Olivier Maingain

Olivier Maingain, the mayor of Sint-Lambrechts-Woluwe, one of the 19 Brussels boroughs, is planning to tax all "antennas for the transmission of data". Each antenna will be taxed a staggering 4,000 euros per year. Such antennas are used for WiFi or WLAN, i.e. wireless internet or wireless networks over relatively short distances.  While the small antenna on your wireless router could theoretically be taxed, the new tax seems to target WiFi-antennas that can be seen from the outside, i.e. that are positioned on the outside of buildings. If the owner of the aerial cannot be identified the owners of the buildings have to pay the new tax.
 

Some Brussels boroughs are already taxing companies on the number of computer screens in their offices. The government of the Brussels Region, however, considers this tax so detrimental for business investments and for the image of the region, that it offers money to boroughs that do not levy the computer screen tax.

Sint-Lambrechts-Woluwe has 50,000 inhabitants. It is a wealthy residential neighbourhood, close to the NATO and EU headquarters, where many Eurocrats and American expats live.

A quote from The Irish Times, 21 March 2007

The European Court of Human Rights has found Poland guilty of a breach of human rights in an abortion case that could have implications for Ireland. Three Irish women have taken a case to the court that has similarities with the Polish case. The court may begin hearing the Irish case, lodged in 2005, later this year. [...] The Irish case has been brought by three women, identified as A, B and C, each of whom had abortions in Britain. [...] [A] protocol was attached to the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, which was aimed at ensuring that the European Court of Justice could not introduce abortion in Ireland through any of its judgments. The Court of Human Rights, however, is not subject to this provision.

A quote from Philippe Val, the publisher and editor of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical weekly in Paris, in The Wall Street Journal, 21 March 2007

In February of last year, the director of the daily France Soir, Jacques Lefranc, decided to publish the [Danish Muhammad] cartoons in France. He was immediately fired. It was in protest against Mr. Lefranc’s firing that I in turn decided to publish the cartoons in Charlie Hebdo. Our front-page headline was “Mohammed Overwhelmed by Extremists,” and had a drawing by Cabu of the prophet, covering his eyes with his hands and crying, “It’s hard to be loved by idiots.” I invited my colleagues from the daily and weekly press to republish the Danish cartoons, too. Most of them published some of them; only L'Express did in full.

Before publication, I was pressured not to go ahead and summoned to the Hôtel Matignon [the residence of the French Prime Minister] to see the prime minister's chief of staff; I refused to go. The next day, summary proceedings were initiated by the Grand Mosque of Paris and the Union of Islamic Organizations of France to stop this issue of Charlie Hebdo from hitting newsstands. The government encouraged them, but their suit was dismissed.

Last week’s Channel 4 documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle (if you missed it, you can still see it here or here) illustrated among others how biased the prevailing climate dogma is: if you want to get a research grant to study squirrels, you won’t get funds, but if the request were to study the impact of global warming on squirrels, then there is plenty of money available.

It is no surprise that climate studies come to the alarming conclusion that climate change will cost us a fortune (and only these tend to be reported in the main stream media, because the others are too boring to be reported) and that any estimates of the cost of measures to combat climate change is at best vague, at worst inexistent.

According to EUObs the first indications on the content of the Solemn Declaration to take place in Berlin are dribbling out.

According to the declaration outline distributed to member states and seen by EUobserver, the text will have five parts with brief passages and will not be longer than three pages.
 
The first chapter will make a tribute to the success stories of EU integration, citing peace, prosperity – attributed to the internal market and the single currency – and stability as “central achievements of European unification.”
 
The passage also notes that “accession of new member states helped unite the continent and consolidate democracy and the rule of law in Europe. The division of the continent could not have been overcome if the people in Central and Eastern European had not so yearned for freedom.”

A quote from Lifesite.net, 20 March 2007

The European Court of Human Rights handed down a 6-1 ruling today which demanded that Poland compensate a mother who claims she was refused an abortion based on discrimination due to her sex and her visual disability. […]

A quote from Wolfgang Ischinger, the German ambassador to Britain (and the German ambassador to the US from 2001 to 2006) in al-Guardian, 20 March 2007

On three critical global issues – nuclear non-proliferation, Middle East peace and climate change – it [Europe, i.e. the EU] is better placed than anyone.

Opening nuclear negotiations with Tehran was a European idea in 2004, initially given a lukewarm reception by Washington. More recently, as the EU3 (Britain, France and Germany) approach began to be seen as the only game in town, Washington has offered more active support, but so far always stopping short of speaking to Tehran directly on the nuclear issue. Bringing Russia and China on board was, again, a European initiative. If a solution emerges, it is likely to be European-brokered. There is much greater cohesion among Europeans on Iran than there was on Iraq five years ago: on Iran, the EU will not be split.

A quote from Spiegel Online, 15 March 2007

A new wave of anti-feminism is taking hold of Germany. Former career women-turned-housewives are spreading the word about a "new femininity" which encourages women to stay at home and embrace motherhood.

A quote from Brendan O’Neill at spiked-online, 13 March 2007

Last week, Conservative MP and former army colonel Patrick Mercer was sacked from the Front Bench by party leader David Cameron for saying the words ‘black bastard’ in an interview with The Times. Mercer said: ‘If someone is slow on the assault course [in army training], you’d get people shouting: “Come on you fat bastard, come on you ginger bastard, come on you black bastard.”’ Cameron said Mercer’s words were ‘completely unacceptable’ and within three hours of their being published in The Times he had kicked Mercer out of the shadow cabinet.

A quote from Paul Weyrich and William Lind in The American Conservative, 12 March 2007:

In a striking turn from Americans’ traditional optimism, 48 percent thought life in the future would generally get worse. […] Fifty-nine percent of those polled said that our political leaders, and by implication a political program, should try to lead the country back toward the way we used to be. […]

We believe that the theme of retroculture can and should similarly shape the next conservatism, […] When we are asked, “Just what is it that you guys, as conservatives, want?” our answer will be, “An America pretty much like the one we had in the 1950s.” That may turn off the elites, but our survey gives us reason to think it will resonate with many ordinary Americans.