Once the outline of this essay emerged in my mind it took only seconds to register an irony connected to the project. It so happens that I spent five longer episodes of my life in different countries. In all these cases the “family language” was not that of the surrounding majority. For instance, in Hungary we spoke French and German. Subsequently, in America we used Hungarian. After my marriage, in San Diego, following an intermezzo in French, it was German. Every time we moved back to Europe we switched to English.

The Russia-EU summit which took place in the Russian city of Sochi last week, was another foreign policy debacle for the European Union. Of course, the EU did reach a number of technical agreements with the Kremlin on issues like visa facilitation, but those had been on the agenda for several years and even the disaster management team of Solana, Barosso and Schüssel, which entertained the Russians in Sochi, could not have failed to sign them (though Solana, according to a Russian paper, was drunk during most of the ceremonial proceedings).

“There seems to be a god to suit every lifestyle. All gods and all lifestyles are tolerated. It is this observation about polytheistic religion that struck me as similar to modern secularism. In the modern secular world there is increasing tolerance of all kinds of lifestyle. Once upon a time in the West having a child out of wedlock was considered shameful. Today being a single mother is a lifestyle choice and soon same-sex marriage will become accepted in law in the US as it is increasingly accepted in Europe. After that I predict that sex with minors will also become acceptable,” says Ohmyrus, who writes for the Iranian ex-Muslim Ali Sina's website. [HT Fjordman].

Today paedophiles in the Netherlands announced that they are going to establish their own political party. The party, which is called Naastenliefde, Vrijheid en Diversiteit (Charity, Freedom and Diversity), will campaign for the legalisation of sex between adults and children. “Ten years ago we were ‘on speaking terms’ with society. But since [Belgian paedophile killer] Marc Dutroux there is no more discussion. All paedophiles are being put in the same box. We are being hushed up,” Ad van den Berg, the NVD co-founder, told the newspaper Algemeen Dagblad. The NVD party aims for a reduction in the age of consent in the Netherlands from 16 to 12, the legalisation of the possession of child pornography and the reduction of the minimum age for featuring in porn from 18 to 16. According to van den Berg, “rearing a child is also about introducing it to sex.” The NVD also wants to give more rights to animals and to allow ‘consensual’ sex between humans and animals.

Yesterday the new Polish minister for agriculture, Andrzej Lepper, made his maiden trip to Brussels to meet with the commissioner for agriculture Mariann Fischer-Boel. Lepper repeated his call for a renegotiation of Poland’s EU accession treaty, because he feels that the treaty has left Polish farmers badly off. “We don’t go back from the position that in certain respects we need to change the Accession Treaty,” Lepper said, adding: “After five years Spain renegotiated its Treaty on fisheries, Denmark on land sales, Greece on olive cultivation. This is within reach.”

Mankind has always had difficulties with the management of its war experiences and the savoring of the peace breaks separating them. To those that this phrasing shocks: it is a normative position to regard peace as the natural condition of mankind. Just because non-violent solutions are preferable, it does not follow that eras characterized by what we like to call “peace” are our normal state. If you replace “peace” with the term “free of group conflict,” the support of the thesis hardens.

Sitting in a pleasant cafe in Rome on a sunny spring day, my Italian friend arrives and says, “Richard we have had a wonderful month here in Italy because we have had no government.” He referred to the fact that between the defeat of the last government at the polls and formation of the new government, no new initiative to tax, misspend the taxpayers’ money or new major regulation had been possible.

553 years ago today, on 29 May 1453, the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II conquered Constantinople. The Byzantine Empire had been in decline for decades and the fall was inevitable. Some had tried to turn the tide. In 1374, when the Ottomans were only a nascent power, Prince Manuel, governor of Salonica and a son of the Byzantine Emperor, had tried to rally the inhabitants of his city against the Turks. But the Salonicans did not want to bear the high costs of defending their city and promptly threw him out. Out of fear of the Turks his father, Emperor John V, refused Manuel shelter within the walls of Constantinople and so did all the other Byzantine cities. Consequently the prince was forced to seek refuge with... the Ottomans, whom he served until 1394, when he became Emperor himself.

I have always had a sneaking regard for the new Italian Prime Minister, Romano Prodi – a feeling which, as far as I can tell, is wholly unreciprocated. Shortly after he was appointed President of the European Commission in 1999, I conducted an interview with him, during which I asked about the curious episode of Aldo Moro. Aldo Moro, you may recall, was the former Italian Prime Minister who, in 1978, was kidnapped and later murdered by the Red Brigades. While he was being held, Prodi, then an academic, went to the police and told them (correctly) that Aldo Moro could be found at a place called Gradoli. Asked how he knew, he replied that he had been playing with a Ouija board when the spirits of dead Christian Democrats had moved the glass to spell out G-R-A-D-O-L-I.

The director of the Center for Equal Opportunities and Opposition against racism (CEOOR), a governmental agency in Belgium, has told the press that the stigmatization or discrimination of majorities is not real discrimination.

These days the CEOOR is distributing 100,000 post cards with the message "Vuile Hetero" (in Dutch) or "Sale Hétéro" (in French), which in English translates to: "Dirty Heterosexual".  In a press release, the center explains that this is a "provocative boomerang campaign" intended to demonstrate "the kind of insults homosexuals are frequently subjected to".

Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen should have met with eleven Muslim ambassadors in October to discuss the Muhammad cartoons published in the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten last September. This is the opinion of a number of Danish scholars at the University of Southern Denmark. Rasmussen’s refusal to do so created a bigger problem than the cartoons themselves they claim and therefore he is responsible for the crisis which have come to be known as the Danish cartoon affair.