The latest issue of Science contains a paper claiming that glaciers along the periphery of Greenland are melting at a rapidly increasing rate. In fact – the report states – the extra water from glaciers along the periphery can contribute to a rise in sea water level with as much as an extra foot.

But hold your horses – don’t start selling your seafront property yet.

Bat Ye'or

Yesterday I had the unexpected pleasure of meeting a very special person. If you did not know the tiny, unpretentious and vivacious grey-haired lady whom I had the privilege of sitting next to you would never guess that she is one of the most formidable personalities of our time. When I drove to The Hague I did not know I was going to meet her, but I knew her name – or rather the pseudonym which she generally uses: Bat Ye’or. It is Hebrew for “daughter of the Nile.” She was born in Cairo but her family was expelled from Egypt and stripped of their Egyptian nationality in 1957 because they were Jewish.

Read this headline: “Paris: Gang suspected of killing Jew nabbed.” Then the subheadline: “Ilan Halimi, 23-year-old Parisian man, found tied to tree, naked, wounded, with burns covering his body; police arrest 13 suspects, say act not motivated by anti-Semitism.”

OK, so that seems pretty clear, just another dead Jew. But hold on a moment, what is this we see down the page, right down at the bottom?

Appeasing the radicals does not help. Here is another example. The Danish-Swedish diary giant Arla is the worst hit victim of the Muslim boycott of Danish products. Arab countries constituted Arla’s most important export markets. An article in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten today suggest that Arla itself has for many years been boycotting Israel because apparently companies doing business in Muslim countries are obliged to accept a clause that they will not trade with Israel. [PS: Arla immediately denied this in a press statement] Naturally, private companies and individuals are entitled to boycott whomever they want to. The present instance, however, shows that those who try to be a friend of extremists have no guarantee that the extremists will reciprocate the friendship.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is quoted in this week’s The Economist as saying: “I am the Jesus Christ of politics. I’m a patient victim. I endure everything. I sacrifice myself for everyone.”

Many Italian politicians behave theatrically – and often irresponsibly. Mr Berlusconi is one of them, and so is Roberto Calderoli, the Italian minister of Institutional Reforms. Today, the Italian “Jesus Christ” – forced Mr Calderoli – one of his ‘apostles’ – to resign because on Italian state television last Wednesday the latter had provocatively shown that he was wearing a T-shirt with one of the Danish Muhammad cartoons beneath his shirt.

Last month Microsoft caved in and opened up the source code of its Windows Server operating system, in an effort to appease the European Union and avoid a possible 2 million euro per day fine. The threat of the additional fine is the last in a long range of aggressive attacks on large companies from the European Commission.

A true and current tale: A person of my acquaintance, wishing to have a child with his wife, was discussing his lack of success with another friend, a female who with her own husband has lovely and vigorous sons. This second couple, apparently fine parents in every way, resorted to in vitro fertilization to achieve their own pregnancy.  Thus, their apparent children – the ones to be seen in the strollers, or playing in the yard – are not their only children.  The rest are frozen in some sterile repository, out of sight if not mind.

An article by Chresten Anderson with Elaib Harvey in Strassburg and Paul Belien in Brussels

Yesterday the European Parliament, in plenary session in Strassburg, adopted the Services Directive. It only did so, however, after having drastically watered down the original directive, which was a proposal by the former European commissioner Frits Bolkestein. Mr Bolkestein wanted to liberalize the European markets by granting individuals and businesses the right to provide services throughout the EU. This was opposed by the Left in the Western welfare states with the argument that it would lead to “social dumping” and to wage cuts as “Polish plumbers” would swamp the West and companies would re-establish themselves in countries with less regulation and lower wages.

The controversy over the Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad has generated plenty of hypocritical commentary from politicians and other public figures in attempts to convey an impression of moderation and neutrality.  In most cases they do so by taking up the quarrel in the middle and condemning both the “insensitivity” of the cartoonists and the “overreaction” of the Muslim world, both alleged instances of “extremism.” They expect us to believe that there is a moral equivalence between the exercising of a fundamental right (freedom of expression) and the attempt to abolish this right.

As you read this commentary, a highly predictable scandal is developing that may embarrass leaders, including President Bush, British Prime Minister Blair, and other heads of government, severely damage the reputations, or worse, of many bureaucrats, and cost American and European taxpayers billions.