A Nobel Prize goes to a Chinese: Peking’s revealing reaction. Charging Geert Wilders. The schnitzel tax. A tale about ecological Socialism and dirty capitalism.
 
1. The Nobel committee gave the prize to a Chinese dissenter. One is reminded of the choice of the Soviet dissident Solzhenitsyn. In this case, however, the Committee faced more than it did in the 70s. Already during the assessment stage, China aggressively warned against giving the award to its trouble maker-in-residence.
 

It is more than four months now since the elections, and the formation of a Belgian government seems further away than ever. Walloon and Flemish politicians are diametrically opposed on a new Finance Act. The degree of regional fiscal autonomy is the discordant issue.

Present performance and the degrading inferiority of the Soviet system. A crime, committed by one, remains an offense even if it is said to be to the action of many. Good terrorists? More Marx or more money.

1. Examine the record of Eastern Europe and of Russia since the collapse of Communism as a ruling system. In doing so, one is hardly able to suppress some disappointment. The performance registered is below par for the potential we discover. Often, only the voluntary and outright restoration of the totalitarianism of the USSR and its empire would underbid the accomplishments.

If you do not think that the striving for freedom is the instinctive course pursued by mankind, then you are interested in how freedom came to work in successful societies. You will also want to investigate the cases in which risk-laden freedom has been abandoned for safe servitude.

In 1858, the Virgin Mary appeared to young Bernadette Soubirous in Lourdes, France. Before long, Lourdes became the most important pilgrimage site for Roman Catholics and other Mary worshippers. France prided itself on being a secular state, in some phases (esp. 1905-40) even aggressively secular, yet it acknowledged and protected Lourdes as a place of pilgrimage. Not many French officials actually believe in the apparition, but that is not the point. The believers are human beings, fellow citizens, and out of respect for them does the state respect and protect their pilgrimage.

At least the world as defined by the left in the USA. Their confidence in 2008 to have won a permanent super majority in Congress, lays in shatters. Thank you, Obama.  Never before succeeded a President in driving his own party into ruin in such a short time. His arrogance in forcing his socialist worldview upon the American people, against their will, comes home to roost. America is still a majority center-right country where Republicans, Independents and a fair number of Democrats favor maximum economic freedom in a democratic capitalist system.
 

1. Ahmadinedjad had an opportunity to perform during the yearly circus operated by the UN’s GA. He used the occasion to insult the USA. This is part of a ritual – so yawn. Iran insults and the US are not provoked to act. That makes Iran’s posturing into a safe act of heroism. Akin to jumping out a ground floor window. One wonders why some European delegations have not walked out when most did. Only the Swiss had a reason to stay. Being neutral since 1648 or 1814 –depending how you like to count- Bern represents Iran and the US as these powers do not have direct diplomatic relations.  Iran’s claim that alleges that America organized the 9/11 attack on herself can also be seen as a compliment. The Leader’s repeated provocations reveal that Iran trusts the self-chosen foe. Depending on the point of view, the restraint of America’s institutions and her executive, or the paralysis rooted in delusions, is trusted sufficiently to make the survival of Iran dependent on the “hegemon’s” continued self-control. The theory is correct. At least till the next election or so.
 

In recent weeks Iceland has been having a dispute with the European Union over the fishing of mackerel within the Icelandic exclusive economic zone. Icelandic representatives have not been allowed at the negotiating table on mackerel by Norway and the EU despite the fact that the species has increasingly been found within the Icelandic EEZ mainly due to warming of the sea. As a result Iceland has not been bound by any agreements on mackerel and therefore the Icelandic government has issued unilateral quotas for mackerel in Icelandic waters.

Scholarship places the composition of the two Vinland Sagas in the Twelfth century, in the case of The Greenlanders’ Saga, and in the Fourteenth Century in the case of Eirik’s Saga. But like most of the saga-literature the two narratives reflect a non-mythic oral tradition, linked with the settlement and early chronology of Iceland and Greenland, the general (if not the minutely detailed) trustworthiness of which much research both literary and archeological over the last century has attested. Quite apart from scholarly and technical arguments, even the ordinary reader must take the wealth of circumstantial detail and the laconic matter-of-factness of the storytelling as signs of an essential veracity. The two Vinland Sagas reflect the Nordic people at a particular epoch: The transformational moment, namely, at the end of the Ninth Century, when the old warrior-ethos began yielding to the new Gospel ethos and when success in the market began replacing notches on a sword haft as the paramount sign of masculine status. Both The Greenlanders’ Saga and Eirik’s Saga represent this change in the generational differences that distinguish Eirik the Red (above left) on the one hand from his male children, especially his son Leif (above right), on the other. (The two portraits, from the Sixteenth Century and the Nineteenth Century respectively, are obviously conjectural.)

For some time now, an issue creates waves in Europe. It is caused by the expulsion of some Gypsies from France.  The case, but especially what is meant while left unspoken, is telling.

EU rules allow for the free movement of the citizens of member countries and of the Union’s associated states. This means that anyone can go anywhere and stay for three months. The analogy of older times is an automatic tourist visa. Those able to find a job prior to their move or during their legal stay can settle.

Their presence is tolerated as long as they remain employed or have earned the right to unemployment benefits. This arrangement is a practical one. A similar deal –free migration- has worked before World War One when anyone could stay on wherever he pleased. The scheme’s working out  hinges on whether an assumption behind the rule holds up.

What is the most corrupting institution in society? Quite simply, it is government, because it controls and distributes more money to more people and institutions than any other single entity and it has the power to coerce and punish or reward that dwarfs what any private party might be capable of doing.

Now that we are in the midst of the political season, we are constantly being warned by the establishment media about the dangers of businesses donating to political candidates either directly or indirectly. In recent weeks, there have been at least two major hits in the New Yorker and New York Magazine on businessmen Charles and David Koch and their roles in supporting candidates who oppose the policies of President Obama and the Democrats, as well as for supporting free-market think tanks and grass-roots organizations.