Dec 9, 2011: the first day of Europe's new life

Merkel and Sarkozy point the way... or poking fun at Cameron?

Today, 20 years after the Maastricht Treaty, the temptation may be to start a long rant on Britain's often successful attempts to block European integration, in general acting on behalf of its former colonies across the Atlantic. Thirty eight years of British Euro-skepticism and hostility have now been repaid with simple indifference. Britain was always the spanner in the European works, or as Der Spiegel puts it "the fly in the European soup"!

Anyway, let bygones be bygones and let us celebrate the first day of a new era: a two-speed Europe.

We are done with the hypocrisy, no more lowest common denominator agreements. The continent will march on forwards, and the island north of La Manche can continue swimming towards America... except that maybe Scotland may decide to join us later on.

History proved the Charles de Gaulle was right all the time: Britain should never have entered, having instead some kind of association agreement at the same level of Turkey. The unprepared US-led enlargement towards the East was also an error: although these nations are an absolutely essential part of Europe, the calendar was all wrong, i.e. deepening of the Union should have came before a formal enlargement. This has led us to a moment when only creative destruction will solve the problem, and Merkel and Sarkozy have earned their place in history. The debt crisis is Europe's blessing in disguise.

So we have a draft intergovernmental treaty, but that is only a first step. Europe now needs the instruments of representative democracy. Of course integrated economic policies, foriegn policy and defense are essential, but none are totally legitimate without the creation of European-wide political parties. Without truly European parties setting the agenda, we will always face the risk of crippling balkanization.

Having solved the problem of a Union eternaly blocked by the British, of course the intergovernmental agreement (the "compact") itself still has to run the gauntlet of approval in each signatory country. Furthermore, a 'fiscal union' may come in many forms, and the devil is in the detail. 'Fiscal union' at most will be an euphemism for common rules for budgetary discipline across the Eurozone, there will be no merger of tax structures and authorities.

Naturally the less naïve among us are also raising fundamental doubts on the sufficiency of the intergovernmental agreement as a tool to return public debt markets to normality, strong tools such as Eurobonds or the ability of the ECB to make large scale bond purchases or increase money supply remain off the agenda. Even simple budgetary discipline rules imposed from outside will only be effective if non-compliance will lead to powerful sanctions. Writing budget prudence into the constitution of each member country per se is not enough, if politicians have a talent is is fudging the rules. In case it was forgotten: rules for budgetary discipline across the EU are already in place. The Euro convergence criteria (aka Maastricht criteria) require that member states keep deficits below 3 per cent of GDP and ratio of gross government debt to GDP must not exceed 60% at the end of the preceding fiscal year.

Charles de Gaulle vindicated at last - Gallic revenge on the Brits

Libya - another war based on lies

William James (1842-1910), the father of modern Psychology  said "There's nothing so absurd that if you repeat it often enough, people will believe it." (this quote is often wrongly attributed to the Reichsminister für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda, Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels, making it sexier).

Anyway, everywhere we turn we see NATO members stating that bombings in Libya are for the "protection of civilians", when it is in plain sight that regime change is the goal... even if the country's infrastructure is wiped out in the process and if the casualties of a full fledged war are much higher than a simple insurrection suppression by Khadaffi. Acephalous journalists echo this propaganda view like  inebriated parrots.

This protection of civilians euphemism bears a deja vu feeling when we think about the chorus line on "weapons of mass destruction" endelessly repetead by the Bush administration to get rid of Saddam Hussein. However now it is more serious, besides President Hussein Obama, such words are also coming from the European side of the Atlantic. From Sarkozy, from Cameroon... These men should know better!

Come the day when Europe actually needs to fight a war for legitimate reasons, the public will be saturated and credibility exhausted. As if no one knew about Peter and the wolf...

10 French soldiers killed in Afghanistan

EU flag with mourning black stripe

10 French soldiers were killed and 21 injured after Taliban guerrillas ambushed a patrol east of Kabul, in the Sarobi district.

This happened barely one day after president Sarkozy completed a tour of Afghanistan. Before this tragic events, opinion polls showed that less than 25% of the French supported France's role in the conflict, and yet even the French Communist Party favours the war!

Europe should be able to accept its casualties with pride, but for  its own wars and causes. Europe is accepting US orders in a war euohemistically called "Operation Enduring Freedom" that makes no sense and that is lost from the very first day!

Have politicians on both sides of the Atlantic forgoten the image of a castrated president Mohammad Najibullah hanging from a post in Kabu's Aryana Squarel? He was the Karzai of the Soviets...

Time is on the side of the Taliban, and even America's closest ally in the region, Pakistan, covertly supports them  through their Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

The west need to cut its losses and leave Afghanistan immediately. Negotiate with Mullah Omar. What is the difference if the Taliban control the country now or in 5 years?

Once the Taliban are in power they must be talked to and traded with, otherwise we create a new Iran or North Korea.

After all the terrorists that plant bombs in the West are usually Saudi or Pakistani, not Afghans. The predominant ethnic group in the country and in the Taliban are the Pashtun, a proud Indo-European people that mostly wants to be left alone. The world will be better off living with the Taliban than fighting them, after all they are a lot less radical than our Saudi "allies".

Kabul 1992: president Najibullah and his brother executed by the Taliban