The Belgian police have arrested one of the two men who mugged and murdered Joe Van Holsbeeck. The 17 year old Belgian was knifed on 12 April during rush hour in Brussels Central Station when he refused to hand over his MP3 player. The arrested person is a 16 year old immigrant of Polish origin. The police know the identity of his accomplice (the one who is actually believed to have used the knife). He, too, is said to be a 16 year old Pole.

“The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.”
Daniel Patrick Moynihan

America prides itself on being a land of immigrants. “Give me your tired, your poor,” begins Emma Lazarus’ poem. For most of American history, the immigrants were remarkably similar to their predecessors: trans-Atlantic migrants, Christian (or, in the case of Jews, from majority-Christian societies), and European. Prior to the Second World War, the only significant exceptions to this rule of thumb were the Chinese and Japanese of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and the miniscule numbers of Christian Arabs who began settling in places like Dearborn, Michigan. Their numbers were not enough to make a difference in the popular conception of this country, nor in the idea of the citizen’s duty toward it.

Today, some 80,000 people participated in a silent march in Brussels to commemorate 17 year old Joe Van Holsbeeck, who was knifed on 12 April because he refused to hand over his MP3 player to two North African youths. The murder happened during the evening rush hour in a crowded Brussels central station. The murderers were filmed by security cameras, but it took a full week before the authorities released the footage. The assassins are still at large.

Yesterday, on April 20th 2006, the Belgians carried a young scout to his grave after he was murdered by North African youths for not obeying them immediately when they told him to hand over his MP3 player. Desperately trying to prove that their boy was not a “racist” who must have “provoked” the murderers, the boy’s family gave pride of place to Muslim friends and symbols at the funeral service. Their immigrant neighbours were given permission to distribute homebaked bread in the church.

Joe Van Holsbeeck, the 17 year old boy who died after being butchered with a knife by North African youths in Brussels Central Station last week, was buried today. Muslim immigrants distributed home baked bread during the funeral. Joe was savagely stabbed to death Wednesday a week ago when he refused to hand over his MP3 player to the North Africans. Immediately after the assassination the police inquired whether Joe had made any “racist remarks” whilst been mugged, but Joe and his family and friends were not racists. On the contrary.

Nothing undermines the EU’s soft power more than its hypocrisy. The real face of the EU’s duplicitous machinery rears its ugly head in its selective application of travel bans, which Brussels and national capitals eagerly apply to some cronies and as eagerly waive to others. Even when applied, these sanctions are more of a publicity tool for showing the EU’s glossy democratization efforts rather than a genuine attempt at changing the status quo.

Joe Van Holsbeeck

Last Wednesday Joe Van Holsbeeck, 17 years of age, was murdered in Brussels Central Station. He was stabbed five times in the heart by North African youths. They demanded that he give them his MP3 player. When Joe refused he was savagely murdered. The atrocity happened during the evening rush hour on a crowded platform. Though there were hundreds of people on the platform, no-one interfered – perhaps because many people do not notice what is happening around them on a crowded, noisy and busy platform where passengers are rushing to catch their trains.

Theories are a “good thing.” Correct or not, they depict complex situations in simple terms: thus the otherwise confusing becomes understandable. We embrace theories when their implications confirm our predispositions. Any speculation that validates what we like to hear is more soothing than two double Martinis.

Recent events have again brought “surprises” that counsel against accepting postulates merely because they are agreeable and fit the events we selectively care to remember. To our disappointment, the cases referred to by the terms “Baghdad” and “Budapest” reveal that general trends do not necessarily predict single instances.

Taken from the Open Europe Bulletin a follow up to my piece on the Euro or maybe I should say a prequel,

“In an interview with Belgian daily De Morgen (18 March) Commission President Jose Barroso’s economic advisor Professor Paul de Grauwe has argued that the euro has damaged Italy’s economy, and that without ‘political union’ in Europe, the euro will collapse in ten to twenty years. He also argued that the EU’s Lisbon process, which forms the backbone of the Commission’s efforts to make Europe more competitive, ‘is best buried.’”

In my essay about the retreat of the Western world order, I mentioned the possibility of civil strife in the West caused by runaway immigration. This is no longer just a theoretical possibility. It is pretty clear to anybody following the developments in Europe that the situation in France is starting to become rather serious. President Jacques Chirac threw out part of a youth labor law that triggered massive protests and strikes, bowing to intense pressure from students and unions. The unemployment rate for youths under 26 is a staggering 22 percent nationwide, but soars to nearly 50 percent in some of those troubled areas with many Muslim immigrants. French Jews are leaving the country in ever-growing numbers, fleeing a wave of anti-Semitism. Nidra Poller, American ex-pat writer and translator in Paris, has written some appalling stories about aggressive anti-Semitism, such as the murder and brutal torture of French Jew Ilan Halimi early in 2006.