Yesterday two events took place that are heartening. Firstly there was a protest march against the EU Constitution in Helsinki. This is important in that Finland is about to take over the Presidency of the EU from Austria, and is attempting to be a good little soldier by ratifying the corpse of the Constitution to earn brownie points in Brussels.

Today is Europe Day. On 9 May 1950, the French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman called upon France, Germany and other European countries to pool together their coal and steel production. Part of the original mystique of the movement for European unification can be found in the name of the Brussels building which for more than 50 years has housed the Council of Ministers of the organisations that were first known as the European Coal and Steel Community (ESCS), Euratom and the European Economic Community (EEC), and which later merged to become the European Communities (EC) and finally the European Union (EU). This building is called the Charlemagne Building.

A German reader informs us that it is not just the Catholic Church that has its quislings selling out to the Muslims. On Palm Sunday (9 April) a Protestant church in Bochum/Germany celebrated Muhammad’s birthday. The church invited the local Turkish community and the Turkish Consul, Munis Dirik, to attend the service. A Turkish music band played sufi music during the service, in which Protestants and Muslims joined together in honour of Muhammad.

In his sermon, Fred Sobiech, the protestant vicar, tried to link the figures of Muhammad and Jesus, saying: “Today we remember the birth and life of Muhammad and the beginning of the week of the passion of Christ, leading to Good Friday, the day Jesus of Nazareth was crucified.”

The Belgian Bishops have opened their churches to illegal immigrants in order to pressurize the Belgian authorities to allow the immigrants to stay in the country.

Most of the immigrant squatters in the churches are Muslims. They display banners in the church showing the name of Allah (picture taken in the church of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour, Brussels).

While Western Europe is turning Muslim, its Christian Churches are committing suicide. A Muslim would never allow his mosque to be turned into a dormitory for non-believers. This, however, is exactly what the Belgian Catholic Church is doing. The Belgian Bishops have already opened up 20 churches and chapels to illegal immigrants – so-called “sans-papiers” or “people without papers [=staying permits]” – who by Belgian law have to be expelled.

Arguably, the success of Western Civilization and of its derivates can be attributed to the triumph of reason over irrationality in the course of its development. This process had its modest beginnings in the Middle Ages (at the outset of which Europe had a “traditional civilization,” meaning that it resembled all other previous and contemporary cultures). The movement then accelerated, and so it transformed its original environment through the Enlightenment and the eras that followed it. All through this there evolved a parallel and contrary trend. Its modern phase harks back to Rousseau. It continued with the “racialists” and scored with the Leninist version of Marxism and National Socialism as well as Fascism.

Jean-François Revel

Early on Sunday morning, the French intellectual Jean-François Revel died aged 82. He was a member of the French Academy and, with philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, economist Guy Sorman, and writer Pascal Bruckner, one of the few truly pro-American French writers.

In his 2002 book "L'obsession anti-américaine" (English version: Anti-Americanism) he analyses anti-Americanism throughout the world. Exposing its paradoxes, its contradictions and its lies, he shows that it is instigated by cultural and political elites, rather than supported by the population at large. Already in 1970, Revel was "astonished by the evidence that almost everything Europeans are saying about the US is false". Since then, nothing has changed. From the book, an example of French anti-American bias in the press and by politicians:

The Dutch secret services AIVD (state intelligence) and MIVD (military intelligence) are investigating an unknown number of Muslims within the Dutch army. Last Saturday, the Dutch newspaper Het Parool reported that a growing number of Dutch soldiers sympathizes with radical Islamists. The paper refers to the annual report of the MIVD, which states that it conducted a number of investigations into “alleged radicalisation of military personnel” as “there are signs that indicate a possible radicalisation of Muslim individuals or groups within the armed forces.”

Rumours are circulating in some European countries that Iceland may be about to adopt the euro. The rumours have been picked up by some foreign media such as the Danish daily Berlingske Tidende as well as the Financial Times. These rumours are, however, totally unfounded.

The Swedish Muslim Association, Sveriges muslimska förbund (SMuF), the largest Muslim organisation in Sweden, has written a letter to all the parties in the Swedish parliament to demand that separate legislation be introduced for Muslims. SmuF has 70,000 members and claims to represent the 470,000 Muslim immigrants living in the country. Sweden has a total population of 9 million. One in every 19 people in Sweden is a Muslim. It is the fastest growing segment of the population.