A French custom largely unreported in the U.S. press is auto burning. Every night the boisterous youths of the religion of peace burn autos in French cities. This December 31, they burned 1,147.

According to Le Figaro, Sarkozy is taking a hard law and order line on this phenomenon. He wants apprehended incendiaries to be denied their driver’s license until they  reimburse the owners or the insurance companies. No other form of punishment is mentioned.

Only four policemen were injured on December 31; they handled the auto burnings diplomatically, so as not to provoke the boisterous youth further.

Great minds think alike; compare yesterday’s post:

Chesterton: “The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected.”

In Montreal Concordia University has managed to have five paintings owned by Max Stern and stolen by the Nazis returned to their rightful heirs. When Stern was in Nazi Germany before he could flee, the Nazis forced him to sell some of his art to an “Aryan” dealer and then confiscated the rest after he escaped to Montréal.

The director of the Montreal restitution project explained in the Globe and Mail:

“One of the challenges we have is that, unlike the United States, which recognizes a forced sale as being equivalent to a theft, here in Germany and in other countries, they haven’t yet developed an art law position that is as clear as the Americans.”

Europeans have dragged their feet for decades about returning goods stolen by the Nazis. They have been reluctant to make even that small compensation to the victims of the Holocaust and their families. European museums are full of works stolen from murdered Jews, just as Swiss banks profited from the accounts of Holocaust victims.

It is always easy to tolerate injustices done to others.

We have reached the point where investors will pay the US government to keep thir money safe – Treasuries are paying a negative interest rate. It has been about 70 years since this happened last.

The whole world has a touching faith in the US dollar – I hope these true believers are in the right church.

Catholic Democrats complain about tax reductions – Americans are undertaxed, they say. Pope Benedict has criticized off-shore banks as a source of the financial crisis But in Kaiman and Abel, Timothy Ridley, the former head of a bank in the Cayman Islands, points out 

Der Vatikan hat selbst 1929 einen Deal mit Mussolini geschlossen, wonach er de facto zur Steueroase wurde. Es steht in den aktuellen Yellow Pages der EU: ‘Bürger des Vatikans zahlen keine Steuern.’ In Italien genießt die katholische Kirche jede Menge Steuervorteile. Erst 2005 hat die Regierung Berlusconi die Kirche von allen Steuern auf die meisten ihrer Immobilien befreit.”

Die Überschrift von Ridleys Artikel ist “Matthäus, 7:3”. Dieser Vers des Evangeliums lautet: Warum siehst du den Splitter im Auge deines Bruders, aber den Balken in deinem Auge bemerkst du nicht?

In 1929 the Vatican itself had concluded a deal with Mussolni, by which it became a dde facto tax oasis. In the current Yellow Pages of the European Union it says: “Citizens of the Vatican pay no tax. In Italy the Catholic Church enjoys many tax advantages. In 2005 the government of Berlusconi freed the Church of all taxes on most of its real estate.

The headline of Ridley’s article’s is Matthew 7:3. This verse of the Gospel reads ‘”Why do you see the splinter in your brother’s eye, but you don’t notice the beam in your own eye.

As I walked around Rome on recent visits, I noticed how many buildings outside the Vatican bore signs that indicate they were extraterritorial (i.e., tax free). Hoteliers in Rome are sore about this. The Vatican and religious orders run hotels which are exempt from real estate taxes and use as employees religious who are exempt from minimum wage laws and other employment regulations. Unfair competition?

What Diogenes was expecting to find an honest man when he cast light on the doings of the governor of Illinois?

Obama’s Chicago connections should keep the FBI busy for a term or two.