo?" he added
Those brothers in Kosovo, of course, are the province's 120,000 ethnic Serbian inhabitants. Kosovar Albanians, most of them Muslim, constitute 90 percent of the population.

reason on Kosovo here.

Bank Nationalisation (sic) in Britain

bdoherty@reason.com (Brian Doherty) — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 13:35:00 EST

Cue up talks of pipers and calling tunes: what started as a bailout in September turns into a takeover as Britain's Northern Rock bank is nationalized.

The Financial Times on some of the reaction, from analysts, stockholders, and the private interests who wanted to buy the bank. As the Telegraph reports, the government says it hopes to be able to sell it back to the private sector at a propitious time in the future, "When the market conditions improve and when the housing market comes back."

Market Fears, Loathing in Europe

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 10:02:00 EST

While on a fellowship in Europe, Newsweek editor Stefan Thiel reviewed and compared economics textbooks for college and high school students in France, Germany, and the United States. He writes about what he found in the current issue of Foreign Policy.

“Economic growth imposes a hectic form of life, producing overwork, stress, nervous depression, cardiovascular disease and, according to some, even the development of cancer,” asserts the three-volume Histoire du XXe siècle, a set of texts memorized by countless French high school students as they prepare for entrance exams to Sciences Po and other prestigious French universities. The past 20 years have “doubled wealth, doubled unemployment, poverty, and exclusion, whose ill effects constitute the background for a profound social malaise,” the text continues . . . Capitalism itself is described at various points in the text as “brutal,” “savage,” “neoliberal,” and “American.” This agitprop was published in 2005, not in 1972.
[...]
Equally popular in Germany today are student workbooks on globalization. One such workbook includes sections headed “The Revival of Manchester Capitalism,” “The Brazilianization of Europe,” and “The Return of the Dark Ages.” India and China are successful, the book explains, because they have large, state-owned sectors and practice protectionism, while the societies with the freest markets lie in impoverished sub-Saharan Africa. Like many French and German books, this text suggests students learn more by contacting the antiglobalization group Attac, best known for organizing messy protests at the annual G-8 summits.

One might expect Europeans to view the world through a slightly left-of-center, social-democratic lens. The surprise is the intensity and depth of the anti-market bias being taught in Europe’s schools. Students learn that private companies destroy jobs while government policy creates them. Employers exploit while the state protects. Free markets offer chaos while government regulation brings order. Globalization is destructive, if not catastrophic. Business is a zero-sum game, the source of a litany of modern social problems.

Modern British Libertarian History Comes to Life...

bdoherty@reason.com (Brian Doherty) — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 14:51:00 EST

...at the Botsford Archives, a now-digitized collection of video interviews with leading British libertarian scholars and activists conducted during the early 1990s. Spend some time with Kenneth Minogue, Lord Ralph Harris, and Norman Barry, among many others.

The modern British libertarian movement has a long and fascinating story, and the Botford Archives, hosted by the British Libertarian Alliance, is a great place to start. For the modern American libertarian movement, there is of course my book Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement.

Polygamous Marriage in England: Not Quite Legal, But Subsidized

bdoherty@reason.com (Brian Doherty) — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 11:20:00 EST

A great move for freedom of marital arrangements? One more small-time welfare state scam? Or another crushing defeat for Europe in While Europe Slept style? Britain offers extra welfare benefits for polygamous marriages. From the UK Telegraph:

Even though bigamy is a crime in Britain, the decision by ministers means that polygamous marriages can now be recognised formally by the state, so long as the weddings took place in countries where the arrangement is legal.
The outcome will chiefly benefit Muslim men with more than one wife, as is permitted under Islamic law. Ministers estimate that up to a thousand polygamous partnerships exist in Britain, although they admit there is no exact record.
The decision has been condemned by the Tories, who accused the Government of offering preferential treatment to a particular group, and of setting a precedent that would lead to demands for further changes in British law.
New guidelines on income support from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) state: "Where there is a valid polygamous marriage the claimant and one spouse will be paid the couple rate ... The amount payable for each additional spouse is presently £33.65."
Income support for all of the wives may be paid directly into the husband's bank account, if the family so choose. Under the deal agreed by ministers, a husband with multiple wives may also be eligible for additional housing benefit and council tax benefit to reflect the larger property needed for his family.

Excuse Me, Is the Hermann Goering Hot Tub on This Floor?

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 10:04:00 EST

Brent Bozell's Cybercast News Service ("The Right News. Right Now.") reminds us that the world--or at least Serbia--is an endlessly strange and horrifying place:

The Mr. President Hotel, in Belgrade, Serbia, offers hotel rooms named after past or present world leaders. Among them is the $200-a-night Hitler suite, where a portrait of the uniformed German dictator, with a swastika on his arm, hangs on the wall over the king-sized bed.

Other suites honor President George W. Bush, his father, former President George H.W. Bush, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Cuban Leader Fidel Castro, former Russian dictator Joseph Stalin and former Yugoslavian communist dictator Josip Broz Tito.

Whole thing here. Where, one asks, is the Pierre Trudeau Whoopie Parlor?

Last June, reason's Michael C. Moynihan checked into "The Hotel Honecker," a Berlin "hotel that 'recreates the experience' of East Germany for the budget traveler."

Crown Heights, France; Caracas, Bolivia

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 15:18:00 EST

Rioting erupted last night in the "crime-ridden" French district of Villiers-le-Bel, located some 20 miles from Paris, after a police car collided with a stolen moped piloted by a local teenager, killing him and his passenger. What seemed initially to be an unfortunate accident—witnesses said the boys were travelling "'at very high speed' when it cut across the path of the police car"—ended in Yankel Rosenbaum territory, with rioting locals torching cars and hurling Molotov cocktails at police responding to the call. The BBC has more:

Police said 21 officers were injured in the rioting in the northern suburbs of Villiers-le-Bel and Arnouville. A prosecutor has ordered an internal police inquiry into possible manslaughter and "non-assistance to persons in danger". The violence - reminiscent of riots in 2005 - lasted for more than six hours.

[...]

A brother of one of the dead teenagers, Omar Sehhouli, said the rioting "was not violence but an expression of rage".

In Bolivia's political capital of Sucre, protesters rioted after allies of President Evo Morales, in a nod to the December 2 vote in Caracas, passed a preliminary bill through parliament that would undo constitutional limits on presidential re-election. It still must be approved by referendum, which a Morales spokesman said is forthcoming, though declined to give a specific date. From Bloomberg:

Two anti- government demonstrators and a police officer were killed in the past two days, Efe said, adding that calm was restored after the police yesterday withdrew from Sucre's streets.
The riots began Nov. 24, when members of the government- controlled assembly barred opposition delegates and passed the draft version without having read its content, Efe said. One protester remains in a coma and several others suffered serious injuries, Efe said, citing medical reports.

Earlier today, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued a statement expressing concern over the state of democracy and human rights in Bolivia.

Fogh More Years

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 14:37:00 EST

Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, author of the libertarian tract From Welfare State to Minimal State, was reelected to a third straight term as Denmark's prime minister, which will be the longest consecutive run of a center-right government in modern Danish history. It appears that Naser Khader, the Syrian-born leader of the New Alliance party, who bravely defended the rights of Jyllands-Posten to offend radical Muslims, will likely support the ruling coalition, which includes Rasmussen's Liberal Party (Venstre), the Conservatives and the anti-immigration Danish People's Party. It's a somewhat disappointing showing for Khader's new party—the New Alliance managed five seats in parliament, significantly lower than previous poll predictions—who campaigned a pro-immigration, tax-cutting platform (Khader proposed lowering the top income tax from 63 percent to 40 percent). In the first election since the "cartoon crisis," Pia Kjærsgaard's anti-immigration, pro-welfare state Danish People's Party increased their representation in Parliament by a single seat, garnering 13.8 percent of the vote, the party's highest total since its 1998 electoral debut.

The Economist leads today with a story on Denmark, playing up the immigration and Danish People's Party angle (headline: "Fear of Foreigners"), but conceded that "in the end...Danes are more concerned about welfare than immigrants, although the two issues are often mixed in voters' minds." But Europe as a whole, The Economist argues, is experiencing a wave of xenophobia unprecedented in the post-war period:

Where xenophobic parties are not flourishing it is sometimes because centre-right parties-and even some others-have taken up their themes. Nicolas Sarkozy, who won the presidency of France earlier in the year, imitated the policies of the National Front of Jean-Marie Le Pen over law-and-order and immigration. He also promised to oppose Turkish membership of the EU. A block on further EU enlargement may be one consequence Europe's worries about foreigners.

Back in Denmark, Mr Rasmussen's razor-thin majority may be more or less dependent on the DPP. Denmark has a consensus-based tradition, so he may have the option of fishing for votes among a left-wing party instead, and from Mr Khader's small party. In any case Mr Rasmussen may be thinking of moving on soon, perhaps to a European post. Given the prevailing anxiety about foreigners in the midst, he would find familiar themes of xenophobia to occupy his time, whether in Brussels or in Copenhagen.

For those who speak a Scandinavian language, I made a similar case when interviewed by the Danish newspaper Weekendavisen last week, which can be read here.

Achtung: Your Commute is Killing the Planet

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 16:26:00 EDT

Via the International Herald Tribune, another stroke of regulatory genius from the folks in Brussels, the same people who brought mind-boggling horticultural rules on banana curvature to the continent's green grocers:

The European Parliament proposed last Wednesday that car advertisements in the European Union carry tobacco-style labels, warning of the environmental impact they cause. Under the plan, 20 percent of the space or time of any auto ad would have to be set aside for information on a car's fuel consumption and carbon dioxide emissions, cited as a contributor to global climate change.

As could be expected from the bureaucrat-heavy EU, such a measure (proposed by the European Parliament and only enforceable by the European Commission) is likely to languish in some obscure committee. The measure was meant, says EU environment commissioner Stavros Dimas, as "a warning shot across the bow." The auto industry is taking the hint:

Still, automakers and their ad agencies are taking the matter seriously, for fear that cars might go the way of tobacco or junk food. Cigarette advertising has been almost entirely stubbed out across Europe, and several countries have placed restrictions on ads for unhealthy fare.

Automakers account for more than €6 billion, or $8.6 billion, a year in annual ad spending in Western Europe, according to the European Association of Communications Agencies, a trade organization based in Brussels for the marketing industry. Lobbyists argue that some of that could dry up, hurtingcarmakers, ad agencies and media owners, if marketers were required to place a prominent environmental warning in their ads.

Full story here.

Xenophobes Win, Homophobes Lose

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 14:10:00 EDT

Good news and bad news from Europe this weekend. First, the good news from Poland, where the free-market Civic Platform, led by Donald Tusk, received 41 percent of the vote in Sunday's general election. The outgoing government of Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski—co-founder of the Euroskeptic, hyper-nationalist, homophobic Law and Justice Party—won't be missed by many in Brussels (or, it seems, among Poland's young, urban voters). Tusk promised that, if elected, his party would push for a 15 percent flat tax on both corporate and individual income and ease restrictions on the hiring and firing of employees. For all of Law and Justice's reprehensible policies (like that delightful suggestion that gays should not be allowed teaching positions), I'll give them a some—but not much—credit for its aggressive lustration policies, aimed at purging Polish politics of collaborators with the Soviet puppet government. The right idea, poorly executed.

And now for the bad news: In Switzerland, the anti-immigration SVP trounced the opposition Social Democrats, who lost nine seats in the lower house of parliament and managed only 19 percent of the vote nationwide. Also distressing, the free-market Free Democratic Party lost voters to the SVP, shedding five seats from the 2003 election. The SVP managed an impressive 29 percent of the vote, solidifying its position as the country's largest political party, and gaining seven seats in the Swiss parliament. The AFP has reaction from Geneva:

"It's the strongest score of any party" since 1919, political scientist Hans Hirter told AFP. The daily Le Matin dubbed the result a "triumph" for the SVP and the architect of its shift to the right over the past two decades, Justice Minister Christoph Blocher. The establishment Neue Zuercher Zeitung, however, warned of "increasing polarisation" in Switzerland.

Here is the vote breakdown, courtesy of Tages-Anzeiger (From left, the major parties listed: Swiss People's Party (SVP), Social Democrats (SD), Free Democratic Party (FDP), Christian Democrats (CVP), Greens (GPS)):

Wisdom and Folly on Drug Laws in U.K.

bdoherty@reason.com (Brian Doherty) — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 09:30:00 EDT

The wisdom is from North Wales' Chief Constable Richard Brunstrom, as reported in the U.K. Independent. He has called

for all drugs – including heroin and cocaine – to be legalised and urges the Government to declare an end to the "failed" war on illegal narcotics.

The folly, alas, is from 10 Downing Street:

In his conference speech this year, Gordon Brown signalled an intensification of the existing battle. "We will send out a clear message that drugs are never going to be decriminalised," the Prime Minister told the party.

Ron Bailey blogged last month on the prospects for global drug legalization.

Link via Rational Review, a great news aggregator of libertarian interest.

The Battle of Bern

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 15:42:00 EDT

Today's New York Times goes front page and above the fold with a story on the Swiss People's Party (SVP) and its not-so-subtly racist campaign to boot out entire families of immigrants, provided one member has committed a crime in Switzerland. Rather than simply documenting the party's often deeply offensive campaign tactics, Times correspondent Elaine Sciolino attempts to account for SVP's growing popularity. Like in other European countries—many of whom have seen a precipitous increase in the popularity of populist, anti-immigration parties—Switzerland's mainstream parties seem to have all but ceded the sensitive issue of integration and assimilation to the SVP, who frequently rail against the disproportionate representation of immigrants in Swiss prisons:

The message of the party resonates loudly among voters who have seen this country of 7.5 million become a haven for foreigners, including political refugees from places like Kosovo and Rwanda. Polls indicate that the right-wing party is poised to win more seats than any other party in Parliament in the election, as it did in national elections in 2003, when its populist language gave it nearly 27 percent of the vote.

"Our political enemies think the poster is racist, but it just gives a simple message," Bruno Walliser, a local chimney sweep running for Parliament on the party ticket, said at the rally, held on a Schwerzenbach farm outside Zurich. "The black sheep is not any black sheep that doesn't fit into the family. It's the foreign criminal who doesn't belong here, the one that doesn't obey Swiss law. We don't want him."

More than 20 percent of Swiss inhabitants are foreign nationals, and the SVP argues that a disproportionate number are lawbreakers. Many drug dealers are foreign, and according to federal statistics, about 70 percent of the prison population is non-Swiss.

Sciolino observes that SVP has yet to launch a P.R. campaign like that of the French far-right, "where...National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen campaigned for president in the spring alongside black and ethnic Arab supporters, the SVP has taken a much cruder us-against-them approach." Perhaps, but Le Pen's P.R. campaign was inaugurated only after intense lobbying from his daughter, Marine. The party, alas, is still brimming with skinheads and crypto-fascists.

The Times also watches an amazingly crude three-part campaign film produced by SVP (since withdrawn), which can be viewed here:

In a short three-part campaign film, "Heaven or Hell," the party's message is clear. In the first segment, young men inject heroin, steal handbags from women, kick and beat up schoolboys, wield knives and carry off a young woman. The second segment shows Muslims living in Switzerland - women in head scarves; men sitting, not working. The third segment shows "heavenly" Switzerland: men in suits rushing to work, logos of Switzerland's multinational corporations, harvesting on farms, experiments in laboratories, scenes of lakes, mountains, churches and goats. "The choice is clear: my home, our security," the film states.

In other Swiss news, a radical left group rioted at a SVP rally in Bern yesterday. The Guardian reports:

The Swiss capital of Berne was turned into a battle zone at the weekend when leftwing radicals seized control of the main square outside parliament, routing the main far-right political party two weeks before a general election and catching the Swiss police off guard. Dozens of protesters were arrested and around two dozen people injured, mostly police officers, as police deployed tear gas, water cannon, and rubber bullets to try to regain control from gangs of highly organised, masked people who turned the small and normally sleepy capital of Switzerland into a scene of devastation.
...
The Federal Square, site of a charming Saturday morning flower and vegetable market, resembled a war zone by Saturday night, littered with debris, masonry, shattered glass and torched metal.

Last month, I wrote about the rise of the SVP and European populism in general.

According to a recent poll in the Finnish daily Helsingin Sanomat, most Finns would welcome an increase in immigration to their country.

Revisiting the Danish Cartoon Crisis

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 12:30:00 EDT

Over a year after the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published those now-infamous cartoons of Mohammad—one of which portrayed the Muslim Prophet carrying a lit bomb in his turban—the country is still noticeably on edge. When I recently visited Copenhagen, a week after a pre-dawn raid netted a handful of suspected Islamic extremists, the twin issues of Islam and integration were difficult to avoid. On television, the news and chat shows were dominated by discussions of coexistence with the country's approximately 200,000 Muslims; newspapers were brimming with reader letters and editorials on Islamophobia, secularism and democracy; and a bookshop associated with the country's left-leaning daily Politiken prominently displayed Norman Podhoertz's latest book World War IV in the window, with a large stack on sale inside.

To get a sense of how this diminutive socialist country (previously famous for pork products, liberal views on pornography and Jante's Law) was tranformed into a main front in Europe's culture war, I sat down with the man responsible for printing the offending cartoons, Jyllands-Posten's culture and arts editor Flemming Rose. In a wide-ranging discussion, Rose expounded on his years in the Soviet Union, free speech versus "responsible speech" and his Muslim supporters.

I spoke with Rose in September at Jyllands-Posten's Copenhagen office.

reason: Did your time in Russia and as Berlingske Tidende correspondent in the Soviet Union inform your ideas of free speech and political freedom?

Flemming Rose: Yes. I am going to write a book about the cartoon crisis and I am going to compare the experience of the dissidents in the Soviet Union to what has happened to people like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Ibn Warraq, Salman Rushdie and Irshad Manji... I am very much informed by my contact with [Soviet dissidents] and I'm close to the Sakharov camp—people like Natan Sharansky and Sergei Kovalev... The dissidents were split between what I would I would call the nationalist camp and the human rights movement. And I would say that I identified more with the human rights movement, although I am a big admirer of Solzhenitsyn, of course, because of what he accomplished. But today he is, in fact, supporting Putin and he believes that he's conducting a very wise foreign policy program. I don't think Sakharov would have subscribed to this view.

reason: Were you surprised by the reaction of those who argued not for unfettered free speech, but "responsible speech?"

Rose: Well, no. I think many people betrayed their own ideals. The history of the left, for instance, is a history of confronting authority—be it religious or political authority—and always challenging religious symbols and figures. In this case, they failed miserably. I think the left is in a deep crisis in Europe because of their lack of willingness to confront the racist ideology of Islamism. They somehow view the Koran as a new version of Das Kapital and are willing to ignore everything else, as long of they continue to see the Muslims of Europe as a new proletariat.

Like during the Cold War, there is a willingness to establish a false equivalence between democracy and oppression—between a totalitarian ideology and a liberal ideology. When I look back at my own behavior during the "cartoon crisis," it was very much informed by my experience with Soviet Union because I saw the same kind of behavior both inside the Soviet Union and those dealing with the Soviet Union in the West.

reason: At the height of the "cartoon crisis," were you surprised to turn the television on to images of people in Lahore burning Danish flags, mobs attacking Scandinavian embassies? Did anyone at the paper anticipate such a response?

Rose: Not at all. No one expected this kind of reaction. Last year, I visited Bernard Lewis at Princeton and he told me: "Your case in unique in a historical sense. Never before in modern times, on such a scale, have Muslims insisted upon applying Islamic law to what non-Muslims are doing in non-Muslim country. It has never happened before. And you can't really compare the Rushdie affair, because he was perceived to be an apostate." And as he told me, there is a long tradition of offending the Prophet in history. In the St. Petronio church in Bologna there is, on the ceiling, a painting of Mohammad in hell, based Dürer's paintings of Dante's Divine Comedy.

Those people who say, "you offended one billion people," or "you offended a weak minority," they lack the understanding of the raw power game that was at play here. This had very little to do with insulting religious sensibilities, though it was being used by influential groups and regimes in the Middle East to stir up emotions. It was a very well planned and executed operation. It was not spontaneous in any way.

Abu Laban, the Danish imam that promoted the cartoons in the Arab world, was saying that we aren't allowed to build mosques in Denmark, that the Koran is being censored, that we aren't allowed to have our own cemeteries, that Muslims are almost on the verge of being sent to concentration camps. But the fact is that Muslims in Denmark enjoy more rights than they would in any Muslim country. In fact, two weeks ago a delegation from the Egyptian parliament were in Denmark and they were surprised when they spoke to Danish Muslims who said "we enjoy living here."

Naser Khader, a Danish parliamentarian who was very supportive of me and stood up in parliament and said "I am very offended by those who insist on an apology to one billion Muslims, because I am not offended by these cartoons." But, he said, I am offended by being lumped into this grey mass of "one billion Muslims."

reason: How do you rank the reactions of European politicians?

Rose: I think it's a mixed bag. I think [European Commission President] Manuel Barraso, who has a background in an authoritarian regime, understood the situation better than others, like, for instance, Tony Blair and Jack Straw, who behaved disastrously. Barraso came out very clear—a little late, maybe—but he said that free speech is non-negotiable; it's the foundation of European civilization. A lot of governments and opinion makers in Europe and the West were driving this line that we have offended one billion people and we should be ashamed of ourselves, free speech and but responsible speech... all this crap.

But what really bothers me today—and this hasn't been reported very widely—is that right after the cartoon crisis, the Organization of the Islamic Conference at the United Nations sponsored a resolution condemning the "ridiculing of religion." It didn't pass, but in March of this year the United Nations Human Rights Consul, which is the highest international body in the world for the protection of human rights, passed a resolution condoning state punishment of people criticizing religion. I think this is a big scandal. This was a direct result of the "cartoon crisis." Fortunately the European Union voted against it. But countries like Russia, Mexico and China supported the resolution. And in this resolution, they call on governments to pass laws or write provisions into their constitutions forbidding criticism of religion. This would give a free hand to authoritarian regimes around the world to clamp down on dissidents.

One of the lessons I have drawn from this experience is that free speech is indivisible. I am in favor of removing all blasphemy laws and laws criminalizing Holocaust denial... I think that in a globalized world, the way forward is not raise barriers "protecting people," or calling for "responsible speech," but to do away with all kinds of limitations of speech.

Things have perhaps changing when they have their own cartoon crises. I'm amazed that Swedish newspapers are republishing [artist Lars Vilks cartoon of Mohammad as a dog]-and not noticing the hypocrisy that they didn't want to publish our cartoons. We published the Vilks cartoon; almost all Danish newspapers did.

reason: Whose response disappointed you the most?

Rose: In Europe? Jacques Chirac, who lambasted [Jyllands-Posten] and then flew to Saudi Arabia the next week to sign a large weapons contract.

reason: How are the cartoonists doing?

Rose: They are OK: All back in Denmark. But they are still under surveillance by the police.

reason: Are you under surveillance?

Rose: Every now and then. But we [at Jyllands-Posten] don't feel in any immediate danger; we aren't getting any information that we are being targeted. There is an ongoing terror trial in Odense, and according to the prosecutor, these young men planned a terrorist attack against parliament and this building.

I do receive some supportive emails from Muslims in Denmark, who think that my struggle is their struggle. And I think this is very important: Fundamentally, this is a struggle within the Muslim community, and I think our duty is to send a very clear message whose side we are on.

Michael Moynihan is an associate editor of reason.

A Time for Choosing, En Francais

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 12:09:00 EDT

The Wall Street Journal editorial page says its "cautiously optimistic," but it's giving Nicolas Sarkozy's domestic reform agenda speech high marks. Indeed, such rhetoric would have once been considered political suicide in France. From the WSJ:

The new President declared that France's generous welfare state is "unjust" and "financially untenable," "discourages work and job creation," and "fails to bring equal opportunity." The result: France's jobless rate is the euro zone's highest. The President wants "a new social contract founded on work, merit and equal opportunity." He promised to loosen restrictions on working hours and toughen up requirements for jobless benefits, to ease hiring and firing rules and reduce incentives to retire early.

Now for the skepticism:

One of the biggest threats to Mr. Sarkozy's revolution may yet be from Mr. Sarkozy himself. In his first four months in office, the President has revealed a populist streak. He browbeats the European Central Bank to lower interest rates and sticks his nose into big business. Such interventionism harks back to old-style French economic management and is out of tune with the approach outlined yesterday.
Mr. Sarkozy's long-awaited speech sets the stage for the most important political battle in his first term. Whatever the President does in the next five years, he can't claim to have succeeded unless France breaks out of its economic slumber. His equally ambitious foreign policy depends on it, too. The President's prescriptions for the ailing French welfare state are hard to argue with. Now if only Mr. Sarkozy will apply them.

Whole thing here.

Video of Sarkozy at the G8 summit, after, apparently, tossing back two dozen cans of Kronenbourg 1664.

Bonus video of Tony Blair congratulating Nicolas Sarkozy on his election victory in French, courtesy of Number 10's own YouTube channel.

May the Road (as Long as It's Not Marked in Kilometers) Rise Up To Meet the "Metric Martyr"

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 08:19:00 EDT

Britons and the Irish can still walk a mile to the pub for a pint of beer instead of trudging 1.6 kilometers for 50 centiliters of the sudsy stuff, European Union regulators ruled.
In a belated victory for Britain's "metric martyr," the European Commission dropped plans to force the U.K. and Ireland to replace Imperial measures such as pints, yards, feet and inches with the metric system by 2009.
The metric climbdown, triggered by a public-opinion survey in the two countries, "honors the culture and traditions of Great Britain and Ireland," Industry Commissioner Guenter Verheugen said in a statement in Brussels today.
Today's decision is a posthumous victory for Steven Thoburn, an English grocer dubbed the "metric martyr" when he was fined in 2001 for selling bananas by the pound. Thoburn died of a heart attack at the age of 39 in 2004 after his appeal was rejected.
Other traders were prosecuted for selling mackerel, Brussels sprouts and pumpkins by the pound.

In other recent rulings, speaking in Esperanto anywhere in the EU--other than when chanting along to the 1965 Esperanto movie Incubus starring William Shatner, of course-- will be punished by death.

And let's not miss the irony that the Irish now get to keep the "Imperial" weights and measures system imposed on them by their, well, former imperial overlords. The important thing is that Van Morrison need not learn how to re-measure anything at this point in his life.

More here.

And never forget that Gerry Ford's darkest hour came not when he pardoned Nixon, or refused to admit that Poland was under Soviet domination, or when he unveiled his sadomasochistic WIN campaign. It came when the signed The Metric Conversion Act of 1975, surrendering American sovereignty when it came to feets, inches, and all the rest. Luckily for us, he was in that, as in all else, a failure.

Black Sheep Squadron

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 11:59:00 EDT

Near the end of Carol Reed's 1949 noir classic The Third Man, Harry Lime, played by a brooding Orson Welles, disembarks from a Vienna Ferris wheel and delivers the film's best-remembered soliloquy. Pondering the relative merits of a libertine society, Lime muses that Italy was once governed by the House of Borgia, yet managed to produce "Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance," while the studiously inoffensive Swiss " had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock." (Which, incidentally, is of German provenance.)

Indeed, Switzerland's international reputation has long been one of neutrality, dubious banking regulations and superior watch-making; a remarkably harmonious, multilingual country with postcard vistas and little violent crime. And as such, it's often invoked as a model to be emulated. For Second Amendment defenders, the country's low murder rate negates the assumption that more guns necessitate an increase in crime; Switzerland is awash in firearms, yet manages to avoid American levels of gun violence. Many even urged the provisional government in Iraq to adopt a Swiss canton-like ethnic division. Writing in Legal Times in 2003, author Gregory A. Fossedal argued implausibly that if the Bush administration was "looking to build democracy in a divided nation," they could "learn a lot from Switzerland."

But is this harmonious ethnic bouillabaisse liable to boil over? Last week, Britain's Independent newspaper wondered if little Switzerland was, in fact, "Europe's heart of darkness." The once sedate country, the paper claimed, is now "home to a new extremism that has alarmed the United Nations." At issue is the latest advertising campaign from the Swiss People's Party (Schweizerische Volkspartei, or SVP), the country's largest political party, controlling 55 of the 200 seats in the lower chamber of parliament. A recent SVP campaign poster, attempting to marshall support for the "Federal Popular Initiative for the Deportation of Criminal Foreigners," features two sheep—both white—grazing atop a Swiss flag, while a third uses its hind legs to kick a black sheep off out of the country. The party has unconvincingly denied any racist intent, claiming that the image simply suggests that immigrants who commit crimes should, like black sheep, be ostracized from the "flock" and returned to their country of origin.

Expelling non-native criminals is hardly a novel policy prescription in Europe. But the SVP went a step further, demanding that the immediate families of criminals under 18-years-old also be deported, leading critics to compare it to the Nazi policy of Sippenhaft—kin liability. Nor is this the SVP's first brush with controversy. A previous ad campaign featured a black hand dipping into a box of Swiss passports (over 20 percent of the population is foreign born), and a recent SVP proposal to ban the construction of minarets has roiled opposition politicians and activists. (Polling data shows that almost half the population supports the minaret ban).

The Independent might express astonishment, but European antipathy (and outright hostility) towards its immigrants is hardly new, as reflected in the increasing support for anti-immigration parties across the continent. Belgium's Vlaams Belang, the Sweden Democrats, France's National Front, Denmark's People's Party, and Austria's Freedom Party have all either made alarming electoral gains in recent years or have become power brokers in coalition governments. Various Western European countries—Italy, Germany, England and France—have considered or adopted bans on various forms of female Islamic dress, like the niqab or headscarf, in public schools. A blogger at Foreign Policy sighed that the situation in Switzerland unfortunately reflects "a larger general trend of racism and anti-Semitism brewing in the region."

That Europe is "trending racist" is surely an overstatement, though many of the continent's traditional paragons of racial and social tolerance, like the Netherlands, have travelled a bumpy road towards a multiethnic society and religious pluralism. After the murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh, and the persistent death threats against anti-immigration politician Geert Wilders and Islam critic Ayaan Hirsi Ali, many native Dutch have become noticeably less "tolerant" of Muslim immigrants. According to the New York Times, a 2005 opinion poll found that 35 percent of "the native Dutch questioned had negative views about Islam," while Dutch polling firm Motivaction found that "63 percent of respondents think Islam is incompatible with modern European life." But this, of course, is a two-way street. A study by Frank Buijs of the University of Amsterdam's Institute of Migration and Ethnic Studies showed that Moroccan youth in the Netherlands are deeply skeptical of Dutch liberalism, with 40 percent of respondents saying they "reject western values and democracy."

In Denmark, a country long associated with socialism and sexual liberation, anti-immigrant sentiment has markedly increased, causing a left-wing columnist for Sweden's biggest daily to brand his fellow Scandinavians an unreservedly racist lot: "Our little neighbor is Western Europe's most prejudiced, bigoted and narrow-minded nation." A deeply unfair characterization to be sure, but the far right Danish People's Party, the country's third-largest, with approximately 13 percent voter support, is a vital bit player in the ruling Venstre Party coalition.

The depth of European skepticism towards immigration is difficult to gauge by merely charting the progress of far right parties. Across the continent, fringe parties have watched as establishment politicians appropriate portions of their message. When British political candidates collate the latest opinion poll data—suggesting deep skepticism to increased legal immigration; demonstrating a startling preponderance of illiberal attitudes amongst British Muslims—they respond with alacrity. Yesterday, the Sunday Telegraph reported that "Tens of thousands of immigrant workers will be forced to learn English before they are allowed into Britain under a plan [Labour] Prime Minister Gordon Brown is expected to announce tomorrow in a speech to the Trades Union Congress in Brighton..." Not exactly Enoch Powell, but Prime Minister Brown is clearly not courting the Neil Kinnock-wing of his party either.

For those in the hyperpuissance who argued that profligate social spending works counter to the goals of integration, it's difficult not to say "I told you so." When riots engulfed France's urban ghettos in 2005, many American commentators noted, with barely contained schadenfreude, that during the 1992 L.A. Riots, many in the French intellectual class viewed urban discontent as a uniquely American problem, deeply rooted in a cultural and economic conservatism. Indeed, President François Mitterrand told French state radio during the riots that in Los Angeles, "a racial and a social conflict" was manifesting itself in a country where "there is an absence of social legislation and protection...[America] is a conservative society, with a free-market economy, and we see some of the results" in the riots.

Europe, despite—or perhaps because of—its web of safety nets, is now confronting social problems long familiar to this country. And while there is no imminent danger of a far right takeover of Western European politics, the days easily contrasting a tolerant, free-spending Europe with an intolerant, inhumane America are long gone.

Michael Moynihan is an associate editor for reason.

Belgium: Giving Teegeack A Bad Name

bdoherty@reason.com (Brian Doherty) — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 14:54:00 EDT

In further international religious liberty news, Belgium contemplates a war on Scientology:

A Belgian prosecutor on Tuesday recommended that the U.S.-based Church of Scientology stand trial for fraud and extortion, following a 10-year investigation that concluded the group should be labeled a criminal organization.
........
An administrative court will decide whether to press charges against the Scientologists.
In a statement, Scientology's Europe office accused the prosecutor of hounding the organization and said it would contest the charges.
........
Scientology has been active in Belgium for nearly three decades. In 2003, it opened an international office near the headquarters of the European Union to lobby for its right to be recognized as an official religious group, a status it does not enjoy in Belgium.
.........
Belgium, Germany and other European countries have been criticized by the State Department for labeling Scientology as a cult or sect and enacting laws to restrict its operations.

Katherine Mangu-Ward blogged a defense of Scientology last month.

Headline explanation for non-OTs

Let Turkey Into the EU?

bdoherty@reason.com (Brian Doherty) — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 14:10:00 EDT

Perhaps Turkey should first let Wordpress back into Turkey.

RIP, Ulrich Mühe

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 12:08:00 EDT

From the wonderful website Sign and Sight, the English-language service of Perlentaucher magazine, comes this celebration of German actor Ulrich Mühe, know to American audiences as the star of the Oscar-winning film "The Lives of Others." He died of cancer last week, aged 54. Mühe, who played the Stasi agent Gerd Wiesler in "The Lives of Others," discovered soon before his death that his wife, GDR actress Jenny Gröllmann, was an informant. From Die Welt:

In the spring of 2006, when actor Ulrich Mühe fought out a legal and press battle with his ex-wife Jenny Gröllmann, many were astonished at his relentless anger. Because Jenny Gröllmann was already terminally ill, and spent her last months fighting rumours that she had informed on her husband for the Stasi during their marriage

The BBC detailed the Mühe-Gröllmann feud in greater detail here.

Die Welt cites Mühe as an organizer of the demonstrations that precipitated the wall's fall:

Mühe contributed personally to the downfall of the GDR. He helped organise and spoke at the large demonstration on Berlin's Alexanderplatz on November 4, 1989, in which hope for "another form of socialism" was articulated one last time, but which above all heightened the panic of the old regime.

RIP.

Glenn Garvin on Anna Funder's brilliant Stasiland here.

And in case you were unaware, the Ossi skater was a spy.

What Every Sensible Driver Needs: Speeding Insurance

jsamuel@reason.com (Juliet Samuel) — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 09:13:00 EDT

Following on from the latest French craze of trading speeding penalties, the Danes have invented a whole new business designed to take the pressure off drivers who like to go fast (or are just careless): speeding insurance.

Drivers pay 2.5 Danish crowns (46 cents) per day. In return they get annual coverage of up to $1855 for four speeding and four parking tickets. And again, it’s a case of drivers uniting against the state:

The idea, [insurance company] Fartklubben founder Poul Winther told Danish daily Politiken, is not to give Danes license to put the pedal to the metal, but rather to protect motorists from over-zealous traffic cops.
"We're a solidarity club where each member is jointly liable for one another," he said. "We believe that photo speed traps and parking companies have become pure money machines."

The government could respond by lowering incentives to use such insurance, i.e. reducing penalties for speeding or getting control of its traffic cops. More likely, they'll go for Option 2: make speeding insurance illegal.

Feeling the Angst? A Year in Jail Should Help.

jsamuel@reason.com (Juliet Samuel) — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 08:21:00 EDT

Several years ago a young Turkish rock band released a song railing against the unfairness of the country’s national standardized test for university entrance. “Life should not be a prison because of an exam,” they sang, “I have gotten lost; you have ruined my future; I am going to tell you one thing: Shove that exam...”

This week they are standing trial for “insulting Turkishness,” with the possibility of an 18 month jail sentence if convicted. That seems unlikely, however:

There's been little public discussion about the wisdom of prosecuting the punk band. Turkish prosecutors routinely file defamation complaints, creating a glut of cases, some of which never go to trial.

So the whole case is a tiresome and wasteful use of government resources—if Turkey keeps it up, its prospects for EU membership look better than ever. (via Shoutmouth)

U.N.'s Ban Urges Slowness on Iraq and Kosovo, but Some Speed Heading into Darfur

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 08:44:00 EDT

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged U.S. policy-makers yesterday to exercise "great caution" in considering any rapid withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Iraq.

"It is not my place to inject myself into this discussion taking place between the American people, government and Congress," said Mr. Ban, who was expected to repeat the message during meetings on Capitol Hill today.

"But I'd like to tell you that a great caution should be taken for the sake of the Iraqi people," he said at a U.N. press conference. "Any abrupt withdrawal or decision may lead to a further deterioration."...

Mr. Ban also meets today with President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who are expected to ask the secretary-general to beef up the U.N. presence in Iraq. They would like the world body to do more to address the country's humanitarian needs and to support its fragile government.

Mr. Ban said he also plans to brief the Americans on a U.N. timetable for installing a hybrid African-international peacekeeping force in Darfur, a priority for both the international organization and the Bush administration....

African soldiers are expected to form the bulk of the Darfur force, but Western technical, logistical and financial support will be necessary to get the effort off the ground.

Mr. Ban said the U.S. contribution "would be immensely important," but declined to be more specific about U.S. involvement.

Mr. Ban, who just returned from two weeks in Europe and Afghanistan, also told reporters he is "deeply concerned" about a stalemate in the Security Council over whether to recognize Kosovo as a sovereign state.

The United States and Russia have locked horns over the issue, and Mr. Ban said the lack of progress "will have a very negative impact not only on Kosovo but in the wider region."

The Bush administration has indicated it might move to recognize Kosovar independence without the Security Council, a move that would enrage Moscow and possibly encourage other separatist movements.

Mr. Ban said no party should "take premature unilateral action on Kosovo."

More here.