The Post-Partisan Emporium

EU President Ursula von der Leyen Announces Review of Protected Status for All European Wolves After a Wolf Kills Her Pony The European Union is a stupid organisation governed by stupid people. eugyppius In September, a thirty year-old pony named Dolly, who happened to belong to loathsome EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, was found dead with grievous injuries. Today,  we learn that genetic tests have established that Dolly’s killer was a wolf  – and not just any wolf, but the notorious livestock hunter known as GW 950m, a member of the so-called Burgdorf Pack. Von der Leyen’s party, the EPP, had already taken up the question of whether limits should be imposed on the growing European wolf population. Upon receiving this news, though, she announced that her commission will review the protected status that wolves enjoy in EU member states. It’s very hard to find good statistics, but  superficial internet research  confirms the proverbial assumption that wol...

‘Populists’ and the ‘Tools’ of Totalitarians The only hope of defeating neo-fascism in Europe is if those the authorities and journaliars call ‘fascists’ can find their courage and speak of what is really going on. John Waters Back in the late summer of 2014 I spoke at the closing-down party of a business  near the town of Pesaro, on Italy’s northern Adriatic coast. It was a heartbreaking occasion. The event was held in the open air, on the premises of a family business that was closing as a result of the ‘recession’. The business was a garden centre, a longtime family concern which had been driven to the wall in the wake of the economic collapse of 2008 and its continuing fallout. It was no common garden centre, for it boasted some of the most beautiful glasshouses I have ever seen, more beautiful even than those venerable specimens to be seen at the Botanical Gardens in Dublin. The man who owned and managed the business was bereft, because its closure meant that his children, all...