Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and his political spin doctors have been especially busy this summer. Indeed, they have been making furious rounds on the national television talk show circuit, trying to explain to an increasingly skeptical Spanish public just why the Socialist government’s “progressive” foreign policy of coddling third world despots has turned Spain into one of the most marginalized countries in the European Union.

Bad news share a feature: today’s festering sores began as neglected pickles. An issue that might upset Europe in the future flows from a casually committed earlier global error. Colonial empires and the treaties ending the world wars have created states with artificial boundaries. These deals ignored the foundations of good and stable settlements: these leave all parties relatively satisfied. A stable state has consenting inhabitants have reasons see it as representing them. It helps if the populace is ethnically, by faith and culture homogenous. Ignoring this created contemporary problems such as in Iraq and Africa. Recent symptoms include the violent disintegration of Yugoslavia (actually a Greater Serbia) and the still fermenting issue of Kosovo. Historically, the origins of the world wars were states seen as prisons by their subjects and the territorial rivalries this fueled.

The Hergé Foundation agrees with yesterday’s decision of the international bookseller Borders Books to ban the comic album “Tintin in the Congo” from its children’s section and move it to the adult section of its stores.

An email from Katrin Saks MEP (Member of the European Parliament) to her colleagues, 12 July 2007

Dear colleagues,
Last night, TWO of our laptops were stolen from our offices, incl. one owned by the MEP.
If anyone else has recently experienced the theft (this week), please come forward and we can deal with this together.

For the rest of you: Please be cautious not to leave your materiel in your offices and help us speak out on this subject. This has gone too far, people’s personal belongings are being stolen from their own offices in a political institution.

A quote from the Berlaymonster, 11 July 2007

A quote from The Daily Telegraph, 11 July 2007

The Commission for Racial Equality has labelled a Tintin book racist and criticised a high street book chain for stocking the title. The CRE says Tintin in the Congo makes black people “look like monkeys and talk like imbeciles”. It has called on Borders to remove it from sale due to what it deems offensive content. A CRE spokeswoman said: “This book contains imagery and words of hideous racial prejudice, where the ‘savage natives’ look like monkeys and talk like imbeciles. [...]’

The CRE was contacted by a Borders customer who saw the book in a London branch of the chain last month. A spokesman for the chain said it was moving the Tintin book from the children's to the adult graphic novels section of its stores.

Click here.

A quote from Jose Manuel Barroso, the President of the European Commission, 10 July 2007

Sometimes I like to compare the EU as a creation to the organisation of empires. We have the dimension of Empire but there is a great difference. Empires were usually made with force with a centre imposing diktat, a will on the others. Now what we have is the first non-Imperial empire. We have 27 countries that fully decided to work together and to pool their sovereignty. I believe it is a great construction and we should be proud of it. At least, we in the Commission are proud of it.

A quote from Charles A. Coulombe at Taki’s Top Drawer, 10 July 2007

Back during the Roaring ‘20s, a then-contemporary witticism had it that four institutions would prevent the takeover of Europe by Communism: the German General Staff, the British House of Lords, the Academie Française, and the Holy See. Eighty years have brought many changes, to be sure. On the one hand, Communism is as unlikely to remerge in Europe as Fascism or Nazism. But on the other, the four mentioned institutions have also undergone alteration. The German General Staff was corrupted by Hitler, and destroyed by the allies; the House of Lords has suffered the same fate (albeit in reverse order) at the hands of the late Tony Blair. The cultural supremacy of English has diminished the relevance and importance of the Academie severely: as one French friend told me, “it would not be so terrible for the language of Moliere to be eclipsed by that of Shakespeare; but by that of Rod McKuen?” A horrible fate for us all, to be sure.

A quote from Brendan O’Neill at Spiked-Online, 10 July 2007

Last week, [...] three cyber-jihadists were imprisoned for a total of 24 years. They were found guilty of incitement to commit acts of terrorism. At Woolwich Crown Court in England, Younis Tsouli was given a 10-year jail sentence; his accomplices Tariq Al-Daour and Waseem Mughal were banged up for six-and-a-half years and seven-and-a-half years respectively. Their crime? They ran websites that featured beheadings carried out by ‘holy warriors’ in Iraq, and which cheered the killing of ‘infidels’ on 7/7 and provided access to CIA manuals on how to make and detonate explosives. [...]