An eight-year-old boy has sparked an unlikely outcry in Sweden after failing to invite two of his classmates to his birthday party.

The boy’s school says he has violated the children’s rights and has complained to the Swedish Parliament.

The school, in Lund, southern Sweden, argues that if invitations are handed out on school premises then it must ensure there is no discrimination.

There’s a few things to be said about this. Firstly, the tone of “Fitna” is reportedly so over the top and hysterical that no sensible person would be swayed by whatever arguments it tries to make. Therefore, having it out in the public domain isn’t doing anyone any harm. You shouldn’t ban things just because some people, or even most people, don’t like them. As John Stuart Mill explained in On Liberty, it’s better to have incorrect views aired publicly, where they can be evaluated and rejected by society at large, rather than try to stifle their expression, and in the process create a kind of cult following around them.

Of course the problem here is not that “Fitna” was banned by a government, which would be an outrage, but that it was pulled by a website because of security concerns. Thus, yet again, intimidation has carried the day, as it did back 2005/2006 when newspaper editors across Europe caved into fear and refused to publish offensive-yet-newsworthy cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad. It is of course understandable that LiveLeak would remove the video after its staff receiving death threats and so on, but their decision is still disappointing.

However, the real villains of this piece are obviously not the LiveLeak management but the people behind the campaign of intimidation itself. Although their thuggery is remarkable, the most outstanding feature of these clowns is their stupidity. Through their crazed threats of violence they’ve managed to spin the news cycle 180º and have turned a minor news item about a scaremongering Dutch film into another major free speech issue in which the entire media establishment will be arrayed against them and not Geert Wilders. In fact, Wilders and his juvenile film are now likely morph from a minor and derided curiosity into a cause célèbre for the media, in which almost all of the political right and a good deal of the left will end up backing Wilders by default.

By strangling the release of “Fitna”, these enemies of free expression are only going to encourage more people to believe that maybe Geert Wilders has a point when he claims that Islam and Liberalism are incompatible. They’re making Wilders’ argument better than he could ever have, had he been allowed to speak.

Miliband’s idea stems from the traditional British conception of what the EU ought to be: a broad and shallow union, as opposed the Franco-German conception of a narrower and deeper union. The British tend to look at the EU as a trade bloc with a predilection for meddling in the affairs of member states, whereas those who take a less Eurosceptic perspective think of the ‘European Project’ as one of the brightest developments of the last century, ensuring a Kantian perpetual peace among members who were previous bitter enemies and forging a least some form of collective European identity for nation states who can no longer command the world stage in the ways they once could.

If the EU is nothing more than a trade bloc that also has the happy side-effect promoting good, liberal democratic government, then it makes sense to expand the EU as far as possible, as Miliband suggests. But the EU is more than this. For all their differences, European countries have much more in common with each other than they do with, say, Morocco or Syria. As an atheist I’m slow to make too much of Christianity’s influence on the development of Europe over the last millennium, but it seems silly to suggest that it hasn’t been of huge importance. Similarly, events like the Reformation and the French Revolution sparked off processes and modes of thought that still shape Europe in profound ways. Secular government is taken for granted in Europe to a far greater extent than it is in North Africa and the Middle East (although I commend Atatürk’s Turkey in this regard). Further to this, there is a cultural gulf between Europe and these other regions deeper than the Mediterranean; I’m no expert on classical music, theatre, or art, but it appears to me that there is a far greater degree of overlap between, say, a typical Belgian and Swiss composer’s style than there is between a Belgian and a Jordanian’s, in as much as these things can be measured (and again I should stress that this is merely the impression I get). When Baghdad’s museums were ransacked live on TV I don’t recall seeing any looters making off with statues of naked Greek goddesses that are so often found in European museums.

Besides, it even sounds incorrect to talk of expanding the ‘European Union’ to such far-flung regions. The ‘European Union’ should be just that: a Union of European countries. I would have voted for the European Constitution in its original form with its foreign minister, European flag and European national anthem, and I’m frankly disappointed that these features were taken out of the new text. What’s wrong with displaying a little patriotic European spirit? The last century was a disaster for the European powers, but who says that this one has to be? In a world where people like George W. Bush can run America, Russia has slipped back into authoritarianism and China is fast on the rise, Europe has better things to be doing than feeling sorry for itself and its past mistakes. So what European nations once plundered the rest of the world for all they could? Europe has given the world plenty of things as well (in terms of ideas, science, literature, etc…), and it’s not like the present European leaders had anything to do with what came before them.

In sum, Europe is a great continent that all Europeans ought to be proud of, and selling out our fledgling sense of identity in order to expand good government in countries that are not European and share little in common with us makes no sense.

BBC story.

The Swiss People’s Party (SVP) has won the largest share of the vote in the country’s recent general election, taking about 27%. The election campaign focused on immigration, with the SVP proposing measures such as deporting foreigners who commit crimes and forbidding the construction of minarets. While I think that you can argue for or against either of these proposals and not be a nut, that poster is going a bit too far in my view. The text reads “for greater security”, and the SVP claims the black sheep only represents criminal foreigners, but…

BBC News report.

The Economist explains Yulia Tymoshenko’s popularity:

Her speeches are emotional and her message is effective: she promises change to everyone who feels dissatisfied with the Ukrainian authorities, past and present. And that is the vast majority of the population. She promises to rid the country of corruption and offers compensation for the financial losses people have suffered since the end of the Soviet Union. And even if her own supporters do not always believe her, they still admire her. “Of course she lies—like everyone else—but she does it so beautifully,” one supporter quipped.

The rest of the story on Economist.com.

The BBC’s account.