Belgium, the state of origin of EU president Herman Van Rompuy, is proving its status of non-country once again. For the fifth time since he was elected in 2007 the prime minister Yves Leterme, a Christian Democrat of Van Rompuy’s party, has either failed to put or keep a government together. Yesterday, he submitted his resignation to the King after one of his Flemish coalition parties, the Liberal VLD, withdrew from the government.

It was anomalously the case that British musicians, not French ones, dominated the bicentenary celebrations seven years ago in honor of Louis-Hector Berlioz (1803–1869), even the ones that took place in what ought to have been the undisputed heart of Berlioz country, the city of Paris. True to its history, the French establishment acknowledged its stellar musical son only in a mean-spirited way. The absurd rancor of politically correct persons against a composer more than a century and a half deceased had two foci: A plan by admirers to remove Berlioz’ remains from their private grave and re-inter them in the Panthéon, the shrine for the illustrious dead in Paris; and the announcement by managers of the Théatre de Chatelet that they intended to stage the great work that Berlioz saw as the summation of his creative life but never actually saw in performance in a complete or adequate way – his Virgilian opera Les Troyens.

The European Union (EU) has temporarily solved the crisis involving the euro, the EU’s common currency, by bailing out Greece. Temporarily, because no one believes the problems are over.

Interesting things happened in Europe long before the Greeks and the Romans. Prior to 5000 BC the inhabitants of the Lower Danube Valley and the Balkan foothills farmed, built sizable towns and mastered large-scale copper smelting. At its peak by 4500 BC, says Professor David W. Anthony, “Old Europe was among the most sophisticated and technologically advanced places in the world.” Admiring their colorful ceramics, a specialist in Egyptian archaeology remarked that at such an early time “Egyptians were certainly not making pottery like this.” The Spondylus shell from the Aegean Sea was a special item of trade in the region.

What is the EU worth if there is real trouble? Hungary: Election day illusions. When violene is recast as a virtue.

 

1. Central and Western Europe’s existing states mirror the region’s multi-polarity. Neither the State nor the Church could centralize continent-wide their power in order to create the idealized unity and uniformity that these institutions have pursued. As a result, numerous entities could emerge and many of these managed to establish themselves as states. A fall-out product –and sometimes a causative force behind this process of fragmentation- has been the emergence of a multitude of idioms. These are all regarded as expressions of essential identity. It is illustrative of diversification that some of these languages are not even Indo-European. Through this process of fragmentation, a number of states could emerge. They survived the efforts of the likes of Charlemagne, Louis XIV, Napoleon, Hitler and Stalin who all attempted to create unity by force. The firming tradition of independence, distinguished by a “unique” language, geographic factors and “race” proved to be stronger than muscle-driven projects of unification.

From Gnosis to Sepsis
 
Until now, we have surveyed the symptoms of the multiple plagues of contemporary West, drawn some conclusions and cited statistics and news stories to provide the rationale for such conclusions. We have not delved into the causes of these diseases, and skimped in the analysis of some symptoms, notably Islam’s penetration of the West.

Analysis of the causes falls largely in two categories: conspiracy theories or social psychosomatics. This work omits the subject of conspiracies, which does not necessarily mean none exists. Nevertheless, by the time you have read the millions of words that have been written, often by mentally unstable monomaniacs, on each of: the Illuminati, the Freemasons, the Bilderbergs, the Elders of Zion, the Trilateral Commission, the Black Helicopters of the New World Order etc., you will be begging for Occam’s razor.

As Bat Ye’or showed in Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis and I elaborated in my own book Defeating Eurabia, Eurabia was born when Western European leaders abandoned their pro-Israeli stance due to Arab threats in the 1970s. This should serve as a reminder of how closely the fate of Europe is tied to that of Israel. Three years ago I wrote the essay Why Europeans Should Support Israel. As I stated there, “Bat Ye’or’s predictions about Arab anti-Semitism spreading in Europe as the continent’s Islamization and descent into Eurabia continues have so far proved depressingly accurate. This trend needs to be fought, vigorously, by all serious European anti-Jihadists. Not only because it is immoral and unfair to Israelis, which it is, but also because those who assist it are depriving Europeans of the opportunity to fully grasp the threat and understand the nature of the Jihad that is now targeting much of Europe as well.”

I remember one Holocaust survivor who was asked what he had learned from the Second World War. He replied that “When somebody says he wants to kill you, you should believe him.” Jews have learned this lesson the hard way, which is why they will fight, as they should, when people such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of the Islamic Republic of Iran brag about how they want to wipe out Jews in a “final victory.” The rest of us should fight, too.

What pillorying deviant churchmen is not. Noble principles invite scrutiny. A Gypsy voice: Wanted is work and order. Why you should keep your prayer rug ready.

 

1. In a sermon, the Pope’s personal priest reacted to the charges of pedophilia, and sadism attributed to churchmen and committed against juveniles entrusted to their care. In doing so, he has compared the criticism of the Church to anti-Semitism and the resulting Holocaust persecution of Jews. The claim elicits concerns that are comparable to the publicized instances of abuse.

March was a good month for Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. He received high-profile apologies from both the United States and the European Union. The apologies were at the expense of Switzerland, the country against which Gaddafi has officially declared “holy war.” Switzerland has a tradition of neutralism in international conflicts, but could not avoid a nasty conflict with Libya. Trying to remain “neutral” in the Swiss-Libyan conflict, the US and the EU grovel before the Libyan despot.

The book A God Who Hates: The Courageous Woman Who Inflamed the Muslim World Speaks Out Against the Evils of Islam was written by Wafa Sultan, a Syrian-American ex-Muslim. Breaking with Islam takes tremendous courage, as the traditional death penalty for leaving Islam is still upheld today. The only good byproduct of Muslim immigration to the West is that it has allowed a handful of such former Muslims to publish their thoughts about leaving Islam. One of these titles is Leaving Islam: Apostates Speak Out, edited by Ibn Warraq. Another is Understanding Muhammad by the Iranian ex-Muslim Ali Sina, the founder of Faith Freedom International. I have reviewed his book at Jihad Watch previously.