It looks as if immigrants youths want to turn nightly rioting during the Islamic holy month of ramadan into an annual tradition. Around 8:30pm last night violence erupted again in Brussels, the capital of Europe. The riots centered on the Brussels Marollen quarter and the area near the Midi Train Station, where the international trains from London and Paris arrive. Youths threw stones at passing people and cars, windows of parked cars were smashed, bus shelters were demolished, cars were set ablaze, a youth club was arsoned and a shop was looted. Two molotov cocktails were thrown into St.Peter’s hospital, one of the main hospitals of central Brussels. The fire brigade was able to extinguish the fires at the hospital, but youths managed to steal the keys of the fire engine.

A quote from Wim Uyttersprot, the CEO of the Brussels company U2U, in a message to an Israeli businessman:

I appreciate your interest in my company, but after the destructive and inhumane war crimes that Israel committed in Lebanon, and because of the apartheid regime that your government is enforcing in Palestine, U2U does not see it fit to connect itself with Israeli products. I hope the political situation in your country changes completely and will be based on peace and respect for non Jewish cultures. Warm regards, Wim Uyttersprot

Last Sunday the Islamic holy month of Ramadan began. It lasts until 23 October. Many will remember last year’s ramadan riots, which set France and, to a lesser extent, parts of Belgium and Denmark, alight. Rioting went on for three weeks. Each night thousands of cars were set alight by immigrant youths, until the French and Belgian governments ordered the police to no longer divulge any information about the disturbances, after which the media stopped reporting, the youths lost interest and the number of nightly “carbecues” in France dropped to the “normal” level of about 50.

It looks like some Brussels immigrant youths want to make “ramadan rioting” an annual event. Last Saturday morning, between 1 and 4 am, ten cars were set on fire in the Brussels borough of Schaarbeek. Last night several car and shop windows were smashed and one shop and five cars were set alight in the Brussels Marollen quarter.

Nonsense first. From Germany:

Berlin’s Deutsche Oper has canceled performances of Mozart’s “Idomeneo.” The opera house said that the production’s reference to world religions, including Islam, raises an “incalculable security risk.” The Idomeneo performance shows King Idomeneo staggering on stage carrying the decapitated heads of Poseidon, Jesus, Buddha and Muhammad.

The Hungarians have been rioting for days. The demonstrations were triggered when a tape was leaked that contained a private conversation of Socialist Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány, in which he admitted to having lied to the nation. The PM made this confession during a meeting with deputies of his Socialist Party last May. As he urged the deputies to embrace economic reform to fix Hungary’s budget problems he told them that the [formerly Communist] party had won the elections by concealing how dramatic the economic situation was.

When the citizens of Eastern Europe rejected Communism 17 years ago they had been inspired by dissidents such as Václav Havel, who told them that people have a right to “live in the truth.” People wanted to rid themselves of the lies of their Communist masters. It is significant that during the past days of riots in Budapest, not only cars were set alight and official buildings stormed, but also the main Soviet war monument was vandalised.

A quote from an email of the [American] Home School Legal Defense Association, 22 September 2006

The German government is persecuting homeschoolers like never before. Armin Eckermann, president of Schulunterricht zu Hause (School Instruction at Home – SIH), the homeschool legal defense association of Germany, states that there are over 40 homeschool families in court in Germany!

The families are being heavily fined; the parents are being jailed; the children are being threatened with being seized and placed in the custody of the state; and families are being forced to flee to Austria and other surrounding countries. […] [Some families] have sought review by the Human Rights European Court that covers all of Europe. There are now eight cases pending before the European Court, [...]. The problem with the European Court, is that all cases are discretionary: there is no right of appeal. If the Court decides not to rule on them, the case will not be heard. Another problem is the Court has no particular deadline of when they have to decide to take the case or not, so some of these cases have been sitting for three to four years, with no resolution in sight.

A quote from David Gordon at mises.org, 22 September 2006

The Nazi press enthusiastically hailed the early New Deal measures: America, like the Reich, had decisively broken with the “uninhibited frenzy of market speculation.” The Nazi Party newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter, “stressed ‘Roosevelt’s adoption of National Socialist strains of thought in his economic and social policies,’ praising the president’s style of leadership as being compatible with Hitler’s own dictatorial Führerprinzip”. [...] A New Order in both countries had replaced an antiquated emphasis on rights.

In the 19th century the forces shaping the modern world brought industrialization and with it new economic nets that connected settlements, then regions and finally continents. People were made aware that their well-being depended of forces whose roots and movers were beyond their community. Not being able to encounter the remote figure who seemed to have been one’s good or bad fortune was of significant novelty.

A quote from Jack Wheeler on To the Point News, 19 September 2006

[The Pope] knows that a religion capable of responding to criticism only with violence and incapable – metaphysically incapable – of reasoned dialogue has no future. He knows he is no Manuel II facing vast Moslem armies he has no capacity to withstand. There are no more vast Moslem armies. All that Islam has left are terrorists, suicide bombers, and imams preaching hate.

The recent divergence in US and French policies with regard to Iran should come as little surprise, given French President Jacques Chirac’s policy that France’s “relations with the United States will never be submissive.” Yet The Independent has posited that France ’s change of mind may in fact be connected with the presence of French peacekeepers in Lebanon – that is to say within range of Iran’s military proxy, Hezbollah. There may be some truth to that assertion, but it is perhaps more instructive to look at France’s Iran policy over the last few decades, the better to round out the context.