Tanja Ostojic is a 33-year old Serbian artist who currently lives in Berlin but considers herself to be a European “nomad”. Many of her “works of art” consist of “nude performances” during which the artist, having shaved all body hair, stands naked and motionless for hours in exhibition halls as “a living statue.”

An art website writes that “it is no surprise that she found in France a receptive audience” for her nude performances. Apparently, Ostojic’s breakthrough as an artist came after exhibitions in France during which “She took the public’s excuse to ogle her to say something about looking and seeing, and being. Tanja wasn’t trying to jerk the public off but rather open them up to her nearly political idea of purity.”

The French government tried to crack down on digital piracy but the plan backfired last week. The government had proposed that people caught pirating copy-protected material would face $360,000 in fines and up to three years in jail. A parliamentary committee of the French National Assembly, however, endorsed amendments to reverse the legislation by legalizing the online sharing of music and movies rather than punishing it.

There is a clear pattern in international migration. The US attracts 54 percent of the highly skilled workers, whereas the EU attracts 84 percent of the unskilled workers. In the long term this is a bad deal for Europe, because unskilled workers tend to draw benefits from the welfare system, whereas highly qualified workers tend to contribute to the government's revenue.

If you are saving money for retirement or to put a child through school, would you be likelier to buy the stock of a company with a reputation for providing a good return to its shareholders or one that prides itself on its “social responsibility”? You may like to do both, but the evidence is companies that change their focus from benefiting their shareholders to “social responsibility” often end up providing much lower total returns to their shareholders.

The Danish cartoon case is becoming a never-ending story, which shows that freedom of speech no longer exists in Europe. After the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, the United Nations and the Council of Europe, the European Union is now the fourth multinational organisation to lash out at the Danish government for not calling a Danish newspaper to account for publishing caricatures of the Muslim prophet Muhammad.

Andrei Illarionov

Four months ago the Brussels Journal published a piece about Andrei Illarionov, the chief economic adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Illarionov had surprised his fellow members of the Mont Pelerin Society (MPS) at a meeting in Reykjavik when he warned them that his boss was abolishing economic and political freedom in Russia. This, he said, was obvious in a number of areas: The Russian authorities are reaffirming their stranglehold on the economy. They have effectively nationalized the oil and gas industry. The bureaucracy and the military are on the rise. The rule of law is diminishing.

The idea to thwart the Russian-German Gas Pact by moving the Estonian seaborder in the Gulf of Finland to its maximum extent is catching on. Today, the Estonian daily Eesti Päevaleht – one of the two national quality papers in Estland – devotes a front page article to the joint appeal by former Prime Minister Juhan Parts (Res Publica party, opposition), MP Igor Gräzin (Reform Party, a member of the governing coalition), former Tallinn Mayor Hardo Aasmäe and professor Heiki Lindpere (Professor of Maritime Law, Tartu University) to move the Estonian seaborder to the maximum limit.

Their arguments correspond with those made by me last week in the Brussels Journal. The four men indicate that the Russian-German Gas Pact is their reason for proposing to change the current arrangement. They say that Russia’s contribution to the global economy cannot be done at the expense of other nations or the environment. They emphasise that extending the border would not constitute a new territorial claim by Estonia (or Finland) but merely a repossession of territory that was voluntarily given up in 1993.

There is an assumption which people living in advanced and free countries are conditioned to regard as a fact. It is that freedom (economic and political) is universally desired and that therefore its implementation will succeed. The cases of Russia’s Provisional Government (1917), the fate of the Weimar Republic in Germany, post-independence Africa and the current vicissitudes in Iraq indicate that freedom and economic success are not inevitable in any society that achieves self-determination.

After the approval of the EU Budget last week new life has once again been given to the old idea of a common EU tax. A proposal by European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso received support from the Christian Democrat top politicians belonging to the European People’s Party (EPP).

Barroso, a member of the EPP, called for a complete review of the budget. The aim is to create a whole new structure for EU common spending. The Commission president argued that “the structure and the methods used to negotiate the budget at the moment are not good.” He is convinced that the European Union cannot continue to operate with the present system. Barroso therefore thinks it necessary to have “a systematic revision of the budget,” a revision in which there are no “restrictions or taboos.” At present the EU budget is made up of  a gross national income-related contribution, revenues from customs duties, agricultural levies, fines and 1% of the VAT base.

Do abortionists wish each other a Merry Christmas?

Every year one in three pregnancies worldwide ends in an abortion. A total of 40 million abortions are performed each year, which means that since 1980 one billion children have not been allowed to be born. Contemplating Baby Jesus in the crib one may wonder whether the fact that there are 6.5 billion of us today instead of 7.5 billion is a human achievement or not. Some think it is, some think it is not. But why do those who consider universal legalised abortion to be a sign of progress want to force those who regard abortion as a crime to be a part of it?