George Handlery about the week that was. Aggressors exploit pacifists. Rockets and reputations. Freedom can still have a price. The price of popularity. “We are all migrants” and its implications. Integration by government policy: who is adjusting and to what?

It has become a pattern in several European countries: The Muslim electorate tips the balance towards the Left. In Germany, too, Turkish immigrants are likely to play the pivotal role in the general elections next Sunday. All the parties are hoping to attract their votes.

Some English-language Arabic news sources have covered this story. It is certainly not new - discussions about Islamic finance have been making headlines in the world of economics for a long time, but the French are inching closer to a definitive measure that will allow Islamic law to enter into the French legal framework. All this is happening with the support of President Sarkozy's UMP.

The newspaper Aftenposten writes that according to a new report, six percent of Swedish girls questioned said they had been raped during the previous year. The hostile Wikipedia entry on “Fjordman” previously claimed that my essays about the Swedish rape epidemic are false because the massive increase in rapes was caused by “a widening of the legal definition of rape.” I bet it was. In this situation, the number one preoccupation of Swedish media is demonizing Israel, and the number two preoccupation is demonizing native Swedish critics of mass immigration and barring them from access to the mass media.

 Introduction to Part I: Modern people assume the immunity of their situation to major disturbance or – even more unthinkable – to terminal wreckage. The continuance of a society or culture depends, in part, on that very assumption because without it no one would complete his daily round. A man cannot enthusiastically arise from bed as the sun comes up and set about the day’s errands believing that all undertakings will issue vainly because the established order threatens to go up in smoke before twilight. Just as it serves this necessity, however, the assumption of social permanence, that tomorrow will necessarily be just like today, can, when it becomes too habitual through lack of reflection, lead to dangerous complacency.

The former Soviet Union used to send dissidents to psychiatric wards and treat them for the mental disease of not seeing the benefits of communism. In Europe, we have not gone so far (yet) that people who do not see the benefits of the multicultural society are treated as lunatics. They are merely considered to be “fascists” or “racists.” Nevertheless, some intellectuals on the left truly seem unable to understand how anyone who is right in the head can be “right” in the head.

He reserves a number of categories such as Arabic literature, Indian philosophy and Chinese art for non-Western peoples, with Du Fu’s (AD 712-770) and Li Bai’s (AD 701-762) poetry ranking highest in Chinese literature, Sesshu’s (AD 1420-1506) paintings or the haiku poetry of Matsuo Basho (1644-1694) topping the list in Japan, Kalidasa’s (fifth century AD?) plays and poetry in India and al-Mutanabbi’s (AD 915-965) Arabic poetry at the top of the list in the Arabic ranking.

George Handlery about the week that was. It is a nuthouse and the inmates hold the keys. How not to negotiate with tyrants. Aims that Stalin and Hitler did not pursue. Can one avoid provoking terrorists? Money for climate. The insider deals of the political class.

 

1. For about a year, mainly to serve the cause of unintended humor, an item titled “The Dictator’s Tantrum” has been presented to you. An issue or two ago the end of the quaint story has been announced. This proves to be a serious error of judgment. Innocently, I had concluded that at the price of an unnecessary humiliation, Switzerland has put aside her quarrel with Qaddafi. Well, the story, like a successful soap opera, goes on. And on.

Do you think the Internal Revenue Service should have the right to share your tax information with foreign governments -- even ones run by thugs and those that engage in human rights abuses and/or suppress freedom in their countries?

A meeting was held in Mexico City last week under the auspices of the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), whose implicit goal is to create a global high-tax cartel.

Today, like yesterday, the headlines of the Belgian press are dominated by a couple from Hoboken, a southern suburb of Antwerp, who have a photo of Adolf Hitler in their living room. Two days ago, an undercover journalist of the Belgian state television had been in the living room to take pictures of the Hitler photo on the wall. The woman of the couple is a babysitter who in the daytime minds babies and toddlers of other people in her house, including in the room with the photo.