In just two months, the Central Bank of Spain has sold off 20% of its gold reserves, equivalent to 80 tonnes of pure gold, and worth about 2 billion dollars. Experts close to the Banco de España have characterized these sales as mere “technical adjustments of the reserves” but the fact is that the Spanish gold holdings, which in March of 2004 held eleventh place in the world’s ranking with 523 tonnes, have been reduced to little more than 300 tonnes. Download PDF

European negotiators, for their part, have proffered an image of collective unity by presenting their American interlocutors with a long list of us-versus-them demands: American acceptance of a transatlantic market ‘without barriers’; American agreement to lift visa restrictions on all EU citizens; American concessions on a deal to share airline passenger data; and, of course, American acquiescence to rigid caps on greenhouse gas emissions. Download PDF

The truth is that Zapatero’s ideology explains his decisions and his attitude toward terrorism. In first place, the progressive person believes that the Spanish system and the Western order are unfair. For this reason it generates terrorism. Download PDF

For many Spaniards, including his supporters, Zapatero is an accidental political leader who was thrust into the prime minister’s office by the Islamic terrorists who set off a series of train bombs in Madrid that killed 191 people only three days before the 2004 general elections. Download PDF

When José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero came to power, his approach to foreign policy could be summarised in three sentences: no to war; a return to the heart of Europe; and the opposite of everything Aznar had done. His attitude, his lack of knowledge of the rules of the environment, his obvious contempt for reality, as well as his naïveté and frivolity, ensured that Spain’s status would diminish on the international scene. Download PDF Descargar PDF

Poland and the Czech Republic are considering an American request to base elements of an anti-missile defense system on their territory. Russia has reacted with predictable indignation, arguing that the American missile shield will upset the post-Cold War balance of power in Europe. Download PDF Descargar PDF

German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited US President George W Bush in Washington on 4 January, just days after Germany assumed the rotating presidencies of the European Union and the Group of Eight major industrialized nations. Merkel said the visit was supposed to be a signal that transatlantic relations would be an important issue for Germany during its six months as leader of Europe and the G-8. Download PDF

The execution on 30 December of Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi dictator, was (not surprisingly) greeted with the reflexive moral superiority complex that has come to characterize the anti-death penalty left wingers who make up much of today’s European news media. Download PDF

Now that Democrats are about to take control of the American Congress, many European left-wingers are hoping that the United States will soon begin pulling its troops out of Iraq so that the Middle East can return to the utopia of peace and stability concocted by their collective imagination. Unlike their European counterparts, however, even most Democrats understand that a precipitous American pullout from Iraq would create a power vacuum that would lead to bloodshed on an unprecedented scale. Many thoughtful Democrats also seem to understand better than European lefties that a hasty American withdrawal from Iraq would be viewed as a propaganda victory for Al-Qaeda, which in turn would greatly increase the likelihood of more terrorist attacks on European (not American) soil. Download PDF

Europe’s left-wingers are elated about the outcome of the recent mid-tern elections in the United States. Indeed, newspapers across the continent greeted the news that Democrats have gained control of the US House and Senate with jubilation. Germany’s reliably anti-American Der Spiegel surmised that the Democratic sweep heralds the beginning of a new era in US foreign policy. Spain’s leftist El País, notoriously better at sensationalism than solid journalism, ran a simplistic headline reading: “US Sentences the Bush Era”. Oh really? Download PDF

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