Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court ruled recently that Germany will ratify the Lisbon Treaty if the German parliament first passes a law strengthening the Bundestag’s influence on EU decisions made in Brussels. (To learn more about this ruling, read “Germany’s Stealth Attack on the EU.”)

In the days after the ruling, it appeared EU leaders, relieved that Berlin was actually making plans to ratify Lisbon, had given little thought to the far-reaching ramifications of greater German influence over the EU. Now it appears some Europeans might be catching on.

“The possible implications of the 147-page ruling is slowly becoming clear after the initial relief expressed in Brussels that the EU’s new treaty was given the green light,” notedEU Observer on Thursday. After initially expressing excitement and relief that Germany was preparing to ratify Lisbon, European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso is now expressing concern at the judgment by Germany’s constitutional court, fearing it could undermine the “European project.”

“Criticism of the German court’s ruling has grown with each day that passes since the decision was handed down,” observed Spiegel Online on Friday.

The court ruling is “outrageous,” declared former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer. “The decision comes at a time at which our European neighbors and the Americans are increasingly gaining the impression that Germany is more and more turning away from Europe and is mainly interested in its own affairs,” he wrote. “The Constitutional Court’s decision strengthens this impression” (emphasis mine throughout).

When a former German foreign minister is warning that outsiders are justified in being concerned about German ambitions, it is time to watch Germany carefully.

Economic Downturn May Rock Japanese Politics—and America

Japan may be in for a major political upheaval. Its economy, like the rest of the world, is in severe contraction. But what makes the crisis especially worrisome in the Land of the Rising Sun is the fact that the current ruling party has only been out of power once in the last 54 years, which means disgruntled voters may be ready to turn Japanese politics on its ear. “Voters are finally being pushed into action because their livelihoods are starting to crumble,” said Masaru Kaneko, an economics professor at Keio University in Tokyo. “Until now, Japanese were politically apathetic because they could still live comfortably despite the weak economy.”

A poll published last Wednesday by Japan’s largest newspaper showed a five-point lead for Japan’s opposition Democratic Party.

A Japan under the leadership of the Democratic Party could have major implications for America. On April 12, Masaharu Nakagawa, the chief finance spokesman for the Democratic Party, told bbc that he was worried about the future value of the dollar and that if his party were elected in the upcoming national elections it would refuse to purchase any more U.S. treasuries unless they were denominated in Japanese yen.

Japan is America’s second most important creditor nation—lending the U.S. billions of dollars each year. If Japan’s price for supporting U.S. treasuries goes up, the U.S. dollar will be in serious trouble. As the Trumpet wrote in its August edition:

If the dollar goes down, America’s standard of living—and other, far more important implications—can’t help but follow. The dangers of debt are about to be brought home to America. Skyrocketing interest rates, plummeting currency, escalating import costs and three-digit oil prices will be just a few of the consequences. Mei jin has lost its luster. And soon, more than just the Japanese will say “no thanks” to the U.S. dollar.

Solving America’s Education Crisis

Despite all sorts of innovative plans implemented in the American school system over the past 30 years, American education is in deep trouble. We need to figure out why kids aren’t motivated more, wrote Jim Clifton and Marguerite Kondracke in the Washington Times today. How bad is it? The article continues,

Today, America is the only industrialized nation in the world where children are less likely to graduate from high school than their parents. A student drops out of high school every 26 seconds, 1.2 million children each year. Three in 10 students fail to graduate with their class, a percentage that doubles for minority, urban and low-income students.

Even among those who do graduate, noted Clifton and Kondracke, “many are unprepared for college or a career.”

This is a national concern, say the authors. “Simply put, the high school dropout and college-readiness crisis is the greatest long-term threat to our economic security and moral authority as a nation.“

Identifying the problem is one thing. What about solving the crisis? “If we want to leave our children a better world than the one we inherited, where a quality public education is a fundamental right, we must ask them what that future looks like,” they say.

In actual fact, what our children need most is for adults—parents, pastors, teachers, employers—to accept full responsibility for training up children in the way they should go (Proverbs 22:6). God, after all, is much more than Creator—He is mankind’s educator.

But we have drifted so far from God, it’s no wonder our educational system is broken. Today, it’s difficult to find adults who are actively applying the laws of success, obeying the Ten Commandments and submitting to God’s authority in their lives.

For more on the missing dimension in modern education, read Education With Vision.

113-Year-Old Veteran Dies

First World War veteran Henry Allingham, one of the last two surviving British veterans of the First World War, has died at the age of 113. He was the last surviving founding member of the raf, the last man to have witnessed the Battle of Jutland and the last surviving member of the Royal Naval Air Service. The Daily Mail writes,

Prime Minister Gordon Brown said: “He was a tremendous character, one of the last representatives of a generation of tremendous characters.” The Queen said he was “one of the generation who sacrificed so much for us all.” …Prince Charles wrote in 2008: “He has witnessed so much of our history—including the sinking of the Titanic, the Great War, the Depression, the Second World War and the building of the welfare state—taking in six of my forebears, as well as 21 prime ministers.

A whole generation has now virtually disappeared from the scene—and despite what some may think—the hard lessons learned have long since been forgotten. This is what we wrote in June, when Australia’s last World War i vet died:

Time has now taken more witnesses than the bullets and bombs. Who in the Anglo-American nations now gives testament to the horror of war and the evil that mankind is capable of inflicting on each other? Who is left to tell of the many acts of providence—small and large—that protected and sustained our nations during that time of great need? Who will stand down politically correct revisionists and radical historians who are mutilating our national sense of history and identity? …The English-speaking peoples have forgotten their history. We are forgetting the reason so many soldiers gave their lives. But more importantly, we are forgetting why those soldiers were forced to give their lives in the first place. We have forgotten where our blessings came from. And we have forgotten who really saved us during World Wars i and ii.

How the Mighty Have Fallen

British frontline troops in Afghanistan are so short of helicopters and transport planes that they are being bailed out by the Russians, as well as from an unnamed Third World country. In many ways, Britain is no longer even a second-rate power.

The Mail on Sunday has established that the Ministry of Defense is using civilian Russian-built Mi-8 and Mi-26 transport helicopters to ferry supplies and soldiers in Afghanistan. The pilots are freelance Russians and Ukrainians. Britain is also hiring massive commercial Russian Antonov aircraft to fly vehicles and heavy equipment … to Afghanistan.Even more extraordinary is that elite British special forces troops have been forced to use helicopters from a Third World nation to mount covert operations because of a desperate lack of UK aircraft.

And Finally …

The title says it all. Dealers are desperate, and Americans are growing concerned over their safety during the economic downturn. A car dealership in Kansas is offering a unique incentive for shoppers interested in purchasing a new car—a free AK-47 machine gun with every pick-up purchased. Owner Mark Muller says, “We feel we have an obligation to protect ourselves. … Everyone is scared at the moment. You cannot buy bullets because stores are selling out and guns are hard to come by, so I thought it was a good promotion. The only people being irresponsible are those not protecting themselves.”