Three weeks ago, all the members of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Belgian Senate received an invitation of the US Embassy in Brussels to attend the inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama at the Embassy on 20 January. Senators Karim Van Overmeire and Freddy Van Gaever, both belonging to the Vlaams Belang (VB) party, the largest party in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking northern half of Belgium, accepted the invitation.

On the very morning of the inauguration, however, the secretary of the two VB senators received a phone call from the U.S. Embassy. The embassy told her that the invitation of the VB politicians was “a mistake” and requested them “not to come.”

The sum of our fears

Question:  What are these people doing in Europe? Who invited them? Who let them in? Who let them stay? What has allowed them to even dream about moving to Europe, let alone realizing a colonization plan?

In Great Britain alone, intelligence agencies are tracking 200 terrorists plots among Pakistani Brits, of whom some 2,000 are under observation. More than 400,000 Pakistani citizens of Great Britain travel every year to Pakistan – a country of 12,000 madrassas and, as of mid-2005, 55 terrorist training camps.

George Handlery about the week that was. That goals and not the military hardware are disproportional is what counts. Israel, Hamas and principles. When does world opinion matter? About “war is no solution”. “Oil” or the “Jewish Lobby” as the axis of the world. Land for peace, or no land, no peace. Authoritarian anti-authoritarians. The stench of Russian gas.
 
1. Many contend that there is something disproportional about Israel’s military’s operations in Gaza. The qualified “yes” of this writer might surprise the reader. However, the decisive disproportion involves the goals of the hostile parties and not their means to wage war. One of them wishes to wipe its foe off the map. The other would be content to be left alone and if its right to exist would not be questioned. It is a telling sign that putting it this way will anger some. It is also too bad that, regardless of the entirely different goals pursued, approval and condemnation is dished out while ignoring who wants to achieve what.

The Jordanian Muslim organization “The Messenger of Allah Unites Us” states that the Kingdom of Jordan is about to issue an international arrest warrant against the Dutch politician Geert Wilders “within the next ten days.” Jordan wants to put Mr. Wilders, a member of the Dutch Parliament and the leader of the Freedom Party in the Netherlands, on trial for producing Fitna, a documentary film about Koranic verses advocating violence against Jews and other non-Muslims. (See Fitna here.) Zakaria Sheikh, the chairman of “The Messenger of Allah Unites Us,” told the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant that he is happy with the decision of the Amsterdam Court of Appeal earlier this week to prosecute Mr. Wilders for “the instigation of hatred” against Muslims. “Finally the judiciary in the Netherlands has taken action against these serious crimes,” Mr. Sheikh said.

The just-completed American presidential campaigns, the election, and the inauguration together have taught us a lesson about crowds. Our electronically mediated presidential campaigns thrive on crowds and on the social phenomena that attend them: one might list unified cheering, rhythmic repetition of slogans, emotive activations of the body, swooning, flag-waving, and an eagerness to respond, in “Simon-says” style, to broad cues from a designated leader. Our political spectacles differ hardly at all in their outward appearance from our sportive entertainments. Another word for a crowd is a mob, a mass of people mobilized in unanimity and thus demoting itself freely and spontaneously from the status of the responsible individual to that of a collective instrument of agitation or coercion – and for a purpose more than likely not its own. Crowds are mobile, but they are also motile, that is to say, fickle. The crowd that shouts “Ave Rabbi!” will swiftly transform itself into the crowd that shouts, “Crucifigatur!”

The Dutch judicial authorities are going to prosecute Geert Wilders, one of the 150 members of the Dutch Parliament, for making the movie Fitna. In this short documentary, which explains what happens if a number of verses of the Koran are taken seriously, Mr Wilders compares the Muslims’ holy book to Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf. He claims the Koran calls for violence against Jews and other non-Muslims. Fitna can be seen here.

A wave of violent protest demonstrations struck Europe in the wake of the recent events in Gaza. Despite efforts of the media to downplay the incidents, ordinary Europeans realize that the vandals who demonstrate against Israel in Europe’s streets are almost exclusively youths of immigrant Muslim origin. The protests have been accompanied by anti-Semitic rants and attacks on Jewish citizens. Leftist Europeans joined in by demanding a boycott of Israeli products and local Jewish businesses. Even mainstream politicians joined the chorus of Israel bashing, hoping to attract the support of the growing Muslim electorate in Western Europe.

This moment in history, destined to be a where-were-you moment for the present crop of twentysomethings, was mostly missed by me. A morning en route from California to Texas via the miracle of aviation left me with a few minutes in the Phoenix airport, where I did not watch the televised Inauguration in progress, but rather those watching it. The scene is now familiar to anyone who has watched the watchers of Barack Obama over the past year: misty-eyed, rapt, mostly young, mostly female, disproportionately minority — and strangely possessed by a weird admixture of joy and anxiety that recalls nothing so much as the aftermath of a difficult birth. Perhaps this is no accident: the circumstances that produced the new President are difficult indeed, with war and recession only the beginning of the national troubles. This assumes that he is a product of circumstance, though, and so may not give him due credit for the most extraordinary act of social climbing since Jay Gatsby.

One need not yield to the grotesque spectacle of the 170-million dollar “Inaugural Festivity” during a time when wealth is disappearing by the hours. Other, more worthy, objects of interest offer themselves for contemplation…

George Handlery about the week that was. Radicalizing majorities. If criminality is a life style, is enforcing the laws racism? The right to total war and the obligation of a limited response. Needed: The courage to win. Terrorism is about ultimate subjugation not about compromise settlements. Back to the oven?
 
1. One reads, “Israel has lost the propaganda war” over Gaza, “sequel ‚X’”. True. However, the judgment has little to do with Israel’s responsibility and the quality of her crisis management. This defeat had been pre-programmed. That has everything to do with the proper response to the violence engaged in by a PC-protected group. (N.B. As this was written, an e-mail called attention to a poll conducted by a newscaster. On the site, one could click on the Israeli or the Palestinian flag to register their support. The score, when checked, was about 50:50.)