www.spectator.co.uk Mark Steyn says that the high-minded, pacifist tax-and-spend ideology of ‘Eurabia’ means the future is American (but not Canadian) New Hampshire In 1898, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, prime minister of Queen Victoria’s great white north, declared that just ‘as the 19th century was the century of the United States, so shall the 20th century belong to Canada.’ The line caught on. ‘The 19th century was the century of the United States,’ James Longley, attorney-general of Nova Scotia, informed a Boston audience in 1902. ‘The 20th century is Canada’s century.’ The voice of America‘The day is coming,’ predicted another prime minister, Sir Charles Tupper, ‘when Canada, which has become the right arm of the British empire, will dominate the American continent.’ Now, if you’ll quit laughing and wipe the tears from your eyes, I’ll get to the point. Tupper was talking to the historian John Boyd, who fleshed out the soundbite: ‘Canada,’ he explained, ‘shall dominate the American continent, not in aggression or materialism, but in the arts of peace, in the greatness of its institutions, in the broadness of its culture, and in the lofty moral character of its people.’ Does that sound familiar? It’s the European argument today: just as the 20th century belonged to America, so the 21st will belong to Europe, a Europe that cannot — and, indeed, disdains to — compete with the Yanks in ‘aggression’ (military capability) or ‘materialism’ (capitalism red in tooth and claw), and so has devised a better way. We’ve all had a grand old time these last few weeks watching M. Chirac demonstrate his mastery of ‘the arts of peace’ and his ‘lofty moral character’, but it would perhaps be fairer to choose a more representative Euro-grandee to articulate the EUtopian vision. Step forward, Finnish Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen, who said in London last year that ‘the EU must not develop into a military superpower but must become a great power that will not take up arms at any occasion in order to defend its own interests.’ No doubt it sounds better in Finnish. Nonetheless, like the Canadians a century ago, the Europeans are claiming that the old rules no longer apply, that they’ve been supplanted by new measures of power, not least the ‘greatness of institutions’ (EU, UN, ICC, etc.). And, like the Canadians, the Europeans are doomed to disappointment. Just for the record, if you’re reading this in an obscure corner of the jungle, not only did the 20th century not belong to Canada; the decayed Dominion will be very lucky to make it through the 21st at all: I doubt it’ll get past 2025 with its present borders intact. But that’s by the by. What the world — or, at any rate, ‘old Europe’ — wants to know is: what will it take to nobble the Yanks? Or, to be more accurate, what will it take for the Yanks to nobble themselves? The corollary to the Euro-Canadian redefinition of ‘great power’ is that a lone cowboy who sticks to tired concepts like guns’n’ammo is bound to come a cropper. As Matthew Parris put it last week, ‘We should ask whether America does have the armies, the weaponry, the funds, the economic clout and the democratic staying power to carry all before her in the century ahead. How many wars on how many fronts could she sustain at once? How much fighting can she fund? How much does she need to export? Is she really unchallenged by any other economic bloc?’ My colleague is falling prey to theories of ‘imperial overstretch’. But, if you’re not imperial, it’s quite difficult to get overstretched. By comparison with 19th-century empires, the Americans travel light. More to the point, their most obvious ‘overstretch’ is in their historically unprecedented generosity to putative rivals: unlike traditional imperialists, they garrison not remote ramshackle colonies but their wealthiest allies. The US picks up the defence tab for Europe, Japan, South Korea and Saudi Arabia, among others. As Americans have learned in the last 18 months, absolving wealthy nations of the need to maintain their own armies does not pay off in the long run. This overstretch is over. If Bush wins a second term, the boys will be coming home from South Korea and Germany, and maybe Japan, too. So the EU will begin the second decade of the century with an excellent opportunity to test Mr Lipponen’s theory: it can either will the means to maintain a credible defence, or it can try to live as the first ‘superpower’ with no means of defence. In other words, the first victim of American overstretch will not be America but Europe. I doubt the Continentals of a decade hence will be in any mood to increase defence spending. For all M. de Villepin’s dreams of Napoleonic glory, his generation of French politicians will spend the rest of their lives managing decline. By 2050, there will be 100 million more Americans, 100 million fewer Europeans. The US fertility rate is 2.1 children per couple; in Europe it’s 1.4. Demography is not necessarily destiny, and certainly not inevitable disaster. But it will be for Europe, because the 20th-century Continental welfare state was built on a careless model that requires a constantly growing population to sustain it. In hard-hearted New Hampshire, we don’t have that problem. According to a UN report from last year, for the EU to keep its working population stable till 2050 it would need another 1.58 million immigrants every year. To keep the ratio of workers to retirees at the present level, you’d need 13.5 million immigrants per year. Personally, I’ve never seen what’s so liberal and enlightened about denuding the developing world of their best and brightest. But, even if you can live with it, it won’t be an option much longer. The UN’s most recent population report has revised the global fertility rate down from 2.1 — i.e., replacement rate — to 1.85 — i.e., eventual population decline. It will peak in about 2050, and then fall off in a geometric progression. What this means for the Continent is that the fall-back position — use the Third World as your nursery — is also dead. The developing world’s fertility rate is 2.9 and falling. The Third Worlders being born now in all but the most psychotic jurisdictions will reach adulthood with a range of options, of which Europe will be the least attractive. If that ratio of workers to retirees keeps heading in the same direction, the EU will have the highest taxes not just in the Western world, but in most of the rest. A middle-class Indian or Singaporean or Chilean already has little incentive to come to the Continent. If the insane Bush–Steyn plan to remake the Middle East comes off, even your wacky Arabs may stay home. If it doesn’t, the transformation of Europe into ‘Eurabia’, as the droller Western Muslims already call their new colony, will continue. So for Europe this is the perfect storm, with Jacques Chirac in the George Clooney role. Best case scenario: you wind up as Vienna with Swedish tax rates. Don’t get me wrong, I love Vienna. I especially like the way you can stroll down their streets and never hear any ghastly rockers and rappers caterwauling. When you go into a record store, the pop category’s a couple of bins at the back and there are two floors of operetta. All very pleasant, though not if you’re into surfing the cutting edge of the zeitgeist. I quite like Stockholm, too. Well, I like the babes, but they’re gonna be a lot wrinklier by 2050. And Sweden’s already got a lower standard of living than Mississippi. Its 60 per cent overall tax rate is likely to be the base in the Europe of 2020 and fondly recalled as the good old days by mid-century. Worst case scenario: Sharia, circa 2070. For the Americans, it doesn’t make much difference whether the Austro-Swedish or Eurabian option prevails. This is nothing to do with disagreements over Iraq: you can’t ‘mend bridges’ when the opposite bank is sinking into the river. The death of Europe in its present form is a given. The phase we’ve just begun is an interim one: America’s gone to the store, and is trying various outfits on for size. There is Bush’s wooing of Putin, who has not been so insane as to follow Jacques on his diplomatic suicide-bomber mission. There is the suggestion, floated more and more frequently vis-à-vis the Korean peninsula, that now may be the time for Japan to go nuclear. There are the Atlanticist states of Eastern Europe who declined to be shut up by Chirac. There are the President’s Latino inclinations, soon to be given expression in the Free Trade Area of the Americas. From the American point of view, the FTAA brings their principal foreign energy suppliers — Alberta and Venezuela — in-house and, in the broader sense, Catholic Latin America is more culturally compatible with the US than post-Christian Europe is. And then there’s the conservatives’ favourite: National Review’s current cover shows Bush, Blair and John Howard above the headline ‘Three Amigos’. Five years ago, when Bill Clinton launched his non-Chirac-sanctioned mini-war on Baghdad with the assistance of Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, I noted that what those countries had in common was a perverse determination to recoil from the notion that they had anything in common. For a generation, these countries’ elites have worked tirelessly to deny the reality of language, culture and history. Much of the territory Anglospherists claim is already lost — Canada and New Zealand, for starters — and anyone who wants to make it a going concern had better step on it, because it will be a lot harder to do in another generation. Where Britain will lie depends on how serious Mr Blair is about going down with the Franco–Belgo–German ship. All these arrangements in embryo, however, have one thing in common: the intention is that America’s partners should be both economically and militarily credible — or, in that Canadian historian’s terms, they’re being evaluated in terms of ‘aggression and materialism’. Australia will never be as powerful as America, but it doesn’t, as Mr Lipponen does, trumpet its arthritic defects as a virtue and demand that these should be accepted as the new global norm. Indeed, once you stick a black void in the centre of the map where Western Europe is, it’s amazing how the global outlook improves. I should add that by ‘Europe’ I’m using the Chiraquist shorthand for a European Union run on sclerotic Franco–German lines. What we’ve seen in the last few weeks is that for Europeans the real clash of civilisations is not between Islam and the West but between what the French call ‘Anglo-Saxon’ capitalism and Eurostatism. I was amused by the sheer snobbery of Martin Amis’s analysis in the Guardian last week: the condescension to Bush’s faith, the parallels between Texas and Saudi Arabia, both mired in a dusty religiosity. America’s religiosity, now unique in the Western world, is at least part of the reason it reproduces at replacement rate, also uniquely in the Western world. Besides, for all Amis’s cracks, Texas doesn’t seem as fundamentalist as the radical secularism of post-Christian Europe. Why would anyone think a disinclination to breed or to defend oneself is the recipe for success? Just because there’ll always be an England? As Bernard Shaw wrote almost 90 years ago in Heartbreak House, of a Europe too smug and self-absorbed to see what was coming, ‘Do you think the laws of God will be suspended in favour of England because you were born in it?’

www.signonsandiego.com By Brian Hazle UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER March 13, 2003

EL CAJON – While gasoline prices have risen steadily throughout the county, one station's prices rocketed out of this world yesterday.

The Texaco gas station at Greenfield Drive and East Main Street inexplicably raised the price of a gallon of regular unleaded gas to $3.19 – $1.07 higher than another station across the street.

The station advertised its "Power Plus" fuel for $3.79 and charged $4.29 for "Power Premium."

Understandably, fewer cars stopped at the station than at nearby pumps, but some customers paid the price.

"I have no choice, I have to get gas," said Jeanne Cooney as she fueled her SUV. "I didn't want to run out of gas."

Employees at the station said the owner had ordered the price increases. They also said the owner, whom they refused to identify, would hold a news conference at 6 p.m. yesterday, but the person didn't show up.

The prospect of war with Iraq and interruptions in crude-oil shipments from Venezuela have pushed the average per-gallon cost of regular unleaded gasoline in the United States to $1.71, according to the Energy Information Administration, which keeps statistics for the Energy Department.

In San Diego County, a survey by the Utility Consumers' Action Network found that the average price in the county Tuesday was $2.14 a gallon.

A year ago, the average price for gas in the county was $1.34.

"Prices have risen by a penny per day on average since February 24," UCAN's Web site says.

Analysts predict prices will continue to increase as refineries retool to make cleaner-burning summer fuel blends and produce fuel with ethanol instead of MTBE.

Last week, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., asked the General Accounting Office to look into allegations that oil companies are shutting down more refineries than usual this season with the possible intention of spiking prices.

Besides calling for a GAO probe, Boxer also sent letters to the chief executive officers of the seven largest refining companies in California.

The letters requested information on the number of hours that the companies' refineries were off-line from November through last month, compared with the same period a year earlier.

Brian Hazle: (619) 593-4955; brian.hazle@uniontrib.com

www.barbadosadvocate.com Web Posted - Thu Mar 13 2003

CARIBBEAN tourism is bracing for international conflict and its associated hardship, as the Bush administration presses for war with Iraq.

Considering this region’s dependence on the outside world for tourists, oil and other trade, and the lingering hangover from the economic fallout of the attacks of 9/11, most commentators believe that Caribbean economies will suffer significantly if the looming war becomes a reality.

“The context is already a bad one,” Anthony Gonzalves, director of the Institute of International Relations at the University of the West Indies, recently commented. “If you impose a war on the current situation, you’ll see how much worse it can get.”

Caribbean governments are attempting to cushion the anticipated fallout by seeking price guarantees on oil and developing plans to boost travel promotion, but their ability to cushion the impact may be limited.

“No one believes this war would be good for business,” said Jean Holder, secretary-general of the Caribbean Tourism Organisation. “We pray that it doesn’t break out.”

This region is, however, accustomed to buffeting by outside forces. Tourism has yet to recover fully from the terrorist attacks in the United States, whilst he flow of oil from Venezuela remains uncertain.

The European Community is phasing out preferential prices for bananas and sugar. The offshore banking and insurance industry remain under pressure from international organisations.

Tourism, however, has the most to lose, as a US attack on Iraq would strike directly at the Caribbean’s largest industry. As many as 20 million visitors – more than half of them from the United States – pump billions of dollars into the region annually. That trade, which employs as much as three-quarters of the workforce on some islands, is still recovering from a ten per cent drop in arrivals since September 11, 2001.

“If there’s a war, people don’t go on holidays,” Edward Carrington, secretary-general of the Caribbean Community, said last month.

During the 1991 Persian Gulf War, tourist visits to some islands fell by as much as 30 per cent. Simon Suarez, president of the Caribbean Hotel Association, said a similar experience now would be “a terrific blow.”

“There are quite clear signs of recovery, but that could come to a sudden stop if this war actually goes and if it lasts a long time,” said Suarez, an executive with Coral Hotels and Resorts in the Dominican Republic.

“The long-term effect will be that there will be a gap in the growth pattern.”

Holder said the impact might not be as negative as feared. In 1991, some American vacationers who would otherwise have gone overseas to Europe, visited the Caribbean instead. After the war, the region recovered more quickly than other parts of the world.

Still, Holder said, any additional decline would further burden the struggling airline industry. United and US Airways already have declared bankruptcy, and analysts have speculated American Airlines – the leading carrier to the Caribbean – could follow suit.

Reliance on fuel imports makes the Caribbean vulnerable to oil price hikes. The recent reduction in flow from Venezuela during the general strike against the government of President Hugo Chavez, sparked walkouts by transportation workers in Guyana and Haiti, and raised consumer prices on several islands.

Oil-producing Trinidad and Tobago already told its neighbours it would not be able to hold prices to a “pre-Iraq war” level, should hostilities commence.

The nation imports half the petroleum it refines, and so is also vulnerable to world price fluctuations.

“Our willingness to empathise is not supported by the realities of our own situation,” Prime Minister Patrick Manning said.

War plans are affecting the US territories in another way. In Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands, thousands of Army reservists and National Guardsmen are answering the call to service; in the case of Puerto Rico, those numbers are the largest in island history. While troops train with weapons and gas masks, the government has opened several family- support centres.

At the governmental level, the region’s leaders – with the exception of Cuba’s Fidel Castro – have sounded a more measured ambivalence.

In a communiqué last month, the heads of the Caribbean Community bloc of 15 nations called on the United States to exercise restraint while urging Iraq to co-operate fully with weapons inspectors.

“These islands are economically dependent on the United States,” said Ralph Premdas, a professor of public policy at the University of the West Indies. “I don’t think you’re going to find any place except for Cuba officially coming out against the war.”

Instead, leaders are preparing contingency plans. In Puerto Rico, for example, the government has pre-purchased ten million barrels of petroleum at a fixed price, and invested in hedges – insurance to protect against fluctuations in fuel prices – for 2.7 million barrels more. The US commonwealth has set aside $3.5 million for additional tourist promotion.

The Caribbean Hotel Association has advised members on public relations messages – promoting, for example, perceptions of the region as safe and affordable – while urging them to establish more flexible cancellation policies for travellers stranded by events.

www.heraldtribune.com By ALEXANDRA OLSON Associated Press Writer

If you think Americans went crazy over their flag after Sept. 11, you should come to Venezuela. Venezuelans don't just decorate their homes with flags. They're wearing them on T-shirts, shorts, skirts, back-packs, fanny-packs - even bikinis. It's a fashion craze spun from the turmoil surrounding President Hugo Chavez's four-year rule, in which pro-and anti-Chavez Venezuelans are fighting to prove which side is most patriotic. Almost every clothing store in town seems to carry items featuring the yellow-blue-and-red banner, with an arch of seven white stars in the middle. On every street in Caracas, at least one person wears some form of the flag. Now, Venezuela's haute couture is embracing the trend. On Wednesday - National Flag Day - 20 local designers displayed flag-inspired gowns at an evening competition at the Melia Hotel in Caracas. The fashion elite sipped wine while gazing at mannequins sporting gowns ranging from regal to outrageous. There was a simple strapless A-line with layers of yellow, blue and red chiffon. There was also a mini dress made from linked copper and bronze stars. Underneath, was a royal blue bikini. A yellow cape swept down the back, decorated with yellow, blue and red parrots. The winning dress was to be worn by Venezuela's contestant at the 2003 Miss Universe pageant. "It used to be cheesy to wear the flag," said designer Octavio Vasquez. "Now it's matter of pride to wear the flag, hold the flag, be the flag." It all started when Chavez bucked a law banning national symbols at political events. During his frequent rallies, Chavez uses them all: the flag, the national anthem and images of 19th-century independence hero Simon Bolivar. The result was a flag war. Vowing to "take back" the emblem, Venezuela's opposition turned its own marches into seas of red, blue and yellow. Opponents unfurled the banner outside their car windows, homes and office buildings. But the power behind the fashion is Venezuela's army of street vendors. Eager to profit from the protests, hawkers got creative, selling everything from flag knapsacks to tricolor beaded jewelry. For some, it's all a bit much. Sitting on a park bench, Jesus Flores, 80, eyes a vendor. "Wearing the flag as a bikini isn't patriotic," he grumbles. "The flag is a symbol. We should respect it." Last modified: March 13. 2003 9:10A

www.canada.com Scott Haggett Calgary Herald; with files from Herald News Services Thursday, March 13, 2003

Oil continued to rise Wednesday, reaching a 12-year high, but the shares of the companies that produce it haven't managed similar gains.

Crude oil on New York's Nymex Exchange rose $1.11 US to $37.83 US a barrel -- the highest since Oct. 16, 1990 -- as a key report said oil inventories fell unexpectedly last week.

The U.S. department of energy said American oil reserves have fallen to 269.8 million barrels, down four million barrels in a week and the lowest in almost 28 years.

The shortfall came as Venezuela continues to struggle to rebuild oil production after a general strike. The South American country had been the world's fifth-largest oil producer and is struggling to resume its pre-strike production of three million barrels a day. Lacking that output, U.S. imports fell 12 per cent for the week ended March 7 to 7.62 million barrels.

"It shows that the U.S. market is still undersupplied by about one million barrels per day," said Lawrence Eagles. an energy analyst with GNI-Man Financial in Belfast.

The report came as oil traders worry that supplies will be further disrupted if there's a war in Iraq. Conflict in the crucial Persian Gulf region would not only end Iraq's exports of 1.7 million barrels a day but could also threaten exports from other big producers such as Kuwait or Saudi Arabia.

War fears and the potential for war pushed up oil prices by nearly a third over the past six months. While the Organization of Petroleum Producers has pledged to boost production to make up for shortfalls during a war, the International Energy Agency said Wednesday the cartel could only increase production by 900,000 barrels a day, much less than Iraq now exports.

"The market is heading into a period of heightened uncertainty with low stocks and limited spare production and shipping capacity," the IEA, which represent 26 industrialized countries, said in its monthly oil report. "A further supply disruption would tax a system operating close to capacity."

While oil rose, natural gas continued to fall off two-year highs reached late last month as warmer weather was forecast to move into eastern North America and the U.S. Midwest. Gas on the Nymex fell 7.9 cents US to US$5.865 per million British thermal units. Canadian gas prices also fell, dropping 70 cents to $7.65 per gigajoule at the AECO hub in southeastern Alberta. Despite Wednesday's fall, natural gas prices are still up by more than 75 per cent over the past six months.

Despite high prices for oil and natural gas, Canadian energy stocks fell Wednesday as investors steered clear of the sector. Calgary's petroleum companies are now enjoying what analysts say will be the most profitable first quarter in the industry's history, but that hasn't been reflected in their share prices.

The S&P/TSX energy index, which accounts for the shares of most of Canada's major oil producers, fell 18.77 points Wednesday to 1217.74, up 1.8 per cent in the past six months.

The trouble, observers say, is that no one wants to buy energy stocks at a time when prices are high.

"People won't pay for peak earnings and peak pricing," said Kevin Nyysola, a portfolio manager with Investors Group in Winnipeg. "Why buy them now when you can buy them later for less."

Nyysola said the investors are pricing the shares of energy companies as if oil was trading at $23 US a barrel and gas was $4 US per thousand cubic feet.

shaggett@theherald.canwest.com