In Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 horror movie “The Shining”, Jack Torrance, played by Jack Nicholson, in an attempt to murder his wife and 6-year old son, chops his way through a closed door with an axe, shouting “Heeere’s Johnny!” It has become an iconic image.

Numerous past European travelers to America have commented on the apparent importance of religion to (most) Americans. Some did so in a positive way, while others appeared to be more prejudicial. Among the former, Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America” from the 1820’s remains a classic work of reference, but this article will be more concerned with the opinions of a contemporary commentator, Josef Joffe, the editor/publisher of the German newspaper Die Zeit in Hamburg, Germany(*).

“The older you get, the less you have to lose.” That is the answer which the 74 year old Kurt Westergaard gives when you ask him how afraid he is of being assassinated. Since he drew a cartoon of Muhammed with a bomb in his turban, in 2005, he has been living under constant death threats from Muslims. The Danish state security and secret services, the PET, have watched over Kurt and his wife Gitte ever since. “My pets take good care of me,” he says. Kurt needs it. Regularly plots to murder him are  uncovered. In 2008 the PET arrested two Tunisians who were planning to force their way into the Westergaard home and assassinate the cartoonist. Yesterday evening, the Danish police shot a Somali man who had forced his way into Kurt’s home with an axe.

George Handlery about the week that was. The governing class, its power and wealth. State intervention and curing the market cures. Separating state and church was easier than untying the government and the economy. Is the choice between honest poverty and crooked wealth? The interests of the “state class” and the people. How neutral can the state be? Wealth, well-being and the state. Competition, uniform EU taxes and its beneficiaries.

1. We had time to get used to the devastating instinctive reflex that resorts to big, or more correctly, even bigger government. This impulse is not entirely explained by the trust of the public and of the behavior-shaping class of influence-yielders in government intervention. Much of the intuitive reaction of the governing class is caused by its subconscious wish for dependent clients. An independent entrepreneurial class might be beneficial if general wealth is to be created. Albeit productive, docile and submissive this class will not be. This disinclination will be proportional to this element’s economic success. Defiance will also be reflected in the attitude of previously depressed classes as these rise and attain relative economic well being.

Ten years ago, on a cold winter morning in New York City, the Catholic-Jewish Historical Commission, established to investigate Pope Pius XII’s response to the Holocaust, met for the first time to discuss its future work. I was the only Israeli historian among the six scholars (3 Catholics and 3 Jews) designated by the Vatican and leading Jewish organizations to study this hotly contested issue. A little under two years later, the project was abandoned as a result of the Holy See’s unwillingness to release materials from its own archives that could help clarify issues that our team of scholars raised in our provisional report. Already at that time, in the last years of Pope John Paul’s pontificate, there were moves afoot to place Pius XII on the fast track to sainthood, but they were probably slowed down by Israeli and Jewish protests and a desire by Church authorities to prevent a serious rupture in Catholic-Jewish relations.

The European Union on December 8 adopted a resolution that for the first time explicitly calls for Jerusalem to become the future capital of both a Palestinian state and Israel. Backing away only slightly from a more controversial Swedish proposal to officially call for the division of Jerusalem, the EU declared: “If there is to be a genuine peace, a way must be found through negotiations to resolve the status of Jerusalem as the future capital of two states.”

If that isn't the creepiest nativity scene ever displayed! It's in Switzerland, of all places. Some Swiss cannot atone enough for the sins of their compatriots who voted against minarets, they have to offend, insult, and renounce the last glimmer of reason, the last concern for taste and the last faint flicker of national or religious identity.

The picture originally arrived in my e-mail box, and I assumed it was PhotoShopped. Then I saw this article at Bivouac-Id. I really was surprised, though I shouldn't have been. It ranks with Jeff Koons Lobster hanging in Versailles as one of the craziest things ever done in the name of "art":

In the Fertile Crescent agriculture was gradually established after 10,000 BC, with settlements at the Neolithic town of Jericho near the Dead Sea dating back to 9000 BC. The success of Chatal Huyuk or Çatalhöyük, a large site in Anatolia that existed from ca. 7200 to after 6000 BC, is thought to have resulted from its trade in the volcanic glass known as obsidian.

The greatest change in the history of the Near East and indeed the world came with a people called the Sumerians in southern Mesopotamia, between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. During the Uruk period (ca. 4000 to 3100 BC), the Sumerians are credited with many “firsts” in human history, from the first writing system to the first monumental statues in an urban setting. Their origin is unknown and their language has no proven connection to any other language, living or dead, yet they produced lasting literature such as the Epic of Gilgamesh.

George Handlery about the week that was. The Talker-in-Chief and “Copenhagen”. Michelangelo and American foreign policy. The problems of war time Democratic Presidents.  Open societies and their wars. Is Iran demonstratively hiding what it does not have? Admit the failure of diplomacy?

1. Copenhagen. All talk of failure. Wrongly. Many “good things” have happened. Consider this: many people attending were enabled to expand their horizon by travel. And that on someone else’ expense. (You will guess the donor.) Plenty of opportunity to profile the otherwise nameless that claimed to be in a state of uncompromising outrage. That created good gut feelings because fury is, in some circles, a moral pedestal. Accordingly, it was possible to riot and smash and to express thereby ethical superiority. Doing so was even fun although normally, acknowledged “virtue” requires that pleasure be relinquished. So, those on the streets voiced their opinions by smashing things for the camera – “look Mom, I am on TV!” Meanwhile, inside, the official participants of the conference held significant speeches during which the listeners did not listen because they were busy being asleep. For the delegates – all fearless fighters against vice – of otherwise forgotten countries, excellent photo ops and a great chance to claim risk-free rank and status was the reward.

Recently, we placed the Healthcare Reform into the pattern of the Barko elite’s war against its own people. On 20 December, one of the barking lunatics in the U.S. Congress, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) criticized those who oppose this economic sabotage of their country with these words:

“The birthers, the fanatics, the people running around in right-wing militia and Aryan support groups, it is unbearable to them that President Barack Obama should exist.”