Readers of The Brussels Journal might approach the following essay as though it were an extended footnote to “Fjordman’s” magisterial multi-part treatment of Western music-history. My essay is also, in its way, a follow-up to my own earlier Brussels Journal statements about Johann Sebastian Bach and Joseph Haydn. This year (2009) is the bicentenary of Haydn’s death. The year 2011 will be the centenary of Gustav Mahler’s death. As in the cases of Bach and Haydn, I consider Mahler (1860-1911) – and specifically his Second Symphony (1894) – to be what I call “a conservative obligation,” an essential and poignant manifestation of the Western spirit, close familiarity with which Westerners ought to cultivate. Not all “conservative obligations” are musical. I hope, in future, to dedicate some words to the Hudson Valley School of American landscape painting and to the aesthetics of steam locomotion, European and American. I have reason to believe that once, during his sojourn in New York State and on his way to Niagara Falls with his wife, Mahler passed through the small town on Lake Ontario where – in my exile from my native California – I have lived since the fall of the fateful year 2001. A fair number of Mahler acquaintances made their way to California in the 1930s. His influence may be heard in certain landmark film-scores, like those of Eric Korngold. For me, Mahler is a presence, immediate and personal.

If all goes as planned, the 27 member states of the European Union will soon have a common hate crime legislation, which will turn disapproval for Islamic practices or homosexual lifestyles into crimes. Europe’s Christian churches are trying to stop the plan of the European political establishment, but it is unclear whether they will be successful. The media are silent on the topic.

Last April, the European Parliament approved the European Union’s Equal Treatment Directive. A directive is the name given to an EU law. As directives overrule national legislation, they need the approval of the European Council of Ministers before coming into effect. Next month, the Council will decide on the directive, which places the 27 EU member states under a common anti-discrimination legislation. The directive’s definition of discriminatory harassment is so broad that every objection to Muslim or homosexual practices will be considered unlawful.

People have studied stones for practical or decorative usages since prehistoric times. The ancient Greek philosopher Theophrastus in his work On Stones described many minerals. There are those who claim that the history of geology begins in the eleventh century AD with the Persian polymath Avicenna, a view which is not convincing. In China, the polymath Shen Kuo upon noticing that there were seashells embedded in a sandstone cliff far above sea level inferred that the sandstone must have derived from an ancient beach that had somehow been compressed and elevated. While this insight was correct, it remained an isolated observation and was not followed up by other Chinese or Asian scholars. Geology, like modern science in general, was therefore born in Europe after the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment.

George Handlery about the week that was. “What goes around…” The UN’s biased rendition of reality. Unwelcome refugees. Noble ends and terror. Third Worlders, socialism and failing societies. Tyranny and guided economies. Strange bedfellows and odd mutations.

1. A small news item calls attention to the issue hidden behind it. The report of October 18 tells that a terrorist attack cost the lives of several Iranian revolutionary guards. Even some bosses were among the victims. We might be inclined to file away the news under the heading “well deserved,” or “ultimately we all have to swallow our own medicine,” or perhaps the reaction is “who cares, we are used to this”. While the terms might fit, the event has a significance hiding under its surface. It points to something that transcends the event itself.

Diophantus of Alexandria is sometimes called “the father of algebra,” although the title is disputed. He worked in Roman Egypt in the third century of our era, but while he is usually assumed to have been a Greek, very little is known about his life. His collection of books known as the Arithmetica, a landmark work in the history of algebra and number theory with the so-called Diophantine equations, is believed to have been completed around AD 250. Dirk J. Struik explains in A Concise History of Mathematics, Fourth Revised Edition:

Jeffrey Sachs is senior economist at the UN and author of the bestseller "Common Wealth" and the controversial Time essay "The Case for Bigger Government". In a recent interview in the Brussels newspaper De Tijd Jeffrey Sachs blames “unbridled American market capitalism” for the financial crisis and pleads in favor of the Swedish social model as an alternative. His ideological argument is revealing for the dominant utopian-socialist mind at the top of the UN. 
 

 An article by Johnny Munkhammar

One cause of the impressive economic development in the Nordic countries during the last two decades has been their early deregulations of the telecom market. A symbol for this has been the healthy competition between Nokia and Ericsson. We have not just seen an explosion in the supply within telecom but also 75 per cent in price cuts. The industry as a whole has been able to increase its productivity and the consumers have gained more in freedom and choice.

Thilo Sarrazin, a Bundesbank director who criticized Turkish and Arab immigrants in a recent interview, has been punished by his employer and may lose his job. Apart from receiving threats by Islamist extremists, he may also be taken to court by the German authorities on charges of “incitement to racial hatred.” For many Germans, however, the 64-year old Mr. Sarrazin, who until last May was Finance Minister in the regional government of the state of Berlin for the Social-Democrat SPD, is a hero.

Several weeks ago I posted a photo of the Eiffel Tower dressed up in the Turkish flag, similar to the photo at left. Some readers wanted to know if this was a an official preview photo or a photoshop production. Its purpose was to announce to the people of France that their country was welcoming La Saison de la Turquie - a 10-month celebration of Turkish culture - by lighting up the Tower in red and white, with the Turkish flag superimposed.

George Handlery about the week that was. Direct democracy, minarets the burkas. The trend toward qualified equality. The grab for power by those who wish to save mankind.

1. Among the informed, Switzerland is noted for her stability and the predictability of her system of governance. These qualities were the foundation of the general wealth of that land-locked country blessed by nature with a rough climate and a matching forbidding geography. The average person associates Switzerland with the coo-coo clock – actually made in Germany – and myths about bank secrecy that is said to protect crooks only. In addition to its above oddities, the country also practices direct democracy. That means that the people can legislate by making laws or by invalidating existing ordinances without the legislature’s nod and against the executive’s recommendations. As a result, referendums are regularly reoccurring events. This makes Switzerland THE country were the people’s voice on the issues of our time can be heard directly. An interesting vote is coming up in November. The “sovereign” – the local legal term for “people” – will have to decide whether the erection of further minarets is to be forbidden. The right of Muslims to build houses of worship is not effected by the vote. Even so, led by the commands of “multi-culti” sentiment, the country’s PC “establishment” is dead set against the – admittedly symbolic – minaret ban. Indirectly, the largest party, which is, however, by rational calculations, unable to achieve absolute majority, supports the initiative.