Bat Ye’or in her book about Eurabia documented how European leaders have for years been quietly planning to merge Europe with the Islamic world. This has been denounced as a “conspiracy theory.” Only a few months ago the British Foreign Minister David Miliband said openly that the European Union should expand to include the Muslim Middle East and North Africa. Now French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are saying virtually the same thing. The greatest betrayal in European history is fact, not fiction. And to think that many people supported Sarkozy because he should “halt” Islamization. Now he is speeding it up:

The whole scandal about the expenses of members of the European Parliament (MEPs) keeps rolling on. It, of course, does not generate the heat and light that national scandals create. But the cumulative effect on the institutions of the European Union cannot be other than damaging.

While America is focused on its elections, which might bring the first Muslim-born president in the White House, Europe is anxiously awaiting Geert Wilders’ movie on the Koran. The Dutch government fears that the release of the movie might lead to terror attacks on the Netherlands or on Dutch citizens abroad. There are rumours that the government may seek to ban the film. NATO secretary general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, a Dutchman, has also expressed concern about the Wilders movie. On Sunday he told Dutch television that he fears retaliations against Dutch NATO troops in Afghanistan.

The argument for Kosovar independence, inasmuch as there is one, rests upon a two propositions: first, that ethnic groups per se deserve sovereignty; and second, that Kosovo experienced a unique and sui generis oppression that merits unique and sui generis independence. The second proposition received an explicit endorsement and elaboration from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice when she announced the United States’s recognition of Kosovar sovereignty:

It was rather difficult to comprehend after reading the opening paragraph in this Financial Times article:

“Germany will on Tuesday call for the European Union to clamp down on the continent’s last tax havens, whose low taxes and bank secrecy rules it sees as an incitement to tax evasion.”

Pardon me, but is it not the hyper levels of taxation unfortunately found in many European countries which is the very true incitement for individuals to become motivated in the protection of their incomes/wealth?

A quote from Yale Daily News, 29 February 2008

Europe is a dying continent. I say this not as a criticism, but rather as a statement of fact. In Europe, an acute failure to produce the next generation has created a looming demographic crisis. […] Given present trends, within about a century, Europe will cease to be a white, Christian continent.

No one wants to talk about racial or religious issues, but it merits consideration that the vast majority of immigrants to the European Union are Muslims from North Africa, the Middle East and Turkey. By the year 2150, barring a major shift in either native European fertility rates or immigrant nationality, Europe will be a largely Muslim continent with whites and Christians as minorities composing less than 20 percent of the population. Much of Europe has come to terms with that possibility, but a significant portion of the population is uncomfortable about the prospect of a change in Europe's continental character, warranting wider spread support for xenophobic political parties across the continent.

Nicolas Sarkozy brought up the name of André Malraux in a recent interview with Le Parisien. Malraux was a well-known name in the 1960's in America. Novelist, art critic, adventurer, he became Charles de Gaulle's first minister of culture and it was in that capacity that he met President John F. Kennedy and Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy when they visited France in 1961, and later in 1963 in Washington, when Malraux arranged for the Mona Lisa to be brought to America for a special exhibit. Read the details of those "Camelot" days here.

President Sarkozy was careful not to quote another famous passage by Malraux on Islam that has made the rounds of the French websites many times over. It is posted in French at Armées (along with a picture of Malraux on the cover of Time):

Our age is a mosaic. Its bits are easily missed as we tend to focus on the whole. This column presents some overlooked details that deserve attention.
 
1. Kosovo has declared the independence she has de facto enjoyed for years. Contrary to the belief of The Brussels Journal I do not think this is a victory for Islamism. Widely recognized independence supports moderate Islam. Re-subjugating abused Kosovo to Serbia would have radicalized its Albanian majority that also happens to be Moslem.

A quote from The Daily Mail, 27 February 2008

They are devoted foster parents with an unblemished record of caring for almost 20 vulnerable children. But Eunice and Owen Johns [from Derby, England] have been forced to abandon their good work because they refuse to tell children as young as ten that homosexuality is an acceptable lifestyle. […] Mrs Johns, 59, a Sunday school teacher, said:

Ljubljana, Slovenia. -- As I gaze out on the prosperous and exquisite "old town" of this ancient city, now in the European Union, it seems far removed from the country of Yugoslavia of which it was part until 1991 when, after a brief battle, Slovenia won its independence. The tensions between Serbia and Kosovo, the final remnants of Yugoslavia, are felt not much more deeply here than in most other parts of the EU.