You say "the only question is do you support cruelty toward animals or not?" The point of what I'm trying to say is that this is not the only question. I, for example, strongly oppose cruelty toward humans. Nevertheless, I would not favor launching a full-scale nuclear war to wipe out the entire human race, even though this would drastically decrease the quantity of cruelty that human beings will endure over the entire course of history.
The aim of preventing cruelty only makes sense if we believe that life has some value, otherwise the simplest way to prevent cruelty will just be to have no life at all.
[…]
People eat cows because beef is tasty. The question is whether or not this is morally problematic. You say that it is problematic because in order to eat beef you have to kill the cow and treat it cruelly in a variety of other ways. I am suggesting that veganism, too, is morally problematic because its adoption would de facto eliminate cruelty to cows not by eliminating the cruelty but by eliminating the cows. It seems to me that if you consider the possibility of eliminating cruelty toward humans by eliminating humanity you will see that this is absurd.

Scientists in Pennsylvania yesterday said they had turned ordinary mouse embryo cells into egg cells in laboratory dishes -- an advance that opens the door to creating "designer" eggs from scratch and, if repeated with human cells, could blur the biological line between fathers and mothers.

The work undermines the standard model of parenthood because the scientists made egg cells not only from female cells, but also from male cells, indicating that even males have the biological capacity to make eggs.

If the science holds true in humans as in mice -- and several scientists said they suspect it will -- then a gay male couple might, before long, be able to produce children through sexual reproduction, with one man contributing sperm and the other fresh eggs bearing his own genes.

[. . .]

Until now, one argument for banning the creation of cloned embryos has been that it would require a huge supply of human eggs to make all the embryos and therapeutic cells that patients might need. That market demand could lead to an "egg-donor underclass" of poor women who might submit to repeated, health-compromising egg donation procedures as a way of making money.

But if scientists can grow lots of human eggs in the laboratory, experts said, that market would not appear. "Commodification and safety issues would be avoided," said Judy Norsigian, executive director of the Boston Women's Health Book Collective, who has been a leader in the movement against what is known as therapeutic cloning because of the risks it might pose to poor women.

[. . .]

Perhaps most astonishing, said Eppig of the Jackson Laboratory, the lab-reared egg and follicle cells apparently engaged in the complicated cross-talk required for normal development. Follicle cells surrounded each egg in a gentle embrace as they would in an ovary, for example, and even produced female hormones, which the eggs need to mature.

"I am flabbergasted that these darn things are making estrogen," Eppig said. "Imagine what's going to happen when you can do the same thing and make sperm."

The genetic program for making sperm is believed to be more complicated than for making eggs, but sperm farming may not be farfetched, Schoeler said. Success could raise interesting questions about the biological relevance of males.

If sperm can be made from stem cells, for example, then lesbians could make babies by sexual reproduction. Unlike gay men, they would not have to turn to the other sex to gestate those babies.

"It will take a nanosecond for people in same-sex relationships to figure out the potential implications of this research for them," said Murray, of the Hastings Center. "People can just fill in the blanks."

Brad de Long gives extensive quotes from an article by Martin Feldstein in the FT, telling Britain to stay out of the euro. Feldstein accurately identifies himself as a long time skeptic of European economic and monetary union. He's less forthcoming about the precise nature of his skepticism, which goes (or at the very least used to go) far beyond the standard Optimal Currency Area nostrums that he cites in the FT piece. Feldstein wrote a quite notorious article in Foreign Affairs back in 1997, predicting that even though the EU was supposed to end all wars, the euro would likely lead to "increased conflict" among the EU's member states. What kinds of conflict? Well, "[a]lthough it is impossible to know for certain whether these conflicts would lead to war, it is too real a possibility to ignore in weighing the potential effects of EMU and the European political integration that would follow." Feldstein also ruminates darkly about Germany's aspirations towards European hegemony, citing Helmut Kohl's statement that "Germany is our fatherland, but Europe is our future" as being "not without ambiguity."


Feldstein's 1997 piece is deeply silly in the way that only breezy and over-ambitious articles for foreign policy journals can be silly. The EMU has led to tensions between member states, but not of the sort that Feldstein mutters about; his arguments display a deep and absolute incomprehension of what the EU is. They're interesting, however, as a harbinger of things to come. Their main trope is that there's something shifty about the European Union, which has to do with all the nasty things that went on in continental Europe during the 1930's. This of course has become one of the intellectual givens of US jingoists, who simultaneously see the Europeans as (a) effete tree-hugging peace-loving surrender monkeys, and (b) sinister, anti-Semitic conspirators on the way to recreating a European Reich-by-stealth. Believing both of these things at once is a rather impressive feat of intellectual gymnastics; Feldstein was one of the first people to show - by demonstration - that such gymnastics are possible, if you're sufficiently limber. Glenn Reynolds and the boys owe him a vote of thanks.

As Gordon Brown, the chancellor of the exchequer, considers whether adopting the euro would be in Britain's interest, he should look carefully at the experience of Germany. Membership in the monetary union has weakened the German economy and is preventing it from escaping its current slump. Although Germany also suffers from a variety of structural problems, it is the euro that raised its unemployment rate over the past year to 10.6 per cent. The German example shows that Britain's decision about adopting the euro is not a question of whether the time to do so is now right. Adopting the euro is a permanent commitment with permanent consequences. My judgment is that it would not be in Britain's long-term economic interest to accept the constraints of the single currency.

Here are the facts. Germany's gross domestic product rose only 0.5 per cent last year, the lowest of all the leading European countries, and ended the year in decline. Germany also has the lowest inflation rate, just 1.2 per cent. Because the single currency means that all eurozone countries have the same nominal interest rate, Germany's real interest rate is the highest in the eurozone. This is a very dangerous situation in which the high real interest rate weakens the economy and causes inflation to fall further. As the inflation rate falls, the real interest rate rises, creating the potential for a dangerous downward economic spiral.

If the German economy were not constrained by the single currency, natural market forces would cause interest rates to decline, thereby boosting all kinds of interest-sensitive spending. Weak demand in Germany would also cause the D-mark to decline relative to its trading partners, boosting exports and helping producers to compete with imports from the rest of the world. Instead, German manufacturing has been weakened by the sharp rise of the euro over the past year. In addition to these automatic market responses, an independent Bundesbank would probably have responded to the weak economy and declining inflation by temporarily lowering short-term interest rates. This is now impossible. The European Central Bank must make monetary policy for Europe as a whole, an area in which inflation is now above the 2 per cent target ceiling. The Stability and Growth Pact also prevents Germany from using a temporary fiscal stimulus to increase growth and bring down unemployment. Although persistent deficits are harmful in the long term, a temporary rise in the fiscal deficit could in principle provide the stimulus needed to rekindle growth. But the eurozone countries have had to constrain themselves from running deficits because of the potential danger to the common currency.

As an American who has long been sceptical about the economic effects of the euro, I am often asked why a single currency should be good for a large continental economy such as the US and yet not for Europe. The answer is that the US economy has three basic features that make it possible to have a single currency without the harmful effects that now arise in Europe. First, American employees move within the country when demand is relatively weak in a particular region, facilitated by a common language and a culture that regards moving across the country as perfectly normal. Germans are not leaving Germany in large numbers for areas of Europe with faster growth or lower unemployment. Second, wages are much more flexible in the US than in Europe, reducing the decline in regional employment that occurs when demand falls. And third, the US has a federal fiscal system that directly offsets about 40 per cent of the relative decline in any state's gross domestic product by a lower outflow of taxes to Washington and a higher inflow of transfer payments. European fiscal systems are still largely national.

Germany did not decide to embark on the single currency after a careful evaluation of its economic costs and benefits. Helmut Kohl led Germany into the single currency in order to create a stronger political union in continental Europe, a political union that would have common economic, social, defence and foreign policies. The euro would be a symbol of that solidarity and a mechanism for centralising economic power.

'There is a general consensus that we need to teach children that Europe evolved naturally through the organic coming-together of a group of sympathetic nations rather than through a series of tense and bloody clashes between a collection of wildly diverse countries,' she said. 'But Europe's history is about more than commonality; it is about conflict and that should be admitted and even celebrated.'

Soysal's report, Rethinking Nation State Identities in the New Europe, to be published in May, blames the efforts of international organisations such as Unesco, the Council of Europe and the European Commission for going too far in their attempts to wipe prejudice from history textbooks.

'The curriculum certainly did need to be re-examined because its introduction in 1978 reflected the priorities of the Government of the day, and Europe was certainly not among them,' she said.

But in the effort to reassess European history, the union looms larger than any nation state. 'Europe's ideals are promoted above all others in the modern curriculum; nations and regions lose their individual charisma and get equalised vis-à-vis each other within Europe,' she said.

The changes, Soysal believes, involve positive and negative aspects: positive, because textbooks now treat other civilisations in a more comprehensive manner, but negative because they ignore the fact Europe was born out of conflict.

I think it's a lovely way to teach history, missing out all the slaughter and pillage and burning and going straight to the positive warm fuzzy stuff, and I am looking forward to the next round of textbooks.

"People in England and Europe did not get real holidays back then, so the Crusades were started as a way of getting some sunshine and exercise and to help people meet their Islamic counterparts in places like Jerusalem, for multicultural dialogue and a change of air."

"It was forbidden for Christians to lend money for interest, which meant that many Jews became moneylenders. This made them them tremendously popular and respected community members all across Europe."

"In 1588 the Spanish decided to go and visit England, in order to expand England's trading horizons, and a whole Armada of trading vessels set out on a visit. The English were so excited, they lit bonfires and gathered on the South Coast to welcome their Spanish Visitors. They even sent ships out to meet them. Unfortunately, the silly old British weather was against the Spanish, and most of their ships were wrecked and lost before they could land, which left the English very disappointed indeed."

After two terms in office in the European Commission - before as Transport Commissioner and presently as Vice President - Neil Kinnock has finally spoken out against the working methods of Council committees.

In an interview published by the Austrian daily Der Standard, Mr Kinnock says "the citizens do not know that there is a secret governing system in Europe. That is the Council with its system of Committees. We have more than 300 formations in which officials from the member states meet and pass decisions. That is the largest source of bureaucracy and the black hole in European democracy".

The attack on Council committees comes shortly after the Commission drew similar fire from a Swedish political scientist, Professor Torbjörn Larsson.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I have two great interests in life these days; traffic data retention and the undemocratic nature of the European Third Pillar. This EP opinion is a round-up of similar frustrations;
- 9/11 fall-out has caused a huge increase in activity on justice and home affairs at the EU level,
- the EP's role in decision-making on justice and home affairs is limited to rubber-stamping and provides no real democratic accountability,
- member states are using the JHA Council to advance domestic agendas and do policy-laundering,
On 3rd Pillar decision-making in general, Parliament said; "The lack of public accessibility, together with a lack of democratic control over Council,is leading to an unacceptable restriction of the principle of democracy. This calls into question the legal legitimacy of Council measures with a bearing on constitutional law."
An interesting point. Not being a lawyer myself, constitutional or otherwise, I'd love to hear more about this question and whether constitutional challenges might be brought to bear on the applicability of decisions made by the JHA Council.

Parliament also says changes in criminal justice policy are not being subjected to the relevant European legal instruments protecting human rights:
- proper safeguards of individual rights (under Article 13 of the EC Treaty) must temper criminal justice co-operation, especially on the European Arrest Warrant,
- a framework decision on procedural safeguards is needed for suspects and defendants in criminal proceedings.
- a 'EuroRights' body of independent defence practitioners in criminal law should be set up.
- there should be full democratic scrutiny of Europol, so it is fully accountable to the EP in partnership with national parliaments and subject to judicial control of the European Court of Justice.

The EP also warned the Council and Member States of the danger of "an overwhelming obsession with illegal entrants."

The EU Parliament yesterday (Tuesday) granted the 2001 budget discharge to the European Commission. MEPs adopted socialist Paul Casaca’s report with 440 votes in favour, 67 against and 14 abstentions, recommending the discharge despite a negative report on the expenditures carried by the Court of Auditors last year.
The main criticism centred on the Commission's accountability system and the sums of money that has been under spent, especially regarding the ‘structural funds’ of national EU governments (programmes which finance regions to bring themselves up to an EU-wide standard on education, training and small business development).

The Liberal group believed that refusing to rubber-stamp the accounts now would make a bad impression on future member states - and would come at a time when the Commission is trying to carry out internal reform to counteract these criticisms.

A study published today by a Swedish political scientist sheds light on the hitherto shady world of the EU committee system.
Professor Torbjörn Larsson's 178-page book is the first attempt to catalogue just how the European Commission goes about its daily business, who knows what is going on, who does not and who should.
There are an astounding 1352 different groups in and around the Commission - about which the "overview is rather lacking" as the Swede delicately puts it.
For example, in DG enterprise where much of the study is focussed, 40% of the 120 groups were unaccounted for. Nobody knows if they are active or not.
[snip]
But how easy was it for the Swedish pioneer to gather such information? It took him two years to carry out the study which focussed mainly on DG enterprise.
[snip]
The Commission has huge influence over the expert groups. It can decide whether member state experts should participate, whether to "stop and start" the group if it not following the line it wants and what exactly the agenda should be. "Few official rules govern this part of the EU decision-making process", notes the book.
It can use these groups not only as a fig leaf but also for agenda setting and mobilising support for the issues that it wants to see the EU taking a role in.
"In many areas the Commission has managed to expand the European competencies by starting very with very informal and exploratory discussion among the Member States", says the book.
[snip]
These numerous committees, groups, working parties wield huge influence on EU policy-making. Professor Larsson suggests that by the time the Commission table a proposal for legislation to the council and parliament, the idea may have been "pre-cooking" in the whole comitology procedure for up to five years.
The book also points out the fact that the European Parliament is not involved in any way in the process. "It is rare to find MEPs actively participating in the preparatory processes preceding the presentation of proposals to the council and parliament."
[snip]
Every government needs informal structures, says the professor but the Commission's is particularly obscure. He says that member states often have no idea what is going on, which of their own civil servant sits in what group, or even how many types of groups there are.
He suggests that it should be public knowledge how many committees there are, who is in them and how often they meet. In his native Sweden where there are about 300 committees around the government, such information is public knowledge.