Delicious LiveJournal Links for 2-17-2011

The freedom enjoyed by EU citizens to live and work in each others' countries is a unique liberty. It is the basis around which European governments have tried to build a single border, a compensatory system of co-operation between police, judges and immigration officers and a common refugee policy. But hardening attitudes towards immigration in many countries and widening policy disagreements between governments and the EU's institutions are exposing fault-lines in this structure. As the cracks threaten to widen over the coming months, policy-makers face some tricky dilemmas.

I have covered this issue previously, but it is a good summary of the story of the fake Obama birth certificates.

Now that the truth about this propaganda has been revealed, we can expect that those who constructed it – Tony Blair, Dick Cheney et al – will now amend their usual arguments to suggest that they were innocently misled by evidence such as Curveball's. After all, if a defector claimed that there was a substantial bio-weapons programme, as "Curveball" did, how could they know that he was lying? Again, we will be confronted with the "not my fault!" excuse from those who manufactured the case for an avoidable war.But once again, they are trying to mislead.

large pluralities of the public in the surveyed Mediterranean countries of France, Italy, and Spain see increasing development aid to poorer countries as the most effective policy to reduce irregular immigration, more so than increasing national border controls... It’s time for the rest of Europe to listen to those on the front lines.