Why Old Europe will remain Old Europe...

And why the United States should watch its back.

Different subjects in the news, although all suggest that Old Europe isn't exactly ready to give up her suicidal instincts.

First we have Mr. Berlusconi, ready apparently to say just about anything - anything indeed - to win elections. But Bush is the one who lied. Right.

Less than six months away from a general election, the Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has urged his voters to believe that he opposed the Iraq war from the outset. His declaration came in a television interview as he was preparing to fly to Washington for talks with President Bush.

Italy did not participate in the invasion but sent 3,000 "peacekeepers" to Nasiriyah soon after the fall of Saddam. The war has been unpopular. Three hundred Italian soldiers came home in the summer in the first stage of a phased withdrawal.

"I was never convinced that war was the best way to make a country democratic or to enable it to escape from a bloody dictatorship," he told Omnibus, a morning show on the private channel La Sette, to be broadcast today. "I tried numerous times to persuade the American President not to go to war. I tried to find other ways and other solutions, including through a joint initiative with [Libyan dictator Colonel Muammar] Gaddafi. But we didn't succeed and there was the military operation."

Oh, really? Never, ever? Berlusconi again, 2 years ago:

"We are able, with Russia and America, to look at the states of the world and assess the dignity of the people and we give them democracy and liberty. Yes! By force if necessary, because that is the only way to show it is not a joke. We said to Saddam, do it or we come. And we came and we did it."

Now, one can change one's mind, but visibly here, what we have is a European leader unable to stand his ground. Great message sent to the terrorists, really.

Then we have Prince Charles and his new wife. I won't comment more.

The truth is that the EU is doing so well, it is certainly the best "entity" to lecture America over and over. But what would be Europe without its daily lectures to decadent, unsuccessful, racist America? We have to admit that, like the drowning man who doesn't know how to swim, Old Europe is gesticulating, trying to prove it will survive thanks to its unappropriate movements and its yelling in all directions and its begging those trying to drown it completely.

Of course, we have seen what the situation in France is (and there is much more than we have the time to blog, like a strike in public transportation that has been going on, in Marseille, for a month now. Busses of "substitution" have been attacked by strikers and have now to be protected by the police. This is one among many examples of solidarity à la française).

Let's have a quick look at Zapatero's Spain.

The transportation monopoly has already started threatening Spanish citizens with a strike. The government immediately caved in and, inadvertently uncovered a new hole in the country’s regional financing scheme which the government will have to fill. The transportation strike could have brought us dangerously close to a total collapse, with warehouses out of basic goods –and the situation could have become unmanageable because no one can assume the government would have mobilized the necessary resources to ease the crisis. Something similar could happen with a fishing strike, justified by demands for greater state subsidies on fuel (following the French model –what a nice economic example!). If we look at the precedents, we find our government’s response: concessions as proof of its wonderful “talante” or good manners. This means, we are in the hands of a government that is improvising day to day on how to face whatever problem appears in its path. And when the government acts this way, it surrenders to every problem in the vain hope of pleasing everyone –whether a nationalist or a truck driver. Pressure groups make sure they don’t miss their golden opportunity to gain greater power and income. Spain is becoming a “blackmail corporation,” with the people’s worst enemies threatening to paralyze the country. It is the Allende model that ruined Chile (remember that mythical lefty?); it is the Chavez model, the Kichner model, etc… We have come a millimeter from learning a lesson about where we are going –toward the Argentinization of Spain. But this will not be the last lesson; the path is clear and we are heading down it without pause: the possible confiscation of homes the government declares “unoccupied” or which do not attend to the general interest.

Leaders with leadership, b*lls and brains. That's what we have over here. Cough.