Niall Ferguson on the fall of the European Union

Harvard history professor Niall Ferguson has written an interesting column, comparing the fall of the Roman Empire with what happens in Europe today:

Peter Heather’s The Fall of the Roman Empire emphasises the ­disastrous effects not just of mass migration, but also organised vio­lence: first the westward shift of the Huns of central Asia and then the Germanic irruption into Roman territory.
In his reading, the Visigoths who settled in Aquitaine and the Vandals who conquered Carthage were attracted to the Roman ­Empire by its wealth, but were ­enabled to seize that wealth by the arms acquired and skills learnt from the Romans ­themselves.
“For the adventurous,” writes Heather, “the Roman Empire, while being a threat to their existence, also presented an unprecedented opportunity to prosper ... Once the Huns had pushed large numbers of (alien groups) across the frontier, the Roman state ­became its own worst enemy. Its military power and financial sophistication both hastened the process whereby streams of incomers became coherent forces capable of carving out kingdoms from its own body politic.”
Uncannily similar processes are destroying the European Union today, though few of us want to recognise them for what they are. Like the Roman Empire in the early 5th century, Europe has allowed its defences to crumble. As its wealth has grown, so its military prowess has shrunk, along with its self-belief. It has grown decadent in its malls and stadiums. At the same time, it has opened its gates to outsiders who have coveted its wealth without ren­ouncing their ancestral faith.
The distant shock to this weakened edifice has been the Syrian civil war, though it has been a catalyst as much as a direct cause for the great Volkerwanderung of 2015.
As before, they have come from all over the imperial periphery — North Africa, the Levant, South Asia — but this time they have come in their millions, not in mere tens of thousands. To be sure, most have come hoping only for a better life. Things in their own countries have become just good enough economically for them to afford to leave and just bad enough politically for them to risk leaving.
But they cannot stream northwards and westwards without some of that political malaise coming with them. As Gibbon saw, convinced monotheists pose a grave threat to a secular empire.
It is doubtless true to say that the overwhelming majority of Muslims in Europe are not violent. But it is also true the majority hold views not easily reconciled with the principles of our liberal democracies, including our novel notions about sexual equality and tolerance not merely of religious diversity but of nearly all sexual proclivities. And it is thus remarkably easy for a violent minority to acquire their weapons and prepare their assaults on civilisation within these avowedly peace-loving ­communities.

Communist China tortures lawyers

Communist China´s human rights violations should not be forgotten!

Beijing prosecutor and lawyer Tang Jitian was on the grounds of a Chinese black jail last year, investigating a case, when local police officers handcuffed and attacked him.

 

“I was first strapped to an iron chair, slapped in the face, kicked on my legs, and hit so hard over the head with a plastic bottle filled with water that I passed out,” Tang said to Amnesty International of his sudden detention. Three other lawyers with him received the same treatment that day.

 

Under the ever-tightening censorship policies of China’s central government, human rights activists and lawyers in the country have found themselves subject to a brutal, sweeping crackdown this year. On Nov. 12, human rights organization Amnesty International released a new report that tells Tang’s chilling story—as well as dozens of others from lawyers who’ve also been assaulted by the Chinese government.

 

These personal accounts come to light at a crucial time: Next week, China will answer questions from a United Nations anti-torture committee at a conference in Geneva—the UN’s fifth probe into the country’s torture practices.

Garry Kasparov: "Trying to ally w Putin to fight ISIS is like giving yourself cancer to fight a cold"

Garry Kasparov ‏@Kasparov63 6 hrs6 hours ago

Trying to ally w Putin to fight ISIS is like giving yourself cancer to fight a cold. He supports terror, Iran, Assad, & wants more refugees.

 

Garry Kasparov is of course right. Sadly, the weak US, UK and German "leaders" are again doing their utmost to please this dictator, who has blood in his hands.

US presidential candidate Marco Rubio: "Putin is a gangster"

 

 

Florida senator and presidential candidate Marco Rubio is the right man to handle Vladimir Putin!

Rubio in a speech:

"As soon as I take office, I will move quickly to increase pressure on Moscow. I will impose a new round of sanctions on The Kremlin’s senior leadership and other Russian entities, including Gazprom, and will work with Europe to exclude Russia from the SWIFT interbank payment system.

I will immediately provide Ukraine with lethal military assistance and increased intelligence sharing to ensure that Putin’s violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty comes at a price.

I will impose visa bans and asset freezes against high-level Russian officials, and move to isolate Russia diplomatically by ceasing efforts to engage Moscow on issues not essential to resolving the crisis in Ukraine.

Under my administration, there will be no pleading for meetings with Vladimir Putin. He will be treated as the gangster and thug that he is. And yes, I stand by that phrasing."

Edward Lucas on the claims that the Ukraine crisis was NATO´s and EU´s fault

A number of foreign-policy expterts have blamed NATO and the EU for the crisis in Ukraine. Edward Lucas looks at how the predictions made by political scientist John Mearsheimer and others have fared:

The Ukraine crisis is the West’s fault. That has been the contention of a slew of foreign-policy experts, notably the distinguished political scientist John Mearsheimer, who wrote a much-quoted piece in Foreign Affairs in August last year called “The Liberal Delusions That Provoked Putin.”

For those who missed it, Mearsheimer blamed the crisis in Ukraine on NATO enlargement, saying that Russia had adamantly opposed it (which is not true); that it breached undertakings given to the Soviet Union (also false); and that Putin feared that the “coup” against Yanukovych was a prelude to a NATO base in Crimea (also untrue).

Mearsheimer also argued that the EU had been “marching eastward” and therefore provoking Russia and that the West was recklessly promoting democracy with the aim of turning Ukraine into a “Western stronghold on Russia’s doorstep.”

The counter-arguments to this are well known. The biggest is that they remove from Ukrainians and others any say in their own future. They are just counters in a board game played by others. As Mearsheimer argues, might is right and countries Ukraine’s position just have to get used to it.

That is both inaccurate and morally dubious (given how much the countries of the “bloodlands” have suffered in the past century). It is right to say that Russia, not the West, gets to decide what constitutes a threat to Russia. We can’t help it if Russia’s ex-KGB regime is afflicted by paranoia. But if Russia’s threat-perception becomes the paramount and unchallenged factor in regional security, we are in effect assenting to a new Yalta.

Read the entire article here

Finally something to celebrate at the Paris COP 21: "Global warming has been good to Champagne makers"

A few thousand bottles of vintage champagne are ready for the COP 21 delegates in Paris.

The famous Maxim´s will be one of the main venues for these much appreciated "side events" ...

As Paris gets ready to welcome the 50,000 or so delegates to the megalomaniac COP 21 climate jamboree, due to begin on November 30, there is finally some good news to report.

When US President Barack Obama, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the likes arrive in the beginning of the meeting for a photo opportunity (the French idea is to have heads of state present only in the beginning of the conference in order to make statements) they can wholeheartedly enjoy the champagne offered by their host, President Hollande, knowing that global warming has been good to this noble wine:

As France prepares to host world leaders for talks on how to slow global warming next month, producers of the northeastern French region's famous sparkling wine have seen only benefits from rising temperatures so far.
The 1.2 degrees centigrade increase in temperatures in the region over the past 30 years has reduced frost damage. It has also added one degree in the level of alcohol and reduced acidity, making it easier to comply with strict production rules, according to champagne makers group CIVC.
"The Champagne region and Germany are among the northerly vineyards which have managed to develop thanks to warmer weather," Jean-Marc Touzard, coordinator of a program on wine and climate change at French research institute INRA.
"Even if I feel very concerned by climate change, I have to say that for the moment it has had only positive effects for Champagne," Pierre-Emmanuel Taittinger, president of the group that bears his family's name, told Reuters at the company's Reims headquarters.

Obama: "Large part of this Earth" could become uninhabitable 25 years from now!

US President Barack Obama thinks that "large parts of this Earth" will become uninhabitable in "our lifetimes" if global warming is not reduced. The average life expectancy in the US is about 79 years ( 78.8 in 2012), which, considering that Obama was born in 1961, means that large parts of the Earth would be uninhabitable as soon as 2040.

We all know that there has been no global warming for almost nineteen years now. This means that there has to be a hell of a lot of warming during the next 25 years to make "large parts of this Earth" uninhabitable by 2040! Does Obama really believe in this rubbish? I do not think so, but he surely thinks that this kind of scaremongering makes him popular among greenies and other "progressive" global warming believers.